of his rod into the turf, and settled down in the heather to fill a
pipe. All round him stretched the undulating moor, purple in the late
summer sunlight. To the southward, low down, a faint haze told where the
sea lay. The stream at his feet sang its queer, crooning moor-song as it
rambled onward, chuckling to meet a bed of pebbles somewhere out of
sight, whispering mysteriously to the rushes that fringed its banks of
peat, deepening to a sudden contralto as it poured over granite boulders
into a scum-flecked pool below.
For a long time the man sat smoking. Occasionally he turned his head to
watch with keen eyes the fretful movements of a fly hovering above the
water. Then a sudden dimple in the smooth surface of the stream arrested
his attention. A few concentric ripples widened, travelled towards him,
and were absorbed in the current. His lips curved into a little smile
and he reached for his rod. In the clear water he could see the origin
of the ripples; a small trout, unconscious of his presence, was waiting
in its hover for the next tit-bit to float downstream. Presently it rose
again.
"The odds are ten to one in your favour," said the man. "Let's see!"
He dropped on one knee and the cast leapt out in feathery coils. Once,
twice it swished; the third time it alighted like thistledown on the
surface. There was a tiny splash, a laugh, and the little greenheart
rod flicked a trout high over his head. It was the merest
baby--half-an-ounce, perhaps--and it fell from the hook into the herbage
some yards from the stream.
"Little ass!" said Maynard. "That was meant for your big brother."
He recovered his cast and began to look for his victim. Without avail he
searched the heather, and as the fateful seconds sped, at last laid down
his rod and dropped on hands and knees to probe among the grass-stems.
For a while he hunted in vain, then the sunlight showed a golden sheen
among some stones. Maynard gave a grunt of relief, but as his hand
closed round it a tiny flutter passed through the fingerling; it gave a
final gasp and was still. Knitting his brows in almost comical vexation,
he hastened to restore it to the stream, holding it by the tail and
striving to impart a life-like wriggle to its limpness.
"Buck up, old thing!" he murmured encouragingly. "Oh, buck up! You're
all right, really you are!"
But the "old thing" was all wrong. In fact, it was dead.
Standing in the wet shingle, Maynard regarded the speckled atom as it
lay in the palm of his hand.
"A matter of seconds, my son. One instant in all eternity would have
made just the difference between life and death to you. And the high
gods denied it you!"
On the opposite side of the stream, set back about thirty paces from the
brink, stood a granite boulder. It was as high as a man's chest, roughly
cubical in shape; but the weather and clinging moss had rounded its
edges, and in places segments had crumbled away, giving foothold to
clumps of fern and starry moor-flowers. On three sides the surrounding
ground rose steeply, forming an irregular horseshoe mound that opened to
the west. Perhaps it was the queer amphitheatrical effect of this
setting that connected up some whimsical train of thought in Maynard's
brain.
"It would seem as if the gods had claimed you," he mused, still holding
the corpse. "You shall be a sacrifice--a burnt sacrifice to the God of
Waste Places."
He laughed at the conceit, half-ashamed of his own childishness, and
crossing the stream by some boulders, he brushed away the earth and weed
from the top of the great stone. Then he retraced his steps and gathered
a handful of bleached twigs that the winter floods had left stranded
along the margin of the stream. These he arranged methodically on the
cleared space; on the top of the tiny pyre he placed the troutlet.
"There!" he said, and smiling gravely struck a match. A faint column of
smoke curled up into the still air, and as he spoke the lower rim of the
setting sun met the edge of the moor. The evening seemed suddenly to
become incredibly still, even the voice of the stream ceasing to be a
sound distinct. A wagtail bobbing in the shallows fled into the waste.
Overhead the smoke trembled upwards, a faint stain against a cloudless
sky. The stillness seemed almost acute. It was as if the moor were
waiting, and holding its breath while it waited. Then the twigs upon his
altar crackled, and the pale flames blazed up. The man stepped back with
artistic appreciation of the effect.
"To be really impressive, there ought to be more smoke," he continued.
Round the base of the stone were clumps of small flowers. They were
crimson in colour and had thick, fleshy leaves. Hastily, he snatched a
handful and piled it on the fire. The smoke darkened and rose in a thick
column; there was a curious pungency in the air.
Far off the church-bell in some unseen hamlet struck the hour. The
distant sound, coming from the world of men and every-day affairs,
seemed to break the spell. An ousel fluttered across the stream and
dabbled in a puddle among some stones. Rabbits began to show themselves
and frisk with lengthened shadows in the clear spaces. Maynard looked at
his watch, half-mindful of a train to be caught somewhere miles away,
and then, held by the peace of running water, stretched himself against
the sloping ground.
The glowing world seemed peopled by tiny folk, living out their timid,
inscrutable lives around him. A water-rat, passing bright-eyed upon his
lawful occasion, paused on the border of the stream to consider the
stranger, and was lost to view. A stagnant pool among some reeds caught
the reflection of the sunset and changed on the instant into raw gold.
Maynard plucked a grass stem and chewed it reflectively, staring out
across the purple moor and lazily watching the western sky turn from
glory to glory. Over his head the smoke of the sacrifice still curled
and eddied upwards. Then a sudden sound sent him on to one elbow--the
thud of an approaching horse's hoofs.
"Moor ponies!" he muttered, and, rising, stood expectant beside his
smoking altar.
Then he heard the sudden jingle of a bit, and presently a horse and
rider climbed into view against the pure sky. A young girl, breeched,
booted and spurred like a boy, drew rein, and sat looking down into the
hollow.
For a moment neither spoke; then Maynard acknowledged her presence by
raising his tweed hat. She gave a little nod.
"I thought it was somebody swaling--burning the heather." She considered
the embers on the stone, and then her grey eyes travelled back to the
spare, tweed-clad figure beside it.
He smiled in his slow way--a rather attractive smile.
"No. I've just concluded some pagan rites in connection with a small
trout!" He nodded gravely at the stone. "That was a burnt sacrifice."
With whimsical seriousness he told her of the trout's demise and high
destiny.
For a moment she looked doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his
voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A
smile hovered about the corners of her mouth.
"Oh, is that it? I wondered ..."
She gathered the reins and turned her horse's head.
"Forgive me if I dragged you out of your way," said Maynard, never swift
to conventionality, but touched by the tired shadows in her eyes. The
faint droop of her mouth, too, betrayed intense fatigue. "You look
fagged. I don't want to be a nuisance or bore you, but I wish you'd let
me offer you a sandwich. I've some milk here, too."
The girl looked round the ragged moor, brooding in the twilight, and
half hesitated. Then she forced a wan little smile.
"I am tired, and hungry, too. Have you enough for us both?"
"Lots!" said Maynard. To himself he added: "And what's more, my child,
you'll have a little fainting affair in a few minutes, if you don't have
a feed."
"Come and rest for a minute," he continued aloud.
He spoke with pleasant, impersonal kindliness, and as he turned to his
satchel she slipped out of the saddle and came towards him, leading her
horse.
"Drink that," he said, holding out the cup of his flask. She drank with
a wry little face, and coughed. "I put a little whisky in it," he
explained. "You needed it."
She thanked him and sat down with the bridle linked over her arm. The
colour crept back into her cheeks. Maynard produced a packet of
sandwiches and a pasty.
"I've been mooning about the moor all the afternoon and lost myself
twice," she explained between frank mouthfuls. "I'm hopelessly late for
dinner, and I've still got miles to go."
"Do you know the way now?" he asked.
"Oh, yes! It won't take me long. My family are sensible, too, and don't
fuss." She looked at him, her long-lashed eyes a little serious. "But
you--how are you going to get home? It's getting late to be out on the
moor afoot."
Maynard laughed.
"Oh, I'm all right, thanks!" He sniffed the warm September night. "I
think I shall sleep here, as a matter of fact. I'm a gipsy by instinct--
"'Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly Heaven above----'"
He broke off, arrested by her unsmiling eyes. She was silent a moment.
"People don't as a rule sleep out--about here." The words came jerkily,
as if she were forcing a natural tone into her voice.
"No?" He was accustomed to being questioned on his unconventional mode
of life, and was prepared for the usual expostulations. She looked
abruptly towards him.
"Are you superstitious?"
He laughed and shook his head.
"I don't think so. But what has that got to do with it?"
She hesitated, flushing a little.
"There is a legend--people about here say that the moor here is haunted.
There is a Thing that hunts people to death!"
He laughed outright, wondering how old she was. Seventeen or eighteen,
perhaps. She had said her people "didn't fuss." That meant she was left
to herself to pick up all these old wives' tales.
