The blind man passed my flat between seven and eight each night. I never remember having heard him during the summer months, but directly the days began to darken – perhaps because I was more indoors – I noticed the tap-tap of his stick beneath my window. Even if it had been light enough to see I could not have caught sight of him, for the pavement was obscured by a jutting bay-window immediately below mine, and inevitably he walked upon the near side of the street.
I have always felt acute sympathy for all who are maimed and defrauded; above all for the blind, shut away from light and colour, which mean more to me than speech or music. But I feared and hated that blind man: from the beginning I hated him, though I saw nothing of him, heard nothing – not even so much as cough or sigh – apart from that tapping stick.
I was curious about him, and yet I never tried to meet him. The truth is, I was more frightened than curious, would hurry down my short street at the hour when he might be returning that way, thankful to reach my own door, or the roaring traffic, the lights of the wider thoroughfare.
‘Returning,’ I say: but when did he set out? and what did he return from? I had a fancy that he reached the scene of his day’s labours – pleasure, solicitation, whatever it might be – by some altogether uncanny means; that his every action, his whole life, indeed, was nefarious.
During a long illness I thought of him continually. ‘When I get better,’ I said to myself, ‘I will ask the policeman at the corner about him under some pretence of charity; find out what he is like, where he comes from.’
And yet, when I was about again I spoke of him to no one. If there were visitors with me at the time of his passing, I was all on edge, in case they might lift their heads to listen to the sound of the tapping stick, and put something that I feared – I had no idea what – into words!
Then, one evening during the last week of February, coming away from a tea-party in the higher part of London, I dipped to Chelsea and found myself completely enveloped by a thick yellow fog.
I ought to have turned back at once; but I pushed on, anxious to reach home, confident that I knew the way far too well to miss it.
The secluded streets and squares, through which I had attempted a short cut, were very quiet. The roadways seemed to be empty. Now and then people passed me; but when I entreated their help I was met with nothing but vague complaints of their own troubles; bewildered questions. At times they did not even answer; if they shook their heads I could not see them do so.
Once, some strange fluttering form caught at my arm and in a shrill voice entreated guidance to Parsons Green – of all places! – cursing me shrilly when I declared my inability to help; fluttering off again with shoes that flapped at the heels like broken wings.
Sharp, jutting angles of wall and railing shot out before me. There was no accounting for them; avoiding one, I turned a corner and there was another like a sharp elbow; a wall flat against my face, or a chevaux de frise of spiked paling; and everywhere a smell of sulphurous damp. The fur beneath my chin was wet; my gloves clammy, clinging to my fingers.
Quite suddenly hope gave way within me. I convicted myself of having walked round and round the same square, and tears, of self-pity, exasperation, fatigue, mingled with the foggy moisture on my veil.
Then a man standing motionless at a corner – so close that I must have almost touched him as I leant against the rail fumbling for my pocket-handkerchief – spoke to me:
‘You have lost your way?’
‘What is that – who – ?’ I put out one hand, involuntarily groping. There was a movement; a shadow darker than the fog; a strange, musty smell of something dry and desiccated – yes, dry, in all that damp – inexpressibly frowsty; and a dry, cold hand was laid upon mine.
‘I will lead you. Where are you going?’
‘Hunter’s Grove –’ I began, then drew back, my fear of the fog overcome by something more poignant, though perfectly vague. ‘Thank you, but I can manage. I – I am all right – I am only resting.’
There was a laugh at this – a hoarse chuckle – then: ‘Oh, very well.’
The air around me cleared: I was alone once more.
With an effort of determination I started off again: straight on for a dozen yards or so, then round the first corner; stupefied by the feeling which comes to one upon waking suddenly in a strange room, uncertain which way one faces, which side the wall lies.
To my bewilderment, the ground grew rough beneath my feet. I tapped my way with my umbrella; there were ruts and loose stones. It became worse and worse; I fell against something which caught me just above my knees; followed it with one hand and found a broken piece of wall zigzagging up and down – in some places above my reach. I stumbled again and fell forward, bruising my knees upon a pile of loose masonry.
