The Gloved Hand, Burton Egbert Stevenson [first ebook reader txt] 📗

them from what?"

"I don't know," and he twisted his fingers helplessly.

"Well, the police will stop them. There are three or four men on duty there, with orders to let no one in or out."

His face brightened.

"Ah, that's better," he said. "I didn't know that. How long will they be there?"

"Till after the inquest, anyway."

"And you will see Miss Vaughan after the inquest?"

"Yes."

"And urge her to go to Mr. and Mrs. Royce?"

"Yes—but I don't think she'll need much urging. I'll get a note from Mrs. Royce. I'll telephone to Mr. Royce now, and you can stop and get the note as you come up in the morning."

Godfrey's car glided up the drive and stopped at the porch. Swain held out his hand and clasped mine warmly.

"Thank you, Mr. Lester," he said; and a moment later the car turned into the highway and passed from sight.

Then I went in, got Mr. Royce on the 'phone, and give him a brief outline of the incidents of the night before. He listened with an exclamation of astonishment from time to time, and assented heartily when I suggested that Miss Vaughan might be placed in Mrs. Royce's care temporarily.

"She's a beautiful girl," I concluded, "and very young. I agree with Swain that she mustn't be left alone in that house."

"Certainly she mustn't," said my partner. "I'll have Mrs. Royce write the note, and get a room ready for her."

"Of course," I said, "it's possible she won't come—though I believe she'll be glad to. Or there may be a family lawyer who will want to look after her. Only she didn't appear to know of any when she was talking to Swain."

"Well, bring her along if you can," said Mr. Royce. "We'll be glad to have her. And take your time about coming back, if you're needed up there. We're getting along all right."

I thanked him, and hung up; and presently Mrs. Hargis came to summon me to dinner. That meal over, I went in to Godfrey's desk to see what the books were he had suggested that I look at. There was quite a pile of them, and I saw that they all related to mysticism or to the religions of India. There was Sir Monier Williams's "Brahmanism and Hinduism," Hopkins's "The Religions of India," a work on crystallomancy, Mr. Lloyd Tuckey's standard work on "Hypnotism and Suggestion," and some half dozen others whose titles I have forgotten. And as I looked at them, I began to understand one reason for Godfrey's success as a solver of mysteries—no detail of a subject ever escaped him.

I lit my pipe, sat down, and was soon deep in the lore of the East. I must confess that I did not make much of it. In that maze of superstition, the most I could do was to pick up a thread here and there. The yogi had referred to the White Night of Siva, and I soon found out that Siva is one of the gods of Hinduism—one of a great trilogy: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer. He had also spoken of the attributes of Kali, and, after a little further search, I discovered that Kali was Siva's wife—a most unprepossessing and fiendish female.

But when I passed on to Hinduism itself, and tried to understand its tenets and its sects, I soon found myself out of my depth. They were so jumbled, so multitudinous, and so diverse that I could get no clear idea of them. I read of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Brâhmanas; of metaphysical abstractions too tenuous to grasp; of karna or action, of maya or illusion, and I know not what "tangled jumble of ghosts and demons, demi-gods, and deified saints, household gods, village gods, tribal gods, universal gods, with their countless shrines and temples and din of discordant rites." At last, in despair, I gave it up, and turned to the book on crystallomancy.

Here, at least, was something comprehensible, if not altogether believable, and I read with interest of the antiquity of crystal-gazing as a means of inducing hallucination for the purpose of seeking information not to be gained by any normal means. I read of its use in China, in Assyria, in Egypt, in Arabia, in India, in Greece and Rome; of how its practitioners in the Middle Ages were looked upon as heretics and burnt at the stake or broken on the wheel; of the famous Dr. Dee, and so down to the present time. The scryers or seers sometimes used mirrors, sometimes vessels filled with water, but usually a polished stone, and beryl was especially esteemed.

The effect of gazing at these intently for a time was to abstract the mind from normal sensory impressions, and to induce a state of partial hypnosis during which the scryer claimed he could perceive in the crystal dream-pictures of great vividness, scenes at a distance, occurrences of the past, and of the future.

I was still deep in this, when I heard a step outside, the door opened, and Godfrey came in. He smiled when he saw what I was doing.

"How have you been getting along?" he asked.

"Not very well," and I threw the book back on the table. "The crystal-gazing isn't so bad—one can understand that; but the jumble of abstractions which the Hindus call religion is too much for me. I didn't know it was so late," I added, and looked at my watch; but it was not yet eleven o'clock.

"I'm earlier than usual," said Godfrey. "I cut loose as soon as I could, because I thought we'd better talk things over. I saw Simmonds in town to-night."

"Ah," I said; "and what did he tell you?"

"Nothing I didn't know already. The police have discovered nothing new—or, if they have, they're keeping it dark until to-morrow. Simmonds did, however, regale me with his theory of the case. He says the murder was done either by one of the Hindus or by young Swain."

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I'm inclined to agree with Simmonds," said Godfrey, grimly. "With the emphasis on the Hindus," he added, seeing the look on my face, "I don't believe Swain had any hand in it."

"Neither do I," I agreed, heartily. "In fact, such a theory is too absurd to discuss."

"Just the same," said Godfrey, slowly, "I'm glad he didn't touch Vaughan. If he had happened to seize him by the neck, while they were struggling together,—in other words, if those finger-prints Goldberger found had happened to be Swain's—things would have looked bad for him. I'm hoping they'll turn out to belong to one of the Hindus—but, as I said to Goldberger, I'm afraid that's too good to be true."

