III.The HouseI don’t suppose I was in the air a second, but there was time enough for me to rue my neglect of Jack Bonnet’s invitation. Why hadn’t I turned round and gone away from the Forest and let the oratory go hang?I was aware soon afterward that I was still alive in a queer place under the shelter of the hilltop, a place all caved-in earth and half-buried squarish rock, like heavy tombstones thickly lichened, and resting, some of them, one upon the other. I was on my back with my head on a pillow of fungi; beneath the pillow, however, was a sufficiently flinty foundation. For a long time I remained supine, and listened with interest while my heart gradually resumed a normal rate. The upper tangle of the fog was just beyond and below me; yet when I looked at the dark brink above, I realized that never, never could I climb back at the spot where I had fallen. But I felt a great gladness.I explored the place little more than was necessary to get my bearings. So upon regaining enough strength I commenced to creep along the face of the cliff, now and then dipping into the region of the mist and losing sight of the sky, which was growing desolate of light. At length I found a slope where the grass was short and turf firm, a sward. I went now at a pace between a walk and a run and congratulated myself on making headway, though the brow of the ravine was forbidding above me still. Then the bank became startlingly overgrown with trees, and the drizzle was thicker among them.I slowed to a snail’s pace, and that was well for me. All too soon my foot gave way on the left-hand edge of a mass of undergrowth quite impenetrable to sight. I struggled to take hold of something, did, in fact, grasp stems that yielded instantly to my weight, for they were frail and grew on a perpendicular face of earth. Once more I had the exquisitely dreadful sensation of falling whither I could not tell. My body ripped down through a mesh and tangle of shrubs that availed almost nothing to stay my descent. I accelerated.Then my ribs struck a goodly branch with a knock that did indeed break my fall, but before I could twine an arm about this saviour, I had jounced to a lower branch, thence to the ground, this time with only a moderate jar.I was on a narrow rocky path with the densely overgrown hill on one hand and the mist of the Vale—yawning space—on the other. I thought for a flash that I had invaded the home-ledge of some unrecorded ape or gorilla. For a creature cried out in my very face, a man coming up, as it were, out of the living rock of the path before me. He was fustian-clad, heavy-set, dark-featured, scowling frightfully, and my impression was that he was almost spent of breath. His mouth gaped in a rictus of strain and fear.“Mawkerdjey—immilath acowal!” So they sounded, the words he spat in my face, the shout he shouted uninterpretable by my English ears in that cranny of Wales. But meaningless as was the shout to me, it remained clear in my auditive memory, as a scene sometimes is keenly limned in one’s inattentive sight. And I was sure it was not Welsh. Nor was this because Radnorshire is a backsliding county where the ancient language has yielded to the new. The shape and stress of the cry were unlike what speech I have heard in the remoter areas where Welsh is still spoken.In an instant the fellow had scuffled past me and was ascending in the fog, while yet I leaned on my hand with buzzing senses and jerky mind. I staggered to my feet and looked upward along the path. At the head of the rise a glimmer of sea-green sunset-light lingered, and the broad bulk of the man staggered against that semi-darkness, a diminishing silhouette. At length I saw him reach the top of the rise, throw up his hands in a sort of gesture of weary achievement, and disappear to the uplands beyond.Excitedly, and full of profitless conjecture as to what might be his business upon the rolling solitudes of Aidenn Forest, I turned on my way down the zigzag path, being resolved to explore the Vale for shelter since now it was hopeless to make my way over the fells and crags to my Welsh tavern lodging that night. The outcry of the ape-like man was still distinct in my ears, an undecipherable shout, one, I knew, strange even in this region of strange tongues.I had paused, arrested by a sound the like of which I have never known, a roaring sound, not the boom of cannon or the rage of water or the thunder of avalanche, all of which I have heard. It came from below and far away, a gentle roar; I thought it might be some superhuman voice. As a fact, while I listened, I became convinced that it was a voice of great power with something unique and quite baffling in its quality, one full capable of terrifying a man of unsteady nerves. Yet I was sure that in a different context I would recognize that quality as a natural thing. The muffled echoes of the voice rocked around the Vale; words I am sure there were, the same phrase or sentence repeated many times, but the utmost strain of ear and faculties did not enable me to distinguish the meaning of a syllable. Then the distant shout and its reflections ceased, and I heard only the still grasses. I went on, full of living fancies.A new sound greeted me out of the darkness, the rippling song of a nightingale on my right beyond the brink. The trees in the depths of Aidenn Vale, then, must be near below. And presently finding almost level ground, I heard the chuckle of water, and discerned a lofty fall of dulled silver, indeed passed it so close that the rising spray touched my cheek. Thus I had found Aidenn Water, not far from its springs on the shoulder of Black Mixen at the upper end of the horseshoe.Straining my sight in the clogged air, I could trace the black thread of the watercourse on my right hand. Beside it I trod, to the broken descant of amorous birds. And while I went the way of the stream south among the wilding trees, the dark mist paled. I raised my eyes; great Whimble hill loomed before me, and over its stern summit crept a chipped and gibbous moon, softly lustering. While the moon went up the sky, I trolled on southward in air grey and spectral under the frowning summits of Aidenn Vale.The pathway left the stream for a gentle rise through the trees. Still I could hear Aidenn Water clamour down the Vale while it skipped along. Soon I emerged from the thick of the wood into an open space, the level summit of a vast mound, and