THE HEART OF HYNDS HOUSE
I stood staring at the broken coin in my hand with a sort of
stupefaction, while The Jinnee moved slowly away from the window. I
had received a summons I could not ignore. Had I not promised,
smilingly indeed, but sincerely, to answer that call whenever and
however it should come?
The music had ceased for the moment, and the big hall was quite
empty, for the dancers had trooped into the dining-room, from which
came laughter and chattering voices, and the chink of silver and
china. The great front doors were wide open. I slipped unseen into
the darkly bright, whispering night.
The moon was high in the heavens, for it was past midnight; the wind
was chill upon my shoulders, the dew silvery under my feet. There
was an odor abroad--the ineffable odor of sleepily stirring spring,
of young new leaves budding, of tender grass, growing like a baby's
hair.
At some distance ahead I could just distinguish the dark figure of
the messenger, flitting soundless as a shadow. And then, to my
infinite relief, out of the shrubbery stepped Boris, and thrust his
doggy nose into my hand. I laid hold of his collar, and he trotted
sedately beside me.
I had half expected to be led to the gray-gabled cottage, but The
Jinnee stole along in the shadow of the hedge, stopped beside the
spring-house, and held up his hand.
"In the name of God!" said I, involuntarily.
"The compassionate, the merciful!" finished The Jinnee, and turning
to the east made a profound reverence. There was something so simple
and so sincere in his manner that my momentary fear subsided.
"But why have I been sent for? Why are _you_ here?" I wondered.
He folded his arms upon his breast, and in a sing-song voice,
curiously unlike any other I had ever heard, answered parrotlike:
"This is the word of the master: Take to the fair-haired lady the
broken coin, my sign, and she will remember her word to me. Verily,
for the sign's sake, she will follow without fear."
"The master is not ill, then?"
"In his body he is well. But of the spirit of man, and what help he
needs, there is but one judge, namely, God."
"He has need of me?"
"He sends the token by me, Achmet." And he stood there with a
motionless patience, waiting.
Achmet! I remembered an afternoon in the Enchanted Wood, and that
name ringing in my ears--Achmet!
"I will follow you," I said. And instantly The Jinnee pushed open
the unlocked door of the spring-house and stepped inside.
I hesitated for a moment, turning my head toward Hynds House,
blazing with lights. I could hear voices, laughter, snatches of
song. From the kitchen Mary Magdalen's great, rich, unctuous laugh
rolled out like an organ peal. Silhouetted against the lighted
library window was one of our big black cats, with an arched back
and an uplifted and expressive tail.
"I wait," said a quiet voice. And, clutching Boris by the collar, I
stepped inside the door.
It was dark in there; only a faint and broken light came through the
one window, set high in the wall. Boris's eyes were balls of fire,
and his feet made a stealthy, scuffling sound on the flagged floor.
The little spring bubbling in its stone basin was like a whispering,
secretive voice.
Achmet stooped down, over in one corner. Then, shading a very modern
flash-light with a fold of his robe, he showed me one of the square
flags lifted, and a black hole yawning in the floor.
I backed away. With a crooked, sly smile, The Jinnee snapped his
fingers at Boris. The big dog jerked himself free of my hand and
disappeared.
"Now!" said The Jinnee. And like one in a dream I gathered my
lace-trimmed skirts in my hand and backed down a spider-web stairway
that barely gave one foothold. Achmet waited until I reached the
bottom, then he, too, backed in, and I heard the flagstone fall to
over my head.
There was a moment of utter and awful blackness and stillness. I was
upon the point of shrieking, when something cold and friendly
touched my hand: Boris was nosing me. The Jinnee, at the bottom of
the steps, showed the light.
We were in a circular shaft, narrowing upward like an inverted
funnel. It was quite clean and dry, lined with hard cement.
Branching from it were two wedge-shaped openings, just wide enough
to allow one person at a time to walk through.
The Jinnee plunged into one of these, and Boris and I followed.
There was nothing else for us to do.
"This is safest way. If I come through house, I am seen. Not want
that," said Achmet, over his shoulder.
I made no reply. I was wondering what The Author would have said had
he seen us at that moment--The Jinnee shuffling ahead in heelless
slippers and Oriental dress, upon his woolly head a red fez with a
silver crescent on it, and on his breast a string of _saphies_,
verses from the Koran, in exquisite Arabic script, framed in flat
round pieces of silver and strung on a chain. Boris, larger and
nobler even than most of his breed, paced behind him. Then came I, a
slim blonde woman, with fair hair powdered, in a dress a century
old.
The passage wasn't quite six feet high, and so still that you
could hear the beating of your heart. Achmet's slippers went
_scuf-scuf-scuf_. Boris swayed from side to side, his tongue
lolling, his eyes phosphorescent. He resembled those ghost-hounds
of old stories, terrific beasts that follow the Wild Huntsman.
