But the most mysterious of cases of insect bites, or alleged insect bites, is that of the small wound that led to the death of Lord Carnarvon, if be accepted that his death, and the deaths of fourteen other persons, were in any especial way related to the opening, or the violation, of the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen. Lord Carnarvon was stung by what was supposed to be an insect. What was said to be blood poisoning set in. What was said to be septic pneumonia followed.
The stories of the "kissing bug" differ from vampire stories, in that victims were painfully wounded. But there was an occurrence in Upper Broadway, New York City, May 7, 1909, that may be more in agreement. It seems possible that a woman could, in a street crowd, viciously jab several persons with a hat pin, without being detected: but it does seem unlikely that she could enjoy such a stroll, jabbing at least five men and a woman, before being interfered with. A Broadway policeman learned that upon somebody a small wound, as if made by a hat pin, had appeared. Four other men and a woman joined the crowd and showed that they had been similarly wounded. The policeman arrested, as the cause of the excitement, a woman, who told that her name was Mary Maloney, and gave a false address.
Perhaps she had no address. She may have been guilty, but perhaps she was shabby. If somebody must be arrested, it is wise to pick out one who does not look very self-defensive. "Plead guilty and you'll get off with a light sentence." It is dangerous to be anywhere near any scene of crime, considering the way detectives pick up "suspects," even an hour or so later, obviously arguing that when somebody commits a crime, he hangs around to be suspected.
I have never been jabbed with a hat pin, but I have sat on pointed things, and my responses were so energetic that I suspect that at least six persons were not jabbed with a hat pin, before the jabber was caught. See data to come, that indicate that people may be— by some means at present not understood— wounded, and not know it until later. Also that a woman was accused makes me doubt that the marauder was caught. Women don't do such things. I have a long list of Jacks, ranging from the rippers and stranglers to the egg throwers and the ink squirters: but Mary Maloney is the only alleged Jill in my collection. Women don't do such things. They have their own deviltries.
Upon Dec. 4, 1913, Mrs. Wesley Graff, who sat in a box, in the Lyric Theatre, New York City, felt something scratching her hand. She felt a pain like the sting of a wasp, and, staggering from her chair, fainted, first accusing a young man near her. The manager of the theater held the young man, and called the police. Policemen searched, and found, on the floor, a common darning needle. It was their theory that the young man was a white slaver, who by means of a hypodermic injection, had sought to render a victim insensible, probably having waiting outside, a cab, to which he, explaining that he was her companion, would carry her. There were marks upon Mrs. Graff's arm, but it seems that they were not made by a darning needle.
With the idea that the needle might be tipped with a drug, the police sent it to a chemist. To my astonishment, I record that he reported that he had found neither drug, nor poison, on it. A strange circumstance is that, at this place, where a woman was wounded somewhat as if by a darning needle, was found this darning needle, which was suggestive of a commonplace explanation.
Then arose the story that a gang of white slavers was operating in the city. But in the newspapers were published interviews with physicians, who stated that they knew of no drug by which women could be affected so as to make them easily abductable, because the pain of an injection would give minutes of warning, before a victim could be rendered helpless. But it may be that something, or somebody, was abroad, mysteriously wounding women. In the Brooklyn Eagle, December 6, it was said that, in a period of two weeks, the Committee of Fourteen, of New York City, had heard a dozen complaints of mysterious, minor attacks upon women, and had investigated, but had been unable to learn anything definite in any case.
See back to the story of the Chicago woman, and "marks of two small incisors." Upon Mrs. Graff's arm were two little punctures. December 29— girl named Marian Brindle said that something had stung her. Upon her arm were two little punctures.
It may be that, in the period of the scare in New York City, the first occurrence of which was in November, 1913, a vampire was abroad. It could be that we pick up the trail more than a year before this time. In October, 1912, Miss Jean Milne, aged 67, was living alone in her home, in West Ferry, Dundee, Scotland. London Times, Nov. 5, 1912— the finding of her body. The woman had been beaten, presumably with a poker, which was found, according to the account in the Times: but it was said that, though she had been struck on the head, her skull was not fractured: so her death was not altogether accounted for. There was more of this story, in the London Weekly Dispatch, Nov. 24, 1912. Upon this body were found perforations, as if having been made by a fork.
