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

lighted only by the glitter of the moon, and came to a stop before that of Sir Michael Ferrara.

Lights shone from the many windows. The front door was open, and light streamed out into the porch.

“My God!” cried Cairn, leaping from the cab. “My God! what has happened?”

A thousand fears, a thousand reproaches, flooded his brain with frenzy. He went racing up to the steps and almost threw himself upon the man who stood half-dressed in the doorway.

“Felton, Felton!” he whispered hoarsely. “What has happened? Who⁠—”

“Sir Michael, sir,” answered the man. “I thought”⁠—his voice broke⁠—“you were the doctor, sir?”

“Miss Myra⁠—”

“She fainted away, sir. Mrs. Hume is with her in the library, now.”

Cairn thrust past the servant and ran into the library. The housekeeper and a trembling maid were bending over Myra Duquesne, who lay fully dressed, white and still, upon a Chesterfield. Cairn unceremoniously grasped her wrist, dropped upon his knees and placed his ear to the still breast.

“Thank God!” he said. “It is only a swoon. Look after her, Mrs. Hume.”

The housekeeper, with set face, lowered her head, but did not trust herself to speak. Cairn went out into the hall and tapped Felton on the shoulder. The man turned with a great start.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Is Sir Michael⁠—?”

Felton nodded.

“Five minutes before you came, sir.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “Miss Myra came out of her room. She thought someone called her. She rapped on Mrs. Hume’s door, and Mrs. Hume, who was just retiring, opened it. She also thought she had heard someone calling Miss Myra out on the stairhead.”

“Well?”

“There was no one there, sir. Everyone was in bed; I was just undressing, myself. But there was a sort of faint perfume⁠—something like a church, only disgusting, sir⁠—”

“How⁠—disgusting! Did you smell it?”

“No, sir, never. Mrs. Hume and Miss Myra have noticed it in the house on other nights, and one of the maids, too. It was very strong, I’m told, last night. Well, sir, as they stood by the door they heard a horrid kind of choking scream. They both rushed to Sir Michael’s room, and⁠—”

“Yes, yes?”

“He was lying half out of bed, sir⁠—”

“Dead?”

“Seemed like he’d been strangled, they told me, and⁠—”

“Who is with him now?”

The man grew even paler.

“No one, Mr. Cairn, sir. Miss Myra screamed out that there were two hands just unfastening from his throat as she and Mrs. Hume got to the door, and there was no living soul in the room, sir. I might as well out with it! We’re all afraid to go in!”

Cairn turned and ran up the stairs. The upper landing was in darkness and the door of the room which he knew to be Sir Michael’s stood wide open. As he entered, a faint scent came to his nostrils. It brought him up short at the threshold, with a chill of supernatural dread.

The bed was placed between the windows, and one curtain had been pulled aside, admitting a flood of moonlight. Cairn remembered that Myra had mentioned this circumstance in connection with the disturbance of the previous night.

“Who, in God’s name, opened that curtain!” he muttered.

Fully in the cold white light lay Sir Michael Ferrara, his silver hair gleaming and his strong, angular face upturned to the intruding rays. His glazed eyes were starting from their sockets; his face was nearly black; and his fingers were clutching the sheets in a death grip. Cairn had need of all his courage to touch him.

He was quite dead.

Someone was running up the stairs. Cairn turned, half dazed, anticipating the entrance of a local medical man. Into the room ran his father, switching on the light as he did so. A greyish tinge showed through his ruddy complexion. He scarcely noticed his son.

“Ferrara!” he cried, coming up to the bed. “Ferrara!”

He dropped on his knees beside the dead man.

“Ferrara, old fellow⁠—”

His cry ended in something like a sob. Robert Cairn turned, choking, and went downstairs.

In the hall stood Felton and some other servants.

“Miss Duquesne?”

“She has recovered, sir. Mrs. Hume has taken her to another bedroom.”

Cairn hesitated, then walked into the deserted library, where a light was burning. He began to pace up and down, clenching and unclenching his fists. Presently Felton knocked and entered. Clearly the man was glad of the chance to talk to someone.

“Mr. Antony has been phoned at Oxford, sir. I thought you might like to know. He is motoring down, sir, and will be here at four o’clock.”

“Thank you,” said Cairn shortly.

Ten minutes later his father joined him. He was a slim, well-preserved man, alert-eyed and active, yet he had aged five years in his son’s eyes. His face was unusually pale, but he exhibited no other signs of emotion.

“Well, Rob,” he said, tersely. “I can see you have something to tell me. I am listening.”

Robert Cairn leant back against a bookshelf.

“I have something to tell you, sir, and something to ask you.”

“Tell your story, first; then ask your question.”

“My story begins in a Thames backwater⁠—”

Dr. Cairn stared, squaring his jaw, but his son proceeded to relate, with some detail, the circumstances attendant upon the death of the king-swan. He went on to recount what took place in Antony Ferrara’s rooms, and at the point where something had been taken from the table and thrown in the fire⁠—

“Stop!” said Dr. Cairn. “What did he throw in the fire?”

The doctor’s nostrils quivered, and his eyes were ablaze with some hardly repressed emotion.

“I cannot swear to it, sir⁠—”

“Never mind. What do you think he threw in the fire?”

“A little image, of wax or something similar⁠—an image of⁠—a swan.”

At that, despite his self-control, Dr. Cairn became so pale that his son leapt forward.

“All right, Rob,” his father waved him away, and turning, walked slowly down the room.

“Go on,” he said, rather huskily.

Robert Cairn continued his story up to the time that he visited the hospital where the dead girl lay.

“You can swear that she was the original of the photograph in Antony’s rooms and the same who was waiting at the foot of the stair?”

“I can, sir.”

“Go on.”

Again the younger man