The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham

I write this account not because I expect anyone to believe it, but hoping to prepare an escape for the next victim. Perhaps he may learn from my misfortune. My own case is hopeless, and I am now somewhat prepared to meet my fate.

My name is Edward George Eden. I was born in Trentham, Staffordshire, where my father worked in the gardens. I lost my mother when I was three years old, and my father when I was five. My uncle, George Eden, then adopted me as his own son. He was a single man, self-educated, and well-known in Birmingham as an enterprising journalist. He educated me generously, fired my ambition to succeed in the world, and at his death, four years ago, left me his entire fortune—about five hundred pounds after expenses. I was then eighteen. He advised me in his will to use the money to complete my education. I had chosen medicine, and through his generosity and a scholarship, I became a medical student at University College, London. At the start of this story, I lodged at 11A University Street, in a small, shabby, draughty upper room overlooking the back of Shoolbred's premises. I lived and slept there to stretch my means to the last shilling.

I was taking a pair of shoes to be mended at a shop in Tottenham Court Road when I first met the little old man with the yellow face, with whom my life has become so inextricably entangled. He stood on the kerb, staring doubtfully at a number on a door, as I opened it. His eyes—dull grey, reddish under the rims—fell to my face, and his expression became a crinkled, friendly smile.

"You come," he said, "apt to the moment. I had forgotten the number of your house. How do you do, Mr. Eden?"

I was surprised by his familiar manner, for I had never seen him before. I was also annoyed that he caught me carrying my boots. He noticed my lack of warmth.

"Wonder who the deuce I am, eh? A friend, let me assure you. I have seen you before, though you haven't seen me. Is there anywhere we can talk?"

I hesitated. The shabbiness of my room upstairs was not for every stranger. "Perhaps," I said, "we might walk down the street. I'm unfortunately prevented—" I gestured to my boots.

"The very thing," he said, and looked both ways. "The street?

Which way shall we go?" I slipped my boots into the passage. "Look here!" he said abruptly. "This business of mine is a rigmarole. Come and lunch with me, Mr. Eden. I'm an old man, a very old man, and not good at explanations, and what with my piping voice and the clatter of the traffic—"

He laid a persuasive skinny hand that trembled a little on my arm.

I was not so old that an old man might not treat me to lunch. Yet I was not altogether pleased by this abrupt invitation. "I had rather—" I began. "But I had rather," he said, catching me up, "and a certain civility is surely due to my grey hairs."

So I consented, and went with him.

He took me to Blavitiski's; I had to walk slowly to match his pace. Over a lunch I had never tasted before, he fended off my leading questions, and I took better note of his appearance. His clean-shaven face was lean and wrinkled, his shrivelled lips fell over false teeth, his white hair was thin and rather long. He seemed small to me—though most people did—and his shoulders were rounded. Watching him, I noticed he was also studying me, running his eyes with a touch of greed over my broad shoulders, my suntanned hands, and my freckled face. "And now," he said as we lit cigarettes, "I must tell you of the business in hand."

"I must tell you, then, that I am an old man, a very old man," he said, pausing. "And it happens that I have money that I must presently be leaving, and never a child have I to leave it to." I thought of confidence tricks and resolved to be alert for my five hundred pounds. He went on about his loneliness and the difficulty of finding a proper use for his money. "I have weighed this plan and that—charities, institutions, scholarships, libraries—and I have come to this conclusion at last," he fixed his eyes on mine, "that I will find some young fellow, ambitious, pure-minded, and poor, healthy in body and mind, and make him my heir. Give him all that I have. So that he will suddenly be lifted out of all the trouble and struggle in which his sympathies have been educated, to freedom and influence."

I tried to seem disinterested. With transparent hypocrisy I said, "And you want my help, my professional services maybe, to find that person."

He smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette. I laughed at his quiet exposure of my pretence.

"What a career such a man might have! It fills me with envy to think how I have accumulated that another may spend. But there are conditions, of course, burdens to be imposed. He must, for instance, take my name. You cannot expect everything without some return. And I must go into all the circumstances of his life before I can accept him. He must be sound. I must know his heredity, how his parents and grandparents died, have strict inquiries made into his private morals."

This modified my secret congratulations a little.

"And do I understand," I said, "that I—"

"Yes," he said, almost fiercely. "You. You."

I answered not a word. My imagination danced wildly; my innate scepticism was useless. There was no gratitude in me—I did not know what to say. "But why me in particular?" I said at last.

He had chanced to hear of me from Professor Haslar, he said, as a typically sound and sane young man, and he wished to leave his money where health and integrity were assured.

That was our first meeting. He was mysterious, would not give his name yet, and after answering some questions, he left me at the Blavitiski portal. I noticed he drew a handful of gold coins from his pocket to pay. His insistence on bodily health was curious. In accordance with our arrangement, I applied that day for a life policy with the Loyal Insurance Company for a large sum, and was exhaustively overhauled by their medical advisers in the next week. Even that did not satisfy him; he insisted I be re-examined by the great Doctor Henderson.

It was Friday in Whitsun week before he came to a decision. He called me down quite late—nearly nine—from cramming chemical equations for my Preliminary Scientific exam. He stood in the passage under the feeble gas-lamp, his face a grotesque interplay of shadows. He seemed more bowed than when I had first seen him, his cheeks sunk in.

His voice shook with emotion. "Everything is satisfactory, Mr. Eden," he said. "Everything is quite satisfactory. And this night of all nights, you must dine with me and celebrate your accession." He was interrupted by a cough. "You won't have long to wait, either," he said, wiping his lips and gripping my hand with his long bony claw. "Certainly not long to wait."

We went into the street and called a cab. I remember every incident of that drive vividly: the swift, easy motion, the vivid contrast of gas and electric light, the crowds, the place in Regent Street, and the sumptuous dinner. I was disconcerted at first by the waiter's glances at my rough clothes and bothered by olive stones, but the champagne warmed my blood. The old man talked of himself. He had already told me his name in the cab: Egbert Elvesham, the great philosopher, whose name I had known since school. It seemed incredible that this abstraction should realize itself as this decrepit, familiar figure. I daresay every young fellow who falls among celebrities feels such disappointment. He told me of the future his life would leave dry for me: houses, copyrights, investments. I had never suspected philosophers were so rich. He watched me drink and eat with envy.

"What a capacity for living you have!" he said, and then with a sigh of relief, "it will not be long."

"Ay," said I, head swimming with champagne, "I have a future perhaps—of a passing agreeable sort, thanks to you. I shall have the honour of your name. But you have a past. Such a past as is worth all my future."

He shook his head and smiled, as I thought, with sad appreciation of my flattery. "That future," he said, "would you in truth change it?" The waiter came with liqueurs. "You will not perhaps mind taking my name, my position, but would you indeed—willingly—take my years?"

"With your achievements," I said gallantly.

He smiled again. "Kummel—both," he said to the waiter, and turned to a little paper packet from his pocket. "This hour," he said, "is the hour of small things. Here is a scrap of my unpublished wisdom." He opened it with shaking yellow fingers, showing a little pinkish powder. "This—well, you must guess what it is. But Kummel—put but a dash of this powder in it—is Himmel."

His large greyish eyes watched mine with inscrutable expression. It shocked me that this great teacher gave his mind to liqueur flavour. I feigned interest in his weakness, for I was drunk enough for such sycophancy.

He divided the powder between the glasses, then rose with strange dignity, holding out his hand. I did the same; glasses rang. "To a quick succession," he said, raising his glass.

"Not that," I said hastily. "Not that."

He paused, glass at his chin, eyes blazing into mine.

"To a long life," said I.

