Victorian Tales of the Weird E-Book

Nick Rennison

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 437

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

From a dancing automaton running amok at a ball, to a prehistoric beast lurking in the depths of a Yorkshire cave, this anthology explores the nature of the 'old weird', and unordinary stories which go outside the boundaries of everyday life. The anthology includes not only stories by well-known writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, but also by long-forgotten authors such as D. F. Hannigan and Reginald Bacchus. Focusing on the idea and history of what can be classified as 'old weird', compared to the 'new weird', Rennison applies experience and knowledge of Victorian literary history to bring these supernatural tales to the surface.

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‘A gloriously Gothic collection of heroes fighting against maidens with bone-white skin, glittering eyes and bloodthirsty intentions’

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‘Nick Rennison’s The Rivals of Dracula shows that many Victorian and Edwardian novelists tried their hand at this staple of Gothic horror’

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VICTORIAN TALES OF THE WEIRD

Nick Rennison

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise for Nick Rennison’s Anthologies

Title Page

Introduction

Reginald Bacchus and Ranger Gull – The Dragon of St Paul’s

Gertrude Bacon – The Gorgon’s Head

Louisa Baldwin – The Weird of the Walfords

Robert Barr – The Doom of London

Arthur Conan Doyle – The Ring of Thoth

D F Hannigan – The Extraordinary Case of Mr Ebenstal

E and H Heron – The Story of the Grey House

C J Cutcliffe Hyne – The Lizard

Jerome K Jerome – The Dancing Partner

S Levett-Yeats – The Devil’s Manuscript

Mary Louisa Molesworth – The Man with the Cough

Edith Nesbit – Man-Size in Marble

Charlotte Riddell – Sandy the Tinker

Phil Robinson – The Man-Eating Tree

T W Speight – The Green Phial

Also by Nick Rennison

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

This is an anthology of weird fiction published during the reign of Queen Victoria. What exactly is meant by ‘weird fiction’? The American critic S T Joshi, in The Weird Tale, his study of writers such as Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany and Arthur Machen, acknowledged how much the concept escaped easy description and ventured to assert that ‘any definition of it may be impossible’. Plenty of people over the years have nonetheless attempted one. The horror writer H P Lovecraft, for example, provided his own idiosyncratic version in his 1927 essay ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’. The weird tale, he thought, must carry at the very least a ‘hint’ of ‘that most terrible conception of the human brain – a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos’. Weird Tales, the self-styled ‘Unique Magazine’ in which much of Lovecraft’s own fiction was published, first appeared on American newsstands early in 1923.

However it is defined, weird fiction dates back, of course, much further than the 1920s. It could be argued that it has been around as long as people have been inventing stories. Ancient Greek and Roman literature contains material that could be described as ‘weird’. The ironically titled A True Story by the satirist Lucian of Samosata, written in the second century AD, includes a voyage to the moon, an island made of cheese and a 200-mile-long whale whose belly is home to a variety of fish people. Fast-forward a millennium and more, and the romances of the Middle Ages have much that is weird and fantastical in them. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for instance, written by an anonymous English author in the fourteenth century, begins in the court of King Arthur, where Gawain decapitates a green giant, who promptly picks up his head, mounts his green horse and rides away.

In the eighteenth century, ‘Gothic fiction’ was enormously popular with readers. In The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, from 1764, giants, ghosts and walking skeletons put in appearances; thirty years later, supernatural terrors regularly threaten Emily St Aubert, the heroine of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, although, perhaps disappointingly, most of them turn out to have a natural explanation. The Gothic influence stretched well into the following century, the genre still popular enough to attract Jane Austen’s satirical attention in Northanger Abbey. That most famous of all horror novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, owes a strong debt to the eighteenth-century Gothic novel.

In America, Edgar Allan Poe, pioneer in so many genres, was hailed by Lovecraft as a founding father of ‘weird fiction’ and, in well-known stories like ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, it’s easy enough to identify the later writer’s reasons for doing so. Poe’s countryman Nathaniel Hawthorne also flirted (and more) with the supernatural in many of his short stories. In Britain, the 1830s and 1840s saw novelists like Dickens and Emily Brontë still haunted by echoes of the Gothic.

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and her long reign saw massive changes not only in society but in literary tastes. Most of the stories in this volume come from the last 20 years of the nineteenth century. These last decades of the old queen’s reign were those in which genre fiction of all kinds came into its own. The detective story was given a new boost by Conan Doyle’s invention of Sherlock Holmes. H G Wells’s ‘scientific romances’ – The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898) and others – were the first masterpieces of what was not yet called science fiction. Classics of horror fiction appeared. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and MrHyde, the iconic doppelgänger story, in 1886; the most famous of all vampire tales, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was published in 1897.

It is no surprise that these were decades in which ‘weird fiction’ also thrived. I have tried in this anthology to demonstrate the range and variety of stories from the late Victorian era that can be broadly categorised as such. There are no ghost stories in the selection, although all have elements of the supernatural. The ghost story, particularly the Victorian ghost story, seems to me to be a genre of its own. Many of the writers in this book, particularly women authors such as Louisa Baldwin and Charlotte Riddell, excelled at the ghost story but I have chosen other examples of their work. Some of the stories might be described as science fiction, although the term had not then been invented; others could be categorised as ‘horror’ stories.