Evidently enough, that turning from the main street, the baffling square, debouched upon nothing more than a piece of waste ground, bestrewn with remnants of half-destroyed buildings: an old deserted nest of slums.
If I went on, ten to one I would fall into some unguarded cellar or clay pit; lie there with a broken leg; perish of cold and hunger.
Why, here – right in the midst of London – I might have been miles and miles away from humanity.
Best to retrace my steps. But how? I turned, then hesitated, trembling. There was not so much as a kerb to guide me.
I cried aloud: shouted for help, overcome by that sense of wild panic which attacks a child, realizing itself alone in the darkness. I heard the tapping of a stick, then someone sniggered, close to my elbow.
Of course, oh, of course anyone must feel their way with a stick, in darkness such as this. All the same, the sound struck some shrinking dread in the depths of my being. It was as though that tap-tap were upon my heart as well as the ground, emphasizing some fear.
Tap-tap-tap.
With an extraordinary effort I kept the thought of whom it might be at the back of my mind.
‘Come, come now; be sensible.’ It was the same oddly smooth voice which had accosted me half an hour earlier: empty and flattened, like that of a man talking in his sleep.
I hesitated a moment, then brought my common sense to my aid, arguing with myself: ‘Anyhow, I have got to get home; I can’t stay here all night.’
‘If you think you can find your way – but how?’ I began.
It was in my mind to say, ‘If I can’t see, how can you?’ but I changed it to, ‘If you will take me to my own door I’ll give you five shillings.’
‘All right – all right.’ A hand was laid upon my arm; that strange mouse-like odour was about me once more. There was that laugh, malevolent and mocking.
‘Now – now – use your eyes; look where you’re going.’
I shook off the hand, half hysterically. ‘I’ll follow – don’t touch me.’ There must have been some servile fear of him in my heart, which made me add, ‘I might stumble if you held me – I am not used – accustomed…’ My awkward words tailed off as he moved away, without a protest, keeping close in front of me.
I could see him and yet not see him: nothing more than a darker blur, magnified by the yellow fog.
After a time I found my feet once again upon the pavement, and that cheered me. My spirits leapt up with the thought that I must be near home.
Now and then people passed by, all alike mere slips of denser darkness: now and then a flashlight blazed full in my face, then vanished, leaving me blinder than before.
Still we went on and on. I could not be sure how far I had strayed out of my way, and yet I could not have believed that we would take so long.
Oppressed by the darkness, by fatigue, by the strain of fear, I began to feel as though I were in a dream. On and on and on we went.
Now and then the thought came to me: ‘Why, it’s years since I first made sure that we had come more than far enough.’
Now and then I called to my guide, but he took no notice, though my voice sounded shrill and almost indecently loud in my own ears. A certain sense of awe is the outcome of everything over which we have no influence, with which we find ourselves unable to grapple: and hearing my own voice shrieking in that darkness, silence, I felt as suddenly ashamed as though I had set up a clamour in church.
Once I stopped dead: ‘I won’t go on – I won’t. I am certain that you are taking me wrong.’
He was so sure of me that he moved on. And rightly enough, for as he melted away I stumbled after him, caught at his sleeve.
‘Wait a minute – wait! You promised to guide me. Only – well, we must ask the way. I’m sure you’re doing your best, but – but…’ I was servile in my fear, my conciliation.
Keeping close to the frowsty form, feeling my way along palings, the sides of walls, I would suddenly encounter other fingers, cold or damply gloved: other people groping their way as I did. There would be a moment’s pause; then one or the other would reluctantly move out from the place of vantage. I think we all hated each other in that fog – without sight or reason.
I never failed to shoot out a question: ‘Am I right for Hunter’s Grove?’ – ‘Can you tell me the way to Hunter’s Grove?’ And every time I was answered, if at all, in the negative: briefly and pettishly, as though each wayfarer were engrossed in his own troubles alone.
‘Down Church Street, across King’s Road, down Oakley Street – then to the left,’ my guide had said mockingly enough; and yet… Well, after all, he seemed the only person who even knew of Hunter’s Grove; the only one willing to help or even consider me.
