by Sax Rohmer
“I am so glad,” said Moris Klaw, and his voice rumbled thunderously about the room, “that I have this opportunity to visit Grange.”
“It certainly has great historic interest,” agreed Sir James. “I had never anticipated inheriting the grand old place, much less the title. My uncle’s early death, unmarried, very considerably altered my prospects; I became a landed proprietor who might otherwise have become a ‘Murrumbidgee whaler!’”
He laughed, light-heartedly, glancing at Isis Klaw, and from her to his cousin.
“Clem had everything in apple-pie order for me,” he added, “including the family goblin!”
“Ah! that family goblin!” rumbled Moris Klaw. “It is him I am after, that goblin!”
The history of Grange, in fact, was directly responsible for Moris Klaw’s presence that night. An odd little book, Psychic Angles, had recently attracted considerable attention amongst students of the occult, and had proved equally interesting to the general public. It dealt with the subject of ghosts from quite a new standpoint, and incidentally revealed its anonymous author as one conversant apparently with the history of every haunted house in Europe. Few knew that the curio-dealer of Wapping was the author, but as Grange was dealt with in Psychic Angles, amongst a number of other haunted homes of England, a letter from Sir James Leyland, forwarded by the publisher, had invited the author to investigate the latest developments of the Leyland family ghost.
I had had the privilege to be associated with Moris Klaw, in another case of apparent haunting — that which I have dealt with in an earlier paper; the haunting of The Grove. He had courteously invited me, then, to assist him (his own expression) in the inquiry at Grange. I welcomed the opportunity; for I was anxious to include in my annals at least one other case of the apparent occult.
“We shall without delay,” continued the eccentric investigator, “endeavour to meet him face to face — this disturber of the peace. Sir James, it is with the phenomena you call ghosts the same as with valuable relics, with jewels, with mummies — ah, those mummies! — with beautiful women!”
“To liken a beautiful woman to a relic,” said Sir James, “would be — well—” he glanced at Isis, “hardly complimentary!”
“It would be true!” Moris Klaw assured him impressively. “Nature, that mystic process of reproduction, wastes not its models. Sir James, all beauty is duplicated. Look at my daughter, Isis.” (Sir James readily obeyed.) “You see her, yes? And what do you see?”
Isis lowered her eyes, but, frankly, I was unable to perceive any evidence of embarrassment in this singularly self-possessed girl.
“Perhaps,” resumed her father, “I could tell you what you see; but I will only tell you what it is you may see. You may see a beauty of your Regency or a favourite of your Charles; the daughter of a Viking, an ancient British princess; the slave of a Caesar, the dancer of a Pharaoh!”
“You believe in reincarnation?” suggested Clement Leyland, quietly.
“Yes, certainly, why not, of course!” rumbled Moris Klaw. “But I do not speak of it now, not I; I speak of Nature’s reproduction; I tell you how Nature wastes nothing which is beautiful. What has the soul to do with the body? I tell you how the reproduction goes on and on until the mould, the plate, the die, has perished! So is it with ghosts. You write me that your goblin has learned some new tricks. I answer, your goblin can never learn new tricks; I answer this is not he, it is another goblin! Nature is conservative with her goblins as with her beautiful women; she does not disfigure the old model with alterations. What! Chop them about! Never! she makes new ones.”
Clement Leyland smiled discreetly, but Sir James was evidently interested.
“Of course I’ve read Psychic Angles, Mr. Klaw,” he said, “consequently your novel theories do not altogether surprise me. I gather your meaning to be this: a haunted house is haunted in exactly the same way generation after generation? Any new development points to the presence of a new force or intelligence?”
“It is exactly quite so,” Moris Klaw nodded sympathetically. “You have the receptive mind, Sir James; you should take up ghosts; they would like you. There is a scientific future for the sympathetic ghost-hunter — for I will whisper it — these poor ghosts are sometimes so glad to be hunted! It is a lonely life, that of a ghost!”
