X.The LaughA white bone, six inches long, the broadened knobs at each end a little darker than the rest—horizontal, perfectly still.Perhaps I had gazed at this thing in fascination for twenty or thirty seconds before it stirred at all. Then the faintest swinging motion seemed to occur, on a horizontal plane, and suddenly—now my heart was going mad—it rose a couple of feet as if jerked by a string, and remained motionless once more, until the swinging recommenced, one end and then the other moving slightly toward me and away.The comforting tones of voices had died; it might have been that I and that apparition were alone in the Vale, a man and a white irrational bone. I was of no mind to linger there until the thing should leap up again and drive me into an apoplexy. And all the while the basis of reason in me was firm, and there was a voice bidding me quit my folly, for there could be no bone in the unsupporting air of the Hall. Yet I did not enter the chamber and get within the same walls as the apparition; instead I abandoned the place to its ghostly visitant, hastened around to the front entrance of the House and rang the bell, although the door itself was unlatched.I wanted hot water for shaving.Soames, answering the ring, I met at the foot of the winding staircase. My voice, I believe, was controlled out of its excitement when I ordered the water, which he promised to bring at once.It was with a doubtful, distracted mind that I entered my room and caused a tiny apex of flame to glow on the fresh candles standing at either side of my writing-table. For a breath of open air, I swung the casement window inward. The breeze, forerunner of storm, brushed past outside, but no more than writhed the candle-flames.I looked out.As I have stated, my window gives on what I suppose I must call the balcony, though part of the ancient battlement stands there in lieu of a balustrade, remnant of an age before even this room was built and when the top of the wall was no higher than the window-sill. Odd that the old parapet with its indentations remained when this lofty course of rooms was made. This wall above the second storey cut off my view of the lawn, save where a gap of the crenellation permitted me to look almost straight down to the drive. Directly below me I now saw nothing, and far beyond the gate-house towers, rising to the level of the roof of the mansion, was only the dusky dark expanse to Aidenn Water. But about the twin-legged gate-house itself the afterglow lingered in a tiny pool.I suddenly remembered Crofts’ admonition to have a look at the tomb on Vron Hill, and my promise that I would. With an athletic effort I squeezed through my window and stood on the roof outside. To my disappointment, the sky beyond the Hill was darkened with clouds whose purple came near to black. The tumulus was indistinguishable against them.I moved to the edge of the parapet and leaned over one of the cops of the crenelled wall for a better look about.It appeared that two or three people were gathered by the winch that works the drawbridge and were having great glee in their endeavours. Rusty metal shrilled, a little cloud of laughter burst upward, and the huge bridge descended. There came a thump when the platform settled into place. Then amid a new little cloud of laughter, the winch set to work again, and the bridge commenced to rise.My attention was diverted by something at my feet, the merest trifle lying at the base of one of the merlons: a twisted strand which might have been part of a piece of light rope. It was about the length of my finger-joint, far from fresh, one end newly abraded, the other decayed. It was, as I said, a trifle, but it was curious. I could not think then, nor can I now, how it got there; and certainly the fresh abrasion was not more than a couple of days old. I had a notion of showing it to Crofts for an opinion, but when I considered what the energetic response of our much-tried host might be when asked to account for a fragment of half-rotten rope, I changed my mind. But I tucked away the strand for future reference.One last look up and down the empty lawn, and I slipped back into my room.I recalled my shaving, which now must be rapid if I were to be ready in time for the reading of the play. A few preliminary preparations made, I ran into an unprecedented number of mishaps.I seemed to have an unsteady fit. Soames had not yet come with the hot water, and I was in a hurry; my watch said a quarter to five. I made a beginning, however, ridding myself of my coat and shirt and addressing myself to the oak chest whereinto I had transferred my things from my bag during the ten-minute interval before luncheon. But at once I realized the unsuitability of sixteenth-century appointments for purposes of personal convenience, for the upper drawer was jammed or stuck. I hauled, jerked, and jogged sidewise. Suddenly, bang! came out the drawer, but the handle had parted from it, and I, handle in hand, staggered back, crash! into a stool in the corner of the room. When I separated myself from the stool, and we were both on our legs again, I recollected that I had tossed my shaving utensils into the drawer of the writing-table, as being readier to hand.Then indeed I had a brainstorm, an eagerness for haste being added to my disquiet of mind. Soames might be there with the water at any moment, and I not ready. Clutching razor and strop, I looked in vain for a proper place to attach the strop; my dissatisfaction with the old