Number 13 to a sense of his exposed position, for very swiftly and
suddenly he swept aside from the window, and his red light went out.
Anderson, who had been smoking a cigarette, laid the end of it on the
window-sill and went to bed.
Next morning he was woke by the _stuepige_ with hot water, etc. He
roused himself, and after thinking out the correct Danish words, said as
distinctly as he could:
"You must not move my portmanteau. Where is it?"
As is not uncommon, the maid laughed, and went away without making any
distinct answer.
Anderson, rather irritated, sat up in bed, intending to call her back,
but he remained sitting up, staring straight in front of him. There was
his portmanteau on its trestle, exactly where he had seen the porter put
it when he first arrived. This was a rude shock for a man who prided
himself on his accuracy of observation. How it could possibly have
escaped him the night before he did not pretend to understand; at any
rate, there it was now.
The daylight showed more than the portmanteau; it let the true
proportions of the room with its three windows appear, and satisfied its
tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was
almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look
out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he
must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he
had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went
to bed, and here was his cigarette-end on the sill of the middle window.
He started to go down to breakfast. Rather late, but Number 13 was
later: here were his boots still outside his door--a gentleman's boots.
So then Number 13 was a man, not a woman. Just then he caught sight of
the number on the door. It was 14. He thought he must have passed Number
13 without noticing it. Three stupid mistakes in twelve hours were too
much for a methodical, accurate-minded man, so he turned back to make
sure. The next number to 14 was number 12, his own room. There was no
Number 13 at all.
After some minutes devoted to a careful consideration of everything he
had had to eat and drink during the last twenty-four hours, Anderson
decided to give the question up. If his eyes or his brain were giving
way he would have plenty of opportunities for ascertaining that fact; if
not, then he was evidently being treated to a very interesting
experience. In either case the development of events would certainly be
worth watching.
During the day he continued his examination of the episcopal
correspondence which I have already summarized. To his disappointment,
it was incomplete. Only one other letter could be found which referred
to the affair of Mag. Nicolas Francken. It was from the Bishop Joergen
Friis to Rasmus Nielsen. He said:
"Although we are not in the least degree inclined to assent to your
judgment concerning our court, and shall be prepared if need be to
withstand you to the uttermost in that behalf, yet forasmuch as our
trusty and well-beloved Mag. Nicolas Francken, against whom you have
dared to allege certain false and malicious charges, hath been suddenly
removed from among us, it is apparent that the question for this term
falls. But forasmuch as you further allege that the Apostle and
Evangelist St. John in his heavenly Apocalypse describes the Holy Roman
Church under the guise and symbol of the Scarlet Woman, be it known to
you," etc.
Search as he would, Anderson could find no sequel to this letter nor any
clue to the cause or manner of the "removal" of the _casus belli_. He
could only suppose that Francken had died suddenly; and as there were
only two days between the date of Nielsen's last letter--when Francken
was evidently still in being--and that of the Bishop's letter, the death
must have been completely unexpected.
In the afternoon he paid a short visit to Hald, and took his tea at
Baekkelund; nor could he notice, though he was in a somewhat nervous
frame of mind, that there was any indication of such a failure of eye or
brain as his experiences of the morning had led him to fear.
At supper he found himself next to the landlord.
"What," he asked him, after some indifferent conversation, "is the
reason why in most of the hotels one visits in this country the number
thirteen is left out of the list of rooms? I see you have none here."
The landlord seemed amused.
"To think that you should have noticed a thing like that! I've thought
about it once or twice, myself, to tell the truth. An educated man, I've
said, has no business with these superstitious notions. I was brought up
myself here in the high school of Viborg, and our old master was always
a man to set his face against anything of that kind. He's been dead now
this many years--a fine upstanding man he was, and ready with his hands
as well as his head. I recollect us boys, one snowy day--"
Here he plunged into reminiscence.
"Then you don't think there is any particular objection to having a
Number 13?" said Anderson.
