Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (18 page)

"Yes. But I am afraid, Salisbury, you are incorrigible. You are a slave
to what you call matter of fact. You know perfectly well that in your
heart you think the oddness in that case is of my making, and that it
is all really as plain as the police reports. However, as I have begun,
I will go on. But first we will have something to drink, and you may as
well light your pipe."

Dyson went up to the oak cupboard, and drew from its depths a rotund
bottle and two little glasses quaintly gilded.

"It's Benedictin," he said. "You'll have some, won't you?"

Salisbury assented, and the two men sat sipping and smoking
reflectively for some minutes before Dyson began.

"Let me see," he said at last; "we were at the inquest, weren't we? No,
we had done with that. Ah, I remember. I was telling you that on the
whole I had been successful in my inquiries, investigation, or what
ever you like to call it, into the matter. Wasn't that where I left
off?"

"Yes, that was it. To be precise, I think 'though' was the last word
you said on the matter."

"Exactly. I have been thinking it all over since the other night, and I
have come to the conclusion that that 'though' is a very big 'though'
indeed. Not to put too fine a point on it, I have had to confess that
what I found out, or thought I found out, amounts in reality to
nothing. I am as far away from the heart of the case as ever. However,
I may as well tell you what I do know. You may remember my saying that
I was impressed a good deal by some remarks of one of the doctors who
gave evidence at the inquest. Well, I determined that my first step
must be to try if I could get something more definite and intelligible
out of that doctor. Somehow or other I managed to get an introduction
to the man, and he gave me an appointment to come and see him. He
turned out to be a pleasant, genial fellow; rather young and not in the
least like the typical medical man, and he began the conference by
offering me whiskey and cigars. I didn't think it worth while to beat
about the bush, so I began by saying that part of his evidence at the
Harlesden Inquest struck me as very peculiar, and I gave him the
printed report, with the sentences in question underlined. He just
glanced at the slip, and gave me a queer look. 'It struck you as
peculiar, did it?' said he. 'Well, you must remember the Harlesden case
was very peculiar. In fact, I think I may safely say that in some
features it was unique—quite unique.' 'Quite so,' I replied, 'and
that's exactly why it interests me, and why I want to know more about
it. And I thought that if anybody could give me any information it
would be you. What is your opinion of the matter?'

"It was a pretty downright sort of question, and my doctor looked
rather taken aback.

"'Well,' he said, 'as I fancy your motive in inquiring into the
question must be mere curiosity, I think I may tell you my opinion with
tolerable freedom. So, Mr.—Mr. Dyson, if you want to know my theory,
it is this: I believe that Dr. Black killed his wife.'

"'But the verdict,' I answered, 'the verdict was given from your own
evidence.'

"'Quite so, the verdict was given in accordance with the evidence of my
colleague and myself, and, under the circumstances, I think the jury
acted very sensibly. In fact I don't see what else they could have
done. But I stick to my opinion, mind you, and I say this also: I don't
wonder at Black's doing what I firmly believe he did. I think he was
justified.'

"'Justified! How could that be?' I asked. I was astonished, as you may
imagine, at the answer I had got. The doctor wheeled round his chair,
and looked steadily at me for a moment before he answered.

"'I suppose you are not a man of science yourself? No; then it would be
of no use my going into detail. I have always been firmly opposed
myself to any partnership between physiology and psychology. I believe
that both are bound to suffer. No one recognizes more decidedly than I
do the impassable gulf, the fathomless abyss that separates the world
of consciousness from the sphere of matter. We know that every change
of consciousness is accompanied by a rearrangement of the molecules in
the gray matter; and that is all. What the link between them is, or why
they occur together, we do not know, and most authorities believe that
we never can know. Yet, I will tell you that as I did my work, the
knife in my hand, I felt convinced, in spite of all theories, that what
lay before me was not the brain of a dead woman; not the brain of a
human being at all. Of course I saw the face; but it was quite placid,
devoid of all expression. It must have been a beautiful face, no doubt;
but I can honestly say that I would not have looked in that face when
there was life behind it for a thousand guineas, no, nor for twice that
sum.'

