Kitabı oku: «True Tales of the Weird», sayfa 3

Forming ourselves into a committee of the whole, we carried the clock back to its former place, which, it need not be said, we found unoccupied – then returned to the sitting-room, where, with lowered lights, we discussed the strange occurrences of the evening. Although curious to see if any other manifestations would occur, we made no effort to invite them beyond dimming the lights, and as we found the room had become rather warm and close, we opened the door into the hall for the sake of better ventilation. The hall was only partially lighted, but objects in it were easily visible in comparison with the almost total darkness that shrouded the sitting-room. Our talk was of ghosts and of other subjects uncanny to the uninitiated, and might have seemed unpleasantly interesting to anyone listening to it from the hall – as we were afterward led to believe was the case.

Directly facing the open door, and the only one of the company so seated, was my wife – who suddenly startled us all by springing to her feet and crying out: – "There he is! There is the man I saw at the Isles of Shoals last summer!"

"What is it?" we inquired; "an apparition?"

"No, no!" she exclaimed; "it is a living man! I saw him look around the edge of the door and immediately draw back again! He is here to rob the house! Stop him! Stop him!" – and she rushed out into the hall with the whole company in pursuit. The servants, who by this time had gone to bed, were aroused and set to work to examine the lower floors, while we above searched every room, but in each case without result.

Next to the sitting-room was a large apartment some thirty feet long by twenty wide, which was used for dancing parties, and dinners on occasions when many guests were invited. It was at the time unfurnished, except, I believe, that a few chairs were scattered about it, and along one side was a row of several windows, before which hung heavy crimson draperies that completely covered them. We lighted the gas in this room, but a glance was sufficient to show that it was unoccupied and afforded no possible place of concealment. I passed through it, however, and, as I did so, felt a current of cold air, which I immediately traced, by the swaying of one of the heavy curtains, to a window which its folds covered.

Going up to the drapery and drawing it aside, I saw that the window behind it was half open, and on the sill and the stone coping outside I perceived, in the several inches of snow that covered both, marks which showed the passage of what was evidently a human body. Reaching nearly to the window was the slanting roof, formed by heavy plate glass, of the conservatory, which opened from the dining-room on the lower floor – and in the snow which covered this was a furrow which indicated that someone had by this means allowed himself to slide from the second story to the ground. Further investigation below showed, by the tell-tale marks in the snow, that the person who had thus escaped from the house, and who, after gliding down the glass roof of the conservatory, had fallen sprawling under it, had lost no time in picking himself up, and making good his escape. The footsteps of a man running with long strides were traced through the grounds to the street, two hundred yards away, where they were lost in the confused tracks of the public highway – and from that time to the present the mystery has remained unsolved.

THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW

Prefatory Note

The annals of crime contain few chapters more lurid than those contributed to them by the record of Frederick Bailey Deeming, who suffered the extreme penalty of the law on the scaffold of the Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) jail on the morning of the twenty-third of May, in the year one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two.

The details of his misdeeds, his trial, and his punishment were set forth by me at the time in letters to the New York Times and the Boston Journal– of which, as well as of several other publications, I was accredited correspondent during several years of residence and travel in Australasia and the South Seas.

In the narrative that follows, so far as it describes atrocities which shocked the whole English-speaking world, I have endeavored to subordinate particulars in the presentation of a general effect; my purpose has been, not to picture horrors, but to suggest the strange and abnormal personality that lay behind them.

In regard to the peculiar manifestations which followed the criminal's execution, and for which some undefined influence that survived his physical extinction seemed, in part at least, to be responsible, I can advance no opinion.

CHAPTER I
THE CONDEMNED

When I called upon the Colonial Secretary, in the Government Offices at Melbourne, with a request that I might be allowed to visit the prisoner as he lay in jail awaiting execution, I was informed that such permission was contrary to all precedent.

I had sat directly under the eye of the culprit four weary days while the evidence accumulated that should take away his life. I had watched his varied changes of expression as the tide of testimony ebbed and flowed, and finally swelled up and overwhelmed him. I had heard against him the verdict of "the twelve good men and true" who had sat so long as arbiters of his fate, and the words of the judge condemning him to "be hanged by the neck until he was dead," and commending his soul to the mercy of a God who seemed far aloof from the scheme of human justice so long and so laboriously planned.

Short shrift had been allowed him. Condemned and sentenced on a Monday, the date for his act of expiation had been set for the early morning of the Monday then a scant three weeks away;¹ an appeal for a respite had been quickly and formally made, and as quickly and formally disallowed; the days granted for preparation had glided by with portentous speed, and now but five remained between him and his introduction to the gallows and the cord.

As a special and gruesome favor I had received one of the few cards issued for the execution; and it was perhaps due as much to this fact as to that of my newspaper connections (as already stated) that the Colonial Secretary finally consented to waive in my interest the usual rule of exclusion, and handed me his order for my admission to the jail. I cannot confess to any high exultation when the mandate of the Secretary, bravely stamped with the Great Seal of the Colony of Victoria, was placed in my hands – particularly as it was accompanied by a strict injunction that no public account should be given of the interview.

"At least," said the Colonial Secretary, "not at present. The trial has been so sensational, the crimes traced home to this unhappy man so atrocious, that popular feeling has risen to such a pitch as to make it desirable to add thereto no new occasion of excitement. Moreover, I have refused many requests similar to yours from the local newspapers; you may imagine the position I should find myself in if it became known that I had discriminated in favor of a foreign journalist – therefore I rely upon your discretion."

Thus the Colonial Secretary – in consideration of whose injunction I made no professional use of my opportunity at the time, and report upon it now only because of its relation to this present record of events. Not that I asseverate the existence of such a relation, or theorize upon it even if it were, for the sake of argument, accepted as containing the nucleus of a mystery that, after many years of consideration, remains a mystery still.

I was not alone in my visit to the condemned cell in which, heavily ironed and guarded day and night by the death-watch, Frederick Bailey Deeming awaited his doom.² My wife, who was included in the warrant from the Colonial Secretary, accompanied me; she who had been my companion in journeys that had taken me twice around the globe, and who had shared with me many of the inexplicable experiences to which I have alluded in my "Preface;" and who, seeming throughout her life more sensitive than most of us to occult forces that at times appear to be in operation about us, has since crossed the frontier of the Undiscovered Country, there to find, perhaps, solution of some of the riddles that have perplexed both her and me. Intensely human as she was, and in all things womanly, her susceptibility to weird and uncomprehended influences must always seem a contradiction – and the more so since they always came upon her not only without invitation, but even in opposition to a will of unusual force and sanity, which, until the incidents occurred that I am about to relate, kept them measurably in control.

A memento of my interview with the murderer stands before me on the table as I write: – a memento also of my wife's skill in modeling, on account of which I had with difficulty induced her to be my companion on my sinister errand – an impression in plaster of his right hand; the hand against which had been proved the "deep damnation of the taking-off" of two women and four children, and in whose lines thus preserved those learned in such matters profess to discern the record of other like crimes that have been suspected of him, but could not be confirmed. I will not weary the reader with the histories that have been read to me from this grisly document, and no one now may ever know whether they be true or false: – at all events the hand that made this impress was duly found guilty of the atrocities I have recorded against it, and the price that was exacted for them will seem to none excessive, and to some a world too small.

I remember being much struck at the time with the interest which the condemned man manifested in assisting me to secure the record. My warrant from the Colonial Secretary included permission to obtain it, and the consent of the prisoner followed promptly on the asking. It came, in fact, with a sort of feverish readiness, and I fancied that his mind found in the operation some brief respite from the thoughts that his position, and the swift approach of his fate, forced upon him. He regarded with intentness the moistening of the plaster, and its manipulation into the proper degree of consistency; followed intelligently the instruction to lay his hand with even pressure upon the yielding mass, and when the cast had hardened, and was passed through the bars for his inspection, he examined it with an appearance of the liveliest satisfaction.

