Blood on the Portrait
We had carried Maryvale down to the bridge, and the ambulance from the
Cottage Hospital at Kington had been waiting to take the unfortunate
man away. We did not know until later, of course, that Maryvale would
never walk again, though the delusion which had unhinged his mind no
longer held him in thrall.
Now we were returning to the House, I and the remnant of the men of
the Bidding Feast. We were a straggling squad. The sense of Fate, of
dark wings closing down, of stern gates clashing, swept over me again
while I wondered which of us would be the next to suffer. One by one
our little group reassembled in the library. There the women were
waiting; there, too, stood Maryvale’s picture of the headless Parson,
more enigmatic than before. Yes, even with the madman’s words ringing
in our ears, none of us could believe that he had indeed been the
arch-lord of disorder who may have destroyed two men.
Mrs. Belvoir, purpureal priestess, was making agitated efforts to
reassemble her devotees that she might reveal the further activities
of the “malignant spirit”; but the devotees were very slippery.
Indeed, it was natural that after the catastrophe of Maryvale, other
things should disintegrate, and although the terror spread through the
House tightened the little knot of us, soon we might have wandered off
to bed, unless a sudden loud knocking had been audible.
“The front door, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lebetwood.
Our host said it was, and added he wondered what the devil—
“It is a sign for me, I think.” Addressing Mrs. Belvoir: “Marvel, you
must let me take charge now.”
“Why, what do you mean?” demanded the seeress.
“We shall see in a moment.”
Alberta’s firm hand had restrained Crofts from jumping into the
corridor to answer the knock himself. Presently Soames sidled into the
room with a salver which he presented to Miss Lebetwood. Regarding him
closely, I thought he gave her a slanting, snake-like look of mingled
fear and malevolence—and yet on the surface his countenance remained
perfectly respectful.
“A telegram for you, Miss.”
“Thank you.”
Lib gurgled, “Why, Paula, someone’s had the cheek to open it!”
“I know,” answered Miss Lebetwood, withdrawing two closely-filled
sheets from the envelope already slit. “Those were my instructions.”
Crofts asked sharply, “Don’t they know those should be ’phoned here?”
“My directions again,” said the American girl evenly, without glancing
up from the sheet in her hand. Her brief, self-possessed words made us
realize of a sudden that she had assumed leadership quietly and
confidently. “There will be no answer, Soames,” she remarked, and the
man slid out shadow-wise.
A silence supervened, while we stared at her and she read the message
to the very end. When she was through, her clear blue eyes were bright
with exultation.
“Yes, it’s what I expected! I think, people, that we will see the end
of our ghastly bewilderment to-night. Won’t you be glad? Oh, I will!”
Mrs. Belvoir, aware that she was likely to lose the post of cynosure,
countered vaguely. “What do you mean?” she repeated. “I haven’t
finished—”
“You won’t need to, Marvel dear. I have found a better way to deal
with the malignant spirit you spoke of. I have Mr. Salt’s approval for
what I do. In fact”—she smiled slightly—“I am his deputy.”
Lord Ludlow’s eyebrows gave a jerk. “His deputy?”
“Yes, and I believe I am to have a Police-Constable to enforce my
authority. And the—the Frenchwomen from the farm, the Delambres, have
kindly consented to be present here to-night as witnesses.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Crofts. “Will people be coming in here
all night? Who owns this place, anyhow?”
Alberta struck a counter-blow. “Of course, Paula dearest, we shall do
anything you like. Shall we have to wait long for those queer old
women?”
“_They_ are waiting for _you_,” said the American girl, standing by
the door which led through the armoury into the Hall. “Will you enter,
please, and take your seats as before?”
“I don’t like this,” objected Crofts, blocking our way. “In my opinion
there should be no jiggery-pokery without Salt or this Scotland Yard
man he was supposed to bring. Why doesn’t he do as he intended?”
“Hush, dear,” said Alberta, “or Paula will have her Constable arrest
you and lock you up in the gate-house.”
“He may appear later on, of course,” the American girl suggested, not
very hopefully. “You can trust me, though, to—”
“Later? Later?” Crofts grumbled. “Are we going to be kept up all
night?”
But now Paula Lebetwood ignored him. “Please follow me,” she said,
brushing past, and Crofts gave way.
Like creatures under a spell we moved into the Hall, a place still
obscured from the moon and illumined now only by the pale ring of
lights from the chandelier by the gallery. I offered to switch on the
other chandelier, which hung near the chimney-piece, but she said she
wished it to remain dark for the present. While she spoke, she lit the
one bright globe beneath which Mrs. Belvoir had sat, and took her own
place beneath it.
“Please interrupt me as little as possible,” she requested,
“especially in this early part where I know my way. I’ll try not to
waste time, though I don’t expect this to be a really short meeting.
No, don’t say anything, yet.”
It was hard to repress some exclamation of wonder when I saw the two
women who sat in semi-darkness near the great expanse of the
chimney-piece. Very quiet they had been, and took no notice of us
while we entered. They seemed to be absorbed in the embers of the
fire, from which only an occasional blue flame winked like an eye. One
of them, the squatter of the two, seemed particularly aloof, and only
her flattish nose and broad forehead peeped beyond the queer
old-fashioned hood still drawn over her head. The other, who wore an
expansive coverchief, was taller and more stalwart, with a strong
face, large chin, and eyes which shone even in the gloom. She appeared
from time to time to take some interest in us and our proceedings. But
on the whole the presence of these foreign sisters was eerie and
evasive.
More stolid than either of these appeared the bovine Constable who sat
near them and seemed to have them in charge.
“Geewhilikins!” emitted Bob, and the state of Lib could be imagined
from the fact that she brazenly allowed him to clutch her hand and
keep it.
Paula Lebetwood indicated the sisters Delambre with a gesture.
“These—gentlewomen: you know who they are, of course. Before to-night
is over we shall all be grateful to them for coming here. But it’s
late, I know, and you are all anxious to hear my—revelation; so I’ll
commence at once.”
Her revelation! God grant that no prank of fate should cause _her_ to
be snared in whatever trap she was setting!
“Don’t think, please, that I am certain myself what to-night’s result
is going to be,” she went on while we settled into our seats around
the shadowy board. “If I did, I wouldn’t waste your time. But I
think—yes, I am almost certain—that you will find out before you leave
your places. And perhaps I had better put this in evidence first.”
She picked up the creased sheets of the telegram which lay on the
table before her and handed them to Charlton Oxford. “It’s the answer
to a wire Mr. Salt sent for me this morning. As you see, it’s from the
Welsh National Library at Aberystwyth.”
“That is surely far afield,” remarked Ludlow.
“It may seem so. But I believe that when Mr. Salt hears of it, he’ll
agree with me that it’s an important item in our list. In fact, my
Lord, it’s the keystone of my arch.”
While his eyes travelled along the lines, Oxford’s face was blank.
Obviously he did not perceive the slightest link between the matter of
the telegram and the matter in hand. He was not even puzzled; he was
irretrievably befogged.
“Will someone repeat it aloud, please? It will save so much time.”
Crofts snatched the sheets from Oxford’s fingers and commenced to
read. The eagerness in his voice subsided while he went on to an
uncomfortable conclusion with an air that he was being made a fool.
Our confusion increased with rapt attention, but the sisters Delambre
seemed utterly uninterested, and I believe that the Constable had
already dropped into a doze. The message ran about as follows:¹
¹ The original has been supplied. (V. Markham.)
ADEQUATE DESCRIPTION MANUSCRIPT IN CATALOGUE MOSTYN COLLECTION TO
WHICH IT FORMERLY BELONGED STOP ORIGINAL NOW IN CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY STOP COPIES MAY EXIST STOP MOSTYN SAYS ELIS GRUFFYDD SELF
STYLED SOLDIER OF CALAIS WAS NATIVE GRONNANT UCHA IN PARISH LLANASSA
FLINTSHIRE LIVED ABOUT 1490–1560 STOP CUSTODIAN WINGFIELD PALACE
SEVEN YEARS BEFORE JOINING RETINUE AT CALAIS STOP BEST KNOWN AS
AUTHOR AND SCRIBE OF LARGE POLYCHRONICON IN WELSH IN TWO MANUSCRIPT
VOLUMES STOP FIRST BEGINS CREATION ENDING BATTLE OF HASTINGS STOP
SECOND CONTINUES TO 1552 STOP FOLIOS 365–657 CONTAIN EYE WITNESS
ACCOUNTS MANY TRANSACTIONS INCLUDING TRIALS IN STAR CHAMBER STOP NO
MENTION IN MOSTYN OF REFERENCE TO CWM MELIN OR AIDENN VALE STOP CAN
ASSURE YOU NO PASSAGE OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED STOP.
