A Bitter Heritage

"I suppose," he muttered, "that my sense of smell's affected too, now. Or else-jacket's getting-some beastly old-old-old tropical smell that clings to everything-in-in such countries. Never mind. Here's keys."

He drew them forth, regarding the bunch with a stare as though it was something he was unacquainted with, and then, instead of putting into the lock of the bag the long slim key which is usual, he endeavoured to insert a large one that really belonged to a trunk he had left behind at the shipping office in Belize as not being wanted.

Reflection served, however, to call to his mind that this key was not very likely to open the bag, and at last, after giving an inane smile at the mistake, he succeeded in his endeavour and was able to get out the contents, and to withdraw the little medicine casket.

"Quinine," he said, spelling the word letter by letter as he held the phial under the lamp. "Quinine. That's it. Don't let's make a mistake. Q-u-i-n-i-n-e. That's all right. Can't go wrong now."

By the aid of the contents of the water-bottle and his glass he was enabled to swallow two quinine pills of two grains each, and then he resolved-in a hazy, uncertain kind of way-to go to bed. Whereon, slowly he divested himself of his clothes and, in a mechanical manner, threw back the mosquito curtains. But, whatever might be the matter with him, and however clouded his intellect might be, he was not yet so dense as to forget the strange occupant of that bed which he had once before discovered there.

"Beatrix said," he muttered, "that coral snake kills in an hour. I don't want to die in an hour. Let's see if we've got another guest here to-night."

And, as he had done every night since he had returned to Desolada, he thoroughly explored the bed, doing so, however, on this occasion in a lethargic, heavy manner which caused him to be some considerable time about it.

"Turn to the left to unscrew," he said to himself, recalling some old schoolboy phrase as he stood now by the lamp ready to extinguish it, "to the right to screw. Same, I suppose, to turn up and down. Oh! the revolver. Where's that? May as well have it handy." Whereupon he went over to where he had hung up his jacket and removed the weapon from the inside pocket.

"A nasty smell these tropical places have," he muttered as he did so. "There's the smell of India-no one ever forgets that-and also the smell of Africa. Well! strikes me Honduras can go one better than either of them."

Then he got into bed.

Dizzy, stupefied as he felt, however, it did not seem as if his stupefaction or semi-delirium, or whatever it was which had overcome him, was likely to plunge him into a heavy, dull sleep. Instead, he found himself lying there with his eyes wide open, and, although his brain felt like a lump of lead, while there was a weight at his forehead as if something were pressing on it, he was conscious that one of his senses was very acute-namely, the sense of smell. Either that, or else some very peculiar phase in the fever which he was experiencing, was causing a strange sense of disgust in his nostrils.

"This bed smells just like a temple I went into in Burmah once," he thought to himself. "What the deuce is the matter with me-or it? Anyhow, I can't stand it." And, determined not to endure the unpleasantness any longer, he got up from the bed, while wrapping himself in the dark coverlet he went over to an old rickety sofa that ran along the opposite side of the room and lay down upon it.

And here, at least, the odour was not apparent. The old horsehair bolster and pillow did emit, it is true, the peculiar stuffy flavour which such things will do even in temperate climates; but beyond that nothing else. The acrid, loathsome odour which he had smelt for the first time when he leant his head slightly as he felt for his keys, and which he had perceived in a far more intensified form when he lay down in the bed, was not at all apparent now. It seemed as if he was, at last, likely to fall asleep.

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE DARK

Julian supposed when he was awakened later on, and felt that he was drenched with a warm perspiration which caused his light tropical clothes to stick to him with a hot clammy feeling, that he must have slept for two hours. For now, as he lay on the sofa facing the window, he could see through the slats of the persianas, which he had forgotten to turn down, that, peeping round the window-frame there came an edge of the moon, which he seemed to recollect-dimly, hazily, and indistinctly-had risen late last night.

And that moon-which stole more and more into his view as he regarded it-was casting now a long ray into the bedroom, so that there came across the floor a streak of light of about the breadth of nine inches.

