The Dream of X and Other Fantastic Visions

by William Hope Hodgson; Douglas A. Anderson

  “Do you happen, Mister Mac Ghee, to recognize these?” he asked, with a grin of somewhat savage triumph; for he felt himself at last within touch of “putting away” Mac Ghee; and he knew that his superiors would count it in heavily for promotion; for the Treasury was sore, from top to bottom, as one might say, with the way that Sandy Mac Ghee’s publicly successful jewel-runnings had given the opposition press a chance to be scathing in cutting headlines.

  Sandy Mac Ghee stared, in a dumb, stupid kind of way at the dowels and the brace and bit. Then, he shrugged his shoulders, and attempted a laugh.

  “You’ll laugh better in a minute, I’m thinking,” said the chief searcher. “Perhaps you’ll come this way, Sir. We’ve already located the dowels you’ve hid the stuff under.” He beckoned his men up. “Stand back there! Stand back!” he shouted in true official fashion, at the passengers, who had begun to crowd round—Many of them exceedingly anxious. One of the men, who appeared to be a carpenter, was down on his knees, working at the dowels in the deck-planks. Presently, he lifted one out, and it proved to be no more than a thin disk of wood, scarce a quarter of an inch thick, instead of a couple of inches or so. And in the hollow, between it and the bolt-head, there were three magnificent diamond rings. “There!” said the head searcher, unable to hold back his triumph. “There’s no hiding places aboard ship, that we don’t know of. You can’t put that sort of trick over on us! Open up the others, Jim.”

  In half an hour, they appeared to have collected all the surplus rings and valuable jewels that had been missing since the day when Mac Ghee had explained to the men in the First Class smoke-room, the Custom’s Jewel tariff. There was little, the head searcher felt, to add to his triumph, except the fixing of the crime upon Mac Ghee. But this, he could not do yet; for though the spy had found, and handed on to him, the dowels and the brace and bit; yet he had collected no evidence that would actually associate Mac Ghee with the hiding, and he knew it; and hence his attempt to bluff Mr. MacGhee into admitting that he knew where the stuff had been hid.

  “Now,” said the officer, to the passengers, as he collected his men, “if any of you ladies and gentlemen want your jewelry, you’ll have to come up to the office to claim it, and pay the duty and fines, or else lose it!” Then he went; but as Mac Ghee walked ashore, later, he knew perfectly well that a Treasury detective tracked him all the way to his hotel. Perhaps the following cutting, which Sandy Mac Ghee enclosed with a note to his new friend, Miss Macleod, concludes this tale as effectively as anything I could add. The cutting is headed:

  “SANDY PUTS ANOTHER OVER ON THE TREASURY”

  “Sandy, Or His Ghost, Puts The Dowels Over The Diamonds”

  Then followed much that I have told, in fluent and flowery journalese. “Only,” it concluded:

  “the diamond rings and the other gew-gaws that someone (was it you, Sandy dear?) had put under the deck dowels, weren’t gen-u-ine at all, at all. (Sandy may have bought a little cheap jewelry in Brummagem!) Anyway, it was Brummagem trash the Head Searcher got swelled head over. And, of course, after this bully clean-up, the Customs never bothered to frisk anyone in the covered hall adjoining the wharf; and Sandy and the passengers walked ashore with their fal-lals in their pockets, as happy as you please; and poor Uncle Sam has never touched a cent. Honest Sandy must go as usual for his Treasury Receipt, to add to his little collection that’s going to knock the Jewel Bill out of time, before he’s finished. Well done, Sandy! Go to it again; We’re watching out for you!”

