THE DARK-STREET MYSTERY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5020, 30 May 1889, Page 4

THE DARK-STREET MYSTERY.

LITERATURE-

A. DOCTOR’S STORY. CHAPTER I. He saw my efforts to repress a smile at the actor’s vanity, and said quietly : ‘ And I am far from certain that I could get on without Ranch. He gives me a benefit now and then. I understand him and his little peculiarities. "We have been together a good many years. He is not a bad sort—or a bad friend —and helped me once when nobody else would, and, God knows, I am not likely to forget that. But,’ he added, with a melancholy shake of the head, ‘ poor Kench cannot act. I wish he could. I wish he were a Macready, for that matter.’ ‘ And what is your especial line, Mr Hash P * 1 Comedy—pure comedy. I come of an old acting family, my father and grandfather were actors before me ,* my daughters are theatrical—they would take to the boards, despite my efforts to change the scene a bit, just as I did, despite a rare chance of becoming a respectable surgeon at my uncle’s expense. Hereditary tastes, I suppose,’ he added, with a sigh ; ‘ they are not always to be fought against.’ ‘ Shall I have the pleasure of seeing your daughters act on the fourth ? ’ ‘ They are not with me, sir,’ he added, his mobile countenance rapidly shadowing at this inquiry j ‘ I am quite alone here.’ *O ! indeed ! ’

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him where his daughters were, but 1 refrained. He answered my thoughts, however. ‘My children are in London. I shall return to them in a week or so, when I get their new address.’ ‘Are they advancing in their profession 1 ’ ‘ One *s an invalid—Hyacintha. You have reason to remember Hyacintha, Mr Lissamer.’ ‘l7’ ‘ You were called in six years ago, when we were lodging in Thistlewood Street. Hyacintha was nineteen years of age then, and was injured at the old Yic in a trap accident. Christmas time—you may recoliect ? ’ ‘ That was your daughter, then ? ’ * Yes. You have not forgotten ? ’ ‘Ho, poor girl ! I recommended you to take her at once to St Thomas’s Hospital. Her case was beyond my skill.' ‘As it was beyond the skill of the hospital people too. She only partially recovered the use of her limbs. She has been helpless ever since.’ ‘ Poor girl 1 ’ ‘ Fortunately her sister is seldom out of an engagement. We call her, playfully. the genius of the family. If she ever gets West, she will make her mark, I fancy. A clever girl is Delia; and Kench thinks so too. Alair judge of acting, Kench, though he can’t—but I am repeating myself and wasting your time, Mr Lissamer, and my own, which just now is not up to much,’ he said slangily, as he sprang with alacrity to his feet. ‘ You will allow me to withdraw, and to thank you again, with all my heart, for your kind patronage. Good morning, sir. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you on the fourth, I hope,' ‘The pleasure of meeting will be mine,’ I said politely and cheerfully ; * for I rely upon you, and not Mr Kencb, for an evening’s entertainment.’

‘ Ha, La ! ’ he laughed outright now ; ‘ mo, we must not build upon Kench for anything in the way of amusement. Good morning, sir ; good morning.’ He went away bright and smiling, under my little effort of pleasantry ; he bowed himself out of my room with no email degree of ease and grace, and went down the stairs humming an air from ‘ Trovatore.’

CHAPTER 11. I cohxiD not get Mr Noah Nash out of my head all day. It was quite a stirring incident in my life at Breynnuth, which had been very dull, and slow, and monotonous till then. It seemed so strange that he should remember me as the young surgeon ot Thistlewood Street—stranger still that I should have been called, in a case of emergency, into this man’s house. As I eat before my fire in the murky afternoon after my early dinner, I conjured up the whole scene in which I had played my part, six years ago. It was not all so fer away ; I have had always a most excellent memory. I had forgotten the name of Nash, but not the incident which had occurred on the one occasion of my visit to the actor’s lodgings. As I sat before the fire, the whole facts came back by degrees, though the scene was misty, and the characters, all but one, mere shadows, the shadow of Mr Noah Nash —a pale, nervous, confused man, whom I should never have identified with the leading comedian of the Prince’s Theatre —the most indistinct. There was a second shadow—a gawky, ill-clad girl, with large black eyes, standing in the background, biting nervously at the corner of an apron, a girl who never spoke j that must have been Delia. And the patient, she who had been brought home, a young woman, very dark, very handsome, very wild and hysterical, prone to delirium in her passionate outbursts at her own illfortune, not to be pacified or controlled in her grief, and despair, and passion, whilst I was with her—she was no shadow now, I could see her just as vividly as on that cold, cheerless, January night—again 1 saw the blood leave the face, and the lips grow gray, and the eyes look at me as at a judge who had condemned her, when I urged them all to take her to the hospital without further delay. How it all came back that afternoon—how strange 1 it was !—how I seemed to be having I iny share in this family’s disaster once again J

I must have dropped off to sleep thinking of these Nash’s, and become the victim of a disturbed dream in consequence, in which the ridiculous became mixed up with the sensational, and my little house in Thistlewood Street, my dead mother and my live housekeeper became more real than the Breymouth life about me, and yet were mixed with it in a strange, incongruous fashion, patent to the dreams of folk who go to sleep in easy-chairs with their heads hanging upside-down over the arms.

If I attempted to account for what followed my waking—with a jump, and a groan, and a sensation of having been stabbed with a sharp knife at the back of my neck—only a crick that, I dare say—a few sceptical friends would laugh at me. I could only account for it by one of my odd theories—to which I have faintly alluded in an earlier page—and this is not the time and place to ventilate them. I have grown too staid and matter-of-fact a man; I explain everything on natural and scientific principles; I throw the responsibility of the Unaccountable on tbe liver. Indigestion is the godfather of all the ghosts, I tell the dyspeptic and the nervous ‘ break-down gang,’ who make the fortunes of physicians. But, in the most secret recesses of my inner self, I see beyond all this a little, and look out at times into the mistladen, impalpable, undiscoverable country where wander beings whom we dare not face, and where things happen that we will not believe !

I woke up that afternoon with no more out-of-the-way intention than that of going to the Prince’s Theatre at Breymouth that evening—a fixed intention, which seemed to my foggy mind approximate to an invisible command. I had gone to sleep, perfectly assured that I should wait till the fourth with exemplary patience to see Mr Noah Nash, and I woke up fidgety and feverish, and with a strong regret that I had not asked him what time the doors of the theatre opened, so that I might get there in good time this very night, and be fortunate enough to secure the best seat in the house. Nothing unaccountable, nothing verging on the supernatural in this—merely the fancy of a crotchety being close on convalescence. (To he Continued .)