by James Carnac
I admit that for a time I toyed with the idea that it was possible for me to cut that throat and escape detection, but common sense convinced me that even were the police not so omniscient as they were generally supposed to be, the fact that I was the person in closest contact with my uncle would arouse a certain suspicion in the dullest mind.
I remember very vividly how I wrestled with my strange inclination. Night after night I would lie sleepless upon my bed, tossing about in a hot, feverish condition, to fall asleep in the small hours of the morning into dreams in which the principal object of my oppression was a large, sleek, shining throat which gaped redly—like two other throats which I had seen.
The crisis came at last on one night after weeks of troubled thought. I arose from my bed at about two in the morning unreasoningly intent upon carrying out my project. The desire to cut that throat had suddenly become so over-whelming as to swamp entirely all thoughts of risk to myself and all recollections of kindness received from the old chap sleeping in the adjoining room. In a kind of unthinking deliberation I lit a candle and exchanged my night-shirt for my day-clothes. Although I say I was unthinking, I was obsessed by an adventurous expectation; a rather pleasant sensation of anticipation which was accompanied by a definite physical feeling, which it is almost impossible to describe, in the region of the solar plexus. I was in no hurry; I prolonged this sensation deliberately by dressing fully, even to my tie. But I finally drew around my neck a dark muffler, and put on my felt slippers.
Then I went to the chest of drawers and brought from beneath a pile of clothing where it had lain my father’s large scalpel. It glistened in the candle-light and I examined the edge; my desire received a fresh impetus as I realized (from memories of my hospital dissection) the feeling of satisfaction which would accrue as that keen edge sunk into the fat, shiny roll of my sleeping uncle’s throat. I blew out the candle and opened my window.
As I have previously mentioned, the verandah-like portico outside the house was approachable from my own as well as from my uncle’s room. I stepped out on to it and crept softly to my uncle’s window which, as I had supposed, was slightly open, for the time was midsummer. I made haste, for already there was a slight lightness in the sky and, in spite of my dark clothes, I feared that I might be seen if a policeman happened to be passing near. Softly raising the window sash I dropped into my uncle’s room.
For some minutes I stood in darkness, but as my eyes became accustomed to the light, I was able to make out my uncle’s bed and his form upon it. He was grossly snoring with a blowing, rattling sound. I stood beside him and looked down in the gloom.
But I could not see him clearly; the night was too dark. And I felt my deed would lack satisfaction unless I could see as well as feel my scalpel penetrating the goitre-like surface. A candle stood beside my uncle’s bed and, feeling around this, my hand encountered a box of matches; I resolved to light the candle, for even if this awoke him I needed but a fraction of time for one slash of my blade. Very cautiously I fumbled the match-box open and, striking a light, applied it to the wick of the candle. In the instant during which the wax around the wick melted and the light of the candle grew bright, the snoring abruptly ceased and, turning again to my uncle, I perceived that his eyes were wide open.
I think that the ensuing moment was the most dramatic I have experienced, not excluding, even, the phases of my later exploits. I stood looking down at my uncle, the scalpel poised at the level of my breast; he gazed fixedly up into my face. Our faces were hardly a yard apart. His first expression was one of extraordinary amazement, and this changed briefly into horror as he evidently read my purpose in my eyes; for my face, as well as his own, was in the full light of the bed-side candle. He uttered no sound, but lay and stared up at my face.
Had that expression of horror lingered, or had it changed to definite fear, I think I should have thrust my scalpel into the fat throat which lay exposed above the bed-clothes; but it was gone in an instant, giving place to another which strangely stayed my hand. I can describe it no more clearly than by saying it resembled that of an affectionate dog who has suddenly received an unexpected and undeserved kick from his master. It was surprised, pleading, altogether pathetic. Beneath that gaze the hand holding my blade slowly sank; and then I took a stumbling step backwards. My uncle’s unblinking eyes were still fixed upon my own and, unable to bear that reproachful scrutiny, I suddenly bent forward and blew out the candle, and stumbled towards the window. As I climbed through it I heard a low, shuddering sigh from the direction of the bed.
When I regained my own room I was trembling and covered in a cold perspiration. I leant against the chest of drawers and, allowing the scalpel to slip from my grasp, wiped my clammy hands on the sides of my coat. I stood there for an appreciable interval, gathering together my scattered wits and listening intently. But not a sound came to me from the room I had left. From the death-like silence I might have supposed that the deed had been actually done, my failure and retreat no more than a dream. The thought flashed across my muddled mind that the whole thing might have been a dream. Had I really crept into that room with the deliberate intent of cutting my benefactor’s throat?
But, standing there with an unaccustomed icy feeling at the back of my skull, I knew it was not a dream. My obsession had at last mastered me, and I perceived clearly that but one course was open to me—instant flight. Whether that course was dictated by my realized inability to face my uncle again, or whether I felt I was fleeing from my obsession, I do not know. But hastily and feverishly I lit my candle and began to thrust a few belongings into a leather bag which I dragged from beneath my bed. And as I fumbled I still strained my ears for any sound proceeding from my uncle’s room. I expected a sudden outcry, a hammering upon my door; was my uncle too amazed, too overcome by the revelation to move? Was he supposing he had dreamed? I did not know.
