The Captain of the Polestar - Arthur Conan Doyle (thriller novels to read .TXT) 📗

in order to see the ladies home. He walked in front with Mrs. Merton, and I found myself behind with the young lady. For a minute or so I walked beside her without making any remark, and then I suddenly blurted out, in a manner which must have seemed somewhat brusque to her—

“You did that, Miss Northcott.”

“Did what?” she asked sharply.

“Why, mesmerised the mesmeriser—I suppose that is the best way of describing the transaction.”

“What a strange idea!” she said, laughing. “You give me credit for a strong will then?”

“Yes,” I said. “For a dangerously strong one.”

“Why dangerous?” she asked, in a tone of surprise.

“I think,” I answered, “that any will which can exercise such power is dangerous—for there is always a chance of its being turned to bad uses.”

“You would make me out a very dreadful individual, Mr. Armitage,”

she said; and then looking up suddenly in my face—“You have never liked me. You are suspicious of me and distrust me, though I have never given you cause.”

The accusation was so sudden and so true that I was unable to find any reply to it. She paused for a moment, and then said in a voice which was hard and cold—

“Don’t let your prejudice lead you to interfere with me, however, or say anything to your friend, Mr. Cowles, which might lead to a difference between us. You would find that to be very bad policy.”

There was something in the way she spoke which gave an indescribable air of a threat to these few words.

“I have no power,” I said, “to interfere with your plans for the future. I cannot help, however, from what I have seen and heard, having fears for my friend.”

“Fears!” she repeated scornfully. “Pray what have you seen and heard. Something from Mr. Reeves, perhaps—I believe he is another of your friends?”

“He never mentioned your name to me,” I answered, truthfully enough. “You will be sorry to hear that he is dying.” As I said it we passed by a lighted window, and I glanced down to see what effect my words had upon her. She was laughing—there was no doubt of it; she was laughing quietly to herself. I could see merriment in every feature of her face. I feared and mistrusted the woman from that moment more than ever.

We said little more that night. When we parted she gave me a quick, warning glance, as if to remind me of what she had said about the danger of interference. Her cautions would have made little difference to me could I have seen my way to benefiting Barrington Cowles by anything which I might say. But what could I say? I might say that her former suitors had been unfortunate. I might say that I believed her to be a cruel-hearted woman. I might say that I considered her to possess wonderful, and almost preternatural powers. What impression would any of these accusations make upon an ardent lover—a man with my friend’s enthusiastic temperament? I felt that it would be useless to advance them, so I was silent.

And now I come to the beginning of the end. Hitherto much has been surmise and inference and hearsay. It is my painful task to relate now, as dispassionately and as accurately as I can, what actually occurred under my own notice, and to reduce to writing the events which preceded the death of my friend.

Towards the end of the winter Cowles remarked to me that he intended to marry Miss Northcott as soon as possible—probably some time in the spring. He was, as I have already remarked, fairly well off, and the young lady had some money of her own, so that there was no pecuniary reason for a long engagement. “We are going to take a little house out at Corstorphine,” he said, “and we hope to see your face at our table, Bob, as often as you can possibly come.” I thanked him, and tried to shake off my apprehensions, and persuade myself that all would yet be well.

It was about three weeks before the time fixed for the marriage, that Cowles remarked to me one evening that he feared he would be late that night. “I have had a note from Kate,” he said, “asking me to call about eleven o’clock tonight, which seems rather a late hour, but perhaps she wants to talk over something quietly after old Mrs. Merton retires.”

It was not until after my friend’s departure that I suddenly recollected the mysterious interview which I had been told of as preceding the suicide of young Prescott. Then I thought of the ravings of poor Reeves, rendered more tragic by the fact that I had heard that very day of his death. What was the meaning of it all?

Had this woman some baleful secret to disclose which must be known before her marriage? Was it some reason which forbade her to marry? Or was it some reason which forbade others to marry her?

I felt so uneasy that I would have followed Cowles, even at the risk of offending him, and endeavoured to dissuade him from keeping his appointment, but a glance at the clock showed me that I was too late.

I was determined to wait up for his return, so I piled some coals upon the fire and took down a novel from the shelf. My thoughts proved more interesting than the book, however, and I threw it on one side. An indefinable feeling of anxiety and depression weighed upon me. Twelve o’clock came, and then half-past, without any sign of my friend. It was nearly one when I heard a step in the street outside, and then a knocking at the door. I was surprised, as I knew that my friend always carried a key—however, I hurried down and undid the latch. As the door flew open I knew in a moment that my worst apprehensions had been fulfilled. Barrington Cowles was leaning against the railings outside with his face sunk upon his breast, and his whole attitude expressive of the most intense despondency. As he passed in he gave a stagger, and would have fallen had I not thrown my left arm around him. Supporting him with this, and holding the lamp in my other hand, I led him slowly upstairs into our sitting-room. He sank down upon the sofa without a word. Now that I could get a good view of him, I was horrified to see the change which had come over him. His face was deadly pale, and his very lips were bloodless. His cheeks and forehead were clammy, his eyes glazed, and his whole expression altered. He looked like a man who had gone through some terrible ordeal, and was thoroughly unnerved.

“My dear fellow, what is the matter?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Nothing amiss, I trust? Are you unwell?”

“Brandy!” he gasped. “Give me some brandy!”

I took out the decanter, and was about to help him, when he snatched it from me with a trembling hand, and poured out nearly half a tumbler of the spirit. He was usually a most abstemious man, but he took this off at a gulp without adding any water to it.

It seemed to do him good, for the colour began to come back to his face, and he leaned upon his elbow.

“My engagement is off, Bob,” he said, trying to speak calmly, but with a tremor in his voice which he could not conceal. “It is all over.”

“Cheer up!” I answered, trying to encourage him.

Don’t get down on your luck. How was it? What was it all about?”

“About?” he groaned, covering his face with his hands. “If I did tell you, Bob, you would not believe it. It is too dreadful—

too horrible—unutterably awful and incredible! O Kate, Kate!” and he rocked himself to and fro in his grief; “I pictured you an angel and I find you a–-”

“A what?” I asked, for he had paused.

He looked at me with a vacant stare, and then suddenly burst out, waving his arms: “A fiend!” he cried. “A ghoul from the pit! A vampire soul behind a lovely face! Now, God forgive me!” he went on in a lower tone, turning his face to the wall; “I have said more than I should. I have loved her too much to speak of her as she is. I love her too much now.”

He lay still for some time, and I had hoped that the brandy had had the effect of sending him to sleep, when he suddenly turned his face towards me.

“Did you ever read of wehr-wolves?” he asked.

I answered that I had.

“There is a story,” he said thoughtfully, “in one of Marryat’s books, about a beautiful woman who took the form of a wolf at night and devoured her own children. I wonder what put that idea into Marryat’s head?”

He pondered for some minutes, and then he cried out for some more brandy. There was a small bottle of laudanum upon the table, and I managed, by insisting upon helping him myself, to mix about half a drachm with the spirits. He drank it off, and sank his head once more upon the pillow. “Anything better than that,” he groaned.

“Death is better than that. Crime and cruelty; cruelty and crime.

Anything is better than that,” and so on, with the monotonous refrain, until at last the words became indistinct, his eyelids closed over his weary eyes, and he sank into a profound slumber. I carried him into his bedroom without arousing him; and making a couch for myself out of the chairs, I remained by his side all night.

In the morning Barrington Cowles was in a high fever. For weeks he lingered between life and death. The highest medical skill of Edinburgh was called in, and his vigorous constitution slowly got the better of his disease. I nursed him during this anxious time; but through all his wild delirium and ravings he never let a word escape him which explained the mystery connected with Miss Northcott. Sometimes he spoke of her in the tenderest words and most loving voice. At others he screamed out that she was a fiend, and stretched out his arms, as if to keep her off. Several times he cried that he would not sell his soul for a beautiful face, and then he would moan in a most piteous voice, “But I love her—I love her for all that; I shall never cease to love her.”

When he came to himself he was an altered man. His severe illness had emaciated him greatly, but his dark eyes had lost none of their brightness. They shone out with startling brilliancy from under his dark, overhanging brows. His manner was eccentric and variable—sometimes irritable, sometimes recklessly mirthful, but never natural. He would glance about him in a strange, suspicious manner, like one who feared something, and yet hardly knew what it was he dreaded. He never mentioned Miss Northcott’s name—

never until that fatal evening of which I have now to speak.

In an endeavour to break the current of his thoughts by frequent change of scene, I travelled with him through the highlands of Scotland, and afterwards down the east coast. In one of these peregrinations of ours we visited the Isle of May, an island near the mouth of the Firth of Forth, which, except in the tourist season, is singularly barren and desolate. Beyond the keeper of the lighthouse there are only one or two families of poor fisher-folk, who sustain a precarious existence by their nets, and by the capture of cormorants and solan geese. This grim spot seemed to have such a fascination for Cowles that we engaged a room in one of the fishermen’s