It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those few exquisite days that an
English climate offers, and half London had strayed out into the fields,
north, south, east, and west to smell the scent of the white May, and to
see if the wild roses were yet in blossom in the hedges. I had gone out
myself early in the morning, and had had a long ramble, and somehow or
other as I was steering homeward I found myself in this very Harlesden
we have been talking about. To be exact, I had a glass of beer in the
"General Gordon," the most flourishing house in the neighbourhood, and
as I was wandering rather aimlessly about, I saw an uncommonly tempting
gap in a hedgerow, and resolved to explore the meadow beyond. Soft grass
is very grateful to the feet after the infernal grit strewn on suburban
sidewalks, and after walking about for some time I thought I should like
to sit down on a bank and have a smoke. While I was getting out my
pouch, I looked up in the direction of the houses, and as I looked I
felt my breath caught back, and my teeth began to chatter, and the stick
I had in one hand snapped in two with the grip I gave it. It was as if I
had had an electric current down my spine, and yet for some moment of
time which seemed long, but which must have been very short, I caught
myself wondering what on earth was the matter. Then I knew what had
made my very heart shudder and my bones grind together in an agony. As I
glanced up I had looked straight towards the last house in the row
before me, and in an upper window of that house I had seen for some
short fraction of a second a face. It was the face of a woman, and yet
it was not human. You and I, Salisbury, have heard in our time, as we
sat in our seats in church in sober English fashion, of a lust that
cannot be satiated and of a fire that is unquenchable, but few of us
have any notion what these words mean. I hope you never may, for as I
saw that face at the window, with the blue sky above me and the warm air
playing in gusts about me, I knew I had looked into another
world--looked through the window of a commonplace, brand-new house, and
seen hell open before me. When the first shock was over, I thought once
or twice that I should have fainted; my face streamed with a cold sweat,
and my breath came and went in sobs, as if I had been half drowned. I
managed to get up at last, and walked round to the street, and there I
saw the name "Dr. Black" on the post by the front gate. As fate or my
luck would have it, the door opened and a man came down the steps as I
passed by. I had no doubt it was the doctor himself. He was of a type
rather common in London; long and thin, with a pasty face and a dull
black moustache. He gave me a look as we passed each other on the
pavement, and though it was merely the casual glance which one
foot-passenger bestows on another, I felt convinced in my mind that here
was an ugly customer to deal with. As you may imagine, I went my way a
good deal puzzled and horrified too by what I had seen; for I had paid
another visit to the "General Gordon," and had got together a good deal
of the common gossip of the place about the Blacks. I didn't mention the
fact that I had seen a woman's face in the window; but I heard that Mrs.
Black had been much admired for her beautiful golden hair, and round
what had struck me with such a nameless terror, there was a mist of
flowing yellow hair, as it were an aureole of glory round the visage of
a satyr. The whole thing bothered me in an indescribable manner; and
when I got home I tried my best to think of the impression I had
received as an illusion, but it was no use. I knew very well I had seen
what I have tried to describe to you, and I was morally certain that I
had seen Mrs. Black. And then there was the gossip of the place, the
suspicion of foul play, which I knew to be false, and my own conviction
that there was some deadly mischief or other going on in that bright red
house at the corner of Devon Road: how to construct a theory of a
reasonable kind out of these two elements. In short, I found myself in a
world of mystery; I puzzled my head over it and filled up my leisure
moments by gathering together odd threads of speculation, but I never
moved a step towards any real solution, and as the summer days went on
the matter seemed to grow misty and indistinct, shadowing some vague
terror, like a nightmare of last month. I suppose it would before long
have faded into the background of my brain--I should not have forgotten
it, for such a thing could never be forgotten--but one morning as I was
looking over the paper my eye was caught by a heading over some two
dozen lines of small type. The words I had seen were simply, "The
Harlesden Case," and I knew what I was going to read. Mrs. Black was
dead. Black had called in another medical man to certify as to cause of
death, and something or other had aroused the strange doctor's
suspicions and there had been an inquest and _post-mortem_. And the
result? That, I will confess, did astonish me considerably; it was the
triumph of the unexpected. The two doctors who made the autopsy were
obliged to confess that they could not discover the faintest trace of
any kind of foul play; their most exquisite tests and reagents failed to
detect the presence of poison in the most infinitesimal quantity. Death,
they found, had been caused by a somewhat obscure and scientifically
interesting form of brain disease. The tissue of the brain and the
molecules of the grey matter had undergone a most extraordinary series
of changes; and the younger of the two doctors, who has some reputation,
I believe, as a specialist in brain trouble, made some remarks in giving
his evidence which struck me deeply at the time, though I did not then
grasp their full significance. He said: "At the commencement of the
examination I was astonished to find appearances of a character entirely
new to me, notwithstanding my somewhat large experience. I need not
specify these appearances at present, it will be sufficient for me to
state that as I proceeded in my task I could scarcely believe that the
brain before me was that of a human being at all." There was some
surprise at this statement, as you may imagine, and the coroner asked
the doctor if he meant to say that the brain resembled that of an
animal. "No," he replied, "I should not put it in that way. Some of the
appearances I noticed seemed to point in that direction, but others, and
these were the more surprising, indicated a nervous organization of a
wholly different character from that either of man or the lower
animals." It was a curious thing to say, but of course the jury brought
in a verdict of death from natural causes, and, so far as the public was
concerned, the case came to an end. But after I had read what the doctor
said I made up my mind that I should like to know a good deal more, and
I set to work on what seemed likely to prove an interesting
investigation.