Vengeancy by Proxy

Vengeancy by Proxy John Wyndham

As far as Dr. Linton was concerned it began with the arrival of the messenger boy.

Telegram from Walter Fisson, Hotel Princip, Beograd (Belgrade), Yugo-Slavia, to Dr. Leslie Linton, 84 Nelson Court, London, W.I.:

CAN YOU RECOMMEND MENTAL SPECIALIST BELGRADE LETTER FOLLOWS

WALTER

Telegram from Dr. Leslie Linton, London, to Walter Fisson, Beograd:

IF ESSENTIAL DOCTOR BLJEDOLJE BUT WHY NOT COME HOME

LESLIE

Letter from Walter Fisson to Dr. Linton, by Air Maiclass="underline"

Hotel Princip,

Beograd,

Yugo-Slavia.

3rd May, 193-

Dear Leslie:

Sorry if I alarmed you with the telegram, but something had to be done quickly. It's about Elaine. Shock, I think. I wanted to get her back home at once, of course, and booked seats on a plane, but she refused and still refuses to leave here. I can't understand it at all and am worried to death about her. The only thing seemed to be to get a professional opinion at once.

She's — well, I hardly know how to put it — but she's not herself. I don't mean that in the usual sense of the phrase. It's something much more literal than that. Heaven knows what's happened to her, poor darling, but it frightens me. And I'm cut off from her, too. I can't even talk to her properly and try to understand what the trouble is, nor she to me beyond a few essentials. She can grasp only the simplest sentences, spoken slowly and carefully, and she herself replies only with a few words in broken English.

Leslie, it doesn't seem possible. I have heard of rare cases of loss of memory making one forget his own language. But this is worse than that — it's taught her another! Honestly, there have been times in the last few days when I have wondered whether she was not all right and I was going mad. I'd better tell you the whole thing and see what you make of it.

It was last Tuesday that it happened. We'd come from Venice via Trieste and Fiume right down the Dalmatian coast to Dubrovnik. Instead of continuing along the coast into Greece, we decided to go up through the mountains to Sarajevo, on to Belgrade and on along the Danube towards Bucharest, giving Greece a miss altogether.

The journey wasn't too bad, except for the roads, and we got along finely until just when we were some ten miles short of a place called Valejo, about sixty miles from Belgrade itself.

We came round a blind corner. We weren't going fast, but the road was loose-surfaced and steep, and to make it worse there had been a light shower just before. Just round that corner was a man crawling on all fours almost in the middle of the road. I braked and pulled across.

I think I'd have cleared him on a decent road, but as it was the back of the car swung round and hit him. Why we didn't turn over on a slope like that I don't know, but we didn't, and I was just pulling out of the skid when the front offside wheel fetched up smack on a mighty boulder.

We got out and ran back to the man. He was lying sprawled out now, on his face. Between us we turned him over and found he was in a nasty mess, poor chap.

His clothes were rough and covered with mud, but he was clearly a cut above the usual peasant, and his face, what we could see of it for his beard, was intelligent, but those were things we only noticed afterwards. What we saw first was a gash on his forehead from which the blood had run down into his eyes, and another patch of blood which had spread about the front of his shirt and coat.

None of that was our fault. The blood from his head had already dried and caked, and that on his clothing had soaked in for some time.

Elaine ran to the car and came back with a flask and a bottle of water. While she bathed his head with a wet handkerchief I started loosening his clothes. Suddenly she gave an exclamation which made me look up. She was staring down at his forehead.

The wiping away of the blood had revealed no ragged gash, but a shallow cut which had now ceased to bleed. The thing was neat and clean. It reminded me of a Greek lambda more than anything. No one could have had a moment's doubt that it had been done deliberately.

“That's queer,” Elaine said uncertainly.

It was. I guessed what was in her mind. The vendetta still exists in those parts. Almost instinctively I raised my head to see if there were anyone around watching us. I hadn't any wish to get involved in a business of that sort, but at the same time we weren't going to let a man die before our eyes if I could help it. I ripped open the man's shirt.

We wiped off the mess, and found the blood still welling slowly from a bullet wound in the chest, one which had missed the heart by a narrow margin, I'd say.

Elaine fetched a shirt of mine out of the car and we tore it up to make a bandage. When we'd got it fixed we gave the man a shot of brandy.

It was a minute or more before anything happened, then his eyes opened slowly. At first they seemed blank and almost unconscious, but after a second or two they met mine and came suddenly alive.

That was a most extraordinary sensation. I felt somehow as if they had fastened on mine. Almost as though our mutual gazes formed physical rods linking us together. More than that, it seemed that the rods were being tugged, pulling me down to him.

That sounds fanciful, but it was really a most uncanny sensation though it lasted only a few moments. It snapped abruptly, as his face contorted with a twist of agony and his eyes closed again.

Between us we got him to the side of the road and laid him on a rug. Then there was the problem of what to do next. The car was out of commission with the steering rod gone and the front axle badly bent. Either we had to wait until someone should come along, or one of us would have to go for help.

The last hamlet was miles away behind us, and hopeless at that. The obvious course was for me to start walking on in the direction of Valejo. I didn't relish the idea of leaving Elaine in a lonely spot like that, but we could scarcely leave the man unattended in the state he was, and that settled it.

I had to walk all the ten miles into Valejo before I could find a car. I managed to hire a machine and, with the help of my bad German and the equally bad German of a native, make the driver understand what was wanted. By a series of miracles we got to the place where I had left Elaine.

I could see her as we came up the road. The man still lay where we had put him. She was kneeling beside him, looking down. It was odd that she didn't look up as we rattled into view. As soon as we stopped I got out and hurried across to her. She might have been a statue.

“Elaine!” I said.

The man on the rug turned his head. For a moment his eyes met mine. This time there was something desperate and pathetic in them. Then they closed, his head rolled and his mouth fell open. Unmistakably that was the end.

“Elaine!” I repeated.

She did not move until I touched her shoulder. Then it was to look up at me with a bewildered, uncomprehending expression. I took hold of her arm and helped her to her feet.

“He's dead,” I said.

She nodded, but said nothing. I led her to the hired car and then set about fetching our cases from our own. Finally when they were all aboard, I explained to the driver by signs that we must take the dead man as well. He wasn't pleased. I could understand that, but one couldn't leave the poor chap's body out on the road like that, and he reluctantly agreed.

We went over together to carry him, but a couple of yards short of the corpse the driver stopped dead. I walked on, got ready to take the man under the armpits and looked to him to take the feet. He was standing frozen, with an expression of veritable terror on his face. As I bent down he called suddenly.