DOYLE,Arthur Conan - Tales of Terror & Mystery

TALES OF TERROR AND MYSTERY

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TALES OF TERROR AND

MYSTERY

By Arthur Conan Doyle

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TALES OF TERROR AND MYSTERY

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CONTENTS

The Horror of the Heights

The Leather Funnel

The New Catacomb

The Case of Lady Sannox

The Terror of Blue John Gap

The Brazilian Cat

The Lost Special

The Beetle-Hunter

The Man with the Watches

The Japanned Box

The Black Doctor

The Jew’s Breastplate

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Tales of Terror

The Horror of the Heights

The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the

Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by

some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of

humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter.

The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate

before linking his morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic

facts which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions

contained in it are amazing and even monstrous, it is none the less

forcing itself upon the general intelligence that they are true,

and that we must readjust our ideas to the new situation. This

world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious

margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger. I

will endeavour in this narrative, which reproduces the original

document in its necessarily somewhat fragmentary form, to lay

before the reader the whole of the facts up to date, prefacing my

statement by saying that, if there be any who doubt the narrative

of Joyce-Armstrong, there can be no question at all as to the facts

concerning Lieutenant Myrtle, R. N., and Mr. Hay Connor, who

undoubtedly met their end in the manner described.

The Joyce-Armstrong Fragment was found in the field which is

called Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village

of Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the 15th

September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the

employment of Mathew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham,

perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the

hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair

of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the

ditch, he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved

to be a note-book with detachable leaves, some of which had

come loose and were fluttering along the base of the hedge. These

he collected, but some, including the first, were never recovered,

and leave a deplorable hiatus in this all-important statement. The

note-book was taken by the labourer to his master, who in turn

showed it to Dr. J. H. Atherton, of Hartfield. This gentleman at

once recognized the need for an expert examination, and the

manuscript was forwarded to the Aero Club in London, where it now

lies.

The first two pages of the manuscript are missing. There is

also one torn away at the end of the narrative, though none of

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these affect the general coherence of the story. It is conjectured

that the missing opening is concerned with the record of Mr. Joyce-

Armstrong’s qualifications as an aeronaut, which can be gathered

from other sources and are admitted to be unsurpassed among the

air-pilots of England. For many years he has been looked upon as

among the most daring and the most intellectual of flying men, a

combination which has enabled him to both invent and test several

new devices, including the common gyroscopic attachment which is

known by his name. The main body of the manuscript is written

neatly in ink, but the last few lines are in pencil and are so

ragged as to be hardly legible—exactly, in fact, as they might be

expected to appear if they were scribbled off hurriedly from the

seat of a moving aeroplane. There are, it may be added, several

stains, both on the last page and on the outside cover which have

been pronounced by the Home Office experts to be blood—probably

human and certainly mammalian. The fact that something closely

resembling the organism of malaria was discovered in this blood,

and that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have suffered from

intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new weapons

which modern science has placed in the hands of our detectives.

And now a word as to the personality of the author of this

epoch-making statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few

friends who really knew something of the man, was a poet and a

dreamer, as well as a mechanic and an inventor. He was a man of

considerable wealth, much of which he had spent in the pursuit of

his aeronautical hobby. He had four private aeroplanes in his

hangars near Devizes, and is said to have made no fewer than one

hundred and seventy ascents in the course of last year. He was a

retiring man with dark moods, in which he would avoid the

society of his fellows. Captain Dangerfield, who knew him better

than anyone, says that there were times when his eccentricity

threatened to develop into something more serious. His habit of

carrying a shot-gun with him in his aeroplane was one manifestation

of it.

Another was the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant

Myrtle had upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height

record, fell from an altitude of something over thirty thousand

feet. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated,

though his body and limbs preserved their configuration. At every

gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield,

would ask, with an enigmatic smile: “And where, pray, is Myrtle’s

head?”

On another occasion after dinner, at the mess of the Flying

School on Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be

the most permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter.

Having listened to successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty

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construction, and over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders

and refusing to put forward his own views, though he gave the

impression that they differed from any advanced by his companions.

