The Camera Fiend

by E. W. Hornung

It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs or anywhere. There had been a brisk interval—and then an end—of more or less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables, to which Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so that he noticed its absence more than the thing itself. It was as though the whole town was at rest, and the tunnels under the town, and every single soul above or below ground, but those two white faces in the moonlight, and perhaps one other overhead.

Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to their ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was against it; perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what he did see so very vividly, in his mind’s eye, that he shivered and was asked if he felt cold. The whispered debate that followed was the longest conversation they had that night. The window was not shut as a result of it, but Pocket fetched his overcoat on tiptoe, and it just went over both their shoulders, when the chairs were drawn as near together as they would go.

The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to wall. The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some monstrous wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above and below the moon, varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night, and Pocket did not think that he had broken the stillness, until the door burst open behind them, and Baumgartner stood there, holding his lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high, the flame ran up the chimney in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face flared up behind it. Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower, and the doctor was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy drew back as the lamp flew through the open window, within an inch of his nose, and crashed upon the path outside.

The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was breathing hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself; and at last he laughed sardonically as though he had won.

“A lamp like that’s a dangerous thing,” said he, with a kind of forced solemnity and a shake of the head; “you never know what may happen when a lamp does that! I’m glad the window was open; it didn’t go very near my young fellow, I hope?”

And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that the boy could have screamed with pain.

“It would have served you right,” continued the doctor, before Pocket could find his tongue, “for sitting up so late, and keeping a young lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have another word with you, young fellow.”

The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest. They were tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was suavely sinister; it made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of mind to bid her a cheery good-night, and she went, closely followed by Baumgartner.

Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the next flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and his own surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an idea came. He opened the front door wide, and then stole back through the conservatory into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down before he gained the garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in the shadow of the far wall.

The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly the look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood out horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in Baumgartner’s room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor’s pipe was well in blast.