Bulldog Drummond's disaster: A note on The Female of the Species

The Female of the Species

The Female of the Species begins with several handicaps, almost overcomes them, but ends in failure. In this it bears some resemblance to the second Drummond novel, The Black Gang, whose anti-working-class proto-fascist celebration of vigilantism is infamous.

The Female of the Species is narrated in the first person by Joe Dixon, a self-described rabbit of a man. He blunders into a role in Drummond's gang, clever enough to help with clues but still stupid enough to show off his new companions in heroic light.

Narrator aside, the biggest blunder made by H.C. McNeile is his choice of villains. After four novels spent besting, thwarting, and finally, finally putting Carl Peterson out of his misery, we are given a fifth round with the scraps of his organization, led by his mad wife Irma.

How mad is Irma? Well, she kidnaps Drummond's wife, and forces Bulldog and company through their paces in a clued treasure hunt, trying to pick them off in the process.  Irma is one of those supervillains who basically and up defeating themselves because their too-clever plans and lengthy gloating and scenery-chewing are simply a prelude to authorial nemesis. The kind of thing Austin Powers movies had some sport with.

The "real" Irma of the first four novels would, I think, have taken Carl Peterson's death in stride and moved on to the next criminal mastermind suitor willing to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed.

The novel goes along smoothly for the first half. A creepy old house littered with booty traps is searched. Our heroes barely escape drowning in an underground chamber. But when they arrive in Salisbury Plain, the narrative begins to seize-up. Various disguises are donned, and narrator Dixon spends too much time trying to figure out whether fellow tourists at Stonehenge and a local hotel are disguised villains, disguised allies, or civilians.

Finally the whole crew, variously through bungling or by design, end up in Irma's clutches. Then we find out what she has in store for the boys: a prehistoric sacrifice on a small-scale replica of Stonehenge set up in her home.

Which made me think, inevitably, of this.

Irma spends several chapters madly bragging, gloating, and talking about her triumph over Drummond and his band. On and on she goes.  Which gives Drummond plenty of time to get all his pieces in position.

The tables are turned against her, but Irma escapes again. And Dixon is made a permanent member of Drummond's gang.

The n-word appears several dozen times in the novel. This seems gratuitous, even for 1928. And of course Drummond's great coup against Irma and her henchmen is accomplished because he has "blacked-up" to impersonate one of  her killers, Pedro.

Jay
3/13/17

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Just a taster, from Chapter 16:

…."If by that you mean he killed Carl Peterson, I do not deny it," said Darrell calmly. "And no man ever deserved death more richly."

"Deserved death!" Her voice rose. "Who are you, you dogs, to pronounce judgment on such a man?" With an effort she controlled herself. "However, we will not bandy words. He killed my man—even as I shall shortly kill his woman."

She fell silent for a while staring at the plaster cast, and I saw Darrell's anxious eyes roving round the room. They met mine for a moment, and he shrugged his shoulders helplessly. It was out now: there was no bluff about it. Death was in sight, and the manner of it seemed of but little account. Death—unless...

Feverishly I stared around. Death, unless Drummond intervened. I looked up at the roof, remembering the sailor of the night before. But this time it was empty. And all the time the man called Paul stood watching the woman with sombre eyes.

"It has not been very easy, Darrell." She was speaking again. "My servants have blundered. Mistakes have been made. But from the moment she fell into my hands the final issue has never been in doubt. I might have had to forego this. I might even have had to forego getting the lot of you. But her life has been forfeit since that moment. I have played with her at times, letting her think that she would be free if you found her, and she, stupid little fool, has believed me. Free!" She laughed. "There have been times when only the greatest restraint has prevented me killing her with my own hands. And now I am glad, for I would like you to see her die."

"Carissima," said the man called Paul, "is it wise to delay? All has gone so well up to now, and I fear something may happen."

"What can happen," she said calmly, "who can interrupt us? The time has passed when there was danger of surprise. Your police, Darrell, are stickers. And although I did not think you would enlist their aid, there was the little matter of the blood in the ditch. I felicitated dear Phyllis on that. Paul tells me that she practically killed him with one blow of that heavy spanner—naughty girl."

"For God's sake get on with it, woman," said Jerningham harshly.

Horror in Hemingway: A brief note and two stories

Hemingway dealt with horrors we would today call middle class: alienation, body issues, anxiety over status and performance prowess. They had never been made so nakedly explicit before.

Hemingway's genius lay in forcing readers to draw the conclusions and make the summations based upon his (in the short stories) lyric pointilism.

This was post-war modernist horror a la Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the hysteria of Lon Chaney's cinematic cripples and amputees.

A couple of examples may suffice to begin.

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936) is about a man, relieved to find himself dying of gangrene, who spends his last hours in an ecstasy of self-recrimination and self-pity, the summation of the petty-bourgeois soul on ice as the prospect of eternity starts to turn up the heat.

"An Alpine Idyll" (1926) finds Nick Adams and his friend John soul-sick from a month of continuous skiing in the mountains. They come down to an inn for lunch on their way back to everyday life.  At the inn they learn how a peasant and his wife passed the Alpine winter after the wife died. In true E.C. Comics fashion.

"Three Shots" and the more famous "Indian Camp" (1924) follow one-another in The Nick Adams Stories (Scribners 1972).

They form a thematic and chronological unity.  Here the existential horror and self-pity are unsurpassed, explored with elemental simplicity as they refract through the consciousness of a child.

Hemingway's style stays out of the reader's way, compelling us to do the hard work of explaining the implications to ourselves.

Jay
3/12/17

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Three Shots

Nick was undressing in the tent. He saw the shadows of his father and Uncle George cast by the fire on the canvas wall. He felt very uncomfortable and ashamed and undressed as fast as he could, piling his clothes neatly. He was ashamed because undressing reminded him of the night before. He had kept it out of his mind all day.

His father and uncle had gone off across the lake after supper to fish with a jack light. Before they shoved the boat out his father told him that if any emergency came up while they were gone he was to fire three shots with the rifle and they would come right back. Nick went back from the edge of the lake through the woods to the camp. He could hear the oars of the boat in the dark. His father was rowing and his uncle was sitting in the stern trolling. He had taken his seat with his rod ready when his father shoved the boat out. Nick listened to them on the lake until he could no longer hear the oars.

Walking back through the woods Nick began to be frightened. He was always a little frightened of the woods at night. He opened the flap of the tent and undressed and lay very quietly between the blankets in the dark. The fire was burned down to a bed of coals outside. Nick lay still and tried to go to sleep. There was no noise anywhere. Nick felt if he could only hear a fox bark or an owl or anything he would be all right. He was not afraid of anything definite as yet. But he was getting very afraid. Then suddenly he was afraid of dying. Just a few weeks before at home, in church, they had sung a hymn, “Some day the silver cord will break.” While they were singing the hymn Nick had realized that some day he must die. it made him feel quite sick, it was the first time he had ever realized that he himself would have to die sometime.

That night he sat out in the hall under the night light trying to read Robinson Crusoe to keep his mind off the fact that some day the silver cord must break. The nurse found him there and threatened to tell his father on him if he did not go to bed. He went in to bed and as soon as the nurse was in her room came out again and read under the hall light until morning.

Last night in the tent he had had the same fear. He never had it except at night. It was more a realization than a fear at first. But it was always on the edge of fear and became fear very quickly when it started. As soon as he began to be really frightened he took the rifle and poked the muzzle out the front of the tent and shot three times. The rifle kicked badly. He heard the shots rip off through the trees. As soon as he had fired the shots it was all right.

He lay down to wait for his father’s return and was asleep before his father and uncle had put out their jack light on the other side of the lake.

“Damn that kid,” Uncle George said as they rowed back. “What did you tell him to call us in for? He’s probably got the heebie-jeebies about something.”

Uncle George was an enthusiastic fisherman and his father’s younger brother.

“Oh, well. He’s pretty small,” his father said.

“That’s no reason to bring him into the woods with us.”

“I know he’s an awful coward,” his father said, “but we’re all yellow at that age.”

“I can’t stand him,” George said. “He’s such an awful liar.”

“Oh, well, forget it. You’ll get plenty of fishing anyway.”

They came into the tent and Uncle George shone his flashlight into Nick’s eyes.

“What was it, Nickie?” said his father. Nick sat up in bed.

“it sounded like a cross between a fox and a wolf and it was fooling around the tent,” Nick said, “it was a little like a fox but more like a wolf.” He had learned the phrase “cross between” that same day from his uncle.

“He probably heard a screech owl,” Uncle George said.

In the morning his father found two big basswood trees that leaned across each other so that they rubbed together in the wind.

“Do you think that was what it was, Nick?” his father asked.

“Maybe,” Nick said. He didn’t want to think about it.

“You don’t want to ever be frightened in the woods, Nick. There is nothing that can hurt you.”

“Not even lightning?” Nick asked.

“No, not even lightning. If there is a thunder storm get out into the open. Or get under a beech tree. They’re never struck.”

“Never?” Nick asked.

“I never heard of one,” said his father.

“Gee, I’m glad to know that about beech trees,” Nick said.

Now he was undressing again in the tent. He was conscious of the two shadows on the wall although he was not watching them. Then he heard a boat being pulled up on the beach and the two shadows were gone. He heard his father talking with someone.

Then his father shouted, “Get your clothes on, Nick.”

He dressed as fast as he could. His father came in and rummaged through the duffel bags.

“Put your coat on, Nick,” his father said.

Indian Camp

At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved farther ahead in the mist all the time.

“Where are we going, Dad?” Nick asked.

“Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.”

“Oh,” said Nick.

Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.

They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walked on along the road.

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

Nick’s father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.

“This lady is going to have a baby, Nick,” he said.

“I know,” said Nick.

“You don’t know,” said his father. “Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams.”

“I see,” Nick said.

Just then the woman cried out.

“Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?” asked Nick.

“No. I haven’t any anesthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important.”

The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick’s father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

“Those must boil,” he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father’s hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

“You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they’re not. When they’re not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I’ll have to operate on this lady. We’ll know in a little while.”

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

“Pull back that quilt, will you, George?” he said. “I’d rather not touch it.”

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, “Damn squaw bitch!” and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

“See, it’s a boy, Nick,” he said. “How do you like being an intern?”

Nick said, “All right.” He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

“There. That gets it,” said his father and put something into the basin.

Nick didn’t look at it.

“Now,” his father said, “there’s some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I’m going to sew up the incision I made.”

Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

“I’ll put some peroxide on that, George,” the doctor said.

He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” the doctor said, standing up. “The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she’ll bring everything we need.”

He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.

“That’s one for the medical journal, George,” he said. “Doing a Caesarian with a jackknife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.”

Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

“Oh, you’re a great man, all right,” he said.

“Ought to have a look at the proud father. They’re usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs,” the doctor said. “I must say he took it all pretty quietly.”

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian’s head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

“Take Nick out of the shanty, George,” the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian’s head back.

It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake.

“I’m terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie,” said his father, all his postoperative exhilaration gone. “It was an awful mess to put you through.”

“Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?” Nick asked.

“No, that was very, very exceptional.”

“Why did he kill himself, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, Nick. He couldn’t stand things, I guess.”

“Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”

“Not very many, Nick.”

“Do many women?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Don’t they ever?”

“Oh, yes. They do sometimes.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“Where did Uncle George go?”

“He’ll turn up all right.”

“Is dying hard, Daddy?”

“No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

***

Madman's Luck: Oppenheim's The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.

The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

*

After a week of reacquainting myself with Hemingway's short stories, a book by E. Phillips Oppenheim comes almost as a relief.

Hemingway demands to be read at full attention in a straight-back wooden chair with hard seat and no armrests. His style requires the reader do the heavy narrative lifting; this is an incredible exciting process, but exhausting. Unless taken in small doses, everything by Hemingway quickly begins to sound the same.

I have not read Oppenheim before.  The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart. was probably not the beginning a real connoisseur would suggest.  But even if I never read another Oppenheim book, I'm glad I read this one, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Londe was originally written as a series of interconnected stories, published in magazines in 1923-24. Various online sources give year of book publication as 1927.

Oppenheim seems not to have recast the stories as a novel, as Christie did with The Big Four. So the chapters are episodic, and the reader should not force the pace. I found one chapter in the morning, and another on lunch break at work, worked very well.

Londe is not a mystery novel. There are some crimes and investigations and solutions along the way. But the real atmosphere is one of menace and suspense, and fundamentally of adventurous dread. At first we think we are rooting for the amateur sleuths, Daniel Rocke and Ann Lancaster. They are both wet as haddocks, but Oppenheim throws in some nice bickering to break things up.

After a few chapters we begin to think we should root for Londe and his equally mad wife Judith. Londe himself wants to be cured of his madness, convinced then he will be able to achieve scientific greatness. He thinks insanity has also robbed him of his soul. Judith, on the other hand, insists that madness has done wonders for her hair and skin, making her look and feel like a young pagan. She mesmerizes young men and bathes in their adulation.

Oppenheim gives us plenty of scrapes and escapes and some nicely outre touches. Later chapters in Monte Carlo are particularly strong.

Below are a few long excerpts that capture the weird poetry of Londe's character and behaviour.

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...."You see, my wife here and I—she wasn't my wife then—were right up to the line in France and Belgium for many, many months. I lived with a knife in my hand, and she with bandages. Night and day we were there. If I sought a moment's sleep, I was awakened by the screaming—and they came and fetched me. We were short of anaesthetics. We were short of everything. Blood—you never saw anything like it! We lived in it, and, somehow or other, a drop of it got into my brain. I went to a physician. I knew it was there because I could see it with the X-rays. He told me that nothing would cure me but to find another brain of the same formation as mine, but a natural colour, and remove a small portion of it to take the place of the discoloured part of my own. I dare say it was good advice, but I couldn't find another brain that hadn't got a similar smudge of red in it. I tried several subjects, as you know. The third was too selfish. People misunderstood us, so we had to go away. Then there came the question of this exchange of hair. My wife was afraid that you would be like these cowardly men and make difficulties about it. Directly I saw you, though, I knew there was no fear of that."


The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1202251h.html

___

From chapter 7:

LONDE threw the copy of the Times which he had been reading across to his wife, and stood upon the hearthrug of the somewhat Victorian-looking drawing-room, scowling. They had settled down for a few months in a remote corner of Surrey.

"Read that, Judith," he invited.

She stretched out a lazy hand, drew the paper towards her, and read the paragraph aloud.

