Following Femm upstairs left ample time for reflection. He seemed to
move not merely slowly but with downright reluctance, as if he were
climbing to the scaffold. Philip was telling himself that he felt
a durned sight better. He had Penderel (and the house itself too,
perhaps) to thank for that, because it was that outburst of confidences
round the table that had done him good. To begin with, he had let off
steam himself, which made an immense difference. Then Margaret’s answer
to his question had told him a great deal. In fact, he had thought
of trying to put things right between them, had just been about to
begin—led on by the good old Come-now-Philip look in Margaret’s clear
eyes—when the confounded lights went out and eyes and all disappeared.
Then, too, the others had rushed in to give themselves away, and that
had been a warming and heartening kind of experience. The night had
redeemed itself. If you can put yourself right with people, he
announced to himself, the rest doesn’t matter; the roof can fall in.
And a serious young architect couldn’t put it stronger than that.
So far he had been climbing funereally in Femm’s shadow. Now they had
reached the top of the first flight of stairs, and his guide had come
to a halt and was holding the candle above his head, as if he were
inviting the architect in Philip to look round. There wasn’t much
to be seen, but Philip peered curiously and suddenly found himself
interested. He turned to examine the panelling at his elbow, and Femm
brought the light nearer.
‘Seventeenth century?’ Philip asked.
‘That was when this house was built, or at least some of it,’ Mr. Femm
replied, and seemed anxious to remain where he was and to volunteer
further information.
Philip nodded to all that was said, looked about, touched things.
Everything there was magnificently done but had been wickedly neglected
and was now in a ruinous state of decay; it was a sight that went to
his heart. He thought he understood now why the house had depressed
him at first, where he had picked up the idea of an evil desolation,
for everything told the same sad tale, and no doubt downstairs
he had quite unconsciously taken in all this. Treated with anything
like decency, this house would have been a joy, a miracle. Now they
stood there holding a candle to a fallen empire of craftsmanship. A not
unpleasant melancholy, touched with autumnal beauty, invaded his mind.
He wanted to talk about it to somebody, to Margaret.
They moved slowly down the landing, past several stout old doors. The
last of these Mr. Femm tapped with his forefinger. ‘This is my room,’
he said, halting. ‘There are some things here that you would like to
see, I imagine.’ He looked at Philip almost wistfully.
I’ve no doubt I should,’ Philip replied, ‘but not just now, if you
don’t mind. We’ve got to get that lamp, you know.’
Mr. Femm lowered the candle and then made use of his other hand to
stroke his long chin. He looked most fantastically bloodless, brittle.
‘Ah, yes, the lamp.’ He stared at Philip for a moment, then pushed his
face forward a little. ‘Why should we bother about the lamp? We have
been long enough away now. We can go back and say that we cannot
find it or that it was too heavy for us or that it is broken. They will
have to believe us. Why should we trouble about the lamp?’ He spoke
very softly but with even more precision than usual.
Philip looked at him in amazement. What was the matter with the man? ‘I
don’t see the point,’ he began, then broke off and changed his tone,
feeling rather indignant. ‘Besides, we couldn’t do that. We said we’d
get the lamp and we’ll get it. Why shouldn’t we?’
‘Why should we if we don’t want to?’ said Mr. Femm, calmly. ‘And I
don’t want to. Are you afraid of telling a few lies? If you are, I will
take it upon myself to tell them.’
‘It’s not that, though I must say I don’t like lying. And in this case
it would be particularly mean.’ But Philip couldn’t be angry, it was
all so absurd. He never remembered a more absurd conversation—the two
of them standing there in the little glow of candle-light at the end of
the landing, arguing about a tiny errand they had undertaken.
‘I must say, if I may do so without offence,’ Mr. Femm mused, ‘that
for a man of culture, as you have just proved yourself to be, you are
singularly naive. Perhaps you have religious convictions, like my
sister. Perhaps God is on your side.’
‘No, I’ve not,’ Philip replied shortly. He was beginning to be annoyed.
There was something offensive about the man, a queer unpleasant streak
in him that could hardly be dismissed as eccentricity. But something
came to break his thought. ‘Hello, did you hear that?’ he exclaimed.
