Your street turns into a quiet lane, and your staring houses into elm
trees, and the back gardens into green meadows. You pass instantly from
town to country; there is no transition as in a small country town, no
soft gradations of wider lawns and orchards, with houses gradually
becoming less dense, but a dead stop. I believe the people who live
there mostly go into the city. I have seen once or twice a laden 'bus
bound thitherwards. But however that may be, I can't conceive a greater
loneliness in a desert at midnight than there is there at midday. It is
like a city of the dead; the streets are glaring and desolate, and as
you pass it suddenly strikes you that this, too, is part of London.
Well, a year or two ago there was a doctor living there; he had set up
his brass plate and his red lamp at the very end of one of those
shining streets, and from the back of the house the fields stretched
away to the north. I don't know what his reason was in settling down in
such an out-of-the-way place, perhaps Dr. Black, as we will call him,
was a far-seeing man and looked ahead. His relations, so it appeared
afterwards, had lost sight of him for many years and didn't even know
he was a doctor, much less where he lived. However, there he was,
settled in Harlesden, with some fragments of a practice, and an
uncommonly pretty wife. People used to see them walking out together in
the summer evenings soon after they came to Harlesden, and, so far as
could be observed, they seemed a very affectionate couple. These walks
went on through the autumn, and then ceased; but, of course, as the
days grew dark and the weather cold, the lanes near Harlesden might be
expected to lose many of their attractions. All through the winter
nobody saw anything of Mrs. Black; the doctor used to reply to his
patients' inquiries that she was a 'little out of sorts, would be
better, no doubt, in the spring.' But the spring came, and the summer,
and no Mrs. Black appeared, and at last people began to rumor and talk
amongst themselves, and all sorts of queer things were said at 'high
teas,' which you may possibly have heard are the only form of
entertainment known in such suburbs. Dr. Black began to surprise some
very odd looks cast in his direction, and the practice, such as it was,
fell off before his eyes. In short, when the neighbours whispered about
the matter, they whispered that Mrs. Black was dead, and that the
doctor had made away with her. But this wasn't the case; Mrs. Black was
seen alive in June. It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those few
exquisite days that an English climate offers, and half London had
strayed out into the fields North, South, East, and West, to smell the
scent of the white May, and to see if the wild roses were yet in
blossom in the hedges. I had gone out myself early in the morning, and
had had a long ramble, and somehow or other, as I was steering
homeward, I found myself in this very Harlesden we have been talking
about. To be exact, I had a glass of beer in the 'General Gordon,' the
most flourishing house in the neighbourhood, and as I was wandering
rather aimlessly about I saw an uncommonly tempting gap in a hedgerow,
and resolved to explore the meadow beyond. Soft grass is very grateful
to the feet after the infernal grit strewn on suburban sidewalks, and
after walking about for some time, I thought I should like to sit down
on a bank and have a smoke. While I was getting out my pouch, I looked
up in the direction of the houses, and as I looked I felt my breath
caught back, and my teeth began to chatter, and the stick I had in one
hand snapped in two with the grip I gave it. It was as if I had had an
electric current down my spine, and yet for some moment of time which
seemed long, but which must have been very short, I caught myself
wondering what on earth was the matter. Then I knew what had made my
very heart shudder and my bones grind together in an agony. As I
glanced up I had looked straight towards the last house in the row
before me, and in an upper window of that house I had seen for some
short fraction of a second a face. It was the face of a woman, and yet
it was not human. You and I, Salisbury, have heard in our time, as we
sat in our seats in church in sober English fashion, of a lust that
cannot be satiated, and of a fire that is unquenchable, but few of us
have any notion what these words mean. I hope you never may, for as I
saw that face at the window, with the blue sky above me and the warm
air playing in gusts about me, I knew I had looked into another
world--looked through the window of a commonplace, brand-new house, and
seen hell open before me. When the first shock was over, I thought once
or twice that I should have fainted; my face streamed with a cold
sweat, and my breath came and went in sobs, as if I had been half
drowned. I managed to get up at last, and walked round to the street,
and there I saw the name Dr. Black on the post by the front gate. As
fate or my luck would have it, the door opened and a man came down the
