Finger of Fate

by Sapper

  “I reckons it must have been about nine o’clock when George Turnbury came in. He’d been up at Oastbury, I knew, because he had had his lunch in this house.

  “‘Say, fellows,’ he said, ‘have any of you seen a queer-looking customer about the place? A great hook-nosed fellow with a huge red scar down his face?’

  “‘It’s the stranger,’ I cried. ‘The one who told me John Philimore was dead.’

  “‘Dead?’ cried George, staring at me. ‘John Philimore dead?’ For of course he hadn’t heard the news.

  “‘That’s so,’ I said. ‘A year ago.’

  “‘Good Lord!’ he muttered, and I could see he was a bit moved. After all, though he’d never known John, he’d been up at his daughter’s all the afternoon.

  “‘Well, anyway,’ he went on, ‘I saw this man nosing round Oastbury, and I tell you I didn’t like the look of him. So I passed the word to some of the hands, and Heaven help him if he tries any tricks!’

  “‘In my life I’ve never relied overmuch on Heaven,’ said a voice from the door, and there was the stranger, with his eyes fixed on George. As you can imagine, sir, it was a bit of an awkward moment, because we didn’t know how much he’d heard.

  “‘I’ve found that I’m quite capable of looking after myself, young man,’ he continued, crossing the room and standing close to George. ‘And now may I ask why you don’t like the look of me?’

  “George Turnbury got a bit red in the face.

  “‘I’m sorry you should have heard that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were in the room.’

  “‘I’m still waiting for an answer to my question, young man,’ said the other quietly, though there was a nasty note in his voice.

  “Young George, he drew himself up, for he had the devil of a temper of his own, and he didn’t like the stranger’s tone.

  “‘You’ll get the answer in a looking-glass,’ he said, and turned his back on him. ‘I guess it was a powerful cat you tried petting,’ he flung over his shoulder.

  “The stranger put out both his hands quite gently, and caught hold of George from behind just above each elbow. Now, George was a powerful lad, used to handling sacks of corn, and I shall never forget the look of blank amazement that spread over his face. It must have been a quarter of a minute they stood there without movement, and the reason was plain to us all. George couldn’t move; he was as powerless as a child in that man’s grasp. We could see him struggling so that the sweat broke out on his forehead, and there was hardly a tremor in that stranger’s hands. And then the stranger laughed.

  “‘It wasn’t a cat, little boy,’ he said. ‘It was the slash of a cutlass. And the man who did it died as he did it. It was a much stronger man than you, little boy. But as far as you’re concerned, don’t be rude any more, or I might have to whip you.’

  “And with that he let George go and swung round on me.

  “‘Send me up a bottle of whisky,’ he cried. ‘I’m going to my room.’

  “For a while after he left no one spoke. George – who had a proper pride in himself – was well-nigh crying with shame and mortification at having been made to look such a fool before us all. And, of course, a thing like that was bound to get around, if only as a measure indicating the stranger’s strength. But as the days went on it was forgotten in the much more important affairs that were happening up at Oastbury. It had us all beat; we couldn’t make head nor tail of ’em.

  “For this stranger pretty well lived up there, and what Mary Philimore or her aunt could see in him was beyond us. He still kept on his room here; he still got through his two bottles of whisky a day, and sometimes three. But for the rest of the time he was at Oastbury.

  “George was pretty near off his head about it all; seemed to think he’d got some hold over Mary – this man with the scar. And sure enough two or three times when I seed her, she seemed to have a terrible hunted look in her sweet eyes.

  “Then a month after he’d arrived we heard the news. At first no one would believe it; but it was true right enough. Mary had tokened herself to this man with the scar, whose name we now knew was Henry Gaunt.

  “I tell you, sir, it had us all knocked endwise. For Mary, that sweet girl, to marry this whisky-drinking bully, who was old enough to be her father, seemed a horrible sin. And once it was settled, what little mark of decency he had kept on to start with disappeared. He took a delight in picking quarrels and insulting people. He nearly killed poor old Dick, the policeman, one night – and only just escaped prison by the skin of his teeth.

  “That sobered him up a bit, and he was more careful in future. But even then he was a devil. Chaps as had come to this house for years, and their fathers before them, stayed away, because they were afeared of Gaunt. And this was the man Mary was going to marry.

  “Time went on and the wedding was due in a fortnight. And then one morning I was standing in the door there thinking things over, when again I seed a stranger coining up the street. The house was empty; Gaunt was up at Oastbury – but this stranger reminded me in a way of him. The same build – the same roll in his walk, and I thought to myself, I thought, ‘Good Lord! This ain’t another such as Gaunt.’

  “And then as he got nearer I began to rub my eyes. I must be wrong, of course, but it surely was a staggering likeness to John Philimore.

  “‘Hullo, Sam!’ he sung out. ‘Forgotten me, I suppose. I know it’s you; you’re so like your father.’

  “‘Good God!’ I said, all mazed-like; ‘it’s John Philimore!’

  “‘The very same,’ he answered. ‘And why not?’

  “‘But we was told you were dead, sir,’ I cries.

  “‘And who told you that?’ he says, smiling.

  “‘Why, Henry Gaunt,’ I answers. ‘Him as is staying here now.’

  “The smile had left his face, and he stared at me speechless.

  “‘Do you mean a man with a great red scar down his face?’ he said in a terrible voice.

  “‘That’s the one,’ I told him. ‘And not only is he staying here, but he’s tokened to your daughter.’

  “‘What!’ he roared, and I thought he was going to strike me. Then he pulled himself together. ‘Come inside and tell me all about it. But – wait a moment. Where is he now?’

  “‘Up at Oastbury,’ I said, and I’ve never seen such a look of devilish rage on a man’s face before or since.

  “Well, I took him inside, and I told him all I knew. And when I’d finished he got up.

  “‘Sam,’ he said, ‘I rely on you. Not a word to a soul that I’m back. Above all, not a word to that devil incarnate, Henry Gaunt.’

  “‘You have my word, sir,’ I said. ‘And if you can get rid of him, I, for one, will be profoundly thankful.’

  “‘I’ll get rid of him all right,’ he answered quietly. ‘Usually back here at six, you say?’

  “‘That’s when he begins his second bottle,’ I told him, and with that he left.

  “Naturally, I was fair bursting with the news, but I kept my word and didn’t breathe a hint to a soul. And as the afternoon wore on I got in such a condition of excitement at what was going to happen, that I gave old Downley, what always drank ginger ale, a double whisky by mistake. At a quarter to six Gaunt came in and, sitting down in the chair you’re in, he ordered his usual bottle. In a foul temper he was over something or other and he sat there glowering across the harbour. There were two or three others drinking over at that table, and by this time my knees were shaking under me as six o’clock drew nearer.

  “Five minutes to – and young George Turnbury passed down the road on the way to the station.

  “‘Hi, you – you young swab,’ sung out Gaunt. ‘Come here!’

  “George, he took no notice and just walked on, when, would you believe it, sir? that devil pulled out a revolver and fired. George told us afterwards that he felt the wind of the bullet past his ear – it was so close.

  “‘Next time I’ll hit you,’ said Gaunt, ‘unless yo
u stop!’

  “George stopped.

  “‘Now, you young cockerel, is it you who has been closeted all the afternoon with the girl I’m going to marry?’

  “‘It was not,’ said a stern voice behind him. ‘It was I.’

  “And there was John Philimore standing just behind Gaunt with the muzzle of his revolver pressed into the devil’s neck.

  “‘And if you move, Gaunt; if you try any of your foul tricks, I’ll blow the top of your head off, as sure as there’s a God above.’

  “Gaunt’s face was a study. He’d gone quite white, and the scar looked like a streak of bright red paint, while in his eyes there was the look of an animal at bay, a sort of snarling fear.

  “‘Is it you, John Philimore?’ he said, moistening his lips, for with that gun in his neck he dursn’t look round to see.

  “‘Who else would it be, Gaunt?’ said John. ‘You see, you didn’t kill me after all, though it was touch and go, Gaunt – touch and go. If two prospectors hadn’t come along soon after you cleared out with what was left of the water, having shot me from behind, you would have killed me, Gaunt.’

