The Mystery of the Green Ray - William le Queux (ebook reader .txt) 📗

I need hardly say that I left the telegraph office with a comparatively light heart. The journey to Mallaig was one of the most interesting afternoons I have spent. Garnesk was consulting oculist to all the big chemical, machine, naval and other manufacturers in the great industrial centre on the Clyde, and he kept me enthralled with his accounts of the sudden attacks of various eye diseases which were occasionally the fate of the workers. The effects of chemicals, the indigenous generation of gases in the furnace-rooms, and so on, had afforded him ample scope for experiment; and, fortunately for us all, he was delighted to have found new ground for enlarging his experience. The mixture of professional anecdote and piscatorial prophecy with which he entertained me, now and then rushing across the carriage to get a glimpse of a salmon-pool in some river over which we happened to be passing, gave me an amusing insight into the character of one whom I have since learned to regard as a very brilliant and charming man. When we arrived at the landing-stage at the Lodge, the General greeted him with undisguised joy.

“Begad! Mr. Garnesk,” he blurted, “I’m thundering glad to see you, sir. It’s good of you to come, sir—extremely good.”

“That remains to be seen, General,” said Garnesk, solemnly—“whether my visit will do any good. I hope so, with all my heart.”

“Amen to that!” said the old man, pathetically, with a heavy sigh.

“How is Miss McLeod?” asked the scientist.

“Her eyes are no better,” the General replied. “She cannot see at all. Otherwise she is in perfect health. She says she feels as well as ever she did. I can’t understand it,” he finished helplessly.

A suit-case, a bag of golf-clubs, and a square deal box completed Garnesk’s outfit.

“Steady with that—here, let me take it?” he cried, as Angus was lifting the last item ashore. “Business and pleasure,” he continued, raising the box in his arms and indicating his clubs and fishing-rods with a jerk of the head. “I’ve one or two things here that may help me in my work, and as they are very delicate instruments I would rather carry them myself.”

As we approached the house the sound of the piano greeted us in the distance; and soon we could distinguish the strains of that most beautiful and understanding of all burial marches, Grieg’s “Aase’s Tod.”

“My daughter can even welcome us with a tune,” said the old man proudly. To him all music came under the category of “tunes,” with the sole exception of “God Save the King,” which was a national institution.

Garnesk stopped and stood on the path, the deal box clasped carefully in his arms, his head on one side, listening.

“We have the right sort of patient to deal with, anyway,” he remarked, with a sigh of relief. But to me the melancholy insistence of the exquisite harmonies was fraught with ill-omen, and I could not restrain the shudder of an unaccountable fear as we resumed our walk. Later on, when I found an opportunity to ask her why she had chosen that particular music, I was only partially relieved by her ingenuous answer:

“Oh! just because I love it, Ronnie,” she said, “and there are no difficult intervals to play with your eyes shut. I thought it was rather clever of me to think of it. I shall soon be able to play more tricky things. It will cure me of looking at the notes when I can see again.”

Myra and the young specialist were introduced; and, though he chatted gaily with her, and touched on innumerable subjects, he never once alluded to her misfortune. Though the General was evidently anxious that Garnesk should make his examination as soon as possible, hospitality forced him to suggest dinner first, and I was surprised at the alacrity with which the visitor concurred, knowing, as I did, his intense interest in the case. But, after a few conventional remarks to the General and Myra, I was about to show him to his room when he seized my arm excitedly.

“Quick!” he whispered. “Where’s the dog?”

I led him to a room above the coach-house where poor Sholto was a pitiful prisoner. Garnesk deposited his precious packing-case on the floor, and called the dog to him. Sholto sprang forward in a moment, recognising the tone of friendship in the voice, and planted his paws on my companion’s chest. For twenty minutes the examination lasted. One strange test after another was applied to the poor animal; but he was very good about it, and seemed to understand that we were trying to help him.

“I should hate to have to kill that dog, but it may be necessary before long,” said the specialist. “But why didn’t you tell Miss McLeod her dog was blind?”

“We were afraid it would upset her too much,” I answered, and then suddenly realising the point of the question, I added, “but how on earth did you know we hadn’t?”

“Because,” he said thoughtfully, “if you had, she strikes me as the sort of girl who would have asked me straight away what I thought I could do for him.”

“You seem to understand human nature as well as you do science,” I said admiringly.

“The two are identical, or at least co-incident, Mr. Ewart,” he replied solemnly. “But what was it you did tell her?”

“We said he was suffering from a sort of eczema, which looked as if it might be infectious, and we thought she ought not to be near him for a bit. Otherwise, of course, she would have wanted him with her all the time.”

When the examination was over for the time being, I chained Sholto to a hook in an old harness-rack, for he was strong and unused to captivity, and the door had no lock, only a small bolt outside. Garnesk packed away his instruments, carried them carefully to the house, and then we sprinted upstairs to dress hurriedly for dinner.

