Pharos, The Egyptian by Guy Boothby (reading rainbow books .txt) 📖

/> "I want to know all you can tell me about him," I replied gravely. "It is the greatest favour I have ever asked of you, and I hope you will not disappoint me."

For some moments he paced the room as if in anxious thought. Then he returned to his seat at the writing-table. The long hand of the clock upon the mantelpiece had made a perceptible movement when he spoke again. So changed was his voice, however, that I scarcely recognised it.

"Cyril," he said, "you have asked me a question to which I can return you but one answer, and that is--may God help you if you have fallen into that man's power! What he has done or how he has treated you I do not know, but I tell you this, that he is as cruel and as remorseless as Satan himself. You are my friend, and I tell you I would far rather see you dead than in his clutches. I do not fear many men, but Pharos the Egyptian is to me an incarnate terror."

"You say Pharos the Egyptian. What do you mean by that?"

"What I say. The man is an Egyptian, and claims, I believe, to be able to trace his descent back at least three thousand years."

"And you know no more of him?"

As I put the question I looked at Sir George's hand, which rested on his blotting-pad, and noticed that it was shaking as if with the palsy.

Once more a pause ensued.

"What I know must remain shut up in my own brain," he answered slowly and as if he were weighing every word before he uttered it; "and it will go down to my grave with me. Dear lad, fond as I am of you, you must not ask any more of me, for I can not satisfy your curiosity."

"But, Sir George, I assure you, with all the earnestness at my command, that this is a matter of life and death to me," I replied. "You can have no notion what it means. My honour, my good name--nay, my very existence itself--depends upon it."

As if in answer to my importunity, my friend rose from his chair and picked up the newspaper which the attendant had placed on the table beside me. He opened it, and, after scanning the pages, discovered what he was looking for. Folding it carefully, he pointed to a certain column and handed it to me. I took it mechanically and glanced at the item in question. It was an account of the murder of the unfortunate curiosity dealer, but, so far as I could see, my name was not mentioned. I looked up at Sir George for an explanation.

"Well?" I said, but the word stuck in my throat.

"Though you will scarcely credit it, I think I understand everything," he replied. "The murdered man's shop was within a short distance of your abode. A witness states that he saw some one leave the victim's house about the time the deed must have been committed and that he made his way into your street. As I said, when you first asked me about him, may God help you, Cyril Forrester, if this is your trouble!"

"But what makes you connect Pharos with the murder described here?" I asked, feigning a surprise I was far from feeling.

"That I can not tell you," he replied. "To do so would bring upon me----But no, my lips are sealed, hopelessly sealed."

"But surely you are in a position to give me that man's address? Lady Medenham told me you were aware of it."

"It is true I was, but I am afraid you have come too late."

"Too late! What do you mean? Oh, Sir George, for Heaven's sake do not trifle with me!"

"I am not trifling with you, Forrester," he replied seriously. "I mean that it is impossible for you to find him in London, for the simple reason that he left England with his companion early this morning."

On hearing this I must have looked so miserable that Sir George came over to where I sat and placed his hand upon my shoulder.

"Dear lad," he said, "you don't know how it pains me to be unable to help you. If it were possible, you have every reason to know that I would do so. In this case, however, I am powerless, how powerless you can not imagine. But you must not give way like this. The man is gone, and in all human probability you will never see his face again. Try to forget him."

"It is impossible. I assure you, upon my word of honour, that I shall know neither peace nor happiness until I have seen him and spoken to him face to face. If I wish ever to be able to look upon myself as an honourable man I _must_ do so. Is there no way in which I can find him?"

"I fear none; but stay, now I come to think of it, there is a chance, but a very remote one. I will make inquiries about it and let you know within an hour."

"God bless you! I will remain in my studio until your messenger arrives."

I bade him good-bye and left the Museum. That he did not forget his promise was proved by the fact that within an hour a cab drove up to my door and one of the attendants from the Museum alighted. I took in the note he brought with him at the door, and, when I had returned to the studio, tore open the envelope and drew forth a plain visiting card. On it was written:


"_Inquire for the man you seek from_
CARLO ANGELOTTI,
_Public Letter-writer,
In the arches of the Theatre San Carlo, Naples._"




CHAPTER V.

