Fingers of Fear

by J. U. Nicolson

  She shook her head. I was in doubt as to whether she heard or understood me.

  “But she’ll— Oh, please don’t let her come near me!”

  “No. We won’t. We’ll watch out for you. You’ll be all right now. It’s lucky I came in when I did. But now everything’s all right. You feel better?” She nodded. I bent over her and rearranged the bandages. “You don’t want anything?”

  “No, only . . .”

  “I understand,” I said, soothingly. “But we’re all very busy just now. I’m needed downstairs. But she—the woman—is locked in her room. You hear?”

  She nodded, though her eyes went to the door and a look of fear came again into her face.

  I reassured her again, and as well as I could. I must humor her, I supposed, in her fancy that a woman had visited her. I knew that Grayce slept soundly in her room. I knew that neither Muriel nor Gray had been lately above the ground floor. And I was certain that Barbara sat alone in her chamber. And yet . . . Barbara? Was it possible that she . . . ? But I could not answer that.

  None the less, I had become more convinced than I had yet been of the reality of the figure I had seen in the hallway as I mounted the stairs. It was the figure of a man, and I knew it to be the figure of Ormond’s father. And when I speak of it as a “reality” I mean, of course, that it was an objective ghost, not a phantasm of my disordered brain. And yet, after all . . . Was it a ghost? What if it were the man himself in the flesh? What if the Undead walked . . . ?

  And did this man, this Undead Thing, move always where Barbara . . . where Barbara . . . ?

  Whatever Gray felt, and however much she may have doubted our chances of success, her iron will sustained her throughout dinner and throughout the time which followed. She had given way to tears earlier in the day. Now her inflexible pride appeared to have lifted up her courage, and not by word, nor by a sigh, nor by so much as a look of terror or doubt in her yellow eyes did she betray the slightest hesitation or wish to yield. Her resolution nerved us all, somehow, and shamed us out of weakness and a wish for failure.

  Sitting together on the lawn, with Hobbs within easy calling distance inside the house, we discussed in low tones every detail of the work before us. Ormond’s car had been driven into the garage, the door of which had been, of course, closed. I estimated the time when we could expect sufficient darkness on this clear evening, supposing that it would have descended upon us, though not upon the hilltops, by eight o’clock, or a little later.

  Mrs. Hobbs had not been told anything by her husband, save that she was to remain quiet and hold her tongue, both then and at any later time. Barbara had elected to remain secluded in her room. But Hobbs reported that he feared his wife was developing a slight fever, so that new complications threatened, should the woman say in delirium anything which might attract the suspicions of the cynical Doctor Barnes.

  As for myself, though I forced my brain to take cognizance of what was going on around me and to formulate questions, and answers to the questions of my companions, I was more intent upon the problem of Barbara’s conduct than upon anything more directly pressing. I had not said anything to the others of what I suspected. What, indeed, was there to be said? And could I tell even Gray of the apparition I had seen of her dead father? In that hour I did not think I could. But I could not rid my thought of fear, nor my body of desire for action—action, I mean, relative to investigating the meaning of the sight I had seen and the suspicion I had partly formed.

  It was arranged that Gray must accompany the physician, when he arrived, and remain with him in Alice Hobbs’s room until he had treated the patient and then had left her.

  The doctor arrived at a few minutes past seven o’clock. Bringing his little car to a stop under the old porte cochère, he skipped nimbly out of it, nodded in the general direction of Muriel and me, then was admitted by Hobbs and disappeared from our sight. Gray, who had previously entered the house, would accompany him up the stairs. I had risen and bowed to the visitor; now I resumed my seat, gave Muriel a cigarette and lighted one for myself.

  “When he goes,” I said, “you and I will have become engaged in something of a kind we never thought, once upon a time, to be engaged in.”

  “Yes. This depression in business is having strange results. We can’t blame it directly, of course, and yet, if it hadn’t brought us here, we wouldn’t have become involved in such things.”

