Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “On the contrary, Morgan told me he was still here with you. Hyman probably walked down, and didn’t take the lift at all,” he replied. “That accounts for neither of us seeing him.” He decided to say nothing about the occurrence in the lift, for his brother’s nerves, he saw plainly, were on edge.

  William then stood up out of his chair, and the skin of his face changed its hue, for whereas a moment ago it was merely pale, it had now altered to a tint that lay somewhere between white and a livid grey. The man was fighting internal terror. For a moment these two brothers of middle age looked each other straight in the eye. Then John spoke:

  “What’s wrong, Billy?” he asked quietly. “Something’s upset you. What brought Hyman in this way — unexpectedly? I thought he was still in Germany.”

  The brothers, affectionate and sympathetic, understood one another perfectly. They had no secrets. Yet for several minutes the younger one made no reply. It seemed difficult to choose his words apparently.

  “Hyman played, I suppose — on the fiddles?” John helped him, wondering uneasily what was coming. He did not care much for the individual in question, though his talent was of such great use to them.

  The other nodded in the affirmative, then plunged into rapid speech, talking under his breath as though he feared someone might overhear. Glancing over his shoulder down the foggy room, he drew his brother close.

  “Hyman came,” he began, “unexpectedly. He hadn’t written, and I hadn’t asked him. You hadn’t either, I suppose?”

  John shook his head.

  “When I came in from the dining-room I found him in the passage. The servant was taking away the dishes, and he had let himself in while the front door was ajar. Pretty cool, wasn’t it?”

  “He’s an original,” said John, shrugging his shoulders. “And you welcomed him?” he asked.

  “I asked him in, of course. He explained he had something glorious for me to hear. Silenski had played it in the afternoon, and he had bought the music since. But Silenski’s ‘Strad’ hadn’t the power — it’s thin on the upper strings, you remember, unequal, patchy — and he said no instrument in the world could do it justice but our ‘Joseph’-the small Guarnerius, you know, which he swears is the most perfect in the world.”

  “And what was it? Did he play it?” asked John, growing more uneasy as he grew more interested. With relief he glanced round and saw the matchless little instrument lying there safe and sound in its glass case near the door.

  “He played it — divinely: a Zigeuner Lullaby, a fine, passionate, rushing bit of inspiration, oddly misnamed ‘lullaby.’ And, fancy, the fellow had memorized it already! He walked about the room on tiptoe while he played it, complaining of the light — —”

  “Complaining of the light?”

  “Said the thing was crepuscular, and needed dusk for its full effect. I turned the lights out one by one, till finally there was only the glow of the gas logs. He insisted. You know that way he has with him? And then he got over me in another matter: insisted on using some special strings he had brought with him, and put them on, too, himself — thicker than the A and E we use.”

  For though neither Gilmer could produce a note, it was their pride that they kept their precious instruments in perfect condition for playing, choosing the exact thickness and quality of strings that suited the temperament of each violin; and the little Guarnerius in question always “sang” best, they held, with thin strings.

  “Infernal insolence,” exclaimed the listening brother, wondering what was coming next. “Played it well, though, didn’t he, this Lullaby thing?” he added, seeing that William hesitated. As he spoke he went nearer, sitting down close beside him in a leather chair.

  “Magnificent! Pure fire of genius!” was the reply with enthusiasm, the voice at the same time dropping lower. “Staccato like a silver hammer; harmonics like flutes, clear, soft, ringing; and the tone — well, the G string was a baritone, and the upper registers creamy and mellow as a boy’s voice. John,” he added, “that Guarnerius is the very pick of the period and” — again he hesitated— “Hyman loves it. He’d give his soul to have it.”

  The more John heard, the more uncomfortable it made him. He had always disliked this gifted Hebrew, for in his secret heart he knew that he had always feared and distrusted him. Sometimes he had felt half afraid of him; the man’s very forcible personality was too insistent to be pleasant. His type was of the dark and sinister kind, and he possessed a violent will that rarely failed of accomplishing its desire.

