the next they were face to face, another, and the stranger had vanished
into the gloom with a courteous word of grateful thanks. But the little
shock of interruption had put memory out of gear. Had he already turned
twice to the right, or had he not? O'Reilly realized sharply he had
forgotten his memorized instructions. He stood still, making strenuous
efforts at recovery, but each effort left him more uncertain than
before. Five minutes later he was lost as hopelessly as any townsman who
leaves his tent in the backwoods without blazing the trees to ensure
finding his way back again. Even the sense of direction, so strong in
him among his native forests, was completely gone. There were no stars,
there was no wind, no smell, no sound of running water. There was
nothing anywhere to guide him, nothing but occasional dim outlines,
groping, shuffling, emerging and disappearing in the eddying fog, but
rarely coming within actual speaking, much less touching, distance. He
was lost utterly; more, he was alone.
Yet not _quite_ alone--the thing he dreaded most. There were figures
still in his immediate neighborhood. They emerged, vanished, reappeared,
dissolved. No, he was not quite alone. He saw these thickenings of the
fog, he heard their voices, the tapping of their cautious sticks, their
shuffling feet as well. They were real. They moved, it seemed, about him
in a circle, never coming very close.
"But they're real," he said to himself aloud, betraying the weak point
in his armour. "They're human beings right enough. I'm positive of
that."
He had never argued with Dr. Henry--he wanted to get well; he had obeyed
implicitly, believing everything the doctor told him--up to a point. But
he had always had his own idea about these "figures," because, among
them, were often enough his own pals from the Somme, Gallipoli, the
Mespot horror, too. And he ought to know his own pals when he saw them!
At the same time he knew quite well he had been "shocked," his being
dislocated; half dissolved as it were, his system pushed into some
lopsided condition that meant inaccurate registration. True. He grasped
that perfectly. But, in that shock and dislocation, had he not possibly
picked up another gear? Were there not gaps and broken edges, pieces
that no longer dovetailed, fitted as usual, interstices, in a word?
Yes, that was the word--interstices. Cracks, so to speak, between his
perception of the outside world and his inner interpretation of
these? Between memory and recognition? Between the various states of
consciousness that usually dovetailed so neatly that the joints were
normally imperceptible?
His state, he well knew, was abnormal, but were his symptoms on that
account unreal? Could not these "interstices" be used by--others? When
he saw his "figures," he used to ask himself: "Are not these the real
ones, and the others--the human beings--unreal?"
This question now revived in him with a new intensity. Were these
figures in the fog real or unreal? The man who had asked the way to the
station, was he not, after all, a shadow merely?
By the use of his cane and foot and what of sight was left to him he
knew that he was on an island. A lamppost stood up solid and straight
beside him, shedding its faint patch of glimmering light. Yet there were
railings, however, that puzzled him, for his stick hit the metal rods
distinctly in a series. And there should be no railings round an island.
Yet he had most certainly crossed a dreadful open space to get where he
was. His confusion and bewilderment increased with dangerous rapidity.
Panic was not far away.
He was no longer on an omnibus route. A rare taxi crawled past
occasionally, a whitish patch at the window indicating an anxious human
face; now and again came a van or cart, the driver holding a lantern as
he led the stumbling horse. These comforted him, rare though they were.
But it was the figures that drew his attention most. He was quite sure
they were real. They were human beings like himself.
For all that, he decided he might as well be positive on the point. He
tried one accordingly--a big man who rose suddenly before him out of the
very earth.
"Can you give me the trail to Morley Place?" he asked.
But his question was drowned by the other's simultaneous inquiry in a
voice much louder than his own.
"I say, is this right for the Tube station, d'you know? I'm utterly
lost. I want South Ken."
And by the time O'Reilly had pointed the direction whence he himself had
just come, the man was gone again, obliterated, swallowed up, not so
much as his footsteps audible, almost as if--it seemed again--he never
had been there at all.
This left an acute unpleasantness in him, a sense of bewilderment
greater than before. He waited five minutes, not daring to move a step,
then tried another figure, a woman this time who, luckily, knew the
immediate neighbourhood intimately. She gave him elaborate instructions
in the kindest possible way, then vanished with incredible swiftness
and ease into the sea of gloom beyond. The instantaneous way she
vanished was disheartening, upsetting; it was so uncannily abrupt and
sudden. Yet she comforted him. Morley Place, according to her version,
was not two hundred yards from where he stood. He felt his way forward,
step by step, using his cane, crossing a giddy open space kicking the
kerb with each boot alternately, coughing and choking all the time as he
did so.
"They were real, I guess, anyway," he said aloud. "They were both real
enough all right. And it may lift a bit soon!" He was making a great
effort to hold himself in hand. He was already fighting, that is. He
realized this perfectly. The only point was--the reality of the figures.
"It may lift now any minute," he repeated louder. In spite of the cold,
his skin was sweating profusely.
But, of course, it did not lift. The figures, too, became fewer. No
carts were audible. He had followed the woman's directions carefully,
but now found himself in some by-way, evidently, where pedestrians at
the best of times were rare. There was dull silence all about him. His
foot lost the kerb, his cane swept the empty air, striking nothing
solid, and panic rose upon him with its shuddering, icy grip. He was
alone, he knew himself alone, worse still--he was in another open space.
It took him fifteen minutes to cross that open space, most of the way
upon his hands and knees, oblivious of the icy slime that stained his
trousers, froze his fingers, intent only upon feeling solid support
against his back and spine again. It was an endless period. The moment
of collapse was close, the shriek already rising in his throat, the
shaking of the whole body uncontrollable, when--his outstretched fingers
struck a friendly kerb, and he saw a glimmering patch of diffused
radiance overhead. With a great, quick effort he stood upright, and an
instant later his stick rattled along an area railing. He leaned against
it, breathless, panting, his heart beating painfully while the street
lamp gave him the further comfort of its feeble gleam, the actual flame,
however, invisible. He looked this way and that; the pavement was
deserted. He was engulfed in the dark silence of the fog.
But Morley Place, he knew, must be very close by now. He thought of the
friendly little V.A.D. he had known in France, of a warm bright fire, a
cup of tea and a cigarette. One more effort, he reflected, and all these
would be his. He pluckily groped his way forward again, crawling slowly
by the area railings. If things got really bad again, he would ring a
bell and ask for help, much as he shrank from the idea. Provided he had
no more open spaces to cross, provided he saw no more figures emerging
and vanishing like creatures born of the fog and dwelling within it as
within their native element--it was the figures he now dreaded more than
anything else, more even than the loneliness--provided the panic
sense----
A faint darkening of the fog beneath the next lamp caught his eye and
made him start. He stopped. It was not a figure this time, it was the
shadow of the pole grotesquely magnified. No, it moved. It moved towards
him. A flame of fire followed by ice flowed through him. It was a
figure--close against his face. It was a woman.
The doctor's advice came suddenly back to him, the counsel that had
cured him of a hundred phantoms:
"Do not ignore them. Treat them as real. Speak and go with them. You
will soon prove their unreality then. And they will leave you...."
He made a brave, tremendous effort. He was shaking. One hand clutched
the damp and icy area railing.
"Lost your way like myself, haven't you, ma'am?" he said in a voice that
trembled. "Do you know where we are at all? Morley Place _I_'m looking
for----"
He stopped dead. The woman moved nearer and for the first time he saw
her face clearly. Its ghastly pallor, the bright, frightened eyes that
stared with a kind of dazed bewilderment into his own, the beauty above
all, arrested his speech midway. The woman was young, her tall figure
wrapped in a dark fur coat.
"Can I help you?" he asked impulsively, forgetting his own terror for
the moment. He was more than startled. Her air of distress and pain
stirred a peculiar anguish in him. For a moment she made no answer,
thrusting her white face closer as if examining him, so close, indeed,
that he controlled with difficulty his instinct to shrink back a little.
"Where am I?" she asked at length, searching his eyes intently. "I'm
lost--I've lost myself. I can't find my way back." Her voice was low, a
curious wailing in it that touched his pity oddly. He felt his own
distress merging in one that was greater.
"Same here," he replied more confidently. "I'm terrified of being alone,
too. I've had shell-shock, you know. Let's go together. We'll find a way
together----"
"Who are you!" the woman murmured, still staring at him with her big
bright eyes, their distress, however, no whit lessened. She gazed at him
as though aware suddenly of his presence.
He told her briefly. "And I'm going to tea with a V.A.D. friend in
Morley Place. What's your address? Do you know the name of the street?"
She appeared not to hear him, or not to understand exactly; it was as if
she was not listening again.
"I came out so suddenly, so unexpectedly," he heard the low voice with
pain in every syllable; "I can't find my home again. Just when I was
expecting him too----" She looked about her with a distraught expression
that made O'Reilly long to carry her in his arms to safety then and
there. "He may be there now--waiting for me at this very moment--and I
can't get back." And so sad was her voice that only by an effort did
O'Reilly prevent himself putting out his hand to touch her. More and
more he forgot himself in his desire to help her. Her beauty, the wonder
of her strange bright eyes in the pallid face, made an immense appeal.
He became calmer. This woman was real enough. He asked again the
address, the street and number, the distance she thought it was. "Have
you any idea of the direction, ma'am, any idea at all? We'll go together
and----"
She suddenly cut him short. She turned her head as if to listen, so that
he saw her profile a moment, the outline of the slender neck, a glimpse
of jewels just below the fur.
"Hark! I hear him calling! I remember...!" And she was gone from his
side into the swirling fog.
Without an instant's hesitation O'Reilly followed her, not only because
he wished to help, but because he dared not be left alone. The presence
of this strange, lost woman comforted him; he must not lose sight of
her, whatever happened. He had to run, she went so rapidly, ever just in
front, moving with confidence and certainty, turning right and left,
crossing the street, but never stopping, never hesitating, her companion
always at her heels in breathless haste, and with a growing terror that
he might lose her any minute. The way she found her direction through
the dense fog was marvellous enough, but O'Reilly's only thought was to
keep her in sight, lest his own panic redescend upon him with its
inevitable collapse in the dark and lonely street. It was a wild and
panting pursuit, and he kept her in view with difficulty, a dim fleeting
outline always a few yards ahead of him. She did not once turn her head,
she uttered no sound, no cry; she hurried forward with unfaltering
instinct. Nor did the chase occur to him once as singular; she was his
safety, and that was all he realized.
One thing, however, he remembered afterwards, though at the actual time
he no more than registered the detail, paying no attention to it--a
definite perfume she left upon the atmosphere, one, moreover, that he
knew, although he could not find its name as he ran. It was associated
vaguely, for him, with something unpleasant, something disagreeable. He
connected it with misery and pain. It gave him a feeling of uneasiness.
More than that he did not notice at the moment, nor could he
remember--he certainly did not try--where he had known this particular
scent before.
Then suddenly the woman stopped, opened a gate and passed into a small
private garden--so suddenly that O'Reilly, close upon her heels, only
just avoided tumbling into her. "You've found it?" he cried. "May I come
in a moment with you? Perhaps you'll let me telephone to the doctor."
She turned instantly. Her face close against his own, was livid.
"Doctor!" she repeated in an awful whisper. The word meant terror to
her. O'Reilly stood amazed. For a second or two neither of them moved.
The woman seemed petrified.
"Dr. Henry, you know," he stammered, finding his tongue again. "I'm in
his care. He's in Harley Street."
Her face cleared as suddenly as it had darkened, though the original
expression of bewilderment and pain still hung in her great eyes. But
the terror left them, as though she suddenly forgot some association
that had revived it.
"My home," she murmured. "My home is somewhere here. I'm near it. I must
get back--in time--for him. I must. He's coming to me." And with these
extraordinary words she turned, walked up the narrow path, and stood
upon the porch of a two-storey house before her companion had recovered
from his astonishment sufficiently to move or utter a syllable in reply.
The front door, he saw, was ajar. It had been left open.
For five seconds, perhaps for ten, he hesitated; it was the fear that
the door would close and shut him out that brought the decision to his
will and muscles. He ran up the steps and followed the woman into a dark
hall where she had already preceded him, and amid whose blackness she
now had finally vanished. He closed the door, not knowing exactly why
he did so, and knew at once by an instinctive feeling that the house he
now found himself in with this unknown woman was empty and unoccupied.
In a house, however, he felt safe. It was the open streets that were his
danger. He stood waiting, listening a moment before he spoke; and he
heard the woman moving down the passage from door to door, repeating to
herself in her low voice of unhappy wailing some words he could not
understand:
"Where is it? Oh, where is it? I must get back...."
O'Reilly then found himself abruptly stricken with dumbness, as though,
with these strange words, a haunting terror came up and breathed against
him in the darkness.
"Is she after all a figure?" ran in letters of fire across his numbed
brain. "Is she unreal--or real?"
Seeking relief in action of some kind, he put out a hand automatically,
feeling along the wall for an electric switch, and though he found it by
some miraculous chance, no answering glow responded to the click.
And the woman's voice from the darkness: "Ah! Ah! At last I've found it.
I'm home again--at last...!" He heard a door open and close upstairs. He
was on the ground-floor now--alone. Complete silence followed.
In the conflict of various emotions--fear for himself lest his panic
should return, fear for the woman who had led him into this empty
house and now deserted him upon some mysterious errand of her own that
made him think of madness--in this conflict that held him a moment
spell-bound, there was a yet bigger ingredient demanding instant
explanation, but an explanation that he could not find. Was the woman
real or was she unreal? Was she a human being or a "figure"? The horror
of doubt obsessed him with an acute uneasiness that betrayed itself in a
return of that unwelcome inner trembling he knew was dangerous.
What saved him from a _crise_ that must have had most dangerous results
for his mind and nervous system generally, seems to have been the
outstanding fact that he felt more for the woman than for himself. His
sympathy and pity had been deeply moved; her voice, her beauty, her
anguish and bewilderment, all uncommon, inexplicable, mysterious, formed
together a claim that drove self into the background. Added to this was
the detail that she had left him, gone to another floor without a word,
and now, behind a closed door in a room upstairs, found herself face to
face at last with the unknown object of her frantic search--with "it,"
whatever "it" might be. Real or unreal, figure or human being, the
overmastering impulse of his being was that he must go to her.
It was this clear impulse that gave him decision and energy to do what
he then did. He struck a match, he found a stump of candle, he made his
way by means of this flickering light along the passage and up the
carpetless stairs. He moved cautiously, stealthily, though not knowing
why he did so. The house, he now saw, was indeed untenanted; dust-sheets
covered the piled-up furniture; he glimpsed through doors ajar, pictures
were screened upon the walls, brackets draped to look like hooded heads.
He went on slowly, steadily, moving on tiptoe as though conscious of
being watched, noting the well of darkness in the hall below, the
grotesque shadows that his movements cast on walls and ceiling. The
silence was unpleasant, yet, remembering that the woman was "expecting"
someone, he did not wish it broken. He reached the landing and stood
still. Closed doors on both sides of a corridor met his sight, as he
shaded the candle to examine the scene. Behind which of these doors, he
asked himself, was the woman, figure or human being, now alone with
"it"?
There was nothing to guide him, but an instinct that he must not delay
sent him forward again upon his search. He tried a door on the right--an
empty room, with the furniture hidden by dust-sheets, and the mattress
rolled up on the bed. He tried a second door, leaving the first one
open behind him, and it was, similarly, an empty bedroom. Coming out
into the corridor again he stood a moment waiting, then called aloud in
a low voice that yet woke echoes unpleasantly in the hall below: "Where
are you? I want to help--which room are you in?"
There was no answer; he was almost glad he heard no sound, for he knew
quite well that he was waiting really for another sound--the steps of
him who was "expected." And the idea of meeting with this unknown
third sent a shudder through him, as though related to an interview he
dreaded with his whole heart, and must at all costs avoid. Waiting
another moment or two, he noted that his candle-stump was burning low,
then crossed the landing with a feeling, at once of hesitation and
determination, towards a door opposite to him. He opened it; he did
not halt on the threshold. Holding the candle at arm's length, he went
boldly in.
