Part 11 (1/2)

We were staying at the Hotel de France, and this man told me one day that a celebrated French _modiste_ had rooms in our hotel, having come there to show her beautiful Parisian costumes, and to take orders as usual from the Russian Royal Family and Ladies of the Court. He also mentioned the Frenchwoman's recent misfortune in hearing--since her arrival in Russia--that her trusted manager in Paris had disappeared suddenly, carrying away with him 100,000 francs.

Two nights later I had gone to bed as usual about ten-thirty P.M., and must have slept for nearly four hours, when I awoke feeling the heat very oppressive. It was almost the end of June at the time. Getting out of bed to open my window still farther, I gazed down upon the courtyard which it overlooked, noting the absolute stillness of the house and the hot, oppressive air outside.

Suddenly this stillness was rent by the most horrible and appalling shrieks! Peal after peal rang out. I have never heard anything so ghastly nor so blood-curdling either before or since. For a moment it seemed that one _must_ be dreaming. What horrors, to justify such awful shrieks, could be taking place at this quiet hour and in this quiet, respectable hotel?

Nothing less than murder suggested itself to me, and I quickly crossed the room, and turned the key in the lock. My next thought was for my companion--the Miss Greenlow of American days. She was sleeping next door to me, with an intervening door between us.

I hammered loudly upon this, and finally opened it. I knew she always locked her outer door, but feared she might go into the pa.s.sage, not realising the danger in the moment of waking, and might fall into the murderer's hands. So I called out: ”Wake up--wake up, Miss Greenlow!--_but don't open your door_. Someone is being murdered out there.”

I had heard every other door in the pa.s.sage opening, and the scared inmates rus.h.i.+ng to and fro, so there was no question of feeling bound to give the alarm.

Miss Greenlow, being an extremely lymphatic person, was still sleeping the sleep of the just. I gave her a good shake at last, finding knocks and calls of no avail; but she only turned over sleepily, murmuring: ”Oh, it's all right! I don't suppose there is anything much the matter--do go to bed again!”

So I returned to my own room, and as the horrible screams had now ceased, I opened my door very gently, and looked down the dimly lighted pa.s.sage. My room was a corner one, exactly at the head of the wide staircase; to the left-hand side, for anyone mounting the stairs.

Exactly opposite my door, with a wide pa.s.sage between, was the room which had been pointed out to me as belonging to the famous French _modiste_.

Miss Greenlow was evidently the only person in the hotel who had slept through the horrors of that night, for small groups were gathered together at various points along the corridor, and at every door some scared man or woman was looking out, anxious, like myself, to solve the dreadful mystery.

At that moment my eyes lighted on my special German waiter talking in a hushed whisper to a musjig--in the usual red coat. So I beckoned to him, and very reluctantly he came to my door.

Being asked in German what was the meaning of the shrieks we had heard, he said at once that a lady had been taken ill suddenly.

The man was a bad liar, and a child would have seen that he was repeating a made-up story. But nothing more could be got out of him, so I dismissed him impatiently, saying: ”What is the good of telling me such nonsense? I shall find out for myself to-morrow.”

Once more I shut and locked the door, and lay for an hour or two thinking over the ghastly disturbance, and wondering who could have been the hapless victim. It was now about five A.M., and full dawn. As so often happens, even after the most sleepless night, I dozed off then, and slept for more than an hour, and during my sleep I dreamed--and this was my dream. It must first be noted that the wide staircase I have described as pa.s.sing close to my room was thence continued upward to the next floor. In my dream or vision I saw distinctly a woman in a white nightgown, with dark hair streaming down her back, rus.h.i.+ng up this second flight of stairs in the most distraught and reckless fas.h.i.+on. In one hand she held a knife, and was trying to stab herself with it, as a musjig--in crimson coat--rushed after her, and endeavoured to wrench it out of her hand. Two or three other people ran up the stairs behind her, but only this peasant seemed to have the courage or presence of mind to grapple with her. In a few moments, as it seemed to me, the vision, so startling and clear cut, faded away, and I sank into a dreamless sleep, I suppose, for it was past six A.M. when I woke finally.

When the German waiter appeared with my breakfast I said rather curtly to him: ”You need not have troubled to make up that foolish story last night; I know what happened--_I have seen it_.”

He looked very incredulous, so I went on: ”The lady was trying to kill herself, and rushed up to the next floor with a knife in her hand. I saw the musjig run after her and force it from her.”

The man was absolutely speechless. He said not one syllable, either of corroboration or denial, but left the room as quickly as possible, looking scared, and certainly left the impression upon my mind that my vision represented what had actually taken place an hour or two previously.

To my great surprise, however, our respectable and dependable courier, Kuntze, gave quite a different version of the affair.

He came as usual to my room to take his orders for the day--Miss Greenlow being present--and at once referred to the terrible tragedy.

”Ah, poor lady! you remember my telling you about her the other day, and how her manager had run away with all that money? Now _this_ frightful misfortune has happened to her, and no one knows if she will survive it.

She is still alive, however, and is to be taken to the hospital at one P.M.”

”But what has happened, Kuntze?” I said impatiently, rather irritated, if the truth must be told, by his mysterious allusions and Miss Greenlow's a.s.sumption of profound indifference. Of course, no self-respecting person, having calmly slept through such a tragedy, could be otherwise than indifferent next morning! Kuntze's story was far more artistic than that of the waiter, and was skilfully interwoven with shreds of truth, as I discovered later.

He said that ”the poor lady” was in the habit of making herself a cup of tea in the middle of the night when wakeful; also that she wore wide, hanging muslin sleeves with her night attire. She had risen as usual from a sleepless bed to make tea with her little Etna. Unfortunately, she had set fire to a sleeve, which at once burned up, and in a few moments she was enveloped in flames, owing to the flimsy material she wore. Then the shrieks began which had so thrilled our nerves. A Russian gentleman, sleeping near her, was awakened by the noise, and knowing that she was a rich woman, and had brought many valuables with her, he concluded she was being murdered; so he rushed to the rescue with a revolver, found the burning woman, and he and the musjig at length succeeded in putting out the flames.

The story was well told, and perfectly credible. Miss Greenlow could not resist pointing out how entirely it annihilated my vision. No suicide!--no knife!--no rush up the staircase!--nothing, in fact, that might not have been, and, of course, _must have been_ a mere freak of imagination during my troubled sleep. In the face of Kuntze's quiet and detailed statement I could only agree with her, and so the matter rested for some months. The poor woman meanwhile remained in the hospital, and her son and daughter were telegraphed for from Paris. We found them at the hotel on our return there, three weeks later, from Moscow. There was then some slight hope of ultimate recovery, but within six or seven weeks from the ”accident” the unfortunate woman died from shock and exhaustion.

From Russia we returned to Stockholm and Christiania, where Miss Greenlow took the steamer for Hull, and I went up into the Dovre Feld Mountains to join a Swedish friend, already mentioned in my chapter on India.

I told her my story of the poor French _modiste_ and her sad and painful accident, also about my curiously vivid and yet inaccurate vision, and we discussed the latter in quite an S.P.R. spirit! We were then in a very remote part of the Dovre Feld, where foreign papers were practically inaccessible.

I had left my friend in Norway, and returned to England a week or two before receiving a very interesting letter from her.