The Nameless Thing

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THE

NAMELESS

Contents

CHAPTER PACE

I The Mystery i

II The Strange Data ........ . 18

CHAPTER I: The Mystery I T is the most mysterious thing that ever hap* pened.”

The coffee had been brought in ; Judge Flint had declined and was lighting a cigar; Father Jerome was sipping at his cup. Dr. Lennard had been speaking. He was a man in middle life, hard and sunburned. He stood by the table, near the lamps, a cigarette in his fingers.

“ You mean the manner of his death,” said the priest.

“ Not only that,” continued the doctor “ — and it was the strangest death that any man ever died — but also the manner of his life.”

“ It was strange,” said the priest, musing over his cup, “ but I had little opportunity to know. He saw me often, but he never spoke to me in his life."

“ Never spoke to you in his life ! ” cried the judge. “ Why, man, you are the beneficiary of his will ! ” The lean figure of the priest lifted in astonishment. “ He left a sum of money to me? ”

i

“ He left everything to you.”

The pale, intellectual face of the priest was serious and perplexed.

“ For what purpose? ” he said.

“ For no purpose that the will names,” replied the judge. “ It is drawn in a dozen lines, and bequeaths everything to you, absolutely, without a condition.”

The priest sat for some moments erect, motionless.

“ Then he feared God,” he said.

“ He feared something,” replied the doctor.

The lawyer went on. He was astonished to discover that Father Jerome did not know the man. This fact had snuffed out a light which he had expected to find burning.

“ I do not know either how this man lived or died,” he said. “ When I heard the bare fact that he was dead, I wrote Dr. Lennard that we held the man’s will, in which he was named as the executor, and you as the beneficiary. He at once telegraphed me to come here, and I have just arrived.” He was looking at the priest. “ We drew the will entirely by correspondence, and sent it to him to be executed. It was executed and returned in proper form, but it was accompanied by a letter, to be opened at his death, and 1 thought you would be able to explain this letter.’.’

“ What sort of letter ? ” inquired the doctor.

“ A most incredible, a most amazing letter,” replied the lawyer. He got a sheet of paper out of a leather pocket case, and read it :

“ ‘ I do not know how I shall die, but I do know the design that will accomplish my death. Therefore, if I am found dead, it is my desire that no inquiry be made. It could serve no purpose, except perhaps to implicate innocent persons. — Wilfred Druce.’ ”

“ Now,” said the judge, “ what did the man mean by this extraordinary note ? ”

The doctor and the priest exchanged an enigmatic glance, and the doctor shook his head.

“ That note,” he said, “ leaves the whole thing in even greater mystery. The man was surely living in some deadly fear, and he died as no living creature ever died in this world.”

“ How did he die ? ” inquired the judge.

“ I will tell you that,” replied Dr. Lennard. “ But, first, I want to tell you how he lived.”

He went over to a window and drew aside a curtain. A white moon illumined the world. Below the doctor’s gabled, red-tiled house, there stretched fields and meadows down to a lake ; and, beyond, on the summit of a hill, bare of trees, stood a great stone house, fantastic and shadowy under this moon. It was a country of beautiful hills, enclosed by the bow of a wooded mountain range, that hemmed it in like a wall.

“ 1 have often thought,” continued the doctor, as he turned back from the window, “ that Wilfred Druce chose this community in America because it resembled England more than any other; the lie of the hills, the big country houses, the gardens and the parked lands, gave him the atmosphere of England. A man cannot get the scent of his native land out of his nostrils. If he goes into a new country he will build a house like the one he was bom in, and keep the old names. That house on the hill is the exact replica of an English country house.”

Dr. Lennard paused. “ Remember,” he said, “ I do not know that this man was English except by what you would call circumstantial evidence — his name, his personal peculiarities, and the like. He purchased the house from an agent and came here. That was seven years ago. The colony here called on him, as he seemed a gentleman, but he sent his card by a servant in return. We overlooked that, and asked him to dinner once or twice, but he made excuses, and presently we gave him up. This marked ' him as, to say the least, peculiar. He had horses, and he rode and drove about the country, and sometimes he had a game of golf, but always alone, — in the afternoon usually, when no one was on the course, or early in the morning. At first the man went about alone, and then, later he was always accompanied by a servant. At first he rode a good spirited horse, and through the loneliest wooded roads, then he came to ride the very quietest horse he could get, and only on the open roads. This was curious because the man was an excellent horseman.”

The doctor paused, then he went on.

