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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great God Pan
+
+Author: Arthur Machen
+
+Posting Date: August 12, 2008 [EBook #389]
+Release Date: January, 1996
+Last updated: July 3, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT GOD PAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brandi Weed.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT GOD PAN
+
+by
+
+ARTHUR MACHEN
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I  THE EXPERIMENT
+   II  MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS
+  III  THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS
+   IV  THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET
+    V  THE LETTER OF ADVICE
+   VI  THE SUICIDES
+  VII  THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO
+ VIII  THE FRAGMENTS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE EXPERIMENT
+
+"I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed.  I was not sure you
+could spare the time."
+
+"I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very
+lively just now.  But have you no misgivings, Raymond?  Is it
+absolutely safe?"
+
+The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's
+house.  The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it
+shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was
+quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above,
+and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves.
+Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between
+the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a
+faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills.  Dr. Raymond
+turned sharply to his friend.
+
+"Safe?  Of course it is.  In itself the operation is a perfectly simple
+one; any surgeon could do it."
+
+"And there is no danger at any other stage?"
+
+"None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word.
+You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history.  I have
+devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years.  I
+have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the
+while I knew I was on the right path.  Five years ago I reached the
+goal, and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall
+do tonight."
+
+"I should like to believe it is all true."  Clarke knit his brows, and
+looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond.  "Are you perfectly sure, Raymond,
+that your theory is not a phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly,
+but a mere vision after all?"
+
+Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a
+middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he
+answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.
+
+"Look about you, Clarke.  You see the mountain, and hill following
+after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields
+of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river.
+You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you
+that all these things--yes, from that star that has just shone out in
+the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are
+but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our
+eyes.  There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this
+vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them
+all as beyond a veil.  I do not know whether any human being has ever
+lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it
+lifted this very night from before another's eyes.  You may think this
+all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the
+ancients knew what lifting the veil means.  They called it seeing the
+god Pan."
+
+Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.
+
+"It is wonderful indeed," he said.  "We are standing on the brink of a
+strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true.  I suppose the knife
+is absolutely necessary?"
+
+"Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling
+rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would
+escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred.
+I don't want to bother you with 'shop,' Clarke; I might give you a mass
+of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave
+you as enlightened as you are now.  But I suppose you have read,
+casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides
+have been made recently in the physiology of the brain.  I saw a
+paragraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's
+discoveries.  Theories and discoveries!  Where they are standing now, I
+stood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I have not been
+standing still for the last fifteen years.  It will be enough if I say
+that five years ago I made the discovery that I alluded to when I said
+that ten years ago I reached the goal.  After years of labour, after
+years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights of
+disappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used now and then
+to tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were
+others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of
+sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at an end.
+By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a
+moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I
+had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and
+I saw, mapped out in lines of sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown;
+continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed
+(to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun,
+and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath.  You will think
+this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to be literal.
+And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot be set forth
+in plain and lonely terms.  For instance, this world of ours is pretty
+well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with
+something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to
+sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places.
+Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he
+and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking
+them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw
+uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash
+forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the
+voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our
+thought.  As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have
+done; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here
+one evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it
+does now; I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the
+unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of
+matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim
+before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth
+to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned.  You may look in
+Browne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find that to the present
+day men of science are unable to account for the presence, or to
+specify the functions of a certain group of nerve-cells in the brain.
+That group is, as it were, land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful
+theories.  I am not in the position of Browne Faber and the
+specialists, I am perfectly instructed as to the possible functions of
+those nerve-centers in the scheme of things.  With a touch I can bring
+them into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the current, with a
+touch I can complete the communication between this world of sense
+and--we shall be able to finish the sentence later on. Yes, the knife
+is necessary; but think what that knife will effect.  It will level
+utterly the solid wall of sense, and probably, for the first time since
+man was made, a spirit will gaze on a spirit-world.  Clarke, Mary will
+see the god Pan!"
+
+"But you remember what you wrote to me?  I thought it would be
+requisite that she--"
+
+He whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.
+
+"Not at all, not at all.  That is nonsense.  I assure you.  Indeed, it
+is better as it is; I am quite certain of that."
+
+"Consider the matter well, Raymond.  It's a great responsibility.
+Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of
+your days."
+
+"No, I think not, even if the worst happened.  As you know, I rescued
+Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was
+a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit.  Come, it's
+getting late; we had better go in."
+
+Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down a
+long dark passage.  He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavy
+door, and motioned Clarke into his laboratory.  It had once been a
+billiard-room, and was lighted by a glass dome in the centre of the
+ceiling, whence there still shone a sad grey light on the figure of the
+doctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table in
+the middle of the room.
+
+Clarke looked about him.  Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; there
+were shelves all around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes and
+colours, and at one end stood a little Chippendale book-case.  Raymond
+pointed to this.
+
+"You see that parchment Oswald Crollius?  He was one of the first to
+show me the way, though I don't think he ever found it himself.  That
+is a strange saying of his: 'In every grain of wheat there lies hidden
+the soul of a star.'"
+
+There was not much furniture in the laboratory.  The table in the
+centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on
+which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an
+odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room.  Clarke looked at
+it, and raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, that is the chair," said Raymond.  "We may as well place it in
+position."  He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began
+raising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at
+various angles, and adjusting the foot-rest.  It looked comfortable
+enough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as the
+doctor manipulated the levers.
+
+"Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable.  I have a couple hours'
+work before me; I was obliged to leave certain matters to the last."
+
+Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he
+bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible.  The
+doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge
+above his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down at
+the great shadowy room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant
+light and undefined darkness contrasting with one another.  Soon he
+became conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of
+odour, in the room, and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that
+he was not reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery.  Clarke found
+himself idly endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and half conscious,
+he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent
+roaming through the woods and meadows near his own home.  It was a
+burning day at the beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the
+outlines of all things and all distances with a faint mist, and people
+who observed the thermometer spoke of an abnormal register, of a
+temperature that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day
+of the fifties rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense of
+dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the
+lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in
+gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard
+the myriad murmur of the summer.
+
+"I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothing
+unwholesome about it.  It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all."
+
+Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was
+speaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himself
+from his lethargy.  He could only think of the lonely walk he had taken
+fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had
+known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant
+light, as a picture, before him.  Above all there came to his nostrils
+the scent of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the
+woods, of cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by
+the sun's heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with
+arms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies
+made him wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the
+wood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of
+beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock
+sounded as a clear melody in the dream.  Thoughts began to go astray
+and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a
+path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough
+to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes,
+and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against
+the dark shadows of the ilex.  Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was
+conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an
+undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it
+all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an
+infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed,
+and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence,
+that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but
+all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form.  And
+in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a
+voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness of
+darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.
+
+When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of
+some oily fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.
+
+"You have been dozing," he said; "the journey must have tired you out.
+It is done now.  I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten
+minutes."
+
+Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered.  It seemed as if he had but
+passed from one dream into another.  He half expected to see the walls
+of the laboratory melt and disappear, and to awake in London,
+shuddering at his own sleeping fancies. But at last the door opened,
+and the doctor returned, and behind him came a girl of about seventeen,
+dressed all in white.  She was so beautiful that Clarke did not wonder
+at what the doctor had written to him.  She was blushing now over face
+and neck and arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.
+
+"Mary," he said, "the time has come.  You are quite free.  Are you
+willing to trust yourself to me entirely?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Do you hear that, Clarke?  You are my witness.  Here is the chair,
+Mary.  It is quite easy.  Just sit in it and lean back.  Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes, dear, quite ready.  Give me a kiss before you begin."
+
+The doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough. "Now shut your
+eyes," he said.  The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, and
+longed for sleep, and Raymond placed the green phial to her nostrils.
+Her face grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, and
+then with the feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her arms
+upon her breast as a little child about to say her prayers.  The bright
+light of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes
+fleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the summer
+clouds float across the sun.  And then she lay all white and still, and
+the doctor turned up one of her eyelids.  She was quite unconscious.
+Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank
+back.  Clarke saw him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her
+hair, and the lamp was moved nearer.  Raymond took a small glittering
+instrument from a little case, and Clarke turned away shudderingly.
+When he looked again the doctor was binding up the wound he had made.
+
+"She will awake in five minutes."  Raymond was still perfectly cool.
+"There is nothing more to be done; we can only wait."
+
+The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow, heavy, ticking.
+There was an old clock in the passage.  Clarke felt sick and faint; his
+knees shook beneath him, he could hardly stand.
+
+Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly
+did the colour that had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, and
+suddenly her eyes opened.  Clarke quailed before them.  They shone with
+an awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her
+face, and her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible;
+but in an instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful
+terror.  The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook
+from head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the
+house of flesh.  It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as
+she fell shrieking to the floor.
+
+Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying
+wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, still quite cool, "it is a great pity; she is a
+hopeless idiot.  However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she
+has seen the Great God Pan."
+
+
+
+II
+
+MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS
+
+Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the strange
+experiment of the god Pan, was a person in whose character caution and
+curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the
+unusual and eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in his
+heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the
+more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men.  The latter
+tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for
+though his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's
+theories as the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in
+fantasy, and would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The
+horrors that he witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain
+extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in an affair not
+altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to
+the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation.
+Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the
+seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of
+these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of
+every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke
+knew that he still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old
+passion began to reassert itself, as the face of Mary, shuddering and
+convulsed with an unknown terror, faded slowly from his memory.
+Occupied all day in pursuits both serious and lucrative, the temptation
+to relax in the evening was too great, especially in the winter months,
+when the fire cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a
+bottle of some choice claret stood ready by his elbow.  His dinner
+digested, he would make a brief pretence of reading the evening paper,
+but the mere catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and Clarke would
+find himself casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old
+Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth.
+Like a boy before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover
+indecisive, but lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up
+his chair, lighting a candle, and sitting down before the bureau.  Its
+pigeon-holes and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid
+subjects, and in the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which
+he had painfully entered the gems of his collection.  Clarke had a fine
+contempt for published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to
+interest him if it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the
+reading, compiling, and rearranging what he called his "Memoirs to
+prove the Existence of the Devil," and engaged in this pursuit the
+evening seemed to fly and the night appeared too short.
+
+On one particular evening, an ugly December night, black with fog, and
+raw with frost, Clarke hurried over his dinner, and scarcely deigned to
+observe his customary ritual of taking up the paper and laying it down
+again.  He paced two or three times up and down the room, and opened
+the bureau, stood still a moment, and sat down.  He leant back,
+absorbed in one of those dreams to which he was subject, and at length
+drew out his book, and opened it at the last entry.  There were three
+or four pages densely covered with Clarke's round, set penmanship, and
+at the beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:
+
+        Singular Narrative told me by my Friend, Dr. Phillips.
+                He assures me that all the facts related
+                therein are strictly and wholly True, but
+                refuses to give either the Surnames of the
+                Persons Concerned, or the Place where these
+                Extraordinary Events occurred.
+
+Mr. Clarke began to read over the account for the tenth time, glancing
+now and then at the pencil notes he had made when it was told him by
+his friend.  It was one of his humours to pride himself on a certain
+literary ability; he thought well of his style, and took pains in
+arranging the circumstances in dramatic order.  He read the following
+story:--
+
+
+The persons concerned in this statement are Helen V., who, if she is
+still alive, must now be a woman of twenty-three, Rachel M., since
+deceased, who was a year younger than the above, and Trevor W., an
+imbecile, aged eighteen. These persons were at the period of the story
+inhabitants of a village on the borders of Wales, a place of some
+importance in the time of the Roman occupation, but now a scattered
+hamlet, of not more than five hundred souls.  It is situated on rising
+ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a large and
+picturesque forest.
+
+Some eleven years ago, Helen V. came to the village under rather
+peculiar circumstances.  It is understood that she, being an orphan,
+was adopted in her infancy by a distant relative, who brought her up in
+his own house until she was twelve years old. Thinking, however, that
+it would be better for the child to have playmates of her own age, he
+advertised in several local papers for a good home in a comfortable
+farmhouse for a girl of twelve, and this advertisement was answered by
+Mr. R., a well-to-do farmer in the above-mentioned village.  His
+references proving satisfactory, the gentleman sent his adopted
+daughter to Mr. R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that the girl
+should have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be at
+no trouble in the matter of education, as she was already sufficiently
+educated for the position in life which she would occupy.  In fact, Mr.
+R. was given to understand that the girl be allowed to find her own
+occupations and to spend her time almost as she liked.  Mr. R.  duly
+met her at the nearest station, a town seven miles away from his house,
+and seems to have remarked nothing extraordinary about the child except
+that she was reticent as to her former life and her adopted father. She
+was, however, of a very different type from the inhabitants of the
+village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her features were
+strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign character.  She appears to
+have settled down easily enough into farmhouse life, and became a
+favourite with the children, who sometimes went with her on her rambles
+in the forest, for this was her amusement.  Mr. R. states that he has
+known her to go out by herself directly after their early breakfast,
+and not return till after dusk, and that, feeling uneasy at a young
+girl being out alone for so many hours, he communicated with her
+adopted father, who replied in a brief note that Helen must do as she
+chose.  In the winter, when the forest paths are impassable, she spent
+most of her time in her bedroom, where she slept alone, according to
+the instructions of her relative. It was on one of these expeditions to
+the forest that the first of the singular incidents with which this
+girl is connected occurred, the date being about a year after her
+arrival at the village.  The preceding winter had been remarkably
+severe, the snow drifting to a great depth, and the frost continuing
+for an unexampled period, and the summer following was as noteworthy
+for its extreme heat.  On one of the very hottest days in this summer,
+Helen V. left the farmhouse for one of her long rambles in the forest,
+taking with her, as usual, some bread and meat for lunch.  She was seen
+by some men in the fields making for the old Roman Road, a green
+causeway which traverses the highest part of the wood, and they were
+astonished to observe that the girl had taken off her hat, though the
+heat of the sun was already tropical.  As it happened, a labourer,
+Joseph W. by name, was working in the forest near the Roman Road, and
+at twelve o'clock his little son, Trevor, brought the man his dinner of
+bread and cheese.  After the meal, the boy, who was about seven years
+old at the time, left his father at work, and, as he said, went to look
+for flowers in the wood, and the man, who could hear him shouting with
+delight at his discoveries, felt no uneasiness.  Suddenly, however, he
+was horrified at hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the
+result of great terror, proceeding from the direction in which his son
+had gone, and he hastily threw down his tools and ran to see what had
+happened.  Tracing his path by the sound, he met the little boy, who
+was running headlong, and was evidently terribly frightened, and on
+questioning him the man elicited that after picking a posy of flowers
+he felt tired, and lay down on the grass and fell asleep.  He was
+suddenly awakened, as he stated, by a peculiar noise, a sort of singing
+he called it, and on peeping through the branches he saw Helen V.
+playing on the grass with a "strange naked man," who he seemed unable
+to describe more fully.  He said he felt dreadfully frightened and ran
+away crying for his father.  Joseph W. proceeded in the direction
+indicated by his son, and found Helen V. sitting on the grass in the
+middle of a glade or open space left by charcoal burners.  He angrily
+charged her with frightening his little boy, but she entirely denied
+the accusation and laughed at the child's story of a "strange man," to
+which he himself did not attach much credence.  Joseph W.  came to the
+conclusion that the boy had woke up with a sudden fright, as children
+sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in his story, and continued in such
+evident distress that at last his father took him home, hoping that his
+mother would be able to soothe him. For many weeks, however, the boy
+gave his parents much anxiety; he became nervous and strange in his
+manner, refusing to leave the cottage by himself, and constantly
+alarming the household by waking in the night with cries of "The man in
+the wood! father! father!"
+
+In course of time, however, the impression seemed to have worn off, and
+about three months later he accompanied his father to the home of a
+gentleman in the neighborhood, for whom Joseph W. occasionally did
+work.  The man was shown into the study, and the little boy was left
+sitting in the hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was
+giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing
+shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child
+lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror.  The
+doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he
+pronounced the child to be suffering form a kind of fit, apparently
+produced by a sudden shock.  The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms,
+and after some time recovered consciousness, but only to pass into a
+condition described by the medical man as one of violent hysteria.  The
+doctor exhibited a strong sedative, and in the course of two hours
+pronounced him fit to walk home, but in passing through the hall the
+paroxysms of fright returned and with additional violence.  The father
+perceived that the child was pointing at some object, and heard the old
+cry, "The man in the wood," and looking in the direction indicated saw
+a stone head of grotesque appearance, which had been built into the
+wall above one of the doors.  It seems the owner of the house had
+recently made alterations in his premises, and on digging the
+foundations for some offices, the men had found a curious head,
+evidently of the Roman period, which had been placed in the manner
+described.  The head is pronounced by the most experienced
+archaeologists of the district to be that of a faun or satyr.  [Dr.
+Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in question, and assures me
+that he has never received such a vivid presentment of intense evil.]
+
+From whatever cause arising, this second shock seemed too severe for
+the boy Trevor, and at the present date he suffers from a weakness of
+intellect, which gives but little promise of amending.  The matter
+caused a good deal of sensation at the time, and the girl Helen was
+closely questioned by Mr. R., but to no purpose, she steadfastly
+denying that she had frightened or in any way molested Trevor.
+
+The second event with which this girl's name is connected took place
+about six years ago, and is of a still more extraordinary character.
+
+At the beginning of the summer of 1882, Helen contracted a friendship
+of a peculiarly intimate character with Rachel M., the daughter of a
+prosperous farmer in the neighbourhood.  This girl, who was a year
+younger than Helen, was considered by most people to be the prettier of
+the two, though Helen's features had to a great extent softened as she
+became older.  The two girls, who were together on every available
+opportunity, presented a singular contrast, the one with her clear,
+olive skin and almost Italian appearance, and the other of the
+proverbial red and white of our rural districts.  It must be stated
+that the payments made to Mr. R. for the maintenance of Helen were
+known in the village for their excessive liberality, and the impression
+was general that she would one day inherit a large sum of money from
+her relative. The parents of Rachel were therefore not averse from
+their daughter's friendship with the girl, and even encouraged the
+intimacy, though they now bitterly regret having done so. Helen still
+retained her extraordinary fondness for the forest, and on several
+occasions Rachel accompanied her, the two friends setting out early in
+the morning, and remaining in the wood until dusk.  Once or twice after
+these excursions Mrs. M. thought her daughter's manner rather peculiar;
+she seemed languid and dreamy, and as it has been expressed, "different
+from herself," but these peculiarities seem to have been thought too
+trifling for remark.  One evening, however, after Rachel had come home,
+her mother heard a noise which sounded like suppressed weeping in the
+girl's room, and on going in found her lying, half undressed, upon the
+bed, evidently in the greatest distress.  As soon as she saw her
+mother, she exclaimed, "Ah, mother, mother, why did you let me go to
+the forest with Helen?"  Mrs. M. was astonished at so strange a
+question, and proceeded to make inquiries.  Rachel told her a wild
+story.  She said--
+
+Clarke closed the book with a snap, and turned his chair towards the
+fire.  When his friend sat one evening in that very chair, and told his
+story, Clarke had interrupted him at a point a little subsequent to
+this, had cut short his words in a paroxysm of horror.  "My God!" he
+had exclaimed, "think, think what you are saying.  It is too
+incredible, too monstrous; such things can never be in this quiet
+world, where men and women live and die, and struggle, and conquer, or
+maybe fail, and fall down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer strange
+fortunes for many a year; but not this, Phillips, not such things as
+this.  There must be some explanation, some way out of the terror.
+Why, man, if such a case were possible, our earth would be a nightmare."
+
+But Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:
+
+"Her flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished in broad
+sunlight; they saw her walking in a meadow, and a few moments later she
+was not there."
+
+Clarke tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by the fire, and
+again his mind shuddered and shrank back, appalled before the sight of
+such awful, unspeakable elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant
+in human flesh.  Before him stretched the long dim vista of the green
+causeway in the forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the
+swaying leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the
+sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long distance, the
+two figures moved toward him.  One was Rachel, but the other?
+
+Clarke had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the
+account, as he had written it in his book, he had placed the
+inscription:
+
+ET DIABOLUS INCARNATE EST.  ET HOMO FACTUS EST.
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS
+
+"Herbert!  Good God!  Is it possible?"
+
+"Yes, my name's Herbert.  I think I know your face, too, but I don't
+remember your name.  My memory is very queer."
+
+"Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?"
+
+"So it is, so it is.  I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was
+begging of an old college friend. Good-night."
+
+"My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary.  My rooms are close by, but
+we won't go there just yet.  Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a
+little way?  But how in heaven's name have you come to this pass,
+Herbert?"
+
+"It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear
+it if you like."
+
+"Come on, then.  Take my arm, you don't seem very strong."