"1,000 reward will be paid for any information as to the present whereabouts of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart., late of Melbourne, Australia, Surgeon-Major in His Majesty's Forces. Apply Box 117, Offices of this Journal."

Judith looked up and laughed with the pleased interest of a child.

"Why, that must mean you, Joseph," she exclaimed. "Somebody seems to want you very badly."

He glanced at her with an evil light in his brilliant eyes—eyes which seemed during the last few months to have narrowed and to have receded in his head.

"Somebody wants me," he repeated bitterly. "I know who it is, of course. It is that archlunatic in this world of lunatics, Daniel Rocke. I know what he wants, too. He wants to hang me."

"How ridiculous!" she murmured. "Are people ever hanged nowadays?"

"You have not much intelligence, Judith," he went on, dropping his voice a little, although they were alone in the room; "but you know what has happened, of course—the war has sent every living human creature mad. I could see it coming. I foretold it in the Lancet and all the medical papers. I even warned them in an article I sent to the Fortnightly, which they never published. I felt it coming like the end of the world. It is a horrible thing, Judith, to be the only sane person amongst all the hundreds of millions in the universe."

"What about me?" she asked, with an empty laugh.

"You are mad, of course," he answered scornfully, "but that does not matter. You are beautiful and that's all that counts with you. It is your very insanity which keeps your skin as soft as a baby's, your forehead unwrinkled, which gives you the strength never to tire. But think of the horror of the situation for me. I have the brain of a million scientists in one. I am solving every day in my mind problems which have baffled the world for generations, and yet, at any moment, I am liable to be arrested by lunatic detectives, tried by a lunatic judge and twelve lunatic jurymen, and hanged by a lunatic hangman. All this because I am the only sane person in the world!"

She smiled reassuringly. She was lying on a couch by the window, her hands clasped behind her head.

"Don't think of it, dear," she begged. "You are too clever, far too clever for them. Think how they try to catch us sometimes and how we always move on when we choose. A world of lunatics have no chance against a sane man hke you."

He nodded, assentingly, but still with gloom.

"That is true," he admitted, "but mad people are sometimes very cunning. Not mad people like you," he continued, after a moment's pause. "You are just silly—soft, the country folk call it. But a man like Griggs! I have been watching Griggs lately. I have come to the conclusion that he is no longer trustworthy."

"What a pity!" she murmured. "He has been so useful and we must have somebody."

"I am afraid," Londe observed, with a peculiar smile, "that his days of utility are over. I have made a most interesting experiment upon him. I was obliged to do it as a matter of self-preservation, but I am afraid it means that he will be of little use to us in the future."

"Poor Griggs!" she sighed. "What have you done?"

"I have closed up the other cells in his mind," Londe confided. "He is now not only mad, but a hopeless imbecile. It was quite an interesting experiment."

She clapped her hands.

"What fun!" she exclaimed. "I must see him at once."

"You will be very interested," Londe assured her. "I flatter myself that there is no one living who could have done with that man what I have done."....

The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1202251h.html#ch07

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….It was, in its way, a wonderful dinner, served by a typical French butler, and cooked by his wife. Londe was an excellent host, Judith a seductive hostess. Brookes expanded with the wine and the glamour of his surroundings. He told them both his story. After the war, he had gone back to Ceylon, to find his small estate in a parlous condition. Then the price of rubber, of which half his planting consisted, had fallen to nothing. In despair, after two years of unsuccessful toiling, he had closed down the estate, collected all the money he could, which amounted only to about nine hundred pounds, and come to England, for a holiday first and then to make a fresh start. That nine hundred pounds he had lost at the tables that afternoon. Judith was a little scornful. Londe only smiled. The young man drank more wine.

"I must make money somehow," he declared. "I can't think why I can't win at the tables like you do. Everything you back seems to turn up."

Londe's smile became more evident.

"There is a reason for that," he remarked.

"What do you mean?" Brookes demanded eagerly. "Do you play on a system?"

Londe shook his head. Judith laughed.

"We need no system," the former confided. "We win always because neither my wife nor I are perfectly sane. A mad person, as you know, will win at any game of chance."

"I beg your pardon," the young man ventured, a little bewildered.

"I mean exactly what T said," Londe continued, with dignity. "You, yourself, know something of our activities during the war. We did twice as much work as any other surgeon and nurse. In the end, a small portion of my brain became affected. My wife, curiously enough, developed sympathetic symptoms."

"God bless my soul!" the young man gasped.

"There is nothing so extraordinary in the matter," Londe proceeded stiffly. "A small spot in my brain became discoloured; it became, in fact, red instead of of ordinary grey, which, you may be aware, is the colour of a normal person's brain. An operation was indicated. All that I needed was a small atom of healthy matter to be annexed to mine, in a manner known only to me. Now, I'm going to tell you something that I have never told any other living person. I advertised for a subject. Shall I tell you the result?"