"Do those lines mean anything?" he asked.

"Many think so," I replied, "and even profess to read a record from them. For myself, I am ignorant of the art."

"I have heard of that," he returned. "They call it 'palmistry,' don't they? I wish you could find out whether they are going to hang me next Monday. But they'll do that, right enough. I'm thirty-nine now, and my mother always said I would die before forty. She died a good while ago – but she keeps coming back. She comes every night, and of late she comes in the daytime, too. What does she bother me so for? Why can't she leave me alone?" (glancing over his shoulder.) "She's here now – over there in the corner. You can't see her? That's queer. Can't you see her?" – addressing the governor of the jail, who accompanied me, and who shook his head to the question. "I thought perhaps you could. But you don't miss much. She ain't pretty to look at, crying all the time and wringing her hands, and saying I'm bound to be hanged! I don't mind her so much in the daylight, but coming every night at two o'clock, and waking me up and tormenting me! – that's what I can't stand."

"Is this insanity?" I asked the governor as I came away.

"I don't know what it is," he replied. "We all thought at first it was shamming crazy, and the government sent in a lot of doctors to examine him; but he seemed sane enough when they talked with him – the only thing out about him was when he complained of his mother's visits; just as he did to you. And it is certainly true that he has a sort of fit about two o'clock every morning, and wakes up screaming and crying out that his mother is in the cell with him; and talks in a frightful, blood-curdling way to someone that nobody can see, and scares the death-watch half out of their wits. Insanity, hallucination, or an uneasy conscience – it might be any of them; I can't say. Whatever it is, it seems strange that he always talks about visitations from his mother, who, as far as I can learn, died quietly in her bed, and never of apparitions of his two wives and four children whose throats he cut with a knife held in the hand whose print you've got there under your arm. Perhaps you won't mind my saying it – but it strikes me you've got a queer taste for curiosities. I wouldn't be able to sleep with that thing in the house."

I laughed at the worthy governor's comment; yet, as it turned out, his words were pregnant with prophecy.

CHAPTER II
THE CRIME

In the month of March, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, the people of Melbourne were startled by glaring headlines in the morning newspapers announcing the discovery of a murder in the suburb of Windsor.

During the historic "boom" that started into life all manner of activities in and about the Victorian capital during the middle and later "eighties," a great stimulus to building operations had been felt, not only in the city itself, but also through all the extensive district outlying it. The suburb of Windsor enjoyed its share in this evidence of prosperity, and sanguine speculators, viewing through the glasses of a happy optimism a rush of new inhabitants to the fortunate city, erected in gleeful haste a multitude of dwellings for their purchase and occupancy. New streets were laid out across the former barren stretches of the suburb, and lined on either side by "semi-detached villas" – imposing as to name, but generally more or less "jerry-built," and exceedingly modest in their aspect.³ These structures were of what we might now call a standardized pattern – housing two families side by side with a dividing partition between them, and of a single story, with an attic above. Between each two connected dwellings (which were fronted by a shallow veranda, and contained three or four rooms for each resident family) ran a narrow alley, hardly wide enough for a real separation between one building and the next, but sufficiently so to justify the description of "semi-detached" which their inventor, by a happy inspiration, had applied to them.

The "Great Melbourne Boom" – as I believe it is still referred to as distinguishing it from all other "booms," of various dimensions, which preceded or have followed it – spent its force, unfortunately, before the hopes of the speculators who had ridden into Windsor on its flood had been realized; and amid the wreck and flotsam that remained to mark its ebb, some mournful miles of these "semi-detached villas" were conspicuous.

