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MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY
Masterpieces of
Mystery
_In Four Volumes_
GHOST STORIES
Edited by
Joseph Lewis French
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
NOTE
The Editor desires especially to acknowledge assistance in granting the
use of original material, and for helpful advice and suggestion, to
Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia University, to Mrs. Anna
Katherine Green Rohlfs, to Cleveland Moffett, to Arthur Reeve, creator
of "Craig Kennedy," to Wilbur Daniel Steele, to Ralph Adams Cram, to
Chester Bailey Fernald, to Brian Brown, to Mrs. Lillian M. Robins of the
publisher's office, and to Charles E. Farrington of the Brooklyn Public
Library.
FOREWORD
The ghost story is as old as human speech,--and perhaps even antedates
it. A naive acceptance of the supernatural was unquestionably one of the
primal attributes of human intelligence. The ghost story may thus quite
conceivably be the first form of tale ever invented. It makes its
appearance comparatively early in the annals of literature. Who that has
read it is likely to forget Pliny's account in a letter to an intimate
of an apparition shortly after death to a mutual acquaintance? Old books
of tales and legends are full of the ghost story. It has persisted
throughout the ages. It began to attain some real standing in
literature,--to take its definite place,--a little more than a century
ago. Like the apparition it embodies it had always been--and is still
to-day even--more or less discredited. Mrs. Radcliffe gave it a new
being and even a certain dignity in her "Castle of Otranto"; and after
her came Sir Walter Scott who frankly surrendered to the power and charm
of the theme. The line of succession has been continuous. The ghost has
held his own with his human fellow in fiction, and his tale has been
told with increasing skill as the art of the writer has developed.
To-day the case for the ghost as an element in fiction is an exceedingly
strong one. There has indeed sprung into being within a couple of
decades a new school of such writers. Nowadays almost every fictionist
of account produces one good thriller at least of this sort. The
temptation is irresistible for the simple reason that the theme imposes
absolutely no limit on the imagination.
The reader will find here a careful selection illustrating the growth in
art of this exotic in literature during the past fifty years, and for a
contrast, spanning the centuries, the naive narration of Pliny the
Younger.
JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE LISTENER 3
_Algernon Blackwood_
II. NUMBER 13 45
_Montague Rhodes James_
III. JOSEPH: A STORY 70
_Katherine Rickford_
IV. THE HORLA 84
_Guy de Maupassant_
V. THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS 123
_William F. Harvey_
VI. SISTER MADDELENA 167
_Ralph Adams Cram_
VII. THRAWN JANET 191
_Robert Louis Stevenson_
VIII. THE YELLOW CAT 207
_Wilbur Daniel Steele_
IX. LETTER TO SURA 237
_Pliny the Younger_
MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY
Masterpieces of Mystery
_GHOST STORIES_
THE LISTENER[A]
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
Sept. 4.--I have hunted all over London for rooms suited to my
income--L120 a year--and have at last found them. Two rooms, without
modern conveniences, it is true, and in an old, ramshackle building, but
within a stone's throw of P-- Place and in an eminently respectable
street. The rent is only L25 a year. I had begun to despair when at last
I found them by chance. The chance was a mere chance, and unworthy of
record. I had to sign a lease for a year, and I did so willingly. The
furniture from our old place in H--shire, which has been stored so long,
will just suit them.
* * * * *
Oct. 1.--Here I am in my two rooms, in the centre of London, and not far
from the offices of the periodicals where occasionally I dispose of an
article or two. The building is at the end of a _cul-de-sac_. The alley
is well paved and clean, and lined chiefly with the backs of sedate and
institutional-looking buildings. There is a stable in it. My own house
is dignified with the title of "Chambers." I feel as if one day the
honour must prove too much for it, and it will swell with pride--and
fall asunder. It is very old. The floor of my sitting-room has valleys
and low hills on it, and the top of the door slants away from the
ceiling with a glorious disregard of what is usual. They must have
quarrelled--fifty years ago--and have been going apart ever since.
* * * * *
Oct. 2.--My landlady is old and thin, with a faded, dusty face. She is
uncommunicative. The few words she utters seem to cost her pain.
Probably her lungs are half choked with dust. She keeps my rooms as free
from this commodity as possible, and has the assistance of a strong girl
who brings up the breakfast and lights the fire. As I have said already,
she is not communicative. In reply to pleasant efforts on my part she
informed me briefly that I was the only occupant of the house at
present. My rooms had not been occupied for some years. There had been
other gentlemen upstairs, but they had left.
She never looks straight at me when she speaks, but fixes her dim eyes
on my middle waistcoat button, till I get nervous and begin to think it
isn't on straight, or is the wrong sort of button altogether.
* * * * *
Oct. 8.--My week's book is nicely kept, and so far is reasonable. Milk
and sugar 7d., bread 6d., butter 8d., marmalade 6d., eggs 1s. 8d.,
laundress 2s. 9d., oil 6d., attendance 5s.; total 12s. 2d.
The landlady has a son who, she told me, is "somethink on a homnibus."
He comes occasionally to see her. I think he drinks, for he talks very
loud, regardless of the hour of the day or night, and tumbles about over
the furniture downstairs.