with a certain freshening of surprise found myself approaching a lonely wall built by human strength.A wall—no more—ruinous and desolate, toppled in many places from its original height.Passing closer, I discovered the confounded and scattered remnant of other wasted walls, strewn like bones in the brightening glamour of the moon. And midway among them stood one tree of mighty stature, doubtless rendered even more towering by the witchery of mist and moonlight.Sometimes acoustic conditions prevent one from hearing what goes on just round the corner only a few feet away. So, then, my path led me toward the south-west end of the ruin, and precisely at the standing angle of the stone I ran into another man. I did literally run into him, for he was soft and spongy, and my first feeling was that I had encountered a hot-water bottle strolling as leisurely as if on the Mall.We recoiled from a position cheek by jowl. A light flashed in my eyes, and at the same instant I directed the glare of my pocket-torch, which I still possessed, into his eyes. Our speeches, too, crossed each other.“Pardon! I didn’t hear you, sir!”“What are you doing here?”It was not the greeting I had expected; in fact, I felt it quite discourteous. Moreover, he kept the spot-light of his dark-lantern playing on my features for some time, and his piercing eyes studied me critically. In return I gave his exterior a good scrutiny.My light revealed a tall figure, appearing excessively, grotesquely tall because it was wearing a very high, narrow top-hat, almost a steeple-hat. The man was large and round as well as long. His face compared with the rest of his body was relatively narrow; I saw glittering eyes and a long, straight nose, eyebrows black like coals, and a mantling, pointed beard, also very thick and fiercely black. What gave me the creeps was that this beard did not grow quite straight, but was tilted a little to the left.His clothing, I saw in this long dissection, was that of an elderly man, a black double-breasted frock-coat, not cutaway, and black trousers which descended to elastic-sided boots. And under the arm toward which the beard slanted was lodged an old, bulgy umbrella with a large metal handle. He quickly shifted this article into his right hand, grasping it toward the point so that it might be a weapon of considerable moment, his left hand holding the dark-lantern.He was the first to break the silence. Smiling, he replaced the umbrella under his arm.“Ah, pardon me, please. I see that you are on my side.” His voice, now I noticed it, was rather deep, and yet rather young for one of his solemn appearance.“I’m sure I’m not against you,” I answered, and lowered my light out of his eyes. He followed suit.“You are one of the natives of this region?” he asked, and with his question came the thought to me that he might be a foreigner, although his full, somewhat throaty voice was perfectly assimilated to the Anglican inflections. Those coat-skirts somehow gave him a little of a Continental aspect—and that umbrella! Didn’t Schubert always carry an umbrella? or was I thinking of Paul Pry?“I should say not,” I responded. “I, too, am a stranger.”“Ah, you,too? What a pity!”“Yes, am I not correct in believing that you—”“Quite so, sir; my name, sir, is Septimus MacWilloughby, and I was taught not far from Birmingham. And now, sir, will you kindly tell me what you have been doing here?”“Been doing? Doing? Why, nothing, in the sense you seem to mean. And have you any business with me? Isn’t it rather—?”“It is necessary.”“I lost my way in fog up there on the hilltops and came down into the Vale in the hope of finding some sort of shelter. I was just passing by this—”“Yes, of course,” said Mr. MacWilloughby, in what seemed to me a rather meditative tone. “Tell me, please: in your travelling to-day have you run across a very small grey spaniel, with ink-spots?”I was reduced to repeating, “With ink-spots?”“Yes, certainly: I repeat, a small grey spaniel, with ink-spots. The dog was not to blame if the bottle was too near the edge of the table. No, I see that you have not. Well then, by chance you may have seen a pair of Scandinavian ponies, both lame in the off foreleg?”“I certainly have not.”“Dear me,” sighed my interlocutor. He stabbed the ground with his umbrella, leaned upon it with both hands, large, red, bloated hands, nervously twitching fat fingers. “And finally, did you notice whether any snakes—”I was growing exasperated, whether or not thissoi-disantMacWilloughby was making merry at my expense.“Don’t you know,” I asked harshly, “that there are no snakes in Radnorshire?”“But these were from my menagerie. Dear me, my menagerie will be dreadfully depleted, I fear. You didn’t—?”“Look here,” I exploded; “have you a Bull of Bashan on your list? If you have, your bull’s dead—I can tell you so much. With the exception of a cave-man who was running up the path there, every animal I’ve seen has been indigenous.”“But snakes—from my menagerie,” he protested mildly, ignoring my tone. He indicated with the umbrella and his free hand, for a pencil of moonlight from rifted clouds had caused us both to stow away our torches. “Snakes about so long.”“No, no!”He shrugged disappointedly. “Well! if it must be. Then you will tell me, please, which of these hills”—he included them all with a sweep of the umbrella—“is called Kerry Hill?”“Why, none of them. Kerry Hill is outside this county, thirty miles away.”“Oh, so far away? Then I must be leaving at once. I have a friend who lives in a little house on the top of that hill, and he will be anxious for me.”Whereupon Mr. MacWilloughby strode past me, but checked himself. “Stay—what was that you said about a cave-man?”I was willing to humour him a little longer. “Oh, I methimright enough. He shouted some gibberish in my face and passed me going to the uplands.”“Oh? Now that is very good. You may think it inexcusable of me, sir, but I had the idea for a little while that you were that cave-man. I asked you those questions partly to hear a little of your language. Now, since you say Kerry Hill is so far, I really—”He commenced to walk away, but I protested.“I think it’s time you answered a question or two of mine. I don’t know what possesses you to climb into that wilderness, even if your whole menagerie is kicking its heels up there—they’ll keep. But you can at least tell me what I’m likely to find further down the Vale. Shall I find anyone there?”The stranger’s face, in spite of its startling features, grew really pleasant with a smile. “I believe you will find someone further down. Yes, I believe you will find all you want.”“I’m not looking for any special number of people,” I told him tartly. “I want a house—shelter—a place to stop overnight. Am I clear?”Mr. MacWilloughby seemed to have lost interest in his surroundings. In answer to my question he murmured, “Yes, you are very likely to find a house,” but his thought seemed to be running in other channels. He was biting the beard of his nether lip. Suddenly he drew himself up. “You might mention—if you decide to stop—to the master of the hostelry, that his many watch-dogs are causing me inconvenience. Secretly, you understand. All this you must tell him secretly. I enjoy the society of the menagerie, and of many kinds of dogs—the Russian wolf-hound, the Dalmatian—but I do not care for the two-legged kind he has out to-night. It is not a thing I like to mention, you understand—it is so delicate—but when one is actually precluded from stepping across a stile—” Hand and umbrella made an expressive gesture. “You catch my drift, I perceive.”“I’ll be sure to tell him,” I remarked sardonically.“You will?” he exclaimed with a parade of pleasure. “Then in that case I shall not need protection against the rain.”His arm shot out, and I saw the umbrella fly up like a thick javelin through the air, to disappear beyond the wall beside which we stood.“Another thing!” he cried, and I detected a real note of sincerity in his tempestuous voice. “Tell the golden-haired woman that I have warned her to beware of the blighter with the red face and the pot of money. She should dismiss him—utterly. I have seen what I have seen.”I emitted a dry “No doubt.”“Thank you, sir, for your great courtesy,” said Mr. MacWilloughby. His lofty hat he removed with a flowing ease; he bent his back in an old-time inclination. Then in the fluctuating moonlight I saw not only black beard and brows, but as well a wriggling mass of black hair. He was smiling, but his smile now had a touch of wildness, even of ghoulishness. He set his hat upon his brows again.“I shall not need even finger-nails if I meet another like you,” he said.He turned on his heel and continued his stately promenade toward the summit of the Vale. I watched him until the moon surrendered and the mist had him. Where was he going? To join that prehistoric man on the hill? And where in heaven’s name had he comefrom?Mad? Was he mad? No more mad than I. I realized, the moment he had projected his umbrella, that he was eminently sane. But he had overplayed his part a little—for his audience.Continuing on my southward way, I soon passed the site of what had been the outer walls of this great castle, though now little remained save one block of hewn stone upon another here and there. Most of the material had probably been carried off to build some mansion of a later age.I left the ruin, advancing down the Vale, whose bounds of lofty crag and hanger were darkly visible for a little while. But I could not leave behind me the thought of the huge man and his eccentric speeches. Only new surprises could reave that vision from me; and presently, passing a large, white-painted, wood-gate, I was startled to observe that although I was in a wilderness, it was an extraordinarily well-ordered wilderness. The trees along the path, ash and sycamore, I believed, stood at like distances from one another and were spaced regularly opposite. I seemed to be marching along a smooth avenue in a park; the remoter trees, too, although they were obscure as fleeing ghosts, appeared to flee away in serried ranks. The spaces in the glades looked clear of underbrush. I was glad to note these signs, if signs they were, of human tending, with their suggestion of human nearness, for even my refreshened strength was slipping away from me and the welts and strains of my body were clamouring again.Quicker than I had expected, I was out of the toy wilderness into a clear space of thirty-odd yards (the dominant moon showed me this), and Aidenn Water was roaming close beside my path. A brook going to join the larger stream from some hill-recess on my left was crossed by an old stone bridge with urns at the ends of its stone balustrades, a ridiculously massive structure for so insignificant a watercourse. But a few seconds later I passed another object built with overplus of formality and ostentation, a semi-rustic house which could have been no more than a summer-house, quite unsuited for habitation but freaked and loaded with statuary and gewgaws.“The eighteenth century!” I murmured. “What nightmares did they not have in the Age of Reason? Am I now to find a geometrical mansion of Georgian brick?”I had entered a new zone of drizzle and mist when I had my first evidence of the house appertaining hereto. The fog thickened almost to the density of a wall, and when the well-ordered path ceased at the edge of the lawns, I blundered against a tree trunk, one of three standing alone in gloom and grandeur in the open space. I generously cursed the spirits, whose exhalation, as every Welsh peasant used to know, the mist is. By a flash of my torch I recognized the three tapering shapes as horizontal cypresses, and at once I felt relief, for I was sure that these none-too-hardy trees must be of a recent and venturesome planting. I was becoming convinced that human lives were not far from me.A few steps more and I was standing on a pebble walk beneath the shorter northern wall of a definitely up-to-date structure. The stone may have been old stone, but it had been smoothed off within a generation, and the ivy had evidently been somewhat restricted in its rambling in order that the broad-spread glass of this storey might not be effaced from the light. Why all this glass? A conservatory? I stepped across the walk, flashed my torch, peered in, saw a glimmering galaxy of flowers, sniffed and detected a hint of their thick odour, was satisfied. A conservatory it was, extending from end to end of this northern wall, with unlit, wide-paned windows from end to end save where a steep outer stair led up to a small roofless platform and door in the first storey; and I perceived a vague second storey, above which chimneys sprouted.Now, I should not have lingered here more than a few seconds, had not there burst forth a chill sound that actually took me out