The Jewel of Seven Stars - Bram Stoker (best 7 inch ereader .TXT) 📗
- Author: Bram Stoker
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think I must have gone mad for a moment.” She stopped and shuddered.
My eyes lit on Sergeant Daw, still fiddling in an aimless way with the
revolver. Mindful of my work with the tourniquet, I said calmly:
“Now tell us, Sergeant Daw, what did you fire at?” The policeman seemed
to pull himself together with the habit of obedience. Looking around at
the servants remaining in the room, he said with that air of importance
which, I take it, is the regulation attitude of an official of the law
before strangers:
“Don’t you think, sir, that we can allow the servants to go away? We
can then better go into the matter.” I nodded approval; the servants
took the hint and withdrew, though unwillingly, the last one closing the
door behind him. Then the Detective went on:
“I think I had better tell you my impressions, sir, rather than recount
my actions. That is, so far as I remember them.” There was a mortified
deference now in his manner, which probably arose from his consciousness
of the awkward position in which he found himself. “I went to sleep
half-dressed—as I am now, with a revolver under my pillow. It was the
last thing I remember thinking of. I do not know how long I slept. I
had turned off the electric light, and it was quite dark. I thought I
heard a scream; but I can’t be sure, for I felt thick-headed as a man
does when he is called too soon after an extra long stretch of work.
Not that such was the case this time. Anyhow my thoughts flew to the
pistol. I took it out, and ran on to the landing. Then I heard a sort
of scream, or rather a call for help, and ran into this room. The room
was dark, for the lamp beside the Nurse was out, and the only light was
that from the landing, coming through the open door. Miss Trelawny was
kneeling on the floor beside her father, and was screaming. I thought I
saw something move between me and the window; so, without thinking, and
being half dazed and only half awake, I shot at it. It moved a little
more to the right between the windows, and I shot again. Then you came
up out of the big chair with all that muffling on your face. It seemed
to me, being as I say half dazed and half awake—I know, sir, you will
take this into account—as if it had been you, being in the same
direction as the thing I had fired at. And so I was about to fire again
when you pulled off the wrap.” Here I asked him—I was cross-examining
now and felt at home:
“You say you thought I was the thing you fired at. What thing?” The
man scratched his head, but made no reply.
“Come, sir,” I said, “what thing; what was it like?” The answer came in
a low voice:
“I don’t know, sir. I thought there was something; but what it was, or
what it was like, I haven’t the faintest notion. I suppose it was
because I had been thinking of the pistol before I went to sleep, and
because when I came in here I was half dazed and only half awake—which I
hope you will in future, sir, always remember.” He clung to that
formula of excuse as though it were his sheet-anchor. I did not want to
antagonise the man; on the contrary I wanted to have him with us.
Besides, I had on me at that time myself the shadow of my own default;
so I said as kindly as I knew how:
“Quite right! Sergeant. Your impulse was correct; though of course in
the half-somnolent condition in which you were, and perhaps partly
affected by the same influence—whatever it may be—which made me sleep
and which has put the Nurse in that cataleptic trance, it could not be
expected that you would paused to weigh matters. But now, whilst the
matter is fresh, let me see exactly where you stood and where I sat. We
shall be able to trace the course of your bullets.” The prospect of
action and the exercise of his habitual skill seemed to brace him at
once; he seemed a different man as he set about his work. I asked Mrs.
Grant to hold the tourniquet, and went and stood where he had stood and
looked where, in the darkness, he had pointed. I could not but notice
the mechanical exactness of his mind, as when he showed me where he had
stood, or drew, as a matter of course, the revolver from his pistol
pocket, and pointed with it. The chair from which I had risen still
stood in its place. Then I asked him to point with his hand only, as I
wished to move in the track of his shot.
Just behind my chair, and a little back of it, stood a high buhl
cabinet. The glass door was shattered. I asked:
“Was this the direction of your first shot or your second?” The answer
came promptly.
“The second; the first was over there!”
He turned a little to the left, more toward the wall where the great
safe stood, and pointed. I followed the direction of his hand and came
to the low table whereon rested, amongst other curios, the mummy of the
cat which had raised Silvio’s ire. I got a candle and easily found the
mark of the bullet. It had broken a little glass vase and a tazza of
black basalt, exquisitely engraved with hieroglyphics, the graven lines
being filled with some faint green cement and the whole thing being
polished to an equal surface. The bullet, flattened against the wall,
lay on the table.
I then went to the broken cabinet. It was evidently a receptacle for
valuable curios; for in it were some great scarabs of gold, agate, green
jasper, amethyst, lapis lazuli, opal, granit, and blue-green china.
None of these things happily were touched. The bullet had gone through
the back of the cabinet; but no other damage, save the shattering of the
glass, had been done. I could not but notice the strange arrangement of
the curios on the shelf of the cabinet. All the scarabs, rings,
amulets, &c. were arranged in an uneven oval round an exquisitely-carved
golden miniature figure of a hawk-headed God crowned with a disk and
plumes. I did not wait to look further at present, for my attention was
demanded by more pressing things; but I determined to make a more minute
examination when I should have time. It was evident that some of the
strange Egyptian smell clung to these old curios; through the broken
glass came an added whiff of spice and gum and bitumen, almost stronger
than those I had already noticed as coming from others in the room.
All this had really taken but a few minutes. I was surprised when my
eye met, through the chinks between the dark window blinds and the
window cases, the brighter light of the coming dawn. When I went back
to the sofa and took the tourniquet from Mrs. Grant, she went over and
pulled up the blinds.
It would be hard to imagine anything more ghastly than the appearance of
the room with the faint grey light of early morning coming in upon it.
As the windows faced north, any light that came was a fixed grey light
without any of the rosy possibility of dawn which comes in the eastern
quarter of heaven. The electric lights seemed dull and yet glaring; and
every shadow was of a hard intensity. There was nothing of morning
freshness; nothing of the softness of night. All was hard and cold and
inexpressibly dreary. The face of the senseless man on the sofa seemed
of a ghastly yellow; and the Nurse’s face had taken a suggestion of
green from the shade of the lamp near her. Only Miss Trelawny’s face
looked white; and it was of a pallor which made my heart ache. It
looked as if nothing on God’s earth could ever again bring back to it
the colour of life and happiness.
It was a relief to us all when Doctor Winchester came in, breathless
with running. He only asked one question:
“Can anyone tell me anything of how this wound was gotten?” On seeing
the headshake which went round us under his glance, he said no more, but
applied himself to his surgical work. For an instant he looked up at
the Nurse sitting so still; but then bent himself to his task, a grave
frown contracting his brows. It was not till the arteries were tied and
the wounds completely dressed that he spoke again, except, of course,
when he had asked for anything to be handed to him or to be done for
him. When Mr. Trelawny’s wounds had been thoroughly cared for, he said
to Miss Trelawny:
“What about Nurse Kennedy?” She answered at once:
“I really do not know. I found her when I came into the room at
half-past two o’clock, sitting exactly as she does now. We have not
moved her, or changed her position. She has not wakened since. Even
Sergeant Daw’s pistol-shots did not disturb her.”
“Pistol-shots? Have you then discovered any cause for this new
outrage?” The rest were silent, so I answered:
“We have discovered nothing. I was in the room watching with the Nurse.
Earlier in the evening I fancied that the mummy smells were making me
drowsy, so I went out and got a respirator. I had it on when I came on
duty; but it did not keep me from going to sleep. I awoke to see the
room full of people; that is, Miss Trelawny and Sergeant Daw, being only
half awake and still stupefied by the same scent or influence which had
affected us, fancied that he saw something moving through the shadowy
darkness of the room, and fired twice. When I rose out of my chair,
with my face swathed in the respirator, he took me for the cause of the
trouble. Naturally enough, he was about to fire again, when I was
fortunately in time to manifest my identity. Mr. Trelawny was lying
beside the safe, just as he was found last night; and was bleeding
profusely from the new wound in his wrist. We lifted him on the sofa,
and made a tourniquet. That is, literally and absolutely, all that any
of us know as yet. We have not touched the knife, which you see lies
close by the pool of blood. Look!” I said, going over and lifting it.
“The point is red with the blood which has dried.”
Doctor Winchester stood quite still a few minutes before speaking:
“Then the doings of this night are quite as mysterious as those of last
night?”
“Quite!” I answered. He said nothing in reply, but turning to Miss
Trelawny said:
“We had better take Nurse Kennedy into another room. I suppose there is
nothing to prevent it?”
“Nothing! Please, Mrs. Grant, see that Nurse Kennedy’s room is ready;
and ask two of the men to come and carry her in.” Mrs. Grant went out
immediately; and in a few minutes came back saying:
“The room is quite ready; and the men are here.” By her direction two
footmen came into the room and, lifting up the rigid body of Nurse
Kennedy under the supervision of the Doctor, carried her out of the
room. Miss Trelawny remained with me in the sick chamber, and Mrs.
Grant went with the Doctor into the Nurse’s room.
When we
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