Bat Wing by Sax Rohmer

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The billiard room was immediately beneath us, adjoining the last
apartment in the east wing, and there we made our way. Harley played
keenly, deliberately, concentrating upon the game. I was less
successful, for I found myself alternately glancing toward the door and
the open window, in the hope that Val Beverley would join us. I was
disappointed, however. We saw no more of the ladies until tea-time, and
if a spirit of constraint had prevailed throughout luncheon, a
veritable demon of unrest presided upon the terrace during tea.

Madame de Staemer made apologies on behalf of the Colonel. He was
prolonging his siesta, but he hoped to join us at dinner.

"Is the Colonel's heart affected?" Harley asked.

Madame de Staemer shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, blankly.

"It is mysterious, the state of his health," she replied. "An old
trouble, which began years and years ago in Cuba."

Harley nodded sympathetically, but I could see that he was not
satisfied. Yet, although he might doubt her explanation, he had noted,
and so had I, that Madame de Staemer's concern was very real. Her
slender hands were strangely unsteady; indeed her condition bordered on
one of distraction.

Harley concealed his thoughts, whatever they may have been, beneath
that mask of reserve which I knew so well, whilst I endeavoured in vain
to draw Val Beverley into conversation with me.

I gathered that Madame de Staemer had been to visit the invalid, and
that she was all anxiety to return was a fact she was wholly unable to
conceal. There was a tired look in her still eyes, as though she had
undertaken a task beyond her powers to perform, and, so unnatural a
quartette were we, that when presently she withdrew I was glad,
although she took Val Beverley with her.

Paul Harley resumed his seat, staring at me with unseeing eyes. A sound
reached us through the drawing room which told us that Madame de
Staemer's chair was being taken upstairs, a task always performed when
Madame desired to visit the upper floors by Manoel and Pedro's
daughter, Nita, who acted as Madame's maid. These sounds died away, and
I thought how silent everything had become. Even the birds were still,
and presently, my eye being attracted to a black speck in the sky
above, I learned why the feathered choir was mute. A hawk was hovering
loftily overhead.

Noting my upward glance, Paul Harley also raised his eyes.

"Ah," he murmured, "a hawk. All the birds are cowering in their nests.
Nature is a cruel mistress, Knox."

CHAPTER XVI

RED EVE

Over the remainder of that afternoon I will pass in silence. Indeed,
looking backward now, I cannot recollect that it afforded one incident
worthy of record. But because great things overshadow small, so it may
be that whereas my recollections of quite trivial episodes are sharp
enough up to a point, my memories from this point onward to the
horrible and tragic happening which I have set myself to relate are
hazy and indistinct. I was troubled by the continued absence of Val
Beverley. I thought that she was avoiding me by design, and in Harley's
gloomy reticence I could find no shadow of comfort.

We wandered aimlessly about the grounds, Harley staring up in a vague
fashion at the windows of Cray's Folly; and presently, when I stopped
to inspect a very perfect rose bush, he left me without a word, and I
found myself alone.

Later, as I sauntered toward the Tudor garden, where I had hoped to
encounter Miss Beverley, I heard the clicking of billiard balls; and
there was Harley at the table, practising fancy shots.

He glanced up at me as I paused by the open window, stopped to relight
his pipe, and then bent over the table again.

"Leave me alone, Knox," he muttered; "I am not fit for human society."

Understanding his moods as well as I did, I merely laughed and
withdrew.

I strolled around into the library and inspected scores of books
without forming any definite impression of the contents of any of them.
Manoel came in whilst I was there and I was strongly tempted to send a
message to Miss Beverley, but common sense overcame the inclination.

When at last my watch told me that the hour for dressing was arrived, I
heaved a sigh of relief. I cannot say that I was bored, my ill-temper
sprang from a deeper source than this. The mysterious disappearance of
the inmates of Cray's Folly, and a sort of brooding stillness which lay
over the great house, had utterly oppressed me.

As I passed along the terrace I paused to admire the spectacle afforded
by the setting sun. The horizon was on fire from north to south and the
countryside was stained with that mystic radiance which is sometimes
called the Blood of Apollo. Turning, I saw the disk of the moon coldly
rising in the heavens. I thought of the silent birds and the hovering
hawk, and I began my preparations for dinner mechanically, dressing as
an automaton might dress.

Paul Harley's personality was never more marked than in his evil moods.
His power to fascinate was only equalled by his power to repel. Thus,
although there was a light in his room and I could hear Lim moving
about, I did not join him when I had finished dressing, but lighting a
cigarette walked downstairs.

