Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

This story began in Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction for September 17

From whence sprung that sinister affinity between the master and the beating hooves of an unseen horseman riding to the tower?

Threatening Sacha Malone that he knew her husband’s death was not accidental, Barrington Bryan blackmailed her into a promise to marry him, warning that her lover, Dick Lovelace, would be the price of her refusal. Sacha went with Dr. Eustace Hailey to The Black Tower of her uncle, Lord Gerald Templewood, to certify to his insanity. At intervals he heard the hoof-beats of an unseen horseman, which presaged his death; and at other times he communicated with his long dead fiancée, Beatrice. The medium of both of these phenomena was Mlle. Ninon Darelli, who Dr. Hailey accused of being fraudulent. She administered dope to Lord Templewood, and to quiet Sacha, had also administered dope to her. Under the spell of dope and Ninon’s hypnotism Sacha defied Barrington and attempted to kill him. Ninon was agitated when Barrington informed her of this, as he was her lover. At Lord Templewood’s, Dr. Hailey heard the mysterious hoof-beats, and shortly after Sacha appeared, saying she had ridden up on a horse.

Chapter XIX “I Warn You”

Lord Templewood had half risen in his chair. His hands clutched at the arms, so that their knuckles were blanched; and he glared at his niece Sacha.

“How dare you tell me that?” he cried hoarsely. “How dare you tell me that!”

Sacha started back, revealing to, Dr. Hailey, in that action, the utter weariness of her face.

“I... I’m so sorry if I — frightened you,” she faltered.

The old man seemed to gather new strength. He sprang to his feet with a degree of agility of which the doctor had not supposed him to be possessed.

“You lie,” he cried. “You are not sorry.”

His eyes glared. He drew himself up to his full height. His hands plucked at the front of his coat.

“Do you think that I do not know what you are about? That I do not understand your game? Ha!” He laughed, mirthlessly, displaying long teeth. “I know everything — everything.” His arm shot cut in a minatory gesture. “It is a plot between you and Lovelace to kill me.”

“My dear Uncle Gerald—”

Sacha’s voice thrilled with repudiation of a charge so monstrous. Dr. Hailey laid his hand on her hand, to bid her exercise all her self-control.

“Yes, to kill me.” The shrill voice had become almost screaming in its violence. “To kill me and to rob me. Why have you brought your doctor here? So that he can swear that my death was due to natural causes. Why have you galloped your horse round The Tower?

“So that my death may be due, apparently, to natural causes.” His face assumed suddenly a look of cold hatred. His violence, at the same moment was abated, “You thought,” he queried with a sneer, “that, at the sound of your horse’s hooves, my heart would stop?”

Sacha caught her breath in a gasp. That action seemed to whet her uncle’s desire to wound her. He took a step toward her.

“Ninon was a fraud. Why? Because Ninon stood between you and your object.”

He turned and strode to the bell. He rang it. A footman came to the room.

“Ask Mlle. Darelli to come here,” he told the man.

He sank back into his chair, and lay for a moment as if exhausted. Then, once again, he turned to Sacha.

“Why did you come?” he demanded abruptly.

“Because you sent for me.”

“I did not send for you.”

“May I remind you, Lord Templewood,” Dr. Hailey said, “that you consented this afternoon to my summoning your niece from London.”

“What do you want her here for, anyhow?”

“I want her to look after you.”

Lord Templewood banged his fist on the arm of his chair. He cried,

“She shall not look after me. Tomorrow she can go to Beech Croft or to London, whichever she prefers. She is not to stay here with Lovelace.” He lowered his voice, and added, “God knows, had she been content to stay at Beech Croft, with her husband, instead of always running across here, Orme Malone might have been alive to-day.”

A cruel laugh escaped his lips. Sacha uttered a cry of dismay. She tottered and clutched at Dr. Hailey’s arm for support. He led her out of the room.

In the corridor they met Ninon Darelli. The doctor signed to her that he wished to speak to her at once. She followed him to the gallery above the great hall. He told Sacha to go down and wait for him in the hall. He turned to Ninon.

“I have come to the conclusion,” he said, in tones the menace of which was unmistakable, “that Lord Templewood’s mind is deranged. I warn you that you will run a serious risk if, in these circumstances, you administer to him any drug.”

“What, you think he is not sane? You will certify him?”

The girl’s voice was so eager that Dr. Hailey started.

“I have not said that,” he declared coldly.

He left her, and began to descend the broad oaken stairway.

Chapter XX He Is Dangerous!

“My own reading of the case is that his sanity has been undermined by drugs. Behind that fact, however, lies another.”

Dr. Hailey paused to help himself to snuff. He set his eyeglass in his eye and faced Dick Lovelace. He added:

“I feel almost certain that this second fact is the lady to whom he refers as ‘my angel Beatrice.’ ”

Dick nodded.

“Her death was a great blow to him, undoubtedly.”

“It was not her death of which I was thinking, but of what happened before her death.” The doctor allowed his eyeglass to drop. “Death,” he commented, “is frequently less cruel than life.”

He sat with half-closed eyes, gazing vacantly in front of him. The young man puffed uneasily at a brier pipe. That sentiment, did Dr. Hailey but know it, exactly corresponded with his own mood. Now that Sacha had gone to bed, the thoughts which had been perched like ravens in his mind during the last twenty-four hours, descended once more to their roosting places.

“You do not happen to know any details of the history of the poor Beatrice?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The doctor sighed.

“I fancy,” he declared, “that Ninon Darelli could enlighten us, if she so desired. This galloping horseman, whom she simulated so cleverly last night, was not, I think, chosen at random as a means of terrorization.”

“Oh, of course not.” Dick took his pipe from his mouth. “It is a legend, you know, of the Templewood family, that a ghostly horseman rides to The Black Tower when a tragedy is about to befall some member of the family.”

“My dear sir, family legends become insignificant when personal experiences are set against them. The last time Beatrice came to this house, she came on horseback — at night. The family legend and the personal experience on that occasion were merged in one another.”

Dr. Hailey was watching his companion under his half-closed lids. He saw the young man start violently.

“You... you are sure of that.”

“I have Lord Templewood’s word for it.” The doctor took another pinch of snuff. “What I do not understand,” he added in casual tones, “is why this medium should wish to recall that very painful experience to the old man’s mind. Even if we grant that she is trying to drive him mad, we have not solved the mystery. What possible benefit can accrue to her if her employer is sent to an asylum?”

Dick shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

“And yet, until I can answer that question, I feel the very greatest reluctance to sign a certificate of insanity. I have a strong feeling that Ninon is exceedingly anxious that I should sign such a certificate. The fact that she did her best, by means of that sound of galloping, to rouse her employer to frenzy in my presence, seems almost conclusive evidence on the point.”

Dick struck a match to relight his pipe.

“If I didn’t happen to know,” he said, “that Lord Templewood has made a will in Sach — in Mrs. Malone’s — favor, I would suspect that Mlle. Darelli must have inveigled him into leaving her property.”

“My dear sir, insanity is not death. If Ninon had ten wills, she would get nothing so long as he remained alive. Moreover, the fact of the insanity would tell very strongly against her claim if Mrs. Malone chose to dispute such a will.”

They fell into silence. Then Dr. Hailey asked:

“How long has Ninon Darelli been employed by him?”

“About four years. She comes three or four times a week, as a rule. Sometimes she stays for days on end.”

“He is a rich man?”

“Only moderately so. He is extremely careful with his money, however, extremely careful.”

They heard light footsteps descending the stairs. The next instant, Ninon Darelli faced them with wide-open, terrified eyes.

“I cannot stay with him!” she cried. “I cannot. It is too dangerous.”

Chapter XXI A Packet of Treasury Notes

Ninon fluttered her hands outward like a wounded bird spreading its wings in the face of danger. Her hands moved in jerks and then grew rigid.

“What has happened?” Dr. Hailey asked.

“Ah, you do not know him as I know him. He has been afraid — of the horse which Mrs. Malone rode here. Now his nerves are gone.” The hands fluttered again. “So.” She came nearer to the doctor. “To-night he will walk in his sleep, and then—” She brought her hands stiffly together, stiffly and eloquently together. “I am afraid,” she concluded.

Dr. Hailey contracted his brows.

“You have not given him — anything?”

“Nothing. And that is why I am afraid. You, who are a doctor, must deal with him to-night, since you will not allow me to give him anything.”

She sat down on one of the big chairs with which the hall was furnished. She glanced about her anxiously.

“Oh, he is mad,” she murmured, “so mad.”

“My dear lady, if you would tell us what has happened.”

Dr. Hailey raised his eyeglass, and adjusted it.

“Nothing has happened — yet. But something is going to happen—”

“If he doesn’t get his dose of cocaine?”

Ninon shrugged her shoulders. “It is not cocaine which I give him,” she declared abruptly.

Dr. Hailey rose.

“I will stay with him to-night,” he announced. He turned to Dick Lovelace. “Perhaps you will join me for a little while in his room before you go to bed.”

He mounted the stairs, leaving Ninon and Dick together. Lord Templewood was asleep when he entered his bedroom. He crossed the room to the fireplace and sat down. A few minutes later, Dick came very quietly into the room. Dr. Hailey was about to signal to him that he might go to bed, since it was unlikely that his help would be required, when, suddenly, Lord Templewood sat up in bed.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, in tones which suggested the discovery of a burglar.

“I came to see if you were all right, sir.”

“You are a liar.” Lord Templewood’s voice rose from one word to another. It began to screech as it had screeched when he was accusing Sacha. “You are a liar and a thief. You wish to kill me so that you can marry Sacha and get my money.”

Dick did not reply. At a sign from Dr. Hailey, he began to retire toward the door, but Lord Templewood was too quick for him. He sprang out of bed and stood in front of the door, a wild figure in his sky-blue sleeping suit.

“Answer me,” he shouted, “you are going to marry Sacha?”

“No, sir.”

“What! You deny that, do you?”

The young man seemed to hesitate. His shoulders rose in a deep breath.

“Sacha,” he said, in low tones, “is engaged to be married to Barrington Bryan.”

Had he struck his antagonist a blow in the face, the effect could not have been more overwhelming than the effect of these words. Lord Templewood’s knees shook beneath him. He seemed to be about to sink to the floor.

“Barrington Bryan!”

He caught at the door-handle. The handle rattled in his grasp. Dick came to him and gave him his arm. He led him back to the bed.

“You are not well, sir.”

But, once back in bed, the old man’s weakness passed as swiftly as it had come. He flushed scarlet, and his speech grew thick.

“Is this true?” he demanded hoarsely.

“Yes, sir.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, suddenly, Dr. Hailey ran to the bedside. Dick saw that Lord Templewood’s features were working convulsively, and that a blue tinge had come into his lips, and was spreading all over his face.

“Get me a bowl of water.”

Dr. Hailey’s tones were peremptory. Dick released Lord Templewood’s arm and ran to the washstand. He splashed the water in pouring it. When he turned back to the bed, he saw the old man striking fiercely at the doctor with his disengaged arm. Dr. Hailey flung off the assault, and then seized his patient in his powerful grasp, and forced him back on the mattress.

“Put the bowl on the chair. Now feel in my waistcoat pocket. You will find a small phial. Open it and drop one of the pellets into the water. Shake the bowl. Now, feel in the other pocket. There’s a case there.”

The doctor’s voice came breathlessly, for Lord Templewood’s strength seemed to have been multiplied fifty-fold. The old man followed every movement with his wild, glaring eyes. But he uttered no sound, perhaps because his lips were swollen and congested, like the lips of a man newly dead by strangulation.

Dick opened the pocket-case and saw a tiny knife. The light from the electric lamp fell on the blade of the knife and set it gleaming like a mirror.

“Put the knife in the water and then go round the bed to the other side and hold him.”

Dr. Hailey retained possession of one of Lord Templewood’s arms. He bared the arm nearly to the shoulder by rolling back the sleeve of the sleeping suit. Then he set his patient’s hand between his knees, and secured it in that position by a method known to his profession.

He took his handkerchief, and bound it round the upper arm, until the skin below this tourniquet was duskier even than Lord Templewood’s face. The veins of the forearm stood out like thick cords.

The doctor took his knife from the antiseptic solution in which Dick had placed it. The small blade flashed, as the drops of water ran over its pure surface.

Next moment, Dr. Hailey had opened one of Lord Templewood’s veins.

The effect on the patient was wonderful beyond anything which Dick had ever seen before. The dusky color passed from the old man’s features, and was replaced by a generous glow. The madness faded from his eyes. His expression grew gentle. He sighed deeply and then closed his eyes. He seemed to be falling into a deep, natural slumber.

The doctor bound up the vein and rose from his seat on the bed. His face was very grave. He signed to Dick to come beside him, and pointed to a tiny red mark on the patient’s upper arm, just below the shoulder.

“Look at that.”

The young man shook his head.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The puncture of a hypodermic needle. I thought that woman was lying when she told me she had given him nothing. She chose this site, high up on the arm, so that it might pass unnoticed.”

Dick gazed at the tiny puncture mark with horrified eyes. He turned to the doctor:

“So that is the explanation?”

He broke off, suppressing at the same time an exclamation of amazement. He pointed to the carpet.

Lying just below Lord Templewood’s pillow, from beneath which it had evidently fallen during the struggle, was a large packet of Treasury notes.

Chapter XXII The Watcher by the Door

Dr. Hailey picked up the notes and examined them carefully. They were not new. It was evident that they had not come direct from a bank. He moved away from the bed, on which his patient now slept soundly. He asked:

“Does he always keep his money under his pillow in that fashion?”

“I was not aware that he did.” Dick hesitated a moment, and then added: “I don’t even know where this money came from. It certainly has not passed through my hands.”

Dr. Hailey made a rough count of the notes.

“There must be nearly eight hundred pounds,” he announced.

He returned to the bed and pushed the packet back into its former resting place. Then he rejoined his companion.

“You had better go to bed. He is not likely to give any more trouble. Curious, isn’t it, that blood-letting should have been so completely abandoned by my profession? In a case of this sort it acts invariably, in my experience, like a charm.”

Dick went away. Dr. Hailey sat down in an armchair and tried to concentrate his thoughts. Why should the announcement of Sacha’s engagement have exercised so profound an effect on her uncle? And who was this Barrington Bryan, to whom she was engaged? Why, again, should Lord Templewood go to sleep with wads of money under his pillow?

Could it be that it was this money which Ninon Darelli hoped to steal when its owner was taken away to an asylum? But no, that was absurd. Had she wished, she could have stolen the money any time while her wretched victim was under the influence of her drugs.

His mind began to wander. He closed his eyes. An immense drowsiness stole over all his senses.

He awoke with a start, and instantly jumped to his feet. He turned to the bed.

It was empty.

He sprang to it and lifted the pillow, which bore, still, the indent of Lord Templewood’s head. The packet of notes was no longer under the pillow.

He hurried to the door of the room. It was standing ajar. He entered the corridor and moved softly along it to the gallery above the great hall. He stopped here and listened. A faint sound of footsteps came to him from the floor above. He strained his senses. The footsteps were almost certainly those of a woman.

They began to descend the stairs. He drew back into the deep shadow of the corridor from which he had just emerged. The steps drew nearer. Was she coming in his direction? He drew back yet another pace.

And then, suddenly, the steps ceased. A light tap on wooden panels sounded across the darkness. He heard the faint turning of a door handle and then the closing of the door.

He waited for a moment or two before venturing to leave his sanctuary. A new sound of footsteps came to him, heavy footsteps this time, descending step by step from the floor above. He caught his breath and crept nearer to the open gallery. The steps lingered interminably. At last, however, they reached the landing.

Dr. Hailey’s mind began to work quickly. He knew that Sacha Malone’s bedroom was on the top floor, and that Dick Lovelace also had a room on that floor. Ninon Darelli, on the other hand.

He caught his breath. The sound of women’s voices had reached him, unmistakably, across the space of the gallery. He moved forward again, scarcely daring to breathe lest he should betray his presence to the other silent watcher by the bedroom door.

Suddenly, a narrow beam of light was thrust out into the darkness, proclaiming that the door had not been properly shut, and had swung slightly ajar. A figure appeared in the beam.

“Dick Lovelace!”

There was a muttered exclamation of horror. The door was thrown open. Dick sprang into the brilliantly lighted room.

Chapter XXIII “Orme from Sacha”

Dr. Hailey tried to reach a point from which he might be able to see and hear what was passing in the bedroom. But before he could accomplish that purpose, it was rendered futile. There was a buzz of whispered voices, an angry buzz, like the “piping” sound which honey bees make when their hive is disturbed, and then Dick came staggering back out of the room.

The door was immediately closed behind him. Dr. Hailey heard the key grate in the lock. Then he heard the railing of the gallery creak, as the young man grasped it, apparently to steady himself. He stood still and waited to see how this strange adventure would end. He was not held long in suspense. Dick shuffled to the stair and began to mount it with stumbling feet.

The doctor lingered until he head a door on the top story close. Then he descended to the great hall and listened again. The old house now was filled with silence. He reascended the stair and listened again.

If the women were still talking, their voices were completely muted by the heavy walls and doors. He passed his hand across his brow. What did it all mean? Why had Sacha gone to the medium’s bedroom at this deep hour of the night? And why had Dick Lovelace followed her there? Again, why had he been so swiftly ejected from the room.

And where, during this time, was Lord Templewood?

He moved back along the corridor to Lord Templewood’s room. As he came to the door, an exclamation of amazement escaped him. He had left it open. It was shut. He grasped the handle and turned it. He entered the room. Lord Temple-wood was lying in bed, apparently fast asleep.

Utter bewilderment overwhelmed him. The corridor ended blindly at his own bedroom door; nobody, certainly, had passed him during the term of his vigil. He started as the truth flashed across his mind. Lord Templewood must have been hiding in the wardrobe or behind one of the pieces of furniture.

