 8. Smith. In episode in a lodging-house. When I was a medical student, began the doctor, half turning towards his circle of listeners in the firelight, I came across one or two very curious human beings. But there was one fellow, I remember particularly, for he caused me the most vivid, and I think the most uncomfortable emotions I have ever known. For many months I knew Smith only by name, as the occupant of the floor above me. Obviously his name meant nothing to me. Moreover, I was busy with lectures, reading, clinics, and the like, and had little leisure to devise plans for scraping acquaintance with any of the other lodgers in the house. Then Chance brought us curiously together, and this fellow Smith left a deep impression upon me as the result of our first meeting. At the time, the strength of this first impression seemed quite inexplicable to me, but looking back at the episode now from a standpoint of greater knowledge, I judged the fact to have been that he stirred my curiosity to an unusual degree, and at the same time awakened my sense of horror, whatever that may be in a medical student, about as deeply and permanently as these two emotions were capable of being stirred at all in the particular system and set of nerves called me. How he knew I was interested in the study of languages was something I could never explain, but one day quite unannounced he came quietly into my room in the evening and asked me point blank if I knew enough Hebrew to help him in the pronunciation of certain words. He caught me along the line of least resistance, and I was greatly flattered to be able to give him the desired information, but it was only when he had thanked me and was gone that I realized I had been in the presence of an unusual individuality. For the life of me I could not quite seize and label the peculiarities of what I felt to be a very striking personality, but it was born in upon me that he was a man apart from his fellows, a mind that followed a line leading away from ordinary human intercourse and human interests, and into regions that left in his atmosphere something remote, rarefied, chilling. The moment he was gone I became conscious of two things, an intense curiosity to know more about this man and what his real interests were, and secondly the fact that my skin was crawling, that my hair had a tendency to rise. The doctor paused a moment here to puff hard at his pipe, which however had gone out beyond recall without the assistance of a match, and in the deep silence which testified to the genuine interest of his listeners, someone poked the fire up into a little blaze, and one or two others glanced over their shoulders into the dark distances of the big hall. On looking back, he went on watching the momentary flames in the grate. I see a short, thick-set man of perhaps forty-five, with immense shoulders and small, slender hands. The contrast was noticeable, for I remember thinking that such a giant frame and such slim-finger bones hardly belonged together. His head, too, was very large and very long, the head of an idealist, beyond all question, yet with an unusually strong development of the jaw and chin. Here again was a singular contradiction, though I am better able now to appreciate its full meaning, with a greater experience in judging the values of physiognomy. For this meant, of course, an enthusiastic idealism, balanced and kept in check, by will and judgment. Elements usually deficient in dreamers and visionaries. At any rate, here was a being with probably a very wide range of possibilities. A machine, with a pendulum that most likely had an unusual length of swing. The man's hair was exceedingly fine, and the lines about his nose and mouth were cut as with a delicate steel instrument in wax. His eyes I have left to the last, they were large, and quite changeable. Not in color only, but in character, size and shape, occasionally they seemed the eyes of someone else, if you can understand what I mean, and at the same time in their shifting shades of blue, green, and a nameless sort of dark gray, there was a sinister light in them, that lent to the whole face and aspect almost alarming. Moreover, they were the most luminous optics I think I have ever seen in any human being. There, again, at the risk of a wearisome description, is Smith, as I saw him for the first time that winter's evening, in my shabby students' rooms in Edenburg. And yet the real part of him, of course, I have left untouched, for it is both indescribable and un-get-attable. I have spoken already of an atmosphere of warning and aloofness he carried about with him. It is impossible further to analyze the series of little shocks his presence always communicated to my being. But there was that about him which made me instantly on the cave in his presence, every nerve alert, every sense strained, and on the watch. I do not mean that he deliberately suggested danger, but rather that he brought forces in his wake which automatically warned the nervous centers of my system to be on their guard and alert. Since the days of my first acquaintance with this man, I have lived through other experiences and have seen much I cannot pretend to explain or understand. But so far in my life, I have only once come across a human being who suggested a disagreeable familiarity with unholy things, and who made me feel uncanny and creepy in his presence. And that unenviable individual was Mr. Smith, what his occupation was during the day I never knew. I think he slept until the sun set. No one ever saw him on the stairs, or heard him move in his room during the day. He was a creature of the shadows, who apparently preferred darkness to light. Our landlady either knew nothing or would say nothing. At any rate, she found no fault, and I have since wondered often by what magic this fellow was able to convert a common landlady of a common lodging-house into a discreet and uncommunicative person. This alone was a sign of genius of some sort. He's been here with me for years, long before you come, and I don't interfere or ask no questions of what doesn't concern me as long as people pace their rent. Was the only remark on the subject that I ever succeeded in winning from that quarter, and it certainly told me nothing, nor gave me any encouragement to ask for further information. Examinations, however, in the general excitement of a medical student's life, for a time put Mr. Smith completely out of my head. For a long period he did not call upon me again, and for my part I felt no courage to return his unsolicited visit. Just then, however, there came a change. In the fortunes of those who controlled my very limited income, and I was obliged to give up my ground floor, and move aloft to more modest chambers on the top of the house. Here I was directly over Mr. Smith and had to pass his door to reach my own. It so happened that about this time I was frequently called out at all hours of the night for the maternity cases, which a fourth year student takes at a certain period of the studies. And on returning from one of these visits, at about two o'clock in the morning, I was surprised to hear the sound of voices as I passed his door, a peculiar sweet odor too, not unlike the smell of incense penetrated into the passage. I went upstairs very quietly, wondering what was going on there at this hour of the morning. To my knowledge, Smith never had visitors. For a moment I hesitated outside the door, with one foot on the stairs. All my interest in this strange man revived, and my curiosity rose to a point not far from action. At last I might learn something of the habits of this lover of the night and the darkness. The sound of voices was plainly audible, Smiths predominating so much that I never could catch more than points of sound from the other, penetrating now and then the steady stream of his voice. Not a single word reached me, at least not a word that I could understand, though the voice was loud and distinct, and it was only afterwards that I realized he must have been speaking in a foreign language. The sound of footsteps too was equally distinct. Two persons were moving about the room, passing and repassing the door, one of them a light agile person, and the other, ponderous, and somewhat awkward. Smith's voice went on incessantly, with its odd monotonous droning, now loud, now soft, and he crossed and recrossed the floor. The other person was also on the move, but in a different and less regular fashion, for I heard rapid steps that seemed to end, sometimes in stumbling, and quick sudden movements that brought up with a violent lurching against the wall or furniture. As I listened to Smith's voice, moreover, I began to feel afraid. There was something in this sound that made me feel intuitively he was in a tight place, and an impulse stirred faintly into me, very faintly, I admit, to knock at the door and inquire if he needed help, but long before the impulse could translate itself into an act, or even before it had been properly weighed and considered by the mind, I heard a voice close beside me in the air, a sort of hushed whisper, which I am certain was Smith speaking. The sound did not seem to have come to me through the door. It was close in my very ear, as though he stood beside me, and it gave me such a start that I clutched the banisters to save myself from stepping backwards and making a clatter on the stairs. There is nothing you can do to help me. It's said distinctly, and you will be much safer in your own room. I am ashamed to this day. Of the pace at which I covered the flight of stairs in the darkness to the top floor and of the shaking hand with which I lit my candles and bolted the door. But there it is, just as it happened. This midnight episode, so odd and yet so trivial in itself, fired me with more curiosity than ever about my fellow lodger. It also made me connect him, in my mind, with a sense of fear and distrust. I never saw him, yet I was often and uncomfortably aware of his presence in the upper regions of that loomy lodging-house. Smith and his secret mode of life and mysterious pursuits somehow contrived to awaken in my being a line of reflection that disturbed my comfortable condition of ignorance. I never saw him, as I said, and exchanged no sort of communication with him, yet it seemed to me that his mind was in contact with mine, and some of the strange forces of his atmosphere filtered through into my being and disturbed my equilibrium. Those upper floors became haunted for me after dark, and though outwardly our lives never came into contact, I became unwillingly involved in certain pursuits on which his mind was centered. I felt that he was somehow making use of me against my will, and by methods which passed my comprehension. I was at this time, moreover, in the heavy unquestioning state of materialism, which is common to medical students when they begin to understand something of the human anatomy and nervous system, and jump at once to the conclusion that they control the universe, and hold in their forceps the last word of life and death. I knew it all, and regarded a belief in anything beyond matter