«A quaint advertisement in the columns of a contemporary shows that the famous Lord John Roxton, third son of the Duke of Pomfret, is seeking fresh worlds to conquer. Having exhausted the sporting adventures of this terrestrial globe, he is now turning to those of the dim, dark and dubious regions of psychic research. He is in the market apparently for any genuine specimen of a haunted house, and is open to receive information as to any violent or dangerous manifestation which called for investigation. As Lord John Roxton is a man of resolute character and one of the best revolver shots in England, we would warn any practical joker that he would be well-advised to stand aside and leave this matter to those who are said to be as impervious to bullets as their supporters are to common sense.»
McArdle gave his dry chuckle at the concluding words.
«I'm thinking they are getting pairsonal there, friend Malone, for if you are no a supporter, you're well on the way. But are you no of the opeenion that this chiel and you between you might put up a spook and get two racy columns off him?»
«Well, I can see Lord Roxton,» said Malone. «He's still, I suppose, in his old rooms in the Albany. I would wish to call in any case, so I can open this up as well.»
Thus it was that in the late afternoon just as the murk of London broke into dim circles of silver, the pressman found himself once more walking down Vigo Street and accosting the porter at the dark entrance of the old-fashioned chambers. Yes, Lord John Roxton was in, but a gentleman was with him. He would take a card. Presently he returned with word that in spite of the previous visitor, Lord Roxton would see Malone at once. An instant later, he had been ushered into the old luxurious rooms with their trophies of war and of the chase. The owner of them with outstretched hand was standing at the door, long, thin, austere, with the same gaunt, whimsical, Don Quixote face as of old. There was no change save that he was more aquiline, and his eyebrows jutted more thickly over his reckless, restless eyes.
«Hullo, young fellah!» he cried. «I was hopin' you'd draw this old covert once more. I was comin' down to the office to look you up. Come in! Come in! Let me introduce you to the Reverend Charles Mason.»
A very tall, thin clergyman, who was coiled up in a large basket chair, gradually unwound himself and held out a bony hand to the newcomer. Malone was aware of two very earnest and human grey eyes looking searchingly into his, and of a broad, welcoming smile which disclosed a double row of excellent teeth. It was a worn and weary face, the tired face of the spiritual fighter, but it was very kindly and companionable, none the less. Malone had heard of the man, a Church of England vicar, who had left his model parish and the church which he had built himself in order to preach freely the doctrines of Christianity, with the new psychic knowledge super-added.
«Why, I never seem to get away from the Spiritualists!» he exclaimed.
«You never will, Mr. Malone,» said the lean clergyman, chuckling. «The world never will until it has absorbed this new knowledge which God has sent. You can't get away from it. It is too big. At the present moment, in this great city there is not a place where men or women meet that it does not come up. And yet you would not know it from the Press.»
«Well, you can't level that reproach at the Daily Gazette,» said Malone. «Possibly you may have read my own descriptive articles.»
«Yes, I read them. They are at least better than the awful sensational nonsense which the London Press usually serves up, save when they ignore it altogether. To read a paper like The Times you would never know that this vital movement existed at all. The only editorial allusion to it that I can ever remember was in a leading article when the great paper announced that it would believe in it when it found it could, by means of it, pick out more winners on a race-card than by other means.»
«Doosed useful, too,» said Lord Roxton. «It's just what I should have said myself. What!»
The clergyman's face was grave and he shook his head.
«That brings me back to the object of my visit,» he said. He turned to Malone. «I took the liberty of calling upon Lord Roxton in connection with his advertisement to say that if he went on such a quest with a good intention, no better work could be found in the world, but if he did it out of a love of sport, following some poor earth-bound soul in the same spirit as he followed the white rhinoceros of the Lido, he might be playing with fire.»
«Well, padre, I've been playin' with fire all my life and that's nothin' new. What I mean – if you want me to look at this ghost business from the religious angle, there's nothin' doin', for the Church of England that I was brought up in fills my very modest need. But if it's got a spice of danger, as you say, then it's worth while. What!»
The Rev. Charles Mason smiled his kindly, toothsome grin.
«Incorrigible, is he not?» he said to Malone. «Well, I can only wish you a fuller comprehension of the subject.» He rose as if to depart.
«Wait a bit, padre!» cried Lord Roxton, hurriedly. «When I'm explorin', I begin by ropin' in a friendly native. I expect you're just the man. Won't you come with me?»
«Where to?»
«Well, sit down and I'll tell you.» He rummaged among a pile of letters on his desk. «Fine selection of spooks!» he said. «I got on the track of over twenty by the first post. This is an easy winner, though. Read it for yourself. Lonely house, man driven mad, tenants boltin' in the night, horrible spectre. Sounds all right – what!»
The clergyman read the letter with puckered brows.
«It seems a bad case,» said he.
«Well, suppose you come along. What! Maybe you can help clear it up.»
The Rev. Mason pulled out a pocket-almanac. «I have a service for ex-Service men on Wednesday, and a lecture the same evening.»
«But we could start to-day.»
«It's a long way.»
«Only Dorsetshire. Three hours.»
«What is your plan?»
