The Six Queer Things, page 14
“Whereabouts did she see the snake?”
The cook took him to a narrow landing, running from the main corridor to a bathroom.
“And there was no sign of anything when you came here?”
“Not a crumb or a smell!”
“How long after would it have been?”
“Well, Anne came flying into the kitchen like a mad thing, and I went straight along. It would be almost at once, a minute at the most.”
Morgan examined the small corridor carefully. The bathroom door was closed, but opening off a part of the corridor was the linen cupboard, and he noticed that a pipe came out of it. A hole had been cut in the wood skirting, and this hole was considerably larger than the diameter of the pipe. He went to the head of the stairs, unfastened a stair rod, and poked this cautiously through the hole. Suddenly he felt something soft and leathery which squirmed and slid violently beneath his prod. There was a sinister hiss. He withdrew the rod hurriedly.
With another hiss, a narrow triangular head with two beady eyes shot out of the hole and quivered on the end of a long neck.
“Mother of God!” screamed the cook. “Look at the wicked little tongue of it!”
The head darted out another six inches.
“I think we’ll leave it alone for the moment,” exclaimed Morgan, retreating. “Let’s go downstairs.”
The cook needed no encouragement, and a minute or two later Morgan was phoning headquarters. They promised to send him down an expert as soon as possible. After an hour during which he shared some cooking sherry with his companion, a little man with a bag arrived in a police car. He had been dug out of the Zoo.
“It may not be a dangerous specimen,” Morgan told him, “but I’m taking no chances!”
The little man went upstairs, Morgan keeping well in the rear. The reptile had taken cover again. The snake expert scraped gently on the skirting and presently the head shot out.
“Very fine,” he murmured. “Very fine, indeed. A lovely animal.”
“Is it poisonous?” asked Morgan practically.
“Yes. After one bite you’d be dead in three minutes, I should say.”
Morgan moved several paces away. The expert suddenly flashed a forked stick down on the snake’s neck, and pinned it to the ground. He then inserted a small lever into its mouth.
“I’m sorry, I was wrong. It’s not poisonous. Its poison glands have been removed, although the fangs have been left. An old snake-charmer’s trick!”
He removed the forked stick, and picked the snake up by the head.
“It can bite, but although painful the bites are not likely to do any harm.”
The sight of the little forked stick gave Morgan an idea, and he had a runner sent from the Yard with the attaché case in which the Six Queer Things were kept.
He removed the forked stick, the thin pipe and the straws, and handed them to the expert.
“Yes, a typical snake-charmer’s outfit,” he was told. “The sort of thing any charlatan can get hold of. You hold the snake down with the stick and make it silly with straws dipped in nicotine, and then you charm it with the pipe. It dances to the swaying of the body, not to the pipe, in a sort of coma, but it’s more impressive to play on the pipe.”
“Are you sure this snake could not harm anything—not even a dog?” Morgan described the incident with the animal.
“This snake? Good Lord, no. The glands have been completely extirpated! In any case, its bite does not give you convulsions. You get unconscious and die in a coma.”
Morgan went home thoughtfully with the Six Queer Things, a dead dog, and some scraps of food in a bag. The snake he presented to the Zoo—subject to recall—as an exhibit. He had some more facts now, but they were getting infernally difficult to sort out! Balloons with spirit faces, snake-charmer’s outfits, nonpoisonous snakes, dead dogs, strait jackets. . . .
“Something damned queer has been happening at Belmont Avenue!”
CHAPTER IX: The Night of Delusions
When Marjorie had rushed out into the road from her bedroom, her one idea had been to escape to somewhere safe in a collapsing world. This security took the form of Dr Wood. His calm personality and strength of will seemed the only thing which could save her reason.
The street was deserted when she ran out into it. She had only run a few paces when she began to gain more control of herself. How could she get to Dr Wood? It was miles away from here.
Yet she could not persuade herself to return into the dark house—the house of those horrors where everyone had seemed dead, where even her frenzied shaking had been unable to awaken her lifeless nurse.
She stared desperately at the rows of windows, lightless and old, and it seemed to her overwrought imagination that they were staring at her, coldly and aloofly. It seemed to her that invisible presences were watching her from behind the window and jeering at her vain efforts to escape.
Her mouth opened and she felt she would start to scream; that once she began to scream she would never be able to stop. But no scream came. Instead her whole body shook with great sobs of terror, and her legs began to give way. She clung to the railings to avoid falling, and everything started to go black in front of her eyes.
At that moment she saw a car moving slowly along the road. In this city of the dead, anything living seemed a beacon of hope. She managed to walk again, and she staggered into the road in front of the car, careless of the strange sight she must have looked. It stopped at once.
“Please help me,” she said desperately to the driver. “I can’t stay in the house. I can’t explain now, but it’s urgent! For God’s sake, drive me to a friend’s house. It’s not far from here.”
The driver’s face was masked by the shadow from the roof of the car. He remained immobile while she spoke, and she had a sudden return of panic terror. It was as if she had been cut off from the real world, and its inhabitants could no longer communicate with her, like the nurse she had vainly tried to shake to life.
But after a moment of silence, the man nodded.
“All right, jump in!” he said.
She opened the door, and as she did so, she started back. A man and a woman were seated in the back, but in such a way that they could not be seen until the door was opened. As she moved backwards her arm was seized, and she was dragged forcibly into the car. She felt a rough hand forced over her mouth. After all she had been through, she did not put up a struggle, although she whimpered faintly and stirred when she felt something sharp thrust into her arm.
This was followed by a feeling of lassitude. As they sped through the streets, the car itself, the feeling of constraint from the rug which was tied tightly round her, and the street lights as they flashed into the car and vanished again, mixed into one dissolving, flowing stream of fantastic semiconsciousness. Was this a dream? It seemed like that sometimes. At other times it seemed strangely as though she were mixed up with her dream, and did not know which was dream and which was herself.
After what might equally have been an hour or a day, the car became filled with the cold, ghastly light of dawn. Then the car stopped.
“This way,” said a firm voice, and she obediently got to her feet and stumbled heavily up the stairs, as the man guided her with a strong arm. Upstairs she collapsed into a chair and went to sleep.
She came to consciousness again only when someone shook her, and a woman gave her a drink of what tasted like hot soup. Almost immediately after taking it, she dropped asleep again, and her sleep was full of confused dreams, in which she seemed to have no consciousness of being a personality, but everything swam around her in separate, disjointed visions.
Every now and then consciousness returned to her in snatches, accompanied by the persistent idea that she was at a dentist’s. . . .
Someone was shaking her roughly.
“Come on, dress!” she was urged.
She made a few efforts to help the woman who put strange clothes on her and washed her face, but after a time she gave it up, and submitted feebly to the process. The woman’s face seemed oddly familiar, and yet she could not give it a name.
“Who are you?” she asked wonderingly.
“Your aunt!” replied the woman. “Your aunt Martha. Fancy your asking such a silly question, Marjorie!”
“I don’t remember any aunt Martha,” protested Marjorie weakly. “And yet I seem to remember you.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, darling,” said the woman, continuing to brush her hair. She gave it a final pat and smoothed it into place. “There! Look at yourself in the glass. All ready to go!”
Marjorie stared at herself in the mirror. For a moment she hardly recognized herself. She was wearing a hideous black costume, designed for a middle-aged woman. The dress had obviously been worn before—it was green at the seams. The ugliness was emphasized by the condition it was in and the slovenly way in which it had been put on. There were splashes of food and grease down the front. Marjorie’s hair had been brushed so carelessly that tangles flopped into her eyes and straggled over her ears. She shuddered at the sight.
Yet such was her weakness and general state of confusion that she could only stare at herself dully in the glass. She put up a hand to smooth back her hair for a moment, and then let the hand drop back without doing anything. She turned away from the mirror.
“That’s right, my darling!” said the woman encouragingly. “You’re feeling better already. I said your holiday by the sea would do you good.”
“By the sea?” asked Marjorie, puzzled. “I don’t remember any sea.”
“Listen to this, Sam,” shouted out the woman. “Marjorie says she doesn’t remember the sea!”
The man came in from the next room. He was a large red-faced man with broad hands. As he laid his hand on her arm, she noticed the hairy backs and had a moment’s feeling of aversion.
“Silly little thing!” he said in a coaxing voice. “You’ve not been well! Never mind. Auntie’s right. You’re looking worlds better for your holiday by the sea.”
The woman nodded and got up.
“Well, now we must get off, dear! We’ve a call to pay. Your uncle will help you out.”
“He’s not my uncle,” shouted Marjorie suddenly, in a high voice which seemed to have got beyond her control. “I can manage all right, thank you!”
She got to her feet and walked towards the door.
“What ideas she does get into her head, to be sure!” said the woman good humoredly. “There, give her a hand, Sam. You can see she can’t manage it!”
Her momentary flare-up had exhausted her, and she made no resistance when the man took her arm and guided her into the car.
After a short journey, she was taken up some steps to another house—a large one, standing in its own grounds. They waited a moment and then were shown into a room where three men were already waiting.
They looked at her in a strange way as she came in.
“What is your name?” asked one enquiringly.
“Marjorie Easton!”
“We’ve just came back from the sea,” volunteered the man. “It got worse there. My niece has never been what you could call really right.”
“He’s not my uncle,” exclaimed Marjorie furiously.
One of the three men, a man with a grey pointed beard, looked surprised.
“Not your uncle? Then who is he?”
“I don’t know!” she answered helplessly. “I’d never seen him before I got into his car.”
The woman gave an exclamation of surprise.
“Marjorie, how could you say such a thing about your uncle Sam!”
“Do you know this woman?” asked the bearded man, pointing to her.
Marjorie looked at her.
“Yes, I know her, but I can’t place her somehow. I know I’ve met her before, but I can’t remember her name.”
She saw the three men exchange glances that seemed to have a meaning which evaded her. There was evidently some understanding between them. Was it an understanding about her?
“You say you had never seen this man before you got into his car?” asked another of the three, a young man in a smart black jacket with striped trousers and a thin hatchet face. “Where had you been before then?”
“In the house where the dreadful things happened.”
“What dreadful things?”
“The voices,” she answered, putting one hand to her forehead. Everything seemed incoherent and vague now. “That terrible laugh, and all the faces. And then when I tried to wake the nurse, and couldn’t! Was she dead?”
The man who had brought her there whispered something into the ear of the bearded man, and he nodded.
“What are you whispering about?” she asked sharply.
“Nothing,” the bearded man replied smoothly. “You don’t remember a trip to the seaside then?”
“No, of course not. I’m positive about that. Surely I ought to know.”
“How old are you?” asked the young man in the lounge suit.
She gave her age, and she saw him look quickly at a slip of paper in the palm of his hand.
“You are sure of that?”
“Of course!”
There was a silence, and then, as if at some signal she had not seen, the three men rose simultaneously and went into another room.
“What have they gone for?” she asked her companions, confused. “Why are we here?”
“That’s all right, darling!” said the man who had brought her, in a soothing voice. “It’s just a little visit we had to pay. Two of those men are doctors. They are going to prescribe a little tonic.”
“But I don’t want a tonic,” she said, and suddenly burst into tears. “I want to go home.”
The woman patted her shoulders and spoke to her as if she were a child.
“So you will, Marjorie. Keep quiet. The kind gentlemen will be back in a moment. We’ll take you straight home from here!”
In a few minutes the men returned, and she saw the bearded man hand the woman a long envelope. As they went out the eldest of the three, a man who had not asked her any questions before, spoke to the woman. She had been thanking him apparently.
“That’s all right, Mrs Easton! It’s my job. Although I must admit it’s one of the less attractive sides of a magistrate’s duties.”
As the door closed behind them, and she found herself alone again with the man and woman who had brought her there, Marjorie, in spite of her muddled mind and physical weakness, felt a sudden unreasoning terror. Although the three men had talked so oddly, there had been something comforting about their presence. Now she was alone with these two.
“I don’t want to go home! I want to go back there,” she said, starting to move back towards the door of the sitting room she had just left. The man grasped her arm roughly.
“None of that nonsense, you little bastard!” he said. “Come on. Get out of it quickly.” He put his hand over her mouth and started to drag her along. She caught hold of a bit of furniture and clung to it desperately, panting. She hadn’t the strength to scream.
“Better give her another shot, Joe,” said the woman, and she felt the skin of her arm pinched. There was a sharp pain, and then she felt the arm go limp. She half walked, was half carried to the car. Everything went confused. . . .
2
Marjorie woke in the afternoon, for the sun was low. She did not know how long she had been sleeping, but it seemed as if it had been for ages.
She was in a strange room.
She went to the window and looked out. An unexpected view met her eyes, which made her wonder if she were still awake.
The house was on a slightly rising ground, and overlooked a huge sheet of water which stretched out, cold and grey, beneath the faint afternoon sun. It was deserted except for the few birds which paddled on its surface or flew out of the huge clumps of reeds which dotted its expanse. Beyond the water could be seen more country—flat, marshy fields which the weather, or the poverty of the soil, had turned a harsh dirty brown.
There was no sign of civilisation in the dreary, flat prospect in front of her except for seven windmills which were placed at intervals in the landscape, and an old black boat, decrepit and ramshackle, which seemed to be sinking at the rotting post to which it was moored. The strangeness of the scene and its deserted, mournful aspect gave her a curious sensation of hopelessness.
There was something foreign about the birds which flitted above the water, about the oily darkness of the vast stretch of water itself, about the windmills, and even about the oddly shaped black boats. She at once had the conviction that she was in another country. Was it Holland?
She found some clothes beside her bed, and she put them on with a shudder. It gave her a physical nausea, now that she was clear headed, to put on these repellent garments. But there was nothing else to be had. The house seemed strangely silent, considering it was the afternoon.
When she had finished dressing, she went to the door. It was locked on the outside. Her efforts to open it were useless, and eventually, to attract attention, she started to shout and bang on the door with a hairbrush.
After some minutes she heard footsteps approaching. The key in the lock turned, and the door was cautiously opened. A little man with a black moustache and a sallow, greasy skin stood in the door. He was smartly dressed in a black morning coat and striped trousers, and his thick black hair was plastered with pomade and looked like patent leather. She was immediately struck by his bright scarlet lips, which stood out in contrast to his sallow face.
“Well, well,” he said, with a smile that flickered and disappeared so quickly that it was difficult to be sure it had even appeared. “That was a lot of noise. I hope there is nothing wrong?”
Marjorie felt her fury ooze away. There was something sinister and reptilian about his polite remark and it made her afraid.
“Why am I here?” she demanded as boldly as she could.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s a little unfair to ask me that! Perhaps life has been too much for you; perhaps you chose your parents badly. I have not yet had the pleasure of looking up my colleague’s notes!”
