Wolfden stands black and dense in front of the calm splendour of the moon; the stars shine on it with their myriad eyes, but they cannot lift the shadow from off it. And he who lies within – is he mingling with the airy spirits of the dead, or dreaming of the accomplishment of his hideous purpose? Is he mad? Is his potent elixir only the outcome of a confused brain? Or is he a glorious genius shaping the form of a great discovery? Is he mad? Was Hamlet?
How still the night; only the murmur of the river as it flows, broad-breasted and fair towards the infinite sea. A few barges lie on the surface of the stream, black, shapeless masses, hanging, as in the centre of a hollow globe, between the star-spread sky and its counterpart in the breast of the river. The distant cry of an owl sounds from the belfry, an answer comes from another at Wolfden, and then the bell again – one! two!
Hark! the wind is rising; the hollow-voiced bell has woke it, and it rushes with wild and querulous voice through the deserted halls. Whew! how it whistles through the great dining-room, and shakes the jagged fragment of rope to and fro as if in glee. The old Squire’s spirit is abroad tonight. Whew! how it catches the crazy shutters and shakes them to and fro until one falls with a shriek, and the wind rushes away, rejoicing in its work. Whirr! what a blast down the chimney – the laboratory – what armies of phials, what queer cabalistic apparatus. There are a few ashes in the furnace. How the fierce wind makes them flare and blaze redly like the angry eye of the Cyclops. Away down the old oak stairs, where the moon, looking through the painted windows, casts a red stain on the dust. Whew! into the bedroom of the Professor. Blow the curtains aside, and let yon thin shaft of moonlight strike on his face. How calm, how passionless. Is the spirit indeed in the body, or is his discovery a great truth? How deadly pale, with the black eyebrows, and the black hair wildly tossed about on the pillow. Look how his hand is clenched. A shade sweeps across his face. Is it the spirit returning to the body, or a cloud drifting across the face of the moon? Is he mad? Does that great brow only bind the fantastic humours of a madman’s brain? Is he mad? Who can tell? Time alone will work out the solution of that problem. Leave him to his dreams and phantasies. Away! out to sea, where the great ships ride on the white waves. Whew! away! Whirr – whew! Look how the clouds drive across the midnight sky. Oh! this is rare sport; hark! the white surges of the Atlantic cry aloud. Whew! and the wind sweeps away into the black pavilion of clouds which hangs over the boiling gulf of the ocean.
VIII
In the Laboratory.
‘Whene’er a man
Is near the pinnacle of his desire,
“What ho!” cries Death, and lo, he tumbles down.’
JUST outside the gates of Wolfden stood a large hawthorn, whose branches, bare of leaves, were shaking wildly in the keen November blasts. It was raining heavily, and the sky was overcast with heavy clouds, while there was not a speck of blue to give any promise of clearing up.
Under the hawthorn, trying to get some shelter from the driving rain, stood Lord Dulchester and his fiancée. They had come out for a short walk, and had been caught in the full fury of the storm outside the gates of Wolfden. Jack drew Philippa under the hawthorn, but they might as well have been in the open for all the protection that delusive shelter afforded them. They were a quarter of a mile away from the Hall; the storm gave no promise of clearing away, and the nearest place in which they could take shelter was Wolfden, which Philippa resolutely declined to enter.
‘I can’t go in while that horrible man is there,’ she said, in reply to Jack’s persistent entreaties.
‘I like him as little as you do,’ retorted Dulchester, bluntly; ‘but I’m not going to have you get your death of cold for anything of that sort. We have no umbrella. Wolfden is the nearest shelter, and the storm won’t clear away for some time, so the best thing we can do is to go in.’
Philippa cast a disconsolate look around. It was raining vigorously, and the road was full of little puddles. She had her furs on, but her feet were wet, so at last she consented to try the hospitality of the Professor.
