The Red Book Magazine/Volume 36/Number 2/The White Dog

by Frederick Britten Austin

IN this remarkable story its famous author presents a point of view toward the study of psychics that will certainly stimulate discussion.

 

THE
WHITE
DOG

By
F. BRITTEN AUSTIN

Illustrated by
J. HENRY

“For many years my mind has been familiar with the occult.”

MR. GILCHRIST was nervous and fidgety. He was alone, not merely in the dining-room where he sat, but in the house; and solitude at night to a man accustomed to find comfort and distraction in the presence of others is a black desert where one starts at one's own footsteps.

Sitting there in the dining-room of the pretty suburban villa he had had built some twenty miles from town, the familiar objects which surrounded him seemed to have grown remote, unfamiliar. Smoking his pipe, with the half-read newspaper on his knee, his ear was worried by the insistent ticking of the clock, and this ticking seemed a novel, almost uncanny phenomenon. He could not remember having heard a sound from that time-piece before. There were features about the sideboard, too, as he gazed at it fixedly, that appeared quite strange to him, Certain details of inlay-work on the Sheraton-pattern legs he perceived now for the first time. These little unfamiliarities observed with his mind on the stretch—the latent primitive man in him. Scenting danger in solitude—added to the loneliness. The sheltering walls of the usual were pushed away from him. He felt himself exposed, out of the call of friends, in a desolation haunted by invisible malevolences. Of course, the feeling was absurd. He shook himself and tried to summon up a little of the bravura with which he had dismissed his wife and daughter to the dance at the village a mile away, making light of their protests that it was the one servant's evening out, saying that at any rate she in the kitchen would not be much company to him in the dining-room where he proposed to sit and smoke. His friend Williamson might drop in, too—anyway, he would be all right.

His friend Williamson had not dropped in, and with every slow minute ticked out by that confounded clock he had found himself less at ease. Once he got up and walked into another room, but the sound of his own footsteps, heard with astonishing loudness in the house empty of any other person, afflicted his nerves, and he returned to his former seat in the dining-room.

The seven-thirty express from town rushed by on the railway line which ran, fifty yards distant, parallel with the road; and the sound of it heartened him for a minute or two. The world of fellow-men was brought close to him for a flying second, and all his sociable instincts greeted it, claiming acquaintance, as it sped along. Then, as the noise of it died away into a silence yet more profound than before, the primitive in him again peeped out through his civilization, panicky, ear at stretch for stealthy danger. The stillness which surrounded the lonely house seemed charged with perils that stole near with noiseless footfall. A weird, mournful cry outside, breaking suddenly on that stillness, pulled him erect on his feet, listening, trembling. The cry was repeated, and he sat down again, telling himself that it was an owl, as doubtless it was; but his hand shook as he picked up his newspaper again and tried to read.

With some effort he forced his brain to grasp the meanings of the words, which related a murder case, announced in massive letters at the top of the column. The mental machine seemed to stop every now and then and he found himself gazing at some unimportant, common word in the line until it looked as strange and devoid of meaning as one in a foreign and unknown language. The comprehension of it required a deliberate effort of will.

Suddenly, with soul-shaking unexpectedness, there was a violent, rapid knocking at the door.

HE was on his feet in an instant, shaking in every limb, panic-stricken as an Indian in a place of spirits. A primitive vague dread of the supernatural held him motionless, obsessed by a formless horror.

The knocking at the door renewed itself, a frantic hammering. The repetition lightened him, redeemed it from the vague purposelessness of the ghostly, suggested human anxiety at fever pitch. His imagination, relieved from the spell, flew to work, building catastrophes after familiar models. His wife and daughter? The disasters of fire, vehicular collision or heart-failure presented themselves in confused and fragmentary pictures. The door now resounded under a ceaseless rain of blows; and trembling so violently as to feel almost ill, he ran to open it.

On the threshold stood a little, stout, bearded man, past middle age. He struck one or two frenzied blows at the air after the door had swung away from him.

“What do you want?” demanded Mr. Gilchrist.

His visitor looked at him vacantly for a moment, seemingly unable to adjust his mind to human intercourse.

“For God's sake, give me some brandy—if you are a Christian man!”

