Chapter Three
The House by the Pond
Heath Hover was a long, two-storeyed house built in the shape of the letter E with the centre bar left out. Nobody knew exactly how it had ever come to be built at all. The property on which it stood had changed hands several times right up to date, and tradition on the subject was obscure. It could never have been intended for a farmstead, if only that it was situated right in the middle of woods, nor were there any traces of yard or outbuildings in the very limited and sloping space immediately behind it. Some were of opinion that it had been built as a dower house to one or other of the succeeding owners of Sotherby Hall, others that it had been a separate demesne altogether.
As we have said, it stood low – the chimneys being below the level of the sluice which regulated the custody of the great mass of water pent within the long triangular pond which was the scene of the midnight incident. It was situated at the open end of the V formed by this and by a sweep of oakwoods on either side, flowing down to the water’s edge. In summer it was a delightfully picturesque and inviting retreat, nestling in the heart of its sylvan surroundings, and never failed to catch the attention of the users of the not very good public road which ran along the sluice, whether motorists or cycle riders. In the darker months, when the cloud-murk hung grey and gloomy, and no sound broke the awful stillness of the moist air but that of the dripping woods, why then the impression conveyed to the onlookers was dismal and desolate to the last degree. Then it seemed to live up to its sinister reputation, for in the opinion of the countryside Heath Hover was a very badly haunted house indeed.
Its present occupant awoke the next morning later than usual, and feeling by no means best pleased with himself and the world at large. To begin with he had passed a bad night. Whether it was owing to the excitement of the strange midnight adventure which might so easily have culminated in tragedy, or that he had been wrought up by the weird phenomenon of the opening door – which, try as he would, he could not altogether persuade himself was a sheer optical delusion – certain it was that hour followed upon hour before sleep would come. When it did it brought with it strange dreams, or rather imaginings. Once he could have sworn that his own bedroom door was opening, then that the mysterious stranger whom he had so opportunely rescued, was standing by his bedside, bending over him with stealthy enquiring gaze; and his fingers had closed round the butt of the deadly weapon which reposed beneath his pillow. But no; there was nothing. The moon tempered the darkness of the room sufficiently to render visible anything moving within the same. Still, when he did doze off there was always that haunting apprehension of some impending peril and something which he had thought buried, and which had suddenly started to life to dog him down and threaten him in this out-of-the-world retreat. And it, somehow or other, was closely connected with his unexpected guest, sleeping peacefully in the room below.
Stay. As to the latter, was he sleeping so peacefully? Moved by an unaccountable impulse Mervyn decided that he would make sure of that, and was in the act of rising with that intent when a sudden wake of drowsiness swept over him, and he fell back and slept hard until morning.
The late sun was just rising, a red ball above the tree-tops. The ground lay shrouded in whiteness, and the dark firs and naked oak boughs were picked out in snow patterns, and the window panes were crusted with the delicate lacework of a hard frost. Mervyn shivered, and wondered apprehensively if he had caught cold in his undertaking of the night. He dressed quickly and went downstairs.
He opened the door noiselessly and looked in. The room was in semi-darkness, for the blinds were still down. His guest was still asleep apparently, for there on the couch he lay, the rug drawn over his head. Noiselessly still, Mervyn closed the door, and went out. Then, through the back kitchen – for he would not open the front door lest the grating of the bolts should disturb the sleeper – he passed into the open air.
The exhilaration of it in a measure braced him. The sun, mounting higher and higher, had emerged from the red ball stage into radiating beams, which touched the frosty particles on ground and tree alike into myriads of faceted diamonds. Mechanically he mounted the staircase-like path which led up to the sluice. The ice lay, a pure white triangle, narrowing away to the distantly converging woods; the break, now frozen over and newly coated with snow, hardly showing. But to this he took his way.
