The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder

by John Bellairs

  The two boys went outside and circled around the hedge maze. The summer had been hot and dry, Bertie said. The rank grass on the front lawn had died and dried. Now it stood stiff and yellow, a thick sedgy growth that reminded Lewis uncomfortably of the field he had waded through in his nightmares. The brick cottage looked deserted as Bertie and Lewis approached it. The windows were all dark, and no one had bothered to sweep away the pile of dead leaves that had blown up against the front steps. They lay there ankle deep and undisturbed.

  “I don’t get it,” muttered Lewis. “The place looks empty. How long has this Prester guy been living there, anyway?”

  Bertie thought back. “A little more than a week,” he said. “This is Tuesday. He came a week ago yesterday.”

  “Well, he hasn’t turned on the lights or swept the steps or washed the windows,” said Lewis. “In fact, he hasn’t done anything.” They had stopped a few feet from the house. Lewis braced himself. “I’m going to peek through the window,” he said.

  “Do—do you think you ought?” stammered Bertie.

  “I have to,” answered Lewis. “You can’t do it, and we need to know if he’s in there. Be ready to run if I yell. You know which way the Manor is?”

  “Sure,” said Bertie. “We’re on the driveway. You just follow it up until it circles the house.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “Here goes.”

  He crept up to the house. The windows were in sad shape, blurred and bleared with layers of ancient grime. He shaded his eyes and peered in through one foggy pane. The house was decidedly gloomy inside, but gradually, as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, Lewis began to make out shapes. He frowned. The room he was peering into looked unlived-in. A bed, shrouded under a dustcover, stood near the window. Aside from that he could see no furniture at all. A door opposite the window was open and led into a room that looked like a kitchen, with an old-fashioned wood-burning stove just visible. Off to his right was the closed front door. The little cottage appeared to have no other rooms, unless a bathroom lay beyond a closed door to the left of the kitchen. “Empty,” Lewis reported to Bertie.

  “What now?”

  “Well—I vote we knock on the door and see if anyone is home. If he is, you just introduce me and say I am visiting. If not, we’ll see if the door is unlocked.”

  “Lewis!” exclaimed Bertie. “Isn’t that breaking and entering?”

  “Not if we don’t break anything. It’s just, uh, entering.” Lewis paused. He was not at all positive that he was using proper legal terms, but this was no time to hesitate. He continued: “And besides, we’ll just take one quick look and then get out of here.”

  “Well—all right.” But Bertie did not sound happy about the whole idea.

  They walked to the front door, where they scuffed through the dead leaves. Lewis tentatively rapped at the door. It gave back a hollow, vacant sound. “Here goes nothing,” said Lewis. He reached out to touch the doorknob.

  “What’s that?” asked Bertie in a sharp, frightened voice.

  Lewis had heard it too: a slithery, rustling, creepy noise. It came from the side of the house. He looked and saw the tall, dead grass stirring as if something big were stalking through it, heading for them. “Run!” he yelled.

  Bertie broke for the Manor at once, with Lewis right at his heels. Behind them something growled. Lewis cast one terrified glance back when he was halfway to the Manor. The grass beside the drive waved wildly as something huge and invisible bounded through it. Whatever had chased them through the maze at midnight was loose again!

  Lewis forced his knees to run harder, faster. His breath burned in his chest. Yet he could barely manage to pull even with Bertie. They came to the circular drive around the house and crossed that—

  And Lewis heard a frustrated, low growl from behind. He looked back again. “It stopped!” he panted. Then he remembered the awful night that he and Bertie had stumbled across the same drive. “It can’t cross the drive!” he said. “Something is keeping it out!”

  Bertie collapsed and lay on his stomach, breathing great ragged gasps of air. Lewis bent over, his hands on his knees. Whatever had chased them had gone. He could barely see the corner of the gatekeeper’s cottage down at the foot of the driveway. He blinked, and goose flesh rose on his arms.

  A tall, thin man stood beside the house. He had a long, pale face with deep-set eyes, and although Lewis could not clearly see his features, he seemed to be leering in an evil, triumphant way. “Is—is that him?” Lewis panted.

