by Mike Ashley
NORTON VYSE LAID THE LETTER DOWN ON THE TABLE AND FROWNED.
The frown—a gentle drawing together of the brows—was of perplexity rather than annoyance; his eyes, grey and unusually transparent, stared into vacancy, blind for the moment to the lawn, across which the cloud shadows drifted in alternating light and shade; blind even to the peacock trailing, with evident desire to attract attention, its preposterously gorgeous tail in the sunshine.
In the letter lay the cause of his perplexity, and his indifference to the antics of that incarnation of vanity, arriving as it had on the eve of the holiday and change he so much needed.
The postmark was that of a small town in France; the address at the top of the notepaper, Villa Adelaide, Borderive; the signature a strange one, although the surname had been familiar to him in Oxbridge days.
It was to ask for help, or at least advice, the usual appeal in letters to him from strangers or friends. How best to give it had drawn the lines on his forehead, and sent the clear, grey eyes searching into space.
After absently fingering one or two objects lying on the writing-table, he turned to the window—a big bay, designed to catch all the sunshine obtainable from a none too generous climate—and seating himself on the low sill, his back to the lawn, he spread out the letter and read it over again.
“Dear Mr. Vyse,” (it ran) “will you forgive me if in my distress and perplexity I turn to you, a perfect stranger, for help? You are so well-known to me by name, and I have heard so much of your wonderful powers and knowledge about things which, I suppose, would be called psychic, that I feel if you cannot help me no one can, and I must just live out my present trouble—of a most extraordinary nature—by myself. If, however, you will take pity on a rather lonely girl, and let me state my case, I will send details of the astonishing events of which I seem to be the centre. Or, better still, if anything should by chance be bringing you to the South of France, you would find waiting for you as my guest more than a hearty welcome. Hoping in any case you will forgive me for troubling you.—Yours sincerely, AVERY WHITBURN.”
Vyse shook his head. Nothing was by any sort of chance going to take him to the South of France at that moment. On the morrow he was to start for Wales, on a long-arranged holiday with an old college friend, who, although not endowed with Vyse’s gifts and supersensitiveness, was in sympathy with his aims and an admirer of his perfect control of the physical body and the powers acquired thereby.
Now, at the eleventh hour, he could not possibly throw Michael Swinnerton over, but to any advice communicable by letter Avery Whitburn was welcome. It was all he could do for her at the moment.
He turned to the writing-table, wrote a short note to this effect, addressed it, and the frown vanished; the clear, grey eyes returned from “nowhere,” and he stepped over the door-sill on to the grass, conscious at last of the insistent bird, who, finding all other methods unavailing, had spread his tail, and now strutted in front of his lord and master with an overweening conceit of himself.
Whitburn? He remembered the name. There had been a Whitburn at Oxbridge in the old days when he and Swinnerton were there; an unpleasant sort of chap, and clever as the devil. Since then he had heard of him once or twice as dabbling in a certain form of occultism—Vyse disliked the word, but there seemed nothing else to call it—and always in the unpleasant side of it. For years now he had lost sight of him; had never wished, in fact, to see him again. Odd if this girl Avery should turn out to be connected with Oliver Whitburn.
He would have preferred personal contact with the applicant in the case, but advice by post might be sufficient. His knowledge and help were always at the disposal of any who required assistance, and “a lonely girl” was not likely to appeal in vain. In this instance there might be nothing personal about it; Miss Whitburn might want advice about some outside happening, something detached, aloof, in which case correspondence on the subject might do as well as anything else. Among the rugged Welsh highlands Vyse always felt himself at his best. The clear air, the absence of contact with the rest of humanity, the great silences, the opportunities for meditation alone with Nature, all conspired to bring him into closer touch with that other world that lies around us, interpenetrating our own, accessible only to those who have eyes to see, ears to hear.
For hours he loved to sit on the lonely mountain side, close to the music of the trickling stream, and losing all sense of the material world around him, become aware of that other, hidden by so thin a veil that the marvel is it should prove so impervious to ordinary senses.
“You come in from the mountains with the peace of all the world in your eyes,” his friend said one evening, as after the hotel dinner they sat together on a balcony overlooking a long valley with a high rocky peak standing guard at the far end.
“I find it,” he answered, smiling, “in the valleys of Wales, and on the hill-tops. It is not that it is there more particularly than anywhere else if you know how to look for it, but it is easier come by.”
Swinnerton looked at him earnestly.
“If the study of the hidden side of things, the spiritual, psychic, whatever you like to call it, had the effect on all its votaries that it has on you, it would need no further arguments in its favour,” he observed.
“The spiritual and the psychic are not at all the same thing; you shouldn’t bracket them like that,” Vyse urged. “The psychic has to do mainly with the plane next our own, a state of matter vibrating just a little more rapidly than the physical. The spiritual is in touch with things far higher and nearer the essence of all things. Physical phenomena come under the former head.”
