The Uncanny Stories MEGAPACK ™: 16 Classic Chillers

by Roy Vickers

  “All except his spirit,” said Ballantyne.

  The motor-man stared at the old sea-dog strangely. “You want a nerve tonic, my son,” he said; “that’s what you want.”

  So Commander Ballantyne never told anyone about that fountain-pen.

  THE JUNGLE, by Paul Eardley

  Chapter I

  A Man of Mystery

  With a joy akin to that of Adam beholding his first sunrise, Heron stood at the taffrail of the incoming mail-steamer and watched the magic of the dawn as it spread its green suffusion behind the dark line of the Western Ghats, and touched the still waters of the harbor and the waking city of Bombay with glimmering opal fire.

  He was bare-headed and blue-eyed, and the breeze of the morning ruffled his crisp, yellow hair till he looked seraphically youthful. Pitching away his cigarette he dug his fists into the pockets of his loose-fitting tussore jacket and drank of that breeze as if he found it the rarest vintage of rapture.

  “India at last,” he whispered.

  Now, India is all things to all men, and because Clive Heron sought her in a spirit of high romance it was romance that she offered unto him. But like Circe or Cleopatra, India mostly tinctures the cup of romance, with strange and ungodly things.

  At the shivery hour of three in the morning Heron found himself stretching his cramped limbs on the platform of a small and very drowsy wayside station.

  He lit a cigarette and strolled to the other end of the platform. Turning his head presently he saw a shadowy form glide out of the deeper shadows and come to a halt beside his heaped up baggage.

  “You are from Mr. Shore?”

  The man had salaamed assent as Heron strode up and thereupon assumed the office of guide in the difficult journey up country, which had to be made by means of ponies. For it was to a tea-plantation that Heron was bound, and many of these Assam tea-gardens are somewhat inaccessible places.

  The sun was already hot by the time the bungalow came in sight. There was something very homely to Heron in the appearance of that bungalow; it was like a rambling, whitewashed English farmhouse with a thatched roof.

  “A consumptive Hercules!” That was Heron’s first impression of the man who came stalking down from the veranda to bid him welcome.

  Shore, the manager of the tea-garden, was a man of magnificent frame, but sickness or overwork or some other thing had played pathetic havoc with his physique. His garments hung as loosely upon his gaunt figure as the rags on a scarecrow. His head was massive, with handsome, clear-cut features, but his cheeks were painfully hollow and his eyes looked out from cavernous depths with a feverish glitter. In age he might have been anything between thirty-five and fifty.

  “Delighted to meet you, Mr. Heron.”

  It was a deep voice of unmistakable culture. His hand closed over the boy’s in a vice-like grip. “Hope you didn’t have too much bother getting here? Don’t let me keep you here, though,” he added, turning on his heel and leading the way to the bungalow. “You’re feeling pretty well fagged, I’ve no doubt. Hope you will get used to our different hours of feeding up here. You’ll have time now to have a bath before breakfast.” Heron’s clothes were sticking to his back.

  “Thanks! That’s just what I should like!”

  “I will put you up for the first few nights while you are getting your things and your place is being put in order. It’s a bit out of repair just now.”

  “Thanks awfully.”

  Heron sat down to breakfast with about the best appetite he had ever known in his life, but Shore made the merest pretense at eating. He appeared to be thinking deeply.

  “You’re not married, are you?” he suddenly shot out.

  Heron laughed: “Of course not.”

  “There’s a lot of young fellows with wives at home who come out here as single men,” said Shore, and his eyes were keen as a hawk’s as they met the boy’s gaze. “But I won’t have any of that sort working for me! If a man has a wife at home and he comes out here and dies, it leads to no end of misery and unpleasantness. My last assistant, for instance—”

  “The one who broke his neck?”

  “So you’ve heard about that, have you?” Shore queried sharply.

  “I heard in Bombay.”

  “It was the fellow’s own fault,” Shore said, in a dry, grating voice. “Any man who is fool enough to go wandering about in the dark on a night when there isn’t a moon must expect to get broken bones! But the letters his wife wrote to me—!” He made an expressive gesture. “Why, you might have imagined that I was to blame for his death!

  In spite of the blazing sunlight Heron felt a little shiver creep up his spine. The manager emptied his glass at a draught and refilled it.

  “Here!” he said. “Don’t let’s talk about ghastly things. Try one of these Burma cheroots.”

  For some time they smoked in silence—a silence punctuated by periodic gurglings from the whisky bottle. Shore was drinking glass after glass of neat spirit.

  “You’d better sleep for a couple of hours now,” the man said at length, “and then we’ll stroll round the tea.”

  Chapter II

  The Coolie Girl

  They were a little late in starting. As they made their way along the thread-like paths which wound between the green bushes they met gangs of coolies returning from work with their tools and their laden baskets. Some of the women among them had babies astride their hips, and one who passed close to Shore fingered a string of blue beads round the neck of her child in a curiously nervous fashion.

  “What’s she doing that for?” asked Heron.

  “She thinks I’ve got the evil-eye, and she’s taking precautions in case I should work the child harm. Lots of ’em think I’m accursed!” And he laughed harshly.

  And then, the path growing wider, he linked his arm through Heron’s and began to talk in the most entertaining fashion. Nor did his genial mood vanish; it continued till dinner that night, increasing in warmth all the time. But as soon as the plates were removed he began to consume whisky as industriously as ever. There was remonstrance in Heron’s eyes.

  “A man must either sleep or drink,” Shore said apologetically. “I can’t sleep, so I—do the other thing!”

  “But you ought to see a doctor. You’ll kill yourself.”

  Shore puffed out a wreath of smoke. “I wish I’d got the pluck to do that,” he said darkly. “But I’m a coward when it comes to death,” came the mysterious mocking cry of a nightjar. A galleon of cloud, slowly sailing through an archipelago of giant stars, heaved to and down from her sank the silver anchor of the waning moon.

  Then something stirred in the tea-bushes no more than a dozen yards from the foot of the veranda steps.

  “Where on earth did that girl spring from?”

  “What girl?” Shore spoke in a thick, faint voice as if he had drawn a cloud of smoke into his lungs and had all he could do to prevent himself choking.

  “I say, isn’t she a beauty,” breathed Heron. “But ought she to be plucking tea at this time of night? Won’t she get fever or something?”

  “No,” answered Shore, still in the same gasping whisper, “she won’t—get—fever!”

  In the moonlight stood a coolie girl plucking rapidly, all her attention apparently concentrated upon her task. Her face was turned a little from them, but the moonlight seemed to have grown on a sudden much brighter, revealing in all their loveliness the sylphlike lines of her figure. The few wisps of whitish drapery which comprised her garments, emphasized the lissome grace of her contours, and Heron watched her entranced, the man and the artist both fully awake in his blood.

  The little twinkling ripple died out of the slim, bronze shoulders. She had ceased from her plucking. For a moment she was motionless, with her arms limp against her sides, and her little
palms curled outwards; she seemed very weary. And then her bosom heaved as she drew a long breath, and she stooped.

  “She’ll never be able to lift that great basket alone!” Heron had sprung to his feet. “I must lend her a hand!”

  Shore’s fingers closed on his shoulder.

  “Sit down!”

  Heron turned on him hotly.

  “I can’t stand by and see her doing such work at this time of night if you can! Let me go!”

  Shore glared at him, and then with a throaty chuckle let his hand fall and reached out for the whisky bottle. Heron took two strides forward and reached the edge of the veranda, and then he glanced back. “She’s gone!” he breathed in a queer, incredulous voice.

  “You must have startled her.”

  “No, she’s vanished; I tell you—disappeared into nothing!”