‘“Beggars mustn’t be choosers,”’ she said, miserably. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’
Macduff (otherwise Lord Dulchester) pushed open the gate, and, letting Philippa pass through, shut it with a bang. The house looked dreary and gloomy in the rain, but they had little time to inspect it. They hastened up the path, and soon found themselves at the huge oaken door. Jack applied the knocker vigorously, and in a few minutes the door was opened by the Professor himself. He expressed the greatest surprise at seeing them, and inwardly determined that he would accomplish his design at once, since the elements had put his victim into his power.
‘You had better come upstairs to my laboratory,’ he said, shaking Dulchester by the hand, which civility that gentleman did not at all relish. ‘It is the only place where there is a fire.’
‘I prefer to wait here,’ said Philippa, coldly, looking out at the steady rain.
‘Permit me to observe, Miss Harkness,’ said the Professor, blandly, ‘that I am a bit of a doctor, and you are very likely to catch cold standing here in your wet clothes.’
‘You had better go, Phil,’ struck in Jack, giving himself a shake like a huge water-dog. ‘I’ll come too.’
The Professor acquiesced in this arrangement with at least some show of pleasure, and led the way upstairs to his laboratory.
It was an octagon-shaped room, with a triple-arched, diamond-paned window, and a furnace nearly opposite. There were a multitude of instruments, and phials, containing drugs required for chemistry, scattered about, and on a small table were writing materials.
Opposite the door which gave entrance from the body of the house was a smaller and massive-looking door, bound with iron; it was partly open, but nothing could be seen beyond.
The Professor led his unexpected visitors into this workshop of science, and, having apologized for the disorder, put Philippa in a chair in front of the furnace. He removed a portion of the top, so that more heat could get at her, and then asked his visitors if they would take any wine. Both of them declined, so the Professor set his wits to work to get Dulchester out of the way.
Jack was rather taken with the queer apparatus about, and the quick-witted German, seeing this, began explaining various experiments to him. Philippa sat looking dreamily into the fire, and drying her wet boots, while her lover and the Professor moved about. At last Dulchester found himself close to the iron-bound door.
‘What have you in here, Professor?’ he asked, pushing it slightly open with his hand.
The Professor’s eyes flashed. Here was a chance he had not reckoned upon of getting rid of Dulchester.
‘Go and see,’ he said, with a laugh. Jack, feeling curious, stepped in, upon which the Professor pulled the door to. It was a spring door, and shut with a click. Hearing this Philippa turned round.
‘Where is Lord Dulchester?’ she asked, rising from her chair in alarm.
‘In there,’ answered the Professor, with a harsh laugh of triumph, pointing to the door.
‘Hallo, Professor, let me out,’ called Jack, with a kick at the door.
The Professor paid no attention, but advanced towards Philippa.
‘Let him out, Professor,’ she said, with a calmness she was far from feeling, for she did not like the look in his eyes. ‘I think we will go now; the storm has cleared away.’
The Professor did not answer, but pulling a drawer out of the table, produced from it a long steel knife, the edge of which he felt with a hideous smile. Philippa felt her heart leap, and would have fainted, but that she knew all her courage would be needed in this terrible situation.
‘Young lady,’ said the Professor, looking at her with a triumphant smile, and speaking slowly, ‘some months ago I made a great discovery which requires one thing to perfect it. That is the blood of a pure and innocent maiden. I have chosen you as the person who is to assist at the consummation of this great secret of Nature. You will have had a short life but an
eternal fame.’
Philippa’s heart turned sick within her as she saw the long blade of the knife, and the wild fire in his eyes.
‘It is an honour,’ he went on in the same monotonous tone, ‘to be an aid to the great cause of science. What is death? Only a pang, and then all is over. Are you prepared?’
The poor girl breathed a prayer to God, and fixed her eyes steadily on the madman.
‘You have been my father’s guest,’ she said in a hard voice, which sounded unnatural to her own ears. ‘Will you stain your hands with the blood of his daughter?’
‘It is an honour,’ answered the madman, with a cruel smile, running his thumb along the edge of the knife. ‘Prepare.’
Philippa had retreated to the window as he advanced, and she looked round for some weapon of defence. On the windowsill by her side stood a huge bottle filled with some chemical preparation. At an ordinary time, she could not have lifted it, but at the present moment the terrible danger gave her strength, and, catching it up, she turned round on the German.
He was now standing immediately in front of the furnace, and she could see the fire blazing up behind him.
‘Advance another step and I will throw this,’ she cried, despairingly.
‘It is an honour,’ he repeated, still advancing, with a vacant smile.
She closed her eyes in desperation, and flung the bottle at him with all her strength. It struck the madman on the shoulder, causing him to stagger against the furnace, and then fell with a crash into the burning heat of the fire. Immediately there was a terrible explosion, and Philippa saw a wall of flame rise up before her as she sank insensible on the floor.
Meanwhile Jack, guessing that there was something wrong, hammered at the door with unabated vigour, but finding that it resisted all his efforts, looked round for some way of escape.
He was in a long, narrow room, and at the end a small window gave an indistinct light. Jack hurried towards this and dashed it open. He got outside on the ledge which ran round the house, and found himself about twenty feet from the ground. The ivy which grew in profusion over the walls offered a natural ladder. So, not hesitating a moment, he scrambled down. How he reached the ground he did not know, but as soon as he found himself there he ran round to the front, in at the door which the Professor had left open, and up the stairs.
The door of the laboratory was closed. But that was no obstacle, for the athlete, putting his shoulder to it, burst it open, and on entering found the room full of smoke. He stumbled over a body lying on the floor, and on bending down saw it was that of the Professor, lying in a pool of blood.
Hastily he stepped over him, and discovered Philippa lying under the window insensible. He caught her in his arms, and, carrying her downstairs, called loudly for the servants.
On their appearance, he sent them to see after the Professor, while he laid Philippa on a sofa in the sitting-room, and sprinkled her face with water. She opened her eyes with a low moan, and, on seeing Jack’s face bending over her, caught his arm with a convulsive sob.
‘Oh, Jack,’ she gasped, ‘what has happened?’
‘That’s what I should like to know,’ said Jack, anxiously, as she sat up.
‘The Professor wanted to kill me,’ she said, looking at him with a haggard face, ‘and I threw some bottle at him. It fell into the fire, there was an explosion, and I knew no more.’
Jack did not say anything, but telling one of the servants to go for the Launceston police took her home.
Of course the affair caused a nine days’ wonder. The back of the Professor’s head was blown away, and death must have been instantaneous. The bottle evidently contained some dangerous drug, which exploded on touching the fire. He was buried in England, and news of his death was sent to his relatives in Germany.
Sir Gilbert was horrified at the event, and came to the conclusion, as did everyone else, that the German was mad. Philippa’s system sustained a severe shock, and she was ill for a long time.
She is now Lady Dulchester, and her husband is devotedly attached to her.
The diary of the Professor fell into the hands of Sir Gilbert, and it was from it that Lady Dulchester learned the strange series of events which had so nearly cost her her life.
Jack is very proud of his wife’s bravery, but she can never recall without a shudder that terrible hour when she discovered the Professor’s secret.
Note by Dr R. Andrews. – I was on a visit to Sir Gilbert Harkness, and in the library found the diary of the late Professor Brankel. I read it, and was deeply interested in the wonderful example which it afforded me of the workings of a diseased brain. Sir Gilbert had a phial of the elixir which the Professor claimed to have discovered, and on analysing it I found that the principal ingredient was opium. Without doubt this was the cause of his visions and hallucinations as described by him in his diary. Whether he did find the cryptogram which led to his discovery I do not know, but the quantity of opium and other drugs which he took must have sent him mad.
From the earlier portions of his diary I am inclined to think that he must have had the germs of insanity in him, which developed under the evil influence of the drink which he called the elixir.
I obtained leave from Sir Gilbert to publish the portions of the diary contained in this story (which I translated from the German), and from what was told me by Lady Dulchester and her husband, I pieced the rest of the story together.
The opium vision in Chapter V. struck me as peculiarly strange. It seems to embrace short and vivid pictures of what the dreamer saw, and must have been written by him immediately after he awoke in the morning. In the diary it was written hurriedly, and was so illegible that I could not make portions of it out.
The workings of this man’s mind are peculiarly interesting, and this fact, coupled with the strange series of events linking it to the outer world, led me to publish this story. Of a certainty there is no truer saying than, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’
JOHN BARRINGTON COWLES
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh, and began writing while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His first published story was ‘The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley,’ which appeared in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal in 1879. Many other works of fiction by this author appeared in print over the next fifty years, but all were eclipsed by his brilliant stories chronicling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, beginning with A Study in Scarlet in 1887. The character’s popularity soared to greater heights with the publication of the first series of Sherlock Holmes short stories in The Strand Magazine, and within a few years Doyle had become one of Britain’s best-paid authors. The following story, ‘John Barrington Cowles,’ made its first appearance in the April 1884 issue of Cassell’s Saturday Journal, and received its first book publication in Dreamland and Ghostland: An Original Collection of Tales and Warnings from the Borderland of Substance and Shadow, Vol. III (1887). Like many macabre stories from the late 19th century, it reflects Victorian men’s anxieties over unleashed female sexuality, as a result of which beautiful, strong-willed women were invariably depicted as seducers and destroyers of men. In this particular instance, the femme fatale is a psychic vampire who uses hypnotism to subjugate her victims.
The Story of a Medical Student.
PART I
IT might seem rash of me to say that I ascribe the death of my poor friend, John Barrington Cowles, to any preternatural agency. I am aware that in the present state of public feeling a chain of evidence would require to be strong indeed before the possibility of such a conclusion could be admitted.
I shall therefore merely state the circumstances which led up to this sad event as concisely and as plainly as I can, and leave every reader to draw his own deductions. Perhaps there may be some one who can throw light upon what is dark to me.
I first met Barrington Cowles when I went up to Edinburgh University to take out medical classes there. My landlady in Nor
thumberland Street had a large house, and, being a widow without children, she gained a livelihood by providing accommodation for several students.
Barrington Cowles happened to have taken a bedroom upon the same floor as mine, and when we came to know each other better we shared a small sitting-room, in which we took our meals. In this manner we originated a friendship which was unmarred by the slightest disagreement up to the day of his death.
Cowles’ father was the colonel of a Sikh regiment, and had remained in India for many years. He allowed his son a handsome income, but seldom gave any other sign of parental affection – writing irregularly and briefly.
My friend, who had himself been born in India, and whose whole disposition was an ardent tropical one, was much hurt by this neglect. His mother was dead, and he had no other relation in the world to supply the blank.
Thus he came in time to concentrate all his affection upon me, and to confide in me in a manner which is rare among men. Even when a stronger and deeper passion came upon him, it never infringed upon the old tenderness between us.
Cowles was a tall, slim young fellow, with an olive, Velasquez-like face, and dark, tender eyes. I have seldom seen a man who was more likely to excite a woman’s interest, or to captivate her imagination.
His expression was, as a rule, dreamy, and even languid; but if in conversation a subject arose which interested him be would be all animation in a moment. On such occasions his colour would heighten, his eyes gleam, and he could speak with an eloquence which would carry his audience with him.
In spite of these natural advantages he led a solitary life, avoiding female society, and reading with great diligence. He was one of the foremost men of his year, taking the senior medal for anatomy, and the Neil Arnott prize for physics.
How well I can remember the first time we met her! Often and often I have recalled the circumstances, and tried to recall what the exact impression was which she produced on my mind at the time.
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