.
Up in a dingy attic two little figures were seated on the side of a wretched straw-stuffed bed, their arms enlacing each other, their cheeks touching, their tears mingling. They had to cry in silence, for any sound might remind the ogre downstairs of their existence. Now and again one would break into an uncontrollable sob, and the other would whisper, “Hush! Hush! Oh hush!” Then suddenly they heard the slam of the outer door and that heavy tread booming over the wooden flap. They squeezed each other in their joy. Perhaps when he came back he might kill them, but for a few short hours at least they were safe from him. As to the woman, she was spiteful and vicious, but she did not seem so deadly as the man. In a dim way they felt that he had hunted their mother into her grave and might do as much for them.
The room was dark save for the light which came through the single dirty window. It cast a bar across the floor, but all round was black shadow. Suddenly the little boy stiffened, clasped his sister with a tighter grip, and stared rigidly into the darkness.
“She’s coming!” he muttered. “She’s coming!” Little Margery clung to him.
“Oh, Wiliie, is it mother?”
“It is a light — a beautiful yellow light. Can you not see it, Margery?”
But the little girl, like all the world, was without vision. To her all was darkness.
“Tell me, Willie,” she whispered, in a solemn voice. She was not really frightened, for many times before had the dead mother returned in the watches of the night to comfort her stricken children.
“Yes. Yes, she is coming now. Oh, mother! Mother!”
“What does she say, Willie?”
“Oh, she is beautiful. She is not crying. She is smiling. It is like the picture we saw of the angel. She looks so happy. Dear, dear mother! Now she is speaking. ‘It is over’, she says. ‘It is all over’. She says it again. Now she beckons with her hand. We are to follow. She has moved to the door.”
“Oh, Willie, I dare not.”
“Yes, yes, she nods her head. She bids us fear nothing Now she has passed through the door. Come, Margery, come, or we shall lose her.”
The two little mites crept across the room and Willie unlocked the door. The mother stood at the head of the stair beckoning them onwards. Step by step they followed her down into an empty kitchen. The woman seemed to have gone out. All was still in the house. The phantom still beckoned them on.”
“We are to go out.”
“Oh, Willie, we have no hats.”
“We must follow, Madge. She is smiling and waving.”
“Father will kill us for this.”
“She shakes her head. She says we are to fear nothing. Come!”
They threw open the door and were in the street. Down the deserted court they followed the gleaming gracious presence, and through a tangle of low streets, and so out into the crowded rush of Tottenham Court Road. Once or twice amid all that blind torrent of humanity, some man or woman, blessed with the precious gift of discernment, would start and stare as if they were aware of an angel presence and of two little white-faced children who followed behind, the boy with fixed, absorbed gaze, the girl glancing ever in terror over her shoulder. Down the long street they passed, then again amid humbler dwellings, and so at last to a quiet drab line of brick houses. On the step of one the spirit had halted.
“We are to knock,” said Willie.
“Oh, Willie, what shall we say? We don’t know them.”
“We are to knock,” he repeated, stoutly. Rat-tat!
“It’s all right, Madge. She is clapping her hands and laughing.”
So it was that Mrs. Tom Linden, sitting lonely in her misery and brooding over her martyr in gaol, was summoned suddenly to the door, and found two little apologetic figures outside it. A few words, a rush of woman’s instinct, and her arms were round the children. These battered little skiffs, who had started their life’s voyage so sadly, had found a harbour of peace where no storm should vex them more.
.
There were some strange happenings in Bolton’s Court that night. Some folk thought they had no relation to each other. One or two thought they had. The British Law saw nothing and had nothing to say.
In the second last house, a keen, hawklike face peered from behind a window-blind into the darkened street. A shaded candle was behind that fearful face, dark as death, remorseless as the tomb. Behind Rebecca Levi stood a young man whose features showed that he sprang from the same Oriental race. For an hour — for a second hour — the woman had sat without a word, watching, watching . . . At the entrance to the court there was a hanging lamp which cast a circle of yellow light. It was on this pool of radiance that her brooding eyes were fixed.
Then suddenly she saw what she had waited for. She started and hissed out a word. The young man rushed from the room and into the street. He vanished through a side door into the brewery.
Drunken Silas Linden was coming home. He was in a gloomy, sulken state of befuddlement. A sense of injury filled his mind. He had not gained the billet he sought. His injured hand had been against him. He had hung about the bar waiting for drinks and had got some, but not enough. Now he was in a dangerous mood. Woe to the man, woman or child, who crossed his path! He thought savagely of the Jewess who lived in that darkened house. He thought savagely of all his neighbours. They would stand between him and his children, would they? He would show them. The very next morning he would take them both out into the street and strap them within an inch of their lives. That would show them all what Silas Linden thought of their opinions. Why should he not do it now? If he were to waken the neighbours up with the shrieks of his children, it would show them once for all that they could not defy him with impunity. The idea pleased him. He stepped more briskly out. He was almost at his door when . . .
