"Then, as he moved, still playing," continued the other, "he seemed to grow smaller; to shrink down below the line of the gas. I thought I should lose sight of him altogether. I turned the light up suddenly.
There he was over by the door--crouching."
"Playing on his knees, you mean?"
William closed his eyes in an effort to visualize it again.
"Crouching," he repeated, at length, "close to the floor. At least, I think so. It all happened so quickly, and I felt so bewildered, it was hard to see straight. But at first I could have sworn he was half his natural size. I called to him, I think I swore at him--I forget exactly, but I know he straightened up at once and stood before me down there in the light"--he pointed across the room to the door--"eyes gleaming, face white as chalk, perspiring like midsummer, and gradually filling out, straightening up, whatever you like to call it, to his natural size and appearance again. It was the most horrid thing I"ve ever seen."
"As an--animal, you saw him still?"
"No; human again. Only much smaller."
"What did he say?"
Billy reflected a moment.
"Nothing that I can remember," he replied. "You see, it was all over in a few seconds. In the full light, I felt so foolish, and nonplussed at first. To see him normal again baffled me. And, before I could collect myself, he had let himself out into the pa.s.sage, and I heard the front door slam. A minute later--the same second almost, it seemed--you came in. I only remember grabbing the violin and getting it back safely under the gla.s.s case. The strings were still vibrating."
The account was over. John asked no further questions. Nor did he say a single word about the lift, Morgan, or the extinguished light on the landing. There fell a longish silence between the two men; and then, while they helped themselves to a generous supply of whisky-and-soda before going to bed, John looked up and spoke:
"If you agree, Billy," he said quietly, "I think I might write and suggest to Hyman that we shall no longer have need for his services."
And Billy, acquiescing, added a sentence that expressed something of the singular dread lying but half concealed in the atmosphere of the room, if not in their minds as well:
"Putting it, however, in a way that need not offend him."
"Of course. There"s no need to be rude, is there?"
Accordingly, next morning the letter was written; and John, saying nothing to his brother, took it round himself by hand to the Hebrew"s rooms near Euston. The answer he dreaded was forthcoming:
"Mr. Hyman"s still away abroad," he was told. "But we"re forwarding letters; yes. Or I can give you "is address if you"ll prefer it." The letter went, therefore, to the number in Konigstra.s.se, Munich, thus obtained.
Then, on his way back from the insurance company where he went to increase the sum that protected the small Guarnerius from loss by fire, accident, or theft, John Gilmer called at the offices of certain musical agents and ascertained that Silenski, the violinist, was performing at the time in Munich. It was only some days later, though, by diligent inquiry, he made certain that at a concert on a certain date the famous virtuoso had played a Zigeuner Lullaby of his own composition--the very date, it turned out, on which he himself had been to the Masonic rehearsal at Mark Masons" Hall.
John, however, said nothing of these discoveries to his brother William.
4
It was about a week later when a reply to the letter came from Munich--a letter couched in somewhat offensive terms, though it contained neither words nor phrases that could actually be found fault with. Isidore Hyman was hurt and angry. On his return to London a month or so later, he proposed to call and talk the matter over. The offensive part of the letter lay, perhaps, in his definite a.s.sumption that he could persuade the brothers to resume the old relations. John, however, wrote a brief reply to the effect that they had decided to buy no new fiddles; their collection being complete, there would be no occasion for them to invite his services as a performer. This was final. No answer came, and the matter seemed to drop. Never for one moment, though, did it leave the consciousness of John Gilmer. Hyman had said that he would come, and come a.s.suredly he would. He secretly gave Morgan instructions that he and his brother for the future were always "out" when the Hebrew presented himself.
"He must have gone back to Germany, you see, almost at once after his visit here that night," observed William--John, however, making no reply.
One night towards the middle of January the two brothers came home together from a concert in Queen"s Hall, and sat up later than usual in their sitting-room discussing over their whisky and tobacco the merits of the pieces and performers. It must have been past one o"clock when they turned out the lights in the pa.s.sage and retired to bed. The air was still and frosty; moonlight over the roofs--one of those sharp and dry winter nights that now seem to visit London rarely.