Yet-once his bemused brain had grasped the fact that this ray was there, while, at the same time, that brain was still clear enough to comprehend that every moment the flood of light was becoming larger, so that soon the apartment would be filled with it-he paid no further attention to the matter, nor to the distant rumbling of thunder far away-thunder that told of a tropical storm taking place at a distance. Instead, he was endeavouring to argue silently with himself as to the actual state in which his mind was; as to whether he was in a dreamy kind of delirium, or whether, in spite of any fever that might be upon him, he was still able to distinctly understand his surroundings.

If, as he hoped earnestly, the latter was the case; if he was not delirious, but only numbed by some ailment that had insidiously taken possession of him-then-why then-surely! he was in deadly peril of some immediate attack upon him-upon his life perhaps.

For, outside those persianas there was another light, two other lights glittering in upon him that were not cast by the moon, but that (because now and again her rays were thrown upon them) he discovered to be a pair of eyes. And not the eyes of an animal either, since they glisten in the dark, but, instead, human eyes that glared horribly as now and again the moonbeams caught them.

Only! was it the truth that they were real tangible eyes, or were they but a fantasy of a mind unhinged by fever?

He must know that! And he could only do so by lying perfectly still; by watching.

Those eyes which stared in at him now were low down to the floor of the balcony, even as he seemed to recollect Zara's eyes had been on one occasion during her nocturnal visits to him when he first arrived at Desolada; yet now he knew, felt sure, that they were not Zara's. Why he felt so sure he could not tell, nor in the feverish languor that was upon him, could he even reason with himself as why he did feel so sure. But, at the same time, he told himself, they were not hers. Of that he was certain.

How did they come there, low down-not a foot above the floor of the veranda? Could they indeed be the eyes of an animal in spite of the white eyeballs on which the rays shone with such a sickly gleam; did they belong to some household dog which had chosen this spot for its night's repose? Yet-yet-if such was the case, why did it not sleep curled up or stretched out, instead of peering through the latticework with its eyes close to the slats, as though determined to see all that was in the room and all that was going on in it. No! it could not be that, while, also it was not what he had deemed it might be a few minutes ago-the eyes of a snake. It was impossible, since the eyes of a snake would have been much closer together.

They were-there could be no doubt about it! the eyes of a human being, man or woman. And they were not Zara's. He was sure of that.

But still they glared into the room, glared through the dusky sombreness of the lower part of it, of that part of the floor which, even now, the moonlight was not illuminating. And then to his astonishment he saw, as the light flooded the apartment more and more, that those eyes were staring not at him but towards another portion of the room; towards where the bed stood enveloped in the long hanging folds of the mosquito curtains, which, to his distempered mind, seemed in the weird light of the tropical night to look like the hangings that enshroud a catafalque-a funeral canopy.

His hand, shaky though he knew it was from whatever ailed him, was on his revolver; for a moment or so he lay there asking himself if he should fire at that wizard thing, that creepy mystery outside his room; if he should aim fair between those glistening eyeballs and trust to fortune to kill or disable the mysterious watcher? But still, however, he refrained; for, if his senses were still in his own possession, if his mind was still able to understand anything, it understood that near the bed in which he should have been sleeping had it not been for the evil odours exhaled from it to-night, there was something that might be a more fitting object of his discharge than the creature outside.

"If," he thought to himself, "I am neither mad nor delirious nor drenched with fever, those eyes are watching something in this room, and that something is not myself."

Should he turn his head; could he turn it towards that dark patch behind the mosquito curtains which was not illuminated with the moon's rays? Could he do it as a man turns in his sleep-restlessly-so that in the action there might be nothing which should alarm whatever lurked in the darkness over there; the thing that, having got into his room in the night full of evil intentions towards him, was now itself being watched, suspected, perhaps trapped.

Could he do it?

