the chaplain, when the door was swung open and two warders entered
leading Duncan Warner between them. He glanced round him with a set
face, stepped resolutely forward, and seated himself upon the chair.
“Touch her off!” said he.
It was barbarous to keep him in suspense. The chaplain murmured a few
words in his ear, the attendant placed the cap upon his head, and then,
while we all held our breath, the wire and the metal were brought in
contact.
“Great Scott!” shouted Duncan Warner.
He had bounded in his chair as the frightful shock crashed through his
system. But he was not dead. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed far more
brightly than they had done before. There was only one change, but it
was a singular one. The black had passed from his hair and beard as the
shadow passes from a landscape. They were both as white as snow. And yet
there was no other sign of decay. His skin was smooth and plump and
lustrous as a child’s.
The Marshal looked at the committee with a reproachful eye.
“There seems to be some hitch here, gentlemen,” said he.
We three practical men looked at each other.
Peter Stulpnagel smiled pensively.
“I think that another one should do it,” said I.
Again the connection was made, and again Duncan Warner sprang in his
chair and shouted, but, indeed, were it not that he still remained in
the chair none of us would have recognised him. His hair and his beard
had shredded off in an instant, and the room looked like a barber’s shop
on a Saturday night. There he sat, his eyes still shining, his skin
radiant with the glow of perfect health, but with a scalp as bald as a
Dutch cheese, and a chin without so much as a trace of down. He began to
revolve one of his arms, slowly and doubtfully at first, but with more
confidence as he went on.
“That joint,” said he, “has puzzled half the doctors on the Pacific
slope. It’s as good as new, and as limber as a hickory twig.”
“You are feeling pretty well?” asked the old German.
“Never better in my life,” said Duncan Warner cheerily.
The situation was a painful one. The Marshal glared at the committee.
Peter Stulpnagel grinned and rubbed his hands. The engineers scratched
their heads. The bald-headed prisoner revolved his arm and looked
pleased.
“I think that one more shock----” began the chairman.
“No, sir,” said the Marshal; “we’ve had foolery enough for one morning.
We are here for an execution, and an execution we’ll have.”
“What do you propose?”
“There’s a hook handy upon the ceiling. Fetch a rope, and we’ll soon set
this matter straight.”
There was another awkward delay while the warders departed for the cord.
Peter Stulpnagel bent over Duncan Warner, and whispered something in his
ear. The desperado stared in surprise.
“You don’t say?” he asked.
The German nodded.
“What! No ways?”
Peter shook his head, and the two began to laugh as though they shared
some huge joke between them.
The rope was brought, and the Marshal himself slipped the noose over the
criminal’s neck. Then the two warders, the assistant and he swung their
victim into the air. For half an hour he hung--a dreadful sight--from
the ceiling. Then in solemn silence they lowered him down, and one of
the warders went out to order the shell to be brought round. But as he
touched ground again what was our amazement when Duncan Warner put his
hands up to his neck, loosened the noose, and took a long, deep breath.
“Paul Jefferson’s sale is goin’ well,” he remarked, “I could see the
crowd from up yonder,” and he nodded at the hook in the ceiling.
“Up with him again!” shouted the Marshal, “we’ll get the life out of him
somehow.”
In an instant the victim was up at the hook once more.
They kept him there for an hour, but when he came down he was perfectly
garrulous.
“Old man Plunket goes too much to the Arcady Saloon,” said he. “Three
times he’s been there in an hour; and him with a family. Old man Plunket
would do well to swear off.”
It was monstrous and incredible, but there it was. There was no getting
round it. The man was there talking when he ought to have been dead. We
all sat staring in amazement, but United States Marshal Carpenter was
not a man to be euchred so easily. He motioned the others to one side,
so that the prisoner was left standing alone.
“Duncan Warner,” said he slowly, “you are here to play your part, and I
am here to play mine. Your game is to live if you can, and my game is to
carry out the sentence of the law. You’ve beat us on electricity, I’ll
give you one there. And you’ve beat us on hanging, for you seem to
thrive on it. But it’s my turn to beat you now, for my duty has to be
done.”
