by Jack Mann
Jacob repeated thoughtfully. “I’d say that chap was a born fule, if yu ast me—why, Noah’d been forever a ketchin’ o’ turnip flies!”
“An’ the chap caught the shillin’s,” Tom remarked, “which go to show what a born fule he were. There’s others. I’m havin’ one more half pint, an’ then goin’ hoam to bed.” He reached up and put his mug on the bar, and searched for and found three pennies to put beside it.
Gees went out, shaking with silent laughter and keeping his face averted from the settle on which the worthies sat. He stood under the chestnut tree, revelling in the faint scents that freighted the air of the still, moonless night, hawthorn and sweetbrier, the tree itself, and momentarily, a drifting layer in the mass, the unmistakable reek of grazing kine somewhere near. He could hear the faint, swishing crunch as one of them tongue-lapped mouthfuls of grass.
Then light, quick footfalls, passing in the shadow on the far side of the road, and with them the faintest of rustles, as of silken skirts. Someone hurrying away from the village—the sound went pattering almost at the rate of a run. Someone who had been to post a letter, Gees surmised, and now hastened back home, since women in Denlandham feared the darkness and all that it might hold, after last November’s event.
Then he caught another layer of the night’s scents, and knew it for no natural product of country growth. Faint and delicate, yet oversweet, it came to him for a few seconds and passed as had those hurrying footfalls, fading out, gone entirely.
“Rimmel, Houbigant, or Lapeyrac?” he asked himself.
Then more footsteps, slower, heavier, in the middle of the road this time. Phil Bird came in under the chestnut tree, and stopped.
“I thought it was you, sir,” he said. “Wonderful still night.”
“Quite,” Gees assented. He saw Bird’s gaze at him, and knew that more than half his face was lighted by the ray from the bar window, but did not turn to conceal it. Phil Bird went on gazing at him.
“It look like—have you been seein’ anything, sir?” he asked.
“No,” Gees answered. “Only my ears and nose were busy.”
“Ah!” said Phil. “Went past my gate just as I was openin’ it. I don’t think there’s another woman in Denlum’d be out alone after dark.”
Gees did not answer. Did Perivale know his wife was out alone?
“We’ll be seein’ you inside presently, sir?” Phil inquired.
“Not to-night, I think,” Gees answered. “I’ve just come out, in fact, for a breath of air before turning in to make a very early night of it. There was a turnip fly story—do you know it?”
“That’ll be Tom Myers,” Phil decided accurately. “Never a stranger’s come into the bar any time these twenty year but what he’s told that tale, an’ many’s the pint he’s had for tellin’ it.”
“He was unlucky to-night, then,” Gees observed.
“Aye, but they’re a pack o’ swingers, all of ’em,” Phil asserted.
“So would I be, on their pay, I expect,” Gees said. “Look here—two half-crowns. Tom Myers and all the rest of them—you too, as far as it goes. But I won’t come in there again to-night.”
“Lord save us!” Phil ejaculated as he took the coins. “I’ll tell ’em it’s you doin’ it, sir. They’ll all sing anthems—five bob to go on a Thursday night. And—and thank you very much, sir.”
“That’s all right, Bird. Good night.”
“Good night, sir, an’ thank you again for us all.”
The next day’s dawn came slowly, with chill, intermittent showers driving across from the border hills on a fitful wind, and with them a grey reek that thickened ever and again to actual fog, only to thin to mere gloom through which the rain came down. Gees found a welcome fire lighted in the inn dining-room when he reached it, and Nicholas Churchill, bustling in soon after, put down a dish and removed its cover to expose two grilled bloaters, either of which would have been enough to extinguish any normal man’s appetite.
“Thowt tha might like to start wi’ fish for a change, sir,” he piped.
“I’ll bring th’eggs an’ bacon along presently.”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t!” Gees exclaimed. “If I get outside half this I shall be hungrier than I think myself.”
“Maybe it’s th’ air don’t suit thee, sir,” Nicholas observed with some concern. “I hope th’art not goin’ off thy feed.” He took an unstamped enveloped from his pocket and put it down on the table beside Gees plate. “This just coom, for thee,” he added.
“Ah, thank you.” Gees waited till the landlord had left the room and then took out the single sheet of paper from the envelope, to see that it was die-stamped “Denlandham House, Shropshire,” and undated.
“Dear Mr. Green,” he read, in small, clear handwriting, “I have learned only to-night that you have been staying at the Hunters’ Arms since yesterday, and am rather surprised that you have, apparently, begun your investigations without first acquainting me of your presence. I have no objection to your visiting Knightsmere, but consider that you might first have acquainted me of your intention of doing so. I shall be glad if you can make it convenient to call at the House to see me to-morrow (Friday) at any time that may suit you, as I shall be in all day.
“Faithfully yours,
“ANGUS D’ARCY HUNTER.”