steps as I passed by. I had no doubt it was the doctor himself. He was
of a type rather common in London,--long and thin with a pasty face and
a dull black moustache. He gave me a look as we passed each other on
the pavement, and though it was merely the casual glance which one
foot-passenger bestows on another, I felt convinced in my mind that
here was an ugly customer to deal with. As you may imagine I went my
way a good deal puzzled and horrified, too, by what I had seen; for I
had paid another visit to the 'General Gordon,' and had got together a
good deal of the common gossip of the place about the Blacks. I didn't
mention the fact that I had seen a woman's face in the window; but I
heard that Mrs. Black had been much admired for her beautiful golden
hair, and round what had struck me with such a nameless terror there
was a mist of flowing yellow hair, as it were an aureole of glory round
the visage of a satyr. The whole thing bothered me in an indescribable
manner; and when I got home I tried my best to think of the impression
I had received as an illusion, but it was no use. I knew very well I
had seen what I have tried to describe to you, and I was morally
certain that I had seen Mrs. Black. And then there was the gossip of
the place, the suspicion of foul play, which I knew to be false, and my
own conviction that there was some deadly mischief or other going on in
that bright red house at the corner of the Devon Road,--how to
construct a theory of a reasonable kind out of these two elements. In
short, I found myself in a world of mystery; I puzzled my head over it
and filled up my leisure moments by gathering together odd threads of
speculation, but I never moved a step toward any real solution, and as
the summer days went on the matter seemed to grown misty and
indistinct, shadowing some vague terror, like a nightmare of last
month. I suppose it would before long have faded into the background of
my brain--I should not have forgotten it, for such a thing could never
be forgotten--but one morning as I was looking over the paper my eye
was caught by a heading over some two dozen lines of small type. The
words I had seen were simply, 'The Harlesden Case,' and I knew what I
was going to read. Mrs. Black was dead. Black had called in another
medical man to certify as to cause of death, and something or other had
aroused the strange doctor's suspicions, and there had been an inquest
and _post-mortem_. And the result? That, I will confess, did astonish
me considerably; it was the triumph of the unexpected. The two doctors
who made the autopsy were obliged to confess that they could not
discover the faintest trace of any kind of foul play; their most
exquisite tests and reagents failed to detect the presence of poison in
the most infinitesimal quantity. Death, they found, had been caused by
a somewhat obscure and scientifically interesting form of brain
disease. The tissue of the brain and the molecules of the gray matter
had undergone a most extraordinary series of changes; and the younger
of the two doctors, who has some reputation, I believe, as a specialist
in brain trouble, made some remarks in giving his evidence, which
struck me deeply at the time, though I did not then grasp their full
significance. He said: 'At the commencement of the examination I was
astonished to find appearances of a character entirely new to me,
notwithstanding my somewhat large experience. I need not specify these
appearances at present; it will be sufficient for me to state that as I
proceeded in my task I could scarcely believe that the brain before me
was that of a human being at all.' There was some surprise at this
statement, as you may imagine, and the coroner asked the doctor if he
meant to say that the brain resembled that of an animal. 'No,' he
replied, 'I should not put it in that way. Some of the appearances I
noticed seemed to point in that direction, but others, and these were
the more surprising, indicated a nervous organization of a wholly
different character to that either of man or of the lower animals.' It
was a curious thing to say, but of course the jury brought in a verdict
of death from natural causes, and, so far as the public was concerned,
the case came to an end. But after I had read what the doctor said, I
made up my mind that I should like to know a good deal more, and I set
to work on what seemed likely to prove an interesting investigation. I
had really a good deal of trouble, but I was successful in a measure.
Though--why, my dear fellow, I had no notion of the time. Are you aware
that we have been here nearly four hours? The waiters are staring at
us. Let's have the bill and be gone."
The two men went out in silence, and stood a moment in the cool air,
watching the hurrying traffic of Coventry Street pass before them to
the accompaniment of ringing bells of hansoms and the cries of the
newsboys, the deep far murmur of London surging up ever and again from
beneath these louder noises.
"It is a strange case, isn't it?" said Dyson, at length. "What do you
think of it?"
"My dear fellow, I haven't heard the end, so I will reserve my opinion.
When will you give me the sequel?"
"Come to my rooms some evening; say next Thursday. Here's the address.
Good-night; I want to get down to the Strand."
Dyson hailed a passing hansom, and Salisbury turned northward to walk
home to his lodgings.
II
Mr. Salisbury, as may have been gathered from the few remarks which he
had found it possible to introduce in the course of the evening, was a
young gentleman of a peculiarly solid form of intellect, coy and
retiring before the mysterious and the uncommon, with a constitutional
dislike of paradox. During the restaurant dinner he had been forced to
listen in almost absolute silence to a strange tissue of
improbabilities strung together with the ingenuity of a born meddler in
plots and mysteries, and it was with a feeling of weariness that he
crossed Shaftesbury Avenue, and dived into the recesses of Soho, for
his lodgings were in a modest neighbourhood to the north of Oxford
Street. As he walked he speculated on the probable fate of Dyson,
relying on literature unbefriended by a thoughtful relative; and could
not help concluding that so much subtlety united to a too vivid
imagination would in all likelihood have been rewarded with a pair of
Sandwich-boards or a super's banner. Absorbed in this train of thought,
and admiring the perverse dexterity which could transmute the face of a
sickly woman and a case of brain disease into the crude elements of
romance, Salisbury strayed on through the dimly lighted streets, not
noticing the gusty wind which drove sharply round corners and whirled
the stray rubbish of the pavement into the air in eddies, while black
clouds gathered over the sickly yellow moon. Even a stray drop or two
of rain blown into his face did not rouse him from his meditations, and
it was only when with a sudden rush the storm tore down upon the street
that he began to consider the expediency of finding some shelter. The
rain, driven by the wind, pelted down with the violence of a
thunder-storm, dashing up from the stones and hissing through the air,
and soon a perfect torrent of water coursed along the kennels and
accumulated in pools over the choked-up drains. The few stray
passengers who had been loafing rather than walking about the street,
had scuttered away like frightened rabbits to some invisible places of
refuge, and though Salisbury whistled loud and long for a hansom, no
hansom appeared. He looked about him, as if to discover how far he
might be from the haven of Oxford Street; but strolling carelessly
along he had turned out of his way, and found himself in an unknown
region, and one to all appearance devoid even of a public-house where
shelter could be bought for the modest sum of twopence. The street
lamps were few and at long intervals, and burned behind grimy glasses
with the sickly light of oil lamps, and by this wavering light
Salisbury could make out the shadowy and vast old houses of which the
street was composed. As he passed along, hurrying, and shrinking from
the full sweep of the rain, he noticed the innumerable bell-handles,
with names that seemed about to vanish of old age graven on brass
plates beneath them, and here and there a richly carved pent-house
overhung the door, blackening with the grime of fifty years. The storm
seemed to grow more and more furious; he was wet through, and a new hat
had become a ruin, and still Oxford Street seemed as far off as ever.
It was with deep relief that the dripping man caught sight of a dark
archway which seemed to promise shelter from the rain if not from the
wind. Salisbury took up his position in the dryest corner and looked
about him; he was standing in a kind of passage contrived under part of
a house, and behind him stretched a narrow footway leading between
blank walls to regions unknown. He had stood there for some time,
vainly endeavouring to rid himself of some of his superfluous moisture,
and listening for the passing wheel of a hansom, when his attention was
aroused by a loud noise coming from the direction of the passage
behind, and growing louder as it drew nearer. In a couple of minutes he
could make out the shrill, raucous voice of a woman, threatening and
denouncing and making the very stones echo with her accents, while now
and then a man grumbled and expostulated. Though to all appearance
devoid of romance, Salisbury had some relish for street rows, and was,
indeed, somewhat of an amateur in the more amusing phases of
drunkenness; he therefore composed himself to listen and observe with
something of the air of a subscriber to grand opera. To his annoyance,
however, the tempest seemed suddenly to be composed, and he could hear
nothing but the impatient steps of the woman and the slow lurch of the
man as they came toward him. Keeping back in the shadow of the wall, he
could see the two drawing nearer; the man was evidently drunk, and had
much ado to avoid frequent collision with the wall as he tacked across
from one side to the other, like some bark beating up against a wind.
