“I’m on my way to Dr. Ross,” he said quickly. “My wife has been taken
suddenly ill. She had been in bed an hour when I came upstairs, and
I found her white as a ghost and utterly exhausted. She had been to
sleep, it seemed---- but you will excuse me.”

“One moment, Major,” said Urcombe. “Was there any mark on her throat?”

“How did you guess that?” said he. “There was: one of those beastly
gnats must have bitten her twice there. She was streaming with blood.”

“And there’s someone with her?” asked Urcombe. “Yes, I roused her maid.”

He went off, and Urcombe turned to me. “I know now what we have to do,”
he said. “Change your clothes, and I’ll join you at your house.”

“What is it?” I asked. “I’ll tell you on our way. We’re going to the cemetery.”

       *       *       *       *       *

He carried a pick, a shovel, and a screwdriver when he rejoined me, and
wore round his shoulders a long coil of rope. As we walked, he gave me
the outlines of the ghastly hour that lay before us. “What I have to tell you,” he said, “will seem to you now too fantastic
for credence, but before dawn we shall see whether it outstrips
reality. By a most fortunate happening, you saw the spectre, the
astral body, whatever you choose to call it, of Mrs. Amworth, going on
its grisly business, and therefore, beyond doubt, the vampire spirit
which abode in her during life animates her again in death. That is
not exceptional--indeed, all these weeks since her death I have been
expecting it. If I am right, we shall find her body undecayed and
untouched by corruption.”

“But she has been dead nearly two months,” said I. “If she had been dead two years it would still be so, if the vampire
has possession of her. So remember: whatever you see done, it will be
done not to her, who in the natural course would now be feeding the
grasses above her grave, but to a spirit of untold evil and malignancy,
which gives a phantom life to her body.”

“But what shall I see done?” said I. “I will tell you. We know that now, at this moment, the vampire clad in
her mortal semblance is out; dining out. But it must get back before
dawn, and it will pass into the material form that lies in her grave. We must wait for that, and then with your help I shall dig up her
body. If I am right, you will look on her as she was in life, with the
full vigour of the dreadful nutriment she has received pulsing in her
veins. And then, when dawn has come, and the vampire cannot leave the
lair of her body, I shall strike her with this”--and he pointed to his
pick--“through the heart, and she, who comes to life again only with
the animation the fiend gives her, she and her hellish partner will be
dead indeed. Then we must bury her again, delivered at last.”

We had come to the cemetery, and in the brightness of the moonshine
there was no difficulty in identifying her grave. It lay some twenty
yards from the small chapel, in the porch of which, obscured by shadow,
we concealed ourselves. From there we had a clear and open sight of
the grave, and now we must wait till its infernal visitor returned
home. The night was warm and windless, yet even if a freezing wind had
been raging I think I should have felt nothing of it, so intense was
my preoccupation as to what the night and dawn would bring. There was
a bell in the turret of the chapel, that struck the quarters of the
hour, and it amazed me to find how swiftly the chimes succeeded one
another. The moon had long set, but a twilight of stars shone in a clear sky,
when five o’clock of the morning sounded from the turret. A few minutes
more passed, and then I felt Urcombe’s hand softly nudging me; and
looking out in the direction of his pointing finger, I saw that the
form of a woman, tall and large in build, was approaching from the
right. Noiselessly, with a motion more of gliding and floating than
walking, she moved across the cemetery to the grave which was the
centre of our observation. She moved round it as if to be certain
of its identity, and for a moment stood directly facing us. In the
greyness to which now my eyes had grown accustomed, I could easily see
her face, and recognise its features. She drew her hand across her mouth as if wiping it, and broke into a
chuckle of such laughter as made my hair stir on my head. Then she
leaped on to the grave, holding her hands high above her head, and inch
by inch disappeared into the earth. Urcombe’s hand was laid on my arm,
in an injunction to keep still, but now he removed it. “Come,” he said. With pick and shovel and rope we went to the grave. The earth was light
and sandy, and soon after six struck we had delved down to the coffin
lid. With his pick he loosened the earth round it, and, adjusting the
rope through the handles by which it had been lowered, we tried to
raise it. This was a long and laborious business, and the light had
begun to herald day in the east before we had it out, and lying by the
side of the grave. With his screwdriver he loosed the fastenings of
the lid, and slid it aside, and standing there we looked on the face
of Mrs. Amworth. The eyes, once closed in death, were open, the cheeks
were flushed with colour, the red, full-lipped mouth seemed to smile. “One blow and it is all over,” he said. “You need not look.”

Even as he spoke he took up the pick again, and, laying the point of it
on her left breast, measured his distance. And though I knew what was
coming I could not look away.... He grasped the pick in both hands, raised it an inch or two for the
taking of his aim, and then with full force brought it down on her
breast. A fountain of blood, though she had been dead so long, spouted
high in the air, falling with the thud of a heavy splash over the
shroud, and simultaneously from those red lips came one long, appalling
cry, swelling up like some hooting siren, and dying away again. With
that, instantaneous as a lightning flash, came the touch of corruption
on her face, the colour of it faded to ash, the plump cheeks fell in,
the mouth dropped. “Thank God, that’s over,” said he, and without pause slipped the coffin
lid back into its place. Day was coming fast now, and, working like men possessed, we lowered
the coffin into its place again, and shovelled the earth over it.... The birds were busy with their earliest pipings as we went back to
Maxley. In the Tube




In the Tube


“It’s a convention,” said Anthony Carling cheerfully, “and not a very
convincing one. Time, indeed! There’s no such thing as Time really; it
has no actual existence. Time is nothing more than an infinitesimal
point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity. At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed
to believe that we are travelling. There’s a roar in our ears and a
darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us. But before we came
into the tunnel we existed for ever in an infinite sunlight, and after
we have got through it we shall exist in an infinite sunlight again.