THE MONKEY-GOD
Early one stormy morning, about two o’clock, when the rain beat upon
the window-panes, Charlesworth and the smart chauffeur, Budd, were
seated together in complete darkness in the long dining-room. They sat
but uttered no word. Indeed, the only signs of anyone being present
were two red ends of cigarettes, for both were smoking.
Sitting in silence with drawn blinds, they had been there since the
house had been closed at eleven, none of the occupants aware that they
were keeping a night vigil, or that they had done so for many previous
nights.
So as not to show any light, they lit one cigarette by the end of the
other, and smoked on without a single word. Continual smoking kept
them from dozing, as night after night they had sat there, each with a
bottle of beer at his elbow, until dawn, when they would noiselessly
retire. This strange procedure had been repeated nightly by the two
men ever since they had entered Sibell’s service.
Suddenly there sounded a noise in the farther corner of the dark
room--a slight hiss, which caused both men to spring to their feet.
The low hiss, as though of some reptile or large insect, was repeated
twice.
“Careful!” whispered Charlesworth to his fellow-servant. “Not a
sound!”
“Right,” was Budd’s whispered reply, and, opening the well-oiled door,
they both crept in their socks out into the hall, where, at the top of
the staircase, they saw a small, dull-green light moving very slowly,
until it stopped at the head of the stairs. By its light they could
distinguish something moving--a gloved human hand, it appeared,
holding something that shone--a knife. The hand seemed to be carefully
scraping or picking the handsome carved mahogany post which held the
heavy balustrade.
For fully three minutes the two watchers, warned of some intrusion by
the electrical contrivance which had produced the curious hissing in
the dining-room, looked on in surprise. That tiny green light was
distinctly weird and uncanny.
Presently the light moved from the head of the staircase slowly along
the corridor to an end room, which Sibell had made into her own little
den. Its door stood open. The faint, dull light of the night sky, the
blind not having been drawn, revealed that the green light was carried
by a man bent and short of stature, a man who wore surgical rubber
gloves, and evidently also felt slippers, as his feet fell silently.
Creeping behind him, the two men watched him advance to Sibell’s
writing-table, upon which he placed his little green lamp, with an
open penknife. Then, selecting her fountain-pen from the silver tray
of the handsome inkstand, he carefully unscrewed the cap. It was a
self-filler of unusual type. Taking from his pocket a small phial of
some liquid, which appeared to be ink, he inserted the nib of the pen
and quickly filled it. Then, with gloved hands, he carefully plunged
the whole pen into the inky liquid, and afterwards screwed on the cap,
and then replaced it just as he had found it.
Upon the polished silver tray he allowed a few drops of ink to fall,
and at the same time he rubbed, with his rubber glove, a quantity of
the liquid upon the polished writing-table.
It was as though he was intent upon polishing the whole table with
ink.
As the stranger turned, Charlesworth suddenly flashed his bright
electric torch full upon his face, causing him to stagger back in
fright, while at that same second, Budd switched on the electric light
in the room.
“We are officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I
arrest you, John Dare, _alias_ Bettinson, and lots of other names,
upon charges of wilful murder,” Charlesworth said in his deep voice.
“You--you arrest me!” screamed the wily, white-haired old fellow.
“Arrest me! And in my own house! I defy you! Touch me if you dare, and
from the slightest scratch with this knife you’ll die!” And with a
demoniacal grin he held up his little pen-knife, which he had used
upon the stairs.
Next instant Detective-Sergeant Budd threw himself upon him, seizing
the hand which held the fatal blade, while Inspector Charlesworth
strove to get the dangerous knife from his hand. But the old man, in
that demented state, screamed and yelled like some wild animal,
fighting with the ferocity of a tiger, twisting and swaying as he
tried to wound one or the other of his captors.
“This house is mine--mine! You understand?” he shrieked wildly. “My
brother Henry should have left it to me! It is mine by law! All these
years I’ve waited and have been in it, and now those who usurp what is
my property--all who dare enter here--must die. They die
mysteriously--of--of heart disease!” And then he gave vent to a most
hideous screeching laugh that showed him to have suddenly become
raving in his lunacy.
To secure him was nearly impossible, and as Sibell and two maids,
awakened in fright, appeared in their dressing-gowns, Charlesworth
turned to his mistress, and said:
“Excuse me, miss, we’ve caught a burglar! Will you please telephone to
the police-station at once, and simply say that Charlesworth wants
immediate assistance here? They’ll know.”
At hearing those words, the homicidal maniac made a renewed and most
desperate struggle, still holding the dangerous knife in a grip of
steel. Then, of a sudden, Charlesworth, in his efforts to obtain
possession of it, drew his hand so close to the prisoner’s neck that
the point of the blade entered just beneath his right jaw.
