Sorcerer's House

by Gerald Verner

  “Perhaps he was,” said Gale. He refilled the tankard, took a prodigious gulp from it, and continued: “Or perhaps it was the murderer who didn’t want him identified? What about that?”

  “But, according to you, Paul knew who he was,” said Flake. “Why didn’t he identify him?”

  “Why indeed? I say,” Gale raised one shaggy eyebrow and cocked an inquiring eye at them, “what did you think of Meriton, hey?”

  Rather to Alan’s surprise it was Mrs. Onslow-White who answered him. She said in her gentle, placid voice:

  “Poor Paul! I always felt so sorry for him. It must have been dreadful...that tortured mind...”

  “You’ve hit the nail whack on the head, Maggie!” cried Simon Gale, smashing his closed fist into the palm of his hand. “That exactly describes him...”

  “It was Fay,” said Flake. “She made him like that—”

  Simon Gale finished his beer. Very gently, this time, he put the empty tankard down on the smooth grass of the lawn. He said in a voice that had no trace of its usual stridency:

  “Yes... Fay...”He scowled, “Fay... I wonder what happened to her?”

  “Everybody knows that,” said Henry Onslow-White. “She’ ran away...”

  “Did she?” said Gale. “Y’know, Henry, I don’t think she did anything of the kind…”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The moon, nearly at the full, rose high in a cloudless sky. With the sunset had come a cool breeze, dispersing the humid heat of the afternoon. The countryside, stretching away to hill and woodland, was a vast pattern in black and silver, with washes of dove-grey where the meadows lay; a land of highlights and dense shadows and a stillness that broken only by the gentle rustling of leaves as a light breeze s stirred them. There was a scent of hay...

  To Alan Boyce it was a land of enchantment where anything was possible. If a knight in full armour had come riding out of the shadows of the copse by the white roadside, he would not have been surprised. This moon-drenched world was haunted with the magic of fairy-tale and legend...

  He had been dawdling, absorbing the peace and beauty of the night, but the watch on his wrist warned him that, if he was to be in time for his appointment with Simon Gale, he would have to hurry.

  Why Gale had asked him to come to his house at half eleven that night, he had no idea. That eccentric individual, after exploding his bombshell concerning Fay Meriton, had suddenly leapt to his feet and declared he must go. And he gone, ignoring the chorus of protests that followed him. It was just before he turned the corner of the house that he had called casually over his shoulder: “Can you come along to my house half past eleven tonight, young feller? You might be interested.”

  He was so sure I’d be there, that he didn’t bother to wait for a reply, thought Alan, as he increased his pace.

  Alan discovered, a little to his surprise, that he was beginning to like Simon Gale. There was something refreshingly genuine about him. Even his rudeness was the rudeness of the schoolboy, without hurtful sting to it. His immense gusto and vitality; the enjoyment which you felt he extracted from every moment of living, was a tonic.

  Alan, following the directions Flake had given him, climbed a stile and struck off across a footpath skirting the edge of a field. This should bring him out by the bridge over the Dark Water where Miss Flappit had overheard Veezey utter his threat...

  He came to it in a few moments. It was a narrow, humpy bridge of old stone, spanning a wide, stagnant pool of black, green-scummed water. About it clustered great trees whose spreading branches shut out the moonlight and steeped the place in shadow. A few feet away from the beginning of the bridge, Alan could see the dark entrance to Hanger’s Lane in which Miss Flappit had lurked. It was a gloomy and not very pleasant place. The road that led up to the bridge ran down to an abrupt turn and was lost to view.

  It was here that the unfortunate motor-cyclist had crashed into the parapet…

  When he came to the middle of the bridge, he saw the broken stonework where the accident had happened. There was a dark, irregular patch that still showed... He was glad when he emerged once more into the bright moonlight.

