"What is the meaning of Sea?"
"That I confess I cannot explain. I introduced the word later and got the ordinary answer of Boat. To Seventh Sign
I got first Life, the second time Love. To Eighth Sign, I got
the answer None. I take it therefore that Seven was the sum
and number of the signs."
"But the Seventh was not achieved," I said on a sudden inspiration. "Since through the Sixth came Destruction.t"
"Ah! You think so? But we are taking these--mad ramblings very seriously. They are really only interesting from
a medical point of view."
"Surely they will attract the attention of psychic investigators.''
The doctor's eyes narrowed. "My dear sir, I have no intention of making them public."
'q'ben your interest9.''
THE HOUND OF DEATH
141
"Is purely personal. I shall make notes on the case, of course."
"I see." But for the f'u-st time I felt, like the blind man, that I didn't see at all. I rose to my feet.
"Well, I'll wish you good night, doctor. I'm off to town again tomorrow."
"Ah!" I fancied there was satisfaction, relief perhaps, behind the exclamation.
"I wish you good luck with your investigations," I continued lightly. "Don't loose the Hound of Death on me next
time we meet!"
His hand was in mine as I spoke, and I felt the start it gave. He recovered himself quickly. His lips drew back
from his long pointed teeth in a smile.
"For a man who loved power, what a power that would be!" he said. "To hold every human being's life in the hollow
of your hand!"
And his smile broadened.
V
That was the end of my direct connection with the affair. Later, the doctor's notebook and diary came into my
hands. I will reproduce the few scanty entries in it here,
though you will understand that it did not really come into
my possession until sometime afterwards.
Aug. 5th. Have discovered that by "the Chosen," Sister M.A. means those who reproduced the race. Apparently
they were held in the highest honour, and exalted above the
Priesthood. Contrast this with early Christians.
Aug. 7th. Persuaded Sister M.A. to let me hypnotize her. Succeeded in inducing hypnotic sleep and trance, but
no rapport established.
Aug. 9th. Have there been civilizations in the past to which ours is as nothing? Strange if it should be so, and I
the only man with the clue to it ....
Aug. 12th. Sister M.A. not at all amenable to suggestion when hypnotized. Yet state of trance easily induced. Cannot
understand it.
142 Agatha Christie
Aug. 13th. Sister M.A. mentioned today that in "state of grace" the "gate must be closed, lest another should
command the body." Interesting--but baffling.
Aug. 18th. So the First Sign is none other than... (words erased here).., then how many centuries will it take to
reach the Sixth? But if there should be a short-cut to Power...
Aug. 20th. Have arranged for M.A. to come here with Nurse. Have told her it is necessary to keep patient under
morphia. Am I mad? Or shall I be the Superman, with the
Power of Death in my hands?
(Here the entries cease.)
VI
It was, I think, on August 29 that I received the letter. It was directed to me, care of my sister-in-law, in a sloping
foreign handwriting. I opened it with some curiosity. It ran
as follows:
Cher Monsieur,--I have seen you but twice, but I
have felt that I could trust you. Whether my dreams
are real or not, they have grown clearer of late And,
monsieur, one thing at all events, the Hound of Death is
no dream .... In the days I told you of (whether they
are real or not, I do not know) He Who was Guardian
of the Crystal revealed the Sixth Sign to the People
too soon .... Evil entered into their hearts. They
had the power to slay at will--and they slew without
justice--in anger. They were drunk with the lust
of Power. When we saw this, we who were yet pure,
we knew that once again we should not complete the
Circle and come to the Sign of Everlasting Life. He
who would have been the next Guardian of the Crystal
was bidden to act. That the old might die, and the
new, after endless ages, might come again, he loosed
the Hound of Death upon the sea (being careful not
to close the Circle), and the sea rose up in the shape
of a Hound and swallowed the land utterly ....
Once
before I remembered this--on the altar steps in
Belgium ....
THE HOUND OF DEATH
143
The Dr. Rose, he is of the Brotherhood. He knows
the First Sign, and the form of the Second, though its
meaning is hidden to all save a chosen few. He would
learn of me the Sixth. I have withstood him so far--but
I grow weak. Monsieur, it is not well that a man
should come to power before his time. Many centuries
must go by ere the world is ready to have the power
of death delivered into its hand .... I beseech of you,
monsieur, you who love goodness and truth, to help
me... before it is too late.
Your sister in Christ,
Marie Angelique.
I let the paper fall. The solid earth beneath me seemed
a little less solid than usual. Then I began to rally. The poor
woman's belief, genuine enough, had almost affected me!