  Sandy sent this note with the cutting:

  Dear Miss Macleoid,

  I heard you say, “oh!” when I dumped that package. It contained nothing but what was left over of the false Brummagem jewelry, that I bought in London; for I had planned out everything, before the trip across. If they’d caught me with that they might have been able to trace the dowel mystery to me. You will, I know, feel relieved to hear that, as usual, the Treasury will benefit to the full amount of what I smuggled. The sermon the Chaplain preached, was due to me, I’m afraid. You see, I guessed there was a Treasury spy somewhere in the ship; and I wanted to make sure he tumbled to the fact of the passengers’ abstinence from what the Chaplain called “heathenish charms.” So I got talking to the Chaplain about the way people were developing, these days, and I instanced that point in particular, and wondered why no one ever seemed to remark on these “upward tendencies.” He fell at once for my plan, like a useful innocent!

  I hope to see you next time I cross. I know your father makes the trip every month, and if you are with him, it will be a great pleasure to look forward to.

  Yours faithfully,

  Sandy Mac Ghee.

  P.S. It was rather neat, don’t you think so, leaving the brace and the odd dowels where the spy could find ‘em!

  P.P.S. By the way, I slipped a small parcel into your bag, when I was talking to you, just before the search officer came up. Take care of it for me, won’t you. It contains 100,000 dollars worth of cut stones. I thought it better not to have it on me, in case the Treasury forced matters a bit, and detained me. S. MG.

  The Last Word in Mysteries

  Oh, yes, I’ve had my share of ‘amoorus’ adventures, too,” asserted the Captain:

  Why, my own sweetheart was once kidnapped up in ‘Frisco, though she carried a gun; and I near went dotty till we traced her. We suspected old Tim Murgan’s wood shanty, that was built out on wooden piles, over the river, and searched it through and through—a matter of two or three separate times; but we couldn’t find her. Well, we watched the house day and night, and at last, one night, we saw three men with a big package enter the house. The police surrounded the house and entered it; but never a sign was there of the three big men and the big package. It was the last word in mysteries.

  We had to give it up; but we still watched the house. And later, to crown the mystery, we saw the three men come out of that same house, that we had searched every nook of. It left us guessing. Only we did more. The police officer meant to take no chances this time, and, after having stationed his men, bid eight of the biggest pick up an old pile that lay along the side of the jetty. With this, they smashed in the door of the house, with a single quick run. Then, whilst two stood on guard in the doorway, the rest rushed inside. I heard the Officer order two of the men to “look after” Murgan, and they ran up the steep little stairway, and there was immediately a sound of pistol shots above.

  But I was otherwise interested; for I had run into the kitchen; and there, in the middle of the floor, where the butt-ends of the floor-boards joined, the boards had been slid endwise apart, showing a small hole, just about big enough for a man to enter.

  In the mouth of this hole, a small electric fan was whirling round silently. That was all; but it was the solution of the mystery. We lifted out the fan, and there below us went a deep, narrow shaft. At the bottom, there was a dim light.

  “By George!” muttered the Officer, looking down. “It’s the inside of one of the piles. Don’t you see? It’s a big iron pipe, covered, I expect on the outside with wood, so as to look like the rest.”

  And so it proved. When the men had lowered us down, I found that we had come into a long, round iron structure, lighted by a single small electric lamp.

  “An old biler—sunk. Do you see?” said the Officer. “Lord! What a cute idea!”

  One end of the sunk boiler was curtained off, and behind that curtain, there was a low camp-bed, and on the bed lay my sweetheart, sleeping quietly. Beside her, lying upon the floor, evidently her gaoler and attendant, and like her fast asleep, lay Mrs. Tim Murgan. That is about all.

  There is little to explain. My sweetheart had been surprised by two men during a walk, and before she could get her gun free, they had a sponge of chloroform over her mouth and nostrils.

  When she woke up, she found herself lying on a bed, in the big sunk boiler, with Mrs. Tim in attendance. She had been treated with a certain rough care and consideration; and had only been kept there,
as was apparent to me, because her disappearance had created such a tremendous stir and commotion that they had been afraid to risk moving her, or even to attempt any overtures for a ransom.

  The reason we did not discover her hiding place, is obvious; for it had never occurred to us that any of the piles supporting the house might be hollow, and the way the floor-boards met naturally and irregularly over the end of the hollow pile (there were really two of them, so as to have an up-draught and a down-draught), was so cunning that none of us had seen anything to make us suspicious.

