Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

Ten O’Clock by Philip MacDonald

I must make everybody understand, somehow, that I was quite normal that night when I came back from my month with the Vansittarts. Quite absolutely, stone-cold, righteously, smugly normal. Normal with a capital N. I could, you know, have stayed another fortnight. Mary asked me to, and so did Tom, and the others all joined in. I must have been damn popular in that house. It was a good house, and a good party, and I’d another month before the long vac ended. But I had to come back.

It was Claire who made me come back. Not, you must understand, by writing to me, or telephoning to me, or wirelessing to me, or even telepathing me... She wasn’t a girl who would do that. She wasn’t one to worry a man. She made me come back simply by the very fact of her existence.

London was very hot. A damn sight hotter than it was full. But I didn’t care... I’d sent her a telegram that I was coming.

It was rather queer about that telegram. Queer, I mean in a way that will show you how absolutely my very existence was governed by Claire’s being in the world. I could have sent that wire, of course, from the Vansittarts’ house. Or if I hadn’t liked to do that I could have hopped out one evening and sent it from that little pub at the top of the hill. I could have tipped the grocer’s boy a shilling to take it to the post office and send it for me. I could have done this, and I could have done that, and I could have done the other. But I didn’t. It wasn’t that I was frightened that anybody should know about Claire, because she didn’t care two hoots in hell what they thought, and I was in that state where outside opinions, outside influence, anything outside that utterly pagan, beatific world in which we two dwelt when we got the chance, didn’t matter one solitary jot. I didn’t send that wire from the house, because to have done that would have seemed a violation somehow of that wonderful privacy. I meant to send the damn thing from the station before the train left, but with the usual perversity of things Vansittart, the Vansittart clocks that day were all about a quarter of an hour slow. As we got to the top of the short steep hill before the little station, we saw the train just coming out of the long tunnel. So Peters whipped up the cob, and we rattled down the slope just in time for me to scramble into the last carriage before the guard’s van...

What I did will just show you the state of mind I was in. I got out, actually got out of the train, at Greyne and sent the wire from there. So it cost me an hour’s wait for the next train. That’ll show you how normal I was. It was one of those damn fool things that only a sane man will do. A madman’s got more logic.

I was saying just now that London was hot. It was. Hot as hell in a frying pan. And empty. Empty as Piccadilly Circus is of virgins. I got a taxi at Waterloo, made the old fellow — I’ll never forget him, he was exactly like an old crab with long white whiskers — shove down the top, and off we trundled. Empty as the town was, it took that rattling taxi at least half an hour to get to the Temple. By the time I got there I was hot and sticky, and in fiendish temper.

Bascombe, with that seventh sense of his which made him the best valet my old father ever had, and certainly the best servant that any young K.C. could wish for, had in his miraculous way anticipated my arrival. He was actually standing under the arch of Dr. Johnson’s chambers waiting for the taxi. He took my bags, and paid the driver. He shepherded me upstairs like an old hen getting chickens back into the run. He gave me a drink. Told me that my bath was ready. That he presumed I would like to dine early, and could do so within an hour. That no one had called, rung up, or written that day. That Simpson — my chief clerk — had told him there were seven new briefs. That he had taken the liberty of paying two bills. That he hoped I was feeling refreshed and exhilarated by my holiday...

And that’ll show you the sort of fellow Bascombe was. One of the best, if not the best.

I had that bath and that drink. In pyjamas and dressing-gown I went to the telephone. Bascombe was just leaving the room, a tray in one hand, an empty tumbler in the other. I said to him:

“Any telephone messages, Bascombe? Special messages?” I didn’t look at him. I knew perfectly well that he knew I meant Claire. And he knew perfectly well that I knew. He shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “Had there been, sir, I should have taken the liberty, of informing you over the wire.” A good fellow, Bascombe.

I took up the receiver. As always, when it was Claire to whom I was telephoning, I got the most ridiculous little lump in my throat. A small lump, but in a way a painful lump. One moment it wasn’t there, and then it was, so that I couldn’t swallow. I told Claire about it once. I tried to make a joke of it because I really thought she’d think it silly. But Claire — and this’ll show you what sort of a girl she was — Claire didn’t even smile. I said, with rather a painful attempt to laugh it off: “Perhaps you’ll realize now how much I love you. When a man gets to a state when a ’phone number’ll make him go choky, he’s in a pretty bad way.”

But as I say, she didn’t even smile. She put an arm round my neck and pressed my face into that delicious hollow between shoulder and breast. She said:

“It doesn’t need that, old boy. Nothing could make me love you any more. But that does all the same...”

I picked up the receiver, and then let it drop; left it until the small lump had gone. I picked it up again, and asked an angry exchange girl for the number. I then waited. After what, by the clock, said two minutes, but was really in the time of my mind at least half an hour, I began “depressing the receiver continuously and slowly.” I always start like that, and it never works. Always keep it up for about two minutes, and then turn it into a kind of fury of rattling.

But this time nothing was any good. I mean as far as Claire was concerned. She obviously wasn’t in the flat. I thought at first that the exchange girl wasn’t trying — I always did if they couldn’t get Claire — so I got on to the supervisor. But supervisor, who was also supercilious, couldn’t get any reply either. So I hung up.

I had had the drink, and the bath, in double quick time. But I dressed in double slow. I got through nearly an hour putting on a dinner jacket, I think. But at last I wandered towards the meal.

I began to make some show of drinking the soup, more to please old Bascombe than anything. But the stuff tasted like ink. I’d just managed to force the last spoonful down my resisting gorge, when the ’phone rang. Bascombe went to it. He came back saying:

“A lady for you, sir.” His face was expressionless and his voice meant to be. But there was in it a nuance which spelt Claire as plainly as did that lovely word’s own six letters. I made a dash for the library. A dash with more speed about it than dignity; but who was I to think of being dignified where Claire was concerned? Dignity’s all right when you’re all figged out in wig and gown; but otherwise I’ve not much use for it...

Her voice came to me over that blessed wire like a thin and silver and magic stream of water to a desert-bound fool, almost at the point of drinking his own blood. She said:

“You are back, then!...”

She hadn’t had my wire. She’d been out all day, and even now was telephoning from some restaurant or somewhere. She had, she said, been lonely. She had thought, she said, so lonely had she been, of going that night to a theater by herself. But somehow, she said, she had known, or hoped anyhow, that I was back in town. I said:

“How long will it take you to get back to the flat? My wings’ll do it in twenty-five minutes.”

Her laugh came to me like a disembodied picture of all the fire and sweetness of her. She said: “You’d better clip them then, because I won’t be ready for you till ten.”

And that was the first time that night that I looked at the little bronze clock which stood at the right-hand corner of my writing table. Its hands stood — if I close my eyes I can see them now, not a picture of them, nor the memory of them, but the very damn things themselves — they stood at seven minutes and a half to nine. Not eight, or seven and three-quarters to, but seven and a half to. I said:

“I’ll go there first, and wait for you. And when you do come in... well, just you look out, my girl! That’s all.”

She didn’t laugh this time. There came that little deep note into her voice which always sounded when she would say something of importance. She said: “Darling, you mustn’t, mustn’t, mustn’t! Not after you’ve been away such days of months.” And then she did laugh again, only this time it was a little double-noted laugh which, to me, was a symbol of all her magic provocativeness, and, too, of all the tender, mad, glorious, wild redemptions of provocation that afterwards would come... She said, after that laugh:

“Such days of months! This, Ivor, is a special night. An extra special command night. Come at ten, my darling; not a moment later, and not half a minute before. I’ll be ready, I promise you. And when it is ten, not a moment later, and not half a moment before, you’ll believe that ten was worth waiting for.”

I heard the little metallic click of finality which so abruptly ends a telephone conversation. Sometimes I wonder whether I thought anything special about that particular click. Whether I did or not I can’t remember. Sometimes it seems to me so vastly important that I should... But at other times it doesn’t seem to matter whether I do or not...

Anyhow, there I was left, with the dumb black instrument in my hands, and my eyes on the clock.

Bascombe came in. He coughed. That perfectly discreet, what-the-devil-are-you-up-to cough of the perfect manservant. I went back to my dinner. I was sorry that the soup was finished. I know now that it had been very good soup, as good in its way as was the rest of the meal. There is nothing like disappointment turned joy for giving a man zest; zest even for the enjoyment of lesser things than promise holds.

I firmly believe that Bascombe was incapable of listening at doors. And quite firmly I believe that, that night, he knew as well as did I the gist of that telephonic talk of mine. I had just finished my peach when there came another of his coughs. This time an excuse-me-sir-but-if-you-are-not-too-busy-I-would-like-to-speak-to-you cough. He said:

“Might I suggest, sir, that there are still two dozen of His Lordship’s port? Only half-bottles, sir, but two dozen.”

“Bascombe,” I said, “make it one dozen and ten.”

He carried the two bottles in, dust and cobwebs and all, as if they had been twin children which all his life he had longed for.

I must say old Ribbleford knew something about wine. It was good port. The best port I’ve ever tasted. I lingered over it a bit. I was trying to kill time, and this seemed a pleasant weapon. I lingered until the clock on the mantelpiece — I believe it was five minutes fast — said nine-thirty-five. And then I took my glass, and I got up, and I went over to that clock. I was damn fool enough to drink its health. I opened the foolish old chap’s case, and moved the hands round until they stood, not at a minute past ten, not at a minute before, but just exactly at ten o’clock. I was rather like that in those days. If I could give myself a symbol I could picture Claire, or the incident or emotion which the symbol symbolized, picture her so really that often did I stretch out a hand to touch her...

I was very successful then. Quite suddenly, and most damnably acutely, I saw her...

First I saw her as I thought I might see her at ten o’clock — not a minute past or half a minute to, but at ten o’clock exactly. And that, believe me, was a sight so exquisite in its intrinsic beauty and in its ineffable promise that almost I staggered on my feet...

And then I saw Claire as first I had seen her... I didn’t want then to think about that. I don’t want to write about it. Before she met me there had been no happiness for Claire. That much she told me, and that’s all... I didn’t want to think about it; not even what my chance passing by had helped her to avert... But I did not mind thinking, as I stood there drinking my port before that mantelpiece, of another time — I think it was three months after that first meeting — when Claire, now clothed as befitted her beauty, and housed as befitted her, or as nearly befitting her as my pocket would allow, first became that mistress who was to be more friend than any wife, more lovely than any mere beauty, more faithful than any simple wench, yet with her lover more gloriously wanton than any whose wantonness is their all.

I’ve often thought, you know, that I’d like to write a book about Claire. Only all the time I’ve really known that that book about Claire would never be written because, you see, it would have had to be such a book! I don’t suppose there’s any man living, or that there ever has lived any man who, even with my untold and paradisaic opportunities, could write a book about Claire which would come within even measurable distance of doing justice to its subject. I once, having told her that I was going to write a book about her, sent her a thick octavo volume bound in blue morocco and having a golden key. This book contained four hundred and ninety-nine blank pages. The first, which made up the full five hundred, was the only one written upon. I have headed this page “The Book of Claire,” and under this title I had written: “She was most wonderfully her unique self...”

It has often occurred to me to wonder how long I should have gone on that night standing before the clock, which now by the action of my own hands was fast by a full five and twenty minutes, had not Bascombe jerked me out of my symbolizing reverie; Bascombe and another of his coughs...

I spun round angrily. He stood just inside the door. The light from the low-hung lamp over the dining table showed me only his stout body, and the formal formless clothes of the English manservant.

I could see nothing of his head. He might not have had a head at all. From somewhere near his face, above that island of white shirt-front with the discreet black stud glittering like an ebony island in its whiteness, he said — and his voice had in it an agitation which all his training couldn’t conceal:

“Sir... you must forgive me, sir... but there’s a man! A man, sir, at this time of night. He says he must see you, sir. Won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I told him, sir, that you weren’t here... But he’s inside, sir, and his back’s against the oak, sir...”

Poor old Bascombe’s voice, quivering in a most unusual and even eerie mixture of outraged dignity and sense of failure, quivered off into silence...

I was going to say something pretty curt. But before I could open my mouth I saw that the poor old boy was trembling; actually trembling. By the set of his mouth and the curious posture of his short, fat legs I knew that he was making a supreme effort to still this trembling. But the effort wasn’t any good.

It gave me a jerk, that did, you know. Bascombe trembling! One might, I thought, as well see St. Paul’s at the angle of Pisa’s Leaning Tower...

I walked round the table and put my hand on one of his shoulders. Under my palm I could feel the shaking of his soft servant’s body. I said: “All right, Bascombe. You sit down. Have a glass of port.” I half pushed him into a chair. I believe I remember a small sound, almost a cry of protest, which the dear old thing’s servile soul forced his mouth to utter. But I took no notice.

I went out into the hall. I remember that, as I passed through the doorway, I buttoned my open dinner jacket in the way a man buttons his coat when he expects trouble — physical trouble, that is. I’m rather a big fellow still and I was big then, in all conscience. I said, as I stepped out from light to darkness — for, for some obscure reason poor old Bascombe had forgotten to switch on the hall light:

“What the devil’s all this about?”

Opposite me the library door stood ajar, and from it there came a shaft of faint yellow light... It slid slimily across the deep gray darkness of the hall. I looked towards the outer door. I couldn’t see anything. I expect that was because my eyes weren’t yet accustomed to the change, because of course the place wasn’t really dark. I mean, not dark...

The first thing I saw — actually saw with my eyes — was an interference with that shaft of dusky gold light from the library. It had reached right across the hall to my feet. Suddenly — and there was no sound — it reached only half-way. I stood quite still... Then I began to see... What I saw was a shape. A great, indeterminate, columnar mass. A man all right. But a man so big, and so blurred somehow in outline, that it seemed impossible, at least standing where I was, to take in the whole of him at one glance.

A voice came to me out of the semi-darkness. A very small voice to come from so great a bulk. A small still voice. There was that about this voice which I find very hard to describe. I think I can best get at it when I say that it was a dead voice. It said:

“Are you Mr. Lorimer, sir?”

It was funny about that voice. I don’t know the exact words which had been on the tip of my tongue before he spoke, but they were to the effect that if he didn’t get out in rather less time than it takes a cat to wag its tail once, I’d put him out. But after he’d spoken the idea seemed to leave me. I said that Mr. Lorimer I was. I also said, I believe: “And what do you want?”

He still stood blocking that light from the library door, and I tried putting my hand out and feeling along the wall for the hall switch. But either I was standing an inch or two further to the left than I thought, or else the switch had moved... That sounds damn silly. But perhaps it isn’t... I mean, you never know...

The still small voice said: “What I want, sir, is advice.”

That doesn’t look much written down, does it? It’s the sort of ordinary remark that any ordinary man might make at any ordinary time. But, believe me, that isn’t how it sounded. Whether it was in that voice — though the voice was toneless — or in the words — though the words were senseless — or in the man — though the man was indeterminate — wherever it was, there was urgency there. A compelling urgency. An urgency which it would have been impossible to deny.

I said: “All right. I can give you a few minutes. Come in here!” And I pointed towards the library door...

Only the queer thing was that my lips, though they moved, didn’t make any sound. And my hand that I had meant to point stayed where it was, bunched into a fist in my right-hand trouser pocket...

A sort of shiver went through me, standing there in that dark hall... Mind you, I don’t know what it was about. For I wasn’t frightened. I wasn’t even particularly interested. It was as if something else, somebody outside me, had taken charge and had said, not to the internal me, but to the external husk of me: “Look out! Look out! Look out!”

I swallowed hard and had another try. This time I got the words out. They sounded all right. I believe I smiled to myself as I heard them. Smiled inside, I mean, because my face was too stiff to smile with.

I pointed at the library. The full lights weren’t on there. There was only the reading lamp on the table. It made a sort of dull gold pool, a clearly defined pool which yet sent out beyond its defined circle a luminous, rather febrile light which cut a dim path to the door, and had been the origin of that splash across the hall which my visitor’s bulk had swallowed up.

I went in ahead of him. I remember stiffening my shoulders. Not only squaring them, but actually giving them that straining tension which tries to make shoulder-blades meet; that movement which a man makes semi-consciously when he is walking away from an enemy, and doesn’t look round though he knows there may be danger...

It wasn’t, you know, that I felt any kind of physical danger... Mental danger, then, you say?... No. Not a feeling of that, either. That’s my, difficulty in putting all this down. I had impressions — my God, I had impressions! — but what they were impressions of I couldn’t tell you to save my life...

I dropped into my chair and waved my visitor to one that faced me across the table. I could see him better now. He was, all of him, well within the pool of light from the reading lamp, because now I had turned the shade so that the little lake it had spilt over the table left me in shadow, and flooded the chair in which my visitor sat.

I say “in which he sat,” but that’s wrong. Because he didn’t sit in it. He balanced himself, in that precarious way the lower classes have when sitting in the presence of those they term their superiors, on the chair’s front edge. Right forward he was, and, looking at him, I got a silly idea.

So silly that it made me feel for a moment very much as if I was going actually to vomit. The fellow had a great oilskin round him. Oilskin of that patchy, dirty, greeny-yellow which comes to oilskin which has seen many years use upon hard and dangerous seas. And this coat, as he sat there perched like some damned great ugly bird, hung down right to the floor in front of him. It didn’t only just touch the floor; it coiled up on the floor, and made him look as if, perhaps, he hadn’t any legs... As if, perhaps, there was of him only that great bulk of his torso and head and arms balanced by some devilish means on the chair’s edge...

I had to make quite an effort to pull myself together after that silly idea. But I did it all right, and as the light wasn’t on me, but on him, I don’t suppose he could have seen.

I was waiting for him to begin talking. But he seemed to be thinking the same about me. I wanted to look at the time. Wanted to badly. But, d’you know, it cost me what seemed like a full minute to take my eyes off that shapeless bulk, and turn them to the clock. When I did, I saw that if I gave this visitor more than three minutes I should be late. I shouldn’t be at the flat at ten exactly — nor should I be there at half a minute past — not half a minute to. I should be there at a quarter past... And had I not been told that it was at ten o’clock I must come?

So I tried to make myself a bit brusque. I said: “Come on, man. If you want to speak to me, speak up! I can give you” — I looked across at the clock — “exactly nine and a half minutes.” He spoke then, damn him! He said: “You are Mr. Lorimer, sir? The K.C. sir? The Mr. Lorimer who was actin’ for the fellow in that red bicycle case last twelve-month?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to draw things out any longer by answering when it wasn’t necessary. Really, I was waiting for him to get on with it. I tried hard, really very hard, to take in some accurate impression of him. But d’you know, I couldn’t. He was utterly and most determinedly indeterminate. He was a great mass. A shapeless mass with no outlines which man’s eye could take in; no salient points. No incongruity, no congruity...

I don’t mean, you know, that he was fluid or anything crazy like that. I mean that, somehow, I didn’t seem to be able to make my eyes take him in...

And then, just as this was beginning to annoy me, with that half-fearful, half-petty annoyance which the inexplicable often gives a man, he began to speak again. As he began to speak he lifted one of his great arms with a semi-apologetic gesture. It had been hanging down beside the chair, almost out of my sight, but now it came into sight. And it had grasped in a massive indeterminate hand, a little wicker basket. It was the size and shape of those baskets in which old women carry cats; but in that hand it seemed much smaller than this. He stood it upon his knee. Every now and then, with his breathing, it creaked a little. He said, in that small voice which ought to have been incongruous; that small voice which ought to have been ridiculous; that small voice which was neither:

“It’s advice I want, sir. And your advice.” He paused for ten seconds which seemed to me quite ten minutes. He went on then: “It’s like this, sir. I’ve killed some’un, sir...”