"'My dear sir,' I said, 'you surprise me extremely. You say that it was
not the brain of a human being. What was it then?'

"'The brain of a devil.' He spoke quite coolly, and never moved a
muscle. 'The brain of a devil,' he repeated, 'and I have no doubt that
Black put a pillow over her mouth and kept it there for a few minutes.
I don't blame him if he did. Whatever Mrs. Black was, she was not fit
to stay in this world. Will you have anything more? No? Good-night,
good-night.'

"It was a queer sort of opinion to get from a man of science, wasn't
it? When he was saying that he would not have looked on that face when
alive for a thousand guineas or two thousand guineas, I was thinking of
the face I had seen, but I said nothing. I went again to Harlesden, and
passed from one shop to another, making small purchases, and trying to
find out whether there was anything about the Blacks which was not
already common property; but there was very little to hear. One of the
tradesmen to whom I spoke said he had known the dead woman well—she
used to buy of him such quantities of grocery as were required for
their small household, for they never kept a servant, but had a
charwoman in occasionally, and she had not seen Mrs. Black for months
before she died. According to this man, Mrs. Black was 'a nice lady,'
always kind and considerate, so fond of her husband, and he of her, as
everyone thought. And yet, to put the doctor's opinion on one side, I
knew what I had seen. And then, after thinking it all over and putting
one thing with another, it seemed to me that the only person likely to
give me much assistance would be Black himself, and I made up my mind
to find him. Of course he wasn't to be found in Harlesden; he had left,
I was told, directly after the funeral. Everything in the house had
been sold, and one fine day Black got into the train with a small
portmanteau, and went nobody knew where. It was a chance if he were
ever heard of again, and it was by a mere chance that I came across him
at last. I was walking one day along Gray's Inn Road, not bound for
anywhere in particular, but looking about me, as usual, and holding on
to my hat, for it was a gusty day in early March, and the wind was
making the tree-tops in the Inn rock and quiver. I had come up from the
Holborn end, and I had almost got to Theobald's Road, when I noticed a
man walking in front of me, leaning on a stick and to all appearance
very feeble. There was something about his look that made me curious, I
don't know why; and I began to walk briskly, with the idea of
overtaking him, when of a sudden his hat blew off, and came bounding
along the pavement to my feet. Of course I rescued the hat, and gave it
a glance as I went towards its owner. It was a biography in itself; a
Piccadilly maker's name in the inside, but I don't think a beggar would
have picked it out of the gutter. Then I looked up, and saw Dr. Black
of Harlesden waiting for me. A queer thing, wasn't it? But, Salisbury,
what a change! When I saw Dr. Black come down the steps of his house at
Harlesden, he was an upright man, walking firmly with well-built limbs;
a man, I should say, in the prime of his life. And now before me there
crouched this wretched creature, bent and feeble, with shrunken cheeks,
and hair that was whitening fast, and limbs that trembled and shook
together, and misery in his eyes. He thanked me for bringing him his
hat, saying, 'I don't think I should ever have got it, I can't run much
now. A gusty day, sir, isn't it?' and with this he was turning away;
but by little and little I contrived to draw him into the current of
conversation, and we walked together eastward. I think the man would
have been glad to get rid of me, but I didn't intend to let him go, and
he stopped at last in front of a miserable house in a miserable street.
It was, I verily believe, one of the most wretched quarters I have ever
seen,—houses that must have been sordid and hideous enough when new,
that had gathered foulness with every year, and now seemed to lean and
totter to their fall. 'I live up there,' said Black, pointing to the
tiles, 'not in the front,—in the back. I am very quiet there. I won't
ask you to come in now, but perhaps some other day—'