The woman was looking straight in front of her, with tears streaming
from her eyes, but suddenly as they went by, the flame blazed up again,
and she burst forth into a torrent of abuse, facing round upon her
companion.
"You low rascal! You mean, contemptible cur!" she went on, after an
incoherent storm of curses: "You think I'm to work and slave for you
always, I suppose, while you're after that Green Street girl and
drinking every penny you've got. But you're mistaken, Sam,--indeed,
I'll bear it no longer. Damn you, you dirty thief, I've done with you
and your master too, so you can go your own errands, and I only hope
they'll get you into trouble."
The woman tore at the bosom of her dress, and taking something out that
looked like paper, crumpled it up and flung it away. It fell at
Salisbury's feet. She ran out and disappeared in the darkness, while
the man lurched slowly into the street, grumbling indistinctly to
himself in a perplexed tone of voice. Salisbury looked out after him,
and saw him maundering along the pavement, halting now and then and
swaying indecisively, and then starting off at some fresh tangent. The
sky had cleared, and white fleecy clouds were fleeting across the moon,
high in the heaven. The light came and went by turns as the clouds
passed by, and, turning round as the clear white rays shone into the
passage, Salisbury saw the little ball of crumpled paper which the
woman had cast down. Oddly curious to know what it might contain, he
picked it up and put it in his pocket, and set out afresh on his
journey.
III
Salisbury was a man of habit. When he got home, drenched to the skin,
his clothes hanging lank about him, and a ghastly dew besmearing his
hat, his only thought was of his health, of which he took studious
care. So, after changing his clothes and encasing himself in a warm
dressing-gown he proceeded to prepare a sudorific in the shape of hot
gin and water, warming the latter over one of those spirit lamps which
mitigate the austerities of the modern hermit's life. By the time this
preparation had been imbibed, and Salisbury's disturbed feelings had
been soothed by a pipe of tobacco, he was able to get into bed in a
happy state of vacuity, without a thought of his adventure in the dark
archway, or of the weird fancies with which Dyson had seasoned his
dinner. It was the same at breakfast the next morning, for Salisbury
made a point of not thinking of anything until that meal was over; but
when the cup and saucer were cleared away, and the morning pipe was
lit, he remembered the little ball of paper, and began fumbling in the
pockets of his wet coat. He did not remember into which pocket he had
put it, and as he dived now into one, and now into another, he
experienced a strange feeling of apprehension lest it should not be
there at all, though he could not for the life of him have explained
the importance he attached to what was in all probability mere rubbish.
But he sighed with relief when his fingers touched the crumpled surface
in an inside pocket, and he drew it out gently and laid it on the
little desk by his easy chair with as much care as if it had been some
rare jewel. Salisbury sat smoking and staring at his find for a few
minutes, an odd temptation to throw the thing in the fire and have done
with it struggling with as odd a speculation as to its possible
contents and as to the reason why the infuriated woman should have
flung a bit of paper from her with such vehemence. As might be
expected, it was the latter feeling that conquered in the end, and yet
it was with something like repugnance that he at last took the paper
and unrolled it, and laid it out before him. It was a piece of common
dirty paper, to all appearance torn out of a cheap exercise book, and
in the middle were a few lines written in a queer cramped hand.
Salisbury bent his head and stared eagerly at it for a moment, drawing
a long breath, and then fell back in his chair gazing blankly before
him, till at last with a sudden revulsion he burst into a peal of
laughter, so long and loud and uproarious that the landlady's baby in
the floor below awoke from sleep and echoed his mirth with hideous
yells. But he laughed again and again, and took up the paper to read a
second time what seemed such meaningless nonsense.
"Q. has had to go and see his friends in Paris," it began. "Traverse
Handel S. 'Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice
around the maple tree.'"
