Fairbank, startled by the touch on his arm, stopped. It was Ailsa Brearley who had dropped behind her brother and now stood confronting us. In the dense shadows of the corridor one could barely distinguish her figure, but a stray beam of light touched one side of her pure oval face and burnished her fair hair.
She wanted help, guidance. I had read it in her eyes before. I was sorry that her sweet lips should have that pathetic little droop.
“Doctor Fairbank! I have wanted to ask you all night--do you think he----”
She could not speak the words, and stood biting her lips, with eyes averted.
“Miss Brearley,” he replied, “I do, certainly, fear that your brother is liable to a nervous breakdown at any moment. He has applied his mind too closely to this inquiry, and has studiously surrounded himself with a morbid atmosphere.”
Ailsa Brearley was now watching him, anxiously.
“Should we allow him to go on with it?”
“I fear any attempt to prevent him would prove most detrimental, in his present condition.”
“But----” There was clearly something else which she wanted to say. “But, apart from that”--she suddenly turned to Moris Klaw, instinctively it almost seemed--“Mr. Klaw--is this--ceremony right?”
He peered at her through his pince-nez.
“In what way, my dear Miss Brearley--how right?”
“Well--what I mean is--it amounts to idolatry, does it not?”
I started. It was a point of view which had not, hitherto, occurred to me.
“You probably understand the nature of the thing better than we do, Miss Brearley,” said Fairbank. “Do you mean that it involves worship of Isis?”
“He has always avoided a direct answer when I have asked him that,” she said. “But it is only reasonable to suppose that it does. His translation of the writing I have never seen. But he has been dieting in a most extraordinary manner for nearly a year! Since the workmen completed it, no one but himself has been inside the chamber which he has had constructed at the end of his study; and he spends hours and hours there every day--and every night!”
Her anxiety became more evident with each word.
“You saw that he ate nothing at dinner,” she continued, “and taxed him with faddism. But it is something more than that. Why has he sent the servants away to-night? Oh, Doctor Fairbank! I have a dreadful foreboding! I am so afraid!”
The light in her eyes, suddenly upturned to him in the vague half-light, the tone in her voice, the appeal in her attitude--were unmistakable. Fairbank had been abroad for three years, and I could see that between these two was an undeclared love, and almost I felt that I intruded. Moris Klaw looked away for a moment, too. Then--
“My dear young lady,” he rumbled, paternally, “do not be afraid. I, the old know-all, so fortunately am here! Perhaps there is danger--yes, I admit it; there may be danger. But it is such danger as dwells here”--he tapped his yellow brow--“it is a danger of the mind. For thoughts are things, Miss Brearley--that is where it lies, the peril--and thought things can kill!”
“Ailsa! Fairbank! Mr. Klaw!” came Brearley’s voice. “We have none too much time!”
“Proceed, my friends,” rumbled Moris Klaw; “I am with you.” And, oddly enough, I was comforted by his presence; so, it was evident, were the girl and the doctor; for Moris Klaw, beneath that shabby, ramshackle exterior, Moris Klaw, the Wapping curio dealer, was a man of power--an intellectual ark of refuge.
In the Egyptologist’s study all appeared much the same as when last I had set foot there. The cases filled with vases, scarabs, tablets, weapons, and the hundred-and-one relics of the great dead age with which the student had surrounded himself; the sarcophagi; the frames of papyri--all seemed familiar.
Brearley sat at the huge writing table, littered, as of yore, and in picturesque confusion.
“We must begin almost immediately!” he said, as we entered.
A danger spot burned lividly upon either pale cheek. His eyes gleamed brilliantly. The prolonged excitement of his strange experiment was burning the man up. His nerve centres must be taxed abnormally, I knew.
Brearley glanced at his watch.
“I must be very brief,” he explained, hurriedly, “as it is vitally important that I commence in time. Beyond the bookcase, there, you will see that a part of the room has been walled off.”
We looked in the direction indicated. Although it was not noticeable at first glance I now saw that the apartment was, indeed, smaller than formerly. The usual books covered the new wall, giving it much the same aspect as the old; but, where hitherto there had been nothing but shelves, a small, narrow door of black wood now broke the imposing expanse of faded volumes.
“In there,” Brearley resumed, “is the Secret Place described by Khamus!”
He placed his long, thin hand upon a yellow roll that lay partly opened on the table.
“No one but myself may enter there--until after to-night, at any rate!” with a glance at Moris Klaw. “To the most minute particular”--patting the papyrus--“it is equipped as Khamus describes. For many months I have prepared myself, by fasting and meditation, as he prepared! There was, as no doubt you know, a widespread belief in ancient times that for any but the chosen to look upon the goddess was death. As I admit the possibility of Isis existing, I must also admit the possibility of this belief being true--the more so as it is confirmed by Khamus! Therefore none may enter with me.”
“One moment, Mr. Brearley,” interrupted Klaw; “in what form does Khamus relate that the goddess appeared?”
A cloud crossed Brearley’s face.
“It is the one point upon which he is not clear,” was the reply. “I do not know, in the least, what to expect!”
“Go on!” I said, quickly. Although I seriously doubted my poor friend’s sanity, I began to find the affair weirdly, uncannily fascinating.
Brearley continued:
“The ritual opens with a chant, which I may broadly translate as ‘The Hymn of Dedication.’ Its exact purport is not very clear to me. This hymn is the only part of the ceremony in which I am assisted. It is to be ‘sung by a virgin beyond the door.’ That is, directly I have entered yonder it must be sung out here. Ailsa has composed a sort of chant to the words, which, I think, is the proper kind of setting. Have you not, Ailsa?”
She bowed her graceful head, glancing, under her lashes, toward Fairbank.
“She has learned the words--for, of course, it must be sung in Egyptian----”
“But have no idea of their meaning,” said his sister, softly.
“That is unnecessary,” he went on, quickly. “After this, I want you all just to remain here in this room. I am afraid you will have to sit in the dark! Any sounds which you detect, please note. I will not tell you what to expect, then imagination cannot deceive you. I will be back in a moment.”
With another hasty glance at his watch, he went out in high excitement.
“Please,” began Ailsa Brearley, the moment he was gone, “do not think that because I assist him I approve of this attempt! I think it is horrible! But what am I to do? He is wrapped up in it! I dare not try to check him!”
“We understand that,” said Fairbank; “all of us. Do as he desires. When he has made the attempt, and failed--as, of course, he must do--the folly of the whole thing will become apparent to him. Do not let it worry you, Miss Brearley. Your brother is not the first man to succumb, temporarily, to the glamour of the Unknown.”
She shook her head sadly.
“It is an unpleasant farce,” she said. “But there is something more in it than that.”
Her blue eyes were full of trouble.
“What do you mean, Miss Brearley?” asked Moris Klaw.
“I hardly know, myself!” was the reply; “but for the past two months an indefinable horror of some kind has been growing upon me.”
With a deep sigh, she turned to a tall case and took from it a kind of slender harp. The instrument, of which the frame, at any rate, was evidently ancient Egyptian work, rested upon a claw-shaped pedestal.
“Do you play this? Yes? No?” inquired Moris Klaw, with interest.
“Yes,” she said, wearily. “It comes from the tomb of a priestess of Isis and was played by her in the temple. It is scaled differently from the modern harp, but any one with a slight knowledge of the ordinary harp, or even of the piano, can perform upon it with ease. It is sweet toned, but--creepy!”
She smiled slightly at her own expression, and I was glad to see it.
Brearley returned.
He wore a single loose garment of white linen, and thin sandals were upon his feet. Save for his long, fair hair, he looked a true pagan priest, his eyes bright with the fire of research that consumed him, his features gaunt, ascetic.
Some ghost of his old humorous expression played, momentarily, about his lips as he observed the astonishment depicted upon our faces. But it was gone almost in the moment of its coming.
“You wonder at me, no doubt,” he said; “and at times I have wondered at myself! Do not think me fanatic. I scarcely hope for any result. But remembering that the writing is authentic and that there prevails, to this day, a widespread belief in the occult wisdom of the Egyptians, why should not this problem in psychics receive the same attention from me that one in physics would receive from you, Fairbank?”
There was reason in his argument and in his manner of advancing it. Fairbank glanced from Brearley to the girl sitting with her white hands listlessly caressing the harp strings. The silence of the great empty house grew oppressive. Suppose the ancients indeed possessed the strange lore attributed to them? Suppose in those Dark Continents, the Past and the Future, somewhere in the vast unknown, there existed a power, a being, a spirit, named by the Egyptians, Isis?
Those were my thoughts, when Moris Klaw said suddenly:
“Mr. Brearley, it is not yet too late to turn back! This sensitive plate”--he tapped his forehead--“warns me that some evil thought thing hovers about us! You are about to give form to that thought being. Be wise, Mr. Brearley--abandon your experiment!”
His tone surprised everyone. Otter Brearley looked at him with an odd expression and then glanced at the watch upon the writing table.
“Mr. Klaw,” he said, quietly, “I had hoped for a different attitude in you; but if you really disapprove of what I am about to attempt, I can only ask you to withdraw; it is too late for further arguments.”
“I remain, my friend! I spoke not for myself--my life has been passed in this coping with evil things; I spoke for others.”
None of us entirely understood his words, but Brearley went on, impatiently:
“Listen, please. I rely upon your coöperation. From now onward I require absolute silence. Whatever happens make no noise.”
“I shall not be noisy, I, my friend!” rumbled Moris Klaw. “I am the old silent; I watch and wait--until I am wanted.”
He shrugged his shoulders and nodded, significantly.
“Good!” said Brearley, and his voice quivered with excitement; “then the experiment, the final experiment, has begun!”