It was a stifled cry from somewhere, and there came with it a kind of
battering noise.
The candle dipped and shook, and in its wavering light Mr. Femm, who
had started back, looked more ghostly than ever. He answered Philip’s
stare with hollow eyes. ‘I did hear something,’ he said at last.
‘I should think you did,’ Philip returned. It was rude, but he couldn’t
help it. ‘What was it?’ he demanded bluntly.
The other leaned forward again. ‘It must have been Morgan. That fellow
is drunk, as you know. He is probably making a disturbance in the
kitchen.’
The sound had not come from the direction of the kitchen, but Philip
couldn’t very well pursue the topic, although his mind had not
dismissed it. They were wasting time. ‘Well, what about the lamp?’
Mr. Femm bit his lip and then looked apologetic. ‘Listen,’ he began, ‘I
want you to excuse me from accompanying you. I am tired and I am not
strong. I cannot face any more stairs. I should have told you before,
but vanity—the vanity of age—would not allow me. You know where it is,
I believe. You will find it on a small table nearly at the end of the
next landing above’—he pointed—‘at the top of the stairs there.’
The man was so obviously lying that Philip could have laughed in his
face. His excuses were sheer impudence. There was something very
strange in all this, but there was nothing to be done about it. ‘All
right. I see,’ he said, looking him steadily in the eyes. ‘I’ll go and
get it. I suppose,’ he added, remembering his companion’s objection
downstairs, ‘it’s not too heavy for me to carry?’
‘Not at all,’ came the reply. So that had been a lie too. The man was
made up of them. What an extraordinary shifty, spectral creature he
was! That’s what’s the matter with him, why I haven’t liked him from
the first, Philip told himself: he’s a born liar himself and he
makes everything, yes, the whole world, seem hollow and false.
‘I shall want that, you know.’ And Philip held out his hand for the
candle. Mr. Femm begged him to wait a moment and disappeared into his
room. When he returned he was carrying a burning night-light and,
without a word, he now handed over the candle and remained standing at
his door while Philip hurried forward to the foot of the next staircase.
He was not half-way up when he heard the sound of a door closing behind
him. Evidently Mr. Femm had retired into his room. And the next moment
there came the sound of a door either being bolted or locked. It seemed
as if Mr. Femm were determined to feel secure. It was all very strange,
and Philip stopped to tell himself so and to listen again. Somehow he
didn’t like the sound of that door. It was odd how a little thing like
that could leave you feeling uncomfortably insecure yourself, almost
as if you were left naked. He went on, but now he trod very lightly on
the stairs. They were narrower than those below, uncarpeted and given
to creaking long after your feet had passed over them. In the moving
glimmer of candle-light everything here looked very uncared for
and melancholy. Above his head was a little black skylight where the
rain went rap-rapping. It was a place of dust and mildew and long
decay, of things forgotten by the sunlight, as strangely remote as some
house, fragmentary, shadowy, in the dark of a dream.
Here was the landing before him, and there, nearly at the end of it,
were the little table and the lamp. To examine them coolly was to
disperse the fairy-tale dusk that had somehow gathered in his mind
as this absurd little errand had lengthened out and become touched
with fantasy. The lamp was one of those old-fashioned double-branched
affairs, its twin glass cylinders covered with dust. With care, he
ought to be able to carry it down in one hand. The light of his candle
fell on an old steel engraving hanging above the table, and it showed
him a bewhiskered officer standing, sword in hand, in front of a large
cannon, while in the background there towered a quite impossible
pagoda. For a moment he stopped to gaze at this unknown, evidently a
hero of one of the old Chinese wars, and to wonder how he came to be
there, with his sword and his cannon and his pagoda. Then he took up
the lamp, held out the candle at arm’s length, and returned, more
slowly and carefully now, along the landing.
He had been in such a hurry to discover the table and the lamp that
he had never noticed that door on the left. Now, as he walked slowly
back, it invited his attention, then arrested it. There was nothing
very odd about its appearance; it was merely a stout old door that had
lost most of its paint; but there was something very odd about the way
in which it was closed. Then he saw what it was. The door had two large
bolts. It was fastened on the outside. Why should they have done that?
