Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  “Fair division—you’re bigger than I am,” he observed. “We’ll walk and leave the car here—the distance is next to nothing.”

  “Over a mile, altogether,” Norris said. “But that’s not much.”

  With no more conversation they tramped to the gateway of Nightmare Farm. All along the rutted way between the two great hedges may-blossom petals sheeted the ground like soiled snow, and in a little breeze that troubled the stillness other petals were fluttering down thinly. Norris gazed up at the sky which, brilliantly clear earlier in the morning, was now becoming overcast, while away in the west the edge of a blue-black cloud appeared. The freshness had gone from the air, which now was moistly warm and even oppressive, in spite of the breeze.

  “Storm coming,” Norris remarked. “Thunder, by the look of things.”

  “Appropriate weather for a job like ours,” Gees commented. He lifted the gate just so far open as would give them ingress, and they went along the slightly-rising roadway. It had been no more than a deeply shadowed walk, may-blossom scented, when Gees and May Norris had gone along it to look at the farmhouse.

  Now, the sinister quality of stillness and watchful presences had returned to its gloom. Gees could see that Norris felt the influence equally with himself, saw that the farmer kept glancing quickly, first to one side and then the other, and even slackened pace, once, to look back.

  “Haunted,” he said, in little more than a whisper, “or is it the storm in the air? It seems to me more than that—something else.”

  “If we’re successful, it may be different on the way back,” Gees said. “Don’t yield to it—ignore it.”

  “What do you expect to find?” Norris asked after a silence.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. Anything—nothing. Something, I think, but what it is I simply don’t know.”

  They said no more. Without actually echoing, their voices appeared to them to have just such a quality as that of a note struck on a piano with the loud pedal held down, a sustained resonance that added to the oppression in which they plodded on, endlessly, it seemed.

  Yet at last they came out to view of the farmhouse, under a sky more clouded than they had seen before entering the roadway, while the blue-black curtain over the west was higher, bigger. Without pausing, they went on to the house. The window of the room that had been May’s was opened a little way, but the other three were closed. Gees tried the door, and found it locked.

  “It would be,” Norris remarked. “He might have left a window unfastened at the back, though. Let’s leave the tools here and see.”

  They stood the crowbars and pickaxe against the wall, and went to the back. But both the kitchen and scullery windows were fastened, and the back door, giving access to the kitchen, had been bolted on the inside—it had no lock, evidently, for there was no keyhole.

  “It’s a case of unlawful entry,” Gees remarked thoughtfully.

  “Let’s go and estimate the chances of getting in at that upstair window. If we can’t, it means either breaking a pane in a downstair one, or forcing the door—and since it’s only locked from the outside it will be easier to force than this one with bolts shot top and bottom.”

  They returned to the front, and he looked up at the window and shook his head. The sill was too far above the ground for entry; there might be a ladder somewhere about the buildings, he knew—but might not.

  “The door, I think,” he said. “We might find a way of closing it again, but we can’t repair a window pane. Let’s see.”

  “What about a ladder, if there is one?” Norris asked.

  “I propose we go into the house together, not singly,” Gees answered. He did not explain, nor did Norris ask for explanation. He went to the door, and, turning its handle, pushed at it and saw that it yielded about an eighth of an inch back from its framing. Then he took up the pickaxe, intending to thrust the flat end of the blade in the crack and force the lock by leverage. But Norris laid a hand on his arm.

  “You’d damage the woodwork, that way,” he said. “Stand back.”

  He set his great shoulder against the door and thrust at it. The slot for the bolt of the lock, not mortised into the wood but screwed on the inside of the lintel, broke away, and the door itself swung open to reveal the passageway, dark, except for such light as entered by the doorway, since all doors leading to the rooms were closed. The two men stood, gazing in, and from the stairway, invisible to them since it began at the inner end and neared the outer wall in its ascent, came a faint rustling and clucking, chuttering sound that ceased almost as soon as it began. Gees thrust his hand in the pocket that held his Webley automatic, and got in front of Norris to call out—

  “Is anybody inside there?”

  Dead silence followed. He backed, and took up a crowbar.

  “Come on,” he said. “It might have been a creaking or something of the sort, caused by bursting in the door like that.”