  There is one other thing. Down in the boiler was discovered an immense amount of stolen property, which helped to send Mr. and Mrs. Tim Murgan to the Penitentiary for quite a long period. And it was down there, with their big package of stolen goods, that the three strange men had hidden, whilst we searched so intently for some hidden compartment, big enough to hold them and the package they had carried.

  The Dumpley Acrostics

  Yes, I once did quite a bit of smart, detective work. I cleared up that affair of that valuable book, the “Dumpley Acrostics.” There was only one copy in existence, so that Messrs. Malbrey and Jones, Editors of the “Bibliophile and Booktable” were astonished and sceptical when a Mr. Ralph Ludwig walked into their office with a second copy—a “find.” They, Professor Wagflen, the great Bibliophile, and Mr. Neuls, chief librarian of the Caylen Museum (where reposed the supposed “one and only” copy of the “Dumpley Acrostics”) all examined Ralph Ludwig’s “find”—and pronounced it unmistakable genuine. Malbrey and Jones, however, smelt a rat, and put me on the job, and this is what I unearthed and told them in their office, after I had gathered all the characters there to hear my tale:

  “Gentlemen,” I began, “I went first to the Caylen Museum and asked questions. I found that “Rare Editions,” such as the Dumpley, are never loaned out. An examination of the signatures in the registers showed that the book had been consulted only three times, by three separate people, Charles, Nolles, and Waterfield, in the last two years, and always in the presence of an attendant. Expert examination, showed, however, that the three signatures were in the same handwriting, and that they were identical with a specimen I had of Mr. Ralph Ludwig’s writing. The next step is deduction on my part, and is indicated by reasoning as the only possible lines on which Mr. Ludwig could have worked. I can only suppose that Mr. Ludwig must, in some way or other, have come into possession of a dummy copy of the Acrostics. This blank-paper dummy of the book, would he made up by the printer and bookbinder, so as to enable Lord Wellbeck, who published the book, to see how the “Acrostics” would bind up and bulk out. The method is common in the publishing trade; and though the binding of a book may be exactly a duplicate of what the finished binding will be, yet the inside is nothing but blank paper of the same thickness and quality as that on which the finished hook will be printed. In this way, a publisher is enabled to see beforehand how the book will look.

  “I am quite convinced that I have described the first step in Mr. Ludwig’s ingenious little plot; for he made only three visits to the Museum; and as you will see in a minute, if he had not been provided already with a facsimile in binding of the “Acrostics,” on his first visit, he could not have carried out the plot under four. Moreover, unless I am wrong in my psychology of the incident, it was through becoming possessed of this particular dummy copy, that Mr. Ludwig thought out his scheme.

  “Well, the rest is simple. He went the first time to the Museum, and after appearing to study the Museum copy deftly replaced it with the dummy, which he had brought in, hidden about him. The attendant took the dummy (which was externally identical with the printed copy) in place of the genuine article which Mr. Ludwig had secreted somewhere on him. This was, of course, the one big risk in his little plot; also that someone might call to see the “Acrostics” before he could replace it again with the original; for this is what he meant to do, and did, after he had photographed each page. It must have been a deal of work, Mr. Ludwig!

  “This accounts for his second visit, after which he printed the retrieved dummy copy, on a hand press, with the photographic blocks which he had prepared. And after he had done that, he returned to the Museum, and once more exchanged the copies, taking away now for ‘keeps’ the Museum copy, and leaving the most excellently printed ‘dummy’ in its place.

  “Each time, as you know, he used a new name and a new handwriting, and probably disguises of some kind; for he had no wish to be in any way connected with the Museum copy. Also, if the blank dummy had been discovered between the first and second visits, then on his second visit, unless disguised, he would most certainly have been arrested.

  “Now let us look at the lessons his little plot has for us. He realized that, if he stole the book frankly, he could never sell it in the open market. He would have to sell it secretly to some unscrupulous collector, who would of course (knowing it was stolen) give him next to nothing for it; and might indeed hand him over to the police; though as we are speaking of collectors, I don’t think he feared much on that head.

