by Roy Vickers
He answered at once: “No,” and at that she gave a frightened little cry. He seemed to take her hands and try to comfort her—the cad! I could willingly have kicked him! After a moment he resumed: “You can’t expect me to part easily with all that I have left of you—but see here, dear, I promise faithfully to give every one back to you if you will come for them yourself.”
“But how can I?” she asked breathlessly.
“Meet me in the picture gallery tonight, an hour after they’ve all gone to bed,” he replied. “I’ll give them to you then and you can destroy them. After that—well, I swear that I will go away tomorrow—if you still wish it.”
At first she refused outright. But I could hear from her tone how anxious she was to regain those confounded letters, and after a time she promised to do as he asked. They were just leaving the room when Mrs. Dawson paused, adding something that really caused me to prick up my ears. There was terror in her voice.
“But I simply dare not come into the picture gallery at that hour. Oh, Godfrey, be careful! Do you know you have the end room?” And, as he laughed outright: “Wait—the Mailed Foot is walking! My mother has heard it, and last night I heard it, too. Even the servants have complained of strange noises from the east wing. You may laugh, but I am afraid.”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Who believes those old wives’ tales? If you want your letters you must come for them.”
She renewed her promise, though in a very subdued manner, and to my intense relief they went away, leaving me feeling like a criminal.
For the rest of the evening the recollection of what I had overheard worried me considerably. Somehow I felt that I ought to warn Flaxham, for I knew that I could do no good by talking to Mrs. Dawson herself. What I couldn’t make out was whether she was really keen on Leyton or just frightened of him, but I was certain that up to the present things had gone no further than a rather desperate flirtation. I knew the type of man Leyton was, though, and I did not like that appointment. Anyway, the poor little fool would compromise herself hopelessly by keeping it—and yet what right had I to interfere?
Chapter V
The Legend
It was just on twelve when we all retired for the night and, remembering that Mrs. Dawson was not due in the picture gallery until an hour after the house had betaken itself to rest, I decided with some satisfaction that Leyton would probably have been visited by my unknown friend in armor before that. If my summary of his character were in any way correct he would not venture out of his room before daylight to keep any sort of tryst. To tell the truth, I thought a good, wholesome fright would do him no harm.
Neither Flaxham nor I was very sleepy. Having got into our dressing-gowns we established ourselves in the comfortable arm-chairs on either side of the fireplace, and, lighting our pipes, settled down for a pow-wow. We chattered about old times for a while, and had lapsed into silence, smoking contentedly, when I suddenly made up my mind to ask him to tell me the legend which he had hinted at on the evening of my arrival. He didn’t speak for a time; then removing his pipe he knocked out the ashes and proceeded to refill it, saying slowly:
“No reason why I shouldn’t tell you. You know most old families are supposed to have their spooks, George, and we Flaxhams are not a fortunate exception. Only we don’t talk about ours, because it rakes up stories that the family would rather forget. Outside the family there are very few people who have heard of the Mailed Foot.”
This brought me straight up in my chair.
“Go on!” I urged eagerly.
Flaxham smiled.
“I can’t say that I personally pay much heed to these things. I have to see a thing or at least have some tangible proof of it before I believe in its existence, and I can’t say that I have ever seen this particular apparition, though even now there are those in the house who swear to having heard it, at least. The legend goes back as far as the days of Richard the First when the Hall was a Norman keep, and the second holder of the title—Sir Edward Flaxham—reigned here. All that remains of that building now is the east wing—where you slept last night.
“Well, Sir Edward, so the story runs, had ‘one fair daughter whom he loved passing well’—in other words, she was a deucedly pretty girl and the apple of his eye. But two things came before her—his King and his honor. He was a perfect stickler for honor.
“After a time the old fellow got the crusading craze, and off he went to ye holie war, leaving his lovely daughter to the care of her ladies and the trusty retainers—for her mother was dead. He was away in the Holy Land for a dickens of a time, and you can imagine what he felt like when, on his return, he found that his daughter Edith had died by her own hand rather than face the disgrace brought upon her by a certain knight.
“Sir Edward swore to find the man and be revenged—firstly because he loved his daughter, and secondly because the honor of the family demanded it, for the Flaxham women were renowned for their virtue. After a time he discovered his enemy. He had the young man seized and brought to the Hall, where he imprisoned him in that room at the end of the picture gallery. It has a stone floor—I hope you didn’t find it cold, old man!—and to that the prisoner was fastened by heavy chains.
“Now the story has it that, when the lover of Edith was at last brought to the keep, Sir Edward was just off to the crusades again. Late that night he visited his prisoner, attired in a full suit of mail, and walking round the room informed him quietly that when he reached him he was simply going to crush the life out of him. I can’t remember what his exact words are supposed to have been, but they ran to the effect that his handsome face had done enough damage, and that he—Sir Edward—was now going to spoil it. So he walked round and round that big, almost empty room, while the other unfortunate devil was fastened to the floor, face upwards, and unable to move hand or foot. My noble ancestor walked on, always in narrowing circles, until, coming up to his victim, he very deliberately raised one of his mailed feet and just stamped the life out of him.”