  “Young George, he started forward in a rage.

  “‘You foul swine!’ he shouted, but Gaunt heeded him not. There was only one thing he could think of at the moment, and that was that his sin had found him out. And ceaselessly he moistened his lips with his tongue.

  “‘And then, Gaunt,’ went on John Philimore in a terrible voice, ‘having killed me as you thought, you came to my home. You knew all about it, for I’d told you – and you thought it would be a fine way of spending the rest of your foul life. And when you found it was entailed, and you couldn’t get it by forgery – then, Gaunt, your infamous brain conceived a plan which would have done the devil himself credit. You went to my daughter, and told her that I wasn’t really dead; that you’d lied when you said so – lied on purpose. You said that I was in prison for life for murder and bush-ranging: that I’d been guilty of unnameable crimes; that you had proof of it. And then, Gaunt, you told her the price of your silence. You knew our pride: you knew she’d do anything rather than that our name should be disgraced. And so you blackmailed her into the unthinkable sacrifice of marrying you. Can you tell me, Gaunt, of any single reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you sit?’

  “Gaunt laughed harshly, though his eyes roved wildly from side to side as if seeking some way of escape.

  “‘One very good one,’ he snarled. ‘They’ll hang you if you do.’

  “‘True,’ answered John Philimore. ‘Then I’ll flog you, Gaunt – flog you here and now till the blood drips off you. And to save bother I shall lash you up. Sam,’ he called out to me, ‘you’ll find a rhinoceros whip in my grip. Get it.’

  “And then, sir, it happened – so quickly that one could scarce see. Of a sudden two shots rang out, and we saw John Philimore sink to the ground. And even as he fell on one side of the chair, Gaunt rolled off and fell on the other.

  “We rushed up to them, young George Turnbury first of us all. And John, he looked up at him with a smile.

  “Go up, young George,’ he said, ‘and tell Mary that the wedding can take place, but the bridegroom will be different.’

  “‘Are you hurt, sir?’ cried George.

  “‘Not so badly as Henry Gaunt,’ he answered. “We looked at the man with the scar on his face, and he was dead. Shot through the heart – plugged clean as a whistle.

  “Well, sir, that’s the story. John Philimore was shot through the groin: maybe you noticed he still limps. And young George, he married Mary. But that shows you we don’t always sleep in this village.”

  THE IDOL’S EYE

  1

  “Personally, I don’t consider there’s a word of truth in the whole thing,” said Fenton, dogmatically. “All this mystery and spook stunt was started by hysterical old women, and has been kept alive by professional knaves, who fill their pockets at the expense of fools.”

  He drained his port, and glared round the table as if challenging anyone to dispute his assertion.

  “There was a silly old aunt of mine,” he continued, thrusting his heavy-featured face forward, “who bought a house down Camberley way two or three years ago. Admirable house: just suited the old lady. Special room facing south for the canaries and parrots, and all that sort of thing.” He helped himself to another glass of port. “She hadn’t been in the house a fortnight before the servants gave notice. They weren’t going to stop on, they said, in a house where noises were heard at strange hours of the night, and where the clothes were snatched off the cook’s bed. So the old thing wrote to me – I was managing her affairs for her – and asked what she should do. I told her that I’d come down and deal with the noises, and that if anyone started pulling my bedclothes off he’d get a thick ear for his trouble.”

  Fenton laughed, and, leaning back in his chair, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. “Of course there were noises,” he continued. “Show me any house – especially an old one – where there ain’t noises at night. The stairs creaked – stairs always do: boards in the passages contracted a bit and made a noise – boards always do. And as for the cook’s bedclothes, having once seen the cook I didn’t wonder they came off in the night. She must have weighed twenty stone, and nothing less than full-size double sheets could have been expected to remain tucked in. But do you suppose it was any good pointing these things out to the old dear? Not on your life! All she said to me was: ‘Harry, my boy: there are agencies at work in this world of which we have no knowledge. You may not be able to feel with them; some of us can. And it is written in the Book that they are evil.’”

