by Algernon Blackwood (1928)
Young Pelham reached the doctor's house on the stroke of half-past eleven, and as he pushed the Night Bell button he felt pleased with his punctuality. He had kept the appointment to the minute. He looked like a traveller just off the train, yet not quite suitably dressed for a warm night in summer. A hint of adventure might have betrayed itself to a discerning eye. In addition to a heavy overcoat, he carried a plaid rug, and a walker's knapsack was slung across one shoulder, while a stout stick and a felt hat completed the outfit. His mind ran over the contents of the knapsack for the twentieth time — candles, thermos of coffee, sandwiches, book, pistol; and the keys were in his pocket. He had forgotten nothing. His bright eyes betrayed a certain tension; he was excited; the occasional shiver that ran down his spine this warm June night, he assured himself, was anticipation merely. Perhaps it was. He remembered telling his friend, Dr. Feldman, that he intended to go in any case. "I shall sit up till dawn," he said. "If you won't come, I shall go alone." He had meant it, too, only that was in the daytime, and now, with the darkness, his mood had shifted. Companionship, he realized would be most desirable. The presence of burly Dr. Feldman, with his black beard, his deep voice, his big shoulders, and his clear brown eyes, would be undeniably welcome.
He gave the bell another push, pressing it hard, for the minutes had slipped by. "I'm on the tick," he repeated, looking at his watch again. "He said he would be ready at eleven-thirty sharp, barring an urgent call. Ah!" he reflected, with sudden uneasiness, "I'd rather forgotten that!"
A voice close behind him made him start, and turning sharply he saw the door wide open and the parlour-maid upon the step. She had been speaking, he realized, for a moment or two, but at first he hardly took in what she was saying. Then his heart sank. "Gone out!" he stammered, in obvious dismay. "But the doctor expected me! We had an appointment!" He was rather flustered. "It's just eleven-thirty, the time he said."
"There was an important call, sir. Dr. Feldman left this for you." He read the note hurriedly on the mat. "I'm called out," it ran. "Urgent case. I must go. It shouldn't take long, and I'll join you in the house the moment I'm free. Leave key under the door. M. F., 11 p.m." "The doctor told me to say, sir, that he should meet you there," he heard the girl's voice through his shock of disappointment; "and that he would bring his own things with him for the night."
The young man's composure was upset. "Yes, I see," he mumbled, stupidly; "we had arranged to walk instead of taking a taxi, so as not to attract attention — " He paused, realizing that the girl would not know what he was talking about. "Will you come in, sir, and wait?" she asked, noticing his hesitation. No, he wouldn't do that. He thanked her. "It's all right," he said, as casually as he could, then turned — it cost him a certain effort — and walked slowly down the deserted street alone.
This "effort" he noticed; the disinclination to leave companionship and light. The shock of disappointment rather surprised him too: its strength, its almost bitter flavour. Something that had lain unacknowledged in him all the day, that had become more insistent as the dusk drew on, something he had deliberately concealed from himself, was now suddenly so clear that he had to face it. Pretence had become childish merely. He did face it. The prospect of sitting up all night alone in an empty house he did not relish. "It's absurd," he admitted,"but I am, I suppose, a bit nervous!"
He made his way slowly, very slowly, across the dim Bloomsbury square in the direction of the unoccupied mansion, turning from time to time to see if anyone might be following him. He would have given a good deal to see the burly figure swinging down the street, the black beard flying. But pedestrians were few, and men with beards were rarer still. The failure of his friend, though understandable, had disconcerted him more than he cared to admit. "Barring an urgent call," the doctor had said, and the urgent call had come — an unfortunate, rather an odd, coincidence, the young man felt. As a specialist the doctor's time was fairly regular, night calls an exception. An unwelcome flavour of question, though not yet of doubt, crept in. His old friend, he remembered, had not exactly favoured this expedition. "If you are sincere when you say you want this experience for your new book," he had said, reluctantly, "all right, then I'll come with you. If nothing happens, at least I can study you!" The mental specialist was not interested in so-called hauntings, but the reactions of a human mind under the stress of unusual emotion might interest him. He laughed and yielded.
