Fighters of Fear

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Fighters of Fear Page 44

by Mike Ashley


  “At that I became indignant.

  “‘My father will prevent it, for one,’ I said.

  “‘Your father!’ He laughed contemptuously. ‘I tell you that no one is strong enough to prevent me from enjoying your friendship now that I wish it. You will see!’

  “If he had not turned away then, I believe I should have struck him, for my rage had overcome my fear. The idea of this creature daring to dictate to me, presuming to force himself upon me, was so overwhelming that I scarcely knew what I was doing.

  “I went straight back and told my father. Dad is usually a quiet man, whose only wish is to be left in peace to enjoy his beloved books, but when he heard my story he went straight away to consult his solicitor. Mr. Denning wrote a letter to Memory, warning him that his attentions were unwelcome to me, that I was already engaged to be married, and that any repetition of his conduct that afternoon would be communicated without delay to the local police. The local police,” repeated the visitor in a hopeless voice. “Little did I realize at the time how helpless any police could be in dealing with a monster like Memory!”

  Her strange words filled me with a sense of foreboding. I glanced at Quin and saw that his eyes were unnaturally bright. Evidently this case was interesting him intensely.

  Before she continued, Miss Loring took another sip of brandy.

  “The following night the first terrible thing happened,” she resumed. “My father had gone to bed early, but I had been sitting with my—the man to whom I am engaged, Mr. Harry Sinclair. Suddenly I heard a cry. I rushed upstairs, Harry by my side. I found my father—” Sobs now choked her so that she could not continue.

  “If you are too distressed, Miss Loring—”

  “No! No! I must tell it and get it over. I was saying that I found my father-paralysed! He could speak, but that was all. He said he had cried out because he felt a strange numbness creeping over him, robbing him of all strength and power.

  “No”—answering my look; “my father had not been stricken with any stealthy disease; neither had he had a stroke. The local doctor was puzzled and sent for a specialist from Plymouth. The latter in turn wired for a big London man—Sir Timothy Brash—”

  “I know him quite well,” commented Quin. “He is a member of the same club as I. A thoroughly good man; about as good as any in the world, I should say. What did Sir Timothy say, Miss Loring?”

  The girl’s body was shaken by one of those convulsive shudders which were so distressing to see.

  “It was Sir Timothy who referred me to you, Mr. Quin. After examining poor Daddy, he said that it was a case outside of medical science, because, as far as he could determine, there was no physical cause for father’s condition. Although not a robust man—but then Daddy had never been that—he said my father was wonderfully healthy and well preserved for his age. When I first heard him mention your name I thought you were still another doctor—”

  “Naturally,” was the grave comment.

  “And, to be frank, Mr. Quin, while of course I was anxious to do anything—anything—which could make Daddy better, I was so disappointed that I did not act at once upon his advice. You are not a doctor, Mr. Quin?”

  “No—only of the mind,” replied my friend. “I can tell you why Sir Timothy Brash mentioned my name to you, Miss Loring. He considered that your father’s illness was due to another agency rather than disease.”

  “What agency, Mr. Quin?”

  “That I cannot say with certainty until I reach the spot. Huish, look up the next train to Trevelyn. We shall return with Miss Loring. There is not a moment to lose!”

  I consulted the Bradshaw and glanced at my watch. “There is a train from Paddington in an hour’s time.”

  “We will catch it,” said Quin decisively.

  In the train Miss Loring told the rest of her amazing story. The malignant influence which was at work in her life had manifested itself in another direction besides rendering her father a helpless cripple. Harry Sinclair, her devoted lover, the man to whom she was engaged, had suddenly seemed to become bereft of his senses, to lose his reason.

  “Not that he has become actually mad,” explained the girl, “but he regards me now more or less as a stranger, and he spends all his time mooning about on the sands. His manner has become so peculiar that he is the talk of the town, and people are saying that—that he ought to be taken away. Mr. Quin’—stretching out a beautiful hand in anguished appeal—“do you think you will be able to help me?”

