Part 7
Together they went into the gaming room, and the young engineer saw crowds of men and women standing about the whirling wheels, or sitting about the tables with the light of greed in their eyes. Here a woman laughed shrilly as the croupier pushed toward her a pile of money, while beside her a man cursed his luck in language which would have shamed a demon.
They went to the opium den and saw men and women, some safely tucked away on the little shelves, others sitting on low divans, while half a dozen grinning Chinamen cooked the little brown beads and brought to them. They went into other rooms, seeing sights which I will not describe, and everywhere suggestive songs and oaths met their ears.
That night about 12 o’clock a man slipped about the decks of the “Lawless,” making little noise but working busily. He went to the ship’s boats and removed from all save the one in the stern small sections of the bottom which had been cunningly sawed out. He went down in the hold to each of the pumps, and smiled to himself as he noted the cylinders from which the plungers had been removed. Then he drew a few more cans of oil and carried them down to where the coal was stored, and when he returned the cans were empty. From there he went to his cabin and carried a few more things to the one boat in the stern which had not been tampered with.
Then, although everything was completed, he paused irresolutely. He went to some of the rooms into which Jenifer Vass had taken him earlier in the evening. He did not go into them, but stood and listened to the sounds which came out through transoms and half-opened doors, and, as he listened, the former look of determination began to come back to his face.
He paused for a minute outside the drinking room, listening to the chorus of a vulgar song. The door opened and a couple of men staggering out started for the part of the ship given over to the women. As they lurched past him Planchette heard a remark one of them made to the other. He turned and walked swiftly to the hold, and lighting a match, held it over the spot on the coal where nearly a barrel of oil had soaked in. Then he stole back to the upper deck, slipped the ship’s boat carefully over the side and dropped into the sea.
He remained perfectly motionless, watching the great form of the “Lawless” as she steamed slowly past him. Taking up his oars he pulled along for a little way, and the distance between him and the ship did not increase greatly, for, as has been observed, speed of traveling was not one of the pleasures promised to the passengers of the “Lawless.” In a little while he saw a number of lights flash out on deck, and the black forms of many men hurrying to and fro were silhouetted against the sky. Then, suddenly, above the roar of the water he heard the piercing shriek of a woman. He shivered slightly and ceased rowing.
The ship’s engines had stopped, and the boat was rolling heavily on the swell. Great clouds of black smoke began to pour from the hatchways, and across the water he heard the sound of men trying to get out the boats, an undertaking followed immediately by an angry cursing in which he heard his own name mingled. But he only smiled again, that same strange smile that had been on his face for the last week when as he worked down in the bowels of the ship, he heard the sounds of riot above.
“They’ll be after the pumps now,” muttered the instrument of God to himself, and he laughed mirthlessly.
He took up his oars and began rowing again. He knew it was many miles to the nearest land, but he must get away from that great flaming eye, which seemed to be winking at him. The cries and shrieks of despair from those on board the burning ship were awful to hear, so he sang loudly and drowned out the noise.
He rowed furiously till nearly daybreak, when, sinking to the bottom of the boat, he slept from sheer exhaustion. When he opened his eyes again the sun was high in the heavens. He looked around him for some trace of his last night’s work, but only the great green expanse of water met his eye. There was not a speck on the waters. Of the eight hundred passengers who had set out a week before in pursuit of sin not one remained.
Five days later the BORUS, a merchantman plying between Savannah and New York, picked up a man off Hatteras, drifting about in a boat. He had neither oars nor provisions, and was raving with delirium. He was carried back to New York and taken to Bellevue hospital, where he was identified by the house physician as the man who had left there against orders two weeks before scarcely recovered from brain fever. He had a lucid interval three days later, during which the nurse learned much of the foregoing.
The man died that night muttering of a Palace of Sin which was smitten by the hand of God.
THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.
THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.
Four young men sat around a table one winter’s night in an old New England country house. Their host, Richard Churchill, was a civil engineer, who had inherited some property, including this old estate, from an aunt; and he was giving a little winter stag party to three of his old college friends. On the table was a steaming punch bowl, and scattered about were pipes, tobacco and cigars. The conversation touched lightly on various subjects; the struggle in the Islands, the coming great presidential contest, and other current events. Captain Van Patten, a West Point graduate, who had done some things worthy of mention, and won the bars on his shoulder straps at San Juan Hill, had just made a statement regarding the courage of a recent great naval commander.
“You may talk about the courage that prompts men to do bold deeds in the bright sunshine, with hundreds of men cheering and fighting beside them, but the man who has the real courage, is the one who, on a dark night like this, dares to walk by himself into a lonely graveyard, and sit on a newly made grave.” It was the host who had spoken, but as he had had the reputation at college of being afraid of the dark, there was a general laugh at his expense.
“That,” said one of the other young men, who was a doctor, and so accustomed to gruesome sights, “doesn’t require much courage, and besides,” he added, looking at the deep snowbanks outside, “one couldn’t very well sit on a newly made grave to-night, for the ground is frozen solid, and there are snow-drifts two feet deep. However, there are several bodies in the vault over in the cemetery yonder, and I am willing to wager that no one here dares walk over and knock three times on the iron door.”
“It seems to me,” answered Captain Van Patten, carelessly, “that you civilians have a very primitive idea of courage. If you will make a wager that would tempt a man to leave this most delicious punch, and such delightful company, I will venture to go over and bring back a souvenir from your terrible tomb. Churchill, our host here, as nearest resident to the village graveyard, is no doubt supplied with a key to the tomb.” He looked inquiringly at the young civil engineer, who nodded. “Well, as I remarked before, for a sufficient wager I will agree to bring back to you one of the bats which probably haunt the place.”
The doctor, somewhat nettled at the bantering tone of the captain, rose as if to make what he was about to say more impressive, and said, slowly, “In that tomb there was placed this afternoon the body of Andrew Phelps, who died in church last Sunday from heart failure. The clothes of the corpse included a black frock suit and a black silk tie. I know these things, because the village undertaker was away, and I was called in to assist in preparing the body for burial. I will wager this gentleman, who seems not to be afraid,” he added sarcastically, “one hundred dollars that he does not dare, at twelve o’clock to-night, leave this courageous company, unlock the tomb, force open the coffin, and bring back to this room within the hour that same black neckcloth.”
“Taken,” answered the captain promptly; and drawing a check-book from his pocket, he wrote a check for the amount. “And now,” he continued, “as I see the clock indicates 11.30, I shall have to request as quickly as possible the loan of a hammer and screw-driver.”
They brought him the necessary tools, he wrapped himself in his great coat, and left the house whistling nonchalantly.
“I didn’t tell him which was the squire’s coffin,” said the doctor after Van Patten had left. “It might give even his iron nerves a shock if he opened the coffin in which they buried the remains of the tramp who was run over on the Central last week, and was picked up in pieces in a basket,--all except the head, which was never found.”
Van Patten trudged along through the snow toward the tomb. He wasn’t a timid young man in any sense of the word, and the present excursion was nothing but a little adventure, which he could work up with frequent tellings into a good after-dinner story. “Rather a nasty night,” he muttered to himself, as he turned in at the cemetery gate. There was not a star in sight, and the sky was full of great threatening black clouds, which probably meant snow before morning.
He unlocked the tomb, and stepped inside, but it was some time before he could make out in the inky darkness where what he was seeking lay. There were three wooden boxes resting on iron bars set into the cement wall. All were of about the same length, and there was nothing by which to distinguish one from the other, as he felt them over.
“It’s a wonder he wouldn’t have told me there was a party of them here. How’s a man to know who’s who?” said the captain to himself, and he gave a slight shiver. “Well, here goes for luck, anyway,” and he began to unscrew the lid from the nearest coffin box.
After some ten minutes’ work he had the wooden cover off, and tried to pry the coffin open. The thing gave way at last, and he thrust his hand in and groped about the neck of the body, feeling for the tie. His hand met only a mass of lace and ribbons, and to his dismay he discovered that the corpse was that of a woman.
He hurriedly replaced the cover, screwed on the lid again, and wiped the sweat from his brow. There was not a sound in the vault save a thud now and then, when a piece of the ceiling, loosened by frost, fell to the floor, or struck on one of the wooden boxes. The humor of the situation was all gone now, and he was trembling as he began work on the second box. Every few minutes his shaking hands slipped, and the screw-driver would jam against the box with a dull, echoing thud. In his feverish haste he tried to turn the heavy screws with his bare fingers; but the rough edges cut him cruelly, and the box was soon splashed with blood. He did not feel the pain, however, and only worked the faster.
He loosened, but did not wholly remove the lid of the box, and then reached down to pry off the coffin cover; but he found that it was not fastened. He thrust his hand in, and felt again for the throat; but, to his horror, _there was no throat there_. He passed his hand up higher, and felt for the face, and there was only a little bunch of frozen flowers. “You’re losing your head, Pat,” he said to himself; but his voice was hollow, and echoed strangely in that gruesome, shut-in place. He reached farther down and felt along the arm. He gave a little pull on the hand, and it came off at the wrist. Thoroughly unmanned, he threw the thing on the floor, and ran shrieking from the tomb. Once outside again, the cold air brought him back to himself a little, but he could feel the touch of those icy fingers on his trembling hand. He was partly dazed, and could not reason rightly. The long strain had been too much for him, but one thought remained uppermost in his mind; he must get that black silk neck cloth from the man whose coffin still remained unopened.
He forced himself back into the tomb, but his heart fluttered strangely, as he knelt beside the last box. He did not stop to remove the screws, but drove the hammer under the cover, and twisted and wrenched the boards off furiously. The coffin lid withstood his efforts for some time, for the fastenings were strong; but at last they, too, gave way. He reached down for the throat again, dreading lest he should find some new horror. His hand touched a moist face, and the man in the coffin stirred and groaned.
“Lie still, damn you!” he shrieked, and seized the man brutally by the throat. A hand cold and clammy clutched his feebly. “Let go!” he screamed with another curse, and struck the face angrily with his hand. He tore the neckcloth, collar and all, from the man’s throat, and started to turn away, when a low voice came from the coffin. With a laugh that was not nice to hear, Van Patten staggered across the vault. As he neared the door his head struck against one of the iron coffin supports and he fell heavily to the ground.
* * * * *
Van Patten’s three friends sat around the table in the country house, anxiously waiting for the return of the captain. The wager was lost to Van Patten, for it was nearly two hours since he left the house, and the men were about to start out in search of him, when the front door opened and someone staggered into the lighted room from the hall. But the white-faced man who lurched toward them, with clothes torn and covered with blood, was not the captain, but Andrew Phelps. He talked wildly and incoherently; but they gathered from his ravings that he had been rescued from a living grave by someone who had immediately set upon him like a madman.
Leaving the doctor with him, the other two men started out in search of the missing captain. They did not find him on the road leading to the cemetery; but when they neared the vault they found the door half opened, while the sound of maniacal singing came out through the night. They pushed the door wide open, and there by the dim light of the lanterns a strange sight shocked their gaze.
Two of the coffins were broken open. One was empty; but partially in the other and partly scattered about the tomb, as if thrown as a child tosses its playthings, were some ghastly things, the sight of which made young Churchill sick and faint. On the edge of the coffin in which the body of the tramp had been placed sat Van Patten; but he did not look up as they entered. They brought the light close to his face, but he only leered vacantly at them and continued singing.
In one hand he held something on which he was trying to fit his fur glove, and at his feet lay a torn black neckcloth.
THE STORY THE DOCTOR TOLD.
THE STORY THE DOCTOR TOLD.
To begin with, let me say that I am not a story-teller, neither can I make fine phrases nor coin strange words which shall delight the ear. I am only a country doctor, getting well along in years, and I write this tale only because I promised Richard Crew so to do, as I held his feverish hand while he lay and tossed in pain, and prayed for a death that would not come.
So without further excuse or apology, let me begin. Richard Crew was the only son of Sir Davies Crew, distinguished as artist, soldier, and scholar. His mother, Anne Sargent, was the fairest Englishwoman it has ever been my privilege to know. Of money there was a plenty on both sides; so when the young lad Richard reached his eighteenth year, and under his father’s careful teaching showed a decided taste for painting, he was sent forthwith to Paris and placed under the best master that gold could procure.
As family physician of the Crews, I was somewhat of a privileged character at Redfern, as the old estate was called, and many an evening have I spent with old Sir Davies playing chess, or listening to his tales of a life full of strange experiences. It was I who helped young Richard to first blink his large blue eyes on this world, and who attended him through his trials of teething, measles, and all the other evils to which childhood is heir. It was my hand also which reverently closed the eyes of Lady Anne after a short illness, the very year that Richard went to Paris.
Sir Davies never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death, and what with brooding over her loss, shutting himself up in his room, and neglecting the exercise that a man of his physique always requires, I was deeply grieved but not surprised when Bingham, the head butler, came down to the house one evening to inform me that Sir Davies had died in an apoplectic fit during dinner.
It is a bad thing for most boys who are about to come of age to fall heir to a lot of money, but when that boy is a student in the Latin Quarter of Paris, is fair to look upon, popular with his set, and generous to a fault, the result can be imagined.
For the next three years I saw very little of Richard. He came to Redfern only occasionally in the summer, and then he was always accompanied by a gay crowd of his Paris associates; artists like himself, scribblers for some Paris sheet, and the hangers-on invariably to be found in the train of the rich young man. These visits to his old home became rarer and rarer, for which the country people around were very glad, for they had developed into little better than riotous orgies; when nights, for weeks at a time, were spent in carousals, and the days in resting up only for another night.
Exercising what I considered my right as an old friend of the family, I called one morning at Redfern to remonstrate with the boy, but I came away sorry that I had made the attempt. It was hard to imagine that the dissipated young wreck, with trembling hands and swollen, bloodshot eyes, was the same lad whom I saw the morning of his journey to Paris, as he whirled by on the coach and waved his cap to me in farewell.
