by Ashby, R. C.
The stone. That was a clever touch. One day he confesses to having heard the legend of the stone, and would like to see for himself. His old uncles take him down to the cellar; the stone is uncovered. Why, what is this? The inscription is legible, with the aid of a magnifying-glass! (He had been careful not to overdo it. A sharp penknife and some earth rubbed well in.) In the credulity of poor Ingram, the doctor, he finds an unconscious ally, and he trades on the fact.
The haunted broch is his greatest find; an inviolable sanctuary. His next step is to buy the Roman dress and armour, easily obtained from a theatrical costumier in Edinburgh. (The tradesman was found by the prosecution and remembered the sale, but was unable to remember the purchaser well enough to identify him with the accused, or to identify positively the armour which was found buried in the broch, so this evidence was not entirely satisfactory. Here again Barr, through his Counsel, denied all knowledge of the costume.)
As the foggy winter nights come on, Charlie probably tries out his masquerade, a scarf of grey gauze obscuring his features. No one sees him stalking the moors. A born gambler, he has to stake everything sooner or later, so he resolves to plunge at once. A struggle on the cliff, and all is over with Uncle Ian. Complete success. The sandal-print has incriminated not a man but a ghost. One step nearer the fortune, and now he must be prepared for another long wait before tackling Uncle Germain, ill upstairs with a nurse in attendance.
Well, of course, as everyone knows by now, that nurse was the snag. Nobody got within twenty yards of Colonel Barr, and the nephew fumed in vain. He couldn’t protest too much. The Colonel was saved from his brother’s fate by the pig-headed devotion of his nurse.
Charlie’s undoing was the coming of two not very clever people to the house, Winifred Goff, the nurse, and Mertoun, the “glorified auctioneer,” as he called himself; at least I’ll take back the “not very clever” with regard to the nurse. She may not have been an intellectual, but she was one of the cleverest women I ever came across in my career, and as a strategist I class her with Hannibal. More of her in due course.
Charlie’s fraud was a masterpiece, a superb piece of acting from beginning to end. He had himself well in hand, he never hurried, he never went too far. I can’t see that he made a single error, unless you account the insulting of my own intelligence, which he couldn’t have been expected to foresee.
Of course there were unfortunate happenings upon which he hadn’t counted, the chief of which was the obstinate temerity of the shepherd Blaik. Blaik was probably only the second man within a hundred years who set foot among the nettles of the eerie ruin on the hill; the first was Charlie himself. It was a nasty situation for Charlie. Even if Blaik should not discover the secret cache with its hidden trappings, the fact that one villager could visit the broch unscathed would end in the quashing of that superstition and the entry of many other people. And it was much too early for Gracchus to disappear altogether!
It is pretty certain now, however, that Blaik was inquisitive and made the discovery which Barr dreaded. Being shrewder than most of his class, the shepherd didn’t run to the village crying, “Look what I’ve found!” Instead of that he waylaid Charlie and tried to make a bargain, but Charlie had had experience and knew that the only way to deal with a blackmailer is to silence him. Blaik told his wife that he’d found a gold-mine. He went out that night in the darkness to meet Charlie Barr, and instead he met the Roman ghost. He had overrated his own shrewdness. Though he didn’t know it, that was Barr’s last crime. His luck—if you can use the word luck in connection with the hitherto uninterrupted success of a clever villain—was already on the wane. The disappearance of his uncle, Colonel Germain Barr, left him in the dark without a plan. He waited for something to break, and he waited just a little too long.
As I said, the trial lasted eight days; Barr was found guilty on all charges, and condemned to death. His Counsel tried to get him to appeal on the grounds of insanity, which would have had a good chance of proof. Barr scorned the very idea.
iii
The two most interesting witnesses were Mertoun and Miss Goff. Mertoun’s evidence covered most of the ground of the story which he told me at the National Progress Club one night in February. I have that story now in manuscript, and I have made several notes upon it which may be of interest to those who have followed the narrative without completely understanding the implications of the various incidents.
To begin with the arrival of Mertoun at The Broch, in itself an unwelcome interference with Barr’s plans; but understanding it to be his uncle’s wish he could not complain. He would make the best of the visitor for a day or two, and of course nothing out of the ordinary should happen while Mertoun was in the house. What kind of man would Mertoun be? He proved to be affable, and later, credulous. Barr, accustomed to summing up men, took the measure of this one almost on sight.
Mertoun complained that on his first entry into the house he was conscious of peculiar mental distress, as though something were wrong. I account for this by the fact that though he emphatically denies the suggestion, he was acutely sensitive to atmosphere. There was something wrong with the house; had been for months, and Mertoun sensed it.
Barr, of course, hoped to get rid of him soon; within a couple of days. Miss Goff, dexterously weaving her plot—the plot and counter-plot at this point are very intriguing to the observer of the game—Miss Goff had planned otherwise. She invented the job of cataloguing the library, and Barr couldn’t protest or show any desire to interfere with his uncle’s plans, being so solicitous for the old man’s health as he must always appear to be.
Mertoun stayed; and Mertoun had already got the creeps and learned that there was a ghost story connected with the house. He took the story to Charlie, and Charlie realized that the surface of the lake was stirred and he must be very careful. Now notice how cleverly he encouraged Mertoun’s suspicions with frankness and good humour, leading the other man on, preparing him for anything. Inwardly I’m sure he cursed the obstinacy of Mertoun, who would not let the subject alone. The ghost had a fascination for the visitor, and at last Barr decided to impress Mertoun and with the same stroke revive the village rumours of a malignant doom for the Barr family. A brilliant stroke. The slashing of the family portrait. Mertoun fell for it as the salmon for the hook.
Now for an important point, the hypnotizing of Mertoun. This was literally carried out, and accounts for his periodical fits of illness. It was good practice for Barr and he had an easy subject. Barr had my friend so completely under a spell that he could influence all his thoughts and actions. And yet when in one of their talks Mertoun mentions hypnotism, notice how neatly Barr discredits it. The cleverness of all that man’s lying was that it contained a little truth. The hypnotic influence was of course most apparent on the night of the séance when Barr made it impossible for Mertoun to remove the Roman sword from the wall. More of that later.
The dices were certainly loaded against Barr from the time that Mertoun entered the house. Instead of being able to let Gracchus sleep for a fortnight he found himself compelled to build up a tremendous structure of deception to meet the demands of circumstance. Mertoun’s chance visit to Doctor Ingram, a firm believer in all spirits, including that of the Roman soldier, led to the emergence of the whole of the ghost story. Mertoun was thrilled and came home full of it. Notice Barr’s composure even after this revealing visit to Ingram. Events have compelled him to talk about the ghost, and since he is so compelled he will do it frankly. No display of anger or resentment. It is a masterpiece of self-control, and yet in one sentence of that ensuing conversation in the library Barr did reveal himself when he said, “I might have guessed you couldn’t come to this cursed place without getting an inkling.” That whole scene, with Charlie’s dramatic outbursts, was a marvellous piece of acting.
That night he went to the cellar and worked on the stone for Mer
toun’s edification. He knew the story would go round the village, which was all to the good. Just another instance of how he turned everything to his own ends, including the discovery of the Society of Antiquaries.
Then the séance. His first impulse was to refuse flatly. During the night he saw the thing in another light; the light of a marvellous opportunity. A séance presented no difficulties to him; he was on his own ground, a master of his profession, and a match for any hired medium. So he proved to be. The tricks were easy and never overdone. The wretched medium was in the grip of a personality of tremendous power. The voice of Gracchus, the crashes, the hurling of the sword, were nothing to a man of Barr’s accomplishments. Mertoun, you remember, tried to withdraw the sword and couldn’t; Barr did it with ease, tossed it into a drawer, and during the night came down to retrieve it and hide it in a suitable place.
But during all this time Barr had his bad moments. He was not made of iron, and the strain of constant alertness, the planning of perfect detail, had their effect on him. He was not fooling children, after all, but intelligent men, and one slip would have finished it all. Mertoun sometimes found him depressed and morose. On the morning after the séance, Mertoun says, he was “haggard, chilled, and tight-lipped.”
Now the Blaik affair. Mertoun administered the first shock, and a shock it was. A man, a shepherd, was using the haunted broch as a sheepfold, defying the superstition upon which Barr depended for his protection. But see how subtly Barr spread the prophecies that Blaik would come to a bad end. He was never too badly shaken to think six moves ahead; not that he had any thought at the time of removing Blaik, but he must prepare for eventualities. I imagine that he watched Blaik carefully, slipping up to the ruin at the first opportunity to find out if his secret was safe. It wasn’t. Blaik had been nosing about, and Blaik was waiting for this very visit. He thought he had Barr on toast. How much for the secret? Go away, Barr told him, and don’t tell anyone, and to-morrow night I’ll meet you with a hundred pounds.
The hour was well chosen, the place, and the night. Mertoun was out somewhere. The moor was dark, foggy, and utterly deserted, and the Gracchus story was rife. Barr slipped out, dressed in the Roman’s armour, tied the gauze veil across his face, and waited for the shepherd. It only took a minute. He rose, stretched himself, and made off up the heathery hill to the broch, stripped off the trappings, and was back in his own study in a quarter of an hour without anyone having seen him go out or come in.
Later he deemed it wise to go down to the library for a friendly chat with the visitor whose time was—fortunately—growing short. Another day would see the end of this wretched Mertoun.
Oh, this thrice-wretched Mertoun! Think of it . . . picture the scene. Mertoun all agog. What is he saying? “I’ve seen him. I’ve seen the Roman ghost!” And crash on the floor went the cigarette-case from Barr’s nerveless hands; the first time he ever lost himself. Seen him! Mertoun had seen him. Where? And doing what?
Mertoun told the details, and Barr, cursing the lighthouse and the fool that invented such things, asked if the face had been recognizable. Oh no, it was a satisfyingly ghostly face. A face of smoke. Well and good. And the incident passed over. I believe that all these lucky escapes induced the idea in Barr that he could never fail. And yet the scene on the moor when Blaik’s body was found, and the subsequent inquest, meant two or three days of maddening suspense and strain for the murderer, now becoming more and more entangled in the meshes of his own plot. His dismay was real enough; he wasn’t acting all the time. I am thinking of the occasion when he and Mertoun met Ingram and Joan Hope, and Barr, as savage as a pestered animal, explained himself: “You see, I’m all in.” So he was, and Mertoun merely misunderstood the reason for it.