“Come inside,” said Mr. Gilchrist, and he led the way into the dining-room, the stranger following. “Bless my soul! What is it? An accident?” He spoke nervously, more to himself than to his guest, who replied nothing but stood swaying on his legs and kept from falling only by the clutched-at support of the table. “Dear me—dear me! One moment—I have some brandy here.” He fumbled with the key of the tantalus. “Here you are. Steady, man, steady! Sit down.”

The stranger drank off the brandy and took a deep breath, passing his hand over his brow like one recovering from a swoon. In the moment or two of silence Mr. Gilchrist had leisure to scrutinize him. He was without a hat, and his head shone in the lamplight, a polished dome rising from a narrow forehead and a half-ring of gray wisps over his ears. His eyes protruded, globularly, but it could be guessed that they carried impressions to an active brain. His gray beard converged irresolutely to a point in front of his chin. His clothes were respectable but not well cut, and they were now soiled with earth. One trouser-leg, Mr. Gilchrist noticed, was badly torn. Altogether his appearance suggested a benevolent old gentleman, connected possibly with some dissenting religious body, who had been badly mauled in conflict with a gang of ruffians.

“Feel better?” asked Mr. Gilchrist. “Have some more.”

“No, I thank you, sir,” replied the stranger, and the tone of his voice assured his host that he had to deal with an educated man. “I feel much better. Alcohol, I may say, is an unfamiliar stimulant to me, and the action of a comparatively small quantity is powerful. If I might beg a little further indulgence of your kindness, however, I should be glad to rest myself a minute or two.

“Certainly, certainly—by all means. You will find that a more comfortable chair. Have you met with an accident?”

The stranger's protruding eyes flashed with a singular brightness at the question. Then he sighed and again pressed the palm of his hand across his brow.

“Your courtesy, sir, undoubtedly deserves some explanation of the plight you have so generously relieved.” The man's tone and phrasing indicated a person accustomed to put his thoughts into an elaborated word-structure for the attention of an audience. “I hardly think that accident is the correct description of my misfortune. I am the victim, sir, of a traitorous chain of circumstances, a chain of circumstances so strange as to be scarcely credible.”

“Indeed?” Mr. Gilchrist had reseated himself and now bent forward, his face alight with interest kindled by his guest's last sentence. “If I can help you in any way, I shall be glad to do so.”

The stranger acknowledged the offer by a downward inclination of the head.

“Your great kindness of heart needs no further exposition, sir—it is self-evident. I have no words sufficient to thank you. I greatly fear, however, that I am beyond human help. A matter of a few hours is the utmost respite from my fate that I can expect. None the less, I am deeply grateful to you for this breathing-space.”

The stranger sighed again, and his countenance settled into a resigned melancholy.

“You make me curious,” said Mr. Gilchrist. “Of course, I don't wish to intrude—”

The old gentleman raised his eyebrows and made a protesting movement with his hand.

“In all probability, sir, you will soon be made acquainted with a garbled newspaper version of the calamity which has befallen me. Its dreadful nature is bound to flare into publicity. It is useless, therefore, for me to attempt to conceal it. If you care to hear the true version of a tragedy which every newsboy will be shouting tomorrow morning,—a version stranger than the one counsel for defense and prosecution will adopt as a battle-ground for their wits,—I will do my best to gratify your curiosity. I may say that it will be some comfort to me to know that one fellow human being—especially so kind-hearted a one as yourself—is acquainted with the real facts.”

“My dear sir!” began Mr. Gilchrist. “Surely—you are overwrought—an accident—I cannot believe—”

“I do not look like a murderer,” said the old gentleman, interrupting him, a pathetic little smile on his grave face. “Nevertheless I am one. It is the terrible truth, I assure you, sir. I am a murderer, a murderer trapped into crime by that chain of circumstances I spoke of. And I am a man that until today never wittingly took the life of any creature, however small.”

“But—my dear sir!” Mr. Gilchrist half rose from his chair. His guest waved him back into it.

“I am speaking the sober truth. You think that you are harboring a madman. I am as sane as you. If you care to listen, I will relate the story, and when I have finished, if you desire to call in the local police, you are at liberty to do so. I give you my word that there will be no disturbance.”