It was the same sad, old story; wine, women, and song, and then more wine and more women, and for seven long years the son of my dear old friend lived the life that is worse than death, and then came back to Redfern with the seal of sin upon his brow.
Only once did I see him that summer after my morning call. Then I was called up at two in the morning by a young man in Austrian uniform, who, half drunk himself, begged me in a maudlin way to come up to the house, for young Crew was down with the “jumps,” as he called it. I went with him of course, and found Richard in the old banquet room with a motley crowd of men and women bending over him, as he lay stretched out on the couch.
I have seen many men in my life who have drunk too much, and are tasting that bitter after draught by which an abused system avenges itself, and I looked to find a far different sight from that which met my eyes as they made room for me about the couch. In the white drawn face before me there was nothing but fear, not ordinary healthy fear such as every man at times experiences, but a kind of speechless horror; and his eyes, as they turned toward me, had in them the fathomless misery of a lost soul.
His lips moved, and I heard him pleading faintly with somebody or something to go away and leave him for a little while; but as entreaties did no good he tried to bribe the thing, and offered a thousand, ten thousand pounds to be left in peace. Then, as nothing seemed to avail, his voice rose to a frenzied scream, and he cursed the thing that haunted him, the God that made him, yes, and the mother who bore him.
At last, worn out and exhausted, he sank back to the floor, and I succeeded in getting him into a fitful sleep, while that crowd of tawdry, painted women and drunken men crept past him out of the room, with all the laughter gone from their faces.
The next day I was surprised by a visit from the young man, who, as might be expected of one in his position, was thoroughly frightened. I explained to him, as a man of medicine, just what his condition the night before meant, and he promised solemnly, and of his own accord, not to touch anything more for a year. Then he told me what he had seen the night before; for, strange to say, he remembered perfectly all he had been through. As he lay there, he said, he could see across the room, slowly forming itself out of nothing, and yet having a frightful form, some hideous thing which, neither man nor beast, and yet resembling both, approached slowly, grinning at him. He could not describe it more definitely, for he had not learned to know it as he afterwards did. All that I could find out was that it was a great flabby creature that waddled as it walked; and though it had a face, it was not like anything he had ever seen.
As regards this pledge to me, I think he kept it, for I heard indirectly from him several times during the year, and the report was always good. He was back again in Paris, but had given up all his old companions, and was working faithfully. That year one of his pictures received a prize in the salon, and he was prophesied a great future.
I was away during the next year and a half, looking up interests of mine in America, and heard little that was going on among my own people. On the evening of my return to our village, therefore, I was surprised to see the big house at Redfern gaily illuminated, and was told by the servants that there had been bad doings up on the hill for many a day. The temptation of the old life had been too strong; he had gathered his all too willing crowd of former associates around him, and was “celebrating” with all the pent up passion of a _roué_ who has walked in the narrow path for nearly a year.
He was sick with his old trouble twice that month, and both times for old friendship’s sake I did what I could for him; but I saw there must come an end before many months. But such an end!
I was surprised one day to hear the servants talking in the next room, for they said that all the crowd at Redfern had left for the city that morning, with the exception of Master Richard, who was shut up in his room working all day like mad on some picture, and drinking furiously at night.
The end of it all came one night two weeks later, about ten o’clock in the evening, when one of the maids came down to my house, white and trembling, to tell me that “Master Richard was down with the horrors again, worse than ever, and would I please come up as quick as possible.” I hurried on a hat and coat, and followed her up the hill. As we turned in at the little gate in the garden I was startled by a shriek so terrible that I turned to the trembling maid questioningly.
“That’s the way he’s been at it for an hour, sir,” she whispered, and her teeth chattered as she spoke, though the night was not cold.
She left me at the door of his room and I went in alone. At first I could see nothing, for the light was turned down; but from the bed there came a low, moaning noise. Then, suddenly, the clothes were thrown aside, and, God help me, I saw a face the like of which I pray I may never see again. I have doctored many men in my time, and I have seen some sights that are not nice to think about; but never have I seen such nameless horror, such uncontrollable fear, as looked at me from the eyes of that man.
He stood there for a minute gibbering and making strange noises like a beast; and then jumping from the bed, he ran to a piece of canvas standing against the wall and covered by a thick drapery. He pulled the cover aside a little way and peeped fearfully behind. Then, in a very paroxysm of terror, he ran shrieking and screaming to the bed. He buried himself under the clothes, and I could hear him sobbing and moaning again as when I first came in. There is to me something inexpressibly pitiful in the sight of a man in tears, and yet I had to stay there for three mortal hours and watch that man. Always the same program,--the look behind the drapery, and then that horrible fright, which in a few minutes was followed by another look.