by Edith Nesbit
So far, the head had been to her only the head of a dead man. Now, like a cold hand on her heart, came the question: Whose? — She had felt that it was dead — she had seen that it was dead — but the long hair had fallen over its face and she had not seen the features. .Constricting her heart came the thought that had come to her while she danced that night — with that thing in her hands, that thing which was perhaps looking at her through the enwrapping towels — through the inlaid brass and turtleshell of the cabinet door. Dead men could see through doors perhaps. The thought, the ghastly thought, clamoured for recognition. She held her breath a moment — clenched her hands, and let it come.
If that head should be her lover’s? Disguised with flowing hair. — The work of some madman — mad with desire and jealousy. Such things had happened. Jealousy did make men murderers. She had read such things. Some of her letters had breathed hints of such things. And there had been vague threats. That man — but he was dead — and pneumonia keeps you out of mischief for a little while before you die. She had not really seen the face. . . .
She had not looked through her letters to see if there were one from her lover. The letters were lying on that bed — red and white — and black and white, like the cards in the forest a very long time ago. She could not go back into that room — even for his letter.
And perhaps there was no letter. Perhaps that was why he had not come. That — in the cabinet.
Love was a very faint emotion — like a little candle in face of the fire of terror that burned her. But, also, it was a different thing. She had loved Edmund — she was sure of it. If she were a different girl, like other girls, the thought of his love would sustain her.
But how could his love sustain her if he were now only it — behind the locked door of the cabinet?
Unless you have ever been frightened as she was, you will never understand how she found at last the desperate courage to put that key into the keyhole of the Buhl cabinet. I cannot explain it to you. I am not at all sure that it was not the wild hope that the terror she felt might melt into grief — thus becoming bearable — if she should find that the head was the head of her lover. Isabella and the Pot of Basil shewed for an instant, like a magic lantern picture against the blankness of her fear.
She looked round: there must be some help?
She found it — in the half of the second bottle of champagne that Uncle Moses had opened. So few minutes had passed, as clocks count time, that the wine was still fresh and bright. She poured out a glassful and drank it. Another.
“They say it helps when you are afraid,” she told herself, and some comic phrase about “ Dutch courage “ drove her shrinking from a laugh that would have been the knell of her self-control.
She did open the cabinet — she got out the head — laid it on the table, and folded back the towels. The black hair was all over the face. The neck, where it had been cut off, was tarred, and the tar had cracked, and the accumulated blood oozed through.
“I shall go mad presently,” she told herself, “but I will know first.”
She caught at the long black hair and pulled fiercely. It came away in her hand, and she shuddered as it came. The beard, too . . . it was of the same texture. It, too, yielded — and under the brilliant, blazing crystal chandelier, with its score of electric lamps, she saw the face of the dead man.
It was not her lover: it was her husband. Her husband — someone had murdered him. But her husband had died of pneumonia — and yet he had been murdered. No one could believe that unless they were mad. Then it had happened. She was mad — and nothing mattered.
Now she could do what she had wanted to do all the time. She could scream. Nothing mattered now, so why deny one’s strongest desire? Mad people might scream as much as they liked.
Have you ever heard a hare scream just before the dogs get it? It is one of the most exciting moments in the sport of coursing. It is a sound that goes to the hearts of the weak stomached sportsman, and sends him home swearing. It is so like the cry of a baby — suddenly and terribly hurt.
Just such a cry was Sandra’s — a very little cry — for lips and tongue and throat were parched.
Quite a little cry — yet the echo of it came to her ears, and it seemed to her that it had been echoed by everyone of the reflections of her that she had seen in the looking-glass room.
The head lay there on the table — terrible, accusing. She had wished him dead. Well — he was dead. His eyes were closed — his mouth calm. It was a better face than the living man had had.
How did one go mad? When one had screamed? What ought one to do next?
She swayed to and fro, slowly, rhythmically, and the head lay there. What next — what next?
It was then that the knock came — a knock on the room door. A knock, urgent, insistent, in The House With No Address — the house where she was alone.
CHAPTER XV. THE INTRUDER.
It is a strange and terrible moment when something knocks at the door — and you, within, alone with your fear, filled with it as a glass is filled with water — know that beyond the door something waits — something that cannot be there — since the house is empty.
Because you must either say “ Come in!” to it — or you must go and open the door to you know not what.
Sandra did neither. She cried out again as the hare cries, though she knew as she did it how unwise it was to cry out, and thus to rivet on herself the attention of the thing on the other side of the door — the thing that could, not be there, because the house was empty.
I shall not tell you what her tortured imagination figured as standing at the other side of that door. You would not believe or understand. Because you have never stood at dead of night by a table on which a head lay, a head that you had danced with, danced to, the head of a dead man.
The door shook to a hand that tried the latch. I shall not tell you what hand, in her madness, she thought it might be.
