A few months after Villiers's meeting with Herbert, Mr. Clarke was
sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth, resolutely guarding his
fancies from wandering in the direction of the bureau. For more than a
week he had succeeded in keeping away from the 'Memoirs,' and he
cherished hopes of a complete self-reformation; but, in spite of his
endeavours, he could not hush the wonder and the strange curiosity that
that last case he had written down had excited within him. He had put
the case, or rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific
friend, who shook his head, and thought Clarke getting queer, and on
this particular evening Clarke was making an effort to rationalize the
story, when a sudden knock at his door roused him from his meditations.
'Mr. Villiers to see you, sir.'
'Dear me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me up; I have not
seen you for many months; I should think nearly a year. Come in, come
in. And how are you, Villiers? Want any advice about investments?'
'No, thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is pretty safe. No,
Clarke, I have really come to consult you about a rather curious matter
that has been brought under my notice of late. I am afraid you will
think it all rather absurd when I tell my tale. I sometimes think so
myself, and that's just why I made up my mind to come to you, as I know
you're a practical man.'
Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the 'Memoirs to prove the Existence of the
Devil.'
'Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the best of
my ability. What is the nature of the case?'
'It's an extraordinary thing altogether. You know my ways; I always keep
my eyes open in the streets, and in my time I have chanced upon some
queer customers, and queer cases too, but this, I think, beats all. I
was coming out of a restaurant one nasty winter night about three months
ago; I had had a capital dinner and a good bottle of Chianti, and I
stood for a moment on the pavement, thinking what a mystery there is
about London streets and the companies that pass along them. A bottle of
red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I should have
thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by a beggar who had
come behind me, and was making the usual appeals. Of course I looked
round, and this beggar turned out to be what was left of an old friend
of mine, a man named Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a
wretched pass, and he told me. We walked up and down one of those long
dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story. He said he had
married a beautiful girl, some years younger than himself, and, as he
put it, she had corrupted him body and soul. He wouldn't go into
details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and heard haunted
him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I knew he was
speaking the truth. There was something about the man that made me
shiver. I don't know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money
and sent him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood.'
'Isn't all this just a little fanciful, Villiers? I suppose the poor
fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to
the bad.'
'Well, listen to this.' Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard from
Austin.
'You see,' he concluded, 'there can be but little doubt that this Mr.
Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful,
so terrible, that it cut short his life. And what he saw, he most
certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name
in the neighbourhood. I had the curiosity to go and look at the place
for myself. It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough
to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I
could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished,
and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the ground
floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it's a dismal
street in every way. I found Number 20 was to let, and I went to the
agent's and got the key. Of course I should have heard nothing of the
Herberts in that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long
they had left the house, and whether there had been other tenants in the
meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the
Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it,
and since then the house had been empty.'
Mr. Villiers paused for a moment.
'I have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a
sort of fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails
sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills. But I
didn't enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street. I had hardly put my foot
inside the passage before I noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air
of the house. Of course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth, but
this was something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it
seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front room and the back room,
and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as
you would expect, but there was something strange about them all. I
couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the
rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish
room, and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but
when I saw it, paint, paper, and everything were most doleful. But the
room was full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on
the door, and when I went in, I thought I should have fallen fainting to
the floor. However, I pulled myself together, and stood against the end
wall, wondering what on earth there could be about the room to make my
limbs tremble, and my heart beat as if I were at the hour of death. In
one corner there was a pile of newspapers littered about on the floor,
and I began looking at them; they were papers of three or four years
ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had been used
for packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found a
curious drawing; I will show it you presently. But I couldn't stay in
the room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to come out,
safe and sound, into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along
the street, and one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about from
one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much as I could do
to take the key back to the agent and get home. I was in bed for a week,
suffering from what my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion. One
of those days I was reading the evening paper, and happened to notice a
paragraph headed: "Starved to Death." It was the usual style of thing; a
model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door locked for several days, and a
dead man in his chair when they broke in. "The deceased," said the
paragraph, "was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed to have been
once a prosperous country gentleman. His name was familiar to the public
three years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul Street,
Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of the house Number
20, in the area of which a gentleman of good position was found dead
under circumstances not devoid of suspicion." A tragic ending, wasn't
it? But after all, if what he told me were true, which I am sure it
was, the man's life was all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a stranger sort
than they put on the boards.'
'And that is the story, is it?' said Clarke musingly.
'Yes, that is the story.'
'Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it. There
are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the
finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert's house, for instance,
and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of death;
but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be explained in a
straightforward manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see
the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid imagination;
you must have been brooding, in a semiconscious way, over what you had
heard. I don't exactly see what more can be said or done in the matter;
you evidently think there is a mystery of some kind, but Herbert is
dead; where then do you propose to look?'
'I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married. _She_ is
the mystery.'
The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating
himself on having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the
commonplace, and Villiers wrapt in his gloomy fancies.
'I think I will have a cigarette,' he said at last, and put his hand in
his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.
'Ah!' he said, starting slightly, 'I forgot I had something to show you.
You remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch amongst
the pile of old newspapers at the house in Paul Street? Here it is.'
Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered
with brown paper, and secured with string, and the knots were
troublesome. In spite of himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent
forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and
unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and
Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke
without a word.
There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men
sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned
clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the
slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory. He was looking
intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's head; it had
evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true artist, for the
woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were parted with a
strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to his memory
one summer evening long ago; he saw again the long lovely valley, the
river winding between the hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the
dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a
voice speaking to him across the waves of many years, and saying,
'Clarke, Mary will see the God Pan!' and then he was standing in the
grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the
clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying on the green
chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes,
and his heart grew cold within him.
'Who is this woman?' he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.
'That is the woman whom Herbert married.'
Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There
certainly was Mary's face, but there was something else, something he
had not seen on Mary's features when the white-clad girl entered the
laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she
lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from
those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole
face, Clarke shuddered before it in his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillips's words, 'the most vivid presentment of
evil I have ever seen.' He turned the paper over mechanically in his
hand and glanced at the back.
'Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death.'
Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a
groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.
'I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour
me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a few
minutes.'
Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had
done.
'You saw that?' he said. 'That's how I identified it as being a portrait
of Herbert's wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel now?'
'Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don't think I quite
catch your meaning. What did you say enabled you to identify the
picture?'
'This word--"Helen"--written on the back. Didn't I tell you her name was
Helen? Yes; Helen Vaughan.'
Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.
'Now, don't you agree with me,' said Villiers, 'that in the story I have
told you to-night, and in the part this woman plays in it, there are
some very strange points?'
'Yes, Villiers,' Clarke muttered, 'it is a strange story indeed; a
strange story indeed. You must give me time to think it over; I may be
able to help you or I may not. Must you be going now? Well, good-night,
Villiers, good-night. Come and see me in the course of a week.'
V