“‘Cos I know they like this best,” was the answer, and the boy looked up at Casson and grinned.
Casson was now so taken up with the boy’s appearance that he forgot all about the bait. He had never seen such an unpleasant, queer, malshapen face before. The cranium was disproportionately large; the forehead and sides of the head immediately above and behind the ears were enormously developed; the chin was small and retreating; the ears, which stood very pronouncedly out from the head, were very big and pointed; the mouth huge; the eyes big, dark, and very heavily lidded; the skin yellow and unhealthy. The face was unprepossessing enough in repose, but when the lips opened and it smiled, the likeness to some ghoulish, froggish, and wholly monstrous kind of animal was increased a hundredfold, and Casson started back in dismay.
“Who are you?” he demanded, “and what right have you to fish here?”
“I like that—I do,” the boy grunted. “Why, I’ve every right. I’m Ephraim Owen Lloyd. My mother, her you’re staying with, was Mrs. Owen Lloyd before she married again and took the name of Griffiths. No right to fish here! You tell my mother that and see what she says.” And, grinning wider than ever, he picked up the baited hook and flung it far into the stream.
Not wishing to have any further conversation with him, and feeling thoroughly disgusted and repelled, Casson walked on towards the stones. “Fancy being under the same roof with a young degenerate like that!” he said to himself. “I wish now I hadn’t decided to stay so long.”
Slashing at the grass and other herbage with his stick—a trick Casson always resorted to when unsettled or annoyed—he reached the stones, and was about to turn into the yard when he received something of a surprise. A man in flannels, with a chocolate, white, and blue striped blazer, passed him by and, crossing the yard, vanished round an angle of the house. Casson did not see his face, but the back of his head, his figure, and walk at once recalled Wotherall. “If that’s not Ralph,” Casson exclaimed, “I’ll eat my hat! I wonder why he’s come back? It will give him a bit of a surprise when he sees me.”
At the front door he ran into Mrs. Griffiths, who, with an apron full of French beans, was making for the kitchen.
“Have you seen him?” Casson inquired.
“Seen who?” Mrs. Griffiths rejoined.
“The man in the blazer, of course,” Casson replied. “Mr. Wotherall, wasn’t it?”
“Mr. Wotherall!” Mrs. Griffiths exclaimed, stopping short and staring hard at Casson. “You seem to have got Mr. Wotherall on the brain. Mr. Wotherall is nowhere near here—leastways, if he is, I’ve seen no signs of him.”
“Why, there he is!” Casson cried excitedly, pointing at a window, through which he saw a figure in the familiar Harleyan House blazer saunter slowly by. “That is Wotherall. He hasn’t altered in the least. See, he’s looking straight in here—at me! I’ll go and speak to him!”
He ran to the door and threw it open. To his astonishment, there was no one there but young Ephraim Lloyd, who met his puzzled expression with an impudent leer.
“Where’s Mr. Wotherall?” Casson cried. “What’s become of him?”
The boy’s countenance instantly underwent a change. “Mr. Wotherall!” he stammered. “What do you know of Mr. Wotherall?”
“Know of him?” Casson retorted angrily. “That’s my business. He was here a few seconds ago, and now I can see no trace of him. Where is he, I say?”
By this time Mrs. Griffiths had deposited the beans on the kitchen table and joined the two at the door. “Take no notice of the gentleman,” she said to Ephraim, “it’s overwork. Been a-studying too hard. I’ve told him he must throw aside his books and letter-writing while he is here, and rest.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Casson said “that neither of you saw a man in a blazer pass here just now?”
“Naw!” Ephraim drawled. “I ain’t seen no one. There’s no man in a blazer or in any other kind of thing anywhere about here. There’s no man at all except yourself.”
“That’s right!” Mrs. Griffiths chipped in. “I told the gentleman so, only he won’t believe me.”
