The Second Attempt
The sight which met my eyes had the horror of a dream within a dream,
with the certainty of reality added. The room was as I had seen it
last; except that the shadowy look had gone in the glare of the many
lights, and every article in it stood stark and solidly real.
By the empty bed sat Nurse Kennedy, as my eyes had last seen her,
sitting bolt upright in the arm-chair beside the bed. She had placed a
pillow behind her, so that her back might be erect; but her neck was
fixed as that of one in a cataleptic trance. She was, to all intents
and purposes, turned into stone. There was no special expression on
her face—no fear, no horror; nothing such as might be expected of one
in such a condition. Her open eyes showed neither wonder nor interest.
She was simply a negative existence, warm, breathing, placid; but
absolutely unconscious of the world around her. The bedclothes were
disarranged, as though the patient had been drawn from under them
without throwing them back. The corner of the upper sheet hung upon
the floor; close by it lay one of the bandages with which the Doctor
had dressed the wounded wrist. Another and another lay further along
the floor, as though forming a clue to where the sick man now lay.
This was almost exactly where he had been found on the previous night,
under the great safe. Again, the left arm lay toward the safe. But
there had been a new outrage, an attempt had been made to sever the arm
close to the bangle which held the tiny key. A heavy “kukri”
knife—one of the leaf-shaped knives which the Gurkhas and others of
the hill tribes of India use with such effect—had been taken from its
place on the wall, and with it the attempt had been made. It was
manifest that just at the moment of striking, the blow had been
arrested, for only the point of the knife and not the edge of the blade
had struck the flesh. As it was, the outer side of the arm had been
cut to the bone and the blood was pouring out. In addition, the former
wound in front of the arm had been cut or torn about terribly, one of
the cuts seemed to jet out blood as if with each pulsation of the
heart. By the side of her father knelt Miss Trelawny, her white
nightdress stained with the blood in which she knelt. In the middle of
the room Sergeant Daw, in his shirt and trousers and stocking feet, was
putting fresh cartridges into his revolver in a dazed mechanical kind
of way. His eyes were red and heavy, and he seemed only half awake,
and less than half conscious of what was going on around him. Several
servants, bearing lights of various kinds, were clustered round the
doorway.
As I rose from my chair and came forward, Miss Trelawny raised her eyes
toward me. When she saw me she shrieked and started to her feet,
pointing towards me. Never shall I forget the strange picture she
made, with her white drapery all smeared with blood which, as she rose
from the pool, ran in streaks toward her bare feet. I believe that I
had only been asleep; that whatever influence had worked on Mr.
Trelawny and Nurse Kennedy—and in less degree on Sergeant Daw—had not
touched me. The respirator had been of some service, though it had not
kept off the tragedy whose dire evidences were before me. I can
understand now—I could understand even then—the fright, added to that
which had gone before, which my appearance must have evoked. I had
still on the respirator, which covered mouth and nose; my hair had been
tossed in my sleep. Coming suddenly forward, thus enwrapped and
dishevelled, in that horrified crowd, I must have had, in the strange
mixture of lights, an extraordinary and terrifying appearance. It was
well that I recognised all this in time to avert another catastrophe;
for the half-dazed, mechanically-acting Detective put in the cartridges
and had raised his revolver to shoot at me when I succeeded in
wrenching off the respirator and shouting to him to hold his hand. In
this also he acted mechanically; the red, half-awake eyes had not in
them even then the intention of conscious action. The danger, however,
was averted. The relief of the situation, strangely enough, came in a
simple fashion. Mrs. Grant, seeing that her young mistress had on only
her nightdress, had gone to fetch a dressing-gown, which she now threw
over her. This simple act brought us all back to the region of fact.
With a long breath, one and all seemed to devote themselves to the most
pressing matter before us, that of staunching the flow of blood from
the arm of the wounded man. Even as the thought of action came, I
rejoiced; for the bleeding was very proof that Mr. Trelawny still lived.
