Part 15

“I have it!” he rumbled, triumphantly. “And in my pocket reposes the electric lamp. I ascend; you, my good friend, will follow.”

True enough he scrambled upward and, to my unspeakable amazement, disappeared in the chimney. Filled with great wonder I followed and saw him standing in a recess high above my head, a recess which he must have opened in some way unknown to me. He extended a long arm and grasped my hand in his.

“Up!” he cried, exerted his surprising strength, and jerked me up beside him with as little effort as though I had been a child.

He pressed the button of a torch which he held and I saw that we stood upon an exceedingly steep and narrow wooden stair.

“It is in the thickness of the wall between the panellings,” he whispered, solemnly; “a Jacobite hiding place. Sir James knows nothing of it, for has he not spent his life in the Bush?”

He mounted the stair.

“On the right,” his voice came back to me, “the gun room, the billiard room! On the left, the banquet room. From here comes the laughter--from here comes the danger.”

Still he ascended and I followed. The narrow stair terminated in a dusty box-like apartment no more than six feet high by six feet square. Moris Klaw, ducking his head grotesquely, stood there shining the light about him. From the floor he took up a square wooden case and waved to me to descend again.

“No exit,” he said; “no exit. Sir James’s bedroom is upon the farther side, but, as I had anticipated, there is no exit.”

We returned the way we had come; clearly there was no other. Beneath his caped coat Moris Klaw jealously concealed the case which he had discovered in the secret chamber. I was filled with intense curiosity; but Moris Klaw, having gone to his room, asking me to await him outside in the drive, returned, ultimately, without the case, but carrying a huge notebook, and intimated that he was prepared to reënter the waiting car.

Behind the pebbles of his pince-nez his strange eyes gleamed triumphantly.

“We triumph,” he said. “The haunting of Grange succumbs to the Science of the Mind!”

IV

We all had lunch at Friars House, but were by no means a jovial party. Sir James seemed worried and preoccupied, and Clement Leyland even more reticent than usual. Moris Klaw talked, certainly, but his conversation turned entirely upon the subject of the Borgias, concerning which notorious family he was possessed of a stock of most unsavoury anecdote. So realistic were his gruesome stories, delivered in that rumbling whisper, wholly impossible to describe or imitate, that every mouthful of food which I swallowed threatened to choke me.

Afterward we wandered idly about the beautiful old grounds, which bore ineffaceable marks of monkish cultivation. Sir James, who was walking ahead with Moris Klaw and Isis, suddenly turned and waited for me. I had been examining a sundial with much interest, but I now walked on and joined our host.

“Mr. Searles,” he said, “may I press you to remain here over the week-end?”

“That’s very good of you,” I replied. “I think I could manage it, and I should enjoy the stay immensely.”

I concluded that Moris Klaw also was remaining, and consequently was surprised when a short time later he drew me aside into a rose-covered arbour and announced that he was leaving by the four-o’clock train.

“But I shall be back in the morning, Mr. Searles,” he assured me, wagging his finger mysteriously; “I shall be back in the morning!”

“And Miss Klaw?”

“She, too, goes by the four-o’clock train and will not be returning--for the present.”

“I understand that Sir James is taking up his residence here at Friars House from now onward?”

“It is so, my friend; he deserts Grange. The servants come over here to-day. Is he not well advised? Mr. Clement has all along recommended that this shall be his residence. He was against it, the idea of inhabiting Grange, from the first. He is wise, that Mr. Clement. He has lived in these parts so long. He knows that Grange is haunted, is uninhabitable.”

Later, then, Moris Klaw and Isis took their departure; and just as the car was about to drive off my eccentric friend removed his brown bowler and sprayed his bald brow with verbena. He bent to me:

“Day and night,” he whispered, huskily, “do not lose sight of him, Sir James! Above all, allow him not to _explore!_”

With that the car drove off, and I stood looking after it, wondering, utterly mystified. On the steps behind me stood Clement Leyland and his cousin. The latter’s gaze followed the course of the car along the picturesque winding road until it became lost from view. I thought I heard him sigh.

