The Perfume of Egypt by C. W. Leadbeater (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“What if this should turn out to be Sir Ralph’s forgotten chamber, and he should come and disturb my rest, as that other visitor came to me in town!”

This idea returned to me again and again, until I really began to fancy that I could distinguish the peculiar atmosphere of which Jack had spoken — a sort of subtle influence that was gradually taking possession of me. This I felt would never do, if I was to have a comfortable night, so I roused myself from this unhealthy train of thought and resolutely put it away from me; but do what I would, I could not entirely shake off ghostly associations, for (recalled I suppose by my surroundings) every detail of the strange occurrence at my chambers passed before my mind over and over again with startling distinctness and fidelity.

Eventually I fell into a troubled sleep, in which my late mysterious visitor and the idea I had formed of Sir Ralph Fernleigh seemed to chase each other through my brain, till at last all these confused visions culminated in one peculiarly vivid dream. I seemed to myself to be lying in bed (just as I really was), with the fire burnt down to a deep red glow, when suddenly there appeared before me the same figure that I had seen in my chambers, habited in the same loose black robe; but now it held in its left hand a small book — evidently that to which the slip in my possession had belonged, for I could see the very place from which the missing leaf had been torn — and with the forefinger of the right hand the spectre was pointing to the last page of the book, while it looked eagerly in my face. I sprang up and approached the figure; it retreated before me until it reached one of the panelled walls, through which it seemed to vanish, still pointing to the page of its book, and with that imploring gaze still on its face. I woke with a start, and found myself standing close to the wall at the spot where the figure had seemed to disappear, with the dull red glow of the fire reflected from the carving, just as I had seen it in my dream, and my nostrils filled once more with that strange sweet Oriental perfume! Then in a moment a revelation. dawned upon my mind. There was a peculiarity in the atmosphere of the room — I had been quite right in fancying so; and that peculiarity, which I could not recognise before, consisted in the faintest possible permanent suggestion of that magical odour so faint that I had not been able to identify it until this stronger rush of the scent made it clear.

Was it a dream, I asked myself; or had I really seen my mysterious visitor once more? I could not tell, but at any rate the smell in the room was an undoubted fact. I went and tried the door, but, as I expected, found it as I left it fast locked. I stirred up my fire into a bright blaze, threw fresh coals on it, and went to bed again — this time to sleep soundly and refreshingly till I was awakened in the morning by the servant bringing hot water.

Reviewing my last night’s adventure in the sober light of day, I was disposed to think that something of it at least might be due to overheated imagination, though I still fancied I could detect that faint peculiarity of atmosphere. I decided to say nothing to Fernleigh, since to speak of it would involve describing the apparition in my chambers, which I shrank from discussing with any one; so when Jack asked me how I had slept, I replied:

“Very well indeed towards morning, though a little restless in the earlier part of the night.”

After breakfast we walked about the park, which was very extensive, and studied the stately old house from different points of view. I was much struck with the great beauty of its situation and surroundings; and, though there were sad traces of neglect everywhere, I saw that the expenditure of what was comparatively but a small amount of money for so large a place would make it fully worthy to rank with any mansion and estate of its size in the kingdom. I enthusiastically pointed out the various possibilities to Jack, but he, poor fellow, sorrowfully remarked that the sum required to make the improvements, though no doubt comparatively small, was absolutely pretty large, and far beyond his present means.

After some hour’s ramble we returned to the house, and Jack proposed that we should look over the picture-gallery and some other rooms that we had not seen on the previous night. We took the gallery first, and Jack told me that it had once contained many almost priceless gems of the old Flemish and Italian masters; but his dissolute uncle had sold most of them, often at merely nominal prices, to raise money for his riotous life in town, so that what were left were, generally speaking, comparatively valueless. There was the usual collection of ancestral portraits — some life-like and carefully executed, others mere daubs; and we were passing them over with scant interest, when my eye was caught by one which instantly riveted my attention and sent a cold thrill down my spine, bright midday though it was; for there, out of the canvas, looked the very face I had seen so vividly in my dream last night — the face of the mysterious visitant at my chambers in London!