  “Wish I’d heard the fellow play,” he said at length, ignoring his brother’s last remark, and going on to speak of the most matter-of-fact details he could think of. “Did he use the Dodd bow, or the Tourte? That Dodd I picked up last month, you know, is the most perfectly balanced I have ever — —”

  He stopped abruptly, for William had suddenly got upon his feet and was standing there, searching the room with his eyes. A chill ran down John’s spine as he watched him.

  “What is it, Billy?” he asked sharply. “Hear anything?”

  William continued to peer about him through the thick air.

  “Oh, nothing, probably,” he said, an odd catch in his voice; “only —— I keep feeling as if there was somebody listening. Do you think, perhaps” — he glanced over his shoulder— “there is someone at the door? I wish — I wish you’d have a look, John.”

  John obeyed, though without great eagerness. Crossing the room slowly, he opened the door, then switched on the light. The passage leading past the bathroom towards the bedrooms beyond was empty. The coats hung motionless from their pegs.

  “No one, of course,” he said, as he closed the door and came back to the stove. He left the light burning in the passage. It was curious the way both brothers had this impression that they were not alone, though only one of them spoke of it.

  “Used the Dodd or the Tourte, Billy — which?” continued John in the most natural voice he could assume.

  But at that very same instant the water started to his eyes. His brother, he saw, was close upon the thing he really had to tell. But he had stuck fast.

  3

  By a great effort John Gilmer composed himself and remained in his chair. With detailed elaboration he lit a cigarette, staring hard at his brother over the flaring match while he did so. There he sat in his dressing-gown and slippers by the fireplace, eyes downcast, fingers playing idly with the red tassel. The electric light cast heavy shadows across the face. In a flash then, since emotion may sometimes express itself in attitude even better than in speech, the elder brother understood that Billy was about to tell him an unutterable thing.

  By instinct he moved over to his side so that the same view of the room confronted him.

  “Out with it, old man,” he said, with an effort to be natural. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Billy shuffled slowly round and the two sat side by side, facing the fog-draped chamber.

  “It was like this,” he began softly, “only I was standing instead of sitting, looking over to that door as you and I do now. Hyman moved to and fro in the faint glow of the gas logs against the far wall, playing that ‘crepuscular’ thing in his most inspired sort of way, so that the music seemed to issue from himself rather than from the shining bit of wood under his chin, when — I noticed something coming over me that was” — he hesitated, searching for words— “that wasn’t all due to the music,” he finished abruptly.

  “His personality put a bit of hypnotism on you, eh?”

  William shrugged his shoulders.

  “The air was thickish with fog and the light was dim, cast upwards upon him from the stove,” he continued. “I admit all that. But there wasn’t light enough to throw shadows, you see, and — —”

  “Hyman looked queer?” the other helped him quickly.

  Billy nodded his head without turning.

  “Changed there before my very eyes” — he whispered it— “turned animal — —”

  “Animal?�
�� John felt his hair rising.

  “That’s the only way I can put it. His face and hands and body turned otherwise than usual. I lost the sound of his feet. When the bow-hand or the fingers on the strings passed into the light, they were” — he uttered a soft, shuddering little laugh— “furry, oddly divided, the fingers massed together. And he paced stealthily. I thought every instant the fiddle would drop with a crash and he would spring at me across the room.”

  “My dear chap — —”

  “He moved with those big, lithe, striding steps one sees” — John held his breath in the little pause, listening keenly— “one sees those big brutes make in the cages when their desire is aflame for food or escape, or — or fierce, passionate desire for anything they want with their whole nature — —”

  “The big felines!” John whistled softly.

  “And every minute getting nearer and nearer to the door, as though he meant to make a sudden rush for it and get out.”

  “With the violin! Of course you stopped him?”

