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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 32777 ***
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
+
+And Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen
+
+by
+
+A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New [Illustration] York
+George H. Doran Company
+
+
+Copyright, 1905, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1918, 1919,
+by A. Conan Doyle
+
+Copyright, 1910,
+by Charles Scribner’s Sons
+
+Copyright, 1911,
+by Associated Sunday Magazines, Inc.
+
+Copyright, 1908,
+by the McClure Company
+
+Copyright, 1900, 1902,
+by the S. S. McClure Company
+
+Copyright, 1894,
+D. Appleton & Company
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
+AND OTHER TALES OF THE UNSEEN
+----Q----
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+     I THE BROWN HAND                                         9
+
+    II THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL                         30
+
+   III B. 24                                                 51
+
+    IV THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT                        72
+
+     V CYPRIAN OVERBECK WELLS                                95
+
+    VI PLAYING WITH FIRE                                    120
+
+   VII THE RING OF THOTH                                    139
+
+  VIII THE LOS AMIGOS FIASCO                                163
+
+    IX HOW IT HAPPENED                                      174
+
+     X LOT NO. 249                                          179
+
+    XI “DE PROFUNDIS”                                       225
+
+   XII THE LIFT                                             239
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
+
+_and Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE BROWN HAND
+
+
+Every one knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon,
+made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from a
+hard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landed
+proprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people between
+the inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick’s selection appeared to be
+altogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can assure them, however, that
+they are quite mistaken, and that, although I only knew Sir Dominick in
+the closing years of his life, there were none the less very real
+reasons why he should show his goodwill towards me. As a matter of fact,
+though I say it myself, no man ever did more for another than I did for
+my Indian uncle. I cannot expect the story to be believed, but it is so
+singular that I should feel that it was a breach of duty if I did not
+put it upon record--so here it is, and your belief or incredulity is
+your own affair.
+
+Sir Dominick Holden, C.B., K.C.S.I., and I don’t know what besides, was
+the most distinguished Indian surgeon of his day. In the Army
+originally, he afterwards settled down into civil practice in Bombay,
+and visited as a consultant every part of India. His name is best
+remembered in connection with the Oriental Hospital, which he founded
+and supported. The time came, however, when his iron constitution began
+to show signs of the long strain to which he had subjected it, and his
+brother practitioners (who were not, perhaps, entirely disinterested
+upon the point) were unanimous in recommending him to return to England.
+He held on so long as he could, but at last he developed nervous
+symptoms of a very pronounced character, and so came back, a broken man,
+to his native county of Wiltshire. He bought a considerable estate with
+an ancient manor-house upon the edge of Salisbury Plain, and devoted his
+old age to the study of Comparative Pathology, which had been his
+learned hobby all his life, and in which he was a foremost authority.
+
+We of the family were, as may be imagined, much excited by the news of
+the return of this rich and childless uncle to England. On his part,
+although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some sense
+of his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitation
+to visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be a
+melancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at last
+received my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was so
+carefully excluded in the invitation that my first impulse was to refuse
+it, but the interests of the children had to be considered, and so, with
+her consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire,
+with little thought of what that visit was to entail.
+
+My uncle’s estate was situated where the arable land of the plains
+begins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which are
+characteristic of the county. As I drove from Dinton Station in the
+waning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature of
+the scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfed
+by the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared to
+be a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. The
+road wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills,
+and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaborate
+fortifications, some circular, and some square, but all on a scale which
+has defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call them
+Roman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for this
+particular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments have
+never been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth,
+olive-coloured slopes there rose small rounded barrows or tumuli.
+Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply into
+the hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dust
+represents the man who once laboured under the sun.
+
+It was through this weird country that I approached my uncle’s residence
+of Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with its
+surroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted by
+a mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive.
+A cold wind whistled through the elms which lined it, and the air was
+full of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch of
+trees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light of
+the coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregular
+wings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof, and walls which were
+criss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheery
+light of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left of
+the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my
+uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make
+my host’s acquaintance.
+
+He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn
+had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow
+of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose
+and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister
+marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with
+something of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst.
+At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it
+was a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me from
+under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this
+outlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all
+the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.
+
+For my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen a
+man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one’s attention. His figure
+was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away until his coat
+dangled straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and
+bony shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could
+not take my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But
+his eyes--those peering light-blue eyes--they were the most arrestive
+of any of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it
+the ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which
+I read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were
+masterful, and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his
+eyes, but instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed
+and crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has
+taken the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one
+glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was
+stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to
+sudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment--a
+false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to
+realise the look which I read in his eyes.
+
+My uncle’s welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour
+or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortable
+dinner, with curious pungent delicacies upon the table, and a stealthy,
+quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had come
+round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and
+wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find
+themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the
+end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and
+love, who can change their winter into a gentle Indian summer, have come
+as victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alert
+woman with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was a
+certificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a
+mutual love in their glances, I read also mutual horror, and recognised
+in her face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I had detected
+in his. Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was
+a forced note in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness
+which told me that a heavy heart beat upon either side of me.
+
+We were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had left
+the room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkable
+effect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was which
+started the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing them
+that the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had,
+like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concluded
+by narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical Research
+Society, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night in
+a haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing,
+but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in a
+remarkable degree. They listened with an eager silence, and I caught a
+look of intelligence between them which I could not understand. Lady
+Holden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.
+
+Sir Dominick pushed the cigar-box over to me, and we smoked for some
+little time in silence. That huge bony hand of his was twitching as he
+raised it with his cheroot to his lips, and I felt that the man’s nerves
+were vibrating like fiddle-strings. My instincts told me that he was on
+the verge of some intimate confidence, and I feared to speak lest I
+should interrupt it. At last he turned towards me with a spasmodic
+gesture like a man who throws his last scruple to the winds.
+
+“From the little that I have seen of you it appears to me, Dr.
+Hardacre,” said he, “that you are the very man I have wanted to meet.”
+
+“I am delighted to hear it, sir.”
+
+“Your head seems to be cool and steady. You will acquit me of any desire
+to flatter you, for the circumstances are too serious to permit of
+insincerities. You have some special knowledge upon these subjects, and
+you evidently view them from that philosophical standpoint which robs
+them of all vulgar terror. I presume that the sight of an apparition
+would not seriously discompose you?”
+
+“I think not, sir.”
+
+“Would even interest you, perhaps?”
+
+“Most intensely.”
+
+“As a psychical observer, you would probably investigate it in as
+impersonal a fashion as an astronomer investigates a wandering comet?”
+
+“Precisely.”
+
+He gave a heavy sigh.
+
+“Believe me, Dr. Hardacre, there was a time when I could have spoken as
+you do now. My nerve was a by-word in India. Even the Mutiny never shook
+it for an instant. And yet you see what I am reduced to--the most
+timorous man, perhaps, in all this county of Wiltshire. Do not speak too
+bravely upon this subject, or you may find yourself subjected to as
+long-drawn a test as I am--a test which can only end in the madhouse or
+the grave.”
+
+I waited patiently until he should see fit to go farther in his
+confidence. His preamble had, I need not say, filled me with interest
+and expectation.
+
+“For some years, Dr. Hardacre,” he continued, “my life and that of my
+wife have been made miserable by a cause which is so grotesque that it
+borders upon the ludicrous. And yet familiarity has never made it more
+easy to bear--on the contrary, as time passes my nerves become more worn
+and shattered by the constant attrition. If you have no physical fears,
+Dr. Hardacre, I should very much value your opinion upon this phenomenon
+which troubles us so.”
+
+“For what it is worth my opinion is entirely at your service. May I ask
+the nature of the phenomenon?”
+
+“I think that your experiences will have a higher evidential value if
+you are not told in advance what you may expect to encounter. You are
+yourself aware of the quibbles of unconscious cerebration and subjective
+impressions with which a scientific sceptic may throw a doubt upon your
+statement. It would be as well to guard against them in advance.”
+
+“What shall I do, then?”
+
+“I will tell you. Would you mind following me this way?” He led me out
+of the dining-room and down a long passage until we came to a terminal
+door. Inside there was a large bare room fitted as a laboratory, with
+numerous scientific instruments and bottles. A shelf ran along one side,
+upon which there stood a long line of glass jars containing pathological
+and anatomical specimens.
+
+“You see that I still dabble in some of my old studies,” said Sir
+Dominick. “These jars are the remains of what was once a most excellent
+collection, but unfortunately I lost the greater part of them when my
+house was burned down in Bombay in ’92. It was a most unfortunate affair
+for me--in more ways than one. I had examples of many rare conditions,
+and my splenic collection was probably unique. These are the survivors.”
+
+I glanced over them, and saw that they really were of a very great value
+and rarity from a pathological point of view: bloated organs, gaping
+cysts, distorted bones, odious parasites--a singular exhibition of the
+products of India.
+
+“There is, as you see, a small settee here,” said my host. “It was far
+from our intention to offer a guest so meagre an accommodation, but
+since affairs have taken this turn, it would be a great kindness upon
+your part if you would consent to spend the night in this apartment. I
+beg that you will not hesitate to let me know if the idea should be at
+all repugnant to you.”
+
+“On the contrary,” I said, “it is most acceptable.”
+
+“My own room is the second on the left, so that if you should feel that
+you are in need of company a call would always bring me to your side.”
+
+“I trust that I shall not be compelled to disturb you.”
+
+“It is unlikely that I shall be asleep. I do not sleep much. Do not
+hesitate to summon me.”
+
+And so with this agreement we joined Lady Holden in the drawing-room and
+talked of lighter things.
+
+It was no affectation upon my part to say that the prospect of my
+night’s adventure was an agreeable one. I had no pretence to greater
+physical courage than my neighbours, but familiarity with a subject robs
+it of those vague and undefined terrors which are the most appalling to
+the imaginative mind. The human brain is capable of only one strong
+emotion at a time, and if it be filled with curiosity or scientific
+enthusiasm, there is no room for fear. It is true that I had my uncle’s
+assurance that he had himself originally taken this point of view, but I
+reflected that the breakdown of his nervous system might be due to his
+forty years in India as much as to any psychical experiences which had
+befallen him. I at least was sound in nerve and brain, and it was with
+something of the pleasurable thrill of anticipation with which the
+sportsman takes his position beside the haunt of his game that I shut
+the laboratory door behind me, and partially undressing, lay down upon
+the rug-covered settee.
+
+It was not an ideal atmosphere for a bedroom. The air was heavy with
+many chemical odours, that of methylated spirit predominating. Nor were
+the decorations of my chamber very sedative. The odious line of glass
+jars with their relics of disease and suffering stretched in front of my
+very eyes. There was no blind to the window, and a three-quarter moon
+streamed its white light into the room, tracing a silver square with
+filigree lattices upon the opposite wall. When I had extinguished my
+candle this one bright patch in the midst of the general gloom had
+certainly an eerie and discomposing aspect. A rigid and absolute silence
+reigned throughout the old house, so that the low swish of the branches
+in the garden came softly and smoothly to my ears. It may have been the
+hypnotic lullaby of this gentle susurrus, or it may have been the result
+of my tiring day, but after many dozings and many efforts to regain my
+clearness of perception, I fell at last into a deep and dreamless
+sleep.
+
+I was awakened by some sound in the room, and I instantly raised myself
+upon my elbow on the couch. Some hours had passed, for the square patch
+upon the wall had slid downwards and sideways until it lay obliquely at
+the end of my bed. The rest of the room was in deep shadow. At first I
+could see nothing, presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the faint
+light, I was aware, with a thrill which all my scientific absorption
+could not entirely prevent, that something was moving slowly along the
+line of the wall. A gentle, shuffling sound, as of soft slippers, came
+to my ears, and I dimly discerned a human figure walking stealthily from
+the direction of the door. As it emerged into the patch of moonlight I
+saw very clearly what it was and how it was employed. It was a man,
+short and squat, dressed in some sort of dark-grey gown, which hung
+straight from his shoulders to his feet. The moon shone upon the side of
+his face, and I saw that it was chocolate-brown in colour, with a ball
+of black hair like a woman’s at the back of his head. He walked slowly,
+and his eyes were cast upwards towards the line of bottles which
+contained those gruesome remnants of humanity. He seemed to examine each
+jar with attention, and then to pass on to the next. When he had come to
+the end of the line, immediately opposite my bed, he stopped, faced me,
+threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and vanished from my
+sight.
+
+I have said that he threw up his hands, but I should have said his arms,
+for as he assumed that attitude of despair I observed a singular
+peculiarity about his appearance. He had only one hand! As the sleeves
+drooped down from the upflung arms I saw the left plainly, but the right
+ended in a knobby and unsightly stump. In every other way his appearance
+was so natural, and I had both seen and heard him so clearly, that I
+could easily have believed that he was an Indian servant of Sir
+Dominick’s who had come into my room in search of something. It was only
+his sudden disappearance which suggested anything more sinister to me.
+As it was I sprang from my couch, lit a candle, and examined the whole
+room carefully. There were no signs of my visitor, and I was forced to
+conclude that there had really been something outside the normal laws of
+Nature in his appearance. I lay awake for the remainder of the night,
+but nothing else occurred to disturb me.
+
+I am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I found
+him pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towards
+me in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door.
+
+“Well, well!” he cried. “Did you see him?”
+
+“An Indian with one hand?”
+
+“Precisely.”
+
+“Yes, I saw him”--and I told him all that occurred. When I had finished,
+he led the way into his study. “We have a little time before breakfast,”
+said he. “It will suffice to give you an explanation of this
+extraordinary affair--so far as I can explain that which is essentially
+inexplicable. In the first place, when I tell you that for four years I
+have never passed one single night, either in Bombay, aboard ship, or
+here in England without my sleep being broken by this fellow, you will
+understand why it is that I am a wreck of my former self. His programme
+is always the same. He appears by my bedside, shakes me roughly by the
+shoulder, passes from my room into the laboratory, walks slowly along
+the line of my bottles, and then vanishes. For more than a thousand
+times he has gone through the same routine.”
+
+“What does he want?”
+
+“He wants his hand.”
+
+“His hand?”
+
+“Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawur for a
+consultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look at
+the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. The
+fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond
+somewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtoo,
+and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from a
+soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I made
+him realise that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to
+save his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, and
+he asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow was
+almost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered in
+jest that my fee should be his hand, and that I proposed to add it to my
+pathological collection.
+
+“To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and he
+explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter
+that the body should be reunited after death, and so make a perfect
+dwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and the
+mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. I
+answered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how he
+intended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt and
+carry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in my
+keeping than his, and that I had better means than salt for preserving
+it. On realising that I really intended to carefully keep it, his
+opposition vanished instantly. ‘But remember, sahib,’ said he, ‘I shall
+want it back when I am dead.’ I laughed at the remark, and so the matter
+ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the course of time
+was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan.
+
+“Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay.
+Half of it was burned down, and, among other things, my pathological
+collection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains of
+it. The hand of the hillman went with the rest, but I gave the matter no
+particular thought at the time. That was six years ago.
+
+“Four years ago--two years after the fire--I was awakened one night by a
+furious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that my
+favourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw my
+Indian patient of long ago, dressed in the long grey gown which was the
+badge of his people. He was holding up his stump and looking
+reproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that time
+I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a
+gesture of anger and vanished. I realised that he had just died, and
+that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in
+safety for him.
+
+“Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same
+hour for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple
+thing in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone.
+It has brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the
+expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my
+wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the
+breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared
+with you last night. We are both much indebted to you for your
+gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when
+we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us
+as to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question.”
+
+This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me--a
+story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility,
+but which, after my experience of the night before, and my previous
+knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact.
+I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my
+reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my
+host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the
+next train.
+
+“My dear doctor,” cried Sir Dominick in great distress, “you make me
+feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in
+intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own
+burden.”
+
+“It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London,” I answered;
+“but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of
+last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to
+ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in
+your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again.”
+
+My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my
+fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back
+in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my
+memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested
+my attention when I had read it.
+
+“In the case of earth-bound spirits,” said my authority, “some one
+dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold
+them in this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and of
+the next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes
+from land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a
+life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice,
+revenge, anxiety, love, and pity have all been known to have this
+effect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when the
+wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many cases
+upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, and
+also their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or in
+some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected.”
+
+“_A reasonable compromise effected_”--those were the words which I had
+brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original.
+No actual atonement could be made here--but a reasonable compromise! I
+made my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen’s
+Hospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Without
+explaining the situation I made him understand what it was that I
+wanted.
+
+“A brown man’s hand!” said he, in amazement. “What in the world do you
+want that for?”
+
+“Never mind. I’ll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full of
+Indians.”
+
+“I should think so. But a hand----” He thought a little and then struck
+a bell.
+
+“Travers,” said he to a student-dresser, “what became of the hands of
+the Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the East
+India Dock who got caught in the steam winch.”
+
+“They are in the _post-mortem_ room, sir.”
+
+“Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr. Hardacre.”
+
+And so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curious
+outcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but I
+slept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar’s hand in
+one of the glass jars at the end of my couch.
+
+So interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out of
+the question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patiently
+for my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appeared
+beside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into as
+distinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his grey
+gown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling sound
+which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly
+along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained
+the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with
+expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face
+which was convulsed with disappointment, he hurled it down on the floor.
+There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when I looked
+up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door flew
+open and Sir Dominick rushed in.
+
+“You are not hurt?” he cried.
+
+“No--but deeply disappointed.”
+
+He looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass, and the brown hand
+lying upon the floor.
+
+“Good God!” he cried. “What is this?”
+
+I told him my idea and its wretched sequel. He listened intently, but
+shook his head.
+
+“It was well thought of,” said he, “but I fear that there is no such
+easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that
+you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that
+something might have happened to you--when I heard that crash--have been
+the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not
+expose myself to a repetition of it.”
+
+He allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of the night where I was,
+and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own failure.
+With the first light of morning there was the Lascar’s hand still lying
+upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at it--and as I
+lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and brought me
+quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim relic from
+where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the _left_ hand
+of the Lascar.
+
+By the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the
+Seamen’s Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been
+amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in
+search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense
+was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the _post-mortem_ room.
+And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission
+accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment.
+
+But Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory
+again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf ear. It offended his sense
+of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand,
+therefore, as I had done its fellow the night before, and I occupied a
+comfortable bedroom in another portion of the house, some distance from
+the scene of my adventures.
+
+But in spite of that my sleep was not destined to be uninterrupted. In
+the dead of night my host burst into my room, a lamp in his hand. His
+huge gaunt figure was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown, and his whole
+appearance might certainly have seemed more formidable to a weak-nerved
+man than that of the Indian of the night before. But it was not his
+entrance so much as his expression which amazed me. He had turned
+suddenly younger by twenty years at the least. His eyes were shining,
+his features radiant, and he waved one hand in triumph over his head. I
+sat up astounded, staring sleepily at this extraordinary visitor. But
+his words soon drove the sleep from my eyes.
+
+“We have done it! We have succeeded!” he shouted. “My dear Hardacre, how
+can I ever in this world repay you?”
+
+“You don’t mean to say that it is all right?”
+
+“Indeed I do. I was sure that you would not mind being awakened to hear
+such blessed news.”
+
+“Mind! I should think not indeed. But is it really certain?”
+
+“I have no doubt whatever upon the point. I owe you such a debt, my dear
+nephew, as I have never owed a man before, and never expected to. What
+can I possibly do for you that is commensurate? Providence must have
+sent you to my rescue. You have saved both my reason and my life, for
+another six months of this must have seen me either in a cell or a
+coffin. And my wife--it was wearing her out before my eyes. Never could
+I have believed that any human being could have lifted this burden off
+me.” He seized my hand and wrung it in his bony grip.
+
+“It was only an experiment--a forlorn hope--but I am delighted from my
+heart that it has succeeded. But how do you know that it is all right?
+Have you seen something?”
+
+He seated himself at the foot of my bed.
+
+“I have seen enough,” said he. “It satisfies me that I shall be troubled
+no more. What has passed is easily told. You know that at a certain hour
+this creature always comes to me. To-night he arrived at the usual time,
+and aroused me with even more violence than is his custom. I can only
+surmise that his disappointment of last night increased the bitterness
+of his anger against me. He looked angrily at me, and then went on his
+usual round. But in a few minutes I saw him, for the first time since
+this persecution began, return to my chamber. He was smiling. I saw the
+gleam of his white teeth through the dim light. He stood facing me at
+the end of my bed, and three times he made the low Eastern salaam which
+is their solemn leave-taking. And the third time that he bowed he raised
+his arms over his head, and I saw his _two_ hands outstretched in the
+air. So he vanished, and, as I believe, for ever.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So that is the curious experience which won me the affection and the
+gratitude of my celebrated uncle, the famous Indian surgeon. His
+anticipations were realised, and never again was he disturbed by the
+visits of the restless hillman in search of his lost member. Sir
+Dominick and Lady Holden spent a very happy old age, unclouded, so far
+as I know, by any trouble, and they finally died during the great
+influenza epidemic within a few weeks of each other. In his lifetime he
+always turned to me for advice in everything which concerned that
+English life of which he knew so little; and I aided him also in the
+purchase and development of his estates. It was no great surprise to me,
+therefore, that I found myself eventually promoted over the heads of
+five exasperated cousins, and changed in a single day from a
+hard-working country doctor into the head of an important Wiltshire
+family. I at least have reason to bless the memory of the man with the
+brown hand, and the day when I was fortunate enough to relieve
+Rodenhurst of his unwelcome presence.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL
+
+
+Mr. Lumsden, the senior partner of Lumsden and Westmacott, the
+well-known scholastic and clerical agents, was a small, dapper man, with
+a sharp, abrupt manner, a critical eye, and an incisive way of speaking.
+
+“Your name, sir?” said he, sitting pen in hand with his long, red-lined
+folio in front of him.
+
+“Harold Weld.”
+
+“Oxford or Cambridge?”
+
+“Cambridge.”
+
+“Honours?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Athlete?”
+
+“Nothing remarkable, I am afraid.”
+
+“Not a Blue?”
+
+“Oh no.”
+
+Mr. Lumsden shook his head despondently and shrugged his shoulders in a
+way which sent my hopes down to zero. “There is a very keen competition
+for masterships, Mr. Weld,” said he. “The vacancies are few and the
+applicants innumerable. A first-class athlete, oar, or cricketer, or a
+man who has passed very high in his examinations, can usually find a
+vacancy--I might say always in the case of the cricketer. But the
+average man--if you will excuse the description, Mr. Weld--has a very
+great difficulty, almost an insurmountable difficulty. We have already
+more than a hundred such names upon our lists, and if you think it
+worth while our adding yours, I dare say that in the course of some
+years we may possibly be able to find you some opening which----”
+
+He paused on account of a knock at the door. It was a clerk with a note.
+Mr. Lumsden broke the seal and read it.
+
+“Why, Mr. Weld,” said he, “this is really rather an interesting
+coincidence. I understand you to say that Latin and English are your
+subjects, and that you would prefer for a time to accept a place in an
+elementary establishment, where you would have time for private study?”
+
+“Quite so.”
+
+“This note contains a request from an old client of ours, Dr. Phelps
+McCarthy, of Willow Lea House Academy, West Hampstead, that I should at
+once send him a young man who should be qualified to teach Latin and
+English to a small class of boys under fourteen years of age. His
+vacancy appears to be the very one which you are looking for. The terms
+are not munificent--sixty pounds, board, lodging, and washing--but the
+work is not onerous, and you would have the evenings to yourself.”
+
+“That would do,” I cried, with all the eagerness of the man who sees
+work at last after weary months of seeking.
+
+“I don’t know that it is quite fair to these gentlemen whose names have
+been so long upon our list,” said Mr. Lumsden, glancing down at his open
+ledger. “But the coincidence is so striking that I feel we must really
+give you the refusal of it.”
+
+“Then I accept it, sir, and I am much obliged to you.”
+
+“There is one small provision in Dr. McCarthy’s letter. He stipulates
+that the applicant must be a man with an imperturbable good temper.”
+
+“I am the very man,” said I, with conviction.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Lumsden, with some hesitation, “I hope that your temper
+is really as good as you say, for I rather fancy that you may need it.”
+
+“I presume that every elementary school-master does.”
+
+“Yes, sir, but it is only fair to you to warn you that there may be some
+especially trying circumstances in this particular situation. Dr. Phelps
+McCarthy does not make such a condition without some very good and
+pressing reason.”
+
+There was a certain solemnity in his speech which struck a chill in the
+delight with which I had welcomed this providential vacancy.
+
+“May I ask the nature of these circumstances?” I asked.
+
+“We endeavour to hold the balance equally between our clients, and to be
+perfectly frank with all of them. If I knew of objections to you I
+should certainly communicate them to Dr. McCarthy, and so I have no
+hesitation in doing as much for you. I find,” he continued, glancing
+over the pages of his ledger, “that within the last twelve months we
+have supplied no fewer than seven Latin masters to Willow Lea House
+Academy, four of them having left so abruptly as to forfeit their
+month’s salary, and none of them having stayed more than eight weeks.”
+
+“And the other masters? Have they stayed?”
+
+“There is only one other residential master, and he appears to be
+unchanged. You can understand, Mr. Weld,” continued the agent, closing
+both the ledger and the interview, “that such rapid changes are not
+desirable from a master’s point of view, whatever may be said for them
+by an agent working on commission. I have no idea why these gentlemen
+have resigned their situations so early. I can only give you the facts,
+and advise you to see Dr. McCarthy at once and to form your own
+conclusions.”
+
+Great is the power of the man who has nothing to lose, and it was
+therefore with perfect serenity, but with a good deal of curiosity, that
+I rang early that afternoon the heavy wrought-iron bell of the Willow
+Lea House Academy. The building was a massive pile, square and ugly,
+standing in its own extensive grounds, with a broad carriage-sweep
+curving up to it from the road. It stood high, and commanded a view on
+the one side of the grey roofs and bristling spires of Northern London,
+and on the other of the well-wooded and beautiful country which fringes
+the great city. The door was opened by a boy in buttons, and I was shown
+into a well-appointed study, where the principal of the academy
+presently joined me.
+
+The warnings and insinuations of the agent had prepared me to meet a
+choleric and overbearing person--one whose manner was an insupportable
+provocation to those who worked under him. Anything further from the
+reality cannot be imagined. He was a frail, gentle creature,
+clean-shaven and round-shouldered, with a bearing which was so courteous
+that it became almost deprecating. His bushy hair was thickly shot with
+grey, and his age I should imagine to verge upon sixty. His voice was
+low and suave, and he walked with a certain mincing delicacy of manner.
+His whole appearance was that of a kindly scholar, who was more at home
+among his books than in the practical affairs of the world.
+
+“I am sure that we shall be very happy to have your assistance, Mr.
+Weld,” said he, after a few professional questions. “Mr. Percival
+Manners left me yesterday, and I should be glad if you could take over
+his duties to-morrow.”
+
+“May I ask if that is Mr. Percival Manners of Selwyn?” I asked.
+
+“Precisely. Did you know him?”
+
+“Yes; he is a friend of mine.”
+
+“An excellent teacher, but a little hasty in his disposition. It was his
+only fault. Now, in your case, Mr. Weld, is your own temper under good
+control? Supposing for argument’s sake that I were to so far forget
+myself as to be rude to you or to speak roughly or to jar your feelings
+in any way, could you rely upon yourself to control your emotions?”
+
+I smiled at the idea of this courteous, little, mincing creature
+ruffling my nerves.
+
+“I think that I could answer for it, sir,” said I.
+
+“Quarrels are very painful to me,” said he. “I wish every one to live in
+harmony under my roof. I will not deny Mr. Percival Manners had
+provocation, but I wish to find a man who can raise himself above
+provocation, and sacrifice his own feelings for the sake of peace and
+concord.”
+
+“I will do my best, sir.”
+
+“You cannot say more, Mr. Weld. In that case I shall expect you
+to-night, if you can get your things ready so soon.”
+
+I not only succeeded in getting my things ready, but I found time to
+call at the Benedict Club in Piccadilly, where I knew that I should find
+Manners if he were still in town. There he was sure enough in the
+smoking-room, and I questioned him, over a cigarette, as to his reasons
+for throwing up his recent situation.
+
+“You don’t tell me that you are going to Dr. Phelps McCarthy’s Academy?”
+he cried, staring at me in surprise. “My dear chap, it’s no use. You
+can’t possibly remain there.”
+
+“But I saw him, and he seemed the most courtly, inoffensive fellow. I
+never met a man with more gentle manners.”
+
+“He! oh, he’s all right. There’s no vice in him. Have you seen
+Theophilus St. James?”
+
+“I have never heard the name. Who is he?”
+
+“Your colleague. The other master.”
+
+“No, I have not seen him.”
+
+“_He’s_ the terror. If you can stand him, you have either the spirit of
+a perfect Christian or else you have no spirit at all. A more perfect
+bounder never bounded.”
+
+“But why does McCarthy stand it?”
+
+My friend looked at me significantly through his cigarette smoke, and
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“You will form your own conclusions about that. Mine were formed very
+soon, and I never found occasion to alter them.”
+
+“It would help me very much if you would tell me them.”
+
+“When you see a man in his own house allowing his business to be ruined,
+his comfort destroyed, and his authority defied by another man in a
+subordinate position, and calmly submitting to it without so much as a
+word of protest, what conclusion do you come to?”
+
+“That the one has a hold over the other.”
+
+Percival Manners nodded his head.
+
+“There you are! You’ve hit it first barrel. It seems to me that there’s
+no other explanation which will cover the facts. At some period in his
+life the little Doctor has gone astray. _Humanum est errare._ I have
+even done it myself. But this was something serious, and the other man
+got a hold of it and has never let go. That’s the truth. Blackmail is at
+the bottom of it. But he had no hold over me, and there was no reason
+why _I_ should stand his insolence, so I came away--and I very much
+expect to see you do the same.”
+
+For some time he talked over the matter, but he always came to the same
+conclusion--that I should not retain my new situation very long.
+
+It was with no very pleasant feelings after this preparation that I
+found myself face to face with the very man of whom I had received so
+evil an account. Dr. McCarthy introduced us to each other in his study
+on the evening of that same day immediately after my arrival at the
+school.
+
+“This is your new colleague, Mr. St. James,” said he, in his genial,
+courteous fashion. “I trust that you will mutually agree, and that I
+shall find nothing but good feeling and sympathy beneath this roof.”
+
+I shared the good Doctor’s hope, but my expectations of it were not
+increased by the appearance of my _confrère_. He was a young,
+bull-necked fellow about thirty years of age, dark-eyed and
+black-haired, with an exceedingly vigorous physique. I have never seen
+a more strongly built man, though he tended to run to fat in a way which
+showed that he was in the worst of training. His face was coarse,
+swollen, and brutal, with a pair of small black eyes deeply sunken in
+his head. His heavy jowl, his projecting ears, and his thick bandy legs
+all went to make up a personality which was as formidable as it was
+repellent.
+
+“I hear you’ve never been out before,” said he, in a rude, brusque
+fashion. “Well, it’s a poor life: hard work and starvation pay, as
+you’ll find out for yourself.”
+
+“But it has some compensations,” said the principal. “Surely you will
+allow that, Mr. St. James?”
+
+“Has it? I never could find them. What do you call compensations?”
+
+“Even to be in the continual presence of youth is a privilege. It has
+the effect of keeping youth in one’s own soul, for one reflects
+something of their high spirits and their keen enjoyment of life.”
+
+“Little beasts!” cried my colleague.
+
+“Come, come, Mr. St. James, you are too hard upon them.”
+
+“I hate the sight of them! If I could put them and their blessed
+copybooks and lexicons and slates into one bonfire I’d do it to-night.”
+
+“This is Mr. St. James’s way of talking,” said the principal, smiling
+nervously as he glanced at me. “You must not take him too seriously.
+Now, Mr. Weld, you know where your room is, and no doubt you have your
+own little arrangements to make. The sooner you make them the sooner you
+will feel yourself at home.”
+
+It seemed to me that he was only too anxious to remove me at once from
+the influence of this extraordinary colleague, and I was glad to go, for
+the conversation had become embarrassing.
+
+And so began an epoch which always seems to me as I look back to it to
+be the most singular in all my experience. The school was in many ways
+an excellent one. Dr. Phelps McCarthy was an ideal principal. His
+methods were modern and rational. The management was all that could be
+desired. And yet in the middle of this well-ordered machine there
+intruded the incongruous and impossible Mr. St. James, throwing
+everything into confusion. His duties were to teach English and
+mathematics, and how he acquitted himself of them I do not know, as our
+classes were held in separate rooms. I can answer for it, however, that
+the boys feared him and loathed him, and I know that they had good
+reason to do so, for frequently my own teaching was interrupted by his
+bellowing of anger, and even by the sound of his blows. Dr. McCarthy
+spent most of his time in his class, but it was, I suspect, to watch
+over the master rather than the boys, and to try to moderate his
+ferocious temper when it threatened to become dangerous.
+
+It was in his bearing to the head master, however, that my colleague’s
+conduct was most outrageous. The first conversation which I have
+recorded proved to be typical of their intercourse. He domineered over
+him openly and brutally. I have heard him contradict him roughly before
+the whole school. At no time would he show him any mark of respect, and
+my temper often rose within me when I saw the quiet acquiescence of the
+old Doctor, and his patient tolerance of this monstrous treatment. And
+yet the sight of it surrounded the principal also with a certain vague
+horror in my mind, for supposing my friend’s theory to be correct--and I
+could devise no better one--how black must have been the story which
+could be held over his head by this man and, by fear of its publicity,
+force him to undergo such humiliations. This quiet, gentle Doctor might
+be a profound hypocrite, a criminal, a forger possibly, or a poisoner.
+Only such a secret as this could account for the complete power which
+the younger man held over him. Why else should he admit so hateful a
+presence into his house and so harmful an influence into his school? Why
+should he submit to degradations which could not be witnessed, far less
+endured, without indignation?
+
+And yet, if it were so, I was forced to confess that my principal
+carried it off with extraordinary duplicity. Never by word or sign did
+he show that the young man’s presence was distasteful to him. I have
+seen him look pained, it is true, after some peculiarly outrageous
+exhibition, but he gave me the impression that it was always on account
+of the scholars or of me, never on account of himself. He spoke to and
+of St. James in an indulgent fashion, smiling gently at what made my
+blood boil within me. In his way of looking at him and addressing him,
+one could see no trace of resentment, but rather a sort of timid and
+deprecating good will. His company he certainly courted, and they spent
+many hours together in the study and the garden.
+
+As to my own relations with Theophilus St. James, I made up my mind from
+the beginning that I should keep my temper with him, and to that
+resolution I steadfastly adhered. If Dr. McCarthy chose to permit this
+disrespect, and to condone these outrages, it was his affair and not
+mine. It was evident that his one wish was that there should be peace
+between us, and I felt that I could help him best by respecting this
+desire. My easiest way to do so was to avoid my colleague, and this I
+did to the best of my ability. When we were thrown together I was quiet,
+polite, and reserved. He, on his part, showed me no ill-will, but met me
+rather with a coarse joviality, and a rough familiarity which he meant
+to be ingratiating. He was insistent in his attempts to get me into his
+room at night, for the purpose of playing euchre and of drinking.
+
+“Old McCarthy doesn’t mind,” said he. “Don’t you be afraid of him. We’ll
+do what we like, and I’ll answer for it that he won’t object.” Once only
+I went, and when I left, after a dull and gross evening, my host was
+stretched dead drunk upon the sofa. After that I gave the excuse of a
+course of study, and spent my spare hours alone in my own room.
+
+One point upon which I was anxious to gain information was as to how
+long these proceedings had been going on. When did St. James assert his
+hold over Dr. McCarthy? From neither of them could I learn how long my
+colleague had been in his present situation. One or two leading
+questions upon my part were eluded or ignored in a manner so marked that
+it was easy to see that they were both of them as eager to conceal the
+point as I was to know it. But at last one evening I had the chance of a
+chat with Mrs. Carter, the matron--for the Doctor was a widower--and
+from her I got the information which I wanted. It needed no questioning
+to get at her knowledge, for she was so full of indignation that she
+shook with passion as she spoke of it, and raised her hands into the air
+in the earnestness of her denunciation, as she described the grievances
+which she had against my colleague.
+
+“It was three years ago, Mr. Weld, that he first darkened this
+doorstep,” she cried. “Three bitter years they have been to me. The
+school had fifty boys then. Now it has twenty-two. That’s what he has
+done for us in three years. In another three there won’t be one. And the
+Doctor, that angel of patience, you see how he treats him, though he is
+not fit to lace his boots for him. If it wasn’t for the Doctor, you may
+be sure that I wouldn’t stay an hour under the same roof with such a
+man, and so I told him to his own face, Mr. Weld. If the Doctor would
+only pack him about his business--but I know that I am saying more than
+I should!” She stopped herself with an effort, and spoke no more upon
+the subject. She had remembered that I was almost a stranger in the
+school, and she feared that she had been indiscreet.
+
+There were one or two very singular points about my colleague. The chief
+one was that he rarely took any exercise. There was a playing-field
+within the college grounds, and that was his farthest point. If the boys
+went out, it was I or Dr. McCarthy who accompanied them. St. James gave
+as a reason for this that he had injured his knee some years before, and
+that walking was painful to him. For my own part I put it down to pure
+laziness upon his part, for he was of an obese, heavy temperament.
+Twice, however, I saw him from my window stealing out of the grounds
+late at night, and the second time I watched him return in the grey of
+the morning and slink in through an open window. These furtive
+excursions were never alluded to, but they exposed the hollowness of his
+story about his knee, and they increased the dislike and distrust which
+I had of the man. His nature seemed to be vicious to the core.
+
+Another point, small but suggestive, was that he hardly ever during the
+months that I was at Willow Lea House received any letters, and on those
+few occasions they were obviously tradesmen’s bills. I am an early
+riser, and used every morning to pick my own correspondence out of the
+bundle upon the hall table. I could judge therefore how few were ever
+there for Mr. Theophilus St. James. There seemed to me to be something
+peculiarly ominous in this. What sort of a man could he be who during
+thirty years of his life had never made a single friend, high or low,
+who cared to continue to keep in touch with him? And yet the sinister
+fact remained that the head master not only tolerated, but was even
+intimate with him. More than once on entering a room I had found them
+talking confidentially together, and they would walk arm in arm in deep
+conversation up and down the garden paths. So curious did I become to
+know what the tie was which bound them, that I found it gradually push
+out my other interests and become the main purpose of my life. In school
+and out of school, at meals and at play, I was perpetually engaged in
+watching Dr. Phelps McCarthy and Mr. Theophilus St. James, and in
+endeavouring to solve the mystery which surrounded them.
+
+But, unfortunately, my curiosity was a little too open. I had not the
+art to conceal the suspicions which I felt about the relations which
+existed between these two men and the nature of the hold which the one
+appeared to have over the other. It may have been my manner of watching
+them, it may have been some indiscreet question, but it is certain that
+I showed too clearly what I felt. One night I was conscious that the
+eyes of Theophilus St. James were fixed upon me in a surly and menacing
+stare. I had a foreboding of evil, and I was not surprised when Dr.
+McCarthy called me next morning into his study.
+
+“I am very sorry, Mr. Weld,” said he, “but I am afraid that I shall be
+compelled to dispense with your services.”
+
+“Perhaps you would give me some reason for dismissing me,” I answered,
+for I was conscious of having done my duties to the best of my power,
+and knew well that only one reason could be given.
+
+“I have no fault to find with you,” said he, and the colour came to his
+cheeks.
+
+“You send me away at the suggestion of my colleague.”
+
+His eyes turned away from mine.
+
+“We will not discuss the question, Mr. Weld. It is impossible for me to
+discuss it. In justice to you, I will give you the strongest
+recommendation for your next situation. I can say no more. I hope that
+you will continue your duties here until you have found a place
+elsewhere.”
+
+My whole soul rose against the injustice of it, and yet I had no appeal
+and no redress. I could only bow and leave the room, with a bitter sense
+of ill-usage at my heart.
+
+My first instinct was to pack my boxes and leave the house. But the
+head master had given me permission to remain until I had found another
+situation. I was sure that St. James desired me to go, and that was a
+strong reason why I should stay. If my presence annoyed him, I should
+give him as much of it as I could. I had begun to hate him and to long
+to have my revenge upon him. If he had a hold over our principal, might
+not I in turn obtain one over him? It was a sign of weakness that he
+should be so afraid of my curiosity. He would not resent it so much if
+he had not something to fear from it. I entered my name once more upon
+the books of the agents, but meanwhile I continued to fulfil my duties
+at Willow Lea House, and so it came about that I was present at the
+_dénouement_ of this singular situation.
+
+During that week--for it was only a week before the crisis came--I was
+in the habit of going down each evening, after the work of the day was
+done, to inquire about my new arrangements. One night, it was a cold and
+windy evening in March, I had just stepped out from the hall door when a
+strange sight met my eyes. A man was crouching before one of the windows
+of the house. His knees were bent and his eyes were fixed upon the small
+line of light between the curtain and the sash. The window threw a
+square of brightness in front of it, and in the middle of this the dark
+shadow of this ominous visitor showed clear and hard. It was but for an
+instant that I saw him, for he glanced up and was off in a moment
+through the shrubbery. I could hear the patter of his feet as he ran
+down the road, until it died away in the distance.
+
+It was evidently my duty to turn back and to tell Dr. McCarthy what I
+had seen. I found him in his study. I had expected him to be disturbed
+at such an incident, but I was not prepared for the state of panic into
+which he fell. He leaned back in his chair, white and gasping, like one
+who has received a mortal blow.
+
+“Which window, Mr. Weld?” he asked, wiping his forehead. “Which window
+was it?”
+
+“The next to the dining-room--Mr. St. James’s window.”
+
+“Dear me! Dear me! This is, indeed, unfortunate! A man looking through
+Mr. St. James’s window!” He wrung his hands like a man who is at his
+wits’ end what to do.
+
+“I shall be passing the police-station, sir. Would you wish me to
+mention the matter?”
+
+“No, no,” he cried, suddenly, mastering his extreme agitation; “I have
+no doubt that it was some poor tramp who intended to beg. I attach no
+importance to the incident--none at all. Don’t let me detain you, Mr.
+Weld, if you wish to go out.”
+
+I left him sitting in his study with reassuring words upon his lips, but
+with horror upon his face. My heart was heavy for my little employer as
+I started off once more for town. As I looked back from the gate at the
+square of light which marked the window of my colleague, I suddenly saw
+the black outline of Dr. McCarthy’s figure passing against the lamp. He
+had hastened from his study then to tell St. James what he had heard.
+What was the meaning of it all, this atmosphere of mystery, this
+inexplicable terror, these confidences between two such dissimilar men?
+I thought and thought as I walked, but do what I would I could not hit
+upon any adequate conclusion. I little knew how near I was to the
+solution of the problem.
+
+It was very late--nearly twelve o’clock--when I returned, and the lights
+were all out save one in the Doctor’s study. The black, gloomy house
+loomed before me as I walked up the drive, its sombre bulk broken only
+by the one glimmering point of brightness. I let myself in with my
+latch-key, and was about to enter my own room when my attention was
+arrested by a short, sharp cry like that of a man in pain. I stood and
+listened, my hand upon the handle of my door.
+
+All was silent in the house save for a distant murmur of voices which
+came, I knew, from the Doctor’s room. I stole quietly down the corridor
+in that direction. The sound resolved itself now into two voices, the
+rough bullying tones of St. James and the lower tone of the Doctor, the
+one apparently insisting and the other arguing and pleading. Four thin
+lines of light in the blackness showed me the door of the Doctor’s room,
+and step by step I drew nearer to it in the darkness. St. James’s voice
+within rose louder and louder, and his words came plainly to my ear.
+
+“I’ll have every pound of it. If you won’t give it me I’ll take it. Do
+you hear?”
+
+Dr. McCarthy’s reply was inaudible, but the angry voice broke in again.
+
+“Leave you destitute! I leave you this little goldmine of a school, and
+that’s enough for one old man, is it not? How am I to set up in
+Australia without money? Answer me that!”
+
+Again the Doctor said something in a soothing voice, but his answer only
+roused his companion to a higher pitch of fury.
+
+“Done for me! What have you ever done for me except what you couldn’t
+help doing? It was for your good name, not for my safety, that you
+cared. But enough cackle! I must get on my way before morning. Will you
+open your safe or will you not?”
+
+“Oh, James, how can you use me so?” cried a wailing voice, and then
+there came a sudden little scream of pain. At the sound of that helpless
+appeal from brutal violence I lost for once that temper upon which I had
+prided myself. Every bit of manhood in me cried out against any further
+neutrality. With my walking cane in my hand I rushed into the study. As
+I did so I was conscious that the hall-door bell was violently ringing.
+
+“You villain!” I cried, “let him go!”
+
+The two men were standing in front of a small safe, which stood against
+one wall of the Doctor’s room. St. James held the old man by the wrist,
+and he had twisted his arm round in order to force him to produce the
+key. My little head master, white but resolute, was struggling furiously
+in the grip of the burly athlete. The bully glared over his shoulder at
+me with a mixture of fury and terror upon his brutal features. Then,
+realising that I was alone, he dropped his victim and made for me with a
+horrible curse.
+
+“You infernal spy!” he cried. “I’ll do for you anyhow before I leave.”
+
+I am not a very strong man, and I realised that I was helpless if once
+at close quarters. Twice I cut at him with my stick, but he rushed in at
+me with a murderous growl, and seized me by the throat with both his
+muscular hands. I fell backwards and he on the top of me, with a grip
+which was squeezing the life from me. I was conscious of his malignant
+yellow-tinged eyes within a few inches of my own, and then with a
+beating of pulses in my head and a singing in my ears, my senses slipped
+away from me. But even in that supreme moment I was aware that the
+door-bell was still violently ringing.
+
+When I came to myself, I was lying upon the sofa in Dr. McCarthy’s
+study, and the Doctor himself was seated beside me. He appeared to be
+watching me intently and anxiously, for as I opened my eyes and looked
+about me he gave a great cry of relief. “Thank God!” he cried. “Thank
+God!”
+
+“Where is he?” I asked, looking round the room. As I did so, I became
+aware that the furniture was scattered in every direction, and that
+there were traces of an even more violent struggle than that in which I
+had been engaged.
+
+The Doctor sank his face between his hands.
+
+“They have him,” he groaned. “After these years of trial they have him
+again. But how thankful I am that he has not for a second time stained
+his hands in blood.”
+
+As the Doctor spoke I became aware that a man in the braided jacket of
+an inspector of police was standing in the doorway.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he remarked, “you have had a pretty narrow escape. If we had
+not got in when we did, you would not be here to tell the tale. I don’t
+know that I ever saw any one much nearer to the undertaker.”
+
+I sat up with my hands to my throbbing head.
+
+“Dr. McCarthy,” said I, “this is all a mystery to me. I should be glad
+if you could explain to me who this man is, and why you have tolerated
+him so long in your house.”
+
+“I owe you an explanation, Mr. Weld--and the more so since you have, in
+so chivalrous a fashion, almost sacrificed your life in my defence.
+There is no reason now for secrecy. In a word, Mr. Weld, this unhappy
+man’s real name is James McCarthy, and he is my only son.”
+
+“Your son?”
+
+“Alas, yes. What sin have I ever committed that I should have such a
+punishment? He has made my whole life a misery from the first years of
+his boyhood. Violent, headstrong, selfish, unprincipled, he has always
+been the same. At eighteen he was a criminal. At twenty, in a paroxysm
+of passion, he took the life of a boon companion and was tried for
+murder. He only just escaped the gallows, and he was condemned to penal
+servitude. Three years ago he succeeded in escaping, and managed, in
+face of a thousand obstacles, to reach my house in London. My wife’s
+heart had been broken by his condemnation, and as he had succeeded in
+getting a suit of ordinary clothes, there was no one here to recognise
+him. For months he lay concealed in the attics until the first search of
+the police should be over. Then I gave him employment here, as you have
+seen, though by his rough and overbearing manners he made my own life
+miserable, and that of his fellow-masters unbearable. You have been with
+us for four months, Mr. Weld, but no other master endured him so long. I
+apologise now for all you have had to submit to, but I ask you what else
+could I do? For his dead mother’s sake I could not let harm come to him
+as long as it was in my power to fend it off. Only under my roof could
+he find a refuge--the only spot in all the world--and how could I keep
+him here without it exciting remark unless I gave him some occupation? I
+made him English master therefore, and in that capacity I have protected
+him here for three years. You have no doubt observed that he never
+during the daytime went beyond the college grounds. You now understand
+the reason. But when to-night you came to me with your report of a man
+who was looking through his window, I understood that his retreat was at
+last discovered. I besought him to fly at once, but he had been
+drinking, the unhappy fellow, and my words fell upon deaf ears. When at
+last he made up his mind to go he wished to take from me in his flight
+every shilling which I possessed. It was your entrance which saved me
+from him, while the police in turn arrived only just in time to rescue
+you. I have made myself amenable to the law by harbouring an escaped
+prisoner, and remain here in the custody of the inspector, but a prison
+has no terrors for me after what I have endured in this house during the
+last three years.”
+
+“It seems to me, Doctor,” said the inspector, “that, if you have broken
+the law, you have had quite enough punishment already.”
+
+“God knows I have!” cried Dr. McCarthy, and sank his haggard face upon
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+B. 24
+
+
+I told my story when I was taken, and no one would listen to me. Then I
+told it again at the trial--the whole thing absolutely as it happened,
+without so much as a word added. I set it all out truly, so help me God,
+all that Lady Mannering said and did, and then all that I had said and
+done, just as it occurred. And what did I get for it? “The prisoner put
+forward a rambling and inconsequential statement, incredible in its
+details, and unsupported by any shred of corroborative evidence.” That
+was what one of the London papers said, and others let it pass as if I
+had made no defence at all. And yet, with my own eyes I saw Lord
+Mannering murdered, and I am as guiltless of it as any man on the jury
+that tried me.
+
+Now, sir, you are there to receive the petitions of prisoners. It all
+lies with you. All I ask is that you read it--just read it--and then
+that you make an inquiry or two about the private character of this
+“lady” Mannering, if she still keeps the name that she had three years
+ago, when to my sorrow and ruin I came to meet her. You could use a
+private inquiry agent or a good lawyer, and you would soon learn enough
+to show you that my story is the true one. Think of the glory it would
+be to you to have all the papers saying that there would have been a
+shocking miscarriage of justice if it had not been for your perseverance
+and intelligence! That must be your reward, since I am a poor man and
+can offer you nothing. But if you don’t do it, may you never lie easy in
+your bed again! May no night pass that you are not haunted by the
+thought of the man who rots in gaol because you have not done the duty
+which you are paid to do! But you will do it, sir, I know. Just make one
+or two inquiries, and you will soon find which way the wind blows.
+Remember, also, that the only person who profited by the crime was
+herself, since it changed her from an unhappy wife to a rich young
+widow. There’s the end of the string in your hand, and you only have to
+follow it up and see where it leads to.
+
+Mind you, sir, I make no complaint as far as the burglary goes. I don’t
+whine about what I have deserved, and so far I have had no more than I
+have deserved. Burglary it was, right enough, and my three years have
+gone to pay for it. It was shown at the trial that I had had a hand in
+the Merton Cross business, and did a year for that, so my story had the
+less attention on that account. A man with a previous conviction never
+gets a really fair trial. I own to the burglary, but when it comes to
+the murder which brought me a lifer--any judge but Sir James might have
+given me the gallows--then I tell you that I had nothing to do with it,
+and that I am an innocent man. And now I’ll take that night, the 13th of
+September, 1894, and I’ll give you just exactly what occurred, and may
+God’s hand strike me down if I go one inch over the truth.
+
+I had been at Bristol in the summer looking for work, and then I had a
+notion that I might get something at Portsmouth, for I was trained as a
+skilled mechanic, so I came tramping my way across the south of
+England, and doing odd jobs as I went. I was trying all I knew to keep
+off the cross, for I had done a year in Exeter Gaol, and I had had
+enough of visiting Queen Victoria. But it’s cruel hard to get work when
+once the black mark is against your name, and it was all I could do to
+keep soul and body together. At last, after ten days of wood-cutting and
+stone-breaking on starvation pay, I found myself near Salisbury with a
+couple of shillings in my pocket, and my boots and my patience clean
+wore out. There’s an alehouse called “The Willing Mind,” which stands
+on the road between Blandford and Salisbury, and it was there that night
+I engaged a bed. I was sitting alone in the taproom just about closing
+time, when the inn-keeper--Allen his name was--came beside me and began
+yarning about the neighbours. He was a man that liked to talk and to
+have some one to listen to his talk, so I sat there smoking and drinking
+a mug of ale which he had stood me; and I took no great interest in what
+he said until he began to talk (as the devil would have it) about the
+riches of Mannering Hall.
+
+“Meaning the large house on the right before I came to the village?”
+said I. “The one that stands in its own park?”
+
+“Exactly,” said he--and I am giving all our talk so that you may know
+that I am telling you the truth and hiding nothing. “The long white
+house with the pillars,” said he. “At the side of the Blandford Road.”
+
+Now I had looked at it as I passed, and it had crossed my mind, as such
+thoughts will, that it was a very easy house to get into with that
+great row of grand windows and glass doors. I had put the thought away
+from me, and now here was this landlord bringing it back with his talk
+about the riches within. I said nothing, but I listened, and as luck
+would have it, he would always come back to this one subject.
+
+“He was a miser young, so you can think what he is now in his age,” said
+he. “Well, he’s had some good out of his money.”
+
+“What good can he have had if he does not spend it?” said I.
+
+“Well, it bought him the prettiest wife in England, and that was some
+good that he got out of it. She thought she would have the spending of
+it, but she knows the difference now.”
+
+“Who was she then?” I asked, just for the sake of something to say.
+
+“She was nobody at all until the old Lord made her his Lady,” said he.
+“She came from up London way, and some said that she had been on the
+stage there, but nobody knew. The old Lord was away for a year, and when
+he came home he brought a young wife back with him, and there she has
+been ever since. Stephens, the butler, did tell me once that she was the
+light of the house when fust she came, but what with her husband’s mean
+and aggravatin’ way, and what with her loneliness--for he hates to see a
+visitor within his doors; and what with his bitter words--for he has a
+tongue like a hornet’s sting, her life all went out of her, and she
+became a white, silent creature, moping about the country lanes. Some
+say that she loved another man, and that it was just the riches of the
+old Lord which tempted her to be false to her lover, and that now she
+is eating her heart out because she has lost the one without being any
+nearer to the other, for she might be the poorest woman in the parish
+for all the money that she has the handling of.”
+
+Well, sir, you can imagine that it did not interest me very much to hear
+about the quarrels between a Lord and a Lady. What did it matter to me
+if she hated the sound of his voice, or if he put every indignity upon
+her in the hope of breaking her spirit, and spoke to her as he would
+never have dared to speak to one of his servants? The landlord told me
+of these things, and of many more like them, but they passed out of my
+mind, for they were no concern of mine. But what I did want to hear was
+the form in which Lord Mannering kept his riches. Title-deeds and stock
+certificates are but paper, and more danger than profit to the man who
+takes them. But metal and stones are worth a risk. And then, as if he
+were answering my very thoughts, the landlord told me of Lord
+Mannering’s great collection of gold medals, that it was the most
+valuable in the world, and that it was reckoned that if they were put
+into a sack the strongest man in the parish would not be able to raise
+them. Then his wife called him, and he and I went to our beds.
+
+I am not arguing to make out a case for myself, but I beg you, sir, to
+bear all the facts in your mind, and to ask yourself whether a man could
+be more sorely tempted than I was. I make bold to say that there are few
+who could have held out against it. There I lay on my bed that night, a
+desperate man without hope or work, and with my last shilling in my
+pocket. I had tried to be honest, and honest folk had turned their backs
+upon me. They taunted me for theft; and yet they pushed me towards it. I
+was caught in the stream and could not get out. And then it was such a
+chance: the great house all lined with windows, the golden medals which
+could so easily be melted down. It was like putting a loaf before a
+starving man and expecting him not to eat it. I fought against it for a
+time, but it was no use. At last I sat up on the side of my bed, and I
+swore that that night I should either be a rich man and able to give up
+crime for ever, or that the irons should be on my wrists once more. Then
+I slipped on my clothes, and, having put a shilling on the table--for
+the landlord had treated me well, and I did not wish to cheat him--I
+passed out through the window into the garden of the inn.
+
+There was a high wall round this garden, and I had a job to get over it,
+but once on the other side it was all plain sailing. I did not meet a
+soul upon the road, and the iron gate of the avenue was open. No one was
+moving at the lodge. The moon was shining, and I could see the great
+house glimmering white through an archway of trees. I walked up it for a
+quarter of a mile or so, until I was at the edge of the drive, where it
+ended in a broad, gravelled space before the main door. There I stood in
+the shadow and looked at the long building, with a full moon shining in
+every window and silvering the high stone front. I crouched there for
+some time, and I wondered where I should find the easiest entrance. The
+corner window of the side seemed to be the one which was least
+overlooked, and a screen of ivy hung heavily over it. My best chance
+was evidently there. I worked my way under the trees to the back of the
+house, and then crept along in the black shadow of the building. A dog
+barked and rattled his chain, but I stood waiting until he was quiet,
+and then I stole on once more until I came to the window which I had
+chosen.
+
+It is astonishing how careless they are in the country, in places far
+removed from large towns, where the thought of burglars never enters
+their heads. I call it setting temptation in a poor man’s way when he
+puts his hand, meaning no harm, upon a door, and finds it swing open
+before him. In this case it was not so bad as that, but the window was
+merely fastened with the ordinary catch, which I opened with a push from
+the blade of my knife. I pulled up the window as quickly as possible,
+then I thrust the knife through the slit in the shutter and prized it
+open. They were folding shutters, and I shoved them before me and walked
+into the room.
+
+“Good evening, sir! You are very welcome!” said a voice.
+
+I’ve had some starts in my life, but never one to come up to that one.
+There, in the opening of the shutters, within reach of my arm, was
+standing a woman with a small coil of wax taper burning in her hand. She
+was tall and straight and slender, with a beautiful white face that
+might have been cut out of clear marble, but her hair and eyes were as
+black as night. She was dressed in some sort of white dressing-gown
+which flowed down to her feet, and what with this robe and what with her
+face, it seemed as if a spirit from above was standing in front of me.
+My knees knocked together, and I held on to the shutter with one hand
+to give me support. I should have turned and run away if I had had the
+strength, but I could only just stand and stare at her.
+
+She soon brought me back to myself once more.
+
+“Don’t be frightened!” said she, and they were strange words for the
+mistress of a house to have to use to a burglar. “I saw you out of my
+bedroom window when you were hiding under those trees, so I slipped
+downstairs, and then I heard you at the window. I should have opened it
+for you if you had waited, but you managed it yourself just as I came
+up.”
+
+I still held in my hand the long clasp-knife with which I had opened the
+shutter. I was unshaven and grimed from a week on the roads. Altogether,
+there are few people who would have cared to face me alone at one in the
+morning; but this woman, if I had been her lover meeting her by
+appointment, could not have looked upon me with a more welcoming eye.
+She laid her hand upon my sleeve and drew me into the room.
+
+“What’s the meaning of this, ma’am? Don’t get trying any little games
+upon me,” said I, in my roughest way--and I can put it on rough when I
+like. “It’ll be the worse for you if you play me any trick,” I added,
+showing her my knife.
+
+“I will play you no trick,” said she. “On the contrary, I am your
+friend, and I wish to help you.”
+
+“Excuse me, ma’am, but I find it hard to believe that,” said I. “Why
+should you wish to help me?”
+
+“I have my own reasons,” said she; and then suddenly, with those black
+eyes blazing out of her white face: “It’s because I hate him, hate him,
+hate him! Now you understand.”
+
+I remembered what the landlord had told me, and I did understand. I
+looked at her Ladyship’s face, and I knew that I could trust her. She
+wanted to revenge herself upon her husband. She wanted to hit him where
+it would hurt him most--upon the pocket. She hated him so that she would
+even lower her pride to take such a man as me into her confidence if she
+could gain her end by doing so. I’ve hated some folk in my time, but I
+don’t think I ever understood what hate was until I saw that woman’s
+face in the light of the taper.
+
+“You’ll trust me now?” said she, with another coaxing touch upon my
+sleeve.
+
+“Yes, your Ladyship.”
+
+“You know me, then?”
+
+“I can guess who you are.”
+
+“I dare say my wrongs are the talk of the county. But what does he care
+for that? He only cares for one thing in the whole world, and that you
+can take from him this night. Have you a bag?”
+
+“No, your Ladyship.”
+
+“Shut the shutter behind you. Then no one can see the light. You are
+quite safe. The servants all sleep in the other wing. I can show you
+where all the most valuable things are. You cannot carry them all, so we
+must pick the best.”
+
+The room in which I found myself was long and low, with many rugs and
+skins scattered about on a polished wood floor. Small cases stood here
+and there, and the walls were decorated with spears and swords and
+paddles, and other things which find their way into museums. There were
+some queer clothes, too, which had been brought from savage countries,
+and the lady took down a large leather sack-bag from among them.
+
+“This sleeping-sack will do,” said she. “Now come with me and I will
+show you where the medals are.”
+
+It was like a dream to me to think that this tall, white woman was the
+lady of the house, and that she was lending me a hand to rob her own
+home. I could have burst out laughing at the thought of it, and yet
+there was something in that pale face of hers which stopped my laughter
+and turned me cold and serious. She swept on in front of me like a
+spirit, with the green taper in her hand, and I walked behind with my
+sack until we came to a door at the end of this museum. It was locked,
+but the key was in it, and she led me through.
+
+The room beyond was a small one, hung all round with curtains which had
+pictures on them. It was the hunting of a deer that was painted on it,
+as I remember, and in the flicker of that light you’d have sworn that
+the dogs and the horses were streaming round the walls. The only other
+thing in the room was a row of cases made of walnut, with brass
+ornaments. They had glass tops, and beneath this glass I saw the long
+lines of those gold medals, some of them as big as a plate and half an
+inch thick, all resting upon red velvet and glowing and gleaming in the
+darkness. My fingers were just itching to be at them, and I slipped my
+knife under the lock of one of the cases to wrench it open.
+
+“Wait a moment,” said she, laying her hand upon my arm. “You might do
+better than this.”
+
+“I am very well satisfied, ma’am,” said I, “and much obliged to your
+Ladyship for kind assistance.”
+
+“You can do better,” she repeated. “Would not golden sovereigns be worth
+more to you than these things?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said I. “That’s best of all.”
+
+“Well,” said she. “He sleeps just above our head. It is but one short
+staircase. There is a tin box with money enough to fill this bag under
+his bed.”
+
+“How can I get it without waking him?”
+
+“What matter if he does wake?” She looked very hard at me as she spoke.
+“You could keep him from calling out.”
+
+“No, no, ma’am, I’ll have none of that.”
+
+“Just as you like,” said she. “I thought that you were a stout-hearted
+sort of man by your appearance, but I see that I made a mistake. If you
+are afraid to run the risk of one old man, then of course you cannot
+have the gold which is under his bed. You are the best judge of your own
+business, but I should think that you would do better at some other
+trade.”
+
+“I’ll not have murder on my conscience.”
+
+“You could overpower him without harming him. I never said anything
+about murder. The money lies under the bed. But if you are
+faint-hearted, it is better that you should not attempt it.”
+
+She worked upon me so, partly with her scorn and partly with this money
+that she held before my eyes, that I believe I should have yielded and
+taken my chances upstairs, had it not been that I saw her eyes following
+the struggle within me in such a crafty, malignant fashion, that it was
+evident she was bent upon making me the tool of her revenge, and that
+she would leave me no choice but to do the old man an injury or to be
+captured by him. She felt suddenly that she was giving herself away, and
+she changed her face to a kindly, friendly smile, but it was too late,
+for I had had my warning.
+
+“I will not go upstairs,” said I. “I have all I want here.”
+
+She looked her contempt at me, and there never was a face which could
+look it plainer.
+
+“Very good. You can take these medals. I should be glad if you would
+begin at this end. I suppose they will all be the same value when melted
+down, but these are the ones which are the rarest, and therefore, the
+most precious to him. It is not necessary to break the locks. If you
+press that brass knob you will find that there is a secret spring. So!
+Take that small one first--it is the very apple of his eye.”
+
+She had opened one of the cases, and the beautiful things all lay
+exposed before me. I had my hand upon the one which she had pointed out,
+when suddenly a change came over her face, and she held up one finger as
+a warning. “Hist!” she whispered. “What is that?”
+
+Far away in the silence of the house we heard a low, dragging, shuffling
+sound, and the distant tread of feet. She closed and fastened the case
+in an instant.
+
+“It’s my husband!” she whispered. “All right. Don’t be alarmed. I’ll
+arrange it. Here! Quick, behind the tapestry!”
+
+She pushed me behind the painted curtains upon the wall, my empty
+leather bag still in my hand. Then she took her taper and walked quickly
+into the room from which we had come. From where I stood I could see
+her through the open door.
+
+“Is that you, Robert?” she cried.
+
+The light of a candle shone through the door of the museum, and the
+shuffling steps came nearer. Then I saw a face in the doorway, a great,
+heavy face, all lines and creases, with a huge curving nose, and a pair
+of gold glasses fixed across it. He had to throw his head back to see
+through the glasses, and that great nose thrust out in front of him like
+the beak of some sort of fowl. He was a big man, very tall and burly, so
+that in his loose dressing-gown his figure seemed to fill up the whole
+doorway. He had a pile of grey, curling hair all round his head, but his
+face was clean-shaven. His mouth was thin and small and prim, hidden
+away under his long, masterful nose. He stood there, holding the candle
+in front of him, and looking at his wife with a queer, malicious gleam
+in his eyes. It only needed that one look to tell me that he was as fond
+of her as she was of him.
+
+“How’s this?” he asked. “Some new tantrum? What do you mean by wandering
+about the house? Why don’t you go to bed?”
+
+“I could not sleep,” she answered. She spoke languidly and wearily. If
+she was an actress once, she had not forgotten her calling.
+
+“Might I suggest,” said he, in the same mocking kind of voice, “that a
+good conscience is an excellent aid to sleep?”
+
+“That cannot be true,” she answered, “for you sleep very well.”
+
+“I have only one thing in my life to be ashamed of,” said he, and his
+hair bristled up with anger until he looked like an old cockatoo. “You
+know best what that is. It is a mistake which has brought its own
+punishment with it.”
+
+“To me as well as to you. Remember that!”
+
+“You have very little to whine about. It was I who stooped and you who
+rose.”
+
+“Rose!”
+
+“Yes, rose. I suppose you do not deny that it is a promotion to exchange
+the music-hall for Mannering Hall. Fool that I was ever to take you out
+of your true sphere!”
+
+“If you think so, why do you not separate?”
+
+“Because private misery is better than public humiliation. Because it is
+easier to suffer for a mistake than to own to it. Because also I like to
+keep you in my sight, and to know that you cannot go back to him.”
+
+“You villain! You cowardly villain!”
+
+“Yes, yes, my lady. I know your secret ambition, but it shall never be
+while I live, and if it happens after my death I will at least take care
+that you go to him as a beggar. You and dear Edward will never have the
+satisfaction of squandering my savings, and you may make up your mind to
+that, my lady. Why are those shutters and the window open?”
+
+“I found the night very close.”
+
+“It is not safe. How do you know that some tramp may not be outside? Are
+you aware that my collection of medals is worth more than any similar
+collection in the world? You have left the door open also. What is there
+to prevent any one from rifling the cases?”
+
+“I was here.”
+
+“I know you were. I heard you moving about in the medal room, and that
+was why I came down. What were you doing?”
+
+“Looking at the medals. What else should I be doing?”
+
+“This curiosity is something new.” He looked suspiciously at her and
+moved on towards the inner room, she walking beside him.
+
+It was at this moment that I saw something which startled. I had laid my
+clasp-knife open upon the top of one of the cases, and there it lay in
+full view. She saw it before he did, and with a woman’s cunning she held
+her taper out so that the light of it came between Lord Mannering’s eyes
+and the knife. Then she took it with her left hand and held it against
+her gown out of his sight. He looked about from case to case--I could
+have put my hand at one time upon his long nose--but there was nothing
+to show that the medals had been tampered with, and so, still snarling
+and grumbling, he shuffled off into the other room once more.
+
+And now I have to speak of what I heard rather than of what I saw, but I
+swear to you, as I shall stand some day before my Maker, that what I say
+is the truth.
+
+When they passed into the outer room I saw him lay his candle upon the
+corner of one of the tables, and he sat himself down, but in such a
+position that he was just out of my sight. She moved behind him, as I
+could tell from the fact that the light of her taper threw his long,
+lumpy shadow upon the floor in front of him. Then he began talking about
+this man whom he called Edward, and every word that he said was like a
+blistering drop of vitriol. He spoke low, so that I could not hear it
+all, but from what I heard I should guess that she would as soon have
+been lashed with a whip. At first she said some hot words in reply, but
+then she was silent, and he went on and on in that cold, mocking voice
+of his, nagging and insulting and tormenting, until I wondered that she
+could bear to stand there in silence and listen to it. Then suddenly I
+heard him say in a sharp voice, “Come from behind me! Leave go of my
+collar! What! would you dare to strike me?” There was a sound like a
+blow, just a soft sort of thud, and then I heard him cry out, “My God,
+it’s blood!” He shuffled with his feet as if he was getting up, and then
+I heard another blow, and he cried out, “Oh, you she-devil!” and was
+quiet, except for a dripping and splashing upon the floor.
+
+I ran out from behind my curtain at that, and rushed into the other
+room, shaking all over with the horror of it. The old man had slipped
+down in the chair, and his dressing-gown had rucked up until he looked
+as if he had a monstrous hump to his back. His head, with the gold
+glasses still fixed on his nose, was lolling over upon one side, and his
+little mouth was open just like a dead fish. I could not see where the
+blood was coming from, but I could still hear it drumming upon the
+floor. She stood behind him with the candle shining full upon her face.
+Her lips were pressed together and her eyes shining, and a touch of
+colour had come into each of her cheeks. It just wanted that to make her
+the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.
+
+“You’ve done it now!” said I.
+
+“Yes,” said she, in her quiet way, “I’ve done it now.”
+
+“What are you going to do?” I asked. “They’ll have you for murder as
+sure as fate.”
+
+“Never fear about me. I have nothing to live for, and it does not
+matter. Give me a hand to set him straight in the chair. It is horrible
+to see him like this!”
+
+I did so, though it turned me cold all over to touch him. Some of his
+blood came on my hand and sickened me.
+
+“Now,” said she, “you may as well have the medals as any one else. Take
+them and go.”
+
+“I don’t want them. I only want to get away. I was never mixed up with a
+business like this before.”
+
+“Nonsense!” said she. “You came for the medals, and here they are at
+your mercy. Why should you not have them? There is no one to prevent
+you.”
+
+I held the bag still in my hand. She opened the case, and between us we
+threw a hundred or so of the medals into it. They were all from the one
+case, but I could not bring myself to wait for any more. Then I made for
+the window, for the very air of this house seemed to poison me after
+what I had seen and heard. As I looked back, I saw her standing there,
+tall and graceful, with the light in her hand just as I had seen her
+first. She waved good-bye, and I waved back at her and sprang out into
+the gravel drive.
+
+I thank God that I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that I have
+never done a murder, but perhaps it would be different if I had been
+able to read that woman’s mind and thoughts. There might have been two
+bodies in the room instead of one if I could have seen behind that last
+smile of hers. But I thought of nothing but of getting safely away, and
+it never entered my head how she might be fixing the rope round my neck.
+I had not taken five steps out from the window skirting down the shadow
+of the house in the way that I had come, when I heard a scream that
+might have raised the parish, and then another and another.
+
+“Murder!” she cried. “Murder! Murder! Help!” and her voice rang out in
+the quiet of the night-time and sounded over the whole country-side. It
+went through my head, that dreadful cry. In an instant lights began to
+move and windows to fly up, not only in the house behind me, but at the
+lodge and in the stables in front. Like a frightened rabbit I bolted
+down the drive, but I heard the clang of the gate being shut before I
+could reach it. Then I hid my bag of medals under some dry fagots, and I
+tried to get away across the park, but some one saw me in the moonlight,
+and presently I had half a dozen of them with dogs upon my heels. I
+crouched down among the brambles, but those dogs were too many for me,
+and I was glad enough when the men came up and prevented me from being
+torn into pieces. They seized me, and dragged me back to the room from
+which I had come.
+
+“Is this the man, your Ladyship?” asked the oldest of them--the same
+whom I found out afterwards to be the butler.
+
+She had been bending over the body, with her handkerchief to her eyes,
+and now she turned upon me with the face of a fury. Oh, what an actress
+that woman was!
+
+“Yes, yes, it is the very man,” she cried. “Oh, you villain, you cruel
+villain, to treat an old man so!”
+
+There was a man there who seemed to be a village constable. He laid his
+hand upon my shoulder.
+
+“What do you say to that?” said he.
+
+“It was she who did it,” I cried, pointing at the woman, whose eyes
+never flinched before mine.
+
+“Come! come! Try another!” said the constable, and one of the
+men-servants struck at me with his fist.
+
+“I tell you that I saw her do it. She stabbed him twice with a knife.
+She first helped me to rob him, and then she murdered him.”
+
+The footman tried to strike me again, but she held up her hand.
+
+“Do not hurt him,” said she. “I think that his punishment may safely be
+left to the law.”
+
+“I’ll see to that, your Ladyship,” said the constable. “Your Ladyship
+actually saw the crime committed, did you not?”
+
+“Yes, yes, I saw it with my own eyes. It was horrible. We heard the
+noise and we came down. My poor husband was in front. The man had one of
+the cases open, and was filling a black leather bag which he held in his
+hand. He rushed past us, and my husband seized him. There was a
+struggle, and he stabbed him twice. There you can see the blood upon his
+hands. If I am not mistaken, his knife is still in Lord Mannering’s
+body.”
+
+“Look at the blood upon her hands!” I cried.
+
+“She has been holding up his Lordship’s head, you lying rascal,” said
+the butler.
+
+“And here’s the very sack her Ladyship spoke of,” said the constable, as
+a groom came in with the one which I had dropped in my flight. “And here
+are the medals inside it. That’s good enough for me. We will keep him
+safe here to-night, and to-morrow the inspector and I can take him into
+Salisbury.”
+
+“Poor creature,” said the woman. “For my own part, I forgive him any
+injury which he has done me. Who knows what temptation may have driven
+him to crime? His conscience and the law will give him punishment enough
+without any reproach of mine rendering it more bitter.”
+
+I could not answer--I tell you, sir, I could not answer, so taken aback
+was I by the assurance of the woman. And so, seeming by my silence to
+agree to all that she had said, I was dragged away by the butler and the
+constable into the cellar, in which they locked me for the night.
+
+There, sir, I have told you the whole story of the events which led up
+to the murder of Lord Mannering by his wife upon the night of September
+the 14th, in the year 1894. Perhaps you will put my statement on one
+side as the constable did at Mannering Towers, or the judge afterwards
+at the county assizes. Or perhaps you will see that there is the ring of
+truth in what I say, and you will follow it up, and so make your name
+for ever as a man who does not grudge personal trouble where justice is
+to be done. I have only you to look to, sir, and if you will clear my
+name of this false accusation, then I will worship you as one man never
+yet worshipped another. But if you fail me, then I give you my solemn
+promise that I will rope myself up, this day month, to the bar of my
+window, and from that time on I will come to plague you in your dreams
+if ever yet one man was able to come back and to haunt another. What I
+ask you to do is very simple. Make inquiries about this woman, watch
+her, learn her past history, find out what she is making of the money
+which has come to her, and whether there is not a man Edward as I have
+stated. If from all this you learn anything which shows you her real
+character, or which seems to you to corroborate the story which I have
+told you, then I am sure that I can rely upon your goodness of heart to
+come to the rescue of an innocent man.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
+
+
+Of all the sciences which have puzzled the sons of men, none had such an
+attraction for the learned Professor von Baumgarten as those which
+relate to psychology and the ill-defined relations between mind and
+matter. A celebrated anatomist, a profound chemist, and one of the first
+physiologists in Europe, it was a relief for him to turn from these
+subjects and to bring his varied knowledge to bear upon the study of the
+soul and the mysterious relationship of spirits. At first, when as a
+young man he began to dip into the secrets of mesmerism, his mind seemed
+to be wandering in a strange land where all was chaos and darkness, save
+that here and there some great unexplainable and disconnected fact
+loomed out in front of him. As the years passed, however, and as the
+worthy Professor’s stock of knowledge increased, for knowledge begets
+knowledge as money bears interest, much which had seemed strange and
+unaccountable began to take another shape in his eyes. New trains of
+reasoning became familiar to him, and he perceived connecting links
+where all had been incomprehensible and startling. By experiments which
+extended over twenty years, he obtained a basis of facts upon which it
+was his ambition to build up a new exact science which should embrace
+mesmerism, spiritualism, and all cognate subjects. In this he was much
+helped by his intimate knowledge of the more intricate parts of animal
+physiology which treat of nerve currents and the working of the brain;
+for Alexis von Baumgarten was Regius Professor of Physiology at the
+University of Keinplatz, and had all the resources of the laboratory to
+aid him in his profound researches.