“I must have been dreaming, then,” Casson replied reluctantly; “but, at all events, I am awake now, and should like my dinner, Mrs. Griffiths, as soon as you can get it.”
That ended the incident. Casson retreated to his parlour, and the other two, after mumbling for awhile in the hall, retired together to the kitchen. The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and, once again, Casson found himself, candle in hand, wending his way upstairs to bed.
Just outside his door the same thing happened as on the previous night. He thought he saw someone standing there, and pulled himself up sharply to avoid a collision.
Once inside his room he locked the door, and then looked everywhere to make sure no one was hiding. That preliminary over, he stood for a while by the window smoking, then undressed, and got into bed. Leaning on his elbow, he was about to blow out the candle, which was on the chair by his side, when there was a big puff and it was blown out for him. No thought of investigating this time entered Casson’s mind; he dived deep under the bedclothes, and did not emerge till Mrs. Griffiths, almost thumping his door down, announced that his breakfast was on the table getting cold. After breakfast he went for a ramble in the fields, and as he had no desire to come in contact with Ephraim, towards whom he had taken a most violent dislike, he headed in a direction away from the stream. He had not gone many yards, however, when he heard a cat screaming as if in fearful pain. Thinking some dog had got hold of it and was worrying it to death, and being very fond of cats, Casson at once made for the sounds, and in an open space, within a few yards of the stream, came upon a spectacle that he felt he could never forget, even if he lived a thousand years.
Tied down securely with cord to the top of a big wooden box was a black and white cat. Ephraim had hooked out one of its eyes, which was on the ground near his fishing-line, and was now about to hook out the other. The mystery of the bait Casson had seen him using the day before was thus explained.
With something like a howl of fury Casson rushed at Ephraim, and, seizing him by the scruff of his neck, thrashed him until his arms ached. Then flinging him on the ground with the remark, “You little devil, I hope I’ve killed you,” he untied the cat. Weak with pain and loss of blood, the wretched animal had not the strength to move, and Casson, lifting it tenderly up, carried it to the house. Going straight into the kitchen, he showed it to Mrs. Griffiths.
“This is your son’s work,” he said. “I’m going to show it to the police at once, and I only hope he’ll get a thorough good birching.”
Mrs. Griffiths ceased what she was doing and looked at Casson defiantly.
“What do you want to interfere with Ephraim for?” she remarked. “He ain’t done nothing to you, has he?”
“He’s done nothing to me, perhaps,” Casson retorted, “but he’s done something to this cat. You can see for yourself.”
“Well, he’s only a boy,” Mrs. Griffiths responded; “and if he has ill-treated the cat, there’s not much harm done. I expect it’s the same cat that has been after the chickens. The cats about here are a perfect pest.”
“That’s no excuse for hooking their eyes out,” Casson said hotly. “I intend leaving at once. Here’s a week’s rent,” and, taking some money from his pocket, he deposited it on the table.
At that moment there were sounds of steps on the gravel outside, loud hullabalooings, and Ephraim burst into the kitchen.
“The gentleman’s been hitting me,” he bellowed. “He struck me on the head and boxed my ears.”
“You struck him!” Mrs. Griffiths screamed, her cheeks white with fury. “You dared to strike him! I’ll have the law on you, see if I don’t. There, there, Ephraim, cease crying, and you shall have what is left of that custard pudding you liked so much
yesterday.”
This bribe apparently taking effect, Mrs. Griffiths gave her offspring a final cuddle, and then veered round with the intention of renewing an attack upon Casson. Before she could open her mouth to speak, however, there was another howling on the part of Ephraim, and Casson, under cover of it hurried off to his bedroom to collect his things. As he went upstairs, both the boy and his mother showered abuses on him, and he thought he heard Ephraim say something to the effect that he wished they could serve him as they had served someone else—the name of the someone else being drowned in a loud hush from Mrs. Griffiths, who afterwards began to speak very excitedly in Welsh.
