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E. W. Hornung - "A Thief in the Night"

an adult. - "Baartock, by Lewis Roth (C)1989"

Philip Melanchthon, 1497 1560 - "The Augsburg Confession"

P. J. Proudhon - "What is Property?"

Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra.

E >> Eden Phillpotts >> Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra.




"That is the first interesting fact, and the second seems to me to
be this: that those who perished here in living memory all died at
different places in the room, and so died that their deaths could
not be immediately and undeviatingly traced to the bed. Hardcastle,
for example, as you have related his conversation, did not associate
the death of poor Captain May with that of the lady of the hospital
eleven years before; and Sir Walter himself saw no reason to connect
the still earlier death of his aged aunt, which took place when he
was a boy, with the disaster that followed.

"Let us now examine for a moment the amazing fact that none of the
stigmata of death was found in those who perished here.

"Death has three modes--the pale horseman strikes us down by
asphyxia, by coma, and by syncope. In asphyxia he stabs the lungs;
in coma his lance is aimed at the brain; in syncope, at the heart.

"When a man dies by asphyxia, it means that the action of the
muscles by which he breathes is stopped, or the work of his lungs
prevented by injury, or the free passage of air arrested, as in
drowning, or strangulation. It may also mean that embolism has
taken place, and the pulmonary artery is blocked, withholding
blood from the lungs. But it was not thus that any died in this
chamber.

"Coma occurs through an apoplexy, or concussion; by the use of
certain narcotic or mineral poisons; and in various other ways,
all of which are ruled out for us.

"There remains syncope. A heart ceases to beat from haemorrhage,
or starvation, from exhaustion, or the depressing influence of
certain drugs. They who died here died from syncope; but why?
No autopsy can tell us why. They passed with only their Maker
to sustain them, and none leaves behind an explanation of what
overtook him, or her. Yet we know full well, even in the case of
Peter Hardcastle, concerning whom the police felt doubt, that he
was quite dead before Mr. Lennox discovered him and picked him up.
We know that the phenomena of rigor mortis had already set in
before his body reached London.

"Nothing, however, is new under the sun. Many journals related
the fact that these people had passed away without a cause, as
though it were an event without a parallel. It is not. Your Dr.
Templeman, in 1893, describes two examples of sudden death with
absolute absence of any pathological condition in any part of the
bodies to account for it. He describes the case of a man of
forty-three, and calls it 'emotional inhibition of the heart.'
The heart was arrested in diastole, instead of systole, as is
usually the case; the mode of death was syncope; the cause of death,
undiscoverable.

"A layman may be permitted, I suppose, to describe 'emotional
inhibition of the heart' as 'shock'; but we know, in our cases,
that if a shock, it was not a painful one--perhaps not even an
unpleasant one. Since all other emotions can be pleasant or
unpleasant, why must we assume that the supreme emotion of death
may not be pleasant also, did we know how to make it so? Perhaps
the Borgia, among their secrets, had discovered this. At least
the familiar signs of death were wholly absent from the
countenances of the dead. The jaws were not set; the familiar,
expressions were not changed, as usually happens from rigidity of
facial muscles; their faces were not sallow; their temples were
not sunk; their brows were not contracted.

"We will now take the victims, one by one, and show how death
happened to each of them, yet left no sign that it had happened.
Frankly, the first case alone presented any difficulties to me.
For a time I despaired of proving how the bed had destroyed Sir
Walter's ancestor, because she had not entered it. But the
difficulty becomes clear to one possessing our present knowledge,
for once prove the properties of the bed, and the rest follows.
You will say that they were not proved, only guessed. That was
true, until Prince died. His death crowned my edifice of theory
and converted it to fact. As to why the bed has these properties,
that is for science to find out presently.

"To return, then, to the old lady, the ancient woman of your race,
who came unexpectedly to the Christmas re-union and was put to
sleep in the Grey Room at her own wish. She was found dead next
morning on the floor. She had not entered the bed. The exact
facts have long disappeared from human knowledge, and it is only
possible to re-construct them by inference and the support of
those straightforward events that followed. I conceive, then,
that though the old lady did not create the warmth that liberated
the evil spirit of the bed and so destroyed her, that warmth was
nevertheless artificially created. What must have happened, think
you? The bed is made up in haste and the fire lighted. But the
fire is a long way from the bed, and would have no effect to create
the necessary temperature. There is, however, a hot-water bottle
in the bed, or a hot brick wrapped in flannel. The old lady is
about to enter her bed. She has extinguished her candle, but the
flame of the fire gives light. She has prayed; she throws off her
dressing-gown and flings back the covering of the bed, to fall an
instant victim to the miasma. She drops backward and is found
dead next morning, by which time the bottle and bed are also cold.

