Читать книгу The Dancer In Red - Fergus Hume - Страница 3

So incredible is this tale that I expect few to believe it. Nevertheless, it is not only true, but happened within the last decade. The names of the places and the characters are changed, it is true; I write, too, under a nom-de-plume; but the incidents are set down just as they took place. I can vouch for their truth, for I was an eye-witness of many. The rest I heard from the chief actor in this drama—or perhaps I should say melodrama, if not tragedy—for it is as moving as the most sensational play. And true! Do not forget that—absolutely true. That is the horror of the thing.

As a busy London physician, I have a great deal of hard work to get through; and it is always a pleasure when I can take an occasional holiday for the recuperation of body and mind. Being a bachelor and well-to-do, I have less difficulty than I otherwise would have in making extended trips, so that frequently I go far afield in search of enjoyment and relaxation.

One night in June I was seated in my study, turning over the leaves of a Continental Bradshaw, and wondering what country I should explore on my coming holiday, when the door opened and Hugh Tancred entered hurriedly. Tancred is my cousin, and as we were at school and college together has been free of my house these many years. I was surprised to see him just then, as two months before he had gone to Spain, and I had no idea that he was back in town.

“My dear fellow,” I cried, jumping up with outstretched hands, “I am glad to—. Good God, man, what is the matter?”

And indeed it was no wonder I was startled, for his appearance was such as to dismay a person much less nervous than myself. The ruddy-faced hale young man I had known was as white as any ghost, and every whit as spare. His cheeks were wan, his eyes had in them a startled expression, and the clothes hung loosely on his once stalwart figure. Two months before, when he had started for Spain, he had been the very picture of health; now he might have been, if not a spectre, a patient convalescent from the nearest hospital. He was in a sad state of fright, too —I saw that at once; for his breath came and went in quick gasps, and he hastened to lock the door. Then he flung himself into my arms and gripped me in a mortal terror.

“Dick,” he gasped, glancing back at the door, “Dick, save me!”

“What on earth is the matter?”

“Hell has broken loose!” was his extraordinary reply. “Do you hear the guitar? Listen!”

He paused, but no sound broke the stillness. With a sob of relief he pitched forward into the nearest chair.

“They have missed me!” he said under his breath. “Thank God!”

I stared at the shaking figure in bewilderment. The sudden appearance of Tancred, his inexplicable agitation and his sickly appearance, amazed me beyond measure. When I was able to collect my scattered wits sufficiently for action, the professional habit came uppermost. I must calm him. Going to my medicine chest, I mixed a stiff dose of valerian and bromide, and handed it to him.

“Drink this, Hugh. Tut! tut! you are spilling it man.” And so he was; for his hand shook so with nervousness that I had to hold the glass to his lips. When he had got it down I fingered his pulse, and found it leaping and throbbing in the most extraordinary way. His whole body trembled, and his teeth were chattering. I saw well enough that the man had not been drinking, yet from his appearance and behaviour he might have been recovering from a prolonged debauch.

“You’ll take care of me, Dick,” he whispered, with a scared look at the door.

“Yes, yes; no one shall hurt you here. Lie down for a few moments,”

Hugh nodded, and leaning on my arm staggered to the sofa. Then, as I expected, came a nerve storm which shook him to the very core of his being. He cried and choked hysterically, trembled in every limb, gripped at the cushions, and swung his head from side to side with his teeth rattling like castanets. It was a terrible sight even to a hardened doctor like myself. Hugh had always been highly strung and prone to nervous attacks, yet I had never seen him quite so bad as he was on this night.

In time the drug did its work, and he became sufficiently calm to explain the cause of his agitation. He told me the story in whispers, clutching my hand the while; and the matter of his narrative was so extraordinary that I was half-inclined to put a good deal of it down hallucination. Nevertheless, what was credible sufficiently accounted for his terror.