Last night’s lesson was not thrown away. More than one of those
present knew now what to do in such an emergency, and within a few
seconds willing hands were at work on a tourniquet. A man was at once
despatched for the doctor, and several of the servants disappeared to
make themselves respectable. We lifted Mr. Trelawny on to the sofa
where he had lain yesterday; and, having done what we could for him,
turned our attention to the Nurse. In all the turmoil she had not
stirred; she sat there as before, erect and rigid, breathing softly and
naturally and with a placid smile. As it was manifestly of no use to
attempt anything with her till the doctor had come, we began to think
of the general situation.
Mrs. Grant had by this time taken her mistress away and changed her
clothes; for she was back presently in a dressing-gown and slippers,
and with the traces of blood removed from her hands. She was now much
calmer, though she trembled sadly; and her face was ghastly white.
When she had looked at her father’s wrist, I holding the tourniquet,
she turned her eyes round the room, resting them now and again on each
one of us present in turn, but seeming to find no comfort. It was so
apparent to me that she did not know where to begin or whom to trust
that, to reassure her, I said:
“I am all right now; I was only asleep.” Her voice had a gulp in it as
she said in a low voice:
“Asleep! You! and my Father in danger! I thought you were on the
watch!” I felt the sting of justice in the reproach; but I really
wanted to help her, so I answered:
“Only asleep. It is bad enough, I know; but there is something more
than an “only” round us here. Had it not been that I took a definite
precaution I might have been like the Nurse there.” She turned her
eyes swiftly on the weird figure, sitting grimly upright like a painted
statue; and then her face softened. With the action of habitual
courtesy she said:
“Forgive me! I did not mean to be rude. But I am in such distress and
fear that I hardly know what I am saying. Oh, it is dreadful! I fear
for fresh trouble and horror and mystery every moment.” This cut me to
the very heart, and out of the heart’s fulness I spoke:
“Don’t give me a thought! I don’t deserve it. I was on guard, and yet
I slept. All that I can say is that I didn’t mean to, and I tried to
avoid it; but it was over me before I knew it. Anyhow, it is done now;
and can’t be undone. Probably some day we may understand it all; but
now let us try to get at some idea of what has happened. Tell me what
you remember!” The effort to recollect seemed to stimulate her; she
became calmer as she spoke:
“I was asleep, and woke suddenly with the same horrible feeling on me
that Father was in great and immediate danger. I jumped up and ran,
just as I was, into his room. It was nearly pitch dark, but as I
opened the door there was light enough to see Father’s nightdress as he
lay on the floor under the safe, just as on that first awful night.
Then I think I must have gone mad for a moment.” She stopped and
shuddered. My eyes lit on Sergeant Daw, still fiddling in an aimless
way with the revolver. Mindful of my work with the tourniquet, I said
calmly:
“Now tell us, Sergeant Daw, what did you fire at?” The policeman
seemed to pull himself together with the habit of obedience. Looking
around at the servants remaining in the room, he said with that air of
importance which, I take it, is the regulation attitude of an official
of the law before strangers:
“Don’t you think, sir, that we can allow the servants to go away? We
can then better go into the matter.” I nodded approval; the servants
took the hint and withdrew, though unwillingly, the last one closing
the door behind him. Then the Detective went on:
“I think I had better tell you my impressions, sir, rather than recount
my actions. That is, so far as I remember them.” There was a mortified
deference now in his manner, which probably arose from his
consciousness of the awkward position in which he found himself. “I
went to sleep half-dressed—as I am now, with a revolver under my
pillow. It was the last thing I remember thinking of. I do not know
how long I slept. I had turned off the electric light, and it was
quite dark. I thought I heard a scream; but I can’t be sure, for I
felt thick-headed as a man does when he is called too soon after an
extra long stretch of work. Not that such was the case this time.
