The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  “Scorched—yes,” repeated the Colonel, failing to catch the rest of the sentence in his excitement.

  There was a prolonged silence in the room, in which I heard the gurgling of the oil in the lamp and the click of the coals and the heavy breathing of our host. The most unwelcome sensations were creeping about my spine, and I wondered whether my companion would scorn me utterly if I asked to sleep on the sofa in his room. It was eleven o’clock, I saw by the clock on the mantelpiece. We had crossed the dividing line and were now well in the movement of the adventure. The fight between my interest and my dread became acute. But, even if turning back had been possible, I think the interest would have easily gained the day.

  “I have enemies, of course,” I heard the Colonel’s rough voice break into the pause presently, “and have discharged a number of servants–”

  “It’s not that,” put in John Silence briefly.

  “You think not? In a sense I am glad, and yet—there are some things that can be met and dealt with—”

  He left the sentence unfinished, and looked down at the floor with an expression of grim severity that betrayed a momentary glimpse of character. This fighting man loathed and abhorred the thought of an enemy he could not see and come to grips with. Presently he moved over and sat down in the chair between us. Something like a sigh escaped him. Dr. Silence said nothing.

  “My sister, of course, is kept in ignorance, as far as possible, of all this,” he said disconnectedly, and as if talking to himself. “But even if she knew she would find matter-of-fact explanations. I only wish I could. I’m sure they exist.”

  There came then an interval in the conversation that was very significant. It did not seem a real pause, or the silence real silence, for both men continued to think so rapidly and strongly that one almost imagined their thoughts clothed themselves in words in the air of the room. I was more than a little keyed up with the strange excitement of all I had heard, but what stimulated my nerves more than anything else was the obvious fact that the doctor was clearly upon the trail of discovery. In his mind at that moment, I believe, he had already solved the nature of this perplexing psychical problem. His face was like a mask, and he employed the absolute minimum of gesture and words. All his energies were directed inwards, and by those incalculable methods and processes he had mastered with such infinite patience and study, I felt sure he was already in touch with the forces behind these singular phenomena and laying his deep plans for bringing them into the open, and then effectively dealing with them.

  Colonel Wragge meanwhile grew more and more fidgety. From time to time he turned towards my companion, as though about to speak, yet always changing his mind at the last moment. Once he went over and opened the door suddenly, apparently to see if any one were listening at the keyhole, for he disappeared a moment between the two doors, and I then heard him open the outer one. He stood there for some seconds and made a noise as though he were sniffing the air like a dog. Then he closed both doors cautiously and came back to the fireplace. A strange excitement seemed growing upon him. Evidently he was trying to make up his mind to say something that he found it difficult to say. And John Silence, as I rightly judged, was waiting patiently for him to choose his own opportunity and his own way of saying it. At last he turned and faced us, squaring his great shoulders, and stiffening perceptibly.

  Dr. Silence looked up sympathetically.

  “Your own experiences help me most,” he observed quietly.

  “The fact is,” the Colonel said, speaking very low, “this past week there have been outbreaks of fire in the house itself. Three separate outbreaks—and all—in my sister’s room.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said, as if this was just what he had expected to hear.

  “Utterly unaccountable—all of them,” added the other, and then sat down. I began to understand something of the reason of his excitement. He was realising at last that the “natural” explanation he had held to all along was becoming impossible, and he hated it. It made him angry.

  “Fortunately,” he went on, “she was out each time and does not know. But I have made her sleep now in a room on the ground floor.”

  “A wise precaution,” the doctor said simply. He asked one or two questions. The fires had started in the curtains—once by the window and once by the bed. The third time smoke had been discovered by the maid coming from the cupboard, and it was found that Miss Wragge’s clothes hanging on the hooks were smouldering. The doctor listened attentively, but made no comment.

  “And now can you tell me,” he said presently, “what your own feeling about it is—your general impression?”

  “It sounds foolish to say so,” replied the soldier, after a moment’s hesitation, “but I feel exactly as I have often felt on active service in my Indian campaigns: just as if the house and all in it were in a state of siege; as though a concealed enemy were encamped about us—in ambush somewhere.” He uttered a soft nervous laugh. “As if the next sign of smoke would precipitate a panic—a dreadful panic.”

  The picture came before me of the night shadowing the house, and the twisted pine trees he had described crowding about it, concealing some powerful enemy; and, glancing at the resolute face and figure of the old soldier, forced at length to his confession, I understood something of all he had been through before he sought the assistance of John Silence.

  “And tomorrow, unless I am mistaken, is full moon,” said the doctor suddenly, watching the other’s face for the effect of his apparently careless words.

  Colonel Wragge gave an uncontrollable start, and his face for the first time showed unmistakable pallor.

  “What in the world–?” he began, his lip quivering.

  “Only that I am beginning to see light in this extraordinary affair,” returned the other calmly, “and, if my theory is correct, each month when the moon is at the full should witness an increase in the activity of the phenomena.”

