Called Back

by Hugh Conway

  We were in a good-sized room, substantially but not fashionably furnished; the style altogether was that of an ordinary lodging house. It was clear it had not been occupied for some time, as dust lay thick on every article. I could throw my mind back and recall the very corner of the room in which I was stationed while the assassins were so busily engaged. I could mark the spot where I fell upon the yet quivering body, and I shuddered as I could not resist peering on the floor for traces of the crime. But if the carpet was the same one, it was of a dark red hue and kept its secret well. At one end of the room were folding doors—it must have been from behind these I heard those haunting sounds of distress. I threw them open, and, holding my candle on high, looked in. The room was of much the same kind as the other one, but, as I fully expected, it contained a piano—the very piano, perhaps, whose notes had merged into that cry of horror.

  What possessed me! What impulse urged me! I shall never know. I laid down the candle; I entered the back room; I lifted the dust-covered lid of the piano and I struck a few notes. Doubtless it was the tragical associations of the scene which made me, without thinking why or wherefore, blend together the notes which commenced that great song which I had heard as I lingered outside the door, listening to the sweet voice singing, and wondering whose voice it was. As I struck those notes I looked through the folding door at the motionless, statue-like figure of Pauline.

  A nervous trembling seemed to pass over her frame. She turned and came toward me, and there was a look in her face which made me move aside from the piano, and wonder and fear what was to take place.

  The cloak I had thrown around her had fallen from her shoulders. She seated herself on the music bench, and striking the keys with a master hand, played brilliantly and faultlessly the prelude to the song of which I had struck a few vagrant notes.

  I was thunderstruck. Never till now had she shown the slightest taste for music—as I have said, it appeared rather to annoy and irritate her. Now she was bringing out sounds which it seemed absurd to expect from that neglected and untuned piano.

  But after the first few bars my astonishment ceased. As well as if I had been told, I knew what would happen—or part of it. I was even prepared, when the moment came for the voice to join the music, to hear Pauline sing as faultlessly as she was playing, yet to sing in the same subdued manner as on that fatal night. So fully prepared I was, that with breathless emotion I waited until the song came to the very note at which it finished when once before I listened to it. So fully prepared, that when she started wildly to her feet and uttered once more that cry of horror, my arms were round her in a moment, and I bore her to a sofa close by.

  To her, as well as to me, all the occurrences of that dreadful night were being reproduced. The past had come back to Pauline—come back at the moment it left her.

  What the reflux might do eventually—whether it would be a blessing or a curse—I had no time to consider. All my cares were needed by Pauline. My task was terrible! I had to hold her down by main force, to endeavour in every possible way to soothe her and prevent her cries, which rang so loudly that I feared the neighbours would be alarmed. And all the while she struggled with me, strove to repulse me and regain her feet; as certainly as if I could read her thoughts, I knew that whatever had happened formerly was once more before her eyes. Once more she was being held down by a strong hand, most likely on the same couch, and once more her struggles were gradually becoming feebler and her cries growing fainter. It needed only for the latter to sink at last into a repetition of that dismal moan to make the picture, so far as she was concerned, complete. The only difference was that the hands now laid upon her were loving ones.

  All things up to the present situation, and all that I narrate after the termination of this chapter, I expect to be believed. I do not say that such events and coincidences are of everyday occurrence. Had they been so, I should have no object in writing this tale. But I do say this, all else save this one thing I could prove to be true, if not by direct by circumstantial evidence; all else can be explained either simply or scientifically; but what follows I can only give my own word for. Call it what you like, dream, hallucination, overheated imagination—call it anything save invention—I shall not be annoyed. This is what happened.

  Pauline at last lay still. Her moan had sunk into silence. She seemed once more to have lost all consciousness. My one idea now was to remove her as speedily as possible from this fatal place. All sorts of strange thoughts and speculations were thronging my brain. All sorts of hopes and fears were shaking me. What would the explanation be, if ever I could get it?

  My poor darling lay still and peaceful. I thought I would let her rest so for a few moments before I carried her out. I dreaded what waking her might mean. So I took her hand and held it close in mine.

  The candle was on the mantelpiece behind me. It threw little or no light into the front room, the folding doors of which were only partially open—the half behind the couch on which Pauline lay being closed. It was, therefore, impossible for me from my seat beside her to look into the front room. Indeed, as I sat there my face was turned from it.

  I held my wife’s hand for a few seconds, and then a strange undefinable feeling crept over me—the kind of feeling sometimes experienced in a dream in which two persons appear, and the dreamer cannot be certain with which one’s thoughts and acts he identifies himself. For a while I seemed to have a dual existence. Although perfectly aware that I still occupied the same seat, still held Pauline’s hand in mine, I was also seated at the piano, and in some way gazed through the half-opened doors into the other room, and that room was full of light!

  Light so brilliant that in a glance I could see everything the apartment contained. Each article of furniture, the pictures on the walls, the dark curtains drawn over the window at the end, the mirror over the fireplace, the table in the centre, on which a large lamp was burning. I could see all this, and more! For round the table were grouped four men, and the faces of two of the party were well known to me!

  That man who was facing me—leaning across the table on which his hands rested, whose features seemed full of alarmed surprise, whose eyes were fixed on one object a few feet away from him—that man was Ceneri, the Italian doctor, Pauline’s uncle and guardian.

  That man who was near the table on Ceneri’s right hand—who stood in the attitude of one ready to repel a possible attack, whose face was fierce and full of passion, whose dark eyes were blazing—that man was the English-speaking Italian, Macari, or, as he now styled himself, Anthony March, Pauline’s brother. He also was looking at the same object as Ceneri.

  The man in the background—a short, thick-set man with a scar on his cheek—was a stranger to me. He was looking over Ceneri’s shoulder in the same direction.

  And the object they all looked at was a young man, who appeared to be falling out of his chair, and whose hand grasped convulsively the hilt of a dagger, the blade of which was buried in his heart, buried I knew by a blow which had been struck downward by one standing over him.

  All this I saw and realized in a second. The attitude of each actor, the whole scene surrounding was taken in by me as one takes in with a single glance the purpose and meaning of a picture. Then I dropped Pauline’s hand and sprang to my feet.

  Where was the lighted room? Where were the figures I had seen? Where was that tragic scene which was taking place before my eyes? Vanished into thin air! The candle was burning dimly behind me, the front room was in dusk. Pauline and I were the only living creatures in the place!

  It was a dream, of course. Perhaps, under the circumstances, not an unnatural one. Knowing what I knew already of the crime which had taken place here; feeling sure that in some way Pauline had been present when it was committed; excited by what had occurred tonight—Pauline’s strange walk, her sudden bursting into song, the very song I had before heard, that song with the dreadful ending—it is no wonder that I imagined a scene like this, and taking the only persons I knew who
were in any way connected with my poor wife, brought them into the life-like vision.

  But given that a man may dream the same dream twice, perhaps three times, there is no record of his dreaming it as often as he willed. Yet this was my case. Again I took Pauline’s hand, and again, after a few moments’ waiting, I felt the same strange sensation and saw the same awful sight. Not once, not twice, but many times did this occur, until, sceptical as I was, as even I am now in such matters, I could only believe that in some mysterious way I was actually gazing on the very sight which had met the girl’s eyes when memory, perhaps mercifully, fled from her, and reason was left impaired.

  It was only when our hands were in contact that the scene came before me. This fact strengthened my theory. I felt then—I feel now, it is the true one. What peculiar mental or physical organization can have brought about such an effect I am unable to say. Call it cataleptic, clairvoyant, anything you will, but it was as I relate.

  Again and again I took Pauline’s hand, and as I held it looked into that brilliantly lighted room.

  Like the motionless figures in a tableau vivant, again and again, without a change of attitude or expression, I saw Ceneri, Macari, and the man in the background looking at their victim. The appearance of the last-named I studied very closely. Even with the agony of death on his face I could see he was supremely handsome. His must have been a face that women love to look upon, and even through the horror of the vision, a painful thought came to me as I wondered what might have been his relations with the girl who saw him suddenly struck down.

  Who had struck him? Without a doubt Macari, who, as I said, was standing nearest to him, in the attitude of one expecting an attack. His hand might just have quitted the dagger hilt. His downward stroke had driven the blade so deeply into the heart that death and the blow were all but simultaneous. This was what Pauline saw, what perhaps she was seeing now, and what, by some strange power, she was able to show me as one shows another a picture!

  Ever since that night I have wondered how I found the presence of mind to sit there and repeatedly call up, by the aid of that senseless girl by my side, that phantasmagoria It must have been the burning desire to fathom the mysteries of that long past night, the wish to learn exactly what shock had disarranged my wife’s intellect, the indignation I felt at the cowardly murder, and the hope of bringing the criminals to justice, which gave me strength to produce and reproduce that scene until I was satisfied that I knew all that dumb show could tell me, until my heart smote me for letting Pauline lie so long in her present state.

  Then I wrapped her cloak around her, raised her in my arms and bore her from the room, down the stairs to the door. The hour was not late; I soon, by the aid of a passer-by, summoned a cab, and in a very short time reached home, and laid her, still insensible, upon her bed.

  Whatever strange power she had possessed of communicating her thoughts to me, it ceased as soon as we were outside that fatal house. Now and hereafter I could hold her hand, but no dream, vision, or hallucination followed the act.

  This is the one thing I cannot explain—the mystery at which I hinted when I commenced my tale. I have related what happened; if my bare word is insufficient to win credence, I must be content on this one point to be disbelieved.

  CHAPTER IX

  A BLACK LIE

  HAVING placed the poor girl in Priscilla’s motherly hands, I fetched the best doctor I could think of, and efforts were at once made to restore consciousness. It was long before any sign of returning animation showed itself, but, at last, she awoke. Need I say what a supreme moment that was to me?

  I need not give details of that return to life. After all, it was but a half return, and brought fresh terrors in its train. When morning dawned it found Pauline raving with what I prayed was but the delirium of fever.

  The doctor told me her state was a most critical one. There was hope for her life, but no certainty of saving it. It was during those days of anxiety that I learned how much I loved my unhappy girl. How grateful I should be if she were given back to me, even as I had always known her.

  Her wild fevered words cut me to the heart. Sometimes in English, sometimes in soft Italian, she called on someone; spoke words of deep love and sorrow; gave vent to expressions of fond endearment. These were succeeded by cries of grief, and it seemed as if shudders of fear passed over her.

  For me there was no word; no look of recognition. I, who would have given worlds to hear my name spoken once, during her delirium, with an expression of love, was but a stranger at her bedside.

  Whom was it she called for and lamented? Who was the man that she and I had seen slain? I soon learned—and if my informant spoke the truth, he had, in so doing, dealt me a blow from which I should never rally.

  It was Macari who struck it. He called on me the day alter Pauline and I had visited that house. I would not see him then. My plans were not formed. For the time I could think of nothing save my wife’s danger. But two days afterward, when he again called, I gave orders for him to be admitted.

  I shuddered as I took the hand I dared not yet refuse him, although in my own mind I was certain that a murderer’s fingers were clasped round my own. Perhaps the very fingers which had once closed on my throat. Yet, with all I knew, I doubted whether I could bring him to justice.

  Unless Pauline recovered, the evidence I could bring would be of no weight. Even the victim’s name was unknown to me. Before the accusation would lie his remains must be found and identified. It was hopeless to think of punishing the murderer, now that more than three years had elapsed since the crime.

  Besides—was he Pauline’s brother?

  Brother or not, I would unmask him. I would show him that the crime was no longer a secret; that an outsider knew every detail. I would tell him this in the hope that his future would be haunted with the dread of a just vengeance overtaking him.

  I knew the name of the street to which Pauline had led me. I had noticed it as we drove from it a few nights ago, and the reason of my drunken guide’s mistake was apparent. It was Horace Street. My conductor had jumbled up Walpole and Horace in his drink-muddled brain.

  On what a slight thread the whole course of a life hangs!

  Macari had heard of Pauline’s illness and delirium. He was as tenderly solicitous in his inquiries as a brother should be. My replies were cold and brief. Brother or not, he was answerable for everything.

  Presently he changed the subject. ‘I scarcely like to trouble you at such a time, but I should be glad to know if you are willing to join me, as I suggested, in a memorial to Victor Emmanuel?’

  ‘I am not. There are several things I must have explained first.’

  He bowed politely; but I saw his lips close tightly for a moment.

  ‘I am quite at your service,’ he said.

  ‘Very well. Before all I must be satisfied that you are my wife’s brother.’

  He raised his thick, dark eyebrows and tried to smile.

  ‘That is easily done. Had poor Ceneri been with us, he would have vouched for it.’

  ‘But he told me very differently.’

  ‘Ah, he had his reasons. No matter, I can bring plenty of other persons.’

  ‘Then, again,’ I said, looking him full in the face and speaking very slowly, ‘I must know why you murdered a man three years ago in a house in Horace Street.’

  Whichever the fellow felt—fear or rage—the expression of his face was that of blank astonishment. Not, I knew, the surprise of innocence, but of wonder that the crime should be known. For a moment his jaw dropped and he gaped at me in silence.

  Then he recovered. ‘Are you mad, Mr Vaughan?’ he cried.

  ‘On the 20th of August, 186—, at No. — Horace Street, you stabbed to the heart a young man who was sitting at the table. Dr Ceneri was in the room at the time, also another man with a scar on his face.’

  He attempted no evasion. He sprang to his feet with features convulsed with rage. He seized my arm. For a moment I thoug
ht he meant to attack me, but found he only wanted to scan my face attentively. I did not shrink from his inspection. I hardly thought he would recognize me, so great a change does blindness make in a face.

  But he knew me. He dropped my arm and stamped his foot in fury.

  ‘Fools! Idiots!’ he hissed. ‘Why did they not let me do the work thoroughly?’

  He walked once or twice up and down the room, and then with regained composure stood in front of me.

  ‘You are a great actor, Mr Vaughan,’ he said, with a coolness and cynicism which appalled me. ‘You deceived even me, and I am very suspicious.’

  ‘You do not even deny the crime, you villain?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why should I, to an eye-witness? To others I will deny it fast enough. Besides, as you are interested in the matter, there is no occasion to do so.’

  ‘I am interested!’

  ‘Certainly; as you married my sister. Now, my fine fellow! my gay bridegroom! my dear brother-in-law! I will tell you why I killed that man and what I meant by my words to you at Geneva.’

  His air of bitter, callous mockery, as he spoke these words, made me dread what was to come. My hands were tingling to throw him from the room.

  ‘That man—I shall not for obvious reasons tell you his name—was Pauline’s lover. Translate “lover” into Italian—into what the word drudo signifies in that language—then you will understand my meaning. We, on our mother’s side have noble blood in our veins—blood which brooks no insult. He was Pauline’s, your wife’s, lover, I say again. He had no wish to marry her, and so Ceneri and I killed him—killed him in London—even in her presence. As I told you once before, Mr Vaughan, it is well to marry a woman who cannot recall the past.’

  I made no reply. So hideous a statement called for no comment. I simply rose and walked toward him