The Watchers
I was struck by the way the two young women looked at each other. I
suppose I have been so much in the habit of weighing up in my own mind
the personality of witnesses and of forming judgment by their
unconscious action and mode of bearing themselves, that the habit
extends to my life outside as well as within the court-house. At this
moment of my life anything that interested Miss Trelawny interested me;
and as she had been struck by the newcomer I instinctively weighed her
up also. By comparison of the two I seemed somehow to gain a new
knowledge of Miss Trelawny. Certainly, the two women made a good
contrast. Miss Trelawny was of fine figure; dark, straight-featured.
She had marvellous eyes; great, wide-open, and as black and soft as
velvet, with a mysterious depth. To look in them was like gazing at a
black mirror such as Doctor Dee used in his wizard rites. I heard an
old gentleman at the picnic, a great oriental traveller, describe the
effect of her eyes “as looking at night at the great distant lamps of a
mosque through the open door.” The eyebrows were typical. Finely
arched and rich in long curling hair, they seemed like the proper
architectural environment of the deep, splendid eyes. Her hair was
black also, but was as fine as silk. Generally black hair is a type of
animal strength and seems as if some strong expression of the forces of
a strong nature; but in this case there could be no such thought.
There were refinement and high breeding; and though there was no
suggestion of weakness, any sense of power there was, was rather
spiritual than animal. The whole harmony of her being seemed complete.
Carriage, figure, hair, eyes; the mobile, full mouth, whose scarlet
lips and white teeth seemed to light up the lower part of the face—as
the eyes did the upper; the wide sweep of the jaw from chin to ear; the
long, fine fingers; the hand which seemed to move from the wrist as
though it had a sentience of its own. All these perfections went to
make up a personality that dominated either by its grace, its
sweetness, its beauty, or its charm.
Nurse Kennedy, on the other hand, was rather under than over a woman’s
average height. She was firm and thickset, with full limbs and broad,
strong, capable hands. Her colour was in the general effect that of an
autumn leaf. The yellow-brown hair was thick and long, and the
golden-brown eyes sparkled from the freckled, sunburnt skin. Her rosy
cheeks gave a general idea of rich brown. The red lips and white teeth
did not alter the colour scheme, but only emphasized it. She had a
snub nose—there was no possible doubt about it; but like such noses in
general it showed a nature generous, untiring, and full of good-nature.
Her broad white forehead, which even the freckles had spared, was full
of forceful thought and reason.
Doctor Winchester had on their journey from the hospital, coached her
in the necessary particulars, and without a word she took charge of the
patient and set to work. Having examined the new-made bed and shaken
the pillows, she spoke to the Doctor, who gave instructions; presently
we all four, stepping together, lifted the unconscious man from the
sofa.
Early in the afternoon, when Sergeant Daw had returned, I called at my
rooms in Jermyn Street, and sent out such clothes, books and papers as
I should be likely to want within a few days. Then I went on to keep
my legal engagements.
The Court sat late that day as an important case was ending; it was
striking six as I drove in at the gate of the Kensington Palace Road.
I found myself installed in a large room close to the sick chamber.
That night we were not yet regularly organised for watching, so that
the early part of the evening showed an unevenly balanced guard. Nurse
Kennedy, who had been on duty all day, was lying down, as she had
arranged to come on again by twelve o’clock. Doctor Winchester, who
was dining in the house, remained in the room until dinner was
announced; and went back at once when it was over. During dinner Mrs.
Grant remained in the room, and with her Sergeant Daw, who wished to
complete a minute examination which he had undertaken of everything in
the room and near it. At nine o’clock Miss Trelawny and I went in to
relieve the Doctor. She had lain down for a few hours in the afternoon
so as to be refreshed for her work at night. She told me that she had
determined that for this night at least she would sit up and watch. I
did not try to dissuade her, for I knew that her mind was made up.