We went down some steps. I shouldn't have been surprised had I found
myself climbing the beanstalk after Jack. Dazedly I thought: "I'll
wake up in the morning and tell them at the breakfast-table what a
wonderful dream I had." I could fancy the Lady with the Soul
clasping her hands, and The Author crinkling his eyes, and Alicia
laughing.
This last passage, which, I learned afterward, ran under the
carriage house, presently crooked like an elbow and led us into a
windowless and stone-floored little room, under the cellar. On the
opposite side of the room was the opening of another such passage,
with stone steps leading to it. On these steps sat Nicholas Jelnik.
He got to his feet and stood looking at me. A momentary red rushed
to his cheek, and his eyes flashed. Boris, tongue out, tail wagging,
rubbed against him, and the master's hand dropped between the
speaking eyes with a swift caress.
"Good dog! You came with her!"
"And I. Am I not also a good dog?" asked The Jinnee, jealously.
Mr. Jelnik's reply I did not understand, but Achmet made a
respectful salutation, and his grin was the grin of a little boy.
"Sophy!" said Nicholas Jelnik, and his voice shook, "Sophy! Oh, I
knew you would come!" He gave a low, pleased laugh. "And now she is
here, she doesn't even ask why I have sent for her!"
"The mistress," said Achmet, "should have been of the Faith. May
Allah enlighten her!"
"Sit down here beside me for a few minutes, Sophy, and rest," said
Mr. Jelnik, seating himself. "And do not look so pale, my little
comrade."
"I thought--that you might be ill," I faltered. "I thought--that you
needed me."
"I am not ill, but I do need you," he said quickly, and took my hand
in a firm clasp. The touch of that hand brought me out of my
trance-like state. It was all right, and the most natural thing in
the world, that I should be sitting in this windowless vault, with
two candles and a shadowy lantern burning dimly in the still air, an
old black Jinnee squatting on his heels watching me, a great
wolf-hound stretched beside him. Wasn't Nicholas Jelnik holding my
hand?
"Sophy," he said directly, "I have found the lost Key of Hynds
House." I looked at him dumbly. "I have reached that point where I
can tell you everything, little friend. Thank Heaven you have come!"
But of a sudden his-forehead was damp.
"You will remember," he said, after a moment's silence, and still
holding my hand--and I think that now he held it as he had once held
his mother's--"when I talked to you about my childhood and my
mother, I told you she had made me more of an American than an
Austrian. This old home-town of her people, this old house, the
mystery that blackened the Hynds name, were as real to me as the
scenes and people that actually surrounded me.
"When I was older, she turned over to me all her family papers, and
I sifted and assorted and reduced them to system and order. I found
among them Richard Hynds's own brief account of the affair, and
copies of letters to his father, but the bulk of the papers
consisted of such data as his son and namesake could gather. This
formed a copious mass, for he had set down every least circumstance
that he thought might have any bearing upon his father's case. These
papers, guarded so jealously, bequeathed to his successors the
sacred task of righting Richard Hynds.
"In Richard's short statement, left for his little son, he, as
rightful heir of Hynds House, mentions the secret passages and tells
how they may be entered. He had been taught that much, himself, on
reaching his majority. But there was one vital secret that hadn't
been revealed to Richard, for not until the head of Hynds House knew
he was about to die did he give to his successor the Key to the
hidden room; the room concealed so cunningly that without the Key
one could never hope to find it. They planned and built wonderfully
well, those old master work-men. They meant that secret room to be
the strong-box, the inviolate hiding-place which should keep what
might be entrusted to it. It was, as it were, the heart of Hynds
House.
"Remember that Richard's father died of a stroke of apoplexy, and
without speaking. Thus Freeman would know no more than Richard did.
There was but one person alive who knew, and that was--"
"A slave?" I whispered, remembering Freeman's diary.
"A slave, an unlettered slave. How he discovered it I do not know.
But he did discover it. He knew, and the Hyndses did not. In regard
to this same slave, a curious item was set down by Richard's son:
"'This day Black Shooba's son told me of a heathen song Shooba made
before he died and swore him to forget not. 'Tis a strange chaunt:
"I, Shooba, the Snake Soul, make me a Song.
In the night I sing it for my Snake.
My Snake showed me a Secret Thing.
Two Eyes and Two Eyes looked upon One Eye.
One Eye is open and sees, and sees not.
This my Snake showed me, in the Dark.
But the Strong Ones, the White Ones,
They have no Snake. Ho! Never shall they see it!"'
"Sounds like a stark raving, doesn't it? One can fancy the doctor
feeling a bit ashamed of himself when he wrote it down.