Although I have included stories by very well-known writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K Jerome, I have ignored some writers (Arthur Machen, M P Shiel) whose names are regularly associated with ‘weird fiction’. Their work is very frequently anthologised and I preferred to look elsewhere for examples of the genre. For that reason I have included stories by writers such as Robert Barr and Cutcliffe Hyne, whose former fame has long since faded, and by long-forgotten authors such as D F Hannigan and Reginald Bacchus whose names may not even be familiar to scholars of the period. There are works by both male and female writers. The stories are, I hope, intriguingly different. A dancing automaton runs amok at a ball; a prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of a Yorkshire cave; two statues in an ancient church come to life with fatal results; a man realises that he has married not a woman but a shape-shifting serpent. What unites them is that they all deal with experiences outside the boundaries of ordinary, everyday life. They all explore the ‘weird’.

THE DRAGON OF ST PAUL’S

By Reginald Bacchus (1873–1945) and Ranger Gull (1875–1923)

Bacchus, who was married to the actress Isa Bowman, a former child friend of Lewis Carroll, had a louche career in 1890s bohemian London, which included friendship with the notorious publisher of erotica, Leonard Smithers. He wrote several pornographic works for Smithers’s Erotika Biblion Society but he also produced novels and short stories for more respectable publishers and publications. Ranger Gull was a novelist and literary journalist who was to gain his greatest fame under the pen name Guy Thorne. His 1903 novel, When It Was Dark, told the story of the moral collapse which followed apparent disproof of Christ’s resurrection. Only when this is revealed as part of a Jewish plot (the book is unashamedly anti-Semitic) is order restored. Between 1898 and his death, Gull published more than 100 novels, mostly potboilers, many of which would now be categorised as science fiction or horror. Reginald Bacchus and Ranger Gull collaborated on a number of short stories around the turn of the century, mostly published in the Ludgate Monthly. ‘The Dragon of St Paul’s’, which reflects the era’s fascination with the prehistoric past and with the possibility there might, somewhere in the world, be survivals from it, is the most memorable of them.

Ludgate Monthly, April 1899

First Episode

‘It is certainly a wonderful yarn,’ said Trant, ‘and excellent copy. My only regret is that I didn’t think of it myself in the first instance.’

‘But, Tom, why shouldn’t it be true? It’s incredible enough for anyone to believe. I’m sure I believe it, don’t you, Guy?’

Guy Descaves laughed. ‘Perhaps, dear. I don’t know and I don’t much care, but I did a good little leaderette on it this morning. Have you done anything, Tom?’

‘I did a whole buck middle an hour ago at very short notice. That’s why I’m a little late. I had finished all my work for the night, and I was just washing my hands when Fleming came in with the make-up. We didn’t expect him at all tonight, and the paper certainly was rather dull. He’d been dining somewhere, and I think he was a little bit cocked. Anyhow he was nasty, and kept the presses back while I did a “special” on some information he brought with him.’

While he was talking, Beatrice Descaves, his fiancée, began to lay the table for supper, and in a minute she called them to sit down. The room was very large, with cool white-papered walls, and the pictures, chiefly original black and white sketches, were all framed in passe-partout frames, which gave the place an air of serene but welcome simplicity. At one end of it was a great window which came almost to the floor, and in front of the window there was a low, cushioned seat. The night was very hot, and the window was wide open. It was late – nearly half-past one, and London was quite silent. Indeed the only sound that they could hear was an occasional faint burst of song and the tinkling of a piano, which seemed to come from the neighbourhood of Fountain Court.

Guy Descaves was a writer, and he lived with his sister Beatrice in the Temple. Trant, who was also a journalist on the staff of a daily paper, and who was soon going to marry Beatrice, often came to them there after his work was done. The three young people lived very much together, and were very happy in a delightful unfettered way. The Temple was quiet and close to their work, and they found it in these summer days a most peaceful place when night had come to the town.

They were very gay at supper in the big, cool room. Trant was a clever young man and very much in love, and the presence of Beatrice always inspired him to talk. It was wonderful to sit by her, and to watch her radiant face, or to listen to the music of her laugh, which rippled like water falling into water. Guy, who was more than thirty, and was sure that he was very old, liked to watch his sister and his friend together, and to call them ‘you children’.

‘What is the special information that the editor brought, dear?’ Beatrice asked Trant, as soon as they were seated round the table.

‘Well,’ he answered. ‘It seems that he managed to get hold of young Egerton Cotton, Professor Glazebrook’s assistant, who is staying at the Metropole. Of course, various rumours have got about from the crew of the ship, but nothing will be definitely known till the inquest tomorrow. Cotton’s story is really too absurd, but Fleming insisted on its going in.’

‘Did he give him much for his information?’ Descaves asked.

‘Pretty stiff, I think. I know the Courier offered fifty, but he stuck out. Fleming only got it just at the last moment. It’s silly nonsense, of course, but it’ll send the sales up tomorrow.’

‘What is the whole thing exactly?’ Beatrice asked. ‘All that I’ve heard is that Professor Glazebrook brought back some enormous bird from the Arctic, and that just off the Nore the thing escaped and killed him. I’m sure that sounds quite sufficiently extraordinary for anything; but I suppose it’s all a lie.’

‘Well,’ said Trant. ‘What Egerton Cotton says is the most extraordinary thing I have ever heard – it’s simply laughable – but it will sell 300,000 extra copies. I’ll tell you. I’ve got the whole thing fresh in my brain. You know that Professor Glazebrook was one of the biggest biologists who have ever lived, and he’s been doing a great, tedious, monumental book on prehistoric animals, the mammoth and all that sort of thing that E T Reid draws in Punch. Some old scientific Johnny in Wales used to find all the money, and he fitted out the Professor’s exploration ship, the Henry Sandys, to go and find these mammoths and beasts which have got frozen up in the ice. Don’t you remember about two years ago when they started from Tilbury? They got the Lord Mayor down, and a whole host of celebrities, to see them go. I was there reporting, I remember it well, and Reggie Lance did an awfully funny article about it, which he called ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. Well, Egerton Cotton tells Fleming – the man must be mad – that they found a whole lot of queer bears and things frozen up, but no very great find until well on into the second year, when they were turning to come back. Fleming says he’s seen all the diaries and photographs and everything; they had a frightfully hard time. At last one day they came across a great block of ice, and inside it, looking as natural as you please, was a huge winged sort of dragon creature, as big as a carthorse. Fleming saw a photograph. I don’t know how they faked it up, and he says it was the most horrid cruel sort of thing you ever dreamt of after lobster salad. It had big, heavy wings, and a beak like a parrot, little flabby paws all down its body like a caterpillar, and a great bare, pink, wrinkled belly. Oh, the most filthy-looking brute! They cut down the ice till it was some decent size, and they hauled the whole thing chock-a-block, like a prune in a jelly, into the hold. The ice was frightfully hard, and one of the chains of the donkey engine broke once, and the whole thing fell, but even then the block held firm. It took them three weeks to get it on board. Well, they sailed away with their beastly Snark as jolly as sandboys, and Cotton says the Professor was nearly out of his mind with joy – used to talk and mumble to himself all day. They put the thing in a huge refrigerator like the ones the Australian mutton comes over in, and Glazebrook used to turn on the electric lights and sit muffled up in furs watching his precious beast for hours.’

He stopped for a moment to light a cigarette, noticing with amusement that Guy and Beatrice were becoming tremendously interested. He made Beatrice pour him out a great tankard of beer before he would go on, and he moved to the window seat, where it was cooler, and he could sit just outside the brilliant circle of light thrown by the tall shaded lamp. The other two listened motionless, and as he unfolded the grisly story, his voice coming to them out of the darkness became infinitely more dramatic and impressive.

‘Well, Cotton says that this went on for a long time. He had to do all the scientific work himself, writing up their journals and developing the photos, as the Professor was always mysteriously pottering about in the cellar place. At last, one day, Glazebrook came into the cabin at lunch or whatever they have, and said he was going to make a big experiment. He talked a lot of rot about toads and reptiles being imprisoned for thousands of years in stones and ice, and then coming to life, and he said he was going to try and melt out the dragon and tickle it into life with a swingeing current from the dynamo. Cotton laughed at him, but it wasn’t any good, and they set to work to thaw the creature out with braziers. When they got close to it Cotton said that the water from the ice, as it melted, got quite brown and smelt! It wasn’t till they were within almost a few hours from the Channel – you remember they put into some place in Norway for coal – and steaming for London River as hard as they could go, that they got it clear.

‘While they were fixing the wires from the dynamo room, Cotton hurt his ankle and had to go to his bunk for some hours to rest. He begged Glazebrook to wait till he could help, for he had become insensibly interested in the whole uncanny thing, but it was no use. He says the fellow was like a madman, red eyes with wrinkles forming up all round them, and so excited that he was almost foaming at the mouth. He went to his cabin frightfully tired, and very soon fell asleep. One of the men woke him up by shaking him. The man was in a blue funk and told him something dreadful had happened in the hold. Cotton hobbled up to the big hatchway, which was open, and as he came near it with the mate and several of the men, he said he could hear a coughing choked-up kind of noise, and that there was a stench like ten thousand monkey houses. They looked in and saw this great beast alive! And squatting over Glazebrook’s body picking out his inside like a bird with a dead crab.’

Beatrice jumped up with a scream. ‘Oh, Tom, Tom, don’t, you horrid boy! I won’t hear another word. I shan’t sleep a wink. Ugh! how disgusting and ridiculous. Do you mean to tell me that you’ve actually gone to press with all that ghastly nonsense? I’m going to bathe my face, you’ve made me feel quite hot and sticky. You can tell the rest to Guy, and if you haven’t done by the time I come back, I won’t say good night to you, there!’