“No, no, no, no!” she cried. And on that the door burst open with a crack, and a report like a pistol’s — and something stood in the doorway an instant, then came slowly into the room.
Sandra cowered — but she had not dared to hide her eyes. They widened, wavered, gladdened. And then, at last, she laughed.
There are ears in which that laugh still rings.
The next moment she was holding the arms of the newcomer above the elbow and saying over and over again:
“Oh! — thank God — it’s you, it’s you, it’s you, it’s you, it’s you.”
The new chauffeur, at the same time, was repeating with equal iteration:
“It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right”
When he became aware of the head he did not start or exclaim; he just threw the towels over it, as though it were some unimportant if unsightly object, and closed the door — she holding to him all the time.
Then he said, in a voice that she had not heard — a voice gentle, equal, confident:
“Everything is perfectly all right. Nothing can hurt you while I am here. That can’t hurt you. Come away from it.”
He would have led her into the further room. But she held back.
“I’m not so frightened here. The other rooms are worse. They seem full of it.”
“I see,” he said in a tone of cheerful comprehension. “I see. Shall I put it away? It’s a practical joke, I assure you — not a nice one. We shall have it all explained in the morning.”
“I’m glad you came,” she said reflectively, “It must be horrid to be mad. May I hold your hands?”
She held out hers, as a child frightened in the dark holds out its hands to its nurse, and the chauffeur took them.
“You understand,” he said, “ I shan’t leave you. I felt certain that you would want something to-night — I stayed in that little room of Forrester’s, and I was in the vaulted passage and heard you call out. Just think. It’s all nonsense “ — his voice was firm and kind—” it’s o
nly a horrible practical joke — some medical student ...”
“It is the head of my husband,” said Sandra. “Who sent it to me?”
“Your husband?”
“Yes. I tell you — yes.”
“You got it . . .?”
“It was passed to me through the machine. You know the head seems to come to me from nowhere while I’m dancing. And Denny must have put it on the brougham with the . . . the presents, you know.”
“You were married to ... to him?”
“Not really — oh, what does all this matter? But who sent it? He died of pneumonia last Wednesday — and I was engaged to be married to someone else — Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
“You will sit down on this sofa,” said the chauffeur, “ and drink some wine.”
“I have.”
“Then you will drink some more. Don’t worry — don’t think. Believe me, it is all right. Yes, I will hold both your hands. Is there anyone I can call? — Mr. Mosenthal, you said”
“No” cried Sandra with a vehemence that she herself could not have explained; “and besides, he’s gone back to Germany. Don’t leave me, for God’s sake, and don’t call anybody.” She drew a long breath that trembled on a sob. She took her hands away to lay her face in them.
“There was a letter, I think,” she said presently, looking up, “ from him — that I was going to marry, you know . . . He couldn’t have sent the head — to show me that I’m really free — could he?”
“He might have,” said the chauffeur bitterly, “ but I don’t think he did. Don’t think of it. Haven’t you any friends you can go to?”
She shook her head forlornly.
“There was a letter,” she said again.
«‘ Yes.”
“I put all my letters on my pillow, and the head,” she explained as a child explains the unexplained troubles that have come to it. “Mr. Mosenthal had been making jokes about it — I didn’t want him to see it. When he was gone I went up — Oh! And the head had — it had moved,”
“It couldn’t: there must be someone in the house — someone who is playing you this “ — he choked on an adjective—”this silly trick. There must be someone.” He moved towards the door. But she held him.
“No, no, no,” she said; “it didn’t really move — I put it on the pillow, and it had rolled down — that’s all; and where it’s been cut off they’ve tarred it — and it ... it was all over, the letters. And if there’s one from him I want it.”
“I will go and get it,” said the new chauffeur.
“And leave me here with it? I ... I could go up with you.”
They went up like lovers, the chauffeur’s arm round her, and both her hands in one of his. He got the letters, she standing holding on to the wooden rail of the bed.
“It’s all right,” he said—”you see there’s nothing here — it’s all right.”
“How horrible roses smell,” she said. And he got her down again.
“When you have read your letter,” he said, “you will let me send for the police. The person who played this trick on you must be caught and punished.”
He would not use the ugly words crime or murderer — but she used them.
“It’s not murder,” she said—”he died of pneumonia. Oh, I didn’t think there was anyone in the world who hated me enough to do this to me — It is cruel, isn’t it? — except him — and he’s dead. He couldn’t have sent me his head himself, could he?”
She laughed again. “No — I don’t mean that — that’s silly, of course. I mean, could he have left it in his will, or got someone to promise to send it? I shouldn’t be so frightened if I thought that was it. It would be just like him.”
“Of course that’s it,” said the chauffeur heartily. While she spoke he had wiped the letters with his handkerchief, so that the stains on them were, at any rate, dry.
“See if the letter you want is here,” he said, and pushed her gently into the corner of the sofa, under the electric light.
“No — none of them,” she said, turning them quickly.—” Ah, yes, this packet — open it — my hands feel so funny.”
He cut the string and laid the open packet on her knee. There were letters in it — letters torn at the edges, obviously not of any late writing. A fresh sheet lay at the top. She caught it up and read.
“But I don’t understand,” she said, looking up at him, “ I don’t understand.”
If you had been the new chauffeur you would have done as he did. He took the letter from her hand with a “ May I? “ as though it were some unimportant note on business.
And he read; and all the time he was reading she was plucking at his arm and saying over and over again very quickly: “What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean?”
This was the letter:
“I found out your lie about the pneumonia death. I found your husband. I am going abroad. I wonder what you will do with head. I think I am mad, but I can do nothing more. God knows what I ought to have done. I did what I could not keep from doing, and I did it for you. I enclose your letters to him. You may wish to destroy them. You did not know how I loved you — but perhaps this will shew you. Good-bye — if it were not a mockery from me to you I would say God bless you.
“E. T.”
It was her second love-letter.
“What does it mean?” she was still saying as he let the letter hang in his dropped hand and looked at her, meeting her eyes.
“I am afraid it means — you poor little thing, be brave! You will have to think what you will do. Was he jealous, the man you were engaged to?”
“Yes.”
“Of the — of the man you married?”
“Yes — but it’s not possible.”
“Never mind about it now,” the chauffeur urged. “ The thing for me to do is to fetch the police.”
“Not till you’ve told me what it means,” she said steadily. “I am not afraid now. Look, my hands are quite steady.” She held them out for him to see. He took them and held them, looking masterfully into her eyes.
“You’ll be brave if I tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Courage is the only respectable thing in the world.”
“I know.”
“Well, then, it means that your husband wasn’t really dead when you thought he was — and that your lover found him and killed him. There was a fight, very likely. I’m certain your lover didn’t mean to do it. He couldn’t have been such a fool.”
“And the head?” she asked with a brisk confidence that led him on.
“I’m afraid when he saw what he’d done he must have gone mad: it’s horrible — but you’ve got to face it some time, and — and cut off the head and — and—”
“And passed it off somehow on Denny as the false one that I have for the Salome dance. Yes, it might be that. But I don’t believe it. You don’t know him. He simply couldn’t do a thing like that.”
His heart vibrated to the brave, fortified voice of a woman unhappy, and in love.
“You don’t know what men can do when they’re jealous — and in love,” he said. “There’s a murderer inside everyone of us — only we keep him down.”
“Oh! — he might have killed him,” she said almost indifferently, “ but he’d never have sent that thing to frighten me. And he never did,” she said, “never. I’ll stake my life on it he never did that.”
“But he has done it,” said the chauffeur. Only he said it to himself.
She re-read the letter.
“What,” she said slowly, “ does he mean by wondering what I shall do with the head?”
“Oh! — I don’t know,” said the chauffeur.
“And why did he send it?” she asked.
“What you said ... to shew you the man was dead. And then he couldn’t bear the thought of what he’d done. He must be mad. I don’t know.”
“But I do,” she said. “ I know.” And it seemed to him that she shuddered in the grip
of that new knowledge. “Oh, it’s all gaps and blanks, and all muddled and mazy, and nothing fits, but I see through it to that. I know.”
He did not ask her what she knew. And she would not have told him.
“Will you be advised?” he said. “Let me go for the police. It’s the only safe thing you can do.”
But something in the muddle and maze, among the gaps and blanks, said NO to that. It was not a doubt of Templar — she told herself that it was not that. What she said was: “I can’t be left alone, not here — with that . . .”
And at the word the horror that had lifted a little fell on her suddenly like a heavy pall thrown over her from behind, so that she cowered and her hands fluttered in his like captive moths.
“No, no,” she said: “ in the morning, when it is light — I can do anything when it is light. Oh! it is moving inside the cabinet — I heard it move. It did move on my bed — I only pretended to myself that it didn’t move — it’s moving now. . . .”
Only the clasp of his hands controlled her.
“Be quiet,” he said, “ be quiet. Yes — there was something — I heard it. I heard something, too — but it wasn’t that. Listen — listen.” She held her breath and pressed her hand over his mouth, so that he, too, to calm her, listened. And there was a sound, a sound in the empty house — the creaking of a board — and then, quite plainly, and not to be mistaken, a low moaning sigh.
“There,” she said, tense; “I knew, it was! It is.”
“Nonsense,” he said, moving briskly towards the door. “ There’s someone in the house.”
“Take my revolver. Here,” she said, and opened an inlaid box. “ Oh I — no, it isn’t here. I don’t know where it is.”
“I don’t want your revolver,” he said.
“But it doesn’t matter. You won’t find anything”
“Oh, yes, I shall,” he cried, furiously glad of a chance of action to relieve the tension of pity and other things. “Yes — come if you like — but keep behind me — I shall find someone right enough.” And to himself he said: “I shall find her lover.”