of the gangway the fold of the rug which he was carrying on his arm,
caught in the railings. He turned sharply to free it and stepping back,
cannoned into an officer of the dock. It threw him off his balance on
the edge of the dockside.
Even if the official had not grabbed him, it is highly probable that he
could have saved himself from falling into the water, because the
gangway railing was in easy reach; and if you remember that he was a
champion swimmer, you will agree that it is still more probable that he
would not have been drowned, even if he had fallen.
But the incident made its impression. His thoughts reverted to it
constantly during the next few days. Then he told himself that his
attendance at the last rites of his uncle had made him morbid, and was
more or less successful in dismissing the affair from his mind.
He had many friends in common with the Lardners. Early in February he
was invited for a week's hunting to a house at which Betty Lardner was
also a guest.
She had not forgotten. She did her best to avoid him, and succeeded
remarkably well, in spite of the fact that their hostess, knowing
something of young Cargill's feelings, made several efforts to throw
them together.
One day at the end of the hunt he came alongside of her and they walked
their horses home together. When he was sure that they were out of
earshot he asked:
"You haven't forgiven me yet?"
"You know the conditions," she replied banteringly.
"You leave me no alternative to suicide," he protested.
"That would be cheating," she said. "You must be drowned honestly, or
it's no good."
Then he made a foolish reply. He thought her humour forced and it
annoyed him. Remember that he was exasperated. He had looked forward to
meeting her, and now she was treating him with studied coldness over
what still seemed to him a comparatively trifling matter.
"I am afraid," he said, "that that is hardly likely to occur. The fact
of my being a townsman instead of a drunken boatman doesn't give your
legend a fair chance!"
Less than an hour afterwards he was having his bath before dressing for
dinner. The water was deliciously hot, and the room was full of steam.
As he lay in the bath a drowsiness stole over him. Enjoying the keen
physical pleasure of it, he thought what a wholly delightful thing was a
hot bath after a day's hard hunting. His mind, bordering on sleep, dwelt
lazily on hot baths in general. And then with a startling suddenness
came the thought that, before now, men had been drowned in their baths!
With a shock he realised that he had almost fallen asleep. He tried to
rouse himself, but a faintness had seized him. That steam--he could not
breathe! He was certain he was going to faint.
With a desperate effort of the will he hurled himself out of the bath
and threw open the window.
It must have been the bath episode that first aroused the sensation of
positive fear in Cargill. For it was almost a month later when he
surprised the secretary of that swimming club of which he was the main
pillar by his refusal to take part in any events for the coming season.
He was beginning to take precautions.
Late one night, when taxi-cabs were scarce, he found that his quickest
way to reach home would be by means of one of the tubes. He was in the
descending lift when he suddenly remembered that that particular tube
ran beneath the river. Suppose an accident should occur--a leakage!
After all such a thing was within the bounds of possibility. Instantly
there rose before him the vision of a black torrent roaring through the
tunnel.
Without waiting for the lift to ascend he rushed to the staircase, and
sweating with terror gained the street and bribed a loafer to find him a
cab.
He made an effort to take himself seriously in hand after that. More
than one acquaintance had lately told him that he was looking "nervy."
In the last few weeks his sane and normal self seemed to have shrunk
within him. But it was still capable of asserting itself under
favourable conditions. It would talk aloud to the rest of him as if to a
separate individual.
"Look here, old man, this superstitious nonsense is becoming an
obsession to you," it said one fine April morning. "Yes, I mean what I
say--an obsession! You must pull yourself together or you'll go stark
mad, and then you'll probably go and throw yourself over the Embankment.
That legend is all bosh! You're in the twentieth century, and you're not
a drunken fisherman----"
"Hullo, young Cargill!"
The door burst open and Stranack, oozing health and sanity, glared at
him.
"Jove! What a wreck you look!" continued Stranack. "You've been
frousting too much. I'm glad I came. The car's outside, and we'll run
down to Kingston, take a skiff and pull up to Molesey."
The river! Young Cargill felt the blood singing in his ears.
