asked Mr. Ponders.
Mr. Millin paused. “There was just something I did see--marks very
like those made by the muddy paws of some animals outside the master’s
bedroom door several times, and one time, when Sir Roger woke me up and
told me the dog was on his bed, there were some marks on the blanket.
“There was one funny little thing. The master was fond of cats,
and kept six of them. Well, as soon as the Sound began, they all
disappeared and were never seen again, and the keeper told me his dog
wouldn’t go near the hall after dusk. But I don’t _think_ I ever saw
anything, though the master made it all seem so real that it was
enough to make anyone see things.
“Well, sir, the next night it happened--I had managed to get to sleep
about two o’clock--the master was out as usual. Suddenly I was awakened
by hearing him rushing down the passage. I heard his door slam and
then he began shouting, ‘Get down! Down, you brute! Down! Down! Down!’
and then I heard everything in the room begin crashing about. Just as
I reached my door there was a terrible screaming and choking kind of
cry--the most awful sound I ever heard, sir.
“I rushed to his room and turned on the light. He was lying across
the bed, his throat torn open and the blood pouring out. He was dead
already. As I lifted him and tried to staunch the blood I noticed
something about his eyes. There was something sort of photographed in
them.”
“What?” asked Mr. Ponders sharply.
“Well, sir, it might have been the head of a dog smashed up and
bleeding.”
“When I went to pull down the blinds, my eye was caught by a shadow
coming out from the big cedar. It was like the one I had seen in Grey
Fallow. And it almost seemed as if I saw another shadow, which was
leaping and bounding towards it--and then they both disappeared. And
then I noticed the Sound had stopped.
“I got the doctor and the police as soon as I could. The doctor was
very puzzled. He said he’d never seen a wound like it, and couldn’t
imagine how it had been caused.
“Next day the London police came down, and, of course, it began to be
a bit unpleasant for me, being so near in the next room like that, and
no one else about. They cross-examined me for a long time. All I could
say was that the master had been queer for a long time and taken to
roaming in the grounds at night, that I had been woken up by hearing
him scream and had rushed in to find what I have described, sir. But it
sounded weak and fishy. The Inspector heard something in the village
about Black Jack, and tried his best to find him, but he was never seen
again. The inquest was adjourned several times, and I think everyone
expected me to be arrested, but when the doctor had given his evidence
it seemed to me that everyone in the Court felt there was something
that couldn’t be explained about the business, and the verdict was
‘Murder by a person or persons unknown.’ After that the police left
me alone, but I suppose most people still believe I did it. And then
I came up to London and saw Sir Leonard. I’ve never been able to get
another place. As soon as they hear I was with Sir Roger they turn me
down.
“Well, that’s my story, sir, and it’s the whole truth and nothing but
the truth, though I know how it must sound.”
“Did you ever think of telling the whole truth and nothing but the
truth to the police?” asked Mr. Ponders.
“They wouldn’t have stood for it, sir. I’m sure they wouldn’t.”
“Well, Mr. Millin,” said Mr. Ponders smiling, “my brother has praised
you more than I have known him praise many people, but even he never
suggested you had the imagination to invent _that_ story. Do you know
why--amongst other reasons--I believe every word of it? It’s because
I’ve heard it before.”
“Heard it before, sir!”
“Well, almost. Do you see that black and red book on the shelf just
behind you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that contains an account of a very, very similar happening in
the year 1795 in this county, not ten miles away. It is called ‘A True
Account of the Curious Events connected with the death of Mr. Arthur
Pitts.’ You shall read it when you are installed here. By the way, how
soon can you come?”
Mr. Millin’s eyes were very bright as he answered, “Any time which will
suit you, sir.”
“HE COMETH AND HE PASSETH BY!”
“HE COMETH AND HE PASSETH BY!”
Edward Bellamy sat down at his desk, untied the ribbon round a
formidable bundle of papers, yawned and looked out of the window.
On that glistening evening the prospect from Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s
Inn, was restful and soothing. Just below the motor mowing-machine
placidly “chug-chugged” as it clipped the finest turf in London.