“Six weeks ago, I was in Seville,” he said “all alone. I did not want any chattering companion to spoil my pleasure. I put up at a good hotel, and hired a guide to show me the sights of the city. I saw them all—the Cathedral, the tobacco factories, the Giralda and the famous Torre del Oro of Don Pedro. Then I was anxious to see the gipsy quarter, as I had heard so much of the beautiful women to be found there. My guide was willing to take me, but mentioned that I had better not be too attentive to any of the girls, as the Gitane are excessively jealous of strangers, and as likely as not I should get into trouble. I promised to be careful. But you know Dick how inflammable I am where a woman is concerned.”

“I know; so you got into trouble?”

“Of the worst.” He shuddered. “Trouble which has made me the wreck you see; trouble which is not yet over.” He put his lips to my ear. “They mean to murder me!”

“The gipsies? Nonsense!”

“It is true. The Mosaic law, Dick: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ ” After a pause, Hugh added slowly, “I killed a man.”

“You—killed—a—man?” I cried, horrified.

“It was this way, Dick,” continued my unfortunate cousin, rapidly. “In the gipsy quarter, I went to a kind of open-air theatre. A girl was dancing—a beautiful Gitana with large black eyes and a most wonderful figure. She was dressed in red—red as blood. I should have been warned by the colour.” He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and panted. “But I was foolish. She smiled on me, and I—well I lost my head, I suppose. I never saw so beautiful a woman. She had some kind of mesmeric influence over me. When she smiled I took a flower out of my coat, and cast it at her feet. There was a man near me, handsome, but savage in his looks and bearing. He said something under his breath, and looked angrily at me. The guide laid his hand on my arm, and tried to get me away. I shook him off, as I wished to speak with Lola before going.”

“Was her name Lola?”

“Lola Fajardo. The audience called out her name as she danced. I called it out, too.”

“You must have been mad or drunk, Hugh.”

“The latter, I think. It was after dinner, and I am not used to fiery Spanish wines. Yet I can carry a good deal, as you know. I was merely excited, but the beauty and alluring glances of Lola threw me into a kind of intoxicated state. For the time I could see no one but her. She swam before me in her strange dance, like Salome before Herod.”

“Rubbish. I want prose, not poetry.”

“I am telling you facts!” cried Tancred, vehemently. “She danced with a dried human head in her hands. It was the dance of Salome—the daughter of Herodias. And she juggled with the head as she swung and swayed to the music. Ah!” he uttered a sharp cry—“the music! That’s what haunts me. There were words to it—horrible words. I got the guide to translate them to me. I have made a verse of them in English. Listen!”

Hugh rose from the sofa, and balancing the cushion in his hands, danced about the room to his own singing. The music he sang was weird enough; the words as he sang them nothing short of horrible!

“See in the dance pass, repass,

My hands, my feet, my garments red;

The daughter of Herodias,

And this my John the Baptist’s head;”

“Hugh! Hugh!” I stopped the terrible performance, and pulled him down on to the sofa. “Be calm, man,” I said; “you will make yourself thoroughly ill. Tell me how the trouble occurred.”

“Lola caused it,” he said. “She finished her dance, and stepped down to collect money. As she held out her tambourine to me she looked into my face with an alluring smile. I dropped a gold piece into it. Then—I was mad, I think—I kissed her arm.”

“In such a place! You fool!”

“She drew it away angrily, and the young man bounded forward. He had a knife in his hand—a navaja. Lola shrieked, and the crowd shouted. I don’t know how it happened, but I got possession of the navaja, and—and—and I killed him!”

“Great God! You killed him!”

“Yes; the knife pierced his heart, Dick. I remember as in a dream the shouting, swaying crowd, the yellow lights, and the man lying dead there, with the blood spurting in jets from his breast. Lola flung herself on his body, and my guide catching me by the arm hurried me away. Some one extinguished the lights, and so we escaped. The police came, and there was a terrible riot, but I was safe.”

“Did not your guide deliver you up?”

“I paid him a hundred pounds not to do so. He made me leave Seville that night, and took me to Gibraltar. But the gipsies found me out, and followed.”

“Did you see them?”