"Really! Has anyone been caught?"
She nodded, unsmiling.
"Yes; old George Toms. He was one of Dad's tenants, a big purple-faced
man, who drank a lot and never took much exercise. They found him in a
ditch with his clothes all torn and covered with mud. He had been run to
death; there was no wound on his body, but his heart was broken." Her
thoughts recurred to the stone against which they leant, and his quaint
conceit. "You were rather rash to go offering burnt sacrifices about
here, don't you think? Dad says that stone is the remains of an old
Ph[oe]nician altar, too."
She was smiling now, but the seriousness lingered in her eyes.
"And I have probably invoked some terrible heathen deity--Ashtoreth, or
Pugm, or Baal! How awful!" he added, with mock gravity.
The girl rose to her feet.
"You are laughing at me. The people about here are superstitious, and I
am a Celt, too. I belong here."
He jumped up with a quick protest.
"No, I'm not laughing at you. Please don't think that! But it's a little
hard to believe in active evil when all around is so beautiful." He
helped her to mount and walked to the top of the mound at her stirrup.
"Tell me, is there any charm or incantation, in case----?" His eyes were
twinkling, but she shook her fair head soberly.
"They say iron--cold iron--is the only thing it cannot cross. But I must
go!" She held out her hand with half-shy friendliness. "Thank you for
your niceness to me." Her eyes grew suddenly wistful. "Really, though, I
don't think I should stay there if I were you. Please!"
He only laughed, however, and she moved off, shaking her impatient
horse into a canter. Maynard stood looking after her till she was
swallowed by the dusk and surrounding moor. Then, thoughtfully, he
retraced his steps to the hollow.
* * * * *
A cloud lay across the face of the moon when Fear awoke Maynard. He
rolled on to one elbow and stared round the hollow, filled with
inexplicable dread. He was ordinarily a courageous man, and had no
nerves to speak of; yet, as his eyes followed the line of the ridge
against the sky, he experienced terror, the elementary, nauseating
terror of childhood, when the skin tingles, and the heart beats at a
suffocating gallop. It was very dark, but momentarily his eyes grew
accustomed to it. He was conscious of a queer, pungent smell, horribly
animal and corrupt.
Suddenly the utter silence broke. He heard a rattle of stones, the
splash of water about him, realised that it was the brook beneath his
feet, and that he, Maynard, was running for his life.
Neither then nor later did Reason assert herself. He ran without
question or amazement. His brain--the part where human reasoning holds
normal sway--was dominated by the purely primitive instinct of flight.
And in that sudden rout of courage and self-respect one conscious
thought alone remained. Whatever it was that was even then at his heels,
he must not see it. At all costs it must be behind him, and, resisting
the sudden terrified impulse to look over his shoulder, he unbuttoned
his tweed jacket and disengaged himself from it as he ran. The faint
haze that had gathered round the full moon dispersed, and he saw the
moor stretching before him, grey and still, glistening with dew.
He was of frugal and temperate habits, a wiry man at the height of his
physical powers, with lean flanks and a deep chest.
At Oxford they had said he was built to run for his life. He was running
for it now, and he knew it.
The ground sloped upwards after a while, and he tore up the incline,
breathing deep and hard; down into a shallow valley, leaping gorse
bushes, crashing through whortle and meadowsweet, stumbling over
peat-cuttings and the workings of forgotten tin-mines. An idiotic
popular tune raced through his brain. He found himself trying to frame
the words, but they broke into incoherent prayers, still to the same
grotesque tune.
Then, as he breasted the flank of a boulder-strewn tor, he seemed to
hear snuffling breathing behind him, and, redoubling his efforts,
stepped into a rabbit hole. He was up and running again in the twinkling
of an eye, limping from a twisted ankle as he ran.
He sprinted over the crest of the hill and thought he heard the sound
almost abreast of him, away to the right. In the dry bed of a
watercourse some stones were dislodged and fell with a rattle in the
stillness of the night; he bore away to the left. A moment later there
was Something nearly at his left elbow, and he smelt again the nameless,
f[oe]tid reek. He doubled, and the ghastly truth flashed upon him. The
Thing was playing with him! He was being hunted for sport--the sport of
a horror unthinkable. The sweat ran down into his eyes.