"I caught him up at that, and told him I should be only too glad to
come and see him. He gave me an odd sort of glance, as if he was
wondering what on earth I or anybody else could care about him, and I
left him fumbling with his latch-key. I think you will say I did pretty
well, when I tell you that within a few weeks I had made myself an
intimate friend of Black's. I shall never forget the first time I went
to this room; I hope I shall never see such abject, squalid misery
again. The foul paper, from which all pattern or trace of a pattern had
long vanished, subdued and penetrated with the grime of the evil
street, was hanging in mouldering pennons from the wall. Only at the
end of the room was it possible to stand upright; and the sight of the
wretched bed and the odour of corruption that pervaded the place made
me turn faint and sick. Here I found him munching a piece of bread; he
seemed surprised to find that I had kept my promise, but he gave me his
chair, and sat on the bed while we talked. I used to go and see him
often, and we had long conversations together, but he never mentioned
Harlesden or his wife. I fancy that he supposed me ignorant of the
matter, or thought that if I had heard of it, I should never connect
the respectable Dr. Black of Harlesden with a poor garreteer in the
backwoods of London. He was a strange man, and as we sat together
smoking, I often wondered whether he were mad or sane, for I think the
wildest dreams of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians would appear plain
and sober fact, compared with the theories I have heard him earnestly
advance in that grimy den of his. I once ventured to hint something of
the sort to him; I suggested that something he had said was in flat
contradiction to all science and all experience. 'No, Dyson,' he
answered, 'not all experience, for mine counts for something. I am no
dealer in unproved theories; what I say I have proved for myself, and
at a terrible cost. There is a region of knowledge of which you will
never know, which wise men, seeing from afar off, shun like the plague,
as well they may; but into that region I have gone. If you knew, if you
could even dream of what may be done, of what one or two men have done,
in this quiet world of ours, your very soul would shudder and faint
within you. What you have heard from me has been but the merest husk
and outer covering of true science,—that science which means death and
that which is more awful than death to those who gain it. No, Dyson,
when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little
know the awe and the terror that dwell always within them and about
them.'"

There was a sort of fascination about the man that drew me to him, and
I was quite sorry to have to leave London for a month or two; I missed
his odd talk. A few days after I came back to town I thought I would go
and look him up; but when I gave the two rings at the bell that used to
summon him, there was no answer. I rang and rang again, and was just
turning to go away, when the door opened and a dirty woman asked me
what I wanted. From her look I fancy she took me for a plain-clothes
officer after one of her lodgers; but when I inquired if Mr. Black was
in, she gave me a stare of another kind. 'There's no Mr. Black lives
here,' she said. 'He's gone. He's dead this six weeks. I always thought
he was a bit queer in his head, or else had been and got into some
trouble or other. He used to go out every morning from ten till one,
and one Monday morning we heard him come in and go into his room and
shut the door, and a few minutes after, just as we was a-sitting down
to our dinner, there was such a scream that I thought I should have
gone right off. And then we heard a stamping, and down he came raging
and cursing most dreadful, swearing he had been robbed of something
that was worth millions. And then he just dropped down in the passage,
and we thought he was dead. We got him up to his room, and put him on
his bed, and I just sat there and waited, while my 'usband he went for
the doctor. And there was the winder wide open, and a little tin box he
had lying on the floor open and empty; but of course nobody could
possible have got in at the winder, and as for him having anything that
was worth anything, it's nonsense, for he was often weeks and weeks
behind with his rent, and my 'usband he threatened often and often to
turn him into the street, for, as he said, we've got a living to myke
like other people, and of course that's true; but somehow I didn't like
to do it, though he was an odd kind of a man, and I fancy had been
better off. And then the doctor came and looked at him, and said as he
couldn't do nothing, and that night he died as I was a-sitting by his
bed; and I can tell you that, with one thing and another, we lost money
by him, for the few bits of clothes as he had were worth next to
nothing when they came to be sold.'

"I gave the woman half a sovereign for her trouble, and went home
thinking of Dr. Black and the epitaph she had made him, and wondering
at his strange fancy that he had been robbed. I take it that he had
very little to fear on that score, poor fellow; but I suppose that he
was really mad, and died in a sudden access of his mania. His landlady
said that once or twice when she had had occasion to go into his room
(to dun the poor wretch for his rent, most likely), he would keep her
at the door for about a minute, and that when she came in she would
find him putting away his tin box in the corner by the window. I
suppose he had become possessed with the idea of some great treasure,
and fancied himself a wealthy man in the midst of all his misery.