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

I answered; "strange visions, Señor Silva. I wish I knew their origin."

"Their origin is in the Universal Spirit," he said, quietly. "Even yet you do not believe."

"No," and I looked again at the crystal. "There are some things past belief."

"Nothing is past belief," he said, still more quietly, "You think so because your mind is wrapped in the conventions amid which you exist. Free it from those wrappings, and you will begin really to live. You have never known what life is."

"How am I to free it, Señor Silva?" I questioned.

He took a step nearer to me.

"By becoming a disciple of the Holy One," he said, most earnestly.

But I was myself again, and I rose to my feet and shook my head, with a smile.

"No," I said. "You will get no convert here. I must be going."

"I will open the gate for you," he said, in another tone, and led the way down the stairs, through the library, and out upon the gravelled walk.

After the drugged atmosphere of his room, the pure night air was like a refreshing bath, and I drew in long breaths of it. Silva walked beside me silently; he unlocked the gate with a key which he carried in his hand, and pulled it open.

"Good-night, Mr. Lester," he said. "The sphere is at your service should you desire again to test it. Think over what I have said to you."

"Good-night," I answered, and stepped through into the road.

The gate swung shut and the key grated in the lock. Mechanically I turned my steps toward Godfrey's house; but I seemed to be bending under a great burden—the burden of the vision.

CHAPTER XXII THE SUMMONS

I was confused and shaken; I had no idea of the hour; I did not know whether that vision had lasted a minute or a thousand years. But when I blundered up the path to Godfrey's house, I found him and Simmonds sitting on the porch together.

"I had Godfrey bring me out," said Simmonds, as he shook hands, "because I wanted another look at those midnight fireworks. Did you come up on the elevated?"

"Yes," I answered; and I felt Godfrey turn suddenly in his chair, at the sound of my voice, and scrutinise my face. "I had dinner in town and came up afterwards."

"What time was that?" asked Godfrey, quietly.

"I got up here about eight o'clock. I had an engagement with Miss Vaughan."

"You have been with her since?"

"With her and Silva," and I dropped into a chair and mopped my face with my handkerchief. "The experience was almost too much for me," I added, and told them all that had occurred.

They listened, Godfrey motionless and intent, and Simmonds with a murmur of astonishment now and then.

"I'm bound to confess," I concluded, "that my respect for Silva has increased immensely. He's impressive; he's consistent; I almost believe he's sincere."

"Have you considered what that belief implies?" asked Godfrey.

"What does it imply?"

"If Silva is sincere," said Godfrey, slowly; "if he is really what he pretends to be, a mystic, a priest of Siva, intent only on making converts to what he believes to be the true religion, then our whole theory falls to the ground; and Swain is guilty of murder."

I shivered a little, but I saw that Godfrey was right.

"We are in this dilemma," Godfrey continued, "either Silva is a fakir and charlatan, or Swain is a murderer."

"I wish you could have witnessed that horrible scene, as I did," I broke in; "it would have shaken your confidence, too! I wish you could have seen his face as he glanced back over his shoulder! It was fiendish, Godfrey; positively fiendish! It made my blood run cold. It makes it run cold now, to remember it!"

"How do you explain all that crystal sphere business, anyway?" asked Simmonds, who had been chewing his cigar perplexedly. "It stumps me."

"Lester was hypnotised and saw what Silva willed him to see," answered Godfrey. "You'll remember he sat facing him."

"But," I objected, "no one remembers what happens during hypnosis."

"They do if they are willed to remember. Silva willed you to remember. It was cleverly done, and his explanation of the origin of the vision was clever, too. Moreover, it had some truth in it, for the secret of crystal-gazing is that it awakens the subjective consciousness, or Great Spirit, as Silva called it. But you weren't crystal-gazing, to-night, Lester—you were simply hypnotised."

"You may be right," I admitted; "I remember how his eyes stared at me. But it was wonderful—I'm more impressed with him than ever."

"It isn't the fact that he hypnotised you that bothers me," said Godfrey, after a moment. "It's the fact that he has also hypnotised Miss Vaughan."

The words startled me.

"You think that's the reason of her behaviour?" I asked, quickly.

"What other reason can there be?" Godfrey demanded. "Here we have a girl who thinks herself in danger and summons to her aid the man who loves her and whom, presumably, she loves. And two days later, when he has been imprisoned for a crime of which she declares it is absurd to suspect him, instead of hastening to him or trying to carry out his wishes, she turns her back on him and deliberately walks into the danger from which, up to that moment, she had shrunk with loathing. Contrast her behaviour of Saturday, when she declared her faith in Swain and begged your assistance, with her behaviour of yesterday and to-day, when she throws you and Swain aside and announces that she is going to follow Silva—to become a priestess of Siva. Do you know what that means, Lester—to become a priestess of Siva?"

"No," I answered, slowly; "I don't know. Silva said it was a great destiny; yes, and that it meant turning one's back on marriage."

"That is right," said Godfrey, in an indescribable tone, "there is no marriage—there are only revolting, abominable, unspeakable rites and ceremonies. I ran across Professor Sutro, the Orientalist, to-day, and had a talk with him about it. He says the worship of Siva is merely the worship of the reproductive principle, as it runs through all creation, and that the details of this worship are inconceivably disgusting. That is the sort of destiny Miss Vaughan has chosen."

My hands were clammy with the horror of it.

"We must save her!" I said, hoarsely. "Of course she doesn't know—doesn't suspect! We must get her away from Silva!"

"Undoubtedly we must do something," Godfrey agreed. "I don't know how we can get her away from Silva, but we might get Silva away from her. Couldn't you arrest him on suspicion and keep him locked up for two or three days, Simmonds?"

"I might," Simmonds grunted.

"And while he's away, you can work with her, Lester; take Mrs. Royce to see her, give her a hint of what Saivaism really is—or get Mrs. Royce to. If that doesn't have any effect, we can try stronger measures; but I believe, if we can get her away from Silva's influence for a few days, she will be all right again."

"I hope so," I agreed, "but I'm not at all certain. She didn't behave like a hypnotised person, Godfrey; she seemed to be acting of her own free will. I couldn't see that Silva was trying to influence her in any way. She said she was trying to carry out her father's wish. And it certainly was his wish—the will proves that. If anybody is hypnotising her, I should say it was he."

"Well, I can't arrest him," said Simmonds, with a grin.

"Her father's wishes may have had some weight with her at the outset," admitted Godfrey, "but they couldn't have driven her to the length to which she has gone. And about the will. If Vaughan had not been killed, if he had been found insane, the will would have been at once invalidated. Don't you get the glimmer of a motive for his murder there, Lester?"

"It can be invalidated now, if Miss Vaughan contests it," I pointed out.

"Yes; but unless she does contest it, it will stand. But if Vaughan had been declared insane, the will could never have been probated—no contest would have been necessary. Do you see the difference?"

"I see what you mean; but I don't think it amounts to much. Silva declares that if Miss Vaughan contests the will, he will not defend it."

"But he knows perfectly well that she will not contest it. The surest way to prevent a contest is by adopting just such an attitude. Besides, if we don't save her, he'll get her share, too. Vaughan's estate and Vaughan's daughter and everything else that was Vaughan's will disappear into his maw. Oh, he's playing for a big stake, Lester, and it looks to me as though he were going to win it!"

It looked so to me, too, and I fell into gloomy thought.

"You've got your men watching the house, I suppose?" I asked, at last, turning to Simmonds.

"Yes; and we managed to score one little point to-day."

"What was that?"

"I found out that Annie Crogan, the housemaid over there, had a cousin on the force, so I got him out here and he managed to have a talk with her. He didn't find out anything," he added; "that is, anything we don't know; but she promised to leave the door of her bedroom open at night, and, if anything happened, to show a light at her window."

"Splendid!" I said. "And of course she'll keep her eyes open in the daytime."

"Sure she will. She's a bright girl. The only thing I'm afraid of is that the Hindu will get on to her and fire her. But she's been warned to be mighty careful. If they don't suspect her, maybe she'll have something to tell us, in a day or two."

"Perhaps she will," I agreed; and I drew a breath of relief. Surely with all these guardians, inside the house and out, Miss Vaughan was safe. The least outcry would bring swift assistance. Besides, I could not bring myself to believe that Silva was such a brute as Godfrey seemed to think him. I had been attracted by him, not repelled, and I have always believed in the accuracy of these instinctive feelings.

And Godfrey himself, I reflected, did not seem to be very clear in the matter. If Silva was merely a fakir and a charlatan, there was no reason why he should wish to induct Miss Vaughan into the mysteries of a religion which he wore only as a cloak, to be dropped as soon as his plans were accomplished. On the other hand, if he was sincere and really wished to convert the girl, it was only reasonable to suppose that he was sincere in other things as well.

"It reduces itself to this," I said finally to Godfrey. "If Silva is a charlatan, there is no reason why he should hypnotise Miss Vaughan; but if he really wishes to make a priestess of her, then, by the same token, he is sincere and not a charlatan at all."

Godfrey nodded.

"There's a twist there which I can't seem to get straight," he admitted. "We'll have to watch Silva a little longer to find out what his game really is. Of course, it's just possible that he'd be glad to get rid of the girl, but that she really is obsessed by the idea of carrying out her father's wish. If that's the case, Silva is rather up a tree."

"That's where we'd better be getting," broke in Simmonds, who had taken out his watch and held it up to the light. "It's nearly twelve o'clock, and I don't want to miss the fireworks. Besides, you fellows don't gain anything by all this jawing. You've been at it for an hour, and you're more tangled up now than when you started. My motto with a case of this kind is just to sit quiet and watch it; and pretty soon the rat thinks the coast is clear, and pokes out his head, and you nab him."

"There's a good deal in that," agreed Godfrey, with a little laugh. "I admit that our arguing doesn't seem to lead anywhere. Come along," and he led the way out among the trees.

"Now take these fireworks," went on Simmonds, in a low tone, when we were sitting side by side on the limb. "I don't understand what they mean; but they must mean something. Am I laying awake nights worrying about them? Not me! I'm just going to keep on watching till I find out what the meaning is. I know you're a great fellow for theory and deduction, and all that sort of thing, Godfrey, and I know you've pulled off some mighty clever stunts; but, after all, there's nothing like patience."

"Yes—'it's dogged