The Yellow Claw, Sax Rohmer [top 100 novels of all time .TXT] 📗

burst free of its bindings and poured in gleaming cascade down about her shoulders.

Clutching with one hand at her cloak in order to keep it wrapped about her, and holding the other blindly before her, she rose, and with that same odd, groping movement, began to approach the writing-table. The pupils of her eyes were mere pin-points now; she shuddered convulsively, and her skin was dewed with perspiration. Her breath came in agonized gasps.

“God!—I... am dying... and I cannot—tell him!” she breathed.

Feverishly, weakly, she took up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with her whole body shaking.

Some three or four wavering lines she had written, when intimately, for the flat of Henry Leroux in Palace Mansions lay within sight of the clock-face—Big Ben began to chime midnight.

The writer started back and dropped a great blot of ink upon the paper; then, realizing the cause of the disturbance, forced herself to continue her task.

The chime being completed: ONE! boomed the clock; TWO!... THREE! ... FOUR!...

The light in the entrance-hall went out!

FIVE! boomed Big Ben;—SIX!... SEVEN!...

A hand, of old ivory hue, a long, yellow, clawish hand, with part of a sinewy forearm, crept in from the black lobby through the study doorway and touched the electric switch!

EIGHT!...

The study was plunged in darkness!

Uttering a sob—a cry of agony and horror that came from her very soul—the woman stood upright and turned to face toward the door, clutching the sheet of paper in one rigid hand.

Through the leaded panes of the window above the writing-table swept a silvern beam of moonlight. It poured, searchingly, upon the fur-clad figure swaying by the table; cutting through the darkness of the room like some huge scimitar, to end in a pallid pool about the woman's shadow on the center of the Persian carpet.

Coincident with her sobbing cry—NINE! boomed Big Ben; TEN!...

Two hands—with outstretched, crooked, clutching fingers—leapt from the darkness into the light of the moonbeam.

“God! Oh, God!” came a frenzied, rasping shriek—“MR. KING!”

Straight at the bare throat leapt the yellow hands; a gurgling cry rose—fell—and died away.

Gently, noiselessly, the lady of the civet fur sank upon the carpet by the table; as she fell, a dim black figure bent over her. The tearing of paper told of the note being snatched from her frozen grip; but never for a moment did the face or the form of her assailant encroach upon the moonbeam.

Batlike, this second and terrible visitant avoided the light.

The deed had occupied so brief a time that but one note of the great bell had accompanied it.

TWELVE! rang out the final stroke from the clock-tower. A low, eerie whistle, minor, rising in three irregular notes and falling in weird, unusual cadence to silence again, came from somewhere outside the room.

Then darkness—stillness—with the moon a witness of one more ghastly crime.

Presently, confused and intermingled voices from above proclaimed the return of Leroux with the doctor. They were talking in an excited key, the voice of Leroux, especially, sounding almost hysterical. They created such a disturbance that they attracted the attention of Mr. John Exel, M. P., occupant of the flat below, who at that very moment had returned from the House and was about to insert the key in the lock of his door. He looked up the stairway, but, all being in darkness, was unable to detect anything. Therefore he called out:—

“Is that you, Leroux? Is anything the matter?”

“Matter, Exel!” cried Leroux; “there's a devil of a business! For mercy's sake, come up!”

His curiosity greatly excited, Mr. Exel mounted the stairs, entering the lobby of Leroux's flat immediately behind the owner and Dr. Cumberly—who, like Leroux, was arrayed in a dressing-gown; for he had been in bed when summoned by his friend.

“You are all in the dark, here,” muttered Dr. Cumberly, fumbling for the switch.

“Some one has turned the light out!” whispered Leroux, nervously; “I left it on.”

Dr. Cumberly pressed the switch, turning up the lobby light as Exel entered from the landing. Then Leroux, entering the study first of the three, switched on the light there, also.

One glance he threw about the room, then started back like a man physically stricken.

“Cumberly!” he gasped, “Cumberly”—and he pointed to the furry heap by the writing-table.

“You said she lay on the chesterfield,” muttered Cumberly.

“I left her there.”...

Dr. Cumberly crossed the room and dropped upon his knees. He turned the white face toward the light, gently parted the civet fur, and pressed his ear to the silken covering of the breast. He started slightly and looked into the glazing eyes.

Replacing the fur which he had disarranged, the physician stood up and fixed a keen gaze upon the face of Henry Leroux. The latter swallowed noisily, moistening his parched lips.

“Is she”... he muttered; “is she”...

“God's mercy, Leroux!” whispered Mr. Exel—“what does this mean?”

“The woman is dead,” said Dr. Cumberly.

In common with all medical men, Dr. Cumberly was a physiognomist; he was a great physician and a proportionately great physiognomist. Therefore, when he looked into Henry Leroux's eyes, he saw there, and recognized, horror and consternation. With no further evidence than that furnished by his own powers of perception, he knew that the mystery of this woman's death was as inexplicable to Henry Leroux as it was inexplicable to himself.

He was a masterful man, with the gray eyes of a diplomat, and he knew Leroux as did few men. He laid both hands upon the novelist's shoulders.

“Brace up, old chap!” he said; “you will want all your wits about you.”

“I left her,” began Leroux, hesitatingly—“I left”...

“We know all about where you left her, Leroux,” interrupted Cumberly; “but what we want to get at is this: what occurred between the time you left her, and the time of our return?”

Exel, who had walked across to the table, and with a horror-stricken face was gingerly examining the victim, now exclaimed:—

“Why! Leroux! she is—she is... UNDRESSED!”

Leroux clutched at his dishevelled hair with both hands.

“My dear Exel!” he cried—“my dear, good man! Why do you use that