"How did you get this?" I asked the youth. "Who are you?"
"I'm John May, sir," was his answer. "I work in the gardens at Lydford,
an' last night, soon after eleven, as I was a-comin' home from
Rockingham, I met Miss Asta out in the drive. She was like a mad thing.
She 'ad the letter and wanted it delivered at once. So I went to the
stables and, sayin' nothink, came away."
"Then she had written this note, and gone out in the hope of finding
some one to deliver it?" I exclaimed, glancing at his horse, and
noticing that it was absolutely done up after an all-night ride.
"I didn't know it was you, sir, that passed me in a motor-car," the
young gardener went on.
"No," I said, re-reading the mysterious summons for help. "But you and
your horse must remain here and rest. I shall return to Lydford in the
car."
Full of anxiety, I put on my mackintosh and cap, for it was raining
steadily, and within a quarter of an hour of receiving the note I was
already on my way along the autumn-tinted roads.
The morning was that of the first of November. Regardless of
speed-limits or of police-traps, I tore along until, just before eleven,
I again pulled up at the ancient stone porch of the Hall.
A maid-servant opened the door, and I eagerly inquired for Miss Seymour.
"She's very ill, sir," was the girl's reply. "Mr Shaw's been called on
the Bench this morning, but he'll be back in an hour. Doctor Redwood is
here, sir."
"Redwood! Then what's the matter?" I gasped.
"I hardly know, sir. But here's Mrs Howard!" and looking along the
wide hall I saw the grave-faced woman in black standing out of the
light.
"Oh, Mrs Howard?" I cried, walking up to her. "What's happened to
Miss Asta? Tell me. Is she ill?"
"Very, I'm afraid, sir," replied the housekeeper in a low voice. "The
doctor is upstairs with her. What happened in the night was most
extraordinary and mysterious."
"Tell me--tell me all, I beg of you," I cried quickly.
"Well, sir, it was like this," said the woman. "Last night, about
eleven, I heard Miss Asta go along the corridor past my room, and
downstairs into the servants' quarters. She was gone, perhaps, twenty
minutes, and then I heard her repass again to her room and lock the
door. I know she did that, because I heard it lock distinctly. Miss
Asta sleeps at the other end of the corridor to where I sleep--just at
the corner as you go round to the front staircase. Well, I suppose,
after that I must have dropped off to sleep. But just after two o'clock
we were all awakened by hearing loud, piercing screams of terror. At
the first moment of awakening I was too frightened to move, but
realising that it was Miss Asta I jumped up instantly, slipped on a
dressing-gown, and ran along to the door of her room. Several of the
other servants, awakened by the cries, were out in the corridor. She
had, however, locked her door, and we could not get in. I shouted to
her to open it, for she was still shrieking, but she did not do so. At
that moment Mr Shaw came along in his dressing-gown, greatly alarmed,
and with his assistance we burst in the door."
"Then he helped you to do that?"
"Yes, sir," replied the woman. "Inside, we found the poor young lady in
her nightdress crouched down on the floor by the ottoman at the foot of
the bed. She was still crying hysterically and quivering with fear from
head to foot. I bent, and taking her in my arms asked her what was the
matter, for as we had entered, somebody had switched on the electric
light. For a moment she looked at me fixedly with a strange intense
expression, as though she did not recognise me. Then she gasped the
words: `Death!--hand!--hand!' That was all. Next moment she fell back
in my arms, and I thought her dead. Mr Shaw was beside himself with
grief. He helped to lift her on to her bed and tried all he could to
restore her with brandy and sal volatile, but without avail. In the
meanwhile I had telephoned to Doctor Redwood, who arrived about half an
hour later, and he's been here ever since."
"And how is Miss Asta now?" I inquired eagerly. "Still unconscious.
The doctor has, I fear, but little hope of her recovery, sir. She has,
he declared, received some great and terrible shock which has affected
her heart."
The circumstances were strangely parallel with those of Guy Nicholson's
mysterious end.
"No one has formed any conclusion of what caused the shock?"
"No, sir. None of us, not even the doctor, can guess what `hand' and
`death' could signify more than the usual figure of speech," the woman
replied. "To me, when she spoke, she seemed to be strangely altered.
Her poor face seemed thin, pinched, and utterly bloodless, and when she
fell back into my arms I was convinced that the poor thing had gone."
"You are quite certain the door of her room was locked?"
"Absolutely. I heard her lock it, as was her habit, and being the first
person there on hearing the screams for help, I tried the door and found
it still secured on the inside. Mr Shaw is half demented, and would
not at first leave the poor young lady's side--until compelled to go to
the Petty Sessions. It seems that there is an important case, and no
other magistrate is at home to take his place on such short notice. But
I'm expecting him back at any moment now."
"And is Miss Asta still in her room?" I asked. "I think you said that
the door was broken open."
"Yes, sir. For that reason we've carried her into the green guest-room,
which is lower down the corridor, nearer to my own."
"Thank you, Mrs Howard," I said. "I'll go up and find the doctor. I
know my way." Then, in quick anxiety, I breathlessly ascended the
broad, thickly carpeted oak staircase, and a few moments later was in
the room which I knew, by the door, was the apartment in which the weird
occurrence had taken place.
I recollected only too vividly my own terrible experience, and by those
ejaculations which had so puzzled everybody, I knew that she had again
witnessed that claw-like hand.
