The Weird Picture

by John R. Carling

The magazine was laid aside, and, producing a card-case, she seemed to be making a selection from its contents. Presently she handed a card to me. It was inscribed with the following words, written evidently with a view to emergencies such as she was now in:

"Pardon me if I have seemed rude. I thank you for your kind attentions, but being dumb from birth, I am unable to carry on a conversation.—Dora Vane."

Dumb from birth! This, then, was the key to her extraordinary silence. But immediately the thought succeeded, "Perhaps she is only fooling me." The words on the card might describe the actual state of the case, or they might be but the resources of a woman determined not to yield an inch to my curiosity—an adroit device to ward off all further questions.

"You evidently heard my last remark," I thought, "even above the roar and rattle of this train, and yet I was always given to understand that people who are dumb from birth are likewise deaf. You must be an exception. If you are dumb, as this card states, you must know the dumb alphabet. I'll try an experiment, and put you through a few paces."

I was quite familiar with the finger alphabet, having been taught it by my school friend Tracey, who used to hold many a silent conversation with me when lessons grew tedious. So, after attracting the lady's attention again, I held up my fingers and proceeded to frame a sentence expressive of my sympathy for her affliction. But she stared at me with absolutely no appreciation of my meaning, and the only conclusion I could draw from my experiment was that my companion was no more dumb than myself, but that for reasons of her own she did not want to have any conversation with me, and had hit upon this device for rendering any impossible.

"Tracey's system of dumb language doesn't seem to work upon the South Eastern line," I muttered, ruefully relinquishing my efforts. "Perhaps Tracey's was one of his own invention. Not likely, though; he hadn't the brains to invent anything."

Thus do we libel the absent!

Manifestly it was out of the question to attempt to gain any knowledge of the lady by compelling her to lift her veil and to reveal the part played by her in the mysterious business, though I was more than once tempted to commit this rash act. Such a proceeding, besides being very ungallant, might have resulted in my transference from the train to a police-cell. It was equally out of the question to seize on the valise and examine its contents. To press her with further questions would be as little to the purpose; for if, accepting her plea of dumbness, I committed them to paper, she would doubtless refuse to answer. All I could do was to sit in silence, resolving in my own mind not to lose sight of her on reaching London, but to follow her and find out if possible the place of her abode.

So I whiled away the rest of the journey in reading, or in trying to read, some Christmas annuals. Dora Vane, to give the lady the name she had claimed, having glanced through the magazines, was now apparently asleep in her corner of the compartment. It was only a feigned sleep however, for whenever I moved, she would give a start, plainly showing that she was suspicious of me.

The train was delayed considerably by the adverse weather, and it was not till past seven o'clock that we entered Charing Cross Station. I opened the carriage-door, and, emerging first, assisted the veiled lady to alight. Two points were noticeable in her behaviour while stepping from the train—the care with which she guarded the bag, and the care she took to avert her face from me. As there was not a soul on the platform to welcome her, I was on the point of proffering my services to escort her to her destination, but with a friendly nod to me she flitted off without a moment's delay to the end of the station, and then hailing a cab, was driven off. And it seemed to me that, instead of handing the driver a card with an address on it, as a dumb lady might naturally be supposed to do, she had conveyed her orders to him by word of mouth; but I was too far off to be certain of this. However, the moment the vehicle had disappeared beneath the archway I flung my portmanteau and person into a hansom, calling out to the driver: