The Vanishing Man Part 39

"Let us hope it won't," I said, but with little conviction, I fear, in my tone. It was harrowing to see her torn by anxiety for her father, and I yearned to comfort her. But what was there to say? Mr. Bellingham was breaking up visibly under the stress of the terrible menace that hung over his daughter, and no words of mine could make the fact less manifest.

We walked silently up the court. The lady at the window greeted us with a smiling salutation, Mr. Finneymore removed his pipe and raised his cap, receiving a gracious bow from Ruth in return, and then we pa.s.sed through the covered way into Fetter Lane, where my companion paused and looked about her.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"The detective," she answered quietly. "It would be a pity if the poor man should miss me after waiting so long. However, I don't see him"; and she turned away towards Fleet Street. It was an unpleasant surprise to me that her sharp eyes had detected the secret spy upon her movements; and the dry, sardonic tone of her remark pained me, too, recalling, as it did, the frigid self-possession that had so repelled me in the early days of our acquaintance. And yet I could not but admire the cool unconcern with which she faced her horrible peril.

"Tell me a little more about this conference," she said, as we walked down Fetter Lane. "Your note was rather more concise than lucid; but I suppose you wrote it in a hurry."

"Yes, I did. And I can't give you any details now. All I know is that Doctor Norbury has had a letter from a friend of his in Berlin, an Egyptologist, as I understand, named Lederbogen, who refers to an English acquaintance of his and Norbury's whom he saw in Vienna about a year ago. He cannot remember the Englishman's name, but from some of the circ.u.mstances Norbury seems to think that he is referring to your Uncle John. Of course, if this should turn out to be really the case, it would set everything straight; so Thornd.y.k.e was anxious that you and your father should meet Norbury and talk it over."

"I see," said Ruth. Her tone was thoughtful but by no means enthusiastic.

"You don't seem to attach much importance to the matter," I remarked.

"No. It doesn't seem to fit the circ.u.mstances. What is the use of suggesting that poor Uncle John is alive--and behaving like an imbecile, which he certainly was not--when his dead body has actually been found?"

"But," I suggested lamely, "there may be some mistake. It may not be his body after all."

"And the ring?" she asked, with a bitter smile.

"That may be just a coincidence. It was a copy of a well-known form of antique ring. Other people may have had copies made as well as your uncle. Besides," I added, with more conviction, "we haven't seen the ring. It may not be his at all."

She shook her head. "My dear Paul," she said quietly, "it is useless to delude ourselves. Every known fact points to the certainty that it is his body. John Bellingham is dead: there can be no doubt of that. And to everyone except his unknown murderer and one or two of my own loyal friends, it must seem that his death lies at my door. I realised from the beginning that the suspicion lay between George Hurst and me; and the finding of the ring fixes it definitely on me. I am only surprised that the police have made no move yet."

The quiet conviction of her tone left me for a while speechless with horror and despair. Then I recalled Thornd.y.k.e's calm, even confident att.i.tude, and I hastened to remind her of it.

"There is one of your friends," I said, "who is still undismayed.

Thornd.y.k.e seems to antic.i.p.ate no difficulties."

"And yet," she replied, "he is ready to consider a forlorn hope like this. However, we shall see."

I could think of nothing more to say, and it was in gloomy silence that we pursued our way down Inner Temple Lane and through the dark entries and tunnel-like pa.s.sages that brought us out, at length, by the Treasury.

"I don't see any light in Thornd.y.k.e's chambers," I said, as we crossed King's Bench Walk; and I pointed out the row of windows all dark and blank.

"No: and yet the shutters are not closed. He must be out."

"He can't be after making an appointment with you and your father. It is most mysterious. Thornd.y.k.e is so very punctilious about his engagements."

The mystery was solved, when we reached the landing, by a slip of paper fixed by a tack on the iron-bound "oak."

"A note for P.B. is on the table," was the laconic message: on reading which I inserted my key, swung the heavy door outward, and opened the lighter inner door. The note was lying on the table and I brought it out to the landing to read by the light of the staircase lamp.

"Apologise to our friends," it ran, "for the slight change of programme.

Norbury is anxious that I should get my experiments over before the Director returns, so as to save discussion. He has asked me to begin to-night and says he will see Mr. and Miss Bellingham here, at the Museum. Please bring them along at once. The hall porters are instructed to admit you and bring you to us. I think some matters of importance may transpire at the interview.--J.E.T."

"I hope you don't mind," I said apologetically, when I had read the note to Ruth.

"Of course I don't," she replied. "I am rather pleased. We have so many a.s.sociations with the dear old Museum, haven't we?" She looked at me for a moment with a strange and touching wistfulness and then turned to descend the stone stairs.

At the Temple gate, I hailed a hansom and we were soon speeding westward and north to the soft tinkle of the horse's bell.

"What are these experiments that Doctor Thornd.y.k.e refers to?" she asked presently.

"I can only answer you rather vaguely," I replied. "Their object, I believe, is to ascertain whether the penetrability of organic substances by the X-rays becomes altered by age; whether, for instance, an ancient block of wood is more or less transparent to the rays than a new block of the same size."

"And of what use would the knowledge be, if it were obtained?"

"I can't say. Experiments are made to obtain knowledge without regard to its utility. The use appears when the knowledge has been acquired.

But in this case, if it should be possible to determine the age of any organic substance by its reaction to X-rays, the discovery might be of some value in legal practice--as in demonstrating a new seal on an old doc.u.ment, for instance. But I don't know whether Thornd.y.k.e has anything definite in view; I only know that the preparations have been on a most portentous scale."

"How do you mean?"

"In regard to size. When I went into the workshop yesterday morning, I found Polton erecting a kind of portable gallows about nine feet high, and he had just finished varnis.h.i.+ng a pair of enormous wooden trays, each over six feet long. It looked as if he and Thornd.y.k.e were contemplating a few private executions with subsequent post-mortems on the victims."

"What a horrible suggestion!"

"So Polton said, with his quaint, crinkly smile. But he was mighty close about the use of the apparatus all the same. I wonder if we shall see anything of the experiments, when we get there. This is Museum Street, isn't it?"

"Yes." As she spoke, she lifted the flap of one of the little windows in the back of the cab and peered out. Then, closing it with a quiet, ironic smile, she said:

"It is all right; he hasn't missed us. It will be quite a nice little change for him."

The cab swung round into Great Russell Street, and, glancing out as it turned, I saw another hansom following; but before I had time to inspect its solitary pa.s.senger, we drew up at the Museum gates. The gate-porter, who seemed to expect us, ushered us up the drive to the great portico and into the Central Hall, where he handed us over to another official.

"Doctor Norbury is in one of the rooms adjoining the Fourth Egyptian Room," the latter stated in answer to our inquiries: and, providing himself with a wire-guarded lantern, he prepared to escort us thither.

Up the great staircase, now wrapped in mysterious gloom, we pa.s.sed in silence with bitter-sweet memories of that day of days when we had first trodden its steps together: through the Central Saloon, the Mediaeval Room and the Asiatic Saloon, and so into the long range of the Ethnographical Galleries.

It was a weird journey. The swaying lantern shot its beams abroad into the darkness of the great, dim galleries, casting instantaneous flashes on the objects in the cases, so that they leaped into being and vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Hideous idols with round, staring eyes started forth from the darkness, glared at us for an instant and were gone. Grotesque masks, suddenly revealed by the s.h.i.+mmering light, took on the semblance of demon faces that seemed to mow and gibber at us as we pa.s.sed. As for the life-sized models--realistic enough by daylight--their aspect was positively alarming; for the moving light and shadow endowed them with life and movement, so that they seemed to watch us furtively, to lie in wait and to hold themselves in readiness to steal out and follow us. The illusion evidently affected Ruth as well as me, for she drew nearer to me and whispered:

"These figures are quite startling. Did you see that Polynesian? I really felt as if he were going to spring out on us."

"They are rather uncanny," I admitted, "but the danger is over now. We are pa.s.sing out of their sphere of influence."

We came out on a landing as I spoke and then turned sharply to the left along the North Gallery, from the centre of which we entered the Fourth Egyptian Room.

Almost immediately, a door in the opposite wall opened; a peculiar, high-pitched humming sound became audible, and Jervis came out on tiptoe with his hand raised.

"Tread as lightly as you can," he said. "We are just making an exposure."

The attendant turned back with his lantern, and we followed Jervis into the room from whence he had come. It was a large room, and little lighter than the galleries, for the single glow-lamp that burned at the end where we entered left the rest of the apartment in almost complete obscurity. We seated ourselves at once on the chairs that had been placed for us, and, when the mutual salutations had been exchanged, I looked about me. There were three people in the room besides Jervis: Thornd.y.k.e, who sat with his watch in his hand, a grey-headed gentleman whom I took to be Dr. Norbury, and a smaller person at the dim farther end--undistinguishable, but probably Polton. At our end of the room were the two large trays that I had seen in the workshop, now mounted on trestles and each fitted with a rubber drain-tube leading down to a bucket. At the farther end of the room the sinister shape of the gallows reared itself aloft in the gloom; only now I could see that it was not a gallows at all. For affixed to the top cross-bar was a large, bottomless gla.s.s basin, inside which was a gla.s.s bulb that glowed with a strange green light; and in the heart of the bulb a bright spot of red.

It was all clear enough so far. The peculiar sound that filled the air was the hum of the interrupter; the bulb was, of course, a Crookes tube, and the red spot inside it, the glowing red-hot disc of the anti-cathode. Clearly an X-ray photograph was being made; but of what? I strained my eyes, peering into the gloom at the foot of the gallows, but though I could make out an elongated object lying on the floor directly under the bulb, I could not resolve the dimly seen shape into anything recognisable. Presently, however, Dr. Norbury supplied the clue.