"Taken alone, I grant this explanation may fail to win your
sympathy; but consider the cumulative evidence in store. The old
lady may, of course, have died a natural death. She may not have
turned down the bed. There is nobody living to tell us. All that
Sir Walter can recollect is that she was found on the floor of the
room dead. Exactly where, he does not remember. But for my own
part I have no doubt whatever that her death took place in that way.

"We are on safer ground with the other tragic happenings, though,
save in the case of Nurse Forrester, there is nothing on the
surface of events to connect their deaths with the accursed bed.
You will see, however, that it is very easy to do so. In the lady's
case all is clear enough. She goes to bed tired and she sleeps
peacefully into death without waking. She is probably asleep
within ten minutes, before her own warmth has penetrated through
sheet and blanket to the mattress beneath and so destroyed her.
Suppose that she is dead in half an hour. She retired to rest at
ten o'clock; she is called at seven; the room is presently broken
into and she is then not only dead, but cold. The demon has gone
to sleep again under its lifeless burden. Now had she been stout
and well covered, there had hardly been time for her to grow cold,
and those who came to her assistance might even have perished, too.
But she is a little, thin thing, and the heat has gone out of her.
This assured the safety of those who came to the bedside. One can
make no laws as to the time necessary for a dead body to grow as
cold as its surroundings. The bodies of the old and the young
cool more quickly than those of adult persons. If the conditions
are favorable a body may cool in six to eight hours. Prince took
but five, poor little bag of bones.

"In the case of Captain May the conditions are altogether different.
Let me speak with all tenderness and spare you pain. Be sure that
he suffered no more than the others. The bed is now no longer
made; the mattress is bare. That matters not to him. Clad in his
pyjamas, with a railway rug to cover him and his dressing-gown
for a pillow, he flings himself down, and from his powerful and
sanguine frame warmth is instantly communicated to the mattress
that supports him. Probably but a few minutes were sufficient to
liberate the poison. He is not asleep, but on the edge of sleep
when he becomes suddenly conscious of physical sensations beyond
his experience. He had breathed death, but yet he is not dead.
His brain works, and can send a message to his limbs, which are
still able to obey. But his hour has come. He leaps from the bed
in no suffering, but conscious, perhaps of an oppression, or an
unfamiliar odor--we cannot say what. We only know that he feels
intense surprise, not pain for in that dying moment his emotions
are fixed for ever by the muscles of his face. He needs air and
seeks it. He hurries to the recess, kneels on the cushion, and
throws open the window. Or the window may have been already
open--we cannot tell. To reach it is his last conscious act, and
in another moment he is dead. The bed is not suspected. Why
should it be? Who could prove that he had even laid down upon it?
Indeed it was believed and reported at the inquest that he had not
done so. Yet that is what unquestionably happened. Otherwise his
candle would have burned to the socket. He had blown it out and
settled to rest, be sure.

"We have now to deal with the detective, and here again there was
nothing to associate his death with the bed of the Borgia. Yet
you will see without my aid how easily he came by his death. Peter
Hardcastle desires to be alone, that he may study the Grey Room
and everything in it. He is left as he wishes, walks here and
there, sketches a ground plan of the room and exhausts its more
obvious peculiarities. Would that he had known the meaning of the
golden bull! Presently he strikes a train of thought and sits down
to develop it. Or he may not have finished with the room and have
taken a seat from which he could survey everything around him. He
sits at the foot of the bed--there on the right side. He makes
his notes, then his last thoughts enter his mind--abstract
reflection on the subject of his trade. For a moment he forgets
the matter immediately in hand and writes his ideas in his book.
He has been sitting on the bed now for some while--how long we
know not, but long enough to create the heightened temperature
which is all the watchful fiend within the mattress requires to
summon him. Then ascends the spirit of death, and Hardcastle,
surprised as Captain May was surprised, leaps to his feet. He
takes two or three steps forward; his book and pen fall from his
hand and he drops upon his face--a dead man. He is, of course,
still warm when Mr. Lennox finds him; but the bed he leaped from
is cold again and harmless--its work done.

"There remains the priest, the Rev. Septimus May. He neither lay
on the bed, nor sat upon it. But what did he do? He clearly
knelt beside it a long time, engaged in prayer. Nothing more
natural than that he should stretch his arms over the mattress;
bury his face in his hands, and so remain in commune with the
Almighty, uttering petition after petition for the being he
conceived as existing in the Grey Room, without power to escape
from it. Thus leaning upon the bed with his arms stretched upon
it and his head perhaps sunk between them, he presently creates
that heightened temperature sufficient to arouse the destroyer.
It enters into him--how, we know not yet--and he sinks unconscious
to the floor, while the bed is quickly cold again.

