its "attitude" of repose. It still moved. Below the window curtains on
the right, not far from the shelf that bore the violins in their glass
cases, he made it out, slowly gliding along the floor. Then, even as his
eye caught it, it came to rest.
And, while the cold perspiration broke out all over him afresh, he knew
that this still moving item was the cause both of his waking and of his
terror. This was the disturbance whose presence he had divined in the
flat without actual hearing, and whose passage through his room, while
he yet slept, had touched every nerve in his body as with ice. Clutching
his Turkish sword tightly, he drew back with the utmost caution against
the wall and watched, for the singular impression came to him that
the movement was not that of a human being crouching, but rather of
something that pertained to the animal world. He remembered, flash-like,
the movements of reptiles, the stealth of the larger felines, the
undulating glide of great snakes. For the moment, however, it did not
move, and they faced one another.
The other side of the room was but dimly lighted, and the noise he made
clicking up another electric lamp brought the thing flying forward
again--towards himself. At such a moment it seemed absurd to think of
so small a detail, but he remembered his bare feet, and, genuinely
frightened, he leaped upon a chair and swished with his sword through
the air about him. From this better point of view, with the increased
light to aid him, he then saw two things--first, that the glass case
usually covering the Guarnerius violin had been shifted; and, secondly,
that the moving object was slowly elongating itself into an upright
position. Semi-erect, yet most oddly, too, like a creature on its hind
legs, it was coming swiftly towards him. It was making for the door--and
escape.
The confusion of ghostly fear was somehow upon him so that he was too
bewildered to see clearly, but he had sufficient self-control, it
seemed, to recover a certain power of action; for the moment the
advancing figure was near enough for him to strike, that curved scimitar
flashed and whirred about him, with such misdirected violence, however,
that he not only failed to strike it even once, but at the same
time lost his balance and fell forward from the chair whereon he
perched--straight into it.
And then came the most curious thing of all, for as he dropped, the
figure also dropped, stooped low down, crouched, dwindled amazingly in
size, and rushed past him close to the ground like an animal on all
fours. John Gilmer screamed, for he could no longer contain himself.
Stumbling over the chair as he turned to follow, cutting and slashing
wildly with his sword, he saw halfway down the darkened corridor beyond
the scuttling outline of, apparently, an enormous--cat!
The door into the outer landing was somehow ajar, and the next second
the beast was out, but not before the steel had fallen with a crashing
blow upon the front disappearing leg, almost severing it from the body.
It was dreadful. Turning up the lights as he went, he ran after it to
the outer landing. But the thing he followed was already well away, and
he heard, on the floor below him, the same oddly gliding, slithering,
stealthy sound, yet hurrying, that he had heard weeks before when
something had passed him in the lift and Morgan, in his terror, had
likewise cried aloud.
For a time he stood there on that dark landing, listening, thinking,
trembling; then turned into the flat and shut the door. In the
sitting-room he carefully replaced the glass case over the treasured
violin, puzzled to the point of foolishness, and strangely routed in his
mind. For the violin itself, he saw, had been dragged several inches
from its cushioned bed of plush.
Next morning, however, he made no allusion to the occurrence of the
night. His brother apparently had not been disturbed.
5
The only thing that called for explanation--an explanation not fully
forthcoming--was the curious aspect of Mr. Morgan's countenance. The
fact that this individual gave notice to the owners of the building, and
at the end of the month left for a new post, was, of course, known to
both brothers; whereas the story he told in explanation of his face was
known only to the one who questioned him about it--John. And John, for
reasons best known to himself, did not pass it on to the other. Also,
for reasons best known to himself, he did not cross-question the liftman
about those singular marks, or report the matter to the police.
Mr. Morgan's pasty visage was badly scratched, and there were red lines
running from the cheek into the neck that had the appearance of having
been produced by sharp points viciously applied--claws. He had been
disturbed by a noise in the hall, he said, about three in the morning, a
scuffle had ensued in the darkness, but the intruder had got clear
away....