Mr. Gilchrist sat back in his chair, half-fascinated, half-frightened.

“Go on,” he said briefly, not trusting himself to speak.

“I MUST first request your patience whilst I relate a few circumstances which, however remote they may appear from the terrible fact that has, among other things, made me your guest, are nevertheless intimately connected with it.

“I am a man in business for myself, in a small way, as the saying is. It might have been a larger way had not my intellectual activities been employed on subjects which I regard as of graver and deeper import than the purchase and sale of ephemeral commodities. For many years my mind has been more familiar with that region known briefly as the occult, than with the intricacies of terrestrial markets. I have striven earnestly to penetrate to those great secrets which throb behind this earthly veil—with what success I need not specify. Suffice it that a small society of fellow-seekers after the Truth chose me as their president, a position I still hold.

“However small your acquaintance with this difficult subject, sir, you are probably aware—from hearsay at least—that it has two great aspects, good and evil. The pure in heart may achieve a certain mastery over forces hidden from the multitude and use them for innocent or praiseworthy ends, such, for example, as establishing communication between our loved ones who have crossed the threshold and those who remain here. This is known vulgarly as white-magic. But there is a black magic. It is known to every adept that it is possible—difficult. perhaps, but possible—for self-seeking men who have, perchance before they became perverted, had the key to these vast mysteries put in their hands, to control the mighty forces of which I have spoken and turn them, regardless of the suffering they inflict, to their personal advantage.

Illustration: “I saw the light in your house. Clambering over a wall I made my way to it, scarce able to walk, but frantic.”

“It is possible, I say, though exceedingly rare. Few men, good or evil, are so fortunately endowed as to acquire a mastery over those forces for any purpose, and of those who have acquired it the majority are good. In any case they are rare. For myself, despite years of study and anxious striving, I have utterly failed to grasp those forces save in one or two trifling instances. This, by the way. For some time past I have been conscious—I cannot now tell you by what agency I became aware of it—that a group of men, greater adepts than any I have known, had in fact subjected forces terrible in their power and were using them to the danger of the world.”

The stranger turned his bulbous bright eyes to Mr. Gilchrist, who sat silent, gripped in a spell which was partly fear. In the moment or two of silence he heard that infernal clock ticking along with insistent industry. The stranger waited a brief space for some comment, and receiving none, proceeded.

“You know, I have no doubt, that in the past—in the Middle Ages, for example—certain secret societies existed for purposes partly occult. I use occult as a synonym for the spiritual, for all that lies beyond the veil. Such, I may remark, were the Rosicrucians. Others are known to every student of the subject. One might almost class it as common historical knowledge. Few, however, suspect that today such a society, immeasurably more powerful than the ordinary man considers possible, exists. It exists, and by some means it has penetrated to the very arcana of the spiritual world. It wields a power, by its control over forces that to call cosmic is to minimize, quite beyond ordinary resistance. And it wields that power for evil. I could point out several frightful disasters of recent times directly traceable to that society. It is a menace to the world!”

THE old gentleman's eyes flashed excitement at Mr. Gilchrist, who felt in a dream, scarcely knowing whether he was awake or sleeping.

“In one way only can it be overthrown—and it must be overthrown if our civilization is to continue. A group of men—equally adept but pure in soul—must meet and check each of their schemes and finally turn the immense forces, too great for ordinary comprehension, with which they work, against them, wiping them out of existence. Where that group of men is to be found, sir, I do not know, but if the disease is to find a remedy it must first be diagnosed. It was my duty, then, having discovered this monstrous danger, to proclaim it to the world. And, knowing full well the awful risks I ran, I did so. I contributed a long article to a periodical which exists for the diffusion of spiritual truth, and so far as my knowledge permitted me, exposed the terrible enemy.

“I knew I invited disaster. Immediately I was warned—I cannot tell you by what channel the warning came to me—that the gravest perils threatened me. You, an ordinary man, whose most terrible engine of destruction possible to the imagination is a monster-gun battleship, can have no conception of the powers unchained against me. I cannot tell you with what fervor I strove to acquire control over forces that might befriend me, but in vain. Ever I was thwarted and baffled. I lost what little powers I had. Stripped of every means of defense, I waited in anguish for the blow to fall. What kind of blow it would be and whence it would come I could not tell. I knew only that it was inevitable. An undying enmity was all around me.

