“I ought to be able to make it out,” he thought; “but I suppose I am a
little rusty in my Latin. When I come to think of it, I don’t believe I
even know the word for a whistle. The long one does seem simple enough.
It ought to mean, ‘Who is this who is coming?’ Well, the best way to
find out is evidently to whistle for him.”
He blew tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at
the note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it,
and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles
round. It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the power (which many
scents possess) of forming pictures in the brain. He saw quite clearly
for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh
wind blowing, and in the midst a lonely figure—how employed, he could
not tell. Perhaps he would have seen more had not the picture been
broken by the sudden surge of a gust of wind against his casement, so
sudden that it made him look up, just in time to see the white glint of
a seabird’s wing somewhere outside the dark panes.
The sound of the whistle had so fascinated him that he could not help
trying it once more, this time more boldly. The note was little, if at
all, louder than before, and repetition broke the illusion—no picture
followed, as he had half hoped it might. ‘But what is this? Goodness!
what force the wind can get up in a few minutes! What a tremendous
gust! There! I knew that window-fastening was no use! Ah! I thought
so—both candles out. It is enough to tear the room to pieces.’
The first thing was to get the window shut. While you might count
twenty Parkins was struggling with the small casement, and felt almost
as if he were pushing back a sturdy burglar, so strong was the
pressure. It slackened all at once, and the window banged to and
latched itself. Now to relight the candles and see what damage, if any,
had been done. No, nothing seemed amiss; no glass even was broken in
the casement. But the noise had evidently roused at least one member of
the household: the Colonel was to be heard stumping in his stockinged
feet on the floor above, and growling.
Quickly as it had risen, the wind did not fall at once. On it went,
moaning and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so
desolate that, as Parkins disinterestedly said, it might have made
fanciful people feel quite uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, he
thought after a quarter of an hour, might be happier without it.
Whether it was the wind, or the excitement of golf, or of the
researches in the preceptory that kept Parkins awake, he was not sure.
Awake he remained, in any case, long enough to fancy (as I am afraid I
often do myself under such conditions) that he was the victim of all
manner of fatal disorders: he would lie counting the beats of his
heart, convinced that it was going to stop work every moment, and would
entertain grave suspicions of his lungs, brain, liver, etc.—suspicions
which he was sure would be dispelled by the return of daylight, but
which until then refused to be put aside. He found a little vicarious
comfort in the idea that someone else was in the same boat. A near
neighbour (in the darkness it was not easy to tell his direction) was
tossing and rustling in his bed, too.
The next stage was that Parkins shut his eyes and determined to give
sleep every chance. Here again over-excitement asserted itself in
another form—that of making pictures. _Experto crede_, pictures do come
to the closed eyes of one trying to sleep, and are often so little to
his taste that he must open his eyes and disperse them.
Parkins’s experience on this occasion was a very distressing one. He
found that the picture which presented itself to him was continuous.
When he opened his eyes, of course, it went; but when he shut them once
more it framed itself afresh, and acted itself out again, neither
quicker nor slower than before. What he saw was this:
A long stretch of shore—shingle edged by sand, and intersected at short
intervals with black groynes running down to the water—a scene, in
fact, so like that of his afternoon’s walk that, in the absence of any
landmark, it could not be distinguished therefrom. The light was
obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter
evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor
was visible. Then, in the distance, a bobbing black object appeared; a
moment more, and it was a man running, jumping, clambering over the
groynes, and every few seconds looking eagerly back. The nearer he came
the more obvious it was that he was not only anxious, but even terribly
frightened, though his face was not to be distinguished. He was,
moreover, almost at the end of his strength. On he came; each
successive obstacle seemed to cause him more difficulty than the last.
“Will he get over this next one?” thought Parkins; “it seems a little
higher than the others.” Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he
did get over, and fell all in a heap on the other side (the side
nearest to the spectator). There, as if really unable to get up again,
he remained crouching under the groyne, looking up in an attitude of
painful anxiety.
So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but
now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of
something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and
irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a
figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined. There was something
about its motion which made Parkins very unwilling to see it at close
quarters. It would stop, raise arms, bow itself towards the sand, then
run stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and
then, rising upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed
that was startling and terrifying. The moment came when the pursuer was
hovering about from left to right only a few yards beyond the groyne
where the runner lay in hiding. After two or three ineffectual castings
hither and thither it came to a stop, stood upright, with arms raised
high, and then darted straight forward towards the groyne.