The room, cosy, well-furnished and upholstered in pretty cretonne, was
in great disorder. The bed--a brass one, with cretonne hangings over
the head to match the furniture--was tumbled with half the clothes upon
the floor, while the green satin down-quilt had been tossed some
distance away. A chair lay overturned, and water and towels were about,
showing the attempts at restoration.
Upon a little wicker-table near the bed stood a shaded electric light,
and a novel which my love had evidently been reading on the previous
night, lay open. Yet though I investigated the room with careful
deliberation, fearing every moment lest Shaw should return, I could
detect nothing to account for the singular phenomenon.
The window stood slightly open, but Mrs Howard had explained how it had
been unlatched by herself.
I examined the lock of the door. The key was still on the inside, while
the hasp was broken; while the hasp of a small brass safety-bolt above
had also been forced off. Hence the door must have been both locked and
bolted. Certainly there could have been no intruder in that room.
One object caused me curiosity, and my heart beat quickly. Upon the
mantelshelf was a little framed snapshot of myself and her father which
she had one day taken outside the Casino at Aix.
But what had she seen within that room to cause her such a shock--nay,
to produce upon her almost exactly the same symptoms which in the case
of Guy Nicholson had terminated fatally?
I heard a footstep in the corridor, and emerging from the room came face
to face with the fussy old doctor in his rough tweeds.
My unexpected appearance caused him to utter an exclamation of surprise,
but when I asked breathlessly for news of his patient, he looked very
grave and said--
"A weak heart, and brain trouble, my dear Mr Kemball. To tell you
frankly, alas! I fear the worst."
"Come here a moment," I said, taking him by the arm and pulling him into
the disordered bedroom. "Now," I added, as I pushed the door to as well
as it would go. "Tell me truthfully. Doctor Redwood, what do you make
of this affair?"
"Nothing at present," he replied with a peculiar sniff, a habit of his,
"Can't make it out at all. But I don't like the symptoms. Only once
she has spoken. In her delirium she whispered something about a hand.
She must have _seen_ something or other--something uncanny, I think.
And yet what can there be here?" he asked, gazing amazedly round the
apartment.
"Look here, Redwood," I exclaimed firmly, "the facts are very similar to
those at Titmarsh. Poor Nicholson saw _Something_, you'll recollect.
And he had locked himself in--just as Miss Seymour did."
The doctor stroked his ruddy, clean-shaven chin.
"I quite admit that in many of the details it is quite a parallel case.
But I am hoping to get the young lady round sufficiently to describe
what happened. The servants say that the screams were loud piercing
ones of horror and terror. Shaw himself told me that he had the
greatest difficulty in breaking down the door. They found her crouched
down in fear--yonder, behind the ottoman. And she shrieked out
something about a hand. To what could she have referred, do you think?
She's quite sane and of perfectly sound mind, or I should attribute the
affair to some hallucination."
"It was more than hallucination," I assured him, recollecting my own
experience, yet determined not to assist him towards the elucidation of
the mystery. The dead man had evidently made a discovery immediately,
before his fatal seizure. I recollected that brief urgent note of
Asta's. Had she, too, made a similar discovery?
Yes. There could be no evasion of the fact. The two cases were in
every way identical.
For nearly a quarter of an hour I stood discussing the amazing affair
with Redwood. I could see that he was both mystified and suspicious,
therefore I extracted from him a pledge of secrecy, and promised to
assist him towards a solution of the extraordinary problem. I made no
mention to anybody of Asta's message to me, which I intended should
remain a secret.
At my earnest appeal he allowed me to creep on tiptoe into the darkened
chamber, wherein still lay unconscious the woman I loved so profoundly--
she who was all the world to me.
I bent over the poor white face that presented the waxen transparency of
death, and touched the thin, soft hand that lay outside the coverlet.
Then, with eyes filled with tears, and half choked by the sob which I
was powerless to restrain, I turned away and left the room.
"Will she recover?" I managed to ask the doctor. But he merely raised
his thick eyebrows in blank uncertainty.
What devil's work had been accomplished within that locked room? Ay,
what indeed?
Against the man Shaw, who had so cleverly misled her into the honest
belief that he adored her, there arose within me a deep and angry
hatred. Why was he not there, knowing Asta's precarious condition? His
excuse of enforced attendance at the Petty Sessions was no doubt an
ingenious one. Little did he dream that before the occurrence Asta had
summoned me, and for that reason I was there at her side.
So strange had been all the circumstances from that moment when the man
of mystery--Melvill Arnold--had breathed his last, that I had become
utterly bewildered. And this amazing occurrence in the night now
staggered me. Only one person had solved the mystery of the shadowy
hand, and he, alas I had not lived to reveal what, no doubt, was a
terrible truth.
In the corridor I stood discussing my beloved's condition in low, bated
whispers with the fussy country practitioner, a man of the old
fox-hunting school--for nearly every one rides to hounds in that
grass-country. He had already telephoned for Doctor Petherbridge, in
Northampton, to come for consultation, and was now expecting him to come
over in his car.
"I have done all I can, Mr Kemball," he said. "But as we don't know
the cause, the exact remedy is rather difficult to determine. Every
symptom is of brain trouble through fright."
"Exactly the same symptoms as those you observed in Nicholson!" I
remarked. Whereat he slowly nodded in the affirmative, and again
stroked his rosy, clean-shaven chin.
"Well, doctor," I said, "I intend to make it my business to investigate
the cause of this peculiar phenomenon."
And I sat down and wrote an urgent telegram to Cardew, who was, I knew,
now stationed at Aldershot.