Mr. Trevor describes _The Garden of my Grandmother_ in some detail, but
that would be of interest only to the specialist. The place was lately
raided, and is now closed; and remained open so long as it did only with
the help of such devices as commend themselves to those aliens who know
the laws of the land only to circumvent them. For some time, indeed, the
police did not even know of its existence as a night-club, for the
entrance to the place was through two mean-looking doors several yards
apart, on one of which was boldly inscribed the word “Gentlemen” and on
the other “Ladies.”
Within, all was gaiety and _chic_. From the respectable night-clubs and
restaurants, all closed by this hour, would come the _jeunesse_ of
England; and an appetising smell of kippers brought new life to the
jaded senses of young ladies, while young gentlemen cleverly contrived
to give the appearance of drinking ginger ale by taking their champagne
through straws. Mr. Trevor says, however, that there was not the
smallest chance of the place being raided on the night in question, for
among the company was a Prince of the Blood; and it is an unwritten law
in the Metropolitan Police Force that no night-club shall be raided
while a Prince of the Blood is pulling a party therein.
The young lady and our two gentlemen were presently refreshing
themselves at a table in a secluded corner; and when at last only the
wine was left before them Mr. Maturin assumed his courtliest manner to
beg the young lady to tell her tale, and in detail, if she thought its
relation would relieve her at all. She thought, with all the pensive
beauty of her dark eyes, that it would, and immediately began on the
following tale:
_The Tale of the Bulgarian Girl_
I am (she said) twenty-three years old, and although I once spent two
years in England at a boarding-school in Croydon, my life hitherto has
been lived entirely in Bulgaria. My father was a Bulgar of the name of
Samson Samsonovitch Samsonoff, my mother an Englishwoman of the
Lancashire branch of the race of Jones, and for her tragic death in a
railway accident just over a year ago I shall grieve all my life: which,
I cannot help praying, may be a short one, for I weary of the insensate
cruelties that every new day opens out for me.
I must tell you that my mother was an unusual woman, of rigid
principles, lofty ideals and a profound feeling for the grace and
dignity of the English tongue, in which, in spite of my father’s
opposition, for the Samsonoffs are a bitter proud race, she made me
proficient at an early age. Never had this admirable woman a thought in
her life that was not directed towards furthering her husband’s welfare
and to obtaining the happiness of her only child; and I am convinced
that my father had not met his cruel death two months ago had she been
spared to counsel him.
My father came of an ancient Macedonian house. For hundreds of years a
bearer of the name of Samson Samsonovitch Samsonoff has trod the stark
hillsides of the Balkans and raided the sweet, rich valleys about
Philippopolis. As brigands, the Samsonoffs had never a rival; as
_comitadjis_, in war or peace, their name was a name for heroism and of
terror: while as assassins--for the domestic economy of Bulgaria has
ever demanded the occasional services of a hawk’s eye and a ruthless
hand--a Samsonoff has been honourably associated with some of the most
memorable _coups_ in Balkan history. I am well aware that pride of
family has exercised a base dominion over the minds of many good men and
women; yet I do not hesitate to confess that it is with almost
unbearable regret that I look upon the fact that I, a wretched girl, am
the last and only remnant of our once proud house.
Such a man it was whom my mother, while accompanying her father, a civil
engineer, through Bulgaria, married. Nor did it need anything less than
the ardour of her love and the strength of her character to seduce a
Samson Samsonovitch from the dour dominion of the hills to the
conventional life of the valleys. I loved my father, but cannot be blind
to the grave flaws in his character. A tall, hairy man, with a beard
such as would have appalled your description of Beaver, he was subject
to ungovernable tempers and, occasionally, to regrettable lapses from
that moral code which is such an attractive feature of English domestic
life. Ah, you who live in the content and plenty of so civilised a land,
how can you even imagine the horrors of lawlessness that obtain among
primitive peoples! Had not that good woman my mother always willed him
to loving-kindness, Samsonovitch Samsonoff had more than once spilled
the blood of his dearest friends in the heat of some petty tavern brawl.
We lived in a farmhouse in what is surely the loveliest valley in the
world, that which is called the Valley of the Roses, and whence is given
to the world that exquisite essence known as _attar_ of roses. Our
little household in that valley was a happy and united one; more and
more infrequent became my father’s demoniac tempers; and, but for his
intolerance of fools and cravens, you had taken the last of the
Samsonoffs to be a part of the life of the valley-men, of whose
industry, the cultivation of roses, he rapidly became a master.
Thus we come to the time which I now think of as two months before my
mother’s death. My father had attained to a certain degree of wealth,
and was ever enticing my mother with dreams of a prolonged visit to her
beloved birthplace, Southport, which is, I believe, a pretty town on the
seaboard of Lancashire, and which I look forward with delight to
visiting. While enticing her, however, with such visions, he did not
hesitate to warn her that she must wait on the issue of his fanciful
hobby, which daily grew on him; for the last of the Samsonoffs had
become an inventor of flowers!
You may well look bewildered. But had you known my father you would in
some measure have understood how a man, of an extreme audacity of
temperament, might be driven into any fanciful pursuit that might lend a
spice to a life of intolerable gentility. Nor was that pursuit so
fanciful as might as first appear to those of conventionally studious
minds: my father had a profound knowledge of the anatomy of flowers; and
was in the habit of saying that he could not but think that the mind of
man had hitherto neglected the invention and cultivation of the most
agreeable variations. In fine, the tempestuous but simple mind of
Samsonovitch Samsonoff had been captivated by the possibility of growing
green carnations.
My mother and I were, naturally enough, not at all averse from his
practising so gentle a hobby as the invention and cultivation of
improbable flowers. And it was long before we even dreamt of the evil
consequences that might attend so inoffensive an ambition. But my poor
mother was soon to be rid of the anxieties of this life.
One day she and I were sitting in the garden, discussing the English
fashion journals, when, silently as a cloud, my father came out of the
house and looked towards us in the half-frowning, half-smiling way of
his best mood. Tall and patriarchal, he came towards us--and in his hand
we saw a flower with a long slender stem, and we stared at it as though
we could not believe our eyes, for it was a green carnation!
“You have painted it!” we cried, my mother and I, for his success had
seemed to us as remote as the stars.
“I have _made_ it!” said my father, and he smiled into his beard, which
was ever his one confidential friend. “Women, I have made it in my
laboratory. And as I have made this I can make thousands, millions, and
thousands of millions!”
He waved a closely-covered piece of paper towards me. “My daughter,” he
said, “here is your dower, your heritage. I am too old to burden myself
with the cares of great riches, but by the help of this paper you, my
beloved child, will become an heiress who may condescend to an Emperor
or an American. We will not lose a minute before going to England, the
land of honest men, to put the matter of the patent in train. For on
this paper is written the formula by which green carnations, as well as
all previously known varieties of carnations, can be _made_ instead of
grown. _Made_, I say, instead of grown! Women, do you understand what it
is that I have achieved? I have stolen something of the secret of the
sun!”
“Samson, boast not!” cried my mother, but he laughed at her and fondled
me, while I stared in great wonder at the slip of paper that fluttered
in his hand and dreamed the fair dreams of wealth and happiness in a
civilised country. Ah me, ah me, the ill-fated excellence of dreams! For
here I am in the most civilised country in the world, a pauper, and more
wretched than a pauper!
Our preparations for removal to England were not far advanced before
that happened which brought the first cruel turn to our fortunes. On an
evil day my mother set out to Varna to buy some trivial thing, and--but
I cannot speak of that, how she was returned to us a mangled corpse, her
dear features mutilated beyond recognition by the fury of the railway
accident.
My father took his sudden loss strangely: it was as though he was
deprived at one blow of all the balance, the restraint, with which so
many years of my mother’s influence had softened the dangerous temper of
the Samsonoff; and the brooding silence he put upon his surroundings
clamoured with black thoughts. Worst of all, he began again to frequent
the taverns in the valley, wherein he seemed to find solace in goading
to fury the craven-hearted lowlanders among whom he had lived in peace
for so long. The Samsonoff, in short, seemed rapidly to be reverting to
type; and I, his daughter, must stand by and do nothing, for my
influence over him was never but of the pettiest sort.
The weeks passed, and our preparations for departure to England
proceeded at the soberest pace. In England we were going to stay with my
mother’s brother, a saintly man of some little property who lived a
retired life in London, and whose heir I would in due course be, since
he was himself without wife or children.
My father, never notable for the agreeable qualities of discretion and
reticence, soon spread about the report of his discovery of the green
carnation. He could not resist boasting of it in his cups, of the
formula with which he could always make them, of the fortune he must
inevitably make. Nor did he hesitate to taunt the men of the valley,
they who came of generations of flower-growers, with his own success in
an occupation which, he said, he had never undertaken but at a woman’s
persuasion, since it could be regarded as manly only by those who would
describe as manly the painted face of a Circassian eunuch. Thus he would
taunt them, laughing me to scorn when I ventured to point out that even
worms will turn and cravens conspire. Woe and woe to the dour and
high-handed in a world of polity, for their fate shall surely find them
out!
One day, having been to the village to procure some yeast for the making
of a _yaourt_ or _yawort_, which is that same Bulgarian “sour milk” so
strongly recommended to Anglo-Saxon digestions, I was startled, as I
walked up the path to the door, by the bruit of loud rough voices. Only
too soon was my fear turned to horror. One of the voices was my
father’s, arrogant and harsh as only his could be, with a sneer like a
snake running through it. The other I could not recognise, but could
hear only too well that it had not the soft accents of the men of the
valley; and when, afraid to enter, I peered in through the window, I saw
my father in violent altercation with a man his equal in stature and
demeanour--another bearded giant, as fair as my father was dark, and
with the livid eyes of a wolf.
What was my horror on recognising him as Michaelis the _comitadji_, the
notorious and brutal Michaelis of the hills. The Michaelises and the
Samsonovitch Samsonoffs had always been the equal kings of the
_banditti_ and, in many a fight between Christian and Turk, the equal
champions of the Cross against the Crescent. And now, as I could hear
through the window, the last of the Michaelises was asking of the last
of the Samsonoffs some of his great wealth, that he might arm and
munition his troop to the latest mode.
My father threw back his head and laughed. But his laugh had cost him
dear had I not screamed a warning, for the Michaelis with the wolfish
eyes had raised a broad knife. My father leapt to one side, and taking
up the first thing that came to hand, a heavy bottle of _mastique_,
crashed it down like an axe on the fair giant’s head; and then, without
so much as a glance at the unconscious man, and massive though the
Michaelis was, slung him over his shoulder, strode out of the house and
garden and flung him into the middle of the roadway, where he lay for
long moaning savagely with the pain of his broken head. I had gone to
the aid of the wretch, but my father would not let me, saying that no
Michaelis ever yet died of a slap on the crown and that a little
blood-letting would clear the man’s mind of his boyish fancies. Ah, if
it had!
It was at a late hour of the very next night--for since my mother’s
death my father would loiter in the taverns until all hours--that his
hoarse voice roused me from my sleep; and on descending I found him
raging about the kitchen like a wounded tiger, his clothes in disorder
and showing grim dark stains that, as I clung to him, foully wetted my
hands. I prayed him, in an access of terror, to tell me he was not hurt,
for what other protection than him had I in that murderous land?
“I am not hurt, child,” he growled impatiently. “But I have been driven
to hurt some so that they can never again feel pain.”
They had ambushed him, the cowards, as he came home through the wood--as
though a hundred of those maggots of the valley could slay a
Samsonovitch Samsonoff! My father had caught the last of them by the
throat, and the trembling coward had saved himself by confessing the
plot. It appeared that it was they who had persuaded the Michaelis to
visit us the day before, alluring his fancy with tales of the discovery
of the carnation and of the great riches the Samsonoff had concealed
about the house. And the Michaelis had come to our house not for part of
my father’s wealth but for all he could find, as also for the secret of
the carnation, which he might sell at a great price to some Jew in
Sofia--he had come to kill my father!
“And I, like a fool,” cried my father, “only broke the skin of his
wolfish head! Girl, we must be off at once! I have not lived in
unwilling peace all these years to die like a rat; and now that these
weak idiots have failed to kill me Michaelis and his troop will surround
the house, and who shall escape the wolves of the hills? Now linger not
for your clothes and fineries. Grigory Eshekovitch has horses for us at
the edge of the wood, and we can make Philippopolis by the morning. Here
is all our money in notes. Take them, so that you will be provided for
should these scum get me. And the formula--take care of the formula,
child, for that is your fortune! Should I have to stay behind, your
mother’s brother in England is a good man and will probably not rob you
of more than half the profits of it.”
And so we came to leave our beloved home, stealing like thieves through
the darkness of a moonless night. How shall I ever forget those
desperate moments! Our farm lay far from any other habitation, and a
long sloping lane joined our pastures to the extensive Karaloff Wood, a
wood always evoked by Bulgarian poets of past centuries as the home of
vampires and the kennel of the hounds of hell.
There, at its borders, Grigory Eshekovitch, a homely man devoted to our
interests, awaited us with two horses; and, although I could not see his
face in the darkness, I could imagine by the tremor of his never very
assured voice how pallid, indeed green, it must have been; for poor
Grigory Eshekovitch suffered from some internal affection which had the
effect of establishing his complexion very uncertainly.
“Have you seen anyone in the wood?” my father asked him.
“No, but I have heard noises,” Grigory Eshekovitch trembled.
“Bah!” growled my father. “That was the chattering of your own miserable
teeth.”
I wonder what has happened to poor Grigory Eshekovitch, whether he
survived that hideous night. We left him there, a trembling figure on
the borders of the wood, while we put our horses into the heart of that
darkness; and I tried to find solace in our desperate situation by
looking forward to the safety and comfort of our approaching life in
England. Little I knew that I was to suffer such agonies of fear in this
huge city that I would wish myself back in the land of wolves!
My dreams were shattered by a low growl from my father, and we pulled up
our horses, listening intently. By this time we were about half-way
through the wood; and had we not known the place by heart we had long
since lost our way, for the curtain of leaves between us and the faint
light of the stars made the place so black that we could not even see
the faintest glimmer of each other. At last my father whispered that it
was all right, and we were in the act of spurring our tired horses for
the last dash through the wood when torches flamed on all sides and we
stood as in the tortured light of a crypt in moonlight.
“Samson Samsonovitch,” cried a hoarse voice, and like a stab at my heart
I knew it for the voice of the Michaelis, “we hope your sins are not too
heavy, for your time has come.”
It ill becomes a girl to boast of her parent; but shall I neglect to
mention the stern fortitude, the patriarchal resignation, the monumental
bravery, of my father, how he sat his horse still as a rock in a tempest
and only his lips moved in a gentle whisper to me. “Child, save
yourself,” said he, and that was his farewell. “I command you to go--to
save yourself and my secret from these hounds. Maybe I too will get
through. God is as good to us as we deserve. Head right through them.
Their aim, between you and me, will be so unsure that we might both
escape. Go, and God go with you!”
Can you ask me to remember the details of the awful moment? The
darkness, the flaming torches, the hoarse cries of the bandits as they
rode in on us, my father’s great courage--all these combined to produce
in me a state for which the word “terror” seems altogether too homely.
Perhaps I should not have left my father. Perhaps I should have died
with him. I did not know what I was doing. Blindly as in a nightmare I
spurred my horse midway between two moving torches. The horse, startled
already, flew madly as the wind. Cries, curses, shots seemed to sweep
about me, envelop me, but terror lent wings to my horse, and the shots
and shouts faded behind me as phantoms might fade in a furious wind.
Last of all came a fearful fusillade of shots, then a silence broken
only by the harsh rustle of the bracken under my horse, which, with the
livid intelligence of fear, did not stop before we reached Philippopolis
in the dawn.
I was never to see my father again. Until noon of the next day I sat
anxiously in the only decent inn of the ancient town, praying that some
act of Providence had come to his aid and that he might at any moment
appear; when, from a loquacious person, who did not know my name, I
heard that the last of the Samsonoffs had that morning been found in
Karaloff Wood nailed to a tree-trunk with eighteen bullet wounds in his
body.
I will spare you my reflections on the pass in which I then found
myself. No young girl was ever so completely alone as she who sat the
day through in the parlour of the Bulgarian inn, trying to summon the
energy with which to arrange for her long journey on the Orient Express
to England.
Arrived in London, I at once set out to my uncle’s house in Golgotha
Road, Golders Green. I was a little surprised that he had not met me at
the station, for I had warned him of my arrival by telegram; but,
knowing he was a gentleman of particular though agreeable habits, it was
with a sufficiently good heart that I rang the bell of his tall gloomy
house, which stood at the end of a genteel street of exactly similar
houses.
Allow me, if you please, to hurry over the relation of my further
misfortunes. My uncle had died of a clot of blood on the heart a week
before my arrival. His property he had, of course, left to me; and I
could instantly take possession of his house in Golgotha Road. I was
utterly alone.
That was four weeks ago. Though entirely without friends or
acquaintance--for my uncle’s lawyer, Mr. Tarbold, was a man who bore his
own lack of easy conversation and human sympathy with a resigned
fortitude worthy of more wretched sorrows--I passed the first two weeks
pleasantly enough in arranging the house to my taste, in engaging a
housekeeper and training her to my ways, and in wondering how I must
proceed as regards the patenting and exploiting of the carnation, the
formula for which I kept locked in a secret drawer of my toilet-table.
At the end of three weeks--one week ago--my housekeeper gave me notice
of her instant departure, saying that no consideration would persuade
her to spend another night in the house. She was, it seemed, psychic,
and the atmosphere of the house, which was certainly oppressive, weighed
heavily on her mind. She had heard noises in the night, she affirmed,
and also spoke indignantly of an unpleasant smell in the basement of the
house, a musty smell which she for one made no bones of recognising as
of a graveyard consistency; and if she did not know a graveyard smell,
she asked, from one of decent origins, who did, for she had buried three
husbands?
Of course I laughed at her tremors, for I am not naturally of a nervous
temper; and when she insisted on leaving that very day I was not at all
disturbed. Nor did I instantly make enquiries for another woman, for I
could very well manage by myself; and the work of the house, I thought,
must help to fill in the awful spaces made by the utter lack of
companionship. As to any nervousness at being left entirely alone in a
house, surrounded as it was by the amenities of Golders Green, I never
gave a thought to it, for I had been inured to a reasonable solitude all
my life. And, putting up a notice of “Apartments to Let” in one of the
ground-floor windows, I set about the business of the house in something
of a spirit of adventure natural, if I may say so, to one of my years.
That, as I have said, was one week ago; and the very next day but one
after my housekeeper had left me was to see my hardly-won peace
shattered at one blow. I do not know if you gentlemen are aware of the
mode of life that obtains in Golders Green; but I must tell you that the
natives of that quarter do not discourage the activities of
barrel-organs--a somewhat surprising exercise of restraint to one who
has been accustomed to the dolorous and beautiful songs of the Balkan
_cziganes_. It is true, however, that these barrel-organs are played
mostly by foreigners, and I have been given to understand that
foreigners are one of the most sacred institutions of this great
country.
The very next morning after my housekeeper had left me I was distracted
from my work by a particularly disagreeable combination of sounds,
which, I had no doubt, could come only from a barrel-organ not of the
first order and the untrained voice of its owner. A little amused, I
looked out of the window--and, with a heart how still, leapt back into
the room, for the face of the organ-grinder was the face of the
Michaelis!
I spent an hour of agony in wondering if he had seen me, for how could I
doubt but that he had followed me to England in quest of the formula of
the carnation? At last, however, I decided that he could not have seen
me, and I was in some degree calmed by the decreasing noise of the
barrel-organ as it inflicted itself on more distant streets. London, I
told myself, was a very large city; it was not possible that the
Michaelis could have the faintest idea in what part of it I lodged; and
it could only have been by the most unfortunate combination of chances
that he had brought his wretched organ into Golgotha Road. Nevertheless
I took the precaution to withdraw the notice of Apartments to Let from
the window, lest yet another unfortunate combination of chances should
lead him or his minions to search for lodging in my house.
The next day passed quietly enough. I went out shopping with a veil over
my face, for reasons you can well understand. And little did I dream
that the approaching terror was to come from a quarter which would only
be known to the Michaelis when he was dead.
That evening in my bedroom, in a curious moment of forgetfulness, I
chanced to pull the bell-rope. I wanted some hot water, had for the
moment forgotten that the silly woman had left me, and only remembered
it with a smile when, far down in the basement, I heard the thin clatter
of the bell. The bathroom was some way down the passage, and I had
reached the door, empty jug in hand, when I was arrested by the sound of
approaching steps! They were very faint, they seemed to be coming up
from the basement, as though in answer to the bell! I pressed my hand to
my forehead in a frantic attempt to collect my wits, and I have no
hesitation in saying that for those few moments I was near insane. The
accumulation of terrors in my recent life had, I thought, unhinged my
mind; and I must that day have engaged a servant and forgotten it.
Meantime the steps ascended, slowly, steadily, exactly as an elderly
servant might ascend in answer to the bell; and as they ascended I was
driven, I cannot tell you how, somehow past fear. Maybe it was the blood
of the Samsonoffs at last raging in me: I was not afraid: and, without
locking the door, I withdrew to a far corner of the room, awaiting the
moment when the steps must reach the door. I must not forget to add that
the empty jug was still in my hand.
Steadily, but with a shuffling as of carpet-slippers, the steps came up
the passage: slowly the door was opened, and a gaunt, grey-haired woman
in musty black stood there, eyeing me with strange contempt. Fear
returned, enveloped me, shook me, and I sobbed, I screamed. The woman
did not move, did not speak, but stood there, gaunt and grey and dry,
eyeing me with a strange contempt; and on her lined face there was such
an undreamt-of expression of evil. Yet I recognised her.
I must tell you that my mother had often, in telling me of her brother,
spoken of his confidential housekeeper. My mother was a plain-spoken
woman, and I had gathered from her that the woman had exercised some
vulgar art to enthrall my poor uncle and had dominated him, to his hurt,
in all things. At the news of this woman’s death just before my mother’s
tragic end, she had been unable to resist an expression of relief; and
I, on having taken possession of the house a few weeks before, had
examined with great interest, as girls will, the various photographs of
her that stood about the rooms.
It was from these that I recognised the woman who stood in the doorway.
But she was dead, surely she had died more than a year ago! Yet there
she now stood, eyeing me with that strange contempt--with such contempt,
indeed, that I, reacting from fear to anger, sternly demanded of her
what she did there and what she wanted.
She was silent. That was perhaps the most awful moment of all--but no,
no, there was worse to come! For, sobbing with terror, I hurled the
empty jug at her vile face with a precision of aim which now astonishes
me: but she did not waver so much as the fraction of an inch as the jug
came straight at her--and, passing through her head, smashed into pieces
against the wall of the passage outside. I must have swooned where I
stood; for when I was again conscious of my surroundings she was gone, I
was alone; but, far down in the house, I could hear the shuffling steps,
retreating, descending, to the foul shades whence she had come.
Now I am one who cannot bear any imposition; and unable, despite the
witness of my own eyes, to believe in the psychic character of the
intruder, I ran out of the room and in hot pursuit down the stairs. The
gaunt woman must have descended with a swiftness surprising in one of
her years, for I could only see her shadow far below, on the last flight
of stairs that would take her to the basement. Into that lower darkness,
I must confess, I had not the courage to follow her; and still less so
when, on peering down the pitch-dark stairs into the kitchen, I was
assailed by that musty smell which my housekeeper had spoken of with
such indignant conviction as of a graveyard consistency.
I locked the door of my room and slept, I need scarcely say, but ill
that night. However, in the cheerful light of the following morning, I
was inclined, as who would not, to pooh-pooh the incredible events of
the previous night; and again pulled the bell-rope, just to see the
event, if any. There was; and, unable to await the ascent of the
shuffling steps, I crammed on a hat and ran down the stairs.
The woman was coming upstairs, steadily, inevitably. As she heard me
descending she stopped and looked up, and I cannot describe the effect
that the diabolical wickedness of her face had on me in the clear
daylight. I stopped, was rooted there, could not move. To get to the
front-door I must pass the foul thing, and that I could not summon the
courage to do. And then she raised an arm, as though to show me
something, and I saw the blade of a razor shining in her hand. You may
well shudder, gentlemen!
When I came to it was to find myself lying at the foot of the stairs,
whither I must have fallen, and the foul thing gone. Why she did not
kill me, I do not know. God will pardon me for saying that maybe it had
been better if she had, for what miseries are not still in store for me!
Trembling and weak, I reached the door and impelled myself into the
clear air of morning. Nor could the fact that I had forgotten my veil,
and the consequent fear of the Michaelis, persuade me to reenter that
house until I had regained some degree of calmness.
All day long I wandered about, knowing neither what to do nor where to
go. I am not without some worldly sense, and I knew what little
assistance the police could give me in such a dilemma, even had they
believed me; while as for the lawyer, Mr. Tarbold, how could I face a
man of so little sympathy in ordinary things with such an extraordinary
tale?
Towards ten o’clock that night, I determined to return and risk another
night in that house; I was desperate with weariness and hunger; and
could not buy food nor lodging for the night, for in my flight I had
forgotten my purse; while I argued to myself that if, after all, she had
intended to murder me, she could without any difficulty have done so
that morning when I lay unconscious on the stairs.
My bravery, however, did not help me to ascend the stairs to my bedroom
with any resolution. I stole upstairs, myself verily like a phantom.
But, hearing no sound in the house, I plucked up the courage to switch
on the light on my bedroom landing. My bedroom-door stood open, but I
could not remember whether or not I had left it so that morning. It was
probable, in my hasty descent. I tiptoed to it and peered in--and I take
the liberty to wonder whether any man, was he never such a lion-heart,
had been less disturbed than I at the sight which the light of the moon
revealed to my eyes.
The Michaelis lay full length on the floor, his great fair beard
darkened with his blood, which came, I saw, from a great gash behind his
ear. Across him, with her back to me, sat straddled the gaunt foul
thing, as silent as the grave. Yet even my terror could not overcome my
curiosity as to her actions, for she kept on lowering and raising her
left hand to and from the Michaelis’s beard, while with her right, in
which shone the bloody razor, she sawed the air from side to side. I
could not realise what that vile shape was doing--I could, and could not
admit the realisation. For with her left hand she was plucking out one
by one the long hairs of the Michaelis’s beard, while with the razor in
her right she was slicing them to the floor!
I must have gasped, made some noise, for she heard me; and, turning on
me and brandishing the dripping razor, she snarled like an animal and
leapt towards me. But I am young and quick, and managed just in time to
reach the street-door and slam it against her enraged pursuit.
That was last night. Since then, gentlemen, I have wandered about the
streets of London, resting a little among the poor people in the Parks.
I have had no food, for what money I have is in that house, together
with the formula for the green carnation; but nothing, not death by
exposure nor death by starvation, would induce me to return to the house
in Golders Green while it is haunted by that foul presence. Is she a
homicidal lunatic or a phantom from hell? I do not know, I am too tired
to care. I have told you two gentlemen my story because you seem kind
and capable, and I can only pray that I have not wearied you overmuch.
But I do beg you to believe that nothing is further from my mind than to
ask, and indeed nothing would induce me to accept, anything from you but
the generous sympathy of your understanding and the advice of your
chivalrous intelligence. My tale is finished, gentlemen. And, alas, am
not I?