And instantly his nostrils told him he was right at last, for a whiff
of the strange perfume, though this time much stronger than before,
greeted him, sending a new quiver along his nerves. He knew now why it
was associated with unpleasantness, with pain, with misery, for he
recognized it--the odour of a hospital. In this room a powerful
anaesthetic had been used--and recently.
Simultaneously with smell, sight brought its message too. On the large
double bed behind the door on his right lay, to his amazement, the woman
in the dark fur coat. He saw the jewels on the slender neck; but the
eyes he did not see, for they were closed--closed, too, he grasped at
once, in death. The body lay stretched at full length, quite motionless.
He approached. A dark thin streak that came from the parted lips and
passed downwards over the chin, losing itself then in the fur collar,
was a trickle of blood. It was hardly dry. It glistened.
Strange it was perhaps that, while imaginary fears had the power to
paralyse him, mind and body, this sight of something real had the effect
of restoring confidence. The sight of blood and death, amid conditions
often ghastly and even monstrous, was no new thing to him. He went up
quietly, and with steady hand he felt the woman's cheek, the warmth of
recent life still in its softness. The final cold had not yet mastered
this empty form whose beauty, in its perfect stillness, had taken on the
new strange sweetness of an unearthly bloom. Pallid, silent, untenanted,
it lay before him, lit by the flicker of his guttering candle. He lifted
the fur coat to feel for the unbeating heart. A couple of hours ago at
most, he judged, this heart was working busily, the breath came through
those parted lips, the eyes were shining in full beauty. His hand
encountered a hard knob--the head of a long steel hat-pin driven through
the heart up to its hilt.
He knew then which was the figure--which was the real and which the
unreal. He knew also what had been meant by "it."
But before he could think or reflect what action he must take, before he
could straighten himself even from his bent position over the body on
the bed, there sounded through the empty house below the loud clang of
the front door being closed. And instantly rushed over him that other
fear he had so long forgotten--fear for himself. The panic of his own
shaken nerves descended with irresistible onslaught. He turned,
extinguishing the candle in the violent trembling of his hand, and tore
headlong from the room.
The following ten minutes seemed a nightmare in which he was not master
of himself and knew not exactly what he did. All he realized was that
steps already sounded on the stairs, coming quickly nearer. The flicker
of an electric torch played on the banisters, whose shadows ran swiftly
sideways along the wall as the hand that held the light ascended. He
thought in a frenzied second of police, of his presence in the house, of
the murdered woman. It was a sinister combination. Whatever happened, he
must escape without being so much as even seen. His heart raced madly.
He darted across the landing into the room opposite, whose door he had
luckily left open. And by some incredible chance, apparently, he was
neither seen nor heard by the man who, a moment later, reached the
landing, entered the room where the body of the woman lay, and closed
the door carefully behind him.
Shaking, scarcely daring to breathe lest his breath be audible,
O'Reilly, in the grip of his own personal terror, remnant of his uncured
shock of war, had no thought of what duty might demand or not demand of
him. He thought only of himself. He realized one clear issue--that he
must get out of the house without being heard or seen. Who the new-comer
was he did not know, beyond an uncanny assurance that it was _not_ him
whom the woman had "expected," but the murderer himself, and that it was
the murderer, in his turn, who was expecting this third person. In that
room with death at his elbow, a death he had himself brought about but
an hour or two ago, the murderer now hid in waiting for his second
victim. And the door was closed.
Yet any minute it might open again, cutting off retreat.
O'Reilly crept out, stole across the landing, reached the head of the
stairs, and began, with the utmost caution, the perilous descent.
Each time the bare boards creaked beneath his weight, no matter how
stealthily this weight was adjusted, his heart missed a beat. He tested
each step before he pressed upon it, distributing as much of his weight
as he dared upon the banisters. It was a little more than half-way down
that, to his horror, his foot caught in a projecting carpet tack; he
slipped on the polished wood, and only saved himself from falling
headlong by a wild clutch at the railing, making an uproar that seemed
to him like the explosion of a hand-grenade in the forgotten trenches.
His nerves gave way then, and panic seized him. In the silence that
followed the resounding echoes he heard the bedroom door opening on the
floor above.