“Well, of course, if you put it that way——” I began.
“Yes, I do. I ask you to stay, for a little while, a few weeks, at least. I can’t tell you why—anything—just now. But you are wrong to laugh at us. There’s really . . . something . . . in that house. It walks. It comes into rooms at night. It’s there in the day also. And I—I’m beginning to be afraid, Mr. Seaverns.”
“Then of course I’ll stay—Gray!” I cried.
I saw her lashes move in the merest flicker when I thus used her Christian name. But she gave no other evidence that she had noticed it. Why, after all, should I not have called her by that name? I had known her brother long enough, even if I had inadvertently called him Mr. Ormes that morning, to adopt an air of informality toward his sister, especially after the request she had just made of me and the confession of fear she had just uttered. And yet it came over me that it would have been far better manners to have continued calling her Miss Ormes until the effect of that strange request had somewhat passed away. I seemed to be peculiarly unfortunate today in my choice of names and titles. But she was speaking again.
“Tonight, after dinner, when Agnes has gone to her room, I’d like to have a talk with you,” she said, seriously. “Will you wait for me in the library? There are things I want to tell you about that house . . . and about us who live it in. Also I must tell you something you don’t appear to know about yourself. Will you meet me?”
“Of course!”
Her yellow eyes stared into mine unseeingly. Then she turned away. I stopped the car, at her bidding, nearer the garage than the house itself. She descended immediately and called to the dogs which had been trailing easily along, since I had not driven above ten miles an hour. They were fierce gray brutes, of the breed erroneously called “police dogs” by nine Americans out of ten. Yet they cowered before this woman, at her sharp word of command, and left off trying to nose me out of the car and into the open where they could fairly have got their fangs into my legs. I drove into the garage as she disappeared with the beasts behind a clump of cedars that grew at the rear of the house.
“Something to tell me about myself, eh?” I mused, taking my way toward the library, conscious that I had missed by an hour the luncheon which was to be served at one sharp, if Mrs. Ormes’s warning meant anything. “I wonder, now, whether she intends telling me anything about a certain kiss? And I’m beginning to wonder whether my role here isn’t properly that of protector of lonely women, rather than that of amateur historian? Gray sneered at my work, asking whether I really intended going on with the ridiculous job. One thing is certain: if Gray asks me to stay here, wild horses can’t drag me away. I hate her. I’m afraid of her. There’s something about her that’s somehow all wrong. But oh, Gray! I am beginning to be more in love with you than it is wise for a man to be in love with any woman!”
I think I remember that I was not, after all, too late for lunch. And during the afternoon, without thinking of what I was doing, I actually listed nearly a dozen books, by title, date, publisher and subject matter.
V
Both Agnes and Gray were present at the dinner table. Conversation, while not animated, was general and sufficiently interesting to be easily maintained. A few remarks were made, desultory and evincing no interest in their makers’ minds, on my supposed labors toward an understanding of New England literature. It was said that the Coddingtons probably would not open their big house that summer. Agnes querulously found fault with something the servants had done or had not done. For the most part the talk was of such happenings as had been reported in the daily papers, of this, that or the other radio entertainment, of Hollywood’s doings and of Broadway’s. Nothing of any consequence was put into speech. Mrs. Ormes’s usual volubility was evidently being held in leash, doubtless owing to her sister-in-law’s presence, since the woman was obviously afraid of Gray.