  “I don’t see the connection,” Colonel Wragge answered almost savagely, “but I am bound to say my diary bears you out.” He wore the most puzzled expression I have ever seen upon an honest face, but he abhorred this additional corroboration of an explanation that perplexed him.

  “I confess,” he repeated, “I cannot see the connection.”

  “Why should you?” said the doctor, with his first laugh that evening. He got up and hung the map upon the wall again. “But I do—because these things are my special study—and let me add that I have yet to come across a problem that is not natural, and has not a natural explanation. It’s merely a question of how much one knows—and admits.”

  Colonel Wragge eyed him with a new and curious respect in his face. But his feelings were soothed. Moreover, the doctor’s laugh and change of manner came as a relief to all, and broke the spell of grave suspense that had held us so long. We all rose and stretched our limbs, and took little walks about the room.

  “I am glad, Dr. Silence, if you will allow me to say so, that you are here,” he said simply, “very glad indeed. And now I fear I have kept you both up very late,” with a glance to include me, “for you must be tired, and ready for your beds. I have told you all there is to tell,” he added, “and tomorrow you must feel perfectly free to take any steps you think necessary.”

  The end was abrupt, yet natural, for there was nothing more to say, and neither of these men talked for mere talking’s sake.

  Out in the cold and chilly hall he lit our candles and took us upstairs. The house was at rest and still, every one asleep. We moved softly. Through the windows on the stairs we saw the moonlight falling across the lawn, throwing deep shadows. The nearer pine trees were just visible in the distance, a wall of impenetrable blackness.

  Our host came for a moment to our rooms to see that we had everything. He pointed to a coil of strong rope lying beside the window, fastened to the wall by means of an iron ring. Evidently it had been recently put in.

  “I don’t think we shall need it,” Dr. Silence said, with a smile.


  “I trust not,” replied our host gravely. “I sleep quite close to you across the landing,” he whispered, pointing to his door, “and if you—if you want anything in the night you will know where to find me.”

  He wished us pleasant dreams and disappeared down the passage into his room, shading the candle with his big muscular hand from the draughts.

  John Silence stopped me a moment before I went.

  “You know what it is?” I asked, with an excitement that even overcame my weariness.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m almost sure. And you?”

  “Not the smallest notion.”

  He looked disappointed, but not half as disappointed as I felt.

  “Egypt,” he whispered, “Egypt!”

  II

  Nothing happened to disturb me in the night—nothing, that is, except a nightmare in which Colonel Wragge chased me amid thin streaks of fire, and his sister always prevented my escape by suddenly rising up out of the ground in her chair—dead. The deep baying of dogs woke me once, just before the dawn, it must have been, for I saw the window frame against the sky; there was a flash of lightning, too, I thought, as I turned over in bed. And it was warm, for October oppressively warm.

  It was after eleven o’clock when our host suggested going out with the guns, these, we understood, being a somewhat thin disguise for our true purpose. Personally, I was glad to be in the open air, for the atmosphere of the house was heavy with presentiment. The sense of impending disaster hung over all. Fear stalked the passages, and lurked in the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, but really haunted; not by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite though incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous. At the least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the servants, though professedly ignorant by the master’s unspoken orders, yet shared the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with this display of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity, provided a kind of black doom that draped not only the walls, but also the minds of the people living within them.

  Only the bright and cheerful vision of old Miss Wragge being pushed about the house in her noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly to every one she met, prevented us from giving way entirely to the depression which governed the majority. The sight of her was like a gleam of sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened wood, and just as we went out I saw her being wheeled along by her attendant into the sunshine of the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she turned her head and wished us good sport.

  The morning was October at its best. Sunshine glistened on the dew-drenched grass and on leaves turned golden-red. The dainty messengers of coming hoar-frost were already in the air, a search for permanent winter quarters. From the wide moors that everywhere swept up against the sky, like a purple sea splashed by the occasional grey of rocky clefts, there stole down the cool and perfumed wind of the west. And the keen taste of the sea ran through all like a master-flavour, borne over the spaces perhaps by the seagulls that cried and circled high in the air.

  But our host took little interest in this sparkling beauty, and had no thought of showing off the scenery of his property. His mind was otherwise intent, and, for that matter, so were our own.

  “Those bleak moors and hills stretch unbroken for hours,” he said, with a sweep of the hand; “and over there, some four miles,” pointing in another direction, “lies S–- Bay, a long, swampy inlet of the sea, haunted by myriads of seabirds. On the other side of the house are the plantations and pine-woods. I thought we would get the dogs and go first to the Twelve Acre Wood I told you about last night. It’s quite near.”

  We found the dogs in the stable, and I recalled the deep baying of the night when a fine bloodhound and two great Danes leaped out to greet us. Singular companions for guns, I thought to myself, as we struck out across the fields and the great creatures bounded and ran beside us, nose to ground.

  The conversation was scanty. John Silence’s grave face did not encourage talk. He wore the expression I knew well—that look of earnest solicitude which meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed and preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, but anxious often—it always moved me to witness it—and he was anxious now.

  “On the way back you shall see the laundry building,” Colonel Wragge observed shortly, for he, too, found little to say. “We shall attract less attention then.”

  Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed able to dispel the feelings of uneasy dread that gathered increasingly about our minds as we went.

  In a very few minutes a clump of pine trees concealed the house from view, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a densely grown plantation of conifers. Colonel Wragge stopped abruptly, and, producing a map from his pocket, explained once more very briefly its position with regard to the house. He showed how it ran up almost to the walls of the laundry building—though at the moment beyond our actual view—and pointed to the windows of his sister’s bedroom where the fires had been. The room, now empty, looked straight on to the wood. Then, glancing nervously about him, and calling the dogs to heel, he proposed that we should enter the plantation and make as thorough examination of it as we thought worth while. The dogs, he added, might perhaps be persuaded to accompany us a little way—and he pointed to where they cowered at his feet—but he doubted it. “Neither voice nor whip will get them very far, I’m afraid,” he said. “I know by experience.”

  “If you have no objection,” replied Dr. Silence, with decision, and speaking almost for the first time, “we will make our examination alone—Mr. Hubbard and myself. It will be best so.”

  His tone was absolutely final, and the Colonel acquiesced so politely that even a less intuitive man than myself must have seen that he was genuinely relieved.

  “You doubtless have good reasons,” he said.

  “Merely that I wish to obtain my impressions uncoloured. This delicate clue I am working on might be so easily blurred by the thought-currents of another mind with strongly preconceived ideas.”

  “Perfectly. I understand,” rejoined the soldier, though with an expression of countenance that plainly contradicted his words. “Then I will wait here with the dogs; and we’ll have a look at the laundry on our way home.”

  I turned once to look back as we clambered over the low stone wall built by the late owner, and saw his straight, soldierly figure standing in the sunlit field watching us with a curiously intent look on his face. There was something to me incongruous, yet distinctly pathetic, in the man’s efforts to meet all far-fetched explanations of the mystery with contempt, and at the same time in his stolid, unswerving investigation of it all. He nodded at me and made a gesture of farewell with his hand. That picture of him, standing in the sunshine with his big dogs, steadily watching us, remains with me to this day.

  Dr. Silence led the way in among the twisted trunks, planted closely together in serried ranks, and I followed sharp at his heels. The moment we were out of sight he turned and put down his gun against the roots of a big tree, and I did likewise.

  “We shall hardly want these cumbersome weapons of murder,” he observed, with a passing smile.

  “You are sure of your clue, then?” I asked at once, bursting with curiosity, yet fearing to betray it lest he should think me unworthy. His own methods were so absolutely simple and untheatrical.

  “I am sure of my clue,” he answered gravely. “And I think we have come just in time. You shall know in due course. For the present—be content to follow and observe. And think, steadily. The support of your mind will help me.”

  His voice had that quiet mastery in it which leads men to face death with a sort of happiness and pride. I would have followed him anywhere at that moment. At the same time his words conveyed a sense of dread seriousness. I caught the thrill of his confidence; but also, in this broad light of day, I felt the measure of alarm that lay behind.
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br />   “You still have no strong impressions?” he asked. “Nothing happened in the night, for instance? No vivid dreamings?”

  He looked closely for my answer, I was aware.

  “I slept almost an unbroken sleep. I was tremendously tired, you know, and, but for the oppressive heat—”

  “Good! You still notice the heat, then,” he said to himself, rather than expecting an answer. “And the lightning?” he added, “that lightning out of a clear sky—that flashing—did you notice that?”

  I answered truly that I thought I had seen a flash during a moment of wakefulness, and he then drew my attention to certain facts before moving on.

  “You remember the sensation of warmth when you put the letter to your forehead in the train; the heat generally in the house last evening, and, as you now mention, in the night. You heard, too, the Colonel’s stories about the appearances of fire in this wood and in the house itself, and the way his brother and the gamekeeper came to their deaths twenty years ago.”

  I nodded, wondering what in the world it all meant.

  “And you get no clue from these facts?” he asked, a trifle surprised.

  I searched every corner of my mind and imagination for some inkling of his meaning, but was obliged to admit that I understood nothing so far.

  “Never mind, you will later. And now,” he added, “we will go over the wood and see what we can find.”

  His words explained to me something of his method. We were to keep our minds alert and report to each other the least fancy that crossed the picture-gallery of our thoughts. Then, just as we started, he turned again to me with a final warning.

  “And, for your safety,” he said earnestly, “imagine now—and for that matter, imagine always until we leave this place—imagine with the utmost keenness, that you are surrounded by a shell that protects you. Picture yourself inside a protective envelope, and build it up with the most intense imagination you can evoke. Pour the whole force of your thought and will into it. Believe vividly all through this adventure that such a shell, constructed of your thought, will and imagination, surrounds you completely, and that nothing can pierce it to attack.”