Fingers of Fear

by J. U. Nicolson

  For a long time I sat still in the chair I had chosen. So much had happened during the past twenty-four hours, and so many changes had taken place in my consciousness, that my life as I had known it up to yesterday seemed strange and remote. How long had it been since I had seen Muriel and heard her voice? It was only by an effort that I recalled having deliberately put her out of mind. I had done that when Gray came into it. And now Gray herself had become impossible. In the choppy seas of emotion that tossed my soul that night, I could steer no straight course. There was no beacon anywhere. I felt small and ineffectual and was afraid deep within myself. Tomorrow I must take leave of Ormesby, let the mad Gray plead with me as she might. If I remained here, I doubted that I myself should long retain the thing called sanity.

  Slowly I became oppressed by a feeling that I was being watched. I sat very still and rigid in my chair. I listened. Yes! Yes! There was no mistake about it. Water dripped somewhere near me, as it had dripped from Gray’s wet coat on the bare steps outside. I arose and went into the bathroom. It was not there. The taps were all properly shut off and dry. The little room was tiled from floor to ceiling and the floor was itself of tile. There was no opening anywhere, save the one small window, and this, when I examined it, was fast shut and locked. No water of the late rain had entered around it. I returned into the chamber, determined to sit still no longer in a chair, waiting for the dawn. I was resolved to learn how beings could enter my room and look at and kiss me without having come through the door or a window.

  I had resumed my shoes and shirt. I now went to the clothes closet, which contained the third door opening into my room. There was a lamp in there, which I now lighted. The closet was about seven feet long by two in depth. There was not one suspicious thing to be seen there. The walls had been painted a light gray. They were common plastered walls. Hooks for clothing ranged completely around them, from one side of the door to the other. These hooks were empty of clothing. I had hung nothing of my own there, since I possessed no other outer garments than those I stood in and my underthings and shirts were in a drawer of the walnut bureau across the room. I was on the point of turning away. Then I saw the little pool of water on the floor. A red gleam of the light made me think, for a moment, that it was blood!

  So Gray had been here! She had not removed her wet clothing, but had entered this closet in some way. That way lay toward the wall on my right—which would have been the wall on my left had I been facing the closet door from within the room proper. Under the light of the lamp I could make out a tiny stream of water leading in that direction from the pool. Well, if she could come to me that way, then I could go by the same route to her. And I would. I wanted only matches, which were to be taken from a pocket of my coat. Gray was not mad, then. Gray was as sane as I, if she was ever sane; or else she was not sane, ever, but was veritably as mad as a wolf, even when she appeared to be most rational. There was no alternative.

  And yet . . . it might have been Hobbs. Why not? I did not like the fellow’s looks. Why should he not have come here, spying upon me, even though he could not have supposed I had anything about me of value great enough to motivate an attempt at robbery? But now that I had a clue to some of the mysterious doings in this house, I was in mood to follow it to a conclusion, let it lead me whither it would.

  Matches in hand I approached the wall toward the north. And it may be well here to explain that this clothes closet had been placed in the room comparatively recently. By that I mean, it had not been originally built into either the north or the south wall of the chamber, in one or the other of which it ought naturally to have been placed. But that wall dividing the room from the hallway had been later doubled, so that the closet lay between them. I had already observed, without having given it any thought, that my door did not open directly from hall to chamber, but gave into a short passage of not quite three feet in length. But when I had come to the north wall of the closet, I found it to be as solid as any wall could be. Then in an instant, turning about as I did to examine my whereabouts, my elbow pressed against what I had assumed to be an area of solid masonry to the eastward, but which now gave way before the pressure. What had appeared to be plaster, to a hasty glance, turned out to be no more than a curtain of heavy canvas, painted or stained to resemble the walls about it. Beyond it was a narrow passage which led away from the closet for a distance of perhaps twelve feet, as nearly as I could estimate it by the light of burning matches. It then appeared to end. But I could not be sure that it did not turn abruptly to the right, though this could not have been, since such a turning must have brought me again into my own room. The passage before me was very narrow, being barely wide enough to permit me to traverse it without sidling. And at the end of it I saw that the turn was to be made to the left, not to the right; and when I had placed my hand against a second canvas curtain there, and had darted under it, I found myself inside a second closet, similar in all essentials to the first. There was an electric lamp within it, depending by a cord from the ceiling. I turned it on, then opened the door, cautiously and half expecting to surprise my spying visitor in the room beyond.

