Brood of the Witch-Queen by Sax Rohmer (the top 100 crime novels of all time .TXT) 📕

a spell⁠—no need to name its weaver; I thought that a poisonous thing at last lay at my mercy, and by cunning means the primitive evil within me was called up, and braving the laws of God and man, I was about to slay that thing. Thank God!⁠—”

He dropped upon his knees, silently bowed his head for a moment, and then stood up, self-possessed again, as his son had always known him. It had been a strange and awful awakening for Robert Cairn⁠—to find his room illuminated by a lurid light, and to find his own father standing over him with a knife! But what had moved him even more deeply than the fear of these things, had been the sight of the emotion which had shaken that stern and unemotional man. Now, as he gathered together his scattered wits, he began to perceive that a malignant hand was moving above them, that his father, and himself, were pawns, which had been moved mysteriously to a dreadful end.

A great disturbance had now arisen in the streets below, streams of people it seemed, were pouring towards the harbour; but Dr. Cairn pointed to an armchair.

“Sit down, Rob,” he said. “I will tell my story, and you shall tell yours. By comparing notes, we can arrive at some conclusion. Then we must act. This is a fight to a finish, and I begin to doubt if we are strong enough to win.”

He took up the dagger and ran a critical glance over it, from the keen point to the enamelled hilt.

“This is unique,” he muttered, whilst his son, spellbound, watched him; “the blade is as keen as if tempered but yesterday; yet it was made full five thousand years ago, as the workmanship of the hilt testifies. Rob, we deal with powers more than human! We have to cope with a force which might have awed the greatest Masters which the world has known. It would have called for all the knowledge, and all the power of Apollonius of Tyana to have dealt with⁠—him!”

“Antony Ferrara!”

“Undoubtedly, Rob! it was by the agency of Antony Ferrara that the wireless message was sent to you from the P. and O. It was by the agency of Antony Ferrara that I dreamt a dream tonight. In fact it was no true dream; I was under the influence of⁠—what shall I term it?⁠—hypnotic suggestion. To what extent that malign will was responsible for you and I being placed in rooms communicating by means of a balcony, we probably shall never know; but if this proximity was merely accidental, the enemy did not fail to take advantage of the coincidence. I lay watching the stars before I slept, and one of them seemed to grow larger as I watched.” He began to pace about the room in growing excitement. “Rob, I cannot doubt that a mirror, or a crystal, was actually suspended before my eyes by⁠—someone, who had been watching for the opportunity. I yielded myself to the soothing influence, and thus deliberately⁠—deliberately⁠—placed myself in the power of⁠—Antony Ferrara⁠—”

“You think that he is here, in this hotel?”

“I cannot doubt that he is in the neighbourhood. The influence was too strong to have emanated from a mind at a great distance removed. I will tell you exactly what I dreamt.”

He dropped into a cane armchair. Comparative quiet reigned again in the streets below, but a distant clamour told of some untoward happening at the harbour.

Dawn would break ere long, and there was a curious rawness in the atmosphere. Robert Cairn seated himself upon the side of the bed, and watched his father, whilst the latter related those happenings with which we are already acquainted.

“You think, sir,” said Robert, at the conclusion of the strange story, “that no part of your experience was real?”

Dr. Cairn held up the antique dagger, glancing at the speaker significantly.

“On the contrary,” he replied, “I do know that part of it was dreadfully real. My difficulty is to separate the real from the phantasmal.”

Silence fell for a moment. Then:

“It is almost certain,” said the younger man, frowning thoughtfully, “that you did not actually leave the hotel, but merely passed from your room to mine by way of the balcony.”

Dr. Cairn stood up, walked to the open window, and looked out, then turned and faced his son again.

“I believe I can put that matter to the test,” he declared. “In my dream, as I turned into the lane where the house was⁠—the house of the mummy⁠—there was a patch covered with deep mud, where at some time during the evening a quantity of water had been spilt. I stepped upon that patch, or dreamt that I did. We can settle the point.”

He sat down on the bed beside his son, and, stooping, pulled off one of his slippers. The night had been full enough of dreadful surprises; but here was yet another, which came to them as Dr. Cairn, with the inverted slipper in his hand, sat looking into his son’s eyes.

The sole of the slipper was caked with reddish brown mud.

XVI Lair of the Spiders

“We must find that house, find the sarcophagus⁠—for I no longer doubt that it exists⁠—drag it out, and destroy it.”

“Should you know it again, sir?”

“Beyond any possibility of doubt. It is the sarcophagus of a queen.”

“What queen?”

“A queen whose tomb the late Sir Michael Ferrara and I sought for many months, but failed to find.”

“Is this queen well known in Egyptian history?”

Dr. Cairn stared at him with an odd expression in his eyes.

“Some histories ignore her existence entirely,” he said; and, with an evident desire to change the subject, added, “I shall return to my room to dress now. Do you dress also. We cannot afford to sleep whilst the situation of that house remains unknown to us.”

Robert Cairn nodded, and his father stood up, and went out of the room.

Dawn saw the two of them peering from the balcony upon the streets of Port Said, already dotted with moving