The result of the inquest restored all Barr’s confidence. The reaction was intoxicating; that was why he made up his mind to break down the opposition and get at his uncle—who you will recall had actually been out of the house a fortnight! This was a crucial moment, and I suppose that had not Miss Goff already taken her daring step nothing could have saved Colonel Barr. Charlie’s real shock when he found the empty room and realized its significance required no histrionic aid. It was the first definite move in the game that had not been engineered by himself, and I can see him asking himself in a horrified way, what did it mean? No, there was no acting now—except the perfectly marvellous acting of the nurse. She was overwhelmed at the disappearance; she was speechless, terror-stricken, appalled—all in rapid succession. She thoroughly deceived Mertoun, and if she didn’t deceive Barr she baffled his understanding. And then she crowned her little scene with the obvious explanation. Gracchus has taken him! What could Barr reply to that? Barr, who had openly credited the Roman soldier with far more mysterious and sinister deeds than the abduction of an elderly man under the noses of his household.
There was no reply. Barr must clear these people out of the house, and think. So the nurse went, and Mertoun went; and how many hours of fruitless thought were put into the problem of that disappearance can only be conjectured, never known. But I have gone beyond the scope of Mertoun as an eye-witness.
iv
Now for Miss Goff. This is the key to the whole position; as the reader has probably guessed long ago, Miss Goff knew from the beginning. And yet when I say knew, I make a stronger suggestion than was actually the case. Miss Goff knew merely by the evidence of her own wits, without having the slightest proof that would make her suspicion into an established fact. Miss Goff knew with a woman’s utter unreasonableness, scorning logic and evidence, flying straight to the point indicated by her own intuitions, and sticking there.
She was primitive at heart, country born and bred, in spite of the veneer of her hospital training. She worshipped the Barr family; she hated Charlie at sight for a fortune hunter. She didn’t believe in ghosts, much less the Roman one, and what she said in her heart was . . . so feminine that any woman will understand . . . “I hate him. Therefore he murdered his uncle and will murder his other uncle if he can. But he shan’t.”
The logic is marvellous!
She was a brave woman, fearless for her own safety, though she can’t have realized until she got into the house what a difficult and dangerous job she had undertaken and what a clever villain she had pitted herself against. Because she outwitted him in the end I say she was a natural, born strategist. She came to The Broch immediately after the death of Ian Barr, scarcely daring to admit to herself that she knew how and why that death had been accomplished. The countryside was ringing with the story of the Roman ghost, a terror by night. “There is no Roman ghost,” Winifred Goff told herself, quietly moving about the house. “Charlie Barr is the Roman ghost.” She told it to herself again and again until she was convinced, though frightened of the conviction. She knew that she stood alone and was utterly without evidence. Many people asked at the trial, why didn’t she confide her suspicions to someone? The answer was, partly that she was reserved and secretive by disposition, and partly that her own ignorance gave her an unholy dread of incurring grim penalties for slander and libel. It is not in any case prudent to bring a terrible accusation for which you have no proof against your neighbour; in Miss Goff’s case there were other complications. She played a waiting game, and dared to put a ban on her patient’s room. Later she learned the strong points of her position; how Charlie’s very culpability made it impossible for him to defy her. One night, however, she woke in a panic, realizing how careless she had been. While she was in her room the Colonel was unguarded, and of course it would be during those night hours that the “ghost” would strike. The dreaded event would take place, and again she would be without proof for her intuitions. Next morning she moved her belongings into the tiny dressing-room which opened off her patient’s room, and there in future she slept with the door and one eye open, and the Colonel’s door bolted on the inside. She also took the precaution of greatly exaggerating
the Colonel’s illness; it was sufficient excuse for all this watchfulness.
She found the discarded letter to Mertoun in a blotter at a time when she was feeling particularly discouraged and afraid after weeks of anxious watching. As she said in her evidence, nothing had happened during those weeks. She had no complaint about Barr’s behaviour, beyond the inexplicable feeling that he was only waiting for her to relax her vigilance before adding another tragedy to the family record. She wondered how long this state of affairs could last; how long she could keep up the pretence that the Colonel was very ill indeed; what would happen if she were suddenly dismissed. All these forebodings, together with lack of sleep and recreation, had reduced her to despair when she came across that letter and thought it must have fallen straight from heaven. She was convinced that Mertoun, her brother’s hero, would save the situation. Everyone knows how she arranged for his arrival, was dismayed to find that he only intended to stay a couple of days, and promptly invented an excuse for a stay of a fortnight. Her first steps in conspiracy were so successful that she grew bold. The removal of the Colonel by night to the lighthouse was a magnificent step, planned and carried out by her, without a hitch. Once he was out of danger and she had only an empty room to guard, half her anxiety was gone, and the longer she could keep up the deception the greater chance of his ultimate safety.