She left the room, not a little disconcerted by the loathsome story which Trant, forgetting his listeners, had been telling with the true journalist’s passion for sensational detail. Guy knocked the ashes slowly out of his pipe. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘Oh, there isn’t much more. He says they all ran away and watched from the companion steps, and presently the beast came flopping up on deck, with its beak all over blood, and its neck coughing and working. It got half across the hatchway and seemed dazed for about an hour. No one seemed to think of shooting it! Then Cotton says it crawled to the bulwarks coughing and grunting away, and after a few attempts actually flew up into the air. He said it flew unlike any creature he had ever seen, much higher than most birds fly, and very swiftly. The last they saw of it was a little thing like a crow hovering over the forts at Shoe’ness.’

‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Guy. ‘I never heard a better piece of yarning in my life. Do you actually mean to tell me that Fleming dares to print all that gaudy nonsense in the paper? He must certainly have been very drunk.’

‘Well, there it is, old man. I had to do what I was told, and I made a good piece of copy out of it. I am not responsible if Fleming does get his head laughed off, I don’t edit his rag. Pass the beer.’

‘Is the ship here?’

‘Yes, it was docked about six this morning, and so far all the published news is what you had today in the Evening Post. It seems that something strange certainly did happen, though, of course, it wasn’t that. They are going to hold an inquest, Fleming says. Something horribly beastly has happened to Glazebrook, there’s no doubt of that. Something has scooped the poor beggar out. Well, I must be going, it’s nearly three, and more than a little towards dawning. Tell Bee I’m off, will you?’

Beatrice came back in a minute like a fresh rose, and before he went, she drew him on to the balcony outside the window. There was a wonderful view from the balcony. Looking over the great lawns far down below, they could just see the dim purple dome of St Paul’s, which seemed to be floating in mist, its upper part stark and black against the sky.

To the right was the silent river with innumerable patches of yellow light from the rows of gas lamps on Blackfriars Bridge. A sweet scent from the boxes of mignonette floated on the dusky, heavy air. He put his arm round her and kissed her sweet, tremulous lips. ‘My love, my love,’ she whispered, ‘oh, I love you so!’

Her slender body clung to him. She was very sweet. The tall, strong young man leant over her and kissed her masses of dark, fragrant hair.

‘My little girl, my little girl,’ he murmured with a wonderful tenderness in his voice, ‘there is nothing in the world but you, sweet little girl, dear, dear little girl, little wife.’

She looked up at him at the word and there was a great light in her eyes, a thing inexpressibly beautiful for a man to see.

‘Love, good night,’ he whispered, and he kissed the tiny pink ear that heard him.

After the fantastic story he had been telling them, a story which, wild and grotesque as it was, had yet sufficient vraisemblance to make them feel uncomfortable, the majesty of the night gave the dim buildings of the town a restful and soothing effect, and as they stood on the balcony with their love surging over them, they forgot everything but that one glorious and radiant fact.

Beatrice went with him to the head of the staircase – they lived very high up in the buildings called ‘Temple Gardens’ – and watched him as he descended. It was curious to look down the great well of the stone steps and to feel the hot air which rose up from the gas lamps beating on her face. She could only see Tom on each landing when he turned to look up at her – a tiny pink face perched on a little black foreshortened body.

When he got right down to the bottom he shouted up a ‘good night’, his voice sounding strange and unnatural as the walls threw it back to each other. In after years she always remembered the haunting sound of his voice as it came to her for the last time in this world.

Between seven and eight o’clock the next morning Guy, who was on the staff of the Evening Post, one of the leading lunch-time papers, left the Temple for the offices in the Strand.

It was a beautiful day, and early as it was the streets were full of people going to their work. Even now the streets were full of colour and sunshine, and every little city clerk contributed to the gayness of the scene by wearing round his straw hat the bright ribbon of some club to which he did not belong.

Guy had been working for about an hour when Gobion, his assistant – the young man who afterwards made such a success with his book Penny Inventions – came in with a bunch of ‘flimsies’, reports of events sent in by penny-a-liners who scoured London on bicycles, hoping for crime.

‘There doesn’t seem anything much,’ he said, ‘except one thing which is probably a fake. It was brought in by that man, Roberts, and he tried to borrow half a James from the commissionaire on the strength of it, which certainly looks like a fake. If it is true, though, it’s good stuff. I’ve sent a reporter down to inquire.’

‘What is it?’ said Descaves, yawning.

‘Reported murder of a journalist. The flimsy says he was found at four o’clock in the morning by a policeman, on the steps of St Paul’s, absolutely broken up and mangled. Ah, here it is. “The body, which presented a most extraordinary and unaccountable appearance, was at once removed to St Bride’s mortuary.” Further details later, Roberts says.’

‘It sounds all right; at any rate the reporter will be back soon, and we shall know. How did Roberts spot him as a journalist?’

‘Don’t know, suppose he hadn’t shaved.’

While the youth was speaking, the reporter entered breathless.

‘Column special,’ he gasped.

‘Trant, a man on the Mercury, has been murdered, cut all to pieces. Good God! I forgot, Descaves. Oh, I am fearfully sorry!’

