The Goddess: a Demon
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 26: The Legacy of the Scarlet Hands
We could do nothing for him. The shock of the surprise, for a moment, held us motionless. But so soon as we realised that the man was being hacked to death before our eyes, we rushed to his assistance. It was of no avail. Death had, probably, been instantaneous, so much mercy the creature showed. A sharp-pointed blade, more than eighteen inches long, which proceeded from its stomach, had pierced him through and through. The writhing, gibbering puppet held him skewered in a dozen places. To have released him we should have had to tear him into pieces. When I tried to drag him free, I only succeeded in bringing the whole thing over. Down he came, with his assailant sticking to him like a limpet. Pinning him on to the floor, it continued its extraordinary contortions, lacerating its victim with every movement in a hundred different places. It was difficult to believe that it was not alive. Perceiving that it was not to be persuaded by any other means to loosen its embrace, I struck it on the back, again and again, with a heavy wooden chair.
Presently it was still; its movements ceased; it became again inanimate. As if its lust for blood was glutted, it rolled over, lethargically, upon its side, leaving its handiwork exposed—a horrible spectacle. A grin—as it were a smile, born of repletion—was on the creature’s face.
Later, the thing was torn to pieces; its anatomy laid bare. Examination showed that its construction had been diabolically ingenious. It was simply a light steel frame, shaped to resemble a human body, to which was attached a number of strong springs, which were set in motion by clockwork machinery. The whole had been encased in scarlet leather, so that, when completed, it resembled nothing so much as an artist’s lay figure. In the leather were innumerable eyelet-holes. Through each of these holes the point of a blade was always peeping. So soon as the clockwork was set in motion each of these blades leaped from its appointed place, and continued leaping, ceaselessly, to and fro, till the machinery ran down. In the head was an arrangement somewhat on the lines of a phonograph; it was from this proceeded the sound resembling a woman’s gentle laughter, which was not the least eerie part of its horrible performance.
Inquiries seemed to show that the creature had originally been intended for sacrificial purposes. Lawrence had apparently purchased it at Allahabad; probably from the workshop of a native who was suspected of the manufacture of contrivances, whose ingenuity was almost too conspicuous, which were used in the temples. On certain days such a puppet would be produced by the priests, with a flourish of trumpets. One could easily believe that miraculous power would be claimed for it; it was even likely that, as a proof of the substantiality of these claims, it would go through its gruesome performance in the presence of the assembled congregations. Of what might have been the objects on which it exhibited its powers one did not care to think. Some queer things still take place in India.
Edwin Lawrence could hardly have been perfectly sane when he purchased such a plaything. It was not a possession which a perfectly healthy-minded man would have cared to have had at any price; and Lawrence must have paid an enormous sum for it, or that wily native would never have allowed such a curio to leave his hands. It was shown that the brothers had been in the habit of quarrelling their whole lives long. Edwin would do something to arouse Philip’s passion, whereon Philip would attack him with unreasoning violence. The fit of fury past, and the mischief done, repentance came. In these moods Philip must have expended thousands of pounds in his attempts to soothe the feelings of the brother whom he had just been battering. One of these scenes had taken place just before Edwin’s departure for India; it was the usual plaster which had enabled him to start upon his travels. That his brother’s treatment of him rankled, there was scarcely room for doubt; the purchase of the scarlet puppet was, probably a firstfruit of his morbid brooding.
At the very last, possibly, the crime had been the result of a moment’s impulse—as he himself had said. But that it had been prepared for, as likely to happen some time, was clear. He had obtained a suit of clothes, which was exactly like those which his brother was in the habit of wearing. These he secreted in his bedroom. So soon as his “goddess” had done her work, he stripped what was left of his brother bare—an awful task it must have been. He arrayed the body in a suit of his own clothes, oblivious of the fact that they showed no signs of the cutting and the hacking, and the suit which he had prepared he himself put on.
Whether or not he saw me—or even if I was actually there to see—is not clear to this day. But either he did not notice the departure of his lady visitor, or he was indifferent to what it might portend; under the circumstances, after the tragedy had actually taken place, his movements were marked by curious deliberation. The probability is that the catastrophe finally overturned the brain whose equilibrium was already tottering. No other hypothesis can adequately explain the manner in which he retained his self-possession, expecting every moment that the alarm would be raised, and that he would be caught red-handed.