November Night Tales

by Henry Chapman Mercer

  “Hello, up there!” I called out.

  There was no answer. I shook the ladder, called again, and waited a little longer. Then I slowly climbed up through the opening.

  ix

  The place I got into showed a vast roof space, with overhanging floors and galleries, extending back into the darkness, and looked as if it might be one of the wings of a deserted foundry.

  By the light of a hanging lamp I saw piles of lumber, rusty machinery, and casters’ flasks. Another lamp, with a half-barrel and some bottles and dishes, stood on a workbench behind me. Across the floor, near a pile of boxes stuffed with straw and close to a cupboard, I saw a long wire cage, built against the wall.

  As I looked from a distance, a moving white mass, seen inside the close-woven meshes, seemed to expand and contract, like a shifting cloud of vapor, until I stepped across the room; when, leaning close against the wire, I saw to my astonishment, that the cage was swarming with rats. White rats!—hundreds of them,—darting in all directions, or crouched in groups upon a long pile of mould or grass heaped against the inner wall. The cage was wet inside, from a dark liquid that had formed pools upon its metal bottom, and was oozing out upon the floor of the room. It took me some time to see that the moisture was dripping from a long tin trough in the cage; and I had just made out a barrel fixed upon a framework above it, when I heard a noise as of the splash of oars and presently, voices. I stepped back and looked across the room.

  The sounds came up through the trap-door from below, indistinct at first, then clearer, until I heard words, plainly spoken in an urgent, rasping tone:

  “Doctor, I don’t like this. He never did me any harm.” And then, after a pause: “Let’s throw him overboard and be done with it?”

  A harsh laugh and some talk that I could not make out followed. I saw the ladder move, and with a quick premonition of danger, stepped into the high empty cupboard and closed the door.

  As I did so my legs grazed some bars of iron, and instinctively I stooped down and seized what I found to be a pair of blacksmith’s tongs. A few moments of silence were followed by a noise of heavy breathing, a grating of footsteps, and a dull, scraping sound. I pushed the door slightly open and, holding it by a nail just within the crack, looked out. A bleached-looking, thin-bearded, long-haired man, without a hat, in a dingy cutaway coat, was leaning over the ladder, pulling at a rope. The high-cheeked white face, under a commanding forehead, was turned downward; but there was something about the protruding close-set eyes and overshow of teeth that seemed familiar, until, as the man’s muscular body strained at the rope, a peculiar flare of the ears and fall of the hair convinced me that he was the pedlar of my night walks.

  I had hardly made him out, when the hole was filled with a sight that overwhelmed me with amazement and horror. The gray hair, flushed face, then the shoulders of my uncle, slowly rose into the room. The lower features were concealed by a wad of white rags, stuffed into his mouth; and as the arms, tightly bound under the rope that lifted him, and then the body emerged, I saw a pair of dirty hands push him up from below. I was trembling, and as my hand bore upon the closet door, I heard it creak, closed it, and drew back. For a few seconds I waited in the darkness, listening to the shuffling of feet, followed by a dull bumping sound. When I pushed the door out again, and looked through the crack, my uncle was lying upon the floor, and another man, with close-cropped hair, and staring eyes, was standing near him. The formidable man I had recognized bent down, and I watched him loose and pull out the rope noosed under my uncle’s arms, deliberately coil it up, and throw it across the floor. Then, stooping the two men seized the tightly-bound prostrate figure, lifted it, and carrying it across the room, placed it on the floor close to the cage.

  The pedlar walked back to the work-bench, and pouring some liquid from a bottle and a pitcher into a basin, picked up a large brush, and, returning to the cage, sprinkled my uncle with the mixture. While he did so, I thought I recognized the pungent aromatic smell of oil of rhodium. And as it filled the room, I heard a loud noise of scampering and squealing inside the cage. The younger man, who had been peering through the wire meshes, gave a low whistle.

  I saw the pedlar look down at my uncle and push him with his foot.

  “Do you hear that?” said he.

  There was a door about two feet square in the front of the cage. The pedlar pulled out an iron pin in its staple, opened it, and stooped down.

  “Now, in with him,” he ordered savagely; and the two men, seizing the tightly-bound body of their prisoner, pushed it head foremost through the hole. As the door closed, the younger man stared at his assistant with a look of fear. He seemed to he trembling.

  “Good God!” he cried. “This is too much for me.”

  He stepped across the floor to the ladder, started to climb down, then stopped, calling back:

  “Come along, doctor. I wouldn’t look at it, if I were you.”

