It was a quarter to seven when Moris Klaw entered the sick room. Ottley lay in a trance-like condition, and the eccentric investigator, of whose proceedings the nurse strongly disapproved, settled himself in a split-cane armchair by the bedside, and waving his hand in dismissal to Haufmann and myself, placed a large silk handkerchief over his sparsely covered skull and composed himself for slumber.
We left him and tiptoed from the room.
“If you hadn’t told me what he’s done in the past,” whispered Haufmann, “I should say our old friend was mad a lot!”
The great empty house was eerily silent, and during the time that we sat smoking and awaiting the end of Moris Klaw’s singular telepathic experiment, neither of us talked very much. At eight o’clock the man whose proceedings savoured so much of charlatanism, but whom I knew for one of the foremost criminologists of the world, emerged, spraying his face with verbena.
“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, coming in to us, “I have recovered some slight impression”--he tapped his moist forehead--“of that agonizing thought which preceded the unconsciousness of Ottley. I depart. Sometime to-night will come Sir Bartram Vane from Half-Moon Street, the specialist, to confer with the physician who is attending here. Mr. Searles, remain concealed. Not even he must know of your being here; no one outside the house must know. Remember my warnings. I depart.”
Behind the thick pebbles his eyes gleamed with some excitement repressed. By singular means, he would seem to have come upon a clue.
“Good-night, Mr. Haufmann,” he said. “Good-night, Mr. Searles. To the nurse I have said good-night and she only glared. She thinks I am the mad old fool!”
He departed, curtly declining company, and carrying his huge plaid rug and heavy grip. As his slouching footsteps died away along the avenue, Haufmann and I looked grimly at each other.
“Seems we’re left!” said my friend. “You won’t desert me, Searles?”
“Most certainly I shall not! You are tied here by the presence of poor Ottley, in any event, and you can rely upon me to keep you company.”
At about ten o’clock Sir Bartram Vane drove up, bringing with him the local physician who was attending upon Ottley. I kept well out of sight, but learnt, when the medical men had left, that the course of treatment had been entirely changed.
Thus commenced our strange ordeal; how it terminated you presently shall learn.
Moris Klaw, in pursuit of whatever plan he had formed, never appeared on the scene, but evidence of his active interest reached us in the form of telegraphic instructions. Once it was a wire telling Haufmann to detain the American servants in London should they arrive and to go on living as we were. Again it was a warning not to go out on the balcony after dusk; and, again, that we should not desert our posts for one single evening. On the fourth day the doctor pronounced a slight improvement in Ottley’s condition, and Haufmann determined to run down to Brighton on the following morning, returning in the afternoon.
That night we again heard the voice.
The house was very still, and Haufmann and I had retired to our rooms, when I discerned, above the subdued rustling whisper of the leaves, that other sound that no leaf ever made. In an instant I was crouching by the open window. A lull followed. Then, again, I heard the soft voice calling. I could not detect the words, but in obedience to the instructions of Klaw, I picked up the pistol which I had brought for the purpose, and ran to the door. The idea that the whispering menace was something that could be successfully shot at robbed it of much of its eerie horror, and I relished the prospect of action after the dreary secret sojourn in the upper rooms of the house.
I groped my way down to the hall. As we had carefully oiled the bolts, I experienced no difficulty in silently opening the door. Inch by inch I opened it, listening intently.
Again I heard the queer call.
Now, by craning my neck, I could see the moon-bright front of the house; and looking upward, I was horrified to see Shan Haufmann, a conspicuous figure in his light pajama suit, crouching on the balcony! The moonlight played vividly on the nickelled barrel of the pistol he carried as he rose slowly to his feet.
Though I did not know what danger threatened, nor from whence it would proceed, I knew well that Klaw’s was no idle warning. I could not imagine what madness had prompted Haufmann to neglect it, and was about to throw wide the door and call to him, when a series of strange things happened in bewildering succession.
An odd strumming sound came from somewhere in the outer darkness. Haufmann dropped to his knees (I learnt, afterward, that the loose slippers he wore had tripped him). The glass of the window behind him was shattered with a great deal of noise.
A shot!… a spurt of flame in the black darkness of the poplar avenue!… a shriek from somewhere on the west front… and I ran out on to the drive.
With a tremendous crash a bulky form rolled down the sloping roof of the coach house, to fall with a sickening thud to the ground!
Then, out into the moonlight, Moris Klaw came running, his yet smoking pistol in his hand!
“Haufmann!” he cried, and again, “Haufmann!”
The big American peered down from the balcony, hauling in something which seemed to be a line, but which I was unable to distinguish in the darkness.
“Good boy!” he panted. “I was a fool to do it! But I saw him lying behind the chimney and thought I could drop him!”
Moris Klaw ran, ungainly, across to the coach house and I followed him. The figure of a tall, lithe man, wearing a blue serge suit, lay face downward on the gravel. As we turned him over, Haufmann, breathing heavily, joined us. The moonlight fell on a dark saturnine face.
