The Autumn meeting opened in a full easterly gale, and it was a battered and weary collection of competitors who arrived back at the club house.
Mr Baxter, greeting them as they came in, found them on one subject unanimously eloquent. They one and all cherished loathing mingled with respect for the new seventeenth. The Secretary examined their cards with curiosity. Only one five was recorded, the average was eight. When young Cyril Ward, the only scratch player in the club, came in, the Secretary asked him how he had fared. 'My ancient friend,' he replied, 'I accomplished seventeen holes in seventy-two strokes; good going in this wind; my total is eighty. I give you one guess as to the other hole.'
'Oh, the seventeenth, I suppose.'
'You've said it. Baxter, there's something funny about it. I hit two perfect shots and then took six more to hole out.'
'I'm sure of it,' said the Secretary, 'but I'm getting most remarkably sick of hearing about it.'
After the second round of the thirty-six holes stroke competition Mr Baxter found himself the centre of one of the fiercest indignation meetings in the history of the golf game. Everyone had something to say. Eventually he was forced to promise that, if at the end of the week they were still of the same opinion, he would have the old seventeenth restored. 'But,' said he, 'all this chopping and changing will cost us a lot of money.'
'More likely save us a bit,' grumbled a protestant. 'I lost three new balls there today. Have you noticed what a stench there was coming from the back of the green?'
Cyril Ward went for a stroll with Mr Baxter when the debate was over. 'I wish the old boys weren't so impatient,' he said. 'That hole has beaten me badly twice, but I'd like to have many more shots at it. I shall protest strongly if they decide to change back. Loot at it now, the green's like a pool of blood!'
('A sinister but apt description,' thought Mr Baxter.)
The sun was setting in a wild and tortured sky, and its fiery dying rays certainly painted the seventeenth a sanguine hue.
'It's funny you should say that,' he remarked. 'It's called "Blood Wood" by the locals.'
'From what I heard of the expletives used by our worthy fellow foozlers, they certainly agree with them,' laughed Ward.
That night Mr Baxter had a short but disturbing dream. He seemed to hear a deep bell tolling sullenly, and then suddenly a voice cried, 'Sacred to the memory of Cyril Ward, who screamed once in Blood Wood', and then came a discordant chorus of vile and bestial laughter, and he awoke feeling depressed and ill at ease.
'This absurd business is getting on my nerves,' he thought. 'I'm even dreaming about it,' and he suddenly felt he wanted to leave Duncaster, and the sooner the better. It was too lonely and idle a life, he decided.
The next day the gale continued, bringing torrents of rain with it, and there was no competition. The course was a melancholy and deserted waste. Mr Baxter, as he worked in his office, could hear the great breakers booming beyond the Dunes. About six the rain dwindled to a light drizzle, and Cyril Ward came in to see him, a couple of clubs under his arm. 'There's just enough light to let me defeat that blasted hole,' he said; 'the swine fascinates me!'
Mr Baxter found himself rather vehemently trying to persuade him otherwise. 'I shouldn't; it's still raining, and it will be almost dark in the wood.'
'Oh, rot,' said Ward, and presently the Secretary saw him tee up and drive off. He watched him until he had almost reached the wood, and then someone called him to settle a point of Bridge law. The windows of the smoking-room were open, and the gale suddenly increased in fury.
Mr Baxter had just given his decision when there came a long scream of agony shaking down the wind. He rushed to the door, the other occupants of the room hustling after him.
That terrible cry had come from the wood, and they began running towards it. Suddenly just visible in the gloom, a figure came staggering out from the wood, threw up its arms, and fell. Mr Baxter dashed towards it as he had not run for twenty years, the others after him.
Cyril Ward was lying on his back, his eyes wide, staring, and horrible — obviously dead.
Amongst those who came up was the local doctor, who knelt down and made a short examination. 'Must be heart. I believe he had a weakness there, poor Cyril!' Mr Baxter helped to carry the body back to the Dormy House; his burden was Cyril's left leg, a disgusting dangling thing. The memory of his dream came back to him, and his nerves shook. He tried to find reassurance by telling himself that such premonitions were common enough, however inexplicable.