as the wanderings of weak or at best untrained minds. And this condition of mind, of course, added to the strength of this upsetting fear, which emanated from the floor below, and began slowly to take possession of me. Though I kept no notes of the subsequent events in this matter, they made too deep an impression for me ever to forget the sequence in which they occurred. Without difficulty I can recall the next step in the adventure with Smith. For adventure it rapidly grew to be. The doctor stopped a moment, and laid his pipe on the table behind him before continuing. The fire had burned low, and no one stirred to poke it. The silence in the great hall was so deep that when the speaker's pipe touched the table the sound woke audible echoes at the far end among the shadows. One evening while I was reading, the door of my room opened, and Smith came in. He made no attempt at ceremony. It was after ten o'clock, and I was tired, but the presence of the man immediately galvanized me into activity. My attempt at ordinary politeness, he thrust on one side at once, and began asking me to vocalize and then pronounce for him certain Hebrew words, and when this was done he abruptly inquired if I was not the fortunate possessor of a very rare rabbinical treatise, which he named. How he knew that I possessed this book puzzled me exceedingly, but I was still more surprised to see him cross the room and take it out of my bookshelf. Almost before I had time to answer in the affirmative, evidently he knew exactly where it was kept. This excited my curiosity beyond all bounds, and I immediately began asking him questions, and though out of sheer respect for the man I put them very delicately to him, and almost by way of mere conversation he had only one reply for the lot. He would look up at me from the pages of the book with an expression of complete comprehension on his extraordinary features, would bow his head a little, and say very gravely, that of course is a perfectly proper question, which was absolutely all I could ever get out of him. On this particular occasion he stayed with me perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, and he went quickly downstairs to his room with my Hebrew treatise in his hand and I heard him close and bolt his door, but a few moments later, before I had time to settle down to my book again, or to recover from the surprise his visit had caused me, I heard the door open and there stood Smith once again beside my chair. He made no excuse for his second interruption, but bent his head down to the level of my reading lamp, and peered across the flame straight into my eyes. I hope, he whispered, I hope you are never disturbed at night. Eh? I stammered, disturbed at night. Oh, no, thanks, at least not that I know of. I am glad, he replied gravely, appearing not to notice my confusion and surprise at his question. But remember, should it ever be the case, please let me know at once. And he was gone, downstairs and into his room again. For some minutes I sat reflecting upon his strange behavior. He was not mad, I argued, but was the victim of some harmless delusion that had gradually grown upon him as a result of his solitary mode of life, and from the books he used I judged that it had something to do with medieval magic, or some system of ancient Hebrew mysticism. The words he asked me to pronounce for him were probably words of power, which, when uttered with the behemoths of a strong will behind them, were supposed to produce physical results, or set up vibrations in one's own inner being that had the effect of a partial lifting of the veil. I sat thinking about the man, and his way of living, and the probable effects in the long run of his dangerous experiments, and I can recall perfectly well the sensation of disappointment that crept over me when I realized that I had labelled his particular form of aberration, and that my curiosity would therefore no longer be excited. For some time I had been sitting alone with these reflections. It may have been ten minutes, or it may have been a half an hour. When I was aroused from my reverie by the knowledge that someone was again in the room standing close beside my chair, my first thought was that Smith had come back again in his swift, unaccountable manner. But almost at the same moment I realized that this could not be the case at all, for the door faced my position, and it certainly had not been opened again. Yet, someone was in the room, moving cautiously to and fro, watching me, almost touching me. I was as sure of it as I was of myself, and though at the moment I do not think I was actually afraid, I am down to admit that a certain weakness came over me, and that I felt that strange disinclination for action, which is probably the beginning of the horrible paralysis of real terror. I should have been glad to hide myself, if that had been possible, to cower into a corner or behind a door or anywhere so that they could not be watched and observed. But, overcoming my nervousness with an effort of the will, I got up quickly out of my chair and held the reading lamp aloft, so that it shone into over corners like a searchlight. The room was utterly empty. It was utterly empty, at least, to the eye, but to the nerves, and especially to that combination of sense perception which is made up by all the senses acting together, and by no one in particular. There was a person standing there, at my very elbow. I say person, for I can think of no appropriate word, for if it was a human being I can only affirm that I had the overwhelming conviction that it was not, but that it was some form of life wholly unknown to me, both as to its essence and its nature, a sensation of gigantic force and power came with it. And I remember vividly to this day my terror, on realizing that I was close to an invisible being who could crush me as easily as I could crush a fly, and who could see my every movement while itself remaining invisible. To this terror was added the certain knowledge that the being kept in my proximity for a definite purpose, and this purpose had some direct bearing upon my well-being, indeed upon my life. I was equally convinced, for I became aware of a sensation of growing lassitude as though the vitality were being steadily drained out of my body. My heart began to beat irregularly at first then faintly. I was conscious, even within a few minutes, of a general drooping of the powers of life in the whole system and ebbing away of self-control and a distinct approach of drowsiness and torpor. The power to move or to think out any mode of resistance was fast leaving me. When there arose, in the distance as it were, a tremendous commotion. A door opened with a clatter, and I heard the preemptory and commanding tones of a human voice calling aloud in a language I could not comprehend. It was Smith, my fellow lodger, calling up the stairs, and his voice had not sounded for more than a few seconds when I felt something withdrawn from my presence, from my person, indeed from my very skin. It seemed as if there was a rushing of air, and some large creature swept by me at about the level of my shoulders. Instantly the pressure on my heart was relieved, and the atmosphere seemed to resume its normal condition. Smith's door closed quietly downstairs. As I put the lamp down with trembling hands, what had happened I do not know. Only I was alone again, and my strength was returning as rapidly as it had left me. I went across the room and examined myself in the glass. The skin was very pale and the eyes dull. My temperature, I found, was a little below normal, and my pulse faint and irregular. But these smaller signs of disturbance were as nothing compared with the feeling I had, though no outward signs bore testimony to the fact, that I had narrowly escaped a wheeling, ghastly catastrophe. I felt shaken, somehow shaken to the very roots of my being. The doctor rose from his chair and crossed over to the dying fire, so that no one could see the expression on his face as he stood with his back to the grate, and continued his weird tale. It would be wearisome. He went on in a lower voice, looking over our heads as though he still saw the dingy top floor of that haunted Edenberg lodging-house. It would be tedious for me at this length of time to analyze my feelings, or attempt to reproduce for you the thorough examination to which I endeavored then to subject my whole being, intellectual, emotional, and physical. I need only mention the dominant emotion, with which this curious episode left me, the indignant anger against myself, that I could ever have lost my self-control enough to come under the sway of so gross and absurd a delusion. This protest, however, I remember making with all the emphasis possible, and I also remember noting that it brought me very little satisfaction, for it was the protest of my reason only, when all the rest of my being was up in arms against its conclusions. My dealings with the delusion, however, were not yet over for the night, for very early next morning, somewhere about three o'clock, I was awakened by a curiously stealthy noise in the room. In the next minute there followed a crash, as if all my books had been swept bodily from their shelf onto the floor. But this time I was not frightened, cursing the disturbance with all the resounding and harmless words I could accumulate. I jumped out of bed and lit the candle in a second, and in the first dazzle of the flaring match, but before the wick had time to catch, I was certain I saw a dark gray shadow of ungainly shape, and with something more or less like a human head. Drive rapidly past the side of the wall farthest from me and disappear into the gloom by the angle of the door. I waited one single second to be sure the candle was a light, and then dashed after it. But before it had gone two steps my foot stumbled against, something hard piled on the carpet, and I only just saved myself from falling headlong. I picked myself up and found that all the books from what I called my language shelf were strewn across the floor. The room, meanwhile, as a minute's search revealed, was quite empty. I looked in every corner and behind every stick of furniture, and a student's bedroom on the top floor costing twelve shillings a week did not hold many available hiding places, as you may imagine. The crash, however, was explained. Some very practical and physical force had thrown the books from their resting place. That at least was beyond all doubt, and as I replaced them on the shelf I noted that not one was missing. I busied myself mentally, with the sore problem of how the agent of this little practical joke had gained access to my room, and then escaped again. For my door was locked and bolted. Smith sought question as to whether I was disturbed in the night, and his warning injunction to let him know at once if such were the case, now, of course, returned to affect me, as I stood there in the early morning, cold and shivering on the carpet. But I realized at the same moment how impossible it would be for me to admit that a more than usually vivid nightmare could have connection