Then and there I made up my mind that I would watch with her—unless,
of course, I should see that she really did not wish it. I said
nothing of my intentions for the present. We came in on tiptoe, so
silently that the Doctor, who was bending over the bed, did not hear
us, and seemed a little startled when suddenly looking up he saw our
eyes upon him. I felt that the mystery of the whole thing was getting
on his nerves, as it had already got on the nerves of some others of
us. He was, I fancied, a little annoyed with himself for having been
so startled, and at once began to talk in a hurried manner as though to
get over our idea of his embarrassment:
“I am really and absolutely at my wits’ end to find any fit cause for
this stupor. I have made again as accurate an examination as I know
how, and I am satisfied that there is no injury to the brain, that is,
no external injury. Indeed, all his vital organs seem unimpaired. I
have given him, as you know, food several times and it has manifestly
done him good. His breathing is strong and regular, and his pulse is
slower and stronger than it was this morning. I cannot find evidence
of any known drug, and his unconsciousness does not resemble any of the
many cases of hypnotic sleep which I saw in the Charcot Hospital in
Paris. And as to these wounds”—he laid his finger gently on the
bandaged wrist which lay outside the coverlet as he spoke, “I do not
know what to make of them. They might have been made by a
carding-machine; but that supposition is untenable. It is within the
bounds of possibility that they might have been made by a wild animal
if it had taken care to sharpen its claws. That too is, I take it,
impossible. By the way, have you any strange pets here in the house;
anything of an exceptional kind, such as a tiger-cat or anything out of
the common?” Miss Trelawny smiled a sad smile which made my heart ache,
as she made answer:
“Oh no! Father does not like animals about the house, unless they are
dead and mummied.” This was said with a touch of bitterness—or
jealousy, I could hardly tell which. “Even my poor kitten was only
allowed in the house on sufferance; and though he is the dearest and
best-conducted cat in the world, he is now on a sort of parole, and is
not allowed into this room.”
As she was speaking a faint rattling of the door handle was heard.
Instantly Miss Trelawny’s face brightened. She sprang up and went over
to the door, saying as she went:
“There he is! That is my Silvio. He stands on his hind legs and
rattles the door handle when he wants to come into a room.” She opened
the door, speaking to the cat as though he were a baby: “Did him want
his movver? Come then; but he must stay with her!” She lifted the
cat, and came back with him in her arms. He was certainly a
magnificent animal. A chinchilla grey Persian with long silky hair; a
really lordly animal with a haughty bearing despite his gentleness; and
with great paws which spread out as he placed them on the ground.
Whilst she was fondling him, he suddenly gave a wriggle like an eel and
slipped out of her arms. He ran across the room and stood opposite a
low table on which stood the mummy of an animal, and began to mew and
snarl. Miss Trelawny was after him in an instant and lifted him in her
arms, kicking and struggling and wriggling to get away; but not biting
or scratching, for evidently he loved his beautiful mistress. He
ceased to make a noise the moment he was in her arms; in a whisper she
admonished him:
“O you naughty Silvio! You have broken your parole that mother gave
for you. Now, say goodnight to the gentlemen, and come away to
mother’s room!” As she was speaking she held out the cat’s paw to me
to shake. As I did so I could not but admire its size and beauty.
“Why,” said I, “his paw seems like a little boxing-glove full of
claws.” She smiled:
“So it ought to. Don’t you notice that my Silvio has seven toes, see!”
she opened the paw; and surely enough there were seven separate claws,
each of them sheathed in a delicate, fine, shell-like case. As I
gently stroked the foot the claws emerged and one of them
accidentally—there was no anger now and the cat was purring—stuck
into my hand. Instinctively I said as I drew back:
“Why, his claws are like razors!”
