by R. R. Ryan
“Uncle Terry, what sort of guy is this lodger chap of mother’s?” Don whispered.
“I don’t quite understand, Don. You heard, he’s a foreigner who’s been injured by fire and is writing a book.”
Terry, despite all he had heard from Josh Wray and despite his own calm, legal mind, looked at his godson with apprehension. Something had got under Don’s stolidity and, temporarily at any rate, shattered it. Here was fear and intense mystification. Was it his imagination, or did the boy tremble?
“What’s up, Don?”
“Listen . . . Just about five minutes before you came in—it might have been less, for all I know—I opened my door to slip out to the bathroom and I saw an odd figure half in, half out of the visitor’s room . . .”
“Oh, I see. All in black and his face half covered by a black, silk fall and two huge, dark glasses. I know and . . .”
“It wasn’t that. Mother told me how queer he looked . . . It was his eyes . . .”
“Eyes? You can’t see his eyes. They’re . . .”
“I saw them . . .”
“But how could you with those goggles on? It . . .”
“He had no goggles on . . . His eyes were uncovered. They shone like a wild beast’s.”
“Don’t talk too wet, Don, old pal . . . You’ve been taken in by some illusion. To begin with, you can’t see on that landing. There’s only the faintest light coming through the window and . . .”
“I’m not talking wet, Uncle; I’ve seen no illusion. There was a tall, black-clad figure there. That I could just vaguely discern; but his eyes shone. They were a beast’s eyes. I’m no funk. I didn’t turn tail and bang my door to. I immediately thought of an illusion. I stayed where I was. And you can just take it as fact, I saw two, bright, gleaming, feline eyes. I spoke. I said: Hello! And, call me a fool, start splitting differences about the degrees and peculiarities of nightmare if you like, but it’s just plain gospel when I say—THAT THING VANISHED as I spoke.”
Terry frowned. For some reason his mind was carried back years . . . The cat in Mary’s garden . . . Gleaming eyes . . . Dead child.
He shuddered.
The sense of uneasiness that had prevailed earlier came back. Yet commonsense rebuked it. Undoubtedly Don had imagined what he saw, or had been the victim of some unaccountable vision such as does come to all of us seemingly without cause or purpose. It was easy, really, to rationalize these things; and, sometimes, as hard to accept one’s own abstract solutions.
Anyhow, life had taught him nothing is more foolish than to try and convince others of their folly. Quite clearly Don was satisfied, hence the wise thing to do was—nothing.
“Even if you did see what you describe, Don, what do you propose?”
“To-night, nothing, Uncle; but I think you, or I, or Dad, or all of us together pay this merchant a visit. And early.”
“Just tell me what you suspect: that he’s something supernatural?”
“Not necessarily; but perfectly good material magic has been used before now for criminal purposes.”
The quiet sense of this sobered Terry.
“We’ll not trouble either your mother or your father with these—er—unpleasant fantasies, Don. What? P’raps we two to-morrow can call on Mr. Govina . . . When I feel sure you’ll come away feeling . . .”
“A fool, eh, Uncle? But we’ll call that a bargain. I certainly feel I’d like to satisfy myself that everything’s above board.”
“Very well. Stick around after breakfast and I’m your man. However, I think I should explain that I felt, because of your mother’s misgivings, a little doubt regarding Mr. Govina, so I rang up Wray and Wray and Tableman, the Gray’s Inn solicitors who conducted the negotiations, and they assure me that Mr. Govina is vouched for by two consuls, various firms, and Lord Portage.”
“Oh yes . . . all that . . . It wouldn’t alter my feelings if he had brought testimonials from the Archangel Gabriel. We’ll make that call, Uncle.”
“Okay, young Daniel. How much wiser you may be! Good night!” As he turned away, the wish welled up in his mind with imperative force that this stranger had never crossed Mary’s threshold. Already nothing but perplexity and doubt had accompanied his advent. At the best, he was a bird of ill omen.