“The Grange ghost,” Sir James assured him, “is a most gregarious animal. He doesn’t go in for lonely groanings in the chapel or anything of that kind; he drops into the billiard-room frequently, he’s often to be met with right here in the dining-room, and of late he’s been sleeping with me regularly!”
“So I hear,” rumbled Moris Klaw; “so I hear. It is quaint, yes, proceed, my friend.”
Isis Klaw sat with her big eyes fixed upon Sir James as he continued:
“The traditional ghost of Grange was a grey monk who on certain nights — I forget the exact dates — came out from the chapel beyond the orchard carrying a long staff, walked up to a buttress of the west wall and disappeared at the point where formerly there was a private entrance. In fact there used to be a secret stair opening at that point and communicating with a room built by a remote Leyland of the eighth Henry’s time — a notorious roue. The last Leyland to use the room was Sir Francis, an intimate of Charles II. The next heir had the wing rebuilt, and the ancient door walled up.”
“Yes, yes,” said Moris Klaw. “I know it all, but you tell it well. This is a most interesting house, this Grange. I have recorded him, the grey monk, and I learn with surprise how another spook comes poaching on his preserves! Tell us now of these new developments, Sir James.”
Sir James cleared his throat and glanced about the table.
“Please smoke,” said Isis; “because I should like to smoke, too!”
“Yes, yes!” agreed Moris Klaw. “Remain, my child, we will all remain; do not let us move an inch. This banqueting-hall is loaded with psychic impressions. Let us smoke and concentrate our minds upon the problem.”
Coffee and liqueurs were placed upon the table and cigarettes lighted. In deference to the presence of Isis, I suppose, no cigars were smoked; but the girl lighted an Egyptian cigarette proffered by Sir James with the insouciance of an old devotee of my Lady Nicotine. The butler having made his final departure, we were left — a lonely company in our lighted oasis — amid the shadow desert of that huge and ghostly apartment.
“All sorts of singular things have happened,” began Sir James, “since my return from Australia. Of course I cannot say if these are recent developments, because my uncle, for seven or eight years before his death, resided entirely in London, and Grange was in charge of the housekeeper. It is notorious, is it not, that housekeepers and such worthy ladies never by any chance detect anything unseemly in family establishments with which they are associated? Anyway, when I was dug up out of the Bush, and all the formalities were through, good old Clement here set about putting things to rights for me and I arrived to find Grange a perfect picture from floor to roof. New servants engaged, too, though the housekeeper and the butler, who have been in the family for years, remained, of course, with some other old servants. As I have said, everything was in apple-pie order.”
“Including the ghost!” interpolated his cousin, laughing.
“That’s the trouble,” said Sir James, banging his fist upon the table; “the very first night I dined in this room there was a most uncanny manifestation. Clement and I were sitting here at this very table; we had dined — not unwisely, don’t think that — and were just smoking and chatting, when—”
He ceased abruptly; in fact the effect was similar to that which would have resulted had a solid door suddenly been closed upon the speaker. But the stark silence which ensued was instantly interrupted. My blood seemed to freeze in my veins; a horrid, supernatural dread held me fast in my chair.
For, echoing hollowly around and about the huge, ancient apartment, rolled, booming, a peal of demoniacal laughter! From whence it proceeded I was wholly unable to imagine.
It seemed to be all about, above us, and beneath us. It was mad, devilish, a hell-sound impossible to describe. It rose, it fell, it rose again — and ceased abruptly.
“My God!” I whispered. “What was it?”
II
In the silence that followed the ghostly disturbance we sat around the table listening. Sir James was the first to speak.
“A demonstration, Mr. Klaw!” he said. “This sort of thing happens every night!”
“Ah!” rumbled Moris Klaw, “every night, eh? That laughing? You have investigated — yes — no?”
“I tried to investigate,” explained the baronet, “but quite frankly I didn’t know where to begin.”
We were all recovering our composure somewhat, I think.
“You hear that laughter nowhere but in this room?” asked Klaw.
“I have always heard it when we have been seated at this table,” was the reply; “at no other time, but it can be heard clearly beyond the room. The servants have heard it. Excepting the housekeeper and the butler, they are leaving almost immediately.”
“Ah! canaille!” grunted Moris Klaw, “fear-pigs! It is always so, these servants. So you have not located the one that laughs, no?”
“No,” answered Sir James; “and he doesn’t stop at laughing-does he, Clem?”
Clement Leyland shook his head. He looked even paler than usual, I thought, and the uncanny incident seemed to have disturbed him greatly.
“What else?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “The grey monk is forgetting his manners. He becomes rude, eh — that grey monk?”
“The house has practically become uninhabitable,” said the baronet, bitterly. “None of the unusual phenomena are missing. We have slamming doors, phantom footsteps, and, if the servants are to be believed, half the forces of hell loose here at night!”
“But your own experiences?” interrupted Klaw.
“My own experiences in brief amount to this: I rarely sit at this table at night without hearing that beastly laughter, at least once.
I never go into the billiard-room, which opens out under the gallery yonder, without feeling a cold wind blowing upon my face or head, even in perfectly still weather, or with all the windows closed. To the left of the billiard-room, and opening out of it, is a third centre of these disturbances. It’s the gun-room, and guns have been fired there in the night with the door locked, on no fewer than five occasions!”
Moris Klaw, from a tail pocket of his coat, produced a cylindrical scent-spray and squirted verbena upon his high, yellow forehead.
“It grows exciting, this,” he said. “I require the cool brain.”
“Finally,” added Sir James, “the only other point worth mentioning is the ghostly voice which regularly wakes me from my sleep at night.”
“A voice,” rumbled Klaw, “what voice and what does it say, that voice?”
“I won’t repeat what it says!” replied the baronet, glancing at Isis; “but it offers obscene suggestions, or that is the impression I have of it — a low filthy mumbling; if you can follow me, the voice of something dead and infinitely evil.”
Moris Klaw stood up.
“This intelligence,” he rumbled, “a living or a dead one, has thoughts then, and thoughts, Sir James, are things. I shall sleep in one of the centres of its activity to-night, perhaps here, perhaps in the billiard-room or the gun-room. Isis, my child, bring for me my odically sterilised pillows. This is a charming case and worthy of the subtle method.”
He placed his hands upon the shoulders of Sir James Leyland, who stood facing him.
“Evil thoughts live, Sir James,” he said. “I cannot explain to you how hard it is to slay them. Few good thoughts survive; but such an ancient abode as this” — he waved his long hands characteristically about him— “is peopled with thought-forms surviving from the dark ages. I have opened the inner eye, my friend. Mercifully, perhaps, the inner eye is closed in most of us; in some it is blind. But I have opened that eye and trained it. As I sleep” — he lowered his voice oddly— “those thought-things come to me. It is an uncomfortable gift, yes; for here in Grange I shall find myself to-night in evil company. Murders long forgotten will be accomplished again before that inner eye of mine! I shall swim in blood! Assassins will come stealing to me, murdered ones will scream in my ears, the secret knife will flash, the honest axe do its deadly work; for in the moment of such deeds two imperishable thought-forms are created: the thought-form of the slayer, strong to survive, because a blood-lustful thought, a revengeful thought; and the thought of the slain, likewise a long-surviving thought because a thought of wildest despair, a final massing of the mental forces greater than any generally possible in life, upon that last awful grievance.”
He paused, looking around him.
“From the phantom company,” he said, “I must pick out that one whose thought is of laughter, of firing guns, and of evil whisperings. What a task! Wondrous is the science of the mental negative!”
The meeting broke up, then, and Isis Klaw, having brought from a large case, which formed part of her father’s luggage, two huge red cushions, bade us good-night and retired to her own room. Moris Klaw, with a cushion swinging in each hand, went shuffling ungainly from room to room like some strange animal seeking a lair.
“Do I understand,” Clement Leyland whispered to me, “that your friend proposes to sleep down here?”
“Yes,” I replied, smiling at his evident wonderment; “such is his method of investigation, eccentric, but effective.”
“It is really effective, then? The experiences given in Psychic Angles are not fabulous?”
“In no way. Moris Klaw is a very remarkable man. I have yet to meet the mystery which is beyond him.”
Moris Klaw’s rumbling voice, which frequently reminded me of the rolling of casks in a distant cellar, broke in upon our conversation —
“Here is the ideal spot; here upon this settee by the door of the gun-room I am in the centre of these psychic storms which nightly arise in Grange.”
“If you are determined to remain here, Mr. Klaw,” said Sir James, “I shall not endevour to dissuade you, of course; but I should prefer to see you turn into more comfortable quarters.”
“No, no,” was the reply; “it is here I shall lay down my old head, it is here I shall lie and wait for him, the one who laughs.” Accordingly, since the hour grew late, we left this novel ghost-hunter stretched out upon the settee in the billiard-room; and as I knew his objection to any disturbance, I suggested to Sir James that we should retire out of earshot for a final smoke ere seeking our separate apartments.
We sat chatting for close upon an hour, I suppose. Then Clement Leyland left us, saying that he had had a heavy day.
“Clement’s been working real hard,” the baronet confided to me. “In the circumstances, as I think I told you, I have decided to abandon Grange, and we are having the old Friars House, a mile from here, but on part of the estate, restored. It hasn’t been inhabited for about three generations, and it’s very much older than Grange; part of it dates back to King John. Perhaps I can get servants to stop there, though, and it’s quite impossible to keep up Grange without a staff. Clement has been superintending the work over there all day; he’s one of the best.”
A few moments later we parted for the night. I left Sir James at the door of his room, which had formerly opened off the balcony overlooking the banqueting-hall. That door was now walled up, however, and the entrance was from the corridor beyond. The room allotted to me was upon the opposite side of the same corridor and farther to the north.
I felt particularly unlike sleep. The extremely modern furniture of my room could not rob the walls, with their small square paneling, of the air of hoary antiquity which was theirs. The one window, deep set, and overlooking an extensive orchard, was such as might have formed the focus for cavalierly glance, was such as might have framed the head of a romantic maid of Stuart days. And with it all was that gloomy air that had a more remote antiquity, that h
arked back to darker times than those of the Merry Monarch: the air of ghostly evil, the cloud from which proceeded the devilish laughter, the obscene whisperings.
Where the shadows of the trees lay beneath me on the turf, I could fancy a grey cowled figure flitting across the lighted patches and lurking, evilly watching, amid the pools of darkness. Sleep was impossible. Moris Klaw, to whom such fears as mine were utterly unknown, might repose, nay, was actually reposing, in the very vortex of this psychical storm; but I was otherwise constituted. I had been with him in many cases of dark enough evil-doing, but this purely ghostly menace was something that sapped my courage.
Grange stood upon rather high ground, and in a north-easterly direction, peeping out from the trees of a wooded slope, showed a grey tower almost like a giant monkish figure under the moon. I watched it with a vague interest. It was Friars House, to which the baronet projected retreat from the haunted Grange. Lighting my pipe, I leaned from the window, idly watching that ancient tower and wondering if more evil deeds had taken place within it — long as it had stood there amid the trees — than those which had left their mark ghostly upon Grange.
The night was very beautiful and very still. Not the slightest sound could I detect within or without the house. How long I had lounged there in this half-dreamy, but vaguely fearful, mood I cannot say, but I was aroused by a tremendous outcry. Loud it broke in upon the silence of the night, broke in on my mood with nerve-racking effect. My pipe dropped upon the floor, and taking one step across the room I stood there, rooted to the spot with indefinable horror.
“Father!” it came in a piercing scream, and again: “Father! O God! save him! save him!”
III
The voice was that of Isis Klaw!
Whenever I accompanied her father upon any of his inquiries I came armed, and now with a magazine pistol held in my hand I leapt out into the corridor and turned toward the stair. A door slammed open in front of me and Sir James Leyland also came running out, pulling on his dressing-gown as he ran. One quick glance he gave me; his face was very pale; and together we went racing down the stairs into the hall patched with ghostly moonlight.