All the morning I sit indoors writing--articles; verses for the comic
papers; a novel I've been "at" for three years, and concerning which I
have dreams; a children's book, in which the imagination has free rein;
and another book which is to last as long as myself, since it is an
honest record of my soul's advance or retreat in the struggle of life.
Besides these, I keep a book of poems which I use as a safety valve, and
concerning which I have no dreams whatsoever. Between the lot I am
always occupied. In the afternoons I generally try to take a walk for my
health's sake, through Regent's Park, into Kensington Gardens, or
farther afield to Hampstead Heath.
* * * * *
Oct. 10.--Everything went wrong to-day. I have two eggs for breakfast.
This morning one of them was bad. I rang the bell for Emily. When she
came in I was reading the paper, and, without looking up, I said, "Egg's
bad." "Oh, is it, sir?" she said; "I'll get another one," and went out,
taking the egg with her. I waited my breakfast for her return, which was
in five minutes. She put the new egg on the table and went away. But,
when I looked down, I saw that she had taken away the good egg and left
the bad one--all green and yellow--in the slop basin. I rang again.
"You've taken the wrong egg," I said.
"Oh!" she exclaimed; "I thought the one I took down didn't smell so
_very_ bad." In due time she returned with the good egg, and I resumed
my breakfast with two eggs, but less appetite. It was all very trivial,
to be sure, but so stupid that I felt annoyed. The character of that egg
influenced everything I did. I wrote a bad article, and tore it up. I
got a bad headache. I used bad words--to myself. Everything was bad, so
I "chucked" work and went for a long walk.
I dined at a cheap chop-house on my way back, and reached home about
nine o'clock.
Rain was just beginning to fall as I came in, and the wind was rising.
It promised an ugly night. The alley looked dismal and dreary, and the
hall of the house, as I passed through it, felt chilly as a tomb. It was
the first stormy night I had experienced in my new quarters. The
draughts were awful. They came criss-cross, met in the middle of the
room, and formed eddies and whirlpools and cold silent currents that
almost lifted the hair of my head. I stuffed up the sashes of the
windows with neckties and odd socks, and sat over the smoky fire to keep
warm. First I tried to write, but found it too cold. My hand turned to
ice on the paper.
What tricks the wind did play with the old place! It came rushing up the
forsaken alley with a sound like the feet of a hurrying crowd of people
who stopped suddenly at the door. I felt as if a lot of curious folk had
arranged themselves just outside and were staring up at my windows. Then
they took to their heels again and fled whispering and laughing down the
lane, only, however, to return with the next gust of wind and repeat
their impertinence. On the other side of my room, a single square window
opens into a sort of shaft, or well, that measures about six feet across
to the back wall of another house. Down this funnel the wind dropped,
and puffed and shouted. Such noises I never heard before. Between these
two entertainments I sat over the fire in a great-coat, listening to the
deep booming in the chimney. It was like being in a ship at sea, and I
almost looked for the floor to rise in undulations and rock to and fro.
* * * * *
Oct. 12.--I wish I were not quite so lonely--and so poor. And yet I love
both my loneliness and my poverty. The former makes me appreciate the
companionship of the wind and rain, while the latter preserves my liver
and prevents me wasting time in dancing attendance upon women. Poor,
ill-dressed men are not acceptable "attendants."
My parents are dead, and my only sister is--no, not dead exactly, but
married to a very rich man. They travel most of the time, he to find his
health, she to lose herself. Through sheer neglect on her part she has
long passed out of my life. The door closed when, after an absolute
silence of five years, she sent me a cheque for L50 at Christmas. It was
signed by her husband! I returned it to her in a thousand pieces and in
an unstamped envelope. So at least I had the satisfaction of knowing
that it cost her something! She wrote back with a broad quill pen that
covered a whole page with three lines, "You are evidently as cracked as
ever, and rude and ungrateful into the bargain." It had always been my
special terror lest the insanity in my father's family should leap
across the generations and appear in me. This thought haunted me, and
she knew it. So after this little exchange of civilities the door
slammed, never to open again. I heard the crash it made, and, with it,
the falling from the walls of my heart of many little bits of china with
their own peculiar value--rare china, some of it, that only needed
dusting. The same walls, too, carried mirrors in which I used sometimes
to see reflected the misty lawns of childhood, the daisy chains, the
wind-torn blossoms scattered through the orchard by warm rains, the
robbers' cave in the long walk, and the hidden store of apples in the
hay-loft. She was my inseparable companion then--but, when the door
slammed, the mirrors cracked across their entire length, and the visions
they held vanished for ever. Now I am quite alone. At forty one cannot
begin all over again to build up careful friendships, and all others are
comparatively worthless.
* * * * *
Oct. 14.--My bedroom is 10 by 10. It is below the level of the front
room, and a step leads down into it. Both rooms are very quiet on calm
nights, for there is no traffic down this forsaken alley-way. In spite
of the occasional larks of the wind, it is a most sheltered strip. At
its upper end, below my windows, all the cats of the neighbourhood
congregate as soon as darkness gathers. They lie undisturbed on the long
ledge of a blind window of the opposite building, for after the postman
has come and gone at 9:30, no footsteps ever dare to interrupt their
sinister conclave, no step but my own, or sometimes the unsteady
footfall of the son who "is somethink on a homnibus."
* * * * *
Oct. 15.--I dined at an "A. B. C." shop on poached eggs and coffee, and
then went for a stroll round the outer edge of Regent's Park. It was ten
o'clock when I got home. I counted no less than thirteen cats, all of a
dark colour, crouching under the lee side of the alley walls. It was a
cold night, and the stars shone like points of ice in a blue-black sky.
The cats turned their heads and stared at me in silence as I passed. An
odd sensation of shyness took possession of me under the glare of so
many pairs of unblinking eyes. As I fumbled with the latch-key they
jumped noiselessly down and pressed against my legs, as if anxious to be
let in. But I slammed the door in their faces and ran quickly upstairs.
The front room, as I entered to grope for the matches, felt as cold as a
stone vault, and the air held an unusual dampness.
* * * * *
Oct. 17.--For several days I have been working on a ponderous article
that allows no play for the fancy. My imagination requires a judicious
rein; I am afraid to let it loose, for it carries me sometimes into
appalling places beyond the stars and beneath the world. No one realizes
the danger more than I do. But what a foolish thing to write here--for
there is no one to know, no one to realize! My mind of late has held
unusual thoughts, thoughts I have never had before, about medicines and
drugs and the treatment of strange illnesses. I cannot imagine their
source. At no time in my life have I dwelt upon such ideas as now
constantly throng my brain. I have had no exercise lately, for the
weather has been shocking; and all my afternoons have been spent in the
reading-room of the British Museum, where I have a reader's ticket.
I have made an unpleasant discovery: there are rats in the house. At
night from my bed I have heard them scampering across the hills and
valleys of the front room, and my sleep has been a good deal disturbed
in consequence.
* * * * *
Oct. 24.--Last night the son who is "somethink on a homnibus" came in.
He had evidently been drinking, for I heard loud and angry voices below
in the kitchen long after I had gone to bed. Once, too, I caught the
singular words rising up to me through the floor, "Burning from top to
bottom is the only thing that'll ever make this 'ouse right." I knocked
on the floor, and the voices ceased suddenly, though later I again heard
their clamour in my dreams.
These rooms are very quiet, almost too quiet sometimes. On windless
nights they are silent as the grave, and the house might be miles in the
country. The roar of London's traffic reaches me only in heavy, distant
vibrations. It holds an ominous note sometimes, like that of an
approaching army, or an immense tidal-wave very far away thundering in
the night.
* * * * *
Oct. 27.--Mrs. Monson, though admirably silent, is a foolish, fussy
woman. She does such stupid things. In dusting the room she puts all my
things in the wrong places. The ash-trays, which should be on the
writing-table she sets in a silly row on the mantelpiece. The pen-tray,
which should be beside the inkstand, she hides away cleverly among the
books on my reading-desk. My gloves she arranges daily in idiotic array
upon a half-filled bookshelf, and I always have to rearrange them on the
low table by the door. She places my armchair at impossible angles
between the fire and the light, and the tablecloth--the one with Trinity
Hall stains--she puts on the table in such a fashion that when I look at
it I feel as if my tie and all my clothes were on crooked and awry. She
exasperates me. Her very silence and meekness are irritating. Sometimes
I feel inclined to throw the inkstand at her, just to bring an
expression into her watery eyes and a squeak from those colourless lips.
Dear me! What violent expressions I am making use of! How very foolish
of me! And yet it almost seems as if the words were not my own, but had
been spoken into my ear--I mean, I never make use of such terms
naturally.
* * * * *
Oct. 30.--I have been here a month. The place does not agree with me, I
think. My headaches are more frequent and violent, and my nerves are a
perpetual source of discomfort and annoyance.
I have conceived a great dislike for Mrs. Monson, a feeling I am certain
she reciprocates. Somehow, the impression comes frequently to me that
there are goings on in this house of which I know nothing, and which she
is careful to hide from me.
Last night her son slept in the house, and this morning as I was
standing at the window I saw him go out. He glanced up and caught my
eye. It was a loutish figure and a singularly repulsive face that I
saw, and he gave me the benefit of a very unpleasant leer. At least, so
I imagined.
* * * * *
Nov. 2.--The utter stillness of this house is beginning to oppress me. I
wish there were other fellows living upstairs. No footsteps ever sound
overhead, and no tread ever passes my door to go up the next flight of
stairs. I am beginning to feel some curiosity to go up myself and see
what the upper rooms are like. I feel lonely here and isolated, swept
into a deserted corner of the world and forgotten.... Once I actually
caught myself gazing into the long, cracked mirrors, trying to see the
sunlight dancing beneath the trees in the orchard. But only deep shadows
seemed to congregate there now, and I soon desisted.
It has been very dark all day, and no wind stirring. The fogs have
begun. I had to use a reading-lamp all this morning. There was no cart
to be heard to-day. I actually missed it. This morning, in the gloom and
silence, I think I could almost have welcomed it. After all, the sound
is a very human one, and this empty house at the end of the alley holds
other noises that are not quite so satisfactory.
I have never once seen a policeman in the lane, and the postmen always
hurry out with no evidence of a desire to loiter.