Pelham drew nearer and nearer to the great empty mansion he had visited already in the daytime; its large echoing hall he could easily visualize, the wide creaking staircase, the carpetless corridors, the smaller drawing-room on the first floor where he proposed to keep his vigil. They lay in darkness now — shadows, silence, emptiness, devoid of normal occupants, at least. It was a place that called for companionship of a robust order. The house, with its grim, dreadful story supported by incontrovertible facts, stood waiting for him only a few hundred yards down the deserted street. He could already make out its square, uncompromising shape, its unwashed windows peering sideways at him. He found himself walking slower and slower, dawdling, hesitating, playing for time. An occasional pedestrian passed him, and twice at least he recognized his friend, only to discover his mistake when they were almost abreast. A taxi whizzed by noisily, a policeman laboriously examined innocent doors, but the neighbourhood lay otherwise still and heavy in the thickish, humid June night. Gloomy it was, the houses gaunt and gloomy too, and the particular house that waited for him came nearer till at last he stood opposite to it. Instead of going in — he passed it, with a quick glance at the staring windows. He took a turn round the square. "I'll wait till twelve," he told himself. "When the clocks strike midnight, I'll go in — whether Feldman has come or not."
Having made himself this promise, he held to it. The policeman helped a little, perhaps, for Pelham realized that he was a suspicious figure, mooning about with rug and knapsack in this desultory fashion, and questions were the last thing he wanted. The house soon faced him again, the policeman a good way down the street: no one was in sight, the clocks were striking the hour. Walking boldly up the steps, he inserted the key, entered the black hole that gaped before him, and closed the door quietly behind him.
Quietly, perhaps, yes, but a hundred echoes went flying none the less, as though the place were alive with footsteps, then dying away into the deep silence they had broken. The darkness was at first impenetrable. A window was open somewhere, for the last strokes of twelve came clearly down the stairs. And immediately, before there had been time to move towards a plan of any sort, there happened two disagreeable things, both of which he could explain, but which he disliked because they revealed too sharply his own condition. The second of these two he explained, indeed — with difficulty.
The first, as he stood in the well of blackness, not moving, breathing rather low, thinking what he would do next, was a sound close beside him; at his feet it seemed: a curious shuffling sound, and accompanied by a light, stroking touch upon his shoulder, with the result that he had jumped a yard and raised his arm to ward off a possible blow before he realized that it was merely the plaid rug which had slipped from his shoulder and fallen with a faint swishing noise upon the stone floor. He stooped and picked it up, cursing his silly nerves. his movement rapid, as though he felt safer in an upright position, and it was a moment later that the second disagreeable thing occurred, the one he explained less easily.
It happened in this way. The instinct of self-preservation was already automatically at work, for while one hand picked up the rug, the other, dropping the knapsack clutched the flashlight in his coat pocket. and had actually switched it on as he rose into an upright position again. Holding it askew, in that first second, the beam shot along the hall floor, and the staircase went directly in its full glare. The blaze. however, was enough for him to catch sight out of the corner of his eye, of — Dr. Feldman, black beard and all, standing motionless peering down upon him over the banisters. Close to the top of the first flight he was, and the very same instant, before the beam could show him fully, he had passed silently and rapidly round the angle and on to the landing above. The following beam, now turned full after him, showed no one. Stairs, landing and banisters were undeniably empty.
Pelham did not move, he did not start, much less did he jump; no single muscle. in fact, stirred, The reaction was of another kind: his heart missed a beat. Breath, at the first gasp, was unmanageable, and at the second — well, some vivid instinct made silence preferable to calling out. To shout, "Hullo, Max! Doctor, is that you?" in the great echoing hall was impossible. Besides — he already had found the line of explanation — the figure was not Dr. Feldman at all. Instinctively, even before he began to argue, he knew it was not his friend. There could be no answer to his call. Dr. Feldman was not in the building with him. No one — he almost said it audibly — was in the building with him. The figure was imaginary, of course.
His critical mind, nerves or no nerves, began instantly to argue towards firm conviction. The sudden light, rushing shadows distorted by startled nerves, the fact that Feldman's personality lay vividly in his thoughts, that he longed for him eagerly, hoping with a kind of vehemence that he would turn up any minute now — this was quite enough to manufacture the desired figure out of a sudden glare and a flock of leaping shadows. Holding the beam more or less steadily upon the empty stairs and corner of the landing, he explained away the disagreeable thing. "Why, even in the street I mistook two fellows for him till I got close enough to see my mistake!" Beards, he remembered, with a faint smile, were uncommon these days, rare enough to make an impression. The production of a figure with bearded face was easy enough with flying shadows. There had been no sound of footsteps. And, as he argued, the premonitory shiver down his spine, while it did not wholly pass, grew a little less.