"Yes, yes, certainly."

"I was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum—my wife and I—for over a year."

Brookes was past speech. He lifted his glass. He gazed at the speaker, half-fearfully, yet with a terrible curiosity.

"When they let me out," Londe continued, "I tried again to find a subject, only this time I knew better than to advertise. I investigated the brains of several persons who happened to come my way, but in each case I found a small red discolouration just in the same position as my own. For the present, therefore, I have abandoned the attempt. My efforts seem to have created an absurd prejudice against me on the part of the police and other troublesome people, and, to tell you the truth, I have lost faith, to some extent, in my own theory of exchange. Besides, my wife and I find a certain compensation in our present state."

"You really believe that you are both a little mad still, then?" Brookes faltered.

"Without a doubt," his host assented. "I am perfectly aware that both my wife and I, in different and varying degrees, lack an absolutely sane poise towards life. But what does that matter? See!"

He rose to his feet, and drew on one side the blinds which concealed the window. From outside a stone balcony looked down upon gardens, glorious in the full moonlight, and sloping to the still Mediterranean. There were cypress trees, like black frescoes against the deep blue background, orange trees, bending with their load of fruit, a few olive trees, a grove of firs, a mass of flowering shrubs, oleanders, a bed of Freesias, whose disturbing perfume crept into the room. From below came the haunting sound of the soft lapping of the waves upon the shore.

"We can appreciate beauty," Londe pointed out, "just as you can. We have gifts—cunning, I suppose you would call the chief one—which enable us to match our wits against most people's. We have lost the rack of nerves—look at my wife, she is more beautiful and younger now than during or before the war. All that we lack, the scientists would say, is soul—and who on earth is not the better for being without a soul?"

Londe dropped the curtain and turned back into the room. His wife's hand rested on the young man's arm. He felt the pressure of her fingers, and his brain reeled with the wonder of it. He was, after all, quite an ordinary person.

"I shall go to my salon," she murmured, moving towards the door. "Please come soon."

Brookes resumed his place at the table and sipped the old brandy which his host had produced. He was still in a state of feverish bewilderment. Londe, in his way, seemed also excited. His eyes were bright, his lips tense.

"I have a proposition to make to you, Mr. Brookes," he announced. "Do you care to hear it?"

"Rather," the young man agreed, a little recklessly. "If there's any money at the end of it, it will be all the more welcome."

"There will be all the money you can use at the end of it," Londe promised. "Briefly, the situation is this. You know, of your own experience, that I am a great surgeon."

"I have heard it said that you are the greatest surgeon in the world," was the emphatic assent.

"It is possibly true," Londe acquiesced. "I am also a great scientist. I have invented a new anaesthetic, which has marvellous properties. I have a tube in my pocket now. I could take the strength from your limbs with a single whiff, whilst leaving your brain normal. Or I have another one, with which I could entirely reverse the process. Would you like me to experiment?"

"No! For God's sake, no!" the young man interrupted.

Londe smiled tolerantly.

"Just as you like, of course. Now, I have made another discovery which I am anxious to try," he continued, leaning back in his chair, and lighting a cigarette. "I still believe that I shall be able some day to regain my sanity by my principle of brain transfusion, but my last discovery is this. I can make you insane like me. I could give you a draught to-night, and you would awake to-morrow, to all appearances, exactly the same person, but you yourself would be conscious of the change. You would be lighter-hearted, gayer, happier, and, in some things—such as gambling, for instance—your success would be extraordinary. You would be free, too, from the thraldom of soul."

"But I should be mad," the young man muttered.

Londe shrugged his shoulders.

"Are you so happy, as you are, and is your future so assured?" he asked. "Give yourself over to me for experiment, and to-morrow you can make a million francs at the tables, and a million more whenever you choose."

Brookes looked around him, dazed but already shaking with excitement.

"This isn't some sort of an Arabian Nights, is it?" he asked, with a clumsy laugh.

"I am making a perfectly practical proposition to you," his host assured him.

"What do I have to do about it?"

"You submit to a slight injection before you leave this house," Londe explained, "and you take a draught which I shall prepare for you."

The young man rose from his seat and walked to the window. His heart was pounding. Somehow or other, although he had affected incredulity, he felt a curious conviction that this amazing offer was a perfectly genuine one. Suddenly he swung round.

"I consent," he announced. "I might as well. There is nothing else left for me."

Londe accepted his decision as a matter of course.

"I shall now go to prepare the drug," he declared. "It takes careful mixing. When you have offered yourself for my experiment, I shall give you ten of these mille notes to start with. Afterwards, your future is in your own hands. Do me the favour to entertain my wife for a quarter of an hour. You will find her in the salon across the hall."