Late at night, Feb. 2, 1913, the body of a woman was found on the tracks of the London Underground Railway, near the Kensington High-street station. The body had been run over, and the head had been cut off. The body was identified as that of Miss Maud Frances Davies, who, alone, had been traveling around the world, and, earlier in the day, had, upon a ship train, arrived in London. She had friends and relatives in South Kensington, and presumably she was on her way to visit them. But the explanation at the inquest (London Times, Feb. 6, 1913) was that she had probably committed suicide by placing her neck upon a rail.
"Dr. Townsend said that over the heart he found a number of small, punctured wounds, over a dozen of which had penetrated the muscles; and one had entered the ventricle cavity of the heart. These punctures had been caused in life, with a sharp instrument, such as a hat pin. They were not enough to cause death, but had been made a few hours previously."
Upon December 29th, of this year, 1913, a woman, known as "Scotch Dolly," was found dead in her room, 18 Etham Street, S. E., London. A man, who had lived with her, was arrested, but was released, because he was able to show that, before the time of her death, he had left the woman. Her face was bruised, but she had seldom been sober, and the man, Williams, before leaving her, had struck her. The verdict was that she had died of heart failure, "from shock."
Upon one of this woman's legs was found a series of 38 little, double wounds. They were not explained. "The Coroner: 'Have you ever had a similar case, yourself?' Dr. Spilsbury: 'No: not exactly like this.'"
Chapter 9
UPON April 16, 1922, a man was taken to Charing Cross Hospital, London, suffering from a wound in his neck. It was said that he would tell nothing about himself, except that, while walking along a turning, off Coventry Street, he had been stabbed. Hours later, another man, who had been wounded in the neck, entered the hospital. He told, with a foreign accent, that in a turning, off Coventry Street, he had been so wounded. He signed his name in the hospital register as Pilbert, but would, it was said, give no other information about the assault upon him. Late in the day, another wounded man was taken to this hospital, where, according to the records, he refused to tell anything about what had befallen him, except that he had been stabbed in the neck while walking along a turning off Coventry Street.
In the pockets of one of these men were found racing slips. The police explained that probably all of them were victims of a turf-feud.
It is, considering many other data, quite thinkable that, instead of refusing to tell how they had been wounded, these men were unable to tell, but that this inability was so mysterious that the hospital authorities recorded it as refusal. See the London Daily Express, April 17, and the People, April 23, 1922.
In a London hospital, there is small chance for an unconventional record, and probably in no London newspaper would have been published any reporter's notion of the lurk of an invisible and murderous thing, in a turning, off Coventry Street. But, in the London Daily Mail, Sept. 26, 1923, there was an account of something like this, but far away. It was a facetious account. Murderous things always have, somewhere, been regarded humorously. Or fondly. No address was published, or probably this one would have received letters from women, wanting to marry it. The story was that, in September, 1923, there was a Mumiai scare in India. Mumiais are invisibles that grab people. They have no sense of the mystic: don't dwell in enchanted woods, nor feel out for victims from old towers, or ruins; no valuation for midnight. In daylight, in the streets of cities, they grab people. Coolies, in the city of Lahore, believed that a Mumiai was abroad. There was a panic in Lahore, and it fed upon screams of rickshaw men, who thought that they were grabbed.
Probably the Daily Mail published this story, because of wavelets of gratification that arose from it, at London breakfast tables. It is usually thought that the value of coolies is only in their willingness to work for a few cents a day: but I have a notion that they have another function; or that, if it were not for coolies, and their silly superstitions that give the rest of us some sense of superiority to keep going on, millions of the rest of us would lie down and die of chagrin. Sometime I shall develop a theory of Evolution in aristocratic terms, showing that things probably made of themselves oysters and lions and hyenas, just for the thrill of gratification in being able to say that at least they weren't elephants, or worms, or human beings. I know how it is, myself, and have compensations, in thinking of silly, credulous people who believe that a dog ever said "Good morning!" and disappeared in a thin, greenish vapor.