“No; I heard the music—the music of the dance. It haunted me all the time. I caught a P. and O. steamer for Malta, and on board I heard that infernal guitar. Then again in Malta I heard it. Thence I crossed to Sicily—to Italy—went to Germany, to Switzerland, to Paris, but go where I would, the sound of that music still rang in my ears. To-night, as I was getting my luggage at Victoria, there it was again. I could see no one in the crowd, but I heard the music. I—I came on here, and—the music; Hark!”

His voice leaped to an alto, and he fell back into my arms. As I am a living man, I heard the notes of a guitar in the street. The music was like that which Hugo sang—wild, strange and fascinating. I tried to get to the window, but Tancred clutched me. “No, no,” he implored. “Don’t open it, don’t—” His voice died away in his throat, and he rolled limply on the floor in a faint. There was no time to waste. I sprang to the window. As I opened it the guitar ceased; and when I looked down into the moonlit street, no one was about. Unstrung and puzzled I returned to the unconscious man.

* * * * * * *

For three weeks Hugh lay in my house, hovering between life and death. The excitement consequent on his crime, and the haunting of the guitarist brought on brain fever. I called in another medical man, and we did all in our power to save him. In the end we succeeded; yet it was almost a pity we took the trouble to drag him back from the grave. Others, more powerful and unscrupulous than we, were bent on his death. All we did was to retard the fatal moment. It was bound to come, as the guitar had warned us.

There was no hallucination about that music. I heard it distinctly. So did my confrère. But by placing Hugh in a back room we managed to keep it from his ears. The sound of it would have killed him. I tried to catch the player. Knowing that Hugh had murdered a man, I did not think it wise to seek the aid of the police. It is best to let sleeping dogs lie; and since Tancred had managed to escape from Spain, I did not care to risk the chance of his being extradited back again, to answer for his crime. I felt terribly worried by my position. It is no light matter, first to have to save a man’s life and thereafter to have to protect it.

I never saw the player. At times, both by night and day, I heard the strum, strum, strum of that infernal tune, until I knew it every note backwards. Once I even caught myself whistling it. Whenever it struck my ear I would rush out into the street and make a search for the musician. But it was always in vain. Once or twice I asked a policeman, and was informed that the guitar was played by a hunchback accompanied by a very beautiful woman. I had no doubt but that this latter was Lola, and that she was on the track of her lover’s murderer. Hugh had told me that the dead man had been her lover. That she was not here without design I felt certain, though it was impossible exactly to surmise what it might be. When later on I learned it I marvelled at its cruelty.

In due time Hugh recovered, and with his returning health and reason came the thought of his sin in Seville. In answer to his questions about the guitar music, I swore, God forgive me, that I had never heard it since the night he was taken ill. I was apprehensive that if he remained in England and in my house he would certainly hear it, and then I feared lest he might lose his reason permanently. Such a situation required very strong measures, so I took two passages to the Cape and arranged to accompany Hugh there on a long holiday. So that he should not by any chance hear the thing, I drugged him before we left the house, and it was in a quasi insensible condition that he was taken on board the steamer. And it was as well I had taken this precaution, for sure enough, as we drove round the corner of Harley Street there came the sound of it.

“Now we are safe!” said I, as the liner breasted the waves of the Channel. “Here at least your gipsy friends cannot follow us.”

“I hope not!” murmured Hugh, anxiously, “God grant indeed they may give it up and go back to Spain. Why does Lola persecute me so, I wonder! It was a pure accident I killed her lover. He attacked me first; he—”

“Old man,” I said seriously, “I want you not to talk about this at all. Try and forget; get the thing out of your mind altogether if you can.”

And I believe he did try his best, but I am pretty sure he did not succeed. However, knowing it vexed me, he did not refer to it at all, and when we arrived in South Africa, the novelty of the country and the surrounding life gave him other interests. His wasted form filled out well, and again his face became ruddy, and he began to show every sign of recovered health. There were times even when he was quite merry, and laughed like he used to do. At the end of six months he was completely restored; and although not infrequently a dark shadow rested on his face, he was for the most part cheerful.

“And now, Hugh,” said I to him one day, “it is about time I returned to my patients, whom I think I have neglected long enough. But you take my advice and remain here.”

