A Silent Witness

by R. Austin Freeman

  Taken as a whole, I found private practice disappointing and soon began to wish myself back in the wards and to sigh for my quiet, solitary rambles on Hampstead Heath.

  Still, there were rifts in the cloud. Some of the patients appreciated the interest that I took in their cases, evidently contrasting it with the rather casual attitude of my principal, and some were positively friendly. But, in general, my reception was such as to make me slightly apprehensive whenever a new patient appeared.

  On the fourth evening after Batson’s departure, Mrs. Samway was announced and I prepared myself for the customary snub. But I was mistaken. Nothing could be more gracious than her manner towards me, though the object of her visit occasioned me some embarrassment. “I have called, Dr. Jardine.” she said, “to ask you if you could let me have the account for poor Mr. Maddock. My husband is the executor, you know, and, as we shall be going back to Paris quite shortly, he wants to get everything settled up.”

  I was in rather a quandary. Of the financial side of practice I was absolutely ignorant and I thought it best to say so. “But,” I added, “Dr. Batson will be back on Friday evening, if you can wait so long.”

  “Oh, that will do quite well,” she replied, “but don’t forget to tell him that we want the account at once.”

  I promised not to forget, and then remarked that she would, no doubt, be glad to be back in Paris. “No,” she answered, “I shall be rather sorry. Of course Camden Town is not a very attractive neighbourhood, but it is close to the heart of London; and then there are some delightful places near and quite accessible. There is Highgate, for instance.”

  “Yes; but it is getting very much built over, isn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately it is; but yet there are some very pleasant places left. The old village is still charming. So quaint and old world. And then there is Hampstead. What could be more delightful than the Heath? But perhaps you don’t know Hampstead?”

  “Oh, yes I do,” said I; “my rooms are at Gospel Oak, quite near the Heath, and I think I know every nook and corner of the neighbourhood. I am pining for a stroll on the Heath at this very moment.”

  “I daresay you are,” she said sympathetically. “This is a depressing neighbourhood if you can’t get away from it. We found it very dismal, at first, after Paris.”

  “Do you live in Paris?” I asked.

  “Not permanently,” she replied. “But we spend a good deal of time there. My husband is a dealer in works of art, so he has to travel about a good deal. That is how we came to know Mr. Maddock.”

  “He was a dealer too, wasn’t he?” I enquired.

  “Yes, in a way. But he had means of his own and his dealing was a mere excuse for collecting things that he was not going to keep. He had a passion for buying, and then he used to sell the things in order to buy more. But I am afraid I am detaining you with my chatter?”

  “No, not at all,” I said eagerly, only too glad to have an intelligent, educated person to talk to; “you are the last caller, and I hope I have finished my day’s work.”

  Accordingly she stayed quite a long time, chatting on a variety of subjects and finally on that of cremation. “I daresay,” she said, “it is more sanitary and wholesome than burial, but there is something rather dreadful about it. Perhaps it is because we are not accustomed to the idea.”

  “Did you go to the funeral?” I asked.

  “Yes. Mr. Maddock had no friends in England but my husband and me, so we both went. It was very solemn and awesome. The coffin was laid on the catafalque while a short service was read, and then two metal doors opened and it was passed through out of our sight. We waited some time and presently they brought us a little terra-cotta urn with just a handful or two of white ash in it. That was all that was left of our poor friend Septimus Maddock. Don’t you think it is rather dreadful?”

  “Death is always rather dreadful,” I answered. “But when we look at the ashes of a dead person, we realize the total destruction of the body; whereas the grave keeps its secrets. If we could look down through the earth and see the changes that are taking place, we should probably find the slow decay more shocking than the swift consumption by fire. Fortunately we cannot. But we know that the final result is the same in both.”

  Mrs. Samway shuddered slightly, and drew her wraps more closely about her. “Yes,” she said with a faint sigh; “the same end awaits us all—but it is better not to think about it.”

