“And make my seated heart knock
at my ribs
Against the use of nature. Present
fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.-Shakespeare.
Big Ben announced the approaching
hour of midnight, throwing the sonorous notes to the
soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley Street.
Save for the light thrown by the dancing
flames of a log fire, and the orange disc made on
the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the
room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional
crackle of the wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir
Jonathan turned a page.
“Notes” was written in
letters of brass across the thick book heavily bound
in leather, and of which the small key to the massive
Bramah lock was kept in a pocket especially made in
every waistcoat Sir Jonathan possessed.
Slowly he read through the page he
had just written, crossing a t, dotting an i, adding
or scratching out a word of the writing which was
in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon;
and when he had read he ran his hand through the mass
of snow-white hair, sighed, and pushed the book further
back on to the desk.
It is an eerie sound that of someone
speaking aloud to himself, and still more eerie when
it occurs in the middle of the night when the only
part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong
white hands moving in the orange disc thrown on the
desk by the heavily shaded lamp.
And it is a strange habit this talking
aloud of the solitary soul.
Mad?
Not a bit.
Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic
midday, unresponsive to the uncongenial matter around,
it will talk on subjects gay and grave, and even laugh
with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.
Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.
For the twentieth time the famous
specialist picked up a letter and read it from beginning
to end.
“Strange, Jim, old fellow,”
said he as he laid it down, “strange how I think
of you to-night. Seeing your little one, I suppose.
But somehow to-night more than ever I feel the blank
you made in my life when you left. How you’d
have loved the kiddie, Jim. Strange wee soul
with a shadow already on her life-a big
black shadow, Jim, which I-I am going !”
He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
“Ugh!” he said, as he
turned back to the desk and drew the book towards
him.
“Leonie Hetth-age
seven-walks in her sleep and dreams-dreams
are evidently of India-things that walk
softly and purr-a small light-and
wet red which may mean blood-green eyes
and a black woman who-who-
Once more he ran his hand through
his hair, but time irritably, then shook his head
from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.
“I’ve been sitting up
too late these last few nights over that opium case.
Don’t seem to be able to collect or hold my
thoughts. Jim, old fellow, I wonder what made
you leave Leonie in the care of that damn silly, shallow
woman, and I wonder how you could ever have produced
anything so highly strung and temperamental as your
little daughter. I sup-
He stopped quite suddenly and rose,
standing with his head bent forward.
There was not a sound!
Feeling for the arm of his chair with
his face still turned to the curtained window he sank
back, only to spring upright with a bound.
Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to
the window, and pulling back the curtain an inch or
two peered out into the small garden with its one
tree and border of shrubs.
There was no sound and nothing moved.
“Strange!” he muttered, “I could
have sworn some-one knocked.”
He jerked back the curtains so that
they rasped on the brass rod, letting in the almost
blinding glare of the full moon which drew a nimbus
from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced
and gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls
and ceiling, and in and out of the open safe.
He turned, but stopped abruptly when
half-way across the room, standing stock still with
his back to the window.
There was a faint distinct tapping
as though slender fingers were beating a ghastly,
distant drum.
It stopped-it continued-it stopped.
Then fell one little solitary rap
like a drop of water falling on a metal plate, and
it died away into silence.
And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.
“Surely I’ve got India
on the brain to-night, and as surely I want a good
long holiday,” he said, as he sat down at his
desk and picked up his pen. “And I must
remember to tell the gardener to clip that tree to-morrow.
How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutely
scared by a branch rubbing against the window.”
For five long minutes he sat frowning
down at the pen in his hand. Three times he commenced
to write, and three times he stopped; twice he lit
a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the
lines between the brows and round the mouth, until
he shivered and turned quickly in his chair.
“That felt just like a sea-fog
creeping up behind; stupid to keep the window open
even in spring,” he said as he picked up a log
from a basket by his side and threw it deftly into
the wide-open grate, leant sideways to separate two
brass ornaments on a table which had jangled one against
the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.
“Confound those great market
lorries,” he muttered, looking round the room
with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange
and weird, beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought
back from every corner of the globe. “They
shake the house enough to bring it down about one’s
ears.”
The moon was slowly shifting as he
leant back and settled himself comfortably in the
high leather chair; the room was getting darker and
there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness
which envelops most great cities after midnight, and
against which his thoughts stood out like steel points
upon a velvet curtain.
Clear and sharp as steel they shot
indeed, this way and that through his mind; but hold
them he could not, analyse or arrange them he could
not, neither would his hand move towards the pen a
few inches from the finger-tips.
“God!” he suddenly thundered,
striking the arm of the chair with his fist.
“The answer is just there on the tip of my tongue-before
my very eyes-within reach of my fingers,
and yet I cannot grasp it-ah! why! could
it possibly be-
He rose as he spoke and crossed to
a massive bookcase packed to overflowing with books,
switched on a light hanging near, opened the glass
door and ran his hand lovingly over the leather volumes.
Then he very gently laid his hand
on his left shoulder and turned with a smile lighting
up his face, which abruptly went blank in astonishment.