We did cross King’s Road: I was certain of that; and it relieved my mind. There was none of the usual roar of traffic; but there were faint blurs of light, the sound of something like a motor-lorry moving at a foot’s pace, the stench of petrol.
Then I smelt the river. Smell, indeed, seemed the only sense left to me: speech and hearing were alike deadened, sight useless; but I caught up scents like a dog.
If they blindfolded me, placed that sour, musty form among a hundred others, I should recognize it, even now.
It was quite suddenly that I became conscious of a sort of hollowness beneath my feet; a freshening air, the moan and shriek of fog-signals.
I stopped dead. ‘We are on the bridge,’ I cried. ‘We have come wrong – too far…’
He turned at that, came close to me. ‘Dear, dear – I’m afraid – and I was so certain … Sir, can you tell us how far we are out of our way for Hunter’s Grove?’ He plucked at the sleeve of a passing shadow.
‘I don’t know – how should I know? I don’t know my own way,’ wailed the stranger. “Let me go – everyone for himself.’
‘I would not have had this happen for worlds. I was so sure – oh, so sure!’ lamented my guide. ‘We must turn and go back.’
The kerb was very high, and I stumbled over it. Somehow or other, we must have got into one of the recesses of the bridge, for I felt the coping upon three sides; the damp reek of the river came up to meet me.
I was actually glad of a hand upon my arm. There was no reason why I should fall over a wall which reached almost to my waist; but, all the same, I was frightened.
The fact that my companion acknowledged himself at fault – this and that other fear drew me to him. When he said, ‘We must turn back,’ I turned, without realizing which way I already faced.
Yet it must have been there that I turned – not for the first but for the second time; the first time was in the recess; and that was why, with his diabolical cleverness, he had led me there, working upon me so that I moved in a restricted circle.
‘All right now – all right now,’ he chuckled, and moved on in front of me. ‘In another moment we shall be off the bridge again. Now – now – to the left, and then to the right; twice to the right, and then to the left again.’
We were clear of the bridge. Battersea Bridge was but a little distance from my flat: I tried to follow the route in my mind’s eye, to remember how one turned. But I was without any special bump of locality; was too wearied for clear thought.
We turned and turned. My brain, bedizzied with fatigue, refused to register the number of turns, to exert itself further.
The atmosphere became more airless and dank, as though there were high, sordid buildings close at either side – but there are many such in the vicinity of Hunter’s Grove – impregnated with the sour smell of stale cabbage-water and garbage. The pavement was greasy and uneven beneath my feet.
My guide came to a pause.
‘I have missed my way again – tch! tch!’ He stood tapping the ground with his stick.
Wrapped in the yellow mist, I could just make out his figure, a sooty blur; there was a dim movement of his head, as though he were listening or – or sniffing: indeed, I seemed to hear the quickened breath in his nostrils.
Though we could see nothing there was the sound of a low humanity all about us. In some cases people seemed to be divided from us by walls; in others the sound came from upper storeys: raucous voices, gruntings, snorings, oaths, cries – all in some way muffled by distance, by the fog; but all alike hoarse and almost unimaginably bestial.
To one side of us was the dim square of an open doorway, made visible through a speck of gas which burned within it.
‘I think I know where I am. I will go in and inquire.’
He did not ask me to follow him. I see now how clever he was in that as in all else – he did not ask me to follow!
There was a stairway facing the door. He did not pause to make any inquiries upon the ground floor; I realized that as I heard his stick go tap-tap up it.
‘Wait, wait!’ I cried. ‘Don’t leave me – I –’
A heavy form, reeking of beer, rolled against me, steadied itself by a hand upon my shoulder, and hiccoughed out a stream of curses.
I wrenched myself free and fled to the shelter of the open door, stumbled on the stairs, and mounted the first three steps, with the idea that there was a point of vantage where I might be safer than in the open streets.
I called up to my guide, ‘Is there anyone there? Can you find anyone to help?’
‘What the b— hell –?’ There was a roar like a wild beast.
A door was dashed open to the right of the stairs and a huge figure – just visible in that single light, which fought with the incoming fog – shot forward to the foot of the stairs; immense shoulders, clothed in a ragged shirt, a shaggy head, swollen eyes beneath a shock of hair showed themselves, leaving the rest lost in darkness, like a body half in and half out of a pool of black water.
