Fighters of Fear

by Mike Ashley

  His knowledge was unique and prodigious. When I visited his place at Hampstead I found a room lined from floor to ceiling with books bearing on the subject, and another had been turned into a veritable museum of charms, amulets, mascots, and other adjuncts of the magical arts.

  Mrs. Carwell, a plump, fair little woman with merry blue eyes and a rosy complexion, threw up her hands in mock dismay when she heard that I was the painter of “The Werwolf.”

  “If only you played golf or grew chrysanthemums, or did something equally commonplace, how much better pleased I should be to see you!” she said, giving me a very gracious handshake nevertheless. “Peter takes far too much interest in these uncomfortable subjects. You won’t encourage him, will you?”

  “It’s a good thing my wife has common-sense enough for both of us, isn’t it?” he asked, giving her an affectionate pat on the shoulder.

  I couldn’t help thinking what a comical contrast they made, and yet how happy and contented they looked, as they stood there smiling indulgently and affectionately at each other.

  I had known him some time before I had my first experience of the practical use to which he occasionally put his knowledge.

  We were walking up to Hampstead Heath one evening in July, when the quiet of the side street up which we were strolling was suddenly broken by the distant clanging of a bell.

  Carwell stopped in the middle of a discourse on Michael Scot, the famous wizard of the thirteenth century, and his delvings into Arabian magic.

  “That’s the fire-engine,” he said. “I wonder—”

  His wonder was abruptly cut short by an agitated voice. It came from a man who shot from a large iron gate on our right with dramatic suddenness. He was short, stout, and elderly, and his sparse grey hair was standing almost upright with excitement.

  “Have you heard or seen anything of the fire-engine—why, Carwell!”

  “Masterman!” responded Carwell with equal surprise. “I’d no idea you lived in this neighbourhood!”

  “I shan’t much longer! I shan’t live anywhere if this goes on! I’m being burnt out of house and home. Seven outbreaks in four days—my nerves won’t stand it! Nobody’s would. Ah, here they are at last!” as a sound of shouting mingled with incessant clanging came from the end of the street.

  The engine, followed by the usual train of errand-boys, nursemaids, and shrieking children, drew up opposite us, and the firemen were in the road and hauling out serpentine lengths of tubing in less time than it took Carwell to introduce me to his agitated friend.

  “Don’t go away. I’m at my wits’ end, and should be glad to know what you think of it, Carwell,” he said, as he turned to a tall man—evidently the Chief—who was gloomily regarding him from the edge of the pavement. “It’s no use glaring at me like that, Henderson! You seem to think I’m indulging in a silly practical joke—”

  “Well, if you are, it’s one that’ll cost you pretty dear, sir—that’s all I got to say,” Henderson curtly observed. “Seven calls in four days! Where’s it broke out this time?”

  “I should think it was pretty evident,” said Masterman, pointing to a window on the ground floor of the house to our right, from which smoke was issuing in a thin cloud.

  “Cost me pretty dear!” he went on in an angry aside to us. “It will ruin me if there’s much more of it. Those are gold damask curtains from Cairo, for which I paid the Lord knows what a pair, that are being reduced to charred rags now! These fool officials seem to think I’m burning my place piecemeal simply for the satisfaction of seeing how smartly they can turn out! Come in, both of you, won’t you? We can’t talk in front of these gaping idiots!”—with a furious glance at the shrilly ejaculating crowd.

  We followed the angrily snorting figure through the gate and up the path of an untidy garden. The flower-beds had been trampled into heaps of tangled stalks and leaves, and the lawn showed marks of ruthless feet in all directions.

  Before we reached the door two of the firemen jumped through the window on to the grass and flung down a smouldering mass of material, on which the hose at once began to play.

  “Why the deuce didn’t the silly old josser pull ’em down hisself?” I heard one growl to the other as I passed. “There ain’t been no real body in any o’ these last attacks. I hope the Chief’ll give him a bit of ’is mind this time—keeping us on the ’op like this!”