He crossed the room and came to his patient. The old man’s sleep was as gentle as that of a child. For what possible reason had he played this strange trick?

Suddenly the doctor’s eyes narrowed. He passed his hand gently under his patient’s pillow. The bundle of notes had not been replaced under the pillow.

He went to the wardrobe and opened it. He glanced inside. The notes were not in the wardrobe.

He kept his vigil until the gray light of morning began to fill the room. The danger that Lord Templewood might be seized with a fit of sleepwalking was remote now; he seemed to be resting in the utmost tranquillity. Dr. Hailey rose and left the room. He went to his own bedroom and lay down for a couple of hours.

When he awoke the day had already ridden into the sky. Level sunbeams were streaming through the open window. He got up and glanced out at the delectable spectacle of this March morning, which promised a day of genial spring. Even the dark waters of the moat seemed to be kindled with laughter.

He visited his patient, and then went out into the young morning. He walked through the shrubbery where, already, almond trees were in full bloom, and came to the Temple of Peace. He gazed in wonder at this strange edifice, trying, as was his habit, to probe the mind of the man who had built it.

He started, and approached closer to the building, shielding his eyes with his hand from the sunlight. Round the walls there was a frieze depicting galloping horsemen. A vacant look came into the doctor’s eyes. So, from the beginning, he thought, have men decorated their shrines with the object of their greatest fear.

He walked on toward the open fields. It was strange, certainly, that the old legend of the horseman should have fitted so exactly the tragedy of Lord Templewood’s own life. He wondered what message of sorrow it was which the girl, Beatrice, had brought with her on that last visit of hers to The Black Tower, when she came galloping through the night to her lover. She had been killed the next morning.

He stopped suddenly and reached out his hand. He picked up an object which his keen eyes had detected lying among the rank weeds under one of the laurel bushes. It was a cigarette case, of silver, heavily tarnished by the weather. He set his eyeglass in his eye and examined it.

As he did so, an exclamation of astonishment broke from his lips.

On the outside of the case were engraved the words: “Orme from Sacha.”

Chapter XXIV When It Began

He opened the case. It was half filled with a shapeless mass of decaying tobacco.

He slipped it into his pocket, and searched carefully around the spot where he had found it. There was nothing else which might afford a clew to the manner in which it had come to this resting place. He turned back to the castle, and ascended to his bedroom.

Dr. Andrews had told him, during his visit the morning before, how Orme Malone had met his death, and had even pointed out the field in which the body of the unfortunate young man was found. The cigarette case had been lying directly between that field and the door of the castle!

Probably it had fallen from the dead man’s pocket when he was being carried to The Black Tower. But no, that was exceedingly unlikely, because a stretcher of some sort must almost certainly have been employed. Dr. Hailey started.

Most men carried their cigarette cases in their waistcoat pockets. Such a position practically insured against loss in all ordinary circumstances. But if the owner of the waistcoat happened to bend down—

Had Orme Malone visited The Black Tower, then, before he met his death? Was this yet another case of a horseman who had come at night to these tragic portals?

He began to pace the floor of the room. Dr. Andrews had said that Lord Temple wood’s mental breakdown really dated from Orme Malone’s death. On the night following Orme’s death, the old man had walked in his sleep and fallen down the stairs from the first gallery to the great hall. He had been severely bruised.

Had that attack of somnambulism originated, like the attack of two nights before, in the fear inspired by a horseman riding after dark to the castle? In that case—

Dr. Hailey leaned his elbows on the mantelpiece and rested his head between his hands. Sacha, he knew, had been staying at The Black Tower at the time of her husband’s death. She had come there a fugitive, seeking sanctuary from his violence and brutality.

According to Dr. Andrews, it was a kind of Providence which had intervened to prevent Orme from reaching her, since the fellow had been drinking heavily for some days, and had actually told his groom that he was going to give his wife a thrashing because of her fancied relations with Dick Lovelace.

He took the cigarette case from his pocket, and examined it again. There could be no doubt that it had lain during long months where he had found it; the tarnish was very heavy, and the contents had been subjected to all kinds of weather conditions.

A look of horror dawned in his eyes. Was it this coming of the dead man to The Black Tower on the night of his death at which Lord Templewood had been hinting when he ordered Sacha to leave the castle and return to Beech Croft, her husband’s home? Was it this dreadful knowledge which had made him so wildly apprehensive about his own safety, and so sure that his niece and Lovelace were plotting his death?

He walked to the window, and looked out with vacant eyes on the smiling day. He turned sharply. Some one had knocked on the door of the room.

“Come in!”

He slipped Orme Malone’s cigarette case back into his pocket.

Dick Lovelace entered the room and closed the door behind him.

Dick was in his dressing gown. His hair was still wet from his morning bath, but his cheeks lacked the glow which the cold water should have imparted to them.

“May I speak to you?”

Dr. Hailey inclined his head. He scrutinized this handsome young man as he advanced across the room with a thrill of swift apprehension. Dick Lovelace did not look the part which inexorable circumstance seemed to be assigning to him, but that, as bitter experience had demonstrated, was no proof of guiltlessness. Dick’s agitation was painful.

“Last night,” he stammered, “I discovered that Ninon Darelli is giving Mrs. Malone injections of drugs.”

His voice shook as he spoke. This revelation, following the awful experience with Lord Templewood, had unnerved him. The doctor’s expression remained rather vacant.

“I couldn’t sleep. I heard footsteps passing my door. I got out and listened. Somehow I knew it was Sacha. She went down to the woman’s bedroom, and I followed her. The door had not been closed; I heard her ask for an injection.” He paused.

His eyes were wide with fear and dismay. He raised his hand to his brow, and Dr. Hailey saw that his fingers were twitching. The horror of his failure to prevent the injection being given was in his face.

“What does it mean?” he asked, in accents of dread.

“I don’t know.” The doctor spoke deliberately, as if he were weighing every word. He came to the mantelpiece and rested one of his arms on it.

“Mrs. Malone,” he asked, “was very unhappy with her husband, was she not? It is just possible that, during his lifetime—”

Dr. Hailey’s face was in the shadow. Dick’s face, on the contrary, was turned toward the window.

“Sacha never took drugs during her husband’s lifetime!” he exclaimed in positive tones. “It is certainly only since.”

He broke off. A slight flush had come to his pale cheeks.

“Yes?”

“Since she became engaged to Barrington Bryan that this terrible habit has been concentrated.”

“How long ago was that?”

The young man shook his head. “I don’t quite know.”

“Bryan is a local squire, isn’t he?”

“Yes. His place, Redden Hall, is the next one to this.”

Dr. Hailey raised his eyeglass and set it carefully in his eye.

“Have you any reason to think — to fear — that Mrs. Malone’s engagement to this man has been forced on her?” he asked in quiet tones.

“None. How could it be forced on her?”

Dick’s face was innocent of any expression except that of surprise.

“I mean that — that some threat has been used to make her give her consent. When a woman is tormented by her feelings, she is very apt to resort to anodynes.”

“I am sure that is not the explanation.”

Dr. Hailey allowed his eyeglass to drop.

“There was no gossip, was there,” he asked, “about the rather strange manner of her husband’s death? No evilly disposed tongue suggested—”

He broke off. Dick’s cheeks had become ashen in their pallor.

Chapter XXV A Black Streak

Dr. Hailey waited a moment until Dick had so far recovered himself as to be able to answer him. Then he repeated his question. The young man fumbled in the pocket of his dressing gown and produced a cigarette case. He opened it with trembling hands and took out a cigarette. He tapped the cigarette on the side of the case.

“There was no gossip of any kind,” he said, in low tones. “Orme Malone was a drunken ruffian. Nobody was surprised that he should have been thrown from his horse.”

“I was not referring to the manner of his death, so much as to the place where it occurred. Dr. Andrews told me about it yesterday.”

Dick struck a match. He extinguished it with his own breath, while he was trying to light his cigarette. He struck another and waited to allow it to burn up. The flame zigzagged.

“The field where his body was found lies in a direct line between here and Beech Croft,” he declared. “He was coming here without a shadow of doubt. He always took that short cut through the fields.”

He lit his cigarette.

“Is there nothing which can be done,” he demanded abruptly, “to save Sacha from this vampire?”

“Nothing. Unless you take the extreme step of calling in the police. Even then, I doubt if you would accomplish your end. I am nearly certain that it was not cocaine, but Indian hemp, the famous hashish, which Ninon Darelli administered to Lord Templewood last night.”

Dick closed his eyes for an instant. Then he glanced at the cigarette which had burst between his fingers. He threw it into the grate.

“What are the effects of hashish?” he asked, in low tones.

“Illusions. A doctor friend of mine who took some small doses once, as an experiment, saw a race course, with grand stand and bookmakers complete, in the middle of Harley Street. That, however, is not the earliest effect. Most people, at first, experience a wonderful sense of well-being.

“The illusions and hallucinations come later, sometimes when the supply of the drug is suddenly cut off. Then, even the senses of time and distance may be completely lost.