Did they suppose someone would break into the house that way? The very
idea of anyone breaking into this house was monstrous. Pondering these
things, he had actually passed the door, when something pulled him up.
He seemed to hear somebody moving about. Surely there was the sound
of a voice too, a kind of muttering not very far away? It could only
come from behind that door. There was somebody inside that room, the
thickness of a wall away from him, behind that bolted door. And what
about that stifled cry he had heard a few minutes ago, that battering
noise? Curiosity, like a little flame in the mind, burned and
brightened for a moment and then suddenly went out, leaving him in a
crawling darkness, with doubt and terror. He felt suddenly sick and
terrified of life.
Yet he had not halted a minute when his ears seemed to catch another
cry, this time from below, out of another world. Margaret. Surely that
was her voice calling his name? Or was it that old trick of memory,
a phantom call? There was silence now and he moved forward, but
doubtfully. No, there was no mistake. ‘Philip, Philip!’ All of her in
the cry, and a terrible urgency. Still mechanically clutching at the
lamp, with neither hand free to balance himself, he rushed down the
stairs, miraculously without falling; and immediately that feeling
of mental sickness and terror vanished and a curious kind of anger
stirred in him. He’d left her confident and smiling, and now even she’d
been dragged into it. It couldn’t leave even her alone. His mind,
outracing him, found an opposing presence, an enemy, but no name for
it; a density of evil, something gigantic, ancient but enduring, only
dimly felt before, but now taking the mind by storm; it was working
everywhere, in the mirk of rain outside, here in the rotting
corners, and without end, in the black between the stars. Margaret
never seemed to understand about it, but now it had made her understand
or she wouldn’t be calling like that. He’d been telling himself it was
high time she did understand, but as he hurried on now to find her,
the thought that it had got at her while she had been waiting, smiling
there, below, roused him to fury.
As soon as he reached the lower landing, he hastily set down the lamp
and ran forward. There was a flash of blue, a flying fair head, and she
was clinging to him, her hands grasping the lapels of his coat. She
was battling for breath. ‘Morgan—drunk—got hold of me—coming now’ was
all that he could catch, but it was enough. The next moment the man
himself, incredibly hulking in that light, had appeared, but he stopped
short, a few yards away, when he saw the candle and the two of them
standing there.
Margaret swiftly turned her head, then tugged at his coat. ‘He’s there.
Let’s get away from him.’
Philip shook his head, gave a quick glance round, then fixed his eyes
on Morgan’s dark bulk. ‘There’s a doorway just behind us,’ he
told Margaret. ‘If he comes on, get behind me and stay in the doorway.
There’ll be plenty of time to run afterwards, if it’s necessary.’
‘Let’s go, Philip. I’m terrified of him.’
He watched Morgan steadily. The man was swaying a little, but otherwise
he made no movement. ‘He’s probably drunk himself silly and is only
wandering about aimlessly. Are you sure he was after you?’
‘He followed me round downstairs,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I was all
alone. Then he caught hold of me, and when I escaped he followed me up
the stairs.’ He could feel her trembling. ‘Let’s go now. We might find
the others.’
‘I don’t know where they are.’
What was Morgan going to do? Philip watched him with anxiety, for
the fellow was obviously as strong as a gorilla and was probably
half-crazy, and Philip, though he was fairly tough and was at least
sober, was by no means confident that he could stand up to the brute,
let alone overpower him. He didn’t even know what exactly he would do
if Morgan advanced. He hadn’t used his hands on a man for years,
though there was a time when he had known how to box. Nevertheless, he
was determined not to turn his back on the man, not to budge. The anger
that had been so curiously fired in him on the way down still remained.
Whatever the man may have done already, he still seemed a mere foolish
lump; but if he changed to anything worse, Philip would oppose him
whatever it cost. And anyhow Margaret could easily escape, could run
downstairs—not upstairs, to that landing above, to that room.
‘If he comes on,’ he whispered, ‘and you want to escape, slip past and
run downstairs. Don’t forget.’