Within a space of a few minutes I had packed my bag, thrust within it the scalpel which I perceived lying upon the floor, and again climbed through the window. In what must have been almost a panic I slid and scrambled down the pillar of the portico, letting the bag drop before me. And then, with one glance towards my uncle’s dark window, I began to run.
The streets were quite deserted, and the eastern sky was flushing red with the promise of dawn.
Chapter 11
I had walked, I suppose, over a mile before I began to think coherently; I say “walked” but my progress must have been more in the nature of a blind rush unconscious of direction. I had no thought but to get away from the vicinity of my uncle’s house.
I have a dim recollection that the aching of my arm as a result of the bag I carried was the thing which ultimately dragged me back to reality. I know that I stayed my footsteps and leant against some railings. And then I gave way to uncontrollable laughter; I had suddenly seen the funny side of my adventure.
The remembrance of my uncle’s face no longer struck me as pathetic, but as grotesque. He must have had the surprise of his life. And he was probably still lying in bed waiting for morning in a state of funk, watching the window and wondering whether my head would suddenly appear round it. (Unless, of course, he had heard the sounds of my departure.) And all the time he was lying there sweating, afraid to move, I was a mile or more away. I was still chuckling over this when I perceived in the distance a figure approaching and, picking up my bag, I resumed my journey. The figure was that of an early workman, and he gave me and my bag a curious glance as he passed.
I was now sufficiently controlled to observe my surroundings and to think sensibly. I saw I had been walking towards London, and as this seemed as good a place to make for as any other, I had no reason to alter my direction. But as I went I pondered my future movements, and it occurred to me to examine my financial resources. Placing my bag on the pavement I examined the pocket book which, luckily, I had left in my coat pocket over-night. I knew there was a five-pound note there, but I
wanted to confirm this. My trouser-pockets yielded nothing, for it had been my habit to fold my trousers each night upon retiring and to hang them over a chair-back; and this necessitated emptying the pockets. But a waistcoat-pocket contained, I found, half a sovereign.
I was not dismayed by my shortage of ready cash, for I had a banking account at a Town branch of my uncle’s bank—more convenient to me by reason of my days spent in Town than a suburban branch would have been—and I knew that over fifty pounds lay to my credit. I had left my cheque-book behind, but I could easily obtain a fresh one and there seemed no reason why I should be unable to draw against my account. I felt quite confident that my uncle would take no steps against me, and, after all, what had I done which could not be explained as a joke?
It then occurred to me that I might very well return home, but on thinking this over I perceived that such a course would be impossible. Primarily it would be difficult for my uncle and myself to live comfortably together in the future; he would almost certainly regard me with a feeling of suspicion. Such a feeling is unavoidable between two persons, one of whom has betrayed a desire to cut the throat of the other. And it was highly probable that my uncle would suspect an outbreak of insanity on my part and insist on having me “seen to” by doctors. But the factor which finally decided me against a return home was the realization that were I to do so I should, sooner or later, cut my uncle’s throat. I knew instinctively that I could no longer live with that sleek, goitre-like throat. In this particular matter I could no longer rely upon my strength to withstand temptation.
And, on the whole, I was not sorry to enter upon a period of absolute freedom. I was tired of my medical studies, which had lost their first novelty, and although nothing more than a merely conventional restraint had ever been exercised over me by my uncle, I had not, in the past, experienced the sense of absolute freedom which I now did—the knowledge that I could do absolutely whatever I pleased without question from any person.
That afternoon I deposited my bag at a small London hotel, but I did not spend the night there. I slept in the bed of a young person I encountered in Shaftesbury Avenue.
—
Having definitely decided not to return to my uncle’s house, or to my medical studies, I took two rooms in a street off Tottenham Court Road. The district was then a sordid one, but my particular street consisted largely of houses which had not long since been in the occupation of “gentlefolks” and had not yet fallen into actual degradation. Most of them were tenanted by women who let rooms to young men of the student class; my landlady’s name was Mrs. Brooks and my two rooms were on the first floor of her house. Mrs. Brooks was a kindly and rather casual old soul with a tippling husband who was employed in some minor capacity at the Olympic Theatre in Wych Street.
Within a week of settling in these rooms, I received, through my bankers, a letter from my uncle. He begged me to return home and he wrote in terms of sorrow but with no word of reproach. “I found this,” he wrote, “with your poor father’s papers. I was not going to let you see it, but as things are I think you had better know. I am afraid it is in your blood, my poor boy, but do come and talk things over.” He concluded with a vague hope as to the possibility of a doctor being able to “do something” and with a further pleading to me to come home.
“This” was a document in my father’s handwriting in the form of a genealogical tree and I reproduce it here as it was set out.