"Like the old-fashioned days when we were boys," remarked William, pausing a moment by the pa.s.sage window and looking out across the miles of silvery, sparkling roofs.
"Yes," added John; "the ponds freezing hard in the fields, rime on the nursery windows, and the sound of a horse"s hoofs coming down the road in the distance, eh?" They smiled at the memory, then said good night, and separated. Their rooms were at opposite ends of the corridor; in between were the bathroom, dining-room, and sitting-room. It was a long, straggling flat. Half an hour later both brothers were sound asleep, the flat silent, only a dull murmur rising from the great city outside, and the moon sinking slowly to the level of the chimneys.
Perhaps two hours pa.s.sed, perhaps three, when John Gilmer, sitting up in bed with a start, wide-awake and frightened, knew that someone was moving about in one of the three rooms that lay between him and his brother. He had absolutely no idea why he should have been frightened, for there was no dream or nightmare-memory that he brought over from unconsciousness, and yet he realized plainly that the fear he felt was by no means a foolish and unreasoning fear. It had a cause and a reason.
Also--which made it worse--it was fully warranted. Something in his sleep, forgotten in the instant of waking, had happened that set every nerve in his body on the watch. He was positive only of two things--first, that it was the entrance of this person, moving so quietly there in the flat, that sent the chills down his spine; and, secondly, that this person was _not_ his brother William.
John Gilmer was a timid man. The sight of a burglar, his eyes black-masked, suddenly confronting him in the pa.s.sage, would most likely have deprived him of all power of decision--until the burglar had either shot him or escaped. But on this occasion some instinct told him that it was no burglar, and that the acute distress he experienced was not due to any message of ordinary physical fear. The thing that had gained access to his flat while he slept had first come--he felt sure of it--into his room, and had pa.s.sed very close to his own bed, before going on. It had then doubtless gone to his brother"s room, visiting them both stealthily to make sure they slept. And its mere pa.s.sage through his room had been enough to wake him and set these drops of cold perspiration upon his skin. For it was--he felt it in every fibre of his body--something hostile.
The thought that it might at that very moment be in the room of his brother, however, brought him to his feet on the cold floor, and set him moving with all the determination he could summon towards the door. He looked cautiously down an utterly dark pa.s.sage; then crept on tiptoe along it. On the wall were old-fashioned weapons that had belonged to his father; and feeling a curved, sheathless sword that had come from some Turkish campaign of years gone by, his fingers closed tightly round it, and lifted it silently from the three hooks whereon it lay. He pa.s.sed the doors of the bathroom and dining-room, making instinctively for the big sitting-room where the violins were kept in their gla.s.s cases. The cold nipped him. His eyes smarted with the effort to see in the darkness. Outside the closed door he hesitated.
Putting his ear to the crack, he listened. From within came a faint sound of someone moving. The same instant there rose the sharp, delicate "ping" of a violin-string being plucked; and John Gilmer, with nerves that shook like the vibrations of that very string, opened the door wide with a fling and turned on the light at the same moment. The plucked string still echoed faintly in the air.
The sensation that met him on the threshold was the well-known one that things had been going on in the room which his unexpected arrival had that instant put a stop to. A second earlier and he would have discovered it all in the act. The atmosphere still held the feeling of rushing, silent movement with which the things had raced back to their normal, motionless positions. The immobility of the furniture was a mere att.i.tude hurriedly a.s.sumed, and the moment his back was turned the whole business, whatever it might be, would begin again. With this presentment of the room, however--a purely imaginative one--came another, swiftly on its heels.
For one of the objects, less swift than the rest, had not quite regained its "att.i.tude" of repose. It still moved. Below the window curtains on the right, not far from the shelf that bore the violins in their gla.s.s cases, he made it out, slowly gliding along the floor. Then, even as his eye caught it, it came to rest.
And, while the cold perspiration broke out all over him afresh, he knew that this still moving item was the cause both of his waking and of his terror. This was the disturbance whose presence he had divined in the flat without actual hearing, and whose pa.s.sage through his room, while he yet slept, had touched every nerve in his body as with ice. Clutching his Turkish sword tightly, he drew back with the utmost caution against the wall and watched, for the singular impression came to him that the movement was not that of a human being crouching, but rather of something that pertained to the animal world. He remembered, flash-like, the movements of reptiles, the stealth of the larger felines, the undulating glide of great snakes. For the moment, however, it did not move, and they faced one another.