“Big doses, such as Lord Templewood received, bring on convulsions, and lead to insanity. Or they may drive their victim to criminal acts, even to murder. The Malays, who run amuck and kill are all hashish fiends.”

Dick went away. He climbed the stairs to his bedroom with quick steps. A new fear and a new excitement were in his eyes. He dressed, and then hurried to Sacha’s room. He knocked sharply.

“May I come in?”

Sacha was fully dressed; she gave him her hand, in the manner of the old days, and then resumed the brushing of her hair. She brushed in long, steady sweeps which made the surface hair rise up like a golden mist about her brows and temples. She smiled into the looking glass, and so back at Dick.

He blurted out the question which he had come to ask. The brush fell with a thud from Sacha’s hand.

“It is not true,” she declared. “I am marrying Barrington because I wish to marry him. For that reason only.”

She picked up the brush again, and leaned forward closer to the mirror, so as to command a better view of his face. He was frowning.

“Barrington Bryan is quite capable of—”

He stopped.

Sacha brushed her hair again. She knew that in a moment he would compel her to look into his face. She turned to him.

“Why should you doubt me?” she asked.

“Because—” He clasped his brow. “Oh my God! why not, why not?” She felt his hands on her shoulders, gripping them with swift violence. “Say you love Barrington Bryan?”

“I love Barrington Bryan.”

“I do not love you.”

With a quick gesture, he pulled back the sleeve of her dress, exposing the tiny red punctures of Ninon’s hypodermic needle.

“Love,” he commented, “does not fly to drugs.”

Sacha closed her eyes. Her strength was so little secure, that already she had almost lost it. And yet, she must not lose it, for if she faltered, he would make sacrifice of himself. She jumped up and faced him.

“Listen, Dick,” she cried, breathlessly. “I am not the good, kind, gentle, faithful girl you believe me to be. No girl could have been Orme Malone’s wife and remained — uncontaminated. There is a black streak in me now. Barrington, you see, reminds me of Orme.”

She broke off. Her eyes had not swerved before his eyes. She managed to smile.

“You are such a good man, Dick, and there are so many unspoiled girls in the world.”

“I don’t care what you may be.”

“Listen; I have been taking drugs for months. I can’t live now without them — nor without the sort of life to which they lead a woman, Orme’s life, Barrington’s life, my life.”

She came near him and held the top button of his waistcoat to make him her prisoner.

“Orme’s father died of drink, Barrington’s father died of dope. Orme died of drink. Barrington takes dope. I take dope. And so on — and so on.”

Her voice sailed away on a laugh, like small ripples on a wave.

“You see, I am a bad woman, really.”

“You are under the influence of drugs.” She shook her head.

“A little, perhaps. But I always am — a little.” She allowed her eyes to fall, but she retained possession of his waistcoat button.

“Do you know why I take drugs?” she asked him, in tones which made him shudder.

The button was plucked from her fingers. “Oh God, it is too horrible!”

Sacha held out her hand to him.

“Good-by, Dick dear.”

She knelt by the bed when he had gone, and thanked God because he had not taken her hand. And then she wept, and when she had wept, laughed softly just as if she were crying, and then she laughed and cried together.

She started to her feet.

“Oh, Ninon, what a fright you gave me. Ninon, I have sent him away. So now you will give me some more—”

She uttered a cry of dismay.

“Dick! Why, a moment ago you looked exactly like Ninon. Now isn’t that funny?”

Dick did not advance beyond the threshold of the room.

“Your uncle has ordered Mlle. Darelli to return at once to London,” he announced. “He has refused to see her before she goes.” He paused. His face was grim and drawn. “I should tell you perhaps, that she tried to poison him last night. Only Dr. Hailey’s promptness saved his reason, or his life.”

Sacha sank down on the bed and covered her face with her hands.

“Oh well, what does it matter anyhow,” she murmured. “Uncle Gerald has lived his life.”

She did not raise her eyes, but she heard his feet shuffle on the wooden floor.

“He wishes you to go back to Beech Croft as soon as possible.”

“Has Ninon gone?”

“No.”

Sacha looked up. “I shall take her with me to Beech Croft. I have arranged to go to the Hunt Ball to-night. My servants are coming from London to-day.”

Dick flung the door shut behind him and came to her side.

“Don’t, don’t,” he pleaded. “She is vile, unutterably vile. It will be worse than Orme, than Barrington.”

She raised her shoulders.

“She is a woman of the world, Dick; of my world.”

His hands clenched till the knuckles showed white. He turned and left her.

Chapter XXVI The Stain on the Floor

After breakfast, which he ate alone in the big, somber dining room, Dr. Hailey returned to the spot where he had found Orme Malone’s cigarette case. The case had been lying about a foot to the righthand side of the carriageway — exactly where it might be expected to fall if its owner’s body were carried flung over somebody’s right shoulder. The doctor knelt down and examined the grass in the neighborhood. He raised some of the yellow, dead tufts which the winter snows and rains had beaten down.

He continued this search for more than an hour without achieving any result. He abandoned it and walked back to the house.

The great hall was empty. He crossed it to the fireplace, and stood for a moment warming himself at the cheerful blaze. He stepped inside the high, old-fashioned fender in order to get nearer to the fire which was set in an immense iron basket standing in the center of the brick embrasure.

The embrasure was so large that there was room for him to stand behind the fire, and even to walk right round it. His eyes scanned the flagstones methodically, and then directed their gaze to the polished floor.

After a few moments, he left his position in the embrasure and drew aside one of the heavy Turkish mats which were spread on the floor. He cast his eyes quickly over the place which had been covered. He pulled the mat into position again and repeated the process with each of the others.

The floor, like the flagstones, was without the suspicion of a stain.

He went and sat down in one of the big leather armchairs which were placed near the fire. He took his snuffbox from his pocket and opened it carefully. If Dick Lovelace had not exhibited such manifest signs of anxiety when challenged about Orme Malone’s death, he would have dismissed the matter from his thoughts — for, after all, it was possible that the cigarette case had been lost on some occasion other than the fatal night.

But Dick’s pallor, and his refusal to discuss the subject farther than was absolutely necessary, had whetted his instinct as a detective. He took a pinch of snuff and shut the box with a snap. It was certain, at any rate, that Lovelace was himself hopelessly in love with Mrs. Malone.

He leaned forward in his chair. If one began with that fact and added to it the self-confessed jealousy of the dead man toward his wife.

“Hullo!”

He bent forward with his eyes fixed on a dark spot on the floor just below the fender. He rose and knelt down, at the same time setting his eyeglass in his eye.

The fender, and he could now see, had been shifted slightly out of its usual position, for the waxing of the floor stopped short just where the stain began. Perhaps he had moved it when he was warming himself.

He felt in his pocket and found the small magnifying glass which was as invariable a companion of his activities as his flash lamp. He focused it on the stain.

There could be no doubt that an effort — probably many efforts — had been made to wash the stain out of the wood. They had not succeeded, because the wood at this place was unwaxed.

With his pocket knife he carefully cut away a splinter of the stained wood. He rose to his feet.

He started slightly.

Dick Lovelace was standing on the staircase, watching him.

Dr. Hailey wondered whether or not he should put his cards on the table at once, and demand of Dick Lovelace an explanation of the discoveries which he had made.

He decided against that course. The stain, after all, might not be a blood stain, and, uncorroborated, the cigarette case was too flimsy a piece of evidence on which to base so grave a charge. He slipped the splinter of wood into his pocket and sat down again. He contrived to move the fender slightly with the toe of his boot, so as to cover the mark which his knife had made on the floor.

Dick came to him and gave him an exact account of his interview with Sacha. He laid special emphasis on the fact that, on his second visit to the room, the girl had mistaken him for Ninon Darelli.

“That is hashhish, isn’t it?”

“That is hashish. The effect of the dose she got last night must be wearing off.”

Dick was standing with his back to the fire. He raised one foot and set his instep on the top of the high fender.

“Is all the rest hashish also? I mean, about the influence of her husband?”

Dr. Hailey lowered his eyes. The fender had moved slightly.

“It is possible. On the other hand, there is no doubt that a bad man can deprave even the best woman. Drugs, as perhaps you know, frequently represent what modern psychology calls a ‘substitute.’ ”

Dick moved his knee so that the fender grated on the floor. He shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

“The use of them may symbolize an emotion which has not found its natural expression.” Dr. Hailey raised his eyes for a moment. “I fancy, for example,” he said, “that Lord Templewood took to drugs after his fiancée, Beatrice, was killed, though I don’t think that it was her death which impelled him to that course. As I suggested to you the other night, Beatrice’s last visit to this house was almost certainly a visit of tragedy.”

He broke off and glanced down again. The end of the hollow, from which he had cut his splinter of wood, was just showing beyond the edge of the fender.

“If we suppose that Beatrice came to break off her engagement, violent emotions must, from that hour, have been pent up in your employer’s heart. The accident next day, in the hunting field, removed forever all possibility of their release. Very well, then, those who are baulked of their satisfaction in the real world turn to the unreal, the world of dreams, of fantasies. The master key to that unreal world is dope. Dope becomes a symbol of the thing lost.”