+
+Professor von Baumgarten was tall and thin, with a hatchet face and
+steel-grey eyes, which were singularly bright and penetrating. Much
+thought had furrowed his forehead and contracted his heavy eyebrows, so
+that he appeared to wear a perpetual frown, which often misled people as
+to his character, for though austere he was tender-hearted. He was
+popular among the students, who would gather round him after his
+lectures and listen eagerly to his strange theories. Often he would call
+for volunteers from amongst them in order to conduct some experiment, so
+that eventually there was hardly a lad in the class who had not, at one
+time or another, been thrown into a mesmeric trance by his Professor.
+
+Of all these young devotees of science there was none who equalled in
+enthusiasm Fritz von Hartmann. It had often seemed strange to his
+fellow-students that wild, reckless Fritz, as dashing a young fellow as
+ever hailed from the Rhinelands, should devote the time and trouble
+which he did in reading up abstruse works and in assisting the Professor
+in his strange experiments. The fact was, however, that Fritz was a
+knowing and long-headed fellow. Months before he had lost his heart to
+young Elise, the blue-eyed, yellow-haired daughter of the lecturer.
+Although he had succeeded in learning from her lips that she was not
+indifferent to his suit, he had never dared to announce himself to her
+family as a formal suitor. Hence he would have found it a difficult
+matter to see his young lady had he not adopted the expedient of making
+himself useful to the Professor. By this means he frequently was asked
+to the old man’s house, where he willingly submitted to be experimented
+upon in any way as long as there was a chance of his receiving one
+bright glance from the eyes of Elise or one touch of her little hand.
+
+Young Fritz von Hartmann was a handsome lad enough. There were broad
+acres, too, which would descend to him when his father died. To many he
+would have seemed an eligible suitor; but Madame frowned upon his
+presence in the house, and lectured the Professor at times on his
+allowing such a wolf to prowl around their lamb. To tell the truth,
+Fritz had an evil name in Keinplatz. Never was there a riot or a duel,
+or any other mischief afoot, but the young Rhinelander figured as a
+ringleader in it. No one used more free and violent language, no one
+drank more, no one played cards more habitually, no one was more idle,
+save in the one solitary subject. No wonder, then, that the good Frau
+Professorin gathered her Fräulein under her wing, and resented the
+attentions of such a _mauvais sujet_. As to the worthy lecturer, he was
+too much engrossed by his strange studies to form an opinion upon the
+subject one way or the other.
+
+For many years there was one question which had continually obtruded
+itself upon his thoughts. All his experiments and his theories turned
+upon a single point. A hundred times a day the Professor asked himself
+whether it was possible for the human spirit to exist apart from the
+body for a time and then to return to it once again. When the
+possibility first suggested itself to him his scientific mind had
+revolted from it. It clashed too violently with preconceived ideas and
+the prejudices of his early training. Gradually, however, as he
+proceeded farther and farther along the pathway of original research,
+his mind shook off its old fetters and became ready to face any
+conclusion which could reconcile the facts. There were many things which
+made him believe that it was possible for mind to exist apart from
+matter. At last it occurred to him that by a daring and original
+experiment the question might be definitely decided.
+
+“It is evident,” he remarked in his celebrated article upon invisible
+entities, which appeared in the _Keinplatz wochentliche Medicalschrift_
+about this time, and which surprised the whole scientific world--“it is
+evident that under certain conditions the soul or mind does separate
+itself from the body. In the case of a mesmerised person, the body lies
+in a cataleptic condition, but the spirit has left it. Perhaps you reply
+that the soul is there, but in a dormant condition. I answer that this
+is not so, otherwise how can one account for the condition of
+clairvoyance, which has fallen into disrepute through the knavery of
+certain scoundrels, but which can easily be shown to be an undoubted
+fact. I have been able myself, with a sensitive subject, to obtain an
+accurate description of what was going on in another room or another
+house. How can such knowledge be accounted for on any hypothesis save
+that the soul of the subject has left the body and is wandering through
+space? For a moment it is recalled by the voice of the operator and says
+what it has seen, and then wings its way once more through the air.
+Since the spirit is by its very nature invisible, we cannot see these
+comings and goings, but we see their effect in the body of the subject,
+now rigid and inert, now struggling to narrate impressions which could
+never have come to it by natural means. There is only one way which I
+can see by which the fact can be demonstrated. Although we in the flesh
+are unable to see these spirits, yet our own spirits, could we separate
+them from the body, would be conscious of the presence of others. It is
+my intention, therefore, shortly to mesmerise one of my pupils. I shall
+then mesmerise myself in a manner which has become easy to me. After
+that, if my theory holds good, my spirit will have no difficulty in
+meeting and communing with the spirit of my pupil, both being separated
+from the body. I hope to be able to communicate the result of this
+interesting experiment in an early number of the _Keinplatz wochenliche
+Medicalschrift_.”
+
+When the good Professor finally fulfilled his promise, and published an
+account of what occurred, the narrative was so extraordinary that it was
+received with general incredulity. The tone of some of the papers was so
+offensive in their comments upon the matter that the angry savant
+declared that he would never open his mouth again, or refer to the
+subject in any way--a promise which he has faithfully kept. This
+narrative has been compiled, however, from the most authentic sources,
+and the events cited in it may be relied upon as substantially correct.
+
+It happened, then, that shortly after the time when Professor von
+Baumgarten conceived the idea of the above-mentioned experiment, he was
+walking thoughtfully homewards after a long day in the laboratory, when
+he met a crowd of roystering students who had just streamed out from a
+beer-house. At the head of them, half-intoxicated and very noisy, was
+young Fritz von Hartmann. The Professor would have passed them, but his
+pupil ran across and intercepted him.
+
+“Heh! my worthy master,” he said, taking the old man by the sleeve, and
+leading him down the road with him. “There is something that I have to
+say to you, and it is easier for me to say it now, when the good beer is
+humming in my head, than at another time.”
+
+“What is it, then, Fritz?” the physiologist asked, looking at him in
+mild surprise.
+
+“I hear, mein Herr, that you are about to do some wondrous experiment in
+which you hope to take a man’s soul out of his body, and then to put it
+back again. Is it not so?”
+
+“It is true, Fritz.”
+
+“And have you considered, my dear sir, that you may have some difficulty
+in finding some one on whom to try this? Potztausend! Suppose that the
+soul went out and would not come back. That would be a bad business. Who
+is to take the risk?”
+
+“But, Fritz,” the Professor cried, very much startled by this view of
+the matter, “I had relied upon your assistance in the attempt. Surely
+you will not desert me. Consider the honour and glory.”
+
+“Consider the fiddlesticks!” the student cried angrily. “Am I to be paid
+always thus? Did I not stand two hours upon a glass insulator while you
+poured electricity into my body? Have you not stimulated my phrenic
+nerves, besides ruining my digestion with a galvanic current round my
+stomach? Four-and-thirty times you have mesmerised me, and what have I
+got from all this? Nothing. And now you wish to take my soul out, as you
+would take the works from a watch. It is more than flesh and blood can
+stand.”
+
+“Dear, dear!” the Professor cried in great distress. “That is very true,
+Fritz. I never thought of it before. If you can but suggest how I can
+compensate you, you will find me ready and willing.”
+
+“Then listen,” said Fritz solemnly. “If you will pledge your word that
+after this experiment I may have the hand of your daughter, then I am
+willing to assist you; but if not, I shall have nothing to do with it.
+These are my only terms.”
+
+“And what would my daughter say to this?” the Professor exclaimed, after
+a pause of astonishment.
+
+“Elise would welcome it,” the young man replied. “We have loved each
+other long.”
+
+“Then she shall be yours,” the physiologist said with decision, “for you
+are a good-hearted young man, and one of the best neurotic subjects that
+I have ever known--that is when you are not under the influence of
+alcohol. My experiment is to be performed upon the fourth of next month.
+You will attend at the physiological laboratory at twelve o’clock. It
+will be a great occasion, Fritz. Von Gruben is coming from Jena, and
+Hinterstein from Basle. The chief men of science of all South Germany
+will be there.”
+
+“I shall be punctual,” the student said briefly; and so the two parted.
+The Professor plodded homeward, thinking of the great coming event,
+while the young man staggered along after his noisy companions, with
+his mind full of the blue-eyed Elise, and of the bargain which he had
+concluded with her father.
+
+The Professor did not exaggerate when he spoke of the widespread
+interest excited by his novel psychological experiment. Long before the
+hour had arrived the room was filled by a galaxy of talent. Besides the
+celebrities whom he had mentioned, there had come from London the great
+Professor Lurcher, who had just established his reputation by a
+remarkable treatise upon cerebral centres. Several great lights of the
+Spiritualistic body had also come a long distance to be present, as had
+a Swedenborgian minister, who considered that the proceedings might
+throw some light upon the doctrines of the Rosy Cross.
+
+There was considerable applause from this eminent assembly upon the
+appearance of Professor von Baumgarten and his subject upon the
+platform. The lecturer, in a few well-chosen words, explained what his
+views were, and how he proposed to test them. “I hold,” he said, “that
+when a person is under the influence of mesmerism, his spirit is for the
+time released from his body, and I challenge any one to put forward any
+other hypothesis which will account for the fact of clairvoyance. I
+therefore hope that upon mesmerising my young friend here, and then
+putting myself into a trance, our spirits may be able to commune
+together, though our bodies lie still and inert. After a time nature
+will resume her sway, our spirits will return into our respective
+bodies, and all will be as before. With your kind permission, we shall
+now proceed to attempt the experiment.”
+
+The applause was renewed at this speech, and the audience settled down
+in expectant silence. With a few rapid passes the Professor mesmerised
+the young man, who sank back in his chair, pale and rigid. He then took
+a bright globe of glass from his pocket, and by concentrating his gaze
+upon it and making a strong mental effort, he succeeded in throwing
+himself into the same condition. It was a strange and impressive sight
+to see the old man and the young sitting together in the same cataleptic
+condition. Whither, then, had their souls fled? That was the question
+which presented itself to each and every one of the spectators.
+
+Five minutes passed, and then ten, and then fifteen, and then fifteen
+more, while the Professor and his pupil sat stiff and stark upon the
+platform. During that time not a sound was heard from the assembled
+savants, but every eye was bent upon the two pale faces, in search of
+the first signs of returning consciousness. Nearly an hour had elapsed
+before the patient watchers were rewarded. A faint flush came back to
+the cheeks of Professor von Baumgarten. The soul was coming back once
+more to its earthly tenement. Suddenly he stretched out his long thin
+arms, as one awaking from sleep, and rubbing his eyes, stood up from his
+chair and gazed about him as though he hardly realised where he was.
+“Tausend Teufel!” he exclaimed, rapping out a tremendous South German
+oath, to the great astonishment of his audience and to the disgust of
+the Swedenborgian. “Where the Henker am I then, and what in thunder has
+occurred? Oh yes, I remember now. One of these nonsensical mesmeric
+experiments. There is no result this time, for I remember nothing at all
+since I became unconscious; so you have had all your long journeys for
+nothing, my learned friends, and a very good joke too”; at which the
+Regius Professor of Physiology burst into a roar of laughter and slapped
+his thigh in a highly indecorous fashion. The audience were so enraged
+at this unseemly behaviour on the part of their host, that there might
+have been a considerable disturbance, had it not been for the judicious
+interference of young Fritz von Hartmann, who had now recovered from his
+lethargy. Stepping to the front of the platform, the young man
+apologised for the conduct of his companion. “I am sorry to say,” he
+said, “that he is a harum-scarum sort of fellow, although he appeared so
+grave at the commencement of this experiment. He is still suffering from
+mesmeric reaction, and is hardly accountable for his words. As to the
+experiment itself, I do not consider it to be a failure. It is very
+possible that our spirits may have been communing in space during this
+hour; but, unfortunately, our gross bodily memory is distinct from our
+spirit, and we cannot recall what has occurred. My energies shall now be
+devoted to devising some means by which spirits may be able to recollect
+what occurs to them in their free state, and I trust that when I have
+worked this out, I may have the pleasure of meeting you all once again
+in this hall, and demonstrating to you the result.” This address, coming
+from so young a student, caused considerable astonishment among the
+audience, and some were inclined to be offended, thinking that he
+assumed rather too much importance. The majority, however, looked upon
+him as a young man of great promise, and many comparisons were made as
+they left the hall between his dignified conduct and the levity of his
+professor, who during the above remarks was laughing heartily in a
+corner, by no means abashed at the failure of the experiment.
+
+Now although all these learned men were filing out of the lecture-room
+under the impression that they had seen nothing of note, as a matter of
+fact one of the most wonderful things in the whole history of the world
+had just occurred before their very eyes. Professor von Baumgarten had
+been so far correct in his theory that both his spirit and that of his
+pupil had been for a time absent from the body. But here a strange and
+unforeseen complication had occurred. In their return the spirit of
+Fritz von Hartmann had entered into the body of Alexis von Baumgarten,
+and that of Alexis von Baumgarten had taken up its abode in the frame of
+Fritz von Hartmann. Hence the slang and scurrility which issued from the
+lips of the serious Professor, and hence also the weighty words and
+grave statements which fell from the careless student. It was an
+unprecedented event, yet no one knew of it, least of all those whom it
+concerned.
+
+The body of the Professor, feeling conscious suddenly of a great dryness
+about the back of the throat, sallied out into the street, still
+chuckling to himself over the result of the experiment, for the soul of
+Fritz within was reckless at the thought of the bride whom he had won so
+easily. His first impulse was to go up to the house and see her, but on
+second thought he came to the conclusion that it would be best to stay
+away until Madame Baumgarten should be informed by her husband of the
+agreement which had been made. He therefore made his way down to the
+Grüner Mann, which was one of the favourite trysting-places of the
+wilder students, and ran, boisterously waving his cane in the air, into
+the little parlour, where sat Spiegle and Müller and half a dozen other
+boon companions.
+
+“Ha, ha! my boys,” he shouted. “I knew I should find you here. Drink up,
+every one of you, and call for what you like, for I’m going to stand
+treat to-day.”
+
+Had the green man who is depicted upon the signpost of that well-known
+inn suddenly marched into the room and called for a bottle of wine, the
+students could not have been more amazed than they were by this
+unexpected entry of their revered professor. They were so astonished
+that for a minute or two they glared at him in utter bewilderment
+without being able to make any reply to his hearty invitation.
+
+“Donner und Blitzen!” shouted the Professor angrily. “What the deuce is
+the matter with you, then? You sit there like a set of stuck pigs
+staring at me. What is it then?”
+
+“It is the unexpected honour,” stammered Spiegel, who was in the chair.
+
+“Honour--rubbish!” said the Professor testily. “Do you think that just
+because I happen to have been exhibiting mesmerism to a parcel of old
+fossils, I am therefore too proud to associate with dear old friends
+like you? Come out of that chair, Spiegel, my boy, for I shall preside
+now. Beer, or wine, or schnapps, my lads--call for what you like, and
+put it all down to me.”
+
+Never was there such an afternoon in the Grüner Mann. The foaming
+flagons of lager and the green-necked bottles of Rhenish circulated
+merrily. By degrees the students lost their shyness in the presence of
+their Professor. As for him, he shouted, he sang, he roared, he balanced
+a long tobacco-pipe upon his nose, and offered to run a hundred yards
+against any member of the company. The Kellner and the barmaid whispered
+to each other outside the door their astonishment at such proceedings on
+the part of a Regius Professor of the ancient university of Keinplatz.
+They had still more to whisper about afterwards, for the learned man
+cracked the Kellner’s crown, and kissed the barmaid behind the kitchen
+door.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the Professor, standing up, albeit somewhat
+totteringly, at the end of the table, and balancing his high
+old-fashioned wine glass in his bony hand, “I must now explain to you
+what is the cause of this festivity.”
+
+“Hear! hear!” roared the students, hammering their beer glasses against
+the table; “a speech, a speech!--silence for a speech!”
+
+“The fact is, my friends,” said the Professor, beaming through his
+spectacles, “I hope very soon to be married.”
+
+“Married!” cried a student, bolder than the others. “Is Madame dead,
+then?”
+
+“Madame who?”
+
+“Why, Madame von Baumgarten, of course.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” laughed the Professor; “I can see, then, that you know all
+about my former difficulties. No, she is not dead, but I have reason to
+believe that she will not oppose my marriage.”
+
+“That is very accommodating of her,” remarked one of the company.
+
+“In fact,” said the Professor, “I hope that she will now be induced to
+aid me in getting a wife. She and I never took to each other very much;
+but now I hope all that may be ended, and when I marry she will come and
+stay with me.”
+
+“What a happy family!” exclaimed some wag.
+
+“Yes, indeed; and I hope you will come to my wedding, all of you. I
+won’t mention names, but here is to my little bride!” and the Professor
+waved his glass in the air.
+
+“Here’s to his little bride!” roared the roysterers, with shouts of
+laughter. “Here’s her health. Sie soll leben--Hoch!” And so the fun
+waxed still more fast and furious, while each young fellow followed the
+Professor’s example, and drank a toast to the girl of his heart.
+
+While all this festivity had been going on at the Grüner Mann, a very
+different scene had been enacted elsewhere. Young Fritz von Hartmann,
+with a solemn face and a reserved manner, had, after the experiment,
+consulted and adjusted some mathematical instruments; after which, with
+a few peremptory words to the janitor, he had walked out into the street
+and wended his way slowly in the direction of the house of the
+Professor. As he walked he saw Von Althaus, the professor of anatomy, in
+front of him, and quickening his pace he overtook him.
+
+“I say, Von Althaus,” he exclaimed, tapping him on the sleeve, “you were
+asking me for some information the other day concerning the middle coat
+of the cerebral arteries. Now I find----”
+
+“Donnerwetter!” shouted Von Althaus, who was a peppery old fellow. “What
+the deuce do you mean by your impertinence! I’ll have you up before the
+Academical Senate for this, sir”; with which threat he turned on his
+heel and hurried away. Von Hartmann was much surprised at this
+reception. “It’s on account of this failure of my experiment,” he said
+to himself, and continued moodily on his way.
+
+Fresh surprises were in store for him, however. He was hurrying along
+when he was overtaken by two students. These youths, instead of raising
+their caps or showing any other sign of respect, gave a wild whoop of
+delight the instant that they saw him, and rushing at him, seized him by
+each arm and commenced dragging him along with them.
+
+“Gott in Himmel!” roared Von Hartmann. “What is the meaning of this
+unparalleled insult? Where are you taking me?”
+
+“To crack a bottle of wine with us,” said the two students. “Come along!
+That is an invitation which you have never refused.”
+
+“I never heard of such insolence in my life!” cried Von Hartmann. “Let
+go my arms! I shall certainly have you rusticated for this. Let me go, I
+say!” and he kicked furiously at his captors.
+
+“Oh, if you choose to turn ill-tempered, you may go where you like,” the
+students said, releasing him. “We can do very well without you.”
+
+“I know you. I’ll pay you out,” said Von Hartmann furiously, and
+continued in the direction which he imagined to be his own home, much
+incensed at the two episodes which had occurred to him on the way.
+
+Now, Madame von Baumgarten, who was looking out of the window and
+wondering why her husband was late for dinner, was considerably
+astonished to see the young student come stalking down the road. As
+already remarked, she had a great antipathy to him, and if ever he
+ventured into the house it was on sufferance, and under the protection
+of the Professor. Still more astonished was she, therefore, when she
+beheld him undo the wicket-gate and stride up the garden path with the
+air of one who is master of the situation. She could hardly believe her
+eyes, and hastened to the door with all her maternal instincts up in
+arms. From the upper windows the fair Elise had also observed this
+daring move upon the part of her lover, and her heart beat quick with
+mingled pride and consternation.
+
+“Good day, sir,” Madame von Baumgarten remarked to the intruder, as she
+stood in gloomy majesty in the open doorway.
+
+“A very fine day indeed, Martha,” returned the other. “Now, don’t stand
+there like a statue of Juno, but bustle about and get the dinner ready,
+for I am well-nigh starved.”
+
+“Martha! Dinner!” ejaculated the lady, falling back in astonishment.
+
+“Yes, dinner, Martha, dinner!” howled Von Hartmann, who was becoming
+irritable. “Is there anything wonderful in that request when a man has
+been out all day? I’ll wait in the dining-room. Anything will do.
+Schinken, and sausage, and prunes--any little thing that happens to be
+about. There you are, standing staring again. Woman, will you or will
+you not stir your legs?”
+
+This last address, delivered with a perfect shriek of rage, had the
+effect of sending good Madame von Baumgarten flying along the passage
+and through the kitchen, where she locked herself up in the scullery and
+went into violent hysterics. In the meantime Von Hartmann strode into
+the room and threw himself down upon the sofa in the worst of tempers.
+
+“Elise!” he shouted. “Confound the girl! Elise!”
+
+Thus roughly summoned, the young lady came timidly downstairs and into
+the presence of her lover. “Dearest!” she cried, throwing her arms round
+him, “I know this is all done for my sake. It is a _ruse_ in order to
+see me.”
+
+Von Hartmann’s indignation at this fresh attack upon him was so great
+that he became speechless for a minute from rage, and could only glare
+and shake his fists, while he struggled in her embrace. When he at last
+regained his utterance, he indulged in such a bellow of passion that the
+young lady dropped back, petrified with fear, into an arm-chair.
+
+“Never have I passed such a day in my life,” Von Hartmann cried,
+stamping upon the floor. “My experiment has failed. Von Althaus has
+insulted me. Two students have dragged me along the public road. My wife
+nearly faints when I ask her for dinner, and my daughter flies at me and
+hugs me like a grizzly bear.”
+
+“You are ill, dear,” the young lady cried. “Your mind is wandering. You
+have not even kissed me once.”
+
+“No, and I don’t intend to either,” Von Hartmann said with decision.
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why don’t you go and fetch my
+slippers, and help your mother to dish the dinner?”
+
+“And is it for this,” Elise cried, burying her face in her
+handkerchief--“is it for this that I have loved you passionately for
+upwards of ten months? Is it for this that I have braved my mother’s
+wrath? Oh, you have broken my heart; I am sure you have!” and she sobbed
+hysterically.
+
+“I can’t stand much more of this,” roared Von Hartmann furiously. “What
+the deuce does the girl mean? What did I do ten months ago which
+inspired you with such a particular affection for me? If you are really
+so very fond, you would do better to run away down and find the Schinken
+and some bread, instead of talking all this nonsense.”
+
+“Oh, my darling!” cried the unhappy maiden, throwing herself into the
+arms of what she imagined to be her lover, “you do but joke in order to
+frighten your little Elise.”
+
+Now it chanced that at the moment of this unexpected embrace Von
+Hartmann was still leaning back against the end of the sofa, which, like
+much German furniture, was in a somewhat rickety condition. It also
+chanced that beneath this end of the sofa there stood a tank full of
+water in which the physiologist was conducting certain experiments upon
+the ova of fish, and which he kept in his drawing-room in order to
+ensure an equable temperature. The additional weight of the maiden,
+combined with the impetus with which she hurled herself upon him, caused
+the precarious piece of furniture to give way, and the body of the
+unfortunate student was hurled backwards into the tank, in which his
+head and shoulders were firmly wedged, while his lower extremities
+flapped helplessly about in the air. This was the last straw.
+Extricating himself with some difficulty from his unpleasant position,
+Von Hartmann gave an inarticulate yell of fury, and dashing out of the
+room, in spite of the entreaties of Elise, he seized his hat and rushed
+off into the town, all dripping and dishevelled, with the intention of
+seeking in some inn the food and comfort which he could not find at
+home.
+
+As the spirit of Von Baumgarten encased in the body of Von Hartmann
+strode down the winding pathway which led down to the little town,
+brooding angrily over his many wrongs, he became aware that an elderly
+man was approaching him who appeared to be in an advanced state of
+intoxication. Von Hartmann waited by the side of the road and watched
+this individual, who came stumbling along, reeling from one side of the
+road to the other, and singing a student song in a very husky and
+drunken voice. At first his interest was merely excited by the fact of
+seeing a man of so venerable an appearance in such a disgraceful
+condition, but as he approached nearer, he became convinced that he knew
+the other well, though he could not recall when or where he had met him.
+This impression became so strong with him, that when the stranger came
+abreast of him he stepped in front of him and took a good look at his
+features.
+
+“Well, sonny,” said the drunken man, surveying Von Hartmann and swaying
+about in front of him, “where the Henker have I seen you before? I know
+you as well as I know myself. Who the deuce are you?”
+
+“I am Professor von Baumgarten,” said the student. “May I ask who you
+are? I am strangely familiar with your features.”
+
+“You should never tell lies, young man,” said the other. “You’re
+certainly not the Professor, for he is an ugly snuffy old chap, and you
+are a big broad-shouldered young fellow. As to myself, I am Fritz von
+Hartmann at your service.”
+
+“That you certainly are not,” exclaimed the body of Von Hartmann. “You
+might very well be his father. But hullo, sir, are you aware that you
+are wearing my studs and my watch-chain?”
+
+“Donnerwetter!” hiccoughed the other. “If those are not the trousers for
+which my tailor is about to sue me, may I never taste beer again.”
+
+Now as Von Hartmann, overwhelmed by the many strange things which had
+occurred to him that day, passed his hand over his forehead and cast his
+eyes downwards, he chanced to catch the reflection of his own face in a
+pool which the rain had left upon the road. To his utter astonishment he
+perceived that his face was that of a youth, that his dress was that of
+a fashionable young student, and that in every way he was the antithesis
+of the grave and scholarly figure in which his mind was wont to dwell.
+In an instant his active brain ran over the series of events which had
+occurred and sprang to the conclusion. He fairly reeled under the blow.
+
+“Himmel!” he cried, “I see it all. Our souls are in the wrong bodies. I
+am you and you are I. My theory is proved--but at what an expense! Is
+the most scholarly mind in Europe to go about with this frivolous
+exterior? Oh the labours of a lifetime are ruined!” and he smote his
+breast in his despair.
+
+“I say,” remarked the real Von Hartmann from the body of the Professor,
+“I quite see the force of your remarks, but don’t go knocking my body
+about like that. You received it in an excellent condition, but I
+perceive that you have wet it and bruised it, and spilled snuff over my
+ruffled shirt-front.”
+
+“It matters little,” the other said moodily. “Such as we are so must we
+stay. My theory is triumphantly proved, but the cost is terrible.”
+
+“If I thought so,” said the spirit of the student, “it would be hard
+indeed. What could I do with these stiff old limbs, and how could I woo
+Elise and persuade her that I was not her father? No, thank Heaven, in
+spite of the beer which has upset me more than ever it could upset my
+real self, I can see a way out of it.”
+
+“How?” gasped the Professor.
+
+“Why, by repeating the experiment. Liberate our souls once more, and the
+chances are that they will find their way back into their respective
+bodies.”
+
+No drowning man could clutch more eagerly at a straw than did Von
+Baumgarten’s spirit at this suggestion. In feverish haste he dragged his
+own frame to the side of the road and threw it into a mesmeric trance;
+he then extracted the crystal ball from the pocket, and managed to bring
+himself into the same condition.
+
+Some students and peasants who chanced to pass during the next hour were
+much astonished to see the worthy Professor of Physiology and his
+favourite student both sitting upon a very muddy bank and both
+completely insensible. Before the hour was up quite a crowd had
+assembled, and they were discussing the advisability of sending for an
+ambulance to convey the pair to hospital, when the learned savant
+opened his eyes and gazed vacantly around him. For an instant he seemed
+to forget how he had come there, but next moment he astonished his
+audience by waving his skinny arms above his head and crying out in a
+voice of rapture, “Gott sei gedanket! I am myself again. I feel I am!”
+Nor was the amazement lessened when the student, springing to his feet,
+burst into the same cry, and the two performed a sort of _pas de joie_
+in the middle of the road.
+
+For some time after that people had some suspicion of the sanity of both
+the actors in this strange episode. When the Professor published his
+experiences in the _Medicalschrift_ as he had promised, he was met by an
+intimation, even from his colleagues, that he would do well to have his
+mind cared for, and that another such publication would certainly
+consign him to a madhouse. The student also found by experience that it
+was wisest to be silent about the matter.
+
+When the worthy lecturer returned home that night he did not receive the
+cordial welcome which he might have looked for after his strange
+adventures. On the contrary, he was roundly upbraided by both his female
+relatives for smelling of drink and tobacco, and also for being absent
+while a young scapegrace invaded the house and insulted its occupants.
+It was long before the domestic atmosphere of the lecturer’s house
+resumed its normal quiet, and longer still before the genial face of Von
+Hartmann was seen beneath its roof. Perseverance, however, conquers
+every obstacle, and the student eventually succeeded in pacifying the
+enraged ladies and in establishing himself upon the old footing. He has
+now no longer any cause to fear the enmity of Madame, for he is
+Hauptmann von Hartmann of the Emperor’s own Uhlans, and his loving wife
+Elise has already presented him with two little Uhlans as a visible sign
+and token of her affection.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+CYPRIAN OVERBECK WELLS
+
+A LITERARY MOSAIC
+
+
+From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that
+my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however,
+had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to
+share my views. It is true that private friends have sometimes, after
+listening to my effusions, gone the length of remarking, “Really, Smith,
+that’s not half bad!” or, “You take my advice, old boy, and send that to
+some magazine!” but I have never on these occasions had the moral
+courage to inform my adviser that the article in question had been sent
+to well-nigh every publisher in London, and had come back again with a
+rapidity and precision which spoke well for the efficiency of our postal
+arrangements.
+
+Had my manuscripts been paper boomerangs they could not have returned
+with greater accuracy to their unhappy despatcher. Oh, the vileness and
+utter degradation of the moment when the stale little cylinder of
+closely written pages, which seemed so fresh and full of promise a few
+days ago, is handed in by a remorseless postman! And what moral
+depravity shines through the editor’s ridiculous plea of “want of
+space!” But the subject is a painful one, and a digression from the
+plain statement of facts which I originally contemplated.
+
+From the age of seventeen to that of three-and-twenty I was a literary
+volcano in a constant state of eruption. Poems and tales, articles and
+reviews, nothing came amiss to my pen. From the great sea-serpent to
+the nebular hypothesis, I was ready to write on anything or everything,
+and I can safely say that I seldom handled a subject without throwing
+new lights upon it. Poetry and romance, however, had always the greatest
+attractions for me. How I have wept over the pathos of my heroines, and
+laughed at the comicalities of my buffoons! Alas! I could find no one to
+join me in my appreciation, and solitary admiration for one’s self,
+however genuine, becomes satiating after a time. My father remonstrated
+with me too on the score of expense and loss of time, so that I was
+finally compelled to relinquish my dreams of literary independence and
+to become a clerk in a wholesale mercantile firm connected with the West
+African trade.
+
+Even when condemned to the prosaic duties which fell to my lot in the
+office, I continued faithful to my first love. I have introduced pieces
+of word-painting into the most commonplace business letters which have,
+I am told, considerably astonished the recipients. My refined sarcasm
+has made defaulting creditors writhe and wince. Occasionally, like the
+great Silas Wegg, I would drop into poetry, and so raise the whole tone
+of the correspondence. Thus what could be more elegant than my rendering
+of the firm’s instructions to the captain of one of their vessels. It
+ran in this way:--
+
+  “From England, Captain, you must steer a
+  Course directly to Madeira,
+  Land the casks of salted beef,
+  Then away to Teneriffe.
+  Pray be careful, cool, and wary
+  With the merchants of Canary.
+  When you leave them make the most
+  Of the trade winds to the coast.
+  Down it you shall sail as far
+  As the land of Calabar,
+  And from there you’ll onward go
+  To Bonny and Fernando Po”----
+
+and so on for four pages. The captain, instead of treasuring up this
+little gem, called at the office next day, and demanded with quite
+unnecessary warmth what the thing meant, and I was compelled to
+translate it all back into prose. On this, as on other similar
+occasions, my employer took me severely to task--for he was, you see, a
+man entirely devoid of all pretensions to literary taste!
+
+All this, however, is a mere preamble, and leads up to the fact that
+after ten years or so of drudgery I inherited a legacy which, though
+small, was sufficient to satisfy my simple wants. Finding myself
+independent, I rented a quiet house removed from the uproar and bustle
+of London, and there I settled down with the intention of producing some
+great work which should single me out from the family of the Smiths, and
+render my name immortal. To this end I laid in several quires of
+foolscap, a box of quill pens, and a sixpenny bottle of ink, and having
+given my housekeeper injunctions to deny me to all visitors, I proceeded
+to look round for a suitable subject.
+
+I was looking round for some weeks. At the end of that time I found that
+I had by constant nibbling devoured a large number of the quills, and
+had spread the ink out to such advantage, what with blots, spills, and
+abortive commencements, that there appeared to be some everywhere
+except in the bottle. As to the story itself, however, the facility of
+my youth had deserted me completely, and my mind remained a complete
+blank; nor could I, do what I would, excite my sterile imagination to
+conjure up a single incident or character.
+
+In this strait I determined to devote my leisure to running rapidly
+through the works of the leading English novelists, from Daniel Defoe to
+the present day, in the hope of stimulating my latent ideas and of
+getting a good grasp of the general tendency of literature. For some
+time past I had avoided opening any work of fiction because one of the
+greatest faults of my youth had been that I invariably and unconsciously
+mimicked the style of the last author whom I had happened to read. Now,
+however, I made up my mind to seek safety in a multitude, and by
+consulting _all_ the English classics to avoid the danger of imitating
+any one too closely. I had just accomplished the task of reading through
+the majority of the standard novels at the time when my narrative
+commences.
+
+It was, then, about twenty minutes to ten on the night of the fourth of
+June, eighteen hundred and eighty-six, that, after disposing of a pint
+of beer and a Welsh rarebit for my supper, I seated myself in my
+arm-chair, cocked my feet upon a stool, and lit my pipe, as was my
+custom. Both my pulse and my temperature were, as far as I know, normal
+at the time. I would give the state of the barometer, but that unlucky
+instrument had experienced an unprecedented fall of forty-two
+inches--from a nail to the ground--and was not in a reliable condition.
+We live in a scientific age, and I flatter myself that I move with the
+times.
+
+Whilst in that comfortable lethargic condition which accompanies both
+digestion and poisoning by nicotine, I suddenly became aware of the
+extraordinary fact that my little drawing-room had elongated into a
+great _salon_, and that my humble table had increased in proportion.
+Round this colossal mahogany were seated a great number of people who
+were talking earnestly together, and the surface in front of them was
+strewn with books and pamphlets. I could not help observing that these
+persons were dressed in a most extraordinary mixture of costumes, for
+those at the end nearest to me wore peruke wigs, swords, and all the
+fashions of two centuries back; those about the centre had tight
+knee-breeches, high cravats, and heavy bunches of seals; while among
+those at the far side the majority were dressed in the most modern
+style, and among them I saw, to my surprise, several eminent men of
+letters whom I had the honour of knowing. There were two or three women
+in the company. I should have risen to my feet to greet these unexpected
+guests, but all power of motion appeared to have deserted me, and I
+could only lie still and listen to their conversation, which I soon
+perceived to be all about myself.
+
+“Egad!” exclaimed a rough, weather-beaten man, who was smoking a long
+church-warden pipe at my end of the table, “my heart softens for him.
+Why, gossips, we’ve been in the same straits ourselves. Gadzooks, never
+did mother feel more concern for her eldest born than I when Rory Random
+went out to make his own way in the world.”
+
+“Right, Tobias, right!” cried another man, seated at my very elbow. “By
+my troth, I lost more flesh over poor Robin on his island, than had I
+the sweating sickness twice told. The tale was well-nigh done when in
+swaggers my Lord of Rochester--a merry gallant, and one whose word in
+matters literary might make or mar. ‘How now, Defoe,’ quoth he, ‘hast a
+tale on hand?’ ‘Even so, your lordship,’ I returned. ‘A right merry one,
+I trust,’ quoth he. ‘Discourse unto me concerning thy heroine, a comely
+lass, Dan, or I mistake.’ ‘Nay,’ I replied, ‘there is no heroine in the
+matter.’ ‘Split not your phrases,’ quoth he; ‘thou weighest every word
+like a scald attorney. Speak to me of thy principal female character, be
+she heroine or no.’ ‘My lord,’ I answered, ‘there is no female
+character.’ ‘Then out upon thyself and thy book too!’ he cried. ‘Thou
+hadst best burn it!’--and so out in great dudgeon, whilst I fell to
+mourning over my poor romance, which was thus, as it were, sentenced to
+death before its birth. Yet there are a thousand now who have heard of
+Robin and his man Friday, to one who has heard of my Lord of Rochester.”
+
+“Very true, Defoe,” said a genial-looking man in a red waistcoat, who
+was sitting at the modern end of the table. “But all this won’t help our
+good friend Smith in making a start at his story, which, I believe, was
+the reason why we assembled.”
+
+“The Dickens it is!” stammered a little man beside him, and everybody
+laughed, especially the genial man, who cried out, “Charley Lamb,
+Charley Lamb, you’ll never alter. You would make a pun if you were
+hanged for it.”
+
+“That would be a case of haltering,” returned the other, on which
+everybody laughed again.
+
+By this time I had begun to dimly realise in my confused brain the
+enormous honour which had been done me. The greatest masters of fiction
+in every age of English letters had apparently made a rendezvous beneath
+my roof, in order to assist me in my difficulties. There were many faces
+at the table whom I was unable to identify; but when I looked hard at
+others I often found them to be very familiar to me, whether from
+paintings or from mere description. Thus between the first two speakers,
+who had betrayed themselves as Defoe and Smollett, there sat a dark,
+saturnine, corpulent old man, with harsh prominent features, who I was
+sure could be none other than the famous author of Gulliver. There were
+several others of whom I was not so sure, sitting at the other side of
+the table, but I conjecture that both Fielding and Richardson were among
+them, and I could swear to the lantern-jaws and cadaverous visage of
+Lawrence Sterne. Higher up I could see among the crowd the high forehead
+of Sir Walter Scott, the masculine features of George Eliot, and the
+flattened nose of Thackeray; while amongst the living I recognised James
+Payn, Walter Besant, the lady known as “Ouida,” Robert Louis Stevenson,
+and several of lesser note. Never before, probably, had such an
+assemblage of choice spirits gathered under one roof.
