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

say that. I will say emphatically that she has not absolutely hopelessly lost her sight. The nerves are not dead. This green veil may be lifted, possibly, as suddenly as it fell; but I am talking to men, and I want you to understand that I can give no idea as to when that may be. I pray that it may be soon—very soon.”

“I’m glad you’re so straightforward about it, Whitehouse,” said the old man, as he sank into a chair. “I don’t need to be buoyed up by any false hopes. You can understand that it is a very terrible blow to Mr. Ewart and myself.”

“I can indeed,” said the doctor solemnly. “I brought her into the world, you know. It is a tragic shock to me. I’ll get back now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a very serious case in the village, but I’ll be over first thing in the morning, and I’ll bring you a small bottle of something with me. You’ll need it with this anxiety.”

“Nonsense, Whitehouse,” declared the General stoutly. “I’m perfectly all right. There’s nothing at all the matter with me. I don’t need any of your begad slush.”

“Now, my dear friend,” said the medical man cunningly, “it’s my business to look ahead. In the next few days you’ll be too anxious to eat, so I’m going to bring you something that will simply stimulate your appetite and make you want to eat. It’s not good for any man to go without his meals, especially when that man’s getting on for sixty.”

“Thank ye, my dear fellow,” said the old man, more graciously. “I’m sorry to be such a boor, but I thought you meant some begad tonic.” The General was getting on for seventy; to be exact, he was sixty-nine—he married at forty-six—and when the medicine came he took it, “because, after all, it was begad decent of Whitehouse to have thought of it.”

I spent a miserable night. I went to bed early, and lay awake till daybreak. The hideous nightmare of the green ray kept me awake for many nights to come. The General agreed with me that we must waste no time, and it was arranged that we should take Myra up to London the next day.

“You know, Ronald,” said the old man to me as we sat together after the mockery that would otherwise have been an excellent dinner, “I was particularly glad to see you to-day. I’ve been very worried about—well, about myself lately. I had an extraordinary experience the other day which I should never dare to relate to anyone whom I could not absolutely rely on to believe me. I’ve been fidgeting for the last month or two, and that window that you say you saw to-day has got very much on my nerves. I’ve been imagining that it’s a heliograph from an enemy encampment. Simply nerves, of course; but nerves ought not to account for extraordinary optical delusions or hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations?” I asked anxiously. “What sort of hallucinations?”

“I hardly like to tell you, my boy,” he answered, nervously twirling his liqueur glass in his fingers. “You see, you’re young, and I’m—well, to tell you the truth, I’m getting old, and when you get old you get nerves, and they can be terrible things, nerves.” I looked up at the haggard face, drawn into deep furrows with the new trouble that had fallen on the old man, and I was shocked and startled to see a look of absolute fear in his eyes. I leaned forward, and laid my hand on his wrist.

“Tell me,” I suggested, as gently as I could. He brightened at once, and patted my arm affectionately.

“I couldn’t tell the little woman,” he muttered. “She—she’d have been frightened, and she might have thought I was going mad. I couldn’t bear that. I hadn’t the courage to tell Whitehouse either; but you’re a good chap, Ronald, and you’re very fond of my girlie, and your father and I were pals, as you boys would say. I daresay it was only a sort of waking dream, or——” He broke off and stared at the table-cloth. I took the glass from his hand, and filled it with liqueur brandy, and put it beside him. He sipped it thoughtfully. Suddenly he turned to me, and brought his hand down on the table with a bang.

“I swear I’m not mad, Ronald!” he cried fiercely. “There must be some explanation of it. I know I’m sane.”

“What was it exactly?” I asked quietly. “Nothing on God’s earth will persuade me that you are mad, sir.”

“Thank you, my boy. I’ll tell you what happened to me. You won’t be able to explain it, but you shall hear just what it was. You may think it’s silly of me to get nervous of what sounds like an absurdity, but you see it happened where—where to-day’s tragedy happened.”

“What Myra calls the Chemist’s Rock?” I asked, by this time intensely interested.

“At the Chemist’s Rock,” he replied. “It was a lovely afternoon, just such an afternoon as to-day. I had been going to fish with girlie, but I was a little tired, and—er—I had some letters to write, so I said I would meet her later in the afternoon. It was agreed we should meet at the Chemist’s Rock at half-past four. I left the house about a quarter-past, and strolled down the river to the Fank Pool, crossed the stream in the boat that lies there, and walked up the opposite bank past Dead Man’s Pool towards the Chemist’s Rock. I mention all this to show you that I was feeling well enough to enjoy a stroll, and a very rocky stroll at that, because, if I hadn’t been feeling perfectly fit, I should have gone up the back way past the stable, the way you came back this afternoon. So you see, I was undoubtedly quite well, my boy. However, to get on with the tale. As soon as I came in sight of our meeting-place I looked up to see if girlie had got there before me. She was not there. I looked further up stream, and saw Sholto come tearing down over the rocks. I knew that he had seen me, and that she was following him. I naturally strolled on to go to the rock—I say I went——” He broke off, and passed his hands across his eyes.