"As to the four detectives--Inspector Frith and his men--pure
chance saved the life of at least one of them, and by so doing,
chance also prevented them from discovering that the bed in their
midst was the seat of all the trouble. Had one among them taken
up his watch upon it, he would certainly have died in the presence
of his collaborators; but the men sat on chairs in the corners of
the room, and the chairs were harmless. Whether their gas masks
would indeed have saved them remains, of course, to be proved. I
doubt it.

"Such, my friends, were the masterpieces of the Borgia, for whom
the profoundest chemists worked willingly enough and by doing so
doubtless made their fortunes. Their poisons were so designed to
act that, by their very operation, the secrets of them were
concealed, and all clues obliterated. Chemistry knows nothing of
the supernatural, yet can, as in this case, achieve results that
may well appear to be black magic.

"And if we, of this day, fail to find them out, it is easy to guess
that in their own times, much that they caused to be done was set
down to the operations of Heaven alone.

"Science will be deeply interested in your Borgia mattress, Sir
Walter. Science, I doubt not, will carefully unpick it and make a
series of very remarkable experiments; yet I make bold to believe
that science may be baffled by the cunning and forgotten knowledge
of men long dust. We shall see as to that."

He rose and bade Masters call Stephano. Then, with a few words,
they parted, and each shook the old man's hand and expressed a deep
and genuine gratitude before they did so.

"A little remains to add," said Signor Mannetti. "You shall hear
what it is to-morrow. For the moment, 'Good-night!' It has been
a crowning joy to my long life that I was able to do this service
to new and valued friends."

In the servants' hall next morning Masters related what he had
heard.

"And if you ask me," he concluded, "I draw back what I thought
about him being younger than he pretends. He's older--old as the
hills--older than that horror in the Grey Boom. He's a demon;
and he's killed the old dog; and I believe he's a Borge himself if
the truth was known."




CHAPTER XIII

TWO NOTES


They walked in the garden next morning, and Sir Walter delayed to
write to Scotland Yard until after seeing Signor Mannetti again.
The old gentleman descended to them presently, and declared himself
over-fatigued.

"I must sit in the sun and go to sleep again after lunch," he said.
"Stephano is annoyed with me, and hints at the doctor."

"Mannering will be here to lunch. You will understand that nobody
is more deeply interested in these things than he."

"But yourself," said Mary. "Come and sit down and rest. You are
looking very tired to-day."

"A little reaction--no more. It was worth it." He then proceeded
where he had broken off on the preceding night.

"There remains only to tell you how I found myself caught up in
your sad story. It had not occurred to you to wonder?"

"I confess I had never thought of that, signor. You made us forget
such a trifling detail."

"But, none the less, you will want to know, Sir Walter. Our common
friend, Colonel Vane, put the first thought in my head. He laid
the train to which I set the match so well. He it was who described
the Grey Room very exactly, and the moment that I heard of the
ancient carved furniture, I knew that he spoke of curios concerning
which I already had heard. The name of Lennox completed the clue,
for that had already stirred memories in my ancient mind. I had
listened to my father, when I was young, telling a story in which
a bed and chairs and a gentleman named Lennox were connected. He
spoke of an ancient Italian suite of three pieces, the work of
craftsmen at Rome in the fifteenth century. It was papal furniture
of the early Renaissance, well known to him as being in a Spanish
collection--a hundred and fifty years ago that is now--and when
these things came into the market, he rejoiced and hurried off to
Valencia, where it was to be sold. For he was even such a man as
your grandfather--a connoisseur and an enthusiastic collector.
But, alas, his hopes were short-lived; he found himself in
opposition to a deeper purse than his own, and it was Sir John
Lennox, not my father, who secured the bed and the two chairs that
go with it. These things, as I tell you, returned to my
recollection, and, remembering them, I guessed myself upon the
right track. The arms of the Borgia, and the successful experiment
with the dog, Prince, proved that I was correct in guessing where
the poison lay hidden."

"It is impossible to express my sense of your amazing goodness, or
my gratitude, or my admiration for your genius," declared Sir
Walter; but the other contradicted him.

"Genius is a great word to which I can lay no claim. I have done
nothing at all that you yourself might not have done, given the
same knowledge. As for gratitude, if indeed that is not too
strong an expression also, you can show gratitude in a very simple
manner, dear friend. I am a practical, old man and, to be honest,
I very greatly covet the Borgia bed and chairs. Now, if indeed
you feel that I am not asking too grand a favor--a favor out of
all keeping with my good offices on your behalf--then let me
purchase the bed and chairs, and convey them with me home to Rome.
It is seemly that they should return to Rome, is it not? Rome
would welcome them. I much desire to sleep in that bed--to be
where I am so sure Prince Djem lay when he breathed his last.
Yes, believe me, he received your bed as a gracious present from
Alexander VI. The Borgia were generous of such gifts."

