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THE
SHRIEKING PIT
BY
ARTHUR J. REES
CO-AUTHOR OF
THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS,
THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
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|Transcriber's Notes: Obvious printer errors have been corrected, all|
|other inconsistencies are as in the original. |
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TO
MY SISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
ANNIE AND FRANCES
_The sea beats in at Blakeney--
Beats wild and waste at Blakeney;
O'er ruined quay and cobbled street,
O'er broken masts of fisher fleet,
Which go no more to sea._
_The bitter pools at ebb-tide lie,
In barren sands at Blakeney;
Green, grey and green the marshes creep,
To where the grey north waters leap
By dead and silent Blakeney._
_And Time is dead at Blakeney--
In old, forgotten Blakeney;
What care they for Time's Scythe or Glass;
Who do not feel the hours pass,
Who sleep in sea-worn Blakeney?_
_By the old grey church in Blakeney,
By quenched turret light in Blakeney,
They slumber deep, they do not know,
If Life's told tale is Death and Woe;
Through all eternity._
_But Love still lives at Blakeney,
'Tis graven deep at Blakeney;
Of Love which seeks beyond the grave,
Of Love's sad faith which fain would save--
The headstones tell the story._
_Grave-grasses grow at Blakeney
Sea pansies, sedge, and rosemary;
Frail fronds thrust forth in dim dank air,
A message from those lying there:
Wan leaves of memory._
_I send you this from Blakeney--
From distant, dreaming Blakeney;
Love and Remembrance: These are sure;
Though Death is strong they shall endure,
Till all things cease to be._
_A. J. R._
_Blakeney,
Norfolk._
PREFACE
As the scenes of this story are laid in a part of Norfolk which will be
readily identified by many Norfolk people, it is perhaps well to state
that all the personages are fictitious, and that the Norfolk police
officials who appear in the book have no existence outside these pages.
They and the other characters are drawn entirely from imagination.
To East Anglian readers I offer my apologies for any faults there may be
in reproducing the Norfolk dialect. My excuse is the fascination the
language produced on myself, and that it is as essential to the scene of
the story as the marshes and the sea. Though I have found it impossible
to transliterate the pronunciation into the ordinary English alphabet, I
hope I have been able to convey enough of the characteristic speech of
the native to enable those familiar with it to put it for themselves
into the accents of their own people. To those who are not familiar with
the dialect, I can only say, "Go and study this relic of old English in
that remote part of the country where the story is laid, where the
ghosts of a ruined past mingle with the primitive survivors of to-day,
who walk very near the unseen."
A. J. R.
LONDON
THE SHRIEKING PIT
CHAPTER I
Colwyn had never seen anything quite so eccentric in a public room as
the behaviour of the young man breakfasting alone at the alcove table in
the bay embrasure, and he became so absorbed in watching him that he
permitted his own meal to grow cold, impatiently waving away the waiter
who sought with obtrusive obsequiousness to recall his wandering
attention by thrusting the menu card before him.
To outward seeming the occupant of the alcove table was a good-looking
young man, whose clear blue eyes, tanned skin and well-knit frame
indicated the truly national product of common sense, cold water, and
out-of-door pursuits; of a wholesomely English if not markedly
intellectual type, pleasant to look at, and unmistakably of good birth
and breeding. When a young man of this description, your fellow guest at
a fashionable seaside hotel, who had been in the habit of giving you a
courteous nod on his morning journey across the archipelago of
snowy-topped tables under the convoy of the head waiter to his own
table, comes in to breakfast with shaking hands, flushed face, and
passes your table with unseeing eyes, you would probably conclude that
he was under the influence of liquor, and in your English way you would
severely blame him, not so much for the moral turpitude involved in his
excess as for the bad taste, which prompted him to show himself in public
in such a condition. If, on reaching his place, the young man's conduct
took the additional extravagant form of picking up a table-knife and
sticking it into the table in front of him, you would probably enlarge
your previous conclusion by admitting the hypotheses of drugs or
dementia to account for such remarkable behaviour.
All these things were done by the young man at the alcove table in the
breakfast room of the Grand Hotel, Durrington, on an October morning in
the year 1916; but Colwyn, who was only half an Englishman, and,
moreover, had an original mind, did not attribute them to drink,
morphia, or madness. Colwyn flattered himself that he knew the outward
signs of these diseases too well to be deceived into thinking that the
splendid specimen of young physical manhood at the far table was the
victim of any of them. His own impression was that it was a case of
shell-shock. It was true that, apart from the doubtful evidence of a
bronzed skin and upright frame, there was nothing about him to suggest
that he had been a soldier: no service lapel or regimental badge in his
grey Norfolk jacket. But an Englishman of his class would be hardly
likely to wear either once he had left the Army. It was almost certain
that he must have seen service in the war, and by no means improbable
that he had been bowled over by shell-shock, like many thousands more of
equally splendid specimens of young manhood. Any other conclusion to
account for the strange condition of a young man like him seemed
unworthy and repellent.
"It _must_ be shell-shock, and a very bad case--probably supposed to be
cured, and sent up here to recuperate," thought Colwyn. "I'll keep an
eye on him."
As Colwyn resumed his breakfast it occurred to him that some of the
other guests might have been alarmed by the young man's behaviour, and
he cast his eyes round the room to see if anybody else had noticed him.
There were about thirty guests in the big breakfast apartment, which had
been built to accommodate five times the number--a charming, luxuriously
furnished place, with massive white pillars supporting a frescoed
ceiling, and lighted by numerous bay windows opening on to the North
Sea, which was sparkling brightly in a brilliant October sunshine. The
thirty people comprised the whole of the hotel visitors, for in the year
1916 holiday seekers preferred some safer resort than a part of the
Norfolk coast which lay in the track of enemy airships seeking a way to
London.
Two nights before a Zeppelin had dropped a couple of bombs on the
Durrington front, and the majority of hotel visitors had departed by the
next morning's train, disregarding the proprietor's assurance that the
affair was a pure accident, a German oversight which was not likely to
happen again. Off the nervous ones went, and left the big hotel, the
long curved seafront, the miles of yellow sand, the high green
headlands, the best golf-links in the East of England, and all the other
attractions mentioned in the hotel advertisements, to a handful of
people, who were too nerve-proof, lazy, fatalistic, or indifferent to
bother about Zeppelins.
These thirty guests, scattered far and wide over the spacious isolation
of the breakfast-room, in twos and threes, and little groups, seemed,
with one exception, too engrossed in the solemn British rite of
beginning the day well with a good breakfast to bother their heads about
the conduct of the young man at the alcove table. They were, for the
most part, characteristic war-time holiday-makers: the men, obviously
above military age, in Norfolk tweeds or golf suits; two young officers
at a table by the window, and--as indifference to Zeppelins is not
confined to the sterner sex--a sprinkling of ladies, plump and matronly,
or of the masculine walking type, with two charmingly pretty girls and a
gay young war widow to leaven the mass.
The exception was a tall and portly gentleman with a slightly bald head,
glossy brown beard, gold-rimmed eye-glasses perilously balanced on a
prominent nose, and an important manner. He was breakfasting alone at a
table not far from Colwyn's, and Colwyn noticed that he kept glancing at
the alcove table where the young man sat. As Colwyn looked in his
direction their eyes met, and the portly gentleman nodded portentously
in the direction of the alcove table, as an indication that he also had
been watching the curious behaviour of the occupant. A moment afterwards
he got up and walked across to the pillar against which Colwyn's table
was placed.
"Will you permit me to take a seat at your table?" he remarked urbanely.
"I am afraid we are going to have trouble over there directly," he
added, sinking his voice as he nodded in the direction of the distant
alcove table. "We may have to act promptly. Nobody else seems to have
noticed anything. We can watch him from behind this pillar without his
seeing us."
Colwyn nodded in return with a quick comprehension of all the other's
speech implied, and pushed a chair towards his visitor, who sat down and
resumed his watch of the young man at the alcove table. Colwyn bestowed
a swift glance on his companion which took in everything. The tall man
in glasses looked too human for a lawyer, too intelligent for a
schoolmaster, and too well-dressed for an ordinary medical man. Colwyn,
versed in judging men swiftly from externals, noting the urbane,
somewhat pompous face, the authoritative, professional pose, the
well-shaped, plump white hands, and the general air of well-being and
prosperity which exuded from the whole man, placed him as a successful
practitioner in the more lucrative path of medicine--probably a
fashionable Harley Street specialist.
Colwyn returned to his scrutiny of the young man at the alcove table,
and he and his companion studied him intently for some time in silence.
But the young man, for the moment, was comparatively quiet, gazing
moodily through the open window over the waters of the North Sea, an
untasted sole in front of him, and an impassive waiter pouring out his
coffee as though the spectacle of a young man sticking a knife into the
table-cloth was a commonplace occurrence at the Grand Hotel, and all in
the day's doings. When the waiter had finished pouring out the coffee
and noiselessly departed, the young man tasted it with an indifferent
air, pushed it from him, and resumed his former occupation of staring
out of the window.
"He seems quiet enough now," observed Colwyn, turning to his companion.
"What do you think is the matter with him--shell-shock?"
"I would not care to hazard a definite opinion on so cursory an
observation," returned the other, in a dry, reticent, ultra-professional
manner. "But I will go so far as to say that I do not think it is a case
of shell-shock. If it is what I suspect, that first attack was the
precursor of another, possibly a worse attack. Ha! it is commencing.
Look at his thumb--that is the danger signal!"