“No!” he said obstinately. “I have quite got over all that folly. The death of that gipsy was due to pure accident; and even if Lola haunts me with that music, I can laugh at it and her now. I am sane again. I expect she has long since given up her pursuit of revenge, and returned to Spain.”

I thought so, too, and said as much. Still I suggested that Hugh should not remain in London on his return. His fever had left him even more excitable than he had been before, and I thought it best in every way that he should live in the country.

“You are right, Dick,” he asserted. “I shall go down to ‘The Cage.’ This was a lonely mansion placed amidst the Essex fens at no great distance from the sea, and which descended to Hugh from an ancestor. It was a dreary and desolate dwelling, and this I remarked to Hugh.

“It is not cheerful,” replied Hugh, indifferently.

“But it is quiet, and far from civilisation; so I don’t think Lola, even if she be still in England, which I doubt, will follow me there. I can ride and read, and use my camera. Peace is what I require, and at ‘The Cage’ I shall secure it.”

As Tancred was now well, and strong, and sane, I made no further opposition. We returned to England, and he remained a week in my house. Then he went down to Essex; and I am glad to say that in spite of my apprehensions not a note of that cursed guitar was heard. Evidently Hugh was right. Lola had given up her vengeance.

Within a month I was undeceived on this point. A hastily scrawled letter from Hugh informed me that he had heard the guitar music. “Not only that” went on the note, “but I have seen the red dancer—seen Lola—with a head in her hands. It is the head of the man I killed. Come down, for God’s sake. I am going mad.”

To this despairing appeal there was but one answer possible for me. I hastily packed a portmanteau, slipped a revolver into my pocket, and caught the first train. My cousin’s factotum, Jabez Crane, met me at the station with the dogcart, and forthwith we started upon the twelve-mile drive to “The Cage.”

I never could bring myself to like Jabez. He was the man who looked after the Essex property, and with his hag of a wife, lived at “The Cage.” They were a couple of ogres—misanthropes—savages. They resembled strongly those atrocious characters in that remarkable book “Wuthering Heights.” There was little of humanity about either of them; and they both hated Hugh on account of some fancied injury which his father had done them. Often and often I had advised Hugh to discharge them, but he continued to employ them, which was surprising, considering their malice and stupidity. I think it was sheer indolence on his part. Embedded like toads in a rock they had vegetated at “The Cage” for twenty years or more. Only when it was too late did I know what I had done in sending Tancred to keep company with these ourangoutangs.

“Is Mr. Tancred ill?” I asked Jabez, as the cart swung out of the station.

“Ees, he be!” grunted the creature.

“Have you seen any gipsies about “The Cage?”

“Naw, I ain’t.”

“A hunchback and a woman, for instance?”

“I’ve seed nowt.”

“Have you heard any music?”

“Ees, I have.”

“And you have seen no one? Nothing?”

“I’ve seed nowt!” repeated Jabez, who all through this conversation had replied in three words. Clearly there was nothing to be got out of the sulky brute. It may be he knew more than he chose to confess. I was aware that he bore no goodwill towards his master. On the other hand, he might be as ignorant as he professed to be. I could catch no glimpse of Tancred’s persecutor in London, so why should Jabez be more fortunate in Essex. All the same, on glancing at the animal face of the man, on recollecting the lonely position of “The Cage” and the invisible presence of the gipsies, I congratulated myself on the possession of my revolver. That at least was useful defence against the perils amid which I was about to enter.

The first glance assured me that Tancred had slipped back into his old state of half-insane fear. His white and haggard face, his shifting, glittering eyes, betrayed the torture of his mind, and as we sat over the fire after dinner he told me about the coming of the gipsy devils.

“They mean to drive me mad!” he whispered, huddling in abject fear to my side. “Lola no doubt deems death too light a punishment for my crime. It is her intention to wreck me body and soul. Oh, that music—that music!” And he began to sing:—

“ ‘See in the dance I pass, repass,

My hands, my feet, my—’ ”

“Drop it Hugh,” I interrupted, throwing my arm round his shoulder. The poor fellow was shaking like a leaf. “Tell me; have you seen her?”

