Just as they reached the ground-floor they heard, from far up the staircase, a short cry, followed a moment afterwards by the sound of a heavy fall.
"What"s that?" Blake exclaimed.
"I"m just going to see," said Yarrow, quietly. "It seemed to me to come from Brackley"s rooms. Let"s go up again."
They hurried up the staircase and knocked at Brackley"s door. There was no answer. The whole place was absolutely silent. The door was ajar; Yarrow pushed it open, and the two men went in.
The candles on the card-table were still burning. At some distance from them, in a dark corner of the room, lay Brackley, face downwards, with one arm folded under him and the other stretched wide.
Blake stood in the doorway. Yarrow went quickly over to Brackley, and turned the body partially over.
"What is it?" asked Blake, excitedly. "Is the man ill? Has he fainted?"
"Run downstairs," said Yarrow, curtly. "Rouse the porter and get a doctor at once."
The moment Blake had gone, Yarrow took a candle from the card-table, and by the light of it examined once more the body of the dead man. On the throat there was the imprint of a hand--a right hand with the second finger missing. The marks, which were crimson at first, grew gradually fainter.
Some years afterwards, in Yarrow"s presence, a man happened to tell some story of a warning apparition that he himself had investigated.
"And do you believe that?" Yarrow asked.
"The evidence that the apparition was seen--and seen by more than one person--seems to me fairly conclusive in this case."
"That is all very well. I will grant you the apparition if you like. But why speak of it as a warning? If such appearances take place, it still seems to me absurd and disproportionate to suppose that they do so in order to warn us, or help us, or hinder us, or anything of the kind.
They appear for their own unfathomable reasons only. If they seem to forbid one thing or command another, that also is for their own purpose.
I have an experience of my own which would tend to show that."
THE TOWER
In the billiard-room of the Cabinet Club, shortly after midnight, two men had just finished a game. A third had been watching it from the lounge at the end of the room. The winner put up his cue, slipped on his coat, and with a brief "Good-night" pa.s.sed out of the room. He was tall, dark, clean-shaven and foreign in appearance. It would not have been easy to guess his nationality, but he did not look English.
The loser, a fair-haired boy of twenty-five, came over to the lounge and dropped down by the side of the elderly man who had been watching the billiards.
"Silly game, ain"t it, doctor?" he said cheerfully. The doctor smiled.
"Yes," he said, "Vyse is a bit too hot for you, Bill."
"A bit too hot for anything," said the boy. "He never takes any trouble; he never hesitates; he never thinks; he never takes an easy shot when there"s a brilliant one to be pulled off. It"s almost uncanny."
"Ah," said the doctor, reflectively, "it"s a queer thing. You"re the third man whom I have heard say that about Vyse within the last week."
"I believe he"s quite all right--good sort of chap, you know. He"s frightfully clever too--speaks a lot of beastly difficult Oriental languages--does well at any game he takes up."
"Yes," said the doctor, "he is clever; and he is also a fool."
"What do you mean? He"s eccentric, of course. Fancy his buying that rotten tower--a sweet place to spend Christmas in all alone, I don"t think."
"Why does he say he"s going there?"
"Says he hates the conventional Christmas, and wants to be out of it; says also that he wants to shoot duck."
"That won"t do," said the doctor. "He may hate the conventional Christmas. He may, and he probably will, shoot duck. But that"s not his reason for going there."
"Then what is it?" asked the boy.
"Nothing that would interest you much, Bill. Vyse is one of the chaps that want to know too much. He"s playing about in a way that every medical man knows to be a rotten, dangerous way. Mind, he may get at something; if the stories are true he has already got at a good deal. I believe it is possible for a man to develop in himself certain powers at a certain price."
"What"s the price?"
"Insanity, as often as not. Here, let"s talk about something pleasanter. Where are you yourself going this Christmas, by the way?"
"My sister has taken compa.s.sion upon this lone bachelor. And you?"
"I shall be out of England," said the doctor. "Cairo, probably."
The two men pa.s.sed out into the hall of the club.
"Has Mr Vyse gone yet?" the boy asked the porter.
"Not yet, Sir William. Mr Vyse is changing in one of the dressing-rooms.
His car is outside."
The two men pa.s.sed the car in the street, and noticed the luggage in the tonneau. The driver, in his long leather coat, stood motionless beside it, waiting for his master. The powerful headlight raked the dusk of the street; you could see the paint on a tired woman"s cheek as she pa.s.sed through it on her way home at last.
"See his game?" said Bill.
"Of course," said the doctor. "He"s off to the marshes and that blessed tower of his to-night."
"Well, I don"t envy him--holy sort of amus.e.m.e.nt it must be driving all that way on a cold night like this. I wonder if the beggar ever goes to sleep at all?"
They had reached Bill"s chambers in Jermyn Street.
"You must come in and have a drink," said Bill.
"Don"t think so, thanks," said the doctor; "it"s late, you know."
"You"d better," said Bill, and the doctor followed him in.
A letter and a telegram were lying on the table in the diminutive hall.
The letter had been sent by messenger, and was addressed to Sir William Orlsey, Bart., in a remarkably small hand-writing. Bill picked it up, and thrust it into his pocket at once, unopened. He took the telegram with him into the room where the drinks had been put out, and opened it as he sipped his whisky-and-soda.
"Great Scot!" he exclaimed.