He let his thoughts wander on for a while, without giving them definite
direction, but ever and again his mind kept coming back to that strange
little incident of the telephone. Often and often he had been rung up by
some mistake, often and often he had been put on to the wrong number by
the exchange, but there was something in this very subdued ringing of
the telephone bell, and the unintelligible whisperings at the other end
that suggested a very curious train of reflection to his mind, and soon
he found himself pacing up and down his room, with his thoughts eagerly
feeding on a most unusual pasture.
“But it’s impossible,” he said, aloud.
He went down as usual to the prison next morning and once again he was
strangely beset with the feeling that there was some unseen presence
there. He had before now had some odd psychical experiences, and knew
that he was a “sensitive”--one, that is, who is capable, under certain
circumstances, of receiving supernormal impressions, and of having
glimpses of the unseen world that lies about us. And this morning the
presence of which he was conscious was that of the man who had been
executed yesterday morning. It was local, and he felt it most strongly
in the little prison yard, and as he passed the door of the condemned
cell. So strong was it there that he would not have been surprised if
the figure of the man had been visible to him, and as he passed through
the door at the end of the passage, he turned round, actually expecting
to see it. All the time, too, he was aware of a profound horror at his
heart, this unseen presence strangely disturbed him. And the poor soul,
he felt, wanted something done for it. Not for a moment did he doubt
that this impression of his was objective, it was no imaginative phantom
of his own invention that made itself so real. The spirit of Linkworth
was there.
He passed into the infirmary, and for a couple of hours busied himself
with his work. But all the time he was aware that the same invisible
presence was near him, though its force was manifestly less here than in
those places which had been more intimately associated with the man.
Finally, before he left, in order to test his theory he looked into the
execution shed. But next moment with a face suddenly stricken pale, he
came out again, closing the door hastily. At the top of the steps stood
a figure hooded and pinioned, but hazy of outline and only faintly
visible. But it was visible, there was no mistake about it.
Dr Teesdale was a man of good nerve, and he recovered himself almost
immediately, ashamed of his temporary panic. The terror that had
blanched his face was chiefly the effect of startled nerves, not of
terrified heart, and yet deeply interested as he was in psychical
phenomena, he could not command himself sufficiently to go back there.
Or rather he commanded himself, but his muscles refused to act on the
message. If this poor earth-bound spirit had any communication to make
to him, he certainly much preferred that it should be made at a
distance. As far as he could understand, its range was circumscribed. It
haunted the prison yard, the condemned cell, the execution shed, it was
more faintly felt in the infirmary. Then a further point suggested
itself to his mind, and he went back to his room and sent for Warder
Draycott, who had answered him on the telephone last night.
“You are quite sure,” he asked, “that nobody rang me up last night, just
before I rang you up?”
There was a certain hesitation in the man’s manner which the doctor
noticed.
“I don’t see how it could be possible, sir,” he said, “I had been
sitting close by the telephone for half an hour before, and again before
that. I must have seen him, if anyone had been to the instrument.”
“And you _saw_ no one?” said the doctor with a slight emphasis.
The man became more markedly ill at ease.
“No, sir, I _saw_ no one,” he said, with the same emphasis.
Dr Teesdale looked away from him.
“But you had perhaps the impression that there was some one there?” he
asked, carelessly, as if it was a point of no interest.
Clearly Warder Draycott had something on his mind, which he found it
hard to speak of.
“Well, sir, if you put it like that,” he began. “But you would tell me I
was half asleep, or had eaten something that disagreed with me at my
supper.”
The doctor dropped his careless manner.
“I should do nothing of the kind,” he said, “any more than you would
tell me that I had dropped asleep last night, when I heard my telephone
bell ring. Mind you, Draycott, it did not ring as usual, I could only
just hear it ringing, though it was close to me. And I could only hear a
whisper when I put my ear to it. But when you spoke I heard you quite
distinctly. Now I believe there was something--somebody--at this end of
the telephone. You were here, and though you saw no one, you, too, felt
there was someone there.”
The man nodded.
“I’m not a nervous man, sir,” he said, “and I don’t deal in fancies. But
there was something there. It was hovering about the instrument, and it
wasn’t the wind, because there wasn’t a breath of wind stirring, and the
night was warm. And I shut the window to make certain. But it went about
the room, sir, for an hour or more. It rustled the leaves of the
telephone book, and it ruffled my hair when it came close to me. And it
was bitter cold, sir.”
The doctor looked him straight in the face.
“Did it remind you of what had been done yesterday morning?” he asked
suddenly.
Again the man hesitated.
“Yes, sir,” he said at length. “Convict Charles Linkworth.”
Dr Teesdale nodded reassuringly.
“That’s it,” he said. “Now, are you on duty to-night?”
“Yes, sir, I wish I wasn’t.”
“I know how you feel, I have felt exactly the same myself. Now whatever
this is, it seems to want to communicate with me. By the way, did you
have any disturbance in the prison last night?”
“Yes, sir, there was half a dozen men who had the nightmare. Yelling
and screaming they were, and quiet men too, usually. It happens
sometimes the night after an execution. I’ve known it before, though
nothing like what it was last night.”
“I see. Now, if this--this thing you can’t see wants to get at the
telephone again to-night, give it every chance. It will probably come
about the same time. I can’t tell you why, but that usually happens. So
unless you must, don’t be in this room where the telephone is, just for
an hour to give it plenty of time between half past nine and half past
ten. I will be ready for it at the other end. Supposing I am rung up, I
will, when it has finished, ring you up to make sure that I was not
being called in--in the usual way.
“And there is nothing to be afraid of, sir?” asked the man.
Dr Teesdale remembered his own moment of terror this morning, but he
spoke quite sincerely.
“I am sure there is nothing to be afraid of,” he said, reassuringly.
Dr Teesdale had a dinner engagement that night, which he broke, and was
sitting alone in his study by half past nine. In the present state of
human ignorance as to the law which governs the movements of spirits
severed from the body, he could not tell the warder why it was that
their visits are so often periodic, timed to punctuality according to
our scheme of hours, but in scenes of tabulated instances of the
appearance of _revenants_, especially if the soul was in sore need of
help, as might be the case here, he found that they came at the same
hour of day or night. As a rule, too, their power of making themselves
seen or heard or felt, grew greater for some little while after death,
subsequently growing weaker as they became less earth-bound, or often
after that ceasing altogether, and he was prepared to-night for a less
indistinct impression. The spirit apparently for the early hours of its
disembodiment is weak, like a moth newly broken out from its
chrysalis--and then suddenly the telephone bell rang, not so faintly as
the night before, but still not with its ordinary imperative tone.
Dr Teesdale instantly got up, put the receiver to his ears. And what he
heard was heart-broken sobbing, strong spasms that seemed to tear the
weeper.
He waited for a little before speaking, himself cold with some nameless
fear, and yet profoundly moved to help, if he was able.
“Yes, yes,” he said at length, hearing his own voice tremble. “I am Dr
Teesdale. What can I do for you? And who are you?” he added, though he
felt that it was a needless question.
Slowly the sobbing died down, the whispers took its place, still broken
by crying.
“I want to tell, sir--I want to tell--I must tell.”
“Yes, tell me, what is it?” said the doctor.
“No, not you--another gentleman, who used to come to see me. Will you
speak to him what I say to you?--I can’t make him hear me or see me.”
“Who are you?” asked Dr Teesdale suddenly.
“Charles Linkworth. I thought you knew. I am very miserable. I can’t
leave the prison--and it is cold. Will you send for the other
gentleman?”
“Do you mean the chaplain?” asked Dr Teesdale.
“Yes, the chaplain. He read the service when I went across the yard
yesterday. I shan’t be so miserable when I have told.”
The doctor hesitated a moment. This was a strange story that he would
have to tell Mr Dawkins, the prison chaplain, that at the other end of
the telephone was the spirit of the man executed yesterday. And yet he
soberly believed that it was so that this unhappy spirit was in misery,
and wanted to “tell.” There was no need to ask what he wanted to tell.
“Yes, I will ask him to come here,” he said at length.
“Thank you, sir, a thousand times. You will make him come, won’t you?”
The voice was growing fainter.
“It must be to-morrow night,” it said. “I can’t speak longer now. I have
to go to see--oh, my God, my God.”
The sobs broke out afresh, sounding fainter and fainter. But it was in a
frenzy of terrified interest that Dr Teesdale spoke.
“To see what?” he cried “Tell me what you are doing, what is happening
to you?”
“I can’t tell you; I mayn’t tell you,” said the voice very faint. “That
is part----” and it died away altogether.
Dr Teesdale waited a little, but there was no further sound of any kind,
except the chuckling and croaking of the instrument. He put the receiver
on to its hook again, and then became aware for the first time that his
forehead was streaming with some, cold dew of horror. His ears sang; his
heart beat very quick and faint, and he sat down to recover himself.
Once or twice he asked himself if it was possible that some terrible
joke was being played on him, but he knew that could not be so; he felt
perfectly sure that he had been speaking with a soul in torment of
contrition for the terrible and irremediable act it had committed. It
was no delusion of his senses, either; here in this comfortable room of
his in Bedford Square, with London cheerfully roaring round him, he had
spoken with the spirit of Charles Linkworth.
But he had no time (nor indeed inclination, for somehow his soul sat
shuddering within him) to indulge in meditation. First of all he rang up
the prison.
“Warder Draycott?” he asked.
There was a perceptible tremor in the man’s voice as he answered.
“Yes, sir. Is it Dr Teesdale?”
“Yes. Has anything happened here with you?”
Twice it seemed that the man tried to speak and could not. At the third
attempt the words came.
“Yes, sir. He has been here. I saw him go into the room where the
telephone is.”
“Ah! Did you speak to him?”
“No, sir: I sweated and prayed. And there’s half a dozen men as have
been screaming in their sleep to-night. But it’s quiet again now. I
think he has gone into the execution shed.”
“Yes. Well, I think there will be no more disturbance now. By the way,
please give me Mr Dawkins’s home address.”
* * * * *
This was given him, and Dr Teesdale proceeded to write to the chaplain,
asking him to dine with him on the following night. But suddenly he
found that he could not write at his accustomed desk, with the telephone
standing close to him, and he went upstairs to the drawing-room which he
seldom used, except when he entertained his friends. There he recaptured
the serenity of his nerves, and could control his hand. The note simply
asked Mr Dawkins to dine with him next night, when he wished to tell him
a very strange history and ask his help. “Even if you have any other
engagement,” he concluded, “I seriously request you to give it up.
To-night, I did the same. I should bitterly have regretted it if I had
not.”
Next night accordingly, the two sat at their dinner in the doctor’s
dining-room, and when they were left to their cigarettes and coffee the
doctor spoke.
“You must not think me mad, my dear Dawkins,” he said, “when you hear
what I have got to tell you.”
Mr Dawkins laughed.
“I will certainly promise not to do that,” he said.
“Good. Last night and the night before, a little later in the evening
than this, I spoke through the telephone with the spirit of the man we
saw executed two days ago. Charles Linkworth.”
The chaplain did not laugh. He pushed back his chair, looking annoyed.
“Teesdale,” he said, “is it to tell me this--I don’t want to be
rude--but this bogey-tale that you have brought me here his evening?”
“Yes. You have not heard half of it. He asked me last night to get hold
of you. He wants to tell you something. We can guess, I think, what it
is.”
Dawkins got up.
“Please let me hear no more of it,” he said. “The dead do not return. In
what state or under what condition they exist has not been revealed to
us. But they have done with all material things.”
“But I must tell you more,” said the doctor. “Two nights ago I was rung
up, but very faintly, and could hear only whispers. I instantly inquired
where the call came from and was told it came from the prison. I rang
up the prison, and Warder Draycott told me that nobody had rung me up.
He, too, was conscious of a presence.”
“I think that man drinks,” said Dawkins, sharply.
The doctor paused a moment.
“My dear fellow, you should not say that sort of thing,” he said. “He is
one of the steadiest men we have got. And if he drinks, why not I also?”
The chaplain sat down again.
“You must forgive me,” he said, “but I can’t go into this. These are
dangerous matters to meddle with. Besides, how do you know it is not a
hoax?”
“Played by whom?” asked the doctor. “Hark!”
The telephone bell suddenly rang. It was clearly audible to the doctor.
“Don’t you hear it?” he said.
“Hear what?”
“The telephone bell ringing.”
“I hear no bell,” said the chaplain, rather angrily. “There is no bell
ringing.”
The doctor did not answer, but went through into his study, and turned
on the lights. Then he took the receiver and mouthpiece off its hook.
“Yes?” he said, in a voice that trembled. “Who is it? Yes: Mr Dawkins is
here. I will try and get him to speak to you.”
He went back into the other room.
“Dawkins,” he said, “there is a soul in agony. I pray you to listen.
For God’s sake come and listen.”
The chaplain hesitated a moment.
“As you will,” he said.
He took up the receiver and put it to his ear.
“I am Mr Dawkins,” he said.
He waited.
“I can hear nothing whatever,” he said at length. “Ah, there was
something there. The faintest whisper.”
“Ah, try to hear, try to hear!” said the doctor.
Again the chaplain listened. Suddenly he laid the instrument down,
frowning.
“Something--somebody said, ‘I killed her, I confess it. I want to be
forgiven.’ It’s a hoax, my dear Teesdale. Somebody knowing your
spiritualistic leanings is playing a very grim joke on you. I _can’t_
believe it.”
Dr Teesdale took up the receiver.
“I am Dr Teesdale,” he said. “Can you give Mr Dawkins some sign that it
is you?”
Then he laid it down again.
“He says he thinks he can,” he said. “We must wait.”
The evening was again very warm, and the window into the paved yard at
the back of the house was open. For five minutes or so the two men stood
in silence, waiting, and nothing happened. Then the chaplain spoke.
“I think that is sufficiently conclusive,” he said.
Even as he spoke a very cold draught of air suddenly blew into the room,
making the papers on the desk rustle. Dr Teesdale went to the window and
closed it.
“Did you feel that?” he asked.
“Yes, a breath of air. Chilly.”
Once again in the closed room it stirred again.
“And did you feel that?” asked the doctor.
The chaplain nodded. He felt his heart hammering in his throat suddenly.
“Defend us from all peril and danger of this coming night,” he
exclaimed.
“Something is coming!” said the doctor.
As he spoke it came. In the centre of the room not three yards away from
them stood the figure of a man with his head bent over on to his
shoulder, so that the face was not visible. Then he took his head in
both his hands and raised it like a weight, and looked them in the face.
The eyes and tongue protruded, a livid mark was round the neck. Then
there came a sharp rattle on the boards of the floor, and the figure was
no longer there. But on the floor there lay a new rope.
For a long while neither spoke. The sweat poured off the doctor’s face,
and the chaplain’s white lips whispered prayers. Then by a huge effort
the doctor pulled himself together. He pointed at the rope.
“It has been missing since the execution,” he said.
Then again the telephone bell rang. This time the chaplain needed no
prompting. He went to it at once and the ringing ceased. For a while he
listened in silence.
“Charles Linkworth,” he said at length, “in the sight of God, in whose
presence you stand, are you truly sorry for your sin?”
Some answer inaudible to the doctor came, and the chaplain closed his
eyes. And Dr Teesdale knelt as he heard the words of the Absolution.
At the close there was silence again.
“I can hear nothing more,” said the chaplain, replacing the receiver.
Presently the doctor’s man-servant came in with the tray of spirits and
syphon. Dr Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had
been.
“Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker,” he said.
There was a moment’s silence.
“There is no rope, sir,” said Parker.
AT ABDUL ALI’S GRAVE
Luxor, as most of those who have been there will allow, is a place of
notable charm, and boasts many attractions for the traveller, chief
among which he will reckon an excellent hotel containing a
billiard-room, a garden fit for the gods to sit in, any quantity of
visitors, at least a weekly dance on board a tourist steamer, quail
shooting, a climate as of Avilion, and a number of stupendously ancient
monuments for those archæologically inclined. But to certain others, few
indeed in number, but almost fanatically convinced of their own
orthodoxy, the charm of Luxor, like some sleeping beauty, only wakes
when these things cease, when the hotel has grown empty and the
billiard-marker “has gone for a long rest” to Cairo, when the decimated
quail and the decimating tourist have fled northwards, and the Theban
plain, Danæ to a tropical sun, is a gridiron across which no man would
willingly make a journey by day, not even if Queen Hatasoo herself
should signify that she would give him audience on the terraces of
Deir-el-Bahari. A suspicion however that the fanatic few were right, for
in other respects they were men of estimable opinions, induced me to
examine their convictions for myself, and thus it came about that two
years ago, certain days toward the beginning of June saw me still there,
a confirmed convert.
Much tobacco and the length of summer days had assisted us to the
analysis of the charm of which summer in the south is possessed, and
Weston--one of the earliest of the elect--and myself had discussed it at
some length, and though we reserved as the principal ingredient a
nameless something which baffled the chemist, and must be felt to be
understood, we were easily able to detect certain other drugs of sight
and sound, which we were agreed, contributed to the whole. A few of them
are here subjoined.
The waking in the warm darkness just before dawn to find that the desire
for stopping in bed fails with the awakening.
The silent start across the Nile in the still air with our horses, who,
like us, stand and sniff at the incredible sweetness of the coming
morning without apparently finding it less wonderful in repetition.
The moment infinitesimal in duration but infinite in sensation, just
before the sun rises, when the grey shrouded river is struck suddenly
out of darkness, and becomes a sheet of green bronze.
The rose flush, rapid as a change of colour in some chemical
combination, which shoots across the sky from east to west, followed
immediately by the sunlight which catches the peaks of the western
hills, and flows down like some luminous liquid.
The stir and whisper which goes through the world: a breeze springs up;
a lark soars and sings; the boatman shouts “Yallah. Yallah”; the horses
toss their heads.
The subsequent ride.
The subsequent breakfast on our return.
The subsequent absence of anything to do.
At sunset the ride into the desert thick with the scent of warm barren
sand, which smells like nothing else in the world, for it smells of
nothing at all.
The blaze of the tropical night.
Camel’s milk.
Converse with the fellahin, who are the most charming and least
accountable people on the face of the earth except when tourists are
about, and when in consequence there is no thought but backsheesh.
Lastly, and with this we are concerned, the possibility of odd
experiences.
* * * * *
The beginning of the things which make this tale occurred four days ago,
when Abdul Ali, the oldest man in the village, died suddenly, full of
days and riches. Both, some thought, had probably been somewhat
exaggerated, but his relations affirmed without variation that he had as
many years as he had English pounds, and that each was a hundred. The
apt roundness of these numbers was incontestable, the thing was too
neat not to be true, and before he had been dead for twenty-four hours,
it was a matter of orthodoxy. But with regard to his relations, that
which turned their bereavement, which must soon have occurred, into a
source of blank dismay instead of pious resignation, was that not one of
these English pounds, not even their less satisfactory equivalent in
notes, which, out of the tourist season, are looked upon at Luxor as a
not very dependable variety of Philosopher’s stone, though certainly
capable of producing gold under favourable circumstances, could be
found. Abdul Ali with his hundred years was dead, his century of
sovereigns--they might as well have been an annuity--were dead with him,
and his son Mohamed, who had previously enjoyed a sort of brevet rank in
anticipation of the event, was considered to be throwing far more dust
in the air than the genuine affection even of a chief mourner wholly
justified.
Abdul, it is to be feared, was not a man of stereotyped respectability;
though full of years and riches, he enjoyed no great reputation for
honour. He drank wine whenever he could get it, he ate food during the
days of Ramadan, scornful of the fact, when his appetite desired it, he
was supposed to have the evil eye, and in his last moments he was
attended by the notorious Achmet, who is well known here to be practised
in Black Magic, and has been suspected of the much meaner crime of
robbing the bodies of those lately dead. For in Egypt, while to despoil
the bodies of ancient kings and priests is a privilege for which
advanced and learned societies vie with each other, to rob the corpses
of your contemporaries, is considered the deed of a dog. Mohamed who
soon exchanged the throwing of dust in the air for the more natural mode
of expressing chagrin, which is to gnaw the nails, told us in confidence
that he suspected Achmet of having ascertained the secret of where his
father’s money was, but it appeared that Achmet had as blank a face as
anybody when his patient, who was striving to make some communication to
him, went out into the great silence, and the suspicion that he knew
where the money was, gave way, in the minds of those who were competent
to form an estimate of his character, to a but dubious regret that he
had just failed to learn that very important fact.