The young man, in a state now of fierce excitement, hastened to obey his host. He was an unambitious youth, who, save for that brief period of the war, had lived, for the most part, a quiet life in middle-class surroundings. He had certainly never been brought into social contact with any woman so lovely and engaging as Judith. Her very presence intoxicated him. He felt himself trembling as he heard his host's retreating footsteps, and he himself turned the handle of the door of the salon. Judith was half sitting, half reclining, upon the sofa as he entered. The flash of her white arm, as she motioned him to a seat by her side, maddened him. She wore a wonderful, blue brocaded gown, fastened round her waist by a silken girdle, seductively unrestraining. She saw his confusion and laughed at him. He leaned towards her, but she held him away.

"Silly boy," she murmured. "You lose your head so easily, and now you have lost all your money."

"I shall make more, a great deal more," he declared passionately. "Do you know that you are the most beautiful thing on earth?"

"Foolish!" she mocked. "There, you may hold my hand. I like you very much, but—"

"I love you," he broke in. "I adore you, Judith. Come back to Ceylon with me."

She laughed outright.

"And what about my husband?" she asked. "And what should we live on? I am a very extravagant woman."

"I can make money," he assured her. "To win you I shall do it."

"I like you. I have affection to give," she told him; "but I warn you that I am a pagan. I will love you a little when you give me a present like this."

She held up her arm, from which drooped a strange bracelet, a thin band of platinum and a single rose-tinted pearl.

"I will do it," he promised. "One kiss, Judith, one kiss."

She leaned towards him, then suddenly drew back with a warning gesture. The door had opened noiselessly. Londe stood upon the threshold. His face was imperturbable. He appeared not to notice his guest's embarrassment. He simply stood there.

"I have a liqueur I am anxious for you to try, Mr. Brookes," he said. "Afterwards, perhaps my wife will give us some music."

The young man hesitated. For a single moment a queer divination of evil seemed to oppress him. A black gulf yawned at his feet—on the other side of it Londe, impenetrable, yet menacing. He had an impulse to fly from the house. Then he heard Judith's whisper, low and caressing, carrying with it the spice of promise.

"Go with him now, and return."

He moved towards the door, crossed the white stone-flagged hall, and followed his host into the dining room. An old dust-covered brandy bottle stood upon the table and two Napoleon glasses. Londe served the liqueurs with meticulous care.

"Eighteen eighteen." he murmured. "Gold and sunshine. The best things in life."

Brookes drained the contents of his glass. He felt a delicious sense of fragrant warmth steal through his veins. The touch of the brandy upon his palate was like velvet. Londe drew another bottle from behind a bowl of roses, poured out a wineglassful into a fresh glass, and passed it over.

"Now I want you to try that," he invited.

His guest did not hesitate. He raised the glass to his lips and drained its contents. It was tasteless, yet somehow suggestive, of marvellous and unexpected potency. He saw Londe's face, sinister but triumphant, and then a hundred faces. A mist and a roar. Afterwards nothing.

The morning was full of surprises to Brookes. He woke with an unusual sense of buoyancy, to find himself in his hotel bedroom, the sound of his bath water running, and the valet moving about the room, laying out his clothes. He sat up in bed.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "How the devil did I get here?"

The man smiled a little knowingly.

"Monsieur is in his own room," he observed.

"But I don't remember coming home last night," Brookes confessed.

"Monsieur arrived home soon after one o'clock," the man confided. "He was accompanied by an older gentleman who had the kindness to give me a twenty-franc note. Monsieur had, without doubt, been dining well," he added.

Brookes felt absolutely no more curiosity about the events of the night before. He sprang out of bed, whistling lightly to himself. From the moment he stepped into his bath he was conscious of a new light-heartedness which he seemed to accept as a matter of course. He shouted for his breakfast, which he devoured eagerly, dressed with interest, and strolled out afterwards on to the terrace, full of an exhilaration such as he had not experienced for years, a childlike delight in his surroundings which took no account of his recent despair. He talked to all his neighbours in the famous bar where he took his morning cocktail, and made several new acquaintances, strolled across to the Casino, played without anxiety, and with a new sense of certainty, and before lunch, which he shared with some of his new friends, had won a trifle over forty milles. Four o'clock found him at the Sporting Club, engaged in an eager search for Judith. He played for a short time with a curious loss of all sense of excitement, won a pocketful of plaques and notes, but left the tables directly Londe and Judith entered. He hurried to them with all the eagerness of a schoolboy. They both looked at him curiously.

"Winning?" Londe enquired.

Brookes nodded indifferently—he who had played, with beads of perspiration on his forehead, only yesterday, watching every stake as though it had been a matter of life or death.

"Yes, I've won," he admitted. "What about some tea, Sister Judith? Let's find a corner in the bar, or shall we go somewhere and dance?"

His eyes sought hers eagerly, devouringly. She was gracious, but with a certain restraint in her manner, which he was at first too happy to appreciate.

"I've come to play," she told him. "We'll have some tea first, though, if you like."