“Learned to-night, eh?” Gees observed to himself, and laid the letter beside his plate for re-perusal while he moved and began on one of the bloaters. “Possibly a little more illuminating than you meant it to be, Squire Hunter. A certain amount—a glimmer, say—of light begins to appear—or does it? Is it a cure for turnip-fly, perchance.”
Absorbed in consideration of the letter, even of what the type of handwriting might convey, he found eventually that he had disposed of both the bloaters, and sat back aghast at himself.
“Nicholas, you’re right,” he apostrophised. “The air doesn’t suit me. But, by gosh, they were good, both of ’em!”
A desk in the corner of the room provided paper and envelopes, and he wrote a reply to Hunter’s letter.
“Dear Mr. Hunter, I have not called on you because, so far, I have nothing to report, and do not feel inclined to waste either your time or mine by troubling you without cause. I believe I defined the method in which I would conduct this inquiry, quite plainly, when you called at my office in London. Since you appear to wish to see me, I will try to be at Denlandham House late this afternoon, say between five and six, but fear I cannot spare time before that hour. Also, by that time, I may have something tangible to tell you, which I have not now.
“Yours truly,
G.G. G. GREEN.”
He stuck this in an envelope, addressed it to “Angus Hunter, Esq.,” and rang the bell. Nicholas appeared, and looked at the fish bones.
“An’ now tha’ll have t’bacon an’ eggs, sir?” he asked hopefully.
“To-morrow, but not to-day,” Gees answered with friendly firmness. “But I’d be glad if you could find a boy to take this to Denlandham House some time-this morning. No hurry, as long as it gets there by noon.” He offered the letter, and Nicholas took it and looked at it.
“T’squire, eh?” he observed. “T’butcher’s man’ll be along round about eleven, sir, an’ he might deliver it. Will that do?”
“Admirably,” Gees assured him, “if you’re sure he comes to you before going on to Denlandham House—doesn’t go there first.”
“Noa,” said Nicholas. “Greedy for his mornin’ pint, that chap is. This’ll be t’first call he’ll make anywheer i’ Denlum. ’Sides, I’m on his way. If he went to t’ House first, he’d have to coom back heer.”
“One fluid reason, and one sound one,” Gees remarked. “All right, let the butcher’s man have the honour, and tell him it’s not merely important, but much worse. I’ll be back about one.”
“Roast pork, sir, wi’ the cracklin’ done to a turn—a bit o’ loin, an’ some new taturs Tom
Myers tried growin’ under glass—lovely, they are. An’ the very laast cauliflower outer our own garden. Doan’t be laate, sir,” he ended with wistful pleading.
“One o’clock, if I ruin my health hurrying,” Gees promised.
“Nay, doan’t do that, sir,” Nicholas urged. “Else tha wouldn’t enjoy t’ pork. I’ll see to this,” he added, indicating the letter. Gees went out, and turned out his car after putting up hood and side curtains. Driving easily, he passed Nightmare roadway and Cosham’s farm, merely following the road with no object in view but that of movement as aid to thought—and to get away from any chance of contact with Hunter for the present. He had an idea that the man might seek him out if he remained at the inn or anywhere within reach, while, before any meeting could take place, he wanted to clarify his own ideas, and get more data for others. In his mind was a sentence of Phil Bird’s—“Human wickedness is warmth and strength to it, food and drink.”
Short of murder of the physical body, Gees asked himself, could there be worse wickedness than he was beginning to glimpse dimly—or imagine as existing? Something that at any time might turn to murder of faith and love, perhaps of all belief in humankind and of purpose in life. Something that he himself saw no means of averting—if it existed outside his own imagination! If it did, then no wonder that whatever made nightmare at Nightmare Farm had food and drink, warmth and strength to waken and go ravening, if one admitted Phil Bird’s line of belief.
There was nothing certain, nothing tangible. Except—Gees knew now that he had been wrong about the girl May Norris, though he could not have said how he knew. The soul of her had not been driven out, but still inhabited the physical body that he had seen. Crushed down by something far stronger, something that had accreted strength from wickedness for ages, but still present, still living. Else, that other would have dominated its habitation completely, and those fits of rigidity and following exhaustion would have ceased, to leave her apparently normal in action, though changed in motivation. It was May Norris, not that which possessed her, which tore clothes to pieces, to keep it from contact with the outside world in which it sought desperately to appear as human. The spirit belonging to that frail body still had strength, might even conquer without aid, in the end, though the chance of such conquest was so small as to be set aside, negligible.
“Rhuddlan, 5,” a signpost declared, and, mindful of roast pork and Tom Myers’ taturs grown under glass, Gees turned about and found that, absorbed in his reflections, he had not only travelled faster and farther than he had intended, but also that he did not know his way back. A general sense of direction and careful observation of the slant of the rain, with knowledge that the wind had been south-west when he set out, brought him eventually to a signpost with an arm pointing the way to Ludlow. With that he was at ease again, and reached the Hunters’ Arms in time to see Nicholas stand on the doorstep and relax from anxiety as he recognised the car. Gees left it under the chestnut.
“In time, I hope?” he asked.
“Aye, but I was mortal feared—t’ pork’ll be dished up i’ five minutes, sir, an’ if tha’d missed it, t’ missis’d niver let me hear t’last on’t. I’m reet glad th’art back in time.”
“Five minutes—time for a pint,” Gees observed. “Have one with me, won’t you, Churchill?”
“Th’art a reet good sort, an’ I will,” Nicholas conceded.
With the Daimler saloon turned about to face toward Denlandham, and H. Jones waiting behind the steering wheel, Gees faced a man both taller and broader than himself on the doorstep of Cosham’s farmhouse. A man easily angered, he saw at once, resolute rather than obstinate, and hostile to him on sight. In the passage behind the man, the vinegary-faced woman hovered, and the gloom of the rainy afternoon was not so deep as that which clouded the face of the man who half-hid her from Gees’ sight.
“Mr. Curtis, I hope,” Gees said pleasantly.
“That is my name. What do you want?” Curtis demanded.
“I? Want?” Gees echoed, as if in surprise. “Why, nothing, Mr. Curtis. It’s you who want—want your daughter restored to you as she was before her—her seizure, call it. At least, I hope you do.”
“Yes?” Curtis half sneered. “And what do you reckon to make out of torturin’ my poor girl, like the other doctors did till I stopped it?”
“In the first place, I am not a doctor,” Gees told him calmly. “In the second, I ask to do nothing at all, myself—not so much as touch your daughter or even speak to her. You yourself shall do all that, if I can convince you that there is a way of restoring her—”
“I don’t know if you’re a quack or what you are or who you are,”
Norris interrupted, “though my wife pitched me a tale about you being a detective of sorts, which I don’t for one moment believe now I see you. Everything that could be tried, I believe, has been tried on my daughter, only to make her worse instead of better, and I’m damned—”
“No!” Gees interposed there. “But she will be, if you refuse to save her. Your rector, Mr. Perivale, will be waiting in Denlandham church this afternoon for her, with you or her mother or both of you, and that is the one thing that has not been tried—that no doctor would think of trying in these days. Now think, before you speak!”
A look of utter amazement came on Norris’s face. “Perivale?” he said, with all the certainty gone from his voice. “Why, he—”
“He, I believe, can do in five minutes what no doctor has been able to do in more months,” Gees told him. “You asked what I get out of it, and I tell you—nothing, beyond the satisfaction of giving such help as I might ask myself at need—as a man in your own village put it to me yesterday. Your own parson, mind, and your daughter in your own care—not taken out of your sight for a moment. Think hard, Mr. Norris, before you refuse to save the girl, as I honestly believe you will if you do just this. That car at your gate is waiting.”
“I—I don’t know—” Norris said, altogether uncertainly, now.
“Maybe you’d better come in out of the wet, Mr.—Mr. Gees, I believe it is. It’s all—why a stranger like you should come and talk like this is more’n I can—and you say Mr. Perivale knows about it, too?”
“If I hadn’t got his consent and co-operation, I shouldn’t be here,” Gees told him as he stepped in off the threshold. Movement, and the opening and closing of a door along the passage, caused Gees to glance past Norris. The vinegary-faced woman had disappeared, he saw, and Mrs. Norris stood gazing toward him and her husband.
“You mean she’s—?” Norris began, and broke off.
“In need of something more than human doctoring,” Gees completed for him. “I’ve been to Nightmare, sensed what’s there, and seen her—yesterday. Now I’ve told you, and it’s up to you.”
“Fred”—Mrs. Norris grasped her husband’s arm—“don’t refuse!
Oh, you mustn’t! Another day, and I shall go mad too! Even if it’s only a chance, you’d be wicked to refuse it. Don’t—I beg you, Fred!”
“Get her dressed,” Norris said abruptly—harshly, it sounded.
“No,” Gees interposed. “Just as she is, after what Mrs. Norris told me yesterday about trying to dress her. Wrap a blanket round her to take her out to the car—anything, but don’t distress her by trying that. In half an hour or less, I hope, you can be back here with her.”
“All right, then,” Norris said. “You go out to the car, and I’ll fetch her out, since you say Mr. Perivale’ll be waiting. You’d better come along too, Jean.” He turned to his wife with the final sentence. She shook her head. “Not—not both of us,” she answered, “and she always turned more to you than to me.”
In that remark, as Gees turned to go out to the car, he sensed an inevitable jealousy on the mother’s part. He seated himself beside H. Jones, leaving the back of the car to Norris and the girl.