The beauty of the night called to me, although as I stepped out upon
the terrace I realized with a sort of shock that the gathering dusk
held a menace, so that I found myself questioning the shadows and
doubting the rustle of every leaf. Something invisible, intangible yet
potent, brooded over Cray's Folly. I began to think more kindly of the
disappearance of Val Beverley during the afternoon. Doubtless she, too,
had been touched by this spirit of unrest and in solitude had sought to
dispel it.

So thinking. I walked on in the direction of the Tudor garden. The
place was bathed in a sort of purple half-light, lending it a fairy air
of unreality, as though banished sun and rising moon yet disputed for
mastery over earth. This idea set me thinking of Colin Camber, of
Osiris, whom he had described as a black god, and of Isis, whose silver
disk now held undisputed sovereignty of the evening sky.

Resentment of the treatment which I had received at the Guest House
still burned hotly within me, but the mystery of it all had taken the
keen edge off my wrath, and I think a sort of melancholy was the
keynote of my reflections as, descending the steps to the sunken
garden, I saw Val Beverley, in a delicate blue gown, coming toward me.
She was the spirit of my dreams, and the embodiment of my mood. When
she lowered her eyes at my approach, I knew by virtue of a sort of
inspiration that she had been avoiding me.

"Miss Beverley," I said, "I have been looking for you all the
afternoon."

"Have you? I have been in my room writing letters."

I paced slowly along beside her.

"I wish you would be very frank with me," I said.

She glanced up swiftly, and as swiftly lowered her lashes again.

"Do you think I am not frank?"

"I do think so. I understand why."

"Do you really understand?"

"I think I do. Your woman's intuition has told you that there is
something wrong."

"In what way?"

"You are afraid of your thoughts. You can see that Madame de Staemer and
Colonel Menendez are deliberately concealing something from Paul
Harley, and you don't know where your duty lies. Am I right?"

She met my glance for a moment in a startled way, then: "Yes," she
said, softly; "you are quite right. How have you guessed?"

"I have tried very hard to understand you," I replied, "and so perhaps
up to a point I have succeeded."

"Oh, Mr. Knox." She suddenly laid her hand upon my arm. "I am oppressed
with such a dreadful foreboding, yet I don't know how to explain it to
you."

"I understand. I, too, have felt it."

"You have?" She paused, and looked at me eagerly. "Then it is not just
morbid imagination on my part. If only I knew what to do, what to
believe. Really, I am bewildered. I have just left Madame de Staemer--"

"Yes?" I said, for she had paused in evident doubt.

"Well, she has utterly broken down."

"Broken down?"

"She came to my room and sobbed hysterically for nearly an hour this
afternoon."

"But what was the cause of her grief?"

"I simply cannot understand."

"Is it possible that Colonel Menendez is dangerously ill?"

"It may be so, Mr. Knox, but in that event why have they not sent for a
physician?"

"True," I murmured; "and no one has been sent for?"

"No one."

"Have you seen Colonel Menendez?"

"Not since lunch-time."

"Have you ever known him to suffer in this way before?"

"Never. It is utterly unaccountable. Certainly during the last few
months he has given up riding practically altogether, and in other ways
has changed his former habits, but I have never known him to exhibit
traces of any real illness."

"Has any medical man attended him?"

"Not that I know of. Oh, there is something uncanny about it all.
Whatever should I do if you were not here?"

She had spoken on impulse, and seeing her swift embarrassment:

"Miss Beverley," I said, "I am delighted to know that my company cheers
you."

Truth to tell my heart was beating rapidly, and, so selfish is the
nature of man, I was more glad to learn that my company was acceptable
to Val Beverley than I should have been to have had the riddle of
Cray's Folly laid bare before me.

Those sweetly indiscreet words, however, had raised a momentary barrier
between us, and we walked on silently to the house, and entered the
brightly lighted hall.

The silver peal of a Chinese tubular gong rang out just when we reached
the veranda, and as Val Beverley and I walked in from the garden,
Madame de Staemer came wheeling through the doorway, closely followed by
Paul Harley. In her the art of the toilette amounted almost to genius,
and she had so successfully concealed all traces of her recent grief
that I wondered if this could have been real.

"My dear Mr. Knox," she cried, "I seem to be fated always to apologize
for other people. The Colonel is truly desolate, but he cannot join us
for dinner. I have already explained to Mr. Harley."

