AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
One morning, after I'd been four whole years at Aunt Emma's, I heard
a ring at the bell, and, looking over the stairs, saw a tall and
handsome man in a semi-military coat, who asked in a most audible
voice for Miss Callingham.
Maria, the housemaid, hesitated a moment.
"Miss Callingham's in, sir," she answered in a somewhat dubious
tone; "but I don't know whether I ought to let you see her or not.
My mistress is out; and I've strict orders that no strangers are to
call on Miss Callingham when her aunt's not here."
And she held the door ajar in her hand undecidedly.
The tall man smiled, and seemed to me to slip a coin quietly into
Maria's palm.
"So much the better," he answered, with unobtrusive persistence; "I
thought Miss Moore was out. That's just why I've come. I'm an officer
from Scotland Yard, and I want to see Miss Callingham--alone--most
particularly."
Maria drew herself up and paused.
My heart stood still within me at this chance of enlightenment. I
guessed what he meant; so I called over the stairs to her, in a
tremor of excitement:
"Show the gentleman into the drawing-room, Maria. I 'll come down to
him at once."
For I was dying to know the explanation of the Picture that haunted
me so persistently; and as nobody at home would ever tell me
anything worth knowing about it, I thought this was as good an
opportunity as I could get for making a beginning towards the
solution of the mystery.
Well, I ran into my own room as quick as quick could be, and set my
front hair straight, and slipped on a hat and jacket (for I was in
my morning dress), and then went down to the drawing-room to see the
Inspector.
He rose as I entered. He was a gentleman, I felt at once. His manner
was as deferential, as kind, and as considerate to my sensitiveness,
as anything it's possible for you to imagine in anyone.
"I'm sorry to have to trouble you, Miss Callingham," he said, with a
very gentle smile; "but I daresay you can understand yourself the
object of my visit. I could have wished to come in a more authorised
way; but I've been in correspondence with Miss Moore for some time
past as to the desirability of reopening the inquiry with regard to
your father's unfortunate death; and I thought the time might now
have arrived when it would be possible to put a few questions to you
personally upon that unhappy subject. Miss Moore objected to my
plan. She thought it would still perhaps be prejudicial to your
health--a point in which Dr. Wade, I must say, entirely agrees with
her. Nevertheless, in the interests of Justice, as the murderer is
still at large, I've ventured to ask you for this interview; because
what I read in the newspapers about the state of your health--."
I interrupted him, astonished.
"What you read in the newspapers about the state of my health!" I
repeated, thunderstruck. "Why, surely they don't put the state of MY
health in the newspapers!"
For I didn't know then I was a Psychological Phenomenon.
The Inspector smiled blandly, and pulling out his pocket-book,
selected a cutting from a pile that apparently all referred to me.
"You're mistaken," he said, briefly. "The newspapers, on the
contrary, have treated your case at great length. See, here's the
latest report. That's clipped from last Wednesday's Telegraph."
I remembered then that a paragraph of just that size had been
carefully cut out of Wednesday's paper before I was allowed by Aunt
Emma to read it. Aunt Emma always glanced over the paper first,
indeed, and often cut out such offending paragraphs. But I never
attached much importance to their absence before, because I thought
it was merely a little fussy result of auntie's good old English
sense of maidenly modesty. I supposed she merely meant to spare my
blushes. I knew girls were often prevented on particular days from
reading the papers.
But now I seized the paragraph he handed me, and read it with deep
interest. It was the very first time I had seen my own name in a
printed newspaper. I didn't know then how often it had figured
there.
The paragraph was headed, "THE WOODBURY MURDER," and it ran
something like this, as well as I can remember it:
"There are still hopes that the miscreant who shot Mr. Vivian
Callingham at The Grange, at Woodbury, some four years since, may be
tracked down and punished at last for his cowardly crime. It will be
fresh in everyone's memory, as one of the most romantic episodes in
that extraordinary tragedy, that at the precise moment of her
father's death, Miss Callingham, who was present in the room during
the attack, and who alone might have been a witness capable of
recognising or describing the wretched assailant, lost her reason on
the spot, owing to the appalling shock to her nervous system, and
remained for some months in an imbecile condition. Gradually, as we
have informed our readers from time to time, Miss Callingham's
intellect has become stronger and stronger; and though she is still
totally unable to remember spontaneously any events that occurred
before her father's death, it is hoped it may be possible, by
describing vividly certain trains of previous incidents, to recall
them in some small degree to her imperfect memory. Dr. Thornton, of
Welbeck Street, who has visited her from time to time on behalf of
the Treasury, in conjunction with Dr. Wade, her own medical
attendant, went down to Barton-on-the-Sea on Monday, and once more
examined Miss Callingham's intellect. Though the Doctor is
judiciously reticent as to the result of his visit, it is generally
believed at Barton that he thinks the young lady sufficiently
recovered to undergo a regular interrogatory; and in spite of the
fact that Dr. Wade is opposed to any such proceeding at present, as
prejudicial to the lady's health, it is not unlikely that the
Treasury may act upon their own medical official's opinion, and send
down an Inspector from Scotland Yard to make inquiries direct on the
subject from Miss Callingham in person."
My head swam round. It was all like a dream to me. I held my
forehead with my hands, and gazed blankly at the Inspector.
"You understand what all this means?" he said interrogatively,
leaning forward as he spoke. "You remember the murder?"
"Perfectly," I answered him, trembling all over. "I remember every
detail of it. I could describe you exactly all the objects in the
room. The Picture it left behind has burned itself into my brain
like a flash of lightning!"
The Inspector drew his chair nearer. "Now, Miss Callingham," he said
in a very serious voice, "that's a remarkable expression--like a
flash of lightning.' Bear in mind, this is a matter of life and
death to somebody somewhere. Somebody's neck may depend upon your
answers. Will you tell me exactly how much you remember?"
I told him in a few words precisely how the scene had imprinted
itself on my memory. I recalled the room, the box, the green wires,
the carpet; the man who lay dead in his blood on the floor; the man
who stood poised ready to leap from the window. He let me go on
unchecked till I'd finished everything I had to say spontaneously.
Then he took a photograph from his pocket, which he didn't show me.
Looking at it attentively, he asked me questions, one by one, about
the different things in the room at the time in very minute detail:
Where exactly was the box? How did it stand relatively to the
unlighted lamp? What was the position of the pistol on the floor? In
which direction was my father's head lying? Though it brought back
the Horror to me in a fuller and more terrible form than ever, I
answered all his questions to the very best of my ability. I could
picture the whole scene like a photograph to myself; and I didn't
doubt the object he held in his hand was a photograph of the room as
it appeared after the murder. He checked my statements, one by one
as I went on, by reference to the photograph, murmuring half to
himself now and again: "Yes, yes, exactly so"; "That's right"; "That
was so," at each item I mentioned.
At the end of these inquiries, he paused and looked hard at me.
"Now, Miss Callingham," he said again, peering deep into my eyes, "I
want you to concentrate your mind very much, not on this Picture you
carry so vividly in your own brain, but on the events that went
immediately before and after it. Pause long and think. Try hard to
remember. And first, you say there was a great flash of light. Now,
answer me this: was it one flash alone, or had there been several?"
I stopped and racked my brain. Blank, blank, as usual.
"I can't remember," I faltered out, longing terribly to cry. "I can
recall just that one scene, and nothing else in the world before
it."
He looked at me fixedly, jotting down a few words in his note-book
as he looked. Then he spoke again, still more slowly:
"Now, try once more," he said, with an encouraging air. "You saw
this man's back as he was getting out of the window. But can't you
remember having seen his face before? Had he a beard? a moustache?
what eyes? what nose? Did you see the shot fired? And if so, what
sort of person was the man who fired it?"
Again I searched the pigeon-holes of my memory in vain, as I had
done a hundred times before by myself.
"It's no use," I cried helplessly, letting my hands drop by my side.
"I can't remember a thing, except the Picture. I don't know whether
I saw the shot fired or not. I don't know what the murderer looked
like in the face. I've told you all I know. I can recall nothing
else. It's all a great blank to me."
The Inspector hesitated a moment, as if in doubt what step to take
next. Then he drew himself up and said, still more gravely:
"This inability to assist us is really very singular. I had hoped,
after Dr. Thornton's report, that we might at last count with some
certainty upon arriving at fresh results as to the actual murder. I
can see from what you tell me you're a young lady of
intelligence--much above the average--and great strength of mind.