If there is one place more than another for which I entertain a dislike that is akin to hatred, it is for Naples in the summer time--that wretched period when every one one knows is absent, all the large houses are closed, the roads are knee-deep in dust, and even the noise of the waves breaking upon the walls of the Castello del' Ovo seems unable to alleviate the impression of heat and dryness which pervades everything. It is the season when the hotels, usually so cool--one might almost say frigid--have had time to grow hot throughout, and are in consequence well-nigh unbearable; when the particular waiter who has attended to your wants during each preceding visit, and who has come to know your customs and to have survived his original impression that each successive act on your part is only a more glaring proof of your insular barbarity, is visiting his friends in the country, or whatever it is that waiters do during the dull season when the tourists have departed and their employers have no further use for them. It was at this miserable period of the year that I descended upon Naples in search of Monsieur Pharos.

Owing to a breakdown on the line between Spezia and Pisa, it was close upon midnight before I reached my destination, and almost one o'clock before I had transported my luggage from the railway station to my hotel. By this time, as will be readily understood by all those who have made the overland journey, I was in a condition bordering upon madness. Ever since I had called upon Sir George Legrath, and had obtained from him the address of the man from whom I hoped to learn the whereabouts of Pharos, I had been living in a kind of stupor. It took the form of a drowsiness that nothing would shake off, and yet, do what I would, I could not sleep. Times out of number during that long journey I had laid myself back in the railway carriage and closed my eyes in the hope of obtaining some rest; but it was in vain. However artfully I might woo the drowsy god, sleep would not visit my eyelids. The mocking face of the man I had come to consider my evil angel was always before me, and in the darkness of the night, when the train was rolling southward, I could hear his voice in my ears telling me that this hastily-conceived journey on my part had been all carefully thought out and arranged by him beforehand, and that in seeking him in Naples I was only advancing another step toward the fulfilment of my destiny.

On reaching my hotel I went straight to bed. Every bone in my body ached with fatigue. Indeed, so weary was I that I could eat nothing and could scarcely think coherently. The proprietor of the hotel was an old friend, and for the reason that whenever I visited Naples I made it a rule to insist upon occupying the same room, I did not experience the same feeling of loneliness which usually assails one on retiring to rest in a strange place. In my own mind I was convinced that as soon as my head touched the pillow I should be asleep. But a bitter disappointment was in store for me. I laid myself down with a sigh of satisfaction and closed my eyes; but whether I missed the rocking of the train, or was overtired, I can not say--at any rate, I was soon convinced of one thing, and that was that the longer I lay there the more wakeful I became. I tried another position, but with the same result. I turned my pillow, only to make it the more uncomfortable. Every trick for the production of sleep that I had ever heard of I put into execution, but always with entire absence of success. At last, thoroughly awake and still more thoroughly exasperated, I rose from my couch, and dressing myself, opened the window of my room and stepped out on to the balcony. It was a glorious night, such a one as is seldom, if ever, seen in England. Overhead the moon sailed in a cloudless sky, revealing with her exquisite light the city stretching away to right and left and the expanse of harbour lying directly before me; Vesuvius standing out black and awesome, and the dim outline of the hills toward Castellamare and Sorrento beyond. For some reason my thoughts no longer centred themselves on Pharos. I found the lovely face of his companion continually rising before my eyes. There was the same expression of hopelessness upon it that I remembered on the first occasion upon which I had seen her; but there was this difference, that in some vague, uncertain way she seemed now to be appealing to me to help her, to rescue her from the life she was leading and from the man who had got her, as he had done myself, so completely in his power. Her beauty affected me as no other had ever done. I could still hear the soft accents of her voice, and the echo of her wild, weird music, as plainly as if I were still sitting listening to her in Lady Medenham's drawing-room; and, strange to relate, it soothed me to think that it was even possible we might be in the same town together.

For upward of an hour I remained in the balcony looking down at the moonlit city and thinking of the change the last few days had brought about in my life. When I once more sought my couch, scarcely five minutes elapsed before I was wrapped in a