XX.The Recrudescence of Parson LollyI chanced upon an alternative road, with more variety in its prospects, to take me back to the mouth of the Vale, omitting New Aidenn entirely and saving a third of my journey. Even on this short-cut southward, I found daylight part drawn into evening when I reached the top of the vast hill called the Smatcher, shaped like a loaf of bread, and began to descend through its larches to the entrance of the Vale. Gleams of sun walked from peak to peak while violet dusk deepened along the skirts of the hills. On the highway below me I perceived a human figure trudging toward the branch road to the House.I straightway recognized that sawed-off, machine-like form, and the peculiar drawing-up of the shoulder with each step. Doctor Aire was preceding me through the twilight.I hailed him and joined him. “I thought the others might pick you up.”“Not returned yet, I dare say. Didn’t call for me, at any rate. So I’m getting my fortnightly exercise.” He looked up at me quizzically. “You found everything satisfactory?”“Damnably the reverse. Why, there never was a right arm on that effigy. Do you know, Doctor, I believe Maryvale has the mission in life of plaguing me!”“Not you alone, let me assure you. Other persons are agog over his cryptic remarks. I, for instance.”“You? Oh, no.”“Yes. You didn’t hear what he told the Pendletons and me this morning at breakfast? He said that Parson Lolly is dead.”“Parson Lolly dead! That was fudge.”“On the contrary, he assured us with perfect gravity that the Parson died last night.”“He was pulling your leg.”“Not a bit of it. I know Maryvale that well, anyhow.”“Give it your own name, then; I’d call it empty talk.”Aire twitched around at me in a surprised way. “Never,” he declared. “Sure, Bannerlee, you must realize by this time that there’s always something behind what Maryvale says. He doesn’t merely vaporize.”We were approaching the temporary bridge. “I wish you’d tell me exactly what you think of Maryvale, Doctor. I confess that to me there’s something uncanny about the man. If he’s mad, he ought not to be loose among us, and if not—”“If not?” Aire cocked his head to hear.“—if not, he’s up to some subtle game.”“Oho, you think so?”“What else, for heaven’s sake?”He waited to cross the bridge before he answered. “No, that’s not my reading of Maryvale. I look on him as a man wrestling with an idea, the idea of Parson Lolly.”“And still I don’t get hold of your meaning.”“It’s this way. Gilbert Maryvale has come to Aidenn Vale before. Each time, certainly, a tradition of the countryside, a popular half-belief, has been mentioned, more often discussed with some fullness. It is, to say the minimum, a fable of much piquancy, a legend above the average in interest, this tradition of the goblin-parson—is it not?”“Granted, granted.”“Haven’t you often wished that fairy-tales were true? Maryvale has almost convinced himself to believe in Parson Lolly. His mind hasn’t conquered the idea, seems to be more or less at the mercy of it. But sometimes he rebels. Now and then he can see the absurdity as well as you or I; he can even laugh at the Parson. But again he will fall into perplexity, confusion, shame, fear over the idea. And he is capable, under suggestion or after shock, of getting into the throes, quite possessed with the reality of the unreal, virtually a maniac if you like that word. At these times he makes the supreme surrender one is capable of making to ideas.”“What is that?”“Why, heactson them. Remember his carrying that revolver up the Vale.”“Thanks, I remember well enough.” We went on in silence a little way, and then I said quickly, “But that doesn’t explain everything. Madmen are consistent; that’s why they’re mad. But Maryvale tells me that someone of the house of Kay did this murder, and sends me over to Old Aidenn to find out about that missing arm, and—”“Of course he is not consistent; that’s why he isnotmad, as you persist in thinking. He is very much mixed, but his ideas don’t fit into a complete system. I shall be sorry when they do, and I think the sooner he leaves the Vale the better.”“Why don’t you suggest it?”“I have, to Salt. However, the Superintendent doesn’t want our group to be dissolved for a few days yet. I’d have Maryvale out of here in a jiffy, though, if I felt his mental condition were critical, not simply fluctuating, for there’s not the remotest possibility of his being implicated in Cosgrove’s death.”“Let me see, where was he, just?”“Sitting with me on the steps of the summer-house the whole time during which the murder could have happened. But if he is shielded from any further mental concussion, I suppose there’s no harm in his staying on here a while longer. Besides, you know, he will have it that the Parson is dead.”In the thickening gloom I could make out no expression on the face of the man keeping step beside me. I spoke cautiously.“I take it, then, Doctor, that you don’t think Maryvale may have a hand in the manifestations of the Parson?”He laughed. “Rather not! How could he?”“I wish I could tell you. But in any case I suppose—I devoutly hope, anyhow—that the manifestations are over, and the explanations will be in order henceforth.”“I second you willingly.”We went on. I stumbled against a stone in the roadway. “Doctor, you’ve heard about the man I encountered the night I came here; I mean the one with the umbrella.”“Yes, Salt asked my opinion about that chap.”“What opinion could you have?”“Question of sanity again.”“What do you think?”“Hopelessly sane, I should say. You didn’t take him for crazed, did you?”“No; I suppose his talk was fabricated.”“From Salt’s account, I judged it was—most of it, anyhow.”“Which part do you exempt?”“Well, wasn’t there an urgent warning about calling off the dogs, and a reference to golden-haired woman? Believe me, Bannerlee, this Mac-whatever-his-name-was meant what he said just then.”“Perhaps. But what I wanted to tell you, Doctor, was that I can’t help connecting Maryvale with that man. The physical differences in their appearance aren’t so great that they couldn’t be one and the same, what with a false beard stuck on crooked, and the rest of it. It’s unlikely, of course, but still—”“Tut! it’s impossible.”“You don’t know. You weren’t here that night.”“Trust Salt. He has ascertained beyond a shade of doubt that Maryvale and the rest of the party were in the House the whole evening. The only possibility is that one of the servantsmighthave gone out looking that way, and you know how likely that is.”I gave a shrug to dismiss the whole question as insoluble. “I thank my stars I wasn’t born a detective.”“Curious how dark the House is,” said Aire. “So close to dinner, too.”The building had been in sight for a time, but only as a black beast crouching with closed eyes on the lawn. Now we were some hundred yards or so distant, but had still to go through the gate-house archway if we followed the westward trend of the drive.I said, “I suppose our friends haven’t appeared. I’d make my outing as long as possible, too, having to return at last to this devil’s playground.”We passed underneath the arch, crossed the lawn.“Even the kitchens looked dark from down below. Can’t tell about them from this side, though. I certainly expected the motorists to be back by this time; didn’t you?”“Yes, I did.”“It looks like a tomb.”I was aware that Aire had made a swift movement; then I saw him stock still, with his hand part way to his lips in a gesture of surprise.“No lights, no. But there’s someone in the conservatory.”“What!”“I saw the gleam of a face at the window of the tower. Just a white blotch. See that?”“Right‑o.”We made across the lawn at a run, entered the Hall of the Moth by the unfastened french window, and encountered two figures emerging from the conservatory.“I’m so glad you’ve come!”“Miss Lebetwood!”“Yes, it’s Millicent and I. Don’t—don’t be afraid,” she added with a little, unsteady laugh.“Are you alone? Is there something the matter with the lights?”“The lights are all right. Yes, we’re alone.”Aire demanded, “Aren’t the servants here?”“They’re all here, I guess. I meant our people, you know. They brought us to the bridge, so we could come up and have an hour or two of rest before dinner. They didn’t want to come in yet; so they drove on again.”“But why didn’t you switch on the lights?” Aire queried. “With all deference to your courage, I should think you would have felt easier in your minds—”“We didn’t dare turn on the light,” said Miss Lebetwood.Aire and I barked astonishment.Miss Mertoun, who had been clinging to the American girl’s arm, said, “Do go on, Paula. Tell them what we saw.”“It’s very little after all,” said Miss Lebetwood. “We had driven down to the Wye Valley, had tea, and come back again by five-thirty, and someone suggested going north to Ludlow before returning to the House. But Millicent and I said we’d rather be excused; so one car waited on the main road while the other brought us up and dropped us at the bridge. We walked very slowly, and it wasn’t until about half an hour ago that we reached the House. It was pretty dark, you know, even then, but light from one or two kitchen windows showed in the garden; so we weren’t scared at all.”“Ah,” remarked Aire. “You didn’t come by the drive, then?”“Oh, no, it was too dull for us. We came round through the grove under Whimble and across the lawn south of the House to the cat-head door. The door wasn’t latched, and we simply walked into the vestibule, and we would have gone straight upstairs, but Millicent remembered a book she had left in the Hall of the Moth. So she went in there to get it, and I waited by the steps, but a moment later I heard her give a small scream. I ran in—”“What had you seen, Miss Mertoun?” asked Aire, turning to the English girl.“Something looked in the window. Paula saw it, too.”“ ‘Something’ is a trifle vague, isn’t it?”“But we don’t know what it was.”“Well, what was its shape, and how was it dressed?”“It was as tall as a man, maybe taller,” said Miss Lebetwood, “and it was wrapped in a long black robe from the top of its—head to the ground.”“That’s the creature Oxford and I saw on the lawn that first night,” I exclaimed.Aire asked, “What was its face like?”Miss Lebetwood spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “It didn’t have any face.”Aire actually staggered back a step, and I reached out for something to support me, but encountering nothing, concluded to stand upright.I found my voice. “You mean you couldn’t see any.”“On the contrary, I was quite near the window—that one by the armoury door. Millicent had left her book on the cabinet there, and had reached the place before she saw the shape, and I naturally went to her side. We had all the light there was, and would have seen a face if there had been any there.”Stricken by a memory, I put my hand on Aire’s arm. “Remember, Doctor, how Maryvale put no face in his portrait?”He ignored me, and said, “What then?”“We were petrified, of course. It seemed to peer in, if you can understand, even without a face. The whole attitude of the thing was inquiring, curious. And then perhaps it saw us, for suddenly it twisted and hurried away.”“Why didn’t you get the servants?” I put in.“Things were bad enough without that.”“What shall we do, Bannerlee?”“Go after it, don’t you think?”“Right. You have a torch, haven’t you?”“Yes; I’ll fetch it. You stay here to guard the womenfolk.”I made dizzy haste up the spiral stairs and down again, and found the three outside the french window where the intruder had stood. Aire was lighting matches in search of footprints, but as had been predicted, vainly. We agreed that it would be best for the two girls to return to the conservatory and keep watch through the windows, having care to remain invisible. If anything untoward happened, they were to signal us by switching on the light, at the same time ringing for the servants if danger was evident.Aire and I went side by side over the lawn toward the small solitary copse. First one of us flashed the light along the sward while the other tried to penetrate the darkness ahead; then we reversed duties. As for footprints, if there were any they were exceedingly light and vague, and singularly small, but we could not even agree there was a definite trail.The distance from the House to the cypresses was over two hundred feet, and before we had covered the distance the Vale was filled with a soft illumination, as if twilight had re-begun. On our right, the moon was rising over Whimble, a crescent moon glowing like white-hot metal. Then Aire, who had been looking ahead, drew up.“Something’s among the trees for sure.”While he spoke I saw movement underneath the horizontal branches, and that queer, black-robed, conic figure—unmistakably the same I had seen on the evening of my arrival—swiftened from the shelter of the cypresses toward the expansive darkness of the park where the summer-house stood. The long loose-flying sleeves flapped curiously as if there were no arms within them. The wide garment spread along the ground, but we had no sight of legs or feet, and I admit I felt uneasy at the thought that if we caught this unknown, it might prove to have no face.We ran in pursuit, but I was careful not to outstrip Aire, lest the thing should turn and fell us separately. In consequence, we barely maintained our distance, and had the mortification of seeing the black robe merge with the night among the sycamores of the park.“Hear that?”“It’s jumped into the stream.”“Or fallen in.”A little way within the park we found the steep-sided channel of the brook which flowed across the farm of the sisters Delambre, later on passed beneath the elaborated bridge, and eventually joined Aidenn Water. The bank at this point was five or six feet high.“What next?”Aire slid and floundered down to the edge of the rivulet which whispered along the channel.“Can’t tell for certain, but I believe it went toward the bridge.”I got down beside him, and we sped between the banks, which gradually lifted above us. Dry land was scarce, and we did a deal of splashing in the brook, but by the aid of my torch I seemed to see ahead muddy traces of other splashing before ours. A wild rose growing on the edge of the water had been trampled down.A couple of short turns in the course of the brook brought us to the stone bridge, a structure magnificently heavy in the body, but leaving a semicircular arch only about eighteen inches high for the passage of water.“It’s a blind alley. No man—or woman—could have gone through there. There isn’t room for a good-sized dog.”I bent down and shot the light underneath; there was nothing but water there.“Well—”“Up the bank, did it go?”I flashed the torch up and down both sides of us. On the one hand was a miniature precipice more than ten feet high, on the other was a wall of earth nearly vertical, thickly grown with ivy-leaved toad-flax showing no sign that anything larger than a mite had travelled over it.“I never—” Aire began.I could not repress a tremor when he suddenly looked skyward, showing that the spell of magic could exist in his bones. I turned my gaze up, too, as if I really expected to see a black-robed figure floating over the ruined summer-house or receding into the depths of the night sky. But it was eastward that Aire was looking, and while we stared, some solitary winged form flapped across the narrow surface of the moon.“We’re beaten,” said Aire.“Let’s get out of here. I need a tonic.”“Shall we go back?”“No; I’ll give you a leg up, and you reach down a hand to me.”In this wise we crawled up the toad-flax, and a minute later our wet feet were taking us back toward the cypress grove again. I kept my light running along the ground, though my hope was feeble of discovering any traces of the unknown. But when we had reached the grove itself, Aire darted forward with a chortling cry.No need to tell me what the white thing was that he picked up and held in a trembling hand. He tried to decipher it in the moonlight before my torch made the letters clear:LoOk OUT FoR mE ToNIGhT PARSON LOLLYThere was singularly little reaction on the part of anyone; I think most of the minds in the House are drugged with dangers and alarums.“But, I say,” protested Charlton Oxford. “The beastly placard says to-night, y’know.”“Can you use a pistol?” asked Crofts.“Yes, but—”“You can have mine, then. As for me, I’m going to sleep with one ear and one eye open, and shan’t be surprised at anything, including being murdered.”Alberta rang for someone to remove the coffee-cups. “And nobody must whisper a word of it to the servants, must they, Crofts?”“Of course not.”Blenkinson himself entered, slipped about the room with deferential soft-footedness, collected the débris, and carried it out on two trays. I noticed his eyes once or twice sliding into their corners while he stole an inscrutable look at Miss Lebetwood.“Extraordinary staff of servants you have,” remarked Aire, as soon as the butler had departed.“I’m paying double wages,” said Crofts shortly.“I agree with Stephen,” declared Belvoir. “And I don’t think wages alone cut much figure.”“Tell them, Crofts,” said Alberta.Her husband looked a bit abashed, but having encountered the steady beam of her eye, growled, “Blenkinson.”“Elucidate,” I said.“Blest if I know,” confessed Crofts. “But there’s the fact. The fellow’s a perfect lord among the community, and somehow he’s induced the lot to believe that he’s able to protect ’em. I don’t know his method. He just assured me I could depend on him.”Silence fell, in which the clock was audible, and I noticed that it was a quarter to ten.Alberta yawned and made a gesture of weariness. “What do you say to ten o’clock bed, people?”Assent was unanimous.Those gate-house towers that nod to me across the lawn—may they harbour the Parson? Those locked cellars that no one has seen for years. Who or what may not be down there? There are persons unaccounted for in the Vale. And where now is the drowning-pit? In olden days this castle must have had one. Discovering it, would I know more about the Parson, or about the perfidious tree, or about the cat’s claw?Some of these questions I may be able to answer, if—Yes, just now, at eleven minutes to twelve, I tossed a sixpence to decide. It fell spinning on the table, wobbled provokingly, and said, “Go forth.”Let the Parson beware! If I catch him—or her—to-night!Five minutes to twelve.Great God, through my open window—Some woman’s voice, very faint. . . . I am not sure whose. It is not Paula Lebetwood’s.It called “Sean, poor Sean!” many times, and died away.
