by John Collier
The tablets were not long in taking effect. Our hero closed his eyes. He put on a smile such as a man of taste would wish to wear when found in the morning. He shut off that engine which drives us from one moment to the next, and prepared to glide into the valley of the shadow.
The glide was a long one. He anticipated no landing, and was the more surprised to learn that there is no such thing as nothing, while there is quite definitely such a thing as being dead in the most comfortable bedroom in all Mutton's Hotel.
«Here I am,» he said. «Dead! In Mutton's Hotel!»
The idea was novel enough to make him get out of bed at once. He noticed that his corpse remained there, and was glad to observe that the smile was still in place, and looked extremely well.
He strolled across to the mirror to see if his present face was capable of an equally subtle expression, but when he came to look in he saw nothing at all. Nevertheless he obviously had arms and legs, and he felt that he could still do his old trick with his eyebrows. From this he assumed that he was much the same, only different.
«I am just invisible,» he said, «and in that there are certain advantages.»
He decided to go out at once, in order to have a bit of fun. He went down the stairs, followed a departing guest through the revolving door, and in two minutes he was walking down Cork Street. It appeared to be just after midnight; there was a bobby, a taxi or two, and a few ladies, none of whom took any notice of him at all.
He had not gone twenty yards, however, and was, as a matter of fact, just passing his tailor's, when a lean dark figure detached itself from the shadows which hung about the railings in front of the shop, and coming up close behind his elbow, said, «Damn and blast it, man, you have been a time!»
Louis was a little put out at finding himself not so invisible as he had thought. Still, he glanced at the stranger and saw that his eyes were as luminous as a cat's eyes, from which it was plain that he could see better than most.
«Do you mean,» said Louis, «that I've been keeping you waiting?»
«I've been hanging about here, freezing, for a week,» said the stranger peevishly.
Now it was only September, and the nights, though nippy, were not as cold as all that. Louis put two and two together. «Is it possible,» said he, «that you have been waiting to — to take me in charge, so to speak, on account of my recent suicide?»
«I have,» said the fiend. «You'll come quietly, I suppose.»
«My dear fellow,» said Louis, «I know you have your duty to do, and in any case I'm not the sort of person to make a scene in the street. I'm sorry if I've kept you hanging about in the cold, but the truth is I had no idea of your existence, so I hope there'll be no ill feeling.»
«I've got an ill feeling all right,» replied the other, grumpily. «I swear I've got the 'flu, curse it!» And with that he sneezed miserably. «The worst of it is,» he added, «we've got such a human of a way to go. I shall be fit for nothing for weeks.»
«Really, I can't bear to hear you sneeze like that,» cried our hero. «Have you ever tried the Quetch at the Rat Trap Club?»
«What Quetch?» asked the other, between sneezes.
«It tastes like liquid fire,» replied Louis. «I believe it's made from plum stones, though why I can't tell you. Possibly to cure your cold.»
«Liquid fire, eh?» observed the stranger, his eyes glowing like cigarette ends.
«Come and try it,» said Louis.
«I don't know,» said the other. «We're a week late through your fault. I don't see why we shouldn't be half an hour later through mine. I suppose there'll be trouble if they hear of it.»
Louis assured him that this last half-hour must be put down to his account also. «You caught the cold through my delay,» said he. «Therefore I am responsible for the time you take to cure it.» The fiend obviously believed this, which caused our hero to reflect that he must be a very simple fiend.
They set out for the Rat Trap Club. Passing through Piccadilly Circus, the fiend indicated the Underground, saying, «That's where I'm going to take you when we've had this drop of what-d'ye-call-it.»
«That does not take you to Hell,» said Louis, «but only to Barons Court. The mistake is pardonable.»
«No mistake,» replied the fiend. «Let's cross the road this way, and I'll show you what I mean.»
They went in, and travelled down the escalator, chatting very affably. It was fairly crowded with more ordinary passengers, but our friends attracted no attention whatever. There are a great many fiendish-looking individuals travelling on this subway, and others of a corpsy appearance. Besides, now I come to think of it, they were invisible.
When they had reached the ordinary lowest level, where the trains run, «Come,» said the fiend, and drew Louis into a passage he had never before noticed, up which there came a huger clanking and a sultrier blast. He saw a notice saying, KEEP TO THE WRONG. A few paces brought them to the top of an escalator such as our hero had never dreamed of: it swooped down from under their feet with a roar and a groan, down into the close innards of the earth. Its passage was lit by the usual lamps. Louis, whose sight seemed to have become extremely keen, saw that at some far point on its vast curve the black shades changed to blue, and the lamps gave place to stars. However, it seemed to go on the devil of a long way past that.
For the rest, it was made just like all other escalators, except in matters of details. Its sides were adorned with pictorial advertisements of temptations, some of which Louis thought might be very interesting. He could have stepped on, for there was no barrier or ticket collector, but, as we have seen, he liked to take his time.
Now and then, he and his companion were jostled by other fiends and their charges. I am afraid some of the latter were behaving in rather an undignified manner, and had to be marched along in a sort of policeman's grip. The effect was degrading. Louis was interested to see, however, how tremendously the escalator accelerated once it felt the weight of these infernal policemen and their victims. It was a tremendous spectacle to see this narrow moving chain, dimly lit, roaring, rushing down, looping the distance between Earth and Hell, which is greater than one would imagine.
«What did you do before this sort of thing was invented?» asked Louis.
«We had to leap down, like chamois, from star to star,» replied the fiend.
«Splendid!» said Louis. «Now let's go and have that drink.»
The fiend consenting, they went off to the Rat Trap, and, slipping into a cubby-hole behind the bar, they helped themselves to a full bottle of the famous Quetch. The fiend disdained a glass, and put the bottle to his lips, whereupon Louis saw, to his great amazement, this powerful form of brandy was actually brought to the boil. The fiend appeared to like it. When the liquid was gone he sucked away at the bottle, the melting sides of which collapsed like the skin of a gooseberry sucked at by a child. When he had drawn it all into his mouth, he smiled, pursed his lips, and blew out the glass again, this time more like a cigarette-smoker exhaling his first puff. What's more, he didn't blow the glass into bottle shape as formerly, but into the most delightful statuary piece, most realistic, most amusing. «Adam and Eve,» said he laconically, placing it on the table to cool.
«Oh, very, very good!» cried Louis. «Can you do Mars and Venus?»
«Oh, yes,» said the fiend. Louis immediately commandeered several more bottles of Quetch.
He called for one or two other subjects, of a nature that would hardly interest the reader. The fiend, however, thought each more amusing than the last, and nearly split his sides over the effect of a hiccup on Lady Godiva. The fact is, he was getting rather tight. Louis encouraged him, not so much for the love of art as because he had no great desire to ride on that escalator.
At last the fiend could drink no more. He got up, jingled his money (fiends have money — that's where it's all gone to), puffed out his cheeks. «Whoops!» said he, with a hiccup. «My cold's better, I believe. If it isn't, well, then — to Hell with it! that's what I
say. Ha! Ha!»
Louis, you may be sure, told him he was a fine fellow. «Well,» said he, as they stood on the steps of the Club, «I suppose you're going that way; I'm going this.» He made a bit of a face, pleasantly, raised his hat, and set off along the street, scarcely daring to breathe till he had rounded the corner.
When he thought himself in safety, «By Jove,» said he, «I'm well rid of that fellow. Here I am, dead, invisible, and the night is yet young. Shall I go and see what Celia's doing?»
Before he could embark on this rash project, he felt a very hard hand on his arm, looked round, and saw his custodian.
«Oh, there you are,» said he. «I wondered where you'd got to.»
«Drunk as a lord,» said the fiend, with a smile. «Got to see each other home, eh?»
There was nothing for it. They set out for Piccadilly Circus. The fiend kept his hand on Louis' wrist, quite inoffensively of course, only Louis would rather it had not been there.