Harley inclined his head sympathetically, and assisted to arrange
Madame in her place.

"The Colonel requests us to smoke a cigar with him after dinner, Knox,"
he said, glancing across to me. "It would seem that troubles never come
singly."

"Ah," Madame shrugged her shoulders, which her low gown left daringly
bare, "they come in flocks, or not at all. But I suppose we should feel
lonely in the world without a few little sorrows, eh, Mr. Harley?"

I loved her unquenchable spirit, and I have wondered often enough what
I should have thought of her if I had known the truth. France has bred
some wonderful women, both good and bad, but none I think more
wonderful than Marie de Staemer.

If such a thing were possible, we dined more extravagantly than on the
previous night. Madame's wit was at its keenest; she was truly
brilliant. Pedro, from the big bouffet at the end of the room,
supervised this feast of Lucullus, and except for odd moments of
silence in which Madame seemed to be listening for some distant sound,
there was nothing, I think, which could have told a casual observer
that a black cloud rested upon the house.

Once, interrupting a tete-a-tete between Val Beverley and Paul Harley:

"Do not encourage her, Mr. Harley," said Madame, "she is a desperate
flirt."

"Oh, Madame," cried Val Beverley and blushed deeply.

"You know you are, my dear, and you are very wise. Flirt all your life,
but never fall in love. It is fatal, don't you think so, Mr. Knox?"--
turning to me in her rapid manner.

I looked into her still eyes, which concealed so much.

"Say, rather, that it is Fate," I murmured.

"Yes, that is more pretty, but not so true. If I could live my life
again, M. Knox," she said, for she sometimes used the French and
sometimes the English mode of address, "I should build a stone wall
around my heart. It could peep over, but no one could ever reach it."

Oddly enough, then, as it seems to me now, the spirit of unrest seemed
almost to depart for awhile, and in the company of the vivacious
Frenchwoman time passed very quickly up to the moment when Harley and I
walked slowly upstairs to join the Colonel.

During the latter part of dinner an idea had presented itself to me
which I was anxious to mention to Harley, and:

"Harley," I said, "an explanation of the Colonel's absence has occurred
to me."

"Really!" he replied; "possibly the same one that has occurred to me."

"What is that?"

Paul Harley paused on the stairs, turning to me.

"You are thinking that he has taken cover from the danger which he
believes particularly to threaten him to-night?"

"Exactly."

"You may be right," he murmured, proceeding upstairs.

He led the way to a little smoke-room which hitherto I had never
visited, and in response to his knock:

"Come in," cried the high voice of Colonel Menendez.

We entered to find ourselves in a small and very cosy room. There was a
handsome oak bureau against one wall, which was littered with papers of
various kinds, and there was also a large bookcase occupied almost
exclusively by French novels. It occurred to me that the Colonel spent
a greater part of his time in this little snuggery than in the more
formal study below. At the moment of our arrival he was stretched upon
a settee near which stood a little table; and on this table I observed
the remains of what appeared to me to have been a fairly substantial
repast. For some reason which I did not pause to analyze at the moment
I noted with disfavour the presence of a bowl of roses upon the silver
tray.

Colonel Menendez was smoking a cigarette, and Manoel was in the act of
removing the tray.

"Gentlemen," said the Colonel, "I have no words in which to express my
sorrow. Manoel, pull up those armchairs. Help yourself to port, Mr.
Harley, and fill Mr. Knox's glass. I can recommend the cigars in the
long box."

As we seated ourselves:

"I am extremely sorry to find you indisposed, sir," said Harley.

He was watching the dark face keenly, and probably thinking, as I was
thinking, that it exhibited no trace of illness.

Colonel Menendez waved his cigarette gracefully, settling himself amid
the cushions.

"An old trouble, Mr. Harley," he replied, lightly; "a legacy from
ancestors who drank too deep of the wine of life."

"You are surely taking medical advice?"

Colonel Menendez shrugged slightly.

"There is no doctor in England who would understand the case," he
replied. "Besides, there is nothing for it but rest and avoidance of
excitement."

"In that event, Colonel," said Harley, "we will not disturb you for
long. Indeed, I should not have consented to disturb you at all, if I
had not thought that you might have some request to make upon this
important night."

"Ah!" Colonel Menendez shot a swift glance in his direction. "You have
remembered about to-night?"

"Naturally."