The fender grated again. Dr. Hailey glanced up and perceived that his companion was gazing in horror at the cut in the floor. He saw him moisten his lips with his tongue.

“Why did you remove that piece of wood?” Dick asked in low tones and without raising his eyes.

“Because I am interested in what is called microspectroscopy. Every stain is a fresh problem to the student of that new branch of science.”

The fender grated again. The cut was covered from sight.

“As it happens,” the young man said, “I can save you the trouble of making an examination in this case. That is a bloodstain, and the blood is mine. I cut my finger here one night when I was trying to cut a cigar.”

Dr. Hailey rose and extracted his snuffbox.

“Even so,” he remarked, “the problem should be interesting. The stain seems to be a pretty old one.”

He crossed the hall and ascended the massive staircase that led to Lord Temple wood’s bedroom.

Chapter XXVII The First Time the Horseman Rode

Lord Templewood was sitting in an armchair reading the Bible. Dr. Hailey observed that the volume was open at the Book of Revelation. He took the chair which the old man offered him with a movement of his fleshless hand.

Lord Templewood closed his Bible, and laid it on a small table beside him.

“Behold a pale horse,” he quoted, “and him that sat on him was Death.” He raised his eyes. “You have come to tell me that Ninon tried to poison me last night?”

“Yes.”

The doctor concealed his surprise by raising his eyeglass to his eye. The old man sighed deeply.

“I have sent her away for good,” he declared. “She and Sacha also.”

“You know that she has been giving drugs to your niece?”

Lord Templewood’s chair moved back sharply on its castors.

“That too,” he whispered.

He put out his left hand and rested it on the cover of his Bible. The fingers seemed to clutch at the well-used pages.

“Like father like son.”

He leaned toward the doctor.

“Barrington Bryan, to whom my niece is engaged, is a scoundrel, as was his father, Willoughby Bryan, before him. Ninon Darelli has told me of him.” Dr. Hailey moved his chair so that his back was squarely set toward the window.

“So they are friends,” he remarked; “the woman and your neighbor Bryan?”

“They know one another.” Lord Templewood closed his lips. “Oh, yes, they know one another.”

The doctor’s chair, which was of wicker work, creaked.

“Is it permissible to ask,” he queried, “whether you connect this engagement of Mrs. Malone to Bryan in any way with his acquaintanceship with Mlle. Darelli?”

He spoke in casual tones. But he watched the old man closely as he spoke. Lord Templewood’s face remained expressionless.

“I have not thought about it.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “Ninon’s going is a heavy blow,” he declared. “It will be necessary to obtain a new medium.”

“She has been with you a long time?”

“Four years.”

Again Dr. Hailey’s chair creaked.

“Do you happen to remember,” he asked, “whether or not she was staying here on the night when Mrs. Malone’s husband met his death? I may explain that I have a special reason for seeking that information.”

“Yes, she was staying here.”

Lord Templewood’s fingers dug between the gilded leaves of his Bible. An expression of fear came into his eyes.

“It was on that night,” he declared, in tones of dismay, “that the Horseman of Death rode for the first time in my experience, to the door of The Black Tower. I heard him myself, and I was alone in this room. The next morning my niece’s husband was found lying with his head battered in. He must have been on his way here when he met his death.”

“That is according to the family legend, is it not?”

The old man inclined his head.

“When any member of my family, or the husband or wife of any member of my family, is about to suffer a tragic death,” he stated, “a horseman rides by night to the great door of the castle.”

His voice failed. His head sank down on his chest. He murmured.

“I have no doubt that it is the Spirit of Evil himself.”

Dr. Hailey opened his snuffbox and took a pinch.

“Where was Ninon Darelli at that moment?” he asked, in quiet tones.

“I don’t know. She was not here, in this room.”

Suddenly Lord Templewood raised flashing eyes to the doctor’s face.

“If you are hinting, sir!” he exclaimed, “that that woman reproduced the sound of the horse’s hooves by fraud, I can tell you that you are very much mistaken. The night was clear, with a half moon. I looked out at that window. With my own eyes I saw the horseman ride round the side of the castle to the great door.”

He sprang to his feet. His cheeks had become livid.

“I saw him; but I did not recognize him. It was only the next day, when I learned that Orme Malone had never reached this house at all, that I realized who it was that I had seen.”

Dr. Hailey rose also.

“I think it is my duty,” he said, in firm tones, “to tell you, Lord Templewood, that there are strong reasons for supposing that your first impression of the horseman was the correct one. I am not yet absolutely sure, but I possess evidence of an important kind in support of my opinion that Orme Malone did ride to this house on the night on which he met his death.”

He lowered his voice as he added:

“It was in this house, I think, that he met his death.”

He sprang forward as he spoke.

Lord Templewood had fallen in a faint on the floor.

Chapter XXVIII “How to Deal with Murder”

That same afternoon Dr. Hailey returned to London. He had definitely made up his mind that Lord Templewood was sane, and had informed Dr. Andrews, of Redden, of this decision.

As soon as he reached Harley Street, he went to the small laboratory which he had recently installed and took the splinter of stained wood from his pocket. He set the splinter in a test-tube and poured a few drops of a clear fluid into the tube beside it.

Half an hour later the clear fluid had assumed a delicate pink hue. He placed a few drops of it under his microscope.

There was nothing to be seen but a blur of débris, which might be anything or nothing. He rose, and with great care screwed an instrument, like a small brass telescope, to the eyepiece of the microscope. Then he looked again.

The new instrument showed him the seven colors of the spectrum, the “rainbow colors”; it showed him also that, in this case, two dark bands, placed close together, crossed the spectrum. One of these was in the orange and the other lay at the junction of the yellow and the green.

“Blood!”

He rose and took another test-tube. He poured a little of the pink fluid into it, and added to this two or three drops of a substance from a bottle labeled “Tincture of guaiac.” The test-tube seemed, immediately, to be filled with milk. He took a bottle of ozonic ether, and added a little of that substance to the milky fluid. A ring of delicate blue formed around the tube, at the point where the two fluids met.

“Blood!”

He rang the bell, and ordered his man, Jenkins, to call a cab.

He told the driver to take him to 2000 Brook Street.

Dr. Hailey’s impression of Ninon Darelli’s waiting room was rather different from Sacha’s impression. Where Sacha had seen only the simplicity of a convent, the eyes of the man detected corruption. Innocence, he reflected, which is conscious, is utter depravity.

He seated himself on one of the bare chairs that looked as if pious hands scrubbed them daily in pious service. He focused his eyeglass on the wooden arm at his side. It had been painted with clear lacquer, which, at a distance, was invisible.

There was dust on the lacquer.

There was dust, too, on the table in the center of the room, on the petals of the deep blue anemones which decorated the table, on the walls — everywhere; the more unchaste by reason of its inconspicuousness.

He closed his eyes. Suddenly he leaned forward, listening.

Quick footsteps were approaching along the corridor.

The steps came to the door of the room. They paused there, an instant, and then resumed their way. Dr. Hailey sprang to the door and threw it open. He saw a woman fumbling with the latch of the front door. Before she was able to open the door he was at her side.

“From here,” he said in low tones, “I go straight to Scotland Yard. They will know there how to deal with — murder.”

Ninon Darelli’s hands fell away from the latch. She caught her breath. The door moved gently ajar, impelled by some errant breath of wind.

Dr. Hailey shut the door.

Chapter XXIX From a Branding Iron

Ninon Darelli led the way back to the waiting room from which Dr. Hailey had just come. She stood aside for him to enter the room, and. then followed him into it and dosed the door behind her.

“I have some one with me to consult me in my own room,” she announced.

She indicated one of the bare chairs. The doctor drew it up to the dusty table and sat down. He waited until she should be seated, but she remained standing with the tips of her fingers resting on the table.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

“I want you to tell me exactly what happened at The Black Tower on the night on which Orme Malone, Mrs. Malone’s husband, met his death.”

Dr. Hailey’s tones were gentle. He saw the pink finger tips move slightly, as though the pressure on them had been relaxed suddenly.

“I do not think that anything happened.”

“You were in the castle on that night?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear anything?”

Ninon closed the hand on which she had been leaning. Then she extended her index finger. He saw her draw her finger across the dust which lay on the tabletop.

She shook her head.

“It is not easy to hear in that house.”

He thought a moment, and then asked:

“What bedroom did you occupy at that time?”

“Always the same. It is at the back of the house, you know.”

“But its door opens on the gallery above the great hall.”

“Oh, yes.”

Ninon’s finger crossed the first line with a second.

“Orme Malone,” Dr. Hailey said, “met his death in the great hall.”

His eyes were fixed on her face. She did not flinch.

“I do not know. It was said otherwise at the time.”

She withdrew her hands altogether from the table. She flung the hair back from her brows.

“I find it very difficult to believe that you do not know,” he said. “Malone rode to the door of the house. He rode across the drawbridge. He knocked on the door. And he was drunk. After his death, his body was carried out of the house. As I have reason to know, the sound of a horse’s hooves at the front door is clearly audible in most parts of the castle.”

He broke off. His gaze was still set on her face.

“I do not know. That night I went to sleep very early.”

Ninon’s tones were as restrained as those of her accuser, but Dr. Hailey fancied that she had grown slightly paler. He leaned back in his chair, and adjusted his eyeglass.

“Lord Templewood heard the sound of the horse’s hooves,” he declared. “He told me so this morning.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

The girl leaned forward and plucked one of the blue anemones from the bowl in the center of the table. A little shower of dust fell from its petals as she did so. She pulled off one of its petals and dropped it on the lacquered surface.

“He told you?”

“Oh, yes.”

A smile flickered on the doctor’s lips.

“And you naturally assumed, as he had assumed, that this was a visitation by the Horseman of Death, the family ghost?”

His tones caressed her. She crushed the flower in her hand and flung it down, violently, on the floor. To his surprise, he saw tears gleaming in her eyes.

“That is what I think now, this minute.”

“I see. And that, no doubt, is what suggested to your mind, in the first instance, the admirable reproduction of the sounds of a galloping horse with which you entertained us all the other evening.”

“It is not true.”

Her tones rang with repudiation of his charge.

“What is not true?”

“That I have cheated to make that sound.”

She caught her brow in her hand, clasping it so that her nails grew white.

“On the other hand, it is true that the sound frightened Lord Templewood nearly out of his wits; and was very well calculated to exercise exactly that effect on him.”

Dr. Hailey rose as he spoke. He allowed his eyeglass to drop. He added:

“And it is also true that last night you gave him an injection of hashish into his right shoulder of so potent a kind that, had not help been immediately available, he must inevitably have become insane. May I ask why you have been trying to rob Lord Templewood of his reason?”

Ninon had recoiled a step. Now, with a swift gesture, she drew the collar of her frock away from her left shoulder, exposing to him its bare contour.

“You shall see,” she cried, in her contralto voice.

Dr. Hailey uttered an exclamation of horror.

Across the fair white of the shoulder was a weal, livid as the healed scar of a branding iron.

Chapter XXX “You Know the Man”

“That is where he wounded me one I night when he walked in his sleep to my bedroom.”

Ninon drew her shoulders together as she spoke, defending herself anew against that hideous recollection. The breath hissed between her lips.

“On that night also, he had tried to cut his own throat. There was blood on his neck.”

She moved her hand in an imperious gesture which bade Dr. Hailey be seated. She approached him with her shoulder still bared. She added:

“So he would have wounded Mrs. Malone, if I had not been with her the other night to call his Beatrice to him.” Her eyes grew misty suddenly. She lowered her voice to a whisper.

“And I will tell you why. It was, thus, twenty years ago, that he wounded Beatrice in the great hall of his castle when she came to confess to him that Willoughby Bryan was her lover, and to ask his forgiveness. Each time that he walks in his sleep, it is to keep the same tryst with that frail one.”

Ninon snatched at her frock, and so drew it again over the scar.

“Is not hashish,” she demanded, “a good medicine for such cases?”

Dr. Hailey did not reply for a moment, but his expression was troubled.

“That explanation,” he said at last, “can scarcely be stretched to cover the case of Mrs. Malone, to whom, as I understand, you are also giving this drug.”

He raised his eyes, from which the horror had not wholly passed away, to her eyes. Ninon sighed deeply. She told him how she had rescued Sacha from the gas-filled bedroom. Then suddenly she collapsed into one of her lacquer chairs and buried her head in her arms.

She began to sob bitterly, passionately, like a child whose nerves have been utterly overwrought. Dr. Hailey thought that she looked a lonely little figure, even, perhaps, in her misguided faith, and in spite of her trickery, a pathetic little figure. He laid his hand on her shoulder in a kindly gesture.

The girl looked up at him. Her mysterious eyes were veiled by her tears.

“When people are in great trouble,” she said simply, “usually they come to me. I have done for them what I could — for Lord Templewood, for Sacha Malone.”

The doctor inclined his head.

“Mrs. Malone,” he asked, “did not tell you, did she, the nature of her trouble?”

“No. And I did not ask her to tell me. I do not seek to know of such things.”

She pressed a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes.

“It may be that what you have said about the death of her husband is the reason why she is afraid. It is not for herself that she fears, no; but for Mr. Dick Lovelace. I am sure.”

Dr. Hailey leaned toward the girl.

“She told you that?”

“Oh, yes. Listen: before I gave her my medicine, she told me, ‘Dick Lovelace is in terrible danger.’ ”

Ninon bent her head again, and that action prevented her from seeing that her last words had caused the doctor’s eyes to narrow. His gaze traveled from the miserable little figure at his side, to the bowl of anemones in front of him. It remained fixed, vacantly, on the garish flowers. Why should Sacha be so greatly afraid of Dick Lovelace, seeing that she was about to marry Barrington Bryan?

He started. He leaned toward Ninon.

“Last night,” he said, “Dick Lovelace told Lord Templewood, in my hearing, that Mrs. Malone was engaged to a man named Bryan, Barrington Bryan. I understand from Lord Templewood that you know this man.”

He got no farther than that.

Ninon had raised her head, and was staring at him.

She made a swift, furtive gesture with her right hand.

Dr. Hailey realized, with a thrill of astonishment, that she had crossed herself.

Chapter XXXI Lash of the Whip

Ninon moistened her lips, but no words came from them. The muscles of her shoulders began to twitch. Then she shivered all over her body.

“It is very cold in this room.”

She spoke breathlessly, as nervous people speak when they are anticipating danger. Dr. Hailey remembered that he had witnessed just such conduct in patients with neurasthenia during the German air raids on London — between the sounding of the first warning signal and the arrival of the enemy.

“Do you happen to know,” he asked, “whether Barrington Bryan was staying at his place in Leicestershire on the night when Orme Malone met his death?”

The girl glanced wildly about her, at the walls, the ceiling, the windows.

“Oh, no,” she muttered. “He was not there.”

“You are quite sure of that?”

“I am sure — because on that night he spoke to me on the telephone from London. It is a trunk call.”

She was still shivering and still her eyes wandered about the room.

“In that case,” the doctor said, “it is not possible that Bryan could have known anything about the real manner of Orme Malone’s death?”

Ninon started. She seemed to try to collect her wits.

“It is possible that some one, the servants or the peasants might have seen — something, and told him.”

“No. Had that happened, the whole world would have known. Servants and country folk in England never keep knowledge of a tragedy to themselves when that tragedy has reached the coroner’s court.” He contracted his brows. “If what you say is true, that Mrs. Malone attempted to commit suicide—”

Ninon was not listening to him. Fear was in her eyes, in her posture, in her breath. He rose to his feet.

“I am going to be frank with you,” he said. “You have told me that Mrs. Malone tried to take her own life because she feared for Dick Lovelace’s safety. And I know that when she made this attempt she was engaged to Barrington Bryan.

“Why should she fear for Lovelace’s safety? Why should she so greatly concern herself about it? May not the answer be that she was really in love with the man who had helped her to get rid of her drunken and infamous husband, and that this engagement had been forced on her by Bryan, under the threat of criminal proceedings against that man?”

Dr. Hailey raised his eyeglass. He had the satisfaction of observing that Ninon was now attending closely to his words.

“My difficulty,” he added, “is that you tell me Barrington Bryan was not at Redden on the night of the tragedy.”

He paused, giving the girl a chance to speak; but she remained silent.

“I am quite certain that Lord Temple wood did not furnish any information to Bryan,” he went on. “And it is incredible that either Lovelace or Mrs. Malone did so. Nor do I believe for a moment that the servants or the country folk knew anything.” His voice became grave. “There is only yourself left among those who could, possibly have played the part of ‘informer.’ ”

He broke off. Ninon jumped to her feet.

A wild cry of fear had come ringing to their ears from a distant apartment of the flat.

Ninon Darelli sprang to the door of the room and threw it open. She ran along the corridor toward another door which Dr. Hailey saw was shut. He was by her side before she had time to open this door.

When she opened it, a cry broke from the doctor’s lips.

Kneeling on a couch in the room, with her arms outstretched in supplication, was Sacha Malone. Above her eyes, across the white pallor of her brow, a long red weal extended from temple to temple. Beside the couch, on a small table, was Ninon Darelli’s crystal on its pedestal of black velvet.

He glanced round the room, seeking the girl’s assailant.

There was nobody in the room.

Nor did it seem possible that anybody could have escaped from it, for the windows, as he saw, were bolted, and the walls lacked so much as a cupboard to afford concealment. Ninon came to Sacha and spoke to her in low tones, her musical voice falling graciously in the silence. The girl’s body seemed to relax. She suffered herself to be laid gently on the couch. Ninon turned to the doctor in mute horror.

“Somebody has been here.”

She ran to the windows and examined their fastenings. He saw her clutch at the curtains which were rolled back from one of the windows. The wooden rings of the curtain rattled on their pole. She stood shivering, as she had shivered in the waiting room when he told her that Dick Lovelace had informed Lord Templewood of Sacha’s engagement to Barrington Bryan.

She stared fixedly at the weal on Sacha’s brow.

The doctor came and looked down at the sleeping girl. The weal was bright red along its margins, but in the center it was rather pale. A whip-lash might have inflicted such an injury. He was aware of a curious sense of uneasiness. It was incredible that the girl could have struck her own brow in this fashion.

He glanced up. Ninon was still holding the curtain.

“Did you hear anything — any foot-steps?” he asked.

“No, no. There was nothing.”

The curtain rods rattled again. Dr. Hailey adjusted his eyeglass.

“My God!”

He bent down over the sleeping girl. He held his eyeglass, focused, just above the weal.

The white line had become paler, much paler, between its borders of scarlet. He straightened himself, and turned to the medium.

And, just then, Sacha cried out again, shrilly, piteously. She raised herself to her knees and shrank away from him. She put up her two hands to her brow as though she would shield herself against some dreadful assault.

“Oh, no, oh, no, please,” she cried in accents of supplication.

Dr. Hailey laid his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Malone.”

He withdrew his hand quickly, because his gesture had added to her fear. She thrust him away from her with her hands, revealing anew the streak which seemed, every moment, to be growing more vivid.

“I swear it is not true. Orme, I swear that it is not true. Oh, do not strike me. Do not—”

Sacha cried out again, and again shielded her face from violence. The curtain rings rattled in strange discord. Dr. Hailey turned to Ninon.

“Cannot you wake her? For God’s sake, wake her if you can.”

Ninon approached the bed, but her coming was the occasion of a fresh outburst. The piteous tones pleaded anew for mercy.

“Listen. Oh, listen to me, Orme. Dick is my friend, that and nothing more. You will not hurt me, Orme, you must not hurt me. You must not.”

Suddenly, the wild eyes closed. The tense muscles were relaxed. Sacha sank down on the couch.

“Look!” Ninon pointed to the weal with a tremulous finger.

The white portion of it had risen above the surface of the skin, assuming a clear aspect like a blister.

Dr. Hailey caught the medium’s wrist. He drew her close to him.

“Did you? Have you given her more hashish?” he demanded, in a whisper.

“Only a little more.”

His eyes hardened against her.

“It is that.”

“But the scar, I have not touched her, I swear it.”

He did not reply. He stood gazing at Sacha’s face, on which, from moment to moment, the weal rose more and more distinctly from its scarlet background. Not before, in all his professional experience, bad he beheld with his own eyes so wondrous a reproduction of the phenomenon known to his profession as Dermatographism, or skin writing, a condition in which the lightest touch produces a great weal, so that a man may write his name on his body with a feather.

He came and knelt beside Sacha and drew his finger nail lightly across the skin of her forearm. Then he stood up and remained with his eyes fixed on the place which he had touched.

A scarlet blush spread, in sinuous line, across the white skin. Then, in the scarlet, there developed a pale streak, running centrally through it from end to end.

A few moments later, the pale streak had risen above the level of the surface of the skin.

“What is it?” Ninon beseeched him.

“Hashish.”

Dr. Hailey indicated the weal on Sacha’s brow. He added:

“That, and the memory of the blow which her husband struck her with his whip, the memory of overwhelming fear revived under the hypnotism which your crystal has induced.”

He was silent a moment; then he asked:

“Did you see her on the day following Orme Malone’s death?”

“Oh yes.”

Ninon started.

“It is true,” she cried, “because, on that day, she was wearing, for the first time, a fringe of her hair on her brow. I am sure—”

Chapter XXXII Blows from the Grave

Dr. Hailey moved across the room to the fireplace. He signed to Ninon to join him.

“When did she come here this afternoon?” he asked, low tones.

“A little while before you came.”

“To get you to give her another dose?”

“Yes, and to gaze also into my crystal. Yesterday, I have shown her—”

Ninon moved her hands in a semicircle.

“That means that she is still on the rack of anxiety.”

He stood with vacant eyes gazing at the wall in front of him. Ninon knelt down and spread out her hands to the fire. Then she took the tongs and put some pieces of coal on the fire.

“Lord Templewood,” Dr. Hailey said, “used a very strange expression when I told him that you were giving drugs to his niece.”

He glanced down at Ninon as he spoke. She was in the act of transferring a piece of coal from the box to the fire. The course of the tongs was immediately arrested.

“Yes?”

“He said: ‘That, too—’ and then he added: ‘Like father, like son.’ I think in reference to Barrington Bryan, though I was not able at the time to see the connect—”

The tongs fell with a crash on to the fender.

At the same moment, while Ninon crouched at the doctor’s feet, like a wild creature stricken to death, Sacha sprang from the couch.

“Dick, Dick,” she cried, “what has happened? Oh, Dick, what has happened?”

She came unsteadily to the small table on which the crystal was standing. She caught at the edge of the table. Then she moved round the table until she reached a point from which the fireplace was visible.

“Oh, Dick, he isn’t — Dick, he doesn’t move; he’s not moving, Dick! Dick, he’s not moving!”

Sacha’s voice fell to a whisper.

“Is he breathing? Dick, I’ll get a looking-glass from my room to see if he’s breathing. Oh, why doesn’t he move? And his face is so pale, too. His face is terribly pale, Dick. I’m sure there must be something wrong.”

She caught her breath in a gasp. Her unseeing eyes were wide with horror.

“Perhaps he’s fainted. Shall I get some water? Shall I get some water, Dick?”

Dr. Hailey put out his hands and took Sacha’s hands.

“He’s all right,” he said, in firm tones, “don’t be frightened about him.”

“He isn’t all right, Dick—”

She withdrew her hands suddenly.

“Oh, dear, we must do something. We must do something. He mustn’t be found here like this. Dick, if he is found here—”

The doctor put his arm about her shoulders. He led her back to the couch, and this time she made no attempt to escape from him. When she had dosed her eyes again, he saw that the weal on her brow had begun to fade. That on her forearm was already a mere thread of pink. He turned to Ninon, who had risen and was standing with one elbow on the mantelpiece.

“Can nothing be done to wake her?”

The girl shook her head. He saw that she had begun to tremble again. Her lips were blue, as though she chilled for a fever.

“She has hypnotized herself with the crystal. She must sleep till she wakes of herself.”

Dr. Hailey returned to the fireplace.

“I think,” he said, “that it was your dropping of the tongs into the fender which roused her. I have reason to believe that Orme Malone’s head struck the fender in the great hall when he fell.”

He broke off. Ninon was sobbing again, as she had sobbed before in the waiting room. Her nerves seemed to be utterly unstrung.

“Will you not sit down? It may be some time yet before she awakes.”

The girl sank into a chair. She rested her brow on her arm, showing him the admirable curve of her neck, with its close-cropped black hair. She was still shivering. He crossed the room to the door, which they had left standing ajar, and closed it.

“What was that?”

Sacha moved uneasily, as she spoke. She raised herself on her elbow.

“What was that, Dick?” She looked up to the ceiling of the room, appearing to challenge an invisible danger. “Didn’t you hear a door? There must be some one. Oh, Dick, if anybody should be watching!”

She sank down again. Dr. Hailey came to her and drew a chair up to the side of the couch. He seated himself, and took one of her hands in his hands.

“You will wake up soon, now,” he said in gentle tones.

He laid his hand on Sacha’s brow, and pressed his fingers lightly on her eyeballs. He repeated his words over and over again, always in the same tones. The girl, however, did not respond to his attempts at counter-hypnosis.

On the contrary, she began to moan. She drew one of her fingers across her brow. He saw the weal on her brow, which had faded, begin to glow again. He watched it with melancholy eyes. Whatever might have been the manner of Orme Malone’s death, there could be no doubt that the man had wrought foully to deserve it.

The weal stood out from the surface of the skin. Tiny drops of blood showed on its raised surface, like small rubies set in a coronet. Dr. Hailey was conscious of a sense of horror. What fearful memories were they which were wounding the living flesh of this girl before his eyes?

“Dick. Oh, don’t hurt him, don’t—”

Sacha uttered a wild cry which rang terribly in the silence. She sprang from the couch, and stood with outstretched hands and staring eyes, as though she witnessed a catastrophe too awful to be borne.

The next moment she had fallen prostrate on the floor of the room.

Dr. Hailey sprang to her side and lifted her in his arms. He saw that the drops of blood had become small trickles across her brow.

He saw, too, that at last she had awakened from her trance.

Chapter XXXIII Face Cream

Dr. Hailey laid Sacha back on the couch, but she refused to lie down. She passed her hand over her brow, and then glanced at her fingers. She exclaimed in astonishment.

“I must have cut myself when I fell.”

She pressed her handkerchief to the weal. Ninon Darelli, who was watching her, rose and left the room, saying she would get a little water to bathe the wound.

“Did you ask her to give you another dose of her medicine,” the doctor queried, in his gentle tones, “or did she invite you to come here to get it?”