“I expected something cataclysmic, world-shaking. Fool that I was, I might have known better. 'They' are far too cunning thus to advertise their power needlessly. Day after day I dwelt in a world of terror, and nothing happened, save the complete interruption of any intercourse with the spiritual world. Malevolent forces had closed that door. I waited, each moment expecting disaster, I knew not from what quarter, as a man waits in a dark wood for the lurking danger to spring at him. Suddenly—a week ago today—they commenced to act.”

He stopped to allow the import of his words to have full effect on his host. Mr. Gilchrist opened his mouth as if to speak, but he could not give utterance to a sound.

“I was walking, about six o'clock in the afternoon, along Piccadilly. The thoroughfare was crowded. I felt almost happy in the throng. My mind was for the moment distracted from its ever-present anxiety, and I had almost forgotten my danger. Suddenly a man jostled against me and thrust a piece of paper into my hand. I glanced at it and knew my doom was upon me. Here it is.”

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Gilchrist. It bore only the words, in fat black type: “Prepare to meet thy Judge.”

“But,” said his host, grasping at the familiar in this strange story, “this is merely a leaflet circulated by some religious body.”

“I know,” said the stranger, smiling. “That is their cunning. It conveys little or nothing to an outsider. But they knew I would know. I looked around for the man. He had disappeared. The blood surged to my head; I reeled dizzily against a lamp-post and for a moment or two knew nothing. The shock, long expected though it was, was awful. After a brief space my brain cleared. My giddiness seemingly had not been noticed. The street looked normal. I shook myself and prepared to continue on my way. At that moment I happened to look round and saw a large white bulldog sitting on the pavement and regarding me fixedly. Even then—I knew. But I affected to take no notice of it and commenced to walk~onward. The dog got up and followed me. I walked faster, but the dog was always a couple of feet behind my heels. I stopped. The dog stopped. I went on again. The dog went on again also. There was no doubt of its connection with me.

“I cannot make you realize, sir, the awful fear that surged up in me, mastering me, throttling me. I almost choked. The lights, the houses, the people swam in my vision. For some moments I walked along blind, unseeing: I trust that I am not a coward, that ordinary danger would find me ready to meet.it with some calmness of mind, but in contact now with the peril. I had dreaded, such firmness as I have gave way. The seeming innocence of the manner in which my death-sentence was conveyed, the apparently innocuous character of the messenger they had sent, accentuated my terror. I felt that it was useless to appeal to my fellow-creatures for help. The certain reply would have been an imputation of madness. Above all, the purpose of the dog baffled me. It seemed impossible that my enemies, with all the vast forces at their command, should use so petty an instrument to strike at me. I could not even imagine in what manner the dog was to bring about my annihilation. The disparity of means to the end seemed grotesque.

“So strongly did I feel this that I half-persuaded myself that I was under an illusion, that the dog was merely a stray that had followed me for a few yards in the hope of finding a new home. Walking along, looking straight in front of me, for I dared not turn my head, I was almost comforted by a semi-belief that the dog was no longer in pursuit. Presently, with an effort of will, I looked back—to find, as reason told me I should, the animal still at my heels, padding along with its nose to the ground.

“I stopped, more from a suspension of faculties than from any desire to do so, and the dog stopped also. It sat calmly down, looking at me, and I could almost fancy a quiet diabolic smile on the loose, ugly, dripping jaws. We exchanged a steadfast gaze—I can see it now; its eyes were red-rimmed, bleary, cunning. Standing there, I strove to divine its purpose. Suddenly it flashed upon me. The dog was tracking me to my home. Over the trail it had gone once it would go again, this time accompanied by the active agents of my foes. Why this roundabout method of reaching me was adopted will no doubt seem a puzzle to you, sir—it is so to me. But I was and am convinced of the fact.

