A Bottomless Grave

  ‘The ghost has scored off me,’ he said, with an odd, sullen laugh, ‘but now I fancy it’s my turn! But before we adjourn to the Museum to examine the place, I will ask you to let me hear your notion of things. You have been right in saying there was real danger. For myself I can only tell you that I felt something spring upon me, and I knew no more. Had this not happened I am afraid I should never have asked you a second time what your idea of the matter might be,’ he added with a sort of sulky frankness.

  ‘There are two main indications,’ replied Low. ‘This strip of yellow bandage, which I have just now picked up from the passage floor, and the mark on your neck.’

  ‘What’s that you say? Swaffam rose quickly and examined his neck in a small glass beside the mantelshelf.

  ‘Connect those two, and I think I can leave you to work it out for yourself,’ said Low.

  ‘Pray let us have your theory in full,’ requested Swaffam shortly.

  ‘Very well,’ answered Low good–humouredly—he thought Swaffam’s annoyance natural in the circumstances—‘The long, narrow figure which seemed to the Professor to be armless is developed on the next occasion. For Miss Van der Voort sees a bandaged arm and a dark hand with gleaming—which means, of course, gilded—nails. The clicking sound of the footsteps coincides with these particulars, for we know that sandals made of strips of leather are not uncommon in company with gilt nails and bandages. Old and dry leather would naturally click upon your polished floor.’

  ‘Bravo, Mr Low! So you mean to say that this house is haunted by a mummy!’

  ‘That is my idea, and all I have seen confirms me in my opinion.’

  ‘To do you justice, you held this theory before to–night—before, in fact, you had seen anything for yourself. You gathered that my father had sent home a mummy, and you went on to conclude that I had opened the case?’

  ‘Yes. I imagine you took off most of, or rather all, the outer bandages, thus leaving the limbs free, wrapped only in the inner bandages which were swathed round each separate limb. I fancy this mummy was preserved on the Theban method with aromatic spices, which left the skin olive-coloured, dry and flexible, like tanned leather, the features remaining distinct, and the hair, teeth, and eyebrows perfect.’

  ‘So far, good,’ said Swaffam. ‘But now, how about the intermittent vitality? The pustule on the neck of those whom it attacks? And where is our old Baelbrow ghost to come in?’

  Swaffam tried to speak in a rallying tone, but his excitement and lowering temper were visible enough, in spite of the attempts he made to suppress them.

  ‘To begin at the beginning,’ said Flaxman Low, ‘everybody who, in a rational and honest manner, investigates the phenomena of spiritism will, sooner or later, meet in them some perplexing element, which is not to be explained by any of the ordinary theories. For reasons into which I need not now enter, this present case appears to me to be one of these. I am led to believe that the ghost which has for so many years given dim and vague manifestations of its existence in this house is a vampire.’

  Swaffam threw back his head with an incredulous gesture.

  ‘We no longer live in the middle ages, Mr Low! And besides, how could a vampire come here?’ he said scoffingly.

  ‘It is held by some authorities on these subjects that under certain conditions a vampire may be self–created. You tell me that this house is built upon an ancient barrow, in fact, on a spot where we might naturally expect to find such an elemental psychic germ. In those dead human systems were contained all the seeds for good and evil. The power which causes these psychic seeds or germs to grow is thought, and from being long dwelt on and indulged, a thought might finally gain a mysterious vitality, which could go on increasing more and more by attracting to itself suitable and appropriate elements from its environment. For a long period this germ remained a helpless intelligence, awaiting the opportunity to assume some material form, by means of which to carry out its desires. The invisible is the real; the material only subserves its manifestation. The impalpable, reality already existed, when you provided for it a physical medium for action by unwrapping the mummy’s form. Now, we can only judge of the nature of the germ by its manifestation through matter. Here we have every indication of a vampire intelligence touching into life and energy the dead human frame. Hence the mark on the neck of its victims, and their bloodless and anaemic condition. For a vampire, as you know, sucks blood.’

  Swaffam rose, and took up the lamp.

  ‘Now, for proof,’ he said bluntly. ‘Wait a second, Mr Low. You say you fired at this appearance?’ And he took up the pistol which Low had laid down on the table.

  ‘Yes, I aimed at a small portion of its foot which I saw on the step.’

  Without more words, and with the pistol still in his hand, Swaffam led the way to the Museum.

  The wind howled round the house, and the darkness, which precedes the dawn, lay upon the world, when the two men looked upon one of the strangest sights it has ever been given to men to shudder at.

  Half in and half out of an oblong wooden box in a corner of the great room, lay a lean shape in its rotten yellow bandages, the scraggy neck surmounted by a mop of frizzled hair. The toe strap of a sandal and a portion of the right foot had been shot away.

  Swaffam, with a working face, gazed down at it, then seizing it by its tearing bandages, he flung it into the box, where it fell into a life–like posture, its wide, moist-lipped mouth gaping up at them.

  For a moment Swaffam stood over the thing; then with a curse he raised the revolver and shot into the grinning face again and again with a deliberate vindictiveness. Finally he rammed the thing down into the box, and, clubbing the weapon, smashed the head into frag–ments with a vicious energy that coloured the whole horrible scene with a suggestion of murder done.

  Then, turning to Low, he said:

  ‘Help me to fasten the cover on it.’

  ‘Are you going to bury it?’

  ‘No, we must rid the earth of it,’ he answered savagely. ‘I’ll put it into the old canoe and burn it.’

  The rain had ceased when in the daybreak they carried the old canoe down to the shore. In it they placed the mummy case with its ghastly occupant, and piled faggots about it. The sail was raised and the pile lighted, and Low and Swaffam watched it creep out on the ebb-tide, at first a twinkling spark, then a flare and waving fire, until far out to sea the history of that dead thing ended 3000 years after the priests of Armen had laid it to rest in its appointed pyramid.

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