THE GHOST IN THE CHURCH BELFRY
If you have ever journeyed down into Essex by way of the Great Eastern
from Liverpool Street, you may remember that just before you come to
Valehampton--six or seven miles before, in fact--the train stops at a
small and exceedingly picturesque station bearing the name of Willowby
Old Church, behind which the village of the same name lies in a sort of
depression, a picture of peaceful beauty.
But if you do not recall it, it doesn't matter; the point is that it is
there, and that at a period of about two and a half hours after Cleek
and Mr. Narkom had left His Grace of Essex there rushed up to the
outlying borders of that village a panting and dust-smothered blue
limousine in which sat four men--two on the front seat and two on the
back. And the remarkable fact about it was that the two "back seaters"
looked so nearly the image of the two "front seaters" that if you hadn't
heard all four of them talking you might have fancied that at least one
pair was seated in front of a looking-glass.
They differed not a particle in anything, from sleek, well-pomaded hair
to bristly, close-clipped moustache, or from self-evident "dickey" and
greasy necktie to clumping, thick-soled, well-polished cow-hide boots
with metal "protectors" on the heels--policemen's boots by all the
signs.
"Safe enough here, sir, I reckon," came through the speaking tube from
the chauffeur as the car halted in the shadow of some trees. "No one in
sight, and the station not more than a hundred yards away--get to it in
two minutes without half trying."
The pair on the back seat pulled farther back from observation and the
pair on the front one rose and got out. The last to do so spoke a few
sentences to the chauffeur.
"The train won't be in for another half-hour yet," he said. "You ought
to be in Valehampton before that. Keep out of sight as much as possible.
You won't have much difficulty in finding out where we put up, and when
you do, keep as close to the neighbourhood as you can with safety.
Meanwhile, impress it upon Hammond and Petrie not to pull down the
curtains, but to keep out of sight, if they have to lie on the floor to
do it. Come along, Mr. Narkom. Step lively!"
"All right, sir," said Lennard; then the limousine flashed away, bearing
the original Hammond and Petrie in one direction while the counterfeit
presentments of them walked off in the other.
In half an hour the down train from London arrived. They boarded it, and
went, with their brier-woods and their shag, into a third-class smoking
compartment, and were off a minute or so afterward.
The sun had not yet dropped wholly out of sight behind the west wing of
Essex Castle when they turned out at Valehampton, and they had only got
as far as the door where the ticket collector stood when a voice behind
them said abruptly: "Mr. Headland--Mr. Markham. One moment, please."
Facing round they saw a pleasant-faced man on the right side of forty
coming into the waiting-room from the platform, and advancing toward
them. His clothing was undeniably town-made, and selected with excellent
taste. He wore tan boots and leather puttees, and carried a hunting crop
in his hand. He came up and introduced himself at once as James Overton,
land-steward of the Duke of Essex.
"Hallo! The duke got back a'ready, has he?" asked Cleek, when he heard
this.
"Oh, no. I do not expect him for quite another hour at the very
earliest. He will come down as he went up--in the motor. And he is
always a little uneasy about travelling fast. It was at Captain
Weatherley's suggestion that I telephoned him at the Carlton to inquire
if there was any likelihood of somebody from Scotland Yard being sent
down before morning. That is how I came to know--and to be here. His
Grace informed me that you had already started. The local time-table
told me the rest."
"Good business! But I say, Mr. Overton, what put it into Captain
What's-his-name's head to have you telephone the duke and inquire?
Nervous gent, is he?"
"No; not in the least. He suddenly remembered that the only inn in the
village closed its doors this morning. Last night's affair finished the
landlady. She cleared out, bag and baggage, at noon. Couldn't be hired
to stop another hour. The Captain thought I ought to telephone to His
Grace and make the inquiry, because if anybody _should_ be coming down
to-night something ought to be done to find lodgings beforehand."
"I see. Nice and thoughtful of the gent, Markham--eh, what? Much obliged
to you for the trouble, I'm sure. Did you manage to find us any, then?"
"Yes, Mr.--er--Headland, will it be? Thanks.... I had some difficulty in
doing so for a time; but finally Carstairs came to the rescue. Carstairs
is His Grace's butler. He is engaged to a young woman living on the
other side of the village, and her people have eased matters up a bit by
placing a room in their cottage at the disposal of Mr. Markham and
yourself. Shall I show you to it? I regret that I was thoughtless and
neglected to speak for a conveyance."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," replied Cleek, knocking out his pipe against
his heel. "My mate and me, we're used to hoofing it; and, besides,
it'll be a change to stretch our legs after being cooped up for nigh
three hours in the train. Wot price Shanks's mare for a bit, Jim?