So they went chatting into the subway again. Just as they got to the level of the Piccadilly line, which is where the infernal aperture gapes for those who are privileged to see it, whom should Louis see, in top hat, white silk scarf, and all the rest, but his damned nasty rival, catching a late train home.
«I bet,» said Louis at once, addressing the fiend, «that, you are not strong enough to carry me on your back from here to the escalator.»
The fiend, with a sneer of contempt, immediately bent down. Louis, with a desperate effort, picked hold of his rival round the waist and dumped him on the back of the fiend, who gripped his legs, and started off like a racehorse.
«Carry you all the way to Hell for tuppence!» cried he, in drunken pride.
«Done!» cried Louis, who was skipping along beside them to enjoy the spectacle.
He had the delicious pleasure of seeing them jump on the escalator, whose terrific acceleration seemed even more marked and more admirable than before.
Louis returned to the street as happy as a king. He walked about for a bit, and suddenly decided to look in at Mutton's Hotel to see how his corpse was getting on.
He was rather annoyed to see, even as he stood looking at it, that the effective smile, over which he had taken so much trouble, was slipping. In fact, it was beginning to look altogether idiotic. Without giving the matter a thought, he instinctively nipped inside to hook it back into place. In doing so he twitched his nose, found it necessary to sneeze, opened his eyes, and, in a word, found himself quite alive and no longer kicking, in that excellent bedroom of Mutton's Hotel.
«Well, upon my word!» said he, glancing at the bedside table. «Is it possible I dropped off to sleep after taking only two of those tablets? There is really something to be said for taking one's time. It must have been just a vivid dream.»
In short, he was glad to be alive, and still gladder a day or two afterwards, when some news came through that made it seem that it was not a dream after all. Louis' rival was announced as missing, having last been seen by two friends at the entrance of Piccadilly Circus station shortly after midnight on Tuesday.
«Who'd have thought it?» said Louis. «Anyway, I suppose I had better go and see Celia.»
However, he had learned the advantage of taking his time, and before he went he thought better of it, and, in fact, did not go at all, but went to Paris for the autumn, which shows that girls shouldn't play fast and loose with the affections of small men with blue eyes, or they may find themselves left in the lurch.
THE LADY ON THE GREY
Ringwood was the last of an Anglo-Irish family which had played the devil in County Clare for a matter of three centuries. At last all their big houses were sold up, or burned down by the long-suffering Irish, and of all their thousands of acres not a single foot remained. Ringwood, however, had a few hundred a year of his own, and if the family estates had vanished he at least inherited a family instinct, which prompted him to regard all Ireland as his domain, and to rejoice in its abundance of horses, foxes, salmon, game, and girls.
In pursuit of these delights Ringwood ranged and roved from Donegal to Wexford through all the seasons of the year. There were not many hunts he had not led at some time or other on a borrowed mount, nor many bridges he had not leaned over through half a May morning, nor many inn parlours where he had not snored away a wet winter afternoon in front of the fire.
He had an intimate by the name of Bates, who was another of the same breed and the same kidney. Bates was equally long and lean, and equally hard-up, and he had the same wind-flushed bony face, the same shabby arrogance, and the same seignorial approach to the little girls in the cottages and cowsheds.
Neither of these blades ever wrote a letter, but each generally knew where the other was to be found. The ticket collector, respectfully blind as he snipped Ringwood's third-class ticket in a first-class compartment, would mention that Mr. Bates had travelled that way only last Tuesday, stopping off at Killorglin for a week or two after the snipe. The chambermaid, coy in the clammy bedroom of a fishing inn, would find time to tell Bates that Ringwood had gone on up to Lough Corrib for a go at the pike. Policemen, priests, bagmen, game-keepers, even the tinkers on the roads, would pass on this verbal pateran. Then, if it seemed his friend was on to a good thing, the other would pack up his battered kit-bag, put rods and guns into their cases, and drift off to join in the sport.