Heavens! it was a mystery the man had escaped the frozen death – a marvel that he himself should have been aroused just in the very nick of time to rescue him – he now told himself standing on the bank and contemplating the spot in broad daylight. The ladder lay where it had been left, but now frozen fast into the ice. It resisted his efforts to move it. Well, it could stay where it was for the present. When old Joe turned up – by the way, the old rascal was late this morning – they would be able to move it between them, and the ice was thicker for the night’s frost, and would bear easily.
He retraced his steps along the woodland path. The leaves crackled crisply under his tread, and hungry blackbirds shot out swiftly from the hollies, uttering alarmed cachinnations. A little red squirrel clawed itself up a tree bole, and squatting in a fork chirked angrily and impudently at him from its place of safety. But as he walked, he was puzzling hard over the strange and sinister impression which the advent of his unknown guest had instilled within his mind. In the cheery and bracing morning light and air, this seemed to strike him as sheer fancy, sheer unreasonable imagining. The man was probably quite all right; his appearance and manner were certainly not unprepossessing. He would persuade him to stay on a few days and relieve his loneliness. Why not? He was becoming altogether too self-centred, as he had told himself the night before.
Thus musing he gained the sluice and looked down at his dwelling. The blinds of the living-room were still down. Clearly his guest was “taking it out,” and small blame to him, after his experiences of the night before. At the bottom of the stair path, the unit previously referred to as old Joe came round the end of the house.
Old Joe, surnamed Sayers, was his outdoor male factotum – gardener – though there wasn’t much of a garden – make-himself-generally-useful, and so on. Old Judy – otherwise Christian-named Judith – was his indoor and female factotum; cook, general-do-everything there was to be done. Joe Sayers was an ancient rustic, normally towards crisp surliness inclined, except when full of extra ale – and Joe could carry a great deal of extra ale – and then he would wax confidential, not to say friendly. On him his master now opened.
“Hard morning, Joe?”
“Sure-ly,” came the laconic assent.
“Is the gentleman in the sitting-room awake yet?”
“Gemmun in settin’ room? I see nought o’ he.”
“Well, the blinds are still down. I thought Judy might have disturbed him, not knowing he was here.”
“She’s t’whoäm. Got roomatics. Tarr’ble hard marnin’ t’is.”
This ancient couple only gave their services during the hours of daylight; no consideration on earth would have availed to keep them within the precincts of Heath Hover during those of darkness. They inhabited one of the labourers’ cottages referred to on the other side of the wooded hill and half a mile distant by road.
“Can’t she come to-day then, Joe?”
“Not to-day,” was the answer, with a very decided shake of the head. “May-be not to-marrer neither.”
Mervyn felt vexed. How could he ask the stranger to prolong his stay when there was nobody on the premises to so much as boil a potato. And he had rather reckoned that the other would prolong his stay. In fact he wanted him to, and that, paradoxically, on all fours with that vague, undefinable instinct of apprehension which had been upon him during those sleepless night hours.
“Look up the pond, Joe,” he said. “See that break in the ice, away there, by the two hanging ash trees. Well, I got him out of there in the middle of the night. I had to lug the ladder along to do it – we’ll have to haul it back again presently, by the way. He’d have been drowned but for it.”
“That he would, sure-ly.” Then the intense rustic suspicion of everything and everybody unknown asserted itself – “What be he a doing there – on the ice – middle of the night? Poachin’ may be?” Mervyn laughed.
“No – no. He’s no poacher whatever he is?”
“And what might he be? Tell me that,” and the old countryman’s little eyes blinked with satisfaction over what he considered his own shrewdness.
“Don’t know, I didn’t ask him and he hasn’t told me – yet. It’s a bad habit to get into – asking people questions about themselves and their private affairs, Joe. It’s a thing I don’t do.”
The ancient slowly shook his head – pityingly, contemptuously. He thought his master little removed from a fool.
“Folks as gets on the ice, middle of Plane Pond – middle of the night, and don’t say nothin’ as to how they gets there and what they be after, bean’t up to no good. That’s what I say, muster.” And the speaker nodded profoundly.
