The two men made their way across the very fine hall, the walls of which had suffered a little through lack of heating, into the library, and seated themselves in easy-chairs before the blazing log fire. Parkins silently served them with coffee and brandy. He had scarcely left the room before there was a timid knock and Middleton made his somewhat hesitating entrance.
“Come in and close the door,” Dominey directed. “What is it, Middleton? Parkins says you wish to speak to me.”
The man came hesitatingly forward. He was obviously distressed and uneasy, and found speech difficult. His face glistened with the rain which had found its way, too, in long streaks down his velveteen coat. His white hair was wind-tossed and disarranged.
“Bad night,” Dominey remarked.
“It’s to save its being a worse one that I’m here, Squire,” the old man replied hoarsely. “I’ve come to ask you a favour and to beg you to grant it for your own sake. You’ll not sleep in the oak room to-night?”
“And why not?” Dominey asked.
“It’s next her ladyship’s.”
“Well?”
The old man was obviously perturbed, but his master, as though of a purpose, refused to help him. He glanced at Mangan and mumbled to himself.
“Say exactly what you wish to, Middleton,” Dominey invited. “Mr. Mangan and his father and grandfather have been solicitors to the estate for a great many years. They know all our family history.”
“I can’t get rightly into touch with you, Squire, and that’s a fact,” Middleton went on despairingly. “The shape of you seems larger and your voice harder. I don’t seem to be so near to you as I’d wished, to say what’s in my heart.”
“I have had a rough time Middleton,” Dominey reminded him. “No wonder I have changed! Never mind, speak to me just as man to man.”
“It was I who first met you, Squire,” the old man went on, “when you tottered home that night across the park, with your arm hanging helplessly by your side, and the blood streaming down your face and clothes, and the red light in your eyes—murderous fire, they called it. I heard her ladyship go into hysterics. I saw her laugh and sob like a maniac, and, God help us! that’s what she’s been ever since.”
The two men were silent. Middleton had raised his voice, speaking with fierce excitement. It was obvious that he had only paused for breath. He had more to say.
“I was by your side, Squire,” he went on, “when her ladyship caught up the knife and ran at you, and, as you well know, it was I, seizing her from behind, that saved a double tragedy that night, and it was I who went for the doctor the next morning, when she’d stolen into your room in the night and missed your throat by a bare inch. I heard her call to you, heard her threat. It was a madwoman’s threat, Squire, but her ladyship is a madwoman at this moment, and with a knife in her hand you’ll never be safe in this house.”
“We must see,” Dominey said quietly, “that she is not allowed to get possession of any weapon.”
“Aye! Make sure of that,” Middleton scoffed, “with Mother Unthank by her side! Her ladyship’s mad because of the horror of that night, but Mother Unthank is mad with hate, and there isn’t a week passes,” the old man went on, his voice dropping lower and his eyes burning, “that Roger Unthank’s spirit don’t come and howl for your blood beneath their window. If you stay here this night, Squire, come over and sleep in the little room they’ve got ready for you on the other side of the house.”
Mr. Mangan had lost his smooth, after-dinner appearance. His face was rumpled, and his coffee was growing cold. This was a very different thing from the vague letters and rumours which had reached him from time to time and which he had put out of his mind with all the contempt of the materialist.
“It is very good of you to warn me, Middleton,” Dominey said, “but I can lock my door, can I not?”
“Lock the door of the oak room!” was the scornful reply. “And what good would that do? You know well enough that the wall’s double on three sides, and there are more secret entrances than even I know of. The oak room’s not for you this night, Squire. It’s hoping to get you there that’s keeping them quiet.”
“Tell us what you mean, Middleton,” the lawyer asked, with ill-assumed indifference, “when you spoke of the howling of Roger Unthank’s spirit?”
The old man turned patiently around.
“Just that, sir,” he replied. “It’s round the house most weeks. Except for me odd nights, and Mrs. Unthank, there’s been scarcely a servant would sleep in the Hall for years. Some of the maids they do come up from the village, but back they go before nightfall, and until morning there isn’t a living soul would cross the path—no, not for a hundred pounds.”
“A howl, you call it?” Mr. Mangan observed.
“That’s mostly like a dog that’s hurt itself,” Middleton explained equably, “like a dog, that is, with a touch of human in its throat, as we’ve all heard in our time, sir. You’ll hear it yourself, sir, maybe to-night or to- morrow night.”
“You’ve heard it then, Middleton?” his master asked.
“Why, surely, sir,” the old man replied in surprise. “Most weeks for the last ten years.”
“Haven’t you ever got up and gone out to see what it was?”
The old man shook his head.
“But I knew right well what that was, sir,” he said, “and I’m not one for looking on spirits. Spirits there are that walk this world, as we well know, and the spirit of Roger Unthank walks from between the Black Wood and those windows, come every week of the year. But I’m not for looking at him. There’s evil comes of that. I turn over in my bed, and I stop my ears, but I’ve never yet raised a blind.”
“Tell me, Middleton,” Dominey asked, “is Lady Dominey terrified at these—er—visitations?”