“ Another thing he did that nobody could understand was this: There were some splendid old trees about his house when he bought it, and some capital shrubs. Well, he cut these trees down, cleaned out the shrubs, and made the place as bare as your palm, down to the foot of the hill. Then he began to take precautions to guard the house. That was perhaps not extraordinary, because burglars come out to these country colonies during the season, and crooks always get enticing ideas about persons of apparent wealth who are eccentric. But it was extraordinary to make a house into a fortress, and that, practically, is what Wilfred Druce did. He put iron bars over the windows, and rigged the house up inside with all manner of locks and bolts.”

The doctor got another cigarette.

“ None of us had been in his house, you know,” he continued, “ but workmen and servants gossip, and such things get about. Besides, since this thing happened, I have tried to find out everything I could. The next thing the man did was gradually to get rid of all of his servants and his horses, until, during the last year, he came to live in the house with a single servant, and to ride a saddle horse that a schoolgirl would have scorned.”

“ That servant? ” said the judge, with his practical instinct for a leading point.

The doctor nodded. “ Yes, he came here with Druce, and we were sure he could clear the mystery up when we got at him. But he could not. His story was that one night he was sleeping on the embankment in London. He had been a butler in a good family, but his appetite for liquor had driven him out, and he was on the town. He was awakened by hearing a man walk past him. He had an eye out for a ‘ bobby,’ but the man was this chap Druce. He was going for the Thames, and there was something about him that alarmed the old butler.

“ At any rate, he sprang up and caught the man by the arm. He says that when the man turned, his face was ‘ awful ’ — I never could get any other word out of him, ‘ awful ’ he continued to say. . . . And that’s all he knows. Druce took him to a hotel on the Strand, and, in a few days, brought him along to America. ... I put the old fellow through what you lawyers call the third degree, on what his mas- 6 ter’s peculiarities meant, and he says the man was afraid. But he does not know what he was afraid of any more than we do. I suggested some enemy, but he shook his head. ‘ ’Ow could an enemy make a rotten branch to fall on you, sir, or your ’orse to come a cropper, or an elm tree to crush you, or lightning to strike the ’ouse ? Now, I ask you that, sir ? ’ . . . ‘ And, yet, sir, the master was always armed, and there was the manner of his death,’ and he continued to shake his head. ‘ If a man’s afraid of one thing, ’ow could he be afraid of everything? ’ ”

“ But, Leonard,” interrupted Flint, “ are not these clear evidences of insanity? Is not the delusion of persecution, and secret enemies, a common mania ? ” The doctor sat down.

“ Let us consider that a moment,” he said. “ If one takes elaborate precautions against a danger that does not exist, we call him mad, but if he takes these precautions against a danger that does exist, we call him prudent. The former is evidence of insanity, but the latter is evidence of the soundest common sense. If nothing had happened, I should have pronounced the man mad, but, by heaven, Flint, something did happen 1 ”

“ But was death the only thing that the man was taking precautions against? ” said the lawyer. “ It seems to me not entirely. Now, that my attention is a 7 directed to it, I observe this tendency to caution in the investments which we managed for him. At first he bought the usual market securities, and then he gradually became more and more careful, until bonds of the government were the only securities that he would put his money into. Now, what did that mean? ”

“ What does it all mean ? ” said the doctor.

The priest, who had been silent, now spoke.

“ Perhaps,” he said, “ the thing which this man feared was something that menaced him at every point.”

“ But what sort of thing could that be? ” said Dr. Lennard.

The priest seemed to consider before he would undertake to reply. He stroked his lean face with his white, emaciated fingers. And in the interval the attorney interrupted.

“ Gentlemen,” he said, “ before we begin to speculate, let us have all the evidence before us. You were speaking, Doctor, of this servant.”

“ The suggestion is sound,” replied Dr. Lennard, “ there is this evidence yet.” And he opened a door in the writing table, lifted out an iron box, and set it beside the lamp. It was a heavy square box of curious Japanese workmanship. It looked very old, as though it was some ancient heirloom that descended from father to son. The metal was bright except for a dull brown stain that bordered the bottom of the box, for perhaps a quarter of an inch. He laid a sealed envelope beside the box.

“One moment, Lennard,” said Flint; “the testimony before the exhibits. Go on with your story.”

“ Ah,” replied the doctor, “ our professions differ there in handling a mystery. We examine the exhibits first. Let me see, I was on the butler. Well, there was truth in one element of the man’s story, at any rate. He was a drunkard. Servants about the colony say that the man was never entirely sober. At any rate, he was drunk on the night that Wilfred Druce died.” The doctor paused. “ He must have been drunk! A thing that he asserts simply could not have happened. . . . True, the whole thing looks impossible, but this one thing is downright impossible. He says that as he fled from the house in terror, he saw that the cement walk by the library windows was covered with bloody footprints — covered ! ”

“ But if it was night,” interrupted Flint, “ how could he know that it was blood ? ”

“ I screwed him down on that,” continued the doctor, “ and he swore to me that he slipped in it as he ran, and that the whole place was wet. And he sticks to it. True, he was capitally full of liquor that night, and no question, those who found him thought he had delirium tremens, and that is the reason no one went to the house until morning. He was wading around in the pond at the foot of the hill, and screaming like a woman.”

“ But the cement walk itself,” cried the judge, “ the footprints would be there. . . . That would tell you.”

The doctor shook his head.

“ No,” he continued, “ it did not tell us a thing. The whole country had been dry, as dry as a bone, but just at daybreak there was a thunder storm and a tremendous rain. But, mark you, it was as dry as powder when the thing happened. Father Jerome knows.”

“ Yes,” said the priest, “ I had prayed for rain. My people’s little crops were withering, but the rain did not come until dawn. Some of my people brought this man to me at two o’clock in the morning, and the rain did not fall until five. Then, there was a deluge as from God’s door.”

“ Of course, that rain scrubbed the cement walk as clean as your hand,” Dr. Lennard continued. “ Outside there was nothing; but inside, by Heaven, there were things to confirm the creature’s story. He had heard a very hell of cries in the library where Druce spent his evenings, and a perfect fusillade of shooting, as though the man were fighting like a demon, in

io some deadly fear. And he fled the house with his hair on end. He says the thing came on like a flash. He had come down from his room to get a nightcap of liquor, and the house was as quiet as a grave. Then, as at the snapping of one’s Anger, the row began. The creature was in pajamas, and barefoot when they found him.

“ Father Jerome sent for me and we went up to the house as soon as the storm was over. The man said that the house was protected against burglars, but we did not expect to And it a fortress. The library, which was on the ground floor, especially was secured like a jail — the windows were protected by a grating of two-inch iron bars set into solid masonry, and solid oak shutters that locked on the inside. These windows had not been opened, but the shutters were splintered and riddled with shots — every one of them flred from within the room — every one, • — we could tell that from the splintered holes.

“ We got into the house, expecting to And the door to the library open, but, by Jove, it was as fast closed as the shutters! We couldn’t budge the door. It ,was solid oak, and the man said it was secured on the inside by bolts and an iron bar. We were pretty certain that Druce was dead. And our theory was that he had admitted someone, who had killed him, and was, himself, perhaps dead. At any rate, we

ii could not get inside. The room was as impregnable as a cell. The windows were simply out of the question, and we had to go at the door. It took a dozen workmen three hours to force it, working with every tool we had.

“ Well, we found Druce dead ! But our theory ! ” he stopped and snapped his lingers. “ I haven’t any theory any longer. . . . The room was in great confusion, chairs were broken, articles on the table overthrown, a corner of the bookcase thrown off its support, as though someone had lurched against it, its glass doors broken, and the fragments of glass on the carpet. The panes of glass had been shot out of the windows. Druce was lying in a corner of the room, a big calibre automatic revolver gripped in his hand. There was a pool of blood on the floor, and he was stone dead. There was no sign of blood in any other part of the room. And there was only one wound on Druce, and that was a deep gash on the top of his head that fractured the occipital bone. There wasn’t a mark, a scratch, or a bruise on the man. I think he was killed by a single blow, and that the creature that killed him never touched him until it struck him down. There had been the very devil of a fight. The carpet was strewn with shells from Druce’s weapon. He had continued to reload it as he fought; the magazine was half filled' when we picked it up, but the barrel was foul with shots. There was a curious thing about these shots, — every one of them had been fired into the windows. There was not a bullet hole anywhere in the room. The three window panes and sash were literally shot to fragments. We went over every inch of the room ■ — wall, floor, ceiling, and there was no place that an assassin could have entered. The throat of the chimney was not broad enough to admit a cat; the iron bars over the windows had not been tampered with. ... Yes, we were careful about it, we went over these windows with a glass. The bars had not been tampered with; the rust remained where they were cemented into the solid stone, every bar was sound as on the day it was forged; and the door could not have been entered.

“ I thought Druce might have first admitted the assassin, and then bolted the door. But, if so, how did the assassin get out and rebolt the door behind him ? The bolts were all on the inside, and the iron bar was up across it. No, Druce could not have fastened that door after the assassin had gone out, because that blow crushing the skull must have killed him instantly. He did not move after he was struck down. The shooting was all in a single direction, the windows. That meant that the man was menaced from the direction of the windows only. I should have believed that the thing, or things, that killed him had not been able to enter the room at all, except for the fact that the man had been killed in a corner of die room farthest from the windows, and he was apparendy struck down by some tall creature, some sort of creature much taller than the ordinary man, because the wound showed a blow made direcdy downward on the top of the man’s head with some implement. Now, if that blow had been given by an ordinary man with any sort of weapon, the wound would have shown some slant. It must have been dealt by some sort of creature that towered over him. . . . No, there is no theory. Three steps along any theory that you can imagine, brings one up sharp against the sheer wall of the impossible, and iris bubbles of the fancy only get well on their way until they collide with the sharp edge of a fact, and puff out.”

The judge had listened with the greatest attention.

“ Lennard,” he said, “ the way you relate these facts, this thing is downright impossible. No one ever heard of such a case.”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders and spread put his hands.

“ I have stated the evidences exactly as we found them. Father Jerome knows.”

“ It is all precisely the truth,” said the priest

“ Of course,” continued the doctor, “ I have used the words ‘ thing ’ and ‘ things,’ ‘ creature ’ and * creatures,’ and the like, because I don’t know how else to speak of the agency that killed Druce. The facts surrounding his death seem to preclude any agency that we know anything about. And, at the same time — what is incredible — these facts seem to establish that the man was killed by some physical agency. Of course, there is a solution. But the thing resembles those problems of physics, like the atomic theory, in which, to get a working hypothesis, you must begin by postulating an impossible base. And, like those problems, any theory will do if you simply force a single impossible gap in it. Granted that Druce killed himself, and you can work the thing out. But no living man could have dealt himself that blow, and besides, there is his letter to you, the fact of his desperate resistance, and the innumerable evidences that he was in constant fear. Granted that the agency that killed him could have entered the room, and it works out — but no living creature could have entered the room I . . . Pull the problem any way you like, put the pieces down on the table and edge them up, move them about, join them, fit them until you are mad, and you always find exactly the same thing, namely, that you must fit in an impossible piece in order to make a design. The thing simply will not go together without postulating the impossible. . . . But the impossible does not exist! We know that. It is perhaps the sole physical fact that we do, unquestionably, know. So, there we are !

“ A man is killed by assassins, but no trace of them can be found, either within or without the house. The whole country has been searched. No strange person has been seen or heard of. Everything about the premises has been literally scrutinized under a glass. The only thing is what this butler says, and he was drunk! And, yet, here is the fact of a desperate resistance, and the further fact that Druce died with an expression of terror so stamped into his face, that the lips were drawn back from the teeth, and the eyes protruded. I have seen faces of men killed in all sorts of fear, but I never saw a human countenance so indentured with deadly terror. The man saw something awful, and he fought it in a very hell of fear. . . . That much is certain ! ”

The doctor indicated the steel box on the table.

“ I fancied that the box was the object of the attack on Druce because it was sitting on the floor beside him, in the pool of blood, as though he had retreated into the farthest corner of the room to defend it. But, if so, why was it not taken? It could not have been opened because we found the key in a leather case among some jewels, which Druce had left at the village bank. Of course, the assassins might have had a duplicate key, or they might have abandoned the box in alarm. But, again, if the thing that killed Druce could have been frightened off, that hell of shooting would have done it.”

“ The contents of this box ought to clear that up,” said the judge. “ Was there any sort of treasure in it? ”

“ I’ll show you what is in it,” replied Dr. Lennard. He tore open the envelope, got out a little curious flat key, inserted it into the lock, and opened the box.

CHAPTER II: The Strange Data

N OW, Flint,” said the doctor, “ you see that the contents of this box only make the mystery more impenetrable. The thing was dark enough, believe me, but the articles in this box make that darkness Stygian. Father Jerome and I have puzzled over this thing from all points of view, and every advance we make is only a step in the fog. It is inconceivable that common assassins would make a deadly assault on Druce to secure what that box contains. And, as Father Jerome has just pointed out — a thing I had forgotten — nothing could have been taken out of the box by the assassins because there was a seal over the keyhole, and this seal was covered with dust. We had a high-power lens on it, and we are certain that the seal was old, and had not been tampered with. There is the fancy — I can’t call it anything more than a fancy — that the killer of Druce imagined this box to contain a treasure of some sort. But you must concede, even to the most abandoned cutthroats, a grain of common sense, and what assassin, not sheer mad, would attack an armed man in a fortified room, and wage a desperate encounter like this one, on the mere fancy that this box contained something valuable? The idea is absurd 1

“ On die other hand, if the agency that killed Druce, knew what this box contained, how is it possible to believe that they would have entered into this' terrible encounter to secure it. True, a sort of theory branches off here, that the box may have at one time contained something removed from it in later years. But if that was the moving idea of Druce’s assailants, they would not have gone away without making sure, and this they could not have done on account of the seal over the keyhole. So this way leads only into confusion. The only thing we know is what the box contains now. And these contents, as you observe, Flint, fall into three distinct classes, one having no apparent relation to the Other, and no one of them connected with any other fact that we are in possession of.

“ First, here are these eight photographs in the bottom of the box. They are all of one size, and evidently taken by the same photographer ; and, from the character of the work, I should say that they were not more than ten years old. They are the pirtures of eight men. Every mark on these photographs has been carefully erased. There is nothing here to guide us but the pictures themselves. The men are young, and, one would say, English — 'the sort o£ sturdy fellows one would see In a cricket match anywhere. And, there, all that we know about these eight photographs halts abruptly.

“ Second, here are a lot of memoranda in Druce’s hand that seem to be descriptive of something that took place on Nelson’s flag ship, the Victory. This memoranda is fragmentary. It appears to be notes, jotted in pencil, to confirm or describe some story that ran parallel with it, but until we have the story, we simply cannot make head or tail of it. But there is here a certain fact, and that is this reference to the Victory. That looks like a moving candle in this darkness. But when you try to follow it, you are immediately lost. It has been one hundred and seven years since the Victory was Nelson’s flag ship! Druce was about thirty. These photographs and the dress of the men show them to be near Druce’s age, and to have been living within the last ten years. So neither Druce, nor any one of them could have been with Nelson on the Victory. Nor is it possible that Druce or any one of these men could have had anything to do with what occurred a century ago on the Victory.

“ Now, the only other thing that the box contains is this mass of newspaper clippings. There are hundreds of these clippings, cut from all sorts of papers, and they fill the box. But no one of them refers to

Druce, or to the Victory, or to these eight men ; nor do any two of them refer to the same event. But they do all have some relation to the general idea of retributive justice, that is to say, that the criminal, in the end, is discovered and punished, and that no degree of ingenuity, or care on his part, is sufficient to prevent this result. These clippings illustrate the variety of precautions which criminals have taken, and the variety of events and agencies that have accomplished their ruin.”

The doctor stopped and relighted his cigarette.

“ Now, Flint,” he said, “ the whole evidence is before you. I have stated it, I think, completely and accurately. What is your opinion ? ”

The judge did not at once reply. He had been carefully going over the contents of the box — the eight photographs, Druce’s scribbled notes, and the piles of clippings. He had listened with the greatest attention to every word. Now he arose.

“ Can I get New York by telephone? ” he said.

“ Certainly,” replied Dr. Lennard, “ you have not made an adventure into Darkest Africa.” He rang for a servant, and bade him show the guest to the telephone.

The judge was gone for perhaps twenty minutes. When he returned, he replied to the doctor’s question.

“ Gentlemen,” he said, “ I believe this to be the most extraordinary case that ever occurred. Frankly, as the matter stands, I have no opinion. And I believe it useless to speculate on the data which we now possess — one’s fancy would simply go to riot. My experience is that one can hardly ever arrive at the truth if he permit himself to entertain a theory before he has collected and examined every fragment of evidence that it is possible to obtain. I have set some inquiries afoot that may uncover something of this man’s history. Only one thing seems precisely certain here, namely, that Wilfred Druce was in constant dread of some agency which he feared would destroy him. The evidence seems to establish this, I think, conclusively. From the letter accompanying his will, it seems permissible to believe that he knew what thing or things menaced him. But the expression which he uses is vague, ‘ I know the design that will accomplish my death.’ Now, this expression does not necessarily imply that he knew the agency that would make use of the design, nor yet the means which that agency would use to carry this design into effect. Strictly construed, this word, as used here, means * purpose ’ or 4 intention.’ ”