10 P.M.--As I write this I hear no sound but the deep murmur of the
distant traffic and the low sighing of the wind. The two sounds melt
into one another. Now and again a cat raises its shrill, uncanny cry
upon the darkness. The cats are always there under my windows when the
darkness falls. The wind is dropping into the funnel with a noise like
the sudden sweeping of immense distant wings. It is a dreary night. I
feel lost and forgotten.
* * * * *
Nov. 3.--From my windows I can see arrivals. When anyone comes to the
door I can just see the hat and shoulders and the hand on the bell. Only
two fellows have been to see me since I came here two months ago. Both
of them I saw from the window before they came up, and heard their
voices asking if I was in. Neither of them ever came back.
I have finished the ponderous article. On reading it through, however, I
was dissatisfied with it, and drew my pencil through almost every page.
There were strange expressions and ideas in it that I could not explain,
and viewed with amazement, not to say alarm. They did not sound like my
_very own_, and I could not remember having written them. Can it be that
my memory is beginning to be affected?
My pens are never to be found. That stupid old woman puts them in a
different place each day. I must give her due credit for finding so many
new hiding places; such ingenuity is wonderful. I have told her
repeatedly, but she always says, "I'll speak to Emily, sir." Emily
always says, "I'll tell Mrs. Monson, sir." Their foolishness makes me
irritable and scatters all my thoughts. I should like to stick the lost
pens into them and turn them out, blind-eyed, to be scratched and mauled
by those thousand hungry cats. Whew! What a ghastly thought! Where in
the world did it come from? Such an idea is no more my own than it is
the policeman's. Yet I felt I _had_ to write it. It was like a voice
singing in my head, and my pen wouldn't stop till the last word was
finished. What ridiculous nonsense! I must and will restrain myself. I
must take more regular exercise; my nerves and liver plague me horribly.
* * * * *
Nov. 4.--I attended a curious lecture in the French quarter on "Death,"
but the room was so hot and I was so weary that I fell asleep. The only
part I heard, however, touched my imagination vividly. Speaking of
suicides, the lecturer said that self-murder was no escape from the
miseries of the present, but only a preparation of greater sorrow for
the future. Suicides, he declared, cannot shirk their responsibilities
so easily. They must return to take up life exactly where they laid it
so violently down, but with the added pain and punishment of their
weakness. Many of them wander the earth in unspeakable misery till they
can _reclothe_ themselves in the body of some one else--generally a
lunatic or weak-minded person, who cannot resist the hideous obsession.
This is their only means of escape. Surely a weird and horrible idea! I
wish I had slept all the time and not heard it at all. My mind is morbid
enough without such ghastly fancies. Such mischievous propaganda should
be stopped by the police. I'll write to the _Times_ and suggest it. Good
idea!
I walked home through Greek Street, Soho, and imagined that a hundred
years had slipped back into place and De Quincey was still there,
haunting the night with invocations to his "just, subtle, and mighty"
drug. His vast dreams seemed to hover not very far away. Once started in
my brain, the pictures refused to go away; and I saw him sleeping in
that cold, tenantless mansion with the strange little waif who was
afraid of its ghosts, both together in the shadows under a single
horseman's cloak; or wandering in the companionship of the spectral
Anne; or, later still, on his way to the eternal rendezvous she never
was able to keep. What an unutterable gloom, what an untold horror of
sorrow and suffering comes over me as I try to realize something of what
that man--boy he then was--must have taken into his lonely heart.
As I came up the alley I saw a light in the top window, and a head and
shoulders thrown in an exaggerated shadow upon the blind. I wondered
what the son could be doing up there at such an hour.
* * * * *
Nov. 5.--This morning, while writing, some one came up the creaking
stairs and knocked cautiously at my door. Thinking it was the landlady,
I said, "Come in!" The knock was repeated, and I cried louder, "Come in,
come in!" But no one turned the handle, and I continued my writing with
a vexed "Well, stay out, then!" under my breath. Went on writing. I
tried to, but my thoughts had suddenly dried up at their source. I could
not set down a single word. It was a dark, yellow-fog morning, and there
was little enough inspiration in the air as it was, but that stupid
woman standing just outside my door waiting to be told again to come in
roused a spirit of vexation that filled my head to the exclusion of all
else. At last I jumped up and opened the door myself.
"What do you want, and why in the world don't you come in?" I cried out.
But the words dropped into empty air. There was no one there. The fog
poured up the dingy staircase in deep yellow coils, but there was no
sign of a human being anywhere.
I slammed the door, with imprecations upon the house and its noises, and
went back to my work. A few minutes later Emily came in with a letter.
"Were you or Mrs. Monson outside a few minutes ago knocking at my door?"
"No, sir."
"Are you sure?"
"Mrs. Monson's gone to market, and there's no one but me and the child
in the 'ole 'ouse, and I've been washing the dishes for the last hour,
sir."
I fancied the girl's face turned a shade paler. She fidgeted toward the
door with a glance over her shoulder.
"Wait, Emily," I said, and then told her what I had heard. She stared
stupidly at me, though her eyes shifted now and then over the articles
in the room.
"Who was it?" I asked when I had come to the end.
"Mrs. Monson says it's honly mice," she said, as if repeating a learned
lesson.
