Three John Silence Stories
Page 30
see his face, but hisattitude was plainly one of resolution, of muscles and mind ready forvigorous action. We were within ten feet of the blackened circle whenthe smoke of a sudden ceased to rise, and vanished. The tail of thecolumn disappeared in the air above, and at the same instant it seemedto me that the sensation of heat passed from my face, and the motion ofthe wind was gone. The calm spirit of the fresh October day resumedcommand.
Side by side we advanced and examined the place. The grass wassmouldering, the ground still hot. The circle of burned earth was a footto a foot and a half in diameter. It looked like an ordinary picnicfireplace. I bent down cautiously to look, but in a second I sprang backwith an involuntary cry of alarm, for, as the doctor stamped on theashes to prevent them spreading, a sound of hissing rose from the spotas though he had kicked a living creature. This hissing was faintlyaudible in the air. It moved past us, away towards the thicker portionof the wood in the direction of our field, and in a second Dr. Silencehad left the fire and started in pursuit.
And then began the most extraordinary hunt of invisibility I can everconceive.
He went fast even at the beginning, and, of course, it was perfectlyobvious that he was following something. To judge by the poise of hishead he kept his eyes steadily at a certain level--just above the heightof a man--and the consequence was he stumbled a good deal over theroughness of the ground. The hissing sound had stopped. There was nosound of any kind, and what he saw to follow was utterly beyond me. Ionly know, that in mortal dread of being left behind, and with a bitingcuriosity to see whatever there was to be seen, I followed as quickly asI could, and even then barely succeeded in keeping up with him.
And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the Colonel's stories ranthrough my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was onlyheld in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure before me.For John Silence at work inspired me with a kind of awe. He looked sodiminutive among these giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that hispurpose and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he wasdignified. The fancy that we were playing some queer, exaggerated gametogether met the fact that we were two men dancing upon the brink ofsome possible tragedy, and the mingling of the two emotions in my mindwas both grotesque and terrifying.
He never turned in his mad chase, but pushed rapidly on, while I pantedafter him like a figure in some unreasoning nightmare. And, as I ran, itcame upon me that he had been aware all the time, in his quiet, internalway, of many things that he had kept for his own secret consideration;he had been watching, waiting, planning from the very moment we enteredthe shade of the wood. By some inner, concentrated process of mind,dynamic if not actually magical, he had been in direct contact with thesource of the whole adventure, the very essence of the real mystery. Andnow the forces were moving to a climax. Something was about to happen,something important, something possibly dreadful. Every nerve, everysense, every significant gesture of the plunging figure before meproclaimed the fact just as surely as the skies, the winds, and the faceof the earth tell the birds the time to migrate and warn the animalsthat danger lurks and they must move.
In a few moments we reached the foot of the mound and entered thetangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field.Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. Therewere brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless treetrunks closing up to make a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silencenever seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, jumping, dodging,ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail.Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up again,I saw him ahead of me, still forcing a way like a dog after its quarry.And sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed--human pointing itwas, psychic pointing, and each time he stopped to point I heard thatfaint high hissing in the air beyond us. The instinct of an infallibledowser possessed him, and he made no mistakes.
At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and found that we stood atthe edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his accountthe night before. It was long and narrow, filled with dark brown water,in which the trees were dimly reflected. Not a ripple stirred itssurface.
"Watch!" he cried out, as I came up. "It's going to cross. It's boundto betray itself. The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see thedirection."
And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of a water-spider,shot swiftly across the shiny surface; there was a ghost of steam in theair above; and immediately I became aware of an odour of burning.
Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that made me think oflightning. I began to shake all over.
"Quick!" he cried with excitement, "to the trail again! We must runaround. It's going to the house!"
The alarm in his voice quite terrified me. Without a false step I dashedround the slippery banks and dived again at his heels into the sea ofbushes and tree trunks. We were now in the thick of the very dense beltthat ran around the outer edge of the plantation, and the field wasnear; yet so dark was the tangle that it was some time before the firstshafts of white sunlight became visible. The doctor now ran in zigzags.He was following something that dodged and doubled quite wonderfully,yet had begun, I fancied, to move more slowly than before.
"Quick!" he cried. "In the light we shall lose it!"
I still saw nothing, heard nothing, caught no suggestion of a trail; yetthis man, guided by some interior divining that seemed infallible, madeno false turns, though how he failed to crash headlong into the treeshas remained a mystery to me ever since. And then, with a sudden rush,we found ourselves on the skirts of the wood with the open field lyingin bright sunshine before our eyes.
"Too late!" I heard him cry, a note of anguish in his voice. "It'sout--and, by God, it's making for the house!"
I saw the Colonel standing in the field with his dogs where we had lefthim. He was bending double, peering into the wood where he heard usrunning, and he straightened up like a bent whip released. John Silencedashed passed, calling him to follow.
"We shall lose the trail in the light," I heard him cry as he ran. "Butquick! We may yet get there in time!"
That wild rush across the open field, with the dogs at our heels,leaping and barking, and the elderly Colonel behind us running as thoughfor his life, shall I ever forget it? Though I had only vague ideas ofthe meaning of it all, I put my best foot forward, and, being theyoungest of the three, I reached the house an easy first. I drew up,panting, and turned to wait for the others. But, as I turned, somethingmoving a little distance away caught my eye, and in that moment I swearI experienced the most overwhelming and singular shock of surprise andterror I have ever known, or can conceive as possible.
For the front door was open, and the waist of the house being narrow, Icould see through the hall into the dining-room beyond, and so out on tothe back lawn, and there I saw no less a sight than the figure of MissWragge--running. Even at that distance it was plain that she had seenme, and was coming fast towards me, running with the frantic gait of aterror-stricken woman. She had recovered the use of her legs.
Her face was a livid grey, as of death itself, but the generalexpression was one of laughter, for her mouth was gaping, and her eyes,always bright, shone with the light of a wild merriment that seemed themerriment of a child, yet was singularly ghastly. And that very second,as she fled past me into her brother's arms behind, I smelt again mostunmistakably the odour of burning, and to this day the smell of smokeand fire can come very near to turning me sick with the memory of what Ihad seen.
Fast on her heels, too, came the terrified attendant, more mistress ofherself, and able to speak--which the old lady could not do--but with aface almost, if not quite, as fearful.
"We were down by the bushes in the sun,"--she gasped and screamed inreply to Colonel Wragge's distracted questionings,--"I was wheeling thechair as usual when she shrieked and leaped--I don't know exactly--I wastoo frightened to see--Oh, my God! she jumped clean out of thechair--_and ran_! There was a b
last of hot air from the wood, and shehid her face and jumped. She didn't make a sound--she didn't cry out, ormake a sound. She just ran."
But the nightmare horror of it all reached the breaking point a fewminutes later, and while I was still standing in the hall temporarilybereft of speech and movement; for while the doctor, the Colonel and theattendant were half-way up the staircase, helping the fainting woman tothe privacy of her room, and all in a confused group of dark figures,there sounded a voice behind me, and I turned to see the butler, hisface dripping with perspiration, his eyes starting out of his head.
"The laundry's on fire!" he cried; "the laundry building's a-caught!"
I remember his odd expression "a-caught," and wanting to laugh, butfinding my face rigid and inflexible.
"The devil's about again, s'help me Gawd!" he