Part 19

It had been only the night before, at a studio tea, that Armitage had made the threat, or the promise, that came to her now with a sudden, cold prevision of tragedy. Armitage was young, reckless, debonair, of an engaging manner with women; and Rita had encouraged him—well, just a little, she told herself.

It was a fascinating game—in the playing. The paying—that would be another matter. And as if the words had been spoken in her ear, she was hearing now the smooth voice, thickened a trifle with his potations, with that faintly roughened, passionate undertone:

“... Daventry doesn’t care, does he? Why should _you_? I tell you, Rita, you’ve gotten into my blood. Some night _between you and me_—the witching hour, ha? I _promise_ you I’ll be there; and you won’t have to _look_ to find me!”

The handsome, dissipated face had come close to hers; there had been a menace in the tone, as well as a caress. And the fact that the man had been—well—not himself could not condone. The noise, the lights, the music upon which, dancing together, they had floated as on a languorous, steep wave of sound and motion, could not condone.

Rita had had no excuse save the oft-repeated, sophisticated sophistry of “The last time; this will be the very last!” And she had gone on, protesting, if at all, with a half-mutinous, wholly unconsidered coquetry, which, at the last, had led to this!

* * * * *

Ronald Armitage had the reputation of being something of a “blood;” the Armitages had sowed and reaped, and of young Ronald it was said that he would stop at nothing for the accomplishment of his desires.

And now, alone in that vast bed, hearing again that stealthy movement by the window, the girl checked again sharply in the act of reaching forth her hand. With her finger upon the button, she froze, rigid, as that smooth, stealthy advance moved closer.

There came a fumbling at the footboard; she heard the sound, like a faint, rubbing whisper, of naked fingers sliding upon polished wood. But the night was a moonless, black emptiness; the bed-chamber was like a tomb for blackness, dark as a wolf’s throat, and yet alive with movement, with a tension drawn like a fine wire and singing at a pitch too low for sound.

At any moment, too, Daventry might come down; he was a careful man who guarded his house and the treasure therein with a meticulous observance. And sitting there, waiting, nerves at pitch, Rita Daventry tasted to the full the fruits of her single indiscretion. As between Armitage and her husband, she knew now beyond peradventure whom it was she loved, and with a love, as she knew now, fierce and protective, desirous above all things of the safety—the life, indeed, of the toiler on the second floor.

Armitage had never been in her bedchamber, of course, although he knew its location, had seen it, from the outside, walking with Daventry through the corridor without. But in the darkness strange tricks are played with one’s sense of direction. The room was a large one, lofty, high-ceilinged, its rear windows opening upon a service alley, and it had been by means of this alley that the midnight intruder had made entrance.

She could hear him now a little better—his breathing, hard-held and yet rising to that peculiar, stertorous quality that was almost like a snuffling, a quick, eager panting as of a hound questing his quarry in the dark. If Armitage had been drinking—but then, he must have been, or he would scarcely have made good his threat.

Daventry, though a studious, careful man, was a lion when aroused; he could shoot and shoot straight. And if the two should meet, there in that midnight black, it would be grim tragedy for one, or both—tragedy with none for witness save that pale girl new-risen from her couch of dreams, wide-eyed, her gaze fixed now in a sightless staring upon the black well of the night.

And then, as she shrank backward against the pillows, there came a thumping clatter, a thick, whispered oath, and a following silence that was more terrible than any sound.

He was coming now, around the foot-board, along the side of the bed. She felt rather than heard that fumbling, stealthy advance; the fingers feeling along the counterpane; the noiseless _pad-pad_ of the feet deadened by the thick pile of the Kermanshah rug; in imagination she could almost see the face, flushed now, bemused with drink, the leering, parted mouth....

The scream, lodged in her throat now, seemed like a bird beating against bars; in a moment the silence would be ripped from end to end, as a sheet is ripped from point to point, with the tearing impact of that scream, rising heavenward with the first defiling touch of those groping fingers. Armitage’s face on that evening had been the face of a satyr, high-colored, the nose sharpened to a point of greed, the eyes in a wide, avid staring upon the perfect curve of her shoulders, her neck.

And she had encouraged him with by-play of hand and eye, speech in a low rich contralto dealing in double meanings that yet had no meaning; glance provocative plumbing the depths of his—for this.

And in that moment Rita Daventry knew fear; the primal fear of the woman whose very protection has become her peril—the peril of the abyss.

And it was then that she heard it, like a summons of doom; the sound of heavy footsteps from the room above.

* * * * *

The footsteps were coming down now; they beat hollowly against the iron treads of the staircase with rapid thunder.

Robert Daventry was coming, leaping downward, now to meet—the death that waited for him behind that closed door, or to deal it to the man who, somewhere in that smothering dark, crouched, automatic ready, waiting for the man who was coming—on the wings of death.

After all, her husband might not have heard that thumping clatter; all unknowing, he might be rushing downward to meet an ambush unsuspected and unknown. And that Armitage would shoot, the woman was convinced. For he would put but one construction upon that headlong descent. Daventry had heard him, knew that he was there, like a thief in the night, a marauder, an outlaw meriting the swift justice of the ballet.

And then, all at once, the steps ceased; a silence grew and held that was like the silence before storm, so that to the woman upon the bed it seemed that she abode in a vacuum of sound and silence, brooding upon the night in a volcanic, breathless calm.

It must be a nightmare that would pass, a waking dream that would presently dissolve in the sanity of peaceful slumber. She strove, as a drowning swimmer fathoms deep in dreams, to scream a warning, a command to the man—_her_ man—silent now upon the threshold of life, or of death. But she could not.

And presently, how she could not have told, she knew that, where before there had been but _one_ dim Presence in that bed-chamber, now there were _two_.

She had heard nothing, seen nothing, felt nothing; neither the opening nor the closing of the heavy door; no faintest sound of breathing; the silence held, borrowing a tension from the electric air. Remote, as through many thicknesses of walls, there came to her now, as from a world removed, the night noises of the City, muted by distance to a vague shadow of clamor, faint and far.

But that velvet black before her was, as she knew, most terribly endowed with motion, sinister, alive, awaiting merely the spark, the pressure of rigid finger upon trigger, the touch of hand against hand, the faintest whisper of a sound, to dissolve in a chaos of red ruin—and with it the ruin of her world.

Abruptly, again she heard that muffled ticking, this time close at hand, and with it, as she fancied, the faint breathing of a man. But even as she heard it, it receded, died; there came the faint _snick_ of metal upon metal, like the _snick_ and slither of a steel blade; it was followed by a sort of chugging impact, like the sound made by a knife sheathed home, say, at the base of a man’s brain, or between the shoulders—a sound to freeze the blood.

That Armitage could have been capable of this she could not believe, but upon the instant her flesh crawled abruptly at the thought; of the invisible duelists but one remained now, and he was coming toward her; she fancied she could hear the faint, scarce-audible footfall on the thick pile of the rug.

And then—the silence was abruptly broken by a shattering crash. The intruder, unfamiliar with the room’s interior, had swept a great vase from the mantel.

And then, distinct and clear, she heard the sodden impact of fist on flesh, a heaving grunt, the lift and strain of heavy bodies, close-locked.

And following this, in a sudden fury, all round the room the pictures rattled in their frames; the flooring shook; a heavy desk went over in a smashing ruin; grunts followed it, the straining shock of big men in a death-grapple. But mostly it was a fight in silence and darkness, with the quick, hard breathing of men at the last desperate urge of their spent strength.

With her finger again upon the light-switch, again she hesitated, and in that flash of time she heard all at once a quick, sobbing breath—a groan—then silence.

Somewhere out there in that midnight blackness her husband might be lying wounded—dead—above him the beast whom she had known as Ronald the Debonair, turning his face now toward the girl who, shivering and defenseless, crouched forlorn upon the bed.

But even as this fresh terror out of the dark assailed her, there came a heavy crash—another—the barking rattle of an automatic, the quick flashes stabbing into the murk to right and left.