“You’re a rare clever ’un, Joe,” and Mervyn laughed banteringly. “Now there’d be no great difficulty in any one, especially a stranger, losing his way in country like this, and that in the teeth of a howling sleet storm. Taking a short cut, you know, and thinking to cross the ice instead of taking all the way round? That needn’t prove he was up to no good. Eh?”
But to this the old fellow condescended no reply. He didn’t take kindly to banter, slow witted people don’t as a rule. He spat on his palms, picked up the handles of the barrow he had come to fetch and moved off with it. His master followed him, chatting desultorily. Three or four pigs in a stye grunted shrilly as the human clement suggested morning aliment. To this was added the cacklings and flutterings of the occupants of a fowl roost, expectant of like solid advantage.
“Mus’ Reynolds he bin around sure-ly,” chuckled old Joe, looking down on the numerous pad marks of a fox indented in the fresh snow. “Well, well, that there wire cageing’s too tough for his milk teeth. He’ll ha’ gone away wi’ an empty belly I rackon.”
“That reminds me, Joe, that I could peck a bit myself,” laughed Mervyn, turning towards the house. It was getting quite late too, he decided, looking at his watch. It would do no harm now to awaken his guest.
He passed in through the back, listened a moment, then softly turned the handle of the living-room door. The room was still in semi-darkness. On the couch lay the long, shadowy figure of the stranger.
“Feel like turning out?” said Mervyn genially, but not in so loud a tone as to startle the other. But no answer came. Then stepping to the window, he raised the blind.
The room was now flooded with light – the light of a radiant, cloudless, frosty winter day. Still the recumbent form never moved. Bending over it Mervyn dropped a hand on one shoulder. But – still no response.
With a quick, strange impulse that accelerated his own heartbeats he turned down the blanket and rug, which had been drawn over the head of the sleeper. The latter had removed his coat and waistcoat, otherwise he was fully dressed. But his face wore a half-startled, half-puzzled expression, and the lips were slightly parted – and then, bending down for a closer glance, Mervyn’s countenance became if possible more white – certainly more ghastly – than the one lying there beneath his gaze, as well it might.
For his unknown and unexpected guest, the man whom he had rescued from the frozen death in the black midnight depths of Plane Pond, was now lying there in front of him stone dead.
Chapter Four
The Pentacle
Yes – stone dead. There could be no possible mistake about it. Mervyn touched the face. It was icy cold. But how on earth could this have befallen? The man had seemed as well as any one could be when he had bidden him good-night and retired to his own room. Certainly he had appeared none the worse for his immersion. Quite himself after his hearty supper and generous liquid refreshment, he had sat and chatted and smoked in the enjoyment of perfect comfort for an hour or so. The room was still warm, the ashes of the glowing fire not yet dead in the grate. Heavens, what a thing to happen! Well, it had happened, and the next thing was to send Joe with the pony and cart into Clancehurst – incidentally five miles distant – for a doctor.
To that end he moved towards the door. But before he reached it something caused him to turn. Ever so faint a sound had fallen upon his ear. Something had fallen – had fallen from the couch where the dead man lay – had fallen with ever so faint a clink. It lay on the ground – a small object – and it shone. He picked it up – and then as he stood there in the winter sunlight holding it in his fingers, John Seward Mervyn felt the hair upon him rise, and his flesh creep, and his face grow rather more ghastly and livid than that of the dead man lying there. For one dazed moment he stood gazing at the thing, then went over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into one of the queer old vases of quaint ware that stood thereon.
“Good God!” he ejaculated. “That – and now!”
Outside he could hear the movements of his old retainer. The latter had come into the kitchen, which adjoined this room, and could be heard fussing about and grumbling in very audible tones.
“Why, what be it, Mus’ Mervyn?” he exclaimed, startled at the perturbed apparition presented by his master. “Look as if you’d seed a ghoäst, sure-ly.”
“Well, I’ve seen the next thing to it, and that’s a dead man,” was the answer; and even amid his own perturbation, the speaker’s sense of humour could not resist watching the effect the announcement was bound to have upon his ancient servitor. But upon the mind of the stolid countryman the statement had just no effect at all.