As he meditated thus, feeling sure now that his stupor, his density of mind, was not what it had been-recognising with a feeling of devout thankfulness that, whatever his state might hitherto have been, his mind was now becoming clear and his intellect collected, he prepared to put this determination into practise. He would roll over on to his right side, as he had seen sleepy sailors roll over on to theirs in the watch below; he would roll over too, with his hand securely on the butt of his revolver. And then-if-if, as he felt certain was the case, there was some dark skulking thing hiding behind his bedhead, if he should see another pair of eyes gleaming out in the rays of the moon-why, then, woe befall it! He had had enough of these midnight hauntings from one visitant or another in this house of mystery; he would fire straight at that figure, he would kill it dead, if so it must be, even if it were Sebastian himself.

As he turned, imitating a sleeper's restlessness, as well as he was able, there came two interruptions-interruptions that stayed his hand.

From near the bed-he was right! those eyes outside had been watching something that was inside there! – close to him, across the room, he heard a sound. A sound that was half a one, half an inward catching of the breath, a gasp. Yet so low, so quickly suppressed, that none who had not suspected, none who had not been on the watch for the slightest sign, would have heard or noticed it. But he had heard it!

The other was a noisier, a more palpable interruption. Sebastian, below in the great saloon on the front was singing to himself, loudly and boisterously, and then, equally boisterously, was wishing Madame Carmaux "Good-night." Answering evidently, too, some question, which Julian could not hear put to him by her, and expressing also the hope that she would feel better soon.

"Yet," thought Julian, "she cannot quit her room. It is strange. Strange, too, that she should be up so late. It must be two o'clock, at least."

With a glance from his eye towards the lower part of the window, which still he could see from the position in which he lay, he observed that the mysterious watcher outside was gone. Those eyes, at least, no longer gleamed from low down by the floor; through the slats of the blind he perceived that the spot where they had lately been was now a void. The watcher was gone! But what of the one who had been watched, of the lurking creature that was near his bed, and that had gasped with fear even as he turned over on the sofa? What of that? Well, it was still there. He was alone with it.

His thumb drew back the trigger of the revolver, the well-known click was heard-the click which can never be disguised or silenced. A click that many a man has listened to with mortal agony and terror of soul, knowing that it sounds his knell. Then again on his ears there fell that gasp, that indrawn catching of the breath, which told of a terrified object close by his side.

And it could not be Sebastian who had uttered it; Sebastian, the one person alone who had reason to meditate the worst towards him that one human being can desire for another. It could not be he. For was he not still singing boisterously below in the front of the house? It could not be he. And, Julian reflected, he was about to take a life, the life of some one whom he himself did not know, of some one whose presence in his room even at night, at such an hour of the night, might yet be capable of explanation; that might not, in absolute fact, bode evil to him. Suppose, that after all, it should be Zara, and that again she was there for some purpose of serving his interest as he had told Beatrix he believed she had been more than once before. Suppose that, and that now he should fire and kill her! How would he feel then! What would his remorse be?

No! He would not do it.

Instead, therefore, he whispered the words, "Zara, what is it?"

Even as he did so, even as he spoke, he noticed that a change had come over the room. It was quite dark now; the moon's rays no longer gleamed in; the moon itself was gone, obscured. What had happened? In a moment the question was answered.

Upon the balcony outside there came a rattle as though a deluge of small stones had been hurled down upon it, and he, who knew well what the violence of tropical storms is, recognized that one had broken over Desolada, and that the rain, if not hail, was descending in a deluge. A moment later there came, too, a flash of purple, gleaming lightning which was gone before he could turn his eyes into the quarter of the room where lurked the thing that he suspected, felt sure was there. Then, over all, there burst the roar of the thunder from above, reverberating, pealing all around, rumbling, and reechoing a moment later in the Cockscomb Mountains.

"Zara!" he called louder now, so as to make himself heard above the din of the storm-"Zara, why do you not answer me? I mean you no harm."

But, if amid this tumult any answer was given, he did not hear it. For now the crash of the thunder, the downpour of the rain, the screaming of the parrots, and the demoniacal howlings of the baboons farther away, served to create such a turmoil that scarcely could the cry of a human voice be heard above it all.