  A contemptuous smirk played over the grim face of his companion. I saw the white of teeth and a diabolical glitter in the eyes. Then, as the head and shoulders of the speaker disappeared down the ladder, the man or monster whose terrible purpose I at last understood, gave a low chuckle, walked back to the cage, and placing a stool near it, sat down, and leaned over towards the grating.

  x

  For a few moments, while an irresistible impulse to rush upon him sent the blood tingling through my veins, I waited and listened, until the noises from the boat below died away. But I had no thought of parley, or of juggling with the chances of my uncle’s fate, when at length I pushed the door slowly open. Safe, then, from interruption, and clutching the iron weapon in my right hand, I stepped out upon the floor, noiselessly approached the ferocious villain, and struck him a tremendous blow with the tongs. Without a groan, he fell heavily upon the planks; but I hardly saw him, when I rushed at the cage door, pulled out the staple pin, and swung it open. I heard the rats scamper and squeal, as I squeezed in across my uncle’s body, stooped over him, and looked close. Thank God, I saw no wound! The voracious vermin had not yet tasted his blood. He was breathing in deep gasps. His flushed face was streaming with perspiration. His swollen and inflamed eyes were winking, as if he hardly saw me. I threw down the tongs, seized his legs, and dragged him through the door. Pulling the rags out of his mouth, I cut the ropes from his arms and legs with my pocket knife, and, finding my flask, held it to his lips. But I had to wait several moments, as I chafed his stiffened arms and turned and shifted him, before he managed to get on his feet, stagger forward, and clutch the side of the cage. At length, the strong spirits had their effect and he found strength to lean upon me and stumble across the floor to the ladder. I got my feet upon it, and with a last look at the villain, who lay perceptibly breathing near the open door of the cage, I held fast to the dazed and trembling man until, slowly descending through the trap-door, he had followed me to the bottom.

  The stony bank under foot was reasonably level, and while we groped forward, his trembling sentences became coherent enough to make clear the full meaning of his ghastly experience. Several times we halted in the darkness, while the broken details of his capture and imprisonment verified my suspicion that the stunned man left behind us,—the pedlar, the monster, who would have watched the rats devour his victim alive,—was the terrible Dr. Gooch.

  With arms extended to meet the continued obstacle of the thick-clustered posts, we struggled on in the watery cellar of the great buildings above us until finally a platform leading backwards brought us to a rotting staircase choked with rubbish, and thence upward into a long, narrow yard between high walls. Passing piles of waste iron and then a labyrinth of ruinous sheds faintly lit by the moon, we reached a gate at the end of a paved alley and pulled back its rusty bolt. As the doorway swung open, I saw a glimmer ahead, felt the river breeze, and a moment later stepped out on the main highway leading to the Nor
th Ferry Bridge.

  xi

  It took about ten minutes to find a policeman, who, having directed us to the nearest station, left me and took my uncle home; while I, determined that the diabolical villain I had disabled should not escape, hurried back, with two other men, to the den of horror I had just left.

  By way of the foundry yards, staircase, and beach, lit now by the dark lanterns of the officers, we reached the lighted ladder; and, after waiting a while in silence, clambered up through the trap door into the room above.

  The lamp suspended from the ceiling had burned low and was smoking badly, throwing the whole side of the place near the cage into shadow. But in the dimmed light I saw the open door of the rats’ prison and the white forms of the escaped animals darting about the floor.

  “Where’s your man?” asked the officer.

  He stood looking about the great room. Then, stepping slowly across the floor, suddenly stopped and started back, as some rats scampered out of the shadows ahead.

  “What’s that!” he exclaimed, in startled tones.

  He was pointing to a yellowish litter half covered with wet-looking rags on the floor. I looked at it, and beyond it at the cage. The fallen man had disappeared. The blotched rags half concealed a round smooth object.

  “Why, that’s a skull!” cried the man. “Good God! Look at the bones! The rats have eaten him up!”

  I had hardly heard the terrible words, when the policeman behind me plucked my sleeve.

  “Listen!” he whispered. “There’s someone coming.”

  We heard the splash of oars from below and what I took to be the bumping of a boat, and then a low whistle.

  I pointed to the closet, and the officer ahead of us slipped in and closed the door, while my companion and I hurried behind one of the lumber piles.

  xii

  The whistle was repeated. Then the ladder shook, and I saw the ill-shaped head and close-cropped hair of the doctor’s accomplice emerge from the opening.

  “Hello, doctor!” he cried. Then, after hesitating a moment, he climbed into the room.

  “What’s the matter? Hello, there!” he called again. “What’s all this?”

  He must have seen the rats, or noticed that the cage-door was open, for there was a puzzled look on the bleared face as I saw him step to the workbench, pick up the lamp, and, holding it high above his head, walk slowly across the floor. Before reaching the cage he stopped and looked downward, while his eyes assumed a fixed stare of abject terror. The uplifted lamp was shaking visibly. Just then the closet door opened behind him. I saw the tall figure of the policeman step out with extended arm and pointed pistol and heard the shouted word, “Surrender!”

