Lost House — 3 - Chapter II, Part 1
II
“Prothero,” said Cuthbert, “is a man of mystery.
As soon as I began asking his neighbors questions, I saw he was of interest and that I was of interest.
I saw they did not believe I was an agent of a West End shop, but a detective.
So they wouldn't talk at all, or else they talked freely.
And from one of them, a chemist named Needham, I got all I wanted.
He's had a lawsuit against Prothero, and hates him.
Prothero got him to invest in a medicine to cure the cocaine habit.
Needham found the cure was no cure, but cocaine disguised.
He sued for his money, and during the trial the police brought in Prothero's record.
Needham let me copy it, and it seems to embrace every crime except treason.
The man is a Russian Jew.
He was arrested and prosecuted in Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, Belgrade; all over Europe, until finally the police drove him to America.
There he was an editor of an anarchist paper, a blackmailer, a 'doctor' of hypnotism, a clairvoyant, and a professional bigamist.
His game was to open rooms as a clairvoyant, and advise silly women how to invest their money.
When he found out which of them had the most money, he would marry her, take over her fortune, and skip.
In Chicago, he was tried for poisoning one wife, and the trial brought out the fact that two others had died under suspicious circumstances, and that there were three more unpoisoned but anxious to get back their money.
He was sentenced to ten years for bigamy, but pardoned because he was supposed to be insane, and dying.
Instead of dying, he opened a sanatorium in New York to cure victims of the drug habit.
In reality, it was a sort of high-priced opium-den.
The place was raided, and he jumped his bail and came to this country.
Now he is running this private hospital in Sowell Street.
Needham says it's a secret rendezvous for dope fiends.
But they are very high-class dope fiends, who are willing to pay for seclusion, and the police can't get at him.
I may add that he's tall and muscular, with a big black beard, and hands that could strangle a bull.
In Chicago, during the poison trial, the newspapers called him 'the Modern Bluebeard.
”' For a short time Ford was silent.
But, in the dark corner of the cab, Cuthbert could see that his cigar was burning briskly.
“Your friend seems a nice chap,” said Ford at last.
“Calling on him will be a real pleasure.
I especially like what you say about his hands.
” “I have a plan,” began the assistant timidly, “a plan to get you into the house-if you don't mind my making suggestions?
” “Not at all!
” exclaimed his chief heartily.
“Get me into the house by all means; that's what we're here for.
The fact that I'm to be poisoned or strangled after I get there mustn't discourage us.'
” “I thought,” said Cuthbert, “I might stand guard outside, while you got in as a dope fiend.
” Ford snorted indignantly.
“Do I LOOK like a dope fiend?
” he protested.
The voice of the assistant was one of discouragement.
“You certainly do not,” he exclaimed regretfully.
“But it's the only plan I could think of.
” “It seems to me,” said his chief testily, “that you are not so very healthy-looking yourself.
What's the matter with YOUR getting inside as a dope fiend and MY standing guard?
” “But I wouldn't know what to do after I got inside,” complained the assistant, “and you would.
You are so clever.
” The expression of confidence seemed to flatter Ford.
“I might do this,” he said.
“I might pretend I was recovering from a heavy spree, and ask to be taken care of until I am sober.
Or I could be a very good imitation of a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
I haven't been five years in the newspaper business without knowing all there is to know about nerves.
That's it!
” he cried.
“I will do that!
And if Mr. Bluebeard Svengali, the Strangler of Paris person, won't take me in as a patient, we'll come back with a couple of axes and BREAK in.
But we'll try the nervous breakdown first, and we'll try it now.
I will be a naval officer,” declared Ford.
“I made the round-the-world cruise with our fleet as a correspondent, and I know enough sea slang to fool a medical man.
I am a naval officer whose nerves have gone wrong.
I have heard of his sanatorium through----” “How,” asked Ford sharply, “have I heard of his sanatorium?
” “You saw his advertisement in the DAILY WORLD,” prompted Cuthbert.
“'Home of convalescents; mental and nervous troubles cured.'
” “And,” continued Ford, “I have come to him for rest and treatment.
My name is Lieutenant Henry Grant.
I arrived in London two weeks ago on the MAURETANIA.
But my name was not on the passenger-list, because I did not want the Navy Department to know I was taking my leave abroad.
I have been stopping at my own address in Jermyn Street, and my references are yourself, the Embassy, and my landlord.
You will telephone him at once that, if any one asks after Henry Grant, he is to say what you tell him to say.
And if any one sends for Henry Grant's clothes, he is to send MY clothes.
” “But you don't expect to be in there as long as that?
” exclaimed Cuthbert.
“I do not,” said Ford.
“But, if he takes me in, I must make a bluff of sending for my things.
No; either I will be turned out in five minutes, or if he accepts me as a patient I will be there until midnight.
If I cannot get the girl out of the house by midnight, it will mean that I can't get out myself, and you had better bring the police and the coroner.
” “Do you mean it?
” asked Cuthbert.
“I most certainly do!
” exclaimed Ford.
