Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures

by S. R. Crockett

But the doctor pushed him aside and entered. As he shed the light of his lantern around he gasped like a man in extremity, for surely a stranger or a more terrible sight the eyes of man had never looked upon.

Two dark forms, those of a man and a woman, were upon the floor, the man prone on his face with his hands stretched out before him, the woman crouched far back in the corner with her mouth wide open and her eyes starting from her head with absolute and ghastly terror. Yet both eyes and mouth were obviously those of a corpse. In the centre of the room were three coffins laid upon narrow tables, the same that Cleg had so often seen. But now they were all three open, and in each reclined a figure arrayed in white, with the head raised on a level with the coffin lid.

In the coffin in the centre lay General Theophilus Ruff, with an expression of absolute triumph on his face. He appeared to lean forward a little towards the woman in the corner, and his dead wide-open eyes were fixed upon her. An empty opium box lay by his side. A revolver lay across his knees, evidently fallen from his right hand, which hung over the coffin edge. His Oriental pipe stood on the floor, and the amber mouthpiece was still between his lips.

But the other two coffins contained the strangest part of the contents of this room of horrors. To the right of the General lay the perfectly preserved body of a woman, whose regular features and delicate skin had only been slightly marred at the nostrils by the process of embalming. She was dressed in white, and her hands were crossed upon her bosom. A man, young and noble-looking, lay in the same position in the other coffin upon the General's left.

But the most wonderful thing was that the necks of both the man and the woman were bound about with a red cord drawn very tight midway between the chin and the shoulder. Upon the breast of the man on the left were written in red the words:

"False Friend."

And on the breast of the fair woman upon the right the words:

"False Love."

A row of tall candlesticks stood round the coffins, six on either side. The great ceremonial candles which they had once contained had burned down to the sockets and guttered over the tops. The floor was strewn with the contents of drawers and papers, and with dainty articles of female attire. A small glove of French make lay at the doctor's feet.

He lifted it and put it into his pocket mechanically, before turning his attention to the bodies in this iron charnel-house. They were, of course, all long since dead. The weasel-faced man on the floor had a bullet through the centre of his forehead. The woman in the corner, on the other hand, was wholly untouched by any wound; but from the expression on her face she must have died in the most instant and mortal terror.