  We were both silent for awhile. I sat with my gaze bent rather absently on the case-book before me, turning over her last somewhat gloomy utterance, until, chancing to look up, I found her pale, penetrating eyes fixed on me with the same strange intentness that I had noticed when she had looked at me as I sat by the body of Maddock. As she met my glance, she looked down quickly but without confusion, and with a return to her habitual reposefulness.

  Half-unconsciously I returned her scrutiny. She was a remarkable-looking woman. A beautiful woman, too, but of a type that is, in our time and country, rare: an ancient or barbaric type in which womanly beauty and grace are joined to manifest physical strength. I felt that some unusual racial mixture spoke in her inconsistent colouring; her clear, pink skin, her pale eyes and the jet-black hair that rippled down either side of her low forehead in little crimpy waves, as regular and formal as the “archaic curls” of early Greek sculpture.

  But predominant over all other qualities was that of strength. Full and plump, soft and almost ultra-feminine, lissom and flexible in every pose and movement, yet, to me, the chief impression that her appearance suggested was strength—sheer, muscular strength; not the rigid bull-dog strength of a strong man, but the soft and supple strength of a leopard. I looked at her as she sat almost limply in her chair, with her head on one side, her hands resting in her lap and a beautiful, soft, womanly droop of the shoulders; and I felt that she could have started up in an instant, active, strong, formidable, like a roused panther.

  I was going on, I think, to make comparisons between her and that other woman who was wont to trip so daintily down Millfield Lane, when she raised her eyes slowly to mine; and suddenly she blushed scarlet. “Am I a very remarkable-looking person, Dr. Jardine?” she asked quietly, as if answering my thoughts.

  The rebuke was well merited. For an instant a paltry compliment fluttered on my lips; but I swallowed it down. She wasn’t that kind of woman. “I am afraid I have been staring you out of countenance, Mrs. Samway,” I said apologetically.

  “Hardly that,” she replied with a smile; “but you certainly were looking at me very attentively.”

  “Well,” I said, recovering myself, “after all, a cat may look at a king, you know.”

  She laughed softly—a very pretty, musical laugh—and rose, still blushing warmly. “And,” she retorted, “by the same reasoning, you think a king may look at a cat. Very well, Dr. Jardine. Good-night.”

  She held out her hand; a beautifully-shaped hand, though rather large—but, as I have said, she was not a small woman; and as it clasped mine, though the pressure was quite gentle, it conveyed, like her appearance, an impression of abundant physical strength.

  I accompanied her to the door and watched her as she walked up the dingy street with an easy, erect, undulating gait; even as might have walked those women who are portrayed for the wonder of all time on the ivory-toned marble of the Parthenon frieze. I followed with my eyes the dignified, graceful figure until it vanished round the corner, and then went back to the consulting-room dimly wondering why a woman of such manifest beauty and charm should offer little attraction to me.

  Batson’s practice, among its other drawbacks, suffered from a deadly lack of professional interest. Whether this was its normal condition, or whether his patients had got wind of me and called in other and more experienced practitioners, I know not; but certainly, after the stirring work of the hospital, the cases that I had to deal with seemed very small beer. Hence the prospect of a genuine surgical case came as a grateful surprise and I hailed it with e
nthusiasm.

  It was on the day before Batson’s expected return that I received the summons; which was delivered to me in a dirty envelope as I sat by the bedside of the last patient on my list. “Is the messenger waiting?” I asked, tearing open the envelope.

  “No, Doctor. He just handed in the note and went off. He seemed to be in a hurry.”

  I ran my eye over the message, scrawled in a rather illiterate hand on a sheet of common notepaper, and read:

  “SIR,

  “Will you please come at once to the Mineral Water Works in Norton Street. One of our men has injured himself rather badly.

  “Yours truly,

  “J. PARKER.

  “P.S.—He is bleeding a good deal, so please come quick.”

  The postscript gave a very necessary piece of information. An injury which bled would require certain dressings and surgical appliances over and above those contained in my pocket case; and to obtain these I should have to take Batson’s house on the way. Slipping the note into my pocket, I wished my patient a hasty adieu and strode off at a swinging pace in the direction of Jacob Street.

  The housemaid, Maggie, helped me to find the dressings and pack the bag—for she was a handy, intelligent girl though no beauty; and meanwhile I questioned her as to the whereabouts of Norton Street and the mineral water factory. “Oh, I know the place well enough, sir,” said she, “though I didn’t know the works were open. Norton Street is only a few minutes’ walk from here. It’s quite close to Gayton Street, in fact these works are just at the back of the Samway’s house. You go up to the corner by the market and take the second on the right and then—”

  “Look here, Maggie,” I interrupted, “you’d better come and show me the way, as you know the place. There’s no time to waste on fumbling for the right turning.”

  “Very well, sir,” she replied, and the bag being now packed with all necessary instruments and dressings, we set forth together. “Is this a large factory?” I asked, as she trotted by my side, to the astonished admiration of Jacob Street, and the neighbourhood in general.

  “No, sir,” she replied. “It’s quite a small place. The last people went bankrupt and the works were empty and to let for a long time. I thought they were still to let, but I suppose somebody has taken them and started the business afresh. It’s round here.”

  She piloted me round a corner into a narrow bystreet, near the end of which she halted at the gate of a yard or mews. Above the entrance was a weather-beaten board bearing the inscription, “International Mineral Water Company” and a half-defaced printed bill offering the premises to let; and at the side was a large bell-pull. A vigorous tug at the latter set a bell jangling within, and, as Maggie tripped away up the street, a small wicket in the gate opened, disclosing the dimly-seen figure of a man standing in the inner darkness. “Are you the doctor?” he inquired.

  I answered “Yes,” and, being thereupon bidden to enter, stepped through the opening of the wicket, which the man immediately closed, shutting out the last gleam of light from the street lamp outside. “It’s rather dark,” said the unseen custodian, taking me by the arm.

  “It is indeed,” I replied, groping with my feet over the rough cobbles; “hadn’t you better get a light of some kind?”

  “I will in a minute,” was the reply. “You see, all the other men have gone home. We close at six sharp. This is the way. I’ll strike a match. The man is down in the bottling-room.”

  My conductor struck a match by the light of which he guided me through a doorway, along a passage or corridor and down a flight of stone steps. At the bottom of the steps was a flagged passage, out of which opened what looked like a range of cellars. Along the passage I walked warily, followed by the stranger and lighted, very imperfectly, by the matches that he struck; the glimmer of which threw a gigantic and ghostly shadow of myself on the stone floor, but failed utterly to pierce the darkness ahead. I was exactly opposite the yawning doorway of one of the cellars when the match went out, and the man behind me exclaimed: “Wait a moment, Doctor! Don’t move until I strike another light.”

  I halted abruptly; and the next moment I received a violent thrust that sent me staggering through the open doorway into the cellar. Instantly, the massive door slammed and a pair of heavy bolts were shot in succession on the outside.

  “What the devil is the meaning of this?” I roared, battering and kicking furiously at the door. Of course there was no answer, and I quickly stopped my demonstrations, for it dawned on me in a moment that the factory was untenanted save by the ruffian who had admitted me; that I had been decoyed here of a set purpose, though what that purpose was I could not imagine.

  But it was not long before I received a pretty broad hint as to the immediate intentions of my host. A gentle thumping at the door of my cellar attracted my attention and caused me to lay my ear against the wood. The sound that I heard was quite unmistakable. The crevices of the door were being filled, apparently with pieces of rag, which my friend was ramming home, presumably with a chisel. In fact the door was being “caulked” to make the joints airtight.

  The object of this proceeding was clear enough. I was shut up in an air-tight cavity in which I was to be slowly suffocated. That was quite obvious. Why I was to be suffocated, I could form no sort of guess excepting that I had fallen into the hands of a homicidal lunatic. But I was not greatly alarmed. The air in a good-sized cellar will last a considerable time, and I could easily poke out anything that my friend might stuff into the keyhole. Then, when the men arrived in the morning, I could kick on the cellar door, and they would come and let me out. There was nothing to be particularly frightened about.

  Were there any men? The injured man was evidently a myth. Supposing the other men were a myth too? I recalled Maggie’s remark, that she “had thought the place was to let still.” Perhaps it was. That would be rather more serious.

