Vintage Vampire Stories (16 page)

“The only way!” he gasped, in lisping German: “the only way! But I am ready—glad; for I shall come to you now and you cannot escape me! See!” And so saying, and before Rowan could realize what was taking place, the man stabbed himself to the heart, and with a loud groan fell backwards into the waters of the Bosphorus, which closed over him.

“And you say you were not frightened?” exclaimed Bertonneux of the Oeil de Boeuf.

Hippy Rowan shook his head and smiled. “No, of course not,” he said. Then he added, lowering his voice lest the others should hear him, “Do you know, it's a strange thing, mon cher, that never in my life have I known what fear is. It's no boast, of course, but a fact; and you can ask any one who's been with me in danger. There are plenty of them about, for I began with Inkermann and only ended with Candahar, not to speak of innumerable little private adventures more or less unpleasant between times, like the one I've just been telling you about, in fact. You know me well enough to feel that I'm neither a fool nor a coxcomb, and as a matter of fact this is not exactly courage, I fancy, but rather an absolute inability to entertain such a sentiment as fear. Just as some people are born blind and deaf and dumb.”

The scene was an immense and lofty chamber, luxuriously furnished, half drawing-room, half smoking-room, in Tony Jeratczesco's house in Moldavia, in the Karpak Mountains, and the time about a month after the events recorded in the last chapter had taken place.

To the French journalist Rowan had already told the story of his horrible adventure with Isaac Lebedenko and of the man's suicide—all or which events, together with minutes of what Maryx had said about the Children of Judas, were found carefully noted down in the Colonel's diary after his death—from which source of information and the testimony of Adams the present authentic account of these strange occurrences is taken; but Mr Leonard P. Beacon not having heard the story before, Hippy had been prevailed upon to repeat it to him.

Hippy had spoken in a low tone, to avoid attracting attention; but he had not been taken into consideration the boisterous nature of his American auditor, who now exclaimed at the top of his voice: “What! do you mean seriously to tell me, Rowan, that you have never known what fear is? that you simply can't be frightened or anything?”

Annoying as it was under the circumstances to have such a question put in so trumpet-tongued a fashion, Hippy plainly saw that the American would insist upon a reply to his thundered query, and that it would in no wise better matters do delay giving it.

“I do,” said he simply; and then added, in a half-whisper, “I wish you wouldn't yell so, Beacon.” But it was too late. One local gentleman, a certain Prince Valerian Eldourdza, who, owing to the ract of his having been educated at a Lycée in Paris, was looked upon as the Admirable Crichton of that part of Moldavia, pressed Hippy very hard, plying him with most personal and impertinent questions as to his belief in a future life, future punishment, the devil, and so forth, and at last, indeed, going as far as to solemnly declare that not only did he not believe in Colonel Rowan's inability to experience terror, but that he would himself undertake under a penalty of £4,000 to frighten him. This somewhat offensive boast had, in the first instance, fallen from Eldourdza's lips in the heat of excitement, and probably without the speaker himself attaching any very great meaning or importance to his words; but the statement having been received with vociferous approval by the other local Boyards who were present, his Highness had been constrained to repeat the bet, and the second time give it a more specific form. “One hundred thousand francs,” he repeated, bringing his very small and very unclean fist down on the table with much violence, “that I frighten you, Colonel, before you leave here—that is, of course, always provided you're not leaving at once.”

“My friend is staying with me another month,” interposed Jeratczesco, rather angrily. “But I can't allow such bets to be made in my house, Eldourdza. I hate practical jokes—we have quite enough of that kind of folly in England.”

“You leave this to me,Tony,” said Rowan to his host, speaking quickly, and in English; then, turning to Eldourdza: “Let's understand each other plainly, Prince.What do you mean by fright? Of course you can startle me by jumping out from a dark corner, or by any trick of that kind. I made no bet about that kind of thing, of course; but I'll bet you an even hundred thousand franks, if you like, or a hundred and fifty thousand francs, that you don't make me experience what is generally and by every one understood by the word fright—a sentiment of fear, or of anything even remotely resembling fear. How shall we define it, for we must be clear on this point?”

