Complete weird tales of.., p.1224
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1224
Gorgeous masses of flowers blazed in the sunshine from the grey terraces of the Savoy, from the high grilled court of the Vanderbilt palace, and from the balconies of the Plaza opposite.
The white marble façade of the Metropolitan Club was a grateful relief in the universal glare, and I kept my eyes on it until I had crossed the dusty street and entered the shade of the trees.
Before I came to the Zoo I smelled it. Next week it was to be removed to the fresh cool woods and meadows in Bronx Park, far from the stifling air of the city, far from the infernal noise of the Fifth Avenue omnibuses.
A noble stag stared at me from his enclosure among the trees as I passed down the winding asphalt walk. “Never mind, old fellow,” said I, you will be splashing about in the Bronx River next week and cropping maple shoots to your heart’s content.
On I went, past herds of staring deer, past great lumbering elk, and moose, and long-faced African antelopes, until I came to the dens of the great carnivora.
The tigers sprawled in the sunshine, blinking and licking their paws; the lions slept in the shade or squatted on their haunches, yawning gravely. A slim panther travelled to and fro behind her barred cage, pausing at times to peer wistfully out into the free sunny world. My heart ached for caged wild things, and I walked on, glancing up now and then to encounter the blank stare of a tiger or the mean shifty eyes of some ill-smelling hyena.
Across the meadow I could see the elephants swaying and swinging their great heads, the sober bison solemnly slobbering over their cuds, the sarcastic countenances of camels, the wicked little zebras, and a lot more animals of the camel and llama tribe, all resembling each other, all equally ridiculous, stupid, deadly uninteresting.
Somewhere behind the old arsenal an eagle was screaming, probably a Yankee eagle; I heard the “rchug! rchug!” of a blowing hippopotamus, the squeal of a falcon, and the snarling yap! of quarrelling wolves.
“A pleasant place for a hot day!” I pondered bitterly, and I thought some things about Jamison that I shall not insert in this volume. But I lighted a cigarette to deaden the aroma from the hyenas, unclasped my sketching block, sharpened my pencil, and fell to work on a family group of hippopotami.
They may have taken me for a photographer, for they all wore smiles as if “welcoming a friend,” and my sketch block presented a series of wide open jaws, behind which shapeless bulky bodies vanished in alarming perspective.
The alligators were easy; they looked to me as though they had not moved since the founding of the Zoo, but I had a bad time with the big bison, who persistently turned his tail to me, looking stolidly around his flank to see how I stood it. So I pretended to be absorbed in the antics of two bear cubs, and the dreary old bison fell into the trap, for I made some good sketches of him and laughed in his face as I closed the book.
There was a bench by the abode of the eagles, and I sat down on it to draw the vultures and condors, motionless as mummies among the piled rocks. Gradually I enlarged the sketch, bringing in the gravel plaza, the steps leading up to Fifth Avenue, the sleepy park policeman in front of the arsenal — and a slim, white-browed girl, dressed in shabby black, who stood silently in the shade of the willow trees.
After a while I found that the sketch, instead of being a study of the eagles, was in reality a composition in which the girl in black occupied the principal point of interest. Unwittingly I had subordinated everything else to her, the brooding vultures, the trees and walks, and the half indicated groups of sun-warmed loungers.
She stood very still, her pallid face bent, her thin white hands loosely clasped before her.
“Rather dejected reverie,” I thought, “probably she’s out of work.” Then I caught a glimpse of a sparkling diamond ring on the slender third finger of her left hand.
“She’ll not starve with such a stone as that about her,” I said to myself, looking curiously at her dark eyes and sensitive mouth. They were both beautiful, eyes and mouth — beautiful, but touched with pain.
After a while I rose and walked back to make a sketch or two of the lions and tigers. I avoided the monkeys — I can’t stand them, and they never seem funny to me, poor dwarfish, degraded caricatures of all that is ignoble in ourselves.