  “Nonsense! The moonlight’s misled you. Why, the night is full of shadows!”

  Heron sat down again, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I could have sworn—” he began; and then: “But any way what was she doing working at this hour at all?”

  “She always comes here to work one night in the year. It’s a custom with her.”

  “You know her, then?”

  “Quite well.”

  “I’m glad of that.” He laughed a trifle shakily. “D’ye know, just for a minute I thought she might be a ghost!”

  “Fancy your thinking that!” Shore smiled, raising his black, bushy eyebrows. “Here, let’s talk of something else! You’ll be getting nervous. Tell me about yourself. What part do you come from? You’re a public school man, aren’t you?”

  “I was at Harrow.”

  “Were you, begad? You—you didn’t know a man by the name of Durward?”

  “Didn’t I, though! Why, little Tony Durward was my special chum.”

  “And he was fond of you?” said the other hoarsely, his neck craned eagerly forward.

  “He was that! The chaps used to call us The Twins.”

  “Tell me more about him. I’m interested. I used to know his brother.”

  So Heron gave free rein to his tongue. He was always enthusiastic when he spoke of his chum, and he talked on and on, the distant bray of a stag filling in occasional pauses between his words.

  “I think we’d better turn in now,” said Shore at last in a weary voice. He rose, stretching himself, and pitched away the stump of his cigar.

  “Right you are. But I just want to have another look to see if that girl’s about.” Heron laughed lightly and walked to the veranda-edge. In the misty moonlight the bamboo-jungle which bounded the tea-garden reared itself like a jagged black cliff against the sky. Not the slightest breath of wind stirred the tea-bushes. Above the spot whence the girl had disappeared a band of fire-flies danced and circled like sparks from an anvil. In the room behind him he could hear the foot-fall of Shore; there was something almost tigerish about it—so heavy and yet so soft.

  “Pooh!” said Heron, shaking himself, and walked into the lamp-lit room, whistling through his teeth.

  “Well, good-night!” Shore said, and stretched out a large, bony hand.

  “Good-night,” Heron answered. “I’ve enjoyed today.”

  As Heron made to withdraw his hand Shore flung him back against the table. The lamp met the floor with a crash, blinked and went out. They were wrestling together in the dark.

  Chapter III

  The Call

  Only for a moment they struggled; the man had the strength of a giant. Heron felt himself falling—heard his head hit the floor with a thud—and with the paraffin reek in his nostrils he swooned amid the ruins of the lamp.

  He opened his eyes painfully. The back of his head felt bruised; he wanted to rub it with his hand. But a rope was cutting into his flesh at a dozen points; he could not move hand or foot; he had been trussed up and fastened to a staple in the wall.

  “What’s the game, Shore? What’s all this foolery?”

  Heron could hardly hear himself speak for the singing in his ears. Shore had lit a candle. He was holding it flame downwards, so that the wax dripped in a little pool upon the table. When the pool was the size of a shilling he placed the base of the candle upon it, pressing it till the candle stood fixed in an upright position. All this he did very methodically.

  “What’s the game, Shore?” He spoke in a milder voice; if the man were mad he had better humor him. “This rope is cutting my arms most infernally!”

  “I’m going to save your life!”

  Shore leant across the table, grasping two corners of it with his big, bony hands. “I can’t let you go like the others!”

  “Who wants my life? I don’t understand?”

  “You saw that girl in the garden? Well, she’s coming to see us tonight.”

  “What about that?”

  “You thought she was a ghost, didn’t you?”

  Heron nodded.

  “Well, you thought right!”

  A little draught caught the candle, and the shadow of Shore staggered across the room like a drunken Colossus.

  “You believe I’m mad? I guessed you would. But I’m telling the truth. I’ve tied you up to save you from her!”

  Heron gazed at him blankly.

  “At first I meant to let you go, just as I let my last two assistants, without lifting a hand to save you, but that was before I knew you were Tony Durward’s friend. You see, I love little Durward.”