Anyhow my thoughts flew to the pistol. I took it out, and ran on to
the landing. Then I heard a sort of scream, or rather a call for help,
and ran into this room. The room was dark, for the lamp beside the
Nurse was out, and the only light was that from the landing, coming
through the open door. Miss Trelawny was kneeling on the floor beside
her father, and was screaming. I thought I saw something move between
me and the window; so, without thinking, and being half dazed and only
half awake, I shot at it. It moved a little more to the right between
the windows, and I shot again. Then you came up out of the big chair
with all that muffling on your face. It seemed to me, being as I say
half dazed and half awake—I know, sir, you will take this into
account—as if it had been you, being in the same direction as the
thing I had fired at. And so I was about to fire again when you pulled
off the wrap.” Here I asked him—I was cross-examining now and felt at
home:
“You say you thought I was the thing you fired at. What thing?” The
man scratched his head, but made no reply.
“Come, sir,” I said, “what thing; what was it like?” The answer came
in a low voice:
“I don’t know, sir. I thought there was something; but what it was, or
what it was like, I haven’t the faintest notion. I suppose it was
because I had been thinking of the pistol before I went to sleep, and
because when I came in here I was half dazed and only half awake—which
I hope you will in future, sir, always remember.” He clung to that
formula of excuse as though it were his sheet-anchor. I did not want
to antagonise the man; on the contrary I wanted to have him with us.
Besides, I had on me at that time myself the shadow of my own default;
so I said as kindly as I knew how:
“Quite right! Sergeant. Your impulse was correct; though of course in
the half-somnolent condition in which you were, and perhaps partly
affected by the same influence—whatever it may be—which made me sleep
and which has put the Nurse in that cataleptic trance, it could not be
expected that you would pause to weigh matters. But now, whilst the
matter is fresh, let me see exactly where you stood and where I sat.
We shall be able to trace the course of your bullets.” The prospect of
action and the exercise of his habitual skill seemed to brace him at
once; he seemed a different man as he set about his work. I asked Mrs.
Grant to hold the tourniquet, and went and stood where he had stood and
looked where, in the darkness, he had pointed. I could not but notice
the mechanical exactness of his mind, as when he showed me where he had
stood, or drew, as a matter of course, the revolver from his pistol
pocket, and pointed with it. The chair from which I had risen still
stood in its place. Then I asked him to point with his hand only, as I
wished to move in the track of his shot.
Just behind my chair, and a little back of it, stood a high buhl
cabinet. The glass door was shattered. I asked:
“Was this the direction of your first shot or your second?” The answer
came promptly.
“The second; the first was over there!”
He turned a little to the left, more toward the wall where the great
safe stood, and pointed. I followed the direction of his hand and came
to the low table whereon rested, amongst other curios, the mummy of the
cat which had raised Silvio’s ire. I got a candle and easily found the
mark of the bullet. It had broken a little glass vase and a tazza of
black basalt, exquisitely engraved with hieroglyphics, the graven lines
being filled with some faint green cement and the whole thing being
polished to an equal surface. The bullet, flattened against the wall,
lay on the table.
I then went to the broken cabinet. It was evidently a receptacle for
valuable curios; for in it were some great scarabs of gold, agate,
green jasper, amethyst, lapis lazuli, opal, granite, and blue-green
china. None of these things happily were touched. The bullet had gone
through the back of the cabinet; but no other damage, save the
shattering of the glass, had been done. I could not but notice the
strange arrangement of the curios on the shelf of the cabinet. All the
scarabs, rings, amulets, &c. were arranged in an uneven oval round an
exquisitely-carved golden miniature figure of a hawk-headed God crowned
with a disk and plumes. I did not wait to look further at present, for
my attention was demanded by more pressing things; but I determined to
make a more minute examination when I should have time. It was evident
that some of the strange Egyptian smell clung to these old curios;
through the broken glass came an added whiff of spice and gum and
bitumen, almost stronger than those I had already noticed as coming
from others in the room.
All this had really taken but a few minutes. I was surprised when my
eye met, through the chinks between the dark window blinds and the
window cases, the brighter light of the coming dawn. When I went back
to the sofa and took the tourniquet from Mrs. Grant, she went over and
pulled up the blinds.
