I looked
around. It was dark inside the consulting room, even though we had left the
light on. I peered over toward the couch, and I could see Marjorie’s stockinged
feet, just as they were. I switched on the light and walked over to see if she
was all right.
“Oh, my God,” I
said. It was all I could think of.
Marjorie was
dead. There didn’t seem to be any marks on her at all, but she was clutching
her hands tight to her chest as if to fight something off. Her eyes were wide
open and staring, and her mouth was horribly drawn, as if in a silent scream.
Dr. Jarvis had
heard the door crack and he was right behind me. He took one look over my
shoulder at Marjorie’s body and immediately checked for pulse-rate, for
respiration, for any vital sign that she could still be saved. It was only
after three or four minutes of quick, urgent checks that he let her thin hand
fall on her chest again and stood up straight “I’m sorry,” he said gravely.
“She is quite
dead.”
“Do you know
how?” I asked him. I felt queasy and faint, but I still had to know.
Dr. Jarvis drew
a starched white sheet over her body and covered her face. “She was
frightened,”
he
said. “It looks as if something frightened her.”
“In here?
You’re kidding.”
Dr. Jarvis
turned around angrily. “I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do!” he
shouted. He was very upset. “See for yourself! There’s every sign of death by
hysterical spasm! It happens all the time! Even people who get hanged often die
of fear before their necks are broken! “
I went to the
window and rattled it. It was locked. So was the window on the other side of
the room. There was no way out of either of them.
Cr. Jarvis sat
down nervously and watched me check the room. Nothing was broken, nothing was
marked. Nothing was disarranged.
“I can’t
understand it,” he said, more calmly now. “I just can’t understand it.”
“You can’t
understand what?”
“Mr. Erskine,
if you die of fear something usually frightens you. What could possibly have
frightened Marjorie in here?”
I took a final
look around. Then Professor Qualt and Anna came in. I turned away, while Dr.
Jarvis told
them what had happened. I was too shocked, too anxious, to talk to anyone else
right now. I had been told about Max’s death, and I had seen Marjorie
frightened. I had been frightened a couple of times myself. But now I had seen
what the djinn could really do. I was sure now unshakably sure-that whatever
was in that jar was directly responsible for everything that was going on.
Somehow we had to gain access to Winter Sails and get rid of it-no matter how
dangerous it was. I didn’t want Miss Johnson dead, and I didn’t want Anna dead.
Nor did I want Professor Qualt or Dr. Jarvis dead. And most of all, I didn’t
fancy dying myself. Not like that, anyway. Not with ray eyes bulging open in
terror and my mouth dragged down in a howl that I was too frightened even to
let out.
“What
happened?” said Professor Qualt. “Did you see anything?”
I shook my
head. “No, but I’m pretty sure I heard something.”
“You heard
something?” said Dr. Jarvis. “What was it?”
“Well,” I said
slowly. “You know when you’re lying in bed at night, and a big moth somehow
strays into the room and starts to flicker and beat around the lampshade, and
all the time you’re afraid that it’s going to flicker right into your face?
That’s what I heard.
Something that sounded just like that.”
Dr. Jarvis,
biting his lip, went over and picked up the phone.
“What are you
doing?” I said.
“I’m calling
the police-what do you think? We can’t allow this kind of thing to carry on.”
“And do you
seriously think the police are going to believe us? And do you seriously think
they could or would do anything about it if they did? Come on, doctor, let’s be
realistic”
Dr. Jarvis
pointed to Marjorie’s body. “If you think Marjorie’s death has anything to do
with realism, you can be as realistic as you like. But I think it’s
supernatural. And that’s why I’m going to call the police.”
Professor Qualt
went over and gently took the receiver away from Dr. Jarvis’s nervous hand.
“Who are you
going to call?” he said in his deep, even voice.
“The Ghost
Squad?”
It was nearly
ten o’clock in the evening before we decided to go back to Winter Sails. It was
dark now, a thick velvety dark that enclosed us like the inside of a violin
case. The moon was not yet up, and there was a strange suffocating stillness.