  The man turned. A moment later came a quick report and the crash of broken glass, as the lamp fell from the outstretched hand. But the surprised rascal had escaped the bullet. He leaped along the side of the cage and around its corner, while the officer, firing again, ran after him. There was a loud rattle of boards in the dim-lit background, when I rushed out with the other man, to see the fugitive dart over one of the lumber-piles and disappear in the darkness.

  His pursuer, who had stopped and turned back, was pointing at the lower end of the rat-cage, where a tongue of fire had flared up from the grass-stuffed packing boxes. He sprang to the work-bench, seized an empty bucket, and, dipping it into the half-barrel, stepped forward and threw its contents towards the floor near the cage, which by that time was ablaze with the oil from the broken lamp.

  Instantly a bright blueish flame, redoubling that of the kerosene, rose against the boxes, quickly transforming the tufts of protruding grass above us into gleaming torches that lit up the walls and ceilings of the vast room.

  “God only knows what that is,” exclaimed the man, stepping back in dismay. “I thought it was water.”

  “There’s water down the ladder there,” said his companion. “Hand me the pail, and I’ll pass it up.”

  “It’s too late!” cried the other, throwing down the bucket in terror as he turned towards the trap-door.

  With startling rapidity, the fire had overwhelmed everything in its reach. Forked flames, catching the high-stacked boxes and straw, with far-hurled volumes of smoke and crackling sparks, were rising in all directions upon the piles of combustible rubbish.

  “Hello, back there!” I shouted at the top of my voice, at thought of the escaped villain hiding in the background. “The building’s on fire.”

  “He’s safe enough by this time,” declared the officer, who began climbing down the ladder. “Come on, I tell you, and come quick, or we’ll never get out of this alive!”

  We followed him through the opening and downward to the beach, and for a few moments I stood by the ladder, shouting, but looked up in vain for the terrified face of the criminal who had escaped us.

  One of the officers with his opened lantern had found the boat left by the runaway.

  “Get in here,” said he. “Quick! The yards won’t be safe by the time we’re out there.”

  We clambered in and, rather by pushing and pulling at the piers than by the oars, got out into the river. By that time the blanketed glass of some of the windows in the doomed building had yielded to outbursts of smoke and flame, whose intermittent flashings upon the water ended the night; for the dawn was breaking and the tide at its lowest ebb when we reached a landing down the river and got ashore.

  xiii

  I had a long run back to the station with the men, and when they left me to give the alarm, I hurried to my uncle’s house, where I found him in bed and asleep.

  The old housekeeper took me into the brightly-lit kitchen, and there listened to my hasty account of what had happened, with the horrors omitted. Then, utterly exhausted as I was, I accepted her invitation to rest in one of the spare rooms, got rid of my wet clothes, and soon fell asleep.

  When I awoke the morning was nearly gone. Through the open windows I heard a loud noise of shouting and ringing of bells; and, calling downstairs for my dried clothes, got them on and went out. The streets were full of hurrying people, whose frightened random words prepared me for the fiery havoc that I soon saw. The whole water-front of the city was enveloped in flame and smoke. Most of the great warehouses had sunk into smouldering craters. From others, outbursts of flame, seen through water-jets, were leaping across wide intervals, to seize upon their wooden prey. Where defeated firemen, helped by volunteers from the onlooking crowds, were yielding in all directions, I did my share. But it was late in the afternoon before the wind lulled and ruin halted its fatal march.

  xiv

  Bridgenorth was saved. The fire, destructive as it was, seemed to clear the air of a contagion that, after the conflagration, made no headway; and, gradually yielding to the precautions taken and a wholesale poisoning of rats, soon died out.

  Before my uncle recovered, I learned in a talk one evening by his bedside the full story of his imprisonment by his ferocious and vindictive enemy, who had kidnapped him in one of the boat landings, and whose latest frightful project, as a sequel to earlier crimes, threatened the whole city with destruction. The purpose of the weird laboratory we had seen was explained. For months past the deserted foundry had been used as a breeding-place for the agents of monstrous revenge,—rats poisoned till they were turned white by the deadly infection that soaked their straw; cholera-bearing rats, caged in a false pedlar’s pack to be scattered broadcast by the arch poisoner.

  But for my accident on the North Ferry Bridge, his ferocious vengeance would have triumphed.

  “Accidents are strange things sometimes,” said my uncle. “What theory of chances will explain the hour that you crossed the bridge,—the passing ship,—your jump upon the draw, and your fall?”