The Uttermost Farthing by R. Austin Freeman
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R. Austin Freeman >> The Uttermost Farthing
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12 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
A SAVANT'S VENDETTA
BY R. AUSTIN FREEMAN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Motive Force
II. "Number One"
III. The Housemaid's Followers
IV. The Gifts of Chance
V. By-products of Industry
VI. The Trail of the Serpent
VII. The Uttermost Farthing
THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
I
THE MOTIVE FORCE
It is not without some misgivings that I at length make public the
strange history communicated to me by my lamented friend Humphrey
Challoner. The outlook of the narrator is so evidently abnormal, his
ethical standards are so remote from those ordinarily current, that the
chronicle of his life and actions may not only fail to secure the
sympathy of the reader but may even excite a certain amount of moral
repulsion. But by those who knew him, his generosity to the poor, and
especially to those who struggled against undeserved misfortune, will be
an ample set-off to his severity and even ferocity towards the enemies
of society.
Humphrey Challoner was a great savant spoiled by untimely wealth. When I
knew him he had lapsed into a mere dilettante; at least, so I thought
at the time, though subsequent revelations showed him in a rather
different light. He had some reputation as a criminal anthropologist and
had formerly been well known as a comparative anatomist, but when I made
his acquaintance he seemed to be occupied chiefly in making endless
additions to the specimens in his private museum. This collection I
could never quite understand. It consisted chiefly of human and other
mammalian skeletons, all of which presented certain small deviations
from the normal; but its object I could never make out--until after his
death; and then, indeed, the revelation was a truly astounding one.
I first made Challoner's acquaintance in my professional capacity. He
consulted me about some trifling ailment and we took rather a liking to
each other. He was a learned man and his learning overlapped my own
specialty, so that we had a good deal in common. And his personality
interested me deeply. He gave me the impression of a man naturally
buoyant, genial, witty, whose life had been blighted by some great
sorrow. Ordinarily sad and grave in manner, he exhibited flashes of a
grim, fantastic humor that came as a delightful surprise and showed what
he had been, and might still have been, but for that tragedy at which he
sometimes hinted. Gentle, sympathetic, generous, his universal
kindliness had yet one curious exception: his attitude towards habitual
offenders against the law was one of almost ferocious vindictiveness.
At the time that I went away for my autumn holiday his health was not
quite satisfactory. He made no complaint, indeed he expressed himself as
feeling perfectly well; but a certain, indefinable change in his
appearance had made me a little uneasy. I said nothing to him on the
subject, merely asking him to keep me informed as to his condition
during my absence, but it was not without anxiety that I took leave of
him.
The habits of London society enable a consultant to take a fairly
liberal holiday. I was absent about six weeks, and when I returned and
called on Challoner, his appearance shocked me. There was no doubt now
as to the gravity of his condition. His head appeared almost to have
doubled in size. His face was bloated, his features were thickened, his
eyelids puffy and his eyes protruding. He stood, breathing hard from the
exertion of crossing the room and held out an obviously swollen hand.
"Well, Wharton," said he, with a strange, shapeless smile, "how do you
find me? Don't you think I'm getting a fine fellow? Growing like a
pumpkin, by Jove! I've changed the size of my collars three times in a
month and the new ones are too tight already." He laughed--as he had
spoken--in a thick, muffled voice and I made shift to produce some sort
of smile in response to his hideous facial contortion.
"You don't seem to like the novelty, my child," he continued gaily and
with another horrible grin. "Don't like this softening of the classic
outlines, hey? Well, I'll admit it isn't pretty, but, bless us! what
does that matter at my time of life?"
I looked at him in consternation as he stood, breathing quickly, with
that uncanny smile on his enormous face. It was highly unprofessional
of me, no doubt, but there was little use in attempting to conceal my
opinion of his case. Something inside his chest was pressing on the
great veins of the neck and arms. That something was either an aneurysm
or a solid tumor. A brief examination, to which he submitted with
cheerful unconcern, showed that it was a solid growth, and I told him
so. He knew some pathology and was, of course, an excellent anatomist,
so there was no avoiding a detailed explanation.
