# Grim House

Extracted from Detective Story magazine, 28 May 1921, pp. 109–121.
Grim House
$^{by}$ Richard Connell
IN an out-of-the-way corner of the suburb of Pelham Manor, on the rim of Greater New York, stood a deserted house, Which had once been painted a bluish gray, but which was now dull and ashen as if it had grown pale and bloodless with the passing years. It was an old, square, wooden structure of some twenty rooms, one of those high-ceilinged mid-Victorian arks, whose jig-sawed gingerbread served to accentuate rather than relieve its forbidding, cheerless austerity.
Time was, no doubt, when it had been a fine mansion, a country house, even, and one of the floating stories connected with it was that President Grant had once dined beneath the carved gilt gas chandeliers of the dining room, a paneled, cavelike room, now dim, dank, and dirty. But its original owners had long since passed to the land where, it is almost safe to say, there is no mid-Victorian architecture, and now the old house was in a state of dilapidation approaching almost on decay, with blinds askew, windowpanes broken, and the lawns a jungle of weeds. The house was surrounded by five or six acres of grounds, studded with pine trees, which were also moth-eaten and dismal, and a privet hedge, which was unkempt.
No one had lived there in years, and it was believed by some of the dwellers in the small, modern houses near it to be haunted. Others, of a more materialistic mind, declared that the occasional sounds heard near it were nothing more ghostly than the wind in the pines. The neighbors, however, agreed that it was not the sort of place one would care to spend a night in; it was sinister, somehow. Some one once called it “The Grim House,” and that became its familiar name.
I had always taken an interest in The Grim House since the time, some years ago, when I bought the house nearest it—a little place, separated from the privet hedge by a small field and a road. In the daytime I never passed the old place without thinking of a broken-down aristocrat, aloof and sullen, clinging to the husk of a former grandeur. At night, when a late visit to some patient caused me to be out, I must confess I always was a little glad when I had passed that ragged privet hedge, through the gaps of which I could get glimpses of the black bulk of The Grim House, lonely and silent amid the pine trees.
By a species of self-analysis I tried to discover why I, a middle-aged physician with a good, steady set of nerves, should quicken my footsteps almost automatically while passing the deserted house. But I could discover no tangible source for the effect it had on my imagination.
One moonless October night I was returning late from the deathbed of a patient of mine, and I was musing on the grotesque game we call life, when I approached the road leading past The Grim House.
I stopped, startled. Through a gap in the hedge I could see lights moving in the old mansion. My first thought was of burglars or tramps, but I quickly perceived that it could be neither. A large motor van stood at the gate and by the light of its lamps I could see the figures of four or five men coming and going, bearing large objects that were not clearly discernible in the darkness. They were not taking things from the old house; they were carrying things into it.
I drew nearer, curious to see more of this midnight moving. A tall man, who appeared to supervising it, struck a match to light his cigarette, and in the fluttering flame I had a momentary glimpse at his face. It was a keen, pale face, with a sharp black beard, and the flickering light distorted it, making it look like a Chinese theatrical mask.
Apparently I had arrived as the last of the load was being carried into the house, for before I could start on my way again, all the men, with the exception of the bearded man, jumped into the moving van, and it rumbled away. The tall man stood at the gate a moment, watching the tail lights disappear. I thought it would be only neighborly to pass the time of day, or night, with him, and besides, I admit, I was impelled by a certain curiosity to see what manner of man would choose The Grim House to move into at midnight. So I advanced and said pleasantly:
“Good evening.”
The man started back as if I had struck at him with a knife. A thin, pale stream of light came through the open door of the house and down the path, and I could see his face. It was contorted with fear, suspicion, hate.
“Who the devil are you?” he questioned fiercely, and I saw his hand go behind him toward his hip pocket.
“I'm very sorry if I alarmed you,” I said affably. “I'm one of your neighbors. Doctor Wain is my name. I'm just returning from a late call.”
The demeanor underwent a quick and curious change. From snarling hostility it changed abruptly to a politeness so ingratiating that it seemed almost artificial.
“Oh, my dear Doctor Wain, forgive my rudeness,” he said in a voice that seemed to me to pur. “One naturally must be on one's guard in a strange place, you know.”
“Of course,” I assented, “but you need not worry about thieves or tramps out here. The place is singularly free from them.”
“That is fortunate—for them,” he said.
“For them?” I repeated, mystified.
“You see,” explained my neighbor, “I am a somewhat nervous man, so I keep four very large and fierce Great Danes. They are trained to tear the throat out of any person who should venture on my property after dark.”
He looked at me steadily as he said this, and there was a note in his voice that disturbed me; I could not help feeling that he was giving me a warning.
“Well, good night,” he said abruptly and went crunching up the gravel walk.
