Printer's Devil Court

by Susan Hill

  “To you? I am not sure. But I can see no reason why you would be at serious risk of harm.”

  “Is it legal?”

  “I have no idea. I suspect that the law has never been tested in the matter.”

  Suddenly, my mind was made up. I slapped the arm of the chair. “Then, dammit…”

  But Walter held up his hand. “Just one more thing, though I suspect I know what you have decided. If you are with us, you must swear solemnly that you will tell no one — no one. Now or at any time. If you are ever questioned, which is improbable, you must deny all knowledge or involvement.”

  His expression was as serious as a man’s could be.

  “Then I swear it,” I said, and as I did so I felt an odd nervous lurch in my belly. “I swear it and I am with you.”

  Walter did not reply but turned to look at James, who had gone horribly pale.

  “I cannot swear,” he said, “I am not with you, whatever this nonsense is about, and so I would rather not hear more.”

  He got up quickly and nodding us good night, he left the room. We heard his footsteps and his door close. It was disconcerting. I liked and trusted James and for a moment, I thought of changing my mind. I looked at Walter and as I did so, I felt a flicker of alarm. Something in his eyes gave out a warning and a threat.

  “Another glass of port,” I said hastily. “I’m sure James would not object.”

  Walter frowned. “No, we need clear heads.” I let the port stand but I tried to keep my tone light as I asked, “Now — what is this all about? What are you proposing?”

  “We are proposing,” Walter replied, “to bring the dead back to life.”

  2

  I slept soundly that night perhaps because I still believed that Walter’s proposed experiment was nothing more than a jape.

  At first, nothing else happened or was said, though I caught James looking at me anxiously once or twice. But then there were some subtle changes to our household routine. Rafe had apparently discovered some time earlier that the house had a basement room — no more than a cellar — which was empty and unused, and he persuaded our landlady to let it to him for a pittance. I returned home early one day with a feverish cold, to find him unloading what looked like half the contents of a laboratory and lugging it down the area steps. He did not speak and I was feeling too rotten to ask any questions or offer him help.

  The next time I saw him he was coming up from the basement, slipping a key into his pocket. He rarely joined us at supper now and when he did, he ate quickly and immediately made off downstairs. There were no more leisurely, companionable evenings when we four sat talking round the fire. Walter seemed to spend longer hours at the hospital, especially at night, and when he was home, kept to his own room. Shortly afterwards I forgot about the whole secret episode because my head cold descended onto my lungs and the subsequent bronchitis put me first to bed for a week and then sent me away from London’s foul winter air to the home of my family in coastal Norfolk. There, I regained my health and strength, albeit slowly, until I could take walks along the seashore and across the marshes. Nothing could have been better calculated to restore me.

  Christmas came and went and we saw in the New Year merrily. I was preparing to return to London when, on January 2, I received a telegram from Walter.

  “Enterprise critical stage. Urgent you return and witness.”

  After the fogs and damp of late autumn, London had come in for one of the worst winters for decades. Snow had fallen thickly for several days and then frozen hard to the ground every night. Temperatures remained below freezing and twice plummeted to depths barely known since the Great Frost, when the Thames had frozen over.

  The fire made little impression on the air of the sitting room and our windows were ferned and feathered over with ice on the inside. The hospital, of course, was full to bursting point: vagrants and beggars died on the streets in shameful numbers and we were all working round the clock. I had hurried back as requested but for over two weeks Walter had no time to talk to me, and Rafe was unable to work in his cellar laboratory because of the intense cold. James I almost never saw, and when I did, I felt that he had withdrawn from me as well as from the others and was wary of conversation.

  On a night in early March, when at last the thermometer hovered just above freezing, Walter knocked on my door well after one o’clock in the morning. He was wearing his outdoor clothes and there was something almost akin to an electrical charge about him, so much so that I jumped up from my desk in alarm.

  “What has happened?”

