Chapter 3

“Herbert! Good God! Is it possible?”

“Yes, my name’s Herbert. I think I know your face, too, but I don’t
remember your name. My memory is very queer.”

“Don’t you recollect Villiers of Wadham?”

“So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn’t think I was
begging of an old college friend. Good-night.”

“My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but
we won’t go there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a
little way? But how in heaven’s name have you come to this pass,
Herbert?”

“It’s a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear
it if you like.”

“Come on, then. Take my arm, you don’t seem very strong.”

The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty,
evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a
man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had
emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses,
assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame
of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the
door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those
mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem
in every quarter and every hour. Villiers prided himself as a practised
explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this
unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more
serious employment. Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the
passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only
to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula:
“London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than that,
it is the city of Resurrections,” when these reflections were suddenly
interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable appeal
for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden shock
found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat
stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and
disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy
ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had
matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry
and wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying
interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since
Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man
with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to
what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a
doleful pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of
the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely
speculations outside the restaurant.

They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by
stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed
man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing
this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he
repeated his question.

“How on earth has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would
succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your father
disinherit you? Surely not?”

“No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father’s death;
he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me,
and I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men
are; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into
society. Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to
enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little,
certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races
brought me in money—only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for
cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the
tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?”

“No, I never heard anything about it.”

“Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful
and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I
cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I
should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her
acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told
them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian
mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw
her was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a
friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard
a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian
song. I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I
married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted
my soul. The night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom
in the hotel, listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I
listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things
which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I
stood in the midst of a wilderness. You, Villiers, you may think you
know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this dreadful
city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but
I tell you you can have no conception of what I know, not in your most
fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow
of what I have heard—and seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible,
such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the
street and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such things
and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in body and soul—in
body and soul.”

“But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset.”

“I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house—everything.”

“And the money?”

“She took it all from me.”

“And then left you?”

“Yes; she disappeared one night. I don’t know where she went, but I am
sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no
interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I
have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I
could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would
never know a happy day again. You would pass the rest of your life, as
I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell.”

Villiers took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal.
Herbert could eat little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set
before him. He sat moody and silent by the fire, and seemed relieved
when Villiers sent him away with a small present of money.

“By the way, Herbert,” said Villiers, as they parted at the door, “what
was your wife’s name? You said Helen, I think? Helen what?”

“The name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but what
her real name was I can’t say. I don’t think she had a name. No, no,
not in that sense. Only human beings have names, Villiers; I can’t say
anymore. Good-bye; yes, I will not fail to call if I see any way in
which you can help me. Good-night.”

The man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his
fireside. There was something about Herbert which shocked him
inexpressibly; not his poor rags nor the marks which poverty had set
upon his face, but rather an indefinite terror which hung about him
like a mist. He had acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of
blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and
Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an actor in
scenes evil beyond the power of words. His story needed no
confirmation: he himself was the embodied proof of it. Villiers mused
curiously over the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had
heard both the first and the last of it. “No,” he thought, “certainly
not the last, probably only the beginning. A case like this is like a
nest of Chinese boxes; you open one after the other and find a quainter
workmanship in every box. Most likely poor Herbert is merely one of the
outside boxes; there are stranger ones to follow.”

Villiers could not take his mind away from Herbert and his story, which
seemed to grow wilder as the night wore on. The fire seemed to burn
low, and the chilly air of the morning crept into the room; Villiers
got up with a glance over his shoulder, and, shivering slightly, went
to bed.

A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance,
named Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London life,
both in its tenebrous and luminous phases. Villiers, still full of his
encounter in Soho and its consequences, thought Austin might possibly
be able to shed some light on Herbert’s history, and so after some
casual talk he suddenly put the question:

“Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert—Charles
Herbert?”

Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some
astonishment.

“Charles Herbert? Weren’t you in town three years ago? No; then you
have not heard of the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of
sensation at the time.”

“What was the case?”

“Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark
dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham
Court Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you
happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the
constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in
somebody’s area, you will be left alone. In this instance, as in many
others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don’t mean a
common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business
or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at
five o’clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, ‘going
home,’ it did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass
through Paul Street between four and five a.m. Something or other
caught his eye at Number 20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house
had the most unpleasant physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any
rate, he glanced down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a
man lying on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face
turned up. Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly,
and so set off at a run in search of the nearest policeman. The
constable was at first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting
common drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man’s
face, changed his tone, quickly enough. The early bird, who had picked
up this fine worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang
and knocked at the door till a slatternly servant girl came down
looking more than half asleep. The constable pointed out the contents
of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the
street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the
house, and so forth. Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come back
with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area. The
gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps. The doctor
hardly needed a moment’s examination; he said the poor fellow had been
dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get
interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his
pockets were papers identifying him as—well, as a man of good family
and means, a favourite in society, and nobody’s enemy, as far as could
be known. I don’t give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to do
with the story, and because it’s no good raking up these affairs about
the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious point was
that the medical men couldn’t agree as to how he met his death. There
were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so slight that
it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the kitchen door, and
not thrown over the railings from the street or even dragged down the
steps. But there were positively no other marks of violence about him,
certainly none that would account for his death; and when they came to
the autopsy there wasn’t a trace of poison of any kind. Of course the
police wanted to know all about the people at Number 20, and here
again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two other very
curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the house
were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed
proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was not
exactly the place to look for country gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert,
nobody seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I
fancy the divers after her history found themselves in rather strange
waters. Of course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased,
and in default of any evidence against them they were discharged. But
some very odd things came out about them. Though it was between five
and six in the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had
collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on.
They were pretty free with their comments, by all accounts, and from
these it appeared that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street.
The detectives tried to trace down these rumours to some solid
foundation of fact, but could not get hold of anything. People shook
their heads and raised their eyebrows and thought the Herberts rather
‘queer,’ ‘would rather not be seen going into their house,’ and so on,
but there was nothing tangible. The authorities were morally certain
the man met his death in some way or another in the house and was
thrown out by the kitchen door, but they couldn’t prove it, and the
absence of any indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless.
An odd case, wasn’t it? But curiously enough, there’s something more
that I haven’t told you. I happened to know one of the doctors who was
consulted as to the cause of death, and some time after the inquest I
met him, and asked him about it. ‘Do you really mean to tell me,’ I
said, ‘that you were baffled by the case, that you actually don’t know
what the man died of?’ ‘Pardon me,’ he replied, ‘I know perfectly well
what caused death. Blank died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I
never saw features so hideously contorted in the entire course of my
practice, and I have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.’ The
doctor was usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence in
his manner struck me, but I couldn’t get anything more out of him. I
suppose the Treasury didn’t see their way to prosecuting the Herberts
for frightening a man to death; at any rate, nothing was done, and the
case dropped out of men’s minds. Do you happen to know anything of
Herbert?”

“Well,” replied Villiers, “he was an old college friend of mine.”

“You don’t say so? Have you ever seen his wife?”

“No, I haven’t. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years.”

“It’s queer, isn’t it, parting with a man at the college gate or at
Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop
up his head in such an odd place. But I should like to have seen Mrs.
Herbert; people said extraordinary things about her.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, I hardly know how to tell you. Everyone who saw her at the
police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most
repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw
her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe
the woman, but he couldn’t tell why. She seems to have been a sort of
enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he
would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in
another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
Blank (we’ll call him that if you don’t mind) want in such a very queer
house as Number 20? It’s altogether a very odd case, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case. I didn’t think, when I
asked you about my old friend, I should strike on such strange metal.
Well, I must be off; good-day.”

Villiers went away, thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes;
here was quaint workmanship indeed.