Ensued an uneventful day and night. Life was pleasant enough at Friars House, if a trifle dull; and Sir James seemed unsettled, whilst his disquietude was reflected in his cousin. The latter, now that his active labours in preparing this new residence for the baronet were checked, seemed a man at a loss what to do with himself. His was one of those quietly ardent temperaments, I divined, and idleness palled upon him. Apparently he had no profession, and although I presumed that he had some residence of his own in the neighbourhood, he, apparently, was prepared indefinitely to prolong his stay at Friars House. I think his companionship was welcome to Sir James, for the latter was yet strange to the new duties of a landed gentleman.

The next morning brought Moris Klaw, and I learned with ever-growing surprise that he had made arrangements to spend the following week beneath the hospitable roof of Friars House.

I have nothing to record of interest up to the time I left; but often during the ensuing six days the problem of the haunting of Grange, and the mystery of Moris Klaw’s protracted visit to Friars House came between me and my work. Then on the Saturday morning arrived a telegram:

“Can you join us for week-end--car will meet 2:30. Wire reply. Best wishes.--Leyland.”

I determined to accept the invitation; for respecting the nature of Moris Klaw’s business at Friars House--and that he had some other motive than ordinary in sojourning there I was persuaded--my curiosity knew no bounds. Accordingly, I packed my grip, and at about five o’clock on a delightful afternoon found myself taking tea in a cloister-like apartment of the former Friary.

“Grange,” said Sir James, in answer to a question of mine, “is shut up.”

“It is shut, yes,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “What a pity! What a pity!”

In the course of the day occurred incidents which I have since perceived to have been significant. I will pass over them, however, and hasten to what I may term the catastrophe of this very singular case.

Four of us sat down to dinner in an apartment which clearly had been the ancient refectory of the monks. Clement Leyland, who had arrived barely in time to dress, looked haggard and worried. I determined that he had some private troubles of his own, and beneath his quiet geniality I thought I could detect a sort of brooding gloom. His pale, clean-shaven face, so like yet so unlike that of his cousin, was a mask that ill repaid study; yet I knew that the real Clement Leyland was a stranger to me, perhaps to all of us.

I was most anxious to learn if Moris Klaw had divulged the secret of the hidden chamber at Grange to Sir James; and I was unspeakably curious concerning the box of which I had had but a glimpse--the box that he had found there. But he baffled my curiosity at every point.

Have you experienced that sense of impending calamity which sometimes heralds tragic things? It was with me that night, throughout dinner; and afterward, when we entered the library and sat over our cigars, it grew portentously. I felt that I stood upon the brink of a precipice. And literally I was not in great error. Moris Klaw, to the evident discomfort of Sir James, brought the conversation around to the subject of the haunting. I observed him to glance at his watch, with a rather odd expression upon his vellum-hued face.

“Is it not singular,” he said, “how poor spectres are confined, like linnets, to their cages? They seem, these spooks, never to roam. That laughing demon of Grange--look at him. He remains in that empty, desolate house; he----”

There was a dreadful interruption.

Commencing with a sort of guttural rattle, out upon the cloisteresque stillness burst a peal of wicked laughter.

It rang throughout the room; it poured fear into my every fibre. It died away--and was gone.

Sir James, clutching the leather-covered chair-arms, looked like a man of stone. I was frankly terrorized. Moris Klaw stood behind me, by a bookcase, him I could not see. But Clement Leyland’s face I can never forget. It was positively deathlike. His eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and his teeth chattered horribly.

“God in Heaven!” he whispered, brokenly. “What is it? O God! What is it! Take it away--take it away!”

Then Moris Klaw spoke, slowly:

“It is for _you_ to take it away, Mr. Leyland!”

Clement Leyland rose from his seat; he swayed like a drunken man, and there was madness in the glaring eyes that he turned in Klaw’s direction.

“You--you----” he gasped.

“I--I----” rumbled Moris Klaw, sternly, and took a step forward; “I have entered the Jacobite hiding place at Grange, and there I found a box! Ah! you glare! glare on, my friend! I returned that box to where I found it; but first I examined its contents! What! that demon laughter frightens you! Then descend, Mr. Leyland, descend and bring him out--the one who laughs!”

Rigidly, Sir James sat in his chair; I, too, seemed to be palsied. But at sight of the next happening we both stood up. Moris Klaw stamped heavily upon the oaken floor in a deep recess; then applied his weight to a section of the seemingly solid stone wall.