“May I have it back? Thank you. And now straight to the point. People,
I suppose you think that if we could only put our fingers down tight
on one person, our troubles would be over. I mean Parson Lolly—not the
Parson of Mr. Maryvale’s sad delusion, but the real one.”
“I should say so,” remarked Crofts.
“Well,” she said very quietly, “if there is one part of these
mysteries I know I hold the clue of, it’s the Parson. I _know_ who the
Parson is.”
The tableful of us stiffened as if we had been plunged in an electric
bath.
“Then who, who, who?” Crofts burst out.
“You mustn’t excite yourself. There never was any reason to be excited
about Parson Lolly. Parson Lolly is a dud.”
“Yes, he is!” hooted Bob incredulously.
“Yes, he is, I tell you. I can’t believe for a minute that he has any
unusual power. You can hardly say that he has any power at all; at
least, it’s delusive rather than formidable. Why, he’s done nothing
but deliver threats and make gestures, and some of us have been
imagining we’re the victims of supernatural pranks.”
“Supernatural or not,” growled Crofts, “I’ll give him a fine quarter
of an hour when I lay hands on him. Who is he?”
The American girl looked him straight in the eye, severely, and he
subsided with vague rumblings. “Now, I stipulate that you shall do
nothing of the sort. If you intend to make this the excuse for working
off your surplus bad temper, I won’t go any further.”
“I’ll go bail for him,” promised Alberta.
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me,” said Crofts.
The American girl leaned her chin in her hand and studied the table
with thoughtful eyes. She spoke slowly, tentatively. “Suppose I set
the evidence before you and see if your conclusion isn’t the same as
mine. Beginning, perhaps, with that night Millicent wandered out on
the lawn, and I with her. It was the clock in the corner there that
started all the trouble; neither the Parson nor any human being here
could have foreseen the effect that melody would have on Millicent
when she heard it through her dreams. But somewhere on the lawn we two
collided, you might say, with a separate series of events. First of
all it was the devilish, goggling face that glared down at us from an
instant from the air. And let me remind you that it was not only an
enormous face—I was frightened, but I’m not exaggerating—it was also
high up in the air. We know the Parson is tall when he stands full
length, but even he can’t extend indefinitely. Well, we saw this
perfectly hellish face, just for an instant, and it hasn’t been seen
again—that way. Mr. Salt took most of it away with him when he left
the Vale this evening.”
“What’s that?” jogged in Crofts.
“Let me go on, please. The head was one thing. Then there was the
placard: ‘Parson Lolly sends regards. Look out for Parson Lolly.’ That
was the first of a number of such messages that have been found all
about the place, and why _this_ one, at any rate, should have caused
us such great alarm, I can only account for by supposing that we’d
caught the spirit of panic from the servants. On sober reflection, I
should think that that placard demonstrated a sort of ingenuousness in
Parson Lolly.”
“A damned funny sort of ingenuousness,” remarked our host. “What about
the axe and the blood we found?”
“I was just going to remind you of them. The blood, as you know, we
learned to be that of one of a batch of little pigs, and its carcass
was found this afternoon along with the head. As for the axe, you
remember that Doctor Aire pointed out how light and impracticable it
was, and how it had been removed from low down on the armoury wall.
The final thing was that Mr. Bannerlee’s hat had been deposited on the
lawn. The rest was merely excitement. I am able, though, to add a
point or two borrowed from Mr. Bannerlee.”
I received a burning glance from Crofts. “From you? Have you been
holding something back all this time?”
The American girl swiftly continued. “These are notes from the diary
Mr. Bannerlee commenced that night.”
They all exclaimed, “Diary!”
“Yes, yes; don’t be so surprised at everything, or we shan’t get
through. Don’t let them bother you, Mr. Bannerlee. A little later I’ll
say something more general about the diary, but now I confine myself
to a pair of small points. One is that while he came down the path
from the uplands to the Vale, he heard a voice somewhere in the fog
below, shouting—an indeterminate sort of voice with a quality he
couldn’t quite describe. Now, I believe that was Parson Lolly’s voice,
the same queer voice we heard the night before Mr. Bannerlee came. And
the second point is this. Late in the afternoon before Sean met his
death, Mr. Bannerlee was standing on the roof outside his window.
Crofts had told him how the sun strikes the tumulus in Great Rhos at
sunset. Mr. Bannerlee looked down, as it chanced, and saw a tiny piece
of rope beneath the parapet that runs along there. It was lying at the
edge of one of the merlons, which have been scraped fairly smooth and
have their corners sharp. It is my belief that this scrap was part of
the clothes-line rope and that it had something to do with Parson
Lolly’s visit the night the conservatory window was smashed, also on
the night previous to Mr. Bannerlee’s advent.”