I chanced upon an alternative road, with more variety in its prospects, to take me back to the mouth of the Vale, omitting New Aidenn entirely and saving a third of my journey. Even on this short-cut southward, I found daylight part drawn into evening when I reached the top of the vast hill called the Smatcher, shaped like a loaf of bread, and began to descend through its larches to the entrance of the Vale. Gleams of sun walked from peak to peak while violet dusk deepened along the skirts of the hills. On the highway below me I perceived a human figure trudging toward the branch road to the House.
I straightway recognized that sawed-off, machine-like form, and the peculiar drawing-up of the shoulder with each step. Doctor Aire was preceding me through the twilight.
I hailed him and joined him. “I thought the others might pick you up.”
“Not returned yet, I dare say. Didn’t call for me, at any rate. So I’m getting my fortnightly exercise.” He looked up at me quizzically. “You found everything satisfactory?”
“Damnably the reverse. Why, there never was a right arm on that effigy. Do you know, Doctor, I believe Maryvale has the mission in life of plaguing me!”
“Not you alone, let me assure you. Other persons are agog over his cryptic remarks. I, for instance.”
“You? Oh, no.”
“Yes. You didn’t hear what he told the Pendletons and me this morning at breakfast? He said that Parson Lolly is dead.”
“Parson Lolly dead! That was fudge.”
“On the contrary, he assured us with perfect gravity that the Parson died last night.”
“He was pulling your leg.”
“Not a bit of it. I know Maryvale that well, anyhow.”
“Give it your own name, then; I’d call it empty talk.”
Aire twitched around at me in a surprised way. “Never,” he declared. “Sure, Bannerlee, you must realize by this time that there’s always something behind what Maryvale says. He doesn’t merely vaporize.”
We were approaching the temporary bridge. “I wish you’d tell me exactly what you think of Maryvale, Doctor. I confess that to me there’s something uncanny about the man. If he’s mad, he ought not to be loose among us, and if not—”
“If not?” Aire cocked his head to hear.
“—if not, he’s up to some subtle game.”
“Oho, you think so?”
“What else, for heaven’s sake?”
He waited to cross the bridge before he answered. “No, that’s not my reading of Maryvale. I look on him as a man wrestling with an idea, the idea of Parson Lolly.”
“And still I don’t get hold of your meaning.”
“It’s this way. Gilbert Maryvale has come to Aidenn Vale before. Each time, certainly, a tradition of the countryside, a popular half-belief, has been mentioned, more often discussed with some fullness. It is, to say the minimum, a fable of much piquancy, a legend above the average in interest, this tradition of the goblin-parson—is it not?”
“Granted, granted.”
“Haven’t you often wished that fairy-tales were true? Maryvale has almost convinced himself to believe in Parson Lolly. His mind hasn’t conquered the idea, seems to be more or less at the mercy of it. But sometimes he rebels. Now and then he can see the absurdity as well as you or I; he can even laugh at the Parson. But again he will fall into perplexity, confusion, shame, fear over the idea. And he is capable, under suggestion or after shock, of getting into the throes, quite possessed with the reality of the unreal, virtually a maniac if you like that word. At these times he makes the supreme surrender one is capable of making to ideas.”
“What is that?”
“Why, heactson them. Remember his carrying that revolver up the Vale.”
“Thanks, I remember well enough.” We went on in silence a little way, and then I said quickly, “But that doesn’t explain everything. Madmen are consistent; that’s why they’re mad. But Maryvale tells me that someone of the house of Kay did this murder, and sends me over to Old Aidenn to find out about that missing arm, and—”
“Of course he is not consistent; that’s why he isnotmad, as you persist in thinking. He is very much mixed, but his ideas don’t fit into a complete system. I shall be sorry when they do, and I think the sooner he leaves the Vale the better.”
“Why don’t you suggest it?”
“I have, to Salt. However, the Superintendent doesn’t want our group to be dissolved for a few days yet. I’d have Maryvale out of here in a jiffy, though, if I felt his mental condition were critical, not simply fluctuating, for there’s not the remotest possibility of his being implicated in Cosgrove’s death.”
“Let me see, where was he, just?”
“Sitting with me on the steps of the summer-house the whole time during which the murder could have happened. But if he is shielded from any further mental concussion, I suppose there’s no harm in his staying on here a while longer. Besides, you know, he will have it that the Parson is dead.”
In the thickening gloom I could make out no expression on the face of the man keeping step beside me. I spoke cautiously.
“I take it, then, Doctor, that you don’t think Maryvale may have a hand in the manifestations of the Parson?”
He laughed. “Rather not! How could he?”
“I wish I could tell you. But in any case I suppose—I devoutly hope, anyhow—that the manifestations are over, and the explanations will be in order henceforth.”
“I second you willingly.”
We went on. I stumbled against a stone in the roadway. “Doctor, you’ve heard about the man I encountered the night I came here; I mean the one with the umbrella.”
“Yes, Salt asked my opinion about that chap.”
“What opinion could you have?”
“Question of sanity again.”
“What do you think?”
“Hopelessly sane, I should say. You didn’t take him for crazed, did you?”
“No; I suppose his talk was fabricated.”
“From Salt’s account, I judged it was—most of it, anyhow.”
“Which part do you exempt?”
“Well, wasn’t there an urgent warning about calling off the dogs, and a reference to golden-haired woman? Believe me, Bannerlee, this Mac-whatever-his-name-was meant what he said just then.”
“Perhaps. But what I wanted to tell you, Doctor, was that I can’t help connecting Maryvale with that man. The physical differences in their appearance aren’t so great that they couldn’t be one and the same, what with a false beard stuck on crooked, and the rest of it. It’s unlikely, of course, but still—”
“Tut! it’s impossible.”
“You don’t know. You weren’t here that night.”
“Trust Salt. He has ascertained beyond a shade of doubt that Maryvale and the rest of the party were in the House the whole evening. The only possibility is that one of the servantsmighthave gone out looking that way, and you know how likely that is.”
I gave a shrug to dismiss the whole question as insoluble. “I thank my stars I wasn’t born a detective.”
“Curious how dark the House is,” said Aire. “So close to dinner, too.”
The building had been in sight for a time, but only as a black beast crouching with closed eyes on the lawn. Now we were some hundred yards or so distant, but had still to go through the gate-house archway if we followed the westward trend of the drive.
I said, “I suppose our friends haven’t appeared. I’d make my outing as long as possible, too, having to return at last to this devil’s playground.”
We passed underneath the arch, crossed the lawn.
“Even the kitchens looked dark from down below. Can’t tell about them from this side, though. I certainly expected the motorists to be back by this time; didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It looks like a tomb.”
I was aware that Aire had made a swift movement; then I saw him stock still, with his hand part way to his lips in a gesture of surprise.
“No lights, no. But there’s someone in the conservatory.”
“What!”
“I saw the gleam of a face at the window of the tower. Just a white blotch. See that?”
“Right‑o.”
We made across the lawn at a run, entered the Hall of the Moth by the unfastened french window, and encountered two figures emerging from the conservatory.
“I’m so glad you’ve come!”
“Miss Lebetwood!”
“Yes, it’s Millicent and I. Don’t—don’t be afraid,” she added with a little, unsteady laugh.
“Are you alone? Is there something the matter with the lights?”
“The lights are all right. Yes, we’re alone.”
Aire demanded, “Aren’t the servants here?”
“They’re all here, I guess. I meant our people, you know. They brought us to the bridge, so we could come up and have an hour or two of rest before dinner. They didn’t want to come in yet; so they drove on again.”
“But why didn’t you switch on the lights?” Aire queried. “With all deference to your courage, I should think you would have felt easier in your minds—”
“We didn’t dare turn on the light,” said Miss Lebetwood.
Aire and I barked astonishment.
Miss Mertoun, who had been clinging to the American girl’s arm, said, “Do go on, Paula. Tell them what we saw.”
“It’s very little after all,” said Miss Lebetwood. “We had driven down to the Wye Valley, had tea, and come back again by five-thirty, and someone suggested going north to Ludlow before returning to the House. But Millicent and I said we’d rather be excused; so one car waited on the main road while the other brought us up and dropped us at the bridge. We walked very slowly, and it wasn’t until about half an hour ago that we reached the House. It was pretty dark, you know, even then, but light from one or two kitchen windows showed in the garden; so we weren’t scared at all.”
“Ah,” remarked Aire. “You didn’t come by the drive, then?”
“Oh, no, it was too dull for us. We came round through the grove under Whimble and across the lawn south of the House to the cat-head door. The door wasn’t latched, and we simply walked into the vestibule, and we would have gone straight upstairs, but Millicent remembered a book she had left in the Hall of the Moth. So she went in there to get it, and I waited by the steps, but a moment later I heard her give a small scream. I ran in—”
“What had you seen, Miss Mertoun?” asked Aire, turning to the English girl.
“Something looked in the window. Paula saw it, too.”
“ ‘Something’ is a trifle vague, isn’t it?”
“But we don’t know what it was.”
“Well, what was its shape, and how was it dressed?”
“It was as tall as a man, maybe taller,” said Miss Lebetwood, “and it was wrapped in a long black robe from the top of its—head to the ground.”
“That’s the creature Oxford and I saw on the lawn that first night,” I exclaimed.
Aire asked, “What was its face like?”
Miss Lebetwood spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “It didn’t have any face.”
Aire actually staggered back a step, and I reached out for something to support me, but encountering nothing, concluded to stand upright.
I found my voice. “You mean you couldn’t see any.”
“On the contrary, I was quite near the window—that one by the armoury door. Millicent had left her book on the cabinet there, and had reached the place before she saw the shape, and I naturally went to her side. We had all the light there was, and would have seen a face if there had been any there.”
Stricken by a memory, I put my hand on Aire’s arm. “Remember, Doctor, how Maryvale put no face in his portrait?”
He ignored me, and said, “What then?”
“We were petrified, of course. It seemed to peer in, if you can understand, even without a face. The whole attitude of the thing was inquiring, curious. And then perhaps it saw us, for suddenly it twisted and hurried away.”
“Why didn’t you get the servants?” I put in.
“Things were bad enough without that.”
“What shall we do, Bannerlee?”
“Go after it, don’t you think?”
“Right. You have a torch, haven’t you?”
“Yes; I’ll fetch it. You stay here to guard the womenfolk.”
I made dizzy haste up the spiral stairs and down again, and found the three outside the french window where the intruder had stood. Aire was lighting matches in search of footprints, but as had been predicted, vainly. We agreed that it would be best for the two girls to return to the conservatory and keep watch through the windows, having care to remain invisible. If anything untoward happened, they were to signal us by switching on the light, at the same time ringing for the servants if danger was evident.
Aire and I went side by side over the lawn toward the small solitary copse. First one of us flashed the light along the sward while the other tried to penetrate the darkness ahead; then we reversed duties. As for footprints, if there were any they were exceedingly light and vague, and singularly small, but we could not even agree there was a definite trail.
The distance from the House to the cypresses was over two hundred feet, and before we had covered the distance the Vale was filled with a soft illumination, as if twilight had re-begun. On our right, the moon was rising over Whimble, a crescent moon glowing like white-hot metal. Then Aire, who had been looking ahead, drew up.
“Something’s among the trees for sure.”
While he spoke I saw movement underneath the horizontal branches, and that queer, black-robed, conic figure—unmistakably the same I had seen on the evening of my arrival—swiftened from the shelter of the cypresses toward the expansive darkness of the park where the summer-house stood. The long loose-flying sleeves flapped curiously as if there were no arms within them. The wide garment spread along the ground, but we had no sight of legs or feet, and I admit I felt uneasy at the thought that if we caught this unknown, it might prove to have no face.
We ran in pursuit, but I was careful not to outstrip Aire, lest the thing should turn and fell us separately. In consequence, we barely maintained our distance, and had the mortification of seeing the black robe merge with the night among the sycamores of the park.
“Hear that?”
“It’s jumped into the stream.”
“Or fallen in.”
A little way within the park we found the steep-sided channel of the brook which flowed across the farm of the sisters Delambre, later on passed beneath the elaborated bridge, and eventually joined Aidenn Water. The bank at this point was five or six feet high.
“What next?”
Aire slid and floundered down to the edge of the rivulet which whispered along the channel.
“Can’t tell for certain, but I believe it went toward the bridge.”
I got down beside him, and we sped between the banks, which gradually lifted above us. Dry land was scarce, and we did a deal of splashing in the brook, but by the aid of my torch I seemed to see ahead muddy traces of other splashing before ours. A wild rose growing on the edge of the water had been trampled down.
A couple of short turns in the course of the brook brought us to the stone bridge, a structure magnificently heavy in the body, but leaving a semicircular arch only about eighteen inches high for the passage of water.
“It’s a blind alley. No man—or woman—could have gone through there. There isn’t room for a good-sized dog.”
I bent down and shot the light underneath; there was nothing but water there.
“Well—”
“Up the bank, did it go?”
I flashed the torch up and down both sides of us. On the one hand was a miniature precipice more than ten feet high, on the other was a wall of earth nearly vertical, thickly grown with ivy-leaved toad-flax showing no sign that anything larger than a mite had travelled over it.
“I never—” Aire began.
I could not repress a tremor when he suddenly looked skyward, showing that the spell of magic could exist in his bones. I turned my gaze up, too, as if I really expected to see a black-robed figure floating over the ruined summer-house or receding into the depths of the night sky. But it was eastward that Aire was looking, and while we stared, some solitary winged form flapped across the narrow surface of the moon.
“We’re beaten,” said Aire.
“Let’s get out of here. I need a tonic.”
“Shall we go back?”
“No; I’ll give you a leg up, and you reach down a hand to me.”
In this wise we crawled up the toad-flax, and a minute later our wet feet were taking us back toward the cypress grove again. I kept my light running along the ground, though my hope was feeble of discovering any traces of the unknown. But when we had reached the grove itself, Aire darted forward with a chortling cry.
No need to tell me what the white thing was that he picked up and held in a trembling hand. He tried to decipher it in the moonlight before my torch made the letters clear:
LoOk OUT FoR mE ToNIGhT PARSON LOLLY
LoOk OUT FoR mE ToNIGhT PARSON LOLLY
There was singularly little reaction on the part of anyone; I think most of the minds in the House are drugged with dangers and alarums.
“But, I say,” protested Charlton Oxford. “The beastly placard says to-night, y’know.”
“Can you use a pistol?” asked Crofts.
“Yes, but—”
“You can have mine, then. As for me, I’m going to sleep with one ear and one eye open, and shan’t be surprised at anything, including being murdered.”
Alberta rang for someone to remove the coffee-cups. “And nobody must whisper a word of it to the servants, must they, Crofts?”
“Of course not.”
Blenkinson himself entered, slipped about the room with deferential soft-footedness, collected the débris, and carried it out on two trays. I noticed his eyes once or twice sliding into their corners while he stole an inscrutable look at Miss Lebetwood.
“Extraordinary staff of servants you have,” remarked Aire, as soon as the butler had departed.
“I’m paying double wages,” said Crofts shortly.
“I agree with Stephen,” declared Belvoir. “And I don’t think wages alone cut much figure.”
“Tell them, Crofts,” said Alberta.
Her husband looked a bit abashed, but having encountered the steady beam of her eye, growled, “Blenkinson.”
“Elucidate,” I said.
“Blest if I know,” confessed Crofts. “But there’s the fact. The fellow’s a perfect lord among the community, and somehow he’s induced the lot to believe that he’s able to protect ’em. I don’t know his method. He just assured me I could depend on him.”
Silence fell, in which the clock was audible, and I noticed that it was a quarter to ten.
Alberta yawned and made a gesture of weariness. “What do you say to ten o’clock bed, people?”
Assent was unanimous.
Those gate-house towers that nod to me across the lawn—may they harbour the Parson? Those locked cellars that no one has seen for years. Who or what may not be down there? There are persons unaccounted for in the Vale. And where now is the drowning-pit? In olden days this castle must have had one. Discovering it, would I know more about the Parson, or about the perfidious tree, or about the cat’s claw?
Some of these questions I may be able to answer, if—
Yes, just now, at eleven minutes to twelve, I tossed a sixpence to decide. It fell spinning on the table, wobbled provokingly, and said, “Go forth.”
Let the Parson beware! If I catch him—or her—to-night!
Five minutes to twelve.
Great God, through my open window—
Some woman’s voice, very faint. . . . I am not sure whose. It is not Paula Lebetwood’s.
It called “Sean, poor Sean!” many times, and died away.