out, I took a ramble round the place. The house and garden stood on a
plateau facing south; below it were a couple of acres of pasture that
sloped down to a vagrant stream crossed by a foot-bridge, by the side
of which stood a thatched cottage with a vegetable patch surrounding
it. A path ran close past this across the pasture from a wicket-gate in
the garden, conducted you over the foot-bridge, and, so my remembered
sense of geography told me, must constitute a short cut to the links
that lay not half a mile beyond. The cottage itself was clearly on
the land of the little estate, and I at once supposed it to be the
gardener’s house. What went against so obvious and simple a theory was
that it appeared to be untenanted. No wreath of smoke, though the
evening was chilly, curled from its chimneys, and, coming closer, I
fancied it had that air of “waiting” about it which we so often conjure
into unused habitations. There it stood, with no sign of life whatever
about it, though ready, as its apparently perfect state of repair
seemed to warrant, for fresh tenants to put the breath of life into it
again. Its little garden, too, though the palings were neat and newly
painted, told the same tale; the beds were untended and unweeded, and
in the flower-border by the front door was a row of chrysanthemums,
which had withered on their stems. But all this was but the impression
of a moment, and I did not pause as I passed it, but crossed the
foot-bridge and went on up the heathery slope that lay beyond. My
geography was not at fault, for presently I saw the club-house just
in front of me. Hugh no doubt would be just about coming in from his
afternoon round, and so we would walk back together. On reaching the
club-house, however, the steward told me that not five minutes before
Mrs. Grainger had called in her car for her husband, and I therefore
retraced my steps by the path along which I had already come. But
I made a detour, as a golfer will, to walk up the fairway of the
seventeenth and eighteenth holes just for the pleasure of recognition,
and looked respectfully at the yawning sandpit which so inexorably
guards the eighteenth green, wondering in what circumstances I should
visit it next, whether with a step complacent and superior, knowing
that my ball reposed safely on the green beyond, or with the heavy
footfall of one who knows that laborious delving lies before him.
The light of the winter evening had faded fast, and when I crossed
the foot-bridge on my return the dusk had gathered. To my right, just
beside the path, lay the cottage, the whitewashed walls of which
gleamed whitely in the gloaming; and as I turned my glance back from
it to the rather narrow plank which bridged the stream I thought I
caught out of the tail of my eye some light from one of its windows,
which thus disproved my theory that it was untenanted. But when I
looked directly at it again I saw that I was mistaken: some reflection
in the glass of the red lines of sunset in the west must have deceived
me, for in the inclement twilight it looked more desolate than ever.
Yet I lingered by the wicket gate in its low palings, for though all
exterior evidence bore witness to its emptiness, some inexplicable
feeling assured me, quite irrationally, that this was not so, and that
there was somebody there. Certainly there was nobody visible, but, so
this absurd idea informed me, he might be at the back of the cottage
concealed from me by the intervening structure, and, still oddly, still
unreasonably, it became a matter of importance to my mind to ascertain
whether this was so or not, so clearly had my perceptions told me that
the place was empty, and so firmly had some conviction assured me
that it was tenanted. To cover my inquisitiveness, in case there was
someone there, I could inquire whether this path was a short cut to
the house at which I was staying, and, rather rebelling at what I was
doing, I went through the small garden, and rapped at the door. There
was no answer, and, after waiting for a response to a second summons,
and having tried the door and found it locked, I made the circuit of
the house. Of course there was no one there, and I told myself that I
was just like a man who looks under his bed for a burglar and would be
beyond measure astonished if he found one.
My hosts were at the house when I arrived, and we spent a cheerful two
hours before dinner in such desultory and eager conversation as is
proper between friends who have not met for some time. Between Hugh
Grainger and his wife it is always impossible to light on a subject
which does not vividly interest one or other of them, and golf,
politics, the needs of Russia, cooking, ghosts, the possible victory
over Mount Everest, and the income tax were among the topics which we
passionately discussed. With all these plates spinning, it was easy
to whip up any one of them, and the subject of spooks generally was
lighted upon again and again.
“Margaret is on the high road to madness,” remarked Hugh on one of
these occasions, “for she has begun using planchette. If you use
planchette for six months, I am told, most careful doctors will
conscientiously certify you as insane. She’s got five months more
before she goes to Bedlam.”
“Does it work?” I asked.
“Yes, it says most interesting things,” said Margaret. “It says things
that never entered my head. We’ll try it to-night.”
“Oh, not to-night,” said Hugh. “Let’s have an evening off.”
Margaret disregarded this.