This document astonished me, containing as it did information at which my father had never even hinted. I was also rather pleasantly excited to learn of my descent from such a famous—or should I say infamous?—family; but at the same time I experienced a vague uneasiness. I perceived the drift of my uncle’s remarks; he supposed I had an hereditary taint. Ever since he had discovered the document he had doubtless suspected the possibility of such a taint and he must have regarded the homicidal outbreak of my father as tending to confirm his suspicion. Had the poor old chap been even waiting in dread for some similar manifestation of abnormality on my part? I felt pretty certain that he had. In a flash of imaginative insight, I experienced a real sympathy for my uncle.
In the light of this document I could fully understand what my uncle’s point of view may have been, but I resisted the lurking suspicion that he was right. I tried to laugh it away as being too grotesque for serious consideration. Within limits I was prepared to admit that my reactions to certain phenomena, such as the shedding of blood, were peculiar; that there might be a connection between those peculiarities and the fact that I came of a long line of executioners and torturers I perceived as a possibility. But I was not prepared to subscribe to the doctrine of heredity beyond a certain point. Never, I told myself, would I believe that I, the master of my own actions, the author of my individual feelings and emotions, was a mere puppet manipulated by the dead hands of my ancestors. The idea, I rammed into myself, was preposterous. I refused to entertain it. Why, the alleged genealogical tree might even be a work of imagination on the part of my father.
I may say that in later years I made the half-hearted attempt to confirm that tree. Owing to the difficulty of conducting my researches, which involved reference to documents lodged in a foreign country, I did not get very far; but I must confess I was unable to discover any discrepancies in my father’s document. Up to a point, at least, it seemed perfectly correct.
—
After some hesitation I replied to my uncle’s letter, for it seemed callous to ignore it entirely. I was fully conscious of his past kindness to me, but I realized with absolute conviction the unwisdom of attempting to live again within the very circle of temptation. So my reply was evasive and concerned mainly with thanks to him for his care and kindness.
I never saw him again and he died two years later.
Part 2
Chapter 12
In the summer of the year 1888 I was living in rooms in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. I shall not mention the number of the house, but it is one on the right-hand side as one walks towards the Market. My landlady was an elderly widow, rather stout, very talkative, but a kindly and motherly soul. She kept my rooms spotlessly clean; mainly by her personal efforts, for although a young maid-of-all-work lurked somewhere in the lower recesses of the building, her contact with the “gentlemen” (i.e., I and my fellow lodger) was limited to the carrying of coals, water-jugs and heavy trays, and the cleaning and returning of boots. Mrs. D., my landlady, dusted, made my bed and carried in and arranged my meals.
Of her two lodgers I was, I think, regarded by Mrs. D. with the most consideration, for I was financially independent; and the moneyed drone is always, in this world, treated with more respect than the worker. In the popular view the possession of money would seem to postulate intrinsic merit in the possessor. I had inherited my uncle’s savings in addition to my father’s money, and the combined capital was, and is, sufficient to provide me with a comfortable income.
Technically I was, I suppose, a drone, but my time was fully occupied. I did not live the life of the “young man about town”; I was neither dissipated nor extravagant. Although a comparatively young man, I took little pleasure in the flippancies of youth; my disposition was that of the student, and reading and drawing were my principal interests.
I kept up my drawing. I have never had occasion to practise as a professional artist and am quite aware that such proficiency as I now possess is no more than that of the average industrious amateur. I am not even sure that the drawings I have made for this book reach the standard of merit expected by a publisher.
In pursuit of my hobby of drawing I explored many parts of London and particularly the East End. I was attracted by the grotesque and the macabre, but never by the “pretty-pretty.” I take more pleasure in drawing a leprous, tumble-down building enveloped in the sinister shadows of a London slum than I do in depicting a sun-lit haystack with cows in the foreground. Owing to the impracticality of setting u
p an easel in a crowded East End street I had to learn to rely upon my memory assisted by rapid, rough jottings made on the spot, and to work out my actual drawings at home.
I grew thoroughly familiar with the East End of London; the grimy, dilapidated houses packed with grotesque caricatures of humanity seemed to hold a message for me and yet I could not interpret that message. Fantastic stirrings of what seemed a remote memory moved me as I loafed about brooding over these mucoid and decaying tenements; they recalled a vague familiarity as though in a remote and nearly forgotten past I had lived and wandered among them. Yet I seemed to recall that the houses had once been taller, more angular; leaning outwards and precariously balanced one against the other; fantastically lit by sharp, angular patches of bluish moonlight and yellow splashes from drunken-looking lamps suspended from the walls. And as I stood in a street letting my imagination—or memory—range about the scene before me, there would come to my ears the sound of muttering, gnomish voices with snatches of guttural song. Not the cockney and Yiddish intonations with which the street really resounded, but something stranger and even more foreign than those mixed dialects. And in the course of time one voice slowly developed and separated itself from the muttered unintelligibility until I began to recognize it above the undertones of my imagination and even above the actual, existing chatter and uproar of the Whitechapel streets.