Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (22 page)

He bent his head courteously, as though awaiting my reply, but the same
choking sensation prevented me from speaking; and, with a deep bow, he
disappeared.

He had hardly gone before a feeling of intense horror stole over me,
and I was aware of the presence of a ghastly creature in the room of
dim outlines and uncertain proportions. One moment it seemed to pervade
the entire apartment, while at another it would become invisible, but
always leaving behind it a distinct consciousness of its presence. Its
voice, when it spoke, was quavering and gusty. It said, "I am the
leaver of footsteps and the spiller of gouts of blood. I tramp upon
corridors. Charles Dickens has alluded to me. I make strange and
disagreeable noises. I snatch letters and place invisible hands on
people's wrists. I am cheerful. I burst into peals of hideous laughter.
Shall I do one now?" I raised my hand in a deprecating way, but too
late to prevent one discordant outbreak which echoed through the room.
Before I could lower it the apparition was gone.

I turned my head toward the door in time to see a man come hastily and
stealthily into the chamber. He was a sunburned powerfully-built
fellow, with earrings in his ears and a Barcelona handkerchief tied
loosely round his neck. His head was bent upon his chest, and his whole
aspect was that of one afflicted by intolerable remorse. He paced
rapidly backward and forward like a caged tiger, and I observed that a
drawn knife glittered in one of his hands, while he grasped what
appeared to be a piece of parchment in the other. His voice, when he
spoke, was deep and sonorous. He said, "I am a murderer. I am a
ruffian. I crouch when I walk. I step noiselessly. I know something of
the Spanish Main. I can do the lost treasure business. I have charts.
Am able-bodied and a good walker. Capable of haunting a large park." He
looked toward me beseechingly, but before I could make a sign I was
paralyzed by the horrible sight which appeared at the door.

It was a very tall man, if, indeed, it might be called a man, for the
gaunt bones were protruding through the corroding flesh, and the
features of a leaden hue. A winding sheet was wrapped round the figure,
and formed a hood over the head, from under the shadow of which two
fiendish eyes, deep-set in their grisly sockets, blazed and sparkled
like red-hot coals. The lower jaw had fallen upon the breast,
disclosing a withered, shrivelled tongue and two lines of black and
jagged fangs. I shuddered and drew back as this fearful apparition
advanced to the edge of the circle.

"I am the American blood-curdler," it said, in a voice which seemed to
come in a hollow murmur from the earth beneath it. "None other is
genuine. I am the embodiment of Edgar Allan Poe. I am circumstantial
and horrible. I am a low-caste spirit-subduing spectre. Observe my
blood and my bones. I am grisly and nauseous. No depending on
artificial aid. Work with grave-clothes, a coffin-lid, and a galvanic
battery. Turn hair white in a night." The creature stretched out its
fleshless arms to me as if in entreaty, but I shook my head; and it
vanished, leaving a low sickening repulsive odour behind it. I sank
back in my chair, so overcome by terror and disgust that I would have
very willingly resigned myself to dispensing with a ghost altogether,
could I have been sure that this was the last of the hideous
procession.

A faint sound of trailing garments warned me that it was not so. I
looked up, and beheld a white figure emerging from the corridor into
the right. As it stepped across the threshold I saw that it was that of
a young and beautiful woman dressed in the fashion of a bygone day. Her
hands were clasped in front of her, and her pale proud face bore traces
of passion and of suffering. She crossed the hall with a gentle sound,
like the rustling of autumn leaves, and then, turning her lovely and
unutterably sad eyes upon me, she said,

"I am the plaintive and sentimental, the beautiful and ill-used. I have
been forsaken and betrayed. I shriek in the night-time and glide down
passages. My antecedents are highly respectable and generally
aristocratic. My tastes are æsthetic. Old oak furniture like this would
do, with a few more coats of mail and plenty of tapestry. Will you not
take me?"

Her voice died away in a beautiful cadence as she concluded, and she
held out her hands as in supplication. I am always sensitive to female
influences. Besides, what would Jorrocks' ghost be to this? Could
anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself to the
chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews with such creatures
as my last visitor, unless I decided at once? She gave me a seraphic
smile, as if she knew what was passing in my mind. That smile settled
the matter. "She will do!" I cried; "I choose this one;" and as, in my
enthusiasm, I took a step toward her, I passed over the magic circle
which had girdled me round.

"Argentine, we have been robbed!"

I had an indistinct consciousness of these words being spoken, or
rather screamed, in my ear a great number of times without my being
able to grasp their meaning. A violent throbbing in my head seemed to
adapt itself to their rhythm, and I closed my eyes to the lullaby of
"Robbed, robbed, robbed." A vigorous shake caused me to open them
again, however, and the sight of Mrs. D'Odd in the scantiest of
costumes and most furious of tempers was sufficiently impressive to
recall all my scattered thoughts, and make me realize that I was lying
on my back on the floor, with my head among the ashes which had fallen
from last night's fire, and a small glass phial in my hand.

I staggered to my feet, but felt so weak and giddy that I was compelled
to fall back into a chair. As my brain became clearer, stimulated by
the exclamations of Matilda, I began gradually to recollect the events
of the night. There was the door through which my supernatural visitors
had filed. There was the circle of chalk with the hieroglyphics round
the edge. There was the cigar-box and brandy bottle which had been
honoured by the attentions of Mr. Abrahams. But the seer himself—where
was he? and what was this open window with a rope running out of it?
And where, O where, was the pride of Goresthorpe Grange, the glorious
plate which was to have been the delectation of generations of D'Odds?
And why was Mrs. D. standing in the gray light of dawn, wringing her
hands and repeating her monotonous refrain? It was only very gradually
that my misty brain took these things in, and grasped the connection
between them.

Reader, I have never seen Mr. Abrahams since; I have never seen the
plate stamped with the resuscitated family crest; hardest of all, I
have never caught a glimpse of the melancholy spectre with the trailing
garments, nor do I expect that I ever shall. In fact my night's
experiences have cured me of my mania for the supernatural, and quite
reconciled me to inhabiting the humdrum nineteenth century edifice on
the outskirts of London which Mrs. D. has long had in her mind's eye.

As to the explanation of all that occurred—that is a matter which is
open to several surmises. That Mr. Abrahams, the ghost-hunter, was
identical with Jemmy Wilson,
alias
the Nottingham crackster, is
considered more than probable at Scotland Yard, and certainly the
description of that remarkable burglar tallied very well with the
appearance of my visitor. The small bag which I have described was
picked up in a neighbouring field next day, and found to contain a
choice assortment of jimmies and centrebits. Footmarks deeply imprinted
in the mud on either side of the moat showed that an accomplice from
below had received the sack of precious metals which had been let down
through the open window. No doubt the pair of scoundrels, while looking
round for a job, had overheard Jack Brocket's indiscreet inquiries, and
had promptly availed themselves of the tempting opening.

And now as to my less substantial visitors, and the curious grotesque
vision which I had enjoyed—am I to lay it down to any real power over
occult matters possessed by my Nottingham friend? For a long time I was
doubtful upon the point, and eventually endeavoured to solve it by
consulting a well-known analyst and medical man, sending him the few
drops of the so-called essence of Lucoptolycus which remained in my
phial. I append the letter which I received from him, only too happy to
have the opportunity of winding up my little narrative by the weighty
words of a man of learning.

"Arundel Street.

"Dear Sir,—Your very singular case has interested me extremely.
The bottle which you sent contained a strong solution of chloral,
and the quantity which you describe yourself as having swallowed
must have amounted to at least eighty grains of the pure hydrate.
This would of course have reduced you to a partial state of
insensibility, gradually going on to complete coma. In this
semi-unconscious state of chloralism it is not unusual for
circumstantial and
bizarre
visions to present themselves—more
especially to individuals unaccustomed to the use of the drug. You
tell me in your note that your mind was saturated with ghostly
literature, and that you had long taken a morbid interest in
classifying and recalling the various forms in which apparitions
have been said to appear. You must also remember that you were
expecting to see something of that very nature, and that your
nervous system was worked up to an unnatural state of tension.
Under the circumstances, I think that, far from the sequel being an
astonishing one, it would have been very surprising indeed to
anyone versed in narcotics had you not experienced some such
effects.—I remain, dear sir, sincerely yours,

"T. E. STUBE, M.D.