He hesitated. "To a long life," he said with a sudden bark of laughter, and with eyes fixed on one another we tilted the glasses. His eyes looked into mine, and as I drained the stuff, I felt a curious intense sensation. The first touch set my brain in a furious tumult; I seemed to feel an actual stirring in my skull, a seething humming filled my ears. I didn't notice the flavour; I saw only the grey intensity of his gaze. The draught, the confusion, the noise lasted an interminable time. Curious vague impressions danced on the edge of consciousness. At last he broke the spell. With a sudden explosive sigh, he put down his glass.

"Well?" he said.

"It's glorious," said I, though I had not tasted it.

My head spun. I sat down. My brain was chaos. Then my perception grew clear and minute, as though I saw things in a concave mirror. His manner changed to something nervous and hasty. He pulled out his watch, grimaced. "Eleven-seven! And tonight I must—Seven-twenty-five. Waterloo! I must go at once." He called for the bill and struggled with his coat. Waiters assisted. In another moment I was wishing him good-bye over the apron of a cab, still with an absurd feeling of minute distinctness, as though—how can I express it?—I not only saw but felt through an inverted opera-glass.

"That stuff," he said, putting his hand to his forehead. "I ought not to have given it to you. It will make your head split to-morrow. Wait a minute. Here." He handed me a little flat thing like a seidlitz-powder. "Take that in water as you go to bed. The other thing was a drug. Not till you're ready for bed, mind. It will clear your head. That's all. One more shake—Futurus!"

I gripped his shrivelled claw. "Good-bye," he said, and by the droop of his eyelids I judged he too was a little under the influence.

He recollected something else, felt in his breast-pocket, produced another packet, a cylinder the size and shape of a shaving-stick. "Here," he said. "I'd almost forgotten. Don't open this until I come to-morrow—but take it now."

It was so heavy I nearly dropped it. "All ri'!" said I, and he grinned through the cab window as the cabman flicked the horse. It was a white packet with red seals at each end and along the edge. "If this isn't money," I said, "it's platinum or lead."

I stuck it carefully in my pocket and walked home through Regent Street loiterers and dark back streets beyond Portland Road. I remember those sensations vividly. I was still myself enough to notice my strange state and wonder if the stuff was opium. It is hard to describe the peculiarity—mental doubling vaguely expresses it. As I walked up Regent Street, I found a queer persuasion that it was Waterloo Station, and an odd impulse to get into the Polytechnic as one gets into a train. I put a knuckle in my eye, and it was Regent Street. How can I express it? You see an actor look at you, pull a grimace, and lo!—another person. It seemed as if Regent Street had, for a moment, done that. Then, persuaded it was Regent Street again, I was muddled by fantastic reminiscences. "Thirty years ago," I thought, "it was here that I quarrelled with my brother." Then I burst out laughing, astonishing night prowlers.

Thirty years ago I did not exist, and never had I a brother. The poignancy of regret for that lost brother still clung. Along Portland Road the madness took another turn. I recalled vanished shops, compared the street with what it used to be. Confused thinking is understandable after drink, but these vivid phantasm memories puzzled me. I stopped opposite Stevens', the natural history dealer, and tried to remember what he had to do with me. A 'bus went by, sounding like a train. I seemed to be dipping into a dark, remote pit for the recollection. "Of course," I said at last, "he has promised me three frogs to-morrow. Odd I should have forgotten."

Do they still show children dissolving views? In those, one view would begin faint as a ghost, grow, and oust another. Just so it seemed that a ghostly set of new sensations struggled with my ordinary self.

I went on through Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, puzzled and a little frightened, scarcely noticing the unusual way, for I usually cut through back streets. I turned into University Street, to discover I had forgotten my number. Only by strong effort did I recall 11A, and even then it seemed something a forgotten person had told me. I tried to recall the dinner, but couldn't conjure my host's face; I saw him only as a shadowy outline, like oneself reflected in a window. Instead, I had a curious exterior vision of myself sitting at a table, flushed, bright-eyed, talkative.

"I must take this other powder," I said. "This is getting impossible."

I tried the wrong side of the hall for my candle and matches, doubted which landing my room was on. "I'm drunk," I said, and blundered on the stairs.

At first glance my room seemed unfamiliar. "What rot!" I said, and stared. I seemed to bring myself back by effort, and the odd phantasmal quality passed. There was the old glass with my notes on albumens in the corner of the frame, my everyday suit pitched about the floor. Yet it wasn't so real. An idiotic persuasion crept in that I was in a railway carriage, peering out at an unknown station. I gripped the bed-rail. "It's clairvoyance, perhaps," I said. "I must write to the Psychical Research Society."

I put the rouleau on the dressing-table, sat on the bed, began to remove my boots. It was as if the picture of my present sensations was painted over another trying to show through. "Curse it!" said I. "My wits are going, or am I in two places at once?" Half-undressed, I tossed the powder into a glass and drank it. It effervesced into fluorescent amber. Before I was in bed, my mind was tranquillized. I felt the pillow at my cheek, and must have fallen asleep.

I awoke abruptly from a dream of strange beasts, lying on my back. Everyone knows that dismal, emotional dream from which one escapes awake but cowed. There was a curious taste, tired limbs, cutaneous discomfort. I lay motionless, expecting the feeling to pass and that I'd doze again. Instead, uncanny sensations increased. At first I perceived nothing wrong. A faint light, next to darkness, furniture as vague blots. I stared over the bedclothes.

It came to me that someone had entered to rob me of my rouleau, but after breathing regularly to simulate sleep, I realized it was fancy. Still, uneasiness held. With effort I raised my head and peered. I couldn't conceive what was wrong. I looked at dim shapes—curtains, table, fireplace, bookshelves. Then I began to perceive something unfamiliar. Had the bed turned? Yonder should be bookshelves, but a shrouded, pallid something rose there—too big to be my shirt on a chair.

Overcoming childish terror, I threw back the bedclothes and thrust my leg out. Instead of reaching the floor from my truckle-bed, my foot scarcely touched the edge of the mattress. I made another step and sat on the edge. By the side should be the candle and matches on a broken chair. I put out my hand—touched nothing. I waved it, and came against some heavy hanging, soft and thick, which rustled. I grasped and pulled; it seemed a curtain over the head of the bed.

I was now thoroughly awake and realized I was in a strange room. I tried to recall last night, and found it—curiously—vivid: the supper, the packages, my wonder about intoxication, my slow undressing, the cool pillow. A sudden distrust: was that last night, or the night before? This room was strange. The dim pale outline grew paler; it was a window, with the dark shape of an oval toilet-glass against the dawn filtering through the blind. I stood, surprised by weakness and unsteadiness. Trembling, I walked to the window, bruising a knee on a chair. I fumbled around the large glass with brass sconces for the blind cord; I couldn't find it. By chance I took the tassel; with a click the blind ran up.

I looked out upon a scene entirely strange. The night was overcast; through heaped clouds filtered a faint half-light of dawn. At the sky's edge, a blood-red rim. Below, everything dark and indistinct: dim hills, a vague mass of buildings with pinnacles, trees like spilt ink, and below the window a tracery of black bushes and pale grey paths. So unfamiliar I thought myself dreaming. I felt the toilet-table of polished wood, elaborately furnished—cut-glass bottles and a brush. A queer little object, horse-shoe shaped, smooth with hard projections, lay in a saucer. I could find no matches or candlestick.

I turned again.

With the blind up, faint spectres of furnishing emerged: a huge curtained bed, a fireplace with a white marble mantel.

I leaned against the table, shut and opened my eyes, tried to think. Too real for dreaming. I imagined some hiatus in my memory from the strange liqueur; perhaps I had come into inheritance and lost recollection. Yet dinner with Elvesham was vivid and recent. I could have staked my soul it happened hours ago.

Then occurred a thing so trivial yet so terrible that I shiver now: I spoke aloud. "How the devil did I get here?" ... And the voice was not my own.

It was thin, slurred; the resonance of my facial bones different. Then I ran one hand over the other and felt loose folds of skin, the bony laxity of age. "Surely," I said in that horrible voice, "surely this is a dream!"