“Hair standing on end and teeth chattering,” suggested Mr Leonard P. Beacon, who was greatly delighted at the turn affairs had taken, foreseeing an adventure and new experience of some kind.

“Exactly,” replied Eldourdza, who had been consulting in a whisper with his friends, and absorbing yet another gobletful of champagne strongly laced with brandy.“Let those very words be used if you like—I'll bet you an even hundred and fifty thousand francs—two hundred thousand if you like” (Hippy nodded)—“that before you leave this place, four weeks from to-day, you shall be so frightened that your hair will stand on end, your teeth will chatter, and what's more, you'll call for help.”

“Very well,” assented Rowan, laughing, “C'est entendu; but I shan't make you go so far as that, my dear Prince. I shall be quite ready to pay up if you do more than merely startle me in the way I spoke of just now—by some sudden noise, or jumping out at me, or some such silly prank. Anything even approaching fear, much less terror, of course, and I pay up at once. “And,” he added good-naturedly—for he was fond of winning money, and the certainty of this £8,000 was very pleasant to him—“luckily for you, Eldourdza, I happen to have the money to pay with if I lose. I was on every winner the last day at Baden—couldn't do wrong—and sent it all on to Gunzburg at once, where it is intact, for I didn't want to be tempted to gamble till I got to St Petersburg.”

And so this strange bet was made, and duly noted down with the approval of all, even Jeratczesco withdrawing his objection when he saw the very evident satisfaction with which the Colonel regarded what he felt sure to be the only possible result of this absurd wager.

But if Hippy Rowan had foreseen the wholly unexpected way in which this waiting day by day, night after night, and hour by hour for the surprise—of course of an apparently unpleasant nature—which Eldourdza and his friends must be preparing for him—had he, we say, foreseen the peculiar and unprecedented way in which this really absurd suspense was destined gradually, and by almost imperceptible degrees, to affect his nerves in the course of the next month—he would most assuredly have let the Prince's silly wager pass unnoticed. And what made this never-absent feeling of care, of personal caution, of unceasing vigilance, the more acutely irksome to Hippy, was that these novel sensations could be ascribed but to one altogether disagreeable and detestable cause—namely, the advance of old age. His experience of life had told him that the constitution of a man who had lived as he had lived was apt to break down suddenly, no matter how apparently robust it might be; the supports, the foundation, which kept the structure in its place and seemingly firm and upright, having been little by little, and very gradually but very surely removed in the course of years, the nights of which had been worn to morning in the fatigue of pleasure, and the days of which had been scornful of repose. He had seen innumerable friends of his, apparently as strong and vigorous as himself, suddenly give way to this fashion—fall down like a house of cards, as it were, and be swept away into the outer darkness. Could it be owing to the approach of some such sudden and disastrous conclusion to his mundane affairs, that he found, day to day, as the next four weeks wore on, his nerves, hitherto apparently of steel, becoming more and more unstrung by this suspense, the cause of which was in reality so utterly puerile and contemptible? This was very certainly not his first experience of suspense: he had been in danger of his live very often, and on a few occasions this danger had been imminent for a considerable period of time, and yet never could he recall having felt before this uneasiness of mind, this perpetual questioning of his heart, which he now experienced while merely waiting for these boorish savages to play some more or less gruesome, and even perhaps dangerous practical joke on him. It must be old age; it could be nothing else—old age, and the beginning, perhaps, of a general breaking-up of the system; the first intimation, as it were, of the second and finally payment about to be required of him for those extravagances already alluded to, those prolonged and oft-repeated saunters from midnight to dawn arm-in-arm with Bacchus and baccarat,—such outriders of Death's chariot, Rowan told himself, it must be, that induced him, greatly to his own surprise, to waste so much of his time twisting and turning over in his mind all kinds of possible and impossible speculations as to how these wretched Moldavians were going to try and frighten him. This led him to examine carefully his apartments every night before retiring to rest, and see that his revolver had not been tampered with and was safely under his pillow. Of course this very abnormal condition of mind, which in no wise even remotely resembled fear, and was one merely of perpetual watchfulness, was of very gradual growth, and Hippy Rowan was throughout the whole course of its development, until just before the end, sufficiently master of himself to conceal his feelings, not only from his friends, but even from his valet, the omniscient Adams; and the very visible change in the Colonel's appearance and manner, which by-and-by came to be remarked, was ascribed by all—and in a great measure justly ascribed—to a very severe chill which he caught shortly after the night of the wager, and which confined him to the house, and indeed to his room, for many days. Neither Prince Eldourdza nor any one else had made any allusion whatever, in Rowan's hearing, to the wager since the night of which it had been made and formally noted down; and this fact in itself, this studied silence, became in the course of time, and as Rowan's nervous irritability increased, a source of annoyance to him, and induced him at length, suddenly, one morning, when they were all at breakfast together, to boldly allude to the matter, which was becoming more and more constantly uppermost in his mind.

“Pardon me, Prince,” said he, smiling, and with well-assumed carelessness, “if I allude to the matter of our wager, which you see to have forgotten, for you have only ten days left now, and—”

“Plenty of time!” interrupted Eldourdza roughly. “Forgotten it? Not I—have I?” he continued, turning to his friends. “You know whether I have forgotten it or not!” Significant and sinister grins and much shaking of heads in negation responded to this appeal,—a pantomime which excited the Colonel's curiosity not a little.

“Well,” said he, “I'm glad to hear it, for I shouldn't like to take your money without your having had some semblance of a run for it. All I wanted to tell you was this, and I feel sure you'll agree with what I now say. Of course I've no idea what kind of prank you're going to play on me, to endeavor to frighten me, but no doubt it will be as horrible and awful a thing as you can concoct, for I suppose you've no intention of making me a present of two hundred thousand francs.”

“Certainly not!” laughed Prince Valerian; “if you get it at all you'll have to pay dear for it, believe me.”

“Very well,” replied Hippy—“anything you like; but that's just what I wanted to speak about. Of course I'm at your disposal to do anything you like with, and to try and frighten in any way and every way you can contrive; but you can easily understand that there must be a limit to my endurance, otherwise you'd make me look like a fool.What I mean is, that you're at perfect liberty, say, to send any ghost or vampire or wild beast or devil, or anything else you can think of, to my room to try and frighten me, and for that purpose I am glad to lend you all the aid in my power. As it is, I leave my door unlocked every night now, as perhaps you know. But there must be some limit to this,—I mean that your endeavor to frighten me must have some limit in time, and can't go on forever. Suppose we put it at one hour—for one hour let your ghost or devil do its worst: then at the end of that time, if it has failed to frighten me, your goblin will become merely a nuisance, and I think I shall be justified in extinguishing it, don't you?”

“Most assuredly,” replied Eldourdza. “In less than an hour: we don't ask for an hour—half an hour will do,—after half an hour you are perfectly at liberty to do as you like—provided always,” he added grimly, “that by that time you are not half dead with fright.”

“Very well, then,” rejoiced Hippy. “So that's understood. After half an hour from the time your test, whatever it may be, begins, I shall be free to use any means I care to adopt to put a stop to this test, provided by that time, of course, I have not felt anything even remotely resembling alarm. As in the event of your test being something really offensive and disagreeable to me I should probably use my revolver, I thought it only fair to have this plainly understood, so that what is really only a silly practical joke may not, by a misunderstanding, end in tragedy.”

The Prince nodded in acquiescence. “You are quite right,” he said. “After half an hour do as you please. But you're mistaken in looking upon this as a practical joke, Colonel Rowan: it will be no joke, and may indeed, even against your will, end in a tragedy.”