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THE EMPTY HOUSE

AND OTHER GHOST STORIES

BY

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

AUTHOR OF

"JOHN SILENCE" "THE LOST VALLEY" ETC.

LONDON

EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY

LIMITED

1916

First Printed 1906

Uniform Edition 1915

Reprinted 1916

CONTENTS

THE EMPTY HOUSE

A HAUNTED ISLAND

A CASE OF EAVESDROPPING

KEEPING HIS PROMISE

WITH INTENT TO STEAL

THE WOOD OF THE DEAD

SMITH: AN EPISODE IN A LODGING-HOUSE

A SUSPICIOUS GIFT

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PRIVATE SECRETARY IN NEW YORK

SKELETON LAKE: AN EPISODE IN CAMP

THE EMPTY HOUSE

Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once

their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular

feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an

ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the

unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with

their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate

an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their

immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased.

And, perhaps, with houses the same principle is operative, and it is the

aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the

actual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and the

hair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of

the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher,

and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin,

and a chilling of the blood. He is terror-stricken without apparent

cause.

There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this

particular house to bear out the tales of the horror that was said to

reign within. It was neither lonely nor unkempt. It stood, crowded into

a corner of the square, and looked exactly like the houses on either

side of it. It had the same number of windows as its neighbours; the

same balcony overlooking the gardens; the same white steps leading up to

the heavy black front door; and, in the rear, there was the same narrow

strip of green, with neat box borders, running up to the wall that

divided it from the backs of the adjoining houses. Apparently, too, the

number of chimney pots on the roof was the same; the breadth and angle

of the eaves; and even the height of the dirty area railings.

And yet this house in the square, that seemed precisely similar to its

fifty ugly neighbours, was as a matter of fact entirely

different--horribly different.

Wherein lay this marked, invisible difference is impossible to say. It

cannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination, because persons who had

spent some time in the house, knowing nothing of the facts, had declared

positively that certain rooms were so disagreeable they would rather die

than enter them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole house

produced in them symptoms of a genuine terror; while the series of

innocent tenants who had tried to live in it and been forced to decamp

at the shortest possible notice, was indeed little less than a scandal

in the town.

When Shorthouse arrived to pay a "week-end" visit to his Aunt Julia in

her little house on the sea-front at the other end of the town, he found

her charged to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had only

received her telegram that morning, and he had come anticipating

boredom; but the moment he touched her hand and kissed her apple-skin

wrinkled cheek, he caught the first wave of her electrical condition.

The impression deepened when he learned that there were to be no other

visitors, and that he had been telegraphed for with a very special

object.

Something was in the wind, and the "something" would doubtless bear

fruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychical

research, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook she

usually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon

after tea, when she sidled close up to him as they paced slowly along

the sea-front in the dusk.

"I've got the keys," she announced in a delighted, yet half awesome

voice. "Got them till Monday!"

"The keys of the bathing-machine, or--?" he asked innocently, looking

from the sea to the town. Nothing brought her so quickly to the point as

feigning stupidity.

"Neither," she whispered. "I've got the keys of the haunted house in the

square--and I'm going there to-night."

Shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back.

He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and manner thrilled

him. She was in earnest.

"But you can't go alone--" he began.

"That's why I wired for you," she said with decision.

He turned to look at her. The ugly, lined, enigmatical face was alive

with excitement. There was the glow of genuine enthusiasm round it like

a halo. The eyes shone. He caught another wave of her excitement, and a

second tremor, more marked than the first, accompanied it.

"Thanks, Aunt Julia," he said politely; "thanks awfully."

"I should not dare to go quite alone," she went on, raising her voice;

"but with you I should enjoy it immensely. You're afraid of nothing, I

know."

"Thanks _so_ much," he said again. "Er--is anything likely to happen?"

"A great deal _has_ happened," she whispered, "though it's been most

cleverly hushed up. Three tenants have come and gone in the last few

months, and the house is said to be empty for good now."

In spite of himself Shorthouse became interested. His aunt was so very

much in earnest.

"The house is very old indeed," she went on, "and the story--an

unpleasant one--dates a long way back. It has to do with a murder

committed by a jealous stableman who had some affair with a servant in

the house. One night he managed to secrete himself in the cellar, and

when everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs to the servants' quarters,

chased the girl down to the next landing, and before anyone could come

to the rescue threw her bodily over the banisters into the hall below."

"And the stableman--?"

"Was caught, I believe, and hanged for murder; but it all happened a

century ago, and I've not been able to get more details of the story."

Shorthouse now felt his interest thoroughly aroused; but, though he was

not particularly nervous for himself, he hesitated a little on his

aunt's account.

"On one condition," he said at length.

"Nothing will prevent my going," she said firmly; "but I may as well

hear your condition."

"That you guarantee your power of self-control if anything really

horrible happens. I mean--that you are sure you won't get too

frightened."

"Jim," she said scornfully, "I'm not young, I know, nor are my nerves;

but _with you_ I should be afraid of nothing in the world!"

This, of course, settled it, for Shorthouse had no pretensions to being

other than a very ordinary young man, and an appeal to his vanity was

irresistible. He agreed to go.

Instinctively, by a sort of sub-conscious preparation, he kept himself

and his forces well in hand the whole evening, compelling an

accumulative reserve of control by that nameless inward process of

gradually putting all the emotions away and turning the key upon them--a

process difficult to describe, but wonderfully effective, as all men who

have lived through severe trials of the inner man well understand.

Later, it stood him in good stead.

But it was not until half-past ten, when they stood in the hall, well in

the glare of friendly lamps and still surrounded by comforting human

influences, that he had to make the first call upon this store of

collected strength. For, once the door was closed, and he saw the

deserted silent street stretching away white in the moonlight before

them, it came to him clearly that the real test that night would be in

dealing with _two fears_ instead of one. He would have to carry his

aunt's fear as well as his own. And, as he glanced down at her

sphinx-like countenance and realised that it might assume no pleasant

aspect in a rush of real terror, he felt satisfied with only one thing

in the whole adventure--that he had confidence in his own will and power

to stand against any shock that might come.

Slowly they walked along the empty streets of the town; a bright autumn

moon silvered the roofs, casting deep shadows; there was no breath of

wind; and the trees in the formal gardens by the sea-front watched them

silently as they passed along. To his aunt's occasional remarks

Shorthouse made no reply, realising that she was simply surrounding

herself with mental buffers--saying ordinary things to prevent herself

thinking of extra-ordinary things. Few windows showed lights, and from

scarcely a single chimney came smoke or sparks. Shorthouse had already

begun to notice everything, even the smallest details. Presently they

stopped at the street corner and looked up at the name on the side of

the house full in the moonlight, and with one accord, but without

remark, turned into the square and crossed over to the side of it that

lay in shadow.

"The number of the house is thirteen," whispered a voice at his side;

and neither of them made the obvious reference, but passed across the

broad sheet of moonlight and began to march up the pavement in silence.

It was about half-way up the square that Shorthouse felt an arm slipped

quietly but significantly into his own, and knew then that their

adventure had begun in earnest, and that his companion was already

yielding imperceptibly to the influences against them. She needed

support.

A few minutes later they stopped before a tall, narrow house that rose

before them into the night, ugly in shape and painted a dingy white.

Shutterless windows, without blinds, stared down upon them, shining here

and there in the moonlight. There were weather streaks in the wall and

cracks in the paint, and the balcony bulged out from the first floor a

little unnaturally. But, beyond this generally forlorn appearance of an

unoccupied house, there was nothing at first sight to single out this

particular mansion for the evil character it had most certainly

acquired.

Taking a look over their shoulders to make sure they had not been

followed, they went boldly up the steps and stood against the huge black

door that fronted them forbiddingly. But the first wave of nervousness

was now upon them, and Shorthouse fumbled a long time with the key

before he could fit it into the lock at all. For a moment, if truth were

told, they both hoped it would not open, for they were a prey to various

unpleasant emotions as they stood there on the threshold of their

ghostly adventure. Shorthouse, shuffling with the key and hampered by

the steady weight on his arm, certainly felt the solemnity of the

moment. It was as if the whole world--for all experience seemed at that

instant concentrated in his own consciousness--were listening to the

grating noise of that key. A stray puff of wind wandering down the empty

street woke a momentary rustling in the trees behind them, but otherwise

this rattling of the key was the only sound audible; and at last it

turned in the lock and the heavy door swung open and revealed a yawning

gulf of darkness beyond.

With a last glance at the moonlit square, they passed quickly in, and

the door slammed behind them with a roar that echoed prodigiously

through empty halls and passages. But, instantly, with the echoes,

another sound made itself heard, and Aunt Julia leaned suddenly so

heavily upon him that he had to take a step backwards to save himself

from falling.

A man had coughed close beside them--so close that it seemed they must

have been actually by his side in the darkness.

With the possibility of practical jokes in his mind, Shorthouse at once

swung his heavy stick in the direction of the sound; but it met nothing

more solid than air. He heard his aunt give a little gasp beside him.

"There's someone here," she whispered; "I heard him."

"Be quiet!" he said sternly. "It was nothing but the noise of the front

door."

"Oh! get a light--quick!" she added, as her nephew, fumbling with a box

of matches, opened it upside down and let them all fall with a rattle on

to the stone floor.

The sound, however, was not repeated; and there was no evidence of

retreating footsteps. In another minute they had a candle burning, using

an empty end of a cigar case as a holder; and when the first flare had

died down he held the impromptu lamp aloft and surveyed the scene. And

it was dreary enough in all conscience, for there is nothing more

desolate in all the abodes of men than an unfurnished house dimly lit,

silent, and forsaken, and yet tenanted by rumour with the memories of

evil and violent histories.

They were standing in a wide hall-way; on their left was the open door

of a spacious dining-room, and in front the hall ran, ever narrowing,

into a long, dark passage that led apparently to the top of the kitchen

stairs. The broad uncarpeted staircase rose in a sweep before them,

everywhere draped in shadows, except for a single spot about half-way up

where the moonlight came in through the window and fell on a bright

patch on the boards. This shaft of light shed a faint radiance above and

below it, lending to the objects within its reach a misty outline that

was infinitely more suggestive and ghostly than complete darkness.

Filtered moonlight always seems to paint faces on the surrounding gloom,

and as Shorthouse peered up into the well of darkness and thought of the

countless empty rooms and passages in the upper part of the old house,

he caught himself longing again for the safety of the moonlit square, or

the cosy, bright drawing-room they had left an hour before. Then

realising that these thoughts were dangerous, he thrust them away again

and summoned all his energy for concentration on the present.

"Aunt Julia," he said aloud, severely, "we must now go through the house

from top to bottom and make a thorough search."

The echoes of his voice died away slowly all over the building, and in

the intense silence that followed he turned to look at her. In the

candle-light he saw that her face was already ghastly pale; but she

dropped his arm for a moment and said in a whisper, stepping close in

front of him--

"I agree. We must be sure there's no one hiding. That's the first

thing."

She spoke with evident effort, and he looked at her with admiration.

"You feel quite sure of yourself? It's not too late--"

"I think so," she whispered, her eyes shifting nervously toward the

shadows behind. "Quite sure, only one thing--"

"What's that?"

"You must never leave me alone for an instant."

"As long as you understand that any sound or appearance must be

investigated at once, for to hesitate means to admit fear. That is

fatal."

"Agreed," she said, a little shakily, after a moment's hesitation. "I'll

try--"

Arm in arm, Shorthouse holding the dripping candle and the stick, while

his aunt carried the cloak over her shoulders, figures of utter comedy

to all but themselves, they began a systematic search.

Stealthily, walking on tip-toe and shading the candle lest it should

betray their presence through the shutterless windows, they went first

into the big dining-room. There was not a stick of furniture to be

seen. Bare walls, ugly mantel-pieces and empty grates stared at them.

Everything, they felt, resented their intrusion, watching them, as it

were, with veiled eyes; whispers followed them; shadows flitted

noiselessly to right and left; something seemed ever at their back,

watching, waiting an opportunity to do them injury. There was the

inevitable sense that operations which went on when the room was empty

had been temporarily suspended till they were well out of the way again.

The whole dark interior of the old building seemed to become a malignant

Presence that rose up, warning them to desist and mind their own

business; every moment the strain on the nerves increased.

Out of the gloomy dining-room they passed through large folding doors

into a sort of library or smoking-room, wrapt equally in silence,

darkness, and dust; and from this they regained the hall near the top of

the back stairs.

Here a pitch black tunnel opened before them into the lower regions,

and--it must be confessed--they hesitated. But only for a minute. With

the worst of the night still to come it was essential to turn from

nothing. Aunt Julia stumbled at the top step of the dark descent, ill

lit by the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt at least half

the decision go out of his legs.

"Come on!" he said peremptorily, and his voice ran on and lost itself in

the dark, empty spaces below.

"I'm coming," she faltered, catching his arm with unnecessary violence.

They went a little unsteadily down the stone steps, a cold, damp air

meeting them in the face, close and mal-odorous. The kitchen, into which

the stairs led along a narrow passage, was large, with a lofty ceiling.

Several doors opened out of it--some into cupboards with empty jars

still standing on the shelves, and others into horrible little ghostly

back offices, each colder and less inviting than the last. Black beetles

scurried over the floor, and once, when they knocked against a deal

table standing in a corner, something about the size of a cat jumped

down with a rush and fled, scampering across the stone floor into the

darkness. Everywhere there was a sense of recent occupation, an

impression of sadness and gloom.

Leaving the main kitchen, they next went towards the scullery. The door

was standing ajar, and as they pushed it open to its full extent Aunt

Julia uttered a piercing scream, which she instantly tried to stifle by

placing her hand over her mouth. For a second Shorthouse stood

stock-still, catching his breath. He felt as if his spine had suddenly

become hollow and someone had filled it with particles of ice.

Facing them, directly in their way between the doorposts, stood the

figure of a woman. She had dishevelled hair and wildly staring eyes, and

her face was terrified and white as death.

She stood there motionless for the space of a single second. Then the

candle flickered and she was gone--gone utterly--and the door framed

nothing but empty darkness.

"Only the beastly jumping candle-light," he said quickly, in a voice

that sounded like someone else's and was only half under control. "Come

on, aunt. There's nothing there."

He dragged her forward. With a clattering of feet and a great appearance

of boldness they went on, but over his body the skin moved as if

crawling ants covered it, and he knew by the weight on his arm that he

was supplying the force of locomotion for two. The scullery was cold,

bare, and empty; more like a large prison cell than anything else. They

went round it, tried the door into the yard, and the windows, but found

them all fastened securely. His aunt moved beside him like a person in

a dream. Her eyes were tightly shut, and she seemed merely to follow the

pressure of his arm. Her courage filled him with amazement. At the same

time he noticed that a certain odd change had come over her face, a

change which somehow evaded his power of analysis.

"There's nothing here, aunty," he repeated aloud quickly. "Let's go

upstairs and see the rest of the house. Then we'll choose a room to wait

up in."

She followed him obediently, keeping close to his side, and they locked

the kitchen door behind them. It was a relief to get up again. In the

hall there was more light than before, for the moon had travelled a

little further down the stairs. Cautiously they began to go up into the

dark vault of the upper house, the boards creaking under their weight.

On the first floor they found the large double drawing-rooms, a search

of which revealed nothing. Here also was no sign of furniture or recent

occupancy; nothing but dust and neglect and shadows. They opened the big

folding doors between front and back drawing-rooms and then came out

again to the landing and went on upstairs.

They had not gone up more than a dozen steps when they both

simultaneously stopped to listen, looking into each other's eyes with a

new apprehension across the flickering candle flame. From the room they

had left hardly ten seconds before came the sound of doors quietly

closing. It was beyond all question; they heard the booming noise that

accompanies the shutting of heavy doors, followed by the sharp catching

of the latch.

"We must go back and see," said Shorthouse briefly, in a low tone, and

turning to go downstairs again.

Somehow she managed to drag after him, her feet catching in her dress,

her face livid.

When they entered the front drawing-room it was plain that the folding

doors had been closed--half a minute before. Without hesitation

Shorthouse opened them. He almost expected to see someone facing him in

the back room; but only darkness and cold air met him. They went through

both rooms, finding nothing unusual. They tried in every way to make the

doors close of themselves, but there was not wind enough even to set the

candle flame flickering. The doors would not move without strong

pressure. All was silent as the grave. Undeniably the rooms were utterly

empty, and the house utterly still.

"It's beginning," whispered a voice at his elbow which he hardly

recognised as his aunt's.

He nodded acquiescence, taking out his watch to note the time. It was

fifteen minutes before midnight; he made the entry of exactly what had

occurred in his notebook, setting the candle in its case upon the floor

in order to do so. It took a moment or two to balance it safely against

the wall.

Aunt Julia always declared that at this moment she was not actually

watching him, but had turned her head towards the inner room, where she

fancied she heard something moving; but, at any rate, both positively

agreed that there came a sound of rushing feet, heavy and very

swift--and the next instant the candle was out!

But to Shorthouse himself had come more than this, and he has always

thanked his fortunate stars that it came to him alone and not to his

aunt too. For, as he rose from the stooping position of balancing the

candle, and before it was actually extinguished, a face thrust itself

forward so close to his own that he could almost have touched it with

his lips. It was a face working with passion; a man's face, dark, with

thick features, and angry, savage eyes. It belonged to a common man, and

it was evil in its ordinary normal expression, no doubt, but as he saw

it, alive with intense, aggressive emotion, it was a malignant and

terrible human countenance.

There was no movement of the air; nothing but the sound of rushing

feet--stockinged or muffled feet; the apparition of the face; and the

almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle.

In spite of himself, Shorthouse uttered a little cry, nearly losing his

balance as his aunt clung to him with her whole weight in one moment of

real, uncontrollable terror. She made no sound, but simply seized him

bodily. Fortunately, however, she had seen nothing, but had only heard

the rushing feet, for her control returned almost at once, and he was

able to disentangle himself and strike a match.

The shadows ran away on all sides before the glare, and his aunt stooped

down and groped for the cigar case with the precious candle. Then they

discovered that the candle had not been _blown_ out at all; it had been

_crushed_ out. The wick was pressed down into the wax, which was

flattened as if by some smooth, heavy instrument.

How his companion so quickly overcame her terror, Shorthouse never

properly understood; but his admiration for her self-control increased

tenfold, and at the same time served to feed his own dying flame--for

which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him was the

evidence of physical force they had just witnessed. He at once

suppressed the memory of stories he had heard of "physical mediums" and

their dangerous phenomena; for if these were true, and either his aunt

or himself was unwittingly a physical medium, it meant that they were

simply aiding to focus the forces of a haunted house already charged to

the brim. It was like walking with unprotected lamps among uncovered

stores of gun-powder.

So, with as little reflection as possible, he simply relit the candle

and went up to the next floor. The arm in his trembled, it is true, and

his own tread was often uncertain, but they went on with thoroughness,

and after a search revealing nothing they climbed the last flight of

stairs to the top floor of all.

Here they found a perfect nest of small servants' rooms, with broken

pieces of furniture, dirty cane-bottomed chairs, chests of drawers,

cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms had low sloping

ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs, small windows, and

badly plastered walls--a depressing and dismal region which they were

glad to leave behind.

It was on the stroke of midnight when they entered a small room on the

third floor, close to the top of the stairs, and arranged to make

themselves comfortable for the remainder of their adventure. It was

absolutely bare, and was said to be the room--then used as a clothes

closet--into which the infuriated groom had chased his victim and

finally caught her. Outside, across the narrow landing, began the stairs

leading up to the floor above, and the servants' quarters where they had

just searched.

In spite of the chilliness of the night there was something in the air

of this room that cried for an open window. But there was more than

this. Shorthouse could only describe it by saying that he felt less

master of himself here than in any other part of the house. There was

something that acted directly on the nerves, tiring the resolution,

enfeebling the will. He was conscious of this result before he had been

in the room five minutes, and it was in the short time they stayed there

that he suffered the wholesale depletion of his vital forces, which

was, for himself, the chief horror of the whole experience.

They put the candle on the floor of the cupboard, leaving the door a few

inches ajar, so that there was no glare to confuse the eyes, and no

shadow to shift about on walls and ceiling. Then they spread the cloak

on the floor and sat down to wait, with their backs against the wall.

Shorthouse was within two feet of the door on to the landing; his

position commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down into

the darkness, and also of the beginning of the servants' stairs going to

the floor above; the heavy stick lay beside him within easy reach.

The moon was now high above the house. Through the open window they

could see the comforting stars like friendly eyes watching in the sky.

One by one the clocks of the town struck midnight, and when the sounds

died away the deep silence of a windless night fell again over

everything. Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled

the air with hollow murmurs.

Inside the house the silence became awful; awful, he thought, because

any minute now it might be broken by sounds portending terror. The

strain of waiting told more and more severely on the nerves; they

talked in whispers when they talked at all, for their voices aloud

sounded queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the

night air, invaded the room, and made them cold. The influences against

them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them of

self-confidence, and the power of decisive action; their forces were on

the wane, and the possibility of real fear took on a new and terrible

meaning. He began to tremble for the elderly woman by his side, whose

pluck could hardly save her beyond a certain extent.

He heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed so loud

that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly certain other sounds

that were beginning very faintly to make themselves audible in the

depths of the house. Every time he fastened his attention on these

sounds, they instantly ceased. They certainly came no nearer. Yet he

could not rid himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere

in the lower regions of the house. The drawing-room floor, where the

doors had been so strangely closed, seemed too near; the sounds were

further off than that. He thought of the great kitchen, with the

scurrying black-beetles, and of the dismal little scullery; but,

somehow or other, they did not seem to come from there either. Surely

they were not _outside_ the house!

Then, suddenly, the truth flashed into his mind, and for the space of a

minute he felt as if his blood had stopped flowing and turned to ice.

The sounds were not downstairs at all; they were _upstairs_--upstairs,

somewhere among those horrid gloomy little servants' rooms with their

bits of broken furniture, low ceilings, and cramped windows--upstairs

where the victim had first been disturbed and stalked to her death.

And the moment he discovered where the sounds were, he began to hear

them more clearly. It was the sound of feet, moving stealthily along the

passage overhead, in and out among the rooms, and past the furniture.

He turned quickly to steal a glance at the motionless figure seated

beside him, to note whether she had shared his discovery. The faint

candle-light coming through the crack in the cupboard door, threw her

strongly-marked face into vivid relief against the white of the wall.

But it was something else that made him catch his breath and stare

again. An extraordinary something had come into her face and seemed to

spread over her features like a mask; it smoothed out the deep lines

and drew the skin everywhere a little tighter so that the wrinkles

disappeared; it brought into the face--with the sole exception of the

old eyes--an appearance of youth and almost of childhood.

He stared in speechless amazement--amazement that was dangerously near

to horror. It was his aunt's face indeed, but it was her face of forty

years ago, the vacant innocent face of a girl. He had heard stories of

that strange effect of terror which could wipe a human countenance clean

of other emotions, obliterating all previous expressions; but he had

never realised that it could be literally true, or could mean anything

so simply horrible as what he now saw. For the dreadful signature of

overmastering fear was written plainly in that utter vacancy of the

girlish face beside him; and when, feeling his intense gaze, she turned

to look at him, he instinctively closed his eyes tightly to shut out the

sight.

Yet, when he turned a minute later, his feelings well in hand, he saw to

his intense relief another expression; his aunt was smiling, and though

the face was deathly white, the awful veil had lifted and the normal

look was returning.

"Anything wrong?" was all he could think of to say at the moment. And

the answer was eloquent, coming from such a woman.

"I feel cold--and a little frightened," she whispered.

He offered to close the window, but she seized hold of him and begged

him not to leave her side even for an instant.

"It's upstairs, I know," she whispered, with an odd half laugh; "but I

can't possibly go up."

But Shorthouse thought otherwise, knowing that in action lay their best

hope of self-control.

He took the brandy flask and poured out a glass of neat spirit, stiff

enough to help anybody over anything. She swallowed it with a little

shiver. His only idea now was to get out of the house before her

collapse became inevitable; but this could not safely be done by turning

tail and running from the enemy. Inaction was no longer possible; every

minute he was growing less master of himself, and desperate, aggressive

measures were imperative without further delay. Moreover, the action

must be taken _towards_ the enemy, not away from it; the climax, if

necessary and unavoidable, would have to be faced boldly. He could do it

now; but in ten minutes he might not have the force left to act for

himself, much less for both!

Upstairs, the sounds were meanwhile becoming louder and closer,

accompanied by occasional creaking of the boards. Someone was moving

stealthily about, stumbling now and then awkwardly against the

furniture.

Waiting a few moments to allow the tremendous dose of spirits to produce

its effect, and knowing this would last but a short time under the

circumstances, Shorthouse then quietly got on his feet, saying in a

determined voice--

"Now, Aunt Julia, we'll go upstairs and find out what all this noise is

about. You must come too. It's what we agreed."

He picked up his stick and went to the cupboard for the candle. A limp

form rose shakily beside him breathing hard, and he heard a voice say

very faintly something about being "ready to come." The woman's courage

amazed him; it was so much greater than his own; and, as they advanced,

holding aloft the dripping candle, some subtle force exhaled from this

trembling, white-faced old woman at his side that was the true source of

his inspiration. It held something really great that shamed him and gave

him the support without which he would have proved far less equal to the

occasion.

They crossed the dark landing, avoiding with their eyes the deep black

space over the banisters. Then they began to mount the narrow staircase

to meet the sounds which, minute by minute, grew louder and nearer.

About half-way up the stairs Aunt Julia stumbled and Shorthouse turned

to catch her by the arm, and just at that moment there came a terrific

crash in the servants' corridor overhead. It was instantly followed by a

shrill, agonised scream that was a cry of terror and a cry for help

melted into one.

Before they could move aside, or go down a single step, someone came

rushing along the passage overhead, blundering horribly, racing madly,

at full speed, three steps at a time, down the very staircase where they

stood. The steps were light and uncertain; but close behind them sounded

the heavier tread of another person, and the staircase seemed to shake.

Shorthouse and his companion just had time to flatten themselves against

the wall when the jumble of flying steps was upon them, and two persons,

with the slightest possible interval between them, dashed past at full

speed. It was a perfect whirlwind of sound breaking in upon the midnight

silence of the empty building.

The two runners, pursuer and pursued, had passed clean through them

where they stood, and already with a thud the boards below had received

first one, then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing--not a

hand, or arm, or face, or even a shred of flying clothing.

There came a second's pause. Then the first one, the lighter of the two,

obviously the pursued one, ran with uncertain footsteps into the little

room which Shorthouse and his aunt had just left. The heavier one

followed. There was a sound of scuffling, gasping, and smothered

screaming; and then out on to the landing came the step--of a single

person _treading weightily_.

A dead silence followed for the space of half a minute, and then was

heard a rushing sound through the air. It was followed by a dull,

crashing thud in the depths of the house below--on the stone floor of

the hall.

Utter silence reigned after. Nothing moved. The flame of the candle was

steady. It had been steady the whole time, and the air had been

undisturbed by any movement whatsoever. Palsied with terror, Aunt Julia,

without waiting for her companion, began fumbling her way downstairs;

she was crying gently to herself, and when Shorthouse put his arm round

her and half carried her he felt that she was trembling like a leaf. He

went into the little room and picked up the cloak from the floor, and,

arm in arm, walking very slowly, without speaking a word or looking once

behind them, they marched down the three flights into the hall.

In the hall they saw nothing, but the whole way down the stairs they

were conscious that someone followed them; step by step; when they went

faster IT was left behind, and when they went more slowly IT caught them

up. But never once did they look behind to see; and at each turning of

the staircase they lowered their eyes for fear of the following horror

they might see upon the stairs above.

With trembling hands Shorthouse opened the front door, and they walked

out into the moonlight and drew a deep breath of the cool night air

blowing in from the sea.

A HAUNTED ISLAND

The following events occurred on a small island of isolated position in

a large Canadian lake, to whose cool waters the inhabitants of Montreal

and Toronto flee for rest and recreation in the hot months. It is only

to be regretted that events of such peculiar interest to the genuine

student of the psychical should be entirely uncorroborated. Such

unfortunately, however, is the case.

Our own party of nearly twenty had returned to Montreal that very day,

and I was left in solitary possession for a week or two longer, in order

to accomplish some important "reading" for the law which I had foolishly

neglected during the summer.

It was late in September, and the big trout and maskinonge were stirring

themselves in the depths of the lake, and beginning slowly to move up to

the surface waters as the north winds and early frosts lowered their

temperature. Already the maples were crimson and gold, and the wild

laughter of the loons echoed in sheltered bays that never knew their

strange cry in the summer.

With a whole island to oneself, a two-storey cottage, a canoe, and only

the chipmunks, and the farmer's weekly visit with eggs and bread, to

disturb one, the opportunities for hard reading might be very great. It

all depends!

The rest of the party had gone off with many warnings to beware of

Indians, and not to stay late enough to be the victim of a frost that

thinks nothing of forty below zero. After they had gone, the loneliness

of the situation made itself unpleasantly felt. There were no other

islands within six or seven miles, and though the mainland forests lay a

couple of miles behind me, they stretched for a very great distance

unbroken by any signs of human habitation. But, though the island was

completely deserted and silent, the rocks and trees that had echoed

human laughter and voices almost every hour of the day for two months

could not fail to retain some memories of it all; and I was not

surprised to fancy I heard a shout or a cry as I passed from rock to

rock, and more than once to imagine that I heard my own name called

aloud.

In the cottage there were six tiny little bedrooms divided from one

another by plain unvarnished partitions of pine. A wooden bedstead, a

mattress, and a chair, stood in each room, but I only found two mirrors,

and one of these was broken.

The boards creaked a good deal as I moved about, and the signs of

occupation were so recent that I could hardly believe I was alone. I

half expected to find someone left behind, still trying to crowd into a

box more than it would hold. The door of one room was stiff, and refused

for a moment to open, and it required very little persuasion to imagine

someone was holding the handle on the inside, and that when it opened I

should meet a pair of human eyes.

A thorough search of the floor led me to select as my own sleeping

quarters a little room with a diminutive balcony over the verandah roof.

The room was very small, but the bed was large, and had the best

mattress of them all. It was situated directly over the sitting-room

where I should live and do my "reading," and the miniature window looked

out to the rising sun. With the exception of a narrow path which led

from the front door and verandah through the trees to the boat-landing,

the island was densely covered with maples, hemlocks, and cedars. The

trees gathered in round the cottage so closely that the slightest wind

made the branches scrape the roof and tap the wooden walls. A few

moments after sunset the darkness became impenetrable, and ten yards

beyond the glare of the lamps that shone through the sitting-room

windows--of which there were four--you could not see an inch before your

nose, nor move a step without running up against a tree.

The rest of that day I spent moving my belongings from my tent to the

sitting-room, taking stock of the contents of the larder, and chopping

enough wood for the stove to last me for a week. After that, just before

sunset, I went round the island a couple of times in my canoe for

precaution's sake. I had never dreamed of doing this before, but when a

man is alone he does things that never occur to him when he is one of a

large party.

How lonely the island seemed when I landed again! The sun was down, and

twilight is unknown in these northern regions. The darkness comes up at

once. The canoe safely pulled up and turned over on her face, I groped

my way up the little narrow pathway to the verandah. The six lamps were

soon burning merrily in the front room; but in the kitchen, where I

"dined," the shadows were so gloomy, and the lamplight was so

inadequate, that the stars could be seen peeping through the cracks

between the rafters.

I turned in early that night. Though it was calm and there was no wind,

the creaking of my bedstead and the musical gurgle of the water over the

rocks below were not the only sounds that reached my ears. As I lay

awake, the appalling emptiness of the house grew upon me. The corridors

and vacant rooms seemed to echo innumerable footsteps, shufflings, the

rustle of skirts, and a constant undertone of whispering. When sleep at

length overtook me, the breathings and noises, however, passed gently to

mingle with the voices of my dreams.

A week passed by, and the "reading" progressed favourably. On the tenth

day of my solitude, a strange thing happened. I awoke after a good

night's sleep to find myself possessed with a marked repugnance for my

room. The air seemed to stifle me. The more I tried to define the cause

of this dislike, the more unreasonable it appeared. There was something

about the room that made me afraid. Absurd as it seems, this feeling

clung to me obstinately while dressing, and more than once I caught

myself shivering, and conscious of an inclination to get out of the room

as quickly as possible. The more I tried to laugh it away, the more real

it became; and when at last I was dressed, and went out into the

passage, and downstairs into the kitchen, it was with feelings of

relief, such as I might imagine would accompany one's escape from the

presence of a dangerous contagious disease.

While cooking my breakfast, I carefully recalled every night spent in

the room, in the hope that I might in some way connect the dislike I now

felt with some disagreeable incident that had occurred in it. But the

only thing I could recall was one stormy night when I suddenly awoke and

heard the boards creaking so loudly in the corridor that I was convinced

there were people in the house. So certain was I of this, that I had

descended the stairs, gun in hand, only to find the doors and windows

securely fastened, and the mice and black-beetles in sole possession of

the floor. This was certainly not sufficient to account for the strength

of my feelings.

The morning hours I spent in steady reading; and when I broke off in the

middle of the day for a swim and luncheon, I was very much surprised,

if not a little alarmed, to find that my dislike for the room had, if

anything, grown stronger. Going upstairs to get a book, I experienced

the most marked aversion to entering the room, and while within I was

conscious all the time of an uncomfortable feeling that was half

uneasiness and half apprehension. The result of it was that, instead of

reading, I spent the afternoon on the water paddling and fishing, and

when I got home about sundown, brought with me half a dozen delicious

black bass for the supper-table and the larder.

As sleep was an important matter to me at this time, I had decided that

if my aversion to the room was so strongly marked on my return as it had

been before, I would move my bed down into the sitting-room, and sleep

there. This was, I argued, in no sense a concession to an absurd and

fanciful fear, but simply a precaution to ensure a good night's sleep. A

bad night involved the loss of the next day's reading,--a loss I was not

prepared to incur.

I accordingly moved my bed downstairs into a corner of the sitting-room

facing the door, and was moreover uncommonly glad when the operation

was completed, and the door of the bedroom closed finally upon the

shadows, the silence, and the strange _fear_ that shared the room with

them.

The croaking stroke of the kitchen clock sounded the hour of eight as I

finished washing up my few dishes, and closing the kitchen door behind

me, passed into the front room. All the lamps were lit, and their

reflectors, which I had polished up during the day, threw a blaze of

light into the room.

Outside the night was still and warm. Not a breath of air was stirring;

the waves were silent, the trees motionless, and heavy clouds hung like

an oppressive curtain over the heavens. The darkness seemed to have

rolled up with unusual swiftness, and not the faintest glow of colour

remained to show where the sun had set. There was present in the

atmosphere that ominous and overwhelming silence which so often precedes

the most violent storms.

I sat down to my books with my brain unusually clear, and in my heart

the pleasant satisfaction of knowing that five black bass were lying in

the ice-house, and that to-morrow morning the old farmer would arrive

with fresh bread and eggs. I was soon absorbed in my books.

As the night wore on the silence deepened. Even the chipmunks were

still; and the boards of the floors and walls ceased creaking. I read on

steadily till, from the gloomy shadows of the kitchen, came the hoarse

sound of the clock striking nine. How loud the strokes sounded! They

were like blows of a big hammer. I closed one book and opened another,

feeling that I was just warming up to my work.

This, however, did not last long. I presently found that I was reading

the same paragraphs over twice, simple paragraphs that did not require

such effort. Then I noticed that my mind began to wander to other

things, and the effort to recall my thoughts became harder with each

digression. Concentration was growing momentarily more difficult.

Presently I discovered that I had turned over two pages instead of one,

and had not noticed my mistake until I was well down the page. This was

becoming serious. What was the disturbing influence? It could not be

physical fatigue. On the contrary, my mind was unusually alert, and in a

more receptive condition than usual. I made a new and determined effort

to read, and for a short time succeeded in giving my whole attention to

my subject. But in a very few moments again I found myself leaning back

in my chair, staring vacantly into space.

Something was evidently at work in my sub-consciousness. There was

something I had neglected to do. Perhaps the kitchen door and windows

were not fastened. I accordingly went to see, and found that they were!

The fire perhaps needed attention. I went in to see, and found that it

was all right! I looked at the lamps, went upstairs into every bedroom

in turn, and then went round the house, and even into the ice-house.

Nothing was wrong; everything was in its place. Yet something _was_

wrong! The conviction grew stronger and stronger within me.

When I at length settled down to my books again and tried to read, I

became aware, for the first time, that the room seemed growing cold. Yet

the day had been oppressively warm, and evening had brought no relief.

The six big lamps, moreover, gave out heat enough to warm the room

pleasantly. But a chilliness, that perhaps crept up from the lake, made

itself felt in the room, and caused me to get up to close the glass door

opening on to the verandah.

For a brief moment I stood looking out at the shaft of light that fell

from the windows and shone some little distance down the pathway, and

out for a few feet into the lake.

As I looked, I saw a canoe glide into the pathway of light, and

immediately crossing it, pass out of sight again into the darkness. It

was perhaps a hundred feet from the shore, and it moved swiftly.

I was surprised that a canoe should pass the island at that time of

night, for all the summer visitors from the other side of the lake had

gone home weeks before, and the island was a long way out of any line of

water traffic.

My reading from this moment did not make very good progress, for somehow

the picture of that canoe, gliding so dimly and swiftly across the

narrow track of light on the black waters, silhouetted itself against

the background of my mind with singular vividness. It kept coming

between my eyes and the printed page. The more I thought about it the

more surprised I became. It was of larger build than any I had seen

during the past summer months, and was more like the old Indian war

canoes with the high curving bows and stern and wide beam. The more I

tried to read, the less success attended my efforts; and finally I

closed my books and went out on the verandah to walk up and down a bit,

and shake the chilliness out of my bones.

The night was perfectly still, and as dark as imaginable. I stumbled

down the path to the little landing wharf, where the water made the very

faintest of gurgling under the timbers. The sound of a big tree falling

in the mainland forest, far across the lake, stirred echoes in the heavy

air, like the first guns of a distant night attack. No other sound

disturbed the stillness that reigned supreme.

As I stood upon the wharf in the broad splash of light that followed me

from the sitting-room windows, I saw another canoe cross the pathway of

uncertain light upon the water, and disappear at once into the

impenetrable gloom that lay beyond. This time I saw more distinctly than

before. It was like the former canoe, a big birch-bark, with

high-crested bows and stern and broad beam. It was paddled by two

Indians, of whom the one in the stern--the steerer--appeared to be a

very large man. I could see this very plainly; and though the second

canoe was much nearer the island than the first, I judged that they were

both on their way home to the Government Reservation, which was situated

some fifteen miles away upon the mainland.

I was wondering in my mind what could possibly bring any Indians down to

this part of the lake at such an hour of the night, when a third canoe,

of precisely similar build, and also occupied by two Indians, passed

silently round the end of the wharf. This time the canoe was very much

nearer shore, and it suddenly flashed into my mind that the three canoes

were in reality one and the same, and that only one canoe was circling

the island!

This was by no means a pleasant reflection, because, if it were the

correct solution of the unusual appearance of the three canoes in this

lonely part of the lake at so late an hour, the purpose of the two men

could only reasonably be considered to be in some way connected with

myself. I had never known of the Indians attempting any violence upon

the settlers who shared the wild, inhospitable country with them; at the

same time, it was not beyond the region of possibility to suppose. . . .

But then I did not care even to think of such hideous possibilities, and

my imagination immediately sought relief in all manner of other

solutions to the problem, which indeed came readily enough to my mind,

but did not succeed in recommending themselves to my reason.

Meanwhile, by a sort of instinct, I stepped back out of the bright light

in which I had hitherto been standing, and waited in the deep shadow of

a rock to see if the canoe would again make its appearance. Here I could

see, without being seen, and the precaution seemed a wise one.

After less than five minutes the canoe, as I had anticipated, made its

fourth appearance. This time it was not twenty yards from the wharf, and

I saw that the Indians meant to land. I recognised the two men as those

who had passed before, and the steerer was certainly an immense fellow.

It was unquestionably the same canoe. There could be no longer any doubt

that for some purpose of their own the men had been going round and

round the island for some time, waiting for an opportunity to land. I

strained my eyes to follow them in the darkness, but the night had

completely swallowed them up, and not even the faintest swish of the

paddles reached my ears as the Indians plied their long and powerful

strokes. The canoe would be round again in a few moments, and this time

it was possible that the men might land. It was well to be prepared. I

knew nothing of their intentions, and two to one (when the two are big

Indians!) late at night on a lonely island was not exactly my idea of

pleasant intercourse.

In a corner of the sitting-room, leaning up against the back wall, stood

my Marlin rifle, with ten cartridges in the magazine and one lying

snugly in the greased breech. There was just time to get up to the house

and take up a position of defence in that corner. Without an instant's

hesitation I ran up to the verandah, carefully picking my way among the

trees, so as to avoid being seen in the light. Entering the room, I shut

the door leading to the verandah, and as quickly as possible turned out

every one of the six lamps. To be in a room so brilliantly lighted,

where my every movement could be observed from outside, while I could

see nothing but impenetrable darkness at every window, was by all laws

of warfare an unnecessary concession to the enemy. And this enemy, if

enemy it was to be, was far too wily and dangerous to be granted any

such advantages.

I stood in the corner of the room with my back against the wall, and my

hand on the cold rifle-barrel. The table, covered with my books, lay

between me and the door, but for the first few minutes after the lights

were out the darkness was so intense that nothing could be discerned at

all. Then, very gradually, the outline of the room became visible, and

the framework of the windows began to shape itself dimly before my eyes.

After a few minutes the door (its upper half of glass), and the two

windows that looked out upon the front verandah, became specially

distinct; and I was glad that this was so, because if the Indians came

up to the house I should be able to see their approach, and gather

something of their plans. Nor was I mistaken, for there presently came

to my ears the peculiar hollow sound of a canoe landing and being

carefully dragged up over the rocks. The paddles I distinctly heard

being placed underneath, and the silence that ensued thereupon I rightly

interpreted to mean that the Indians were stealthily approaching the

house. . . .

While it would be absurd to claim that I was not alarmed--even

frightened--at the gravity of the situation and its possible outcome, I

speak the whole truth when I say that I was not overwhelmingly afraid

for myself. I was conscious that even at this stage of the night I was

passing into a psychical condition in which my sensations seemed no

longer normal. Physical fear at no time entered into the nature of my

feelings; and though I kept my hand upon my rifle the greater part of

the night, I was all the time conscious that its assistance could be of

little avail against the terrors that I had to face. More than once I

seemed to feel most curiously that I was in no real sense a part of the

proceedings, nor actually involved in them, but that I was playing the

part of a spectator--a spectator, moreover, on a psychic rather than on

a material plane. Many of my sensations that night were too vague for

definite description and analysis, but the main feeling that will stay

with me to the end of my days is the awful horror of it all, and the

miserable sensation that if the strain had lasted a little longer than

was actually the case my mind must inevitably have given way.

Meanwhile I stood still in my corner, and waited patiently for what was

to come. The house was as still as the grave, but the inarticulate

voices of the night sang in my ears, and I seemed to hear the blood

running in my veins and dancing in my pulses.

If the Indians came to the back of the house, they would find the

kitchen door and window securely fastened. They could not get in there

without making considerable noise, which I was bound to hear. The only

mode of getting in was by means of the door that faced me, and I kept my

eyes glued on that door without taking them off for the smallest

fraction of a second.

My sight adapted itself every minute better to the darkness. I saw the

table that nearly filled the room, and left only a narrow passage on

each side. I could also make out the straight backs of the wooden chairs

pressed up against it, and could even distinguish my papers and inkstand

lying on the white oilcloth covering. I thought of the gay faces that

had gathered round that table during the summer, and I longed for the

sunlight as I had never longed for it before.

Less than three feet to my left the passage-way led to the kitchen, and

the stairs leading to the bedrooms above commenced in this passage-way,

but almost in the sitting-room itself. Through the windows I could see

the dim motionless outlines of the trees: not a leaf stirred, not a

branch moved.

A few moments of this awful silence, and then I was aware of a soft

tread on the boards of the verandah, so stealthy that it seemed an

impression directly on my brain rather than upon the nerves of hearing.

Immediately afterwards a black figure darkened the glass door, and I

perceived that a face was pressed against the upper panes. A shiver ran

down my back, and my hair was conscious of a tendency to rise and stand

at right angles to my head.

It was the figure of an Indian, broad-shouldered and immense; indeed,

the largest figure of a man I have ever seen outside of a circus hall.

By some power of light that seemed to generate itself in the brain, I

saw the strong dark face with the aquiline nose and high cheek-bones

flattened against the glass. The direction of the gaze I could not

determine; but faint gleams of light as the big eyes rolled round and

showed their whites, told me plainly that no corner of the room escaped

their searching.

For what seemed fully five minutes the dark figure stood there, with the

huge shoulders bent forward so as to bring the head down to the level of

the glass; while behind him, though not nearly so large, the shadowy

form of the other Indian swayed to and fro like a bent tree. While I

waited in an agony of suspense and agitation for their next movement

little currents of icy sensation ran up and down my spine and my heart

seemed alternately to stop beating and then start off again with

terrifying rapidity. They must have heard its thumping and the singing

of the blood in my head! Moreover, I was conscious, as I felt a cold

stream of perspiration trickle down my face, of a desire to scream, to

shout, to bang the walls like a child, to make a noise, or do anything

that would relieve the suspense and bring things to a speedy climax.

It was probably this inclination that led me to another discovery, for

when I tried to bring my rifle from behind my back to raise it and have

it pointed at the door ready to fire, I found that I was powerless to

move. The muscles, paralysed by this strange fear, refused to obey the

will. Here indeed was a terrifying complication!

* * * * *

There was a faint sound of rattling at the brass knob, and the door was

pushed open a couple of inches. A pause of a few seconds, and it was

pushed open still further. Without a sound of footsteps that was

appreciable to my ears, the two figures glided into the room, and the

man behind gently closed the door after him.

They were alone with me between the four walls. Could they see me

standing there, so still and straight in my corner? Had they, perhaps,

already seen me? My blood surged and sang like the roll of drums in an

orchestra; and though I did my best to suppress my breathing, it sounded

like the rushing of wind through a pneumatic tube.

My suspense as to the next move was soon at an end--only, however, to

give place to a new and keener alarm. The men had hitherto exchanged no

words and no signs, but there were general indications of a movement

across the room, and whichever way they went they would have to pass

round the table. If they came my way they would have to pass within six

inches of my person. While I was considering this very disagreeable

possibility, I perceived that the smaller Indian (smaller by comparison)

suddenly raised his arm and pointed to the ceiling. The other fellow

raised his head and followed the direction of his companion's arm. I

began to understand at last. They were going upstairs, and the room

directly overhead to which they pointed had been until this night my

bedroom. It was the room in which I had experienced that very morning so

strange a sensation of fear, and but for which I should then have been

lying asleep in the narrow bed against the window.

The Indians then began to move silently around the room; they were going

upstairs, and they were coming round my side of the table. So stealthy

were their movements that, but for the abnormally sensitive state of the

nerves, I should never have heard them. As it was, their cat-like tread

was distinctly audible. Like two monstrous black cats they came round

the table toward me, and for the first time I perceived that the smaller

of the two dragged something along the floor behind him. As it trailed

along over the floor with a soft, sweeping sound, I somehow got the

impression that it was a large dead thing with outstretched wings, or a

large, spreading cedar branch. Whatever it was, I was unable to see it

even in outline, and I was too terrified, even had I possessed the power

over my muscles, to move my neck forward in the effort to determine its

nature.

Nearer and nearer they came. The leader rested a giant hand upon the

table as he moved. My lips were glued together, and the air seemed to

burn in my nostrils. I tried to close my eyes, so that I might not see

as they passed me; but my eyelids had stiffened, and refused to obey.

Would they never get by me? Sensation seemed also to have left my legs,

and it was as if I were standing on mere supports of wood or stone.

Worse still, I was conscious that I was losing the power of balance, the

power to stand upright, or even to lean backwards against the wall. Some

force was drawing me forward, and a dizzy terror seized me that I should

lose my balance, and topple forward against the Indians just as they

were in the act of passing me.

Even moments drawn out into hours must come to an end some time, and

almost before I knew it the figures had passed me and had their feet

upon the lower step of the stairs leading to the upper bedrooms. There

could not have been six inches between us, and yet I was conscious only

of a current of cold air that followed them. They had not touched me,

and I was convinced that they had not seen me. Even the trailing thing

on the floor behind them had not touched my feet, as I had dreaded it

would, and on such an occasion as this I was grateful even for the

smallest mercies.

The absence of the Indians from my immediate neighbourhood brought

little sense of relief. I stood shivering and shuddering in my corner,

and, beyond being able to breathe more freely, I felt no whit less

uncomfortable. Also, I was aware that a certain light, which, without

apparent source or rays, had enabled me to follow their every gesture

and movement, had gone out of the room with their departure. An

unnatural darkness now filled the room, and pervaded its every corner so

that I could barely make out the positions of the windows and the glass

doors.

As I said before, my condition was evidently an abnormal one. The

capacity for feeling surprise seemed, as in dreams, to be wholly absent.

My senses recorded with unusual accuracy every smallest occurrence, but

I was able to draw only the simplest deductions.

The Indians soon reached the top of the stairs, and there they halted

for a moment. I had not the faintest clue as to their next movement.

They appeared to hesitate. They were listening attentively. Then I heard

one of them, who by the weight of his soft tread must have been the

giant, cross the narrow corridor and enter the room directly

overhead--my own little bedroom. But for the insistence of that

unaccountable dread I had experienced there in the morning, I should at

that very moment have been lying in the bed with the big Indian in the

room standing beside me.

For the space of a hundred seconds there was silence, such as might

have existed before the birth of sound. It was followed by a long

quivering shriek of terror, which rang out into the night, and ended in

a short gulp before it had run its full course. At the same moment the

other Indian left his place at the head of the stairs, and joined his

companion in the bedroom. I heard the "thing" trailing behind him along

the floor. A thud followed, as of something heavy falling, and then all

became as still and silent as before.

It was at this point that the atmosphere, surcharged all day with the

electricity of a fierce storm, found relief in a dancing flash of

brilliant lightning simultaneously with a crash of loudest thunder. For

five seconds every article in the room was visible to me with amazing

distinctness, and through the windows I saw the tree trunks standing in

solemn rows. The thunder pealed and echoed across the lake and among the

distant islands, and the flood-gates of heaven then opened and let out

their rain in streaming torrents.

The drops fell with a swift rushing sound upon the still waters of the

lake, which leaped up to meet them, and pattered with the rattle of shot

on the leaves of the maples and the roof of the cottage. A moment later,

and another flash, even more brilliant and of longer duration than the

first, lit up the sky from zenith to horizon, and bathed the room

momentarily in dazzling whiteness. I could see the rain glistening on

the leaves and branches outside. The wind rose suddenly, and in less

than a minute the storm that had been gathering all day burst forth in

its full fury.

Above all the noisy voices of the elements, the slightest sounds in the

room overhead made themselves heard, and in the few seconds of deep

silence that followed the shriek of terror and pain I was aware that the

movements had commenced again. The men were leaving the room and

approaching the top of the stairs. A short pause, and they began to

descend. Behind them, tumbling from step to step, I could hear that

trailing "thing" being dragged along. It had become ponderous!

I awaited their approach with a degree of calmness, almost of apathy,

which was only explicable on the ground that after a certain point

Nature applies her own anæsthetic, and a merciful condition of numbness

supervenes. On they came, step by step, nearer and nearer, with the

shuffling sound of the burden behind growing louder as they approached.

They were already half-way down the stairs when I was galvanised afresh

into a condition of terror by the consideration of a new and horrible

possibility. It was the reflection that if another vivid flash of

lightning were to come when the shadowy procession was in the room,

perhaps when it was actually passing in front of me, I should see

everything in detail, and worse, be seen myself! I could only hold my

breath and wait--wait while the minutes lengthened into hours, and the

procession made its slow progress round the room.

The Indians had reached the foot of the staircase. The form of the huge

leader loomed in the doorway of the passage, and the burden with an

ominous thud had dropped from the last step to the floor. There was a

moment's pause while I saw the Indian turn and stoop to assist his

companion. Then the procession moved forward again, entered the room

close on my left, and began to move slowly round my side of the table.

The leader was already beyond me, and his companion, dragging on the

floor behind him the burden, whose confused outline I could dimly make

out, was exactly in front of me, when the cavalcade came to a dead halt.

At the same moment, with the strange suddenness of thunderstorms, the

splash of the rain ceased altogether, and the wind died away into utter

silence.

For the space of five seconds my heart seemed to stop beating, and then

the worst came. A double flash of lightning lit up the room and its

contents with merciless vividness.

The huge Indian leader stood a few feet past me on my right. One leg was

stretched forward in the act of taking a step. His immense shoulders

were turned toward his companion, and in all their magnificent

fierceness I saw the outline of his features. His gaze was directed upon

the burden his companion was dragging along the floor; but his profile,

with the big aquiline nose, high cheek-bone, straight black hair and

bold chin, burnt itself in that brief instant into my brain, never again

to fade.

Dwarfish, compared with this gigantic figure, appeared the proportions

of the other Indian, who, within twelve inches of my face, was stooping

over the thing he was dragging in a position that lent to his person the

additional horror of deformity. And the burden, lying upon a sweeping

cedar branch which he held and dragged by a long stem, was the body of a

white man. The scalp had been neatly lifted, and blood lay in a broad

smear upon the cheeks and forehead.

Then, for the first time that night, the terror that had paralysed my

muscles and my will lifted its unholy spell from my soul. With a loud

cry I stretched out my arms to seize the big Indian by the throat, and,

grasping only air, tumbled forward unconscious upon the ground.

I had recognised the body, and _the face was my own_! . . .

It was bright daylight when a man's voice recalled me to consciousness.

I was lying where I had fallen, and the farmer was standing in the room

with the loaves of bread in his hands. The horror of the night was still

in my heart, and as the bluff settler helped me to my feet and picked up

the rifle which had fallen with me, with many questions and expressions

of condolence, I imagine my brief replies were neither self-explanatory

nor even intelligible.

That day, after a thorough and fruitless search of the house, I left the

island, and went over to spend my last ten days with the farmer; and

when the time came for me to leave, the necessary reading had been

accomplished, and my nerves had completely recovered their balance.

On the day of my departure the farmer started early in his big boat with

my belongings to row to the point, twelve miles distant, where a little

steamer ran twice a week for the accommodation of hunters. Late in the

afternoon I went off in another direction in my canoe, wishing to see

the island once again, where I had been the victim of so strange an

experience.

In due course I arrived there, and made a tour of the island. I also

made a search of the little house, and it was not without a curious

sensation in my heart that I entered the little upstairs bedroom. There

seemed nothing unusual.

Just after I re-embarked, I saw a canoe gliding ahead of me around the

curve of the island. A canoe was an unusual sight at this time of the

year, and this one seemed to have sprung from nowhere. Altering my

course a little, I watched it disappear around the next projecting point

of rock. It had high curving bows, and there were two Indians in it. I

lingered with some excitement, to see if it would appear again round the

other side of the island; and in less than five minutes it came into

view. There were less than two hundred yards between us, and the

Indians, sitting on their haunches, were paddling swiftly in my

direction.

I never paddled faster in my life than I did in those next few minutes.

When I turned to look again, the Indians had altered their course, and

were again circling the island.

The sun was sinking behind the forests on the mainland, and the

crimson-coloured clouds of sunset were reflected in the waters of the

lake, when I looked round for the last time, and saw the big bark canoe

and its two dusky occupants still going round the island. Then the

shadows deepened rapidly; the lake grew black, and the night wind blew

its first breath in my face as I turned a corner, and a projecting bluff

of rock hid from my view both island and canoe.

A CASE OF EAVESDROPPING

Jim Shorthouse was the sort of fellow who always made a mess of things.

Everything with which his hands or mind came into contact issued from

such contact in an unqualified and irremediable state of mess. His

college days were a mess: he was twice rusticated. His schooldays were a

mess: he went to half a dozen, each passing him on to the next with a

worse character and in a more developed state of mess. His early boyhood

was the sort of mess that copy-books and dictionaries spell with a big

"M," and his babyhood--ugh! was the embodiment of howling, yowling,

screaming mess.

At the age of forty, however, there came a change in his troubled life,

when he met a girl with half a million in her own right, who consented

to marry him, and who very soon succeeded in reducing his most messy

existence into a state of comparative order and system.

Certain incidents, important and otherwise, of Jim's life would never

have come to be told here but for the fact that in getting into his

"messes" and out of them again he succeeded in drawing himself into the

atmosphere of peculiar circumstances and strange happenings. He

attracted to his path the curious adventures of life as unfailingly as

meat attracts flies, and jam wasps. It is to the meat and jam of his

life, so to speak, that he owes his experiences; his after-life was all

pudding, which attracts nothing but greedy children. With marriage the

interest of his life ceased for all but one person, and his path became

regular as the sun's instead of erratic as a comet's.

The first experience in order of time that he related to me shows that

somewhere latent behind his disarranged nervous system there lay psychic

perceptions of an uncommon order. About the age of twenty-two--I think

after his second rustication--his father's purse and patience had

equally given out, and Jim found himself stranded high and dry in a

large American city. High and dry! And the only clothes that had no

holes in them safely in the keeping of his uncle's wardrobe.

Careful reflection on a bench in one of the city parks led him to the

conclusion that the only thing to do was to persuade the city editor of

one of the daily journals that he possessed an observant mind and a

ready pen, and that he could "do good work for your paper, sir, as a

reporter." This, then, he did, standing at a most unnatural angle

between the editor and the window to conceal the whereabouts of the

holes.

"Guess we'll have to give you a week's trial," said the editor, who,

ever on the lookout for good chance material, took on shoals of men in

that way and retained on the average one man per shoal. Anyhow it gave

Jim Shorthouse the wherewithal to sew up the holes and relieve his

uncle's wardrobe of its burden.

Then he went to find living quarters; and in this proceeding his unique

characteristics already referred to--what theosophists would call his

Karma--began unmistakably to assert themselves, for it was in the house

he eventually selected that this sad tale took place.

There are no "diggings" in American cities. The alternatives for small

incomes are grim enough--rooms in a boarding-house where meals are

served, or in a room-house where no meals are served--not even

breakfast. Rich people live in palaces, of course, but Jim had nothing

to do with "sich-like." His horizon was bounded by boarding-houses and

room-houses; and, owing to the necessary irregularity of his meals and

hours, he took the latter.

It was a large, gaunt-looking place in a side street, with dirty windows

and a creaking iron gate, but the rooms were large, and the one he

selected and paid for in advance was on the top floor. The landlady

looked gaunt and dusty as the house, and quite as old. Her eyes were

green and faded, and her features large.

"Waal," she twanged, with her electrifying Western drawl, "that's the

room, if you like it, and that's the price I said. Now, if you want it,

why, just say so; and if you don't, why, it don't hurt me any."

Jim wanted to shake her, but he feared the clouds of long-accumulated

dust in her clothes, and as the price and size of the room suited him,

he decided to take it.

"Anyone else on this floor?" he asked.

She looked at him queerly out of her faded eyes before she answered.

"None of my guests ever put such questions to me before," she said; "but

I guess you're different. Why, there's no one at all but an old gent

that's stayed here every bit of five years. He's over thar," pointing

to the end of the passage.

"Ah! I see," said Shorthouse feebly. "So I'm alone up here?"

"Reckon you are, pretty near," she twanged out, ending the conversation

abruptly by turning her back on her new "guest," and going slowly and

deliberately downstairs.

The newspaper work kept Shorthouse out most of the night. Three times a

week he got home at 1 a.m., and three times at 3 a.m. The room proved

comfortable enough, and he paid for a second week. His unusual hours had

so far prevented his meeting any inmates of the house, and not a sound

had been heard from the "old gent" who shared the floor with him. It

seemed a very quiet house.

One night, about the middle of the second week, he came home tired after

a long day's work. The lamp that usually stood all night in the hall had

burned itself out, and he had to stumble upstairs in the dark. He made

considerable noise in doing so, but nobody seemed to be disturbed. The

whole house was utterly quiet, and probably everybody was asleep. There

were no lights under any of the doors. All was in darkness. It was after

two o'clock.

After reading some English letters that had come during the day, and

dipping for a few minutes into a book, he became drowsy and got ready

for bed. Just as he was about to get in between the sheets, he stopped

for a moment and listened. There rose in the night, as he did so, the

sound of steps somewhere in the house below. Listening attentively, he

heard that it was somebody coming upstairs--a heavy tread, and the owner

taking no pains to step quietly. On it came up the stairs, tramp, tramp,

tramp--evidently the tread of a big man, and one in something of a

hurry.

At once thoughts connected somehow with fire and police flashed through

Jim's brain, but there were no sounds of voices with the steps, and he

reflected in the same moment that it could only be the old gentleman

keeping late hours and tumbling upstairs in the darkness. He was in the

act of turning out the gas and stepping into bed, when the house resumed

its former stillness by the footsteps suddenly coming to a dead stop

immediately outside his own room.

With his hand on the gas, Shorthouse paused a moment before turning it

out to see if the steps would go on again, when he was startled by a

loud knocking on his door. Instantly, in obedience to a curious and

unexplained instinct, he turned out the light, leaving himself and the

room in total darkness.

He had scarcely taken a step across the room to open the door, when a

voice from the other side of the wall, so close it almost sounded in his

ear, exclaimed in German, "Is that you, father? Come in."

The speaker was a man in the next room, and the knocking, after all, had

not been on his own door, but on that of the adjoining chamber, which he

had supposed to be vacant.

Almost before the man in the passage had time to answer in German, "Let

me in at once," Jim heard someone cross the floor and unlock the door.

Then it was slammed to with a bang, and there was audible the sound of

footsteps about the room, and of chairs being drawn up to a table and

knocking against furniture on the way. The men seemed wholly regardless

of their neighbour's comfort, for they made noise enough to waken the

dead.

"Serves me right for taking a room in such a cheap hole," reflected Jim

in the darkness. "I wonder whom she's let the room to!"

The two rooms, the landlady had told him, were originally one. She had

put up a thin partition--just a row of boards--to increase her income.

The doors were adjacent, and only separated by the massive upright beam

between them. When one was opened or shut the other rattled.

With utter indifference to the comfort of the other sleepers in the

house, the two Germans had meanwhile commenced to talk both at once and

at the top of their voices. They talked emphatically, even angrily. The

words "Father" and "Otto" were freely used. Shorthouse understood

German, but as he stood listening for the first minute or two, an

eavesdropper in spite of himself, it was difficult to make head or tail

of the talk, for neither would give way to the other, and the jumble of

guttural sounds and unfinished sentences was wholly unintelligible.

Then, very suddenly, both voices dropped together; and, after a moment's

pause, the deep tones of one of them, who seemed to be the "father,"

said, with the utmost distinctness--

"You mean, Otto, that you refuse to get it?"

There was a sound of someone shuffling in the chair before the answer

came. "I mean that I don't know how to get it. It is so much, father. It

is _too_ much. A part of it--"

"A part of it!" cried the other, with an angry oath, "a part of it, when

ruin and disgrace are already in the house, is worse than useless. If

you can get half you can get all, you wretched fool. Half-measures only

damn all concerned."

"You told me last time--" began the other firmly, but was not allowed to

finish. A succession of horrible oaths drowned his sentence, and the

father went on, in a voice vibrating with anger--

"You know she will give you anything. You have only been married a few

months. If you ask and give a plausible reason you can get all we want

and more. You can ask it temporarily. All will be paid back. It will

re-establish the firm, and she will never know what was done with it.

With that amount, Otto, you know I can recoup all these terrible losses,

and in less than a year all will be repaid. But without it. . . . You must

get it, Otto. Hear me, you must. Am I to be arrested for the misuse of

trust moneys? Is our honoured name to be cursed and spat on?" The old

man choked and stammered in his anger and desperation.

Shorthouse stood shivering in the darkness and listening in spite of

himself. The conversation had carried him along with it, and he had been

for some reason afraid to let his neighbourhood be known. But at this

point he realised that he had listened too long and that he must inform

the two men that they could be overheard to every single syllable. So he

coughed loudly, and at the same time rattled the handle of his door. It

seemed to have no effect, for the voices continued just as loudly as

before, the son protesting and the father growing more and more angry.

He coughed again persistently, and also contrived purposely in the

darkness to tumble against the partition, feeling the thin boards yield

easily under his weight, and making a considerable noise in so doing.

But the voices went on unconcernedly, and louder than ever. Could it be

possible they had not heard?

By this time Jim was more concerned about his own sleep than the

morality of overhearing the private scandals of his neighbours, and he

went out into the passage and knocked smartly at their door. Instantly,

as if by magic, the sounds ceased. Everything dropped into utter

silence. There was no light under the door and not a whisper could be

heard within. He knocked again, but received no answer.

"Gentlemen," he began at length, with his lips close to the keyhole and

in German, "please do not talk so loud. I can overhear all you say in

the next room. Besides, it is very late, and I wish to sleep."

He paused and listened, but no answer was forthcoming. He turned the

handle and found the door was locked. Not a sound broke the stillness of

the night except the faint swish of the wind over the skylight and the

creaking of a board here and there in the house below. The cold air of a

very early morning crept down the passage, and made him shiver. The

silence of the house began to impress him disagreeably. He looked behind

him and about him, hoping, and yet fearing, that something would break

the stillness. The voices still seemed to ring on in his ears; but that

sudden silence, when he knocked at the door, affected him far more

unpleasantly than the voices, and put strange thoughts in his

brain--thoughts he did not like or approve.

Moving stealthily from the door, he peered over the banisters into the

space below. It was like a deep vault that might conceal in its shadows

anything that was not good. It was not difficult to fancy he saw an

indistinct moving to-and-fro below him. Was that a figure sitting on the

stairs peering up obliquely at him out of hideous eyes? Was that a sound

of whispering and shuffling down there in the dark halls and forsaken

landings? Was it something more than the inarticulate murmur of the

night?

The wind made an effort overhead, singing over the skylight, and the

door behind him rattled and made him start. He turned to go back to his

room, and the draught closed the door slowly in his face as if there

were someone pressing against it from the other side. When he pushed it

open and went in, a hundred shadowy forms seemed to dart swiftly and

silently back to their corners and hiding-places. But in the adjoining

room the sounds had entirely ceased, and Shorthouse soon crept into bed,

and left the house with its inmates, waking or sleeping, to take care of

themselves, while he entered the region of dreams and silence.

Next day, strong in the common sense that the sunlight brings, he

determined to lodge a complaint against the noisy occupants of the next

room and make the landlady request them to modify their voices at such

late hours of the night and morning. But it so happened that she was not

to be seen that day, and when he returned from the office at midnight it

was, of course, too late.

Looking under the door as he came up to bed he noticed that there was no

light, and concluded that the Germans were not in. So much the better.

He went to sleep about one o'clock, fully decided that if they came up

later and woke him with their horrible noises he would not rest till he

had roused the landlady and made her reprove them with that

authoritative twang, in which every word was like the lash of a metallic

whip.

However, there proved to be no need for such drastic measures, for

Shorthouse slumbered peacefully all night, and his dreams--chiefly of

the fields of grain and flocks of sheep on the far-away farms of his

father's estate--were permitted to run their fanciful course unbroken.

Two nights later, however, when he came home tired out, after a

difficult day, and wet and blown about by one of the wickedest storms he

had ever seen, his dreams--always of the fields and sheep--were not

destined to be so undisturbed.

He had already dozed off in that delicious glow that follows the removal

of wet clothes and the immediate snuggling under warm blankets, when his

consciousness, hovering on the borderland between sleep and waking, was

vaguely troubled by a sound that rose indistinctly from the depths of

the house, and, between the gusts of wind and rain, reached his ears

with an accompanying sense of uneasiness and discomfort. It rose on the

night air with some pretence of regularity, dying away again in the roar

of the wind to reassert itself distantly in the deep, brief hushes of

the storm.

For a few minutes Jim's dreams were coloured only--tinged, as it were,

by this impression of fear approaching from somewhere insensibly upon

him. His consciousness, at first, refused to be drawn back from that

enchanted region where it had wandered, and he did not immediately

awaken. But the nature of his dreams changed unpleasantly. He saw the

sheep suddenly run huddled together, as though frightened by the

neighbourhood of an enemy, while the fields of waving corn became

agitated as though some monster were moving uncouthly among the crowded

stalks. The sky grew dark, and in his dream an awful sound came

somewhere from the clouds. It was in reality the sound downstairs

growing more distinct.

Shorthouse shifted uneasily across the bed with something like a groan

of distress. The next minute he awoke, and found himself sitting

straight up in bed--listening. Was it a nightmare? Had he been dreaming

evil dreams, that his flesh crawled and the hair stirred on his head?

The room was dark and silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and

drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows. How

nice it would be--the thought flashed through his mind--if all winds,

like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish

noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they

had such a different sound. If only--

Hark! It was no dream after all, for the sound was momentarily growing

louder, and its _cause_ was coming up the stairs. He found himself

speculating feebly what this cause might be, but the sound was still too

indistinct to enable him to arrive at any definite conclusion.

The voice of a church clock striking two made itself heard above the

wind. It was just about the hour when the Germans had commenced their

performance three nights before. Shorthouse made up his mind that if

they began it again he would not put up with it for very long. Yet he

was already horribly conscious of the difficulty he would have of

getting out of bed. The clothes were so warm and comforting against his

back. The sound, still steadily coming nearer, had by this time become

differentiated from the confused clamour of the elements, and had

resolved itself into the footsteps of one or more persons.

"The Germans, hang 'em!" thought Jim. "But what on earth is the matter

with me? I never felt so queer in all my life."

He was trembling all over, and felt as cold as though he were in a

freezing atmosphere. His nerves were steady enough, and he felt no

diminution of physical courage, but he was conscious of a curious sense

of malaise and trepidation, such as even the most vigorous men have been

known to experience when in the first grip of some horrible and deadly

disease. As the footsteps approached this feeling of weakness increased.

He felt a strange lassitude creeping over him, a sort of exhaustion,

accompanied by a growing numbness in the extremities, and a sensation of

dreaminess in the head, as if perhaps the consciousness were leaving its

accustomed seat in the brain and preparing to act on another plane. Yet,

strange to say, as the vitality was slowly withdrawn from his body, his

senses seemed to grow more acute.

Meanwhile the steps were already on the landing at the top of the

stairs, and Shorthouse, still sitting upright in bed, heard a heavy body

brush past his door and along the wall outside, almost immediately

afterwards the loud knocking of someone's knuckles on the door of the

adjoining room.

Instantly, though so far not a sound had proceeded from within, he

heard, through the thin partition, a chair pushed back and a man quickly

cross the floor and open the door.

"Ah! it's you," he heard in the son's voice. Had the fellow, then, been

sitting silently in there all this time, waiting for his father's

arrival? To Shorthouse it came not as a pleasant reflection by any

means.

There was no answer to this dubious greeting, but the door was closed

quickly, and then there was a sound as if a bag or parcel had been

thrown on a wooden table and had slid some distance across it before

stopping.

"What's that?" asked the son, with anxiety in his tone.

"You may know before I go," returned the other gruffly. Indeed his voice

was more than gruff: it betrayed ill-suppressed passion.

Shorthouse was conscious of a strong desire to stop the conversation

before it proceeded any further, but somehow or other his will was not

equal to the task, and he could not get out of bed. The conversation

went on, every tone and inflexion distinctly audible above the noise of

the storm.

In a low voice the father continued. Jim missed some of the words at the

beginning of the sentence. It ended with: " . . . but now they've all left,

and I've managed to get up to you. You know what I've come for." There

was distinct menace in his tone.

"Yes," returned the other; "I have been waiting."

"And the money?" asked the father impatiently.

No answer.

"You've had three days to get it in, and I've contrived to stave off the

worst so far--but to-morrow is the end."

No answer.

"Speak, Otto! What have you got for me? Speak, my son; for God's sake,

tell me."

There was a moment's silence, during which the old man's vibrating

accents seemed to echo through the rooms. Then came in a low voice the

answer--

"I have nothing."

"Otto!" cried the other with passion, "nothing!"

"I can get nothing," came almost in a whisper.

"You lie!" cried the other, in a half-stifled voice. "I swear you lie.

Give me the money."

A chair was heard scraping along the floor. Evidently the men had been

sitting over the table, and one of them had risen. Shorthouse heard the

bag or parcel drawn across the table, and then a step as if one of the

men was crossing to the door.

"Father, what's in that? I must know," said Otto, with the first signs

of determination in his voice. There must have been an effort on the

son's part to gain possession of the parcel in question, and on the

father's to retain it, for between them it fell to the ground. A curious

rattle followed its contact with the floor. Instantly there were sounds

of a scuffle. The men were struggling for the possession of the box. The

elder man with oaths, and blasphemous imprecations, the other with short

gasps that betokened the strength of his efforts. It was of short

duration, and the younger man had evidently won, for a minute later was

heard his angry exclamation.

"I knew it. Her jewels! You scoundrel, you shall never have them. It is

a crime."