“NO sooner had I realized this,” pursued the old gentleman, “than I thought over means of ridding myself of it. The obvious way was simple. I walked along the street in quest of a policeman. The dog got quietly on its legs again and followed. Some hundred yards or so farther on I saw an officer and approached him. It was at the corner where the street flows into Piccadilly Circus, and the open space was a maelstrom of traffic, starred overhead by the lamps which were beginning to glow against the darkening sky. I had to wait an agonized minute or two at the policeman's elbow whilst he set two fussy and nervous old ladies upon their right way. At last he turned to me and a radiance of hope commenced to break over the dark tumult of my mind as I explained to him that I was being followed by a stray dog and wished to give it into his charge.

“He looked patiently down at me from his towering bulk of body, nodded and asked: 'Where's the dog?' I turned to point it out. To my astonishment, it had disappeared. No shape of dog was anywhere visible. The policeman's eyes rested upon me with so questioning a look that I felt uncomfortable. I could divine that he was thinking me deranged or intoxicated. My mind was in a state of bewilderment also at the sudden disappearance of the creature that a moment before had hung at my heels with all the quiet persistency of Fate. I stammered, strove to explain, found myself entangled in nervous foolishness rendered worse by e slightly contemptuous, steady gaze of the policeman. I leaped desperately out by the common exit from such embarrassments and tipped the policeman with the only coin I happened to have in my pocket. It was a half-crown. He smiled as I made off quickly, my ears burning.

“Thank God, at any rate I was freed from my enemy. With a bounding lightness of spirits I plunged into the vortex of traffic and made my way across the Circus. I was supremely happy. I remember smiling round at the garish lights, at the thronging people, at the poor, at the wealthy, at the flower-girls, at the vicious. I was glad, unutterably glad, like a prisoner just reprieved, to be among my kind, of whatever sort. I am not musical, but I found myself singing a trivial melody, picked up somewhere from a barrel-organ.

“Thus I proceeded on my way, going eastward, making, in fact, for the station, where I take train to my home some few miles farther down the line than this.

“I was somewhere in the Strand when suddenly I heard a girl who passed me say to her companion: 'Oh, what an ugly beast!' I turned sharply, an ice-cold hand clutching at my heart, and saw to my horror the white dog again at my heels. He looked up at me, and I fled with a cry, down a side-street. The dog followed easily.

“In wild terror I ran as fast as my strength, never great, would permit. It was useless, of course. The dog found no difficulty in keeping up with me. I stopped at last from sheer exhaustion, and the creature seemed to grin at my distress. Had a policeman been visible, I would have tried. again to hand it over to him, convinced though I was that the attempt would be in vain.

“One means of escape presented itself to me, but I could not avail myself of it. I might have called a taxicab, but I had no money. I ought to have tried that way first.

“A wild rage seized me. I rushed at the dog, kicking at him furiously. The animal dodged me with ease. I could not touch him. I ran on again.

“Thus, now running in mad panic, now walking with the slow deliberation of settled despair, I continued on my way, and always the dog followed. Why I did not go in another direction and throw the animal off the scent, I do not know. My one leading idea was to get home, and perhaps subconsciously I knew that, whatever stratagems I tried, the dog was not to be shaken from his trail.

“I was almost demented with terror when unexpectedly salvation showed itself, my station was not many hundred yards distant—I was in Broad Street, I think—when suddenly there was a snarl and a furious barking behind me. A large dog, belonging to some passer-by, had sprung at my enemy, and they were locked in desperate fight. In a few seconds a crowd collected. I saw a policeman hastening up. It was my chance. With all that remained to me of strength I ran toward the station.

Illustration: All through my indisposition the specter of that white dog dominated not only my dreams but every waking thought.

“I heard voices calling after me, but I heeded them not. The sounds of angry strife continued, muffled, and lent me hope and speed. Calling up every energy, I raced along, sped down the approach, saw that it wanted but the fraction of a minute to seven-thirty, dashed through the gate, which clanged behind me and flung myself into the train for home just as it started. I thought I was safe. As I put my hand out of the window to shut the door, I heard a commotion at the gate. I looked out and saw the dog struggling with the officials, vainly striving to leap the barrier. We moved out of the station, leaving him behind.”

He stopped, looking at his host. Mr. Gilchrist gasped and nodded. The stranger continued:

“For a few exultant minutes I thought that I was saved. But presently, as I calmed and my reason began to work, I realized that 'they' had gained their point. They had only to watch and wait. On the morrow, a human emissary of my foes would accompany the dog over the trail, starting at the same time, arriving within a few minutes of seven-thirty at that station platform. From that the direction, at least, of my home could easily be deduced. Convinced,that sooner or later I should be journeying on that line, they had only to watch and wait till I appeared. I knew that there was no hope for me, that my doom was certain.

“I reached home, in a turmoil of fears, and fell ill. For a week I did not leave the house, and all through my indisposition the specter of that white dog dominated not only my dreams but every waking thought. I could see it looking out at me from under the furniture, sitting with patient eyes on my every movement, in corners of the house, barring my way to the door, if I wished to enter or leave a room. It haunted me, kept me at an excruciating point of mental anguish.

“This morning, however, I felt better, and my business imperatively claiming my attention after a week of absence, I decided to go to town.

“I LEFT the house with the feeling of a man who goes out to execution. Nevertheless, human nature revolted at the prospect of dying without resistance, and I went armed. In my pocket was a revolver which had belonged to my father. He had fought in the Indian Mutiny. I was born in India myself. Some of his fighting instincts arose in me as I walked down to the station fingering the weapon in my pocket.

“Dread oppressed me as I entered the train and journeyed cityward. I felt that I was going to meet my fate. None the less I went about my business, and all day nothing occurred, save moments of fear, to alarm me. I made up my mind to return by a midday train,—would that I had done so!—though perhaps it would have made no difference. So great a press of work awaited me, however, that it was impossible. One hindrance after another stood in my way and with rapidly rising fears, I was forced to remain and see the time slip away until the only train that remained to me was the seven-thirty.

“My office is a little room at the top of a large building. I keep no clerk. Most or all of the other workers in the building had left while I was still writing letters, and the solitude which broods over the city in the evening weighed more and more oppressively on me every minute. My nerves were already at stretch when I heard something thrust into the letter-box. I jumped to my feet, trembling with premonitions. I heard no footfall along the passage. After a moment when my heart seemed to stop, I went to the box, and to my horror—drew out a piece of paper identical with the one pushed into my hand a week before. It bore the same solemn words: 'Prepare to meet thy Judge,' and nothing more. I believe I reeled and staggered. I know that in a flash of frenzy I flung the door wide and rushed into the passage. I could have sworn—I could swear it now—that I saw the white dog slink round the corner a few yards along the corridor.

“Trembling in every limb, my head on fire, I hastily locked up the office and made my way to the station. The building seemed quite deserted as I left it. I saw no sign of the white dog. Choosing the most frequented thoroughfares I soon reached the terminus without any cause for alarm. I remember that my heart beat so violently as to make me feel faint as I passed the barrier. I scarcely dared look for the dog, but with an effort of will I did so and assured myself it was not there.

“I chose an unoccupied carriage and settled myself in it—waiting, with throbbing anxiety, for the few remaining minutes to slip away before the train was due to start. Those minutes seemed vast spaces of time in which the movement of the world had stopped, waiting for some catastrophe. At last I heard the bell ring. For one wild, exultant moment I thought that I was safe.

“Then, just as the train commenced to move, I saw a man running along the platform, holding a dog in leash. The animal strained powerfully at the lead, his nose to the ground. On the instant, I recognized it—the white dog! The door of my compartment was thrown open, and man and dog leaped in. A porter slammed the door after them, and we were moving fast out of the station. Short of throwing myself on the rails there was no escape possible.

“The man was dressed in the garb of a clergyman. He was a large, powerfully built fellow, strength of mind and body marked all over him. He nodded and smiled at me as he drew a long breath to recover his wind and sat down. The dog slunk under the seat, where it lay watching me with steady eyes.

“I cowered in my corner in terror. Had I wished to speak, I could not have done so. The sight of one of my all-powerful foes, visible for the first time, fascinated me. I could not take my eyes from him. Occasionally he looked up at me from his newspaper with a slow, quiet smile which seemed to say: 'All right, my friend. I'll deal with you presently.'

“THE train clanged and banged over the switches and gathered speed for its rush into the dark night and the loneliness of the country-side. Minute after minute I sat there in panic, watching him, agonized every now and then by that terrible sure smile with which he glanced at me. The silence in the carriage was the oppressive silence which awaits a tragedy to break it with a lightning-flash.