He pulled a six-shooter from his coat as he spoke, and fired all the
shots through the body of the prisoner. The room was so filled with
smoke that we could see nothing, but when it cleared the prisoner was
still standing there, looking down in disgust at the front of his coat.
“Coats must be cheap where you come from,” said he. “Thirty dollars it
cost me, and look at it now. The six holes in front are bad enough, but
four of the balls have passed out, and a pretty fine state the back must
be in.”
The Marshal’s revolver fell from his hand, and he dropped his arms to
his sides, a beaten man.
“Maybe some of you gentlemen can tell me what this means,” said he,
looking helplessly at the committee.
Peter Stulpnagel took a step forward.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” said he.
“You seem to be the only person who knows anything.”
“I _am_ the only person who knows anything. I should have warned these
gentlemen; but, as they would not listen to me, I have allowed them to
learn by experience. What you have done with your electricity is that
you have increased the man’s vitality until he can deny death for
centuries.”
“Centuries!”
“Yes, it will take the wear of hundreds of years to exhaust the enormous
nervous energy with which you have drenched him. Electricity is life,
and you have charged him with it to the utmost. Perhaps in fifty years
you might execute him, but I am not sanguine about it.”
“Great Scott! What shall I do with him?” cried the unhappy Marshal.
Peter Stulpnagel shrugged his shoulders.
“It seems to me that it does not much matter what you do with him now,”
said he.
“Maybe we could drain the electricity out of him again. Suppose we hang
him up by the heels?”
“No, no, it’s out of the question.”
“Well, well, he shall do no more mischief in Los Amigos, anyhow,” said
the Marshal, with decision. “He shall go into the new gaol. The prison
will wear him out.”
“On the contrary,” said Peter Stulpnagel, “I think that it is much more
probable that he will wear out the prison.”
It was rather a fiasco, and for years we didn’t talk more about it than
we could help, but it’s no secret now, and I thought you might like to
jot down the facts in your case-book.
IX
HOW IT HAPPENED
She was a writing medium. This is what she wrote:--
I can remember some things upon that evening most distinctly, and others
are like some vague, broken dreams. That is what makes it so difficult
to tell a connected story. I have no idea now what it was that had taken
me to London and brought me back so late. It just merges into all my
other visits to London. But from the time that I got out at the little
country station everything is extraordinarily clear. I can live it
again--every instant of it.
I remember so well walking down the platform and looking at the
illuminated clock at the end which told me that it was half-past eleven.
I remember also my wondering whether I could get home before midnight.
Then I remember the big motor, with its glaring headlights and glitter
of polished brass, waiting for me outside. It was my new
thirty-horse-power Robur, which had only been delivered that day. I
remember also asking Perkins, my chauffeur, how she had gone, and his
saying that he thought she was excellent.
“I’ll try her myself,” said I, and I climbed into the driver’s seat.
“The gears are not the same,” said he. “Perhaps, sir, I had better
drive.”
“No; I should like to try her,” said I.
And so we started on the five-mile drive for home.
My old car had the gears as they used always to be in notches on a bar.
In this car you passed the gear-lever through a gate to get on the
higher ones. It was not difficult to master, and soon I thought that I
understood it. It was foolish, no doubt, to begin to learn a new system
in the dark, but one often does foolish things, and one has not always
to pay the full price for them. I got along very well until I came to
Claystall Hill. It is one of the worst hills in England, a mile and a
half long and one in six in places, with three fairly sharp curves. My
park gates stand at the very foot of it upon the main London road.
We were just over the brow of this hill, where the grade is steepest,
when the trouble began. I had been on the top speed, and wanted to get
her on the free; but she stuck between gears, and I had to get her back
on the top again. By this time she was going at a great rate, so I
clapped on both brakes, and one after the other they gave way. I didn’t
mind so much when I felt my footbrake snap, but when I put all my weight
on my side-brake, and the lever clanged to its full limit without a
catch, it brought a cold sweat out of me. By this time we were fairly
tearing down the slope. The lights were brilliant, and I brought her
round the first curve all right. Then we did the second one, though it
was a close shave for the ditch. There was a mile of straight then with
the third curve beneath it, and after that the gate of the park. If I
could shoot into that harbour all would be well, for the slope up to the
house would bring her to a stand.
