When Masters came to clear the tea, he found Sir Walter still
unconvinced.
"What do you think of Signor Mannetti, Masters?" asked Henry; and the
butler, who was a great reader of the newspapers, made answer.
"I think he's a bit of a freak, Mr. Henry. They tell me that old people
can have a slice of monkey slipped into 'em nowadays--to keep 'em going
and make 'em young and lively again. Well, I should say the gentleman
had a whole monkey popped in somewhere. I never see such another. He's
got a tongue like a rat-trap, and he leaves you guessing every time.
He's amazing clever; so's his man. That Stephano knows a thing or two!
He's got round Jane Bond something disgraceful. I never knew what was in
Jane--and her five and fifty if she's an hour."
"Would he be safe in the Grey Room?" said Sir Walter.
"He'd be safe anywhere. The question in my mind is whether our silver's
safe; and a few other things. I catched him poking about in the silver
table only this morning. He knows what's what. He knows everything. I
wouldn't say he ain't one of the swell mob myself--made up to look
like an old man. I'll swear he's never seen eighty years for all he
pretends."
Henry laughed.
"Don't you be frightened of him, Masters; he's all right."
"Let him go in the Grey Room by all means, Mr. Henry. He knows he's
safe anywhere. Yes, Sir Walter, he knows he's safe enough. He's got the
measure of it."
"Prince is to go with him, Masters."
"Prince! Why, ma'am?"
"We don't know. He wishes it. He can't hurt poor old Prince anyway."
"Well, I sha'n't sleep no worse; and I hope none of you won't, if you'll
excuse me. Come what will, there's nothing in the Grey Room will catch
that man napping. Not that I'm against the gentleman in general, you
understand. Only I wouldn't trust him a foot. He's play-acting, and he's
no more a foreigner than I am--else he couldn't talk so fine English as
I do, if not finer."
"Masters is on our side, father," said Mary. "And he's right. The signor
is play-acting. He loves to be in the centre of the stage. All old
people do, and one of the pathetic things in life is that they're seldom
allowed to be. So he's making the most of his opportunity."
"And if you refuse, Uncle Walter, he'll only go away and say he cannot
help you, and accuse us of giving him all this trouble for nothing,"
added Henry Lennox.
They had their wish at last, and when Signor Mannetti came down to an
early dinner in splendid spirits, Sir Walter conceded his desire.
"Good, my friend! And do not fear that a night of anxiety awaits you.
Indeed, if I am not mistaken, it will be possible for us all to sleep
very soundly, though we may go to bed rather late. But I think we must
be prepared not to retire till after two o'clock. I will enter upon my
watch at eight--in half an hour. The door shall be left open, as you
wish. But I beg that none will approach the east end of the corridor.
That is only fair. I will, however, permit Mr. Lennox to station
himself on the top of the great staircase, and from time to time he may
challenge me. He shall say 'Is all well?' and be sure I shall answer
'All is well.' Could anything be more satisfactory?"
Signor Mannetti ate sparingly, then he donned a big, fur, motor-coat
and declared himself ready. They thought he had forgotten Prince, but he
insisted upon the company of the ancient spaniel. The dog had fed, and
he could sleep as well in one place as another.
"Fear not," said the Italian. "I shall be considerate to your ancient
pet. I do not beg his aid without reason. He is on my side and will help
me if he can--infirm though he be. I have made friends with him. Set him
at my feet. I will sit here under the electric light and read my Italian
papers."
Thus once again a solitary occupied the Grey Room and measured his
intelligence against the terrible forces therein concealed. Signor
Mannetti took leave of them cheerfully at eight o'clock, and while Sir
Walter and Mary descended to the library, Henry took up his station at
the head of the staircase. The corridor was lighted and the door of the
Grey Room left open.
But in ten minutes the watcher looked out and cried to Lennox, who sat
smoking about thirty-five yards from him.
"There is a great draught here," he said. "I will close the door, but
leave it ajar that we may salute each other from time to time."
The hours crept on and since everybody at Chadlands knew what was
happening, few retired to rest. It was understood that some time after
midnight Signor Mannetti hoped to declare the result of his experiment.
Henry Lennox challenged half-hourly, always receiving a brisk reply.
But a little after half-past one his "All well, signor?" received no
response. He raised his voice, but still no answer came. He went to the
door, therefore, and looked into the Grey Room. The watcher had slipped
down in the armchair they had set for him under the electric light,
and was lying motionless, but in an easy position. He still wore his
fur-coat. Prince Henry did not see. The room was silent and cold. The
electric light burned brightly, and both windows were open. Young Lennox
hastened downstairs. His thoughts concentrated on his uncle, and his
desire was to spare him any needless shock. For a moment he believed
that Signor Mannetti had succumbed in the Grey Room, as others before
him, but he could not be certain. A bare half-hour had elapsed since the
watcher had uttered a cheerful answer to the last summons, and told them
his vigil was nearly ended. Lennox sought Masters, therefore, told him
that the worst was to be feared, yet explained that the old man who had
watched in the Grey Room might not be dead but sunk in sleep.
Masters was sanguine that it might be so.
"Be sure he is so. I'll fetch the liqueur brandy," and, armed with his
panacea, he followed Henry upstairs. Signor Mannetti had not moved, but
as they approached him, to their infinite relief he did so, opened his
eyes, stared wildly about him, and then realized the situation.
"Alas! Now I have frightened you out of your senses," he said, looking
at their anxious faces. "All is well. In less than another hour I should
have summoned Sir Walter. But just that last half-hour overcame me, and
I sank into sleep. What is the time?"
"A quarter to two, signor."
"Good! Then let your uncle be summoned. I have found out the secret."
"A thimbleful of old cognac, signor?" asked Masters.
"Willingly, my friend, willingly. I see how wise you both were. I
approve and thank you. You thought that I had followed the others into
the shades, yet meant to restore me if you could without frightening Sir
Walter. To go to sleep was unpardonable."
Abraham Masters and Henry descended with the good news, while the old
man drank.
"I shall detain you half an hour or so," he said, when they all returned
to him. "But I have no fear that anybody will want to fall asleep."
Sir Walter spoke.
"Thank Heaven, signor, thank Heaven! All is well with you?"
"All is absolutely well with me, but then I have slept refreshingly for
some time. You, I fear, have not closed your eyes."
"Would you have any objection to Masters hearing what you may have
to tell us? By so doing a true and ungarbled report will get out to
Chadlands."
"My report will go out to the whole world, Sir Walter. All is
accomplished and established on certain proofs. Your good spaniel has
played his part also. I salute him--the old Prince."
Henry now observed that the dog was stretched on the floor at Signor
Mannetti's feet.
"Still asleep?"
Mary knelt to pat the spaniel and started back.
"How horribly cold he is!"
"For ever asleep--a martyr to science. He was to die on Friday,
remember. He has received euthanasia a little sooner, and nothing in his
life has become him like the leaving of it. The last victim of the Grey
Room. Mourn him not, he passed without a pang--as did his betters."
"But, but--you spoke of crime and criminals!" gasped Sir Walter.
"And truly. Great crimes have been committed in this room and great
criminals committed them. Is a crime any less a crime because the
doers have mouldered in their dishonored graves for nearly five hundred
years?"
"Your handling of speech is not ours, and you use words differently. The
old dog did not suffer, you say? How did he come to die--in his sleep?"
"Even so. Without a sigh, the last venerable victim of this murdering
shadow."
"You saw him die, and yet were safe yourself, sir?" asked Lennox.
"That is what happened. Now sit down all of you, father Abraham also,
and in five minutes all will be as clear as day."
They obeyed him silently.
"Yes, a master criminal, one whose name has rung down the ages and will
from to-morrow win a further resonance. Would that we could bring him to
account; but he has already gone to it, if justice lies at the root
of things, as all men pray, and you and I believe, Sir Walter. An
interesting reflection: How many suffer, if they do not actually perish,
from the sins of the dead? Not only the sins of our father are visited
upon us, but, if we could trace the infliction, the crimes of countless
dead men accomplished long before we were born into this suffering
world. I speak in a parable, but this is literal, actual. Dead men
committed these murders, and left this legacy of woe."
Signor Mannetti stroked the lifeless spaniel.
"When we were left alone I picked him up and set him on the bed. He did
not waken, and I knew that he would never waken again. Now let us look
at this noble bed, if you please. Here is the link, you see, without
which so much that I told you yesterday must have sounded no more than
the idle chatter of an old man. Come and use your eyes. Ah, if only
people had used their eyes sooner!"
They followed him, and he pointed to a framework of carved wood that
connected the four posts.
"What is this on the frieze running above the capitals of the little
Ionic pillars?"
"The papal crown and keys," said Mary.
"Good! Now regard the other side."
"A coat of arms--a golden bull on a red ground--why, father, that was
what puzzled you at Florence!"
"Surely it was. The thing stuck in my memory, yet I could not remember
where I had seen it before."
Signor Mannetti prepared for his effect, then made it.
"The arms of the Borgia! The arms of the Spanish Pope, Alexander VI. of
unholy memory. So all is told, and we will soon go to bed. Having marked
them this morning, you will see how readily I was led into the heart of
the secret. It only needed some such certain sign. And everything that
had happened was consonant with this explanation. The first to suffer
puzzled me; but I solved that problem, too. You shall hear how each
woman and each man was slain. Look at this mattress upholstered in
satin--there lies the unsleeping thing that brings sleep so quickly to
others! I guessed it this morning; I proved it to-night. At seventeen
minutes past eight Prince was dead; but not until I awoke, near two
o'clock, did I dare approach him. For how did he die? The moment the
heat of his ancient body penetrated the mattress under him, it released
its awful venom. He stretched himself, curled up again, and, as the
exhalation rose, with scarcely a tremor he passed from sleep into death.
Needless to tell you that I kept far from him, for I guessed that not
until the poor fellow was cold would the demon in the mattress sink down
and disappear, as the effret into his bottle. Then mattress and dog were
alike harmless, as they are now. I gave him only five hours, for he was
a small, thin beast, and the heat soon left his body."
"But, signor--"
"I shall anticipate all your objections if you will listen a little
longer, dear Mrs. May. Let us sit again, and question me after I have
spoken, if any doubts remain unanswered. Another liqueur, Masters."
He sipped, and preserved silence for a few moments, while none spoke.
Then from his armchair he traversed the story of the Grey Room, and
proved amazingly familiar with the smallest detail of it. Indeed, when
at last he had finished, none could find any questions to ask. "There
are two very interesting preliminary facts to note, my friends," began
the signor. He beamed upon them, and enjoyed his own exposition with
unconcealed gusto. "The first is that a room, already suffering from
sinister traditions, and held to be haunted, should have been precisely
that into which this infernal engine of destruction was introduced. Yet
what more natural? You have the furniture, and, for the time being,
do not know what to do with it. The house is already full of beautiful
things, and these surplus treasures you store here, to be safe and out
of the way, in a room which is not put to its proper use. You are not
collectors or experts. Sir Walter's father did not share his father's
enthusiasm, neither did Sir Walter care for old furniture. So the pieces
take their place in this room, and are, more or less, forgotten.
"That is the first interesting fact, and the second seems to me to
be this: that those who perished here in living memory all died at
different places in the room, and so died that their deaths could not
be immediately and undeviatingly traced to the bed. Hardcastle, for
example, as you have related his conversation, did not associate the
death of poor Captain May with that of the lady of the hospital eleven
years before; and Sir Walter himself saw no reason to connect the still
earlier death of his aged aunt, which took place when he was a boy, with
the disaster that followed.
"Let us now examine for a moment the amazing fact that none of the
stigmata of death was found in those who perished here.
"Death has three modes--the pale horseman strikes us down by asphyxia,
by coma, and by syncope. In asphyxia he stabs the lungs; in coma his
lance is aimed at the brain; in syncope, at the heart.
"When a man dies by asphyxia, it means that the action of the muscles
by which he breathes is stopped, or the work of his lungs prevented
by injury, or the free passage of air arrested, as in drowning, or
strangulation. It may also mean that embolism has taken place, and the
pulmonary artery is blocked, withholding blood from the lungs. But it
was not thus that any died in this chamber.
"Coma occurs through an apoplexy, or concussion; by the use of certain
narcotic or mineral poisons; and in various other ways, all of which are
ruled out for us.
"There remains syncope. A heart ceases to beat from haemorrhage, or
starvation, from exhaustion, or the depressing influence of certain
drugs. They who died here died from syncope; but why? No autopsy can
tell us why. They passed with only their Maker to sustain them, and none
leaves behind an explanation of what overtook him, or her. Yet we know
full well, even in the case of Peter Hardcastle, concerning whom the
police felt doubt, that he was quite dead before Mr. Lennox discovered
him and picked him up. We know that the phenomena of rigor mortis had
already set in before his body reached London.
"Nothing, however, is new under the sun. Many journals related the fact
that these people had passed away without a cause, as though it were
an event without a parallel. It is not. Your Dr. Templeman, in 1893,
describes two examples of sudden death with absolute absence of any
pathological condition in any part of the bodies to account for it.
He describes the case of a man of forty-three, and calls it 'emotional
inhibition of the heart.' The heart was arrested in diastole, instead
of systole, as is usually the case; the mode of death was syncope; the
cause of death, undiscoverable.
"A layman may be permitted, I suppose, to describe 'emotional inhibition
of the heart' as 'shock'; but we know, in our cases, that if a shock,
it was not a painful one--perhaps not even an unpleasant one. Since all
other emotions can be pleasant or unpleasant, why must we assume that
the supreme emotion of death may not be pleasant also, did we know how
to make it so? Perhaps the Borgia, among their secrets, had discovered
this. At least the familiar signs of death were wholly absent from
the countenances of the dead. The jaws were not set; the familiar,
expressions were not changed, as usually happens from rigidity of facial
muscles; their faces were not sallow; their temples were not sunk; their
brows were not contracted.
"We will now take the victims, one by one, and show how death happened
to each of them, yet left no sign that it had happened. Frankly,
the first case alone presented any difficulties to me. For a time I
despaired of proving how the bed had destroyed Sir Walter's ancestor,
because she had not entered it. But the difficulty becomes clear to one
possessing our present knowledge, for once prove the properties of the
bed, and the rest follows. You will say that they were not proved, only
guessed. That was true, until Prince died. His death crowned my
edifice of theory and converted it to fact. As to why the bed has these
properties, that is for science to find out presently.
"To return, then, to the old lady, the ancient woman of your race, who
came unexpectedly to the Christmas re-union and was put to sleep in the
Grey Room at her own wish. She was found dead next morning on the floor.
She had not entered the bed. The exact facts have long disappeared
from human knowledge, and it is only possible to re-construct them by
inference and the support of those straightforward events that followed.
I conceive, then, that though the old lady did not create the warmth
that liberated the evil spirit of the bed and so destroyed her, that
warmth was nevertheless artificially created. What must have happened,
think you? The bed is made up in haste and the fire lighted. But the
fire is a long way from the bed, and would have no effect to create the
necessary temperature. There is, however, a hot-water bottle in the bed,
or a hot brick wrapped in flannel. The old lady is about to enter her
bed. She has extinguished her candle, but the flame of the fire gives
light. She has prayed; she throws off her dressing-gown and flings back
the covering of the bed, to fall an instant victim to the miasma. She
drops backward and is found dead next morning, by which time the bottle
and bed are also cold.
"Taken alone, I grant this explanation may fail to win your sympathy;
but consider the cumulative evidence in store. The old lady may, of
course, have died a natural death. She may not have turned down the bed.
There is nobody living to tell us. All that Sir Walter can recollect is
that she was found on the floor of the room dead. Exactly where, he
does not remember. But for my own part I have no doubt whatever that her
death took place in that way.
"We are on safer ground with the other tragic happenings, though, save
in the case of Nurse Forrester, there is nothing on the surface of
events to connect their deaths with the accursed bed. You will see,
however, that it is very easy to do so. In the lady's case all is clear
enough. She goes to bed tired and she sleeps peacefully into death
without waking. She is probably asleep within ten minutes, before her
own warmth has penetrated through sheet and blanket to the mattress
beneath and so destroyed her. Suppose that she is dead in half an hour.
She retired to rest at ten o'clock; she is called at seven; the room is
presently broken into and she is then not only dead, but cold. The demon
has gone to sleep again under its lifeless burden. Now had she been
stout and well covered, there had hardly been time for her to grow cold,
and those who came to her assistance might even have perished, too.
But she is a little, thin thing, and the heat has gone out of her. This
assured the safety of those who came to the bedside. One can make no
laws as to the time necessary for a dead body to grow as cold as its
surroundings. The bodies of the old and the young cool more quickly than
those of adult persons. If the conditions are favorable a body may cool
in six to eight hours. Prince took but five, poor little bag of bones.
"In the case of Captain May the conditions are altogether different.