Her eyes met his for a second. ‘I shall stay here,’ she said very
quietly. She was composed now. ‘Let me have the candle.’ And she took
it from him, moving a little to one side.
Morgan shuffled his feet and then suddenly lurched forward.
‘Stay where you are,’ Philip called sharply. ‘What do you want?’
He contrived to pull himself up. Then his great shaggy head came
forward and they could see his eyes, fixed in a stare. As if in reply
to Philip’s question, he made a gobbling noise in his throat and
slowly raised a hand until it pointed at Margaret.
There was something overpowering in the very tongueless bulk of the
man, and his approach had shaken Philip at first, sending a flash of
fear through all his nerves. Run, run, run, they screamed. But this
amazing gesture, this raised and pointed hand, so angered him that
his nerves were immediately mastered. He extended an arm and gently
pushed Margaret so that she stepped back into the doorway behind him.
The light she held fell on Morgan, but left Philip shadowy. He watched
those little glassy eyes, now turned from Margaret to him; and leaning
forward slightly, balancing himself upon his toes, he waited.
Nor had he long to wait. Something flared up at last in Morgan’s dull
brain. Suddenly his arms pawed the air and he hurled himself upon
Philip. This blind rush was Philip’s opportunity and he leaped to take
it, throwing all his weight behind one straight hard punch. Crack!—it
went home, full in that lowered rushing face. Philip recovered himself
and instantly stepped back, to be out of reach of those great arms.
But for the moment he was in no danger. Only his sheer bulk had
saved Morgan from being felled by the blow, which had been well-timed
and had found his jaw; and even as it was he was sent reeling back.
Philip did not follow up his advantage but remained where he was, at
once bewildered and exultant, on the defensive. Perhaps that punch
(undoubtedly a whacker) had knocked some sense into the brute, who had
finished staggering back and was now gropingly bringing his hands to
his head. He felt Margaret’s hand on his sleeve and turned to smile at
her. She was standing pressed back into the doorway, and in the light
of the candle she was holding she looked very pale and shining-eyed. A
noise in front brought him sharply round again. And he was only just in
time.
Morgan had charged like a bull and was upon him. He had just time to
raise his arms and tighten his body when the man’s whole weight was
flung upon him and he found his arms gripped by those huge hands.
All was lost. Instinctively, however, he immediately twisted his
arms so that his hands clutched at Morgan’s coat sleeves, then he
held on tightly, his arms rigid, and instead of trying to withstand
the charging weight of his opponent, slackened his whole body.
The result was that he did not go down but was rushed backward, past
Margaret and down the landing, just as if Morgan were carrying him. It
was a dreadful sensation, this of flying helplessly backward, but he
contrived to keep his wits. So long as he was not actually borne down,
with Morgan’s weight upon him, so long as one of those hands had not
found its way to his throat, it might be still possible to master this
brute, who seemed as gigantic but as brainless as a prehistoric monster.
He had found his feet again. This was the moment. He relaxed his grip
for a second, brought his arms down and then threw them upward and
outward with all his strength. Morgan was not quick enough to retain
his grip and Philip was free to throw himself backward. He went further
than he intended, crashing against the wall, because as he moved a
blind swing of Morgan’s clenched hand, as big as a mallet, caught
him on the side of the head, nearly turning him sick. But the light
was very dim here and Morgan’s own bulk now blotted out most of it.
He didn’t seem to know exactly where Philip was, and when he charged
again, he moved straight forward. Philip threw out a leg and, as
Morgan went flying over it, summoned all the strength left to him and
aimed a savage swinging blow at the man’s body, a blow that landed
somewhere in the ribs and completed his destruction. There was a great
thud and with it the sharper crash of broken glass. Morgan was there,
measuring his length on the ground, and in his fall he had smashed the
lamp that Philip had put down not so many minutes before. That was the
end of the lamp then; and the end too, he hoped, for a time of Morgan,
now a dark unstirring shape.
