by Herman Graf
“Snakes?” I said from below.
“No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main roof-beam.” I handed up the rod.
“What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,” said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. “Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below there! It’s falling.”
I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
“It strikes me,” said he, putting down the lamp, “our friend Imray has come back. Oh! You would, would you?” There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.
Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life.
“Is it Imray?” I said.
Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
“It is Imray,” he said; “and his throat is cut from ear to ear.”
Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: “That’s why he whispered about the house.”
Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved open the dining-room door.
She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.
Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
“It’s a bad business, old lady,” said he. “Men don’t climb up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling cloth behind ‘em. Let’s think it out.”
“Let’s think it out somewhere else,” I said.
“Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.”
I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first, and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I was afraid.
“Imray is back,” said Strickland. “The question is—who killed Imray? Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took over most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn’t he?”
I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor the other.
“If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?”
“Call ‘em in one by one,” I said.
“They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,” said Strickland. “We must segregate ’em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?”
“He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days,” I answered.
“What’s your notion?”
“I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?”
There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.
“Come in,” said Strickland. “It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?”
Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.
“It will be so, if God pleases,” said Strickland, tugging off his boots. “It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days—ever since that time when thou first earnest into my service. What time was that?”
“Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honoured service of the protector of the poor.”
“And Imray Sahib went to Europe?”
“It is so said among those who were his servants.”
“And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?”
“Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.”
“That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case yonder.”
The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the .360 Express.
“And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?”
“What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?”
“Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.”
“Sahib!”
The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.
“Go and look!” said Strickland. “Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go!”
The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling- cloth; at the writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the tablecloth.
“Hast thou seen?” said Strickland after a pause.
“I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence do?”
“Hang thee within the month. What else?”
“For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever—my child!”
“What said Imray Sahib?”
“He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.”
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular, “Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.”
Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly. “I am trapped,” he said, “but the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,” he glared at Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, “only such could know what I did.”
“It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!”
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
“Take him to the police-station,” said Strickland. “There is a case toward.”
“Do I hang, then?” said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and keeping his eyes on the ground.
“If the sun shines or the water runs-yes!” said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.
“Go!” said Strickland.
“Nay; but I go very swiftly,” said Bahadur Khan. “Look! I am even now a dead man.”
He lifted h
is foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
“I come of land-holding stock,” said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. “It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and-and-I die.”
At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.
“This,” said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, “is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?”
“I heard,” I answered. “Imray made a mistake.”
“Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years.”
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
“What has befallen Bahadur Khan?” said I.
“He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,” was the answer.
“And how much of this matter hast thou known?”
“As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.”
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house—
“Tietjens has come back to her place!”
And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty, ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
THE OPEN WINDOW
saki (H. H. Munro)
Saki (H. H. Munro) is the author of such masterpieces as Unbearable Bassington and When William Came. The salient quality that distinguishes and differentiates him as a writer from other writers is his vein of macabre, supernatural fantasy.
* * *
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; “you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.
“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.
“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the self-possessed young lady.
“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child; “that would be since your sister’s time.”
“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.
“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.
“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”
“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window—”
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.
“She has been very interesting,” said Framton.
“I hope you don’t mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; “my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn’t it?”
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,” he continued.
“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention—but not to what Framton was saying.
“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”
Framt
on grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, “fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?”
“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”
“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.”
Romance at short notice was her specialty.
THE DEAD HAND
William Wilkie Collins
A friend of Charles Dickens, Collins is the author of the acclaimed first detective novel, The Moonstone, as well as many great short stories.
* * *
When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster exactly in the middle of the race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.
He was one of those reckless, rattlepated, openhearted, and openmouthed young gentlemen who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life, making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go. His father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him. Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the great business after his father’s death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his father’s lifetime. Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently indignant when he found that his son took after him. This may be true or not. I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting on in years, and then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.