"Argentine D'Odd, Esq.,
The Elms, Brixton."

Monsieur Pierre Agénor de Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the
exact opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness,
correctness personified. As a sedate man, he was quite incapable of
being guilty, even in his dreams, of anything resembling a practical
joke, however remotely. I know nobody to whom he could be compared,
unless it be the present president of the French Republic. I think it
is useless to carry the analogy any further, and having said thus much,
it will be easily understood that a cold shiver passed through me when
Monsieur Pierre Agénor de Vargnes did me the honour of sending a lady
to await on me.

At about eight o'clock, one morning last winter, as he was leaving the
house to go to the
Palais de Justice
, his footman handed him a card,
on which was printed:

DOCTOR JAMES FERDINAND,
Member of the Academy of Medicine,
Port-au-Prince,
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

At the bottom of the card there was written in pencil:
From Lady
Frogère
.

Monsieur de Vargnes knew the lady very well, who was a very agreeable
Creole from Hayti, and whom he had met in many drawing-rooms, and, on
the other hand, though the doctor's name did not awaken any
recollections in him, his quality and titles alone required that he
should grant him an interview, however short it might be. Therefore,
although he was in a hurry to get out, Monsieur de Vargnes told the
footman to show in his early visitor, but to tell him beforehand that
his master was much pressed for time, as he had to go to the Law
Courts.

When the doctor came in, in spite of his usual imperturbability, he
could not restrain a movement of surprise, for the doctor presented
that strange anomaly of being a negro of the purest, blackest type,
with the eyes of a white man, of a man from the North, pale, cold,
clear blue eyes, and his surprise increased, when, after a few words of
excuse for his untimely visit, he added, with an enigmatical smile:

"My eyes surprise you, do they not? I was sure that they would, and, to
tell you the truth, I came here in order that you might look at them
well, and never forget them."

His smile, and his words, even more than his smile, seemed to be those
of a madman. He spoke very softly, with that childish, lisping voice,
which is peculiar to negroes, and his mysterious, almost menacing
words, consequently, sounded all the more as if they were uttered at
random by a man bereft of his reason. But his looks, the looks of those
pale, cold, clear blue eyes, were certainly not those of a madman. They
clearly expressed menace, yes, menace, as well as irony, and, above
all, implacable ferocity, and their glance was like a flash of
lightning, which one could never forget.

"I have seen," Monsieur de Vargnes used to say, when speaking about it,
"the looks of many murderers, but in none of them have I ever observed
such a depth of crime, and of impudent security in crime."

And this impression was so strong, that Monsieur de Vargnes thought
that he was the sport of some hallucination, especially as when he
spoke about his eyes, the doctor continued with a smile, and in his
most childish accents: "Of course, Monsieur, you cannot understand what
I am saying to you, and I must beg your pardon for it. To-morrow you
will receive a letter which will explain it all to you, but, first of
all, it was necessary that I should let you have a good, a careful look
at my eyes, my eyes, which are myself, my only and true self, as you
will see."

With these words, and with a polite bow, the doctor went out, leaving
Monsieur de Vargnes extremely surprised, and a prey to this doubt, as
he said to himself:

"Is he merely a madman? The fierce expression, and the criminal depths
of his looks are perhaps caused merely by the extraordinary contrast
between his fierce looks and his pale eyes."

And absorbed by these thoughts, Monsieur de Vargnes unfortunately
allowed several minutes to elapse, and then he thought to himself
suddenly:

"No, I am not the sport of any hallucination, and this is no case of an
optical phenomenon. This man is evidently some terrible criminal, and I
have altogether failed in my duty in not arresting him myself at once,
illegally, even at the risk of my life."