room as a place for personal embellishment was not diminished at all when I finally chose one of the curlicues of the candle-bracket on the north wall for a hook. Like the similar one in the armoury, this was very old, and like the bureau drawer, it seemed malevolent to thwart me. Holding the strop firmly while my razor executed loops and pirouettes, I was aghast a moment later, so suddenly did the fastening of the bracket give way under the strength of my hold upon the strop. Squeak! went the old, damp-rotted iron, the candle-holder on its pivot drooped crazily, and I was staring at the thin red cut beside the finger-nail where the razor-edge had nicked me. This capped the climax.It was comedy, no doubt. For me, nevertheless, it was a bad half-minute. I smashed the bracket back to uprightness; one blow sufficed, since there had been no fissure in the metal itself. But my finger could not be cured so cavalierly. And shaving now was out of the question before five o’clock! Of such trivialities are wrought either contentment or black spirits.I chucked away strop and razor and went to the door, wondering what had become of Soames, and shaking off the drops of fresh blood from the index-finger of my left hand.I heard someone coming up the stairs, and at the same time a peculiar sound of rending rose from the Hall beneath the threshold where I stood, followed by the loud slam of a door.I said to myself, “There must be someone in the Hall now,” but the next instant thought, and all else, was reft from me.For from some part of the house someone was laughing. No—to avoid error from the first—I thought then, and at the present hour this all who heard are willing to swear: the laughter came from no human throat. Yet is Parson Lolly not human? And if he—but this shows the inconsistency of our fear. Yes, I will swear it was no human sound that roared and re-echoed through the House, gleeing and gurgling, curdling the blood of us who were within the walls. So huge was the uproar that the place of its source could not be told, and it went on and on unendurably for immeasurable seconds, to change to silence with a sudden gulp.I dashed to the window for a quick look, and could see nothing in the darkness, but discovered a glow spreading from immediately below me. The chandelier in the Hall must be lighted now. Then flinging my coat on, I rushed out of the room, impelled by a sense of dread and danger, and an anxiety to get where people were. I met Soames, hot-water can in hand, at the head of the stairs underneath the solitary electric bulb. He was green, a mildewed colour, startled into stone.I sprang down the stairs without a word, and he, galvanized, followed with a gasp:“Gord, sir, is thathim?” He meant the Parson.On the landing of the first floor stood Lib Dale, her fingers nervously fluttering about her face.“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”“Something drastic,” I said, while we went speeding together down to the entrance vestibule. Soames, still carrying the water, brought up a thumping rear.“Oh, wouldn’t it be awful if someone’s kicked—I mean, if someone’s been knocked off?”“Knocked off?”“I mean if an individual has been assassinated,” she explained haughtily, and then for an instant her impertinent little face went to chalk.We were standing indecisive in the passage. Hardly a minute had passed since the end of the laughter. A scream suddenly sounded from the lawn beyond the Hall of the Moth, a cry of agony which might have seemed terrible had not it been for that astounding laugh which had preceded it. In its awful context the scream was pitifully thin and feeble, but it was human, certainly.“That’s on the lawn.”“Yes, Governor,” choked Lib, following me at a half-run through the gallery-door of the Hall, through the nearest french windows, and so to the drive.Beside the small tower near the mended conservatory window something dark was stretched, with three or four people about it. While Lib and I were still thirty feet away, we could tell in the widespread light of the Hall chandelier that a body lay there.“It’s a corpse,” cried Lib. “Oh, my God, is it Bobby?” She rushed forward.I turned to Soames. “Round up the others, quickly.”“Y‑yes, sir”; he went back with the ineffable water.I remember that just as I came up from the lower french doors of the Hall, Belvoir, crossing the lawn from the direction of Aidenn Water, arrived at the other side of the group by the small tower.He looked down with a curious, contemplative expression. “This,” he said, “must be the body we missed last night.” It was not a flippant speech; it seemed to fit the occasion.The body lying here, half on the ground, half on the step to the french window, with Miss Lebetwood kneeling on one side, Doctor Aire on the other, was Sean Cosgrove’s. Supine he had fallen, or had been turned, his face bereft of its solidity, a flabby thing, his eyes closed, and the edge of a bloody wound showing beneath his left ear, a wound that apparently had a continuance behind.With knit brow Doctor Aire let down Cosgrove’s wrist and shook his head. His thin lips stirred; he muttered:“It’s no use.”Miss Lebetwood rose in a paroxysm of pain; she warded off Alberta Pendleton. In the scattered glow, with hair dishevelled and eyes afire, she looked like a prophetess of old, pulsing with authority. With a gesture she put us aside; it was as if she were putting us out of her thoughts. From us she went, and disappeared in the vacancy of the lawn.Pendleton, smitten by a thought, cried “The weapon!” and dashed into the Hall. We saw him go to the armoury door and saw the room brighten with electricity. Then the Doctor and I made the same decision.