It is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance

it was found that his private affairs were arranged with a

precision which may show that he had a strong premonition of

disaster. With these essential explanations I will now give the

narrative exactly as it stands, beginning at page three of the

blood-soaked note-book:

“Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav

Raymond I found that neither of them was aware of any particular

danger in the higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually

say what was in my thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they

had any corresponding idea they could not have failed to express

it. But then they are two empty, vainglorious fellows with no

thought beyond seeing their silly names in the newspaper. It is

interesting to note that neither of them had ever been much beyond

the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have been higher

than this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. It

must be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the danger

zone—always presuming that my premonitions are correct.

“Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years,

and one might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealing

itself in our day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak

engines, when a hundred horse-power Gnome or Green was considered

ample for every need, the flights were very restricted. Now that

three hundred horse-power is the rule rather than the exception,

visits to the upper layers have become easier and more common.

Some of us can remember how, in our youth, Garros made a world-wide

reputation by attaining nineteen thousand feet, and it was

considered a remarkable achievement to fly over the Alps. Our

standard now has been immeasurably raised, and there are twenty

high flights for one in former years. Many of them have been

undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot level has been

reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold and asthma.

What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this planet a

thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he

chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are

jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers

which inhabit them. I believe in time they will map these jungles

accurately out. Even at the present moment I could name two of

them. One of them lies over the Pau-Biarritz district of France.

Another is just over my head as I write here in my house in

Wiltshire. I rather think there is a third in the Homburg-

Wiesbaden district.

“It was the disappearance of the airmen that first set me

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thinking. Of course, everyone said that they had fallen into the

sea, but that did not satisfy me at all. First, there was Verrier

in France; his machine was found near Bayonne, but they never got

his body. There was the case of Baxter also, who vanished, though

his engine and some of the iron fixings were found in a wood in

Leicestershire. In that case, Dr. Middleton, of Amesbury, who was

watching the flight with a telescope, declares that just before the

clouds obscured the view he saw the machine, which was at an

enormous height, suddenly rise perpendicularly upwards in a

succession of jerks in a manner that he would have thought to

be impossible. That was the last seen of Baxter. There was a

correspondence in the papers, but it never led to anything. There

were several other similar cases, and then there was the death of

Hay Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved mystery of

the air, and what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet how

little was ever done to get to the bottom of the business! He came

down in a tremendous vol-plane from an unknown height. He never

got off his machine and died in his pilot’s seat. Died of what?

‘Heart disease,’ said the doctors. Rubbish! Hay Connor’s heart

was as sound as mine is. What did Venables say? Venables was the

only man who was at his side when he died. He said that he was

shivering and looked like a man who had been badly scared. ‘Died

of fright,’ said Venables, but could not imagine what he was

frightened about. Only said one word to Venables, which sounded

like ‘Monstrous.’ They could make nothing of that at the inquest.

But I could make something of it. Monsters! That was the last

word of poor Harry Hay Connor. And he DID die of fright, just

as Venables thought.

“And then there was Myrtle’s head. Do you really believe—does

anybody really believe—that a man’s head could be driven clean

into his body by the force of a fall? Well, perhaps it may be

possible, but I, for one, have never believed that it was so with

Myrtle. And the grease upon his clothes--‘all slimy with grease,’

said somebody at the inquest. Queer that nobody got thinking after

that! I did—but, then, I had been thinking for a good long time.

I’ve made three ascents—how Dangerfield used to chaff me about my

shot-gun—but I’ve never been high enough. Now, with this new,

light Paul Veroner machine and its one hundred and seventy-five

Robur, I should easily touch the thirty thousand tomorrow. I’ll

have a shot at the record. Maybe I shall have a shot at something

else as well. Of course, it’s dangerous. If a fellow wants to

avoid danger he had best keep out of flying altogether and subside

finally into flannel slippers and a dressing-gown. But I’ll visit

the air-jungle tomorrow—and if there’s anything there I shall know

it. If I return, I’ll find myself a bit of a celebrity. If I

don’t this note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I

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lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or

mysteries, if YOU please.

