Читать книгу The Mystery of the Ravenspurs - White Fred Merrick - Страница 3

The close clutch of the silence lay over the castle like the restless horror that it was. The caressing drowsiness of healthy slumber was never for the hapless Ravenspurs now. They clung round the ingle nook till the last moment; they parted with a sigh and a shudder, knowing that the morrow might find one face missing, one voice silenced for ever.

Marion alone was really cheerful; her smiling face, her gentle courage were as the cool breath of the north wind to the others. But for her, they would have gone mad with the haunting horror long since.

She was one of the last to go. She still sat pensive in the ingle, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes gazing with fascinated astonishment at Ralph Ravenspur.

In some strange, half-defined fashion it seemed to her that she had seen a face scarred and barred like that before. And in the same vague way the face reminded her of her native India.

It was a strong face, despite the blight that suffering had laid upon it. The lips were firm and straight, the sightless eyes seemed to be seeking for something, hunting as a blind wolf might have done. The long, slim, damp fingers twitched convulsively; feeling upwards and around as if in search of something.

Marion shuddered as she imagined those hooks of steel pressed about her throat, choking the life out of her.

"Where are you going to sleep?" Ravenspur asked abruptly.

"In my old room," Ralph replied. "Nobody need trouble about me. I can find my way about the castle as well as if I had my eyes. After all I have endured, a blanket on the floor will be a couch of down."

"You are not afraid of the family terror?"

Ralph laughed. He laughed hard down in his throat, chuckling horribly.

"I am afraid of nothing," he said; "if you only knew what I know you would not wish to live. I tell you I would sit and see my right arm burnt off with slow fire if I could wipe out the things I have seen in the last five years! I heard of the family fetish at Bombay, and that was why I came home. I prefer a slumbering hell to a roaring one."

He spoke as if half to himself. His words were enigmas to the interested listeners; yet, wild as they seemed, they were cool and collected.

"Some day you shall tell us your adventures," Ravenspur said not unkindly, "how you lost your sight, and whence came those strange disfigurements."

"That you will never know," Ralph replied. "Ah, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our narrow and specious philosophy. There are some things it is impossible to speak of, and my trouble is one of them. Only to one man could I mention it, and whether he is alive or dead I do not know."

Marion rose. The strangely uttered words made her feel slightly hysterical. She bent over Ravenspur and kissed him fondly. Moved by a strong impulse of pity, she would have done the same by her uncle Ralph, but that he seemed to divine her presence and her intention. The long, slim hands went up.

"You must not kiss me, my child," he said. "I am not fit to be touched by pure lips like yours. Good-night."

Marion turned away, chilled and disappointed. She wondered why Ralph spoke like that, why he shuddered at her approach as if she had been an unclean thing. But in that house of singular happenings one strange matter more or less was nothing.

"The light of my eyes," Ravenspur murmured. "After Vera, the creature I love best on earth. What should we do without her?"

"What, indeed?" Ralph said quietly. "I cannot see, but I can feel what she is to all of you. Good-night, father, and thank you."

Ravenspur strode off with a not unkindly nod. As a matter of fact, he was more moved by the return of the wanderer and his evident sufferings and misfortunes than he cared to confess. He brooded over these strange things till at length he lapsed into troubled and uneasy slumber.

The intense gripping silence deepened. Ralph Ravenspur still sat in the ingle with his face bent upon the glowing logs as if he could see, and as if he was seeking for some inspiration in the sparkling crocus flame.

Then without making the slightest noise, he crept across the hall, feeling his way along with his finger-tips to the landing above.

He had made no idle boast. He knew every inch of the castle. Like a cat he crept to his own room, and there, merely discarding his coat and boots, he took a blanket from the bed.

Into the corridor he stepped and then, lying down under the hangings of Cordova leather, wrapped himself up cocoon fashion in his blanket and dropped into a sound sleep. The mournful silence brooded, the rats scratched behind the oaken paneled walls.

Then out of the throat of the darkness came a stifled cry. It was the fighting rattle made by the strong man suddenly deprived of the power to breathe.

Again it came, and this time more loudly, with a ring of despair in it. In the dead silence it seemed to fill the whole house, but the walls were thick, and beyond the corridor there was no cognizance of anything being in the least wrong.

But the man in the blanket against the arras heard it and struggled to his feet. A long period of vivid personal danger had sharpened his senses. His knowledge of woodcraft enabled him to locate the cry to a yard.

"My father," he whispered; "I am only just in time."

He felt his way rapidly, yet noiselessly, along the few feet between his resting-place and Ravenspur's room. Imminent as the peril was, he yet paused to push his blanket out of sight. As he came to the door of Ravenspur's room the cry rose higher. He stooped and then his fingers touched something warm.

"Marion," he said; "I can catch the subtle fragrance of your hair."

The girl swallowed a scream. She was trembling from head to foot with fear and excitement. It was dark, the cry from within was despairing, the intense horror of it was dreadful.

"Yes, yes," she whispered hoarsely. "I was lying awake and I heard it. And that good old man told me to-day that his time was coming. I – I was going to rouse the house. The door is locked."

"Do nothing of the sort. Stand aside."

The voice was low but commanding. Marion obeyed mechanically. With great strength and determination Ralph flung himself against the door. At the second assault the rusty iron bolt gave and the door flew open.

Inside, Ravenspur lay on his bed. By his bedside a nightlight cast a feeble pallid ray. There was nobody in the room besides Ravenspur himself. He lay back absolutely rigid, a yellow hue was over his face like a painted mask, his eyes were wide open, his lips twitched convulsively. Evidently he was in some kind of cataleptic fit and his senses had not deserted him.

He was powerless to move and made no attempt to do so. The man was choking to death and yet his limbs were rigid. A sickly sweet odor filled the room and caused Ralph to double up and gasp for breath. It was as if the whole atmosphere was drenched with a fine spray of chloroform. Marion stood in the doorway like a fascinated white statue of fear and despair.

"What is it?" she whispered. "What is that choking smell?"

Ralph made no reply; he was holding his breath hard. There was a queer grinning smile on his face as he turned toward the window.

The fumbling clutching long hands rested for a moment on Ravenspur's forehead, and the next moment there was a sound of smashing glass, as with his naked fists Ralph beat in the lozenge-shaped windows.

A quick cool draught of air rushed through the room, and the figure on the bed ceased to struggle.

"Come in," said Ralph. "There is no danger now."

Marion entered. She was trembling from head to foot; her face was like death.

"What is it, what is it?" she cried. "Uncle Ralph, do you know what it is?"

"That is a mystery," Ralph replied. "There is some fiend at work here. I only guessed that the sickly odor was the cause of the mischief. You are better, sir?"

Ravenspur was sitting up in bed. The color had come back to his lips; he no longer struggled to breathe.

"I am all right," he said. His eyes beamed affectionately on Marion. "Ever ready and ever quick, child, you saved my life from that nameless horror."

"It was Uncle Ralph," said Marion. "I heard your cry, but Uncle Ralph was here as soon as I was. And it was a happy idea of his to break the window."

"It was that overpowering drug," said Ravenspur. "What it is and where it came from must always remain a mystery. This is a new horror to haunt me – and yet there were others who died in their beds mysteriously. I awoke to find myself choking; I was stifled by that sweet-smelling stuff; I could feel that my heart was growing weaker. But go, my child; you will catch your death of cold. Go to bed."

With an unsteady smile Marion disappeared. As she closed the door behind her, Ravenspur turned and grasped his son's wrist fiercely.

"Do you know anything of this?" he demanded. "You are blind, helpless; yet you were on the spot instantly. Do you know anything of this, I say?"

Ralph shook his head.

"It was good luck," he said. "And how should I know anything? Ah, a blind man is but a poor detective."

Yet as Ralph passed to his strange quarters, there was a queer look on his face. The long lean claws were crooked as if they were fastened about the neck of some enemy, some foe to the death.

"The hem of the mystery," he muttered. "Patience and prudence, and the day shall come when I shall have it by the throat, and such a lovely throat, too!"