"Your interest comforts me very greatly, gentlemen, and I am only sorry
that my uncertain health has made me so poor a host. Nothing has
occurred since your arrival to help you, I am aware. Not that I am
anxious for any new activity on the part of my enemies. But almost
anything which should end this deathly suspense would be welcome."

He spoke the final words with a peculiar intonation. I saw Harley
watching him closely.

"However," he continued, "everything is in the hands of Fate, and if
your visit should prove futile, I can only apologize for having
interrupted your original plans. Respecting to-night"--he shrugged--
"what can I say?"

"Nothing has occurred," asked Harley, slowly, "nothing fresh, I mean,
to indicate that the danger which you apprehend may really culminate
to-night?"

"Nothing fresh, Mr. Harley, unless you yourself have observed
anything."

"Ah," murmured Paul Harley, "let us hope that the threat will never be
fulfilled."

Colonel Menendez inclined his head gravely.

"Let us hope so," he said.

On the whole, he was curiously subdued. He was most solicitous for our
comfort and his exquisite courtesy had never been more marked. I often
think of him now--his big but graceful figure reclining upon the
settee, whilst he skilfully rolled his eternal cigarettes and chatted
in that peculiar, light voice. Before the memory of Colonel Don Juan
Sarmiento Menendez I sometimes stand appalled. If his Maker had but
endowed him with other qualities of mind and heart equal to his
magnificent courage, then truly he had been a great man.

CHAPTER XVII

NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON

I stood at Harley's open window--looking down in the Tudor garden. The
moon, like a silver mirror, hung in a cloudless sky. Over an hour had
elapsed since I had heard Pedro making his nightly rounds. Nothing
whatever of an unusual nature had occurred, and although Harley and I
had listened for any sound of nocturnal footsteps, our vigilance had
passed unrewarded. Harley, unrolling the Chinese ladder, had set out
upon a secret tour of the grounds, warning me that it must be a long
business, since the brilliance of the moonlight rendered it necessary
that he should make a wide detour, in order to avoid possible
observation from the windows. I had wished to join him, but:

"I count it most important that one of us should remain in the house,"
he had replied.

As a result, here was I at the open window, questioning the shadows to
right and left of me, and every moment expecting to see Harley
reappear. I wondered what discoveries he would make. It would not have
surprised me to learn that there were lights in many windows of Cray's
Folly to-night.

Although, when we had rejoined the ladies for half an hour, after
leaving Colonel Menendez's room, there had been no overt reference to
the menace overhanging the house, yet, as we separated for the night, I
had detected again in Val Beverley's eyes that look of repressed fear.
Indeed, she was palpably disinclined to retire, but was carried off by
the masterful Madame, who declared that she looked tired.

I wondered now, as I gazed down into the moon-bathed gardens, if Harley
and I were the only wakeful members of the household at that hour. I
should have been prepared to wager that there were others. I thought of
the strange footsteps which so often passed Miss Beverley's room, and I
discovered this thought to be an uncomfortable one.

Normally, I was sceptical enough, but on this night of the full moon as
I stood there at the window, the horrors which Colonel Menendez had
related to us grew very real in my eyes, and I thought that the
mysteries of Voodoo might conceal strange and ghastly truths, "The
scientific employment of darkness against light." Colin Camber's words
leapt unbidden to my mind; and, such is the magic of moonlight, they
became invested with a new and a deeper significance. Strange, that
theories which one rejects whilst the sun is shining should assume a
spectral shape in the light of the moon.

Such were my musings, when suddenly I heard a faint sound as of
footsteps crunching upon gravel. I leaned farther out of the window,
listening intently. I could not believe that Harley would be guilty of
such an indiscretion as this, yet who else could be walking upon the
path below?

As I watched, craning from the window, a tall figure appeared, and,
slowly crossing the gravel path, descended the moss-grown steps to the
Tudor garden.

It was Colonel Menendez!

He was bare-headed, but fully dressed as I had seen him in the smoking-
room; and not yet grasping the portent of his appearance at that hour,
but merely wondering why he had not yet retired, I continued to watch
him. As I did so, something in his gait, something unnatural in his
movements, caught hold of my mind with a sudden great conviction. He
had reached the path which led to the sun-dial, and with short, queer,
ataxic steps was proceeding in its direction, a striking figure in the
brilliant moonlight which touched his gray hair with a silvery sheen.

His unnatural, automatic movements told their own story. He was walking
in his sleep! Could it be in obedience to the call of M'kombo?