with himself. I would rather stand a hundred of these mysterious visitations and consult such a man as to their possible cause. A knock at the door interrupted my reflections, and I gave a start that sent the candle-grease flying. Let me in, came in Smith's voice. I unlocked the door. He came in, fully dressed. His face were a curious pallor. It seemed to me to be under the skin, and to shine through, and almost to make it luminous. His eyes were exceedingly bright. I was wondering what in the world to say to him, or how he would explain his visit at such an hour. When he closed the door behind him and came close up to me, uncomfortably close, you should have called me at once. He said, in his whispering voice, fixing his great eyes on my face. I stammered something about an awful dream, but he ignored my remark utterly, and I caught his eye, wondering next if any movement of those optics can be described as wandering to the bookshelf. I watched him. Unable to move my gaze from his person, the man fascinated me horribly for some reason. Why in the devil's name was he up and dressed at three in the morning? How did he know anything had happened unusual in my room? Then his whisper began again. It's your amazing vitality that causes you this annoyance. He said, shifting his eyes back to mine. I gasped. Something in his voice or manner turned my blood into ice. That's the real attraction, he went on. But if this continues, one of us will have to leave, you know. I positively could not find a word to say in reply. The channels of speech dried up within me. I simply stared, and wondered what he would say next. I watched him in a sort of dream, and as far as I can remember, he asked me to promise to call him sooner another time, and then began to walk around the room uttering strange sounds and making signs with his arms and hands until he reached the door. Then he was gone in a second, and I had closed and locked the door behind him. After this, the Smith adventure drew rapidly to a climax. It was a week or two later, and I was coming home between two and three in the morning from a maternity case, certain features of which, for the time being, had very much taken possession of my mind, so much so indeed that I passed Smith's door without giving him a single thought. The gas jet on the landing was still burning, but so low that it made little impression on the waves of deep shadow that lay across the stairs. Overhead, the faintest possible gleam of gray showed that the morning was not far away. A few stars shone down through the skylight. The house was still as the grave, and the only sound to break the silence was the rushing of the wind round the walls and over the roof, but this was a fitful sound, suddenly rising, and as suddenly falling away again, and it only served to intensify the silence. I had already reached my own landing when I gave a violent start. It was automatic, almost a reflex action in fact, for it was only when I caught myself fumbling at the door handle and thinking where I could conceal myself quickest, that I realized a voice had sounded close beside me in the air. It was the same voice I had heard before, and it seemed to me to be calling for help. And yet the very same minute I pushed on into the room, determined to disregard it, and seeking to persuade myself it was the creaking of the boards under my weight or the rushing noise of the wind that had deceived me, but hardly had I reached the table where the candle stood when this sound was unmistakably repeated. Help! Help! And this time it was accompanied by what I can only describe as a vivid tactile hallucination. I was touched. The skin of my arm was clutched by fingers. Some compelling force sent me headlong down the stairs, as if the haunting forces of the whole world were at my heels. At Smith's door I paused. The force of his previous warning injunction to seek his aid without delay acted suddenly, and I lent my whole weight against the panels, little dreaming that I should be called upon to give help, rather than to receive it. The door yielded at once, and I burst into a room that was so full of a choking vapor, moving in slow clouds that at first I could distinguish nothing at all, but a set of what seemed to be huge shadows passing in and out of the mist. Then, gradually, I perceived that a red lamp on the mantelpiece gave all the light there was, and that the room which I now entered for the first time was almost empty of furniture. The carpet was rolled back and piled in a heap in the corner, and upon the white boards of the floor I noticed a large circle drawn in black of some material that emitted a faint glowing light, and it was apparently smoking. Inside this circle, as well as of regular intervals outside it, were curious-looking designs, also traced in the same black smoking substance. These two seemed to emit a feeble light of their own. My first impression on entering the room had been that it was full of people, I was going to say, but that hardly expresses my meaning. Beings, they certainly were, but it was born in upon me beyond the possibility of doubt that they were not human beings. That I had caught a momentary glimpse of living intelligent entities, I can never doubt. But I am equally convinced that I cannot prove it, that these entities were from some other scheme of evolution altogether, and had nothing to do with the ordinary human life, either incarnate or discarnate. But whatever they were, the visible appearance of them was exceedingly fleeting. I no longer saw anything, though I still felt convinced of their immediate presence. They were, moreover, of the same order of life as the visitant in my bedroom of a few nights before. In their proximity to my atmosphere, in numbers, instead of singly as before, conveyed to my mind something that was quite terrible and overwhelming. I fell into a violent trembling, and the perspiration poured from my face and streams. They were in constant motion about me. They stood close to my side, moved behind me, brushed past my shoulder, stirred the hair on my forehead, and circled around me without ever actually touching me, yet always pressing closer and closer. Especially in the air, just over my head, there seemed ceaseless movement, and it was accompanied by a confused noise of whispering and sighing that threatened every moment to become articulate in words. To my intense relief, however, I heard no distinct words, and the noise continued more like the rising and falling of the wind than anything else I can imagine. But the characteristic of these beings that impressed me most strongly at the time, and of which I have carried away the most permanent recollection, was that each one of them possessed what seemed to be a vibrating center, which impelled it with tremendous force, and caused a rapid whirling motion of the atmosphere as it passed me. The air was full of these little vortices of wearing, rotating force, and whenever one of them pressed me too closely I felt as if the nerves in that particular portion of my body had been literally drawn out, absolutely depleted of vitality, and then immediately replaced. But replaced dead, flabby, useless. Then suddenly for the first time my eyes fell upon Smith. He was crouching against the wall on my right, in an attitude that was obviously defensive, and it was plain he was in extremities. The terror on his face was pitiable, but at the same time there was another expression about the tightly clenched teeth and mouth, which showed that he had not lost all control of himself. He wore the most resolute expression I have ever seen on a human countenance, and though for the moment at a fearful disadvantage, he looked like a man who had confidence in himself, and in spite of the working of fear was waiting his opportunity. For my part I was face to face with a situation so utterly beyond my knowledge and comprehension that I felt as helpless as a child, and as useless. Help me back. Quick. Into that circle. I heard him half cry, half whisper to me across the moving vapors. My only value appears to have been that I was not afraid to act. Knowing nothing of the forces I was dealing with, I had no idea of the deadly perils risked, and I sprang forward, and caught him by the arms. He, through all his weight in my direction, and by our combined efforts his body left the wall and lurched across the floor towards the circle. Instantly there descended upon us, out of the empty air of that smoke-leading room, a force which I can only compare to the pushing, driving power of a great wind pent up within a narrow space. It was almost explosive in its effect, and it seemed to operate upon all parts of my body equally. It fell upon us with a rushing noise that filled my ears and made me think for a moment the very walls and roof of the building had been torn asunder. Under its first blow we staggered back against the wall, and I understood plainly that its purpose was to prevent us getting back into the circle in the middle of the floor. Pouring with perspiration and breathless, with every muscle strained to the very utmost, we at length managed to get to the edge of the circle. And at this moment so great was the opposing force that I felt myself actually torn from Smith's arms, lifted from my feet, and twirled around in the direction of the windows, as if the wheel of some great machine had caught my clothes and was tearing me to destruction in its revolution. But even as I fell, bruised and breathless against the wall, I saw Smith firmly upon his feet in the circle, and slowly rising again to an upright position. My eyes never left his figure once in the next few minutes. He drew himself up to his full height. His great shoulders squared themselves, his head was thrown back a little, and as I looked I saw the expression on his face change swiftly from fear to one of absolute command. He looked steadily round the room, and then his voice began to vibrate. At first, in a low tone, it gradually rose till it assumed the same volume and intensity I had heard the night before when he called up the stairs into my room. It was a curiously increasing sound, more like the swelling of an instrument than a human voice, and as it grew in power and filled the room I became aware that a great change was being effected slowly and surely. The confusion of noise and rushings of air fell into the roll of long, steady vibrations, not unlike those caused by the deeper petals of an organ. The movements in the air became less violent, then grew decidedly weaker, and finally seized altogether. The whisperings and sirens became fainter and fainter. Till at last I could not hear them at all. And strangest of all, the light emitted by the circle, as well as by the designs around it, increased to a steady glow, casting their radiance upwards with the weirdest possible effect upon his features, slowly by the power of his voice. Behind which lay undoubtedly a genuine knowledge of the occult manipulation of sound, this man dominated the forces that had escaped from their proper sphere, until at length the room was reduced to silence and perfect order