"I am determined," Julian exclaimed, "to know who and what it is that cowers there!" Wherewith he sprang from off the sofa on which he had previously raised himself to a sitting position, and, with a leap, rushed towards the mosquito curtains hanging by the bedhead. "I will see who and what you are!" he cried, feeling certain that in this spot was still lurking some strange, secret visitant.

Yet to his astonishment the spot was empty when he reached it. Neither human being nor animal, nor anything whatever, was there.

"I am indeed struck with fever and delirious," he muttered to himself, "or if not that, am mad. Yet I could have sworn it was as I thought."

Then again, as he stood there holding in his hand the gauzy curtains which he had brushed aside, the storm burst afresh over the house with renewed violence; again the sheets of rain poured down; once more the purple tropical lightning flashed and the thunder roared. And as the tempest beat down on all beneath its violence, and while a moment of intense darkness was followed by an instant of brilliant light, Julian heard a stronger rattle of the Venetian blinds than the wind had made, and saw, as again there came a flash of lightning, a dark, hooded figure creep out swiftly past them on to the balcony-a figure shrouded to the eyes, yet in the dark eyes of which, as the lightning played on them, there seemed to be a look of awful fear.

CHAPTER XXIII

WARNED

Blue as the deepest gleam within the sapphire's depth were the heavens; bright as molten gold were the sun's rays the next morning when the storm was past-leaving, however, in its track some marks of its passage. For the flowers in the gardens round the house were beaten down now with the weight of water that had fallen on them; beneath the oleanders and the flamboyants, the allamandas and ixoras, the blossoms strewed the pampas grass in masses; while many crabs-which wander up from the seacoast in search of succulent plants whereon to feed-lay dead near the roots of the bushes and shrubs.

Yet a day's scorching sun, to be followed perhaps by an entire absence of further rain for a month, would soon cause fresh masses of bloom to take the place of those which were destroyed, especially as now they had received the moisture so necessary to their existence. And Julian, standing on his balcony and wondering who that strange nocturnal visitor was who had fled on to this very balcony a few hours before, thought that during his stay in this mysterious place he had never seen its surroundings look so fair.

Whether it was that he had received considerable benefit from the quinine which he had taken overnight, or whether it was from the total change of clothing which he had now assumed in place of the garments he had worn up to now, or perhaps from his not having lain through the night upon the bed which, particularly of late, had seemed so malodorous, he felt very much better this morning. His brain no longer appeared numbed nor his mind hazy, nor had he any headache.

"Which," he said to himself, "is a mighty good thing. For now I want all my wits about me. This affair has got to be brought to a conclusion somehow, and Julian Ritherdon is the man to do it. Only," he said, with now a smile on his face-"only, no more of the simple trusting individual you have been, my friend-if you ever have been such! Instead of suspecting Master Sebastian of being in the wrong box you have got to prove him so, and instead of suspecting him to be a-well! say a gentleman who hasn't got much regard for you, you have got to get to windward of him. Now go full speed ahead, my son."

Whereon, to commence the process of getting to windward of Sebastian and also of carrying out the movement known in his profession as going "full speed ahead," he informed the nigger who brought him his shaving-water that he felt very poorly indeed, and would, with Sebastian's permission, remain in his room that day.

"Because," he said to himself, "I think it would be as well if I kept a kind of watch upon this tastefully furnished apartment. Like all the rest of this house, it is becoming what the conjurers call 'a home of mystery,' and is consequently getting more and more interesting. And there are only the 'four clear days' left wherein the mystery can be solved-if ever."

A few moments after he had made these reflections he heard a tap at his bedroom door, and on bidding the person who was outside to come in, Sebastian made his appearance, there being on his face a look of regret at the information which he said the negro had just conveyed to him.

"I say, old fellow, this is bad news. It won't do at all. Not at all. What is the matter with you?" he exclaimed in his usual bluff, hearty way.

"A touch of fever, I'm afraid," Julian replied. "Not much, I fancy, but still worth being careful about. I'll keep my room to-day if you don't mind."