The elder man uttered a short, guttural laugh, which froze Jim's blood

and made his skin creep. No word was spoken, and for the space of ten

seconds there was a living silence. Then the air trembled with the sound

of a thud, followed immediately by a groan and the crash of a heavy body

falling over on to the table. A second later there was a lurching from

the table on to the floor and against the partition that separated the

rooms. The bed quivered an instant at the shock, but the unholy spell

was lifted from his soul and Jim Shorthouse sprang out of bed and across

the floor in a single bound. He knew that ghastly murder had been

done--the murder by a father of his son.

With shaking fingers but a determined heart he lit the gas, and the

first thing in which his eyes corroborated the evidence of his ears was

the horrifying detail that the lower portion of the partition bulged

unnaturally into his own room. The glaring paper with which it was

covered had cracked under the tension and the boards beneath it bent

inwards towards him. What hideous load was behind them, he shuddered to

think.

All this he saw in less than a second. Since the final lurch against the

wall not a sound had proceeded from the room, not even a groan or a

foot-step. All was still but the howl of the wind, which to his ears

had in it a note of triumphant horror.

Shorthouse was in the act of leaving the room to rouse the house and

send for the police--in fact his hand was already on the door-knob--when

something in the room arrested his attention. Out of the corner of his

eyes he thought he caught sight of something moving. He was sure of it,

and turning his eyes in the direction, he found he was not mistaken.

Something was creeping slowly towards him along the floor. It was

something dark and serpentine in shape, and it came from the place where

the partition bulged. He stooped down to examine it with feelings of

intense horror and repugnance, and he discovered that it was moving

toward him from the _other side_ of the wall. His eyes were fascinated,

and for the moment he was unable to move. Silently, slowly, from side to

side like a thick worm, it crawled forward into the room beneath his

frightened eyes, until at length he could stand it no longer and

stretched out his arm to touch it. But at the instant of contact he

withdrew his hand with a suppressed scream. It was sluggish--and it was

warm! and he saw that his fingers were stained with living crimson.

A second more, and Shorthouse was out in the passage with his hand on

the door of the next room. It was locked. He plunged forward with all

his weight against it, and, the lock giving way, he fell headlong into a

room that was pitch dark and very cold. In a moment he was on his feet

again and trying to penetrate the blackness. Not a sound, not a

movement. Not even the sense of a presence. It was empty, miserably

empty!

Across the room he could trace the outline of a window with rain

streaming down the outside, and the blurred lights of the city beyond.

But the room was empty, appallingly empty; and so still. He stood there,

cold as ice, staring, shivering listening. Suddenly there was a step

behind him and a light flashed into the room, and when he turned quickly

with his arm up as if to ward off a terrific blow he found himself face

to face with the landlady. Instantly the reaction began to set in.

It was nearly three o'clock in the morning, and he was standing there

with bare feet and striped pyjamas in a small room, which in the

merciful light he perceived to be absolutely empty, carpetless, and

without a stick of furniture, or even a window-blind. There he stood

staring at the disagreeable landlady. And there she stood too, staring

and silent, in a black wrapper, her head almost bald, her face white as

chalk, shading a sputtering candle with one bony hand and peering over

it at him with her blinking green eyes. She looked positively hideous.

"Waal?" she drawled at length, "I heard yer right enough. Guess you

couldn't sleep! Or just prowlin' round a bit--is that it?"

The empty room, the absence of all traces of the recent tragedy, the

silence, the hour, his striped pyjamas and bare feet--everything

together combined to deprive him momentarily of speech. He stared at her

blankly without a word.

"Waal?" clanked the awful voice.

"My dear woman," he burst out finally, "there's been something awful--"

So far his desperation took him, but no farther. He positively stuck at

the substantive.

"Oh! there hasn't been nothin'," she said slowly still peering at him.

"I reckon you've only seen and heard what the others did. I never can

keep folks on this floor long. Most of 'em catch on sooner or

later--that is, the ones that's kind of quick and sensitive. Only you

being an Englishman I thought you wouldn't mind. Nothin' really happens;

it's only thinkin' like."

Shorthouse was beside himself. He felt ready to pick her up and drop her

over the banisters, candle and all.

"Look there," he said, pointing at her within an inch of her blinking

eyes with the fingers that had touched the oozing blood; "look there, my

good woman. Is that only thinking?"

She stared a minute, as if not knowing what he meant.

"I guess so," she said at length.

He followed her eyes, and to his amazement saw that his fingers were as

white as usual, and quite free from the awful stain that had been there

ten minutes before. There was no sign of blood. No amount of staring

could bring it back. Had he gone out of his mind? Had his eyes and ears

played such tricks with him? Had his senses become false and perverted?

He dashed past the landlady, out into the passage, and gained his own

room in a couple of strides. Whew! . . . the partition no longer bulged.

The paper was not torn. There was no creeping, crawling thing on the

faded old carpet.

"It's all over now," drawled the metallic voice behind him. "I'm going

to bed again."

He turned and saw the landlady slowly going downstairs again, still

shading the candle with her hand and peering up at him from time to time

as she moved. A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she

disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle

threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall and over the ceiling.

Without hesitating a moment, Shorthouse threw himself into his clothes

and went out of the house. He preferred the storm to the horrors of that

top floor, and he walked the streets till daylight. In the evening he

told the landlady he would leave next day, in spite of her assurances

that nothing more would happen.

"It never comes back," she said--"that is, not after he's killed."

Shorthouse gasped.

"You gave me a lot for my money," he growled.

"Waal, it aren't my show," she drawled. "I'm no spirit medium. You take

chances. Some'll sleep right along and never hear nothin'. Others, like

yourself, are different and get the whole thing."

"Who's the old gentleman?--does he hear it?" asked Jim.

"There's no old gentleman at all," she answered coolly. "I just told

you that to make you feel easy like in case you did hear anythin'. You

were all alone on the floor."

"Say now," she went on, after a pause in which Shorthouse could think of

nothing to say but unpublishable things, "say now, do tell, did you feel

sort of cold when the show was on, sort of tired and weak, I mean, as if

you might be going to die?"

"How can I say?" he answered savagely; "what I felt God only knows."

"Waal, but He won't tell," she drawled out. "Only I was wonderin' how

you really did feel, because the man who had that room last was found

one morning in bed--"

"In bed?"

"He was dead. He was the one before you. Oh! You don't need to get

rattled so. You're all right. And it all really happened, they do say.

This house used to be a private residence some twenty-five years ago,

and a German family of the name of Steinhardt lived here. They had a big

business in Wall Street, and stood 'way up in things."

"Ah!" said her listener.

"Oh yes, they did, right at the top, till one fine day it all bust and

the old man skipped with the boodle--"

"Skipped with the boodle?"

"That's so," she said; "got clear away with all the money, and the son

was found dead in his house, committed soocide it was thought. Though

there was some as said he couldn't have stabbed himself and fallen in

that position. They said he was murdered. The father died in prison.

They tried to fasten the murder on him, but there was no motive, or no

evidence, or no somethin'. I forget now."

"Very pretty," said Shorthouse.

"I'll show you somethin' mighty queer any-ways," she drawled, "if you'll

come upstairs a minute. I've heard the steps and voices lots of times;

they don't pheaze me any. I'd just as lief hear so many dogs barkin'.

You'll find the whole story in the newspapers if you look it up--not

what goes on here, but the story of the Germans. My house would be

ruined if they told all, and I'd sue for damages."

They reached the bedroom, and the woman went in and pulled up the edge

of the carpet where Shorthouse had seen the blood soaking in the

previous night.

"Look thar, if you feel like it," said the old hag. Stooping down, he

saw a dark, dull stain in the boards that corresponded exactly to the

shape and position of the blood as he had seen it.

That night he slept in a hotel, and the following day sought new

quarters. In the newspapers on file in his office after a long search he

found twenty years back the detailed story, substantially as the woman

had said, of Steinhardt & Co.'s failure, the absconding and subsequent

arrest of the senior partner, and the suicide, or murder, of his son

Otto. The landlady's room-house had formerly been their private

residence.

KEEPING HIS PROMISE

It was eleven o'clock at night, and young Marriott was locked into his

room, cramming as hard as he could cram. He was a "Fourth Year Man" at

Edinburgh University and he had been ploughed for this particular

examination so often that his parents had positively declared they could

no longer supply the funds to keep him there.

His rooms were cheap and dingy, but it was the lecture fees that took

the money. So Marriott pulled himself together at last and definitely

made up his mind that he would pass or die in the attempt, and for some

weeks now he had been reading as hard as mortal man can read. He was

trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed

conclusively he did not understand the value of either. For no ordinary

man--and Marriott was in every sense an ordinary man--can afford to

drive the mind as he had lately been driving his, without sooner or

later paying the cost.

Among the students he had few friends or acquaintances, and these few

had promised not to disturb him at night, knowing he was at last reading

in earnest. It was, therefore, with feelings a good deal stronger than

mere surprise that he heard his door-bell ring on this particular night

and realised that he was to have a visitor. Some men would simply have

muffled the bell and gone on quietly with their work. But Marriott was

not this sort. He was nervous. It would have bothered and pecked at his

mind all night long not to know who the visitor was and what he wanted.

The only thing to do, therefore, was to let him in--and out again--as

quickly as possible.

The landlady went to bed at ten o'clock punctually, after which hour

nothing would induce her to pretend she heard the bell, so Marriott

jumped up from his books with an exclamation that augured ill for the

reception of his caller, and prepared to let him in with his own hand.

The streets of Edinburgh town were very still at this late hour--it was

late for Edinburgh--and in the quiet neighbourhood of F---- Street,

where Marriott lived on the third floor, scarcely a sound broke the

silence. As he crossed the floor, the bell rang a second time, with

unnecessary clamour, and he unlocked the door and passed into the

little hallway with considerable wrath and annoyance in his heart at the

insolence of the double interruption.

"The fellows all know I'm reading for this exam. Why in the world do

they come to bother me at such an unearthly hour?"

The inhabitants of the building, with himself, were medical students,

general students, poor Writers to the Signet, and some others whose

vocations were perhaps not so obvious. The stone staircase, dimly

lighted at each floor by a gas-jet that would not turn above a certain

height, wound down to the level of the street with no pretence at carpet

or railing. At some levels it was cleaner than at others. It depended on

the landlady of the particular level.

The acoustic properties of a spiral staircase seem to be peculiar.

Marriott, standing by the open door, book in hand, thought every moment

the owner of the footsteps would come into view. The sound of the boots

was so close and so loud that they seemed to travel disproportionately

in advance of their cause. Wondering who it could be, he stood ready

with all manner of sharp greetings for the man who dared thus to disturb

his work. But the man did not appear. The steps sounded almost under

his nose, yet no one was visible.

A sudden queer sensation of fear passed over him--a faintness and a

shiver down the back. It went, however, almost as soon as it came, and

he was just debating whether he would call aloud to his invisible

visitor, or slam the door and return to his books, when the cause of the

disturbance turned the corner very slowly and came into view.

It was a stranger. He saw a youngish man short of figure and very broad.

His face was the colour of a piece of chalk and the eyes, which were

very bright, had heavy lines underneath them. Though the cheeks and chin

were unshaven and the general appearance unkempt, the man was evidently

a gentleman, for he was well dressed and bore himself with a certain

air. But, strangest of all, he wore no hat, and carried none in his

hand; and although rain had been falling steadily all the evening, he

appeared to have neither overcoat nor umbrella.

A hundred questions sprang up in Marriott's mind and rushed to his lips,

chief among which was something like "Who in the world are you?" and

"What in the name of heaven do you come to me for?" But none of these

questions found time to express themselves in words, for almost at once

the caller turned his head a little so that the gas light in the hall

fell upon his features from a new angle. Then in a flash Marriott

recognised him.

"Field! Man alive! Is it you?" he gasped.

The Fourth Year Man was not lacking in intuition, and he perceived at

once that here was a case for delicate treatment. He divined, without

any actual process of thought, that the catastrophe often predicted had

come at last, and that this man's father had turned him out of the

house. They had been at a private school together years before, and

though they had hardly met once since, the news had not failed to reach

him from time to time with considerable detail, for the family lived

near his own and between certain of the sisters there was great

intimacy. Young Field had gone wild later, he remembered hearing about

it all--drink, a woman, opium, or something of the sort--he could not

exactly call to mind.

"Come in," he said at once, his anger vanishing. "There's been something

wrong, I can see. Come in, and tell me all about it and perhaps I can

help--" He hardly knew what to say, and stammered a lot more besides.

The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that

lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.

But he had a man's heart for all that.

He led the way across the hall, shutting the front door carefully behind

him, and noticed as he did so that the other, though certainly sober,

was unsteady on his legs, and evidently much exhausted. Marriott might

not be able to pass his examinations, but he at least knew the symptoms

of starvation--acute starvation, unless he was much mistaken--when they

stared him in the face.

"Come along," he said cheerfully, and with genuine sympathy in his

voice. "I'm glad to see you. I was going to have a bite of something to

eat, and you're just in time to join me."

The other made no audible reply, and shuffled so feebly with his feet

that Marriott took his arm by way of support. He noticed for the first

time that the clothes hung on him with pitiful looseness. The broad

frame was literally hardly more than a frame. He was as thin as a

skeleton. But, as he touched him, the sensation of faintness and dread

returned. It only lasted a moment, and then passed off, and he ascribed

it not unnaturally to the distress and shock of seeing a former friend

in such a pitiful plight.

"Better let me guide you. It's shamefully dark--this hall. I'm always

complaining," he said lightly, recognising by the weight upon his arm

that the guidance was sorely needed, "but the old cat never does

anything except promise." He led him to the sofa, wondering all the time

where he had come from and how he had found out the address. It must be

at least seven years since those days at the private school when they

used to be such close friends.

"Now, if you'll forgive me for a minute," he said, "I'll get supper

ready--such as it is. And don't bother to talk. Just take it easy on the

sofa. I see you're dead tired. You can tell me about it afterwards, and

we'll make plans."

The other sat down on the edge of the sofa and stared in silence, while

Marriott got out the brown loaf, scones, and huge pot of marmalade that

Edinburgh students always keep in their cupboards. His eyes shone with a

brightness that suggested drugs, Marriott thought, stealing a glance at

him from behind the cupboard door. He did not like yet to take a full

square look. The fellow was in a bad way, and it would have been so like

an examination to stare and wait for explanations. Besides, he was

evidently almost too exhausted to speak. So, for reasons of

delicacy--and for another reason as well which he could not exactly

formulate to himself--he let his visitor rest apparently unnoticed,

while he busied himself with the supper. He lit the spirit lamp to make

cocoa, and when the water was boiling he drew up the table with the good

things to the sofa, so that Field need not have even the trouble of

moving to a chair.

"Now, let's tuck in," he said, "and afterwards we'll have a pipe and a

chat. I'm reading for an exam, you know, and I always have something

about this time. It's jolly to have a companion."

He looked up and caught his guest's eyes directed straight upon his own.

An involuntary shudder ran through him from head to foot. The face

opposite him was deadly white and wore a dreadful expression of pain and

mental suffering.

"By Gad!" he said, jumping up, "I quite forgot. I've got some whisky

somewhere. What an ass I am. I never touch it myself when I'm working

like this."

He went to the cupboard and poured out a stiff glass which the other

swallowed at a single gulp and without any water. Marriott watched him

while he drank it, and at the same time noticed something else as

well--Field's coat was all over dust, and on one shoulder was a bit of

cobweb. It was perfectly dry; Field arrived on a soaking wet night

without hat, umbrella, or overcoat, and yet perfectly dry, even dusty.

Therefore he had been under cover. What did it all mean? Had he been

hiding in the building? . . .

It was very strange. Yet he volunteered nothing; and Marriott had pretty

well made up his mind by this time that he would not ask any questions

until he had eaten and slept. Food and sleep were obviously what the

poor devil needed most and first--he was pleased with his powers of

ready diagnosis--and it would not be fair to press him till he had

recovered a bit.

They ate their supper together while the host carried on a running

one-sided conversation, chiefly about himself and his exams and his "old

cat" of a landlady, so that the guest need not utter a single word

unless he really wished to--which he evidently did not! But, while he

toyed with his food, feeling no desire to eat, the other ate

voraciously. To see a hungry man devour cold scones, stale oatcake, and

brown bread laden with marmalade was a revelation to this inexperienced

student who had never known what it was to be without at least three

meals a day. He watched in spite of himself, wondering why the fellow

did not choke in the process.

But Field seemed to be as sleepy as he was hungry. More than once his

head dropped and he ceased to masticate the food in his mouth. Marriott

had positively to shake him before he would go on with his meal. A

stronger emotion will overcome a weaker, but this struggle between the

sting of real hunger and the magical opiate of overpowering sleep was a

curious sight to the student, who watched it with mingled astonishment

and alarm. He had heard of the pleasure it was to feed hungry men, and

watch them eat, but he had never actually witnessed it, and he had no

idea it was like this. Field ate like an animal--gobbled, stuffed,

gorged. Marriott forgot his reading, and began to feel something very

much like a lump in his throat.

"Afraid there's been awfully little to offer you, old man," he managed

to blurt out when at length the last scone had disappeared, and the

rapid, one-sided meal was at an end. Field still made no reply, for he

was almost asleep in his seat. He merely looked up wearily and

gratefully.

"Now you must have some sleep, you know," he continued, "or you'll go to

pieces. I shall be up all night reading for this blessed exam. You're

more than welcome to my bed. To-morrow we'll have a late breakfast

and--and see what can be done--and make plans--I'm awfully good at

making plans, you know," he added with an attempt at lightness.

Field maintained his "dead sleepy" silence, but appeared to acquiesce,

and the other led the way into the bedroom, apologising as he did so to

this half-starved son of a baronet--whose own home was almost a

palace--for the size of the room. The weary guest, however, made no

pretence of thanks or politeness. He merely steadied himself on his

friend's arm as he staggered across the room, and then, with all his

clothes on, dropped his exhausted body on the bed. In less than a minute

he was to all appearances sound asleep.

For several minutes Marriott stood in the open door and watched him;

praying devoutly that he might never find himself in a like predicament,

and then fell to wondering what he would do with his unbidden guest on

the morrow. But he did not stop long to think, for the call of his books

was imperative, and happen what might, he must see to it that he passed

that examination.

Having again locked the door into the hall, he sat down to his books and

resumed his notes on _materia medica_ where he had left off when the

bell rang. But it was difficult for some time to concentrate his mind on

the subject. His thoughts kept wandering to the picture of that

white-faced, strange-eyed fellow, starved and dirty, lying in his

clothes and boots on the bed. He recalled their schooldays together

before they had drifted apart, and how they had vowed eternal

friendship--and all the rest of it. And now! What horrible straits to be

in. How could any man let the love of dissipation take such hold upon

him?

But one of their vows together Marriott, it seemed, had completely

forgotten. Just now, at any rate, it lay too far in the background of

his memory to be recalled.

Through the half-open door--the bedroom led out of the sitting-room and

had no other door--came the sound of deep, long-drawn breathing, the

regular, steady breathing of a tired man, so tired that, even to listen

to it made Marriott almost want to go to sleep himself.

"He needed it," reflected the student, "and perhaps it came only just in

time!"

Perhaps so; for outside the bitter wind from across the Forth howled

cruelly and drove the rain in cold streams against the window-panes, and

down the deserted streets. Long before Marriott settled down again

properly to his reading, he heard distantly, as it were, through the

sentences of the book, the heavy, deep breathing of the sleeper in the

next room.

A couple of hours later, when he yawned and changed his books, he still

heard the breathing, and went cautiously up to the door to look round.

At first the darkness of the room must have deceived him, or else his

eyes were confused and dazzled by the recent glare of the reading lamp.

For a minute or two he could make out nothing at all but dark lumps of

furniture, the mass of the chest of drawers by the wall, and the white

patch where his bath stood in the centre of the floor.

Then the bed came slowly into view. And on it he saw the outline of the

sleeping body gradually take shape before his eyes, growing up strangely

into the darkness, till it stood out in marked relief--the long black

form against the white counterpane.

He could hardly help smiling. Field had not moved an inch. He watched

him a moment or two and then returned to his books. The night was full

of the singing voices of the wind and rain. There was no sound of

traffic; no hansoms clattered over the cobbles, and it was still too

early for the milk carts. He worked on steadily and conscientiously,

only stopping now and again to change a book, or to sip some of the

poisonous stuff that kept him awake and made his brain so active, and on

these occasions Field's breathing was always distinctly audible in the

room. Outside, the storm continued to howl, but inside the house all was

stillness. The shade of the reading lamp threw all the light upon the

littered table, leaving the other end of the room in comparative

darkness. The bedroom door was exactly opposite him where he sat. There

was nothing to disturb the worker, nothing but an occasional rush of

wind against the windows, and a slight pain in his arm.

This pain, however, which he was unable to account for, grew once or

twice very acute. It bothered him; and he tried to remember how, and

when, he could have bruised himself so severely, but without success.

At length the page before him turned from yellow to grey, and there were

sounds of wheels in the street below. It was four o'clock. Marriott

leaned back and yawned prodigiously. Then he drew back the curtains. The

storm had subsided and the Castle Rock was shrouded in mist. With

another yawn he turned away from the dreary outlook and prepared to

sleep the remaining four hours till breakfast on the sofa. Field was

still breathing heavily in the next room, and he first tip-toed across

the floor to take another look at him.

Peering cautiously round the half-opened door his first glance fell upon

the bed now plainly discernible in the grey light of morning. He stared

hard. Then he rubbed his eyes. Then he rubbed his eyes again and thrust

his head farther round the edge of the door. With fixed eyes he stared

harder still, and harder.

But it made no difference at all. He was staring into an empty room.

The sensation of fear he had felt when Field first appeared upon the

scene returned suddenly, but with much greater force. He became

conscious, too, that his left arm was throbbing violently and causing

him great pain. He stood wondering, and staring, and trying to collect

his thoughts. He was trembling from head to foot.

By a great effort of the will he left the support of the door and walked

forward boldly into the room.

There, upon the bed, was the impress of a body, where Field had lain and

slept. There was the mark of the head on the pillow, and the slight

indentation at the foot of the bed where the boots had rested on the

counterpane. And there, plainer than ever--for he was closer to it--was

_the breathing_!

Marriott tried to pull himself together. With a great effort he found

his voice and called his friend aloud by name!

"Field! Is that you? Where are you?"

There was no reply; but the breathing continued without interruption,

coming directly from the bed. His voice had such an unfamiliar sound

that Marriott did not care to repeat his questions, but he went down on

his knees and examined the bed above and below, pulling the mattress off

finally, and taking the coverings away separately one by one. But

though the sounds continued there was no visible sign of Field, nor was

there any space in which a human being, however small, could have

concealed itself. He pulled the bed out from the wall, but the sound

_stayed where it was_. It did not move with the bed.

Marriott, finding self-control a little difficult in his weary

condition, at once set about a thorough search of the room. He went

through the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the little alcove where the

clothes hung--everything. But there was no sign of anyone. The small

window near the ceiling was closed; and, anyhow, was not large enough to

let a cat pass. The sitting-room door was locked on the inside; he could

not have got out that way. Curious thoughts began to trouble Marriott's

mind, bringing in their train unwelcome sensations. He grew more and

more excited; he searched the bed again till it resembled the scene of a

pillow fight; he searched both rooms, knowing all the time it was

useless,--and then he searched again. A cold perspiration broke out all

over his body; and the sound of heavy breathing, all this time, never

ceased to come from the corner where Field had lain down to sleep.

Then he tried something else. He pushed the bed back exactly into its

original position--and himself lay down upon it just where his guest had

lain. But the same instant he sprang up again in a single bound. The

breathing was close beside him, almost on his cheek, and between him and

the wall! Not even a child could have squeezed into the space.

He went back into his sitting-room, opened the windows, welcoming all

the light and air possible, and tried to think the whole matter over

quietly and clearly. Men who read too hard, and slept too little, he

knew were sometimes troubled with very vivid hallucinations. Again he

calmly reviewed every incident of the night; his accurate sensations;

the vivid details; the emotions stirred in him; the dreadful feast--no

single hallucination could ever combine all these and cover so long a

period of time. But with less satisfaction he thought of the recurring

faintness, and curious sense of horror that had once or twice come over

him, and then of the violent pains in his arm. These were quite

unaccountable.

Moreover, now that he began to analyse and examine, there was one other

thing that fell upon him like a sudden revelation: _During the whole

time Field had not actually uttered a single word!_ Yet, as though in

mockery upon his reflections, there came ever from that inner room the

sound of the breathing, long-drawn, deep, and regular. The thing was

incredible. It was absurd.

Haunted by visions of brain fever and insanity, Marriott put on his cap

and macintosh and left the house. The morning air on Arthur's Seat would

blow the cobwebs from his brain; the scent of the heather, and above

all, the sight of the sea. He roamed over the wet slopes above Holyrood

for a couple of hours, and did not return until the exercise had shaken

some of the horror out of his bones, and given him a ravening appetite

into the bargain.

As he entered he saw that there was another man in the room, standing

against the window with his back to the light. He recognised his

fellow-student Greene, who was reading for the same examination.

"Read hard all night, Marriott," he said, "and thought I'd drop in here

to compare notes and have some breakfast. You're out early?" he added,

by way of a question. Marriott said he had a headache and a walk had

helped it, and Greene nodded and said "Ah!" But when the girl had set

the steaming porridge on the table and gone out again, he went on with

rather a forced tone, "Didn't know you had any friends who drank,

Marriott?"

This was obviously tentative, and Marriott replied drily that he did not

know it either.

"Sounds just as if some chap were 'sleeping it off' in there, doesn't

it, though?" persisted the other, with a nod in the direction of the

bedroom, and looking curiously at his friend. The two men stared

steadily at each other for several seconds, and then Marriott said

earnestly--

"Then you hear it too, thank God!"

"Of course I hear it. The door's open. Sorry if I wasn't meant to."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Marriott, lowering his voice. "But I'm

awfully relieved. Let me explain. Of course, if you hear it too, then

it's all right; but really it frightened me more than I can tell you. I

thought I was going to have brain fever, or something, and you know what

a lot depends on this exam. It always begins with sounds, or visions, or

some sort of beastly hallucination, and I--"

"Rot!" ejaculated the other impatiently. "What _are_ you talking about?"

"Now, listen to me, Greene," said Marriott, as calmly as he could, for

the breathing was still plainly audible, "and I'll tell you what I

mean, only don't interrupt." And thereupon he related exactly what had

happened during the night, telling everything, even down to the pain in

his arm. When it was over he got up from the table and crossed the room.

"You hear the breathing now plainly, don't you?" he said. Greene said he

did. "Well, come with me, and we'll search the room together." The

other, however, did not move from his chair.

"I've been in already," he said sheepishly; "I heard the sounds and

thought it was you. The door was ajar--so I went in."

Marriott made no comment, but pushed the door open as wide as it would

go. As it opened, the sound of breathing grew more and more distinct.

"_Someone_ must be in there," said Greene under his breath.

"_Someone_ is in there, but _where_?" said Marriott. Again he urged his

friend to go in with him. But Greene refused point-blank; said he had

been in once and had searched the room and there was nothing there. He

would not go in again for a good deal.

They shut the door and retired into the other room to talk it all over

with many pipes. Greene questioned his friend very closely, but without

illuminating result, since questions cannot alter facts.

"The only thing that ought to have a proper, a logical, explanation is

the pain in my arm," said Marriott, rubbing that member with an attempt

at a smile. "It hurts so infernally and aches all the way up. I can't

remember bruising it, though."

"Let me examine it for you," said Greene. "I'm awfully good at bones in

spite of the examiners' opinion to the contrary." It was a relief to

play the fool a bit, and Marriott took his coat off and rolled up his

sleeve.

"By George, though, I'm bleeding!" he exclaimed. "Look here! What on

earth's this?"

On the forearm, quite close to the wrist, was a thin red line. There was

a tiny drop of apparently fresh blood on it. Greene came over and looked

closely at it for some minutes. Then he sat back in his chair, looking

curiously at his friend's face.

"You've scratched yourself without knowing it," he said presently.

"There's no sign of a bruise. It must be something else that made the

arm ache."

Marriott sat very still, staring silently at his arm as though the

solution of the whole mystery lay there actually written upon the skin.

"What's the matter? I see nothing very strange about a scratch," said

Greene, in an unconvincing sort of voice. "It was your cuff links

probably. Last night in your excitement--"

But Marriott, white to the very lips, was trying to speak. The sweat

stood in great beads on his forehead. At last he leaned forward close to

his friend's face.

"Look," he said, in a low voice that shook a little. "Do you see that

red mark? I mean _underneath_ what you call the scratch?"

Greene admitted he saw something or other, and Marriott wiped the place

clean with his handkerchief and told him to look again more closely.

"Yes, I see," returned the other, lifting his head after a moment's

careful inspection. "It looks like an old scar."

"It _is_ an old scar," whispered Marriott, his lips trembling. "_Now_ it

all comes back to me."

"All what?" Greene fidgeted on his chair. He tried to laugh, but without

success. His friend seemed bordering on collapse.

"Hush! Be quiet, and--I'll tell you," he said. "_Field made that scar._"

For a whole minute the two men looked each other full in the face

without speaking.

"Field made that scar!" repeated Marriott at length in a louder voice.

"Field! You mean--last night?"

"No, not last night. Years ago--at school, with his knife. And I made a

scar in his arm with mine." Marriott was talking rapidly now.

"We exchanged drops of blood in each other's cuts. He put a drop into my

arm and I put one into his--"

"In the name of heaven, what for?"

"It was a boys' compact. We made a sacred pledge, a bargain. I remember

it all perfectly now. We had been reading some dreadful book and we

swore to appear to one another--I mean, whoever died first swore to show

himself to the other. And we sealed the compact with each other's blood.

I remember it all so well--the hot summer afternoon in the playground,

seven years ago--and one of the masters caught us and confiscated the

knives--and I have never thought of it again to this day--"

"And you mean--" stammered Greene.

But Marriott made no answer. He got up and crossed the room and lay down

wearily upon the sofa, hiding his face in his hands.

Greene himself was a bit non-plussed. He left his friend alone for a

little while, thinking it all over again. Suddenly an idea seemed to

strike him. He went over to where Marriott still lay motionless on the

sofa and roused him. In any case it was better to face the matter,

whether there was an explanation or not. Giving in was always the silly

exit.

"I say, Marriott," he began, as the other turned his white face up to

him. "There's no good being so upset about it. I mean--if it's all an

hallucination we know what to do. And if it isn't--well, we know what to

think, don't we?"

"I suppose so. But it frightens me horribly for some reason," returned

his friend in a hushed voice. "And that poor devil--"

"But, after all, if the worst is true and--and that chap _has_ kept his

promise--well, he has, that's all, isn't it?"

Marriott nodded.

"There's only one thing that occurs to me," Greene went on, "and that

is, are you quite sure that--that he really ate like that--I mean that

he actually _ate anything at all_?" he finished, blurting out all his

thought.

Marriott stared at him for a moment and then said he could easily make

certain. He spoke quietly. After the main shock no lesser surprise could

affect him.

"I put the things away myself," he said, "after we had finished. They

are on the third shelf in that cupboard. No one's touched 'em since."

He pointed without getting up, and Greene took the hint and went over to

look.

"Exactly," he said, after a brief examination; "just as I thought. It

was partly hallucination, at any rate. The things haven't been touched.

Come and see for yourself."

Together they examined the shelf. There was the brown loaf, the plate of

stale scones, the oatcake, all untouched. Even the glass of whisky

Marriott had poured out stood there with the whisky still in it.

"You were feeding--no one," said Greene "Field ate and drank nothing. He

was not there at all!"

"But the breathing?" urged the other in a low voice, staring with a

dazed expression on his face.

Greene did not answer. He walked over to the bedroom, while Marriott

followed him with his eyes. He opened the door, and listened. There was

no need for words. The sound of deep, regular breathing came floating

through the air. There was no hallucination about that, at any rate.

Marriott could hear it where he stood on the other side of the room.

Greene closed the door and came back. "There's only one thing to do," he

declared with decision. "Write home and find out about him, and

meanwhile come and finish your reading in my rooms. I've got an extra

bed."

"Agreed," returned the Fourth Year Man; "there's no hallucination about

that exam; I must pass that whatever happens."

And this was what they did.

It was about a week later when Marriott got the answer from his sister.

Part of it he read out to Greene--

"It is curious," she wrote, "that in your letter you should have

enquired after Field. It seems a terrible thing, but you know only a

short while ago Sir John's patience became exhausted, and he turned him

out of the house, they say without a penny. Well, what do you think? He

has killed himself. At least, it looks like suicide. Instead of leaving

the house, he went down into the cellar and simply starved himself to

death. . . . They're trying to suppress it, of course, but I heard it all

from my maid, who got it from their footman. . . . They found the body on

the 14th and the doctor said he had died about twelve hours before. . . .

He was dreadfully thin. . . ."

"Then he died on the 13th," said Greene.

Marriott nodded.

"That's the very night he came to see you."

Marriott nodded again.

WITH INTENT TO STEAL

To sleep in a lonely barn when the best bedrooms in the house were at

our disposal, seemed, to say the least, unnecessary, and I felt that

some explanation was due to our host.

But Shorthouse, I soon discovered, had seen to all that; our enterprise

would be tolerated, not welcomed, for the master kept this sort of thing

down with a firm hand. And then, how little I could get this man,

Shorthouse, to tell me. There was much I wanted to ask and hear, but he

surrounded himself with impossible barriers. It was ludicrous; he was

surely asking a good deal of me, and yet he would give so little in

return, and his reason--that it was for my good--may have been perfectly

true, but did not bring me any comfort in its train. He gave me sops now

and then, however, to keep up my curiosity, till I soon was aware that

there were growing up side by side within me a genuine interest and an

equally genuine fear; and something of both these is probably necessary

to all real excitement.

The barn in question was some distance from the house, on the side of

the stables, and I had passed it on several of my journeyings to and fro

wondering at its forlorn and untarred appearance under a régime where

everything was so spick and span; but it had never once occurred to me

as possible that I should come to spend a night under its roof with a

comparative stranger, and undergo there an experience belonging to an

order of things I had always rather ridiculed and despised.

At the moment I can only partially recall the process by which

Shorthouse persuaded me to lend him my company. Like myself, he was a

guest in this autumn house-party, and where there were so many to

chatter and to chaff, I think his taciturnity of manner had appealed to

me by contrast, and that I wished to repay something of what I owed.

There was, no doubt, flattery in it as well, for he was more than twice

my age, a man of amazingly wide experience, an explorer of all the

world's corners where danger lurked, and--most subtle flattery of

all--by far the best shot in the whole party, our host included.

At first, however, I held out a bit.

"But surely this story you tell," I said, "has the parentage common to

all such tales--a superstitious heart and an imaginative brain--and has

grown now by frequent repetition into an authentic ghost story? Besides,

this head gardener of half a century ago," I added, seeing that he still

went on cleaning his gun in silence, "who was he, and what positive

information have you about him beyond the fact that he was found hanging

from the rafters, dead?"

"He was no mere head gardener, this man who passed as such," he replied

without looking up, "but a fellow of splendid education who used this

curious disguise for his own purposes. Part of this very barn, of which

he always kept the key, was found to have been fitted up as a complete

laboratory, with athanor, alembic, cucurbite, and other appliances, some

of which the master destroyed at once--perhaps for the best--and which I

have only been able to guess at--"

"Black Arts," I laughed.

"Who knows?" he rejoined quietly. "The man undoubtedly possessed

knowledge--dark knowledge--that was most unusual and dangerous, and I

can discover no means by which he came to it--no ordinary means, that

is. But I _have_ found many facts in the case which point to the

exercise of a most desperate and unscrupulous will; and the strange

disappearances in the neighbourhood, as well as the bones found buried

in the kitchen garden, though never actually traced to him, seem to me

full of dreadful suggestion."

I laughed again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded

one of the story of Giles de Rays, maréchal of France, who was said to

have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one

hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and

who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not

"rise," and only returned to his subject.

"His suicide seems to have been only just in time to escape arrest," he

said.

"A magician of no high order then," I observed sceptically, "if suicide

was his only way of evading the country police."

"The police of London and St. Petersburg rather," returned Shorthouse;

"for the headquarters of this pretty company was somewhere in Russia,

and his apparatus all bore the marks of the most skilful foreign make. A

Russian woman then employed in the household--governess, or

something--vanished, too, about the same time and was never caught. She

was no doubt the cleverest of the lot. And, remember, the object of this

appalling group was not mere vulgar gain, but a kind of knowledge that

called for the highest qualities of courage and intellect in the

seekers."

I admit I was impressed by the man's conviction of voice and manner, for

there is something very compelling in the force of an earnest man's

belief, though I still affected to sneer politely.