«Well, I suppose a night in the house should do it.»
«If there is any poor soul in trouble it becomes a duty. Very well, I will come.»
«And surely there is room for me,» pleaded Malone.
«Of course there is, young fellah! What I mean – I expect that old, red-headed bird at the office sent you round with no other purpose. Ah, I thought so. Well, you can write an adventure that is not perfect bilge for a change – what! There's a train from Victoria at eight o'clock. We can meet there, and I'll have a look in at old man Challenger as I pass.»
They dined together in the train and after dinner reassembled in their first-class carriage, which is the snuggest mode of travel which the world can show. Roxton, behind a big black cigar, was full of his visit to Challenger.
«The old dear is the same as ever. Bit my head off once or twice in his own familiar way. Talked unadulterated tripe. Says I've got brain-softenin', if I could think there was such a thing as a real spook. 'When you're dead you're dead'». That's the old man's cheery slogan. Surveyin' his contemporaries' he said, extinction was a doosed good thing! 'It's the only hope of the world', said he. 'Fancy the awful prospect if they survived'. Wanted to give me a bottle of chlorine to chuck at the ghost. I told him that if my automatic was not a spook-stopper, nothin' else would serve. Tell me, padre, is this the first time you've been on safari after this kind of game?»
«You treat the matter too lightly, Lord John,» said the clergyman gravely. «You have clearly had no experience of it. In answer to your question I may say that I have several times tried to help in similar cases.»
«And you take it seriously?» asked Malone, making notes for his article.
«Very, very seriously.»
«What do you think these influences are?»
«I am no authority upon the general question. You know Algernon Mailey, the barrister, do you not? He could give you facts and figures. I approach the subject rather perhaps from the point of view of instinct and emotion. I remember Mailey lecturing on Professor Bozzano's book on ghosts where over five hundred well-authenticated instances were give
n, every one of them sufficient to establish an a priori case. There is Flammarion, too. You can't laugh away evidence of that kind.»
«I've read Bozzano and Flammarion, too,» said Malone, «but it is your own experience and conclusions that I want.»
«Well, if you quote me, remember that I do not look on myself as a great authority on psychic research. Wiser brains than mine may come along and give some other explanation. Still, what I have seen has led me to certain conclusions. One of them is to think that there is some truth in the theosophical idea of shells.»
«What is that?»
«They imagined that all spirit bodies near the earth were empty shells or husks from which the real entity had departed. Now, of course, we know that a general statement of that sort is nonsense, for we could not get the glorious communications which we do get from anything but high intelligences. But we also must beware of generalizations. They are not all high intelligences. Some are so low that I think the creature is purely external and is an appearance rather than a reality.»
«But why should it be there?»
«Yes, that is the question. It is usually allowed that there is the natural body, as St. Paul called it, which is dissolved at death, and the etheric or spiritual body which survives and functions upon an etheric plane. Those are the essential things. But we may really have as many coats as an onion and there may be a mental body which may shed itself at any spot where great mental or emotional strain has been experienced. It may be a dull automatic simulacrum and yet carry something of our appearance and thoughts.»
«Well» said Malone, «that would to some extent get over the difficulty, for I could never imagine that a murderer or his victim could spend whole centuries re-acting the old crime. What would be the sense of it?»
«Quite right, young fellah,» said Lord Roxton. «There was a pal of mine, Archie Soames, the gentleman Jock, who had an old place in Berkshire. Well, Nell Gwynne had lived there once, and he was ready to swear he met her a dozen times in the passage. Archie never flinched at the big jump at the Grand National, but, by Jove! he flinched at those passages after dark. Doosed fine woman she was and all that, but dash it all! What I mean – one has to draw the line – what!»
«Quite so!» the clergyman answered. «You can't imagine that the real soul of a vivid personality like Nell could spend centuries walking those passages. But if by chance she had ate her heart out in that house, brooding and fretting, one could think that she might have cast a shell and left some thought-image of herself behind her.»
«You said you had experiences of your own.»
«I had one before ever I knew anything of Spiritualism. I hardly expect that you will believe me, but I assure you it is true. I was a very young curate up in the north. There was a house in the village which had a poltergeist, one of those very mischievous influences which cause so much trouble. I volunteered to exorcize it. We have an official form of exorcism in the Church, you know, so I thought that I was well-armed. I stood in the drawing-room which was the centre of the disturbances, with all the family on their knees beside me, and I read the service. What do you think happened?»
Mason's gaunt face broke into a sweetly humorous laugh. «Just as I reached Amen, when the creature should have been slinking away abashed, the big bearskin hearthrug stood up on end and simply enveloped me. I am ashamed to say that I was out of that house in two jumps. It was then that I learned that no formal religious proceeding has any effect at all.»
«Then what has?»
«Well, kindness and reason may do something. You see, they vary greatly. Some of these earthbound or earth-interested creatures are neutral, like these simulacra or shells that I speak of. Others are essentially good like these monks of Glastonbury, who have manifested so wonderfully of late years and are recorded by Bligh Bond. They are held to earth by a pious memory. Some are mischievous children like the poltergeists. And some – only a few, I hope – are deadly beyond words, strong, malevolent creatures too heavy with matter to rise above our earth plane – so heavy with matter that their vibrations may be low enough to affect the human retina and to become visible. If they have been cruel, cunning brutes in life, they are cruel and cunning still with more power to hurt. It is evil monsters of this kind who are let loose by our system of capital punishment, for they die with unused vitality which may be expended upon revenge.»
«This Dryfont spook has a doosed bad record,» said Lord Roxton.
«Exactly. That is why I disapprove of levity. He seems to me to be the very type of the creature I speak of. Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure.»
Malone's jaw began to drop.
«I say!» he exclaimed, «have we no protection?»
«Yes, I think we have. If we had not, such a creature could devastate the earth. Our protection is that there are white forces as well as dark ones. We may call them 'guardian angels' as the Catholics do, or 'guides' or 'controls', but whatever you call them, they really do exist and they guard us from evil on the spiritual plane.»
«What about the chap who was driven mad, padre? Where was your guide when the spook put the rug round you? What!»
«The power of our guides may depend upon our own worthiness. Evil may always win for a time. Good wins in the end. That's my experience in life.»
Lord Roxton shook his head.
«If good wins, then it runs a doosed long waitin' race, and most of us never live to see the finish. Look at those rubber devils that I had a scrap with up the Putomayo River. Where are they? What! Mostly in Paris havin' a good time. And the poor niggers they murdered. What about them?»
«Yes, we need faith sometimes. We have to remember that we don't see the end. 'To be continued in our next' is the conclusion of every life-story. That's where the enormous value of the other world accounts come in. They give us at least one chapter more.»
«Where can I get that chapter?» asked Malone.
«There are many wonderful books, though the world has not yet learned to appreciate them – records of the life beyond. I remember one incident – you may take it as a parable, if you like – but it is really more than that. The dead rich man pauses before the lovely dwelling. His sad guide draws him away. 'It is not for you. It is for your gardener'. He shows him a wretched shack. 'You gave us nothing to build with. It was the best that we could do'. That may be the next chapter in the story of our rubber millionaires.»
Roxton laughed grimly.
«I gave some of them a shack that was six foot long and two foot deep,» said he. «No good shakin' your head, padre. What I mean – I don't love my neighbour as myself, and never shall. I hate some of 'em like poison.»
«Well, we should hate sin, and, for my own part, I have never been strong enough to separate sin from the sinner. How can I preach when I am as human and weak as anyone?»
«Why, that's the only preachin' I could listen to,» said Lord Roxton. «The chap in the pulpit is over my head. If he comes down to my level I have some use for him. Well, it strikes me we won't get much sleep to-night. We've just an hour before we reach Dryfont. Maybe we had better use it.»
It was past eleven o'clock of a cold, frosty night when the party reached their destination. The station of the little watering-place was almost deserted, but a small, fat man in a fur overcoat ran forward to meet them, and greeted them warmly.
«I am Mr. Belchamber, owner of the house. How do you do, gentlemen? I got your wire, Lord Roxton, and everything is in order. It is indeed kind of you to come down. If you can do anything to ease my burden I shall indeed be grateful.»
Mr. Belchamber led them across to the little Station Hotel where they partook of sandwiches and coffee, which he had thoughtfully ordered. As they ate he told them something of his troubles. «It isn't as if I was a rich man, gentlemen. I am a re
tired grazier and all my savings are in three houses. That is one of them, the Villa Maggiore. Yes, I got it cheap, that's true. But how could I think there was anything in this story of the mad doctor?»
«Let's have the yarn,» said Lord Roxton, munching at a sandwich.
«He was there away back in Queen Victoria's time. I've seen him myself. A long, stringy, dark-faced kind of man, with a round back and a queer, shuffling way of walking. They say he had been in India all his life, and some thought he was hiding from some crime, for he would never show his face in the village and seldom came out till after dark. He broke a dog's leg with a stone, and there was some talk of having him up for it, but the people were afraid of him, and no one would prosecute. The little boys would run past, for he would sit glowering and glooming in the front window. Then one day he didn't take the milk in, and the same the next day, and so they broke the door open, and he was dead in his bath – but it was a bath of blood, for he opened the veins of his arm. Tremayne was his name. No one here forgets it.»
«And you bought the house?»
«Well, it was re-papered and painted and fumigated, and done up outside. You'd have said it was a new house. Then, I let it to Mr. Jenkins of the Brewery. Three days he was in it. I lowered the rent, and Mr. Beale, the retired grocer, took it. It was he who went mad – clean mad – after a week of it. And I've had it on my hands ever since – sixty pounds out of my income, and taxes to pay on it, into the bargain. If you gentlemen can do anything, for God's sake do it! If not, it would pay me to burn it down.»
The Villa Maggiore stood about half a mile from the town on the slope of a low hill. Mr. Belchamber conducted them so far, and even up to the hall door. It was certainly a depressing place, with a huge, gambrel roof which came down over the upper windows and nearly obscured them. There was a half-moon, and by its light they could see that the garden was a tangle of scraggy, winter vegetation, which had, in some places, almost overgrown the path. It was all very still, very gloomy and very ominous.
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