The mind, that is to say, provided a passable explanation, although emotion, being unable to argue, remained discontented and uneasy. Emotion, he realized, would be his problem. "It's always primitive, credulous, superstitious," he reminded himself emphatically. "To observe its behaviour and to note the antics of imagination is why I'm here to-night.", And wisely then, before emotion might gain any further advantage, he decided upon action. He would search the house from top to bottom before settling down to his long vigil. A trick? A practical joke? His friend's passionate interest in mental experiment? The question of that "urgent call" again flashed past and vanished.
Leaving his paraphernalia on the floor, he took the pistol from the knapsack and began at once his search of the empty building, With firm, echoing steps, he moved slowly up the staircase, flashing his light in all directions as he went.
A large empty building is not inviting in the darkness, nor is a flashlight, with the contrast of inky blackness just beyond its beam, the best way of exploring it. The search undoubtedly required nerve. This house, moreover, was not merely empty; it was empty because no one could live in it. So devoid was it, indeed, of a pleasant living atmosphere that two successive tenants, and that quite recently, had chosen to die in it — by their own hands. And the reason for their choice, according to Pelham's investigations, added nothing to the homeliness of the atmosphere. Two years before them, another tenant, the origin of the present horror apparently, had also done away with himself, after first doing away, in ghastly fashion, with the rest of his family. Crazed by drugs, drink, love, or something equally powerful and devastating — Pelham had been unable exactly to ascertain — he had been found among the grim remnants of his fearful orgy, strangled by his own hands. His imitators, it was held, owed their similar fates to his vile, terrific, posthumous influence. Subsequent occupiers objected strenuously, broke their leases, paid money rather than stay, even went to court. The house, thus, was in the market for a song — and young Pelham was now searching its dismal entrails at midnight with a shoddy little flashlight. His object was to experience at first hand, and for the purposes of a scene in his new novel, what an imaginative man would feel during an all-night vigil.c He himself was an imaginative man, and he got his "copy." He got more besides. The details remain the strangest among the numerous remarkable cases in Dr. Feldman's notebooks.
The search was thorough, but unproductive. It established the fact that there was no one in the great dismal building save himself. It was hardly a reassuring process for a nervous temperament, and it called upon all his pluck to go through certain of the rooms — the servants' quarters, for instance, on the top floor, the offices in the basement, and certain large pieces that had two doors. There was always the feeling that someone trailed stealthily behind him, that he was watched, that the piled shadows concealed a figure. Once a door banged, there were creakings everywhere, there were groans and cracks and whispers down the draughty passages. But the place, otherwise, was still as death, holding its musty smell, its gaping emptiness, its air of rather sinister expectancy in common with most other big unoccupied buildings. And, at the end, Pelham stood in the hall again with the satisfied feeling that he had done his job faithfully, and that he could now settle down in the small drawing-room for the vigil proper. He had brought in a couple of deck chairs during the day; he had his book and candles, his coffee. Whether Feldman came or did not come, he could manage it. If anything happened, he now told himself, he could manage that too. He went upstairs and settled in. He was calmer — yes, even quite calm. He was master of himself.
It was here that Pelham's version (marked in red ink in Dr. Feldman's notebooks) first caught the attention of the specialist. The word "calm" was underlined, a mark of interrogation in the margin. The search of the building should have left the nerves on edge; instead, the reverse had happened — the young man had recovered his normal quiet. He felt "calm," he could "manage anything" that might happen later. "Didn't particularly notice this odd calmness in himself," ran the expert comment. In talking it over afterwards, Pelham used another adjective: "sedative." Uneasiness had gone, he declared, "just as though I'd taken a sedative and it was beginning to work. I observed everything keenly," he tried to explain, "but things that half an hour before would have startled and made me jump — well, they just didn't. I watched them happen, missing nothing, but without any nasty reaction, horror least of all. I was prepared for anything I might see. Like being doped almost." And in the doctor's notebook, on this point, is an interesting and suggestive comment: "This curious preliminary calmness, though P. noticed it suddenly, came on gradually no doubt. He was aware of it only when achieved. His own word 'sedative' indicates slow approach. Morbid excitement had passed completely, but acute observation nowhere impaired. He felt 'prepared' for what might follow. A preparation!?"
The young man, now settled comfortably in his deck-chair, a rug over his knees, the two candles on a packing-case behind his head, sat reading his book with one part of his mind, while, with another part, he stared, listened, watched, every muscle and nerve in alert tension, yet wholly at his ease. His original jumpiness had vanished, nervousness was gone, had exhausted itself perhaps. Opposite to him was the unoccupied chair intended for his friend. Two blindless windows on his right gave upon roofs and a night-sky too hazy for stars to show. On his left, wide open, was the door through which the top of the staircase, with the few feet of banisters the sham Dr. Feldman had peered over, was just visible. The carpetless room had no stick of furniture, the blank walls marked only with lines of dirt where pictures and a large mirror had been hung. A glass chandelier above his chair sparkled faintly in the flickering candle-light. The light, of course, was poor.
Here he sat reading while the hours passed and the night drew towards morning. From time to time he pricked his ears; creakings on the stairs, cracks of wood on the floors above, sounds in the big hall below, those he noticed without a qualm, but attributed quite rightly to their natural causes. No purpose, no intent, no meaning, living or posthumous, could be ascribed to them. Nothing approaching a footstep, much less a voice, broke the deep silence that wrapped the building from roof to kitchen. Yet his composure was remarkable rather, considering his temperament and his recent jumpiness. And the young man felt disappointment growing on him. Even if he saw and heard nothing, he had hoped for unusual reactions of interesting kind. These did not come. After his first bout of rather boyish "nerves," his recording apparatus, imaginative or critical, registered — nothing. His experiment seemed a failure; the scene in his book would gain no verisimilitude from the description of an actual experience. He even began to feel glad that Dr. Feldman after all had not wasted a night's sleep for nothing. Even if he saw a figure now, his attitude would be one merely of critical examination: could he touch it as solid, walk through it, could it answer questions or show intelligence in response to his advances, his calm, collected, cross-examining advances?
Dr. Feldman! He put his book down, Ah! He had almost forgotten him. The first keen longing, the bitter disappointment, these, too, had left him. He realized that, for a considerable time now, he had not been alertly waiting for his footstep, his voice, his brown eyes. This expectancy had left him too. This indifference, this forgetfulness, Dr. Feldman also stressed in his own notebook — as a proof that Pelham's mind was no longer working normally. "Noticed his own indifference," ran the comment in red ink, "but not particularly surprised at it."
"Dr. Feldman!" And Pelham abruptly realized, for the first time, that he had forgotten to leave the key outside the front door. Completely overlooked it! Even if Dr. Feldman had come, he could not have got in. Perhaps he had already come — and gone. He would probably not have rung, much less would he have knocked. Possibly, indeed, reflected Pelham, the doctor might welcome the excuse and go home to bed. Well, it didn't matter, the young man thought, as he went down cautiously in the dark to remedy his oversight, but leaving his electric torch on the packing-case. There was nothing of interest here for his clever, learned friend. He was relieved, in fact, to have no critical observer of his own disappointment, of this flat, uneventful, and rather foolish night.
Key in hand, he opened the big door and peered out into the deserted street. It was between two and three in the morning; soon the grey light would come in the sky. No one was to be seen. He paused a moment, standing on the step, then came back inside, shutting the door carelessly, and with a good deal of echoing noise, but again forgetting to leave the key outside, an omission only realized long afterwards. He started to cross the hall. A faint light from his open door above filtered down, so that the banisters were just visible. And it was as he crossed the hall that someone brushed by, and passed in front of him up the staircase. Though no actual touch was registered, he was quite positive of this. Whether he actually heard the steps he could not swear, but that someone who had been standing close beside him in this dark hall now moved up the stairs ahead of him, he was convinced beyond any possible doubt. Had there been doubt, indeed, it was at once negatived, for a second later he saw the outline of a man slip along the banisters overhead and move rapidly along the landing. The outline disappeared towards the door where the faint light issued. The person, whoever it was, had gone into his room.
