Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (16 page)

One evening in autumn, when the deformities of London were veiled in
faint, blue mist and its vistas and far-reaching streets seemed
splendid, Mr. Charles Salisbury was slowly pacing down Rupert Street,
drawing nearer to his favourite restaurant by slow degrees. His eyes
were downcast in study of the pavement, and thus it was that as he
passed in at the narrow door a man who had come up from the lower end
of the street jostled against him.

"I beg your pardon—wasn't looking where I was going. Why, it's Dyson!"

"Yes, quite so. How are you, Salisbury?"

"Quite well. But where have you been, Dyson? I don't think I can have
seen you for the last five years."

"No; I dare say not. You remember I was getting rather hard up when you
came to my place at Charlotte Street?"

"Perfectly. I think I remember your telling me that you owed five
weeks' rent, and that you had parted with your watch for a
comparatively small sum."

"My dear Salisbury, your memory is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But
the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My
financial state was described by a friend as 'stone broke.' I don't
approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we
go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's a human
weakness, Salisbury."

"Certainly; come along. I was wondering as I walked down whether the
corner table were taken. It has a velvet back, you know."

"I know the spot; it's vacant. Yes, as I was saying, I became even
harder up."

"What did you do then?" asked Salisbury, disposing of his hat, and
settling down in the corner of the seat, with a glance of fond
anticipation at the
menu
.

"What did I do? Why, I sat down and reflected. I had a good classical
education, and a positive distaste for business of any kind; that was
the capital with which I faced the world. Do you know, I have heard
people describe olives as nasty! What lamentable philistinism! I have
often thought, Salisbury, that I could write genuine poetry under the
influence of olives and red wine. Let us have Chianti; it may not be
very good, but the flasks are simply charming."

"It is pretty good here. We may as well have a big flask."

"Very good. I reflected, then, on my want of prospects, and I
determined to embark in literature."

"Really, that was strange. You seem in pretty comfortable
circumstances, though."

"Though! What a satire upon a noble profession. I am afraid, Salisbury,
you haven't a proper idea of the dignity of an artist. You see me
sitting at my desk,—or at least you can see me if you care to
call,—with pen and ink, and simple nothingness before me, and if you
come again in a few hours you will (in all probability) find a
creation!"

"Yes, quite so. I had an idea that literature was not remunerative."

"You are mistaken; its rewards are great. I may mention, by the way,
that shortly after you saw me I succeeded to a small income. An uncle
died, and proved unexpectedly generous."

"Ah, I see. That must have been convenient."

"It was pleasant,—undeniably pleasant. I have always considered it in
the light of an endowment of my researches. I told you I was a man of
letters; it would, perhaps, be more correct to describe myself as a man
of science."

"Dear me, Dyson, you have really changed very much in the last few
years. I had a notion, don't you know, that you were a sort of idler
about town, the kind of man one might meet on the north side of
Piccadilly every day from May to July."

"Exactly. I was even then forming myself, though all unconsciously. You
know my poor father could not afford to send me to the university. I
used to grumble in my ignorance at not having completed my education.
That was the folly of youth, Salisbury; my university was Piccadilly.
There I began to study the great science which still occupies me."

"What science do you mean?"

"The science of the great city; the physiology of London; literally and
metaphysically the greatest subject that the mind of man can conceive.
What an admirable
salmi
this is; undoubtedly the final end of the
pheasant. Yes, I feel sometimes positively overwhelmed with the thought
of the vastness and complexity of London. Paris a man may get to
understand thoroughly with a reasonable amount of study; but London is
always a mystery. In Paris you may say, 'Here live the actresses, here
the Bohemians, and the
Ratés
;' but it is different in London. You may
point out a street, correctly enough, as the abode of washerwomen; but,
in that second floor, a man may be studying Chaldee roots, and in the
garret over the way a forgotten artist is dying by inches."

"I see you are Dyson, unchanged and unchangeable," said Salisbury,
slowly sipping his Chianti. "I think you are misled by a too fervid
imagination; the mystery of London exists only in your fancy. It seems
to me a dull place enough. We seldom hear of a really artistic crime in
London, whereas I believe Paris abounds in that sort of thing."

"Give me some more wine. Thanks. You are mistaken, my dear fellow, you
are really mistaken. London has nothing to be ashamed of in the way of
crime. Where we fail is for want of Homers, not Agamemnons.
Carent
quia vale sacro
, you know."

"I recall the quotation. But I don't think I quite follow you."