  “What?” Bertie asked. “Lewis, you know I can’t see!”

  “I forgot,” apologized Lewis. “There’s a skinny man next to—” He broke off in confusion. He had not taken his eyes away from the tall man who stood beside the cottage. And yet the man was gone.

  Somehow, even with Lewis staring straight at him, the baleful figure had vanished into thin air.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As Lewis stared unbelievingly at the place near the cottage where the black-clad man had stood, a hand fell on his shoulder. He jumped a mile and yelped in alarm. Bertie cried out at the same time. But when Lewis turned to see who or what had grabbed him, there stood old Jenkins, a look of reproach on his face. “The master won’t like that,” said Jenkins, shaking his head. “Runnin’ about and makin’ an unholy row and all. You and Bertie here ought to be quieter and more considerate of your elders.”

  “We’re sorry, Jenkins,” said Bertie. “We had a bit of a fright.”

  “Oh? And what frightened you two?”

  Lewis thought fast. “We were down close to the gatekeeper’s cottage, and, uh, we heard a dog or something. It growled at us and we ran up to the house.”

  Jenkins furrowed his brow and scratched the top of his bald head. “A dog? Nay, there’s no dog there, nor any within miles of this place, except for the sheep dogs. And they’re too well trained to come mummocking about where they don’t belong.” Jenkins had not changed back into his suit after working in the garden. He wore coveralls and a plaid shirt. He straightened up and gazed down the drive toward the cottage. “You two were best to stay well out of the way of that house, and the man that’s staying there. That one’s a strange duck, and no mistake.”

  “Mr. Prester, you mean?” asked Bertie.

  “Aye, whatever he calls himself,” muttered Jenkins. “Needs a rest, he says. Down from London, he says. A retired businessman, he is—and my sainted Aunt Sarah was a foxtrotting pepperpot! A queer, strange sort of cove, that one. And he comes when I’ve got the garden on my hands, and the worry of all the chickens dying of the heat or something, and I have the mowing and the painting of the master’s bedroom to see to—just when I don’t need any extra work.”

  “He’s made you work harder?” asked Lewis.

  “Hard enough.” Jenkins sniffed in disdain. “All very well for him to come tramping down the high road. ‘Good afternoon to thee,’ he says, like a blessed vicar. ‘And may I speak to thy master about a small matter of business?’ And him standin’ there in the road like a bloomin’ scarecrow. ‘Speak to him if you want,’ said I. ‘Though what business the likes of you might have with the master of Barnavelt Manor I couldn’t guess.’ And then the silly goose stood there gapin’ at me. ‘What are you waiting for?’ I asked him, and he says, ‘For you to invite me into the house.’ Well, that was cheeky. ‘Come in, then,’ said I, ‘and speak more polite-like to the master than you do to me, or it’s no business at all you’ll be doing with him.’”

  Lewis could tell that old Jenkins had taken an instant dislike to the mysterious Mr. Prester. “But how did he make you have to work harder?” he asked. “I mean, from what you say, you just had to answer his questions—”

  Jenkins scowled down at Lewis. “And wasn’t it extra work and trouble for me to have to prowl about the whole blessed Manor to find keys the master never had any call to use before? ‘Twasn’t the key for the cottage I minded so much. But the other, that nobody had seen for fifty year, that was
a bit much. And next morning didn’t I have to dust and sweep yon little house to make it fit for his nibs? And then didn’t himself show up later that day with a blessed heavy trunk beside him, standin’ at the foot of the drive like a bloomin’ balloon had set him and it down there? ‘Do me the kindness of assisting me with my equipage,’ he says, just as cool as you please. I had to lug that heavy trunk in on my poor old back. What did he pack in it? Lead shot and cannonballs? ‘Cos that’s what it felt like, and me with lumbago too!”

  Bertie frowned in concentration. He pushed his green spectacles back into place on his sweaty nose. “Uh, what was the other key you had to find?”

  Jenkins sniffed again. “Never you mind, Bertie Goodring. But I warn the two of you: Leave yon cottage alone, and give precious Mr. Matthew Prester a wide berth. He’ll bring no good to this old house, mark my words.”