Londe strolled off and the young man eagerly carried Judith away to a corner table in the bar. He had lost all his nervous incoherence of the night before. He plunged at once into superlatives. He made open and unabashed love to her. He was eager, impetuous, almost compelling. She, on her part, was all the time gracious. She at no time rebuked him, but he felt, somehow or other, conscious of a barrier which had not been there on the preceding day. He refused to accept the possibility of its existence, however. He laughed to scorn the idea of failure.

"You are an ardent lover to-day," she murmured, "but I have come to see you play. Remember, you must win."

He suffered himself to be led, reluctantly, into the rooms. At seven o'clock he had won half a million francs.

"You must dine with me, both of you," he insisted.

Londe accepted eagerly. Judith seemed a little bored at the prospect.

"I shall have to go home and dress," she said. "However, I suppose—"

"Nine o'clock at the Hotel de Paris," Brookes interrupted. "I shall have a little surprise for you."

The dinner was a banquet—wine, food, flowers, thanks to the genius of the maitre d'httel, were all the most perfect of their sort. Brookes was an eager host, almost handsome in his light-hearted gaiety, with a new colour in his cheeks, a freshness which made him seem years younger, a constant stream of conversation, a complete lack of background. Londe, immensely interested, was an appreciative guest. Judith, on the other hand, occasionally showed signs of a wandering attention. Several times she smiled across the room at a table where a young Frenchman, an acquaintance from the Club, was dining alone. Once Brookes intercepted her glance, and broke off in the middle of a sentence. The stem of the wineglass which he was holding snapped in his fingers, a look of black fury darkened his face. Londe watched him with the delighted interest of the scientific investigator. Judith laughed at him.

"He's such a dear," she murmured, "the Vicomte d'Aix. He's all alone, too. Why don't you ask him to have coffee with us?"

"I don't want to," Brookes answered sullenly. "I don't like him."

Judith made a little grimace.

"Very well then, let's go," she suggested, rising to her feet at the same moment as the Vicomte. "We'll have our coffee at the Club. You men needn't hurry unless you like. The Vicomte will take me."

Brookes seized the menu and tore it in half. Londe watched his distorted face with a pleased and understanding interest.

"A capricious person, my wife, I am afraid," he sighed. "She is scarcely sufficiently grateful for our delightful dinner. May I suggest that we try a glass of eighteen eighteen brandy? We can compare it with what I gave you last night."

"Damn last night, and you, and your wife!" was the insolent reply.

Londe only laughed.

The young man's, opportunity was long in coming. He had won many thousands of francs and drank many liqueur brandies before he found Judith temporarily alone. He drew her into the bar.

"I am not sure that I want to come in here again," she complained, a little peevishly. "I want to play."

"Presently," he said. "I have something for you."

She settled down with an air of resignation.

"Do you know that I have won six hundred thousand francs," he confided.

She nodded.

"Well?"

He drew a little packet from his pocket, opened the grey morocco case, and the glitter of diamonds flashed out into the room. She leaned forward negligently and made a little grimace.

"Diamonds!" she exclaimed disparagingly. "I hate them. Whatever made you spend your money on jewels set in such a ridiculous fashion?"

He shut up the case with a snap. His expression for a moment was almost terrible.

"I bought them for you," he declared fiercely. "I won my money for you. I have become as you and your husband are for your sake."

She looked at him disdainfully.

"You're a fool," she exclaimed. "You might have had a chance before. You have none now."

"What do you mean?" he gasped. "I did it for your sake."

"Idiot!" she scoffed.

"I only half believed what your husband told me," he went on, "but I know now that it's the truth. I feel the difference every moment. I have a mind without a background, a brain, feeling, passion—all without a soul. It was for you."

She laughed at him contemptuously.

"You should have known better," she told him. "Your only attraction to me was—that you were on the other side of the border. You were sane. Now you are just like us. You do not interest me. Run away, please, and take your diamonds. The Vicomte is coming and I want to talk to him."

Brookes rose to his feet and walked out of the place, hatless, and without a word to the servant whom he passed. He crossed the road, descended a little way and sprang on to the top of the wall. For a moment he stood there, poised—a horrible sight. Then he dived downwards into space.

The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.
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____

….brought you here because of a curious idea I had," Sir Francis confided, after the ceremony was over and the melancholy little procession had departed. "I think I told you that amongst my few accomplishments is a knowledge of Spanish. I've been very interested during the last week in hearing the gossip of some of these peasants. They say that the devil has been walking in the cemetery. There have been curious footprints and disturbances around the graves. The people here are very superstitious and I was really surprised to see a funeral taking place at all."

Ann shivered a little. It was Daniel who asked the question.

"You think that Londe—"

"I suspect something of the sort," Sir Francis admitted. "One can't pretend to follow the workings of such a brain as his, but one can easily imagine that his craving to use the knife is insatiable. A cemetery close at hand would always be a temptation."

"Horrible!" Ann exclaimed.

"We draw near to the end," Sir Francis said solemnly. "To-morrow I expect the warrant."

