"What is the information?" the man inquired suspiciously. "The Home Secretary sees no one except on the most urgent business now."

"My business is the most urgent possible," I returned. "If you will take my name to him, I feel sure he will see me."

"I shall do nothing of the kind," replied the sergeant, "so you had better take yourself off. We don't want any of your kind about here just now. There's enough trouble without having you to look after."

"But I must see him!" I cried in despair. "You don't know what you are doing when you try to stop me. I have a confession to make to him, and make it I will at any hazard. Take me to him at once, or I shall find him myself."

The man was moving toward me with the evident intention of putting me into the street, when a door opened and the Home Secretary, Sir Edward Grangerfield, stood before me. When last I had seen him at the d.u.c.h.ess of Amersham's ball--I remembered that he congratulated me on my engagement on that occasion--he had looked in the prime of life. Now he was an old man, borne down by the weight of sorrow and responsibility which the plague had placed upon his shoulders. From the way he looked at me it was plain he did not recognise me.

"Sir Edward," I said, "is it possible I am so much changed that you do not know me? I am Cyril Forrester."

"Cyril Forrester!" he cried in amazement, coming a step closer to me as he spoke. "Surely not? But it is, I see. Why, man, how changed you are!

What brings you here, and what is it you want with me? I have not much time to spare. I have an appointment with the Public Health Commission in a quarter of an hour."

"So much the better," I answered, "for you will then be able to acquaint them with the circ.u.mstances I am about to reveal to you. Sir Edward, I must have a few moments' conversation with you alone. I have a confession to make to you--the most hideous tale to pour into your ears that ever man confided to another." Then, recollecting myself, I continued, "But it must not be here. It must be in the open air, or I shall infect you."

He looked at me in a curious fashion.

"You need have no fear on that score," he said. "I have had the plague, and have recovered from it. So far it has not been known to attack anyone twice. But since you wish to speak to me alone, come with me."

With this he led me down the long pa.s.sage to an office at the further end. Like the others this one was also deserted. Once inside he closed the door.

"Be as brief as you can," he said, "for during this terribly trying period my time is not my own. What is it you wish to say to me?"

"I wish to confess to you," I said, and my voice rang in my ears like a death knell, "that I am the cause of the misery under the weight of which England and Europe is groaning at the present time."

Once more Sir Edward looked at me as he had done in the pa.s.sage outside.

"I am afraid I do not quite understand," he said, but this time in a somewhat different tone. "Do you mean that you wish me to believe that you, Cyril Forrester, are the cause of the plague which is decimating England in this terrible manner?"

"I do," I answered, and then waited to hear what he would say.

In reply he inquired whether I had suffered from the disease myself.

"I was the first to have it," I answered. "My story is an extraordinary one, but I a.s.sure you every particular of it is true. I was inoculated with the virus while I was in Egypt--that is to say, in the Queen's Hall of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. I afterward nearly died of it in an Arab tent out in the desert beyond Luxor. Later I was taken by a man, of whom I will tell you more presently, to Constantinople, thence through Austria and Germany, and finally was smuggled across the Channel into England."

"And who was the man who inoculated you?" inquired the Home Secretary, still with the same peculiar intonation. "Can you remember his name?"

"He is known in England as Pharos the Egyptian," I replied--"the foulest fiend this world has ever seen. In reality he is Ptahmes the Magician, and he has sworn vengeance on the human race. Among other things he was the real murderer of Clausand, the curiosity dealer, in Bonwell Street last June, and not the inoffensive German who shot himself after confessing to the crime at Bow Street. He smuggled me into England from Hamburg, and the night before last he took me all through London--to the Antiquarian Club, to the d.u.c.h.ess of Amersham's ball, to the Fancy Dress ball that was held at Covent Garden the same night, and to many other places. Everyone I spoke to became infected, and that, I a.s.sure you, on my word of honour, was how the plague originated here. Oh, Sir Edward, you cannot realise what agonies I have suffered since I became possessed of this terrible knowledge!"

A short silence followed, during which I am convinced I heard my companion say very softly to himself, "That settles it."

Then, turning to me, he continued, "You say you were at the d.u.c.h.ess of Amersham's ball the night before last? Do you mean this?"

"Of course I do," I replied. "Why, you spoke to me there yourself, and congratulated me upon my engagement. And, now I come to think of it, I saw you talking with Pharos there."

"Quite right," he said. "I did speak to Monsieur Pharos there. But are you sure it was the night before last? That is what I want to get at."

"I am as sure of that as I am of anything in this world," I replied.

"What you tell me is very interesting," he said, rising from his chair--"very interesting indeed, and I am sincerely obliged to you for coming to me. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be going, for, as I told you, I have a meeting of the Health Commission to attend in a few minutes. If I were you I should go back to my house and keep quiet.

There is nothing to be gained by worrying oneself, as you have evidently been doing."

"I can see that you do not believe what I have told you," I cried with great bitterness. "Sir Edward, I implore you to do so. I a.s.sure you on my honour as a gentleman, I will swear, by any oath you care to name, that what I say is true in every particular. Pharos is still in London, in Park Lane, and if you are quick you can capture him. But there is not a moment to lose. For G.o.d's sake believe me before it is too late!"

"I have listened to all you have said, my dear Cyril," he answered soothingly, "and I can quite understand that you believe it to be true.

You have been ill, and it is plain your always excitable imagination has not yet recovered its equilibrium. Go home, as I say, and rest. Trust me, you will soon be yourself once more. Now I must go."

"Oh, heavens! how can I convince you?" I groaned, wringing my hands. "Is there nothing I can say or do that will make you believe my story? You will find out when it is too late that I have told you the truth. Men and women are dying like sheep to right and left of us, and yet the vile author of all this sorrow and suffering will escape unpunished. Is it any use, Sir Edward, for me to address one last appeal to you?"

Then a notion struck me. I thrust my hand into my coat pocket and produced the prescription which Pharos had given me for Valerie in Hamburg, and which, since it had done her so much good, I had been careful not to let out of my possession.

"Take that, Sir Edward," I said. "I came to make my confession to you because I deemed it my duty, and because of the load upon my brain, which I thought it might help to lighten. You will not believe me, so what can I do? This paper contains the only prescription which has yet been effectual in checking the disease. It saved the life of Valerie de Vocxqal, and I can vouch for its efficacy. Show it to the medical authorities. It is possible it may convince them that I am not as mad as you think me."

He took it from me, but it was plain to me, from the look upon his face, that he believed it to be only another part of my delusion.

"If it will make your mind any easier," he said, "I will give you my word that it shall be placed before the members of the Commission. If they deem it likely that any good can result from it, you may be sure it will be used."

He then wished me good-bye, and, with a feeling of unavailing rage and disappointment in my heart, I left the Offices and pa.s.sed out into Whitehall. Once more I made my way into St. James's Park, and reaching a secluded spot, threw myself down upon the turf and buried my face in my arms. At first I could think of nothing but my own shame; then my thoughts turned to Valerie. In my trouble I had for the moment forgotten her. Coward that I was, I had considered my own safety before hers. If anything happened to me, who would protect her? I was still debating this with myself when my ears caught the sound of a footstep on the hard ground, and then the rustle of a dress. A moment later a voice sounded in my ears like the sweetest music. "Thank G.o.d!" it said, "Oh! thank G.o.d! I have found you."

Her cry of happiness ended in a little choking sob, and I turned and looked up to discover Valerie, her beautiful eyes streaming with tears, bending over me.

"How did you find me?" I inquired, in a voice that my love and longing for her rendered almost inaudible. "How did you know that I was here?"

"Love told me," she answered softly. "My heart led me to you. You forget the strange power with which I am gifted. Though I did not see you leave the house, I knew that you were gone, and my instinct warned me not only where you were going, but what you were going to do. Cyril, it was brave of you to go."

"It was useless," I cried. "I have failed. He would not believe me, Valerie, and I am lost eternally!"

"Hush!" she said. "Dear love, you must not say such things. They are not true. But rise. You must come to him. All this morning he has not been at all the same. I do not know what to think, but something is going to happen, I am certain."

There was no need for her to say to whom she referred.

I did as she commanded me, and side by side we crossed the park.

"He has made arrangements to leave England this afternoon," she continued, as we pa.s.sed into Piccadilly. "The yacht is in the Thames, and orders have been sent to hold her in readiness for a long voyage."

"And what does he intend doing with us?"

"I know nothing of that," she answered. "But there is something very strange about him to-day. When he sent for me this morning I scarcely knew him, he was so changed."

We made our way along the deserted streets and presently reached Park Lane. As soon as we were inside the house I ascended the stairs beside her, and it was not until we had reached the top floor, on which Pharos's room was situated, that we paused before a door. Listening before it, we could plainly hear someone moving about inside. When we knocked, a voice I failed to recognise called upon us to enter. It was a strange picture we saw when we did so. In a large armchair before a roaring fire, though it was the middle of summer, sat Pharos, but so changed that I hardly knew him. He looked half his usual size; his skin hung loose about his face, as if the bones had shrunken underneath it; his eyes, always so deep-set in his head, were now so much sunken that they could scarcely be seen, while his hands were shrivelled until they resembled those of a mummy more than a man. The monkey also, which was huddled beside him in the chair, looked smaller than I had ever seen it.

As if this were not enough, the room was filled with Egyptian curios from floor to ceiling. So many were there, indeed, that there barely remained room for Pharos's chair. How he had obtained possession of them I did not understand; but since Sir George Legrath's confession, written shortly before his tragic death by his own hand, the mystery has been solved, and Pharos confronts us in an even more unenviable light than before. Hating, loathing, and yet fearing the man as I did, there was something in his look now that roused an emotion in me that was almost akin to pity.

"Thou hast come in time," he said to Valerie, but in a different voice and without that harshness to which we had so long grown accustomed. "I have been anxiously awaiting thee."

He signed to her to approach him.

"Give me your hand," he whispered faintly. "Through you it is decreed that I must learn my fate. Courage, courage--there is naught for thee to fear!"