  “It will have made an entirely new world, Muriel,” I said, “when it has passed.” I spoke, I confess, more to ease the tension of my brain than to say anything of consequence. “It’s not only your life and mine. It’s changed something in the lives of everyone in the country, maybe even in the world. Which reminds me. . . . What are you thinking of doing . . . afterwards?”

  “If we go through this without being arrested, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you thinking of doing?”

  “I’m not thinking. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter much, I suppose.”

  “Doesn’t it matter? Then I don’t know either.”

  “But——”

  “No! I’ve tried that. It didn’t work. At least, it didn’t work satisfactorily. I thought, at first, that it was going to be great fun, with half a dozen men dancing after me. I enjoyed the liberty, just as you did, too, if you’d admit it.”

  “I might have enjoyed it more,” I said, bitterly, “if I’d had cab fare and enough money to buy a decent dinner, now and then. As things were, I——”

  “I know,” she interrupted, softly. “I’m sorry, Selden. But I wasn’t really happy. Having fun isn’t being safe. And I’m intended to be safe, if I’m to be happy at all. I’m that kind of woman, I guess. It seems to me that right now, in spite of all the things threatening us, and in spite of poverty and all that threatens hereafter, it seems to me that I’m safer with you . . . here . . . than . . .”

  Her voice trailed away. I was tempted to answer in words calculated to bridge the chasm between us. For that such a chasm existed, neither of us would, I think, have denied. It had been one thing to see Muriel, after the divorce, in town, to take her to dinner, to make love to her in her apartment. Then the doing of it had smacked of romance. There was then no notion in either of our brains that we should ever marry again, for all that we talked idly of it as perhaps happening . . . some time. But now, with the woman offering again, as certainly she was offering, to come back to me legally as my wife—well, I hesitated. I do not defend my attitude. Neither do I wholly condemn it. She had made it plain that she wanted a reconciliation. Perhaps I manifested a streak of cruelty in allowing her to do this without encouragement. I do not know. Besides, under the conditions we faced, love-making would have been no less than heartless. Within a short distance from where we sat there were two stark corpses against which we meditated the foulest of violations.

  None the less (let me be as honest as I can be) I do not think my words were checked by any such considerations as I have mentioned. I was afraid . . . of the ghost I had seen, that Thing Undead which haunted Ormesby and seemed to be looking on with approval at such deeds as I was beginning to suspect were done by that vampire’s sister. I was afraid of the dangers which threatened us, of Muriel’s honesty, of my own desires. In that moment Gray’s face, handsome in fixed resolve, rose before the eyes of my mind. I searched for words in which to reply to Muriel, but found none. I suppose I did not wish, earnestly, to find any. Nor did she speak again. She had made her advance. If I received it in silence, what could she further say or do? The time dragged.

  Doctor Barnes and Gray came at last out of the house, and stood together, for a moment, chatting on the steps before the door. I knew at once, from her manner, and from the glance she flung at us, that everything had happened according to our desire. The medical man made as if to enter his car, then hesitated and engaged in some ea
rnest talk with her. I caught the word “dogs” and later the worthy doctor’s “dammit!” Abruptly he stepped away from her, tossed his satchel into the car and came toward us. I sprang to my feet, introducing Muriel and the man. For an instant I had hesitated. Then I named her as “my wife, Mrs. Seaverns.” I saw a dry little smile cross her mouth.

  “Haven’t you any influence with this unreasonable woman, Mr. Seaverns?” the doctor demanded.

  “I’m afraid she thinks she knows her own mind,” I answered. I had guessed at something of what he intended saying. “But if there’s anything I can do——” I broke off, laughing a little.

  “I want her to get rid of those damned dogs. Somebody’s goin’ to get badly mauled. There oughta be a law against keepin’ savage brutes like that.”

  “Oh, they don’t bother people who have any business here,” Gray objected, while I marveled at her ability as an actress.

