Now that is my story, and I have told it in the interest of your trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thoughtfulness to ask me the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience of being knocked down.
His humor did not amuse me. I could see that in relating his delusion he was again somewhat disturbed. His concluding smile was positively ghastly, and his eyes had resumed something more than their old restlessness; they shifted hither and thither about the room with apparent aimlessness and I fancied had taken on a wild expression, such as is sometimes observed in cases of dementia. Perhaps this was my own imagination, but at any rate I was now persuaded that my friend was afflicted with a most singular and interesting monomania. Without, I trust, any abatement of my affectionate solicitude for him as a friend, I began to regard him as a patient, rich in possibilities of profitable study. Why not? Had he not described his delusion in the interest of science? Ah, poor fellow, he was doing more for science than he knew: not only his story but himself was in evidence. I should cure him if I could, of course, but first I should make a little experiment in psychology nay, the experiment itself might be a step in his restoration.
That is very frank and friendly of you, Bartine, I said cordially, and Im rather proud of your confidence. It is all very odd, certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch?
He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and singularly engraved. After closely examining the dial and observing that it was nearly twelve oclock, I opened it at the back and was interested to observe an inner case of ivory, upon which was painted a miniature portrait in that exquisite and delicate manner which was in vogue during the eighteenth century.
Why, bless my soul! I exclaimed, feeling a sharp artistic delight how under the sun did you get that done? I thought miniature painting on ivory was a lost art.
That, he replied, gravely smiling, is not I; it is my excellent great-grandfather, the late Bramwell Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of Virginia. He was younger then than later about my age, in fact. It is said to resemble me; do you think so?
Resemble you? I should say so! Barring the costume, which I supposed you to have assumed out of compliment to the art or for vraisemblance,[6] so to say and the no mustache, that portrait is you in every feature, line, and expression.
No more was said at that time. Bartine took a book from the table and began reading. I heard outside the incessant plash of the rain in the street. There were occasional hurried footfalls on the sidewalks; and once a slower, heavier tread seemed to cease at my door a policeman, I thought, seeking shelter in the doorway. The boughs of the trees tapped significantly on the window panes, as if asking for admittance. I remember it all through these years and years of a wiser, graver life.
Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old-fashioned key that dangled from the chain and quickly turned back the hands of the watch a full hour; then, closing the case, I handed Bartine his property and saw him replace it on his person.
I think you said, I began, with assumed carelessness, that after eleven the sight of the dial no longer affects you. As it is now nearly twelve looking at my own timepiece perhaps, if you dont resent my pursuit of proof, you will look at it now.
He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch again, opened it, and instantly sprang to his feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their blackness strikingly intensified by the pallor of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which he clutched in both hands. For some time he remained in that attitude without uttering another sound; then, in a voice that I should not have recognized as his, he said:
Damn you! it is two minutes to eleven!
I was not unprepared for some such outbreak, and without rising replied, calmly enough:
I beg your pardon; I must have misread your watch in setting my own by it.
He shut the case with a sharp snap and put the watch in his pocket. He looked at me and made an attempt to smile, but his lower lip quivered and he seemed unable to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking, and he thrust them, clenched, into the pockets of his sack-coat. The courageous spirit was manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward body. The effort was too great; he began to sway from side to side, as from vertigo, and before I could spring from my chair to support him his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward and fell upon his face. I sprang to assist him to rise; but when John Bartine rises we shall all rise.
The post-mortem examination disclosed nothing; every organ was normal and sound. But when the body had been prepared for burial a faint dark circle was seen to have developed around the neck; at least I was so assured by several persons who said they saw it, but of my own knowledge I cannot say if that was true.
Nor can I set limitations to the law of heredity. I do not know that in the spiritual world a sentiment or emotion may not survive the heart that held it, and seek expression in a kindred life, ages removed. Surely, if I were to guess at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should guess that he was hanged at eleven oclock in the evening, and that he had been allowed several hours in which to prepare for the change.
As to John Bartine, my friend, my patient for five minutes, and Heaven forgive me! my victim for eternity, there is no more to say. He is buried, and his watch with him I saw to that. May God rest his soul in Paradise, and the soul of his Virginian ancestor, if, indeed, they are two souls.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Lot No. 249
In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and knitted together with strands of ivy. From the door a stone stair curves upwards spirally, passing two landings, and terminating in a third one. In the month of May, in the year of 1884, three young men occupied the sets of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each set consisted simply of a sitting-room and of a bedroom, while two corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a coal-cellar, and the other as a living-room of the servant, or scout,[7] Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him. To the right and left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain seclusion, which made the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were the three who occupied them now Abercrombie Smith above, Edward Bellingham beneath him, and William Monkhouse Lee upon the lowest storey.
It was ten oclock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air men men whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke for his college boat, and Smith was an even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its shadow over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week which health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with scattered bones, models and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and a set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which, with Hasties help, he might take his exercise in its most compressed and least distant form. They knew each other very well so well that they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest development of companionship.
Have some whisky, said Abercrombie Smith at last between two cloudbursts. Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle.
No, thanks. Im in for the sculls. I dont liquor when Im training. How about you?
Im reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone.
Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.
By-the-way, Smith, asked Hastie, presently, have you made the acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?
Just a nod as we pass. Nothing more.
Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I dont think I should take them to my bosom if I were you. Not that theres much amiss with Monkhouse Lee.
Meaning the thin one?
Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I dont think there is any vice in him. But then you cant know him without knowing Bellingham.
Meaning the fat one?
Yes, the fat one. And hes a man whom I, for one, would rather not know.
Abercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his companion.
Whats up, then? he asked. Drink? Cards?
Ah! you evidently dont know the man, or you wouldnt ask. Theres something damnable about him something reptilian. Hes no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his line that they have ever had in the college.
Medicine or classics?
Eastern languages. Hes a demon at them.
Why do you say you cant know Lee without knowing Bellingham?
Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. Its disgusting to see that brute with her. A toad and a dove, thats what they always remind me of.
Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of the grate. When Hastie had clattered off down the winding stair, Abercrombie Smith sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy carriage clock upon the side table were rapidly closing together upon the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the students ear a sharp, rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a mans breath who gasps under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted his ear to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath the same neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavoury an account. There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream the call of a man who is moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pronged his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head. Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that he would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a moment he stood in doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of footsteps upon the stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half dressed and as white as ashes, burst into his room.
Come down! he gasped. Bellinghams ill.
Abercrombie Smith followed him closely down stairs into the sitting-room which was beneath his own, and intent as he was upon the matter in hand, he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed the threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen before a museum rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of the Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung in a double noose.
In the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table, littered with papers, bottles, and the dried leaves of some graceful, palm-like plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in order to make room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid across the front of the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a charred head on a gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with its claw-like hand and bony forearm resting upon the table. Propped up against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head thrown back, his widely-opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to the crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every expiration.
My God! hes dying! cried Monkhouse Lee distractedly.
He was a slim, handsome young fellow, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, of a Spanish rather than English type, with a Celtic intensity of manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercombie Smith.
Only a faint, I think, said the medical student. Just give me a hand with him. You take his feet. Now on to the sofa. Can you kick all those little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will be all right if we undo his collar and give him some water. What has he been up to at all?
I dont know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty well, you know. It is very good of you to come down.
His heart is going like a pair of castanets, said Smith, laying his hand on the breast of the unconscious man. He seems to me to be frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has got on him!
It was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of fear but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the underside of a sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having been at some time considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown hair bristled up from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears protruding at the sides. His light grey eyes were still open, the pupils dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare. It seemed to Smith as he looked down upon him that he had never seen natures danger signals flying so plainly upon a mans countenance, and his thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had given him an hour before.
What the deuce can have frightened him so? he asked.
Its the mummy.
The mummy? How, then?
I dont know. Its beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it. Its the second fright he has given me. It was the same last winter. I found him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him.
What does he want with the mummy, then?
Oh, hes a crank, you know. Its his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldnt! Ah, hes beginning to come to.
A faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellinghams ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like a sail after a calm. He clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his teeth, and suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he sprang off the sofa, seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key, and then staggered back on to the sofa.