“That I can’t rightly say, sir. Her ladyship’s always sweet and gentle, with kind words on her lips for every one, but there’s the terror there in her eyes that was lit that night when you staggered into the hall, Squire, and I’ve never seen it properly quenched yet, so to speak. She carries fear with her, but whether it’s the fear of seeing you again, or the fear of Roger Unthank’s spirit, I could not tell.”
Dominey seemed suddenly to become possessed of a strange desire to thrust the whole subject away. He dismissed the old man kindly but a little abruptly, accompanying him to the corridor which led to the servants’ quarters and talking all the time about the pheasants. When he returned, he found that his guest had emptied his second glass of brandy and was surreptitiously mopping his forehead.
“That,” the latter remarked, “is the class of old retainer who lives too long. If I were a Dominey of the Middle Ages, I think a stone around his neck and the deepest well would be the sensible way of dealing with him. He made me feel positively uncomfortable.”
“I noticed it,” Dominey remarked, with a faint smile. “I’m not going to pretend that it was a pleasant conversation myself.”
“I’ve heard some ghost stories,” Mangan went on, “but a spook that comes and howls once a week for ten years takes some beating.”
Dominey poured himself out a glass of brandy with a steady hand.
“You’ve been neglecting things here, Mangan,” he complained. “You ought to have come down and exorcised that ghost. We shall have those smart maidservants of yours off to-morrow, I suppose, unless you and I can get a little ghost-laying in first.”
Mr. Mangan began to feel more comfortable. The brandy and the warmth of the burning logs were creeping into his system.
“By the by, Sir Everard,” he enquired, a little later on, “where are you going to sleep to-night?”
Dominey stretched himself out composedly.
“There is obviously only one place for me,” he replied. “I can’t disappoint any one. I shall sleep in the oak room.”
CHAPTER X
Table of Contents
For the first few tangled moments of nightmare, slowly developing into a live horror, Dom
iney fancied himself back in Africa, with the hand of an enemy upon his throat. Then a rush of awakened memories—the silence of the great house, the mysterious rustling of the heavy hangings around the black oak four-poster on which he lay, the faint pricking of something deadly at his throat—these things rolled back the curtain of unreality, brought him acute and painful consciousness of a situation almost appalling. He opened his eyes, and although a brave and callous man he lay still, paralysed with the fear which forbids motion. The dim light of a candle, recently lit, flashed upon the bodkin-like dagger held at his throat. He gazed at the thin line of gleaming steel, fascinated. Already his skin had been broken, a few drops of blood were upon the collar of his pyjamas. The hand which held that deadly, assailing weapon—small, slim, very feminine, curving from somewhere behind the bed curtain—belonged to some unseen person. He tried to shrink farther back upon the pillow. The hand followed him, displaying glimpses now of a soft, white-sleeved arm. He lay quite still, the muscles of his right arm growing tenser as he prepared for a snatch at those cruel fingers. Then a voice came,—a slow, feminine and rather wonderful voice.
“If you move,” it said, “you will die. Remain quite still.”
Dominey was fully conscious now, his brain at work, calculating his chances with all the cunning of the trained hunter who seeks to avoid death. Reluctantly he was compelled to realise that no movement of his could be quick enough to prevent the driving of that thin stiletto into his throat, if his hidden assailant should keep her word. So he lay still.
“Why do you want to kill me?” he asked, a little tensely.
There was no reply, yet somehow he knew that he was being watched. Ever so slightly those curtains around which the arm had come, were being parted. Through the chink some one was looking at him. The thought came that he might call out for help, and once more his unseen enemy read his thought.
“You must be very quiet,” the voice said,—that voice which it was difficult for him to believe was not the voice of a child. “If you even speak above a whisper, it will be the end. I wish to look at you.”
A little wider the crack opened, and then he began to feel hope. The hand which held the stiletto was shaking, he heard something which sounded like quick breathing from behind the curtains—the breathing of a woman astonished or terrified—and then, so suddenly that for several seconds he could not move or take advantage of the circumstance, the hand with its cruel weapon was withdrawn around the curtain and a woman began to laugh, softly at first, and then with a little hysterical sob thrusting its way through that incongruous note of mirth.
He lay upon the bed as though mesmerised, finding at his first effort that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, and, with the former in his right hand, flashed a little orb of light into the shadows of the great apartment. Once more something like terror seized him. The figure which had been standing by the side of his bed had vanished. There was no hiding place in view. Every inch of the room was lit up by the powerful torch he carried, and, save for himself, the room was empty. The first moment of realisation was chill and unnerving. Then the slight smarting of the wound at his throat became convincing proof to him that there was nothing supernatural about this visit. He lit up half-a-dozen of the candles distributed about the place and laid down his torch. He was ashamed to find that his forehead was dripping with perspiration.
“One of the secret passages, of course,” he muttered to himself, stooping for a moment to examine the locked, folding doors which separated his room from the adjoining one. “Perhaps, when one reflects, I have run unnecessary risks.”