It was never quite clear how it was that the cellar-flap was not securely fastened that night. The jury were inclined to blame the brewery, but the coroner pointed out that Linden was a heavy man, that he might have fallen on it if he were drunk, and that all reasonable care had been taken. It was an eighteen-foot fall upon jagged stones, and his back was broken. They did not find him till next morning, for, curiously enough, his neighbour, the Jewess, never heard the sound of the accident. The doctor seemed to think that death had not come quickly. There were horrible signs that he had lingered. Down in the darkness, vomiting blood and beer, the man ended his filthy life with a filthy death.
One need not waste words or pity over the woman whom he had left. Relieved from her terrible mate, she returned to that music-hall stage from which he, by force of his virility and bull-like strength, had lured her. She tried to regain her place with:
“Hi! Hi! Hi! I’m the dernier cri,
The girl with the cart-wheel hat.”
which was the ditty which had won her her name. But it became too painfully evident that she was anything but the dernier cri, and that she could never get back. Slowly she sank from big halls to small halls, from small halls to pubs, and so ever deeper and deeper, sucked into the awful silent quicksands of life which drew her down and down until that vacuous painted face and frowsy head were seen no more.
12. There Are Heights And There Are Depths
THE Institut Métapsychique was an imposing stone building in the Avenue Wagram with a door like a baronial castle. Here it was that the three friends presented themselves late in the evening. A footman showed them into a reception-room where they were presently welcomed by Dr. Maupuis in person. The famous authority on psychic science was a short, broad man with a large head, a clean-shaven face, and an expression in which worldly wisdom and kindly altruism were blended. His conversation was in French with Mailey and Roxton, who both spoke the language well, but he had to fall back upon broken English with Malone, who could only utter still more broken French in reply. He expressed his pleasure at their visit, as only a graceful Frenchman can, said a few words as to the wonderful qualities of Panbek, the Galician medium, and finally led the way downstairs to
the room in which the experiments were to be conducted. His air of vivid intelligence and penetrating sagacity had already shown the strangers how preposterous were those theories which tried to explain away his wonderful results by the supposition that he was a man who was the easy victim of impostors.
Descending a winding stair they found themselves in a large chamber which looked at first glance like a chemical laboratory, for shelves full of bottles, retorts, test-tubes, scales and other apparatus lined the walls. It was more elegantly furnished, however, than a mere workshop, and a large massive oak table occupied the centre of the room with a fringe of comfortable chairs. At one end of the room was a large portrait of Professor Crookes, which was flanked by a second of Lombroso, while between them was a remarkable picture of one of Eusapia Palladino’s seances. Round the table there was gathered a group of men who were talking in low tones, too much absorbed in their own conversation to take much notice of the newcomers.
“Three of these are distinguished visitors like yourselves,” said Dr. Maupuis. “Two others are my laboratory assistants, Dr. Sauvage and Dr. Buisson. The others are Parisians of note. The Press is represented to-day by Mr. Forte, sub-editor of the Matin. The tall, dark man who looks like a retired general you probably know.... Not? That is Professor Charles Richet, our honoured doyen, who has shown great courage in this matter, though he has not quite reached the same conclusions as you, Monsieur Mailey. But that also may come. You must remember that we have to show policy, and that the less we mix this with religion, the less trouble we shall have with the Church, which is still very powerful in this country. The distinguished-looking man with the high forehead is the Count de Grammont. The gentleman with the head of a Jupiter and the white beard is Flammarion, the astronomer. Now, gentlemen,” he added, in a louder voice, “if you will take your places we shall get to work.”
They sat at random round the long table, the three Britons keeping together. At one end a large photographic camera was reared aloft. Two zinc buckets also occupied a prominent position upon a side table. The door was locked and the key given to Professor Richet. Dr. Maupuis sat at one end of the table with a small middle-aged man, moustached, bald-headed and intelligent, upon his right.
“Some of you have not met Monsieur Panbek,” said the doctor. “Permit me to present him to you. Monsieur Panbek, gentlemen, has placed his remarkable powers at our disposal for scientific investigation, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. He is now in his forty-seventh year, a man of normal health, of a neuro-arthritic disposition. Some hyper-excitability of his nervous system is indicated, and his reflexes arc exaggerated, but his blood-pressure is normal. The pulse is now at seventy-two, but rises to one hundred under trance conditions. There are zones of marked hyper-aesthesia on his limbs. His visual field and pupillary reaction is normal. I do not know that there is anything to add.”
“I might say,” remarked Professor Richet, “that the hyper-sensibility is moral as well as physical. Panbek is impressionable and full of emotion, with the temperament of the poet and all those little weaknesses, if we may call them so, which the poet pays as a ransom for his gifts. A great medium is a great artist and is to be judged by the same standards.”
“He seems to me, gentlemen, to be preparing you for the worst,” said the medium with a charming smile, while the company laughed in sympathy.
“We are sitting in the hopes that some remarkable materialisations which we have recently had may be renewed in such a form that we may get a permanent record of them.” Dr. Maupuis was talking in his dry, unemotional voice. “These materialisations have taken very unexpected forms of late, and I would beg the company to repress any feelings of fear, however strange these forms may be, as a calm and judicial atmosphere is most necessary. We shall now turn out the white light and begin with the lowest degree of red light until the conditions will admit of further illumination.”
