The Lost Million

Of what evil had Melvill Arnold desired to warn me when he had scrawled those curious final words before expiring?

Chapter Seventeen

A Further Problem

I had seen the sign of the Hand against which Melvill Arnold had warned me with final effort before he expired.

I could not close my eyes again. Thoroughly awakened, I lay trying to convince myself that it was but a bad dream. Yet so distinct had been that touch, that I still felt the repulsive contact that had thrilled me and left upon me such a lasting impression.

In the uncertain light of early morning one’s brain is often full of weird fancies, and as I lay there wondering, a thousand curious unreal conjectures floated through my mind.

I was not old, yet in my life I had probably travelled more, and seen more, than most men of my age. Of little love affairs I had had, of course, one or two. None of them had been serious – none, until the present.

Yes, I may as well here confess it. I loved Asta Seymour.

From the first moment that she had met me in that lonely country road, and I had sat by her side in the car, she had exercised over me a strange and fatal fascination. I found myself beneath the spell of her bewitching beauty.

I was drawn towards her by some strange, irresistible, unknown power – drawn to her as the moth is drawn towards the candle.

Fascinated alike by the mystery surrounding her foster-father and by her sweet pensive face, I had been constantly in her company. My thoughts were ever of her, to the oblivion of all else in the world. She was all in all to me, and I was now involuntarily her slave, so entangled had I become in the net of her sweet and wondrous charm. Ah yes! I loved her – loved her with all the strength of my being, with all the passion of my soul.

But I had not spoken. My secret was as yet my own.

Nevertheless, it was in order to be near her that I, like Nicholson, had accepted Shaw’s invitation; in order also to protect her, for, knowing what I did of the man’s peril of arrest, I had been seized by a strange presage of evil that might befall her.

I lay awake, listening to the clanging of the old bells of a monastery near by, and thinking it all over. Yes, in those few weeks I had grown to love her, even though she undoubtedly was in possession of some strange if not guilty secret.

Yet how could I reveal my heart to her while recollections of poor Guy still, filled her mind? No, I must wait and watch in patience, my heart tortured constantly by the burning fires of unspoken love.

Thinking, reflecting, pondering, resolving, I still lay there, when suddenly I became conscious that my friend in the adjoining room was no longer snoring.

I heard a curious sound. He gave a quick, loud gasp, as though of alarm, followed by a murmured growl. Was he speaking in his sleep? I listened attentively until my ears caught another sound. He had risen and was moving about his room.

I was rather pleased than otherwise, for it relieved the tension, and I breathed more freely. The apparition of that claw-like hand before my face had, I believe, somewhat upset my nerves.

“Is that you, Shaw?” I called out, but there was no response.

All was quiet. The movement in the adjoining room had ceased.

Already I had satisfied myself that nobody could enter my room, both doors being bolted on the inside, but I slipped again out of bed, and, going to the communicating door, rapped upon it, crying —

“Shaw! Shaw! Are you asleep?”

“Hulloa?” growled a sleepy voice. “Why, what’s up, eh?”

“Nothing,” I laughed. “Are you still in bed?”

“Of course I am, why? What’s the matter? Anything wrong?”

“No, nothing,” I replied. “Only I heard you groaning, that’s all. Talking in your sleep, I expect.”

“I – I didn’t know,” he said. “Sorry, Kemball, if I disturbed you.”

“All right,” I laughed, and then returned to bed again.

I pondered over the fact that while he certainly had been upon, his feet – for I distinctly heard the creaking of the beeswaxed boards – a moment before I called, yet he made pretence of being asleep. The only explanation was that, while asleep, he had got out of bed, a not unusual circumstance with some people, and with that surmise I had to be content.

Truly, that night had been fraught with a strange inexplicable terror. Though dawn spread slowly, and from where I lay I could see the first flush of crimson in the sky heralding the sun’s coming, yet I could not rid myself of that phantom hand, those thin skeleton fingers that had touched my cheek and left a chilly impression upon it.

I rose and looked into the tiny oval toilet-glass, startled when I saw evidence that my experience was an actual tangible one.

