DR. CAIRN ARRIVES
Dr. Bruce Cairn stepped into the boat which was to take him ashore,
and as it swung away from the side of the liner sought to divert his
thoughts by a contemplation of the weird scene. Amid the smoky flare
of many lights, amid rising clouds of dust, a line of laden toilers
was crawling ant-like from the lighters into the bowels of the big
ship; and a second line, unladen, was descending by another gangway.
Above, the jewelled velvet of the sky swept in a glorious arc; beyond,
the lights of Port Said broke through the black curtain of the night,
and the moving ray from the lighthouse intermittently swept the
harbour waters; whilst, amid the indescribable clamour, the grimily
picturesque turmoil, so characteristic of the place, the liner took in
coal for her run to Rangoon.
Dodging this way and that, rounding the sterns of big ships, and
disputing the water-way with lesser craft, the boat made for shore.
The usual delay at the Custom House, the usual soothing of the excited
officials in the usual way, and his _arabîyeh_ was jolting Dr. Cairn
through the noise and the smell of those rambling streets, a noise and
a smell entirely peculiar to this clearing-house of the Near East.
He accepted the room which was offered to him at the hotel, without
troubling to inspect it, and having left instructions that he was to
be called in time for the early train to Cairo, he swallowed a whisky
and soda at the buffet, and wearily ascended the stairs. There were
tourists in the hotel, English and American, marked by a gaping
wonderment, and loud with plans of sightseeing; but Port Said, nay all
Egypt, had nothing of novelty to offer Dr. Cairn. He was there at
great inconvenience; a practitioner of his repute may not easily
arrange to quit London at a moment's notice. But the business upon
which he was come was imperative. For him the charm of the place had
not existence, but somewhere in Egypt his son stood in deadly peril,
and Dr. Cairn counted the hours that yet divided them. His soul was up
in arms against the man whose evil schemes had led to his presence in
Port Said, at a time when many sufferers required his ministrations in
Half-Moon Street. He was haunted by a phantom, a ghoul in human shape;
Antony Ferrara, the adopted son of his dear friend, the adopted son,
who had murdered his adopter, who whilst guiltless in the eyes of the
law, was blood-guilty in the eyes of God!
Dr. Cairn switched on the light and seated himself upon the side of
the bed, knitting his brows and staring straight before him, with an
expression in his clear grey eyes whose significance he would have
denied hotly, had any man charged him with it. He was thinking of
Antony Ferrara's record; the victims of this fiendish youth (for
Antony Ferrara was barely of age) seemed to stand before him with
hands stretched out appealingly.
"You alone," they seemed to cry, "know who and what he is! You alone
know of our awful wrongs; you alone can avenge them!"
And yet he had hesitated! It had remained for his own flesh and blood
to be threatened ere he had taken decisive action. The viper had lain
within his reach, and he had neglected to set his heel upon it. Men
and women had suffered and had died of its venom; and he had not
crushed it. Then Robert, his son, had felt the poison fang, and Dr.
Cairn, who had hesitated to act upon the behalf of all humanity, had
leapt to arms. He charged himself with a parent's selfishness, and his
conscience would hear no defence.
Dimly, the turmoil from the harbour reached him where he sat. He
listened dully to the hooting of a syren--that of some vessel coming
out of the canal.
His thoughts were evil company, and, with a deep sigh, he rose,
crossed the room and threw open the double windows, giving access to
the balcony.
Port Said, a panorama of twinkling lights, lay beneath him. The beam
from the lighthouse swept the town searchingly like the eye of some
pagan god lustful for sacrifice. He imagined that he could hear the
shouting of the gangs coaling the liner in the harbour; but the night
was full of the remote murmuring inseparable from that gateway of the
East. The streets below, white under the moon, looked empty and
deserted, and the hotel beneath him gave up no sound to tell of the
many birds of passage who sheltered within it. A stunning sense of his
loneliness came to him; his physical loneliness was symbolic of that
which characterised his place in the world. He, alone, had the
knowledge and the power to crush Antony Ferrara. He, alone, could rid
the world of the unnatural menace embodied in the person bearing that
name.
The town lay beneath his eyes, but now he saw nothing of it; before
his mental vision loomed--exclusively--the figure of a slim and
strangely handsome young man, having jet black hair, lustreless, a
face of uniform ivory hue, long dark eyes wherein lurked lambent
fires, and a womanish grace expressed in his whole bearing and
emphasised by his long white hands. Upon a finger of the left hand
gleamed a strange green stone.
Antony Ferrara! In the eyes of this solitary traveller, who stood
looking down upon Port Said, that figure filled the entire landscape
of Egypt!
With a weary sigh, Dr. Cairn turned and began to undress. Leaving the
windows open, he switched off the light and got into bed. He was very
weary, with a weariness rather of the spirit than of the flesh, but it
was of that sort which renders sleep all but impossible. Around and
about one fixed point his thoughts circled; in vain he endeavoured to
forget, for a while, Antony Ferrara and the things connected with him.
Sleep was imperative, if he would be in fit condition to cope with the
matters which demanded his attention in Cairo.
Yet sleep defied him. Every trifling sound from the harbour and the
canal seemed to rise upon the still air to his room. Through a sort of
mist created by the mosquito curtains, he could see the open windows,
and look out upon the stars. He found himself studying the heavens
with sleepless eyes, and idly working out the constellations visible.
Then one very bright star attracted the whole of his attention, and,
with the dogged persistency of insomnia, he sought to place it, but
could not determine to which group it belonged.
So he lay with his eyes upon the stars until the other veiled lamps of
heaven became invisible, and the patch of sky no more than a setting
for that one white orb.
In this contemplation he grew restful; his thoughts ceased feverishly
to race along that one hateful groove; the bright star seemed to
soothe him. As a result of his fixed gazing, it now appeared to have
increased in size. This was a common optical delusion, upon which he
scarcely speculated at all. He recognised the welcome approach of
sleep, and deliberately concentrated his mind upon the globe of light.
Yes, a globe of light indeed--for now it had assumed the dimensions of
a lesser moon; and it seemed to rest in the space between the open
windows. Then, he thought that it crept still nearer. The
realities--the bed, the mosquito curtain, the room--were fading, and
grateful slumber approached, and weighed upon his eyes in the form of
that dazzling globe. The feeling of contentment was the last
impression which he had, ere, with the bright star seemingly suspended
just beyond the netting, he slept.