It would be hard to imagine anything more ghastly than the appearance
of the room with the faint grey light of early morning coming in upon
it. As the windows faced north, any light that came was a fixed grey
light without any of the rosy possibility of dawn which comes in the
eastern quarter of heaven. The electric lights seemed dull and yet
glaring; and every shadow was of a hard intensity. There was nothing
of morning freshness; nothing of the softness of night. All was hard
and cold and inexpressibly dreary. The face of the senseless man on
the sofa seemed of a ghastly yellow; and the Nurse’s face had taken a
suggestion of green from the shade of the lamp near her. Only Miss
Trelawny’s face looked white; and it was of a pallor which made my
heart ache. It looked as if nothing on God’s earth could ever again
bring back to it the colour of life and happiness.
It was a relief to us all when Doctor Winchester came in, breathless
with running. He only asked one question:
“Can anyone tell me anything of how this wound was gotten?” On seeing
the headshake which went round us under his glance, he said no more,
but applied himself to his surgical work. For an instant he looked up
at the Nurse sitting so still; but then bent himself to his task, a
grave frown contracting his brows. It was not till the arteries were
tied and the wounds completely dressed that he spoke again, except, of
course, when he had asked for anything to be handed to him or to be
done for him. When Mr. Trelawny’s wounds had been thoroughly cared
for, he said to Miss Trelawny:
“What about Nurse Kennedy?” She answered at once:
“I really do not know. I found her when I came into the room at
half-past two o’clock, sitting exactly as she does now. We have not
moved her, or changed her position. She has not wakened since. Even
Sergeant Daw’s pistol-shots did not disturb her.”
“Pistol-shots? Have you then discovered any cause for this new
outrage?” The rest were silent, so I answered:
“We have discovered nothing. I was in the room watching with the
Nurse. Earlier in the evening I fancied that the mummy smells were
making me drowsy, so I went out and got a respirator. I had it on when
I came on duty; but it did not keep me from going to sleep. I awoke to
see the room full of people; that is, Miss Trelawny and Sergeant Daw,
being only half awake and still stupefied by the same scent or
influence which had affected us, fancied that he saw something moving
through the shadowy darkness of the room, and fired twice. When I rose
out of my chair, with my face swathed in the respirator, he took me for
the cause of the trouble. Naturally enough, he was about to fire
again, when I was fortunately in time to manifest my identity. Mr.
Trelawny was lying beside the safe, just as he was found last night;
and was bleeding profusely from the new wound in his wrist. We lifted
him on the sofa, and made a tourniquet. That is, literally and
absolutely, all that any of us know as yet. We have not touched the
knife, which you see lies close by the pool of blood. Look!” I said,
going over and lifting it. “The point is red with the blood which has
dried.”
Doctor Winchester stood quite still a few minutes before speaking:
“Then the doings of this night are quite as mysterious as those of last
night?”
“Quite!” I answered. He said nothing in reply, but turning to Miss
Trelawny said:
“We had better take Nurse Kennedy into another room. I suppose there
is nothing to prevent it?”
“Nothing! Please, Mrs. Grant, see that Nurse Kennedy’s room is ready;
and ask two of the men to come and carry her in.” Mrs. Grant went out
immediately; and in a few minutes came back saying:
“The room is quite ready; and the men are here.” By her direction two
footmen came into the room and, lifting up the rigid body of Nurse
Kennedy under the supervision of the Doctor, carried her out of the
room. Miss Trelawny remained with me in the sick chamber, and Mrs.
Grant went with the Doctor into the Nurse’s room.
When we were alone Miss Trelawny came over to me, and taking both my
hands in hers, said:
“I hope you won’t remember what I said. I did not mean it, and I was
distraught.” I did not make reply; but I held her hands and kissed
them. There are different ways of kissing a lady’s hands. This way
was intended as homage and respect; and it was accepted as such in the
high-bred, dignified way which marked Miss Trelawny’s bearing and every
movement. I went over to the sofa and looked down at the senseless
man. The dawn had come much nearer in the last few minutes, and there
was something of the clearness of day in the light. As I looked at the
stern, cold, set face, now as white as a marble monument in the pale
grey light, I could not but feel that there was some deep mystery
beyond all that had happened within the last twenty-six hours. Those
beetling brows screened some massive purpose; that high, broad forehead
held some finished train of reasoning, which the broad chin and massive
jaw would help to carry into effect. As I looked and wondered, there
began to steal over me again that phase of wandering thought which had
last night heralded the approach of sleep. I resisted it, and held
myself sternly to the present. This was easier to do when Miss
Trelawny came close to me, and, leaning her forehead against my
shoulder, began to cry silently. Then all the manhood in me woke, and
to present purpose. It was of little use trying to speak; words were
inadequate to thought. But we understood each other; she did not draw
away when I put arm protectingly over her shoulder as I used to do with
my little sister long ago when in her childish trouble she would come
to her big brother to be comforted. That very act or attitude of
protection made me more resolute in my purpose, and seemed to clear my
brain of idle, dreamy wandering in thought. With an instinct of
greater protection, however, I took away my arm as I heard the Doctor’s
footstep outside the door.
When Doctor Winchester came in he looked intently at the patient before
speaking. His brows were set, and his mouth was a thin, hard line.
Presently he said:
“There is much in common between the sleep of your Father and Nurse
Kennedy. Whatever influence has brought it about has probably worked
the same way in both cases. In Kennedy’s case the coma is less marked.
I cannot but feel, however, that with her we may be able to do more and
more quickly than with this patient, as our hands are not tied. I have
placed her in a draught; and already she shows some signs, though very
faint ones, of ordinary unconsciousness. The rigidity of her limbs is
less, and her skin seems more sensitive—or perhaps I should say less
insensitive—to pain.”
“How is it, then,” I asked, “that Mr. Trelawny is still in this state
of insensibility; and yet, so far as we know, his body has not had such
rigidity at all?”
“That I cannot answer. The problem is one which we may solve in a few
hours; or it may need a few days. But it will be a useful lesson in
diagnosis to us all; and perhaps to many and many others after us, who
knows!” he added, with the genuine fire of an enthusiast.
As the morning wore on, he flitted perpetually between the two rooms,
watching anxiously over both patients. He made Mrs. Grant remain with
the Nurse, but either Miss Trelawny or I, generally both of us,
remained with the wounded man. We each managed, however, to get bathed
and dressed; the Doctor and Mrs. Grant remained with Mr. Trelawny
whilst we had breakfast.
Sergeant Daw went off to report at Scotland Yard the progress of the
night; and then to the local station to arrange for the coming of his
comrade, Wright, as fixed with Superintendent Dolan. When he returned
I could not but think that he had been hauled over the coals for
shooting in a sick-room; or perhaps for shooting at all without certain
and proper cause. His remark to me enlightened me in the matter:
“A good character is worth something, sir, in spite of what some of
them say. See! I’ve still got leave to carry my revolver.”
That day was a long and anxious one. Toward nightfall Nurse Kennedy so
far improved that the rigidity of her limbs entirely disappeared. She
still breathed quietly and regularly; but the fixed expression of her
face, though it was a calm enough expression, gave place to fallen
eyelids and the negative look of sleep. Doctor Winchester had, towards
evening, brought two more nurses, one of whom was to remain with Nurse
Kennedy and the other to share in the watching with Miss Trelawny, who
had insisted on remaining up herself. She had, in order to prepare for
the duty, slept for several hours in the afternoon. We had all taken
counsel together, and had arranged thus for the watching in Mr.
Trelawny’s room. Mrs. Grant was to remain beside the patient till
twelve, when Miss Trelawny would relieve her. The new nurse was to sit
in Miss Trelawny’s room, and to visit the sick chamber each quarter of
an hour. The Doctor would remain till twelve; when I was to relieve
him. One or other of the detectives was to remain within hail of the
room all night; and to pay periodical visits to see that all was well.
Thus, the watchers would be watched; and the possibility of such events
as last night, when the watchers were both overcome, would be avoided.
When the sun set, a strange and grave anxiety fell on all of us; and in
our separate ways we prepared for the vigil. Doctor Winchester had
evidently been thinking of my respirator, for he told me he would go
out and get one. Indeed, he took to the idea so kindly that I
persuaded Miss Trelawny also to have one which she could put on when
her time for watching came.
And so the night drew on.