by E. Nesbit
Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this story is that when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the 22nd of October she found him looking like death, with the morning paper in his hand. He caught hers – he couldn’t speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 21st a young lady, the stockbroker’s daughter, had been found, with her throat cut from ear to ear, on the bed in the long back bedroom facing the stairs of that desirable semi-detached.
IN THE DARK
It may have been a form of madness. Or it may be that he really was what is called haunted. Or it may – though I don’t pretend to understand how – have been the development, through intense suffering, of a sixth sense in a very nervous, highly-strung nature. Something certainly led him where They were. And to him They were all one.
He told me the first part of the story, and the last part of it I saw with my own eyes.
I
Haldane and I were friends even in our school-days. What first brought us together was our common hatred of Visger, who came from our part of the country. His people knew our people at home, so he was put on to us when he came. He was the most intolerable person, boy and man, that I have ever known. He would not tell a lie. And that was all right. But he didn’t stop at that. If he were asked whether any other chap had done anything – he would always say, ‘I don’t know, sir, but I believe so.’ He never did know – we took care of that. But what he believed was always right. I remember Haldane twisting his arm to say how he knew about that cherry-tree business, and he only said, ‘I don’t know – I just feel sure. And I was right, you see.’ What can you do with a boy like that?
We grew up to be men. At least Haldane and I did. Visger grew up to be a prig. He was a vegetarian and a teetotaller, and an all-wooler and a Christian Scientist, and all the things that prigs are – but he wasn’t a common prig. He knew all sorts of things that he oughtn’t to have known, that he couldn’t have known in any ordinary decent way. It wasn’t that he found things out. He just knew them. Once, when I was very unhappy, he came into my rooms – we were all in our last year at Oxford – and talked about things I hardly knew myself. That was really why I went to India that winter. It was bad enough to be unhappy, without having that beast knowing all about it.
I was away over a year. Coming back, I thought a lot about how jolly it would be to see old Haldane again. If I thought about Visger at all, I wished he was dead. But I didn’t think about him much.
I did want to see Haldane. He was always such a jolly chap – gay, and kindly, and simple, honourable, upright, and full of practical sympathies. I longed to see him, to see the smile in his jolly blue eyes, looking out from the net of wrinkles that laughing had made round them, to hear his jolly laugh, and feel the good grip of his big hand. I went straight from the docks to his chambers in Gray’s Inn, and I found him cold, pale, anaemic, with dull eyes and a limp hand, and pale lips that smiled without mirth, and uttered a welcome without gladness.
He was surrounded by a litter of disordered furniture and personal effects half packed. Some big boxes stood corded, and there were cases of books, filled and waiting for the enclosing boards to be nailed on.
‘Yes, I’m moving,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand these rooms. There’s something rum about them – something devilish rum. I clear out tomorrow.’
The autumn dusk was filling the corners with shadows. ‘You got the furs,’ I said, just for something to say, for I saw the big case that held them lying corded among the others.
‘Furs?’ he said. ‘Oh yes. Thanks awfully. Yes. I forgot about the furs.’ He laughed, out of politeness, I suppose, for there was no joke about the furs. They were many and fine – the best I could get for money, and I had seen them packed and sent off when my heart was very sore. He stood looking at me, and saying nothing.
‘Come out and have a bit of dinner,’ I said as cheerfully as I could.
‘Too busy,’ he answered, after the slightest possible pause, and a glance round the room – ‘look here – I’m awfully glad to see you – If you’d just slip over and order in dinner – I’d go myself – only – Well, you see how it is.’
I went. And when I came back, he had cleared a space near the fire, and moved his big gate-table into it. We dined there by candlelight. I tried to be amusing. He, I am sure, tried to be amused. We did not succeed, either of us. And his haggard eyes watched me all the time, save in those fleeting moments when, without turning his head, he glanced back over his shoulder into the shadows that crowded round the little lighted place where we sat.
When we had dined and the man had come and taken away the dishes, I looked at Haldane very steadily, so that he stopped in a pointless anecdote, and looked interrogation at me.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘You’re not listening,’ he said petulantly. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘That’s what you’d better tell me,’ I said.
He was silent, gave one of those furtive glances at the shadows, and stooped to stir the fire to – I knew it – a blaze that must light every corner of the room.
‘You’re all to pieces,’ I said cheerfully. ‘What have you been up to? Wine? Cards? Speculation? A woman? If you won’t tell me, you’ll have to tell your doctor. Why, my dear chap, you’re a wreck.’
‘You’re a comfortable friend to have about the place,’ he said, and smiled a mechanical smile not at all pleasant to see.
‘I’m the friend you want, I think,’ said I. ‘Do you suppose I’m blind? Something’s gone wrong and you’ve taken to something. Morphia, perhaps? And you’ve brooded over the thing till you’ve lost all sense of proportion. Out with it, old chap. I bet you a dollar it’s not so bad as you think it.’
‘If I could tell you – or tell anyone,’ he said slowly, ‘it wouldn’t be so bad as it is. If I could tell anyone, I’d tell you. And even as it is, I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone else.’
I could get nothing more out of him. But he pressed me to stay – would have given me his bed and made himself a shake-down, he said. But I had engaged my room at the Victoria, and I was expecting letters. So I left him, quite late – and he stood on the stairs, holding a candle over the banisters to light me down.
When I went back next morning, he was gone. Men were moving his furniture into a big van with Somebody’s Pantechnicon painted on it in big letters.
He had left no address with the porter, and had driven off in a hansom with two portmanteaux – to Waterloo, the porter thought.
Well, a man has a right to the monopoly of his own troubles, if he chooses to have it. And I had troubles of my own that kept me busy.
II
It was more than a year later that I saw Haldane again. I had got rooms in the Albany by this time, and he turned up there one morning, very early indeed – before breakfast in fact. And if he looked ghastly before, he now looked almost ghostly. His face looked as though it had worn thin, like an oyster shell that has for years been cast up twice a day by the sea on a shore all pebbly. His hands were thin as birds’ claws, and they trembled like caught butterflies.
I welcomed him with enthusiastic cordiality and pressed breakfast on him. This time, I decided, I would ask no questions. For I saw that none were needed. He would tell me. He intended to tell me. He had come here to tell me, and for nothing else.
I lit the spirit lamp – I made coffee and small talk for him, and I ate and drank, and waited for him to begin. And it was like this that he began:
‘I am going,’ he said, ‘to kill myself – oh, don’t be alarmed’ – I suppose I had said or looked something – ‘I shan’t do it here, or now. I shall do it when I have to – when I can’t bear it any longer. And I want someone to know why. I don’t want to feel that I’m the only living creature who does know. And I can trust you, can’t I?’
I murmured something reassuring.
‘I should like you, if you don’t mind, to give me your word, that you won’t tell a soul wha
t I’m going to tell you, as long as I’m alive. Afterwards … you can tell whom you please.’
I gave him my word.
He sat silent looking at the fire. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s extraordinary how difficult it is to say it,’ he said, and smiled. ‘The fact is – you know that beast, George Visger.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen him since I came back. Some one told me he’d gone to some island or other to preach vegetarianism to the cannibals. Anyhow, he’s out of the way, bad luck to him.’
‘Yes,’ said Haldane, ‘he’s out of the way. But he’s not preaching anything. In point of fact, he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ was all I could think of to say.
‘Yes,’ said he; ‘it’s not generally known, but he is.’
‘What did he die of?’ I asked, not that I cared. The bare fact was good enough for me.
‘You know what an interfering chap he always was. Always knew everything. Heart to heart talks – and have everything open and above board. Well, he interfered between me and someone else – told her a pack of lies.’
‘Lies?’
‘Well, the things were true, but he made lies of them the way he told them – you know.’ I did. I nodded. ‘And she threw me over. And she died. And we weren’t even friends. And I couldn’t see her – before – I couldn’t even … Oh, my God … But I went to the funeral. He was there. They’d asked him. And then I came back to my rooms. And I was sitting there, thinking. And he came up.’
‘He would do. It’s just what he would do. The beast! I hope you kicked him out!’
‘No, I didn’t. I listened to what he’d got to say. He came to say, No doubt it was all for the best. And he hadn’t known the things he told her. He’d only guessed. He’d guessed right, damn him. What right had he to guess right? And he said it was all for the best, because, besides that, there was madness in my family. He’d found that out too—’
‘And is there?’
‘If there is, I didn’t know it. And that was why it was all for the best. So then I said, “There wasn’t any madness in my family before, but there is now,” and I got hold of his throat. I am not sure whether I meant to kill him; I ought to have meant to kill him. Anyhow, I did kill him. What did you say?’
I had said nothing. It is not easy to think at once of the tactful and suitable thing to say, when your oldest friend tells you that he is a murderer.
‘When I could get my hands out of his throat – it was as difficult as it is to drop the handles of a galvanic battery – he fell in a lump on the hearth-rug. And I saw what I’d done. How is it that murderers ever get found out?’
‘They’re careless, I suppose,’ I found myself saying, ‘they lose their nerve.’
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I never was calmer. I sat down in the big chair and looked at him, and thought it all out. He was just off to that island – I knew that. He’d said goodbye to everyone. He’d told me that. There was no blood to get rid of – or only a touch at the corner of his slack mouth. He wasn’t going to travel in his own name because of interviewers. Mr Somebody Something’s luggage would be unclaimed and his cabin empty. No one would guess that Mr Somebody Something was Sir George Visger, FRS. It was all as plain as plain. There was nothing to get rid of, but the man. No weapon, no blood – and I got rid of him all right.’
‘How?’
He smiled cunningly. ‘No, no,’ he said; ‘that’s where I draw the line. It’s not that I doubt your word, but if you talked in your sleep, or had a fever or anything. No, no. As long as you don’t know where the body is, don’t you see, I’m all right. Even if you could prove that I’ve said all this – which you can’t – it’s only the wanderings of my poor unhinged brain. See?’
I saw. And I was sorry for him. And I did not believe that he had killed Visger. He was not the sort of man who kills people. So I said:
‘Yes, old chap, I see. Now look here. Let’s go away together, you and I – travel a bit and see the world, and forget all about that beastly chap.’
His eyes lighted up at that.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘you understand. You don’t hate me and shrink from me. I wish I’d told you before – you know – when you came and I was packing all my sticks. But it’s too late now.’
‘Too late? Not a bit of it,’ I said. ‘Come, we’ll pack our traps and be off tonight – out into the unknown, don’t you know.’
‘That’s where I’m going,’ he said. ‘You wait. When you’ve heard what’s been happening to me, you won’t be so keen to go travelling about with me.’
‘But you’ve told me what’s been happening to you,’ I said, and the more I thought about what he had told me, the less I believed it.
‘No,’ he said, slowly, ‘no – I’ve told you what happened to him. What happened to me is quite different. Did I tell you what his last words were? Just when I was coming at him. Before I’d got his throat, you know. He said, “Look out. You’ll never to able to get rid of the body – Besides, anger’s sinful.” You know that way he had, like a tract on its hind legs. So afterwards I got thinking of that. But I didn’t think of it for a year. Because I did get rid of his body all right. And then I was sitting in that comfortable chair, and I thought, “Hullo, it must be about a year now, since that—” and I pulled out my pocket-book and went to the window to look at a little almanac I carry about – it was getting dusk – and sure enough it was a year, to the day. And then I remembered what he’d said. And I said to myself, “Not much trouble about getting rid of your body, you brute.” And then I looked at the hearth-rug and— Ah!’ he screamed suddenly and very loud – ‘I can’t tell you – no, I can’t.’
My man opened the door – he wore a smooth face over his wriggling curiosity. ‘Did you call, sir?’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I want you to take a note to the bank, and wait for an answer.’
When he was got rid of, Haldane said: ‘Where was I?—’
‘You were just telling me what happened after you looked at the almanac. What was it?’
‘Nothing much,’ he said, laughing softly, ‘oh, nothing much – only that I glanced at the hearth-rug – and there he was – the man I’d killed a year before. Don’t try to explain, or I shall lose my temper. The door was shut. The windows were shut. He hadn’t been there a minute before. And he was there then. That’s all.’
Hallucination was one of the words I stumbled among.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ he said triumphantly, ‘but – I touched it. It was quite real. Heavy, you know, and harder than live people are somehow, to the touch – more like a stone thing covered with kid the hands were, and the arms like a marble statue in a blue serge suit. Don’t you hate men who wear blue serge suits?’
‘There are hallucinations of touch too,’ I found myself saying.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ said Haldane more triumphant than ever, ‘but there are limits, you know – limits. So then I thought someone had got him out – the real him – and stuck him there to frighten me – while my back was turned, and I went to the place where I’d hidden him, and he was there – ah! – just as I’d left him. Only … it was a year ago. There are two of him there now.’
‘My dear chap,’ I said, ‘this is simply comic.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is amusing. I find it so myself. Especially in the night when I wake up and think of it. I hope I shan’t die in the dark, Winston: that’s one of the reasons why I think I shall have to kill myself. I could be sure then of not dying in the dark.’
‘Is that all?’ I asked, feeling sure that it must be.
‘No,’ said Haldane at once. ‘That’s not all. He’s come back to me again. In a railway carriage it was. I’d been asleep. When I woke up, there he was lying on the seat opposite me. Looked just the same. I pitched him out on the line in Red Hill tunnel. And if I see him again, I’m going out myself. I can’t stand it. It’s too much. I’d sooner go. Whatever the next world’s like,
there aren’t things in it like that. We leave them here, in graves and boxes and … You think I’m mad. But I’m not. You can’t help me – no one can help me. He knew, you see. He said I shouldn’t be able to get rid of the body. And I can’t get rid of it. I can’t. I can’t. He knew. He always did know things that he couldn’t know. But I’ll cut his game short. After all, I’ve got the ace of trumps, and I play it on his next trick. I give you my word of honour, Winston, that I’m not mad.’
‘My dear old man,’ I said, ‘I don’t think you’re mad. But I do think your nerves are very much upset. Mine are a bit, too. Do you know why I went to India? It was because of you and her. I couldn’t stay and see it, though I wished for your happiness and all that; you know I did. And when I came back, she … and you … Let’s see it out together,’ I said. ‘You won’t keep fancying things if you’ve got me to talk to. And I always said you weren’t half a bad old duffer.’
‘She liked you,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘she liked me.’
III
That was how we came to go abroad together. I was full of hope for him. He’d always been such a splendid chap – so sane and strong. I couldn’t believe that he was gone mad, gone for ever, I mean, so that he’d never come right again. Perhaps my own trouble made it easy for me to see things not quite straight. Anyway, I took him away to recover his mind’s health, exactly as I should have taken him away to get strong after a fever. And the madness seemed to pass away, and in a month or two we were perfectly jolly, and I thought I had cured him. And I was very glad because of that old friendship of ours, and because she had loved him and liked me.
We never spoke of Visger. I thought he had forgotten all about him. I thought I understood how his mind, over-strained by sorrow and anger, had fixed on the man he hated, and woven a nightmare web of horror round that detestable personality. And I had got the whip hand of my own trouble. And we were as jolly as sandboys together all those months.