  “Go in; I’ll be with you in a minute,” said Masterman, opening the door. “I must just see the extent of the damage and have another word with Henderson. Go into the dining-room at the end there—last door on the left,” he called over his shoulder as he bustled down the steps again.

  I gave a gasp of surprise as we entered the room. The level rays of the setting sun filled it with a glow that brought into glittering prominence a wealth of treasures that would have graced a royal palace or—more fitly—a national museum. Busts, statuary, an exquisite Adams bookcase, a Chippendale sideboard, a Queen Anne “day-bed,” Jacobean chairs, were all crowded together in hopeless and incongruous confusion. A priceless “pilgrim” table heaped with books and papers ran down one side of the room. A French ormolu clock ticked on the mantelpiece cheek by jowl with some vases that made my mouth water, they were such exquisite specimens of their kind. And over everything lay a thick veil of dust.

  “Masterman is a bachelor, I believe,” said Carwell—superfluously in the presence of that dust!—as he removed a length of gold-encrusted embroidery from a big claw-fooled chair before he sat down. “He is a tea merchant—I met him first in that capacity—but business, though he’s keen and capable enough at it, is not his ruling passion. In his ‘off’ hours he is an enthusiastic student of Grecian and Roman art, an antiquarian of sorts, and an insatiable collector of old furniture.”

  “It’s a pity his taste in arrangement isn’t equal to his taste in acquirement,’’ I said testily. “Everything in this room shouts crude abuse at everything else. Look at those vases next that clock! They are by Teucer himself, I really believe—according to Pliny, the most famous authority of his day. They are so exquisite and rare that they ought to be under glass in a museum—not at the mercy of a careless housemaid.”

  “What are they?”

  “Specimens of the best period of toreutic art—perfect—priceless! We have never been able to touch the Greeks as repoussé workers,” I said, reverently wiping them with my handkerchief. “Come and look at this; it’s Hercules at work in his forge. See the loving finish of every detail! Each nail stands out as if you could pick it up.”

  “I like this better,” answered Carwell, stooping and looking intently at something on the hearth.

  I also bent to examine a brass tripod that stood about three feet high. Figures of Vestal virgins linked hands in a ceremonial dance on the outside of the deep, bell-shaped bowl that rested on three beautifully curved and decorated supports. The inside of the bowl was scarred and rough, but all the rest was without blemish.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s one of the earlier Roman vessels sacred to Vesta, isn’t it? I wonder how many domestic sacrificial fires that has held?” Carwell mused. “Ah, here you are, Masterman!” as the door opened stormily. “Now tell us what all this about ‘seven outbreaks in four days’ means. It sounds mysterious—unless you’ve upset one of your servants and she’s taking this spiteful way of paying you out.”

  “No servant has had a hand in this unless she’s in league with the devil!” answered Masterman emphatically. “It’s too clever for any mere female brain to hatch out. Why, yesterday it broke out in my bedroom when no one but myself was upstairs.”

  “Let’s have the narrative in orderly fashion,” interrupted Carwell. “Take your time and don’t miss anything out. We’d light up if you don’t mind. A pipe will keep Wilton here from bursting out into irrelevant raptures over your toreutic treasures.”

  “Ah, you understand them, do you?” he turned to me with a look of gratification. “That tripod is my latest acquisition—gorgeo
us isn’t it? Oh! all right, Carwell; don’t get impatient. One so seldom meets a kindred spirit. Now to begin at the beginning, as you say. Well, it was on Tuesday last—just four days ago—that a small fire broke out in this room. Alice, the housemaid, came in during the afternoon and found a rug in front of tint sideboard smouldering. Instead of gathering it together and beating it out she ran in to the kitchen for water, and when she came back the flames had burst out and were flickering up the legs of the sideboard. She and the cook lost their heads and screamed, but the boy who helps in the kitchen had the sense to ring up the fire station. It was out, however, before the men came—the women say they smothered it with their wet cloths—but I’ll let the boy put ’em up to it, or did it himself if the truth were known. Unfortunately it had had time to do some damage—look at the polish on that cupboard door! It will take heaven knows how long to get it right again.”