“Yes; in the long gallery, under the painted window. At midnight last week the music drew me out of bed. I followed it to the gallery, and in the moonlight Lola danced, with that head in her hands. I saw the face; it was that of the man I killed.”

“How could you recognise the face in the moonlight?”

“She rolled the head towards me like a ball. It bounded and spun along the gallery, and twirled like a top at my feet. The moon showed me the features of the dead. I fainted, and when I came to myself it was gone. She was gone; the music was gone,”

“Hugh, you must get away from here in the morning.”

“No, I shall stay. I’ve had enough of this torture. Here I shall await my doom. These devils have cornered me.”

“Then show fight.”

Tancred whimpered.

“I can’t show fight,” he cried fretfully. “I am worn out—done for. The end is coming, and I shall await it here.”

From this determination I couldn’t move him. Terrified and ill as he was, he refused to leave “The Cage.” Had I possessed the power, I would have removed him by force; but Jabez and his wife would do nothing, and I could not leave him, to get assistance. My absence even for a day would only have precipitated the end, and that was to come soon enough.

Constantly that weird music buzzed and hummed about the house. It was here, and there, and everywhere; and in spite of all my searching the musician eluded me. “The Cage” was a rambling ruinous mansion, full of secret doors and passages and hiding holes. Jabez knew them all; and seeing that the gipsies contrived to remain invisible, I strongly suspected him of being in league with them. He denied the charge when I made it, and I had no means of proving my words. So here I was shut up in a half-furnished lonely barrack of a house, with a terrified creature who would not leave it, with invisible foes to combat on his behalf, and with the knowledge of a devilish conspiracy against the reason of an unfortunate man. The situation was uncanny enough to shake even my hardened nerves.

I did the best I could with Hugh. I dosed him with sedatives, kept him from over indulgence in drink, made him eat well, and forced him to take plenty of exercise. In his company I explored the neighbourhood, in the hope of coming upon Lola and her hunchback accomplice, but all in vain. The dreary fens, the sandy dunes, were bare of humanity. Once or twice on the beach of a little bay I found the marks of tiny feet, and again the indentation of a boat’s keel driven into the slushy sand. Evidently these demons came from the sea to pursue their nefarious work; but they never appeared in the day-time, and I could not discover where they lurked. It was no use asking Jabez. He gave no sign, either by word or deed, of his knowledge of these things. Neither did his wife; yet I had a firm conviction that the pair had been bought over to lend their aid to the accomplishment of Lola’s vengeance.

After a week of fruitless search and constant music-hauntings, I resolved to inveigle Hugh over those twelve miles to the railway station, and carry him back to London—by force, if needs be. To this end I announced one night at dinner that I intended to return to town. As I anticipated, Tancred objected, “For God’s sake do not leave me, Dick.”

“My dear Hugh, I cannot remain here for an indefinite period. My practice makes it imperative that I return to London, but I will come down again shortly.”

“To find me dead!”

Mrs. Crane was waiting at the table, and I fancied the old witch chuckled at these words. However, when I looked round sharply, her face was as devoid of expression as the wall. So thinking that I was mistaken, I resumed my conversation with her master.

“If you’re afraid of dying, Hugh, come with me to London.”

“No, no; I’ll face death here.”

“At least you will see me off to-morrow at the station?”

Tancred seemed to wince at this. “Then you are bent on going?”

“I must go. Man alive! Think of my patients. I have done what I could.”

“I know, I know. You have been very good, very kind; but you will return?”

“Oh, yes; in ten days or so I will come down for a spell.”

“In that case I don’t mind so much being left now.”

“You’ll come and see me off to-morrow, Hugh?”

“Certainly. That is a small thing to ask.”

In this way the matter was settled, much to my relief; for I had determined that when I got Hugh to the station I would do everything in my power to induce him to come to London. If necessary I would use force. Anything rather than that he should remain here at the peril of his reason and his life.

That night a great storm came up from the sea. The wind roared and moaned round the empty shell of the house, the rain whipped the streaming panes, and the moon was obscured by a rack of ragged clouds.