“Don’t touch the body,” cautioned the Doctor, and he and I together followed our host into the room of weapons, among which he was wildly ranging in a mad search.“Nothing’s been disturbed here,” observed Doctor Aire.But Crofts, deaf, continued in his frenzy, drawing every old rickety sword from its sheath, tearing every weapon from its peg or stud, rubbing his fingers along the cutting parts.“Not there, Crofts, not there!” I cried, taking him by the arm, since speech had no effect.“Which of these did it?” he demanded.“None,” answered Doctor Aire decisively. “You can see at a glance—”“But one of them must have a stain. There couldn’t have been time to wipe it dry.”“None are stained,” returned the Doctor. “Come with me.”He and I had nearly to drag Crofts out to the lawn, to the spot beyond the gate-house towers where the small axe had lain covered from the storm.“But that’s a puny thing!”“Yes,” said the Doctor, “but even a bullet may do damage, and the puny axe may have been in the hand of one of prodigious strength. A light weapon and a heavy blow; it may have broken the weapon, of course.”“It will hardly be here, in that case,” I suggested.We were beside the chicken-wire. There stood Miss Lebetwood, her white hands clenched against her dark dress.Her voice was cold, toneless. “I’ve been waiting here, wondering how long—”“No matter, Miss,” said the doctor, “we’re here—that’s what matters.”I lit a match which managed to keep alive in the stir of air. The canvas, held down by heavy stones, was in place. Crofts yanked the sheet away. We gasped.There lay the small axe, undisturbed. The Doctor stooped and touched the blood-slobbered handle.“It’s dry, absolutely. Well, I’m whipped. I’d have sworn—”We were hastening back to the House almost while the words were in his mouth. Now there must have been a dozen guests and servants clustered about the body. I turned to Crofts.“Who found him there? Was anything seen? Where was he killed?”He was too distracted to pay attention. He was running his fingers through his mane and whispering little phrases to himself.A woman with trembling hands held out some white thing.“Look,” said Eve Bartholomew. “See what I found when I came by the end of the House—down there by the large tower.” She pointed toward the corner round which lay the main entrance.“Another—another!” I exclaimed, and Crofts snarled, “It was time for another, damn his black heart! What does this one say?”We read:LOok OuT foR THe CATS CLAW PARSON LOLLY“The Cat’s Claw! What’s that?”“How do you expect me to tell?”“Again we find this damned thing—too late!”“There’s fresh blood on it!” exclaimed Crofts, taking the placard from my hand.“Of course there is, you fool. Look at my finger.”“How did you do that?”“Razor.”Alberta was looking over her husband’s shoulder. “Where did you find it, Eve?”“Right at the corner of the House. It was on the grass, with the writing downward.”“Now,” said I, “if there’s one thing about this atrocious deed that I can swear to, it is that there was nothing at that spot ten minutes ago. I rounded the corner to enter the House so as to fetch one of the men-servants by ringing the door-bell. The grass had nothing on it.”“I was over by the gate-house,” said Bob Cullen, “but I wasn’t pulling the winch. I was waiting for Lib to come out again. I was watching the end of the House all the time until the lights flared up in the Hall. I’ll take my oath, I will, that nobody went round the corner after Mr. Bannerlee.”Doctor Aire objected. “But after the chandelier was lit—when that part of the House and the lawn outside the windows was bright—you might have overlooked some shadow slipping along the wall further south.”Yet this explanation satisfied me no more than it seemed to quell Bob himself.“Look here,” Crofts suddenly roared. “Perhapshe—” He flung out an arm toward the dead man.“What do you mean?”“He—himself—”“This placard was his doing, you think? Impossible!”“Why not? There was no one else here. That one in his room this morning: he tookitmighty calmly.”“Sean was not a child, or a fool,” said Miss Lebetwood coldly.“Who lit the chandelier?” I asked.“Ah!” murmured the Doctor, and raised one shoulder higher than the other.“Did anyone see him before—this?”Miss Lebetwood spoke. “I was the first to see him, Mr. Bannerlee. He was kneeling, I thought, on the step outside the window—but he must have been—falling. . . .”“Paula—don’t tell it, dearest,” cried Miss Mertoun.“There’s nothing to tell,” said Paula Lebetwood, still brave, still vibrant, commanding. “I am not going to break down, Millicent dear. I—have told of myself. . . . That was all. He lifted his hand from the stone, as if he wanted to reach his head—but he fell forward. That’s all.”“But that unholy bawling laughter—”“It was from—somewhere else. It wasn’t very loud out here, but it was what made me look towards the House. Then I saw—him—while the laugh was still going on. But I didn’t scream until—afterward, when he fell.”“The lights were on at the time, of course,” observed Doctor Aire.“They had been on for a minute or so, I think,” said Miss Lebetwood. “But I had paid no particular attention when they were lit.”“The fact is,” said the Doctor, “we don’t know where he was when he was struck. He must have been nearby—couldn’t have gone far with a bludgeoning like that.”