However, the one thing necessary was to retain a sense of proportion.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Terry opened the door quietly and slipped out; but checked with a gasp . . . A muffled figure, seeming a black ensemble darker than the prevailing gloom; and two gleaming eyes . . .
And at the same time he became aware of an extraordinary oppression, of being in an atmosphere wherein human will, human strength has no defenses. His brain whirled, his heart clamoured, his blood boiled, his skin burst into uncountable particles of fire. He was afraid; understanding fully what means the hyperbole, his blood turned to water. In war he had been brave. All its dangers and foulness he had endured and met with inscrutable visage. But, if the means and the strength had remained to him so that he might, at this instant, flee—he’d have been gone like dust before the wind.
But he was trapped.
Yet the eyes of fire, those gleaming points, were not turned upon him, but were gazing in an oblique direction. It was an agony to turn his own gaze, as if this slight and silent gesture were a tortuous and turbulent proceeding, involving crashes, grindings, outcries; but, while not fully turning his eyeballs in their sockets, he so far glanced askance to bring, if dimly, within his vision a second shadowy figure. Unable to distinguish this second figure, Terry nevertheless knew it was Border . . . and that some extraordinary conflict was in process between the being to his left and the being to his right; and that, thus far, his own emergence had not broken what his excited mind felt to be an interlocking between those two shadowy opponents: an interlocking in enmity.
But what his mind deplored, his subconscious perpetrated: his fear grasped. As if he had blown upon dust, the oppression lifted . . . He was gazing into two luminous pools . . . Gone! One blinding, terrible glare . . . And he was alone, as if no sinister shadows had occupied his attention; as if there had been no gleaming eyes or sense of combat.
Trembling and fumbling in his pockets, he found a box of matches and struck one. Stillness. Emptiness, save for the usual furnishings to which, through custom, he paid no attention.
Mr. Govina’s door was closed. Border’s door was closed. Nothing moved.
Half eternity seemed to have elapsed since he had stepped out of Don’s bedroom door; but truly little more than a second had passed.
Could reason explain this phenomenon? Was the picture Don had so graphically portrayed impressed upon his mind to a degree sufficient to carry it almost visually with him from Don’s room into this deep darkness? Yes, there might be some such explanation. But how explain his fear? His deadly fear.
Oh yes . . . common sense, a bit of logic might explain everything, but for the first time in his life he crept timidly up to bed wondering if the little we know of life is not the merest sublimation of its profundity.
And also, for the first time in his life, he kept the light on till dawn.
CHAPTER III
According to rule, morning light brought to Terry a renewal of scepticism and an inclination to self-mockery. But it also brought a grim determination to see this peace-disturber and form his own impressions.
Whereas, in opposition to custom, Vin absented himself from breakfast, Don, to Terry and Mary’s surprise joined them. It was plain, Terry thought, that the young man was as determined as himself to obtain some first-hand knowledge of his mother’s strange guest.
“However, I’m glad,” Terry decided; “now I won’t have to report the result of my phone to Josh.”
He saw the unquestionable advantage of delaying this report until he had personally satisfied himself as to Govina’s desirability. It was no use allaying Mary’s fears, merely, a little later, to resurrect them in uglier shape.
“Nevertheless,” he
ruminated, “I expect to find the party quite normal and politely resentful of my pushfulness. Luminous eyes! Extra-to-nature, emanations! Oh, Mr. Lawyer!”
Curious, though, how that impression of last night persisted, how clear it remained. Curious, too, how, when a man deliberately began to ask of how much he was sure (que sais-je?), reason failed to satisfy some underlying sense of knowledge, rather than knowledge itself; failed to still a curious uncertainty. Even the most cut-and-dried scientist must have these instants of doubt; must say: “All this rationalization of mine, all this accurate assumption, all this splitting and re-splitting, all these mathematical analogies apply to life as we know it, as we presume it. And if we could proceed to split to an infinitesimal nth, it would still apply to this life as we know it; to this life in relationship to the planets as we know them, to the entire all-embracing systemization as we know it. But that does not prove there exists no other form of existence totally unrelated to our own, with its methods simple and its methods subtle; its laws plain and its laws complex.”
