The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (4 page)

I grasped his hand, gulping down a lump that had risen in my throat.

" Good-bye! " I said. " Now go, there is not a moment to lose! We shall meet again."

But he turned to me once more.

" Never! Ward, you do believe that I did not murder her, do you not ? I have been a brute, but say you believe me innocent of
that."

"Yes, yes!" I cried eagerly, pushing him toward the open window. " Quick! Get out on the sill! "

He stood on the window-sill and climbed up on to the wire, swinging himself out with an agility that showed me he had lost little of his old form.

I stood at the window watching him with a feeling of thankfulness swing lightly along, when — I saw the "Thing" sail swiftly out from under the overhanging eaves and flap toward him.

He did not see it at first as it circled round his head, while I stood there rooted to the spot, unable to stir a finger. Suddenly it swooped down, down, until I could see the blackness of it dimly outlined against his shoulders.

I could not see clearly what happened during those ten awful seconds, but his face was hidden from view—covered by the " Thing." I heard him give a stifled scream of horror that sounded far away, as though a blanket was being pressed firmly
over mouth and nose, and he had stopped clambering. Then he let go one hand to try to tear the bat from his face and draw a breath; but he swung half round on the other arm, and had to clutch the wire again with both hands to save himself from falling.

He turned in frantic terror, trying to regain the window-ledge, and as he came on I, with the cold sweat standing thick on my brow, could see the frightful form pressed close to his face. Three steps he took like that; then he stopped, and his body swayed helplessly, as, with another muffled scream, his hold of the wire relaxed, and he went crashing down to the courtyard beneath.

I heard his skull crush in like an egg-shell as his head struck the stone flags thirty feet below, and while I yet gazed, sick at heart, with the blood frozen in my veins, the horrible " Thing " rose from where he had fallen and fluttered up toward me.

Still, I could not stir, only gaze horrified at the monster as it flapped to the wire, and, hooking on its hinder claws about six feet from the window, hung suspended head down.

A ray of light from the lamp at my back fell upon It, as It turned Its hideous head toward me, and I could see the malignant, beady eyes looking piercingly into mine; /
saw, too, the triangular piece oftrect cartilage on the end of the nose that distinguishes the vampire.

And as I sank to the floor in merciful oblivion the handle of the door rattled, as it swung open, disclosing Major Barnes with four constables at his back.

For an instant I saw him standing there, peering anxiously about the room. Then, as the darkness swept down and engulfed my failing spirit, the little clock within chimed out merrily, paused for a moment, and tolled—One!

DEATH-GRIPS.

Death-Grips.

i.

IT is but ten fleeting months since I stepped proudly from the little Beulah Chapel in Seward Road, the husband of the sweetest, daintiest gir that breathes, with every excuse for acknowledging myself the happiest man on earth; yet here I sit now, toying idly with my pen, about to commence a ghastly confession, of the details of which I am still unashamed, wondering if it can be true that happiness and blissful content ever were so nearly within my grasp.

I hardly know at which point to commence my ghastly story. Am I to begin with my first meeting with Arnold Rawdon ? If so, I doubt if I can remember now where it was that I first met the man. I believe it was at the Masonic Club. By profession Rawdon was a dentist, with a practice in Szechuen Road. He was certainly not a robust man, yet inclined to run to flabbiness with excess of fat. Conjuring up his face in the mirror of memory, I find there is scarcely a remarkable feature to record.

He had a weak-looking, sensuous mouth, watery blue eyes, set very closely together, so closely, in fact, as to give the whole face a look of cunning when the vacuous expression was not predominant, and sandy hair. Stay, though. There was one peculiarity about the man which I fancy struck me in those early days of our acquaintanceship—it was obvious enough later. When he was excited or angry the hair from the back of his head to the nape of the neck used fairly to stand on end and bristle, as one sees the hair bristle on the neck of an angry cat. I can recollect remarking what a peculiarly weird appearance it had—a look that, striking some strange chord of sympathy in one's own mind, produced that eerie creeping of the scalp one experiences when in the austere presence of the unknown.

There was a something repellant about the man's manner that prevented my ever desiring to become intimate with him, though I gathered from casual talks, when he was one of the group, that he had practised for a lengthy period in India, and had more than once come into contact with that mysterious sect, the Mahatma. It was admitted by all that he was deeply imbued with the lore of India, and among ourselves Rawdon was an acknowledged authority on all matters, ancient or modern, connected with that country of esoteric learning.

It was rumoured by the idle gossips' tongues of
Shanghai (this I learned later) that Arnold Rawdon was deeply in love with a fair maiden of the community, Miss Ethel Langarde. My own introduction to the lady was under unconventional and rather peculiar circumstances. I was riding in from Jessfield on my bicycle, when I passed her trudging along on foot, pushing her own machine before her. Judging from the rueful glances she from time to time cast upon her steed that something was amiss, I pulled up and inquired if I could be of any service to her. She looked up at me with a comical expression of despair in her frank blue eyes.

" I am afraid my machine has refused duty. The pedal has come off."

Leaving my own bike by the roadside, I stooped to inspect it. The thread of the pedal had stripped, and the nut was hanging loosely on the bolt.

"I think," I assured her, "we can fix that up sufficiently well to take you into town."

" Thanks very much," replied Miss Langarde, " but I am afraid the case is hopeless. We have already tried, my escort and I, but the horrid thing will keep coming off."

She saw my look of inquiry bent on the road in search of the escort of whom she spoke, and hastened to add—

"We gave up the attempt to make it behave itself, and he has ridden on to try and procure a rickshaw or gharry. It's too bad "—petulantly—
"for that odious thing to break down in the middle of the journey like this! "

" Let us see what can be done," I said.

I am not an inapt mechanic, and managed, with a strip of tin from a match-box case I luckily had in my pocket, to jam the nut on in a manner sufficiently secure to make the machine safe to ride. And having thus put matters to rights, I could do no less than offer to supply the place of the missing escort, who, I devoutly hoped, would have to ride a long way ere finding a conveyance.

" By the way," I remarked, when we were fairly started, "it's very shocking, I suppose, but we don't know each other, and there's no one to make the needful introductions."

" How very dreadful!" she exclaimed, with a bright laugh that sent my front wheel wobbling violently, " I suppose, under the circumstances, we shall be justified in doing it for ourselves. My own name is Ethel Langarde."

"And mine," I replied eagerly, "is Henry Keith."

" So pleased to meet you," she murmured in her most formal tones, whereat we both laughed merrily, and before another twenty yards were covered we were the best of friends.

"Take care, Miss Langarde," I cried presently, for the pace was becoming much too rapid for my liking. " I would not advise you to ride too fast, that pedal might come off again ! "

But she saw through my little ruse to protract
the pleasure of the ride, and a mischievous smile dimpled her cheeks.

" Oh, I really think it would be perfectly safe to go a great deal faster !" she replied cheerfully. Nevertheless she slowed down to my pace, which was about as leisurely as I could make it without tumbling off my machine.

And so we pedalled slowly toward the town, I lost in admiration of the dainty loveliness of the girl at my side, and fervently hoping that her companion had smashed his machine in a collision or any other dire mishap that would prevent his turning up before we reached Shanghai. We met him at last some little distance out, conveying a rickshaw, and great was his surprise to see Miss Langarde riding the disabled machine. Great was also my surprise, not unmixed with mortification, to find, as he approached, that the gentleman was none other than Arnold Rawdon.

As he came up, Miss Langarde, slipping from her machine, prepared to make the necessary explanations and introduction.

"See, Mr. Rawdon," she cried, with eyes brimming with roguishness, " the distressed damsel has already been succoured by a gallant knight. Permit me " Then, catching our looks of mutual recognition, " Ah ! but I see you already know each other. How jolly ! "

Seeing there was no further excuse for intruding
my company, I was about to raise my cap and turn away, when she interposed—

" But surely Mr. Keith is not going to be so selfish as to ride away without giving us a chance of showing him our gratitude ? Mr. Rawdon," she turned imperiously towards him, " please persuade your friend to accompany us and accept a cup of tea."

Rawdon's face was showing as much annoyance as such faces are capable of exhibiting, but he managed to mumble some polite phrase expressive of his wish that I should accompany them. As much to chastise his selfishness as for anything else, I readily conceded, and away we went again three abreast.

" You see, Mr. Keith, my machine might break down again," Miss Langarde murmured demurely, at which remark reflecting on his usefulness as an escort, Rawdon's brow grew blacker yet.

This was the beginning of a friendship that blossomed into intimacy and soon ripened into love. A little more than three months from that lucky day, Ethel and I were made man and wife, and it was only then I discovered that Rawdon had had aspirations toward the same goal. He seemed to take the matter so lightly that I felt almost angry with him for being willing to surrender so rich a prize thus easily. It was, I told myself indignantly, a slight on my wife. How could any man know Ethel and not be in love with her ?

He declined to be present at the wedding reception —the whole affair was as quiet as we could make it, for when two people are really happy they do not like to proclaim it from the housetops—but he sent Ethel a magnificent collection of Cashmere shawls, which we understood had been accumulated during his lengthy sojourn in India. He declined with equal persistency to accept any of our invitations, always having some valid excuse, and so gradually Arnold Rawdon dropped out of our life.

II.

Of
the major part of my career I need say little. They who have read the Shanghai papers of the last few weeks will have seen it blazoned forth again and again, with wearisome iteration, ever with the addition of some fictitious detail to excuse the repetition of the stale story. I will, therefore, go over the old ground no further than to say that until recently I held the position of sub-editor on that thriving daily, the
Eastern Echo,
with every prospect of ultimately fighting my way to the top of the journalistic ladder.

Mental science had always been to me a topic of absorbing interest to which I had devoted all my spare time, following with avidity the abstruse speculations in both its branches, both the psychic and metaphysic. Though the transcendentalism of Descartes, Kant, and Reid had a great fascination for me, it was to mesmerism and the allied phenomena of hypnotism that I directed most of my researches. It was in the arduous pursuit of these that I came in contact with spiritualism before leaving home for the East, and in the sanguineness of youth dreamed that here
was the medium by which the phenomena of mind were to be brought to the demonstrable level of the exact sciences. In this I was unfortunate, for in the attempt of its devotees to pick the lock of eternity and reveal matters behind the awful veil, my eyes were slowly, yet surely, opened to their rank charlatanism. Medium after medium was detected in the act of strumming surreptitious banjos or rapping on the table with would-be invisible fingers.

The result was that with the rashness of young blood I held that the induction which applied so fittingly to spiritualism was equally true of mesmerism and hypnotism, by the %id of which they claimed to work wonders, and I angrily denounced the whole thing as a hollow fraud.

In the revulsion of disgust, I resolved to devote my time to a science a little more positive, one at least in which I could study the resultant phenomena of the mind's action without being basely cheated by blatant charlatanism, so I turned my attention with renewed zeal to the sister branch—metaphysics.

Here at least I was not unsuccessful in my investigations, and may claim, as the issue of my speculations on mind as related to matter, the authorship of two or three treatises, which the schools have been pleased to look upon with approval, while lauding their depth of research and perspicuity.

It was shortly after the issue of the last pamphlet

that I left London for Shanghai, to take up my duties on the staff of the journal from which I have been so lately torn.

But I still retained my interest in metaphysics, reading eagerly every fresh book that appeared to cast a new light on this most elusive of subjects. With hypnotism I, however, declined to have anything more to do. My awakening from the dreams of the supernatural had been thorough and complete, and I was resolved never again to allow myself to be duped by specious appearances, however plausible.

In justice to myself, I must add that I was not unwilling to admit a certain modicum of truth in the experiments of Mesmer and Braid. I still believed it possible to throw the human mind into a mesmeric sleep by keeping the eye strained on a black wafer stuck on a blank white wall. But I emphatically denied all psychic influence, explaining the phenomenon by the theory of the mind being thrown into a state of morbid activity through the abnormal strain on the attention and the reflex action of an excited imagination.

The next time I met Rawdon was out at the race-course. Ethel and I had been to see the review of the volunteers. After it was over, and the people began to move from their seats in the direction of Nankin Road, she slipped away for
a moment to speak to a friend whom she had spied among the crowd, begging me to sit still till she came back. I was idly watching the coolies gathering the pennons that were stuck about the field, when someone, squeezing his way between the benches in front of me, trod heavily on my toe. As he turned to apologise, I recognized Rawdon.