"A cat or something of the kind, no doubt," suggested John Gilmer at the
end of the brief recital. And Morgan replied in his usual way: "A cat,
or something of the kind, Mr. John, no doubt."
All the same, he had not cared to risk a second encounter, but had
departed to wear his billycock and uniform in a building less haunted.
Hyman, meanwhile, made no attempt to call and talk over his dismissal.
The reason for this was only apparent, however, several months later
when, quite by chance, coming along Piccadilly in an omnibus, the
brothers found themselves seated opposite to a man with a thick black
beard and blue glasses. William Gilmer hastily rang the bell and got
out, saying something half intelligible about feeling faint. John
followed him.
"Did you see who it was?" he whispered to his brother the moment they
were safely on the pavement.
John nodded.
"Hyman, in spectacles. He's grown a beard, too."
"Yes, but did you also notice----"
"What?"
"He had an empty sleeve."
"An empty sleeve?"
"Yes," said William; "he's lost an arm."
There was a long pause before John spoke. At the door of their club the
elder brother added:
"Poor devil! He'll never again play on"--then, suddenly changing the
preposition--"_with_ a pedigree violin!"
And that night in the flat, after William had gone to bed, he looked up
a curious old volume he had once picked up on a second-hand bookstall,
and read therein quaint descriptions of how the "desire-body of a
violent man" may assume animal shape, operate on concrete matter even at
a distance; and, further, how a wound inflicted thereon can reproduce
itself upon its physical counterpart by means of the mysterious
so-called phenomenon of "re-percussion."
XII
WIRELESS CONFUSION
"Good night, Uncle," whispered the child, as she climbed on to his knee
and gave him a resounding kiss. "It's time for me to disappop into
bed--at least, so mother says."
"Disappop, then," he replied, returning her kiss, "although I doubt...."
He hesitated. He remembered the word was her father's invention,
descriptive of the way rabbits pop into their holes and disappear, and
the way _good_ children should leave the room the instant bed-time was
announced. The father--his twin brother--seemed to enter the room and
stand beside them. "Then give me another kiss, and disappop!" he said
quickly. The child obeyed the first part of his injunction, but had not
obeyed the second when the queer thing happened. She had not left his
knee; he was still holding her at the full stretch of both arms; he was
staring into her laughing eyes, when she suddenly went far away into an
extraordinary distance. She retired. Minute, tiny, but still in perfect
proportion and clear as before, she was withdrawn in space till she was
small as a doll. He saw his own hands holding her, and they too were
minute. Down this long corridor of space, as it were, he saw her
diminutive figure.
"Uncle!" she cried, yet her voice was loud as before, "but what a funny
face! You're pretending you've seen a ghost"--and she was gone from his
knee and from the room, the door closing quietly behind her. He saw her
cross the floor, a tiny figure. Then, just as she reached the door, she
became of normal size again, as if she crossed a line.
He felt dizzy. The loud voice close to his ear issuing from a diminutive
figure half a mile away had a distressing effect upon him. He knew a
curious qualm as he sat there in the dark. He heard the wind walking
round the house, trying the doors and windows. He was troubled by a
memory he could not seize.
Yet the emotion instantly resolved itself into one of personal anxiety:
something had gone wrong with his eyes. Sight, his most precious
possession as an artist, was of course affected. He was conscious of a
little trembling in him, as he at once began trying his sight at various
objects--his hands, the high ceiling, the trees dim in the twilight on
the lawn outside. He opened a book and read half a dozen lines, at
changing distances; finally he stared carefully at the second hand of
his watch. "Right as a trivet!" he exclaimed aloud. He emitted a long
sigh; he was immensely relieved. "Nothing wrong with my eyes."
He thought about the actual occurrence a great deal--he felt as puzzled
as any other normal person must have felt. While he held the child
actually in his arms, gripping her with both hands, he had seen her
suddenly half a mile away. "Half a mile!" he repeated under his breath,
"why it was even more, it was easily a mile." It had been exactly as
though he suddenly looked at her down the wrong end of a powerful
telescope. It had really happened; he could not explain it; there was no
more to be said.
