by Cave, Hugh
"Yes, it will not be pretty. But it will soon be over, my friend."
He went to the bed and raised the mattress, and took out a leather case which contained instruments. Then he went to the door again and made sure that it was locked. After that he loosened one of the bulbs in the chandelier above him, because the bright light seemed to threaten his solitude. And finally, with the case of instruments on the canvas beside him, he knelt again beside the dead man.
It would have been an all-night job had he not known how; but among other things he had studied medicine and knew the use of scalpel and hacksaw. And he had no personal feelings about the task. It was mechanical and did not frighten him.
He began with the dead man's leg, and at the first stroke of the knife the body twitched convulsively and the victim's lips parted to release a groaning monotone. Vesker stiffened and stared into the man's countenance. Then he listened again at the man's breast, and scowled. After that he worked very quickly.
He worked for an hour before he felt that he was not alone. The feeling grew upon him and annoyed him, so that he ceased his labor and rocked back on his knees. He had already removed both of his victim's legs and placed them to one side. The severed head and left arm lay with them on the canvas. Only the right arm remained, and it lay limp with its fingers slightly curled.
Vesker stared at it uneasily and told himself that the slow opening of the fingers was due to natural causes, and not to anything else. But a mist was forming over the fingers, or seemed to be, and it frightened him. The mist was like cigarette smoke, thin and gray and tenuous, and in motion. Was it taking form? No, of course it was not. That was only his silly imagination, and the lateness of the hour, and the unpleasantness of his task. And yet surely—
The mist was taking form. Vesker watched it and shrank away from it. It was a hand, now, like the hand of the dead man on the floor, except that these smoky fingers were malformed and exceedingly long. And they were descending slowly into the real hand. They were becoming a part of it.
The fingers of the dead man's hand opened, then, while Vesker watched them. The index finger pointed into his face accusingly, as if that other hand had given it the power of life. But of course it was not that; it was merely a mechanical reflex action caused by the severing of certain cords. Vesker laughed throatily.
He stopped laughing and held his breath. Over the victim's torso a second mist was forming, and the mist was becoming a face. Yes, it was a face, a woman's face. How could there be a woman's face like that? Was it his imagination? No, because he was thinking of LaRoque's wife, and this woman was not LaRoque's wife.
It was almost no face at all, but what there was of it was vicious and sinister. The eyes were slanted and the cheekbones were high and the lips were full. The woman was a native, and very old. She was—
But that was foolish! There was no woman here at all. He was making her up in his mind and his inner consciousness was projecting an image of her. That was idiocy.
"There is nothing here," Vesker said aloud.
The woman's lips parted in a smile and seemed to form words to answer him. Vesker cursed and leaned forward and swept his arm through her. And then he laughed, because she was not there. She had never been there.
The hand of the dead man had shifted position on the canvas, and the index finger was still pointing at him. But that was only reflex action.
"I would make a poor professional," Vesker said, smiling. "My nerves are whisky-soaked."
He finished his task and put his instruments back into the case. Then he filled three of the burlap bags with portions of the dead man's body, and into the fourth bag he thrust the bloody canvas and the leather case. He wiped his hands on a towel and put the towel in his pocket. Then he unlocked the door and looked out.
The lights had been turned off in the corridor. Vesker took two of the burlap bags with him and went out, and locked the door after him. He carried the bags down the back stairs, and a car was standing in the side street. The street was deserted, and the car was his own. He placed the bags in the rear compartment.
He returned to his room, then, and made sure that every trace of evidence had been removed before he took the other two bags down to the car. Then he sat behind the wheel and drove.
He drove to the east end of the waterfront and dropped one of the four bags into the sea, after weighting it with heavy stones. He drove farther and dropped the second bag from the end of an abandoned dock. The third bag and the fourth he took with him in a rowboat and transported far out into the bay.
Then he returned to the hotel and went straight to Renee LaRoque's room and let himself in with his own key. And the dead man's wife was waiting for him.
2.
Four days later, when he first saw it, he was living in a private home in the European quarter with Tenegai LaRoque's wife. And he laughed, because he thought that the favorite cat of his mistress had eaten too much and was having cramps.
He had forgotten about Tenegai LaRoque. Four days had passed and there had been an investigation. Government officials had questioned the hotel authorities aimlessly and foolishly, because LaRoque had disappeared. Where had LaRoque gone? No one knew. Perhaps he had tired of the heat and monotony of Bandjermasin and taken silent leave of absence to Singapore. Other men had done that. He would come back.
So they had stopped asking questions and they were now wondering what LaRoque would say when he returned and found his wife living with Corlu Vesker. Presently they would find something else to wonder about, and they would forget the whole affair. There would be a native uprising, or a Chinese merchant found stabbed, or something else to take its place.
So Vesker laughed when he first saw it, because he had nothing to worry about.
He was alone on the veranda, in the mosquito room. It was night, and a lamp burned on the table, and the wire netting was alive with droning insects. The glow of the lamp reached feebly out over the lawn and illuminated the veranda steps.