of myself for a moment, a caterwauling from somewhere behind me and further toward the mountain wall of the ravine. It seemed impossible that such a desecration of silence could proceed from a single throat. It was a sobbing cry full of hunger, but there was positive anger and direness in it. It had a quality, too, of immitigable anguish, as though all the hopelessness of dumb beasts were its burden. Once the throbbing cry subsided into a gruff growl, and then, strangely enough, was the first time that I recognized its clamour as that of a cat. “But,” I remembered thinking, “it must be a cat as big as a wolf.” And while the last throes of the savage wailing echoed back from the hill, I looked up to the gloomy heights of the mansion, as if I expected each dark window to flare with inquiring light.A map of the area surrounding Highglen House. Close to the house are some ruins and the Stables. A road leads from the stables, past the house, and then down the map. Off to the left is a grove of strawberry trees, in the middle of which sits a hard tennis court. At the top right corner of the map is a building labelled “Farm of the sisters Delambre”. The farm sits close to a fence, which runs across the map until it meets the river, labelled “Aidenn Water”. The river runs down the left side of the map, turning briefly towards the middle of the map where it crosses under the road. Between Highglen House and the farm is a footpath, halfway along which it passes a small structure labelled “18th Century Summer House”. A small brook branches off of Aidenn Water which crosses the footpath at a small bridge, and from there another footpath continues up the map, through a gate in the fence, and beyond.In puzzlement and lively eagerness to discover more about this mansion, I turned to the right and followed the walk to the corner of the conservatory, where it joined a drive that wound out of the right-hand darkness. I discovered that the side of the house extended a hundred feet or more parallel to the course of Aidenn Water. Visible, too, on the broad lawn at four or five rods’ distance from the house was a tall, two-legged thing, fifty feet high by a rough judgment, an erection of twin towers with a passageway above and between, the whole standing lonely, dark and still.The conservatory’s narrow side ended in the jutting of a tower, quite black. Between this and the next tower, its counterpart, I caught dim glimpses of modern french windows, a pair of them, evidently belonging to the same large room. There was a formal entrance between the second tower and the third, but since it was unlit, I decided to go further in hopes of finding the main portal. Yet I had a view of what was behind the door, and again I paused, fascinated.Inside the third tower, the projecting half of an octagon studded with little windows, I saw a taper burning low in an old candlestick fastened like a bracket on the wall, a thing of fantastic crooks and curlicues. The light was blue and brittle, for the wick was surfeited with grease. But I was able to see three men in the panelled hallway, two of them standing, or perhaps leaning, against the wall. Of these I perceived no more than their dark featureless forms, and a marked stiffness in their attitudes. On the opposite side of the hall from the candle, they were too vague to be any more particularized than as human forms. The third man, save for his little tuft of white hair, had been no more than a smudge either.For he was bent over, his back toward me,and he was picking the pockets of the other two men! I can describe his actions in no better way. They, seemingly stupefied, made no motion to prevent!I must say that the old, white-tufted fellow was not very adroit at his work. I stood absolutely spell-bound while I watched him paw about the clothing of the two others. The candle guttered with special vehemence, and the pilferer turned upward to it an anxious eye. Then he appeared to make a decision; standing full length, he crossed to the candle and lifted his lean fingers to snuff it. I was impressed by a sight of his narrow brown face, vulturine in contour, with the tall, furrowed brow of a student, the thin, pale lips of an ascetic, and the broken-off jaw of a fighter. The expression was whimsical and wily. The light glinted for an instant on a green eye, on white smiling teeth, and on the diamond stud in his shirt-front. Then the fingers smothered the feeble flame, and he was in the darkness with those dazed ones I suspected were his victims.And I hastened around the fourth tower, larger than the rest, at the southern extremity of the mansion. What was I to do? Had I in fact witnessed the induction to a serious crime? Was it my duty to report what I had seen? It must depend on circumstances; perhaps the old tufted sinner was the proprietor himself. I must be cautious. I must be dissimulative.Above all, I must not be surprised.An electric chandelier sparkled in the large corner tower, revealing it to be part of the sumptuous library of the mansion, empty of persons. I found the entrance I sought in the middle of the south end of the building. The crunching drive made a great circle, leading to a square-arched, ivied entry. A barred lamp above the vestibule faintly revealed the arms of the house cut in stone at the apex of the arch, and surmounting this, as a sort of crest, was the rude but unmistakable image of a cat’s head. I dimly perceived a feline nose with faintest trace of whisker running along it, and triangular ears. The mouth was grinning, not pleasantly.Here was matter for vast surprise, but I must notbesurprised!I stepped underneath the arch, to the broad iron-bound black-door. Another pale light revealed the knocker, an iron piece in the shape of the paw of a cat. There was also the button of an electric bell. I grasped the paw and struck twice.Almost immediately the door opened. “Come in,” said a voice. “You’ve been—”I must not be surprised!But I gaped, and gurgled, for all I know.The sturdy square-set fellow in evening dress who had opened the door so suddenly and who now stood in the half-light was staring at me, beginning to look a littledistrait.“Oh, so you’re not—” he commenced brusquely, and, changing his tone, recommenced, “Butareyou, or aren’t—?”“No, no,” I managed to gasp. “I’m not—I don’t think so.”I had known nothing of Aidenn Vale or of the ruins, mansions, or creatures in it. But I knew this man!