“I’ve enough now,” I thought; “I’ll go home and manufacture a full page that will probably please Jamison.” So I strapped the elastic band around my sketching block, replaced pencil and rubber in my waistcoat pocket, and strolled off toward the Mall to smoke a cigarette in the evening glow before going back to my studio to work until midnight, up to the chin in charcoal grey and Chinese white.
Across the long meadow I could see the roofs of the city faintly looming above the trees. A mist of amethyst, ever deepening, hung low on the horizon, and through it, steeple and dome, roof and tower, and the tall chimneys where thin fillets of smoke curled idly, were transformed into pinnacles of beryl and flaming minarets, swimming in filmy haze. Slowly the enchantment deepened; all that was ugly and shabby and mean had fallen away from the distant city, and now it towered into the evening sky, splendid, gilded, magnificent, purified in the fierce furnace of the setting sun.
The red disk was half hidden now; the tracery of trees, feathery willow and budding birch, darkened against the glow; the fiery rays shot far across the meadow, gilding the dead leaves, staining with soft crimson the dark moist tree trunks around me.
Far across the meadow a shepherd passed in the wake of a huddling flock, his dog at his heels, faint moving blots of grey.
A squirrel sat up on the gravel walk in front of me, ran a few feet, and sat up again, so close that I could see the palpitation of his sleek flanks.
Somewhere in the grass a hidden field insect was rehearsing last summer’s solos; I heard the tap! tap! tat-tat-t-t-tat! of a woodpecker among the branches overhead and the querulous note of a sleepy robin.
The twilight deepened; out of the city the music of bells floated over wood and meadow; faint mellow whistles sounded from the river craft along the north shore, and the distant thunder of a gun announced the close of a June day.
The end of my cigarette began to glimmer with a redder light; shepherd and flock were blotted out in the dusk, and I only knew they were still moving when the sheep bells tinkled faintly.
Then suddenly that strange uneasiness that all have known — that half-awakened sense of having seen it all before, of having been through it all, came over me, and I raised my head and slowly turned.
A figure was seated at my side. My mind was struggling with the instinct to remember.
Something so vague and yet so familiar — something that eluded thought yet challenged it, something — God knows what! troubled me. And now, as I looked, without interest, at the dark figure beside me, an apprehension, totally involuntary, an impatience to understand, came upon me, and I sighed and turned restlessly again to the fading west.
I thought I heard my sigh re-echoed — I scarcely heeded; and in a moment I sighed again, dropping my burned-out cigarette on the gravel beneath my feet.
“Did you speak to me?” said some one in a low voice, so close that I swung around rather sharply.
“No,” I said after a moment’s silence.
It was a woman. I could not see her face clearly, but I saw on her clasped hands, which lay listlessly in her lap, the sparkle of a great diamond. I knew her at once. It did not need a glance at the shabby dress of black, the white face, a pallid spot in the twilight, to tell me that I had her picture in my sketch-book.
“Do — do you mind if I speak to you?” she asked timidly. The hopeless sadness in her voice touched me, and I said: “Why, no, of course not. Can I do anything for you?”
“Yes,” she said, brightening a little, “if you — you only would.”
“I will if I can,” said I, cheerfully; “what is it? Out of ready cash?”
“No, not that,” she said, shrinking back.
I begged her pardon, a little surprised, and withdrew my hand from my change pocket.
“It is only — only that I wish you to take these,” — she drew a thin packet from her breasr,— “these two letters.”
“I?” I asked astonished.
“Yes, if you will.”
“But what am I to do with them?” I demanded.
“I can’t tell you; I only know that I must give them to you. Will you take them?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll take them,” I laughed, “am I to read them?” I added to myself, “It’s some clever begging trick.”
“No,” she answered slowly, “you are not to read them; you are to give them to somebody.”
“To whom? Anybody?”
“No, not to anybody. You will know whom to give them to when the time comes.
“Then I am to keep them until further instructions?”
“Your own heart will instruct you,” she said, in a scarcely audible voice. She held the thin packet toward me, and to humor her I took it. It was wet.
“The letters fell into the sea,” she said; “there was a photograph which should have gone with them but the salt water washed it blank. Will you care if I ask you something else?”
“I? Oh, no.”
“Then give me the picture that you made of me to-day.” I laughed again, and demanded how she knew I had drawn her.
“Is it like me?” she said.
“I think it is very like you,” I answered truthfully. “Will you not give it to me?”
Now it was on the tip of my tongue to refuse, but I reflected that I had enough sketches for a full page without that one, so I handed it to her, nodded that she was welcome, and stood up. She rose also, the diamond flashing on her finger.
“You are sure that you are not in want?” I asked, with a tinge of good-natured sarcasm.
“Hark!” she whispered; “listen! — do you hear the bells of the convent!” I looked out into the misty night.
“There are no bells sounding,” I said, “and anyway there are no convent bells here. We are in New York, mademoiselle — I had noticed her French accent — we are in Protestant Yankee-land, and the bells that ring are much less mellow than the bells of France.”
I turned pleasantly to say good-night. She was gone.
Chapter III
HAVE YOU EVER drawn a picture of a corpse?” inquired Jamison next morning as I walked into his private room with a sketch of the proposed full page of the Zoo.
“No, and I don’t want to,” I replied, sullenly.
“Let me see your Central Park page,” said Jamison in his gentle voice, and I displayed it. It was about worthless as an artistic production, but it pleased Jamison, as I knew it would.
“Can you finish it by this afternoon?” he asked, looking up at me with persuasive eyes.
“Oh, I suppose so,” I said, wearily; “anything else, Mr. Jamison?”
“The corpse,” he replied, “I want a sketch by to-morrow — finished.”
“What corpse?” I demanded, controlling my indignation as I met Jamison’s soft eyes.
There was a mute duel of glances. Jamison passed his hand across his forehead with a slight lifting of the eyebrows.
“I shall want it as soon as possible,” he said in his caressing voice.
What I thought was, “Damned purring pussy-cat!” What I said was, “Where is this corpse?”
“In the Morgue — have you read the morning papers? No? Ah, — as you very rightly observe you are too busy to read the morning papers. Young men must learn industry first, of course, of course. What you are to do is this: the San Francisco police have sent out an alarm regarding the disappearance of a Miss Tufft — the millionaire’s daughter, you know. To-day a body was brought to the Morgue here in New York, and it has been identified as the missing young lady, — by a diamond ring. Now I am convinced that it isn’t, and I’ll show you why, Mr. Hilton.”
He picked up a pen and made a sketch of a ring on a margin of that morning’s Tribune.
“That is the description of her ring as sent on from San Francisco. You notice the diamond is set in the centre of the ring where the two gold serpents’ tails cross!
“Now the ring on the finger of the woman in the Morgue is like this,” and he rapidly sketched another ring where the diamond rested in the fangs of the two gold serpents.
“That is the difference,” he said in his pleasant, even voice.
“Rings like that are not uncommon,” said I, remembering that I had seen such a ring on the finger of the white-faced girl in the Park the evening before. Then a sudden thought took shape — perhaps that was the girl whose body lay in the Morgue!
“Well,” said Jamison, looking up at me, “what are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” I answered, but the whole scene was before my eyes, the vultures brooding among the rocks, the shabby black dress, and the pallid face, — and the ring, glittering on that slim white hand!
“Nothing,” I repeated, “when shall I go, Mr. Jamison? Do you want a portrait — or what?”
“Portrait, — careful drawing of the ring, and, — er — a centre piece of the Morgue at night. Might as well give people the horrors while we’re about it.”
“But,” said I, “the policy of this paper—”
“Never mind, Mr. Hilton,” purred Jamison, “I am able to direct the policy of this paper.”
“I don’t doubt you are,” I said angrily.
“I am,” he repeated, undisturbed and smiling; “you see this Tufft case interests society. I am — er — also interested.”
He held out to me a morning paper and pointed to a heading.
I read: “Miss Tufft Dead! Her Fiancé was Mr. Jamison, the well known Editor.”
“What!” I cried in horrified amazement. But Jamison had left the room, and I heard him chatting and laughing softly with some visitors in the press-room outside.
I flung down the paper and walked out.
“The cold-blooded toad!” I exclaimed again and again;— “making capitral out of his fiancé’s disappearance! Well, I — I’m d — nd! I knew he was a bloodless, heartless grip-penny, but I never thought — I never imagined—” Words failed me.
Scarcely conscious of what I did I drew a Herald from my pocket and saw the column entitled:
“Miss Tufft Found! Identified by a Ring. Wild Grief of Mr. Jamison, her Fiancé.”
That was enough. I went out into the street and sat down in City Hall Park. And, as I sat there, a terrible resolution came to me; I would draw that dead girl’s face in such a way that it would chill Jamison’s sluggish blood, I would crowd the black shadows of the Morgue with forms and ghastly faces, and every face should bear something in it of Jamison. Oh, I’d rouse him from his cold snaky apathy! I’d confront him with Death in such an awful form, that, passionless, base, inhuman as he was, he’d shrink from it as he would from a dagger thrust. Of course I’d lose my place, but that did not bother me, for I had decided to resign anyway, not having a taste for the society of human reptiles. And, as I sat there in the sunny park, furious, trying to plan a picture whose sombre horror should leave in his mind an ineffaceable scar, I suddenly thought of the pale black-robed girl in Central Park. Could it be her poor slender body that lay among the shadows of the grim Morgue! If ever brooding despair was stamped on any face, I had seen its print on hers when she spoke to me in the Park and gave me the letters. The letters! I had not thought of them since, but now I drew them from my pocket and looked at the addresses.
“Curious,” I thought, “the letters are still damp; they smell of salt water too.”
I looked at the address again, written in the long fine hand of an educated woman who had been bred in a French convent. Both letters bore the same address, in French:
“Captain d’Yniol.
(Kindness of a Stranger.)”
“Captain d’Yniol,” I repeated aloud— “confound it, I’ve heard that name! Now, where the deuce — where in the name of all that’s queer—” Somebody who had sat down on the bench beside me placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
It was the Frenchman, “Soger Charlie.”
“You spoke my name,” he said in apathetic tones.
“Your name!”
“Captain d’Yniol,” he repeated; “it is my name.”
I recognized him in spite of the black goggles he was wearing, and, at the same moment, it flashed into my mind that d’Yniol was the name of the traitor who had escaped. Ah, I remembered now!
“I am Captain d’Yniol,” he said again, and I saw his fingers closing on my coat sleeve.
It may have been my involuntary movement of recoil, — I don’t know, — bur the fellow dropped my coat and sat straight up on the bench.
“I am Captain d’Yniol.” he said for the third rime, “charged with treason and under sentence of death.”
“And innocent!” I muttered, before I was even conscious of having spoken. What was it that wrung those involuntary words from my lips, I shall never know, perhaps — but it was I, not he, who trembled, seized with a strange agitation, and it was I, not he, whose hand was stretched forth impulsively, touching his.
Without a tremor he took my hand, pressed it almost imperceptibly, and dropped it. Then I held both letters toward him, and, as he neither looked at them nor at me, I placed them in his hand. Then he started.
“Read them,” I said, “they are for you.”
“Letters!” he gasped in a voice that sounded like nothing human.
“Yes, they are for you, — I know it now — Letters! — letters directed to me?”
“Can you not see?” I cried.
Then he raised one frail hand and drew the goggles from his eyes, and, as I looked, I saw two tiny white specks exactly in the centre of both pupils.
“Blind!” I faltered.
“I have been unable to read for two years,” he said.
After a moment he placed the tip of one finger on the letters.
“They are wet,” I said; “shall — would you like to have me read them?” For a long time he sat silently in the sunshine, fumbling with his cane, and I watched him without speaking. At last he said, “Read, Monsieur,” and I rook the letters and broke the seals.