  “But if he could arrange so that the Museum still had its copy, he might sell his own without fear in the open market to the highest bidder. But, and here comes the lesson some of you ought to take to heart. Mr. Ludwig realized that his copy of the “Acrostics” would be mercilessly challenged and examined. And this is why he made his third exchange, and once more left his dummy (now printed as you know) and took away with him the authentic copy. He knew that the copy at the Museum would not be suspiciously examined; therefore his must be the genuine thing. If the three famous experts had given the same suspicious attention to the false copy at the Museum, which they took to be the original, this little, shall I call it comedy, would have been nipped right off in the bud! By the way, do comedies have buds? Summed up briefly, Mr. Ludwig’s course of action has been: A. First visit to Museum to obtain the book, replacing it by his own blank “dummy” copy. B. Second visit, to return the book and take back his “dummy.” C. Third visit, to exchange his now printed “dummy” for the authentic Museum copy. Is that clear to all of you? I need say little more. Mr. Neule, you hold in your hands what does not belong to your library. The copy which belongs to your Institution is in Messrs. Malbrey and Jones’s safe, over there.”

  Alternate Versions

  An Adventure of the Deep Waters

  This is an extraordinary tale. We had come up from the Cape, and owing to the Trades heading us more than usual, we had made some hundreds of miles more westing than I ever did before or since.

  I remember perfectly the particular night of the happening. I suppose what occurred stamped it solid into my memory with a thousand little details that in the ordinary way I should never have remembered an hour. And, of course, we talked it over so often among ourselves that this no doubt helped to fix it all past any forgetting.

  I remember the Mate and I had been pacing the weather side of the poop and discussing various old shellbacks’ superstitions. I was third mate, and it was between four and five bells in the first watch (i.e. between ten and half-past). Suddenly, he stopped in his walk and lifted his head and sniffed several times.

  “My word, Mister,” he said, “there’s a rum kind of stink somewhere about. Don’t you smell it?”

  I sniffed once or twice at the light airs that were coming in on the beam; then I walked to the rail and leaned over, smelling again at the slight breeze. And abruptly I got a whiff of it, faint and sickly, yet vaguely suggestive of something I had once smelt before.

  “I can smell something, Mr. Lammart,” I said. “I could almost give it name; and yet, somehow I can’t.” I stared away into the dark, to windward. “What do you seem to smell?” I asked him.

  “I can’t smell anything now,” he replied, coming over and standing beside me. “It’s gone again—No! By Jove! there it is again. My goodness! Phoo—”

  The smell was all about us now, filling the night air. It had still that indefinable familiarity about it, and
yet it was curiously strange; and, more than anything else, it was certainly simply beastly.

  The stench grew stronger, and presently the Mate asked me to go forward, and see whether the lookout man noticed anything. When I reached the break of the forecastle head, I called up to the man, to know whether he smelled anything.

  “Smell anything, sir!” he sang out. “Jumpin’larks! I sh’ud think I do. I’m fair p’isoned with it!”

  I ran up the weather steps, and stood beside him. The smell was certainly very plain up there; and after savouring it for a few moments, I asked him whether he thought it might be a dead whale. But he was very emphatic that this could not be the case; for, as he said, he had been nearly fifteen years in whaling ships, and knew the smell of a dead whale “like as you would the smell of bad whisky, sir,” as he put it. “ ’Tain’t no whale, yon; but the Lord He knows what ’tis. I’m thinkin’ it’s Davy Jones come up for a breather.”

  I stayed with him some minutes, staring out into the darkness, but could see nothing; for, even had there been something big close to us, I doubt whether I could have seen it, so black a night it was, without a visible star, and with a vague, dull haze breeding an indistinctness all about the ship.

  I returned to the Mate and reported that the lookout complained of the smell; but that neither he nor I had been able to see anything in the darkness to account for it.