Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled than enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very eccentric acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man’s hard face and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could not be lost upon an impressionable temperament, besides that force of will or character which had dominated the young mind from the first. He began to wish the interview at an end — to be able to talk about it as the extraordinary sequel of an extraordinary adventure — yet he would not have cut it short at this point if he could.

  “I grant you,” continued the doctor, “that the final flight of soul from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits pass it would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still to be educated up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain to initiate such education. I have applied for perfectly private admission to hospital deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons. My applications have been peremptorily refused.”

  Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.

  “You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the little old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.

  “Why not?” asked the other in wide wonder. “But as I am not allowed,” he continued in lighter key, “I have to do the best I can. If I cannot be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or two! And now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and then I take my chance.”

  “They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” remarked Pocket, looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.

  The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the brighter for their partial eclipse.

  “This morning,” he rejoined, “was like no other. I owe you some confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this morning — thanks to you!”

  “Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do you mean to say I — you took me — walking —— ?”

  “You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. “Wait one minute.”

  He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double doors in an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there. Running water and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his absence, but the boy was thinking of another sound. The doctor before leaving had discarded a black alpaca jacket, light as a pocket handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to recall by contrast the noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak. The lad was promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he was within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in his hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all was ready.

  Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would simply have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double doors within been in use; these being shut, the space behind made a separate chamber which again reminded the schoolboy of his study, that smallest of small rooms. This one was as narrow, only twice the length. One end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot like Mephistopheles.

  “This is something like a dark-room!” exclaimed the lad as the door was shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred by shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as the doctor’s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives and stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry copper.

  Everything was perfection from a photographer’s standpoint; the boy felt instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of water. All he had ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was here in this little paradise of order and equipment. The actual work, he felt, would be a secondary consideration in such a workshop; the mere manipulation of such stoppered bottles as his host was handling now, the choice of graduated phials, the wealth of trays and dishes, would have been joy enough for him. He watched the favoured operator with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to reduce the light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they trembled with excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket remembered how extravagant an image was expected on that plain pink surface.

  He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose excitement and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket had come into the dark-room wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind him when they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?

  Pocket said to himself, “Where am I, by the way?” and bent lower to see. His ear touched the doctor’s; it heard the doctor breathing as though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but not walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass. “When did you get me?” asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face paid no attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with beads of blood.

  “There! there! there!” croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato. Pocket could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host — the one gentle thing about him. “You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else, hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.”

  The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had choked out its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between fingers that most distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the hyposulphite, and pulled up the blind. The sun shone again through the tall window, blood-red as before; grass and sky were as richly incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited for the fixing-bath to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still pronounced it. “And I owe it to you, my young fellow!” This he said again and again, aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last and held it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the schoolboy never forgot.

  “Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.”

  Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him momentarily blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again. Pocket thought him careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it was held up an instant to the naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred fragments in the porcelain trough.

  Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back into the drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have been a minute before their eyes met again; the doctor’s were calm and cold and critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he said, and nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go upstairs; and if his young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought as a physician it might do him good.

  AN AWAKENING

  It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands. There was a third person, and only a t
hird, at table in the immature shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss Platts, and addressed as Phillida.

  Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table attentions to her uncle and his guest.

  Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook his head and smiled.

  “Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no good at real games.”

  The statement was too true, but not the preference.

  “That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the doctor’s comment.

  Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve himself in lengthy explanations. He had two types of listener — the dry and the demure — to all he said.

  “And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner when he got a chance.

  “But it wasn’t their fault that I — —”

  Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again. Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.

  “I suppose there are a number of young men at your — establishment?” said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.

  “There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.

  “And how many keepers do they require?”

  A grin apologised for the word.

  “There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school from a mad German doctor.

  “And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”

  “Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.

  “Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”

  Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for him to go to Welbeck Street.

  “Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big easy-chair.

  “Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”

  “But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for such an emergency.”

  “He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use taking it now. It’s meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep out.”

  And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done, when the other doctor cut him short once more.

  “But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair; nobody will come in.”

  Pocket shook his head.

  “I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”

  “Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door. That will give you a good two hours.”

  Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first bottle under the bush.

  “Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”

  “I shall be in again.”

  “Then it is a promise?”

  Pocket would have liked it in black and white.

  “Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”

  It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign accents of Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased deliciously in the cosy chair.

  Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.

  “I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”

  “A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by taking out his watch.

  “A quarter to twelve, you mean!”

  “No — six.”

  And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.

  “You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve broken your word, sir!”

  “Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.

  “I believe you were waiting for me to wake — to catch my soul, or some rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

  “I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best — to make up for my bad night — you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”

  “You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.

  “I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school. I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!”

  “You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

  “What about?”

  Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his gre
y face:

  “Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in town about it.”

  “Do tell me what, sir!”

  “Can you face things, my young fellow?”

  “Is it about my people — my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral in a flash.

  “No — yourself.”

  “Then I can!”

  The doctor overcame his final hesitation.

  “Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”

  “Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”

  “Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there in the wet grass?”

  “I thought he was drunk.”

  “He was dead!”

  Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But then he had not even known the man was dead.

  Had the doctor?

  Yes.

  Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another question first.

  “What did he die of?”

  “A bullet!”