"But, like most Black Magicians, the fellow only succeeded in compassing

his own destruction--that of his tools, rather, and of escaping

himself."

"So that he might better accomplish his objects _elsewhere and

otherwise_," said Shorthouse, giving, as he spoke, the most minute

attention to the cleaning of the lock.

"Elsewhere and otherwise," I gasped.

"As if the shell he left hanging from the rafter in the barn in no way

impeded the man's spirit from continuing his dreadful work under new

conditions," he added quietly, without noticing my interruption. "The

idea being that he sometimes revisits the garden and the barn, chiefly

the barn--"

"The barn!" I exclaimed; "for what purpose?"

"Chiefly the barn," he finished, as if he had not heard me, "that is,

when there is anybody in it."

I stared at him without speaking, for there was a wonder in me how he

would add to this.

"When he wants fresh material, that is--he comes to steal from the

living."

"Fresh material!" I repeated aghast. "To steal from the living!" Even

then, in broad daylight, I was foolishly conscious of a creeping

sensation at the roots of my hair, as if a cold breeze were passing over

my skull.

"The strong vitality of the living is what this sort of creature is

supposed to need most," he went on imperturbably, "and where he has

worked and thought and struggled before is the easiest place for him to

get it in. The former conditions are in some way more easily

reconstructed--" He stopped suddenly, and devoted all his attention to

the gun. "It's difficult to explain, you know, rather," he added

presently, "and, besides, it's much better that you should not know till

afterwards."

I made a noise that was the beginning of a score of questions and of as

many sentences, but it got no further than a mere noise, and Shorthouse,

of course, stepped in again.

"Your scepticism," he added, "is one of the qualities that induce me to

ask you to spend the night there with me."

"In those days," he went on, in response to my urging for more

information, "the family were much abroad, and often travelled for years

at a time. This man was invaluable in their absence. His wonderful

knowledge of horticulture kept the gardens--French, Italian, English--in

perfect order. He had carte blanche in the matter of expense, and of

course selected all his own underlings. It was the sudden, unexpected

return of the master that surprised the amazing stories of the

countryside before the fellow, with all his cleverness, had time to

prepare or conceal."

"But is there no evidence, no more recent evidence, to show that

something is likely to happen if we sit up there?" I asked, pressing him

yet further, and I think to his liking, for it showed at least that I

was interested. "Has anything happened there lately, for instance?"

Shorthouse glanced up from the gun he was cleaning so assiduously, and

the smoke from his pipe curled up into an odd twist between me and the

black beard and oriental, sun-tanned face. The magnetism of his look and

expression brought more sense of conviction to me than I had felt

hitherto, and I realised that there had been a sudden little change in

my attitude and that I was now much more inclined to go in for the

adventure with him. At least, I thought, with such a man, one would be

safe in any emergency; for he is determined, resourceful, and to be

depended upon.

"There's the point," he answered slowly; "for there has apparently been

a fresh outburst--an attack almost, it seems,--quite recently. There is

evidence, of course, plenty of it, or I should not feel the interest I

do feel, but--" he hesitated a moment, as though considering how much he

ought to let me know, "but the fact is that three men this summer, on

separate occasions, who have gone into that barn after nightfall, have

been _accosted_--"

"Accosted?" I repeated, betrayed into the interruption by his choice of

so singular a word.

"And one of the stablemen--a recent arrival and quite ignorant of the

story--who had to go in there late one night, saw a dark substance

hanging down from one of the rafters, and when he climbed up, shaking

all over, to cut it down--for he said he felt sure it was a corpse--the

knife passed through nothing but air, and he heard a sound up under the

eaves as if someone were laughing. Yet, while he slashed away, and

afterwards too, the thing went on swinging there before his eyes and

turning slowly with its own weight, like a huge joint on a spit. The man

declares, too, that it had a large bearded face, and that the mouth was

open and drawn down like the mouth of a hanged man."

"Can we question this fellow?"

"He's gone--gave notice at once, but not before I had questioned him

myself very closely."

"Then this was quite recent?" I said, for I knew Shorthouse had not been

in the house more than a week.

"Four days ago," he replied. "But, more than that, only three days ago a

couple of men were in there together in full daylight when one of them

suddenly turned deadly faint. He said that he felt an overmastering

impulse to hang himself; and he looked about for a rope and was furious

when his companion tried to prevent him--"

"But he did prevent him?"

"Just in time, but not before he had clambered on to a beam. He was very

violent."

I had so much to say and ask that I could get nothing out in time, and

Shorthouse went on again.

"I've had a sort of watching brief for this case," he said with a smile,

whose real significance, however, completely escaped me at the time,

"and one of the most disagreeable features about it is the deliberate

way the servants have invented excuses to go out to the place, and

always after dark; some of them who have no right to go there, and no

real occasion at all--have never been there in their lives before

probably--and now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and

determination to go out there about dusk, or soon after, and with the

most paltry and foolish excuses in the world. Of course," he added,

"they have been prevented, but the desire, stronger than their

superstitious dread, and which they cannot explain, is very curious."

"Very," I admitted, feeling that my hair was beginning to stand up

again.

"You see," he went on presently, "it all points to volition--in fact to

deliberate arrangement. It is no mere family ghost that goes with every

ivied house in England of a certain age; it is something real, and

something very malignant."

He raised his face from the gun barrel, and for the first time his eye

caught mine in the full. Yes, he was very much in earnest. Also, he knew

a great deal more than he meant to tell.

"It's worth tempting--and fighting, _I_ think," he said; "but I want a

companion with me. Are you game?" His enthusiasm undoubtedly caught me,

but I still wanted to hedge a bit.

"I'm very sceptical," I pleaded.

"All the better," he said, almost as if to himself. "You have the pluck;

I have the knowledge--"

"The knowledge?"

He looked round cautiously as if to make sure that there was no one

within earshot.

"I've been in the place myself," he said in a lowered voice, "quite

lately--in fact only three nights ago--the day the man turned queer."

I stared.

"But--I was obliged to come out--"

Still I stared.

"Quickly," he added significantly.

"You've gone into the thing pretty thoroughly," was all I could find to

say, for I had almost made up my mind to go with him, and was not sure

that I wanted to hear too much beforehand.

He nodded. "It's a bore, of course, but I must do everything

thoroughly--or not at all."

"That's why you clean your own gun, I suppose?"

"That's why, when there's any danger, I take as few chances as

possible," he said, with the same enigmatical smile I had noticed

before; and then he added with emphasis, "And that is also why I ask you

to keep me company now."

Of course, the shaft went straight home, and I gave my promise without

further ado.

Our preparations for the night--a couple of rugs and a flask of black

coffee--were not elaborate, and we found no difficulty, about ten

o'clock, in absenting ourselves from the billiard-room without

attracting curiosity. Shorthouse met me by arrangement under the cedar

on the back lawn, and I at once realised with vividness what a

difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying

them out in the dark. One's common-sense--at least in matters of this

sort--is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant

sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make

four--they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into

a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did not find

wings very readily, for I knew that my companion was the most

_unmovable_ of men--an unemotional, solid block of a man who would

never lose his head, and in any conceivable state of affairs would

always take the right as well as the strong course. So my faith in the

man gave me a false courage that was nevertheless very consoling, and I

looked forward to the night's adventure with a genuine appetite.

Side by side, and in silence, we followed the path that skirted the East

Woods, as they were called, and then led across two hay fields, and

through another wood, to the barn, which thus lay about half a mile from

the Lower Farm. To the Lower Farm, indeed, it properly belonged; and

this made us realise more clearly how very ingenious must have been the

excuses of the Hall servants who felt the desire to visit it.

It had been raining during the late afternoon, and the trees were still

dripping heavily on all sides, but the moment we left the second wood

and came out into the open, we saw a clearing with the stars overhead,

against which the barn outlined itself in a black, lugubrious shadow.

Shorthouse led the way--still without a word--and we crawled in through

a low door and seated ourselves in a soft heap of hay in the extreme

corner.

"Now," he said, speaking for the first time, "I'll show you the inside

of the barn, so that you may know where you are, and what to do, in

case anything happens."

A match flared in the darkness, and with the help of two more that

followed I saw the interior of a lofty and somewhat rickety-looking

barn, erected upon a wall of grey stones that ran all round and extended

to a height of perhaps four feet. Above this masonry rose the wooden

sides, running up into the usual vaulted roof, and supported by a double

tier of massive oak rafters, which stretched across from wall to wall

and were intersected by occasional uprights. I felt as if we were inside

the skeleton of some antediluvian monster whose huge black ribs

completely enfolded us. Most of this, of course, only sketched itself to

my eye in the uncertain light of the flickering matches, and when I said

I had seen enough, and the matches went out, we were at once enveloped

in an atmosphere as densely black as anything that I have ever known.

And the silence equalled the darkness.

We made ourselves comfortable and talked in low voices. The rugs, which

were very large, covered our legs; and our shoulders sank into a really

luxurious bed of softness. Yet neither of us apparently felt sleepy. I

certainly didn't, and Shorthouse, dropping his customary brevity that

fell little short of gruffness, plunged into an easy run of talking

that took the form after a time of personal reminiscences. This rapidly

became a vivid narration of adventure and travel in far countries, and

at any other time I should have allowed myself to become completely

absorbed in what he told. But, unfortunately, I was never able for a

single instant to forget the real purpose of our enterprise, and

consequently I felt all my senses more keenly on the alert than usual,

and my attention accordingly more or less distracted. It was, indeed, a

revelation to hear Shorthouse unbosom himself in this fashion, and to a

young man it was of course doubly fascinating; but the little sounds

that always punctuate even the deepest silence out of doors claimed some

portion of my attention, and as the night grew on I soon became aware

that his tales seemed somewhat disconnected and abrupt--and that, in

fact, I heard really only part of them.

It was not so much that I actually heard other sounds, but that I

_expected_ to hear them; this was what stole the other half of my

listening. There was neither wind nor rain to break the stillness, and

certainly there were no physical presences in our neighbourhood, for we

were half a mile even from the Lower Farm; and from the Hall and

stables, at least a mile. Yet the stillness was being continually

broken--perhaps _disturbed_ is a better word--and it was to these very

remote and tiny disturbances that I felt compelled to devote at least

half my listening faculties.

From time to time, however, I made a remark or asked a question, to show

that I was listening and interested; but, in a sense, my questions

always seemed to bear in one direction and to make for one issue,

namely, my companion's previous experience in the barn when he had been

obliged to come out "quickly."

Apparently I could not help myself in the matter, for this was really

the one consuming curiosity I had; and the fact that it was better for

me not to know it made me the keener to know it all, even the worst.

Shorthouse realised this even better than I did. I could tell it by the

way he dodged, or wholly ignored, my questions, and this subtle sympathy

between us showed plainly enough, had I been able at the time to reflect

upon its meaning, that the nerves of both of us were in a very sensitive

and highly-strung condition. Probably, the complete confidence I felt in

his ability to face whatever might happen, and the extent to which also

I relied upon him for my own courage, prevented the exercise of my

ordinary powers of reflection, while it left my senses free to a more

than usual degree of activity.

Things must have gone on in this way for a good hour or more, when I

made the sudden discovery that there was something unusual in the

conditions of our environment. This sounds a roundabout mode of

expression, but I really know not how else to put it. The discovery

almost rushed upon me. By rights, we were two men waiting in an alleged

haunted barn for something to happen; and, as two men who trusted one

another implicitly (though for very different reasons), there should

have been two minds keenly alert, with the ordinary senses in active

co-operation. Some slight degree of nervousness, too, there might also

have been, but beyond this, nothing. It was therefore with something of

dismay that I made the sudden discovery that there _was_ something more,

and something that I ought to have noticed very much sooner than I

actually did notice it.

The fact was--Shorthouse's stream of talk was wholly unnatural. He was

talking with a purpose. He did not wish to be cornered by my questions,

true, but he had another and a deeper purpose still, and it grew upon

me, as an unpleasant deduction from my discovery, that this strong,

cynical, unemotional man by my side was talking--and had been talking

all this time--to gain a particular end. And this end, I soon felt

clearly, was to _convince himself_. But, of what?

For myself, as the hours wore on towards midnight, I was not anxious to

find the answer; but in the end it became impossible to avoid it, and I

knew as I listened, that he was pouring forth this steady stream of

vivid reminiscences of travel--South Seas, big game, Russian

exploration, women, adventures of all sorts--_because he wished the past

to reassert itself to the complete exclusion of the present_. He was

taking his precautions. He was afraid.

I felt a hundred things, once this was clear to me, but none of them

more than the wish to get up at once and leave the barn. If Shorthouse

was afraid already, what in the world was to happen to me in the long

hours that lay ahead? . . . I only know that, in my fierce efforts to deny

to myself the evidence of his partial collapse, the strength came that

enabled me to play my part properly, and I even found myself helping

him by means of animated remarks upon his stories, and by more or less

judicious questions. I also helped him by dismissing from my mind any

desire to enquire into the truth of his former experience; and it was

good I did so, for had he turned it loose on me, with those great powers

of convincing description that he had at his command, I verily believe

that I should never have crawled from that barn alive. So, at least, I

felt at the moment. It was the instinct of self-preservation, and it

brought sound judgment.

Here, then, at least, with different motives, reached, too, by opposite

ways, we were both agreed upon one thing, namely, that temporarily we

would forget. Fools we were, for a dominant emotion is not so easily

banished, and we were for ever recurring to it in a hundred ways direct

and indirect. A real fear cannot be so easily trifled with, and while we

toyed on the surface with thousands and thousands of words--mere

words--our sub-conscious activities were steadily gaining force, and

would before very long have to be properly acknowledged. We could not

get away from it. At last, when he had finished the recital of an

adventure which brought him near enough to a horrible death, I admitted

that in my uneventful life I had never yet been face to face with a

real fear. It slipped out inadvertently, and, of course, without

intention, but the tendency in him at the time was too strong to be

resisted. He saw the loophole, and made for it full tilt.

"It is the same with all the emotions," he said. "The experiences of

others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately

turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years,

he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.

Imaginative authors may write, moralists may preach, and scholars may

criticise, but they are dealing all the time in a coinage of which they

know not the actual value. Their listener gets a sensation--but not the

true one. Until you have faced these emotions," he went on, with the

same race of words that had come from him the whole evening, "and made

them your own, your slaves, you have no idea of the power that is in

them--hunger, that shows lights beckoning beyond the grave; thirst, that

fills with mingled ice and fire; passion, love, loneliness, revenge,

and--" He paused for a minute, and though I knew we were on the brink I

was powerless to hold him. " . . . _and fear_," he went on--"fear . . .

I think that death from fear, or madness from fear, must sum up in a

second of time the total of all the most awful sensations it is possible

for a man to know."

"Then you have yourself felt something of this fear," I interrupted;

"for you said just now--"

"I do not mean physical fear," he replied; "for that is more or less a

question of nerves and will, and it is imagination that makes men

cowards. I mean an _absolute_ fear, a physical fear one might call it,

that reaches the soul and withers every power one possesses."

He said a lot more, for he, too, was wholly unable to stem the torrent

once it broke loose; but I have forgotten it; or, rather, mercifully I

did not hear it, for I stopped my ears and only heard the occasional

words when I took my fingers out to find if he had come to an end. In

due course he did come to an end, and there we left it, for I then knew

positively what he already knew: that somewhere here in the night, and

within the walls of this very barn where we were sitting, there was

waiting Something of dreadful malignancy and of great power. Something

that we might both have to face ere morning, and Something that he had

already tried to face once and failed in the attempt.

The night wore slowly on; and it gradually became more and more clear to

me that I could not dare to rely as at first upon my companion, and that

our positions were undergoing a slow process of reversal. I thank Heaven

this was not borne in upon me too suddenly; and that I had at least the

time to readjust myself somewhat to the new conditions. Preparation was

possible, even if it was not much, and I sought by every means in my

power to gather up all the shreds of my courage, so that they might

together make a decent rope that would stand the strain when it came.

The strain would come, that was certain, and I was thoroughly well

aware--though for my life I cannot put into words the reasons for my

knowledge--that the massing of the material against us was proceeding

somewhere in the darkness with determination and a horrible skill

besides.

Shorthouse meanwhile talked without ceasing. The great quantity of hay

opposite--or straw, I believe it actually was--seemed to deaden the

sound of his voice, but the silence, too, had become so oppressive that

I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop. I

heard, too, the gentle ticking of my watch. Each second uttered its

voice and dropped away into a gulf, as if starting on a journey whence

there was no return. Once a dog barked somewhere in the distance,

probably on the Lower Farm; and once an owl hooted close outside and I

could hear the swishing of its wings as it passed overhead. Above me, in

the darkness, I could just make out the outline of the barn, sinister

and black, the rows of rafters stretching across from wall to wall like

wicked arms that pressed upon the hay. Shorthouse, deep in some involved

yarn of the South Seas that was meant to be full of cheer and sunshine,

and yet only succeeded in making a ghastly mixture of unnatural

colouring, seemed to care little whether I listened or not. He made no

appeal to me, and I made one or two quite irrelevant remarks which

passed him by and proved that he was merely uttering sounds. He, too,

was afraid of the silence.

I fell to wondering how long a man could talk without stopping. . . . Then

it seemed to me that these words of his went falling into the same gulf

where the seconds dropped, only they were heavier and fell faster. I

began to chase them. Presently one of them fell much faster than the

rest, and I pursued it and found myself almost immediately in a land of

clouds and shadows. They rose up and enveloped me, pressing on the

eyelids. . . . It must have been just here that I actually fell asleep,

somewhere between twelve and one o'clock, because, as I chased this word

at tremendous speed through space, I knew that I had left the other

words far, very far behind me, till, at last, I could no longer hear

them at all. The voice of the story-teller was beyond the reach of

hearing; and I was falling with ever increasing rapidity through an

immense void.

A sound of whispering roused me. Two persons were talking under their

breath close beside me. The words in the main escaped me, but I caught

every now and then bitten-off phrases and half sentences, to which,

however, I could attach no intelligible meaning. The words were quite

close--at my very side in fact--and one of the voices sounded so

familiar, that curiosity overcame dread, and I turned to look. I was not

mistaken; _it was Shorthouse whispering_. But the other person, who must

have been just a little beyond him, was lost in the darkness and

invisible to me. It seemed then that Shorthouse at once turned up his

face and looked at me and, by some means or other that caused me no

surprise at the time, I easily made out the features in the darkness.

They wore an expression I had never seen there before; he seemed

distressed, exhausted, worn out, and as though he were about to give in

after a long mental struggle. He looked at me, almost beseechingly, and

the whispering of the other person died away.

"They're at me," he said.

I found it quite impossible to answer; the words stuck in my throat. His

voice was thin, plaintive, almost like a child's.

"I shall have to go. I'm not as strong as I thought. They'll call it

suicide, but, of course, it's really murder." There was real anguish in

his voice, and it terrified me.

A deep silence followed these extraordinary words, and I somehow

understood that the Other Person was just going to carry on the

conversation--I even fancied I saw lips shaping themselves just over my

friend's shoulder--when I felt a sharp blow in the ribs and a voice,

this time a deep voice, sounded in my ear. I opened my eyes, and the

wretched dream vanished. Yet it left behind it an impression of a strong

and quite unusual reality.

"_Do_ try not to go to sleep again," he said sternly. "You seem

exhausted. Do you feel so?" There was a note in his voice I did not

welcome,--less than alarm, but certainly more than mere solicitude.

"I do feel terribly sleepy all of a sudden," I admitted, ashamed.

"So you may," he added very earnestly; "but I rely on you to keep awake,

if only to watch. You have been asleep for half an hour at least--and

you were so still--I thought I'd wake you--"

"Why?" I asked, for my curiosity and nervousness were altogether too

strong to be resisted. "Do you think we are in danger?"

"I think _they_ are about here now. I feel my vitality going

rapidly--that's always the first sign. You'll last longer than I,

remember. Watch carefully."

The conversation dropped. I was afraid to say all I wanted to say. It

would have been too unmistakably a confession; and intuitively I

realised the danger of admitting the existence of certain emotions until

positively forced to. But presently Shorthouse began again. His voice

sounded odd, and as if it had lost power. It was more like a woman's or

a boy's voice than a man's, and recalled the voice in my dream.

"I suppose you've got a knife?" he asked.

"Yes--a big clasp knife; but why?" He made no answer. "You don't think a

practical joke likely? No one suspects we're here," I went on. Nothing

was more significant of our real feelings this night than the way we

toyed with words, and never dared more than to skirt the things in our

mind.

"It's just as well to be prepared," he answered evasively. "Better be

quite sure. See which pocket it's in--so as to be ready."

I obeyed mechanically, and told him. But even this scrap of talk proved

to me that he was getting further from me all the time in his mind. He

was following a line that was strange to me, and, as he distanced me, I

felt that the sympathy between us grew more and more strained. _He knew

more_; it was not that I minded so much--but that he was willing to

_communicate less_. And in proportion as I lost his support, I dreaded

his increasing silence. Not of words--for he talked more volubly than

ever, and with a fiercer purpose--but his silence in giving no hint of

what he must have known to be really going on the whole time.

The night was perfectly still. Shorthouse continued steadily talking,

and I jogged him now and again with remarks or questions in order to

keep awake. He paid no attention, however, to either.

About two in the morning a short shower fell, and the drops rattled

sharply on the roof like shot. I was glad when it stopped, for it

completely drowned all other sounds and made it impossible to hear

anything else that might be going on. Something _was_ going on, too, all

the time, though for the life of me I could not say what. The outer

world had grown quite dim--the house-party, the shooters, the

billiard-room, and the ordinary daily incidents of my visit. All my

energies were concentrated on the present, and the constant strain of

watching, waiting, listening, was excessively telling.

Shorthouse still talked of his adventures, in some Eastern country now,

and less connectedly. These adventures, real or imaginary, had quite a

savour of the Arabian Nights, and did not by any means make it easier

for me to keep my hold on reality. The lightest weight will affect the

balance under such circumstances, and in this case the weight of his

talk was on the wrong scale. His words were very rapid, and I found it

overwhelmingly difficult not to follow them into that great gulf of

darkness where they all rushed and vanished. But that, I knew, meant

sleep again. Yet, it was strange I should feel sleepy when at the same

time all my nerves were fairly tingling. Every time I heard what seemed

like a step outside, or a movement in the hay opposite, the blood stood

still for a moment in my veins. Doubtless, the unremitting strain told

upon me more than I realised, and this was doubly great now that I knew

Shorthouse was a source of weakness instead of strength, as I had

counted. Certainly, a curious sense of languor grew upon me more and

more, and I was sure that the man beside me was engaged in the same

struggle. The feverishness of his talk proved this, if nothing else. It

was dreadfully hard to keep awake.

But this time, instead of dropping into the gulf, I saw something come

up out of it! It reached our world by a door in the side of the barn

furthest from me, and it came in cautiously and silently and moved into

the mass of hay opposite. There, for a moment, I lost it, but presently

I caught it again higher up. It was clinging, like a great bat, to the

side of the barn. Something trailed behind it, I could not make out

what. . . . It crawled up the wooden wall and began to move out along one

of the rafters. A numb terror settled down all over me as I watched it.

The thing trailing behind it was apparently a rope.

The whispering began again just then, but the only words I could catch

seemed without meaning; it was almost like another language. The voices

were above me, under the roof. Suddenly I saw signs of active movement

going on just beyond the place where the thing lay upon the rafter.

There was something else up there with it! Then followed panting, like

the quick breathing that accompanies effort, and the next minute a black

mass dropped through the air and dangled at the end of the rope.

Instantly, it all flashed upon me. I sprang to my feet and rushed

headlong across the floor of the barn. How I moved so quickly in the

darkness I do not know; but, even as I ran, it flashed into my mind that

I should never get at my knife in time to cut the thing down, or else

that I should find it had been taken from me. Somehow or other--the

Goddess of Dreams knows how--I climbed up by the hay bales and swung out

along the rafter. I was hanging, of course, by my arms, and the knife

was already between my teeth, though I had no recollection of how it got

there. It was open. The mass, hanging like a side of bacon, was only a

few feet in front of me, and I could plainly see the dark line of rope

that fastened it to the beam. I then noticed for the first time that it

was swinging and turning in the air, and that as I approached it seemed

to move along the beam, so that the same distance was always maintained

between us. The only thing I could do--for there was no time to

hesitate--was to jump at it through the air and slash at the rope as I

dropped.

I seized the knife with my right hand, gave a great swing of my body

with my legs and leaped forward at it through the air. Horrors! It was

closer to me than I knew, and I plunged full into it, and the arm with

the knife missed the rope and cut deeply into some substance that was

soft and yielding. But, as I dropped past it, the thing had time to turn

half its width so that it swung round and faced me--and I could have

sworn as I rushed past it through the air, that it had the features of

Shorthouse.

The shock of this brought the vile nightmare to an abrupt end, and I

woke up a second time on the soft hay-bed to find that the grey dawn was

stealing in, and that I was exceedingly cold. After all I had failed to

keep awake, and my sleep, since it was growing light, must have lasted

at least an hour. A whole hour off my guard!

There was no sound from Shorthouse, to whom, of course, my first

thoughts turned; probably his flow of words had ceased long ago, and he

too had yielded to the persuasions of the seductive god. I turned to

wake him and get the comfort of companionship for the horror of my

dream, when to my utter dismay I saw that the place where he had been

was vacant. He was no longer beside me.

It had been no little shock before to discover that the ally in whom lay

all my faith and dependence was really frightened, but it is quite

impossible to describe the sensations I experienced when I realised he

had gone altogether and that I was alone in the barn. For a minute or

two my head swam and I felt a prey to a helpless terror. The dream, too,

still seemed half real, so vivid had it been! I was thoroughly

frightened--hot and cold by turns--and I clutched the hay at my side in

handfuls, and for some moments had no idea in the world what I should

do.

This time, at least, I was unmistakably awake, and I made a great effort

to collect myself and face the meaning of the disappearance of my

companion. In this I succeeded so far that I decided upon a thorough

search of the barn, inside and outside. It was a dreadful undertaking,

and I did not feel at all sure of being able to bring it to a

conclusion, but I knew pretty well that unless something was done at

once, I should simply collapse.

But, when I tried to move, I found that the cold, and fear, and I know

not what else unholy besides, combined to make it almost impossible. I

suddenly realised that a tour of inspection, during the whole of which

my back would be open to attack, was not to be thought of. My will was

not equal to it. Anything might spring upon me any moment from the dark

corners, and the growing light was just enough to reveal every movement

I made to any who might be watching. For, even then, and while I was

still half dazed and stupid, I knew perfectly well that someone was

watching me all the time with the utmost intentness. I had not merely

awakened; I had _been_ awakened.

I decided to try another plan; I called to him. My voice had a thin weak

sound, far away and quite unreal, and there was no answer to it. Hark,

though! There was something that might have been a very faint voice near

me!

I called again, this time with greater distinctness, "Shorthouse, where

are you? can you hear me?"

There certainly was a sound, but it was not a voice. Something was

moving. It was someone shuffling along, and it seemed to be outside the

barn. I was afraid to call again, and the sound continued. It was an

ordinary sound enough, no doubt, but it came to me just then as

something unusual and unpleasant. Ordinary sounds remain ordinary only

so long as one is not listening to them; under the influence of intense

listening they become unusual, portentous, and therefore extraordinary.

So, this common sound came to me as something uncommon, disagreeable. It

conveyed, too, an impression of stealth. And with it there was another,

a slighter sound.

Just at this minute the wind bore faintly over the field the sound of

the stable clock, a mile away. It was three o'clock; the hour when

life's pulses beat lowest; when poor souls lying between life and death

find it hardest to resist. Vividly I remember this thought crashing

through my brain with a sound of thunder, and I realised that the strain

on my nerves was nearing the limit, and that something would have to be

done at once if I was to reclaim my self-control at all.

When thinking over afterwards the events of this dreadful night, it has

always seemed strange to me that my second nightmare, so vivid in its

terror and its nearness, should have furnished me with no inkling of

what was really going on all this while; and that I should not have been

able to put two and two together, or have discovered sooner than I did

_what_ this sound was and _where_ it came from. I can well believe that

the vile scheming which lay behind the whole experience found it an easy

trifle to direct my hearing amiss; though, of course, it may equally

well have been due to the confused condition of my mind at the time and

to the general nervous tension under which I was undoubtedly suffering.

But, whatever the cause for my stupidity at first in failing to trace

the sound to its proper source, I can only say here that it was with a

shock of unexampled horror that my eye suddenly glanced upwards and

caught sight of the figure moving in the shadows above my head among the

rafters. Up to this moment I had thought that it was somebody outside

the barn, crawling round the walls till it came to a door; and the rush

of horror that froze my heart when I looked up and saw that it was

Shorthouse creeping stealthily along a beam, is something altogether

beyond the power of words to describe.

He was staring intently down upon me, and I knew at once that it was he

who had been watching me.

This point was, I think, for me the climax of feeling in the whole

experience; I was incapable of any further sensation--that is any

further sensation in the same direction. But here the abominable

character of the affair showed itself most plainly, for it suddenly

presented an entirely new aspect to me. The light fell on the picture

from a new angle, and galvanised me into a fresh ability to feel when I

thought a merciful numbness had supervened. It may not sound a great

deal in the printed letter, but it came to me almost as if it had been

an extension of consciousness, for the Hand that held the pencil

suddenly touched in with ghastly effect of contrast the element of the

ludicrous. Nothing could have been worse just then. Shorthouse, the

masterful spirit, so intrepid in the affairs of ordinary life, whose

power increased rather than lessened in the face of danger--this man,

creeping on hands and knees along a rafter in a barn at three o'clock in

the morning, watching me all the time as a cat watches a mouse! Yes, it

was distinctly ludicrous, and while it gave me a measure with which to

gauge the dread emotion that caused his aberration, it stirred

somewhere deep in my interior the strings of an empty laughter.

One of those moments then came to me that are said to come sometimes

under the stress of great emotion, when in an instant the mind grows

dazzlingly clear. An abnormal lucidity took the place of my confusion of

thought, and I suddenly understood that the two dreams which I had taken

for nightmares must really have been sent me, and that I had been

allowed for one moment to look over the edge of what was to come; the

Good was helping, even when the Evil was most determined to destroy.

I saw it all clearly now. Shorthouse had overrated his strength. The

terror inspired by his first visit to the barn (when he had failed) had

roused the man's whole nature to win, and he had brought me to divert

the deadly stream of evil. That he had again underrated the power

against him was apparent as soon as he entered the barn, and his wild

talk, and refusal to admit what he felt, were due to this desire not to

acknowledge the insidious fear that was growing in his heart. But, at

length, it had become too strong. He had left my side in my sleep--had

been overcome himself, perhaps, first in _his_ sleep, by the dreadful

impulse. He knew that I should interfere, and with every movement he

made, he watched me steadily, for the mania was upon him and he was

_determined to hang himself_. He pretended not to hear me calling, and I

knew that anything coming between him and his purpose would meet the

full force of his fury--the fury of a maniac, of one, for the time

being, truly possessed.

For a minute or two I sat there and stared. I saw then for the first

time that there was a bit of rope trailing after him, and that this was

what made the rustling sound I had noticed. Shorthouse, too, had come to

a stop. His body lay along the rafter like a crouching animal. He was

looking hard at me. That whitish patch was his face.

I can lay claim to no courage in the matter, for I must confess that in

one sense I was frightened almost beyond control. But at the same time

the necessity for decided action, if I was to save his life, came to me

with an intense relief. No matter what animated him for the moment,

Shorthouse was only a _man_; it was flesh and blood I had to contend

with and not the intangible powers. Only a few hours before I had seen

him cleaning his gun, smoking his pipe, knocking the billiard balls

about with very human clumsiness, and the picture flashed across my

mind with the most wholesome effect.

Then I dashed across the floor of the barn and leaped upon the hay bales

as a preliminary to climbing up the sides to the first rafter. It was

far more difficult than in my dream. Twice I slipped back into the hay,

and as I scrambled up for the third time I saw that Shorthouse, who thus

far had made no sound or movement, was now busily doing something with

his hands upon the beam. He was at its further end, and there must have

been fully fifteen feet between us. Yet I saw plainly what he was doing;

he was fastening the rope to the rafter. _The other end, I saw, was

already round his neck!_

This gave me at once the necessary strength, and in a second I had swung

myself on to a beam, crying aloud with all the authority I could put

into my voice--

"You fool, man! What in the world are you trying to do? Come down at

once!"

My energetic actions and words combined had an immediate effect upon him

for which I blessed Heaven; for he looked up from his horrid task,

stared hard at me for a second or two, and then came wriggling along

like a great cat to intercept me. He came by a series of leaps and

bounds and at an astonishing pace, and the way he moved somehow inspired

me with a fresh horror, for it did not seem the natural movement of a

human being at all, but more, as I have said, like that of some lithe

wild animal.

He was close upon me. I had no clear idea of what exactly I meant to do.

I could see his face plainly now; he was grinning cruelly; the eyes were

positively luminous, and the menacing expression of the mouth was most

distressing to look upon. Otherwise it was the face of a chalk man,

white and dead, with all the semblance of the living human drawn out of

it. Between his teeth he held my clasp knife, which he must have taken

from me in my sleep, and with a flash I recalled his anxiety to know

exactly which pocket it was in.

"Drop that knife!" I shouted at him, "and drop after it yourself--"

"Don't you dare to stop me!" he hissed, the breath coming between his

lips across the knife that he held in his teeth. "Nothing in the world

can stop me now--I have promised--and I must do it. I can't hold out any

longer."

"Then drop the knife and I'll help you," I shouted back in his face. "I

promise--"

"No use," he cried, laughing a little, "I must do it and you can't stop

me."

I heard a sound of laughter, too, somewhere in the air behind me. The

next second Shorthouse came at me with a single bound.

To this day I cannot quite tell how it happened. It is still a wild

confusion and a fever of horror in my mind, but from somewhere I drew

more than my usual allowance of strength, and before he could well have

realised what I meant to do, I had his throat between my fingers. He

opened his teeth and the knife dropped at once, for I gave him a squeeze

he need never forget. Before, my muscles had felt like so much soaked

paper; now they recovered their natural strength, and more besides. I

managed to work ourselves along the rafter until the hay was beneath us,

and then, completely exhausted, I let go my hold and we swung round

together and dropped on to the hay, he clawing at me in the air even as

we fell.

The struggle that began by my fighting for his life ended in a wild

effort to save my own, for Shorthouse was quite beside himself, and had

no idea what he was doing. Indeed, he has always averred that he

remembers nothing of the entire night's experiences after the time when

he first woke me from sleep. A sort of deadly mist settled over him, he

declares, and he lost all sense of his own identity. The rest was a

blank until he came to his senses under a mass of hay with me on the top

of him.

It was the hay that saved us, first by breaking the fall and then by

impeding his movements so that I was able to prevent his choking me to

death.

THE WOOD OF THE DEAD

One summer, in my wanderings with a knapsack, I was at luncheon in the

room of a wayside inn in the western country, when the door opened and

there entered an old rustic, who crossed close to my end of the table

and sat himself down very quietly in the seat by the bow window. We

exchanged glances, or, properly speaking, nods, for at the moment I did

not actually raise my eyes to his face, so concerned was I with the

important business of satisfying an appetite gained by tramping twelve

miles over a difficult country.

The fine warm rain of seven o'clock, which had since risen in a kind of

luminous mist about the tree tops, now floated far overhead in a deep

blue sky, and the day was settling down into a blaze of golden light. It

was one of those days peculiar to Somerset and North Devon, when the

orchards shine and the meadows seem to add a radiance of their own, so

brilliantly soft are the colourings of grass and foliage.

The inn-keeper's daughter, a little maiden with a simple country

loveliness, presently entered with a foaming pewter mug, enquired after

my welfare, and went out again. Apparently she had not noticed the old

man sitting in the settle by the bow window, nor had he, for his part,

so much as once turned his head in our direction.

Under ordinary circumstances I should probably have given no thought to

this other occupant of the room; but the fact that it was supposed to be

reserved for my private use, and the singular thing that he sat looking

aimlessly out of the window, with no attempt to engage me in

conversation, drew my eyes more than once somewhat curiously upon him,

and I soon caught myself wondering why he sat there so silently, and

always with averted head.

He was, I saw, a rather bent old man in rustic dress, and the skin of

his face was wrinkled like that of an apple; corduroy trousers were

caught up with a string below the knee, and he wore a sort of brown

fustian jacket that was very much faded. His thin hand rested upon a

stoutish stick. He wore no hat and carried none, and I noticed that his

head, covered with silvery hair, was finely shaped and gave the

impression of something noble.

Though rather piqued by his studied disregard of my presence, I came to

the conclusion that he probably had something to do with the little

hostel and had a perfect right to use this room with freedom, and I

finished my luncheon without breaking the silence and then took the

settle opposite to smoke a pipe before going on my way.

