MME. YBURG
1
I cannot pretend to say how long I stood at the gate, nor what were
my thoughts as I stood there.
Doubtless after the episode of the disincarnate Voice, I was prepared
in a degree for things outside the normal. In lieu of supposing myself
insane, I had to accept as a fact that there are laws, once called
“supernatural,” in the scheme of Providence which are not outside
human control. Many of the devices which we are used to nowadays would
have earned their inventor the title of magician two hundred years
ago.
Powers ascribed by classic poets to their gods of old come within
compass of latter-day science. All myths have some basis in fact.
Earlier inquirers simply conserved their knowledge. To-day,
discoveries are broadcasted.
Thus, I suppose, I argued… fighting, fighting to defeat a white panic.
Did the thing I had just seen conform to any cycle of laws known to
me?
I listened intently.
The breeze had dropped. There was no sound.
As the creature had descended I had seen that it possessed a pair of
enormous eyes. But, more horrible, I had not failed to note that its
purplish gleaming body resembled that of a human being--or of a
chrysalis encasing one--or of a mummy!
Now, the silence confounded me. The stirring of a leaf set my heart
leaping. At any moment I expected to hear again a cold, merciless
voice calling me by name.
Nine persons out of ten would have bolted--nor should I have been the
man to blame them. That _I_ didn’t, I count not a jot or tittle to my
credit. I merely knew from experience that to fly from peril, of body,
mind, or soul, is to invite pursuit.
Again grasping the bars of the gate, I sprang up, and climbing over
the top, dropped upon the further side.
But the first step forward from the gate in that cold moonlight
demanded an effort of will I can never forget. The step taken, I
proceeded with growing confidence. This is the way of things. But it’s
a way hard to learn and harder to follow.
What I found in the shape of a clue to explain the sight I had seen
can be very briefly expressed, I found nothing.
At about the spot where I thought that incredible nocturnal thing had
alighted I came upon an ancient mausoleum. Two cypresses mounted
guard, one on either side of the door, and because of their dense
shadows I could not make out to whom the tomb belonged.
But my left fist and my teeth were tightly clenched when I turned my
back on those shadows--because I wanted to run! _How_ I wanted to run!
Further on, in a new part of the burial ground, I saw a number of “new
graves” as described by George. They seemed to be for the most part
those of peasants and members of the working classes. I could not
perceive any special significance in the fact that certain inhabitants
of Baden-Baden had died recently. People die everywhere.
By the time that I had completed my tour, courage was slowly
returning. My exercise had achieved its object. Courage, unused,
becomes flabby even quicker than muscle.
No sound had disturbed me--excepting the soft flutter of a startled
owl at one point--and the resulting throb in my ears caused by a
sudden acceleration of pulse. It was touch and go. My finger trembled
on the trigger.
That first cold panic was conquered however when I reclimbed the gate
and found myself once more in the narrow, tree-bordered road. I don’t
claim that I was entirely my own man; but mainly a great amazement
remained.
Failing its possession of those gruesome properties ascribed to the
vampire by mediæval superstition, what had become of the great
creature which I had watched alighting among the tombs? In my
exploration, and it had been fairly thorough, I had met with no living
thing except the owl.
I tried to picture it when not on the wing. Did it go on all fours?
Did it _crawl_?… Did it walk erect in ghastly parody of humanity?
And then, as I turned and set out on my homeward journey to the town,
came the crowning terror of that night.
I heard footsteps in the cemetery!
Nothing in my experience had prepared me for this. The steps, which
were light, suggesting a woman’s, and leisurely, plainly were those of
someone, or of some _thing_, coming along the path which led to the
gateway. Soon, _It_ would be out in the road behind me!
To take to my heels--to run for my life, for sanity, salvation--was
the only thing I wanted to do. And I wanted to do it desperately.
But I had won one victory. And it was to inquire into just these
horrors that I had come to Baden.
A rough cart track broke the bushes to left of the road. I tip-toed
along it, turned right, and threw myself prone at the edge of a plum
orchard where I could see through the hedge.
I was no more than in time.
As I reached my look-out I heard the sound of a grating lock. It was
the lock of the cemetery gate. Moonlight flooded that part of the road
visible to me. Merciful shadow draped the margin of the orchard. I was
afraid to breathe. Despite the warmth of the night, I was cold--with a
sort of spiritual coldness.
The gate closed. Again I heard the sound of the lock.
Came--light footsteps, drawing nearer.
I had thought I was prepared for anything. But for that which now
appeared I was not prepared.