"Well, in plain language, we have no good writers in London who make a
specialty of that kind of thing. Our common reporter is a dull dog;
every story that he has to tell is spoilt in the telling. His idea of
horror and of what excites horror is so lamentably deficient. Nothing
will content the fellow but blood, vulgar red blood, and when he can
get it he lays it on thick, and considers that he has produced a
telling story. It's a poor notion. And, by some curious fatality, it is
the most commonplace and brutal murders which always attract the most
attention and get written up the most. For instance, I dare say that
you never heard of the Harlesden case?"

"No, no; I don't remember anything about it."

"Of course not. And yet the story is a curious one. I will tell it you
over our coffee. Harlesden, you know, or I expect you don't know, is
quite on the out-quarters of London; something curiously different from
your fine old crusted suburb like Norwood or Hampstead, different as
each of these is from the other. Hampstead, I mean, is where you look
for the head of your great China house with his three acres of land and
pine houses, though of late there is the artistic substratum; while
Norwood is the home of the prosperous middle-class family who took the
house 'because it was near the Palace,' and sickened of the Palace six
months afterwards; but Harlesden is a place of no character. It's too
new to have any character as yet. There are the rows of red houses and
the rows of white houses and the bright green venetians, and the
blistering doorways, and the little back-yards they call gardens, and a
few feeble shops, and then, just as you think you're going to grasp the
physiognomy of the settlement it all melts away."

"How the dickens is that? The houses don't tumble down before one's
eyes I suppose."

"Well, no, not exactly that. But Harlesden as an entity disappears.
Your street turns into a quiet lane, and your staring houses into elm
trees, and the back gardens into green meadows. You pass instantly from
town to country; there is no transition as in a small country town, no
soft gradations of wider lawns and orchards, with houses gradually
becoming less dense, but a dead stop. I believe the people who live
there mostly go into the city. I have seen once or twice a laden 'bus
bound thitherwards. But however that may be, I can't conceive a greater
loneliness in a desert at midnight than there is there at midday. It is
like a city of the dead; the streets are glaring and desolate, and as
you pass it suddenly strikes you that this, too, is part of London.
Well, a year or two ago there was a doctor living there; he had set up
his brass plate and his red lamp at the very end of one of those
shining streets, and from the back of the house the fields stretched
away to the north. I don't know what his reason was in settling down in
such an out-of-the-way place, perhaps Dr. Black, as we will call him,
was a far-seeing man and looked ahead. His relations, so it appeared
afterwards, had lost sight of him for many years and didn't even know
he was a doctor, much less where he lived. However, there he was,
settled in Harlesden, with some fragments of a practice, and an
uncommonly pretty wife. People used to see them walking out together in
the summer evenings soon after they came to Harlesden, and, so far as
could be observed, they seemed a very affectionate couple. These walks
went on through the autumn, and then ceased; but, of course, as the
days grew dark and the weather cold, the lanes near Harlesden might be
expected to lose many of their attractions. All through the winter
nobody saw anything of Mrs. Black; the doctor used to reply to his
patients' inquiries that she was a 'little out of sorts, would be
better, no doubt, in the spring.' But the spring came, and the summer,
and no Mrs. Black appeared, and at last people began to rumor and talk
amongst themselves, and all sorts of queer things were said at 'high
teas,' which you may possibly have heard are the only form of
entertainment known in such suburbs. Dr. Black began to surprise some
very odd looks cast in his direction, and the practice, such as it was,
fell off before his eyes. In short, when the neighbours whispered about
the matter, they whispered that Mrs. Black was dead, and that the
doctor had made away with her. But this wasn't the case; Mrs. Black was
seen alive in June. It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those few
exquisite days that an English climate offers, and half London had
strayed out into the fields North, South, East, and West, to smell the
scent of the white May, and to see if the wild roses were yet in
blossom in the hedges. I had gone out myself early in the morning, and
had had a long ramble, and somehow or other, as I was steering
homeward, I found myself in this very Harlesden we have been talking
about. To be exact, I had a glass of beer in the 'General Gordon,' the
most flourishing house in the neighbourhood, and as I was wandering
rather aimlessly about I saw an uncommonly tempting gap in a hedgerow,
and resolved to explore the meadow beyond. Soft grass is very grateful
to the feet after the infernal grit strewn on suburban sidewalks, and
after walking about for some time, I thought I should like to sit down
on a bank and have a smoke. While I was getting out my pouch, I looked
up in the direction of the houses, and as I looked I felt my breath
caught back, and my teeth began to chatter, and the stick I had in one
hand snapped in two with the grip I gave it. It was as if I had had an
electric current down my spine, and yet for some moment of time which
seemed long, but which must have been very short, I caught myself
wondering what on earth was the matter. Then I knew what had made my
very heart shudder and my bones grind together in an agony. As I
glanced up I had looked straight towards the last house in the row
before me, and in an upper window of that house I had seen for some
short fraction of a second a face. It was the face of a woman, and yet
it was not human. You and I, Salisbury, have heard in our time, as we
sat in our seats in church in sober English fashion, of a lust that
cannot be satiated, and of a fire that is unquenchable, but few of us
have any notion what these words mean. I hope you never may, for as I
saw that face at the window, with the blue sky above me and the warm
air playing in gusts about me, I knew I had looked into another
world—looked through the window of a commonplace, brand-new house, and
seen hell open before me. When the first shock was over, I thought once
or twice that I should have fainted; my face streamed with a cold
sweat, and my breath came and went in sobs, as if I had been half
drowned. I managed to get up at last, and walked round to the street,
and there I saw the name Dr. Black on the post by the front gate. As
fate or my luck would have it, the door opened and a man came down the
steps as I passed by. I had no doubt it was the doctor himself. He was
of a type rather common in London,—long and thin with a pasty face and
a dull black moustache. He gave me a look as we passed each other on
the pavement, and though it was merely the casual glance which one
foot-passenger bestows on another, I felt convinced in my mind that
here was an ugly customer to deal with. As you may imagine I went my
way a good deal puzzled and horrified, too, by what I had seen; for I
had paid another visit to the 'General Gordon,' and had got together a
good deal of the common gossip of the place about the Blacks. I didn't
mention the fact that I had seen a woman's face in the window; but I
heard that Mrs. Black had been much admired for her beautiful golden
hair, and round what had struck me with such a nameless terror there
was a mist of flowing yellow hair, as it were an aureole of glory round
the visage of a satyr. The whole thing bothered me in an indescribable
manner; and when I got home I tried my best to think of the impression
I had received as an illusion, but it was no use. I knew very well I
had seen what I have tried to describe to you, and I was morally
certain that I had seen Mrs. Black. And then there was the gossip of
the place, the suspicion of foul play, which I knew to be false, and my
own conviction that there was some deadly mischief or other going on in
that bright red house at the corner of the Devon Road,—how to
construct a theory of a reasonable kind out of these two elements. In
short, I found myself in a world of mystery; I puzzled my head over it
and filled up my leisure moments by gathering together odd threads of
speculation, but I never moved a step toward any real solution, and as
the summer days went on the matter seemed to grown misty and
indistinct, shadowing some vague terror, like a nightmare of last
month. I suppose it would before long have faded into the background of
my brain—I should not have forgotten it, for such a thing could never
be forgotten—but one morning as I was looking over the paper my eye
was caught by a heading over some two dozen lines of small type. The
words I had seen were simply, 'The Harlesden Case,' and I knew what I
was going to read. Mrs. Black was dead. Black had called in another
medical man to certify as to cause of death, and something or other had
aroused the strange doctor's suspicions, and there had been an inquest
and
post-mortem
. And the result? That, I will confess, did astonish
me considerably; it was the triumph of the unexpected. The two doctors
who made the autopsy were obliged to confess that they could not
discover the faintest trace of any kind of foul play; their most
exquisite tests and reagents failed to detect the presence of poison in
the most infinitesimal quantity. Death, they found, had been caused by
a somewhat obscure and scientifically interesting form of brain
disease. The tissue of the brain and the molecules of the gray matter
had undergone a most extraordinary series of changes; and the younger
of the two doctors, who has some reputation, I believe, as a specialist
in brain trouble, made some remarks in giving his evidence, which
struck me deeply at the time, though I did not then grasp their full
significance. He said: 'At the commencement of the examination I was
astonished to find appearances of a character entirely new to me,
notwithstanding my somewhat large experience. I need not specify these
appearances at present; it will be sufficient for me to state that as I
proceeded in my task I could scarcely believe that the brain before me
was that of a human being at all.' There was some surprise at this
statement, as you may imagine, and the coroner asked the doctor if he
meant to say that the brain resembled that of an animal. 'No,' he
replied, 'I should not put it in that way. Some of the appearances I
noticed seemed to point in that direction, but others, and these were
the more surprising, indicated a nervous organization of a wholly
different character to that either of man or of the lower animals.' It
was a curious thing to say, but of course the jury brought in a verdict
of death from natural causes, and, so far as the public was concerned,
the case came to an end. But after I had read what the doctor said, I
made up my mind that I should like to know a good deal more, and I set
to work on what seemed likely to prove an interesting investigation. I
had really a good deal of trouble, but I was successful in a measure.
Though—why, my dear fellow, I had no notion of the time. Are you aware
that we have been here nearly four hours? The waiters are staring at
us. Let's have the bill and be gone."