"I've been thinking over your curious experience of last night. I--I've
been wondering."
"Wondering what?"
"I've been trying to discern what connection your experience had with my
own up in Yorkshire," she said. "I saw the hand distinctly--a thin,
scraggy hand just as you saw it. But I have remained silent because--
well, because I could not convince myself that such a thing was actually
a reality."
"Describe the whole circumstance," I urged. "On the occasion when you
saw it, was the door of your room locked?"
"Most certainly," was her reply. "Louise, who is married to a solicitor
in Scarborough, invited me up to stay a week with her, and I went alone,
Dad having gone to London. The house was on the Esplanade, one of the
row of big grey houses that face the sea on the South Cliff. The family
consisted only of Louise, her husband, three maids, and myself, as
visitor. My room was on the second floor, in the front facing the sea,
and my experience was almost identical with that of yourself last night.
I was awakened just before dawn by feeling a cold touch upon my cheek.
And opening my eyes I saw the hand--it seemed to be the horrible hand of
Death himself!"
"Most extraordinary!" I ejaculated.
"Since then, Mr Kemball, I have wondered whether; that touch was not
sent as warning of impending evil--sent to forewarn me of the sudden
death of the man I loved!"
I was silent. The circumstances, so curiously identical, were certainly
alarming. Indeed, I could see that the narration of my extraordinary
experience had terrified her. She seemed to have become suddenly most
solicitous regarding my welfare, for after a slight pause she exclaimed
anxiously--
"Do, Mr Kemball, take every precaution to secure your own safety.
Somehow I--well, I don't know how it is, but I feel that the hand is
seen as warning--a warning against something which threatens--against
some evil of which we have no expectation, or--"
"It warned you of the terrible blow which so soon afterwards fell upon
you," I interrupted. "And it has warned me--of what?"
She shook her head.
"How can we tell?" she asked.
In a flash the remembrance of that bronze cylinder and the dire
misfortune which had befallen every one of its possessors occurred to
me. I recollected the ancient hieroglyphics upon the scraps of brown
crinkled papyri, and their translation. But surely the apparition of
the Hand could have no connection with what had been written long ago,
before our Christian era?
"Did you actually feel the cold touch of the Hand?" I asked her in
eagerness.
"Yes. It awakened me, just as it awakened you."
"And there was no one else in the house but the persons you named. I
mean you are positive that you were not a victim of any practical joke,
Miss Seymour?" I asked.
"Quite certain. The door of my room was locked and bolted. It was at
the head of the stairs. There were four rooms on that floor, but only
mine was occupied."
"The window? If I recollect aright, most of the houses on the Esplanade
at Scarborough have balconies," I remarked.
"Mine had a balcony, it is true, but both windows were securely
fastened. I recollected latching them before retiring, as is my habit."
"Then nobody could possibly have entered there!"
"Nobody. Yet I have a distinct recollection of having been touched by,
and having actually seen, the hand being withdrawn from my pillow. I
rushed out of the room and alarmed the house. In a few moments every
one came out of their rooms, but when I told my story they laughed at me
in ridicule, and Louise took me back to bed, declaring that I must have
had a bad dream. But I could sleep there no longer, and returned home
next day. I did not tell Dad, because I knew that he would only poke
fun at me."
For some moments I did not speak. Surely ours was a strange
conversation in that busy modern thoroughfare, amid the cafe idlers
seated out in the roadway, and the lounging groups enjoying the cool air
from the river after the heat and burden of the day.
Strange it was--very strange--that almost the same inexplicable
circumstances had occurred to her as to me.
Had I been superstitious I certainly should have been inclined to the
belief that the uncanny hand--which was so material that it had left its
imprint upon my flesh--was actually some evil foreboding connected with
the bronze cylinder--the Thing which the papyri decreed shall not speak
until the Day of Awakening. Was not the curse of the Wolf-god placed
upon any one who sought knowledge of the contents of that cylinder,
which had been placed for security in the tomb of the Great Merenptah,
King of Kings? Even contact with the human hand was forbidden under
pain of the wrath of the Sun-god, and of Osiris the Eternal.
As I walked there I recalled the quaint decipher of those ancient
hieroglyphics.
Yes, the incident was the most weird and inexplicable that had ever
happened to me. The whole problem indeed defied solution.
I had not attempted to open the cylinder, nor to seek knowledge of what
was contained therein. It still reposed in the safe in the library at
Upton End, together with that old newspaper, the threatening letter, and
the translation of the papyri.
We wandered along the quay, Asta appearing unusually pale and pensive.
"I wonder you did not recount your strange experience to your father," I
exclaimed presently.
"It happened in the house of a friend, and not at home. Therefore I
resolved to say nothing. Indeed I had grown to believe that, after all,
it must have been mere imagination--until you described what happened to
you last night. That has caused me to think--it has convinced me that
what I saw was material and real."
"It's a mystery, Miss Seymour," I said; "one which we must both
endeavour to elucidate. Let us say nothing--not even to your father.
We will keep our own counsel and watch."
When we returned to the hotel we found Shaw awaiting us. Asta, being
fatigued, retired to her room, and afterwards he and I strolled down to
one of those big cafes in the Place Bellecour. A string band was
playing a waltz, and hundreds of people were sitting out upon the
pavement drinking their _bock_ or _mazagran_.
Darkness had fallen, and with it the air became fresher--welcome indeed
after those long hours on the white, dusty road of the Bourgogne. My
host, in the ease of straw hat and grey flannel suit, still wore his
dark glasses, and as we sat together at one of the tin tables near the
kerb a man and a woman at the adjacent table rose and left, so that we
were comparatively alone and in the shadow.
After we had been chatting merrily--for he seemed in the best of spirits
and full of admiration of the way in which the French roads were kept--
he removed his spectacles and wiped them.