THE VISITANT
That first hour of watching, waiting, and listening in the lonely
quietude passed drearily; and with the passage of every quarter--
signalized by London's muffled clocks--my mood became increasingly
morbid. I peopled the silent rooms opening out of that wherein I sat,
with stealthy, murderous figures; my imagination painted hideous
yellow faces upon the draperies, twitching yellow hands protruding
from this crevice and that. A score of times I started nervously,
thinking I heard the pad of bare feet upon the floor behind me, the
suppressed breathing of some deathly approach.
Since nothing occurred to justify these tremors, this apprehensive
mood passed; I realized that I was growing cramped and stiff, that
unconsciously I had been sitting with my muscles nervously tensed.
The window was open a foot or so at the top and the blind was drawn;
but so accustomed were my eyes now to peering through the darkness,
that I could plainly discern the yellow oblong of the window, and
though very vaguely, some of the appointments of the room--the
Chesterfield against one wall, the lamp-shade above my head, the
table with the Tûlun-Nûr box upon it.
There was fog in the room, and it was growing damply chill, for we
had extinguished the electric heater some hours before. Very few
sounds penetrated from outside. Twice or perhaps thrice people passed
along the corridor, going to their rooms; but, as I knew, the greater
number of the rooms along that corridor were unoccupied.
From the Embankment far below me, and from the river, faint noises
came at long intervals it is true; the muffled hooting of motors, and
yet fainter ringing of bells. Fog signals boomed distantly, and train
whistles shrieked, remote and unreal. I determined to enter my bedroom,
and, risking any sound which I might make, to lie down upon the bed.
I rose carefully and carried this plan into execution. I would have
given much for a smoke, although my throat was parched; and almost any
drink would have been nectar. But although my hopes (or my fears) of
an intruder had left me, I determined to stick to the rules of the
game as laid down. Therefore I neither smoked nor drank, but carefully
extended my weary limbs upon the coverlet, and telling myself that I
could guard our strange treasure as well from there as from elsewhere
... slipped off into a profound sleep.
Nothing approaching in acute and sustained horror to the moment when
next I opened my eyes exists in all my memories of those days.
In the first place I was aroused by the shaking of the bed. It was
quivering beneath me as though an earthquake disturbed the very
foundations of the building. I sprang upright and into full
consciousness of my lapse.... My hands clutching the coverlet on
either side of me, I sat staring, staring, staring ... at _that_ which
peered at me over the foot of the bed.
I knew that I had slept at my post; I was convinced that I was now
widely awake; yet I _dared_ not admit to myself that what I saw was
other than a product of my imagination. I dared not admit the physical
quivering of the bed, for I could not, with sanity, believe its cause
to be anything human. But what I saw, yet could not credit seeing,
was this:
A ghostly white face, which seemed to glisten in some faint reflected
light from the sitting-room beyond, peered over the bedrail; gibbered
at me demoniacally. With quivering hands this night-mare horror, which
had intruded where I believed human intrusion to be all but impossible,
clutched the bed-posts so that the frame of the structure shook and
faintly rattled....
My heart leapt wildly in my breast, then seemed to suspend its
pulsations and to grow icily cold. My whole body became chilled
horrifically. My scalp tingled: I felt that I must either cry out or
become stark, raving mad!
For this clammily white face, those staring eyes, that wordless
gibbering, and the shaking, shaking, shaking of the bed in the clutch
of the nameless visitant--prevailed, refused to disperse like the evil
dream I had hoped it all to be; manifested itself, indubitably, as
something tangible--objective....
Outraged reason deprived me of coherent speech. Past the clammy white
face I could see the sitting-room illuminated by a faint light; I
could even see the Tûlun-Nûr box upon the table immediately opposite
the door.
The thing which shook the bed was actual, existent--to be counted with!
Further and further I drew myself away from it, until I crouched close
up against the head of the bed. Then, as the thing reeled aside, and--
merciful Heaven!--made as if to come around and approach me yet closer,
I uttered a hoarse cry and hurled myself out upon the floor and on the
side remote from that pallid horror which I thought was pursuing me.
