The Shadow in the North Read Online Free PDF Page A

She's dignified and very still, and she's watching, just watching. . . . There's a man on a bed or a couch of some sort. He's asleep. No, he's moving, he's dreaming. He's crying out. . . . There's someone coming. A servant. A Chinaman. With a . . . with a pipe. He's crouching down. . . . He's got a taper from the lamp. . . . He's lighting the pipe. There's a sweet smell, sickly. . . opium. There, it's gone now." He opened his eyes and looked up again. "Something to do with opium," he said. "Am I right?"

    Frederick ran his hands through his hair, too amazed to speak. His uncle sat back and laughed, and even Jim felt impressed—by the brooding atmosphere Mackin-non evoked, by his still concentration, as much as by what he said.
    "You've hit the bulls-eye," said Frederick, leaning forward and taking the brass object from his hand. "D'you know what this is?"
    "Ive no idea," said Mackinnon.
    Frederick wound up a small key in the side of it and pressed a button. From inside the mechanism a long thin ribbon of whitish metal unwound itself, coiling in a heap on the bench in front of him.
    "It's a magnesium burner," he said. "You set the end alight and it burns down, and the spring shoves it out at exactly the same rate, so that you have a constant light for taking pictures by. I last used this in an opium den in Limehouse, taking pictures of the poor devils who smoke the stuff ... So that's psychometry, eh? I'm impressed. How does it happen? D'you see a picture in your mind, or what?"
    "Something like that," said Mackinnon. "It's like having a dream when you're awake. I can't control it. It comes into my mind at the oddest times. And this is the point: I've seen a murder, and the murderer knows I have, but I don't know his name."
    "Good start," said Frederick. "Promising. You'd better tell us all about it. More whiskey?"

    He filled Mackinnons glass, and sat back to listen.
    "It was six months ago," began Mackinnon. "I was performing in a private house for a nobleman. It's something I do from time to time—more as a guest, you understand, than a hired entertainer.'*
    "You do it without a fee, you mean?" said Jim. He was finding Mackinnons condescending manner and high, slightly grating, genteel Scottish voice increasingly hard to bear.
    "There is a professional charge, naturally," said Mackinnon stiflfly.
    "Who was the nobleman?" said Frederick.
    "I would rather not say. A man of great prominence in political life. There is no need for his name to be mentioned."
    "As you wish," said Frederick affably. "Please go on."
    "I was invited for dinner on the evening of the performance. That is my usual practice. I am one of the guests; that is understood by all. While the ladies withdrew after dinner and the gentlemen remained in the dining room, I went into the music room of this particular house and prepared the items I needed for my performance.
    "I noticed that someone had left a cigar case on the lid of the piano, and I picked it up, meaning to put it out of the way somewhere, and at once I had the strongest psychometric impressions I've ever experienced.

    "It was a river in a forest—a northern forest, with dark pines and snow, and a lowering, dark gray sky. There were two men walking together on the bare ground by the bank, talking angrily. I couldn't hear them, but I could see them as clearly as I see you now, and suddenly one of them took his stick, drew a sword out of it, and ran the other man through and through—not a moment s warning—in and out of his chest three, four, five, six times. I could see the dark blood on the snow.
    "When the man lay still, the killer looked around for a clump of moss and wiped his sword clean, then bent and took the dead man by the feet and dragged him away toward the water. The snow was beginning to fall. And then I heard a splash as the body fell into the water."
    He paused and sipped his whiskey. Either its true, thought Jim, or he's a better actor than I take him for, because Mackinnon was