The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (11 page)

She looked around in bewilderment, slowly raising herself on her hands. As she did so the coils of hair became unfastened and fell about her shoulders in a glorious cascade of shimmering bronze. Her nightgown had slipped from one bare shoulder and her bosom was heaving quickly. I sent one wild prayer of thanks to Heaven as I saw her bosom heaving. My eyes were fixed upon her face, while my fingers fumbled in frantic haste for the bottle of chloroform I kept in a case of drugs I had used for killing and curing the natural history specimens I had been accustomed to send to an enthusiastic friend at home.

The look of bewilderment was giving place to one of terror in the eyes of Ethel as I rose to my feet. Her voice was pitifully weak and strained, and she could scarcely articulate the words as she asked—

"What is the matter, Harry?" and a moment after, " Harry, where are you going ? "

" Nothing! Nowhere! " I replied quickly. " Ethel, I am going out. Try to think as lightly of me as you can."

As I reached the door I glanced back. She had thrown her hair back from her eyes, and was striving to get up, while the bewildered look crept back into her eyes at her unaccountable weakness.
XIII.

That
was the last time I saw my wife, except for the brief interviews here under the eyes of the warder, and that is the picture I shall carry with me into the grave; aye, and beyond.

The next instant I had darted through the door, and, gaining the street, was hurrying wildly toward Arnold Rawdon's surgery in Szechuen Road, with but one thought in my mind, but one purpose, one duty looming large and clear before my eyes.

As I hurried blindly through the deserted streets my mind was made up, my purpose implacably fixed. It was the choice between the murder of the innocent girl I loved and the extermination— one could not call it murder to hurl such a viper out of existence—of this fiend who was trying to make me stain my soul with the blood of my wife.

He had called me many a time, and I had come ; now I was coming to him without his bidding. Now was the time to do it—now while I knew his power was for the time gone. Now! now ! while he had overreached himself and was in a state of mental remission of the force spent! Thank God, it had come in time ! Perhaps he thought his vile purpose already accomplished, and had allowed his mind
to wander and sink from its intensity of concentration.

I feared that if I dallied, his power might return before I could wreak my vengeance. I knew my utter helplessness if it should, and hurried still more, until I dashed up to the house in Szechuen Road breathless and palpitating. The boy opened to my vigorous knock with a look of grieved astonishment in his sleepy eyes, but I pushed roughly past him and rushed up the stairs. He knew me, however, or was too sleepy to heed my wild looks, and crept gladly back to his bed. I could see by the streak of light from beneath the door that a lamp was burning in the study; I pushed the door ajar and peered cautiously in. Yes, Rawdon was there !

Stepping swiftly into the room I closed the door behind me. He was lying on a couch against the opposite wall, a rug thrown over his knees. His pale face was livid and ghastly, and beneath the shifty eyes were heavy shadows that the lamplight from above intensified. He had been expecting me, I think, for as I turned from closing the door, he raised himself on his elbow, and without a word stared at me with eyes in which I thought I detected a glance of terror

1 turned again to the door. There was no key in the lock, but immediately below it was a stout bolt; this I shot.

It was clear to both of us, as our eyes met once
more, there beneath the swinging lamp, that but one of us could hope to draw that bolt again and pass out a living man.

I had been fumbling in my pocket for the bottle of chloroform which it had been my intention to hurl at him and smash in his face before he could use the terrible power of his eyes; but now, as he fixed those eyes on mine, the impatient movement of my fingers was stilled. And so for a space we stood and eyed each other, each conscious that a life depended on the result—that it was now or never he must gain the mastery.

It may have been only for minutes, but it seemed to me interminable hours that we stood there wrestling in that terrible death-grip of the eyes, as I crouched like a tiger waiting his chance to spring.

Twice, as his hair bristled and stood on end, the sensuous face blurred away from my sight, and twice the jets of blue-grey vapour leapt forth to meet me. But with a desperate effort I shook myself free from the spell that was mastering me and met his gaze.

Then there came a change. His face turned yet more livid in its ghastly pallor, and his brow puckered and wrinkled, while the corners of the weak mouth were drawn suddenly downward, as one sees in a child that is about to burst into tears. Then his eyes seemed to snap and crackle for a moment, ere with contracted pupils, that dilated again with fear, they glazed swiftly over. With a
despairing gasp, the only sound that had been uttered, Rawdon fell back on the couch.

I had conquered!

With one terrible bound I hurled myself across the room to his side. In my triumph the chloroform and all my carefully laid plans were forgotten, for my knee was planted on his breast and my fingers were busy at his throat.

Into that deadly grip I threw my own strength and the strength of the demons of revenge that possessed me, until I could see the face beneath me grow purple, then black, as his jaw slowly dropped and the tongue protruded. His mouth closed with a sharp, convulsive snap, and I could hear the white teeth meet and grate together in the yielding flesh. And still I pressed with my whole strength the throat into which my fingers were sinking. I seemed to have but one all-absorbing desire, to squeeze the throat of my victim until I forced the eyes, already protruding so far, completely from their sockets. And so I pressed and pressed, never heeding that all sign of life had fled from the bloated, purple face beneath me, or that the body on which my knee was pressed was growing cold and rigid in death. Those fiendish eyes must come out—they must! they must! And I tried to put yet a little more force into the grip of iron, smiling exultantly when I thought they seemed to be protruding a half-inch farther than before. In my frenzied triumph I expected to see
them, could I but compress the villainous throat hard enough, shoot out of their sockets, as one sees the pulp of a grape pop out of the skin when it is squeezed.

Perhaps at this point the bottle of chloroform capsized in my pocket and some of the fluid leaked out, for its penetrating odour suddenly filled my nostrils, the room spun round as I gasped for breath, and all was darkness.

XIV.

They
said in their evidence in court, that next morning they found me lying across the body of Arnold Rawdon, my fingers stiffened at his throat, and the nails so deeply sunk in the flesh that they had considerable difficulty in relaxing my grasp.

But I have saved my Ethel. I have taken the one course left for a desperate man, and I care nothing.

Five days from to-day the law has decreed that I shall die, " and may God have mercy on my soul!"

Five short days, and then, under the peremptory hand of the public executioner, I must quit the sweet, balmy air of the Shanghai spring, quit the glorious sunshine, and plunge into the vortex of death that is to whirl me—whither ?

And yet I am resigned—nay, almost cheerful—in spite of contemplation of myself as the author of " the most heinous artocity that has for years confronted the community of Shanghai." It is a stock phrase of theirs (do I not know the tricks of the trade ?), and would be applied with equal glibness to the despatch of a chicken were the season slack and stirring news scarce. For, despite of the ban of
Justice, despite the fiat of condemnation that has gone forth against me, I feel that I have done a goodly act; and I know that did the world but learn the why and wherefore, it would applaud the deed, even as my conscience applauds.

This story I have determined shall be laid before it after my death, not before, for I cannot bring myself to believe that it will meet with credence when spread abroad, though stamped with the awful solemnity that belongs to the confession of a dying man. So rather than be pitied and branded a dangerous maniac, I have chosen the shorter shrift and an unhallowed grace.

If when my poor wife reads this manuscript, after I have paid the last penalty of the law, she will search my desk, Rawdon's note, written before I started for Chefoo, will be found I think beneath the bundle of English letters that are the last epistles I had from my aged mother before death claimed her. It will be the one slender proof I can bring forward, that what I here relate is the ghastly truth and not the wild fantasy of a demented brain.

I can hear, as I pause now, the monotonous tramp of the warder on the stone flags outside the iron-bound door, and I know, without looking up, when they cease for a moment, that the poor fool is peering in upon me through the grating lest I use the pen to do myself an injury. Perhaps 1 might, but that I have far more important work
for it to do; and what are five days more or less in the balance against eternity ?

And what is the dreary waiting through the awful continuity and eternity itself for the sight of a face I shall never see, when by one swift stroke I have saved my innocent darling's honour and her life ?

Will the good God, I wonder, look upon the deed as murder?

And yet—and yet—I bow my head and repeat in the solemn words of the judge, " May God have mercy on my soul! Amen."

CERBERUS.

1WAS walking through the Hong-Kong Lunatic Asylum, when my attention was attracted to a gaunt, wild-eyed individual, who appeared to be stealthily following our every step. I am a nervous man, and the gleam of almost ferocious cunning in his eye disconcerted me. I mentioned the matter to my guide.

"Oh, he's quite harmless," said he confidently. " The poor fellow murdered his two children and slew a cat, the family pet, during a fit of insanity, brought on by excesses in some strange drug; but he's as docile as a lamb now."

He passed on, and a few moments after, while my guide's attention was diverted to some other part of the ward, I felt a light tap on the shoulder, and swung hastily round to find myself confronted by our friend of the previous encounter. He was gesticulating wildly, with a sly leer of intensest cunning at the warder's broadly-turned back, while he tried to thrust into my hand, with signs of great secrecy, a roll of paper.

In order to humour him, or more, perhaps, for fear of a scene should I exasperate him by a refusal, I accepted it with an equal show of profound secrecy, concealing it in my breastpocket, at which he slunk away apparently well satisfied.

In the painful interest of the scenes I afterward witnessed I forgot completely the little bundle the madman had thrust into my hands, and it was not until evening, when searching my pockets for my cigarette case, that my hand found and drew forth the roll. I was about to throw it carelessly on the fire, as the idle freak of a demented mind, when my eye caught some writing on it, and I undid the string that bound it.

Judge of my surprise on finding that it was a genuine manuscript, consisting of several closelywritten sheets of Asylum note-paper, the last three sheets crossed and re-crossed in a manner that called for considerable care in deciphering them.

Many years have passed since I first perused this manuscript and locked it away with a shudder in my desk.

I give it now to the world just as it stands, unaltered except for the insertion of a few stops where the maniac in his frantic haste had forgotten to punctuate it.

I have the less compunction in making this extraordinary revelation public, as I know that the principal actors in it have.passed away to a larger
stage, and even in the memory of the older inhabitants of Shanghai, the details of that terrible crime will be but a misty, elusive recollection.

As to whether the madman's ghastly story is true or merely the hallucination of a disordered intellect, that seeks to account for what it has done, will never be known, and each must draw his own conclusions as to its probability.

They say here that I am mad, the cowardly curs! pretending that I am not responsible for my actions, and so keep me incarcerated in durance against my will, nor will they allow me even to go to the wife of my bosom, who needs me, who
must
need me, in her loneliness and grief.

Oh, it is a terrible thing that a sane man should be thus helplessly in the power of eleven raving lunatics; for lunatics they are, insane, mad as the proverbial March hare. Yet they have the telling superiority of numbers, and we four of us must perforce submit with what grace we may to their wild fantasies. But I bear them no malice, only pity them; for do they not say that those with a mind unhinged ever fancy themselves sane, and everyone else mad ? Therefore it is but natural that these poor souls, who call themselves "doctors" and " warders " should act as they do.

Just now they have power in their numbers, they are as three to one; but some day some of
them may be called away out of hearing of the