The House of Souls

sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost in meditation on the drowsy traffic of the street. There was a bamboo table by his side, a fantastic thin

u made any discoveries i

which struck me as singular, and there is a st

was really Crashaw whom you saw that night standi

nor their results have any special relation to Crashaw. But my investig

In what way

d I know her better

name i

rbe

peated the word, daz

You had reason to recognize the expression of her face; when you go home look at the f

have proo

have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or

id you s

I saw her entering a house in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho. In fac

have seen this woman, in the ordinary adventure of London society, talking and laughing, and sippin

with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I searched for Mrs. Beaumo

een in strange p

she came from the country. I should be wrong in saying that she found her level in going to this particular quarter, or associating with these people, for from what I was told, I should think the worst den in London far too good for her. The person from whom I got my information, as you may suppose, no great Puritan, shuddered and grew sick in telling me of the nameless infamies which were laid to her charge. After living there for a year, or perhaps a little more, she disappeared as suddenly as she came, and they saw nothing of her till about the time of the Paul Street case. At first she came to her old haunts only occasionally, then more frequently, and finally took up her abode there as before, and remained for six or eight months. It's of no use my going into details as to the life that woman led; if you want particulars you can look at Meyrick's legacy. Those designs were not drawn from his imagination. She again disappeared, and the people of the place saw nothing of her till a few months ago. My informant told me that she had taken some rooms in a house which he pointed out, and these rooms she was in the habit of visiting two or three times a week and always at ten in the morning. I was led to expect that one of these visits would be paid on a certain day about a week ago, and I accordingly managed to be on the look-out in company with my cicerone at a quarter to ten, and the hour and the lady came with equal punctuality. My friend and I were standing under an archway, a little way back from the street, but she saw us, and gave me a glance that I shall be long in forgetting. That look was quite enough for me; I knew Miss Raymond to be Mrs. Her

to Cl

n possession of facts about this wo

what

air and looked reflectively at Aus

arke and I should ca

s that? No, no, Villiers, you cannot do

y that my information does not end here; it

t a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who

s eye was caught by a word and a phrase that followed it; and, sick at heart, with wh

the thoughts of the man who stands in the keen morning air on the black platform, bound, the bell tolling in his ears, an

site symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing

f sweat stood out on his forehead. Austin sat silent for

rely never enter such a house as th

ll go out alive-I,

You cannot, you w

r what I did there, but feeling impelled, as one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one another in the short compass of a single window. I think it was a cold shudder that suddenly passed through me that first told me that I had found what I wanted. I looked up from the pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above which the lettering had faded, where the red bricks of two hundred years ago had grimed to black; where the windows had gathered to themselves the fog and the dirt of winters innumerable. I saw what I required; but I think it was five

and sick. Villiers pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and showed Au

st as it used to be made for the old trade, the

and stared at Villiers, g

od on your hands. My God!' he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, 'yo

this cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes. If when we go in

tay here any longer; I can

ight, A

as opened again, and Austin stood,

. I have received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres. He

ied him off in the prime o

system, probably caused by some severe shock. But he states that the patient would tel

e anythi

bout your poor friend. He had not been long in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely any one, with the e