Agreeable?"
"Hur!" grunted Mr. Narkom, nodding his head in the affirmative without
troubling to remove his pipe from his lips.
"Right you are, then--best foot forward. Mustn't mind Markham's little
ways, Mr. Overton. Some folks get the idea that because he doesn't talk
much the beggar's sullen. But that ain't it at all. Fact is, he's a bit
hard of hearing. Shell in the South African War. Busted ear-drum."
"What, _deaf_?"
"Yessir. Deaf as a blooming hitching post in the left ear, and the right
one not up to no great figger, either. A thundering good man though, one
of the best."
"God bless my soul! Deaf, and yet----"
Here Mr. Overton's voice dropped off suddenly, and he did the rest of
his thinking in silence. The thoughts themselves were anything but
complimentary to a police force which retained deaf men on its active
list and could send out nothing better than this precious pair of
illiterates to investigate an important case.
"The duke does some funny things sometimes," he said to himself as he
walked over to the spot where he had tethered his horse and began to
unfasten it. "And that's what Scotland Yard takes the rate-payers' good
money to support, eh? Good lord!"
He rejoined the two undesirables a moment later, and with the horse's
bridle over his arm, walked on beside Cleek while Mr. Markham dropped
back a few paces into the rear and clumped along in heavy-footed,
listless style.
Mr. Overton, too, was silent for a time--as if the apparent inefficiency
of these two upon whose perspicacity the duke was relying rather weighed
upon his spirits, and he saw little more hope of getting to the bottom
of this perplexing affair than if it had been left to the local
constabulary. Cleek was sorry for that. He could see that the man was of
a hearty, jovial disposition, and likely to be a rather pleasant
companion for a long walk. He therefore set out to put him more at his
ease and to start the conversational ball rolling.
"Fine country this, Mr. Overton," he said, looking round over the wide
sweep of green land. "Reminds me of Australia, them trees and fields.
Though I never was there; but I've seen the photographs. Brother's a
sailor on the P. and O.--fetched back heaps of 'em. Hello! Wot price
that church spire away over there to the left? Will that be St.
Saviour's?"
"Yes."
"Church where the goings on takes place, ain't it? The bell-ringing and
the like. Reckon I must have a look at that place some time to-morrow."
"Not until to-morrow, Mr. Headland?"
"Well, you see, I didn't expect that the box containing our magnifying
glasses and camera for taking photographs of fingerprints and things of
that sort, you know, will arrive before then, and it's no use working
without your tools, is it? Superintendent said he'd ship it down to us
either to-night or the first thing in the morning, and he's pretty
prompt about such things."
"So then, of course---- To-morrow, eh? I suppose you haven't formed any
opinion regarding the genesis of the case, Mr. Headland?"
"The which, sir?"
"The genesis, the start, the beginning, the cause."
"Oh! I see. No, I haven't made up my mind so set that it ain't liable to
be changed. I never was one of them pig-headed sort that gets an idea
and then can't be shook off it. I've formed a sort of general notion
regarding it, you know, but, as I say, nothing fixed."
"I see. Would it be too much to ask what the 'general notion' is?"
"Why, it'll be just what that dead chap--the one that was killed last
night--called it: a case of hanky-panky. Somebody is engineering the
business. For a purpose, you know. Depreciating land values for the sake
of getting hold of that piece of property the cement company wants to
get from the duke."
Mr. Overton stopped short.
"I hadn't thought of that!" he declared. And it was clear enough from
the manner in which the blood drained out of his face, and then came
rushing back again, that he never had.
"Hadn't you?" said Cleek, with a slight swagger. "Lord, I did--the first
thing!"
It was evident that this hitherto unthought-of explanation had a
remarkable effect upon Mr. Overton.
"It would be that Hebrew chap, the company promoter who was knighted
last New Year, Sir Julius Solinski," he said as he resumed the walk. "It
would be that fellow who would be at the bottom of any scheme to acquire
the land; and the man has a country seat in the adjoining district. Yes,
but the bells, Mr. Headland--the bells?"