Pelham went after this figure; he climbed the stairs very quickly, almost ran along the short stretch of landing, and, without a sign of hesitation, entered the room himself. "I burst into it, in fact," he described it afterwards. "And there, in the chair opposite to mine," he said, with intense conviction, "sat — yourself. You, Max, sat in that chair." The deck-chair was occupied by Dr. Feldman, big shoulders, burly frame. black beard and all. The head was sunk a little forwards, down upon the chest rather; the eyes were closed; the breathing was regular and sounded heavy. "You looked asleep, though naturally I knew this was impossible." And in his written version, Pelham, describing his own reaction to this "bit of nonsense," emphasized his impatient resentment that a "friend like you, Max, should have played this trifling, rather dangerous trick upon me." He felt sore, even angry.
For in that first instant of inspection. young Pelham realized that the doctor had somehow secreted himself in the house from the beginning, that the "urgent call" was a thought-out detail, that it was, in fact, an ill-judged practical joke. He remembered his own first fugitive doubt. Dr. Feldman was not going to lose a night's sleep for nothing; he had always meant to make use of the occasion to give his romantic friend a shock, then study his nervous reactions.
And Pelham resented the trick, its perilous foolishness in view of his own nerves and the fact that he had a pistol. So much did he resent it that, taking his own chair again, he sat there staring at his friend, a kind of dull anger in him, giving no single thought as to how the doctor had contrived his trivial little plan. He did not speak, he made no attempt to tackle him about it. he did not even prod him out of this idiotic pretence of being asleep. He just sat and stared, this sullen, rather sulky anger in his heart. He felt no relief that his friend had come and now sat before him; he no longer needed him, nor was his presence comforting. Comfort, even companionship, of that sort he did not want any more. Deep annoyance, contempt to the point of bitterness almost, was all he felt.
Dr. Feldman, it seems, meanwhile kept up this game of his with a steady perfection that, the other felt, would have been admirable in a better cause. He maintained his pose of sleep without a flaw. It was good acting. No sign of expression showed itself in his face. The body was limp with the relaxation of a man in deep slumber. And the longer young Pelham watched him, the more his angry vexation grew. His thought found words such as "Idiot, imbecile," phrases like "Amazing trick for a man like you, a great mental specialist, to play" — and finally, after perhaps half an hour of this persistent folly on the "specialist's" part of silence and immobility, since it betrayed no sign of explaining itself, Pelham took up his book again and went on reading. He was furious, yet wanted to laugh.
Comic, no doubt, the situation was, but he was in no mood to appreciate its comedy. He obstinately refused to speak, and in his mind now was a sort of boyish determination that he would meet the other at his own game, and beat him at it too! He made no sign, no sound. He merely read. The minutes passed. Perhaps half an hour slipped by, perhaps longer. His obstinacy remained cast-iron. Dr. Feldman, for his part, also kept up the nonsense; he aped slumber to perfection; his breathing was heavy, heavy; the black beard rising and falling with the movement of his chest; the brown eyes always tightly closed — till at last, the sound of a clock striking the hour came faintly into the room where these two sat. Pelham counted the strokes, and they were three. There was a gleam of dawn. He looked up suddenly from his book, hardly knowing why —
And this time he started. His blood ebbed, then came back with a rush. What was it? What did it mean? At the first sight, in this faint early light, Dr. Feldman looked precisely as before, ordinary, normal: at the second, he looked — amazing. Every atom of attention Pelham could muster concentrated in his eyes. He stared till they smarted, But his spine ran icy cold.
There was a difference, yet this difference remained concealed. At the first glimpse it was Max Feldman who faced him; at the second, it was someone else. Thus he phrased it in his written version, and the brevity was significant. Here was something, apparently, he could not describe. He shivered all over. The former queer insensitiveness, the numbness, had begun to pass. The "sedative " effect was leaving him!
Thus, staring with all his energy, with all available concentration, at his familiar friend, he knew himself dreadfully overwrought. Yet that "second glimpse " refused to come back; the amazing aspect of this well-known shape kept hidden. He had seen it, however. It was, he divined, still there. The blood gushed and ebbed alternately; his feet, his back were cold. He was "all on edge," like a terrified girl, The figure in the chair, so far as he could analyse, had not altered; the burly frame, the broad shoulders, the black heard, the eyes closed in "sleep" remained as before. "The idiot," he tried to say, "still pretends," but his thought refused to frame the words — because they were somewhere, somehow false. "Idiot" and "asleep," at any rate, were merely lies.
His written description of what followed was extremely, curiously brief. His own eyes remained glued, unable to move. He stared and stared. The beard moved up and down with the slow heaving of the great chest, the relaxed body betrayed no tension, the head sank forwards and downwards as before. Then, suddenly, that "second" glimpse, that "other" aspect came stealing horribly back. The face, hitherto devoid of expression, had begun to change. It was slowly altering. Black and white entered into it somehow, a white that was passionless, a black that was diabolical. The mouth, under the dark hair, sagged; the eyebrows took a slanting twist, the jaw beneath the beard thrust out. It became, slowly but decisively, an entirely different and an atrocious face. The mask slipped gradually downwards from it. And young Pelham, now bereft of power to move, stared helplessly at the appalling change. He was staring, he tried to tell himself, at something he could not believe, something that was not possible, something that human experience cannot admit. But yet he witnessed it. And he could not move his eyes.
"It's not Feldman, not Max Feldman, not my friend," his thought struggled to cry out, then realized vaguely that thought was stifled in him, no longer operating. Thought and volition had simultaneously disappeared. And the head then suddenly moved a little to one side. It slowly shifted. The beard, at a new angle, now revealed the neck. There was no collar.
He tried to scream, to shriek, but breath failed him. Horror dropped over him like ice. He trembled from head to foot. The shuddering was audible, his teeth clattered, his feet tapped the wooden floor. But he still stared helplessly, because sight was riveted beyond any power of his that could either move his eyes or close them. He became aware then that this demoniacal face that aped his friend was about to change still further. How he knew this lay beyond him. He did know it. A faint quiver of the cheeks betrayed it, possibly. Something ghastly ran across the skin. He knew the eyes were going to open.
There came a further movement of the head. It lolled to one side — frightfully. The collarless neck was creased with dull red lines. The same instant the two eyes opened, giving back his own awful, fascinated stare. They were bright, fixed, maniacal eyes. Moreover, they were not brown, but black. They gazed into his own with murder in their depths. And the whole figure then gave a convulsive shudder and began to alter visibly like the face. With extreme swiftness, as in a cinema, this alteration supervened. The great frame seemed suddenly to have grown emaciated, the big shoulders sank and drooped, only the black beard still flowed down the collarless neck that was marked with its hideous red.
Then the outline rose. Leaving the chair without visible effort, it stood up, it wavered a moment, half staggering, half lurching; the arms projected abruptly; the hands opened long, muscular fingers that moved through the air toward his throat. He saw the eyes behind them — like shining lamps — close.
The tremendous clamour that broke here with its sudden clashing gave him, it seems, the power to move his muscles. A bell rang furiously, there was a violent banging on a door. The building echoed. The awful figure, though it did not seem to pause in its advance, came, singularly, no nearer actually to his face and throat. A measure of volition, startled into activity perhaps by the resounding noise, returned to him. He sprang up, he shrieked as though his heart had burst, he staggered but he reached the door. He was down the steps in what seemed literally a couple of enormous leaps, and across the dark hall. The same second he was fumbling at the big front door, where the knocking sounded. He opened it. Facing him on the step, an electric torch blazing in his hand, stood — Dr. Feldman. He came in, closing the door behind him with a bang. "Frightfully sorry, old man, but it took me longer than I thought. You forgot the key —" was all young Pelham heard before darkness fell over him and he fainted in his friend's arms.
A swoon, rather than a faint, it was, lasting perhaps a minute. A sip of brandy from the doctor's flask brought the blood back to normal ways. There followed confused talk, questions, and somewhat incoherent answers, and then — Dr. Feldman insisted firmly on this — the visit to the room upstairs. They went together, side by side, arm in arm in fact, into an entirely empty room. The candles stood guttering on the packing-case, electric torch and pistol beside them, a book on the floor, and a couple of unoccupied deck-chairs opposite.
But young Pelham, shaking from head to foot, white as chalk, found no very intelligent words, and the specialist, thoroughly at home among conditions of this kind, took him home, administered a mild sedative, and read at his leisure some days later the account of Pelham's night. He had insisted on a written version first. Talk followed, a little study of his own as well, but this was for his private notebooks, as were also two facts he took some trouble to ascertain — namely, that the murderer used drugs on his victims as on himself, and also, oddly enough, that his maniac face held black eyes and was adorned with a black beard into the bargain.