The commanding look of iron will and dauntless courage was there, and the same indefinable air of latent passion and cruelty; there too, though tenderly treated by the artist and made less prominent than it was in reality, was the curious white scar running down from the lower lip. Except that he was here dressed in rich court costume instead of the plain black robe, nothing but the pleading look of appeal was wanting to make the resemblance exact. I suppose something of the emotion I felt showed itself in my face, for Jack seized me by the arm, crying:

“Bless me, Tom, what is the matter? Are you ill? Why are you glaring at the portrait of Sir Ralph in that awful manner?”

“Sir Ralph? Yes, the wicked Sir Ralph. I know him. He came into my room last night. I’ve seen him twice.”

Muttering these disjointed sentences, I staggered to an ottoman and tried to collect my scattered senses. For the whole truth had flashed upon me, and it was almost too much for me. Of course it has occurred to the intelligent reader long ago, but until this moment absolutely no suspicion had ever crossed my mind that Sir Ralph and my spectral visitor in London were identical; now I saw it all. The word commencing with “Ra? that he had tried so hard to write was his own name; he had somehow (heaven alone knows how) foreseen that I should visit Fernleigh, and so had tried to make an impression on my mind — introduce himself to me, as it were — beforehand. I was now obliged to tell Jack the whole story, and was relieved to find that instead of laughing at me, as I more than half expected, he was deeply interested.

“I never believed in a ghost before,” he said, “but here there seems no room for doubt. A perfect stranger shows himself to you in London, you recognise his portrait at once on sight down here at Fernleigh, and he turns out to be the very man whom tradition points out as haunting this place! The chain of evidence is perfect.”

“But why should he have come to me?” I said. “I know nothing about ghosts and their ways; I am not even what these spiritualists call mediumistic. Would it not have been much more straightforward to appeal to you direct? Why should I be singled out for such a visitation?”

“Impossible to say,” replied Jack; “I suppose he liked your looks; but what could he have wanted? We are no nearer discovering that than we were before. Where is that scrap of paper? For it strikes me that the solution of its mystery will yield the answer to our riddle.”

I pulled out my pocket-book and handed the slip to Jack.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, the moment he glanced at it, “this is certainly Sir Ralph’s monogram; I know it well, for I have seen it in several of the books in the library.”

We at once adjourned to the library and compared the writing in some of Sir Ralph’s books with that on the slip; the resemblance was perfect, though the writing on the slip seemed more carefully done, as though with a special effort to make every letter legible: while in the monogram (a very complicated one) every line and stroke were exactly similar. With Jack’s guidance I was able to make out of it the initials “R.F.,”. but I should certainly never have discovered them without assistance. We now concentrated our attention on the two lines of writing.

Jack took a powerful glass from a drawer and scrutinized them long and carefully.

“Your reading of the letters seems quite correct,” he said at length; “but what language can this possibly be? It is not Spanish, Portuguese, nor Italian, I know; and you, who are acquainted with several Oriental dialects, do not recognise it either. I don’t believe it is a language at all, Tom; it looks much more like a cryptograph.”

“Scarcely, I think,” I remarked; “you know, in a cryptograph one always gets utterly impossible combinations of consonants which betray its nature at once.”

“Not invariably,” replied Jack; “that depends upon the system on which it is constructed. I happen, though only by way of pastime, to have made this subject a rather special study, and I do not think there are many cryptographs which I could not, with sufficient time and patience, manage to make out.”

“Then, Jack, if you think this may be one, by all means proceed to exercise your talents upon it at once.”

Jack set to work, and I must say I was really amazed at the ingenuity he displayed, and the facility with which he seized upon and followed up the most seemingly insignificant clues. I need give no particulars of his processes; thanks to Edgar Allen Poe, everybody in these days knows how a cryptograph is solved. Suffice it to say that this, though really extremely simple, gave a good deal of trouble and led us off on a false scent, in consequence of the fact that a double system is employed in its construction. The rule is to substitute for every consonant the letter succeeding it in the alphabet, but for every vowel — not the letter, but — the vowel next preceding it in the alphabet. By a reversal of this process the reader will easily discover that its signification is as follows:

Pull the centre rose in the third panel.

Our excitement may be imagined when this was deciphered. I knew at once to what it referred, for I remembered the carved border of roses and lilies round the panels in my bedroom of last night. The butler came in to announce luncheon, but we cared little for that; we rushed upstairs like a couple of school-boys and dashed into the panelled room.

“The third panel from which end?” asked Jack.

But I had not the slightest doubt; I remembered that the spectre had vanished through the wall on the left of the fireplace, so I walked up to that spot without hesitation, put my hand on the