For all that, it was enough. I turned and ran stumbling up the stairway. There were more oaths, something about ‘squawking’, twisting a ‘gory bullet’ – but that was all: no pursuit further than a bare half-dozen steps.
At the first landing I was in total darkness: below I could just see the head of the brute moving from side to side like a threatening bull: the flickering, far-away spurt of gas: nothing more.
I called to my guide in a shrill whisper: ‘Are you there? What is it? – what –’ I moved a step and caught my foot in a hole in the flooring.
‘Mind – mind …’ It was the smooth, slurred voice to which I had grown accustomed; almost – as it seemed in my panic – the voice of a friend. ‘Be careful – there’s …’
I made another step forward, and my foot broke through a rotten plank.
There was a shrill squeak and something heavier than a mouse brushed across my instep: little wonder that I shrieked aloud, wild with fear.
‘A rat – only a rat. Mind, or you’ll fall.’
A hand drew me aside – just aside, as I thought – while a raucous voice shouted: ‘Come in, come in! Oh, damn it all, come in!’
A door banged; there was the snap of a latch, the rattle of a withdrawn key.
Even then I did not realize how I had been trapped, until I flung out both hands, struck the back of one against the hollow-sounding wood.
‘And now we shall do nicely – oh yes, nicely,’ chuckled the smooth voice.
Whoever it was who had shouted ‘Come in!’ had dropped to grumbling, cursing hoarsely, in one corner of the room, or so it seemed to me. I don’t know why, but at that moment I got the clear impression of a madman, crouching, muttering.
‘I must get out! Open the door … I … How dare you! … How …’ My own voice broke shrilly. I felt along the surface of the door, found the handle and rattled it furiously.
It is impossible to chronicle my terror. And yet why – why was I so frightened? I was a young, strong woman: there might be the possible loss of my purse and watch before me, but what else?
Maybe my fear was all the wilder in that it was concerned with nothing definite. I did not even think of death. In truth, I did not fear anything – ‘to fear’, that is the verb, carrying a different, and, for me at least, a less dreadful meaning. It was Fear itself which had me in its grip, stark, unreasoning – ‘shrill, hair-bristling Fear’.
Foolish enough, eh? But remember the darkness, the absolute and unbroken darkness: those two of whom I knew nothing beyond their voices: the awful stench of the place; the close air like a foul blanket against my face.
Ah, but above all, the darkness. Not a mere absence of light, but something tangible, alive, threatening.
Once again I shrieked, so wildly that I felt the cords of my throat crack.
God – the devil, rather – only knows to what desperate sounds that house, that district, was accustomed that no one came in answer to my clamour; that my captor made no attempt to stop it.
‘Now, now!’ The oily voice slid in between that long-drawn cry and the sobs which followed it.
‘Supposing you sit down’ – a chair was pushed against my legs, and out of sheer weakness I collapsed into it – ‘and let us have a little quiet talk together. For wine I love, women I worship.’
What was it made me feel – was it some stir of the frowsty atmosphere? – that he bowed towards me at this? ‘But talk – ah, there you have it – talk is the breath of my nostrils.
‘As for a subject – What about Eternity, now? – just to begin with: a small matter. How does Eternity strike you? The problematical after-life of the Soul as Plato conceived it, or the far more satisfying, infinite prolongation of the life of the body, the secret of which so many philosophers, physicians, have sought for, and found … Oh yes, without doubt found.
‘There are cases chronicled, quite a number, for those who know where to search for such records; and many more, you may take my word for it, many more still unchronicled. If I had a mind to write a book on the subject – to register all I have heard, guessed – once read – of eternal mortal life, unending youth …’
Of course he was mad, and I should have humoured him: two of them – both mad – close to me – how close I could not tell, there in the darkness. Do you realize all this? The only wonder seems that I did not make a third among them. It was evident that this fellow’s fellow knew how to take him, for he broke in, laughing loudly; then began to whistle, ‘Tiddley-winks the Barber’ – of all things!
The whole situation had its ludicrous side, I allow that, now. But is not all fear more of less ludicrous, grotesque; bearing no true relation to the thing feared; devoid of personal dignity?‘A light – for God’s sake let us have a light – a candle – a match – anything!’ I cried.
‘Dear, dear, how dependent you people are.’ I could place that voice, and I began to move round the room away from it, feeling along the wall with my right hand, the left stretched out in front of me: horribly afraid lest I should find myself up against that Other, whose whistling it was so impossible to locate.
‘Two orbs – orbs! As well say oysters! So much slimy matter, tied in a network of nerves: vulnerable to every sort of hurt! – and silly fools banking their entire existence on this sight – light. Calling for “light – light” … Oh, damn your eyes! And “for God’s sake!” you say.… Now, I tell you this: God ‘ud take it coolly enough if you never saw again. Here am I in the dark for all eternity, an’ you squawking – “Light – light! – a match! – candle!”’
Of course I had known it all the time! It was the blind man! That certainty leapt into the open: no shooting it back.
Picture to yourself a traveller making his way through the jungle at night; telling himself that such and such a rustle was only a large bird, the wind among the leaves: those bright lights two fire-flies: and knowing all the while what it was – ‘burning’ – ‘burning bright’ … It came into my head then. ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright …’
If I could only reach a window I might throw it up, shriek so that someone must hear.
I stumbled against something which might have been a stool; there was the rattle of a chain, a harsh string of curses.
A hand shot out and drew me aside. ‘Come, be careful now. Even we – nous autres, in our own dark world – we have our rights – the urbane attention of any guest to any host. But you of the younger generation have done away with that. You of the younger generation’ – the smooth voice broke in a snarl – ‘you of the younger generation, damn you! – devouring, trampling – “Blind mouths” – who is it speaks of “blind mouths?” Come now!’
I caught myself together at that, thinking to humour him. ‘Milton’.
‘Then you do know something, have read. Strange how one mistrusts the brains of any woman who wears a rustling silk petticoat. And yet … Ah, well, my choice, my means of selection, was limited. Come now – let’s have a look at you.’
I was past protesting as he drew me towards him: those hot, dry hands as strong as steel hooks, as inhuman. For a moment or so I struggled weakly; then stood still, shaken with rigors which ran through and through me at his hateful touch.
What use had a man like that for anything so humane as sight? – eyes to see, love, admire, shed tears of pity?
He drew the pins from my hat and removed it; felt me over, commenting aloud: ‘Hair crisp and springy – not fair, though; there is the feel of gloss, that is good. With fair-headed people one is liable to suspect status lymphaticus and … Ah, well, who knows? – who knows? – possibly communicable even through the bony tissue.’
He felt round my eyes, the curve of my brow. I retched with nausea as, following the line of my nose, he fingered my lips, ran his hand down my shoulder and bust; summing me up the while, like a cattle-buyer at a fair summing up the merits and demerits of a possible purchase.
He had drawn off my fur coat. You ask me why I allowed it? why – or how – it was I did not struggle in earnest? The truth is I was as helpless as a wild doe with a boa-constrictor sliming it over. There was no question of relative size or weight: twice his size, I believe I should have still been helpless. I am thin and slimly made, and was wearing a thin crêpe blouse. As he ran his dry, gritty fingers down my spine, with its unusually prominent vertebrae – never, never even by the people I love can I bear to be touched there – I felt as though the very soul were being drawn from out of my body.
I did not, could not shriek, even then, but I heard myself give a shrill squeak, like a mouse; upon which the third occupant of the room – or were there more? – ‘There might be more,’ that thought came to me, ‘all silent and all damned’ – shouted out hoarsely and solemnly, with a long interval between each word:
‘Battle – murder – and sudden death!’ Then, with a shriek: ‘Damn your eyes, I say! Damn your eyes!’
‘Strophe and antistrophe,’ tittered the smooth voice at my ear.
I repeated the words to myself dully enough: ‘Strophe and antistrophe.’ Of course I had heard them, but how? – where?
My brain, like my body, was sick; so deadened that all fear had left me with that small, contemptible cry.
‘You do not like to have your spine touched – there – there …’ Once again I felt his fingers upon me, but my long-drawn shudder was purely physical. ‘How men have wrangled over the soul, the spirit, the vital spark, the centre of life, reason, of all emotion – love – hate. And yet the Egyptians mastered the secret, the Ethiopians. In the days of Hadrian it had its name: that one small bone which to another – not to its owner, never to its original owner, mind you! – carries the secret of eternal life in life; the only immortality worth a pinch of salt.
‘Come now, you shan’t say that, mentally at least, I have left you in the dark regarding our venture. Ours, mind you – an undertaking of the most supreme issues, the highest possible interest to mankind.
‘There are so many people who do not count, who do not matter, who would not be missed – if you will excuse my saying so. Others who need nothing more than time – time – to develop their ideas, something more than the mere apprenticeship of fourscore and ten years. It comes to this: two futile, semi-lives, or one complete super-life. Some small sacrifice for the lesser, I grant you; but then, what has existence ever held for such people? And after all, they are the ones who, lacking courage to make the best of this world, drug themselves with hopes of heaven. Put it to them plainly: you are but helping them on their way, and they must see it. With you, now, it’s a pity – ah, yes, I grant you that – a pity you cannot be here to witness the effect of the operation to which you will so largely contribute. But, believe me, I shall not forget you – you will live again, in fame, in actuality – bone of my bone – “Luz”!’
The words were laughable enough; uttered with the deliberate pomposity of the lunatic who floats upon the stream of his own monstrous illusions, egotism. And yet – even now I do not understand why – it was in connection with myself, not with my gaoler or his companion, that I began to have fears of madness.
‘I shall go mad. I’m going mad …’ That was my thought.
Light! Light! There was the only possible remedy, hope. At that moment it seemed as though in light alone, any light – the light of day, electric light, the merest farthing dip, the spurt of a match – might be found the one panacea for all ills of body and mind; the preservation of that sanity which was being distilled out of me by cold sweats, shaken from me by such tremblings that my very teeth chattered; the balm against that horror, gathering to some dreadful head in the darkness.
‘You must let me have a light. I can’t – I can’t endure this!’
‘Tut, tut! so impatient! But it will come; in a better, brighter world, according to your divines, who offer you a letter of credit to some sort of glorified gin-palace, with no close hours …
‘“Oh, for the golden gates of heaven!” etc, etc, “The Sun of Righteousness, that setteth nevermore” … There you have it, eh? Yes, there you have it. As I said, I cannot but regret that you will not be here visibly – shall we say, completely? – to join in my triumph, the triumph of an ancient belief resuscitated by me – by me!’
His voice swelled with vanity. I knew that he smote his breast, for by this time I had grown sensitive to the faintest sound, to every stir of the foul air: that mouse-like stench already carried its own personality.
‘Still, I daresay you will be better suited – “Leaving to better oneself” – it is an expression confined, I believe, to the servant-class. But the clergy might well adopt it – a pretty heading for a tombstone, eh? Good! Very good!’
He chuckled, tapping my knee with a forefinger like a thin bar of iron.
‘Battle! – murder! – and sudden – death!’
The third occupant of the room broke the silence with a piercing shrillness. Odd how he affected me: I think I was more frightened of him than of the other who threatened me – for I knew he threatened, menaced – perhaps because I had not seen so much as a shadow of him; because he held all the dreaded quality of the completely unknown.
‘If only – you – would – would – light the gas – a candle – anything – I promise –’ I began, slowly, laboriously, trying to think and speak with reason.
‘Oh, damn your eyes!’ Again it was that other. The tone was fretful, the outburst followed by a low, muttered soliloquy:
‘There – you hear that? It is two to one. My companion is against you: both alike, we are creatures of darkness. To master conditions, that is the secret of life. If you had lived long enough …’
The speaker was moving round me, feeling me over. He had taken off a long scarf which I had worn under my coat, and I fancied I heard him running the silk through his slightly roughened fingers.
‘What are you doing? What –’ I cried, and, waking from my inertia, made one desperate effort to escape. But I was too late – I had once complained of that scarf being over-long – it went three times round my body now, widened out like a bandage, pressing my arms close to my sides; and even then there was the fringe left for knotting.
‘We were talking of Eternity –’ The smooth voice was a trifle broken; the creature panted. It seemed as though all his strength must lie in those steel-like muscles, those iron bones, for there had been nothing which could be called a tussle – I was past that. ‘Life eternal! Now, I wonder if you ever heard of the belief I mentioned – the fact proved – proved, I tell you! – that there in one of the smaller vertebrae of the human spine which the Romans distinguished by the name of Luz – there – just there –’
Somehow or other, more by the pressure of will than by any actual force, I was being propelled across the floor.
‘– just there – above, rather than between, the shoulder-blades – nearer to the seat of the intellect than that of the animal passions, though partaking of both – which has the power of conferring immortality upon another who removes it from the still living body! Think of it – only think of it – the infinite sense of time in which to work out one’s ideas – crowding, all crowding in upon one, as they do now, with no time for completion – making man one with the gods.’
His voice rose shrilly. ‘“A life for a life” – this was what was meant. I’ve proved it – proved it, I tell you!’
He was panting with excitement. I could actually feel it in the air, vibrant, distinct; could have sworn that I heard his heart beat – quick, like a small animal’s.
‘Your life for mine! But only think what I know, what it’ll mean to the world – my life – unhurried, calm, eternal! Here – just here – one little bone!’
Again he touched my spine, and I shuddered from head to foot. My knees were like water under me as I was lowered on to some sort of couch or bed.
I suppose he made certain that I was past all further effort, or else he had half-forgotten me as an individual, as anything apart from a means by which to carry out his own chimerical desires, for he started to move about the room, humming to himself.
I heard him pouring out water – can you imagine how it affected me in that blackness? It was, indeed, as though I were blind, and this stranger seeing, pursuing the ordinary avocations of life.
‘Ba-a-a-tle – mur-mur-mur-der,’ his companion muttered senilely; then – suddenly, decisively – broke out with: ‘Sudden death! Sudden death, I say! Damn your eyes!’
There was an odd little click; a moment’s pause, and then it came again.
For what seemed like an eternity my mind fumbled over memories of just such a sound.
Once again, and I had it!
For three years during the war I had been nursing. During the last twelve months my work lay in the operating-theatre, and here the greater part of my time was given to the sterilizing of the instruments, keeping them scrupulously clean.
Well, there you had it – the click-click of the pieces of steel against each other as they were washed, and laid down, side by side.
Panic overcame me, my sense of deadly weakness. I flung my feet to the floor, and made a dash – all on one side, with my arms pinned close – for the place where I imagined the door to be: struck the corner of a table, struck the wall and hurtled round it, frantically beating myself against it, like a bird with clipped wings dashing itself against the bars of its cage; screaming at the top of my voice.
I caught my foot against something which fell with a clatter followed by a hail of shrill curses – ‘Damn your eyes – you … you … damn your eyes, I say! Battle – murder – murder … Death!’ – stumbled on a few steps, and crashed to the floor, conscious of a sudden sharp agony of pain in my left arm.
That mouse-like frowsty odour was close to me again; there was the sound of that quick, panting breath; then a scent stronger, sicklier than all else.
‘Mur-u-u-rder!’ repeated a far, far-away voice.
A vision of the operating theatre at B– , the patient strapped upon the table, floated clear and clean-cut before me.
I was overcome by a sharp dread of passing the wrong instrument. ‘If …’ I began – and that was all.
It was an hour or more later when they found me … us. … That was, somehow or other, the most awful part of the whole thing; haunting my dreams, even now.
The fog had lifted a little, and my informant – a stolid constable – and his mate had been going down the alley together when they heard that strange, discordant shriek of ‘Murder!’ – more words that they could not catch, and again, ‘Murder! Murder!’
Even then it had been difficult to find the right room.