“I asked her.”

Sacha glanced at the crystal which, in the dim light, shone with an almost metallic hue.

“She left me here alone. I couldn’t resist trying the crystal again. Then I suppose I must have become drowsy.” She broke off suddenly, and again pressed her handkerchief to her brow. “Ninon said that I had something of the medium in me, so perhaps it was not a sleep but a trance into which I fell.”

“You hypnotized yourself.” Dr. Hailey’s tones were rather abrupt. “Anybody can do it who cares to gaze long enough and fixedly enough at a bright object.” He contracted his brows. “As a rule, when autohypnosis is induced, the sleep is filled with pictures and images corresponding to the thoughts which were uppermost in the waking mind before the hypnosis began.”

He watched Sacha narrowly as he spoke. He saw her eyelids flicker for a moment, as though drowsiness were about to return. Ninon Darelli came back to the room with a little crystal bowl and a packet of cotton wool. She bathed the weal gently with her long, sensitive fingers, the touch of which seemed as light as thistledown.

When the operation was complete, Dr. Hailey announced his intention of taking Sacha home. He bestowed her in a cab, and was about to give the driver her address in Green Street when she leaned out of the vehicle and laid her hand on his arm.

“Tell him, please, to drive, first of all, to Ninette’s in Bond Street — No. 50–50; I want to buy some face cream to put on my cut.”

He gave the order and joined the girl in the cab.

“The scar,” he said, “will have completely vanished before to-morrow morning.”

“Ah, but that is too late,” Sacha cried. “You see, I am going to Redden to-night to the Hunt Ball. I have sent all my servants on already to Beech Croft. It was only because Mlle. Darelli refused to accompany me there that I came to London.”

“My dear Mrs. Malone, you are not fit to travel to Leicestershire.”

The cab came to the curb. Sacha opened the door and jumped out. He saw her walk briskly into the shop. The amazing contrast between this self-confident girl and the distracted woman of a few minutes ago, filled him with wonder. Yet, as he reflected, both these states of mind were attributable, probably, to the drug which was now circulating in her blood. The dreams of the hashish eater are not more astonishing than his supreme self-confidence when awake.

A look of deep anxiety came into his face. Sacha Malone was laboring, obviously, under some fierce excitement which had utterly broken down her powers of nervous restraint. Without these injections, her nerves would not be able to sustain the burden of such excitement.

Not a doubt remained in his mind, after what he had just seen and heard, that Barrington Bryan, as instructed by Ninon Darelli, was levying on the girl the most hideous of all forms of blackmail. When they reached Green Street he paid off the cab and followed Sacha up the steps of the house.

“There is something,” he explained, “about which I should like to talk to you at once.”

Sacha opened the front door with her key, and stood aside to allow him to enter.

The house had a curious feeling of emptiness which characterizes all untenanted human habitations.

Chapter XXXIV Half World

Sacha led the way to the dining room.

“If you don’t mind waiting for a moment,” she said, “I’ll run upstairs and take my things off.”

He glanced round the pretty room, with its rosewood furniture and quiet decoration. Sacha, he knew, had rented it after her husband’s death. It suggested, somehow, bereavement without mourning. He walked to the window and looked out, across the deep well of the area, on the darkening street.

The mourning, nevertheless, had come of its own accord. And the cup of mourning was not yet full. He watched a taxicab crawling along the curb, its lamps gleaming like eyes in the twilight. If only he could read the riddle of Ninon Darelli’s relations to Lord Templewood.

He turned. Sacha had reentered the room. He saw that, already, she had succeeded in obliterating the scar on her forehead.

“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “the mark had nearly all gone. I had no idea a bruise could heal up so quickly.”

Dr. Hailey took the seat which she offered him. He waited till she also had seated herself. Then he leaned toward her.

“That scar,” he said, in low tones, “was not in fact the result of injury. It came while you were dreaming.”

He paused. Sacha raised her hand swiftly to her brow, shutting off, by that action, his view of the injured place. She uttered an exclamation of surprise in which, however, he detected the note of fear.

“My dear Mrs. Malone, when we have suffered any very dreadful experience involving actual injury to the body, and when, later on, that experience is recalled in circumstances of bodily weakness or of bodily poisoning, the injured place sometimes reacts once again.

“That is the explanation of a large number of so-called nervous diseases. And that, too, I think, is the explanation of the weal which appeared on your forehead, though I admit that you may have drawn your finger across the place while you were dreaming.”

His tones were very kind and very earnest. But they exercised on the girl the effect of a sharp rebuke. She paled and then flushed.

“It certainly does not apply in my case,” she exclaimed. “I have never suffered any injury to my forehead.”

She turned her head to the door and then glanced at the clock. He saw her lips curve in a hard smile.

“Then I am at a loss to explain the cause of your scar. Unless, indeed, it be the effect of the drug which you are taking.” He lowered his voice. “As a doctor,” he urged, “it is my duty to warn you that in taking those injections of hashish, you are incurring a terrible danger.”

“I am not afraid.”

“Not now. Because you are still under the influence of the drug.”

Sacha rose.

“I do hope,” she exclaimed, “that you won’t think me rude, but if I am to get to Beech Croft in time for the ball—”

Dr. Hailey rose also. There was a determined light in his eyes.

“Mlle. Darelli,” he said, measuring his words as he spoke, “told me this afternoon that two nights ago, at The Black Tower, you attempted to put an end to your life. I should like you to tell me why.”

“It is not true.”

Sacha’s right hand moved in small jerks across her breast. The points of her fingers were pressed into the flesh.

“She gave me a very circumstantial account of it. She said she found you in bed with the gas turned on.”

“It is a wicked falsehood!” The girl’s eyes sought in vain some resting point on the wall opposite her. Dr. Hailey resumed his seat.

“Undoubtedly,” he declared, “the statement, if untrue, is wicked. On the other hand, that is not the only piece of evidence suggesting that, during the last days, some great, some overwhelming sorrow has come to you.”

He raised his hand because she seemed to be about to protest again.

“There is, for example, your sudden resort to crystal gazing. There is your resort to drugs. And there are your own terrible words uttered at the moment when the weal was developing on your brow.”

Sacha stumbled. She sat down and rested one of her elbows on the polished surface of the table. The doctor noticed that that surface was not encumbered by so much as a speck of dust. Daffodils in an exquisite Venetian glass added to the effect of the spotless luster.

“If you are trying to insinuate anything,” she declared, in low tones, “I think it would be better to be open and above board about it.”

Her eyes were steady. They glowed as they watched him. She might be afraid; but it was certainly not for herself that she feared. He decided to take her at her word.

“During your hypnotic sleep,” he said, “you acted a part — a part which my knowledge of hypnosis leads me to think, to believe, you must have acted on a former occasion in real life. You called on your late husband, by name, to show you mercy. Then you called on Mr. Lovelace not to kill your husband. After that, you described your husband’s death.”

Dr. Hailey broke off. He moved forward in his chair.

And then, suddenly, he sat back again. Sacha began to laugh.

Her laughter rang, clear and hard, in the emptiness of the house.

“My dear Dr. Hailey,” she cried, “surely it can’t be possible that you have been converted to a belief in crystal gazing? You!”

“I am not speaking of crystal gazing.”

“But I told you that it was the crystal which put me to sleep. Everything you have described appeared before my eyes in the crystal.” She caught her breath in a gasp. “It was really most amazing.

“I saw poor Orme quite distinctly, standing dressed in his hunting pink in the great hall. He had his crop in his hands. Then I saw myself come to him, and I must say I looked terribly frightened. He lashed me across the face. The next moment Dick Lovelace had him by the throat and sent him crashing down on the floor. I thought he was dead.”

She paused. Her eyes challenged him.

“And then, I suppose, I fell asleep and dreamed it all over again for your special benefit.”

“I see.”

Dr. Hailey’s expression had become rather vacant. His right hand moved to the pocket of his coat and remained there. Sacha observed the gesture. She sighed.

“I was told,” she exclaimed, “that you were an amateur detective. I didn’t guess that you were quite so keen on riding your hobby as you appear to be.”

Her voice was full of scorn. She added:

“Not even psycho-analysts dare to twist dreams into the shapes of reality in so grotesque a fashion.”

“I do not think that it was a dream, in the strict sense.” The doctor rose again. “Your uncle, as I happen to know, heard the sounds of a horse’s hooves at the door of The Black Tower on the night on which your husband met his death.”

“Not really? It is so very seldom that he hears that sound, isn’t it?”

Her lips mocked him. But her eyes had not ceased their vigilance. She found her handkerchief and pressed it lightly to her forehead. He stood for a moment looking at her in silence.

“If you could only realize it,” he said, “I am trying to help you. I am deeply sorry for you.”

“But why? When there is nothing to be sorry for.”

He contracted his brows.

“Because those things which I have mentioned are not the only evidence in my possession bearing on your husband’s death. There is this also.”

Dr. Hailey withdrew his hand from his pocket, as he spoke. He opened his hand, revealing to her Orme Malone’s cigarette case.