It was decided at an informal meeting that the links should be closed the next day out of respect for the dead, but that the foursomes should be held on the Thursday. 'A very typically British compromise,' thought Mr Baxter.
'Will an inquest be necessary?' he asked the doctor.
'I think not; it's clearly a case of heart.'
'Did you notice his eyes?' asked the Secretary.
The doctor gave him a quick glance, 'I did,' he replied, 'but these attacks are often very painful. But did you notice that appalling stink coming from the wood?'
'Yes,' said the Secretary shortly.
'Well, I should find out the cause, it can't be healthy.'
'I will tomorrow,' said Mr Baxter.
The next day he spent in his office, and never before had a sense of the futility of his occupation so swept over him. This shifting of pieces of india-rubber from one spot to another! Oh, that a man should have to spend his few and gloriously potential days fussing about such banality! Perhaps he was only pitying himself He went back to his card-marking. He felt utterly weary when he went to bed, and fell immediately asleep. 'Boom! Boom! Boom!' there came that terrible tolling. He must wake! He must not hear what was to come. 'Sacred to the memory of Sybil Grant, who screamed twice in Blood Wood,' and once again came that foul and wicked laughter.
He awoke sweating and unnerved. He got up and mixed himself the strongest whisky and soda of his temperate existence. 'Sybil Grant! Sybil Grant!' Thank God, he knew no one of that name! He tried to read, till light came.
He went down to the club house after breakfast, and met the doctor. 'Hullo,' said the latter, 'you're not looking very fit! What's the matter?'
'Oh, just a rotten night,' said the Secretary. 'By the way, I sent the green-keeper to find out about that smell, but he couldn't discover any cause for it; and, as a matter of fact, says he couldn't smell anything.'
'Well, he's a lucky man,' said the doctor. 'It was the most loathsome reek I've encountered, and I've met a few!'
After the foursomes had started, everyone desperately light-hearted and pathetically determined to allow no echo of the horror of a few hours before to disturb the atmosphere of laboured cheerfulness, Mr Baxter felt he must be alone. He wandered off to the long No Man's Land between the dunes and the sea, a famous haunt of sea birds; the sand showed everywhere the delicate tracings of their soft little feet.
As he reached the darker strata just surrendered by the angry, fading tide, his eye was caught by a patch of scarlet moving down to the sea some distance to his left. 'A girl going to bathe,' he thought casually. 'She must have warm blood in her to face such a sea on such a day. I hope she knows what she's about. It's none too safe a spot.' Presently he saw a man run down to join her, and felt reassured and yet depressed. 'To be a dingy old bachelor like myself is the one unanswerable indictment. Ten King's Councillors could not make it seem excusable.'
Then his mind turned to the question of the new post he was determined to secure. He would go up to London as soon as the meeting was over and get an exchange if possible.
His work kept him busy all the afternoon, and he did not emerge from his office till dusk was failing. 'Best figure in England,' he heard the Colonel declaring, as he entered the smoking room. 'I believe she's engaged to Bob Renton.'
'Who's that?' asked the Secretary.
'The Grant girl,' said the Colonel, 'Sybil Grant.'
The Secretary felt a tug of horror at his heart.
; 'Is she coming down here?' he asked sharply.
'She is here,' replied the Colonel. 'If you'd been here ten minutes ago you'd have seen her.'
'Well, where is she now?' asked the Secretary, seizing his arm. 'Where is this girl?' he cried, his voice rising,
'Hullo, young feller, what's all the excitement? I imagine she's about at the seventeenth green; she's staying with the Bartletts at the Old Cottage, and is walking back that way.'
At that moment a bell seemed to toll once shatteringly in the Secretary's ears. He put his hands to his head, and without a word started running frantically down the seventeenth fairway. Suddenly there sprang down the wind a terrible cry of terror, followed by a desperate and prolonged scream. Mr Baxter stopped dead and shuddered. He heard shouts behind him and the patter of others running. He tottered on. Somebody — several people — passed him; as he reeled into the wood he could see the fire-fly gleam of electric torches, and as he neared them he could see they were focussed on some object on the ground. It was white, and someone was kneeling over it. When he saw what it was he was suddenly and violently sick. It was flung down the bank, it was naked, its head was lolling hideously. It was sprawling, one knee flung high, its face — but someone covered that face with his coat and told Mr Baxter to go for the doctor. And that terrible Death stench kept him company.