“Blenkinson, you there?” asked Crofts.“I am, sir.”“Have you ’phoned Superintendent Salt at New Aidenn?”“I ’ave, sir. ’E’s coming, and looking out for hall suspicious characters on the south road.”“All right, then.”“Hadn’t the women better go?” asked Ludlow practically.“Go in, everybody,” said Crofts.“Musthebe left?”Doctor Aire said, “Put something under the back of his head and cover his body with something. I’ll stand guard here. He can’t be moved until the police arrive.”“God!”A bellowing leaped upon us out of the north, a roar that instead of tailing away mounted higher and higher upon itself. The wind, which had been bustling, seemed to disintegrate while the darkness of sound swept through the Vale. Resonant, tremendous, devastating, the sheer undifferentiated noise bore down on us, oppressed us with its weight. Brimming the hills, it actually made the ground tremble. It was nothing like thunder, but as if something buried alive beneath the earth had awakened and vociferated horribly. Several of the women stopped their ears, and there was an awfulness in seeing their mouths open in screams when the sound was wholly lost in the roar up the Vale. It was as if they had all gone dumb and raving. Even when it had ceased at climax, the echoes of the roar bruited from crag to crag made the Vale alive with sound. And when the final reverberations had sunk to peace, we gaped at each other silenced for a little while, even the body of the man forgotten in the overwhelmingness of sound. When we spoke, it was in whispers.“Could that be—thunder?”“Thunder—like that?”“It was like Judgment.”“What was it, then?”“I can tell you what it was,” I said.They were round me in a moment, greedy.“An earthquake?” asked Doctor Aire.“A landslide—almost an avalanche—on one of the north-most hills.”“But what could have caused it?”“There may have been a condition of incipient instability, waiting for rain, perhaps.”“For rain—what rain?” interposed Pendleton.In answer to him a vast sheet of purple lightning pictured all the north of the Vale. It vanished, sweeping us into an instantaneous blacker darkness, but again it glared, and again, while unmistakable thunders rang. In that dazzling fulgour the nearby features of the scene were revealed to us as in bright noontide, but above the Black Mixen, above Mynydd Tarw, above the other northern peaks, hung a great tower reaching into illimitable night like a waterfall from heaven. Again the lightning blazed, and we beheld the hanging shafts, like sun-pillars among clouds, save that these were black—or like aerial waterspouts soaring above the earth. And this stupendous cliff of water was visibly moving toward us, down the Vale!Crofts Pendleton turned from the terrific sight, with a bitter-happy look. He gestured toward the north. In the effulgence and clamour of the storm he stood like a valiant pygmy.“By God,” he shouted, “there’s one direction cut off—for the fiend who did this!”“Particularly if the zigzag path has been blocked by the landslide,” added Belvoir.“Praise God, the police are coming by the south road. There’s no missing him if he tries to leave the Vale to-night!”“Sir Brooke!” cried Eve Bartholomew suddenly. “Sir Brooke! Where is he?”“We should all like to know,” said Crofts.These speeches had been shouts. Now the Doctor made a megaphone of his hands in order to be heard. In a blaze of lightning lasting several seconds we saw him hunch his shoulder and head toward the top of the Vale, whence the rain, white rain now, and horrible, was pushing back towards us. “This will be on us in a minute. We can’t leave this poor fellow’s remains here, regulations or no. We must get the location and position of the body down in writing at once. I’ll take responsibility.”Crofts and I stooped to lift by the shoulders and feet respectively. During our brief act of carrying the corpse into the Hall and composing it on the couch, the wind suddenly rose into a mighty strife, and heavy plashing drops of rain came sousing on the windows. The gale was mad with leaves from the dishevelled autumn trees, which came knocking on the panes, clung there for moments like silhouettes, and were whirled on to their fate.Crofts stood beside the useless and ironic tea-service, agaze at the streaming windows. His lips were moving, but I heard no speech from them.I moved over beside him. “Who is Superintendent Salt?”“The best man for detective work in Radnorshire, and the Chief Constable knows it, they say. Lucky for us Salt lives in New Aidenn. But he’ll never get here to-night—not in this deluge.”Something dashed against the window-pane, and from us came a stifled cry. Handsome Ruth Clay, who had come in to remove the tea things, was standing with her fist jammed halfway into her mouth, her frightened eyes staring to the stormy night.“What’s the matter?”“See, see! The Bird!”I followed her look, just in time to see some small dark object blown before the wind and lost in the howling murk. “It came up against the window. I saw it.”“And what of it?”“It’s the Corpse-bird, sir. It means a death!”“What!”“Oh, I saw it, sir—no feathers it had—only like the down of other birds’ wings—and eyes like balls of fire!”“Nonsense, woman. Besides, this Corpse-bird, as you call it, should have come before. The damage is done already.”“Yes, sir, there’s poor Mr. Cosgrove’s body lying there, sir. But the Bird means another death.”
A white bone, six inches long, the broadened knobs at each end a little darker than the rest—horizontal, perfectly still.
Perhaps I had gazed at this thing in fascination for twenty or thirty seconds before it stirred at all. Then the faintest swinging motion seemed to occur, on a horizontal plane, and suddenly—now my heart was going mad—it rose a couple of feet as if jerked by a string, and remained motionless once more, until the swinging recommenced, one end and then the other moving slightly toward me and away.
The comforting tones of voices had died; it might have been that I and that apparition were alone in the Vale, a man and a white irrational bone. I was of no mind to linger there until the thing should leap up again and drive me into an apoplexy. And all the while the basis of reason in me was firm, and there was a voice bidding me quit my folly, for there could be no bone in the unsupporting air of the Hall. Yet I did not enter the chamber and get within the same walls as the apparition; instead I abandoned the place to its ghostly visitant, hastened around to the front entrance of the House and rang the bell, although the door itself was unlatched.
I wanted hot water for shaving.
Soames, answering the ring, I met at the foot of the winding staircase. My voice, I believe, was controlled out of its excitement when I ordered the water, which he promised to bring at once.
It was with a doubtful, distracted mind that I entered my room and caused a tiny apex of flame to glow on the fresh candles standing at either side of my writing-table. For a breath of open air, I swung the casement window inward. The breeze, forerunner of storm, brushed past outside, but no more than writhed the candle-flames.
I looked out.
As I have stated, my window gives on what I suppose I must call the balcony, though part of the ancient battlement stands there in lieu of a balustrade, remnant of an age before even this room was built and when the top of the wall was no higher than the window-sill. Odd that the old parapet with its indentations remained when this lofty course of rooms was made. This wall above the second storey cut off my view of the lawn, save where a gap of the crenellation permitted me to look almost straight down to the drive. Directly below me I now saw nothing, and far beyond the gate-house towers, rising to the level of the roof of the mansion, was only the dusky dark expanse to Aidenn Water. But about the twin-legged gate-house itself the afterglow lingered in a tiny pool.
I suddenly remembered Crofts’ admonition to have a look at the tomb on Vron Hill, and my promise that I would. With an athletic effort I squeezed through my window and stood on the roof outside. To my disappointment, the sky beyond the Hill was darkened with clouds whose purple came near to black. The tumulus was indistinguishable against them.
I moved to the edge of the parapet and leaned over one of the cops of the crenelled wall for a better look about.
It appeared that two or three people were gathered by the winch that works the drawbridge and were having great glee in their endeavours. Rusty metal shrilled, a little cloud of laughter burst upward, and the huge bridge descended. There came a thump when the platform settled into place. Then amid a new little cloud of laughter, the winch set to work again, and the bridge commenced to rise.
My attention was diverted by something at my feet, the merest trifle lying at the base of one of the merlons: a twisted strand which might have been part of a piece of light rope. It was about the length of my finger-joint, far from fresh, one end newly abraded, the other decayed. It was, as I said, a trifle, but it was curious. I could not think then, nor can I now, how it got there; and certainly the fresh abrasion was not more than a couple of days old. I had a notion of showing it to Crofts for an opinion, but when I considered what the energetic response of our much-tried host might be when asked to account for a fragment of half-rotten rope, I changed my mind. But I tucked away the strand for future reference.
One last look up and down the empty lawn, and I slipped back into my room.
I recalled my shaving, which now must be rapid if I were to be ready in time for the reading of the play. A few preliminary preparations made, I ran into an unprecedented number of mishaps.
I seemed to have an unsteady fit. Soames had not yet come with the hot water, and I was in a hurry; my watch said a quarter to five. I made a beginning, however, ridding myself of my coat and shirt and addressing myself to the oak chest whereinto I had transferred my things from my bag during the ten-minute interval before luncheon. But at once I realized the unsuitability of sixteenth-century appointments for purposes of personal convenience, for the upper drawer was jammed or stuck. I hauled, jerked, and jogged sidewise. Suddenly, bang! came out the drawer, but the handle had parted from it, and I, handle in hand, staggered back, crash! into a stool in the corner of the room. When I separated myself from the stool, and we were both on our legs again, I recollected that I had tossed my shaving utensils into the drawer of the writing-table, as being readier to hand.
Then indeed I had a brainstorm, an eagerness for haste being added to my disquiet of mind. Soames might be there with the water at any moment, and I not ready. Clutching razor and strop, I looked in vain for a proper place to attach the strop; my dissatisfaction with the old room as a place for personal embellishment was not diminished at all when I finally chose one of the curlicues of the candle-bracket on the north wall for a hook. Like the similar one in the armoury, this was very old, and like the bureau drawer, it seemed malevolent to thwart me. Holding the strop firmly while my razor executed loops and pirouettes, I was aghast a moment later, so suddenly did the fastening of the bracket give way under the strength of my hold upon the strop. Squeak! went the old, damp-rotted iron, the candle-holder on its pivot drooped crazily, and I was staring at the thin red cut beside the finger-nail where the razor-edge had nicked me. This capped the climax.
It was comedy, no doubt. For me, nevertheless, it was a bad half-minute. I smashed the bracket back to uprightness; one blow sufficed, since there had been no fissure in the metal itself. But my finger could not be cured so cavalierly. And shaving now was out of the question before five o’clock! Of such trivialities are wrought either contentment or black spirits.
I chucked away strop and razor and went to the door, wondering what had become of Soames, and shaking off the drops of fresh blood from the index-finger of my left hand.
I heard someone coming up the stairs, and at the same time a peculiar sound of rending rose from the Hall beneath the threshold where I stood, followed by the loud slam of a door.
I said to myself, “There must be someone in the Hall now,” but the next instant thought, and all else, was reft from me.
For from some part of the house someone was laughing. No—to avoid error from the first—I thought then, and at the present hour this all who heard are willing to swear: the laughter came from no human throat. Yet is Parson Lolly not human? And if he—but this shows the inconsistency of our fear. Yes, I will swear it was no human sound that roared and re-echoed through the House, gleeing and gurgling, curdling the blood of us who were within the walls. So huge was the uproar that the place of its source could not be told, and it went on and on unendurably for immeasurable seconds, to change to silence with a sudden gulp.
I dashed to the window for a quick look, and could see nothing in the darkness, but discovered a glow spreading from immediately below me. The chandelier in the Hall must be lighted now. Then flinging my coat on, I rushed out of the room, impelled by a sense of dread and danger, and an anxiety to get where people were. I met Soames, hot-water can in hand, at the head of the stairs underneath the solitary electric bulb. He was green, a mildewed colour, startled into stone.
I sprang down the stairs without a word, and he, galvanized, followed with a gasp:
“Gord, sir, is thathim?” He meant the Parson.
On the landing of the first floor stood Lib Dale, her fingers nervously fluttering about her face.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“Something drastic,” I said, while we went speeding together down to the entrance vestibule. Soames, still carrying the water, brought up a thumping rear.
“Oh, wouldn’t it be awful if someone’s kicked—I mean, if someone’s been knocked off?”
“Knocked off?”
“I mean if an individual has been assassinated,” she explained haughtily, and then for an instant her impertinent little face went to chalk.
We were standing indecisive in the passage. Hardly a minute had passed since the end of the laughter. A scream suddenly sounded from the lawn beyond the Hall of the Moth, a cry of agony which might have seemed terrible had not it been for that astounding laugh which had preceded it. In its awful context the scream was pitifully thin and feeble, but it was human, certainly.
“That’s on the lawn.”
“Yes, Governor,” choked Lib, following me at a half-run through the gallery-door of the Hall, through the nearest french windows, and so to the drive.
Beside the small tower near the mended conservatory window something dark was stretched, with three or four people about it. While Lib and I were still thirty feet away, we could tell in the widespread light of the Hall chandelier that a body lay there.
“It’s a corpse,” cried Lib. “Oh, my God, is it Bobby?” She rushed forward.
I turned to Soames. “Round up the others, quickly.”
“Y‑yes, sir”; he went back with the ineffable water.
I remember that just as I came up from the lower french doors of the Hall, Belvoir, crossing the lawn from the direction of Aidenn Water, arrived at the other side of the group by the small tower.
He looked down with a curious, contemplative expression. “This,” he said, “must be the body we missed last night.” It was not a flippant speech; it seemed to fit the occasion.
The body lying here, half on the ground, half on the step to the french window, with Miss Lebetwood kneeling on one side, Doctor Aire on the other, was Sean Cosgrove’s. Supine he had fallen, or had been turned, his face bereft of its solidity, a flabby thing, his eyes closed, and the edge of a bloody wound showing beneath his left ear, a wound that apparently had a continuance behind.
With knit brow Doctor Aire let down Cosgrove’s wrist and shook his head. His thin lips stirred; he muttered:
“It’s no use.”
Miss Lebetwood rose in a paroxysm of pain; she warded off Alberta Pendleton. In the scattered glow, with hair dishevelled and eyes afire, she looked like a prophetess of old, pulsing with authority. With a gesture she put us aside; it was as if she were putting us out of her thoughts. From us she went, and disappeared in the vacancy of the lawn.
Pendleton, smitten by a thought, cried “The weapon!” and dashed into the Hall. We saw him go to the armoury door and saw the room brighten with electricity. Then the Doctor and I made the same decision.
“Don’t touch the body,” cautioned the Doctor, and he and I together followed our host into the room of weapons, among which he was wildly ranging in a mad search.
“Nothing’s been disturbed here,” observed Doctor Aire.
But Crofts, deaf, continued in his frenzy, drawing every old rickety sword from its sheath, tearing every weapon from its peg or stud, rubbing his fingers along the cutting parts.
“Not there, Crofts, not there!” I cried, taking him by the arm, since speech had no effect.
