Brood of the Witch-Queen, Sax Rohmer [books to read for beginners txt] 📗

“No, not at all, now that I come to consider the features; but it was a shock at first. What on earth caused death?”

“Asphyxia,” answered Walton shortly. “Can’t you see?”

“Someone strangled her, and she was brought here too late?”

“Not at all, my dear chap; nobody strangled her. She was brought here in a critical state four or five days ago by one of the slum priests who keep us so busy. We diagnosed it as exhaustion from lack of food⁠—with other complications. But the case was doing quite well up to last night; she was recovering strength. Then, at about one o’clock, she sprang up in bed, and fell back choking. By the time the nurse got to her it was all over.”

“But the marks on her throat?”

Walton shrugged his shoulders.

“There they are! Our men are keenly interested. It’s absolutely unique. Young Shaw, who has a mania for the nervous system, sent a long account up to Sime, who suffers from a similar form of aberration.”

“Yes; Sime phoned me.”

“It’s nothing to do with nerves,” said Walton contemptuously. “Don’t ask me to explain it, but it’s certainly no nerve case.”

“One of the other patients⁠—”

“My dear chap, the other patients were all fast asleep! The nurse was at her table in the corner, and in full view of the bed the whole time. I tell you no one touched her!”

“How long elapsed before the nurse got to her?”

“Possibly half a minute. But there is no means of learning when the paroxysm commenced. The leaping up in bed probably marked the end and not the beginning of the attack.”

Cairn experienced a longing for the fresh air; it was as though some evil cloud hovered around and about the poor unknown. Strange ideas, horrible ideas, conjectures based upon imaginings all but insane, flooded his mind darkly.

Leaving the hospital, which harboured a grim secret, he stood at the gate for a moment, undecided what to do. His father, Dr. Cairn, was out of London, or he would certainly have sought him in this hour of sore perplexity.

“What in Heaven’s name is behind it all!” he asked himself.

For he knew beyond doubt that the girl who lay in the hospital was the same that he had seen one night at Oxford, was the girl whose photograph he had found in Antony Ferrara’s rooms!

He formed a sudden resolution. A taxicab was passing at that moment, and he hailed it, giving Sir Michael Ferrara’s address. He could scarcely trust himself to think, but frightful possibilities presented themselves to him, repel them how he might. London seemed to grow dark, overshadowed, as once he had seen a Thames backwater grow. He shuddered, as though from a physical chill.

The house of the famous Egyptian scholar, dull white behind its rampart of trees, presented no unusual appearances to his anxious scrutiny. What he feared he scarcely knew; what he suspected he could not have defined.

Sir Michael, said the servant, was unwell and could see no one. That did not surprise Cairn; Sir Michael had not enjoyed good health since malaria had laid him low in Syria. But Miss Duquesne was at home.

Cairn was shown into the long, low-ceiled room which contained so many priceless relics of a past civilisation. Upon the bookcase stood the stately ranks of volumes which had carried the fame of Europe’s foremost Egyptologist to every corner of the civilised world. This queerly furnished room held many memories for Robert Cairn, who had known it from childhood, but latterly it had always appeared to him in his daydreams as the setting for a dainty figure. It was here that he had first met Myra Duquesne, Sir Michael’s niece, when, fresh from a Norman convent, she had come to shed light and gladness upon the somewhat, sombre household of the scholar. He often thought of that day; he could recall every detail of the meeting⁠—

Myra Duquesne came in, pulling aside the heavy curtains that hung in the arched entrance. With a granite Osiris flanking her slim figure on one side and a gilded sarcophagus on the other, she burst upon the visitor, a radiant vision in white. The light gleamed through her soft, brown hair forming a halo for a face that Robert Cairn knew for the sweetest in the world.

“Why, Mr. Cairn,” she said, and blushed entrancingly⁠—“we thought you had forgotten us.”

“That’s not a little bit likely,” he replied, taking her proffered hand, and there was that in his voice and in his look which made her lower her frank grey eyes. “I have only been in London a few days, and I find that Press work is more exacting than I had anticipated!”

“Did you want to see my uncle very particularly?” asked Myra.

“In a way, yes. I suppose he could not manage to see me⁠—”

Myra shook her head. Now that the flush of excitement had left her face, Cairn was concerned to see how pale she was and what dark shadows lurked beneath her eyes.

“Sir Michael is not seriously ill?” he asked quickly. “Only one of the visual attacks⁠—”

“Yes⁠—at least it began with one.”

She hesitated, and Cairn saw to his consternation that her eyes became filled with tears. The real loneliness of her position, now that her guardian was ill, the absence of a friend in whom she could confide her fears, suddenly grew apparent to the man who sat watching her.

“You are tired out,” he said gently. “You have been nursing him?”

She nodded and tried to smile.

“Who is attending?”

“Sir Elwin Groves, but⁠—”

“Shall I wire for my father?”

“We wired for him yesterday!”

“What! to Paris?”

“Yes, at my uncle’s wish.”

Cairn started.

“Then⁠—he thinks he is seriously ill, himself?”

“I cannot say,” answered the girl wearily. “His behaviour is⁠—queer. He will allow no one in his room, and barely consents to see Sir Elwin. Then, twice recently, he has awakened in the night and made a singular request.”

“What is that?”

“He has asked me to send for his solicitor in the morning, speaking harshly and almost as though⁠—he hated me.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t understand. Have you complied?”

“Yes,