"Ah! to be sure. Well, you understand, I was brought up to the business
by my poor old father. He kept an hotel in Aarhuus first, and then, when
we were born, he moved to Viborg here, which was his native place, and
had the Phoenix here until he died. That was in 1876. Then I started
business in Silkeborg, and only the year before last I moved into this
house."
Then followed more details as to the state of the house and business
when first taken over.
"And when you came here, was there a Number 13?"
"No, no. I was going to tell you about that. You see, in a place like
this, the commercial class--the travellers--are what we have to provide
for in general. And put them in Number 13? Why, they'd as soon sleep in
the street, or sooner. As far as I'm concerned myself, it wouldn't make
a penny difference to me what the number of my room was, and so I've
often said to them; but they stick to it that it brings them bad luck.
Quantities of stories they have among them of men that have slept in a
Number 13 and never been the same again, or lost their best customers,
or--one thing and another," said the landlord, after searching for a
more graphic phrase.
"Then, what do you use your Number 13 for?" said Anderson, conscious as
he said the words of a curious anxiety quite disproportionate to the
importance of the question.
"My Number 13? Why, don't I tell you that there isn't such a thing in
the house? I thought you might have noticed that. If there was it would
be next door to your own room."
"Well, yes; only I happened to think--that is, I fancied last night that
I had seen a door numbered thirteen in that passage; and, really, I am
almost certain I must have been right, for I saw it the night before as
well."
Of course, Herr Kristensen laughed this notion to scorn, as Anderson had
expected, and emphasized with much iteration the fact that no Number 13
existed or had existed before him in that hotel.
Anderson was in some ways relieved by his certainty, but still puzzled,
and he began to think that the best way to make sure whether he had
indeed been subject to an illusion or not was to invite the landlord to
his room to smoke a cigar later on in the evening. Some photographs of
English towns which he had with him formed a sufficiently good excuse.
Herr Kristensen was flattered by the invitation, and most willingly
accepted it. At about ten o'clock he was to make his appearance, but
before that Anderson had some letters to write, and retired for the
purpose of writing them. He almost blushed to himself at confessing it,
but he could not deny that it was the fact that he was becoming quite
nervous about the question of the existence of Number 13; so much so
that he approached his room by way of Number 11, in order that he might
not be obliged to pass the door, or the place where the door ought to
be. He looked quickly and suspiciously about the room when he entered
it, but there was nothing beyond that indefinable air of being smaller
than usual, to warrant any misgivings. There was no question of the
presence or absence of his portmanteau to-night. He had himself emptied
it of its contents and lodged it under his bed. With a certain effort he
dismissed the thought of Number 13 from his mind, and sat down to his
writing.
His neighbours were quiet enough. Occasionally a door opened in the
passage and a pair of boots was thrown out, or a bagman walked past
humming to himself, and outside, from time to time a cart thundered over
the atrocious cobble-stones, or a quick step hurried along the flags.
Anderson finished his letters, ordered in whiskey and soda, and then
went to the window and studied the dead wall opposite and the shadows
upon it.
As far as he could remember, Number 14 had been occupied by the lawyer,
a staid man, who said little at meals, being generally engaged in
studying a small bundle of papers beside his plate. Apparently, however,
he was in the habit of giving vent to his animal spirits when alone. Why
else should he be dancing? The shadow from the next room evidently
showed that he was. Again and again his thin form crossed the window,
his arms waved, and a gaunt leg was kicked up with surprising agility.
He seemed to be barefooted, and the floor must be well laid, for no
sound betrayed his movements. Sagfoerer Herr Anders Jensen, dancing at
ten o'clock at night in a hotel bedroom, seemed a fitting subject for a
historical painting in the grand style; and Anderson's thoughts, like
those of Emily in the "Mysteries of Udolpho," began to "arrange
themselves in the following lines":
"When I return to my hotel,
At ten o'clock P.M.,
The waiters think I am unwell;
I do not care for them.
But when I've locked my chamber door,
And put my boots outside,
I dance all night upon the floor.
And even if my neighbours swore,
I'd go on dancing all the more,
For I'm acquainted with the law,
And in despite of all their jaw,
Their protests I deride."