“Mile after mile the train raced on, and nothing happened. The suspense was maddening me. My lips were dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I could feel a cold sweat beading my forehead. I took out my handkerchief to wipe it, and a piece of paper fluttered to the ground, close to his feet. I recognized it. It was the second warning. Before I could move, the man bent to pick it up. He handed it to me with that meaning smile and said, with awful quietness: 'Are you prepared?'

“I started with terror and felt something hurt the hand which all the time had been gripping the revolver in my pocket. It was the tense pressure of my finger on the weapon.

“The man nodded and smiled at me again. I gasped, feeling certain that my hour had come. With the fascination of a man trapped and bound, I saw him bend sideways and put his hand into his hip pocket. Instantly—I know not how—there was a deafening report in the carriage, and a film of smoke floated between me and him. He sank to the floor. He rolled slightly with his last gasp, his arm outflung. I had killed him! I stood fixed with horror. In his hand was—not a revolver, but a tobacco-pipe.

“For a moment my senses left me. I knew nothing. I was brought to consciousness by a sharp pain in my leg. The white dog held me in a savage grip, growling in a manner frightful to hear. Frenzy overcame me; I kicked and fought in vain. Then, suddenly recollecting the revolver in my hand, I pressed it to his head and fired. I was free. Free? No, trapped in the swaying carriage splashed with blood, its floor heaped with the large body of the man I had killed. The train was racing along at top speed. In five or ten minutes more we should stop and the crime would be discovered. Mad with horror, I rushed to the door, opened it, flung myself into the black night. I remember the roar of the train passing me as I rolled down the embankment, have an impression of a bright light whisked away, and then I lost consciousness.

“When my senses returned, I saw the light in your house. Clambering over a wall, I made my way to it, fainting, scarce able to walk, but frantic, it seems to me, for help. You kindly took me in. For the moment I have respite, but 'they' have triumphed. By their cunning manipulation of the forces behind Life, I have been tricked into murdering one who to all outward semblance was an innocent man. In a day or two I shall be standing in the dock, and finally my life will be violently cut short by my fellow-men, accompanied by every circumstance of ignominy. Fully, indeed, are they revenged!

“Now, sir, you know my story; and if, after hearing it, you care to call in the local police—”

AT that moment there was a sound of carriage-wheels on the road. They stopped just in front of the house. The stranger sprang to his feet. His eyes swept round the room in a swift, panic-stricken quest for concealment. Then, crying: “No! They shall not take me! They shall not take me!” he rushed from the room.

Mr. Gilchrist, still spellbound by the story to which he had been so intently listening, stood for a moment as though paralyzed, staring at the open door. A familiar whistle from outside, a cheery call—“Gilchrist! Gilchrist!”—gave him back his faculties. It was Williamson—thank God!

Mr. Gilchrist ran out into the hall, found the front door still open from the stranger's abrupt departure, peered out into the dark night intensified by the two staring eyes of Williamson's gig-lamps.

“Come in, Williamson!” he called. His voice was joyous with relief. As he spoke, he heard swift feet upon the gravel. The words had barely left his mouth when a violent collision knocked him breathless against the doorpost. It was the stranger, back again!

“The white dog! The white dog!” he gasped in terror.

Mr. Gilchrist clutched at him and fought for breath to speak.

“But my dear sir—” he began irritably. This was absurd! Of course there was a dog—the harmless old white bull which was Williamson's invariable companion. He tried to explain, but the stranger, tugging frantically to get free, would listen to nothing. With the strength of a madman he wrenched himself from Gilchrist's detaining grasp and fled into the house.

Williamson, preceded by his old dog, came up the gravel-path.

“All alone?” he asked cheerily.

Mr. Gilchrist hesitated—and then, obeying an obscure impulse, lied.

“Er—yes,” he replied. “Come in.”

The absurdity of the falsehood occurred to him at once. Cursing his folly, he tried to think of some plausible explanation as he led his friend to the dining-room, where, of course, the stranger's presence would stultify his ridiculous statement. He glanced round the room as he entered. It was empty! Where, then? His eyes rested on a suspicious bulging of the window-curtain.

