CHAPTER I_Death in the dusk

Death in the Dusk

by Virgil Markham

Jacobsen Publishing Company, Inc.

CONTENTS

Prefatory Words

Persons in this Chronicle

I. The Obtrusion of Parson Lolly

II. The Bull

III. The House

IV. The Bidding Feast

V. Kingmaker

VI. Strain

VII. Court of Inquiry

VIII. Wager of Battel

IX. The Bone

X. The Laugh

XI. Superintendent Salt

XII. Noah’s Flood

XIII. The Weapon

XIV. The Fiendish Cat of the Sisters Delambre

XV. The Rainbow

XVI. Parchment—and Paper

XVII. Lancelot’s Ultimatum

XVIII. Grisly Planting

XIX. The Deathless Arm

XX. The Recrudescence of Parson Lolly

XXI. The Midnight Expedition

XXII. The Beginning of the End: Parabola

XXIII. Miss Lebetwood and a Campstool

XXIV. Bannerlee’s Secret

XXV. The Flight of Parson Lolly

XXVI. Blood on the Portrait

XXVII. The Purr of the Cat!

XXVIII. The Crash

XXIX. Rescue

The Communication of April 17, 1926

PREFATORY WORDS

The journal of Alfred Bannerlee, of Balzing (Kent), is at last to be

published practically in full, and without the alteration of any name.

I say “at last,” but I suppose there are some who would leap with joy

if the closely-written pages of the Oxford antiquarian and athlete

were utilized, like Carlyle’s first “French Revolution,” for building

a cheery fire. Lord Ludlow certainly is one.

It seems incredible, but Mr. Bannerlee has requested Ludlow to write

an introduction to the book. Perhaps Mr. Bannerlee was pulling the

baronial leg. Of all the party of poor half-maddened people who

emerged from Aidenn Vale after the powerful doings recorded in this

Journal, I can imagine none less likely to perform this service for

the diarist who clung faithfully to the task of recording terrors in

the midst of terror and didn’t hesitate to display the baronial

character at its craftiest. Small wonder, I should think, that on the

eve of publication of what he himself admits is “an unbelievable and

utterly veracious narrative” Lord Ludlow sails for unknown seas, and

makes no secret of the fact that England’s loss is permanent.

Now, since his Lordship promises never to come back, I don’t see any

reason why I shouldn’t publish his recent letter to me, and thereby,

perhaps, satisfy Mr. Bannerlee.

“Brillig, Ambleside, Westmorland,

December 27, 1927.

My dear Markham:

One can scarcely conjecture what maggot of audacity was in the brain

of Alfred Bannerlee, Esq., when he forwarded me his diary with the

request that I write a foreword to accompany it ‘to give the stamp

of reality.’ When you perceive the light in which I am placed in

this unbelievable and utterly veracious narrative, you will not need

to reflect in order to understand why I decline to have anything to

do with the document. In accordance with Mr. Bannerlee’s wish, I am

sending the diary to you, ‘an obscure but ambitious author,’ and I

do not suppose that you will object to having your name upon the

title-page. The whole arrangement impresses me as asinine, but,

after all, the manuscript is Mr. Bannerlee’s and he should be

allowed full scope to play the fool with it.

In fairness to the author, however, I must abate the indictment. I

do no more than allude to what seem to me distinct virtues in this

account. They will appeal to others likewise, if they are virtues.

In the first place, there is nothing of that grisly, putrid stuff

going nowadays under the name of modern psychology, although a

pedlar of this ‘science’ could have found no end of matter for his

hole and corner methods. Second point: I am not a devotee of the

enormous literature dealing with the hounding and capture of

wrongdoers. But I will venture a pronouncement in my egregious

innocence, to wit, that not in any half-dozen combined of these

would-be ‘shockers’ published in a lifetime will be found as many

trials and alarums and as much genuine mystification as make up this

compendium of the bedevilment of Parson Lolly, the mad behaviour of

the milkman, the invisible omnipresence of Sir Brooke Mortimer,

the enigma of the mystic bone, the Legend of Sir Pharamond’s

imperishable arm, and the machinations of the ultimate contriver, I

will not call him ‘fiend,’ working through and behind all.

And here it is my wish to express my wholehearted esteem for (then)

Miss Paula Lebetwood. I dislike the whole species of American girls,

but intelligence compels exceptions to every rule. Some of us judged

her harshly, no doubt, but she took the road leading to success, and

if she seemed cold-hearted, she chose wisely. Had she been a weaker

woman, snuffling and inept, the narrative would not now be on the

verge of publication. In spite of this, wherever she is, I wish her

well.

I myself shall not remain in England to witness the effervescence of

the multitude over this narrative. Democratic outbursts rather gall

me. On the eve of the publication of the Journal, my yacht, with me

on board, sails for waters unknown. I seek as far as I may a

shoreless cruise. I am old, and mankind is not my hobby. Perhaps I

shall linger in the beauty of the Mediterranean where there are two

skies, perhaps drift endlessly in the steady strength of the Trades,

perhaps dare the dark Antarctic seas—or find beyond the sunset. One

thing stands sure; it is unthinkable that I shall ever set foot in

Britain again. So here I take farewell of those who with me shared

the dread, wonder and aftermath of _Death in the Dusk_. (By the way,

I don’t like that title of Bannerlee’s.)

Pray accept my congratulations on your recent appointment, and

believe me your sincere friend, and

Faithfully yours,

Ludlow.”