Had not the landlord at this moment knocked at the door, it is probable
that quite a long poem might have been laid before the reader. To judge
from his look of surprise when he found himself in the room, Herr
Kristensen was struck, as Anderson had been, by something unusual in its
aspect. But he made no remark. Anderson's photographs interested him
mightily, and formed the text of many autobiographical discourses. Nor
is it quite clear how the conversation could have been diverted into the
desired channel of Number 13, had not the lawyer at this moment begun to
sing, and to sing in a manner which could leave no doubt in anyone's
mind that he was either exceedingly drunk or raving mad. It was a high,
thin voice that they heard, and it seemed dry, as if from long disuse.
Of words or tune there was no question. It went sailing up to a
surprising height, and was carried down with a despairing moan as of a
winter wind in a hollow chimney, or an organ whose wind fails suddenly.
It was a really horrible sound, and Anderson felt that if he had been
alone he must have fled for refuge and society to some neighbour
bagman's room.
The landlord sat open-mouthed.
"I don't understand it," he said at last, wiping his forehead. "It is
dreadful. I have heard it once before, but I made sure it was a cat."
"Is he mad?" said Anderson.
"He must be; and what a sad thing! Such a good customer, too, and so
successful in his business, by what I hear, and a young family to bring
up."
Just then came an impatient knock at the door, and the knocker entered,
without waiting to be asked. It was the lawyer, in deshabille and very
rough-haired; and very angry he looked.
"I beg pardon, sir," he said, "but I should be much obliged if you would
kindly desist--"
Here he stopped, for it was evident that neither of the persons before
him was responsible for the disturbance; and after a moment's lull it
swelled forth again more wildly than before.
"But what in the name of Heaven does it mean?" broke out the lawyer.
"Where is it? Who is it? Am I going out of my mind?"
"Surely, Herr Jensen, it comes from your room next door? Isn't there a
cat or something stuck in the chimney?"
This was the best that occurred to Anderson to say, and he realized its
futility as he spoke; but any thing was better than to stand and listen
to that horrible voice, and look at the broad, white face of the
landlord, all perspiring and quivering as he clutched the arms of his
chair.
"Impossible," said the lawyer, "impossible. There is no chimney. I came
here because I was convinced the noise was going on here. It was
certainly in the next room to mine."
"Was there no door between yours and mine?" said Anderson eagerly.
"No, sir," said Herr Jensen, rather sharply. "At least, not this
morning."
"Ah!" said Anderson. "Nor to-night?"
"I am not sure," said the lawyer with some hesitation.
Suddenly the crying or singing voice in the next room died away, and the
singer was heard seemingly to laugh to himself in a crooning manner. The
three men actually shivered at the sound. Then there was a silence.
"Come," said the lawyer, "what have you to say, Herr Kristensen? What
does this mean?"
"Good Heaven!" said Kristensen. "How should I tell! I know no more than
you, gentlemen. I pray I may never hear such a noise again."
"So do I," said Herr Jensen, and he added something under his breath.
Anderson thought it sounded like the last words of the Psalter, "_omnis
spiritus laudet Dominum_," but he could not be sure.
"But we must do something," said Anderson--"the three of us. Shall we go
and investigate in the next room?"
"But that is Herr Jensen's room," wailed the landlord. "It is no use; he
has come from there himself."
"I am not so sure," said Jensen. "I think this gentleman is right: we
must go and see."
The only weapons of defence that could be mustered on the spot were a
stick and umbrella. The expedition went out into the passage, not
without quakings. There was a deadly quiet outside, but a light shone
from under the next door. Anderson and Jensen approached it. The latter
turned the handle, and gave a sudden vigorous push. No use. The door
stood fast.
"Herr Kristensen," said Jensen, "will you go and fetch the strongest
servant you have in the place? We must see this through."
The landlord nodded, and hurried off, glad to be away from the scene of
action. Jensen and Anderson remained outside looking at the door.
"It _is_ Number 13, you see," said the latter.
"Yes; there is your door, and there is mine," said Jensen.
"My room has three windows in the daytime," said Anderson, with
difficulty suppressing a nervous laugh.