again. Judging by the immense relief which also communicated itself to my nerves, I then felt that the crisis was over and Smith was wholly master of the situation. But hardly had I begun to congratulate myself upon this result and to gather my scattered senses about me when, uttering the loud cry, I saw him leap out of the circle and fling himself into the air. As it seemed to me into the empty air. Then, even while holding my breath for dread of the crash, he was bound to come upon the floor. I saw him strike with a dull thud against a solid body in mid-air. In the next instant he was wrestling with some ponderous thing that was absolutely invisible to me, and the room shook with the struggle. Two in fro they swayed, sometimes lurching in one direction, sometimes in another, and always in horrible proximity to myself, as I leaned, trembling against the wall and watched the encounter. It lasted at most but a short minute or two, ending as suddenly as it had begun. Smith, with an unexpected movement, threw up his arms with a cry of relief. At the same instant there was a wild, tearing shriek in the air beside me, and something rushed past us with a noise like the passage of a flock of big birds. Both windows rattled as if they would break away from their sashes. Then a sense of emptiness and peace suddenly came over the room, and I knew that all was over. Smith, his face exceedingly white, but otherwise strangely composed, turned to me at once. God, if you hadn't come, you deflected the stream, broke it up, he whispered. You saved me. The doctor made a long pause. Presently he felt for his pipe in the darkness, groping over the table behind us with both hands. No one spoke for a bit, but all dreaded the sudden glare that would come when he struck the match. The fire was nearly out, and the great hall was pitch dark, but the storyteller did not strike that match. He was merely gaining time for some hidden reason of his own, and presently he went on with his tail in a more subdued voice. I quite forget, he said, how I got back to my own room. I only know that I lay with two lighted candles for the rest of the night. The first thing I did in the morning was to let the landlady know I was leaving her house at the end of the week. Smith still has my rabbinical treatise. At least he did not return it to me at the time, and I have never seen him since to ask for it. END OF CHAPTER VIII a suspicious gift Blake had been in very low water for months, almost underwater part of the time, due to circumstances he was fond of saying were no fault of his own. And as he sat writing in his room on the third floor back of a New York boarding house, part of his mind was busily occupied and wondering when his luck was going to turn again. It was his room only in the sense that he paid rent. Two friends, one a little Frenchman and the other a big Dane, shared it with him, both hoping eventually to contribute something towards expenses, but so far not having accomplished this result. They had two beds only, the third being a mattress they slept upon in turns, a week at a time. A good deal of their irregular feeding consisted of oatmeal, potatoes, and sometimes eggs, all of which they cooked on a strange utensil they had contrived to fix into the gas jet. Occasionally, when dinner failed them altogether, they swallowed a little raw rice and drank hot water from the bathroom on top of it, and then made a wild race for bed so as to get to sleep while the sensation of false repletion was still there. For sleep and hunger are slight acquaintances as they well knew. Fortunately, all of New York houses are supplied with hot air, and they only had to open a grating in the wall to get a plentiful, if not a wholesome amount of heat. Though loneliness in a big city is a real punishment, as they had severally learnt to their cost, their experiences, three in a small room for several months, had revealed to them horrors of quite another kind, and their nerves had suffered according to the temperament of each. But on this particular evening, as Blake sat scribbling by the only window that was not cracked, the Dane and the Frenchman, his companions in adversity, were in wonderful luck. They had both been asked out to a restaurant to dine with a friend, who also held out to one of them a chance of work and remuneration. They would not be back till late, and when they did come they were pretty sure to bring in supplies of one kind or another. For the Frenchman never could resist the offer of a glass of absinthe, and this meant that he would be able to help himself plentifully from the free lunch counters, with which all New York bars are furnished, and to which any purchaser of a drink is entitled to help himself, and this meant that he would be able to help himself plentifully from the free lunch counters, with which all New York bars are furnished, and to which any purchaser of a drink is entitled to help himself and devour on the spot or carry away casually in his hand for consumption elsewhere. Thousands of unfortunate men get their sole substance in this way in New York, and experience soon teaches where, for the price of a single drink, a man can take away almost a meal of chip potatoes, sausage, bits of bread, and even eggs. The Frenchman and the Dane knew their way about, and Blake looked forward to a supper more or less substantial before pulling his mattress out of the cupboard and turning in upon the floor for the night. Meanwhile he can enjoy a quiet and lonely evening with a room all to himself. In the daytime he was a reporter on an evening newspaper of sensational and lying habits. His work was chiefly in the police-courts, and in his spare hours at night, when not too tired or too empty, he wrote sketches and stories for the magazines that very rarely saw the light of day on their printed and paid-for sentences. On this particular occasion he was deep in the most involved tale of a psychological character, and had just worked his way into a sentence, or set of sentences, that completely baffled and muddled him. He was fairly out of his depth, and his brain was too poorly supplied with blood to invent a way out again. The story would have been interesting had he written it simply, keeping to facts and feelings, and not diving into difficult analysis of motive and character, which was quite beyond him. For it was largely autobiographical, and was meant to describe the adventures of a young Englishman who had come to grief in the usual matter on a Canadian farm, and then subsequently became barkeeper, sub-editor on a Methodist magazine, a teacher of French and German to clerks at twenty-five cents per hour, a model for artists, a super on the stage, and, finally, a wanderer to the gold fields. Blake scratched his head, and dipped the pen in the ink pot, stared out through the blindless windows and sighed deeply. His thoughts kept wandering to food, beef steak, and steaming vegetables. The smell of cooking that came from a lower floor through the broken windows was a constant torment to him. He pulled himself together and again attacked the problem. For with some people, he wrote, the imagination is so vivid as to be almost an extension of consciousness, but here he stuck absolutely. He was not quite sure what he meant by the words, and how to finish the sentence puzzled him into blank inaction. It was a difficult point to decide for it seemed to come in appropriately at this point in his story, and he did not know whether to leave it as it stood, change it round a bit, or take it out altogether. It might just spoil its chances of being accepted. Editors were such clever men. But to rewrite the sentence was a grind, and he was so tired and sleepy. After all, what did it matter? People who were clever would force a meaning into it, people who were not clever would pretend. He knew of no other classes of readers. He would let it stay and go on with the action of the story. He put his head in his hands and he began to think hard. His mind soon passed from thought to reverie. He fell to wondering when his friends would find work and relieve him of the burden. He acknowledged it as such, of keeping them, and of letting another man wear his best clothes on alternate Sundays. He wondered when his luck would return. There were one or two influential people in New York whom he could go and see if he had a dress suit or other conventional uniforms. His thoughts ran on far ahead and at the same time by a sort of double process far behind as well. His home in the old country rose up before him. He saw the lawn and the cedars in the sunshine. He looked through the familiar windows and saw the clean, swept rooms. His story began to suffer. The psychological masterpiece would not make much progress unless he pulled up and dragged his thoughts back to the treadmill. But he no longer cared. Once he has got as far as that cedar with the sunshine on it, he can never get back again. For all he cared, the troublesome sentence might run away and get into someone else's pages or be snuffed out altogether. There came a gentle knock at the door and Blake started. The knock was repeated louder. Who in the world could it be at this late hour of the night? On the floor above, he remembered, there lived another Englishman, a foolish second-rate creature who sometimes came in and made himself objectionable with endless and silly chatter. But he was an Englishman for all of that, and Blake always tried to treat him with politeness, realizing that he was lonely in a strange land. But tonight, of all people in the world, he did not want to be bored with Perry's cackle, as he called it. And the come-in he gave an answer to the second knock had no very cordial sound of welcome in it. However, the door opened in response, and the man came in. Blake did not turn round at once, and the other advanced to the center of the room but without speaking. Then Blake knew it was not his enemy Perry and turned around. He saw a man about forty standing in the middle of the carpet, but standing sideways so that he did not present a full face. He wore an overcoat buttoned up to the neck and on the felt hat which he held in front of him, fresh raindrops glistened. In his other hand, he carried a small black bag. Blake gave him a look and came to the conclusion that he might be a secretary or a chief clerk, or a confidential man of sorts. He was a shabby, respectable-looking person. This was the sum total of the first impression, gained the moment his eyes took in that it was not Perry. The second impression was less pleasant and reported at once that something was wrong. Though otherwise young and inexperienced, Blake, thanks or curses to the police court training, knew more about common criminal black guardism than most men of fifty, and he recognized that there was somewhere a suggestion of this undesirable world about the man. But there was more than this. There was something singular about him, something far out of the common, though for the life of him Blake could not say wherein it lay. The fellow was out of the ordinary, and in some very undesirable manner. All this takes so long to