Gaslit Horror

by Lamb, Hugh; Hearn, Lafcadio ; Capes, Bernard

  “I suppose you refer to these deep scratches upon it, don’t you, Hassan?” asked Denviers, as he pointed to some marks, a few of which were apparently fairly recent.

  “The sahib guesses rightly,” answered our guide. “You will remember that the Kachyen stated to me that the Nat is accustomed to obtain its victim now from the abode of the Maw-Sayah; those marks, then, have been made by it when it dragged its human prey out of the hut.”

  We gazed curiously at the marks for a few minutes, then Denviers broke the silence by asking the Arab why it was that the Nat made marks at all.

  “I should have thought that such a powerful spirit could prevent such evidences of its presence becoming observed,” he continued. “My respect for it is certainly not increased by seeing those deep scars; they seem to be made by something which has sharp claws.”

  “That is because of the shape which it has assumed, sahib,” said the Arah, “for the Nats have wondrous powers—”

  “Very likely, Hassan,” interposed Denviers; “I suppose they can do exactly what they like, can they not?”

  I was much surprised at the limit which was, however, placed upon their powers by our guide, for he responded, quickly:—

  “Not altogether, sahib. There is one thing that a Nat cannot do, according to the reports of the Kachyens, and that is, they are unable to move in a direction which is not straight, and hence they are careful to avoid rough ground, where tangled masses and boulders bar their progress, so they usually frequent the open avenues, such as the one which we have just passed through. The symbols above it and the writings and weapons are all for the Nat’s benefit.”

  “And the elephant’s skull?” asked Denviers, irreverently. “What is that put up for?”

  The Arab, however, had an explanation ready, for he promptly replied:—

  “That indicates where the supplies of food are to be found when the Nat requires any.”

  Denviers turned to me for a moment as he said:—

  “I should have thought it a good plan, then, to have put it upon the hut of this Maw-Sayah whom we are about to interview. See that your weapons are in good order, Harold, we may soon need them.”

  Giving a cautious look at my belt and the weapons thrust into it, I followed Denviers, who had mounted the short bamboo ladder, and ws endeavouring to obtain admission to the hut. We heard a harsh sound within, then the cry of someone apparently terror-stricken, and a moment afterwards we had pushed past the Maw-Sayah, who by no means was willing to allow us to enter the rude dwelling.

  The single room, which seemed to constitute the hut, was extremely low and bare of furniture entirely. A few bamboos were spread in one part of it, while at the far end was a fire, the light from which was partly obscured by the smoke, which almost suffocated us, so thickly did it roll up and then spread through the hut. Near the door stood a man scarcely clothed, upon whose face we saw a look of the most abject terror, for, as we surmised, the noise of our entry was mistaken by him for the approach of the fell thing to which he was condemned by the Maw-Sayah. We moved towards the latter as he threw himself down by the fire, which he had only left to see who it was that came unbidden to the hut where to enter was the preceding event to death. He was clothed in a long blue strip of linen, which wound round his waist and covered his body, partly leaving his dark chest uncovered. His features were stamped with an appearance of supreme cunning, his oblique eyes reminding us of a Chinaman, while the fierce look in them as they glared at us from either side of an aquiline nose, which betrayed his Burmese descent, did not increase our confidence in the man as he stretched out his bony hands over the fire as if for warmth, although outside the hut we had found the heat almost insupportable.

  “What do ye seek?” he demanded, as he looked into our faces in turn and seemed astonished at our strange features.

  “We are travellers who wished to see a Kachyen village,” responded Denviers, “and we further desired to see some of its inhabitants; but as none were visible we entered this hut, even against your will. Where are the people who dwell here?”

  The man whom my companion addressed pointed to the Kachyen near the doorway, as he responded:—

  “There is one of them, and in a short time even he will never be seen again.”

  “Can you give us food?” hazarded Hassan, in order to get the man to continue his conversation, for the Arab evidently was expecting that the Nat would soon arrive upon the scene. The Maw-Sayah rose and pointed to the entrance as he cried:—

  “That way ye came, that way shall ye depart. Food for ye I have not, nor would I give it if I had.”