“Good God!” was all I could get out just then.
“Quaint idea, wasn’t it?” inquired Flaxham. “Now the superstition runs that whenever the honor of one of the Flaxham women is in jeopardy, Sir Edward is heard to walk. And if he can get at the right man he will do to him just what he did to his daughter’s betrayer.”
“But,” I cried breathlessly, “has that ever been known to happen? I mean—”
“Well,” said Owen, with a sudden access of seriousness, “the funny part of the business is that three or four times men are supposed to have been found in that room dead by some unknown agency, and with their faces crushed out of all recognition—as though they had been stamped on by a steel-clad foot. The last case was in the eighteenth century, when handsome Denis Hallam was found there. It afterwards came out that on the very night of his death he was to have eloped with Lady Betty Flaxham, wife of the then reigning baronet. They said that for nights before he slept in that room the footsteps had been heard. The idea is that the ghost will only harm the betrayer or would-be betrayer of a woman of the family.”
I don’t know why in heaven’s name it had not struck me earlier, but at his words my mind suddenly swung back to the conversation I had overheard in the study, and my experience in the room at the end of the picture gallery took new and sinister form. It was born upon me that at any cost I must get to Godfrey Leyton and warn him before one o’clock struck, for he was in deadly danger.
Then, while I remained in momentary doubt as to how it would be best to move, the big grandfather clock outside the door struck one. In a second I was on my feet.
“Owen!” I cried, clutching him by the arm. “For God’s sake come with me to the picture gallery—quickly, man!”
I darted towards the door and wrenched it open, but before I could get out Flaxham had seized hold of me. He told me afterwards he had serious do
ubts as to my sanity.
“Hold hard, old man!” he reasoned, keeping a tight grip of me. “What on earth’s wrong?”
“I haven’t time to go into explanations now. I am quite sane. For the love of heaven, ask no questions but come with me at once!” I urged. “Leyton is in that end room, and he is in danger—I know it!” The gravity of my tone convinced him I was in earnest, and as he let me go I caught up a candlestick, and hurried into the passage, putting a match to the wick as I walked. Flaxham followed close upon my heels urging me to explain more fully.
Heedless of his importunities I hurried on in silence until we had turned from the more modern wing of the house and reached the staircase which led upwards to the picture gallery. The lights had long since been extinguished, and as I passed between the rows of armored figures lining the stairs my excitement began to cool and uneasiness to take its place. I waited at the stair-head—ostensibly to regain my breath, and Owen caught up with me. Then, as we paused, the long, dark gallery stretching before us, I distinctly heard the clang of armor.
Chapter VI
The Mark of the Avenger
For the first time, the sound of the Mailed Foot filled me with real fear. I had had it in the same room with me, close enough to do me bodily harm but never once had it raised in me the dread which it raised as I heard it echoing along the deserted picture gallery before me. Mastering my horror with a mighty effort I caught hold of my companion and dragged him along.
“Do you not hear it?” I demanded. But there was no need for an answer, for I caught a glimpse of his face in the flickering light of the candle I bore. He had caught my mood and was as eager as I to gain the room where Leyton slept, and into which, but a moment since, we had heard the footsteps pass.
Then an unlooked for thing happened. As we reached the short flight of steps which led downstairs to the nail-studded door, we both found we were incapable of further movement. There we stood, regarding each other helplessly, I holding the guttering candle in one hand, while all the time we could hear the movement in the room not half-a-dozen yards away. I knew that at any moment a terrible and appalling tragedy would be enacted behind that closed door, and I was powerless to utter a cry or stretch forth a finger to prevent it. The pacing footsteps went on, heavily insistent.
It had never struck me that the ghost might have identically the same effect on anyone outside the room as within. We stood there, our brains the only portion of us fully alive, for, I should think, five minutes. Then suddenly a woman’s scream pierced the silence and flying footsteps rushed along the gallery.
In my eagerness I had forgotten Cecily Dawson, but I realized at once it was she. As she caught sight of us standing there motionless she called to her brother desperately:
“Owen, Owen, for God’s sake, go on—go in! Don’t you hear? Godfrey is in there! Go in to him one of you—oh, for the love of Heaven!”
She reached us, came between us, a desperate, slight figure in a soft dressing-wrap. As she caught her brother’s arm silence fell within the room.
Almost immediately the steps came towards the door. I had barely time to catch the fainting girl in my arms, and draw back close against the wall, when something brushed past me—and I swear I felt the hardness and coldness of steel against my hands!
When that brief silence fell it had released us from the spell of immovability, but the rest had happened so swiftly that we had no time to realize our regained freedom of action. As I caught Mrs. Dawson I had dropped my candle, which had gone out.
We two men stood there in the darkness, I holding my unconscious burden. We could hear the throbbing echo of the footsteps as they died away. The room was away from all the other rooms. Then I felt Flaxham’s shaking hand upon my arm.
“I must go in,” he said. “Leave her here and come with me.”
Laying my unconscious burden gently down I followed him. He found the latch of the door and, opening it, passed in before me. One candle was burning on the mantel-shelf. He walked towards it, stumbled over something on his way and, stooping, called to me to bring more light.
Enough to say that I obeyed him. The thing he had tripped over was the body of Godfrey Leyton, and as I stooped to put the candle near we saw that he was lying on his back.
His face was crushed out of all recognition. Horrible! Horrible!
No one except Flaxham, myself, and the family doctor saw Leyton after. It was given out that he had died of heart failure.
THE PIPERS OF MALLORY, by Theo. Douglas
Chapter I
While my last letter was flying out to you in India, dear Margaret, and your reply flying back to me, a great deal has been happening.
My last letter was all about Jack, wasn’t it?—how we met and fell in love and how he was under orders for the war, and so we had to be married in a desperate hurry—such a hurry that it shocked Aunt Winifred, glad as she was to get rid of me.
I told you what I was going to wear, and Jack says I made rather a nice-looking bride (he put it more strongly than that). He was, of course, in khaki, and looked dearer than ever, and half an hour or less turned me into Mrs. Frazer. We had only nine days for our honeymoon instead of the three weeks we hoped for, but they were nine lovely days. Then there was the dreadful going away; but, before that came about, the question had to be settled—the question you ask, my dear cousin—what was to become of me while Jack was away in France fighting those horrible Huns?
It was over this Jack and I had our first difference—not a serious difference, for we kissed and made it up at once—when I found out what he wanted me to do. He actually wished me to make my home with his mother in Scotland—fancy that—to bury myself for months and months in the wilds with a woman I did not know, who would be worse than Aunt Winifred twice over. I had never been free in my life, but always in leading-strings, and I made up my mind I would be free now, quite on my own, to make up for what I should suffer through Jack being away.
I didn’t tell Jack that—about wanting to be emancipated, he would not have understood. I told him what was quite true—that I wanted to make my V.A.D. training of use, and do war work of sorts in a London hospital, like Violet Power. And my plan was that Violet and I should take a flat together, a tiny flat, which would cost next to nothing (I thought), near enough to her hospital to be convenient, a hospital which needed helpers, and would find work for me, too.
Jack did not like it. Dear fellow! He is one of the old-fashioned sort who thinks women should be hedged about and protected, and give themselves up to looking after their household concerns; but he gave in when he saw I was determined.
That was nearly at the end of our time together—our lovely time. He had planned to take me up to Mallory, to say good-bye at the end of his leave, but having to go off suddenly altered that. However, he made me promise I would go there alone as soon as he left, to pay my mother-in-law a long visit before I settled down with Violet in the flat. Over that I was obliged to yield (with some private reservation about the long), for, as you will understand, I could not say “No” to him just then.
Well, we parted, and it was a hard parting. He put me in the night train for the North, before he left to cross over to France. Peters, his mother’s servant, was to meet me in Edinburgh and take care of me from there; you see, I could not get away from the “take care.”
Now you will know from my letter, the “Jack” letter, that I had never seen Lady Heron. She is always more or less of an invalid, and bronchitis, or something like that, prevented her taking the long journey to be present at our wedding. Fancy having attacks of bronchitis, and yet living up there in the North! She has been a widow for many years, and Jack is her only son; there is a son by a former marriage, Jack’s half-brother, who is now Lord Heron. The Frazers are poor in these days, but Jack’s mother has an income of her own, though I do not think it is a large one. Ma
llory is the old family place—mind you pronounce it right—Mal-lory, and not the other way. I suppose Lady Heron would not live there if Heron married, but he is still a bachelor, and with the regiment somewhere in France. Jack does not say much about his half-brother. I fancy the two are not very good friends.
Peters was waiting for me on the Edinburgh station, and by that time I was feeling rather better, and able to take an interest in what was new. Breakfast was ready for me at an hotel, with no bill for it, as Peters paid everything. I was “her leddyship’s guest,” he said, and it was by Lady Heron’s orders; he seemed quite hurt when I offered. A very good breakfast it was, and I was hungry, for I had been far too wretched to eat any dinner the night before. Then, after rest and refreshment, I had to sally forth again to a different station, Peters carrying my hand-luggage. And when we gained the street—that wonderful street with the Castle opposite, standing up grey against the morning sky—there was a skirl of wild music coming towards us, with the tramp of marching feet.
A skirl. That is the right word for bagpipes, as perhaps you know. I daresay you have heard them in India, as there are Scottish regiments there, but I had never heard them before. Their music may be barbaric—people say so; but there is something about it that fires the blood—that fired my blood, though I am only a Scotswoman married and not born. I could understand how it put spirit into the tired feet which were following, muddy from a long route march, as they kept time to the swing and beat of the brave tune. Jack belongs to a Highland regiment, of course, the same that Heron is in. And at the moment I felt prouder than ever to be Jack’s wife.
“I suppose Lady Heron has a piper at Mallory, has she not?”
It was the first question I had put to Peters. I had the notion that a piper must be a necessary appendage to every Highland family of importance; Lady Heron would not of course detain a young man, but she might so employ some old retainer, past the age to be of service in the war. But the servant shook his head. He, too, is quite elderly—did I say?—and speaks broad Scotch, though his name might as well be English.