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 semi-conscious
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 wrapped 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. He
was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman’s
head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true
artist, for the woman’s soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were
parted with a strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought
to his memory one summer evening, long ago; he saw again the long
lovely valley, the river winding between the hills, the meadows and the
cornfields, the dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising from the
water. He heard a voice speaking to him across the waves of many years,
and saying “Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!” and then he was
standing in the grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy
ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying
on the green chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked
into her eyes, and his heart grew cold within him. “Who is this woman?” he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse. “That is the woman who Herbert married.”

Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There
certainly was Mary’s face, but there was something else, something he
had not seen on Mary’s features when the white-clad girl entered the
laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she
lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from
those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole
face, Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip’s words, “the most vivid presentment of
evil I have ever seen.” He turned the paper over mechanically in his
hand and glanced at the back. “Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death.”

Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a
groan, and let the paper drop from his hands. “I don’t feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour
me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a
few minutes.”

Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had
done. “You saw that?” he said. “That’s how I identified it as being a
portrait of Herbert’s wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel
now?”

“Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don’t think I quite
catch your meaning. What did you say enabled you to identify the
picture?”

“This word—‘Helen’—was written on the back. Didn’t I tell you her name
was Helen? Yes; Helen Vaughan.”

Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt. “Now, don’t you agree with me,” said Villiers, “that in the story I
have told you to-night, and in the part this woman plays in it, there
are some very strange points?”

“Yes, Villiers,” Clarke muttered, “it is a strange story indeed; a
strange story indeed. You must give me time to think it over; I may be
able to help you or I may not. Must you be going now? Well, good-night,
Villiers, good-night. Come and see me in the course of a week.”




V
THE LETTER OF ADVICE


“Do you know, Austin,” said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing
sedately along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, “do you know I
am convinced that what you told me about Paul Street and the Herberts
is a mere episode in an extraordinary history? I may as well confess to
you that when I asked you about Herbert a few months ago I had just
seen him.”

“You had seen him? Where?”

“He begged of me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable
plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history,
or at least the outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this—he had
been ruined by his wife.”

“In what manner?”

“He would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed him,
body and soul. The man is dead now.”

“And what has become of his wife?”

“Ah, that’s what I should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner
or later. I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of
business, but shrewd enough.