第91章

It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, whilst behind his GLASS eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had been lit in it.It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced me back into one of the chairs--the broken one--out of which I had much difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamour was ended.It seemed, to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if he was lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me.When I came to myself he was down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken cane-bottomed chair, kindly enough--"Bah!" said he, "it is the smell of my medicine.It often gives the vertigo.I thought you would have had a little fit.Come into the open air." And we went down the steps, and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was just shining on the statue of Shepherd; the laundresses were traipsing about; the porters were leaning against the railings; and the clerks were playing at marbles, to my inexpressible consolation.

"You said you were going to dine at the 'Gray's-inn Coffee-house,'"he said.I was.I often dine there.There is excellent wine at the "Gray's-inn Coffee-house;" but I declare I NEVER SAID SO.I was not astonished at his remark; no more astonished than if I was in a dream.Perhaps I WAS in a dream.Is life a dream? Are dreams facts? Is sleeping being really awake? I don't know.I tell you Iam puzzled.I have read "The Woman in White," "The Strange Story"--not to mention that story "Stranger than Fiction" in the Cornhill Magazine--that story for which THREE credible witnesses are ready to vouch.I have had messages from the dead; and not only from the dead, but from people who never existed at all.I own I am in a state of much bewilderment: but, if you please, will proceed with my simple, my artless story.

Well, then.We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which I never can pass without delaying at the windows--indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more at that delightful omnium gatherum.And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's little shop, "No.47," which is also a favorite haunt of mine.

Mr.Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged salutations, "Mr.Pinto," I said, "will you like to see a real curiosity in this curiosity shop? Step into Mr.Gale's little back room."In that little back parlor there are Chinese gongs; there are old Saxe and Sevres plates; there is Furstenberg, Carl Theodor, Worcester, Amstel, Nankin and other jimcrockery.And in the corner what do you think there is? There is an actual GUILLOTINE.If you doubt me, go and see--Gale, High Holborn, No.47.It is a slim instrument, much slighter than those which they make now;--some nine feet high, narrow, a pretty piece of upholstery enough.There is the hook over which the rope used to play which unloosened the dreadful axe above; and look! dropped into the orifice where the head used to go--there is THE AXE itself, all rusty, with A GREATNOTCH IN THE BLADE.

As Pinto looked at it--Mr.Gale was not in the room, I recollect;happening to have been just called out by a customer who offered him three pound fourteen and sixpence for a blue Shepherd in pate tendre,--Mr.Pinto gave a little start, and seemed crispe for a moment.Then he looked steadily towards one of those great porcelain stools which you see in gardens--and--it seemed to me--Itell you I won't take my affidavit--I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir--I may have been sleep-walking: perhaps am as I write now--I may have been under the influence of that astounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen--but I vow I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly grin at the porcelain stool,"Nay, nefer shague your gory locks at me, Dou canst not say I did it."(He pronounced it, by the way, I DIT it, by which I KNOW that Pinto was a German.)I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the porcelain stool I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful distinctness--a ghost--an eidolon--a form--A HEADLESS MAN seated, with his head in his lap, which wore an expression of piteous surprise.

At this minute, Mr.Gale entered from the front shop to show a customer some delf plates; and he did not see--but WE DID--the figure rise up from the porcelain stool, shake its head, which it held in its hand, and which kept its eyes fixed sadly on us, and disappear behind the guillotine.

"Come to the 'Gray's-inn Coffee-house,'" Pinto said, "and I will tell you how THE NOTCH CAME TO THE AXE." And we walked down Holborn at about thirty-seven minutes past six o'clock.

If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader, I promise him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be astonished still more.