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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
Two-pair back. Room at the back of a house on the second floor.
Two-pair refers to two flights of steps with a landing in between.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
EVERYONE in the house disliked Kantra Prasad with something of the instinctive loathing awakened in human hearts by ugly, noxious, creeping things. An oily young Babu with beady black eyes peering from under drooping lids, the look of him alone was of a kind to inspire distaste into the most easy-going; and his manners, or rather an atmosphere that always surrounded him, that seemed to move with him, deepened the distaste to a hatred.
The fact that he had never allowed her to enter his room since he had occupied it, filled our landlady with a thousand fears and suspicions; and she would not have suffered him to stay in the house, had she not spent the six months' rent which he had paid her in advance. Maria, the untidy, hard-worked servant, declared with an unaffected shudder that she couldn't "a-bear" him.
I distrusted him profoundly for his furtive air, his slinking movements, and the uneasy, gaol-bird glances he shot at me from his half-closed eyes whenever we met. But Dulcie Langton, the daughter of the decayed gentleman, who lived also on the second floor, loathed him with the whole-souled loathing of her fourteen years. She called him the "Poison-spider" and would wait half-an-hour to avoid the risk of passing him on the stairs. As she and I were great friends, her loathing of him strengthened my distrust and dislike.
He had been in the house about a month when I noticed one day that he was changing—the olive tints in his brown face were growing a repulsive lighter green—and before I had made up my mind whether the change had been brought about by illness or mental trouble, I found myself with a very real grievance against him. I am a light sleeper, and if by any chance I am awakened in the night, I am long falling asleep again. Four or five nights running I was suddenly aroused to find myself in an inexplicable midnight fright and to hear nothing that could have aroused me. But I knew, I knew not how, that the awakening sound had come from the room above, the two-pair back, where Kantra Prasad lodged. And as sure as ever I fell asleep again, some snarling beast came into my dreams.
THE day was cold I had grown stiff writing, and a sentence baffled me; the right word would not come. I rose mechanically, began walking off the stiffness without thinking why I walked, stopped before the window, and was gazing vacantly out into the sleety drizzle, trying to rake the right word from some cranny of my mind, when I became aware that eyes were on me. It is an impression to which I am always sensitive, but this time it affected me with strong uneasiness. My absorption vanished, and I stared with all my intentness at the curtained window of the house opposite. I could see nothing, not even a vague outline that might pass for a head; but I could feel that the eyes were there, very troubling.
I drew back into the room out of sight, and watched with a curiosity, ever growing livelier, for a glimpse of the eyes whose gaze could so disquiet me. I had watched no little while, when, at the sound of a hansom rattling down the street, the curtains parted, and a face peered stealthily out of them down into it, with a savage eagerness—a lean, brown face, set in lank black hair, and alive with wild eyes. It was no face for a commonplace London back-street.
"A friend of Kantra Prasad's," I said to myself, slipping into my chair to go on with my work.
I fell to it again; but I had lost my grip on it. The face behind the curtains of the house opposite kept coming into my mind. Worse still, I could feel the eyes from time to time resting on me. I was glad when the early dusk forced me to draw down the blind and bar them out. I closed the shutters as well. Even then I could not write; I kept speculating on the face, and thinking that I should like no one to he waiting for one with so sinister an impatience.
It was no use trying to go on with my writing, it would be bad, and I rose to fill my pipe. I had filled it, and was folding a spill, when I heard a smothered cry, a patter of footsteps, and a flutter of skirts down the stairs; the door was jerked open, and Dulcie fell into the room.
She fell into the room, clutched the couch, and sank to her knees on the floor, her eyes glazed in a colourless face, contorted out of all its prettiness, her open lips gray; her very curls limp and straightening, with overmastering fear. I caught her up in my arms, and called on her to tell me what was the matter. She only choked and shuddered with her face against my shoulder, her fingers, clutching me with a painful grip, while her whole body quivered to each heartbeat. I set about soothing her, holding her in a tight clasp; it seemed the right method. It was at any rate effective, for presently the choking gasps ended in a burst of tears that relieved her oppression.
"I should have died if you hadn't held me," she sobbed; and I was inclined to believe her.
"What is it, dear? What frightened you?" I said gently
"There's something in the Babu's room," she sobbed.
"That infernal nigger again! I'll stop this!" I cried, angrily.
"Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" she cried in a fresh access of terror, and threw her arms round my neck.
"You'll be quite safe here. Lock the door as I go out," said I, unclasping them, for I was in a bitter rage that she should have been so terrified.
"You shan't! You shan't! You shan't" she cried, almost wailed. "You'll be killed. The Poison-spider has been away in the country these three days. His room is empty—only there's something dreadful in it!"
There was no use in arguing with her; she was unnerved by too severe a shock. I laid her back in the easy chair, and said "Now, you lie here; I will be back in two minutes."
She looked at my set face in piteous helpless appeal, gave a great gulp, bit her little lip, set her teeth, stiffened her arms against the side of the chair, and rose.
"Then I'll go too," she said quietly, and something stronger than fear shone of her eye.
I took her hand—it was atremble with the nervous effort—and, thinking that to see would most surely banish her fear, led her out of the room. At the first step that, creaked upon the dark stair, I heard a mumbling from the empty two-pair back, slipped my arm round her waist, and gripped her to me. When our steps creaked upon the landing the mumbling rose to an angry muttering of a sinister tone inconceivably disquieting.
"Oh, come away," she said below her breath; "it does worse than this," and she was again quivering with fear.
For all reply, I put her behind me and rattled the door. But snarl upon snarl, long drawn, ferocious, from no human or animal throat, and withal of so strong a note of potent malignity as to assure me, against all reasoning, that we faced the extreme peril, rang upon the air. I stood helpless while a man might count a score, felt Dulcie stiffen on the arm I had thrown round her, then staggered down the stairs half-carrying her, and stood at the bottom in the disorder of unnerving horror, the cold beads trickling down my face with cold chills racing down my spine.
With an empty hand I struck a match to light the gas; I hadn't the sense left to go into my room. As I struck it, I heard the front door open, and a blast of cold air blew it out. I struck another in wild hurry and unreasoning belief that the thing could not face the tight, and lit it. The flare relieved our hearts.
There came halting footsteps up the stairs, and Kantra Prasad rose into the circle of the light. His face, set in a mask of fear, helpless, hopeless fear, showed greenish; there was foam on his brown lips; his eyes were the eyes of a sleep-walker, and saw nothing but some horrible fate awaiting him. We shrank back against the wall, and he passed us, with his arm strained behind him, on dragging feet that moved by no will of his own. At each creak of the stairs came a snarl in a new note of a triumphant savagery, a gloating ruthlessness. His steps quickening to their summons, he passed across the landing at a stumbling run, and dashed open the door
The room was very dimly lighted; as he went in a swaying, writhing black shadow veiled him; there came a storm of snarls in the sound of a monstrous worrying, and then his body shot out of the room, toppled slowly down the stairs, heels over head, and lay in a huddled heap at our feet.
At the mere human horror Dulcie's fear found voice in screams, and I heard the doors opening below. Of a sudden another head came into the light, and the brown man from the house opposite stood beside us. A glance at the huddled body, a glance at us, and he sprang up the stairs with a swift, noiseless spring. The other lodgers, and the landlady came hurrying up, and in an excited group, noisy with questions set about raising Kantra Prasad and soothing Dulcie.
In the midst of the uproar the brown man came leaping down, bearing in his arms a burden of the size of a baby swathed in a silk coverlet, and sprang through the group, down the stairs, and vanished.
I carried the fainting child into my room, and with the help of the landlady set about restoring her. When I came out I found two policemen among the group on the landing, looking at Kantra Prasad, and receiving suggestions with an air of imperturbable wisdom. The Babu was quite dead, and into his throat, blue against the brown, two little hands, no bigger than a baby's, had bruised their fatal imprint. His lips, and cheeks, and chin had been bitten about by tiny teeth; but his face was the face of a man relieved of some intolerable burden.
The policemen heard my story, and went up to the two-pair back, their truncheons ready. I followed behind them. There was no living thing in the room. One of them lit the gas, and it showed us a large trunk in one corner, a pile of rags and cushions in another, and some simple cooking utensils an the hearth. In the middle of the room stood a small block of common deal, and, a foot away from each corner of it a little lamp of the kind used in illuminating gardens. Three of them had burned out, the fourth still flickered. In the trunk was a set of the tools of a gem setter.
THE inquest had been a tedious affair, very tiring to poor Dulcie; the jury, hopeless of understanding the matter, brought in a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.
I was sitting in my room, tired out, when Maria brought up a card inscribed "E.V. Gilberton." I was sick of newspaper men and amateur detectives, and was about to say I would not see him, when I saw that he had written "Indian Police" in the corner of it. I told her to show him up; and there came into the room a sun-browned man of forty, a man of a languid air, but with very keen eyes.
He came straight to the point, told me he had been sent by the Indian Government in search of a man who might be the dead Babu, and asked me to tell him what had happened. I repeated the story for the fiftieth time. He heard me without a word, and when I had made an end of it, asked me to show him the Babu's room. I led him upstairs to it at once.
It was just us the police had found it, the impression of horror was too vivid on the women's minds for them to touch it yet. He looked at the wooden block and the lamps with a thoughtful frown; walked across the room, and opened the trunk; as his eye fell on the gem-cutter's tools, the frown smoothed out, and there came on to his face the easy, triumphant expression of a man who sees the solution of a problem that has troubled him.
"So they've got it back!" he said, very softly.
"Come and tell me," I said, led the way to my room, gave him a cigar, and poured him out some whisky and soda.
"It's only fair that you should know," he said, "you've had trouble enough about it. Kantra Prasad fell a victim to the spread of Western ideas. The gods of his fathers were not good enough for him, but he has learned to appreciate them now. Six months ago a small idol of Shiva—the Destroyer, you know—which had two great rubies for eyes, was missing from a Benares temple. So was a young priest. When the priests found that he had got out of the country, they asked help of the Government, and I was sent to Europe after him. I traced him to Holland, and lost all traces of him there. While I was hunting, the brown man across the way had found him, and the goddess was looking after her image. She was angry. It strangled Kantra Prasad."
He took a sip of his whisky and soda.
"What! You mean to tell me that a stone image strangled a man! Here, in London, at the end of the nineteenth century!" I cried.
"I don't expect you to believe it," be said, with a smile. " But I have seen yet stranger things."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.