What They Heard

They crept round the house. At the back a pair of French windows were open, but heavy curtains were drawn across them. No light was visible. They listened. A voice was speaking—slowly, scarcely above a whisper, but a whisper of contemptuous pride.

"Yes," it said, "I am the Destroyer! I was born to kill. It was the curse of my birth."

The silence of the room was broken only by the faint sound of a woman sobbing. Monsieur Dupont and the inspector drew nearer to the window.

"You fools!" said the arrogant voice. "What are your laws of Right and Wrong to me? I am Right and Wrong. What are your Codes of Sin? I am Sin. Who are you to judge me? Who are you to set your little laws against My Madness?" There was a long pause. Then the voice continued, in a tone of dull bitterness.

"Ever since I had strength to break, I have broken—to tear, I have torn. The disease took command of me long before I knew its meaning. When I was a child the sight of pretty things frightened me. I used to shrink from them, and hide my face. I was only quiet and normal when there were plain, colorless things about me. As I grew older the fear developed into hatred—and with hatred grew, slowly and subtly, the inclination to destroy. At first the opposition of all that was normal in me sufficed to keep the desire in check, but day by day it grew stronger and stronger, and day by day the power to resist became less and less. The increase of the hatred into madness followed the growth of the impulse towards the first surrender. It came upon me for the first time when I was twelve. How well I remember that day! My sanity had fought its strongest battle, and my head was still throbbing and swimming with the strain of it. I was taken to a strange house, and left alone in a bright room. On the wall there was a picture of a very beautiful woman. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I couldn't move from in front of it. New passions, that I had never felt before, were tearing me. The picture seemed to be alive, to be mocking me. I hated it. I felt that it was cruel and loathsome—that it had wronged me. My whole body was on fire—my brain was flaming. Then something seemed to snap in my head. I lost myself. Irresistible forces took possession of me, and used me. When I came to myself ... the picture was lying at my feet ... in fragments."

The voice settled down into an expressionless monotone, pursuing its story without emotion.

"From that moment my doom lay on me. I had made the initial submission. Any attempt at resistance after that was futile. I was helpless. Out of my hatred of beauty in any shape or form came the desire to obtain the most beautiful things I could find to enjoy the mad ecstasy of shattering them. I had all the morbid secret longing to induce attacks of my own madness—to enjoy the awful exaltation, the triumph of destruction. I was not ashamed. I found myself entirely without scruple, without conscience, incapable of remorse. When the periods of desire were upon me, I hesitated at nothing to gratify them. At first they were frequent—sometimes there were only a few days between—but as I grew older the intervals lengthened, until sometimes I dared to think myself free. But, sooner or later, it came again. I knew all the warning signals—the creeping in of uncontrollable thoughts—the brain pictures—the quickening of mind and body—then the grip of the madness. All I could do at such times was to collect a number of things sufficiently beautiful to satisfy my lust, and lock myself in to an orgy of destruction. Then I was normal again for another period. So I grew up. When I was twenty, I learnt the truth."

"I told him," a woman's broken voice said. "I hadn't the heart to tell him before. I was hoping against hope that the curse would pass away as he grew into manhood. But when I saw that it would not ... I told him."

"Then I knew there was no escape," the dull voice went on. "The results of my father's vices and my mother's madness were my inheritance. God! ... what a legacy!"

The voice flamed for an instant—then subsided again into its previous monotony.

"The intervals became longer and longer, but each time the madness recurred it tightened its clutches. Each time it made me more and more its own property. Whenever the warnings showed themselves I fled to the refuge of Miss Masters's house. She bought and kept there things on which, when the mania was at its height, it satisfied me to expend my lust. But those inanimate things, though sufficient for that purpose, had no power in themselves to produce an attack of the madness. The capability to do that was reserved to a woman's beauty—the effect of which, so far, I had had no opportunity to experience. That opportunity came to me for the first time at Nice—twenty years ago. I had never seen a really beautiful woman before I saw Colette d'Orsel."

Another pause followed the name. The room behind the curtains remained in tense silence until the voice resumed.

"I can remember it now—as if it were yesterday. How she stood there—in the soft shaded light—terribly beautiful. And I—the Destroyer—watched her paralyzed—knowing for the first time the pinnacle of my madness. The sight of her numbed all my sanity. I could no more have torn myself away from that place than I could have resisted the new flood of my disease that broke over me like a nightmare wave. I was introduced to her. As I bent over her hand I almost laughed at the thought of what her horror would have been if she had known the impulses that surged through me. Her voice—the touch of her—burnt into me like flames. I knew what the end would be, but I was powerless in the grip of my inheritance. And she—in the pitiless irony of it—liked me! Three evenings later I met her in the gardens of the hotel. We sat together ... alone for the first time. I struggled. My God, I struggled! But it was useless. The white shape of her next to me—the dim outline of her features—the whole nearness of her beauty.... Then it came on me, as I knew it would—the final rush of irresistible hatred. When I knew myself again ... she was lying on the ground ... smashed ... my first living victim."

The woman sobbed.

"God forgive him!" she cried. "He was innocent himself. It wasn't really him...."

Light footsteps moved across the floor.

"Let me be," said the voice hardly. "What God does with me is for God to do. Sit down again."

The footsteps returned.

"I left her there, and went back to the hotel. I sat down in my room, and analyzed my feelings. The madness had left me. My mind was perfectly clear and steady. I felt no horror at what I had done—no remorse—only a sense of impersonal regret at the death of an innocent woman, and a faint detached pity for her misfortune in crossing my path. I carefully considered my position, and certainty that there could be no evidence against me dispelled any fears for myself—but my cold-blooded sanity realized that the odds were tremendously against a recurrence of the same good fortune, and that the avoidance of the opposite sex must become the chief care of my life. Then I went to bed, and slept soundly. The discovery of Colette d'Orsel's body early the next morning provided the sensation of the year at Nice. The police were confounded. There was no motive—no clue. It is an unsolved mystery to-day."

The callousness of the story was so revolting that even the inspector, seasoned as he was, allowed a muttered expression of disgust to escape him. But Monsieur Dupont remained as silent and still as the house itself.

"Ten years later," continued the voice, "I went to America. For five years I had been free from any return of the madness. You can imagine the longing to be like other men—to presume on the years of immunity. I felt unshakably sane. I even felt that I had never been mad. I gloried in the keenness of my intellect, the absolute order and control of my thoughts. What had I to do with madness? But in Boston ... I saw Margaret McCall. In an instant I was mad. In an instant——"

A cry tore the air—a cry so awful in its inhuman fury that the two listeners shrank back horrified. For a moment the room seethed with confusion. The voices of men and women were blended in rage, terror, and command. Then the curtains were wrenched aside, and two figures rushed out shrieking into the darkness of the garden.