So complete was the disaster that many of the owners of these properties paid no further heed to them: – and it was with an emotion akin to surprise that, on a day in the month and year above mentioned, the agent of a certain house in Andrew street received a visit from a woman with a view to renting it. Why the prospective tenant should have selected this particular "villa" out of the scores of others precisely like it that lined both sides of this street, is not known – nor might she herself have had any definite reason for her choice. Perhaps it was Chance; perhaps Providence – the terms are possibly synonymous: – but at all events her action proved to be the first and most important of the threads that wove themselves together in a net to entrap, and bring to justice, one of the craftiest and most relentless murderers of the age.

The agent, apprised by his visitor of her desire to examine the house, eagerly prepared to accompany her, but could not find the key. A search among his records followed; from which the fact resulted that, in the previous December, he had rented the house to a gentlemanly stranger, who, in lieu of affording references, had established confidence by paying three months' rent in advance. In the prevailing depression of the local real estate business the agent had given so little attention to his lines of empty properties that he had not since even visited the house in question – the more so as the period for which payment had been made was not yet expired. Assured by his visitor, however, that the house was certainly unoccupied, he went with her to the door, which he opened with a master-key with which he had equipped himself.

The house was in good order throughout – in fact it seemed never to have been occupied. The prospective tenant inspected it carefully and with approval, and could discover but one objection; she was sure she noticed a disagreeable odor in the parlor. Her companion (as is natural to agents with a house to dispose of) failed to detect this: – if it existed it was doubtless due to the fact that the house had been closed for some time; he would have it thoroughly aired and overhaul the drains – after which she could call again. This she agreed to do, gave the agent her name and address, and departed.

Left to himself, the agent began an investigation. With senses quickened, perhaps, by the favorable prospect of business, he became aware that the atmosphere of the parlor was undoubtedly oppressive; and as he moved about in search of the cause he observed that near the open fireplace it was positively sickening. Examining this feature of the room more carefully, he discovered that the hearth-stone had been forced up at one end, cracking and crumbling the cement in which it had been set, and from the inch-wide aperture thus formed came forth a stench so overpowering that he recoiled in horror, and gasping and strangling, staggered into the open air.

The police authorities were notified, and a mason was sent for with his tools. The hearth-stone was wrenched from its place, and in the hollow space beneath, encased in cement, knees trussed up to chin and bound with cords, lay the body of a young woman – nude save for the mantle of luxuriant dark hair that partly shrouded her, and with her throat cut from ear to ear.

About a week before Christmas of the previous year, the North German Lloyd S. S. "Kaiser Wilhelm II." from Bremen to Plymouth via the Suez Canal and Colombo, debarked its passengers at the port of Melbourne. Among the second-class contingent who had taken ship at Plymouth were "Albert Williams" and his wife Emily. They had not been long married, and their destination was understood by their fellow-passengers to be Colombo; but on reaching that port they remained on board and continued to Melbourne. It was remarked that Mrs. Williams, who up to that time had been the life of the company, fell thereafter under increasing fits of uneasiness and melancholy – until, at the time of arrival at Melbourne, she had drawn so far aloof from her former friends of the passage that none concerned themselves regarding her plans, or even final destination, in the new land.⁴

No such change, however, was noted in the demeanor of her husband. He was well to the fore in all the interests and amusements that offer themselves on shipboard, rallied his wife in no very refined or considerate terms upon her growing depression, and devoted most of his spare time to a pet canary, which he had brought aboard in an elaborate gilt cage; keeping it constantly near him on deck by day, and at night sharing with it his stateroom.⁵

A month's association with him had not increased the liking of his fellow-voyagers. The compulsory intimacies engendered by a long journey by sea afford a trying test of character, and to it the temperament of the so-called Albert Williams failed satisfactorily to respond. Strange and contradictory moods were noticed in him. At times he was morose and "grouchy," at times feverishly jovial and even hilarious, and the transition from one to the other of these states of mind was often startlingly abrupt. He seems, indeed, to have "got on the nerves" of all his associates on the voyage – and so at length it happened that when he went ashore, carrying the cage and canary solicitously in his hand and followed by his silent and sad-faced wife, both passengers and officers were at one in the aspiration that they might never see his sort again.