Guy rose quickly from his seat with a very white face, but without any sound. As he did so, by some strange coincidence the tape machine on the little pedestal behind him began to print the first words of a despatch from the Exchange Telegraph Company. The message dealt with the tragedy that had taken immediate power of speech away from him. The familiar whirr of the type wheel made him turn from mere force of habit and, stunned as his brain was, he saw the dreadful words spelling themselves on the paper with no realisation of their meaning. He stood swaying backwards and forwards, not knowing what he did, his eyes still resting on the broad sheet of white paper on which the little wheel sped ceaselessly, recording the dreadful thing in neat blue letters.

Then suddenly his eyes flashed the meaning of the gathering words to his brain, and he leant over the glass with a sick eagerness. Gobion and the reporter stood together anxiously watching him. At length the wheel slid along the bar and came to rest with a sharp click. Guy stood up again.

‘Do my work today,’ he said quietly. ‘I must go to my sister,’ and taking his hat he left the room.

When he got out into the brilliant sunshine which flooded the Strand, his senses came back to him and he determined that obviously the first thing to be done was to make sure that the body at St Bride’s was really the body of his friend.

Even in moments of deep horror and sorrow the mind of a strong, self-contained man does not entirely lose its power of concentration. The telegraphic news had left very little doubt in his mind that the fact was true, but at the same time he could not conceive how such a ghastly thing could possibly have happened. According to the information he had, it seemed the poor fellow had been struck dead only a few minutes after he had left the Temple the night before, and within a few yards of his chambers. ‘On the steps of St Paul’s,’ the wire ran, and Trant’s rooms were not sixty yards away, in a little old-fashioned court behind the Deanery.

It was incredible. Owing to the great shops and warehouses all round, the neighbourhood was patrolled by a large number of policemen and watchmen. The space at the top of Ludgate Hill was, he knew, brilliantly lighted by the street lamps, and besides, about four it was almost daylight. It seemed impossible that Tom could have been done to death like this. ‘It’s a canard,’ he said to himself, ‘damned silly nonsense,’ but even as he tried to trick himself into disbelief, his subconscious brain told him unerringly that the horrid thing was true.

Five minutes later he walked out of the dead house knowing the worst. The horror of the thing he had just seen, the awful inexpressible horror of it, killed every other sensation. He had recognised his friend’s right hand, for on the hand was a curious old ring of beaten gold which Beatrice used to wear.

Second Episode

Mr Frank Fleming, the editor of the Daily Mercury, was usually an early riser. He never stopped at the office of the paper very late unless some important news was expected, or unless he had heard something in the House that he wished to write about himself. Now and then, however, when there was an all-night sitting, he would steal away from his bench below the gangway and pay a surprise visit before Trant and his colleagues had put the paper to bed. On these occasions, when he was kept away from his couch longer than was his wont, he always slept late into the morning. It was about twelve o’clock on the day of Trant’s death that he rose up in bed and pressed the bell for his servant. The man brought his shaving water and the morning’s copy of the Mercury, and retired. Fleming opened his paper and the black headline and leaded type of the article on Professor Glazebrook’s death at once caught his eye. He read it with complacent satisfaction. Trant had done the thing very cleverly and the article was certainly most striking. Fleming, a shrewd man of the world and Parliamentary adventurer, had not for a moment dreamt of believing young Egerton Cotton, but he nevertheless knew his business. It had got about that there was something mysterious in the events that had occurred on board the Henry Sandys, and it had also got about that the one man who could throw any authentic light on these events was Cotton. It was therefore the obvious policy to buy Cotton’s information, and, while disclaiming any responsibility for his statements, to steal a march on his contemporaries by being the first to publish them. As he walked into the pretty little dining-room of his flat, Mr Fleming was in an excellent temper.

He was dividing his attention between the kidneys and the Times, when his man came into the room and told him that Mr Morgan, the news editor, must see him immediately.

He could hear Morgan in the entresol, and he called out cheerily, ‘Come in, Morgan; come in, you’re just in time for some breakfast.’

The news editor entered in a very agitated state. When Fleming heard the undoubted fact of Trant’s death he was genuinely moved, and Morgan, who had a very low opinion of his chief’s human impulses, was surprised and pleased. It seemed that Morgan had neither seen the body nor been to the scene of the crime, but had simply got his news from some men in the bar of the Cheshire Cheese, in Fleet Street, who were discussing the event. Trant had been a very popular man among his brethren, and many men were mourning for him as they went about their work.

‘What you must do,’ said Fleming to his assistant, ‘is this. Go down to the mortuary on my behalf, explain who Trant was, and gain every morsel of information you can. Go to the place where the body was found as well. Poor Tom Trant! He was a nice boy – a nice boy; he had a career before him. I shall walk down to the office. This has shaken me very much, and I think a walk will buck me up a little. If you get a fast cab and tell the man to go hell for leather, you will be back in Fleet Street by the time I arrive. I shall not walk fast.’ He heaved a perfectly sincere sigh as he put on his gloves. As he left the mansions and walked past the Aquarium he remembered that a cigar was a soothing thing, and, lighting one, he enjoyed it to the full. The sunshine was so radiant that it was indeed difficult to withstand its influence. Palace Yard was a great sight, and all the gilding on the clock tower shone merrily. The pigeons, with their strange iridescent eyes, were sunning themselves on the hot stones. The editor forgot all about Trant for some minutes in the pure physical exhilaration of it all. As he advanced up Parliament Street he saw Lord Salisbury, who was wearing an overcoat, despite the heat.