Nevertheless I was not bored. A play of some kind was going on beneath the surface. That was plain, even to perceptions less quick than mine. The eyes of the two women did not concern themselves, adversely and quietly critical, with details of each other’s costume and make-up. Disdaining concern with such purely feminine jealousies, their eyes plunged straight forward, thrusting and fencing like rapiers in the hands of bitterly hostile men, while their courtesy was just as poisonously exact. Hatred between the wife and sister of Ormond Ormes was too openly evinced to be mistaken. It was not the petty, childish, unreasoning hatred that one would not have been astonished to find existing between two women condemned to live together in such surroundings; rather it was an emotion of a far higher and more deadly sort. They knew why they hated, and they knew how they would have liked to glut their hate. I passed from secret amusement at having been thus made privy to a sight of these raw passions, held with difficulty in control, to a state of nervous expectancy induced by fear that the pair must, in the next moment, yield to suppressed fury and fly at each other’s faces like a couple of Gray’s dogs. I was relieved indeed when, without waiting to smoke, Agnes arose and left us.
It was only a little past seven o’clock. The day had been fine and the evening was warm and still, though thunder rumbled somewhere off among the hills and, as the twilight deepened, the darkening sky was lighted by an occasional flash of distant lightning. Not wishing to suffer an interruption during the early evening, I was on the point of proposing a stroll to and from the village of Tiltown, since I supposed that, even in the event of rain, we could find shelter somewhere along the road. But Gray forestalled my proposal with a refusal to accompany me. It was almost as if she had read the intention in my mind.
“Why don’t you amuse yourself for the next hour or so by walking down to Tiltown?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you to go with me.”
“No, I can’t. I’ve something to do. But you go. I’ll give you a few letters to post for me. Then meet me in the library at ten-thirty.”
Walking very slowly, I was able to make the journey of three miles to and from the village occupy me for the next two hours. I returned to Ormesby in the heavy sweet dusk of the long June evening. It would, however, have been even darker in the valley had it not been for a glow that bathed the mountain tops, after-math of a sunset which was near to being the latest of the year. A storm was gathering headway over the hills to the east and south.
There seemed to be no one about as I neared the gate and looked uphill toward the house. I remember having a feeling of uneasiness as to the dogs, for if they had been loosed I should probably be forced to swing myself into one of the trees to avoid being mauled by the savage brutes. But they had not been released from their kennels. The front door stood open, protected from invasion of insects by a screen. I entered and went at once to my own room, where I bathed my face and hands. Then, cooled and refreshed, I made my way downstairs and along the passage leading to the library. Everything was in darkness. The house was silent and seemed as deserted as it had seemed last night when I lay awake in my bed, unable to sleep because of the preternatural stillness. I groped along the hallway until I had come to the door. It yet lacked more than half an hour of the time of Gray’s coming to meet me here, but I had chosen to await her in that room, rather than spend the time in my own lonely bedroom.
There was no light in the library. I entered—after a moment’s hesitation. Say what you will against it, a man who goes in darkness through a house in which ghosts are confidently said to appear does not conduct himself with the fearless assurance of one to whom goblins are only faint tales out of half-forgotten books. There was a lamp, I knew, standing just within the doorway, the light of which could be switched on by pulling a tasseled cord depending from the switch. I went in and groped for the cord. I had just found it and was about to twitch it downward. But I dropped it, instead, as if it had burned my fingers, darting back and scrambling out into the passage with the haste of quick and heart-clutching te
rror. For a hand had closed, ever so lightly and ever so coldly over the back of my own hand, even as my fingers found the cord; and though I had felt no force at all in the feathery touch of that soft cold hand, yet I knew that its compulsion had been against the lighting of the lamp.
I did not run quite away. Once out in the hallway again, I halted and stood listening. I do not know how long I stood there, the open door before me seeming to show as an oblong of deeper darkness than that surrounding it. But I could not remain there for ever, motionless and shiveringly expectant. Gray might be coming to join me, though it was not yet time for her to come. But suppose she was even now within the room, that it had been her hand which touched me. It might be—well, why not? For I had my full supply of masculine vanity, I suppose—that she wanted to receive me in darkness. I mastered my fears, not caring to have them betrayed in voice or manner.
“Gray?” I called, speaking the word as naturally as I could.
There was no answer. Listening intently, I seemed to catch a faint—oh, a very faint!—rusting of silken garments, just as I had seemed to catch such a sound in the morning, when the Lady in Mauve had left me. The slightest of air currents moved against my cheek. I called the girl’s name again, less confidently, I am sure, this time. Still there was no response. It was not Gray Ormes who had bidden me, without words, to leave the room in darkness.
But the ghost, if ghost it was, had done me no harm. More, if it were the Lady in Mauve, I reasoned that I need not be afraid of so gentle a spectre as she had shown herself to be. Abruptly I gathered together my shaken resolution and stepped once more across that threshold, stretching out my hand for the cord. I found it. I pulled it. The soft light of the lamp sprang about me and spread instantly across the room. There was no one within the circle of its beaming. I stood still again, listening again, relieved that I had so far conquered my fears as to have entered the room and lighted the lamp, despite the mysterious hand which had so lately forbidden it. Then I heard someone—it must be Gray —approaching along the passage.
She came garbed in a thin robe of some very dark color, though I do not remember that it was black. Her light hair was piled against the nape of her neck, and within it was a single small ornament of gold, while her silk robe was fastened at the breast by another little golden pin. Except for these, she was dressed so simply as to heighten the redness of her painted lips and the smoldering light in her yellow eyes. That afternoon, seeing her beside the road in breeches and shirt, I had thought her not even pretty, despite the grace of her movements. At dinner I had been absorbed in watching the play of passions beneath the surface of her manner, and I had not then given my masculinity to admiration of her youth and charms. But here, in the subdued light of the one shaded lamp, with the sleazy robe clinging to her breasts and thighs, and with the faintest of perfumes reaching my nostrils from somewhere about her body, I found her beautiful. I even remember thinking it a pity that she could not always appear to a man under such conditions and in such circumstances as those surrounding us at the moment. Indeed, it is the tragedy of most women that they seldom are able to heighten the allurements of sex by settings adapted to their endowments of its charms.
“I’m glad you came,” I told her.
She said nothing, but stood before me, looking into my face and eyes as if she had never previously seen them. I went on to relate, frankly, what I had lately experienced.
To my surprise she shuddered. She drew closer to me, by ever so little. I would have sworn she was afraid, had I not, in the next instant, caught her eyes, which seemed now to burn with a fire that was somehow dully red, fastened upon my throat. And then I shuddered also, though I was able to hide the involuntary twitching from her eyes. She slunk across the room to a chair that stood just at the edge of the circle of light, motioning me to find another and be seated near her. I did so. I saw, then, that she wore no stockings on her gleaming legs and that her feet were hidden in slippers that matched the sombre gown.
“You didn’t expect me, then,” she said.
I was about to reply that I had not expected her so soon, but I did not. I said nothing at all. Now, again, I was hearing the voice that I had heard when she stood last night in the shadowy portal to welcome her brother and myself to Ormesby and to drive the dogs away from us. Deep as a man’s it was, and yet it was not the voice of a man. There was little of masculinity within it. I had not heard it all day, though I had spoken much with her and heard her say many things.
“You’ve been here long enough,” she continued, not seeming to expect a reply from me, “to have learned that things happen queerly here and that queer things are to be seen in this house. I used to think the place was haunted by impersonal ghosts.”
“Impersonal ghosts?”
“Yes. Ghosts outside of and foreign to ourselves—to us who live here. I know now that the things one sees are the ghosts of the things one has done.”
This was in direct contradiction to what she had said in the morning, as we had sat together at breakfast. Then she had maintained, against my own suggestion that her ghosts were subjective, that they were real and exterior to herself. I could not think why she had changed her opinion. In the vague light I saw her shudder again, and this time, without caring that she might notice it, I shuddered also. But she was speaking once more.
“Please don’t interrupt while I tell you. Queer things are done here. Murder has been committed——”
“Murder!” I could not have suppressed the cry, regardless of her admonition to maintain silence.
“Yes. Murder. There’s a man of fifty. I saw him . . . last night. It’s my . . . it’s my father.”
The girl paused for a time, and now I did not find it necessary to break her command to keep silent. She leaned toward me, so that the robe about her breast fell forwards and I saw, vaguely and in deep shadow, yet alluringly enough, the curving of her delicate naked breasts; and I smelled again that hint of some exotic perfume, coming probably from the masses of her hair. It came to me that she was tempting me to put my hands upon her, yet because of the boldness of it I fancied that I must be mistaken. Moreover, what she had said about a murder done in the house had deprived me of all wish to meet her challenge, if challenge it was, with any answering passion.
“There’s a woman. I’ve often seen her . . . oftenest here in this room. Others have seen her also. She was my . . . mother. My father killed her.”
I drew swiftly back, the legs of my chair screeching over the polished floor. Sheer horror choked me and held me from utterance of the words that clamored to be heard. Into what kind of den had I unwittingly fallen? Outside the sultry night was riven by a blinding flash and a tremendous peal of thunder obliterated all other sound. My taut nerves snapped, so that I sprang erect, trembling before her. But the woman remained as calm as if nothing had happened.
“He killed her because he was in love with . . . he was in love with his own sister.”
Horror piled upon horror! But the being before me seemed oblivious even of my presence, now, as she sat before me, leaning in my direction and with her burning eyes fixed steadily upon my throat. And I was no longer conscious of the nakedness of her white breast and gleaming legs.
“The girl—my aunt—was thirty years younger than my father. There were no children between the two of them. It happens that way, sometimes, I’m told. And my mother was ten years younger than he. But he forgot her and made love to Barbara, my aunt.”
So this was the reason for Barbara’s invalidism. This was the shock from which she had never quite recovered, the reason why I, perhaps any man, must be careful in approaching her suddenly. But the other continued:
“Mother learned of it. What happened between them I don’t know. He killed her in the night. He killed her . . . he killed her by tearing her throat out . . . with his teeth!”
Her voice had risen almos
t to a scream. Gone was the deep commanding note of it. She darted to her feet and ran into the shadows at the place where I had that morning seen the Lady in Mauve disappear. I leaped up also, my own nerves a-jangle with the horror of this thing I had heard and of the eerie room in which I had heard it. And yet, remembering back upon that moment, I think that my greatest emotion was one of loathing. And it had been caused by the eyes, burning like those of a wolf in darkness, which showed me something of what this woman’s soul must be. She had glared into my face with a lust that could not ever be content with less than blood. Outside in the night, swept to my ears by a gust of the rising gale, I heard the wild brutality of snarling dogs, as if they had coursed and borne down a helpless victim and were tearing it limb from limb.
This was the girl to whom I had thought to speak gently tonight of love! This was the woman whom I had even permitted myself to dream of marrying!
I stood beside the chair in which I had been sitting, grasping the back of it to steady my swaying feet. I was profoundly shaken. Seeing her approaching me again, I did not know whether to stand my ground or to retreat into the circle of definitely bright light under the lamp. For, loathing her passions as I could not help doing, I yet knew that I desired her! Evil she might be—evil she was!—as ever a hag of Hell, but in that moment she was beautiful. God help me, I believe that I held out my arms, ready to take her into them!
She came on, her feet as noiseless on the parquetry as had been those of the Lady in Mauve. And I awaited her, my nerves tense and the heart pounding in my breast, but in my brain a horror of what she was, and in my blood desire. She avoided my arms. I let them fall slowly to my sides, helpless to take her. She thrust her distorted face almost against my own. I smelled the faint sweet perfume of her tumbled hair. I smelled the hot and sweaty odors of her excited body. The eyes that held mine in a fierce stare of nameless passion were the eyes of a madwoman. They were no longer yellow. From somewhere deep within them rose a flame that was red, like the eyes of a wolf in darkness.
Fingers of Fear Page 6
