The moon was high in the heavens, for it was past midnight; the wind was chill upon my shoulders, the dew silvery under my feet. There was an odor abroad--the ineffable odor of sleepily stirring spring, of young new leaves budding, of tender gra.s.s, growing like a baby"s hair.
At some distance ahead I could just distinguish the dark figure of the messenger, flitting soundless as a shadow. And then, to my infinite relief, out of the shrubbery stepped Boris, and thrust his doggy nose into my hand. I laid hold of his collar, and he trotted sedately beside me.
I had half expected to be led to the gray-gabled cottage, but The Jinnee stole along in the shadow of the hedge, stopped beside the spring-house, and held up his hand.
"In the name of G.o.d!" said I, involuntarily.
"The compa.s.sionate, the merciful!" finished The Jinnee, and turning to the east made a profound reverence. There was something so simple and so sincere in his manner that my momentary fear subsided.
"But why have I been sent for? Why are _you_ here?" I wondered.
He folded his arms upon his breast, and in a sing-song voice, curiously unlike any other I had ever heard, answered parrotlike:
"This is the word of the master: Take to the fair-haired lady the broken coin, my sign, and she will remember her word to me. Verily, for the sign"s sake, she will follow without fear."
"The master is not ill, then?"
"In his body he is well. But of the spirit of man, and what help he needs, there is but one judge, namely, G.o.d."
"He has need of me?"
"He sends the token by me, Achmet." And he stood there with a motionless patience, waiting.
Achmet! I remembered an afternoon in the Enchanted Wood, and that name ringing in my ears--Achmet!
"I will follow you," I said. And instantly The Jinnee pushed open the unlocked door of the spring-house and stepped inside.
I hesitated for a moment, turning my head toward Hynds House, blazing with lights. I could hear voices, laughter, s.n.a.t.c.hes of song. From the kitchen Mary Magdalen"s great, rich, unctuous laugh rolled out like an organ peal. Silhouetted against the lighted library window was one of our big black cats, with an arched back and an uplifted and expressive tail.
"I wait," said a quiet voice. And, clutching Boris by the collar, I stepped inside the door.
It was dark in there; only a faint and broken light came through the one window, set high in the wall. Boris"s eyes were b.a.l.l.s of fire, and his feet made a stealthy, scuffling sound on the flagged floor.
The little spring bubbling in its stone basin was like a whispering, secretive voice.
Achmet stooped down, over in one corner. Then, shading a very modern flash-light with a fold of his robe, he showed me one of the square flags lifted, and a black hole yawning in the floor.
I backed away. With a crooked, sly smile, The Jinnee snapped his fingers at Boris. The big dog jerked himself free of my hand and disappeared.
"Now!" said The Jinnee. And like one in a dream I gathered my lace-trimmed skirts in my hand and backed down a spider-web stairway that barely gave one foothold. Achmet waited until I reached the bottom, then he, too, backed in, and I heard the flagstone fall to over my head.
There was a moment of utter and awful blackness and stillness. I was upon the point of shrieking, when something cold and friendly touched my hand: Boris was nosing me. The Jinnee, at the bottom of the steps, showed the light.
We were in a circular shaft, narrowing upward like an inverted funnel. It was quite clean and dry, lined with hard cement.
Branching from it were two wedge-shaped openings, just wide enough to allow one person at a time to walk through.
The Jinnee plunged into one of these, and Boris and I followed.
There was nothing else for us to do.
"This is safest way. If I come through house, I am seen. Not want that," said Achmet, over his shoulder.
I made no reply. I was wondering what The Author would have said had he seen us at that moment--The Jinnee shuffling ahead in heelless slippers and Oriental dress, upon his woolly head a red fez with a silver crescent on it, and on his breast a string of _saphies_, verses from the Koran, in exquisite Arabic script, framed in flat round pieces of silver and strung on a chain. Boris, larger and n.o.bler even than most of his breed, paced behind him. Then came I, a slim blonde woman, with fair hair powdered, in a dress a century old.
The pa.s.sage wasn"t quite six feet high, and so still that you could hear the beating of your heart. Achmet"s slippers went _scuf-scuf-scuf_. Boris swayed from side to side, his tongue lolling, his eyes phosph.o.r.escent. He resembled those ghost-hounds of old stories, terrific beasts that follow the Wild Huntsman.