  Lewis and Bertie went back around to the rear of the house, where a big garage housed only Cousin Pelly’s ridiculous little Austin Seven, though it had space enough for half a dozen more automobiles. “What key do you suppose Jenkins was looking for?” Bertie asked.

  Lewis had to admit that he had no idea. “But you know what?” he added. “I’ll bet you could find out what it was.”

  “Me?” Bertie sounded surprised but interested.

  “Sure,” said Lewis. “What does anyone do when they look for stuff that they haven’t seen in ages and ages? They go to everybody else and say, ‘Have you seen my left-handed monkey wrench?’ or whatever it is. They do that even if they know the other person has never seen the whatchamacallit—”

  Bertie nodded in comprehension. “I see,” he said.

  Just then they heard Bertie’s mother calling him. “Crikey,” said Bertie. “What time is it, Lewis?”

  Lewis looked at his wristwatch. “Just two o’clock,” he said. “Why?”

  “I have to go. It’s time for my lessons.”

  Lewis felt scandalized. “Don’t you get a summer vacation?”

  “No, not when my mum is the teacher,” said Bertie. “Gotta go.”

  “Hey,” said Lewis. “Be sure to ask your mother about the key. I’ll bet you anything Jenkins came to her and asked her if she’d seen it.”

  “Will do,” said Bertie, and he trotted off.

  As soon as he had gone, Lewis began to feel uneasy and anxious, as if some danger he only half sensed lurked in his vicinity. The air was even damper and warmer than it had been earlier, and he decided to go inside. The old manor house felt deserted. From some distant room a big clock ticked heavily. Lewis did not feel like sitting alone in his room, and he certainly did not feel like scouting around on his own. He decided to go back to the library, Master Martin’s study. Maybe he could find a good book there. He slipped into the room and felt somehow better. Some places just have a good feeling that certain people can recognize. This study was just such a place, in Lewis’s opinion.

  He browsed for some minutes before he struck pure gold. A whole shelf of books, bound in black, had the title The Strand stamped upon them, and various years beneath that, all of them in the 1890’s and early 1900’s. Lewis pulled one of these out at random and opened it. He saw immediately that the books were bound volumes of a magazine. The volume that he held covered part of the year 1892. He turned a few pages and then grinned. He was looking at a picture of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson sitting in a railway car, very much like the one he and his uncle had ridden from London. The drawing illustrated one of his favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, “Silver Blaze.” Lewis realized that this was the magazine in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had first published his tales of the master detective. And though he had read all the stories before, Lewis always liked to renew old acquaintances. He took the bound magazine back to his room and lost himself in the world of Victorian England.

  Several hours passed, and then someone knocked tentatively. Lewis closed the book and went to answer the door. Bertie stood there, and he was fairly bursting with news. “I know what the key was,” he whispered.

  “Come on in,” said Lewis. He looked up and down the hall, but no one else was in sight. Still, he carefully closed the door. “Okay,” he said. “So what key was Jenkins hunting?”

  “He asked Mum if she had any idea where the key to the lumber room might be,” said Bertie. “And then later he said he had found it in the odds-and-ends drawer of the scullery.”

  “So what is this lumber room?” asked Lewis. The name conjured up visions of circular saws, hammers, and nails.

  “It’s a storage room,” answered Bertie. “It’s high up in this wing of the house, above the top story.”

  “Oh—an attic,” said Lewis. “Let’s see what’s there. I don’t think Cousin Pelly and Uncle Jonathan are back yet.”

  “Well, all right,” said Bertie with some hesitation. “But Mum wouldn’t like me poking about up there, so do let’s be quiet.”

  Pelly and his household lived in only the east wing of the rambling old manor house, and even in this wing they occupied only the first and second floors. The third floor was as empty and unused as the main body of the old house. The stair opened into a very dark hallway, lighted by only one small, round window. At the far end of the hallway, next to the window, a narrow door opened onto another stair. This one was so dusty and close that it gave Lewis an attack of sneezing, which he tried to stifle.