"Now, for my part," said he, buttoning up his waistcoat, "I'd sooner
have had an aneurysm. There's a finality about an aneurysm. It gives you
fair notice so that you may settle your affairs, and then, pop! bang!
and the affair's over. How long will this thing take?"
I began to hum and haw nervously, but he interrupted: "It doesn't matter
to me, you know, I'm only asking from curiosity; and I don't expect you
to give a date. But is it a matter of days or weeks? I can see it isn't
one of months."
"I should think, Challoner," I said huskily, "it may be four or five
weeks--at the outside."
"Ha!" he said brightly, "that will suit me nicely. I've finished my job
and rounded up my affairs generally, so that I am ready whenever it
happens. But light your pipe and come and have a look at the museum."
Now, as I knew (or believed I knew) by heart every specimen in the
collection, this suggestion struck me as exceedingly odd; but reflecting
that his brain might well have suffered some disturbance from the
general engorgement, I followed him without remark. Slowly we passed
down the corridor that led to the "museum wing," walked through the
ill-smelling laboratories (for Challoner prepared the bones of the lower
animals himself, though, for obvious reasons, he acquired the human
skeletons from dealers) and entered the long room where the main
collection was kept.
Here we halted, and while Challoner recovered his breath, I looked round
on the familiar scene. The inevitable whale's skeleton--a small sperm
whale--hung from the ceiling, on massive iron supports. The side of the
room nearest the door was occupied by a long glass case filled with
skeletons of animals, all diseased, deformed or abnormal. On the
floor-space under the whale stood the skeletons of a camel and an
aurochs. The camel was affected with rickets and the aurochs had
multiple exostoses or bony tumors. At one end of the room was a large
case of skulls, all deformed or asymmetrical; at the other stood a long
table and a chest of shallow drawers; while the remaining long side of
the room was filled from end to end by a glass case about eight feet
high containing a number of human skeletons, each neatly articulated and
standing on its own pedestal.
Now, this long case had always been somewhat of a mystery to me. Its
contents differed from the other specimens in two respects. First,
whereas all the other skeletons and the skulls bore full descriptive
labels, these human skeletons were distinguished merely by a number and
a date on the pedestal; and, second, whereas all the other specimens
illustrated some disease or deformity, these were, apparently, quite
normal or showed only some trifling abnormality. They were beautifully
prepared and bleached to ivory whiteness, but otherwise they were of no
interest, and I could never understand Challoner's object in
accumulating such a number of duplicate specimens.
"You think you know this collection inside out," said Challoner, as if
reading my thoughts.
"I know it pretty well, I think," was my reply.
"You don't know it at all," he rejoined.
"Oh, come!" I said. "I could write a catalogue of it from memory."
Challoner laughed. "My dear fellow," said he, "you have never seen the
real gems of the collection. I am going to show them to you now."
He passed his arm through mine and we walked slowly up the long room;
and as we went, he glanced in at the skeletons in the great case with a
faint and very horrible smile on his bloated face. At the extreme end I
stopped him and pointed to the last skeleton in the case.
"I want you to explain to me, Challoner, why you have distinguished
this one by a different pedestal from the others."
As I spoke, I ran my eye along the row of gaunt shapes that filled the
great case. Each skeleton stood on a pedestal of ebonized wood on which
was a number and a date painted in white, excepting the end one, the
pedestal of which was coated with scarlet enamel and the number and date
on it in gold lettering.
"That specimen," said Challoner, thoughtfully, "is the last of the
flock. It made the collection complete. So I marked it with a
distinctive pedestal. You will understand all about it when you take
over. Now come and look at my gems."
He walked behind the chest of drawers and stood facing the wall which
was covered with mahogany paneling. Each panel was about four feet wide
by five high, was bordered by a row of carved rosettes and was separated
from the adjoining panels by pilasters.
"Now, watch me, Wharton," said he. "You see these two rosettes near the
bottom of the panel. You press your thumbs on them, so; and you give a
half turn. That turns a catch. Then you do this." He grasped the
pilaster on each side of the panel, gave a gentle pull, and panel and
pilasters came away bodily, exposing a moderate-sized cupboard. I
hastily relieved him of the panel, and, when he had recovered his
breath, he began to expound the contents of this curious hiding-place.
