The Green Eyes of Bâst, Sax Rohmer [pride and prejudice read .txt] 📗
- Author: Sax Rohmer
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Gatton stirred restlessly in his chair and my own curiosity knew no bounds.
"My inquiries at this time had nearly exhausted my always slender financial resources, and the proceeds of a small practice which I succeeded in establishing (exclusively amongst the extensive half-caste colony resident in this neighborhood) proved a welcome addition to my income. It was due to the fact that at this time I was an active practitioner that I came in touch with the most perfect and notable example of a psycho-hybrid which I had ever encountered, indeed which, so far as I am aware, has ever appeared."
He paused again, as if overcome with faintness, and in anticipation of what was to come I could scarcely contain myself, when:
"At this time," he resumed, in a yet lower voice, "and indeed until quite recently, there were but few reliable European medical men in Cairo, and during the summer of 1902 an outbreak of cholera temporarily depleted their already scanty ranks. It happened then that one night, whilst I sat in the huge, lofty room, once the principal harem apartment of the house, which I had appropriated as a study, Cassim, my Nubian servant, communicated to me (by means of a sign-language which I had taught him) some startling news. My immediate presence was desired at the residence of Sir Burnham Coverly, then newly appointed to a government office, and who with his wife had only arrived in the country some few months earlier.
"I thought I knew the nature of the services required of me, but my employment by this typical English aristocrat, hide-bound with caste traditions as he could not fail to be, since he had spent five years of his official life in India, surprised me very greatly. I was later to learn that the services of no other medical man (or of no medical man so highly qualified as myself) were available; but even had I known this at the time I should have put my pride in my pocket, and for this reason:
"I had learned from a native acquaintance of a certain occurrence which had taken place on the very day of the baronet's arrival in Egypt; and it led me to look for a particular manifestation, in fact, I will boldly declare, since science is admittedly a callous mistress, that it had led me to hope for this manifestation, however unpleasant it might prove for those intimately concerned. Accordingly, having made suitable preparation I accompanied Sir Burnham's servant back to the residence of the baronet...."
I heard the door-bell ring, and I heard Coates's regular tread as he proceeded along the passage. There was a brief, muttered colloquy, a rap on the study-door, and Coates entered.
"A sergeant of police and a constable, sir, to see Inspector Gatton!"
Damar Greefe raised his thin, yellow hand. His voice, when next he spoke, exhibited no trace of emotion.
"Let them be told to wait," he said. "I have not finished."
It was wildly bizarre, that scene in my study, with the dignified white-haired Eurasian doctor, palpably laboring against some deathly sickness, sitting there unperturbed, his brilliant, perverted intellect holding him aloof from the ordinary things of life—whilst those who came to hale him to a felon's cell waited in the ante-room!
I glanced swiftly at Gatton, and he nodded impatiently.
"Let them stay in the dining-room, Coates," I said. "Make them comfortable."
"Very good, sir."
Unmoved, Coates withdrew—and I saw Gatton glance at his watch. Throughout the latter part of his strange narrative, neither Gatton nor I interrupted the narrator, therefore I give his story, so far as I remember it, in his own words. He no longer addressed either of us directly; he seemed, indeed, to be thinking aloud.
CHAPTER XXVISTATEMENT OF DR. DAMAR GREEFE (CONTINUED)
As I walked along through the deserted native streets, for the hour was late, I reviewed mentally the circumstances of that affair, already several months old, to which I have referred. Since it proved to have a very important bearing upon my own life and unfortunately the lives of many others, I will briefly recount it here.
Sir Burnham and Lady Coverly, having arrived at Port Said, were proceeding by rail to Cairo when an accident farther up the line necessitated their breaking their journey at Zagazig.
Now, for a time in the spring of the previous year, I had devoted much labor to an inquiry in this place, which stands of course roughly upon the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Bubastis. In those myths, or so-called myths, of the Ancient Egyptian religion which represented the various attributes of man in the guises of animals, I had perceived a nucleus of wisdom pointing to the possibility that the law which I had so laboriously established might have been known to the early Egyptian priesthood. Indeed I was partly induced to inquire into the myths of Bâst, the cat-headed goddess to whom of old this town was dedicated, by the following two things: first, a chance reference in the pages of Herodotus; and, second, a persistent superstition that during a certain season of the year, psycho-hybrids occurred in this town.
By dint of close research I discovered that the date favored by the inhabitants of Zagazig, as that upon which such creatures were born there, corresponded very closely with the Sacred Sothic month, formerly sacred to Bâst, the titulary goddess of the place, corresponded in short with the ancient Feast of Bâst.
My inquiries at the time, however, proved futile, and beyond the fact that the town was remarkable for a singular number of semi-wild cats, I discovered nothing to support my theory. However, as I have already stated, a native acquaintance there, a very learned Moslem, to whom I had imparted during my residence some idea of the nature of my studies, sent me a long communication containing particulars of the event which had befallen Lady Coverly during her one-night's sojourn in Zagazig.
Briefly, she had learned from a native attached to the one possible hotel which the town boasted, of the tradition associated with the place. Some other member of the party (for quite a large company had been detained in Zagazig by the mishap) unwisely pointed out to her that the favored date was that upon which they had arrived in the town.
Nothing might have resulted from this; but by a strange fatality (or because of the operation of some unsuspected law understood by the ancients but misapprehended to-day) the matter was sealed in a very extraordinary fashion.
Lady Coverly's room opened upon a balcony, and during the night one of those huge cats of the kind which I had observed myself to infest the neighborhood, gained access to this balcony. Since the appearance of the creature produced so singular and disastrous an effect, it must certainly have been an unusually large specimen of its kind. I may add that according to my Moslem friend—who, although a man of great culture, was soaked in the traditions of his religion—it was none other than a member of the ginn, an efreet or evil spirit, and not a cat of flesh and blood which appeared to Lady Coverly. I leave each to choose his own explanation, but let it suffice that Lady Coverly was awakened some time during the night by the appearance at her bedside of this gaunt and hungry-eyed creature. The result was an illness of a kind very dangerous to one in her delicate state of health.
Reflecting, then, upon these matters, I presently came to the official residence of Sir Burnham Coverly, and my expectations regarding the nature of the case were realized....[1]
[1]Part of the statement which immediately followed, being of a purely technical nature, is omitted here.
My house in the narrow street so near to the Bâb-es-Zuwêla and the minarets of Muayyâd was admirably adapted for my new purpose. For here in the very heart of native Cairo, with my great house (which had been built, as are all Oriental houses, to guard secrets) I was as safe from unwelcome intrusion as one upon a desert island, whilst at the same time I was denied none of the conveniences and facilities of civilization.
Lady Coverly, then, never set eyes upon her firstborn, and Sir Burnham, who did, readily reconciled himself to the loss of such a daughter. The announcement which should have appeared joyfully under the press-heading "Births" was unobtrusively inserted under "Deaths," and Sir Burnham being fortunately far from the haunts of the social paragraph writers, this unfortunate event aroused comparatively little comment in the English journals; beyond one or two formal condolences it passed unnoticed.
The fever of research at last had led me into my first definite crime against society—if so it can be called. I had rescued alive the most perfect example of a psycho-hybrid with which throughout my extensive special inquiries, I had ever come in contact. Lady Coverly never knew her unnatural child, and Sir Burnham—as well as the old family nurse who had accompanied them out from England—never doubted that it had died in the hour of birth.
I set to work with enthusiasm upon my last and greatest experiment.
To a half-caste woman upon whom I knew I could rely—for she was deeply indebted to me—I entrusted the fostering of the infant hybrid. I personally supervised every detail of the secret nursery, Cassim procuring for me everything necessary for the rearing of this delicate and fragile creature.
Over the early years of her life I will hasten. On three occasions I despaired of preserving her existence, which, from the beginning, had hung by a thread. The first crisis came when she was only four months old, the second on the occasion of her fourth birthday, and the third (most serious of all) when she was eleven, at which age she had become a woman in the Oriental sense and was physically and mentally comparable with an ordinary European girl of nineteen or twenty.
With what scientific ardor did I study her development, noting how the cat traits at certain periods (corresponding to the Feast of Bâst) proclaimed themselves above the human traits, whilst at other times the psychic-felinism sank into a sort of sub-conscious quietude, leaving the subject almost a normal woman. Of the physical reflections which were the visible evidence of her hybrid mentality I have already spoken at length (this refers to a portion of the statement which has been deleted). She invariably wore gloves out of doors and a veil to conceal the chatoyant eyes. She could, as I have explained, see as well in the dark as in daylight, and her agility was phenomenal as was her power of climbing. Having her hands and feet bare I have repeatedly seen her climb to the top platform of the ivy-clad tower of Friar's Park.
At the age of eleven, then, I recognized that the balance of character was definitely established, and that the two outstanding characteristics of the subject were—firstly (a hereditary trait of the Coverlys) an intense pride of race and a fierce jealousy of any infringement upon what she regarded as prerogatives of birth; secondly, a susceptibility to sudden infatuations which invariably terminated in a mood of ferocious cruelty.
To one unacquainted with the Orient, thus to speak of this girl—in years a mere child—as one speaks of a mature woman, would seem strange, if not unnatural. But in the East, of course, at the age of ten a girl is counted marriageable; at the age of fourteen she is not infrequently the devoted mother of a family.
Significantly—from the point of view of the Damar Greefe Law—my ward had grown up, not as English girls grow, but, like the Easterners, as the hot-house flower grows. The point has intense interest for the scientist. At the age of twelve she was a tall, slender woman, beautifully formed and with a natural elegance and taste which came from the Coverly stock, or possibly from her mother's side.
During eleven months of every year it would have been possible—- although I considered it undesirable—for her to have appeared in public unveiled. She possessed features of perfect Ancient Egyptian regularity. I emphasize the point. Her eyes, during the day, were those of a handsome native woman—almond-shaped and of a wonderful amber color. At night they appeared green.
Of her fingers, toes, and the peculiar formation of certain teeth I have spoken at length (another reference to a deleted passage). I will deal, now, with those manifestations which proclaimed themselves during the Sothic month of each year formerly
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