"Mice!" I exclaimed; "it's nothing of the sort. Someone was feeling
about outside my door. Who was it? Is the son in the house?"
Her whole manner changed suddenly, and she became earnest instead of
evasive. She seemed anxious to tell the truth.
"Oh, no, sir; there's no one in the house at all but you and me and the
child, and there couldn't have been nobody at your door. As for them
knocks--" She stopped abruptly, as though she had said too much.
"Well, what about the knocks?" I said more gently.
"Of course," she stammered, "the knocks isn't mice, nor the footsteps
neither, but then--" Again she came to a full halt.
"Anything wrong with the house?"
"Lor', no, sir; the drains is splendid."
"I don't mean drains, girl. I mean, did anything--anything bad ever
happen here?"
She flushed up to the roots of her hair, and then turned suddenly pale
again. She was obviously in considerable distress, and there was
something she was anxious, yet afraid to tell--some forbidden thing she
was not allowed to mention.
"I don't mind what it was, only I should like to know," I said
encouragingly.
Raising her frightened eyes to my face, she began to blurt out something
about "that which 'appened once to a gentleman that lived hupstairs,"
when a shrill voice calling her name sounded below.
"Emily, Emily!" It was the returning landlady, and the girl tumbled
downstairs as if pulled backward by a rope, leaving me full of
conjectures as to what in the world could have happened to a gentleman
_upstairs_ that could in so curious a manner affect my ears
_downstairs_.
* * * * *
Nov. 10.--I have done capital work; have finished the ponderous article
and had it accepted for the _---- Review_, and another one ordered. I
feel well and cheerful, and have had regular exercise and good sleep; no
headaches, no nerves, no liver! Those pills the chemist recommended are
wonderful. Even the gray-faced landlady rouses pity in me; I am sorry
for her: so worn, so weary, so oddly put together, just like the
building. She looks as if she had once suffered some shock of terror,
and was momentarily dreading another. When I spoke to her to-day very
gently about not putting the pens in the ash-tray and the gloves on the
book-shelf she raised her faint eyes to mine for the first time, and
said with the ghost of a smile, "I'll try and remember, sir," I felt
inclined to pat her on the back and say, "Come, cheer up and be jolly.
Life's not so bad after all." Oh! I am much better. There's nothing like
open air and success and good sleep. They build up as if by magic the
portions of the heart eaten down by despair and unsatisfied yearnings.
Even to the cats I feel friendly. When I came in at eleven o'clock
to-night they followed me to the door in a stream, and I stooped down to
stroke the one nearest to me. Bah! The brute hissed and spat, and struck
at me with her paws. The claw caught my hand and drew blood in a thin
line. The others danced sideways into the darkness, screeching, as
though I had done them an injury. I believe these cats really hate me.
Perhaps they are only waiting to be reinforced. Then they will attack
me. Ha, ha! In spite of the momentary annoyance, this fancy sent me
laughing upstairs to my room.
The fire was out, and the room seemed unusually cold. As I groped my way
over to the mantelpiece to find the matches I realized all at once that
there was another person standing beside me in the darkness. I could, of
course, see nothing, but my fingers, feeling along the ledge, came into
forcible contact with something that was at once withdrawn. It was cold
and moist. I could have sworn it was somebody's hand. My flesh began to
creep instantly.
"Who's that?" I exclaimed in a loud voice.
My voice dropped into the silence like a pebble into a deep well. There
was no answer, but at the same moment I heard someone moving away from
me across the room in the direction of the door. It was a confused sort
of footstep, and the sound of garments brushing the furniture on the
way. The same second my hand stumbled upon the matchbox, and I struck a
light. I expected to see Mrs. Monson, or Emily, or perhaps the son who
is something on an omnibus. But the flare of the gas jet illumined an
empty room; there was not a sign of a person anywhere. I felt the hair
stir upon my head, and instinctively I backed up against the wall, lest
something should approach me from behind. I was distinctly alarmed. But
the next minute I recovered myself. The door was open on to the landing,
and I crossed the room, not without some inward trepidation, and went
out. The light from the room fell upon the stairs, but there was no one
to be seen anywhere, nor was there any sound on the creaking wooden
staircase to indicate a departing creature.
I was in the act of turning to go in again when a sound overhead caught
my ear. It was a very faint sound, not unlike the sigh of wind; yet it
could not have been the wind, for the night was still as the grave.
Though it was not repeated, I resolved to go upstairs and see for myself
what it all meant. Two senses had been affected--touch and hearing--and
I could not believe that I had been deceived. So, with a lighted candle,
I went stealthily forth on my unpleasant journey into the upper regions
of this queer little old house.
On the first landing there was only one door, and it was locked. On the
second there was also only one door, but when I turned the handle it
opened. There came forth to meet me the chill musty air that is
characteristic of a long unoccupied room. With it there came an
indescribable odour. I use the adjective advisedly. Though very faint,
diluted as it were, it was nevertheless an odour that made my gorge
rise. I had never smelt anything like it before, and I cannot describe
it.