He waved his friend to a chair.

“Sit down,” he said with an assumption of normality. “What's the news?”

“There's news right enough,” said Williamson, dropping into the proffered seat. “Terrible business on the seven-thirty tonight. Poor old Hepplewhite—shot dead—he and his dog. Ghastly struggle, evidently—blood over everything!”

“Good God!” ejaculated Gilchrist, chilled with a sudden horror. He had given no real credence to his visitor's fantastic story. This brutal contact with the reality paralyzed him in an awful terror at his own false position. What was to be done? He strove to think—played for time. “And the murderer?” he asked, thickly.

“Escaped—for the moment,” replied Williamson in a tone that suggested confidence in the police. “Here, Tiger! Come here!” He addressed the dog, which was sniffing uneasily about the room.

The dog came up to him obediently, wagging his stump of tail. He carried in his mouth a piece of folded paper which he had picked up and now presented to his master. Gilchrist recognized it with a little shock as his friend opened it.

“Prepare to meet thy Judge!” Williamson read out with mock solemnity, and smiled in superior tolerance of the evangelist enthusiasm which had printed the leaflet.

Gilchrist shuddered and thought suddenly of the terrified man behind the curtain, dimly realizing the significance to that overwrought brain of these fatal words. He glanced at the betraying bulge, saw it move slightly.

Williamson smiled down into the intelligent eyes of his old dog.

“Tiger, old fellow,” he said jocularly, “you've made a mistake—you've brought this message to the wrong man. It is evidently meant for the person who shot poor old Hepplewhite. Here,”—he held it out to the dog,—“take it to him. Find him!”

The dog took the paper in his jaws, wagged his tail with a comprehending look up at his master, and ran, following the scent which was on the paper, across the room. He stopped, pawing at the bulged curtain.

Williamson stared after him in amusement.

“Is he there, Tiger?” he said, humoring the intelligent animal. “Have you found him?”

Gilchrist stood speechless. What was coming next?

The curtain was flung suddenly aside.

The old gentleman stood revealed, stepped forward into the room. His bulbous eyes were unwholesomely bright.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I surrender. You have won. I might, of course, shoot you,”—he took a revolver from his pocket,—“as I shot your confederate in the train tonight. But I recognize that it would be useless. Your Society would raise up yet other avengers—”

Both Gilchrist and Williamson had shrunk back in alarm from that brandished revolver—were unable, in their astonishment, to utter a word. They could only stare, bewildered.

The old gentleman looked down at the dog which still offered him the paper.

“I understand—perfectly,” he said with a grim appreciation of some subtlety which eluded them. “In a better cause, I should admire the ingenuity with which you have utilized means which are apparently of the simplest. I do homage to your powers, gentlemen. Or perhaps you yourselves are only half-conscious tools of that occult force you think you control—that occult force which has, with such singular completeness, worked my ruin.” There was a sneer in his voice. He turned to Gilchrist. “As for you, sir, I congratulate you on your faculty of dissimulation. You gulled me excellently well. I can only bow in acknowledgment of the supreme irony with which you beguiled me into telling you the miserable story which, of course, you already knew far better than I. I do not grudge you your triumph. It was superbly well-planned. You held me without suspicion whilst you awaited the arrival—for the last time—of the symbol of my doom—the white dog!” His smile was an illumination of savage sarcasm.

THERE was a pause of silence in which Williamson glanced inquiringly at his friend.

The old gentleman laughed in a mirthless mockery which was hideous to hear.

“But now, face to face at last with you whose monstrous plot I was at least able to detect, if I could not baffle it—I yet cheat you!” he cried. “I cheat you of your complete vengeance! You thought to condemn me to the ignominy of a murderer's trial!” He laughed again. “I elude you—thus!”

With a quick movement he raised the revolver and fired.

The two friends, after the moment in which they recovered from the shock, bent over his body.

“I don't understand!” said Williamson, horror-stricken and mystified. “Who and what was he?”

Gilchrist answered him in one terse word.

“Mad,” he replied, pushing away the white dog, which sniffed innocently at the body.

There will be another unusual story by F. Britten Austin in an early issue of THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE.