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Page 78
The silver wisps which had raced along the horizon, as we came to
Cragmire Tower, had been harbingers of other and heavier banks. A
stormy sunset smeared crimson streaks across the skyline, where a
great range of clouds, like the oily smoke of a city burning, was
banked, mountain topping mountain, and lighted from below by this
angry red. As we came down the steps and out by the gate, I turned and
looked across the moor behind us. A sort of reflection from this
distant blaze encrimsoned the whole landscape. The inland bay glowed
sullenly, as if internal fires and not reflected light were at work; a
scene both wild and majestic.
Nayland Smith was staring up at the cone-like top of the ancient tower
in a curious, speculative fashion. Under the influence of our host's
conversation I had forgotten the reasonless dread which had touched me
at the moment of our arrival, but now, with the red light blazing over
Sedgemoor, as if in memory of the blood which had been shed there, and
with the tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very
uncomfortable again, nor did I envy Van Roon his eerie residence. The
proximity of a tower of any kind, at night, makes in some inexplicable
way for awe, and to-night there were other agents, too.
"What's that?" snapped Smith suddenly, grasping my arm.
He was peering southward, toward the distant hamlet, and, starting
violently at his words and the sudden grasp of his hand, I, too,
stared in that direction.
"We were followed, Petrie," he almost whispered. "I never got a sight
of our follower, but I'll swear we were followed. Look! there's
something moving over yonder!"
Together we stood staring into the dusk; then Smith burst abruptly
into one of his rare laughs, and clapped me upon the shoulder.
"It's Hagar, the mulatto!" he cried--"and our grips. That
extraordinary American with his tales of witch-lights and haunted
abbeys has been playing the devil with our nerves."
Together we waited by the gate until the half-caste appeared on the
bend of the path with a grip in either hand. He was a great, muscular
fellow with a stoic face, and, for the purpose of visiting Saul,
presumably, he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of
livery, with a peaked cap.
Smith watched him enter the house. Then:
"I wonder where Van Roon obtains his provisions and so forth," he
muttered. "It's odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Cragmire
Tower at 'The Wagoners.'"
There came a sort of sudden expectancy into his manner for which I
found myself at a loss to account. He turned his gaze inland and stood
there tugging at his left ear and clicking his teeth together. He
stared at me, and his eyes looked very bright in the dusk, for a sort
of red glow from the sunset touched them; but he spoke no word, merely
taking my arm and leading me off on a rambling walk around and about
the house. Neither of us spoke a word until we stood at the gate of
Cragmire Tower again; then:
"I'll swear, now, that we were followed here today!" muttered Smith.
The lofty place immediately within the doorway proved, in the light of
a lamp now fixed in an iron bracket, to be a square entrance hall
meagerly furnished. The closed study door faced the entrance, and on
the left of it ascended an open staircase up which the mulatto led the
way. We found ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing
the house from back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was
indicated by the mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of
fair size, furnished quite simply but boasting a wardrobe cupboard,
and Smith's grip stood beside the white enameled bed. I glanced
around, and then prepared to follow the man, who had awaited me in the
doorway.
He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the lithe,
broad-shouldered figure along the corridor, I found myself considering
critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of
his neck.
I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding, an elusive stirring
in the depths of my being of which I became conscious at certain times
in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his murderous servants. This
sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now, unaccountably, as
I stood looking into the neat bedroom, on the same side of the
corridor but at the extreme end, wherein I was to sleep.
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