The roaring crashes beat upon her ears like a tocsin of doom, and then, in answer, three answering shots, deliberate, slow. With them there came the slumping fall of a heavy body, and the labored breathing of a man.

The duel was over.

For a moment the silence held. Dreading what the coming of the light might reveal, her finger, hovering upon the push-button, came away; then, with an agony of effort, made a darting thrust.

And as the light sprang to full flower she looked with white face and staring eyes, upon the tall figure in the doorway.

It was Robert Daventry!

* * * * *

But her hysterical, glad cry was stifled in her throat as her husband, bending forward over the rug, turned over the dead man with his foot.

Fearful, yet eager to see, she rose upon her knees, peering with wide eyes over the foot-board.

Then—hysteria seized her with, by turns, a sudden storm of mingled weeping and frantic laughter.

“That.... _That_...!” she cried, pointing a shaking finger at the still figure on the carpet.

And then:

“Oh, my God!... it might have been—!”

But Daventry, gazing with a grim face at the rigid figure of the housebreaker—the unclean skin, with its bristly stubble of unshaven chin, blue now under the lights—thought it merely the natural reaction of the terrific strain which she had undergone.

“You mean—it might have been—_me_!” he said slowly. “Well—of course....”

“Of course, Dear,” lied Rita Daventry, with a misty smile.

Mummies Made by Electricity

R. F. McCampbell, a Chicago undertaker, claims he has invented a process of embalming a dead body so that it will last forever. For twelve years Mr. McCampbell has been working on his process, and he now exhibits a modern mummy, lying in grandeur in an elaborate coffin, as proof that he has succeeded. By dehydrating a body with electricity, he says, its natural expression, even its complexion, may be preserved for ages.

“In the dehydration process performed by the Egyptians,” said Mr. McCampbell, “the body was buried in the sand for seventy days. Then linen was wrapped about the corpse to prevent reabsorption of water and the body was placed away in a tomb. Through the electrical process the body will retain its lifelike appearance. It will be particularly valuable for preserving the bodies of great men so that future generations may see them as lifelike as the day they died.”

MASTERPIECES OF WEIRD FICTION

_No. 1—The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain_

_By_ BULWER LYTTON

A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, “Fancy! since we last met I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London.”

“Really haunted—and by what?—ghosts?”

“Well, I can’t answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, ‘Apartments, Furnished.’ The situation suited us; we entered the house, liked the rooms, engaged them by the week—and left them the third day. No power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I don’t wonder at it.”

“What did you see?”

“Excuse me; I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious dreamer—nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strange marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be—and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week. She said dryly, ‘I know why; you have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever stayed a second night; none before you a third. But I take it they have been very kind to you.’

“‘They—who?’ I asked, affecting to smile.

“‘Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I do not mind them. I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don’t care,—I’m old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them, and in this house still.’ The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and I to get off so cheaply.”

“You excite my curiosity,” said I; “nothing I should like better than to sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one which you left so ignominiously.”

My friend gave me the address; and when we parted, I walked straight toward the house thus indicated.

It is situated on the north side of Oxford Street, in a dull but respectable thoroughfare. I found the house shut up—no bill at the window, and no response to my knock. As I was turning away, a beer-boy, collecting pewter pots at the neighboring areas, said to me, “Do you want any one at that house, sir?”

“Yes, I heard it was to be let.”

“Let!—why, the woman who kept it is dead—has been dead these three weeks, and no one can be found to stay there, though Mr. J⸺ offered ever so much. He offered mother who chars for him, £1 a week just to open and shut the windows, and she would not.”

“Would not!—and why?”

“The house is haunted; and the old woman who kept it was found dead in her bed, with her eyes wide open. They say the devil strangled her.”

“Pooh! You speak of Mr. J⸺. Is he the owner of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Where does he live?”

“In G⸺ Street, No. —.”

“What is he? In any business?”

“No, sir—nothing particular; a single gentleman.”

I gave the potboy the gratuity earned by his liberal information, and proceeded to Mr. J⸺, in G⸺ Street, which was close by the street that boasted the haunted house. I was lucky enough to find Mr. J⸺ at home—an elderly man with intelligent countenance and prepossessing manners.