"Which one of the Hindus?" I asked.

"Oh, the Thug, of course."

I sat bolt upright.

"The Thug?" I echoed.

"Didn't you get that far?" and Godfrey picked up one of the books and ran rapidly through the pages. "You remember we found him squatting on the floor with a rag and a tooth and a bone in front of him?"

"Yes."

"And do you remember how the yogi described them, when Goldberger asked him about them?"

"Very distinctly—he called them the attributes of Kali."

"Now listen to this: 'The Thugs are a religious fraternity, committing murders in honor of Kali, the wife of Siva, who, they believe, assists them and protects them. Legend asserts that she presented her worshippers with three things, the hem of her lower garment to use as a noose, a rib to use as a knife, and a tooth to use as a pick-axe in burying the victims.'" He glanced at me, and then went on: "'But the knife was little used, for the religious character of an assassination came to depend more and more upon its bloodless character, and for this a noose was used, with which the victim was strangled. The aversion to bloodshed became in time so great that many sects of Thuggee consider it defiling to touch human blood!'" He closed the book and threw it on the table. "Don't you think that proves the case?"

"Yes," I said, thoughtfully. "And the yogi—is he also a Thug?"

"Oh, no; a White Priest of Siva could never be a Thug. The worship of Siva and of Kali are the very opposites of each other. The Saivas are ascetics. That is," he added, in another tone, "if the fellow is really a Saiva and not just a plain fraud."

"All these fellows are frauds, more or less, aren't they?" I questioned.

"No," was Godfrey's unexpected answer; "the real yogin are no doubt sincere; but a real yogi wouldn't waste his time on a soft-brained old man, and fire sky-rockets off at midnight to impress him. My own opinion is that this fellow is a fakir—a juggler, a sleight-of-hand man—and, of course, a crook."

"Well?" I asked, as Godfrey stopped and failed to continue.

"Well, that's as far as I've got. Oh, yes—there's Toto. A cobra is one of a fakir's stock properties."

"But, Godfrey," I protested, "he is no ignorant roadside juggler. He's a cultivated man—an unusual man."

"Certainly he is—most unusual. But that doesn't disprove my guess; it only makes the problem harder. Even a roadside juggler doesn't do his tricks for nothing—what reward is it this fellow's working for? It must be a big one, or it wouldn't tempt him."

"I suppose Vaughan paid him well," I ventured.

"Yes; but did you look at him, Lester? You've called him unusual, but that word doesn't begin to express him. He's extraordinary. No doubt Vaughan did pay him well, but it would take something more than that to persuade such a man to spend six months in a place like that. And I think I can guess at the stake he's playing for."

"You mean Miss Vaughan?"

"Just that," and Godfrey leaned back in his chair.

I contemplated this theory for some moments in silence. It was, at least, a theory and an interesting one—but it rested on air. There was no sort of foundation for it that I could see, and at last I said so.

"I know it's pretty thin," Godfrey admitted, "but it's the best I've been able to do—there's so little to build a theory out of. But I'm going to see if I can't prove one part of it true to-night."

"Which part?"

"About his being a fakir. Here's my theory: that hocus-pocus on the roof at midnight was for the purpose of impressing Vaughan. No doubt he believed it a real spiritual manifestation, whereas it was only a clever bit of jugglery. Now that Vaughan is dead, that particular bit of jugglery will cease until there is some new victim to impress. In fact, it has ceased already. There was no star last night."

"But you know why," I pointed out. "The yogi spent the night in contemplation. We can bear witness to that."

"We can't bear witness to when he started in," said Godfrey, drily. "We didn't see him till after half-past twelve. However, accepting his explanation, there would be no reason for omitting the phenomenon to-night, if it's a genuine one."

"No," I agreed.

"And if it is omitted," Godfrey went on, "it will be pretty conclusive evidence that it isn't genuine. Although," he went on hurriedly, "I don't need any proof of that—anything else would be unbelievable." He glanced at his watch. "It's ten minutes to twelve," he said. "Come along."

I followed him out of the house and through the grove with very mixed sensations. If the star didn't fall, it would tend to prove that it was, as Godfrey had said, merely a fake arranged to impress a credulous old man; but suppose it did fall! That was a part of the test concerning which Godfrey had said nothing. Suppose it did fall! What then?

So it was in silence that I followed Godfrey up the ladder and took my place on the limb. But Godfrey seemed to have no uneasiness.

"We won't have long to wait," he said. "We'll wait till five minutes after twelve, just to make sure. It must be twelve now. I wish I could persuade that fellow to show me how the fake was worked, for it was certainly a good one—one of the best...."

He stopped abruptly, staring out into the darkness. I was staring, too, for there, against the sky, a light began to glow and brighten. It hung for a moment motionless, and then began slowly to descend, steadily, deliberately, as of set purpose. Lower and lower it sank, in a straight line, hovered for an instant, and burst into a million sparks.

In the flare of light, a white-robed figure stood, gazing upwards, its arms strained toward the sky.

As we went silently down the ladder, a moment later, it seemed to me that I could hear Godfrey's theory crashing about his ears.

CHAPTER XIII FRANCISCO SILVA

It was not quite ten o'clock when