Gracefully indolent, the flame-coloured scarf thrown carelessly over
her white shoulders, _Mme. Yburg walked toward me!_…
2
Watching, all but breathlessly, as she passed my hiding place, my
first feeling was one of intense relief. It was almost immediately
succeeded, however, by another, by a mood of horrible doubt. Taking
all the facts into consideration, what was this woman doing in such a
place, at night? Where had she been hidden during my tour of
inspection? Above all--why did she hold the cemetery keys?
Ghastly theories, belonging to the realm of black magic, flocked to my
brain. Had she been to meet, in Coleridge’s words, “her demon lover”?
Or was she, herself…
These ideas were insane. I shook my mind free of them.
When the sound of Madame’s footsteps was no longer audible, and I
judged that she had passed a bend in the steep road which I
remembered, I came out from the sheltering orchard and followed, very
slowly.
An owl hooted, high up in a tree. But no other sound disturbed the
serene night.
By a bend in the path where a flight of steps offered a short cut to
the town, there was a seat. Owing to the position of the moon and the
screening trees, this seat was mantled in darkness.
But as I passed it, intent upon descending the steps:
“Good-evening, Mr. Woodville,” said a voice out of the shadows.
I knew the voice--nor was it unmusical. But its music turned me cold.
I stopped dead in my tracks, as though Medusa’s head had been thrust
in front of me. I twisted about, staring.
Mme. Yburg rose from the seat and came toward me!
Conflicting emotions threatened to make me dumb. But I forced a
remark.
“Why!” said I--“this is a surprise! Are you, also, addicted to lonely
rambles?”
“I am,” she replied simply, and walked out into the moonlight.
She wore a frock of some material which appeared black except where
moonrays touched it, when it displayed a serpentine sheen. Dark eyes
regarded me sombrely. Her slender body was grotesquely, horribly like
the body of that flying thing which had alighted in the cemetery. Or
so it seemed to me at this moment.
“A taste,” I went on, desperately forcing conversation, “which one
can’t share. Were you returning, or have I broken in on the journey?”
“I’m going back,” she answered, resting her hand on my arm. “Those
steps are so steep.”
I found myself clenching my teeth. Mme. Yburg’s long, psychic hand
looked waxen white in the moonlight, which also lent the narrow,
burnished nails an unnatural purple tint. She wore a large emerald,
which I had noticed before. Against the black of my sleeve it gleamed
evilly--like the eye of a nocturnal thing.… Silently I cursed myself
for a coward and a fool. There was--there _must_ be--a rational
explanation of her presence in the cemetery that night. And, as if she
had read my thoughts:
“My lonely ramble was not without an object,” she said as we went down
the steps. “It may sound odd, but I had been up to the cemetery on the
hill.”
Her English was faultless, her poise perfect. If my ghastly theories
had any foundation in fact, she was a great actress. The pressure of
her thin white fingers was intensely vital.
“Good heavens! _Very_ odd--at night!”
“Yes, I know it is.” We were on a straight highroad, now, and Mme.
Yburg removed her hand and adjusted the scarf which she wore. “But
someone lies there, you see--a member of my family; and in the middle
of all the gaiety I suddenly thought of him, and it seemed quite
natural to go.”
Her composure, which made me think of snow on a sleeping volcano, was
more exciting than some women’s hysteria. It was on the tip of my
tongue to ask her if she spoke of husband, father, brother, when those
former, uncanny ideas came flooding back to my mind.
Was she, secretly, laughing at me? Had she seen me from the first? Had
she waited there knowing I must presently come that way? And why did
she hold the keys of the cemetery gate? So my thoughts ran, wildly,
feverishly. The night was perfect, lacking those treacherous chills of
the Riviera and reminding one of nights in the Canary Islands.
She had a manner of walking which must have marked her anywhere. She
seemed to glide along beside me. There was a deep note in her voice,
strangely like sincerity; and indeed she was undeniably a very
charming companion.
Presently, we were among the trees of Lichtenthaler Allee, the little
stream bubbling beside us, lights dancing over the water from the
hotels and the Casino.
We walked across to the Regal. And there on the steps stood Mr.
Kluster.
“Oh, dear!” Madame whispered to me. “There was a party to-night, and I
had promised to go!”
Then, as we came up:
“I had such a dreadful headache and I hoped that the night air would
cure it. Mr. Woodville found me wandering.”
“Cured?” said Kluster.
“Quite,” Madame replied, and an amused smile, which softened the line
of her thin lips, was oddly fascinating.
I saw white, glittering teeth against the blood-red of her mouth… and
I remembered…
“Here’s the French boy-friend,” remarked Kluster. “Now we’re all set.”
M. Paul came bounding down the steps. “Bounding” is the only word to
describe his animated approach.