The inquest was fixed for the following Monday and Mr Baxter was told that his testimony would be required.
The little village swarmed with police and reporters. There hadn't been a mystery of such possibilities for many moons, and the whole country was stirred. Murder so foul cried out for vengeance. But there was no arrest, 'And there never will be,' thought Mr Baxter as he took his stand in the improvised witness-box in the village school. The Coroner, a corpulent, hirsute, and pompous person, soon put to him the question he had anticipated. 'I understand that you started to run towards the scene of the tragedy before these screams were heard: is that so?'
'Yes,' replied the Secretary.
'Why was that?'
And then Mr Baxter uncontrollably laughed.
'I may be mistaken,' said the Coroner, 'but this hardly seems a laughing matter.'
'I must beg your pardon,' said Mr Baxter, 'I laughed against my will, I laughed because I suddenly realised how absurd you would consider my explanation to be.'
'That is quite possible,' said the Coroner, 'but I must ask you to let me hear it.'
'I had a premonition, a dream.'
'Of what character?'
'Well, I dreamed that Miss Grant would be killed.'
'Did you warn her?'
'I had never heard of her except in this dream. I did not know she was here till I was so informed a moment before these screams were heard.'
'A curious story,' replied the representative of Law and Order, who clearly regarded Mr Baxter as a person of limited intelligence and dubious veracity.
'Murder by some person or persons unknown,' was the verdict, and unknown he, she, or they remained.
The nine days ran their course, police and reporters departed, and Mr Baxter went off to London, where he secured a job at a new course in Surrey. He was to have no successor at Duncaster. Resignations poured in, and it was decided at a final meeting of the committee that the links should be abandoned.
On arriving in London it occurred to Mr Baxter to call upon a friend of his, a Mr Markes. He very much wanted an expert confidant, and Mr Markes, besides being very wealthy, was by some trick of temperament fascinated by all types of psychic phenomena, and had amassed the finest library on such matters in the world.
'Jim,' asked the Secretary, 'is there any mention of Duncaster in your records?'
'When I read about your troubles there,' replied Mr Markes, 'I thought they sounded rather in the tradition, and so I looked up the history of Duncaster and was unexpectedly fortunate; for it is mentioned in a work, which, for the most part, is deservedly forgotten. The Memoirs of Simon Tylor, a peculiarly dull dog. I have them here,' he continued, walking over to a shelf and taking down a bulky volume.
'In the year 1839 Simon took a walking tour through Norfolk and arrived at Duncaster on September 10th. He liked the look of it, and decided to spend a couple of days there at the inn, The Sleeping Sentinel.'
'It is there still,' said Mr Baxter.
'All this,' went on Mr Markes, 'is described at vast and damnable length, but his adventure, which occurred on the second evening of his stay, is much more crisply done. I will read it to you:
'"I spent a pleasing and invigorating morning wandering over the wild expanse of moor and 'dunes', as they call the great sand mounds; and afterwards dined, rested, and had some talk with my good host of the inn. Late in the afternoon I decided to make further exploration of the neighbourhood, and, noticing a fine wood of tall trees some distance away across the moor, I remarked to my host that I proposed to visit it. Greatly to my surprise he strongly opposed my doing so, but when I asked him for what reason, he returned me evasive replies — 'No one wanders there after nightfall,' he said, 'It has a bad repute.'
'"'On account of the robbers?' I asked. And though he replied with a short laugh that that was so, I did not believe it was the thought in his mind. To satisfy him, I declared I would but walk towards it, a promise I had better have kept.
'"So I wandered out as the light was fading, and drew near to the wood. Then I put it to myself that such village gossip was in most cases but idle tradition inscribed in the long and sparsely furnished memories of country folk. And this decision prevailing, I entered the wood, following a rough pathway. And then I had reason to doubt my host's word, for instead of it being shunned by the local folk it seemed that the wood did house quite a company. The light being low and the trees growing close, I failed clearly to distinguish my companions, but only, as it were, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed them many times. 'Lovers,' thought I. After I had traversed some two hundred paces I noted some little way in front of me a low mound with a single fine tree at its back. I was just fancying that I would go so far and then return when a movement in the gloom caught my eye, and at the same instant I perceived a very vile and curious stench. Something seemed to be reclining on the mound, a beast of some sort, and slowly gaining its feet. And then I knew the beginning of fear. This thing seemed to rise and rise till it towered above the tree, and then it couched its head as for a spring. I have no wish to see its like again. Seized with a great loathing and horror, I ran back along the path, and as I ran it seemed that many were running beside me and closing in upon me. I felt the Thing was close beside me, but I dared not turn to look. Just as my breath was leaving me I found myself at the edge of the wood, and then something seemed to touch me, and I screamed and swooned.
'"When I regained my senses I found I was prone on the ground and my host and some others were standing round me conversing in low tones. They helped me back to the Inn, no one saying a word. I left early the next morning, that stench still lingering in my nostrils and the host seeming to avoid talk with me. All this is the truth as I have set it down."
'And that's what happened to Simon,' said Markes.
'A curious story,' said Mr Baxter.
'Far more curious than uncommon. I could find you a dozen almost identical experiences. Almost certainly the work of our friends the Druids, whoever they were! A mound and an oak — such places are death traps. Not all the time; the peril is periodic, why, we don't know. But our friend Simon was very lucky to be able to leave "early next morning", though he didn't escape altogether. The rest of his book reads like a coda to this adventure. Bad dreams, depression, and always that smell in his nose. He died within a year or two. And now tell me exactly what happened at Duncaster, for I gather it is still a disturbed area.'
So Mr Baxter told him the curious events connected with the new seventeenth.
A Peg On Which To Hang——
BEFORE TELLING Mr James Partridge's displeasing experience at the Beach Hotel, Littleford, it may be as w
ell to establish that gentleman's credentials by briefly describing him. He is a writer by habit and inclination, though being the fruit of rich but honest parents, he is not in the paralysing position of being compelled to rely on his pen, ink, and paper for his means of subsistence. He has made a nice little reputation as an essayist of the lightest sort. He has examined the surface of things, of persons and of life in general with a tolerant, mildly cynical assiduity. Below that surface he very sensibly refrains from looking. It is not in his character. He takes some homely and familiar topic — let us say, a Number 11e Omnibus — as his text, and manages to coax from a ruminating survey of its cargo and its route two thousand bland and gently ironic words of amusement without pedantry, for which he receives twenty-five guineas from a high-brow weekly.
Though on the whole a modest man, he believes in his heart of hearts that he does this sort of thing better than 'Y.Y.' — an opinion not widely shared, and least of all by Mr Robert Lynd.
Being a journalist, you will naturally suspect that he invented this narrative and foisted it on his credulous acquaintance. If so, you will do him a serious injustice, for he has no gift for fiction and, indeed, this is not the type of narrative he would care to pursue if he had. You may take it for granted then that his version of what happened on the night of March 23rd, 1924, at the Royal Hotel, Littleford, is plain, untouched-up fact.
If you would like to know some details of his appearance, he is thin, wiry, but lacking muscle, a mild edition of Sherlock Holmes, facially — a bit dusty and musty and bachelory, a bit donnish and British and formidable — a man's man, but not every man's man. People who like him like him very much — that's all he cares about.
He found himself at the Royal Hotel, Littleford, on March 23rd, 1924, on this account. He has three firm and excellent friends about his own age — which is forty-seven — like himself all keen golfers. Their handicaps range between nine and fourteen — almost certainly the most satisfactory range of all; for those embraced within it are not unduly cast down by the undesired uprising of playful divots, yet they can derive exquisite satisfaction from the production of a Stout Blow, and are sufficiently competent to perpetrate several in the course of a round — humble folk who realise that, if they will never be mistaken for Bobby Jones, it is hardly possible that they will be confused with Harry Tate. Mr George Dunbar, K.C., masterful, hirsute, with a hypnotic power over juries, Mr William Cranmer, who knows more about old books than most people, Mr Alexander Frith, Professor of Moral Philosophy at an Ancient Foundation and a sceptic of sceptics, made up the four who journeyed down to Littleford on this occasion.
THEY RETURN AT EVENING Page 16