This was the first time it happened to him.
At the theatre, a week later, when the phenomenon was repeated, the
stage he was watching fixedly at the moment went far away, as though he
saw it from a long way off. The distance, so far as he could judge, was
the same as before, about a mile. It was an Eastern scene, realistically
costumed and produced, that without an instant's warning withdrew. The
entire stage went with it, although he did not actually see it go. He
did not see movement, that is. It was suddenly remote, while yet the
actors' voices, the orchestra, the general hubbub retained their normal
volume. He experienced again the distressing dizziness; he closed his
eyes, covering them with his hand, then rubbing the eyeballs slightly;
and when he looked up the next minute, the world was as it should be, as
it had been, at any rate. Unwilling to experience a repetition of the
thing in a public place, however, and fortunately being alone, he left
the theatre at the end of the act.
Twice this happened to him, once with an individual, his brother's
child, and once with a landscape, an Eastern stage scene. Both
occurrences were within the week, during which time he had been
considering a visit to the oculist, though without putting his decision
into execution. He was the kind of man that dreaded doctors, dentists,
oculists, always postponing, always finding reasons for delay. He found
reasons now, the chief among them being an unwelcome one--that it was
perhaps a brain specialist, rather than an oculist, he ought to consult.
This particular notion hung unpleasantly about his mind, when, the day
after the theatre visit, the thing recurred, but with a startling
difference.
While idly watching a blue-bottle fly that climbed the window-pane with
remorseless industry, only to slip down again at the very instant when
escape into the open air was within its reach, the fly grew abruptly
into gigantic proportions, became blurred and indistinct as it did so,
covered the entire pane with its furry, dark, ugly mass, and frightened
him so that he stepped back with a cry and nearly lost his balance
altogether. He collapsed into a chair. He listened with closed eyes. The
metallic buzzing was audible, a small, exasperating sound, ordinarily
unable to stir any emotion beyond a mild annoyance. Yet it was terrible;
that so huge an insect should make so faint a sound seemed to him
terrible.
At length he cautiously opened his eyes. The fly was of normal size
once more. He hastily flicked it out of the window.
An hour later he was talking with the famous oculist in Harley Street
... about the advisability of starting reading-glasses. He found it
difficult to relate the rest. A curious shyness restrained him.
"Your optic nerves might belong to a man of twenty," was the verdict.
"Both are perfect. But at your age it is wise to save the sight as much
as possible. There is a slight astigmatism...." And a prescription for
the glasses was written out. It was only when paying the fee, and as a
means of drawing attention from the awkward moment, that his story found
expression. It seemed to come out in spite of himself. He made light of
it even then, telling it without conviction. It seemed foolish suddenly
as he told it. "How very odd," observed the oculist vaguely, "dear me,
yes, curious indeed. But that's nothing. H'm, h'm!" Either it was no
concern of his, or he deemed it negligible.... His only other confidant
was a friend of psychological tendencies who was interested and eager to
explain. It is on the instant plausible explanation of anything and
everything that the reputation of such folk depends; this one was true
to type: "A spontaneous invention, my dear fellow--a pictorial rendering
of your thought. You are a painter, aren't you? Well, this is merely a
rendering in picture-form of"--he paused for effect, the other hung upon
his words--"of the odd expression 'disappop.'"
"Ah!" exclaimed the painter.
"You see everything pictorially, of course, don't you?"
"Yes--as a rule."
"There you have it. Your painter's psychology saw the child
'disappopping.' That's all."
"And the fly?" but the fly was easily explained, since it was merely the
process reversed. "Once a process has established itself in your mind,
you see, it may act in either direction. When a madman says 'I'm afraid
Smith will do me an injury,' it means, 'I will do an injury to Smith,'"
And he repeated with finality, "That's it."
The explanations were not very satisfactory, the illustration even
tactless, but then the problem had not been stated quite fully. Neither
to the oculist nor to the other had _all_ the facts been given. The same
shyness had been a restraining influence in both cases; a detail had
been omitted, and this detail was that he connected the occurrences
somehow with his brother whom the war had taken.