  “In the end. But for a long time, I swear to you, I found it difficult to know what to do, even to move. I couldn’t get my voice for words of any kind; it was like a spell.”

  “It was a spell,” suggested John firmly.

  “Then, as he moved, still playing,” continued the other, “he seemed to grow smaller; to shrink down below the line of the gas. I thought I should lose sight of him altogether. I turned the light up suddenly. There he was over by the door — crouching.”

  “Playing on his knees, you mean?”

  William closed his eyes in an effort to visualize it again.

  “Crouching,” he repeated, at length, “close to the floor. At least, I think so. It all happened so quickly, and I felt so bewildered, it was hard to see straight. But at first I could have sworn he was half his natural size. I called to him, I think I swore at him — I forget exactly, but I know he straightened up at once and stood before me down there in the light” — he pointed across the room to the door— “eyes gleaming, face white as chalk, perspiring like midsummer, and gradually filling out, straightening up, whatever you like to call it, to his natural size and appearance again. It was the most horrid thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “As an — animal, you saw him still?”

  “No; human again. Only much smaller.”

  “What did he say?”

  Billy reflected a moment.

  “Nothing that I can remember,” he replied. “You see, it was all over in a few seconds. In the full light, I felt so foolish, and nonplussed at first. To see him normal again baffled me. And, before I could collect myself, he had let himself out into the passage, and I heard the front door slam. A minute later — the same second almost, it seemed — you came in. I only remember grabbing the violin and getting it back safely under the glass case. The strings were still vibrating.”

  The account was over. John asked no further questions. Nor did he say a single word about the lift, Morgan, or the extinguished light on the landing. There fell a longish silence between the two men; and then, while they helped themselves to a generous supply of whisky-and-soda before going to bed, John looked up and spoke:

  “If you agree, Billy,” he said quietly, “I think I might write and suggest to Hyman that we shall no longer have need for his services.”

  And Billy, acquiescing, added a sentence that expressed something of the singular dread lying but half concealed in the atmosphere of the room, if not in their minds as well:

  “Putting it, however, in a way that need not offend him.”

  “Of course. There’s no need to be rude, is there?”

  Accordingly, next morning the letter was written; and John, saying nothing to his brother, took it round himself by hand to the Hebrew’s rooms near Euston. The answer he dreaded was forthcoming:

  “Mr. Hyman’s still away abroad,” he was told. “But we’re forwarding letters; yes. Or I can give you ‘is address if you’ll prefer it.” The letter went, therefore, to the number in Königstrasse, Munich, thus obtained.

  Then, on his way back from the insurance company where he went to increase the sum that protected the small Guarnerius from loss by fire, accident, or theft, John Gilmer called at the offices of certain musical agents and ascertained that Silenski, the violinist, was performing at the time in Munich. It was only some days later, though, by diligent inquiry, he made certain that at a concert on a certain date the famous virtuoso had played a Zigeuner Lullaby of his own composition — the very date, it turned out, on which he himself had been to the Masonic rehearsal at Mark Masons’ Hall.

  John, however, said nothing of these discoveries to his brother William.

  4

  It was about a week later when a reply to the letter came from Munich — a letter couched in somewhat offensive terms, though it contained neither words nor phrases that could actually be found fault with. Isidore Hyman was hurt and angry. On his return to London a month or so later, he proposed to call and talk the matter over. The offensive part of the letter lay, perhaps, in his definite assumption that he could persuade the brothers to resume the old relations. John, however, wrote a brief reply to the effect that they had decided to buy no new fiddles; their collection being complete, there would be no occasion for them to invite his services as a performer. This was final. No answer came, and the matter seemed to drop. Never for one moment, though, did it leave the consciousness of John Gilmer. Hyman had said that he would come, and come assuredly he would. He secretly gave Morgan instructions that he and his brother for the future were always “out” when the Hebrew presented himself.