I don’t suppose I was in the air a second, but there was time enough for me to rue my neglect of Jack Bonnet’s invitation. Why hadn’t I turned round and gone away from the Forest and let the oratory go hang?
I was aware soon afterward that I was still alive in a queer place under the shelter of the hilltop, a place all caved-in earth and half-buried squarish rock, like heavy tombstones thickly lichened, and resting, some of them, one upon the other. I was on my back with my head on a pillow of fungi; beneath the pillow, however, was a sufficiently flinty foundation. For a long time I remained supine, and listened with interest while my heart gradually resumed a normal rate. The upper tangle of the fog was just beyond and below me; yet when I looked at the dark brink above, I realized that never, never could I climb back at the spot where I had fallen. But I felt a great gladness.
I explored the place little more than was necessary to get my bearings. So upon regaining enough strength I commenced to creep along the face of the cliff, now and then dipping into the region of the mist and losing sight of the sky, which was growing desolate of light. At length I found a slope where the grass was short and turf firm, a sward. I went now at a pace between a walk and a run and congratulated myself on making headway, though the brow of the ravine was forbidding above me still. Then the bank became startlingly overgrown with trees, and the drizzle was thicker among them.
I slowed to a snail’s pace, and that was well for me. All too soon my foot gave way on the left-hand edge of a mass of undergrowth quite impenetrable to sight. I struggled to take hold of something, did, in fact, grasp stems that yielded instantly to my weight, for they were frail and grew on a perpendicular face of earth. Once more I had the exquisitely dreadful sensation of falling whither I could not tell. My body ripped down through a mesh and tangle of shrubs that availed almost nothing to stay my descent. I accelerated.
Then my ribs struck a goodly branch with a knock that did indeed break my fall, but before I could twine an arm about this saviour, I had jounced to a lower branch, thence to the ground, this time with only a moderate jar.
I was on a narrow rocky path with the densely overgrown hill on one hand and the mist of the Vale—yawning space—on the other. I thought for a flash that I had invaded the home-ledge of some unrecorded ape or gorilla. For a creature cried out in my very face, a man coming up, as it were, out of the living rock of the path before me. He was fustian-clad, heavy-set, dark-featured, scowling frightfully, and my impression was that he was almost spent of breath. His mouth gaped in a rictus of strain and fear.
“Mawkerdjey—immilath acowal!” So they sounded, the words he spat in my face, the shout he shouted uninterpretable by my English ears in that cranny of Wales. But meaningless as was the shout to me, it remained clear in my auditive memory, as a scene sometimes is keenly limned in one’s inattentive sight. And I was sure it was not Welsh. Nor was this because Radnorshire is a backsliding county where the ancient language has yielded to the new. The shape and stress of the cry were unlike what speech I have heard in the remoter areas where Welsh is still spoken.
In an instant the fellow had scuffled past me and was ascending in the fog, while yet I leaned on my hand with buzzing senses and jerky mind. I staggered to my feet and looked upward along the path. At the head of the rise a glimmer of sea-green sunset-light lingered, and the broad bulk of the man staggered against that semi-darkness, a diminishing silhouette. At length I saw him reach the top of the rise, throw up his hands in a sort of gesture of weary achievement, and disappear to the uplands beyond.
Excitedly, and full of profitless conjecture as to what might be his business upon the rolling solitudes of Aidenn Forest, I turned on my way down the zigzag path, being resolved to explore the Vale for shelter since now it was hopeless to make my way over the fells and crags to my Welsh tavern lodging that night. The outcry of the ape-like man was still distinct in my ears, an undecipherable shout, one, I knew, strange even in this region of strange tongues.
I had paused, arrested by a sound the like of which I have never known, a roaring sound, not the boom of cannon or the rage of water or the thunder of avalanche, all of which I have heard. It came from below and far away, a gentle roar; I thought it might be some superhuman voice. As a fact, while I listened, I became convinced that it was a voice of great power with something unique and quite baffling in its quality, one full capable of terrifying a man of unsteady nerves. Yet I was sure that in a different context I would recognize that quality as a natural thing. The muffled echoes of the voice rocked around the Vale; words I am sure there were, the same phrase or sentence repeated many times, but the utmost strain of ear and faculties did not enable me to distinguish the meaning of a syllable. Then the distant shout and its reflections ceased, and I heard only the still grasses. I went on, full of living fancies.
A new sound greeted me out of the darkness, the rippling song of a nightingale on my right beyond the brink. The trees in the depths of Aidenn Vale, then, must be near below. And presently finding almost level ground, I heard the chuckle of water, and discerned a lofty fall of dulled silver, indeed passed it so close that the rising spray touched my cheek. Thus I had found Aidenn Water, not far from its springs on the shoulder of Black Mixen at the upper end of the horseshoe.
Straining my sight in the clogged air, I could trace the black thread of the watercourse on my right hand. Beside it I trod, to the broken descant of amorous birds. And while I went the way of the stream south among the wilding trees, the dark mist paled. I raised my eyes; great Whimble hill loomed before me, and over its stern summit crept a chipped and gibbous moon, softly lustering. While the moon went up the sky, I trolled on southward in air grey and spectral under the frowning summits of Aidenn Vale.
The pathway left the stream for a gentle rise through the trees. Still I could hear Aidenn Water clamour down the Vale while it skipped along. Soon I emerged from the thick of the wood into an open space, the level summit of a vast mound, and with a certain freshening of surprise found myself approaching a lonely wall built by human strength.
A wall—no more—ruinous and desolate, toppled in many places from its original height.
