Brood of the Witch-Queen Part 43

"The filament has burnt out," he muttered.

Terror grew upon him--a terror akin to that which children experience in the darkness. But he yet had a fair mastery of his emotions; when--not suddenly, as is the way of a failing electric lamp--but slowly, uncannily, unnaturally, the table-lamp became extinguished!

Darkness.... Cairn turned towards the window. This was a moonless night, and little enough illumination entered the room from the court.

Three resounding raps were struck upon the door.

At that, terror had no darker meaning for Cairn; he had plumbed its ultimate deeps; and now, like a diver, he arose again to the surface.

Heedless of the darkness, of the seemingly supernatural means by which it had been occasioned, he threw open the door and thrust his revolver out into the corridor.

For terrors, he had been prepared--for some gruesome shape such as we read of in _The Magus_. But there was nothing. Instinctively he had looked straight ahead of him, as one looks who expects to encounter a human enemy. But the hall-way was empty. A dim light, finding access over the door from the stair, prevailed there, yet, it was sufficient to have revealed the presence of anyone or anything, had anyone or anything been present.

Cairn stepped out from the room and was about to walk to the outer door. The idea of flight was strong upon him, for no man can fight the invisible; when, on a level with his eyes--flat against the wall, as though someone crouched there--he saw two white hands!

They were slim hands, like the hands of a woman, and, upon one of the tapered fingers, there dully gleamed a green stone.

A peal of laughter came chokingly from his lips; he knew that his reason was tottering. For these two white hands which now moved along the wall, as though they were sidling to the room which Cairn had just quitted, were attached to no visible body; just two ivory hands were there ... _and nothing more_!

That he was in deadly peril, Cairn realised fully. His complete subjection by the will-force of Ferrara had been interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell But now, the attack had been renewed!

The hands vanished.

Too well he remembered the ghastly details attendant upon the death of Sir Michael Ferrara to doubt that these slim hands were directed upon murderous business.

A soft swis.h.i.+ng sound reached him. Something upon the writing-table had been moved.

The strangling cord!

Whilst speaking to his father he had taken it out from the drawer, and when he quitted the room it had lain upon the blotting-pad.

He stepped back towards the outer door.

Something fluttered past his face, and he turned in a mad panic. The dreadful, bodiless hands groped in the darkness between himself and the exit!

Vaguely it came home to him that the menace might be avoidable. He was bathed in icy perspiration.

He dropped the revolver into his pocket, and placed his hands upon his throat. Then he began to grope his way towards the closed door of his bedroom.

Lowering his left hand, he began to feel for the doork.n.o.b. As he did so, he saw--and knew the crowning horror of the night--that he had made a false move. In retiring he had thrown away his last, his only, chance.

The phantom hands, a yard apart and holding the silken cord stretched tightly between them, were approaching him swiftly!

He lowered his head, and charged along the pa.s.sage, with a wild cry.

The cord, stretched taut, struck him under the chin.

Back he reeled.

The cord was about his throat!

"G.o.d!" he choked, and thrust up his hands.

Madly, he strove to pluck the deadly silken thing from his neck. It was useless. A grip of steel was drawing it tightly--and ever more tightly--about him....

Despair touched him, and almost he resigned himself. Then,

"Rob! Rob! open the door!"

Dr. Cairn was outside.

A new strength came--and he knew that it was the last atom left to him. To remove the rope was humanly impossible. He dropped his cramped hands, bent his body by a mighty physical effort, and hurled himself forward upon the door.

The latch, now, was just above his head.

He stretched up ... and was plucked back. But the fingers of his right hand grasped the k.n.o.b convulsively.

Even as that superhuman force jerked him back, he turned the k.n.o.b--and fell.

All his weight hung upon the fingers which were locked about that bra.s.s disk in a grip which even the powers of Darkness could not relax.

The door swung open, and Cairn swung back with it.

He collapsed, an inert heap, upon the floor. Dr. Cairn leapt in over him.

When he reopened his eyes, he lay in bed, and his father was bathing his inflamed throat.

"All right, boy! There's no damage done, thank G.o.d...."

"The hands!--"

"I quite understand. But _I_ saw no hands but your own, Rob; and if it had come to an inquest I could not even have raised my voice against a verdict of suicide!"

"But I--opened the door!"

"They would have said that you repented your awful act, too late.

Although it is almost impossible for a man to strangle himself under such conditions, there is no jury in England who would have believed that Antony Ferrara had done the deed."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HIGH PRIEST, HORTOTEF