+
+“Well,” said Sir Walter Scott, speaking with a very pronounced accent,
+“ye ken the auld proverb, sirs, ‘Ower mony cooks,’ or as the Border
+minstrel sang--
+
+  ‘Black Johnstone wi’ his troopers ten
+    Might mak’ the heart turn cauld,
+  But Johnstone when he’s a’ alane
+    Is waur ten thoosand fauld.’
+
+The Johnstones were one of the Redesdale families, second cousins of the
+Armstrongs, and connected by marriage to----”
+
+“Perhaps, Sir Walter,” interrupted Thackeray, “you would take the
+responsibility off our hands by yourself dictating the commencement of a
+story to this young literary aspirant.”
+
+“Na, na!” cried Sir Walter; “I’ll do my share, but there’s Chairlie over
+there as full o’ wut as a Radical’s full o’ treason. He’s the laddie to
+give a cheery opening to it.”
+
+Dickens was shaking his head, and apparently about to refuse the honour,
+when a voice from among the moderns--I could not see who it was for the
+crowd--said:
+
+“Suppose we begin at the end of the table and work round, any one
+contributing a little as the fancy seizes him?”
+
+“Agreed! agreed!” cried the whole company; and every eye was turned on
+Defoe, who seemed very uneasy, and filled his pipe from a great
+tobacco-box in front of him.
+
+“Nay, gossips,” he said, “there are others more worthy----” But he was
+interrupted by loud cries of “No! no!” from the whole table; and
+Smollett shouted out, “Stand to it, Dan--stand to it! You and I and the
+Dean here will make three short tacks just to fetch her out of harbour,
+and then she may drift where she pleases.” Thus encouraged, Defoe
+cleared his throat, and began in this way, talking between the puffs of
+his pipe:--
+
+“My father was a well-to-do yeoman of Cheshire, named Cyprian Overbeck,
+but, marrying about the year 1617, he assumed the name of his wife’s
+family, which was Wells; and thus I, their eldest son, was named Cyprian
+Overbeck Wells. The farm was a very fertile one, and contained some of
+the best grazing land in those parts, so that my father was enabled to
+lay by money to the extent of a thousand crowns, which he laid out in an
+adventure to the Indies with such surprising success that in less than
+three years it had increased fourfold. Thus encouraged, he bought a part
+share of the trader, and, fitting her out once more with such
+commodities as were most in demand (viz. old muskets, hangers and axes,
+besides glasses, needles, and the like), he placed me on board as
+supercargo to look after his interests, and despatched us upon our
+voyage.
+
+“We had a fair wind as far as Cape de Verde, and there, getting into the
+north-west trade-winds, made good progress down the African coast.
+Beyond sighting a Barbary rover once, whereat our mariners were in sad
+distress, counting themselves already as little better than slaves, we
+had good luck until we had come within a hundred leagues of the Cape of
+Good Hope, when the wind veered round to the southward and blew
+exceeding hard, while the sea rose to such a height that the end of the
+mainyard dipped into the water, and I heard the master say that though
+he had been at sea for five-and-thirty years he had never seen the like
+of it, and that he had little expectation of riding through it. On this
+I fell to wringing my hands and bewailing myself, until the mast going
+by the board with a crash, I thought that the ship had struck, and
+swooned with terror, falling into the scuppers and lying like one dead,
+which was the saving of me, as will appear in the sequel. For the
+mariners, giving up all hope of saving the ship, and being in momentary
+expectation that she would founder, pushed off in the long-boat, whereby
+I fear that they met the fate which they hoped to avoid, since I have
+never from that day heard anything of them. For my own part, on
+recovering from the swoon into which I had fallen, I found that, by the
+mercy of Providence, the sea had gone down, and that I was alone in the
+vessel. At which last discovery I was so terror-struck that I could but
+stand wringing my hands and bewailing my sad fate, until at last taking
+heart, I fell to comparing my lot with that of my unhappy camerados, on
+which I became more cheerful, and descending to the cabin, made a meal
+off such dainties as were in the captain’s locker.”
+
+Having got so far, Defoe remarked that he thought he had given them a
+fair start, and handed over the story to Dean Swift, who, after
+premising that he feared he would find himself as much at sea as Master
+Cyprian Overbeck Wells, continued in this way:--
+
+“For two days I drifted about in great distress, fearing that there
+should be a return of the gale, and keeping an eager look-out for my
+late companions. Upon the third day, towards evening, I observed to my
+extreme surprise that the ship was under the influence of a very
+powerful current, which ran to the north-east with such violence that
+she was carried, now bows on, now stern on, and occasionally drifting
+sideways like a crab, at a rate which I cannot compute at less than
+twelve or fifteen knots an hour. For several weeks I was borne away in
+this manner, until one morning, to my inexpressible joy, I sighted an
+island upon the starboard quarter. The current would, however, have
+carried me past it had I not made shift, though single-handed, to set
+the flying-jib so as to turn her bows, and then clapping on the
+sprit-sail, studding-sail, and fore-sail, I clewed up the halliards upon
+the port side, and put the wheel down hard a-starboard, the wind being
+at the time north-east-half-east.”
+
+At the description of this nautical manœuvre I observed that Smollett
+grinned, and a gentleman who was sitting higher up the table in the
+uniform of the Royal Navy, and who I guessed to be Captain Marryat,
+became very uneasy and fidgeted in his seat.
+
+“By this means I got clear of the current and was able to steer within a
+quarter of a mile of the beach, which indeed I might have approached
+still nearer by making another tack, but being an excellent swimmer, I
+deemed it best to leave the vessel, which was almost waterlogged, and to
+make the best of my way to the shore.
+
+“I had had my doubts hitherto as to whether this new-found country was
+inhabited or no, but as I approached nearer to it, being on the summit
+of a great wave, I perceived a number of figures on the beach, engaged
+apparently in watching me and my vessel. My joy, however, was
+considerably lessened when on reaching the land I found that the figures
+consisted of a vast concourse of animals of various sorts who were
+standing about in groups, and who hurried down to the water’s edge to
+meet me. I had scarce put my foot upon the sand before I was surrounded
+by an eager crowd of deer, dogs, wild boars, buffaloes, and other
+creatures, none of whom showed the least fear either of me or of each
+other, but, on the contrary, were animated by a common feeling of
+curiosity, as well as, it would appear, by some degree of disgust.”
+
+“A second edition,” whispered Lawrence Sterne to his neighbour;
+“Gulliver served up cold.”
+
+“Did you speak, sir?” asked the Dean very sternly, having evidently
+overheard the remark.
+
+“My words were not addressed to you, sir,” answered Sterne, looking
+rather frightened.
+
+“They were none the less insolent,” roared the Dean. “Your reverence
+would fain make a Sentimental Journey of the narrative, I doubt not, and
+find pathos in a dead donkey--though faith, no man can blame thee for
+mourning over thy own kith and kin.”
+
+“Better that than to wallow in all the filth of Yahooland,” returned
+Sterne warmly, and a quarrel would certainly have ensued but for the
+interposition of the remainder of the company. As it was, the Dean
+refused indignantly to have any further hand in the story, and Sterne
+also stood out of it, remarking with a sneer that he was loth to fit a
+good blade on to a poor handle. Under these circumstances some further
+unpleasantness might have occurred had not Smollett rapidly taken up the
+narrative, continuing it in the third person instead of the first:--
+
+“Our hero, being considerably alarmed at this strange reception, lost
+little time in plunging into the sea again and regaining his vessel,
+being convinced that the worst which might befall him from the elements
+would be as nothing compared to the dangers of this mysterious island.
+It was as well that he took this course, for before nightfall his ship
+was overhauled and he himself picked up by a British man-of-war, the
+_Lightning_ (74), then returning from the West Indies, where it had
+formed part of the fleet under the command of Admiral Benbow. Young
+Wells, being a likely lad enough, well-spoken and high-spirited, was at
+once entered on the books as officer’s servant, in which capacity he
+both gained great popularity on account of the freedom of his manners,
+and found an opportunity for indulging in those practical pleasantries
+for which he had all his life been famous.
+
+“Among the quartermasters of the _Lightning_ there was one named
+Jedediah Anchorstock, whose appearance was so remarkable that it quickly
+attracted the attention of our hero. He was a man of about fifty, dark
+with exposure to the weather, and so tall that as he came along the
+’tween decks he had to bend himself nearly double. The most striking
+peculiarity of this individual was, however, that in his boyhood some
+evil-minded person had tattooed eyes all over his countenance with such
+marvellous skill that it was difficult at a short distance to pick out
+his real ones among so many counterfeits. On this strange personage
+Master Cyprian determined to exercise his talents for mischief, the more
+so as he learned that he was extremely superstitious, and also that he
+had left behind him in Portsmouth a strong-minded spouse of whom he
+stood in mortal terror. With this object he secured one of the sheep
+which were kept on board for the officers’ table, and pouring a can of
+rumbo down its throat, reduced it to a state of utter intoxication. He
+then conveyed it to Anchorstock’s berth, and with the assistance of some
+other imps, as mischievous as himself, dressed it up in a high nightcap
+and gown, and covered it over with the bedclothes.
+
+“When the quartermaster came down from his watch our hero met him at the
+door of his berth with an agitated face. ‘Mr. Anchorstock,’ said he,
+‘can it be that your wife is on board?’ ‘Wife!’ roared the astonished
+sailor. ‘Ye white-faced swab, what d’ye mean?’ ‘If she’s not here in the
+ship it must be her ghost,’ said Cyprian, shaking his head gloomily. ‘In
+the ship! How in thunder could she get into the ship? Why, master, I
+believe as how you’re weak in the upper works, d’ye see? to as much as
+think o’ such a thing. My Poll is moored head and starn, behind the
+point at Portsmouth, more’n two thousand mile away.’ ‘Upon my word,’
+said our hero, very earnestly, ‘I saw a female look out of your cabin
+not five minutes ago.’ ‘Ay, ay, Mr. Anchorstock,’ joined in several of
+the conspirators. ‘We all saw her--a spanking-looking craft with a
+dead-light mounted on one side.’ ‘Sure enough,’ said Anchorstock,
+staggered by this accumulation of evidence, ‘my Polly’s starboard eye
+was doused for ever by long Sue Williams of the Hard. But if so be as
+she be there I must see her, be she ghost or quick’; with which the
+honest sailor, in much perturbation and trembling in every limb, began
+to shuffle forward into the cabin, holding the light well in front of
+him. It chanced, however, that the unhappy sheep, which was quietly
+engaged in sleeping off the effects of its unusual potations, was
+awakened by the noise of his approach, and finding herself in such an
+unusual position, sprang out of bed and rushed furiously for the door,
+bleating wildly, and rolling about like a brig in a tornado, partly from
+intoxication and partly from the night-dress which impeded her
+movements. As Anchorstock saw this extraordinary apparition bearing down
+upon him, he uttered a yell and fell flat upon his face, convinced that
+he had to do with a supernatural visitor, the more so as the
+confederates heightened the effect by a chorus of most ghastly groans
+and cries. The joke had nearly gone beyond what was originally intended,
+for the quartermaster lay as one dead, and it was only with the greatest
+difficulty that he could be brought to his senses. To the end of the
+voyage he stoutly asserted that he had seen the distant Mrs.
+Anchorstock, remarking with many oaths that though he was too woundily
+scared to take much note of the features, there was no mistaking the
+strong smell of rum which was characteristic of his better half.
+
+“It chanced shortly after this to be the king’s birthday, an event which
+was signalised aboard the _Lightning_ by the death of the commander
+under singular circumstances. This officer, who was a real fairweather
+Jack, hardly knowing the ship’s keel from her ensign, had obtained his
+position through parliamentary interest, and used it with such tyranny
+and cruelty that he was universally execrated. So unpopular was he that
+when a plot was entered into by the whole crew to punish his misdeeds
+with death, he had not a single friend among six hundred souls to warn
+him of his danger. It was the custom on board the king’s ships that upon
+his birthday the entire ship’s company should be drawn up upon deck, and
+that at a signal they should discharge their muskets into the air in
+honour of his Majesty. On this occasion word had been secretly passed
+round for every man to slip a slug into his firelock, instead of the
+blank cartridge provided. On the boatswain blowing his whistle the men
+mustered upon deck and formed line, whilst the captain, standing well in
+front of them, delivered a few words to them. ‘When I give the word,’ he
+concluded, ‘you shall discharge your pieces, and by thunder, if any man
+is a second before or a second after his fellows I shall trice him up to
+the weather rigging!’ With these words he roared ‘Fire!’ on which every
+man levelled his musket straight at his head and pulled the trigger. So
+accurate was the aim and so short the distance, that more than five
+hundred bullets struck him simultaneously, blowing away his head and a
+large portion of his body. There were so many concerned in this matter,
+and it was so hopeless to trace it to any individual, that the officers
+were unable to punish any one for the affair--the more readily as the
+captain’s haughty ways and heartless conduct had made him quite as
+hateful to them as to the men whom he commanded.
+
+“By his pleasantries and the natural charm of his manners our hero so
+far won the good wishes of the ship’s company that they parted with
+infinite regret upon their arrival in England. Filial duty, however,
+urged him to return home and report himself to his father, with which
+object he posted from Portsmouth to London, intending to proceed thence
+to Shropshire. As it chanced, however, one of the horses sprained his
+off foreleg while passing through Chichester, and as no change could be
+obtained, Cyprian found himself compelled to put up at the Crown and
+Bull for the night.
+
+“Ods bodikins!” continued Smollett, laughing, “I never could pass a
+comfortable hostel without stopping and so, with your permission, I’ll
+e’en stop here, and whoever wills may lead friend Cyprian to his further
+adventures. Do you, Sir Walter, give us a touch of the Wizard of the
+North.”
+
+With these words Smollett produced a pipe, and filling it at Defoe’s
+tobacco-pot, waited patiently for the continuation of the story.
+
+“If I must, I must,” remarked the illustrious Scotchman, taking a pinch
+of snuff; “but I must beg leave to put Mr. Wells back a few hundred
+years, for of all things I love the true mediæval smack. To proceed
+then:--
+
+“Our hero, being anxious to continue his journey, and learning that it
+would be some time before any conveyance would be ready, determined to
+push on alone mounted on his gallant grey steed. Travelling was
+particularly dangerous at that time, for besides the usual perils which
+beset wayfarers, the southern parts of England were in a lawless and
+disturbed state which bordered on insurrection. The young man, however,
+having loosened his sword in his sheath, so as to be ready for every
+eventuality, galloped cheerily upon his way, guiding himself to the best
+of his ability by the light of the rising moon.
+
+“He had not gone far before he realised that the cautions which had been
+impressed upon him by the landlord, and which he had been inclined to
+look upon as self-interested advice, were only too well justified. At a
+spot where the road was particularly rough, and ran across some marsh
+land, he perceived a short distance from him a dark shadow, which his
+practised eye detected at once as a body of crouching men. Reining up
+his horse within a few yards of the ambuscade, he wrapped his cloak
+round his bridle-arm and summoned the party to stand forth.
+
+“‘What ho, my masters!’ he cried. ‘Are beds so scarce, then, that ye
+must hamper the high road of the king with your bodies? Now, by St.
+Ursula of Alpuxerra, there be those who might think that birds who fly
+o’ nights were after higher game than the moorhen or the woodcock!’
+
+“‘Blades and targets, comrades!’ exclaimed a tall powerful man,
+springing into the centre of the road with several companions, and
+standing in front of the frightened horse. ‘Who is this swashbuckler who
+summons his Majesty’s lieges from their repose? A very soldado, o’
+truth. Hark ye, sir, or my lord, or thy grace, or whatsoever title your
+honour’s honour may be pleased to approve, thou must curb thy tongue
+play, or by the seven witches of Gambleside thou may find thyself in but
+a sorry plight.’
+
+“‘I prythee, then, that thou wilt expound to me who and what ye are,’
+quoth our hero, ‘and whether your purpose be such as an honest man may
+approve of. As to your threats, they turn from my mind as your caitiffly
+weapons would shiver upon my hauberk from Milan.’
+
+“‘Nay, Allen,’ interrupted one of the party, addressing him who seemed
+to be their leader; ‘this is a lad of mettle, and such a one as our
+honest Jack longs for. But we lure not hawks with empty hands. Look ye,
+sir, there is game afoot which it may need such bold hunters as thyself
+to follow. Come with us and take a firkin of canary, and we will find
+better work for that glaive of thine than getting its owner into broil
+and bloodshed; for, by my troth! Milan or no Milan, if my curtel axe do
+but ring against that morion of thine it will be an ill day for thy
+father’s son.’
+
+“For a moment our hero hesitated as to whether it would best become his
+knightly traditions to hurl himself against his enemies, or whether it
+might not be better to obey their requests. Prudence, mingled with a
+large share of curiosity, eventually carried the day, and dismounting
+from his horse, he intimated that he was ready to follow his captors.
+
+“‘Spoken like a man!’ cried he whom they addressed as Allen. ‘Jack Cade
+will be right glad of such a recruit. Blood and carrion! but thou hast
+the thews of a young ox; and I swear, by the haft of my sword, that it
+might have gone ill with some of us hadst thou not listened to reason!’
+
+“‘Nay, not so, good Allen--not so,’ squeaked a very small man, who had
+remained in the background while there was any prospect of a fray, but
+who now came pushing to the front. ‘Hadst thou been alone it might
+indeed have been so, perchance, but an expert swordsman can disarm at
+pleasure such a one as this young knight. Well I remember in the
+Palatinate how I clove to the chine even such another--the Baron von
+Slogstaff. He struck at me, look ye, so; but I, with buckler and blade,
+did, as one might say, deflect it; and then, countering in carte, I
+returned in tierce, and so--St. Agnes save us! who comes here?’
+
+“The apparition which frightened the loquacious little man was
+sufficiently strange to cause a qualm even in the bosom of the knight.
+Through the darkness there loomed a figure which appeared to be of
+gigantic size, and a hoarse voice, issuing apparently some distance
+above the heads of the party, broke roughly on the silence of the night.
+
+“‘Now, out upon thee, Thomas Allen, and foul be thy fate if thou hast
+abandoned thy post without good and sufficient cause. By St. Anselm of
+the Holy Grove, thou hadst best have never been born than rouse my
+spleen this night. Wherefore is it that you and your men are trailing
+over the moor like a flock of geese when Michaelmas is near?’
+
+“‘Good captain,’ said Allen, doffing his bonnet, an example followed by
+others of the band, ‘we have captured a goodly youth who was pricking it
+along the London road. Methought that some word of thanks were meet
+reward for such service, rather than taunt or threat.’
+
+“‘Nay, take it not to heart, bold Allen,’ exclaimed their leader, who
+was none other than the great Jack Cade himself. ‘Thou knowest of old
+that my temper is somewhat choleric, and my tongue not greased with that
+unguent which oils the mouths of the lip-serving lords of the land. And
+you,’ he continued, turning suddenly upon our hero, ‘are you ready to
+join the great cause which will make England what it was when the
+learned Alfred reigned in the land? Zounds, man, speak out, and pick not
+your phrases.’
+
+“‘I am ready to do aught which may become a knight and a gentleman,’
+said the soldier stoutly.
+
+“‘Taxes shall be swept away!’ cried Cade excitedly--‘the impost and the
+anpost--the tithe and the hundred-tax. The poor man’s salt-box and
+flour-bin shall be as free as the nobleman’s cellar. Ha! what sayest
+thou?’
+
+“‘It is but just,’ said our hero.
+
+“‘Ay, but they give us such justice as the falcon gives the leveret!’
+roared the orator. ‘Down with them, I say--down with every man of them!
+Noble and judge, priest and king, down with them all!’
+
+“‘Nay,’ said Sir Overbeck Wells, drawing himself up to his full height,
+and laying his hand upon the hilt of his sword, ‘there I cannot follow
+thee, but must rather defy thee as traitor and faineant, seeing that
+thou art no true man, but one who would usurp the rights of our master
+the king, whom may the Virgin protect!’
+
+“At these bold words, and the defiance which they conveyed, the rebels
+seemed for a moment utterly bewildered; but, encouraged by the hoarse
+shout of their leader, they brandished their weapons and prepared to
+fall upon the knight, who placed himself in a posture for defence and
+awaited their attack.
+
+“There now!” cried Sir Walter, rubbing his hands and chuckling, “I’ve
+put the chiel in a pretty warm corner, and we’ll see which of you
+moderns can take him oot o’t. Ne’er a word more will ye get frae me to
+help him one way or the other.”
+
+“You try your hand, James,” cried several voices, and the author in
+question had got so far as to make an allusion to a solitary horseman
+who was approaching, when he was interrupted by a tall gentleman a
+little farther down with a slight stutter and a very nervous manner.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said, “but I fancy that I may be able to do something
+here. Some of my humble productions have been said to excel Sir Walter
+at his best, and I was undoubtedly stronger all round. I could picture
+modern society as well as ancient; and as to my plays, why Shakespeare
+never came near _The Lady of Lyons_ for popularity. There is this little
+thing----” (Here he rummaged among a great pile of papers in front of
+him.) “Ah! that’s a report of mine, when I was in India. Here it is. No,
+this is one of my speeches in the House, and this is my criticism on
+Tennyson. Didn’t I warm him up? I can’t find what I wanted, but of
+course you have read them all--_Rienzi_ and _Harold_, and _The Last of
+the Barons_. Every schoolboy knows them by heart, as poor Macaulay would
+have said. Allow me to give you a sample:--
+
+“In spite of the gallant knight’s valiant resistance the combat was too
+unequal to be sustained. His sword was broken by a slash from a brown
+bill, and he was borne to the ground. He expected immediate death, but
+such did not seem to be the intention of the ruffians who had captured
+him. He was placed upon the back of his own charger and borne, bound
+hand and foot, over the trackless moor, in the fastnesses of which the
+rebels secreted themselves.
+
+“In the depths of these wilds there stood a stone building which had
+once been a farmhouse, but having been for some reason abandoned had
+fallen into ruin, and had now become the headquarters of Cade and his
+men. A large cowhouse near the farm had been utilised as sleeping
+quarters, and some rough attempts had been made to shield the principal
+room of the main building from the weather by stopping up the gaping
+apertures in the walls. In this apartment was spread out a rough meal
+for the returning rebels, and our hero was thrown, still bound, into an
+empty outhouse, there to await his fate.”
+
+Sir Walter had been listening with the greatest impatience to Bulwer
+Lytton’s narrative, but when it had reached this point he broke in
+impatiently.
+
+“We want a touch of your own style, man,” he said. “The
+animal-magnetico-electro-hysterical-biological-mysterious sort of story
+is all your own, but at present you are just a poor copy of myself, and
+nothing more.”
+
+There was a murmur of assent from the company, and Defoe remarked,
+“Truly, Master Lytton, there is a plaguey resemblance in the style,
+which may indeed be but a chance, and yet methinks it is sufficiently
+marked to warrant such words as our friend hath used.”
+
+“Perhaps you will think that this is an imitation also,” said Lytton
+bitterly, and leaning back in his chair with a morose countenance, he
+continued the narrative in this way:--
+
+“Our unfortunate hero had hardly stretched himself upon the straw with
+which his dungeon was littered, when a secret door opened in the wall
+and a venerable old man swept majestically into the apartment. The
+prisoner gazed upon him with astonishment not unmixed with awe, for on
+his broad brow was printed the seal of much knowledge--such knowledge as
+it is not granted to a son of man to know. He was clad in a long white
+robe, crossed and chequered with mystic devices in the Arabic character,
+while a high scarlet tiara marked with the square and circle enhanced
+his venerable appearance. ‘My son,’ he said, turning his piercing and
+yet dreamy gaze upon Sir Overbeck, ‘all things lead to nothing, and
+nothing is the foundation of all things. Cosmos is impenetrable. Why
+then should we exist?’
+
+“Astounded at this weighty query, and at the philosophic demeanour of
+his visitor, our hero made shift to bid him welcome and to demand his
+name and quality. As the old man answered him his voice rose and fell in
+musical cadences, like the sighing of the east wind, while an ethereal
+and aromatic vapour pervaded the apartment.
+
+“‘I am the eternal non-ego,’ he answered. ‘I am the concentrated
+negative--the everlasting essence of nothing. You see in me that which
+existed before the beginning of matter many years before the
+commencement of time. I am the algebraic _x_ which represents the
+infinite divisibility of a finite particle.’
+
+“Sir Overbeck felt a shudder as though an ice-cold hand had been placed
+upon his brow. ‘What is your message?’ he whispered, falling prostrate
+before his mysterious visitor.
+
+“‘To tell you that the eternities beget chaos, and that the immensities
+are at the mercy of the divine ananke. Infinitude crouches before a
+personality. The mercurial essence is the prime mover in spirituality,
+and the thinker is powerless before the pulsating inanity. The cosmical
+procession is terminated only by the unknowable and unpronounceable’----
+
+“May I ask, Mr. Smollett, what you find to laugh at?”
+
+“Gadzooks, master,” cried Smollett, who had been sniggering for some
+time back. “It seems to me that there is little danger of any one
+venturing to dispute that style with you.”
+
+“It’s all your own,” murmured Sir Walter.
+
+“And very pretty, too,” quoth Lawrence Sterne, with a malignant grin.
+“Pray sir, what language do you call it?”
+
+Lytton was so enraged at these remarks, and at the favour with which
+they appeared to be received, that he endeavoured to stutter out some
+reply, and then, losing control of himself completely, picked up all his
+loose papers and strode out of the room, dropping pamphlets and speeches
+at every step. This incident amused the company so much that they
+laughed for several minutes without cessation. Gradually the sound of
+their laughter sounded more and more harshly in my ears, the lights on
+the table grew dim and the company more misty, until they and their
+symposium vanished away altogether. I was sitting before the embers of
+what had been a roaring fire, but was now little more than a heap of
+grey ashes, and the merry laughter of the august company had changed to
+the recriminations of my wife, who was shaking me violently by the
+shoulder and exhorting me to choose some more seasonable spot for my
+slumbers. So ended the wondrous adventures of Master Cyprian Overbeck
+Wells, but I still live in the hopes that in some future dream the great
+masters may themselves finish that which they have begun.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+PLAYING WITH FIRE
+
+
+I cannot pretend to say what occurred on the 14th of April last at No.
+17, Badderly Gardens. Put down in black and white, my surmise might seem
+too crude, too grotesque, for serious consideration. And yet that
+something did occur, and that it was of a nature which will leave its
+mark upon every one of us for the rest of our lives, is as certain as
+the unanimous testimony of five witnesses can make it. I will not enter
+into any argument or speculation. I will only give a plain statement,
+which will be submitted to John Moir, Harvey Deacon, and Mrs. Delamere,
+and withheld from publication unless they are prepared to corroborate
+every detail. I cannot obtain the sanction of Paul Le Duc, for he
+appears to have left the country.
+
+It was John Moir (the well-known senior partner of Moir, Moir, and
+Sanderson) who had originally turned our attention to occult subjects.
+He had, like many very hard and practical men of business, a mystic side
+to his nature, which had led him to the examination, and eventually to
+the acceptance, of those elusive phenomena which are grouped together
+with much that is foolish, and much that is fraudulent, under the common
+heading of spiritualism. His researches, which had begun with an open
+mind, ended unhappily in dogma, and he became as positive and fanatical
+as any other bigot. He represented in our little group the body of men
+who have turned these singular phenomena into a new religion.
+
+Mrs. Delamere, our medium, was his sister, the wife of Delamere, the
+rising sculptor. Our experience had shown us that to work on these
+subjects without a medium was as futile as for an astronomer to make
+observations without a telescope. On the other hand, the introduction of
+a paid medium was hateful to all of us. Was it not obvious that he or
+she would feel bound to return some result for money received, and that
+the temptation to fraud would be an overpowering one? No phenomena could
+be relied upon which were produced at a guinea an hour. But,
+fortunately, Moir had discovered that his sister was mediumistic--in
+other words, that she was a battery of that animal magnetic force which
+is the only form of energy which is subtle enough to be acted upon from
+the spiritual plane as well as from our own material one. Of course,
+when I say this, I do not mean to beg the question; but I am simply
+indicating the theories upon which we were ourselves, rightly or
+wrongly, explaining what we saw. The lady came, not altogether with the
+approval of her husband, and though she never gave indications of any
+very great psychic force, we were able, at least, to obtain those usual
+phenomena of message-tilting which are at the same time so puerile and
+so inexplicable. Every Sunday evening we met in Harvey Deacon’s studio
+at Badderly Gardens, the next house to the corner of Merton Park Road.
+
+Harvey Deacon’s imaginative work in art would prepare any one to find
+that he was an ardent lover of everything which was _outré_ and
+sensational. A certain picturesqueness in the study of the occult had
+been the quality which had originally attracted him to it, but his
+attention was speedily arrested by some of those phenomena to which I
+have referred, and he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that what he
+had looked upon as an amusing romance and an after-dinner entertainment
+was really a very formidable reality. He is a man with a remarkably
+clear and logical brain--a true descendant of his ancestor, the
+well-known Scotch professor--and he represented in our small circle the
+critical element, the man who has no prejudices, is prepared to follow
+facts as far as he can see them, and refuses to theorise in advance of
+his data. His caution annoyed Moir as much as the latter’s robust faith
+amused Deacon, but each in his own way was equally keen upon the matter.
+
+And I? What am I to say that I represented? I was not the devotee. I was
+not the scientific critic. Perhaps the best that I can claim for myself
+is that I was the dilettante man about town, anxious to be in the swim
+of every fresh movement, thankful for any new sensation which would take
+me out of myself and open up fresh possibilities of existence. I am not
+an enthusiast myself, but I like the company of those who are. Moir’s
+talk, which made me feel as if we had a private pass-key through the
+door of death, filled me with a vague contentment. The soothing
+atmosphere of the séance with the darkened lights was delightful to me.
+In a word, the thing amused me, and so I was there.
+
+It was, as I have said, upon the 14th of April last that the very
+singular event which I am about to put upon record took place. I was the
+first of the men to arrive at the studio, but Mrs. Delamere was already
+there, having had afternoon tea with Mrs. Harvey Deacon. The two ladies
+and Deacon himself were standing in front of an unfinished picture of
+his upon the easel. I am not an expert in art, and I have never
+professed to understand what Harvey Deacon meant by his pictures; but I
+could see in this instance that it was all very clever and imaginative,
+fairies and animals and allegorical figures of all sorts. The ladies
+were loud in their praises, and indeed the colour effect was a
+remarkable one.
+
+“What do you think of it, Markham?” he asked.
+
+“Well, it’s above me,” said I. “These beasts--what are they?”
+
+“Mythical monsters, imaginary creatures, heraldic emblems--a sort of
+weird, bizarre procession of them.”
+
+“With a white horse in front!”
+
+“It’s not a horse,” said he, rather testily--which was surprising, for
+he was a very good-humoured fellow as a rule, and hardly ever took
+himself seriously.
+
+“What is it, then?”
+
+“Can’t you see the horn in front? It’s a unicorn. I told you they were
+heraldic beasts. Can’t you recognise one?”
+
+“Very sorry, Deacon,” said I, for he really seemed to be annoyed.
+
+He laughed at his own irritation.
+
+“Excuse me, Markham!” said he; “the fact is that I have had an awful job
+over the beast. All day I have been painting him in and painting him
+out, and trying to imagine what a real live, ramping unicorn would look
+like. At last I got him, as I hoped; so when you failed to recognise it,
+it took me on the raw.”
+
+“Why, of course it’s a unicorn,” said I, for he was evidently depressed
+at my obtuseness. “I can see the horn quite plainly, but I never saw a
+unicorn except beside the Royal Arms, and so I never thought of the
+creature. And these others are griffins and cockatrices, and dragons of
+sorts?”
+
+“Yes, I had no difficulty with them. It was the unicorn which bothered
+me. However, there’s an end of it until to-morrow.” He turned the
+picture round upon the easel, and we all chatted about other subjects.
+
+Moir was late that evening, and when he did arrive he brought with him,
+rather to our surprise, a small, stout Frenchman, whom he introduced as
+Monsieur Paul Le Duc. I say to our surprise, for we held a theory that
+any intrusion into our spiritual circle deranged the conditions, and
+introduced an element of suspicion. We knew that we could trust each
+other, but all our results were vitiated by the presence of an outsider.
+However, Moir soon reconciled us to the innovation. Monsieur Paul Le Duc
+was a famous student of occultism, a seer, a medium, and a mystic. He
+was travelling in England with a letter of introduction to Moir from the
+President of the Parisian brothers of the Rosy Cross. What more natural
+than that he should bring him to our little séance, or that we should
+feel honoured by his presence?
+
+He was, as I have said, a small, stout man, undistinguished in
+appearance, with a broad, smooth, clean-shaven face, remarkable only
+for a pair of large, brown, velvety eyes, staring vaguely out in front
+of him. He was well dressed, with the manners of a gentleman, and his
+curious little turns of English speech set the ladies smiling. Mrs.
+Deacon had a prejudice against our researches and left the room, upon
+which we lowered the lights, as was our custom, and drew up our chairs
+to the square mahogany table which stood in the centre of the studio.
+The light was subdued, but sufficient to allow us to see each other
+quite plainly. I remember that I could even observe the curious, podgy
+little square-topped hands which the Frenchman laid upon the table.
+
+“What a fun!” said he. “It is many years since I have sat in this
+fashion, and it is to me amusing. Madame is medium. Does madame make the
+trance?”
+
+“Well, hardly that,” said Mrs. Delamere. “But I am always conscious of
+extreme sleepiness.”
+
+“It is the first stage. Then you encourage it, and there comes the
+trance. When the trance comes, then out jumps your little spirit and in
+jumps another little spirit, and so you have direct talking or writing.
+You leave your machine to be worked by another. _Hein?_ But what have
+unicorns to do with it?”
+
+Harvey Deacon started in his chair. The Frenchman was moving his head
+slowly round and staring into the shadows which draped the walls.
+
+“What a fun!” said he. “Always unicorns. Who has been thinking so hard
+upon a subject so bizarre?”
+
+“This is wonderful!” cried Deacon. “I have been trying to paint one all
+day. But how could you know it?”
+
+“You have been thinking of them in this room.”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“But thoughts are things, my friend. When you imagine a thing you make a
+thing. You did not know it, _hein_? But I can see your unicorns because
+it is not only with my eye that I can see.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that I create a thing which has never existed by
+merely thinking of it?”
+
+“But certainly. It is the fact which lies under all other facts. That is
+why an evil thought is also a danger.”
+
+“They are, I suppose, upon the astral plane?” said Moir.
+
+“Ah, well, these are but words, my friends. They are
+there--somewhere--everywhere--I cannot tell myself. I see them. I could
+touch them.”
+
+“You could not make _us_ see them.”
+
+“It is to materialise them. Hold! It is an experiment. But the power is
+wanting. Let us see what power we have, and then arrange what we shall
+do. May I place you as I wish?”
+
+“You evidently know a great deal more about it than we do,” said Harvey
+Deacon; “I wish that you would take complete control.”
+
+“It may be that the conditions are not good. But we will try what we can
+do. Madame will sit where she is, I next, and this gentleman beside me.
+Meester Moir will sit next to madame, because it is well to have blacks
+and blondes in turn. So! And now with your permission I will turn the
+lights all out.”
+
+“What is the advantage of the dark?” I asked.
+
+“Because the force with which we deal is a vibration of ether and so
+also is light. We have the wires all for ourselves now--_hein_? You will
+not be frightened in the darkness, madame? What a fun is such a séance!”
+
+At first the darkness appeared to be absolutely pitchy, but in a few
+minutes our eyes became so far accustomed to it that we could just make
+out each other’s presence--very dimly and vaguely, it is true. I could
+see nothing else in the room--only the black loom of the motionless
+figures. We were all taking the matter much more seriously than we had
+ever done before.
+
+“You will place your hands in front. It is hopeless that we touch, since
+we are so few round so large a table. You will compose yourself, madame,
+and if sleep should come to you you will not fight against it. And now
+we sit in silence and we expect--_hein_?”
+
+So we sat in silence and expected, staring out into the blackness in
+front of us. A clock ticked in the passage. A dog barked intermittently
+far away. Once or twice a cab rattled past in the street, and the gleam
+of its lamps through the chink in the curtains was a cheerful break in
+that gloomy vigil. I felt those physical symptoms with which previous
+séances had made me familiar--the coldness of the feet, the tingling in
+the hands, the glow of the palms, the feeling of a cold wind upon the
+back. Strange little shooting pains came in my forearms, especially as
+it seemed to me in my left one, which was nearest to our visitor--due no
+doubt to disturbance of the vascular system, but worthy of some
+attention all the same. At the same time I was conscious of a strained
+feeling of expectancy which was almost painful. From the rigid, absolute
+silence of my companions I gathered that their nerves were as tense as
+my own.
+
+And then suddenly a sound came out of the darkness--a low, sibilant
+sound, the quick, thin breathing of a woman. Quicker and thinner yet it
+came, as between clenched teeth, to end in a loud gasp with a dull
+rustle of cloth.
+
+“What’s that? Is all right?” some one asked in the darkness.
+
+“Yes, all is right,” said the Frenchman. “It is madame. She is in her
+trance. Now, gentlemen, if you will wait quiet you will see something, I
+think, which will interest you much.”
+
+Still the ticking in the hall. Still the breathing, deeper and fuller
+now, from the medium. Still the occasional flash, more welcome than
+ever, of the passing lights of the hansoms. What a gap we were bridging,
+the half-raised veil of the eternal on the one side and the cabs of
+London on the other. The table was throbbing with a mighty pulse. It
+swayed steadily, rhythmically, with an easy swooping, scooping motion
+under our fingers. Sharp little raps and cracks came from its substance,
+file-firing, volley-firing, the sounds of a fagot burning briskly on a
+frosty night.
+
+“There is much power,” said the Frenchman. “See it on the table!”
+
+I had thought it was some delusion of my own, but all could see it now.
+There was a greenish-yellow phosphorescent light--or I should say a
+luminous vapour rather than a light--which lay over the surface of the
+table. It rolled and wreathed and undulated in dim glimmering folds,
+turning and swirling like clouds of smoke. I could see the white,
+square-ended hands of the French medium in this baleful light.