Hugh’s room was next to mine, and about midnight I entered, to find him sleeping peacefully. The man’s nerves were worn out. His slumber was that of sheer exhaustion. Nevertheless I was glad that nature had come to his relief at so critical a moment. I turned away to seek my bed again. In the dark passage I could hear the weird music of the guitar, and the sound, coming as it did in the lull of the storm, struck at my heart.

Determined to find and face the gipsies, I hastily threw on some clothes, grasped my revolver, and with a small lamp proceeded to explore the house. Overhead the storm again began to shriek and whistle; then, occasionally, came the pad, pad, pad of bare feet. Like Ferdinand in “the Tempest,” I followed the strain that mocked and sang in the darkness ahead.

The invisible musician knew the house better than I, for he or she eluded me at every turn. At times the strain would die away in the distance, again it would sound so close to my ear as to make me jump, and then I would hear a hard chuckle. Round and round the house I followed it—downstairs to the hall, through the empty drawing-room, up the vacant attics, but never did I get any closer to it. It twanged and hummed that devilish melody till my nerves ached with reiteration of it. I stole along cautiously in its wake; I ran into dark corners, hoping to seize the player, but in vain. It might have been a thing of air that played. I heard, but I could not see.

Suddenly, with the twang as of a snapped string, it ceased, and the silence closed in. Even the wind had ceased to roar, and was now moaning round the gables as a thing in pain. With sudden resolution I flew down to the quarters of Jabez and hammered at the door. Both he and his wife came to it in their nightdresses, just as they had sprung out of bed. My suspicions of the pair vanished.

“Did you hear the music?”

“Ay—I heard ‘un.”

“Come with me then, to look for these gipsies.”

“I know nowt o’ gipsies. They be devils I tell ‘ee.”

“All the same you must help me to find them.”

Jabez grumbled, but my tone was peremptory, so he shuffled on his trousers and came with me. For a time there was silence; then the thrumming of the guitar recommenced overhead.

“It’s in the gall’ry!”whispered Jabez, and grasped more tightly the stick he carried.

Without answering, I ran up the stairs, with the man at my heels. We burst into the long gallery, and there we saw a sight of dread. The moon clear of clouds, poured in floods of silver light through the windows, making the gallery like day. At the far end, where the radiance was strongest, a tall figure leaped and spun to music, coming from I know not where. I crept near enough to see that the dancer was a beautiful girl in red garments. She was grasping a human head by the hair, and juggled with it as with a ball.

The sight of that ghastly dance made my heart sick. To add to the horror of it the woman began to sing, in a low sweet voice. I could bear it no longer, and with a shout I ran forward, raising my revolver as I ran. In a moment, as it seemed, the woman vanished, and my bullet smashed the glass of the window beneath which she had spun and leaped.

“Maister, maister,” roared Jabez, grasping my arm, “she be pixy for sure.”

“Let go my arm, you fool!”

But he held on, his face grey with terror, urging me to retreat. I shook him off. I ran forward, and at the end of the gallery I found an open door. Through this I sprang, hurled myself down some stone steps, and emerged into the garden. Two figures leaped and ran, making for the beach. I tried to follow; but clad as I was, the stones and brambles cut my feet and I stumbled and fell at the hedge. When I got up again the two figures had dipped behind the sandhill, and were beyond reach. But I had no doubt that I had seen Lola and her hunchback accomplice at their devilish work.

The thought recalled Hugh, and I ran back. Jabez was waiting for me at the door with the lamp, and his face wore an expression of abject fear. I was afraid of the effect this midnight alarm would have on Hugh, and snatching the lamp from the man’s shaking hand I hurried into the house and up the stairs.

“Hugh, Hugh, are you there?”

The figure on the bed gave no answer, made no movement. I thought that he had fainted perhaps, and I held the lamp to his face. There was no face; no head. The man had been decapitated.

