Chapter Eighteen. I Make a Discovery.

The Terminus Hotel at Lyons is, as you know, a large, artistically furnished place at the Perrache Station, an hotel with a huge and garish restaurant below, decorated in the style known as art nouveau. It is a busy spot, where rushing travellers are continuously going and coming, and where the excitable Frenchman, fearing to lose his train, is seen at his best.

It was there we arrived about six o’clock, and at seven we sat together, a merry trio, at dinner. The cooking was perfect, the wines excellent, and after dinner Shaw mentioned that he had letters to write. Therefore I seized the opportunity to stroll out with Asta, for it was pleasant to walk after so many hours in the car.

She was dressed neatly in black coat and skirt, and a small straw hat trimmed with black ribbon—mourning for Guy Nicholson—and as we wandered out our careless footsteps led us across that wide square called the Cours du Midi, and down upon the Quai de la Charité beside the broad, swiftly flowing Rhone, the water of which ran crimson in the brilliant afterglow.

A hot, breathless evening, in which half Lyons seemed to be taking an airing along the Quais of that winding river-bank which traverses the handsome city. We had turned our backs upon the high railway bridge which spans the river, and set our faces towards the centre of the city, when I noticed that Asta seemed again very silent and thoughtful.

I inquired the reason, when she replied—

“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 café 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 cafés 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.

As he did so he laughed across at me, saying in a low voice—

“It’s a nuisance to be compelled to wear these—but I suppose I must exercise caution. One has always to bear the punishment of one’s indiscretion.”

“Why?”

He smiled grimly, but remained silent.

Even though he had admitted that he was not what he represented himself to be; even though I knew that he was an adventurer, and even though the dead man Arnold had urged me not to trust him implicitly, yet I somehow could not help liking him. He was always so full of quiet humour, and his small eyes twinkled merrily when those quaint remarks and caustic criticisms fell from his lips.

“I thought that the danger which existed that evening in Totnes had passed,” I remarked.

“Only temporarily, I fear. Thanks to your generous aid, Kemball, I was able to slip through their fingers, as I have done on previous occasions. But I fear that the meshes of the net may one day be woven a trifle too closely. I shouldn’t really care very much if it were not for Asta. You know how devoted I am to her,” he added, leaning his arms upon! the small table and bending towards me as he spoke.

“And if any little contretemps did happen to you?” I asked.

“Asta would, alas! be left alone,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Poor girl! I—I fear she would find a great change in her circumstances.”

It was upon the tip of my tongue to acknowledges to him how madly I loved her, and of my intention of asking her to be my wife, yet somehow I hesitated, fearing, I think, lest he might scorn such a proposition, for I remembered how, after all, she was his sole companion, and that without her he would be lonely and helpless. She was the one bright spot in his soured life, he had declared to me more than once. Though scarcely yet out of her teens, she directed the large household at Lydford with all the genius and economy of an experienced housewife. Yes! hers had been a strange career—the adopted daughter of a man who was so often compelled to go into hiding in strange guises and in strange places.

“Let us hope nothing will happen,” I said cheerfully. “Why should it?”

His face broadened into a meaning grin, and he readjusted his hideous round spectacles and lit a fresh cigar.

“Really, Mr Shaw,” I said, “your dark forebodings and your strange declarations puzzle me. True, I have endeavoured to serve your interests, and I regard you as a friend, heedless of what I cannot help suspecting. Yet you are never open and frank with me concerning one thing—your friendship with Melvill Arnold.”

He started at mention of the name—a fact which caused me to ponder.

“I hardly follow you.”

“Well,” I said. “Shortly before leaving England I received a visit from a certain Mrs Olliffe—a lady living near Bath. I believe you know her?”

“Yes!” he gasped, grasping the edge of the table and half rising from his seat. “Then she has seen you!” he cried. “What did she tell you?”

“Several things,” I replied. “She alleges that you were not Arnold’s friend—but his fiercest enemy.”

“She has told you that!” he cried bitterly. “And what else has that woman said against me?”

“Nothing much.”

“Come,” he exclaimed boldly. “Tell me, Kemball, man to man, all that woman has said.”

I saw that his manner had changed, his small eyes were flashing with fire, while upon his pale cheeks showed two scarlet patches.

Through my brain surged recollections of the woman’s allegations, but, seeing him in such anger, I did not desire to irritate him further, therefore I declared that whatever the lady had said was in no way derogatory to him.

“You are not telling me the truth, Kemball,” he declared, looking straight into my eyes. “I know her too well. She has lied to you about me.”

“Probably,” was my reply. “I happen by a curious chance to know the character of the lady, and it is hardly such as would inspire me with confidence.”

“You know her then!” he exclaimed, staring at me hard.

“I know that at one time she passed as Lady Lettice Lancaster, and was sentenced to penal servitude as an adventuress.”

“Who told you that? How do you know that?” he asked quickly.

“It is surely common knowledge,” was my reply. “Therefore please dismiss from your mind that anything she might say to your detriment would impair our friendship.”

“Ah yes!” he cried suddenly, taking my hand and wringing it warmly. “I know, Kemball, that you, being my friend, will refuse to be influenced in any way by evil report. That woman is, as you rightly say, an unscrupulous adventuress. I knew her once—before her conviction—but I have since lost sight of her. Yet, I know she is my enemy, and—well, if it were to her interest she would have no compunction in giving me away to Scotland Yard.”

“Then she is your enemy?”

“My worst enemy.”

“Ah! Then I understand the reason of her allegations,” I said, and a moment later the subject dropped.

We returned to the hotel just before midnight, and I ascended in the lift to my room. Shaw shook my hand and turned into his own room.

From my window I found that I commanded a wide, view of the great Place Carnot and the adjacent streets, picturesque with their many lights. I had not switched on my light, and was standing gazing below, when, of a sudden, I distinguished Shaw hurrying out of the hotel again and crossing the Place towards the Pont du Midi, the iron bridge on the right which spans the Rhone.

He had in a moment changed both hat and coat, I noticed, and therefore his sudden exit, after having led me to believe he was about to turn in, struck me as curious. So, without hesitation, I, too, slipped on another coat, and putting on a golf cap descended in the lift, and was soon speeding away in the direction he had taken.

When halfway across the bridge I saw him walking slowly before me, therefore I held back and watched. I followed him across the river, when he suddenly turned to the left along the Quai Claude Bernard, until at the foot of the next bridge, the Guillotière, he turned to the left along the Cours Gambetta until he came to a small square, the Place du Pont.

There he suddenly halted beneath a lamp and glanced at his watch. Then he idled across to the corner of one of the half-dozen dark, deserted streets which converged there, as though awaiting some one.

For a quarter of an hour he remained there calmly smoking, and quite unsuspicious of my proximity.

But his patience was at last rewarded, because from the shadow there emerged a female figure in dark jacket and skirt, to which after a moment’s hesitation he went forward with words of greeting.

They met beneath the light of a street lamp, and from where I stood, hidden in a doorway, I was sufficiently close to get a view of her countenance.

I held my breath.

It was that of the woman who had stood in the dock of the Old Bailey and been convicted of fraud—the woman who now lived in such style at Ridgehill Manor, and who was known in Bath as Mrs Olliffe.

For a moment they stood there in the night, their hands clasped, neither uttering a single word.

And yet Shaw had only an hour before declared her to be his most bitter and dangerous enemy!