+
+“What a fun!” he cried. “It is splendid!”
+
+“Shall we call the alphabet?” asked Moir.
+
+“But no--for we can do much better,” said our visitor. “It is but a
+clumsy thing to tilt the table for every letter of the alphabet, and
+with such a medium as madame we should do better than that.”
+
+“Yes, you will do better,” said a voice.
+
+“Who was that? Who spoke? Was that you, Markham?”
+
+“No, I did not speak.”
+
+“It was madame who spoke.”
+
+“But it was not her voice.”
+
+“Is that you, Mrs. Delamere?”
+
+“It is not the medium, but it is the power which uses the organs of the
+medium,” said the strange, deep voice.
+
+“Where is Mrs. Delamere? It will not hurt her, I trust.”
+
+“The medium is happy in another plane of existence. She has taken my
+place, as I have taken hers.”
+
+“Who are you?”
+
+“It cannot matter to you who I am. I am one who has lived as you are
+living, and who has died as you will die.”
+
+We heard the creak and grate of a cab pulling up next door. There was an
+argument about the fare, and the cabman grumbled hoarsely down the
+street. The green-yellow cloud still swirled faintly over the table,
+dull elsewhere, but glowing into a dim luminosity in the direction of
+the medium. It seemed to be piling itself up in front of her. A sense of
+fear and cold struck into my heart. It seemed to me that lightly and
+flippantly we had approached the most real and august of sacraments,
+that communion with the dead of which the fathers of the Church had
+spoken.
+
+“Don’t you think we are going too far? Should we not break up this
+séance?” I cried.
+
+But the others were all earnest to see the end of it. They laughed at my
+scruples.
+
+“All the powers are made for use,” said Harvey Deacon. “If we _can_ do
+this, we _should_ do this. Every new departure of knowledge has been
+called unlawful in its inception. It is right and proper that we should
+inquire into the nature of death.”
+
+“It is right and proper,” said the voice.
+
+“There, what more could you ask?” cried Moir, who was much excited. “Let
+us have a test. Will you give us a test that you are really there?”
+
+“What test do you demand?”
+
+“Well, now--I have some coins in my pocket. Will you tell me how many?”
+
+“We come back in the hope of teaching and of elevating, and not to guess
+childish riddles.”
+
+“Ha, ha, Meester Moir, you catch it that time,” cried the Frenchman.
+“But surely this is very good sense what the Control is saying.”
+
+“It is a religion, not a game,” said the cold, hard voice.
+
+“Exactly--the very view I take of it,” cried Moir. “I am sure I am very
+sorry if I have asked a foolish question. You will not tell me who you
+are?”
+
+“What does it matter?”
+
+“Have you been a spirit long?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How long?”
+
+“We cannot reckon time as you do. Our conditions are different.”
+
+“Are you happy?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You would not wish to come back to life?”
+
+“No--certainly not.”
+
+“Are you busy?”
+
+“We could not be happy if we were not busy.”
+
+“What do you do?”
+
+“I have said that the conditions are entirely different.”
+
+“Can you give us no idea of your work?”
+
+“We labour for our own improvement and for the advancement of others.”
+
+“Do you like coming here to-night?”
+
+“I am glad to come if I can do any good by coming.”
+
+“Then to do good is your object?”
+
+“It is the object of all life on every plane.”
+
+“You see, Markham, that should answer your scruples.”
+
+It did, for my doubts had passed and only interest remained.
+
+“Have you pain in your life?” I asked.
+
+“No; pain is a thing of the body.”
+
+“Have you mental pain?”
+
+“Yes; one may always be sad or anxious.”
+
+“Do you meet the friends whom you have known on earth?”
+
+“Some of them.”
+
+“Why only some of them?”
+
+“Only those who are sympathetic.”
+
+“Do husbands meet wives?”
+
+“Those who have truly loved.”
+
+“And the others?”
+
+“They are nothing to each other.”
+
+“There must be a spiritual connection?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Is what we are doing right?”
+
+“If done in the right spirit.”
+
+“What is the wrong spirit?”
+
+“Curiosity and levity.”
+
+“May harm come of that?”
+
+“Very serious harm.”
+
+“What sort of harm?”
+
+“You may call up forces over which you have no control.”
+
+“Evil forces?”
+
+“Undeveloped forces.”
+
+“You say they are dangerous. Dangerous to body or mind?”
+
+“Sometimes to both.”
+
+There was a pause, and the blackness seemed to grow blacker still, while
+the yellow-green fog swirled and smoked upon the table.
+
+“Any questions you would like to ask, Moir?” said Harvey Deacon.
+
+“Only this--do you pray in your world?”
+
+“One should pray in every world.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because it is the acknowledgment of forces outside ourselves.”
+
+“What religion do you hold over there?”
+
+“We differ exactly as you do.”
+
+“You have no certain knowledge?”
+
+“We have only faith.”
+
+“These questions of religion,” said the Frenchman, “they are of interest
+to you serious English people, but they are not so much fun. It seems to
+me that with this power here we might be able to have some great
+experience--_hein_? Something of which we could talk.”
+
+“But nothing could be more interesting than this,” said Moir.
+
+“Well, if you think so, that is very well,” the Frenchman answered,
+peevishly. “For my part, it seems to me that I have heard all this
+before, and that to-night I should weesh to try some experiment with all
+this force which is given to us. But if you have other questions, then
+ask them, and when you are finish we can try something more.”
+
+But the spell was broken. We asked and asked, but the medium sat silent
+in her chair. Only her deep, regular breathing showed that she was
+there. The mist still whirled upon the table.
+
+“You have disturbed the harmony. She will not answer.”
+
+“But we have learned already all that she can tell--_hein_? For my part
+I wish to see something I have never seen before.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“You will let me try?”
+
+“What would you do?”
+
+“I have said to you that thoughts are things. Now I wish to _prove_ it
+to you, and to show you that which is only a thought. Yes, yes, I can do
+it and you will see. Now I ask you only to sit still and say nothing,
+and keep ever your hands quiet upon the table.”
+
+The room was blacker and more silent than ever. The same feeling of
+apprehension which had lain heavily upon me at the beginning of the
+séance was back at my heart once more. The roots of my hair were
+tingling.
+
+“It is working! It is working!” cried the Frenchman, and there was a
+crack in his voice as he spoke which told me that he also was strung to
+his tightest.
+
+The luminous fog drifted slowly off the table, and wavered and flickered
+across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and
+glowed, hardening down into a shining core--a strange, shifty, luminous,
+and yet non-illuminating patch of radiance, bright itself, but throwing
+no rays into the darkness. It had changed from a greenish-yellow to a
+dusky sullen red. Then round this centre there coiled a dark, smoky
+substance, thickening, hardening, growing denser and blacker. And then
+the light went out, smothered in that which had grown round it.
+
+“It has gone.”
+
+“Hush--there’s something in the room.”
+
+We heard it in the corner where the light had been, something which
+breathed deeply and fidgeted in the darkness.
+
+“What is it? Le Duc, what have you done?”
+
+“It is all right. No harm will come.” The Frenchman’s voice was treble
+with agitation.
+
+“Good heavens, Moir, there’s a large animal in the room. Here it is,
+close by my chair! Go away! Go away!”
+
+It was Harvey Deacon’s voice, and then came the sound of a blow upon
+some hard object. And then ... And then ... how can I tell you what
+happened then?
+
+Some huge thing hurtled against us in the darkness, rearing, stamping,
+smashing, springing, snorting. The table was splintered. We were
+scattered in every direction. It clattered and scrambled amongst us,
+rushing with horrible energy from one corner of the room to another. We
+were all screaming with fear, grovelling upon our hands and knees to get
+away from it. Something trod upon my left hand, and I felt the bones
+splinter under the weight.
+
+“A light! A light!” some one yelled.
+
+“Moir, you have matches, matches!”
+
+“No, I have none. Deacon, where are the matches? For God’s sake, the
+matches!”
+
+“I can’t find them. Here, you Frenchman, stop it!”
+
+“It is beyond me. Oh, _mon Dieu_, I cannot stop it. The door! Where is
+the door?”
+
+My hand, by good luck, lit upon the handle as I groped about in the
+darkness. The hard-breathing, snorting, rushing creature tore past me
+and butted with a fearful crash against the oaken partition. The instant
+that it had passed I turned the handle, and next moment we were all
+outside, and the door shut behind us. From within came a horrible
+crashing and rending and stamping.
+
+“What is it? In Heaven’s name, what is it?”
+
+“A horse. I saw it when the door opened. But Mrs. Delamere----?”
+
+“We must fetch her out. Come on, Markham; the longer we wait the less we
+shall like it.”
+
+He flung open the door and we rushed in. She was there on the ground
+amidst the splinters of her chair. We seized her and dragged her swiftly
+out, and as we gained the door I looked over my shoulder into the
+darkness. There were two strange eyes glowing at us, a rattle of hoofs,
+and I had just time to slam the door when there came a crash upon it
+which split it from top to bottom.
+
+“It’s coming through! It’s coming!”
+
+“Run, run for your lives!” cried the Frenchman.
+
+Another crash, and something shot through the riven door. It was a long
+white spike, gleaming in the lamplight. For a moment it shone before us,
+and then with a snap it disappeared again.
+
+“Quick! Quick! This way!” Harvey Deacon shouted. “Carry her in! Here!
+Quick!”
+
+We had taken refuge in the dining-room, and shut the heavy oak door. We
+laid the senseless woman upon the sofa, and as we did so, Moir, the hard
+man of business, drooped and fainted across the hearth-rug. Harvey
+Deacon was as white as a corpse, jerking and twitching like an
+epileptic. With a crash we heard the studio door fly to pieces, and the
+snorting and stamping were in the passage, up and down, shaking the
+house with their fury. The Frenchman had sunk his face on his hands, and
+sobbed like a frightened child.
+
+“What shall we do?” I shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Is a gun any
+use?”
+
+“No, no. The power will pass. Then it will end.”
+
+“You might have killed us all--you unspeakable fool--with your infernal
+experiments.”
+
+“I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad
+with terror. It was his fault. He struck it.”
+
+Harvey Deacon sprang up. “Good heavens!” he cried.
+
+A terrible scream sounded through the house.
+
+“It’s my wife! Here, I’m going out. If it’s the Evil One himself I am
+going out!”
+
+He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end
+of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless,
+struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else.
+
+With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and
+still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with
+every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it.
+But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and
+peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and
+stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction
+there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an
+incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed
+and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense,
+velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering
+gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy.
+
+“What a fun!” he cried. “No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and
+the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been
+done before.”
+
+“And as far as I can help,” said Harvey Deacon, “it will certainly never
+be done again.”
+
+And that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly
+Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatise
+as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions,
+_our_ impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John
+Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine
+that we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you
+may think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible
+experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult
+matters, and can inform us of some similar occurrence. In this latter
+case a letter to William Markham, 146M, the Albany, would help to throw
+a light upon that which is very dark to us.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE RING OF THOTH
+
+
+Mr. John Vansittart Smith, F.R.S., of 147-A Gower Street, was a man
+whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have placed him
+in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was the victim,
+however, of a universal ambition which prompted him to aim at
+distinction in many subjects rather than pre-eminence in one. In his
+early days he had shown an aptitude for zoology and for botany which
+caused his friends to look upon him as a second Darwin, but when a
+professorship was almost within his reach he had suddenly discontinued
+his studies and turned his whole attention to chemistry. Here his
+researches upon the spectra of the metals had won him his fellowship in
+the Royal Society; but again he played the coquette with his subject,
+and after a year’s absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental
+Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic
+inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the
+versatility and of the inconstancy of his talents.
+
+The most fickle of wooers, however, is apt to be caught at last, and so
+it was with John Vansittart Smith. The more he burrowed his way into
+Egyptology the more impressed he became by the vast field which it
+opened to the inquirer, and by the extreme importance of a subject which
+promised to throw a light upon the first germs of human civilisation
+and the origin of the greater part of our arts and sciences. So struck
+was Mr. Smith that he straightway married an Egyptological young lady
+who had written upon the sixth dynasty, and having thus secured a sound
+base of operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which
+should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion.
+The preparation of this _magnum opus_ entailed many hurried visits to
+the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last of
+which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became involved
+in a most strange and noteworthy adventure.
+
+The trains had been slow and the Channel had been rough, so that the
+student arrived in Paris in a somewhat befogged and feverish condition.
+On reaching the Hôtel de France, in the Rue Laffitte, he had thrown
+himself upon a sofa for a couple of hours, but finding that he was
+unable to sleep, he determined, in spite of his fatigue, to make his way
+to the Louvre, settle the point which he had come to decide, and take
+the evening train back to Dieppe. Having come to this conclusion, he
+donned his greatcoat, for it was a raw rainy day, and made his way
+across the Boulevard des Italiens and down the Avenue de l’Opéra. Once
+in the Louvre he was on familiar ground, and he speedily made his way to
+the collection of papyri which it was his intention to consult.
+
+The warmest admirers of John Vansittart Smith could hardly claim for him
+that he was a handsome man. His high-beaked nose and prominent chin had
+something of the same acute and incisive character which distinguished
+his intellect. He held his head in a birdlike fashion, and birdlike,
+too, was the pecking motion with which, in conversation, he threw out
+his objections and retorts. As he stood, with the high collar of his
+greatcoat raised to his ears, he might have seen from the reflection in
+the glass-case before him that his appearance was a singular one. Yet it
+came upon him as a sudden jar when an English voice behind him exclaimed
+in very audible tones, “What a queer-looking mortal!”
+
+The student had a large amount of petty vanity in his composition which
+manifested itself by an ostentatious and overdone disregard of all
+personal considerations. He straightened his lips and looked rigidly at
+the roll of papyrus, while his heart filled with bitterness against the
+whole race of travelling Britons.
+
+“Yes,” said another voice, “he really is an extraordinary fellow.”
+
+“Do you know,” said the first speaker, “one could almost believe that by
+the continual contemplation of mummies the chap has become half a mummy
+himself?”
+
+“He has certainly an Egyptian cast of countenance,” said the other.
+
+John Vansittart Smith spun round upon his heel with the intention of
+shaming his countrymen by a corrosive remark or two. To his surprise and
+relief, the two young fellows who had been conversing had their
+shoulders turned towards him, and were gazing at one of the Louvre
+attendants who was polishing some brass-work at the other side of the
+room.
+
+“Carter will be waiting for us at the Palais Royal,” said one tourist to
+the other, glancing at his watch, and they clattered away, leaving the
+student to his labours.
+
+“I wonder what these chatterers call an Egyptian cast of countenance,”
+thought John Vansittart Smith, and he moved his position slightly in
+order to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. He started as his eyes fell
+upon it. It was indeed the very face with which his studies had made him
+familiar. The regular statuesque features, broad brow, well-rounded
+chin, and dusky complexion were the exact counterpart of the innumerable
+statues, mummy-cases, and pictures which adorned the walls of the
+apartment. The thing was beyond all coincidence. The man must be an
+Egyptian. The national angularity of the shoulders and narrowness of the
+hips were alone sufficient to identify him.
+
+John Vansittart Smith shuffled towards the attendant with some intention
+of addressing him. He was not light of touch in conversation, and found
+it difficult to strike the happy mean between the brusqueness of the
+superior and the geniality of the equal. As he came nearer, the man
+presented his side face to him, but kept his gaze still bent upon his
+work. Vansittart Smith, fixing his eyes upon the fellow’s skin, was
+conscious of a sudden impression that there was something inhuman and
+preternatural about its appearance. Over the temple and cheek-bone it
+was as glazed and as shiny as varnished parchment. There was no
+suggestion of pores. One could not fancy a drop of moisture upon that
+arid surface. From brow to chin, however, it was cross-hatched by a
+million delicate wrinkles, which shot and interlaced as though Nature in
+some Maori mood had tried how wild and intricate a pattern she could
+devise.
+
+“Où est la collection de Memphis?” asked the student with the awkward
+air of a man who is devising a question merely for the purpose of
+opening a conversation.
+
+“C’est là,” replied the man brusquely, nodding his head at the other
+side of the room.
+
+“Vous êtes un Egyptien, n’est-ce pas?” asked the Englishman.
+
+The attendant looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon his
+questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess, such as
+Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed into them he
+saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which rose and deepened
+until it broke into a look of something akin both to horror and to
+hatred.
+
+“Non, monsieur; je suis français.” The man turned abruptly and bent low
+over his polishing. The student gazed at him for a moment in
+astonishment, and then turning to a chair in a retired corner behind one
+of the doors he proceeded to make notes of his researches among the
+papyri. His thoughts, however, refused to return into their natural
+groove. They would run upon the enigmatical attendant with the
+sphinx-like face and the parchment skin.
+
+“Where have I seen such eyes?” said Vansittart Smith to himself. “There
+is something saurian about them, something reptilian. There’s the
+membrana nictitans of the snakes,” he mused, bethinking himself of his
+zoological studies. “It gives a shiny effect. But there was something
+more here. There was a sense of power, of wisdom--so I read them--and of
+weariness, utter weariness, and ineffable despair. It may be all
+imagination, but I never had so strong an impression. By Jove, I must
+have another look at them!” He rose and paced round the Egyptian rooms,
+but the man who had excited his curiosity had disappeared.
+
+The student sat down again in his quiet corner, and continued to work at
+his notes. He had gained the information which he required from the
+papyri, and it only remained to write it down while it was still fresh
+in his memory. For a time his pencil travelled rapidly over the paper,
+but soon the lines became less level, the words more blurred, and
+finally the pencil tinkled down upon the floor, and the head of the
+student dropped heavily forward upon his chest. Tired out by his
+journey, he slept so soundly in his lonely post behind the door that
+neither the clanking civil guard, nor the footsteps of sightseers, nor
+even the loud hoarse bell which gives the signal for closing, were
+sufficient to arouse him.
+
+Twilight deepened into darkness, the bustle from the Rue de Rivoli waxed
+and then waned, distant Notre Dame clanged out the hour of midnight, and
+still the dark and lonely figure sat silently in the shadow. It was not
+until close upon one in the morning that, with a sudden gasp and an
+intaking of the breath, Vansittart Smith returned to consciousness. For
+a moment it flashed upon him that he had dropped asleep in his
+study-chair at home. The moon was shining fitfully through the
+unshuttered window, however, and as his eye ran along the lines of
+mummies and the endless array of polished cases, he remembered clearly
+where he was and how he came there. The student was not a nervous man.
+He possessed that love of a novel situation which is peculiar to his
+race. Stretching out his cramped limbs, he looked at his watch, and
+burst into a chuckle as he observed the hour. The episode would make an
+admirable anecdote to be introduced into his next paper as a relief to
+the graver and heavier speculations. He was a little cold, but wide
+awake and much refreshed. It was no wonder that the guardians had
+overlooked him, for the door threw its heavy black shadow right across
+him.
+
+The complete silence was impressive. Neither outside nor inside was
+there a creak or a murmur. He was alone with the dead men of a dead
+civilisation. What though the outer city reeked of the garish nineteenth
+century! In all this chamber there was scarce an article, from the
+shrivelled ear of wheat to the pigment-box of the painter, which had not
+held its own against four thousand years. Here was the flotsam and
+jetsam washed up by the great ocean of time from that far-off empire.
+From stately Thebes, from lordly Luxor, from the great temples of
+Heliopolis, from a hundred rifled tombs, these relics had been brought.
+The student glanced round at the long silent figures who flickered
+vaguely up through the gloom, at the busy toilers who were now so
+restful, and he fell into a reverent and thoughtful mood. An unwonted
+sense of his own youth and insignificance came over him. Leaning back in
+his chair, he gazed dreamily down the long vista of rooms, all silvery
+with the moonshine, which extend through the whole wing of the
+widespread building. His eyes fell upon the yellow glare of a distant
+lamp.
+
+John Vansittart Smith sat up on his chair with his nerves all on edge.
+The light was advancing slowly towards him, pausing from time to time,
+and then coming jerkily onwards. The bearer moved noiselessly. In the
+utter silence there was no suspicion of the pat of a footfall. An idea
+of robbers entered the Englishman’s head. He snuggled up further into
+the corner. The light was two rooms off. Now it was in the next chamber,
+and still there was no sound. With something approaching to a thrill of
+fear the student observed a face, floating in the air as it were, behind
+the flare of the lamp. The figure was wrapped in shadow, but the light
+fell full upon the strange eager face. There was no mistaking the
+metallic glistening eyes and the cadaverous skin. It was the attendant
+with whom he had conversed.
+
+Vansittart Smith’s first impulse was to come forward and address him. A
+few words of explanation would set the matter clear, and lead doubtless
+to his being conducted to some side door from which he might make his
+way to his hotel. As the man entered the chamber, however, there was
+something so stealthy in his movements, and so furtive in his
+expression, that the Englishman altered his intention. This was clearly
+no ordinary official walking the rounds. The fellow wore felt-soled
+slippers, stepped with a rising chest, and glanced quickly from left to
+right, while his hurried gasping breathing thrilled the flame of his
+lamp. Vansittart Smith crouched silently back into the corner and
+watched him keenly, convinced that his errand was one of secret and
+probably sinister import.
+
+There was no hesitation in the other’s movements. He stepped lightly and
+swiftly across to one of the great cases, and, drawing a key from his
+pocket, he unlocked it. From the upper shelf he pulled down a mummy,
+which he bore away with him, and laid it with much care and solicitude
+upon the ground. By it he placed his lamp, and then squatting down
+beside it in Eastern fashion he began with long quivering fingers to
+undo the cerecloths and bandages which girt it round. As the crackling
+rolls of linen peeled off one after the other, a strong aromatic odour
+filled the chamber, and fragments of scented wood and of spices pattered
+down upon the marble floor.
+
+It was clear to John Vansittart Smith that this mummy had never been
+unswathed before. The operation interested him keenly. He thrilled all
+over with curiosity, and his birdlike head protruded further and further
+from behind the door. When, however, the last roll had been removed from
+the four-thousand-year-old head, it was all that he could do to stifle
+an outcry of amazement. First, a cascade of long, black, glossy tresses
+poured over the workman’s hands and arms. A second turn of the bandage
+revealed a low, white forehead, with a pair of delicately arched
+eyebrows. A third uncovered a pair of bright, deeply fringed eyes, and a
+straight, well-cut nose, while a fourth and last showed a sweet, full,
+sensitive mouth, and a beautifully curved chin. The whole face was one
+of extraordinary loveliness, save for the one blemish that in the centre
+of the forehead there was a single irregular, coffee-coloured splotch.
+It was a triumph of the embalmer’s art. Vansittart Smith’s eyes grew
+larger and larger as he gazed upon it, and he chirruped in his throat
+with satisfaction.
+
+Its effect upon the Egyptologist was as nothing, however, compared with
+that which it produced upon the strange attendant. He threw his hands up
+into the air, burst into a harsh clatter of words, and then, hurling
+himself down upon the ground beside the mummy, he threw his arms round
+her, and kissed her repeatedly upon the lips and brow. “Ma petite!” he
+groaned in French. “Ma pauvre petite!” His voice broke with emotion, and
+his innumerable wrinkles quivered and writhed, but the student observed
+in the lamplight that his shining eyes were still dry and tearless as
+two beads of steel. For some minutes he lay, with a twitching face,
+crooning and moaning over the beautiful head. Then he broke into a
+sudden smile, said some words in an unknown tongue, and sprang to his
+feet with the vigorous air of one who has braced himself for an effort.
+
+In the centre of the room there was a large circular case which
+contained, as the student had frequently remarked, a magnificent
+collection of early Egyptian rings and precious stones. To this the
+attendant strode, and, unlocking it, threw it open. On the edge at the
+side he placed his lamp, and beside it a small earthenware jar which he
+had drawn from his pocket. He then took a handful of rings from the
+case, and with the most serious and anxious face he proceeded to smear
+each in turn with some liquid substance from the earthen pot, holding
+them to the light as he did so. He was clearly disappointed with the
+first lot, for he threw them petulantly back into the case and drew out
+some more. One of these, a massive ring with a large crystal set in it,
+he seized and eagerly tested with the contents of the jar. Instantly he
+uttered a cry of joy, and threw out his arms in a wild gesture which
+upset the pot and sent the liquid streaming across the floor to the very
+feet of the Englishman. The attendant drew a red handkerchief from his
+bosom, and, mopping up the mess, he followed it into the corner, where
+in a moment he found himself face to face with his observer.
+
+“Excuse me,” said John Vansittart Smith, with all imaginable politeness;
+“I have been unfortunate enough to fall asleep behind this door.”
+
+“And you have been watching me?” the other asked in English, with a most
+venomous look on his corpse-like face.
+
+The student was a man of veracity. “I confess,” said he, “that I have
+noticed your movements, and that they have aroused my curiosity and
+interest in the highest degree.”
+
+The man drew a long flamboyant-bladed knife from his bosom. “You have
+had a very narrow escape,” he said; “had I seen you ten minutes ago, I
+should have driven this through your heart. As it is, if you touch me or
+interfere with me in any way you are a dead man.”
+
+“I have no wish to interfere with you,” the student answered. “My
+presence here is entirely accidental. All I ask is that you will have
+the extreme kindness to show me out through some side door.” He spoke
+with great suavity, for the man was still pressing the tip of his dagger
+against the palm of his left hand, as though to assure himself of its
+sharpness, while his face preserved its malignant expression.
+
+“If I thought----” said he. “But no, perhaps it is as well. What is your
+name?”
+
+The Englishman gave it.
+
+“Vansittart Smith,” the other repeated. “Are you the same Vansittart
+Smith who gave a paper in London upon El Kab? I saw a report of it. Your
+knowledge of the subject is contemptible.”
+
+“Sir!” cried the Egyptologist.
+
+“Yet it is superior to that of many who make even greater pretensions.
+The whole keystone of our old life in Egypt was not the inscriptions or
+monuments of which you make so much, but was our hermetic philosophy and
+mystic knowledge of which you say little or nothing.”
+
+“Our old life!” repeated the scholar, wide-eyed; and then suddenly,
+“Good God, look at the mummy’s face!”
+
+The strange man turned and flashed his light upon the dead woman,
+uttering a long doleful cry as he did so. The action of the air had
+already undone all the art of the embalmer. The skin had fallen away,
+the eyes had sunk inwards, the discoloured lips had writhed away from
+the yellow teeth, and the brown mark upon the forehead alone showed that
+it was indeed the same face which had shown such youth and beauty a few
+short minutes before.
+
+The man flapped his hands together in grief and horror. Then mastering
+himself by a strong effort he turned his hard eyes once more upon the
+Englishman.
+
+“It does not matter,” he said, in a shaking voice. “It does not really
+matter. I came here to-night with the fixed determination to do
+something. It is now done. All else is as nothing. I have found my
+quest. The old curse is broken. I can rejoin her. What matter about her
+inanimate shell so long as her spirit is awaiting me at the other side
+of the veil!”
+
+“These are wild words,” said Vansittart Smith. He was becoming more and
+more convinced that he had to do with a madman.
+
+“Time presses, and I must go,” continued the other. “The moment is at
+hand for which I have waited this weary time. But I must show you out
+first. Come with me.”
+
+Taking up the lamp, he turned from the disordered chamber, and led the
+student swiftly through the long series of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and
+Persian apartments. At the end of the latter he pushed open a small door
+let into the wall and descended a winding stone stair. The Englishman
+felt the cold fresh air of the night upon his brow. There was a door
+opposite him which appeared to communicate with the street. To the right
+of this another door stood ajar, throwing a spurt of yellow light across
+the passage. “Come in here!” said the attendant shortly.
+
+Vansittart Smith hesitated. He had hoped that he had come to the end of
+his adventure. Yet his curiosity was strong within him. He could not
+leave the matter unsolved, so he followed his strange companion into the
+lighted chamber.
+
+It was a small room, such as is devoted to a _concierge_. A wood fire
+sparkled in the grate. At one side stood a truckle bed, and at the other
+a coarse wooden chair, with a round table in the centre, which bore the
+remains of a meal. As the visitor’s eye glanced round he could not but
+remark with an ever-recurring thrill that all the small details of the
+room were of the most quaint design and antique workmanship. The
+candlesticks, the vases upon the chimneypiece, the fire-irons, the
+ornaments upon the walls, were all such as he had been wont to associate
+with the remote past. The gnarled heavy-eyed man sat himself down upon
+the edge of the bed, and motioned his guest into the chair.
+
+“There may be design in this,” he said, still speaking excellent
+English. “It may be decreed that I should leave some account behind as a
+warning to all rash mortals who would set their wits up against workings
+of Nature. I leave it with you. Make such use as you will of it. I speak
+to you now with my feet upon the threshold of the other world.
+
+“I am, as you surmised, an Egyptian--not one of the down-trodden race of
+slaves who now inhabit the Delta of the Nile, but a survivor of that
+fiercer and harder people who tamed the Hebrew, drove the Ethiopian back
+into the southern deserts, and built those mighty works which have been
+the envy and the wonder of all after generations. It was in the reign of
+Tuthmosis, sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, that I
+first saw the light. You shrink away from me. Wait, and you will see
+that I am more to be pitied than to be feared.
+
+“My name was Sosra. My father had been the chief priest of Osiris in the
+great temple of Abaris, which stood in those days upon the Bubastic
+branch of the Nile. I was brought up in the temple and was trained in
+all those mystic arts which are spoken of in your own Bible. I was an
+apt pupil. Before I was sixteen I had learned all which the wisest
+priest could teach me. From that time on I studied Nature’s secrets for
+myself, and shared my knowledge with no man.
+
+“Of all the questions which attracted me there were none over which I
+laboured so long as over those which concern themselves with the nature
+of life. I probed deeply into the vital principle. The aim of medicine
+had been to drive away disease when it appeared. It seemed to me that a
+method might be devised which should so fortify the body as to prevent
+weakness or death from ever taking hold of it. It is useless that I
+should recount my researches. You would scarce comprehend them if I did.
+They were carried out partly upon animals, partly upon slaves, and
+partly on myself. Suffice it that their result was to furnish me with a
+substance which, when injected into the blood, would endow the body with
+strength to resist the effects of time, of violence, or of disease. It
+would not indeed confer immortality, but its potency would endure for
+many thousands of years. I used it upon a cat, and afterwards drugged
+the creature with the most deadly poisons. That cat is alive in Lower
+Egypt at the present moment. There was nothing of mystery or magic in
+the matter. It was simply a chemical discovery, which may well be made
+again.
+
+“Love of life runs high in the young. It seemed to me that I had broken
+away from all human care now that I had abolished pain and driven death
+to such a distance. With a light heart I poured the accursed stuff into
+my veins. Then I looked round for some one whom I could benefit. There
+was a young priest of Thoth, Parmes by name, who had won my goodwill by
+his earnest nature and his devotion to his studies. To him I whispered
+my secret, and at his request I injected him with my elixir. I should
+now, I reflected, never be without a companion of the same age as
+myself.
+
+“After this grand discovery I relaxed my studies to some extent, but
+Parmes continued his with redoubled energy. Every day I could see him
+working with his flasks and his distiller in the Temple of Thoth, but he
+said little to me as to the result of his labours. For my own part, I
+used to walk through the city and look around me with exultation as I
+reflected that all this was destined to pass away, and that only I
+should remain. The people would bow to me as they passed me, for the
+fame of my knowledge had gone abroad.
+
+“There was war at this time, and the Great King had sent down his
+soldiers to the eastern boundary to drive away the Hyksos. A Governor,
+too, was sent to Abaris, that he might hold it for the King. I had heard
+much of the beauty of the daughter of this Governor, but one day as I
+walked out with Parmes we met her, borne upon the shoulders of her
+slaves. I was struck with love as with lightning. My heart went out from
+me. I could have thrown myself beneath the feet of her bearers. This was
+my woman. Life without her was impossible. I swore by the head of Horus
+that she should be mine. I swore it to the Priest of Thoth. He turned
+away from me with a brow which was as black as midnight.
+
+“There is no need to tell you of our wooing. She came to love me even as
+I loved her. I learned that Parmes had seen her before I did, and had
+shown her that he too loved her, but I could smile at his passion, for I
+knew that her heart was mine. The white plague had come upon the city
+and many were stricken, but I laid my hands upon the sick and nursed
+them without fear or scathe. She marvelled at my daring. Then I told her
+my secret, and begged her that she would let me use my art upon her.
+
+“‘Your flower shall then be unwithered, Atma,’ I said. ‘Other things may
+pass away, but you and I, and our great love for each other, shall
+outlive the tomb of King Chefru.’
+
+“But she was full of timid, maidenly objections. ‘Was it right?’ she
+asked, ‘was it not a thwarting of the will of the gods? If the great
+Osiris had wished that our years should be so long, would he not himself
+have brought it about?’
+
+“With fond and loving words I overcame her doubts, and yet she
+hesitated. It was a great question, she said. She would think it over
+for this one night. In the morning I should know of her resolution.
+Surely one night was not too much to ask. She wished to pray to Isis for
+help in her decision.
+
+“With a sinking heart and a sad foreboding of evil I left her with her
+tirewomen. In the morning, when the early sacrifice was over, I hurried
+to her house. A frightened slave met me upon the steps. Her mistress was
+ill, she said, very ill. In a frenzy I broke my way through the
+attendants, and rushed through hall and corridor to my Atma’s chamber.
+She lay upon her couch, her head high upon the pillow, with a pallid
+face and a glazed eye. On her forehead there blazed a single angry
+purple patch. I knew that hell-mark of old. It was the scar of the white
+plague, the sign-manual of death.
+
+“Why should I speak of that terrible time? For months I was mad,
+fevered, delirious, and yet I could not die. Never did an Arab thirst
+after the sweet wells as I longed after death. Could poison or steel
+have shortened the thread of my existence, I should soon have rejoined
+my love in the land with the narrow portal. I tried, but it was of no
+avail. The accursed influence was too strong upon me. One night as I lay
+upon my couch, weak and weary, Parmes, the priest of Thoth, came to my
+chamber. He stood in the circle of the lamplight, and he looked down
+upon me with eyes which were bright with a mad joy.
+
+“‘Why did you let the maiden die?’ he asked; ‘why did you not strengthen
+her as you strengthened me?’
+
+“‘I was too late,’ I answered. ‘But I had forgot. You also loved her.
+You are my fellow in misfortune. Is it not terrible to think of the
+centuries which must pass ere we look upon her again? Fools, fools, that
+we were to take death to be our enemy!’
+
+“‘You may say that,’ he cried with a wild laugh; ‘the words come well
+from your lips. For me they have no meaning.’
+
+“‘What mean you?’ I cried, raising myself upon my elbow. ‘Surely,
+friend, this grief has turned your brain.’ His face was aflame with joy,
+and he writhed and shook like one who hath a devil.
+
+“‘Do you know whither I go?’ he asked.
+
+“‘Nay,’ I answered, ‘I cannot tell.’
+
+“‘I go to her,’ said he. ‘She lies embalmed in the further tomb by the
+double palm-tree beyond the city wall.’
+
+“‘Why do you go there?’ I asked.
+
+“‘To die!’ he shrieked, ‘to die! I am not bound by earthen fetters.’
+
+“‘But the elixir is in your blood,’ I cried.
+
+“‘I can defy it,’ said he; ‘I have found a stronger principle which will
+destroy it. It is working in my veins at this moment, and in an hour I
+shall be a dead man. I shall join her, and you shall remain behind.’
+
+“As I looked upon him I could see that he spoke words of truth. The
+light in his eye told me that he was indeed beyond the power of the
+elixir.
+
+“‘You will teach me!’ I cried.
+
+“‘Never!’ he answered.
+
+“‘I implore you, by the wisdom of Thoth, by the majesty of Anubis!’
+
+“‘It is useless,” he said coldly.
+
+“‘Then I will find it out,’ I cried.
+
+“‘You cannot,’ he answered; ‘it came to me by chance. There is one
+ingredient which you can never get. Save that which is in the ring of
+Thoth, none will ever more be made.’
+
+“‘In the ring of Thoth!’ I repeated, ‘where then is the ring of Thoth?’
+
+“‘That also you shall never know,’ he answered. ‘You won her love. Who
+has won in the end? I leave you to your sordid earth life. My chains are
+broken. I must go!’ He turned upon his heel and fled from the chamber.
+In the morning came the news that the Priest of Thoth was dead.
+
+“My days after that were spent in study. I must find this subtle poison
+which was strong enough to undo the elixir. From early dawn to midnight
+I bent over the test-tube and the furnace. Above all, I collected the
+papyri and the chemical flasks of the Priest of Thoth. Alas! they taught
+me little. Here and there some hint or stray expression would raise hope
+in my bosom, but no good ever came of it. Still, month after month, I
+struggled on. When my heart grew faint I would make my way to the tomb
+by the palm-trees. There, standing by the dead casket from which the
+jewel had been rifled, I would feel her sweet presence, and would
+whisper to her that I would rejoin her if mortal wit could solve the
+riddle.
+
+“Parmes had said that his discovery was connected with the ring of
+Thoth. I had some remembrance of the trinket. It was a large and
+weighty circlet, made, not of gold, but of a rarer and heavier metal
+brought from the mines of Mount Harbal. Platinum, you call it. The ring
+had, I remembered, a hollow crystal set in it, in which some few drops
+of liquid might be stored. Now, the secret of Parmes could not have to
+do with the metal alone, for there were many rings of that metal in the
+Temple. Was it not more likely that he had stored his precious poison
+within the cavity of the crystal? I had scarce come to this conclusion
+before, in hunting through his papers, I came upon one which told me
+that it was indeed so, and that there was still some of the liquid
+unused.
+
+“But how to find the ring? It was not upon him when he was stripped for
+the embalmer. Of that I made sure. Neither was it among his private
+effects. In vain I searched every room that he had entered, every box
+and vase and chattel that he had owned. I sifted the very sand of the
+desert in the place where he had been wont to walk; but, do what I
+would, I could come upon no traces of the ring of Thoth. Yet it may be
+that my labours would have overcome all obstacles had it not been for a
+new and unlooked-for misfortune.
+
+“A great war had been waged against the Hyksos, and the Captains of the
+Great King had been cut off in the desert, with all their bowmen and
+horsemen. The shepherd tribes were upon us like the locusts in a dry
+year. From the wilderness of Shur to the great bitter lake there was
+blood by day and fire by night. Abaris was the bulwark of Egypt, but we
+could not keep the savages back. The city fell. The Governor and the
+soldiers were put to the sword, and I, with many more, was led away into
+captivity.
