Tales of terror
intelligence to his family, and people marvelled much when they heard
that handsome Lambert Lennox, the man with the iron constitution, had
slipped away so quickly, more particularly as long residence in Florida
had inured him to a hot climate and miasma.
It was found difficult to trace Miss Clarkson’s movements during the
next two or three years, but there were grounds for believing that she
travelled extensively, and amongst other places visited India, and in
this connection there was a somewhat vague and legendary story told. At
a hill station a strange and mysterious woman put in an appearance.
She was thought to be either a Spaniard or a Portuguese. She was known
as Mademoiselle Sassetti, though why ‘Mademoiselle,’ if Spanish or
Portuguese, was not explained. But that is a detail.
This mysterious lady claimed to have occult powers. She could read
anyone’s future. She could perform miracles. The women kept away from
her because they were afraid of her, though there was no definite
statement as to how this fear arose. But the men showed no fear, as
became them, and amongst others who consulted her was a handsome,
much beloved young military officer. His frequent visits to the
sorceress caused a good deal of talk, as it was bound to do in an
Indian hill station. Grey-bearded men shook their heads sadly, and
wise and virtuous women turned up their noses and muttered mysterious
interjections such as ‘Ah!’ ‘Oh!’ ‘Umph.’
One day the station was startled by a report that the young officer had
been found dead in a jungle in one of the valleys. He had been bitten
by a cobra, so the report said, for there was a peculiar little blue
mark at the side of his neck.
If the virtuous ones didn’t actually say it served him right, they
thought it; and the grey beards looked more knowing than ever, and
mumbled that the young officer had been dining somewhere not wisely
but too well, and had mistaken the jungle for his bedroom, and gone to
sleep, otherwise how did the cobra manage to bite him in the neck.
It seemed a plausible theory. Anyway it got over a difficulty, and
it brought an unpleasant little scandal to a tragic and abrupt end.
So the virtuous ones went about their many occupations again, and
the atmosphere was purer when it was known that the sorceress had
disappeared as mysteriously as she had come.
The next direct evidence we got was that under the name of Isabella
Rodino the adventuress turned up in Rome, where she rented a small but
expensive villa in the fashionable Via Porta Pia. Everyone who knows
Rome knows how exclusive society is, but while Isabella Rodino made no
attempt to be received by Roman society she attracted to her villa
some of the male representatives of the best families in the city.
Amongst these gentlemen was the scion of one of the oldest Roman houses.
Now it may be said boldly here, and that without any reflections, that
the young gentlemen of Rome, as of most other continental cities, are
allowed a good deal more latitude than would be accorded to the same
class in, say, cold-blooded, unromantic, prosaic, and commonplace
London, whose soot and grime, somehow, seem to grind their way into
people’s brains and hearts. Anyway the young gentleman referred to,
whose baptismal name was Basta, did not at first provoke any very
severe criticism, but he was destined ultimately to give the Romans a
sensation to talk about for the proverbial nine days, for one Sunday
morning a humble fisherman, having some business on the Tiber, fished
out of that classic river the stark body of the scion. Over Rome flew
the news, and those who loved him, and looked to him to uphold the
honour and dignity of his family, were horror-stricken.
Now, it’s a very curious thing that his distracted relatives firmly
believed that the young prodigal had in a moment of remorse, after a
night’s debauch, flung himself into eternity _via_ the Tiber, and so
mighty was their pride that they used their wealth, their influence,
and their power to stifle inquiry, and caused a report to be circulated
that Basta had met his end through accident. It is no less curious that
the family doctor who examined the body was of opinion that there was
something mysterious about the lad’s death, for he certainly had not
died by drowning, and on one side of the neck was a peculiar little
bluish puncture. But as the family persisted in _their_ view, the
doctor, not wishing to lose their influential patronage, observed a
discreet silence.
A week later, however, an agent of the police called on Isabella
Rodino, and did something more than hint that it was desirable
that within twenty-four hours she should leave Rome as quietly and
unobtrusively as possible. The result of this functionary’s call was
that Isabella Rodino journeyed to Florence by that night’s mail train.
It was known that she only sojourned two days in the fair city on the
Arno.
After that there is another hiatus of something like two years in her
known career, and it is not easy to fill it up. And this brings us to
that fatal night at Wiesbaden, when ill-starred Jack Redcar met the
enchantress on the hotel stairs. From that point to the moment when,
her rôle being finished, she disappeared for ever from the ken of men,
the reader of the story can fill in for himself. She played out her
last act under the name of Annette. In selecting her many names she
seemed actuated by a fine sense of poetic euphony, and in selecting her
victims she was guided by a ‘damnable’ discrimination.
‘Annette,’ as we will now call her, was a human riddle, and she
illustrates for the millionth time the trite adage that ‘Truth is
stranger than Fiction,’ besides which she presents the world with an
object lesson in the study of the occult.
III
THE CORPSE LIGHT
My name is John Patmore Lindsay. By profession I am a medical man, and
a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Member of the Royal
College of Physicians, London. I am also the author of numerous medical
works, the best known, perhaps, being ‘How to Keep in Good Health and
Live Long.’ I was educated at one of the large public schools, and took
my degree at Oxford. I have generally been regarded as ‘a hard-headed
man,’ and sceptical about all phenomena that were not capable of
being explained by rational and known laws. Mysticism, occultism,
spiritualism, and the like only served to excite my ridicule; and I
entertained anything but a flattering opinion of those people who
professed belief in such things. I was pleased to think it argued a
weakness of mind.
I have referred to the few foregoing facts about myself because I
wish to make it clear that I do not belong to that class of nervous
and excitable people who fall a prey to their own fancies; conjure up
shapes and scenes out of their imaginings, and then vow and declare
that they have been confronted with stern realities. What I am about
to relate is so marvellous, so weird and startling, that I am fain
to begin my story in a half apologetic way; and even now, as I dwell
upon it all, I wonder why I of all men should have been subjected to
the unnatural and unearthly influence. But so it is, and though in a
sense I am only half convinced, I no longer scoff when somebody reminds
me that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our
philosophy.
But to my story, and when it is told the reader can judge for himself
how powerful must have been the effect of what I witnessed, when it
could induce a man of my mental fibre to commit to paper so astounding
a narrative as the one I now pen. It is about twenty years ago that I
took up a practice in the old-fashioned and picturesque little town of
Brinton-on-sea. At that time there was no railway into Brinton, the
nearest station being some seven or eight miles away. The result was,
the town still retained a delightful old-time air, while the people
were as primitive and old-fashioned as their town. Nevertheless,
Brinton was far ahead of its neighbours, and, though in a purely
agricultural district, was enterprising and business-like, while its
weekly Tuesday market brought an enormous influx of the population of
the district for miles around, and very large sums of money changed
hands. Being the chief town of the parish, and boasting of a very
curious and ancient church, and a still more ancient market cross, to
say nothing of several delightful old hostelries, and a small though
excellent museum of local curiosities, consisting principally of Roman
remains and fossils, for which the district was renowned, it attracted
not only the antiquary and the gourmand, but artists, tourists, and
lovers of the picturesque, as well as those in search of quietude and
repose. The nearest village was High Lea, about three miles away.
Between the two places was a wide sweep of magnificent rolling down,
delightful at all times, but especially so in the summer. Many an
ancient farmhouse was dotted about, with here and there a windmill.
The down on the seaside terminated in a high headland, from which a
splendid lighthouse sent forth its warning beams over the fierce North
Sea. Second only in conspicuousness to this lighthouse was an old and
half-ruined windmill, known all over the country side as ‘The Haunted
Mill.’
When I first went to live in Brinton this mill early attracted my
attention, for it was one of the most picturesque old places of its
kind I had ever seen; and as I had some artistic instincts, and could
sketch with, as my too flattering friends said, ‘no mean ability,’
the haunted mill appealed to me. It stood on rising ground, close to
the high-road that ran between Brinton and High Lea. I gathered that
there had been some dispute about the ownership, and, as is usually the
case, the suckers of the harpies of the law had fastened upon it, so to
speak, and drained all its vitality away after the manner of lawyers
generally. The old-fashioned, legal luminaries of the country were a
slow-going set, and for over a quarter of a century that disputed claim
had remained unsettled; and during that long period the old mill had
been gradually falling into ruin. The foundations had from some cause
sunk, throwing the main building out of the perpendicular. Part of the
roof had fallen in, and the fierce gales of a quarter of a century had
battered the sails pretty well to match-wood. A long flight of wooden
steps led up to the principal door, but these steps had rotted away in
places, and the door itself had partly fallen inwards. Needless to say,
this mill had become the home of bats and owls, and, according to the
yokels, of something more fearsome than either. It was a forlorn and
mournful-looking place, anyway, even in the full blaze of sunshine;
but seen in moonlight its appearance was singularly weird, and well
calculated to beget in the rustic mind a feeling of horror, and to
produce a creepy and uncanny sensation in anyone susceptible to the
influence of _outre_ appearances. To me it did not appeal in any of
these aspects. I saw in it only subject matter for an exceedingly
effective picture, and yet I am bound to confess that even when
transferred to board or canvas there was a certain grim suggestiveness
of things uncanny, and I easily understood how the superstitious and
unreasoning rustic mind was awed into a belief that this mouldering old
mill was haunted by something more creepy and harrowing than bats and
owls. Anyway, I heard wonderful tales, at which I laughed, and when I
learned that the country people generally gave the mill a wide berth
at night, I blamed them for their stupidity. But it was a fact that
worthy, and in other respects intelligent, farmers and market folk
coming or going between Brinton and High Lea after dark preferred the