I walked on to my own house slowly. He had not mentioned his name. He had given me no clew as to why he had taken The Grim House. But he had given me a very definite warning not to go there after dark.
The next morning I glanced at the old house, but there were no signs of occupancy; the new tenant was not to be seen. But late that night I heard the chug of a motor van and from my study window I saw the midnight movers at work again.
I do not approve of prying into one's neighbors' private affairs, but I felt that the circumstances in this case warranted my watching The Grim House. The objects the men carried were evidently quite heavy; frequently it took all four of them to carry one piece The sky was overcast and the moon gave forth only an occasional feeble beam, so that it was impossible for me to see what they were carrying into the house; of one thing I felt sure, and that was that their load was not ordinary furniture. Once, as they were carrying what I thought at first to be an enormous vase, as tall as a man, the moon, for just a second, came from behind a cloud, and its rays were reflected by the shiny surface of the strange object. Then the moon retired, and in the dimmer light I saw one of the men slip and I heard the shivering crash of breaking glass. My bearded neighbor broke into a fit of swearing.
I never remember hearing a man so completely lose control of himself; he raged and cursed like a wild thing.
“You clumsy dogs,” I heard him say angrily, “that was worth two thousand dollars.”
Several more of these large glass objects were unloaded, with great care, and carried into the house. Then I heard what I believed to be hammer blows, as if some repairing were being done.
I sat at my window, letting my fancy supply all sorts of strange solutions to the riddle I had witnessed, when I heard a sound that froze my blood.
It was a prolonged, eerie, moaning sound, now very loud, now falling way to a deep, guttural muttering. Then the moon came out, and I made out, vaguely, several black shapes roving through the tall grass of The Grim House lawn. Animals as big as small ponies! I had heard the baying of the giant dogs that my neighbor said would tear the throat out of any nocturnal visitor.
When I passed The Grim House next day, I took good care to keep clear of the hedge, for I had small wish to encounter the savage brutes. I noticed that all the blinds were in place and that new windowpanes had been put in, making the decaying house look like some ancient, dissipated roué trying to put on a bold front with new spectacles and a new necktie. Also, I observed that a large sign hung near the front gate:
NO ADMITTANCE,
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.
Beware of the Dogs.
Several days passed. The man was a quiet enough neighbor; I never saw him during the day at all, and I'd have scarcely known The Grim House was occupied had I not seen lights there occasionally, or, now and then, heard the baying of the Great Danes, as they roamed about, a menace to any person who ventured to approach the old house and its secluded occupant.
About a week after The Grim House had become inhabited, I became aware that my neighbor with the black beard was not a hermit; he had a companion. I made this discovery as the result of an odd adventure.
I was strolling along past the privet hedge that girdled the old house, having found out that the dogs were kenneled up during the day, and was peering through the hedge, where it was thin enough, when I became aware that two sharp eyes were watching me through the leaves.
I paused, and made out the sketchy outlines of a face; it was not my neighbor of the beard, but a little, old man, with a weazened, lined face, like faded leather; it was the sort of face one seldom sees except on beds of pain.
As our eyes met, he looked alarmed; he glanced behind him several times, as if to see if he were watched.
“Good evening,” I said to him.
For reply the old man opened wide his mouth and pointed into it. Then he shut it and motioned with his arm toward my house; it was a motion as if he would push me away. The gesture said as plainly as words could that I had better go to my own home and avoid the vicinity of The Grim House. But although the old man seemed to have a real concern for my safety, I stood rooted to the spot, for with the trained eye of a physician I had followed the finger of the man when he had pointed to his open mouth, and I had seen a shocking thing. The man had no tongue!
Before I could answer his wordless warning, the old man turned and skurried away toward the house like a venerable frightened rabbit. As he went I could see that he was dressed in the semiformal garb of an English manservant.
A fascination that was stronger than my half-formed fears caused me to pass close to the hedge at about the same time the following evening; I was convinced that his gesture had not been a hostile one. As I passed along the hedge a wrinkled, bony hand was thrust through the hedge, and I started back, fearing, in a sudden panic, a knife thrust, but the hand of the tongueless old man contained nothing more deadly than a scrap of paper, which I took.
I unfolded the scrap of rough wrapping paper, but before I could read the message he had turned and hurried away. In a convulsive, hurried scrawl I read:
    If my master asks you to dinner, for God's sake, don't come.
Back in my study I read the note again and again, and I looked out at the great, square shape of the old house with a renewed interest.
That night I was called to New York for a consultation, and didn't get home till nearly one o'clock. It was a cool, crisp autumn night and before retiring I looked out at the shadowy outlines of The Grim House. A beam of light stealing through a chink in the blind told me that it was brilliantly lighted inside, but there was nothing unusual about that. My neighbor, I had long since concluded, was a very late reader, or else he was afraid of the dark. Tired, I went to bed at once, and had fallen into a doze, when the night was cut by a sound so ghastly and terrible that I bounded from my bed, trembling, It was the scream of a human being, a man, in an extremity of pain and terror, and it came from The Grim House. it was followed by words, shrieked, almost squealed:
“Mercy, mercy, for God's sake, mercy, mer——”
And then there was a muffled crash, and dead, awful silence.
