The Lost Million

Asta was, alas! still inconsolable. Poor child! Time, instead of healing the wound caused by Guy’s sudden end, only served to aggravate it. She seemed to grow paler and more sad each day. Sometimes I endeavoured to console her, but she only shook her head in grief and silence.

To me she appeared unusually nervous and apprehensive. The least sound seemed to cause her to start and turn almost in terror. It appeared as though she had something upon her conscience – some secret which she feared moment by moment might be betrayed.

One afternoon, while sitting by the open window of the smoking-room at Lydford, I remarked upon her condition to Shaw.

“Yes,” he sighed, “you are quite right, my dear Kemball. I’ve noticed it too. Poor girl! It was a terrible blow for her. She wants a change. I urged her to go abroad long ago, but she would not hear of it. Now, however, I’ve induced her at last to go for a motor-tour in France. We are starting next week, and go by Folkestone to Boulogne, thence by Beauvais, and, avoiding the pavé of Paris, by Versailles, Melun, Joigny, Chagny and Lyons across to Aix-les-Bains. Have you ever been there?”

“No. It must be a very fine run,” I said.

“Then why don’t you come with us?” he suggested. “I’m taking the sixty, and there’ll be plenty of room.”

I reflected. The days were warm and bright, and I loved motoring. My own car, being only a fifteen, was not capable of doing such a journey.

“Ah!” he laughed, noticing my indecision. “Of course, you’ll come. Asta will be delighted. Do keep us company, my dear fellow.”

“Very well,” I said, “I’ll come, if you really mean that there’ll be room.”

And so it was arranged.

When he told Asta a few minutes later her face brightened, and she turned to me, saying —

“Well, this is really good news, Mr Kemball. Dad has often been on the Continent with the car, but he has never taken me before. He as thought that the long runs might be too fatiguing.”

“Any thing, my dear, to get you out of this place,” he said, with a laugh. “You must have a change, or else you’ll be ill.”

Later on, a young man and a girl called, and we played tennis for an hour. Then when the visitors had gone, I sat for a little while with Asta in the drawing-room to get cool. She looked very sweet in her simple lace blouse, short white skirt, and white shoes. Exertion had heightened the tint of her cheeks, and something of the old expression had returned to her eyes.

As we sat chatting, a peculiar low whistle suddenly reached our ears.

I listened. The call was repeated, and seemed to come from the room above.

“It’s Dad,” the girl said. “Of late he seems to have taken to whistling like that. Why, I can’t tell, for we have no dogs.”

We listened again, and it was repeated a third time, a short shrill call of a peculiar note. Apparently he was in his room directly over the drawing-room – which was the bedroom – and the window being open we could hear distinctly.

Again it was repeated, when Asta rose, and, going to the window, shouted up —

“Who are you calling, Dad?”

“Oh, nobody, dear,” was his reply. “I – I didn’t know you were there. I thought you were with Mr Kemball in the garden.”

The incident held me speechless for a few minutes, for I had suddenly recollected that after I had encountered Shaw at Titmarsh, on the occasion of the discovery of poor Guy, I had heard an exactly similar whistle. It was a peculiar note which, once heard, was not quickly forgotten.

We met Shaw outside on the lawn a few minutes later, when Asta exclaimed —

“Why have you got into the habit of whistling so horribly, Dad? One could understand it if we had dogs. But to whistle to nothing seems so idiotic.”

“All, so it is, dear,” he replied, laughing. “But I was not whistling to nothing. I was trying to call Muir, the gardener, from the window. I could see him at work over by the croquet lawn, but the old fellow gets very deaf nowadays.”

Such was Shaw’s explanation. It was surely not an unusual circumstance, yet it was full of meaning when regarded in the light of what afterwards transpired.

As I walked with him, and he discussed our projected trip over those fine level roads of France, I could not help wondering why he had uttered that peculiar call on that well-remembered morning at Titmarsh Court.

A fortnight later, in the crimson of the glorious afterglow, we swung down the hill into the quaint old-world village of Arnay-le-Duc, in the Côte d’Or, a quiet, lethargic place built around its great old château, now, alas! in ruins since the Huguenots gained their victory there under Coligny in 1570. Scarcely had we entered the silent village street, the echoes of which were awakened by our siren, when we pulled up before the long, low-built Hôtel de la Poste, a building painted grey, with jalousies of the same colour, and high sloping roof of slate, like many of those ancient hostelries one finds on the great highways of France – the posting houses of the days of Louis Quatorze, which nowadays bear the golden double A of the Automobile Association.

We were quite a merry trio, for since leaving England Asta had become almost her old self. The complete change of surroundings had wrought in her a wonderful improvement, and she looked sweet and dainty in her pale mauve motor-bonnet and silk dust-coat. Shaw wore dark spectacles, pleading that the whiteness of the roads pained his eyes. But I had shrewd suspicion that they were worn for disguise, for, curiously enough, of an evening he never removed them.

What did he fear in France?

That morning we had left Melun, where we had spent the night at the Grand Monarque, and after driving through the delightful Fôret de Fontainebleau, had lunched at the Hôtel de l’Épée in busy Auverre, and then spun away over the straight wide route nationale through Vermenton, Avallon, and quiet old Saulieu, in the midst of the rich vinelands, until we had accomplished the steep hills between that place and Arnay-le-Duc.

It was our intention to get on to Mâcon, a hundred kilometres farther, that night, but while we were sitting at dinner, in the unpretentious little salle à manger, eating a tasty meal of trout and cutlets, washed down by an old and perfect bottle of Beaune, Harris, the chauffeur, who had been hired for the tour because he knew the French roads, came and informed us of a slight breakdown of the engine, which would take him at least a couple of hours or so to repair.

“Then we can’t get on to Mâcon to-night, that’s very certain,” remarked Shaw.

“That’s a pity, Dad,” exclaimed Asta, “for I wanted to spend a few hours there. I’ve heard it is a wonderful place to buy antiques, and I want some old crucifixes to add to my collection.”

“Never mind, dear,” he said, “we will lunch there to-morrow. We can’t expect to go through France without a single mishap. Very well, Harris,” he added, “we’ll stay here to-night.”

Three travellers in the wine trade, men who tucked their serviettes into their collars, and who ate and drank heartily, were our table companions, and soon we were all chatting merrily in French, while Madame and her two daughters waited upon us.

The room was at the back, and looked out upon the spacious old courtyard into which, in days bygone, the dusty Lyons mail used to rumble over the cobbles. It was bare, with highly polished oak floor, a mirror on the walls, and an old buffet, as is the style in French inns, while when we ascended to our rooms we found the same bareness and cleanliness pervading.

My window looked out upon the village street. The floor was carpetless and polished, the bed an old-fashioned wooden one, and besides a chair, a chest of drawers, and a washstand, the only other furniture was a japanned iron stand of hooks upon which to hang coats – that article which is common in every hotel from Archangel to Reggio, and from Ekaterinburg to Lisbon.

After a wash, we met below and strolled about the village, which, three hundred kilometres distant from Paris, and two hundred from Lyons, was, we found, a charming old-world place, once important, but now, alas! decayed and forgotten in the mad hurry of our modern world. In the heart of the wine-country, with the vines in lines with great regularity everywhere, it is still a place with a certain amount of commerce, but surely not so important or busy as in the days when on an average two hundred travelling coaches passed through daily.

We idled in the old courtyard watching Harris making his repairs, and after a final smoke upon the bench outside, we all retired about ten o’clock, at which hour the whole village seemed already in profound slumber.

Shaw’s room was, I found, next to mine, but the communicating door was shut and bolted, while Asta was at the farther end of the corridor. The long journey and the fresh air had caused a great drowsiness to overcome me, and I was exceedingly glad to turn in. A peal of old bells were clanging somewhere as I blew out my candle, and a few minutes later I must have dropped off to sleep.

How long I slept I know not, but I awoke suddenly by feeling a strange touch upon my cheek, soft, almost imperceptible, yet chilly – a peculiar feeling that I cannot adequately describe. The contact, whatever it was, thrilled me, and as I opened my eyes I saw the grey light of dawn was just appearing. My face was towards the window, and as I looked I saw distinctly upon my pillow the silhouette of a dark and shadowy hand – a hand with weird, claw-like fingers.

Startled, I sat up in bed, but when I looked it had vanished.

It was as though the hand of the Angel of Death himself had touched me! At that instant I recollected the words written by Melvill Arnold before he died.

Holding my breath, and wondering at first whether I had not been dreaming, I looked about me. But there was nothing – absolutely nothing.

My first impulse was to shout, alarm Shaw, and tell him of my uncanny experience, but I could hear him snoring soundly in the adjoining room. So I crept out of bed and examined the communicating door. It was still bolted, just as I had left it.

Yet I still recollected most distinctly that touch upon my cheek. And I still had the black silhouette of that phantom hand photographed indelibly upon my memory.

I tried to persuade myself that the incident was but a mere chimera of my overwrought imagination, but, alas! to no avail.

I had actually seen Something with my own eyes!

But what could that weird Something have been?