+
+“For years and years I tended cattle in the great plains by the
+Euphrates. My master died, and his son grew old, but I was still as far
+from death as ever. At last I escaped upon a swift camel, and made my
+way back to Egypt. The Hyksos had settled in the land which they had
+conquered, and their own King ruled over the country. Abaris had been
+torn down, the city had been burned, and of the great Temple there was
+nothing left save an unsightly mound. Everywhere the tombs had been
+rifled and the monuments destroyed. Of my Atma’s grave no sign was left.
+It was buried in the sands of the desert, and the palm-trees which
+marked the spot had long disappeared. The papers of Parmes and the
+remains of the Temple of Thoth were either destroyed or scattered far
+and wide over the deserts of Syria. All search after them was vain.
+
+“From that time I gave up all hope of ever finding the ring or
+discovering the subtle drug. I set myself to live as patiently as might
+be until the effect of the elixir should wear away. How can you
+understand how terrible a thing time is, you who have experience only of
+the narrow course which lies between the cradle and the grave! I know it
+to my cost, I who have floated down the whole stream of history. I was
+old when Ilium fell. I was very old when Herodotus came to Memphis. I
+was bowed down with years when the new gospel came upon earth. Yet you
+see me much as other men are, with the cursed elixir still sweetening my
+blood, and guarding me against that which I would court. Now at last, at
+last I have come to the end of it!
+
+“I have travelled in all lands and I have dwelt with all nations. Every
+tongue is the same to me. I learned them all to help pass the weary
+time. I need not tell you how slowly they drifted by, the long dawn of
+modern civilisation, the dreary middle years, the dark times of
+barbarism. They are all behind me now. I have never looked with the eyes
+of love upon another woman. Atma knows that I have been constant to her.
+
+“It was my custom to read all that the scholars had to say upon Ancient
+Egypt. I have been in many positions, sometimes affluent, sometimes
+poor, but I have always found enough to enable me to buy the journals
+which deal with such matters. Some nine months ago I was in San
+Francisco, when I read an account of some discoveries made in the
+neighbourhood of Abaris. My heart leapt into my mouth as I read it. It
+said that the excavator had busied himself in exploring some tombs
+recently unearthed. In one there had been found an unopened mummy with
+an inscription upon the outer case setting forth that it contained the
+body of the daughter of the Governor of the city in the days of
+Tuthmosis. It added that on removing the outer case there had been
+exposed a large platinum ring set with a crystal, which had been laid
+upon the breast of the embalmed woman. This, then, was where Parmes had
+hid the ring of Thoth. He might well say that it was safe, for no
+Egyptian would ever stain his soul by moving even the outer case of a
+buried friend.
+
+“That very night I set off from San Francisco, and in a few weeks I
+found myself once more at Abaris, if a few sand-heaps and crumbling
+walls may retain the name of the great city. I hurried to the Frenchmen
+who were digging there and asked them for the ring. They replied that
+both the ring and the mummy had been sent to the Boulak Museum at Cairo.
+To Boulak I went, but only to be told that Mariette Bey had claimed them
+and had shipped them to the Louvre. I followed them, and there at last,
+in the Egyptian chamber, I came, after close upon four thousand years,
+upon the remains of my Atma, and upon the ring for which I had sought so
+long.
+
+“But how was I to lay hands upon them? How was I to have them for my
+very own? It chanced that the office of attendant was vacant. I went to
+the Director. I convinced him that I knew much about Egypt. In my
+eagerness I said too much. He remarked that a Professor’s chair would
+suit me better than a seat in the conciergerie. I knew more, he said,
+than he did. It was only by blundering, and letting him think that he
+had over-estimated my knowledge, that I prevailed upon him to let me
+move the few effects which I have retained into this chamber. It is my
+first and my last night here.
+
+“Such is my story, Mr. Vansittart Smith. I need not say more to a man of
+your perception. By a strange chance you have this night looked upon the
+face of the woman whom I loved in those far-off days. There were many
+rings with crystals in the case, and I had to test for the platinum to
+be sure of the one which I wanted. A glance at the crystal has shown me
+that the liquid is indeed within it, and that I shall at last be able to
+shake off that accursed health which has been worse to me than the
+foulest disease. I have nothing more to say to you. I have unburdened
+myself. You may tell my story or you may withhold it at your pleasure.
+The choice rests with you. I owe you some amends, for you have had a
+narrow escape of your life this night. I was a desperate man, and not to
+be baulked in my purpose. Had I seen you before the thing was done, I
+might have put it beyond your power to oppose me or to raise an alarm.
+This is the door. It leads into the Rue de Rivoli. Good-night.”
+
+The Englishman glanced back. For a moment the lean figure of Sosra the
+Egyptian stood framed in the narrow doorway. The next the door had
+slammed, and the heavy rasping of a bolt broke on the silent night.
+
+It was on the second day after his return to London that Mr. John
+Vansittart Smith saw the following concise narrative in the Paris
+correspondence of the _Times_:--
+
+“_Curious Occurrence in the Louvre._--Yesterday morning a strange
+discovery was made in the principal Eastern chamber. The _ouvriers_ who
+are employed to clean out the rooms in the morning found one of the
+attendants lying dead upon the floor with his arms round one of the
+mummies. So close was his embrace that it was only with the utmost
+difficulty that they were separated. One of the cases containing
+valuable rings had been opened and rifled. The authorities are of
+opinion that the man was bearing away the mummy with some idea of
+selling it to a private collector, but that he was struck down in the
+very act by long-standing disease of the heart. It is said that he was a
+man of uncertain age and eccentric habits, without any living relations
+to mourn over his dramatic and untimely end.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE LOS AMIGOS FIASCO
+
+
+I used to be the leading practitioner of Los Amigos. Of course, every
+one has heard of the great electrical generating gear there. The town is
+wide spread, and there are dozens of little townlets and villages all
+around, which receive their supply from the same centre, so that the
+works are on a very large scale. The Los Amigos folk say that they are
+the largest upon earth, but then we claim that for everything in Los
+Amigos except the gaol and the death-rate. Those are said to be the
+smallest.
+
+Now, with so fine an electrical supply, it seemed to be a sinful waste
+of hemp that the Los Amigos criminals should perish in the old-fashioned
+manner. And then came the news of the electrocutions in the East, and
+how the results had not after all been so instantaneous as had been
+hoped. The Western engineers raised their eyebrows when they read of the
+puny shocks by which these men had perished, and they vowed in Los
+Amigos that when an irreclaimable came their way he should be dealt
+handsomely by, and have the run of all the big dynamos. There should be
+no reserve, said the engineers, but he should have all that they had
+got. And what the result of that would be none could predict, save that
+it must be absolutely blasting and deadly. Never before had a man been
+so charged with electricity as they would charge him. He was to be
+smitten by the essence of ten thunderbolts. Some prophesied combustion,
+and some disintegration and disappearance. They were waiting eagerly to
+settle the question by actual demonstration, and it was just at that
+moment that Duncan Warner came that way.
+
+Warner had been wanted by the law, and by nobody else, for many years.
+Desperado, murderer, train robber, and road agent, he was a man beyond
+the pale of human pity. He had deserved a dozen deaths, and the Los
+Amigos folk grudged him so gaudy a one as that. He seemed to feel
+himself to be unworthy of it, for he made two frenzied attempts at
+escape. He was a powerful, muscular man, with a lion heart, tangled
+black locks, and a sweeping beard which covered his broad chest. When he
+was tried, there was no finer head in all the crowded court. It’s no new
+thing to find the best face looking from the dock. But his good looks
+could not balance his bad deeds. His advocate did all he knew, but the
+cards lay against him, and Duncan Warner was handed over to the mercy of
+the big Los Amigos dynamos.
+
+I was there at the committee meeting when the matter was discussed. The
+town council had chosen four experts to look after the arrangements.
+Three of them were admirable. There was Joseph M’Connor, the very man
+who had designed the dynamos, and there was Joshua Westmacott, the
+chairman of the Los Amigos Electrical Supply Company, Limited. Then
+there was myself as the chief medical man, and lastly an old German of
+the name of Peter Stulpnagel. The Germans were a strong body at Los
+Amigos, and they all voted for their man. That was how he got on the
+committee. It was said that he had been a wonderful electrician at
+home, and he was eternally working with wires and insulators and Leyden
+jars; but, as he never seemed to get any further, or to have any results
+worth publishing, he came at last to be regarded as a harmless crank,
+who had made science his hobby. We three practical men smiled when we
+heard that he had been elected as our colleague, and at the meeting we
+fixed it all up very nicely among ourselves without much thought of the
+old fellow who sat with his ears scooped forward in his hands, for he
+was a trifle hard of hearing, taking no more part in the proceedings
+than the gentlemen of the press who scribbled their notes on the back
+benches.
+
+We did not take long to settle it all. In New York a strength of some
+two thousand volts had been used, and death had not been instantaneous.
+Evidently their shock had been too weak. Los Amigos should not fall into
+that error. The charge should be six times greater, and therefore, of
+course, it would be six times more effective. Nothing could possibly be
+more logical. The whole concentrated force of the great dynamos should
+be employed on Duncan Warner.
+
+So we three settled it, and had already risen to break up the meeting,
+when our silent companion opened his mouth for the first time.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said he, “you appear to me to show an extraordinary
+ignorance upon the subject of electricity. You have not mastered the
+first principles of its actions upon a human being.”
+
+The committee was about to break into an angry reply to this brusque
+comment, but the chairman of the Electrical Company tapped his forehead
+to claim its indulgence for the crankiness of the speaker.
+
+“Pray tell us, sir,” said he, with an ironical smile, “what is there in
+our conclusions with which you find fault?”
+
+“With your assumption that a large dose of electricity will merely
+increase the effect of a small dose. Do you not think it possible that
+it might have an entirely different result? Do you know anything, by
+actual experiment, of the effect of such powerful shocks?”
+
+“We know it by analogy,” said the chairman pompously. “All drugs
+increase their effect when they increase their dose; for example--for
+example----”
+
+“Whisky,” said Joseph M’Connor.
+
+“Quite so. Whisky. You see it there.”
+
+Peter Stulpnagel smiled and shook his head.
+
+“Your argument is not very good,” said he. “When I used to take whisky,
+I used to find that one glass would excite me, but that six would send
+me to sleep, which is just the opposite. Now, suppose that electricity
+were to act in just the opposite way also, what then?”
+
+We three practical men burst out laughing. We had known that our
+colleague was queer, but we never had thought that he would be as queer
+as this.
+
+“What then?” repeated Peter Stulpnagel.
+
+“We’ll take our chances,” said the chairman.
+
+“Pray consider,” said Peter, “that workmen who have touched the wires,
+and who have received shocks of only a few hundred volts, have died
+instantly. The fact is well known. And yet when a much greater force was
+used upon a criminal at New York, the man struggled for some little
+time. Do you not clearly see that the smaller dose is the more deadly?”
+
+“I think, gentlemen, that this discussion has been carried on quite long
+enough,” said the chairman, rising again. “The point, I take it, has
+already been decided by the majority of the committee, and Duncan Warner
+shall be electrocuted on Tuesday by the full strength of the Los Amigos
+dynamos. Is it not so?”
+
+“I agree,” said Joseph M’Connor.
+
+“I agree,” said I.
+
+“And I protest,” said Peter Stulpnagel.
+
+“Then the motion is carried, and your protest will be duly entered in
+the minutes,” said the chairman, and so the sitting was dissolved.
+
+The attendance at the electrocution was a very small one. We four
+members of the committee were, of course, present with the executioner,
+who was to act under their orders. The others were the United States
+Marshal, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, and three members of
+the press. The room was a small brick chamber, forming an out-house to
+the Central Electrical station. It had been used as a laundry, and had
+an oven and copper at one side, but no other furniture save a single
+chair for the condemned man. A metal plate for his feet was placed in
+front of it, to which ran a thick insulated wire. Above, another wire
+depended from the ceiling, which could be connected with a small
+metallic rod projecting from a cap which was to be placed upon his head.
+When this connection was established Duncan Warner’s hour was come.
+
+There was a solemn hush as we waited for the coming of the prisoner. The
+practical engineers looked a little pale, and fidgeted nervously with
+the wires. Even the hardened Marshal was ill at ease, for a mere hanging
+was one thing, and this blasting of flesh and blood a very different
+one. As to the pressmen, their faces were whiter than the sheets which
+lay before them. The only man who appeared to feel none of the influence
+of these preparations was the little German crank, who strolled from one
+to the other with a smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. More
+than once he even went so far as to burst into a shout of laughter,
+until the chaplain sternly rebuked him for his ill-timed levity.
+
+“How can you so far forget yourself, Mr. Stulpnagel,” said he, “as to
+jest in the presence of death?”
+
+But the German was quite unabashed.
+
+“If I were in the presence of death I should not jest,” said he, “but
+since I am not I may do what I choose.”
+
+This flippant reply was about to draw another and a sterner reproof from
+the chaplain, when the door was swung open and two warders entered
+leading Duncan Warner between them. He glanced round him with a set
+face, stepped resolutely forward, and seated himself upon the chair.
+
+“Touch her off!” said he.
+
+It was barbarous to keep him in suspense. The chaplain murmured a few
+words in his ear, the attendant placed the cap upon his head, and then,
+while we all held our breath, the wire and the metal were brought in
+contact.
+
+“Great Scott!” shouted Duncan Warner.
+
+He had bounded in his chair as the frightful shock crashed through his
+system. But he was not dead. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed far more
+brightly than they had done before. There was only one change, but it
+was a singular one. The black had passed from his hair and beard as the
+shadow passes from a landscape. They were both as white as snow. And yet
+there was no other sign of decay. His skin was smooth and plump and
+lustrous as a child’s.
+
+The Marshal looked at the committee with a reproachful eye.
+
+“There seems to be some hitch here, gentlemen,” said he.
+
+We three practical men looked at each other.
+
+Peter Stulpnagel smiled pensively.
+
+“I think that another one should do it,” said I.
+
+Again the connection was made, and again Duncan Warner sprang in his
+chair and shouted, but, indeed, were it not that he still remained in
+the chair none of us would have recognised him. His hair and his beard
+had shredded off in an instant, and the room looked like a barber’s shop
+on a Saturday night. There he sat, his eyes still shining, his skin
+radiant with the glow of perfect health, but with a scalp as bald as a
+Dutch cheese, and a chin without so much as a trace of down. He began to
+revolve one of his arms, slowly and doubtfully at first, but with more
+confidence as he went on.
+
+“That joint,” said he, “has puzzled half the doctors on the Pacific
+slope. It’s as good as new, and as limber as a hickory twig.”
+
+“You are feeling pretty well?” asked the old German.
+
+“Never better in my life,” said Duncan Warner cheerily.
+
+The situation was a painful one. The Marshal glared at the committee.
+Peter Stulpnagel grinned and rubbed his hands. The engineers scratched
+their heads. The bald-headed prisoner revolved his arm and looked
+pleased.
+
+“I think that one more shock----” began the chairman.
+
+“No, sir,” said the Marshal; “we’ve had foolery enough for one morning.
+We are here for an execution, and an execution we’ll have.”
+
+“What do you propose?”
+
+“There’s a hook handy upon the ceiling. Fetch a rope, and we’ll soon set
+this matter straight.”
+
+There was another awkward delay while the warders departed for the cord.
+Peter Stulpnagel bent over Duncan Warner, and whispered something in his
+ear. The desperado stared in surprise.
+
+“You don’t say?” he asked.
+
+The German nodded.
+
+“What! No ways?”
+
+Peter shook his head, and the two began to laugh as though they shared
+some huge joke between them.
+
+The rope was brought, and the Marshal himself slipped the noose over the
+criminal’s neck. Then the two warders, the assistant and he swung their
+victim into the air. For half an hour he hung--a dreadful sight--from
+the ceiling. Then in solemn silence they lowered him down, and one of
+the warders went out to order the shell to be brought round. But as he
+touched ground again what was our amazement when Duncan Warner put his
+hands up to his neck, loosened the noose, and took a long, deep breath.
+
+“Paul Jefferson’s sale is goin’ well,” he remarked, “I could see the
+crowd from up yonder,” and he nodded at the hook in the ceiling.
+
+“Up with him again!” shouted the Marshal, “we’ll get the life out of him
+somehow.”
+
+In an instant the victim was up at the hook once more.
+
+They kept him there for an hour, but when he came down he was perfectly
+garrulous.
+
+“Old man Plunket goes too much to the Arcady Saloon,” said he. “Three
+times he’s been there in an hour; and him with a family. Old man Plunket
+would do well to swear off.”
+
+It was monstrous and incredible, but there it was. There was no getting
+round it. The man was there talking when he ought to have been dead. We
+all sat staring in amazement, but United States Marshal Carpenter was
+not a man to be euchred so easily. He motioned the others to one side,
+so that the prisoner was left standing alone.
+
+“Duncan Warner,” said he slowly, “you are here to play your part, and I
+am here to play mine. Your game is to live if you can, and my game is to
+carry out the sentence of the law. You’ve beat us on electricity, I’ll
+give you one there. And you’ve beat us on hanging, for you seem to
+thrive on it. But it’s my turn to beat you now, for my duty has to be
+done.”
+
+He pulled a six-shooter from his coat as he spoke, and fired all the
+shots through the body of the prisoner. The room was so filled with
+smoke that we could see nothing, but when it cleared the prisoner was
+still standing there, looking down in disgust at the front of his coat.
+
+“Coats must be cheap where you come from,” said he. “Thirty dollars it
+cost me, and look at it now. The six holes in front are bad enough, but
+four of the balls have passed out, and a pretty fine state the back must
+be in.”
+
+The Marshal’s revolver fell from his hand, and he dropped his arms to
+his sides, a beaten man.
+
+“Maybe some of you gentlemen can tell me what this means,” said he,
+looking helplessly at the committee.
+
+Peter Stulpnagel took a step forward.
+
+“I’ll tell you all about it,” said he.
+
+“You seem to be the only person who knows anything.”
+
+“I _am_ the only person who knows anything. I should have warned these
+gentlemen; but, as they would not listen to me, I have allowed them to
+learn by experience. What you have done with your electricity is that
+you have increased the man’s vitality until he can deny death for
+centuries.”
+
+“Centuries!”
+
+“Yes, it will take the wear of hundreds of years to exhaust the enormous
+nervous energy with which you have drenched him. Electricity is life,
+and you have charged him with it to the utmost. Perhaps in fifty years
+you might execute him, but I am not sanguine about it.”
+
+“Great Scott! What shall I do with him?” cried the unhappy Marshal.
+
+Peter Stulpnagel shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“It seems to me that it does not much matter what you do with him now,”
+said he.
+
+“Maybe we could drain the electricity out of him again. Suppose we hang
+him up by the heels?”
+
+“No, no, it’s out of the question.”
+
+“Well, well, he shall do no more mischief in Los Amigos, anyhow,” said
+the Marshal, with decision. “He shall go into the new gaol. The prison
+will wear him out.”
+
+“On the contrary,” said Peter Stulpnagel, “I think that it is much more
+probable that he will wear out the prison.”
+
+It was rather a fiasco, and for years we didn’t talk more about it than
+we could help, but it’s no secret now, and I thought you might like to
+jot down the facts in your case-book.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HOW IT HAPPENED
+
+
+She was a writing medium. This is what she wrote:--
+
+I can remember some things upon that evening most distinctly, and others
+are like some vague, broken dreams. That is what makes it so difficult
+to tell a connected story. I have no idea now what it was that had taken
+me to London and brought me back so late. It just merges into all my
+other visits to London. But from the time that I got out at the little
+country station everything is extraordinarily clear. I can live it
+again--every instant of it.
+
+I remember so well walking down the platform and looking at the
+illuminated clock at the end which told me that it was half-past eleven.
+I remember also my wondering whether I could get home before midnight.
+Then I remember the big motor, with its glaring headlights and glitter
+of polished brass, waiting for me outside. It was my new
+thirty-horse-power Robur, which had only been delivered that day. I
+remember also asking Perkins, my chauffeur, how she had gone, and his
+saying that he thought she was excellent.
+
+“I’ll try her myself,” said I, and I climbed into the driver’s seat.
+
+“The gears are not the same,” said he. “Perhaps, sir, I had better
+drive.”
+
+“No; I should like to try her,” said I.
+
+And so we started on the five-mile drive for home.
+
+My old car had the gears as they used always to be in notches on a bar.
+In this car you passed the gear-lever through a gate to get on the
+higher ones. It was not difficult to master, and soon I thought that I
+understood it. It was foolish, no doubt, to begin to learn a new system
+in the dark, but one often does foolish things, and one has not always
+to pay the full price for them. I got along very well until I came to
+Claystall Hill. It is one of the worst hills in England, a mile and a
+half long and one in six in places, with three fairly sharp curves. My
+park gates stand at the very foot of it upon the main London road.
+
+We were just over the brow of this hill, where the grade is steepest,
+when the trouble began. I had been on the top speed, and wanted to get
+her on the free; but she stuck between gears, and I had to get her back
+on the top again. By this time she was going at a great rate, so I
+clapped on both brakes, and one after the other they gave way. I didn’t
+mind so much when I felt my footbrake snap, but when I put all my weight
+on my side-brake, and the lever clanged to its full limit without a
+catch, it brought a cold sweat out of me. By this time we were fairly
+tearing down the slope. The lights were brilliant, and I brought her
+round the first curve all right. Then we did the second one, though it
+was a close shave for the ditch. There was a mile of straight then with
+the third curve beneath it, and after that the gate of the park. If I
+could shoot into that harbour all would be well, for the slope up to the
+house would bring her to a stand.
+
+Perkins behaved splendidly. I should like that to be known. He was
+perfectly cool and alert. I had thought at the very beginning of taking
+the bank, and he read my intention.
+
+“I wouldn’t do it, sir,” said he. “At this pace it must go over and we
+should have it on the top of us.”
+
+Of course he was right. He got to the electric switch and had it off, so
+we were in the free; but we were still running at a fearful pace. He
+laid his hands on the wheel.
+
+“I’ll keep her steady,” said he, “if you care to jump and chance it. We
+can never get round that curve. Better jump, sir.”
+
+“No,” said I; “I’ll stick it out. You can jump if you like.”
+
+“I’ll stick it with you, sir,” said he.
+
+If it had been the old car I should have jammed the gear-lever into the
+reverse, and seen what would happen. I expect she would have stripped
+her gears or smashed up somehow, but it would have been a chance. As it
+was, I was helpless. Perkins tried to climb across, but you couldn’t do
+it going at that pace. The wheels were whirring like a high wind and the
+big body creaking and groaning with the strain. But the lights were
+brilliant, and one could steer to an inch. I remember thinking what an
+awful and yet majestic sight we should appear to any one who met us. It
+was a narrow road, and we were just a great, roaring, golden death to
+any one who came in our path.
+
+We got round the corner with one wheel three feet high upon the bank. I
+thought we were surely over, but after staggering for a moment she
+righted darted onwards. That was the third corner and the last one.
+There was only the park gate now. It was facing us, but, as luck would
+have it, not facing us directly. It was about twenty yards to the left
+up the main road into which we ran. Perhaps I could have done it, but I
+expect that the steering-gear had been jarred when we ran on the bank.
+The wheel did not turn easily. We shot out of the lane. I saw the open
+gate on the left. I whirled round my wheel with all the strength of my
+wrists. Perkins and I threw our bodies across, and then the next
+instant, going at fifty miles an hour, my right front wheel struck full
+on the right-hand pillar of my own gate. I heard the crash. I was
+conscious of flying through the air, and then--and then----!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I became aware of my own existence once more I was among some
+brushwood in the shadow of the oaks upon the lodge side of the drive. A
+man was standing beside me. I imagined at first that it was Perkins, but
+when I looked again I saw that it was Stanley, a man whom I had known at
+college some years before, and for whom I had a really genuine
+affection. There was always something peculiarly sympathetic to me in
+Stanley’s personality; and I was proud to think that I had some similar
+influence upon him. At the present moment I was surprised to see him,
+but I was like a man in a dream, giddy and shaken and quite prepared to
+take things as I found them without questioning them.
+
+“What a smash!” I said. “Good Lord, what an awful smash!”
+
+He nodded his head, and even in the gloom I could see that he was
+smiling the gentle, wistful smile which I connected with him.
+
+I was quite unable to move. Indeed, I had not any desire to try to move.
+But my senses were exceedingly alert. I saw the wreck of the motor lit
+up by the moving lanterns. I saw the little group of people and heard
+the hushed voices. There were the lodge-keeper and his wife, and one or
+two more. They were taking no notice of me, but were very busy round the
+car. Then suddenly I heard a cry of pain.
+
+“The weight is on him. Lift it easy,” cried a voice.
+
+“It’s only my leg!” said another one, which I recognised as Perkins’s.
+“Where’s master?” he cried.
+
+“Here I am,” I answered, but they did not seem to hear me. They were all
+bending over something which lay in front of the car.
+
+Stanley laid his hand upon my shoulder, and his touch was inexpressibly
+soothing. I felt light and happy, in spite of all.
+
+“No pain, of course?” said he.
+
+“None,” said I.
+
+“There never is,” said he.
+
+And then suddenly a wave of amazement passed over me. Stanley! Stanley!
+Why, Stanley had surely died of enteric at Bloemfontein in the Boer War!
+
+“Stanley!” I cried, and the words seemed to choke my throat--“Stanley,
+you are dead.”
+
+He looked at me with the same old gentle, wistful smile.
+
+“So are you,” he answered.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+LOT NO. 249
+
+
+Of the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee, and of
+the cause of the great terror of Abercrombie Smith, it may be that no
+absolute and final judgment will ever be delivered. It is true that we
+have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself, and such
+corroboration as he could look for from Thomas Styles the servant, from
+the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old’s, and from such other
+people as chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident
+in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the story must rest
+upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that
+one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture,
+some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of Nature has been
+overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as
+the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious
+this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of
+science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and
+terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and
+confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-paths into which
+the human spirit may wander.
+
+In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a
+corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the
+open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its
+years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and
+knitted together with withes and strand of ivy, as though the old mother
+had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From a door a
+stone stair curves upwards spirally, passing two landings, and
+terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the
+tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has
+flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left
+these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic
+scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age,
+how full and strong had been that tide of young English life. And what
+was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies,
+save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a
+stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here
+were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and
+many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like
+grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.
+
+In the month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the sets
+of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each
+set consisted simply of a sitting-room and a bedroom, while the two
+corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a
+coal-cellar, and the other as the living-room of the servant, or scout,
+Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him.
+To right and to left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that
+the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain seclusion, which made
+the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were
+the three who occupied them now--Abercrombie Smith above, Edward
+Bellingham beneath him, and William Monkhouse Lee upon the lowest story.
+
+It was ten o’clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay
+back in his armchair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe
+between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there
+lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro
+Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon
+the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their
+hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air men--men
+whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and
+robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke of his college boat, and Smith was an
+even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its shadow
+over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week which
+health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with
+scattered bones, models, and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as
+well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and a
+set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which,
+with Hastie’s help, he might take his exercise in its most compressed
+and least distant form. They knew each other very well--so well that
+they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest
+development of companionship.
+
+“Have some whisky,” said Abercrombie Smith at last between two
+cloudbursts. “Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle.”
+
+“No, thanks. I’m in for the sculls. I don’t liquor when I’m training.
+How about you?”
+
+“I’m reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone.”
+
+Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.
+
+“By the way, Smith,” asked Hastie, presently, “have you made the
+acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?”
+
+“Just a nod when we pass. Nothing more.”
+
+“Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of
+them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don’t think I should take
+them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there’s much amiss with
+Monkhouse Lee.”
+
+“Meaning the thin one?”
+
+“Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don’t think there is
+any vice in him. But then you can’t know him without knowing
+Bellingham.”
+
+“Meaning the fat one?”
+
+“Yes, the fat one. And he’s a man whom I, for one, would rather not
+know.”
+
+Abercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his
+companion.
+
+“What’s up, then?” he asked. “Drink? Cards? Cad? You used not to be
+censorious.”
+
+“Ah! you evidently don’t know the man, or you wouldn’t ask. There’s
+something damnable about him--something reptilian. My gorge always rises
+at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices--an evil liver.
+He’s no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his
+line that they have ever had in the college.”
+
+“Medicine or classics?”
+
+“Eastern languages. He’s a demon at them. Chillingworth met him
+somewhere above the second cataract last long, and he told me that he
+just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned
+among them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and
+Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all ready to kiss the hem of his
+frock-coat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who
+sit on rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when they
+saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said five words they just lay
+down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he never saw
+anything like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right, too, and
+strutted about among them and talked down to them like a Dutch uncle.
+Pretty good for an undergrad. of Old’s, wasn’t it?”
+
+“Why do you say you can’t know Lee without knowing Bellingham?”
+
+“Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright
+little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It’s disgusting to see
+that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that’s what they always remind
+me of.”
+
+Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of
+the grate.
+
+“You show every card in your hand, old chap,” said he. “What a
+prejudiced, green-eyed, evil-thinking old man it is! You have really
+nothing against the fellow except that.”
+
+“Well, I’ve known her ever since she was as long as that cherry-wood
+pipe, and I don’t like to see her taking risks. And it is a risk. He
+looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You
+remember his row with Long Norton?”
+
+“No; you always forget that I am a freshman.”
+
+“Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along by
+the river. There were several fellows going along it, Bellingham in
+front, when they came on an old market-woman coming the other way. It
+had been raining--you know what those fields are like when it has
+rained--and the path ran between the river and a great puddle that was
+nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path, and
+push the old girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to
+terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and Long Norton, who is
+as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it. One
+word led to another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across the
+fellow’s shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss about it, and it’s a
+treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when they meet
+now. By Jove, Smith, it’s nearly eleven o’clock!”
+
+“No hurry. Light your pipe again.”
+
+“Not I. I’m supposed to be in training. Here I’ve been sitting gossiping
+when I ought to have been safely tucked up. I’ll borrow your skull, if
+you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I’ll take the
+little bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won’t need them.
+Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry them very well under my
+arm. Good-night, my son, and take my tip as to your neighbour.”
+
+When Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the
+winding stair, Abercrombie Smith hurled his pipe into the wastepaper
+basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a
+formidable green-covered volume, adorned with great coloured maps of
+that strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless
+monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in
+medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and
+this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his
+profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat
+hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was
+yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end
+overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen
+and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a
+name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at
+Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.
+
+He had sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy
+carriage clock upon the side table were rapidly closing together upon
+the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student’s ear--a sharp,
+rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man’s breath who gasps
+under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted his ear
+to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the
+interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath--the same
+neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavory an account. Smith knew
+him only as a flabby, pale-faced man of silent and studious habits, a
+man whose lamp threw a golden bar from the old turret even after he had
+extinguished his own. This community in lateness had formed a certain
+silent bond between them. It was soothing to Smith when the hours stole
+on towards dawning to feel that there was another so close who set as
+small a value upon his sleep as he did. Even now, as his thoughts turned
+towards him, Smith’s feelings were kindly. Hastie was a good fellow, but
+he was rough, strong-fibred, with no imagination or sympathy. He could
+not tolerate departures from what he looked upon as the model type of
+manliness. If a man could not be measured by a public-school standard,
+then he was beyond the pale with Hastie. Like so many who are themselves
+robust, he was apt to confuse the constitution with the character, to
+ascribe to want of principle what was really a want of circulation.
+Smith, with his stronger mind, knew his friend’s habit, and made
+allowance for it now as his thoughts turned towards the man beneath him.
+
+There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn
+to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of
+the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream--the call of a man who is
+moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and
+dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was
+something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled
+his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such
+an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head.
+Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national
+hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that he
+would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a moment he stood in
+doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of
+footsteps upon the stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half dressed and as
+white as ashes, burst into his room.
+
+“Come down!” he gasped. “Bellingham’s ill.”
+
+Abercrombie Smith followed him closely downstairs into the sitting-room
+which was beneath his own, and intent as he was upon the matter in hand,
+he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed the
+threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen before--a museum
+rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a
+thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures
+bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the
+apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed
+statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange,
+beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and
+Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the
+ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was
+slung in a double noose.
+
+In the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table,
+littered with papers, bottles, and the dried leaves of some graceful,
+palm-like plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in
+order to make room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the
+wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid across the front of
+the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a
+charred head on a gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with its
+clawlike hand and bony forearm resting upon the table. Propped up
+against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in
+front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head
+thrown back, his widely-opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to the
+crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every
+expiration.
+
+“My God! he’s dying!” cried Monkhouse Lee distractedly.
+
+He was a slim, handsome young fellow, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, of a
+Spanish rather than of an English type, with a Celtic intensity of
+manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercrombie Smith.
+
+“Only a faint, I think,” said the medical student. “Just give me a hand
+with him. You take his feet. Now on to the sofa. Can you kick all those
+little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will be all right
+if we undo his collar and give him some water. What has he been up to at
+all?”
+
+“I don’t know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty well,
+you know. It is very good of you to come down.”
+
+“His heart is going like a pair of castanets,” said Smith, laying his
+hand on the breast of the unconscious man. “He seems to me to be
+frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has
+got on him!”
+
+It was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline
+were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of
+fear, but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the under side of a
+sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having at some time
+been considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and
+folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown
+hair bristled up from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears
+protruding at the sides. His light grey eyes were still open, the pupils
+dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare. It seemed
+to Smith as he looked down upon him that he had never seen Nature’s
+danger signals flying so plainly upon a man’s countenance, and his
+thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had given him
+an hour before.
+
+“What the deuce can have frightened him so?” he asked.
+
+“It’s the mummy.”
+
+“The mummy? How, then?”
+
+“I don’t know. It’s beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it. It’s
+the second fright he has given me. It was the same last winter. I found
+him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him.”
+
+“What does he want with the mummy, then?”
+
+“Oh, he’s a crank, you know. It’s his hobby. He knows more about these
+things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn’t! Ah, he’s
+beginning to come to.”
+
+A faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellingham’s
+ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like a sail after a calm. He
+clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his
+teeth, and suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition
+around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he sprang off the sofa,
+seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key, and
+then staggered back on to the sofa.
+
+“What’s up?” he asked. “What do you chaps want?”
+
+“You’ve been shrieking out and making no end of a fuss,” said Monkhouse
+Lee. “If our neighbour here from above hadn’t come down, I’m sure I
+don’t know what I should have done with you.”
+
+“Ah, it’s Abercrombie Smith,” said Bellingham, glancing up at him. “How
+very good of you to come in! What a fool I am! Oh, my God, what a fool I
+am!”
+
+He sunk his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of
+hysterical laughter.
+
+“Look here! Drop it!” cried Smith, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.
+
+“Your nerves are all in a jangle. You must drop these little midnight
+games with mummies, or you’ll be going off your chump. You’re all on
+wires now.”
+
+“I wonder,” said Bellingham, “whether you would be as cool as I am if
+you had seen----”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a
+mummy without trying your nerves. I have no doubt that you are quite
+right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much
+lately. But I am all right now. Please don’t go, though. Just wait for a
+few minutes until I am quite myself.”
+
+“The room is very close,” remarked Lee, throwing open the window and
+letting in the cool night air.
+
+“It’s balsamic resin,” said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried
+palmate leaves from the table and frizzled it over the chimney of the
+lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting
+odour filled the chamber. “It’s the sacred plant--the plant of the
+priests,” he remarked. “Do you know anything of Eastern languages,
+Smith?”
+
+“Nothing at all. Not a word.”
+
+The answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist’s mind.
+
+“By the way,” he continued, “how long was it from the time that you ran
+down, until I came to my senses?”
+
+“Not long. Some four or five minutes.”
+
+“I thought it could not be very long,” said he, drawing a long breath.
+“But what a strange thing unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to
+it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds or weeks.
+Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the
+eleventh dynasty, some forty centuries ago, and yet if he could find his
+tongue, he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a closing
+of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy,
+Smith.”
+
+Smith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye
+at the black and twisted form in front of him. The features, though
+horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nut-like eyes still
+lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was
+drawn tightly from bone to bone, and a tangled wrap of black coarse hair
+fell over the ears. Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the
+shrivelled lower lip. In its crouching position, with bent joints and
+craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the horrid thing
+which made Smith’s gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like
+covering, were exposed, and the sunken, leaden-hued abdomen, with the
+long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were
+wrapped round with coarse yellow bandages. A number of little
+clove-like pieces of myrrh and of cassia were sprinkled over the body,
+and lay scattered on the inside of the case.
+
+“I don’t know his name,” said Bellingham, passing his hand over the
+shrivelled head. “You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions is
+missing. Lot 249 is all the title he has now. You see it printed on his
+case. That was his number in the auction at which I picked him up.”
+
+“He has been a very pretty sort of fellow in his day,” remarked
+Abercrombie Smith.
+
+“He has been a giant. His mummy is six feet seven in length, and that
+would be a giant over there, for they were never a very robust race.
+Feel these great knotted bones, too. He would be a nasty fellow to
+tackle.”
+
+“Perhaps these very hands helped to build the stones into the pyramids,”
+suggested Monkhouse Lee, looking down with disgust in his eyes at the
+crooked, unclean talons.
+
+“No fear. This fellow has been pickled in natron, and looked after in
+the most approved style. They did not serve hodsmen in that fashion.
+Salt or bitumen was enough for them. It has been calculated that this
+sort of thing cost about seven hundred and thirty pounds in our money.
+Our friend was a noble at the least. What do you make of that small
+inscription near his feet, Smith?”
+
+“I told you that I know no Eastern tongue.”
+
+“Ah, so you did. It is the name of the embalmer, I take it. A very
+conscientious worker he must have been. I wonder how many modern works
+will survive four thousand years?”
+
+He kept on speaking lightly and rapidly, but it was evident to
+Abercrombie Smith that he was still palpitating with fear. His hands
+shook, his lower lip trembled, and look where he would, his eye always
+came sliding round to his gruesome companion. Through all his fear,
+however, there was a suspicion of triumph in his tone and manner. His
+eyes shone, and his footstep, as he paced the room, was brisk and
+jaunty. He gave the impression of a man who has gone through an ordeal,
+the marks of which he still bears upon him, but which has helped him to
+his end.
+
+“You’re not going yet?” he cried, as Smith rose from the sofa.
+
+At the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him,
+and he stretched out a hand to detain him.
+
+“Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I think
+that with your nervous system you should take up some less morbid
+study.”
+
+“Oh, I am not nervous as a rule; and I have unwrapped mummies before.”
+
+“You fainted last time,” observed Monkhouse Lee.
+
+“Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of
+electricity. You are not going, Lee?”
+
+“I’ll do whatever you wish, Ned.”
+
+“Then I’ll come down with you and have a shakedown on your sofa.
+Good-night, Smith. I am so sorry to have disturbed you with my
+foolishness.”
+
+They shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and
+irregular stair he heard a key turn in a door, and the steps of his two
+new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this strange way began the acquaintance between Edward Bellingham
+and Abercrombie Smith, an acquaintance which the latter, at least, had
+no desire to push forward. Bellingham, however, appeared to have taken a
+fancy to his rough-spoken neighbour, and made his advances in such a way
+that he could hardly be repulsed without absolute brutality. Twice he
+called to thank Smith for his assistance, and many times afterwards he
+looked in with books, papers and such other civilities as two bachelor
+neighbours can offer each other. He was, as Smith soon found, a man of
+wide reading, with catholic tastes and an extraordinary memory. His
+manner, too, was so pleasing and suave that one came, after a time, to
+overlook his repellent appearance. For a jaded and wearied man he was no
+unpleasant companion, and Smith found himself, after a time, looking
+forward to his visits, and even returning them.
+
+Clever as he undoubtedly was, however, the medical student seemed to
+detect a dash of insanity in the man. He broke out at times into a high,
+inflated style of talk which was in contrast with the simplicity of his
+life.
+
+“It is a wonderful thing,” he cried, “to feel that one can command
+powers of good and of evil--a ministering angel or a demon of
+vengeance.” And again, of Monkhouse Lee, he said,--“Lee is a good
+fellow, an honest fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He
+would not make a fit partner for a man with a great enterprise. He would
+not make a fit partner for me.”
+
+At such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his pipe,
+would simply raise his eyebrows and shake his head, with little
+interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air.
+
+One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a
+frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be for ever talking
+to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor
+with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled
+monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in the
+silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so
+that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham,
+however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that he had uttered
+a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the
+occasion seemed to demand.
+
+Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go
+far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant
+who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer
+time than any man’s memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over
+the same matter.
+
+“If you please, sir,” said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one
+morning, “do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?”
+
+“All right, Styles?”
+
+“Yes, sir. Right in his head, sir.”
+
+“Why should he not be, then?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know, sir. His habits has changed of late. He’s not the
+same man he used to be, though I make free to say that he was never
+quite one of my gentlemen, like Mr. Hastie or yourself, sir. He’s took
+to talkin’ to himself something awful. I wonder it don’t disturb you. I
+don’t know what to make of him, sir.”
+
+“I don’t know what business it is of yours, Styles.”
+
+“Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I
+can’t help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my
+young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the
+relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that
+walks about his room sometimes when he’s out and when the door’s locked
+on the outside.”
+
+“Eh? you’re talking nonsense, Styles.”
+
+“Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more’n once with my own ears.”
+
+“Rubbish, Styles.”
+
+“Very good, sir. You’ll ring the bell if you want me.”
+
+Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old man-servant,
+but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant
+effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his
+memory.
+
+Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining
+him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in
+Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly
+heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.
+
+“There’s some fellow gone in or out of your room,” he remarked.
+
+Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the
+expression of a man who is half incredulous and half afraid.
+
+“I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it,” he
+stammered. “No one could have opened it.”
+
+“Why, I hear some one coming up the steps now,” said Smith.
+
+Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him,
+and hurried down the stairs. About half-way down Smith heard him stop,
+and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door
+beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of
+moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more, and
+re-entered the room.
+
+“It’s all right,” he said, throwing himself down in a chair. “It was
+that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don’t know how I came
+to forget to lock it.”
+
+“I didn’t know you kept a dog,” said Smith, looking very thoughtfully at
+the disturbed face of his companion.
+
+“Yes, I haven’t had him long. I must get rid of him. He’s a great
+nuisance.”
+
+“He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have
+thought that shutting the door would have been enough, without locking
+it.”
+
+“I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He’s of some value,
+you know, and it would be awkward to lose him.”
+
+“I am a bit of a dog-fancier myself,” said Smith, still gazing hard at
+his companion from the corner of his eyes. “Perhaps you’ll let me have a
+look at it.”
+
+“Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be to-night; I have an
+appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a quarter of an hour late
+already. You’ll excuse me, I am sure.”
+
+He picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his
+appointment, Smith heard him re-enter his own chamber and lock his door
+upon the inside.
+
+This interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical student’s
+mind. Bellingham had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that it looked as
+if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that
+his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had
+heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But if it were not,
+then what could it be? There was old Styles’s statement about the
+something which used to pace the room at times when the owner was
+absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the view. If so,
+it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered
+by the authorities, so that his anxiety and falsehoods might be
+accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate could
+keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the
+explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith
+determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further
+attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favoured
+neighbour.
+
+But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly
+caught up the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three
+steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst
+into the room.
+
+“Still at it!” said he, plumping down into his wonted arm-chair. “What a
+chap you are to stew! I believe an earthquake might come and knock
+Oxford into a cocked hat, and you would sit perfectly placid with your
+books among the ruins. However, I won’t bore you long. Three whiffs of
+baccy, and I am off.”
+
+“What’s the news, then?” asked Smith, cramming a plug of bird’s-eye into
+his briar with his forefinger.
+
+“Nothing very much. Wilson made 70 for the freshmen against the eleven.
+They say that they will play him instead of Buddicomb, for Buddicomb is
+clean off colour. He used to be able to bowl a little, but it’s nothing
+but half-volleys and long hops now.”
+
+“Medium right,” suggested Smith, with the intense gravity which comes
+upon a ’varsity man when he speaks of athletics.
+
+“Inclining to fast, with a work from leg. Comes with the arm about three
+inches or so. He used to be nasty on a wet wicket. Oh, by-the-way, have
+you heard about Long Norton?”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“He’s been attacked.”
+
+“Attacked?”
+
+“Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a
+hundred yards of the gate of Old’s.”
+
+“But who----”
+
+“Ah, that’s the rub! If you said ‘what,’ you would be more grammatical.
+Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from the scratches on
+his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him.”
+
+“What, then? Have we come down to spooks?”
+
+Abercrombie Smith puffed his scientific contempt.
+
+“Well, no; I don’t think that is quite the idea, either. I am inclined
+to think that if any showman has lost a great ape lately, and the brute
+is in these parts, a jury would find a true bill against it. Norton
+passes that way every night, you know, about the same hour. There’s a
+tree that hangs low over the path--the big elm from Rainy’s garden.
+Norton thinks the thing dropped on him out of the tree. Anyhow, he was
+nearly strangled by two arms, which, he says, were as strong and as thin
+as steel bands. He saw nothing; only those beastly arms that tightened
+and tightened on him. He yelled his head nearly off, and a couple of
+chaps came running, and the thing went over the wall like a cat. He
+never got a fair sight of it the whole time. It gave Norton a shake up,
+I can tell you. I tell him it has been as good as a change at the
+seaside for him.”
+
+“A garrotter, most likely,” said Smith.
+
+“Very possible. Norton says not; but we don’t mind what he says. The
+garrotter had long nails, and was pretty smart at swinging himself over
+walls. By-the-way, your beautiful neighbour would be pleased if he heard
+about it. He had a grudge against Norton, and he’s not a man, from what
+I know of him, to forget his little debts. But hallo, old chap, what
+have you got in your noddle?”
+
+“Nothing,” Smith answered curtly.
+
+He had started in his chair, and the look had flashed over his face
+which comes upon a man who is struck suddenly by some unpleasant idea.
+
+“You looked as if something I had said had taken you on the raw.
+By-the-way, you have made the acquaintance of Master B. since I looked
+in last, have you not? Young Monkhouse Lee told me something to that
+effect.”
+
+“Yes; I know him slightly. He has been up here once or twice.”
+
+“Well, you’re big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself. He’s
+not what I should call exactly a healthy sort of Johnny, though, no
+doubt, he’s very clever, and all that. But you’ll soon find out for
+yourself. Lee is all right; he’s a very decent little fellow. Well, so
+long, old chap! I row Mullins for the Vice-Chancellor’s pot on Wednesday
+week, so mind you come down, in case I don’t see you before.”
+
+Bovine Smith laid down his pipe and turned stolidly to his books once
+more. But with all the will in the world, he found it very hard to keep
+his mind upon his work. It would slip away to brood upon the man beneath
+him, and upon the little mystery which hung round his chambers. Then his
+thoughts turned to this singular attack of which Hastie had spoken, and
+to the grudge which Bellingham was said to owe the object of it. The two
+ideas would persist in rising together in his mind, as though there were
+some close and intimate connection between them. And yet the suspicion
+was so dim and vague that it could not be put down in words.
+
+“Confound the chap!” cried Smith, as he shied his book on pathology
+across the room. “He has spoiled my night’s reading, and that’s reason
+enough, if there were no other, why I should steer clear of him in the
+future.”
+
+For ten days the medical student confined himself so closely to his
+studies that he neither saw nor heard anything of either of the men
+beneath him. At the hours when Bellingham had been accustomed to visit
+him, he took care to sport his oak, and though he more than once heard a
+knocking at his outer door, he resolutely refused to answer it. One
+afternoon, however, he was descending the stairs when, just as he was
+passing it, Bellingham’s door flew open, and young Monkhouse Lee came
+out with his eyes sparkling and a dark flush of anger upon his olive
+cheeks. Close at his heels followed Bellingham, his fat, unhealthy face
+all quivering with malignant passion.
+
+“You fool!” he hissed. “You’ll be sorry.”
+
+“Very likely,” cried the other. “Mind what I say. It’s off! I won’t hear
+of it!”
+
+“You’ve promised, anyhow.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll keep that! I won’t speak. But I’d rather little Eva was in her
+grave. Once for all, it’s off. She’ll do what I say. We don’t want to
+see you again.”
+
+So much Smith could not avoid hearing, but he hurried on, for he had no
+wish to be involved in their dispute. There had been a serious breach
+between them, that was clear enough, and Lee was going to cause the
+engagement with his sister to be broken off. Smith thought of Hastie’s
+comparison of the toad and the dove, and was glad to think that the
+matter was at an end. Bellingham’s face when he was in a passion was not
+pleasant to look upon. He was not a man to whom an innocent girl could
+be trusted for life. As he walked, Smith wondered languidly what could
+have caused the quarrel, and what the promise might be which Bellingham
+had been so anxious that Monkhouse Lee should keep.
+
+It was the day of the sculling match between Hastie and Mullins, and a
+stream of men were making their way down to the banks of the Isis. A May
+sun was shining brightly, and the yellow path was barred with the black
+shadows of the tall elm-trees. On either side the grey colleges lay
+back from the road, the hoary old mothers of minds looking out from
+their high, mullioned windows at the tide of young life which swept so
+merrily past them. Black-clad tutors, prim officials, pale reading men,
+brown-faced, straw-hatted young athletes in white sweaters or
+many-coloured blazers, all were hurrying towards the blue winding river
+which curves through the Oxford meadows.
+
+Abercrombie Smith, with the intuition of an old oarsman, chose his
+position at the point where he knew that the struggle, if there were a
+struggle, would come. Far off he heard the hum which announced the
+start, the gathering roar of the approach, the thunder of running feet,
+and the shouts of the men in the boats beneath him. A spray of
+half-clad, deep-breathing runners shot past him, and craning over their
+shoulders, he saw Hastie pulling a steady thirty-six, while his
+opponent, with a jerky forty, was a good boat’s length behind him. Smith
+gave a cheer for his friend, and pulling out his watch, was starting off
+again for his chambers, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder, and
+found that young Monkhouse Lee was beside him.
+
+“I saw you there,” he said, in a timid, deprecating way. “I wanted to
+speak to you, if you could spare me a half-hour. This cottage is mine. I
+share it with Harrington of King’s. Come in and have a cup of tea.”
+
+“I must be back presently,” said Smith. “I am hard on the grind at
+present. But I’ll come in for a few minutes with pleasure. I wouldn’t
+have come out only Hastie is a friend of mine.”
+
+“So he is of mine. Hasn’t he a beautiful style? Mullins wasn’t in it.
+But come into the cottage. It’s a little den of a place, but it is
+pleasant to work in during the summer months.”
+
+It was a small, square, white building, with green doors and shutters,
+and a rustic trellis-work porch, standing back some fifty yards from the
+river’s bank. Inside, the main room was roughly fitted up as a
+study--deal table, unpainted shelves with books, and a few cheap
+oleographs upon the wall. A kettle sang upon a spirit-stove, and there
+were tea things upon a tray on the table.
+
+“Try that chair and have a cigarette,” said Lee. “Let me pour you out a
+cup of tea. It’s so good of you to come in, for I know that your time is
+a good deal taken up. I wanted to say to you that, if I were you, I
+should change my rooms at once.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+Smith sat staring with a lighted match in one hand and his unlit
+cigarette in the other.
+
+“Yes; it must seem very extraordinary, and the worst of it is that I
+cannot give my reasons, for I am under a solemn promise--a very solemn
+promise. But I may go so far as to say that I don’t think Bellingham is
+a very safe man to live near. I intend to camp out here as much as I can
+for a time.”
+
+“Not safe! What do you mean?”
+
+“Ah, that’s what I mustn’t say. But do take my advice, and move your
+rooms. We had a grand row to-day. You must have heard us, for you came
+down the stairs.”
+
+“I saw that you had fallen out.”
+
+“He’s a horrible chap, Smith. That is the only word for him. I have had
+doubts about him ever since that night when he fainted--you remember,
+when you came down. I taxed him to-day, and he told me things that made
+my hair rise, and wanted me to stand in with him. I’m not strait-laced,
+but I am a clergyman’s son, you know, and I think there are some things
+which are quite beyond the pale. I only thank God that I found him out
+before it was too late, for he was to have married into my family.”
+
+“This is all very fine, Lee,” said Abercrombie Smith curtly. “But either
+you are saying a great deal too much or a great deal too little.”
+
+“I give you a warning.”
+
+“If there is real reason for warning, no promise can bind you. If I see
+a rascal about to blow a place up with dynamite no pledge will stand in
+my way of preventing him.”
+
+“Ah, but I cannot prevent him, and I can do nothing but warn you.”
+
+“Without saying what you warn me against.”
+
+“Against Bellingham.”
+
+“But that is childish. Why should I fear him, or any man?”
+
+“I can’t tell you. I can only entreat you to change your rooms. You are
+in danger where you are. I don’t even say that Bellingham would wish to
+injure you. But it might happen, for he is a dangerous neighbour just
+now.”
+
+“Perhaps I know more than you think,” said Smith, looking keenly at the
+young man’s boyish, earnest face. “Suppose I tell you that some one else
+shares Bellingham’s rooms.”
+
+Monkhouse Lee sprang from his chair in uncontrollable excitement.
+
+“You know, then?” he gasped.
+
+“A woman.”
+
+Lee dropped back again with a groan.
+
+“My lips are sealed,” he said. “I must not speak.”
+
+“Well, anyhow,” said Smith, rising, “it is not likely that I should
+allow myself to be frightened out of rooms which suit me very nicely. It
+would be a little too feeble for me to move out all my goods and
+chattels because you say that Bellingham might in some unexplained way
+do me an injury. I think that I’ll just take my chance, and stay where I
+am, and as I see that it’s nearly five o’clock, I must ask you to excuse
+me.”
+
+He bade the young student adieu in a few curt words, and made his way
+homeward through the sweet spring evening, feeling half-ruffled,
+half-amused, as any other strong, unimaginative man might who has been
+menaced by a vague and shadowy danger.
+
+There was one little indulgence which Abercrombie Smith always allowed
+himself, however closely his work might press upon him. Twice a week, on
+the Tuesday and the Friday, it was his invariable custom to walk over to
+Farlingford, the residence of Doctor Plumptree Peterson, situated about
+a mile and a half out of Oxford. Peterson had been a close friend of
+Smith’s elder brother Francis, and as he was a bachelor, fairly
+well-to-do, with a good cellar and a better library, his house was a
+pleasant goal for a man who was in need of a brisk walk. Twice a week,
+then, the medical student would swing out there along the dark country
+roads, and spend a pleasant hour in Peterson’s comfortable study,
+discussing, over a glass of old port, the gossip of the ’varsity or the
+latest developments of medicine or of surgery.
+
+On the day which followed his interview with Monkhouse Lee, Smith shut
+up his books at a quarter past eight, the hour when he usually started
+for his friend’s house. As he was leaving his room, however, his eyes
+chanced to fall upon one of the books which Bellingham had lent him, and
+his conscience pricked him for not having returned it. However repellent
+the man might be, he should not be treated with discourtesy. Taking the
+book, he walked downstairs and knocked at his neighbour’s door. There
+was no answer; but on turning the handle he found that it was unlocked.
+Pleased at the thought of avoiding an interview, he stepped inside, and
+placed the book with his card upon the table.
+
+The lamp was turned half down, but Smith could see the details of the
+room plainly enough. It was all much as he had seen it before--the
+frieze, the animal-headed gods, the hanging crocodile, and the table
+littered over with papers and dried leaves. The mummy case stood upright
+against the wall, but the mummy itself was missing. There was no sign of
+any second occupant of the room, and he felt as he withdrew that he had
+probably done Bellingham an injustice. Had he a guilty secret to
+preserve, he would hardly leave his door open so that all the world
+might enter.
+
+The spiral stair was as black as pitch, and Smith was slowly making his
+way down its irregular steps, when he was suddenly conscious that
+something had passed him in the darkness. There was a faint sound, a
+whiff of air, a light brushing past his elbow, but so slight that he
+could scarcely be certain of it. He stopped and listened, but the wind
+was rustling among the ivy outside, and he could hear nothing else.
+
+“Is that you, Styles?” he shouted.
+
+There was no answer, and all was still behind him. It must have been a
+sudden gust of air, for there were crannies and cracks in the old
+turret. And yet he could almost have sworn that he heard a footfall by
+his very side. He had emerged into the quadrangle, still turning the
+matter over in his head, when a man came running swiftly across the
+smooth-cropped lawn.
+
+“Is that you, Smith?”
+
+“Hullo, Hastie!”
+
+“For God’s sake come at once! Young Lee is drowned! Here’s Harrington of
+King’s with the news. The doctor is out. You’ll do, but come along at
+once. There may be life in him.”
+
+“Have you brandy?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I’ll bring some. There’s a flask on my table.”
+
+Smith bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time, seized the flask,
+and was rushing down with it, when, as he passed Bellingham’s room, his
+eyes fell upon something which left him gasping and staring upon the
+landing.
+
+The door, which he had closed behind him, was now open, and right in
+front of him, with the lamp-light shining upon it, was the mummy case.
+Three minutes ago it had been empty. He could swear to that. Now it
+framed the lank body of its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and
+stark, with his black shrivelled face towards the door. The form was
+lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still
+lingered a lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in
+the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the hollow sockets. So
+astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand, and was
+still staring at the lean, sunken figure when the voice of his friend
+below recalled him to himself.
+
+“Come on, Smith!” he shouted. “It’s life and death, you know. Hurry up!
+Now, then,” he added, as the medical student reappeared, “let us do a
+sprint. It is well under a mile, and we should do it in five minutes. A
+human life is better worth running for than a pot.”
+
+Neck and neck they dashed through the darkness, and did not pull up
+until panting and spent, they had reached the little cottage by the
+river. Young Lee, limp and dripping like a broken water-plant, was
+stretched upon the sofa, the green scum of the river upon his black
+hair, and a fringe of white foam upon his leaden-hued lips. Beside him
+knelt his fellow student, Harrington, endeavouring to chafe some warmth
+back into his rigid limbs.
+
+“I think there’s life in him,” said Smith, with his hand to the lad’s
+side. “Put your watch glass to his lips. Yes, there’s dimming on it. You
+take one arm, Hastie. Now work it as I do, and we’ll soon pull him
+round.”
+
+For ten minutes they worked in silence, inflating and depressing the
+chest of the unconscious man. At the end of that time a shiver ran
+through his body, his lips trembled, and he opened his eyes. The three
+students burst out into an irrepressible cheer.
+
+“Wake up, old chap. You’ve frightened us quite enough.”
+
+“Have some brandy. Take a sip from the flask.”
+
+“He’s all right now,” said his companion Harrington. “Heavens, what a
+fright I got! I was reading here, and had gone out for a stroll as far
+as the river, when I heard a scream and a splash. Out I ran, and by the
+time I could find him and fish him out, all life seemed to have gone.
+Then Simpson couldn’t get a doctor, for he has a game-leg, and I had to
+run, and I don’t know what I’d have done without you fellows. That’s
+right, old chap. Sit up.”
+
+Monkhouse Lee had raised himself on his hands, and looked wildly about
+him.
+
+“What’s up?” he asked. “I’ve been in the water. Ah, yes; I remember.”
+
+A look of fear came into his eyes, and he sank his face into his hands.
+
+“How did you fall in?”
+
+“I didn’t fall in.”
+
+“How then?”
+
+“I was thrown in. I was standing by the bank, and something from behind
+picked me up like a feather and hurled me in. I heard nothing, and I saw
+nothing. But I know what it was, for all that.”
+
+“And so do I,” whispered Smith.
+
+Lee looked up with a quick glance of surprise.
+
+“You’ve learned, then?” he said. “You remember the advice I gave you?”
+
+“Yes, and I begin to think that I shall take it.”
+
+“I don’t know what the deuce you fellows are talking about,” said
+Hastie, “but I think, if I were you, Harrington, I should get Lee to bed
+at once. It will be time enough to discuss the why and the wherefore
+when he is a little stronger. I think, Smith, you and I can leave him
+alone now. I am walking back to college; if you are coming in that
+direction, we can have a chat.”
+
+But it was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith’s
+mind was too full of the incidents of the evening, the absence of the
+mummy from his neighbour’s rooms, the step that passed him on the stair,
+the reappearance--the extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance of the
+grisly thing--and then this attack upon Lee, corresponding so closely to
+the previous outrage upon another man against whom Bellingham bore a
+grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together with the many little
+incidents which had previously turned him against his neighbour, and the
+singular circumstances under which he was first called in to him. What
+had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic conjecture, had suddenly
+taken form, and stood out in his mind as a grim fact, a thing not to be
+denied. And yet, how monstrous it was! how unheard of! how entirely
+beyond all bounds of human experience. An impartial judge, or even the
+friend who walked by his side, would simply tell him that his eyes had
+deceived him, that the mummy had been there all the time, that young Lee
+had tumbled into the river as any other man tumbles into a river, and
+that blue pill was the best thing for a disordered liver. He felt that
+he would have said as much if the positions had been reversed. And yet
+he could swear that Bellingham was a murderer at heart, and that he
+wielded a weapon such as no man had ever used in all the grim history of
+crime.
+
+Hastie had branched off to his rooms with a few crisp and emphatic
+comments upon his friend’s unsociability, and Abercrombie Smith crossed
+the quadrangle to his corner turret with a strong feeling of repulsion
+for his chambers and their associations. He would take Lee’s advice,
+and move his quarters as soon as possible, for how could a man study
+when his ear was ever straining for every murmur or footstep in the room
+below? He observed, as he crossed over the lawn, that the light was
+still shining in Bellingham’s window, and as he passed up the staircase
+the door opened, and the man himself looked out at him. With his fat,
+evil face he was like some bloated spider fresh from the weaving of his
+poisonous web.
+
+“Good-evening,” said he. “Won’t you come in?”
+
+“No,” cried Smith fiercely.
+
+“No? You are busy as ever? I wanted to ask you about Lee. I was sorry to
+hear that there was a rumour that something was amiss with him.”
+
+His features were grave, but there was the gleam of a hidden laugh in
+his eyes as he spoke. Smith saw it, and he could have knocked him down
+for it.
+
+“You’ll be sorrier still to hear that Monkhouse Lee is doing very well,
+and is out of all danger,” he answered. “Your hellish tricks have not
+come off this time. Oh, you needn’t try to brazen it out. I know all
+about it.”
+
+Bellingham took a step back from the angry student, and half-closed the
+door as if to protect himself.
+
+“You are mad,” he said. “What do you mean? Do you assert that I had
+anything to do with Lee’s accident?”
+
+“Yes,” thundered Smith. “You and that bag of bones behind you; you
+worked it between you. I tell you what it is, Master B., they have given
+up burning folk like you, but we still keep a hangman, and, by George!
+if any man in this college meets his death while you are here, I’ll have
+you up, and if you don’t swing for it, it won’t be my fault. You’ll
+find that your filthy Egyptian tricks won’t answer in England.”
+
+“You’re a raving lunatic,” said Bellingham.
+
+“All right. You just remember what I say, for you’ll find that I’ll be
+better than my word.”
+
+The door slammed, and Smith went fuming up to his chamber, where he
+locked the door upon the inside, and spent half the night in smoking his
+old briar and brooding over the strange events of the evening.
+
+Next morning Abercrombie Smith heard nothing of his neighbour, but
+Harrington called upon him in the afternoon to say that Lee was almost
+himself again. All day Smith stuck fast to his work, but in the evening
+he determined to pay the visit to his friend Doctor Peterson upon which
+he had started the night before. A good walk and a friendly chat would
+be welcome to his jangled nerves.
+
+Bellingham’s door was shut as he passed, but glancing back when he was
+some distance from the turret, he saw his neighbour’s head at the window
+outlined against the lamp-light, his face pressed apparently against the
+glass as he gazed out into the darkness. It was a blessing to be away
+from all contact with him, if but for a few hours, and Smith stepped out
+briskly, and breathed the soft spring air into his lungs. The half-moon
+lay in the west between two Gothic pinnacles, and threw upon the
+silvered street a dark tracery from the stone-work above. There was a
+brisk breeze, and light, fleecy clouds drifted swiftly across the sky.
+Old’s was on the very border of the town, and in five minutes Smith
+found himself beyond the houses and between the hedges of a May-scented
+Oxfordshire lane.
+
+It was a lonely and little frequented road which led to his friend’s
+house. Early as it was, Smith did not meet a single soul upon his way.
+He walked briskly along until he came to the avenue gate, which opened
+into the long gravel drive leading up to Farlingford. In front of him he
+could see the cosy red light of the windows glimmering through the
+foliage. He stood with his hand upon the iron latch of the swinging
+gate, and he glanced back at the road along which he had come. Something
+was coming swiftly down it.
+
+It moved in the shadow of the hedge, silently and furtively, a dark,
+crouching figure, dimly visible against the black background. Even as he
+gazed back at it, it had lessened its distance by twenty paces, and was
+fast closing upon him. Out of the darkness he had a glimpse of a scraggy
+neck, and of two eyes that will ever haunt him in his dreams. He turned,
+and with a cry of terror he ran for his life up the avenue. There were
+the red lights, the signals of safety, almost within a stone’s-throw of
+him. He was a famous runner, but never had he run as he ran that night.
+
+The heavy gate had swung into place behind him, but he heard it dash
+open again before his pursuer. As he rushed madly and wildly through the
+night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see, as
+he threw back a glance, that this horror was bounding like a tiger at
+his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm out-thrown. Thank God,
+the door was ajar. He could see the thin bar of light which shot from
+the lamp in the hall. Nearer yet sounded the clatter from behind. He
+heard a hoarse gurgling at his very shoulder. With a shriek he flung
+himself against the door, slammed and bolted it behind him, and sank
+half-fainting on to the hall chair.
+
+“My goodness, Smith, what’s the matter?” asked Peterson, appearing at
+the door of his study.
+
+“Give me some brandy.”
+
+Peterson disappeared, and came rushing out again with a glass and a
+decanter.
+
+“You need it,” he said, as his visitor drank off what he poured out for
+him. “Why, man, you are as white as a cheese.”
+
+Smith laid down his glass, rose up, and took a deep breath.
+
+“I am my own man again now,” said he. “I was never so unmanned before.
+But, with your leave, Peterson, I will sleep here to-night, for I don’t
+think I could face that road again except by daylight. It’s weak, I
+know, but I can’t help it.”
+
+Peterson looked at his visitor with a very questioning eye.
+
+“Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I’ll tell Mrs. Burney to
+make up the spare bed. Where are you off to now?”
+
+“Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to
+see what I have seen.”
+
+They went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look down
+upon the approach to the house. The drive and the fields on either side
+lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.
+
+“Well, really, Smith,” remarked Peterson, “it is well that I know you to
+be an abstemious man. What in the world can have frightened you?”
+
+“I’ll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now, look,
+look! See the curve of the road just beyond your gate.”
+
+“Yes, I see; you needn’t pinch my arm off. I saw some one pass. I should
+say a man, rather thin, apparently, and tall, very tall. But what of
+him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an aspen leaf.”
+
+“I have been within hand-grip of the devil, that’s all. But come down to
+your study, and I shall tell you the whole story.”
+
+He did so. Under the cheery lamp-light, with a glass of wine on the
+table beside him, and the portly form and florid face of his friend in
+front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small,
+which had formed so singular a chain, from the night on which he had
+found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case until this horrid
+experience of an hour ago.
+
+“There now,” he said as he concluded, “that’s the whole black business.
+It is monstrous and incredible, but it is true.”
+
+Doctor Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very
+puzzled expression upon his face.
+
+“I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!” he said at last. “You
+have told me the facts. Now tell me your inferences.”
+
+“You can draw your own.”
+
+“But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter, and
+I have not.”
+
+“Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to
+me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies,
+has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy--or possibly only
+this particular mummy--can be temporarily brought to life. He was trying
+this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt the
+sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he had
+expected it. You remember that almost the first words he said were to
+call out upon himself as a fool. Well, he got more hardened afterwards,
+and carried the matter through without fainting. The vitality which he
+could put into it was evidently only a passing thing, for I have seen it
+continually in its case as dead as this table. He has some elaborate
+process, I fancy, by which he brings the thing to pass. Having done it,
+he naturally bethought him that he might use the creature as an agent.
+It has intelligence and it has strength. For some purpose he took Lee
+into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent Christian, would have
+nothing to do with such a business. Then they had a row, and Lee vowed
+that he would tell his sister of Bellingham’s true character.
+Bellingham’s game was to prevent him, and he nearly managed it, by
+setting this creature of his on his track. He had already tried its
+powers upon another man--Norton--towards whom he had a grudge. It is the
+merest chance that he has not two murders upon his soul. Then, when I
+taxed him with the matter, he had the strongest reasons for wishing me
+out of the way, before I could convey my knowledge to any one else. He
+got his chance when I went out, for he knew my habits and where I was
+bound for. I have had a narrow shave, Peterson, and it is mere luck you
+didn’t find me on your doorstep in the morning. I’m not a nervous man as
+a rule, and I never thought to have the fear of death put upon me as it
+was to-night.”
+
+“My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously,” said his companion.
+“Your nerves are out of order with your work, and you make too much of
+it. How could such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford,
+even at night, without being seen?”
+
+“It has been seen. There is quite a scare in the town about an escaped
+ape, as they imagine the creature to be. It is the talk of the place.”
+
+“Well, it’s a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you
+must allow that each incident in itself is capable of a more natural
+explanation.”
+
+“What! even my adventure of to-night?”
+
+“Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your head
+full of this theory of yours. Some gaunt, half-famished tramp steals
+after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears
+and imagination do the rest.”
+
+“It won’t do, Peterson; it won’t do.”
+
+“And again, in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty, and
+then a few moments later with an occupant, you know that it was
+lamp-light, that the lamp was half turned down, and that you had no
+special reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you
+may have overlooked the creature in the first instance.”
+
+“No, no; it is out of the question.”
+
+“And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted.
+It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against
+Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he
+would simply laugh in your face.”
+
+“I know he would. That is why I mean to take the matter into my own
+hands.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Yes; I feel that a public duty rests upon me, and, besides, I must do
+it for my own safety, unless I choose to allow myself to be hunted by
+this beast out of the college, and that would be a little too feeble. I
+have quite made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I use
+your paper and pens for an hour?”
+
+“Most certainly. You will find all that you want upon that side-table.”
+
+Abercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour,
+and then for a second hour his pen travelled swiftly over it. Page after
+page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back in his
+arm-chair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At last, with
+an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith sprang to his feet, gathered his
+papers up into order, and laid the last one upon Peterson’s desk.
+
+“Kindly sign this as a witness,” he said.
+
+“A witness? Of what?”
+
+“Of my signature, and of the date. The date is the most important. Why,
+Peterson, my life might hang upon it.”
+
+“My dear Smith, you are talking wildly. Let me beg you to go to bed.”
+
+“On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will
+promise to go to bed the moment you have signed it.”
+
+“But what is it?”
+
+“It is a statement of all that I have been telling you to-night. I wish
+you to witness it.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Peterson, signing his name under that of his
+companion. “There you are! But what is the idea?”
+
+“You will kindly retain it, and produce it in case I am arrested.”
+
+“Arrested? For what?”
+
+“For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every
+event. There is only one course open to me, and I am determined to take
+it.”
+
+“For Heaven’s sake, don’t do anything rash!”
+
+“Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I hope
+that we won’t need to bother you, but it will ease my mind to know that
+you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take your
+advice and to go to roost, for I want to be at my best in the morning.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Abercrombie Smith was not an entirely pleasant man to have as an enemy.
+Slow and easy-tempered, he was formidable when driven to action. He
+brought to every purpose in life the same deliberate resoluteness which
+had distinguished him as a scientific student. He had laid his studies
+aside for a day, but he intended that the day should not be wasted. Not
+a word did he say to his host as to his plans, but by nine o’clock he
+was well on his way to Oxford.
+
+In the High Street he stopped at Clifford’s the gunmaker’s, and bought
+a heavy revolver, with a box of central-fire cartridges. Six of them he
+slipped into the chambers, and half-cocking the weapon, placed it in the
+pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie’s rooms, where the
+big oarsman was lounging over his breakfast, with the _Sporting Times_
+propped up against the coffee-pot.
+
+“Hullo! What’s up?” he asked. “Have some coffee?”
+
+“No, thank you. I want you to come with me, Hastie, and do what I ask
+you.”
+
+“Certainly, my boy.”
+
+“And bring a heavy stick with you.”
+
+“Hullo!” Hastie stared. “Here’s a hunting crop that would fell an ox.”
+
+“One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the
+longest of them.”
+
+“There you are. You seem to be fairly on the war trail. Anything else?”
+
+“No; that will do.” Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the
+way to the quadrangle. “We are neither of us chickens, Hastie,” said he.
+“I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am
+going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal
+with, I won’t, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up you come,
+and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?”
+
+“All right. I’ll come if I hear you bellow.”
+
+“Stay here, then. I may be a little time, but don’t budge until I come
+down.”
+
+“I’m a fixture.”
+
+Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham’s door and stepped in.
+Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his
+litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale
+number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff
+and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed
+the door, and then stepping across to the fire-place, struck a match and
+set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage
+upon his bloated face.
+
+“Well, really now, you make yourself at home,” he gasped.
+
+Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table,
+drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the
+long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of
+Bellingham.
+
+“Now, then,” said he, “just get to work and cut up that mummy.”
+
+“Oh, is that it?” said Bellingham with a sneer.
+
+“Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can’t touch you. But I have
+a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not
+set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet
+through your brain!”
+
+“You would murder me?”
+
+Bellingham had half risen, and his face was the colour of putty.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And for what?”
+
+“To stop your mischief. One minute has gone.”
+
+“But what have I done?”
+
+“I know and you know.”
+
+“This is mere bullying.”
+
+“Two minutes are gone.”
+
+“But you must give reasons. You are a madman--a dangerous madman. Why
+should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy.”
+
+“You must cut it up, and you must burn it.”
+
+“I will do no such thing.”
+
+“Four minutes are gone.”
+
+Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an
+inexorable face. As the secondhand stole round, he raised his hand, and
+the finger twitched upon the trigger.
+
+“There! there! I’ll do it!” screamed Bellingham.
+
+In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the
+mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible
+visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every
+stab of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and
+dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending
+crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of
+sprawling limbs, upon the floor.
+
+“Now into the fire!” said Smith.
+
+The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like debris was
+piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and
+the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped
+and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick,
+fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned rosin and
+singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and
+brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.
+
+“Perhaps that will satisfy you,” snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear
+in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormentor.
+
+“No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no
+more devil’s tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have something
+to do with it.”
+
+“And what now?” asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to
+the blaze.
+
+“Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in
+that drawer, I think.”
+
+“No, no,” shouted Bellingham. “Don’t burn that! Why, man, you don’t know
+what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere else to
+be found.”
+
+“Out with it!”
+
+“But look here, Smith, you can’t really mean it. I’ll share the
+knowledge with you. I’ll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let me
+only copy it before you burn it!”
+
+Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the
+yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it
+down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith
+pushed him back and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless
+grey ash.
+
+“Now, Master B.,” said he, “I think I have pretty well drawn your teeth.
+You’ll hear from me again, if you return to your old tricks. And now
+good-morning, for I must go back to my studies.”
+
+And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events
+which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of ’84. As
+Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last
+heard of in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict his
+statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the ways of Nature are
+strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be found
+by those who seek for them?
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+“DE PROFUNDIS”
+
+
+So long as the oceans are the ligaments which bind together the great
+broadcast British Empire, so long will there be a dash of romance in our
+minds. For the soul is swayed by the waters, as the waters are by the
+moon, and when the great highways of an empire are along such roads as
+these, so full of strange sights and sounds, with danger ever running
+like a hedge on either side of the course, it is a dull mind indeed
+which does not bear away with it some trace of such a passage. And now,
+Britain lies far beyond herself, for the three-mile limit of every
+seaboard is her frontier, which has been won by hammer and loom and pick
+rather than by arts of war. For it is written in history that neither
+king nor army can bar the path to the man who having twopence in his
+strong box, and knowing well where he can turn it to threepence, sets
+his mind to that one end. And as the frontier has broadened the mind of
+Britain has broadened too, spreading out until all men can see that the
+ways of the island are continental, even as those of the Continent are
+insular.
+
+But for this a price must be paid, and the price is a grievous one. As
+the beast of old must have one young human life as a tribute every year,
+so to our Empire we throw from day to day the pick and flower of our
+youth. The engine is world-wide and strong, but the only fuel that will
+drive it is the lives of British men. Thus it is that in the grey old
+cathedrals, as we look round upon the brasses on the walls, we see
+strange names, such names as they who reared those walls had never
+heard, for it is in Peshawur, and Umballah, and Korti, and Fort Pearson
+that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind
+them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no
+frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever
+show how high the Anglo-Celtic tide had lapped.