The room was small and square, close under the roof, with a sloping
ceiling and two tiny windows. It was cold as the grave, without a shred
of carpet or a stick of furniture. The icy atmosphere and the nameless
odour combined to make the room abominable to me, and, after lingering a
moment to see that it contained no cupboards or corners into which a
person might have crept for concealment, I made haste to shut the door,
and went downstairs again to bed. Evidently I had been deceived after
all as to the noise.
In the night I had a foolish but very vivid dream. I dreamed that the
landlady and another person, dark and not properly visible, entered my
room on all fours, followed by a horde of immense cats. They attacked me
as I lay in bed, and murdered me, and then dragged my body upstairs and
deposited it on the floor of that cold little square room under the
roof.
* * * * *
Nov. 11.--Since my talk with Emily--the unfinished talk--I have hardly
once set eyes on her. Mrs. Monson now attends wholly to my wants. As
usual, she does everything exactly as I don't like it done. It is all
too utterly trivial to mention, but it is exceedingly irritating. Like
small doses of morphine often repeated she has finally a cumulative
effect.
* * * * *
Nov. 12.--This morning I woke early, and came into the front room to get
a book, meaning to read in bed till it was time to get up. Emily was
laying the fire.
"Good morning!" I said cheerfully. "Mind you make a good fire. It's very
cold."
The girl turned and showed me a startled face. It was not Emily at all!
"Where's Emily?" I exclaimed.
"You mean the girl as was 'ere before me?"
"Has Emily left?"
"I came on the 6th," she replied sullenly, "and she'd gone then." I got
my book and went back to bed. Emily must have been sent away almost
immediately after our conversation. This reflection kept coming between
me and the printed page. I was glad when it was time to get up. Such
prompt energy, such merciless decision, seemed to argue something of
importance--to somebody.
* * * * *
Nov. 13.--The wound inflicted by the cat's claw has swollen, and causes
me annoyance and some pain. It throbs and itches. I'm afraid my blood
must be in poor condition, or it would have healed by now. I opened it
with a penknife soaked in an antiseptic solution, and cleaned it
thoroughly. I have heard unpleasant stories of the results of wounds
inflicted by cats.
* * * * *
Nov. 14.--In spite of the curious effect this house certainly exercises
upon my nerves, I like it. It is lonely and deserted in the very heart
of London, but it is also for that reason quiet to work in. I wonder why
it is so cheap. Some people might be suspicious, but I did not even ask
the reason. No answer is better than a lie. If only I could remove the
cats from the outside and the rats from the inside. I feel that I shall
grow accustomed more and more to its peculiarities, and shall die here.
Ah, that expression reads queerly and gives a wrong impression: I meant
_live and die_ here. I shall renew the lease from year to year till one
of us crumbles to pieces. From present indications the building will be
the first to go.
* * * * *
Nov. 16.--This morning I woke to find my clothes scattered about the
room, and a cane chair overturned beside the bed. My coat and waistcoat
looked just as if they had been _tried on_ by someone in the night. I
had horribly vivid dreams, too, in which someone covering his face with
his hands kept coming close up to me, crying out as if in pain, "Where
can I find covering? Oh, who will clothe me?" How silly, and yet it
frightened me a little. It was so dreadfully real. It is now over a year
since I last walked in my sleep and woke up with such a shock on the
cold pavement of Earl's Court Road, where I then lived. I thought I was
cured, but evidently not. This discovery has rather a disquieting effect
upon me. To-night I shall resort to the old trick of tying my toe to the
bed-post.
* * * * *
Nov. 17.--Last night I was again troubled by most oppressive dreams.
Someone seemed to be moving in the night up and down my room, sometimes
passing into the front room, and then returning to stand beside the bed
and stare intently down upon me. I was being watched by this person all
night long. I never actually awoke, though I was often very near it. I
suppose it was a nightmare from indigestion, for this morning I have one
of my old vile headaches. Yet all my clothes lay about the floor when I
awoke, where they had evidently been flung (had I tossed them?) during
the dark hours, and my trousers trailed over the step into the front
room.
Worse than this, though--I fancied I noticed about the room in the
morning that strange, fetid odour. Though very faint, its mere
suggestion is foul and nauseating. What in the world can it be, I
wonder?... In future I shall lock my door.
* * * * *
Nov. 26.--I have accomplished a lot of good work during this past week,
and have also managed to get regular exercise. I have felt well and in
an equable state of mind. Only two things have occurred to disturb my
equanimity. The first is trivial in itself, and no doubt to be easily
explained. The upper window where I saw the light on the night of
November 4, with the shadow of a large head and shoulder upon the blind,
is one of the windows in the square room under the roof. In reality it
has _no blind at all_!
Here is the other thing. I was coming home last night in a fresh fall of
snow about eleven o'clock, my umbrella low down over my head. Half-way
up the alley, where the snow was wholly untrodden, I saw a man's legs in
front of me. The umbrella hid the rest of his figure, but on raising it
I saw that he was tall and broad and was walking, as I was, towards the
door of my house. He could not have been four feet ahead of me. I had
thought the alley was empty when I entered it, but might of course been
mistaken very easily.
A sudden gust of wind compelled me to lower the umbrella, and when I
raised it again, not half a minute later, there was no longer any man to
be seen. With a few more steps I reached the door. It was closed as
usual. I then noticed with a sudden sensation of dismay that the surface
of the freshly fallen snow was _unbroken_. My own footmarks were the
only ones to be seen anywhere, and though I retraced my way to the point
where I had first seen the man, I could find no slightest impression of
any other boots. Feeling creepy and uncomfortable, I went upstairs, and
was glad to get into bed.