“Upon my word,” he said,
“whatever made me think that Jan had come in
and had put his hand upon my shoulder. Old fool
that I am to-night.”
For a moment he stood looking into
the shadowy corners, then turned again to the case,
ran his finger along a row of books until he came to
one with the title “India,” pulled it out
and opened it under the light.
The book opened quite suddenly and
wide, and his eyes fell on the first few lines.
Without a movement he stood staring down at the printed
words, reading to the end of the page, then he violently
closed the book, thrust it back into the case, and
closing the doors, pressed against them with both
hands as though in an endeavour to keep back something
which was trying to get out.
“No! my God! No! never!
not that-not that as an end-not
for that baby-and yet-
He moved across to the desk, sank
heavily like a very old man into his chair and covered
his face with his hands.
Then very slowly and as though against
his will he uncovered his face, and leaning forward
stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped for
the pen beside the book.
“And the cure,” he muttered,
“the remedy-I must find it-I-I-
His heart was thudding heavily with
the merest suspicion of a complete pause between the
beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilst
his eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.
“I don’t understand, I
don’t understand!” he whispered, just like
a frightened child as he plucked at his collar and
moved his head quickly from side to side as though
trying to loosen some stranglehold about his neck.
He turned and stared unseeingly into
the fire with the look of perplexity deepening on
his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, first to
the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then
to the varied ornaments on the shelf.
“Tish!” he said impatiently
as they roved from the central figure of benign undisturbed
Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and on
to a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.
For a second he stared uncomprehendingly,
then raised his head.
Inch by inch his eyes moved until
they reached the top shelf of the overmantel and stopped.
A shiver shook him as he lay back in his chair, his
widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny
bead of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.
Staring down at him, shining evilly
in the moonlight, was a glistening, unwavering eye.
Just a slanting mother-o’-pearl
eye in the battered head of a god or goddess of India,
with features almost obliterated by the passage of
centuries.
For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat
staring up at the eye which stared back; then moving
with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the
mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing
load from about his head; and turning sideways in
his chair stretched out one hand between the eye above
and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the shaking
fingers.
“Ah! my God!” he muttered,
“the answer is still there, on the tip of my
tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers,
and I cannot grasp it-ah!-yes-
Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote,
printing the letters in thick and crooked capitals,
whilst his breath whistled through the dilated nostrils
and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.
“The answer to the problem concerning
Leonie Hetth is in the third volume upon-
His hand stopped suddenly when the
fingers involuntarily spread wide apart, letting fall
the pen which rolled across the book; and the silvery
head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted
to the one shining in the shadows.
And there commenced a desperate, a
bitter struggle for a child’s reason, perhaps
for a child’s life, as the moon gently withdrew
her light.
Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon
the moor, like the searching tentacles of some blind
monster of the sea, fear crept upon the splendid old
man in this still hour of the night.
It held his hands, it was folded about
his mouth, it pounded violently upon his gallant heart,
whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, so that
his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away
his head he kept his face turned piteously upward.
“What is it,” he muttered
thickly, as though his tongue clove to the roof of
the mouth, “what is it that is pulling me, pressing
upon me, choking me! I have no body, no-no
hands-I-have-no power
to move-I-
And then he screamed, though but a
whisper fell, as with a spasmodic jump of his whole
body he flung himself round in his chair, and cowering
low against the arm, peered into the deepening shadows.
“All round about me,”
he whispered, “all about me those hands are
pulling, and yet-and-and-
He laughed until his face, a white
cameo against a grey velvet pall, grinned like a mask
of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one clenched
fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a
dull thud, useless, against the chair.
“I thought I was afraid-I-I
thought I saw-I saw death behind-but
I-I shall not die until-until
I have written-written-what is
it I am to write-ah! yes!”
Searching sideways with his left hand
he groped and found the pen, then very carefully,
very slowly turned towards the desk.
He drove the pen in fiercely, making
a thick black mark; he pushed it until the nib stuck,
spluttered, and broke as he flung out both hands as
if grasping at something which evaded him.
“Gone!” he mouthed, though
there was no sound of speech in the room. “Gone-gone!”
and he suddenly tore at his collar and his cuffs as
though to break some bond which held him, as he glanced
furtively about the room.
For one long moment he sat leaning
forward, staring far beyond the Indian screen upon
which his eyes were fixed, and then slowly, almost
imperceptibly, his head moved.
The drawn white face had the hunted
look of some animal at bay, the agonised eyes moved
as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch, the
breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried vainly
to frame some word.
The moon had gathered the last fold
of her silvery raiment about her and was creeping
away through the open window just as Sir Jonathan
looked straight up into the eye gleaming malevolently
through the gloom.
And as he looked the head moved gently
so that the eye leered cunningly into the distorted
face beneath; it, hovered for a fraction of time on
the edge of the shelf and fell, just as the old man,
with a blinding flash of understanding sweeping his
face, sprang to his feet, stood upright, swayed forward,
and fell back sideways, dead, across his chair, staring
across the room into eternity with eyes full of knowledge
and infinite horror.