* * * * * * *

Two years after the death of Tancred I was in Spain for the second time. My first visit had been made with the object of discovering Lola Fajado, and bringing her to book for the murder of my cousin. But although I had taken an English detective with me, and although every assistance had been afforded me by the Spanish Government, she could not be found. I fancy she must have gone to the gipsies of Hungary or Russia, or lost herself somewhere beyond the Balkans. At all events my search was in vain, and for the time being she escaped the penalty of her crime.

The Cranes likewise got off free. I was certain that Jabez had been bribed by Lola to show her the secret passages and exits of “The Cage” but he swore, and his wife swore, that they had neither of them ever set eyes upon the gipsies. I must say that, although I believed it was the misanthropical hatred Jabez had for Hugh that led him to play into Lola’s hands in order to frighten him, as well as the factotum’s desire to get his master away from the house, yet I believe he was horrified as was I myself at the terrible tragedy. But whatever the two of them had had to do with the matter they had been wise enough to hold their tongues, and were discharged, as the saying is, without a stain upon their characters. I heard afterwards that they had gone to America; but whether this was true or not, I could not be certain. However, as by the death of Hugh I became the owner of “The Cage” I did not permit them to return there, being satisfied in my own mind that they were indirectly concerned in the crime. They vanished into the darkness best suited to their brutish natures, and I never saw them again.

As was afterwards discovered by detectives, Lola and her hunchback companion had made a fishing village some miles away their headquarters. Thence they came round in a boat at night to the little bay, on the sands of which I had found their footmarks. How they discovered “The Cage” or how they carried on their horrible conspiracy, I did not know then. But I learned the truth during my second visit to Spain.

It was a vague idea that Lola might return to Seville that drew me there. I knew that Spanish justice was lax, and that the Gitane were more or less independent of the law, so it was not unlikely that when the affair was forgotten the woman might venture back among her kinsfolk. I wished to see her, both to bring home the crime, and to recover Tancred’s head, which she had taken with her on that fatal night. For all I knew, she might be using it for her dance. She had certainly juggled with it in the long gallery. But I did not know that until it was too late.

On arriving in Seville I sent for the guide who had been with Hugh on the evening Lola’s lover was killed. He came immediately, and was very frightened when I told him the object of my second visit. As luck would have it, Lola had stolen back, and was in the gipsy quarter at that time; but her accomplice had died in Hungary. The woman, with characteristic insolence, had changed neither her name nor her dance; and as all memory of the affair had died out, no attempt was made to arrest her. Moreover, I strongly suspected that the police had been bribed; but, of course, on this point I could not be certain. At all events she was free, and in Seville; and nightly danced her John the Baptist ballet, with whose head I trembled to think.

Manuel the guide implored me not to see Lola, as she was powerful in the gipsy quarter and there would be trouble. But I compromised the matter by agreeing to go in the character of a tourist, and to make no disturbance. The fact is I wished to see the woman for myself, and be quite certain as to her identity. I determined, too, that when I next went it would be with a posse of police to arrest her. However, with the second visit, Manuel, as I assured him, would have nothing to do.

Thus persuaded, and somewhat heavily bribed, Manuel one night escorted me to the gipsy quarter, and to a small open-air theatre. The seats were ranged in the form of a semi-circle, facing a low platform which was lit with flaring oil lamps. I placed myself directly in front of this, as close as I could get There was no fear of recognition. Lola had never seen me really.

The theatre was filled with gipsies—a most picturesque-looking lot they were—they were drinking, laughing, singing, and smoking the eternal cigarette. What with the colours of their ragged dresses, the yellow lustre of the lamps, and the purple arch of the starry sky roofing in the theatre, the scene was fascinating in the extreme. But I was too intent upon seeing my cousin’s murderess to take much interest in my surroundings, novel as they were.

There was first of all some singing of love ballads, which was followed by dancing with castanets. A gipsy violinist played like an angel and looked like a devil, and there was a famous Tziganda orcshetra from Buda-Pesth. About nine o’clock I heard the thrum of the guitar, and I had considerable difficulty in concealing my agitation. It played the weird music I knew so well—the music of that accursed dance.