  “I shall do all I can,” was the grave response. “I promise you not to leave Trevelyn until the mystery is solved in any case.”

  “What is your view, Quin?”

  He turned on me impatiently.

  “I have no view at present,” he replied. “There may be a filmy thought at the back of my mind, but it is far too early to speak about that yet. All I can say now, Huish, is that we are faced with a problem that has so many terrors attached that we simply must not fail! Even the thought of failure is so ghastly as to terrify me!”

  I knew better than to provoke him into further speech at that moment, although God knows how anxious I was. The story which had brought us post-haste from London to this dreary Cornish coast town, would have seemed incredible had I not been mixed up sufficiently in Sebastian Quin’s affairs to know from experience that, to quote the words he had himself said to the victim of this diabolical plot, “the fantastic is usually the likeliest thing to happen—given certain conditions.”

  I looked at the man who had solved more mysteries than any other person living. He was so deep in thought over his pipe that there was a deep furrow in his forehead.

  Sebastian Quin was an enthusiast of the bizarre. He was as unlike the ordinary crime investigator as the real detective is unlike the fiction variety. Possessed of comfortable means, he devoted his life to the study of crime in its more exotic and weird manifestations. He was a repository of so much varied knowledge that I often marvelled how and by what means he could have accumulated so many facts, knowing that he was still under forty. Quin had learned Chinese well enough to pass for a native within a month, and could speak altogether eighteen languages. That in itself gives proof of his mental powers.

  He was far more than a mere detective of crime: he was a dissector, an analyst, an anatomist of the mind of the criminal. He was never satisfied with merely stopping a crime; he delved beneath and learned what had prompted the outrage. Altogether an amazing person, and my friendship with him was the greatest honour that I—or any other man—could have experienced. It pleased Quin to let me accompany him on certain of his investigations. The part I played was always an exceedingly humble one—I was merely a super on the stage; but Quin, like many other great men, had his moments of pardonable vanity, and he liked to have someone near him to whom he could explain and expound after a “case” had come to a satisfactory conclusion.

  We had decided upon The Grand, because it was the hotel nearest to “The Height”—that mysterious house in which Rathin Memory lived; and, late as it was after we had seen Violet Loring safely to her own door, Quin and I had walked the half-mile of desolate cliff-land, which separated the Grand Hotel from “The Height.”

  I shall never forget that walk. The wind had sprung up and was howling like the spirits of tortured fiends; every now and then the thundering of giant waters sounded, and we were drenched with spray as we walked along the zigzag path that ran between the golf course and the towering range of cliffs.

  “This should be the place,” Quin remarked, flashing the small electric torch he carried.

  We climbed the mighty headland which Violet Loring had called Pentire, and a laborious business it was. A strange and erratic mind it must have been that conceived the idea of building a house on the top of that cliff which jutted straight out into the Atlantic Ocean. Like the nest of some gigantic eagle “The Height” looked as we stood before the iron gates which were rusty with disuse and almost hidden—as Violet Loring had said—by rank we
eds and grasses as tall as a man’s body.

  The place was a monstrous blot of gloom. Not a light showed. There was no sign of any human habitation, and yet—I told myself it was fancy brought on by the story which had brought us to this spot at eleven o’clock of a winter’s night—something seemed to grip me by the throat as I stood staring there in the darkness.

  “Quin!” I called, and then was ashamed of myself.

  My companion came up and looked at me fixedly.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  I tried to laugh, but succeeded only in making a dismal croak.

  “I—I can’t explain it, Quin,” I stammered, “but just then—when I called, I mean—something devilish seemed to be trying to choke the life out of me! It had me by the throat. I was afraid for myself and for you too—that was why I called. Don’t laugh at me!” I went on angrily. “The sensation was real enough—too real for my liking.”

  Quin switched off his torch.