We climbed into the car in silence, and I started the engine. The green glow
from the instrument panel made our faces look distinctly unwholesome.
“Do you think
it was all right to leave Dr. Jarvis behind?” asked Anna.
“Why?” said
Professor Qualt, leaning over from the back seat. “He’s old enough to take care
of himself.”
“Yes,” said
Anna, “but supposing he calls the police?”
I switched on
my headlights, took a look around, and then pulled away from the curb. “He
promised not to,” I said. “And Dr. Jarvis is one of those old-time gentlemen
who keep their promise. Don’t worry.”
I drove quickly
down the illuminated tunnel that my headlights carved in the soft darkness.
Moths and bugs
glimmered and twisted in front of us. I turned out of Dr. Jarvis’s street onto
the main highway and made my way toward Winter Sails. The road was deserted, so
I put my foot down and drove all the way at sixty.
A crescent moon
was just rising over the sea by the time we reached Winter Sails. It silvered
the lawns and the rooftops, and gave a bleached bone-like whiteness to the
house and its empty windows. I drew up in front of the main porch and killed
the engine.
For a minute or
two, we sat in silence. There was no sound at all, except for the sibilant .sea
breeze through the grass, and the monotonous squeaking of the weathervane.
“Looks empty to
me,” said Anna in an overawed hush.
“Just as well,”
said Professor Qualt “If there’s no one around, we can have a look at that jar
with no interference.”
I lit a
cigarette with the car lighter. “You wanna bet?” I asked him. “Ten to one every
shadow in the whole place has a hooded figure lurking in it.”
Professor Qualt
gave a strained little laugh. “If I didn’t know you believed this as much as I
do,”
he
said, “I’d make you go first.”
Eventually, we
climbed out of the car and stepped carefully across the gravel to the front
door. I knocked and rang, just in case, but after three or four fidgety minutes
waiting for someone to answer, we decided that there was nobody home – at least
nobody who was going to answer the door.
“Can you force
it open?” said Professor Qualt.
I gave him a
thumb’s-up, went to the side of the porch, and collected the pick that I had
propped up there when Marjorie had told me to leave. We all stood back, and I
took a hefty swing at the old white woodwork.
“Smashing doors
down seems to be your specialty,” said Anna, as the point of the pick buried
itself in the doorjamb, near the lock.
This one,
however, was much more difficult than the door o£ Dr. Jarvis’s consulting room.
It was heavily bolted on the inside, top and
bottom,
and I practically had to chop the whole thing to pieces.
“I just hope
this is justified,” said Professor Qualt, sounding a little nervous. I gave one
more splintering swing with the pick, and the door sagged open. Inside, it was
musty and dark, and I could just make out the pattern of the black-and-white
hallway floor. Professor Qualt stepped forward and had a close look around.
“Okay, I think it’s safe to go in.”
“Safe?” I said
to Anna, as Qualt stepped through the door ahead of us. “What does he mean?”
“I presume he’s
looking for evil charms and signs,” said Anna. “You never know what traps and
ambushes an enemy might leave for you.”
Professor Qualt
was in the hallway itself by now, and he beckoned us impatiently inside.
“Hurry,” he
said. “If we have any advantage at all, we’ve arrived by surprise, and our
intentions are not yet clear. If there is a djinn here, it will wait to
discover what we want before it takes any defensive measures.”
I followed him
across to the foot of the stairs. They rose gloomily toward the second floor
and looked about as inviting as the entrance to a haunted mineshaft.
“You’re taking
this very seriously,” I said. “Are you sure we’re not making fools of
ourselves?”
Professor Qualt
coughed. “I’d rather look a fool than end up like your godfather,” he said
gently. “The point is, we simply don’t know what it is we’re up against, so I’d
rather take every precaution we can,”
“Okay then,” I
said. “We’d better go up and see what it’s all about. It’s up the stairs, along
the corridor to the very end, and then turn left to the turret door. That’s
where the seals and the locks are. I’ll take the pick, just in case we can’t
break the seals any other way.”
