Dracula's Guest
have become sentient in a way that would have satisfied the Pantheistic
souls of Philo or Spinoza. The lower chamber where we entered was
seemingly, in its normal state, filled with incarnate darkness; even
the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed to be lost in the
vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the masonry rough as when
the builder’s scaffolding had come down, but coated with dust and
marked here and there with patches of dark stain which, if walls could
speak, could have given their own dread memories of fear and pain. We
were glad to pass up the dusty wooden staircase, the custodian leaving
the outer door open to light us somewhat on our way; for to our eyes
the one long-wick’d, evil-smelling candle stuck in a sconce on the wall
gave an inadequate light. When we came up through the open trap in the
corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia held on to me so tightly that I
could actually feel her heart beat. I must say for my own part that I
was not surprised at her fear, for this room was even more gruesome
than that below. Here there was certainly more light, but only just
sufficient to realise the horrible surroundings of the place. The
builders of the tower had evidently intended that only they who should
gain the top should have any of the joys of light and prospect. There,
as we had noticed from below, were ranges of windows, albeit of
mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a very few
narrow slits such as were habitual in places of mediaeval defence. A
few of these only lit the chamber, and these so high up in the wall
that from no part could the sky be seen through the thickness of the
walls. In racks, and leaning in disorder against the walls, were a
number of headsmen’s swords, great double-handed weapons with broad
blade and keen edge. Hard by were several blocks whereon the necks of
the victims had lain, with here and there deep notches where the steel
had bitten through the guard of flesh and shored into the wood. Round
the chamber, placed in all sorts of irregular ways, were many
implements of torture which made one’s heart ache to see—chairs full of
spikes which gave instant and excruciating pain; chairs and couches
with dull knobs whose torture was seemingly less, but which, though
slower, were equally efficacious; racks, belts, boots, gloves, collars,
all made for compressing at will; steel baskets in which the head could
be slowly crushed into a pulp if necessary; watchmen’s hooks with long
handle and knife that cut at resistance—this a speciality of the old
Nurnberg police system; and many, many other devices for man’s injury
to man. Amelia grew quite pale with the horror of the things, but
fortunately did not faint, for being a little overcome she sat down on
a torture chair, but jumped up again with a shriek, all tendency to
faint gone. We both pretended that it was the injury done to her dress
by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had upset her, and
Mr. Hutcheson acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a
kind-hearted laugh.
But the central object in the whole of this chamber of horrors was the
engine known as the Iron Virgin, which stood near the centre of the
room. It was a rudely-shaped figure of a woman, something of the bell
order, or, to make a closer comparison, of the figure of Mrs. Noah in
the children’s Ark, but without that slimness of waist and perfect
_rondeur_ of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah family. One
would hardly have recognised it as intended for a human figure at all
had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a
woman’s face. This machine was coated with rust without, and covered
with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure,
about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through a pulley,
fastened on the wooden pillar which sustained the flooring above. The
custodian pulling this rope showed that a section of the front was
hinged like a door at one side; we then saw that the engine was of
considerable thickness, leaving just room enough inside for a man to be
placed. The door was of equal thickness and of great weight, for it
took the custodian all his strength, aided though he was by the
contrivance of the pulley, to open it. This weight was partly due to
the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its
weight downwards, so that it might shut of its own accord when the
strain was released. The inside was honeycombed with rust—nay more, the
rust alone that comes through time would hardly have eaten so deep into
the iron walls; the rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed! It was
only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the door that the
diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several long
spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the points,
placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper
ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart
and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this time she
fainted dead off, and I had to carry her down the stairs, and place her
on a bench outside till she recovered. That she felt it to the quick
was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears to this day a
rude birthmark on his breast, which has, by family consent, been
accepted as representing the Nurnberg Virgin.
When we got back to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the
Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophising, and now gave us the
benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium.
“Wall, I guess I’ve been learnin’ somethin’ here while madam has been
gettin’ over her faint. “Pears to me that we’re a long way behind the
times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the plains
that the Injun could give us points in tryin’ to make a man
uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party could
raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on the
squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him.