Philip leaned against the wall, triumphant but dizzy and sick. For a
moment he did not move, but then tried a few faltering steps towards
the light. His head ached and this narrow place couldn’t contain the
loud beating of his heart. Once more he leaned against the wall, and
now he closed his eyes, desiring nothing but to be a breath in the
darkness. But the light, coming nearer, forced his eyes open again. It
was Margaret. Her arm was about his neck, her cheek pressed against
his, and there came back to him, bringing a multitude of flashing
little images from a life long lost, the scent of her hair. ‘It’s me,
Phil,’ she was saying. He remembered that, too. It had come back
with the rest, across a desert.
Her fingers were moving gently across his face. ‘Are you hurt?’
He opened his eyes very wide now and shook his head. ‘No, at least
nothing much. Just one bang. I was very lucky though.’ He smiled at her
and then looked down at Morgan, who was still lying there, motionless.
She followed his glance. ‘He’s not—not dead, is he?’
He took the candle from her. ‘No fear. Probably hardly stunned. He
went down with a fearful whack, but he’s obviously a tough subject and
there’s probably nothing wrong with him. Let’s have a look at him.’. He
held the light above the outstretched Morgan, who was stirring a little
now and breathing heavily, and Margaret came peeping over his shoulder.
‘He’s only knocked himself out,’ Philip told her. ‘He’ll be conscious
again in a minute unless he happens to fall asleep; and it’s more than
likely that he will fall asleep, because he’s very drunk.’
Margaret raised her eyes dubiously to his. ‘Suppose he—begins again?’
‘He won’t. Don’t worry about that.’ Philip took her arm and began
moving away. ‘When he comes to his senses he won’t remember anything,
and he probably won’t be fit for much, anyhow.’
Margaret tightened her arm against his fingers. ‘I can’t imagine how
you did it, Phil.’
He laughed. ‘That’s obviously the right remark and just the right tone
of voice, my dear. You caught the note of pride. Well, I can’t help
feeling rather like Jack-the-Giant-Killer. And, as a matter of fact, I
can’t imagine how I did it either.’
They were walking slowly back along the landing now. Suddenly Margaret
stopped. ‘Listen, Phil. You see that room there, the door where I was
standing?’
‘Yes.’ What was this? The dark house closed round him again.
‘There’s someone in there, a man I think. When I was standing there I
heard him call out, in a tiny weak voice.’
‘Femm’s in one of those rooms,’ he told her. ‘He left me and carefully
locked himself in. But it’s the one behind, not this one.’ His mind was
back on the landing above now, before that other door; it seemed
a place in a nightmare. Should he tell Margaret about it? No; at least
not yet.
‘I distinctly heard somebody. He seemed to want something. It must be
that other one.’
‘What other one?’ He had forgotten who was here, feeling lost for the
moment in a maze of dream-like corridors that offered nothing but
mysterious doors and voices crying in the dark.
‘The oldest, the one they called the master of the house, Sir
Roderick,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Don’t you remember, they said he was
very old and ill? I’m sure he wanted something. And think of him lying
there, hearing all that noise, quite helpless perhaps.’
Yes, this must be old Sir Roderick, whose house had given them shelter.
And what a house, what shelter! He looked at Margaret doubtfully, and
then at the door itself. They were standing in front of it now, and its
rubbed panels shone a little in the candle-light.
‘Listen!’ And Margaret’s hand went up as she leaned forward, her white
shoulder curving through the blue silk where her dress had been torn,
her head a medallion of bright gold. His heart went out to her as he
listened. She turned her head, her eyes seeking his. ‘Did you hear
that?’ she whispered.
He nodded, then raised his brows in an unspoken question. There had
come to them, as if from across a great space, the sound of a voice
calling within, the tiny weak voice that Margaret had described. He
read her decision in her face, and felt no surprise when he saw her
hand creep forward to the door and tap-tap upon it gently. Her other
hand sought his arm and rested there.
‘Come in.’ Their ears caught it as their eyes might have picked out a
point of light on a midnight sea.
Margaret hesitated, and Philip felt her hand squeezing his arm. He put
the candle into her other hand, leaned forward and slowly opened the
door. His shadow went wobbling into the room, he went after it, and
Margaret followed him.