Through the open window came the scents of the blossoming fruit trees;

the orchard was drenched in sunshine and the branches danced lazily in

the breeze; the grass below fairly shone with white and yellow daisies,

and the red roses climbing in profusion over the casement mingled their

perfume with the sweetly penetrating odour of the sea.

It was a place to dawdle in, to lie and dream away a whole afternoon,

watching the sleepy butterflies and listening to the chorus of birds

which seemed to fill every corner of the sky. Indeed, I was already

debating in my mind whether to linger and enjoy it all instead of taking

the strenuous pathway over the hills, when the old rustic in the settle

opposite suddenly turned his face towards me for the first time and

began to speak.

His voice had a quiet dreamy note in it that was quite in harmony with

the day and the scene, but it sounded far away, I thought, almost as

though it came to me from outside where the shadows were weaving their

eternal tissue of dreams upon the garden floor. Moreover, there was no

trace in it of the rough quality one might naturally have expected, and,

now that I saw the full face of the speaker for the first time, I noted

with something like a start that the deep, gentle eyes seemed far more

in keeping with the timbre of the voice than with the rough and very

countrified appearance of the clothes and manner. His voice set pleasant

waves of sound in motion towards me, and the actual words, if I remember

rightly, were--

"You are a stranger in these parts?" or "Is not this part of the country

strange to you?"

There was no "sir," nor any outward and visible sign of the deference

usually paid by real country folk to the town-bred visitor, but in its

place a gentleness, almost a sweetness, of polite sympathy that was far

more of a compliment than either.

I answered that I was wandering on foot through a part of the country

that was wholly new to me, and that I was surprised not to find a place

of such idyllic loveliness marked upon my map.

"I have lived here all my life," he said, with a sigh, "and am never

tired of coming back to it again."

"Then you no longer live in the immediate neighbourhood?"

"I have moved," he answered briefly, adding after a pause in which his

eyes seemed to wander wistfully to the wealth of blossoms beyond the

window; "but I am almost sorry, for nowhere else have I found the

sunshine lie so warmly, the flowers smell so sweetly, or the winds and

streams make such tender music. . . ."

His voice died away into a thin stream of sound that lost itself in the

rustle of the rose-leaves climbing in at the window, for he turned his

head away from me as he spoke and looked out into the garden. But it was

impossible to conceal my surprise, and I raised my eyes in frank

astonishment on hearing so poetic an utterance from such a figure of a

man, though at the same time realising that it was not in the least

inappropriate, and that, in fact, no other sort of expression could have

properly been expected from him.

"I am sure you are right," I answered at length, when it was clear he

had ceased speaking; "or there is something of enchantment here--of real

fairy-like enchantment--that makes me think of the visions of childhood

days, before one knew anything of--of--"

I had been oddly drawn into his vein of speech, some inner force

compelling me. But here the spell passed and I could not catch the

thoughts that had a moment before opened a long vista before my inner

vision.

"To tell you the truth," I concluded lamely, "the place fascinates me

and I am in two minds about going further--"

Even at this stage I remember thinking it odd that I should be talking

like this with a stranger whom I met in a country inn, for it has always

been one of my failings that to strangers my manner is brief to

surliness. It was as though we were figures meeting in a dream, speaking

without sound, obeying laws not operative in the everyday working world,

and about to play with a new scale of space and time perhaps. But my

astonishment passed quickly into an entirely different feeling when I

became aware that the old man opposite had turned his head from the

window again, and was regarding me with eyes so bright they seemed

almost to shine with an inner flame. His gaze was fixed upon my face

with an intense ardour, and his whole manner had suddenly become alert

and concentrated. There was something about him I now felt for the first

time that made little thrills of excitement run up and down my back. I

met his look squarely, but with an inward tremor.

"Stay, then, a little while longer," he said in a much lower and deeper

voice than before; "stay, and I will teach you something of the purpose

of my coming."

He stopped abruptly. I was conscious of a decided shiver.

"You have a special purpose then--in coming back?" I asked, hardly

knowing what I was saying.

"To call away someone," he went on in the same thrilling voice, "someone

who is not quite ready to come, but who is needed elsewhere for a

worthier purpose." There was a sadness in his manner that mystified me

more than ever.

"You mean--?" I began, with an unaccountable access of trembling.

"I have come for someone who must soon move, even as I have moved."

He looked me through and through with a dreadfully piercing gaze, but I

met his eyes with a full straight stare, trembling though I was, and I

was aware that something stirred within me that had never stirred

before, though for the life of me I could not have put a name to it, or

have analysed its nature. Something lifted and rolled away. For one

single second I understood clearly that the past and the future exist

actually side by side in one immense Present; that it was _I_ who moved

to and fro among shifting, protean appearances.

The old man dropped his eyes from my face, and the momentary glimpse of

a mightier universe passed utterly away. Reason regained its sway over a

dull, limited kingdom.

"Come to-night," I heard the old man say, "come to me to-night into the

Wood of the Dead. Come at midnight--"

Involuntarily I clutched the arm of the settle for support, for I then

felt that I was speaking with someone who knew more of the real things

that are and will be, than I could ever know while in the body, working

through the ordinary channels of sense--and this curious half-promise of

a partial lifting of the veil had its undeniable effect upon me.

The breeze from the sea had died away outside, and the blossoms were

still. A yellow butterfly floated lazily past the window. The song of

the birds hushed--I smelt the sea--I smelt the perfume of heated summer

air rising from fields and flowers, the ineffable scents of June and of

the long days of the year--and with it, from countless green meadows

beyond, came the hum of myriad summer life, children's voices, sweet

pipings, and the sound of water falling.

I knew myself to be on the threshold of a new order of experience--of an

ecstasy. Something drew me forth with a sense of inexpressible yearning

towards the being of this strange old man in the window seat, and for a

moment I knew what it was to taste a mighty and wonderful sensation, and

to touch the highest pinnacle of joy I have ever known. It lasted for

less than a second, and was gone; but in that brief instant of time the

same terrible lucidity came to me that had already shown me how the past

and future exist in the present, and I realised and understood that

pleasure and pain are one and the same force, for the joy I had just

experienced included also all the pain I ever had felt, or ever could

feel. . . .

The sunshine grew to dazzling radiance, faded, passed away. The shadows

paused in their dance upon the grass, deepened a moment, and then melted

into air. The flowers of the fruit trees laughed with their little

silvery laughter as the wind sighed over their radiant eyes the old,

old tale of its personal love. Once or twice a voice called my name. A

wonderful sensation of lightness and power began to steal over me.

Suddenly the door opened and the inn-keeper's daughter came in. By all

ordinary standards, her's was a charming country loveliness, born of the

stars and wild-flowers, of moonlight shining through autumn mists upon

the river and the fields; yet, by contrast with the higher order of

beauty I had just momentarily been in touch with, she seemed almost

ugly. How dull her eyes, how thin her voice, how vapid her smile, and

insipid her whole presentment.

For a moment she stood between me and the occupant of the window seat

while I counted out the small change for my meal and for her services;

but when, an instant later, she moved aside, I saw that the settle was

empty and that there was no longer anyone in the room but our two

selves.

This discovery was no shock to me; indeed, I had almost expected it, and

the man had gone just as a figure goes out of a dream, causing no

surprise and leaving me as part and parcel of the same dream without

breaking of continuity. But, as soon as I had paid my bill and thus

resumed in very practical fashion the thread of my normal consciousness,

I turned to the girl and asked her if she knew the old man who had been

sitting in the window seat, and what he had meant by the Wood of the

Dead.

The maiden started visibly, glancing quickly round the empty room, but

answering simply that she had seen no one. I described him in great

detail, and then, as the description grew clearer, she turned a little

pale under her pretty sunburn and said very gravely that it must have

been the ghost.

"Ghost! What ghost?"

"Oh, the village ghost," she said quietly, coming closer to my chair

with a little nervous movement of genuine alarm, and adding in a lower

voice, "He comes before a death, they say!"

It was not difficult to induce the girl to talk, and the story she told

me, shorn of the superstition that had obviously gathered with the years

round the memory of a strangely picturesque figure, was an interesting

and peculiar one.

The inn, she said, was originally a farmhouse, occupied by a yeoman

farmer, evidently of a superior, if rather eccentric, character, who had

been very poor until he reached old age, when a son died suddenly in

the Colonies and left him an unexpected amount of money, almost a

fortune.

The old man thereupon altered no whit his simple manner of living, but

devoted his income entirely to the improvement of the village and to the

assistance of its inhabitants; he did this quite regardless of his

personal likes and dislikes, as if one and all were absolutely alike to

him, objects of a genuine and impersonal benevolence. People had always

been a little afraid of the man, not understanding his eccentricities,

but the simple force of this love for humanity changed all that in a

very short space of time; and before he died he came to be known as the

Father of the Village and was held in great love and veneration by all.

A short time before his end, however, he began to act queerly. He spent

his money just as usefully and wisely, but the shock of sudden wealth

after a life of poverty, people said, had unsettled his mind. He claimed

to see things that others did not see, to hear voices, and to have

visions. Evidently, he was not of the harmless, foolish, visionary

order, but a man of character and of great personal force, for the

people became divided in their opinions, and the vicar, good man,

regarded and treated him as a "special case." For many, his name and

atmosphere became charged almost with a spiritual influence that was

not of the best. People quoted texts about him; kept when possible out

of his way, and avoided his house after dark. None understood him, but

though the majority loved him, an element of dread and mystery became

associated with his name, chiefly owing to the ignorant gossip of the

few.

A grove of pine trees behind the farm--the girl pointed them out to me

on the slope of the hill--he said was the Wood of the Dead, because just

before anyone died in the village he saw them walk into that wood,

singing. None who went in ever came out again. He often mentioned the

names to his wife, who usually published them to all the inhabitants

within an hour of her husband's confidence; and it was found that the

people he had seen enter the wood--died. On warm summer nights he would

sometimes take an old stick and wander out, hatless, under the pines,

for he loved this wood, and used to say he met all his old friends

there, and would one day walk in there never to return. His wife tried

to break him gently off this habit, but he always had his own way; and

once, when she followed and found him standing under a great pine in the

thickest portion of the grove, talking earnestly to someone she could

not see, he turned and rebuked her very gently, but in such a way that

she never repeated the experiment, saying--

"You should never interrupt me, Mary, when I am talking with the others;

for they teach me, remember, wonderful things, and I must learn all I

can before I go to join them."

This story went like wild-fire through the village, increasing with

every repetition, until at length everyone was able to give an accurate

description of the great veiled figures the woman declared she had seen

moving among the trees where her husband stood. The innocent pine-grove

now became positively haunted, and the title of "Wood of the Dead" clung

naturally as if it had been applied to it in the ordinary course of

events by the compilers of the Ordnance Survey.

On the evening of his ninetieth birthday the old man went up to his wife

and kissed her. His manner was loving, and very gentle, and there was

something about him besides, she declared afterwards, that made her

slightly in awe of him and feel that he was almost more of a spirit than

a man.

He kissed her tenderly on both cheeks, but his eyes seemed to look

right through her as he spoke.

"Dearest wife," he said, "I am saying good-bye to you, for I am now

going into the Wood of the Dead, and I shall not return. Do not follow

me, or send to search, but be ready soon to come upon the same journey

yourself."

The good woman burst into tears and tried to hold him, but he easily

slipped from her hands, and she was afraid to follow him. Slowly she saw

him cross the field in the sunshine, and then enter the cool shadows of

the grove, where he disappeared from her sight.

That same night, much later, she woke to find him lying peacefully by

her side in bed, with one arm stretched out towards her, _dead_. Her

story was half believed, half doubted at the time, but in a very few

years afterwards it evidently came to be accepted by all the

countryside. A funeral service was held to which the people flocked in

great numbers, and everyone approved of the sentiment which led the

widow to add the words, "The Father of the Village," after the usual

texts which appeared upon the stone over his grave.

This, then, was the story I pieced together of the village ghost as the

little inn-keeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in the

parlour of the inn.

"But you're not the first to say you've seen him," the girl concluded;

"and your description is just what we've always heard, and that window,

they say, was just where he used to sit and think, and think, when he

was alive, and sometimes, they say, to cry for hours together."

"And would you feel afraid if you had seen him?" I asked, for the girl

seemed strangely moved and interested in the whole story.

"I think so," she answered timidly. "Surely, if he spoke to me. He did

speak to _you_, didn't he, sir?" she asked after a slight pause.

"He said he had come for someone."

"Come for someone," she repeated. "Did he say--" she went on

falteringly.

"No, he did not say for whom," I said quickly, noticing the sudden

shadow on her face and the tremulous voice.

"Are you really sure, sir?"

"Oh, quite sure," I answered cheerfully. "I did not even ask him." The

girl looked at me steadily for nearly a whole minute as though there

were many things she wished to tell me or to ask. But she said nothing,

and presently picked up her tray from the table and walked slowly out

of the room.

Instead of keeping to my original purpose and pushing on to the next

village over the hills, I ordered a room to be prepared for me at the

inn, and that afternoon I spent wandering about the fields and lying

under the fruit trees, watching the white clouds sailing out over the

sea. The Wood of the Dead I surveyed from a distance, but in the village

I visited the stone erected to the memory of the "Father of the

Village"--who was thus, evidently, no mythical personage--and saw also

the monuments of his fine unselfish spirit: the schoolhouse he built,

the library, the home for the aged poor, and the tiny hospital.

That night, as the clock in the church tower was striking half-past

eleven, I stealthily left the inn and crept through the dark orchard and

over the hayfield in the direction of the hill whose southern slope was

clothed with the Wood of the Dead. A genuine interest impelled me to the

adventure, but I also was obliged to confess to a certain sinking in my

heart as I stumbled along over the field in the darkness, for I was

approaching what might prove to be the birth-place of a real country

myth, and a spot already lifted by the imaginative thoughts of a

considerable number of people into the region of the haunted and

ill-omened.

The inn lay below me, and all round it the village clustered in a soft

black shadow unrelieved by a single light. The night was moonless, yet

distinctly luminous, for the stars crowded the sky. The silence of deep

slumber was everywhere; so still, indeed, that every time my foot kicked

against a stone I thought the sound must be heard below in the village

and waken the sleepers.

I climbed the hill slowly, thinking chiefly of the strange story of the

noble old man who had seized the opportunity to do good to his fellows

the moment it came his way, and wondering why the causes that operate

ceaselessly behind human life did not always select such admirable

instruments. Once or twice a night-bird circled swiftly over my head,

but the bats had long since gone to rest, and there was no other sign of

life stirring.

Then, suddenly, with a singular thrill of emotion, I saw the first trees

of the Wood of the Dead rise in front of me in a high black wall. Their

crests stood up like giant spears against the starry sky; and though

there was no perceptible movement of the air on my cheek I heard a

faint, rushing sound among their branches as the night breeze passed to

and fro over their countless little needles. A remote, hushed murmur

rose overhead and died away again almost immediately; for in these trees

the wind seems to be never absolutely at rest, and on the calmest day

there is always a sort of whispering music among their branches.

For a moment I hesitated on the edge of this dark wood, and listened

intently. Delicate perfumes of earth and bark stole out to meet me.

Impenetrable darkness faced me. Only the consciousness that I was

obeying an order, strangely given, and including a mighty privilege,

enabled me to find the courage to go forward and step in boldly under

the trees.

Instantly the shadows closed in upon me and "something" came forward to

meet me from the centre of the darkness. It would be easy enough to meet

my imagination half-way with fact, and say that a cold hand grasped my

own and led me by invisible paths into the unknown depths of the grove;

but at any rate, without stumbling, and always with the positive

knowledge that I was going straight towards the desired object, I

pressed on confidently and securely into the wood. So dark was it that,

at first, not a single star-beam pierced the roof of branches overhead;

and, as we moved forward side by side, the trees shifted silently past

us in long lines, row upon row, squadron upon squadron, like the units

of a vast, soundless army.

And, at length, we came to a comparatively open space where the trees

halted upon us for a while, and, looking up, I saw the white river of

the sky beginning to yield to the influence of a new light that now

seemed spreading swiftly across the heavens.

"It is the dawn coming," said the voice at my side that I certainly

recognised, but which seemed almost like a whispering from the trees,

"and we are now in the heart of the Wood of the Dead."

We seated ourselves on a moss-covered boulder and waited the coming of

the sun. With marvellous swiftness, it seemed to me, the light in the

east passed into the radiance of early morning, and when the wind awoke

and began to whisper in the tree tops, the first rays of the risen sun

fell between the trunks and rested in a circle of gold at our feet.

"Now, come with me," whispered my companion in the same deep voice, "for

time has no existence here, and that which I would show you is already

_there_!"

We trod gently and silently over the soft pine needles. Already the sun

was high over our heads, and the shadows of the trees coiled closely

about their feet. The wood became denser again, but occasionally we

passed through little open bits where we could smell the hot sunshine

and the dry, baked pine needles. Then, presently, we came to the edge of

the grove, and I saw a hayfield lying in the blaze of day, and two

horses basking lazily with switching tails in the shafts of a laden

hay-waggon.

So complete and vivid was the sense of reality, that I remember the

grateful realisation of the cool shade where we sat and looked out upon

the hot world beyond.

The last pitchfork had tossed up its fragrant burden, and the great

horses were already straining in the shafts after the driver, as he

walked slowly in front with one hand upon their bridles. He was a

stalwart fellow, with sunburned neck and hands. Then, for the first

time, I noticed, perched aloft upon the trembling throne of hay, the

figure of a slim young girl. I could not see her face, but her brown

hair escaped in disorder from a white sun-bonnet, and her still browner

hands held a well-worn hay rake. She was laughing and talking with the

driver, and he, from time to time, cast up at her ardent glances of

admiration--glances that won instant smiles and soft blushes in

response.

The cart presently turned into the roadway that skirted the edge of the

wood where we were sitting. I watched the scene with intense interest

and became so much absorbed in it that I quite forgot the manifold,

strange steps by which I was permitted to become a spectator.

"Come down and walk with me," cried the young fellow, stopping a moment

in front of the horses and opening wide his arms. "Jump! and I'll catch

you!"

"Oh, oh," she laughed, and her voice sounded to me as the happiest,

merriest laughter I had ever heard from a girl's throat. "Oh, oh! that's

all very well. But remember I'm Queen of the Hay, and I must ride!"

"Then I must come and ride beside you," he cried, and began at once to

climb up by way of the driver's seat. But, with a peal of silvery

laughter, she slipped down easily over the back of the hay to escape

him, and ran a little way along the road. I could see her quite clearly,

and noticed the charming, natural grace of her movements, and the

loving expression in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder to make

sure he was following. Evidently, she did not wish to escape for long,

certainly not for ever.

In two strides the big, brown swain was after her, leaving the horses to

do as they pleased. Another second and his arms would have caught the

slender waist and pressed the little body to his heart. But, just at

that instant, the old man beside me uttered a peculiar cry. It was low

and thrilling, and it went through me like a sharp sword.

HE had called her by her own name--and she had heard.

For a second she halted, glancing back with frightened eyes. Then, with

a brief cry of despair, the girl swerved aside and dived in swiftly

among the shadows of the trees.

But the young man saw the sudden movement and cried out to her

passionately--

"Not that way, my love! Not that way! It's the Wood of the Dead!"

She threw a laughing glance over her shoulder at him, and the wind

caught her hair and drew it out in a brown cloud under the sun. But the

next minute she was close beside me, lying on the breast of my

companion, and I was certain I heard the words repeatedly uttered with

many sighs: "Father, you called, and I have come. And I come willingly,

for I am very, very tired."

At any rate, so the words sounded to me, and mingled with them I seemed

to catch the answer in that deep, thrilling whisper I already knew: "And

you shall sleep, my child, sleep for a long, long time, until it is time

for you to begin the journey again."

In that brief second of time I had recognised the face and voice of the

inn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke from

the lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night,

the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the whole

scene was swallowed up in a wave of utter blackness.

Again the chill fingers seemed to seize my hand, and I was guided by the

way I had come to the edge of the wood, and crossing the hayfield still

slumbering in the starlight, I crept back to the inn and went to bed.

A year later I happened to be in the same part of the country, and the

memory of the strange summer vision returned to me with the added

softness of distance. I went to the old village and had tea under the

same orchard trees at the same inn.

But the little maid of the inn did not show her face, and I took

occasion to enquire of her father as to her welfare and her whereabouts.

"Married, no doubt," I laughed, but with a strange feeling that clutched

at my heart.

"No, sir," replied the inn-keeper sadly, "not married--though she was

just going to be--but dead. She got a sunstroke in the hayfields, just a

few days after you were here, if I remember rightly, and she was gone

from us in less than a week."

SMITH: AN EPISODE IN A LODGING-HOUSE

"When I was a medical student," began the doctor, half turning towards

his circle of listeners in the firelight, "I came across one or two very

curious human beings; but there was one fellow I remember particularly,

for he caused me the most vivid, and I think the most uncomfortable,

emotions I have ever known.

"For many months I knew Smith only by name as the occupant of the floor

above me. Obviously his name meant nothing to me. Moreover I was busy

with lectures, reading, cliniques and the like, and had little leisure

to devise plans for scraping acquaintance with any of the other lodgers

in the house. Then chance brought us curiously together, and this fellow

Smith left a deep impression upon me as the result of our first meeting.

At the time the strength of this first impression seemed quite

inexplicable to me, but looking back at the episode now from a

stand-point of greater knowledge I judge the fact to have been that he

stirred my curiosity to an unusual degree, and at the same time awakened

my sense of horror--whatever that may be in a medical student--about as

deeply and permanently as these two emotions were capable of being

stirred at all in the particular system and set of nerves called ME.

"How he knew that I was interested in the study of languages was

something I could never explain, but one day, quite unannounced, he came

quietly into my room in the evening and asked me point-blank if I knew

enough Hebrew to help him in the pronunciation of certain words.

"He caught me along the line of least resistance, and I was greatly

flattered to be able to give him the desired information; but it was

only when he had thanked me and was gone that I realised I had been in

the presence of an unusual individuality. For the life of me I could not

quite seize and label the peculiarities of what I felt to be a very

striking personality, but it was borne in upon me that he was a man

apart from his fellows, a mind that followed a line leading away from

ordinary human intercourse and human interests, and into regions that

left in his atmosphere something remote, rarefied, chilling.

"The moment he was gone I became conscious of two things--an intense

curiosity to know more about this man and what his real interests were,

and secondly, the fact that my skin was crawling and that my hair had a

tendency to rise."

The doctor paused a moment here to puff hard at his pipe, which,

however, had gone out beyond recall without the assistance of a match;

and in the deep silence, which testified to the genuine interest of his

listeners, someone poked the fire up into a little blaze, and one or two

others glanced over their shoulders into the dark distances of the big

hall.

"On looking back," he went on, watching the momentary flames in the

grate, "I see a short, thick-set man of perhaps forty-five, with immense

shoulders and small, slender hands. The contrast was noticeable, for I

remember thinking that such a giant frame and such slim finger bones

hardly belonged together. His head, too, was large and very long, the

head of an idealist beyond all question, yet with an unusually strong

development of the jaw and chin. Here again was a singular

contradiction, though I am better able now to appreciate its full

meaning, with a greater experience in judging the values of

physiognomy. For this meant, of course, an enthusiastic idealism

balanced and kept in check by will and judgment--elements usually

deficient in dreamers and visionaries.

"At any rate, here was a being with probably a very wide range of

possibilities, a machine with a pendulum that most likely had an unusual

length of swing.

"The man's hair was exceedingly fine, and the lines about his nose and

mouth were cut as with a delicate steel instrument in wax. His eyes I

have left to the last. They were large and quite changeable, not in

colour only, but in character, size, and shape. Occasionally they seemed

the eyes of someone else, if you can understand what I mean, and at the

same time, in their shifting shades of blue, green, and a nameless sort

of dark grey, there was a sinister light in them that lent to the whole

face an aspect almost alarming. Moreover, they were the most luminous

optics I think I have ever seen in any human being.

"There, then, at the risk of a wearisome description, is Smith as I saw

him for the first time that winter's evening in my shabby student's

rooms in Edinburgh. And yet the real part of him, of course, I have

left untouched, for it is both indescribable and un-get-atable. I have

spoken already of an atmosphere of warning and aloofness he carried

about with him. It is impossible further to analyse the series of little

shocks his presence always communicated to my being; but there was that

about him which made me instantly on the _qui vive_ in his presence,

every nerve alert, every sense strained and on the watch. I do not mean

that he deliberately suggested danger, but rather that he brought forces

in his wake which automatically warned the nervous centres of my system

to be on their guard and alert.

"Since the days of my first acquaintance with this man I have lived

through other experiences and have seen much I cannot pretend to explain

or understand; but, so far in my life, I have only once come across a

human being who suggested a disagreeable familiarity with unholy things,

and who made me feel uncanny and 'creepy' in his presence; and that

unenviable individual was Mr. Smith.

"What his occupation was during the day I never knew. I think he slept

until the sun set. No one ever saw him on the stairs, or heard him move

in his room during the day. He was a creature of the shadows, who

apparently preferred darkness to light. Our landlady either knew

nothing, or would say nothing. At any rate she found no fault, and I

have since wondered often by what magic this fellow was able to convert

a common landlady of a common lodging-house into a discreet and

uncommunicative person. This alone was a sign of genius of some sort.

"'He's been here with me for years--long before you come, an' I don't

interfere or ask no questions of what doesn't concern me, as long as

people pays their rent,' was the only remark on the subject that I ever

succeeded in winning from that quarter, and it certainly told me nothing

nor gave me any encouragement to ask for further information.

"Examinations, however, and the general excitement of a medical

student's life for a time put Mr. Smith completely out of my head. For a

long period he did not call upon me again, and for my part, I felt no

courage to return his unsolicited visit.

"Just then, however, there came a change in the fortunes of those who

controlled my very limited income, and I was obliged to give up my

ground-floor and move aloft to more modest chambers on the top of the

house. Here I was directly over Smith, and had to pass his door to

reach my own.

"It so happened that about this time I was frequently called out at all

hours of the night for the maternity cases which a fourth-year student

takes at a certain period of his studies, and on returning from one of

these visits at about two o'clock in the morning I was surprised to hear

the sound of voices as I passed his door. A peculiar sweet odour, too,

not unlike the smell of incense, penetrated into the passage.

"I went upstairs very quietly, wondering what was going on there at this

hour of the morning. To my knowledge Smith never had visitors. For a

moment I hesitated outside the door with one foot on the stairs. All my

interest in this strange man revived, and my curiosity rose to a point

not far from action. At last I might learn something of the habits of

this lover of the night and the darkness.

"The sound of voices was plainly audible, Smith's predominating so much

that I never could catch more than points of sound from the other,

penetrating now and then the steady stream of his voice. Not a single

word reached me, at least, not a word that I could understand, though

the voice was loud and distinct, and it was only afterwards that I

realised he must have been speaking in a foreign language.

"The sound of footsteps, too, was equally distinct. Two persons were

moving about the room, passing and repassing the door, one of them a

light, agile person, and the other ponderous and somewhat awkward.

Smith's voice went on incessantly with its odd, monotonous droning, now

loud, now soft, as he crossed and re-crossed the floor. The other person

was also on the move, but in a different and less regular fashion, for I

heard rapid steps that seemed to end sometimes in stumbling, and quick

sudden movements that brought up with a violent lurching against the

wall or furniture.

"As I listened to Smith's voice, moreover, I began to feel afraid. There

was something in the sound that made me feel intuitively he was in a

tight place, and an impulse stirred faintly in me--very faintly, I

admit--to knock at the door and inquire if he needed help.

"But long before the impulse could translate itself into an act, or even

before it had been properly weighed and considered by the mind, I heard

a voice close beside me in the air, a sort of hushed whisper which I am

certain was Smith speaking, though the sound did not seem to have come

to me through the door. It was close in my very ear, as though he stood

beside me, and it gave me such a start, that I clutched the banisters to

save myself from stepping backwards and making a clatter on the stairs.

"'There is nothing you can do to help me,' it said distinctly, 'and you

will be much safer in your own room.'

"I am ashamed to this day of the pace at which I covered the flight of

stairs in the darkness to the top floor, and of the shaking hand with

which I lit my candles and bolted the door. But, there it is, just as it

happened.

"This midnight episode, so odd and yet so trivial in itself, fired me

with more curiosity than ever about my fellow-lodger. It also made me

connect him in my mind with a sense of fear and distrust. I never saw

him, yet I was often, and uncomfortably, aware of his presence in the

upper regions of that gloomy lodging-house. Smith and his secret mode of

life and mysterious pursuits, somehow contrived to awaken in my being a

line of reflection that disturbed my comfortable condition of ignorance.

I never saw him, as I have said, and exchanged no sort of communication

with him, yet it seemed to me that his mind was in contact with mine,

and some of the strange forces of his atmosphere filtered through into

my being and disturbed my equilibrium. Those upper floors became haunted

for me after dark, and, though outwardly our lives never came into

contact, I became unwillingly involved in certain pursuits on which his

mind was centred. I felt that he was somehow making use of me against my

will, and by methods which passed my comprehension.

"I was at that time, moreover, in the heavy, unquestioning state of

materialism which is common to medical students when they begin to

understand something of the human anatomy and nervous system, and jump

at once to the conclusion that they control the universe and hold in

their forceps the last word of life and death. I 'knew it all,' and

regarded a belief in anything beyond matter as the wanderings of weak,

or at best, untrained minds. And this condition of mind, of course,

added to the strength of this upsetting fear which emanated from the

floor below and began slowly to take possession of me.

"Though I kept no notes of the subsequent events in this matter, they

made too deep an impression for me ever to forget the sequence in which

they occurred. Without difficulty I can recall the next step in the

adventure with Smith, for adventure it rapidly grew to be."

The doctor stopped a moment and laid his pipe on the table behind him

before continuing. The fire had burned low, and no one stirred to poke

it. The silence in the great hall was so deep that when the speaker's

pipe touched the table the sound woke audible echoes at the far end

among the shadows.

"One evening, while I was reading, the door of my room opened and Smith

came in. He made no attempt at ceremony. It was after ten o'clock and I

was tired, but the presence of the man immediately galvanised me into

activity. My attempts at ordinary politeness he thrust on one side at

once, and began asking me to vocalise, and then pronounce for him,

certain Hebrew words; and when this was done he abruptly inquired if I

was not the fortunate possessor of a very rare Rabbinical Treatise,

which he named.

"How he knew that I possessed this book puzzled me exceedingly; but I

was still more surprised to see him cross the room and take it out of

my book-shelf almost before I had had time to answer in the affirmative.

Evidently he knew exactly where it was kept. This excited my curiosity

beyond all bounds, and I immediately began asking him questions; and

though, out of sheer respect for the man, I put them very delicately to

him, and almost by way of mere conversation, he had only one reply for

the lot. He would look up at me from the pages of the book with an

expression of complete comprehension on his extraordinary features,

would bow his head a little and say very gravely--

"'That, of course, is a perfectly proper question,'--which was

absolutely all I could ever get out of him.

"On this particular occasion he stayed with me perhaps ten or fifteen

minutes. Then he went quickly downstairs to his room with my Hebrew

Treatise in his hand, and I heard him close and bolt his door.

"But a few moments later, before I had time to settle down to my book

again, or to recover from the surprise his visit had caused me, I heard

the door open, and there stood Smith once again beside my chair. He made

no excuse for his second interruption, but bent his head down to the

level of my reading lamp and peered across the flame straight into my

eyes.

"'I hope,' he whispered, 'I hope you are never disturbed at night?'

"'Eh?' I stammered, 'disturbed at night? Oh no, thanks, at least, not

that I know of--'

"'I'm glad,' he replied gravely, appearing not to notice my confusion

and surprise at his question. 'But, remember, should it ever be the

case, please let me know at once.'

"And he was gone down the stairs and into his room again.

"For some minutes I sat reflecting upon his strange behaviour. He was

not mad, I argued, but was the victim of some harmless delusion that had

gradually grown upon him as a result of his solitary mode of life; and

from the books he used, I judged that it had something to do with

mediæval magic, or some system of ancient Hebrew mysticism. The words he

asked me to pronounce for him were probably 'Words of Power,' which,

when uttered with the vehemence of a strong will behind them, were

supposed to produce physical results, or set up vibrations in one's own

inner being that had the effect of a partial lifting of the veil.

"I sat thinking about the man, and his way of living, and the probable

effects in the long-run of his dangerous experiments, and I can recall

perfectly well the sensation of disappointment that crept over me when I

realised that I had labelled his particular form of aberration, and that

my curiosity would therefore no longer be excited.

"For some time I had been sitting alone with these reflections--it may

have been ten minutes or it may have been half an hour--when I was

aroused from my reverie by the knowledge that someone was again in the

room standing close beside my chair. My first thought was that Smith had

come back again in his swift, unaccountable manner, but almost at the

same moment I realised that this could not be the case at all. For the

door faced my position, and it certainly had not been opened again.

"Yet, someone was in the room, moving cautiously to and fro, watching

me, almost touching me. I was as sure of it as I was of myself, and

though at the moment I do not think I was actually afraid, I am bound to

admit that a certain weakness came over me and that I felt that strange

disinclination for action which is probably the beginning of the

horrible paralysis of real terror. I should have been glad to hide

myself, if that had been possible, to cower into a corner, or behind a

door, or anywhere so that I could not be watched and observed.

"But, overcoming my nervousness with an effort of the will, I got up

quickly out of my chair and held the reading lamp aloft so that it shone

into all the corners like a searchlight.

"The room was utterly empty! It was utterly empty, at least, to the

_eye_, but to the nerves, and especially to that combination of sense

perception which is made up by all the senses acting together, and by no

one in particular, there was a person standing there at my very elbow.

"I say 'person,' for I can think of no appropriate word. For, if it

_was_ a human being, I can only affirm that I had the overwhelming

conviction that it was _not_, but that it was some form of life wholly

unknown to me both as to its essence and its nature. A sensation of

gigantic force and power came with it, and I remember vividly to this

day my terror on realising that I was close to an invisible being who

could crush me as easily as I could crush a fly, and who could see my

every movement while itself remaining invisible.

"To this terror was added the certain knowledge that the 'being' kept

in my proximity for a definite purpose. And that this purpose had some

direct bearing upon my well-being, indeed upon my life, I was equally

convinced; for I became aware of a sensation of growing lassitude as

though the vitality were being steadily drained out of my body. My heart

began to beat irregularly at first, then faintly. I was conscious, even

within a few minutes, of a general drooping of the powers of life in the

whole system, an ebbing away of self-control, and a distinct approach of

drowsiness and torpor.

"The power to move, or to think out any mode of resistance, was fast

leaving me, when there rose, in the distance as it were, a tremendous

commotion. A door opened with a clatter, and I heard the peremptory and

commanding tones of a human voice calling aloud in a language I could

not comprehend. It was Smith, my fellow-lodger, calling up the stairs;

and his voice had not sounded for more than a few seconds, when I felt

something withdrawn from my presence, from my person, indeed from my

_very skin_. It seemed as if there was a rushing of air and some large

creature swept by me at about the level of my shoulders. Instantly the

pressure on my heart was relieved, and the atmosphere seemed to resume

its normal condition.

"Smith's door closed quietly downstairs, as I put the lamp down with

trembling hands. What had happened I do not know; only, I was alone

again and my strength was returning as rapidly as it had left me.

"I went across the room and examined myself in the glass. The skin was

very pale, and the eyes dull. My temperature, I found, was a little

below normal and my pulse faint and irregular. But these smaller signs

of disturbance were as nothing compared with the feeling I had--though

no outward signs bore testimony to the fact--that I had narrowly escaped

a real and ghastly catastrophe. I felt shaken, somehow, shaken to the

very roots of my being."

The doctor rose from his chair and crossed over to the dying fire, so

that no one could see the expression on his face as he stood with his

back to the grate, and continued his weird tale.

"It would be wearisome," he went on in a lower voice, looking over our

heads as though he still saw the dingy top floor of that haunted

Edinburgh lodging-house; "it would be tedious for me at this length of

time to analyse my feelings, or attempt to reproduce for you the

thorough examination to which I endeavoured then to subject my whole

being, intellectual, emotional, and physical. I need only mention the

dominant emotion with which this curious episode left me--the indignant

anger against myself that I could ever have lost my self-control enough

to come under the sway of so gross and absurd a delusion. This protest,

however, I remember making with all the emphasis possible. And I also

remember noting that it brought me very little satisfaction, for it was

the protest of my reason only, when all the rest of my being was up in

arms against its conclusions.

"My dealings with the 'delusion,' however, were not yet over for the

night; for very early next morning, somewhere about three o'clock, I was

awakened by a curiously stealthy noise in the room, and the next minute

there followed a crash as if all my books had been swept bodily from

their shelf on to the floor.

"But this time I was not frightened. Cursing the disturbance with all

the resounding and harmless words I could accumulate, I jumped out of

bed and lit the candle in a second, and in the first dazzle of the

flaring match--but before the wick had time to catch--I was certain I

_saw_ a dark grey shadow, of ungainly shape, and with something more or

less like a human head, drive rapidly past the side of the wall farthest

from me and disappear into the gloom by the angle of the door.

"I waited one single second to be sure the candle was alight, and then

dashed after it, but before I had gone two steps, my foot stumbled

against something hard piled up on the carpet and I only just saved

myself from falling headlong. I picked myself up and found that all the

books from what I called my 'language shelf' were strewn across the

floor. The room, meanwhile, as a minute's search revealed, was quite

empty. I looked in every corner and behind every stick of furniture, and

a student's bedroom on a top floor, costing twelve shillings a week, did

not hold many available hiding-places, as you may imagine.

"The crash, however, was explained. Some very practical and physical

force had thrown the books from their resting-place. That, at least, was

beyond all doubt. And as I replaced them on the shelf and noted that not

one was missing, I busied myself mentally with the sore problem of how

the agent of this little practical joke had gained access to my room,

and then escaped again. _For my door was locked and bolted._

"Smith's odd question as to whether I was disturbed in the night, and

his warning injunction to let him know at once if such were the case,

now of course returned to affect me as I stood there in the early

morning, cold and shivering on the carpet; but I realised at the same

moment how impossible it would be for me to admit that a more than

usually vivid nightmare could have any connection with himself. I would

rather stand a hundred of these mysterious visitations than consult such

a man as to their possible cause.

"A knock at the door interrupted my reflections, and I gave a start that

sent the candle grease flying.

"'Let me in,' came in Smith's voice.

"I unlocked the door. He came in fully dressed. His face wore a curious

pallor. It seemed to me to be under the skin and to shine through and

almost make it luminous. His eyes were exceedingly bright.

"I was wondering what in the world to say to him, or how he would

explain his visit at such an hour, when he closed the door behind him

and came close up to me--uncomfortably close.

"'You should have called me at once,' he said in his whispering voice,

fixing his great eyes on my face.

"I stammered something about an awful dream, but he ignored my remark

utterly, and I caught his eye wandering next--if any movement of those

optics can be described as 'wandering'--to the book-shelf. I watched

him, unable to move my gaze from his person. The man fascinated me

horribly for some reason. Why, in the devil's name, was he up and

dressed at three in the morning? How did he know anything had happened

unusual in my room? Then his whisper began again.

"'It's your amazing vitality that causes you this annoyance,' he said,

shifting his eyes back to mine.

"I gasped. Something in his voice or manner turned my blood into ice.

"'That's the real attraction,' he went on. 'But if this continues one of

us will have to leave, you know.'

"I positively could not find a word to say in reply. The channels of

speech dried up within me. I simply stared and wondered what he would

say next. I watched him in a sort of dream, and as far as I can

remember, he asked me to promise to call him sooner another time, and

then began to walk round the room, uttering strange sounds, and making

signs with his arms and hands until he reached the door. Then he was

gone in a second, and I had closed and locked the door behind him.

"After this, the Smith adventure drew rapidly to a climax. It was a week

or two later, and I was coming home between two and three in the morning

from a maternity case, certain features of which for the time being had

very much taken possession of my mind, so much so, indeed, that I passed

Smith's door without giving him a single thought.

"The gas jet on the landing was still burning, but so low that it made

little impression on the waves of deep shadow that lay across the

stairs. Overhead, the faintest possible gleam of grey showed that the

morning was not far away. A few stars shone down through the sky-light.

The house was still as the grave, and the only sound to break the

silence was the rushing of the wind round the walls and over the roof.

But this was a fitful sound, suddenly rising and as suddenly falling

away again, and it only served to intensify the silence.

"I had already reached my own landing when I gave a violent start. It

was automatic, almost a reflex action in fact, for it was only when I

caught myself fumbling at the door handle and thinking where I could

conceal myself quickest that I realised a voice had sounded close beside

me in the air. It was the same voice I had heard before, and it seemed

to me to be calling for help. And yet the very same minute I pushed on

into the room, determined to disregard it, and seeking to persuade

myself it was the creaking of the boards under my weight or the rushing

noise of the wind that had deceived me.

"But hardly had I reached the table where the candles stood when the

sound was unmistakably repeated: 'Help! help!' And this time it was

accompanied by what I can only describe as a vivid tactile

hallucination. I was touched: the _skin_ of my arm was clutched by

fingers.

"Some compelling force sent me headlong downstairs as if the haunting

forces of the whole world were at my heels. At Smith's door I paused.

The force of his previous warning injunction to seek his aid without

delay acted suddenly and I leant my whole weight against the panels,

little dreaming that I should be called upon to give help rather than

to receive it.

"The door yielded at once, and I burst into a room that was so full of a

choking vapour, moving in slow clouds, that at first I could distinguish

nothing at all but a set of what seemed to be huge shadows passing in

and out of the mist. Then, gradually, I perceived that a red lamp on the

mantelpiece gave all the light there was, and that the room which I now

entered for the first time was almost empty of furniture.

"The carpet was rolled back and piled in a heap in the corner, and upon

the white boards of the floor I noticed a large circle drawn in black of

some material that emitted a faint glowing light and was apparently

smoking. Inside this circle, as well as at regular intervals outside it,

were curious-looking designs, also traced in the same black, smoking

substance. These, too, seemed to emit a feeble light of their own.

"My first impression on entering the room had been that it was full

of--_people_, I was going to say; but that hardly expresses my meaning.

_Beings_, they certainly were, but it was borne in upon me beyond the

possibility of doubt, that they were not human beings. That I had caught

a momentary glimpse of living, intelligent entities I can never doubt,

but I am equally convinced, though I cannot prove it, that these

entities were from some other scheme of evolution altogether, and had

nothing to do with the ordinary human life, either incarnate or

discarnate.

"But, whatever they were, the visible appearance of them was exceedingly

fleeting. I no longer saw anything, though I still felt convinced of

their immediate presence. They were, moreover, of the same order of life

as the visitant in my bedroom of a few nights before, and their

proximity to my atmosphere in numbers, instead of singly as before,

conveyed to my mind something that was quite terrible and overwhelming.

I fell into a violent trembling, and the perspiration poured from my

face in streams.

"They were in constant motion about me. They stood close to my side;

moved behind me; brushed past my shoulder; stirred the hair on my

forehead; and circled round me without ever actually touching me, yet

always pressing closer and closer. Especially in the air just over my

head there seemed ceaseless movement, and it was accompanied by a

confused noise of whispering and sighing that threatened every moment to

become articulate in words. To my intense relief, however, I heard no

distinct words, and the noise continued more like the rising and falling

of the wind than anything else I can imagine.

"But the characteristic of these 'Beings' that impressed me most

strongly at the time, and of which I have carried away the most

permanent recollection, was that each one of them possessed what seemed

to be a _vibrating centre_ which impelled it with tremendous force and

caused a rapid whirling motion of the atmosphere as it passed me. The

air was full of these little vortices of whirring, rotating force, and

whenever one of them pressed me too closely I felt as if the nerves in

that particular portion of my body had been literally drawn out,

absolutely depleted of vitality, and then immediately replaced--but

replaced dead, flabby, useless.

"Then, suddenly, for the first time my eyes fell upon Smith. He was

crouching against the wall on my right, in an attitude that was

obviously defensive, and it was plain he was in extremities. The terror

on his face was pitiable, but at the same time there was another

expression about the tightly clenched teeth and mouth which showed that

he had not lost all control of himself. He wore the most resolute

expression I have ever seen on a human countenance, and, though for the

moment at a fearful disadvantage, he looked like a man who had

confidence in himself, and, in spite of the working of fear, was waiting

his opportunity.

"For my part, I was face to face with a situation so utterly beyond my

knowledge and comprehension, that I felt as helpless as a child, and as

useless.

"'Help me back--quick--into that circle,' I heard him half cry, half

whisper to me across the moving vapours.

"My only value appears to have been that I was not afraid to act.

Knowing nothing of the forces I was dealing with I had no idea of the

deadly perils risked, and I sprang forward and caught him by the arms.

He threw all his weight in my direction, and by our combined efforts his

body left the wall and lurched across the floor towards the circle.

"Instantly there descended upon us, out of the empty air of that

smoke-laden room, a force which I can only compare to the pushing,

driving power of a great wind pent up within a narrow space. It was

almost explosive in its effect, and it seemed to operate upon all parts

of my body equally. It fell upon us with a rushing noise that filled my

ears and made me think for a moment the very walls and roof of the

building had been torn asunder. Under its first blow we staggered back

against the wall, and I understood plainly that its purpose was to

prevent us getting back into the circle in the middle of the floor.

"Pouring with perspiration, and breathless, with every muscle strained

to the very utmost, we at length managed to get to the edge of the

circle, and at this moment, so great was the opposing force, that I felt

myself actually torn from Smith's arms, lifted from my feet, and twirled

round in the direction of the windows as if the wheel of some great

machine had caught my clothes and was tearing me to destruction in its

revolution.

"But, even as I fell, bruised and breathless, against the wall, I saw

Smith firmly upon his feet in the circle and slowly rising again to an

upright position. My eyes never left his figure once in the next few

minutes.

"He drew himself up to his full height. His great shoulders squared

themselves. His head was thrown back a little, and as I looked I saw the

expression on his face change swiftly from fear to one of absolute

command. He looked steadily round the room and then his voice began to

_vibrate_. At first in a low tone, it gradually rose till it assumed the

same volume and intensity I had heard that night when he called up the

stairs into my room.

"It was a curiously increasing sound, more like the swelling of an

instrument than a human voice; and as it grew in power and filled the

room, I became aware that a great change was being effected slowly and

surely. The confusion of noise and rushings of air fell into the roll of

long, steady vibrations not unlike those caused by the deeper pedals of

an organ. The movements in the air became less violent, then grew

decidedly weaker, and finally ceased altogether. The whisperings and

sighings became fainter and fainter, till at last I could not hear them

at all; and, strangest of all, the light emitted by the circle, as well

as by the designs round it, increased to a steady glow, casting their

radiance upwards with the weirdest possible effect upon his features.

Slowly, by the power of his voice, behind which lay undoubtedly a

genuine knowledge of the occult manipulation of sound, this man

dominated the forces that had escaped from their proper sphere, until

at length the room was reduced to silence and perfect order again.

"Judging by the immense relief which also communicated itself to my

nerves I then felt that the crisis was over and Smith was wholly master

of the situation.

"But hardly had I begun to congratulate myself upon this result, and to

gather my scattered senses about me, when, uttering a loud cry, I saw

him leap out of the circle and fling himself into the air--as it seemed

to me, into the empty air. Then, even while holding my breath for dread

of the crash he was bound to come upon the floor, I saw him strike with

a dull thud against a solid body in mid-air, and the next instant he was

wrestling with some ponderous thing that was absolutely invisible to me,

and the room shook with the struggle.

"To and fro _they_ swayed, sometimes lurching in one direction,

sometimes in another, and always in horrible proximity to myself, as I

leaned trembling against the wall and watched the encounter.

"It lasted at most but a short minute or two, ending as suddenly as it

had begun. Smith, with an unexpected movement, threw up his arms with a

cry of relief. At the same instant there was a wild, tearing shriek in

the air beside me and something rushed past us with a noise like the

passage of a flock of big birds. Both windows rattled as if they would

break away from their sashes. Then a sense of emptiness and peace

suddenly came over the room, and I knew that all was over.

"Smith, his face exceedingly white, but otherwise strangely composed,

turned to me at once.

"'God!--if you hadn't come--You deflected the stream; broke it up--' he

whispered. 'You saved me.'"

The doctor made a long pause. Presently he felt for his pipe in the

darkness, groping over the table behind us with both hands. No one spoke

for a bit, but all dreaded the sudden glare that would come when he

struck the match. The fire was nearly out and the great hall was pitch

dark.

But the story-teller did not strike that match. He was merely gaining

time for some hidden reason of his own. And presently he went on with

his tale in a more subdued voice.

"I quite forget," he said, "how I got back to my own room. I only know

that I lay with two lighted candles for the rest of the night, and the

first thing I did in the morning was to let the landlady know I was

leaving her house at the end of the week.

"Smith still has my Rabbinical Treatise. At least he did not return it

to me at the time, and I have never seen him since to ask for it."

A SUSPICIOUS GIFT

Blake had been in very low water for months--almost under water part of

the time--due to circumstances he was fond of saying were no fault of

his own; and as he sat writing in his room on "third floor back" of a

New York boarding-house, part of his mind was busily occupied in

wondering when his luck was going to turn again.

It was his room only in the sense that he paid the rent. Two friends,

one a little Frenchman and the other a big Dane, shared it with him,

both hoping eventually to contribute something towards expenses, but so

far not having accomplished this result. They had two beds only, the

third being a mattress they slept upon in turns, a week at a time. A

good deal of their irregular "feeding" consisted of oatmeal, potatoes,

and sometimes eggs, all of which they cooked on a strange utensil they

had contrived to fix into the gas jet. Occasionally, when dinner failed

them altogether, they swallowed a little raw rice and drank hot water

from the bathroom on the top of it, and then made a wild race for bed so

as to get to sleep while the sensation of false repletion was still

there. For sleep and hunger are slight acquaintances as they well knew.

Fortunately all New York houses are supplied with hot air, and they only

had to open a grating in the wall to get a plentiful, if not a wholesome

amount of heat.

Though loneliness in a big city is a real punishment, as they had

severally learnt to their cost, their experiences, three in a small room

for several months, had revealed to them horrors of quite another kind,

and their nerves had suffered according to the temperament of each. But,

on this particular evening, as Blake sat scribbling by the only window

that was not cracked, the Dane and the Frenchman, his companions in

adversity, were in wonderful luck. They had both been asked out to a

restaurant to dine with a friend who also held out to one of them a

chance of work and remuneration. They would not be back till late, and

when they did come they were pretty sure to bring in supplies of one

kind or another. For the Frenchman never could resist the offer of a

glass of absinthe, and this meant that he would be able to help himself

plentifully from the free-lunch counters, with which all New York bars

are furnished, and to which any purchaser of a drink is entitled to help

himself and devour on the spot or carry away casually in his hand for

consumption elsewhere. Thousands of unfortunate men get their sole

subsistence in this way in New York, and experience soon teaches where,

for the price of a single drink, a man can take away almost a meal of

chip potatoes, sausage, bits of bread, and even eggs. The Frenchman and

the Dane knew their way about, and Blake looked forward to a supper more

or less substantial before pulling his mattress out of the cupboard and

turning in upon the floor for the night.

Meanwhile he could enjoy a quiet and lonely evening with the room all to

himself.

In the daytime he was a reporter on an evening newspaper of sensational

and lying habits. His work was chiefly in the police courts; and in his

spare hours at night, when not too tired or too empty, he wrote sketches

and stories for the magazines that very rarely saw the light of day on

their printed and paid-for sentences. On this particular occasion he was

deep in a most involved tale of a psychological character, and had just

worked his way into a sentence, or set of sentences, that completely

baffled and muddled him.

He was fairly out of his depth, and his brain was too poorly supplied

with blood to invent a way out again. The story would have been

interesting had he written it simply, keeping to facts and feelings, and

not diving into difficult analysis of motive and character which was

quite beyond him. For it was largely autobiographical, and was meant to

describe the adventures of a young Englishman who had come to grief in

the usual manner on a Canadian farm, had then subsequently become

bar-keeper, sub-editor on a Methodist magazine, a teacher of French and

German to clerks at twenty-five cents per hour, a model for artists, a

super on the stage, and, finally, a wanderer to the goldfields.

Blake scratched his head, and dipped the pen in the inkpot, stared out

through the blindless windows, and sighed deeply. His thoughts kept

wandering to food, beefsteak and steaming vegetables. The smell of

cooking that came from a lower floor through the broken windows was a

constant torment to him. He pulled himself together and again attacked

the problem.

" . . . for with some people," he wrote, "the imagination is so vivid as

to be almost an extension of consciousness. . . ." But here he stuck

absolutely. He was not quite sure what he meant by the words, and how to

finish the sentence puzzled him into blank inaction. It was a difficult

point to decide, for it seemed to come in appropriately at this point in

his story, and he did not know whether to leave it as it stood, change

it round a bit, or take it out altogether. It might just spoil its

chances of being accepted: editors were such clever men. But, to rewrite

the sentence was a grind, and he was so tired and sleepy. After all,

what did it matter? People who were clever would force a meaning into

it; people who were not clever would pretend--he knew of no other

classes of readers. He would let it stay, and go on with the action of

the story. He put his head in his hands and began to think hard.

His mind soon passed from thought to reverie. He fell to wondering when

his friends would find work and relieve him of the burden--he

acknowledged it as such--of keeping them, and of letting another man

wear his best clothes on alternate Sundays. He wondered when his "luck"

would turn. There were one or two influential people in New York whom

he could go and see if he had a dress suit and the other conventional

uniforms. His thoughts ran on far ahead, and at the same time, by a sort

of double process, far behind as well. His home in the "old country"

rose up before him; he saw the lawn and the cedars in sunshine; he

looked through the familiar windows and saw the clean, swept rooms. His

story began to suffer; the psychological masterpiece would not make much

progress unless he pulled up and dragged his thoughts back to the

treadmill. But he no longer cared; once he had got as far as that cedar

with the sunshine on it, he never could get back again. For all he

cared, the troublesome sentence might run away and get into someone

else's pages, or be snuffed out altogether.

There came a gentle knock at the door, and Blake started. The knock was

repeated louder. Who in the world could it be at this late hour of the

night? On the floor above, he remembered, there lived another

Englishman, a foolish, second-rate creature, who sometimes came in and

made himself objectionable with endless and silly chatter. But he was an

Englishman for all that, and Blake always tried to treat him with

politeness, realising that he was lonely in a strange land. But

to-night, of all people in the world, he did not want to be bored with

Perry's cackle, as he called it, and the "Come in" he gave in answer to

the second knock had no very cordial sound of welcome in it.

However, the door opened in response, and the man came in. Blake did not

turn round at once, and the other advanced to the centre of the room,

but _without speaking_. Then Blake knew it was not his enemy, Perry, and

turned round.

He saw a man of about forty standing in the middle of the carpet, but

standing sideways so that he did not present a full face. He wore an

overcoat buttoned up to the neck, and on the felt hat which he held in

front of him fresh rain-drops glistened. In his other hand he carried a

small black bag. Blake gave him a good look, and came to the conclusion

that he might be a secretary, or a chief clerk, or a confidential man of

sorts. He was a shabby-respectable-looking person. This was the

sum-total of the first impression, gained the moment his eyes took in

that it was _not_ Perry; the second impression was less pleasant, and

reported at once that something was wrong.

Though otherwise young and inexperienced, Blake--thanks, or curses, to

the police court training--knew more about common criminal

blackguardism than most men of fifty, and he recognised that there was

somewhere a suggestion of this undesirable world about the man. But

there was more than this. There was something singular about him,

something far out of the common, though for the life of him Blake could

not say wherein it lay. The fellow was out of the ordinary, and in some

very undesirable manner.

All this, that takes so long to describe, Blake saw with the first and

second glance. The man at once began to speak in a quiet and respectful

voice.

"Are you Mr. Blake?" he asked.

"I am."

"Mr. Arthur Blake?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Arthur _Herbert_ Blake?" persisted the other, with emphasis on the

middle name.

"That is my full name," Blake answered simply, adding, as he remembered

his manners; "but won't you sit down, first, please?"

The man advanced with a curious sideways motion like a crab and took a

seat on the edge of the sofa. He put his hat on the floor at his feet,

but still kept the bag in his hand.

"I come to you from a well-wisher," he went on in oily tones, without

lifting his eyes. Blake, in his mind, ran quickly over all the people he

knew in New York who might possibly have sent such a man, while waiting

for him to supply the name. But the man had come to a full stop and was

waiting too.

"A well-wisher of _mine_?" repeated Blake, not knowing quite what else

to say.

"Just so," replied the other, still with his eyes on the floor. "A

well-wisher of yours."

"A man or--" he felt himself blushing, "or a woman?"

"That," said the man shortly, "I cannot tell you."

"You can't tell me!" exclaimed the other, wondering what was coming

next, and who in the world this mysterious well-wisher could be who sent

so discreet and mysterious a messenger.

"I cannot tell you the name," replied the man firmly. "Those are my

instructions. But I bring you something from this person, and I am to

give it to you, to take a receipt for it, and then to go away without

answering any questions."

Blake stared very hard. The man, however, never raised his eyes above

the level of the second china knob on the chest of drawers opposite. The

giving of a receipt sounded like money. Could it be that some of his

influential friends had heard of his plight? There were possibilities

that made his heart beat. At length, however, he found his tongue, for

this strange creature was determined apparently to say nothing more

until he had heard from him.

"Then, what have you got for me, please?" he asked bluntly.

By way of answer the man proceeded to open the bag. He took out a parcel

wrapped loosely in brown paper, and about the size of a large book. It

was tied with string, and the man seemed unnecessarily long untying the

knot. When at last the string was off and the paper unfolded, there

appeared a series of smaller packages inside. The man took them out very

carefully, almost as if they had been alive, Blake thought, and set them

in a row upon his knees. They were dollar bills. Blake, all in a

flutter, craned his neck forward a little to try and make out their

denomination. He read plainly the figures 100.

"There are ten thousand dollars here," said the man quietly.

The other could not suppress a little cry.

"And they are for you."

Blake simply gasped. "Ten thousand dollars!" he repeated, a queer

feeling growing up in his throat. "_Ten thousand._ Are you sure? I

mean--you mean they are for _me_?" he stammered. He felt quite silly

with excitement, and grew more so with every minute, as the man

maintained a perfect silence. Was it not a dream? Wouldn't the man put

them back in the bag presently and say it was a mistake, and they were

meant for somebody else? He could not believe his eyes or his ears. Yet,

in a sense, it was possible. He had read of such things in books, and

even come across them in his experience of the courts--the erratic and

generous philanthropist who is determined to do his good deed and to get

no thanks or acknowledgment for it. Still, it seemed almost incredible.

His troubles began to melt away like bubbles in the sun; he thought of

the other fellows when they came in, and what he would have to tell

them; he thought of the German landlady and the arrears of rent, of

regular food and clean linen, and books and music, of the chance of

getting into some respectable business, of--well, of as many things as

it is possible to think of when excitement and surprise fling wide open

the gates of the imagination.

The man, meanwhile, began quietly to count over the packages aloud from

one to ten, and then to count the bills in each separate packet, also

from one to ten. Yes, there were ten little heaps, each containing ten

bills of a hundred-dollar denomination. That made ten thousand dollars.

Blake had never seen so much money in a single lump in his life before;

and for many months of privation and discomfort he had not known the

"feel" of a twenty-dollar note, much less of a hundred-dollar one. He

heard them crackle under the man's fingers, and it was like crisp

laughter in his ears. The bills were evidently new and unused.

But, side by side with the excitement caused by the shock of such an

event, Blake's caution, acquired by a year of vivid New York experience,

was meanwhile beginning to assert itself. It all seemed just a little

too much out of the likely order of things to be quite right. The police

courts had taught him the amazing ingenuity of the criminal mind, as

well as something of the plots and devices by which the unwary are

beguiled into the dark places where blackmail may be levied with

impunity. New York, as a matter of fact, just at that time was literally

undermined with the secret ways of the blackmailers, the green-goods

men, and other police-protected abominations; and the only weak point

in the supposition that this was part of some such proceeding was the

selection of himself--a poor newspaper reporter--as a victim. It did

seem absurd, but then the whole thing was so out of the ordinary, and

the thought once having entered his mind, was not so easily got rid of.

Blake resolved to be very cautious.

The man meanwhile, though he never appeared to raise his eyes from the

carpet, had been watching him closely all the time.

"If you will give me a receipt I'll leave the money at once," he said,

with just a vestige of impatience in his tone, as if he were anxious to

bring the matter to a conclusion as soon as possible.

"But you say it is quite impossible for you to tell me the name of my

well-wisher, or why _she_ sends me such a large sum of money in this

extraordinary way?"

"The money is sent to you because you are in need of it," returned the

other; "and it is a present without conditions of any sort attached. You

have to give me a receipt only to satisfy the sender that it has reached

your hands. The money will never be asked of you again."

Blake noticed two things from this answer: first, that the man was not

to be caught into betraying the sex of the well-wisher; and secondly,

that he was in some hurry to complete the transaction. For he was now

giving reasons, attractive reasons, why he should accept the money and

make out the receipt.

Suddenly it flashed across his mind that if he took the money and gave

the receipt _before a witness_, nothing very disastrous could come of

the affair. It would protect him against blackmail, if this was, after

all, a plot of some sort with blackmail in it; whereas, if the man were

a madman, or a criminal who was getting rid of a portion of his

ill-gotten gains to divert suspicion, or if any other improbable

explanation turned out to be the true one, there was no great harm done,

and he could hold the money till it was claimed, or advertised for in

the newspapers. His mind rapidly ran over these possibilities, though,

of course, under the stress of excitement, he was unable to weigh any of

them properly; then he turned to his strange visitor again and said

quietly--

"I will take the money, although I must say it seems to me a very

unusual transaction, and I will give you for it such a receipt as I

think proper under the circumstances."

"A proper receipt is all I want," was the answer.

"I mean by that a receipt before a proper witness--"

"Perfectly satisfactory," interrupted the man, his eyes still on the

carpet. "Only, it must be dated, and headed with your address here in

the correct way."

Blake could see no possible objection to this, and he at once proceeded

to obtain his witness. The person he had in his mind was a Mr. Barclay,

who occupied the room above his own; an old gentleman who had retired

from business and who, the landlady always said, was a miser, and kept

large sums secreted in his room. He was, at any rate, a perfectly

respectable man and would make an admirable witness to a transaction of

this sort. Blake made an apology and rose to fetch him, crossing the

room in front of the sofa where the man sat, in order to reach the door.

As he did so, he saw for the first time the _other side_ of his

visitor's face, the side that had been always so carefully turned away

from him.

There was a broad smear of blood down the skin from the ear to the

neck. It glistened in the gaslight.

Blake never knew how he managed to smother the cry that sprang to his

lips, but smother it he did. In a second he was at the door, his knees

trembling, his mind in a sudden and dreadful turmoil.

His main object, so far as he could recollect afterwards, was to escape

from the room as if he had noticed nothing, so as not to arouse the

other's suspicions. The man's eyes were always on the carpet, and

probably, Blake hoped, he had not noticed the consternation that must

have been written plainly on his face. At any rate he had uttered no

cry.

In another second he would have been in the passage, when suddenly he

met a pair of wicked, staring eyes fixed intently and with a cunning

smile upon his own. It was the other's face in the mirror calmly

watching his every movement.

Instantly, all his powers of reflection flew to the winds, and he

thought only upon the desirability of getting help at once. He tore

upstairs, his heart in his mouth. Barclay must come to his aid. This

matter was serious--perhaps horribly serious. Taking the money, or

giving a receipt, or having anything at all to do with it became an

impossibility. Here was crime. He felt certain of it.

In three bounds he reached the next landing and began to hammer at the

old miser's door as if his very life depended on it. For a long time he

could get no answer. His fists seemed to make no noise. He might have

been knocking on cotton wool, and the thought dashed through his brain

that it was all just like the terror of a nightmare.

Barclay, evidently, was still out, or else sound asleep. But the other

simply could not wait a minute longer in suspense. He turned the handle

and walked into the room. At first he saw nothing for the darkness, and

made sure the owner of the room was out; but the moment the light from

the passage began a little to disperse the gloom, he saw the old man, to

his immense relief, lying asleep on the bed.

Blake opened the door to its widest to get more light and then walked

quickly up to the bed. He now saw the figure more plainly, and noted

that it was dressed and lay only upon the outside of the bed. It struck

him, too, that he was sleeping in a very odd, almost an unnatural,

position.

Something clutched at his heart as he looked closer. He stumbled over a

chair and found the matches. Calling upon Barclay the whole time to wake

up and come downstairs with him, he blundered across the floor, a

dreadful thought in his mind, and lit the gas over the table. It seemed

strange that there was no movement or reply to his shouting. But it no

longer seemed strange when at length he turned, in the full glare of the

gas, and saw the old man lying huddled up into a ghastly heap on the

bed, his throat cut across from ear to ear.

And all over the carpet lay new dollar bills, crisp and clean like those

he had left downstairs, and strewn about in little heaps.

For a moment Blake stood stock-still, bereft of all power of movement.

The next, his courage returned, and he fled from the room and dashed

downstairs, taking five steps at a time. He reached the bottom and tore

along the passage to his room, determined at any rate to seize the man

and prevent his escape till help came.

But when he got to the end of the little landing he found that his door

had been closed. He seized the handle, fumbling with it in his violence.

It felt slippery and kept turning under his fingers without opening the

door, and fully half a minute passed before it yielded and let him in

headlong.

At the first glance he saw the room was empty, and the man gone!

Scattered upon the carpet lay a number of the bills, and beside them,

half hidden under the sofa where the man had sat, he saw a pair of

gloves--thick, leathern gloves--and a butcher's knife. Even from the

distance where he stood the blood-stains on both were easily visible.

Dazed and confused by the terrible discoveries of the last few minutes,

Blake stood in the middle of the room, overwhelmed and unable to think

or move. Unconsciously he must have passed his hand over his forehead in

the natural gesture of perplexity, for he noticed that the skin felt wet

and sticky. His hand was covered with blood! And when he rushed in

terror to the looking-glass, he saw that there was a broad red smear

across his face and forehead. Then he remembered the slippery handle of

the door and knew that it had been carefully moistened!

In an instant the whole plot became clear as daylight, and he was so

spellbound with horror that a sort of numbness came over him and he came

very near to fainting. He was in a condition of utter helplessness, and

had anyone come into the room at that minute and called him by name he

would simply have dropped to the floor in a heap.

"If the police were to come in now!" The thought crashed through his

brain like thunder, and at the same moment, almost before he had time to

appreciate a quarter of its significance, there came a loud knocking at

the front door below. The bell rang with a dreadful clamour; men's

voices were heard talking excitedly, and presently heavy steps began to

come up the stairs in the direction of his room.

It _was_ the police!

And all Blake could do was to laugh foolishly to himself--and wait till

they were upon him. He could not move nor speak. He stood face to face

with the evidence of his horrid crime, his hands and face smeared with

the blood of his victim, and there he was standing when the police burst

open the door and came noisily into the room.

"Here it is!" cried a voice he knew. "Third floor back! And the fellow

caught red-handed!"

It was the man with the bag leading in the two policemen.

Hardly knowing what he was doing in the fearful stress of conflicting

emotions, he made a step forward. But before he had time to make a

second one, he felt the heavy hand of the law descend upon both

shoulders at once as the two policemen moved up to seize him. At the

same moment a voice of thunder cried in his ear--

"Wake up, man! Wake up! Here's the supper, and good news too!"

Blake turned with a start in his chair and saw the Dane, very red in the

face, standing beside him, a hand on each shoulder, and a little further

back he saw the Frenchman leering happily at him over the end of the

bed, a bottle of beer in one hand and a paper package in the other.

He rubbed his eyes, glancing from one to the other, and then got up

sleepily to fix the wire arrangement on the gas jet to boil water for

cooking the eggs which the Frenchman was in momentary danger of letting

drop upon the floor.

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PRIVATE SECRETARY IN NEW YORK

I

It was never quite clear to me how Jim Shorthouse managed to get his

private secretaryship; but, once he got it, he kept it, and for some

years he led a steady life and put money in the savings bank.

One morning his employer sent for him into the study, and it was evident

to the secretary's trained senses that there was something unusual in

the air.

"Mr. Shorthouse," he began, somewhat nervously, "I have never yet had

the opportunity of observing whether or not you are possessed of

personal courage."

Shorthouse gasped, but he said nothing. He was growing accustomed to the

eccentricities of his chief. Shorthouse was a Kentish man; Sidebotham

was "raised" in Chicago; New York was the present place of residence.

"But," the other continued, with a puff at his very black cigar, "I must

consider myself a poor judge of human nature in future, if it is not one

of your strongest qualities."

The private secretary made a foolish little bow in modest appreciation

of so uncertain a compliment. Mr. Jonas B. Sidebotham watched him

narrowly, as the novelists say, before he continued his remarks.

"I have no doubt that you are a plucky fellow and--" He hesitated, and

puffed at his cigar as if his life depended upon it keeping alight.

"I don't think I'm afraid of anything in particular, sir--except women,"

interposed the young man, feeling that it was time for him to make an

observation of some sort, but still quite in the dark as to his chief's

purpose.

"Humph!" he grunted. "Well, there are no women in this case so far as I

know. But there may be other things that--that hurt more."

"Wants a special service of some kind, evidently," was the secretary's

reflection. "Personal violence?" he asked aloud.

"Possibly (puff), in fact (puff, puff) probably."

Shorthouse smelt an increase of salary in the air. It had a stimulating

effect.

"I've had some experience of that article, sir," he said shortly; "but

I'm ready to undertake anything in reason."

"I can't say how much reason or unreason there may prove to be in this

particular case. It all depends."

Mr. Sidebotham got up and locked the door of his study and drew down the

blinds of both windows. Then he took a bunch of keys from his pocket and

opened a black tin box. He ferreted about among blue and white papers

for a few seconds, enveloping himself as he did so in a cloud of blue

tobacco smoke.

"I feel like a detective already," Shorthouse laughed.

"Speak low, please," returned the other, glancing round the room. "We

must observe the utmost secrecy. Perhaps you would be kind enough to

close the registers," he went on in a still lower voice. "Open registers

have betrayed conversations before now."

Shorthouse began to enter into the spirit of the thing. He tiptoed

across the floor and shut the two iron gratings in the wall that in

American houses supply hot air and are termed "registers." Mr.

Sidebotham had meanwhile found the paper he was looking for. He held it

in front of him and tapped it once or twice with the back of his right

hand as if it were a stage letter and himself the villain of the

melodrama.

"This is a letter from Joel Garvey, my old partner," he said at length.

"You have heard me speak of him."

The other bowed. He knew that many years before Garvey & Sidebotham had

been well known in the Chicago financial world. He knew that the amazing

rapidity with which they accumulated a fortune had only been surpassed

by the amazing rapidity with which they had immediately afterwards

disappeared into space. He was further aware--his position afforded

facilities--that each partner was still to some extent in the other's

power, and that each wished most devoutly that the other would die.

The sins of his employer's early years did not concern him, however. The

man was kind and just, if eccentric; and Shorthouse, being in New York,

did not probe to discover more particularly the sources whence his

salary was so regularly paid. Moreover, the two men had grown to like

each other and there was a genuine feeling of trust and respect between

them.

"I hope it's a pleasant communication, sir," he said in a low voice.

"Quite the reverse," returned the other, fingering the paper nervously

as he stood in front of the fire.

"Blackmail, I suppose."

"Precisely." Mr. Sidebotham's cigar was not burning well; he struck a

match and applied it to the uneven edge, and presently his voice spoke

through clouds of wreathing smoke.

"There are valuable papers in my possession bearing his signature. I

cannot inform you of their nature; but they are extremely valuable _to

me_. They belong, as a matter of fact, to Garvey as much as to me. Only

I've got them--"

"I see."

"Garvey writes that he wants to have his signature removed--wants to cut

it out with his own hand. He gives reasons which incline me to consider

his request--"

"And you would like me to take him the papers and see that he does it?"

"And bring them back again with you," he whispered, screwing up his eyes

into a shrewd grimace.

"And bring them back again with me," repeated the secretary. "I

understand perfectly."

Shorthouse knew from unfortunate experience more than a little of the

horrors of blackmail. The pressure Garvey was bringing to bear upon his

old enemy must be exceedingly strong. That was quite clear. At the same

time, the commission that was being entrusted to him seemed somewhat

quixotic in its nature. He had already "enjoyed" more than one

experience of his employer's eccentricity, and he now caught himself

wondering whether this same eccentricity did not sometimes go--further

than eccentricity.

"I cannot read the letter to you," Mr. Sidebotham was explaining, "but I

shall give it into your hands. It will prove that you are my--er--my

accredited representative. I shall also ask you not to read the package

of papers. The signature in question you will find, of course, on the

last page, at the bottom."

There was a pause of several minutes during which the end of the cigar

glowed eloquently.

"Circumstances compel me," he went on at length almost in a whisper, "or

I should never do this. But you understand, of course, the thing is a

ruse. Cutting out the signature is a mere pretence. It is nothing.

_What Garvey wants are the papers themselves._"

The confidence reposed in the private secretary was not misplaced.

Shorthouse was as faithful to Mr. Sidebotham as a man ought to be to the

wife that loves him.

The commission itself seemed very simple. Garvey lived in solitude in

the remote part of Long Island. Shorthouse was to take the papers to

him, witness the cutting out of the signature, and to be specially on

his guard against any attempt, forcible or otherwise, to gain possession

of them. It seemed to him a somewhat ludicrous adventure, but he did not

know all the facts and perhaps was not the best judge.

The two men talked in low voices for another hour, at the end of which

Mr. Sidebotham drew up the blinds, opened the registers and unlocked the

door.

Shorthouse rose to go. His pockets were stuffed with papers and his head

with instructions; but when he reached the door he hesitated and turned.

"Well?" said his chief.

Shorthouse looked him straight in the eye and said nothing.

"The personal violence, I suppose?" said the other. Shorthouse bowed.

"I have not seen Garvey for twenty years," he said; "all I can tell you

is that I believe him to be occasionally of unsound mind. I have heard

strange rumours. He lives alone, and in his lucid intervals studies

chemistry. It was always a hobby of his. But the chances are twenty to

one against his attempting violence. I only wished to warn you--in

case--I mean, so that you may be on the watch."

He handed his secretary a Smith and Wesson revolver as he spoke.

Shorthouse slipped it into his hip pocket and went out of the room.

* * * * *

A drizzling cold rain was falling on fields covered with half-melted

snow when Shorthouse stood, late in the afternoon, on the platform of

the lonely little Long Island station and watched the train he had just

left vanish into the distance.

It was a bleak country that Joel Garvey, Esq., formerly of Chicago, had

chosen for his residence and on this particular afternoon it presented a

more than usually dismal appearance. An expanse of flat fields covered

with dirty snow stretched away on all sides till the sky dropped down to

meet them. Only occasional farm buildings broke the monotony, and the

road wound along muddy lanes and beneath dripping trees swathed in the

cold raw fog that swept in like a pall of the dead from the sea.

It was six miles from the station to Garvey's house, and the driver of

the rickety buggy Shorthouse had found at the station was not

communicative. Between the dreary landscape and the drearier driver he

fell back upon his own thoughts, which, but for the spice of adventure

that was promised, would themselves have been even drearier than either.

He made up his mind that he would waste no time over the transaction.

The moment the signature was cut out he would pack up and be off. The

last train back to Brooklyn was 7.15; and he would have to walk the six

miles of mud and snow, for the driver of the buggy had refused

point-blank to wait for him.

For purposes of safety, Shorthouse had done what he flattered himself

was rather a clever thing. He had made up a second packet of papers

identical in outside appearance with the first. The inscription, the

blue envelope, the red elastic band, and even a blot in the lower

left-hand corner had been exactly reproduced. Inside, of course, were

only sheets of blank paper. It was his intention to change the packets

and to let Garvey see him put the sham one into the bag. In case of

violence the bag would be the point of attack, and he intended to lock

it and throw away the key. Before it could be forced open and the

deception discovered there would be time to increase his chances of

escape with the real packet.

It was five o'clock when the silent Jehu pulled up in front of a

half-broken gate and pointed with his whip to a house that stood in its

own grounds among trees and was just visible in the gathering gloom.

Shorthouse told him to drive up to the front door but the man refused.

"I ain't runnin' no risks," he said; "I've got a family."

This cryptic remark was not encouraging, but Shorthouse did not pause to

decipher it. He paid the man, and then pushed open the rickety old gate

swinging on a single hinge, and proceeded to walk up the drive that lay

dark between close-standing trees. The house soon came into full view.

It was tall and square and had once evidently been white, but now the

walls were covered with dirty patches and there were wide yellow streaks

where the plaster had fallen away. The windows stared black and

uncompromising into the night. The garden was overgrown with weeds and

long grass, standing up in ugly patches beneath their burden of wet

snow. Complete silence reigned over all. There was not a sign of life.

Not even a dog barked. Only, in the distance, the wheels of the

retreating carriage could be heard growing fainter and fainter.

As he stood in the porch, between pillars of rotting wood, listening to

the rain dripping from the roof into the puddles of slushy snow, he was

conscious of a sensation of utter desertion and loneliness such as he

had never before experienced. The forbidding aspect of the house had the

immediate effect of lowering his spirits. It might well have been the

abode of monsters or demons in a child's wonder tale, creatures that

only dared to come out under cover of darkness. He groped for the

bell-handle, or knocker, and finding neither, he raised his stick and

beat a loud tattoo on the door. The sound echoed away in an empty space

on the other side and the wind moaned past him between the pillars as if

startled at his audacity. But there was no sound of approaching

footsteps and no one came to open the door. Again he beat a tattoo,

louder and longer than the first one; and, having done so, waited with

his back to the house and stared across the unkempt garden into the fast

gathering shadows.

Then he turned suddenly, and saw that the door was standing ajar. It had

been quietly opened and a pair of eyes were peering at him round the

edge. There was no light in the hall beyond and he could only just make

out the shape of a dim human face.

"Does Mr. Garvey live here?" he asked in a firm voice.

"Who are you?" came in a man's tones.

"I'm Mr. Sidebotham's private secretary. I wish to see Mr. Garvey on

important business."

"Are you expected?"

"I suppose so," he said impatiently, thrusting a card through the

opening. "Please take my name to him at once, and say I come from Mr.

Sidebotham on the matter Mr. Garvey wrote about."

The man took the card, and the face vanished into the darkness, leaving

Shorthouse standing in the cold porch with mingled feelings of

impatience and dismay. The door, he now noticed for the first time, was

on a chain and could not open more than a few inches. But it was the

manner of his reception that caused uneasy reflections to stir within

him--reflections that continued for some minutes before they were

interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps and the flicker of a

light in the hall.

The next instant the chain fell with a rattle, and gripping his bag

tightly, he walked into a large ill-smelling hall of which he could only

just see the ceiling. There was no light but the nickering taper held by

the man, and by its uncertain glimmer Shorthouse turned to examine him.

He saw an undersized man of middle age with brilliant, shifting eyes, a

curling black beard, and a nose that at once proclaimed him a Jew. His

shoulders were bent, and, as he watched him replacing the chain, he saw

that he wore a peculiar black gown like a priest's cassock reaching to

the feet. It was altogether a lugubrious figure of a man, sinister and

funereal, yet it seemed in perfect harmony with the general character of

its surroundings. The hall was devoid of furniture of any kind, and

against the dingy walls stood rows of old picture frames, empty and

disordered, and odd-looking bits of wood-work that appeared doubly

fantastic as their shadows danced queerly over the floor in the shifting

light.

"If you'll come this way, Mr. Garvey will see you presently," said the

Jew gruffly, crossing the floor and shielding the taper with a bony

hand. He never once raised his eyes above the level of the visitor's

waistcoat, and, to Shorthouse, he somehow suggested a figure from the

dead rather than a man of flesh and blood. The hall smelt decidedly ill.

All the more surprising, then, was the scene that met his eyes when the

Jew opened the door at the further end and he entered a room brilliantly

lit with swinging lamps and furnished with a degree of taste and comfort

that amounted to luxury. The walls were lined with handsomely bound

books, and armchairs were arranged round a large mahogany desk in the

middle of the room. A bright fire burned in the grate and neatly framed

photographs of men and women stood on the mantelpiece on either side of

an elaborately carved clock. French windows that opened like doors were

partially concealed by warm red curtains, and on a sideboard against the

wall stood decanters and glasses, with several boxes of cigars piled on

top of one another. There was a pleasant odour of tobacco about the

room. Indeed, it was in such glowing contrast to the chilly poverty of

the hall that Shorthouse already was conscious of a distinct rise in the

thermometer of his spirits.

Then he turned and saw the Jew standing in the doorway with his eyes

fixed upon him, somewhere about the middle button of his waistcoat. He

presented a strangely repulsive appearance that somehow could not be

attributed to any particular detail, and the secretary associated him in

his mind with a monstrous black bird of prey more than anything else.

"My time is short," he said abruptly; "I hope Mr. Garvey will not keep

me waiting."

A strange flicker of a smile appeared on the Jew's ugly face and

vanished as quickly as it came. He made a sort of deprecating bow by way

of reply. Then he blew out the taper and went out, closing the door

noiselessly behind him.

Shorthouse was alone. He felt relieved. There was an air of obsequious

insolence about the old Jew that was very offensive. He began to take

note of his surroundings. He was evidently in the library of the house,

for the walls were covered with books almost up to the ceiling. There

was no room for pictures. Nothing but the shining backs of well-bound

volumes looked down upon him. Four brilliant lights hung from the

ceiling and a reading lamp with a polished reflector stood among the

disordered masses of papers on the desk.

The lamp was not lit, but when Shorthouse put his hand upon it he found

it was _warm_. The room had evidently only just been vacated.

Apart from the testimony of the lamp, however, he had already felt,

without being able to give a reason for it, that the room had been

occupied a few moments before he entered. The atmosphere over the desk

seemed to retain the disturbing influence of a human being; an

influence, moreover, so recent that he felt as if the cause of it were

still in his immediate neighbourhood. It was difficult to realise that

he was quite alone in the room and that somebody was not in hiding. The

finer counterparts of his senses warned him to act as if he were being

observed; he was dimly conscious of a desire to fidget and look round,

to keep his eyes in every part of the room at once, and to conduct

himself generally as if he were the object of careful human observation.

How far he recognised the cause of these sensations it is impossible to

say; but they were sufficiently marked to prevent his carrying out a

strong inclination to get up and make a search of the room. He sat quite

still, staring alternately at the backs of the books, and at the red

curtains; wondering all the time if he was really being watched, or if

it was only the imagination playing tricks with him.

A full quarter of an hour passed, and then twenty rows of volumes

suddenly shifted out towards him, and he saw that a door had opened in

the wall opposite. The books were only sham backs after all, and when

they moved back again with the sliding door, Shorthouse saw the figure

of Joel Garvey standing before him.

Surprise almost took his breath away. He had expected to see an

unpleasant, even a vicious apparition with the mark of the beast

unmistakably upon its face; but he was wholly unprepared for the

elderly, tall, fine-looking man who stood in front of him--well-groomed,

refined, vigorous, with a lofty forehead, clear grey eyes, and a hooked

nose dominating a clean shaven mouth and chin of considerable

character--a distinguished looking man altogether.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting, Mr. Shorthouse," he said in a

pleasant voice, but with no trace of a smile in the mouth or eyes. "But

the fact is, you know, I've a mania for chemistry, and just when you

were announced I was at the most critical moment of a problem and was

really compelled to bring it to a conclusion."

Shorthouse had risen to meet him, but the other motioned him to resume

his seat. It was borne in upon him irresistibly that Mr. Joel Garvey,

for reasons best known to himself, was deliberately lying, and he could

not help wondering at the necessity for such an elaborate

misrepresentation. He took off his overcoat and sat down.

"I've no doubt, too, that the door startled you," Garvey went on,

evidently reading something of his guest's feelings in his face. "You

probably had not suspected it. It leads into my little laboratory.

Chemistry is an absorbing study to me, and I spend most of my time

there." Mr. Garvey moved up to the armchair on the opposite side of the

fireplace and sat down.

Shorthouse made appropriate answers to these remarks, but his mind was

really engaged in taking stock of Mr. Sidebotham's old-time partner. So

far there was no sign of mental irregularity and there was certainly

nothing about him to suggest violent wrong-doing or coarseness of

living. On the whole, Mr. Sidebotham's secretary was most pleasantly

surprised, and, wishing to conclude his business as speedily as

possible, he made a motion towards the bag for the purpose of opening

it, when his companion interrupted him quickly--

"You are Mr. Sidebotham's _private_ secretary, are you not?" he asked.

Shorthouse replied that he was. "Mr. Sidebotham," he went on to explain,

"has entrusted me with the papers in the case and I have the honour to

return to you your letter of a week ago." He handed the letter to

Garvey, who took it without a word and deliberately placed it in the

fire. He was not aware that the secretary was ignorant of its contents,

yet his face betrayed no signs of feeling. Shorthouse noticed, however,

that his eyes never left the fire until the last morsel had been

consumed. Then he looked up and said, "You are familiar then with the

facts of this most peculiar case?"

Shorthouse saw no reason to confess his ignorance.

"I have all the papers, Mr. Garvey," he replied, taking them out of the

bag, "and I should be very glad if we could transact our business as

speedily as possible. If you will cut out your signature I--"

"One moment, please," interrupted the other. "I must, before we proceed

further, consult some papers in my laboratory. If you will allow me to

leave you alone a few minutes for this purpose we can conclude the whole

matter in a very short time."

Shorthouse did not approve of this further delay, but he had no option

than to acquiesce, and when Garvey had left the room by the private door

he sat and waited with the papers in his hand. The minutes went by and

the other did not return. To pass the time he thought of taking the

false packet from his coat to see that the papers were in order, and the

move was indeed almost completed, when something--he never knew

what--warned him to desist. The feeling again came over him that he was

being watched, and he leaned back in his chair with the bag on his knees

and waited with considerable impatience for the other's return. For more

than twenty minutes he waited, and when at length the door opened and

Garvey appeared, with profuse apologies for the delay, he saw by the

clock that only a few minutes still remained of the time he had allowed

himself to catch the last train.

"Now I am completely at your service," he said pleasantly; "you must, of

course, know, Mr. Shorthouse, that one cannot be too careful in matters

of this kind--especially," he went on, speaking very slowly and

impressively, "in dealing with a man like my former partner, whose mind,

as you doubtless may have discovered, is at times very sadly affected."

Shorthouse made no reply to this. He felt that the other was watching

him as a cat watches a mouse.

"It is almost a wonder to me," Garvey added, "that he is still at large.

Unless he has greatly improved it can hardly be safe for those who are

closely associated with him."

The other began to feel uncomfortable. Either this was the other side of

the story, or it was the first signs of mental irresponsibility.

"All business matters of importance require the utmost care in my

opinion, Mr. Garvey," he said at length, cautiously.

"Ah! then, as I thought, you have had a great deal to put up with from

him," Garvey said, with his eyes fixed on his companion's face. "And, no

doubt, he is still as bitter against me as he was years ago when the

disease first showed itself?"

Although this last remark was a deliberate question and the questioner

was waiting with fixed eyes for an answer, Shorthouse elected to take

no notice of it. Without a word he pulled the elastic band from the blue

envelope with a snap and plainly showed his desire to conclude the

business as soon as possible. The tendency on the other's part to delay

did not suit him at all.

"But never personal violence, I trust, Mr. Shorthouse," he added.

"Never."

"I'm glad to hear it," Garvey said in a sympathetic voice, "very glad to

hear it. And now," he went on, "if you are ready we can transact this

little matter of business before dinner. It will only take a moment."

He drew a chair up to the desk and sat down, taking a pair of scissors

from a drawer. His companion approached with the papers in his hand,

unfolding them as he came. Garvey at once took them from him, and after

turning over a few pages he stopped and cut out a piece of writing at

the bottom of the last sheet but one.

Holding it up to him Shorthouse read the words "Joel Garvey" in faded

ink.

"There! That's my signature," he said, "and I've cut it out. It must be

nearly twenty years since I wrote it, and now I'm going to burn it."

He went to the fire and stooped over to burn the little slip of paper,

and while he watched it being consumed Shorthouse put the real papers in

his pocket and slipped the imitation ones into the bag. Garvey turned

just in time to see this latter movement.

"I'm putting the papers back," Shorthouse said quietly; "you've done

with them, I think."

"Certainly," he replied as, completely deceived, he saw the blue

envelope disappear into the black bag and watched Shorthouse turn the

key. "They no longer have the slightest interest for me." As he spoke he

moved over to the sideboard, and pouring himself out a small glass of

whisky asked his visitor if he might do the same for him. But the

visitor declined and was already putting on his overcoat when Garvey

turned with genuine surprise on his face.

"You surely are not going back to New York to-night, Mr. Shorthouse?" he

said, in a voice of astonishment.

"I've just time to catch the 7.15 if I'm quick."

"But I never heard of such a thing," Garvey said. "Of course I took it

for granted that you would stay the night."

"It's kind of you," said Shorthouse, "but really I must return to-night.

I never expected to stay."

The two men stood facing each other. Garvey pulled out his watch.

"I'm exceedingly sorry," he said; "but, upon my word, I took it for

granted you would stay. I ought to have said so long ago. I'm such a

lonely fellow and so little accustomed to visitors that I fear I forgot

my manners altogether. But in any case, Mr. Shorthouse, you cannot catch

the 7.15, for it's already after six o'clock, and that's the last train

to-night." Garvey spoke very quickly, almost eagerly, but his voice

sounded genuine.

"There's time if I walk quickly," said the young man with decision,

moving towards the door. He glanced at his watch as he went. Hitherto he

had gone by the clock on the mantelpiece. To his dismay he saw that it

was, as his host had said, long after six. The clock was half an hour

slow, and he realised at once that it was no longer possible to catch

the train.

Had the hands of the clock been moved back intentionally? Had he been

purposely detained? Unpleasant thoughts flashed into his brain and made

him hesitate before taking the next step. His employer's warning rang in

his ears. The alternative was six miles along a lonely road in the

dark, or a night under Garvey's roof. The former seemed a direct

invitation to catastrophe, if catastrophe there was planned to be. The

latter--well, the choice was certainly small. One thing, however, he

realised, was plain--he must show neither fear nor hesitancy.

"My watch must have gained," he observed quietly, turning the hands back

without looking up. "It seems I have certainly missed that train and

shall be obliged to throw myself upon your hospitality. But, believe me,

I had no intention of putting you out to any such extent."

"I'm delighted," the other said. "Defer to the judgment of an older man

and make yourself comfortable for the night. There's a bitter storm

outside, and you don't put me out at all. On the contrary it's a great

pleasure. I have so little contact with the outside world that it's

really a god-send to have you."

The man's face changed as he spoke. His manner was cordial and sincere.

Shorthouse began to feel ashamed of his doubts and to read between the

lines of his employer's warning. He took off his coat and the two men

moved to the armchairs beside the fire.

"You see," Garvey went on in a lowered voice, "I understand your

hesitancy perfectly. I didn't know Sidebotham all those years without

knowing a good deal about him--perhaps more than you do. I've no doubt,

now, he filled your mind with all sorts of nonsense about me--probably

told you that I was the greatest villain unhung, eh? and all that sort

of thing? Poor fellow! He was a fine sort before his mind became

unhinged. One of his fancies used to be that everybody else was insane,

or just about to become insane. Is he still as bad as that?"

"Few men," replied Shorthouse, with the manner of making a great

confidence, but entirely refusing to be drawn, "go through his

experiences and reach his age without entertaining delusions of one kind

or another."

"Perfectly true," said Garvey. "Your observation is evidently keen."

"Very keen indeed," Shorthouse replied, taking his cue neatly; "but, of

course, there are some things"--and here he looked cautiously over his

shoulder--"there are some things one cannot talk about too

circumspectly."

"I understand perfectly and respect your reserve."

There was a little more conversation and then Garvey got up and excused

himself on the plea of superintending the preparation of the bedroom.

"It's quite an event to have a visitor in the house, and I want to make

you as comfortable as possible," he said. "Marx will do better for a

little supervision. And," he added with a laugh as he stood in the

doorway, "I want you to carry back a good account to Sidebotham."

II

The tall form disappeared and the door was shut. The conversation of the

past few minutes had come somewhat as a revelation to the secretary.

Garvey seemed in full possession of normal instincts. There was no doubt

as to the sincerity of his manner and intentions. The suspicions of the

first hour began to vanish like mist before the sun. Sidebotham's

portentous warnings and the mystery with which he surrounded the whole

episode had been allowed to unduly influence his mind. The loneliness of

the situation and the bleak nature of the surroundings had helped to

complete the illusion. He began to be ashamed of his suspicions and a

change commenced gradually to be wrought in his thoughts. Anyhow a

dinner and a bed were preferable to six miles in the dark, no dinner,

and a cold train into the bargain.

Garvey returned presently. "We'll do the best we can for you," he said,

dropping into the deep armchair on the other side of the fire. "Marx is

a good servant if you watch him all the time. You must always stand over

a Jew, though, if you want things done properly. They're tricky and

uncertain unless they're working for their own interest. But Marx might

be worse, I'll admit. He's been with me for nearly twenty years--cook,

valet, housemaid, and butler all in one. In the old days, you know, he

was a clerk in our office in Chicago."

Garvey rattled on and Shorthouse listened with occasional remarks thrown

in. The former seemed pleased to have somebody to talk to and the sound

of his own voice was evidently sweet music in his ears. After a few

minutes, he crossed over to the sideboard and again took up the decanter

of whisky, holding it to the light. "You will join me this time," he

said pleasantly, pouring out two glasses, "it will give us an appetite

for dinner," and this time Shorthouse did not refuse. The liquor was

mellow and soft and the men took two glasses apiece.

"Excellent," remarked the secretary.

"Glad you appreciate it," said the host, smacking his lips. "It's very

old whisky, and I rarely touch it when I'm alone. But this," he added,

"is a special occasion, isn't it?"

Shorthouse was in the act of putting his glass down when something drew

his eyes suddenly to the other's face. A strange note in the man's voice

caught his attention and communicated alarm to his nerves. A new light

shone in Garvey's eyes and there flitted momentarily across his strong

features the shadow of something that set the secretary's nerves

tingling. A mist spread before his eyes and the unaccountable belief

rose strong in him that he was staring into the visage of an untamed

animal. Close to his heart there was something that was wild, fierce,

savage. An involuntary shiver ran over him and seemed to dispel the

strange fancy as suddenly as it had come. He met the other's eye with a

smile, the counterpart of which in his heart was vivid horror.

"It _is_ a special occasion," he said, as naturally as possible, "and,

allow me to add, very special whisky."

Garvey appeared delighted. He was in the middle of a devious tale

describing how the whisky came originally into his possession when the

door opened behind them and a grating voice announced that dinner was

ready. They followed the cassocked form of Marx across the dirty hall,

lit only by the shaft of light that followed them from the library door,

and entered a small room where a single lamp stood upon a table laid for

dinner. The walls were destitute of pictures, and the windows had

Venetian blinds without curtains. There was no fire in the grate, and

when the men sat down facing each other Shorthouse noticed that, while

his own cover was laid with its due proportion of glasses and cutlery,

his companion had nothing before him but a soup plate, without fork,

knife, or spoon beside it.

"I don't know what there is to offer you," he said; "but I'm sure Marx

has done the best he can at such short notice. I only eat one course for

dinner, but pray take your time and enjoy your food."

Marx presently set a plate of soup before the guest, yet so loathsome

was the immediate presence of this old Hebrew servitor, that the

spoonfuls disappeared somewhat slowly. Garvey sat and watched him.

Shorthouse said the soup was delicious and bravely swallowed another

mouthful. In reality his thoughts were centred upon his companion, whose

manners were giving evidence of a gradual and curious change. There was

a decided difference in his demeanour, a difference that the secretary

_felt_ at first, rather than saw. Garvey's quiet self-possession was

giving place to a degree of suppressed excitement that seemed so far

inexplicable. His movements became quick and nervous, his eye shifting

and strangely brilliant, and his voice, when he spoke, betrayed an

occasional deep tremor. Something unwonted was stirring within him and

evidently demanding every moment more vigorous manifestation as the meal

proceeded.

Intuitively Shorthouse was afraid of this growing excitement, and while

negotiating some uncommonly tough pork chops he tried to lead the

conversation on to the subject of chemistry, of which in his Oxford days

he had been an enthusiastic student. His companion, however, would none

of it. It seemed to have lost interest for him, and he would barely

condescend to respond. When Marx presently returned with a plate of

steaming eggs and bacon the subject dropped of its own accord.

"An inadequate dinner dish," Garvey said, as soon as the man was gone;

"but better than nothing, I hope."

Shorthouse remarked that he was exceedingly fond of bacon and eggs, and,

looking up with the last word, saw that Garvey's face was twitching

convulsively and that he was almost wriggling in his chair. He quieted

down, however, under the secretary's gaze and observed, though evidently

with an effort--

"Very good of you to say so. Wish I could join you, only I never eat

such stuff. I only take one course for dinner."

Shorthouse began to feel some curiosity as to what the nature of this

one course might be, but he made no further remark and contented himself

with noting mentally that his companion's excitement seemed to be

rapidly growing beyond his control. There was something uncanny about

it, and he began to wish he had chosen the alternative of the walk to

the station.

"I'm glad to see you never speak when Marx is in the room," said Garvey

presently. "I'm sure it's better not. Don't you think so?"

He appeared to wait eagerly for the answer.

"Undoubtedly," said the puzzled secretary.

"Yes," the other went on quickly. "He's an excellent man, but he has

one drawback--a really horrid one. You may--but, no, you could hardly

have noticed it yet."

"Not drink, I trust," said Shorthouse, who would rather have discussed

any other subject than the odious Jew.

"Worse than that a great deal," Garvey replied, evidently expecting the

other to draw him out. But Shorthouse was in no mood to hear anything

horrible, and he declined to step into the trap.

"The best of servants have their faults," he said coldly.

"I'll tell you what it is if you like," Garvey went on, still speaking

very low and leaning forward over the table so that his face came close

to the flame of the lamp, "only we must speak quietly in case he's

listening. I'll tell you what it is--if you think you won't be

frightened."

"Nothing frightens me," he laughed. (Garvey must understand that at all

events.) "Nothing can frighten me," he repeated.

"I'm glad of that; for it frightens _me_ a good deal sometimes."

Shorthouse feigned indifference. Yet he was aware that his heart was

beating a little quicker and that there was a sensation of chilliness in

his back. He waited in silence for what was to come.

"He has a horrible predilection for vacuums," Garvey went on presently

in a still lower voice and thrusting his face farther forward under the

lamp.

"Vacuums!" exclaimed the secretary in spite of himself. "What in the

world do you mean?"

"What I say of course. He's always tumbling into them, so that I can't

find him or get at him. He hides there for hours at a time, and for the

life of me I can't make out what he does there."

Shorthouse stared his companion straight in the eyes. What in the name

of Heaven was he talking about?

"Do you suppose he goes there for a change of air, or--or to escape?" he

went on in a louder voice.

Shorthouse could have laughed outright but for the expression of the

other's face.

"I should not think there was much air of any sort in a vacuum," he said

quietly.

"That's exactly what _I_ feel," continued Garvey with ever growing

excitement. "That's the horrid part of it. How the devil does he live

there? You see--"

"Have you ever followed him there?" interrupted the secretary. The

other leaned back in his chair and drew a deep sigh.

"Never! It's impossible. You see I can't follow him. There's not room

for two. A vacuum only holds one comfortably. Marx knows that. He's out

of my reach altogether once he's fairly inside. He knows the best side

of a bargain. He's a regular Jew."

"That is a drawback to a servant, of course--" Shorthouse spoke slowly,

with his eyes on his plate.

"A drawback," interrupted the other with an ugly chuckle, "I call it a

draw-in, that's what I call it."

"A draw-in does seem a more accurate term," assented Shorthouse. "But,"

he went on, "I thought that nature abhorred a vacuum. She used to, when

I was at school--though perhaps--it's so long ago--"

He hesitated and looked up. Something in Garvey's face--something he had

_felt_ before he looked up--stopped his tongue and froze the words in

his throat. His lips refused to move and became suddenly dry. Again the

mist rose before his eyes and the appalling shadow dropped its veil over

the face before him. Garvey's features began to burn and glow. Then they

seemed to coarsen and somehow slip confusedly together. He stared for a

second--it seemed only for a second--into the visage of a ferocious and

abominable animal; and then, as suddenly as it had come, the filthy

shadow of the beast passed off, the mist melted out, and with a mighty

effort over his nerves he forced himself to finish his sentence.

"You see it's so long since I've given attention to such things," he

stammered. His heart was beating rapidly, and a feeling of oppression

was gathering over it.

"It's my peculiar and special study on the other hand," Garvey resumed.

"I've not spent all these years in my laboratory to no purpose, I can

assure you. Nature, I know for a fact," he added with unnatural warmth,

"does _not_ abhor a vacuum. On the contrary, she's uncommonly fond of

'em, much too fond, it seems, for the comfort of my little household. If

there were fewer vacuums and more abhorrence we should get on better--a

damned sight better in my opinion."

"Your special knowledge, no doubt, enables you to speak with authority,"

Shorthouse said, curiosity and alarm warring with other mixed feelings

in his mind; "but how _can_ a man tumble into a vacuum?"

"You may well ask. That's just it. How can he? It's preposterous and I

can't make it out at all. Marx knows, but he won't tell me. Jews know

more than we do. For my part I have reason to believe--" He stopped and

listened. "Hush! here he comes," he added, rubbing his hands together as

if in glee and fidgeting in his chair.

Steps were heard coming down the passage, and as they approached the

door Garvey seemed to give himself completely over to an excitement he

could not control. His eyes were fixed on the door and he began

clutching the tablecloth with both hands. Again his face was screened by

the loathsome shadow. It grew wild, wolfish. As through a mask, that

concealed, and yet was thin enough to let through a suggestion of, the

beast crouching behind, there leaped into his countenance the strange

look of the animal in the human--the expression of the were-wolf, the

monster. The change in all its loathsomeness came rapidly over his

features, which began to lose their outline. The nose flattened,

dropping with broad nostrils over thick lips. The face rounded, filled,

and became squat. The eyes, which, luckily for Shorthouse, no longer

sought his own, glowed with the light of untamed appetite and bestial

greed. The hands left the cloth and grasped the edges of the plate, and

then clutched the cloth again.

"This is _my_ course coming now," said Garvey, in a deep guttural voice.

He was shivering. His upper lip was partly lifted and showed the teeth,

white and gleaming.

A moment later the door opened and Marx hurried into the room and set a

dish in front of his master. Garvey half rose to meet him, stretching

out his hands and grinning horribly. With his mouth he made a sound like

the snarl of an animal. The dish before him was steaming, but the slight

vapour rising from it betrayed by its odour that it was not born of a

fire of coals. It was the natural heat of flesh warmed by the fires of

life only just expelled. The moment the dish rested on the table Garvey

pushed away his own plate and drew the other up close under his mouth.

Then he seized the food in both hands and commenced to tear it with his

teeth, grunting as he did so. Shorthouse closed his eyes, with a feeling

of nausea. When he looked up again the lips and jaw of the man opposite

were stained with crimson. The whole man was transformed. A feasting

tiger, starved and ravenous, but without a tiger's grace--this was what

he watched for several minutes, transfixed with horror and disgust.

Marx had already taken his departure, knowing evidently what was not

good for the eyes to look upon, and Shorthouse knew at last that he was

sitting face to face with a madman.

The ghastly meal was finished in an incredibly short time and nothing

was left but a tiny pool of red liquid rapidly hardening. Garvey leaned

back heavily in his chair and sighed. His smeared face, withdrawn now

from the glare of the lamp, began to resume its normal appearance.

Presently he looked up at his guest and said in his natural voice--

"I hope you've had enough to eat. You wouldn't care for this, you know,"

with a downward glance.

Shorthouse met his eyes with an inward loathing, and it was impossible

not to show some of the repugnance he felt. In the other's face,

however, he thought he saw a subdued, cowed expression. But he found

nothing to say.

"Marx will be in presently," Garvey went on. "He's either listening, or

in a vacuum."

"Does he choose any particular time for his visits?" the secretary

managed to ask.

"He generally goes after dinner; just about this time, in fact. But he's

not gone yet," he added, shrugging his shoulders, "for I think I hear

him coming."

Shorthouse wondered whether vacuum was possibly synonymous with wine

cellar, but gave no expression to his thoughts. With chills of horror

still running up and down his back, he saw Marx come in with a basin and

towel, while Garvey thrust up his face just as an animal puts up its

muzzle to be rubbed.

"Now we'll have coffee in the library, if you're ready," he said, in the

tone of a gentleman addressing his guests after a dinner party.

Shorthouse picked up the bag, which had lain all this time between his

feet, and walked through the door his host held open for him. Side by

side they crossed the dark hall together, and, to his disgust, Garvey

linked an arm in his, and with his face so close to the secretary's ear

that he felt the warm breath, said in a thick voice--

"You're uncommonly careful with that bag, Mr. Shorthouse. It surely must

contain something more than the bundle of papers."

"Nothing but the papers," he answered, feeling the hand burning upon his

arm and wishing he were miles away from the house and its abominable

occupants.

"Quite sure?" asked the other with an odious and suggestive chuckle. "Is

there any meat in it, fresh meat--raw meat?"

The secretary felt, somehow, that at the least sign of fear the beast on

his arm would leap upon him and tear him with his teeth.

"Nothing of the sort," he answered vigorously. "It wouldn't hold enough

to feed a cat."

"True," said Garvey with a vile sigh, while the other felt the hand upon

his arm twitch up and down as if feeling the flesh. "True, it's too

small to be of any real use. As you say, it wouldn't hold enough to feed

a cat."

Shorthouse was unable to suppress a cry. The muscles of his fingers,

too, relaxed in spite of himself and he let the black bag drop with a

bang to the floor. Garvey instantly withdrew his arm and turned with a

quick movement. But the secretary had regained his control as suddenly

as he had lost it, and he met the maniac's eyes with a steady and

aggressive glare.

"There, you see, it's quite light. It makes no appreciable noise when I

drop it." He picked it up and let it fall again, as if he had dropped it

for the first time purposely. The ruse was successful.

"Yes. You're right," Garvey said, still standing in the doorway and

staring at him. "At any rate it wouldn't hold enough for two," he

laughed. And as he closed the door the horrid laughter echoed in the

empty hall.

They sat down by a blazing fire and Shorthouse was glad to feel its

warmth. Marx presently brought in coffee. A glass of the old whisky and

a good cigar helped to restore equilibrium. For some minutes the men sat

in silence staring into the fire. Then, without looking up, Garvey said

in a quiet voice--

"I suppose it was a shock to you to see me eat raw meat like that. I

must apologise if it was unpleasant to you. But it's all I can eat and

it's the only meal I take in the twenty-four hours."

"Best nourishment in the world, no doubt; though I should think it might

be a trifle strong for some stomachs."

He tried to lead the conversation away from so unpleasant a subject, and

went on to talk rapidly of the values of different foods, of

vegetarianism and vegetarians, and of men who had gone for long periods

without any food at all. Garvey listened apparently without interest and

had nothing to say. At the first pause he jumped in eagerly.

"When the hunger is really great on me," he said, still gazing into the

fire, "I simply cannot control myself. I must have raw meat--the first I

can get--" Here he raised his shining eyes and Shorthouse felt his hair

beginning to rise.

"It comes upon me so suddenly too. I never can tell when to expect it. A

year ago the passion rose in me like a whirlwind and Marx was out and I

couldn't get meat. I had to get something or I should have bitten

myself. Just when it was getting unbearable my dog ran out from beneath

the sofa. It was a spaniel."

Shorthouse responded with an effort. He hardly knew what he was saying

and his skin crawled as if a million ants were moving over it.

There was a pause of several minutes.

"I've bitten Marx all over," Garvey went on presently in his strange

quiet voice, and as if he were speaking of apples; "but he's bitter. I

doubt if the hunger could ever make me do it again. Probably that's what

first drove him to take shelter in a vacuum." He chuckled hideously as

he thought of this solution of his attendant's disappearances.

Shorthouse seized the poker and poked the fire as if his life depended

on it. But when the banging and clattering was over Garvey continued his

remarks with the same calmness. The next sentence, however, was never

finished. The secretary had got upon his feet suddenly.

"I shall ask your permission to retire," he said in a determined voice;

"I'm tired to-night; will you be good enough to show me to my room?"

Garvey looked up at him with a curious cringing expression behind which

there shone the gleam of cunning passion.

"Certainly," he said, rising from his chair. "You've had a tiring

journey. I ought to have thought of that before."

He took the candle from the table and lit it, and the fingers that held

the match trembled.

"We needn't trouble Marx," he explained. "That beast's in his vacuum by

this time."

III

They crossed the hall and began to ascend the carpetless wooden stairs.

They were in the well of the house and the air cut like ice. Garvey,

the flickering candle in his hand throwing his face into strong outline,

led the way across the first landing and opened a door near the mouth of

a dark passage. A pleasant room greeted the visitor's eyes, and he

rapidly took in its points while his host walked over and lit two

candles that stood on a table at the foot of the bed. A fire burned

brightly in the grate. There were two windows, opening like doors, in

the wall opposite, and a high canopied bed occupied most of the space on

the right. Panelling ran all round the room reaching nearly to the

ceiling and gave a warm and cosy appearance to the whole; while the

portraits that stood in alternate panels suggested somehow the

atmosphere of an old country house in England. Shorthouse was agreeably

surprised.