“My _dear_ Mme. Yburg!” he exclaimed, and grasped both her hands. “Ah!
but I have been inconsolable! So also”--he turned to the
American--“has poor Mr. Kluster! We have cried together, Mr.
Woodville”--he now included _me_ in his oration--“until the bar has
nearly run dry!”
Then he laughed, and we all laughed with him--Kluster excepted--for he
was indeed a joyous creature.
“Very true,” said Kluster. “Suppose we start.” He nodded to me. “I
wish you good-night, sir.”
The others having also bidden me good-night, the party set out, M.
Paul waving farewell in his gay fashion. I recalled that the M. Paul
who had passed me earlier in the evening had been far from gay.
3
_Here_ was the first copyworthy material which had come to my hand.
But how could I use it? To send a thousand-word report to the _Daily
World_ covering my visit to the cemetery and my sight of a giant bat
was simple enough--and good copy, if editor or readers could believe
it. But where the story touched upon Mme. Yburg I must perforce be
silent. There is a law of libel in England.
Furthermore, I did not know who Mme. Yburg _was_.
A mediæval observer would have declared, unconditionally, that she
was a vampire, and that Kluster and Paul were her present victims.
I placed the _caporal_ picked up at the cemetery gate in a drawer of
my table. I sat staring at a blank writing block. And, consulting my
wrist watch, I noted that nearly twenty hours had passed since I had
received “the first warning.” What were the links between that
inexplicable happening and later events? Why should I obey the
warning?… and what would result if I ignored it?
The unknown dangers of my commission became painfully apparent.
Despatches were out of the question. A considered account--after I had
left the Black Forest--was the only possible course.
I drafted a telegram, copied it on one of the forms provided in my
apartment, and personally took it to the hall porter’s desk for
dispatch.
Equipped with two bottles of beer, for an hour and a half, perhaps two
hours, I wrote. The dance band at the Casino had stopped. I had not
noted the fact consciously: I only realized it when I had finished. My
notes brought up to date, I looked at the time.
Half-past one.
Of the first of my three days only an hour and a half remained!
My quarters in the Regal consisted of a long alcove on the ground
floor. There was a balcony overlooking the gardens on which I usually
took breakfast. Sun shutters, with narrow oblique slats, closed the
centre opening. The outer room, in which were writing table,
telephone, and other appurtenances, was divided from the bedroom only
by a heavy curtain, which during the day was open.
In my case it was open at night as well. I like fresh air. For the
same reason I had hitherto raised the shutters, before turning in, not
wholly but partly. (They were religiously closed by the chambermaid
some time after dusk, to exclude nocturnal insects.)
To-night I left them closed, whilst I searched every foot of the
apartment and also the adjoining bathroom. My tour of inspection was
completed within a few minutes of two o’clock.
One hour!
As my investigations will have indicated, I had a theory touching the
Voice. If it challenged me again--as I half expected--I proposed to
test this theory.
Having had little more than two hours’ rest in the past twenty-four, I
was desperately sleepy. Nevertheless, until 3 A.M. had come and gone,
further sleep was out of the question. I mixed a stiff peg of whisky,
lighted my pipe, and settled down in an armchair with Stevenson’s
_Treasure Island_. I knew whole passages by heart; but five minutes in
the company of Long John Silver unfailingly brings the tang of the sea
to my nostrils. “Here you comes and tells me of it plain.… You’re a
lad, you are, but you’re as smart as paint.…”
The silence had grown so deep when at last I took leave of the
_Hispaniola_ and glanced at my wrist watch that the song of the tiny
stream beyond my windows was magnified to that of a considerable
torrent. Twice I had heard regular footsteps on the gravel path
outside: a night watchman, I had concluded. But no other sound had
disturbed me.
Laying my book down, I stood up. My pipe had burned out.…
Five minutes to three.
I crossed the room, went into the lobby, and opened my outer door.
Beyond, lay a sort of inner hallway, corridors branching off from it.
It was empty. A lamp stood on the floor clerk’s table and afforded the
only light.
Going over to this table, I stooped to the lamp and fixed my eyes on
the minute finger of my watch as it crept to the hour.…
Three o’clock!
“Brian Woodville!” said the Voice.
My heart was not beating quite normally. But this time I was certainly
prepared for the phenomenon; and I had learned something.
The Voice was not connected with any hidden apparatus in my rooms. It
had spoken at my elbow.
I crossed to a glazed swing-door and went several paces along a
passage leading to deserted service quarters.
“Brian Woodville!”
The Voice had _followed_ me!
Teeth hard clenched, I returned to the open door of my apartment--and
just as I gained it:
“Brian Woodville,” those measured tones continued, “you have two days.
This is the second warning. You have two days.…”