  Somewhere along here, according to his instructions, was Veezey’s hut, and further on, Simon Gale’s house. After walking about a hundred yards, he came upon the hut, set a good way back from the road on the left. It was a large army hut of corrugated iron, painted white with a round roof, and half-hidden under a profusion of creepers and vines. The small front door was approached by a white gate set in a wooden fence, and a stone-flagged path that wound its way through the loveliest little garden that the American had ever seen. It was small, but perfectly planned and laid out. In the full light of day it must have been a blaze of colour. Now, in the moonlight, it had a dream-like quality.

  Was the hand which had created that garden a murderer’s hand?

  Alan did not believe that just because a man was fond of flowers, he was incapable of violence. But he couldn’t see Veezey, somehow, as a murderer…

  There were no lights in any of the windows. Veezey was probably the type who went to bed early and got up with the dawn.

  Gale’s house was quite a good way further on. Alan was beginning to think he must have missed it when he came, suddenly, to the gate. It was in the middle of a very high and straggly hedge; a solid gate of seasoned oak. On it, in large white letters, was painted: ‘If you have been invited, come in. If you haven’t, don’t waste my time or yours.’

  Alan pushed the gate open. Beyond was a short path that led through a thick shrubbery to a long, low house that was backed by a mass of trees. It was shaped like an L and the front door, of oak like the gate, was in the short arm. In the longer arm, a row of windows were brilliantly lighted behind drawn curtains.

  Approaching the door, Alan saw there was neither knocker nor bell The massive door presented an unbroken surface of ancient oak except for a very small keyhole set in a round metal plate. He had raised his hand to hammer on the door with his fist, when it suddenly opened and Simon Gale appeared on the threshold.

  “Hello, hello!” he cried in greeting. “You’re late! Come in and have some beer.”

  “How did you know I was here?” asked Alan curiously. “I was trying to find a bell...”

  “No bell, no knocker,” Gale, grinned. “Just a little gadget of my own, d’you see? Any weight on this step rings a buzzer in the studio. During the day it’s switched through to the kitchen. Good idea, eh?” He led the way through a square hall, so stuffed with odds and ends that it looked like a junk shop, into an enormous room that obviously occupied the whole of the longer arm of the house.

  And it was like no other room that the American had ever seen before.

  At one end, near a large window, stood a big studio-easel. Beside it, laden with jars of brushes, tubes of paint, palettes, all the paraphernalia of the painter, was a dinner-wagon on rubber casters. Against the nearby wall was stacked a pile of canvases of all sizes and shapes, and on the opposite wall, running under three of the six windows, was a carpenter’s bench, littered with all kinds of debris, and with a glue-pot in a tin saucepan standing on a gas-ring. Above the bench was a long rack, stuffed with tools of all descriptions. Next to the carpenter’s bench was a small lathe, driven by an electric motor, and, under the remaining three windows, an enormous desk with a typewriter and a telephone. It was piled with books and papers, and in front of it stood an office swivel-chair. Facing the desk, in the middle of the other wall, was a great open fireplace of red brick, with several huge, comfortable-looking easy chairs scattered in front of it. A large barrel of beer, on trestles, occupied a place to the left of the fireplace, with a shelf over it, containing a collection of pewter tankards and old German drinking mugs. There were books everywhere, crammed into shelves which had obviously been built wherever there was a vacant wall space, and piled in heaps on the floor and on numerous tables. The whole place was incredibly untidy, but with an untidiness that gave an impression of comfort.<
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  “I suppose,” said Simon Gale, striding across the parquet floor, and snatching two large tankards from the row on the shelf, “you’re curious to know why I asked you to come? We’ll have some beer an’ I’ll tell you.”

  He filled the tankards from the barrel and thrust one into

  Alan’s hand. “Sit down,” he said, waving a huge hand towards the group of chairs.

  Alan sat down. He said, balancing the tankard on his knee: “I guess the reason you asked me here has something to do with Meriton.”

  “A direct hit!” cried Gale, standing straddle-legged in front of the fireplace. “You an’ I are going to do some exploring, young feller.”

  “Where?” asked Alan, although he had a fairly good idea.

  “Sorcerer’s House,” answered Gale shortly. He took a deep draught of beer, and set the tankard down on the narrow brick ledge of the mantel. “I’ve got a hunch that I’d like to have a really good look over that place.”

