A Woman Named Smith, Marie Conway Oemler [fun to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Marie Conway Oemler
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"I suppose," he went on dreamily, "that it was in my blood, the desire to come here to Hyndsville, like a homing bird. But when my mother died, the ties that bound me to her country seemed to be in a measure loosened. Then, too, the Wanderlust had me in its grip. I put aside the profession my father had bred me to, left my affairs in what I thought capable hands, and indulged my desire to wander up and down the earth and sail the seven seas. It was upon one of these prowls that I came upon my old Achmet here, and induced a master who didn't love him to part with him." And he looked at the old man with whimsical tenderness.
"I am your slave," spoke up The Jinnee, sturdily. "I am the fostered offspring of my master's bounty. May he live a thousand years!"
That shocked my Yankee ears. Achmet smiled his crooked smile.
"Why did the sahiba follow when I showed her a broken coin?" he asked.
"Because I knew that Mr. Jelnik needed me."
"Even in the bowels of the earth?" I was silent.
"Because he is the master!" said The Jinnee. "Therefore you obeyed. He is the master. Wherefore am I, Achmet, his slave." Oh, shame upon you, Sophy Smith, for there was that in you, and that not the least divine part, which was in full accord with black Achmet!
"Achmet's ideas are of the immutable East," said Mr. Jelnik, with a faint smile. "He is archaic." And dismissing this persiflage with a wave of the hand, he continued:
"Behold me, then, footing it up and down the highways and byways of the world. But it was as if I had disobeyed the dead, and they would give me no rest. So presently I stopped short and came to Hyndsville.
"With Richard's directions in my possession, it was comparatively easy for me to find the passageways, and after the old woman's death I had chance to examine the house room by room. And sometimes, Sophy, when I have been alone in this tragic old place—" he paused, and looked at me with a puzzled frown—"it has seemed to me that there were—well, secret influences, say; things outside of our sphere. I have felt a sense of horror and despair descend upon my spirit, a weight almost too heavy to bear. Sometimes it would be so powerful, so insistent, so vivid, that I had to fly from it.
"Then I happened to remember something that a gipsy, an old, old man reputed to be very wise, told me when I was a boy. He said that troubled spirits can be soothed and sent hence by music. It is the old and sure charm, as David found when he played upon the harp and drove the evil spirit out of Saul the king. I brought my violin and tried it. And," said the cosmopolitan Mr. Jelnik, "the gipsy was right."
"Ah, yes, I see you know, now. It was I whom you heard playing, that first day. It was I, touched by your plight in that forlorn and dusty barracks, who gave you some slight relief. It was easy enough for me to cut across to Geddes's house, reach in through his kitchen window, lift his tray, and escape through the ragged hedges while his cook's broad back was turned. Achmet was willing enough to play the obliging Jinnee. You had your dinner, and I had a bit of harmless amusement. It pleased me to hear Alicia call me Ariel. It pleased me to stand by, to protect you, if that should be necessary. Achmet and I took turns in safeguarding you at night.
"You will understand"—he gave me a straight, clear, proud look—"that it was never my desire to mystify or to frighten you. But I couldn't take you offhand into my confidence, could I? I had to find out something more about you. Remember, too, that my search in no wise jeopardizes your interests.
"Day after day, night after night, Sophy, I have pored over old papers, or burrowed mole-like into the black recesses of Hynds House. Bit by bit I have pieced scraps of evidence together—Shooba's savage chant with Scipio's dying whisper in Freeman's ear, and these two with a rude verse and a line of dots. But there the thread snapped.
"Do you remember the morning you told me, The Author's guess that 'Hellen's Keye' was the Greek fret, the design over all the windows and doors of Hynds House? The trail was plain then. I was to follow the line of the Greek key for three and thirty turnings, when I should come upon a sign. I tried and tried. And to-night—I reached the end of it, Sophy. I found it." Again his forehead was damp, and his pallor, if possible, deepened.
I rose as if on springs. The hair of my head rose, too, I thought, and my scalp tingled.
"Found what?"
"The hidden room that the masters built for the master of Hynds House." He stopped, and a shudder passed over him. His hand closed upon mine, and it was deathly cold.
"You have been in a secret room?—here in Hynds House?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes," said he in a whisper. "I opened the door—and went in. The room hadn't been opened for a hundred years, Sophy. There was a table in one corner, and I went over to it. There was something else there, too, Sophy." He moistened his lips, and looked at me with dilated eyes.
"What?" I asked; "in God's name, what?"
"The thief," said Nicholas Jelnik.
CHAPTER XVI THE DEVILL HIS RAINBOW
I was taken with a cold grue.
"Is it—murder?" It seemed to me that the still room shook and echoed to the barely whispered word, that the candles stirred and flickered as in a wind of passing wings.