So it happened that one winter afternoon, when Ringwood was strolling back from a singularly blank day on the bog of Ballyneary, he was hailed by a one-eyed horse dealer of his acquaintance, who came trotting by in a gig, as people still do in Ireland. This worthy told our friend that he had just come down from Galway, where he had seen Mr. Bates, who was on his way to a village called Knockderry, and who had told him very particularly to mention it to Mr. Ringwood if he came across him.
Ringwood turned this message over in his mind, and noted that it was a very particular one, and that no mention was made as to whether it was fishing or shooting his friend was engaged in, or whether he had met with some Croesus who had a string of hunters that he was prepared to lend. «He certainly would have put a name to it if it was anything of that sort! I'll bet my life it's a pair of sisters he's got on the track of. It must be!»
At this thought, he grinned from the tip of his long nose like a fox, and he lost no time in packing his bag and setting off for this place Knockderry, which he had never visited before in all his roving up and down the country in pursuit of fur, feathers, and girls.
He found it was a long way off the beaten track, and a very quiet place when he got to it. There were the usual low, bleak hills all around, and a river running along the valley, and the usual ruined tower up on a slight rise, girdled with a straggly wood and approached by the remains of an avenue.
The village itself was like many another: a few groups of shabby cottages, a decaying mill, half-a-dozen beer-shops and one inn at which a gentleman, hardened to rural cookery, might conceivably put up.
Ringwood's hired car deposited him there, and he strode in and found the landlady in the kitchen and asked for his friend Mr. Bates.
«Why, sure, your honour,» said the landlady, «the gentleman's staying here. At least, he is, so to speak, and then, now, he isn't.»
«How's that?» said Ringwood.
«His bag's here,» said the landlady, «and his things are here, and my grandest room taken up with them (though I've another every bit as good), and himself staying in the house best part of a week. But the day before yesterday he went out for a bit of a constitutional, and — would you believe it, sir? — we've seen neither hide nor hair of him since.»
«He'll be back,» said Ringwood. «Show me a room, and I'll stay here and wait for him.»
Accordingly he settled in, and waited all the evening, but Bates failed to appear. However, that sort of thing bothers no one in Ireland, and Ringwood's only impatience was in connection with the pair of sisters, whose acquaintance he was extremely anxious to make.
During the next day o
r two he employed his time in strolling up and down all the lanes and bypaths in the neighbourhood, in the hope of discovering these beauties, or else some other. He was not particular as to which it should be, but on the whole he would have preferred a cottage girl, because he had no wish to waste time on elaborate approaches.
It was on the second afternoon, just as the early dusk was falling, he was about a mile outside the village and he met a straggle of muddy cows coming along the road, and a girl driving them. Our friend took a look at this girl, and stopped dead in his tracks, grinning more like a fox than ever.
This girl was still a child in her teens, and her bare legs were spattered with mud and scratched by brambles, but she was so pretty that the seignorial blood of all the Ringwoods boiled in the veins of their last descendant, and he felt an over-mastering desire for a cup of milk. He therefore waited a minute or two, and then followed leisurely along the lane, meaning to turn in as soon as he saw the byre, and beg the favour of this innocent refreshment, and perhaps a little conversation into the bargain.
They say, though, that blessings never come singly, any more than misfortunes. As Ringwood followed his charmer, swearing to himself that there couldn't be such another in the whole country, he heard the fall of a horse's hoofs, and looked up, and there, approaching him at a walking pace, was a grey horse, which must have turned in from some bypath or other, because there certainly had been no horse in sight a moment before.
A grey horse is no great matter, especially when one is so urgently in need of a cup of milk, but this grey horse differed from all others of its species and colour in two respects.
First, it was no sort of a horse at all, neither hack nor hunter, and it picked up its feet in a queer way, and yet it had an arch to its neck and a small head and a wide nostril that were not entirely without distinction. And, second — and this distracted Ringwood from all curiosity as to breed and bloodline — this grey horse carried on its back a girl who was obviously and certainly the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.