“Personally,” Terry told himself, “I always do, always did, have the feeling that something lives cheek by jowl with me, that I serve, that all-life serves. Whose amusement I, we, may even be . . . We’re such a spot . . . Infinitude—eternity, we cannot adjust our minute mentality to them and of necessity all our thinking is local and ridiculously personal. Swedenborg had some conception of the fluid total—but he got mixed up in dreams.”
He determined to finish when Don finished, leave the room with him.
And presently the younger man rose abruptly, brushed his mother’s cheek and glanced with sharp inquiry at Terry, who also rose.
Rather to his consternation Terry experienced a degree of nervousness as he and Don, by silent consent, turned towards the stairs—though, ordinarily, Don would make for the hat-rack, grab his hat and coat and be off as if making his escape from pursuing hordes.
Now Terry had every intention of approaching this interview in a polite, friendly, tactful manner; but he counted without the stern impetuosity of youth; and Don, mounting the stairs in strides that even the fit and athletic Terry found hard to equal, merely slung himself at and opened the door of Govina’s sanctum—to find it empty. Then, before the elder could lay a restraining hand upon him, Don sprang at the second door, behind which, since it was his bedroom door, Govina might have considered himself safe from intrusion. This suffered a similar fate . . .
And the intruders found themselves faced by him whom they each had expected to see—feared to see. A Something—which no words in the vocabulary of either could name, or describe. An animal-human face, eyes pools of fire, carnivorous jaws agape showing them fangs easily able to tear out their throats. And, in its human aspect, a face contorted with terrifying fury.
Both men stared aghast. Held. Helpless . . .
Yet as this paralysis fastened upon them, the extraordinary vision—as upon the previous night—faded, and they saw a man. A man plainly mutilated by fire; but a man. A man with filmy, injured eyes, whose sight could only be seriously impaired; a man whose jaw had been contorted, puckered by fierce flames, and which was now sparsely covered with a newly grown beard. Moreover, the Man smiled courteously, if with inquiry.
Apart from his injured face, uncovered for toilet attentions, Govina was dressed as Mary had described and was, even thus, a sufficiently impressive figure.
Terry made a grab at his whirling control, strove to clear his mind and turn this dreadful faux pas to good account.
It was possible, he thought, to see in that mutilated face evidence of primary good looks; and it was not difficult to understand Mr. Govina’s sensitive reluctance to have his misfortune viewed by others. And here were two seeming busybodies bursting in on an apparently groundless errand. It was a cutting rebuke that the disfigured man very quietly, with easy dignity and quite without ostentation, assumed his black silk fall and put on his masking goggles.
Anyhow, from now on they did know that the unjustly suspected visitor had mutilations, seemed inoffensive and might easily be a very scholarly man.
“We really must apologize most profoundly,” Terry said with the easy aplomb that his legal training had enabled him to assume at will. “We heard a crash . . . And couldn’t determine where it came from.”
There was an instant’s very uncomfortable pause; then Mr. Govina said quietly:
“It did not come from here.”
“Well—we wondered . . . Looks as if we’re very intrusive; but it sounded like a fall; so we just came along to see if you were all right.”
“It was most extraordinarily kind of you. However, I did not fall.”
He had an accent, Terry noticed, but his English sounded fluent, yet it was a disagreeable voice, containing some mysterious quality that grated. Once, in the night, across a humid bog, Terry had heard just such another timbre—and had kept his gun to hand.
“This is Mrs. Border’s son, Don,” he explained, laying a hand on his young companion’s shoulder. “My name’s Cliffe. I’m by way of being Don’s god-father and self-appointed uncle.”
“I am deeply interested to meet Mrs. Border’s son,” Govina said foreignly. And added the inexplicable remark: “It is an astonishing performance.”
“P’raps,” Terry thought, “his English is not so good as I assumed. That’s a perfectly pointless remark.”
“I must be going, Uncle,” Don said curtly.
