LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

I have kept it through all these years at the bottom of my drawer. It is hidden there so that Lucy may never see it and be reminded of those days.

      Oh! how it points the accusing finger at me in its stern and baleful way.

      It tells so clearly how the grip of terror held the city then, and explains far better than could any words of mine to what a pitch of horror everything had come. Dated only just a fortnight after Alderman Bentley died, it is headed, "No Panic, Please."

      "This morning for the eighth time during the past fortnight and for the fourth day in succession," it begins, "it is our distressing duty to record for our readers the happening of a new and dreadful crime. Last evening, about nine o'clock, Dr. Charles Smallwood, a popular and esteemed medical practitioner of Lower Unley, was foully done to death in the open public road, within a few yards of his home. With the manner of his death we have unhappily of late become only too familiar, but the reason for the brutal act is again as mysterious and as obscure as are the reasons for all the other crimes that have recently been perpetrated in our midst. As usual there was no attempt at robbery—no removal of anything from the person of the murdered man—no semblance of suspicion that he had enemies in any quarter, or that anyone had ever wished him ill. There is no suggestion of any of these things—nothing again but, as in all the other deaths, the sheer wanton lust of blood.

      "What are we going to do?

      "As a people it has been always our pride that in all circumstances we can keep our heads. Down all the life-story of our race we have been always stubborn and unflinching in adversity, and the greater our need the greater have been our courage and endurance. Surely we now in Adelaide have never needed these qualities more than we do today.

      "With what are we faced? Let us be open and candid with ourselves. Our city is no longer secure to live in, and the shadow of a dreadful death hangs nightly on us all.

      "Somewhere in our midst—somewhere unnoticed and unmarked among us—lurks a maniac of most horrible proclivities, a man of terrible and diseased mind.

      "We are, of course, in complete ignorance as to how it has come to happen, but, somehow, in some poor wretch the beautiful and complicated machinery of the mind has broken down, and in its fall has loosed amongst us a ravening and ferocious beast.

      "Unhappily it is not with the ordinary type of madman that we probably have now to deal.

      "Outwardly he may show no signs at all of his malady, and our difficulty lies in the probability that he is not always mad. His mania may come on in paroxysms—perhaps only at night. By day, perhaps, he is a quiet and inoffensive member of the community. Maybe he works just like an ordinary man in some factory—some office, or some shop. Maybe he stops quietly at home, for we know nothing of his circumstances or conditions of life.

      "At any rate, as long as daylight lasts so far his madness has left behind no trail. Then, perhaps, he is as sane as anyone in the State.

      "But when night comes apparently an irresistible impulse seizes him. Every street and path and road becomes his hunting ground, and the chance of sudden death looms over everyone outside locked doors.

      "With our knowledge of what has already occurred it is too much to hope that the last chapter of our trouble has been written, or, indeed, that we shall have no more dreadful happenings to record.

      "How, then, shall we attempt to grapple with the evil, and what can we possibly learn to help us from a cool and calm consideration of the methods of these dreadful crimes?

      "Let us briefly refer to them seriatim as they have occurred in the city and its suburbs.

      "A fortnight ago yesterday, on Tuesday night, Alderman Bentley was killed on the park lands between North Adelaide and the bank of the Torrens River. (Shall we ever learn by what strange chance this dear old man became the first victim of these bloody crimes?) Two days later Police Constable Holthusen was killed almost on the same spot. Both had been bludgeoned with the same kind of heavy, blunt weapon.

      "The day following, on Friday evening, Mrs. Hutton, a young and recently married woman, met her dreadful fate near South station, also, be it noted, when crossing over the park lands. Again, one fierce, vicious blow with some blunt instrument, and the poor creature was left to die where she fell.

      "On Saturday nothing happened, and nothing on Sunday either. It will be remembered, however, that heavy rain fell on both these evenings.

      "On Monday again a blank day, but at 9.35 that night information was brought to Woodville Police Station that Rex Ferguson, a St. Peter's boy, just over seventeen, had been chased by an unknown man for two hundred yards along the Port road. Young Ferguson is a cool, intelligent young fellow, and he describes his pursuer as a thin, medium-sized man without a hat. Unhappily, the night was dark, and he was unable to see the man's face. The escape was apparently quite accidental, for it was only by chance that Ferguson turned round to find, as he says, a black figure rushing furiously down upon him. He does not remember hearing any footsteps. He took to his heels instantly, and, being a strong runner, providentially escaped. But this is significant—Ferguson said the man held him for quite a hundred yards. He heard him plainly close behind.

      "To continue—the next night, on Tuesday, a week ago today, Walter Bevan, a porter from Kilkenny station, was killed just after bathing, on the sandhills at Grange. The same black tale—bludgeoned on the head with a blunt instrument. There were other bathers near him not fifty yards away, and he was discovered almost at once. But no sound, no cry had been heard—just the same usual silent, dreadful death.

      "Thursday and Friday we had nothing to record, and we are sure our readers scanned our columns in thankful relief. Some of us, indeed, were sanguine that the measures taken by the authorities and the increased vigilance of us all were already bearing fruit.

      "But, no—the bloody run of crime goes on, and the week-end has been one of sustained and continued horror.

      "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and last night, too, have all, one after another, had their awful deed to record.

      "Old Mr. Perterson, of Toorak, was killed while asleep on his verandah on Friday.

      "On Saturday night Mathew Crane, a tram conductor on duty, was struck on the head when actually not five yards away from his tram, just as he was altering the tram time-indicator at the terminus opposite Kensington Gardens. He died an hour later in the Adelaide Hospital.

      "Sunday brought a double crime—the killing of Mr. and Mrs. Van Dene, in their own drawing-room in Medindie. It is very difficult to write calmly here. Those whose duty it was to visit the scene of the crime described it as being as terrible in its surroundings as anything the mind of anyone could conceive. For the first time the assassin had been interrupted in his ghastly work, and Mr. Van Dene had put up a gallant fight. But we cannot further harrow the feelings of our readers—the dreadful facts were detailed in our columns yesterday.

      "Then last night—this last crime, the murder of Dr. Smallwood. We had hoped that the assassin was not uninjured by what happened on Sunday, or would at least have been disheartened for a time by the resistance he undoubtedly encountered. But, no—directly darkness fell last evening he returned to his bloody work, and once again a harmless and inoffensive member of the community has met with a dreadful death.

      "Now there can be no hiding from ourselves that we are all living in very black and deadly peril.

      "Tonight—tomorrow night—or any night until the madman is laid low it may be the fate of any one of us to suffer sudden death. It is a dreadful thing to contemplate, and we may well all feel in a state of nerves.

      "But let us straight away apply the antidote and drill in forcibly to ourselves that there is not the slightest need for panic. In the end the community must inevitably prove stronger than the individual. Sooner or later, and probably much sooner than any of us think, the madman will be laid by the heels.

      "It is well known everywhere that special measures are being taken for the trapping of the madman. As far as possible revolvers are being served out to responsible individuals, and police patrols have everywhere been doubled. It is an open secret, too,

Скачать книгу