“Which of these did it?” he demanded.
“None,” answered Doctor Aire decisively. “You can see at a glance—”
“But one of them must have a stain. There couldn’t have been time to wipe it dry.”
“None are stained,” returned the Doctor. “Come with me.”
He and I had nearly to drag Crofts out to the lawn, to the spot beyond the gate-house towers where the small axe had lain covered from the storm.
“But that’s a puny thing!”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “but even a bullet may do damage, and the puny axe may have been in the hand of one of prodigious strength. A light weapon and a heavy blow; it may have broken the weapon, of course.”
“It will hardly be here, in that case,” I suggested.
We were beside the chicken-wire. There stood Miss Lebetwood, her white hands clenched against her dark dress.
Her voice was cold, toneless. “I’ve been waiting here, wondering how long—”
“No matter, Miss,” said the doctor, “we’re here—that’s what matters.”
I lit a match which managed to keep alive in the stir of air. The canvas, held down by heavy stones, was in place. Crofts yanked the sheet away. We gasped.
There lay the small axe, undisturbed. The Doctor stooped and touched the blood-slobbered handle.
“It’s dry, absolutely. Well, I’m whipped. I’d have sworn—”
We were hastening back to the House almost while the words were in his mouth. Now there must have been a dozen guests and servants clustered about the body. I turned to Crofts.
“Who found him there? Was anything seen? Where was he killed?”
He was too distracted to pay attention. He was running his fingers through his mane and whispering little phrases to himself.
A woman with trembling hands held out some white thing.
“Look,” said Eve Bartholomew. “See what I found when I came by the end of the House—down there by the large tower.” She pointed toward the corner round which lay the main entrance.
“Another—another!” I exclaimed, and Crofts snarled, “It was time for another, damn his black heart! What does this one say?”
We read:
LOok OuT foR THe CATS CLAW PARSON LOLLY
LOok OuT foR THe CATS CLAW PARSON LOLLY
“The Cat’s Claw! What’s that?”
“How do you expect me to tell?”
“Again we find this damned thing—too late!”
“There’s fresh blood on it!” exclaimed Crofts, taking the placard from my hand.
“Of course there is, you fool. Look at my finger.”
“How did you do that?”
“Razor.”
Alberta was looking over her husband’s shoulder. “Where did you find it, Eve?”
“Right at the corner of the House. It was on the grass, with the writing downward.”
“Now,” said I, “if there’s one thing about this atrocious deed that I can swear to, it is that there was nothing at that spot ten minutes ago. I rounded the corner to enter the House so as to fetch one of the men-servants by ringing the door-bell. The grass had nothing on it.”
“I was over by the gate-house,” said Bob Cullen, “but I wasn’t pulling the winch. I was waiting for Lib to come out again. I was watching the end of the House all the time until the lights flared up in the Hall. I’ll take my oath, I will, that nobody went round the corner after Mr. Bannerlee.”
Doctor Aire objected. “But after the chandelier was lit—when that part of the House and the lawn outside the windows was bright—you might have overlooked some shadow slipping along the wall further south.”
Yet this explanation satisfied me no more than it seemed to quell Bob himself.
“Look here,” Crofts suddenly roared. “Perhapshe—” He flung out an arm toward the dead man.
“What do you mean?”
“He—himself—”
“This placard was his doing, you think? Impossible!”
“Why not? There was no one else here. That one in his room this morning: he tookitmighty calmly.”
“Sean was not a child, or a fool,” said Miss Lebetwood coldly.
“Who lit the chandelier?” I asked.
“Ah!” murmured the Doctor, and raised one shoulder higher than the other.
“Did anyone see him before—this?”
Miss Lebetwood spoke. “I was the first to see him, Mr. Bannerlee. He was kneeling, I thought, on the step outside the window—but he must have been—falling. . . .”
“Paula—don’t tell it, dearest,” cried Miss Mertoun.
“There’s nothing to tell,” said Paula Lebetwood, still brave, still vibrant, commanding. “I am not going to break down, Millicent dear. I—have told of myself. . . . That was all. He lifted his hand from the stone, as if he wanted to reach his head—but he fell forward. That’s all.”
“But that unholy bawling laughter—”
“It was from—somewhere else. It wasn’t very loud out here, but it was what made me look towards the House. Then I saw—him—while the laugh was still going on. But I didn’t scream until—afterward, when he fell.”
“The lights were on at the time, of course,” observed Doctor Aire.
“They had been on for a minute or so, I think,” said Miss Lebetwood. “But I had paid no particular attention when they were lit.”
“The fact is,” said the Doctor, “we don’t know where he was when he was struck. He must have been nearby—couldn’t have gone far with a bludgeoning like that.”
“Blenkinson, you there?” asked Crofts.
“I am, sir.”
“Have you ’phoned Superintendent Salt at New Aidenn?”
“I ’ave, sir. ’E’s coming, and looking out for hall suspicious characters on the south road.”
“All right, then.”
“Hadn’t the women better go?” asked Ludlow practically.
“Go in, everybody,” said Crofts.
“Musthebe left?”
Doctor Aire said, “Put something under the back of his head and cover his body with something. I’ll stand guard here. He can’t be moved until the police arrive.”
“God!”
A bellowing leaped upon us out of the north, a roar that instead of tailing away mounted higher and higher upon itself. The wind, which had been bustling, seemed to disintegrate while the darkness of sound swept through the Vale. Resonant, tremendous, devastating, the sheer undifferentiated noise bore down on us, oppressed us with its weight. Brimming the hills, it actually made the ground tremble. It was nothing like thunder, but as if something buried alive beneath the earth had awakened and vociferated horribly. Several of the women stopped their ears, and there was an awfulness in seeing their mouths open in screams when the sound was wholly lost in the roar up the Vale. It was as if they had all gone dumb and raving. Even when it had ceased at climax, the echoes of the roar bruited from crag to crag made the Vale alive with sound. And when the final reverberations had sunk to peace, we gaped at each other silenced for a little while, even the body of the man forgotten in the overwhelmingness of sound. When we spoke, it was in whispers.
“Could that be—thunder?”
“Thunder—like that?”
“It was like Judgment.”
“What was it, then?”
“I can tell you what it was,” I said.
They were round me in a moment, greedy.
“An earthquake?” asked Doctor Aire.
“A landslide—almost an avalanche—on one of the north-most hills.”
“But what could have caused it?”
“There may have been a condition of incipient instability, waiting for rain, perhaps.”
“For rain—what rain?” interposed Pendleton.
In answer to him a vast sheet of purple lightning pictured all the north of the Vale. It vanished, sweeping us into an instantaneous blacker darkness, but again it glared, and again, while unmistakable thunders rang. In that dazzling fulgour the nearby features of the scene were revealed to us as in bright noontide, but above the Black Mixen, above Mynydd Tarw, above the other northern peaks, hung a great tower reaching into illimitable night like a waterfall from heaven. Again the lightning blazed, and we beheld the hanging shafts, like sun-pillars among clouds, save that these were black—or like aerial waterspouts soaring above the earth. And this stupendous cliff of water was visibly moving toward us, down the Vale!
Crofts Pendleton turned from the terrific sight, with a bitter-happy look. He gestured toward the north. In the effulgence and clamour of the storm he stood like a valiant pygmy.
“By God,” he shouted, “there’s one direction cut off—for the fiend who did this!”
“Particularly if the zigzag path has been blocked by the landslide,” added Belvoir.
“Praise God, the police are coming by the south road. There’s no missing him if he tries to leave the Vale to-night!”
“Sir Brooke!” cried Eve Bartholomew suddenly. “Sir Brooke! Where is he?”
“We should all like to know,” said Crofts.
These speeches had been shouts. Now the Doctor made a megaphone of his hands in order to be heard. In a blaze of lightning lasting several seconds we saw him hunch his shoulder and head toward the top of the Vale, whence the rain, white rain now, and horrible, was pushing back towards us. “This will be on us in a minute. We can’t leave this poor fellow’s remains here, regulations or no. We must get the location and position of the body down in writing at once. I’ll take responsibility.”
Crofts and I stooped to lift by the shoulders and feet respectively. During our brief act of carrying the corpse into the Hall and composing it on the couch, the wind suddenly rose into a mighty strife, and heavy plashing drops of rain came sousing on the windows. The gale was mad with leaves from the dishevelled autumn trees, which came knocking on the panes, clung there for moments like silhouettes, and were whirled on to their fate.
Crofts stood beside the useless and ironic tea-service, agaze at the streaming windows. His lips were moving, but I heard no speech from them.
I moved over beside him. “Who is Superintendent Salt?”
“The best man for detective work in Radnorshire, and the Chief Constable knows it, they say. Lucky for us Salt lives in New Aidenn. But he’ll never get here to-night—not in this deluge.”
Something dashed against the window-pane, and from us came a stifled cry. Handsome Ruth Clay, who had come in to remove the tea things, was standing with her fist jammed halfway into her mouth, her frightened eyes staring to the stormy night.
“What’s the matter?”
“See, see! The Bird!”
I followed her look, just in time to see some small dark object blown before the wind and lost in the howling murk. “It came up against the window. I saw it.”
“And what of it?”
“It’s the Corpse-bird, sir. It means a death!”
“What!”
“Oh, I saw it, sir—no feathers it had—only like the down of other birds’ wings—and eyes like balls of fire!”
“Nonsense, woman. Besides, this Corpse-bird, as you call it, should have come before. The damage is done already.”
“Yes, sir, there’s poor Mr. Cosgrove’s body lying there, sir. But the Bird means another death.”