"I'm afraid I can't manage it. I--I've got an appointment this
afternoon," he stammered.
Stranack perceived that he was lying, and wondered. For a few minutes
he gossiped, while young Cargill was repeating to himself:
"You must pull yourself together. It's becoming an obsession. You must
pull yourself together."
He was vaguely conscious that Stranack was about to depart. Stranack was
already in the doorway. His chance of killing the obsession was slipping
from him! A special effort and then:
"Stop!" cried Cargill. "I--I'll come with you, Stranack."
Oddly enough, he felt much better when they were actually on the river.
He had never been afraid of water, as such. And the familiar scenery,
together with the wholesome exercise of sculling, acted as a tonic to
his nerves.
They pulled above Molesey lock. When they were returning, Stranack said:
"You'll take her through the lock, won't you?"
It was a needless remark, and if Stranack had not made it all might have
been well. As a fact, it set Cargill asking himself why he should not
take her through the lock. He was admitted to be a much better boatman
than Stranack, and everyone knew that it required a certain amount of
skill to manage a lock properly. Locks were dangerous if you played the
fool. Before now people had been drowned in locks.
The rest was inevitable. He lost his head as the lower gates swung open,
and broke the rule of the river by pushing out in front of a launch. The
launch was already under way, and young Cargill trying to avoid it
better, thrust with his boat-hook at the side of the lock. The thrust
was nervous and ill-calculated, and the next instant the skiff had
blundered under the bows of the launch.
It happened very quickly. The skiff was forced, broadside on, against
the lock gates, and was splintered like firewood. Cargill fell
backwards, struck his head heavily against the gates--and sank.
He returned to consciousness in the lock-keeper's lodge. He had been
under water a dangerously long time before Stranack, who had suffered no
more than a wetting, had found him. It had been touch and go for his
life, but artificial respiration had succeeded.
He soon went to pieces after that.
From one of the windows of his chambers the river was just visible. One
morning he deliberately pulled the blind down. The action was important.
It signified that he had definitely given up pretending that he had the
power of shaking off the obsession.
But if he could not shake it off, he could at least keep it temporarily
at bay. He started a guerilla campaign against the obsession with the
aid of the brandy bottle. He was rarely drunk, and as rarely sober.
He was sober the day he was compelled to call on an aunt who lived in
the still prosperous outskirts of Paddington. It was one of his good
days and, in spite of his sobriety, he had himself in very good control
when he left his aunt.
In his search for a cab it became necessary for him to cross the canal.
On the bridge he paused and, gripping the parapet, made a surprise
attack upon his enemy.
Some children, playing on the tow path, helped him considerably. Their
delightful sanity in the presence of the water was worth more to him
than the brandy. He was positively winning the battle, when one of the
children fell into the water.
For an instant he hesitated. Then, as on the night of the Tube episode,
panic seized him. The next instant the man who was probably the best
amateur swimmer in England, was running with all his might away from the
canal.
When he reached his chambers he waited, with the assistance of the
brandy, until his man brought him the last edition of the evening paper.
A tiny paragraph on the back sheet told him of the tragedy.
An hour later his man found him face downwards on the hearthrug and,
wrongly attributing his condition wholly to the brandy, put him to bed.
He was in bed about three weeks. The doctor, who was also a personal
friend, was shrewd enough to suspect that the brandy was the effect,
rather than the cause of the nerve trouble.
About the first week in June Cargill was allowed to get up.
"You've got to go away," said the doctor one morning. "You are probably
aware that your nerves have gone to pieces. The sea is the place for
you!"
The gasp that followed was scarcely audible, and the doctor missed it.
"You went to Tryn yr Wylfa about this time last year," continued the
doctor. "Go there again! Go for long walks on the mountains, and put up
at a temperance hotel."
He went to Tryn yr Wylfa.
The train journey of six hours knocked him up for another week. By the
time he was strong enough for the promenade it was the fourteenth of
June. He noticed the date on the hotel calendar, and realised that the
Fates had another ten days in which to drown him.
He did not call on the Lardners. He felt that he couldn't--after the
canal episode. Four of the ten days had passed before Betty Lardner ran
across him on the promenade.
She noticed at once the change in him, and was kinder than she had ever
been before.
"Next Saturday," he said, "is the anniversary!"
For answer she smiled at him, and he might have smiled back if he had
not remembered the canal.
She met him each morning after that, so that she was with him on the day
when he made his atonement.
There had been a violent storm in the early morning. It had driven one
of the quarry steamers on to the long sand-bank that lies submerged
between Tryn yr Wylfa and Puffin Island. The gale still lasted, and the
steamer was in momentary danger of becoming a complete wreck.
There is no lifeboat service at Tryn yr Wylfa. It was impossible to
launch an ordinary boat in such a sea.
Colonel Denbigh, the owner of the quarry and local magnate, who had been
superintending what feeble efforts had been made to effect a rescue,
answered gloomily when Betty Lardner asked him if there were any hope.
"It's a terrible thing," he jerked. "First time there has been a wreck
hereabouts. It's hopeless trying to launch a boat----"
"Suppose a fellow were to swim out to the wreck with a life-line in
tow?"
It was young Cargill who spoke.
The Colonel glared at him contemptuously.
"He would need to be a pretty fine swimmer," he returned.
"I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but I am considered to be one of
the best amateur swimmers in the country," replied Cargill calmly. "If
you will tell your men to get the line ready, I will borrow a bathing
suit from somewhere."
They both stared at him in amazement.
"But you are still an invalid," cried Betty Lardner. "You----"
She stopped short and regarded him with fresh wonder. Somehow he no
longer looked an invalid.
Mechanically she walked by his side to the little bathing office.
Suddenly she clutched his arm.
"Jack," she said, "have you forgotten the--the legend?"
"Betty," he replied, "have you forgotten the crew?"
While he was undressing the attendant asked him some trivial question.
He did not hear the man. His thoughts were far away. He was thinking of
a group of children playing on the bank of a canal.
To the accompaniment of the Colonel's protests they fixed a belt on him,
to which was attached the life-line.
He walked along the sloping wooden projection that is used as a landing
stage for pleasure skiffs, walked until the water splashed over him.
Then he dived into the boiling surf.
Thus it was that he earned Betty Lardner's forgiveness.
VII
THE LAST ASCENT
The extraordinary rapidity with which a successful airman may achieve
fame was well shown in the case of my friend, Radcliffe Thorpe. One week
known merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer, the next his
name was on the lips of the civilised world. His first success was
followed by a series of remarkable feats, of which his flight above the
Atlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the North
Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on
Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the
fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused
by his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting at
Attercliffe, near London, towards the end of the summer.
Few people, I suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some time
previously he had been devoting himself more especially to ascending to
as great a height as possible. He held all the records for height, and
it was known that at Attercliffe he meant to endeavour to eclipse his
own achievements.
It was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring, not a cloud in the
sky. We saw him start. We saw him fly up and up in great sweeping
spirals. We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the azure space.
We watched him, those of us whose eyes could bear the strain, as he
dwindled to a dot and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight.
It was a stirring thing to see a man thus storm, as it were, the walls
of Heaven and probe the very mysteries of space. I remember I felt quite
annoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It seemed
such a sordid, business-like thing to be doing at such a moment.
Presently the aeroplane came into sight again and was greeted with a
sudden roar of cheering.
"He is doing a glide down," someone cried excitedly, and though someone
else declared that a glide from such a height was unthinkable and
impossible, yet it was soon plain that the first speaker was right.
Down through unimaginable thousands of feet, straight and swift swept
the machine, making such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would never
have dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting every moment
some catastrophe. But the machine kept on an even keel, and in a few
moments I joined with the others in a wild rush to the field at a little
distance where the machine, like a mighty bird, had alighted easily and
safely.
But when we reached it we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. There
was no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe!
No one knew what to say; we looked blankly at our neighbours, and one
man got down on his hands and knees and peered under the body of the
machine as if he suspected Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairman
of the meeting, Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery.