describe, Blake saw with the first and second glance, the man at once began to speak in a quiet and respectful voice. Are you Mr. Blake, he asked? I am. Mr. Arthur Blake? Yes. Mr. Arthur Herbert Blake persisted the other with emphasis on the middle name. That is my full name. Blake answered simply, adding as he remembered his manners, but once you sit down first, please. The man advanced with a curious sideways motion like a crab, and took a seat on the edge of the sofa. He put his hat on the floor at his feet, but still kept the bag in hand. I come to you from a well-wisher. He went on in oily tones without lifting his eyes. Blake, in his mind, ran quickly all over the people he knew in New York, who might possibly have sent such a man, while waiting for him to supply the name. But the man had come to a full stop and was waiting too. A well-wisher of mine, repeated Blake, not knowing quite what else to say. Just so, replied the other, still with his eyes on the floor, a well-wisher of yours. A man, or he felt himself blushing, or a woman? That, the man said shortly, I cannot tell you. You can't tell me? exclaimed the other, wondering what was coming next, and who in the world this mysterious well-wisher could be who sent so discreet and a mysterious messenger. I cannot tell you the name, replied the man firmly. Those are my instructions. But I bring you something from this person, and I am to give it to you, to take a receipt for it, and then to go away without answering any questions. Blake stared very hard. The man, however, never raised his eyes above the level of the second China knob on the chest of drawers opposite. The giving of a receipt sounded like money. Could it be that some of his influential friends had heard of his plight? There were possibilities that made his heart beat. At length, however, he found his tongue for this strange creature was determined apparently to say nothing more until he had heard from him. Then what have you got for me, please? he asked bluntly. By way of an answer the man proceeded to open the bag. He took out a parcel wrapped loosely in brown paper and about the size of a large book. It was tied with string and the man seemed unnecessarily long and tying the knot. When at last the string was off and the paper unfolded, there appeared a series of smaller packages inside. The man took him out very carefully, almost as if they'd been alive, Blake thought, and set them in a row upon his knees. They were dollar bills. Blake, all in a flutter, craned his neck forward a little to try and make out the denomination. He read plainly the figures one hundred. There are ten thousand dollars here, said the man quietly. The other could not suppress a little cry. And they are for you. Blake simply gasped. Ten thousand dollars, he repeated, a queer feeling growing up in his throat. Ten thousand? Are you sure? I mean, you mean they are for me? he stammered. He felt quite silly with excitement and grew more so with every minute as the man maintained a perfect silence. Was it not a dream? When did the man put them back in the bag presently and say it was a mistake, and they were meant for somebody else? You cannot believe his eyes or his ears, yet, in a sense, it was possible. He had read of such things in books and even come across them in his experience of the courts. The erratic and generous philanthropist who was determined to do his good deed and to get no thanks or acknowledgement for it. Still, it seemed almost incredible. His troubles began to melt away like bubbles in the sun. He thought of the other fellows when they came in, and what he would have to tell them. He thought of the German landlady and the arrears of rent, of regular food and clean linen, and books and music, of the chance of getting into some respectable business of, well, of as many things as it is possible to think of when excitement and surprise fling wide open the gates of the imagination. The man, meanwhile, began quietly to count over the packages allowed from one to ten, and then to count the bills in each separate packet also from one to ten. Yes, there were ten little heaps, each containing ten bills of a hundred-dollar denomination. That made ten thousand dollars. Blake had never seen so much money in a single lump in his life before, and for many months of privation and discomfort he had not known the feel of a twenty-dollar note much less of a hundred-dollar one. He heard them crackle under the man's fingers and was like crisp laughter in his ears. The bills were evidently new and unused. But, side by side, with excitement caused by the shock of such an event, Blake's caution, acquired by a year of vivid New York experience, was meanwhile beginning to assert itself. It all seemed just a little too much out of the likely order of things to be quite right. The police courts had taught him the amazing ingenuity of the criminal mind, as well as something of the plots and devices by which the unwary are regaled into the dark places where blackmail may be levied with impunity. New York, as a matter of fact, just at that time was literally undermined with the secret ways of the blackmailers, the green goodsmen, and other police-protected abominations, and the only weak point in the supposition that this was part of some proceeding was the selection of himself, a poor newspaper reporter, as a victim. It did seem absurd, but then the whole thing was so out of the ordinary, and the thought once having entered his mind was not so easily got rid of. Blake resolved to be very cautious. The man, meanwhile, though he never appeared to raise his eyes from the carpet, had been watching him closely all the time. If you'll give me your seat, I'll leave the money at once, he said, with just a vestige of impatience in his tone, as if he were anxious to bring the matter to a conclusion as soon as possible. But you say it is quite impossible for you to tell me the name of my well-wisher, or why she sends me such a large sum of money in this extraordinary way. The money is sent to you because you are in need of it, return the other. And it is a present without conditions of any sort attached. You have to give me your seat, only to satisfy the sender that it has reached your hands. The money will never be asked of you again. Blake noticed two things from this answer. First, that the man was not to be caught into betraying the sex of the well-wisher, and secondly, that he was in some hurry to complete the transaction. For he was now giving reasons, attractive reasons, why you should accept the money and make out the receipt. Suddenly it flashed across his mind that if he took the money and gave the receipt before a witness, nothing very disastrous could come out of the affair. It would protect him against blackmail if this was, after all, a plot of some sort with blackmail in it. Whereas if the man were a madman or a criminal who was getting rid of a portion of his ill-gotten gains to divert suspicion, or if any other improbable explanation turned out to be the true one, there was no great harm done, and he could hold the money till it was claimed, or advertised for in the newspapers. His mind rapidly ran over these possibilities, though, of course, under the stress of excitement. He was unable to weigh any of them properly. Then he turned to his strained visitor again and said quietly, I will take the money, although I must say it seems to me a very unusual transaction, and I will give you for it such a receipt as I think proper under the circumstances. A proper receipt is all I want, was the answer. I mean by that a receipt before a proper witness, perfectly satisfactory, interrupted the man, his eyes still on the carpet, only it must be dated and headed with your address here in the correct way. Blake could see no possible objection to this, and he at once proceeded to obtain his witness. The person he had in mind was a Mr. Barclay, who occupied the room above his own. An old gentleman who had retired from business and who, the landlady always said, was a miser, and kept large sums secreted in his room. He was, at any rate, a perfectly respectable man and would make an admirable witness to a transaction of this sort. Blake made an apology and rose to fetch him, crossing the room in front of the sofa with the man sat in order to reach the door. As he did so, he saw for the first time the other side of the visitor's face, the side that had always been so carefully turned away from him. There was a broad smear of blood down the skin from ear to the neck, it glistened in the gaslight. Blake never knew how he managed to smother the cry that sprang to his lips but smother it, he did. In a second he was at the door, his knees trembling, his mind in a sudden and dreadful turmoil. His main object, so far as he could recollect afterwards, was to escape from the room as if he had noticed nothing, so as not to arouse the other suspicions. The man's eyes were always on the carpet and, probably, Blake hoped. He had not noticed the consternation that must have been written plainly on his face. At any rate he uttered no cry. In another second he would have been in the passage when suddenly he met a pair of wicked staring eyes fixed intently and with a cunning smile upon his own. It was the other's face in the mirror calmly watching his every movement. Instantly all his powers of reflection flew to the winds, and he thought only upon the desirability of getting help at once. He tore upstairs his heart in his mouth. Barclay must come to his aid. This matter was serious, perhaps horribly serious. Taking the money or giving over seat or having anything at all to do with it became an impossibility. Here was a crime, he felt certain of it. In three bounds he reached the next landing and began to hammer at the old miser's door as if his very life depended on it. For a long time he could get no answer. His fists seemed to make no noise. He might have been knocking on cotton wool and the thought dashed through his brain that it was all just like the terror of a nightmare. Barclay evidently was still out, or else sound asleep, but the other simply could not wait a minute longer in suspense. He turned the handle and walked into the room. At first he saw nothing for the darkness and made sure the owner of the room was out, but the moment the light from the passage began a little to disperse the gloom, he saw the old man, to his immense relief lying asleep on the bed. Blake opened the door to its widest to get more light and then walked quickly up to the bed. He now saw the figure more plainly and noted that it was dressed and lay upon the outside of the bed. It struck him too that he was sleeping in a very odd and almost unnatural position. Something clutched at his heart as he looked closer. He stumbled over a chair and found the matches. Collin upon Barclay the whole time to wake up and come downstairs with him. He blundered across the floor, a dreadful thought in his mind, and lit the gas over the table. It seemed strange that there was no movement or replying to his shouting. But it no longer seemed strange when at length he turned, in the full