  The two friends crept up the narrow stair as carefully as they could, but the dry wood creaked beneath their feet all the same. Lewis found it hard going. The hall had been murky enough, but total darkness shrouded this stairway. The doorway behind them was only a dusky opening, and up ahead Lewis could see only a thin, dim line where the door at the top of the stairs did not quite fit in the doorjamb. He found the handle by feel and gave it an experimental twist. The latch squeaked with rust, but the handle moved, and the door swung inward.

  It was an attic, all right. The air was hot in their faces, and it had that closed-in, dusty smell that only attic rooms get. The ceiling overhead sloped at a sharp angle, and the beams were hung with dusty cobwebs swaying lazily in the faint breeze from the open door. Two of the very narrow arrow-slot windows let a little light into the place. Lewis saw a clutter of broken furniture and paintings wrapped in old sheets and boxes furry with undisturbed layers of dust. Lewis stepped cautiously into the room. “Something has been taken,” he said.

  “How do you know?” asked Bertie.

  “The floor is about an inch deep in dust,” replied Lewis, exaggerating only a little. “But right there against the wall there is a clear space, about two feet by three. Something rectangular has rested there until recently. Something like a big box—or maybe a trunk.”

  “Mr. Prester had a trunk,” said Bertie.

  “I remember,” murmured Lewis. “Hello, what’s this?” He stooped and picked up something. It was a book. A very old book, from the fuzzy, crumbly feel of the leather binding. And he saw that on the floor beneath where the book had lain, the dust rested in an unbroken layer. That meant the book had been dropped very recently.

  “What did you find?” Bertie wanted to know.

  “It’s a thin book,” said Lewis. “Now, this is strange. In fact—”

  From far down below, a high-pitched voice interrupted him: “Boys! I say, boys! Confound you two young scoundrels, where are you?”

  “Mr. Barnavelt,” gasped Bertie. “And he sounds ever so angry!”

  “Let’s go,” said Lewis. He pulled up his shirt and slipped the book down inside the waistband of his pants. Then he tugged his shirt back into place, hoping that the outline of the book would not show. He and Bertie hurried downstairs, carefully closing doors behind them.

  They found Pelly standing at the bottom of the stair on the first floor. “There you are,” he said, sounding irritable. “Looking all over for you. What have you been up to, eh?”

  “Uh, Bertie was just showing me around,” said Lewis. “I thought it would be all right, Cousin Pelly. I’m sorry if�
��”

  A terrific roll of thunder cut him off, and he flinched. A moment later rain began to pound hard against the house. Pelly threw his head back and took a deep breath. “What a storm!” he said. “This is going to be a glorious night, my boys. I wouldn’t want you to miss it!”

  Something in his tone made the words ominous. Bertie had to hurry off to help his mother close windows, and Lewis slipped away to go back to his own bedroom. He wanted to look at the odd, slim volume he had smuggled down. And he wanted to think about the curious observation he had made in the attic room.

  Though someone had obviously taken the trunk or box from its place against the wall and carried it all the way across the room, the floor had lain in an unbroken film of dust. Not one footprint disturbed it. How could anyone cross over that floor and leave no mark?

  No one could. At least, thought Lewis, no one human.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dinner was cheerless. Outside the Manor the summer storm raged, bringing on an early twilight. The wind moaned, thunder rattled the glass in the windows, and rain pelted down so hard that it sounded like pebbles clattering on the roof. Just as Jonathan, Pelly, and Lewis were finishing their meal, an especially loud crash of thunder shook the house. A moment later the lights went out, plunging the dining room into gloom. “Ah,” said Pelly. “Lightning’s downed the wires, I expect. Never mind! Candles will do. They lighted this old house for centuries before Father had the place wired for electricity.”

  Mrs. Goodring brought three tall white candles in, each in its own holder, and Pelly lit one. Lewis did not like the way the yellow light made his cousin’s face look. With the candle shining up from beneath, his features took on a sharp, predatory expression. The good-humored eyes became narrow and sly, and the friendly, wrinkled face seemed frozen in a savage grimace. Lewis was happy enough to take one of the candles and find his way to his bedroom.