Vesker saw the thing on the steps. Then he saw what it was, and he recoiled so abruptly that he knocked the swizzle-stick out of the tall glass on the table beside him. For the thing was not a cat, but a human arm with a hand and five fingers, and it was sliding across the veranda floor toward him.
He stood up and drew a deep breath and walked toward it, because he did not believe what he saw. But he did not open the door of the mosquito room. He stood with his face pressed against the screen, staring silently. Then he shouted wildly:
"Renee! In the name of God, come quick!"
The thing was ten feet away and approaching like a large caterpillar, humping itself in the center and clawing forward with its five groping fingers. Vesker stood quite still and watched it. His eyes were wide and his face pale, and he was afraid.
"Renee!" he shouted. "Renee! Come out here!"
Then he took a small pearl-handled revolver from the bulging pocket of his linen coat, and flung the screen door open. He fired twice blindly and missed, and then he fired four times methodically. The thing ceased its forward motion and reared like a swaying snake, with its five fingers opening and closing in the air. It fell backward with the impact of the last bullet. Then it wriggled away with incredible speed, while Vesker clung to the door and gaped at it.
In a moment Renee LaRoque came and stared at Vesker and said shrilly:
"What is it? What were you shooting at?"
Vesker looked down at the revolver in his hand, and looked at the veranda floor, and shook his head heavily.
"I must be drunk," he said.
But he knew better.
3.
Vesker wrote a letter.
It was the evening of the seventh day, and the lamp on the table threw his big shadow grotesquely over the paper. He was alone in the room and he was afraid, and his letter was both a confession and a lie.
"I killed him, and there was a good reason for doing so. You knew him, Fournier, so you will understand."
Fournier—Captain Jas
on Fournier—was in charge of the native police squad which patrolled the evil quarter of Bandjermasin's waterfront.
"He was a half-caste and a rotter, and he deserved to die, but I should not have interfered except that he was dragging his wife's good name in the dust. He was playing with another woman and the authorities suspected it. For Renee's sake I had to stop it.
"That night I went to his room at the hotel and argued with him. He was drunk, Fournier. You have seen him drunk, and you know how utterly uncontrollable he can become. He attacked me and I struck him, and when I bent over him he was dead.
"Why am I telling you this? Because I know it will go no further. We are friends. And I need your help. A terrible thing has happened, and I am going mad thinking of it. Four days after I had hidden his body, a horrible beast tried to get into the mosquito room to kill me. It was his hand, Fournier. As God is my witness, it was his hand and arm. His! I shot it, and it went away, but last night it came again and tried to get into my window.
"That was about two o'clock in the morning. I heard a scratching sound, like rats, and I sat up in bed and switched on a flashlight. The window was shut, Fournier. I always sleep with my windows shut, thank God. And the thing was coiled on the sill, with its five fingers flattened against the glass. It had forced the screen up, but the window was locked. It was awful! You will laugh at me, thinking I am drunk, but I am not drunk and I was not drunk last night when the thing came. What I saw was real.
"I screamed, Fournier, and rushed to the bureau for my revolver. But the thing has a brain, because when I turned again to shoot it, it was not there. Renee came running into the room—she is my guest, you know, for the time being, until she gets over the shock of her husband's infidelity—and she asked me what was wrong. I told her. She said I was mad. But I am not mad, Fournier. I was never more sane or sober in my life. And it was LaRoque's hand, his arm and fingers, trying to kill me.
"You must help me. I cannot go to the police. The police would not know what to do, anyway. This is a terrible thing and driving me crazy. I am afraid, because LaRoque was not a white man but a half-caste, and part Saputan. They say his mother was a sorceress.
"What shall I do, Fournier? You have studied these things, and know more than I. What shall I do?"
Vesker read what he had written. It did not give him courage; it frightened him more. Putting his beliefs on paper made him sure of them. He heard footsteps in the corridor outside his door, and he turned in his chair like a scared animal.
"Who is there?" he said harshly.
The knob turned and the door opened, and Renee LaRoque stood there. She wore yellow pajamas which were deep orange in the lamplight, and she had let her hair down so that it covered her shoulders and accentuated the white smoothness of her breasts. Vesker pushed his letter aside and stood up to meet her.
"Are you coming to me tonight?" she said softly.
"Yes."
"I'm tired of waiting, Corlu."
He held her passionately and kissed her until her eyes were wide with anticipation. Then he walked with her to the door.
"I will come in a moment," he promised. "I must finish a letter."
"To a woman?" she said quickly.
"There is no other woman. You know that."
She leaned in the doorway and pushed her hair back with smooth, slender fingers. Vesker lifted his hands and stepped close to her, and then stepped back again, laughing softly.
"As soon as I have finished the letter," he promised. And he closed the door after her.
He went to the table and began to read the letter over again, but it frightened him. He sealed it quickly, addressed the envelope, then turned the lamp low.
The corridor was dark, and Renee LaRoque's room was at the other end. He tiptoed along, smiling and rubbing his hands together softly. He was quite contented. Desire was greater now than fear, and in a moment he would forget about Tenegai LaRoque and about the creeping beast with five fingers.
He removed his necktie and carried it in his hand, and began to unbutton his shirt, because he was impatient. He was fumbling with the fourth button when he heard the scream.
He stopped abruptly. The scream was human, and came from the rear of the house where the servants' quarters were located. It was a vibrant shriek, full of terror.
Vesker stood quite still, waiting for it to come again, and after the scream he heard someone talking in a loud, frightened voice. Then he hurried down the corridor, and he was running when he reached the source of the sound.
It was the room of the Malay houseboy, Melgani. There was a light burning on the washstand, and the little brown-skinned native was kneeling foolishly on the carpet, with his bare arms uplifted and his face turned to the ceiling. From his lips poured a torrent of incoherent syllables which were prayers.
Vesker stood over him and frowned and shook him. The boy flung both arms around him and sobbed.
"What is it?" Vesker said sullenly.
The Malay muttered in his own tongue, pointing to the window. The window was half-way open and the screen was up. The white cotton curtains were moving indolently in the breeze.
"What is it?" Vesker said again. "Talk English, damn you!"
"Dem snake, Tuan!" the Malay whined. "Dem snake him come t'rough window affer me!"
"What snake?"
"Dem big white-color snake him hab twitchy head!"
Vesker stiffened and looked about the room fearfully. He said: "Where is it?"
"Him come 'cross floor! Him try climb on bed! Me yell, Tuan!"
"Where is it, I asked you!"
The Malay gazed about, too, and shook his head from side to side.
"Me—me not know, Tuan."
And there was no snake. Vesker looked; Melgani looked. Holding the lamp, Vesker went to his knees and searched the floor, the corners, the bed-shadows. Rising, he searched the window ledge, the washstand, the cupboard. There was no snake.
"Did you leave your window open?" Vesker demanded.
"No, no, Tuan! No!"
"Well, it's not here. It's gone again. Go back to bed."
Then he went out and walked slowly down the corridor to Renee LaRoque's room. But he was afraid again and he struck four matches, one after another, to light the way. And his hand trembled when he opened the door.
He thought at first that Renee LaRoque was lying that way for his benefit, because she was lovely and passionate and because she wanted him. She lay across the bed, limp and relaxed and nearly naked, with her hair dangling and her white throat exposed.
But when he had shut the door and tiptoed toward her, he saw something else.
She was not lying there for him. She had been flung there. Her lips were blue and parted, and her tongue protruded. Her throat was blotched with crimson. Her yellow pajamas were not open because she had opened them, but because they had been torn open!
Vesker could not believe it. He still expected something else. So he sat beside her and caressed her body with his big hands, and not until she failed to respond to his caresses did he realize that she was dead.
Then he moved away from her and stared at her, and licked his lips. He could not understand it. He still wanted her. She was limp and exquisite and warm, and yet she was dead. How could that be?
He leaned forward again to touch her, but terror took hold of him instead. He leaped to his feet and paced the room, turning always to look at her. The lamp was burning on the dressing-table, and its pink silk shade made a bloody glow of the light. Beyond that the window was open. Renee had never slept with her window open!
The hand had killed her! The hand which had gone to the Malay's room, first, by mistake! God in heaven!
Vesker stared at her and felt cold blood climbing through his legs into his body. He could not take his eyes from her, but he did not want her now; he was afraid of her. She was no longer lovely; she was something dead and cold and horrible. But he was afraid to leave her.
He stood and stared, until he saw another face
in the room, it was the same face he had seen on the night of the murder. It was the old native woman, nameless and strange, hovering over the body of Tenegai LaRoque's wife, and smiling —smiling triumphantly, as if she were proud of something.
Vesker said thickly: "Who—who are you?"
The woman looked at him. She was only the face of a woman. She did not answer.
"What do you want?" Vesker moaned.
But she was not there anymore. There was only the strangled body of Renee LaRoque, and the lamp with the red silk shade, and the open window.
And fear. The fear was a living thing that seeped into Vesker's brain, undermining his reason. He rushed to the bed and glared into the space where the woman's face had hung. He beat at the space with his fists. He muttered and said meaningless things aloud. He screamed hysterically.
Then he sank to his knees and buried his face in Renee LaRoque's breast, and sobbed with terror.
4.
He did not mail the letter to Captain Jason Fournier. When he left Renee LaRoque and returned to his own room, the letter was not where he had put it. He found it on the floor, torn into very small pieces.
He looked at the pieces a long time before he could find courage enough to pick them up. And then he burned them. He was afraid of them.
"It is a good thing," he said. "If I had mailed the letter, there would have been trouble. If they ever learn that Tenegai LaRoque's wife is dead, they will hang me."
He would have to hide the body. Pacing his room, back and forth for an hour, he thought of possible hiding-places. It was a quarter after three o'clock, his watch said. He would have to complete the task before daylight, or the native servants would know.
He went back to Renee LaRoque's room and rolled the body in the top blanket of the bed. That was considerate, he thought. The blanket was soft and woolly and would not irritate. Then he put the bundle over his shoulder and carried it upstairs to the top floor of the house, and up a final flight of wooden steps to the attic. It was very dark up here, and the only light was the probing eye of his flashlight.