“Look here,” Crofts broke in. He had gradually been sliding to the
edge of his chair again. “Why can’t you give up beating about the bush
and tell us out and out?”
“I’d have to go over it all anyhow,” returned Miss Lebetwood. “I’m
wondering if these straws seem to you to point the way I think they
do. You must let me tell this in my own way. There isn’t much more,
and for that I have to thank Mr. Bannerlee also.”
“You mean my visit to the tower?” I asked. “The Superintendent could
help you there. He must have scoured the place long before me.”
“He did, as it happens. But he left matters there as he found them,
and it was through reading your diary that I heard of the variegated
lot of objects which probably belonged to the Parson. For instance,
you found shavings from the pencil which had written the placards. You
also saw some splashes, unquestionably the blood of the little pig.
Then there were fragments of wood and scraps of crêpe, left over from
the construction of the head. Another thing was a pungent smell that
you couldn’t identify. I think that was all except a torn-off corner
of the title-page of a book; something ending in ‘CATTI.’ I would have
telegraphed for information about that, too, this morning, but when I
asked the Superintendent, he was able to tell me right away what the
book is. It’s been quite a common one in Wales for generations: ‘The
Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti,’ who is described as a wild
wag of Wales. He was a real person two hundred years ago, Mr. Salt
told me, and a great many legends have sprung up about him, so that
his exploits as a highwayman and a hero and a man of chivalry make up
quite a readable book. It was borrowed from your library, Crofts, but
I noticed this morning that it was back in its place.”
Our host now seemed sunk in meditative gloom. “What of it?”
“Well, suppose I recapitulate. As I see it, the night before Mr.
Bannerlee came, the Parson intended to invade the House, but his plans
were awry. Although the head was made, he didn’t bring it with him;
this was to be an experimental sortie. He came by way of the kitchen
yard, and took down the clothes-line that was hanging there and
brought it with him. He made a loop, a lasso, with one end of the rope
and flung it up the side of the House until he succeeded in drawing it
tight about one of the merlons of the battlement. Then he began
shouting through a megaphone, and even if you had heard his voice
previously you wouldn’t have recognized it then. And he was still
shouting while he commenced to walk up the wall of the House.”
I thought Crofts was going to levitate from his chair. “A megaphone!”
“But, my dear young lady,” objected Aire, “the man must have had a
hand too many. I grant you, he might have hauled himself up the
outside of the House, but he’d need both hands for it; where does the
megaphone come in?”
“You people will interrupt,” said the American girl. “The explanation
is simple. The megaphone came from old Watts’ storeroom, of course.
Don’t you remember that there are relics in there of early days of
sport—even some oars and a sliding seat from a shell? A rowing
coxswain uses a megaphone, doesn’t he, and there’s an attachment for
keeping it tight against his mouth while both hands are occupied with
the rudder chains. Parson Lolly, I imagine, can manage as well as most
coxswains. Anyhow, he _was_ climbing, and he _was_ shouting when his
foot slipped and there he dangled. Instead of letting go the rope, he
held on, and the result was that he began to sway back and forth. Of
course he tried to steady himself by reaching one foot out to the
wall, but instead of checking his momentum he kicked away from the
wall, and his pendulum swing carried him neatly through the window of
the conservatory. He wasn’t as much as scratched.”
“Unbelievable,” declared Crofts. “And supposing by a miracle he wasn’t
cut to pieces, what became of him?”
The American girl went on quietly. “When my brother was a high-school
lad, he had a soccer ball at home. One evening in an unlit hall he
stepped on it accidentally and it sent him clean through a glass door
without his losing a drop of blood. It isn’t an unusual thing, after
all. As for how the Parson got away, he really didn’t—then. You see,
the swing of the rope had gradually ground it to bits where it rubbed
against the sharpened merlon. When the Parson swung through the
window, the rope broke and he came down on his feet inside the
conservatory. Lucky for him, perhaps, that he did, if he wanted to
evade us, for all he had to do was to draw the rope in after him and
wait until we had spent our patience looking for him in the grounds.
None of us had a thought of searching inside.”
“Well, I’m—” Crofts muttered, breaking off into stupefaction. No one
else said a word, only stared at the American girl, and waited.