Away back in the year 1890, the Japanese were coolies. Then they showed such talents for slaughter that now they are respected everywhere. But, in the year 1890, the Japanese were supposed to be little more than a nation of artists. A story of a panic in Japan was something to smile smugly about. I take a story from the Religio-Philosophical Journal, May 17, 1890, as copied from the newspapers. People in Japan thought that, sometimes in the streets, and sometimes in their houses, an invisible thing was attacking them. They thought that upon persons were appearing wounds, each a slash about an inch long. They thought that, at the time of an attack, little pain was felt.
Possibly a Jap, educated according to what is supposed to be an education, having his ideas as to the identity and geographical distribution of coolies, has looked over files of American newspapers, and has come upon accounts of a series of occurrences in New York City, in the winter of 1891-92, and has been amused to note the mystery that New York reporters infused into their accounts of woundings of men, in the streets of New York. The reporters told of a "vanishing man." The assassin "disappeared marvelously." As noted, in the New York Sun, Jan. 14, 1892, five men had been stabbed by an unknown assailant. There were other attacks. The police were blamed, and in the downtown precincts of the city, the most important order, each day, was to catch the stabber.
January 17— "Slasher captured." The police were out to get him, and one of them got an unterrifying-looking little fellow, named Dowd. It was said that he had been caught, stabbing a man.
In the mixture of all situations, it is impossible to be unable to pick out grounds for reasonably believing, or disbelieving, anything. Say that it is our preference to believe— or to accept— that it was not the "marvelously disappearing" slasher who was caught, but somebody else who would do just as well. Then we note that, twenty minutes earlier, another policeman had caught a man, who had, this policeman said, seized somebody, and was about to stab him. Or June, 1899— and two men were out to catch the "kissing bug"— and one of them caught a beetle, and the other nabbed a butterfly. The policeman of the first arrest was ignored: the captor of Dowd was made a roundsman.
Dowd pleaded not guilty. He said that he had had nothing to do with the other assaults, and had drawn a knife only in this one case, which had been a quarrel. His lawyer pleaded not guilty, but insane. He was found insane, and was sent to the asylum for insane criminals, at Auburn, N. Y.
The outrages in New York stopped. Brooklyn Eagle, March 12, 1892— dispatch from Vienna, Austria— "This city continues to be shocked by mysterious murders. The latest victim is Leopold Buchinger, who was stabbed to the heart by an undetected assassin, in one of the most public places in Vienna. This makes the list of such tragedies five in number, and there is a growing feeling of terror among the public."
Say that it's an old castle, hidden away in a Balkan forest— and somebody was wounded, at night— but, as if lulled by a vampire's wings, felt no pain. This would be only an ordinarily incredible story.
In November, 1901, a woman told a policeman, of Kiel, Germany, that, while walking in a street in Kiel, she learned that she had been unaccountably wounded. She had felt no pain. She could not explain.
The police probably explained. If a doctor was consulted, he probably explained learnedly.
Another woman— about thirty women— "curious and inexplicable attacks." Then men were similarly injured. About eighty persons, openly, in the streets, were stabbed by an uncatchable— an invisible— or it may be the most fitting description to say that, upon the bodies of people of Kiel, wounds appeared. See the London Daily Mail, Dec. 7, 1901— "The extraordinary thing about the mystery is that some marvelously sharp instrument must have been used, because the victims do not seem to know that they are wounded, until several minutes after an attack."
And yet I think that something of an explanation of these Jacks is findable in every male's recollections of his own boyhood— the ringing of door bells, just to torment people— stretching a string over sidewalks, to knock off hats— other, pestiferous tricks. It is not only "just for fun"; there is an engagement of the imagination in these pranks. It will be my expression that, when the more powerful and more definite imagination of an adult human similarly engages and concentrates, phenomena that will be considered beyond belief, or acceptance, by readers who do not realize of what common occurrence they are, develop.
We have had stories of series of accidents, and perhaps my suspicion that they were not mere coincidences has been regarded at least tolerantly. I have data of three automobile accidents that occurred at times not far apart; and, as to this series, I note a seeming association with minor attacks upon other automobiles, and upon people, that suggests the doings of one criminal. If so, he will have to be called occult, whether we take readily to, or are much repelled by, that term.
