Strangler

“ Should the person to be strangled prove a powerful man, or the strangler inexpert, another Thug lays hold of the end of the handkerchief, and the work is completed. The perfection of the act is said to be, when several persons are simultaneously murdered without any of them having time to utter a cry, or to be aware of the fate of their comrades. ”

“ One thing I cannot understand is why so desperate a scoundrel should pause in the middle of his [Pg 192] deadly work, and leave your poor father living, though unconscious. It is deemed the greatest possible disgrace for a Thug to attack his victim with the 'noose' and fail to kill him. Of course, as a rule, the Stranglers—as they are called—work together, but against one old man a single Thug should be able to carry out his grim work thoroughly. ”

“ The junior Thugs make a merit of attending upon the older and more experienced Thugs, shampooing their bodies, and performing the most menial offices. They gradually become initiated into all the mysteries of the art, and if they prove to be powerful men, these promising disciples are made stranglers. When a murder is to be committed, the strangler usually follows the particular person whom he has been nominated by the jemadar to strangle ”

“ Then they were taught how to strangle a person with the sacred choke-cloth, but were not allowed to perform officially with it until after long practice. No half-educated strangler could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep him from uttering a sound—a muffled scream, gurgle, gasp, moan, or something of the sort ”

“ Another sect, which goes by the name of Stranglers, fully believes that the doors of Heaven are only opened before those who have died a violent death, and whenever a relative or friend is dangerously ill they proceed to smother him under the weight of many pillows so as to hasten the end. ”

“ MAURICE. I have killed nobody. All I did was to talk a lot of nonsense while I was drunk. But it is your crime that comes back, and that crime you have grafted on to me.
HENRIETTE. Oh, that's the tone you talk in now!—Was it not you who cursed your own child, and wished the life out of it, and wanted to go away without saying good-bye to anybody? And was it not I who made you visit Marion and show yourself to Madame Catherine?
MAURICE. Yes, you are right. Forgive me! You proved yourself more human than I, and the guilt is wholly my own. Forgive me! But all the same I am without guilt. ”

“ It was Boscombe who spoke when the waters began to subside.
“This,” he cried, “is murder!”
He glared at Constance Maturin, who stood pale, silent and trembling.
“I told you she was mad,” he roared at Stranleigh. “It is your money that in some devilish way has caused this catastrophe. If any lives are lost, it is rank murder!”
“It is murder,” agreed Stranleigh, quietly. “Whoever is responsible for the weakness of that dam should be hanged!” ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! ”

“ This had been no ordinary murder; the work of no everyday assassin. The presumption was that, taken wholly by surprise, she had seen enacted in front of her some spectacle of supreme horror; so close had she been standing as to have been actually drenched by the victim’s blood. My vision—if it was a vision—might not have any legal value, but it was full of suggestion for me; and the impression was still strong upon me that some strange creature had been present in the room, by which the crime had been actually committed. ”

“ Murderers! The angry hum of a bullet past his ear roused a fury in his soul that was elemental, primal, and he cursed now under his breath. Murderers... six feet of earth... in cold blood... or if they winged him, the car, amuck, slanting from the road to up-end itself, would do their bloody work for them... Bookie Skarvan... some day, if he lived through this... Bookie Skarvan... it was strange that all their shots had missed... even if the back of his car was a protection... ”

“ ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible.
CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched—of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower—no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? ”

“ A murderer’s hand has been lifted against me while I slept—I have seen blood shed before my eyes, and could not stay the unrighteous hand of the murderer—I have had none to love me but one—no mother ever smiled upon me—no recollection of a father’s caress warms my heart. ”

“ When I shouted he gave me leave to go on till I was black in the face; nobody would hear me through the front of the house, and perhaps I remembered the heavy shutters he had made for the French windows at the time of the burglar scare? He went round to see if he could hear me through them, and he came back rubbing his hands. But now I took no more notice of his taunts. The last and cruellest was at the very flecks of blood on floor and shavings, flung far as froth in my demented efforts to tear either my foot from the trap or myself limb from limb.... ”

“ Many a precious villain, and merciless marauder, was made by these midnight tales of rapine, murder, and robbery; many a stripling, in whose tender mind the seeds of virtue and honesty had never germinated, burned for an opportunity of loading his pack-horse with the beaver skins of some solitary Blackfoot trapper, who was to be murdered and despoiled of the property he had acquired by weeks, and perhaps months, of toil and danger. ”

“ Mystery films which dealt with criminal violence in a somber setting never failed to excite her. The psychopathic young killer, haunted, desperate, self-tormented and guilt-ridden, had a strange fascination for her, whether in books or on the screen, and she experienced a pleasure she would not have cared to discuss as she watched the net closing in, the noose swinging nearer ... ”

“ I feel myself to be a guilty wretch, an assassin, and murderer.”
“Mon Dieu, monsieur, you are talking in a wild, incoherent manner. Assassin and murderer—​bah! Be reasonable if you please. Don’t talk in such a false and ridiculous strain. Come, here we are at our domicile. Jump out, and come in—​ha, ha! and make your life happy. I won’t have you accuse yourself thus wrongfully. Murder—​bah! it is ridiculous.” ”

“ Does anybody want proof that she is blackhearted, treacherous, lying, cowardly, a secret murderer?” raved the girl. “Yes, a murderer! She wanted me to commit murder,—to let a sweet young creature starve on her sick-bed, and tried to bribe me with that very ear-ring. ”

“ The time of the dance is beaten in with sobs, and the wind is alive. Oh, I cannot bear hell."—OLIVE SCHREINER.
For some time I was conscious of nothing, but by degrees I realised what I had done. An awful crime rested upon my soul, a crime only the shadow of which had rested upon me before.
The hatred of years had found expression at last. The serpent that had lain in my heart, writhing and turning, and growing for years, had at last lifted its head, the latent devil had asserted itself, and I was a murderer.
A murderer! ”

“ Was it possible these murderers would murder her? I struck a match on my trousers, I lit a candle, I read her letter carefully again, and again it maddened and distracted me. I struck my hands together. I paced the room wildly. Caution deserted me, and I made noise enough to wake the very mute; lost to every consideration but that of the terrifying day before me, the day of silence and of inactivity, that I must live through with an unsuspecting face, a cool head, a civil tongue! ”

“ Murderers had friends, relations, helpers—they had knowledge. She had nothing. She was the most lonely of murderers that ever struck a mortal blow. She was alone in London: and the whole town of marvels and mud, with its maze of streets and its mass of lights, was sunk in a hopeless night, rested at the bottom of a black abyss from which no unaided woman could hope to scramble out. ”

“ And, as he reached trembling hands for the cards, that thing in his soul which he had believed slain sprang to life again, man-high and demon-strong, and through eager lips he heard it calling him—calling him—that old undying devil of the thousand lures that snare man's feet. ”

“ The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently, has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out—a terror which clutches him when he prays and when he dances. ”

“ On each side of the throat were unmistakable signs of thumb pressure, and a post-mortem examination made it clear that strangulation had caused death. Such a prominent and well-known man could not have died in an ordinary way without his fellow-citizens experiencing a shock and being deeply affected, but when the news spread that he had been murdered it caused a profound sensation. Then there was a universal expression of regret, followed by a cry of indignation and horror, and a demand for vengeance, swift and pitiless, on the slayer of this good man. ”

“ The thief (if thief it were) must have already taken the alarm, and descended to the lowest regions. I fancied I could detect the same footsteps, but more distinctly marked, walk by me with a hurried, frightened movement, accompanied by a quick, sobbing breath; and, as I paused to consider what such a mystery could indicate, a pair of heavily-shod feet rushed past me, or seemed to rush, upon the stairs. I heard an angry shout commingle with a faint cry of terror below the landing whereon I stood; then, the discharge of a firearm, followed by a low groan of pain—and all was still. ”

“ Whatever the cause or purpose; whatever of hellish suffering lay behind, that dreadful apparition pictured the very spirit of murder—murder in the dark.
"Perhaps it does, my lad," I answered, my hand on his shoulder, "but when that death comes it will find us plucking the heart out of this mystery. Now come to your senses and listen to me. Two murders have been committed in this house within the last forty-eight hours, and whoever committed them has left no trace. There is a secret passageway leading in here with an opening on this floor. ”

“ We have not been permitted to lift the veil, and show you the perpetrators of this horrible murder—a murder most atrocious in its inception, brutal and cowardly in its execution a crime which in many respects stands without a parallel. But the blood of a pure and honourable man, shed in the streets of your city, calls aloud to Heaven for vengeance, and I trust the cry will be heard and answered ”

“ Fit the Sixth THE BARRISTER’S DREAM They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap. But the Barrister, weary of proving in vain That the Beaver’s lace-making was wrong, Fell asleep, and in dreams saw the creature quite plain That his fancy had dwelt on so long. He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court, Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye, Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig On the charge of deserting its sty. ”

“ Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. ”

“ You are naught to me but a robber, a wrecker, a drunkard, a murderer—go down into Hell?’"
In his quivering excitement he acted the whole scene, unconscious that he was so doing, and the drops of agony stood on his brow and rolled—drip—drip—drip from it. ”

“ But are we not all liable to mistakes? We call him a misguided man, which is a more Christian phrase than to say, in the coarser language of the law, that he was instigated by the devil. But, nevertheless, we hang this misguided man by the neck, till he is dead. How absurd! How unjust!
A needy wanderer of the night breaks into the house of some rich, old gentleman; robs his dwelling; breaks his skull, ex abundanti cautela; and sets fire to the tenement; thus combining burglary, murder, and arson. ”

“ All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that "murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and terrible hallucination.
My case is in no wise parallel.
I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. ”