The Great Impersonation, E. Phillips Oppenheim [finding audrey TXT] 📗

“That,” the latter remarked, “is the class of old retainer who lives too long. If I were a Dominey of the Middle Ages, I think a stone around his neck and the deepest well would be the sensible way of dealing with him. He made me feel positively uncomfortable.”

“I noticed it,” Dominey remarked, with a faint smile. “I’m not going to pretend that it was a pleasant conversation myself.”

“I’ve heard some ghost stories,” Mangan went on, “but a spook that comes and howls once a week for ten years takes some beating.”

Dominey poured himself out a glass of brandy with a steady hand.

“You’ve been neglecting things here, Mangan,” he complained. “You ought to have come down and exorcised that ghost. We shall have those smart maidservants of yours off tomorrow, I suppose, unless you and I can get a little ghost-laying in first.”

Mr. Mangan began to feel more comfortable. The brandy and the warmth of the burning logs were creeping into his system.

“By the by, Sir Everard,” he enquired, a little later on, “where are you going to sleep tonight?”

Dominey stretched himself out composedly.

“There is obviously only one place for me,” he replied. “I can’t disappoint anyone. I shall sleep in the oak room.”

For the first few tangled moments of nightmare, slowly developing into a live horror, Dominey fancied himself back in Africa, with the hand of an enemy upon his throat. Then a rush of awakened memories⁠—the silence of the great house, the mysterious rustling of the heavy hangings around the black oak four-poster on which he lay, the faint pricking of something deadly at his throat⁠—these things rolled back the curtain of unreality, brought him acute and painful consciousness of a situation almost appalling. He opened his eyes, and although a brave and callous man he lay still, paralysed with the fear which forbids motion. The dim light of a candle, recently lit, flashed upon the bodkin-like dagger held at his throat. He gazed at the thin line of gleaming steel, fascinated. Already his skin had been broken, a few drops of blood were upon the collar of his pyjamas. The hand which held that deadly, assailing weapon⁠—small, slim, very feminine, curving from somewhere behind the bed curtain⁠—belonged to some unseen person. He tried to shrink farther back upon the pillow. The hand followed him, displaying glimpses now of a soft, white-sleeved arm. He lay quite still, the muscles of his right arm growing tenser as he prepared for a snatch at those cruel fingers. Then a voice came⁠—a slow, feminine and rather wonderful voice.

“If you move,” it said, “you will die. Remain quite still.”

Dominey was fully conscious now, his brain at work, calculating his chances with all the cunning of the trained hunter who seeks to avoid death. Reluctantly he was compelled to realise that no movement of his could be quick enough to prevent the driving of that thin stiletto into his throat, if his hidden assailant should keep her word. So he lay still.

“Why do you want to kill me?” he asked, a little tensely.

There was no reply, yet somehow he knew that he was being watched. Ever so slightly those curtains around which the arm had come, were being parted. Through the chink someone was looking at him. The thought came that he might call out for help, and once more his unseen enemy read his thought.

“You must be very quiet,” the voice said⁠—that voice which it was difficult for him to believe was not the voice of a child. “If you even speak above a whisper, it will be the end. I wish to look at you.”

A little wider the crack opened, and then he began to feel hope. The hand which held the stiletto was shaking, he heard something which sounded like quick breathing from behind the curtains⁠—the breathing of a woman astonished or terrified⁠—and then, so suddenly that for several seconds he could not move or take advantage of the circumstance, the hand with its cruel weapon was withdrawn around the curtain and a woman began to laugh, softly at first, and then with a little hysterical sob thrusting its way through that incongruous note of mirth.

He lay upon the bed as though mesmerised, finding at his first effort that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, and, with the former in his right hand, flashed a little orb of light into the shadows of the great apartment. Once more something like terror seized him. The figure which had been standing by the side of his bed had vanished. There was no hiding place in view. Every inch of the room was lit up by the powerful torch he carried, and, save for himself, the room was empty. The first moment of realisation was chill and unnerving. Then the slight smarting of the wound at his throat became convincing proof to him that there was nothing supernatural about this visit. He lit up half-a-dozen of the candles distributed about the place and laid down his torch. He was ashamed to find that his forehead was dripping with perspiration.

“One of the secret passages, of course,” he muttered to himself, stooping for a moment to examine the locked, folding doors which separated his room from the adjoining one. “Perhaps, when one reflects, I have run unnecessary risks.”

Dominey was standing at the window, looking out at the tumbled grey waters of the North Sea, when Parkins brought him hot water and tea in the morning. He thrust his