The phenomenon made one more appearance--the last--before its character,
its field of action rather, altered. He was reading a book when the
print became now large, now small; it blurred, grew remote and tiny,
then so huge that a single word, a letter even, filled the whole page.
He felt as if someone were playing optical tricks with the mechanism of
his eyes, trying first one, then another focus.
More curious still, the meaning of the words themselves became
uncertain; he did not understand them any more; the sentences lost their
meaning, as though he read a strange language, or a language little
known. The flash came then--someone was using his eyes--someone else was
looking through them.
No, it was not his brother. The idea was preposterous in any case. Yet
he shivered again, as when he heard the walking wind, for an uncanny
conviction came over him that it was someone who did not understand eyes
but was manipulating their mechanism experimentally. With the conviction
came also this: that, while not his brother, it was someone connected
with his brother.
Here, moreover, was an explanation of sorts, for if the supernatural
existed--he had never troubled his head about it--he could accept this
odd business as a manifestation, and leave it at that. He did so, and
his mind was eased. This was his attitude: "The supernatural _may_
exist. Why not? We cannot know. But we can watch." His eyes and brain,
at any rate, were proved in good condition.
He watched. No change of focus, no magnifying or diminishing, came
again. For some weeks he noticed nothing unusual of any kind, except
that his mind often filled now with Eastern pictures. Their sudden
irruption caught his attention, but no more than that; they were
sometimes blurred and sometimes vivid; he had never been in the East;
he attributed them to his constant thinking of his brother, missing in
Mesopotamia these six months. Photographs in magazines and newspapers
explained the rest. Yet the persistence of the pictures puzzled him:
tents beneath hot cloudless skies, palms, a stretch of desert, dry
watercourses, camels, a mosque, a minaret--typical snatches of this kind
flashed into his mind with a sense of faint familiarity often. He knew,
again, the return of a fugitive memory he could not seize.... He kept
a note of the dates, all of them subsequent to the day he read his
brother's fate in the official Roll of Honour: "Believed missing; now
killed." Only when the original phenomenon returned, but in its altered
form, did he stop the practice. The change then affected his life too
fundamentally to trouble about mere dates and pictures.
For the phenomenon, shifting its field of action, abruptly became
mental, and the singular change of focus took place now in his mind.
Events magnified or contracted themselves out of all relation with their
intrinsic values, sense of proportion went hopelessly astray. Love, hate
and fear experienced sudden intensification, or abrupt dwindling into
nothing; the familiar everyday emotions, commonplace daily acts,
suffered exaggerated enlargement, or reduction into insignificance, that
threatened the stability of his personality. Fortunately, as stated,
they were of brief duration; to examine them in detail were to touch the
painful absurdities of incipient mania almost; that a lost collar stud
could block his exasperated mind for hours, filling an entire day with
emotion, while a deep affection of long standing could ebb towards
complete collapse suddenly without apparent cause...!
It was the unexpected suddenness of Turkey's spectacular defeat that
closed the painful symptoms. The Armistice saw them go. He knew a quick
relief he was unable to explain. The telegram that his brother was alive
and safe came _after_ his recovery of mental balance. It was a shock.
But the phenomena had ceased before the shock.
It was in the light of his brother's story that he reviewed the puzzling
phenomena described. The story was not more curious than many another,
perhaps, yet the details were queer enough. That a wounded Turk to whom
he gave water should have remembered gratitude was likely enough, for
all travellers know that these men are kindly gentlemen at times;
but that this Mohammedan peasant should have been later a member
of a prisoner's escort and have provided the means of escape and
concealment--weeks in a dry watercourse and months in a hut outside the
town--seemed an incredible stroke of good fortune. "He brought me food
and water three times a week. I had no money to give him, so I gave him
my Zeiss glasses. I taught him a bit of English too. But he liked the
glasses best. He was never tired of playing with 'em--making big and
little, as he called it. He learned precious little English...."
