The Goddess: a Demon
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 4: Dr. Hume
I was awoke next morning by Atkins bringing in my cup of coffee. He asked me a question as he arranged it on the small table beside my bed.
“Do you know, sir, if Mr. Lawrence slept in his rooms last night?”
He had aroused me from a dreamless slumber, and I was not yet sufficiently awake to catch the full drift of his inquiry.
“Slept in his rooms? What do you mean?”
“Because, sir, when I took him his coffee just now, as usual, I knocked four times and got no answer. And his door’s locked; it’s not his habit to lock his door when he’s at home.”
Atkins is one of the staff of servants attached to the Mansions, whose particular office it is to wait on the occupants of chambers on the first floor: a discreet man, who has a pretty intimate knowledge of the manners and customs of those on whom he attends.
“Mr. Lawrence was in his rooms last night. I was with him till rather late, and I believe he had a visitor after I had left.”
This I said remembering what Turner had told me about his brother coming down the stairs, with the parcel in his arms.
“I think he must be out now—at least, I can’t make him hear. And the door’s locked; I never knew him have the door locked when he was in.”
“Perhaps he’s ill,” I suggested. “I’ll slip along the balcony and see. You wait here till I come back.”
I do not know what induced me to make such a proposition, except that I was struck by the man’s words, and impelled by a sudden impulse. On every floor a balcony runs right round the building. Lawrence and I had often made use of it to reach each other’s rooms—his are the first set round the corner. I put on a pair of slippers and a dressing-gown, and started.
It was a chilly morning, with a touch of fog in the air, and it had been raining. I made what haste I could. The window of Lawrence’s dining-room opened directly I turned the handle. I went inside, and I saw what I then instantly and clearly realised I had all along felt sure that I should see. I sprang back upon the balcony. Atkins was looking out of my window. I called to him.
“Come here! Quick! There’s something wrong!”
He came running to me.
“What is it, sir?”
“I don’t know what it is, but—it’s something.”
Atkins followed me into the room. Edwin Lawrence lay face foremost on the floor. All about him the carpet was stained with blood. His clothes were soaked. Had it not been for his clothes I should not have certainly known that it was Lawrence, because, when we turned him over, we found that his face and head had been cut and hacked to pieces. In my time I have seen men who have come to their death by violence, but never had I seen such an extraordinary sight as he presented. It was as if some savage thing, fastening upon him, had torn him to pieces with tooth and nail. His flesh had been ripped and rent so that not one recognisable feature was left. Indeed, it might not have been a man we were looking upon, but some thing of horror.
I spoke to Atkins. “Run and fetch Dr. Hume. I am afraid he will be of little use, but he must come. And the police!”
Off he sped to tell the ghastly tidings. So soon as he was gone I looked about me. On a chair close by was a pair of white kid gloves—a woman’s. I picked them up and put them in my pocket. Among the portraits on the mantelshelf was the face of one I knew. I put that in my pocket also with the gloves.
The room was in some disarray, but not in such disorder as to suggest that a desperate struggle had taken place. A chair or two and a table were not in the places in which I knew they generally stood; the table on which we had played that game of cards last night was pushed up against another, on which were some copper vases. A revolving bookcase had been driven up against the fireplace. On the woodwork were gouts of blood. There was a blotch on the back of one of the books—a volume of Rudyard Kipling’s “Many Inventions.” On the edge of the white stone mantelpiece was the mark of where a hand had rested—a blood-stained hand. Something lay on the carpet, perhaps two yards away from the dead man’s feet. I took it up. It was a collar—a man’s collar—shapeless and twisted and stiff with coagulated blood. As I stared at it a wild wonder began to take shape and to grow in my brain.
“Ferguson, what’s the matter? What’s this Atkins tells me about? Good God! is that Lawrence?”
It was Dr. Hume who spoke. He had come into the room while I was staring at the collar.
Graham Hume is a man who has taken high medical honours; but, having ample private means, he does not pretend to have anything in the shape of a regular practice. He has a hobby—madness. He is a student of what he calls obscure diseases of the brain; insisting that we have all of us a screw loose somewhere, and that out of every countenance insanity peeps—even though, as a rule, thank goodness, it is only the shadow of a shade.
Some strange stories are told of experiments which he has made. His chambers are on the ground floor; and, though he has a plate on his door, his patients are few and far between—nor are they by any means always welcome even when they do appear. Probably the larger number of them are residents in the Mansions, and because that was so, any one living in the buildings being in sudden need of medical help used to rush at once to him. Lawrence used to chaffingly speak of him as “the Imperial Doctor.”
Hume was still in the prime of life—perhaps forty, of medium height, sparely built, with clean-shaven face, high forehead, and coal-black hair. A good fellow, in his fashion; but with rather a too professional outlook on to the world. I always felt that he regarded every one with whom he came in contact—man, woman, or child—as a possible subject for experiment. Personally, I was conscious of feeling no dislike for him; but I had a sort of suspicion that he did not like me.
“Yes,” I replied; “that’s Lawrence—what’s left of him.”
He was kneeling by the dead man on the floor, his usually impassive face all alert and eager.
“How has this happened—and when?”
“That is what has to be discovered.”
“Who found him?”
“Atkins and I.”
“Was he lying in this position?”
“No; he was on his face. We turned him over.”
“The man’s been cut to pieces.”
“It almost looks to me as if he had been scratched to pieces.”
“I fancy these wounds are too deep for scratches—in the ordinary sense. It looks as if several narrow blades had been used, set in some kind of frame, or a row of spikes. The flesh has been torn open in regular layers. This is interesting—very.” This was the kind of remark which I should have expected he would make; it came from him sotto voce. “He’s been dead some time, he’s quite cold. Very curious indeed.”
While he spoke he had been unfastening, with deft fingers, the dead man’s clothes, laying bare his neck and chest. Now he called to me, with an accent of suspicion.
“Look at that!”
I looked. I saw that the body was almost as much disfigured as the head and face; that it was covered with gaping wounds.
“I see; enough violence has been used to kill the poor fellow a dozen times over.”
“Is that all you see?” Hume spoke with more than a touch of impatience. “Don’t you see that some sharp-pointed instrument has been thrust right through the man’s body, from the back to the front, and from the front to the back, because he has been attacked from both back and front? If, then, a knife, or something of the kind, has been driven clean through him, as it has been, over and over again, how came it to miss his shirt, his coat, the whole of his clothes?”
“I don’t quite see what you mean.”
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