“It’s no use asking planchette questions,” she went on, “because there
is in your mind some sort of answer to them. If I ask whether it will
be fine to-morrow, for instance, it is probably I--though indeed I
don’t mean to push--who makes the pencil say ‘yes.’”
“And then it usually rains,” remarked Hugh.
“Not always: don’t interrupt. The interesting thing is to let the
pencil write what it chooses. Very often it only makes loops and
curves--though they may mean something--and every now and then a word
comes, of the significance of which I have no idea whatever, so I
clearly couldn’t have suggested it. Yesterday evening, for instance,
it wrote ‘gardener’ over and over again. Now what did that mean? The
gardener here is a Methodist with a chin-beard. Could it have meant
him? Oh, it’s time to dress. Please don’t be late, my cook is so
sensitive about soup.”
We rose, and some connection of ideas about “gardener” linked itself up
in my mind.
“By the way, what’s that cottage in the field by the foot-bridge?” I
asked. “Is that the gardener’s cottage?”
“It used to be,” said Hugh. “But the chin-beard doesn’t live there: in
fact nobody lives there. It’s empty. If I was owner here, I should put
the chin-beard into it, and take the rent off his wages. Some people
have no idea of economy. Why did you ask?”
I saw Margaret was looking at me rather attentively.
“Curiosity,” I said. “Idle curiosity.”
“I don’t believe it was,” said she.
“But it was,” I said. “It was idle curiosity to know whether the
house was inhabited. As I passed it, going down to the club-house, I
felt sure it was empty, but coming back I felt so sure that there was
someone there that I rapped at the door, and indeed walked round it.”
Hugh had preceded us upstairs, as she lingered a little.
“And there was no one there?” she asked. “It’s odd: I had just the same
feeling as you about it.”
“That explains planchette writing ‘gardener’ over and over again,” said
I. “You had the gardener’s cottage on your mind.”
“How ingenious!” said Margaret. “Hurry up and dress.”
A gleam of strong moonlight between my drawn curtains when I went up
to bed that night led me to look out. My room faced the garden and
the fields which I had traversed that afternoon, and all was vividly
illuminated by the full moon. The thatched cottage with its white walls
close by the stream was very distinct, and once more, I suppose, the
reflection of the light on the glass of one of its windows made it
appear that the room was lit within. It struck me as odd that twice
that day this illusion should have been presented to me, but now a yet
odder thing happened. Even as I looked the light was extinguished.
The morning did not at all bear out the fine promise of the clear
night, for when I woke the wind was squealing, and sheets of rain from
the south-west were dashed against my panes. Golf was wholly out of the
question, and, though the violence of the storm abated a little in the
afternoon, the rain dripped with a steady sullenness. But I wearied
of indoors, and, since the two others entirely refused to set foot
outside, I went forth mackintoshed to get a breath of air. By way of
an object in my tramp, I took the road to the links in preference to
the muddy short cut through the fields, with the intention of engaging
a couple of caddies for Hugh and myself next morning, and lingered
awhile over illustrated papers in the smoking-room. I must have read
for longer than I knew, for a sudden beam of sunset light suddenly
illuminated my page, and looking up, I saw that the rain had ceased,
and that evening was fast coming on. So instead of taking the long
detour by the road again, I set forth homewards by the path across
the fields. That gleam of sunset was the last of the day, and once
again, just as twenty-four hours ago, I crossed the foot-bridge in the
gloaming. Till that moment, as far as I was aware, I had not thought
at all about the cottage there, but now in a flash the light I had
seen there last night, suddenly extinguished, recalled itself to my
mind, and at the same moment I felt that invincible conviction that
the cottage was tenanted. Simultaneously in these swift processes of
thought I looked towards it, and saw standing by the door the figure of
a man. In the dusk I could distinguish nothing of his face, if indeed
it was turned to me, and only got the impression of a tallish fellow,
thickly built. He opened the door, from which there came a dim light as
of a lamp, entered, and shut it after him.
So then my conviction was right. Yet I had been distinctly told that
the cottage was empty: who, then, was he that entered as if returning
home? Once more, this time with a certain qualm of fear, I rapped on
the door, intending to put some trivial question; and rapped again,
this time more drastically, so that there could be no question that my
summons was unheard. But still I got no reply, and finally I tried the
handle of the door. It was locked. Then, with difficulty mastering an
increasing terror, I made the circuit of the cottage, peering into each
unshuttered window. All was dark within, though but two minutes ago I
had seen the gleam of light escape from the opened door.
