120. “D——,” replied Dupin, “is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interest. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest I might never have left the ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions. In this matter I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the minister has had her in his power. She has now him in hers—since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was.Is “was” correct? Thus will he inevitably commit himself at once to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. The descent to Avernus (the fabled entrance to the Infernal Regions) is easy. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathy—at least no pity—for him who descends. He is that monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, Monster to be shuddered at. however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her whom the Prefect terms ‘a certain personage,’ he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack.”
121. “How? Did you put anything particular in it?”
Real Climax.
122. “Why, it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank—that would have been insulting. D——, at Vienna, once did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clew. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words:—
A design so baleful, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.
‘——Un dessein si funeste,
S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.’
They are to be found in Crébillon’s ‘Atrée.’”
JACOBS AND HIS WRITINGS
William Wymark Jacobs was born in London, September 8, 1863, the son of William Gage Jacobs. He was educated at private schools, and entered the employ of the Post Office Savings Bank at sixteen. Four years later he secured a regular clerkship there. He began his literary career at the age of twenty-one with a contribution to the Blackfriars Magazine, a publication conducted by the clerks at the Post Office, and from that he was led to contributing articles to various London papers, though he retained his Civil Service position until 1899. His remarkable acquaintance with nautical subjects, and characters of the coasting trade and seaport wharves, was acquired during several years spent in Wapping, while his father was wharfinger there, as during that period the younger Jacobs was brought into contact with many seamen and wharf hands, and came to know many of them very well. In 1900 he married Agnes Eleanor Williams. Some of Jacobs’ most popular collections of stories are Many Cargoes; More Cargoes; Short Cruises; Odd Craft; Captains All; Light Freights; and The Lady of the Barge. His longer stories include A Master of Craft, Dialstone Lane; Salthaven, and At Sunwich Port.
Mr. Jacobs is known mostly by his delightfully quaint and humorous character delineations of river, shore, and sea-faring folk. The remarkable short-story given herewith, however, is of a very different sort and discloses a mastery of the weird, of the supernatural, which is not surpassed in the whole short-story field. With a sureness of character-drawing which is nothing short of amazing in a humorist, he outlines scene and actors, and when the crises are reached—so completely is all visualized—we are able to infer the swift-moving climax with scarce the need of a word. “The Monkey’s Paw” is one of the most dramatically poignant stories of the supernatural ever written, and invites us to a closer study of its gifted and versatile author.