The First Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK ®. Algernon Blackwood

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СКАЧАТЬ course there was nothing there, nothing but the faded carpet and the bulging canvas sides. He put out his hands and threw open the mouth of the sack where it had fallen over, being only three parts full, and then he saw for the first time that around the inside, some six inches from the top, there ran a broad smear of dull crimson. It was an old and faded bloodstain. He uttered a scream and drew back his hands as if they had been burned. At the same moment the kit bag gave a faint, but unmistakable, lurch forward toward the door.

      Johnson collapsed backward, searching with his hands for the support of something solid, and the door, being farther behind him than he realized, received his weight just in time to prevent his falling and shut with a resounding bang. At the same moment the swinging of his left arm accidentally touched the electric switch, and the light in the room went out.

      It was an awkward and disagreeable predicament, and if Johnson had not been possessed of real pluck, he might have done all manner of foolish things. As it was, however, he pulled himself together and groped furiously for the little brass knob to turn the light on again. But the rapid closing of the door had set the coats hanging on it swinging, and his fingers became entangled in a confusion of sleeves and pockets so that it was some moments before he found the switch. And in those few moments of bewilderment and terror two things happened that sent him beyond recall over the boundary into the region of genuine horror: he distinctly heard the kit bag shuffling heavily across the floor in jerks, and close in front of his face sounded once again the sigh of a human being.

      In his anguished efforts to find the brass button on the wall, he almost scraped the nails from his fingers, but even then, in those frenzied moments of alarm—so swift and alert are the impressions of a mind keyed up by a vivid emotion—he had time to realize that he dreaded the return of the light and that it might be better for him to stay hidden in the merciful screen of darkness. It was but the impulse of a moment, however, and before he had time to act upon it, he had yielded automatically to the original desire, and the room was flooded again with light.

      But the second instinct had been right. It would have been better for him to have stayed in the shelter of the kind darkness. For there, close before him, bending over the half-packed kit bag, as clear as life in the merciless glare of the electric light, stood the figure of John Turk, the murderer. Not three feet from him the man stood, the fringe of black hair marked plainly against the pallor of the forehead, the whole horrible presentment of the scoundrel, as vivid as he had seen him day after day in the Old Bailey, when he stood there in the dock, cynical and callous, under the very shadow of the gallows.

      In a flash Johnson realized what it all meant: the dirty and much-used bag; the smear of crimson within the top; the dreadful stretched condition of the bulging sides. He remembered how the victim’s body had been stuffed inside a canvas bag for burial, the ghastly, dismembered fragments forced with lime into this very bag, and the bag itself produced as evidence—it all came back to him as clear as day…

      Very softly and stealthily his hand groped behind him for the handle of the door, but before he could actually turn it, the very thing that he most of all dreaded came about, and John Turk lifted his devil’s face and looked at him. At the same moment that heavy sigh passed through the air of the room, formulated somehow into words: “It’s my bag. And I want it.”

      Johnson just remembered clawing open the door and then falling in a heap upon the floor of the landing as he tried frantically to make his way into the front room.

      He remained unconscious for a long time, and it was still dark when he opened his eyes and realized that he was lying, stiff and bruised, on the cold boards. Then the memory of what he had seen rushed back into his mind, and he promptly fainted again. When he woke the second time, the wintry dawn was just beginning to peep in at the windows, painting the stairs a cheerless, dismal gray, and he managed to crawl into the front room and cover himself with an overcoat in the armchair, where at length he fell asleep.

      A great clamor woke him. He recognized Mrs. Monks’s voice, loud and voluble.

      “What! You ain’t been to bed, sir! Are you ill, or has anything ‘appened? And there’s an urgent gentleman to see you, though it ain’t seven o’clock yet, and—”

      “Who is it?” he stammered. “I’m all right, thanks. Fell asleep in my chair, I suppose.”

      “Someone from Mr. Wilb’ram’s, and he says he ought to see you quick before you go abroad, and I told him—”

      “Show him up, please, at once,” said Johnson, whose head was whirling, and his mind was still full of dreadful visions.

      Mr. Wilbraham’s man came in with many apologies and explained briefly and quickly that an absurd mistake had been made and that the wrong kit bag had been sent over the night before.

      “Henry somehow got hold of the one that came over from the courtroom, and Mr. Wilbraham only discovered it when he saw his own lying in his room and asked why it had not gone to you,” the man said.

      “Oh!” said Johnson stupidly.

      “And he must have brought you the one from the murder case instead, sir, I’m afraid,” the man continued, without the ghost of an expression on his face. “The one John Turk packed the dead body in. Mr. Wilbraham’s awful upset about it, sir, and told me to come over first thing this morning with the right one, as you were leaving by the boat.”

      He pointed to a clean-looking kit bag on the floor, which he had just brought. “And I was to bring the other one back, sir,” he added casually.

      For some minutes Johnson could not find his voice. At last he pointed in the direction of his bedroom. “Perhaps you would kindly unpack it for me. Just empty the things out on the floor.”

      The man disappeared into the other room and was gone for five minutes. Johnson heard the shifting to and fro of the bag and the rattle of the skates and boots being unpacked.

      “Thank you, sir,” the man said, returning with the bag folded over his arm. “And can I do anything more to help you, sir?”

      “What is it?” asked Johnson, seeing that he still had something that he wished to say.

      The man shuffled and looked mysterious. “Beg pardon, sir, but knowing your interest in the Turk case, I thought you’d maybe like to know what’s happened—”

      “Yes.”

      “John Turk killed himself last night with poison immediately on getting his release, and he left a note for Mr. Wilbraham saying as he’d be much obliged if they’d have him put away, same as the woman he murdered, in the old kit bag.”

      “What time—did he do it?” asked Johnson.

      “Ten o’clock last night, sir, the warden says.”

1 King’s Counsel.

      THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM

      He arrived late at night by the yellow diligence, stiff and cramped after the toilsome ascent of three slow hours. the village, a single mass of shadow, was already asleep. Only in front of the little hotel was there noise and light and bustle for a moment. the horses, with tired, slouching gait, crossed the road and disappeared into the stable of their own accord, their harness trailing in the dust; and the lumbering diligence stood for the night where they had dragged it the body of a great yellow-sided beetle with broken legs.

      In spite of his physical weariness the schoolmaster, СКАЧАТЬ