It was at this point that Parkins always failed in his resolution to
keep his eyes shut. With many misgivings as to incipient failure of
eyesight, overworked brain, excessive smoking, and so on, he finally
resigned himself to light his candle, get out a book, and pass the
night waking, rather than be tormented by this persistent panorama,
which he saw clearly enough could only be a morbid reflection of his
walk and his thoughts on that very day.
The scraping of match on box and the glare of light must have startled
some creatures of the night—rats or what not—which he heard scurry
across the floor from the side of his bed with much rustling. Dear,
dear! the match is out! Fool that it is! But the second one burnt
better, and a candle and book were duly procured, over which Parkins
pored till sleep of a wholesome kind came upon him, and that in no long
space. For about the first time in his orderly and prudent life he
forgot to blow out the candle, and when he was called next morning at
eight there was still a flicker in the socket and a sad mess of
guttered grease on the top of the little table.
After breakfast he was in his room, putting the finishing touches to
his golfing costume—fortune had again allotted the Colonel to him for a
partner—when one of the maids came in.
“Oh, if you please,” she said, “would you like any extra blankets on
your bed, sir?”
“Ah! thank you,” said Parkins. “Yes, I think I should like one. It
seems likely to turn rather colder.”
In a very short time the maid was back with the blanket.
“Which bed should I put it on, sir?” she asked.
“What? Why, that one—the one I slept in last night,” he said, pointing
to it.
“Oh yes! I beg your pardon, sir, but you seemed to have tried both of
“em; leastways, we had to make ’em both up this morning.”
“Really? How very absurd!” said Parkins. “I certainly never touched the
other, except to lay some things on it. Did it actually seem to have
been slept in?”
“Oh yes, sir!” said the maid. “Why, all the things was crumpled and
throwed about all ways, if you’ll excuse me, sir—quite as if anyone
’adn’t passed but a very poor night, sir.”
“Dear me,” said Parkins. “Well, I may have disordered it more than I
thought when I unpacked my things. I’m very sorry to have given you the
extra trouble, I’m sure. I expect a friend of mine soon, by the way—a
gentleman from Cambridge—to come and occupy it for a night or two. That
will be all right, I suppose, won’t it?”
“Oh yes, to be sure, sir. Thank you, sir. It’s no trouble, I’m sure,”
said the maid, and departed to giggle with her colleagues.
Parkins set forth, with a stern determination to improve his game.
I am glad to be able to report that he succeeded so far in this
enterprise that the Colonel, who had been rather repining at the
prospect of a second day’s play in his company, became quite chatty as
the morning advanced; and his voice boomed out over the flats, as
certain also of our own minor poets have said, “like some great bourdon
in a minster tower”.
“Extraordinary wind, that, we had last night,” he said. “In my old home
we should have said someone had been whistling for it.”
“Should you, indeed!” said Parkins. “Is there a superstition of that
kind still current in your part of the country?”
“I don’t know about superstition,” said the Colonel. “They believe in
it all over Denmark and Norway, as well as on the Yorkshire coast; and
my experience is, mind you, that there’s generally something at the
bottom of what these country-folk hold to, and have held to for
generations. But it’s your drive” (or whatever it might have been: the
golfing reader will have to imagine appropriate digressions at the
proper intervals).
When conversation was resumed, Parkins said, with a slight hesitancy:
“A propos of what you were saying just now, Colonel, I think I ought to
tell you that my own views on such subjects are very strong. I am, in
fact, a convinced disbeliever in what is called the ‘supernatural’.”
“What!” said the Colonel, “do you mean to tell me you don’t believe in
second-sight, or ghosts, or anything of that kind?”
“In nothing whatever of that kind,” returned Parkins firmly.
“Well,” said the Colonel, “but it appears to me at that rate, sir, that
you must be little better than a Sadducee.”
Parkins was on the point of answering that, in his opinion, the
Sadducees were the most sensible persons he had ever read of in the Old
Testament; but, feeling some doubt as to whether much mention of them
was to be found in that work, he preferred to laugh the accusation off.
“Perhaps I am,” he said; “but—Here, give me my cleek, boy!—Excuse me
one moment, Colonel.” A short interval. “Now, as to whistling for the
wind, let me give you my theory about it. The laws which govern winds
are really not at all perfectly known—to fisherfolk and such, of
course, not known at all. A man or woman of eccentric habits, perhaps,
or a stranger, is seen repeatedly on the beach at some unusual hour,
and is heard whistling. Soon afterwards a violent wind rises; a man who
could read the sky perfectly or who possessed a barometer could have
foretold that it would. The simple people of a fishing-village have no
barometers, and only a few rough rules for prophesying weather. What
more natural than that the eccentric personage I postulated should be
regarded as having raised the wind, or that he or she should clutch
eagerly at the reputation of being able to do so? Now, take last
night’s wind: as it happens, I myself was whistling. I blew a whistle
twice, and the wind seemed to come absolutely in answer to my call. If
anyone had seen me—”
The audience had been a little restive under this harangue, and Parkins
had, I fear, fallen somewhat into the tone of a lecturer; but at the
last sentence the Colonel stopped.
“Whistling, were you?” he said. “And what sort of whistle did you use?
Play this stroke first.” Interval.
“About that whistle you were asking, Colonel. It’s rather a curious
one. I have it in my—No; I see I’ve left it in my room. As a matter of
fact, I found it yesterday.”
And then Parkins narrated the manner of his discovery of the whistle,
upon hearing which the Colonel grunted, and opined that, in Parkins’s
place, he should himself be careful about using a thing that had
belonged to a set of Papists, of whom, speaking generally, it might be
affirmed that you never knew what they might not have been up to. From
this topic he diverged to the enormities of the Vicar, who had given
notice on the previous Sunday that Friday would be the Feast of St
Thomas the Apostle, and that there would be service at eleven o’clock
in the church. This and other similar proceedings constituted in the
Colonel’s view a strong presumption that the Vicar was a concealed
Papist, if not a Jesuit; and Parkins, who could not very readily follow
the Colonel in this region, did not disagree with him. In fact, they
got on so well together in the morning that there was no talk on either
side of their separating after lunch.
Both continued to play well during the afternoon, or, at least, well
enough to make them forget everything else until the light began to
fail them. Not until then did Parkins remember that he had meant to do
some more investigating at the preceptory; but it was of no great
importance, he reflected. One day was as good as another; he might as
well go home with the Colonel.
As they turned the corner of the house, the Colonel was almost knocked
down by a boy who rushed into him at the very top of his speed, and
then, instead of running away, remained hanging on to him and panting.
The first words of the warrior were naturally those of reproof and
objurgation, but he very quickly discerned that the boy was almost
speechless with fright. Inquiries were useless at first. When the boy
got his breath he began to howl, and still clung to the Colonel’s legs.
He was at last detached, but continued to howl.
“What in the world _is_ the matter with you? What have you been up to?
What have you seen?” said the two men.
“Ow, I seen it wive at me out of the winder,” wailed the boy, “and I
don’t like it.”
“What window?” said the irritated Colonel. “Come, pull yourself
together, my boy.”
“The front winder it was, at the ’otel,” said the boy.
At this point Parkins was in favour of sending the boy home, but the
Colonel refused; he wanted to get to the bottom of it, he said; it was
most dangerous to give a boy such a fright as this one had had, and if
it turned out that people had been playing jokes, they should suffer
for it in some way. And by a series of questions he made out this
story: The boy had been playing about on the grass in front of the
Globe with some others; then they had gone home to their teas, and he
was just going, when he happened to look up at the front winder and see
it a-wiving at him. _It_ seemed to be a figure of some sort, in white
as far as he knew—couldn’t see its face; but it wived at him, and it
warn’t a right thing—not to say not a right person. Was there a light
in the room? No, he didn’t think to look if there was a light. Which
was the window? Was it the top one or the second one? The seckind one
it was—the big winder what got two little uns at the sides.
“Very well, my boy,” said the Colonel, after a few more questions. “You
run away home now. I expect it was some person trying to give you a
start. Another time, like a brave English boy, you just throw a
stone—well, no, not that exactly, but you go and speak to the waiter,
or to Mr Simpson, the landlord, and—yes—and say that I advised you to
do so.”
The boy’s face expressed some of the doubt he felt as to the likelihood
of Mr Simpson’s lending a favourable ear to his complaint, but the
Colonel did not appear to perceive this, and went on:
“And here’s a sixpence—no, I see it’s a shilling—and you be off home,
and don’t think any more about it.”
The youth hurried off with agitated thanks, and the Colonel and Parkins
went round to the front of the Globe and reconnoitred. There was only
one window answering to the description they had been hearing.
“Well, that’s curious,” said Parkins; “it’s evidently my window the lad
was talking about. Will you come up for a moment, Colonel Wilson? We
ought to be able to see if anyone has been taking liberties in my
room.”
They were soon in the passage, and Parkins made as if to open the door.
Then he stopped and felt in his pockets.
“This is more serious than I thought,” was his next remark. “I remember
now that before I started this morning I locked the door. It is locked
now, and, what is more, here is the key.” And he held it up. “Now,” he
went on, “if the servants are in the habit of going into one’s room
during the day when one is away, I can only say that—well, that I don’t
approve of it at all.” Conscious of a somewhat weak climax, he busied
himself in opening the door (which was indeed locked) and in lighting
candles. “No,” he said, “nothing seems disturbed.”
“Except your bed,” put in the Colonel.
“Excuse me, that isn’t my bed,” said Parkins. “I don’t use that one.
But it does look as if someone had been playing tricks with it.”
It certainly did: the clothes were bundled up and twisted together in a
most tortuous confusion. Parkins pondered.
“That must be it,” he said at last: “I disordered the clothes last
night in unpacking, and they haven’t made it since. Perhaps they came
in to make it, and that boy saw them through the window; and then they
were called away and locked the door after them. Yes, I think that must
be it.”
“Well, ring and ask,” said the Colonel, and this appealed to Parkins as
practical.
The maid appeared, and, to make a long story short, deposed that she
had made the bed in the morning when the gentleman was in the room, and
hadn’t been there since. No, she hadn’t no other key. Mr Simpson he
kep’ the keys; he’d be able to tell the gentleman if anyone had been
up.
This was a puzzle. Investigation showed that nothing of value had been
taken, and Parkins remembered the disposition of the small objects on
tables and so forth well enough to be pretty sure that no pranks had
been played with them. Mr and Mrs Simpson furthermore agreed that
neither of them had given the duplicate key of the room to any person
whatever during the day. Nor could Parkins, fair-minded man as he was,
detect anything in the demeanour of master, mistress, or maid that
indicated guilt. He was much more inclined to think that the boy had
been imposing on the Colonel.
The latter was unwontedly silent and pensive at dinner and throughout
the evening. When he bade goodnight to Parkins, he murmured in a gruff
undertone:
“You know where I am if you want me during the night.”
“Why, yes, thank you, Colonel Wilson, I think I do; but there isn’t
much prospect of my disturbing you, I hope. By the way,” he added, “did
I show you that old whistle I spoke of? I think not. Well, here it is.”
The Colonel turned it over gingerly in the light of the candle.
“Can you make anything of the inscription?” asked Parkins, as he took
it back.
“No, not in this light. What do you mean to do with it?”
“Oh, well, when I get back to Cambridge I shall submit it to some of
the archaeologists there, and see what they think of it; and very
likely, if they consider it worth having, I may present it to one of
the museums.”
“’M!” said the Colonel. “Well, you may be right. All I know is that, if
it were mine, I should chuck it straight into the sea. It’s no use
talking, I’m well aware, but I expect that with you it’s a case of live
and learn. I hope so, I’m sure, and I wish you a good night.”
He turned away, leaving Parkins in act to speak at the bottom of the
stair, and soon each was in his own bedroom.
By some unfortunate accident, there were neither blinds nor curtains to
the windows of the Professor’s room. The previous night he had thought
little of this, but tonight there seemed every prospect of a bright
moon rising to shine directly on his bed, and probably wake him later
on. When he noticed this he was a good deal annoyed, but, with an
ingenuity which I can only envy, he succeeded in rigging up, with the
help of a railway-rug, some safety-pins, and a stick and umbrella, a
screen which, if it only held together, would completely keep the
moonlight off his bed. And shortly afterwards he was comfortably in
that bed. When he had read a somewhat solid work long enough to produce
a decided wish for sleep, he cast a drowsy glance round the room, blew
out the candle, and fell back upon the pillow.
He must have slept soundly for an hour or more, when a sudden clatter
shook him up in a most unwelcome manner. In a moment he realized what
had happened: his carefully-constructed screen had given way, and a
very bright frosty moon was shining directly on his face. This was
highly annoying. Could he possibly get up and reconstruct the screen?
or could he manage to sleep if he did not?
For some minutes he lay and pondered over the possibilities; then he
turned over sharply, and with his eyes open lay breathlessly listening.
There had been a movement, he was sure, in the empty bed on the
opposite side of the room. Tomorrow he would have it moved, for there
must be rats or something playing about in it. It was quiet now. No!
the commotion began again. There was a rustling and shaking: surely
more than any rat could cause.
I can figure to myself something of the Professor’s bewilderment and
horror, for I have in a dream thirty years back seen the same thing
happen; but the reader will hardly, perhaps, imagine how dreadful it
was to him to see a figure suddenly sit up in what he had known was an
empty bed. He was out of his own bed in one bound, and made a dash
towards the window, where lay his only weapon, the stick with which he
had propped his screen. This was, as it turned out, the worst thing he
could have done, because the personage in the empty bed, with a sudden
smooth motion, slipped from the bed and took up a position, with
outspread arms, between the two beds, and in front of the door. Parkins
watched it in a horrid perplexity. Somehow, the idea of getting past it
and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have
borne—he didn’t know why—to touch it; and as for its touching him, he
would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen. It
stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what
its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all
at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some relief, that
it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms
in a groping and random fashion. Turning half away from him, it became
suddenly conscious of the bed he had just left, and darted towards it,
and bent and felt over the pillows in a way which made Parkins shudder
as he had never in his life thought it possible. In a very few moments
it seemed to know that the bed was empty, and then, moving forward into
the area of light and facing the window, it showed for the first time
what manner of thing it was.
Parkins, who very much dislikes being questioned about it, did once
describe something of it in my hearing, and I gathered that what he
chiefly remembers about it is a horrible, an intensely horrible, face
_of crumpled linen._ What expression he read upon it he could not or
would not tell, but that the fear of it went nigh to maddening him is
certain.
But he was not at leisure to watch it for long. With formidable
quickness it moved into the middle of the room, and, as it groped and
waved, one corner of its draperies swept across Parkins’s face. He
could not, though he knew how perilous a sound was—he could not keep
back a cry of disgust, and this gave the searcher an instant clue. It
leapt towards him upon the instant, and the next moment he was half-way
through the window backwards, uttering cry upon cry at the utmost pitch
of his voice, and the linen face was thrust close into his own. At
this, almost the last possible second, deliverance came, as you will
have guessed: the Colonel burst the door open, and was just in time to
see the dreadful group at the window. When he reached the figures only
one was left. Parkins sank forward into the room in a faint, and before
him on the floor lay a tumbled heap of bed-clothes.
Colonel Wilson asked no questions, but busied himself in keeping
everyone else out of the room and in getting Parkins back to his bed;
and himself, wrapped in a rug, occupied the other bed, for the rest of
the night. Early on the next day Rogers arrived, more welcome than he
would have been a day before, and the three of them held a very long
consultation in the Professor’s room. At the end of it the Colonel left
the hotel door carrying a small object between his finger and thumb,
which he cast as far into the sea as a very brawny arm could send it.
Later on the smoke of a burning ascended from the back premises of the
Globe.
Exactly what explanation was patched up for the staff and visitors at
the hotel I must confess I do not recollect. The Professor was somehow
cleared of the ready suspicion of delirium tremens, and the hotel of
the reputation of a troubled house.
There is not much question as to what would have happened to Parkins if
the Colonel had not intervened when he did. He would either have fallen
out of the window or else lost his wits. But it is not so evident what
more the creature that came in answer to the whistle could have done
than frighten. There seemed to be absolutely nothing material about it
save the bedclothes of which it had made itself a body. The Colonel,
who remembered a not very dissimilar occurrence in India, was of the
opinion that if Parkins had closed with it it could really have done
very little, and that its one power was that of frightening. The whole
thing, he said, served to confirm his opinion of the Church of Rome.
There is really nothing more to tell, but, as you may imagine, the
Professor’s views on certain points are less clear cut than they used
to be. His nerves, too, have suffered: he cannot even now see a
surplice hanging on a door quite unmoved, and the spectacle of a
scarecrow in a field late on a winter afternoon has cost him more than
one sleepless night.