It is well, I believe, to point out that the minds of all those

present at Highglen House among the sorcerous hills of Wales during

the early autumn of 1925, the mind which directed the writing of this

Journal was, save perhaps one, the best fitted for presenting the

closest account possible to the truth. The one other mind which could

possibly equal this record in truthfulness would be that which

actually contrived the series of demoniacal events in the Vale of

Aidenn Water. The queer, tense, potentially tragic, and ultimately

fatal situation discovered by Mr. Bannerlee after his serio-comic

descent from the Forest through the fog contained so many

cross-currents and tangled nets of misunderstanding, prejudice and

enmity that no other could have pretended to the shadow of fairness in

his (or her) statement of the case. For the sake of truth, then

(though God knows what disadvantages offset that!), it was well that

Mr. Bannerlee was plunged into the seething midst of the Bidding

Feast.

I shall not dilate upon the morbid eagerness with which the public

will seize upon this Journal. This is no hackneyed chronicle of raw

head and bloody bones. The consternation caused by the events in

Aidenn Vale, constituting, upon their emergence after the flood, a

problem of what may genuinely be called universal interest, will never

be forgotten by those old enough to realize their dreadfulness. The

nine days’ terror became a nine days’ wonder, and without hyperbole it

may be said that the fate of one nation hung upon the Radnorshire

riddles. The public has never been informed of all there was to be

told, nor, as sporadic (and totally erroneous) statements and versions

in the press signify, has the public lost its interest. Here, for the

first time, is offered for general perusal this unbelievable and

utterly veracious document. Need I comment further?

This is not, of course, the original form of Mr. Bannerlee’s diary.

What he wrote until the turmoil of events forced him to stay

his hand on the evening of the 9th of October was necessarily

briefer, more compact, and—to a reader not in touch with the

circumstances—unintelligible. His recasting of the manuscript, which

involved its enlargement to thrice its original length is, it seems to

me, one of the most notable of his feats. Hard it must have been for

him to alter this account from the sketch-book manner of an ordinary

diary, to give the convincing gloss of rumination and reflection, to

reveal precise details of fact, the links of cogitation, and the

phases of feeling which poured in upon him. I think, too, that he has

well preserved the sense of imminence, the uncertainty as to the

morrow, which was, I am told, present in the original version. If

portions of the work seem lacking in spontaneity, let me remind the

reader that it was impossible for Mr. Bannerlee to limit himself to a

mere polychronicon of episodes, frilled with running comment on

persons, and edged with a neat pattern of emotions. Clearness demanded

he should sometimes _elucidate_ and the white heat of events must have

time to cool before they can be handled analytically.

Only last month I myself visited New Aidenn again. A word of

self-introduction to Superintendent Salt made that rather wonderful

policeman my good friend at once, and he personally conducted me

through the Vale where death and terror had danced. It is all as

Bannerlee describes it; even the atmosphere of mystery has not

departed, and while Salt and I came down by Aidenn Water through the

dusk, I was glad to have him there, glad and nevertheless uneasy. The

villagers and the folk of the countryside know well that Parson Lolly

is not dead yet, though his age is nearer five hundred than four

hundred years, and often they see his black cloak whisk through some

twilight copse, or see him far off above the hills, poised against the

sunset.

Some day I shall write my own book about Salt: that other mystery of

East Wales, the frightful affair of the Straight Road. But enough.

Virgil Markham

St. John’s Wood,

London, February 26, 1928.

DEATH IN THE DUSK

Being Alfred Bannerlee’s own revision

and enlargement of his journal notes

from the evening of October 2, 1925,

to the breaking off, October 9. Together

with the conclusion of the narrative

later supplied by him, and the

communication of April 17, 1926.

Paula Andrews

in loving memory of

Paula Lebetwood

and to

Mrs. Robert Cullen

in grateful memory of Lib

PERSONS IN THIS CHRONICLE

The Narrator

Alfred Bannerlee of Balzing in Kent,

athlete and antiquarian

Host and Hostess of the Bidding Feast

The Honourable Crofts Pendleton

Mrs. (Alberta) Pendleton

The Betrothed

Sean Cosgrove

Paula Lebetwood

Guests

Herbert Pinckney, Baron Ludlow and Ditherington

Ted Belvoir

Mrs. (Marvel) Belvoir

Gilbert Maryvale, Esq.

Mr. Charlton Oxford

Mrs. Eve Bartholomew

Miss Millicent Mertoun

Dr. Stephen Aire

Lib Dale

Bob Cullen

Servants

Blenkinson, patriarch

Soames, footman

Hughes, gamekeeper

Finlay, head gardener

Wheeler, chauffeur and handy man

Morgan, handy man

Tenney, handy man

Toby, boy

Rosa Clay, cook

Ruth Clay, housekeeper

Ardelia Lacy, lady’s maid

Jael, parlourmaid

Harmony, housemaid

Em, kitchenmaid

Nebulous or Mysterious Persons

The gorilla man

The menagerie keeper

Sir Brooke Mortimer

The sisters Delambre

The red-bearded runner

The youth in the library

The man in the tower

Officials

Superintendent Salt

Dr. Niblett, Coroner

“Scotland Yard”

Super-Sleuth

Harry Heatheringham

Arch-Lord of Disorder

PARSON LOLLY

CHAPTER I

The Obtrusion of Parson Lolly

Highglen House, Aidenn Vale, Radnorshire,

October 3, 1925. 12.30 A.M.

Heaven smile on us if it can! Heaven watch and ward us. This is a

wedding party!

Crofts Pendleton has just brought me the fresh candles and this

writing-book. He wished me God-speed in my endeavours and good-night.

“Good-night!” It sounded like a travesty, or a challenge.

Surely I am the sane one here if anyone is. Yet I cannot name the

curse that lies on my spirit and keeps in my eyes the vision of the

two faces, the golden hair above the black! Never-to-be-forgotten

moment! But I shall not let it unnerve me now, as it seemed to then.