glare of the gas and saw the old man lying huddled up in a ghastly heap on the bed, his throat cut across from ear to ear, and all over the carpet lay new dollar bills, crisp and clean like those he had left downstairs and strewn about in little heaps. For a moment Blake stood, stock still, bereft of all power of movement. The next his courage returned and he fled from the room and dashed downstairs, taking five steps at a time. He reached the bottom and tore along the passage to his room, determined at any rate to seize the man and prevent his escape till help came. But when he got to the end of the little landing he found that his door had been closed. He seized the handle, fumbling with it in his violence. It felt slippery and kept turning under his fingers without opening the door, and fully half a minute passed before it yielded and led him in headlong. At first glance he saw the room was empty and the man gone. Scattered upon the carpet lay a number of the bills and beside them, half hidden under the sofa where the man had sat, he saw a pair of gloves, thick leather gloves, and a butcher's knife. Even from the distance where he stood the blood stains on both were easily visible. Dazed and confused by the terrible discoveries of the last few minutes, Blake stood in the middle of the room, overwhelmed and unable to think or move. Unconsciously he must have passed his hand over his forehead in the natural gesture of perplexity, for he noticed that the skin felt wet and sticky. His hand was covered with blood, and when he rushed in terror to the looking-glass he saw that there was a broad red smear across his face and forehead. Then he remembered the slippery handle of the door and knew that it had been carefully moistened. In an instant the whole plot became clear as daylight, and he was so spellbound with horror that a sort of numbness came over him and he came very near to feigning. He was in a condition of utter helplessness, and had anyone come into the room at that minute and called him by name he would simply have dropped to the floor in a heap. If the police were to come in now, the thought crashed through his brain like thunder, and at the same moment almost before he had time to appreciate a quarter of its significance, there came a loud knocking at the front door below. The bell rang with a dreadful clamour. Men's voices were heard talking excitedly and presently heavy steps began to come up the stairs in the direction of his room. It was the police. And all Blake could do was to laugh foolishly to himself and wait till they were upon him. He could not move nor speak. He stood face to face with the evidence of this horrid crime. His hands and his face smeared with the blood of his victim, and there he was standing when the police burst open the door and came noisily into the room. Here it is, cried a voice he knew. Third floor back and the fellow caught red-handed. It was the man with the bag leading in the two policemen, hardly knowing when he was doing in the fearful stress of conflicting emotions he made a step forward. But before he had time to make a second one, he felt the heavy hand of the law descend upon both his shoulders at once, as the two policemen moved up to seize him. At the same moment a voice of thunder cried in his ear. Wake up, man! Wake up! Here's the supper! And good news, too! Blake turned with a start in his chair and saw the dane, very red in the face standing beside him, a hand on each shoulder, and a little further back he saw the Frenchman leering happily at him at the end of the bed, a bottle of beer in one hand and a paper package in the other. He rubbed his eyes, glancing from one to the other, and then got up sleepily to fix the wire arrangement on the gas-jet to boil water for cooking the eggs which the Frenchman was in momentary danger of letting drop upon the floor. End of chapter. Read by William Mosqueda. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kate Follis. The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood. The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York. Part one. It was never quite clear to me how Jim Shorthouse managed to get his private secretarieship, but once he got it he kept it, and for some years he led a steady life and put money in the savings bank. One morning his employer sent for him into the study, and it was evident to the secretaries trained senses that there was something unusual in the air. Mr. Shorthouse, he began somewhat nervously. I have never yet had the opportunity of observing whether or not you are possessed of personal courage. Shorthouse gasped, but he said nothing. He was growing accustomed to the eccentricities of his chief. Shorthouse was a kentish man. Side-botherm was raised in Chicago. New York was the present place of residence. But the other continued with a puff at his very black cigar. I must consider myself a poor judge of human nature and future, if it is not one of your strongest qualities. The Private Secretary made a foolish little bow in modest appreciation of so uncertain a compliment. Mr. Jonas B. Side-botherm watched him narrowly, as the novelists say, before he continued his remarks. I have no doubt that you are a plucky fellow, and— he hesitated, and puffed at his cigar as if his life depended upon keeping it alight. I don't think I'm afraid of anything in particular, sir—except women—interposed the young man, feeling that it was time for him to make an observation of some sort, but still quite in the dark as to his chief's purpose. Humpf! he grunted. Well, there are no women in this case, so far as I know, but there may be other things that—that hurt more. Once a special service of some kind evidently was the Secretary's reflection. Personal violence, he asked aloud. Possibly—puff—in fact—puff—puff—probably. Shorthouse smelt an increase of salary in the air, it had a stimulating effect. I've had some experience of that article, sir, he said, shortly, but I'm ready to undertake anything in reason. I can't say how much reason or unreason there may prove to be in this particular case. It all depends. Mr. Sidebottom got up and locked the door of his study, and drew down the blinds of both windows. Then he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and opened a black tin box. He ferreted about among blue and white papers for a few seconds, enveloping himself, as he did so, in a cloud of blue tobacco smoke. I feel like a detective already. Shorthouse laughed. Speak low, please. Returned the other, glancing round the room. We must observe the utmost secrecy. Perhaps you would be kind enough to close the registers. He went on in a still lower voice. Open registers have betrayed conversations before now. Shorthouse began to enter into the spirit of the thing. He tiptoed across the floor and shut the two iron gratings in the wall, that in American houses supply hot air and are termed registers. Mr. Sidebottom had meanwhile found the paper he was looking for. He held it in front of him, and tapped it once or twice with the back of his right hand, as if it were a stage letter, and himself the villain of the melodrama. This is a letter from Joel Garvey, my old partner, he said, at length. You have heard me speak of him? The other bowed. He knew that many years before Garvey and Sidebottom had been well known in the Chicago financial world. He knew that the amazing rapidity with which they accumulated a fortune had only been surpassed by the amazing rapidity with which they had immediately afterwards disappeared into space. He was further aware, his position afforded facilities, that each partner was still, to some extent, in the other's power, and that each wished most devoutly that the other would die. The sins of his employer's early years did not concern him, however. The manned was kind and just, if eccentric, and Shorthouse, being in New York, did not probe to discover more particularly the sources once his salary was so regularly paid. Moreover, the two men had grown to like each other, and there was a genuine feeling of trust and respect between them. I hope it's a pleasant communication, sir, he said, in a low voice. Quite the reverse, returned the other, fingering the paper nervously, as he stood in front of the fire. Blackmail, I suppose? Precisely. Mr. Sidebottom's cigar was not burning well, he struck a match and applied it to the uneven edge, and presently his voice spoke through clouds of breathing smoke. There are valuable papers in my possession, bearing his signature. I cannot inform you of their nature, but they are extremely valuable to me. They belong, as a matter of fact, to Garvey, as much as to me. Only I've caught them. I see. Garvey writes that he wants to have his signature removed, wants to cut it out with his own hand. He gives reasons which incline me to consider his request. And would you like me to take him the papers, and see that he does it? And bring them back again with you, he whispered, screwing up his eyes into a shrewd grimace. And bring them back again with me, repeated the Secretary. I understand perfectly. Shorthouse knew from unfortunate experience more than a little of the horrors of Blackmail. The pressure Garvey was bringing to bear upon his old enemy must be exceedingly strong. That was quite clear. At the same time the commission that was being entrusted to him seemed somewhat chaotic in its nature. He had already enjoyed more than one experience of his employer's eccentricity, and he now caught himself wondering whether this same eccentricity did not sometimes go further than eccentricity. I cannot read the letter to you, Mr. Sidebottom was explaining, but I shall give it into your hands. It will prove that you are my—er—my accredited representative. I shall also ask you not to read the package of papers. The signature in question you will find, of course, on the last page, at the bottom. There was a pause of several minutes, during which the end of the cigar glowed eloquently. Circumstances compel me. He went on at a length almost in a whisper. Or I should never do this. But you understand, of course, the thing is a ruse. Cutting out this signature is a mere pretense. It is nothing. What Garvey wants are the papers themselves. The confidence reposed in the Private Secretary was not misplaced. Shorthouse was as faithful to Mr. Sidebottom as a man ought to be to the wife that loves him. The commission itself seemed very simple. Garvey lived in solitude in the remote part of Long Island. Shorthouse was to take the papers to him, witness the cutting out of the signature, and to be specially on his guard against any attempt, forcible or otherwise, gain possession of them. It seemed to him a somewhat ludicrous adventure, but he did not know all the facts, and perhaps was not the best judge. The two men talked in low voices for another hour, at the end of which Mr. Sidebottom drew up the blinds, opened the registers, and unlocked the door. Shorthouse rose to go. His pockets were stuffed with papers and his head with instructions, but when he reached the door he hesitated and turned. Well, said his chief, Shorthouse looked him straight in