On reaching his room Casson sought to revive the cat. He gave it some brandy from his flask, but the animal had been so badly mauled that all his efforts were in vain, and in a very few minutes it succumbed. He was thinking how he should carry it to the police station, when he heard a growl, and, looking round, saw a big black retriever dog, with a bright steel collar, standing on its hind legs, with its back towards him, gazing out of the window. Wondering whose dog it was, and what it was growling at, Casson went to the window, and, looking out, saw Mrs. Griffiths and the boy, each armed with a long pole, making off in the direction of the stream. Once or twice they peeped round, (whereupon Casson quickly hid himself behind the curtain), and then, apparently satisfied that they had not been seen, kept on following the course of the stream till they arrived at the stepping-stones. Crossing the first two, they stood on the third, and, thrusting the tops of their poles under the middle one, began to lever it up. Casson now thought it high time to depart. He felt convinced that they were setting some kind of trap for him, and that the exact nature of it was only known to themselves. Thanking his lucky stars that he had happened to look out of the window in time to see their little game, and determining to escape at once, avoiding the stepping-stones at all costs, he was preparing to leave the room, when he suddenly thought of the dog. It was nowhere to be seen, and the door and the window were both shut. Where could it be? He looked under the bed, in the cupboard, everywhere; it was useless—the dog had vanished!
“The sooner I am out of this house,” he muttered, as he ran downstairs and out at the kitchen door, “the better.” And taking care, as he crossed the yard, to keep well out of sight of the stepping-stones, he ran in an opposite direction, without stopping for at least a mile.
Eventually he crossed the stream by a bridge, and found his way to a village, from whence he was able to proceed by train to Coalbrookdale. Arriving at the latter place, he went at once to the police, and telling them first of all about the cat, went on to narrate all that had happened to him at the farm. The police were not altogether unsympathetic; they could, however, so they said, do nothing with regard to the cat without corroborative evidence, and, as to the other matter, they were afraid the law did not take cognizance of the superphysical, or suspicion founded on anything so immaterial as ghosts, although they themselves would not like to go as far as to deny their existence altogether. At length, being unable to prevail upon the police to do anything, Casson, by offering a handsome remuneration, persuaded two labourers to accompany him back to the stream. Arriving at the stepping-stones, they cautiously examined the middle one, and found it to be so poised that anyone standing on it would, by its unexpected tilt, suddenly be precipitated into a deep hole directly underneath it.
After considerable difficulty the stone was sufficiently moved on one side to enable the workmen to explore this hole, and at the bottom of it the skeletons of two men and a dog were discovered.
There was nothing on the one skeleton that could in any way help to identify it; but remnants of clothes, ragged and rotten, still adhered to the other, and from the name engraven on a card-case in the pocket of the coat, which tallied with the initials on the undergarments and a signet ring, there was little doubt but that the remains were those of Ralph Wotherall. [From subsequent inquiries it was ascertained that the friends and relatives of Ralph Wotherall had heard from him immediately prior to the time he was supposed to have left Stepping-Stone Farm, but had not heard from him since, a fact to which they had attributed little importance, as Wotherall, on more than one occasion, had suddenly decided to go abroad, where he had stayed for a couple of years or so without letting anyone know where he was or what he was doing. The story, they said, of his being so hard up as to be unable to pay the rent could be discredited by his solicitors, who would testify to the fact that they had but recently invested a large sum of money for him, from which he was deriving a not inconsiderable income.] A steel collar bearing the initials R. L. W. was found round the neck of the third skeleton, and as several people remembered having seen a big black retriever with Wotherall while he was staying at the farm, it was pretty certain that the canine remains were those of his dog. However, Mrs. Griffiths, who appeared to be quite as astonished as anyone at the discovery of the skeletons, still stuck to her original story that Wotherall had left the neighbourhood, taking his dog with him, and against her statements Casson could only reiterate his surmises. He was quite certain that Mrs. Griffiths and her evil-faced son were guilty of murder, that, having done away with Wotherall and some other man by means of the stepping-stone, they had deliberately set the same deathtrap for him, and that he had only been saved from falling into it by the apparition of his old friend’s dog; but he could not, of course, expect the police to work up a case, which, from their point of view, rested upon such an unsubstantial foundation, and as on examination the skeleton showed no evidence of foul play, there was no alternative, the usual verdict of “Death from misadventure” had to be returned.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PINES
“Who is the most interesting person in this institution?” my friend Dr. Custance remarked, repeating my words. “If you mean from your point of view—ghosts, I should say Dacre, George Richard Dacre. He is pretty old now—close upon seventy, and very possibly you have never heard of him. The case, with which he was somewhat closely connected, took place in Cumberland about forty years ago, and the spot is still said to be haunted. If you would like to hear all about it, come along, and I will introduce you to him.”