"Look," he said in a high, shaken voice, "the steering wheel is jammed!"
It was true. The steering wheel had been carefully fastened in one
position, and the lever controlling the planes had also been fixed so as
to hold them at the right angle for a downward glide. That was strange
enough, but in face of the mystery of Radcliffe's disappearance little
attention was paid it.
Where, then, was its pilot? That was the question that was filling
everybody's mind. He had vanished as utterly as vanishes the mist one
sees rising in the sunshine.
It was supposed he must have fallen from his seat, but as to how that
had happened, how it was that no fragment of his body or his clothing
was ever found, above all, how it was that his aeroplane had returned,
the engine cut off, the planes secured in correct position, no even
moderately plausible explanation was ever put forward.
The loss to aeronautics was felt to be severe. From childhood Radcliffe
had shown that, in addition to this, he had a marked aptitude for
drawing, usually held at the service of his profession, but now and
again exercised in producing sketches of his friends.
Among those who knew him privately he was fairly popular, though not,
perhaps, so much so as he deserved; certainly he had a way of talking
"shop" which was a trifle tiring to those who did not figure the world
as one vast engineering problem, while with women he was apt to be
brusque and short-mannered.
My surprise, then, can be imagined when, calling one afternoon on him
and having to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his desk a crayon
sketch of a woman's face. It was a very lovely face, the features almost
perfect, and yet there was about it something unearthly and spectral
that was curiously disturbing.
"Smitten at last?" I asked jestingly, and yet aware of a certain odd
discomfort.
When, he saw what I was looking at he went very pale.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"Oh, just--someone!" he answered.
He took the sketch from me, looked at it, frowned and locked it away. As
he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject, I went on to talk of the
business I had come about, and I congratulated him on his flight of the
day before in which he had broken the record for height. As I was going
he said:
"By the way, that sketch--what did you think of it?"
"Why, that you had better be careful," I answered, laughing; "or you'll
be falling from your high estate of bachelordom."
He gave so violent a start, his face expressed so much of apprehension
and dismay, that I stared at him blankly. Recovering himself with an
effort, he stammered out:
"It's not--I mean--it's an imaginary portrait."
"Then," I said, amazed in my turn, "you've a jolly sight more
imagination than anyone ever credited you with."
The incident remained in my mind. As a matter of fact, practical
Radcliffe Thorpe, absorbed in questions of strain and ease, his head
full of cylinders and wheels and ratchets and the Lord knows what else,
would have seemed to me the last man on earth to create that haunting,
strange, unearthly face, human in form, but not in expression.
It was about this time that Radcliffe began to give so much attention to
the making of very high flights. His favourite time was in the early
morning, as soon as it was light. Then in the chill dawn he would rise
and soar and wing his flight high and ever higher, up and up, till the
eye could no longer follow his ascent.
I remember he made one of these strange, solitary flights when I was
spending the week-end with him at his cottage near the Attercliffe
Aviation Grounds.
I had come down from town somewhat late the night before, and I remember
that just before we went to bed we went out for a few minutes to enjoy
the beauty of a perfect night. The moon was shining in a clear sky, not
a sound or a breath disturbed the sublime quietude; in the south one
wondrous star gleamed low on the horizon. Neither of us spoke; it was
enough to drink in the beauty of such rare perfection, and I noticed how
Radcliffe kept his eyes fixed upwards on the dark blue vault of space.
"Are you longing to be up there?" I asked him jestingly.
He started and flushed, and he then went very pale, and to my surprise I
saw that he was shivering.
"You are getting cold," I said. "We had better go in."
He nodded without answering, and, as we turned to go in, I heard quite
plainly and distinctly a low, strange laugh, a laugh full of a honeyed
sweetness that yet thrilled me with great fear.
"What's that?" I said, stopping short.
"What?" Radcliffe asked.
"Someone laughed," I said, and I stared all round and then upwards. "I
thought it came from up there," I said in a bewildered way, pointing
upwards.