Upon my left cheek was a faint red mark, almost like a scratch, where the chilly hand had touched me!

Carefully I examined it, but there seemed no abrasion of the skin. By the deadly contact it had been irritated, inflamed – seared, it seemed, by the chill finger of the dreaded Unknown.

Moving without a sound, so as not to attract Shaw’s attention, I made a minute survey of the apartment, examining the walls to assure myself of no hidden doorway such as are common in old houses of that description. But there was none. The only modes of ingress were both securely locked and bolted.

Soon after six o’clock I dressed and went out. I could remain in that chamber no longer. I wandered through the quaint old village, already agog, for Arnay-le-Duc retires early and is astir with the rising of the sun. Ascending the hill, I had a look at the round frowning towers of the ancient stronghold of the Counts d’Arnay, now, alas! grey, weather-beaten, and ruined. In them a last stand was made by a party of the 79th Regiment of Infantry against the Prussians in 1870, when the latter brought some field-pieces to bear upon the place and completed the ruin which time had long ago begun. Part of the village had afterwards been burned by the enemy, who had already devastated the whole of the smiling countryside of the Côte d’Or, and laid bare the valley of the Yonne with fire and sword.

As I stood beneath the battered walls where great ugly holes showed as mute evidence of the destruction wrought by the German guns, a beautiful panorama of sloping wine-lands, of river and rich pastures spread before me, while behind lay the long open road to Lyons, fringed on each side by high poplars planted at regular intervals and running straight as an arrow across the blue distant plain to old-world Mâcon.

Over that road we sped two hours later at a speed which would never be allowed in England, and raising a perfect wall of dust behind us. Asta, seated between Shaw and myself, seemed unusually bright and happy, for she laughed merrily, and declared herself delighted with the novelty and change of the journey.

“What was the matter with you early this morning, Kemball?” inquired my host presently with a laugh.

“You woke me up suddenly, and I believed that you were unwell!”

“No,” I said. “On the contrary, I was awake, and I heard you sigh and groan, therefore I believed you were ill.”

“You were awake?” he echoed, regarding me sharply through his dark spectacles. “Then – then I must have had the nightmare or something, eh?”

“Probably you had,” I said. Then I added, “I didn’t pass a very good-night myself.”

“I hate sleeping in strange beds,” Asta declared.

“One has to get used to them on a motor-tour,” remarked Shaw, leaning back again, his face set straight before him.

I was half inclined to relate my weird experience, yet I felt that if I did Asta might only regard me as a frightened fool.

Therefore the subject dropped when next moment, as the road ran over the hillside, we burst forth into admiration of the wide and magnificent panorama with a splendid old château with numberless round-slated turrets, perched upon a huge rock rising from the valley in the foreground – a huge, mediaeval fortress, yet still inhabited. Below clustered the sloping roofs of a small village within the ponderous walls of the château, entrance to which was by two ancient gates, with guard-houses built above them – a place which long ago had been the stronghold of one of the robber-barons of the Yonne.

Truly the Lyons road is full of variety and picturesqueness, running, as it does, through those rich vinelands and mountains of the Côte d’Or, before descending to the valley where the broad Saone flows south to join the mighty Rhone.

Passing through the beautiful Saussey forest, where the thick trees met in many places overhead, we shot through Ivry village, and, fifty kilometres after leaving Arnay-le-Duc, were compelled to slow down on entering the busy agricultural town of Chalons-sur-Saone. There we came to the river-bank, following it through a number of villages well-known in the wine-country, St. Loup, Beaumont, Tournus, and Fleurville, until at last we found ourselves passing slowly over the uneven cobbles and among the curious high-gabled houses of old-world Mâcon.

There, at the Hotel Terminus, we lunched, and afterwards, while Shaw sat smoking, I went forth with Asta to an antiquarian, to whom we were recommended, in order to buy antique crosses.

In the musty old shop, down in the older part of the town, kept by a short, bald-headed, but urbane Frenchman, we found several treasures, beautiful old crucifixes of carved ivory and mother-of-pearl which Asta at once purchased in great delight and at moderate prices.