“You mean table-turning, banging tambourines, and so on?”
“Don’t throw contempt on what are merely the readiest means of communication,” the other laughed. “You remind me of Naaman, in the Bible, and his chagrin when told to cure his leprosy by bathing in the Jordan when he expected some highly dramatic ceremonial. You don’t ask to be assisted by pomp and ritual when speaking on the telephone. If you take the trouble to train for clairvoyance and clairaudience, you will be independent of such instruments.”
“It would have saved a lot of trouble if we had been shown how to establish this communication, instead of having to worry it out for ourselves,” Swinnerton grumbled, lighting his pipe.
“It would have saved a lot of trouble if Adam had been shown how to make aeroplanes,” Vyse laughed; “but he wasn’t. If we had not had to worry everything out for ourselves the evolution of man’s brain would have remained at a standstill; and perfect communication with the plane next to ours is about the toughest proposition we have been up against; but, mark me, Swinnerton, it will be done. Got a letter from France today,” he went on, drawing an envelope from his pocket, “about that case I told you of—there is nothing confidential about it. It seems likely to be interesting.”
“Your ‘cases’ always interest me, although I know so little about it all. Go ahead, let’s have the letter.”
Vyse gazed thoughtfully into the dusk, already purpling in the shadow of the great hills; then turning the letter to the fading light, he read:
“Dear Mr. Vyse,—I can’t say how good I think it of you to have given me such kind encouragement. As you ask me to be frank, I will begin at the beginning; a few family details may be of service before giving your advice.
“Firstly: Yes, I have an uncle whose name is Oliver, and who was at Oxbridge at about the date you mention. He was my father’s younger brother, but they quarrelled and I neither saw nor heard anything of him until quite lately. The family considered him odd, more than eccentric, wrapped up in his books, and dreadfully fond of money. My father said the accumulation of it pleased him more than the spending. I can’t see the sense in having money if you don’t spend it. But since my father’s death he has been quite nice to me, writing friendly letters, and even supplying me with a French companion, whose family he knew about, and who seems quite a pleasant sort of woman.
“I must
first describe the house—I warn you this is going to be a very long letter, but you said no details were to be considered too trifling to mention—this Villa Adelaide, where I am living with Mlle. Gourget. If you understand the ins and outs you will be the better able to understand what follows. It’s long and low, two-storied, and stands back from the high road to Borderive in a wood of fir-trees. For years my father and I spent our summers here, in spite of a report the place was haunted by something unpleasant. In all the years we were there we neither heard nor saw anything unusual, and in the beauty and peace of the surroundings forgot the old rumours of uncanny visitors.
“I must tell you there was one exception, but we were never quite clear about the truth of it. My father and I were in England at the time, and the caretaker called in a temporary maid to do some scrubbing. Something happened that scared the caretaker out of his life, but I believe it was put down to tricks played by the maid, as the hauntings never took place unless she was in the house. She was summarily dismissed, and from that day to the time of my father’s death nothing abnormal ever disturbed the peace of the villa.”
Vyse paused.
“I wonder how much longer the world is to continue perpetrating injustices through ignorance—colossal ignorance!” he murmured.
“What makes you say that?” Swinnerton asked, refilling his pipe, and looking out over the darkened valley with a sigh of content.
Instead of answering, Vyse continued to read.
“Just round the house the trees have been cleared away, and a garden full of flowering shrubs stretches to the south; on the north runs a wild belt of firs, the sough of which in breezy weather might be mistaken for a hundred thousand ghosts. We are one kilometre from the nearest village, and five from Borderive. The house is built of rough stone, and the rooms communicate—drawing-room, dining-room, and library, all opening into one another, and overlooking the garden. A wide corridor runs the whole length of the building, into which the rooms also open. Since my father’s death the drawing-room has been shut up; Mlle. Gourget and I occupy the dining-room and library.
“My father was not altogether easy to live with, and he and my grandfather had a life-long feud; I need not go into the cause of it. At the latter’s death it was found he had left every penny he possessed to Oliver, the younger son, my father’s portion being this villa. We lived in it on a very small income, and on his death he left it to me, with the proviso that I was to live in it for six months of every year. If I failed in these conditions the villa was to pass to my uncle Oliver. He was fond of the place, and I suppose wished to ensure its proper upkeep.
“Is that enough of past history to enable you to understand the situation?”
Vyse broke off and looked up.
“Why do the dead interfere in the affairs of the living?” he exclaimed. “Half the trouble in the world is the result of post-mortem interference!”
Swinnerton laughed.
“A mania for having a finger in the pie as long as possible. They can’t believe the pie will get on as well without them.”
“Now I am coming to exactly why I asked you to help me,” Vyse resumed. “The villa is very lonely, and I could never have contemplated living alone with the solitary maid who has been with us since my childhood, so I advertised for a companion. It was that advertisement that brought me the letter from my uncle Oliver. On his strong recommendation, I engaged Mlle. Gourget, who is nothing very pronounced in any respect, but I get on with her quite well. As I have spent six months of this year in England, I must live here for the remaining six if I wish to fulfil the conditions which make the Villa Adelaide mine. At one time these conditions presented no difficulties, but lately I have begun to wonder if I shall ever have the courage to carry them out.
“The beginning of the trouble was about a month after I had settled in with the new companion. I was passing from the library, where we had been sitting together, into the dining-room in the dusk, when on the threshold of the door connecting the two rooms, a hand gripped me by the shoulder. It is quite impossible to describe my sensations—not fear in that first moment so much as a sort of staggering surprise. It gripped and held me. I felt the fingers close on my flesh. Before I could speak or cry out, it was gone, leaving a tingling imprint where the fingers had rested. I turned sharply, resenting the liberty, but there was no one close behind me. Mlle. Gourget was on the point of resuming her seat by the table, having apparently risen while I was crossing the room. Naturally I suspected her.
“‘Did you put your hand on my shoulder?’ I asked quickly. She appeared surprised.
“‘Mais non!’ she replied, looking at me quite frankly. ‘I have not moved, except to pick up my scissors from the floor.’
“‘I could have sworn someone gripped my shoulder,’ I protested.
“She smiled, rather oddly I thought, but that may have been imagination, and shook her head. ‘Ce n’est pas moi. A contraction of the muscles perhaps—’
“But I interrupted impatiently. ‘I am not an imbecile,’ for I knew someone had caught hold of my shoulder; it was useless to discuss it.
“The old tales ran through my mind; after all the years of immunity I had forgotten them, they had made so little impression. Perhaps even after that astonishing moment in the doorway I should have forgotten them again, had not the same thing happened two days later. I was going up to bed, candlestick in hand—lighting arrangements at the villa are still primitive—and had placed a foot on the first stair, when a hand again seized me, this time by the elbow, gripping it so tightly that I cried out, and dropped the candlestick on the floor.
“‘It was you that time!’ I exclaimed with some heat to my companion close behind. But again she denied it emphatically, and when she tried to make out I was suffering from nerves, it was too much. With the pain and fright in addition, I lost my temper, and, pulling up the sleeve, felt a natural satisfaction in showing a faintly red mark above the elbow that might well have been inflicted by the pressure of a thumb. Mademoiselle was, however, hard to convince, and we parted for the night with some coldness.”
Vyse paused, staring into the darkness lost in thought. He could no longer see to read. The outlines of the great peaks surrounding them were only faintly visible against the sky; there was no moon, but stars shone softly in the clear vault of indigo. His mind was evidently working—had strayed probably to the Villa Adelaide, trying to unravel tangled problems, and Swinnerton refilled his pipe without breaking the silence.
After a moment or two Vyse spoke.
“What do you make of it?” he asked abruptly.
“I should like to know something more about Mlle. Gourget,” Swinnerton replied. “I don’t altogether trust her.”
Vyse rose, entered the room behind him by the window, and returned with an oil lamp the maid had deposited on the table. It was as still outside as a scene on the stage; not a breath to rouse the flame into a flicker, and placing it between them on the seat, he held the letter to the light.
“It is impossible,” he said before continuing to read, “to come to any sort of decision yet. But I think you are right and I think you are wrong.”
With which enigmatical reply Swinnerton for the moment had to be content.
“During the next few days,” Vyse read on, “I felt that horrid hand three or four times. It began to shake my nerve. It was always at dusk or in the dark, always when mademoiselle was in the room, and always absolutely unmistakable. It was ridiculous to try and persuade me, as she did, that it was a freak of my own imagination. On one occasion it left a bruise on my left wrist that has not yet faded. She said I must have knocked it against something without knowing it.
“Then one evening I saw it.
“I had walked into Borderive to do some shopping alone—mademoiselle is not fond of walking. I felt rather tired; it had been hot, and the road dusty. As dusk fell, I was sitting by the window, hands folded idly in my lap, thinking of nothing in particular. Mademoiselle also seemed disi
nclined to do anything, rather drowsy, sitting by the table in the centre of the room, and we talked, with intervals of silence, lazily, when I felt the grip I had learnt to dread on my folded hands.
“I looked down, and there, quite visible in the fading light, lay a third hand, coarse with gnarled knuckles, clenched on mine, a great scar spreading across the two first fingers, and fading away into a sort of thick mist at the wrist. The grip was so strong, so compelling it pulled me to my feet, and I flung the loathsome fingers off with a scream.