  He sighed heavily and mopped his hot face with a handkerchief that looked like a cushion cover.” Funny how a man with such immaculate taste in artistic masterpieces could go so wrong in little details like that, I reflected. But it often is so.

  “The next outbreak was in the kitchen,” he resumed. “A heap of clothes ready for the laundry broke spontaneously into flames. The servants were upstairs at the time, and when they came down the clothes and a wooden chair were blazing fiercely. The room opposite this was the scene of the next holocaust—another rug, but luckily not a particularly valuable one. Of course I suspected the women—how could I help it? They are infernally careless with their cleaning utensils—paraffin rags and oil and all sorts of inflammable stuff. Indeed, I’ve forbidden them to do any more cleaning than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Of course you’re insured?” I broke in. “It would be madness—”

  “It certainly would, and though I’m a good many things I shouldn’t be, I’m not mad. But what insurance company would cover the worth of these?” He waved his hand expressively round the room. “I’ve been meaning to have a special fool-proof, fire-proof, damp-proof place built for them for years, but somehow I can’t make a start. As you know, if you know anything about such things, some of them are absolutely priceless. That cylix there—it beats the one in Berlin that the German collectors brag so insufferably about into a cocked hat! And those vases by Teucer—they’re unique—irreplaceable! Lord knows I have drilled it into those fool women often enough, and they have learnt to keep their dusters, at least, off ’em. . . . Where was I? Oh. I know! It was the fourth outbreak that convinced me that the fires were not due to carelessness, for that happened yesterday morning when I was dressing and both the servants were downstairs. While I was shaving the head-curtains of my bed suddenly flared up, and before I could get any water the whole contraption was on fire. Luckily there was nothing that mattered much up there to spoil, but if there had been it would have been ruined, for the firemen drenched everything. They were furious because I had dared them to bring the hose into the house unless it was absolutely necessary. Of all the pig-headed—”

  Carwell raised a protesting hand.

  “If you let yourself go on that subject we shall be here till midnight!”

  “All right—but if you knew what I’ve been through you’d sympathise. Well, to get on with it. Another fire broke out in the kitchen last night—another on the first floor landing at six o’clock this morning—and the last you have just witnessed. I discovered it half an hour ago. No one had been in the room since ten this morning, so Alice assures me. Now, do you wonder that I say the devil must be at the bottom of it? Certainly nothing human can be, and as I know you specialise in ghosts and elementals and suchlike mysterious things, I felt when you turned up so auspiciously just now that it was like an answer to prayer!”

  He lay back in his chair and fanned himself vigorously with the appalling handkerchief.

  Carwell laughed, then sent his eyes questing slowly round the room.

  “It began in here, you say?”

  “With a smouldering rug,” affirmed Masterman.

  “Are the attacks increasing, or decreasing, in intensity do you think?”

  “Decreasing, I should say. The one in my room was undoubtedly the worst. Henderson told me pretty plainly just now that if I’d ‘just scrunched them curtains up in my ’ands’ when I first noticed the smoke I could have put it out quite easily. ‘There was nobody in it,’ he declared contemptuously. I’ve no doubt I could—and should—have done if it had been a solitary instance, but these repeated shocks have so shaken my nerves that I hardly know what I’m doing half the time.”

  The Borderland Expert did not appear to be listening; his glance had fastened on the tripod, and the golden-red flame of absorbed interest had suddenly kindled behind the grey of his eyes.

  “When did you say you got that?”

  “Last month. I picked it up outside Rome in a peasant’s cottage. Gave five pounds for it.”

  “Five pounds!” I ejaculated enviously. “You could get five hundred any day.”

  “If I wanted to sell it, but I don’t! What of it, Carwell? What has it got to do with—what are you doing?”

  He was scraping an inquisitive finger nail on the inside of the bowl.

  “Can we have Alice in?” he asked, after a short scrutiny of the result.

  “You’ll get nothing out of Alice!” said Alice’s master decidedly. “She’s scared into hysterics, and the cook’s nearly as bad. However, you can try”—ringing the bell.

  “If you leave her entirely in my hands I may; but,” warningly, “if you explode in your usual fashion you’ll frighten her into hysterics again, or—what will be worse—stubborn silence. Promise not to interrupt whatever the provocation.’’