  But the room was empty. It was, moreover, almost bare of furniture, save for a green old faded carpet on the floor and for a large portrait hanging upon the wall directly before my face. That portrait seemed to be well worth examining, though I could not do so by any better light than the indirect one from within the closet. Even so, however, I saw plainly that it was the portrait of a smiling man, and I had no slightest doubt that it was the representation of Gray’s and Ormond’s father. Certainly the fellow was an Ormes. There were the same asymmetrical face, the same curious yellow eyes, the same features, handsome and yet not handsome, which had become somewhat blurred in Ormond’s puffy countenance, but remained clear-cut and distinct in the younger Gray’s. I cannot render a good description of the yellow eyes. I suppose the man who painted them could not have put his impression of them into clear wording. But he had caught with his brush, more surely than anyone could have done it in speech, the very look that the creature’s eyes must have held in life, since it was the look I had more than once seen tonight in his crazy daughter’s. I had no long time to devote to my examination of this madman, this fiend who tore out the throats of helpless women and sucked their gushing blood and fed upon their living flesh. Just to the right of the portrait was a narrow door. I was about to open it, thinking to find it leading into another closet, when something about the eyes of the portrait caused me to pause. They had followed every movement I had made in the room. So much I had previously seen, noting it with the slight shudder one feels upon making such a discovery in a portrait. But where they had been yellow now they were red! I looked again. There was no doubt of it. The light was not of the best, cut partially off, as it was, by reason that the closet door would not fully open back to the wall. Nevertheless it was quite sufficient for me to see that the color of the eyes in that portrait had changed—unless I had been mistaken in thinking them yellow upon first seeing them. And I did not think I had been mistaken. But that was by no means all! As I stared fixedly at those red and reddening eyes, I grew conscious that they were alive! They moved, at least, and they stared down upon me with a malignity that surely was more, or less, than human. I felt my blood growing cold beneath it. My impulse was to turn back along the way I had come, seeking the safety of my own room, which would at least hold me concealed from that vindictive hate. Unless . . . unless it had been this stare that I had felt upon me as I sat in the chair in my room . . .

  Yet to my own credit be it said, I did not give way to that impulse. I struggled with my terror and overcame it to the extent of dashing to the narrow door I have mentioned and wrenching it open. I had come so far; I was not going to be turned back until I had explored this secret means of communication to its end. At my feet was a flight of winding metal stairs. The blackness down there was absolute. I lighted another match and peered down into
it. Need I say that I hesitated? that I dreaded going into that yawning silent darkness? Yet the spirit of the chase was in my blood. I had set out to learn the secret of how the person who had kissed my throat had gained access to me, and I had learned it. That mystery had been dispelled. Now it appeared that I might be upon the heels of something more. I went down the winding stairs—they were of wrought iron, and the brick walls had been built around them—until I came to the bottom. There was another door there. It also was very narrow, of unpainted pine boards, and it hung upon hinges that allowed it to swing in either direction past its frame. It was unfastened; indeed, there was no catch anywhere wherewith to fasten it. Passing through it my match went out, and I had some difficulty in striking another. At last I had a light. Then I knew that I had solved the mystery of the disappearance of the Lady in Mauve.

  For I had entered the library and I was in a passage that ran straight toward the fireplace in the middle of the north wall of that great room. On my right, as I stood there, were the fixed bookshelves, which were not here so deep as to reach quite back to the wall, as they appeared to do from the front. And so the Lady had been, after all, a mortal woman, and she had entered this passage through the panel which I now plainly made out before me. It opened to my pressure on a handle of wrought iron, sliding quite noiselessly toward the fireplace for a distance of what I judged to be just one foot. I stepped into the opening, intent on learning how the panel could be operated from the other side. Then I started swiftly back, dragging the door to behind me with all the force of which I was capable.

  A lamp in the library had been lighted just before my face. And I had seen the most horrible sight I had ever looked upon. Gray Ormes stood there, facing the panel, distant from it not above five feet. She was entirely naked. Her hair was unbound and it was tumbled wildly over her face and shoulders and matted heavily against her breasts. From head to foot she glistened filthily with sweat or with water, I could not tell which. Her eyes were not human. Her face was no longer anything but the face of a brute. In that instant I had seen that her eyes were red with the unholy fire of a wolf’s eyes—or of those of the portrait on the wall upstairs—and that her face was writhen and twisted out of all semblance to humanity. The wide and heavy mouth was covered with blood, which had flowed in thin streams from the corners of it, dripping into the already matted hair upon the breasts. And when I stepped into the opening, she flung her dripping arms out toward me and burst into such laughter as I pray that I shall never hear again this side the grave.

  I turned and ran, though I have no memory of doing so. It was the second time that night I had run from this mad Thing. Somehow I gained past the portrait, the eyes of which bored into my back as I crossed that chamber. I darted through the closets and the passage and into my room. I was just in time! Sickness overwhelmed me almost before I could come to my bathroom.

  For I knew that the woman I had looked upon was not bleeding from any wound of her own. She had been gorging herself on living flesh and blood!

  VII

  What a fine thing it would be if one could act as reason tells him he should have acted—reason in retrospect! I might have done so many brave things that night. I might have flung myself upon the madwoman, overpowered her, and carried her, in spite of struggling, to her own room, locking her within it. I might have aroused the servants to help me subdue her. I might even have telephoned for the police. I did none of those things. When my nausea had in some part abated, I went and lay down across my bed, waiting for something of calm to return to my nerves and something of courage to my heart. That action must be taken, and that without much delay, I knew well enough. But I was not yet ready for action. And today, looking backward, I am not at all sure that my inaction did not prove to be as wise, in the end, as anything I could have done immediately.