+
+The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty,
+evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a
+man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do.  Villiers had
+emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses,
+assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame
+of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the
+door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those
+mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem
+in every quarter and every hour.  Villiers prided himself as a
+practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and
+in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy
+of more serious employment.  Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying
+the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known
+only to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the
+formula: "London has been called the city of encounters; it is more
+than that, it is the city of Resurrections," when these reflections
+were suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a
+deplorable appeal for alms.  He looked around in some irritation, and
+with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of
+his somewhat stilted fancies.  There, close beside him, his face
+altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered
+by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who
+had matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been
+merry and wise for twelve revolving terms.  Different occupations and
+varying interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years
+since Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a
+man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to
+what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a
+doleful pass.  Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of
+the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely
+speculations outside the restaurant.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by
+stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed
+man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing
+this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho.  Here he
+repeated his question.
+
+"How on earth has it happened, Herbert?  I always understood you would
+succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire.  Did your father
+disinherit you?  Surely not?"
+
+"No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death;
+he died a year after I left Oxford.  He was a very good father to me,
+and I mourned his death sincerely enough.  But you know what young men
+are; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into
+society.  Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to
+enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way.  I played a little,
+certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races
+brought me in money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for
+cigars and such petty pleasures.  It was in my second season that the
+tide turned.  Of course you have heard of my marriage?"
+
+"No, I never heard anything about it."
+
+"Yes, I married, Villiers.  I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful
+and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew.  I
+cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I
+should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her
+acquaintance.  My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told
+them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian
+mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me.  The first time I saw
+her was at an evening party.  I was standing by the door talking to a
+friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard
+a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart.  She was singing an Italian
+song.  I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I
+married Helen.  Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman,
+corrupted my soul.  The night of the wedding I found myself sitting in
+her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk.  She was sitting up in
+bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke
+of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest
+night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness.   You, Villiers,
+you may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night
+in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of
+the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I know,
+not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth
+the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and seen.  Yes, seen.  I have
+seen the incredible, such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in
+the middle of the street and ask whether it is possible for a man to
+behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man,
+in body and soul--in body and soul."
+
+"But your property, Herbert?  You had land in Dorset."
+
+"I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house--everything."
+
+"And the money?"
+
+"She took it all from me."
+
+"And then left you?"
+
+"Yes; she disappeared one night.  I don't know where she went, but I am
+sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no
+interest; sordid misery, that is all.  You may think, Villiers, that I
+have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half.
+I could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would
+never know a happy day again.  You would pass the rest of your life, as
+I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell."
+
+Villiers took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal.
+Herbert could eat little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set
+before him.  He sat moody and silent by the fire, and seemed relieved
+when Villiers sent him away with a small present of money.
+
+"By the way, Herbert," said Villiers, as they parted at the door, "what
+was your wife's name?  You said Helen, I think? Helen what?"
+
+"The name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but what
+her real name was I can't say.  I don't think she had a name.  No, no,
+not in that sense.  Only human beings have names, Villiers; I can't say
+anymore.  Good-bye; yes, I will not fail to call if I see any way in
+which you can help me. Good-night."
+
+The man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his
+fireside.  There was something about Herbert which shocked him
+inexpressibly; not his poor rags nor the marks which poverty had set
+upon his face, but rather an indefinite terror which hung about him
+like a mist.  He had acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of
+blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and
+Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an actor in
+scenes evil beyond the power of words.  His story needed no
+confirmation: he himself was the embodied proof of it.  Villiers mused
+curiously over the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had
+heard both the first and the last of it.  "No," he thought, "certainly
+not the last, probably only the beginning.  A case like this is like a
+nest of Chinese boxes; you open one after the other and find a quainter
+workmanship in every box.  Most likely poor Herbert is merely one of
+the outside boxes; there are stranger ones to follow."
+
+Villiers could not take his mind away from Herbert and his story, which
+seemed to grow wilder as the night wore on. The fire seemed to burn
+low, and the chilly air of the morning crept into the room; Villiers
+got up with a glance over his shoulder, and, shivering slightly, went
+to bed.
+
+A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance,
+named Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London life,
+both in its tenebrous and luminous phases.  Villiers, still full of his
+encounter in Soho and its consequences, thought Austin might possibly
+be able to shed some light on Herbert's history, and so after some
+casual talk he suddenly put the question:
+
+"Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert--Charles
+Herbert?"
+
+Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some
+astonishment.
+
+"Charles Herbert?  Weren't you in town three years ago? No; then you
+have not heard of the Paul Street case?  It caused a good deal of
+sensation at the time."
+
+"What was the case?"
+
+"Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark
+dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham
+Court Road.  Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you
+happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the
+constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in
+somebody's area, you will be left alone.  In this instance, as in many
+others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a
+common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business
+or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at
+five o'clock in the morning.  This individual was, as he said, 'going
+home,' it did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass
+through Paul Street between four and five a.m. Something or other
+caught his eye at Number 20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house
+had the most unpleasant physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any
+rate, he glanced down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a
+man lying on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face
+turned up.  Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly,
+and so set off at a run in search of the nearest policeman.  The
+constable was at first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting
+common drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man's
+face, changed his tone, quickly enough.  The early bird, who had picked
+up this fine worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang
+and knocked at the door till a slatternly servant girl came down
+looking more than half asleep.  The constable pointed out the contents
+of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the
+street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the
+house, and so forth.  Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come back
+with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area.  The
+gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps.  The doctor
+hardly needed a moment's examination; he said the poor fellow had been
+dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get
+interesting.  The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his
+pockets were papers identifying him as--well, as a man of good family
+and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy, as far as could
+be known.  I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to
+do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
+about the dead when there are no relations living.  The next curious
+point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his
+death.  There were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were
+so slight that it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the
+kitchen door, and not thrown over the railings from the street or even
+dragged down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of
+violence about him, certainly none that would account for his death;
+and when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any
+kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at
+Number 20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or
+two other very curious points came out.  It appears that the occupants
+of the house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a
+landed proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was
+not exactly the place to look for country gentry.  As for Mrs. Herbert,
+nobody seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I
+fancy the divers after her history found themselves in rather strange
+waters.  Of course they both denied knowing anything about the
+deceased, and in default of any evidence against them they were
+discharged. But some very odd things came out about them.  Though it
+was between five and six in the morning when the dead man was removed,
+a large crowd had collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see
+what was going on.  They were pretty free with their comments, by all
+accounts, and from these it appeared that Number 20 was in very bad
+odour in Paul Street.  The detectives tried to trace down these rumours
+to some solid foundation of fact, but could not get hold of anything.
+People shook their heads and raised their eyebrows and thought the
+Herberts rather 'queer,' 'would rather not be seen going into their
+house,' and so on, but there was nothing tangible.  The authorities
+were morally certain the man met his death in some way or another in
+the house and was thrown out by the kitchen door, but they couldn't
+prove it, and the absence of any indications of violence or poisoning
+left them helpless.  An odd case, wasn't it?  But curiously enough,
+there's something more that I haven't told you.  I happened to know one
+of the doctors who was consulted as to the cause of death, and some
+time after the inquest I met him, and asked him about it.  'Do you
+really mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you were baffled by the case,
+that you actually don't know what the man died of?' 'Pardon me,' he
+replied, 'I know perfectly well what caused death.  Blank died of
+fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so hideously
+contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen the
+faces of a whole host of dead.'  The doctor was usually a cool customer
+enough, and a certain vehemence in his manner struck me, but I couldn't
+get anything more out of him. I suppose the Treasury didn't see their
+way to prosecuting the Herberts for frightening a man to death; at any
+rate, nothing was done, and the case dropped out of men's minds.  Do
+you happen to know anything of Herbert?"
+
+"Well," replied Villiers, "he was an old college friend of mine."
+
+"You don't say so?  Have you ever seen his wife?"
+
+"No, I haven't.  I have lost sight of Herbert for many years."
+
+"It's queer, isn't it, parting with a man at the college gate or at
+Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop
+up his head in such an odd place.  But I should like to have seen Mrs.
+Herbert; people said extraordinary things about her."
+
+"What sort of things?"
+
+"Well, I hardly know how to tell you.  Everyone who saw her at the
+police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most
+repulsive they had ever set eyes on.  I have spoken to a man who saw
+her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe
+the woman, but he couldn't tell why.  She seems to have been a sort of
+enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he
+would have told some uncommonly queer ones.  And there you are again in
+another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
+Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer
+house as Number 20?  It's altogether a very odd case, isn't it?"
+
+"It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case.  I didn't think, when I
+asked you about my old friend, I should strike on such strange metal.
+Well, I must be off; good-day."
+
+Villiers went away, thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes;
+here was quaint workmanship indeed.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET
+
+A few months after Villiers' meeting with Herbert, Mr. Clarke was
+sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth, resolutely guarding his
+fancies from wandering in the direction of the bureau.  For more than a
+week he had succeeded in keeping away from the "Memoirs," and he
+cherished hopes of a complete self-reformation; but, in spite of his
+endeavours, he could not hush the wonder and the strange curiosity that
+the last case he had written down had excited within him.  He had put
+the case, or rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific
+friend, who shook his head, and thought Clarke getting queer, and on
+this particular evening Clarke was making an effort to rationalize the
+story, when a sudden knock at the door roused him from his meditations.
+
+"Mr. Villiers to see you sir."
+
+"Dear me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me up; I have not
+seen you for many months; I should think nearly a year.  Come in, come
+in.  And how are you, Villiers?  Want any advice about investments?"
+
+"No, thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is pretty safe.  No,
+Clarke, I have really come to consult you about a rather curious matter
+that has been brought under my notice of late.  I am afraid you will
+think it all rather absurd when I tell my tale.  I sometimes think so
+myself, and that's just what I made up my mind to come to you, as I
+know you're a practical man."
+
+Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the "Memoirs to prove the Existence of the
+Devil."
+
+"Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the best of
+my ability.  What is the nature of the case?"
+
+"It's an extraordinary thing altogether.  You know my ways; I always
+keep my eyes open in the streets, and in my time I have chanced upon
+some queer customers, and queer cases too, but this, I think, beats
+all.  I was coming out of a restaurant one nasty winter night about
+three months ago; I had had a capital dinner and a good bottle of
+Chianti, and I stood for a moment on the pavement, thinking what a
+mystery there is about London streets and the companies that pass along
+them.  A bottle of red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I
+dare say I should have thought a page of small type, but I was cut
+short by a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual
+appeals.  Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out to be
+what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named Herbert.  I asked
+him how he had come to such a wretched pass, and he told me.  We walked
+up and down one of those long and dark Soho streets, and there I
+listened to his story.  He said he had married a beautiful girl, some
+years younger than himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him
+body and soul.  He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that
+what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and when I
+looked in his face I knew he was speaking the truth. There was
+something about the man that made me shiver.  I don't know why, but it
+was there.  I gave him a little money and sent him away, and I assure
+you that when he was gone I gasped for breath.  His presence seemed to
+chill one's blood."
+
+"Isn't this all just a little fanciful, Villiers?  I suppose the poor
+fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to
+the bad."
+
+"Well, listen to this."  Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard
+from Austin.
+
+"You see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt that this Mr.
+Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful,
+so terrible, that it cut short his life. And what he saw, he most
+certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad
+name in the neighbourhood.  I had the curiosity to go and look at the
+place for myself.  It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old
+enough to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint.  As far
+as I could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and
+unfurnished, and almost every door has three bells to it.  Here and
+there the ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest
+kind; it's a dismal street in every way.  I found Number 20 was to let,
+and I went to the agent's and got the key.  Of course I should have
+heard nothing of the Herberts in that quarter, but I asked the man,
+fair and square, how long they had left the house and whether there had
+been other tenants in the meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a
+minute, and told me the Herberts had left immediately after the
+unpleasantness, as he called it, and since then the house had been
+empty."
+
+Mr. Villiers paused for a moment.
+
+"I have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a
+sort of fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails
+sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills.  But I
+didn't enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street.  I had hardly put my
+foot inside the passage when I noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the
+air of the house.  Of course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth,
+but this was something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but
+it seemed to stop the breath.  I went into the front room and the back
+room, and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty
+enough, as you would expect, but there was something strange about them
+all.  I couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer.  It was
+one of the rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst.  It
+was a largish room, and once on a time the paper must have been
+cheerful enough, but when I saw it, paint, paper, and everything were
+most doleful.  But the room was full of horror; I felt my teeth
+grinding as I put my hand on the door, and when I went in, I thought I
+should have fallen fainting to the floor.  However, I pulled myself
+together, and stood against the end wall, wondering what on earth there
+could be about the room to make my limbs tremble, and my heart beat as
+if I were at the hour of death.  In one corner there was a pile of
+newspapers littered on the floor, and I began looking at them; they
+were papers of three or four years ago, some of them half torn, and
+some crumpled as if they had been used for packing.  I turned the whole
+pile over, and amongst them I found a curious drawing; I will show it
+to you presently.  But I couldn't stay in the room; I felt it was
+overpowering me.  I was thankful to come out, safe and sound, into the
+open air.  People stared at me as I walked along the street, and one
+man said I was drunk.  I was staggering about from one side of the
+pavement to the other, and it was as much as I could do to take the key
+back to the agent and get home.  I was in bed for a week, suffering
+from what my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion.  One of those
+days I was reading the evening paper, and happened to notice a
+paragraph headed: 'Starved to Death.'  It was the usual style of thing;
+a model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door locked for several days,
+and a dead man in his chair when they broke in.  'The deceased,' said
+the paragraph, 'was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed to have
+been once a prosperous country gentleman.  His name was familiar to the
+public three years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul
+Street, Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of the
+house Number 20, in the area of which a gentleman of good position was
+found dead under circumstances not devoid of suspicion.'  A tragic
+ending, wasn't it?  But after all, if what he told me were true, which
+I am sure it was, the man's life was all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a
+stranger sort than they put on the boards."
+
+"And that is the story, is it?" said Clarke musingly.
+
+"Yes, that is the story."
+
+"Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it.  There
+are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the
+finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert's house, for instance,
+and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of
+death; but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be
+explained in a straightforward manner.  As to your own sensations, when
+you went to see the house, I would suggest that they were due to a
+vivid imagination; you must have been brooding, in a semi-conscious
+way, over what you had heard.  I don't exactly see what more can be
+said or done in the matter; you evidently think there is a mystery of
+some kind, but Herbert is dead; where then do you propose to look?"
+
+"I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married.  She is
+the mystery."
+
+The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating
+himself on having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the
+commonplace, and Villiers wrapped in his gloomy fancies.
+
+"I think I will have a cigarette," he said at last, and put his hand in
+his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.
+
+"Ah!" he said, starting slightly, "I forgot I had something to show
+you.  You remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch
+amongst the pile of old newspapers at the house in Paul Street?  Here
+it is."
+
+Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered
+with brown paper, and secured with string, and the knots were
+troublesome.  In spite of himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent
+forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and
+unfolded the outer covering.  Inside was a second wrapping of tissue,
+and Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke
+without a word.
+
+There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two
+men sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall
+old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of
+one of them the slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory.  He
+was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's
+head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true
+artist, for the woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were
+parted with a strange smile.  Clarke gazed still at the face; it
+brought to his memory one summer evening, long ago; he saw again the
+long lovely valley, the river winding between the hills, the meadows
+and the cornfields, the dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising
+from the water.  He heard a voice speaking to him across the waves of
+many years, and saying "Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!" and then he
+was standing in the grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy
+ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying
+on the green chair beneath the lamplight.  Mary rose up, and he looked
+into her eyes, and his heart grew cold within him.
+
+"Who is this woman?" he said at last.  His voice was dry and hoarse.
+
+"That is the woman who Herbert married."
+
+Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all.  There
+certainly was Mary's face, but there was something else, something he
+had not seen on Mary's features when the white-clad girl entered the
+laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she
+lay grinning on the bed.   Whatever it was, the glance that came from
+those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole
+face, Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought,
+unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip's words, "the most vivid presentment of
+evil I have ever seen."  He turned the paper over mechanically in his
+hand and glanced at the back.
+
+"Good God!  Clarke, what is the matter?  You are as white as death."
+
+Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a
+groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.
+
+"I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks.  Pour
+me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a
+few minutes."
+
+Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had
+done.
+
+"You saw that?" he said.  "That's how I identified it as being a
+portrait of Herbert's wife, or I should say his widow.  How do you feel
+now?"
+
+"Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness.  I don't think I
+quite catch your meaning.  What did you say enabled you to identify the
+picture?"
+
+"This word--'Helen'--was written on the back. Didn't I tell you her
+name was Helen?  Yes; Helen Vaughan."
+
+Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.
+
+"Now, don't you agree with me," said Villiers, "that in the story I
+have told you to-night, and in the part this woman plays in it, there
+are some very strange points?"
+
+"Yes, Villiers," Clarke muttered, "it is a strange story indeed; a
+strange story indeed.  You must give me time to think it over; I may be
+able to help you or I may not.  Must you be going now?  Well,
+good-night, Villiers, good-night.  Come and see me in the course of a
+week."
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LETTER OF ADVICE
+
+"Do you know, Austin," said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing
+sedately along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, "do you know I
+am convinced that what you told me about Paul Street and the Herberts
+is a mere episode in an extraordinary history?  I may as well confess
+to you that when I asked you about Herbert a few months ago I had just
+seen him."
+
+"You had seen him?  Where?"
+
+"He begged of me in the street one night.  He was in the most pitiable
+plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history,
+or at least the outline of it.  In brief, it amounted to this--he had
+been ruined by his wife."
+
+"In what manner?"
+
+"He would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed him,
+body and soul.  The man is dead now."
+
+"And what has become of his wife?"
+
+"Ah, that's what I should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner
+or later.  I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of
+business, but shrewd enough.  You understand my meaning; not shrewd in
+the mere business sense of the word, but a man who really knows
+something about men and life.  Well, I laid the case before him, and he
+was evidently impressed.  He said it needed consideration, and asked me
+to come again in the course of a week.  A few days later I received
+this extraordinary letter."
+
+Austin took the envelope, drew out the letter, and read it curiously.
+It ran as follows:--
+
+"MY DEAR VILLIERS,--I have thought over the matter on which you
+consulted me the other night, and my advice to you is this.  Throw the
+portrait into the fire, blot out the story from your mind.  Never give
+it another thought, Villiers, or you will be sorry.  You will think, no
+doubt, that I am in possession of some secret information, and to a
+certain extent that is the case.  But I only know a little; I am like a
+traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn back in terror.
+What I know is strange enough and horrible enough, but beyond my
+knowledge there are depths and horrors more frightful still, more
+incredible than any tale told of winter nights about the fire. I have
+resolved, and nothing shall shake that resolve, to explore no whit
+farther, and if you value your happiness you will make the same
+determination.
+
+"Come and see me by all means; but we will talk on more cheerful topics
+than this."
+
+Austin folded the letter methodically, and returned it to Villiers.
+
+"It is certainly an extraordinary letter," he said, "what does he mean
+by the portrait?"
+
+"Ah!  I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street and have made a
+discovery."
+
+Villiers told his story as he had told it to Clarke, and Austin
+listened in silence.  He seemed puzzled.
+
+"How very curious that you should experience such an unpleasant
+sensation in that room!" he said at length.  "I hardly gather that it
+was a mere matter of the imagination; a feeling of repulsion, in short."
+
+"No, it was more physical than mental.  It was as if I were inhaling at
+every breath some deadly fume, which seemed to penetrate to every nerve
+and bone and sinew of my body.  I felt racked from head to foot, my
+eyes began to grow dim; it was like the entrance of death."
+
+"Yes, yes, very strange certainly.  You see, your friend confesses that
+there is some very black story connected with this woman.  Did you
+notice any particular emotion in him when you were telling your tale?"
+
+"Yes, I did.  He became very faint, but he assured me that it was a
+mere passing attack to which he was subject."
+
+"Did you believe him?"
+
+"I did at the time, but I don't now.  He heard what I had to say with a
+good deal of indifference, till I showed him the portrait.  It was then
+that he was seized with the attack of which I spoke.  He looked
+ghastly, I assure you."
+
+"Then he must have seen the woman before.  But there might be another
+explanation; it might have been the name, and not the face, which was
+familiar to him.  What do you think?"
+
+"I couldn't say.  To the best of my belief it was after turning the
+portrait in his hands that he nearly dropped from the chair.  The name,
+you know, was written on the back."
+
+"Quite so.  After all, it is impossible to come to any resolution in a
+case like this.  I hate melodrama, and nothing strikes me as more
+commonplace and tedious than the ordinary ghost story of commerce; but
+really, Villiers, it looks as if there were something very queer at the
+bottom of all this."
+
+The two men had, without noticing it, turned up Ashley Street, leading
+northward from Piccadilly.  It was a long street, and rather a gloomy
+one, but here and there a brighter taste had illuminated the dark
+houses with flowers, and gay curtains, and a cheerful paint on the
+doors.  Villiers glanced up as Austin stopped speaking, and looked at
+one of these houses; geraniums, red and white, drooped from every sill,
+and daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from each window.
+
+"It looks cheerful, doesn't it?" he said.
+
+"Yes, and the inside is still more cheery.  One of the pleasantest
+houses of the season, so I have heard.  I haven't been there myself,
+but I've met several men who have, and they tell me it's uncommonly
+jovial."
+
+"Whose house is it?"
+
+"A Mrs. Beaumont's."
+
+"And who is she?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you.  I have heard she comes from South America, but
+after all, who she is is of little consequence.  She is a very wealthy
+woman, there's no doubt of that, and some of the best people have taken
+her up.  I hear she has some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine,
+which must have cost a fabulous sum.  Lord Argentine was telling me
+about it; he was there last Sunday evening.  He assures me he has never
+tasted such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is an expert.  By the
+way, that reminds me, she must be an oddish sort of woman, this Mrs.
+Beaumont.  Argentine asked her how old the wine was, and what do you
+think she said?  'About a thousand years, I believe.' Lord Argentine
+thought she was chaffing him, you know, but when he laughed she said
+she was speaking quite seriously and offered to show him the jar.  Of
+course, he couldn't say anything more after that; but it seems rather
+antiquated for a beverage, doesn't it?  Why, here we are at my rooms.
+Come in, won't you?"
+
+"Thanks, I think I will.  I haven't seen the curiosity-shop for a
+while."
+
+It was a room furnished richly, yet oddly, where every jar and bookcase
+and table, and every rug and jar and ornament seemed to be a thing
+apart, preserving each its own individuality.
+
+"Anything fresh lately?" said Villiers after a while.
+
+"No; I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn't you? I thought so.
+I don't think I have come across anything for the last few weeks."
+
+Austin glanced around the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to
+shelf, in search of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an odd
+chest, pleasantly and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner of
+the room.
+
+"Ah," he said, "I was forgetting, I have got something to show you."
+Austin unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto volume, laid it on
+the table, and resumed the cigar he had put down.
+
+"Did you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?"
+
+"A little; I met him two or three times at the house of a friend of
+mine.  What has become of him?  I haven't heard his name mentioned for
+some time."
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"You don't say so!  Quite young, wasn't he?"
+
+"Yes; only thirty when he died."
+
+"What did he die of?"
+
+"I don't know.  He was an intimate friend of mine, and a thoroughly
+good fellow.  He used to come here and talk to me for hours, and he was
+one of the best talkers I have met.  He could even talk about painting,
+and that's more than can be said of most painters.  About eighteen
+months ago he was feeling rather overworked, and partly at my
+suggestion he went off on a sort of roving expedition, with no very
+definite end or aim about it.  I believe New York was to be his first
+port, but I never heard from him.  Three months ago I got this book,
+with a very civil letter from an English doctor practising at Buenos
+Ayres, stating that he had attended the late Mr. Meyrick during his
+illness, and that the deceased had expressed an earnest wish that the
+enclosed packet should be sent to me after his death. That was all."
+
+"And haven't you written for further particulars?"
+
+"I have been thinking of doing so.  You would advise me to write to the
+doctor?"
+
+"Certainly.  And what about the book?"
+
+"It was sealed up when I got it.  I don't think the doctor had seen it."
+
+"It is something very rare?  Meyrick was a collector, perhaps?"
+
+"No, I think not, hardly a collector.  Now, what do you think of these
+Ainu jugs?"
+
+"They are peculiar, but I like them.  But aren't you going to show me
+poor Meyrick's legacy?"
+
+"Yes, yes, to be sure.  The fact is, it's rather a peculiar sort of
+thing, and I haven't shown it to any one.  I wouldn't say anything
+about it if I were you.  There it is."
+
+Villiers took the book, and opened it at haphazard.
+
+"It isn't a printed volume, then?" he said.
+
+"No.  It is a collection of drawings in black and white by my poor
+friend Meyrick."
+
+Villiers turned to the first page, it was blank; the second bore a
+brief inscription, which he read:
+
+
+Silet per diem universus, nec sine horrore secretus est; lucet
+nocturnis ignibus, chorus Aegipanum undique personatur: audiuntur et
+cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam.
+
+
+On the third page was a design which made Villiers start and look up at
+Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window.  Villiers turned
+page after page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful
+Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist
+had set forth in hard black and white.  The figures of Fauns and Satyrs
+and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the
+dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green
+vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world
+before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers
+whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture
+on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost closed the book.
+
+"Austin!"
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Do you know who that is?"
+
+It was a woman's face, alone on the white page.
+
+"Know who it is?  No, of course not."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"It is Mrs. Herbert."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I am perfectly sure of it.  Poor Meyrick!  He is one more chapter in
+her history."
+
+"But what do you think of the designs?"
+
+"They are frightful.  Lock the book up again, Austin. If I were you I
+would burn it; it must be a terrible companion even though it be in a
+chest."
+
+"Yes, they are singular drawings.  But I wonder what connection there
+could be between Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or what link between her and
+these designs?"
+
+"Ah, who can say?  It is possible that the matter may end here, and we
+shall never know, but in my own opinion this Helen Vaughan, or Mrs.
+Herbert, is only the beginning.  She will come back to London, Austin;
+depend on it, she will come back, and we shall hear more about her
+then.  I doubt it will be very pleasant news."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SUICIDES
+
+Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London Society.  At twenty he
+had been a poor man, decked with the surname of an illustrious family,
+but forced to earn a livelihood as best he could, and the most
+speculative of money-lenders would not have entrusted him with fifty
+pounds on the chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his
+poverty for a great fortune.  His father had been near enough to the
+fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings, but the
+son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much
+as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate.
+Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's
+gown and the wits of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he
+contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it.  At
+twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles
+and of warfare with the world, but out of the seven who stood before
+him and the high places of his family three only remained.  These
+three, however, were "good lives," but yet not proof against the Zulu
+assegais and typhoid fever, and so one morning Aubernon woke up and
+found himself Lord Argentine, a man of thirty who had faced the
+difficulties of existence, and had conquered.  The situation amused him
+immensely, and he resolved that riches should be as pleasant to him as
+poverty had always been.  Argentine, after some little consideration,
+came to the conclusion that dining, regarded as a fine art, was perhaps
+the most amusing pursuit open to fallen humanity, and thus his dinners
+became famous in London, and an invitation to his table a thing
+covetously desired.  After ten years of lordship and dinners Argentine
+still declined to be jaded, still persisted in enjoying life, and by a
+kind of infection had become recognized as the cause of joy in others,
+in short, as the best of company.  His sudden and tragical death
+therefore caused a wide and deep sensation. People could scarcely
+believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and the
+cry of "Mysterious Death of a Nobleman" came ringing up from the
+street.  But there stood the brief paragraph: "Lord Argentine was found
+dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances.  It is
+stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide,
+though no motive can be assigned for the act.  The deceased nobleman
+was widely known in society, and much liked for his genial manner and
+sumptuous hospitality.  He is succeeded by," etc., etc.
+
+By slow degrees the details came to light, but the case still remained
+a mystery.  The chief witness at the inquest was the deceased's valet,
+who said that the night before his death Lord Argentine had dined with
+a lady of good position, whose name was suppressed in the newspaper
+reports.  At about eleven o'clock Lord Argentine had returned, and
+informed his man that he should not require his services till the next
+morning.  A little later the valet had occasion to cross the hall and
+was somewhat astonished to see his master quietly letting himself out
+at the front door.  He had taken off his evening clothes, and was
+dressed in a Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a low brown hat.
+The valet had no reason to suppose that Lord Argentine had seen him,
+and though his master rarely kept late hours, thought little of the
+occurrence till the next morning, when he knocked at the bedroom door
+at a quarter to nine as usual.  He received no answer, and, after
+knocking two or three times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine's
+body leaning forward at an angle from the bottom of the bed.  He found
+that his master had tied a cord securely to one of the short bed-posts,
+and, after making a running noose and slipping it round his neck, the
+unfortunate man must have resolutely fallen forward, to die by slow
+strangulation.  He was dressed in the light suit in which the valet had
+seen him go out, and the doctor who was summoned pronounced that life
+had been extinct for more than four hours.  All papers, letters, and so
+forth seemed in perfect order, and nothing was discovered which pointed
+in the most remote way to any scandal either great or small.  Here the
+evidence ended; nothing more could be discovered.  Several persons had
+been present at the dinner-party at which Lord Argentine had assisted,
+and to all these he seemed in his usual genial spirits.  The valet,
+indeed, said he thought his master appeared a little excited when he
+came home, but confessed that the alteration in his manner was very
+slight, hardly noticeable, indeed.  It seemed hopeless to seek for any
+clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked
+by acute suicidal mania was generally accepted.
+
+It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more
+gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good
+position and ample means, perished miserably in the almost precisely
+the same manner.  Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his
+dressing-room, hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr.
+Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine.
+There was no explanation in either case; a few bald facts; a living man
+in the evening, and a body with a black swollen face in the morning.
+The police had been forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or
+to explain the sordid murders of Whitechapel; but before the horrible
+suicides of Piccadilly and Mayfair they were dumbfoundered, for not
+even the mere ferocity which did duty as an explanation of the crimes
+of the East End, could be of service in the West. Each of these men who
+had resolved to die a tortured shameful death was rich, prosperous, and
+to all appearances in love with the world, and not the acutest research
+should ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in either case.  There
+was a horror in the air, and men looked at one another's faces when
+they met, each wondering whether the other was to be the victim of the
+fifth nameless tragedy. Journalists sought in vain for their scrapbooks
+for materials whereof to concoct reminiscent articles; and the morning
+paper was unfolded in many a house with a feeling of awe; no man knew
+when or where the next blow would light.
+
+A short while after the last of these terrible events, Austin came to
+see Mr. Villiers.  He was curious to know whether Villiers had
+succeeded in discovering any fresh traces of Mrs. Herbert, either
+through Clarke or by other sources, and he asked the question soon
+after he had sat down.
+
+"No," said Villiers, "I wrote to Clarke, but he remains obdurate, and I
+have tried other channels, but without any result.  I can't find out
+what became of Helen Vaughan after she left Paul Street, but I think
+she must have gone abroad.  But to tell the truth, Austin, I haven't
+paid much attention to the matter for the last few weeks; I knew poor
+Herries intimately, and his terrible death has been a great shock to
+me, a great shock."
+
+"I can well believe it," answered Austin gravely, "you know Argentine
+was a friend of mine.  If I remember rightly, we were speaking of him
+that day you came to my rooms."
+
+"Yes; it was in connection with that house in Ashley Street, Mrs.
+Beaumont's house.  You said something about Argentine's dining there."
+
+"Quite so.  Of course you know it was there Argentine dined the night
+before--before his death."
+
+"No, I had not heard that."
+
+"Oh, yes; the name was kept out of the papers to spare Mrs. Beaumont.
+Argentine was a great favourite of hers, and it is said she was in a
+terrible state for sometime after."
+
+A curious look came over Villiers' face; he seemed undecided whether to
+speak or not.  Austin began again.
+
+"I never experienced such a feeling of horror as when I read the
+account of Argentine's death.  I didn't understand it at the time, and
+I don't now.  I knew him well, and it completely passes my
+understanding for what possible cause he--or any of the others for the
+matter of that--could have resolved in cold blood to die in such an
+awful manner.  You know how men babble away each other's characters in
+London, you may be sure any buried scandal or hidden skeleton would
+have been brought to light in such a case as this; but nothing of the
+sort has taken place.  As for the theory of mania, that is very well,
+of course, for the coroner's jury, but everybody knows that it's all
+nonsense.  Suicidal mania is not small-pox."
+
+Austin relapsed into gloomy silence.  Villiers sat silent, also,
+watching his friend.  The expression of indecision still fleeted across
+his face; he seemed as if weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the
+considerations he was resolving left him still silent.  Austin tried to
+shake off the remembrance of tragedies as hopeless and perplexed as the
+labyrinth of Daedalus, and began to talk in an indifferent voice of the
+more pleasant incidents and adventures of the season.
+
+"That Mrs. Beaumont," he said, "of whom we were speaking, is a great
+success; she has taken London almost by storm.  I met her the other
+night at Fulham's; she is really a remarkable woman."
+
+"You have met Mrs. Beaumont?"
+
+"Yes; she had quite a court around her.  She would be called very
+handsome, I suppose, and yet there is something about her face which I
+didn't like.  The features are exquisite, but the expression is
+strange.  And all the time I was looking at her, and afterwards, when I
+was going home, I had a curious feeling that very expression was in
+some way or another familiar to me."
+
+"You must have seen her in the Row."
+
+"No, I am sure I never set eyes on the woman before; it is that which
+makes it puzzling.  And to the best of my belief I have never seen
+anyone like her; what I felt was a kind of dim far-off memory, vague
+but persistent.  The only sensation I can compare it to, is that odd
+feeling one sometimes has in a dream, when fantastic cities and
+wondrous lands and phantom personages appear familiar and accustomed."
+
+Villiers nodded and glanced aimlessly round the room, possibly in
+search of something on which to turn the conversation.  His eyes fell
+on an old chest somewhat like that in which the artist's strange legacy
+lay hid beneath a Gothic scutcheon.
+
+"Have you written to the doctor about poor Meyrick?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; I wrote asking for full particulars as to his illness and death.
+I don't expect to have an answer for another three weeks or a month.  I
+thought I might as well inquire whether Meyrick knew an Englishwoman
+named Herbert, and if so, whether the doctor could give me any
+information about her.  But it's very possible that Meyrick fell in
+with her at New York, or Mexico, or San Francisco; I have no idea as to
+the extent or direction of his travels."
+
+"Yes, and it's very possible that the woman may have more than one
+name."
+
+"Exactly.  I wish I had thought of asking you to lend me the portrait
+of her which you possess.  I might have enclosed it in my letter to Dr.
+Matthews."
+
+"So you might; that never occurred to me.  We might send it now.  Hark!
+what are those boys calling?"
+
+While the two men had been talking together a confused noise of
+shouting had been gradually growing louder.  The noise rose from the
+eastward and swelled down Piccadilly, drawing nearer and nearer, a very
+torrent of sound; surging up streets usually quiet, and making every
+window a frame for a face, curious or excited.  The cries and voices
+came echoing up the silent street where Villiers lived, growing more
+distinct as they advanced, and, as Villiers spoke, an answer rang up
+from the pavement:
+
+"The West End Horrors; Another Awful Suicide; Full Details!"
+
+Austin rushed down the stairs and bought a paper and read out the
+paragraph to Villiers as the uproar in the street rose and fell.  The
+window was open and the air seemed full of noise and terror.
+
+"Another gentleman has fallen a victim to the terrible epidemic of
+suicide which for the last month has prevailed in the West End.  Mr.
+Sidney Crashaw, of Stoke House, Fulham, and King's Pomeroy, Devon, was
+found, after a prolonged search, hanging dead from the branch of a tree
+in his garden at one o'clock today.  The deceased gentleman dined last
+night at the Carlton Club and seemed in his usual health and spirits.
+He left the club at about ten o'clock, and was seen walking leisurely
+up St. James's Street a little later.  Subsequent to this his movements
+cannot be traced.  On the discovery of the body medical aid was at once
+summoned, but life had evidently been long extinct.  So far as is
+known, Mr. Crashaw had no trouble or anxiety of any kind.  This painful
+suicide, it will be remembered, is the fifth of the kind in the last
+month.  The authorities at Scotland Yard are unable to suggest any
+explanation of these terrible occurrences."
+
+Austin put down the paper in mute horror.
+
+"I shall leave London to-morrow," he said, "it is a city of nightmares.
+How awful this is, Villiers!"
+
+Mr. Villiers was sitting by the window quietly looking out into the
+street.  He had listened to the newspaper report attentively, and the
+hint of indecision was no longer on his face.
+
+"Wait a moment, Austin," he replied, "I have made up my mind to mention
+a little matter that occurred last night.  It stated, I think, that
+Crashaw was last seen alive in St. James's Street shortly after ten?"
+
+"Yes, I think so.  I will look again.  Yes, you are quite right."
+
+"Quite so.  Well, I am in a position to contradict that statement at
+all events.  Crashaw was seen after that; considerably later indeed."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because I happened to see Crashaw myself at about two o'clock this
+morning."
+
+"You saw Crashaw?  You, Villiers?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him quite distinctly; indeed, there were but a few feet
+between us."
+
+"Where, in Heaven's name, did you see him?"
+
+"Not far from here.  I saw him in Ashley Street.  He was just leaving a
+house."
+
+"Did you notice what house it was?"
+
+"Yes.  It was Mrs. Beaumont's."
+
+"Villiers!  Think what you are saying; there must be some mistake.  How
+could Crashaw be in Mrs. Beaumont's house at two o'clock in the
+morning?  Surely, surely, you must have been dreaming, Villiers; you
+were always rather fanciful."
+
+"No; I was wide awake enough.  Even if I had been dreaming as you say,
+what I saw would have roused me effectually."
+
+"What you saw?  What did you see?  Was there anything strange about
+Crashaw?  But I can't believe it; it is impossible."
+
+"Well, if you like I will tell you what I saw, or if you please, what I
+think I saw, and you can judge for yourself."
+
+"Very good, Villiers."
+
+The noise and clamour of the street had died away, though now and then
+the sound of shouting still came from the distance, and the dull,
+leaden silence seemed like the quiet after an earthquake or a storm.
+Villiers turned from the window and began speaking.
+
+"I was at a house near Regent's Park last night, and when I came away
+the fancy took me to walk home instead of taking a hansom.  It was a
+clear pleasant night enough, and after a few minutes I had the streets
+pretty much to myself. It's a curious thing, Austin, to be alone in
+London at night, the gas-lamps stretching away in perspective, and the
+dead silence, and then perhaps the rush and clatter of a hansom on the
+stones, and the fire starting up under the horse's hoofs. I walked
+along pretty briskly, for I was feeling a little tired of being out in
+the night, and as the clocks were striking two I turned down Ashley
+Street, which, you know, is on my way.  It was quieter than ever there,
+and the lamps were fewer; altogether, it looked as dark and gloomy as a
+forest in winter. I had done about half the length of the street when I
+heard a door closed very softly, and naturally I looked up to see who
+was abroad like myself at such an hour.  As it happens, there is a
+street lamp close to the house in question, and I saw a man standing on
+the step.  He had just shut the door and his face was towards me, and I
+recognized Crashaw directly.  I never knew him to speak to, but I had
+often seen him, and I am positive that I was not mistaken in my man.  I
+looked into his face for a moment, and then--I will confess the
+truth--I set off at a good run, and kept it up till I was within my own
+door."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why?  Because it made my blood run cold to see that man's face.  I
+could never have supposed that such an infernal medley of passions
+could have glared out of any human eyes; I almost fainted as I looked.
+I knew I had looked into the eyes of a lost soul, Austin, the man's
+outward form remained, but all hell was within it.  Furious lust, and
+hate that was like fire, and the loss of all hope and horror that
+seemed to shriek aloud to the night, though his teeth were shut; and
+the utter blackness of despair.  I am sure that he did not see me; he
+saw nothing that you or I can see, but what he saw I hope we never
+shall.  I do not know when he died; I suppose in an hour, or perhaps
+two, but when I passed down Ashley Street and heard the closing door,
+that man no longer belonged to this world; it was a devil's face I
+looked upon."
+
+There was an interval of silence in the room when Villiers ceased
+speaking.  The light was failing, and all the tumult of an hour ago was
+quite hushed.  Austin had bent his head at the close of the story, and
+his hand covered his eyes.
+
+"What can it mean?" he said at length.
+
+"Who knows, Austin, who knows?  It's a black business, but I think we
+had better keep it to ourselves, for the present at any rate.  I will
+see if I cannot learn anything about that house through private
+channels of information, and if I do light upon anything I will let you
+know."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO
+
+Three weeks later Austin received a note from Villiers, asking him to
+call either that afternoon or the next.  He chose the nearer date, and
+found Villiers sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost in
+meditation on the drowsy traffic of the street.  There was a bamboo
+table by his side, a fantastic thing, enriched with gilding and queer
+painted scenes, and on it lay a little pile of papers arranged and
+docketed as neatly as anything in Mr. Clarke's office.
+
+"Well, Villiers, have you made any discoveries in the last three weeks?"
+
+"I think so; I have here one or two memoranda which struck me as
+singular, and there is a statement to which I shall call your
+attention."
+
+"And these documents relate to Mrs. Beaumont?  It was really Crashaw
+whom you saw that night standing on the doorstep of the house in Ashley
+Street?"
+
+"As to that matter my belief remains unchanged, but neither my
+inquiries nor their results have any special relation to Crashaw.  But
+my investigations have had a strange issue.  I have found out who Mrs.
+Beaumont is!"
+
+"Who is she?  In what way do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you and I know her better under another name."
+
+"What name is that?"
+
+"Herbert."
+
+"Herbert!"  Austin repeated the word, dazed with astonishment.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of earlier adventures
+unknown to me.  You had reason to recognize the expression of her face;
+when you go home look at the face in Meyrick's book of horrors, and you
+will know the sources of your recollection."
+
+"And you have proof of this?"
+
+"Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or shall we say
+Mrs. Herbert?"
+
+"Where did you see her?"
+
+"Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady who lives in
+Ashley Street, Piccadilly.  I saw her entering a house in one of the
+meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho.  In fact, I had made an
+appointment, though not with her, and she was precise to both time and
+place."
+
+"All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it incredible.  You
+must remember, Villiers, that I have seen this woman, in the ordinary
+adventure of London society, talking and laughing, and sipping her
+coffee in a commonplace drawing-room with commonplace people.  But you
+know what you are saying."
+
+"I do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises or fancies.  It
+was with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I searched for Mrs.
+Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of London, but such has been
+the issue."
+
+"You must have been in strange places, Villiers."
+
+"Yes, I have been in very strange places.  It would have been useless,
+you know, to go to Ashley Street, and ask Mrs. Beaumont to give me a
+short sketch of her previous history.  No; assuming, as I had to
+assume, that her record was not of the cleanest, it would be pretty
+certain that at some previous time she must have moved in circles not
+quite so refined as her present ones.  If you see mud at the top of a
+stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom.  I went to the
+bottom.  I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my
+amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its
+inhabitants very useful.  It is, perhaps, needless to say that my
+friends had never heard the name of Beaumont, and as I had never seen
+the lady, and was quite unable to describe her, I had to set to work in
+an indirect way.  The people there know me; I have been able to do some
+of them a service now and again, so they made no difficulty about
+giving their information; they were aware I had no communication direct
+or indirect with Scotland Yard.  I had to cast out a good many lines,
+though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the fish I did
+not for a moment suppose it was my fish.  But I listened to what I was
+told out of a constitutional liking for useless information, and I
+found myself in possession of a very curious story, though, as I
+imagined, not the story I was looking for.  It was to this effect.
+Some five or six years ago, a woman named Raymond suddenly made her
+appearance in the neighbourhood to which I am referring.  She was
+described to me as being quite young, probably not more than seventeen
+or eighteen, very handsome, and looking as if she came from the
+country.  I should be wrong in saying that she found her level in going
+to this particular quarter, or associating with these people, for from
+what I was told, I should think the worst den in London far too good
+for her.  The person from whom I got my information, as you may
+suppose, no great Puritan, shuddered and grew sick in telling me of the
+nameless infamies which were laid to her charge. After living there for
+a year, or perhaps a little more, she disappeared as suddenly as she
+came, and they saw nothing of her till about the time of the Paul
+Street case.  At first she came to her old haunts only occasionally,
+then more frequently, and finally took up her abode there as before,
+and remained for six or eight months.  It's of no use my going into
+details as to the life that woman led; if you want particulars you can
+look at Meyrick's legacy.  Those designs were not drawn from his
+imagination.  She again disappeared, and the people of the place saw
+nothing of her till a few months ago.  My informant told me that she
+had taken some rooms in a house which he pointed out, and these rooms
+she was in the habit of visiting two or three times a week and always
+at ten in the morning.  I was led to expect that one of these visits
+would be paid on a certain day about a week ago, and I accordingly
+managed to be on the look-out in company with my cicerone at a quarter
+to ten, and the hour and the lady came with equal punctuality.  My
+friend and I were standing under an archway, a little way back from the
+street, but she saw us, and gave me a glance that I shall be long in
+forgetting.  That look was quite enough for me; I knew Miss Raymond to
+be Mrs. Herbert; as for Mrs. Beaumont she had quite gone out of my
+head.  She went into the house, and I watched it till four o'clock,
+when she came out, and then I followed her.  It was a long chase, and I
+had to be very careful to keep a long way in the background, and yet
+not lose sight of the woman.  She took me down to the Strand, and then
+to Westminster, and then up St. James's Street, and along Piccadilly.
+I felt queerish when I saw her turn up Ashley Street; the thought that
+Mrs. Herbert was Mrs. Beaumont came into my mind, but it seemed too
+impossible to be true.  I waited at the corner, keeping my eye on her
+all the time, and I took particular care to note the house at which she
+stopped. It was the house with the gay curtains, the home of flowers,
+the house out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself in his
+garden.  I was just going away with my discovery, when I saw an empty
+carriage come round and draw up in front of the house, and I came to
+the conclusion that Mrs. Herbert was going out for a drive, and I was
+right.  There, as it happened, I met a man I know, and we stood talking
+together a little distance from the carriage-way, to which I had my
+back.  We had not been there for ten minutes when my friend took off
+his hat, and I glanced round and saw the lady I had been following all
+day. 'Who is that?' I said, and his answer was 'Mrs. Beaumont; lives in
+Ashley Street.'  Of course there could be no doubt after that.  I don't
+know whether she saw me, but I don't think she did.  I went home at
+once, and, on consideration, I thought that I had a sufficiently good
+case with which to go to Clarke."
+
+"Why to Clarke?"
+
+"Because I am sure that Clarke is in possession of facts about this
+woman, facts of which I know nothing."
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+Mr. Villiers leaned back in his chair and looked reflectively at Austin
+for a moment before he answered:
+
+"My idea was that Clarke and I should call on Mrs. Beaumont."
+
+"You would never go into such a house as that?  No, no, Villiers, you
+cannot do it.  Besides, consider; what result..."
+
+"I will tell you soon.  But I was going to say that my information does
+not end here; it has been completed in an extraordinary manner.
+
+"Look at this neat little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you
+see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape.
+It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin.  It
+is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her
+choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do
+not think he will live many years.  The doctors tell him he must have
+sustained some severe shock to the nerves."
+
+Austin took the manuscript, but never read it.  Opening the neat pages
+at haphazard his eye was caught by a word and a phrase that followed
+it; and, sick at heart, with white lips and a cold sweat pouring like
+water from his temples, he flung the paper down.
+
+"Take it away, Villiers, never speak of this again. Are you made of
+stone, man?  Why, the dread and horror of death itself, the thoughts of
+the man who stands in the keen morning air on the black platform,
+bound, the bell tolling in his ears, and waits for the harsh rattle of
+the bolt, are as nothing compared to this.  I will not read it; I
+should never sleep again."
+
+"Very good.  I can fancy what you saw.  Yes; it is horrible enough; but
+after all, it is an old story, an old mystery played in our day, and in
+dim London streets instead of amidst the vineyards and the olive
+gardens.  We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great
+God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of
+something, not of nothing.  It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath
+which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most
+secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which
+the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies
+blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot
+be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a
+symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a
+foolish tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the
+terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under
+human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form.  Oh,
+Austin, how can it be?  How is it that the very sunlight does not turn
+to blackness before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath
+such a burden?"
+
+Villiers was pacing up and down the room, and the beads of sweat stood
+out on his forehead.  Austin sat silent for a while, but Villiers saw
+him make a sign upon his breast.
+
+"I say again, Villiers, you will surely never enter such a house as
+that?  You would never pass out alive."
+
+"Yes, Austin, I shall go out alive--I, and Clarke with me."
+
+"What do you mean?  You cannot, you would not dare..."
+
+"Wait a moment.  The air was very pleasant and fresh this morning;
+there was a breeze blowing, even through this dull street, and I
+thought I would take a walk.  Piccadilly stretched before me a clear,
+bright vista, and the sun flashed on the carriages and on the quivering
+leaves in the park.  It was a joyous morning, and men and women looked
+at the sky and smiled as they went about their work or their pleasure,
+and the wind blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented
+gorse.  But somehow or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety,
+and found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there
+seemed to be no sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers
+loitered as they walked, and hung indecisively about corners and
+archways.  I walked along, hardly knowing where I was going or what I
+did there, but feeling impelled, as one sometimes is, to explore still
+further, with a vague idea of reaching some unknown goal.  Thus I
+forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the milk-shop, and
+wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco,
+sweets, newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one
+another in the short compass of a single window.  I think it was a cold
+shudder that suddenly passed through me that first told me that I had
+found what I wanted.  I looked up from the pavement and stopped before
+a dusty shop, above which the lettering had faded, where the red bricks
+of two hundred years ago had grimed to black; where the windows had
+gathered to themselves the dust of winters innumerable.  I saw what I
+required; but I think it was five minutes before I had steadied myself
+and could walk in and ask for it in a cool voice and with a calm face.
+I think there must even then have been a tremor in my words, for the
+old man who came out of the back parlour, and fumbled slowly amongst
+his goods, looked oddly at me as he tied the parcel.  I paid what he
+asked, and stood leaning by the counter, with a strange reluctance to
+take up my goods and go. I asked about the business, and learnt that
+trade was bad and the profits cut down sadly; but then the street was
+not what it was before traffic had been diverted, but that was done
+forty years ago, 'just before my father died,' he said.  I got away at
+last, and walked along sharply; it was a dismal street indeed, and I
+was glad to return to the bustle and the noise.  Would you like to see
+my purchase?"
+
+Austin said nothing, but nodded his head slightly; he still looked
+white and sick.  Villiers pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and
+showed Austin a long coil of cord, hard and new; and at one end was a
+running noose.
+
+"It is the best hempen cord," said Villiers, "just as it used to be
+made for the old trade, the man told me.  Not an inch of jute from end
+to end."
+
+Austin set his teeth hard, and stared at Villiers, growing whiter as he
+looked.
+
+"You would not do it," he murmured at last. "You would not have blood
+on your hands.  My God!" he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, "you
+cannot mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?"
+
+"No.  I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan alone with this
+cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes.  If when we go in it is not
+done, I shall call the nearest policeman.  That is all."
+
+"I must go now.  I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot bear this.
+Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, Austin."
+
+The door shut, but in a moment it was open again, and Austin stood,
+white and ghastly, in the entrance.
+
+"I was forgetting," he said, "that I too have something to tell.  I
+have received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres.  He says that
+he attended Meyrick for three weeks before his death."
+
+"And does he say what carried him off in the prime of life?  It was not
+fever?"
+
+"No, it was not fever.  According to the doctor, it was an utter
+collapse of the whole system, probably caused by some severe shock.
+But he states that the patient would tell him nothing, and that he was
+consequently at some disadvantage in treating the case."
+
+"Is there anything more?"
+
+"Yes.  Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: 'I think this is all the
+information I can give you about your poor friend.  He had not been
+long in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely any one, with the exception of
+a person who did not bear the best of characters, and has since left--a
+Mrs. Vaughan.'"
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE FRAGMENTS
+
+[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert Matheson,
+of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of apoplectic seizure,
+at the beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript paper was found, covered
+with pencil jottings.  These notes were in Latin, much abbreviated, and
+had evidently been made in great haste.  The MS. was only deciphered
+with difficulty, and some words have up to the present time evaded all
+the efforts of the expert employed. The date, "XXV Jul. 1888," is
+written on the right-hand corner of the MS.  The following is a
+translation of Dr. Matheson's manuscript.]
+
+"Whether science would benefit by these brief notes if they could be
+published, I do not know, but rather doubt.  But certainly I shall
+never take the responsibility of publishing or divulging one word of
+what is here written, not only on account of my oath given freely to
+those two persons who were present, but also because the details are
+too abominable.  It is probably that, upon mature consideration, and
+after weighting the good and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper,
+or at least leave it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his
+discretion, to use it or to burn it, as he may think fit.
+
+"As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make sure
+that I was suffering under no delusion. At first astounded, I could
+hardly think, but in a minute's time I was sure that my pulse was
+steady and regular, and that I was in my real and true senses.  I then
+fixed my eyes quietly on what was before me.
+
+"Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of
+corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or
+accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying
+there black like ink, transformed before my eyes.  The skin, and the
+flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the
+human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as
+adamant, began to melt and dissolve.
+
+"I know that the body may be separated into its elements by external
+agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I saw.  For here
+there was some internal force, of which I knew nothing, that caused
+dissolution and change.
+
+"Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before
+my eyes.  I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from
+itself, and then again reunited.  Then I saw the body descend to the
+beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to
+the depths, even to the abyss of all being.  The principle of life,
+which makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed.
+
+"The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of
+night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and
+without difficulty.  But it was the negation of light; objects were
+presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a
+manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no
+colours represented in it.
+
+"I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly.  Then
+the ladder was ascended again... [here the MS. is illegible] ...for one
+instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not
+farther describe.  But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient
+sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul
+to be spoken of... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor
+beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.
+
+"I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul,
+here write my name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be
+true.
+
+"ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+...Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen.
+The burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could
+tell it to none but you.  Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows
+nothing of that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die,
+lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun
+and half in shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and
+summoned those companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we
+tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which we can only name
+under a figure.  I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that
+resemblance, which struck me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw
+the portrait, which filled the cup of terror at the end.  What this can
+mean I dare not guess.  I know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and
+yet in the last agony Mary's eyes looked into mine.  Whether there can
+be any one who can show the last link in this chain of awful mystery, I
+do not know, but if there be any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are
+the man.  And if you know the secret, it rests with you to tell it or
+not, as you please.
+
+I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town.
+I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be
+able to guess in which part.  While the horror and wonder of London was
+at its height--for "Mrs. Beaumont," as I have told you, was well known
+in society--I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief
+outline, or rather hint, of what happened, and asking him to tell me
+the name of the village where the events he had related to me occurred.
+He gave me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because
+Rachel's father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had
+gone to a relative in the State of Washington six months before.  The
+parents, he said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by
+the terrible death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that
+death. On the evening of the day which I received Phillips' letter I
+was at Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white
+with the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the meadow
+where once had stood the older temple of the "God of the Deeps," and
+saw a house gleaming in the sunlight.  It was the house where Helen had
+lived.  I stayed at Caermaen for several days.  The people of the
+place, I found, knew little and had guessed less.  Those whom I spoke
+to on the matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed
+myself to be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they
+gave a very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told
+nothing of what I knew.  Most of my time was spent in the great wood
+that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside, and goes
+down to the river in the valley; such another long lovely valley,
+Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer night, walking to and
+fro before your house.  For many an hour I strayed through the maze of
+the forest, turning now to right and now to left, pacing slowly down
+long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy and chill, even under the midday
+sun, and halting beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf of a
+clearing where the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the
+wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour
+is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense and
+corruption.  I stood at the edges of the wood, gazing at all the pomp
+and procession of the foxgloves towering amidst the bracken and shining
+red in the broad sunshine, and beyond them into deep thickets of close
+undergrowth where springs boil up from the rock and nourish the
+water-weeds, dank and evil.  But in all my wanderings I avoided one
+part of the wood; it was not till yesterday that I climbed to the
+summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient Roman road that threads
+the highest ridge of the wood.  Here they had walked, Helen and Rachel,
+along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement of green turf, shut in on
+either side by high banks of red earth, and tall hedges of shining
+beech, and here I followed in their steps, looking out, now and again,
+through partings in the boughs, and seeing on one side the sweep of the
+wood stretching far to right and left, and sinking into the broad
+level, and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land over the sea.  On the
+other side was the valley and the river and hill following hill as wave
+on wave, and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and white houses gleaming,
+and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks in the north.  And so
+at last I came to the place.  The track went up a gentle slope, and
+widened out into an open space with a wall of thick undergrowth around
+it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the distance and the
+faint blue mist of summer heat.  And into this pleasant summer glade
+Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what?  I did not stay
+long there.
+
+In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the
+most part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood at
+various times.  On the day after my arrival in Caermaen I walked over
+to the town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting the
+museum.  After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins,
+rings, coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place
+contains, I was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had
+been recently discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking,
+and, as I found on inquiry, in that open space where the Roman road
+broadens out.  On one side of the pillar was an inscription, of which I
+took a note.  Some of the letters have been defaced, but I do not think
+there can be any doubt as to those which I supply.  The inscription is
+as follows:
+
+        DEVOMNODENT--i--
+        FLA--v--IVSSENILISPOSSV--it--
+        PROPTERNVP--tias--
+        --qua--SVIDITSVBVMB--ra--
+
+"To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius
+Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw
+beneath the shade."
+
+The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were
+much puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in
+translating it, but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is
+made.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+...And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan,
+whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost
+incredible horror.  I was interested in your account, but a good deal,
+nay all, of what you told me I knew already.  I can understand the
+strange likeness you remarked in both the portrait and in the actual
+face; you have seen Helen's mother.  You remember that still summer
+night so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the
+shadows, and of the god Pan.  You remember Mary.  She was the mother of
+Helen Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night.
+
+Mary never recovered her reason.  She lay, as you saw her, all the
+while upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died.
+I fancy that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed,
+and the old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she
+shuddered and groaned and died.  It was an ill work I did that night
+when you were present; I broke open the door of the house of life,
+without knowing or caring what might pass forth or enter in.  I
+recollect your telling me at the time, sharply enough, and rightly too,
+in one sense, that I had ruined the reason of a human being by a
+foolish experiment, based on an absurd theory.  You did well to blame
+me, but my theory was not all absurdity.  What I said Mary would see
+she saw, but I forgot that no human eyes can look on such a sight with
+impunity.  And I forgot, as I have just said, that when the house of
+life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for which we have no
+name, and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not
+express.  I played with energies which I did not understand, you have
+seen the ending of it.  Helen Vaughan did well to bind the cord about
+her neck and die, though the death was horrible.  The blackened face,
+the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes
+from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than
+beast, all the strange horror that you witness, surprises me but
+little. What you say the doctor whom you sent for saw and shuddered at
+I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the moment the child was
+born, and when it was scarcely five years old I surprised it, not once
+or twice but several times with a playmate, you may guess of what kind.
+It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror, and after a few years I
+felt I could bear it no more, and I sent Helen Vaughan away.  You know
+now what frightened the boy in the wood.  The rest of the strange
+story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by your friend, I
+have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the last chapter.
+And now Helen is with her companions...
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen
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+The Great God Pan
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+by Arthur Machen
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+January, 1996 [Etext #389]
+[Date last updated: December 6, 2004]
+
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+This book prepared by:
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+
+
+THE GREAT GOD PAN
+
+by
+
+ARTHUR MACHEN
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE EXPERIMENT
+
+
+
+"I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed.  I was
+not sure you could spare the time."
+
+"I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things
+are not very lively just now.  But have you no misgivings,
+Raymond?  Is it absolutely safe?"
+
+The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of
+Dr. Raymond's house.  The sun still hung above the western
+mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no
+shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the
+great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the
+soft murmuring call of the wild doves.  Below, in the long
+lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely
+hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a
+faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills.  Dr.
+Raymond turned sharply to his friend.
+
+"Safe?  Of course it is.  In itself the operation is a
+perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it."
+
+"And there is no danger at any other stage?"
+
+"None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give
+you my word.  You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know
+my history.  I have devoted myself to transcendental medicine
+for the last twenty years.  I have heard myself called quack and
+charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the
+right path.  Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then
+every day has been a preparation for what we shall do tonight."
+
+"I should like to believe it is all true."  Clarke knit
+his brows, and looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond.  "Are you
+perfectly sure, Raymond, that your theory is not a
+phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly, but a mere
+vision after all?"
+
+Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply.
+He was a middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow
+complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a
+flush on his cheek.
+
+"Look about you, Clarke.  You see the mountain, and
+hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods
+and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching
+to the reed-beds by the river.  You see me standing here beside
+you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things--
+yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the
+solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are but
+dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from
+our eyes.  There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour
+and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a
+career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil.  I do not know whether
+any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know,
+Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from
+before another's eyes.  You may think this all strange nonsense;
+it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what
+lifting the veil means.  They called it seeing the god Pan."
+
+Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the
+river was chilly.
+
+"It is wonderful indeed," he said.  "We are standing on
+the brink of a strange world, Raymond, if what you say
+is true.  I suppose the knife is absolutely necessary?"
+
+"Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all;
+a trifling rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical
+alteration that would escape the attention of ninety-nine brain
+specialists out of a hundred.  I don't want to bother you with
+'shop,' Clarke; I might give you a mass of technical detail which
+would sound very imposing, and would leave you as enlightened as
+you are now.  But I suppose you have read, casually, in
+out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have
+been made recently in the physiology of the brain.  I saw a
+paragraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's
+discoveries.  Theories and discoveries!  Where they are standing
+now, I stood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I
+have not been standing still for the last fifteen years.  It
+will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the discovery
+that I alluded to when I said that ten years ago I reached the
+goal.  After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping
+in the dark, after days and nights of disappointments and
+sometimes of despair, in which I used now and then to tremble
+and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were others
+seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of
+sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at
+an end.  By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the
+suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar
+lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the
+great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of
+sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands,
+and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief)
+since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the
+stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath.  You will think
+this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to be
+literal.  And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at
+cannot be set forth in plain and lonely terms.  For instance,
+this world of ours is pretty well girded now with the telegraph
+wires and cables; thought, with something less than the speed
+of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to south,
+across the floods and the desert places.  Suppose that an
+electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his
+friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them
+for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw
+uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men
+flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems
+beyond, and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the
+waste void that bounds our thought.  As analogies go, that is a
+pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now
+a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a
+summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I
+stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable
+gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter
+and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim
+before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the
+earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned.  You may
+look in Browne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find
+that to the present day men of science are unable to account for
+the presence, or to specify the functions of a certain group of
+nerve-cells in the brain.  That group is, as it were, land to
+let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories.  I am not in the
+position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly
+instructed as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers
+in the scheme of things.  With a touch I can bring them into
+play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the current, with a
+touch I can complete the communication between this world of
+sense and--we shall be able to finish the sentence later on.
+Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that knife will
+effect.  It will level utterly the solid wall of sense, and
+probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit will
+gaze on a spirit-world.  Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!"
+
+"But you remember what you wrote to me?  I thought it
+would be requisite that she--"
+
+He whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.
+
+"Not at all, not at all.  That is nonsense.  I assure
+you.  Indeed, it is better as it is; I am quite certain of
+that."
+
+"Consider the matter well, Raymond.  It's a great
+responsibility.  Something might go wrong; you would be a
+miserable man for the rest of your days."
+
+"No, I think not, even if the worst happened.  As you
+know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain
+starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to
+use as I see fit.  Come, it's getting late; we had better go
+in."
+
+Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the
+hall, and down a long dark passage.  He took a key from his
+pocket and opened a heavy door, and motioned Clarke into his
+laboratory.  It had once been a billiard-room, and was lighted
+by a glass dome in the centre of the ceiling, whence there still
+shone a sad grey light on the figure of the doctor as he lit a
+lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table in the middle
+of the room.
+
+Clarke looked about him.  Scarcely a foot of wall
+remained bare; there were shelves all around laden with bottles
+and phials of all shapes and colours, and at one end stood a
+little Chippendale book-case.  Raymond pointed to this.
+
+"You see that parchment Oswald Crollius?  He was one of
+the first to show me the way, though I don't think he ever found
+it himself.  That is a strange saying of his: 'In every grain of
+wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.'"
+
+There was not much furniture in the laboratory.  The
+table in the centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner,
+the two armchairs on which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that
+was all, except an odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the
+room.  Clarke looked at it, and raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, that is the chair," said Raymond.  "We may as
+well place it in position."  He got up and wheeled the chair to
+the light, and began raising and lowering it, letting down the
+seat, setting the back at various angles, and adjusting the
+foot-rest.  It looked comfortable enough, and Clarke passed his
+hand over the soft green velvet, as the doctor manipulated the
+levers.
+
+"Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable.  I have
+a couple hours' work before me; I was obliged to leave certain
+matters to the last."
+
+Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him
+drearily as he bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under
+the crucible.  The doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the
+larger one, on a ledge above his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat
+in the shadows, looked down at the great shadowy room, wondering
+at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and undefined darkness
+contrasting with one another.  Soon he became conscious of an
+odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of odour, in the room,
+and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that he was not
+reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery.  Clarke found
+himself idly endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and half
+conscious, he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that
+he had spent roaming through the woods and meadows near his own
+home.  It was a burning day at the beginning of August, the heat
+had dimmed the outlines of all things and all distances with a
+faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer spoke of an
+abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost tropical.
+Strangely that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in
+Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading
+sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the
+laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts
+about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard
+the myriad murmur of the summer.
+
+"I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's
+nothing unwholesome about it.  It may make you a bit sleepy,
+that's all."
+
+Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that
+Raymond was speaking to him, but for the life of him he could
+not rouse himself from his lethargy.  He could only think of the
+lonely walk he had taken fifteen years ago; it was his last look
+at the fields and woods he had known since he was a child, and
+now it all stood out in brilliant light, as a picture, before
+him.  Above all there came to his nostrils the scent of summer,
+the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of
+cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the
+sun's heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were
+with arms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all.
+His fancies made him wander, as he had wandered long ago, from
+the fields into the wood, tracking a little path between the
+shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water
+dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in
+the dream.  Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other
+thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between
+ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to
+bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple
+grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree
+stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex.  Clarke, in the
+deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his
+father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he
+was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in
+place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence
+seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a
+moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that
+was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but
+all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all
+form.  And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was
+dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and
+then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of
+everlasting.
+
+When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring
+a few drops of some oily fluid into a green phial, which he
+stoppered tightly.
+
+"You have been dozing," he said; "the journey must have
+tired you out.  It is done now.  I am going to fetch Mary; I
+shall be back in ten minutes."
+
+Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered.  It seemed
+as if he had but passed from one dream into another.  He half
+expected to see the walls of the laboratory melt and disappear,
+and to awake in London, shuddering at his own sleeping fancies.
+But at last the door opened, and the doctor returned, and behind
+him came a girl of about seventeen, dressed all in white.  She
+was so beautiful that Clarke did not wonder at what the doctor
+had written to him.  She was blushing now over face and neck and
+arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.
+
+"Mary," he said, "the time has come.  You are quite
+free.  Are you willing to trust yourself to me entirely?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Do you hear that, Clarke?  You are my witness.  Here
+is the chair, Mary.  It is quite easy.  Just sit in it and lean
+back.  Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes, dear, quite ready.  Give me a kiss before you
+begin."
+
+The doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough.
+"Now shut your eyes," he said.  The girl closed her eyelids, as
+if she were tired, and longed for sleep, and Raymond placed the
+green phial to her nostrils.  Her face grew white, whiter than
+her dress; she struggled faintly, and then with the feeling of
+submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon her breast
+as a little child about to say her prayers.  The bright light
+of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes
+fleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the
+summer clouds float across the sun.  And then she lay all white
+and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids.  She was
+quite unconscious.  Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers
+and the chair instantly sank back.  Clarke saw him cutting away
+a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp was moved
+nearer.  Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a
+little case, and Clarke turned away shudderingly.  When he
+looked again the doctor was binding up the wound he had made.
+
+"She will awake in five minutes."  Raymond was still
+perfectly cool.  "There is nothing more to be done; we can only
+wait."
+
+The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow,
+heavy, ticking.  There was an old clock in the passage.  Clarke
+felt sick and faint; his knees shook beneath him, he could
+hardly stand.
+
+Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn
+sigh, and suddenly did the colour that had vanished return to
+the girl's cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened.  Clarke quailed
+before them.  They shone with an awful light, looking far away,
+and a great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched
+out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an instant the
+wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror.  The
+muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from
+head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within
+the house of flesh.  It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed
+forward, as she fell shrieking to the floor.
+
+Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside.
+She was lying wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side,
+and grinning vacantly.
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, still quite cool, "it is a
+great pity; she is a hopeless idiot.  However, it could not be
+helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great God Pan."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS
+
+
+
+Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to
+witness the strange experiment of the god Pan, was a person in
+whose character caution and curiosity were oddly mingled; in his
+sober moments he thought of the unusual and eccentric with
+undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in his heart, there was a
+wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the more recondite
+and esoteric elements in the nature of men.  The latter tendency had
+prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for though his
+considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's theories
+as the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in
+fantasy, and would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed.
+The horrors that he witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a
+certain extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in
+an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years
+afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all
+occasions of occult investigation.  Indeed, on some homeopathic
+principle, he for some time attended the seances of
+distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these
+gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of
+every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious.
+Clarke knew that he still pined for the unseen, and little by
+little, the old passion began to reassert itself, as the face of
+Mary, shuddering and convulsed with an unknown terror, faded
+slowly from his memory.  Occupied all day in pursuits both
+serious and lucrative, the temptation to relax in the evening
+was too great, especially in the winter months, when the fire
+cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle
+of some choice claret stood ready by his elbow.  His dinner
+digested, he would make a brief pretence of reading the evening
+paper, but the mere catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and
+Clarke would find himself casting glances of warm desire in the
+direction of an old Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant
+distance from the hearth.  Like a boy before a jam-closet, for
+a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but lust always
+prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair, lighting a
+candle, and sitting down before the bureau.  Its pigeon-holes
+and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects,
+and in the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which he
+had painfully entered he gems of his collection.  Clarke had a
+fine contempt for published literature; the most ghostly story
+ceased to interest him if it happened to be printed; his sole
+pleasure was in the reading, compiling, and rearranging what he
+called his "Memoirs to prove the Existence of the Devil," and
+engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed to fly and the night
+appeared too short.
+
+On one particular evening, an ugly December night,
+black with fog, and raw with frost, Clarke hurried over his
+dinner, and scarcely deigned to observe his customary ritual of
+taking up the paper and laying it down again.  He paced two or
+three times up and down the room, and opened the bureau, stood
+still a moment, and sat down.  He leant back, absorbed in one
+of those dreams to which he was subject, and at length drew out
+his book, and opened it at the last entry.  There were three or
+four pages densely covered with Clarke's round, set penmanship,
+and at the beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:
+
+        Singular Narrative told me by my Friend, Dr. Phillips.
+                He assures me that all the facts related
+                therein are strictly and wholly True, but
+                refuses to give either the Surnames of the
+                Persons Concerned, or the Place where these
+                Extraordinary Events occurred.
+
+Mr. Clarke began to read over the account for the
+tenth time, glancing now and then at the pencil notes he had
+made when it was told him by his friend.  It was one of his
+humours to pride himself on a certain literary ability; he
+thought well of his style, and took pains in arranging the
+circumstances in dramatic order.  He read the following story:--
+
+
+The persons concerned in this statement are Helen V.,
+who, if she is still alive, must now be a woman of
+twenty-three, Rachel M., since deceased, who was a year younger
+than the above, and Trevor W., an imbecile, aged eighteen.
+These persons were at the period of the story inhabitants of a
+village on the borders of Wales, a place of some importance in
+the time of the Roman occupation, but now a scattered hamlet,
+of not more than five hundred souls.  It is situated on rising
+ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a
+large and picturesque forest.
+
+Some eleven years ago, Helen V.  came to the village under
+rather peculiar circumstances.  It is understood that she, being
+an orphan, was adopted in her infancy by a distant relative, who
+brought her up in his own house until she was twelve years old.
+Thinking, however, that it would be better for the child to have
+playmates of her own age, he advertised in several local papers
+for a good home in a comfortable farmhouse for a girl of twelve,
+and this advertisement was answered by Mr.  R., a well-to-do
+farmer in the above-mentioned village.  His references proving
+satisfactory, the gentleman sent his adopted daughter to Mr.
+R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that the girl should
+have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be
+at no trouble in the matter of education, as she was already
+sufficiently educated for the position in life which she would
+occupy.  In fact, Mr. R. was given to understand that the girl
+be allowed to find her own occupations and to spend her time
+almost as she liked.  Mr. R.  duly met her at the nearest
+station, a town seven miles away from his house, and seems to
+have remarked nothing extraordinary about the child except that
+she was reticent as to her former life and her adopted father.
+She was, however, of a very different type from the inhabitants
+of the village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her
+features were strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign
+character.  She appears to have settled down easily enough into
+farmhouse life, and became a favourite with the children, who
+sometimes went with her on her rambles in the forest, for this
+was her amusement.  Mr.  R. states that he has known her to go
+out by herself directly after their early breakfast, and not
+return till after dusk, and that, feeling uneasy at a young
+girl being out alone for so many hours, he communicated with
+her adopted father, who replied in a brief note that Helen must
+do as she chose.  In the winter, when the forest paths are
+impassable, she spent most of her time in her bedroom, where
+she slept alone, according to the instructions of her relative.
+It was on one of these expeditions to the forest that the first
+of the singular incidents with which this girl is connected
+occurred, the date being about a year after her arrival at the
+village.  The preceding winter had been remarkably severe, the
+snow drifting to a great depth, and the frost continuing for an
+unexampled period, and the summer following was as noteworthy
+for its extreme heat.  On one of the very hottest days in this
+summer, Helen V. left the farmhouse for one of her long rambles
+in the forest, taking with her, as usual, some bread and meat
+for lunch.  She was seen by some men in the fields making for
+the old Roman Road, a green causeway which traverses the
+highest part of the wood, and they were astonished to observe
+that the girl had taken off her hat, though the heat of the sun
+was already tropical.  As it happened, a labourer, Joseph W. by
+name, was working in the forest near the Roman Road, and at
+twelve o'clock his little son, Trevor, brought the man his
+dinner of bread and cheese.  After the meal, the boy, who was
+about seven years old at the time, left his father at work,
+and, as he said, went to look for flowers in the wood, and the
+man, who could hear him shouting with delight at his
+discoveries, felt no uneasiness.  Suddenly, however, he was
+horrified at hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the
+result of great terror, proceeding from the direction in which
+his son had gone, and he hastily threw down his tools and ran
+to see what had happened.  Tracing his path by the sound, he
+met the little boy, who was running headlong, and was evidently
+terribly frightened, and on questioning him the man elicited
+that after picking a posy of flowers he felt tired, and lay
+down on the grass and fell asleep.  He was suddenly awakened,
+as he stated, by a peculiar noise, a sort of singing he called
+it, and on peeping through the branches he saw Helen V. playing
+on the grass with a "strange naked man," who he seemed unable
+to describe more fully.  He said he felt dreadfully frightened
+and ran away crying for his father.  Joseph W. proceeded in the
+direction indicated by his son, and found Helen V. sitting on
+the grass in the middle of a glade or open space left by
+charcoal burners.  He angrily charged her with frightening his
+little boy, but she entirely denied the accusation and laughed
+at the child's story of a "strange man," to which he himself
+did not attach much credence.  Joseph W.  came to the
+conclusion that the boy had woke up with a sudden fright, as
+children sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in his story, and
+continued in such evident distress that at last his father took
+him home, hoping that his mother would be able to soothe him.
+For many weeks, however, the boy gave his parents much anxiety;
+he became nervous and strange in his manner, refusing to leave
+the cottage by himself, and constantly alarming the household
+by waking in the night with cries of "The man in the wood!
+father!  father!"
+
+In course of time, however, the impression seemed to
+have worn off, and about three months later he accompanied his
+father to the home of a gentleman in the neighborhood, for whom
+Joseph W. occasionally did work.  The man was shown into the
+study, and the little boy was left sitting in the hall, and a
+few minutes later, while the gentleman was giving W. his
+instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing shriek and
+the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child lying
+senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror.  The
+doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he
+pronounced the child to be suffering form a kind of fit,
+apparently produced by a sudden shock.  The boy was taken to
+one of the bedrooms, and after some time recovered
+consciousness, but only to pass into a condition described by
+the medical man as one of violent hysteria.  The doctor
+exhibited a strong sedative, and in the course of two hours
+pronounced him fit to walk home, but in passing through the
+hall the paroxysms of fright returned and with additional
+violence.  The father perceived that the child was pointing at
+some object, and heard the old cry, "The man in the wood," and
+looking in the direction indicated saw a stone head of
+grotesque appearance, which had been built into the wall above
+one of the doors.  It seems the owner of the house had recently
+made alterations in his premises, and on digging the
+foundations for some offices, the men had found a curious head,
+evidently of the Roman period, which had been placed in the
+manner described.  The head is pronounced by the most
+experienced archaeologists of the district to be that of a faun
+or satyr.  [Dr. Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in
+question, and assures me that he has never received such a
+vivid presentment of intense evil.]
+
+From whatever cause arising, this second shock seemed
+too severe for the boy Trevor, and at the present date he
+suffers from a weakness of intellect, which gives but little
+promise of amending.  The matter caused a good deal of
+sensation at the time, and the girl Helen was closely
+questioned by Mr.  R., but to no purpose, she steadfastly
+denying that she had frightened or in any way molested Trevor.
+
+The second event with which this girl's name is
+connected took place about six years ago, and is of a still
+more extraordinary character.
+
+At the beginning of the summer of 1882, Helen
+contracted a friendship of a peculiarly intimate character with
+Rachel M., the daughter of a prosperous farmer in the
+neighbourhood.  This girl, who was a year younger than Helen,
+was considered by most people to be the prettier of the two,
+though Helen's features had to a great extent softened as she
+became older.  The two girls, who were together on every
+available opportunity, presented a singular contrast, the one
+with her clear, olive skin and almost Italian appearance, and
+the other of the proverbial red and white of our rural
+districts.  It must be stated that the payments made to Mr. R.
+for the maintenance of Helen were known in the village for their
+excessive liberality, and the impression was general that she
+would one day inherit a large sum of money from her relative.
+The parents of Rachel were therefore not averse from their
+daughter's friendship with the girl, and even encouraged the
+intimacy, though they now bitterly regret having done so.
+Helen still retained her extraordinary fondness for the forest,
+and on several occasions Rachel accompanied her, the two
+friends setting out early in the morning, and remaining in the
+wood until dusk.  Once or twice after these excursions Mrs. M.
+thought her daughter's manner rather peculiar; she seemed
+languid and dreamy, and as it has been expressed, "different
+from herself," but these peculiarities seem to have been
+thought too trifling for remark.  One evening, however, after
+Rachel had come home, her mother heard a noise which sounded
+like suppressed weeping in the girl's room, and on going in
+found her lying, half undressed, upon the bed, evidently in the
+greatest distress.  As soon as she saw her mother, she
+exclaimed, "Ah, mother, mother, why did you let me go to the
+forest with Helen?"  Mrs. M. was astonished at so strange a
+question, and proceeded to make inquiries.  Rachel told her a
+wild story.  She said--
+
+Clarke closed the book with a snap, and turned his
+chair towards the fire.  When his friend sat one evening in
+that very chair, and told his story, Clarke had interrupted him
+at a point a little subsequent to this, had cut short his words
+in a paroxysm of horror.  "My God!" he had exclaimed, "think,
+think what you are saying.  It is too incredible, too
+monstrous; such things can never be in this quiet world, where
+men and women live and die, and struggle, and conquer, or maybe
+fail, and fall down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer strange
+fortunes for many a year; but not this, Phillips, not such
+things as this.  There must be some explanation, some way out
+of the terror.  Why, man, if such a case were possible, our
+earth would be a nightmare."
+
+But Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:
+
+"Her flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished
+in broad sunlight; they saw her walking in a meadow, and a few
+moments later she was not there."
+
+Clarke tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by
+the fire, and again his mind shuddered and shrank back,
+appalled before the sight of such awful, unspeakable elements
+enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh.  Before
+him stretched the long dim vista of the green causeway in the
+forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the swaying
+leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the
+sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long
+distance, the two figure moved toward him.  One was Rachel, but
+the other?
+
+Clarke had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at
+the end of the account, as he had written it in his book, he
+had placed the inscription:
+
+ET DIABOLUS INCARNATE EST.  ET HOMO FACTUS EST.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS
+
+
+
+"Herbert!  Good God!  Is it possible?"
+
+"Yes, my name's Herbert.  I think I know your face,
+too, but I don't remember your name.  My memory is very queer."
+
+"Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?"
+
+"So it is, so it is.  I beg your pardon, Villiers, I
+didn't think I was begging of an old college friend.
+Good-night."
+
+"My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary.  My rooms
+are close by, but we won't go there just yet.  Suppose we walk
+up Shaftesbury Avenue a little way?  But how in heaven's name
+have you come to this pass, Herbert?"
+
+"It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too,
+but you can hear it if you like."
+
+"Come on, then.  Take my arm, you don't seem very
+strong."
+
+The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street;
+the one in dirty, evil-looking rags, and the other attired in
+the regulation uniform of a man about town, trim, glossy, and
+eminently well-to-do.  Villiers had emerged from his restaurant
+after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an
+ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind
+which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the
+door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of
+those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of
+London teem in every quarter and every hour.  Villiers prided
+himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways
+of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an
+assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment.  Thus he
+stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with
+undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the
+systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula:
+"London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than
+that, it is the city of Resurrections," when these reflections
+were suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and
+a deplorable appeal for alms.  He looked around in some
+irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted
+with the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies.  There,
+close beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and
+disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags,
+stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on
+the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise
+for twelve revolving terms.  Different occupations and varying
+interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years
+since Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this
+wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain
+inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had
+dragged him down to such a doleful pass.  Villiers felt together
+with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and
+congratulated himself on his leisurely speculations outside the
+restaurant.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time, and more than
+one passer-by stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed
+spectacle of a well-dressed man with an unmistakable beggar
+hanging on to his arm, and, observing this, Villiers led the way
+to an obscure street in Soho.  Here he repeated his question.
+
+"How on earth has it happened, Herbert?  I always
+understood you would succeed to an excellent position in
+Dorsetshire.  Did your father disinherit you?  Surely not?"
+
+"No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor
+father's death; he died a year after I left Oxford.  He was a
+very good father to me, and I mourned his death sincerely
+enough.  But you know what young men are; a few months later I
+came up to town and went a good deal into society.  Of course I
+had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very
+much in a harmless sort of way.  I played a little, certainly,
+but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races
+brought me in money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough
+to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures.  It was in my second
+season that the tide turned.  Of course you have heard of my
+marriage?"
+
+"No, I never heard anything about it."
+
+"Yes, I married, Villiers.  I met a girl, a girl of the
+most wonderful and most strange beauty, at the house of some
+people whom I knew.  I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it,
+but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have been
+about nineteen when I made her acquaintance.  My friends had
+come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan,
+the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she
+charmed them as she charmed me.  The first time I saw her was at
+an evening party.  I was standing by the door talking to a
+friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I
+heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart.  She was
+singing an Italian song.  I was introduced to her that evening,
+and in three months I married Helen.  Villiers, that woman, if I
+can call her woman, corrupted my soul.  The night of the wedding
+I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to
+her talk.  She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as
+she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now
+I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood
+in the midst of a wilderness.   You, Villiers, you may think you
+know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this
+dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of
+the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I
+know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have
+imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and
+seen.  Yes, seen.  I have seen the incredible, such horrors that
+even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask
+whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live.
+In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in body and soul--in
+body and soul."
+
+"But your property, Herbert?  You had land in Dorset."
+
+"I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old
+house--everything."
+
+"And the money?"
+
+"She took it all from me."
+
+"And then left you?"
+
+"Yes; she disappeared one night.  I don't know where
+she went, but I am sure if I saw her again it would kill me.
+The rest of my story is of no interest; sordid misery, that is
+all.  You may think, Villiers, that I have exaggerated and
+talked for effect; but I have not told you half.  I could tell
+you certain things which would convince you, but you would never
+know a happy day again.  You would pass the rest of your life,
+as I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell."
+
+Villiers took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and
+gave him a meal.  Herbert could eat little, and scarcely touched
+the glass of wine set before him.  He sat moody and silent by
+the fire, and seemed relieved when Villiers sent him away with a
+small present of money.
+
+"By the way, Herbert," said Villiers, as they parted at
+the door, "what was your wife's name?  You said Helen, I think?
+Helen what?"
+
+"The name she passed under when I met her was Helen
+Vaughan, but what her real name was I can't say.  I don't think
+she had a name.  No, no, not in that sense.  Only human beings
+have names, Villiers; I can't say anymore.  Good-bye; yes, I
+will not fail to call if I see any way in which you can help me.
+Good-night."
+
+The man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers
+returned to his fireside.  There was something about Herbert
+which shocked him inexpressibly; not his poor rags nor the marks
+which poverty had set upon his face, but rather an indefinite
+terror which hung about him like a mist.  He had acknowledged
+that he himself was not devoid of blame; the woman, he had
+avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and Villiers felt that
+this man, once his friend, had been an actor in scenes evil
+beyond the power of words.  His story needed no confirmation: he
+himself was the embodied proof of it.  Villiers mused curiously
+over the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had heard
+both the first and the last of it.  "No," he thought, "certainly
+not the last, probably only the beginning.  A case like this is
+like a nest of Chinese boxes; you open one after the other and
+find a quainter workmanship in every box.  Most likely poor
+Herbert is merely one of the outside boxes; there are stranger
+ones to follow."
+
+Villiers could not take his mind away from Herbert and
+his story, which seemed to grow wilder as the night wore on.
+The fire seemed to burn low, and the chilly air of the morning
+crept into the room; Villiers got up with a glance over his
+shoulder, and, shivering slightly, went to bed.
+
+A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his
+acquaintance, named Austin, who was famous for his intimate
+knowledge of London life, both in its tenebrous and luminous
+phases.  Villiers, still full of his encounter in Soho and its
+consequences, thought Austin might possibly be able to shed some
+light on Herbert's history, and so after some casual talk he
+suddenly put the question:
+
+"Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert
+--Charles Herbert?"
+
+Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with
+some astonishment.
+
+"Charles Herbert?  Weren't you in town three years ago?
+No; then you have not heard of the Paul Street case?  It caused
+a good deal of sensation at the time."
+
+"What was the case?"
+
+"Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was
+found dead, stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul
+Street, off Tottenham Court Road.  Of course the police did not
+make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and
+have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell,
+but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will
+be left alone.  In this instance, as in many others, the alarm
+was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common
+tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business
+or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets
+at five o'clock in the morning.  This individual was, as he
+said, 'going home,' it did not appear whence or whither, and had
+occasion to pass through Paul Street between four and five a.m.
+Something or other caught his eye at Number 20; he said,
+absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant
+physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced
+down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a man lying
+on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face
+turned up.  Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly
+ghastly, and so set off at a run in search of the nearest
+policeman.  The constable was at first inclined to treat the
+matter lightly, suspecting common drunkenness; however, he came,
+and after looking at the man's face, changed his tone, quickly
+enough.  The early bird, who had picked up this fine worm, was
+sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang and knocked at the
+door till a slatternly servant girl came down looking more than
+half asleep.  The constable pointed out the contents of the area
+to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the street,
+but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the
+house, and so forth.  Meanwhile, the original discoverer had
+come back with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into
+the area.  The gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down
+the steps.  The doctor hardly needed a moment's examination; he
+said the poor fellow had been dead for several hours, and it was
+then the case began to get interesting.  The dead man had not
+been robbed, and in one of his pockets were papers identifying
+him as--well, as a man of good family and means, a favourite
+in society, and nobody's enemy, as far as could be known.  I
+don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to do with
+the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
+about the dead when there are no relations living.  The next
+curious point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how
+he met his death.  There were some slight bruises on his
+shoulders, but they were so slight that it looked as if he had
+been pushed roughly out of the kitchen door, and not thrown over
+the railings from the street or even dragged down the steps.
+But there were positively no other marks of violence about him,
+certainly none that would account for his death; and when they
+came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any kind.
+Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at
+Number 20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources,
+one or two other very curious points came out.  It appears that
+the occupants of the house were a Mr.  and Mrs. Charles Herbert;
+he was said to be a landed proprietor, though it struck most
+people that Paul Street was not exactly the place to look for
+country gentry.  As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody seemed to know
+who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the divers
+after her history found themselves in rather strange waters.  Of
+course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased, and
+in default of any evidence against them they were discharged.
+But some very odd things came out about them.  Though it was
+between five and six in the morning when the dead man was
+removed, a large crowd had collected, and several of the
+neighbours ran to see what was going on.  They were pretty free
+with their comments, by all accounts, and from these it appeared
+that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street.  The
+detectives tried to trace down these rumours to some solid
+foundation of fact, but could not get hold of anything.  People
+shook their heads and raised their eyebrows and thought the
+Herberts rather 'queer,' 'would rather not be seen going into
+their house,' and so on, but there was nothing tangible.  The
+authorities were morally certain the man met his death in some
+way or another in the house and was thrown out by the kitchen
+door, but they couldn't prove it, and the absence of any
+indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless.  An odd
+case, wasn't it?  But curiously enough, there's something more
+that I haven't told you.  I happened to know one of the doctors
+who was consulted as to the cause of death, and some time after
+the inquest I met him, and asked him about it.  'Do you really
+mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you were baffled by the case,
+that you actually don't know what the man died of?' 'Pardon me,'
+he replied, 'I know perfectly well what caused death.  Blank
+died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so
+hideously contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I
+have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.'  The doctor was
+usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence in his
+manner struck me, but I couldn't get anything more out of him.
+I suppose the Treasury didn't see their way to prosecuting the
+Herberts for frightening a man to death; at any rate, nothing
+was done, and the case dropped out of men's minds.  Do you
+happen to know anything of Herbert?"
+
+"Well," replied Villiers, "he was an old college friend
+of mine."
+
+"You don't say so?  Have you ever seen his wife?"
+
+"No, I haven't.  I have lost sight of Herbert for many
+years."
+
+"It's queer, isn't it, parting with a man at the
+college gate or at Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years,
+and then finding him pop up his head in such an odd place.  But
+I should like to have seen Mrs. Herbert; people said
+extraordinary things about her."
+
+"What sort of things?"
+
+"Well, I hardly know how to tell you.  Everyone who saw
+her at the police court said she was at once the most beautiful
+woman and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on.  I have
+spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively
+shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't
+tell why.  She seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect
+if that one dead man could have told tales, he would have told
+some uncommonly queer ones.  And there you are again in another
+puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
+Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a
+very queer house as Number 20?  It's altogether a very odd case,
+isn't it?"
+
+"It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case.  I
+didn't think, when I asked you about my old friend, I should
+strike on such strange metal.  Well, I must be off; good-day."
+
+Villiers went away, thinking of his own conceit of the
+Chinese boxes; here was quaint workmanship indeed.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET
+
+
+
+A few months after Villiers' meeting with Herbert, Mr.
+Clarke was sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth,
+resolutely guarding his fancies from wandering in the direction
+of the bureau.  For more than a week he had succeeded in keeping
+away from the "Memoirs," and he cherished hopes of a complete
+self-reformation; but, in spite of his endeavours, he could not
+hush the wonder and the strange curiosity that the last case he
+had written down had excited within him.  He had put the case,
+or rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific
+friend, who shook his head, and thought Clarke getting queer,
+and on this particular evening Clarke was making an effort to
+rationalize the story, when a sudden knock at the door roused
+him from his meditations.
+
+"Mr. Villiers to see you sir."
+
+"Dear me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me
+up; I have not seen you for many months; I should think nearly a
+year.  Come in, come in.  And how are you, Villiers?  Want any
+advice about investments?"
+
+"No, thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is
+pretty safe.  No, Clarke, I have really come to consult you
+about a rather curious matter that has been brought under my
+notice of late.  I am afraid you will think it all rather absurd
+when I tell my tale.  I sometimes think so myself, and that's
+just what I made up my mind to come to you, as I know you're a
+practical man."
+
+Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the "Memoirs to prove the
+Existence of the Devil."
+
+"Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my
+advice, to the best of my ability.  What is the nature of the
+case?"
+
+"It's an extraordinary thing altogether.  You know my
+ways; I always keep my eyes open in the streets, and in my time
+I have chanced upon some queer customers, and queer cases too,
+but this, I think, beats all.  I was coming out of a restaurant
+one nasty winter night about three months ago; I had had a
+capital dinner and a good bottle of Chianti, and I stood for a
+moment on the pavement, thinking what a mystery there is about
+London streets and the companies that pass along them.  A bottle
+of red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I
+should have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by
+a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual
+appeals.  Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out
+to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named
+Herbert.  I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass,
+and he told me.  We walked up and down one of those long and
+dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story.  He said
+he had married a beautiful girl, some years younger than
+himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and
+soul.  He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that
+what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and
+when I looked in his face I knew he was speaking the truth.
+There was something about the man that made me shiver.  I don't
+know why, but it was there.  I gave him a little money and sent
+him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
+breath.  His presence seemed to chill one's blood."
+
+"Isn't this all just a little fanciful, Villiers?  I
+suppose the poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in
+plain English, gone to the bad."
+
+"Well, listen to this."  Villiers told Clarke the story
+he had heard from Austin.
+
+"You see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt
+that this Mr.  Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he
+saw something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life.
+And what he saw, he most certainly saw in that house, which,
+somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood.  I
+had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself.  It's
+a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough to be mean
+and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint.  As far as I could
+see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished,
+and almost every door has three bells to it.  Here and there the
+ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind;
+it's a dismal street in every way.  I found Number 20 was to
+let, and I went to the agent's and got the key.  Of course I
+should have heard nothing of the Herberts in that quarter, but
+I asked the man, fair and square, how long they had left the
+house and whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile.
+He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts
+had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it,
+and since then the house had been empty."
+
+Mr. Villiers paused for a moment.
+
+"I have always been rather fond of going over empty
+houses; there's a sort of fascination about the desolate empty
+rooms, with the nails sticking in the walls, and the dust thick
+upon the window-sills.  But I didn't enjoy going over Number 20,
+Paul Street.  I had hardly put my foot inside the passage when I
+noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air of the house.  Of
+course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth, but this was
+something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it
+seemed to stop the breath.  I went into the front room and the
+back room, and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and
+dusty enough, as you would expect, but there was something
+strange about them all.  I couldn't define it to you, I only
+know I felt queer.  It was one of the rooms on the first floor,
+though, that was the worst.  It was a largish room, and once on
+a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but when I saw
+it, paint, paper, and everything were most doleful.  But the
+room was full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my
+hand on the door, and when I went in, I thought I should have
+fallen fainting to the floor.  However, I pulled myself
+together, and stood against the end wall, wondering what on
+earth there could be about the room to make my limbs tremble,
+and my heart beat as if I were at the hour of death.  In one
+corner there was a pile of newspapers littered on the floor, and
+I began looking at them; they were papers of three or four years
+ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had
+been used for packing.  I turned the whole pile over, and
+amongst them I found a curious drawing; I will show it to you
+presently.  But I couldn't stay in the room; I felt it was
+overpowering me.  I was thankful to come out, safe and sound,
+into the open air.  People stared at me as I walked along the
+street, and one man said I was drunk.  I was staggering about
+from one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much
+as I could do to take the key back to the agent and get home.  I
+was in bed for a week, suffering from what my doctor called
+nervous shock and exhaustion.  One of those days I was reading
+the evening paper, and happened to notice a paragraph headed:
+'Starved to Death.'  It was the usual style of thing; a model
+lodging-house in Marylebone, a door locked for several days, and
+a dead man in his chair when they broke in.  'The deceased,' said
+the paragraph, 'was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed to
+have been once a prosperous country gentleman.  His name was
+familiar to the public three years ago in connection with the
+mysterious death in Paul Street, Tottenham Court Road, the
+deceased being the tenant of the house Number 20, in the area of
+which a gentleman of good position was found dead under
+circumstances not devoid of suspicion.'  A tragic ending, wasn't
+it?  But after all, if what he told me were true, which I am
+sure it was, the man's life was all a tragedy, and a tragedy of
+a stranger sort than they put on the boards."
+
+"And that is the story, is it?" said Clarke musingly.
+
+"Yes, that is the story."
+
+"Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say
+about it.  There are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which
+seem peculiar, the finding of the dead man in the area of
+Herbert's house, for instance, and the extraordinary opinion of
+the physician as to the cause of death; but, after all, it is
+conceivable that the facts may be explained in a straightforward
+manner.  As to your own sensations, when you went to see the
+house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid
+imagination; you must have been brooding, in a semi-conscious
+way, over what you had heard.  I don't exactly see what more can
+be said or done in the matter; you evidently think there is a
+mystery of some kind, but Herbert is dead; where then do you
+propose to look?"
+
+"I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he
+married.  She is the mystery."
+
+The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly
+congratulating himself on having successfully kept up the
+character of advocate of the commonplace, and Villiers wrapped
+in his gloomy fancies.
+
+"I think I will have a cigarette," he said at last, and
+put his hand in his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.
+
+"Ah!" he said, starting slightly, "I forgot I had
+something to show you.  You remember my saying that I had found
+a rather curious sketch amongst the pile of old newspapers at
+the house in Paul Street?  Here it is."
+
+Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket.
+It was covered with brown paper, and secured with string, and
+the knots were troublesome.  In spite of himself Clarke felt
+inquisitive; he bent forward on his chair as Villiers painfully
+undid the string, and unfolded the outer covering.  Inside was a
+second wrapping of tissue, and Villiers took it off and handed
+the small piece of paper to Clarke without a word.
+
+There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or
+more; the two man sat so still that they could hear the ticking
+of the tall old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall,
+and in the mind of one of them the slow monotony of sound woke
+up a far, far memory.  He was looking intently at the small
+pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's head; it had evidently been
+drawn with great care, and by a true artist, for the woman's
+soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were parted with a
+strange smile.  Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to
+his memory one summer evening, long ago; he saw again the long
+lovely valley, the river winding between the hills, the meadows
+and the cornfields, the dull red sun, and the cold white mist
+rising from the water.  He heard a voice speaking to him across
+the waves of many years, and saying "Clarke, Mary will see the
+god Pan!" and then he was standing in the grim room beside the
+doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the clock, waiting and
+watching, watching the figure lying on the green char beneath
+the lamplight.  Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes, and
+his heart grew cold within him.
+
+"Who is this woman?" he said at last.  His voice was
+dry and hoarse.
+
+"That is the woman who Herbert married."
+
+Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary
+after all.  There certainly was Mary's face, but there was
+something else, something he had not seen on Mary's features
+when the white-clad girl entered the laboratory with the doctor,
+nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she lay grinning on the
+bed.   Whatever it was, the glance that came from those eyes,
+the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole face,
+Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought,
+unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip's words, "the most vivid
+presentment of evil I have ever seen."  He turned the paper over
+mechanically in his hand and glanced at the back.
+
+"Good God!  Clarke, what is the matter?  You are as
+white as death."
+
+Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke
+fell back with a groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.
+
+"I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to
+these attacks.  Pour me out a little wine; thanks, that will do.
+I shall feel better in a few minutes."
+
+Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over
+as Clarke had done.
+
+"You saw that?" he said.  "That's how I identified it
+as being a portrait of Herbert's wife, or I should say his
+widow.  How do you feel now?"
+
+"Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness.  I
+don't think I quite catch your meaning.  What did you say
+enabled you to identify the picture?"
+
+"This word--'Helen'--was written on the back.
+Didn't I tell you her name was Helen?  Yes; Helen Vaughan."
+
+Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.
+
+"Now, don't you agree with me," said Villiers, "that in
+the story I have told you to-night, and in the part this woman
+plays in it, there are some very strange points?"
+
+"Yes, Villiers," Clarke muttered, "it is a strange
+story indeed; a strange story indeed.  You must give me time to
+think it over; I may be able to help you or I may not.  Must you
+be going now?  Well, good-night, Villiers, good-night.  Come and
+see me in the course of a week."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LETTER OF ADVICE
+
+
+
+"Do you know, Austin," said Villiers, as the two
+friends were pacing sedately along Piccadilly one pleasant
+morning in May, "do you know I am convinced that what you told
+me about Paul Street and the Herberts is a mere episode in an
+extraordinary history?  I may as well confess to you that when I
+asked you about Herbert a few months ago I had just seen him."
+
+"You had seen him?  Where?"
+
+"He begged of me in the street one night.  He was in
+the most pitiable plight, but I recognized the man, and I got
+him to tell me his history, or at least the outline of it.  In
+brief, it amounted to this--he had been ruined by his wife."
+
+"In what manner?"
+
+"He would not tell me; he would only say that she had
+destroyed him, body and soul.  The man is dead now."
+
+"And what has become of his wife?"
+
+"Ah, that's what I should like to know, and I mean to
+find her sooner or later.  I know a man named Clarke, a dry
+fellow, in fact a man of business, but shrewd enough.  You
+understand my meaning; not shrewd in the mere business sense of
+the word, but a man who really knows something about men and
+life.  Well, I laid the case before him, and he was evidently
+impressed.  He said it needed consideration, and asked me to
+come again in the course of a week.  A few days later I received
+this extraordinary letter."
+
+Austin took the envelope, drew out the letter, and read
+it curiously.  It ran as follows:--
+
+"MY DEAR VILLIERS,--I have thought over the matter on
+which you consulted me the other night, and my advice to you is
+this.  Throw the portrait into the fire, blot out the story from
+your mind.  Never give it another thought, Villiers, or you will
+be sorry.  You will think, no doubt, that I am in possession of
+some secret information, and to a certain extent that is the
+case.  But I only know a little; I am like a traveller who has
+peered over an abyss, and has drawn back in terror.  What I know
+is strange enough and horrible enough, but beyond my knowledge
+there are depths and horrors more frightful still, more
+incredible than any tale told of winter nights about the fire.
+I have resolved, and nothing shall shake that resolve, to
+explore no whit farther, and if you value your happiness you will
+make the same determination.
+
+"Come and see me by all means; but we will talk on more
+cheerful topics than this."
+
+Austin folded the letter methodically, and returned it
+to Villiers.
+
+"It is certainly an extraordinary letter," he said,
+"what does he mean by the portrait?"
+
+"Ah!  I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street
+and have made a discovery."
+
+Villiers told his story as he had told it to Clarke,
+and Austin listened in silence.  He seemed puzzled.
+
+"How very curious that you should experience such an
+unpleasant sensation in that room!" he said at length.  "I
+hardly gather that it was a mere matter of the imagination; a
+feeling of repulsion, in short."
+
+"No, it was more physical than mental.  It was as if I
+were inhaling at every breath some deadly fume, which seemed to
+penetrate to every nerve and bone and sinew of my body.  I felt
+racked from head to foot, my eyes began to grow dim; it was like
+the entrance of death."
+
+"Yes, yes, very strange certainly.  You see, your
+friend confesses that there is some very black story connected
+with this woman.  Did you notice any particular emotion in him
+when you were telling your tale?"
+
+"Yes, I did.  He became very faint, but he assured me
+that it was a mere passing attack to which he was subject."
+
+"Did you believe him?"
+
+"I did at the time, but I don't now.  He heard what I
+had to say with a good deal of indifference, till I showed him
+the portrait.  It was then that he was seized with the attack of
+which I spoke.  He looked ghastly, I assure you."
+
+"Then he must have seen the woman before.  But there
+might be another explanation; it might have been the name, and
+not the face, which was familiar to him.  What do you think?"
+
+"I couldn't say.  To the best of my belief it was after
+turning the portrait in his hands that he nearly dropped from
+the chair.  The name, you know, was written on the back."
+
+"Quite so.  After all, it is impossible to come to any
+resolution in a case like this.  I hate melodrama, and nothing
+strikes me as more commonplace and tedious than the ordinary
+ghost story of commerce; but really, Villiers, it looks as if
+there were something very queer at the bottom of all this."
+
+The two men had, without noticing it, turned up Ashley
+Street, leading northward from Piccadilly.  It was a long
+street, and rather a gloomy one, but here and there a brighter
+taste had illuminated the dark houses with flowers, and gay
+curtains, and a cheerful paint on the doors.  Villiers glanced
+up as Austin stopped speaking, and looked at one of these
+houses; geraniums, red and white, drooped from every sill, and
+daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from each window.
+
+"It looks cheerful, doesn't it?" he said.
+
+"Yes, and the inside is still more cheery.  One of the
+pleasantest houses of the season, so I have heard.  I haven't
+been there myself, but I've met several men who have, and they
+tell me it's uncommonly jovial."
+
+"Whose house is it?"
+
+"A Mrs. Beaumont's."
+
+"And who is she?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you.  I have heard she comes from
+South America, but after all, who she is is of little
+consequence.  She is a very wealthy woman, there's no doubt of
+that, and some of the best people have taken her up.  I hear she
+has some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine, which must
+have cost a fabulous sum.  Lord Argentine was telling me about
+it; he was there last Sunday evening.  He assures me he has
+never tasted such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is an
+expert.  By the way, that reminds me, she must be an oddish sort
+of woman, this Mrs. Beaumont.  Argentine asked her how old the
+wine was, and what do you think she said?  'About a thousand
+years, I believe.' Lord Argentine thought she was chaffing him,
+you know, but when he laughed she said she was speaking quite
+seriously and offered to show him the jar.  Of course, he
+couldn't say anything more after that; but it seems rather
+antiquated for a beverage, doesn't it?  Why, here we are at my
+rooms.  Come in, won't you?"
+
+"Thanks, I think I will.  I haven't seen the
+curiosity-shop for a while."
+
+It was a room furnished richly, yet oddly, where every
+jar and bookcase and table, and every rug and jar and ornament
+seemed to be a thing apart, preserving each its own
+individuality.
+
+"Anything fresh lately?" said Villiers after a while.
+
+"No; I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn't you?
+I thought so.  I don't think I have come across anything for the
+last few weeks."
+
+Austin glanced around the room from cupboard to
+cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in search of some new oddity.
+His eyes fell at last on an odd chest, pleasantly and quaintly
+carved, which stood in a dark corner of the room.
+
+"Ah," he said, "I was forgetting, I have got something
+to show you." Austin unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto
+volume, laid it on the table, and resumed the cigar he had put
+down.
+
+"Did you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?"
+
+"A little; I met him two or three times at the house of
+a friend of mine.  What has become of him?  I haven't heard his
+name mentioned for some time."
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"You don't say so!  Quite young, wasn't he?"
+
+"Yes; only thirty when he died."
+
+"What did he die of?"
+
+"I don't know.  He was an intimate friend of mine, and
+a thoroughly good fellow.  He used to come here and talk to me
+for hours, and he was one of the best talkers I have met.  He
+could even talk about painting, and that's more than can be said
+of most painters.  About eighteen months ago he was feeling
+rather overworked, and partly at my suggestion he went off on a
+sort of roving expedition, with no very definite end or aim
+about it.  I believe New York was to be his first port, but I
+never heard from him.  Three months ago I got this book, with a
+very civil letter from an English doctor practising at Buenos
+Ayres, stating that he had attended the late Mr. Meyrick during
+his illness, and that the deceased had expressed an earnest wish
+that the enclosed packet should be sent to me after his death.
+That was all."
+
+"And haven't you written for further particulars?"
+
+"I have been thinking of doing so.  You would advise me
+to write to the doctor?"
+
+"Certainly.  And what about the book?"
+
+"It was sealed up when I got it.  I don't think the
+doctor had seen it."
+
+"It is something very rare?  Meyrick was a collector,
+perhaps?"
+
+"No, I think not, hardly a collector.  Now, what do you
+think of these Ainu jugs?"
+
+"They are peculiar, but I like them.  But aren't you
+going to show me poor Meyrick's legacy?"
+
+"Yes, yes, to be sure.  The fact is, it's rather a
+peculiar sort of thing, and I haven't shown it to any one.  I
+wouldn't say anything about it if I were you.  There it is."
+
+Villiers took the book, and opened it at haphazard.
+
+"It isn't a printed volume, then?" he said.
+
+"No.  It is a collection of drawings in black and white
+by my poor friend Meyrick."
+
+Villiers turned to the first page, it was blank; the
+second bore a brief inscription, which he read:
+
+
+Silet per diem universus, nec sine horrore secretus
+est; lucet nocturnis ignibus, chorus Aegipanum undique
+personatur: audiuntur et cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum
+per oram maritimam.
+
+
+On the third page was a design which made Villiers
+start and look up at Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of
+the window.  Villiers turned page after page, absorbed, in spite
+of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange
+monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard black
+and white.  The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced
+before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the
+mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards,
+by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before
+which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder.
+Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough,
+but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost
+closed the book.
+
+"Austin!"
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Do you know who that is?"
+
+It was a woman's face, alone on the white page.
+
+"Know who it is?  No, of course not."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"It is Mrs. Herbert."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I am perfectly sure of it.  Poor Meyrick!  He is one
+more chapter in her history."
+
+"But what do you think of the designs?"
+
+"They are frightful.  Lock the book up again, Austin.
+If I were you I would burn it; it must be a terrible companion
+even though it be in a chest."
+
+"Yes, they are singular drawings.  But I wonder what
+connection there could be between Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or
+what link between her and these designs?"
+
+"Ah, who can say?  It is possible that the matter may
+end here, and we shall never know, but in my own opinion this
+Helen Vaughan, or Mrs. Herbert, is only the beginning.  She
+will come back to London, Austin; depend on it, she will come
+back, and we shall hear more about her then.  I doubt it will
+be very pleasant news."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SUICIDES
+
+
+
+Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London
+Society.  At twenty he had been a poor man, decked with the
+surname of an illustrious family, but forced to earn a
+livelihood as best he could, and the most speculative of
+money-lenders would not have entrusted him with fifty pounds on
+the chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his
+poverty for a great fortune.  His father had been near enough to
+the fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings,
+but the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have
+obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the
+ecclesiastical estate.  Thus he fronted the world with no
+better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a younger
+son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to
+make a very tolerable fight of it.  At twenty-five Mr. Charles
+Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare
+with the world, but out of the seven who stood before him and
+the high places of his family three only remained.  These three,
+however, were "good lives," but yet not proof against the Zulu
+assegais and typhoid fever, and so one morning Aubernon woke up
+and found himself Lord Argentine, a man of thirty who had faced
+the difficulties of existence, and had conquered.  The situation
+amused him immensely, and he resolved that riches should be as
+pleasant to him as poverty had always been.  Argentine, after
+some little consideration, came to the conclusion that dining,
+regarded as a fine art, was perhaps the most amusing pursuit
+open to fallen humanity, and thus his dinners became famous in
+London, and an invitation to his table a thing covetously
+desired.  After ten years of lordship and dinners Argentine
+still declined to be jaded, still persisted in enjoying life,
+and by a kind of infection had become recognized as the cause of
+joy in others, in short, as the best of company.  His sudden and
+tragical death therefore caused a wide and deep sensation.
+People could scarcely believe it, even though the newspaper was
+before their eyes, and the cry of "Mysterious Death of a
+Nobleman" came ringing up from the street.  But there stood the
+brief paragraph: "Lord Argentine was found dead this morning by
+his valet under distressing circumstances.  It is stated that
+there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide,
+though no motive can be assigned for the act.  The deceased
+nobleman was widely known in society, and much liked for his
+genial manner and sumptuous hospitality.  He is succeeded by,"
+etc., etc.
+
+By slow degrees the details came to light, but the case
+still remained a mystery.  The chief witness at the inquest was
+the deceased's valet, who said that the night before his death
+Lord Argentine had dined with a lady of good position, whose
+named was suppressed in the newspaper reports.  At about eleven
+o'clock Lord Argentine had returned, and informed his man that
+he should not require his services till the next morning.  A
+little later the valet had occasion to cross the hall and was
+somewhat astonished to see his master quietly letting himself
+out at the front door.  He had taken off his evening clothes,
+and was dressed in a Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a
+low brown hat.  The valet had no reason to suppose that Lord
+Argentine had seen him, and though his master rarely kept late
+hours, thought little of the occurrence till the next morning,
+when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to nine as
+usual.  He received no answer, and, after knocking two or three
+times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine's body leaning
+forward at an angle from the bottom of the bed.  He found that
+his master had tied a cord securely to one of the short
+bed-posts, and, after making a running noose and slipping it
+round his neck, the unfortunate man must have resolutely fallen
+forward, to die by slow strangulation.  He was dressed in the
+light suit in which the valet had seen him go out, and the
+doctor who was summoned pronounced that life had been extinct
+for more than four hours.  All papers, letters, and so forth
+seemed in perfect order, and nothing was discovered which
+pointed in the most remote way to any scandal either great or
+small.  Here the evidence ended; nothing more could be
+discovered.  Several persons had been present at the
+dinner-party at which Lord Augustine had assisted, and to all
+these he seemed in his usual genial spirits.  The valet, indeed,
+said he thought his master appeared a little excited when he
+came home, but confessed that the alteration in his manner was
+very slight, hardly noticeable, indeed.  It seemed hopeless to
+seek for any clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had
+been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal mania was generally
+accepted.
+
+It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks,
+three more gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two
+others men of good position and ample means, perished miserably
+in the almost precisely the same manner.  Lord Swanleigh was
+found one morning in his dressing-room, hanging from a peg
+affixed to the wall, and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had
+chosen to die as Lord Argentine.  There was no explanation in
+either case; a few bald facts; a living man in the evening, and
+a body with a black swollen face in the morning.  The police
+had been forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or to
+explain the sordid murders of Whitechapel; but before the
+horrible suicides of Piccadilly and Mayfair they were
+dumbfoundered, for not even the mere ferocity which did duty as
+an explanation of the crimes of the East End, could be of
+service in the West. Each of these men who had resolved to die
+a tortured shameful death was rich, prosperous, and to all
+appearances in love with the world, and not the acutest
+research should ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in
+either case.  There was a horror in the air, and men looked at
+one another's faces when they met, each wondering whether the
+other was to be the victim of the fifth nameless tragedy.
+Journalists sought in vain for their scrapbooks for materials
+whereof to concoct reminiscent articles; and the morning paper
+was unfolded in many a house with a feeling of awe; no man knew
+when or where the next blow would light.
+
+A short while after the last of these terrible events,
+Austin came to see Mr. Villiers.  He was curious to know whether
+Villiers had succeeded in discovering any fresh traces of Mrs.
+Herbert, either through Clarke or by other sources, and he asked
+the question soon after he had sat down.
+
+"No," said Villiers, "I wrote to Clarke, but he remains
+obdurate, and I have tried other channels, but without any
+result.  I can't find out what became of Helen Vaughan after she
+left Paul Street, but I think she must have gone abroad.  But to
+tell the truth, Austin, I haven't paid much attention to the
+matter for the last few weeks; I knew poor Herries intimately,
+and his terrible death has been a great shock to me, a great
+shock."
+
+"I can well believe it," answered Austin gravely, "you
+know Argentine was a friend of mine.  If I remember rightly, we
+were speaking of him that day you came to my rooms."
+
+"Yes; it was in connection with that house in Ashley
+Street, Mrs. Beaumont's house.  You said something about
+Argentine's dining there."
+
+"Quite so.  Of course you know it was there Argentine
+dined the night before--before his death."
+
+"No, I had not heard that."
+
+"Oh, yes; the name was kept out of the papers to spare
+Mrs. Beaumont.  Argentine was a great favourite of hers, and it
+is said she was in a terrible state for sometime after."
+
+A curious look came over Villiers' face; he seemed
+undecided whether to speak or not.  Austin began again.
+
+"I never experienced such a feeling of horror as when I
+read the account of Argentine's death.  I didn't understand it
+at the time, and I don't now.  I knew him well, and it
+completely passes my understanding for what possible cause he
+--or any of the others for the matter of that--could have
+resolved in cold blood to die in such an awful manner.  You
+know how men babble away each other's characters in London, you
+may be sure any buried scandal or hidden skeleton would have
+been brought to light in such a case as this; but nothing of the
+sort has taken place.  As for the theory of mania, that is very
+well, of course, for the coroner's jury, but everybody knows
+that it's all nonsense.  Suicidal mania is not small-pox."
+
+Austin relapsed into gloomy silence.  Villiers sat
+silent, also, watching his friend.  The expression of
+indecision still fleeted across his face; he seemed as if
+weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the considerations he
+was resolving left him still silent.  Austin tried to shake off
+the remembrance of tragedies as hopeless and perplexed as the
+labyrinth of Daedalus, and began to talk in an indifferent voice
+of the more pleasant incidents and adventures of the season.
+
+"That Mrs. Beaumont," he said, "of whom we were
+speaking, is a great success; she has taken London almost by
+storm.  I met her the other night at Fulham's; she is really a
+remarkable woman."
+
+"You have met Mrs. Beaumont?"
+
+"Yes; she had quite a court around her.  She would be
+called very handsome, I suppose, and yet there is something
+about her face which I didn't like.  The features are exquisite,
+but the expression is strange.  And all the time I was looking
+at her, and afterwards, when I was going home, I had a curious
+feeling that very expression was in some way or another
+familiar to me."
+
+"You must have seen her in the Row."
+
+"No, I am sure I never set eyes on the woman before; it
+is that which makes it puzzling.  And to the best of my belief I
+have never seen anyone like her; what I felt was a kind of dim
+far-off memory, vague but persistent.  The only sensation I can
+compare it to, is that odd feeling one sometimes has in a dream,
+when fantastic cities and wondrous lands and phantom personages
+appear familiar and accustomed."
+
+Villiers nodded and glanced aimlessly round the room,
+possibly in search of something on which to turn the
+conversation.  His eyes fell on an old chest somewhat like that
+in which the artist's strange legacy lay hid beneath a Gothic
+scutcheon.
+
+"Have you written to the doctor about poor Meyrick?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yes; I wrote asking for full particulars as to his
+illness and death.  I don't expect to have an answer for
+another three weeks or a month.  I thought I might as well
+inquire whether Meyrick knew an Englishwoman named Herbert, and
+if so, whether the doctor could give me any information about
+her.  But it's very possible that Meyrick fell in with her at
+New York, or Mexico, or San Francisco; I have no idea as to the
+extent or direction of his travels."
+
+"Yes, and it's very possible that the woman may have
+more than one name."
+
+"Exactly.  I wish I had thought of asking you to lend
+me the portrait of her which you possess.  I might have enclosed
+it in my letter to Dr.  Matthews."
+
+"So you might; that never occurred to me.  We might
+send it now.  Hark! what are those boys calling?"
+
+While the two men had been talking together a confused
+noise of shouting had been gradually growing louder.  The noise
+rose from the eastward and swelled down Piccadilly, drawing
+nearer and nearer, a very torrent of sound; surging up streets
+usually quiet, and making every window a frame for a face,
+curious or excited.  The cries and voices came echoing up the
+silent street where Villiers lived, growing more distinct as
+they advanced, and, as Villiers spoke, an answer rang up from
+the pavement:
+
+"The West End Horrors; Another Awful Suicide; Full
+Details!"
+
+Austin rushed down the stairs and bought a paper and
+read out the paragraph to Villiers as the uproar in the street
+rose and fell.  The window was open and the air seemed full of
+noise and terror.
+
+"Another gentleman has fallen a victim to the terrible
+epidemic of suicide which for the last month has prevailed in
+the West End.  Mr. Sidney Crashaw, of Stoke House, Fulham, and
+King's Pomeroy, Devon, was found, after a prolonged search,
+hanging dead from the branch of a tree in his garden at one
+o'clock today.  The deceased gentleman dined last night at the
+Carlton Club and seemed in his usual health and spirits.  He
+left the club at about ten o'clock, and was seen walking
+leisurely up St. James's Street a little later.  Subsequent to
+this his movements cannot be traced.  On the discovery of the
+body medical aid was at once summoned, but life had evidently
+been long extinct.  So far as is known, Mr. Crashaw had no
+trouble or anxiety of any kind.  This painful suicide, it will
+be remembered, is the fifth of the kind in the last month.  The
+authorities at Scotland Yard are unable to suggest any
+explanation of these terrible occurrences."
+
+Austin put down the paper in mute horror.
+
+"I shall leave London to-morrow," he said, "it is a
+city of nightmares.  How awful this is, Villiers!"
+
+Mr. Villiers was sitting by the window quietly looking
+out into the street.  He had listened to the newspaper report
+attentively, and the hint of indecision was no longer on his
+face.
+
+"Wait a moment, Austin," he replied, "I have made up my
+mind to mention a little matter that occurred last night.  It
+stated, I think, that Crashaw was last seen alive in St.
+James's Street shortly after ten?"
+
+"Yes, I think so.  I will look again.  Yes, you are
+quite right."
+
+"Quite so.  Well, I am in a position to contradict that
+statement at all events.  Crashaw was seen after that;
+considerably later indeed."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because I happened to see Crashaw myself at about two
+o'clock this morning."
+
+"You saw Crashaw?  You, Villiers?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him quite distinctly; indeed, there were
+but a few feet between us."
+
+"Where, in Heaven's name, did you see him?"
+
+"Not far from here.  I saw him in Ashley Street.  He
+was just leaving a house."
+
+"Did you notice what house it was?"
+
+"Yes.  It was Mrs. Beaumont's."
+
+"Villiers!  Think what you are saying; there must be
+some mistake.  How could Crashaw be in Mrs. Beaumont's house at
+two o'clock in the morning?  Surely, surely, you must have been
+dreaming, Villiers; you were always rather fanciful."
+
+"No; I was wide awake enough.  Even if I had been
+dreaming as you say, what I saw would have roused me
+effectually."
+
+"What you saw?  What did you see?  Was there anything
+strange about Crashaw?  But I can't believe it; it is
+impossible."
+
+"Well, if you like I will tell you what I saw, or if
+you please, what I think I saw, and you can judge for yourself."
+
+"Very good, Villiers."
+
+The noise and clamour of the street had died away,
+though now and then the sound of shouting still came from the
+distance, and the dull, leaden silence seemed like the quiet
+after an earthquake or a storm.  Villiers turned from the window
+and began speaking.
+
+"I was at a house near Regent's Park last night, and
+when I came away the fancy took me to walk home instead of
+taking a hansom.  It was a clear pleasant night enough, and
+after a few minutes I had the streets pretty much to myself.
+It's a curious thing, Austin, to be alone in London at night,
+the gas-lamps stretching away in perspective, and the dead
+silence, and then perhaps the rush and clatter of a hansom on
+the stones, and the fire starting up under the horse's hoofs.
+I walked along pretty briskly, for I was feeling a little tired
+of being out in the night, and as the clocks were striking two
+I turned down Ashley Street, which, you know, is on my way.  It
+was quieter than ever there, and the lamps were fewer;
+altogether, it looked as dark and gloomy as a forest in winter.
+I had done about half the length of the street when I heard a
+door closed very softly, and naturally I looked up to see who
+was abroad like myself at such an hour.  As it happens, there
+is a street lamp close to the house in question, and I saw a man
+standing on the step.  He had just shut the door and his face
+was towards me, and I recognized Crashaw directly.  I never knew
+him to speak to, but I had often seen him, and I am positive
+that I was not mistaken in my man.  I looked into his face for a
+moment, and then--I will confess the truth--I set off at a
+good run, and kept it up till I was within my own door."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why?  Because it made my blood run cold to see that
+man's face.  I could never have supposed that such an infernal
+medley of passions could have glared out of any human eyes; I
+almost fainted as I looked.  I knew I had looked into the eyes
+of a lost soul, Austin, the man's outward form remained, but all
+hell was within it.  Furious lust, and hate that was like fire,
+and the loss of all hope and horror that seemed to shriek aloud
+to the night, though his teeth were shut; and the utter
+blackness of despair.  I am sure that he did not see me; he saw
+nothing that you or I can see, but what he saw I hope we never
+shall.  I do not know when he died; I suppose in an hour, or
+perhaps two, but when I passed down Ashley Street and heard the
+closing door, that man no longer belonged to this world; it was
+a devil's face I looked upon."
+
+There was an interval of silence in the room when
+Villiers ceased speaking.  The light was failing, and all the
+tumult of an hour ago was quite hushed.  Austin had bent his
+head at the close of the story, and his hand covered his eyes.
+
+"What can it mean?" he said at length.
+
+"Who knows, Austin, who knows?  It's a black business,
+but I think we had better keep it to ourselves, for the present
+at any rate.  I will see if I cannot learn anything about that
+house through private channels of information, and if I do light
+upon anything I will let you know."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO
+
+
+
+Three weeks later Austin received a note from Villiers,
+asking him to call either that afternoon or the next.  He chose
+the nearer date, and found Villiers sitting as usual by the
+window, apparently lost in meditation on the drowsy traffic of
+the street.  There was a bamboo table by his side, a fantastic
+thing, enriched with gilding and queer painted scenes, and on it
+lay a little pile of papers arranged and docketed as neatly as
+anything in Mr. Clarke's office.
+
+"Well, Villiers, have you made any discoveries in the
+last three weeks?"
+
+"I think so; I have here one or two memoranda which
+struck me as singular, and there is a statement to which I
+shall call your attention."
+
+"And these documents relate to Mrs. Beaumont?  It was
+really Crashaw whom you saw that night standing on the doorstep
+of the house in Ashley Street?"
+
+"As to that matter my belief remains unchanged, but
+neither my inquiries nor their results have any special relation
+to Crashaw.  But my investigations have had a strange issue.  I
+have found out who Mrs. Beaumont is!"
+
+"Who is she?  In what way do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you and I know her better under another
+name."
+
+"What name is that?"
+
+"Herbert."
+
+"Herbert!"  Austin repeated the word, dazed with
+astonishment.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of
+earlier adventures unknown to me.  You had reason to recognize
+the expression of her face; when you go home look at the face
+in Meyrick's book of horrors, and you will know the sources of
+your recollection."
+
+"And you have proof of this?"
+
+"Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or
+shall we say Mrs. Herbert?"
+
+"Where did you see her?"
+
+"Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady
+who lives in Ashley Street, Piccadilly.  I saw her entering a
+house in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in
+Soho.  In fact, I had made an appointment, though not with her,
+and she was precise to both time and place."
+
+"All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it
+incredible.  You must remember, Villiers, that I have seen this
+woman, in the ordinary adventure of London society, talking and
+laughing, and sipping her coffee in a commonplace drawing-room
+with commonplace people.  But you know what you are saying."
+
+"I do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises
+or fancies.  It was with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan
+that I searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark waters of the
+life of London, but such has been the issue."
+
+"You must have been in strange places, Villiers."
+
+"Yes, I have been in very strange places.  It would
+have been useless, you know, to go to Ashley Street, and ask
+Mrs. Beaumont to give me a short sketch of her previous
+history.  No; assuming, as I had to assume, that her record was
+not of the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that at some
+previous time she must have moved in circles not quite so
+refined as her present ones.  If you see mud at the top of a
+stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom.  I went
+to the bottom.  I have always been fond of diving into Queer
+Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that
+locality and its inhabitants very useful.  It is, perhaps,
+needless to say that my friends had never heard the name of
+Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite
+unable to describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect
+way.  The people there know me; I have been able to do some of
+them a service now and again, so they made no difficulty about
+giving their information; they were aware I had no
+communication direct or indirect with Scotland Yard.  I had to
+cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted,
+and when I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it
+was my fish.  But I listened to what I was told out of a
+constitutional liking for useless information, and I found
+myself in possession of a very curious story, though, as I
+imagined, not the story I was looking for.  It was to this
+effect.  Some five or six years ago, a woman named Raymond
+suddenly made her appearance in the neighbourhood to which I am
+referring.  She was described to me as being quite young,
+probably not more than seventeen or eighteen, very handsome,
+and looking as if she came from the country.  I should be wrong
+in saying that she found her level in going to this particular
+quarter, or associating with these people, for from what I was
+told, I should think the worst den in London far too good for
+her.  The person from whom I got my information, as you may
+suppose, no great Puritan, shuddered and grew sick in telling
+me of the nameless infamies which were laid to her charge.
+After living there for a year, or perhaps a little more, she
+disappeared as suddenly as she came, and they saw nothing of
+her till about the time of the Paul Street case.  At first she
+came to her old haunts only occasionally, then more frequently,
+and finally took up her abode there as before, and remained for
+six or eight months.  It's of no use my going into details as
+to the life that woman led; if you want particulars you can
+look at Meyrick's legacy.  Those designs were not drawn from
+his imagination.  She again disappeared, and the people of the
+place saw nothing of her till a few months ago.  My informant
+told me that she had taken some rooms in a house which he
+pointed out, and these rooms she was in the habit of visiting
+two or three times a week and always at ten in the morning.  I
+was led to expect that one of these visits would be paid on a
+certain day about a week ago, and I accordingly managed to be
+on the look-out in company with my cicerone at a quarter to
+ten, and the hour and the lady came with equal punctuality.  My
+friend and I were standing under an archway, a little way back
+from the street, but she saw us, and gave me a glance that I
+shall be long in forgetting.  That look was quite enough for me;
+I knew Miss Raymond to be Mrs. Herbert; as for Mrs. Beaumont
+she had quite gone out of my head.  She went into the house,
+and I watched it till four o'clock, when she came out, and then
+I followed her.  It was a long chase, and I had to be very
+careful to keep a long way in the background, and yet not lose
+sight of the woman.  She took me down to the Strand, and then
+to Westminster, and then up St. James's Street, and along
+Piccadilly.  I felt queerish when I saw her turn up Ashley
+Street; the thought that Mrs. Herbert was Mrs. Beaumont came
+into my mind, but it seemed too impossible to be true.  I
+waited at the corner, keeping my eye on her all the time, and I
+took particular care to note the house at which she stopped.
+It was the house with the gay curtains, the home of flowers, the
+house out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself in
+his garden.  I was just going away with my discovery, when I
+saw an empty carriage come round and draw up in front of the
+house, and I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Herbert was going
+out for a drive, and I was right.  There, as it happened, I met
+a man I know, and we stood talking together a little distance
+from the carriage-way, to which I had my back.  We had not been
+there for ten minutes when my friend took off his hat, and I
+glanced round and saw the lady I had been following all day.
+'Who is that?' I said, and his answer was 'Mrs. Beaumont; lives
+in Ashley Street.'  Of course there could be no doubt after
+that.  I don't know whether she saw me, but I don't think she
+did.  I went home at once, and, on consideration, I thought that
+I had a sufficiently good case with which to go to Clarke."
+
+"Why to Clarke?"
+
+"Because I am sure that Clarke is in possession of
+facts about this woman, facts of which I know nothing."
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+Mr. Villiers leaned back in his chair and looked
+reflectively at Austin for a moment before he answered:
+
+"My idea was that Clarke and I should call on Mrs.
+Beaumont."
+
+"You would never go into such a house as that?  No, no,
+Villiers, you cannot do it.  Besides, consider; what result..."
+
+"I will tell you soon.  But I was going to say that my
+information does not end here; it has been completed in an
+extraordinary manner.
+
+"Look at this neat little packet of manuscript; it is
+paginated, you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry
+of a ribbon of red tape.  It has almost a legal air, hasn't it?
+Run your eye over it, Austin.  It is an account of the
+entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests.
+The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do not
+think he will live many years.  The doctors tell him he must
+have sustained some severe shock to the nerves."
+
+Austin took the manuscript, but never read it.  Opening
+the neat pages at haphazard his eye was caught by a word and a
+phrase that followed it; and, sick at heart, with white lips and
+a cold sweat pouring like water from his temples, he flung the
+paper down.
+
+"Take it away, Villiers, never speak of this again.
+Are you made of stone, man?  Why, the dread and horror of death
+itself, the thoughts of the man who stands in the keen morning
+air on the black platform, bound, the bell tolling in his ears,
+and waits for the harsh rattle of the bolt, are as nothing
+compared to this.  I will not read it; I should never sleep
+again."
+
+"Very good.  I can fancy what you saw.  Yes; it is
+horrible enough; but after all, it is an old story, an old
+mystery played in our day, and in dim London streets instead of
+amidst the vineyards and the olive gardens.  We know what
+happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and
+those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of
+something, not of nothing.  It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol
+beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most
+awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things;
+forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and
+blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current.
+Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be
+imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most
+of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale.
+But you and I, at all events, have known something of the
+terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested
+under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself
+a form.  Oh, Austin, how can it be?  How is it that the very
+sunlight does not turn to blackness before this thing, the hard
+earth melt and boil beneath such a burden?"
+
+Villiers was pacing up and down the room, and the beads
+of sweat stood out on his forehead.  Austin sat silent for a
+while, but Villiers saw him make a sign upon his breast.
+
+"I say again, Villiers, you will surely never enter
+such a house as that?  You would never pass out alive."
+
+"Yes, Austin, I shall go out alive--I, and Clarke
+with me."
+
+What do you mean?  You cannot, you would not dare..."
+
+"Wait a moment.  The air was very pleasant and fresh
+this morning; there was a breeze blowing, even through this dull
+street, and I thought I would take a walk.  Piccadilly stretched
+before me a clear, bright vista, and the sun flashed on the
+carriages and on the quivering leaves in the park.  It was a
+joyous morning, and men and women looked at the sky and smiled
+as they went about their work or their pleasure, and the wind
+blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse.  But
+somehow or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and
+found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where
+there seemed to be no sunshine and no air, and where the few
+foot-passengers loitered as they walked, and hung indecisively
+about corners and archways.  I walked along, hardly knowing
+where I was going or what I did there, but feeling impelled, as
+one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of
+reaching some unknown goal.  Thus I forged up the street, noting
+the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the
+incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets,
+newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one
+another in the short compass of a single window.  I think it was
+a cold shudder that suddenly passed through me that first told
+me that I had found what I wanted.  I looked up from the
+pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above which the
+lettering had faded, where the red bricks of two hundred years
+ago had grimed to black; where the windows had gathered to
+themselves the dust of winters innumerable.  I saw what I
+required; but I think it was five minutes before I had steadied
+myself and could walk in and ask for it in a cool voice and with
+a calm face.  I think there must even then have been a tremor in
+my words, for the old man who came out of the back parlour, and
+fumbled slowly amongst his goods, looked oddly at me as he tied
+the parcel.  I paid what he asked, and stood leaning by the
+counter, with a strange reluctance to take up my goods and go.
+I asked about the business, and learnt that trade was bad and
+the profits cut down sadly; but then the street was not what it
+was before traffic had been diverted, but that was done forty
+years ago, 'just before my father died,' he said.  I got away at
+last, and walked along sharply; it was a dismal street indeed,
+and I was glad to return to the bustle and the noise.  Would you
+like to see my purchase?"
+
+Austin said nothing, but nodded his head slightly; he
+still looked white and sick.  Villiers pulled out a drawer in
+the bamboo table, and showed Austin a long coil of cord, hard
+and new; and at one end was a running noose.
+
+"It is the best hempen cord," said Villiers, "just as
+it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me.  Not an
+inch of jute from end to end."
+
+Austin set his teeth hard, and stared at Villiers,
+growing whiter as he looked.
+
+"You would not do it," he murmured at last. "You would
+not have blood on your hands.  My God!" he exclaimed, with
+sudden vehemence, "you cannot mean this, Villiers, that you will
+make yourself a hangman?"
+
+"No.  I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan
+alone with this cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes.  If
+when we go in it is not done, I shall call the nearest
+policeman.  That is all."
+
+"I must go now.  I cannot stay here any longer; I
+cannot bear this.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, Austin."
+
+The door shut, but in a moment it was open again, and
+Austin stood, white and ghastly, in the entrance.
+
+"I was forgetting," he said, "that I too have something
+to tell.  I have received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos
+Ayres.  He says that he attended Meyrick for three weeks before
+his death."
+
+"And does he say what carried him off in the prime of
+life?  It was not fever?"
+
+"No, it was not fever.  According to the doctor, it was
+an utter collapse of the whole system, probably caused by some
+severe shock.  But he states that the patient would tell him
+nothing, and that he was consequently at some disadvantage in
+treating the case."
+
+"Is there anything more?"
+
+"Yes.  Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: 'I think
+this is all the information I can give you about your poor
+friend.  He had not been long in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely
+any one, with the exception of a person who did not bear the
+best of characters, and has since left--a Mrs. Vaughan.'"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE FRAGMENTS
+
+
+
+[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr.
+Robert Matheson, of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died
+suddenly, of apoplectic seizure, at the beginning of 1892, a
+leaf of manuscript paper was found, covered with pencil
+jottings.  These notes were in Latin, much abbreviated, and had
+evidently been made in great haste.  The MS. was only
+deciphered with difficulty, and some words have up to the
+present time evaded all the efforts of the expert employed.
+The date, "XXV Jul. 1888," is written on the right-hand
+corner of the MS.  The following is a translation of Dr.
+Matheson's manuscript.]
+
+"Whether science would benefit by these brief notes if
+they could be published, I do not know, but rather doubt.  But
+certainly I shall never take the responsibility of publishing or
+divulging one word of what is here written, not only on account
+of my oath given freely to those two persons who were present,
+but also because the details are too abominable.  It is probably
+that, upon mature consideration, and after weighting the good
+and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper, or at least leave
+it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his discretion, to
+use it or to burn it, as he may think fit.
+
+"As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge
+suggested to make sure that I was suffering under no delusion.
+At first astounded, I could hardly think, but in a minute's time
+I was sure that my pulse was steady and regular, and that I was
+in my real and true senses.  I then fixed my eyes quietly on
+what was before me.
+
+"Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me,
+and an odour of corruption choked my breath, I remained firm.
+I was then privileged or accursed, I dare not say which, to see
+that which was on the bed, lying there black like ink,
+transformed before my eyes.  The skin, and the flesh, and the
+muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the human
+body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as
+adamant, began to melt and dissolve.
+
+"I know that the body may be separated into its
+elements by external agencies, but I should have refused to
+believe what I saw.  For here there was some internal force, of
+which I knew nothing, that caused dissolution and change.
+
+"Here too was all the work by which man had been made
+repeated before my eyes.  I saw the form waver from sex to sex,
+dividing itself from itself, and then again reunited.  Then I
+saw the body descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that
+which was on the heights go down to the depths, even to the
+abyss of all being.  The principle of life, which makes
+organism, always remained, while the outward form changed.
+
+"The light within the room had turned to blackness, not
+the darkness of night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I
+could see clearly and without difficulty.  But it was the
+negation of light; objects were presented to my eyes, if I may
+say so, without any medium, in such a manner that if there had
+been a prism in the room I should have seen no colours
+represented in it.
+
+"I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance
+as jelly.  Then the ladder was ascended again... [here the MS.
+is illegible] ...for one instance I saw a Form, shaped in
+dimness before me, which I will not farther describe.  But the
+symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculptures, and in
+paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul to be spoken
+of... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor
+beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.
+
+"I who saw all this, not without great horror and
+loathing of soul, here write my name, declaring all that I have
+set on this paper to be true.
+
+"ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr."
+
+*       *       *
+
+...Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what
+I have seen.  The burden of it was too heavy for me to bear
+alone, and yet I could tell it to none but you.  Villiers, who
+was with me at the last, knows nothing of that awful secret of
+the wood, of how what we both saw die, lay upon the smooth,
+sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun and half in
+shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and summoned
+those companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we
+tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which we can
+only name under a figure.  I would not tell Villiers of this,
+nor of that resemblance, which struck me as with a blow upon my
+heart, when I saw the portrait, which filled the cup of terror
+at the end.  What this can mean I dare not guess.  I know that
+what I saw perish was not Mary, and yet in the last agony Mary's
+eyes looked into mine.  Whether there can be any one who can
+show the last link in this chain of awful mystery, I do not
+know, but if there be any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are
+the man.  And if you know the secret, it rests with you to tell
+it or not, as you please.
+
+I am writing this letter to you immediately on my
+getting back to town.  I have been in the country for the last
+few days; perhaps you may be able to guess in which part.  While
+the horror and wonder of London was at its height--for "Mrs.
+Beaumont," as I have told you, was well known in society--I
+wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief outline, or
+rather hint, of what happened, and asking him to tell me the
+name of the village where the events he had related to me
+occurred.  He gave me the name, as he said with the less
+hesitation, because Rachel's father and mother were dead, and
+the rest of the family had gone to a relative in the State of
+Washington six months before.  The parents, he said, had
+undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by the terrible
+death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that death.
+On the evening of the day which I received Phillips' letter I was
+at Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls,
+white with the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over
+the meadow where once had stood the older temple of the "God of
+the Deeps," and saw a house gleaming in the sunlight.  It was
+the house where Helen had lived.  I stayed at Caermaen for
+several days.  The people of the place, I found, knew little and
+had guessed less.  Those whom I spoke to on the matter seemed
+surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to be)
+should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a
+very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told
+nothing of what I knew.  Most of my time was spent in the great
+wood that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside,
+and goes down to the river in the valley; such another long
+lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer
+night, walking to and fro before your house.  For many an hour I
+strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right and
+now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth,
+shadowy and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting
+beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf of a clearing where
+the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the wind and
+mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour
+is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense
+and corruption.  I stood at the edges of the wood, gazing at all
+the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering amidst the
+bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond them
+into deep thickets of close undergrowth where springs boil up
+from the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and evil.  But
+in all my wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not
+till yesterday that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and
+stood upon the ancient Roman road that threads the highest ridge
+of the wood.  Here they had walked, Helen and Rachel, along this
+quiet causeway, upon the pavement of green turf, shut in on
+either side by high banks of red earth, and tall hedges of
+shining beech, and here I followed in their steps, looking out,
+now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing on one
+side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left,
+and sinking into the broad level, and beyond, the yellow sea,
+and the land over the sea.  On the other side was the valley and
+the river and hill following hill as wave on wave, and wood and
+meadow, and cornfield, and white houses gleaming, and a great
+wall of mountain, and far blue peaks in the north.  And so at
+least I came to the place.  The track went up a gentle slope,
+and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick
+undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into
+the distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat.  And into
+this pleasant summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it,
+who shall say what?  I did not stay long there.
+
+In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum,
+containing for the most part Roman remains which have been
+found in the neighbourhood at various times.  On the day after
+my arrival in Caermaen I walked over to the town in question,
+and took the opportunity of inspecting the museum.  After I had
+seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins, rings, coins,
+and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place contains,
+I was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had been
+recently discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking,
+and, as I found on inquiry, in that open space where the Roman
+road broadens out.  On one side of the pillar was an
+inscription, of which I took a note.  Some of the letters have
+been defaced, but I do not think there can be any doubt as to
+those which I supply.  The inscription is as follows:
+
+        DEVOMNODENTi
+        FLAvIVSSENILISPOSSvit
+        PROPTERNVPtias
+        quaSVIDITSVBVMra
+
+"To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or
+Abyss) Flavius Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the
+marriage which he saw beneath the shade."
+
+The custodian of the museum informed me that local
+antiquaries were much puzzled, not by the inscription, or by
+any difficulty in translating it, but as to the circumstance or
+rite to which allusion is made.
+
+*       *       *
+
+...And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me
+about Helen Vaughan, whom you say you saw die under
+circumstances of the utmost and almost incredible horror.  I
+was interested in your account, but a good deal, nay all, of
+what you told me I knew already.  I can understand the strange
+likeness you remarked in both the portrait and in the actual
+face; you have seen Helen's mother.  You remember that still
+summer night so many years ago, when I talked to you of the
+world beyond the shadows, and of the god Pan.  You remember
+Mary.  She was the mother of Helen Vaughan, who was born nine
+months after that night.
+
+Mary never recovered her reason.  She lay, as you saw
+her, all the while upon her bed, and a few days after the child
+was born she died.  I fancy that just at the last she knew me; I
+was standing by the bed, and the old look came into her eyes for
+a second, and then she shuddered and groaned and died.  It was
+an ill work I did that night when you were present; I broke open
+the door of the house of life, without knowing or caring what
+might pass forth or enter in.  I recollect your telling me at
+the time, sharply enough, and rightly too, in one sense, that I
+had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment,
+based on an absurd theory.  You did well to blame me, but my
+theory was not all absurdity.  What I said Mary would see she
+saw, but I forgot that no human eyes can look on such a sight
+with impunity.  And I forgot, as I have just said, that when the
+house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for
+which we have no name, and human flesh may become the veil of a
+horror one dare not express.  I played with energies which I did
+not understand, you have seen the ending of it.  Helen Vaughan
+did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the
+death was horrible.  The blackened face, the hideous form upon
+the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to
+man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast, all
+the strange horror that you witness, surprises me but little.
+What you say the doctor whom you sent for saw and shuddered at I
+noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the moment the child
+was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I surprised
+it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you may
+guess of what kind.  It was for me a constant, an incarnate
+horror, and after a few years I felt I could bear it no more,
+and I sent Helen Vaughan away.  You know now what frightened the
+boy in the wood.  The rest of the strange story, and all else
+that you tell me, as discovered by your friend, I have contrived
+to learn from time to time, almost to the last chapter.  And now
+Helen is with her companions...
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Great God Pan
+
+
+
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