The Mystery of the Ravenspurs. White Fred Merrick

His long fingers felt over the quaint brasses.

      "A most remarkable-looking pattern," said Geoffrey.

      "It is not a pattern at all," Ralph replied.

      "The quaint filigree work is a language – the written signs of old Tibet, only you are not supposed to know that; indeed, I only found it out myself a few days ago. It had been a long search; but, as I can only see with my fingers, you can understand that. But this is part of the secret."

      Geoffrey was profoundly interested.

      "Tell me what the language says?" he asked.

      "Not now – perhaps not at all. It is a ghastly and terrible thing, and even your nerves are not fireproof. There is only one thing I have to ask you before I efface myself for the present. When you take up that box to carry it down stairs it is to slip through your fingers. You are to drop it."

      "I am to drop that box. Is there anything else?"

      "Not for the present. You are smiling; I feel that you are smiling. For Heaven's sake take this seriously; take everything that I say seriously, boy. Oh, I know what is in your mind – I am going in a clumsy way to get something. I might so easily get what I require by a little judicious burglary. That is what your unsophisticated mind tells you. Later you will know better."

      Ralph turned cheerfully round and left the room. He paused in the doorway. "Don't forget," he said, "that my visit here is a secret. In fact, everything is a secret until I give you permission to make it public."

      This time he left. Geoffrey had managed to drag one or two of the boxes away before Marion appeared. She reproached him gently that he had not waited for her. There might be spooks and bogies in those packages capable of harm.

      "I dare say there are," Geoffrey laughed. "But you were such a long time. Every girl seems to imagine that an hour is like a piece of elastic – you can stretch it out as long as you like. At any rate I have done no harm. As far as I can judge there's only one good thing here."

      "And what is that?" Marion asked.

      Geoffrey pointed to the floor.

      "That one," he said. "The queer brass-bound box at the bottom."

      CHAPTER XIV

      "IT MIGHT BE YOU"

      Marion caught her breath quickly. The marble pallor of her face showed up more strongly against her dark hair. Geoffrey caught the look and his eyes grew sympathetic.

      "What's the matter, little girl?" he asked. "It isn't like you to faint."

      "Neither am I going to faint, Geoff. But I had forgotten all about that box. I cannot go into details, for there are some things that we don't talk about to anybody. But that box is connected with rather an unhappy time in my youth."

      "Hundreds of years ago," Geoffrey said flippantly.

      "Oh, but it is no laughing matter, I assure you. When my mother was a child she was surrounded by all the craft and superstition of her race and religion. That was long before she got converted and married my father. I don't know how it was managed, but my mother never quite broke with her people, and once or twice, when she went to stay in Tibet, I accompanied her.

      "My mother used to get restless at times, and then nothing would do but a visit to Tibet. And yet, at other times, nobody could possibly have told her from a European with foreign blood in her veins. For months and months she would be as English as you and I. Then the old fit would come over her.

      "There was not a cleverer or more brilliant woman in India than my mother. When she died she gave me these things, and I was not to part with them. And, much as I should like to disobey, I cannot break that promise."

      It seemed to Geoffrey that Marion spoke more regretfully than feelingly. He had never heard her say so much regarding her mother before. Affectionate and tender as Marion was, there was not the least trace of these characteristics in her tone now.

      "Did you really love your mother?" Geoffrey asked suddenly.

      "I always obeyed her," Marion stammered. "And I'd rather not discuss the subject, Geoff. Oh, they were bad people, my mother's ancestors. They possessed occult knowledge far beyond anything known or dreamt of by the wisest Western savants. They could remove people mysteriously, they could strike at a long distance, they could wield unseen terrors. Such is the terror that hangs over Ravenspur, for instance."

      Marion smiled sadly. Her manner changed suddenly and she was her old self again.

      "Enough of horrors," she said. "I came here to help you. Come along."

      The boxes were carried below until only the brass-bound one remained. Geoffrey stooped to lift it. The wood was light and thin, the brass-work was the merest tracing.

      A sudden guilty feeling came over Geoffrey as he raised it shoulder-high. He felt half inclined to defy his uncle Ralph and take the consequences. It seemed a mean advantage, a paltry gratifying of what, after all, might be mere curiosity.

      But the vivid recollection of those strained, sightless eyes rose before him. Ralph Ravenspur was not the man to possess the petty vice of irrepressible curiosity. Had it not been a woman he had to deal with, and Marion at that, Geoffrey would not have hesitated for a moment. Down below in the hall he heard the hollow rasp of Ralph's voice.

      Geoffrey made up his mind grimly. He seemed to stumble forward, and the box fell from his shoulder, crashing down on the stone floor. The force of the shock simply shivered it in pieces, a great nest of grass and feathers dropped out, and from the inside a large mass of strange objects appeared.

      "I am very sorry," Geoffrey stammered after the box had fallen.

      "Never mind," she said, "accidents will happen."

      But Geoffrey was rapt in the contemplation of what he saw before him – some score or more of ivory discs, each of which contained some painting; many of them appeared to be portraits.

      Geoffrey picked up one of them and examined it curiously. He was regarding an ivory circle with a dark face upon it, the face of a beautiful fury.

      "Why, this is you," Geoffrey cried. "If you could only give way to a furious passion, it is you to the life."

      "I had forgotten that," Marion gasped. "Of course, it is not me. See how old and stained the ivory is; hundreds of years old, it must be. Don't ask any more questions, but go and throw that thing in the sea. Never speak of the subject again."