Brood of the Witch-Queen Part 45

"Antony Ferrara, realising that we are bent upon his destruction, is making a final, stupendous effort to compa.s.s ours. I know that you have placed certain seals upon the windows of this house, and that after dusk these windows are never opened. I know that imprints, strangely like the imprints of _fiery hands_, may be seen at this moment upon the cas.e.m.e.nts of Myra's room, your room, my room, and elsewhere. I know that Myra's dreams are not ordinary, meaningless dreams. I have had other evidence. I don't want to a.n.a.lyse these things; I confess that my mind is not capable of the task. I do not even want to know the meaning of it all; at the present moment, I only want to know one thing: _Who is Antony Ferrara?_"

Dr. Cairn stood up, and turning, faced his son.

"The time has come," he said, "when that question, which you have asked me so many times before, shall be answered. I will tell you all I know, and leave you to form your own opinion. For ere we go any further, I a.s.sure you that I do not know for certain who he is!"

"You have said so before, sir. Will you explain what you mean?"

"When his adoptive father, Sir Michael Ferrara," resumed the doctor, beginning to pace up and down the library--"when Sir Michael and I were in Egypt, in the winter of 1893, we conducted certain inquiries in the Faym. We camped for over three months beside the Meydm Pyramid. The object of our inquiries was to discover the tomb of a certain queen. I will not trouble you with the details, which could be of no interest to anyone but an Egyptologist, I will merely say that apart from the name and t.i.tles by which she is known to the ordinary student, this queen is also known to certain inquirers as the Witch-Queen. She was not an Egyptian, but an Asiatic. In short, she was the last high priestess of a cult which became extinct at her death. Her secret mark--I am not referring to a cartouche or anything of that kind--was a spider; it was the mark of the religion or cult which she practised. The high priest of the princ.i.p.al Temple of Ra, during the reign of the Pharaoh who was this queen's husband, was one Hortotef. This was his official position, but secretly he was also the high-priest of the sinister creed to which I have referred. The temple of this religion--a religion allied to Black Magic--was the Pyramid of Meydm.

"So much we knew--or Ferrara knew, and imparted to me--but for any corroborative evidence of this cult's existence we searched in vain.

We explored the interior of the pyramid foot by foot, inch by inch--and found nothing. We knew that there was some other apartment in the pyramid, but in spite of our soundings, measurements and laborious excavations, we did not come upon the entrance to it. The tomb of the queen we failed to discover, also, and therefore concluded that her mummy was buried in the secret chamber of the pyramid. We had abandoned our quest in despair, when, excavating in one of the neighbouring mounds, we made a discovery."

He opened a box of cigars, selected one, and pushed the box towards his son. Robert shook his head, almost impatiently, but Dr. Cairn lighted the cigar ere resuming:

"Directed, as I now believe, by a malignant will, we blundered upon the tomb of the high priest--"

"You found his mummy?"

"We found his mummy--yes. But owing to the carelessness--and the fear--of the native labourers it was exposed to the sun and crumpled--was lost. I would a similar fate had attended the other one which we found!"

"What, another mummy?"

"We discovered"--Dr. Cairn spoke very deliberately--"a certain papyrus. The translation of this is contained"--he rested the point of his finger upon the writing-table--"in the unpublished book of Sir Michael Ferrara, which lies here. That book, Rob, will never be published now! Furthermore, we discovered the mummy of a child--"

"A child."

"A boy. Not daring to trust the natives, we removed it secretly at night to our own tent. Before we commenced the task of unwrapping it, Sir Michael--the most brilliant scholar of his age--had proceeded so far in deciphering the papyrus, that he determined to complete his reading before we proceeded further. It contained directions for performing a certain process. This process had reference to the mummy of the child."

"Do I understand--?"

"Already, you are discrediting the story! Ah! I can see it! but let me finish. Unaided, we performed this process upon the embalmed body of the child. Then, in accordance with the directions of that dead magician--that accursed, malignant being, who thus had sought to secure for himself a new tenure of evil life--we laid the mummy, treated in a certain fas.h.i.+on, in the King's Chamber of the Meydm Pyramid. It remained there for thirty days; from moon to moon--"

"You guarded the entrance?"

"You may a.s.sume what you like, Rob; but I could swear before any jury, that no one entered the pyramid throughout that time. Yet since we were only human, we may have been deceived in this. I have only to add, that when at the rising of the new moon in the ancient Sothic month of Panoi, we again entered the chamber, a living baby, some six months old, perfectly healthy, solemnly blinked up at the lights which we held in our trembling hands!"

Dr. Cairn reseated himself at the table, and turned the chair so that he faced his son. With the smouldering cigar between his teeth, he sat, a slight smile upon his lips.

Now it was Robert's turn to rise and begin feverishly to pace the floor.

"You mean, sir, that this infant--which lay in the pyramid--was--adopted by Sir Michael?"

"Was adopted, yes. Sir Michael engaged nurses for him, reared him here in England, educating him as an Englishman, sent him to a public school, sent him to--"

"To Oxford! Antony Ferrara! What! Do you seriously tell me that this is the history of Antony Ferrara?"

"On my word of honour, boy, that is all I know of Antony Ferrara. Is it not enough?"

"Merciful G.o.d! it is incredible," groaned Robert Cairn.

"From the time that he attained to manhood," said Dr. Cairn evenly, "this adopted son of my poor old friend has pa.s.sed from crime to crime. By means which are beyond my comprehension, and which alone serve to confirm his supernatural origin, he has acquired--knowledge.

According to the Ancient Egyptian beliefs the _Khu_ (or magical powers) of a fully-equipped Adept, at the death of the body, could enter into anything prepared for its reception. According to these ancient beliefs, then, the _Khu_ of the high priest Hortotef entered into the body of this infant who was his son, and whose mother was the Witch-Queen; and to-day in this modern London, a wizard of Ancient Egypt, armed with the lost lore of that magical land, walks amongst us! What that lore is worth, it would be profitless for us to discuss, but that he possesses it--_all_ of it--I know, beyond doubt. The most ancient and most powerful magical book which has ever existed was the _Book of Thoth_."

He walked across to a distant shelf, selected a volume, opened it at a particular page, and placed it on his son's knees.

"Read there!" he said, pointing.

The words seemed to dance before the younger man's eyes, and this is what he read:

"To read two pages, enables you to enchant the heavens, the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea; you shall know what the birds of the sky and the crawling things are saying ... and when the second page is read, if you are in the world of ghosts, you will grow again in the shape you were on earth...."

"Heavens!" whispered Robert Cairn, "is this the writing of a madman?

or can such things possibly be!" He read on:

"This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box--"

"An iron box," he muttered--"an iron box."

"So you recognise the iron box?" jerked Dr. Cairn.

His son read on:

"In the iron box, is a bronze box; in the bronze box, is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box, is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box, is a silver box; in the silver box, is a golden box; and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes, and scorpions, and all the other crawling things...."

"The man who holds the _Book of Thoth_," said Dr. Cairn, breaking the silence, "holds a power which should only belong to G.o.d. The creature who is known to the world as Antony Ferrara, holds that book--do you doubt it?--therefore you know now, as I have known long enough, with what manner of enemy we are fighting. You know that, this time, it is a fight to the death--"

He stopped abruptly, staring out of the window.

A man with a large photographic camera, standing upon the opposite pavement, was busily engaged in focussing the house!

"What is this?" muttered Robert Cairn, also stepping to the window.

"It is a link between sorcery and science!" replied the doctor. "You remember Ferrara's photographic gallery at Oxford?--the Zenana, you used to call it!--You remember having seen in his collection photographs of persons who afterwards came to violent ends?"

"I begin to understand!"

"Thus far, his endeavours to concentrate the whole of the evil forces at his command upon this house have had but poor results: having merely caused Myra to dream strange dreams--clairvoyant dreams, instructive dreams, more useful to us than to the enemy; and having resulted in certain marks upon the outside of the house adjoining the windows--windows which I have sealed in a particular manner. You understand?"

"By means of photographs he--concentrates, in some way, malignant forces upon certain points--"

"He focusses his will--yes! The man who can really control his will, Rob, is supreme, below the G.o.dhead. Ferrara can almost do this now.

Before he has become wholly proficient--"

"I understand, sir," snapped his son grimly.

"He is barely of age, boy," Dr. Cairn said, almost in a whisper. "In another year, he would menace the world. Where are you going?"

He grasped his son's arm as Robert started for the door.