  Again Fenton laughed coarsely. “Twaddle! Bunkum. The only agent that she felt was the house agent, who was charmed at the prospect of a second commission so soon.”

  “She moved, did she?” said Lethbridge, our host.

  “Of course she did,” jeered Fenton. “And the last I heard of the house was that it had been taken by a retired grocer with a large family who were perfectly happy there.” He thumped his fist on the table. “The whole thing is entirely imagination. If you sit at the end of a dark passage, when the moon is throwing fantastic shadows, and imagine hard enough that you’re going to see a ghost, you probably will. At least you’ll fancy you see something. But that’s not a ghost. There’s nothing really there. You might as well say that the figures you see in a dream are real.”

  “Which raises a very big question, doesn’t it?” said Mansfrey, thoughtfully. He was a quiet man with spectacles, who had so far taken little part in the conversation. “Even granted that what you say is correct, and I do not dispute it, you cannot dismiss imagination in quite the same manner as you do a dream. It may well be that half the so-called ghosts which people see or hear are merely imagination: but the result on the people is the same as if they were there in reality.” His blue eyes were fixed on Fenton mildly, and he blinked once or twice. “It takes all sorts to make a world, and everyone is not so completely devoid of imagination as you are, Fenton.”

  “I don’t know that I am completely devoid of imagination,” said Fenton. “I can see as far into a brick wall as most men, where a business proposition is concerned. But if you mean that I’m never likely to see a ghost, you’re quite right.” He was staring at Mansfrey, and his face was a little flushed. It struck me as he sat there half-sprawling over the table, what a coarse animal he was. And yet rumour had it that he was very popular with a certain type of woman.

  Mansfrey sipped his port, and a slight smile played round his lips. Lethbridge noticed it and made a movement as if to join the ladies. For Mansfrey’s smile was deliberately provocative, and Fenton was not a congenial companion if provoked – especially after three glasses of port. His voice, loud enough at ordinary times, became louder: the bully in him, which was never far from the surface, flared out.

  “Ghosts,” said Mansfrey, gently, “are the least of the results of imagination. Even if you did see one, Fent
on, I don’t expect it would worry you much.”

  His mild blue eyes were again fixed on the other man. “It is not that manifestation of the power of mind that I was particularly thinking of.”

  Fenton gave a sneering laugh. “Then what was it?” he asked. “Trying to walk between two lampposts and finding there was only one?”

  “Personally,” answered Mansfrey, “I have never suffered that way.” Lethbridge looked at me uncomfortably, but Mansfrey was speaking again. “It was the power of mind over matter with regard to bodily ailments that I was thinking of.”

  “Good heavens!” jeered Fenton, “you don’t mean to say that you’re a Christian Scientist?”

  “Up to a point, certainly,” answered the other. “If it is possible, and we know on indisputable proof that it is, for a man to deliberately decide to die when there is nothing the matter with him, and having come to that decision to sit down on the ground and put it into effect – surely the contrary must be still more feasible. For in the case of the native who dies, his mind is acting against nature: in the case of the man who tries to cure himself his mind is acting with nature.”

  “Those natives who die in that manner have always been seen by somebody else’s brother-in-law,” answered Fenton. “I’ll believe it, Mansfrey, when I see it for myself.”

  “I doubt if you would,” said Mansfrey. “You’d say the man was malingering even when he was in his coffin.”

  Once again I glanced at Lethbridge. It almost seemed as if Mansfrey, usually the mildest of men, was deliberately going out of his way to annoy Fenton.

  “And I suppose,” he continued, after a pause, “that you absolutely disbelieve in the ill luck that goes with certain houses and other inanimate objects – such as the Maga diamond, for instance?”

  “Absolutely,” answered Fenton. “And if I had the money I would pay a thousand pounds to anyone who would prove me wrong–” Then he laughed. “I thought you were reputed to be a scientist, Mansfrey! Funny sort of science, isn’t it? Do you honestly mean to tell me that you believe a bit of carbon like the Maga diamond has the power to bring bad luck to its owner?”