He wouldn't go into
details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and heard haunted
him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I knew he was
speaking the truth. There was something about the man that made me
shiver. I don't know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money
and sent him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood.' 'Isn't all this just a little fanciful, Villiers? I suppose the poor
fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to
the bad.' 'Well, listen to this.' Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard from
Austin. 'You see,' he concluded, 'there can be but little doubt that this Mr.
Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful,
so terrible, that it cut short his life. And what he saw, he most
certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name
in the neighbourhood. I had the curiosity to go and look at the place
for myself. It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough
to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I
could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished,
and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the ground
floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it's a dismal
street in every way. I found Number 20 was to let, and I went to the
agent's and got the key. Of course I should have heard nothing of the
Herberts in that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long
they had left the house, and whether there had been other tenants in the
meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the
Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it,
and since then the house had been empty.' Mr. Villiers paused for a moment. 'I have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a
sort of fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails
sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills. But I
didn't enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street. I had hardly put my foot
inside the passage before I noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air
of the house. Of course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth, but
this was something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it
seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front room and the back room,
and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as
you would expect, but there was something strange about them all. I
couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the
rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish
room, and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but
when I saw it, paint, paper, and everything were most doleful. But the
room was full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on
the door, and when I went in, I thought I should have fallen fainting to
the floor. However, I pulled myself together, and stood against the end
wall, wondering what on earth there could be about the room to make my
limbs tremble, and my heart beat as if I were at the hour of death. In
one corner there was a pile of newspapers littered about on the floor,
and I began looking at them; they were papers of three or four years
ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had been used
for packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found a
curious drawing; I will show it you presently. But I couldn't stay in
the room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to come out,
safe and sound, into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along
the street, and one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about from
one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much as I could do
to take the key back to the agent and get home. I was in bed for a week,
suffering from what my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion. One
of those days I was reading the evening paper, and happened to notice a
paragraph headed: "Starved to Death." It was the usual style of thing; a
model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door locked for several days, and a
dead man in his chair when they broke in. "The deceased," said the
paragraph, "was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed to have been
once a prosperous country gentleman. His name was familiar to the public
three years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul Street,
Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of the house Number
20, in the area of which a gentleman of good position was found dead
under circumstances not devoid of suspicion." A tragic ending, wasn't
it? But after all, if what he told me were true, which I am sure it
was, the man's life was all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a stranger sort
than they put on the boards.' 'And that is the story, is it?' said Clarke musingly. 'Yes, that is the story.' 'Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it. There
are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the
finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert's house, for instance,
and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of death;
but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be explained in a
straightforward manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see
the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid imagination;
you must have been brooding, in a semiconscious way, over what you had
heard. I don't exactly see what more can be said or done in the matter;
you evidently think there is a mystery of some kind, but Herbert is
dead; where then do you propose to look?' 'I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married. _She_ is
the mystery.' The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating
himself on having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the
commonplace, and Villiers wrapt in his gloomy fancies. 'I think I will have a cigarette,' he said at last, and put his hand in
his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case. 'Ah!' he said, starting slightly, 'I forgot I had something to show you. You remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch amongst
the pile of old newspapers at the house in Paul Street? Here it is.' Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered
with brown paper, and secured with string, and the knots were
troublesome. In spite of himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent
forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and
unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and
Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke
without a word. There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men
sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned
clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the
slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory.