The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (2 page)

It was about this time that glowing reports commenced to reach England of the gold that lay beneath the fertile soil of British Guiana, the old El Dorado of Sir Walter Ralegh, and Fergusson and I resolved upon going out to see for ourselves if somewhere at least sinews were not in requisition. As a result we did dig some gold, or rather washed it, for it was all alluvial deposits, but we buried much more silver, and after a year we came away in disgust.

Our next billet was at the other end of the world, where, still together, we each got a berth on the two papers that the tiny town in the Malay States could boast. There, being better hands at satire than the respective editors, we used to write the slashing editorials about each other that was nearly all the papers contained. To an outsider, with a sense of humour, it must have been intensely amusing to see the two who in the columns of their journals had been vilifying each other, seeking among their extensive vocabulary for a name black
enough, drinking an amicable glass together later in the day.

However, there being not enough inhabitants able to read to keep one paper going, the two journals, with a praiseworthy pertinacity, choked each other to death, and with their demise Fergusson and I were once more thrown on our own resources. Yet there exists a certain gentleman of much-maligned character who is reported to look after his own, and he now led us to join the Chinese Imperial Custom Service; thus we drifted from port to port until we were finally stationed at Ningpo, with every prospect of its being a permanency ; and it is here that my story may be said to commence.

There being then no Customs quarters there, we each rented a small flat by the river-side, on opposite sides of the stone-flagged street, and about fifty yards apart, and, with a Chinese girl as housekeeper, proceeded to make our lives as comfortable as might be.

I have no desire to pose as a model of virtue. We were neither of us married, but those girls were as faithful to us as any European woman firmly tied in the bonds of Western wedlock could have been.

And here, in relating how Fergusson came by his housekeeper, I must paint in the first dark stain that marred his character. Under him was a halfcaste watcher who had a lovely young wife, a girl
of little more than eighteen, also with an obvious strain of Western blood in her veins, though she affected the Chinese costume and spoke but little better pidgin-English than her pure-blooded sisters.

This man Fergusson pursued with the most implacable hatred I have ever seen him exhibit towards any human being, until the poor fellow, who went by the name of Mathews (God knows where he got it from!) was never out of hot water. Fine after fine was imposed upon him—sometimes with justice, however unmerciful; more often without—until one day I angrily remonstrated with Fergusson on his gross injustice.

His only reply was a curtly-expressed desire that I would mind my own business, and as I did not care to come to an open rupture with him for the sake of a half-caste, nothing more was said.

At last poor Mathews fell into a trap which I firmly believe had been deliberately laid for him at the instigation of Fergusson, and was dismissed from the service.

This misfortune reduced the unhappy pair to the verge of starvation, and it was then that I saw the ghastly malignity of Fergusson's relentless persecution. He had been paying surreptitious attentions, when chance offered, to the young girlwife, and now, having so successfully ruined the husband, he offered her a home beneath his own roof, which she accepted with alacrity.

I Suppose I must confess that, after the first burst of anger at Fergusson's treachery to the watcher, I condoned the hideous offence. After all, Fergusson was my old college chum, and perhaps at heart I was as bad myself, lacking but opportunity.

And so for five months everything ran smoothly. " May," as Fergusson called his partner in guilt, took readily to her altered fortunes and changed manner of living, nor seemed in the least to regret the loss of her legitimate lord. I be, we heard, had taken to opium-smoking, and during his few hours of wakefulness sought employment as a coolie in the rice-fields on the opposite side of the river. Ibe had never been more than a barely perceptible step above the surrounding Chinaman, but now, in his degradation, he had sunk to the level of the lowest. Yet Fergusson felt no remorse for what was so obviously his handiwork.

One dark night early in February Fergusson and I returned late from the newly-erected Customs Club, and stopped opposite my door. He had taken to drinking rather deeply, and I had stayed on beyond my usual hour to keep an eye on him and prevent him, if possible, from imbibing to excess.

The fiat I occupied was over a Chinese shop, and to reach the staircase one had to go through the small go-down to the side to a little courtyard at the back, and so through the door leading to the stairs.

Now, as we stood talking, Fergusson was pressing me to step round to his place and sample a bottle of particularly good whisky he had obtained from a ship on which he had been stationed. But I firmly declined. It was late, I said, past midnight. Fergusson would take no denial.

" Come along," he said, " it isn't twelve yet. May will have something hot in readiness for us. You need not stay long."

" Not twelve ? " I echoed. " I wouldn't mind betting it is past one! "

" Done for five dollars," said Fergusson, smiling.

" Right; come upstairs and look at the clock."

We turned and walked through the go-down into the courtyard beyond. But we had no need to ascend the stairs. As we stood there the little clock I kept in my room ("Bow Bells" Fergusson called it) chimed out musically, and we both stood still to listen. I thought as we stood there that I heard a faint stir as of someone entering in the go-down beyond, but paid no heed. The little clock ran through its preliminary chime, then struck one.

" There ! " I cried triumphantly.

But scarcely had the sound died away on the stairs when there came the thunderous report of a revolver, fired point-blank in a confined space, and as the reverberations echoed through the go-down Fergusson staggered, with a stifled cry, to the wall. Another shot followed closely on the other, and locating the marksman by the flash of the weapon
in the darkness of the go-down, I made a rush at him, and went sprawling over something soft and yielding lying full across the doorway. I struck a match and bent over it. It was Mathews, or rather the wreck of Mathews, lying there with a tiny stream of blood bubbling out from his temple and trickling across the floor, a smoking pistol—an antiquated "bulldog"—gripped in his hand.

Without waiting to see more, I threw the match away and ran back to see how Fergusson had fared. I found him leaning against the wall, pale but smiling, trying to stanch the flow of blood from a flesh wound in the shoulder.

" Near thing that, Ward," he said coolly, as I inquired anxiously where he was hit. " A little lower, and it would have finished me."

" Where are you hit ? " I asked again.

" Left shoulder—mere scratch ! "

He sat down on an empty box while I helped him off with his coat.

" Wonder who was the potter ?" he said presently.

" Mathews," I answered.

" Damn him!" cried Fergusson furiously, springing to his feet. " The cursed swine! He shall pay for this! "

" He has paid already," I said quietly.

" How ? "

" He is outside with a bullet in his brain," I
answered briefly. This night's work was not to my liking.

" That's right," Fergusson said brutally. " I 'm glad he did the job neatly on himself, just as glad as that he bungled it on me."

"Fergusson," I said sternly, "this is your doing."

" Pshaw ! Nonsense ! The girl did not want to stay with him, and one must oblige a lady when it lies in one's power so to do."

A crowd was already gathering, attracted by the report; and as Fergusson did not want to be mixed up in the matter, he hastily slipped up to my room and washed and bandaged his arm. Then we sauntered down to where they were gathered round the dead man, leaving it to be inferred that he had simply committed suicide in the street and tumbled into the open doorway.

"Jolly glad," said Fergusson when all was quiet again, "that it did not happen at my place—people would have twigged. I suppose he was lying in wait for me at my door, and when he saw us come in here followed with the intention of potting me when I came out."

Things fell back into their old groove, and months slid by. The only change was that, despite my efforts to keep him straight, Fergusson took to drinking deeper and deeper, and poor May had a hard time of it when he came home drunk, for he ill-used her shamefully. Remonstrance was in vain ; when he was in his cups it was utterly useless to
attempt to argue with him, and next morning when he was sobered no one was more contrite, as he viewed the bruises on the girl's tender flesh, than Fergusson himself. Still she stuck to him, doing her best to keep him from the drink, nor ever complaining to him or anyone else of his brutality.

So matters went on until that eventful August night, when began the most frightful series of events it has ever been the lot of mortal man to witness or chronicle.

It was a close, sultry night, with that ominous stillness which, to my mind, always presages some form of disaster. My housekeeper had long ago retired for the night, and I was sitting near the open window smoking and wondering idly what had become of Fergusson, whom I had not seen for three days. On one of his bursts again, was my conclusion. I would have to look him up in the morning and give him a talking to, though I smiled bitterly to myself as I thought of how little use that would be. Things could not go on like this, however, if Fergusson did not want to be dismissed from the service. While I yet pondered on his folly, footsteps creaked on the stairs without, and I looked round to see the man of whom I was thinking standing in the doorway. His eyes were bloodshot and protruding, and his hair—he had come in without a hat—fairly standing on end. His clothes were in disorder, and there was a look
of wild terror in his face, as he staggered into the room, that for the moment alarmed me.

The next I muttered to myself, " Drunk again ! " as I crossed to the table beside which he had collapsed into a chair.

He raised his head as I sat down opposite him and looked wildly round the room, as though searching for a presence he could feel but could not see.

"Ward," he said suddenly, turning his terrorstricken eyes on me, " do you believe in ghosts ? "

"Spirits?" I asked, contempt in my tones as I pointed to the whisky-bottle on the sideboard. " Yes! So do you, or you would not be here now in that disgusting state."

He flung up his head impatiently.

" Do you believe in transmigration ? " he asked again. Fergusson, the cool, the resolute, was trembling like a scared kitten.

" I thought we settled all that to our entire satisfaction years ago at coll.," I told him.

But he went on wildly, unheeding my jesting treatment of the matter.

" Ward, do you think it possible that a man, we will say a Chinaman, could come back to earth in the form of a vampire, to haunt one who has wronged him ? "

" Why ? " I queried amusedly. " Have you seen him?"

His face was ashen with terror and his lips livid as he muttered—

"I have!"

" My dear man," I laughed, " you 've got 'em again, got 'em badly, for this time your rats have wings!"

He answered nothing, only looked apprehensively round the room. I went on :

" Best rat poison for vampires and such, Fergusson, is a course of strict teetotalism, and a few doses of bromide, administered not to them but to yourself."

But my irony was lost on him.

" Listen, Ward! " said he, gripping my arm as in a vice, and there was something of deadly earnestness in his voice that forced my attention.
"
Last night I came home from the club as usual"—I had no need to ask him in what state " as usual" was, I knew, alas! too well—" and went to the little cupboard where I had stowed three bottles of whisky that I had obtained from the chief officer of one of Butterfield's boats discharging sugar in the river, in order to continue the orgy, and found them gone."

He stopped and glanced round the room again.

" Good job for you! " said I unsympathetically.

He continued—

" I went in and shook May out of her sleep, and asked her what she had done with them; but she professed entire ignorance of them until I gripped her arm till she writhed in pain "— he groaned, and from that I concluded that he
must be sober now, but suffering from delirium tremens—" then she cried out in her agony that she had smashed them so that I should not drink myself to death.

" But I told her roughly she lied, and that I would not release her until she showed me where she had hidden them. She only sobbed, • Have makee break ! Have makee break!' Then, Ward, in a frenzy of drunken passion I got a length of cord and bound her slender wrists and ankles to the head and foot rails of the bed. Bound them" —he shuddered violently—" until I could see the cords cutting into the tender flesh, and her delicate limbs swelling under the torture, and I stood beside her and laughed in glee while she moaned, ' Have makee break! True, have makee break!'"

His head sank on his arms and he groaned again in anguish of remorse. I rose to my feet in sudden heat and strode to his side, shaking him roughly by the collar.

"Fergusson!" I cried fiercely, "is this true? Answer me, man! Is this true ? "

" As true," he replied miserably, " as that I look forward to burning in hell for it! "

"You cur!" I cried, flinging him from me, for I knew the depth of the girl's devotion to him.

He did not resent it nor attempt to excuse himself, only looked up at me with a bitter laugh —a laugh that reminded me of the savage snarl of a wounded hyena—and I shuddered involuntarily.