The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the edges
air eaten out by what uster be on them. It’d be a good thing for our
Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to send
round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin’ out of the bucks,
and the squaws too, by showing them as how old civilisation lays over
them at their best. Guess but I’ll get in that box a minute jest to see
how it feels!”
“Oh no! no!” said Amelia. “It is too terrible!”
“Guess, ma’am, nothin’s too terrible to the explorin’ mind. I’ve been
in some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse
while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory—an’ another
time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war path
an’ I didn’t keer to leave my kyard on them. I’ve been two days in a
caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an’ was
one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson what
slid over on her side when we was settin’ the foundations of the
Buffalo Bridge. I’ve not funked an odd experience yet, an’ I don’t
propose to begin now!”
We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: “Well, hurry up,
old man, and get through it quick!”
“All right, General,” said he, “but I calculate we ain’t quite ready
yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister,
didn’t volunteer for the office—not much! And I guess there was some
ornamental tyin’ up before the big stroke was made. I want to go into
this thing fair and square, so I must get fixed up proper first. I dare
say this old galoot can rise some string and tie me up accordin’ to
sample?”
This was said interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter, who
understood the drift of his speech, though perhaps not appreciating to
the full the niceties of dialect and imagery, shook his head. His
protest was, however, only formal and made to be overcome. The American
thrust a gold piece into his hand, saying: “Take it, pard! it’s your
pot; and don’t be skeer’d. This ain’t no necktie party that you’re
asked to assist in!” He produced some thin frayed rope and proceeded to
bind our companion with sufficient strictness for the purpose. When the
upper part of his body was bound, Hutcheson said:
“Hold on a moment, Judge. Guess I’m too heavy for you to tote into the
canister. You jest let me walk in, and then you can wash up regardin’
my legs!”
Whilst speaking he had backed himself into the opening which was just
enough to hold him. It was a close fit and no mistake. Amelia looked on
with fear in her eyes, but she evidently did not like to say anything.
Then the custodian completed his task by tying the American’s feet
together so that he was now absolutely helpless and fixed in his
voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the incipient smile
which was habitual to his face blossomed into actuality as he said:
“Guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf! There ain’t
much room for a full-grown citizen of the United States to hustle. We
uster make our coffins more roomier in Idaho territory. Now, Judge, you
jest begin to let this door down, slow, on to me. I want to feel the
same pleasure as the other jays had when those spikes began to move
toward their eyes!”
“Oh no! no! no!” broke in Amelia hysterically. “It is too terrible! I
can’t bear to see it!—I can’t! I can’t!” But the American was obdurate.
“Say, Colonel,” said he, “why not take Madame for a little promenade? I
wouldn’t hurt her feelin’s for the world; but now that I am here,
havin’ kem eight thousand miles, wouldn’t it be too hard to give up the
very experience I’ve been pinin’ an’ pantin’ fur? A man can’t get to
feel like canned goods every time! Me and the Judge here’ll fix up this
thing in no time, an’ then you’ll come back, an’ we’ll all laugh
together!”
Once more the resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and
Amelia stayed holding tight to my arm and shivering whilst the
custodian began to slacken slowly inch by inch the rope that held back
the iron door. Hutcheson’s face was positively radiant as his eyes
followed the first movement of the spikes.
“Wall!” he said, “I guess I’ve not had enjoyment like this since I left
Noo York. Bar a scrap with a French sailor at Wapping—an’ that warn’t
much of a picnic neither—I’ve not had a show fur real pleasure in this
dod-rotted Continent, where there ain’t no b’ars nor no Injuns, an’
wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don’t you rush this
business! I want a show for my money this game—I du!”
The custodian must have had in him some of the blood of his
predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he worked the engine with a
deliberate and excruciating slowness which after five minutes, in which
the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches, began to
overcome Amelia. I saw her lips whiten, and felt her hold upon my arm
relax. I looked around an instant for a place whereon to lay her, and
when I looked at her again found that her eye had become fixed on the
side of the Virgin. Following its direction I saw the black cat
crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like danger lamps in the
gloom of the place, and their colour was heightened by the blood which
still smeared her coat and reddened her mouth. I cried out:
“The cat! look out for the cat!” for even then she sprang out before
the engine. At this moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her eyes
blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out till she seemed twice her
normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger’s when the
quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused, and
his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said: