The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker (books to read in your 20s TXT) 📕

her pet away.

She returned in a couple of minutes; as she came in she said:

 

“It is most odd about that mummy! When Silvio came into the room

first—indeed I took him in as a kitten to show to Father—he went on

just the same way. He jumped up on the table, and tried to scratch and

bite the mummy. That was what made Father so angry, and brought the

decree of banishment on poor Silvio. Only his parole, given through me,

kept him in the house.”

 

Whilst she had been gone, Doctor Winchester had taken the bandage from

her father’s wrist. The wound was now quite clear, as the separate cuts

showed out in fierce red lines. The Doctor folded the blotting-paper

across the line of punctures made by the cat’s claws, and held it down

close to the wound. As he did so, he looked up triumphantly and

beckoned us over to him.

 

The cuts in the paper corresponded with the wounds in the wrist! No

explanation was needed, as he said;

 

“It would have been better if master Silvio had not broken his parole!”

 

We were all silent for a little while. Suddenly Miss Trelawny said:

 

“But Silvio was not in here last night!”

 

“Are you sure? Could you prove that is necessary?” She hesitated

before replying:

 

“I am certain of it; but I fear it would be difficult to prove. Silvio

sleeps in a basket in my room. I certainly put him to bed last night; I

remember distinctly laying his little blanket over him, and tucking him

in. This morning I took him out of the basket myself. I certainly

never noticed him in here; though, of course, that would not mean much,

for I was too concerned about poor father, and too much occupied with

him, to notice even Silvio.”

 

The Doctor shook his head as he said with a certain sadness:

 

“Well, at any rate it is no use trying to prove anything now. Any cat

in the world would have cleaned blood-marks—did any exist—from his paws

in a hundredth part of the time that has elapsed.”

 

Again we were all silent; and again the silence was broken by Miss

Trelawny:

 

“But now that I think of it, it could not have been poor Silvio that

injured Father. My door was shut when I first heard the sound; and

Father’s was shut when I listened at it. When I went in, the injury had

been done; so that it must have been before Silvio could possibly have

got in.” This reasoning commended itself, especially to me as a

barrister, for it was proof to satisfy a jury. It gave me a distinct

pleasure to have Silvio acquitted of the crime—possibly because he was

Miss Trelawny’s cat and was loved by her. Happy cat! Silvio’s mistress

was manifestly pleased as I said:

 

“Verdict, ‘not guilty!’” Doctor Winchester after a pause observed:

 

“My apologies to master Silvio on this occasion; but I am still puzzled

to know why he is so keen against that mummy. Is he the same toward the

other mummies in the house? There are, I suppose, a lot of them. I saw

three in the hall as I came in.”

 

“There are lots of them,” she answered. “I sometimes don’t know whether

I am in a private house or the British Museum. But Silvio never

concerns himself about any of them except that particular one. I

suppose it must be because it is of an animal, not a man or a woman.”

 

“Perhaps it is of a cat!” said the Doctor as he started up and went

across the room to look at the mummy more closely. “Yes,” he went on,

“it is the mummy of a cat; and a very fine one, too. If it hadn’t been

a special favourite of some very special person it would never have

received so much honour. See! A painted case and obsidian eyes-just

like a human mummy. It is an extraordinary thing, that knowledge of

kind to kind. Here is a dead cat—that is all; it is perhaps four or

five thousand years old—and another cat of another breed, in what is

practically another world, is ready to fly at it, just as it would if it

were not dead. I should like to experiment a bit about that cat if you

don’t mind, Miss Trelawny.” She hesitated before replying:

 

“Of course, do anything you may think necessary or wise; but I hope it

will not be anything to hurt or worry my poor Silvio.” The Doctor

smiled as he answered:

 

“Oh, Silvio would be all right: it is the other one that my sympathies

would be reserved for.”

 

“How do you mean?”

 

“Master Silvio will do the attacking; the other one will do the

suffering.”

 

“Suffering?” There was a note of pain in her voice. The Doctor smiled

more broadly:

 

“Oh, please make your mind easy as to that. The other won’t suffer as

we understand it; except perhaps in his structure and outfit.”

 

“What on earth do you mean?”

 

“Simply this, my dear young lady, that the antagonist will be a mummy

cat like this one. There are, I take it, plenty of them to be had in

Museum Street. I shall get one and place it here instead of that one—

you won’t think that a temporary exchange will violate your Father’s

instructions, I hope. We shall then find out, to begin with, whether

Silvio objects to all mummy cats, or only to this one in particular.”

 

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “Father’s instructions seem very

uncompromising.” Then after a pause she went on: “But of course under

the circumstances anything that is to be ultimately for his good must be

done. I suppose there can’t be anything very particular about the mummy

of a cat.”

 

Doctor Winchester said nothing. He sat rigid, with so grave a look on

his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its enlightening

perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done the strangeness

of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned. When once this

thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it grew, and

blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand different ways. The room

and all in it gave grounds for strange thoughts. There were so many

ancient relics that unconsciously one was taken back to strange lands

and strange times. There were so many mummies or mummy objects, round

which there seemed to cling for ever the penetrating odours of bitumen,

and spices and gums—“Nard and Circassia’s balmy smells”—that one was

unable to forget the past. Of course, there was but little light in the

room, and that carefully shaded; so that there was no glare anywhere.

None of that direct light which can manifest itself as a power or an

entity, and so make for companionship. The room was a large one, and

lofty in proportion to its size. In its vastness was place for a

multitude of things not often found in a bedchamber. In far corners

of the room were shadows of uncanny shape. More than once as I thought,

the multitudinous presence of the dead and the past took such hold on me

that I caught myself looking round fearfully as though some strange

personality or influence was present. Even the manifest presence of

Doctor Winchester and Miss Trelawny could not altogether comfort or

satisfy me at such moments. It was with a distinct sense of relief that

I saw a new personality in the room in the shape of Nurse Kennedy.

There was no doubt that that business-like, self-reliant, capable young

woman added an element of security to such wild imaginings as my own.

She had a quality of common sense that seemed to pervade everything

around her, as though it were some kind of emanation. Up to that moment

I had been building fancies around the sick man; so that finally all

about him, including myself, had become involved in them, or enmeshed,

or saturated, or…But now that she had come, he relapsed into his

proper perspective as a patient; the room was a sick-room, and the

shadows lost their fearsome quality. The only thing which it could not

altogether abrogate was the strange Egyptian smell. You may put a mummy

in a glass case and hermetically seal it so that no corroding air can

get within; but all the same it will exhale its odour. One might think

that four or five thousand years would exhaust the olfactory qualities

of anything; but experience teaches us that these smells remain, and

that their secrets are unknown to us. Today they are as much mysteries

as they were when the embalmers put the body in the bath of natron…

 

All at once I sat up. I had become lost in an absorbing reverie. The

Egyptian smell had seemed to get on my nerves—on my memory—on my very

will.

 

At that moment I had a thought which was like an inspiration. If I was

influenced in such a manner by the smell, might it not be that the sick

man, who lived half his life or more in the atmosphere, had gradually

and by slow but sure process taken into his system something which had

permeated him to such degree that it had a new power derived from

quantity—or strength—or…

 

I was becoming lost again in a reverie. This would not do. I must take

such precaution that I could remain awake, or free from such entrancing

thought. I had had but half a night’s sleep last night; and this night

I must remain awake. Without stating my intention, for I feared that I

might add to the trouble and uneasiness of Miss Trelawny, I went

downstairs and out of the house. I soon found a chemist’s shop, and

came away with a respirator. When I got back, it was ten o’clock; the

Doctor was going for the night. The Nurse came with him to the door of

the sick-room, taking her last instructions. Miss Trelawny sat still

beside the bed. Sergeant Daw, who had entered as the Doctor went out,

was some little distance off.

 

When Nurse Kennedy joined us, we arranged that she should sit up till

two o’clock, when Miss Trelawny would relieve her. Thus, in accordance

with Mr. Trelawny’s instructions, there would always be a man and a

woman in the room; and each one of us would overlap, so that at no time

would a new set of watchers come on duty without some one to tell of

what—if anything—had occurred. I lay down on a sofa in my own room,

having arranged that one of the servants should call me a little before

twelve. In a few moments I was asleep.

 

When I was waked, it took me several seconds to get back my thoughts so

as to recognise my own identity and surroundings. The short sleep had,

however, done me good, and I could look on things around me in a more

practical light than I had been able to do earlier in the evening. I

bathed my face, and thus refreshed went into the sick-room. I moved

very softly. The Nurse was sitting by the bed, quiet and alert; the

Detective sat in an armchair across the room in deep shadow. He did

not move when I crossed, until I got close to him, when he said in a

dull whisper:

 

“It is all right; I have not been asleep!” An unnecessary thing to say,

I thought—it always is, unless it be untrue in spirit. When I told him

that his watch was over; that he might go to bed till I should