Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

I’ve often thought, you know, that I’d like to write a book about Claire. Only all the time I’ve really known that that book about Claire would never be written because, you see, it would have had to be such a book! I don’t suppose there’s any man living, or that there ever has lived any man who, even with my untold and paradisaic opportunities, could write a book about Claire which would come within even measurable distance of doing justice to its subject. I once, having told her that I was going to write a book about her, sent her a thick octavo volume bound in blue morocco and having a golden key. This book contained four hundred and ninety-nine blank pages. The first, which made up the full five hundred, was the only one written upon. I have headed this page “The Book of Claire,” and under this title I had written: “She was most wonderfully her unique self...”

It has often occurred to me to wonder how long I should have gone on that night standing before the clock, which now by the action of my own hands was fast by a full five and twenty minutes, had not Bascombe jerked me out of my symbolizing reverie; Bascombe and another of his coughs...

I spun round angrily. He stood just inside the door. The light from the low-hung lamp over the dining table showed me only his stout body, and the formal formless clothes of the English manservant.

I could see nothing of his head. He might not have had a head at all. From somewhere near his face, above that island of white shirt-front with the discreet black stud glittering like an ebony island in its whiteness, he said — and his voice had in it an agitation which all his training couldn’t conceal:

“Sir... you must forgive me, sir... but there’s a man! A man, sir, at this time of night. He says he must see you, sir. Won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I told him, sir, that you weren’t here... But he’s inside, sir, and his back’s against the oak, sir...”

Poor old Bascombe’s voice, quivering in a most unusual and even eerie mixture of outraged dignity and sense of failure, quivered off into silence...

I was going to say something pretty curt. But before I could open my mouth I saw that the poor old boy was trembling; actually trembling. By the set of his mouth and the curious posture of his short, fat legs I knew that he was making a supreme effort to still this trembling. But the effort wasn’t any good.

It gave me a jerk, that did, you know. Bascombe trembling! One might, I thought, as well see St. Paul’s at the angle of Pisa’s Leaning Tower...

I walked round the table and put my hand on one of his shoulders. Under my palm I could feel the shaking of his soft servant’s body. I said: “All right, Bascombe. You sit down. Have a glass of port.” I half pushed him into a chair. I believe I remember a small sound, almost a cry of protest, which the dear old thing’s servile soul forced his mouth to utter. But I took no notice.

I went out into the hall. I remember that, as I passed through the doorway, I buttoned my open dinner jacket in the way a man buttons his coat when he expects trouble — physical trouble, that is. I’m rather a big fellow still and I was big then, in all conscience. I said, as I stepped out from light to darkness — for, for some obscure reason poor old Bascombe had forgotten to switch on the hall light:

“What the devil’s all this about?”

Opposite me the library door stood ajar, and from it there came a shaft of faint yellow light... It slid slimily across the deep gray darkness of the hall. I looked towards the outer door. I couldn’t see anything. I expect that was because my eyes weren’t yet accustomed to the change, because of course the place wasn’t really dark. I mean, not dark...

The first thing I saw — actually saw with my eyes — was an interference with that shaft of dusky gold light from the library. It had reached right across the hall to my feet. Suddenly — and there was no sound — it reached only half-way. I stood quite still... Then I began to see... What I saw was a shape. A great, indeterminate, columnar mass. A man all right. But a man so big, and so blurred somehow in outline, that it seemed impossible, at least standing where I was, to take in the whole of him at one glance.

A voice came to me out of the semi-darkness. A very small voice to come from so great a bulk. A small still voice. There was that about this voice which I find very hard to describe. I think I can best get at it when I say that it was a dead voice. It said:

“Are you Mr. Lorimer, sir?”

It was funny about that voice. I don’t know the exact words which had been on the tip of my tongue before he spoke, but they were to the effect that if he didn’t get out in rather less time than it takes a cat to wag its tail once, I’d put him out. But after he’d spoken the idea seemed to leave me. I said that Mr. Lorimer I was. I also said, I believe: “And what do you want?”