Almost involuntarily, I thrust my fingers into my mouth. My teeth had gone; my fingertips ran on the flaccid surface of shrivelled gums. I was sick with dismay and disgust.

I felt a passionate desire to see myself, to realize the full horror. I tottered to the mantel, felt for matches. A barking cough sprang up; I clutched a thick flannel nightdress. No matches. I realized my extremities were cold. Sniffing and coughing, whimpering, I fumbled back. "It is surely a dream," I whispered as I clambered. I pulled the covers over my ears, thrust my withered hand under the pillow, and determined to sleep. In the morning the dream would end; I'd wake strong and vigorous. I shut my eyes, breathed regularly, and, finding myself wakeful, began counting slowly through the powers of three.

But the thing would not come. I could not sleep. The persuasion of inexorable reality grew. Presently I found my eyes wide open, powers forgotten, skinny fingers on shrivelled gums. I was indeed an old man. I had somehow fallen through my life, been cheated of love, struggle, strength, hope. I grovelled into the pillow, trying to persuade myself it was hallucination. Imperceptibly, dawn grew clearer.

At last, despairing of sleep, I sat up. A chill twilight rendered the chamber visible. It was spacious, well-furnished, better than any I'd slept in. A candle and matches became dimly visible on a pedestal. I threw back the covers, shivering with the raw morning though it was summer, got out, and lit the candle.

Then, trembling horribly, the extinguisher rattling on its spike, I tottered to the glass and saw—Elvesham's face! It was none the less horrible for having dimly feared. He had seemed weak and pitiful, but seen now, dressed only in a coarse flannel nightdress that fell apart showing a stringy neck, as my own body, I cannot describe the desolate decrepitude. The hollow cheeks, the straggling tail of dirty grey hair, the rheumy bleared eyes, the quivering shrivelled lips showing a gleam of pink interior, those horrible dark gums. You who are mind and body together at natural years cannot imagine this fiendish imprisonment. To be young and full of energy, and to be caught, crushed in this tottering ruin...

But I wander. For some time I was stunned. It was daylight when I gathered myself to think. Somehow I had been changed; how, short of magic, I couldn't say. As I thought, Elvesham's diabolical ingenuity came home. It seemed plain that as I found myself in his, he must be in possession of my body, my strength, my future. But how to prove it? Then the thing became so incredible my mind reeled; I had to pinch myself, feel my toothless gums, see myself in the glass, touch things, before I could steady myself. Was all life hallucination? Was I indeed Elvesham, and he me? Had I dreamed of Eden overnight? Was there any Eden? But if I were Elvesham, I should remember where I was the previous morning, the town, what happened before the dream. I struggled. I recalled the queer doubleness. But now my mind was clear; not a ghost of memory but Eden's could I raise.

"This way lies insanity!" I cried in my piping voice. I staggered to the washstand, plunged my grey head into cold water. Towelling, I tried again. It was no good. I felt beyond question that I was Eden in Elvesham's body!

Had I been a man of another age, I might have given up as enchanted. But in these sceptical days miracles don't pass current. Here was some trick of psychology. What a drug and a steady stare could do, a drug and steady stare could undo. Men have lost memories. But to exchange memories as one does umbrellas! I laughed—not a healthy laugh, but a wheezing senile titter. I fancied Elvesham laughing at my plight, and a gust of petulant anger, unusual to me, swept across. I dressed eagerly in clothes on the floor, only realizing when dressed it was evening suit. I opened wardrobe, found plaid trousers and old-fashioned dressing-gown. I put a venerable smoking-cap on my venerable head, and, coughing a little, tottered to the landing.

It was perhaps a quarter to six; blinds closely drawn, house silent. The landing was spacious, a broad richly-carpeted staircase went down into darkness. Before me a door ajar showed a writing-desk, a revolving bookcase, the back of a study chair, and a fine array of bound books, shelf upon shelf.

"My study," I mumbled, and walked across. Then a thought struck me; I returned to the bedroom and put in the false teeth. They slipped in with ease of old habit. "That's better," said I, gnashing them, and returned.