  “Well,” he said, helplessly, shrugging his narrow shoulders, “have it your own way. They ain’t my dogs. But you mark my words, you’re gonna be sorry, sooner or later. Some day they’ll chew somebody up bad. Good night! I’ll be up tomorrow. The patient may be a bit restless tonight. I left something to quiet her, if she is. But if her fever rises, you’d better call me.”

  “Yes, doctor,” murmured Gray.

  He turned away and she walked with him part of the distance to his car. Then they separated and she came back to us. He entered the car and drove away, a shower of sparks streaming from the fouled exhaust of it.

  “He will treat Alice every day for fourteen days,” said Gray.

  “I’m very glad of it,” said I. “His being here every day will keep the police away. And vindication of his prediction will make him very friendly to all of us, even if he allows himself to be a bit superior. He’ll be willing to believe himself right, if only to show us how wrong we were. This doctor is invaluable.”

  After that the minutes dragged again. Eight o’clock came, and still it did not seem dark enough for our purpose. Fifteen more minutes dragged their dreary way into eternity. I ran to the house, to find Hobbs drinking whiskey in the dining-room. I forbade him to take any more, while at the same time I poured myself a stiff portion and downed it. But at last it was eight-thirty and beyond all question too dark for anyone passing on the road below to see us at work in the grounds.

  Hobbs was ready. Together, carrying torches, we descended the winding stairs and lifted the body of Ormes. Muriel came after us, with a small pail of water and a sponge, to remove any smear of blood that the wet towels may have left upon the cement floor. Gray was with her, lighting her with a torch. Hobbs and I carried the stiffened corpse out through the kitchen, from which Mrs. Hobbs had disappeared. We laid it down on the grass outside, compelled to rest and catch breath. Then, lifting it again, we bore it to a point half way between the garage and the kennels, laid it there, removed the sheet and the towels, which Hobbs immediately took to the incinerator, where he burned them, waiting long enough before the door of the burner to see that they were entirely consumed.

  In the meanwhile I had gone to the garage and had pushed back the door of it. Muriel followed me there, also, prepared to clean up any stains that might be left on that floor when we should have carried Agnes’s body out of the building. Gray had taken up her stand near the kennels. The dogs, scenting her presence near them, set up a sharp yelping and growling, begging to be fed. Through the darkness I saw their evil eyes, red and menacing, as they leaped against the fence or sniffed for a hole along the bottom of it. As soon as Hobbs came back, it was the work of but a moment to carry Agnes to a point close beside the dead body of her husband. Muriel, behind us, closed the garage door. Then she ran to the house, where she burned such cloths and rags as she had used and stained, washed her hands and made ready for the part she was to play later. In the meanwhile, as part of her routine of the moment, she visited Grayce’s room and Barbara’s, seeing to it that everything there was quiet. One mistake we had made, and it later came near to wrecking us: we had not thought to appoint Muriel to visit Mrs. Hobbs during this time, though we should have anticipated that the woman must be aware of something out of the ordinary and be made nervous and frightened.

  But all being ready outside, Hobbs returned to the kitchen, carrying with him a bloody towel that had been under Agnes’s head as she lay on the garage floor. Also he resumed his coat, which he had laid aside while helping me. He was next to appear as the servant who had been on duty ready to serve drinks, if they had been called for, or to answer the door-bell or the telephone.

  Gray stood beside the gate to the kennels. I could not see her face in the gloom, but I guessed from the rigidity of her figure that she was near the breaking point. I did not fear, however, that she would give way to emotion before she had completed her work of loosing the dogs and urging them onto their dead victims. What I dreaded was the reaction which might very well make her hysterical at a later time, when we should have called in the police and the neighbors and when every word and gesture of each of us would be scanned and remembered and, if possible, used against us. But there was now no turning back.

  “Loose them,” I commanded.

  She turned to unbar the gate, and I pulled my revolver from a pocket, not doubting that I might have to use it in the next second. I intended, in any case, to shoot a dog or two before dashing to the telephone and calling help.

