The Narrative of Mr. James Rigby | Page 9

light
a cigar and take a walk.
I could just see enough of the old town to give me good hopes of
to-morrow's sight-seeing. There was nothing visible of quite such an
interesting character as one might meet in Chester, but there were a
good few fine old sixteenth century houses, and there were the two
gates with the chapels above them. But of course the castle was the
great show-place, and that I should visit on the morrow, if there were
no difficulties as to permission. There were some very fine pictures
there, if I remembered aright what I had read. I was walking down the
incline from one of the gates, trying to remember who the painters of
these pictures were, besides Van Dyck and Holbein, when -- that

shuffling step was behind me again!
I admit that it cost me an effort, this time, to turn on my pursuer. There
was something uncanny in that persistent, elusive footstep, and indeed
there was something alarming in my circumstances, dogged thus from
place to place, and unable to shake off my enemy, or to understand his
movements or his motive. Turn I did, however, and straightway the
shuffling step went off at a hastened pace in the shadow of the gate.
This time I made no more than half-a-dozen steps back. I turned again,
and pushed my way to the hotel. And as I went the shuffling step came
after.
The thing was serious. There must be some object in this unceasing
watching, and the object could bode no good to me. Plainly some
unseen eye had been on me the whole of that day, had noted my goings
and comings and my journey from Chester. Again, and irresistibly, the
watchings that preceded my father's death came to mind, and I could
not forget them. I could have no doubt now that I had been closely
watched from the moment I had set foot at Plymouth. But who could
have been waiting to watch me at Plymouth, when indeed I had only
decided to land at the last moment? Then I thought of the two Italian
forecastle hands on the steamer -- the very men whom Dorrington had
used to illustrate in what unexpected quarters members of the terrible
Italian secret societies might be found. And the Camorra was not
satisfied with single revenge; it destroyed the son after the father, and it
waited for many years, with infinite patience and cunning.
Dogged by the steps, I reached the hotel and went to bed. I slept but
fitfully at first, though better rest came as the night wore on. In the
early morning I woke with a sudden shock, and with an indefinite sense
of being disturbed by somebody about me. The window was directly
opposite the foot of the bed, and there, as I looked, was the face of a
man, dark, evil, and grinning, with a bush of black hair about his
uncovered head, and small rings in his ears.
It was but a flash, and the face vanished. I was struck by the terror that
one so often feels on a sudden and violent awakening from sleep, and it
was some seconds ere I could leave my bed and get to the window. My

room was on the first floor, and the window looked down on a
stable-yard. I had a momentary glimpse of a human figure leaving the
gate of the yard, and it was the figure that had fled before me in the
Rows, at Chester. A ladder belonging to the yard stood under the
window, and that was all.
I rose and dressed; I could stand this sort of thing no longer. If it were
only something tangible, if there were only somebody I could take hold
of, and fight with if necessary, it would not have been so bad. But I was
surrounded by some mysterious machination, persistent, unexplainable,
that it was altogether impossible to tackle or to face. To complain to the
police would have been absurd -- they would take me for a lunatic.
They are indeed just such complaints that lunatics so often make to the
police -- complaints of being followed by indefinite enemies, and of
being besieged by faces that look in at windows. Even if they did not
set me down a lunatic, what could the police of a provincial town do
for me in a case like this? No, I must go and consult Dorrington.
I had my breakfast, and then decided that I would at any rate try the
castle before leaving. Try it I did accordingly, and was allowed to go
over it. But through the whole morning I was oppressed by the horrible
sense of being watched by malignant eyes. Clearly there was no