“Thass better,” came the almost unconcerned reply. “We’m all bound to die come the day; but them things what goes a-creepin’ about at night, and what you can’t always see, like in this ’ere ’ouse some nights – why they’re a deal wuss. And – who’s the dead ’un, sir?”
“Why the stranger I pulled out of the pond last night. I left him comfortably tucked up on the couch in the room there, and now this morning he’s as dead as a stone.”
“Talking o’ he,” said the countryman, whom the tragical side seemed to impress not in the least. “I bin over to th’ ice to get that ladder out, but it’s that hard froze in, and that heavy I can’t move it. You’ll have to lend a hand, Muster.”
“And a devilish good thing you can’t move it, Joe. Why don’t you see, lying just where it was it’ll furnish a very important item of evidence.”
Now old Joe’s stolidity did undergo a shock. That last word conveyed an unpleasant suggestiveness of the atmosphere of courts, and of the atmosphere of courts the rustic mind stands in holy terror.
“There’ll be an inquess then, a crowner’s inquess?” he said, with sudden awe. “Lor sakes, Mus’ Mervyn they can’t bring in as we had to do with it?”
“Of course not, you old juggins. But don’t you see – the first thing they’ll ask was how he got here and where he came from, and all that. Well, the position of the ladder – left exactly where it was, you understand – will confirm my explanation as to how he got here. So it’s devilish important that it should be left there. Now, do you see?”
Joe did see – and saw something else, or thought he did. For now his little rustic cunning suggested to his little rustic mind that his master seemed rather over anxious to supply material for explanation.
“Well, I didn’t see the gemmun,” he answered, with a note of sulkiness underlying his tone. “You’ll mind I said so, Mus’ Mervyn. I didn’t see he.”
“No, but you’ve got to now, so come along and look at him. After that you must hitch up the pony and cart, and get along to Clancehurst, and tell Dr Sandys and the Police Inspector to come along here at once. And – look. There are the strange gentleman’s clothes, hanging up on that clothes-horse to dry. I didn’t change mine – wasn’t wet enough.”
The clothes were hung in front of the kitchen fire now roaring and crackling merrily. Joe eyed them with surly disgust. He was becoming more and more imbued with a horrid suspicion that he would be involved in a charge of murdering the stranger – whom as yet he had not even seen – and in the result, duly hanged in Clancehurst gaol; incidentally that edifice was not of sufficient county importance to be used for capital executions, but of this, of course, he was ignorant.
“Well, come along,” said his master, turning. But Joe didn’t move.
“Beggin’ pardon, sur,” he said, “but I’d rather not. I said I didn’t see he, and I don’t want to now.”
“Oh, that’s it is it? Well you’d better. They’ll be asking all sorts of questions – and we are the only two people in the house. You’ll have to give evidence in any case, and you’ll do it all the better for having seen all there is to be seen. So, don’t be a fool. I only want you to see just how the man was when I found him. Of course he won’t be touched or moved or anything until the doctor comes.”
The old man gave way, although reluctantly, and followed his master into the chamber of death.
“Who be he, sur, do you know?” he asked in lowered voice, as he stood gazing, awed, upon the still features. “’E be a middlin’ likely sort of gent, for sure.”
“I know just as much about him as you do, Joe. As I told you this morning – I never ask people about themselves, and he didn’t tell me anything. No doubt he would have done so this morning, poor chap, but – there he is. Well, get away now and fetch the doctor and the police, and the sooner we get all the bother over and done with the better.”
Mervyn went out, and superintended the harnessing of the pony, and saw his old retainer start. It would take the latter well over the hour to jog along the hilly road, between Heath Hover and Clancehurst.
“Straight on and straight back, Joe,” was his parting injunction. “You don’t want to wet your whistle at any pubs this journey you know. The business is too important. And keep your tongue in your head about it, too. The only people you’ve got to wag it to are the doctor and the inspector. To any one else might make things unpleasant to you. See?”
Having, as he thought, effectually frightened his ancient servitor into discretion, and duly seen him start, Mervyn went back to the house, but did not enter. Instead, he took his way up to the sluice and stood gazing out over the ice-bound pond. There was nothing to be done until the representatives of medicine and the law should arrive, and meanwhile he felt a sort of disinclination to enter the house. But for its rather thick coating of snow he would have put on his skates and amused himself upon the said ice, cutting a few figures. Then he remembered he had had no breakfast, and suddenly felt the want of it.
Accordingly he descended the path, and entering began to get out the requisite materials. He was accustomed largely to doing for himself, so in a trice he had brewed his tea in the kitchen and got out other things needed. But some of the said other things were in the living-room, left there from the night before. He did not care to breakfast there with the dead man lying on the couch in the same room.
The latter seemed unusually, supernaturally still. He glanced at the couch. It was just as he had left it. There was nothing particularly repellant in the dead man’s aspect. On the whole it was rather peaceful – still, he preferred to have his breakfast somewhere else. And then, while collecting what he required, his thoughts went again to the thing he had deposited within the vase on the mantelpiece.
This he now extracted. Had there been any one to witness the process, they would have seen that it was effected with extraordinary care. For instance, he did not touch the object, he turned it out upon the table, and when he moved it at all it was with a bit of stick which he took from the remains of what had been used to make the fire with. Yet it was a harmless looking thing enough – a small, shining disk not more than an inch and a half in diameter, and it had five points like those of a star.
What an extraordinary thing was that which had happened, he said to himself. The omen of the door handle and the open door; and involuntarily now he glanced at the latter. But it was fast shut, and the handle at its usual angle. It had been the means of saving the stranger’s life – for what a very short time, as events had proved – and he remembered how he had marvelled that contrary to all report the manifestation had been effected in bringing any good to anybody. Well the “good” had not been effectual enough to last, so that far the grimness of the tradition did not belie itself. It was indeed extraordinary, and here in the broad daylight he could afford to contemplate it from a purely speculative point of view. Yet as he looked more and more at the little disk a good deal of an uneasy fascination was upon him, and well it might be – none knew this better than himself.
Then he did a strange thing. He went out of the room, returning immediately wearing a thick pair of fur-lined gloves. He took up the trinket, even then holding it gingerly. He looked round for something to wrap it in, then thought better of it. He rose, and carried the thing out, holding it behind him, and ascended again to the sluice. There was a small hole in the ice, where the overflow ran out over an iron door. That would do. No, it would not. He paused – just in time, as he realised he had been on the point of making a most fatal mistake.
He looked around, not furtively, not pointedly, just casually. Not a soul was in sight, but he knew, none better, that it does not follow that because you cannot see a soul therefore not a soul can see you. A cloud of blue titmice was twittering in a leafless alder, glancing from twig to twig. Overhead a little red kestrel was hovering against the cloudless blue of the dazzling winter sky, and two squirrels gambolled and chirked among the feathering boughs of a dark yew tree which still had a few berries left. Blackbirds clucked and flickered over the ice surface. All Nature was joyous and at peace this bracing, invigorating winter morning, and within the room down yonder the dead man lay.
Mervyn turned to regain the house. The little black kitten, its bushy tail erect, came bounding up the path stairway to meet him, but he did not take it up, as it rubbed against his legs, purring a greeting.
Halfway down the earth stairway a large stone lay, partly embedded in the soil. Mervyn bent down as though to tie up his bootlace. When he rose again that stone was the custodian of something. It was the tombstone of the strange small disk he had held in his hand.
Mervyn went into the kitchen, where he had left his breakfast all ready; and then he did another strange thing. He took off the big fur gloves he had been wearing, and put both well to the back of the red, roaring, kitchen fire. In an instant they were absorbed in the furnace-like heat. Then he sat down to his breakfast, but, in view of the proceedings just detailed he thought he could in a degree estimate the sensations of a murderer, who has carefully and effectually – as he thinks – disposed of every item of evidence.