We went down some steps. I shouldn"t have been surprised had I found myself climbing the beanstalk after Jack. Dazedly I thought: "I"ll wake up in the morning and tell them at the breakfast-table what a wonderful dream I had." I could fancy the Lady with the Soul clasping her hands, and The Author crinkling his eyes, and Alicia laughing.
This last pa.s.sage, which, I learned afterward, ran under the carriage house, presently crooked like an elbow and led us into a windowless and stone-floored little room, under the cellar. On the opposite side of the room was the opening of another such pa.s.sage, with stone steps leading to it. On these steps sat Nicholas Jelnik.
He got to his feet and stood looking at me. A momentary red rushed to his cheek, and his eyes flashed. Boris, tongue out, tail wagging, rubbed against him, and the master"s hand dropped between the speaking eyes with a swift caress.
"Good dog! You came with her!"
"And I. Am I not also a good dog?" asked The Jinnee, jealously.
Mr. Jelnik"s reply I did not understand, but Achmet made a respectful salutation, and his grin was the grin of a little boy.
"Sophy!" said Nicholas Jelnik, and his voice shook, "Sophy! Oh, I knew you would come!" He gave a low, pleased laugh. "And now she is here, she doesn"t even ask why I have sent for her!"
"The mistress," said Achmet, "should have been of the Faith. May Allah enlighten her!"
"Sit down here beside me for a few minutes, Sophy, and rest," said Mr. Jelnik, seating himself. "And do not look so pale, my little comrade."
"I thought--that you might be ill," I faltered. "I thought--that you needed me."
"I am not ill, but I do need you," he said quickly, and took my hand in a firm clasp. The touch of that hand brought me out of my trance-like state. It was all right, and the most natural thing in the world, that I should be sitting in this windowless vault, with two candles and a shadowy lantern burning dimly in the still air, an old black Jinnee squatting on his heels watching me, a great wolf-hound stretched beside him. Wasn"t Nicholas Jelnik holding my hand?
"Sophy," he said directly, "I have found the lost Key of Hynds House." I looked at him dumbly. "I have reached that point where I can tell you everything, little friend. Thank Heaven you have come!"
But of a sudden his-forehead was damp.
"You will remember," he said, after a moment"s silence, and still holding my hand--and I think that now he held it as he had once held his mother"s--"when I talked to you about my childhood and my mother, I told you she had made me more of an American than an Austrian. This old home-town of her people, this old house, the mystery that blackened the Hynds name, were as real to me as the scenes and people that actually surrounded me.
"When I was older, she turned over to me all her family papers, and I sifted and a.s.sorted and reduced them to system and order. I found among them Richard Hynds"s own brief account of the affair, and copies of letters to his father, but the bulk of the papers consisted of such data as his son and namesake could gather. This formed a copious ma.s.s, for he had set down every least circ.u.mstance that he thought might have any bearing upon his father"s case. These papers, guarded so jealously, bequeathed to his successors the sacred task of righting Richard Hynds.
"In Richard"s short statement, left for his little son, he, as rightful heir of Hynds House, mentions the secret pa.s.sages and tells how they may be entered. He had been taught that much, himself, on reaching his majority. But there was one vital secret that hadn"t been revealed to Richard, for not until the head of Hynds House knew he was about to die did he give to his successor the Key to the hidden room; the room concealed so cunningly that without the Key one could never hope to find it. They planned and built wonderfully well, those old master work-men. They meant that secret room to be the strong-box, the inviolate hiding-place which should keep what might be entrusted to it. It was, as it were, the heart of Hynds House.
"Remember that Richard"s father died of a stroke of apoplexy, and without speaking. Thus Freeman would know no more than Richard did.
There was but one person alive who knew, and that was--"
"A slave?" I whispered, remembering Freeman"s diary.
"A slave, an unlettered slave. How he discovered it I do not know.
But he did discover it. He knew, and the Hyndses did not. In regard to this same slave, a curious item was set down by Richard"s son:
""This day Black s...o...b.."s son told me of a heathen song s...o...b.. made before he died and swore him to forget not. "Tis a strange chaunt:
"I, s...o...b.., the Snake Soul, make me a Song.
In the night I sing it for my Snake.
My Snake showed me a Secret Thing.