The desk drawers were locked; its revolving top locked. No keys in the pockets of my trousers. I shuffled to the bedroom, went through the dress suit and all garments. I was eager; one might think burglars at work. Not only no keys but not a coin nor scrap of paper—save the receipted bill for dinner.

A curious weariness asserted itself. I sat and stared at garments, pockets inside out. My first frenzy flickered out. Every moment I realized the immense intelligence of my enemy's plans, the hopelessness. With effort I rose, hurried hobbling into the study. On the staircase, a housemaid pulling up blinds stared at my expression. I shut the door, seized a poker, and attacked the desk.

That is how they found me. The cover split, lock smashed, letters torn out, tossed about. In senile rage I flung pens and overturned ink. A large vase on the mantel broke—I don't know how. I could find no cheque-book, no money, nothing to recover my body. I was battering madly at drawers when the butler, backed by two women-servants, intruded.

That simply is the story of my change. No one will believe my frantic assertions. I am treated as demented, under restraint. But I am sane, absolutely sane, and have sat down to write this minutely. I appeal to the reader: is there any trace of insanity in style or method? I am a young man locked in an old man's body. But the fact is incredible to everyone. Naturally I appear demented to those who won't believe; I don't know names of secretaries, doctors, servants, neighbours, this town. I lose myself in my own house, suffer inconveniences. I ask odd questions, weep, have paroxysms of despair. I have no money or cheque-book. The bank won't recognize my signature, for my handwriting is still Eden's. They won't let me go to the bank; there seems no bank in this town, and I have an account somewhere in London. Elvesham kept his solicitor's name secret from everyone. I can ascertain nothing.

Elvesham was a profound student of mental science; my declarations confirm their theory that I'm insane from brooding on psychology. Dreams of personal identity! Two days ago I was a healthy youngster; now I'm a furious old man, unkempt, desperate, prowling about a luxurious strange house, watched, feared, avoided as a lunatic. And in London, Elvesham begins life again in my vigorous body, with all the accumulated knowledge of threescore and ten. He has stolen my life.

What happened I don't clearly know.

In the study are volumes of manuscript notes on the psychology of memory, and parts that may be calculations or ciphers in symbols strange to me. Some passages suggest he dabbled in philosophy of mathematics. I take it he transferred his memories, his personality, from his old withered brain to mine, and mine to his discarded body. Practically, he changed bodies. How such change is possible is beyond my philosophy. I have been a materialist all my life, but here is a clear case of man's detachability from matter.

One desperate experiment I am about to try. I sit writing before putting to issue. This morning, with a table-knife secreted at breakfast, I broke open a secret drawer in the wrecked desk. I discovered a little green glass phial containing a white powder. On a label tied round the neck was written one word: "Release." This may be—most probably is—poison. I could understand Elvesham placing poison in my way, and I'd be sure he intended to get rid of the only living witness, were it not for this careful concealment. He has practically solved the problem of immortality. Save for the spite of chance, he will live in my body until it ages, then throw it aside and assume another victim's youth. When one remembers his heartlessness, it is terrible to think of the ever-growing experience... How long has he been leaping from body to body?... But I tire of writing. The powder appears soluble in water. The taste is not unpleasant.

There the narrative found upon Mr. Elvesham's desk ends. His dead body lay between the desk and the chair. The chair had been pushed back, probably by his last convulsions. The story was written in pencil, in a crazy hand quite unlike his usual minute characters. There remain two curious facts. Indisputably there was some connection between Eden and Elvesham, since all his property was bequeathed to the young man. But Eden never inherited. When Elvesham committed suicide, Eden was, strangely enough, already dead. Twenty-four hours before, he had been knocked down by a cab and killed instantly at the crowded crossing at Gower Street and Euston Road. So the only human being who could have thrown light upon this fantastic narrative is beyond the reach of questions. Without further comment, I leave this extraordinary matter to the reader's individual judgment.