The Jewel of Seven Stars - Bram Stoker (best 7 inch ereader .TXT) 📗
- Author: Bram Stoker
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She returned in a couple of minutes; as she came in she said:
“It is most odd about that mummy! When Silvio came into the room
first—indeed I took him in as a kitten to show to Father—he went on
just the same way. He jumped up on the table, and tried to scratch and
bite the mummy. That was what made Father so angry, and brought the
decree of banishment on poor Silvio. Only his parole, given through me,
kept him in the house.”
Whilst she had been gone, Doctor Winchester had taken the bandage from
her father’s wrist. The wound was now quite clear, as the separate cuts
showed out in fierce red lines. The Doctor folded the blotting-paper
across the line of punctures made by the cat’s claws, and held it down
close to the wound. As he did so, he looked up triumphantly and
beckoned us over to him.
The cuts in the paper corresponded with the wounds in the wrist! No
explanation was needed, as he said;
“It would have been better if master Silvio had not broken his parole!”
We were all silent for a little while. Suddenly Miss Trelawny said:
“But Silvio was not in here last night!”
“Are you sure? Could you prove that is necessary?” She hesitated
before replying:
“I am certain of it; but I fear it would be difficult to prove. Silvio
sleeps in a basket in my room. I certainly put him to bed last night; I
remember distinctly laying his little blanket over him, and tucking him
in. This morning I took him out of the basket myself. I certainly
never noticed him in here; though, of course, that would not mean much,
for I was too concerned about poor father, and too much occupied with
him, to notice even Silvio.”
The Doctor shook his head as he said with a certain sadness:
“Well, at any rate it is no use trying to prove anything now. Any cat
in the world would have cleaned blood-marks—did any exist—from his paws
in a hundredth part of the time that has elapsed.”
Again we were all silent; and again the silence was broken by Miss
Trelawny:
“But now that I think of it, it could not have been poor Silvio that
injured Father. My door was shut when I first heard the sound; and
Father’s was shut when I listened at it. When I went in, the injury had
been done; so that it must have been before Silvio could possibly have
got in.” This reasoning commended itself, especially to me as a
barrister, for it was proof to satisfy a jury. It gave me a distinct
pleasure to have Silvio acquitted of the crime—possibly because he was
Miss Trelawny’s cat and was loved by her. Happy cat! Silvio’s mistress
was manifestly pleased as I said:
“Verdict, ‘not guilty!’” Doctor Winchester after a pause observed:
“My apologies to master Silvio on this occasion; but I am still puzzled
to know why he is so keen against that mummy. Is he the same toward the
other mummies in the house? There are, I suppose, a lot of them. I saw
three in the hall as I came in.”
“There are lots of them,” she answered. “I sometimes don’t know whether
I am in a private house or the British Museum. But Silvio never
concerns himself about any of them except that particular one. I
suppose it must be because it is of an animal, not a man or a woman.”
“Perhaps it is of a cat!” said the Doctor as he started up and went
across the room to look at the mummy more closely. “Yes,” he went on,
“it is the mummy of a cat; and a very fine one, too. If it hadn’t been
a special favourite of some very special person it would never have
received so much honour. See! A painted case and obsidian eyes-just
like a human mummy. It is an extraordinary thing, that knowledge of
kind to kind. Here is a dead cat—that is all; it is perhaps four or
five thousand years old—and another cat of another breed, in what is
practically another world, is ready to fly at it, just as it would if it
were not dead. I should like to experiment a bit about that cat if you
don’t mind, Miss Trelawny.” She hesitated before replying:
“Of course, do anything you may think necessary or wise; but I hope it
will not be anything to hurt or worry my poor Silvio.” The Doctor
smiled as he answered:
“Oh, Silvio would be all right: it is the other one that my sympathies
would be reserved for.”
“How do you mean?”
“Master Silvio will do the attacking; the other one will do the
suffering.”
“Suffering?” There was a note of pain in her voice. The Doctor smiled
more broadly:
“Oh, please make your mind easy as to that. The other won’t suffer as
we understand it; except perhaps in his structure and outfit.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Simply this, my dear young lady, that the antagonist will be a mummy
cat like this one. There are, I take it, plenty of them to be had in
Museum Street. I shall get one and place it here instead of that one—
you won’t think that a temporary exchange will violate your Father’s
instructions, I hope. We shall then find out, to begin with, whether
Silvio objects to all mummy cats, or only to this one in particular.”
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “Father’s instructions seem very
uncompromising.” Then after a pause she went on: “But of course under
the circumstances anything that is to be ultimately for his good must be
done. I suppose there can’t be anything very particular about the mummy
of a cat.”
Doctor Winchester said nothing. He sat rigid, with so grave a look on
his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its enlightening
perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done the strangeness
of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned. When once this
thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it grew, and
blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand different ways. The room
and all in it gave grounds for strange thoughts. There were so many
ancient relics that unconsciously one was taken back to strange lands
and strange times. There were so many mummies or mummy objects, round
which there seemed to cling for ever the penetrating odours of bitumen,
and spices and gums—“Nard and Circassia’s balmy smells”—that one was
unable to forget the past. Of course, there was but little light in the
room, and that carefully shaded; so that there was no glare anywhere.
None of that direct light which can manifest itself as a power or an
entity, and so make for companionship. The room was a large one, and
lofty in proportion to its size. In its vastness was place for a
multitude of things not often found in a bedchamber. In far corners
of the room were shadows of uncanny shape. More than once as I thought,
the multitudinous presence of the dead and the past took such hold on me
that I caught myself looking round fearfully as though some strange
personality or influence was present. Even the manifest presence of
Doctor Winchester and Miss Trelawny could not altogether comfort or
satisfy me at such moments. It was with a distinct sense of relief that
I saw a new personality in the room in the shape of Nurse Kennedy.
There was no doubt that that business-like, self-reliant, capable young
woman added an element of security to such wild imaginings as my own.
She had a quality of common sense that seemed to pervade everything
around her, as though it were some kind of emanation. Up to that moment
I had been building fancies around the sick man; so that finally all
about him, including myself, had become involved in them, or enmeshed,
or saturated, or…But now that she had come, he relapsed into his
proper perspective as a patient; the room was a sick-room, and the
shadows lost their fearsome quality. The only thing which it could not
altogether abrogate was the strange Egyptian smell. You may put a mummy
in a glass case and hermetically seal it so that no corroding air can
get within; but all the same it will exhale its odour. One might think
that four or five thousand years would exhaust the olfactory qualities
of anything; but experience teaches us that these smells remain, and
that their secrets are unknown to us. Today they are as much mysteries
as they were when the embalmers put the body in the bath of natron…
All at once I sat up. I had become lost in an absorbing reverie. The
Egyptian smell had seemed to get on my nerves—on my memory—on my very
will.
At that moment I had a thought which was like an inspiration. If I was
influenced in such a manner by the smell, might it not be that the sick
man, who lived half his life or more in the atmosphere, had gradually
and by slow but sure process taken into his system something which had
permeated him to such degree that it had a new power derived from
quantity—or strength—or…
I was becoming lost again in a reverie. This would not do. I must take
such precaution that I could remain awake, or free from such entrancing
thought. I had had but half a night’s sleep last night; and this night
I must remain awake. Without stating my intention, for I feared that I
might add to the trouble and uneasiness of Miss Trelawny, I went
downstairs and out of the house. I soon found a chemist’s shop, and
came away with a respirator. When I got back, it was ten o’clock; the
Doctor was going for the night. The Nurse came with him to the door of
the sick-room, taking her last instructions. Miss Trelawny sat still
beside the bed. Sergeant Daw, who had entered as the Doctor went out,
was some little distance off.
When Nurse Kennedy joined us, we arranged that she should sit up till
two o’clock, when Miss Trelawny would relieve her. Thus, in accordance
with Mr. Trelawny’s instructions, there would always be a man and a
woman in the room; and each one of us would overlap, so that at no time
would a new set of watchers come on duty without some one to tell of
what—if anything—had occurred. I lay down on a sofa in my own room,
having arranged that one of the servants should call me a little before
twelve. In a few moments I was asleep.
When I was waked, it took me several seconds to get back my thoughts so
as to recognise my own identity and surroundings. The short sleep had,
however, done me good, and I could look on things around me in a more
practical light than I had been able to do earlier in the evening. I
bathed my face, and thus refreshed went into the sick-room. I moved
very softly. The Nurse was sitting by the bed, quiet and alert; the
Detective sat in an armchair across the room in deep shadow. He did
not move when I crossed, until I got close to him, when he said in a
dull whisper:
“It is all right; I have not been asleep!” An unnecessary thing to say,
I thought—it always is, unless it be untrue in spirit. When I told him
that his watch was over; that he might go to bed till I should
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