Salisbury took up the paper and crumpled it as the angry woman had
done, and aimed it at the fire. He did not throw it there, however, but
tossed it carelessly into the well of the desk, and laughed again. The
sheer folly of the thing offended him, and he was ashamed of his own
eager speculation, as one who pores over the high-sounding
announcements in the agony column of the daily paper, and finds nothing
but advertisement and triviality. He walked to the window, and stared
out at the languid morning life of his quarter; the maids in slatternly
print-dresses washing door-steps, the fishmonger and the butcher on
their rounds, and the tradesmen standing at the doors of their small
shops, drooping for lack of trade and excitement. In the distance a
blue haze gave some grandeur to the prospect, but the view as a whole
was depressing, and would have only interested a student of the life of
London, who finds something rare and choice in its every aspect.
Salisbury turned away in disgust, and settled himself in the easy
chair, upholstered in a bright shade of green, and decked with yellow
gimp, which was the pride and attraction of the apartments. Here he
composed himself to his morning's occupation, the perusal of a novel
that dealt with sport and love in a manner that suggested the
collaboration of a stud-groom and a ladies' college. In an ordinary
way, however, Salisbury would have been carried on by the interest of
the story up to lunch time, but this morning he fidgeted in and out of
his chair, took the book up and laid it down again, and swore at last
to himself and at himself in mere irritation. In point of fact the
jingle of the paper found in the archway had "got into his head," and
do what he would he could not help muttering over and over, "Once
around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the
maple tree." It became a positive pain, like the foolish burden of a
music-hall song, everlastingly quoted, and sung at all hours of the day
and night, and treasured by the street boys as an unfailing resource
for six months together. He went out into the streets, and tried to
forget his enemy in the jostling of the crowds, and the roar and
clatter of the traffic; but presently he would find himself stealing
quietly aside and pacing some deserted byway, vainly puzzling his
brains, and trying to fix some meaning to phrases that were
meaningless. It was a positive relief when Thursday came, and he
remembered that he had made an appointment to go and see Dyson; the
flimsy reveries of the self-styled man of letters appeared entertaining
when compared with this ceaseless iteration, this maze of thought from
which there seemed no possibility of escape. Dyson's abode was in one
of the quietest of the quiet streets that lead down from the Strand to
the river, and when Salisbury passed from the narrow stairway into his
friend's room, he saw that the uncle had been beneficent indeed. The
floor glowed and flamed with all the colours of the east; it was, as
Dyson pompously remarked, "a sunset in a dream," and the lamplight, the
twilight of London streets, was shut out with strangely worked
curtains, glittering here and there with threads of gold. In the
shelves of an oak _armoire_ stood jars and plates of old French china,
and the black and white of etchings not to be found in the Haymarket or
in Bond Street, stood out against the splendour of a Japanese paper.
Salisbury sat down on the settle by the hearth, and sniffed the mingled
fumes of incense and tobacco, wondering and dumb before all this
splendour after the green rep and the oleographs, the gilt-framed
mirror and the lustres of his own apartment.
"I am glad you have come," said Dyson. "Comfortable little room, isn't
it? But you don't look very well, Salisbury. Nothing disagreed with
you, has it?"
"No; but I have been a good deal bothered for the last few days. The
fact is I had an odd kind of--of--adventure, I suppose I may call it,
that night I saw you, and it has worried me a good deal. And the
provoking part of it is that it's the merest nonsense--but, however, I
will tell you all about it, by and by. You were going to let me have
the rest of that odd story you began at the restaurant."
"Yes. But I am afraid, Salisbury, you are incorrigible. You are a slave
to what you call matter of fact. You know perfectly well that in your
heart you think the oddness in that case is of my making, and that it
is all really as plain as the police reports. However, as I have begun,
I will go on. But first we will have something to drink, and you may as
well light your pipe."
Dyson went up to the oak cupboard, and drew from its depths a rotund
bottle and two little glasses quaintly gilded.
"It's Benedictin," he said. "You'll have some, won't you?"
Salisbury assented, and the two men sat sipping and smoking
reflectively for some minutes before Dyson began.
"Let me see," he said at last; "we were at the inquest, weren't we? No,
we had done with that. Ah, I remember. I was telling you that on the
whole I had been successful in my inquiries, investigation, or what
ever you like to call it, into the matter. Wasn't that where I left
off?"
"Yes, that was it. To be precise, I think 'though' was the last word
you said on the matter."