Dominey was standing at the window, looking out at the tumbled grey waters of the North Sea, when Parkins brought him hot water and tea in the morning. He thrust his feet into slippers and held out his arms for a dressing- gown.
“Find out where the nearest bathroom is, Parkins,” he ordered, “and prepare it. I have quite forgotten my way about here.”
“Very good, sir.”
The man was motionless for a moment, staring at the blood on his master’s pyjamas. Dominey glanced down at it and turned the dressing-gown up to his throat.
“I had a slight accident this morning,” he remarked carelessly. “Any ghost alarms last light?”
“None that I heard of, sir,” the man replied. “I am afraid we should have difficulty in keeping the young women from London, if they heard what I heard the night of my arrival.”
“Very terrible, was it?” Dominey asked with a smile.
Parkins’ expression remained immovable. There was in his tone, however, a mute protest against his master’s levity.
“The cries were the most terrible I have ever heard, sir,” he said. “I am not a nervous person, but I found them most disturbing.”
“Human or animal?”
“A mixture of both, I should say, sir.”
“You should camp out for the night on the skirts of an African forest,” Dominey remarked. “There you get a whole orchestra of wild animals, every one of them trying to freeze your blood up.”
“I was out in South Africa during the Boer War, sir,” Parkins replied, “and I went big game hunting with my master afterwards. I do not think that any animal was ever born in Africa with so terrifying a cry as we heard the night before last.”
“We must look into the matter,” Dominey muttered.
“I have already prepared a bath, sir, at the end of the corridor,” the man announced. “If you will allow me, I will show you the way.”
Dominey, when he descended about an hour later, found his guest awaiting him in the smaller dining-room, which looked out eastwards towards the sea, a lofty apartment with great windows and with an air of faded splendour which came from the ill-cared-for tapestries, hanging in places from the wall. Mr. Mangan had, contrary to his expectations, slept well and was in excellent spirits. The row of silver dishes upon the sideboard inspired him with an added cheerfulness.
“So there were no ghosts walking last night?” he remarked, as he took his place at the table. “Wonderful thing this absolute quiet is after London. Give you my word, I never heard a sound from the moment my head touched the pillow until I woke a short while ago.”
Dominey returned from the sideboard, carrying also a well-filled plate.
“I had a pretty useful night’s rest myself,” he observed.
Mangan raised his eyeglass and gazed at his host’s throat.
“Cut yourself?” he queried.
“Razor slipped,” Dominey told him. “You get out of the use of those things in Africa.”
“You’ve managed to give yourself a nasty gash,” Mr. Mangan observed curiously.
“Parkins is going to send up for a new set of safety razors for me,” Dominey announced. “About our plans for the day,—I’ve ordered the car for two-thirty this afternoon, if that suits you. We can look around the place quietly this morning. Mr. Johnson is sleeping over at a farmhouse near here. We shall pick him up en route. And I have told Lees, the bailiff, to come with us too.”
Mr. Mangan nodded his approval.
“Upon my word,” he confessed, “it will be a joy to me to go and see some of these fellows without having to put ‘em off about repairs and that sort of thing. Johnson has had the worst of it, poor chap, but there are one or two of them took it into their heads to come up to London and worry me at the office.”
“I intend that there shall be no more dissatisfaction amongst my tenants.”
Mr. Mangan set off for another prowl towards the sideboard.
“Satisfied tenants you never will get in Norfolk,” he declared. “I must admit, though, that some of them h
ave had cause to grumble lately. There’s a fellow round by Wells who farms nearly eight hundred acres—”
He broke off in his speech. There was a knock at the door, not an ordinary knock at all, but a measured, deliberate tapping, three times repeated.
“Come in,” Dominey called out.
Mrs. Unthank entered, severer, more unattractive than ever in the hard morning light. She came to the end of the table, facing the place where Dominey was seated.
“Good morning, Mrs. Unthank,” he said.
She ignored the greeting.
“I am the bearer of a message,” she announced.
“Pray deliver it,” Dominey replied.
“Her ladyship would be glad for you to visit her in her apartment at once.”
Dominey leaned back in his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent. She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight. The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely eyes were all clearly revealed.
“I am not at all sure,” he said, with a purpose in the words, “that any further meeting between Lady Dominey and myself is at present desirable.”
If he had thought to disturb this messenger by his suggestion, he was disappointed.
“Her ladyship desires me to assure you,” she added, with a note of contempt in her tone, “that you need be under no apprehension.”
Dominey admitted defeat and poured himself out some more coffee. Neither of the two noticed that his fingers were trembling.
“Her ladyship is very considerate,” he said. “Kindly say that I shall follow you in a few minutes.”
Dominey, following within a very few minutes of his summons, was ushered into an apartment large and sombrely elegant, an apartment of faded white and gold walls, of chandeliers glittering with lustres, of Louise Quinze furniture, shabby but priceless. To his surprise, although he scarcely noticed it at the time, Mrs. Unthank promptly disappeared. He was from the first left alone with the woman whom he had come to visit.
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