“That night we may assume Parson Lolly escaped as soon as the coast
was clear. But he escaped only to plan new mischief for the next
evening. And again his schemes miscarried. I think it is easier to
reconstruct what happened this time. For one thing, he brought the
head with him.” Crofts seemed about to break in, but desisted. “He was
carrying the blood as well; he must have slaughtered the piglet a
little while before he set out from the tower, for the blood had not
begun to clot. Earlier, he had been prowling inside the House and had
pilfered the little battle-axe and the cap belonging to Mr.
Bannerlee.”
“But, dearest, you aren’t making it a bit clearer,” said Alberta.
“What could it have all been for?”
“It was to give us the scare of our lives.”
“And didn’t it?” muttered Oxford. “Dash him!”
“But not as planned. Sean pointed that out at once, I believe. The
Parson’s intention that night was to stage a fictitious murder. There
were the weapon, the gore, and the hat which was to be discovered
reeking with blood. We were to find these things, and in the midst of
our excitement we were to be thrown into a panic when the head—went
off—probably somewhere on the battlement, or even above.”
“The head, the infernal head!”
“Yes, Crofts; it appeared when they dug it up this afternoon—Harmony
told me—that it had been constructed somewhat like a kite and could
have been flown quite easily. That occurred, in fact. When Millicent
and I inadvertently crossed the Parson’s path and he dropped
everything and legged it, the kite did fly up a little way, and
then—went off.” She addressed me. “When it crashed to the ground, Mr.
Bannerlee, the Parson still held the cord, and you distinguished the
head as a black mass sliding across the lawn.”
“I grant you the kite and the rest of the fol-de-rol,” cut in Lord
Ludlow, in a voice like the broken edge of a cake of ice. “I fancy,
however, that this ‘going off,’ as you call it, needs more explanation
than you’ll readily find.”
“The hellish thing couldn’t have been lit with a match like a
Hallowe’en turnip,” added Crofts.
The American girl slowly shook her head and smiled. “On the contrary,
for me that was about the easiest guess of all as soon as I read how
Mr. Bannerlee smelt powder in the tower. Don’t you see, the Parson
must have carried a small dry battery connected by a length of wire
with the magnesium charge in the head? It was an ordinary flash-light
powder such as is used for taking photographs.”
There was a long interval of sagging silence. I cannot speak for
others, but my own mind struggled with an obstacle it could not grasp.
There must be some egregious contradiction involved in this idea.
Flashlight! Who had owned a flashlight?
“But, Miss Lebetwood, you yourself—it can’t be—you’re the photography
expert here. You didn’t—yourself—”
“Wait a moment! I’ve got it!” Aire whistled. “Someone told me other
other day—you’d been teaching Toby how to take flashlight photographs.
Didn’t you bring down some old apparatus of yours and give it to him
last week?”
“Quite right,” said the American girl. “It’s been Toby all along, of
course.”
“Toby!” Crofts was only beginning to see the light.
“Toby, who else?”
“God!” Crofts seemed to choke for breath. “Do you mean to say that lad
killed Cosgrove—killed Heatheringham? I can’t believe it.”
“He never killed anybody. Don’t you see, Parson Lolly has no
connection with these murders?”
“Eh, what?”
“Well, what do you know about that?”
“I’ll be switched!”
“I’ll be damned!”
The American girl gave Ludlow a particular look. “It hardly needed the
new psychology to give us the right lead. I’m amazed, really I am,
that no one has thought of it before. Why, what activities did the
Parson engage in? His plots were just the sort of thing that an
artless—and artful—child would plan to frighten a grown person.”
“Or a grown person to frighten a child,” appended Aire.
“Yes, I think so, but there could be no such intention here, of
course. As soon as I got my wits about me the night Mr. Bannerlee
arrived, I suspected some juvenile escapade. The details unfolded to
fit the theory. There was the little battle-axe from low on the wall,
whereas the big ones hung out of reach. That later night, who but a
small boy could have crawled underneath the arch of the bridge in the
park when the Doctor and Mr. Bannerlee were so brisk on his trail?
Then there was the book: hardly anyone but a lad nowadays would take
much interest in a work as naïve as ‘Twm Shon Catti.’ A boy, however,
might be much struck with it, and it probably fired Toby to emulation
of Twm—a bloodyish emulation. There was his cloak, too—that was rather
puerile, although it was a neat dodge all the same.”
“Where does the neat dodge come in?” I asked.
“Why, to add to his stature. A tiny Parson Lolly would be in danger of
being identified with a boy, if there happened to be a boy in the
neighbourhood. That was the reason for the exceedingly large and
flowing garb. He must have had strapped to his shoulders one of those
contrivances that magicians use to ‘produce’ objects, an apparatus
that could be folded or extended by pressure on some spring. No wonder
Millicent and I saw no head on him! That sort of stunt is as old as
conjuring, I believe, and the appliance probably came from the
exhaustless variety of old Watts’ attics.”
The American girl leaned back in her chair, settling her head against
the leather and closing her eyes, as if grateful for a chance to rest.
The accumulation of details which she had picked out left no doubt
whatever that the houseful of us had been hoaxed and flummoxed by a
child, that Aidenn Vale was Cock Lane repeated on a twentieth century
scale.
_But it could not be!_
There were facts, cold, stony facts, that loomed mountain high,
cutting off this path. These facts could not be avoided.
“But, Miss Lebetwood!” I cried hoarsely, “it won’t do.”
“Won’t do!” resounded the voice of our host, a man of imponderable
mind.
“The placards!” I insisted. “Why, I remember clearly the one in
Cosgrove’s room had been left after Toby had gone to wherever-it-was
to fetch my bag—absolutely no question about that. That afternoon,
too, the one Mrs. Bartholomew picked up by the library tower: I’ll
swear by the beard of the Prophet it wasn’t there when I went past a
few minutes before the tragedy occurred. And Toby was peeling potatoes
then. It’s inconceivable—absolutely inconceivable—that he could have
had anything to do with them.”
Her eyes still shut, Miss Lebetwood said quietly, “I think I can tell
who it was. Not Toby, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t alter the rest of
what I’ve said about him. Toby didn’t write those placards, or leave
them, and I am sure he knows no more about them than he knows
about—that one there!”
The hair at the back of my neck prickled, and my spine seemed to be
wriggling in convulsions. A dozen cries, loud or stunned, sounded as
if from one multi-vocal throat. For the American girl’s eyes were open
now, and her arm pointed to the musicians’ gallery. Indistinct,
hanging outside the bright zone of the globe, but unmistakable, a
fifth placard was suspended from the rail of the balustrade.
“My God!”
“I’ll take oath that wasn’t there when we came in,” declared Crofts,
and many voices supported him.
It was I who rose like a brisk automaton, kicked my chair back against
the wall, and sped up the stairs to the gallery, where I had never set
foot before. The placard hung by a black thread attached to a pin. I
seized it, carried it down to the light. Now we might have been some
multi-headed creature studying the inscription:
T O n i g H T m y L A s t N i G H t B e S t R E G a r d s
P A R S O N L O L L Y
Only the American girl remained limp in her chair, not bending forward
for a sight of the words. While my gaze, as it must, fell on her and
lingered there, ever such a shadowy smile crept from her lips to her
eyes.
“Good people, good, good people, please don’t misjudge me. That
placard has been hanging there since long before you came in. You
didn’t see it because you weren’t on the look-out for it.”
“You knew it was there?” Crofts boomed. “And you didn’t warn us?”
“Warn you? Against myself?”
“Against yourself, dearest?” cried Millicent Mertoun, her face
suddenly worn with anxiety.
Miss Lebetwood said, “I wrote that placard. I wrote it this evening
and put it up there after Marvel’s crystal-gazing to-night. I did it
just to show you that anybody could make a placard like that. This is
the fifth, and perhaps the four others were done by four different
persons.”
Accompanying the last words of her speech, the first strokes of twelve
began to sound from the clock in the corner. There was a spell in the
sound of its old music. We were hushed.
For the only time I saw Lord Ludlow’s face absolutely grey with fear.
“There’s something moving in the wall!”
“Not in the wall—on the wall!”
Indeed, high up, above our solitary light, something rubbed and
scraped near the portrait of Sir Pharamond. From somewhere else in the
room came a soft murmur, as of a smooth-running reel. Belvoir caught
hold of the bulb by its brass top and raised it overhead. Within the
brightness now, the colours of the portrait were sharper and more
brilliant than they had appeared in the austere dimness of the Hall.
But Sir Pharamond was not still; he writhed and rocked, and a loud
outcry was evidence we saw the blood oozing from the wound upon his
cheek.
A moment later down fell Sir Pharamond with a sound of splintering
wood and ripping canvas. The wall where the portrait had been was
quite smooth and blank.
The quiet chime of the old clock had not ceased to ring.