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

the safe, just as on that first awful night. Then I

think I must have gone mad for a moment.” She stopped and shuddered.

My eyes lit on Sergeant Daw, still fiddling in an aimless way with the

revolver. Mindful of my work with the tourniquet, I said calmly:

 

“Now tell us, Sergeant Daw, what did you fire at?” The policeman seemed

to pull himself together with the habit of obedience. Looking around at

the servants remaining in the room, he said with that air of importance

which, I take it, is the regulation attitude of an official of the law

before strangers:

 

“Don’t you think, sir, that we can allow the servants to go away? We

can then better go into the matter.” I nodded approval; the servants

took the hint and withdrew, though unwillingly, the last one closing the

door behind him. Then the Detective went on:

 

“I think I had better tell you my impressions, sir, rather than recount

my actions. That is, so far as I remember them.” There was a mortified

deference now in his manner, which probably arose from his consciousness

of the awkward position in which he found himself. “I went to sleep

half-dressed—as I am now, with a revolver under my pillow. It was the

last thing I remember thinking of. I do not know how long I slept. I

had turned off the electric light, and it was quite dark. I thought I

heard a scream; but I can’t be sure, for I felt thick-headed as a man

does when he is called too soon after an extra long stretch of work.

Not that such was the case this time. Anyhow my thoughts flew to the

pistol. I took it out, and ran on to the landing. Then I heard a sort

of scream, or rather a call for help, and ran into this room. The room

was dark, for the lamp beside the Nurse was out, and the only light was

that from the landing, coming through the open door. Miss Trelawny was

kneeling on the floor beside her father, and was screaming. I thought I

saw something move between me and the window; so, without thinking, and

being half dazed and only half awake, I shot at it. It moved a little

more to the right between the windows, and I shot again. Then you came

up out of the big chair with all that muffling on your face. It seemed

to me, being as I say half dazed and half awake—I know, sir, you will

take this into account—as if it had been you, being in the same

direction as the thing I had fired at. And so I was about to fire again

when you pulled off the wrap.” Here I asked him—I was cross-examining

now and felt at home:

 

“You say you thought I was the thing you fired at. What thing?” The

man scratched his head, but made no reply.

 

“Come, sir,” I said, “what thing; what was it like?” The answer came in

a low voice:

 

“I don’t know, sir. I thought there was something; but what it was, or

what it was like, I haven’t the faintest notion. I suppose it was

because I had been thinking of the pistol before I went to sleep, and

because when I came in here I was half dazed and only half awake—which I

hope you will in future, sir, always remember.” He clung to that

formula of excuse as though it were his sheet-anchor. I did not want to

antagonise the man; on the contrary I wanted to have him with us.

Besides, I had on me at that time myself the shadow of my own default;

so I said as kindly as I knew how:

 

“Quite right! Sergeant. Your impulse was correct; though of course in

the half-somnolent condition in which you were, and perhaps partly

affected by the same influence—whatever it may be—which made me sleep

and which has put the Nurse in that cataleptic trance, it could not be

expected that you would paused to weigh matters. But now, whilst the

matter is fresh, let me see exactly where you stood and where I sat. We

shall be able to trace the course of your bullets.” The prospect of

action and the exercise of his habitual skill seemed to brace him at

once; he seemed a different man as he set about his work. I asked Mrs.

Grant to hold the tourniquet, and went and stood where he had stood and

looked where, in the darkness, he had pointed. I could not but notice

the mechanical exactness of his mind, as when he showed me where he had

stood, or drew, as a matter of course, the revolver from his pistol

pocket, and pointed with it. The chair from which I had risen still

stood in its place. Then I asked him to point with his hand only, as I

wished to move in the track of his shot.

 

Just behind my chair, and a little back of it, stood a high buhl

cabinet. The glass door was shattered. I asked:

 

“Was this the direction of your first shot or your second?” The answer

came promptly.

 

“The second; the first was over there!”

 

He turned a little to the left, more toward the wall where the great

safe stood, and pointed. I followed the direction of his hand and came

to the low table whereon rested, amongst other curios, the mummy of the

cat which had raised Silvio’s ire. I got a candle and easily found the

mark of the bullet. It had broken a little glass vase and a tazza of

black basalt, exquisitely engraved with hieroglyphics, the graven lines

being filled with some faint green cement and the whole thing being

polished to an equal surface. The bullet, flattened against the wall,

lay on the table.

 

I then went to the broken cabinet. It was evidently a receptacle for

valuable curios; for in it were some great scarabs of gold, agate, green

jasper, amethyst, lapis lazuli, opal, granit, and blue-green china.

None of these things happily were touched. The bullet had gone through

the back of the cabinet; but no other damage, save the shattering of the

glass, had been done. I could not but notice the strange arrangement of

the curios on the shelf of the cabinet. All the scarabs, rings,

amulets, &c. were arranged in an uneven oval round an exquisitely-carved

golden miniature figure of a hawk-headed God crowned with a disk and

plumes. I did not wait to look further at present, for my attention was

demanded by more pressing things; but I determined to make a more minute

examination when I should have time. It was evident that some of the

strange Egyptian smell clung to these old curios; through the broken

glass came an added whiff of spice and gum and bitumen, almost stronger

than those I had already noticed as coming from others in the room.

 

All this had really taken but a few minutes. I was surprised when my

eye met, through the chinks between the dark window blinds and the

window cases, the brighter light of the coming dawn. When I went back

to the sofa and took the tourniquet from Mrs. Grant, she went over and

pulled up the blinds.

 

It would be hard to imagine anything more ghastly than the appearance of

the room with the faint grey light of early morning coming in upon it.

As the windows faced north, any light that came was a fixed grey light

without any of the rosy possibility of dawn which comes in the eastern

quarter of heaven. The electric lights seemed dull and yet glaring; and

every shadow was of a hard intensity. There was nothing of morning

freshness; nothing of the softness of night. All was hard and cold and

inexpressibly dreary. The face of the senseless man on the sofa seemed

of a ghastly yellow; and the Nurse’s face had taken a suggestion of

green from the shade of the lamp near her. Only Miss Trelawny’s face

looked white; and it was of a pallor which made my heart ache. It

looked as if nothing on God’s earth could ever again bring back to it

the colour of life and happiness.

 

It was a relief to us all when Doctor Winchester came in, breathless

with running. He only asked one question:

 

“Can anyone tell me anything of how this wound was gotten?” On seeing

the headshake which went round us under his glance, he said no more, but

applied himself to his surgical work. For an instant he looked up at

the Nurse sitting so still; but then bent himself to his task, a grave

frown contracting his brows. It was not till the arteries were tied and

the wounds completely dressed that he spoke again, except, of course,

when he had asked for anything to be handed to him or to be done for

him. When Mr. Trelawny’s wounds had been thoroughly cared for, he said

to Miss Trelawny:

 

“What about Nurse Kennedy?” She answered at once:

 

“I really do not know. I found her when I came into the room at

half-past two o’clock, sitting exactly as she does now. We have not

moved her, or changed her position. She has not wakened since. Even

Sergeant Daw’s pistol-shots did not disturb her.”

 

“Pistol-shots? Have you then discovered any cause for this new

outrage?” The rest were silent, so I answered:

 

“We have discovered nothing. I was in the room watching with the Nurse.

Earlier in the evening I fancied that the mummy smells were making me

drowsy, so I went out and got a respirator. I had it on when I came on

duty; but it did not keep me from going to sleep. I awoke to see the

room full of people; that is, Miss Trelawny and Sergeant Daw, being only

half awake and still stupefied by the same scent or influence which had

affected us, fancied that he saw something moving through the shadowy

darkness of the room, and fired twice. When I rose out of my chair,

with my face swathed in the respirator, he took me for the cause of the

trouble. Naturally enough, he was about to fire again, when I was

fortunately in time to manifest my identity. Mr. Trelawny was lying

beside the safe, just as he was found last night; and was bleeding

profusely from the new wound in his wrist. We lifted him on the sofa,

and made a tourniquet. That is, literally and absolutely, all that any

of us know as yet. We have not touched the knife, which you see lies

close by the pool of blood. Look!” I said, going over and lifting it.

“The point is red with the blood which has dried.”

 

Doctor Winchester stood quite still a few minutes before speaking:

 

“Then the doings of this night are quite as mysterious as those of last

night?”

 

“Quite!” I answered. He said nothing in reply, but turning to Miss

Trelawny said:

 

“We had better take Nurse Kennedy into another room. I suppose there is

nothing to prevent it?”

 

“Nothing! Please, Mrs. Grant, see that Nurse Kennedy’s room is ready;

and ask two of the men to come and carry her in.” Mrs. Grant went out

immediately; and in a few minutes came back saying:

 

“The room is quite ready; and the men are here.” By her direction two

footmen came into the room and, lifting up the rigid body of Nurse

Kennedy under the supervision of the Doctor, carried her out of the

room. Miss Trelawny remained with me in the sick chamber, and Mrs.

Grant went with the Doctor into the Nurse’s room.

 

When we