IN THE DARK.
Julian supposed when he was awakened later on, and felt that he was
drenched with a warm perspiration which caused his light tropical
clothes to stick to him with a hot clammy feeling, that he must have
slept for two hours. For now, as he lay on the sofa facing the window,
he could see through the slats of the persianas, which he had
forgotten to turn down, that, peeping round the window-frame there
came an edge of the moon, which he seemed to recollect--dimly, hazily,
and indistinctly--had risen late last night.
And that moon--which stole more and more into his view as he regarded
it--was casting now a long ray into the bedroom, so that there came
across the floor a streak of light of about the breadth of nine
inches.
Yet--once his bemused brain had grasped the fact that this ray was
there, while, at the same time, that brain was still clear enough to
comprehend that every moment the flood of light was becoming larger,
so that soon the apartment would be filled with it--he paid no further
attention to the matter, nor to the distant rumbling of thunder far
away--thunder that told of a tropical storm taking place at a
distance. Instead, he was endeavouring to argue silently with himself
as to the actual state in which his mind was; as to whether he was in
a dreamy kind of delirium, or whether, in spite of any fever that
might be upon him, he was still able to distinctly understand his
surroundings.
If, as he hoped earnestly, the latter was the case; if he was not
delirious, but only numbed by some ailment that had insidiously taken
possession of him--then--why then--surely! he was in deadly peril of
some immediate attack upon him--upon his life perhaps.
For, outside those persianas there was another light, two other lights
glittering in upon him that were not cast by the moon, but that
(because now and again her rays were thrown upon them) he discovered
to be a pair of eyes. And not the eyes of an animal either, since they
glisten in the dark, but, instead, human eyes that glared horribly as
now and again the moonbeams caught them.
Only! was it the truth that they were real tangible eyes, or were they
but a fantasy of a mind unhinged by fever?
He must know that! And he could only do so by lying perfectly still;
by watching.
Those eyes which stared in at him now were low down to the floor of
the balcony, even as he seemed to recollect Zara's eyes had been on
one occasion during her nocturnal visits to him when he first arrived
at Desolada; yet now he knew, felt sure, that they were not Zara's.
Why he felt so sure he could not tell, nor in the feverish languor
that was upon him, could he even reason with himself as why he did
feel so sure. But, at the same time, he told himself, they were not
hers. Of that he was certain.
How did they come there, low down--not a foot above the floor of the
veranda? Could they indeed be the eyes of an animal in spite of the
white eyeballs on which the rays shone with such a sickly gleam; did
they belong to some household dog which had chosen this spot for its
night's repose? Yet--yet--if such was the case, why did it not sleep
curled up or stretched out, instead of peering through the latticework
with its eyes close to the slats, as though determined to see all that
was in the room and all that was going on in it. No! it could not be
that, while, also it was not what he had deemed it might be a few
minutes ago--the eyes of a snake. It was impossible, since the eyes of
a snake would have been much closer together.
They were--there could be no doubt about it! the eyes of a human
being, man or woman. And they were not Zara's. He was sure of that.
But still they glared into the room, glared through the dusky
sombreness of the lower part of it, of that part of the floor which,
even now, the moonlight was not illuminating. And then to his
astonishment he saw, as the light flooded the apartment more and more,
that those eyes were staring not at him but towards another portion of
the room; towards where the bed stood enveloped in the long hanging
folds of the mosquito curtains, which, to his distempered mind, seemed
in the weird light of the tropical night to look like the hangings
that enshroud a catafalque--a funeral canopy.
His hand, shaky though he knew it was from whatever ailed him, was on
his revolver; for a moment or so he lay there asking himself if he
should fire at that wizard thing, that creepy mystery outside his
room; if he should aim fair between those glistening eyeballs and
trust to fortune to kill or disable the mysterious watcher? But still,
however, he refrained; for, if his senses were still in his own
possession, if his mind was still able to understand anything, it
understood that near the bed in which he should have been sleeping had
it not been for the evil odours exhaled from it to-night, there was
something that might be a more fitting object of his discharge than
the creature outside.
"If," he thought to himself, "I am neither mad nor delirious nor
drenched with fever, those eyes are watching something in this room,
and that something is not myself."
Should he turn his head; could he turn it towards that dark patch
behind the mosquito curtains which was not illuminated with the moon's
rays? Could he do it as a man turns in his sleep--restlessly--so that
in the action there might be nothing which should alarm whatever
lurked in the darkness over there; the thing that, having got into his
room in the night full of evil intentions towards him, was now itself
being watched, suspected, perhaps trapped. Could he do it?
As he meditated thus, feeling sure now that his stupor, his density of
mind, was not what it had been--recognising with a feeling of devout
thankfulness that, whatever his state might hitherto have been, his
mind was now becoming clear and his intellect collected, he prepared
to put this determination into practise. He would roll over on to his
right side, as he had seen sleepy sailors roll over on to theirs in
the watch below; he would roll over too, with his hand securely on the
butt of his revolver. And then--if--if, as he felt certain was the
case, there was some dark skulking thing hiding behind his bedhead, if
he should see another pair of eyes gleaming out in the rays of the
moon--why, then, woe befall it! He had had enough of these midnight
hauntings from one visitant or another in this house of mystery; he
would fire straight at that figure, he would kill it dead, if so it
must be, even if it were Sebastian himself.
As he turned, imitating a sleeper's restlessness, as well as he was
able, there came two interruptions--interruptions that stayed his
hand.
From near the bed--he was right! those eyes outside had been watching
something that was inside there!--close to him, across the room, he
heard a sound. A sound that was half a one, half an inward catching of
the breath, a gasp. Yet so low, so quickly suppressed, that none who
had not suspected, none who had not been on the watch for the
slightest sign, would have heard or noticed it. But he had heard it!
The other was a noisier, a more palpable interruption. Sebastian,
below in the great saloon on the front was singing to himself, loudly
and boisterously, and then, equally boisterously, was wishing Madame
Carmaux "Good-night." Answering evidently, too, some question, which
Julian could not hear put to him by her, and expressing also the hope
that she would feel better soon.
"Yet," thought Julian, "she cannot quit her room. It is strange.
Strange, too, that she should be up so late. It must be two o'clock,
at least."
With a glance from his eye towards the lower part of the window, which
still he could see from the position in which he lay, he observed that
the mysterious watcher outside was gone. Those eyes, at least, no
longer gleamed from low down by the floor; through the slats of the
blind he perceived that the spot where they had lately been was now a
void. The watcher was gone! But what of the one who had been watched,
of the lurking creature that was near his bed, and that had gasped
with fear even as he turned over on the sofa? What of that? Well, it
was still there. He was alone with it.
His thumb drew back the trigger of the revolver, the well-known click
was heard--the click which can never be disguised or silenced. A click
that many a man has listened to with mortal agony and terror of soul,
knowing that it sounds his knell. Then again on his ears there fell
that gasp, that indrawn catching of the breath, which told of a
terrified object close by his side.
And it could not be Sebastian who had uttered it; Sebastian, the one
person alone who had reason to meditate the worst towards him that one
human being can desire for another. It could not be he. For was he not
still singing boisterously below in the front of the house? It could
not be he. And, Julian reflected, he was about to take a life, the
life of some one whom he himself did not know, of some one whose
presence in his room even at night, at such an hour of the night,
might yet be capable of explanation; that might not, in absolute fact,
bode evil to him. Suppose, that after all, it should be Zara, and that
again she was there for some purpose of serving his interest as he had
told Beatrix he believed she had been more than once before. Suppose
that, and that now he should fire and kill her! How would he feel
then! What would his remorse be?
No! He would not do it.
Instead, therefore, he whispered the words, "Zara, what is it?"
Even as he did so, even as he spoke, he noticed that a change had come
over the room. It was quite dark now; the moon's rays no longer
gleamed in; the moon itself was gone, obscured. What had happened? In
a moment the question was answered.
Upon the balcony outside there came a rattle as though a deluge of
small stones had been hurled down upon it, and he, who knew well what
the violence of tropical storms is, recognized that one had broken
over Desolada, and that the rain, if not hail, was descending in a
deluge. A moment later there came, too, a flash of purple, gleaming
lightning which was gone before he could turn his eyes into the
quarter of the room where lurked the thing that he suspected, felt
sure was there. Then, over all, there burst the roar of the thunder
from above, reverberating, pealing all around, rumbling, and reechoing
a moment later in the Cockscomb Mountains.
"Zara!" he called louder now, so as to make himself heard above the
din of the storm--"Zara, why do you not answer me? I mean you no
harm."
But, if amid this tumult any answer was given, he did not hear it. For
now the crash of the thunder, the downpour of the rain, the screaming
of the parrots, and the demoniacal howlings of the baboons farther
away, served to create such a turmoil that scarcely could the cry of a
human voice be heard above it all.
"I am determined," Julian exclaimed, "to know who and what it is that
cowers there!" Wherewith he sprang from off the sofa on which he had
previously raised himself to a sitting position, and, with a leap,
rushed towards the mosquito curtains hanging by the bedhead. "I will
see who and what you are!" he cried, feeling certain that in this spot
was still lurking some strange, secret visitant.
Yet to his astonishment the spot was empty when he reached it. Neither
human being nor animal, nor anything whatever, was there.
"I am indeed struck with fever and delirious," he muttered to himself,
"or if not that, am mad. Yet I could have sworn it was as I thought."
Then again, as he stood there holding in his hand the gauzy curtains
which he had brushed aside, the storm burst afresh over the house with
renewed violence; again the sheets of rain poured down; once more the
purple tropical lightning flashed and the thunder roared. And as the
tempest beat down on all beneath its violence, and while a moment of
intense darkness was followed by an instant of brilliant light, Julian
heard a stronger rattle of the Venetian blinds than the wind had made,
and saw, as again there came a flash of lightning, a dark, hooded
figure creep out swiftly past them on to the balcony--a figure
shrouded to the eyes, yet in the dark eyes of which, as the lightning
played on them, there seemed to be a look of awful fear.