  I turned to Denviers and said, in a low tone:—

  “What shall we do, Frank? I don’t think our opportunity of seeing what may transpire will be as good within the hut as without it. Whatever the solution is to this affair, if we are outside we shall see this Kachyen dragged away, and may further watch the approach of whatever caused those strange marks which we observed.”

  “One thing is clear,” said my companion; “we will attempt to save this intended victim, at all events. I expect that if we tried we could get him away easily enough, but that plan would not be of much service. We must attack this being, whatever it is, with which this Maw-Sayah is leagued. How I should like to hand him over as a victim instead of that trembling captive by the door. It shows to what extent this juggler has acquired power over this tribe, for I notice that his captive is unbound, and is certainly a much finer built man than the other.”

  “It wants less than an hour to dusk, sahibs,” said Hassan, who had listened carefully to our remarks; “if we were to station ourselves a little away from the hut we could see what took place, and if the Nat were mortal we might attack it.”

  Denviers shrugged his shoulders at the Arab’s supposition as he responded:—

  “There is little doubt, Hassan, that the Nat would smart if that keen blade of yours went a little too near it; but I think your plan is a good one, and we will adopt it, as it falls in with what has already been said.”

  We gave a final look at the crafty face of the man who was still seated by the fire, and then brushing past the captive we made for the open village again.

  “I feel sorry for this Kachyen,” said Denviers. “He will have a dreadful five minutes of it, I expect; but it is our only way of preventing, if possible, such an affair from occurring again.”

  On leaving the hut we stationed ourselves almost opposite to it, and then began to keep watch. What we should see pass up the avenue we could only surmise, but our suppositions certainly did not lead us to imagine in the faintest degree the sight which before long was destined to completely startle us.

  III

  The grey dusk was becoming night when among the dark stems of the trees we saw some black form move over the ground. We could scarcely distinguish it as it crawled over the bamboo logs and made a rasping noise as it clung to the ladder. The door of the hut yielded to it, and a minute after it again emerged and bore with it the terrified Kachyen. We crept after it as it dragged its captive down the avenue, striving our utmost to make out its shape. One thing we could tell, which was that the creature was not upright; but our movement behind it was apparently known, for it struggled to move quicker over the ground with its human burden.

  “Shall I shoot it?” I whispered to Denviers, as my nerves seemed to be almost unstrung at the unknowableness of the creeping thing.

  “You would more likely kill the man,” he responded. “Follow as noiselessly as you can—it will not let its prey escape, be sure of that. Once we track it to its haunt we will soon dispatch it, big and fierce as it seems.”

  We drew nearer and nearer to it, until it had passed half-way down the avenue, then it seemed to become lost to our view, although we were, as we knew, close to it. I felt Denviers’ hand upon my shoulder, and then he whispered:—

  “The Kachyen is being dragged up a tree just in front—look!”

  I could just distinguish something
moving up the trunk, when suddenly the captive, who had hitherto been apparently paralyzed with terror, uttered a cry and then must have succeeded in disengaging himself from the dreadful thing that had held him, for the noise of someone falling to the ground was heard, and a minute after we distinguished the form of a man rushing headlong back to the village for safety.

  We did not anticipate such an event, and were contemplating a search for the captor of the Kachyen, when a cold sweat broke out upon me, for the clammy claws of the man-hunter had touched me! The sensation which seized me was only of short duration, for I felt myself released just as Denviers said:—

  “Harold, the Kachyen has fled, and his captor, determined to secure its prey, has betaken its crawling body after him. If only we had a light! I saw something like a black shadow moving onwards; get your pistol ready and follow.”