  The brutes sprang through the opening almost before the gate had cleared a way. Gray, caught behind it by the impact of their rush, was thrown violently against me and into my arms. They closed about her, and the dogs surged through the gate, turned and came toward us. Gray straightened quickly. She knew that not even she dared show any weakness before their ravening jaws.

  “Keep close behind me,” she commanded, starting away toward where we had laid the corpses.

  I followed. I dared do nothing else. Even as it was, more than one of the great beasts snapped at my heels, one of them even catching a leg of my trousers in his teeth and ripping it from knee to bottom. It was Hobbs’s garment, but I was glad of the mishap, since it would lend color to my story of having fought with the dogs in a vain effort to drive them from their prey.

  But now we were close beside the bodies. The dogs ran to them and sniffed at them. For some reason they would not attack. They circled, snarling furiously and darting back from the scent of the blood. I had not, so far, had leisure to sympathize very deeply with Gray in her ordeal. But in that moment my heart went out to her in pity. I had stepped in front of her, indicating the cadavers and endeavoring to sick the dogs on to tear them. But they would not obey me. They mistook my desire and prepared to rush at me instead. Gray was forced to take the last horrible action.

  She did it! I don’t think that I could have done it, in her place, but Gray called upon some hidden reserve of strength and did the unnameable thing. She bent right over her brother’s body, her outstretched finger almost touching his face, and directed the dogs by name to the eating of their meat! And they understood her at last! And they fell upon the carcasses and began to tear them!

  Gray screamed, straightening and reeling backwards into my arms again. But it was not yet time for her to scream. The dogs must have time to tear those corpses limb from limb. I tried to stifle her screams, but she wrenched herself free from me and ran screaming toward the house. And I, excited as I was, and stricken dumb with fear and horror, yet took time through it all to commend the realistic terror in her screaming and the mortal abandon of it. But I quite forgot that I ought myself to be joining my screams to hers.

  It was Hobbs who saved the day in this respect. As it happened, not a soul ever heard the horrid din we made . . . we and the dogs. Not even the reports of my revolver reached anyone’s ears. But if we had not shouted and screamed, if we had not fired shots, if the dogs had not replied with furious yelpings and snarlings, and i
f anyone had chanced to be within earshot, then our carefully laid and utterly heartless plan must certainly have failed.

  Hobbs, supposing that Gray’s premature screaming was his cue to issue forth with his axe, did so. Gray left my arms, staggering and stumbling away from me toward the house where, I learned afterwards, she fell at Muriel’s feet in a dead faint. I saw Hobbs’s white face as he ran toward me through the gloom, and I caught a flash of light reflected from the blade of his axe as he whirled it through the air above his head. A dog yelped sharply, the yelp ending in a deep wet gurgle. Then Hobbs, the stoical, the stolid, the reserved, went completely wild.

  Cursing like a man demented, he flailed about him with the axe. I dimly saw two more dogs cut down with it. The pack, sensing that they were being attacked, left the dead bodies and drew back for a moment, preparatory to rushing these new enemies. I sang out to Hobbs to leave them and come into the house. Whether he heard me or not, he gave no sign of it, but sprang toward the dogs and cut at one of them again. But if he were not himself dragged down and killed by the furious brutes, he would end by dispatching so many of them that there might not be enough of them to complete the terrible work we wanted done. I darted up close behind him, narrowly missing being brained by that whirling axe of his. A long dark brute flashed through the air, launched straight for Hobbs’s throat. He went down under the impact of that spring, with the dog on top of him. Then he screamed again, this time in terror and not in rage. I thrust the muzzle of my revolver against the dog’s ribs and pulled the trigger twice. And then, out of the struggling chaos of legs and arms and flashing teeth, I dragged Hobbs and jerked him onto his feet. He was dizzy and dazed. But I gave him no time for recovery. There was none to give. Throwing all my weight and strength against him, I propelled him in the direction of the house. He had lost his axe. Another dog came for both of us, and again I could not miss, being so close. Then we were clear of the pack, the remaining members of which returned to worrying and tearing the meat we had provided for them.