Custance led me into a room, where an old man, with a glistening bald head and white beard, sat, leaning back in his chair, and examining his hands with an air of strange intensity.
“Mr. Dacre,” Custance remarked, “I have brought you a visitor, a Mr. Elliot O’Donnell, who is very interested in the supernatural, and would much like to hear some of your experiences.”
The old man raised his eyes; they did not look at me, but beyond, far beyond, into a world that seemed known only to himself.
“I have only had one experience,” he said, “and that was a long while ago; so long that, at times, it seems as if it must have happened to me in another incarnation, when I was something out of doors—a pine or an elm—something growing in a wood. I can still, occasionally, smell resin, after one of those long hot summers we used to have,—seventy or eighty years ago,—and occasionally hear the wind, the deliciously cool, evening breezes, rustling and sighing, as it were, through my branches and fanning my perspiring bark. Sit down, and I will tell you all about it.
* * * *
“It was a cold night. Rain had been falling steadily not only for hours but days—the ground was saturated. As I walked along the country lane, the slush splashed over my boots and trousers. To my left was a huge stone wall, behind which I could see the nodding heads of pines; and through them the wind was rushing, making a curious whistling sound—now loud, now soft—roaring and gently murmuring. The sound fascinated me. I fancied it might be the angry voice of a man and the plaintive pleading of a woman, and then, a weird chorus of unearthly beings, of grotesque things that stalked across the moors and crept from behind huge boulders. Nothing but the wind was to be heard. I stood and listened to it. I could have listened for hours, for I felt in harmony wit
h my surroundings—lonely. The moon showed itself at intervals from behind the scudding clouds and lighted up the open landscape to my right. A gaunt hill covered with rocks, some piled up pyramidically, others strewn here and there; a few trees with naked arms tossing about and looking distressfully thin beside the more stalwart boulders; a sloping field or two, a couple of level ones, crossed by a tiny path; and the lane, where I stood. The scenery was desolate—not actually wild, but sad and forlorn; and the wood by my side lent an additionally weird aspect to the place, which was pleasing to me.
“Suddenly I heard a sound—a sound, familiar enough at other times; but, at this hour, and in this place, everything seemed different. A woman was coming along the road—a woman in a dark cloak, with a basket under her arm; and the wind was blowing her skirts about her legs.
“I looked at the trees. One singularly gaunt and fantastic one appalled me. It had long, gnarled arms, and two of them ended in bunches of twigs like hands—yes, they were exactly like hands—huge, murderous-looking hands, with bony fingers. The moonlight played over and around me—I was bathed in it. I had no business to be on the earth—my proper place was in the moon. I no longer thought it—I knew it. The woman was close at hand. She stopped at a little wicket gate leading into the lane skirting the northern boundary of the wood. I felt angry; what right had she to be there, interrupting my musings with the moon! The tree with the human hands appeared to agree. I saw anger in the movements of its branches—anger, which soon blazed into fury. It gave a mighty bend towards her, as if longing to rend her in pieces.
The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack Page 66