The lamps were controlled from Dr. Maupuis’ seat at the table. For a moment they were plunged in utter darkness. Then a dull red glow came in the corner, enough to show the dim outlines of the men round the table. There was no music and no religious atmosphere of any sort. The company conversed in whispers.
“This is different to your English procedure,” said Malone.
“Very,” Mailey answered. “It seems to me that we are wide open to anything which may come. It’s all wrong. They don’t realise the danger.”
“What danger can there be?”
“Well, from my point of view, it is like sitting at the edge of a pond which may have harmless frogs in it, or may have man-eating crocodiles. You can’t tell what may come.”
Professor Richet, who spoke excellent English, overheard the words.
“I know your views, Mr. Mailey,” said he. “Don’t think that I treat them lightly. Some things which I have seen make me appreciate your comparison of the frog and the crocodile. In this very room I have been conscious of the presence of creatures which could, if moved to anger, make our experiments seem rather hazardous. I believe with you that evil people here might bring an evil reflection into our circle.”
“I am glad, sir, that you are moving in our direction,” said Mailey, for like everyone else he regarded Richet as one of the world’s great men.
“Moving, perhaps, and yet I cannot claim to be altogether with you yet. The latent powers of the human incarnate spirit may be so wonderful that they may extend to regions which seem at present to be quite beyond their scope. As an old materialist, I fight every inch of the ground, though I admit that I have lost several lines of trenches. My illustrious friend Challenger still holds his front intact, as I understand.”
“Yes, sir” said Malone, “and yet I have some hopes—”
“Hush!” cried Maupuis in an eager voice. There was dead silence. Then there came a sound of uneasy movement with a strange flapping vibration.
“The bird!” said an awestruck whisper.
There was silence and then once again came the sound of movement and an impatient flap.
“Have you all ready, Rene?” asked the doctor.
“All is ready.”
“Then shoot!”
The flash of the luminant mixture filled the room, while the shutter of the camera fell. In that sudden glare of light the visitors had a momentary glimpse of a marvellous sight. The medium lay with his head upon his hands in apparent insensibility. Upon his rounded shoulders there was perched a huge bird of prey — a large falcon or an eagle. For one instant the strange picture was stamped upon their retinas even as it was upon the photographic plate. Then the darkness closed down again, save for the two red lamps, like the eyes of some baleful demon lurking in the corner.
“My word!” gasped Malone. “Did you see it?”
“A crocodile out of the pond,” said Mailey.
“But harmless,” added Professor Richet. “the bird has been with us several times. He moves his wings, as you have heard, but otherwise is inert. We may have another and a more dangerous visitor.”
The flash of the light had, of course, dispelled all ectoplasm. It was necessary to begin again The company may have sat for a quarter of an hour when Richet touched Mailey’s arm.
“Do you smell anything, Monsieur Mailey?”
Mailey sniffed the air.
“Yes, surely, it reminds me of our London Zoo.”
“There is another more ordinary analogy. Have you been in a warm room with a wet dog?”
“Exactly,” said Mailey. “That is a perfect description. But where is the dog?”
“It is not a dog. Wait a little! Wait!”
The animal smell became more pronounced. It was overpowering. Then suddenly Malone became conscious of something moving round the table. In the dim red light he was aware of a mis-shapen figure, crouching, ill-formed, with some resemblance to man. He silhouetted it against the dull radiance. It was bulky, broad, with a bullet-head, a short neck, heavy, clumsy shoulders. It slouched slowly round the circle. Then it stopped, and a cry
of surprise, not unmixed with fear, came from one of the sitters.
“Do not be alarmed,” said Dr. Maupuis’ quiet voice. “It is the Pithecanthropus. He is harmless.” Had it been a cat which had strayed into the room the scientist could not have discussed it more calmly.
“It has long claws. It laid them on my neck,” cried a voice.
“Yes, yes. He means it as a caress.”
“You may have my share of his caresses!” cried the sitter in a quavering voice.
“Do not repulse him. It might be serious. He is well disposed. But he has his feelings, no doubt, like the rest of us.”
The creature had resumed its stealthy progress. Now it turned the end of the table and stood behind the three friends. Its breath came in quick puffs at the back of their necks. Suddenly Lord Roxton gave a loud exclamation of disgust.
“Quiet! Quiet! “ said Maupuis.
“It’s licking my hand!” cried Roxton.
An instant later Malone was aware of a shaggy head extended between Lord Roxton and himself. With his left hand he could feel long, coarse hair. It turned towards him, and it needed all his self-control to hold his hand still when a long soft tongue caressed it. Then it was gone.
“In heaven’s name, what is it?” he asked.
“We have been asked not to photograph it. Possibly the light would infuriate it. The command through the medium was definite. We can only say that it is either an apelike man or a man-like ape. We have seen it more clearly than to-night. The face is Simian, but the brow is straight; the arms long, the hands huge, the body covered with hair.”
“Tom Linden gave us something better than that,” whispered Mailey. He spoke low but Richet caught the words.
“All Nature is the field of our study, Mr. Mailey. It is not for us to choose. Shall we classify the flowers but neglect the fungi?”
“But you admit it is dangerous.”
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 243
