The Darrow Enigma - Melvin L. Severy (books for 7th graders .txt) 📗

CHAPTER I

Life is but a poor accountant when it leaves the Future to

balance its entries long years after the parties to the

transactions are but a handful of insolvent dust. When, in such

wise, the chiefest item of one side of the sheet fails to explain

itself to the other, the tragic is attained.

 

On the day following Maitland’s departure On for New York, Mr. Darrow

was buried. The Osborne theory seemed to be universally accepted,

and many women who had never seen Mr. Darrow during his life attended

his funeral, curious to see what sort of a person this suicide might

be. Gwen bore the ordeal with a fortitude which spoke volumes for

her strength of character, and I took good care, when it was all

over, that she should not be left alone. In compliance with

Maitland’s request, whose will, since her promise to him, was law to

her, she prepared to close the house and take up her abode with us.

 

It was on the night of the funeral, just after the lamps were

lighted, that an event occurred which made a deep impression upon

Gwen, though neither she nor I fully appreciated its significance

till weeks afterward.

 

Gwen, who was to close the house on the morrow, was going from room

to room collecting such little things as she wished to take with her.

The servants had been dismissed and she was entirely alone in the

house. She had gathered the things she had collected in a little

heap upon the sitting-room table, preparatory to doing them up. She

could think of but one thing more which she must take - a cabinet

photograph of her father. This was upon the top of the piano in the

room where he had met his death. She knew its exact location and

could have put her hand right upon it had it been perfectly dark,

which it was not. She arose, therefore, and, without taking a

light with her, went into the parlour. A faint afterglow illumined

the windows and suffused the room with an uncertain, dim, ghostly

light which lent to all its objects that vague flatness from which

the imagination carves what shapes. it lists. As Gwen reached for

the picture, a sudden conviction possessed her that her father

stood just behind her in the exact spot where he had met his death,

- that if she turned she would see him again with his hand clutching

his throat and his eyes starting from their sockets with that

never-to-be-forgotten look of frenzied helplessness.

 

It would be difficult to find a woman upon whom superstition has so

slight a hold as it has upon Gwen Darrow, yet, for all that, it

required an effort for her to turn and gaze toward the centre of

the room. A dim, ill-defined stain of light fell momentarily upon

the chair in which the dead man had sat, and then flickered

unsteadily across the room and, as it seemed to her, out through

its western side, the while a faint, rustling sound caught her ear.

She was plainly conscious, too, of a something swishing by her, as

if a strong draught had just fallen upon her. She was not naturally

superstitious, as I have said before, yet there was something in the

gloom, the deserted house, and this fatal room with its untold story

of death which, added to her weird perceptions and that indescribable

conviction of an unseen presence, caused even Gwen to press her hand

convulsively upon her throbbing heart. For the first time in her

life the awful possibilities of darkness were fully borne in upon

her and she knew just how her father had felt.

 

In a moment, however, she had recovered from her first shock and had

begun to reason. Might not the sound she had heard, and the movement

she had felt, both be explained by an open window? She knew she had

closed and locked all the windows of the room when she had finished

airing it after the funeral, and she was not aware that anyone had

been there since, yet she said to herself that perhaps one of the

servants had come in and opened a window without her knowledge. She

turned and looked. The lower sash of the eastern window - the one

through which she felt sure death had approached her father - was

raised to its utmost.

 

“How=20fortunate,” she murmured, “that I discovered this before

leaving.”

 

She was all but fully reassured now, as she stepped to the window

to close it. Remembering how the sash stuck in the casing she

raised both hands to forcibly lower it. As she did so a strong

arm caught the sash from the outer side, and a stalwart masculine

form arose directly in front of her. His great height brought his

head almost to a level with her own, despite the fact that he was

standing upon the ground outside. He was so near that she could

feel his breath upon her face. His eyes, like two great coals of

fire, blazed into hers with a sinister and threatening light. His

countenance seemed to utterly surpass any personal malignancy and

to exhibit itself as a type of all the hatreds that ever poisoned

human hearts.

 

Only a moment before Gwen had felt a creepy, sickening sensation

stealing over her as the result of an ill-defined and apparently

causeless dread. Now an actual, imminent, and fearful peril

confronted her. Under such circumstances most women would have

fainted, and, indeed, if Gwen had herself been asked how she would

have acted under such a supreme test, she would have prophesied the

same maidenly course as her own, yet, in the real exigency - how

little do we know of ourselves, save what actual experience has

taught us! - this is precisely what she did not do. When the

horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a

momentary weakness caught her and she clung to the sash for support.

Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine,

opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm’s light seen

under a glass, riveted her attention. She had ceased to tremble.

Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a

great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her. The

future’s burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it

down, there would still be a sense of relief. As this thought

passed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself

irresistibly attracted to the awful face before her. Her assailant’s

gaze seemed to have wound itself about her own till she could not

disentangle it. She was dimly conscious that she was falling under

a spell and summoned all her remaining strength to break it. Quick

as the uncoiling of a released spring, and without the slightest

movement of warning, she threw her entire weight upon the sash in

a last endeavour to close the window, but the man’s upraised arm

held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of

steel. Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand, - saw the light

shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into

her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and

uttered no cry for help. It seemed to her that all this was

happening to another and that she herself was only a fascinated

spectator. She was wondering whether or not the victim would try

to defend herself when the knife began its descent. It seemed

ages in its downward passage, - so long, indeed, that it gave her

time to think of most of the main experiences of her life. At last

it paused irresolutely within an inch of her bosom. She wondered

that the victim made no attempt to escape, uttered no cry for help.

Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while

a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering

torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve

all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and

a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man

striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure it was no

personal concern of hers, yet an idle curiosity noted his great

height, his dark, mulatto-like skin, and a slight halt in his walk

as he passed through a narrow beam of light and off into the

engulfing darkness.

 

It was many minutes before Gwen regained any considerable command

of her faculties, and she afterwards told me that she was even then

more than half inclined to consider the whole thing as a weird dream

of an overwrought mind. At length, however, she realised that she

had had an actual experience, and that it was of sufficient

importance to make it known at once. She accordingly hastened to

lay the whole matter before me, and I, in my turn, notified the

police, who, at once instituted as thorough a search as Gwen’s

description made possible. She had told me that her assailant was

dark-skinned, yet with straight hair, and a cast of features that

gave no hint of any Ethiopian taint. This, and his halting gait

and great stature, were all the police had in the way of description,

and I may as well add that the information was insufficient, for they

never found any trace of Gwen’s assailant.

 

I had had some hopes of this clue, but they were doomed to

disappointment. It seemed evident to us that if anything were ever

done in bringing Mr. Darrow’s assassin to justice, Maitland would

have to do it, unless, indeed, M. Godin solved the problem.=20

Osborne, Allen, and their associates were simply out of the question.

 

We debated for some time as to whether or not we should write

Maitland about Gwen’s strange experience, and finally decided that

the knowledge would be a constant source of worriment without being

of the least assistance to him while he was so far away. We,

therefore, decided to keep our own counsel, for the present at least.

 

Maitland had written us a few lines from New York telling us the

result of his analysis, and ended by saying:

 

There is no doubt that Mr. Darrow died of poison injected into the

blood through the slight wound in the throat. This wound was not

deep, and seemed to have been torn rather than cut in the flesh.

What sort of weapon or projectile produced that wound is a question

of the utmost importance, shrouded in the deepest of mysteries.

Once this point is settled, however, its very uniqueness will be

greatly in our favour. I have an idea our friend Ragobah might be

able to throw some light upon this subject, therefore I am starting

on my way to visit him this afternoon, and shall write you en route

whenever occasion offers.