  Alice entered as he spoke. She was a little dark-haired, pale-faced girl of about twenty-five, with a shrinking, timid manner.

  “I want you to answer a few questions if you will be so good, Alice,’’ said Carwell with pleasant courtesy. “We want to clear up the mystery of these fires, and if we succeed it will be a relief to your and cook’s minds, as well as Mr. Masterman’s, won’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the girl fervently. “I’m sure them firemen think we done it on purpose. As if anybody ’ud be so silly—not to say wicked!”

  ‘‘Quite so; and we will prove them wrong if you will answer my questions frankly. Now, please tell me, when did you burn something in this tripod?”

  He took it from the hearth as he spoke and placed it in the middle of the rug. Alice flushed and began a stammering “I—I never—”

  “It was an accident I feel sure,” interrupted Carwell. “Tell me exactly what happened, please.”

  The girl gave him a quick, intent look, then turned her back on Masterman and faced her questioner. I liked the look of her. Timid and inefficient she might be, but she was fundamentally truthful and honest, and Carwell’s courtesy and trust in her was bringing these qualities out.

  “Very well, I will, sir. It was Tuesday mornin’ about eight o’clock. I’d come in here to take up the pieces an’ lay the master’s breakfast. I’d have dusted, too, but he won’t ’ear of it, though the place is a disgrace”—with a defiant glance over her shoulder at the silently fuming culprit. “Cook an’ me know that well enough, but it isn’t our fault really, sir.”

  “No, I’m sure it isn’t”—soothingly. “Well?”

  “I’d taken up the pieces—an’ a nice lot there was, too—heaps of torn papers in the ’earth, an’ was rubbing up the fender—”

  “With a beastly paraffin rag, I’ll bet!” interjected Masterman indignantly.

  “When I suddenly thought it would be a good plan to put all the rubbish in the grate an’ burn it up. I did it to save myself trouble, I know; there was such a lot it would have meant several journeys through the kitchen to the dustbin outside—”

  “Quite a sensible idea,” commented Carwell. “And then?”

  “So I stacked it in the grate an’ set a light to it. I’d pu
t that tripod thing, as you call it, on the rug beside me, with my cloths an’ things in it, to save ’em from messing the rug, an’—an’ I must have put the lighted match on ’em. I thought I’d blown it out, but it was one of them wax ones, an’ you know how they keep on burnin’. Anyway, the next thing I knew, a sudden flare shot up beside me. It scared me nearly into a fit. There was no water in the room, an’ I daren’t leave it, an’ I daren’t take anything to smother it with, as all the curtains an’ such-like in ’ere are worth their weight in gold so the master says, so I took some of the fruit from the sideboard there—grapes an’ oranges an’ things—an’ squashed ’em down on the flames with my hands, but it seemed to burn fiercer for a minute or two, so I put a chunk of bread on it, an’—an’ poured some wine out of the decanter . . . An’ at last it died down.”

  “It struck you as being more difficult to put out thin an ordinary flare!”

  “Yes, sir. It seemed,” she hesitated and drew a little nearer to him, “You’d think me silly, perhaps, but it really did seem as if there was something, or—or someone there, tryin to keep it goin’, or tryin’ their best to prevent me puttin’ it out, an’ I felt as if I oughtn’t to; as if I should make somebody dreadful angry if I did. I really thought—it seemed—” her voice sank lower and her lips trembled—“as if a whip was goin’ to be laid across my shoulders every minute. But, of course, I knew that was silly!” she ended with a gulp.

  “Darn silly!” growled Masterman, but no one took any notice of him.

  “This room faces west, doesn’t it? Did you move about at all—round the tripod, I mean—when you were trying to put the fire out? Can you remember?”

  “Yes, I walked round and round it.”

  “Start from the sideboard there and show me, will you? Be sure and go the exact way you did before.”

  Alice approached the tripod with evident trepidation. She spread her little work-worn hands above it and circled round slowly, beating the air with outspread fingers. Carwell watched her keenly.