But to-morrow brought nothing except a storm from the sea, a grey mistral which sent them shivering indoors, to enjoy the luxury of a wood fire, and kept them there most of the day. In the afternoon came a telegram which Worton tore open eagerly. He passed it over with an air of satisfaction.

"The warrant is granted," he announced. "It will be here to-morrow night."

Even then the sense of restlessness pursued them. A little before dusk they donned mackintoshes and walked out along the sea road to watch the waves break against the quay. At the last bend they came face to face with Judith! They stopped short. So did she. She was wearing a seaman's mackintosh and south-wester and the rain was dripping from her, but in those few startled seconds the three of them had but the one thought—the amazing beauty of this woman. She carried herself with the grace and freedom of a young goddess, her skin was peachlike in its clearness. She showed not the slightest sign of embarrassment or fear. She looked at no one but Sir Francis, and her eyes glowed as she laughed into his face.

"Have you come for me at last?" she asked. "I expected you long ago. I am ready."

Sir Francis could find no coherent words, but she scarcely waited to listen. She came close to him. Her voice was lowered almost to a whisper, but the music of it remained and the soft invitation of her presence.

"Something has happened to Joseph," she confided. "All day long he sits and mutters. There are terrible things in his eyes. He seems to be surrounded by invisible people whom he is always trying to push away. Sometimes he looks at me as though he hated me. Shall I tell you what I think is coming to him?"

"Tell me," Worton invited.

"I think that he is going sane," she declared. "It is too terrible. I cannot stay with him any longer. The sunshine here warms my heart, makes me feel young and happy, and he is like a frozen statue of horror. I'm glad that you have come at last.—Listen! What's that?"

She broke off in sudden fear. A murmur of voices drifted up to them from the beach. They moved to the side of the road. Below, on the sands, close to the edge of the sea, a group of people were standing round an object that had just been washed ashore.

A man, almost black, from his mixed race and generations of the baking sun, was gesticulating fiercely. He had a black beard, a mass of black hair, a skin withered and scorched—a remnant of his Moorish ancestry. To all appearance he was on the defensive, and there was evil threatening him—evil in the faces and shouting of the little crowd by which he was surrounded. Foremost amongst them was the widow of two days before, a shaking monument of ever-growing fury, her eyes burning fires, her flesh quivering. She seemed to gather the newcomers into her declamation as she swung backwards and forwards an empty sack.

"Listen, all of you, and tell me what it may mean," she cried. "Here was Jose, husband of mine, father of my boys, buried yesterday. Dead he was, as you all know, of the fever that eats out the heart. Buried he was, as you all saw. And now, behold his corpse washed in from the sea, and his head—Mother of Christ! his dear head!"

"What have I to do with this?" cried Pedro, the man with the black skin of a Moor. "It is the devil who took him from his grave, none other."

"You lie, you foul son of a swine!" the woman shouted, suddenly brandishing the sack in one hand and a knife in the other. "He was washed ashore with this sack tied to him, in which there have been stones, and it is your sack, Pedro—yours, you robber of graves, you mutilator of the dead!"

She sprang at him, her knife a line of glittering fire. Pedro fell on his knees.

"I will tell the truth!" he screamed.

The woman paused. Perhaps, even at the height of her passion, curiosity prevailed. Pedro pointed to the body.

"It is the Seqor at the villa by the sea," he declared. "He gives a thousand pesetas for a dead body, out of which the life has only just gone. It is for the science. See, he comes. Spare your anger, Marguerita, widow of Jose. It is a hard world and, for a thousand pesetas—why, Jose himself would have murdered his friend for that!"

The woman seemed tongue-tied. There was a mutter from one or two in the crowd, but no one spoke. Towards them, across the sands, came Londe, quiet, composed, ignorant apparently of what had happened.—Ann found herself shaking in every limb. This must be the end, she told herself. There could be no escape. Her hand touched Daniel's arm and found it tense and hard. In his right hand he was gripping an automatic pistol. Sir Francis had detached himself a little and the light of the hunter was keen in his eyes. So Londe came on to his final end—not death at the hands of Daniel or Worton, men of their word and pledged to kill—but at the hand of the least of his victims. About half a dozen paces from the outskirts of the group, he paused. He probably did not for a moment doubt his ability to quell the tumult, even after Pedro had betrayed him, but he suddenly saw Ann, with Daniel by her side, and Worton in the background. Afterwards they all shared a peculiar conviction with regard to the moments which followed. They saw a sudden gleam of light in Londe's eyes, a terrible self-revealing fire of remorse. The whole expression of his face changed—its strength, the brute strength of lunacy, failed. They all believed that in those few seconds he was sane, that the curtain of his distorted vision was momentarily raised. If this were indeed so he must have welcomed death. The woman sprang at him with a lightness and force which were amazing. In a flash they saw the thread of steel descending, heard one long drawn-out cry—and that was the end. But, while they stood there paralysed—the woman made sure.

The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1202251h.html#ch10