"Not in the sense you mean," he replied. "But whatever it may be, Sophy, this thing has got to be met and faced by us two together. It concerns you now, as well as me." He stood up as he spoke. "And now," he asked, "are you strong enough to come with me?"
I gathered the living spirit within me and looked him in his eyes.
"Yes," I said steadily.
"Allah! but here is a woman a man may serve without shame to his beard!" quoth The Jinnee, wagging his old white head. And with Boris stretched beside him he resigned himself to wait with the tireless patience of the East.
If the other passages had been narrow, that which we now entered was worse. It was so narrow that the wall on each side seemed about to close in and crush us, like those frightful sliding walls that became a living coffin for the victims of medieval cruelty. Always one was confronted by solid brick walls; and to turn back was to meet others seemingly risen to cut off all escape. For this passage follows the simple and yet intricate pattern of the Greek key. Thus:
I fancied myself doomed to spend a frightful eternity of burrowing through brick wormholes which led nowhere. I lost all sense of location, time, and direction. I wasn't even sure of my own identity any more: things like this couldn't happen to a woman named Smith! Just when I reached the stage where I was ready to drop down and lie there unmoving until I died, he turned his head and gave me a comradely smile of assurance and trust. I plucked up heart of grace and staggered on. Of a sudden he stopped. The pale circle of the flash-light moved up, inch by inch, steadied, and stayed on one spot.
I found myself staring fixedly at the old and familiar enough symbol of the rayed eye within the triangle. It was not commonplace or familiar set up there in that secret and awesome place and seen by a pale light. There was about it a stark and stern solemnity, such as suggested the winged circle of immortality carved above the rock-hewn doors of the tombs of Egyptian kings. Higher than a tall man's head, it was painted on bricks of a lighter hue than the surrounding ones, and when the light touched it it seemed to leap out of the dark like a thing alive, a thing that watched with an unwinking and terrifying intensity.
I remembered Shooba's savage chant of the One Eye that his Snake had shown him; and the doggerel verse on the frayed paper in Freeman's diary.
"The Watcher in the Dark!" I stammered; "the Watcher in the Dark! Why—why, that paper was the Key itself!"
"Exactly. And a very simple key, though it took me a heartbreaking length of time to turn it. The cipher was easy enough. It falls apart into the figures three, five, seven, and nine; it was also the simplest train of reasoning to apply these figures to the column of dots. Only, I hadn't the remotest idea what the dots themselves represented. Nor did it occur to me that the tortuous turnings of any of the passageways of Hynds House might follow the pattern of the Greek key, until The Author called your attention to the design over the outside windows. Clever man, The Author!
"I lost the paper in the attic the night you heard me stumble on the stairs. Fortunately, The Author put it in his coat in the closet and locked the door on the outside. You can enter any room in the Hynds House through those closet-walls, Sophy. They're paneled, remember. I hated to have to go through The Author's pockets like a burglar, but I had to have the key."
He handed me the flash-light.
"Now for the column of dots, each of which represents a brick," he said, and began to count, from the first dark brick immediately under the center of the triangle. At the third brick he paused; I could see his fingers moving around the white line that, apparently, held it in place. And that third brick, which looked so solidly placed, turned as upon a pivot and swung out sideways. Still counting from top to bottom, he paused at the fifth, the seventh, and the ninth, and they, too, behaved in the same manner. As the ninth one turned, that which had seemed a section of solid wall rose soundlessly from the floor and left in its place an opening, a door, as it were, some six feet high and about eighteen inches wide.
"It is not brick at all, but painted wood. A really wonderful bit of work," explained Mr. Jelnik.
I could only stare, owlishly.
"You are wondering where we are?" He answered the unspoken question: "Above the library, between the outside wall and the chimney-stacks. You'd have to tear the house down to find it, without the Key." As he spoke, he was lighting two of the candles Achmet had provided us with, and although his hand was quite steady, he had become frightfully pale. I, too, felt myself growing paler, felt again the cold grue, as if the wind of death had stirred my hair.
"Reach into my breast pocket and you'll find a small vial. Put a drop of the contents on your handkerchief and hold it against your mouth for a moment," said Mr. Jelnik, with a sharp glance at me.
I obeyed mechanically. The scent had an indescribably tingling, spicy odor, and left a cool and grateful sensation in one's parched and dry throat. My blurred vision cleared, my dull and throbbing head was relieved.
"An Alexandrine Copt gave me that," he said, watching its effect with satisfaction. "He told me he had gotten it from a temple papyrus, and that it was undoubtedly one of the lost perfumes of Punt, used by the higher priesthood in their mysteries. Once a year he sends me such a tiny vial as you see. I could hardly have survived my searchings in this house, without that
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