I heard a dull thud ... and the thing disappeared from my view, yet--
and remembering the supreme terror of that visitation I am not ashamed
to confess it--I dared not move from the spot upon which I stood, I
dared not make to pass that which lay between me and the door.
"Smith!" I cried, but my voice was little more than a hoarse whisper--
"Smith! Weymouth!"
The words became clearer and louder as I proceeded, so that the last--
"Weymouth!"--was uttered in a sort of falsetto scream.
A door burst open upon the other side of the corridor. A key was
inserted in the lock of the door. Into the dimly lighted arch which
divided the bed-room from the sitting-room, sprang the figure of
Nayland Smith!
"Petrie! Petrie!" he called--and I saw him standing there looking from
left to right.
Then, ere I could reply, he turned, and his gaze fell upon whatever
lay upon the floor at the foot of the bed.
"My God!" he whispered--and sprang into the room.
"Smith! Smith!" I cried, "what is it? what is it?"
He turned in a flash, as Weymouth entered at his heels, saw me, and
fell back a step; then looked again down at the floor.
"God's mercy!" he whispered, "I thought it was you--I thought it was
you!"
Trembling violently, my mind a feverish chaos, I moved to the foot of
the bed and looked down at what lay there.
"Turn up the light!" snapped Smith.
Weymouth reached for the switch, and the room became illuminated
suddenly.
Prone upon the carpet, hands outstretched and nails dug deeply into
the pile of the fabric, lay a dark-haired man having his head twisted
sideways so that the face showed a ghastly pallid profile against the
rich colorings upon which it rested. He wore no coat, but a sort of
dark gray shirt and black trousers. To add to the incongruity of his
attire, his feet were clad in drab-colored shoes, rubber-soled.
I stood, one hand raised to my head, looking down upon him, and
gradually regaining control of myself. Weymouth, perceiving something
of my condition, silently passed his flask to me; and I gladly availed
myself of this.
"How in Heaven's name did he get in?" I whispered.
"How, indeed!" said Weymouth, staring about him with wondering eyes.
Both he and Smith had discarded their disguises; and, a bewildered
trio, we stood looking down upon the man at our feet. Suddenly Smith
dropped to his knees and turned him flat upon his back. Composure was
nearly restored to me, and I knelt upon the other side of the
white-faced creature whose presence there seemed so utterly outside
the realm of possibility, and examined him with a consuming and fearful
interest; for it was palpable that, if not already dead, he was dying
rapidly.
He was a slightly built man, and the first discovery that I made was
a curious one. What I had mistaken for dark hair was a wig! The short
black mustache which he wore was also factitious.
"Look at this!" I cried.
"I am looking," snapped Smith.
He suddenly stood up, and entering the room beyond, turned on the
light there. I saw him staring at the Tûlun-Nûr box, and I knew what
had been in his mind. But the box, undisturbed, stood upon the table
as we had left it. I saw Smith tugging irritably at the lobe of his
ear, and staring from the box towards the man beside whom I knelt.
"For God's sake, what does it man?" said Inspector Weymouth in a voice
hushed with wonder. "How did he get in? What did he come for?--and
what has happened to him?"
"As to what has happened to him," I replied, "unfortunately I cannot
tell you. I only know that unless something can be done his end is not
far off."
"Shall we lay him on the bed?"
I nodded, and together we raised the slight figure and placed it upon
the bed where so recently I had lain.
As we did so, the man suddenly opened his eyes, which were glazed with
delirium. He tore himself from our grip, sat bolt upright, and
holding his hands, fingers outstretched, before his face, stared at
them frenziedly.
"The golden pomegranates!" he shrieked, and a slight froth appeared on
his blanched lips. "The golden pomegranates!"
He laughed madly, and fell back inert.
"He's dead!" whispered Weymouth; "he's dead!"
Hard upon his words came a cry from Smith:
"Quick! Petrie!--Weymouth!"