To the sound of tumultuous applause Lola Fajardo glided on to the stage. She was a tall and beautiful woman, with large black eyes and a brown complexion. Her figure was superb, and she was lithe as a serpent in her movements. From head to foot she was swathed in a gauzy red garment, with a shawl of crimson silk floating from her shoulders. Golden sequins shone round her neck, her waist, and jingled in her streaming black hair, and at every movement she sparkled like a stream at noon-day. I never saw a more lovely and dangerous woman, and I no longer wondered that poor hot-blooded Hugh had lost his heart on that night.

Standing well to the front of the stage, she began to sway and swing to the music without moving her feet. This part of the dance was not unlike the Indian nautch. First she moved her head, then her body; her arms began to wave, and after a time her feet took part in these graceful movements. Quicker and quicker rang the music as the violins added their sweetness to the more mellow notes of the guitars, and with swift bounds and extraordinary twistings of her agile body Lola threw herself about the stage. Suddenly she came spinning down to the footlights in a circle; and with the glare full on her excited face and red garments, she snatched a head from under her shawl. As she held it up by the fair hair, and the light struck on its appaling whiteness, I sprang to my feet with a cry. It was the head of Hugh Tancred.

Lola, taking my cry as a tribute to her dramatic action, looking down on me with a gratified smile. But the smile died away in a look of horror; she dropped the head with a shriek, and rolled forward across the oil lamps. Before the audience could grasp the situation, a tongue of flame shot up the red dress, and in another moment she was reeling round the little stage, a pillar of live flame. Shriek after shriek pealed from her throat as the fire bit into her beautiful body. She fell prone and blazing like a funeral pyre: the audience surged forward on to the stage, and Manuel, grasping my arm, hurried me out of the theatre. He was terrified out of his wits at the danger we had escaped, so was I; but my terror was due to being an eye-witness of the horrible doom which had befallen that cruel woman.

The next morning a gipsy carrying a bag came to my hotel. On being shown into my room, he shook Hugh’s head out of the bag, and most earnestly advised me to leave Seville.

“Your life is not safe here, Senor,” he said hurriedly. “Lola bade me bring you this. She has paid for her wickedness—she is dead. If our people knew you were the cause of her accident they would surely kill you.”

“Lola dead?”

“Yes, she died at six o’clock this morning. She bade me urge you to fly. She was unwilling to have another man’s death upon her soul.”

“How did she recognise me?”

“She saw you with the man she killed, both in London and in the English country.”

“Why did she torture my cousin so?”

“To punish him for having slain her lover. She and Pepé the hunchback followed him to Gibraltar, to Malta, to Italy, to England. When you went away with the Senor whom they killed they waited in London and watched your house.”

“I know; I know. But how did they gain admission to it?”

“By paying much money to those who looked after it, Senor.”

So I was right after all. Jabez and his wife had been concerned in the matter, and no doubt had paid their own passages to America with the money they had received from Lola.

“The people showed Lola and Pepé all the secret places of the house; and so, Senor, they were able to watch you and yet remain hidden themselves. Lola grew tired of torturing the Senor. She was told by the woman that you would take him to London; so she made Pepé play you over the house while she cut off the Senor’s head.”

“Did she kill him in his sleep?”

The gipsy looked at me with an ambiguous smile.

“Nay, Senor; how should I know? Lola was cruel; it may be that she woke him to taunt him before she cut his throat.”

“Horrible! horrible!”

“Lola Fajardo was a terrible woman, Senor, and she is beyond your English law. Leave Seville, Senor, or you also will die. I go, Senor; good-bye.”

I took his advice. There was nothing more to detain me in Seville. There was one question, though that I wished now I had asked; I had quite forgotten it: Why did Lola dance in the long gallery on that night? It may have been nothing but sheer devilry.

I wished now most fervently that I had shot her there and then. But that was not to be. She was preserved for a more terrible death even than that. She died in agony in the prime of her beauty, and all I can say is that she richly deserved her fiery doom. I took back Hugh’s head to England, and placed it in his coffin, poor soul. And then I did my best to forget the Red Dancer and her devilries. But, as this story is sufficient to show, I have not yet succeeded.