I did not go up to The Grim House, as a braver man might have done; I quieted my conscience by telling myself that the tall man with the black beard could take care of himself. As for the old servant, it could not have been he who cried out.
I did not sleep well the rest of the night, and at daybreak I was awake. I looked out of the window where I could see the sickly gray walls of The Grim House, looking like the ghost of a dwelling in the morning mist. I saw that my fears for the safety of my bearded neighbor were unfounded, for I made out his figure, surrounded his huge dogs, which fawned about him and sprang into the air to snatch bits of meat from his hand. Then a second figure, bent and small, came from the house, carrying a platter with more meat, and I recognized the tongueless servant, who held the platter while the black-bearded man made the great brutes beg for their breakfast. Who was it, then, who had cried out in the night in such anguish of body and spirit?
After that incident I decided that it was my duty as a responsible member of the community to keep an even closer watch on The Grim House. My curiosity had a lot to do with it, too, for what I had seen and heard served to deepen the atmosphere of mystery old place had always held for me.
Two nights after I had heard the cry, the noise of a motor car at The Grim House gate brought me to my observation post, and I saw the tall, bearded tenant alight from one of the public taxicabs, followed by another man. The man, so far as I could tell in the moonlight, was young, rather fat, and roughly dressed. From the way he lurched as he went up the walk, I judged that he had been drinking. My neighbor, however, walked with a straight and steady step, sometimes helping his companion by taking him by the arm. They disappeared into the house, the lights were lit, and I heard no more that night.
The nocturnal visitors of my bearded neighbor increased in number. Sometimes for a whole week, he brought home some one with him every night, usually around midnight, and always—of this I felt certain—a different person. Most of his visitors appeared to be young. Several times there were women. This continued for nearly a month. The visitors were quiet enough; once the door of The Grim House closed behind them, I had no cause to complain, for I never heard a sound after that. The Great Danes could be seen, now and then, roaming through the uncut grass of the lawn, but they, too, it seemed, had taken on the silence of the old house, and their baying grew more and more infrequent.
A motley collection of visitors came out with my bearded neighbor, always at night, and I had about decided to put him down as a harmless eccentric, possibly a bit demented, who enjoyed playing the Caliph of Bagdad, when one of those clear and obvious things which are often so near and plain that one does not perceive them, struck me. Although I had seen my strange neighbor leave the grounds early in the evening numerous times, I had never seen a single one of his guests leave!
The only exit from the grounds of The Grim House lay directly in the path of my observation, and I felt sure that had any of that numerous company of nocturnal visitors left I'd have seen them. I smoked many a pipe over the problem that night, and strange, disquieting theories crossed my mind. When I finally retired, only one thought was clear in my brain, and that was that I must get to the bottom of this strange-looking business.
As I left my house the next morning, a man was waiting for me on the walk. I was surprised to recognize the black-bearded tenant of The Grim House.
He made me a sweeping, Continental bow, and, showing his strong, white teeth, wished me a good morning.
“I fear I have been unneighborly,” he said, “but I have been frightfully busy. But now my house is in order, and I hope you'll do me the honor of dining with me at seven-thirty to-night.”
I thought of the warning of the tongueless old servant, and I tried to read what was in back of that smile and that elaborate courtesy. But the smile was inscrutable.
“Oh, I'll chain up the dogs,” he said, as I hesitated.
I made a sudden resolution.
“I'll be delighted to come,” I said.
“Fine, fine,” he said, with a curious little noise, like a chuckle. Then he walked away.
But I could not go to dinner at The Grim House that night. I was called to Philadelphia for an operation; I tried to phone my neighbor, but I remembered that he hadn't told me his name. I was forced to resort to the expedient of sending a telegram addressed to “The Grim House,” and to hurry off to Philadelphia. I didn't get back home till past midnight. The Grim House was dark and silent.
The next morning I decided to go to The Grim House to tell its occupant why I had been unable to come to dinner. It was about ten o'clock when I set out to visit my Mephistolphelian neighbor; I remembered the warning note of the old servant, so I slipped into my pocket the automatic I had carried in the Philippines.
I went to the front door of The Grim House, and pulled at the old-fashioned bell; rotten with rust, it came off in my hand. I rapped loudly with my walking stick without eliciting any response. I knew that it was not my neighbor's custom to be away from home at this time of day, so I went round to the back of the house and, climbing on the sagging, decaying back porch, rapped briskly on the back door. It had not been locked, and it swung open at my touch. I saw a sight that I shall remember to my grave.
The large kitchen of the old house had been painted a brilliant white, and it had been kept spotless. It was fitted up as an unusual sort of laboratory, and was filled with strange instruments and machines that suggested at once chemistry and surgery. The apparatus was familiar, and yet unfamiliar. Then I realized what it was that made it so queer; the conventional chemical equipment was there, but it was many times the ordinary size. There were grotesque alembics, enormous burners, phials that would hold a gallon, and, finally, the glass vases which I had seen carried in turned out to be giant test tubes, as big as a man. Some were filled with curious substances, which I did not recognize, and in the room there was a pungent, mephitic odor. In one corner was a shelf, covered with glittering instruments, and near it a white-enameled table, under a powerful arc light. But the thing in the room that drew my gaze like a magnet was the only untidy object in it. It was the body of a man lying on the white table.
He had been dressed in white duck from head to foot, but his suit was now drenched in places with crimson. He had been beaten almost beyond recognition by some heavy, blunt instrument, but enough remained of that thin, sardonic face with its bristle of black beard to make me certain that it was my tall neighbor with whom I was to have dined on the night before, I bent over and made a hasty professional examination. He had not been dead long.
I called out several times, thinking to summon the old servant, but my voice echoed through the empty house. I pushed open a swinging door that in the old days had led into the dark, paneled dining room. The blinds were shut, so for a moment I could see nothing. Then, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I saw that the dining room contained four large steel cages, such as wild animals are transported in. They were empty. Had the dogs been kept there? Where were they now?
Continuing my cautious explorations, I pushed open another door and found myself in a butler's pantry, that had been turned into a bedroom by putting an iron cot in it. Several suits of clothes of expensive material hung there. I hastily examined the pockets of a brown suit I remembered the bearded man wore when he invited me to dinner, and found three letters. They were addressed to Doctor Karl Raffin, General Delivery, New York City. They were business letters of no significance from a chemical company about some rare salts he had ordered.
Karl Raffin! The name was familiar. Then I remembered. That was the name of a physician who had published in Vienna, some years before, some curious monographs on the possibility of a man creating human life. His theories had been generally discredited in the medical world, but they had been so plausible and so daring that for a time he had created quite a stir.
I went over to my own house and phoned for the police. Then I returned to pursue my investigations, to try to find out who it was who had struck those furious blows.
As I entered the front vestibule, I stumbled over something. I stooped and picked it up. It was a heavy black-thorn stick, broken in the middle, and on the big, knobbed handle were little tufts of black hair, stuck there with a dry, reddish paste. With such a weapon it would be easy to kill a man.
Then a panic seized me and a cold sweat came to-my brow, for I recognized the black-thorn stick. Years before, I had given it as a birthday present to my brother-in-law, Roger Farrier, who lived about a mile from The Grim House.
Roger Farrier a murderer? A settled, family man, a respectable lawyer. I remembered his sudden flares of violent temper, which so soon cooled for which he more than made up by long periods of perfect good nature, and I thought of his powerful physique, souvenir of his college rowing days. I held the broken stick in my hands; that there was not another like it I felt sure, for I had hunted all over Ireland for just such a stick. Roger always carried it; indeed, many persons who did not know his name described him as “the big fellow with the big, black stick.”
I was in an agony of mind, torn between duty and my affection for Roger. What was I to do? The police solved this question for me by arriving just then, and I had no choice but to hand over the stick, and, since I knew that its identification would be the work of but a few hours, to tell them whose it was. Roger Farrier was arrested within an hour.
Below is the sworn statement of Roger Farrier, member of the New York bar and resident of Pelham Manor:
    {On the evening of November 12th, my young son, Robert, eleven years old, was returning home from a Boy Scout meeting. Just before dark he passed the property known as The Grim House. He was tossing a ball with his brother Vernon, aged thirteen, and the ball lodged in the hedge. Robert thrust his arm in to get the ball. As he did so, his arm was seized by some man on the other side of the hedge, and the man attempted to drag my son's body through the hedge. Robert screamed and his brother came to his aid. Vernon says that he saw the man, and that he was a tall man with a black beard and a wild, savage face. When the man saw Vernon, he released Robert, who ran home sobbing with terror and pain. His arm was black and blue from the grip of his assailant.
    I was not at home at the time, and I did not hear the story until I arrived home about eight-thirty. I started at once for The Grim House to demand an explanation, for I was loath to have a man arrested until I had heard both sides of the story
    I knocked at the front door of The Grim House, and a tall man with a black beard, who was dressed all in white, like a baker or a surgeon, came to the door and asked what I wanted. I said, as calmly as I could that I had come to see the man who had assaulted my son.
    He was suave, almost oily, as he replied that he feared the boys were telling me fairy stories. But I had seen the bruises on my son's arm, and I didn't like the man's smile, so I answered hotly that I didn't believe him, and that I wanted his side of the story, and without delay.