My throat grew dry and I knew not how to act. Unwillingly it seemed,
with ever-halting steps, the figure moved onward. I could see that his
fists were tightly clenched and that he held his head rigidly upright.
All horrors, real and imaginary, which I had ever experienced,
culminated in the moment when I saw this man of inflexible character, I
could have sworn of indomitable will, moving like a puppet under the
influence of some unnameable force.

He was almost come to the sun-dial when I determined to cry out. Then,
remembering the shock experienced by a suddenly awakened somnambulist,
and remembering that the Chinese ladder hung from the window at my
feet, I changed my mind. Checking the cry upon my lips, I got astride
of the window ledge, and began to grope for the bamboo rungs beneath
me. I had found the first of these, and, turning, had begun to descend,
when:

"Knox! Knox!" came softly from the opening in the box hedge, "what the
devil are you about?"

It was Paul Harley returned from his tour of the building.

"Harley!" I whispered, descending, "quick! the Colonel has just gone
into the Tudor garden!"

"What!" There was a note of absolute horror in the exclamation. "You
should have stopped him, Knox, you should have stopped him!" cried
Harley, and with that he ran off in the same direction.

Disentangling my foot from the rungs of the ladder which lay upon the
ground, I was about to follow, when it happened--that strange and
ghastly thing toward which, secretly, darkly, events had been tending.

The crack of a rifle sounded sharply in the stillness, echoing and re-
echoing from wing to wing of Cray's Folly and then, more dimly, up the
wooded slopes beyond! Somewhere ahead of me I heard Harley cry out:

"My God, I am too late! They have got him!"

Then, hotfoot, I was making for the entrance to the garden. Just as I
came to it and raced down the steps I heard another sound the memory of
which haunts me to this day.

Where it came from I had no idea. Perhaps I was too confused to judge
accurately. It might have come from the house, or from the slopes
beyond the house, But it was a sort of shrill, choking laugh, and it
set the ultimate touch of horror upon a _scene macabre_ which, even as
I write of it, seems unreal to me.

I ran up the path to where Harley was kneeling beside the sun-dial.
Analysis of my emotions at this moment were futile; I can only say that
I had come to a state of stupefaction. Face downward on the grass, arms
outstretched and fists clenched, lay Colonel Menendez. I think I saw
him move convulsively, but as I gained his side Harley looked up at me,
and beneath the tan which he never lost his face had grown pale. He
spoke through clenched teeth.

"Merciful God," he said, "he is shot through the head."

One glance I gave at the ghastly wound in the base of the Colonel's
skull, and then swayed backward in a sort of nausea. To see a man die
in the heat of battle, a man one has known and called friend, is
strange and terrible. Here in this moon-bathed Tudor garden it was a
horror almost beyond my powers to endure.

Paul Harley, without touching the prone figure, stood up. Indeed no
examination of the victim was necessary. A rifle bullet had pierced his
brain, and he lay there dead with his head toward the hills.

I clutched at Harley's shoulder, but he stood rigidly, staring up the
slope past the angle of the tower, to where a gable of the Guest House
jutted out from the trees.

"Did you hear--that cry?" I whispered, "immediately after the shot?"

"I heard it."

A moment longer he stood fixedly watching, and then:

"Not a wisp of smoke," he said. "You note the direction in which he was
facing when he fell?"

He spoke in a stern and unnatural voice.

"I do. He must have turned half right when he came to the sun-dial."

"Where were you when the shot was fired?"

"Running in this direction."

"You saw no flash?"

"None."

"Neither did I," groaned Harley; "neither did I. And short of throwing
a cordon round the hills what can be done? How can I move?"

He had somewhat relaxed, but now as I continued to clutch his arm, I
felt the muscles grow rigid again.

"Look, Knox!" he whispered--"look!"

I followed the direction of his fixed stare, and through the trees on
the hillside a dim light shone out. Someone had lighted a lamp in the
Guest House.

A faint, sibilant sound drew my glance upward, and there overhead a bat
circled--circled--dipped--and flew off toward the distant woods. So
still was the night that I could distinguish the babble of the little
stream which ran down into the lake. Then, suddenly, came a loud
flapping of wings. The swans had been awakened by the sound of the
shot. Others had been awakened, too, for now distant voices became
audible, and then a muffled scream from somewhere within Cray's Folly.

"Back to the house, Knox," said Harley, hoarsely. "For God's sake keep
the women away. Get Pedro, and send Manoel for the nearest doctor. It's
useless but usual. Let no one deface his footprints. My worst
anticipations have come true. The local police must be informed."

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