One thing was clear. Dr. Rose, in his zeal for a case, was
grossly abusing his professional standing. I would run down
and--
Suddenly I noticed a letter from Kitty among my other
correspondence. I tore it open. I read:
Such an awful thing has happened. You remember
Dr. Rose's little cottage on the cliff? It was swept
away by a landslide last night, and the doctor and that
poor nun, Sister Marie Angelique, were killed. The
debris on the beach is too awful--all piled up in a
fantastic mass--fron a distance it looks like a great hound ....
The letter dropped from my hand.
The other facts may be coincidence. A Mr. Rose, whom
I discovered to be a wealthy relative of the doctor's, died
suddenly that same night--it was said struck by lightning.
As far as was known, no thunderstorm had occurred in the
neighbourhood, but one or two people declared they had
heard one peal of thunder. He had an electric bum on him
"of a curious shape." His will left everything to his nephew,
Dr. Rose.
Now, supposing that Dr. Rose succeeded in obtaining
the secret of the Sixth Sign from Sister Marie Angelique.
144
Agatha Christie
I had always felt him to be an unscrupulous man--he would
not shrink at taking his uncle's life if he were sure it could
not be brought home to him. But one sentence of Sister
Marie Angclique's letter rings in my brain: "... being careful
not to close the Circle .... ' Dr. Rose did not exercise
that care--was perhaps unaware of the steps to take, or
even of the need for them. So the Force he employed returned,
completing its circuit ....
But of course it is all nonsense! Everything can be accounted
for quite naturally. That the doctor believed in Sister
Marie Angelique's hallucinations merely proves that his mind, too, was slightly unbalanced.
Yet sometimes I dream of a continent under the seas
where men once lived and attained to a degree of civilization
far ahead of ours ....
Or did Sister Marie Angelique remember backwards-- as some say is possible--and is this City of the Circles in the future and not the past?
Nonsense--of course the whole thing was mere hallucination!
The Gipsy
Macfarlane had often noticed that his friend, Dickie Carpenter, had a strange aversion to gipsies. He had never
known the reason for it. But when Dickie's engagement to
Esther Lawes was broken off, there was a momentary tearing
down of reserves between the two men.
Macfarlane had been engaged to the younger sister, Rachel, for about a year. He had known both the Lawes
girls since they were children. Slow and cautious in all
things, he had been unwilling to admit to himself the growing
attraction that Rachel's childlike face and honest brown
eyes had for him. Not a beauty like Esther, no! But unutterably
truer and sweeter. With Dickie's engagement to the
elder sister, the bond between the two men seemed to be
drawn closer.
And now, after a few brief weeks, the engagement was off again, and Dickie, simple Dickie, hard-hit. So far in his
had been well chosen. His craving for the sea was inborn.
There was something of the Viking about him, primitive
and direct, a nature on which subtleties of thought were
wasted. He belonged to that inarticulate order of young
Englishmen who dislike any form of emotion, and who find
it peculiarly hard to explain their mental processes in
words ....
Macfarlane, that dour Scot, with a Celtic imagination hidden away somewhere, listened and smoked while his
friend floundered along in a sea of words. He had known
an unburdening was coming. But he had expected the subject
matter to be different. To begin with, anyway, there was
no mention of Esther Lawes. Only, it seemed, the story of
a childish terror.
145
146 Agatha Christie
"It all started with a dream I had when I was a kid. Not
a nightmare exactly. She--the gipsy, you know--would
just come into any old dream--even a good dream (or a
kid's idea of what's good--a party and crackers and things).
I'd be enjoying myself no end, and then I'd feel, I'd know, that if I looked up, she'd be there, standing as she always
stood, watching me .... With sad eyes, you know, as though
she understood something that I didn't .... Can't explain
why it rattled me so--but it did! Every time! I use( to wake
up howling with terror, and my old nurse used to say:
'There! Master Dickie's had one of kis gipsy dreams again!'"
"Ever been frightened by real gipsies?"
"Never saw one till later. That was queer, too. I was
chasing a pup of mine. He'd run away, I got out through
the garden door, and along one of the forest paths. We lived
in the New Forest then, you know. I came to a sort of
clearing at the end, with a wooden bridge over a stream.
And just beside it a gipsy was standingmwith a red hand
kerchief over her head--just the same as in my dream. And
at once I was frightened! She looked at me, you know Just
the
same look--as though she knew something I didn't, and
was sorry about it .... And then she said quite quietly, nodding
her head at me: "I shouMn' t go that way, ill were you.' I can't tell you why, but it frightened me to death. I dashed
past her onto the bridge. I suppose it was rotten. Anyway,
it gave way, and I was chucked into the stream. It
was running pretty fast, and I was nearly drowned. Beastly to
be nearly drowned. I've never forgotten it. And I felt it had
all to do with the gipsy .... "
"Actually,
though, she warned you against it?"