“Master Don don’t like our pal here,” Terry decided with a grin. “And I must say, he’s not immensely prepossessing. There’s a contemptuous satire behind his remarks.” But aloud: “All right, Don. I’ve got to put my best foot forward, too.” He turned to the black-clad, sombre figure. “I trust you’re quite comfortable, Mr. Govina?”
“Thank you, yes.”
“You must not run away with the idea that we’re an intrusive bunch, or that you won’t get the privacy for which you bargained. It was . . .”
“The fall you heard,” Govina said gravely.
Terry flushed. There was a faintly malign ring to these soft sarcasms uttered with so much polished dignity.
“Hell!” Terry growled inwardly. “I wish more than I’ve ever before wished anything in my life that the fellow’d never set foot in this house. Bless my soul, is what Mary’s getting worth the unpleasantness?”
He and Don withdrew and descended to the hall in silence. Arrived there, however, they both involuntarily paused and remained an instant each deep in thought. Then Don jerked his head impatiently and turned to Terry.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What about it?”
“What about what?”
“That human adenoid.”
“For God’s sake speak plainly, boy!”
Don glanced at Terry in surprise. It was unlike his uncle to be irritable.
“What decision have you come to about him, Uncle Terry?”
The latter gave his godson a sly, sideways look.
“Well, we made fools of ourselves, didn’t we, old man?”
Don opened his mouth to speak, closed it, fumbled with a raincoat, then burst out:
“When we first went in, what did you see?”
Terry now hesitated. Then his overwhelming honesty urged him to be frank.
“I thought I saw a phenomenon similar to what you described last night.”
“Worse!” Don snapped urgently. “If you saw what I saw . . . Fangs.”
Terry nodded. They were silent a while, eyeing each other uncertainly, wondering, in the manner of self-conscious Englishmen, how to put their thoughts into words that would not sound emotional or suggest mental disturbance.
“But there were no glinting eyes, Don; no fangs.”
“Yet we both saw them!”
“I wonder . . . We went there with a fixed idea in our minds, formed during the night when odd things do happen to human minds—even if they’re only the result of lobster or crab . . . And then there’s telep
athy. Nothing very metaphysical or extra to nature about that. Less mysterious than the electric waves our voices ride on. How long did your impression of headlights and bone-grinders last?”
“Hardly a second, I suppose.”
“Same here. So we both saw the bogey business simultaneously and it vanished simultaneously, which rather supports my theory of a fixed idea possibly made mutual by telepathy.”
“I suppose so . . .”
“We’ve got to suppose so, Don,” Terry said gravely.
The younger looked up in a sharp, startled manner.
“Just think if we don’t keep our heads and allow our imaginations run away with us, what we’d let ourselves in for. I think it’s safe to say we saw nothing but the actuality: a sadly disfigured human being upon whose privacy we had intruded in a most unwarrantable fashion. Life is prosaic, Don. More may exist than we wot of, but that more’s not, definitely not, shown to human creatures.”
“Yes, I know, Uncle; all the same I feel oddly disturbed . . . And I think you’ll admit I’m not morbid or given to this sort of thing.”
This was only too true . . . Moreover, Terry had, secretly, to admit that he, too, was oddly disturbed.
“I’ll tell you what, Don, I’ll try, when I come home to-night, to persuade your mother to fire the blighter out.”
“Good. If needing support, I’m your man.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This interview had curious results, the first of which was the descent upon Terry of an unfamiliar bad temper. Customarily he was an exception to his kind, for year followed year without one seeing even a frown on his forehead. Blessed with an equable liver, an astonishing sense of humour and a strong will, he seldom experienced a desire to snap and on the rare occasions when a degree of irritability did win through it was either laughed away or suppressed. But now he felt, to quote his own words, “Damned savage.”
He hurried from the house with a guilty feeling, well aware he should see Mary and compose her mind; but for once he failed her and deliberately turned his back on what he felt to be a duty. It would be truly the worst outcome of this unpleasant affair if he should speak rudely to the person whose esteem he valued more than any other on earth.
