"Not then----" began the woman, but Simpkins cut her short by jumping to his feet with a cry of "What"s that!" and his voice was sharp with fear.
For in that silent second, while he waited for her answer, he had heard a noise out in the hall, the sound of stealthy feet behind the veil, and he had seen the woman"s eyes gleam triumph.
Again the terror that had mastered him an hour before leaped into life, and quakingly he faced the darkness. But he saw nothing--only the shifting shadows, the crimson blotches crawling on the veil, and the vague outlines of the coffined dead.
He looked back to the woman. Her face was masklike. It must have been a fancy, a vibration of his own tense nerves. But none the less, he rearranged the light, that while its rays shone clear on Mrs.
Athelstone, he might be in the shadow, and set his chair back close against the wall, that both the woman and the hall might be well in his eye. And when he sat down again one hand clutched tight the b.u.t.t of a revolver.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
VIII
"You seem strangely disturbed, Simpkins," said Mrs. Athelstone quietly; but he fancied that there was a note of malicious pleasure in her voice.
"Has anything happened to alarm you?"
"I thought I heard a slight noise, as if something were moving behind me. Perhaps a mummy was breaking out of its case," he answered, but his voice was scarcely steady enough for the flippancy of his speech.
"Hardly that," was the serious answer; "but it might have been my cat, Rameses."
"Not unless it was Rameses II., because--well, it didn"t sound like a cat," he wound up, guiltily conscious of his other reason for certainty on this point. "Perhaps Isis has climbed down from her pedestal to stretch herself," and he smiled, but his eyes were anxious, and he shot a furtive glance toward the veil.
"It"s hardly probable," was the calm reply.
"What? Can"t the thing use its legs as well as its arms?"
"Ah! then you know----"
"Yes; she reached for me when I was dusting her off, but I kicked harder than Doctor Athelstone, I suppose, and so touched the spring twice."
"You beast!"
"Well, let it go at that," Simpkins a.s.sented. "And let"s hear the rest."
He was burning with impatience to reach the end and get away, back to noisy, crowded Broadway.
But Mrs. Athelstone answered nothing, only looked off toward the altar.
It almost seemed as if she waited for something.
"Go on," commanded Simpkins, stirred to roughness by his growing uneasiness.
"You will not leave while yet you may?" and her tone doubled the threat of her words.
"No, not till I"ve heard it all," he answered doggedly, and gripped the b.u.t.t of his revolver tighter. But though he told himself that her changed manner, this new confidence, this sudden indifference to his going, was the freak of a madwoman, down deep he felt that it portended some evil thing for him, knew it, and would not go, could not go; for he dared not pa.s.s the ambushed terror of that altar.
"You still insist?" the woman asked with rising anger. "So be it. Learn then the fate of meddlers, of dogs who dare to penetrate the mysteries of Isis."
Simpkins took his eyes from her face and glanced mechanically toward the veil. But he looked back suddenly, and caught her signalling with a swift motion of her head to something in the darkness. There could be no mistake this time. And following her eyes he saw a form, black and shapeless, steal along to the nearest post.
Revolver in hand, he leaped up and back, upsetting his chair. The thing remained hidden. He cleared the part.i.tioning sarcophagus at a bound, and, sliding and backing, reached the centre of the hall, never for one instant taking his eyes from that post or lowering his revolver. Step by step, back between the pillars, he retreated, stumbling toward the door and safety.
Half-way, he heard the woman hiss: "Stop him! Don"t let him escape!" And he saw the thing dart from behind the post. In the uncontrollable madness of his fear he hurled, instead of firing, his revolver at it, and turned and ran.
Tapping lightly on the flags behind, he heard swift feet. It was coming, it was gaining, but he was at the door, through it and had slammed it safely behind him. A leap, a bound, and he was through the ante-chamber, and, as the door behind him opened, he was slipping out into the pa.s.sageway. He went down the stairs in great jumps. Thank G.o.d! he had left the street door unlocked. But already the sound of pursuit had stopped, and he reached the open air safely.
Down the deserted street to Broadway he ran. There he hailed a cab and directed the driver to the telegraph office. Then he leaned back and looked at the garish lights, the pa.s.sing cabs, the theatre crowds hurrying along home, laughing and chatting as if the world held no such horror as that which he had just escaped. That madwoman"s words rang through his brain, drowning out the voices of the street; the tapping of those flying feet sounded in his ears above the rattle of the cab. That or this must be unreal; yet how far off both seemed!
Gradually the rough jolting of the cab shook him back to a sense of his surroundings and their safety. He began to regain his nerve, and to busy himself knotting the strands of the story into a connected narrative.
And when, a few minutes later, he handed a message to the manager of the telegraph office and demanded a clear wire into the _Banner_ office, he was quite the old breezy Simpkins.
Then, coat off, a cigar between his teeth, he sat down beside the operator and began to write his story, his flying fingers keeping time with the clicking instrument. He made no mention of the fears that had beset him in the hall and the manner of his exit from it. But there was enough and to spare of the dramatic in what he sent. After a sensational half-column of introduction, fitting the murder on Mrs. Athelstone, and enlarging on the certainty of one"s sin finding one out, provided it were a.s.sisted by a _Banner_ reporter, he swung into the detailed story, dwelling on the woman"s madness and sliding over the details of the murder as much as possible.
Then he described how, for more than a month, Mrs Athelstone had labored over the body, hiding it days in the empty case and dragging it out nights, until she had finished it, with the exception of some detail about the head, into a faithful replica of the mummy of Amosis, the original of which she had no doubt burned. It all made a vivid story; for never had his imagination been in such working order, and never had it responded more generously to his demands upon it. About two in the morning he finished his third column and concluded his story with:
"So this awful confession of madness and murder ended. I left the woman bound and helpless, sitting in her chair, her victim at her feet, to wait the coming of the police." Then he added to Naylor personally, "Going notify police headquarters now and go back to hall."
Naylor, who had been reading the copy page by page as it came from the wire, and who, naturally, was taking a mere cold-blooded view of the case than Simpkins, telegraphed back:
"What share did Brander have in actual murder? You don"t bring that out in story."
"Couldn"t get it out of her," Simpkins sent back, truthfully enough.
"Find out," was the answer. "Get back to hall quick. Brander may have looked in to help Mrs. A. with her night work while you were gone. Will hold enough men for an extra."
Simpkins called a cab and started for police headquarters at breakneck speed, but on the way he stopped at Brander"s rooms; for a miserable suspicion was growing in his brain. "If that really was Isis," he was thinking, "it"s funny she didn"t nail me before I got to the door, even with the start I had."
On his representation that he had called on a matter of life and death, the janitor admitted him to Brander"s rooms. They were empty, and the bed had not been slept in.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
IX
It was just after three o"clock when Simpkins, an officer on either side, entered the Oriental Building again, and hurried up the stairs to the Society"s office.