Tales of terror
that startled me:
‘Yes, Annette is right. I am my own master. What the devil do you mean
by following me, like the sneak and cur that you are? Go back to Maude,
and tell her that I loathe her. Go; relieve me of your presence, or I
may forget myself and injure you.’
Annette, still smiling and still perfectly self-possessed, said:
‘You hear what your friend says, doctor. Need I say that if you are a
gentleman you will respect his wishes?’
I could no longer control myself. Her calm, defiant, icy manner
maddened me, and her silvery voice seemed to cut down on to my most
sensitive nerves, for it was so suggestive of the devilish nature of
the creature. It was so incongruous when contrasted with her harsh,
horribly cruel face. I placed myself between Jack and her, and meeting
her weird gaze, I said, hotly:
‘Leave this room. You are an outrage on your sex; a shame and a
disgrace to the very name of woman. Go, and leave me with my friend,
whose reason you have stolen away.’
She still smiled and was still unmoved, and suddenly I felt myself
gripped in a grip of iron, and with terrific force I was hurled into a
corner of the room, where, huddled up in a heap, I lay stunned for some
moments. But as my senses returned I saw the awful woman smiling still,
and she was waving her long white bejewelled hand before the infuriated
Jack, as if she were mesmerising him; and I saw him sink on to the sofa
subdued and calmed. Then addressing me she said:
‘That is a curious way for your friend to display his friendship. I may
be wrong, but perhaps as a medical man you will recognise that your
presence has an irritating effect on Mr. Redcar, and if I may suggest
it, I think it desirable that you should depart at once and see him no
more.’
‘Devil!’ I shouted at her. ‘You have bewitched him, and made him
forgetful of his honour and of what he owes to those who are dear to
him. But I will defeat you yet.’
She merely bowed and smiled, but deigned no reply; and holding her arm
to Jack, he took it, and they passed out of the room. She was elegantly
attired. Her raven hair was fascinatingly dressed in wavy bands. There
was something regal in her carriage, and gracefulness in her every
movement; and yet she filled me with a sense of indefinable horror; a
dread to which I should have been ashamed to own to a little while ago.
I tried to spring up and go after them, but my body seemed a mass of
pain, and my left arm hung limp and powerless. It was fractured below
the elbow. There was no bell in the room, and I limped out in search
of assistance. I made my way painfully along a gloomy corridor, and
hearing a male voice speaking Spanish, I knocked at a door, which
was opened by the landlord. I addressed him, but he shook his head
and gave me to understand that he spoke no English. Unhappily I spoke
no Spanish. Then he smiled as some idea flitted through his mind, and
bowing me into the room he motioned me to be seated, and hurried away.
He returned in about five minutes accompanied by Annette, whom he had
brought to act as interpreter. I was almost tempted to fly at her and
strangle her where she stood. She was undisturbed, calm, and still
smiled. She spoke to the man in Spanish, then she explained to me that
she had told him I had slipped on the polished floor, and falling over
a chair had injured myself, and she had requested him to summon the
village surgeon if need be.
Without waiting for me to reply she swept gracefully out of the room.
Indeed, I could not reply, for I felt as if I were choking with
suppressed rage. The landlord rendered me physical assistance and took
me to my bedroom, where I lay down on the bed, feeling mortified, ill,
and crushed. Half an hour later a queer-looking old man, with long hair
twisted into ringlets, was ushered into my room, and I soon gathered
that he was the village surgeon. He spoke no English, but I explained
my injury by signs, and he went away, returning in a little while with
the necessary bandages and splints, and he proceeded rather clumsily to
bandage my broken arm. I passed a cruel and wretched night. My physical
pain was great, but my mental pain was greater. The thought forced
itself upon me that I had been defeated, and that the fiendish, cunning
woman was too much for me. I felt no resentment against Jack. His act
of violence was the act of a madman, and I pitied him. For hours I
lay revolving all sorts of schemes to try and get him away from the
diabolical influence of Annette. But though I could hit upon nothing,
I firmly resolved that while my life lasted I would make every effort
to save my old friend, and if possible restore him to the bosom of his
distracted wife.
The case altogether was a very remarkable one, and the question
naturally arose, why did a man so highly gifted and so intelligent
as Jack Redcar desert his charming, devoted, and beautiful wife, to
follow an adventuress who entirely lacked physical beauty. Theories
without number might have been suggested to account for the phenomenon,
but not one would have been correct. The true answer is, Annette was
not a natural being. In the ordinary way she might be described as a
woman of perverted moral character, or as a physiological freak, but
that would have been rather a misleading way of putting it. She was,
in short, a human monstrosity. By that I do not mean to say her body
was contorted, twisted, or deformed. But into her human composition had
entered a strain of the fiend; and I might go even further than this
and say she was more animal than human. Though in whatever way she may
be described, it is certain she was an anomaly--a human riddle.
The morning following the outrage upon me found me prostrated and ill.
