The Blind Spot, Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall [books to read for 13 year olds txt] 📗

he asked me to meet him at the pier? Why didn't he come? When the boat docked and he was still missing I was doubly worried.

Hobart came down the gangplank. He was great, strong, healthy, and it seemed to me in a terrible hurry. He scanned the faces hurriedly and ran over to me.

“Where's Harry?” He kissed me and in the same breath repeated, “Where's Harry?”

“Oh, Hobart!” I exclaimed. “What's the matter with Harry? Tell me. It's something terrible!”

He was afraid. Plainly I could see that! There were lines of anxiety about his eyes. He clutched me by the arm and drew me away.

“He was to meet me here,” I said. “He didn't come. He was to meet me here! Oh, Hobart, I saw him some time ago. He was—it was not Harry at all! Do you know anything about it?”

For a minute he stood still, looking at me. I had never seen Hobart frightened; but at that moment there was that in his eyes which I could not understand. He caught me by the arm and started out almost at a run. There were many people and we dodged in and out among them. Hobart carried a suitcase. He hailed a taxi.

I don't know how I got into the car. It was a blur. I was frightened. Some terrible thing had occurred, and Hobart knew it. I remember a few words spoken to the driver. “Speed, speed, no limit; never mind the law—and Chatterton Place!” After that the convulsive jerking over the cobbled streets, a climbing over hills and twisted corners. And Hobart at my side. “Faster—faster,” he was saying; “faster! My lord, was there ever a car so slow! Harry! Harry!” I could hear him breathing a prayer. Another hill; the car turned and came suddenly to a stop! Hobart leaped out.

A sombre two-storey house; a light burning in one of the windows, a dim light, almost subdued and uncanny. I had never seen anything so lonely as that light; it was grey, uncertain, scarcely a flicker. Perhaps it was my nerves. I had scarcely strength to climb the steps. Hobart grasped the knob and thrust open the door; I can never forget it.

It is hard to write. The whole thing! The room; the walls lined with books; the dim, pale light, the faded green carpet, and the man. Pale, worn, almost a shadow of his former self. Was it Harry Wendel? He had aged forty years. He was stooped, withered, exhausted. A bottle of brandy on the desk before him. In his weak, thin hand an empty wineglass. The gem upon his finger glowed with a flame that was almost wicked; it was blue, burning, giving out sparkles of light—like a colour out of hell. The path of its light was unholy—it was too much alive.

We both sprang forward. Hobart seized him by the shoulders.

“Harry, old boy; Harry! Don't you know us? It's Hobart and Charlotte.”

It was terrible. He didn't seem to know. He looked right at us. But he spoke in abstractions.

“Two,” he said. And he listened. “Two! Don't you hear it?” He caught Hobart by the arm. “Now, listen. Two! No, it's three. Did I say three? Can't you hear? It's the old lady. She speaks out of the shadows. There! There! Now, listen. She has been counting to me. Always she says three! Soon it will be four.”

What did he mean? What was it about? Who was the old lady? I looked round. I saw no one. Hobart stooped over. Harry began slowly to recognise us. It was as if his mind had wandered and was coming back from a far place. He spoke slowly; his words were incoherent and rambling.

“Hobart,” he said; “you know her. She is the maiden out of the moonbeams. The Rhamda, he is our enemy. Hobart, Charlotte. I know so much. I cannot tell you. You are two hours late. It's a strange thing. I have found it and I think I know. It came suddenly. The discovery of the great professor. Why didn't you come two hours earlier? We might have conquered.”

He dropped his head upon his arms; then as suddenly he looked up. He drew the ring from his finger.

“Give it to Charlotte,” he said. “It won't hurt her. Don't touch it yourself. Had I only known. Watson didn't know—”

He straightened; he was tense, rigid, listening.

“Do you hear anything? Listen! Can you hear? It's the old lady. There—”

But there was not a sound; only the rumble of the streets, the ticking of the clock, and our heart-beats. Again he went through the counting.

“Hobart!”

“Yes, Harry.”

“And Charlotte! The ring—ah, yet it was there, Keep it. Give it to no one. Two hours ago we might have conquered. But I had to keep the ring. It was too much, too powerful; a man may not wear it. Charlotte”—he took my hand and ran the ring upon my finger. “Poor Charlotte. Here is the ring. The most wonderful—”

Again he dropped over. He was weak—there was something going from him minute by minute.

“Water,” he asked. “Hobart, some water.”

It was too pitiful. Harry, our Harry—come to a strait like this! Hobart rushed to another room with the tumbler. I could hear him fumbling. I stooped over Harry. But he held up his hand.

“No, Charlotte, no. You must not. If—”

He stopped. Again the strange attention, as if he was listening to something far off in the distance; the pupils of his hollow, worn, lustreless eyes were pin-points. He stood on his feet rigid, quivering; then he held up his hand. “Listen!”

But there was nothing. It was just as before; merely the murmuring of the city night, and the clock ticking.

“It's the dog! D'you hear her? And the old lady. Now listen, 'Two! Now there are two! Three! Three! Now there are three!' There—now.” He turned to me. “Can you hear it, Charlotte? No? How strange. Perhaps—” He pointed to the corner of the room. “That paper. Will you—”

I shall always go over that moment. I have thought over it many times and have wondered at the sequence. Had I not stepped across the library, what would have happened?

What was it.

I had stooped to pick up the piece of paper. There came a queer, cracking, snapping sound, almost audible, I have a strange recollection of Harry standing up by the side of the desk—a flitting vision. An intuition of some terrible force. It was out of nothing—nowhere—approaching. I turned about. And I saw it—the dot of blue.

Blue! That is what it was at first. Blue and burning, like the flame of a million jewels centred into a needlepoint. On the ceiling directly above Harry's head. It was scintillating, coruscating, opalescent; but it was blue most of all. It was the colour of life and of death; it was burning, throbbing, concentrated. I tried to scream. But I was frozen with horror. The dot