Just because some chain of conjecture was beginning to form itself in
my mind, I made no allusion to this odd adventure, and after dinner
Margaret, amid protests from Hugh, got out the planchette which had
persisted in writing “gardener.” My surmise was, of course, utterly
fantastic, but I wanted to convey no suggestion of any sort to
Margaret.... For a long time the pencil skated over her paper making
loops and curves and peaks like a temperature chart, and she had begun
to yawn and weary over her experiment before any coherent word emerged.
And then, in the oddest way, her head nodded forward and she seemed to
have fallen asleep.
Hugh looked up from his book and spoke in a whisper to me.
“She fell asleep the other night over it,” he said.
Margaret’s eyes were closed, and she breathed the long, quiet breaths
of slumber, and then her hand began to move with a curious firmness.
Right across the big sheet of paper went a level line of writing, and
at the end her hand stopped with a jerk, and she woke.
She looked at the paper.
“Hullo,” she said. “Ah, one of you has been playing a trick on me!”
We assured her that this was not so, and she read what she had written.
“Gardener, gardener,” it ran. “I am the gardener. I want to come in. I
can’t find her here.”
“O Lord, that gardener again!” said Hugh.
Looking up from the paper, I saw Margaret’s eyes fixed on mine, and
even before she spoke I knew what her thought was.
“Did you come home by the empty cottage?” she asked.
“Yes: why?”
“Still empty?” she said in a low voice. “Or--or anything else?”
I did not want to tell her just what I had seen--or what, at any rate,
I thought I had seen. If there was going to be anything odd, anything
worth observation, it was far better that our respective impressions
should not fortify each other.
“I tapped again, and there was no answer,” I said.
Presently there was a move to bed: Margaret initiated it, and after she
had gone upstairs Hugh and I went to the front door to interrogate the
weather. Once more the moon shone in a clear sky, and we strolled out
along the flagged path that fronted the house. Suddenly Hugh turned
quickly and pointed to the angle of the house.
“Who on earth is that?” he said. “Look! There! He has gone round the
corner.”
I had but the glimpse of a tallish man of heavy build.
“Didn’t you see him?” asked Hugh. “I’ll just go round the house, and
find him; I don’t want anyone prowling round us at night. Wait here,
will you, and if he comes round the other corner ask him what his
business is.”
Hugh had left me, in our stroll, close by the front door which was
open, and there I waited until he should have made his circuit. He had
hardly disappeared when I heard, quite distinctly, a rather quick but
heavy footfall coming along the paved walk towards me from the opposite
direction. But there was absolutely no one to be seen who made this
sound of rapid walking. Closer and closer to me came the steps of the
invisible one, and then with a shudder of horror I felt somebody unseen
push by me as I stood on the threshold. That shudder was not merely of
the spirit, for the touch of him was that of ice on my hand. I tried to
seize this impalpable intruder, but he slipped from me, and next moment
I heard his steps on the parquet of the floor inside. Some door within
opened and shut, and I heard no more of him. Next moment Hugh came
running round the corner of the house from which the sound of steps had
approached.
“But where is he?” he asked. “He was not twenty yards in front of me--a
big, tall fellow.”
“I saw nobody,” I said. “I heard his step along the walk, but there was
nothing to be seen.”
“And then?” asked Hugh.
“Whatever it was seemed to brush by me, and go into the house,” said I.
There had certainly been no sound of steps on the bare oak stairs, and
we searched room after room through the ground floor of the house. The
dining-room door and that of the smoking-room were locked, that into
the drawing-room was open, and the only other door which could have
furnished the impression of an opening and a shutting was that into the
kitchen and servants’ quarters. Here again our quest was fruitless;
through pantry and scullery and boot-room and servants’ hall we
searched, but all was empty and quiet. Finally we came to the kitchen,
which too was empty. But by the fire there was set a rocking-chair, and
this was oscillating to and fro as if someone, lately sitting there,
had just quitted it. There it stood gently rocking, and this seemed to
convey the sense of a presence, invisible now, more than even the sight
of him who surely had been sitting there could have done. I remember
wanting to steady it and stop it, and yet my hand refused to go forth
to it.
What we had seen, and in especial what we had not seen, would have been
sufficient to furnish most people with a broken night, and assuredly I
was not among the strong-minded exceptions. Long I lay wide-eyed and
open-eared, and when at last I dozed I was plucked from the borderland
of sleep by the sound, muffled but unmistakable, of someone moving
about the house. It occurred to me that the steps might be those of
Hugh conducting a lonely exploration, but even while I wondered a tap
came at the door of communication between our rooms, and, in answer to
my response, it appeared that he had come to see whether it was I thus
uneasily wandering. Even as we spoke the step passed my door, and the
stairs leading to the floor above creaked to its ascent. Next moment
it sounded directly above our heads in some attics in the roof.
“Those are not the servants’ bedrooms,” said Hugh. “No one sleeps
there. Let us look once more: it must be somebody.”
With lit candles we made our stealthy way upstairs, and just when we
were at the top of the flight, Hugh, a step ahead of me, uttered a
sharp exclamation.
“But something is passing by me!” he said, and he clutched at the empty
air. Even as he spoke, I experienced the same sensation, and the moment
afterwards the stairs below us creaked again, as the unseen passed down.
All night long that sound of steps moved about the passages, as if
someone was searching the house, and as I lay and listened that message
which had come through the pencil of the planchette to Margaret’s
fingers occurred to me. “I want to come in. I cannot find her here.”...
Indeed someone had come in, and was sedulous in his search. He was the
gardener, it would seem. But what gardener was this invisible seeker,
and for whom did he seek?
Even as when some bodily pain ceases it is difficult to recall with
any vividness what the pain was like, so next morning, as I dressed, I
found myself vainly trying to recapture the horror of the spirit which
had accompanied these nocturnal adventures. I remembered that something
within me had sickened as I watched the movements of the rocking-chair
the night before and as I heard the steps along the paved way outside,
and by that invisible pressure against me knew that someone had entered
the house. But now in the sane and tranquil morning, and all day
under the serene winter sun, I could not realise what it had been. The
presence, like the bodily pain, had to be there for the realisation of
it, and all day it was absent. Hugh felt the same; he was even disposed
to be humorous on the subject.
“Well, he’s had a good look,” he said, “whoever he is, and whomever
he was looking for. By the way, not a word to Margaret, please. She
heard nothing of these perambulations, nor of the entry of--of whatever
it was. Not gardener, anyhow: who ever heard of a gardener spending
his time walking about the house? If there were steps all over the
potato-patch, I might have been with you.”
Margaret had arranged to drive over to have tea with some friends of
hers that afternoon, and in consequence Hugh and I refreshed ourselves
at the club-house after our game, and it was already dusk when for the
third day in succession I passed homewards by the whitewashed cottage.
But to-night I had no sense of it being subtly occupied; it stood
mournfully desolate, as is the way of untenanted houses, and no light
nor semblance of such gleamed from its windows. Hugh, to whom I had
told the odd impressions I had received there, gave them a reception as
flippant as that which he had accorded to the memories of the night,
and he was still being humorous about them when we came to the door of
the house.
“A psychic disturbance, old boy,” he said. “Like a cold in the head.
Hullo, the door’s locked.”
He rang and rapped, and from inside came the noise of a turned key and
withdrawn bolts.
“What’s the door locked for?” he asked his servant who opened it.
The man shifted from one foot to the other.
“The bell rang half an hour ago, sir,” he said, “and when I came to
answer it there was a man standing outside, and----”
“Well?” asked Hugh.
“I didn’t like the looks of him, sir,” he said, “and I asked him his
business. He didn’t say anything, and then he must have gone pretty
smartly away, for I never saw him go.”
“Where did he seem to go?” asked Hugh, glancing at me.
“I can’t rightly say, sir. He didn’t seem to go at all. Something
seemed to brush by me.”
“That’ll do,” said Hugh rather sharply.
* * * * *
Margaret had not come in from her visit, but when soon after the crunch
of the motor wheels was heard Hugh reiterated his wish that nothing
should be said to her about the impression which now, apparently, a
third person shared with us. She came in with a flush of excitement on
her face.
“Never laugh at my planchette again,” she said. “I’ve heard the most
extraordinary story from Maud Ashfield--horrible, but so frightfully
interesting.”
“Out with it,” said Hugh.
“Well, there was a gardener here,” she said. “He used to live at that
little cottage by the foot-bridge, and when the family were up in
London he and his wife used to be caretakers and live here.”
Hugh’s glance and mine met: then he turned away. I knew, as certainly
as if I was in his mind, that his thoughts were identical with my own.
“He married a wife much younger than himself,” continued Margaret, “and
gradually he became frightfully jealous of her. And one day in a fit
of passion he strangled her with his own hands. A little while after
someone came to the cottage, and found him sobbing over her, trying to
restore her. They went for the police, but before they came he had cut
his own throat. Isn’t it all horrible? But surely it’s rather curious
that the planchette said Gardener. ‘I am the gardener. I want to come
in. I can’t find her here.’ You see I knew nothing about it. I shall do
planchette again to-night. Oh dear me, the post goes in half an hour,
and I have a whole budget to send. But respect my planchette for the
future, Hughie.”
We talked the situation out when she had gone, but Hugh, unwillingly
convinced and yet unwilling to admit that something more than
coincidence lay behind that “planchette nonsense,” still insisted that
Margaret should be told nothing of what we had heard and seen in the
house last night, and of the strange visitor who again this evening, so
we must conclude, had made his entry.
“She’ll be frightened,” he said, “and she’ll begin imagining things. As
for the planchette, as likely as not it will do nothing but scribble
and make loops. What’s that? Yes: come in!”
There had come from somewhere in the room one sharp, peremptory rap. I
did not think it came from the door, but Hugh, when no response replied
to his words of admittance, jumped up and opened it. He took a few
steps into the hall outside, and returned.
“Didn’t you hear it?” he asked.
“Certainly. No one there?”
“Not a soul.”
Hugh came back to the fireplace and rather irritably threw a cigarette
which he had just lit into the fender.
“That was rather a nasty jar,” he observed; “and if you ask me whether
I feel comfortable, I can tell you I never felt less comfortable in my
life. I’m frightened, if you want to know, and I believe you are too.”
I hadn’t the smallest intention of denying this, and he went on.
“We’ve got to keep a hand on ourselves,” he said. “There’s nothing so
infectious as fear, and Margaret mustn’t catch it from us. But there’s
something more than our fear, you know. Something has got into the
house and we’re up against it. I never believed in such things before.
Let’s face it for a minute. _What_ is it anyhow?”
“If you want to know what I think it is,” said I, “I believe it to be
the spirit of the man who strangled his wife and then cut his throat.
But I don’t see how it can hurt us. We’re afraid of our own fear
really.”
“But we’re up against it,” said Hugh. “And what will it do? Good
Lord, if I only knew what it would do I shouldn’t mind. It’s the not
knowing.... Well, it’s time to dress.”
* * * * *
Margaret was in her highest spirits at dinner. Knowing nothing of
the manifestations of that presence which had taken place in the
last twenty-four hours, she thought it absorbingly interesting that
her planchette should have “guessed” (so ran her phrase) about the
gardener, and from that topic she flitted to an equally interesting
form of patience for three which her friend had showed her, promising
to initiate us into it after dinner. This she did, and, not knowing
that we both above all things wanted to keep planchette at a distance,
she was delighted with the success of her game. But suddenly she
observed that the evening was burning rapidly away, and swept the cards
together at the conclusion of a hand.
“Now just half an hour of planchette,” she said.
“Oh, mayn’t we play one more hand?” asked Hugh. “It’s the best game
I’ve seen for years. Planchette will be dismally slow after this.”
“Darling, if the gardener will only communicate again, it won’t be
slow,” said she.
“But it is such drivel,” said Hugh.
“How rude you are! Read your book, then.”
Margaret had already got out her machine and a sheet of paper, when
Hugh rose.
“Please don’t do it to-night, Margaret,” he said.
“But why? You needn’t attend.”
“Well, I ask you not to, anyhow,” said he.
Margaret looked at him closely.
“Hughie, you’ve got something on your mind,” she said. “Out with it. I
believe you’re nervous. You think there is something queer about. What
is it?”
I could see Hugh hesitating as to whether to tell her or not, and I
gathered that he chose the chance of her planchette inanely scribbling.
“Go on, then,” he said.
Margaret hesitated: she clearly did not want to vex Hugh, but his
insistence must have seemed to her most unreasonable.
“Well, just ten minutes,” she said, “and I promise not to think of
gardeners.”
She had hardly laid her hand on the board when her head fell forward,
and the machine began moving. I was sitting close to her, and as it
rolled steadily along the paper the writing became visible.
“I have come in,” it ran, “but still I can’t find her. Are you hiding
her? I will search the room where you are.”
What else was written but still concealed underneath the planchette I
did not know, for at that moment a current of icy air swept round the
room, and at the door, this time unmistakably, came a loud, peremptory
knock. Hugh sprang to his feet.
“Margaret, wake up,” he said, “something is coming!”
The door opened, and there moved in the figure of a man. He stood just
within the door, his head bent forward, and he turned it from side to
side, peering, it would seem, with eyes staring and infinitely sad,
into every corner of the room.
“Margaret, Margaret,” cried Hugh again.
But Margaret’s eyes were open too; they were fixed on this dreadful
visitor.
“Be quiet, Hughie,” she said below her breath, rising as she spoke. The
ghost was now looking directly at her. Once the lips above the thick,
rust-coloured beard moved, but no sound came forth, the mouth only
moved and slavered. He raised his head, and, horror upon horror, I saw
that one side of his neck was laid open in a red, glistening gash....