Professor Qualt
led the way, and we creaked up the old wooden stairs, holding onto the handrail
to guide us, I suggested we switch on the lights, but Qualt said it would give
the djinn the added advantage of being able to see who and what we were. And if
it wasn’t a djinn, but a flesh-and-blood enemy, our arrival in pitch-darkness
would have the same surprising effect.
We reached the
landing and strained our eyes to see down the long stuffy corridor. The moon
was sloping through the open door of Max Greaves’s study, and through the
window at the far end of the corridor that overlooked the driveway; it gave the
place an eerie luminosity.
“I think this
is getting too spooky for me,” Anna whispered. “
Don’t
anybody mention hooded figures, or I think I’ll faint.”
Keeping close
together, we walked slowly and softly up the corridor. The floorboards were old
and squeaky in places, and the furry sound of rats scampering across the
ceiling above our heads didn’t add to our peace of mind. Anna reached forward
and squeezed my hand, and even the bold Professor Qualt seemed to be walking
with less buoyancy than he had before.
Suddenly Anna stopped.
Because she was holding my hand, I stopped, too. I touched Professor Qualt.
“What is it?”
he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Listen,” said
Anna. “Listen.”
I listened, and
for a moment I could hear nothing at all. But then it reached my ears.
That high-pitched, plangent music, like a mournful wind whistling
across the mouth of a jar, or a curious string instrument of unknown antiquity.
It seemed very close – it seemed all around us-and we all felt the same
freezing sense of fright.
T
he music reached an odd vibrant warbling pitch and went on and on
and on, monotonous, yet strangely insistent, as if it were trying to build up
to a tempo it could never reach.
“It’s the jar,”
said Anna in a hollow, frightened voice. “It’s the jar.”
Professor Qualt
said nothing. He simply took us both by the hand and led us down the corridor,
through the slanting moonlight that fell from Max Greaves’s study like a shower
of ice, and down toward the end of the empty hall. At last we stood at the
juncture of corridors, which was lit by the eerie moonlight that fell from the
window overlooking the driveway. We stared in nervous fascination at the
heavily sealed and bolted turret door.
The music kept
on. It was difficult to tell if it was the sound of a stringed instrument or the
high-pitched keening of a human voice.
Professor Qualt
stepped up to the turret door and examined the brown wax seals in the
moonlight. As he did so, the music began to fade away, and after a minute or
two, the corridor was silent again. We stood stock-still, our ears alert for
the slightest sound-especially from within the turret- and we waited for
Professor Quail’s opinion.
“There’s no
doubt about it,” he whispered after a while. “These seals have been set here to
imprison
a powerful djinn
. They are all very rare and
ancient carvings; some of them are completely unknown to me. That one
there-those figures carved in a kind of triangle-was banned from Middle Eastern
countries as long ago as the thirteenth century. This is sorcery of the highest
kind. We can’t laugh this off, Harry. Not for a moment.”
I coughed. “I
wasn’t suggesting that we laugh it off,” I said hoarsely.
“But
what about that music?
You’ve heard it
for yourself now. Where does it come from?”
Professor Qualt
scratched the back of his hairy neck. “Do you think I know, any more than you
do? Who knows where it comes from? In sorcery you don’t think about where
things come from; you talk about when and how. Nothing in real Middle Eastern
sorcery has a where to its name. Where is God? Where is Heaven? Where are the
angels? Those are earthbound questions that just don’t make sense.”
“So you think
the music is some land of spiritual manifestation?”
Professor Qualt
shrugged. “I don’t honestly know what it is. I have heard of strange sounds and
music before, in Western ghost stories; but I have never heard anything like
that. It reminds me vaguely of that ritual music played to the god Pan in parts
of the northern Sahara.”
“You think
it’s
magic music?” asked Anna.
“I don’t know.
But from what you say, Max Greaves heard it as well, and for some reason it
worried him.”
We listened
again for any strange noises within the turret, but it was quite silent. We
heard only the squeaking of the weathervane and the fitful blowing of the night
wind from the sea. Every now and then, the old house creaked, as if settling
itself in its endless sleep and dreams of all the people, now dead, who had
walked along its corridors.