It's curious your memory should fail you so pointedly just where we
stand most in need of its aid. Recollect, nobody else but you ever
saw the murderer's face. Now, I'm going to presume you're answering
me honestly, and try a bold means to arouse your dormant memory.
Look hard, and hark back.--Is that the room you recollect? Is that
the picture that still haunts and pursues you?"
He handed me the photograph he held in his fingers. I took it, all
on fire. The sight almost made me turn sick with horror. To my awe
and amazement, it was indeed the very scene I remembered so well.
Only, of course, it was taken from another point of view, and
represented things in rather different relative positions to those I
figured them in. But it showed my father's body lying dead upon the
floor; it showed his poor corpse weltering helpless in its blood; it
showed myself, as a girl of eighteen, standing awestruck, gazing on
in blank horror at the sight; and in the background, half blurred by
the summer evening light, it showed the vague outline of a man's
back, getting out of the window. On one side was the door: that
formed no part of my mental picture, because it was at my back; but
in the photograph it too was indistinct, as if in the very act of
being burst open. The details were vague, in part--probably the
picture had never been properly focussed;--but the main figures
stood out with perfect clearness, and everything in the room was,
allowing for the changed point of view, exactly as I remembered it
in my persistent mental photograph.
I drew a deep breath.
"That's my Picture," I said, slowly. "But it recalls to me nothing
new. I--I don't understand it."
The Inspector stared at me hard once more.
"Do you know," he asked, "how that photograph was produced, and how
it came into our possession?"
I trembled violently.
"No, I don't," I answered, reddening. "But--I think it had something
to do with the flash like lightning."
The Inspector jumped at those words like a cat upon a mouse.
"Quite right," he cried briskly, as one who at last, after long
search, finds a hopeful clue where all seemed hopeless. "It had to
do with the flash. The flash produced it. This is a photograph taken
by your father's process.... Of course you recollect your father's
process?"
He eyed me close. The words, as he spoke them, seemed to call up
dimly some faint memory of my pre-natal days--of my First State, as
I had learned from the doctors to call it. But his scrutiny made me
shrink. I shut my eyes and looked back.
"I think," I said slowly, rummaging my memory half in vain, "I
remember something about it. It had something to do with
photography, hadn't it?...No, no, with the electric light....I
can't exactly remember which. Will you tell me all about it?"
He leaned back in his chair, and, eyeing me all the time with that
same watchful glance, began to describe to me in some detail an
apparatus which he said my father had devised, for taking
instantaneous photographs by the electric light, with a clockwork
mechanism. It was an apparatus that let sensitive-plates revolve one
after another opposite the lens of a camera; and as each was
exposed, the clockwork that moved it produced an electric spark, so
as to represent such a series of effects as the successive positions
of a horse in trotting. My father, it seemed, was of a scientific
turn, and had just perfected this new automatic machine before his
sudden death. I listened with breathless interest; for up to that
time I had never been allowed to hear anything about my
father--anything about the great tragedy with which my second life
began. It was wonderful to me even now to be allowed to speak and
ask questions on it with anybody. So hedged about had I been all my
days with mystery.
As I listened, I saw the Inspector could tell by the answering flash
in my eye that his words recalled SOMETHING to me, however vaguely.
As he finished, I leant forward, and with a very flushed face, that
I could feel myself, I cried, in a burst of recollection:
"Yes, yes. I remember. And the box on the table--the box that's in
my mental picture, and is not in the photograph--THAT was the
apparatus you've just been describing."
The Inspector turned upon me with a rapidity that fairly took my
breath away.
"Well, where are the other ones?" he asked, pouncing down upon me
quite fiercely.
"The other WHAT?" I repeated, amazed; for I didn't really understand
him.
"Why, the other photographs!" he replied, as if trying to surprise
me. "There must have been more, you know. It held six plates. Except
for this one, the apparatus, when we found it, was empty."
His manner seemed to crush out the faint spark of recollection that
just flickered within me. I collapsed at once. I couldn't stand such
brusqueness.
"I don't know what you mean," I answered in despair. "I never saw
the plates. I know nothing about them."