The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (92 page)

“But who is he?” he asked.

“That,” said the manager, “is Dr. Bourdette.”

Hewson shook his head doubtfully.

“I think I’ve heard the name,” he said, “but I forget in connection with what.”

The manager smiled.

“You’d remember better if you were a Frenchman,” he said. “For some long while that man was the terror of Paris. He carried on his work of healing by day, and of throat-cutting by night, when the fit was on him. He killed for the sheer devilish pleasure it gave him to kill, and always in the same way – with a razor. After his last crime he left a clue behind him which set the police upon his track. One clue led to another, and before very long they knew that they were on the track of the Parisian equivalent of our Jack the Ripper, and had enough evidence to send him to the mad-house or the guillotine on a dozen capital charges.

“But even then our friend here was too clever for them. When he realised that the toils were closing about him he mysteriously disappeared and ever since the police of every civilised country have been looking for him. There is no doubt that he managed to make away with himself, and by some means which has prevented his body coming to light. One or two crimes of a similar nature have taken place since his disappearance, but he is believed almost for certain to be dead, and the experts believe these recrude-scences to be the work of an imitator. It’s queer, isn’t it, how every notorious murderer has imitators?”

Hewson shuddered and fidgetted with his feet.

“I don’t like him at all,” he confessed. “Ugh! What eyes he’s got!”

“Yes, this figure’s a little masterpiece. You find the eyes bite into you? Well, that’s excellent realism, then, for Bourdette practised mesmerism, and was supposed to mesmerise his victims before dispatching them. Indeed, had he not done so, it is impossible to see how so small a man could have done his ghastly work. There was never any signs of a struggle.”

“I thought I saw him move,” said Hewson with a catch in his voice.

The manager smiled.

“You’ll have more than one optical illusion before the night’s out, I expect. You shan’t be locked in. You can come upstairs when you’ve had enough of it. There are watchmen on the premises, so you’ll find company. Don’t be alarmed if you hear them moving about. I’m sorry I can’t give you any more light, because all the lights are on. For obvious reasons we keep this place as gloomy as possible. And now I think you had better return with me to the office and have a tot of whisky before beginning your night’s vigil.”

The member of the night staff who placed the arm-chair for Hewson was inclined to be facetious.

“Where will you have it, sir?” he asked, grinning. “Just ’ere, so as you can ’ave a little talk with Crippen when you’re tired of sitting still? Or there’s old Mother Dyer over there, making eyes and looking as if she could do with a bit of company. Say where, sir.”

Hewson smiled. The man’s chaff pleased him if only because, for the moment at least, it lent the proceedings a much-desired air of the commonplace.

“I’ll place it myself, thanks,” he said. “I’ll find out where the draughts come from first.”

“You won’t find any down here. Well, good night, sir. I’m upstairs if you want me. Don’t let ’em sneak up be’ind you and touch your neck with their cold and clammy ’ands. And you look out for that old Mrs. Dyer; I b’lieve she’s taken a fancy to you.”

Hewson laughed and wished the man good-night. It was easier than he had expected. He wheeled the arm-chair – a heavy one upholstered in plush – a little way down the central gangway, and deliberately turned it so that its back was towards the effigy of Dr. Bourdette. For some undefined reason he liked Dr. Bourdette a great deal less than his companions. Busying himself with arranging the chair he was almost light-hearted, but when the attendant’s footfalls had died away and a deep hush stole over the chamber he realised that he had no slight ordeal before him.

The dim unwavering light fell on the rows of figures which were so uncannily like human beings that the silence and the stillness seemed unnatural and even ghastly. He missed the sound of breathing, the rustling of clothes, the hundred and one minute noises one hears when even the deepest silence has fallen upon a crowd. But the air was as stagnant as water at the bottom of a standing pond. There was not a breath in the chamber to stir a curtain or rustle a hanging drapery or start a shadow. His own shadow, moving in response to a shifted arm or leg, was all that could be coaxed into motion. All was still to the gaze and silent to the ear. “It must be like this at the bottom of the sea,” he thought and wondered how to work the phrase into his story on the morrow.

He faced the sinister figures boldly enough. They were only waxworks. So long as he let that thought dominate all others he promised himself that all would be well. It did not, however, save him long from the discomfort occasioned by the waxen stare of Dr. Bourdette, which, he knew, was directed upon him from behind. The eyes of the little Frenchman’s effigy haunted and tormented him, and he itched with the desire to turn and look.

“Come!” he thought, “my nerves have started already. If I turn and look at that dressed-up dummy it will be an admission of funk.”

And then another voice in his brain spoke to him.

“It’s because you’re afraid that you won’t turn and look at him.”

The two voices quarrelled silently for a moment or two, and at last Hewson slewed his chair round a little and looked behind him.

Among the many figures standing in stiff, unnatural poses, the effigy of the dreadful little doctor stood out with a queer prominence, perhaps because a steady beam of light beat straight down upon it. Hewson flinched before the parody of mildness which some fiendishly skilled craftsman had managed to convey in wax, met the eyes for one agonised second, and turned again to face the other direction.

“He’s only a waxwork like the rest of you,” Hewson muttered defiantly. “You’re all only waxworks.”

They were only waxworks, yes, but waxworks don’t move. Not that he had seen the least movement anywhere, but it struck him that, in the moment or two while he had looked behind him, there had been the least subtle change in the grouping of the figures in front. Crippen, for instance, seemed to have turned at least one degree to the left. Or, thought Hewson, perhaps the illusion was due to the fact that he had not slewed his chair back into its exact original position. And there were Field and Grey, too; surely one of them had moved his hands. Hewson held his breath for a moment, and then drew his courage back to him as a man lifts a weight. He remembered the words of more than one news editor and laughed savagely to himself.

“And they tell me I’ve no imagination!” he said beneath his breath.

He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote quickly.

“Deathly silence and unearthly stillness of figures. Like being bottom of sea. Hypnotic eyes of Dr. Bourdette. Figures seem to move when not being watched.”

He closed the book suddenly over his fingers and looked round quickly and awfully over his right shoulder. He had neither seen nor heard a movement, but it was as if some sixth sense had made him aware of one. He looked straight into the vapid countenance of Lefroy which smiled vacantly back as if to say, “It wasn’t I!”

Of course it wasn’t he, or any of them; it was his own nerves. Or was it? Hadn’t Crippen moved again during that moment when his attention was directed elsewhere. You couldn’t trust that little man! Once you took your eyes off him he took advantage of it to shift his position. That was what they were all doing, if he only knew it, he told himself; and half rose out of his chair. This was not quite good enough! He was going. He wasn’t going to spend the night with a lot of waxworks which moved while he wasn’t looking.

Hewson sat down again. This was very cowardly and very absurd. They
were
only waxworks, and they
couldn’t
move; let him hold that thought and all would yet be well. Then why all that silent unrest about him? – a subtle something in the air which did not quite break the silence and happened, whichever way he looked, just beyond the boundaries of his vision.

He swung round quickly to encounter the mild but baleful stare of Dr. Bourdette. Then, without warning, he jerked his head back to stare straight at Crippen. Ha! He’d nearly caught Crippen that time! “You’d better be careful, Crippen – and all the rest of you! If I do see one of you move I’ll smash you to pieces! Do you hear?”

He ought to go, he told himself. Already he had experienced enough to write his story, or ten stories, for the matter of that. Well, then, why not go? The
Morning Echo
would be none the wiser as to how long he had stayed, nor would it care so long as his story was a good one. Yes, but that night-watchman upstairs would chaff him. And the manager – one never knew – perhaps the manager would quibble over that five-pound note which he needed so badly. He wondered if Rose were asleep or if she were lying awake and thinking of him. She’d laugh when he told her that he had imagined . . .

This was a little too much. It was bad enough that the waxwork effigies of murderers should move when they weren’t being watched, but it was intolerable that they should
breathe
. Somebody was breathing. Or was it his own breath which sounded to him as if it came from a distance? He sat rigid, listening and straining until he exhaled with a long sigh. His own breath after all, or – if not, something had divined that he was listening and had ceased breathing simultaneously.

Hewson jerked his head swiftly around and looked all about him out of haggard and hunted eyes. Everywhere his gaze encountered the vacant waxen faces, and everywhere he felt that by just some least fraction of a second had he missed seeing a movement of hand or foot, a silent opening or compression of lips, a flicker of eyelids, a look of human intelligence now smoothed out. They were like naughty children in a class, whispering, fidgeting and laughing behind their teacher’s back, but blandly innocent when his gaze was turned upon them.

This would not do! This distinctly would not do! He must clutch at something, grip with his mind upon something which belonged essentially to the workaday world, to the daylight London streets. He was Raymond Hewson, an unsuccessful journalist, a living and breathing man, and these figures grouped around him were only dummies, so they could neither move nor whisper. What did it matter if they were supposed to be lifelike effigies of murderers? They were only made of wax and sawdust, and stood there for the entertainment of morbid sightseers and orange-sucking trippers. That was better! Now what was that funny story which somebody had told him in the Falstaff yesterday . . .?

He recalled part of it, but not all, for the gaze of Dr. Bourdette, urged, challenged, and finally compelled him to turn.

Hewson half-turned, and then swung his chair so as to bring him face to face with the wearer of those dreadful hypnotic eyes. His own eyes were dilated, and his mouth, at first set in a grin of terror, lifted at the corners in a snarl. Then Hewson spoke and woke a hundred sinister echoes.

“You moved, damn you!” he cried. “Yes, you did, damn you! I saw you!”

Then he sat quite still, staring straight before him, like a man frozen in the Arctic snows.

Dr. Bourdette’s movements were leisurely. He stepped off his pedestal with the mincing care of a lady alighting from a bus. The platform stood about two feet from the ground, and above the edge of it a plush-covered rope hung in arclike curves. Dr. Bourdette lifted up the rope until it formed an arch for him to pass under, stepped off the platform and sat down on the edge facing Hewson. Then he nodded and smiled and said, “Good evening.”

“I need hardly tell you,” he continued in perfect English in which was traceable only the least foreign accent, “that not until I overheard the conversation between you and the worthy manager of this establishment, did I suspect that I should have the pleasure of a companion here for the night. You cannot move or speak without my bidding, but you can hear me perfectly well. Something tells me that you are – shall I say nervous? My dear sir, have no illusions. I am not one of these contemptible effigies miraculously come to life: I am Dr. Bourdette himself.”

He paused, coughed and shifted his legs.

“Pardon me,” he resumed, “but I am a little stiff. And let me explain. Circumstances with which I need not fatigue you, have made it desirable that I should live in England. I was close to this building this evening when I saw a policeman regarding me a thought too curiously. I guessed that he intended to follow and perhaps ask me embarrassing questions, so I mingled with the crowd and came in here. An extra coin bought my admission to the chamber in which we now meet, and an inspiration showed me a certain means of escape.

“I raised a cry of fire, and when all the fools had rushed to the stairs I stripped my effigy of the caped coat which you behold me wearing, donned it, hid my effigy under the platform at the back, and took its place on the pedestal.

“I own that I have since spent a very fatiguing evening, but fortunately I was not always being watched and had opportunities to draw an occasional deep breath and ease the rigidity of my pose. One small boy screamed and exclaimed that he saw me moving. I understood that he was to be whipped and put straight to bed on his return home, and I can only hope that the threat has been executed to the letter.

“The manager’s description of me, which I had the embarrassment of being compelled to overhear, was biased but not altogether inaccurate. Clearly I am not dead, although it is as well that the world thinks otherwise. His account of my hobby, which I have indulged for years, although, through necessity, less frequently of late, was in the main true although not intelligently expressed. The world is divided between collectors and non-collectors. With the non-collectors we are not concerned. The collectors collect anything, according to their individual tastes, from money to cigarette cards, from moths to match boxes. I collect throats.”