“Yes,” I said softly; “you went to the rock, and Myra met you——”

“No,” he said; “I didn’t. I didn’t go to the rock.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said, as he remained silent for some moments. The old man leaned forward, and laid a trembling, fever-scorched hand on mine.

“Ronald,” he said, in a voice that shook with genuine horror, and sent a cold shiver down my spine, “I did not go to the rock. The rock came to me.”

CHAPTER V IS MORE MYSTERIOUS.

I sat and stared at the old man in astonishment. Obviously he was fully convinced that he was giving me an accurate account of what had happened, and equally obviously he was perfectly sane.

“That is all,” he said presently. “The rock came to me.”

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, suddenly brought to my senses by the sound of his voice. “What an extraordinary thing!”

“For a moment I thought I was mad, and sometimes, when I have thought over it since—and the Lord knows how many times I’ve done that—I’ve come to the conclusion that I must have fallen asleep. But even now the fear haunts me that my mind may be going.”

“You mustn’t imagine anything like that, General,” I advised seriously. “Whatever you do, don’t encourage any doubts of your own sanity. There must be some explanation of this, although I can’t for the moment imagine what it can possibly be. It is a remarkable thing, and I fancy you will find, when we do know the explanation, that anyone else standing where you were at that time would have seen exactly the same thing. The rock stands out of the water; it is just above a deep pool, and probably it was a sort of mirage effect, and not by any means a figment of your brain.”

To my surprise the old man leaned back in his chair and burst out laughing.

“Of course,” he exclaimed. “I never thought of that—a sort of mirage. Well, I’m begad thankful you suggested that, Ronald. I’ve no doubt that it was something of the sort. What a begad old fool I am. Let us pray that our poor little girl’s trouble,” he added solemnly, “will have some equally simple solution.”

The General was so relieved that I had given him, at any rate, some sort of reason to believe that his brain was not yet going, that he began to declare that he was convinced Myra would be better in a day or two. So we arranged that I should take her up to London the next day, and leave her in charge of her aunt, Lady Ruslit, and then, as soon as we had heard Sir Gaire’s verdict, I was to bring her back again. General McLeod had been anxious at first to come with us, but I pointed out that he would be of more use to Myra if he stayed behind, and kept an eye on her interests in the neighbourhood. I promised to wire him the result of the interview with Olvery as soon as I knew it. And just about a quarter to ten we went to bed.

“Ronald,” said the old man, as we shook hands outside my door, “there’s just one thing I wasn’t frank with you about in the matter of the Chemist’s Rock. I am anxious to believe that it’s a point of no particular importance. You know the rock is a sort of sandstone, not grey like the rest, but nearly white?”

“Yes,” I answered, wondering what could be coming next.

“Well,” said the old man, “that day when I saw it appearing to come towards me it was not white, but green.”

“No,” I said at last, when we had spent another twenty minutes discussing this new aspect in my room. “It’s beyond me. I can’t see how the two events can be connected, and yet they are so unusual that one would think they must be. I certainly think it is a point to put in detail before Olvery.”

“On the whole, I quite agree with you,” said the General. “I am rather afraid he may take us for a pack of lunatics, and refuse to be bothered with the case.”

“I’m sure he won’t do that,” I asserted confidently. “And he may have some medical knowledge that will just shake the puzzle into place, and explain the whole mystery to us. It seems to me a most remarkable thing that these two strange affairs should have happened in exactly the same place. That it is some strange freak of nature I have no doubt, but I am absolutely at a loss to think what it can be.”

It can hardly be wondered at that, as I have said before, sleep and I were strangers that night, and I was glad enough when the time came for me to get up.

Myra came down after breakfast, wonderfully brave and bright, but there was no sign whatever of her sight returning to her. The leave-taking was a wretched business, and I cannot dwell on it. Sandy started early to sail to Mallaig with the luggage, and we followed in the motor-boat, Angus at the engine, old Mary McNiven in the bows, while I took the tiller, and Myra lay on a pile of cushions at my feet, her head resting on my knee, her arm round Sholto’s neck; for she had wanted the dog to see her off at