  At this point my agitations were broken in upon by sounds from the adjoining cellar; the sound of someone moving about and dragging some heavy body. And it struck me at once as strange that I should hear these sounds so distinctly, seeing the massive door of my own cellar was sealed and the walls were of solid brick, as I ascertained by rapping at them with my knuckles. But I had no time to consider this circumstance, for there suddenly rose a new sound, whereat, I must confess my heart fairly came into my mouth; a loud, penetrating hiss like the shriek of escaping steam. It seemed to come from some part of the cellar in which I was immured; from a spot nearly overhead; and it was immediately echoed by a similar sound in the adjoining cellar and then by a third. Even as the last sound broke forth, the door of the adjoining cellar slammed, the bolts were shot and then faintly mingled with the discordant hissing. I could hear the dull thumping that told me that the cracks of that door, too, were being caulked.

  It was a frightful situation. The hissing sound was obviously caused by the escape of gas under high pressure, and that gas must be entering my cellar through some opening. I felt for my match-box, and, groping along the wall towards the point whence the loudest sound—and, indeed, all the sounds—proceeded, I struck a match. The glimmer of the wax vesta made everything clear. Close to the ceiling, about seven feet from the ground, was an opening in the wall about six inches square; and pouring through this in a continuous stream was a cloud of white particles that glistened like snowflakes. As I stood under the opening, some of them settled on my face; and the more than icy coldness of the contact, told the whole, horrible tale in a moment.

  This white powder WAS snow—carbonic acid snow. The hissing sound came from three of those great iron bottles, charged under pressure with liquified carbonic acid, which are used by mineral water manufacturers for aerating the water. The miscreant (or lunatic) who had imprisoned me had turned on the taps, and the liquid was escaping and turning into to snow with the cold produced by its own rapid evaporation and expansion. Of course the snow would quickly absorb heat, and, without again liquefying, evaporate into the gaseous form. In a v
ery short time both cellars would be full of the poisonous gas, and I—well, in a word, I was shut up in a lethal chamber.

  It has taken me some time to write this explanation, which, however, flashed through my brain in the twinkling of an eye as the light of the match fell on that sinister cloud of snowflakes. In a moment I had my coat off, and was stuffing it for dear life into the opening. It was but a poor protection against the gas, which would easily enough find its way through the interstices of the fabric; but it would stop the direct stream of snow and give me time to think.

  On what incalculable chances do the great issues of our lives depend! If I had been a short man I must have been dead in half an hour; for the opening through which the cloud of snow was pouring was well over seven feet above the floor and would have been quite out of my reach. Even as it was, with my six feet of stature and corresponding length of arm, it was impossible to ram my coat into the opening with the necessary force, for I had to stand close to the wall with my arm upraised at a great mechanical disadvantage. Still, as I have said, imperfect as the obstruction was, it served to stop the inrushing cloud of snow. It would take some time for the heavy gas in the adjoining cellar to rise to the level of the opening, and, meanwhile, I could be devising other measures.

  I lit another match and looked about me. The cellar was much smaller than I had thought and was absolutely empty. The floor was of concrete, the walls of rough brickwork and the ceiling of plaster, all cracked and falling in. There was plenty of ventilation there, but that was of no interest to me. Carbonic acid gas is so heavy that it behaves almost like a liquid, and it would have filled the cellar and suffocated me even if the top of my prison had been open to the sky. The adjoining cellar was already filling rapidly, and when the gas in it reached the level of the opening, it would percolate through my coat and come pouring down into my cellar. But that, as I have said, would take some time—if the dividing wall was moderately sound. This important qualification, as soon as it occurred to me, set me exploring the wall with the aid of another match; and very unsatisfactory was the result. It was a bad wall, built of inferior brick and worse mortar, and was marked by innumerable holes where wall-hooks and other fastenings had been driven in between the bricks. My brief survey convinced me that, so far from being gas-tight, the wall was as pervious as a sponge, and that whatever I meant to do to preserve my life, I must set about without delay.