  “I am not going to laugh,” he replied seriously. “I had exactly the same feeling myself—and you would not call me an unduly imaginative man, Huish?”

  “I should not!” I said emphatically.

  Quin was silent as we walked away.

  The whole affair was steeped in mystery—evil mystery. On the morning following our arrival we saw David Loring, the girl’s father. He was a pitiable object. Apart from the fact that he could speak, he was a complete paralytic. But his mind was clear enough.

  “I am under the spell of some devilish influence,” he told Quin. “That may seem an incomprehensible thing to you—and, on the other hand, you may accept the statement because I understand you have had many strange experiences yourself, Mr. Quin. Dr. Logan will tell you the exact words that Sir Timothy Brash, the great consultant, said when he examined me.”

  Sebastian Quin, nodding gravely, took the grey-haired local practitioner on one side.

  “From a medical point of view,” said Dr. Logan, “Mr. Loring ought to be as well as you or I. He has been overhauled inside and out; all sorts of tests were made by Sir Timothy Brash, who said at the end: ‘Well, the whole thing is incomprehensible from a medical point of view.’ Poor Mr. Loring himself talks a lot about some malign influence, but, of course, all that is nonsense. This is not the Middle Ages.”

  “It may or it may not be nonsense,” replied Sebastian Quin.

  A short time after this we met Harry Sinclair, Violet Loring’s fiancé, as he was about to enter the house. He proved to be a good-looking, manly young fellow—at least, I should perhaps say he would no doubt have given that impression in ordinary circumstances.

  Now he did not appear to be in possession of all his faculties. His mind was wandering, and he was so careless in his attire that I noticed a flash of pain come into Violet Loring’s face.

  As for Sinclair, he stared blankly at her and glared around at the rest of us.

  “Harry, this is Mr. Sebastian Quin, from London,” the girl announced.

  Again she received a disconcerting, blank stare.

  “Who are you? Why do you keep on speaking to me? Leave me alone!” the man said fretfully, and then a look of loathsome cunning transfigured his face as he added: “But I know who you are! You’re David Loring’s daughter. You’re a bad lot, and I don’t want anything to do with you! It’s your father I want—I’m very fond of your father!” He chuckled obscenely.

  A sob sounded behind me.

  “You can see for yourselves,” said Violet Loring, her distress racking her, “that this is not my Harry. This is some monster he has been changed into!”

  While I tried to comfort her, Sebastian Quin had stepped between Sinclair and the door of the Lorings’ house.

  “I shouldn’t go in now,” he said quietly to the stricken man.

  The wave of madness which made Sinclair’s eyes glare and his whole body stiffen died down as suddenly as it was born when he looked into Quin’s face. With a snarl like that of an angry dog, he turned away without saying another word.

  For the rest of that day Quin kept a close watch on the Lorings’ home, and, noticing how tense and strung-up he was, I ventured to ask him the reason.

  “You may know tonight,” was the only reply he would give me.

  “Ah!” cried Sebastian Quin softly, yet with intense satisfaction. “There it is!”

  He pointed upward. The left wing of “The Height” took the form of a short, squat tower, and it was from a window in this tower that a light—the first sign of human life or activity in the place that we had yet observed—now glowed like a star in a dark sky.

  “Our vigil is ended,” said Quin. “What we have to do now is to ascertain what is going on in that room with the light. The question is whether we shall achieve that purpose by entering the house, or whether we can sufficiently satisfy our curiosity by climbing up this incline, which is on a level with the window, and looking through by lying on our stomachs. I propose the latter method, for it will be quicker, and I feel pretty certain that time is valuable. Now for the climb. Be careful you don’t fall!”

  We were already standing beneath the shadow of the house of mystery. My heart beat at twice its normal rate when I contemplated the task which Quin had set us.

  The progress of that hazardous climb, one false step in which would have meant not only the ruination of our plans, but inevitable death, is a memory upon which I never afterwards liked to look back. It seemed to last an eternity, but eventually I found myself lying side by side with Quin upon the small plateau, and looking into the room the light from which had attracted us from the ground. There were some curtains to the window, but the man inside had evidently felt so secure in his own mind about not being overseen, that he had not troubled to draw them.

