Fire-Tongue Page 2

  CHAPTER II. THE SIXTH SENSE

  Paul Harley stepped into his car in Chancery Lane. "Drive in thedirection of Hyde Park Corner," he directed the chauffeur. "Go along theStrand."

  Glancing neither right nor left, he entered the car, and presently theywere proceeding slowly with the stream of traffic in the Strand. "Pullup at the Savoy," he said suddenly through the tube.

  The car slowed down in that little bay which contains the entrance tothe hotel, and Harley stared fixedly out of the rear window, observingthe occupants of all other cars and cabs which were following. For threeminutes or more he remained there watching. "Go on," he directed.

  Again they proceeded westward and, half-way along Piccadilly, "Stop atthe Ritz," came the order.

  The car pulled up before the colonnade and Harley, stepping out,dismissed the man and entered the hotel, walked through to the sideentrance, and directed a porter to get him a taxicab. In this heproceeded to the house of Sir Charles Abingdon. He had been seekingto learn whether he was followed, but in none of the faces he hadscrutinized had he detected any interest in himself, so that his ideathat whoever was watching Sir Charles in all probability would havetransferred attention to himself remained no more than an idea. For allhe had gained by his tactics, Sir Charles's theory might be no more thana delusion after all.

  The house of Sir Charles Abingdon was one of those small, discreetestablishments, the very neatness of whose appointments inspires respectfor the occupant. If anything had occurred during the journey to suggestto Harley that Sir Charles was indeed under observation by a hiddenenemy, the suave British security and prosperity of his residence musthave destroyed the impression.

  As the cab was driven away around the corner, Harley paused for amoment, glancing about him to right and left and up at the neatlycurtained windows. In the interval which had elapsed since Sir Charles'sdeparture from his office, he had had leisure to survey the outstandingfeatures of the story, and, discounting in his absence the patheticsincerity of the narrator, he had formed the opinion that there wasnothing in the account which was not susceptible of an ordinary prosaicexplanation.

  Sir Charles's hesitancy in regard to two of the questions asked hadcontained a hint that they might involve intimate personal matters,and Harley was prepared to learn that the source of the distinguishedsurgeon's dread lay in some unrevealed episode of the past. Beyond thefact that Sir Charles was a widower, he knew little or nothing ofhis private life; and he was far too experienced an investigator toformulate theories until all the facts were in his possession. Thereforeit was with keen interest that he looked forward to the interview.

  Familiarity with crime, in its many complexions, East and West, haddeveloped in Paul Harley a sort of sixth sense. It was an evasive,fickle thing, but was nevertheless the attribute which had made himan investigator of genius. Often enough it failed him entirely. It hadfailed him to-night--or else no one had followed him from Chancery Lane.

  It had failed him earlier in the evening when, secretly, he had watchedfrom the office window Sir Charles's car proceeding toward the Strand.That odd, sudden chill, as of an abrupt lowering of the temperature,which often advised him of the nearness of malignant activity, had notbeen experienced.

  Now, standing before Sir Charles's house, he "sensed" the atmospherekeenly--seeking for the note of danger.

  There had been a thunder shower just before he had set out, and now,although rain had ceased, the sky remained blackly overcast and acurious, dull stillness was come. The air had a welcome freshness andthe glistening pavements looked delightfully cool after the parchingheat of the day. In the quiet square, no doubt, it was always restfulin contrast with the more busy highroads, and in the murmur of distanttraffic he found something very soothing. About him then were peace,prosperity, and security.

  Yet, as he stood there, waiting--it came to him: the note of danger.Swiftly he looked to right and left, trying to penetrate the prematuredusk. The whole complexion of the matter changed. Some menace intangiblenow, but which at any moment might become evident--lay near him. It wassheer intuition, no doubt, but it convinced him.

  A moment later he had rung the bell; and as a man opened the door,showing a easy and well-lighted lobby within, the fear aura no longertouched Paul Harley. Out from the doorway came hominess and that airof security and peace which had seemed to characterize the house whenviewed from outside. The focus of menace, therefore, lay not insidethe house of Sir Charles but without. It was very curious. In the nextinstant came a possible explanation.

  "Mr. Paul Harley?" said the butler tentatively.

  "Yes, I am he."

  "Sir Charles is expecting you, sir. He apologizes for not being in toreceive you, but he will only be absent a few minutes."

  "Sir Charles has been called out?" inquired Harley as he handed hat andcoat to the man.

  "Yes, sir. He is attending Mr. Chester Wilson on the other side of thesquare, and Mr. Wilson's man rang up a few moments ago requesting SirCharles to step across."

  "I see," murmured Harley, as the butler showed him into a small butwell-filled library on the left of the lobby.

  Refreshments were set invitingly upon a table beside a deep loungechair. But Harley declined the man's request to refresh himself whilewaiting and began aimlessly to wander about the room, apparentlystudying the titles of the works crowding the bookshelves. As a matterof fact, he was endeavouring to arrange certain ideas in order, and ifhe had been questioned on the subject it is improbable that he couldhave mentioned the title of one book in the library.

  His mental equipment was of a character too rarely met with in theprofession to which he belonged. While up to the very moment of reachingSir Charles's house he had doubted the reality of the menace whichhung over this man, the note of danger which he had sensed at the verythreshold had convinced him, where more ordinary circumstantial evidencemight have left him in doubt.

  It was perhaps pure imagination, but experience had taught him that itwas closely allied to clairvoyance.

  Now upon his musing there suddenly intruded sounds of a muffledaltercation. That is to say, the speakers, who were evidently in thelobby beyond the library door, spoke in low tones, perhaps in deferenceto the presence of a visitor. Harley was only mildly interested, butthe voices had broken his train of thought, and when presently the dooropened to admit a very neat but rather grim-looking old lady he started,then looked across at her with a smile.

  Some of the grimness faded from the wrinkled old face, and thehousekeeper, for this her appearance proclaimed her to be, bowed in aqueer Victorian fashion which suggested that a curtsy might follow. Onedid not follow, however. "I am sure I apologize, sir," she said. "Bensondid not tell me you had arrived."

  "That's quite all right," said Harley, genially.

  His smile held a hint of amusement, for in the comprehensive glancewhich the old lady cast across the library, a glance keen to detectdisorder and from which no speck of dust could hope to conceal itself,there remained a trace of that grimness which he had detected at themoment of her entrance. In short, she was still bristling from a recentencounter. So much so that detecting something sympathetic in Harley'ssmile she availed herself of the presence of a badly arranged vase offlowers to linger and to air her grievances.

  "Servants in these times," she informed him, her fingers busilyrearranging the blooms, "are not what servants were in my young days."

  "Unfortunately, that is so," Harley agreed.

  The old lady tossed her head. "I do my best," she continued, "but thatgirl would not have stayed in the house for one week if I had had myway. Miss Phil is altogether too soft-hearted. Thank goodness, she goesto-morrow, though."

  "You don't refer to Miss Phil?" said Harley, intentionallymisunderstanding.

  "Gracious goodness, no!" exclaimed the housekeeper, and laughed withsimple glee at the joke. "I mean Jones, the new parlourmaid. When I saynew, they are all new, for none of them stay longer than three months."

  "Indeed," smiled
Harley, who perceived that the old lady was somethingof a martinet.

  "Indeed, they don't. Think they are ladies nowadays. Four hours off hasthat girl had to-day, although she was out on Wednesday. Then she hasthe impudence to allow someone to ring her up here at the house; andfinally I discover her upsetting the table after Benson had laid it andafter I had rearranged it."

  She glanced indignantly in the direction of the lobby. "Perhaps oneday," she concluded, pathetically, as she walked slowly from the room,"we shall find a parlourmaid who is a parlourmaid. Good evening, sir."

  "Good evening," said Harley, quietly amused to be made the recipient ofthese domestic confidences.

  He continued to smile for some time after the door had been closed. Hisformer train of ideas was utterly destroyed, but for this he was notungrateful to the housekeeper, since the outstanding disadvantage ofthat strange gift resembling prescience was that it sometimes bluntedthe purely analytical part of his mind when this should have been at itskeenest. He was now prepared to listen to what Sir Charles had to sayand to judge impartially of its evidential value.