  “Nothing yet. But it is time. Come — Rafe is waiting.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the hospital. But we must go stealthily and take great care.”

  The pavements were treacherous and piles of dirty, frozen snow lay in the gutters. The half-moon was hazy, so that we had to watch our every step, and a raw and bitter wind blowing off the river scoured our faces.

  The lamps at the hospital entrance gates glowed out but the lighting in much of the building was dimmed, as people slept. We entered by the front doors and at once turned along a covered way to the old East Wing and then down three flights of stairs that led to the basement corridors. Walter’s footsteps made barely a sound and I thought that he must have walked this way at night many times before. Once or twice he stopped, raised his hand, and listened, before continuing. I followed in his footsteps, barely able to breathe, I was so tense. We turned a corner into a short passageway with an unmarked double-door at the end. No one else was about. This part of the hospital was little used, though the old wards had been hastily re-commissioned to cope with the overflow of patients. The whole place smelled cold and slightly damp. We stopped and Walter tapped on the door, though not on the panel but on the frame, presumably so that the sound was muffled. It was opened at once by Rafe. He so rarely gave anything away on his impassive features but now he wore an expression of scarcely concealed excitement and I felt the same strange electrical charge coming off him as I had noticed with Walter.

  The moment we were both inside, Rafe turned the key in the lock. He and Walter did not speak as they moved into the centre of the small room. It was windowless, save for a row of rectangular panes high up along one side, and the walls were tiled to the ceiling. Two lamps stood on a laboratory bench, only one of which was lit and that dimly, but it was enough for me to look around.

  Next to the lamps stood a small array of laboratory paraphernalia — test tubes, rubber piping, glass phials. A Bunsen burner gave out a low, steady blue flame and there were a couple of items of medical equipment. In the body of the room stood a hospital trolley, levered to its full height and with the metal sides raised. On it was a still figure covered in a single grey blanket. I went closer and saw that it was the body of an old man. His head was covered in grey stubble which also formed a close beard. His skin was bruise-coloured and grime enseamed the neck, the skin below his eyes, and around the nose and ears. Clearly, though he looked to have been given a cursory wash, the dirt was ingrained so as to have become almost a part of the body itself. One hand was uncovered; the nails had recently been cut but more dirt was wedged beneath them and in the creases of the fingers.

  At first glance, I took this to be a corpse, but then I saw the faintest of movements as breath rose and fell in the man’s chest. Walter bent down and put a finger under the nostrils and nodded. The man’s breathing was laboured and as we stood looking at him a rattle came from his throat. Walter glanced at Rafe and it was as if a flint has been struck and the quick spark passed between them.

  “Yes,” Walter said, “not long. A moment or two only but the old ones put up a brave fight. Life has been hard to them and they are used to battling.”

  I started to say something but at first I was unable to speak and I could only make a hoarse croaking sound, as if it was I and not the old man fighting for breath. But eventually, I managed to speak

  “Who is he?”

  Walter
shrugged. “Brought in from the street a couple of nights ago, half frozen to death and full of pneumonia. He had nothing on him but his clothes. His pockets were full of chestnut husks — he had probably been living off the scraps of nuts that fell onto the pavement and was perhaps tossed a whole one now and again by the seller.”

  “No name?”

  “No name, no home, no family, no friends, no hope. He is not long for this world and will be better out of it.”

  I had an uprush of terror as he said it, and took a quick step nearer to the trolley on which the old man lay.

  “You are surely not thinking of hastening his end, for some foul purpose? The man is dying and will be at peace soon enough. I will not stand by and watch you commit murder.”

  Walter put a hand on my arm. “No, my friend, we are doctors in the business of saving life, not disposing of it.”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear.”

  I turned to Rafe, who nodded.

  “Then I have done you an injustice.”

  “No matter. But I am puzzled as to why you should think either Rafe or myself likely to be common murderers.”

  I did not know. I could not say that something about their manner had been troubling me sorely and that this urgent journey to the bowels of the hospital at dead of night had thoroughly unnerved me.

  “Nevertheless, I think I am entitled to some explanation of all this.”

  “You are and before long you will be our witness, and I swear to you that we plan nothing nefarious and nothing to endanger a life which is about to draw up to a peaceful end.”

  Walter stepped forward and put his hand out to the man who lay there, breathing with more and more difficulty. The rattle in his throat was more pronounced and once or twice the grimy fingers and hand twitched; once the eyelids seemed about to open but then did not. The gas in Rafe’s burners hissed and popped softly, otherwise the room was quite silent.

  Had Walter and Rafe succumbed to some sort of madness? But what sort would grip two men together yet not also cause them to appear feverish and raving? Insanity is not infectious unless it comes about as the result of some rabies-like infection, and they both seemed eminently well.

  They could simply have been two doctors paying close attention to a patient for whom all hope had gone. What was I doing there, I as sane as any other, for all that I felt nervous and baffled? Walter had said that I was their witness but what was I witnessing? Only an old man dying.

  In the next moment something happened, his raucous breathing changed, slowed and quietened.

  “Now!” Walter said in an urgent tone and at once Rafe crossed to the bench and took up a glass phial, a length of narrow tubing and a test-tube, together with what resembled an oxygen mask but with a couple of alterations. He went up to the dying man and put the mask over his face. It sat loosely and he appeared quite unaware of it — indeed, I thought that the man was unaware of everything now. One end of the tubing was fixed to the mask and the other into the top of the phial and secured by a clip. The phial had two small holes in the side. Rafe held the test tube up and I saw some clear liquid, perhaps to a depth of half an inch, in the bottom. We were now all standing in such silence and stillness that our own breathing seemed to slow almost to a stop. There was no sound.

  The old man’s face was sunken in, the flesh already waxen. He breathed two more shallow breaths, then a third. I thought that I could hear the pounding not only of my own heart but that of Walter and Rafe’s, too.

  There came one more, unsteady breath and Walter said again “Now!”, but in a voice so faint that I barely heard him. On the same instant, Rafe poured the clear liquid out of the test tube into the phial. The old man exhaled for the last time and the breath travelled down from the mask over his face into the tubing. For a split second I saw it mist the inside of the glass. He breathed no more and at the very second that he was still, and in death, the liquid in the phial seemed to catch fire and to turn not into an ordinary flame but a sort of phosphorescent gas that crept up the inside of the glass, a very slightly pulsating substance, semi-transparent and astonishingly beautiful.

  I gazed at it in amazement and in disbelief. It remained when Rafe disconnected the tubing and quickly stopped the aperture. He held up the phial. I glanced at Walter and saw that he was transfixed by it and that his face wore an almost beatific expression — partly of triumph and partly what I can only call joy. Then he gave a small sigh and we all looked at the old man. His chest did not rise. He was utterly still and his face was changed by a look of utter tranquillity. Walter bent and lifted each of his eyelids and then beckoned me to move closer. He handed me his ophthalmic torch and I bent to examine the corpse’s pupils.

  “Fixed and dilated,” I said.

  “Pulse?”

  I held first one wrist then the other for a full minute and put my finger to the carotid artery. I took the stethoscope and listened closely to the chest. There was nothing — no breath, no heartbeat, no sign of life at all.

  “To the best of my knowledge and observation, this man is dead.”

  There was an almost reverential hush. Rafe stood on the other side of the trolley, holding the glass. The beautiful light contained within it gleamed silver white and still phosphorescent and as we stared at it we saw that it pulsed faintly in time with the beating of our hearts.

  “So — there we have it,” Walter said.

  I managed to pull myself out of my half-trance.

  “I suppose you call whatever is in that phial ‘the spark of life’ and I presume you now have plans to replace it into the dead body and wait for a resurrection?”