the eye and said nothing. The person of violence, I suppose, said the other. Shorthouse bowed. I have not seen Garvey for twenty years, he said. All I can tell you is that I believe him to be occasionally of unsound mind. I have heard strange rumours, he lives alone, and in his lucid intervals studies chemistry. It was always a hobby of his. But the chances are twenty to one against his attempting violence. I only wish to warn you, in case, I mean, so that you may be on the watch. He handed his secretary a Smith and Wesson revolver as he spoke. Shorthouse slipped it into his hip pocket and went out of the room. A drizzling cold rain was falling on fields covered with half-melted snow when Shorthouse stood late in the afternoon on the platform of the lonely little Long Island station and watched the train he had just left vanish into the distance. It was a bleak country that Joel Garvey Esquire, formerly of Chicago, had chosen for his residence, and on this particular afternoon it presented a more than usually dismal appearance. An expanse of flat fields covered with dirty snow stretched away on all sides till the sky dropped down to meet them. Only occasional farm-buildings broke the monotony, and the road wound along muddy lanes and beneath dripping trees swathed in the cold raw fog that swept in like a pall of the dead from the sea. It was six miles from the station to Garvey's house, and the driver of the rickety buggy Shorthouse had found at the station was not communicative. Between the dreary landscape and the drearyer driver he fell back upon his own thoughts, which but for the spice of adventure that was promised, would themselves have been even drearyer than either. He made up his mind that he would waste no time over the transaction. The moment the signature was cut out he would pack up and be off. The last train back to Brooklyn was seven-fifteen, and he would have to walk the six miles of mud and snow, for the driver of the buggy had refused point blank to wait for him. For purposes of safety, Shorthouse had done what he flattered himself was rather a clever thing. He had made up a second packet of papers, identical in outside appearance with the first, the inscription, the blue envelope, the red elastic band, and even a blot in the lower left-hand corner had been exactly reproduced. Inside, of course, were only sheets of blank paper. It was his intention to change the packets and to let Garvey see him put the sham one into the bag. In case of violence the bag would be the point of attack, and he intended to lock it and throw away the key. Before it could be forced open and the deception discovered there would be time to increase his chances of escape with the real packet. It was five o'clock when the silent Yehu pulled up in front of a half-broken gate, and pointed with his whip to a house that stood in its grounds among trees, and was just visible in the gathering gloom. Shorthouse told him to drive up to the front door, but the man refused. I ain't runnin' no risk, he said. I've got a family. This cryptic remark was not encouraging, but Shorthouse did not pause to decipher it. He paid the man, and then pushed open the rickety old gate, swinging on a single hinge, and proceeded to walk up the drive that lay dark between close-standing trees. The house soon came into full view. It was tall and square, and had once evidently been white, but now the walls were covered with dirty patches, and there were wide yellow streaks where the plaster had fallen away. The windows stared black and uncompromising into the night. The garden was overgrown with weeds and long grass, standing up in ugly patches beneath their burden of wet snow. Complete silence reigned over all. There was not a sign of life, not even a dog barked. Only in the distance the wheels of the retreating carriage could be heard growing fainter and fainter. As he stood in the porch between pillars of rotting wood, listening to the rain dripping from the roof into the puddles of slushy snow, he was conscious of a sensation of utter desertion and loneliness, such as he had never before experienced. The forbidding aspect of the house had the immediate effect of lowering his spirits. It might well have been the abode of monsters or demons in a child's wonder-tail, creatures that only dared to come out under cover of darkness. He gropped for the bell-handle, or knocker, and finding neither he raised his stick-and-beatle loud tattoo on the door. The sound echoed away in an empty space on the other side, and the wind moaned past him between the pillars as if startled at his audacity. But there was no sound of approaching footsteps, and no one came to open the door. Again he beat a tattoo, louder and longer than the first one, and having done so waited with his back to the house and stared across the unkempt garden into the fast gathering shadows. Then he turned suddenly and saw that the door was standing ajar. It had been quietly opened and a pair of eyes were peering at him round the edge. There was no light in the hall beyond, and he could only just make out the shape of a dim human face. "'Does Mr. Garvey live here?' he asked in a firm voice. "'Who are you?' came in a man's tones. "'I'm Mr. Sidebotham's private secretary. I wish to see Mr. Garvey on important business. "'Are you expected?' "'I suppose so,' he said impatiently, thrusting a card through the opening. "'Please take my name to him at once, and say I come from Mr. Sidebotham on the matter Mr. Garvey wrote about.' The man took the card, and the face vanished into the darkness, leaving Shorthouse standing in the cold porch with mingled feelings of impatience and dismay. The door, he now noticed for the first time, was on a chain, and could not open more than a few inches. But it was the manner of his reception that caused uneasy reflections to stir within him, reflections that continued for some minutes, before they were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps, and the flicker of a light in the hall. The next instant, the chain fell with a rattle, and gripping his bag tightly, he walked into a large, ill-smelling hall, of which he could only just see the ceiling. There was no light, but the knickering taper held by the man, and by its uncertain glimmer, Shorthouse turned to examine him. He saw an undersized man of middle age, with brilliant shifting eyes, a curling black beard, and a nose that at once proclaimed him a Jew. His shoulders were bent, and as he watched him replacing the chain, he saw that he wore a peculiar black gown, like a priest's cassock, reaching to the feet. It was altogether a gooberish figure of a man, sinister and funerial, yet it seemed in perfect harmony with the general character of its surroundings. The hall was devoid of furniture of any kind, and against the dingy walls stood rows of old picture frames, empty and disordered, and odd-looking bits of woodwork that appeared doubly fantastic as their shadows danced queerly over the floor in the shifting light. "'If you'll come this way, Mr. Garvey will see you presently,' said the Jew, gruffly, crossing the floor and shielding the taper with a bony hand. He never once raised his eyes above the level of the visitor's waistcoat, and to Shorthouse he somehow suggested a figure from the dead, rather than a man of flesh and blood. The hall smelt decidedly ill. All the more surprising then was the scene that met his eyes when the Jew opened the door at the further end, and he entered a room brilliantly lit with swinging lamps, and furnished with a degree of taste and comfort that amounted to luxury. The walls were lined with handsomely bound books, and armchairs were arranged round a large mahogany desk in the middle of the room, a bright fire burned in the grate, and neatly framed photographs of men and women stood on the mantelpiece on either side of an elaborately carved clock, French windows that opened like doors were partially concealed by warm red curtains, and on a sideboard against the wall stood decanters and glasses with several boxes of cigars piled on top of one another. There was a pleasant odor of tobacco about the room. Indeed it was in such glowing contrast to the chilly poverty of the hall that Shorthouse already was conscious of a distinct rise in the thermometer of his spirits. Then he turned and saw the Jew standing in the doorway with his eyes fixed upon him, somewhere about the middle button of his waistcoat. He presented a strangely repulsive appearance that somehow could not be attributed to any particular detail, and the secretary associated him in his mind with a monstrous blackbird of prey more than anything else. My time is short, he said abruptly. I hope Mr. Garvey will not keep me waiting. A strange flicker of a smile appeared on the Jew's ugly face, and vanished as quickly as it came. He made a sort of deprecating bow by way of reply. Then he blew out the taper and went out, closing the door noiselessly behind him. Shorthouse was alone. He felt relieved. There was an air of obsequious insolence about the old Jew that was very offensive. He began to take note of his surroundings. He was evidently in the library of the house, for the walls were covered with books almost up to the ceiling. There was no room for pictures. Nothing but the shining backs of well-bound volumes looked down upon him. Four brilliant lights hung from the ceiling, and a reading lamp with a polished reflector stood among the disordered masses of papers on the desk. The lamp was not lit, but when Shorthouse put his hand upon it, he found it was warm. The room had evidently only just been vacated. Apart from the testimony of the lamp, however, he had already felt, without being able to give a reason for it, that the room had been occupied a few moments before he entered. The atmosphere over the desk seemed to retain the disturbing influence of a human being, and influence moreover so recent that he felt as if the cause of it were still in his immediate neighbourhood. It was difficult to realise that he was quite alone in the room and that somebody was not in hiding. The finer counterparts of his senses warned him to act as if he were being observed. He was dimly conscious of a desire to fidget and to look round, to keep his eyes in every part of the room at once, and to conduct himself generally as if he were the object of careful human observation. How far he recognised the cause of these sensations it is impossible to say, but they were sufficiently marked to prevent his carrying out a strong inclination to get up and to make a search of the room. He sat quite still, staring alternately at the backs of the books, and at the red curtains, wondering all the time if he was really being watched, or if it was only the imagination playing tricks with him. A full quarter of an hour passed, and then twenty rows of volumes suddenly shifted out toward him, and he saw that a door had opened in the wall opposite. The books were only sham backs after all, and when they moved back again with the sliding door, Shorthouse saw the figure of Joel Garvey standing before him. Surprise almost took his breath away. He