‘It was only an owl,’ said the Professor, slipping the key into his pocket and preparing to depart.
But I knew it wasn’t an owl, for I had seen the shadowy form of a headless monk standing by the choir screen.
V
Lunch was a strange, unsatisfactory meal. Hans was still too frightened and upset to attempt any cooking. I routed out the remains of the chicken, some cheese and black bread, and made a pot of coffee. But none of us had any appetite. Even the Professor seemed to sense some impending disaster, although he kept up a fire of boisterous conversation. It was too boisterous to be convincing and I knew that he, too, was feeling nervous.
At the end of the meal he looked across at me and said, ‘We’re all in a state of funk, Evans, and I’m bound to admit that occult forces are certainly loose in this abbey. Yet I’ve got to explore that well, so the job may as well be done at once.’
Hans, who had been sitting with his head on his hands and saying nothing, sprang to his feet crying, ‘Don’t do it, Herr Professor. Return the key to the tomb and go your way.’
‘Return the key,’ chaffed Rutter. ‘Don’t be so foolish, my man. Within half an hour I shall be at the bottom of the well, looking for the hole that the key fits.’
‘You will be wise to keep away from the well,’ answered the old man in a toneless voice. ‘There is something down there which is not good to behold.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked the Professor.
‘I don’t know what it is. All I do know is that the cover has never been removed since it was sealed by the Bishop of Salzburg in 1522. My father told me that something evil is hidden in the well, but cannot escape whilst the seal remains unbroken.’
‘There may be something there,’ mused Rutter. ‘But I must take the risk.’
I also attempted to turn him from his purpose. But he waved aside all my objections, and vowed that he would carry out his investigations alone if we were too frightened to help him. This, of course, was unthinkable, so with a coil of stout rope the three of us made our way to the well.
The cover was of iron, stamped with the figure of a saint within a floriated border. Four heavy leaden seals had been placed where the iron met the coping stone, and it was still possible to make out the coat-of-arms of the Prince-Bishop. The seals fell away as we raised the cover. A terrible stench arose, so fetid and overpowering that I hoped the gases in the hole would make it impossible for the Professor to descend. But Rutter was very thorough and prepared for any contingency. He had brought some kind of fireworks used for dispelling foul air from mine workings, and half a dozen of these cleared the well. We experimented with sheets of burning paper, and when these continued to flame until they reached the water, the Professor declared it was safe to go down. Our powerful electric torches revealed a flight of steps cut into the stone side, and a kind of projecting ridge about forty feet below the surface.
‘The hiding-place must be somewhere near the platform,’ declared Rutter. ‘They would never have gone lower than that, for there is a sheer drop into the water below.’
He fastened the rope to his waist, and instructed Hans to hold the end whilst I leaned over the well and directed the beam of my torch upon the steps. I felt an almost overwhelming desire to drag him back as his head disappeared beneath the coping, but he called out that the descent was quite easy, as the footholds were cut deep.
I watched him clinging to the slimy wall and gradually going lower and lower until he reached the projection.
‘I shall have to scrape the stones,’ he called up, and his voice sounded hollow and strange. ‘They are covered with moss and it’s impossible to see any hole.’
He scratched with a wooden scraper. He must have been scraping for over ten minutes when he gave a cry of triumph. He had found the key-hole. I saw his light gleaming far below as he tried to clear it and then he inserted the key. My own torch showed him dragging and pulling, and then a block of stone swung out and revealed a dark aperture. A wild cry of excitement came up the well. ‘It’s here! It’s here!’ he yelled. He plunged his hand into the hole, and I heard a sobbing gasp of wonderment. And then I saw the pearl. It was almost as large as a hen’s egg, and glowed like a pool of moonlight. But the pearl wasn’t the only thing in that dark hiding-place. Something moved in the gloom—something green and horrible, with luminous eyes and a number of waving arms. I yelled a warning, but one of those arms shot out and struck Rutter in the face. He staggered, fell over the edge of the platform, and splashed into the water far below.
For a brief moment I was too shocked to move, and then I seized hold of the rope and Hans and I pulled for all we were worth. We felt our burden leave the water and bump against the projection, and then the weight suddenly increased. Still we continued to pull, and after what seemed an age a gruesome sight appeared above the parapet. It was the Professor’s head, practically shattered to pieces—just as he, himself, had shattered the head of Otto von Unterzein. Hans screamed and I went sick, but we endeavoured to drag the body over the coping. It was then we saw the thing that was clinging to Rutter’s legs. It was a slimy, green, many-tentacled creature of the octopus family. For a moment its baleful eyes glared at us, and then it slipped back into the well and we heard a plop as its body met the water.
We laid the dead Professor on the ground, and then replaced the well-cover. At Hans’s suggestion we weighted it with a large stone from the cloisters, and restored such portions of the broken seals as we could find. Then we carried the body of Professor Rutter into the guest house. One hand still grasped his electric torch, but the Pearl of Zello was evidently at the bottom of the well, where I hope it will remain for ever. We agreed to keep our own counsel about what we had seen, and to say that the Professor had fallen into the well, whilst searching for a secret passage, and had struck his head on the projecting platform.
I got the car out and drove into Schwaz to report the matter to the police. Hans was in such a state of panic that I decided it would be unwise to leave him in the monastery and insisted that he should accompany me. The authorities listened to our story with sympathetic attention, and a young officer and the police surgeon were instructed to return with us to St Dichul’s. We found these gentlemen most helpful and considerate, and our version of the tragedy was accepted without comment. Several other officials followed us out, and the interior of the well was investigated. The secret cupboard was discovered but, much to my relief, nothing was seen of the monster. At the subsequent inquiry a verdict of ‘death by misadventure’ was returned, and beyond the ordinary obituary notices, the English press had little to say about the matter. The circumstances of the Professor’s untimely decease were almost forgotten by the time I got back to England.
Hans Steingel remained on at St Dichul’s, faithful to his family traditions. He died just over a month ago, and within a week of his death fire destroyed the abbey church.
I have never been able to make up my mind whether the creature in the well was actually an octopus. Could such a monster have lived in the secret hiding-place for over five hundred years? It seems impossible. Yet what is the alternative? Was the thing some fearsome elemental created by the black art of sorcery to guard the Pearl of Zello? The answers to these questions we shall never know.
Eight years have passed since I bade farewell to Hans and drove out through the gates of that haunted abbey. Yet I clearly remember looking back into the desolate courtyard and seeing the black figure of a headless monk standing by the well of death.
Retribution
‘STRANGE THINGS CAN be brought about by suggestion,’ said Dawson in his ponderous manner. ‘I have known witch-doctors will a certain person to die and, sure enough, the man has died. But in every case the witch-doctor took good care to let his victim know that he had cast a spell upon him.’
We were sitting around the fire in the club lounge and the talk was about mysterious deaths. A magazine article had raised the subject and Dawson, who having spent some years out East, prides
himself on his knowledge of native superstitions, had had quite a lot to say. His last utterance was calculated to finally settle all argument. Dawson was like that. He had an unfortunate habit of ending a discussion by giving to some very ordinary remark all the pomposity of a pontifical decree. Most of us had got so used to him and his mannerisms that we were usually content to abandon the subject whenever he felt it time to assume the rôle of judge and declare the verdict.
But on this occasion Dawson wasn’t to have it all his own way. Another voice chimed in, and to our surprise it was that of Father Price, the quiet little Roman Catholic priest, who was a comparative newcomer to the district.
‘I have often wondered,’ he said, ‘exactly what part suggestion does play in such cases and how a death, that is by normal standards unnatural, can be explained by fear. Personally I wish that some rational answer was always possible. But there are happenings that, to the most unbiased observer, must appear to be super-normal. I was once, by an unfortunate chance, the witness of a death which defied all logical explanation, and still troubles me to this day.’
I saw Dawson frown and give an annoyed grunt, but before he could speak I said, ‘Won’t you tell us the story, Father? I am sure we should all be interested.’
A chorus of assent endorsed my request and the priest nodded as he lit his pipe.
‘It happened many years ago,’ he began. ‘I was a young man in charge of my first parish in a south-country town. The church was a wooden hut and the rectory was a little semi-detached house in a typical suburban avenue. I was quite new to the place, and the only friend I had made was the Anglican vicar. We used to dine together and play chess on Mondays and Wednesdays. I had a service on Thursday and heard confessions on Saturday, so Tuesday and Friday were my lonely nights. I fell into the habit, which is common with lonely people, of sometimes sitting at the window and watching the passers-by.
‘Towards the end of September a gang of workmen appeared in our quiet avenue and began to carry out excavations to lay a new electric cable. At night a watchman kept guard over the hole in the road, and I often strolled out for a chat with the old fellow. He was a friendly soul, and it was pleasant to stand by his glowing brazier and discuss the topics of the day.
‘One evening I was standing by my window when I noticed a well-dressed woman coming down the road. It was raining slightly and she carried no umbrella, but walked with her head lowered against the wind. Suddenly she looked up and seemed to observe, for the first time, the fire blazing in front of the watchman’s hut. She stopped dead and a look of horror came over her face. Then she appeared to pull herself together, deliberately crossed to the opposite side of the road, and passed the fire with averted eyes.
‘ “Now why,” thought I to myself, “should any woman be afraid of a fire in a brazier?” ’
‘There are certain people who suffer from a strange complex—’ Dawson was interrupting when Coates silenced him with a gesture, and the priest continued.
‘I thought about the matter several times during the following week, but the affairs of the parish soon drove it from my mind. It must have been a couple of months later when I met Dr Masters. He was a cheery kind of chap and invited me to his house for a meal. I went, and to my surprise, discovered that Mrs Masters was the lady who had crossed the road. The dinner was good, my reception most cordial, but one thing I couldn’t help but notice. Neither in the hall, the dining-room, nor the lounge was there a coal fire. The rooms were furnished with electric radiators, and Sylvia Masters seemed to keep as far away as possible from these.
‘Later in the evening the doctor and I were left alone for a short time, and in semi-jocular fashion I said, “You seem to favour electric radiators. I suppose they make less dirt than a coal fire?”
‘He hesitated a moment and then replied, “It isn’t exactly that. My wife has a morbid horror of fire. One of her best friends was burned to death, and since then she has been terrified of even a fire in a grate. It has become an obsession and there seems to be no cure for it.”
‘This appeared to be a reasonable explanation of Mrs Masters’s aversion, but I never felt quite satisfied about it. I became very friendly with both the doctor and his wife, and they liked me to drop in at odd times. Gradually I became convinced that it wasn’t just a fear of fire that was troubling Sylvia Masters. There was something else—some secret terror which dominated her whole life.
‘Then one afternoon—it was about six or seven months after my first introduction to the house—she opened her heart to me. I must here explain that neither she nor her husband were Catholics, so there was no question of confession. She simply told me the story because she had to confide in someone. The burden of the secret was too much for her. As all who are concerned in the tale are dead now, and as her name wasn’t Masters, I am betraying nothing in telling the yarn.
‘Briefly the facts she related were these. When she was a girl she had a friend—let us call her Diana Chapman. They were at school together and remained close companions when schooldays were over. They had the misfortune to fall in love with the same man, and that man happened to be Doctor Masters. Of the two he seemed to prefer Diana, and the gossips in the small northern town where they lived were daily expecting the announcement of an engagement. Sylvia was mad with jealousy, but was clever enough to disguise her feelings.
‘Both the girls were members of a club which used to meet on the top floor of a high building which had formerly been a warehouse. Diana was the secretary and often worked on the premises when the club was closed. One night the two were there together after eleven o’clock. The club was shut for the night and they were alone in the place. Diana confided to her friend that Doctor Masters had hinted that he intended to propose to her on the following day.
‘Sylvia was furious and would most likely have betrayed her feelings had not a smell of burning disturbed them. They ran to the door and found that the whole place was ablaze. Escape was easy for the building was fitted with an external fire-escape, and it was a simple matter to descend this. But, as they were preparing to leave, Diana remembered that some of the club books should be saved. She rushed back to the secretary’s office and inadvertently closed the door, which was fitted with a patent lock. The key was in her handbag which she had left in a downstairs room, and it was one of those locks which can only be opened with a key. Sylvia knew that she could not descend the stairs to obtain Diana’s bag, and like a suggestion from hell itself, came the thought that should anything happen to her friend she would stand a reasonable chance of becoming Mrs Masters. With this idea uppermost in her mind she made her way down the fire-escape. The brigade arrived very quickly and she at once explained that Diana was locked in the secretary’s office. But by that time the building was a blazing inferno. The poor girl was, of course, burned to death, and her friend was morally responsible. Yes, make what allowances you like, Sylvia was a murderess.
‘The doctor mourned Diana for a few months and then married Sylvia. On the actual wedding night Mrs Masters had a disturbing dream. She dreamed that Diana Chapman appeared to her and said, “You have him now, but ten years from the day of my death you too shall be as I am.”
‘In time Sylvia Masters might have forgotten the part she had played in her friend’s death, but the dream created a dread of something intangible. The horror of fire was easily explained to her husband and their immediate circle of friends by her experience in the blazing warehouse. Yet she herself knew that it was inspired by the dream and the fear that she would also be burned to death. They had moved from the town where the tragedy occurred, but the memory of the threat was an ever-present terror.
‘I think the reason she confided in me was the fact that the tenth anniversary of Diana Chapman’s untimely end was fast approaching, and Mrs Masters was slowly but surely working herself up into a state of acute mental alarm.
‘The actual date of the anniversary was June 15th, and I was invited to dine with the Masters’s on that evening.
When I arrived at the house the doctor was in the lounge mixing cocktails, and he explained that his wife had been delayed in town and was still in her room dressing. He handed me a gin and lime and I was raising it to my lips when shriek upon shriek of terror rang out. We simultaneously rushed for the door and dashed upstairs. The doctor led the way to a room at the end of the corridor and tried the door. It was locked, and from the other side came a sound of moaning—like an animal in pain. Masters banged on the panels and kicked at the lock, but it was a strong door and resisted his efforts. We charged it together but made no impression. By this time a frightened maid had joined us and the doctor sent her off for a coal-hammer. It was then I noticed the smell. It was like burning meat—the acrid odour of scorched flesh.
‘When the maid returned with the hammer we were soon able to break our way into the room. I shall never forget the sight that met our eyes. Before the window lay the charred corpse of Sylvia Masters. Yet, of actual fire there was no sign at all. Only on the carpet were the burnt-in marks of two small feet, and upon the polished wood of the dressing-table was the black impression of a hand.
‘It seemed almost as though Sylvia had been struck by lightning and that, of course, is the only logical explanation. But remember, gentlemen, that she was burned to death on the tenth anniversary of the day on which she had left her friend to suffer a similar fate. And do not forget the footprints burnt into the carpet and the outline of a hand on the dressing-table.’
We were silent for a moment or so, and then Dawson coughed and removed the cigar from his lips.
‘It’s a queer story,’ he conceded. ‘Yet it only goes to prove the truth of my theory that these things can be brought about by suggestion.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ agreed the priest. ‘I still think it was a case of just retribution, and I should like to know whose feet and hand made those marks.’
THE NIGHT WIND HOWLS Page 19