Devereux's Dream Page #5

"Devereux's Dream" is a supernatural mystery by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, published in 1853. The novel follows the titular character, Edward Devereux, who confronts his own past and emerging fears through a series of haunting dreams. As Devereux navigates his nightmares, he becomes entwined in a web of intrigue, love, and spectral encounters, exploring themes of memory, identity, and the uncanny. Le Fanu's atmospheric prose and psychological depth make this work a notable example of Victorian Gothic fiction.

• Mystery

								

houses where the child would now and again be asked. I got a list of
all these. One name only struck me; it happened to be a German
name--Steinmetz. I wondered if Monsieur Steinmetz was my man. In the
mean time, who was he? I had no trouble in finding that out: Monsieur
Steinmetz was a German banker of good standing and repute, reasonably
well off, and recently left a widower. Personally? Dame, personally
Monsieur Steinmetz was a great man and a fat, with a big face and blond
hair, and the appearance of what he really was--a bon vivant and a
bon enfant yet n'avait jamais fait de mal à personne--allez!--All,
yes; in effect, Madame had died about a year ago, and Monsieur had been
inconsolable for a long time. He had changed his residence now, and
inhabited a house in one of the new streets off the Champs Elysées.

"From another source I discovered that in the lifetime of Madame
Steinmetz Lucille was frequently at the house. She had ceased to come
there about the date of the commencement of Madame's sudden illness. I
got this information by degrees, while I lay perdu in an old haunt of
mine in the Pays Latin yonder; for I had always had an idea that I
should find the man I wanted in Paris. When I had got it, I thought I
should like to see Monsieur Steinmetz, the agreeable banker. One night I
strolled up as far as his new residence in the street off the Champs
Elysées. Monsieur Steinmetz lived on the first-floor. There was a
brilliant light there: Monsieur Steinmetz was entertaining friends, it
seemed.

"It was a fine night; I established myself out of sight under the
doorway of an unfinished house opposite, and waited. I don't know why;
perhaps I fancied that when his friends were gone, the fineness of the
night might induce Monsieur Steinmetz to take a stroll, and that then I
should be able to gratify my curiosity. You see, I knew that if he were
my man, I should know him directly. I waited a good while: shadows
crossed the lighted blinds; once a big, broad shadow appeared there,
that made me fancy I mightn't have been waiting for nothing after all,
somehow. Presently Monsieur Steinmetz's guests departed, and in a little
while after there appeared on the little balcony of Monsieur Steinmetz's
apartment the man I wanted. There was a moon that night, and the cold
white light fell on the great yellow face, with the full lustful lips,
and the full cruel chin, just as I had seen the light fall on it in my
dream. It was the same face, Bertie; the same face, the same man. I
couldn't be mistaken. I had no doubt; I knew that the assassin of my
wife, of that tender, innocent, helpless child, stood there, twenty
yards from me, on that balcony.

"I had got myself pretty well in hand; and it was as well. I never
moved. The face I knew turned presently toward the spot where I stood
hidden,--the face I had seen in my dream, beyond all doubting. The evil
gray eyes glanced carelessly into the shadow, and up and down the quiet
street; and then Monsieur Steinmetz, humming an air, got inside the
window again, and closed it after him. Once more the great burly shadow
that had at first told me I should not wait in that dark doorway in vain
crossed the blinds; and then it disappeared. I saw my man no more that
night; but I had seen enough. I knew who he was now, and where to find
him.

"As I walked along home I thought what I would do. I quite meant to kill
Monsieur Steinmetz; but I also meant to have no démêlés with an
Impérial Procureur and the Cour d'Assizes for doing so. I didn't want to
murder him, either. I thought I would wait a little for the chance of a
suitable opportunity for settling my business satisfactorily. And I did
wait. I turned this delay to account, and got together a case of
circumstantial evidence against my man that, though perhaps it might
have broken down in a law-court, would have been alone amply sufficient
for me.

"The reason why Lucille's visits to the banker's house ceased was, it
appeared, because Madame Steinmetz had conceived all at once a jealous
dislike to her. How far this was owing to Lucille herself I could well
understand; but I could understand Madame's jealousy equally well.
Madame's illness, strangely sudden, dated from the cessation of
Lucille's visits. Was it hard to find a cause for that illness--a
cause for the wife's subsequent suspected death? I thought not. Then had
followed Lucille's departure from Paris. The child's anxiety for her
father hid her other fear from his eyes and mine; but that fear must
have been on her then. With us she forgot it in time; yet it or another
reason had always prevented all mention of what had occasioned it. She
became my wife. At that very time I easily ascertained that Steinmetz
was absent from Paris; less easily, but indubitably, that he had, at all
events, been as far south as Lyons. At Lyons it must have been that
Lucille first discovered he was dogging us. Hence her alarm, which I had
remembered, and her anxiety to proceed on our journey without stopping
for the night, as I had previously arranged. The morning after the
murder Steinmetz reappeared in Paris. From the hour at which he was seen
at the gare, it was certain that he had travelled by the night express
train in which Lucille and I had started from Lyons; and he wore that
morning a travelling-coat of fur in all respects similar to the one I
remembered so well.

"If I had ever had any doubt of my man after actually seeing him, I
should probably have convinced myself that he was my man by the general
tendency of these facts, which I got at slowly and one by one. But I had
no need of such evidence; and of course no case, even with such
evidence, for a court of law. However, courts of law I had never
intended to trouble in the matter.

"The opportunity I was waiting was some time before it offered. Monsieur
Steinmetz was a man of regular habits, I found--from his first-floor in
the street off the Champs Elysées, every morning at eleven, to the
Bourse; thence to his bureau hard by till four; from his bureau to his
café, where he read papers and played dominoes till six; and then home
slowly by the Boulevarts. He might consider himself tolerably safe from
me while he led this sort of life, even supposing he was aware he was
incurring any danger. I don't think he troubled much about that; till
one night, when, over the count of the beloved domino-points, his eyes
met mine fixed right upon him. I had arranged this little surprise to
see how it would affect him.

"Perhaps my gaze may have expressed something more than the mere
distraction I intended; but I noticed--though a more indifferent
observer might easily have failed to notice--how the great yellow face,
expanded in childish interest in the childish game, seemed suddenly to
grow gray and harden; how the fat smile became a cruel baring of sharp
white teeth; how the fat chin squared itself. The man knew me, and

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