"I suppose you could put it like that." Dickie paused, then went on: "I've told you about this dream of mine, not
because it has anything to do with what happened after (at
least, I suppose it hasn't), but because it's the jumping-off
point, as it were. You'll understand now what I mean by
the 'gipsy feeling.' So I'll go on to that first night at the
Lawes'. I'd just come back from the west coast then. It was
awfully rum to be in England again. The Lawes were old
friends of my people's. I hadn't seen the girls since I was
about seven, but young Arthur was a great pal of mine, and
after he died, Esther used to write to me, and send me out
THE GPSY
147
papers. Awfully jolly letters, she wrote! Cheered me up no-end.
I always wished I was a better hand at writing back.
I was awfully keen to see her. It seemed odd to know a girl
quite well from her letters, and not otherwise. Well, I went
down to the Lawes' place first thing. Esther was away when
I arrived, but was expected back that evening. I sat next to
Rachel at dinner, and as I looked up and down the long
table, a queer feeling came over me. I felt someone was
watching me, and it made me uncomfortable. Then I saw
her--"
"Saw who?"
"Mrs. HawoCah--what I'm telling you about."
It was on the tip of Macfarlane's tongue to say: "I thought
you were telling me about Esther Lawes." But he remained
"There was something about her quite different from all
the rest. She was sitting next to old Lawes--listening to
him very gravely with her head bent down. She had some
of that red tulle stuff round her neck. It had got torn, I
think; anyway, it stood up behind her head like little tongues of flame .... I said to Rachel: 'Who's that woman over
there? Dark--with a red scad!'"
"Do you Alistair Haworth? She's got a red scad.
But she's fair. Very fair."
"So she was, you know. Her hair was a lovely pale
shining yellow. Yet I could have sworn positively she was
dark. Queer what tricks one's eyes play on one .... After
dinner, Rachel introduced us, and we walked up and down
in the garden. We talked about reincarnation "
"Rather
out of your line, Dickie!"
"I suppose it is. I remember saying that it seemed to be
a jolly sensible way of accounting for how one seems to
know some people right off--as if you'd met them before.
She said: 'You mean lovers...' There was something queer
about the way she said it--something soft and eager. It
reminded me of something--but I couldn't remember what.
We went on jawing a bit, and then old Lawes called us from
the terrace--said Esther had come and wanted to see me.
Mrs. Haworth put her hand on my arm and said: 'You're
going in?' 'Yes,' I said. 'l suppose we'd better,' and then--then---"
148
Agatha Christie
"Well.*"
"It sounds such rot. Mrs. Haworth said: 'I shouldn't go
in if I were you .... '" He paused. "It frightened me, you
know. It frighten
ed me badly. That's why I told you about
the dream .... Because, you sec, she said it just the same
way--quietly, as though she knew something I didn't. It
wasn't just a pretty woman who wanted to keep me out in
the garden with her. Her voice was just kind--and very
sorry. Almost as though she knew what was to come .... I
suppose it was rude, but I turned and left her--almost ran
to the house. It seemed like safety. I knew then that I'd
been afraid of her from the first. It was a relief to see old
Lawes. Esther was there beside him .... "He hesitated a minute, and then muttered rather obscurely: "There was no
question--the moment I saw her, I knew I'd got it in the
Macfarlane's mind flew swiftly to Esther Lawes. He had
once heard her summed up as "Six foot one of Jewish
perfection." A shrewd portrait, he thought, as he remembered
her unusual height and the long slenderness of her,
the marble whiteness of her face with its delicate down-drooping
nose, and the black splendour of hair and eyes.
Yes, he did not wonder that the boyish simplicity of Dickie
had capitulated. Esther could never have made his own
pulses beat one jot faster, but he admitted her magnificence.
"And then," continued Dickie, "we got engaged."
"At once?"
"Well, after about a week. It took her about a fortnight
after that to find out that she didn't care after all "
gave
a short bitter laugh.
"It
was the last evening before I went back to the o
ship.
I was coming back from the village through the
woods--and
then I saw her--Mrs. Haworth, I mean. She
had
on a red tam-o'-shanter, and--just for a minute, you
know--it
made me jump! I've told you about my dream,
so
you'll understand .... Then we walked along a bit. Not that there