+
+This, then, as well as the waters which join us to the world, has done
+something to tinge us with romance. For when so many have their loved
+ones over the seas, walking amid hillmen’s bullets, or swamp malaria,
+where death is sudden and distance great, then mind communes with mind,
+and strange stories arise of dream, presentiment, or vision, where the
+mother sees her dying son, and is past the first bitterness of her grief
+ere the message comes which should have broken the news. The learned
+have of late looked into the matter and have even labelled it with a
+name; but what can we know more of it save that a poor stricken soul,
+when hard-pressed and driven, can shoot across the earth some
+ten-thousand-mile-distant picture of its trouble to the mind which is
+most akin to it. Far be it from me to say that there lies no such power
+within us, for of all things which the brain will grasp the last will be
+itself; but yet it is well to be very cautious over such matters, for
+once at least I have known that which was within the laws of Nature seem
+to be far upon the further side of them.
+
+John Vansittart was the younger partner of the firm of Hudson and
+Vansittart, coffee exporters of the Island of Ceylon, three-quarters
+Dutchman by descent, but wholly English in his sympathies. For years I
+had been his agent in London, and when in ’72 he came over to England
+for a three months’ holiday, he turned to me for the introductions which
+would enable him to see something of town and country life. Armed with
+seven letters he left my offices, and for many weeks scrappy notes from
+different parts of the country let me know that he had found favour in
+the eyes of my friends. Then came word of his engagement to Emily
+Lawson, of a cadet branch of the Hereford Lawsons, and at the very tail
+of the first flying rumour the news of his absolute marriage, for the
+wooing of a wanderer must be short, and the days were already crowding
+on towards the date when he must be upon his homeward journey. They were
+to return together to Colombo in one of the firm’s own thousand-ton
+barque-rigged sailing ships, and this was to be their princely
+honeymoon, at once a necessity and a delight.
+
+Those were the royal days of coffee-planting in Ceylon, before a single
+season and a rotting fungus drove a whole community through years of
+despair to one of the greatest commercial victories which pluck and
+ingenuity ever won. Not often is it that men have the heart when their
+one great industry is withered to rear up in a few years another as rich
+to take its place, and the tea-fields of Ceylon are as true a monument
+to courage as is the lion at Waterloo. But in ’72 there was no cloud yet
+above the skyline, and the hopes of the planters were as high and as
+bright as the hill-sides on which they reared their crops. Vansittart
+came down to London with his young and beautiful wife. I was introduced,
+dined with them, and it was finally arranged that I, since business
+called me also to Ceylon, should be a fellow-passenger with them on the
+_Eastern Star_, which was timed to sail on the following Monday.
+
+It was on the Sunday evening that I saw him again. He was shown up into
+my rooms about nine o’clock at night, with the air of a man who is
+bothered and out of sorts. His hand, as I shook it, was hot and dry.
+
+“I wish, Atkinson,” said he, “that you could give me a little lime-juice
+and water. I have a beastly thirst upon me, and the more I take the more
+I seem to want.”
+
+I rang and ordered a caraffe and glasses. “You are flushed,” said I.
+“You don’t look the thing.”
+
+“No, I’m clean off colour. Got a touch of rheumatism in my back, and
+don’t seem to taste my food. It is this vile London that is choking me.
+I’m not used to breathing air which has been used up by four million
+lungs all sucking away on every side of you.” He flapped his crooked
+hands before his face, like a man who really struggles for his breath.
+
+“A touch of the sea will soon set you right.”
+
+“Yes, I’m of one mind with you there. That’s the thing for me. I want no
+other doctor. If I don’t get to sea to-morrow I’ll have an illness.
+There are no two ways about it.” He drank off the tumbler of lime-juice,
+and clapped his two hands with his knuckles doubled up into the small of
+his back.
+
+“That seems to ease me,” said he, looking at me with a filmy eye. “Now
+I want your help, Atkinson, for I am rather awkwardly placed.”
+
+“As how?”
+
+“This way. My wife’s mother got ill and wired for her. I couldn’t
+go--you know best yourself how tied I have been--so she had to go alone.
+Now I’ve had another wire to say that she can’t come to-morrow, but that
+she will pick up the ship at Falmouth on Wednesday. We put in there, you
+know, though I count it hard, Atkinson, that a man should be asked to
+believe in a mystery, and cursed if he can’t do it. Cursed, mind you, no
+less.” He leaned forward and began to draw a catchy breath like a man
+who is poised on the very edge of a sob.
+
+Then first it came into my mind that I had heard much of the
+hard-drinking life of the island, and that from brandy came these wild
+words and fevered hands. The flushed cheek and the glazing eye were
+those of one whose drink is strong upon him. Sad it was to see so noble
+a young man in the grip of that most bestial of all the devils.
+
+“You should lie down,” I said, with some severity.
+
+He screwed up his eyes like a man who is striving to wake himself, and
+looked up with an air of surprise.
+
+“So I shall presently,” said he, quite rationally. “I felt quite swimmy
+just now, but I am my own man again now. Let me see, what was I talking
+about? Oh, ah, of course, about the wife. She joins the ship at
+Falmouth. Now I want to go round by water. I believe my health depends
+upon it. I just want a little clean first-lung air to set me on my feet
+again. I ask you, like a good fellow, to go to Falmouth by rail, so that
+in case we should be late you may be there to look after the wife. Put
+up at the Royal Hotel, and I will wire her that you are there. Her
+sister will bring her down, so that it will be all plain sailing.”
+
+“I’ll do it with pleasure,” said I. “In fact, I would rather go by rail,
+for we shall have enough and to spare of the sea before we reach
+Colombo. I believe too that you badly need a change. Now, I should go
+and turn in, if I were you.”
+
+“Yes, I will. I sleep aboard to-night. You know,” he continued, as the
+film settled down again over his eyes, “I’ve not slept well the last few
+nights. I’ve been troubled with theolololog--that is to say,
+theolological--hang it,” with a desperate effort, “with the doubts of
+theolologicians. Wondering why the Almighty made us, you know, and why
+He made our heads swimmy, and fixed little pains into the small of our
+backs. Maybe I’ll do better to-night.” He rose and steadied himself with
+an effort against the corner of the chair back.
+
+“Look here, Vansittart,” said I gravely, stepping up to him, and laying
+my hand upon his sleeve, “I can give you a shakedown here. You are not
+fit to go out. You are all over the place. You’ve been mixing your
+drinks.”
+
+“Drinks!” He stared at me stupidly.
+
+“You used to carry your liquor better than this.”
+
+“I give you my word, Atkinson, that I have not had a drain for two days.
+It’s not drink. I don’t know what it is. I suppose you think this is
+drink.” He took up my hand in his burning grasp, and passed it over his
+own forehead.
+
+“Great Lord!” said I.
+
+His skin felt like a thin sheet of velvet beneath which lies a
+close-packed layer of small shot. It was smooth to the touch at any one
+place, but to a finger passed along it, rough as a nutmeg-grater.
+
+“It’s all right,” said he, smiling at my startled face. “I’ve had the
+prickly heat nearly as bad.”
+
+“But this is never prickly heat.”
+
+“No, it’s London. It’s breathing bad air. But to-morrow it’ll be all
+right. There’s a surgeon aboard, so I shall be in safe hands. I must be
+off now.”
+
+“Not you,” said I, pushing him back into a chair. “This is past a joke.
+You don’t move from here until a doctor sees you. Just stay where you
+are.”
+
+I caught up my hat and rushing round to the house of a neighbouring
+physician, I brought him back with me. The room was empty and Vansittart
+gone. I rang the bell. The servant said that the gentleman had ordered a
+cab the instant that I had left, and had gone off in it. He had told the
+cabman to drive to the docks.
+
+“Did the gentleman seem ill?” I asked.
+
+“Ill!” The man smiled. “No, sir, he was singin’ his ’ardest all the
+time.”
+
+The information was not as reassuring as my servant seemed to think, but
+I reflected that he was going straight back to the _Eastern Star_, and
+that there was a doctor aboard of her, so that there was nothing which I
+could do in the matter. None the less, when I thought of his thirst, his
+burning hands, his heavy eye, his tripping speech, and lastly, of that
+leprous forehead, I carried with me to bed an unpleasant memory of my
+visitor and his visit.
+
+At eleven o’clock next day I was at the docks, but the _Eastern Star_
+had already moved down the river, and was nearly at Gravesend. To
+Gravesend I went by train, but only to see her topmasts far off, with a
+plume of smoke from a tug in front of her. I would hear no more of my
+friend until I rejoined him at Falmouth. When I got back to my offices,
+a telegram was awaiting me from Mrs. Vansittart, asking me to meet her;
+and next evening found us both at the Royal Hotel, Falmouth, where we
+were to wait for the _Eastern Star_. Ten days passed, and there came no
+news of her.
+
+They were ten days which I am not likely to forget. On the very day that
+the _Eastern Star_ had cleared from the Thames, a furious easterly gale
+had sprung up, and blew on from day to day for the greater part of a
+week without the sign of a lull. Such a screaming, raving, long-drawn
+storm has never been known on the southern coast. From our hotel windows
+the sea view was all banked in haze, with a little rain-swept
+half-circle under our very eyes, churned and lashed into one tossing
+stretch of foam. So heavy was the wind upon the waves that little sea
+could rise, for the crest of each billow was torn shrieking from it, and
+lashed broadcast over the bay. Clouds, wind, sea, all were rushing to
+the west, and there, looking down at this mad jumble of elements, I
+waited on day after day, my sole companion a white, silent woman, with
+terror in her eyes, her forehead pressed ever against the window, her
+gaze from early morning to the fall of night fixed upon that wall of
+grey haze through which the loom of a vessel might come. She said
+nothing, but that face of hers was one long wail of fear.
+
+On the fifth day I took counsel with an old seaman.
+
+I should have preferred to have done so alone, but she saw me speak with
+him, and was at our side in an instant, with parted lips and a prayer in
+her eyes.
+
+“Seven days out from London,” said he, “and five in the gale. Well, the
+Channel’s swept clear by this wind. There’s three things for it. She may
+have popped into port on the French side. That’s like enough.”
+
+“No, no; he knew we were here. He would have telegraphed.”
+
+“Ah, yes, so he would. Well, then, he might have run for it, and if he
+did that he won’t be very far from Madeira by now. That’ll be it, marm,
+you may depend.”
+
+“Or else? You said there was a third chance.”
+
+“Did I, marm? No, only two, I think. I don’t think I said anything of a
+third. Your ship’s out there, depend upon it, away out in the Atlantic,
+and you’ll hear of it time enough, for the weather is breaking. Now
+don’t you fret, marm, and wait quiet, and you’ll find a real blue
+Cornish sky to-morrow.”
+
+The old seaman was right in his surmise, for the next day broke calm and
+bright, with only a low dwindling cloud in the west to mark the last
+trailing wreaths of the storm-wrack. But still there came no word from
+the sea, and no sign of the ship. Three more weary days had passed, the
+weariest that I have ever spent, when there came a seafaring man to the
+hotel with a letter. I gave a shout of joy. It was from the captain of
+the _Eastern Star_. As I read the first lines of it I whisked my hand
+over it, but she laid her own upon it and drew it away. “I have seen
+it,” said she, in a cold, quiet voice. “I may as well see the rest,
+too.”
+
+     “DEAR SIR,” said the letter,
+
+     “Mr. Vansittart is down with the smallpox, and we are blown so far
+     on our course that we don’t know what to do, he being off his head
+     and unfit to tell us. By dead reckoning we are but three hundred
+     miles from Funchal, so I take it that it is best that we should
+     push on there, get Mr. V. into hospital, and wait in the Bay until
+     you come. There’s a sailing-ship due from Falmouth to Funchal in a
+     few days’ time, as I understand. This goes by the brig _Marian_ of
+     Falmouth, and five pounds is due to the master,
+
+     “Yours respectfully,
+
+     “JNO. HINES.”
+
+She was a wonderful woman that, only a chit of a girl fresh from school,
+but as quiet and strong as a man. She said nothing--only pressed her
+lips together tight, and put on her bonnet.
+
+“You are going out?” I asked.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Can I be of use?”
+
+“No; I am going to the doctor’s.”
+
+“To the doctor’s?”
+
+“Yes. To learn how to nurse a small-pox case.”
+
+She was busy at that all the evening, and next morning we were off with
+a fine ten-knot breeze in the barque _Rose of Sharon_ for Madeira. For
+five days we made good time, and were no great way from the island; but
+on the sixth there fell a calm, and we lay without motion on a sea of
+oil, heaving slowly, but making not a foot of way.
+
+At ten o’clock that night Emily Vansittart and I stood leaning on the
+starboard railing of the poop, with a full moon shining at our backs,
+and casting a black shadow of the barque, and of our own two heads, upon
+the shining water. From the shadow a broadening path of moonshine
+stretched away to the lonely skyline, flickering and shimmering in the
+gentle heave of the swell. We were talking with bent heads, chatting of
+the calm, of the chances of wind, of the look of the sky, when there
+came a sudden plop, like a rising salmon, and there, in the clear light,
+John Vansittart sprang out of the water and looked up at us.
+
+I never saw anything clearer in my life than I saw that man. The moon
+shone full upon him, and he was but three oars’ length away. His face
+was more puffed than when I had seen him last, mottled here and there
+with dark scabs, his mouth and eyes open as one who is struck with some
+overpowering surprise. He had some white stuff streaming from his
+shoulders, and one hand was raised to his ear, the other crooked across
+his breast. I saw him leap from the water into the air, and in the dead
+calm the waves of his coming lapped up against the sides of the vessel.
+Then his figure sank back into the water again, and I heard a rending,
+crackling sound like a bundle of brushwood snapping in the fire on a
+frosty night. There were no signs of him when I looked again, but a
+swift swirl and eddy on the still sea still marked the spot where he had
+been. How long I stood there, tingling to my finger-tips, holding up an
+unconscious woman with one hand, clutching at the rail of the vessel
+with the other, was more than I could afterwards tell. I had been noted
+as a man of slow and unresponsive emotions, but this time at least I was
+shaken to the core. Once and twice I struck my foot upon the deck to be
+certain that I was indeed the master of my own senses, and that this was
+not some mad prank of an unruly brain. As I stood, still marvelling, the
+woman shivered, opened her eyes, gasped, and then standing erect with
+her hands upon the rail, looked out over the moonlit sea with a face
+which had aged ten years in a summer night.
+
+“You saw his vision?” she murmured.
+
+“I saw something.”
+
+“It was he! It was John! He is dead!”
+
+I muttered some lame words of doubt.
+
+“Doubtless he died at this hour,” she whispered. “In hospital at
+Madeira. I have read of such things. His thoughts were with me. His
+vision came to me. Oh, my John, my dear, dear, lost John!”
+
+She broke out suddenly into a storm of weeping, and I led her down into
+her cabin, where I left her with her sorrow. That night a brisk breeze
+blew up from the east, and in the evening of the next day we passed the
+two islets of Los Desertos, and dropped anchor at sundown in the Bay of
+Funchal. The _Eastern Star_ lay no great distance from us, with the
+quarantine flag flying from her main, and her Jack half-way up her peak.
+
+“You see,” said Mrs. Vansittart quickly. She was dry-eyed now, for she
+had known how it would be.
+
+That night we received permission from the authorities to move on board
+the _Eastern Star_. The captain, Hines, was waiting upon deck with
+confusion and grief contending upon his bluff face as he sought for
+words with which to break this heavy tidings, but she took the story
+from his lips.
+
+“I know that my husband is dead,” she said. “He died yesterday night,
+about ten o’clock, in hospital at Madeira, did he not?”
+
+The seaman stared aghast. “No, marm, he died eight days ago at sea, and
+we had to bury him out there, for we lay in a belt of calm, and could
+not say when we might make the land.”
+
+Well, those are the main facts about the death of John Vansittart, and
+his appearance to his wife somewhere about lat. 35 N. and long. 15 W. A
+clearer case of a wraith has seldom been made out, and since then it has
+been told as such, and put into print as such, and endorsed by a learned
+society as such, and so floated off with many others to support the
+recent theory of telepathy. For myself, I hold telepathy to be proved,
+but I would snatch this one case from amid the evidence, and say that I
+do not think that it was the wraith of John Vansittart, but John
+Vansittart himself whom we saw that night leaping into the moonlight out
+of the depths of the Atlantic. It has ever been my belief that some
+strange chance--one of those chances which seem so improbable and yet so
+constantly occur--had becalmed us over the very spot where the man had
+been buried a week before. For the rest, the surgeon tells me that the
+leaden weight was not too firmly fixed, and that seven days bring about
+changes which fetch a body to the surface. Coming from the depth to
+which the weight would have sunk it, he explains that it might well
+attain such a velocity as to carry it clear of the water. Such is my own
+explanation of the matter, and if you ask me what then became of the
+body, I must recall to you that snapping, crackling sound, with the
+swirl in the water. The shark is a surface feeder and is plentiful in
+those parts.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE LIFT
+
+
+Flight-Commander Stangate should have been happy. He had come safely
+through the war without a hurt, and with a good name in the most heroic
+of services. He had only just turned thirty, and a great career seemed
+to lie ahead of him. Above all, beautiful Mary MacLean was walking by
+his side, and he had her promise that she was there for life. What could
+a young man ask for more? And yet there was a heavy load upon his heart.
+
+He could not explain it himself, and endeavoured to reason himself out
+of it. There was the blue sky above him, the blue sea in front, the
+beautiful gardens with their throngs of happy pleasure-seekers around.
+Above all, there was that sweet face turned upon him with questioning
+concern. Why could he not raise himself to so joyful an environment? He
+made effort after effort, but they were not convincing enough to deceive
+the quick instinct of a loving woman.
+
+“What is it, Tom?” she asked anxiously. “I can see that something is
+clouding you. Do tell me if I can help you in any way.”
+
+He laughed in shame-faced fashion.
+
+“It is such a sin to spoil our little outing,” he said. “I could kick
+myself round these gardens when I think of it. Don’t worry, my darling,
+for I know the cloud will roll off. I suppose I am a creature of nerves,
+though I should have got past that by now. The Flying Service is
+supposed either to break you or to warrant you for life.”
+
+“It is nothing definite, then?”
+
+“No, it is nothing definite. That’s the worst of it. You could fight it
+more easily if it was. It’s just a dead, heavy depression here in my
+chest and across my forehead. But do forgive me, dear girl! What a brute
+I am to shadow you like this.”
+
+“But I love to share even the smallest trouble.”
+
+“Well, it’s gone--vamosed--vanished. We will talk about it no more.”
+
+She gave him a swift, penetrating glance.
+
+“No, no, Tom; your brow shows, as well as feels. Tell me, dear, have you
+often felt like this? You really look very ill. Sit here, dear, in the
+shade and tell me of it.”
+
+They sat together in the shadow of the great latticed Tower which reared
+itself six hundred feet high beside them.
+
+“I have an absurd faculty,” said he; “I don’t know that I have ever
+mentioned it to any one before. But when imminent danger is threatening
+me I get these strange forebodings. Of course it is absurd to-day in
+these peaceful surroundings. It only shows how queerly these things
+work. But it is the first time that it has deceived me.”
+
+“When had you it before?”
+
+“When I was a lad it seized me one morning. I was nearly drowned that
+afternoon. I had it when the burglar came to Morton Hall and I got a
+bullet through my coat. Then twice in the war when I was overmatched and
+escaped by a miracle, I had this strange feeling before ever I climbed
+into my machine. Then it lifts quite suddenly, like a mist in the
+sunshine. Why, it is lifting now. Look at me! Can’t you see that it is
+so?”
+
+She could indeed. He had turned in a minute from a haggard man to a
+laughing boy. She found herself laughing in sympathy. A rush of high
+spirits and energy had swept away his strange foreboding and filled his
+whole soul with the vivid, dancing joy of youth.
+
+“Thank goodness!” he cried. “I think it is your dear eyes that have done
+it. I could not stand that wistful look in them. What a silly, foolish
+nightmare it all has been! There’s an end for ever in my belief in
+presentiments. Now, dear girl, we have just time for one good turn
+before luncheon. After that the gardens get so crowded that it is
+hopeless to do anything. Shall we have a side show, or the great wheel,
+or the flying boat, or what?”
+
+“What about the Tower?” she asked, glancing upwards. “Surely that
+glorious air and the view from the top would drive the last wisps of
+cloud out of your mind.”
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+“Well, it’s past twelve, but I suppose we could do it all in an hour.
+But it doesn’t seem to be working. What about it, conductor?”
+
+The man shook his head and pointed to a little knot of people who were
+assembled at the entrance.
+
+“They’ve all been waiting, sir. It’s hung up, but the gear is being
+overhauled, and I expect the signal every minute. If you join the others
+I promise it won’t be long.”
+
+They had hardly reached the group when the steel face of the lift
+rolled aside--a sign that there was hope in the future. The motley crowd
+drifted through the opening and waited expectantly upon the wooden
+platform. They were not numerous, for the gardens are not crowded until
+the afternoon, but they were fair samples of the kindly, good-humoured
+north-country folk who take their annual holiday at Northam. Their faces
+were all upturned now, and they were watching with keen interest a man
+who was descending the steel framework. It seemed a dangerous,
+precarious business, but he came as swiftly as an ordinary mortal upon a
+staircase.
+
+“My word!” said the conductor, glancing up. “Jim has got a move on this
+morning.”
+
+“Who is he?” asked Commander Stangate.
+
+“That’s Jim Barnes, sir, the best workman that ever went on a scaffold.
+He fair lives up there. Every bolt and rivet are under his care. He’s a
+wonder, is Jim.”
+
+“But don’t argue religion with him,” said one of the group.
+
+The attendant laughed.
+
+“Ah, you know him, then,” said he. “No, don’t argue religion with him.”
+
+“Why not?” asked the officer.
+
+“Well, he takes it very hard, he does. He’s the shining light of his
+sect.”
+
+“It ain’t hard to be that,” said the knowing one. “I’ve heard there are
+only six folk in the fold. He’s one of those who picture heaven as the
+exact size of their own back street conventicle and every one else left
+outside it.”
+
+“Better not tell him so while he’s got that hammer in his hand,” said
+the conductor, in a hurried whisper. “Hallo, Jim, how goes it this
+morning?”
+
+The man slid swiftly down the last thirty feet, and then balanced
+himself on a cross-bar while he looked at the little group in the lift.
+As he stood there, clad in a leather suit, with his pliers and other
+tools dangling from his brown belt, he was a figure to please the eye of
+an artist. The man was very tall and gaunt, with great straggling limbs
+and every appearance of giant strength. His face was a remarkable one,
+noble and yet sinister, with dark eyes and hair, a prominent hooked
+nose, and a beard which flowed over his chest. He steadied himself with
+one knotted hand, while the other held a steel hammer dangling by his
+knee.
+
+“It’s all ready aloft,” said he. “I’ll go up with you if I may.” He
+sprang down from his perch and joined the others in the lift.
+
+“I suppose you are always watching it,” said the young lady.
+
+“That is what I am engaged for, miss. From morning to night, and often
+from night to morning, I am up here. There are times when I feel as if I
+were not a man at all, but a fowl of the air. They fly round me, the
+creatures, as I lie out on the girders, and they cry to me until I find
+myself crying back to the poor soulless things.”
+
+“It’s a great charge,” said the Commander, glancing up at the wonderful
+tracery of steel outlined against the deep blue sky.
+
+“Aye, sir, and there is not a nut nor a screw that is not in my
+keeping. Here’s my hammer to ring them true and my spanner to wrench
+them tight. As the Lord over the earth, so am I--even I--over the
+Tower, with power of life and power of death, aye of death and of life.”
+
+The hydraulic machinery had begun to work and the lift very slowly
+ascended. As it mounted, the glorious panorama of the coast and bay
+gradually unfolded itself. So engrossing was the view that the
+passengers hardly noticed it when the platform stopped abruptly between
+stages at the five hundred foot level. Barnes, the workman, muttered
+that something must be amiss, and springing like a cat across the gap
+which separated them from the trellis-work of metal he clambered out of
+sight. The motley little party, suspended in mid-air, lost something of
+their British shyness under such unwonted conditions and began to
+compare notes with each other. One couple, who addressed each other as
+Dolly and Billy, announced to the company that they were the particular
+stars of the Hippodrome bill, and kept their neighbours tittering with
+their rather obvious wit. A buxom mother, her precocious son, and two
+married couples upon holiday formed an appreciative audience.
+
+“You’d like to be a sailor, would you?” said Billy the comedian, in
+answer to some remark of the boy. “Look ’ere, my nipper, you’ll end up
+as a blooming corpse if you ain’t careful. See ’im standin’ at the edge.
+At this hour of the morning I can’t bear to watch it.”
+
+“What’s the hour got to do with it?” asked a stout commercial traveller.
+
+“My nerves are worth nothin’ before midday. Why, lookin’ down there, and
+seem’ those folks like dots, puts me all in a twitter. My family is all
+alike in the mornin’.”
+
+“I expect,” said Dolly, a high-coloured young woman, “that they’re all
+alike the evening before.”
+
+There was a general laugh, which was led by the comedian.
+
+“You got it across that time, Dolly. It’s K.O. for Battling Billy--still
+senseless when last heard of. If my family is laughed at I’ll leave the
+room.”
+
+“It’s about time we did,” said the commercial traveller, who was a
+red-faced, choleric person. “It’s a disgrace the way they hold us up.
+I’ll write to the company.”
+
+“Where’s the bell-push?” said Billy. “I’m goin’ to ring.”
+
+“What for--the waiter?” asked the lady.
+
+“For the conductor, the chauffeur, whoever it is that drives the old bus
+up and down. Have they run out of petrol, or broke the mainspring, or
+what?”
+
+“We have a fine view, anyhow,” said the Commander.
+
+“Well, I’ve had that,” remarked Billy. “I’m done with it, and I’m for
+getting on.”
+
+“I’m getting nervous,” cried the stout mother. “I do hope there is
+nothing wrong with the lift.”
+
+“I say, hold on to the slack of my coat, Dolly. I’m going to look over
+and chance it. Oh, Lord, it makes me sick and giddy! There’s a horse
+down under, and it ain’t bigger than a mouse. I don’t see any one
+lookin’ after us. Where’s old Isaiah the prophet who came up with us?”
+
+“He shinned out of it mighty quick when he thought trouble was coming.”
+
+“Look here,” said Dolly, looking very perturbed, “this is a nice thing,
+I don’t think. Here we are five hundred foot up, and stuck for the day
+as like as not. I’m due for the _matinée_ at the Hippodrome. I’m sorry
+for the company if they don’t get me down in time for that. I’m billed
+all over the town for a new song.”
+
+“A new one! What’s that, Dolly?”
+
+“A real pot o’ ginger, I tell you. It’s called ‘On the Road to Ascot.’
+I’ve got a hat four foot across to sing it in.”
+
+“Come on, Dolly, let’s have a rehearsal while we wait.”
+
+“No, no; the young lady here wouldn’t understand.”
+
+“I’d be very glad to hear it,” cried Mary MacLean. “Please don’t let me
+prevent you.”
+
+“The words were written to the hat. I couldn’t sing the verses without
+the hat. But there’s a nailin’ good chorus to it:
+
+  “‘If you want a little mascot
+  When you’re on the way to Ascot,
+  Try the lady with the cartwheel hat.’”
+
+She had a tuneful voice and a sense of rhythm which set every one
+nodding. “Try it now all together,” she cried; and the strange little
+haphazard company sang it with all their lungs.
+
+“I say,” said Billy, “that ought to wake somebody up. What? Let’s try a
+shout all together.”
+
+It was a fine effort, but there was no response. It was clear that the
+management down below was quite ignorant or impotent. No sound came back
+to them.
+
+The passengers became alarmed. The commercial traveller was rather less
+rubicund. Billy still tried to joke, but his efforts were not well
+received. The officer in his blue uniform at once took his place as
+rightful leader in a crisis. They all looked to him and appealed to him.
+
+“What would you advise, sir? You don’t think there’s any danger of it
+coming down, do you?”
+
+“Not the least. But it’s awkward to be stuck here all the same. I think
+I could jump across on to that girder. Then perhaps I could see what is
+wrong.”
+
+“No, no, Tom; for goodness’ sake, don’t leave us!”
+
+“Some people have a nerve,” said Billy. “Fancy jumping across a
+five-hundred-foot drop!”
+
+“I dare say the gentleman did worse things in the war.”
+
+“Well, I wouldn’t do it myself--not if they starred me in the bills.
+It’s all very well for old Isaiah. It’s his job, and I wouldn’t do him
+out of it.”
+
+Three sides of the lift were shut in with wooden partitions, pierced
+with windows for the view. The fourth side, facing the sea, was clear.
+Stangate leaned as far as he could and looked upwards. As he did so
+there came from above him a peculiar sonorous metallic twang, as if a
+mighty harp-string had been struck. Some distance up--a hundred feet,
+perhaps--he could see a long brown corded arm, which was working
+furiously among the wire cordage above. The form was beyond his view,
+but he was fascinated by this bare sinewy arm which tugged and pulled
+and sagged and stabbed.
+
+“It’s all right,” he said, and a general sigh of relief broke from his
+strange comrades at his words. “There is some one above us setting
+things right.”
+
+“It’s old Isaiah,” said Billy, stretching his neck round the corner. “I
+can’t see him, but it’s his arm for a dollar. What’s he got in his
+hand? Looks like a screwdriver or something. No, by George, it’s a
+file.”
+
+As he spoke there came another sonorous twang from above. There was a
+troubled frown upon the officer’s brow.
+
+“I say, dash it all, that’s the very sound our steel hawser made when it
+parted, strand by strand, at Dixmude. What the deuce is the fellow
+about? Hey, there! what are you trying to do?”
+
+The man had ceased his work and was now slowly descending the iron
+trellis.
+
+“All right, he’s coming,” said Stangate to his startled companions.
+“It’s all right, Mary. Don’t be frightened, any of you. It’s absurd to
+suppose he would really weaken the cord that holds us.”
+
+A pair of high boots appeared from above. Then came the leathern
+breeches, the belt with its dangling tools, the muscular form, and,
+finally, the fierce, swarthy, eagle face of the workman. His coat was
+off and his shirt open, showing the hairy chest. As he appeared there
+came another sharp snapping vibration from above. The man made his way
+down in leisurely fashion, and then, balancing himself upon the
+cross-girder and leaning against the side piece, he stood with folded
+arms, looking from under his heavy black brows at the huddled passengers
+upon the platform.
+
+“Hallo!” said Stangate. “What’s the matter?”
+
+The man stood impassive and silent, with something indescribably
+menacing in his fixed, unwinking stare.
+
+The flying officer grew angry.
+
+“Hallo! Are you deaf?” he cried. “How long do you mean to have us stuck
+here?”
+
+The man stood silent. There was something devilish in his appearance.
+
+“I’ll complain of you, my lad,” said Billy, in a quivering voice. “This
+won’t stop here, I can promise you.”
+
+“Look here!” cried the officer. “We have ladies here and you are
+alarming them. Why are we stuck here? Has the machinery gone wrong?”
+
+“You are here,” said the man, “because I have put a wedge against the
+hawser above you.”
+
+“You fouled the line! How dared you do such a thing! What right have you
+to frighten the women and put us all to this inconvenience? Take that
+wedge out this instant, or it will be the worse for you.”
+
+The man was silent.
+
+“Do you hear what I say? Why the devil don’t you answer? Is this a joke
+or what? We’ve had about enough of it, I tell you.”
+
+Mary MacLean had gripped her lover by the arm in agony of sudden panic.
+
+“Oh, Tom!” she cried. “Look at his eyes--look at his horrible eyes! The
+man is a maniac.”
+
+The workman stirred suddenly into sinister life. His dark face broke
+into writhing lines of passion, and his fierce eyes glowed like embers,
+while he shook one long arm in the air.
+
+“Behold,” he cried, “those who are mad to the children of this world are
+in very truth the Lord’s anointed and the dwellers in the inner temple.
+Lo, I am one who is prepared to testify even to the uttermost, for of a
+verity the day has now come when the humble will be exalted and the
+wicked will be cut off in their sins!”
+
+“Mother! Mother!” cried the little boy, in terror.
+
+“There, there! It’s all right, Jack,” said the buxom woman, and then, in
+a burst of womanly wrath, “What d’you want to make the child cry for?
+You’re a pretty man, you are!”
+
+“Better he should cry now than in the outer darkness. Let him seek
+safety while there is yet time.”
+
+The officer measured the gap with a practised eye. It was a good eight
+feet across, and the fellow could push him over before he could steady
+himself. It would be a desperate thing to attempt. He tried soothing
+words once more.
+
+“See here, my lad, you’ve carried this joke too far. Why should you wish
+to injure us? Just shin up and get that wedge out, and we will agree to
+say no more about it.”
+
+Another rending snap came from above.
+
+“By George, the hawser is going!” cried Stangate. “Here! Stand aside!
+I’m coming over to see to it.”
+
+The workman had plucked the hammer from his belt, and waved it furiously
+in the air.
+
+“Stand back, young man! Stand back! Or come--if you would hasten your
+end.”
+
+“Tom, Tom, for God’s sake, don’t spring! Help! Help!”
+
+The passengers all joined in the cry for aid. The man smiled malignantly
+as he watched them.
+
+“There is no one to help. They could not come if they would. You would
+be wiser to turn to your own souls that ye be not cast to the burning.
+Lo, strand by strand the cable snaps which holds you. There is yet
+another, and with each that goes there is more strain upon the rest.
+Five minutes of time, and all eternity beyond.”
+
+A moan of fear rose from the prisoners in the lift. Stangate felt a cold
+sweat upon his brow as he passed his arm round the shrinking girl. If
+this vindictive devil could only be coaxed away for an instant he would
+spring across and take his chance in a hand-to-hand fight.
+
+“Look here, my friend! We give you best!” he cried. “We can do nothing.
+Go up and cut the cable if you wish. Go on--do it now, and get it over!”
+
+“That you may come across unharmed. Having set my hand to the work, I
+will not draw back from it.”
+
+Fury seized the young officer.
+
+“You devil!” he cried. “What do you stand there grinning for? I’ll give
+you something to grin about. Give me a stick, one of you.”
+
+The man waved his hammer.
+
+“Come, then! Come to judgment!” he howled.
+
+“He’ll murder you, Tom! Oh, for God’s sake, don’t! If we must die, let
+us die together.”
+
+“I wouldn’t try it, sir,” cried Billy. “He’ll strike you down before you
+get a footing. Hold up, Dolly, my dear! Faintin’ won’t ’elp us. You
+speak to him, miss. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
+
+“Why should you wish to hurt us?” said Mary. “What have we ever done to
+you? Surely you will be sorry afterwards if we are injured. Now do be
+kind and reasonable and help us to get back to the ground.”
+
+For a moment there may have been some softening in the man’s fierce eyes
+as he looked at the sweet face which was upturned to him. Then his
+features set once more into their grim lines of malice.
+
+“My hand is set to the work, woman. It is not for the servant to look
+back from his task.”
+
+“But why should this be your task?”
+
+“Because there is a voice within me which tells me so. In the night-time
+I have heard it, and in the daytime too, when I have lain out alone upon
+the girders and seen the wicked dotting the streets beneath me, each
+busy on his own evil intent. ‘John Barnes, John Barnes,’ said the voice.
+‘You are here that you may give a sign to a sinful generation--such a
+sign as shall show them that the Lord liveth and that there is a
+judgment upon sin.’ Who am I that I should disobey the voice of the
+Lord?”
+
+“The voice of the devil,” said Stangate. “What is the sin of this lady,
+or of these others, that you should seek their lives?”
+
+“You are as the others, neither better nor worse. All day they pass me,
+load by load, with foolish cries and empty songs and vain babble of
+voices. Their thoughts are set upon the things of the flesh. Too long
+have I stood aside and watched and refused to testify. But now the day
+of wrath is come and the sacrifice is ready. Think not that a woman’s
+tongue can turn me from my task.”
+
+“It is useless!” Mary cried. “Useless! I read death in his eyes.”
+
+Another cord had snapped.
+
+“Repent! Repent!” cried the madman. “One more, and it is over!”
+
+Commander Stangate felt as if it were all some extraordinary dream--some
+monstrous nightmare. Could it be possible that he, after all his
+escapes of death in warfare, was now, in the heart of peaceful England,
+at the mercy of a homicidal lunatic, and that his dear girl, the one
+being whom he would shield from the very shadow of danger, was helpless
+before this horrible man? All his energy and manhood rose up in him for
+one last effort.
+
+“Here, we won’t be killed like sheep in the shambles!” he cried,
+throwing himself against the wooden wall of the lift and kicking with
+all his force. “Come on, boys! Kick it! Beat it! It’s only
+matchboarding, and it is giving. Smash it down! Well done! Once more all
+together! There she goes! Now for the side! Out with it! Splendid!”
+
+First the back and then the side of the little compartment had been
+knocked out, and the splinters dropped down into the abyss. Barnes
+danced upon his girder, his hammer in the air.
+
+“Strive not!” he shrieked. “It avails not. The day is surely come.”
+
+“It’s not two feet from the side girder,” cried the officer. “Get
+across! Quick! Quick! All of you. I’ll hold this devil off!” He had
+seized a stout stick from the commercial traveller and faced the madman,
+daring him to spring across.
+
+“Your turn now, my friend!” he hissed. “Come on, hammer and all! I’m
+ready for you.”
+
+Above him he heard another snap, and the frail platform began to rock.
+Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that his companions were all safe
+upon the side girder. A strange line of terrified castaways they
+appeared as they clung in an ungainly row to the trellis-work of steel.
+But their feet were on the iron support. With two quick steps and a
+spring he was at their side. At the same instant the murderer, hammer in
+hand, jumped the gap. They had one vision of him there--a vision which
+will haunt their dreams--the convulsed face, the blazing eyes, the
+wind-tossed raven locks. For a moment he balanced himself upon the
+swaying platform. The next, with a rending crash, he and it were gone.
+There was a long silence and then, far down, the thud and clatter of a
+mighty fall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With white faces, the forlorn group clung to the cold steel bars and
+gazed down into the terrible abyss. It was the Commander who broke the
+silence.
+
+“They’ll send for us now. It’s all safe,” he cried, wiping his brow.
+“But, by Jove, it was a close call!”
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 32777 ***