  I shuddered. The room was deathly cold, though I had been quite unconscious of the fact until now. I was badly frightened and completely out of my depth medically, ethically and simply as a human being. Walter touched my arm and I jumped back. His eyes were still sparking with excitement but his voice was full of concern.

  “No,” he said. “This man, whoever he is, will now be left to rest in peace and accorded a proper burial by the Christian church — for which, by the way, though not a member, I have a profound respect.”

  Still holding the phial, which continued to gleam and pulsate, Rafe said, “Close by is the hospital mortuary, to which our friend here will now be taken. And then we plan to conduct the next and most vital phase of our experiment. I am warning you now, as I have warned Walter many times, it is the part most likely to fail, though I have a flicker of confidence, based on experiments I have already conducted in my laboratory.”

  “The cat!”

  “Indeed, but after all, one ginger cat may easily be confused with another and besides, the cat is a living organism but it is not a human being. It lacks many attributes of the human and many religious people would say that a cat has no soul.”

  I felt giddy and put my hand to my head. “Is this night never to end? Will there be no conclusion to the strange events?”

  As I swayed, Walter took firm hold of me and held me, while letting me slide gently to the floor. He propped me up with my back against the wall and then pushed me forwards with my head between my knees.

  “If you still feel unsteady in five minutes, I will take you home. You are a robust man but you were gravely ill at the end of last year and you have just been subjected to a severe nervous strain.”

  “No,” I said, as the swirling sensation behind my eyes gradually slowed, like a fairground carousel coming to a standstill

  “No, I intend to see this through. I am your witness and I won’t let you down.”

  “Good man. Now drink this.” He held a small flask. “No no, it is simply a good brandy; it will do you nothing but good. I intend to have a dram myself.”

  I took a good mouthful and the liquid fire re-invigorated me in seconds. I stood up. Walter was ready with a hand but I did not need it.

  “I am quite well,” I said, “and quite ready.”

  3

  We covered the face and body of the old v
agrant with a sheet and Walter and Rafe left the small room, Rafe pushing the trolley, Walter walking a step or two ahead. The corridors were empty and silent — any sounds from the main body of the hospital did not penetrate this subterranean annex. The old mortuary — there was a much newer one in the East Wing — was close by and unattended because it was now little used. Because of the recent influx of mortally ill patients, it was fully equipped and functioning. Walter had a key — I did not ask how he had obtained it.

  “Is Rafe not coming with us?”

  “We have things to attend to in readiness. You will stay here and guard our departed friend.” He glanced almost fondly at the sheeted body.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You seem nervous — surely you are accustomed to death by now?”

  “I am agitated about what you and Rafe are doing. You must agree that it is hardly regular or normal.”

  “It is unique,” Walter said.

  “Perhaps, but as to remaining alone here with our friend — of course I am not nervous.”

  “I am pleased to hear it.” Walter smiled and I realised what had always perturbed me about that smile. It was not sinister, though it was not especially pleasant but it had an odd effect. It changed his face from that of a young, fresh-faced man into one far older. It was uncanny. He was twenty-six but instantly became ancient, his features showing briefly the ravages of old age and bitter, even terrible experience. He glanced at me as he closed the mortuary door, leaving me alone, and as the smile faded his face was young again, a face on which few cares or troubles had made any mark. How peculiar, that the change should be wrought by a smile.

  Being alone with a dead man did not perturb me in the least and I lifted the sheet to look again at his face. It still wore the expression of great calm and acceptance. I could discern, beneath the ravages of a hard lived life and of ageing, that the man had once been handsome, with a broad brow and a well shaped and resolute mouth. There was a gentleness about him which was delightful and strangely comforting. Whatever his life had been, death had resolved all suffering and troubles. I covered his face. No, I was not in the least afraid of a corpse which could do me no harm, but I was terrified of what living men might be about. The phrase “playing with fire” came to mind, followed by remembrance of horrible stories, so that I was relieved when I heard the key being turned in the lock.