The other side of the room was but dimly lighted, and the noise he made clicking up another electric lamp brought the thing flying forward again--towards himself. At such a moment it seemed absurd to think of so small a detail, but he remembered his bare feet, and, genuinely frightened, he leaped upon a chair and swished with his sword through the air about him. From this better point of view, with the increased light to aid him, he then saw two things--first, that the gla.s.s case usually covering the Guarnerius violin had been shifted; and, secondly, that the moving object was slowly elongating itself into an upright position. Semi-erect, yet most oddly, too, like a creature on its hind legs, it was coming swiftly towards him. It was making for the door--and escape.
The confusion of ghostly fear was somehow upon him so that he was too bewildered to see clearly, but he had sufficient self-control, it seemed, to recover a certain power of action; for the moment the advancing figure was near enough for him to strike, that curved scimitar flashed and whirred about him, with such misdirected violence, however, that he not only failed to strike it even once, but at the same time lost his balance and fell forward from the chair whereon he perched--straight into it.
And then came the most curious thing of all, for as he dropped, the figure also dropped, stooped low down, crouched, dwindled amazingly in size, and rushed past him close to the ground like an animal on all fours. John Gilmer screamed, for he could no longer contain himself.
Stumbling over the chair as he turned to follow, cutting and slashing wildly with his sword, he saw halfway down the darkened corridor beyond the scuttling outline of, apparently, an enormous--cat!
The door into the outer landing was somehow ajar, and the next second the beast was out, but not before the steel had fallen with a crashing blow upon the front disappearing leg, almost severing it from the body.
It was dreadful. Turning up the lights as he went, he ran after it to the outer landing. But the thing he followed was already well away, and he heard, on the floor below him, the same oddly gliding, slithering, stealthy sound, yet hurrying, that he had heard weeks before when something had pa.s.sed him in the lift and Morgan, in his terror, had likewise cried aloud.
For a time he stood there on that dark landing, listening, thinking, trembling; then turned into the flat and shut the door. In the sitting-room he carefully replaced the gla.s.s case over the treasured violin, puzzled to the point of foolishness, and strangely routed in his mind. For the violin itself, he saw, had been dragged several inches from its cushioned bed of plush.
Next morning, however, he made no allusion to the occurrence of the night. His brother apparently had not been disturbed.
5
The only thing that called for explanation--an explanation not fully forthcoming--was the curious aspect of Mr. Morgan"s countenance. The fact that this individual gave notice to the owners of the building, and at the end of the month left for a new post, was, of course, known to both brothers; whereas the story he told in explanation of his face was known only to the one who questioned him about it--John. And John, for reasons best known to himself, did not pa.s.s it on to the other. Also, for reasons best known to himself, he did not cross-question the liftman about those singular marks, or report the matter to the police.
Mr. Morgan"s pasty visage was badly scratched, and there were red lines running from the cheek into the neck that had the appearance of having been produced by sharp points viciously applied--claws. He had been disturbed by a noise in the hall, he said, about three in the morning, a scuffle had ensued in the darkness, but the intruder had got clear away....
"A cat or something of the kind, no doubt," suggested John Gilmer at the end of the brief recital. And Morgan replied in his usual way: "A cat, or something of the kind, Mr. John, no doubt."
All the same, he had not cared to risk a second encounter, but had departed to wear his billyc.o.c.k and uniform in a building less haunted.
Hyman, meanwhile, made no attempt to call and talk over his dismissal.
The reason for this was only apparent, however, several months later when, quite by chance, coming along Piccadilly in an omnibus, the brothers found themselves seated opposite to a man with a thick black beard and blue gla.s.ses. William Gilmer hastily rang the bell and got out, saying something half intelligible about feeling faint. John followed him.
"Did you see who it was?" he whispered to his brother the moment they were safely on the pavement.
John nodded.
"Hyman, in spectacles. He"s grown a beard, too."