There is nothing in the world to
fear except fear. You know that as well as I do. Now let’s read our
papers with interest. Which do you back, Mr Druce, or the Duke of
Portland, or the Times Book Club?”

That day, therefore, passed very busily for me; and there were enough
events moving in front of that black background, which I was conscious
was there all the time, to enable me to keep my eyes away from it, and I
was detained rather late at the office, and had to drive back to
Chelsea, in order to be in time to dress for dinner, instead of walking
back as I had intended. Then the message, which for these three days, had been twittering in our
minds, the receivers, just making them quiver and rattle came through. *       *       *       *       *

I found Jack already dressed, since it was within a minute or two of
seven when I got in, and sitting in the drawing-room. The day had been
warm and muggy, but when I looked in on the way up to my room, it
seemed to me to have grown suddenly and bitterly cold, not with the
dampness of English frost, but with the clear and stinging exhilaration
of such days as we had recently spent in Switzerland. Fire was laid in
the grate but not lit, and I went down on my knees on the hearth-rug to
light it. “Why, it’s freezing in here,” I said. “What donkeys servants are! It
never occurs to them that you want fires in cold weather, and no fires
in hot weather.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t light the fire,” said he, “it’s the warmest
muggiest evening I ever remember.”

I stared at him in astonishment. My hands were shaking with the cold. He
saw this. “Why, you are shivering!” he said. “Have you caught a chill? But as to
the room being cold let us look at the thermometer.”

There was one on the writing-table. “Sixty-five,” he said. There was no disputing that, nor did I want to, for at that moment, it
suddenly struck us, dimly and distantly that It was “coming through.” I
felt it like some curious internal vibration. “Hot or cold, I must go and dress,” I said. Still shivering, but feeling as if I was breathing some rarefied
exhilarating air, I went up to my room. My clothes were already laid
out, but, by an oversight, no hot water had been brought up, and I rang
for my man. He came up almost at once, but he looked scared, or, to my
already-startled senses, he appeared so. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Nothing, sir,” he said, and he could hardly articulate the words. “I
thought you rang.”

“Yes. Hot water. But what’s the matter?”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “I thought I saw a lady on the stairs,” he said, “coming up close behind
me. And the front door bell hadn’t rung that I heard.”

“Where did you think you saw her?” I asked. “On the stairs. Then on the landing outside the drawing-room door, sir,”
he said. “She stood there as if she didn’t know whether to go in or
not.”

“One--one of the servants,” I said. But again I felt that It was coming
through. “No, sir. It was none of the servants,” he said. “Who was it then?”

“Couldn’t see distinctly sir, it was dim-like. But I thought it was Mrs
Lorimer.”

“Oh, go and get me some hot water,” I said. But he lingered; he was quite clearly frightened. *       *       *       *       *

At this moment the front-door bell rang. It was just seven, and already
Philip had come with brutal punctuality while I was not yet
half-dressed. “That’s Dr Enderly,” I said. “Perhaps if he is on the stairs you may be
able to pass the place where you saw the lady.”

Then quite suddenly there rang through the house a scream, so terrible,
so appalling in its agony and supreme terror, that I simply stood still
and shuddered, unable to move. Then by an effort so violent that I felt
as if something must break, I recalled the power of motion, and ran
downstairs, my man at my heels, to meet Philip who was running up from
the ground floor. He had heard it too. “What’s the matter?” he said. “What was that?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Together we went into the drawing-room, Jack was lying in front of the
fireplace, with the chair in which he had been sitting a few minutes
before overturned. Philip went straight to him and bent over him,
tearing open his white shirt. “Open all the windows,” he said, “the place reeks.”

We flung open the windows, and there poured in, so it seemed to me, a
stream of hot air into the bitter cold. Eventually Philip got up. “He is dead,” he said. “Keep the windows open. The place is still thick
with chloroform.”

Gradually to my sense the room got warmer, to Philip’s the drug-laden
atmosphere dispersed. But neither my servant nor I had smelt anything at
all. A couple of hours later there came a telegram from Davos for me. It was
to tell me to break the news of Daisy’s death to Jack, and was sent by
her sister. She supposed he would come out immediately. But he had been
gone two hours now. I left for Davos next day, and learned what had happened. Daisy had been
suffering for three days from a little abscess which had to be opened,
and, though the operation was of the slightest, she had been so nervous
about it that the doctor gave her chloroform. She made a good recovery
from the anæsthetic, but an hour later had a sudden attack of syncope,
and had died that night at a few minutes before eight, by central
European time, corresponding to seven in English time. She had insisted
that Jack should be told nothing about this little operation till it was
over, since the matter was quite unconnected with her general health,
and she did not wish to cause him needless anxiety. And there the story ends. To my servant there came the sight of a woman
outside the drawing-room door, where Jack was, hesitating about her
entrance, at the moment when Daisy’s soul hovered between the two
worlds; to me there came--I do not think it is fanciful to suppose
this--the keen exhilarating cold of Davos; to Philip there came the
fumes of chloroform. And to Jack, I must suppose, came his wife. So he
joined her. THE OTHER BED


I had gone out to Switzerland just before Christmas, expecting, from
experience, a month of divinely renovating weather, of skating all day
in brilliant sun, and basking in the hot frost of that windless
atmosphere. Occasionally, as I knew, there might be a snowfall, which
would last perhaps for forty-eight hours at the outside, and would be
succeeded by another ten days of cloudless perfection, cold even to zero
at night, but irradiated all day long by the unflecked splendour of the
sun. Instead the climatic conditions were horrible. Day after day a gale
screamed through this upland valley that should have been so windless
and serene, bringing with it a tornado of sleet that changed to snow by
night.