Let me speak with all tenderness and spare you pain. Be sure that he
suffered no more than the others. The bed is now no longer made; the
mattress is bare. That matters not to him. Clad in his pyjamas, with a
railway rug to cover him and his dressing-gown for a pillow, he flings
himself down, and from his powerful and sanguine frame warmth is
instantly communicated to the mattress that supports him. Probably but
a few minutes were sufficient to liberate the poison. He is not asleep,
but on the edge of sleep when he becomes suddenly conscious of physical
sensations beyond his experience. He had breathed death, but yet he is
not dead. His brain works, and can send a message to his limbs, which
are still able to obey. But his hour has come. He leaps from the bed in
no suffering, but conscious, perhaps of an oppression, or an unfamiliar
odor--we cannot say what. We only know that he feels intense surprise,
not pain for in that dying moment his emotions are fixed for ever by
the muscles of his face. He needs air and seeks it. He hurries to the
recess, kneels on the cushion, and throws open the window. Or the window
may have been already open--we cannot tell. To reach it is his last
conscious act, and in another moment he is dead. The bed is not
suspected. Why should it be? Who could prove that he had even laid down
upon it? Indeed it was believed and reported at the inquest that he had
not done so. Yet that is what unquestionably happened. Otherwise his
candle would have burned to the socket. He had blown it out and settled
to rest, be sure.
"We have now to deal with the detective, and here again there was
nothing to associate his death with the bed of the Borgia. Yet you will
see without my aid how easily he came by his death. Peter Hardcastle
desires to be alone, that he may study the Grey Room and everything in
it. He is left as he wishes, walks here and there, sketches a ground
plan of the room and exhausts its more obvious peculiarities. Would
that he had known the meaning of the golden bull! Presently he strikes
a train of thought and sits down to develop it. Or he may not have
finished with the room and have taken a seat from which he could survey
everything around him. He sits at the foot of the bed--there on the
right side. He makes his notes, then his last thoughts enter his
mind--abstract reflection on the subject of his trade. For a moment he
forgets the matter immediately in hand and writes his ideas in his book.
He has been sitting on the bed now for some while--how long we know not,
but long enough to create the heightened temperature which is all the
watchful fiend within the mattress requires to summon him. Then ascends
the spirit of death, and Hardcastle, surprised as Captain May was
surprised, leaps to his feet. He takes two or three steps forward; his
book and pen fall from his hand and he drops upon his face--a dead man.
He is, of course, still warm when Mr. Lennox finds him; but the bed he
leaped from is cold again and harmless--its work done.
"There remains the priest, the Rev. Septimus May. He neither lay on the
bed, nor sat upon it. But what did he do? He clearly knelt beside it a
long time, engaged in prayer. Nothing more natural than that he should
stretch his arms over the mattress; bury his face in his hands, and so
remain in commune with the Almighty, uttering petition after petition
for the being he conceived as existing in the Grey Room, without power
to escape from it. Thus leaning upon the bed with his arms stretched
upon it and his head perhaps sunk between them, he presently creates
that heightened temperature sufficient to arouse the destroyer. It
enters into him--how, we know not yet--and he sinks unconscious to the
floor, while the bed is quickly cold again.
"As to the four detectives--Inspector Frith and his men--pure chance
saved the life of at least one of them, and by so doing, chance also
prevented them from discovering that the bed in their midst was the seat
of all the trouble. Had one among them taken up his watch upon it, he
would certainly have died in the presence of his collaborators; but
the men sat on chairs in the corners of the room, and the chairs were
harmless. Whether their gas masks would indeed have saved them remains,
of course, to be proved. I doubt it.
"Such, my friends, were the masterpieces of the Borgia, for whom the
profoundest chemists worked willingly enough and by doing so doubtless
made their fortunes. Their poisons were so designed to act that, by
their very operation, the secrets of them were concealed, and all clues
obliterated. Chemistry knows nothing of the supernatural, yet can, as in
this case, achieve results that may well appear to be black magic.
"And if we, of this day, fail to find them out, it is easy to guess that
in their own times, much that they caused to be done was set down to the
operations of Heaven alone.
"Science will be deeply interested in your Borgia mattress, Sir Walter.
Science, I doubt not, will carefully unpick it and make a series of very
remarkable experiments; yet I make bold to believe that science may
be baffled by the cunning and forgotten knowledge of men long dust. We
shall see as to that."
He rose and bade Masters call Stephano. Then, with a few words, they
parted, and each shook the old man's hand and expressed a deep and
genuine gratitude before they did so.
"A little remains to add," said Signor Mannetti. "You shall hear what it
is to-morrow. For the moment, 'Good-night!' It has been a crowning joy
to my long life that I was able to do this service to new and valued
friends."
In the servants' hall next morning Masters related what he had heard.
"And if you ask me," he concluded, "I draw back what I thought about him
being younger than he pretends. He's older--old as the hills--older than
that horror in the Grey Boom. He's a demon; and he's killed the old dog;
and I believe he's a Borge himself if the truth was known."