Fleming turned up Whitehall Court and past the National Liberal Club to the Strand, which was very full of people. Fleming had always been a great patron of the stage. He knew, and was known to, many actors and actresses, and you would always see his name after a ten-guinea subscription on a benefit list. He liked the Strand, and he walked very slowly down the north side, nodding or speaking to some theatrical acquaintance every moment.

When he came to the bar where all the actors go, which is nearly opposite the Tivoli Music Hall, he saw Rustle Tapper, the famous comedian, standing on the steps wearing a new white hat and surveying the bright and animated scene with intense enjoyment.

The two men were friends, and for a minute or two Fleming mounted the steps and stood by the other’s side. It was now about half-past one.

‘Well,’ said the actor, ‘and how are politics, very busy just now? What is this I see in the Pall Mall about the murder of one of your young men? It’s not true, I hope.’

‘I am afraid it is only too true. He was the cleverest young fellow I have ever had on the paper. I got him straight from Balliol, and he would have been a very distinguished man. I don’t know anything about it yet but just the bare facts; our news editor has gone down to find out all he can.’

They moved through the swing doors into the bar, talking as they went.

The Strand was full of all its regular frequenters, and in the peculiar fashion of this street everyone seemed to know everyone else intimately. Little groups of more or less well-known actors and journalists stood about the pavement or went noisily in and out of the bars, much impeding the progress of the ordinary passer-by. There was no sign or trace of anything out of the common to be seen. It was just the Strand on a bright summer’s day, and the flower-girls were selling all their roses very fast to the pretty burlesque actresses and chorus girls who were going to and fro from the agents’ offices.

About two o’clock – the evening papers said half-past two, but their information was faulty – the people in Bedford Street and the Strand heard a great noise of shouting, which, as far as they could judge, came from the direction of the Haymarket or Trafalgar Square. The noise sounded as if a crowd of people were shouting together, but whether in alarm or whether at the passing of some great person was not immediately apparent. It was obvious that something of importance was happening not very far away. After about a minute the shouting became very loud indeed, and a shrill note of alarm was plainly discernible.

In a few seconds the pavements were crowded with men, who came running out from the bars and restaurants to see what was happening. Many of them came out without their hats. Fleming and the actor hurried out with the rest, straining and pushing to get a clear view westwards. One tall, clean-shaven man, with a black patch on his eye, his face bearing obvious traces of greasepaint, came out of the Bun Shop with his glass of brandy and water still in his hand.

It was a curious sight. Everyone was looking towards Trafalgar Square with mingled interest and uncertainty, and for the time being all the business of the street was entirely suspended. The drivers of the omnibuses evidently thought that the shouting came from fire-engines which were trying to force their way eastwards through the traffic, for they drew up by the kerbstone, momentarily expecting that the glistening helmets would swing round the corner of King William Street.

Fleming, from the raised platform at the door of Gatti’s, could see right down past Charing Cross Station, and as he was nearly six feet high, he could look well over the heads of the podgy little comedians who surrounded him. Suddenly the noise grew in volume and rose several notes higher, and a black mass of people appeared running towards them.

The next incident happened so rapidly that before anyone had time for realisation it was over. A huge black shadow loped along the dusty road, and, looking up, the terror-stricken crowd saw the incredible sight of a vast winged creature, as large as a dray-horse, gliding slowly over the street. The monster, which Fleming describes as something like an enormous bat with a curved bill like a bird of prey, began to hover, as if preparing to descend, when there was the sudden report of a gun. An assistant at the hosier’s shop at the corner of Southampton Street, who belonged to the Volunteers, happened to be going to do some range firing in the afternoon, and fetching his rifle from behind the counter, took a pot shot at the thing. His aim, from surprise and fear, was bad, and the bullet only chipped a piece of stone from the coping of the Tivoli. The shot, however, made the creature change its intentions, for it swerved suddenly to the right against some telegraph wires, and then, breaking through them, flew with extraordinary swiftness away over the river, making, it appeared, for the Crystal Palace upon Sydenham Hill. A constable on Hungerford foot-bridge, who saw it as it went over the water, said that its hairless belly was all cut and bleeding from the impact of the wires. The excitement in the Strand became frantic. The windows of all the shops round the Tivoli were broken by the pressure of the crowd, who had instinctively got as near as possible to the houses. The cab and omnibus horses, scenting the thing, were in that state of extreme terror which generally only an elephant has power to induce in them. The whole street was in terrible confusion. The only person who seemed calm, so a report ran in a smart evening paper, was a tall man who was standing at the door of a bar wearing a patch over one eye, and who had a glass of brandy in his hand. A reporter who had been near him, said that as soon as the monster had disappeared over the house-tops, he quietly finished his glass of brandy, and straightway went inside to have it replenished.

Special editions of the evening papers were at once issued. The Globe, owing to the nearness of its offices, being first in the field.