The worst of it is that I am confined in a musty chamber (among

store-rooms!) on the second floor where the web-scribbled ceiling

slants down with the roof and the eaves murmur uncannily just above my

window—a room to make flesh thrill and creep. It looks like a chamber

where murderers may have lurked in bygone days. The narrow, deep-set

window, the old twisty candle-brackets high on the stone wall, the

joined chest with never a nail to fasten its boards, the severely

plain four-square bedstead—they all remind me that I am in a building

centuries old where any or every fiendish deed may have been

performed. I wish that this storey, like the rest of the house, were

equipped with a good up-to-date electric service. The blinking light

of candles is not very comfortable in the gloom.

Nearly a page written, yet nothing pertinent said. This isn’t economy

in words. But now I’ll banish megrims, cease rambling, and come to the

situation.

I have been in Highglen House for a scant six hours. Events have been

moving with intermittent swiftness ever since I came, and they had not

been precisely quiet before my arrival. To-night, though it takes

until dawn, I shall describe as far as I can the happenings of the

last day unless I drift off to sleep in the process. But no, even with

doors locked, sleep is not likely to trouble anyone much to-night, not

after the alarm all of us—I don’t except myself in this case—have just

had.

Moreover, until the nowhere-to-be-found Sir Brooke puts in an

appearance, or some word is heard from him, there will be little rest

for me, with Eve Bartholomew knocking at the door every fifteen

minutes, with, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bannerlee; are you still up? It’s

_so_ silly of me, of course—Sir Brooke can take care of himself as

well as any of us—better, I’m sure, than most—and yet I’m not so

sure—but it’s really odd, isn’t it? Now I know it’s silly of me—but

I’ve just had another idea. Don’t you think it’s possible that Sir

Brooke took the wrong train? Of course I don’t know whether you can do

that in Shrewsbury in the afternoon—but perhaps he got on the wrong

platform, or something—he never was an expert on getting about, poor

dear—and then he may have gone to sleep and not noticed where he was

going. He has a way of doing that in trains—I know him so well, you

see. Perhaps he didn’t learn until he got off at some scrubby little

place where there’s no telegraph. And then, of course, that explains

why there’s been no message from him.”

I have learned a good deal about Sir Brooke’s character since Mrs. B.

began her raids with a Macbethean knocking and a stage whisper. His

chief trait seems to be utter fickleness of memory, his next that

something, or lack of something, which makes able-bodied women like

Mrs. B. call men “dear” with “poor” prefixed. He is near-sighted,

liable to vertigo philanthropic, and a nuisance.

I said Macbethean knocking—I suppose that proves I’m a little

highly-strung myself. Certainly she caused a warm, douche-like

sensation to pass clear over my scalp to the nape of my neck. We have

had an evening which would make the staidest—

I have a severe mind to draw a line through these pages and begin

anew. This isn’t what I intended at all. My candles are bearded now,

and I haven’t scratched my subject. I repent and reform this very

instant. I am going to try to put down things in order, as they have

unfolded themselves in the course of one of the most amazing days I,

or any human being, ever lived through.

Yet first (before taking my way back to the hilltop where I wandered

this afternoon, never having so much as heard of Highglen House!)

while the spirit is urgent and the clutch of sense is keen, I’ll

transcribe the maddening events of the half-hour just past. Before I

forget—but shall I ever forget?

There they were in the Hall of the Moth, civilizees of assorted

temperaments, ignoring their alarms, submerging their differences, and

levelling their intellects in the fascination of a card game. How

“instructive and amusing” had been my introduction by Pendleton to

each of them in this very Hall scarcely more than an hour before! Save

for Alberta, that luscious wife of his, I had never laid eyes on one

of them previous to this evening.

Straight on my entering the Hall, Pendleton had cavalierly handed me

around from person to person.

First he revealed me to his wife, who set down her cards and rose with

one of the gladdest smiles I have ever seen. She was tall and

gracious. Her face, surrounded by its lustre of close-clipped, wavy

hair, was a joy to look at, being both pearly-clear and firm, like an

exquisite lily-petal of classic marble.

“Alfred! We hear that you have been raiding Aidenn Forest.”

“Please!” I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it anything so forcible as—”

But already Pendleton had presented me to Mrs. Belvoir. I withdrew my

hand from its clasp of Alberta’s and took the cold fingers of the

colourless man’s wife. What thoughts lay behind those brooding lids

and that close-lipped mouth? Her face had a wavering indistinctness,

like a face seen under flowing water.

“How do you do?” she said in that rich voice, gave me one full look

with eyes cold and pale as sapphires, and blinked languidly, as if the

discussion were closed.

Pendleton did not let me linger in perplexity. He gave me up to

Belvoir, who shook hands with a faint smile, saying, “Mr. Bannerlee

and I spelled our names to each other in the hall a little while ago.”

Next was Lord Ludlow. “I’ve seen him,” remarked his Lordship, gazing

at me with a little asperity, crinkling the skin over the high-pitched

bridge of his nose, and sat down, for he was wishful of continuing the

game, or of giving the impression that such was his desire.

I was whisked to the second table and made acquainted with the sole

woman there. Eve Bartholomew (God give her peace!) grasped my hand for

a tug or two, exclaiming hurriedly, “Oh, how do you do?” And she

added, with ill-feigned casualness, “They say you’ve been out on the

hills to-day. You’re sure you haven’t seen Sir Brooke?”

“Quite sure, Mrs. Bartholomew.”

“Or hear of anyone who might be him—he?”

“No.”

Next I was set face-to-face with her partner, the red-faced young man,

who I was not surprised to learn was Sean Cosgrove. His head was

large, his features large, too, without being lubberly. The ruddiness

of his complexion was accentuated by his very black and shining hair,

short and thick. There was something grim and settled in the line of

his jaw, and his blazing black eyes bore out the character of

determination. He shook hands unsmiling, gravely.

“My congratulations,” I offered.

He gave a short bow, looking at the floor. Then, “I have heard of

you,” he said, with not a trace of Irish lilt or accent in his speech.

“Is it possible?”

“You are a searcher for the buried lore of antiquity. Is not that so?”

he asked with a certain lofty seriousness.

“I have done a little research among the British saints, but I hardly

expected my labours—”

“They honour you,” asserted Cosgrove, but my smile of deprecation and

anything further he was about to say were cut off by Pendleton, who

relentlessly kept me on the go, and I faced the next guest.

Two men had been partners at this table; I now found myself staring at

a waxed moustache, and a very elegantly tapered and needle-pointed

specimen of craftsmanship it was. The rest of his face was nothing

remarkable, only a little swarthy-purplish with brandy, and a trifle

stary-eyed. I was not prepossessed with this gentleman, judging him to

be the sort who shows his cleverness to an assorted public in quips to

barmaids and dance-hall musicians. His name, “Mr. Charlton Oxford,”

struck me as strainedly aristocratic, though no fault of his.

“Chawmed.”

“Aesthete,” flashed through my brain, but a query-note raised itself

after the word. “Just plain fool,” I concluded.

“You _are_ being bandied about, aren’t you?”

I was surprised by the fluence and ease of his voice, and his

lightening smile, the big darkish man’s who had been dealing the cards

so ritualistically a few minutes before. He lifted his weight as if it

were that of a bubble, and I saw that indeed he was big, bearing his

torso on stanchion-legs. His mass must have been twice mine.

“Gilbert Maryvale, our complete man of business—iron-castings,” said

Pendleton, with evident gladness that his tale was over.

I saw a quick brightness come and go in Gilbert Maryvale’s eyes at

that description, as if the eyeball had darted out a little from its

station under thatch-brows.

“The winner of the Newman Prize for Lucid Prose, I think, in—let me

see—Nineteen-nineteen? May I congratulate you, Mr. Bannerlee, although

the time is past? I have read your ‘Poets of Enervation’ with

delight.”

“No, Mr. Maryvale, that was not my essay.”

“Surely I haven’t mistaken the name?”

“You have mistaken only the man. ‘Poets of Enervation’ was the

overflow of my cousin Norval’s pen. We were in the University

together. I made a bid for the Newman myself, but was buried. Norval

and I are often mistaken for each other, even in our literary

occupations.”

“No doubt you ran him close,” observed the big man twinkingly.

“I’m afraid not. And now, as Mr. Cosgrove has said, I am devoted to

dustier things, and the prose I give my time to is far from lucid.”

“But you wring lucidity out of it.”

Maryvale resumed his seat, picked up his hand, as did the rest, for in

spite of much invitation I insisted on remaining aloof from the game.

Broad capable cheek-bones, sudden forceful chin he had, but I had an

awareness there was much more than capability and force in this

“complete man of business.” That allusion to the Prize Essay for Lucid

Prose was a poser. Was there another trafficker in iron-castings in

the United Kingdom who had read “Poets of Enervation”?—or one who

would speak of it kindly if he had?

Well, all this was past, half-forgotten in ensuing talk. But now, at

one minute to midnight, a new presence was in the Hall, threatening

the mirth of the Feast! Anger!

For Lord Ludlow and Sean Cosgrove were having a beautiful row.

The Irishman’s gaze was hard and heavy, and seemed to bore into his

antagonist. His face, I noticed, was still suffusing with blood. No

one else ventured to intervene as madly as I had just done, and the

silence when the two men ceased parleying was like the yawn of ocean

after a gigantic wave.

Cosgrove’s bitterness seemed to be growing steadily, like the awful

momentum of a railway train, and I had no doubt that the time was not

many seconds away when he would arise and beard his foe with menacing

hands. Lord Ludlow’s acerbity was like the nervous, sputtering

viciousness of a dynamo. From his eyes seemed to come green electric

sparks, while he shifted his ire from me toward Cosgrove again.

“As for you, sir—”

“I accuse you—”

Hark!

The great Hall of the Moth where we stood was gripped in a new hush,

for the clock in the corner was speaking. I had regarded it curiously

in the evening, a fine old carcase with hood, waist, and base

enveloped in spider’s web marqueterie which obliterated the graining

of the wood. The brass dial was finely engraved, and Cupid’s head

appeared four times delicately chiselled in the spandrils.

Now its chime gave the burden it has tolled for two hundred years, and

midnight was ringing sternly through the House from the Hall of the

Moth. It is a strange clock, devised by some brooding or twisted or

philosophic mind long ago: it strikes, they say, only at midnight,

proclaiming the death and the birth of a day. The tones, vigorous and

vibrant, were mellow with centuries, and their song was poignant.

Like some greybeard councillor’s, the old clock’s voice appeared to

abash the hasty peer and the slowly enraged Irishman. They stared at

each other in grimness for an interim of seconds before his Lordship

shrugged his shoulders, cackled “Humph!” loudly, and turned to the

disrupted card-table. Cosgrove’s clenched hands came down in his lap

relaxed, and he, too, turned back to his table, moving his lips

without utterance.

But the game did not go on. It could hardly have pursued its placid

course again after this very distressing interruption of our peace,

even if the crying sound had not begun from somewhere outside the

Hall.

A low, tremulous, wheedling cry, strangled sometimes into a moan—it

froze every face and turned every eye to stone.

“What’s that?” gulped Eve Bartholomew. . . .

“_Where_ is it?” asked Belvoir, and one could tell that the “stick of

dynamite” had not much breath to spare.

But no one seemed to have the breath or the brain to answer him. My

own belief for a moment was that it proceeded from a plane above our

heads, instead of from somewhere in the long portrait-lined passage

outside the Hall of the Moth. This seemed to be Pendleton’s notion,

too, for with a tense “upstairs!” our host moved to the nearest door

to the corridor. But Alberta Pendleton, dismayed (like all of us, no

doubt) by the thought of the hovering menace that had shadowed

Highglen House, hurried across to her husband and clung to him,

positively clung to him, as I have seen actresses do in plays.