* * * * *
Nov. 28.--With the fastening of my bedroom door the disturbances ceased.
I am convinced that I walked in my sleep. Probably I untied my toe and
then tied it up again. The fancied security of the locked door would
alone have been enough to restore sleep to my troubled spirit and enable
me to rest quietly.
Last night, however, the annoyance was suddenly renewed in another and
more aggressive form. I woke in the darkness with the impression that
some one was standing outside my bedroom door _listening_. As I became
more awake the impression grew into positive knowledge. Though there was
no appreciable sound of moving or breathing, I was so convinced of the
propinquity of a listener that I crept out of bed and approached the
door. As I did so there came faintly from the next room the unmistakable
sound of someone retreating stealthily across the floor. Yet, as I heard
it, it was neither the tread of a man nor a regular footstep, but
rather, it seemed to me, a confused sort of crawling, almost as of
someone on his hands and knees.
I unlocked the door in less than a second, and passed quickly into the
front room, and I could feel, as by the subtlest imaginable vibrations
upon my nerves, that the spot I was standing in had just that instant
been vacated! The Listener had moved; he was now behind the other door,
standing in the passage. Yet this door was also closed. I moved swiftly,
and as silently as possible, across the floor, and turned the handle. A
cold rush of air met me from the passage and sent shiver after shiver
down my back. There was no one in the doorway; there was no one on the
little landing; there was no one moving down the staircase. Yet I had
been so quick that this midnight Listener could not be very far away,
and I felt that if I persevered I should eventually come face to face
with him. And the courage that came so opportunely to overcome my
nervousness and horror seemed born of the unwilling conviction that it
was somehow necessary for my safety as well as my sanity that I should
find this intruder and force his secret from him. For was it not the
intent action of his mind upon my own, in concentrated listening, that
had awakened me with such a vivid realization of his presence?
Advancing across the narrow landing, I peered down into the well of the
little house. There was nothing to be seen; no one was moving in the
darkness. How cold the oilcloth was to my bare feet.
I cannot say what it was that suddenly drew my eyes upward. I only know
that, without apparent reason, I looked up and saw a person about
half-way up the next turn of the stairs, leaning forward over the
balustrade and staring straight into my face. It was a man. He appeared
to be clinging to the rail rather than standing on the stairs. The gloom
made it impossible to see much beyond the general outline, but the head
and shoulders were seemingly enormous, and stood sharply silhouetted
against the skylight in the roof immediately above. The idea flashed
into my brain in a moment that I was looking into the visage of
something monstrous. The huge skull, the mane-like hair, the wide-humped
shoulders, suggested, in a way I did not pause to analyze, that which
was scarcely human; and for some seconds, fascinated by horror, I
returned the gaze and stared into the dark, inscrutable countenance
above me, without knowing exactly where I was or what I was doing. Then
I realized in quite a new way that I was face to face with the secret
midnight Listener, and I steeled myself as best I could for what was
about to come.
The source of the rash courage that came to me at this awful moment will
ever be to me an inexplicable mystery. Though shivering with fear, and
my forehead wet with an unholy dew, I resolved to advance. Twenty
questions leaped to my lips: What are you? What do you want? Why do you
listen and watch? Why do you come into my room? But none of them found
articulate utterance.
I began forthwith to climb the stairs, and with the first signs of my
advance _he_ drew himself back into the shadows and began to move too.
He retreated as swiftly as I advanced. I heard the sound of his crawling
motion a few steps ahead of me, ever maintaining the same distance. When
I reached the landing he was half-way up the next flight, and when I was
half-way up the next flight he had already arrived at the top landing.
And then I heard him open the door of the little square room under the
roof and go in. Immediately, though the door did not close after him,
the sound of his moving entirely ceased.
At this moment I longed for a light, or a stick, or any weapon
whatsoever; but I had none of these things, and it was impossible to go
back. So I marched steadily up the rest of the stairs, and in less than
a minute found myself standing in the gloom face to face with the door
through which this creature had just entered.
For a moment I hesitated. The door was about half-way open, and the
Listener was standing evidently in his favourite attitude just behind
it--listening. To search through that dark room for him seemed hopeless;
to enter the same small space where he was seemed horrible. The very
idea filled me with loathing, and I almost decided to turn back.
It is strange at such times how trivial things impinge on the
consciousness with a shock as of something important and immense.
Something--it might have been a beetle or a mouse--scuttled over the
bare boards behind me. The door moved a quarter of an inch, closing. My
decision came back with a sudden rush, as it were, and thrusting out a
foot, I kicked the door so that it swung sharply back to its full
extent, and permitted me to walk forward slowly into the aperture of
profound blackness beyond. What a queer soft sound my bare feet made on
the boards! How the blood sang and buzzed in my head!
I was inside. The darkness closed over me, hiding even the windows. I
groped my way round the walls in a thorough search; but in order to
prevent all possibility of the other's escape, I first of all _closed
the door_.
