Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Nor did it seem possible that anybody could have escaped from it, for the windows, as he saw, were bolted, and the walls lacked so much as a cupboard to afford concealment. Ninon came to Sacha and spoke to her in low tones, her musical voice falling graciously in the silence. The girl’s body seemed to relax. She suffered herself to be laid gently on the couch. Ninon turned to the doctor in mute horror.

“Somebody has been here.”

She ran to the windows and examined their fastenings. He saw her clutch at the curtains which were rolled back from one of the windows. The wooden rings of the curtain rattled on their pole. She stood shivering, as she had shivered in the waiting room when he told her that Dick Lovelace had informed Lord Templewood of Sacha’s engagement to Barrington Bryan.

She stared fixedly at the weal on Sacha’s brow.

The doctor came and looked down at the sleeping girl. The weal was bright red along its margins, but in the center it was rather pale. A whip-lash might have inflicted such an injury. He was aware of a curious sense of uneasiness. It was incredible that the girl could have struck her own brow in this fashion.

He glanced up. Ninon was still holding the curtain.

“Did you hear anything — any foot-steps?” he asked.

“No, no. There was nothing.”

The curtain rods rattled again. Dr. Hailey adjusted his eyeglass.

“My God!”

He bent down over the sleeping girl. He held his eyeglass, focused, just above the weal.

The white line had become paler, much paler, between its borders of scarlet. He straightened himself, and turned to the medium.

And, just then, Sacha cried out again, shrilly, piteously. She raised herself to her knees and shrank away from him. She put up her two hands to her brow as though she would shield herself against some dreadful assault.

“Oh, no, oh, no, please,” she cried in accents of supplication.

Dr. Hailey laid his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Malone.”

He withdrew his hand quickly, because his gesture had added to her fear. She thrust him away from her with her hands, revealing anew the streak which seemed, every moment, to be growing more vivid.

“I swear it is not true. Orme, I swear that it is not true. Oh, do not strike me. Do not—”

Sacha cried out again, and again shielded her face from violence. The curtain rings rattled in strange discord. Dr. Hailey turned to Ninon.

“Cannot you wake her? For God’s sake, wake her if you can.”

Ninon approached the bed, but her coming was the occasion of a fresh outburst. The piteous tones pleaded anew for mercy.

“Listen. Oh, listen to me, Orme. Dick is my friend, that and nothing more. You will not hurt me, Orme, you must not hurt me. You must not.”

Suddenly, the wild eyes closed. The tense muscles were relaxed. Sacha sank down on the couch.

“Look!” Ninon pointed to the weal with a tremulous finger.

The white portion of it had risen above the surface of the skin, assuming a clear aspect like a blister.

Dr. Hailey caught the medium’s wrist. He drew her close to him.

“Did you? Have you given her more hashish?” he demanded, in a whisper.

“Only a little more.”

His eyes hardened against her.

“It is that.”

“But the scar, I have not touched her, I swear it.”

He did not reply. He stood gazing at Sacha’s face, on which, from moment to moment, the weal rose more and more distinctly from its scarlet background. Not before, in all his professional experience, bad he beheld with his own eyes so wondrous a reproduction of the phenomenon known to his profession as Dermatographism, or skin writing, a condition in which the lightest touch produces a great weal, so that a man may write his name on his body with a feather.

He came and knelt beside Sacha and drew his finger nail lightly across the skin of her forearm. Then he stood up and remained with his eyes fixed on the place which he had touched.

A scarlet blush spread, in sinuous line, across the white skin. Then, in the scarlet, there developed a pale streak, running centrally through it from end to end.

A few moments later, the pale streak had risen above the level of the surface of the skin.

“What is it?” Ninon beseeched him.

“Hashish.”

Dr. Hailey indicated the weal on Sacha’s brow. He added:

“That, and the memory of the blow which her husband struck her with his whip, the memory of overwhelming fear revived under the hypnotism which your crystal has induced.”

He was silent a moment; then he asked:

“Did you see her on the day following Orme Malone’s death?”

“Oh yes.”

Ninon started.

“It is true,” she cried, “because, on that day, she was wearing, for the first time, a fringe of her hair on her brow. I am sure—”

Chapter XXXII Blows from the Grave