From Afar. John Russell Fearn
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1946 by John Russell Fearn
Copyright © 1982, 2011 by Philip Harbottle
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Morgan Wallace
CHAPTER ONE
It is a remarkable story that I have to tell, but since I have the permission of the law, and of my wife to do so, I think that I ought to set the whole astounding experience on record since it is still occupying the energies of the world’s greatest psychiatrists. Surely no married couple was ever so damned as Beryl and I from the start of our life together....
We were married on a glorious June day. Our engagement had not been a long one. In fact I had reached the age of thirty-seven, and had come to consider myself as almost a confirmed bachelor when a visit to a Birmingham stockbroker’s firm brought me into contact with Beryl Wilson. At that time she was a very efficient secretary to a wealthy broker.
My own business being in stocks and shares, I conceived all sorts of reasons for going to Birmingham, and finally—well, you know how such things are—Beryl Wilson became Mrs. Richard Shaw. I had become utterly entranced with this blonde-haired girl with the merry blue eyes. She was eight years my junior; filled with a terrible zest for living. I never knew a girl to love speed so much.
Taking it all round our marriage was a pretty quiet affair. When we left the church we had already decided that our honeymoon would be spent at a quiet little hotel in Cornwall, to which I was going to drive us in my car. So, loaded up with luggage and with old shoes tied on the car’s rear bumper we started off on that brilliantly sunny morning.
“Everything fixed?” Beryl asked me, when we were speeding down the country lanes.
“Everything,” I acknowledged smiling. “I’ve arranged that we stop at the Ashdown Hotel for lunch, when we can also get rid of these fancy-dress clothes, then on again to Cornwall. We’ll be there by teatime.”
“I suppose,” she mused, “we are indeed absolutely alone—just together in the world if I can put it that way. You have only a housekeeper and a handyman; I have—or had—only a landlady. No parents—”
“And all the future before us,” I murmured. “I’m fairly well off for money, with a good business. We don’t need anybody to help us....”
Beryl nodded dreamily; then, as she watched the road ahead she sat up suddenly. Bright-eyed, she turned to me.
“Let me drive for a while, Dick, will you? You don’t go half fast enough for my liking. You know how I like to get along—especially in a lovely roadster like this. Go on! Please!”
Well, it isn’t easy to refuse your bride when she puts it like that; so I stopped the car and we changed places. I watched her slender, capable hands grip the steering wheel. She let in the clutch and depressed the accelerator gently—at first. For about a couple of miles she drove as sedately as if following a hearse, presumably to get the feel of the car, then her merry blue eyes glanced at me.
“Feel in the mood for a nice, swift run?” she asked me, impishly.
“Within limits,” I responded, a trifle uneasy as I remembered her weakness.
My assent settled it for her. Gradually her foot pressed lower on the accelerator, and I watched the speed indicator creep up from forty to fifty, then gradually, to sixty. We were in an unrestricted area, of course, with a straight sunlit lane devoid of traffic ahead of us, but even so it seemed a pretty alarming rate to me.
But Beryl was not nearly satisfied yet. She was enjoying every moment of this, the wind blowing the blonde hair back from her lovely face, her eyes fixed keenly straight ahead. Sixty—sixty-six—seventy—seventy-five—!
“Berry!” I cried at last. “Berry, for heaven’s sake ease up a bit!”
“Why? We’re only just getting a real move on—!” And she added five miles an hour to the speed in mischievous retaliation. Then, suddenly, it happened! I could not be quite sure what occurred but I noticed a queer expression settle on Beryl’s face. It was not the look of sudden illness but more of fear and intense perplexity.
This seemed odd to me for I had never seen her afraid in all the time I had known her, and certainly never perplexed. Perhaps it lasted fifteen seconds, then, quite abruptly, her features went blank and her hands dropped from the wheel into her lap.
“Beryl—!” I screamed, but it was too late then.
Going at its present speed and uncontrolled, the car lost the crown of the road and hurtled straight for the bank. For a numbing split second I saw a telegraph pole hurtling towards me.
The rest was an exploding, tearing hell of steel, glass and leather. Then—
Darkness.
* * * * * * *
My mind is in complete confusion concerning the events that followed the smash. I have a dim remembrance of chaotic dreams, of visions of nurses going to and fro, and once the outlines of an operating theater pervaded my consciousness.... Until at last I became rational enough to be able to understand where I was, and ask questions.
Sealed in a plaster cast from waist to shoulders I learned that I had sustained several broken ribs, a fractured arm, and multiple cuts and abrasions. But now it was only a matter of convalescence.
“And my wife?” I asked the doctor in charge of my case. He did not answer immediately.
“I want the truth,” I went on quickly. “Why don’t you answer my question?”
He looked at me steadily and I felt the grip of horror.
“Doc, you don’t mean that she’s—she’s dead?”
“No, not dead,” he reassured me. “She sustained multiple injuries from the crash just as you did, but we’ve fixed her up all right. As far as we can tell medically she is a normal woman again, except for one thing—the way she looks at you.”
“The—the way she looks at you?” I repeated in astonishment.
“I don’t think I have ever seen such a strange light in the eyes of a woman before! It’s mysterious—eerie, yet somehow contemptuous. Her face though remains expressionless. All the pain she has endured has not even made her wince! Yet her nervous system is not in any way injured. I’m afraid I can’t explain it to you very well. You will have to see her for yourself—when you’re better—”
With this he left me, and of course, from then onwards my one anxiety was to get well again and find out what had happened to my beloved Beryl. Even so it was another six weeks before my wish was gratified and by this time she too was ready for discharge. So, for the first time since the accident we met each other in Dr. Mason’s office.
Now I realized what Mason had meant. To all outward appearances my wife was as young and good to look at as ever, trimly smart in the costume that had been provided for her, but there was a difference, an intense paleness of face, explainable perhaps by the ordeal she had been through; and those eyes! How changed they were indeed—how changed!
Certainly she looked at me in full recognition, but with such indefinable insolence that my intended greeting died without being uttered. Instead I felt an uncommonly strong desire to hit her. I cannot describe what else I saw in her eyes; they were depthless, mysterious, had the peculiar quality of looking at me and yet at the same time beyond me to...somewhere.
“You are Richard Shaw, my husband, aren’t you?” she asked me in level tones.
I stared at her. “Well of course I am!” I answered in amazement. “Of all the extraordinary questions!”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Since we have been parted from each other so long I thought it as well to make sure.”
Just for a moment I wondered if this was one of her mischievous tricks,