"My pair, weren't they?" interrupted his brother. "My old climbing
glasses."
"Your present to me when I went out, yes. So really you helped me to
save my life. I told the old Turk that. I was always thinking about
you."
"And the Turk?"
"No doubt.... Through _my_ mind, that is. At any rate, he asked a lot of
questions about you. I showed him your photo. He died, poor chap--at
least they told me so. Probably they shot him."
XIII
CONFESSION
The fog swirled slowly round him, driven by a heavy movement of its own,
for of course there was no wind. It hung in poisonous thick coils and
loops; it rose and sank; no light penetrated it directly from street
lamp or motor-car, though here and there some big shop-window shed a
glimmering patch upon its ever-shifting curtain.
O'Reilly's eyes ached and smarted with the incessant effort to see
a foot beyond his face. The optic nerve grew tired, and sight,
accordingly, less accurate. He coughed as he shuffled forward cautiously
through the choking gloom. Only the stifled rumble of crawling traffic
persuaded him he was in a crowded city at all--this, and the vague
outlines of groping figures, hugely magnified, emerging suddenly and
disappearing again, as they fumbled along inch by inch towards uncertain
destinations.
The figures, however were human beings; they were real. That much he
knew. He heard their muffled voices, now close, now distant, strangely
smothered always. He also heard the tapping of innumerable sticks,
feeling for iron railings or the kerb. These phantom outlines
represented living people. He was not alone.
It was the dread of finding himself _quite_ alone that haunted him, for
he was still unable to cross an open space without assistance. He had
the physical strength, it was the mind that failed him. Midway the
panic terror might descend upon him, he would shake all over, his will
dissolve, he would shriek for help, run wildly--into the traffic
probably--or, as they called it in his North Ontario home, "throw a
fit" in the street before advancing wheels. He was not yet entirely
cured, although under ordinary conditions he was safe enough, as Dr.
Henry had assured him.
When he left Regent's Park by Tube an hour ago the air was clear, the
November sun shone brightly, the pale blue sky was cloudless, and the
assumption that he could manage the journey across London Town alone was
justified. The following day he was to leave for Brighton for the week
of final convalescence: this little preliminary test of his powers on a
bright November afternoon was all to the good. Doctor Henry furnished
minute instructions: "You change at Piccadilly Circus--without leaving
the underground station, mind--and get out at South Kensington. You know
the address of your V.A.D. friend. Have your cup of tea with her, then
come back the same way to Regent's Park. Come back before dark--say six
o'clock at latest. It's better." He had described exactly what turns to
take after leaving the station, so many to the right, so many to the
left; it was a little confusing, but the distance was short. "You can
always ask. You can't possibly go wrong."
The unexpected fog, however, now blurred these instructions in a
confused jumble in his mind. The failure of outer sight reacted upon
memory. The V.A.D. besides had warned him her address was "not easy to
find the first time. The house lies in a backwater. But with your
'backwoods' instincts you'll probably manage it better than any
Londoner!" She, too, had not calculated upon the fog.
When O'Reilly came up the stairs at South Kensington Station, he emerged
into such murky darkness that he thought he was still underground. An
impenetrable world lay round him. Only a raw bite in the damp atmosphere
told him he stood beneath an open sky. For some little time he stood and
stared--a Canadian soldier, his home among clear brilliant spaces, now
face to face for the first time in his life with that thing he had so
often read about--a bad London fog. With keenest interest and surprise
he "enjoyed" the novel spectacle for perhaps ten minutes, watching the
people arrive and vanish, and wondering why the station lights stopped
dead the instant they touched the street--then, with a sense of
adventure--it cost an effort--he left the covered building and plunged
into the opaque sea beyond.
Repeating to himself the directions he had received--first to the right,
second to the left, once more to the left, and so forth--he checked each
turn, assuring himself it was impossible to go wrong. He made correct if
slow progress, until someone blundered into him with an abrupt and
startling question: "Is this right, do you know, for South Kensington
Station?"