“No, Crofts dear—no, no! Wait—let someone go with you!”

“It’s up there,” declared Pendleton with steel-trap enunciation. “The

damned thing’s come again—up there.”

“That’s why you mustn’t go.”

“It’s up there,” he said doggedly, and tugged to loose himself. But

she took step for step with him, finally turning in his path with her

back against the door.

“We’ll all go,” said Maryvale.

“All the men,” said Cosgrove. “The women lock the doors behind us.”

“Ring for the servants,” said someone shakenly, I think Charlton

Oxford.

“Listen! . . . It’s not there any more. . . . It’s stopped.” We

listened with Mrs. Bartholomew; beyond our taut breathings and the

tick-tack-tock of the carcase in the corner—nothing.

“Ring for the servants, I tell you!”

“Listen! It’s out there.”

“Out there!”

“On the lawn.”

Unmistakably now the low wordless cry came through the half-opened

french window leading to the broad lawns beyond the entrance drive.

Pendleton was across the room in a trice, heedless of Alberta’s

protest; so were Maryvale and Cosgrove and I; so were all of us. We

followed our host through the window-entrance. Out to the darkness we

went from the bright-lit hall in a little throng, and when we were

outside, hearing the lonesome, half-whining cry no more, we recoiled

and huddled a little, like scared titmice.

Hardly a quarter of a minute—prolonged by our bewilderment and

dread—could have gone by, and we stood irresolute upon the fringe of

the lawn, when the cry came toward us again, and now it was followed

by a woman’s voice, different from the cry:

“Oh, come here, come here! I couldn’t call you and leave her alone.”

At the sound of that voice Cosgrove stamped like a raving beast.

“Paula,” he bellowed, and plunged across the obscurity of the lawn.

Following among those whose urgence was less than his, my eyes, which

deviated from straight ahead, caught sight of a spine-stirring thing.

It was motion, but of what? A darker mass on the dark sward. Size,

shape, untellable—but moving, moving to the right, now seeming to

crawl, now leaping—only an amorphous blob of black—moving, and

swiftly, toward the north, moving stilly, with only a small rustling

sound at whiles.

“Look there!” I exclaimed to someone who was near me, catching his

arm. (It was Oxford.)

“Hey! What!”

“That—going off there—a black thing.”

“I don’t see it.” Nor did he want to, I judged.

I guided his arm, extending it in the proper line. “Sight by that.”

But I could not make him see it. He and I then diverged from the

others, not much to his liking, and while we hastened after the

nameless thing, I bethought me that I had changed my electric torch to

these clothes. I hauled it from a side pocket, darted a cone of yellow

ahead of us, cast an elliptic figure of yellow on the grass, but found

no trace of the thing.

Oxford, however, saw an object ahead which made him give a yell. He

stopped petrified, and I followed his look far before us. What we both

then saw was too distant to be the thing I had observed nearby, unless

it were indeed a fiend possessed of superhuman powers. He was crossing

a patch of ground a hundred yards away where the moon streamed down

unscathed by clouds; save for the quick, brief clearing, indeed, we

should not have caught sight of him. Like the hopping, gliding thing

on the lawn, he was black, or robed in black. Contrary to report,

however, if this were Parson Lolly, his figure appeared not to be tall

but distinctly short and squatty. Just then the fringe of a cloud

partly obfuscated the moon, but still that space was clearer than all

around it. While the figure glided toward the trees, it seemed to

heave its shoulders and grow a foot, two feet, taller! Again it

writhed itself into greater height, its long cloak billowing, and

again! Just before gaining the covert of branches, it turned toward us

a moment, twice the height of a man. And its head, if head it had, was

only a pointed thing with unguessable features in the cavern of its

hood. The moon was absolutely overcast when the figure, again wheeling

about, went beneath the trees.

“Do we go after it?” I asked sardonically.

“We—we do not.”

“Righto.”

I heard a gurgle from Oxford’s lips and guessed that his heart must be

rotating in his throat. His shoulder to my touch was quivering, and

while we went to rejoin the rest he staggered as if in drink, although

certainly sober. But his nerves aren’t the best, I shouldn’t wonder,

for there must be regular occasions when he quaffs and quaffs again.

They were a chastened, vaguely murmurous company we discovered almost

beneath the arch of the ancient gate-house with its ivy swarming up

and up, now standing lone, its walls on either side all shorn away.

Only a spurt or two of a match they had to see by, until I came with

my torch and they made way for me. The light on the weather-beaten

stone was like the circle of an old medallion or mellowed painting:

two women, one pallid and lifeless, the other, seated on the grass,

supporting the lovely, unconscious head on her knees.

I supposed instantly that this was the young English-woman, Millicent

Mertoun, who lay wan—the most beautiful creature, I believe, I have

ever seen. Fine breeding, fine spirit were in her stricken face. Cold

loveliness, indeed, with the life gone out of it; eyes set widely

apart, closed beneath straight black eyebrows which were now lifted

apeak with the intensity of strain that showed in the fine lines

across her forehead and the slight drawing-back of her short upper

lip, disclosing her large, evenly graduated teeth. The lashes that

rested upon her cheeks were remarkably long, deep black, and it was

their fragile, almost imperceptible stirring alone that betokened a

possible reawakening to life. Her chin was softly rounded, and in the

disorder of her abundant black hair a delicate ear was exposed. The

suspension of life had withdrawn the blood from the full-contoured

lips, left the cheeks pallid, but while I gazed at the face and the

aristocratic little neck, twined about so by the tumbling length of

masses of black hair, I had a whisper of what beauty the face might

have when expression was restored to it, and the eyes, of unguessable

depth and sweetness, were open.

Of the other woman’s head I caught only the partly averted profile,

while she bent over Miss Mertoun, with one hand clasping together at

the throat the unconscious girl’s loose gown, apparently a garment of

negligée. She, of course, must be the American girl, for it was at the

sound of her voice that Sean Cosgrove had torn across the lawn. There

was dignity, I thought, in her head with its straitly fastened

golden-brown hair, and a lovely tenderness in the solicitude of her

pose.

She was in the midst of speech, relating the adventure which had

brought her and her companion to that plight. She did not look up or

turn her head when the light from my hand broke over her, and all the

while she spoke her watchful gaze was for the features of the girl

whose senses were benumbed. American speech it was, yet the words came

from her lips with a chiselled precision, the tone tending toward

viola depth.

“—blinding, yes, not blinding alone, but maddening. I got her into

looser clothing—she wouldn’t go to bed. She gave no sign of fainting,

but the pain drove her into delirium more than once, and I almost sent

for someone else to help me with her. Then the pain went down, and

suddenly she went to sleep.”

Someone, I think Cosgrove, took a step nearer. “No, keep away, please.

Don’t try to move her yet.”

“But, Paula, how did you ever come—?”

The American girl precluded the end of Alberta Pendleton’s question.

“Of course I am coming to that. She went sound asleep, and I thought

it better not to undress her; so I let her lie on the bed, and I

curled up in the chair by the window. Millicent’s wretched evening had

left me tired out, too, and I don’t remember anything more until when

I woke up to find her awake again and wandering about. There was

enough light from the globe by the mirror to see that she was terribly

distressed, but it was not with pain this time. She was suffering from

some—”

Paula Lebetwood hesitated for a moment, then recommenced. “I think she

was walking in her sleep.”

A note of surprise and pity came from all our mouths.

“Were her eyes open?” asked Mrs. Belvoir.

“Yes, with the darkest vagueness in them.”

“Didn’t she recognize you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“You see, it all happened so quickly. Only a couple of seconds after I

had roused myself the clock in the Hall of the Moth commenced ringing

midnight. Millicent stopped for a moment and put her hand to her

heart, a queer thing, I thought. ‘It’s his music,’ she said, and made

for the door.”

Renewed exclamations of surprise attested our close-held interest.

“She ran down the hall—”

“But, Paula, did you let her—?”

“She was too strong for me, or perhaps too quick. She twisted away

from me when I tried to prevent her from leaving the room. She almost

flew down the hall; I was afraid she would throw herself down the

stairs, and I caught up with her just in time. We came down—”

“Did she make any sound?” burst in Pendleton.

“Yes, a wailing sound—if there were any words, I couldn’t distinguish

them. Didn’t you hear her? Oh, I was wishing you would. I didn’t dare

to cry out, you know, since she was in that dangerous state.”

“We heard, dear,” said Alberta Pendleton. “But the sound kept

changing, and we were undecided.”

“She had a definite intention to go out, and out of the front entrance

we went whether I would or not. And then, then, while we were far away

on the lawn, we saw the—the—I can’t name it.”

“What was it like?” asked Pendleton, and I recall that all of us

closed in a little further to hear.

“The head, I suppose you’d call it. It was—awful.”

“What—where?”

“Didn’t any of you see it?” she asked in much surprise, yet not for a

second lifting her intent look from Millicent Mertoun’s face. “It was

just after that I noticed that foul reek of blood.”

“Blood!” That was Eve Bartholomew’s cry.

“Oh, haven’t you noticed that either? The smell was so bad, I feared

it would have some ghastly effect on Millicent. I hoped she wouldn’t

notice it, in her condition. And then—we were beyond the gate-house,

coming back toward the mansion, when we saw—the head.”

“Where, for God’s sake?”

“About a hundred feet away from us. I heard something stirring first,

something scuttling, you might say. Then we saw it. Ugh! . . .

Straight out of hell, surely. . . .”

Pendleton’s excitement was getting too much for him, and he broke

through courtesy. “Why do you keep boggling it? Where was it? What did

it do?”

“Crofts!” reprimanded Alberta.

Still with averted face, Paula Lebetwood tried to satisfy our fuming

host. “Where? I don’t know exactly where. Near the gate-house here, I

suppose. It seemed thirty or forty yards away. It was enormous, about

six feet high—oh, fully that. It hung in the air—there wasn’t any body

beneath. And it didn’t do anything, just remained there long enough to

be seen, half a second, perhaps, and disappeared with a sort of sigh.

I thought I heard a sigh. It—well, it simply went out. . . . It was

hideous.”

“What did it look like, dear?” asked Alberta, more to anticipate her

bluff husband than to satisfy curiosity, for her question was

tremulous.

“Hideous—a great round head with red goggle eyes and a hole for a nose

and broken teeth all grinning. It looked alive and staring—worse than

any mask I’ve ever seen—an indecent thing. . . . Oh, don’t think that

it was hallucination—poor Millicent saw it too, though it came and

went like the winking of an eye. It seemed to strike to her heart—and

to mine, for that matter—and she could manage to walk only a few steps

more—on my arm—through the archway before she weakened and collapsed,

and I saw you all there outside the french window, and called.”

She turned her head full toward us for the first time since Oxford and

I had come from our private chase. Such was my position when she

lifted her bent head that I, and only I, saw, on the yellow-lit ground

revealed beyond, a small placard with uncouth letters thereon, large

enough to be read in spite of their unshapeliness:

P A R S O N L O L L Y S e N d s R E G a R D s L o o K O U T

F O R P A R S O N L O L L Y

A storm sprang in my mind, such a whirlwind of spirit as I believe I

have never before experienced, when behind the quick, expectant face

of this American girl, one so tender to her stricken friend, one so

fearless, I saw that obscene sign. She was at first dazzled by the

light in my hand, and her dark blue eyes show wonderfully bright and

wild. Her gold hair then had a fine-spun beauty. And beside the old

gate-tower lay the sneering message of one who affronted both manhood

and womanhood. Anger at the marauder who made beauty his victim, shame

for being duped, fear of being duped again, a craving to bring the

rascal down—these and I know that not what other unleashed gales met

in the cross-roads of my mind. The winds rose to raving, towered into

hurricanes. My soul was dizzy, staggering. I was not rational at that

moment—then the gales went down. I bit my lip hard, stepped around the

two women there, picked up the sign (which had been printed with a

smudgy pencil on a stiff folio sheet) and showed it to the rest.