Doctor Winchester had come close to us and was bending over looking at
the cat’s claws; as I spoke he said in a quick, sharp way:
“Eh!” I could hear the quick intake of his breath. Whilst I was
stroking the now quiescent cat, the Doctor went to the table and tore
off a piece of blotting-paper from the writing-pad and came back. He
laid the paper on his palm and, with a simple “pardon me!” to Miss
Trelawny, placed the cat’s paw on it and pressed it down with his other
hand. The haughty cat seemed to resent somewhat the familiarity, and
tried to draw its foot away. This was plainly what the Doctor wanted,
for in the act the cat opened the sheaths of its claws and made
several reefs in the soft paper. Then Miss Trelawny took her pet away.
She returned in a couple of minutes; as she came in she said:
“It is most odd about that mummy! When Silvio came into the room
first—indeed I took him in as a kitten to show to Father—he went on
just the same way. He jumped up on the table, and tried to scratch and
bite the mummy. That was what made Father so angry, and brought the
decree of banishment on poor Silvio. Only his parole, given through
me, kept him in the house.”
Whilst she had been gone, Doctor Winchester had taken the bandage from
her father’s wrist. The wound was now quite clear, as the separate
cuts showed out in fierce red lines. The Doctor folded the
blotting-paper across the line of punctures made by the cat’s claws,
and held it down close to the wound. As he did so, he looked up
triumphantly and beckoned us over to him.
The cuts in the paper corresponded with the wounds in the wrist! No
explanation was needed, as he said:
“It would have been better if master Silvio had not broken his parole!”
We were all silent for a little while. Suddenly Miss Trelawny said:
“But Silvio was not in here last night!”
“Are you sure? Could you prove that if necessary?” She hesitated
before replying:
“I am certain of it; but I fear it would be difficult to prove. Silvio
sleeps in a basket in my room. I certainly put him to bed last night;
I remember distinctly laying his little blanket over him, and tucking
him in. This morning I took him out of the basket myself. I certainly
never noticed him in here; though, of course, that would not mean much,
for I was too concerned about poor father, and too much occupied with
him, to notice even Silvio.”
The Doctor shook his head as he said with a certain sadness:
“Well, at any rate it is no use trying to prove anything now. Any cat
in the world would have cleaned blood-marks—did any exist—from his
paws in a hundredth part of the time that has elapsed.”
Again we were all silent; and again the silence was broken by Miss
Trelawny:
“But now that I think of it, it could not have been poor Silvio that
injured Father. My door was shut when I first heard the sound; and
Father’s was shut when I listened at it. When I went in, the injury
had been done; so that it must have been before Silvio could possibly
have got in.” This reasoning commended itself, especially to me as a
barrister, for it was proof to satisfy a jury. It gave me a distinct
pleasure to have Silvio acquitted of the crime—possibly because he was
Miss Trelawny’s cat and was loved by her. Happy cat! Silvio’s
mistress was manifestly pleased as I said:
“Verdict, ‘not guilty!’” Doctor Winchester after a pause observed:
“My apologies to master Silvio on this occasion; but I am still puzzled
to know why he is so keen against that mummy. Is he the same toward
the other mummies in the house? There are, I suppose, a lot of them.
I saw three in the hall as I came in.”
“There are lots of them,” she answered. “I sometimes don’t know
whether I am in a private house or the British Museum. But Silvio
never concerns himself about any of them except that particular one. I
suppose it must be because it is of an animal, not a man or a woman.”
“Perhaps it is of a cat!” said the Doctor as he started up and went
across the room to look at the mummy more closely. “Yes,” he went on,
“it is the mummy of a cat; and a very fine one, too. If it hadn’t been
a special favourite of some very special person it would never have
received so much honour. See! A painted case and obsidian eyes—just
like a human mummy. It is an extraordinary thing, that knowledge of
kind to kind. Here is a dead cat—that is all; it is perhaps four or
five thousand years old—and another cat of another breed, in what is
practically another world, is ready to fly at it, just as it would if
it were not dead. I should like to experiment a bit about that cat if
you don’t mind, Miss Trelawny.” She hesitated before replying:
“Of course, do anything you may think necessary or wise; but I hope it
will not be anything to hurt or worry my poor Silvio.” The Doctor
smiled as he answered:
“Oh, Silvio would be all right: it is the other one that my sympathies
would be reserved for.”