  But an insane person was at large in the house. Someone had already suffered as her victim. Something must be done to curb her frenzy before another, perhaps a greater, crime should have been perpetrated. I arose from off my bed and went out into the hallway, where I stood, as I had so often stood that night, listening for a sound to inform me of what went on. The motion cleared my dazed head somewhat. Gradually I realized that someone in that house had been hurt, that I must investigate the matter at once, since I perhaps was the only inmate of the place, not counting Gray, who knew of it. Moreover, if someone had been killed, then I did not purpose to lend myself to any such hugger-mugger burial as had taken place in the case of that elder Ormes and the wife whom he had butchered with his teeth.

  The light at the head of the staircase burned steadily. No sound disturbed the stillness of the house and of the night outside; stillness that had succeeded to the storm. I tiptoed to Agnes’s door and bent my ear against it, assuring myself that I had heard her regular and quiet breathing. Then I went softly to that door which Ormes had indicated as opening into his aunt’s chamber. Listening there, I could at first hear nothing. But then I caught a faint sobbing and moaning. Was the aunt weeping now, as Agnes had wept earlier that night? There was no doubt that I had heard a sound, but now I knew that it was not a sound of weeping. Behind the door a woman moaned in pain, or in mortal terror. I knocked loudly, careless of who might hear. There was no reply from within. I turned the handle of the door. It opened, and I saw that the chamber was in darkness. But now, from one corner of it, I plainly heard the gasping and groaning of a human being. I groped for the button of the electric switch, found it and pressed it. A lamp in the ceiling flung out its swift white light. And away in one corner of the sparsely furnished room, huddled upon a wretched pallet that seemed to have been made of dirty blankets over a heap of straw, was the blood-stained body of a woman. It was Alice Hobbs.

  She was yet alive, though not conscious. Her throat had been severely torn, but the blood did not leap from the wounds as it must have done had an artery or one of the jugular veins been severed. I judged that her fainting condition had been induced by shock and fright as much as by the ragged gashes in her throat. For even with my first glance I had seen, though I was no physician, that her throat had been torn open as if by teeth, not cut by any keen instrument.

  This, then, was Gray’s victim. She had pitched upon this poor servant, who had been privy to so much of horror already in that house of fear. Alice Hobbs, who had known of the manner in which the elder Ormes had killed his wife and sought to kill his sister, now lay before me, wounded and bleeding from an attack by that man-wolf’s crazed and blood-hungry daughter.

  But I did not believe that her life was in any immediate danger. And I do believe that I said a silent prayer of thankfulness that Gray had not succeeded in murdering her. But where was Hobbs, her husband? Why had he not known of this thing?

  All this passed through my mind during the second or so that I knelt at the woman’s side, examining the superficial wound in her neck and making sure that her half-naked body was not otherwise injured. It appeared not to be, save for some long jagged scratches on her arms and shoulders.

  Then I leaped to my feet and ran to Agnes’s room. I knocked, but I did not wait for her to awaken out of sleep and ask my business. I opened the door and entered. Alone as I was in the house, save for Hobbs, with these mad and merely silly women, I knew that I dared take more seeming liberties without reproof than if there had been another man present. So I entered Agnes Ormes’s room and approached her bed, grasping her by a shoulder and shaking her roughly out of sleep. She sat up in the bed, raising her arms so that the filmy nightgown fell away from them and from her throat, and she would have screamed had I not clapped a hand swiftly across her mouth.

  “It’s I, Seaverns. Hush! You must get up and come with me to the back room . . . yonder. Someone’s been hurt. I don’t think the servants ought to know. Miss Gray——”

  “Gray?” She was blinking rapidly and striving to grasp the import of what I was telling her. “Gray hurt? Huh? No? Barb
ara hurt? Call Gray at once!”

  It appeared that, hate the girl as she might, even Agnes turned to her in emergencies.

  “Don’t you understand? Gray’s . . . it was Gray that hurt her. Get out of bed. Hurry! Don’t take time to dress.”

  I left her and went back into the hall, waiting outside the door for her to join me. In a couple of seconds she did so, drawing a silk kimono over her shoulders as she came. But when we had entered the miserable room in which the sufferer lay and she had seen the bloody blankets and the torn flesh, I was sorry that I had not allowed this useless creature to sleep on, summoning another to my aid in her place.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” she muttered, standing several feet away from the wounded woman and lifting up her huge white arms in what I suppose she assumed to be an effectively dramatic gesture.

  “Come on, help me with her,” I ordered. “We must get her out of here and into a decent bed. How’d she come to be here?”

  “Gray,” whimpered Agnes. “I’ll go get Gray.”

  “Don’t you understand?” I demanded, roughly, seizing her wrist and shaking her as I might have been tempted to shake a refractory child. “It was Gray who did this. Gray’s crazy, insane, blood mad. Leave her out of it. We’ll be lucky if we can keep her quiet till daylight. Then I’ll fetch the authorities and have her taken away. But get busy, you! Fetch me some towels, bandages, disinfectants and clean water. Hurry! Or tell me where to find ’em.”