  “But how do you know him?”

  “I am his brother!”

  A moment of dead silence. Then Shore went on:

  “Of course, he never mentioned me to you. He wouldn’t. He didn’t know you were coming to me. He doesn’t even know where I am or what name I’m living under.”

  He foraged in a pocket of his coat, which had been ripped across the breast in the struggle, and produced a grimy envelope. “Here’s the last letter I got from him, poor lad. He said in it that he was going to pray for me every night. For a month that letter was my sheet anchor. It pulled me up and held me fast. And then I broke loose again and drove straight on to the rocks of hell!”

  He paused, and brushed his hand across his brow; his face was gleaming with sweat.

  “D’ye know, if you hadn’t been Tony’s chum I’d have sacrificed you, just like the others?”

  “Mad”—thought Heron—“stark, staring mad!”

  “She was a coolie girl who was working here when I came, and I wanted a mate and took her,” he went on feverishly. “I was crazy about her at first. I called her Yasodhara because she had”—and he quoted softly—“‘A form of heavenly mould, a gait like Pavati’s, eyes like a hind’s in love-time.’ And then I got sick of her. Perhaps the whisky was to blame. You see, I’d gone back to it after being off it for a spell, and a man can’t love whisky and a woman too. And then—” He broke off, shielding his face with his hand as though to shut out some horror.

  “What happened?” breathed Heron, quivering.

  “I found her putting something in my drink—caught her in the act—something, she said, to bring back my love and make me adore her always. I was blazing mad for a minute. I snatched up the glass and dashed it in her face. I—blinded her!”

  He dropped his hand and stared across at Heron.

  “For two days she stayed in the house. I was drunk all the time. And then in the night she went out, and she could not see, and she fell down a nullah and died.”

  Heron sucked in his breath.

  “Once a year she comes back,” Shore whispered. “She comes for—me. But hitherto she has taken others. I have stood aside and let them go in my place. You see, she is still blind!”

  Heron’s brain reeled; he wanted to speak, but his tongue seemed dead at the roots and his mouth seemed filled wi
th sand. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the small silver watch upon his wrist; it had escaped from the struggle uninjured; and in that utter silence its ticking seemed to fill the place.

  Then came another sound—a faint, far-off rustling, suggesting the movement of a handful of wind-blown leaves along a gravel path. Shore’s jaw dropped. His eyeballs gleamed, white and rolling, and he slid away from the table and flattened himself against the wall in the shadow cast by a bookcase.

  Heron strained his ears listening. And then the pain of the ropes which cut torturingly into his flesh left him as suddenly as the pain slips out of a trapped beast’s limb when it hears the approach of the hunter.

  The soft pit-pat of naked feet was coming up the veranda steps.

  Icy paralysis gripped the boy. He had closed his eyes instinctively, in a sudden shrinking of fear, and now he bit his lip hard as a man might do in a desperate effort to awaken from a nightmare. But he felt naught save the tiny spurt of the salt blood into his mouth. The nightmare remained.

  There was a rush of cold air upon his forehead, and he knew that the door had been noiselessly opened and shut. Then some power he was helpless to resist caused him to raise his eyelids.

  The candle-light glimmered on a slightly clad body and bare, brown limbs. The girl he had seen once already that night was slowly moving towards him.

  Her left hand covered her face. Her right was outstretched gropingly before her, the light flickering on a golden bracelet upon the soft, round arm, and twinkling on her little, sharp, red-tinted nails.

  Then Heron’s heart seemed to stop beating. She had dropped her left hand and was looking at him. No, not looking at him, for her eyes were shut, and right across them ran a ghastly, bluish-white scar.

  Her lips were moving. No audible words came from them, but on a sudden as he gazed on the seared face and felt her sinuous, silent approach, a storm of words swept his being. His heart had interpreted the message of her body and lips.