  I just distinguished Denviers as he passed on in front of me, Hassan coming last. When we reached the hut of the Maw-Sayah we stopped at once, for, from the cry which came from it, we rightly surmised that the terrible seeker for human prey had made for this place, thinking in its dull intelligence, that its captive had returned. We thrust ourselves into the hut, and saw by the red firelight a sanguinary contest between the Maw-Sayah and the black object which we had endeavoured to track. Thinking that the Kachyen was being destroyed, the juggler had not fastened his door, and the enraged man-eater had seized him as he rested on the ground, quite at its mercy!

  The Maw-Sayah was struggling with his bony hands to extricate himself from the clutches of a monstrous tree-spider! We had seen, on an island in the South Seas, several cocoa-nut crabs, and this reptile somewhat resembled them, but was even larger. Grasping the juggler with several of its long, furry-looking claws, it fixed its glaring red eyes in mad anger upon him as he grasped in each hand one of its front pair of legs, which were armed with strong, heavy-looking pincers. He besought us wildly to shoot, even if we killed him, held as he was by his relentless foe.

  “Harold,” cried my companion, “keep clear, and look out for yourself when I fire at this reptile; most likely it will make for one of us.”

  He drew right close to it, and thrusting the barrel of his pistol between its eyes touched the trigger. The explosion shook the hut, its effect upon the spider being to cause it to rush frantically about the floor, dragging the Maw-Sayah as if he were some slight burden scarcely observable.

  “You missed it!” I cried. “Look out, Hassan, guard the doorway!”

  The Arab stood, sword in hand, waiting for it to make for the entrance, while Denviers exclaimed:—

  “I shot it through the head!” and a minute afterwards the trueness of his aim was manifest, for the claws released, and the Maw-Sayah, wounded badly, but saved, stood free from the muscular twitchings of the dead spider.

  “You scoundrel!” said Denviers to him, “I have a good mind to serve you the same. You deserve to die as so many of these simple-minded, credulous Kachyens have done.”

  I thought for one brief second that my companion was about to kill the juggler, for through all our adventures I had never seen him so thoroughly roused. I stood between them; then, when Denviers quickly recovered his self-command, I turned to the Maw-Sayah and asked:—

  “If we spare your life, will you promise to leave this village and never to return?”

  He turned his evil-looking but scared face towards us eagerly as he replied:—

  “I will do whatever you wish.”

  Denviers motioned to him to rest upon the ground, which he did, then turning to me, said:—

  “It is pretty apparent what this juggler has done. The man who first reported the discovery of this Nat, as the foolish Kachyens call it, simply disturbed a monstrous spider which had lived in the trees which he felled—that accounts for his seeing it. Finding animal food scarce, the reptile ventured into this village and tried to get into one of the huts. Its exertions were rewarded by the Kachyen coming to the door, whom it accordingly seized. To continue its plan, which proved so successful, needed very little reasoning power on the part of such a cunning creature. No doubt this Maw-Sayah purposely left the door of his hut unfastened each seventh night, and the spider thus became accustomed to seek for its victim there. I daresay it came the other nights, but the juggler was then careful enough to keep his hut well fastened.”

  “What do the sahibs propose to do?” interrupted Hassan.

  Denviers turned to him, as he responded:—

  “We will wait for daybreak; then having dragged the dead spider out where the Kachyens may see that it is no longer able to harm them, we will take this Maw-Sayah down the mountain path away from the village as poor as he came.”

  “A good plan,” I assented, and we followed it out, eventually leaving the juggler, and climbing once more into the howdah upon the elephant, which we found close to the spot where we had left it, secured from wandering far away by the rope which Hassan had used to hinder its movements.

  We entered Bhamo, and while we took a much-needed rest our guide—as we afterwards learnt—searched for and found the fugitive Kachyen, who, on hearing that his safety was secured, hastily departed to the village to rejoice with the rest of his tribe that the so-called Nat would not do them any more injury.

  Mrs. L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

  Now for two mystery writers who left behind a real-life mystery all their own. It seems there are two candidates for the role of the pen-name Robert Eustace—it is by no means certain which is the right one.