The muted murmurs from Kingsway and Holborn roamed in placidly. One
sleepy pigeon was scratching its poll and ruffling its feathers in
a tree opposite, two others--one coyly fleeing, the other doggedly
in pursuit--strutted the greensward. “A curious rite of courtship,”
thought Bellamy, “but they seem to enjoy it; more than I enjoy the job
of reading this brief!”
Had these infatuated fowls gazed back at Mr. Bellamy they would have
seen a pair of resolute and trustworthy eyes dominating a resolute,
nondescript face, one that gave an indisputable impression of
kindliness, candour and mental alacrity. No woman had etched lines upon
it, nor were those deepening furrows ploughed by the higher exercise of
the imagination marked thereon.
By his thirty-ninth birthday he had raised himself to the unchallenged
position of the most brilliant junior at the Criminal Bar, though
that is, perhaps, too flashy an epithet to describe that combination
of inflexible integrity, impeccable common sense, perfect health
and tireless industry which was Edward Bellamy. A modest person, he
attributed his success entirely to that “perfect health,” a view not
lightly to be challenged by those who spend many of their days in those
Black Holes of controversy, the Law Courts of London. And he had spent
nine out of the last fourteen days therein. But the result had been a
signal triumph, for the Court of Criminal Appeal had taken _his_ view
of Mr. James Stock’s motives, and had substituted ten years’ penal
servitude for a six-foot drop. And he was very weary--and yet here was
this monstrous bundle of papers! He had just succeeded in screwing his
determination to the sticking point when his telephone bell rang.
He picked up the receiver languidly, and then his face lightened.
“I know that voice. How are you, my dear Philip? Why, what’s the
matter? Yes, I’m doing nothing. Delighted! Brooks’s at eight o’clock.
Right you are!”
So Philip had not forgotten his existence. He had begun to wonder.
His mind wandered back over his curious friendship with Franton. It
had begun on the first morning of their first term at Univ., when
they had both been strolling nervously about the quad. That it ever
had begun was the most surprising thing about it, for superficially
they had nothing in common. Philip, the best bat at Eton, almost too
decorative, with a personal charm most people found irresistible, the
heir to great possessions. He, the crude product of an obscure Grammar
School, destined to live precariously on his scholarships, gauche, shy,
taciturn. In the ordinary way they would have graduated to different
worlds, for the economic factor alone would have kept their paths all
through their lives at Oxford inexorably apart. They would have had
little more in common with each other than they had with their scouts.
And yet they had spent a good part of almost every day together during
term time, and during every vacation he had spent some time at Franton
Hall, where he had had first revealed to him those many and delicate
refinements of life which only great wealth, allied with traditional
taste, can secure. Why had it been so? He had eventually asked Philip.
“Because,” he replied, “you have a first-class brain, I have a second
or third. I have always had things made too easy for me. You have had
most things made too hard. _Ergo_, you have a first-class character.
I haven’t. I feel a sense of respectful shame towards you, my dear
Teddie, which alone would keep me trotting at your heels. I feel I
can rely on you as on no one else. You are at once my superior and my
complement. Anyway, it has happened, why worry? Analysing such things
often spoils them, it’s like over-rehearsing.”
And then the War--and even the Defence of Civilisation entailed subtle
social distinctions.
Philip was given a commission in a regiment of cavalry (with the best
will in the world Bellamy never quite understood the privileged rôle of
the horse in the higher ranks of English society); he himself enlisted
in a line regiment, and rose through his innate common sense and his
unflagging capacity for finishing a job to the rank of Major, D.S.O.
and bar, and a brace of wound-stripes. Philip went to Mesopotamia and
was eventually invalided out through the medium of a gas-shell. His
right lung seriously affected, he spent from 1917-1924 on a farm in
Arizona.
They had written to each other occasionally--the hurried, flippant,
shadow-of-death letters of the time, but somehow their friendship had
dimmed and faded and become more than a little pre-War by the end of
it, so that Bellamy was not more than mildly disappointed when he heard
casually that Philip was back in England, yet had had but the most
casual, damp letter from him.
But there had been all the old cordiality and affection in his voice
over the telephone--and something more--not so pleasant to hear.
At the appointed hour he arrived in St. James’s Street, and a moment
later Philip came up to him.
“Now, Teddie,” he said, “I know what you’re thinking, I know I’ve been
a fool and the rottenest sort of type to have acted as I have, but
there is a kind of explanation.”
Bellamy surrendered at once to that absurd sense of delight at being in
Philip’s company, and his small resentment was rent and scattered. None
the less he regarded him with a veiled intentness. He was looking tired
and old--forcing himself--there was something seriously the matter.
“My very dear Philip,” he said, “you don’t need to explain things to
me. To think it is eight years since we met!”
“First of all let’s order something,” said Philip. “You have what you
like, I don’t want much, except a drink.” Whereupon he selected a
reasonable collation for Bellamy and a dressed crab and asparagus for
himself. But he drank two Martinis in ten seconds, and these were not
the first--Bellamy knew--that he had ordered since 5.30 (there _was_
something wrong).
For a little while the conversation was uneasily, stalely reminiscent.
Suddenly Philip blurted out, “I can’t keep it in any longer. You’re the
only really reliable, unswerving friend I’ve ever had. You will help
me, won’t you?”
“My dear Philip,” said Bellamy, touched, “I always have and always will
be ready to do anything you want me to do and at any time--you know
that.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you my story. First of all, have you ever heard
of a man called Oscar Clinton?”
“I seem to remember the name. It is somehow connected in my mind with
the nineties, raptures and roses, absinthe and poses; and the _other_
Oscar. I believe his name cropped up in a case I was in. I have an
impression he’s a wrong ’un.”
“That’s the man,” said Philip. “He stayed with me for three months at
Franton.”
“Oh,” said Bellamy sharply, “how was that?”
“Well, Teddie, anything the matter with one’s lungs affects one’s
mind--not always for the worse, however. I know that’s true, and it
affected mine. Arizona is a moon-dim region, very lovely in its way and
stark and old, but I had to leave it. You know I was always a sceptic,
rather a wooden one, as I remember; well, that ancient, lonely land set
my lung-polluted mind working. I used to stare and stare into the sky.
One is brought right up against the vast enigmas of time and space and
eternity when one lung is doing the work of two, and none too well at
that.”
Edward realised under what extreme tension Philip had been living, but
felt that he could establish a certain control over him. He felt more
in command of the situation and resolved to keep that command.
“Well,” continued Philip, filling up his glass, “when I got back to
England I was so frantically nervous that I could hardly speak or
think. I felt insane, unclean--mentally. I felt I was going mad, and
could not bear to be seen by anyone who had known me--that is why I was
such a fool as not to come to you. You have your revenge! I can’t tell
you, Teddie, how depression roared through me! I made up my mind to
die, but I had a wild desire to know to what sort of place I should go.
And then I met Clinton. I had rushed up to London one day just to get
the inane anodyne of noise and people, and I suppose I was more or less
tight, for I walked into a club of sorts called the ‘Chorazin’ in Soho.
The door-keeper tried to turn me out, but I pushed him aside, and then
someone came up and led me to a table. It was Clinton.
“Now there is no doubt he has great hypnotic power. He began to
talk, and I at once felt calmer and started to tell him all about
myself. I talked wildly for an hour, and he was so deft and delicate
in his handling of me that I felt I could not leave him. He has a
marvellous insight into abnormal mental--psychic--whatever you like to
call them--states. Some time I’ll describe what he looks like--he’s
certainly like no one else in the world.
“Well, the upshot was that he came down to Franton next day and stayed
on. Now, I know that his motives were entirely mercenary, but none the
less he saved me from suicide, and to a great extent gave back peace to
my mind.
“Never could I have imagined such an irresistible and brilliant
talker. Whatever he may be, he’s also a poet, a profound philosopher
and amazingly versatile and erudite. Also, when he likes, his charm
of manner carries one away. At least, in my case it did--for a
time--though he borrowed £20 or more a week from me.
“And then one day my butler came to me, and with the hushed gusto
appropriate to such revelations murmured that two of the maids were
in the family way and that another had told him an hysterical little
tale--floating in floods of tears--about how Clinton had made several
attempts to force his way into her bedroom.
“Well, Teddie, that sort of thing is that sort of thing, but I felt
such a performance couldn’t possibly be justified, that taking
advantage of a trio of rustics in his host’s house was a dastardly and
unforgivable outrage.
“Other people’s morals are chiefly their own affair, but I had a
personal responsibility towards these buxom victims--well, you can
realise just how I felt.