"Oh, that will be the doing of boys. Up to a lark, you know. A blackened
fishing-line carried over the branch of a tree--that sort of thing. Did
it myself when I was a youngster. It's all tommyrot about it's being a
'spirit,' you know. Drivel."
"You think so?"
"Why, cert'nly. Don't you?"
"I did once," replied Overton, sinking his voice. "I changed my mind
upon that score last night. I'd have stopped that chap, Davis, going to
the belfry if I had known in time. I didn't. I was over at Willowby Old
Church on business connected with the estate. I was kept later than I
had expected, and didn't get back to Valehampton until after dark."
His voice dropped off. He walked on a few steps in silence, his face
curiously grave, his eyes very large. Of a sudden he took a slight
shivering fit--the last thing in the world one would have expected of
such a man--and then threw a nervous glance over his shoulder and looked
up at Cleek.
"Mr. Headland," he said, gravely, "heretofore people have merely heard
things. Last night I _saw_!"
"Saw? Saw what?"
"I don't know. Perhaps I never shall. I can give it neither name nor
description. I only know that whatever it was it certainly was nothing
human."
"A ghost?"
"It was a jolly good imitation of one then, if it wasn't. Up to that
minute I had been as certain as you are that human hands, and human
hands alone, were at the back of this diabolical business, and that the
talk of the bells being rung by spirits was the baldest rubbish in all
the world. To-day I don't know what to think! It wasn't a case of
nerves. I didn't imagine the thing. I'm not that kind of man. I _saw_
it, Mr. Headland--saw it as plainly as I now see you."
"I say, you know, you make my flesh crawl. How did it happen? And
where?"
"In the road on the far side of St. Saviour's, at about half-past ten
last night," said Overton, with grave seriousness. "I was coming up over
the slope between Valehampton and Willowby Old Church, intending to turn
off at the crossroads and take the short cut to the Lodge, where I live.
The moon was shining brightly and there was no air stirring. The trees
were as motionless as wooden things, and the road, after the long
drought, was baked like iron. Had any footstep fallen upon it I must
have heard it in that complete quiet. Had any living creature passed me
in the road, that creature I must have seen. I saw and I heard nothing.
"All of a sudden, just as I got to the top of the slope, I happened to
look up and catch sight of the flat top of the bell tower of St.
Saviour's. I was a goodish bit away from it, but there was a break in
the roadside trees at that point and I could see it clearly. I shouldn't
have given it a second glance under other circumstances, for I am quite
used to the sight of it and, up to that moment, never had the slightest
belief in there being anything supernatural connected with it in any
way. But it so happened that a curious thing about it forced itself upon
my notice at that moment, so I stood still and looked at it fixedly. The
curious thing was this: at the very moment when I first looked up and
saw the tower's top, the moon dipped out of sight behind a passing
cloud. The place should, naturally, have been plunged into darkness;
instead a curious blob of light still lay on the roof of the place, as
if the moon still shone upon some circular silver thing that rested
there.
"I could not make it out. There is no metal on the belfry's top. Like
all towers of the Norman type, it is simply a huge, truncated stone
cylinder, roofed over with stones and pierced here and there with
bowman's slits cut in the circular walls. But suddenly, to my immense
surprise, that curious light began to move; then, presently, it went
circling round and round the tower's top at a terrific rate of speed.
"'O-ho,' said I to myself, thinking, of course, that I had had the rare
good fortune to stumble upon the spot at a moment when the person
responsible for the ringing of the bells was on the ground for some
purpose of his own. 'Well, I'll precious soon make short work of you, my
friend, I promise you that.' I had not spoken any louder than I am
speaking now, Mr. Headland, so it would have been utterly impossible for
any one or anything on the tower's top to have heard me all that
distance away. But I swear to you that in the very instant I spoke those
words and made to cut across into the graveyard of St. Saviour's a
sudden gust of wind as furious as a tropical hurricane seized upon the
trees about me and whipped and twisted them into writhing cones of
green; a dozen unseen hands slapped and tore at me and flung me back;
and the light on the belfry's top lurched out into space and came
careering toward me with a shrieking noise. I saw for a moment the
outlines of a frightful, bodiless, inhuman face, wrapped in streaming
ribbons of light, and then the thing rushed by me in the darkness,
shapeless and screaming, and for the first time in my life I fainted."