Short Fiction - Arthur Machen (books suggested by elon musk TXT) 📗

she had made him, and wondering at his strange fancy that he had been robbed. I take it that he had very little to fear on that score, poor fellow; but I suppose that he was really mad, and died in a sudden access of his mania. His landlady said that once or twice when she had had occasion to go into his room (to dun the poor wretch for his rent, most likely), he would keep her at the door for about a minute, and that when she came in she would find him putting away his tin box in the corner by the window; I suppose he had become possessed with the idea of some great treasure, and fancied himself a wealthy man in the midst of all his misery. Explicit, my tale is ended, and you see that though I knew Black, I know nothing of his wife or of the history of her death.⁠—That’s the Harlesden case, Salisbury, and I think it interests me all the more deeply because there does not seem the shadow of a possibility that I or anyone else will ever know more about it. What do you think of it?”

“Well, Dyson, I must say that I think you have contrived to surround the whole thing with a mystery of your own making. I go for the doctor’s solution: Black murdered his wife, being himself in all probability an undeveloped lunatic.”

“What? Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful, too terrible to be allowed to remain on the earth? You will remember that the doctor said it was the brain of a devil?”

“Yes, yes, but he was speaking, of course, metaphorically. It’s really quite a simple matter if you only look at it like that.”

“Ah, well, you may be right; but yet I am sure you are not. Well, well, it’s no good discussing it any more. A little more Benedictine? That’s right; try some of this tobacco. Didn’t you say that you had been bothered by something⁠—something which happened that night we dined together?”

“Yes, I have been worried, Dyson, worried a great deal. I⁠—But it’s such a trivial matter⁠—indeed, such an absurdity⁠—that I feel ashamed to trouble you with it.”

“Never mind, let’s have it, absurd or not.”

With many hesitations, and with much inward resentment of the folly of the thing, Salisbury told his tale, and repeated reluctantly the absurd intelligence and the absurder doggerel of the scrap of paper, expecting to hear Dyson burst out into a roar of laughter.

“Isn’t it too bad that I should let myself be bothered by such stuff as that?” he asked, when he had stuttered out the jingle of once, and twice, and thrice.

Dyson listened to it all gravely, even to the end, and meditated for a few minutes in silence.

“Yes,” he said at length, “it was a curious chance, your taking shelter in that archway just as those two went by. But I don’t know that I should call what was written on the paper nonsense; it is bizarre certainly, but I expect it has a meaning for somebody. Just repeat it again, will you, and I will write it down. Perhaps we might find a cipher of some sort, though I hardly think we shall.”

Again had the reluctant lips of Salisbury slowly to stammer out the rubbish that he abhorred, while Dyson jotted it down on a slip of paper.

“Look over it, will you?” he said, when it was done; “it may be important that I should have every word in its place. Is that all right?”

“Yes; that is an accurate copy. But I don’t think you will get much out of it. Depend upon it, it is mere nonsense, a wanton scribble. I must be going now, Dyson. No, no more; that stuff of yours is pretty strong. Good night.”

“I suppose you would like to hear from me, if I did find out anything?”

“No, not I; I don’t want to hear about the thing again. You may regard the discovery, if it is one, as your own.”

“Very well. Good night.”

IV

A good many hours after Salisbury had returned to the company of the green rep chairs, Dyson still sat at his desk, itself a Japanese romance, smoking many pipes, and meditating over his friend’s story. The bizarre quality of the inscription which had annoyed Salisbury was to him an attraction, and now and again he took it up and scanned thoughtfully what he had written, especially the quaint jingle at the end. It was a token, a symbol, he decided, and not a cipher, and the woman who had flung it away was in all probability entirely ignorant of its meaning; she was but the agent of the “Sam” she had abused and discarded, and he too was again the agent of someone unknown, possibly of the individual styled Q, who had been forced to visit his French friends. But what to make of “Traverse Handel S.” Here was the root and source of the enigma, and not all the tobacco of Virginia seemed likely to suggest any clue here. It seemed almost hopeless, but Dyson regarded himself as the Wellington of mysteries, and went to bed feeling assured that sooner or later he would hit upon the right track. For the next few days he was deeply engaged in his literary labours, labours which were a profound mystery even to the most intimate of his friends, who searched the railway bookstalls in vain for the result of so many hours spent at the Japanese bureau in company with strong tobacco and black tea. On this occasion Dyson confined himself to his room for four days, and it was with genuine relief that he laid down his pen and went out into the streets in quest of relaxation and fresh air. The gas-lamps were being lighted, and the fifth edition of the evening papers was being howled through the streets, and Dyson, feeling