D’you know, I very nearly laughed. So nearly that I had to get out my handkerchief and turn what would have been a laugh into an unconvincing cough... I nearly laughed because — I hope I can make this part clear — because this statement seemed, after all the extraordinary-impressiveness (impressiveness is the only word to use) of his entry, his coming, his — well, everything about him — this statement seemed, I say, to have about it a queer, almost bathetic humor. It was a most flagrant anti-climax.

He seemed, now, again to be waiting for me to say something. He sat there in silence. I was silent too. I couldn’t think of anything to say. First, there was that feeling of anti-climactics. Secondly... well, what do you say when a man comes in and says he’s just killed another?

I could hear the little clock on the desk, its hand pointing nearly to the hour of ten. I could hear, with his breathing, the creak of the lid of his quaint little basket, as, with his breathing, the basket moved.

The silence went on. It seemed, to my mind, rather as if there was a contest of some sort going on between us. A. contest in which the loser was the man who first said anything. If that was it, I won all right. Because he suddenly leaned forward, the basket giving a loud creak as his chest came against it. And he said, fixing his eyes on me — to this day I can’t tell what color or size those eyes were; I can’t even tell you where they were in his face — he said:

“So, as I’ve done this, sir, I’m what they call a murd’rer. And I want, sir, to know what’s the best I can do... I’m... ’m sort of out of touch, as you might say, sir...”

He told me then that he was a seaman. He had been away, he said, for seven years. This seven years wasn’t his fault. He was one of the three survivors of the wreck of that unfortunate ship, the Hesperides. Five years it had taken him to get home again... When he had got home...

But now, with the whispered tick-tock of the little clock drumming into my head the minutes of Claire that I was losing, I grew brutal. And this despite that still, terrible, most gripping urgency in the small, dead voice.

I cut him short in mid-sentence. I said: “For God’s sake stop that damned basket squeaking!”

You know, that thing had got on my nerves, all the time creak, creak, creak. It seemed so even, so systematic, that just when I thought I was going to get into the swing of the thing and he able to anticipate the next creak, the time would change. I’d never meant those words to leave me. I was sorry for the way in which I said them.

He stopped talking again, and looked at me. Again I tried to place his eyes but couldn’t. He said: “I’m sorry, sir.” He set the basket down on the floor beside him, but then changed his mind. He lifted it, and with a humbly apologetic gesture which rippled oddly over his bulk, set it upon the edge of my table...

I got up. I said: “You’ve come to ask for my advice, and my advice is this — and it’s good advice; you can take it or leave it. Don’t tell me any more. Go at once to the police. Tell them the whole thing. They’ll put you inside, but that’s got to come. Do it now. Get it over. When they’ve got you inside they’ll ask you who you want to see. Then you can give them my name. They’ll notify me. I’ll come and see you. I’ll do what I can.”

A funny thing happened then. Odd, isn’t it, how I keep laughing. It was funny — damned funny... Funny in the sense of being queer and unexpected. You’d have thought when I’d said that, and like that, for I was pretty short, that he’d have gone on talking. Wouldn’t you, now? But did he? No, he did not. He surged to his feet. Yes, surged is right... He said:

“Thank’ee, sir.”

And he turned, and rolled towards the door.

Again my eyes, which wanted to go to the clock, didn’t go to the clock. They went instead to the shapeless, enormous, indefinable back. They went with that enveloping oilskin which was wrapped about it like some foul, greeny-yellow mist, went with it until that back had got to the door; until it had passed through the door, and had gone out of actual sight; until it was down the stairs and out into the courtyard, and under Dr. Johnson’s arch, and into Middle Temple Lane, and out into the Strand, and from the Strand...

That’s a bloody silly thing to say. But that’s what my eyes did...

And then, with a jerk, I got myself back to myself. I howled for Bascombe. I howled for a hat and a coat. And a taxi. Loudest of all for a taxi.

I looked at the clock, and the clock said ten twenty-five.

By the time I got there I should have lost an hour out of my life. An hour with Claire; a whole hour with the mind of Claire, that beautiful, tender, caressing, sword-like mind; a whole hour with the white body of Claire, with that glorious strong, lovely, maddening body... An hour! Sixty jeweled minutes which never could I have again, not even should Claire and I live to be as old as the world itself...

And I should have hurt Claire — not that she wouldn’t understand — but have hurt her with a hurt that would last for at least one hour; and to hurt Claire for the seventeenth part of a half second was to stab myself through with flaming, jagged spears of pain...

I heard Bascombe running. I heard him go out, leaving the oak open. I heard his old feet flapping down the stone stairs, and out again onto the cobbles of the court. He was getting my taxi. Good old Bascombe!

I went over to the door and struggled into a coat, flipped open my hat and rammed it on... And then I suddenly felt — I’m sorry I can’t describe this any better — a summons. A command from behind me. It was one of those sensations totally inexplicable but nevertheless impossible of obtaining anything else but obedience from him who feels it.

I turned. I saw my writing table, and the pool which the reading lamp made in the dusk of the low room. Arid on my writing table I saw the telephone. Beside it was that wicker basket... I thought: Damn; he’s forgotten the thing!

I went over to the table... Of course, I must phone Claire and explain. That would save her, when she knew how quickly I would be with her, perhaps ten minutes of her hurt.

I lifted the receiver and got that damn silly lumpiness in my throat... But this time it was worse, so that I dropped that phone as if it had been red hot. Actually dropped it, I mean, so that it fell sprawled on the carpet. Sprawled, with its black, stupid mouth uttering silly cackles...

I was going to stoop to pick it up. I believe I began to stoop. Began to — but I didn’t finish...

Suddenly I had a vision. A vision which, even to me who all my life have seen things with interior as well as exterior eyes, was so clear as to make me think that this sight was actual physical sight. I saw, in front of me, so near that with half out-stretched arms I could have caught her, Claire. Claire as most of all I loved to see her. Claire as Claire. With nothing to hide her loveliness but those softly rippling waves of that black, black hair, which never would I let her shear...

A great pain came to me then. A sharp, stabbing pain, which sent its hot spears through me. I gasped. I can hear even now that strange not-me sound with which that gasp rang, in those ears which were mine...

And then she wasn’t there. Not for either inward or outward eyes to see. But her presence remained; so surely, so certainly, that one half of my brain seemed to know that could I but turn in some direction impossible to man, so, surely, would I see what before I had seen.

And then, as suddenly as he had left me, that dire and terrible God whose name is Commonsense returned to me. I stooped again to the fallen telephone. I picked it up and set it upon the table. I replaced the receiver, and cut short the mundane cackling. I knew that speak into its black mouth I couldn’t. Better go to her quickly... quickly... quickly...

I turned, and the skirt of the light coat into which I had crammed myself flew up with the speed of my turning. Flew up and brushed against the basket...

It was only the ghost of a creaking sound, so slight as to appear disembodied. But in my present state, it was enough. Ah oath tore itself out of my throat. Tore itself savagely, and savagely fled into the dimness of the room’s corners. I struck out behind me with my left hand. I can still feel, on the left side of my fist, the impression of the wicker...

With a squeaking, rattling, bumping little thud, the thing slid off the table and fell to the carpet.

I meant to go on to the door. I wanted to go on to the door. But I turned round. The basket was lying open. I could see that upon the farther side from me the lid had come away from the rest. A force which was not mine moved my legs. I took a step forward. I stood looking down.

And I looked at the face of Claire... The face of Claire — and the head of Claire and the hair of Claire. The hair of Claire lay spread out in a dusky, misty, glistening cloud upon my gray carpet. And from the head of Claire there came small and dull and sluggish dark streaks to stain my gray carpet...