THE SIGN OF EVIL
At eleven o’clock on the following morning Brinsley Otway, having
arranged with a fellow-doctor named Tarrant, living in the Finchley
Road at Golder’s Green, to look after his practice for the day, met
Sibell at Paddington, crossed to Waterloo by tube, and took train to
Hampton Court, where they lunched at the old-world “Mitre” and
afterwards went on to the Guest House.
“Ugh! What a place!” exclaimed the fair-haired, well-dressed girl as
she entered the front door, which was open to admit sunshine and air.
“How dreadfully mouldy it smells, and look at all the cobwebs!”
“Only what one must expect after being closed so long,” remarked the
dark-faced young doctor beside her.
Farmer, the caretaker, and two of the auctioneer’s men in green baize
aprons were in the dining-room, raising a terrible dust in their
futile endeavor to clean up the place, so that they might catalogue
its contents prior to the sale, and allow a few days’ private view.
As Sibell stood in the doorway of the great old room, she could
scarcely see across it for clouds of dust. Through the open windows
came the pale autumn sunlight, which showed up the general shabbiness
and decay of the place, the damp-rotted carpet and hangings, the
moth-eaten tapestry, and the heavy Tudor furniture.
“I could never live in this dreadful place, Brin,” she declared, using
the pet name she had bestowed upon him. “Isn’t it horribly dull and
depressing?”
“It is. But it is very interesting to be in an atmosphere of centuries
ago,” her lover said. “The world has progressed, while this house has
remained just the same. Successive owners have never altered it. It
has been their creed. Apparently they held, for centuries, the same
idea of keeping it just as its original owner had it. The place
reminds me of the old house of Plantin, the Flemish patrician and
printer in Antwerp, who started to print in 1576, and his business has
been carried on uninterrupted till to-day. His house and furniture
have never been altered. It is the same here in the Guest House, which
should be preserved as a museum!”
“If I am compelled to live in it I want everything quite modern,”
declared the girl. “I will have everything cleared out and sold.”
“Won’t you keep anything?” asked the young doctor. “I would certainly
retain something of your ancestors--if I were you, dearest.”
“Perhaps I will when I’ve seen everything. But isn’t the place in a
terrible state?”
It certainly was.
No word had reached either of them regarding the mysterious attack
from which Mr. Gray had suffered on the previous day, or the fact that
he was still confined to his bed with his doctor in attendance. Mr.
Gray had ordered his staff to keep the mysterious affair a complete
secret, being afraid to frighten the young lady into whose possession
the Guest House had so suddenly passed. As a man of business he
hesitated to be any party to the sensational tradition of sinister
happenings in the place. His firm had had the house under its charge
for half a century, and he naturally felt that he should not encourage
any undue interest that might be derogatory to the value of the
estate.
Only that morning he had again telephoned from his bedside ordering
that not a word should leak out to Miss Dare.
From room to room Sibell and her lover wandered, examining the dusty,
neglected home of the D’Aires, finding each room filled with furniture
and objects of art which any museum would be proud to possess.
Upon the panelled walls of several rooms hung time-mellowed family
portraits by great painters of the past, including one of a pretty
little daughter of the ancient French house, Gabrielle D’Aire. Sibell
admired it, and said she would retain it. Not till afterwards did she
learn that it was one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s hitherto unknown
pictures, nor that the larger one which hung beside it was a
Rembrandt. Indeed it was not until a fortnight after, when the art
dealers were allowed to inspect the house, that the treasures were
identified.
Through the dismal, dust-laden house the lovers wandered from room to
room. Everywhere the autumn sunlight fell across the faded carpets
through those old leaded windows of green glass, many panes of which
were broken. Over everything lay the decay of thirty years--the
brilliant, prosperous days of Victoria the Good, the height of
Britain’s world-power.
Together they entered a small room at the rear, the windows of which
overlooked the tangled garden, where the golden leaves of autumn were
fluttering down from the high elms which overshadowed the house. The
little room was lined from floor to ceiling with heavy books, the
leather bindings of which smelt close and stuffy--the
eighteenth-century room of a studious man, which had probably been
neglected ever since the accession of George the Third. The
writing-table was a little narrow one like a bedside table, and the
chairs were all Carolean, cane-seated and cane-backed.
“This seems to be one of the cosiest rooms,” Sibell remarked. “It
shall be your own little den, Brin. You can fit it up as a laboratory,
so that you can study all your germs, or ‘bugs,’ as you call them.”
Her lover, who had his hand already clasped in hers, for they were
alone, kissed her upon the lips, and replied:
“My darling, any room will do for my research work. It is best
upstairs in the attics, so as to be out of the way.”
“But, my dear Brin, I insist that you have a nice room, dearest,” she
said, looking up into his face with eyes full of the lovelight. “This
room will be quite handy for everything.”
She gazed into his face with wondering eyes--those big eyes which
always held him beneath her spell, so that he could never look upon
another woman with any other feeling than as a doctor would towards
his female patients.
“Only if we marry, Sibell.”
“Marry? Of course we shall!” she cried. “I am yours, if you will only
accept me! Did we not decide that long ago?”
