‘You are not—’
‘No – by no means – no.’ She reached into her pocket. ‘I have received this. It came yesterday morning, after you left.’
She handed me a folded piece of paper.
‘I must go. Kitty is expecting me. I hope you will call when we are back.’
I watched her walk away, waiting until she was out of sight before I unfolded and read what she had handed to me.
It was a short note, written in a small neat hand:
The note was signed ‘Veritas’ and was addressed simply to ‘Miss Gallini’, with no direction, suggesting that it had been delivered by hand.
Here was a thing, and I own that it knocked me back for a moment or two. I read the note again; but as the light was now nearly gone, I decided to go straight back to Temple-street and take stock.
I was, no doubt, in a somewhat nervous state, for as I was proceeding past the Diorama, in Park-square, I thought I felt a soft tap on my shoulder. But when I turned round, there was no one to be seen. The street was deserted, except for a single carriage, making its way back through the fading light towards the Park. This would not do. I grasped my stick with determination, and walked on.
Back in my rooms, I lit the lamp and spread the note out on my table.
The hand had something familiar about it – some trace of memory seemed to cling to it; but, try as I might, I could not bring its associations to mind.
I investigated the paper closely with my glass, held it up to the light, even sniffed it. Then I examined every character in turn, pondered the choice and order of the words, and why the author had underlined the name Edward Glapthorn. I studied the flourishes of the signature, and sought to tease out what lay behind the choice of the pseudonym ‘Veritas’. As I write this, I am amazed by my obtuseness, by my inability immediately to grasp the truth; but there it is. The deed that I had so lately committed in Cain-court had, no doubt, produced confusion of mind, and dulled my usually acute powers of perception. In those dark autumn weeks, convulsed by the most terrible of betrayals, and in increasing fear of my own life, I was already in the grip of a kind of madness, unable to see that which was plainly before my eyes, and which will, in due course, be laid before yours. The consequence was that I spent an hour or more trying – with mounting frustration –to force the note to yield up its secret; but it defeated me. Except in this one thing: I knew, with utter conviction, that, though addressed to Bella, it had been meant for me. And so it proved.
Who? Who knew? Though I had never killed before, I was well used to living on the night-side of things. As I shall later relate, my work had hardened me to violence and danger, and I had trained myself in all the arts of the paid spy. I had therefore taken every precaution, deployed all my acquired skills, to ensure that my victim and I had entered Cain-court unobserved; but now it was clear, beyond a doubt, that I had been careless. Someone had followed us. Someone had seen us.
I paced the room, pounding my knuckles against my head, trying to recall every second of those fateful minutes.
I could remember glancing back towards the entrance to the court, soon after striking the fatal blow, and again as I had slid the knife down the grating. Memory could give me back nothing to indicate that I had been observed. Except … Yes, the slightest of sounds, though no sign of movement. A rat, I had thought at the time. But was it possible that someone had been silently watching my victim and me from the deep shadows that lay in the angles of the walls?
This thought now instantly took hold, and then led to another. How had the presumed observer identified me? The answer must be that he already knew me. Perhaps he had been watching my movements for some time and had followed me in my peregrinations that night, then tracked me to Blithe Lodge. But why, with the information he possessed, had he not already denounced me to the authorities? Why had he written to Bella in such a fashion?
I could discern only one motive: blackmail. With that conclusion came a kind of relief. I knew how to deal with such a situation. All that I required was to gain some quick advantage over my pursuer. Then I would have him. Yet it was not altogether clear to me how such an advantage could be obtained; and still I could not understand why the blackmailer had revealed his hand to Bella first. Perhaps he merely wished to torment me a little before administering the coup de grâce.
He – it must be a man, and an educated one – was clever. I was prepared to grant him that. The note had been subtly conceived. To Bella, who knew nothing of what had happened in Cain-court, it hinted at dark possibilities that might alarm any woman, even a demi-mondaine: ‘He is not what he seems …’ Women instantly distrust the unspecific, and their imaginations soon begin to transform hints and suggestions into solid fact. What would Bella’s fancy conjure up from these vague but troubling insinuations? Nothing to my advantage, certainly, and much to her disquiet. But to me, the note sent a different message: a threat to reveal to Bella what I had done if I did not come to an accommodation. This was the cleverness of it; it was intended to put us individually on the rack; and by mischievously sowing doubt and alarm in the innocent Bella, it inflicted a double punishment on me.
I returned to my table and picked up the note again. This time I held it up to the light of my lamp and went carefully over every inch with my eye-glass, searching furiously for some clue to the identity of the sender, something that would set me on his trail. I was on the point of giving up in angry frustration when I noticed a row of small holes pricked into the paper, just below the signature.
On closer examination, I saw that these had been deliberately arranged in groups, separated by spaces. It did not take long to discern the simplest of codes: each group of holes represented a number, which in turn stood for a letter. With little trouble I deciphered the message: ez/vii/vi. Reaching for my Bible, I quickly found the verse from Ezekiel to which the message referred: ‘An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.’
Here was a serious setback to my plans, something that I could not have anticipated, but to the resolution of which I must now divert some of my energy. Watcheth, I perceived, was a word the sender particularly intended me to take to heart. I could do nothing, for the time being, to set aside whatever fears the note had raised in Bella; but I felt sure that I would receive a further communication before long, and this, I hoped, would afford me some opportunity to begin turning the tables on the blackmailer.
I sat up before the fire for half an hour or so, smoking a cigar, then went to bed in a state of suppressed anxiety. Images came crowding in upon me: the dying smile of Lucas Trendle, elephants, Bella laughing in the autumn sunshine, a carriage making its way up a deserted street.
Then, when sleep eventually took hold, came a dream, which haunts me still.
I am walking through an unimaginably vast subterranean chamber, the echoes of my footsteps receding into endless depths of shadow on either side of what seems like an aisle or nave of titanic stone columns. In my hand is a candle, which burns with a steady flame, revealing an open space beyond the columns. Into this space, the boundaries of which are indiscernible, I now pass.
I walk on for some time, feeling a vast and oppressive emptiness pushing in all around me. I stop, and the reverberating echoes of my footsteps slowly die away in a sickening diminuendo into the surrounding immensity. The candle’s flame reveals only darkness, limitless, entire; but then, suddenly, I know that I am not alone, and a choking terror begins to take hold. There is something fearsome here, invisible but present. All is silence; I have heard no sound of footsteps other than my own; and yet I know that danger is near. Then, with inconceivable horror, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder and warm breath on my cheek and hear the faint hiss of exhaled air. Someone – some thing – standing just behind me softly blows out the candle. I drop the extinguished flame, and collapse in utter helplessness and revulsion.