“How do you mean?”
“Master Silvio will do the attacking; the other one will do the
suffering.”
“Suffering?” There was a note of pain in her voice. The Doctor smiled
more broadly:
“Oh, please make your mind easy as to that. The other won’t suffer as
we understand it; except perhaps in his structure and outfit.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Simply this, my dear young lady, that the antagonist will be a mummy
cat like this one. There are, I take it, plenty of them to be had in
Museum Street. I shall get one and place it here instead of that
one—you won’t think that a temporary exchange will violate your
Father’s instructions, I hope. We shall then find out, to begin with,
whether Silvio objects to all mummy cats, or only to this one in
particular.”
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “Father’s instructions seem very
uncompromising.” Then after a pause she went on: “But of course under
the circumstances anything that is to be ultimately for his good must
be done. I suppose there can’t be anything very particular about the
mummy of a cat.”
Doctor Winchester said nothing. He sat rigid, with so grave a look on
his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its
enlightening perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done
the strangeness of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned.
When once this thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it
grew, and blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand different
ways. The room and all in it gave grounds for strange thoughts. There
were so many ancient relics that unconsciously one was taken back to
strange lands and strange times. There were so many mummies or mummy
objects, round which there seemed to cling for ever the penetrating
odours of bitumen, and spices and gums—“Nard and Circassia’s balmy
smells”—that one was unable to forget the past. Of course, there was
but little light in the room, and that carefully shaded; so that there
was no glare anywhere. None of that direct light which can manifest
itself as a power or an entity, and so make for companionship. The
room was a large one, and lofty in proportion to its size. In its
vastness was place for a multitude of things not often found in a
bedchamber. In far corners of the room were shadows of uncanny shape.
More than once as I thought, the multitudinous presence of the dead and
the past took such hold on me that I caught myself looking round
fearfully as though some strange personality or influence was present.
Even the manifest presence of Doctor Winchester and Miss Trelawny could
not altogether comfort or satisfy me at such moments. It was with a
distinct sense of relief that I saw a new personality in the room in
the shape of Nurse Kennedy. There was no doubt that that business-like,
self-reliant, capable young woman added an element of security to such
wild imaginings as my own. She had a quality of common sense that
seemed to pervade everything around her, as though it were some kind of
emanation. Up to that moment I had been building fancies around the
sick man; so that finally all about him, including myself, had become
involved in them, or enmeshed, or saturated, or.... But now that she had
come, he relapsed into his proper perspective as a patient; the room
was a sick-room, and the shadows lost their fearsome quality. The only
thing which it could not altogether abrogate was the strange Egyptian
smell. You may put a mummy in a glass case and hermetically seal it so
that no corroding air can get within; but all the same it will exhale
its odour. One might think that four or five thousand years would
exhaust the olfactory qualities of anything; but experience teaches us
that these smells remain, and that their secrets are unknown to us.
Today they are as much mysteries as they were when the embalmers put
the body in the bath of natron....
All at once I sat up. I had become lost in an absorbing reverie. The
Egyptian smell had seemed to get on my nerves—on my memory—on my very
will.
At that moment I had a thought which was like an inspiration. If I was
influenced in such a manner by the smell, might it not be that the sick
man, who lived half his life or more in the atmosphere, had gradually
and by slow but sure process taken into his system something which had
permeated him to such degree that it had a new power derived from
quantity—or strength—or....
I was becoming lost again in a reverie. This would not do. I must
take such precaution that I could remain awake, or free from such
entrancing thought. I had had but half a night’s sleep last night; and
this night I must remain awake. Without stating my intention, for I
feared that I might add to the trouble and uneasiness of Miss Trelawny,
I went downstairs and out of the house. I soon found a chemist’s shop,
and came away with a respirator. When I got back, it was ten o’clock;
the Doctor was going for the night. The Nurse came with him to the
door of the sick-room, taking her last instructions. Miss Trelawny sat
still beside the bed. Sergeant Daw, who had entered as the Doctor went
out, was some little distance off.