“I chose my Paul Veroner monoplane for the job. There’s

nothing like a monoplane when real work is to be done.

Beaumont found that out in very early days. For one thing it

doesn’t mind damp, and the weather looks as if we should be in the

clouds all the time. It’s a bonny little model and answers my hand

like a tender-mouthed horse. The engine is a ten-cylinder rotary

Robur working up to one hundred and seventy-five. It has all the

modern improvements—enclosed fuselage, high-curved landing skids,

brakes, gyroscopic steadiers, and three speeds, worked by an

alteration of the angle of the planes upon the Venetian-blind

principle. I took a shot-gun with me and a dozen cartridges filled

with buck-shot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my old

mechanic, when I directed him to put them in. I was dressed like

an Arctic explorer, with two jerseys under my overalls, thick socks

inside my padded boots, a storm-cap with flaps, and my talc

goggles. It was stifling outside the hangars, but I was going for

the summit of the Himalayas, and had to dress for the part.

Perkins knew there was something on and implored me to take him

with me. Perhaps I should if I were using the biplane, but a

monoplane is a one-man show—if you want to get the last foot of

life out of it. Of course, I took an oxygen bag; the man who goes

for the altitude record without one will either be frozen or

smothered—or both.

“I had a good look at the planes, the rudder-bar, and the

elevating lever before I got in. Everything was in order so far as

I could see. Then I switched on my engine and found that she was

running sweetly. When they let her go she rose almost at once upon

the lowest speed. I circled my home field once or twice just to

warm her up, and then with a wave to Perkins and the others, I

flattened out my planes and put her on her highest. She skimmed

like a swallow down wind for eight or ten miles until I turned her

nose up a little and she began to climb in a great spiral for the

cloud-bank above me. It’s all-important to rise slowly and adapt

yourself to the pressure as you go.

“It was a close, warm day for an English September, and there

was the hush and heaviness of impending rain. Now and then there

came sudden puffs of wind from the south-west—one of them so gusty

and unexpected that it caught me napping and turned me half-round

for an instant. I remember the time when gusts and whirls and air-

pockets used to be things of danger—before we learned to put

an overmastering power into our engines. Just as I reached the

cloud-banks, with the altimeter marking three thousand, down came

the rain. My word, how it poured! It drummed upon my wings and

lashed against my face, blurring my glasses so that I could hardly

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see. I got down on to a low speed, for it was painful to travel

against it. As I got higher it became hail, and I had to turn tail

to it. One of my cylinders was out of action—a dirty plug, I

should imagine, but still I was rising steadily with plenty of

power. After a bit the trouble passed, whatever it was, and I

heard the full, deep-throated purr—the ten singing as one. That’s

where the beauty of our modern silencers comes in. We can at last

control our engines by ear. How they squeal and squeak and sob

when they are in trouble! All those cries for help were wasted in

the old days, when every sound was swallowed up by the monstrous

racket of the machine. If only the early aviators could come back

to see the beauty and perfection of the mechanism which have been

bought at the cost of their lives!

“About nine-thirty I was nearing the clouds. Down below me,

all blurred and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of

Salisbury Plain. Half a dozen flying machines were doing hackwork

at the thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows

against the green background. I dare say they were wondering what

I was doing up in cloud-land. Suddenly a grey curtain drew across

beneath me and the wet folds of vapours were swirling round my

face. It was clammily cold and miserable. But I was above the

hail-storm, and that was something gained. The cloud was as dark

and thick as a London fog. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked

her nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and I actually

began to slide backwards. My sopped and dripping wings had made me

heavier than I thought, but presently I was in lighter cloud, and

soon had cleared the first layer. There was a second—opal-

coloured and fleecy—at a great height above my head, a white,

unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below, with the

monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is

deadly lonely in these cloud-spaces. Once a great flight of some

small water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the westwards.

The quick whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to

my ear. I fancy that they were teal, but I am a wretched

zoologist. Now that we humans have become birds we must really

learn to know our brethren by sight.

“The wind down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud-

pain. Once a great eddy formed in it, a whirlpool of vapour, and

through it, as down a funnel, I caught sight of the distant world.

A large white biplane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I

fancy it was the morning mail service betwixt Bristol and London.

Then the drift swirled inwards again and the great solitude was

unbroken.

“Just after ten I touched the lower edge of the upper cloud-

stratum. It consisted of fine diaphanous vapour drifting swiftly

from the westwards. The wind had been steadily rising all this

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time and it was now blowing a sharp breeze—twenty-eight an hour by

my gauge. Already it was very cold, though my altimeter only

marked nine thousand. The engines were working beautifully, and we

went droning steadily upwards. The cloud-bank was thicker than I

had expected, but at last it thinned out into a golden mist before

me, and then in an instant I had shot out from it, and there was an

unclouded sky and a brilliant sun above my head—all blue and gold

above, all shining silver below, one vast, glimmering plain as far

as my eyes could reach. It was a quarter past ten o’clock, and the

barograph needle pointed to twelve thousand eight hundred. Up I

went and up, my ears concentrated upon the deep purring of my

motor, my eyes busy always with the watch, the revolution

indicator, the petrol lever, and the oil pump. No wonder aviators

are said to be a fearless race. With so many things to think of

there is no time to trouble about oneself. About this time I noted

how unreliable is the compass when above a certain height from

earth. At fifteen thousand feet mine was pointing east and a point

south. The sun and the wind gave me my true bearings.

“I had hoped to reach an eternal stillness in these high

altitudes, but with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew

stronger. My machine groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet

as she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked

her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps,

than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and

tack up in the wind’s eye, for it was not merely a height

record that I was after. By all my calculations it was above

little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour might be

lost if I struck the outer layers at some farther point.

“When I reached the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was

about midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some

anxiety to the stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them

snap or slacken. I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and

fastened its hook into the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be

ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work

by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she

held together bravely. Every cord and strut was humming and

vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was glorious to see

how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the

conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely

something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to

the limitations which Creation seemed to impose—rise, too, by such

unselfish, heroic devotion as this air-conquest has shown. Talk of

human degeneration! When has such a story as this been written in

the annals of our race?

“These were the thoughts in my head as I climbed that

monstrous, inclined plane with the wind sometimes beating in my

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face and sometimes whistling behind my ears, while the cloud-land

beneath me fell away to such a distance that the folds and hummocks

of silver had all smoothed out into one flat, shining plain. But

suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented experience. I have

known before what it is to be in what our neighbours have called a

tourbillon, but never on such a scale as this. That huge,

sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears,

whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a

moment’s warning I was dragged suddenly into the heart of one. I

spun round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost

lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down

the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost

nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my

seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me hanging half-

insensible over the side of the fuselage. But I am always capable

of a supreme effort—it is my one great merit as an aviator. I was

conscious that the descent was slower. The whirlpool was a cone

rather than a funnel, and I had come to the apex. With a

terrific wrench, throwing my weight all to one side, I levelled my

planes and brought her head away from the wind. In an instant I

had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky. Then,

shaken but victorious, I turned her nose up and began once more my

steady grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid

the danger-spot of the whirlpool, and soon I was safely above it.

Just after one o’clock I was twenty-one thousand feet above the

sea-level. To my great joy I had topped the gale, and with every

hundred feet of ascent the air grew stiller. On the other hand, it

was very cold, and I was conscious of that peculiar nausea which

goes with rarefaction of the air. For the first time I unscrewed

the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an occasional whiff of the

glorious gas. I could feel it running like a cordial through my

veins, and I was exhilarated almost to the point of drunkenness.

I shouted and sang as I soared upwards into the cold, still outer

world.

“It is very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon

Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they

ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was

due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made.

Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the

lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such

dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even

without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without undue distress.

It was bitterly cold, however, and my thermometer was at zero,

Fahrenheit. At one-thirty I was nearly seven miles above the

surface of the earth, and still ascending steadily. I found,

however, that the rarefied air was giving markedly less support to

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