“God!” he shrieked, realizing what had happened. “I--I’ll die! You
damned fiends--you--you----” But slowly, a few seconds later, he
collapsed, while the knife fell from his nerveless fingers. “This
place is mine!--mine by inheritance!” he wailed. “Henry had no right
to it--never had,” he went on. “I was born here, and--and I--I die
here! But I’ve cheated you all. Of the Malays I learnt of their
wonderful _ipoh gadong_, the poison of which, by a tiny scratch, or a
little beneath the finger-nails, causes certain death--the time-poison
which no Western doctor can yet detect--how its effect can be delayed
for a day, a week, or a month. I know! I alone hold the secret of the
old Bomor Enche Jalal of Kelentan. I brought the ingredients to
England with me. And you sha’n’t know them--no, never shall know them.
Their secret is mine, and I alone will hold it!”
In the arms of the two detectives the old fellow became limp and
inert, so that they placed him upon the couch, where he lay until
Sibell, naturally very excited, ran back from the telephone.
Suddenly old John Dare started, and with his thin, upraised hands
began a series of wild incantations which, though nobody understood,
were undoubtedly in Malay, for he called upon the langsuir, which is,
to the natives, a terrible female vampire who afflicts only brides. He
imitated the repulsive laugh--“_haw-haw haw-ho_”--of the Malayan
fish-owl, or “ghost-bird,” while time after time he invoked the anger
of Hantu Doman, his deity, the Monkey-God.
To those present it was only gibberish, but apparently he made use of
the same incantations as he did in the presence of poor Farmer before
his mysterious death.
“Did you hear that?” asked Inspector Charlesworth to Budd. “Take a
note of the name of that poison--_ipoh gadong_.” Then he turned to
Sibell, and warned her not to touch her fountain-pen or the balustrade
of the stairs.
“Later I’ll explain all to you, miss,” the police officer added. “It
is a great consolation to us that, after all, we’ve caught ‘The
Chameleon.’ We know that they called him that in France, where he
committed at least two murders by means of his poison secret, and,
after trial at the Assizes of the Seine, he was confined in the French
criminal lunatic asylum at Toulouse for life. But he escaped, and
arrived in London, where he’s been earning a precarious living in the
City on account of his knowledge of the Malay language. And so----”
His explanation was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the
inspector from Hampton and two constables.
“Fixed up ‘The Chameleon’ all right, sir?” asked the rosy-faced
officer, taking in the situation at a glance.
“Yes, Fowler. All is O.K. Caught him red-handed, and he’s poisoned
himself. I don’t expect he’ll live long. Good job for him if he
doesn’t, eh?”
“You swine!” whined the prostrate man suddenly. “Live long! I don’t
care how long I live! This house is mine. They sold its contents, but
those who helped to do it suffered!” And he yelled like a maniac. “The
man in charge dared to lay a hand upon me, and he died. The doctor who
was to marry the girl who took my inheritance from me had a narrow
escape, because--because I timed it wrong. I was a fool to do so--a
fool--_fool_!”
The police officers looked at each other in silence, while
Charlesworth in a kind voice suggested that Sibell and the maids might
return to their rooms.
This they did, when, a quarter of an hour later, the prisoner was
removed on the ambulance to the police-station, but on the way his
heart failed, so that on arrival he was found to be dead.
Before midday the fountain-pen, with its infected ink, and some fine
splinters of mahogany from the carved head-post of the banisters, were
in the hands of the Home Office pathologist, who, after careful
analysis extending over the next four days, certified that the most
dangerous and most virulent poison had been applied.
A most scrupulous examination was afterwards made of the house of
evil, where it was discovered that “The Chameleon,” a nickname given
him in the asylum at Toulouse because of his amazingly clever
disguises, his strange adventures, and his sound knowledge of
medicine, and as such registered in the criminal archives at the Paris
Sûreté, had, even before the death of his brother Henry, been in the
habit of entering the house at night with his green light, and in his
demented state he had often sat and enjoyed himself through the night
hours in those long-closed rooms, imagining himself the possessor of
the long-closed-up house.
His mode of entry into the place was discovered on the evening of the
day of his death.
When Inspector Charlesworth was faced with the puzzling problem, he
most naturally thought of the shut-up wine-cellar. The door of this
they found ajar, and, with Budd, they struggled past a number of
well-filled bins of old port and sherry to an exit which consisted of
a rotting wooden lattice covered by brambles. They struggled through
these, to find themselves ascending some moss-grown stone steps, after
which, after another struggle, and tearing their clothes, they found
themselves in a thicket on the other side of the adjoining garden!
By such means had the lunatic brother of Henry Dare--who for years
lodged with a dear, deaf old widow at Molesey--gained access to the
old house that had once been his home, and of which he still, in his
demented state, felt that he held possession.
To the public the actual truth never leaked out. It was better so. The
coroner, after a consultation at the Home Office, held his inquiry
without the aid of a jury, and all the world was told was that at a
house at Hampton Court a burglar had been captured by the police, and
that the shock to him proved so great that, on being conveyed to the
police-station, he had died of heart disease.