  “He must have gone back to Germany, you see, almost at once after his visit here that night,” observed William — John, however, making no reply.

  One night towards the middle of January the two brothers came home together from a concert in Queen’s Hall, and sat up later than usual in their sitting-room discussing over their whisky and tobacco the merits of the pieces and performers. It must have been past one o’clock when they turned out the lights in the passage and retired to bed. The air was still and frosty; moonlight over the roofs — one of those sharp and dry winter nights that now seem to visit London rarely.

  “Like the old-fashioned days when we were boys,” remarked William, pausing a moment by the passage window and looking out across the miles of silvery, sparkling roofs.

  “Yes,” added John; “the ponds freezing hard in the fields, rime on the nursery windows, and the sound of a horse’s hoofs coming down the road in the distance, eh?” They smiled at the memory, then said good night, and separated. Their rooms were at opposite ends of the corridor; in between were the bathroom, dining-room, and sitting-room. It was a long, straggling flat. Half an hour later both brothers were sound asleep, the flat silent, only a dull murmur rising from the great city outside, and the moon sinking slowly to the level of the chimneys.

  Perhaps two hours passed, perhaps three, when John Gilmer, sitting up in bed with a start, wide-awake and frightened, knew that someone was moving about in one of the three rooms that lay between him and his brother. He had absolutely no idea why he should have been frightened, for there was no dream or nightmare-memory that he brought over from unconsciousness, and yet he realized plainly that the fear he felt was by no means a foolish and unreasoning fear. It had a cause and a reason. Also — which made it worse — it was fully warranted. Something in his sleep, forgotten in the instant of waking, had happened that set every nerve in his body on the watch. He was positive only of two things — first, that it was the entrance of this person, moving so quietly there in the flat, that sent the chills down his spine; and, secondly, that this person was not his brother William.

  John Gilmer was a timid man. The sight of a burglar, his eyes black-masked, suddenly confronting him in the passage, would most likely have deprived him of all power of decision — until the burglar had either shot him or escaped. But on this occasion some instinct told him that it was no burglar, and that
the acute distress he experienced was not due to any message of ordinary physical fear. The thing that had gained access to his flat while he slept had first come — he felt sure of it — into his room, and had passed very close to his own bed, before going on. It had then doubtless gone to his brother’s room, visiting them both stealthily to make sure they slept. And its mere passage through his room had been enough to wake him and set these drops of cold perspiration upon his skin. For it was — he felt it in every fibre of his body — something hostile.

  The thought that it might at that very moment be in the room of his brother, however, brought him to his feet on the cold floor, and set him moving with all the determination he could summon towards the door. He looked cautiously down an utterly dark passage; then crept on tiptoe along it. On the wall were old-fashioned weapons that had belonged to his father; and feeling a curved, sheathless sword that had come from some Turkish campaign of years gone by, his fingers closed tightly round it, and lifted it silently from the three hooks whereon it lay. He passed the doors of the bathroom and dining-room, making instinctively for the big sitting-room where the violins were kept in their glass cases. The cold nipped him. His eyes smarted with the effort to see in the darkness. Outside the closed door he hesitated.

  Putting his ear to the crack, he listened. From within came a faint sound of someone moving. The same instant there rose the sharp, delicate “ping” of a violin-string being plucked; and John Gilmer, with nerves that shook like the vibrations of that very string, opened the door wide with a fling and turned on the light at the same moment. The plucked string still echoed faintly in the air.

  The sensation that met him on the threshold was the well-known one that things had been going on in the room which his unexpected arrival had that instant put a stop to. A second earlier and he would have discovered it all in the act. The atmosphere still held the feeling of rushing, silent movement with which the things had raced back to their normal, motionless positions. The immobility of the furniture was a mere attitude hurriedly assumed, and the moment his back was turned the whole business, whatever it might be, would begin again. With this presentment of the room, however — a purely imaginative one — came another, swiftly on its heels.