Out of the Dark: Tales of Terror by Robert W. Chambers. Robert W. ChambersЧитать онлайн книгу.
she answered slowly, ‘you are not to read them; you are to give them to somebody.’
‘To whom? Anybody?’
‘No, not to anybody. You will know whom to give them to when the time comes.’
‘Then I am to keep them until further instructions?’
‘Your own heart will instruct you,’ she said, in a scarcely audible voice. She held the thin packet toward me, and to humor her I took it. It was wet.
‘The letters fell into the sea,’ she said. ‘There was a photograph which should have gone with them but the salt water washed it blank. Will you care if I ask you something else?’
‘I? Oh, no.’
‘Then give me the picture that you made of me to-day.’
I laughed again, and demanded how she knew I had drawn her.
‘Is it like me?’ she said.
‘I think it is very like you,’ I answered truthfully.
‘Will you not give it to me?’
Now it was on the tip of my tongue to refuse, but I reflected that I had enough sketches for a full page without that one, so I handed it to her, nodded that she was welcome, and stood up. She rose also, the diamond flashing on her finger.
‘You are sure that you are not in want?’ I asked, with a tinge of good-natured sarcasm.
‘Hark!’ she whispered; ‘listen! – do you not hear the bells of the convent!’
I looked out into the misty night.
‘There are no bells sounding,’ I said, ‘and anyway there are no convent bells here. We are in New York, mademoiselle’ – I had noticed her French accent – ‘we are in Protestant Yankee-land, and the bells that ring are much less mellow than the bells of France.’
I turned pleasantly to say good-night. She was gone.
III
‘Have you ever drawn a picture of a corpse?’ inquired Jamison next morning as I walked into his private room with a sketch of the proposed full page of the Zoo.
‘No, and I don’t want to,’ I replied, sullenly.
‘Let me see your Central Park page,’ said Jamison in his gentle voice, and I displayed it. It was about worthless as an artistic production, but it pleased Jamison, as I knew it would.
‘Can you finish it by this afternoon?’ he asked, looking up at me with persuasive eyes.
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ I said, wearily; ‘anything else, Mr Jamison?’
‘The corpse,’ he replied, ‘I want a sketch by tomorrow – finished.’
‘What corpse?’ I demanded, controlling my indignation as I met Jamison’s soft eyes.
There was a mute duel of glances. Jamison passed his hand across his forehead with a slight lifting of the eyebrows.
‘I shall want it as soon as possible,’ he said in his caressing voice.
What I thought was, ‘Damned purring pussy-cat!’ What I said was, ‘Where is this corpse?’
‘In the Morgue – have you read the morning papers? No? Ah, – as you very rightly observe you are too busy to read the morning papers. Young men must learn industry first, of course, of course. What you are to do is this: the San Francisco police have sent out an alarm regarding the disappearance of a Miss Tufft – the millionaire’s daughter, you know. Today a body was brought to the Morgue here in New York, and it has been identified as the missing young lady – by a diamond ring. Now I am convinced that it isn’t, and I’ll show you why, Mr Hilton.’
He picked up a pen and made a sketch of a ring on a margin of that morning’s Tribune.
‘That is the description of her ring as sent on from San Francisco. You notice the diamond is set in the centre of the ring where the two gold serpents’ tails cross!
‘Now the ring on the finger of the woman in the Morgue is like this,’ and he rapidly sketched another ring where the diamond rested in the fangs of the two gold serpents.
‘That is the difference,’ he said in his pleasant, even voice.
‘Rings like that are not uncommon,’ said I, remembering that I had seen such a ring on the finger of the white-faced girl in the Park the evening before. Then a sudden thought took shape – perhaps that was the girl whose body lay in the Morgue!
‘Well,’ said Jamison, looking up at me, ‘what are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ I answered, but the whole scene was before my eyes, the vultures brooding among the rocks, the shabby black dress, and the pallid face – and the ring, glittering on that slim white hand!
‘Nothing,’ I repeated, ‘when shall I go, Mr Jamison? Do you want a portrait – or what?’
‘Portrait – careful drawing of the ring, and, er, a centre piece of the Morgue at night. Might as well give people the horrors while we’re about it.’
‘But,’ said I, ‘the policy of this paper—’
‘Never mind, Mr Hilton,’ purred Jamison, ‘I am able to direct the policy of this paper.’
‘I don’t doubt you are,’ I said angrily.
‘I am,’ he repeated, undisturbed and smiling; ‘you see this Tufft case interests society. I am – er – also interested.’
He held out to me a morning paper and pointed to a heading.
I read: ‘Miss Tufft Dead! Her Fiancé was Mr Jamison, the well known Editor’.
‘What!’ I cried in horrified amazement. But Jamison had left the room, and I heard him chatting and laughing softly with some visitors in the press-room outside.
I flung down the paper and walked out.
‘The cold-blooded toad!’ I exclaimed again and again; ‘—making capital out of his fiancée’s disappearance! Well, I – I’m d—nd! I knew he was a bloodless, heartless, grip-penny, but I never thought – I never imagined—’ Words failed me.
Scarcely conscious of what I did I drew a Herald from my pocket and saw the column entitled: ‘Miss Tufft Found! Identified by a Ring. Wild Grief of Mr Jamison, her Fiancé.’
That was enough. I went out into the street and sat down in City Hall Park. And, as I sat there, a terrible resolution came to me; I would draw the dead girl’s face in such a way that it would chill Jamison’s sluggish blood, I would crowd the black shadows of the Morgue with forms and ghastly faces, and every face should bear something in it of Jamison. Oh, I’d rouse him from his cold snaky apathy! I’d confront him with Death in such an awful form, that, passionless, base, inhuman as he was, he’d shrink from it as he would from a dagger thrust. Of course I’d lose my place, but that did not bother me, for I had decided to resign anyway, not having a taste for the society of human reptiles. And, as I sat there in the sunny park, furious, trying to plan a picture whose sombre horror should leave in his mind an ineffaceable scar, I suddenly thought of the pale black-robed girl in Central Park. Could it be her poor slender body that lay among the shadows of the grim Morgue! If ever brooding despair was stamped on any face, I had seen its print on hers when she spoke to me in the Park and gave me the letters. The letters! I had not thought of them since, but now I drew them from my pocket and looked at the addresses.
‘Curious,’ I thought, ‘the letters are still damp; they smell of salt water too.’
I looked at the address again, written in the long fine hand of an educated woman who had