"A brunette originally," Douglas replied, "but now a blonde--ma.s.ses of very elaborately waved golden hair; peculiarly long eyes--rather too intensely blue and far apart for my liking--a well-moulded mouth, though the lips are far too thin, and give her away at once."
"That"s the girl," Menzies exclaimed emphatically. "That"s the girl he calls Gabrielle Delacourt. I was with him the day he first met her--over in Montparna.s.se."
Douglas nodded.
"That"s right," he said. "That"s the name he introduced her to me by. But, I"m quite positive she"s Marie Diblanc; and I think you ought to give him the tip. If he"s seen about with her he"ll be suspected by the police.
Besides, she is sure to commit some crime--for a girl with that kind of face and history never reforms, she goes on being right down bad to the bitter end--and get him implicated. Only, possibly, she will use him as her tool."
"I"ll see him and warn him," Menzies said. "I"ll call at his place to-night, though there"s no knowing when he"ll turn up, for he"s the most erratic creature under the sun."
True to his word, Menzies, after a few more minutes" conversation, got up and retraced his steps to Montparna.s.se. O"Hara lived in the Rue Campagne Premiere, close to the famous "rabbit warren." His door, as not infrequently happened, was unlocked, but he was out. Menzies went in, and, entering the little room which served as a parlour, dining-room, and study combined, threw himself into an armchair and lit a cigarette. He did not bother to light up as it was a moonlight night, and the darkness suited his present mood. After a while, however, feeling a little chilly, he turned on the gas fire, and then, glancing at the clock over the mantel-shelf, perceived it was close on twelve.
At that instant there was a noise outside, and, thinking it was O"Hara, he called out, "Hulloa, Bob, is that you?"
As there was no response he called again, and this time there was a laugh--an ugly, malevolent kind of chuckle that made Menzies jump up at once and angrily demand who was there. No one replying, he went to the room door, and, opening it wide, saw a few yards from him a tall dark figure enveloped in what appeared to be a cloak and gown.
"Hulloa!" he cried. "Who are you, and what the ---- do you want here?"
Whereupon the figure drew aside its covering and revealed a face that caused Menzies to utter an exclamation of terror and spring back. It was the face of an old woman with very high cheek-bones, tightly drawn shrivelled skin, and obliquely set pale eyes that gleamed banefully as they met Menzies" horrified stare. A disordered ma.s.s of matted yellow hair crowned her head and descended half-way to her shoulders, revealing, however, her ears, which stood out prominently from her head, huge and pointed, like those of an enormous wolf. A leadenish white glow seemed to emanate from within her and to intensify the general horror of her appearance.
Though Menzies had never believed in ghosts before, he felt certain now that he was looking at something which did not belong to this world. It was, he affirmed, so absolutely h.e.l.lish that he would have uttered a prayer and bid it begone, had not his words died in his throat so that he could not articulate a sound. He then tried to raise a hand to cross himself, but this, also, he was unable to do; and the only thing he found he could do, was to stare at it in dumb, open-mouthed horror and wonder.
How long this state of affairs might have gone on it is impossible to say; but at the sound of heavy and unmistakably human footsteps, first in the lower part of the building, and then ascending the stone staircase leading to this flat, the old woman disappeared, apparently amalgamating with the somewhat artistic hangings on the wall behind her. Menzies was still rubbing his eyes and looking when O"Hara burst in upon him.
"Hulloa, Donald, is that you?" he began. "I"ve done it."
"Done what?" Menzies stuttered, his nerves all anyhow.
"Why, proposed to Gabrielle, of course," O"Hara went on excitedly, "and she"s accepted me. She, the prettiest, sweetest, finest little colleen I"ve ever come across, has told me she will marry me. Ye G.o.ds, I shall go off my head with joy; go stark, staring mad, I tell you." And crossing the floor of the study he tumbled into the chair Menzies himself had just occupied.
"I say, old fellow, why don"t you congratulate me?" he continued.
"I do congratulate you," Menzies observed, taking another seat. "Of course I congratulate you, but are you sure she is the sort of girl you will always care about or who will always care about you. You haven"t known her very long, and most women cost a deuced lot of money, especially French ones. Don"t take the irrevocable steps before contemplating them well first."
"I have," O"Hara retorted, "so it"s no use sermonising. I have made up my mind to marry Gabrielle, and nothing on earth will deter me."
"Do you know her people, or anything about them?" Menzies ventured.
O"Hara laughed.
"No," he said, "but that doesn"t bother me in the slightest. I shouldn"t care whether her father was a navvy or a publican, or whether her mother took in washing and pinched a few odd shirts and socks now and again, only as it happens, they don"t affect the question at all, because they are both dead. Gabrielle is an orphan--quite on her own--so I am perfectly safe as far as that goes. No pompous papa to consult, no cantankerous old mother-in-law to dread. Gabrielle was educated at a convent school, and, though you may laugh, knows next to nothing of the world. She"s as innocent as a b.u.t.terfly. We are to be married next month."
Finding that it was no earthly use to say any more on the subject, just then at all events, Menzies changed the conversation and referred to the incident of the old woman.
O"Hara at once became interested.
"Why," he said, "from your description she must have been one of the Banshees that is supposed to haunt our family, and which my mother always declared she saw shortly before my father"s death. A hideous hag with a shock head of tow-coloured hair, who stood on the staircase laughing devilishly, and then, all at once, vanished. She is known as the bad Banshee to distinguish her from the good one, which is, so I have always been led to understand, very beautiful, but which never manifests itself, saving when anything especially dreadful is going to happen to an O"Hara."
Feeling very uneasy in his mind, Menzies now bid his friend good night, and went home.
After that days pa.s.sed and Menzies saw nothing of O"Hara, until one evening, when he was thinking it must be about now that the marriage was to take place, O"Hara turned up at his flat, and proposed that they should go for a stroll in the direction of the fortifications near Montsouris.
But O"Hara was not in his usual good spirits; he seemed very glum and depressed, and Menzies gathered that there had been occasional differences of opinion between his friend and Gabrielle, and that the affair was not running quite as smoothly as it might. Gabrielle had a great many admirers, one of them very rich, and O"Hara was obviously very much annoyed at the attentions they had been bestowing on his fiancee, and at the manner in which she had received them. But there was something else, too; something he could see in his friend"s face and manner, but which O"Hara would not so much as hint at. Menzies was, of course, pleased, for there now seemed to be a glimmer of hope that these frictions would materialise into something stronger and more definite, and lead to a rupture that would be final.
He was so engrossed in speculations of this nature that he forgot all about the time or where they were, and was only brought back to earth by the whistle and shriek of a train, which made him at once realise they had left Montsouris and were several miles without the fortifications.
It was also getting very dusk, and, as he had to be up unusually early in the morning, he suggested to O"Hara they had better turn back. They were then close beside a clump of bushes and a very lofty pine tree that was bending to and fro in such a peculiar manner that Menzies" attention was at once directed to it.
"What"s wrong with that tree?" he remarked, pointing at it with his stick.
"What"s wrong with the tree?" O"Hara laughed. "Why, it"s not the tree there"s anything the matter with--the tree"s all right, quite all right--it"s you. What on earth are you staring at it for in that ridiculous fashion? Have you suddenly gone mad?"
Menzies made no reply, but went up to the tree and examined it. As he was doing so, a slight disturbance in the bushes made him glance around, and he saw, a few feet from him, the tall figure of a girl, clad in a kind of long flowing mantle, but with bare head and feet. The moonlight was on her face, and Menzies, hard and difficult though he was, as a rule, to please, realised it was lovely, far more lovely, so he declared afterwards, than any woman"s face he had ever gazed upon. The eyes particularly impressed him, for, although in the darkness he could not tell their colour, he could see that they were of an extremely beautiful shape and setting, and seemed to be filled with a sorrow that was almost more than her heart could bear. Indeed, so poignant was this sorrow of hers, that Menzies, infected by it, too, could not keep back the tears from his own eyes; and, dour and unemotional as he was by nature, his whole being suddenly became literally steeped in sadness and pity.
The girl looked straight at him, but only for a few seconds; she then turned towards O"Hara, and seemed to concentrate her whole attention upon him. There was now, Menzies thought, a certain indistinctness and a something shadowy about her that he had not at first noticed, and he was thinking how he could test her to see if she were really a substance or merely an optical illusion, when O"Hara, who was getting tired at his long absence, called out, whereupon the girl at once vanished, uttering, as she melted away in the background, in the same inexplicable manner as the old woman had done, such an awful, harrowing, wailing shriek, that it seemed to fill the whole air, and to linger on for an eternity. Thoroughly terrified, Menzies, as soon as his scattered senses could collect themselves, fled from the spot, and didn"t cease running till O"Hara"s angry shout brought him to a standstill. To his astonishment O"Hara hadn"t heard anything, and was only annoyed at his seemingly mad behaviour. In answer to his description of the girl, however, and the wailing, O"Hara at once declared it was the Banshee, and the one he had always been so particularly anxious to see.
"Unless you are having a joke at my expense," he said, "and you look too genuinely scared for that, you have actually seen her--a very beautiful girl, dressed after some old-time Irish custom, in a loose flowing green mantle--only of course you couldn"t see the colour--with head and feet bare. But it"s odd about that wail. The good Banshee in a family is always supposed to make it, but why didn"t I hear her? Why should it only be you?
You"re Scotch, not Irish."
"For which I"m truly thankful," Menzies said with warmth. "I"ve lived without ever seeing or hearing a ghost or anything approaching one for thirty-eight years, and now I"ve seen and heard two, within the short s.p.a.ce of three weeks, and all because of you, because you"re Irish. No thanks. None of your Banshees for me. I"d rather, ten thousand times rather, be just an ordinary laddie from the Highlands, and dispense with your highly aristocratic and fastidious family ghost."
"Come, now," O"Hara said good-humouredly, "we won"t quarrel about so unsubstantial a thing as the Banshee. Let"s hurry up and have a bottle of cognac to make us think of something rather more cheerful."
Menzies often thought of those words, for it is not infrequently the most trifling words and actions that haunt our memory to the greatest extent in after days. The rest of the evening pa.s.sed quite uneventfully, and, after they had "toasted" each other, the two friends separated for the night.
Two days later O"Hara"s body lay in the Morque, whither it had been taken from the Seine. Though there were some doubts expressed as to the exact manner in which he had met his death, it was officially recorded "death from misadventure," and it was not till several years later Menzies learned the truth.
He was then in Mexico, in a little town not twenty miles from San Blas, on the Western Coast, doing some newspaper work for a South American paper. A storekeeper and his wife were murdered; done to death in a singularly cruel manner, even for those parts, and one of the a.s.sa.s.sins was caught red-handed. The other, a woman, succeeded in escaping. As there had been so many murders lately in that neighbourhood, the townspeople declared they would make a very severe example of the culprit, and hang him, right away, on the scene of his diabolical outrage. Menzies, who had never witnessed anything of the kind before, and was, of course, anxious for copy, took good care to be present. He stood quite close to the handcuffed man, and caught every word of the confession he made to the local padre.
He gave his name as Andre Fecamps, his age as twenty-five, and his nationality as French. He a.s.serted that he was first induced to take to crime through falling in love with a notorious French criminal of the name of Marie Diblanc, who accepted him as her lover, conditionally on his joining the band of Apaches of which she was the recognised leader.
He did so, and forthwith plunged into every kind of wickedness imaginable.
Among other crimes in which he was implicated he mentioned that of the murder of an Irishman of the name of O"Hara, who was supposed to have met with an accidental death from drowning in the Seine. What really happened, so the young desperado said, was this. M. O"Hara was madly in love with Marie Diblanc, who was posing to him as Gabrielle Delacourt, an innocent young girl from the country, when she was already very much married, and was being searched for high and low, at that very time, by certainly more than one desperate husband. Well, one day she persuaded M. O"Hara to take her to a dance given by some very wealthy friends of his.
He did so, and she contrived, unknown to him of course, to smuggle me in, and between us we walked off with something like ten thousand pounds of jewellery.
M. O"Hara came to suspect her--how I don"t know, unless he overheard some stray conversation between her and some other member of our gang at one of the restaurants they used to dine at. Anyhow, she got to know of it, and at once resolved to have him put out of the way. It was arranged that she should bring him to a house in Montmartre, where several of us were in hiding, and that we should both kill and bury him there.
Well, he came, and, on perceiving that he had fallen into a trap, besought her, if his life must be forfeited--and, anyhow, now he knew she was a thief he wouldn"t have it otherwise--to take it herself. This she eventually agreed to do, and, lying in her arms, he allowed her to press a poison-bag over his mouth, and so put him to death. His body was taken to the Seine that night in a fiacre and dropped in. Fecamps added that it was the only occasion upon which he had seen Marie Diblanc really moved, and he believed she was a trifle fond of the Irishman, that is to say, if she could be genuinely fond of anyone.
Menzies, who was of course deeply interested, extracted every particle of information he could out of the man, but nothing would make the latter admit a word as to what had become of Diblanc.
"If I go to h.e.l.l," he said, "she is certain to go there, too; for bad as I am, I believe her to be infinitely worse; worse, a hundred times worse than any Apache man I have ever met. And yet, depraved and evil as she is, I love her, and shall never know a second"s happiness till she joins me."
The man died; and Menzies, as he made a sketch of his swinging body, felt thoroughly satisfied at last that the ghost he had seen outside the fortifications of Monsouris was the good and beautiful Banshee, the Banshee that only manifested itself when some unusually dreadful fate was about to overtake an O"Hara.
CHAPTER VII