"There's many a fine walk hereabouts," said the old man seated in the
arm-chair in the corner of the _Threshers' Inn_ bar-parlour.
Dillon nodded encouragingly.
"There's Ganton-on-the-Hill," continued the ancient. "You can see the
sea from there in clear weather; and many's the time I've heard the guns
in France from Upper Crobury of a still night. Then, four mile away,
there's the haunted Grange, though nobody's allowed past the gate. Not
as nobody wants to be," he added, reflectively.
"The haunted Grange?" questioned Dillon. "Where is that?"
"Hollow Grange?" said the old man. "Why, it lies----"
"Oh, Hollow Grange--yes! I know where Hollow Grange is, but I was
unaware that it was reputed to be haunted."
"Ah," replied the other, pityingly, "you're new to these parts; I see
that the minute I set eyes on you. Maybe you was wounded in France, and
you're down here to get well, like?"
"Quite so. Your deductive reasoning is admirable."
"Ah," said the sage, chuckling with self-appreciation, "I ain't lived in
these here parts for nigh on seventy-five years without learning to use
my eyes, I ain't. For seventy-four years and seven months," he added
proudly, "I ain't been outside this here county where I was born, and
I can use my eyes, I can; I know a thing I do, when I see it. Maybe it
was providence, as you might say, what brought you to the _Threshers_
to-day."
"Quite possibly," Dillon admitted.
"He was just such another as you," continued the old man with apparent
irrelevance. "You don't happen to be stopping at Hainingham Vicarage?"
"No," replied Dillon.
"Ah! he was stopping at Hainingham Vicarage and he'd been wounded in
France. How he got to know Dr. Kassimere I can't tell you; not at
parson's, anyway. Parson won't never speak to him. Only last Sunday week
he preached agin him; not in so many words, but I could see his drift.
He spoke about them heathen women livin' on an island--sort of female
Robinson Crusoes, I make 'em out, I do--as saves poor shipwrecked
sailors from the sea and strangles of 'em ashore."
Dillon glanced hard at the voluble old man.
"The sirens?" he suggested, conscious of a sudden hot surging about his
heart.
"Ah, that's the women I mean."
"But where is the connection?"
"Ah, you're new to these parts, you are. That Dr. Kassimere he keeps a
siren down in Hollow Grange. They see her--these here strangers (same as
the shipwrecked sailors parson told about)--and it's all up with 'em."
Dillon stifled a laugh, in which anger would have mingled with contempt.
To think that in the twentieth century a man of science was like to meet
with the fate of Dr. Dee in the days of Elizabeth! Truly there were dark
spots in England. But could he credit the statement of this benighted
elder that a modern clergyman had actually drawn an analogy between
Phryné Devant and the sirens? It was unbelievable.
"What was the unhappy fate," he asked, masking his intolerance, "of the
young man staying at the Vicarage?"
"The same as them afore him," came the startling reply; "for he warn't
the first, and maybe"--with a shrewd glance of the rheumy old eyes--"he
won't be the last. Them sirens has the powers of darkness. I know,
'cause I've seen one--her at the Grange; and though I'm an old man, nigh
on seventy-five, I'll never forget her face, I won't, and the way she
smiled at me!"
"But," persisted Dillon, patiently, "what became of this particular
young man, the one who was staying at the Vicarage?"
The ancient sage leant forward in his chair and tapped the speaker upon
the knee with the stem of his clay pipe.
"Ask them as knows," he said, with impressive solemnity. "Nobody else
can tell you!"
And, having permitted an indiscreet laugh to escape him, not another
word on the subject could Dillon induce the old man to utter, he
strictly confining himself, in his ruffled dignity, to the climatic
conditions and the crops.
When Dillon, finally, set out upon the four-mile walk back to the
Grange, he realised, with annoyance, that the senile imaginings of his
bar-parlour acquaintance lingered in his mind. That Dr. Kassimere dwelt
outside the social life of the county he had speedily learnt; but for
this he had been prepared. That he might possibly be, not a recluse, but
a pariah, was a new point of view. Trivial things, to which hitherto he
had paid scant attention, began to marshal themselves as evidence. The
two village "helpers," he knew, received extravagant wages, because, as
Phryné had confessed, they had "found it almost impossible to get girls
to stay." Why?
Of the earlier guest, or guests, who had succumbed to the siren lure of
Phryné, he had heard no mention. Why? Save at meal-times he rarely saw
his host, who frankly left him to the society of Phryné. Again--why? Dr.
Kassimere, in his jealously locked laboratory, was at work day and night
upon his experiments. What were these experiments? What was the nature
of the doctor's studies?
He had now been for nearly three weeks at Hollow Grange, and never had
Dr. Kassimere spoken of his work. And Phryné? The sudden, new thought of
Phryné was so strange, so wonderful and overwhelming, that it reacted
physically; and he pulled up short in the middle of a field-path, as
though some palpable obstacle blocked the way.
Why had he set out alone that day, when all other days had been spent
in the girl's company? He had deliberately sought solitude--because
of Phryné; because he wanted to think calmly, judicially, to arraign
himself before his own judgment, remote from the witchery of her
presence. He had tried to render his mind a void, wherein should linger
not one fragrant memory of her delicate beauty and charm, so that he
might return unbiased to his judgment. He had returned; he was judged.
He loved Phryné madly, insanely. His future, his life, lay in the hollow
of her hands.