The sensational story of the Mercury, which had been the signal for increasing laughter all the morning, came at once into men’s minds, and, incredible as it was, there could now be no doubt of the truth.

A creature which, in those dim ages when the world was young and humanity itself was slowly being evolved in obedience to an inevitable law, had winged its way over the mighty swamps and forests of the primeval world, was alive and preying among them. To those who thought, there was something sinister in such an incalculable age. The order of nature was disturbed.

The death of young Trant was immediately explained, and at dinner time the wildest rumours were going about the clubs, while in the theatres and music halls people were saying that a whole foul brood of dragons had been let loose upon the town.

The sensation was unique. Never before in all the history of the world had such a thing been heard of, and all night long the telegraphs sent conflicting rumours to the great centres of the earth. London was beside itself with excitement, and few people going about in the streets that night felt over-secure, though everyone felt that the slaughter of the beast was only a matter of hours. The very uneasiness that such a weird and unnatural appearance excited in the brains of the populace had its humorous side, and when that evening Mr Dan Leno chose to appear upon the stage as a comic St George, the laughter was Homeric. Such was the state of the public opinion about the affair on the evening of the first day, but there was a good deal of anxiety felt at Scotland Yard, and Sir Edward Bradford was for some time at work organising and directing precautionary measures. A company of sharp-shooters was sent down to the Embankment from the Regent’s Park Barrack, and waited in readiness for any news. Mounted police armed with carbines were patrolling the whole country round Sydenham and, even as far as Mitcham Common, were on the alert. Two or three of them rode constantly up and down the Golf Links.

A warning wire was despatched to Mr Henry Gillman, the general manager of the Crystal Palace, for at this season of the year the grounds were always full of pleasure-seekers. About nine o’clock the chief inspector on duty at the police headquarters received the following telegram:

‘Animal appeared here 8.30, and unfortunately killed child. Despite volley got away apparently unharmed. Heading for London when last seen. Have closed Palace and cleared grounds.’

It appears what actually happened was as follows:—

A Dr David Pryce, a retired professor from one of the Scotch Universities, who lived in a house on Gipsy Hill, was taking a stroll down the central transept after dinner, when he was startled to hear the noise of breaking glass high up in the roof. Some large pieces of glass fell within a few yards of him into one of the ornamental fountains. Running to one side, he looked up, and saw that some heavy body had fallen on to the roof and coming through the glass was so balanced upon an iron girder. Even as he looked, the object broke away and fell with a frightful splash into the basin among the goldfish. Simultaneously he heard the crack of rifles firing in the grounds outside.

He was the first of the people round to run to the fountain, where he found, to his unspeakable horror, the bleeding body of a child, a sweet little girl of six, still almost breathing.

The news of this second victim was in the streets about ten o’clock, and it was then that a real panic took possession of all the pleasure-seekers in Piccadilly and the Strand.

The special descriptive writers from the great daily papers, who went about the principal centres of amusement, witnessed the most extraordinary sights. Now and again there would be a false alarm that the dragon – for that is what people were beginning to call it – was in the neighbourhood, and there would be a stampede of men and women into the nearest place of shelter. The proprietor of one of the big Strand bars, afterwards boasted that the panic had been worth an extra £50 to him.

The Commissioner of Police became so seriously alarmed, both at the disorderly state of the streets, and at the possible chance of another fatality, that he thought it wiser to obtain military assistance, and about half-past eleven London was practically under arms. Two or three linesmen were stationed at central points in the main streets, and little groups of cavalry with unslung carbines patrolled from place to place.

Although the strictest watch was kept all night, nothing was seen of the monster, but in the morning a constable of the C Division, detailed for special duty, found traces at the top of Ludgate Hill which proved conclusively that the animal had been there some time during the night.

Third Episode

The widespread news that the terror had been in the very heart of London during the night created tremendous excitement among the authorities and the public at large. The City Police held a hurried consultation in Old Jewry about nine o’clock in the morning, and after hearing Sergeant Weatherley’s account of his discovery, came to the conclusion that the dragon had probably made its lair on the top of St Paul’s Cathedral.

A man was at once sent round to the Deanery for a pass which should allow a force of police to search the roofs, and came back in half an hour with an order written by Dean Gregory himself requesting the officials to give the police every facility for a thorough examination.

It was then that the fatal mistake was made, which added a fourth victim to the death roll.

About 9.30 a telegram was received at New Scotland Yard from a professional golfer at Mitcham, saying that some caddies on their way to the club-house had sighted the monster hovering over the Croydon road early in the morning. A wire was at once despatched to the local police station on the lower green, directing that strict inquiries should be made, and the result telegraphed at once. Meanwhile Scotland Yard communicated with Old Jewry, and the City Police made the incredible blunder of putting off the search party till the Mitcham report was thoroughly investigated.

It was not allowed to be known that the police had any suspicion that St Paul’s might harbour the dragon, and the fact of Sergeant Weatherley’s discovery did not transpire till the second edition of the Star appeared, just about the time the final scene was being enacted on the south roof.