“You were poor then. Now you are rich, my darling. A penniless doctor
like myself is but a poor husband for you.”
“My darling Brin. How very foolish you are! What are you talking
about?”
“Only that I think Gretton would make a far better husband for you.
Your guardian doesn’t care for me--neither does Lady Wyndcliffe. I
feel it always. I am only a mere hard-working suburban doctor, with
nothing except the fees I earn in the poor but respectable
neighborhood of the Finchley Road, and without even a single public
appointment. Each one I seek is always given to somebody else. And yet
in bacteriology and toxicology I earned honors at my examinations.”
“Don’t worry, my dear old Brin. I am yours--and you know it. I want no
other man and will have no other,” declared the girl sweetly, as she
drew his head towards her.
He hugged her to his breast and kissed her fondly upon the lips, for
they were alone in that dingy room, nobody being near. Her words gave
him the greatest comfort and encouragement any man could receive, for
he realized that he loved her with that great, all-absorbing affection
which, alas! comes to few men, love, alas! being so often a mere
passionate pretence in order to secure sympathy, companionship, or,
more often, fortune. As it has ever been through all the ages, so it
is to-day, every woman of every country is open to the flattery of a
man who seeks her, not from any love of her, but for his own
self-advancement in finance, in the higher social scale, or the puny
one of suburban or provincial bridge-parties.
The onlooker who travels the world over, and whose heart is hidebound,
sees so much that is amusing, on board liners, on expensive tours, and
in hotels-de-luxe from end to end of Europe or America, that he begins
to wonder if there really exists any real love commencing with the
capital L.
This is the note of this present romance of the writer’s
observation--the love between the poor but pretty, neat-ankled girl
who suddenly inherited a fortune, and with it a house of evil repute
as residence, and a hard-working suburban London doctor, whose modern
knowledge was equal to many great specialists in Harley Street,
and--though he did not know it--his name had already been placed upon
the list of Home Office experts to be called upon to analyse and fix
the culprit in the next case of any fresh mystery of crime submitted
by Scotland Yard.
As an ordinary hard-working practitioner in Golder’s Green he had
given evidence at the Old Bailey, six months before, in a most
complicated case which concerned the introduction of germs of a fatal
disease into the whiskey-and-soda nightcap of a man who had motored a
friend and his wife home from the Palace Theatre. Otway had, with
unerring knowledge, fixed the guilt upon both the accused, who were
convicted for attempted murder, Scotland Yard having afterwards sent
him their thanks.
Through that trial Otway had been marked out for advancement on the
lines followed by Pepper, Willcox, and the select list of Home Office
pathologists whose word is law to a jury in any criminal court.
Though the pair were unaware of it, the room in which they stood had
been the study of the great lawyer Sir Geoffrey Dare, who was famous
in the early days of King George III, and whose name has been handed
down in legal history as the prosecutor in the famous case of the
Durrants, husband and wife, whom he proved to have poisoned a family
of six persons in order to secure their inheritance. In that room many
conferences had been held with witnesses in the famous trial, which
resulted in both prisoners being hanged at Tyburn. Sir Geoffrey, who
was the most famous criminal lawyer of his time, was brother of John
Dare, the traveller who first explored the Areg region of the Sahara.
Otway took from one of the shelves a heavy, parchment-bound tome, and
found it to be an old treatise on Roman law, while next to it was an
early folio edition of Shakespeare. As a lover of books, sight of them
appealed to him, and he said:
“Before these are sold I would love to go through them. This
Shakespeare, though not the first folio, is evidently of considerable
value.”
“You’ll be choked with dust, darling,” she replied. “Wait until they
clean down the place. Isn’t it awful? Look at the cobwebs.”
They took a final glance around the dingy little room, where the light
struggled in through the dirt-encrusted windows, which could not be
opened because their frames had rotted. Hence the place smelt close
and musty.
“When cleaned and redecorated it will be most charming,” her lover
reassured her. “I can’t think what has given rise to the belief that
this is a house of evil. It certainly has been neglected, and, as in
many other houses all over the country, people have died suddenly
here, but the evil is, I feel certain, only imaginary--the result of
some ill-natured local gossip that has grown into tradition.”
Had he known of the sudden and unaccountable manner in which Mr. Gray
had been attacked he would certainly not have expressed such an
opinion. But happily for the lovers, the occurrence was being kept a
profound secret.
They ascended the broad oak staircase, on which the thick-pile carpet
still remained, though it was in holes in many places, showing the
wood beneath. In the great drawing-room the lovers found much to
interest them as they made a tour of inspection of the spacious
apartment. At once they saw that the furniture, though sadly out of
repair, was genuinely antique, and that the pictures were of
considerable value. Near the centre of the room stood the ancient
armchair upholstered in faded crimson velvet to which Mr. Gray had
staggered when he had been so mysteriously seized with illness, and
the young doctor, knowing nothing of the occurrence, remarked upon the
handsome Renaissance carving of its short, bulbous legs.
Together the pair stood at the dingy, weather-stained old windows
gazing down upon the big, neglected garden, where the weeds grew
breast high and the leaves were floating down from the ancient trees.
By its successive owners that room had been kept practically the same
as it was in Henry the Eighth’s time, except that the carpets and some
of the furniture had been renewed by the father of the last owner on
his marriage; an apartment full of objects of art, the atmosphere of
which was that of the days of the Great Cardinal and possibly one of
the most carefully preserved rooms in the whole Kingdom.
From room to room they passed, ascending to the bedrooms and servants’
quarters just as Mr. Gray and his assistants had done. They saw the
ancient four-poster bedsteads, with their hangings of faded and
time-stained chintz, the genuine Chippendale washstands and mirrors,
the old fire-screens of needlework, and cushions worked in colored
wools by hands that had crumbled to dust two centuries ago.
Wherever they went they raised dust, causing Sibell to sneeze
violently, and by each thing they touched their hands became
blackened, the girl remarking that her gloves were already ruined.
After nearly a couple of hours they descended, and, having chatted
with the fat caretaker Farmer--who made no mention of Askew’s
experience on the previous night, as he treated it as mere
imagination--they left and returned to London, where, after dining
together at the Trocadero, Otway saw his sweetheart off to Cookham
from Paddington.
Next day the young doctor, having arranged with his friend Tarrant to
look after his practice, set out early for the Guest House and spent
the whole of the day in the great lawyer’s close-smelling library
going through his books. Already an expert from a well-known West End
dealer in rare books was there at the invitation of the auctioneers, a
snuffy, white-bearded old gentleman named Ebenezer Tewe, and together
they dusted and examined the title-pages and condition of volume after
volume.
Some of them Mr. Tewe set aside as valuable, and others which took
Otway’s fancy he, in turn, put away from the others. One treasure
Otway found, which Mr. Tewe agreed was extremely valuable, was a
vellum-bound volume of copies of the secret archives of Venice under
the Doges concerning unknown poisons, how they were concocted, how
they were used to remove the enemies of the ancient Republic of
Venice, and the fees paid by the Republic to the secret assassins.
As a research worker in the field of toxicology, Brinsley Otway seized
upon it, while Mr. Tewe agreed that it was one of the most unique and
valuable of all the volumes in the library.
“There are only three copies extant,” said the snuffy old bibliophile.
“One is in the Bodleian, the other in the French National Library, and
the third is in private hands in America. It was sold at Sotheby’s for
£6,300, and unfortunately went across the Atlantic. The compilation
of it must have meant a lifetime of delving into the faded parchments
in the archives of Venice.”
“The old Italian language will puzzle me, but the Latin part is quite
easy,” Otway said, highly delighted with his fortunate find.
Throughout the day the two men worked together in the close little
room, regardless of the half-inch of dust everywhere. Mr. Tewe
identified several rare early printed books from the Nüremberg and
Venetian presses, while with them was a file of _Punch_, from its
earliest number down to 1883, together with the first six years of the
issue of _The Times_, bound in calf, in a dozen volumes.
But the majority of the books were out-of-date law treatises,
practically worthless to-day, though among them was a manuscript book
upon English heraldry, with illuminated coats-of-arms, written in the
crabbed and faded hand of Sir William Segar, Garter King of Arms in
the reign of James the First.
Without thought of lunch, so absorbed were they, they continued their
investigations until the light faded, and then Otway, having packed up
the precious volume of Venetian archives, together with two or three
other books, ascended the broad staircase to speak with the
auctioneer’s representative, who was in the upper drawing-room.
Afterwards he left and hurried back across London to the small,
red-brick, corner house of jerry-built type in the Finchley Road where
he carried on his practice.
Old Mrs. Mobbs, his housekeeper, handed him several telephone messages
from patients which she had given over to Dr. Tarrant, who lived
farther up the road and who was going on a fortnight’s holiday, during
which time Otway had promised to look after his practice.
In the cosy little bachelor sitting-room his modest dinner was laid, a
single cover, for he usually ate a chop at nine o’clock, when the last
of his suburban patients had left the surgery.
He was in the act of eating a peach, which he had taken from a plate
on the sideboard, after untying the parcel of books which he had
brought from the Guest House, when he was suddenly seized by an
unusual faintness.
For a few seconds he stood rigid. The peach fell from his nerveless
fingers. Then, crossing to the mahogany sideboard, he poured out
unsteadily some brandy and swallowed it. It burned his throat. At the
same moment he was seized by a violent fit of shivering. Convulsions
shook his strong frame, while excruciating pains shot through his
extremities. He stood as one transfixed, when a sudden spasm shot
through his heart, and the glass fell from his fingers and was smashed
to fragments.
Instantly he realized that the symptoms were such as he had never
observed before. He held his breath and set his teeth. Then, with a
supreme effort, and his eyes starting from his head, he managed to
utter a sharp cry which brought his old housekeeper hurriedly into the
room.
“I--_I’m very ill_!” he gasped. “Fetch Dr. Tarrant! Quick! Tell him
that--that--I----”
But, alas! the sentence remained unfinished, for the poor fellow
reeled and fell senseless upon the carpet, yet another victim of that
mysterious evil influence which pervaded the long-closed house at
Hampton Court.