He gave me an odd look and, without answering, went into the cottage. He
had said nothing of having planned any flight for the next morning; but
in the early morning, the chill and grey dawn, I was roused by the
drumming of his engine. At once I jumped up out of bed and ran to the
window.
The machine was raising itself lightly and easily from the ground. I
watched him wing his god-like way up through the still, soft air till he
was lost to view. Then, after a time, I saw him emerge again from those
immensities of space. He came down in one long majestic sweep, and
alighted in a field a little way away from the house, leaving the
aeroplane for his mechanics to fetch up presently.
"Hullo!" I greeted him. "Why didn't you tell me you were going up?"
As I spoke I heard plainly and distinctly, as plainly as ever I heard
anything in my life, that low, strange laugh, that I had heard before,
so silvery sweet and yet somehow so horrible.
"What's that?" I said, stopping short and staring blankly upwards, for,
absurd though it seems, that weird sound seemed to come floating down
from an infinite height above us.
"Not high enough," he muttered like a man in an ecstasy. "Not high
enough yet."
He walked away from me then without another word. When I entered the
cottage he was seated at the table sketching a woman's face--the same
face I had seen in that other sketch of his, spectral, unreal, and
lovely.
"What on earth----?" I began.
"Nothing on earth," he answered in a strange voice. Then he laughed and
jumped up, and tore his sketch across.
He seemed quite his old self again, chatty and pleasant, and with his
old passion for talking "shop." He launched into a long explanation of
some scheme he had in mind for securing automatic balancing.
I never told anyone about that strange, mocking laugh, in fact, I had
almost forgotten the incident altogether when something brought every
detail back to my memory. I had a letter from a person who signed
himself "George Barnes."
Barnes, it seemed, was the operator who had taken the pictures of that
last ascent, and as he understood I had been Mr. Thorpe's greatest
friend, he wanted to see me. Certain expressions in the letter aroused
my curiosity. I replied. He asked for an appointment at a time that was
not very convenient, and finally I arranged to call at his house one
evening.
It was one of those smart little six-room villas of which so many have
been put up in the London suburbs of late. Barnes was buying it on the
instalment system, and I quite won his heart by complimenting him on it.
But for that, I doubt if anything would have come of my visit, for he
was plainly nervous and ill at ease and very repentant of ever having
said anything. But after my compliment to the house we got on better.
"It's on my mind," he said; "I shan't be easy till someone else knows."
We were in the front room where a good fire was burning--in my honour, I
guessed, for the apartment had not the air of being much used. On the
table were some photographs. Barnes showed them me. They were
enlargements from those he had taken of poor Radcliffe's last ascent.
"They've been shown all over the world," he said. "Millions of people
have seen them."
"Well?" I said.
"But there's one no one has seen--no one except me."
He produced another print and gave it to me. I glanced at it. It seemed
much like the others, having been apparently one of the last of the
series, taken when the aeroplane was at a great height. The only thing
in which it differed from the others was that it seemed a trifle
blurred.
"A poor one," I said; "it's misty."
"Look at the mist," he said.
I did so. Slowly, very slowly, I began to see that that misty appearance
had a shape, a form. Even as I looked I saw the features of a human
countenance--and yet not human either, so spectral was it, so unreal and
strange. I felt the blood run cold in my veins and the hair bristle on
the scalp of my head, for I recognised beyond all doubt that this face
on the photograph was the same as that Radcliffe had sketched. The
resemblance was absolute, no one who had seen the one could mistake the
other.
"You see it?" Barnes muttered, and his face was almost as pale as mine.
"There's a woman," I stammered, "a woman floating in the air by his
side. Her arms are held out to him."
"Yes," Barnes said. "Who was she?"
The print slipped from my hands and fluttered to the ground. Barnes
picked it up and put it in the fire. Was it fancy or, as it flared up,
and burnt and was consumed, did I really hear a faint laugh floating
downwards from the upper air?
"I destroyed the negative," Barnes said, "and I told my boss something
had gone wrong with it. No one has seen that photograph but you and me,
and now no one ever will."
VIII
THE TERROR BY NIGHT