Passing closer, I discovered the confounded and scattered remnant of other wasted walls, strewn like bones in the brightening glamour of the moon. And midway among them stood one tree of mighty stature, doubtless rendered even more towering by the witchery of mist and moonlight.
Sometimes acoustic conditions prevent one from hearing what goes on just round the corner only a few feet away. So, then, my path led me toward the south-west end of the ruin, and precisely at the standing angle of the stone I ran into another man. I did literally run into him, for he was soft and spongy, and my first feeling was that I had encountered a hot-water bottle strolling as leisurely as if on the Mall.
We recoiled from a position cheek by jowl. A light flashed in my eyes, and at the same instant I directed the glare of my pocket-torch, which I still possessed, into his eyes. Our speeches, too, crossed each other.
“Pardon! I didn’t hear you, sir!”
“What are you doing here?”
It was not the greeting I had expected; in fact, I felt it quite discourteous. Moreover, he kept the spot-light of his dark-lantern playing on my features for some time, and his piercing eyes studied me critically. In return I gave his exterior a good scrutiny.
My light revealed a tall figure, appearing excessively, grotesquely tall because it was wearing a very high, narrow top-hat, almost a steeple-hat. The man was large and round as well as long. His face compared with the rest of his body was relatively narrow; I saw glittering eyes and a long, straight nose, eyebrows black like coals, and a mantling, pointed beard, also very thick and fiercely black. What gave me the creeps was that this beard did not grow quite straight, but was tilted a little to the left.
His clothing, I saw in this long dissection, was that of an elderly man, a black double-breasted frock-coat, not cutaway, and black trousers which descended to elastic-sided boots. And under the arm toward which the beard slanted was lodged an old, bulgy umbrella with a large metal handle. He quickly shifted this article into his right hand, grasping it toward the point so that it might be a weapon of considerable moment, his left hand holding the dark-lantern.
He was the first to break the silence. Smiling, he replaced the umbrella under his arm.
“Ah, pardon me, please. I see that you are on my side.” His voice, now I noticed it, was rather deep, and yet rather young for one of his solemn appearance.
“I’m sure I’m not against you,” I answered, and lowered my light out of his eyes. He followed suit.
“You are one of the natives of this region?” he asked, and with his question came the thought to me that he might be a foreigner, although his full, somewhat throaty voice was perfectly assimilated to the Anglican inflections. Those coat-skirts somehow gave him a little of a Continental aspect—and that umbrella! Didn’t Schubert always carry an umbrella? or was I thinking of Paul Pry?
“I should say not,” I responded. “I, too, am a stranger.”
“Ah, you,too? What a pity!”
“Yes, am I not correct in believing that you—”
“Quite so, sir; my name, sir, is Septimus MacWilloughby, and I was taught not far from Birmingham. And now, sir, will you kindly tell me what you have been doing here?”
“Been doing? Doing? Why, nothing, in the sense you seem to mean. And have you any business with me? Isn’t it rather—?”
“It is necessary.”
“I lost my way in fog up there on the hilltops and came down into the Vale in the hope of finding some sort of shelter. I was just passing by this—”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. MacWilloughby, in what seemed to me a rather meditative tone. “Tell me, please: in your travelling to-day have you run across a very small grey spaniel, with ink-spots?”
I was reduced to repeating, “With ink-spots?”
“Yes, certainly: I repeat, a small grey spaniel, with ink-spots. The dog was not to blame if the bottle was too near the edge of the table. No, I see that you have not. Well then, by chance you may have seen a pair of Scandinavian ponies, both lame in the off foreleg?”
“I certainly have not.”
“Dear me,” sighed my interlocutor. He stabbed the ground with his umbrella, leaned upon it with both hands, large, red, bloated hands, nervously twitching fat fingers. “And finally, did you notice whether any snakes—”
I was growing exasperated, whether or not thissoi-disantMacWilloughby was making merry at my expense.
“Don’t you know,” I asked harshly, “that there are no snakes in Radnorshire?”
“But these were from my menagerie. Dear me, my menagerie will be dreadfully depleted, I fear. You didn’t—?”
“Look here,” I exploded; “have you a Bull of Bashan on your list? If you have, your bull’s dead—I can tell you so much. With the exception of a cave-man who was running up the path there, every animal I’ve seen has been indigenous.”
“But snakes—from my menagerie,” he protested mildly, ignoring my tone. He indicated with the umbrella and his free hand, for a pencil of moonlight from rifted clouds had caused us both to stow away our torches. “Snakes about so long.”
“No, no!”
He shrugged disappointedly. “Well! if it must be. Then you will tell me, please, which of these hills”—he included them all with a sweep of the umbrella—“is called Kerry Hill?”
“Why, none of them. Kerry Hill is outside this county, thirty miles away.”
“Oh, so far away? Then I must be leaving at once. I have a friend who lives in a little house on the top of that hill, and he will be anxious for me.”
Whereupon Mr. MacWilloughby strode past me, but checked himself. “Stay—what was that you said about a cave-man?”
I was willing to humour him a little longer. “Oh, I methimright enough. He shouted some gibberish in my face and passed me going to the uplands.”
“Oh? Now that is very good. You may think it inexcusable of me, sir, but I had the idea for a little while that you were that cave-man. I asked you those questions partly to hear a little of your language. Now, since you say Kerry Hill is so far, I really—”
He commenced to walk away, but I protested.
“I think it’s time you answered a question or two of mine. I don’t know what possesses you to climb into that wilderness, even if your whole menagerie is kicking its heels up there—they’ll keep. But you can at least tell me what I’m likely to find further down the Vale. Shall I find anyone there?”
The stranger’s face, in spite of its startling features, grew really pleasant with a smile. “I believe you will find someone further down. Yes, I believe you will find all you want.”
“I’m not looking for any special number of people,” I told him tartly. “I want a house—shelter—a place to stop overnight. Am I clear?”
Mr. MacWilloughby seemed to have lost interest in his surroundings. In answer to my question he murmured, “Yes, you are very likely to find a house,” but his thought seemed to be running in other channels. He was biting the beard of his nether lip. Suddenly he drew himself up. “You might mention—if you decide to stop—to the master of the hostelry, that his many watch-dogs are causing me inconvenience. Secretly, you understand. All this you must tell him secretly. I enjoy the society of the menagerie, and of many kinds of dogs—the Russian wolf-hound, the Dalmatian—but I do not care for the two-legged kind he has out to-night. It is not a thing I like to mention, you understand—it is so delicate—but when one is actually precluded from stepping across a stile—” Hand and umbrella made an expressive gesture. “You catch my drift, I perceive.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him,” I remarked sardonically.
“You will?” he exclaimed with a parade of pleasure. “Then in that case I shall not need protection against the rain.”
His arm shot out, and I saw the umbrella fly up like a thick javelin through the air, to disappear beyond the wall beside which we stood.
“Another thing!” he cried, and I detected a real note of sincerity in his tempestuous voice. “Tell the golden-haired woman that I have warned her to beware of the blighter with the red face and the pot of money. She should dismiss him—utterly. I have seen what I have seen.”
I emitted a dry “No doubt.”
“Thank you, sir, for your great courtesy,” said Mr. MacWilloughby. His lofty hat he removed with a flowing ease; he bent his back in an old-time inclination. Then in the fluctuating moonlight I saw not only black beard and brows, but as well a wriggling mass of black hair. He was smiling, but his smile now had a touch of wildness, even of ghoulishness. He set his hat upon his brows again.
“I shall not need even finger-nails if I meet another like you,” he said.
He turned on his heel and continued his stately promenade toward the summit of the Vale. I watched him until the moon surrendered and the mist had him. Where was he going? To join that prehistoric man on the hill? And where in heaven’s name had he comefrom?
Mad? Was he mad? No more mad than I. I realized, the moment he had projected his umbrella, that he was eminently sane. But he had overplayed his part a little—for his audience.
Continuing on my southward way, I soon passed the site of what had been the outer walls of this great castle, though now little remained save one block of hewn stone upon another here and there. Most of the material had probably been carried off to build some mansion of a later age.
I left the ruin, advancing down the Vale, whose bounds of lofty crag and hanger were darkly visible for a little while. But I could not leave behind me the thought of the huge man and his eccentric speeches. Only new surprises could reave that vision from me; and presently, passing a large, white-painted, wood-gate, I was startled to observe that although I was in a wilderness, it was an extraordinarily well-ordered wilderness. The trees along the path, ash and sycamore, I believed, stood at like distances from one another and were spaced regularly opposite. I seemed to be marching along a smooth avenue in a park; the remoter trees, too, although they were obscure as fleeing ghosts, appeared to flee away in serried ranks. The spaces in the glades looked clear of underbrush. I was glad to note these signs, if signs they were, of human tending, with their suggestion of human nearness, for even my refreshened strength was slipping away from me and the welts and strains of my body were clamouring again.
Quicker than I had expected, I was out of the toy wilderness into a clear space of thirty-odd yards (the dominant moon showed me this), and Aidenn Water was roaming close beside my path. A brook going to join the larger stream from some hill-recess on my left was crossed by an old stone bridge with urns at the ends of its stone balustrades, a ridiculously massive structure for so insignificant a watercourse. But a few seconds later I passed another object built with overplus of formality and ostentation, a semi-rustic house which could have been no more than a summer-house, quite unsuited for habitation but freaked and loaded with statuary and gewgaws.
“The eighteenth century!” I murmured. “What nightmares did they not have in the Age of Reason? Am I now to find a geometrical mansion of Georgian brick?”
I had entered a new zone of drizzle and mist when I had my first evidence of the house appertaining hereto. The fog thickened almost to the density of a wall, and when the well-ordered path ceased at the edge of the lawns, I blundered against a tree trunk, one of three standing alone in gloom and grandeur in the open space. I generously cursed the spirits, whose exhalation, as every Welsh peasant used to know, the mist is. By a flash of my torch I recognized the three tapering shapes as horizontal cypresses, and at once I felt relief, for I was sure that these none-too-hardy trees must be of a recent and venturesome planting. I was becoming convinced that human lives were not far from me.
A few steps more and I was standing on a pebble walk beneath the shorter northern wall of a definitely up-to-date structure. The stone may have been old stone, but it had been smoothed off within a generation, and the ivy had evidently been somewhat restricted in its rambling in order that the broad-spread glass of this storey might not be effaced from the light. Why all this glass? A conservatory? I stepped across the walk, flashed my torch, peered in, saw a glimmering galaxy of flowers, sniffed and detected a hint of their thick odour, was satisfied. A conservatory it was, extending from end to end of this northern wall, with unlit, wide-paned windows from end to end save where a steep outer stair led up to a small roofless platform and door in the first storey; and I perceived a vague second storey, above which chimneys sprouted.
Now, I should not have lingered here more than a few seconds, had not there burst forth a chill sound that actually took me out of myself for a moment, a caterwauling from somewhere behind me and further toward the mountain wall of the ravine. It seemed impossible that such a desecration of silence could proceed from a single throat. It was a sobbing cry full of hunger, but there was positive anger and direness in it. It had a quality, too, of immitigable anguish, as though all the hopelessness of dumb beasts were its burden. Once the throbbing cry subsided into a gruff growl, and then, strangely enough, was the first time that I recognized its clamour as that of a cat. “But,” I remembered thinking, “it must be a cat as big as a wolf.” And while the last throes of the savage wailing echoed back from the hill, I looked up to the gloomy heights of the mansion, as if I expected each dark window to flare with inquiring light.
A map of the area surrounding Highglen House. Close to the house are some ruins and the Stables. A road leads from the stables, past the house, and then down the map. Off to the left is a grove of strawberry trees, in the middle of which sits a hard tennis court. At the top right corner of the map is a building labelled “Farm of the sisters Delambre”. The farm sits close to a fence, which runs across the map until it meets the river, labelled “Aidenn Water”. The river runs down the left side of the map, turning briefly towards the middle of the map where it crosses under the road. Between Highglen House and the farm is a footpath, halfway along which it passes a small structure labelled “18th Century Summer House”. A small brook branches off of Aidenn Water which crosses the footpath at a small bridge, and from there another footpath continues up the map, through a gate in the fence, and beyond.
In puzzlement and lively eagerness to discover more about this mansion, I turned to the right and followed the walk to the corner of the conservatory, where it joined a drive that wound out of the right-hand darkness. I discovered that the side of the house extended a hundred feet or more parallel to the course of Aidenn Water. Visible, too, on the broad lawn at four or five rods’ distance from the house was a tall, two-legged thing, fifty feet high by a rough judgment, an erection of twin towers with a passageway above and between, the whole standing lonely, dark and still.
The conservatory’s narrow side ended in the jutting of a tower, quite black. Between this and the next tower, its counterpart, I caught dim glimpses of modern french windows, a pair of them, evidently belonging to the same large room. There was a formal entrance between the second tower and the third, but since it was unlit, I decided to go further in hopes of finding the main portal. Yet I had a view of what was behind the door, and again I paused, fascinated.
Inside the third tower, the projecting half of an octagon studded with little windows, I saw a taper burning low in an old candlestick fastened like a bracket on the wall, a thing of fantastic crooks and curlicues. The light was blue and brittle, for the wick was surfeited with grease. But I was able to see three men in the panelled hallway, two of them standing, or perhaps leaning, against the wall. Of these I perceived no more than their dark featureless forms, and a marked stiffness in their attitudes. On the opposite side of the hall from the candle, they were too vague to be any more particularized than as human forms. The third man, save for his little tuft of white hair, had been no more than a smudge either.
For he was bent over, his back toward me,and he was picking the pockets of the other two men! I can describe his actions in no better way. They, seemingly stupefied, made no motion to prevent!
I must say that the old, white-tufted fellow was not very adroit at his work. I stood absolutely spell-bound while I watched him paw about the clothing of the two others. The candle guttered with special vehemence, and the pilferer turned upward to it an anxious eye. Then he appeared to make a decision; standing full length, he crossed to the candle and lifted his lean fingers to snuff it. I was impressed by a sight of his narrow brown face, vulturine in contour, with the tall, furrowed brow of a student, the thin, pale lips of an ascetic, and the broken-off jaw of a fighter. The expression was whimsical and wily. The light glinted for an instant on a green eye, on white smiling teeth, and on the diamond stud in his shirt-front. Then the fingers smothered the feeble flame, and he was in the darkness with those dazed ones I suspected were his victims.
And I hastened around the fourth tower, larger than the rest, at the southern extremity of the mansion. What was I to do? Had I in fact witnessed the induction to a serious crime? Was it my duty to report what I had seen? It must depend on circumstances; perhaps the old tufted sinner was the proprietor himself. I must be cautious. I must be dissimulative.
Above all, I must not be surprised.
An electric chandelier sparkled in the large corner tower, revealing it to be part of the sumptuous library of the mansion, empty of persons. I found the entrance I sought in the middle of the south end of the building. The crunching drive made a great circle, leading to a square-arched, ivied entry. A barred lamp above the vestibule faintly revealed the arms of the house cut in stone at the apex of the arch, and surmounting this, as a sort of crest, was the rude but unmistakable image of a cat’s head. I dimly perceived a feline nose with faintest trace of whisker running along it, and triangular ears. The mouth was grinning, not pleasantly.
Here was matter for vast surprise, but I must notbesurprised!
I stepped underneath the arch, to the broad iron-bound black-door. Another pale light revealed the knocker, an iron piece in the shape of the paw of a cat. There was also the button of an electric bell. I grasped the paw and struck twice.
Almost immediately the door opened. “Come in,” said a voice. “You’ve been—”
I must not be surprised!But I gaped, and gurgled, for all I know.
The sturdy square-set fellow in evening dress who had opened the door so suddenly and who now stood in the half-light was staring at me, beginning to look a littledistrait.
“Oh, so you’re not—” he commenced brusquely, and, changing his tone, recommenced, “Butareyou, or aren’t—?”
“No, no,” I managed to gasp. “I’m not—I don’t think so.”
I had known nothing of Aidenn Vale or of the ruins, mansions, or creatures in it. But I knew this man!