It turned, as on a pivot, revealing a dark cavity.

He stood there, a bizarre figure, pointing down into the blackness.

“Descend, my friend!” he cried. “The one who laughs is upon the seventh step!”

“_The seventh step!_”

In a whisper the words came from Clement Leyland. A draft of damp, cavernous air blew into the library out of the opening.

“Descend, my friend!”

Remorselessly, Moris Klaw repeated the words. In the centre of the room, Clement Leyland, a pitiable sight, stood staring--and hesitating. Suddenly his cousin spoke.

“Don’t go, Clement!” he whispered.

The other turned to him, dazedly.

“Don’t go--down that place. But--O God! I understand at last, or partly.… _Quit!_ I give you half an hour!”

Sir James sank back into his chair and buried his face in his hands; Moris Klaw never moved from where he stood by the cavity. But Clement Leyland, with bowed head, walked from the room.

In the silence that followed his going--

“Await me, gentlemen,” rumbled Klaw; “I descend for the laughter!”

He stepped into the opening.

“One,” he counted, “two--three--four--five--” his voice came up to us from the depths--“_six!_”

We heard him ascending. Walking into the library he placed upon the table beside Sir James a very large and up-to-date gramophone!

“The laughter!” he explained, simply. “That night, my friends, when first I slept at Grange, I secured, among a host of other dreadful negatives, the negative of one who lurked in a secret hiding place. I saw him come creeping from the chimney corner, bearing a great mace which I recognized for one that had hung in the hall! Almost, the Science of the Mind betrayed me; for I mistook him for a thought-form! But the mind of Isis is _en rapport_ with the mind of her poor old father. In her dreams she saw my peril, and she it was who, screaming, saved me!--saved me from the murderer with the mace!”

Sir James made no sign. Moris Klaw continued:

“I gathered, then, that the one who sometimes lurked in the Jacobite hiding place and who, somehow, made the demon laughter, and the other phenomena, sought _one_ end. It was to cause you to leave Grange and to live in Friars House! Beyond so far, my science could not show me. I assisted, therefore, the project of the lurker; and came myself, too, in order to watch, my friend, to guard and to spy!

“His gramophone I found, examined, and replaced. It had a clockwork attachment, very ingenious, which both started and stopped it; there was little or no scraping. To-night, from his room, unknown to him, I removed the instrument from its case, which lay hidden at the bottom of his trunk. Yes! I stole his key! I am the old fox! Why did he bring it here? I cannot reply. Perhaps he meant again to use it; his future projects are dark to me, but their object is all too light.”

Sir James groaned.

“Old Clem!” he whispered, “and how I trusted him!”

“He did not quite believe in my science,” resumed Moris Klaw, “but he did not know that, hidden, I slept almost beside him as he sat, planning, in this very room! From his own bad mind I secured my second negative; and it showed me the death trap of some bad old son of Mother Church! At Grange there was but the Jacobite hiding place, but here was the devilry of feudal times! I returned to London. Why? To learn if my suspicions were well founded. Yes! You may or may not be aware; but if you die childless, the wicked Clement inherits Grange!”

“I knew that,” whispered Sir James.

“Ah! you knew? _So._ I returned to here, for, even at that time, I suspected that your _accidental_ death was the object of removal! Then I secured it, my second negative. Biding my time, I explored that death-smelling place. Its wicked machinery had been _freshly oiled!_ Ah! he knew its secrets well, the old house that he hoped to inherit!

“One night, all innocent, as you sat here, with other guests, he would have blundered upon that doorway! And _you_, the host, would have led the search party! But I saw that he feared to move whilst I remained, and so I played the ghost upon him with his own spook!”

Sir James Leyland looked up. His bronzed face was transformed with emotion.

“Mr. Klaw,” he said, huskily, “why did you lay so much emphasis upon the words, ‘the seventh step’?”

Moris Klaw shrugged, replying simply:

“Because _there is no seventh step--only the mouth of a well!_”

TENTH EPISODE. CASE OF THE VEIL OF ISIS

I

I have made no attempt, in these chronicles, to arrange the cases of my remarkable friend, Moris Klaw, in sections. Yet, as has recently been pointed out to me, they seem naturally to fall into two orders. There were those in which he appeared in the rôle of criminal investigator, and in which he was usually associated with Inspector Grimsby. There was another class of inquiry in which the criminal element was lacking: mysteries which never came under the notice of New Scotland Yard.

Since Moris Klaw’s methods were, if not supernatural, at any rate supernormal, I have been asked if he ever, to my knowledge, inquired into a case which proved insusceptible of a natural explanation--which fell strictly within the province of the occult.

To that I answer that I am aware of several; but I have refrained from including them because readers of these papers would be unlikely to appreciate the nature of Klaw’s investigations outside the sphere of ordinary natural laws. Those who are curious upon the point cannot do better than consult the remarkable work by Moris Klaw entitled, “Psychic Angles.”

But there was one case with which I found myself concerned that I am disposed to include, for it fell between the provinces of the natural and supernatural in such a way that it might, with equal legitimacy, be included under either head. On the whole, I am disposed to bracket it with the case of the headless mummies.

I will take leave to introduce you, then, to the company which met at Otter Brearley’s house one night in August.

“This is most truly amazing,” Moris Klaw was saying; “and I am indebted to my good friend Searles”--he inclined his sparsely covered head in my direction--“for the opportunity to be one of you. It is a séance? Yes and no. But there is a mummy in it--and those mummies are so instructive!”

He extracted the scent spray from his pocket and refreshed his yellow brow with verbena.

“How to be regretted that my daughter is in Paris,” he continued, his rumbling voice echoing queerly about the room. “She loves them like a mother--those mummies! Ah, Mr. Brearley, this will cement your great reputation!”

Otter Brearley shook his head.

“I am not yet prepared to make it public property,” he declared, slowly. “No one, outside the present circle, knows of my discovery. I do not wish it to go farther--at present.”

He glanced around the table, his prominent blue eyes passing from myself to Moris Klaw and from Klaw to the clean-cut dark face of Doctor Fairbank. The latter, scarce heeding his host’s last words, sat watching how the shaded light played, tenderly, amid the soft billows of Ailsa Brearley’s wonderful hair.

“Shall you make it the subject of a paper?” he asked suddenly.

“My dear Doctor Fairbank!” rumbled Moris Klaw, solemnly, “if you had been paying attention to our good friend you would have heard him say that he was not prepared, at present, to make public his wonderful discovery.”

“Sorry!” said Fairbank, turning to Brearley. “But if it is not to be made public I don’t altogether follow the idea. What _do_ you intend, Brearley?”

“I intend to experiment,” answered Brearley.

“In what way?” I asked.

“In every way possible!”

Doctor Fairbank sat back in his chair and looked thoughtful.

“Rather a comprehensive scheme?”

Brearley toyed with the bundle of notes under his hand.

“I have already,” he said, “exhaustively examined seven of the possibilities; the eighth, and--I believe, the last--remains to be considered.”

“Listen now to me, Mr. Brearley,” said Moris Klaw, wagging a long finger. “I am here, the old curious, and find myself in delightful company. But until this evening I know nothing of your work except that I have read all your books. For me you will be so good as to outline all the points--yes?”

Otter Brearley mutely sought permission of the company, and turned the leaves of his manuscript. All men have an innate love of “talking shop,” but few can make such talk of general interest. Brearley was an exception in this respect. He loved to talk of Egypt, of the Pharaohs, of the temples, of the priesthood and its mysteries; but others loved to hear him. That made all the difference.

“The discovery,” he now began, “upon which I have blundered--for pure accident, alone, led me to it--assumes its great importance by reason of the absolute mystery surrounding certain phases of Egyptian worship. In the old days, Fairbank, you will recall that it was my supreme ambition to learn the secrets of Isis-worship as practised in early Egyptian times. Save for impostors, and legitimate imaginative writers, no one has yet lifted the veil of Isis. That mystical ceremony by which a priest was consecrated to the goddess, or made an arch adept, was thought to be hopelessly lost, or, by others, to be a myth devised by the priesthood to awe the ignorant masses. In fact, we know little of the entire religion but its outward form. Of that occult lore so widely attributed to its votaries we know nothing--absolutely nothing! By we, I mean students in general. I, individually, have made a step, if not a stride, into that holy of holies!”

“Mind you don’t lose yourself!” said Fairbank, lightly.

But, professionally, he was displeased with Brearley’s drawn face and with the feverish brightness of his eyes. So much was plain for all to see. In the eyes of Ailsa Brearley, so like, yet so unlike, her brother’s, he read understanding of his displeasure, I think, together with a pathetic appeal.

Brearley waved his long white hand carelessly.

“Rest assured of that, Doctor!” he replied. “The labyrinth in which I find myself is intricate, I readily admit; but all my steps have been well considered. To return, Mr. Klaw”--addressing the latter--“I have secured the mummy of one of those arch adepts! That he was one is proved by the papyrus, presumably in his own writing, which lay upon his breast! I unwrapped the mummy in Egypt, where it now reposes; but the writing I brought back with me and have recently deciphered. A glance had showed me that it was not the usual excerpts from the ‘Book of the Dead.’ Six months’ labour has proved it to be a detailed account of his initiation into the inner mysteries!”

“Is such a papyrus unique?” I asked.

“Unique!” cried Moris Klaw. “Name of a little blue man! It is priceless!”

“But why,” I pursued, “should this priest, alone among the many who must have been so initiated, have left an account of the ceremony?”

“It was forbidden to divulge any part, any word, of it, Searles!” said Brearley. “Departure from this law was visited with fearful punishments in this world and dire penalties in the next. Khamus, for so this priest was named, well knew this. But some reason which, I fear, can never be known, prompted him to write the papyrus. It is probable, if not certain, that no eye but his, and mine, has read what is written there.”

A silence of a few seconds followed his words.

“Yes,” rumbled Klaw, presently; “it is undoubtedly a discovery of extraordinary importance, this. You agree, my friend?”

I nodded.

“That’s evident,” I replied. “But I cannot altogether get the hang of the ceremony itself, Brearley. That is the point upon which I am particularly hazy.”

“To read you the entire account in detail,” Brearley resumed, “would occupy too long, and would almost certainly confuse you. But the singular thing is this: Khamus distinctly asserts that the goddess appeared to him. His writing is eminently sane and reserved, and his account of the ceremony, up to that point, highly interesting. Now, I have tested the papyrus itself--though no possibility of fraud is really admissible, and I have been able to confirm many of the statements made therein. There is only one point, it seems to me, remaining to be settled.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“Whether, as a result of the ceremony described, Khamus did see Isis, or whether he merely imagined he did!”

No one spoke for a moment. Then--

“My friend,” said Moris Klaw, “I have a daughter whom I have named Isis. Why did I name her Isis? Mr. Brearley, you must know that that name has a mystic and beautiful significance. But I will say something--I am glad that my daughter is not here! Mr. Brearley--beware! Beware, I say: you play with burning fires; my friend--beware!”

His words impressed us all immensely; for there was something underlying them more portentous than appeared upon the surface.

Fairbank stared at Brearley, hard.

“Do I understand,” he began, quietly, “that you admit the first possibility?”

“Certainly!” replied Brearley, with conviction.

“You are prepared to admit the existence, as an entity, of Isis?”

“I am prepared to admit the existence of _anything_ until it can be proved not to exist!”

“Then, admitting the existence of Isis, what should you assume it, or her, to be?”

“That is not a matter for presumption; it is a matter for inquiry!”

The doctor glanced quickly toward Ailsa Brearley, and her beautiful face was troubled.

“And this inquiry--how should you propose to conduct it?”

“In surroundings as nearly as possible identical with those described in the papyrus,” replied Brearley, with growing excitement. “I should follow the ceremony, word by word, as Khamus did!”

His eyes gleamed with pent-up enthusiasm. We four listeners, again stricken silent, watched him; and again it was the doctor who broke the silence.

“Is the ceremony spoken?”

“In the first half there is a long prayer, which is chanted.”

“But Egyptian, as a _spoken_ language, is lost, surely?”

“The exact pronunciation, or accent, is lost, of course; but there are many who can speak it. I can, for instance.”

“And I,” rumbled Moris Klaw, gloomily. “But these special surroundings? Eh, my friend?”