I communicated my name and my business frankly. I said I heard the house was considered to be haunted—that I had a strong desire to examine a house with so equivocal a reputation; that I should be greatly obliged if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. “Sir,” said Mr. J⸺, with great courtesy, “the house is at your service, for as short or as long a time as you please. Rent is out of the question—the obligation will be on my side should you be able to discover the cause of the strange phenomena which at present deprive it of all value. I cannot let it, for I cannot even get a servant to keep it in order or answer the door. Unluckily the house is haunted, if I may use that expression, not only by night, but by day, though at night the disturbances are of a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more alarming character. The poor old woman who died in it three weeks ago was a pauper whom I took out of a workhouse; for in her childhood she had been known to some of my family, and had once been in such good circumstances that she had rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior education and strong mind, and was the only person I could ever induce to remain in the house. Indeed, since her death, which was sudden, and the coroner’s inquest, which gave it a notoriety in the neighborhood, I have so despaired of finding any person to take charge of the house, much more a tenant, that I would willingly let it rent free for a year to anyone who would pay its rates and taxes.”

“How long is it since the house acquired the sinister character?”

“That I can scarcely tell you, but very many years since. The old woman I spoke of, said it was haunted when she rented it between thirty and forty years ago. The fact is, that my life has been spent in the East Indies, and in the civil service of the Company. I returned to England last year, on inheriting the fortune of an uncle, among whose possessions was the house in question. I found it shut up and uninhabited. I was told that it was haunted, that no one would inhabit it. I smiled at what seemed to me so idle a story. I spent some money in repairing it, added to its old-fashioned furniture a few modern articles—advertised it, and obtained a lodger for a year. He was a colonel on half pay. He came in with his family, a son and a daughter, and four or five servants; they all left the house the next day; and, although each of them declared that he had seen something different from that which had scared the others, a something still was equally terrible to all. I really could not in conscience sue, nor even blame, the colonel for breach of agreement. Then I put in the old woman I have spoken of, and she was empowered to let the house in apartments. I never had one lodger who stayed more than three days. I do not tell you their stories—to no two lodgers have there been exactly the same phenomena repeated. It is better that you should judge for yourself, than enter the house with an imagination influenced by previous narratives; only be prepared to see and to hear something or other, and take whatever precautions you yourself please.”

“Have you never had a curiosity yourself to pass a night in that house?”

“Yes, I passed not a night, but three hours in broad daylight alone in that house. My curiosity is not satisfied, but it is quenched. I have no desire to renew the experiment. You cannot complain, you see, sir, that I am not sufficiently candid; and unless your interest be exceedingly eager and your nerves unusually strong, I honestly add, that I advice you _not_ to pass a night in that house.”

“My interest is exceedingly keen,” said I; “and though only a coward will boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet my nerves have been seasoned in such variety of danger that I have the right to rely on them—even in a haunted house.”

Mr. J⸺ said very little more; he took the keys of the house out of his bureau, gave them to me—and, thanking him cordially for his frankness, and his urbane concession to my wish, I carried off my prize.

Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I reached home, I summoned my confidential servant—a young man of gay spirits, fearless temper, and as free from superstitious prejudice as anyone I could think of.

“F⸺,” said I, “you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at not finding a ghost in that old castle which was said to be haunted by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there tonight. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow itself to be seen or heard—something, perhaps, excessively horrible. Do you think if I take you with me, I may rely on your presence of mind, whatever may happen?”

“Oh, sir, pray trust me,” answered F⸺, grinning with delight.

“Very well; then here are the keys of the house—this is the address. Go now—select for me any bedroom you please; and since the house has not been inhabited for weeks, make up a good fire, air the bed well—see, of course, that there are candles as well as fuel. Take with you my revolver and my dagger—so much for my weapons; arm yourself equally well; and if we are not a match for a dozen ghosts, we shall be but a sorry couple of Englishmen.”

I was engaged for the rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my honor. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay’s Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there was so much of healthfulness in the style, and practical life in the subjects, that it would serve as an antidote against the influences of superstitious fancy.