had expected to see an unpleasant, even a vicious apparition with the mark of the beast unmistakably upon its face. But he was wholly unprepared, for the elderly, tall, fine-looking man who stood in front of him, well groomed, refined, vigorous, with a lofty forehead, clear grey eyes, and a hooked nose, dominating a clean, shaven mouth, and a chin of considerable character, a distinguished-looking man altogether. I'm afraid I've kept you waiting, Mr. Shorthouse," he said, in a pleasant voice, but with no trace of a smile in the mouth or eyes. But the fact is, you know, I have a mania for chemistry, and just when you were announced I was at the most critical moment of a problem, and was really compelled to bring it to a conclusion. Shorthouse had arisen to meet him, but the other motioned him to resume his seat. It was borne in upon him irresistibly that Mr. Joel Garvey, for reasons best known to himself, was deliberately lying, and he could not help wondering at the necessity for such an elaborate misrepresentation, he took off his overcoat and sat down. I've no doubt, too, that the door startled you. Garvey went on, evidently reading something of his guest's feelings in his face. You probably had not suspected it. It leads into my little laboratory. Chemistry is an absorbing study to me, and I spend most of my time there. Mr. Garvey moved up to the armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace and sat down. Shorthouse made appropriate answers to these remarks, but his mind was really engaged in taking stock of Mr. Sidebottom's old-time partner. So far there was no sign of mental irregularity, and there was certainly nothing about him to suggest violent wrongdoing or coarseness of living. On the whole Mr. Sidebottom's secretary was most pleasantly surprised, and wishing to conclude his business as speedily as possible, he made a motion towards the bag for the purpose of opening it, when his companion interrupted him quickly. You are Mr. Sidebottom's private secretary, are you not? he asked. Shorthouse replied that he was. Mr. Sidebottom, he went on to explain, has entrusted me with the papers in the case, and I have the honour to return to you your letter of a week ago. He handed the letter to Garvey, who took it without a word, and deliberately placed it in the fire. He was not aware that the secretary was ignorant of its contents, yet his face betrayed no signs of feeling. Shorthouse noticed, however, that his eyes never left the fire until the last morsel had been consumed, then he looked up and said, You are familiar, then, with the facts of this most peculiar case. Shorthouse saw no reason to confess his ignorance. I have all the papers, Mr. Garvey. He replied, taking them out of the bag, and I should be very glad if we could transact our business as speedily as possible if you will cut your signature, I—one moment, please—interrupted the other. I must, before we proceed further, consult some papers in my laboratory, if you will allow me to leave you alone a few minutes for this purpose. We can conclude the whole matter in a very short time. Shorthouse did not approve of this further delay, but he had no option then to acquiesce, and when Garvey had left the room by the private door, he sat and waited with the papers in his hand. The minutes went by, and the other did not return. To pass the time he thought of taking the false packet from his coat, to see that the papers were in order, and the move was indeed almost completed, when something he never knew what warned him to desist. The feeling again came over him that he was being watched, and he leaned back in his chair with the bag on his knees, and waited with considerable impatience for the other's return. For more than twenty minutes he waited, and when at length the door opened and Garvey appeared, with profuse apologies for the delay, he saw by the clock that only a few minutes still remained of the time he had allowed himself to catch the last train. Now I am complete the Etcher service, he said pleasantly. You must, of course, know, Mr. Shorthouse, that one cannot be too careful in matters of this kind, especially he went on speaking very slowly and impressively, in dealing with a man like my former partner, whose mind, as you doubtless may have discovered, is at times very sadly affected. Shorthouse made no reply to this. He felt that the other was watching him, as a cat watches a mouse. It is almost a wonder to me, Garvey added, that he is still at large, unless he is greatly improved. It can hardly be safe for those who are closely associated with him. The other began to feel uncomfortable. Either this was the other side of the story, or it was the first signs of mental irresponsibility. All business matters of importance require the utmost care, in my opinion, Mr. Garvey, he said, at length cautiously. Ah, then, as I thought, you have had a great deal to put up with from him, Garvey said, with his eyes fixed on his companion's face. And, no doubt, he is still as bitter against me as he was years ago, when the disease first showed itself. Although this last remark was a deliberate question, and the questioner was waiting with fixed eyes for an answer, Shorthouse elected to take no notice of it. Without a word he pulled the elastic band from the blue envelope with a snap, and plainly showed his desire to conclude the business as soon as possible. The tendency on the other's part to delay did not suit him at all. But never personal violence I trust, Mr. Shorthouse, he added. Never. I'm glad to hear it. Garvey said, in a sympathetic voice, very glad to hear it. And now he went on. If you are ready we can transact this little matter of business before dinner. It will only take a moment. He drew a chair up to the desk and sat down, taking a pair of scissors from a drawer. His companion approached with the papers in his hand, unfolding them as he came. Garvey at once took them from him, and, after turning over a few pages, he stopped, and cut out a piece of writing at the bottom of the last sheet but one. Holding it up to him, Shorthouse read the words, Joel Garvey in faded ink. There that's my signature, he said, and I've cut it out. It must be nearly twenty years since I wrote it, and now I'm going to burn it. He went to the fire and stooped over to burn the little slip of paper, and while he watched it being consumed, Shorthouse put the real papers in his pocket, and slipped the imitation ones into the bag. Garvey turned just in time to see this latter movement. I'm putting the papers back, Shorthouse said quietly. You've done with them, I think. Certainly, he replied, as completely deceived, he saw the blue envelope disappear into the black bag, and watched Shorthouse turn the key. They no longer have the slightest interest for me. As he spoke, he moved over to the sideboard, and pouring himself out a small glass of whisky, asked his visitor if he might do the same for him, but the visitor declined, and was already putting on his overcoat when Garvey turned with genuine surprise on his face. You surely are not going back to New York tonight, Mr. Shorthouse, he said, in a voice of astonishment. I've just time to catch the seven-fifteen if I'm quick. But I never heard of such a thing, Garvey said. Of course I took it for granted that you would stay the night. It's kind of you, said Shorthouse, but really I must return to-night. I never expected to stay. The two men stood facing each other. Garvey pulled out his watch. I'm exceedingly sorry, he said, but upon my word I took it for granted you would stay. I ought to have said so long ago. I'm such a lonely fellow, and so little accustomed to visitors, that I fear I forgot my manners altogether. But in any case, Mr. Shorthouse, you cannot catch the seven-fifteen, for it's already after six o'clock, and that's the last train to-night. Garvey spoke very quickly, almost eagerly, but his voice sounded genuine. There's time if I walk quickly, said the young man with decision moving towards the door. He glanced at his watch as he went. Hitherto he had gone by the clock on the mantelpiece. To his dismay he saw that it was, as his host had said, long after six. The clock was half an hour slow, and he realised at once that it was no longer possible to catch the train. Had the hands of the clock been moved back intentionally, had he been purposely detained? Unpleasant thoughts flashed into his brain, and made him hesitate, before taking the next step. His employers' warning rang in his ears. The alternative was six miles along a lonely road in the dark, or a night under Garvey's roof. The former seemed a direct invitation to catastrophe, if catastrophe there was planned to be. The latter, well, the choice was certainly small. One thing, however, he realised was plain. He must show neither fear nor hesitancy. My watch must have gained, he observed quietly, turning the hands back without looking up. It seems I have certainly missed that train, and shall be obliged to throw myself upon your hospitality. But, believe me, I had no intention of putting you out, to any such extent. I'm delighted, the other said, defer to the judgement of an older man, and make yourself comfortable for the night. There's a bitter storm outside, and you don't put me out at all. On the contrary, it's a great pleasure. I have so little contact with the outside world, that it's really a godsend to have you. The man's face changed as he spoke. His manner was cordial and sincere. Shorthouse began to feel ashamed of his doubts, and to read between the lines of his employer's warning. He took off his coat, and the two men moved to the arm-chairs beside the fire. You see, Garvey went on in a lowered voice. I understand your hesitancy perfectly. I didn't know side-bottom all those years, without knowing a good deal about him. Perhaps more than you do. I've no doubt now he filled your mind with all sorts of nonsense about me. Probably told you that I was the greatest villain unhung, eh? And all that sort of thing, poor fellow. He was a fine sort before his mind became unhinged. One of his fancies used to be that everybody else was insane, or just about to become insane. Is he still as bad as that? Few men, replied Shorthouse, with the manner of making a great confidence, but entirely refusing to be drawn. Go through his experiences, and reach his age without entertaining delusions of one kind or another. Perfectly true, said Garvey. Your observation is evidently keen. Very keen indeed, Shorthouse replied, taking his cue neatly. But of course there are some things, and here he looked cautiously over his shoulder. There are some things one cannot talk about too circumspectly. I understand perfectly, and respect your reserve. There was a little more conversation, and then Garvey got up and excused himself on the plea of superintending the preparation of the bedroom. It's quite an event to have a visitor in the house, and I want to make you as comfortable as possible. He said, Marx will do better for a little supervision. And he added with a laugh as he stood in the doorway. I want you to carry back a good account to the side-bottom.