"Mind!" Sebastian exclaimed. "Mind; why, my dear Julian, that's the very best thing you can do, the very thing you ought to do. And I'll send you something appetizing by Zara. Let me see. They have brought in this morning some of that mountain mullet you liked so much; that will do first-rate for breakfast with some Guava jelly. How will that suit?"

"Nothing could be better. Those mountain mullet are superb. You are very good."

"Oh! that's nothing. And, look here, I have brought you a little phial of our physic-nut oil, which the natives say will cure anything, and almost bring a dead man back to life. Take three or four drops of that, my boy, in your coffee, and you'll feel a new man," whereon he drew a little phial from his pocket and stood it on the table. Then, after a few more sympathetic remarks he prepared to depart, saying he would have the breakfast prepared and sent up by Zara at once.

"I was glad," Julian said casually, as Sebastian approached the door, "to hear you wishing Madame Carmaux good-night, last night. I didn't know she was well enough to get downstairs yet."

"Oh! yes," the other replied in a more or less careless tone, "she came down to supper last night and sat up late with me. I was glad of her company, you know. So you heard us, eh? Did you hear us singing, too? We got quite inspirited over her return to health. If you'd only been down, my boy, we would have had a rollicking time of it."

"Never mind," said Julian, "better luck next time. You wait till I do come down and we'll have a regular chorus. When I give you some of my wardroom songs, you'll be surprised."

"Right," said Sebastian, with a laugh; "the sooner the better," whereon he took himself off.

"I didn't hear the silvery tones of Madame Carmaux, all the same," Julian thought to himself after the other was gone, "neither do I remember that I heard her return his 'good-night.' However, Sebastian's own tones are somewhat stentorian when he lets himself go, or as our Irish doctor used to say of the bo'sun's, 'enough to split a pitcher,' so I suppose that isn't very strange."

He took down his jacket now, and indeed the whole of his white drill suit which he had discarded for an exactly similar one that he had in his large Gladstone bag, and began to roll it up preparatory to packing it away. Though, as he did so, he again perceived the horrible fœtid odour which it had emitted overnight-the same odour that had also been so perceptible when he had laid his head upon the pillow. The revolting smell that had driven him from the bed to seek repose on that sofa.

"Faugh!" he exclaimed, "it is loathsome. Even now, with the room full of the fresh morning air, I feel as if I were getting giddy and bemused again." Whereon, and while uttering some remarks that were by no means complimentary to Honduras and some of its perfumes, he began rolling the clothes up as quickly as he could. Yet while he did so, being now engaged with the jacket, his eye was attracted by the lapel of the collar, the white surface of which was discoloured-though only in the faintest degree discoloured-a yellowish, grey colour. Each lapel, down to where the topmost button was! Then, after a close inspection of the jacket all over, he perceived that nowhere else was it similarly stained.

His curiosity becoming excited by this, since in no way could he account for such a thing (he distinctly remembered that there had been no stain, however faint, on the lapel before), he regarded the waistcoat next; and there, on the small lapel of that-both left and right-were the same marks.

"Strange," he muttered, "strange. Very strange. One might say that the washerwoman had spilt something on coat and waistcoat-purposely. Something, too, that smells uncommonly nasty."

For, by inspection, or rather test with his nostrils, he was easily able to perceive that no other part of his discarded clothing emitted any such disagreeable odour. While, too, as he applied his nose again and again to the faint stains, he also perceived that in his brain there came once more the giddiness and haziness from which he had suffered so much last night-as well as the feeling of stupid density amounting almost to dreaminess or delirium.

"If that stuff was under my nose all day long yesterday, and perhaps for a week or so before," he reflected, "I don't wonder that at last I became almost wandering in my mind, as well as stupefied." Then, a thought striking him, he went over to the pillow on the bed and gazed down on it. And there, upon it, on either side, was the same stain-faint, yellow, and emitting the same acrid, loathsome odour.

"So, so," he said to himself, "I begin to understand. I begin to understand very well, and to comprehend Sebastian's chemical experiments. The woman who washed my jacket and waistcoat in England is not the same woman who washed that pillow-case in British Honduras. Yet the same stain and the same odour are on both. All right! A good deal may happen in the next four days."