  Wandering from side to side of the library, he presently found himselfstanding still before the mantelpiece and studying a photograph ina silver frame which occupied the centre of the shelf. It was thephotograph of an unusually pretty girl; that is to say, of a girl whosebeauty was undeniable, but who belonged to a type widely removed fromthat of the ordinary good-looking Englishwoman.

  The outline of her face was soft and charming, and there was aquestioning look in her eyes which was alluring and challenging. Hernaive expression was palpably a pose, and her slightly parted lipspromised laughter. She possessed delightfully wavy hair and her neck andone shoulder, which were bare, had a Grecian purity. Harley discoveredhimself to be smiling at the naive lady of the photograph.

  "Presumably 'Miss Phil'," he said aloud.

  He removed his gaze with reluctance from the fascinating picture, anddropping into the big lounge chair, he lighted a cigarette. He had justplaced the match in an ash tray when he heard Sir Charles's voice inthe lobby, and a moment later Sir Charles himself came hurrying intothe library. His expression was so peculiar that Harley started upimmediately, perceiving that something unusual had happened.

  "My dear Mr. Harley," began Sir Charles, "in the first place pray acceptmy apologies--"

  "None are necessary," Harley interrupted. "Your excellent housekeeperhas entertained me vastly."

  "Good, good," muttered Sir Charles. "I am obliged to Mrs. Howett," andit was plainly to be seen that his thoughts were elsewhere. "But I haveto relate a most inexplicable occurrence--inexplicable unless by somedivine accident the plan has been prevented from maturing."

  "What do you mean, Sir Charles?"

  "I was called ten minutes ago by someone purporting to be the servantof Mr. Chester Wilson, that friend and neighbour whom I have beenattending."

  "So your butler informed me."

  "My dear sir," cried Sir Charles, and the expression in his eyes grewalmost wild, "no one in Wilson's house knew anything about the matter!"

  "What! It was a ruse?"

  "Palpably a ruse to get me away from home."

  Harley dropped his cigarette into the ash tray beside the match, where,smouldering, it sent up a gray spiral into the air of the library.Whether because of his words or because of the presence of the manhimself, the warning, intuitive finger had again touched Paul Harley."You saw or heard nothing on your way across the square to suggest thatany one having designs on your safety was watching you?"

  "Nothing. I searched the shadows most particularly on my return journey,of course. For the thing cannot have been purposeless."

  "I quite agree with you," said Paul Harley, quietly.

  Between the promptings of that uncanny sixth sense of his and theworking of the trained deductive reasoning powers, he was momentarilyat a loss. Some fact, some episode, a memory, was clamouring forrecognition, while the intuitive, subconscious voice whispered: "Thisman is in danger; protect him." What was the meaning of it all? He feltthat a clue lay somewhere outside the reach of his intelligence, and asort of anger possessed him because of his impotence to grasp it.

  Sir Charles was staring at him in that curiously pathetic way whichhe had observed at their earlier interview in Chancery Lane. "Inany event," said his host, "let us dine: for already I have kept youwaiting."

  Harley merely bowed, and walking out of the library, entered the cosydining room. A dreadful premonition had claimed him as his glancehad met that of Sir Charles--a premonition that this man's dayswere numbered. It was uncanny, unnerving; and whereas, at first, theatmosphere of Sir Charles Abingdon's home had been laden with prosperoussecurity, now from every side, and even penetrating to the warmlylighted dining room, came that chilling note of danger.

  In crossing the lobby he had not failed to note that there were manyIndian curios in the place which could not well have failed to attractthe attention of a burglar. But that the person who had penetrated tothe house was no common burglar he was now assured and he required nofurther evidence upon this point.

  As he took his seat at the dining table he observed that Sir Charles'scollection had overflowed even into this room. In the warm shadows abouthim were pictures and ornaments, all of which came from, or had beeninspired by, the Far East.

  In this Oriental environment lay an inspiration. The terror which hadcome into Sir Charles's life, the invisible menace which, swordlike,hung over him, surely belonged in its eerie quality to the land oftemple bells, of silent, subtle peoples, to the secret land which hasbred so many mysteries. Yes, he must look into the past, into the Indianlife of Sir Charles Abingdon, for the birth of this thing which now hadgrown into a shadow almost tangible.

  Benson attended at table, assisted by a dark-faced and verysurly-looking maid, in whom Harley thought he recognized thehousekeeper's bete noire.