Perkins behaved splendidly. I should like that to be known. He was
perfectly cool and alert. I had thought at the very beginning of taking
the bank, and he read my intention.
“I wouldn’t do it, sir,” said he. “At this pace it must go over and we
should have it on the top of us.”
Of course he was right. He got to the electric switch and had it off, so
we were in the free; but we were still running at a fearful pace. He
laid his hands on the wheel.
“I’ll keep her steady,” said he, “if you care to jump and chance it. We
can never get round that curve. Better jump, sir.”
“No,” said I; “I’ll stick it out. You can jump if you like.”
“I’ll stick it with you, sir,” said he.
If it had been the old car I should have jammed the gear-lever into the
reverse, and seen what would happen. I expect she would have stripped
her gears or smashed up somehow, but it would have been a chance. As it
was, I was helpless. Perkins tried to climb across, but you couldn’t do
it going at that pace. The wheels were whirring like a high wind and the
big body creaking and groaning with the strain. But the lights were
brilliant, and one could steer to an inch. I remember thinking what an
awful and yet majestic sight we should appear to any one who met us. It
was a narrow road, and we were just a great, roaring, golden death to
any one who came in our path.
We got round the corner with one wheel three feet high upon the bank. I
thought we were surely over, but after staggering for a moment she
righted darted onwards. That was the third corner and the last one.
There was only the park gate now. It was facing us, but, as luck would
have it, not facing us directly. It was about twenty yards to the left
up the main road into which we ran. Perhaps I could have done it, but I
expect that the steering-gear had been jarred when we ran on the bank.
The wheel did not turn easily. We shot out of the lane. I saw the open
gate on the left. I whirled round my wheel with all the strength of my
wrists. Perkins and I threw our bodies across, and then the next
instant, going at fifty miles an hour, my right front wheel struck full
on the right-hand pillar of my own gate. I heard the crash. I was
conscious of flying through the air, and then--and then----!
* * * * *
When I became aware of my own existence once more I was among some
brushwood in the shadow of the oaks upon the lodge side of the drive. A
man was standing beside me. I imagined at first that it was Perkins, but
when I looked again I saw that it was Stanley, a man whom I had known at
college some years before, and for whom I had a really genuine
affection. There was always something peculiarly sympathetic to me in
Stanley’s personality; and I was proud to think that I had some similar
influence upon him. At the present moment I was surprised to see him,
but I was like a man in a dream, giddy and shaken and quite prepared to
take things as I found them without questioning them.
“What a smash!” I said. “Good Lord, what an awful smash!”
He nodded his head, and even in the gloom I could see that he was
smiling the gentle, wistful smile which I connected with him.
I was quite unable to move. Indeed, I had not any desire to try to move.
But my senses were exceedingly alert. I saw the wreck of the motor lit
up by the moving lanterns. I saw the little group of people and heard
the hushed voices. There were the lodge-keeper and his wife, and one or
two more. They were taking no notice of me, but were very busy round the
car. Then suddenly I heard a cry of pain.
“The weight is on him. Lift it easy,” cried a voice.
“It’s only my leg!” said another one, which I recognised as Perkins’s.
“Where’s master?” he cried.
“Here I am,” I answered, but they did not seem to hear me. They were all
bending over something which lay in front of the car.
Stanley laid his hand upon my shoulder, and his touch was inexpressibly
soothing. I felt light and happy, in spite of all.
“No pain, of course?” said he.
“None,” said I.
“There never is,” said he.
And then suddenly a wave of amazement passed over me. Stanley! Stanley!
Why, Stanley had surely died of enteric at Bloemfontein in the Boer War!
“Stanley!” I cried, and the words seemed to choke my throat--“Stanley,
you are dead.”
He looked at me with the same old gentle, wistful smile.
“So are you,” he answered.
X
LOT NO. 249
Of the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee, and of
the cause of the great terror of Abercrombie Smith, it may be that no
absolute and final judgment will ever be delivered. It is true that we
have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself, and such
corroboration as he could look for from Thomas Styles the servant, from
the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old’s, and from such other
people as chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident
in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the story must rest
upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that
one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture,
some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of Nature has been
overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as
the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious
this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of
science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and
terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and
confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-paths into which
the human spirit may wander.
In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a
corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the
open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its
years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and
knitted together with withes and strand of ivy, as though the old mother
had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From a door a
stone stair curves upwards spirally, passing two landings, and
terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the
tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has
flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left
these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic
scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age,
how full and strong had been that tide of young English life. And what
was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies,
save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a
stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here
were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and
many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like
grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.
In the month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the sets
of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each
set consisted simply of a sitting-room and a bedroom, while the two
corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a
coal-cellar, and the other as the living-room of the servant, or scout,
Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him.
To right and to left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that
the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain seclusion, which made
the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were
the three who occupied them now--Abercrombie Smith above, Edward
Bellingham beneath him, and William Monkhouse Lee upon the lowest story.
It was ten o’clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay
back in his armchair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe
between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there
lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro
Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon
the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their
hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air men--men
whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and
robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke of his college boat, and Smith was an
even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its shadow
over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week which
health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with
scattered bones, models, and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as
well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and a
set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which,
with Hastie’s help, he might take his exercise in its most compressed
and least distant form. They knew each other very well--so well that
they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest
development of companionship.
“Have some whisky,” said Abercrombie Smith at last between two
cloudbursts. “Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle.”
“No, thanks. I’m in for the sculls. I don’t liquor when I’m training.
How about you?”
“I’m reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone.”
Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.
“By the way, Smith,” asked Hastie, presently, “have you made the
acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?”
“Just a nod when we pass. Nothing more.”
“Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of
them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don’t think I should take
them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there’s much amiss with
Monkhouse Lee.”
“Meaning the thin one?”
“Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don’t think there is
any vice in him. But then you can’t know him without knowing
Bellingham.”
“Meaning the fat one?”
“Yes, the fat one. And he’s a man whom I, for one, would rather not
know.”
Abercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his
companion.
“What’s up, then?” he asked. “Drink? Cards? Cad? You used not to be
censorious.”
“Ah! you evidently don’t know the man, or you wouldn’t ask. There’s
something damnable about him--something reptilian. My gorge always rises
at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices--an evil liver.
He’s no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his
line that they have ever had in the college.”
“Medicine or classics?”
“Eastern languages. He’s a demon at them. Chillingworth met him
somewhere above the second cataract last long, and he told me that he
just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned
among them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and
Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all ready to kiss the hem of his
frock-coat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who
sit on rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when they
saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said five words they just lay
down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he never saw
anything like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right, too, and
strutted about among them and talked down to them like a Dutch uncle.
Pretty good for an undergrad. of Old’s, wasn’t it?”
“Why do you say you can’t know Lee without knowing Bellingham?”
“Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright
little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It’s disgusting to see
that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that’s what they always remind
me of.”
Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of
the grate.
“You show every card in your hand, old chap,” said he. “What a
prejudiced, green-eyed, evil-thinking old man it is! You have really
nothing against the fellow except that.”
“Well, I’ve known her ever since she was as long as that cherry-wood
pipe, and I don’t like to see her taking risks. And it is a risk. He
looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You
remember his row with Long Norton?”
“No; you always forget that I am a freshman.”
“Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along by
the river. There were several fellows going along it, Bellingham in
front, when they came on an old market-woman coming the other way. It
had been raining--you know what those fields are like when it has
rained--and the path ran between the river and a great puddle that was
nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path, and
push the old girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to
terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and Long Norton, who is
as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it. One
word led to another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across the
fellow’s shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss about it, and it’s a
treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when they meet
now. By Jove, Smith, it’s nearly eleven o’clock!”
“No hurry. Light your pipe again.”
“Not I. I’m supposed to be in training. Here I’ve been sitting gossiping
when I ought to have been safely tucked up. I’ll borrow your skull, if
you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I’ll take the
little bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won’t need them.
Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry them very well under my
arm. Good-night, my son, and take my tip as to your neighbour.”
When Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the
winding stair, Abercrombie Smith hurled his pipe into the wastepaper
basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a
formidable green-covered volume, adorned with great coloured maps of
that strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless
monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in
medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and
this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his
profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat
hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was
yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end
overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen
and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a
name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at
Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.