"By George, so has mine!" said the lawyer, turning and looking at
Anderson. His back was now to the door. In that moment the door opened,
and an arm came out and clawed at his shoulder. It was clad in ragged,
yellowish linen, and the bare skin, where it could be seen, had long
gray hair upon it.
Anderson was just in time to pull Jensen out of its reach with a cry of
disgust and fright, when the door shut again, and a low laugh was heard.
Jensen had seen nothing, but when Anderson hurriedly told him what a
risk he had run, he fell into a great state of agitation, and suggested
that they should retire from the enterprise, and lock themselves up in
one or other of their rooms.
However, while he was developing this plan, the landlord and two
able-bodied men arrived on the scene, all looking rather serious and
alarmed. Jensen met them with a torrent of description and explanation,
which did not at all tend to encourage them for the fray.
The men dropped the crowbars they had brought, and said flatly that they
were not going to risk their throats in that devil's den. The landlord
was miserably nervous and undecided, conscious that if the danger were
not faced his hotel was ruined, and very loath to face it himself.
Luckily Anderson hit upon a way of rallying the demoralized force.
"Is this," he said, "the Danish courage I have heard so much of? It
isn't a German in there, and if it was, we are five to one."
The two servants and Jensen were stung into action by this, and made a
dash at the door.
"Stop!" said Anderson. "Don't lose your heads. You stay out here with
the light, landlord, and one of you two men break in the door, and don't
go in when it gives way."
The men nodded, and the younger stepped forward, raised his crowbar, and
dealt a tremendous blow on the upper panel. The result was not in the
least what any of them anticipated. There was no cracking or rending of
wood--only a dull sound, as if the solid wall had been struck. The man
dropped his tool with a shout, and began rubbing his elbow. His cry drew
their eyes upon him for a moment; then Anderson looked at the door
again. It was gone; the plaster wall of the passage stared him in the
face, with a considerable gash in it where the crowbar had struck it.
Number 13 had passed out of existence.
For a brief space they stood perfectly still, gazing at the blank wall.
An early cock in the yard beneath was heard to crow; and as Anderson
glanced in the direction of the sound, he saw through the window at the
end of the long passage that the eastern sky was paling to the dawn.
* * * * *
"Perhaps," said the landlord, with hesitation, "you gentleman would like
another room for to-night--a double-bedded one?"
Neither Jensen nor Anderson was averse to the suggestion. They felt
inclined to hunt in couples after their late experience. It was found
convenient, when each of them went to his room to collect the articles
he wanted for the night, that the other should go with him and hold the
candle. They noticed that both Number 12 and Number 14 had _three_
windows.
* * * * *
Next morning the same party re-assembled in Number 12. The landlord was
naturally anxious to avoid engaging outside help, and yet it was
imperative that the mystery attaching to that part of the house should
be cleared up. Accordingly the two servants had been induced to take
upon them the function of carpenters. The furniture was cleared away,
and, at the cost of a good many irretrievably damaged planks, that
portion of the floor was taken up which lay nearest to Number 14.
You will naturally suppose that a skeleton--say that of Mag. Nicolas
Francken--was discovered. That was not so. What they did find lying
between the beams which supported the flooring was a small copper box.
In it was a neatly-folded vellum document, with about twenty lines of
writing. Both Anderson and Jensen (who proved to be something of a
palaeographer) were much excited by this discovery, which promised to
afford the key to these extraordinary phenomena.
* * * * *
I possess a copy of an astrological work which I have never read. It
has, by way of frontispiece, a woodcut by Hans Sebald Beham,
representing a number of sages seated round a table. This detail may
enable connoisseurs to identify the book. I cannot myself recollect its
title, and it is not at this moment within reach; but the fly-leaves of
it are covered with writing, and, during the ten years in which I have
owned the volume, I have not been able to determine which way up this
writing ought to be read, much less in what language it is. Not
dissimilar was the position of Anderson and Jensen after the protracted
examination to which they submitted the document in the copper box.