"I hope you'll find everything you need," Garvey was saying in the

doorway. "If not, you have only to ring that bell by the fireplace. Marx

won't hear it of course, but it rings in my laboratory, where I spend

most of the night."

Then, with a brief good-night, he went out and shut the door after him.

The instant he was gone Mr. Sidebotham's private secretary did a

peculiar thing. He planted himself in the middle of the room with his

back to the door, and drawing the pistol swiftly from his hip pocket

levelled it across his left arm at the window. Standing motionless in

this position for thirty seconds he then suddenly swerved right round

and faced in the other direction, pointing his pistol straight at the

keyhole of the door. There followed immediately a sound of shuffling

outside and of steps retreating across the landing.

"On his knees at the keyhole," was the secretary's reflection. "Just as

I thought. But he didn't expect to look down the barrel of a pistol and

it made him jump a little."

As soon as the steps had gone downstairs and died away across the hall,

Shorthouse went over and locked the door, stuffing a piece of crumpled

paper into the second keyhole which he saw immediately above the first.

After that, he made a thorough search of the room. It hardly repaid the

trouble, for he found nothing unusual. Yet he was glad he had made it.

It relieved him to find no one was in hiding under the bed or in the

deep oak cupboard; and he hoped sincerely it was not the cupboard in

which the unfortunate spaniel had come to its vile death. The French

windows, he discovered, opened on to a little balcony. It looked on to

the front, and there was a drop of less than twenty feet to the ground

below. The bed was high and wide, soft as feathers and covered with

snowy sheets--very inviting to a tired man; and beside the blazing fire

were a couple of deep armchairs.

Altogether it was very pleasant and comfortable; but, tired though he

was, Shorthouse had no intention of going to bed. It was impossible to

disregard the warning of his nerves. They had never failed him before,

and when that sense of distressing horror lodged in his bones he knew

there was something in the wind and that a red flag was flying over the

immediate future. Some delicate instrument in his being, more subtle

than the senses, more accurate than mere presentiment, had seen the red

flag and interpreted its meaning.

Again it seemed to him, as he sat in an armchair over the fire, that his

movements were being carefully watched from somewhere; and, not knowing

what weapons might be used against him, he felt that his real safety lay

in a rigid control of his mind and feelings and a stout refusal to admit

that he was in the least alarmed.

The house was very still. As the night wore on the wind dropped. Only

occasional bursts of sleet against the windows reminded him that the

elements were awake and uneasy. Once or twice the windows rattled and

the rain hissed in the fire, but the roar of the wind in the chimney

grew less and less and the lonely building was at last lapped in a great

stillness. The coals clicked, settling themselves deeper in the grate,

and the noise of the cinders dropping with a tiny report into the soft

heap of accumulated ashes was the only sound that punctuated the

silence.

In proportion as the power of sleep grew upon him the dread of the

situation lessened; but so imperceptibly, so gradually, and so

insinuatingly that he scarcely realised the change. He thought he was as

wide awake to his danger as ever. The successful exclusion of horrible

mental pictures of what he had seen he attributed to his rigorous

control, instead of to their true cause, the creeping over him of the

soft influences of sleep. The faces in the coals were so soothing; the

armchair was so comfortable; so sweet the breath that gently pressed

upon his eyelids; so subtle the growth of the sensation of safety. He

settled down deeper into the chair and in another moment would have been

asleep when the red flag began to shake violently to and fro and he sat

bolt upright as if he had been stabbed in the back.

Someone was coming up the stairs. The boards creaked beneath a stealthy

weight.

Shorthouse sprang from the chair and crossed the room swiftly, taking up

his position beside the door, but out of range of the keyhole. The two

candles flared unevenly on the table at the foot of the bed. The steps

were slow and cautious--it seemed thirty seconds between each one--but

the person who was taking them was very close to the door. Already he

had topped the stairs and was shuffling almost silently across the bit

of landing.

The secretary slipped his hand into his pistol pocket and drew back

further against the wall, and hardly had he completed the movement when

the sounds abruptly ceased and he knew that somebody was standing just

outside the door and preparing for a careful observation through the

keyhole.

He was in no sense a coward. In action he was never afraid. It was the

waiting and wondering and the uncertainty that might have loosened his

nerves a little. But, somehow, a wave of intense horror swept over him

for a second as he thought of the bestial maniac and his attendant Jew;

and he would rather have faced a pack of wolves than have to do with

either of these men.

Something brushing gently against the door set his nerves tingling

afresh and made him tighten his grasp on the pistol. The steel was cold

and slippery in his moist fingers. What an awful noise it would make

when he pulled the trigger! If the door were to open how close he would

be to the figure that came in! Yet he knew it was locked on the inside

and could not possibly open. Again something brushed against the panel

beside him and a second later the piece of crumpled paper fell from the

keyhole to the floor, while the piece of thin wire that had accomplished

this result showed its point for a moment in the room and was then

swiftly withdrawn.

Somebody was evidently peering now through the keyhole, and realising

this fact the spirit of attack entered into the heart of the beleaguered

man. Raising aloft his right hand he brought it suddenly down with a

resounding crash upon the panel of the door next the keyhole--a crash

that, to the crouching eavesdropper, must have seemed like a clap of

thunder out of a clear sky. There was a gasp and a slight lurching

against the door and the midnight listener rose startled and alarmed,

for Shorthouse plainly heard the tread of feet across the landing and

down the stairs till they were lost in the silences of the hall. Only,

this time, it seemed to him there were four feet instead of two.

Quickly stuffing the paper back into the keyhole, he was in the act of

walking back to the fireplace when, over his shoulder, he caught sight

of a white face pressed in outline against the outside of the window. It

was blurred in the streams of sleet, but the white of the moving eyes

was unmistakable. He turned instantly to meet it, but the face was

withdrawn like a flash, and darkness rushed in to fill the gap where it

had appeared.

"Watched on both sides," he reflected.

But he was not to be surprised into any sudden action, and quietly

walking over to the fireplace as if he had seen nothing unusual he

stirred the coals a moment and then strolled leisurely over to the

window. Steeling his nerves, which quivered a moment in spite of his

will, he opened the window and stepped out on to the balcony. The wind,

which he thought had dropped, rushed past him into the room and

extinguished one of the candles, while a volley of fine cold rain burst

all over his face. At first he could see nothing, and the darkness came

close up to his eyes like a wall. He went a little farther on to the

balcony and drew the window after him till it clashed. Then he stood and

waited.

But nothing touched him. No one seemed to be there. His eyes got

accustomed to the blackness and he was able to make out the iron

railing, the dark shapes of the trees beyond, and the faint light coming

from the other window. Through this he peered into the room, walking the

length of the balcony to do so. Of course he was standing in a shaft of

light and whoever was crouching in the darkness below could plainly see

him. _Below?_--That there should be anyone _above_ did not occur to him

until, just as he was preparing to go in again, he became aware that

something was moving in the darkness over his head. He looked up,

instinctively raising a protecting arm, and saw a long black line

swinging against the dim wall of the house. The shutters of the window

on the next floor, whence it depended, were thrown open and moving

backwards and forwards in the wind. The line was evidently a thickish

cord, for as he looked it was pulled in and the end disappeared in the

darkness.

Shorthouse, trying to whistle to himself, peered over the edge of the

balcony as if calculating the distance he might have to drop, and then

calmly walked into the room again and closed the window behind him,

leaving the latch so that the lightest touch would cause it to fly open.

He relit the candle and drew a straight-backed chair up to the table.

Then he put coal on the fire and stirred it up into a royal blaze. He

would willingly have folded the shutters over those staring windows at

his back. But that was out of the question. It would have been to cut

off his way of escape.

Sleep, for the time, was at a disadvantage. His brain was full of blood

and every nerve was tingling. He felt as if countless eyes were upon him

and scores of stained hands were stretching out from the corners and

crannies of the house to seize him. Crouching figures, figures of

hideous Jews, stood everywhere about him where shelter was, creeping

forward out of the shadows when he was not looking and retreating

swiftly and silently when he turned his head. Wherever he looked, other

eyes met his own, and though they melted away under his steady,

confident gaze, he knew they would wax and draw in upon him the instant

his glances weakened and his will wavered.

Though there were no sounds, he knew that in the well of the house there

was movement going on, _and preparation_. And this knowledge, inasmuch

as it came to him irresistibly and through other and more subtle

channels than those of the senses kept the sense of horror fresh in his

blood and made him alert and awake.

But, no matter how great the dread in the heart, the power of sleep will

eventually overcome it. Exhausted nature is irresistible, and as the

minutes wore on and midnight passed, he realised that nature was

vigorously asserting herself and sleep was creeping upon him from the

extremities.

To lessen the danger he took out his pencil and began to draw the

articles of furniture in the room. He worked into elaborate detail the

cupboard, the mantelpiece, and the bed, and from these he passed on to

the portraits. Being possessed of genuine skill, he found the occupation

sufficiently absorbing. It kept the blood in his brain, and that kept

him awake. The pictures, moreover, now that he considered them for the

first time, were exceedingly well painted. Owing to the dim light, he

centred his attention upon the portraits beside the fireplace. On the

right was a woman, with a sweet, gentle face and a figure of great

refinement; on the left was a full-size figure of a big handsome man

with a full beard and wearing a hunting costume of ancient date.

From time to time he turned to the windows behind him, but the vision of

the face was not repeated. More than once, too, he went to the door and

listened, but the silence was so profound in the house that he gradually

came to believe the plan of attack had been abandoned. Once he went out

on to the balcony, but the sleet stung his face and he only had time to

see that the shutters above were closed, when he was obliged to seek the

shelter of the room again.

In this way the hours passed. The fire died down and the room grew

chilly. Shorthouse had made several sketches of the two heads and was

beginning to feel overpoweringly weary. His feet and his hands were cold

and his yawns were prodigious. It seemed ages and ages since the steps

had come to listen at his door and the face had watched him from the

window. A feeling of safety had somehow come to him. In reality he was

exhausted. His one desire was to drop upon the soft white bed and yield

himself up to sleep without any further struggle.

He rose from his chair with a series of yawns that refused to be stifled

and looked at his watch. It was close upon three in the morning. He made

up his mind that he would lie down with his clothes on and get some

sleep. It was safe enough, the door was locked on the inside and the

window was fastened. Putting the bag on the table near his pillow he

blew out the candles and dropped with a sense of careless and delicious

exhaustion upon the soft mattress. In five minutes he was sound asleep.

There had scarcely been time for the dreams to come when he found

himself lying side-ways across the bed with wide open eyes staring into

the darkness. Someone had touched him, and he had writhed away in his

sleep as from something unholy. The movement had awakened him.

The room was simply black. No light came from the windows and the fire

had gone out as completely as if water had been poured upon it. He gazed

into a sheet of impenetrable darkness that came close up to his face

like a wall.

His first thought was for the papers in his coat and his hand flew to

the pocket. They were safe; and the relief caused by this discovery left

his mind instantly free for other reflections.

And the realisation that at once came to him with a touch of dismay was,

that during his sleep some definite _change_ had been effected in the

room. He felt this with that intuitive certainty which amounts to

positive knowledge. The room was utterly still, but the corroboration

that was speedily brought to him seemed at once to fill the darkness

with a whispering, secret life that chilled his blood and made the

sheet feel like ice against his cheek.

Hark! This was it; there reached his ears, in which the blood was

already buzzing with warning clamour, a dull murmur of something that

rose indistinctly from the well of the house and became audible to him

without passing through walls or doors. There seemed no solid surface

between him, lying on the bed, and the landing; between the landing and

the stairs, and between the stairs and the hall beyond.

He knew that the door of the room _was standing open_! Therefore it had

been opened from the _inside_. Yet the window was fastened, also on the

inside.

Hardly was this realised when the conspiring silence of the hour was

broken by another and a more definite sound. A step was coming along the

passage. A certain bruise on the hip told Shorthouse that the pistol in

his pocket was ready for use and he drew it out quickly and cocked it.

Then he just had time to slip over the edge of the bed and crouch down

on the floor when the step halted on the threshold of the room. The bed

was thus between him and the open door. The window was at his back.

He waited in the darkness. What struck him as peculiar about the steps

was that there seemed no particular desire to move stealthily. There was

no extreme caution. They moved along in rather a slipshod way and

sounded like soft slippers or feet in stockings. There was something

clumsy, irresponsible, almost reckless about the movement.

For a second the steps paused upon the threshold, but only for a second.

Almost immediately they came on into the room, and as they passed from

the wood to the carpet Shorthouse noticed that they became wholly

noiseless. He waited in suspense, not knowing whether the unseen walker

was on the other side of the room or was close upon him. Presently he

stood up and stretched out his left arm in front of him, groping,

searching, feeling in a circle; and behind it he held the pistol, cocked

and pointed, in his right hand. As he rose a bone cracked in his knee,

his clothes rustled as if they were newspapers, and his breath seemed

loud enough to be heard all over the room. But not a sound came to

betray the position of the invisible intruder.

Then, just when the tension was becoming unbearable, a noise relieved

the gripping silence. It was wood knocking against wood, and it came

from the farther end of the room. The steps had moved over to the

fireplace. A sliding sound almost immediately followed it and then

silence closed again over everything like a pall.

For another five minutes Shorthouse waited, and then the suspense became

too much. He could not stand that open door! The candles were close

beside him and he struck a match and lit them, expecting in the sudden

glare to receive at least a terrific blow. But nothing happened, and he

saw at once that the room was entirely empty. Walking over with the

pistol cocked he peered out into the darkness of the landing and then

closed the door and turned the key. Then he searched the room--bed,

cupboard, table, curtains, everything that could have concealed a man;

but found no trace of the intruder. The owner of the footsteps had

disappeared like a ghost into the shadows of the night. But for one fact

he might have imagined that he had been dreaming: _the bag had

vanished_!

There was no more sleep for Shorthouse that night. His watch pointed to

4 a.m. and there were still three hours before daylight. He sat down at

the table and continued his sketches. With fixed determination he went

on with his drawing and began a new outline of the man's head. There was

something in the expression that continually evaded him. He had no

success with it, and this time it seemed to him that it was the eyes

that brought about his discomfiture. He held up his pencil before his

face to measure the distance between the nose and the eyes, and to his

amazement he saw that a change had come over the features. The eyes were

no longer open. _The lids had closed!_

For a second he stood in a sort of stupefied astonishment. A push would

have toppled him over. Then he sprang to his feet and held a candle

close up to the picture. The eye-lids quivered, the eye-lashes trembled.

Then, right before his gaze, the eyes opened and looked straight into

his own. Two holes were cut in the panel and this pair of eyes, human

eyes, just fitted them.

As by a curious effect of magic, the strong fear that had governed him

ever since his entry into the house disappeared in a second. Anger

rushed into his heart and his chilled blood rose suddenly to boiling

point. Putting the candle down, he took two steps back into the room and

then flung himself forward with all his strength against the painted

panel. Instantly, and before the crash came, the eyes were withdrawn,

and two black spaces showed where they had been. The old huntsman was

eyeless. But the panel cracked and split inwards like a sheet of thin

cardboard; and Shorthouse, pistol in hand, thrust an arm through the

jagged aperture and, seizing a human leg, dragged out into the room--the

Jew!

Words rushed in such a torrent to his lips that they choked him. The old

Hebrew, white as chalk, stood shaking before him, the bright pistol

barrel opposite his eyes, when a volume of cold air rushed into the

room, and with it a sound of hurried steps. Shorthouse felt his arm

knocked up before he had time to turn, and the same second Garvey, who

had somehow managed to burst open the window came between him and the

trembling Marx. His lips were parted and his eyes rolled strangely in

his distorted face.

"Don't shoot him! Shoot in the air!" he shrieked. He seized the Jew by

the shoulders.

"You damned hound," he roared, hissing in his face. "So I've got you at

last. That's where your vacuum is, is it? I know your vile hiding-place

at last." He shook him like a dog. "I've been after him all night," he

cried, turning to Shorthouse, "all night, I tell you, and I've got him

at last."

Garvey lifted his upper lip as he spoke and showed his teeth. They shone

like the fangs of a wolf. The Jew evidently saw them too, for he gave a

horrid yell and struggled furiously.

Before the eyes of the secretary a mist seemed to rise. The hideous

shadow again leaped into Garvey's face. He foresaw a dreadful battle,

and covering the two men with his pistol he retreated slowly to the

door. Whether they were both mad, or both criminal, he did not pause to

inquire. The only thought present in his mind was that the sooner he

made his escape the better.

Garvey was still shaking the Jew when he reached the door and turned the

key, but as he passed out on to the landing both men stopped their

struggling and turned to face him. Garvey's face, bestial, loathsome,

livid with anger; the Jew's white and grey with fear and horror;--both

turned towards him and joined in a wild, horrible yell that woke the

echoes of the night. The next second they were after him at full speed.

Shorthouse slammed the door in their faces and was at the foot of the

stairs, crouching in the shadow, before they were out upon the landing.

They tore shrieking down the stairs and past him, into the hall; and,

wholly unnoticed, Shorthouse whipped up the stairs again, crossed the

bedroom and dropped from the balcony into the soft snow.

As he ran down the drive he heard behind him in the house the yells of

the maniacs; and when he reached home several hours later Mr. Sidebotham

not only raised his salary but also told him to buy a new hat and

overcoat, and send in the bill to him.

SKELETON LAKE: AN EPISODE IN CAMP

The utter loneliness of our moose-camp on Skeleton Lake had impressed us

from the beginning--in the Quebec backwoods, five days by trail and

canoe from civilisation--and perhaps the singular name contributed a

little to the sensation of eeriness that made itself felt in the camp

circle when once the sun was down and the late October mists began

rising from the lake and winding their way in among the tree trunks.

For, in these regions, all names of lakes and hills and islands have

their origin in some actual event, taking either the name of a chief

participant, such as Smith's Ridge, or claiming a place in the map by

perpetuating some special feature of the journey or the scenery, such as

Long Island, Deep Rapids, or Rainy Lake.

All names thus have their meaning and are usually pretty recently

acquired, while the majority are self-explanatory and suggest human and

pioneer relations. Skeleton Lake, therefore, was a name full of

suggestion, and though none of us knew the origin or the story of its

birth, we all were conscious of a certain lugubrious atmosphere that

haunted its shores and islands, and but for the evidences of recent

moose tracks in its neighbourhood we should probably have pitched our

tents elsewhere.

For several hundred miles in any direction we knew of only one other

party of whites. They had journeyed up on the train with us, getting in

at North Bay, and hailing from Boston way. A common goal and object had

served by way of introduction. But the acquaintance had made little

progress. This noisy, aggressive Yankee did not suit our fancy much as a

possible neighbour, and it was only a slight intimacy between his chief

guide, Jake the Swede, and one of our men that kept the thing going at

all. They went into camp on Beaver Creek, fifty miles and more to the

west of us.

But that was six weeks ago, and seemed as many months, for days and

nights pass slowly in these solitudes and the scale of time changes

wonderfully. Our men always seemed to know by instinct pretty well "whar

them other fellows was movin'," but in the interval no one had come

across their trails, or once so much as heard their rifle shots.

Our little camp consisted of the professor, his wife, a splendid shot

and keen woods-woman, and myself. We had a guide apiece, and hunted

daily in pairs from before sunrise till dark.

It was our last evening in the woods, and the professor was lying in my

little wedge tent, discussing the dangers of hunting alone in couples in

this way. The flap of the tent hung back and let in fragrant odours of

cooking over an open wood fire; everywhere there were bustle and

preparation, and one canoe already lay packed with moose horns, her nose

pointing southwards.

"If an accident happened to one of them," he was saying, "the survivor's

story when he returned to camp would be entirely unsupported evidence,

wouldn't it? Because, you see--"

And he went on laying down the law after the manner of professors, until

I became so bored that my attention began to wander to pictures and

memories of the scenes we were just about to leave: Garden Lake, with

its hundred islands; the rapids out of Round Pond; the countless vistas

of forest, crimson and gold in the autumn sunshine; and the starlit

nights we had spent watching in cold, cramped positions for the wary

moose on lonely lakes among the hills. The hum of the professor's voice

in time grew more soothing. A nod or a grunt was all the reply he looked

for. Fortunately, he loathed interruptions. I think I could almost have

gone to sleep under his very nose; perhaps I did sleep for a brief

interval.

Then it all came about so quickly, and the tragedy of it was so

unexpected and painful, throwing our peaceful camp into momentary

confusion, that now it all seems to have happened with the uncanny

swiftness of a dream.

First, there was the abrupt ceasing of the droning voice, and then the

running of quick little steps over the pine needles, and the confusion

of men's voices; and the next instant the professor's wife was at the

tent door, hatless, her face white, her hunting bloomers bagging at the

wrong places, a rifle in her hand, and her words running into one

another anyhow.

"Quick, Harry! It's Rushton. I was asleep and it woke me. Something's

happened. You must deal with it!"

In a second we were outside the tent with our rifles.

"My God!" I heard the professor exclaim, as if he had first made the

discovery. "It _is_ Rushton!"

I saw the guides helping--dragging--a man out of a canoe. A brief space

of deep silence followed in which I heard only the waves from the canoe

washing up on the sand; and then, immediately after, came the voice of

a man talking with amazing rapidity and with odd gaps between his words.

It was Rushton telling his story, and the tones of his voice, now

whispering, now almost shouting, mixed with sobs and solemn oaths and

frequent appeals to the Deity, somehow or other struck the false note at

the very start, and before any of us guessed or knew anything at all.

Something moved secretly between his words, a shadow veiling the stars,

destroying the peace of our little camp, and touching us all personally

with an undefinable sense of horror and distrust.

I can see that group to this day, with all the detail of a good

photograph: standing half-way between the firelight and the darkness, a

slight mist rising from the lake, the frosty stars, and our men, in

silence that was all sympathy, dragging Rushton across the rocks towards

the camp fire. Their moccasins crunched on the sand and slipped several

times on the stones beneath the weight of the limp, exhausted body, and

I can still see every inch of the pared cedar branch he had used for a

paddle on that lonely and dreadful journey.

But what struck me most, as it struck us all, was the limp exhaustion of

his body compared to the strength of his utterance and the tearing rush

of his words. A vigorous driving-power was there at work, forcing out

the tale, red-hot and throbbing, full of discrepancies and the strangest

contradictions; and the nature of this driving-power I first began to

appreciate when they had lifted him into the circle of firelight and I

saw his face, grey under the tan, terror in the eyes, tears too, hair

and beard awry, and listened to the wild stream of words pouring forth

without ceasing.

I think we all understood then, but it was only after many years that

anyone dared to confess what he thought.

There was Matt Morris, my guide; Silver Fizz, whose real name was

unknown, and who bore the title of his favourite drink; and huge Hank

Milligan--all ears and kind intention; and there was Rushton, pouring

out his ready-made tale, with ever-shifting eyes, turning from face to

face, seeking confirmation of details none had witnessed but

himself--and _one other_.

Silver Fizz was the first to recover from the shock of the thing, and to

realise, with the natural sense of chivalry common to most genuine

back-woodsmen, that the man was at a terrible disadvantage. At any rate,

he was the first to start putting the matter to rights.

"Never mind telling it just now," he said in a gruff voice, but with

real gentleness; "get a bite t'eat first and then let her go

afterwards. Better have a horn of whisky too. It ain't all packed yet, I

guess."

"Couldn't eat or drink a thing," cried the other. "Good Lord, don't you

see, man, I want to _talk_ to someone first? I want to get it out of me

to someone who can answer--answer. I've had nothing but trees to talk

with for three days, and I can't carry it alone any longer. Those

cursed, silent trees--I've told it 'em a thousand times. Now, just see

here, it was this way. When we started out from camp--"

He looked fearfully about him, and we realised it was useless to stop

him. The story was bound to come, and come it did.

Now, the story itself was nothing out of the way; such tales are told by

the dozen round any camp fire where men who have knocked about in the

woods are in the circle. It was the way he told it that made our flesh

creep. He was near the truth all along, but he was skimming it, and the

skimming took off the cream that might have saved his soul.

Of course, he smothered it in words--odd words, too--melodramatic,

poetic, out-of-the-way words that lie just on the edge of frenzy. Of

course, too, he kept asking us each in turn, scanning our faces with

those restless, frightened eyes of his, "What would _you_ have done?"

"What else could I do?" and "Was that _my_ fault?" But that was nothing,

for he was no milk-and-water fellow who dealt in hints and suggestions;

he told his story boldly, forcing his conclusions upon us as if we had

been so many wax cylinders of a phonograph that would repeat accurately

what had been told us, and these questions I have mentioned he used to

emphasise any special point that he seemed to think required such

emphasis.

The fact was, however, the picture of what had actually happened was so

vivid still in his own mind that it reached ours by a process of

telepathy which he could not control or prevent. All through his

true-false words this picture stood forth in fearful detail against the

shadows behind him. He could not veil, much less obliterate, it. We

knew; and, I always thought, _he knew that we knew_.

The story itself, as I have said, was sufficiently ordinary. Jake and

himself, in a nine-foot canoe, had upset in the middle of a lake, and

had held hands across the upturned craft for several hours, eventually

cutting holes in her ribs to stick their arms through and grasp hands

lest the numbness of the cold water should overcome them. They were

miles from shore, and the wind was drifting them down upon a little

island. But when they got within a few hundred yards of the island,

they realised to their horror that they would after all drift past it.

It was then the quarrel began. Jake was for leaving the canoe and

swimming. Rushton believed in waiting till they actually had passed the

island and were sheltered from the wind. Then they could make the island

easily by swimming, canoe and all. But Jake refused to give in, and

after a short struggle--Rushton admitted there was a struggle--got free

from the canoe--and disappeared _without a single cry_.

Rushton held on and proved the correctness of his theory, and finally

made the island, canoe and all, after being in the water over five

hours. He described to us how he crawled up on to the shore, and fainted

at once, with his feet lying half in the water; how lost and terrified

he felt upon regaining consciousness in the dark; how the canoe had

drifted away and his extraordinary luck in finding it caught again at

the end of the island by a projecting cedar branch. He told us that the

little axe--another bit of real luck--had caught in the thwart when the

canoe turned over, and how the little bottle in his pocket holding the

emergency matches was whole and dry. He made a blazing fire and searched

the island from end to end, calling upon Jake in the darkness, but

getting no answer; till, finally, so many half-drowned men seemed to

come crawling out of the water on to the rocks, and vanish among the

shadows when he came up with them, that he lost his nerve completely and

returned to lie down by the fire till the daylight came.

He then cut a bough to replace the lost paddles, and after one more

useless search for his lost companion, he got into the canoe, fearing

every moment he would upset again, and crossed over to the mainland. He

knew roughly the position of our camping place, and after paddling day

and night, and making many weary portages, without food or covering, he

reached us two days later.

This, more or less, was the story, and we, knowing whereof he spoke,

knew that every word was literally true, and at the same time went to

the building up of a hideous and prodigious lie.

Once the recital was over, he collapsed, and Silver Fizz, after a

general expression of sympathy from the rest of us, came again to the

rescue.

"But now, Mister, you jest _got_ to eat and drink whether you've a mind

to, or no."

And Matt Morris, cook that night, soon had the fried trout and bacon,

and the wheat cakes and hot coffee passing round a rather silent and

oppressed circle. So we ate round the fire, ravenously, as we had eaten

every night for the past six weeks, but with this difference: that

there was one among us who was more than ravenous--and he gorged.

In spite of all our devices he somehow kept himself the centre of

observation. When his tin mug was empty, Morris instantly passed the

tea-pail; when he began to mop up the bacon grease with the dough on his

fork, Hank reached out for the frying pan; and the can of steaming

boiled potatoes was always by his side. And there was another difference

as well: he was sick, terribly sick before the meal was over, and this

sudden nausea after food was more eloquent than words of what the man

had passed through on his dreadful, foodless, ghost-haunted journey of

forty miles to our camp. In the darkness he thought he would go crazy,

he said. There were voices in the trees, and figures were always lifting

themselves out of the water, or from behind boulders, to look at him and

make awful signs. Jake constantly peered at him through the underbrush,

and everywhere the shadows were moving, with eyes, footsteps, and

following shapes.

We tried hard to talk of other things, but it was no use, for he was

bursting with the rehearsal of his story and refused to allow himself

the chances we were so willing and anxious to grant him. After a good

night's rest he might have had more self-control and better judgment,

and would probably have acted differently. But, as it was, we found it

impossible to help him.

Once the pipes were lit, and the dishes cleared away, it was useless to

pretend any longer. The sparks from the burning logs zigzagged upwards

into a sky brilliant with stars. It was all wonderfully still and

peaceful, and the forest odours floated to us on the sharp autumn air.

The cedar fire smelt sweet and we could just hear the gentle wash of

tiny waves along the shore. All was calm, beautiful, and remote from the

world of men and passion. It was, indeed, a night to touch the soul, and

yet, I think, none of us heeded these things. A bull-moose might almost

have thrust his great head over our shoulders and have escaped

unnoticed. The death of Jake the Swede, with its sinister setting, was

the real presence that held the centre of the stage and compelled

attention.

"You won't p'raps care to come along, Mister," said Morris, by way of a

beginning; "but I guess I'll go with one of the boys here and have a

hunt for it."

"Sure," said Hank. "Jake an' I done some biggish trips together in the

old days, and I'll do that much for'm."

"It's deep water, they tell me, round them islands," added Silver Fizz;

"but we'll find it, sure pop,--if it's thar."

They all spoke of the body as "it."

There was a minute or two of heavy silence, and then Rushton again burst

out with his story in almost the identical words he had used before. It

was almost as if he had learned it by heart. He wholly failed to

appreciate the efforts of the others to let him off.

Silver Fizz rushed in, hoping to stop him, Morris and Hank closely

following his lead.

"I once knew another travellin' partner of his," he began quickly; "used

to live down Moosejaw Rapids way--"

"Is that so?" said Hank.

"Kind o' useful sort er feller," chimed in Morris.

All the idea the men had was to stop the tongue wagging before the

discrepancies became so glaring that we should be forced to take notice

of them, and ask questions. But, just as well try to stop an angry

bull-moose on the run, or prevent Beaver Creek freezing in mid-winter by

throwing in pebbles near the shore. Out it came! And, though the

discrepancy this time was insignificant, it somehow brought us all in a

second face to face with the inevitable and dreaded climax.

"And so I tramped all over that little bit of an island, hoping he

might somehow have gotten in without my knowing it, and always thinking

I _heard that awful last cry of his_ in the darkness--and then the night

dropped down impenetrably, like a damn thick blanket out of the sky,

and--"

All eyes fell away from his face. Hank poked up the logs with his boot,

and Morris seized an ember in his bare fingers to light his pipe,

although it was already emitting clouds of smoke. But the professor

caught the ball flying.

"I thought you said he sank without a cry," he remarked quietly, looking

straight up into the frightened face opposite, and then riddling

mercilessly the confused explanation that followed.

The cumulative effect of all these forces, hitherto so rigorously

repressed, now made itself felt, and the circle spontaneously broke up,

everybody moving at once by a common instinct. The professor's wife left

the party abruptly, with excuses about an early start next morning. She

first shook hands with Rushton, mumbling something about his comfort in

the night.

The question of his comfort, however, devolved by force of circumstances

upon myself, and he shared my tent. Just before wrapping up in my double

blankets--for the night was bitterly cold--he turned and began to

explain that he had a habit of talking in his sleep and hoped I would

wake him if he disturbed me by doing so.

Well, he did talk in his sleep--and it disturbed me very much indeed.

The anger and violence of his words remain with me to this day, and it

was clear in a minute that he was living over again some portion of the

scene upon the lake. I listened, horror-struck, for a moment or two, and

then understood that I was face to face with one of two alternatives: I

must continue an unwilling eavesdropper, or I must waken him. The former

was impossible for me, yet I shrank from the latter with the greatest

repugnance; and in my dilemma I saw the only way out of the difficulty

and at once accepted it.

Cold though it was, I crawled stealthily out of my warm sleeping-bag and

left the tent, intending to keep the old fire alight under the stars and

spend the remaining hours till daylight in the open.

As soon as I was out I noticed at once another figure moving silently

along the shore. It was Hank Milligan, and it was plain enough what he

was doing: he was examining the holes that had been cut in the upper

ribs of the canoe. He looked half ashamed when I came up with him, and

mumbled something about not being able to sleep for the cold. But,

there, standing together beside the over-turned canoe, we both saw that

the holes were far too small for a man's hand and arm and could not

possibly have been cut by two men hanging on for their lives in deep

water. Those holes had been made afterwards.

Hank said nothing to me and I said nothing to Hank, and presently he

moved off to collect logs for the fire, which needed replenishing, for

it was a piercingly cold night and there were many degrees of frost.

Three days later Hank and Silver Fizz followed with stumbling footsteps

the old Indian trail that leads from Beaver Creek to the southwards. A

hammock was slung between them, and it weighed heavily. Yet neither of

the men complained; and, indeed, speech between them was almost nothing.

Their thoughts, however, were exceedingly busy, and the terrible secret

of the woods which formed their burden weighed far more heavily than the

uncouth, shifting mass that lay in the swinging hammock and tugged so

severely at their shoulders.

They had found "it" in four feet of water not more than a couple of

yards from the lee shore of the island. And in the back of the head was

a long, terrible wound which no man could possibly have inflicted upon

himself.

_Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh._

John Silence

by Algernon Blackwood

"Not since the days of Poe have we read anything in his peculiar genre

fit to be compared with this remarkable book. . . . He brings to his work

an extraordinary knowledge of strange and unusual forms of

spiritualistic phenomena, and steeps his pages in an atmosphere of real

terror and expectancy."--_Observer_.

"When one says that Mr. Blackwood's work approaches genius, the phrase

is used in no light connection. This very remarkable book is a

considerable and lasting addition to the literature of our

time."--_Morning Post_.

"These are the most haunting and original ghost stories since 'Uncle

Silas' appeared."--_Morning Leader_.

"In the field which he has chosen, Mr. Blackwood stands without rival

among contemporary writers."--_Manchester Guardian_.

"As original, as powerful, and as artistically written as that little

masterpiece of Lytton's, 'The Haunters and the Haunted.' He bears

favourable comparison with Le Fanu. . . . A volume which has an

extraordinary power of fascination."--_Birmingham Daily Post_.

"The story is absolutely arresting in its imaginative power."--_Daily

Telegraph_.

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The Lost Valley

by Algernon Blackwood

"In one of the stories, 'The Wendigo,' the author gives us, perhaps, one

of the most successful excursions into the grimly weird; quietly but

surely he makes his reader come under the influence of the eerie, until

the pages are half-reluctantly turned under the spell of a fearful

fascination. Mr. Blackwood writes like a real artist."--_Daily

Telegraph_.

"The book of a remarkably gifted writer."--_Daily News_.

"The stories are unforgettable. Through them all, too, runs the charm of

an accomplished style. . . . Mr. Blackwood has indeed done well."--_Pall

Mall Gazette_.

"Whether concerned with beauty or terror, fact or fancy, there is an

individuality in Mr. Blackwood's work which cannot be ignored, and there

is also power which proceeds, we think, not so much from the fertility

of a comprehensive imagination, but from the amazing conviction of the

author's power of expression, and a literary quality rarely met with in

contemporary stories of mystery and imagination."--_Globe_.

"In his method of touching the well-springs of fear, of pity, and of

horror, Mr. Blackwood often exhibits powers which can only properly be

called masterly. In its way his work bids fair to become classical . . .

an art superior to that of Bulwer-Lytton, at least as fine as Le Fanu's,

and hardly, if at all, inferior to that exhibited by the supreme living

masters of the short story, Mr. Kipling and Mr. James."--_Birmingham

Daily Post_.

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The Listener

by Algernon Blackwood

"These stories are literature . . . good stories, well imagined, carefully

modelled, properly proportioned. . . . 'The Insanity of Jones' is perhaps

the most remarkable _tour de force_ in this remarkable book. . . . If Mr.

Blackwood keeps at his present level one or two very celebrated authors

will have to look to their laurels."--_Daily Chronicle_.

"Even Edgar Allan Poe never suggested more skilfully an atmosphere of

horror than does Mr. Blackwood in his titular story, or again in his

description of 'The Willows.'"--F.G. BETTANY in the _Sunday Times_.

"Saying that Mr. Blackwood's latest stories reveal strong dramatic

instinct is a dull way of expressing the series of thrills which their

perusal causes. Without doubt Mr. Blackwood is designed to fill a high

place as an author who is able to arouse the attention of his reader on

the first page, and to hold it until the last has been turned. . . .

A distinctive genius."--_Pall Mall Gazette_.

"Full of imagination, and well told."--_Daily News_.

"Mr. Blackwood is clearly a master of the art of the genuine sensation

story."--_Liverpool Courier_.

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