"That row of books you will take possession of and examine when my lease
falls in. You are my executor and this collection will be yours to keep
or give away or destroy, as you think fit. The books consist of a
finger-print album, a portrait album, a catalogue and a history of the
collection. You will find them all quite interesting. Now I will show
you the gems if you will lift those boxes down on to the table."
I did as he asked; lifting down the pile of shallow boxes and placing
them, at his direction, side by side on the table. When they were
arranged to his satisfaction, he took off the lids with somewhat of a
flourish, and I uttered an exclamation of amazement.
The boxes were filled with dolls' heads; at least, such I took them to
be. But such dolls! I had never seen anything like them before. So
horribly realistic and yet so unnatural! I can only describe the
impression they produced by that much-misused word "weird." They were
uncanny in the extreme, suggesting to the beholder the severed heads of
a company of fantastic, grotesque-looking dwarfs. Let me try to describe
them in detail.
Each head was about the size of a small monkey's, that is, about four
inches long. It appeared to be made of some fine leather or vellum,
remarkably like human skin in texture. The hair in all of them was
disproportionately long and very thick, so that it looked somewhat like
a paint-brush. But it was undoubtedly human hair. The eyebrows too were
unnaturally thick and long and so were the mustache and beard, when
present; being composed, as I could plainly see, of genuine mustache and
beard hairs of full length and very closely set. Some were made to
represent clean-shaven men, and some even showed two or three days'
growth of stubble; which stubble was disproportionately long and most
unnaturally dense. The eyes of all were closed and the eyelashes formed
a thick, projecting brush. But despite the abnormal treatment of the
hairy parts, these little heads had the most astonishingly realistic
appearance and were, as I have said, excessively weird and rather
dreadful in aspect. And, in spite of the closed eyes and set features,
each had an expression and character of its own; each, in fact, seemed
to be a faithful and spirited portrait of a definite individual. They
were upwards of twenty in number, all male and all represented persons
of the European type. Each reposed in a little velvet-lined compartment
and each was distinguished by a label bearing a number and a date.
I looked up at Challoner and found him regarding me with an inscrutable
and hideous smile.
"These are very extraordinary productions, Challoner," said I. "What are
they? And what are they made of?"
"Made of, my dear fellow?" said he. "Why, the same as you and I are made
of, to be sure."
"Do you mean to say," I exclaimed, "that these little heads are made of
human skin?"
"Undoubtedly. Human skin and human hair. What else did you think?"
I looked at him with a puzzled frown and finally said that I did not
understand what he meant.
"Have you never heard of the Mundurucu Indians?" he asked.
I shook my head. "What about them?" I asked.
"You will find an account of them in Bates' "Naturalist on the Amazon,"
and there is a reference to them in Gould and Pyle's "Anomalies.""
There was a pause, during which I gazed, not without awe, at the open
boxes. Finally I looked at Challoner and asked, "Well?"
"Well, these are examples of the Mundurucu work."
I looked again at the boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled
along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though
diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning
eyebrows--so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully
closed eyes--a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so
unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive of some diabolical wizardry. I
looked up sharply at my host.
"Where did you get these things, Challoner?" I asked.
His bloated face exhibited again that strange, inscrutable smile.
"You will find a full account of them in the archives of the museum.
Every specimen is fully described there and the history of its
acquirement and origin given in detail. They are interesting little
objects, aren't they?"
"Very," I replied abstractedly; for I was speculating at the moment on
the disagreement between the appearance of the heads and their implied
origin. Finally I pointed out the discrepancy.
"But these heads were never prepared by those Indians you speak of."
"Why not?"
"Because they are all Europeans; in fact, most of them look like
Englishmen."
"Well? And what about it?" Challoner seemed quietly amused at my
perplexity, but at this moment my eye noted a further detail which--I
cannot exactly say why--seemed to send a fresh shiver down my spine.
"Look here, Challoner," I said. "Why is this head distinguished from the
others? They are all in compartments lined with black velvet and have
black labels with white numbers and dates; this one has a compartment
lined with red velvet and a red label with a gold number and date, just
as in the case of that end skeleton." I glanced across at the case and
then it came to me in a flash that the numbers and the dates were
identical on both.
Challoner saw that I had observed this and replied: "It is perfectly
simple, my dear fellow. That skeleton and this head were acquired on the
same day, and with their acquirement my collection was complete. They
were the final specimens and I have added nothing since I got them. But
in the case of the head there was a further reason for a distinctive
setting: it is the gem of the whole collection. Just look at the hair.
Take my lens and examine it."
He handed me his lens and I picked the head out of its scarlet nest--it
was as light as a cork--and brought it close to my eye. And then, even
without the lens, I could see what Challoner meant. The hair presented
an excessively rare abnormality; it was what is known as "ringed hair;"
that is to say, each hair was marked by alternate light and dark rings.
"You say this is really human hair?" I asked.
"Undoubtedly. And a very fine example of ringed hair; the only one, I
may say, that I have ever seen."
"I have never seen a specimen before," said I, laying the little head
down in its compartment, "nor," I added, "have I ever seen or heard of
anything like these uncanny objects. Won't you tell me where you got
them?"
"Not now," said Challoner. "You will learn all about them from the
'Archives,' and very interesting you will find them. And now we'll put
them away." He placed the lids on the boxes, and, when I had stowed
them away in the cupboard, he made me replace the panel and take a
special note of the position of the fastenings for future use.
"Can you stay and have some dinner with me?" he asked, adding, "I am
quite presentable at table, still, though I don't swallow very
comfortably."
"Yes," I answered, "I will stay with pleasure; I am not officially back
at work yet. Hanley is still in charge of my practice."
Accordingly we dined together, though, as far as he was concerned, the
dinner was rather an empty ceremony. But he was quite cheerful; in fact,
he seemed in quite high spirits, and in the intervals of struggling with
his food contrived to talk a little in his quaint, rather grotesquely
humorous fashion.
While the meal was in progress, however, our conversation was merely
desultory and not very profuse; but when the cloth was removed and the
wine set on the table he showed a disposition for more connected talk.
"I suppose I can have a cigar, Wharton? Won't shorten my life
seriously, h'm?"
If it would have killed him on the spot, I should have raised no
objection. I replied by pushing the box towards him, and, when he had
selected a cigar and cut off its end with a meditative air, he looked up
at me and said:
"I am inclined to be reminiscent tonight, Wharton; to treat you to a
little autobiography, h'm?"
"By all means. You will satisfy your own inclinations and my curiosity
at the same time."
"You're a deuced polite fellow, Wharton. But I'm not going to bore you.
You'll be really interested in what I'm going to tell you; and
especially will you be interested when you come to go through the museum
by the light of the little history that you are going to hear. For you
must know that my life for the last twenty years has been bound up with
my collection. The one is, as it were, a commentary on and an
illustration of the other. Did you know that I had ever been married?"
"No," I answered in some surprise; for Challoner had always seemed to
me the very type of the solitary, self-contained bachelor.
"I have never mentioned it," said he. "The subject would have been a
painful one. It is not now. The malice of sorrow and misfortune loses
its power as I near the end of my pilgrimage. Soon I shall step across
the border and be out of its jurisdiction forever."
He paused, lit his cigar, took a few labored draughts of the fragrant
smoke, and resumed: "I did not marry until I was turned forty. I had no
desire to. I was a solitary man, full of my scientific interests and not
at all susceptible to the influence of women. But at last I met my late
wife and found her different from all other women whom I had seen. She
was a beautiful girl, some twenty years younger than I, highly
intelligent, cultivated and possessed of considerable property. Of
course I was no match for her. I was nothing to look at, was double her
age, was only moderately well off and had no special standing either
socially or in the world of science. But she married me and, as I may
say, she married me handsomely; by which I mean that she always treated
our marriage as a great stroke of good fortune for her, as if the
advantages were all on her side instead of on mine. As a result, we were
absolutely devoted to each other. Our life was all that married life
could be and that it so seldom is. We were inseparable. In our work, in
our play, in every interest and occupation, we were in perfect harmony.
We grudged the briefest moment of separation and avoided all society
because we were so perfectly happy with each other. She was a wife in a
million; and it was only after I had married her that I realized what a
delightful thing it was to be alive. My former existence, looked back on
from that time, seemed but a blank expanse through which I had stagnated
as a chrysalis lingers on, half alive, through the dreary months of
winter.
"We lived thus in unbroken concord, with mutual love that grew from day
to day, until two years of perfect happiness had passed.
"And then the end came."
Here Challoner paused, and a look of unutterable sadness settled on his
poor, misshapen face. I watched him with an uncomfortable premonition of
something disagreeable in the sequel of his narrative as, with his
trembling, puffy hand, he re-lighted the cigar that had gone out in the
interval.
"The end came," he repeated presently. "The perfect happiness of two
human beings was shattered in a moment. Let me describe the
circumstances.
"I am usually a light sleeper, like most men of an active mind, but on
this occasion I must have slept more heavily than usual. I awoke,
however, with somewhat of a start and the feeling that something had
happened. I immediately missed my wife and sat up in bed to listen.
Faint creakings and sounds of movement were audible from below and I was
about to get up and investigate when a door slammed, a bell rang loudly
and then the report of a pistol or gun echoed through the house.
"I sprang out of bed and rushed down the stairs. As I reached the hall,
someone ran past me in the darkness. There was a blinding flash close
to my face and a deafening explosion; and when I recovered my sight, the
form of a man appeared for an instant dimly silhouetted in the opening
of the street door. The door closed with a bang, leaving the house
wrapped in silence and gloom.
"My first impulse was to pursue the man, but it immediately gave way to
alarm for my wife. I groped my way into the dining-room and was creeping
towards the place where the matches were kept when my bare foot touched
something soft and bulky. I stooped to examine it and my outspread hand
came in contact with a face.
"I sprang up with a gasp of terror and searched frantically for the
matches. In a few moments I had found them and tremblingly struck a
light; and the first glimmer of the flame turned my deadly fear into yet
more deadly realization. My wife lay on the hearth-rug, her upturned
face as white as marble, her half-open eyes already glazing. A great,
brown scorch marked the breast of her night-dress and at its center was
a small stain of blood.
"She was stone dead. I saw that at a glance. The bullet must have passed
right through her heart and she must have died in an instant. That, too,
I saw. And though I called her by her name and whispered words of
tenderness into her ears; though I felt her pulseless wrists and chafed
her hands--so waxen now and chill--I knew that she was gone.
"I was still kneeling beside her, crazed, demented by grief and horror;
still stroking her poor white hand, telling her that she was my dear
one, my little Kate, and begging her, foolishly, to come back to me, to
be my little friend and playmate as of old; still, I say, babbling in
the insanity of grief, when I heard a soft step descending the stairs.
It came nearer. The door opened and someone stole into the room on
tip-toe. It was the housemaid, Harratt. She stood stock still when she
saw us and stared and uttered strange whimpering cries like a frightened
dog. And then, suddenly, she turned and stole away silently as she had
come, and I heard her running softly upstairs. Presently she came down
again, but this time she passed the dining-room and went out of the
street door. I vaguely supposed she had gone for assistance, but the
matter did not concern me. My wife was dead. Nothing mattered now.
"Harratt did not return, however, and I soon forgot her. The death of my
dear one grew more real. I began to appreciate it as an actual fact. And
with this realization, the question of my own death arose. I took it for
granted from the first. The burden of solitary existence was not to be
entertained for a moment. The only question was how, and I debated this
in leisurely fashion, sitting on the floor with Kate's hand in mine. I
had a pistol upstairs and, of course, there were keen-edged scalpels in
the laboratory. But, strange as it may appear, the bias of an anatomical
training even then opposed the idea of gross mechanical injuries.
However, there were plenty of poisons available, and to this method I
inclined as more decent and dignified.
"Having settled on the method, I was disposed to put it into practice
at once; but then another consideration arose. My wife would have to be
buried. By some hands she must be laid in her last resting-place, and
those hands could be none other than my own. So I must stay behind for a
little while.
"The hours passed on unreckoned until pencils of cold blue daylight
began to stream in through the chinks of the shutters and contend with
the warm gaslight within. Then another footstep was heard on the stairs
and the cook, Wilson, came into the room. She, like the housemaid,
stopped dead when she saw my wife's corpse, and stood for an instant
staring wildly with her mouth wide open. But only for an instant. The
next she was flying out of the front door, rousing the street with her
screams.
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