"The bed and chairs are yours, my dear signor, and the rest of the
contents of the Grey Room, also, if you esteem them in any way."

"Positively I could not, Sir Walter."

"Indeed you shall. It is done, and leaves me greatly your debtor
still."

"Then be it so. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Nor
will I say that you oppress me with such extraordinary generosity,
for is it not more blessed to give than receive? Heavens knows
what dark evils the bed may have committed in the course of its
career, but its activities are at an end. For me it shall bring
no more than honest slumber. But the mattress--no. I do not want
the mattress. That will be a nice present for the museum of your
Royal College of Surgeons."

A week later the old man was sufficiently rested, and he returned
home, taking his treasures with him. But he did not depart until
he had won a promise that Sir Walter and Mary would visit him at
Rome within the year.

Experts again descended upon Chadlands, packed the source of
tribulation with exceeding care, and conveyed it to London for
examination. Those destined to make the inquiry were much alive
to their perils, and took no risk.

Six weeks later letters passed between England and Rome, and Sir
Walter wrote to Signor Mannetti, sending such details as he was
able to furnish.

"A thin, supple wire was found to run between the harmless flock
of the mattress and the satin casing," wrote Sir Walter.
"Experiments showed that neither the stuffing nor the outer case
contained any harmful substance. But the wire, of which fifty
miles wound over the upper and lower surfaces of the mattress
under its satin upholstery, proved infinitely sensitive to heat,
and gave off, or ejected at tremendous speed, an invisible, highly
poisonous matter even at a lower temperature than that of a normal
human being. Insects placed upon it perished in the course of a
few hours, and it destroyed microscopic life and fish and frogs in
water at comparatively low temperatures, that caused the living
organisms no inconvenience until portions of the wire were
introduced. A cat died in eight minutes; a monkey in ten. No
pain or discomfort marked the operation of the wire on unconscious
creatures. They sank into death as into sudden sleep, and
examination revealed no physical effects whatever. The wire is
an alloy, and the constituent metals have not yet been determined;
but it is not an amalgam, for mercury is absent. The wire contains
thallium and helium as the spectroscope shows; but its awful
radioactivity and deadly emanation has yet to be explained. The
chemical experts have a startling theory. They suspect there is a
new element here--probably destined to occupy one of the last
unfilled places of the Periodic Table, which chronicles all the
elements known to science. Chemical analysis fails to reach the
radio-active properties, and for their examination the electroscope
and spinthariscope are needful. With these the radio-chemists are
at work. The wire melted at a lower temperature than lead, but
melting did not destroy its potency. After cooling, the metal
retained its properties and was still responsive, as before, to
warmth. But experiment shows that in a molten state, the metal
of the wire increases in effect, and any living thing brought
within a yard of it under this condition succumbs instantly. Its
properties cannot be extracted, so far, from the actual composition
of the wire. They prove also that the emanation from the warmed
wire is exceedingly subtle, tenuous, and volatile. Save under
conditions of super-heat, it only operates at two feet and a few
inches, and the wire naturally grows cold very quickly. It is
almost as light as aluminium. A gas mask does not arrest the
poison; indeed, it evidently enters a body through the nearest
point offered to it and a safe shield has not yet been discovered.

"I shall tell you more when we know more," concluded Sir Walter.
"But at present it looks as though your prophecy were correct, and
that science is not going to get at the bottom of the horrible
secret easily. Dr. Mannering says that the properties of the
elements have yet to be fully determined, while the subject of
alloys was never suspected of containing such secrets as may prove
to be the case. If more there is to learn, you shall learn it."

In his reply, Signor Mannetti declared that the Borgia bed continued
to be a source of extreme satisfaction and comfort to him.

"As yet no vision has broken my slumbers, but I continue to hope
that the Oriental features of Sultan Bajazet's brother may
presently revisit the place of his taking off, and that Prince
Djem will some night afford me the pleasure of a conversation.
How much might we tell each other that neither of us knows!

"As to the wire, my friend, I will explain to you how that was
probably created and, right or wrong, there is nobody on this
earth at present who can prove my theory to be mistaken. Be sure
that a medieval alchemist, searching in vain for elixir vitae, or
the philosopher's stone, chanced upon this infernal synthesis and
fusion. For him, no doubt, it proved a philosopher's stone in
earnest, for the Borgia always extended a generous hand to those
who could assist their damnable activities. Transmutation--so a
skilled friend assures me--is now proved to be a fact, and
another generation will be able perhaps to make gold, if the
desire for that accursed mineral continues much longer to dominate
mankind.

"Farewell for the present. Again to see you and your daughter is
one of those pleasures lying in wait for me, to make next winter
a season of gladness rather than dismay. But do not change your
minds. One must keep faith with a man of eighty, or risk the
possibilities of remorse."

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