‘No good asking.’ That was what he said. I had sent for him directly I was well enough to see anybody, feeling that I must know everything, everything. There was one memory …
‘People in places like that there, great old rookeries o’ places, will never tell on each other, never let on ter knowing anything that’s going on. Everlastingly on the move from one room to another, taking their bits o’ sticks with ‘em; changing with each other – why, half o’ them never sleep in the same room for two nights together – changing with each other, a regular put-up job, so that the police can never drop across the same people in the same place. Nobody knows nothing, nobody’s seen nothing, nobody’s heard nothing.
‘Not as how that was the case with this old chap. Far from it: lived there for years, he had, or so we reckon. An’, my word! but the place looked like it, choked up with dirt and rubbish!
‘A doctor, too – oh yes, a fully-qualified doctor, turned out o’ ‘is Union, or whatever they call ‘em – for some reason or other. Queer goings-on: that’s what they say. Clever enough, too; in the surgical line, they tell me; out o’ the ordinary clever. But all that happened years before he went blind. There was an old friend o’ his, a doctor up West Kensington way, stood by him as best he could; an’ when he got pretty well to the end of everything, he gave him a good suit of clothes and a trifle o’ money for answering the door and showing in patients; for, blind as he was, there seemed nothing he couldn’t do. But lately there’d been a lot of odds and ends of instruments disappearing out of the surgery, and he was forced to get rid o’ him. He made sure as he’d just sold ‘em for drink, until … But, well, there you were, miss.’
Yes, there I was.
There was a long, shallow cut – the mere outline of an incision – between my shoulder-blades.
And yet ‘more above than between’ – just as he had said. Fortunate that the instrument had been clean, clean as I myself could have kept it.
‘Them bits o’ steel, knives an’ such-like, the only things as wasn’t thick in filth. I’ve seen some queer places in my time, but never none ter equal that there.
‘Books, too, any amount o’ ‘em; though it must have been years since he could see ter read ‘em. One book as they said must ‘a set him on ter do what he was after doing – all about taking a bit o’ the bone out o’ a person’s back, and the one as did it living for ever; a sort of contrariwise ter the Adam and Eve business, seems to me – saving your presence, miss. Ah, well, it was Providence as he was took when he was.’
‘What do you mean? Is he –?’
‘Didn’t you know? I’m sure I’m sorry, miss, but I took it for granted – seein’ as how he had fallen right across you –’
So that was it – that memory, the meaning of my nightmare sense of something intolerably heavy – horrible beyond all words – lying across me, pressing me down.
There was another memory – something else … but …
‘Heart-failure from over-excitement, or so they said at the inquest.’ The policeman was still speaking, as I pieced it all together. ‘But Providence, as I said afore … the knife – a queer-shaped sorter thing – still in his hand, an’ all.
‘Seems as how he’d been trying ter get people ter go home with him before, pretending ter guide ‘em. But o’ course no ‘un ‘ud trust themselves ter be guided by a blind man unless it were in a fog like that there; an’ then the blind see better than the seein’, so ter speak. Well, anyhow, it’s over an’ done with now. An, if you’ll take my advice, miss, you’ll not think no more of it than you can help – such-like things ain’t wholesome ter get broodin’ on.’
He picked up his helmet from the floor and rose to go, eyeing me kindly. ‘To my mind you got off easy with that bit o’ a scratch an’ a broken arm.’
‘Oh, that’s all right.’ … There was still that other memory, something else I wanted to ask him; but I was frightened. My heart beat faster. It was as though, speaking of the thing, putting it into words, would bring the whole horror back again, there in my own brightly-lighted drawing-room.
‘But – the other…’
The constable paused, his helmet in his hand: ‘Beg pardon, miss? The –?’
‘The other…’ The stench of the place was in my nostrils, the chill sweat of fear lapped me round. I moistened my lips with my tongue. ‘The – the other man?’
He looked puzzled. ‘There weren’t no other man, leastways there wasn’t when we got there. Just you and – and – ‘im: and a mangy old parrot, with his stand overturned on the floor, shrieking … well, miss, I’ve told you how it was we came to find you at all – shrieking for all he was worth – poor brute! He’d had both his eyes put out with a red-hot needle, or something o’ that sort, to make him talk better, I suppose – shrieking fit ter deafen yer:
‘“Battle – murder – an’ sudden death!”’