A night of racking pain and mental distress had told even upon my good
constitution. The situation in which I found myself was a singularly
unfortunate one. I was a foreigner in an out-of-the-way place, and my
want of knowledge of Spanish, of course, placed me at a tremendous
disadvantage.
The landlord came to me and brought his wife, and between them they
attended to my wants, and did what they could for my comfort. But they
were ignorant, uncultivated people, only one remove from the peasant
class, and I realised that they could be of little use to me. Now the
nearest important town to this Alpine village was Santander, but that
was nearly a hundred miles away. As everyone knows who has been in
Spain, a hundred miles, even on a railway, is a considerable journey;
but there was no railway between Santander and Potes. An old ramshackle
vehicle, called a diligence, ran between the two places every day in
the summer and twice a week in the winter, and it took fourteen hours
to do the journey. Even a well-appointed carriage and pair could not
cover the distance under eight hours, as the road was infamous, and
in parts was little better than a mule track. I knew that there was
a British consul in Santander, and I was hopeful that if I could
communicate with him he might be able to render me some assistance.
In the meantime I had to devise some scheme for holding Annette in
check and saving my friend. But in my crippled and prostrate condition
I could not do much. While lying in my bed, and thus revolving all
these things in my mind, the door gently opened and Annette glided
in--‘glided’ best expresses her movement, for she seemed to put forth
no effort. She sat down beside the bed and laid her hand on mine.
‘You are ill this morning,’ she said softly. ‘This is regrettable,
but you have only yourself to blame. It is dangerous to interfere in
matters in which you have no concern. My business is mine, Mr. Redcar’s
is his, and yours is your own, but the three won’t amalgamate. Jack and
I came here for the sake of the peace and quietness of these solitudes;
unhappily you intrude yourself and disaster follows.’
Her voice was as silvery as ever. The same calm self-possessed air
characterised her; but in her oily eyes was a peculiar light, and I
had to turn away, for they exerted a sort of mesmeric influence over
me, and I am convinced that had I not exerted all my will power I
should have thrown myself into the creature’s arms. This is a fact
which I have no hesitation in stating, as it serves better than any
other illustration to show what a wonderful power of fascination the
remarkable woman possessed. Naturally I felt disgusted and enraged,
but I fully recognised that I could not fight the woman openly; I must
to some extent meet her with her own weapons. She was cunning, artful,
insidious, pitiless, and the basilisk-like power she possessed not only
gave her a great advantage but made her a very dangerous opponent.
At any rate, having regard to all the circumstances and my crippled
condition, I saw that my only chance was in temporising with her. So I
tried to reason with her, and I pointed out that Redcar had been guilty
of baseness in leaving his wife, who was devoted to him.
At this point of my argument Annette interrupted me, and for the first
time she displayed something like passion, and her voice became hard
and raucous.
‘His wife,’ she said with a sneer of supreme contempt. ‘A poor fool,
a fleshly doll. At the precise instant I set my eyes upon her for the
first time I felt that I should like to destroy her, because she is a
type of woman who makes the world common-place and reduce all men to a
common level. She hated me from the first and I hated her. She would
have crushed me if she could, but she was too insignificant a worm to
do that, and I crushed her.’
This cold, brutal callousness enraged me; I turned fiercely upon her
and exclaimed:
‘Leave me, you are a more infamous and heartless wretch than I believed
you to be. You are absolutely unworthy the name of woman, and if you
irritate me much more I may even forget that you have a woman’s shape.’
She spoke again. All trace of passion had disappeared. She smiled the
wicked insidious smile which made her so dangerous, and her voice
resumed its liquid, silvery tones:
‘You are very violent,’ she said gently, ‘and it will do you harm
in your condition. But you see violence can be met with violence.
The gentleman you are pleased to call your friend afforded you
painful evidence last night that he knows how to resent unjustifiable
interference, and to take care of himself. I am under his protection,
and there is no doubt he will protect me.’
‘For God’s sake, leave me!’ I cried, tortured beyond endurance by her
hypocrisy and wickedness.
‘Oh, certainly, if you desire it,’ she answered, as she rose from her
seat. ‘But I thought I might be of use. It is useless your trying to
influence Mr. Redcar--absolutely useless. His destiny is linked with
mine, and the human being doesn’t exist who can sunder us. With this
knowledge, you will do well to retrace your steps; and, if you like,
I will arrange to have you comfortably conveyed to Santander, where
you can get a vessel. Anyway, you will waste your time and retard your
recovery by remaining here.’
‘I intend to remain here, nevertheless,’ I said, with set teeth. ‘And,
what is more, madame, when I go my friend Redcar will accompany me.’
She laughed. She patted my head as a mother might pat the head of her
child. She spoke in her most insidious, silvery tones.
‘We shall see, mon cher--we shall see. You will be better to-morrow.
Adieu!’
That was all she said, and she was gone. She glided out of the room as
she had glided in.
I felt irritated almost into madness for some little time; but as I
reflected, it was forced upon me that I had to deal with a monster of
iniquity, who had so subdued the will of her victim, Redcar, that he
was a mere wooden puppet in her hand. Force in such a case was worse