He lost all count of time; his wrist watch was smashed on his wrist. He
ran through a reeling eternity, sobbing for breath, stumbling, tripping,
fighting a leaden weariness; and ever the same unreasoning terror urged
him on. The moon and ragged skyline swam about him; the blood drummed
deafeningly in his ears, and his eyeballs felt as if they would burst
from their sockets. He had nearly bitten his swollen tongue in two
falling over an unseen peat-cutting, and blood-flecked foam gathered on
his lips.
God, how he ran! But he was no longer among bog and heather. He was
running--shambling now--along a road. The loping pursuit of that
nameless, shapeless Something sounded like an echo in his head.
He was nearing a village, but saw nothing save a red mist that swam
before him like a fog. The road underfoot seemed to rise and fall in
wavelike undulations. Still he ran, with sobbing gasps and limbs that
swerved under his weight; at his elbow hung death unnamable, and the
fear of it urged him on while every instinct of his exhausted body
called out to him to fling up his hands and end it.
Out of the mist ahead rose the rough outline of a building by the
roadside; it was the village smithy, half workshop, half dwelling. The
road here skirted a patch of grass, and the moonlight, glistening on the
dew, showed the dark circular scars of the turf where, for a generation,
the smith's peat fires had heated the great iron hoops that tyred the
wheels of the wains. One of these was even then lying on the ground with
the turves placed in readiness for firing in the morning, and in the
throbbing darkness of Maynard's consciousness a voice seemed to speak
faintly--the voice of a girl:
"_There's a Thing that hunts people to death. But iron--cold iron--it
cannot cross._"
The sweat of death was already on his brow as he reeled sideways,
plunging blindly across the uneven tufts of grass. His feet caught in
some obstruction and he pitched forward into the sanctuary of the huge
iron tyre--a spasm of cramp twisting his limbs up under him.
As he fell a great blackness rose around him, and with it the bewildered
clamour of awakened dogs.
* * * * *
Dr. Stanmore came down the flagged path from the smith's cottage,
pulling on his gloves. A big car was passing slowly up the village
street, and as it came abreast the smithy the doctor raised his hat.
The car stopped, and the driver, a fair-haired girl, leant sideways from
her seat.
"Good-morning, Dr. Stanmore! What's the matter here? Nothing wrong with
any of Matthew's children, is there?"
The Doctor shook his head gravely.
"No, Lady Dorothy; they're all at school. This is no one belonging to
the family--a stranger who was taken mysteriously ill last night just
outside the forge, and they brought him in. It's a most queer case, and
very difficult to diagnose--that is to say, to give a diagnosis in
keeping with one's professional--er--conscience."
The girl switched off the engine, and took her hand from the
brake-lever. Something in the doctor's manner arrested her interest.
"What is the matter with him?" she queried. "What diagnosis have you
made, professional or otherwise?"
"Shock, Lady Dorothy; severe exhaustion and shock, heart strained,
superficial lesions, bruises, scratches, and so forth. Mentally he is in
a great state of excitement and terror, lapsing into delirium at
times--that is really the most serious feature. In fact, unless I can
calm him I am afraid we may have some brain trouble on top of the other
thing. It's most mysterious!"
The girl nodded gravely, holding her underlip between her white teeth.
"What does he look like--in appearance, I mean? Is he young?"
The shadow of a smile crossed the doctor's eyes.
"Yes, Lady Dorothy--quite young, and very good-looking. He is a man of
remarkable athletic build. He is calmer now, and I have left Matthew's
wife with him while I slip out to see a couple of other patients."
Lady Dorothy rose from her seat and stepped down out of the car.
"I think I know your patient," she said. "In fact, I had taken the car
to look for him, to ask him to lunch with us. Do you think I might see
him for a minute? If it is the person I think it is I may be able to
help you diagnose his illness."
Together they walked up the path and entered the cottage. The doctor led
the way upstairs and opened a door. A woman sitting by the bed rose and
dropped a curtsey.
Lady Dorothy smiled a greeting to her and crossed over to the bed.
There, his face grey and drawn with exhaustion, with shadows round his
closed eyes, lay Maynard; one hand lying on the counterpane opened and
closed convulsively, his lips moved. The physician eyed the girl
interrogatively.
"Do you know him?" he asked.
She nodded, and put her firm, cool hand over the twitching fingers.
"Yes," she said. "And I warned him. Tell me, is he very ill?"
"He requires rest, careful nursing, absolute quiet----"
"All that he can have at the Manor," said the girl softly. She met the
doctor's eyes and looked away, a faint colour tingeing her cheeks. "Will
you go and telephone to father? I will take him back in the car now if
he is well enough to be moved."
"Yes, he is well enough to be moved," said the doctor. "It is very kind
of you, Lady Dorothy, and I will go and telephone at once. Will you stay
with him for a little while?"
He left the room, and they heard his feet go down the narrow stairs. The
cottage door opened and closed.
The two women, the old and the young, peasant and peer's daughter,
looked at each other, and there was in their glance that complete
understanding which can only exist between women.
"Do 'ee mind old Jarge Toms, my lady?"
Lady Dorothy nodded.
"I know, I know! And I warned him! They won't believe, these men! They
think because they are so big and strong that there is nothing that can
hurt them."
"'Twas th' iron that saved un, my lady. 'Twas inside one of John's new
tyres as was lyin' on the ground that us found un. Dogs barkin' wakened
us up. But it'd ha' had un, else----" A sound downstairs sent her flying
to the door. "'Tis the kettle, my lady. John's dinner spilin', an' I
forgettin'."
She hurried out of the room and closed the door.
The sound of their voices seemed to have roused the occupant of the bed.
His eyelids fluttered and opened; his eyes rested full on the girl's
face. For a moment there was no consciousness in their gaze; then a
whimsical ghost of a smile crept about his mouth.
"Go on," he said in a weak voice. "Say it!"
"Say what?" asked Lady Dorothy. She was suddenly aware that her hand was
still on his, but the twitching fingers had closed about hers in a calm,
firm grasp.
"Say 'I told you so'!"
She shook her head with a little smile.
"I told you that cold iron----"
"Cold iron saved me." He told her of the iron hoop on the ground outside
the forge. "You saved me last night."
She disengaged her hand gently.
"I saved you last night--since you say so. But in future----"
Someone was coming up the stairs. Maynard met her eyes with a long look.
"I have no fear," he said. "I have found something better than cold
iron."
The door opened and the doctor came in. He glanced at Maynard's face and
touched his pulse.
"The case is yours, Lady Dorothy!" he said with a little bow.
IX
THE TRAGEDY AT THE "LOUP NOIR"
The Boy at the corner of the table flicked the ash of his cigar into the
fire.
"Spiritualism is all rot!" he declared.
"I don't know," the Host reflected thoughtfully. "One hears queer
stories sometimes."
"Which reminds me----" started the Bore.
But before he could proceed any further the little French Judge
ruthlessly cut him short.
"Bah!" Contempt and geniality were mingled in his tone. "Who are we,
poor ignorant worms, that we should dare to say 'is' or 'is not'? Your
Shakespeare, he was right! 'There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!'"
The faces of the four Englishmen instantly assumed that peculiarly
stolid expression always called forth by the mention of Shakespeare.
"But Spiritualism----" started the Host.
Again the little French Judge broke in:
"I who you speak, I myself know of an experience, of the most
remarkable, to this day unexplained save by Spiritualism, Occultism,
what you will! You shall hear! The case is one I conducted
professionally some two years ago, though, of course, the events which I
now tell in their proper sequence, came out only in the trial. I string
them together for you, yes?"
The Bore, who fiercely resented any stories except his own, gave vent to
a discontented grunt; the other three prepared to listen carefully. From
the drawing-room, whither the ladies had retired after dinner, sounded
the far-away strains of a piano. The little French Judge held out his
glass for a creme de menthe; his eyes were sparkling with suppressed
excitement; he gazed deep into the shining green liquid as if seeing
therein a moving panorama of pictures, then he began:
On a dusky autumn evening, a young man, tall, olive-skinned, tramps
along the road leading from Paris to Longchamps. He is walking with a
quick, even swing. Now and again a hidden anxiety darkens his face.
Suddenly he branches off to the left; the path here is steep and muddy.
He stops in front of a blurred circle of yellow light; by this can one
faintly perceive the outlines of a building. Above the narrow doorway
hangs a creaking sign which announces to all it may concern that this is
the "Loup Noir," much sought after for its nearness to the racecourse
and for its excellent _menage_.
"_Voila!_" mutters our friend.
On entering, he is met by the burly innkeeper, a shrewd enough fellow,
who has seen something of life before settling down in Longchamps. The
young man glances past him as if seeking some other face, then
recollecting himself demands shelter for the night.