Myra, poor child, was sensitive about joining us, but the specialist was very anxious that she should do so, and we all dined together. There was no allusion whatever to the strange events which had brought us together, but, with my professional knowledge of the mysteries of cross-examination, I noticed that Garnesk contrived to acquire more knowledge of various circumstances on which he seemed to wish to be enlightened than Sir Gaire Olvery had gleaned from forty minutes’ blunt questioning.

Myra had hardly left us after the meal was over when the butler handed the General a card, and almost simultaneously a tall, shadowy figure passed the window along the verandah.

“’Pon my soul, that’s kind of him,” said the simple-hearted old man. “Run after him, Ronald, and fetch him back.”

“Who is it?” I asked, rising.

“‘Mr. J. G. Hilderman wishes to express his sympathy with General McLeod in his daughter’s illness.’ Very neighbourly indeed.”

I ran out after Hilderman, and found that his long legs had taken him nearly half-way to the landing-stage by the time I overtook him. He stopped as I called his name.

“Why, Mr. Ewart,” he exclaimed in surprise, “you back again already? I hope you had a very satisfactory interview with the specialist.”

I told him briefly that our visit to London had given us no satisfaction at all, and gave him the General’s invitation to come up to the house.

“I wouldn’t think of it, Mr. Ewart,” he declared emphatically. “Very kind of General McLeod, but he don’t want to worry with strangers just now.”

He was very determined; but I insisted, and he eventually gave way. I was glad he had come. I had a somewhat unreasonable esteem for his abilities and resource, and every assistance was welcomed with open arms at Invermalluch Lodge at that time. His extensive knowledge even included some slight acquaintance with the body’s most wonderful organ, for he told us some very interesting eye cases he had heard of in the States. He was genuinely dumbfoundered when we told him that Sholto was an additional victim.

“You don’t say so!” he exclaimed. “Well, that is remarkable. It sounds as if it came out of a book. In broad daylight a young lady goes out, and is as well as can be. An hour later she is stone blind. Two days afterwards her dog goes out, and he comes in blind. Yes, it’s got me beaten.”

“It’s got us all beaten,” said Garnesk deliberately, and I was shocked to hear him say it. I reflected that he had not even examined Myra, and my disappointment was the keener that he should admit himself nonplussed so early. But he left me no loophole of doubt.

“I can make nothing whatever of it,” he added, ruefully shaking his head. “I wonder if I ever shall?”

“Come, come! my dear sir,” said Hilderman cheerily. “You scientist fellows have a knack of making your difficulties a little greater than they really are, in order to get more credit for surmounting them. I know your little ways. I’m an American, you know, professor; you can’t get me that way.”

Garnesk laughed—fortunately. And again I was grateful to Hilderman for his timely tact, for it cheered the old man immensely, and helped me a little, too. Presently the General left the room, and Garnesk leaned forward.

“Mr. Hilderman,” he said earnestly, “do everything in your power to keep the old man’s spirits up. I can give him no hope, professionally—I dare not. But you, a layman, can. It is difficult in the circumstances for Mr. Ewart to give much encouragement, but I know he will do his best.”

“J. G. Hilderman is yours to command,” said the American, with a bow that included us both. And then the oculist suggested that we should have a look at Sholto. I led the way to the coach-house with a heavy heart. I should not have minded a mystery which would have endangered my own life. Apart from any altruism, the personal peril would have afforded a welcome stimulant. But this unseen horror, which stabbed in the dark and robbed my beautiful Myra of her sight, chilled my very soul. I climbed wearily up the wooden stair to Sholto’s new den, carrying a stable lantern in my hand, for it was getting late, and the carefully darkened room would be as black as ink. The other two followed close on my heels. I opened the door and called to the dog. A faint, sickly-sweet odour met me as I did so.

“You give your dogs elaborate kennels,” said Hilderman, as he climbed the stairs, and I laughed in reply.

At that instant Garnesk stood still and sniffed the air. With a sudden jerk he wrenched the lantern from my hand and strode into the room. Sholto was gone. Only half his chain dangled from the hook, cut through the middle with a pair of strong wire-nippers.

The oculist turned to us with an expression of acute interest.

“Chloroform,” he said quietly.

CHAPTER VII. THE CHEMIST’S ROCK.

By the time we gave up our hunt for Sholto that night and saw Hilderman into the Baltimore II. at the landing-stage, the harvest moon had splashed the mountain side with patches of silver in reckless profusion. But we were in no mood for æsthetics. We applied the moonlight to more practical purposes.

“Show me the river, Mr. Ewart,” said Garnesk, as we turned away from the shore. Accordingly I took him up stream till we came to Dead Man’s Pool.

“What do you make of things now?” I asked, as we walked along.

“I can’t make anything of the stealing of a dog except that someone coveted it and has now got it. Can you?”

“No,” I answered thoughtfully, “I can’t. But it’s an extraordinary coincidence, at the least; and who on earth could have stolen him? You see, no one round here would dream of taking anything that belonged