by Cave, Hugh
I make no effort to explain these quotations. They are significant in themselves. As for the specter, I could find no further mention of it. Page after page I turned, hoping to discover some clue which might lead to a solution. I found nothing.
I did, however, chance upon something of unusual interest, in the oldest of the heavy volumes. It was an account of a very ancient feud. The names mentioned were those of Sir Godfrey Ramsey (the date was in the century before the French Revolution) and Sir Richard Ravenal. The account gave mention of several brutal killings and disappearances, the majority of these executed by the House of Ravenal. The cause of the feud was not divulged.
The hatred between the two families, however, had come to an end with the death of Sir Richard Ravenal, who was, to quote the withered page before me, an artist of unusual genius. In the year previous to his death, having formed a truce with the House of Ramsey, he did present to Sir Godfrey Ramsey one or two paintings of great value, executed by himself, as a token of eternal friendship. These paintings have been carefully preserved.
I sought faithfully for an account of the life of this same Sir Godfrey. Eventually I found it, and read the following:
Twelve years after the Houses of Ramsey and Ravenal had formed the pact of peace, Sir Godfrey was suddenly stricken with an incomprehensible terror which led to complete madness. He did call his son, Sir James, to him and say the following words: "A curse has descended upon the House of Ramsey. It is a curse of horror, of torment. It is intended to make gibbering idiots of the men who bear the honored name of Ramsey. For this reason I command you to an oath of silence. The curse has taken possession of me, and I shall die. When you are of age, you, too, will be stricken by the specter. Swear to me that you will not reveal the nature of the curse, lest your sons and their sons after them live in mortal fear."
This oath was written into parchment and preserved. On the second day following its execution, Sir Godfrey was found lying in the upper galleries . . .
I closed the last volume with the uncomfortable feeling of having delved into a maze of horror and death. In the upper reaches of the very house in which I stood, countless members of the House of Ramsey had been hurled into madness and cruelly murdered. Even now, the man who occupied these whispering rooms and huge, empty corridors was being slowly forced under the same hellish influence of insanity. I understood now his reason for silence. He was bound by a family oath which had been passed down from father to son. He could not speak!
The influence of that mad room still hung over me as I paced across the library and returned to the room where Sir Edward and Lady Sybil awaited me.
The boy was sleeping. As I entered, Lady Sybil came toward me quietly and stood before me.
"You—have found the books?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"Then you know why he is bound to silence, Doctor. He is the last of the Ramseys. I—am the last of—the Ravenals."
I stared at her. I had not suspected any connection between the names in those ancient volumes and the name of the girl before me. Peering into her features now, I felt suddenly as if I had been plunged into an affair of death itself. She—the last of the Ravenals!
"He has never broken the oath," she murmured, "not even to me. I have never remained here at night—never seen the specter. But I have questioned the servants who fled from here, and so I know."
I turned to my patient. He was sleeping peacefully now, and I thanked God that the terror had temporarily left him. Lady Sybil said softly:
"I shall stay here the night, so long as you are here, Doctor. I can not leave him now."
She walked quietly to the divan and made it as comfortable as possible. I did not suggest that she go to one of the sleeping-chambers on the floor above. For my part, I could not consider waking my patient; I would have to sit by him through the night. And I knew that she, too, preferred to be close to him. At any rate, I hadn't the cruelty to suggest that she remain alone, in one of those shadowed, deathly silent rooms on the upper corridor, through the long hours of sinister darkness that confronted us.
I think that she slept very soon after she lay down. When 1 bent over her a moment later, to drape a silken coverlet over her lovely figure, she did not stir.
I realized then that I was the only person awake in this massive, spectral house. I was alone with the unknown being that patrolled the upper galleries. I closed the door of the room and bolted it. Very quietly I returned to my chair and lowered myself. Then I sat there, staring fearfully into the deepening shadows, until I dozed into a fitful slumber.
If the specter of the House of Ramsey crept out of its hidden lair that night, I did not know it. When I awoke, a welcome sunlight was sliding across the floor at my feet, from the opposite window. I was alone in the room. Sir Edward and Lady Sybil had vanished.
I stood up. It was difficult to believe, in this glow of warm sunlight, that anything unusual had occurred during the night.
Evidently nothing had. The door opened behind me and the ferret-faced servant, scuffling forward, said evenly:
"Breakfast is waiting, sir."
I followed him to the dining-hall, and there found my two companions. Lady Sybil rose to greet me with a smile. The boy remained seated. His face was extremely haggard and white. He nodded heavily.
"Thought we'd let you sleep, Briggs," he said. "You earned it."
He did not refer again to the previous night. Lady Sybil, too, maintained a discreet silence. When the meal was over, I called her to me.
"1 shall stay here," I said, "until I am sure that his terror does not return. I do not feel justified in leaving the house at the present time."
"You wish me to do something, Doctor?"
I gave her a prescription. In substance, the desired medicine was little more than a tonic, though it contained a slight portion of morphine. It would serve to keep the boy's nerves under control; but I realized even then that the cause of his fear must be removed before any medicine would benefit him.