    “See that sign down there,” he said, “it says no trespassers, doesn't it? Well, it's lucky for you I haven't let out my dogs for the night, or they'd have ripped you to pieces.” Then he suddenly lost control of himself and cried out with an oath: “As for your brats, teach them to keep away from other men's property.” He started to close the door in my face, but I was fighting mad now, and I blocked it with my foot. He attempted to shove me out of the door and down the steps, and gave me a blow in the chest. I lost my grip on my temper entirely, and struck him across the head with my blackthorn stick. He turned and cried into the house in a terrible voice, “Gryce, let out the dogs.” Then he struck at me again, and I struck back with such force that he staggered back into the hallway and dropped. I fled in a panic, but not a moment too soon for two or three huge dogs came tearing round the corner and came leaping after me. I reached the gate just ahead of them.
    That is the whole story. I swear I struck Doctor Raffin only twice; I deny that in the heat of my anger I struck him repeatedly, although I cannot prove that I did not do so. I am deeply, deeply sorry for my loss of self-control, but I reiterate that I remember striking but twice, and then in self-defense.
    (Signed) Roger Gresham Farrier.
When I read the statement of my brother-in-law, Roger Farrier, I believed every word of it. In our long friendship I had known him to be a man of unimpeachable honesty, and I knew that even in this dire circumstance he would tell the truth as he saw it. But how I, his friend, felt about his guilt, and how a skeptical jury would feel about it, were two entirely different matters, and I was gravely concerned.
After my first superficial examination of Doctor Raffin, whose shattered head told a story of the insensate fury of his assailant, I had not looked at all closely at the body, which the police had allowed to lie as I had found it until the coroner should arrive.
The coroner was long in coming, so I decided to examine the dead man more closely. I unbuttoned his tight-fitting white coat, now stained with his life blood, and as I did so I gave a whistle of surprise that made the policeman on guard over the body start out of his reverie.
“What is it, doctor?” he asked.
“Why, this man has been stabbed through the heart!” I exclaimed.
The policeman examined the deep wound.
“Whoever struck that blow had a strong right arm,” he declared.
The chief of the police force, McRae, an astute, middle-aged man, came into the room just then, visibly excited. He was carrying something in his hand.
“I always did say that the Frenchman who said, 'Look for the woman,' was a wise old bird,” he announced. “Look at this.” “This” was an irregular piece of purple silk, about as big as a handkerchief, and with ragged edges.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Piece of a woman's dress,” he replied, “Found it in the grass, near the hedge, Also a few small tell-tale stains.”
“Show me where,” I said excitedly,
Chief McRae led me to a place near the hedge not far from the gate, where the long grass had been trampled for several square yards. There were a number of small, crimson patches on the ground. Quite close to the hedge was soft dirt where the grass had not grown. Eagerly I examined it. There were fresh footprints there, of two kinds: the footprints of a woman's small, high-heeled shoe and the footprints of a very large dog.
“We must find that woman,” said Chief McRae.
“And I think I have a good idea where she may be,” I replied, as I hurried to my own house to telephone.
I called up the public hospital, which is located about a mile from The Grim House.
“This is Doctor Wain speaking,” I said. “Have you treated a woman last night or this morning for severe lacerations caused by the bite of an animal? She was wearing a purple silk dress.”
“Why, yes, doctor,” came the answer. “She's here now.”
“Please don't let her go before I get there,” I directed.
“Oh, no fear of that,” the hospital answered. “She's pretty badly hurt. She's just recovered consciousness and we haven't been able to find out who she is or how she was hurt. She looks as if she'd been in a tiger's cage. We found her unconscious in a field not far from your house.”
“I'll be right over,” I said.
I jumped into my roaster and burned up the road to the hospital.
I was shown to the bedside of a dark woman of perhaps thirty, in whose deep, black eyes were signs of a great sorrow. Her limbs and body were swathed in bandages, and she was suffering from lacerations and shock, but the interne told me that her condition was not serious. When she heard I had come from The Grim House she said in a tired voice with a slight foreign accent, Italian, I judged:
“Is he dead?”
I nodded.
“I'm glad,” she said simply. Then she asked me to write down a statement, which she dictated to me with an utter lack of emotion in her tone.
    My name is Marie Therese Leska, and I was born in Corsica. I confess freely, and without fear of the consequences and without remorse, that I killed Doctor Karl Raffin on the night of November 12th.
    If there was ever a monster created in the shape of a man, it was he. I met Doctor Raffin about three years ago. I was singing small roles in the opera then, and had every promise of a bright career. I was fascinated by him; he was so masterful, so diabolically clever. We got married and then he deserted me.
    I had lost my place in the opera company—lost my voice, and everything I held dear and sacred. I wrote him frantic letters, for I was almost penniless, and what friends I had had, I had sacrificed to him. He made no reply. I was desperate, so one night I followed him out to his house out here.
    I swear I had no intention of killing him when I came out; the knife I carried was for myself if he should again spurn me
    I waited outside his house till nine-thirty, crouching against the hedge. At about nine I saw a big man, swinging a big stick, go up the path. I heard the sound of angry words, and then some blows, and the big man came running down the path as if fiends were after him, as indeed they were, in the shape of huge dogs. He rushed past me as I trembled there in the darkness. A little later, someone whistled from the house and the dogs went around to the back, and I could hear them growling and snapping as they were fed. So I ran up the path and knocked at the door.
    Doctor Raffin came very cautiously. He had a wound on his head, and he was holding a piece of absorbent cotton over it. I pushed by him, and was inside the house before he could stop me.
    “Oh, it's you, is it?” he said in a sneering voice that chilled my heart.
    We went into a brilliantly lighted laboratory. A scared-looking old man, whom I knew to be Gryce, Doctor Raffin's valet, came in from feeding the dogs. Some one in the room off the laboratory moaned, and I saw Gryce shudder
    “Get out, you swine,” cried Doctor Raffin and Gryce cringed out of the room, leaving me alone with the man I once loved and later hated so bitterly.
    I begged him to have pity on me, but he only jeered at me.
    “You may consider yourself lucky,” he said, “that the dogs didn't tear you to ribbons when you can in. Under the circumstances, I think it would be wise of you to get down on your knees and beg me to escort you as far as the gate. That's the most I'll do for you.”
    He blew cigarette smoke in my face.
    My brain seemed to burst. With the wild fury of my Corsican ancestors, I whipped out my knife and struck him in the chest, once, twice, and he reeled away from me. Then I ran, sobbing with fear, into the night. I ran blindly toward the hedge, not keeping to the path. As I neared the hedge, one of the great dogs sprang at my throat; the knife was still in my hand, and I managed to beat him off. For a moment I struggled for my life with him; he tore my arms and legs with his fangs before I could get to the gate and fall, fainting outside.
    I may have lain there an hour, I may have lain there but ten minute. I don't know. At last I got to my feet and the will to live made me stagger on. I had a vague hope that I'd reach a railroad station and be able to get back to New York. But after I had struggled on for what seemed endless hours, my strength gave way. Just as day was breaking, I fell unconscious in a field near the roadside.
    Every word of this is the truth. I repeat what I said in the beginning. I do not feel the least remorse for what I have done. An earthly jury may find me guilty of the murder of Doctor Raffin, but I have no fear of the verdict of a Heavenly one. He was not a man; he was a beast.
    (Signed) Marie Therese Leska.
It was past three in the afternoon when I returned to The Grim House with the statement of Marie Therese Leska. With me I brought, also, the knife with which she had committed the crime. It was a small affair, very old, and with a carved handle that might have been the work of Benvenuto Cellini. The blade was not very sharp. Indeed, it was more like a paper cutter than a lethal weapon, and I wondered how so frail a woman could have driven that small, dull knife into the stalwart body of Doctor Raffin.
On one point my mind was greatly relieved. Her confession supplied an incontestable alibi, it seemed to me, for Roger Farrier, for had she not sworn that she had seen Doctor Raffin alive after Roger Farrier, “the big man,” left the house? And yet how could one account for the shattered skull of the dead man?
As I drew near The Grim House, I passed that part of the hedge where the mysterious note of warning had been handed to me, and a new problem presented itself to my mind. What had become of the tongueless man? And where were the dogs?
The coroner had not reached the scene when I returned to The Grim House from the hospital; there had been a trolley accident in another part of the county which required his presence, it seemed. So the body of Doctor Raffin lay where I had first found it—on the operating table.
Once again I examined the stab wound in his chest, and then I compared it with the little Corsican knife in my hand. There could be no doubt about it; that little knife could never have made that deep gash. It might have made the two or three superficial cuts in the fleshy part of the chest, mere scratches, which I noticed for the first time, but it could never have been driven in, almost to the spine, even by a powerful man
My head began to swim with this mass of contradictory evidence. A man is dead, his skull shattered and a deep stab wound in his heart. Two persons firmly believe that they have killed him, and yet there is every reason to believe that neither of them did! And if Roger Farrier or the Corsican woman had not killed him, who had?
I decided, while waiting for the arrival of the coroner, to poke around The Grim House. I made my way along one of those seemingly superfluous passageways that honeycomb those old, wooden houses, until I came to a trapdoor in the floor.
I opened it and started down the stairs to the cellar with a lighted match in my hand. I reached the bottom of the stairs, and as I did so the trapdoor above me closed with a bang, blowing out my light and leaving me in total darkness. A heavy, sickening smell came to my nostrils. I took a step forward and partly stumbled. I put out my hand to prevent myself from falling; it touched something soft yet solid, the furry form of a large animal. I scrambled back up the stairs at the cost of a scraped shin, and then lighted another match. By its light I could see on the cellar floor four Great Danes, the largest I have ever seen; but I had no need to fear their fangs now, for their glassy eyes protruded and their muscular legs and bodies were contorted, and they were stone cold after the death spasm produced by what I could see was a powerful poison.
The atmosphere of the cellar was too nauseating for me to examine my grisly discovery further, and, indeed, I had little inclination to do so. But here was a new question that had to be answered before the whole story of the killing of Doctor Raffin could be told. Who had poisoned the dogs?
After my gruesome find in the cellar, I felt that I must ransack the entire house. The upper rooms were quite empty and had not been used. The servants' quarters on the third floor were similarly covered with thick layers of dust. But in a little hallway I found a ladder leading to an attic, and the absence of dust on its rungs told me plainly that some one had gone up it within the past twenty-four hours. As quietly as I could, I climbed the ladder, my revolver in my hand.
I heard a slight sound above me, as if some one were moving, and then a noise that was like the whimper of an animal.
I flung open a small trapdoor and lifted myself into a squat, beamed attic. In the faint light that came through a skylight, uncleaned for ten years, I saw that the place had been fitted up as a bedroom. In the corner crouched the figure of a man.
“Come out or I'll shoot,” I cried.
He turned, and I recognized the frightened face of the tongueless old servant. As he recognized me, he ceased to tremble so violently, and came out of the corner. Drawing the stub of a pencil from his pocket, he wrote on the gray wall:
“Is he dead?”
I nodded my head.
A curious, grim smile came to his lined, leathern face, a face with suffering that I hadn't thought a smile possible. Then he pitched forward into my arms in a dead faint.
I carried the tongueless old man downstairs. He was on the point of a complete collapse, so I had him taken to the hospital. There, with warm food inside him, he seemed to recover rapidly, and he signified that he wanted writing material brought to him. A pen and some paper were brought, and he wrote out in the shaky scrawl of an old man the most frightful story I have ever read.
    It was I, Simon Gryce, who killed Doctor Karl Raffin, the worst man ever born. I did it, yes, and I'm glad I did it. If the law wishes to punish me, I do not care, although it was not with my own hands that I struck the blows that ended the life of a devil. The blows were struck by another with even more reason for hating Doctor Raffin than I have; but he who struck the blows is beyond the reach of the law, and the crime is no blot upon his soul, because Doctor Raffin stole his soul away from him.
    I, and I alone, am guilty; it was I who made it possible for the man without a soul to strike down the fiend who had stripped him of all that made life worth living. You think I talk in riddles. Let me tell you my story from the first.
    I was born in London, sixty-six years ago, the son of Samuel Gryce, head butler in the household of the Earl of Dunraven. I was always a timid, undersized lad and afraid of my own shadow.
    “Lad, you haven't the pluck of a hare,” my father would say, “but I'll make you the best gentleman's man in England, for all that.”
    That was my father's ambition and it became mine. I became Lord Ashdowne's man and was with him for more than thirty years; then I was with his son, Sir Ralph Berwind. One sad day, two years ago, Sir Ralph was killed while hunting, and I found myself an old man, no longer spry, and without a situation. I had supported a couple of sisters and had been able to put by very little, so one day found me sitting on the Thames Embankment, looking at the green water and thinking things no Christian had a right to think.
    A tall, well-dressed stranger came and sat beside me.
    “You were Sir Ralph Berwind's man, weren't you?” he asked.
    “I was,” I said.
    “Out of a situation, eh?” he says.
    “Yes,” I reply.
    “I need a man,” he says.
    “Indeed?” I answer, not very cordially, for there was something about him I didn't like; I don't know what it was, but I felt he wasn't an honest man.
    “Oh,” he says with a grin, “you needn't worry about my position. I stand quite as high in my field as Sir Ralph stood in polo.” And he handed me a card which said he was Doctor Karl Raffin.
    I went with him; the wages were very good. He was overbearing, often lost his temper, and sometimes was drunk, but I put up with it. Then we came to the States.
    From the very first, I stood in terror of Doctor Raffin, and my fear grew. He had a way of looking me in the eye with those burning eyes of his for a long time, until my head became dizzy and I felt weak all over. He had a way of gritting his teeth when he talked to me that always made me think he would have liked to bury them in my throat.
    He took a house out in a wild spot in New Jersey, and fitted up a laboratory there. It was my work to keep the place clean. I was forbidden to come into the laboratory except when he particularly ordered it. He worked there for some weeks, and from my bedroom upstairs I heard some strange sounds, but I minded my own business as a well-trained gentleman's man should.
    One night I thought the doctor had gone out, and I heard sounds in the laboratory, so I came downstairs, thinking it might be thieves. I opened the door gently and saw a dreadful sight. There was a little boy—— No, I cannot write it down.
    My gasp must have betrayed me, for the doctor left his frightful experiment and shook me by the throat as a terrier shakes a rat.
    “You cursed spy,” he shouted, “I'll teach you to snoop!”
    He seized the chloroform sponge, and pressed it to my nose and I lost consciousness,
    When I woke up I was in my own bed, and my mouth felt dry, and sore and empty. I tried to cry out for I was too weak to move, but I could make only a gagging noise. He had cut off my tongue.
    Every day while I was recovering, Doctor Raffin would come into my room and gloat over my pain and my attempts to speak.
    “Listen, Gryce,” he said to me one day, “let this be a lesson to you. You are my man, body and soul, do you understand, and if you betray me, I'll boil you alive in one of those big test tubes.”
    The disappearance of the boy created such a stir in the neighborhood, that Doctor Raffin thought it advisable to move, and he came out to the old house in Pelham Manor.
    My pen revolts from setting down what happened there. Night after night he lured homeless, friendless men and women out there. They never left.
    One day he had been drinking, and he said to me, “Gryce, do you know what I am? I'm a vivisectionist of souls. Some day in my test tube I'll find the elixir of life. Then I'll live forever. But no one else shall have a drop.”
    Again and again I tried to make up my mind to run away. But a fear stronger than my other fears held me there; my very soul was afraid of Doctor Raffin.
    A little later he said to me: “Gryce, the quality of my material is too poor.” “Material” was what he called the poor human devils he lured into his laboratory.
    “It takes life to make life,” he continued “Now, these tramps are inferior beings; I need a man of good intellectual development—a man like my neighbor, Doctor Wain, eh?” And he rubbed his hands and chuckled. So, at the risk of torture, I wrote a note warning Doctor Wain of his peril. Lucky man that he never kept his dinner engagement with Doctor Raffin!
    It was Doctor Raffin's custom to keep the men and women—“his material”—in the iron cages in the dining room. He silenced them by paralyzing their tongues.
    At night he never permitted me in the laboratory; he made me go up to my little room in the attic, and then he took the ladder away. The screams and pleadings I have heard from those poor devils before Doctor Raffin silenced them were awful, awful. But I was too weak, too weak to do anything.
    Yesterday I saw that the cage contained a handsome man, just turned thirty, a man with red hair and the physique of an athlete. His power of speech was gone, and he could only look at me with dumb, pleading eyes.
    The doctor had been drinking again, and his tongue was loose.
    “There's material for you!” he cried. “A brilliant lawyer, he was. To-night I'll take out part of his brain, the part that he thinks with, and leave only the part he imitates with. Then we'll see some sport. I'm a magician, Gryce, and with the touch of my wand I can turn a man into a gibbering parrot.” And he waved a surgical knife over his head.
    Last night Doctor Wain was expected, but he didn't come. It would have been his last visit on this earth, if he had. At nine or thereabouts, I saw the big man with the black stick visit the doctor, heard their quarrel, and saw the man strike the doctor twice.
    They were only glancing blows, and inflicted slight cuts on the doctor's head.
    Then I looked into the unlighted dining room, and I saw two bright, staring eyes—the eyes of the thing that had been a man. He, too, had seen the doctor struck. I slipped out and picked up the stick the big man left when he fled, and placed it near the cage.
    A little later the woman came, and, as I returned from feeding the dogs, I heard her pleading with Doctor Raffin. He ordered me from the room, but I watched at the door and saw her strike twice with the little knife. The doctor was wearing a coat of tough linen, and her blows made only slight scratches, which he dressed himself. He laughed to himself when he heard the dogs attack her. But I slipped out and called them off, and coaxed them into the cellar. There I fed them poisoned meat.
    The doctor was so engrossed in his experiment that he did not notice what was happening; he did not notice that I had left the dinning- room door ajar so that the thing in the cage saw the woman stab him. Very softly I slipped into the dining room and placed a long surgical knife outside the cage door. Then I unlocked the door of the cage, and hurried to my attic, where I knelt until below I heard the most terrified scream I had ever heard in that house of torture. I knew it could not be the thing that had been a man, for his tongue was dead. I knew it was Doctor Raffin facing the creature whose soul he had destroyed.
    (Signed) Simon Gryce.
I had finished reading this frightful document by the bedside of its writer when a young interne came in, walking on tiptoe.
“Say, Doctor Wain,” he whispered to me, “before you go, drop over to the psychopathic ward, will you. There's a queer nut over there—a big, strong fellow with red hair. They picked him up in a swampy field not far from The Grim House. When they found him he was catching frogs and clubbing them to death with a stick and then stabbing them with an operating knife.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1949, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 74 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse