Nothing happened to disturb me in the night--nothing, that is, except a
nightmare in which Colonel Wragge chased me amid thin streaks of fire,
and his sister always prevented my escape by suddenly rising up out of
the ground in her chair--dead. The deep baying of dogs woke me once,
just before the dawn, it must have been, for I saw the window frame
against the sky; there was a flash of lightning, too, I thought, as I
turned over in bed. And it was warm, for October oppressively warm.
It was after eleven o’clock when our host suggested going out with
the guns, these, we understood, being a somewhat thin disguise for
our true purpose. Personally, I was glad to be in the open air, for
the atmosphere of the house was heavy with presentiment. The sense
of impending disaster hung over all. Fear stalked the passages, and
lurked in the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, but really
haunted; not by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite
though incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous.
At the least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour
of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the
servants, though professedly ignorant by the master’s unspoken orders,
yet shared the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with
this display of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity,
provided a kind of black doom that draped not only the walls, but also
the minds of the people living within them.
Only the bright and cheerful vision of old Miss Wragge being pushed
about the house in her noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly
to every one she met, prevented us from giving way entirely to the
depression which governed the majority. The sight of her was like a
gleam of sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened wood, and just
as we went out I saw her being wheeled along by her attendant into the
sunshine of the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she turned
her head and wished us good sport.
The morning was October at its best. Sunshine glistened on the
dew-drenched grass and on leaves turned golden-red. The dainty
messengers of coming hoar-frost were already in the air, asearch for
permanent winter quarters. From the wide moors that everywhere swept up
against the sky, like a purple sea splashed by the occasional grey of
rocky clefts, there stole down the cool and perfumed wind of the west.
And the keen taste of the sea ran through all like a master-flavour,
borne over the spaces perhaps by the seagulls that cried and circled
high in the air.
But our host took little interest in this sparkling beauty, and had
no thought of showing off the scenery of his property. His mind was
otherwise intent, and, for that matter, so were our own.
“Those bleak moors and hills stretch unbroken for hours,” he said, with
a sweep of the hand; “and over there, some four miles,” pointing in
another direction, “lies S---- Bay, a long, swampy inlet of the sea,
haunted by myriads of seabirds. On the other side of the house are the
plantations and pine-woods. I thought we would get the dogs and go
first to the Twelve Acre Wood I told you about last night. It’s quite
near.”
We found the dogs in the stable, and I recalled the deep baying of the
night when a fine bloodhound and two great Danes leaped out to greet
us. Singular companions for guns, I thought to myself, as we struck out
across the fields and the great creatures bounded and ran beside us,
nose to ground.
The conversation was scanty. John Silence’s grave face did not
encourage talk. He wore the expression I knew well--that look of
earnest solicitude which meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed
and preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, but anxious
often--it always moved me to witness it--and he was anxious now.
“On the way back you shall see the laundry building,” Colonel Wragge
observed shortly, for he, too, found little to say. “We shall attract
less attention then.”
Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed able to dispel the
feelings of uneasy dread that gathered increasingly about our minds as
we went.
In a very few minutes a clump of pine trees concealed the house from
view, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a densely-grown
plantation of conifers. Colonel Wragge stopped abruptly, and, producing
a map from his pocket, explained once more very briefly its position
with regard to the house. He showed how it ran up almost to the walls
of the laundry building--though at the moment beyond our actual
view--and pointed to the windows of his sister’s bedroom where the
fires had been. The room, now empty, looked straight on to the wood.
Then, glancing nervously about him, and calling the dogs to heel,
he proposed that we should enter the plantation and make as thorough
examination of it as we thought worth while. The dogs, he added, might
perhaps be persuaded to accompany us a little way--and he pointed to
where they cowered at his feet--but he doubted it. “Neither voice
nor whip will get them very far, I’m afraid,” he said. “I know by
experience.”
“If you have no objection,” replied Dr. Silence, with decision, and
speaking almost for the first time, “we will make our examination
alone--Mr. Hubbard and myself. It will be best so.”
His tone was absolutely final, and the Colonel acquiesced so politely
that even a less intuitive man than myself must have seen that he was
genuinely relieved.
“You doubtless have good reasons,” he said.
“Merely that I wish to obtain my impressions uncoloured. This delicate
clue I am working on might be so easily blurred by the thought-currents
of another mind with strongly preconceived ideas.”
“Perfectly. I understand,” rejoined the soldier, though with an
expression of countenance that plainly contradicted his words. “Then I
will wait here with the dogs; and we’ll have a look at the laundry on
our way home.”
I turned once to look back as we clambered over the low stone wall
built by the late owner, and saw his straight, soldierly figure
standing in the sunlit field watching us with a curiously intent look
on his face. There was something to me incongruous, yet distinctly
pathetic, in the man’s efforts to meet all far-fetched explanations
of the mystery with contempt, and at the same time in his stolid,
unswerving investigation of it all. He nodded at me and made a gesture
of farewell with his hand. That picture of him, standing in the
sunshine with his big dogs, steadily watching us, remains with me to
this day.
Dr. Silence led the way in among the twisted trunks, planted closely
together in serried ranks, and I followed sharp at his heels. The
moment we were out of sight he turned and put down his gun against the
roots of a big tree, and I did likewise.
“We shall hardly want these cumbersome weapons of murder,” he observed,
with a passing smile.
“You are sure of your clue, then?” I asked at once, bursting with
curiosity, yet fearing to betray it lest he should think me unworthy.
His own methods were so absolutely simple and untheatrical.
“I am sure of my clue,” he answered gravely. “And I think we have come
just in time. You shall know in due course. For the present--be content
to follow and observe. And think steadily. The support of your mind
will help me.”
His voice had that quiet mastery in it which leads men to face death
with a sort of happiness and pride. I would have followed him anywhere
at that moment. At the same time his words conveyed a sense of dread
seriousness. I caught the thrill of his confidence; but also, in this
broad light of day, I felt the measure of alarm that lay behind.
“You still have no strong impressions?” he asked. “Nothing happened in
the night, for instance? No vivid dreamings?”
He looked closely for my answer, I was aware.
“I slept almost an unbroken sleep. I was tremendously tired, you know,
and, but for the oppressive heat----”
“Good! You still notice the heat, then,” he said to himself, rather
than expecting an answer. “And the lightning?” he added, “that
lightning out of a clear sky--that flashing--did you notice _that_?”
I answered truly that I thought I had seen a flash during a moment of
wakefulness, and he then drew my attention to certain facts before
moving on.
“You remember the sensation of warmth when you put the letter to your
forehead in the train; the heat generally in the house last evening,
and, as you now mention, in the night. You heard, too, the Colonel’s
stories about the appearances of fire in this wood and in the house
itself, and the way his brother and the gamekeeper came to their deaths
twenty years ago.”