Tales of terror
sentiment, but the loss of the baby mite has hit me hard. Still,
Maude is left to me, and she is such a splendid woman, that I ought
to feel I am more than blest.’
This was the last letter I ever received from Jack, but his wife wrote
at odd times. Hers were merely gossipy little chronicles of passing
events, and singularly enough she never alluded to her husband,
although she wrote in a light, happy vein. This set me wondering, and
when I answered her I never failed to inquire about her husband. I
continued to receive letters from her, though at long intervals, down
to the month of my departure from America, two years later.
I arrived in London in the winter, and an awful winter it was. London
was indeed a city of dreadful night. Gloom and fog were everywhere.
Everybody one met looked miserable and despondent. Into the public
houses and gin palaces such of the poor as could scratch a few pence
together crowded for the sake of the warmth and light. But in the
streets sights were to be seen which made one doubt if civilisation
is the blessing we are asked to believe it. Starving men, women and
children, soaked and sodden with the soot-laden fog, prowled about
in the vain hope of finding food and shelter. But the well-to-do
passed them with indifference, too intent on their own affairs, and
too wrapped in self-interests to bestow thought upon the great city’s
pariahs.
Immediately after my arrival I penned a brief note to Jack Redcar,
giving him my address, and saying I would take an early opportunity of
calling, as I was longing to feel once more the hearty, honest grip of
his handshake. A week later a note was put into my hand as I was in the
very act of going out to keep an appointment in the city. Recognising
Mrs. Redcar’s handwriting I tore open the envelope, and read, with what
feelings may be best imagined, the following lines:--
‘For God’s sake come and see me at once. I am heartbroken and am
going mad. You are the only friend in the world to whom I feel I can
appeal. Come to me, in the name of pity.
‘MAUDE REDCAR.’
I absolutely staggered as I read these brief lines, which were so
pregnant with mystery, sorrow, and hopelessness. What did it all mean?
To me it was like a burst of thunder from a cloudless summer sky.
Something was wrong, that was certain; what that something was I could
only vaguely guess at. But I resolved not to remain long in suspense.
I put off my engagement, important as it was, and hailing a hansom
directed the driver to go to Hampstead, where the Redcars had their
residence.
The house was detached and stood in about two acres of ground, and I
could imagine it being a little Paradise in brilliant summer weather;
but it seemed now in the winter murk, as if a heavy pall of sorrow and
anguish enveloped it.
I was shown into an exquisitely furnished drawing-room by an old and
ill-favoured woman, who answered my knock at the door. She gave me the
impression that she was a sullen, deceptive creature, and I was at a
loss to understand how such a woman could have found service with my
friends--the bright and happy friends of three years ago. When I handed
her my card to convey to Mrs. Redcar she impertinently turned it over,
and scrutinised it, and fixed her cold bleared grey eyes on me, so that
I was induced to say peremptorily, ‘Will you be good enough to go to
your mistress at once and announce my arrival?’
‘I ain’t got no mistress,’ she growled. ‘I’ve got a master’; and with
this cryptic utterance she left the room.
I waited a quarter of an hour, then the door was abruptly opened, and
there stood before me Mrs. Redcar, but not the bright, sweet, radiant
little woman of old. A look of premature age was in her face. Her eyes
were red with weeping, and had a frightened, hunted expression. I
was so astounded that I stood for a moment like one dumbfounded; but
as Mrs. Redcar seized my hand and shook it, she gasped in a nervous,
spasmodic way:
‘Thank God, you have come! My last hope is in you.’
Then, completely overcome by emotion, she burst into hysterical
sobbing, and covered her face with her handkerchief.
My astonishment was still so great, the unexpected had so completely
paralysed me for the moment, that I seemed incapable of action. But of
course this spell quickly passed, and I regained my self-possession.
‘How is it I find this change?’ I asked. It was a natural question, and
the first my brain shaped.
‘It’s the work of a malignant fiend,’ she sobbed.
This answer only deepened the mystery, and I began to think that
perhaps she was literally mad. Then suddenly, as if she divined my
thoughts, she drew her handkerchief from her face, motioned me to be
seated, and literally flung herself on to a couch.
‘It’s an awful story,’ she said, in a hoarse, hollow voice, ‘and I look
to you, and appeal to you, and pray to you to help me.’
‘You can rely upon my doing anything that lies in my power,’ I
answered. ‘But tell me your trouble. How is Jack? Where is he?’
‘In her arms, probably,’ she exclaimed between her teeth; and she
twisted her handkerchief up rope-wise and dragged it backward and
forward through her hand with an excess of desperate, nervous energy.
Her answer gave me a keynote. She had become a jealous and embittered
woman. Jack had swerved from the path of honour, and allowed himself
to be charmed by other eyes to the neglect of this woman whom he
had described to me as being angelic. Although her beauty was now a
little marred by tears and sorrow, she was still very beautiful and
attractive, and had she been so disposed she might have taken an army
of men captive. She saw by the expression on my face that her remark
was not an enigma to me, and she added quickly: ‘Oh, yes, it’s true,
and I look to you, doctor, to help me. It is an awful, dreadful story,
but, mind you, I don’t blame Jack so much; he is not master of himself.
This diabolical creature has enslaved him. She is like the creatures
of old that one reads about. She is in possession of some devilish
power which enables her to destroy men body and soul.’
‘Good God! this is awful,’ I involuntarily ejaculated; for I was aghast
and horror-stricken at the revelation. Could it be possible that my
brilliant friend, who had won golden opinions from all sorts and
conditions of men, had fallen from his pedestal to wallow in the mire
of sinfulness and deception.
‘It is awful,’ answered Mrs. Redcar. ‘I tell you, doctor, there is
something uncanny about the whole business. The woman is an unnatural
woman. She is a she-devil. And from my heart I pity and sorrow for my
poor boy.’
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘In Paris with her.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Since a few weeks after our marriage.’
‘Good heavens, you don’t say so!’
‘You may well look surprised, but it’s true. Three weeks after our
marriage Jack and I were at Wiesbaden. As we were going downstairs to
dinner one evening, we met this woman coming up. A shudder of horror
came over me as I looked at her, for she had the most extraordinary
eyes I have ever seen. I clung to my husband in sheer fright, and I
noted that he turned and looked at her, and she also turned and looked
at him.
‘“What a remarkable woman,” he muttered strangely, so strangely that
it was as if some other voice was using his lips. Then he broke into a
laugh, and, passing his arm round my waist, said: “Why, my dear little
woman, I believe you are frightened.”
‘“I am,” I said; “that dreadful creature has startled me more than an
Indian cobra would have done.”
‘“Well, upon my word,” said Jack, “I must confess she is a
strange-looking being. Did ever you see such eyes? Why, they make one
think of the fairy-books and the mythical beings who flit through their
pages.”
‘During the whole of the dinner-time that woman’s face haunted me.
It was a strong, hard-featured, almost masculine face, every line of
which indicated a nature that was base, cruel, and treacherous. The
thin lips, the drawn nostrils, the retreating chin, could never be
associated with anything that was soft, gentle, or womanly. But it was
the eyes that were the wonderful feature--they absolutely seemed to
exercise some magic influence; they were oily eyes that gleamed and
glistened, and they seemed to have in them that sinister light which is
peculiar to the cobra, and other poisonous snakes. You may imagine the
spell and influence they exerted over me when, on the following day,
I urged my husband to leave Wiesbaden at once, notwithstanding that
the place was glorious in its early autumn dress, and was filled with
a fashionable and light-hearted crowd. But my lightest wish then was
law to Jack, so that very afternoon we were on our way to Homburg, and
it was only when Wiesbaden was miles behind me that I began to breathe
freely again.
‘We had been in Homburg a fortnight, and the incident of Wiesbaden had
passed from my mind, when one morning, as Jack and I were on our way
from the Springs, we came face to face with the woman with the oily
eyes. I nearly fainted, but she smiled a hideous, cunning, cruel smile,
inclined her head slightly in token of recognition, and passed on.
I looked at my husband. It seemed to me that he was unusually pale,
and I was surprised to see him turn and gaze after her, and she had
also turned and was gazing at us. Not a word was uttered by either of
us, but I pressed my husband’s arm and we walked rapidly away to our
apartments.
‘“It’s strange,” I remarked to Jack as we sat at breakfast, “that we
should meet that awful woman again.”
‘“Oh, not at all,” he laughed. “You know at this time of the year
people move about from place to place, and it’s wonderful how you keep
rubbing shoulders with the same set.”
‘It was quite true what Jack said, nevertheless, I could not help the
feeling that the woman with the oily eyes had followed us to Homburg.
If I had mentioned this then it would have been considered ridiculous,
for we had only met her once, and had never spoken a word to her. What
earthly interest, therefore, could she possibly take in us who were
utter strangers to her. But, looked at by the light of after events, my
surmise was true. The creature had marked Jack for her victim from the
moment we unhappily met on the stairs at Wiesbaden. I tell you, doctor,
that that woman is a human ghoul, a vampire, who lives not only by
sucking the blood of men, but by destroying their souls.’
Mrs. Redcar broke down again at this stage of her narrative, and I
endeavoured to comfort her; but she quickly mastered her feelings
sufficiently to continue her remarkable story.
‘Some days later my husband and I moved along with the throng that
drifted up and down the promenade listening to the band, when we met
a lady whom I had known as a neighbour when I was at home with my
parents. We stopped and chatted with her for some time, until Jack
asked us to excuse him while he went to purchase some matches at a
kiosk; he said he would be by the fountain in ten minutes, and I was to
wait for him.
‘My lady friend and I moved along and chatted as women will, and then
she bade me good-night as she had to rejoin her friends. I at once
hurried to the rendezvous at the fountain, but Jack wasn’t there. I
waited some time, but still he came not. I walked about impatiently
and half frightened, and when nearly three-quarters of an hour had
passed I felt sure Jack had gone home, so with all haste I went to
our apartments close by, but he was not in, and had not been in. Half
distracted, I flew back to the promenade. It was nearly deserted, for
the band had gone. As I hurried along, not knowing where to go to, and
scarcely knowing what I was doing, I was attracted by a laugh--a laugh