  “Stay perfectly still, and do not do anything until I give you the word, whatever you may see!” whispered my companion, stressing the last few words in a way that sent a cold chill down my spine.

  Every separate nerve in my body seemed to be twitching as I saw a man enter the room. By the description which Violet Loring had given us, I recognized him at once as Rathin Memory.

  She had not exaggerated the dread with which this man would have inspired in the ordinary clean-living, clean-thinking, normal person. The man, even from a distance, seemed to be surrounded by an aura of evil.

  “Watch!” came the tense whisper from Quin.

  Memory was carrying a bundle when he entered the room, which as far as I could see was quite bare of furniture. Placing the bundle on the floor, he first took out five brass lamps of a peculiar design. Then followed a stoppered vessel. After that the man produced a white cock, alive—for it struggled—but with its feet and beak tied in some fashion that I could not ascertain because I was too far away. Then followed a knife, the blade of which gleamed in the light.

  “What—?” I whispered, but Quin ordered me to be quiet.

  I followed the subsequent actions of the man in the lighted room with breathless attention, for I realized that I was the witness of something which was full of significance—otherwise why should Sebastian Quin have been so absorbed?

  I saw Rathin Memory measure out a space. Having counted off a number of feet—how many I could not reckon—he drew a circle of chalk. Then, taking the bottle, he pulled out the stopper and walked around inside the circle, sprinkling the chalk line with the liquid the bottle contained. At each step he stopped and made a peculiar gesture.

  “The second sign of the unholy celebration,” I heard Quin mutter.

  The complete circle having been sprinkled, the man drew a five-pointed star with the chalk. Then, lighting the five small lamps which he had brought, he placed one at each of the five points. He seemed to be muttering some ritual as he did so, for I could see his lips move.

  Placing himself in the centre of the pentacle, he commenced what must have been a chant, for his lips moved again and his hands swept upward and outward. Presently the uncanny thing which I had been expecting ever since I had
first looked into the room happened—for from each of the five lamps guarding the points of the pentacle there suddenly sprang a reddish tongue of flame. These met and formed a solid barrier of fire around the man in the centre.

  At this point Memory thrust out his hand and seized the white cock. Holding the knife aloft, as though first consecrating it to its task, he decapitated the bird with a single stroke, and I saw the blood splash on the floor inside the circle.

  “Now that the blood is warm—” I heard Sebastian Quin mutter, but I was too fascinated by the horrible ritual I was witnessing to turn to him.

  I saw the unholy celebrant lift up his hands as though saying a prayer. As he did so, the wall of flame with which he had been surrounded died down. Five tongues of flame issued out of the solid fire and returned to the lamps, which burned at the five points of the pentacle. The light of the lamps now burned low, flickered just as though assailed by a gale of wind. They were trembling as though some unseen force were trying to put them out.

  “My God!” breathed Quin. “The real thing—the real thing!”

  Again I was too absorbed to take any notice of my companion.

  Spellbound I saw—or fancied I saw—a grey cloud beat about the figure of the man in the circle of the pentacle. I saw Rathin Memory’s lips move again.

  “Quickly!” A grip of steel was on my arm, and a voice that brooked no denial sounded in my ear. “Huish, get back to the Lorings’ house at once! Murder may be done there at any moment! Go at once—I must stay here. Go, man!”

  So strong was his control over me at that moment that I did not hesitate. I moved like a man in a dream, for the dreadful images I had seen were vivid in my mind—but I must have been quick, for within a surprisingly short space of time I found myself in the garden and climbing over the high wall that separated it from the cliff-land.

  Once on the other side, I took to my heels like a man pursued by fiends. But I was not frightened. My one idea was to get to the Lorings’ house cottage as quickly as possible.

 

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