  “What do you expect to find?” said Alan.

  Simon Gale tugged thoughtfully at his beard. “Ghosts and goblins...”

  There was a silence. Alan drank a little beer, then said suddenly:

  “See here. What did you mean this afternoon—about Meriton’s wife?”

  “That’s been troubling you, eh?” said Gale. “Do you know the story about Fay Meriton?”

  “Some of it,” answered Alan, nodding. “Flake told me.”

  “Nobody knows it all,” said Gale. Abruptly he began to stride about the room. “Fay was a hysteric,” he said suddenly. “D’you know what that means?”

  “Somebody who’s morbidly emotional,” said the American.

  “It means more than that,” said Simon Gale, thumping his fist on the back of a chair, “but that’ll do to be goin’ on with. But that’s not all she was, d’you see? She was a sugar-coated pill. When you got through the sweetness, you found there was a hell of a nasty taste... And that poor devil, Meriton, worshipped the ground she walked on...”

  He stopped by the fireplace, picked up his tankard, and drained the contents.

  “I painted her once,” he went on, staring into the empty tankard with a diabolical frown. “It was a damned good picture. It was Fay—not what you could see, but all the rotten bits that were hidden. She was furious, and so was Meriton. I don’t know what happened to that picture. Maybe they destroyed it...”

  “What,” broke in Alan, “makes you think she didn’t run away? Everybody else seems to be certain that she did—with some man...”

  “I never believed it,” declared Gale. “I’d never have said anything while Meriton was alive, but I always had a theory... Look here, young feller, use your common sense. Old Ayling nearly had a fit when he heard she’d gone. He insisted on calling in the police to try and find her, and kicked up a hell of a rumpus. By all the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, d’you mean to tell me that they wouldn’t have found her? Of course they would—if she’d gone anywhere where she could be found.”

  A chill seemed to Alan Boyce to have come suddenly into the big, untidy room. He knew the suggestion conveyed in Simon Gale’s words, but he had to be sure. He said slowly:

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  Gale shrugged his wide shoulders.

  “Perhaps the ghosts and the goblins got her,” he said. “Finish your beer, young feller—it’s time we were going…”

  *

  An owl hooted mournfully in the trees behind the house, otherwise there was complete silence.

  Under the bright moonlight, Alan thought the ruined house looked even more dilapidated than when he had seen it in the full glare of the sun. Perhaps it was due to the coldness of the light and the hard effect of shadow.

  He stood with Simon Gale amid the wild tangle of the garden, looking up at the broken window of the Long Room with its trailing ivy. Supposing a light were to spring up suddenly in that dark window...a bluish light?

  They were standing where the lawn had once been, but which was now a knee-deep wilderness of coarse grass and nettles. The remains of a pergola, the roses long since reverted to their original briar, ran down one side in a tumbled ruin, and there were traces of flowerbeds, just discernible, under a mass of weeds.

  It was a fitting graveyard for the dead house...

  “Come on,” Simon Gale broke in abruptly on Alan’s thoughts. “It’s the inside of the place I want to explore.”

  He forced his way through a thicket of shrubbery and round to the front door. It wasn’t unlocked tonight, as it had been when Alan, wet and tired, had leaned against it and nearly fallen into the dusty hall…

  “H’m,” grunted Gale, when he pushed against it, and it refused to budge. “I suppose Chippy an’ Hatchard locked it. Oh, well—better not muck about with the lock. There’s sure to be a window we can get through.”

  They found one at the back; a small window that looked as if it belonged to a pantry. There was very little glass left in it, and what there was, Gale calmly proceeded to remove.

  “There you are, young feller,” he said, when he had smashed the last splinter out with a stone. “In you go!”

  Alan pulled himself up on to the sill and scrambled through. He found that he was in a small room that might have been a larder. Dimly, he could see shelves running round the walls, and a broken sink in one corner, full of rubbish.

  “All right?” inquired Gale’s voice outside, and without waiting for a reply, “Hold on, I’m coming in.”

  He found it less easy than the American had, because of his size, but he managed, somehow, to wriggle himself through, and dropped down beside Alan, brushing cobwebs out of his hair and beard.

  There was a door facing the window, and it was partly open. As they passed through into the darkness of a passage beyond, they heard the squeaking and scurry of rats. Simon Gale produced a torch, and sent its light playing ahead of them. The passage was short, and ended in a huge kitchen with a great, rusty range that was falling to pieces. There was dust and decay everywhere. Large, irregular patches of damp blotched the walls, and there was a queer, unpleasant kind of reddish fungus... Like those splashes on the floor of the Long Room...

  “If anybody in the village sees our light,” remarked Gale with a sudden chuckle, “it’ll probably cause a minor panic... This should bring us to the hall.”

  He shone the light on to a door leading out of the kitchen which stood wide open. Cobwebs, the remains of a whole dynasty of spiders, draped it like a curtain. Beyond was another passage and, at the end of it, a closed door. There was a horrible, musty smell of rottenness. Gale tried the door and it opened. They came out into the vast cavern of the hall.

  It was dimly visible, lit by a kind of spectral radiance that came from the moonlight filtering in through the staircase windows, and there was a stillness of utter desolation.

  It was at this moment, while they stood motionless by the door, that fear gripped the American. He could not have said what caused it, but it enveloped him suddenly, as though it were something tangible, something that had gathered out of the shadows…

  Gale took a step forward and gestured with the torch towards a door on the other side of the hall. He said:

  “We’ll start over there. I should think it was the drawin room.”

  Alan followed him over. The door stuck when he pushed against it, but between them they managed, eventually, to force it open. The hinges had sagged from the rotting frame, and it scraped the floor with a screeching noise that sounded abnormally loud in the hush of that silent house.

  They saw a large, high-ceilinged room with the paper hanging in tattered strips from the walls. The greater portion of the ceiling had fallen, leaving a gaping hole, through which the blackened laths protruded, and forming a pile of old plaster on the floor. Soot heaped the fireplace. A rat scurried across the floor in the light, its beady eyes glinting, and vanished in a hole in the wainscot.

  “Nothing here,” grunted Gale, flashing his torch qui
ckly round this wreck of a room.

  “What,” asked Alan anxiously, “exactly are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Gale evasively. “Anything that’s—queer—”

  But they found nothing in the lower rooms; only the ruins of a past splendour and damp and dust and spiders. Slowly they mounted the great staircase. Alan thought that Gale would go into the Long Room, but he ignored it with an impatient gesture.

  “What I’m looking for isn’t there,” he said.

  On the floor above there were five rooms, the principal bedrooms when the house had been—alive was the word that came into Alan’s mind. They were in a worse condition of dilapidation, if possible, than the rooms downstairs. There was nothing here, either, that could be called queer...

  They came, at last, to the top floor—the attic rooms in the gables. And the fear, which had gripped Alan in the hall below, came back…

  He felt the surface of his skin grow cold and clammy with it. It was affecting Simon Gale, too. His beard bristled stiffly as the muscles in his face tightened...

  But there was nothing in the rooms they entered to induce fear. In two of them the sloping ceilings were open to the sky, so that the moonlight streamed through, and the floors were sodden with the rain that had fallen on the previous night.

  Nothing to induce that fear which was growing into terror...

  And then they came to the locked room...

  Judging from the others, it was one of the smaller rooms. The door, more solid than any of the other doors, refused to move when Gale turned the handle.

  “We’ve got to get this open,” he grunted. “Come on—with me...”

  He flung himself against the door. According to all the books Alan had ever read, the door should have burst open.

  But it wasn’t as easy as all that.

  It took both their combined weights, and all their strength, before the screws holding the lock tore out, and the door banged back against the wall with a crash that echoed through the house like the report of a gun.

  Panting, they peered into the room. It was dusty and grimy, like all the others, but it was furnished! In the light from torch they could see chairs, a table, a cushioned divan...