  Elizabeth Thomasina Meade (1844–1914)—who was incorrectly called Mrs. Meade, when she should have been named Mrs. Toulmin Smith—was born in Ireland, the daughter of a Cork rector.

  She became a prolific and well respected writer, both of children’s books (over 150!) and detective stories, which she wrote in collaboration with two writers, Clifford Halifax (six books) and Robert Eustace (five books).

  Space prevents me setting out the full story here, but I recommend interested readers to consult Trevor Hall’s valuable book Dorothy L. Sayers: Nine Literary Studies (1980), where he sets out his argument in a chapter on Eustace and Sayers. He finds two likely candidates for the role of Robert Eustace: Dr. Eustace Robert Barton or Eustace Rawlins, both of whom have good credentials. Both wrote under other names than their own.

  Hall favours Dr. Barton, but whichever one it was, they made a good job of their collaboration with Mrs. Meade. One book which resulted from the Meade/Eustace partnership was A Master of Mysteries (1898), the adventures of a detective called Mr. John Bell, clearly modelled—as many were in those days—on Sherlock Holmes.

  Bell investigated haunted houses as his speciality, and called himself a “a professional exposer of ghosts.” Note the word “exposer”—that was indeed the fate of many of Bell’s cases. As he put it, his cases were “enveloped at first in mystery, and apparently dark with portent, but, nevertheless, when grappled with in the true spirit of science, capable of explanation.”

  “The Mystery of the Felwyn Tunnel” was one of John Bell’s better cases, here returned to print after an absence of over 100 years. It bears an interesting resemblance to Charles Dickens’ famous story “The Signalman,” and I do not think it over-fanciful to see in the line on page 64 starting “What the ...” an affectionate nod at the famous author.

  The Mystery of the Felwyn Tunnel

  I was making experiments of some interest in South Kensington, and hoped that I had perfected a small but not unimportant discovery, when, on returning home one evening in late October in the year 1893, I found a visiting card on my table. On it were inscribed the words, “Mr. Geoffrey Bainbridge.” This name was quite unknown to me, so I rang the bell and inquired of my servant who the visitor had been. He described him as a gentleman who wished to see me on most urgent business, and said further that Mr. Bainbridge intended to call again later in the evening. It was with both curiosity and vexation that I awaited the return of the stranger. Urgent business with me generally meant
a hurried rush to one part of the country or the other. I did not want to leave London just then; and when at half-past nine Mr. Geoffrey Bainbridge was ushered into my room, I received him with a certain coldness which he could not fail to perceive. He was a tall, well-dressed, elderly man. He immediately plunged into the object of his visit.

  “I hope you do not consider my unexpected presence an intrusion, Mr. Bell,” he said. “But I have heard of you from our mutual friends, the Greys of Uplands. You may remember once doing that family a great service.”

  “I remember perfectly well,” I answered more cordially. “Pray tell me what you want; I shall listen with attention.”

  “I believe you are the one man in London who can help me,” he continued. “I refer to a matter especially relating to your own particular study. I need hardly say that whatever you do will not be unrewarded.”

  “That is neither here nor there,” I said; “but before you go any further, allow me to ask one question. Do you want me to leave London at present?”

  He raised his eyebrows in dismay.

  “I certainly do,” he answered.

  “Very well; pray proceed with your story.”

  He looked at me with anxiety.

  “In the first place,” he began, “I must tell you that I am chairman of the Lytton Vale Railway Company in Wales, and that it is on an important matter connected with our line that I have come to consult you. When I explain to you the nature of the mystery, you will not wonder, I think, at my soliciting your aid.”

  “I will give you my closest attention,” I answered; and then I added, impelled to say the latter words by a certain expression on his face, “if I can see my way to assisting you I shall be ready to do so.”

  “Pray accept my cordial thanks,” he replied. “I have come up from my place at Felwyn today on purpose to consult you. It is in that neighbourhood that the affair has occurred. As it is essential that you should be in possession of the facts of the whole matter, I will go over things just as they happened.”