Colwyn looked across the room again. The young man was still sitting in
the same posture, with his gaze bent on the open sea. His left hand was
extended rigidly on the table in front of him, with the thumb, extended
at right angles, oscillating rapidly in a peculiar manner.
"This attack may pass away like the other, but if he looks round at
anybody, and makes the slightest move, we must secure him immediately,"
said Colwyn's companion, speaking in a whisper.
He had barely finished speaking when the young man turned his head from
the open window and fixed his blue eyes vacantly on the table nearest
him, where an elderly clergyman, a golfing friend, and their wives, were
breakfasting together. With a swift movement the young man got up, and
started to walk towards this table.
Colwyn, who was watching every movement of the young man closely, could
not determine, then or afterwards, whether he meditated an attack on the
occupants of the next table, or merely intended to leave the breakfast
room. The clergyman's table was directly in front of the alcove and in a
line with the pair of swinging glass doors which were the only exit from
the breakfast-room. But Colwyn's companion did not wait for the matter
to be put to the test. At the first movement of the young man he sprang
to his feet and, without waiting to see whether Colwyn was following
him, raced across the room and caught the young man by the arm while he
was yet some feet away from the clergyman's table. The young man
struggled desperately in his grasp for some moments, then suddenly
collapsed and fell inert in the other's arms. Colwyn walked over to the
spot in time to see his portly companion lay the young man down on the
carpet and bend over to loosen his collar.
The young man lay apparently unconscious on the floor, breathing
stertorously, with convulsed features and closed eyes. After the lapse
of some minutes he opened his eyes, glanced listlessly at the circle of
frightened people who had gathered around him, and feebly endeavoured
to sit up. Colwyn's companion, who was bending over him feeling his
heart, helped him to a sitting posture, and then, glancing at the faces
crowded around, exclaimed in a sharp voice:
"He wants air. Please move back there a little."
"Certainly, Sir Henry." It was a stout man in a check golfing suit who
spoke. "But the ladies are very anxious to know if it is anything
serious."
"No, no. He will be quite all right directly. Just fall back, and give
him more air. Here, you!"--this to one of the gaping waiters--"just slip
across to the office and find out the number of this gentleman's room."
The waiter hurried away and speedily returned with the proprietor of the
hotel, a little man in check trousers and a frock coat, with a bald head
and an anxious, yet resigned eye which was obviously prepared for the
worst. His demeanour was that of a man who, already overloaded by
misfortune, was bracing his sinews to bear the last straw. As he
approached the group near the alcove table he smoothed his harassed
features into an expression of solicitude, and, addressing himself to
the man who was supporting the young man on the floor, said, in a voice
intended to be sympathetic,
"I thought I had better come myself, Sir Henry. I could not understand
from Antoine what you wanted or what had happened. Antoine said
something about somebody dying in the breakfast-room----"
"Nothing of the sort!" snapped the gentleman addressed as Sir Henry,
shifting his posture a little so as to enable the young man to lean
against his shoulder. "Haven't you eyes in your head, Willsden? Cannot
you see for yourself that this gentleman has merely had a fainting
fit?"
"I'm delighted to hear it, Sir Henry," replied the hotel proprietor. But
his face expressed no visible gratification. To a man who had had his
hotel emptied by a Zeppelin raid the difference between a single guest
fainting instead of dying was merely infinitesimal.
"Who is this gentleman, and what's the number of his room?" continued
Sir Henry. "He will be better lying quietly on his bed."
"His name is Ronald, and his room is No. 32--on the first floor, Sir
Henry."
"Very good. I'll take him up there at once."
"Shall I help you, Sir Henry? Perhaps he could be carried up. One of the
waiters could take his feet, or perhaps it would be better to have two."
"There's not the slightest necessity. He'll be able to walk in a
minute--with a little assistance. Ah, that's better!" The abrupt manner
in which Sir Henry addressed the hotel proprietor insensibly softened
itself into the best bedside manner when he spoke to the patient on the
carpet, who, from a sitting posture, was now endeavouring to struggle to
his feet. "You think you can get up, eh? Well, it won't do you any harm.
That's the way!" Sir Henry assisted the young man to rise, and supported
him with his arm. "Now, the next thing is to get him to his room. No,
no, not you, Willsden--you're too small. Where's that gentleman I was
sitting with a few minutes ago? Ah, thank you"--as Colwyn stepped
forward and took the other arm--"now, let us take him gently upstairs."
The young man allowed himself to be led away without resistance. He
walked, or rather stumbled, along between his guides like a man in a
dream. Colwyn noticed that his eyes were half-closed, and that his head
sagged slightly from side to side as he was led along. A waiter held
open the glass doors which led into the lounge, and a palpitating
chambermaid, hastily summoned from the upper regions, tripped ahead up
the broad carpeted stairs and along the passage to show the way to the
young man's bedroom.