"I rather fancied it raving, myself, until one day I came across--"
here he paused, and looked at me intently--"a yellowed slip of paper
between the pages of an old diary that had been accidentally
discovered. I knew then that there was really something to be
discovered, and that I had not been a visionary sentimentalist when
I yielded to my mother's last expressed wish that I should come
here and search.
"I suppose," he went on dreamily, "that it was in my blood, the
desire to come here to Hyndsville, like a homing bird. But when my
mother died, the ties that bound me to her country seemed to be in a
measure loosened. Then, too, the _Wanderlust_ had me in its grip. I
put aside the profession my father had bred me to, left my affairs
in what I thought capable hands, and indulged my desire to wander up
and down the earth and sail the seven seas. It was upon one of these
prowls that I came upon my old Achmet here, and induced a master who
didn't love him to part with him." And he looked at the old man with
whimsical tenderness.
"I am your slave," spoke up The Jinnee, sturdily. "I am the fostered
offspring of my master's bounty. May he live a thousand years!"
That shocked my Yankee ears. Achmet smiled his crooked smile.
"Why did the sahiba follow when I showed her a broken coin?" he
asked.
"Because I knew that Mr. Jelnik needed me."
"Even in the bowels of the earth?" I was silent.
"Because he is the master!" said The Jinnee. "Therefore you obeyed.
He is the master. Wherefore am I, Achmet, his slave." Oh, shame
upon you, Sophy Smith, for there was that in you, and that not the
least divine part, which was in full accord with black Achmet!
"Achmet's ideas are of the immutable East," said Mr. Jelnik, with a
faint smile. "He is archaic." And dismissing this persiflage with a
wave of the hand, he continued:
"Behold me, then, footing it up and down the highways and byways of
the world. But it was as if I had disobeyed the dead, and they would
give me no rest. So presently I stopped short and came to
Hyndsville.
"With Richard's directions in my possession, it was comparatively
easy for me to find the passageways, and after the old woman's death
I had chance to examine the house room by room. And sometimes,
Sophy, when I have been alone in this tragic old place--" he paused,
and looked at me with a puzzled frown--"it has seemed to me that
there were--well, secret influences, say; things outside of our
sphere. I have felt a sense of horror and despair descend upon my
spirit, a weight almost too heavy to bear. Sometimes it would be so
powerful, so insistent, so vivid, that I had to fly from it.
"Then I happened to remember something that a gipsy, an old, old man
reputed to be very wise, told me when I was a boy. He said that
troubled spirits can be soothed and sent hence by music. It is the
old and sure charm, as David found when he played upon the harp and
drove the evil spirit out of Saul the king. I brought my violin and
tried it. And," said the cosmopolitan Mr. Jelnik, "the gipsy was
right."
"Ah, yes, I see you know, now. It was I whom you heard playing, that
first day. It was I, touched by your plight in that forlorn and
dusty barracks, who gave you some slight relief. It was easy enough
for me to cut across to Geddes's house, reach in through his kitchen
window, lift his tray, and escape through the ragged hedges while
his cook's broad back was turned. Achmet was willing enough to play
the obliging Jinnee. You had your dinner, and I had a bit of
harmless amusement. It pleased me to hear Alicia call me Ariel. It
pleased me to stand by, to protect you, if that should be necessary.
Achmet and I took turns in safeguarding you at night.
"You will understand"--he gave me a straight, clear, proud
look--"that it was never my desire to mystify or to frighten you.
But I couldn't take you offhand into my confidence, could I? I had
to find out something more about you. Remember, too, that my search
in no wise jeopardizes your interests.
"Day after day, night after night, Sophy, I have pored over
old papers, or burrowed mole-like into the black recesses of
Hynds House. Bit by bit I have pieced scraps of evidence
together--Shooba's savage chant with Scipio's dying whisper in
Freeman's ear, and these two with a rude verse and a line of
dots. But there the thread snapped.
"Do you remember the morning you told me, The Author's guess that
'Hellen's Keye' was the Greek fret, the design over all the windows
and doors of Hynds House? The trail was plain then. I was to follow
the line of the Greek key for three and thirty turnings, when I
should come upon a sign. I tried and tried. And to-night--I reached
the end of it, Sophy. I found it." Again his forehead was damp, and
his pallor, if possible, deepened.
I rose as if on springs. The hair of my head rose, too, I thought,
and my scalp tingled.
"Found what?"
"The hidden room that the masters built for the master of Hynds
House." He stopped, and a shudder passed over him. His hand closed
upon mine, and it was deathly cold.
"You have been in a secret room?--here in Hynds House?" I asked
incredulously.
"Yes," said he in a whisper. "I opened the door--and went in. The
room hadn't been opened for a hundred years, Sophy. There was a
table in one corner, and I went over to it. There was something
else there, too, Sophy." He moistened his lips, and looked at me
with dilated eyes.
"What?" I asked; "in God's name, what?"
"The thief," said Nicholas Jelnik.