Repairing to a "Coffee-Palace" – by which sounding title temperance hotels in Australia are identified – the couple spent some days in its respectable retirement; then their belongings were entrusted to a carrying-company, and were by it conveyed to the "semi-detached villa" in Windsor. The canary, chirping and fluttering joyously in its cage, which was promptly hung in the veranda, excited for several days the mild interest of the neighbors and a few casual passers-by – but of the people in the house very little was seen. Now and then a gentleman in smoking-jacket and embroidered velvet cap was observed in the veranda, feeding and chirruping to the canary, but his companion seems to have kept herself in complete seclusion. Her murder may, indeed, have followed swiftly upon her entrance into the house; however that may be, some ten days later the canary was no longer seen in the veranda, a carrier came with his cart and took away a quantity of trunks and boxes, and as he deliberately drove away his employer kept pace with him on the sidewalk, jauntily swinging the cage with its feathered occupant in his hand.

The trunks and boxes were taken to an auction-room in Melbourne, where, after due advertisement, their contents were offered for public sale; women's garments and jewelry, for the most part, and heterogeneous odds and ends. The owner of these properties was present when the sale took place, and seemed much interested in their disposition: – but when the canary and its cage were offered he suddenly declared that he would not sell them, and when the auction closed took them away with him. He subsequently appeared in the town of Sale, several hundred miles away, and at other remote localities – perhaps with the idea of misleading possible pursuit or for some other purpose unknown: – but in all his wanderings he took the canary with him, and by his devotion to it attracted an attention to himself which had much to do with his identification when he was finally apprehended.

Returning to Melbourne, where he had before assumed the new alias of "Baron Swanston," he finally disposed of the cage and the canary to the auctioneer of his former acquaintance. Then he disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and engulfed him – his crime successfully committed and unsuspected, his very name unknown, his tracks as completely covered as was the nearly decapitated body of his victim beneath the cemented hearth-stone of the house at Windsor.

But even then the mysterious power of Chance – or Providence – was at work to his undoing. A peculiarity of many Australian dwellings – a peculiarity which the hastily-constructed "villas" in Windsor shared – is found in the fact that they have no cellars. This assists the work of rapid building, so important when a "boom" is on: – so the ground upon their sites had simply been levelled, a surface of cement laid, and the buildings set above it upon a layer of beams and brickwork. Nothing could be easier, under such a principle of construction, than to remove the hearth-stone, dig a grave under it through the thin layer of cement and into the soil below, conceal the body therein, restore the earth to its place, and fix the stone in position again.

What emotion the murderer may have felt when, after excavating under the cement to the depth of about eighteen inches, his tools struck upon solid rock, and he could dig no further, may be left to the imagination. Perhaps he felt no emotion whatever, not appreciating the fatal nature of this check to his plans. At all events he had no choice but to accept the situation, crowd the body into the shallow space, and by pouring cement about it and the covering hearth-stone insure the lasting secrecy of the crime. He may have been ignorant, too, of the enormous expansive power of the gases released by decomposition, which under ordinary conditions might have been absorbed by the covering and underlying soil: – here, however, with solid rock below, they struggled in their close confinement until their barrier at its weakest point gave way, and forcing up the hearth-stone disclosed to the world the horror that it had concealed.

And here is the strangest circumstance of all. Although it had been known to a few surveyors and builders, and to certain owners of buildings that had been erected, that a large part of the land on which the suburb was built rested upon a rock formation, examinations that were made subsequent to the discovery of the murder showed that at no point did this impenetrable foundation approach nearly to the surface of the soil, save under this particular house of the tragedy! Ages ago this flat table of stone had been laid down – and to the dwelling fortuitously built upon it, with hundreds of others lying empty about it for him to choose, the murderer had been guided across fifteen thousand miles of sea, there to prepare for himself detection not only for one crime, but for the other even more heinous which had so briefly preceded it.