  When presently both servants had temporarily retired. "You see, Mr.Harley," began Sir Charles, glancing about his own room in a manneralmost furtive, "I realized to-day at your office that the history ofthis dread which has come upon me perhaps went back so far that it wasalmost impossible to acquaint you with it under the circumstances."

  "I quite understand."

  "I think perhaps I should inform you in the first place that I have adaughter. Her mother has been dead for many years, and perhaps I havenot given her the attention which a motherless girl is entitled toexpect from her father. I don't mean," he said, hastily, "that we are inany sense out of sympathy, but latterly in some way I must confess thatwe have got a little out of touch." He glanced anxiously at his guest,indeed almost apologetically. "You will of course understand, Mr.Harley, that this seeming preamble may prove to have a direct bearingupon what I propose to tell you?"

  "Pray tell the story in your own way, Sir Charles," said Harley withsympathy. "I am all attention, and I shall only interrupt you in theevent of any point not being quite clear."

  "Thank you," said Sir Charles. "I find it so much easier to explainthe matter now. To continue, there is a certain distinguished Orientalgentleman--"

  He paused as Benson appeared to remove the soup plates.

  "It is always delightful to chat with one who knows India so well as youdo," he continued, glancing significantly at his guest.

  Paul Harley, who fully appreciated the purpose of this abrupt changein the conversation, nodded in agreement. "The call of the East," hereplied, "is a very real thing. Only one who has heard it can understandand appreciate all it means."

  The butler, an excellently trained servant, went about his work withquiet efficiency, and once Harley heard him mutter rapid instructions tothe surly parlourmaid, who hovered disdainfully in the background.When again host and guest found themselves alone: "I don't in any waydistrust the servants," explained Sir Charles, "but one cannot hopeto prevent gossip." He raised his serviette to his lips and almostimmediately resumed: "I was about to tell you, Mr. Harley, about mydaughter's--"


  He paused and cleared his throat, then, hastily pouring out a glass ofwater, he drank a sip or two and Paul Harley noticed that his hand wasshaking nervously. He thought of the photograph in the library, and now,in this reference to a distinguished Oriental gentleman, he suddenlyperceived the possible drift of the conversation.

  This was the point to which Sir Charles evidently experienced suchdifficulty in coming. It was something which concerned his daughter;and, mentally visualizing the pure oval face and taunting eyes of thelibrary photograph, Harley found it impossible to believe that the evilwhich threatened Sir Charles could possibly be associated in any waywith Phyllis Abingdon.

  Yet, if the revelation which he had to make must be held responsible forhis present condition, then truly it was a dreadful one. No longer ableto conceal his concern, Harley stood up. "If the story distresses you sokeenly, Sir Charles," he said, "I beg--"

  Sir Charles waved his hand reassuringly. "A mere nothing. It will pass,"he whispered.

  "But I fear," continued Harley, "that--"

  He ceased abruptly, and ran to his host's assistance, for the latter,evidently enough, was in the throes of some sudden illness or seizure.His fresh-coloured face was growing positively livid, and he plucked atthe edge of the table with twitching fingers. As Harley reached his sidehe made a sudden effort to stand up, throwing out his arm to grasp theother's shoulder.

  "Benson!" cried Harley, loudly. "Quick! Your master is ill!"

  There came a sound of swift footsteps and the door was thrown open.

  "Too late," whispered Sir Charles in a choking voice. He began to clutchhis throat as Benson hurried into the room.

  "My God!" whispered Harley. "He is dying!"

  Indeed, the truth was all too apparent. Sir Charles Abingdon was almostpast speech. He was glaring across the table as though he saw someghastly apparition there. And now with appalling suddenness he became asa dead weight in Harley's supporting grasp. Raspingly, as if forced inagony from his lips:

  "Fire-Tongue," he said... "Nicol Brinn..."

  Benson, white and terror-stricken, bent over him.

  "Sir Charles!" he kept muttering. "Sir Charles! What is the matter,sir?"

  A stifled shriek sounded from the doorway, and in tottered Mrs. Howett,the old housekeeper, with other servants peering over her shoulder intothat warmly lighted dining room where Sir Charles Abingdon lay huddledin his own chair--dead.