There we were, we two, shut in together between four walls, within a few
feet of one another. But with what, with whom, was I thus momentarily
imprisoned? A new light flashed suddenly over the affair with a swift,
illuminating brilliance--and I knew I was a fool, an utter fool! I was
wide awake at last, and the horror was evaporating. My cursed nerves
again; a dream, a nightmare, and the old result--walking in my sleep.
The figure was a dream-figure. Many a time before had the actors in my
dreams stood before me for some moments after I was awake.... There was
a chance match in my pajamas' pocket, and I struck it on the wall. The
room was utterly empty. It held not even a shadow. I went quickly down
to bed, cursing my wretched nerves and my foolish, vivid dreams. But as
soon as ever I was asleep again, the same uncouth figure of a man crept
back to my bedside, and bending over me with his immense head close to
my ear whispered repeatedly in my dreams, "I want your body; I want its
covering. I'm waiting for it, and listening always." Words scarcely less
foolish than the dream.
But I wonder what that queer odour was up in the square room. I noticed
it again, and stronger than ever before and it seemed to be also in my
bedroom when I woke this morning.
* * * * *
Nov. 29.--Slowly, as moonbeams rise over a misty sea in June, the
thought is entering my mind that my nerves and somnambulistic dreams do
not adequately account for the influence this house exercises upon me.
It holds me as with a fine, invisible net. I cannot escape if I would.
It draws me, and it means to keep me.
* * * * *
Nov. 30.--The post this morning brought me a letter from Aden, forwarded
from my old rooms in Earl's Court. It was from Chapter, my former
Trinity chum, who is on his way home from the East, and asks for my
address. I sent it to him at the hotel he mentioned, "to await arrival."
As I have already said, my windows command a view of the alley, and I
can see an arrival without difficulty. This morning, while I was busy
writing, the sound of footsteps coming up the alley filled me with a
sense of vague alarm that I could in no way account for. I went over to
the window, and saw a man standing below waiting for the door to be
opened. His shoulders were broad, his top-hat glossy, and his overcoat
fitted beautifully round the collar. All this I could see, but no more.
Presently the door opened, and the shock to my nerves was unmistakable
when I heard a man's voice ask, "Is Mr. ---- still here?" mentioning my
name. I could not catch the answer, but it could only have been in the
affirmative, for the man entered the hall and the door shut to behind
him. But I waited in vain for the sound of his steps on the stairs.
There was no sound of any kind. It seemed to me so strange that I opened
my door and looked out. No one was anywhere to be seen. I walked across
the narrow landing, and looked through the window that commands the
whole length of the alley. There was no sign of a human being, coming or
going. The lane was deserted. Then I deliberately walked downstairs into
the kitchen, and asked the gray-faced landlady if a gentleman had just
that minute called for me.
The answer, given with an odd, weary sort of smile, was "No!"
* * * * *
Dec. 1.--I feel genuinely alarmed and uneasy over the state of my
nerves. Dreams are dreams, but never before have I had dreams in broad
daylight.
I am looking forward very much to Chapter's arrival. He is a capital
fellow, vigorous, healthy, with no nerves, and even less imagination;
and he has L2000 a year into the bargain. Periodically he makes me
offers--the last was to travel round the world with him as secretary,
which was a delicate way of paying my expenses and giving me some
pocket-money--offers, however, which I invariably decline. I prefer
to keep his friendship. Women could not come between us; money
might--therefore I give it no opportunity. Chapter always laughed at
what he called my "fancies," being himself possessed only of that
thin-blooded quality of imagination which is ever associated with the
prosaic-minded man. Yet, if taunted with this obvious lack, his wrath is
deeply stirred. His psychology is that of the crass materialist--always
a rather funny article. It will afford me genuine relief, none the less,
to hear the cold judgment his mind will have to pass upon the story of
this house as I shall have it to tell.
* * * * *
Dec. 2.--The strangest part of it all I have not referred to in this
brief diary. Truth to tell, I have been afraid to set it down in black
and white. I have kept it in the background of my thoughts, preventing
it as far as possible from taking shape. In spite of my efforts,
however, it has continued to grow stronger.
Now that I come to face the issue squarely, it is harder to express than
I imagined. Like a half-remembered melody that trips in the head but
vanishes the moment you try to sing it, these thoughts form a group in
the background of my mind, _behind_ my mind, as it were, and refuse to
come forward. They are crouching ready to spring, but the actual leap
never takes place.
In these rooms, except when my mind is strongly concentrated on my own
work, I find myself suddenly dealing in thoughts and ideas that are not
my own! New, strange conceptions, wholly foreign to my temperament, are
forever cropping up in my head. What precisely they are is of no
particular importance. The point is that they are entirely apart from
the channel in which my thoughts have hitherto been accustomed to flow.
Especially they come when my mind is at rest, unoccupied; when I'm
dreaming over the fire, or sitting with a book which fails to hold my
attention. Then these thoughts which are not mine spring into life and
make me feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Sometimes they are so strong
that I almost feel as if someone were in the room beside me, thinking
aloud.
Evidently my nerves and liver are shockingly out of order. I must work
harder and take more vigorous exercise. The horrid thoughts never come
when my mind is much occupied. But they are always there--waiting and as
it were _alive_.