Lady Sybil, however, promised to have the prescription filled. She had other matters to attend to, she said, and would probably return sometime in the late afternoon.
When she had gone, I sought out, once again, those significant volumes that I had found the night before. I studied them for a very long time. It must have been well after two o'clock when Sir Edward came into the library.
He slouched into a chair and remained there, without any display of animation or life. When I got quietly to my feet and replaced the last book on the shelf, he looked at me without emotion.
"Where to, Briggs?" he said dully.
"With your permission," I replied, "I should like to have a look at the galleries."
He nodded. I fancied that the slightest cloud of suspicion crossed his face; but he offered no objections.
I had difficulty in finding my way. The route which led to the upper levels was no easy one to follow, winding as it did through a succession of peculiarly dark and unlighted corridors. Eventually, however, I found myself at the bottom of a circular staircase that coiled upward into the gloom of the floor above. I mounted the steps slowly, holding to the great carved bannister for support; and, having reached the second landing, I followed the twistings of the passage by keeping as close to the wall as possible.
At the end of this circular passage, a curtained window revealed the street below. As I peered down and saw the pavement far below me, I could not repress a shudder.
Cautiously I continued along this corridor to the bottom of a second staircase. Once again, with heavy steps, I groped upward.
And here, at the top of the last incline, I found the upper galleries of the House of Ramsey. The room lay directly before me. Its massive door, standing half open, revealed a thread of light from some hidden source—a gleam which penetrated like a livid, groping hand into the blackness of the passage.
I entered timidly, leaving the door open behind me. Before me extended a room of enormous size, more like a huge
banquet chamber than an art alcove.
The illumination was intense, coming as it did from a series of four broad windows set in the farther wall—windows which were uncurtained, and designed to flood the interior with light.
For the rest, the floor was lined with a smooth carpet of dull hue. The walls on opposite sides of me as I moved forward were devoted entirely to framed paintings. The rear wall, which contained the only entrance—through which I had come—was carefully covered with a soft gray drape, cut to outline the wooden panels of the door.
I had taken no more than a dozen steps forward into this strange chamber when I came to an abrupt halt. Before me, as I stood motionless, lay evidence that my patient had been here before me—a silk kerchief, embroidered in black with his emblem. I recognized it instantly. He had worn it on the previous evening, tucked in the breast pocket of his jacket. And now it lay here on the carpet, damnable in its significance as I stared down at it. So he had not slept the night through! He had come here—come to this death room, to keep some infernal midnight tryst!
I dropped the thing into my pocket. Having done this, I turned to inspect the magnificent works of art that surrounded me. And then, almost immediately after that first startling episode, came a second shock, a thousand times greater than the first!
The thing glared out at me with horrible malice. It hung before me, leering into my face. I recoiled from it with a sudden intake of breath.
It was a skeleton, painted in dull values of gray and white, with a single blur of jet-black background, created by an artist who possessed a fiendish cunning for horrifying the human eye. Every revolting effect of death was incorporated into that ghastly countenance. And yet, in a medical sense, the thing was far from perfect.
Even as I stared at it, I discerned a dozen very evident faults of construction. Hideous it was, but hideous only because the artist had sacrificed accuracy in order to make it so.
The eye-sockets, executed in a fiendish combination of gray pigments, were horribly empty and staring—but they were too close-set to be natural. The frontal bone, a streak of livid white, was terrible in its effect—but far too broad. The two superior maxillary bones, forming the upper jaw and bounding the glaring, vacant nasal cavity, were hideously formed—but were separated on the under surface from the row of broken teeth, in order to lend that maddening grin to the mouth.
There were other defects, easily recognizable. They were less significant. But as a work of horror, the skeleton before me was faultless. Never have I been so completely unnerved by something which I knew could hold no power over me.
I went toward it with irresolute steps, determined to inspect it at close range and then leave the room immediately. The singular glare of its dead features had sapped all my curiosity. I wanted to get away from it.
The painting was very old. Only three colors were evident—white, gray, and that sepulchral black. At the bottom of the heavy gilt frame I found the name of the artist—a name which choked on my lips as I cried it aloud. That name, faint and almost illegible, was Ravenal!
Ravenal! "In the year previous to his death, having formed a truce with the House of Ramsey, he did present to Sir Godfrey Ramsey one or two paintings of great value, executed by himself. .
I left the room with an inexplicable sense of fear. Fascination it might have been, for that hideous thing behind me. Horror it might have been, for the slow realization that here—here in this fiendish picture—lay the secret of innumerable murders, and a hellish curse of madness!
There is little more to tell. The concluding event of my stay in the House of Ramsey was not long in forthcoming.
The hour was already late when I returned to the library on the lower floor. Sir Edward had not moved from his position. He greeted me with a nod; and the girl, who had returned during my tour of inspection, came toward me to give me the medicine I had ordered.
I forced the boy to take it. Then, in depressing silence, we sat there, the three of us, as the hour grew later and later. Lady Sybil and I made a feeble attempt to play backgammon; but the boy's glassy eyes haunted us. The game was a mockery.
When ten o'clock came, I rose and took the boy's arm.
"A night's sleep," I said sternly, "would be one of your best medicines."
He glanced at me wearily, as if it hurt him to move.
"You are turning in, Briggs?"
"I am."
He sank back into his chair with a half-inaudible murmur. I motioned quietly to Lady Sybil, thinking that if she left him he would be certain to come with us, rather than be left alone. The girl had already prepared a room for herself on the upper floor.
But the boy did not move. As I drew the door shut, he looked up suddenly and spoke in a voice that was strangely harsh.
"Leave it open, Briggs. I'll—go to bed in a while. Closed doors are ghastly—just now."
In the corridor outside, I said goodnight to Lady Sybil and climbed the stairs to my room. The room opened on an unlighted passage—a narrow, gloomy tunnel that twisted from darkness into darkness, revealed only by the glow of light from my own chamber.
The hands of my watch, as I laid the timepiece carefully upon the table, stood at thirty-two minutes after ten o'clock. No sound stirred in the great house. Lady Sybil, having climbed the stairs behind me, had gone to her room at the far end of the corridor. Below stairs, the servant of the penetrating eyes had evidently retired.
It was perhaps fifteen minutes later when I heard Sir Edward's step on the stairs. He climbed wearily, inertly. His tread moved along the corridor. I heard the door of his chamber open and close. After that there was nothing but an ominous, depressing, sinister silence.
I left my door open. Most men in my position. would, I presume, have closed it and made haste to throw the bolt. But I found comfort, such as it was, in an open exit. I had no desire to be a rat in a trap.
Nervously I switched off the light and sank wearily to the bed. There I lay, facing the half-open door, striving to get rid of my thoughts. And there I lay when, a long time later, I was dimly conscious that the silence had dissolved into sound.
It had no definite beginning, no positive substance. Only in the acute stillness of the capacious structure would it have been audible at all. Even then it was no more than a dead hum, like the drone of muted, smothered machinery.
It increased in volume. For fully sixty seconds, perhaps longer, I lay unmoving, as the sound became a throbbing, wavering reality. I twisted about to stare at the door, as if I expected the vibrations to filter into my room and take the form of some ghastly supernatural being.
Then I heard something more—the distinct tread of human feet advancing quietly along the passage outside! And I saw it—saw the hunched form of Sir Edward Ramsey, creeping slowly along the corridor. Visible for a moment only, he passed the open door of my chamber. An unearthly mask of sepulchral light surrounded him—an obscure, bluish vapor that seemed to rise out of the floor at his feet and hang about him like an ethereal cloak, a Protean winding-sheet. And I shall never forget the fear-haunted glare of the boy's eyes as he moved through the darkness.
He walked as though an inner force guided him forward. His hands hung lifelessly at his sides. His face was tense and ghastly gray, strained to an almost diabolical degree of expectancy. And then, passing out of my range of vision, he vanished.
I sprang from the bed and reached the door in a stride. There I stopped, with both hands clutching the door-frame. The sound of his footsteps had already died; but another form was coming silently out of the darkness and moving past me. The form of Lady Sybil—following him!
I did not hesitate then. I knew, as surely as if the walls themselves were screeching it out to me, that the boy was going to those infernal galleries in the upper recesses of the house. And up there would be that eternal fiend of murder and madness—that unnamed horror which had for centuries preyed on the inhabitants of this ghastly dwelling.
Groping into the passage behind those two g
rim figures, 1 fell into the mute procession. Far above me, that dirge of hell had risen to a whimpering moan—a human voice in torment—rising and falling with my steps as I paced forward.
I saw the two figures before me now—the boy still enveloped in that weird mist; the girl silhouetted behind him. His tread was the tread of a man who had repeated this midnight journey many times and knew every creaking board, every turn of the passage, every twist of the long, winding stairways that led into the upper gloom.
He paced on—and on. Behind him crouched the girl, shadowing him as a jungle cat might shadow some unknown, half-dreaded quarry. I saw that evil shroud of unnatural light ascend the stairs, hovering about him—saw it grope down the second labyrinth—saw it climb again up, up, into the stygian murk. The girl crept after him, and I trailed behind with the utmost caution, lest he should turn and find me behind him.
Only once—before the door of that chamber of abhorrence at the very roof of the house—did he hesitate. Then, swinging the heavy barrier open, he entered.
Through that open doorway, in tripled intensity, came the voice of the House of Ramsey. It beat upon me in waves—a terrific summons, whining hideously, rising and falling with infuriate vehemence. And I knew, in that frantic moment, why Sir Edward had not fled in terror from this place of pestilence. He could not. That spectral voice possessed a spell that would allow no man to leave. It was irresistible in its cunning!
I slunk forward. The girl had already crossed the threshold. As I slipped through the aperture, I saw them directly before me—Lady Sybil pressed flat against the wall; the boy, surrounded by that Protean well of light, standing motionless with both hands uplifted.