“Until twelve I want a chance to get this story exclusively for our paper.
If she is not free by then it means I have fallen down on it, and you and the police are to begin to batter in the doors.
” The two young men left the cab, and at some distance from each other walked to Sowell Street.
At the house of Dr. Prothero, Ford stopped and rang the bell.
From across the street Cuthbert saw the door open and the figure of a man of almost gigantic stature block the doorway.
For a moment he stood there, and then Cuthbert saw him step to one side, saw Ford enter the house and the door close upon him.
Cuthbert at once ran to a telephone, and, having instructed Ford's landlord as to the part he was to play, returned to Sowell Street.
There, in a state nearly approaching a genuine nervous breakdown, he continued his vigil.
Even without his criminal record to cast a glamour over him, Ford would have found Dr. Prothero, a disturbing person.
His size was enormous, his eyes piercing, sinister, unblinking, and the hands that could strangle a bull, and with which as though to control himself, he continually pulled at his black beard, were gigantic, of a deadly white, with fingers long and prehensile.
In his manner he had all the suave insolence of the Oriental and the suspicious alertness of one constantly on guard, but also, as Ford at once noted, of one wholly without fear.
He had not been over a moment in his presence before the reporter felt that to successfully lie to such a man might be counted as a triumph.
Prothero opened the door into a little office leading off the hall, and switched on the electric lights.
For some short time, without any effort to conceal his suspicion, he stared at Ford in silence.
“Well?
” he said, at last.
His tone was a challenge.
Ford had already given his assumed name and profession, and he now ran glibly into the story he had planned.
He opened his card-case and looked into it doubtfully.
“I find I have no card with me,” he said; “but I am, as I told you, Lieutenant Grant, of the United States Navy.
I am all right physically, except for my nerves.
They've played me a queer trick.
If the facts get out at home, it might cost me my commission.
So I've come over here for treatment.
” “Why to ME?
” asked Prothero.
“I saw by your advertisement,” said the reporter, “that you treated for nervous mental troubles.
Mine is an illusion,” he went on.
“I see things, or, rather, always one thing-a battle-ship coming at us head on.
For the last year I've been executive officer of the KEARSARGE, and the responsibility has been too much for me.
” “You see a battle-ship?
” inquired the Jew.
“A phantom battle-ship,” Ford explained, “a sort OF FLYING DUTCHMAN.
The time I saw it I was on the bridge, and I yelled and telegraphed the engine-room.
I brought the ship to a full stop, and backed her.
But it was dirty weather, and the error was passed over.
After that, when I saw the thing coming I did nothing.
But each time I think it is real.
” Ford shivered slightly and glanced about him.
“Some day,” he added fatefully, “it WILL be real, and I will NOT signal, and the ship will sink!
” In silence, Prothero observed his visitor closely.
The young man seemed sincere, genuine.
His manner was direct and frank.
He looked the part he had assumed, as one used to authority.
“My fees are large,” said the Russian.
At this point, had Ford, regardless of terms, exhibited a hopeful eagerness to at once close with him, the Jew would have shown him the door.
But Ford was on guard, and well aware that a lieutenant in the navy had but few guineas to throw away on medicines.
He made a movement as though to withdraw.
“Then I am afraid,” he said, “I must go somewhere else.
” His reluctance apparently only partially satisfied the Jew.
Ford adopted opposite tactics.
He was never without ready money.
His paper saw to it that in its interests he was always able at any moment to pay for a special train across Europe, or to bribe the entire working staff of a cable office.
From his breast-pocket he took a blue linen envelope, and allowed the Jew to see that it was filled with twenty-pound notes.
“I have means outside my pay,” said Ford.
“I would give almost any price to the man who can cure me.
” The eyes of the Russian flashed avariciously.
“I will arrange the terms to suit you,” he exclaimed.
“Your case interests me.
Do you See this mirage only at sea?
” “In any open place,” Ford assured him.
“In a park or public square, but of course most frequently at sea.
” The quack waved his great hands as though brushing aside a curtain.
“I will remove the illusion,” he said, “and give you others more pretty.
” He smiled meaningfully--an evil, leering smile.
“When will you come?
” he asked.
Ford glanced about him nervously.
“I shall stay now,” he said.
“I confess, in the streets and in my lodgings I am frightened.
You give me confidence.
I want to stay near you.
I feel safe with you.
If you will give me writing-paper, I will send for my things.
” For a moment the Jew hesitated, and then motioned to a desk.
As Ford wrote, Prothero stood near him, and the reporter knew that over his shoulder the Jew was reading what he wrote.
Ford gave him the note, unsealed, and asked that it be forwarded at once to his lodgings.
“To-morrow,” he said, “I will call up our Embassy, and give my address to our Naval Attache.
“I will attend to that,” said Prothero.
“From now you are in my hands, and you can communicate with the outside only through me.
You are to have absolute rest--no books, no letters, no papers.
And you will be fed from a spoon.
I will explain my treatment later.
You will now go to your room, and you will remain there until you are a well man.
” Ford had no wish to be at once shut off from the rest of the house.
The odor of cooking came through the hall, and seemed to offer an excuse for delay.
“I smell food,” he laughed.
“And I'm terrifically hungry.
Can't I have a farewell dinner before you begin feeding me from a spoon?
” The Jew was about to refuse, but, with his guilty knowledge of what was going forward in the house, he could not be too sure of those he allowed to enter it.
He wanted more time to spend in studying this new patient, and the dinner-table seemed to offer a place where he could do so without the other suspecting he was under observation.
“My associate and I were just about to dine,” he said.
“You will wait here until I have another place laid, and you can join us.
” He departed, walking heavily down the hall, but almost at once Ford, whose ears were alert for any sound, heard him returning, approaching stealthily on tiptoe.
If by this maneuver the Jew had hoped to discover his patient in some indiscretion, he was unsuccessful, for he found Ford standing just where he had left him, with his back turned to the door, and gazing with apparent interest at a picture on the wall.
The significance of the incident was not lost upon the intruder.
It taught him he was still under surveillance, and that he must bear himself warily.
Murmuring some excuse for having returned, the Jew again departed, and in a few minutes Ford heard his voice, and that of another man, engaged in low tones in what was apparently an eager argument.
Only once was the voice of the other man raised sufficiently for Ford to distinguish his words.
“He is an American,” protested the voice; “that makes it worse.
” Ford guessed that the speaker was Pearsall, and that against his admittance to the house he was making earnest protest.
A door, closing with a bang, shut off the argument, but within a few minutes it was evident the Jew had carried his point, for he reappeared to announce that dinner was waiting.
It was served in a room at the farther end of the hall, and at the table, which was laid for three, Ford found a man already seated.
Prothero introduced him as “my associate,” but from his presence in the house, and from the fact that he was an American, Ford knew that he was Pearsall.
Pearsall was a man of fifty.
He was tall, spare, with closely shaven face and gray hair, worn rather long.
He spoke with the accent of a Southerner, and although to Ford he was studiously polite, he was obviously greatly ill at ease.
He had the abrupt, inattentive manners, the trembling fingers and quivering lips, of one who had long been a slave to the drug habit, and who now, with difficulty, was holding himself in hand.
Throughout the dinner, speaking to him as though, interested only as his medical advisers, the Jew, and occasionally the American, sharply examined and cross-examined their visitor.
But they were unable to trip him in his story, or to suggest that he was not just what he claimed to be.
When the dinner was finished, the three men, for different reasons, were each more at his ease.
Both Pearsall and Prothero believed from the new patient they had nothing to fear, and Ford was congratulating himself that his presence at the house was firmly secure.
“I think,” said Pearsall, “we should warn Mr. Grant that there are in the house other patients who, like himself, are suffering from nervous disorders.
At times some silly neurotic woman becomes hysterical, and may make an outcry or scream.
He must not think ----” “That's all right!
” Ford reassured him cheerfully.
“I expect that.
In a sanatorium it must be unavoidable.
” As he spoke, as though by a signal prearranged, there came from the upper portion of the house a scream, long, insistent.
It was the voice of a woman, raised in appeal, in protest, shaken with fear.
Without for an instant regarding it, the two men fastened their eyes upon the visitor.
The hand of the Jew dropped quickly from his beard, and slid to the inside pocket of his coat.
With eyes apparently unseeing, Ford noted the movement.
“He carries a gun,” was his mental comment, “and he seems perfectly willing to use it.
” Aloud, he said: “That, I suppose is one of them?
” Prothero nodded gravely, and turned to Pearsall.
“Will you attend her?
” he asked.
As Pearsall rose and left the room, Prothero rose also.
“You will come with me,” he directed, “and I will see you settle in your apartment.
Your bag has arrived and is already there.
” The room to which the Jew led him was the front one on the second story.
It was in no way in keeping with a sanatorium, or a rest-cure.
The walls were hidden by dark blue hangings, in which sparkled tiny mirrors, the floor was covered with Turkish rugs, the lights concealed inside lamps of dull brass bedecked with crimson tassels.
In the air were the odors of stale tobacco-smoke, of cheap incense, and the sickly, sweet smell of opium.
To Ford the place suggested a cigar-divan rather than a bedroom, and he guessed, correctly, that when Prothero had played at palmistry and clairvoyance this had been the place where he received his dupes.
But the American expressed himself pleased with his surroundings, and while Prothero remained in the room, busied himself with unpacking his bag.
On leaving him the Jew halted in the door and delivered himself of a little speech.
His voice was stern, sharp, menacing.
“Until you are cured,” he said, “you will not put your foot outside this room.
In this house are other inmates who, as you have already learned, are in a highly nervous state.
The brains of some are unbalanced.
With my associate and myself they are familiar, but the sight of a stranger roaming through the halls might upset them.
They might attack you, might do you bodily injury.
If you wish for anything, ring the electric bell beside your bed and an attendant will come.
But you yourself must not leave the room.
”