Accordingly the omnibuses followed the usual Cannon Street route, and the City men from the suburbs crowded them as usual. In the brilliant morning sunshine – for it was a perfect summer’s day – it was extremely difficult to believe that anything untoward was afoot.

The panic of the night before, the panic of the gas lamps and the uncertain mystery of night, had very largely subsided. Many a city man who the night before had come out of the Alhambra or the Empire seized with a genuine terror, now sat on the top of his City bus smoking the after-breakfast cigarette and almost joking about the whole extraordinary affair. The fresh, new air was so delightful that it had its effect on everybody, and the police and soldiers who stood at ease round the statue of Queen Anne were saluted with a constant fire of chaff from the waggish young gentlemen of the Stock Exchange as they were carried to their daily work.

‘What price the Dragon!’ and ‘Have you got a muzzle handy!’ resounded in the precincts of the Cathedral, and the merry witticisms afforded intense enjoyment to the crowds of ragamuffins who lounged round the top of Ludgate Hill.

Then, quite suddenly, came the last act of the terrible drama.

Just as a white Putney bus was slowly coming up the steep gradient of the hill, the horses straining and slipping on the road, a black object rose from behind the clock tower on the facade of the Cathedral, and with a long, easy dive the creature that was terrorising London came down upon the vehicle. It seemed to slide rapidly down the air with its wings poised and open, and it came straight at the omnibus. The driver, with great presence of mind and not a moment too soon, pulled his horses suddenly to the right, and the giant enemy rushed past with a great disturbance of the air hardly a yard away from the conveyance.

It sailed nearly down to the railway bridge before it was able to check its flight and turn.

Then, with a slow flapping of its great leathery wings, it came back to where the omnibus was oscillating violently as the horses reared and plunged.

It was the most horrible sight in the world. Seen at close quarters the monstrous creature was indescribably loathsome, and the stench from its body was overpowering. Its great horny beak was covered with brown stains, and in its eagerness and anger it was foaming and slobbering at the mouth. Its eyes, which were half-covered with a white scurf, had something of that malignant and horrible expression that one sometimes sees in the eyes of an evil-minded old man.

In a moment the thing was right over the omnibus, and the people on the top were hidden from view by the beating of its mighty wings. Three soldiers on the pavement in front of the Cathedral knelt down, and taking deliberate aim, fired almost simultaneously. A moment after the shots rang out, the horses, who had been squealing in an ecstasy of terror, overturned the vehicle. The dragon, which had been hit in the leather-like integument stretched between the rib-bones of its left wing, rose heavily and slowly, taking a little spring from the side of the omnibus, and giving utterance to a rapid choking sound, very like the gobbling of a turkey. Its wings beat the air with tremendous power and with the regular sound of a pumping engine, and in its bill it held some bright red object, which was screaming in uncontrollable agony. In two seconds the creature had mounted above the houses, and all down Ludgate Hill the horror-bitten crowd could see that its writhing, screaming burden was a soldier of the line.

The man, by some curious instinct, had kept tight hold of his little swagger-stick, and his whirling arms bore a grotesque resemblance to the conductor of an orchestra directing its movements with his baton. Some more shots pealed out, and the screaming stopped with the suddenness of a steam whistle turned off, while the swagger-stick fell down into the street.

Over the road, from house to house, was stretched a row of flags with a Union Jack in the centre, which had been put up earlier in the morning by an alderman who owned one of the shops, in order to signalise some important civic function. In mounting, the monster was caught by the line which supported the flags, and then with a tremendous effort it pulled the whole arrangement loose. Then, very slowly, and with the long row of gaudy flags streaming behind it, it rose high into the air and sank down behind the dome of St Paul’s. As it soared, regardless of the fusillade from below, it looked exactly like a fantastic Japanese kite. The whole affair, from the time of the first swoop from St Paul’s until the monster sank again to its refuge, only took two or three seconds over the minute.

The news of this fresh and terrible disaster reached the waiting party in Old Jewry almost immediately, and they started for the Cathedral without a moment’s delay. They found Ludgate Hill was almost empty, as the police under the railway bridge were deflecting the traffic into other routes. On each side of the street hundreds of white faces peered from doorways and windows towards St Paul’s. The overturned omnibus still lay in the middle of the road, but the horses had been taken away.

The party marched in through the west door, and the ineffable peace of the great church fell round them like a cloak and made their business seem fantastic and unreal. Mr Harding, the permanent clerk of the works, met them in the nave, and held a consultation with Lieutenant Boyle and Inspector Nicholson, who commanded the men. The clerk of the works produced a rough map of the various roofs, on any one of which the dragon might be. He suggested, and the lieutenant quite agreed, that two or three men should first be sent to try and locate the exact resting-place of the monster, and that afterwards the best shots should surround and attack it. The presence of a large number of men wandering about the extremely complicated system of approaches might well disturb the creature and send it abroad again. He himself, he added, would accompany the scouts.

Three men were chosen for the job, a sergeant of police and two soldiers. Mr Harding took them into his office, and they removed their boots for greater convenience in climbing. They were conducted first of all into the low gallery hung with old frescoes which leads to the library, and then, opening a small door in the wall, Mr Harding, beckoning the others to follow, disappeared into darkness.