The Best Horror Stories of Arthur Conan Doyle (22 page)

“ ‘If you want a little mascot

When you're on the way to Ascot,

Try the lady with the cartwheel hat.'”

She had a tuneful voice and a sense of rhythm which set every one nodding. “Try it now all together,” she
cried; and the strange little haphazard company sang it with all their lungs.

“I say,” said Billy, “that ought to wake somebody up. What? Let's try a shout all together.”

It was a fine effort, but there was no response. It was clear that the management down below was quite ignorant or impotent. No sound came back to them.

The passengers became alarmed. The commercial traveler was rather less rubicund. Billy still tried to joke, but his efforts were not well received. The officer in his blue uniform at once took his place as rightful leader in a crisis. They all looked to him and appealed to him.

“What would you advise, sir? You don't think there's any danger of it coming down, do you?”

“Not the least. But it's awkward to be stuck here all the same. I think I could jump across on to that girder. Then perhaps I could see what is wrong.”

“No, no, Tom; for goodness' sake, don't leave us!”

“Some people have a nerve,” said Billy. “Fancy jumping across a five-hundred-foot drop!”

“I dare say the gentleman did worse things in the war.”

“Well, I wouldn't do it myself—not if they starred me in the bills. It's all very well for old Isaiah. It's his job, and I wouldn't do him out of it.”

Three sides of the lift were shut in with wooden partitions, pierced with windows for the view. The fourth side, facing the sea, was clear. Stangate leaned as far as he could and looked upwards. As he did so there came from above him a peculiar sonorous metallic twang, as if a mighty harpstring had been struck. Some distance up—a hundred feet, perhaps—he could see a long brown corded arm, which was working furiously among the wire cordage above. The form was beyond his view, but he was fascinated by this bare sinewy arm which tugged
and pulled and sagged and stabbed.

“It's all right,” he said, and a general sigh of relief broke from his strange comrades at his words. “There is some one above us setting things right.”

“It's old Isaiah,” said Billy, stretching his neck round the corner. “I can't see him, but it's his arm for a dollar. What's he got in his hand? Looks like a screwdriver or something. No, by George, it's a file.”

As he spoke there came another sonorous twang from above. There was a troubled frown upon the officer's brow.

“I say, dash it all, that's the very sound our steel hawser made when it parted, strand by strand, at Dixmude. What the deuce is the fellow about? Hey, there! What are you trying to do?”

The man had ceased his work and was now slowly descending the iron trellis.

“All right, he's coming,” said Stangate to his startled companions. “It's all right, Mary. Don't be frightened, any of you. It's absurd to suppose he would really weaken the cord that holds us.”

A pair of high boots appeared from above. Then came the leathern breeches, the belt with its dangling tools, the muscular form, and, finally, the fierce, swarthy, eagle face of the workman. His coat was off and his shirt open, showing the hairy chest. As he appeared there came another sharp snapping vibration from above. The man made his way down in leisurely fashion, and then, balancing himself upon the cross-girder and leaning against the side piece, he stood with folded arms, looking from under his heavy black brows at the huddled passengers upon the platform.

“Hallo!” said Stangate. “What's the matter?”

The man stood impassive and silent, with something indescribably menacing in his fixed, unwinking stare.

The flying officer grew angry.

“Hallo! Are you deaf?” he cried. “How long do you mean to have us stuck here?”

The man stood silent. There was something devilish in his appearance.

“I'll complain of you, my lad,” said Billy, in a quivering voice. “This won't stop here, I can promise you.”

“Look here!” cried the officer. “We have ladies here and you are alarming them. Why are we stuck here? Has the machinery gone wrong?”

“You are here,” said the man, “because I have put a wedge against the hawser above you.”

“You fouled the line! How dared you do such a thing! What right have you to frighten the women and put us all to this inconvenience? Take that wedge out this instant, or it will be the worse for you.”

The man was silent.

“Do you hear what I say? Why the devil don't you answer? Is this a joke or what? We've had about enough of it, I tell you.”

Mary MacLean had gripped her lover by the arm in an agony of sudden panic.

“Oh, Tom!” she cried. “Look at his eyes—look at his horrible eyes! The man is a maniac.”

The workman stirred suddenly into sinister life. His dark face broke into writhing lines of passion, and his fierce eyes glowed like embers, while he shook one long arm in the air.

“Behold,” he cried, “those who are mad to the children of this world are in very truth the Lord's anointed and the dwellers in the inner temple. Lo, I am one who is prepared to testify even to the uttermost, for of a verity the day has now come when the humble will be exalted and the wicked will be cut off in their sins!”

“Mother! Mother!” cried the little boy, in terror.

“There, there! It's all right, Jack,” said the buxom
woman, and then, in a burst of womanly wrath, “What d'you want to make the child cry for? You're a pretty man, you are!”

“Better he should cry now than in the outer darkness. Let him seek safety while there is yet time.”

The officer measured the gap with a practised eye. It was a good eight feet across, and the fellow could push him over before he could steady himself. It would be a desperate thing to attempt. He tried soothing words once more.

“See here, my lad, you've carried this joke too far. Why should you wish to injure us? Just shin up and get that wedge out, and we will agree to say no more about it.”

Another rending snap came from above.

“By George, the hawser is going!” cried Stangate. “Here! Stand aside ! I'm coming over to see to it.”

The workman had plucked the hammer from his belt, and waved it furiously in the air.

“Stand back, young man! Stand back! Or come—if you would hasten your end.”

“Tom, Tom, for God's sake, don't spring! Help! Help!”

The passengers all joined in the cry for aid. The man smiled malignantly as he watched them.

“There is no one to help. They could not come if they would. You would be wiser to turn to your own souls that ye be not cast to the burning. Lo, strand by strand the cable snaps which holds you. There is yet another, and with each that goes there is more strain upon the rest. Five minutes of time, and all eternity beyond.”

A moan of fear rose from the prisoners in the lift. Stangate felt a cold sweat upon his brow as he passed his arm round the shrinking girl. If this vindictive devil could only be coaxed away for an instant he would spring across and take his chance in a hand-to-hand fight.

“Look here, my friend! We give you best!” he cried. “We can do nothing. Go up and cut the cable if you wish. Go on—do it now, and get it over!”

“That you may come across unharmed. Having set my hand to the work, I will not draw back from it.”

Fury seized the young officer.

‘You devil!” he cried. “What do you stand there grinning for? I'll give you something to grin about. Give me a stick, one of you.”

The man waved his hammer.

“Come, then! Come to judgment!” he howled.

“Hell murder you, Tom! Oh, for God's sake, don't! If we must die, let us die together.”

“I wouldn't try it, sir,” cried Billy. “He'll strike you down before you get a footing. Hold up, Dolly, my dear! Faintin' won't ‘elp us. You speak to him, miss. Maybe he'll listen to you.”

“Why should you wish to hurt us?” said Mary. “What have we ever done to you? Surely you will be sorry afterwards if we are injured. Now do be kind and reasonable and help us to get back to the ground.”

For a moment there may have been some softening in the man's fierce eyes as he looked at the sweet face which was upturned to him. Then his features set once more into their grim lines of malice.

“My hand is set to the work, woman. It is not for the servant to look back from his task.”

“But why would this be your task?”

“Because there is a voice within me which tells me so. In the night-time I have heard it, and in the day-time too, when I have lain out alone upon the girders and seen the wicked dotting the streets beneath me, each busy on his own evil intent. ‘Jim Barnes, Jim Barnes', said the voice. You are here that you may give a sign to a sinful generation—such a sign as shall show them that the Lord liveth and that
there is a judgment upon sin.' Who am I that I should disobey the voice of the Lord?”

“The voice of the devil,” said Stangate. “What is the sin of this lady, or of these others, that you should seek their lives?”

“You are as the others, neither better nor worse. All day they pass me, load by load, with foolish cries and empty songs and vain babble of voices. Their thoughts are set upon the things of the flesh. Too long have I stood aside and watched and refused to testify. But now the day of wrath is come and the sacrifice is ready. Think not that a woman's tongue can turn me from my task.”

“It is useless!” Mary cried. “Useless! I read death in his eyes.”

Another cord had snapped.

“Repent! Repent!” cried the madman. “One more, and it is over!”

Commander Stangate felt as if it were all some extraordinary dream—some monstrous nightmare. Could it be possible that he, after all his escapes of death in warfare, was now, in the heart of peaceful England, at the mercy of a homicidal lunatic, and that his dear girl, the one being whom he would shield from the very shadow of danger, was helpless before this horrible man? All his energy and manhood rose up in him for one last effort.

“Here, we won't be killed like sheep in the shambles!” he cried, throwing himself against the wooden wall of the lift and kicking with all his force. “Come on, boys! Kick it! Beat it! It's only match-boarding, and it is giving. Smash it down! Well done! Once more all together! There she goes! Now for the side! Out with it! Splendid!”

First the back and then the side of the little compartment had been knocked out, and the splinters dropped down into the abyss. Barnes danced upon his girder, his hammer in the air.

“Strive not!” he shrieked. “It avails not. The day is surely come.”

“It's not two feet from the side girder,” cried the officer. “Get across! Quick! Quick! All of you. I'll hold this devil off!” He had seized a stout stick from the commercial traveller and faced the madman, daring him to spring across.

“Your turn now, my friend!” he hissed. “Come on, hammer and all! I'm ready for you.”

Above him he heard another snap, and the frail platform began to rock. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that his companions were all safe upon the side girder. A strange line of terrified castaways they appeared as they clung in an ungainly row to the trellis-work of steel. But their feet were on the iron support. With two quick steps and a spring he was at their side. At the same instant the murderer, hammer in hand, jumped the gap. They had one vision of him there—a vision which will haunt their dreams—the convulsed face, the blazing eyes, the wind-tossed raven locks. For a moment he balanced himself upon the swaying platform. The next, with a rending crash, he and it were gone. There was a long silence and then, far down, the thud and clatter of a mighty fall.

With white faces, the forlorn group clung to the cold steel bars and gazed down into the terrible abyss. It was the Commander who broke the silence.

“They'll send for us now. It's all safe,” he cried, wiping his brow. “But, by Jove, it was a close call!”

O
F the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee, and of the cause of the great terror of Abercrombie Smith, it may be that no absolute and final judgment will ever be delivered. It is true that we have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself, and such corroboration as he could look for from Thomas Styles the servant, from the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old's, and from such other people as chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the story must rest upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture, some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of Nature has been overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-paths into
which the human spirit may wander.

In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and knitted together with withes and strands of ivy, as though the old mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From the door a stone stair curves upward spirally, passing two landings, and terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age, how full and strong had been that tide of young, English life. And what was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies, save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and grey, old wall, with bend and saltire and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.