“I had to speak about it to Clinton, and did so that night. No one
ever saw him abashed. He smiled at me in a superior and patronising
way, and said he quite understood that I was almost bound to hold such
feudal and socially primitive views, suggesting, of course, that my
chief concern in the matter was that he had infringed my _droit de
seigneur_ in these cases. As for him, he considered it was his duty to
disseminate his unique genius as widely as possible, and that it should
be considered the highest privilege for anyone to bear his child. He
had to his knowledge seventy-four offspring alive, and probably many
more--the more the better for the future of humanity. But, of course,
he understood and promised for the future--bowing to my rights and my
prejudices--to allow me to plough my own pink and white pastures--and
much more to the same effect.
“Though still under his domination, I felt there was more lust than
logic in these specious professions, so I made an excuse and went up
to London the next day. As I left the house I picked up my letters,
which I read in the car on the way up. One was a three-page catalogue
raisonné from my tailor. Not being as dressy as all that, it seemed
unexpectedly grandiose, so I paid him a visit. Well, Clinton had forged
a letter from me authorising him to order clothes at my expense, and a
lavish outfit had been provided.
“It then occurred to me to go to my bank to discover precisely how much
I had lent Clinton during the last three months. It was £420. All
these discoveries--telescoping--caused me to review my relationship
with Clinton. Suddenly I felt it had better end. I might be mediæval,
intellectually costive, and the possessor of much scandalously unearned
increment, but I could not believe that the pursuit and contemplation
of esoteric mysteries necessarily implied the lowest possible standards
of private decency. In other words, I was recovering.
“I still felt that Clinton was the most remarkable person I had ever
met. I do to this day--but I felt I was unequal to squaring such magic
circles.
“I told him so when I got back. He was quite charming, gentle,
understanding, commiserating, and he left the next morning, after
pronouncing some incantation whilst touching my forehead. I missed him
very much. I believe he’s the devil, but he’s that sort of person.
“Once I had assured the prospective mothers of his children that they
would not be sacked and that their destined contributions to the
population would be a charge upon me--there is a codicil to my will to
this effect--they brightened up considerably, and rather too frequently
snatches of the Froth-Blowers’ Anthem cruised down to me as they went
about their duties. In fact, I had a discreditable impression that
the Immaculate Third would have shown less lachrymose integrity had
the consequences of surrender been revealed _ante factum_. Eventually
a brace of male infants came to contribute their falsettos to the
dirge--for whose appearance the locals have respectfully given me the
credit. These brats have searching, malign eyes, and when they reach
the age of puberty I should not be surprised if the birth statistics
for East Surrey began to show a remarkable--even a magical--rise.
“Oh, how good it is to talk to you, Teddie, and get it all off my
chest! I feel almost light-hearted, as though my poor old brain had
been curetted. I feel I can face and fight it now.
“Well, for the next month I drowsed and read and drowsed and read until
I felt two-lunged again. And several times I almost wrote to you, but
I felt such lethargy and yet such a certainty of getting quite well
again that I put everything off. I was content to lie back and let that
blessed healing process work its quiet kindly way with me.
“And then one day I got a letter from a friend of mine, Melrose, who
was at the House when we were up. He is the Secretary of ‘Ye Ancient
Mysteries,’ a dining club I joined before the War. It meets once a
month and discusses famous mysteries of the past--the _Mary Celeste_,
the ‘McLachlan Case,’ and so on--with a flippant yet scholarly zeal;
but that doesn’t matter. Well, Melrose said that Clinton wanted to
become a member, and had stressed the fact that he was a friend of
mine. Melrose was a little upset, as he had heard vague rumours about
Clinton. Did I think he was likely to be an acceptable member of the
club?
“Well, what was I to say? On the one side of the medal were the facts
that he had used my house as his stud-farm, that he had forged my
name and sponged on me shamelessly. On the reverse was the fact that
he was a genius and knew more about Ancient Mysteries than the rest
of the world put together. But my mind was soon made up; I could not
recommend him. A week later I got a letter--a charming letter, a most
understanding letter, from Clinton. He realised, so he said, that I had
been bound to give the secretary of the Ancient Mysteries the advice
I had--no doubt I considered he was not a decent person to meet my
friends. He was naturally disappointed, and so on.
“How the devil, I wondered, did he know--not only that I had put my
thumbs down against him, but also the very reason for which I had put
them down!
“So I asked Melrose, who told me he hadn’t mentioned the matter to
a soul, but had discreetly removed Clinton’s name from the list of
candidates for election. And no one should have been any the wiser; but
how much wiser Clinton was!
“A week later I got another letter from him, saying that he was
leaving England for a month. He enclosed a funny little paper pattern
thing, an outline cut out with scissors with a figure painted on it, a
beastly-looking thing. Like this!”
And he drew a quick sketch on the table-cloth.
Certainly it was unpleasant, thought Bellamy. It appeared to be a
crouching figure in the posture of pursuit. The robes it wore seemed to
rise and billow above its head. Its arms were long--too long--scraping
the ground with curved and spiked nails. Its head was not quite human,
its expression devilish and venomous. A horrid, hunting thing, its
eyes encarnadined and infinitely evil, glowing animal eyes in the foul
dark face. And those long vile arms--not pleasant to be in their grip.
He hadn’t realised Philip could draw as well as that. He straightened
himself, lit a cigarette, and rallied his fighting powers. For the
first time he realised, why, that Philip was in serious trouble! Just
a rather beastly little sketch on a table-cloth. And now it was up to
him!
“Clinton told me,” continued Philip, “that this was a most powerful
symbol which I should find of the greatest help in my mystical studies.
I must place it against my forehead, and pronounce at the same time a
certain sentence. And, Teddie, suddenly, I found myself doing so. I
remember I had a sharp feeling of surprise and irritation when I found
I had placarded this thing on my head and repeated this sentence.”
“What was the sentence?” asked Bellamy.
“Well, that’s a funny thing,” said Philip. “I can’t remember it, and
both the slip of paper on which it was written and the paper pattern
had disappeared the next morning. I remember putting them in my pocket
book, but they completely vanished. And, Teddie, things haven’t been
the same since.” He filled his glass and emptied it, lit a cigarette,
and at once pressed the life from it in an ash tray and then lit
another.
“Bluntly, I’ve been bothered, haunted perhaps is too strong a word--too
pompous. It’s like this. That same night I had read myself tired in the
study, and about twelve o’clock I was glancing sleepily around the room
when I noticed that one of the bookcases was throwing out a curious
and unaccountable shadow. It seemed as if something was hiding behind
the bookcase, and that this was that something’s shadow. I got up and
walked over to it, and it became just a bookcase shadow, rectangular
and reassuring. I went to bed.
“As I turned on the light on the landing I noticed the same sort of
shadow coming from the grandfather clock. I went to sleep all right,
but suddenly found myself peering out of the window, and there was
that shadow stretching out from the trees and in the drive. At first
there was about that much of it showing,” and he drew a line down the
sketch on the table-cloth, “about a sixth. Well, it’s been a simple
story since then. Every night that shadow has grown a little. It is now
almost all visible. And it comes out suddenly from different places.
Last night it was on the wall beside the door into the Dutch garden. I
never know where I’m going to see it next.”
“And how long has this been going on?” asked Bellamy.
“A month to-morrow. You sound as if you thought I was mad. I probably
am.”
“No, you’re as sane as I am. But why don’t you leave Franton and come
to London?”
“And see it on the wall of the club bedroom! I’ve tried that, Teddie,
but one’s as bad as the other. Doesn’t it sound ludicrous? But it
isn’t to me.”
“Do you usually eat as little as this?” asked Bellamy.
“‘And drink as much?’ you were too polite to add. Well, there’s more to
it than indigestion, and it isn’t incipient D.T. It’s just I don’t feel
very hungry nowadays.”
Bellamy got that rush of tip-toe pugnacity which had won him so many
desperate cases. He had had a Highland grandmother from whom he had
inherited a powerful visualising imagination, by which he got a
fleeting yet authentic insight into the workings of men’s minds. So now
he knew in a flash how he would feel if Philip’s ordeal had been his.
“Whatever it is, Philip,” he said, “there are two of us now.”
“Then you do believe in it,” said Philip. “Sometimes I can’t. On a
sunny morning with starlings chattering and buses swinging up Waterloo
Place--then how can such things be? But at night I know they are.”