When Nurse Kennedy joined us, we arranged that she should sit up till
two o’clock, when Miss Trelawny would relieve her. Thus, in accordance
with Mr. Trelawny’s instructions, there would always be a man and a
woman in the room; and each one of us would overlap, so that at no time
would a new set of watchers come on duty without some one to tell of
what—if anything—had occurred. I lay down on a sofa in my own room,
having arranged that one of the servants should call me a little before
twelve. In a few moments I was asleep.
When I was waked, it took me several seconds to get back my thoughts so
as to recognise my own identity and surroundings. The short sleep had,
however, done me good, and I could look on things around me in a more
practical light than I had been able to do earlier in the evening. I
bathed my face, and thus refreshed went into the sick-room. I moved
very softly. The Nurse was sitting by the bed, quiet and alert; the
Detective sat in an arm-chair across the room in deep shadow. He did
not move when I crossed, until I got close to him, when he said in a
dull whisper:
“It is all right; I have not been asleep!” An unnecessary thing to
say, I thought—it always is, unless it be untrue in spirit. When I
told him that his watch was over; that he might go to bed till I should
call him at six o’clock, he seemed relieved and went with alacrity. At
the door he turned and, coming back to me, said in a whisper:
“I sleep lightly and I shall have my pistols with me. I won’t feel so
heavy-headed when I get out of this mummy smell.”
He too, then, had shared my experience of drowsiness!
I asked the Nurse if she wanted anything. I noticed that she had a
vinaigrette in her lap. Doubtless she, too, had felt some of the
influence which had so affected me. She said that she had all she
required, but that if she should want anything she would at once let me
know. I wished to keep her from noticing my respirator, so I went to
the chair in the shadow where her back was toward me. Here I quietly
put it on, and made myself comfortable.
For what seemed a long time, I sat and thought and thought. It was a
wild medley of thoughts, as might have been expected from the
experiences of the previous day and night. Again I found myself
thinking of the Egyptian smell; and I remember that I felt a delicious
satisfaction that I did not experience it as I had done. The
respirator was doing its work.
It must have been that the passing of this disturbing thought made for
repose of mind, which is the corollary of bodily rest, for, though I
really cannot remember being asleep or waking from it, I saw a
vision—I dreamed a dream, I scarcely know which.
I was still in the room, seated in the chair. I had on my respirator
and knew that I breathed freely. The Nurse sat in her chair with her
back toward me. She sat quite still. The sick man lay as still as the
dead. It was rather like the picture of a scene than the reality; all
were still and silent; and the stillness and silence were continuous.
Outside, in the distance I could hear the sounds of a city, the
occasional roll of wheels, the shout of a reveller, the far-away echo
of whistles and the rumbling of trains. The light was very, very low;
the reflection of it under the green-shaded lamp was a dim relief to
the darkness, rather than light. The green silk fringe of the lamp had
merely the colour of an emerald seen in the moonlight. The room, for
all its darkness, was full of shadows. It seemed in my whirling
thoughts as though all the real things had become shadows—shadows
which moved, for they passed the dim outline of the high windows.
Shadows which had sentience. I even thought there was sound, a faint
sound as of the mew of a cat—the rustle of drapery and a metallic
clink as of metal faintly touching metal. I sat as one entranced. At
last I felt, as in nightmare, that this was sleep, and that in the
passing of its portals all my will had gone.
All at once my senses were full awake. A shriek rang in my ears. The
room was filled suddenly with a blaze of light. There was the sound of
pistol shots—one, two; and a haze of white smoke in the room. When my
waking eyes regained their power, I could have shrieked with horror
myself at what I saw before me.