“Parson Lolly!” exclaimed more than one.

Then Oxford, perhaps intending to be jocose, said,

“‘Beware of Parson Lolly.’ Beggar’s a bit late, it seems to me.”

“At least,” said Crofts Pendleton thickly “it proves he’s human—the

devil!”

“_In some ways human_, perhaps,” amended Maryvale.

“What else, then?”

“Less than human. Consider the birds of the air, my friends. They are,

I suppose, less than human—yet—they—can—fly!”

I gave a stout shrug to rid myself of the disquiet compelled by such a

suggestion.

Anxiety over Miss Mertoun’s exposure to the midnight air prompted

Alberta Pendleton, not for the first time, to urge taking her inside

the Hall. But Miss Lebetwood shook her head in a determined manner,

and with a gesture showed that she believed it was too far to carry

her to the mansion.

“It’s very mild out here now,” she declared. “I know sleep-walking

people. If she were to wake up while she’s being taken, it might have

some long-lasting ill effect. Alberta, please don’t ask again. I want

her to be in my arms when she opens her eyes. You good people don’t

need to stay. I—and Sean—can wait here with her alone.”

But none of us would go. Then while we waited to see a greater sign of

life than the restlessness of those long black lashes on the pallid

cheek, down from the dark north came that ragged, hungry voice I had

heard while alone earlier in the night, a cry that tore at our nerves

and congealed our blood to ice-drops in our veins. A carnal, raving

cry, thinning to a shriek that pierced the ear, swelling to a howl

that loosened the knees.

Of that dire, abysmal wail of mad desire, an overtone must have found

a counterpart in Cosgrove’s spirit. Out of the past of his kind, that

had seen things more clearly in the dusk than in the plain light of

day, that had loved cries of battle and death more than joyful cries,

some strain may have wrung the man’s soul. Terribly to all of us, he

raised his voice in answer to the inhuman call; I, at least, had no

sense of body or of time and place while he burst into a black rain of

words, a torrent of rancour, and defiance against the fiend of the

pit, whose incarnate self he seemed to hear in the voice of the beast.

But a low call from Paula Lebetwood reduced him to a stunning silence.

“I think she’s coming to.”

The unconscious girl’s fingers fluttered briefly; her lips stirred;

her whole body stirred a little. She turned once, twice, restlessly,

and sank, with a little sigh, comfortably and trustingly into the

American girl’s embrace. The trace of a sneer had vanished from her

face, and her breast moved with her breathing.

“She’s sleeping now,” said Alberta Pendleton, and stooped beside the

pair on the grass.

Miss Lebetwood whispered, “Dearest, do you hear me? Do you know me?

It’s Paula. . . . Dearest, do you hear me?” She stroked the pale

forehead free of its last furrow.

“Yes,” came like a shadow of a word from the sleeping girl.

“Dearest, Paula wants you to come with her.” Still she spoke,

soothing, caressing, in the effort to woo her to awaken peacefully.

And the eyes of Millicent Mertoun opened, revealing themselves to be

of a deep blackness that rivalled her errant hair, opened to see only

the smile of love on the face of the American girl bending over her;

and the English girl smiled too.

“Your headache is all gone, isn’t it, dearest?”

“Yes . . . but where . . . is this?”

“Don’t be frightened, dear. It’s the lawn by the gate-house. Now we’re

going inside.”

“But how? . . . I don’t understand . . . these people.”

Miss Lebetwood kissed her cheek, leaned her forehead against it.

“Never mind, dearest. Everyone is a friend, you know. Can you walk?

Here, now.”

The English girl was sitting up; she rubbed her eyes, and sent short,

bewildered looks this way and that, far from comprehending her

situation. Too many of the party were trying to explain everything to

her, and she was beginning to look desperate and unhappy.

“Never mind the silly people,” said Miss Lebetwood sensibly.

“See—we’re just a few steps away from the house—where we’ve been

before, you know. Now we must go in. Sean, help me.”

The Irishman and the women at last began to support the strengthless

girl into the Hall. It must have been a full quarter of an hour since

we had poured out from that vaulted chamber into the enigmatic night

and had heard the call from the gate-house. Now the servants were

roused, summoned by someone, and lanterns were rushing across the lawn

in our direction. I had commenced to go with the party about Miss

Mertoun, desirous of casting a light before their feet. But Pendleton

called me back somewhat peremptorily.

“Bright enough from the Hall for ’em not to stumble by.” Alone in the

great mansion the Hall of the Moth sparkled forth, but the glare from

its massive chandelier was a sure guiding light. “We need you here,”

added our host; “there’s a good deal more of this needs looking at.”

At a phrase from him the lanterns began to swing hither and thither

about the lawn, and we men of the party passed across the drawbridge

under the resounding gate-house arch.

“Is this usually lowered?” I asked.

“Usually. Can be raised for the sport of it. It’s part of the main

drive, you see. It must have been hereabout that they smelt—”

He had no need to say more.

“Great God, what an unholy stench!”

“It _is_ blood!”

“Bottles of it.”

Crofts Pendleton’s voice shook. “I hope—it’s not—anything serious.”

Just then nothing could have struck us as amusing. Lord Ludlow

interjected, “Remember, sir, that there is a missing man—”

“Oh, Lord, look there! My boot!”

Belvoir lifted a foot for inspection, while I turned the eye of the

torch upon it. The leather was stained with a fluid dark and thick.

“My God!” observed Pendleton.

“It’s jolly well begun to clot.”

“Look out, you chaps, you’ll mire yourselves.”

“Show us the place, Bannerlee.”

My torch exposed a patch of darkened grass only a foot or so each way.

There was nothing else about nearby.

Pendleton, half aghast, kneeled on the edge of the patch and studied

it.

“A lot of blood’s been spilled here. It must have soaked down, a

goodish bit of it, but there’s quite a pool about the grass roots.

This spot will have to be guarded to-night. Pity we’ve tramped about.”

A thick voice lifted in excitement from the north of us.

“Oh, Mister Crofts, sir, do come here.”

“What is it, Tenney? Let it stay, whatever it is.”

“Small fear I’ll touch it, sir. It’s one of them old fightin’ irons.”

“A weapon, by heaven!” exclaimed Lord Ludlow.

“Has it blood on it?”

“All sticky dried, sir.”

We were beside the quaking man-servant in a jiffy or two, staring

curiously where lay a small battle-axe, with an inconsiderable curve

of blade. It was a weapon of uncommon slightness. Both metal and wood

were dark with the same viscous fluid, the handle being quite

slobbered with it.

“From the armoury!” cried our host. “The foul devil’s actually been

inside the house! Don’t touch it!”

“That weapon was on the wall at a quarter before eight,” said Lord

Ludlow. (Ah, I knew why he could say that!) “I was passing through to

the library for my glasses.” (There, to be sure, the old rascal

prevaricated.)

“You don’t say!”

“This looks like a serious crime,” remarked his Lordship.

“Serious crime!” Pendleton snorted. “Ludlow, you surprise me. I

thought it was child’s play.”

“I think that by a serious crime our noble friend means a particular

crime—don’t you, Ludlow? Isn’t it the customary euphemism?” asked

Belvoir.

“I mean murder, sir.”

“Should have said so in the first place,” growled Pendleton, and

added, “No need to say it at all.”

“It’s jolly irregular, though,” declared Oxford. “All that blood in

one spot, and this gory thing over here.”

“This was not done according to rule,” rejoined his Lordship.

“It was not carried out as planned,” declared Cosgrove, who had come

out from the mansion again.

“And one, er, detail only needs to be filled in.” That was Belvoir

from somewhere in the darkness behind us. “The, er, _corpus delicti_.”

“Gad, yes—scatter, now—search—all the way to Aidenn Water.”

The cluster of lanterns spread into kaleidoscopic figures again,

although the men seemed none too happy to leave the protection of one

another. But they did not discover any further traces of the marauder

or a vestige of a victim who might have furnished all that blood. My

own light picked up the last find of the night, a round, battered

object on the grass even further north than the blood-stained axe.

“A hat!”

“Can it be Sir Brooke’s?”

Pendleton leaped ahead of us and snatched it from the ground, held it

from him contemptuously.

“I doubt it.”

“I can tell you certainly that it is not Sir Brooke’s!”

One man, at least, jumped at the sound of a female voice among us.

There was Eve Bartholomew, standing tall and tragic, clinging, I

thought, to the last pinch of nerve she possessed.

“I couldn’t help being interested, you know,” she remarked

ingenuously, and gave a little high-keyed laugh. “I just came from the

Hall. But I can assure you that Sir Brooke has nothing to do with this

affair. He would be mad to take any part in it. He would be mad to

wear that rag of a disreputable hat.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bartholomew,” I agreed, “he would. I was about to say,

before you identified the hat as not Sir Brooke’s, that it belongs to

me. I wore it down the slopes of Aidenn Vale.”

“You did!”

“Yes—none too new when I set forth with it this morning, it has

suffered a lifetime’s wear and tear with me to-day. That is the

history of the hat.”

“But where did you see it last?” demanded Pendleton.

“I left it hanging in the entrance-hall. And I saw it on the rack as

you and I came down the stairs before we went in to the Bidding

Feast.”

“By gad, I remember it too,” he assented. “Then if—”

But he never finished that sentence, whose protases and apodoses might

have filled an hour. Quick with surmise, we turned back to the house.

Millicent Mertoun and her retinue had by this time gone upstairs, but

the Hall of the Moth was full of the women-servants of the house,

arrayed in white as if risen from their graves in winding sheets. A

small boy in a nightgown, scared half to death, was blubbering

soulfully, as were some of the women. Blenkinson, the butler, the only

man of them who had not got into clothes and gone forth, was quieting

everyone with loud sibilance.

Pendleton confronted them somewhat nervously.

“There’s been too much racket about nothing,” he asserted. “Miss

Mertoun walked a little in her sleep. That’s really all that’s

happened. You’re all very silly, you see, to take on so. Now get to

bed.”

But when they had departed he turned upon Eve Bartholomew with a face

full of bale. “I can tell you one thing about Sir Brooke. If he

doesn’t show up to-morrow and clear things up a bit, he’ll find no

Bidding Feast when he gets here. I’ll invite ’em to clear out. I’m not

going to have my guests hounded and threatened.”

Mrs. Bartholomew gasped. “Why, you can’t say that Sir Brooke has

anything—”

“I don’t know,” scowled Pendleton, “but I want him—here!”

We are truly blissful marriage celebrators.

. . . . A thought had been germinating in my mind ever since the

moment of my near-madness on the lawn, when the iniquity of Parson

Lolly had so taken hold of me. When we were alone:

“Crofts, I want to prove I’m not crazy. Show me where you want me to

sleep, and give me a book to write in. And keep it quiet, for heaven’s

sake.”

“A book to write in?”

“I have many words within me craving to be penned. Give me a book to

write in, and show me my room.”

Well, this is the room, and these some of the words.

Now to tell of the many things that happened to me to-day before these

many things.