After two days' contemplation of it, Jensen, who was the bolder spirit
of the two, hazarded the conjecture that the language was either Latin
or Old Danish.
Anderson ventured upon no surmises, and was very willing to surrender
the box and the parchment to the Historical Society of Viborg to be
placed in their museum.
I had the whole story from him a few months later, as we sat in a wood
near Upsala, after a visit to the library there, where we--or, rather,
I--had laughed over the contract by which Daniel Salthenius (in later
life Professor of Hebrew at Koenigsberg) sold himself to Satan. Anderson
was not really amused.
"Young idiot!" he said, meaning Salthenius, who was only an
undergraduate when he committed that indiscretion, "how did he know what
company he was courting?"
And when I suggested the usual considerations he only grunted. That same
afternoon he told me what you have read; but he refused to draw any
inferences from it, and to assent to any that I drew for him.
III
JOSEPH: A STORY
KATHERINE RICKFORD
They were sitting round the fire after dinner--not an ordinary fire, one
of those fires that has a little room all to itself with seats at each
side of it to hold a couple of people or three.
The big dining-room was panelled with oak. At the far end was a handsome
dresser that dated back for generations. One's imagination ran riot when
one pictured the people who must have laid those pewter plates on the
long, narrow, solid table. Massive, mediaeval chests stood against the
walls. Arms and parts of armour hung against the panelling; but one
noticed few of these things, for there was no light in the room save
what the fire gave.
It was Christmas Eve. Games had been played. The old had vied with the
young at snatching raisins from the burning snapdragon. The children had
long since gone to bed; it was time their elders followed them, but they
lingered round the fire, taking turns at telling stories. Nothing very
weird had been told; no one had felt any wish to peep over his shoulder
or try to penetrate the darkness of the far end of the room; the
omission caused a sensation of something wanting. From each one there
this thought went out, and so a sudden silence fell upon the party. It
was a girl who broke it--a mere child; she wore her hair up that night
for the first time, and that seemed to give her the right to sit up so
late.
"Mr. Grady is going to tell one," she said.
All eyes were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep armchair placed
straight in front of the fire. He was short, inclined to be fat, with a
bald head and a pointed beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was
plain that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of so much
strained yet forceful thought upon himself. He was restless in his chair
as people are in a room that is overheated. He blinked his eyes as he
looked round the company. His lips twitched in a nervous manner. One
side of him seemed to be endeavouring to restrain another side of him
from a feverish desire to speak.
"It was this room that made me think of him," he said thoughtfully.
There was a long silence, but it occurred to no one to prompt him.
Everyone seemed to understand that he was going to speak, or rather that
something inside him was going to speak, some force that craved
expression and was using him as a medium.
The little old man's pink face grew strangely calm, the animation that
usually lit it was gone. One would have said that the girl who had
started him already regretted the impulse, and now wanted to stop him.
She was breathing heavily, and once or twice made as though she would
speak to him, but no words came. She must have abandoned the idea, for
she fell to studying the company. She examined them carefully, one by
one. "This one," she told herself, "is so-and-so, and that one there
just another so-and-so." She stared at them, knowing that she could not
turn them to herself with her stare. They were just bodies kept working,
so to speak, by some subtle sort of sentry left behind by the real
selves that streamed out in pent-up thought to the little old man in the
chair in front of the fire.
"His name was Joseph: at least they called him Joseph. He dreamed, you
understand--dreams. He was an extraordinary lad in many ways. His
mother--I knew her very well--had three children in quick succession,
soon after marriage; then ten years went by and Joseph was born. Quiet
and reserved he always was, a self-contained child whose only friend was
his mother. People said things about him, you know how people talk. Some
said he was not Clara's child at all, but that she had adopted him;
others, that her husband was not his father, and these put her change of
manner down to a perpetual struggle to keep her husband comfortably in
the dark. I always imagined that the boy was in some way aware of all
this gossip, for I noticed that he took a dislike to the people who
spread it most."
The little man rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and let the
tips of his fingers meet in front of him. A smile played about his
mouth. He seemed to be searching among his reminiscences for the one
that would give the clearest portrait of Joseph.