  Norris took up the other crowbar and the pickaxe and followed him in. He threw open the door of Stukeley’s living room to admit a light that only half-illuminated the staircase, and to reveal the cheap, scanty furnishings of the room still in it. Then he led the way up the stairs and found the key in the lock of the room that Stukeley had kept locked. Opening it, he saw the room empty—and now the storm cloud was higher in the sky, the light of day lessened, and the house was eerily still, a stillness of waiting presences rather than of emptiness.

  “We’ll get to work, I think,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.

  “Where—how?” Norris asked, looking round the room.

  Gees put down his crowbar, and pointed at the projection of the chimney. “There,” he said. “Break through that wall.”

  “Into the chimney?” Norris asked again, rather incredulously.

  “I think not,” Gees said, and began stripping off his tweed coat and vest. “In fact, I’m practically sure not.”

  He took up the pickaxe as Norris began removing coat and vest, and went to the middle of the projection. With the pointed end of the implement he struck at the wall near the ceiling—and the point went in almost up to the helve, while plaster spattered down. He withdrew the point and struck nearly a foot lower, with the same result, and Norris watched him. A third blow, about six feet above floor level, brought away plaster, but the point of the pick did not enter. Instead, it thudded against solidity, and Gees lowered it to stand and gaze.

  “Yes,” he said. “Built out from the chimney, but not up to the top of this room. Brickwork where I hit last, and only plaster above that to keep the line. We’ll clear away a bit, I think.”

  With the flat end of the pickaxe blade he chipped at the plaster to either side of the point where he had struck for the third time. It flaked away under his blows, revealing bricks set as a very shallow arch, and with some three feet of them uncovered he stopped work.

  “A room of some sort,” he said. “I make it as standing out a yard beyond the line of the chimney in the room below, and quite possibly the chimney wall itself has been thinned here to give more width—with this projection, whoever did it could have got about six feet altogether. Six feet by about ten—a small room, but still a room.”

  “And I never noticed that before!” Norris exclaimed.

  “Because you never looked for it,” Gees told him. “I did, when Stukeley let me see over the place. That is, I was looking for anything there might be out of the ordinary, and saw this.”

  Again he lifted the pickaxe, and chipped two lines, about three feet apart, down from the shallowly arched line of bricks to the floor.

  “We’ll cut that bit out—if we can,” he said. “Make holes through to the inside with the pick, and then lever it out with the crowbars. And whatever we do, we mustn’t let it fall inward, because of what may be inside there. Here—you take a hand. You’re stronger than I am.”

  He stood back and mopped away perspiration while Norris swung the pickaxe. A dozen or more cr
ashing blows, and the point went through.

  “Just so!” Gees remarked in a satisfied way. “Not more than a brick and a half thick. Not the chimney wall at all, in fact.”

  “Only a brick and a half,” Norris assented, pausing, “but bricklayers did better work when this was built than they do now.”

  Abruptly he broke off and stood listening. The purr of a motor sounded up to them, and Gees went to the partly opened window and looked out, while Norris stood listening.

  “Gosh! Come and look here! Hunter himself, too!”

  Norris went to the window, and saw, as Gees saw, a motor van with, scrolled on its side, the legend—“COLLINS & SONS, COMPLETE HOME FURNISHERS.” Beside it Hunter, on a big, glossy-coated bay horse, gazed toward the house. The noise of the van’s engine ceased.

  “No need to have met you with the key.” They could hear

  Hunter’s voice distinctly through the opened window. “Somebody’s broken in.”

  Then, glancing upward, he saw Gees’ face, and his own set vengefully.

  “Still there!” he exclaimed. “Wait here, you—I’ll tackle him alone. Don’t come inside till I tell you—hold this horse for me.”

  A man got down from the driving seat of the van and took the rein as Hunter dismounted. Norris turned and looked at the fallen plaster.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Wait, and leave it to me,” Gees answered.

  Bending down, he took his cigarette case and lighter from his coat pocket, and was lighting a cigarette when Hunter stormed into the room.

  “Got you—you too, Norris!” he exclaimed exultingly. “Both of you!”

  “Have you, though?” Gees asked nonchalantly, and blew a whiff of smoke. He held out his case to Norris. “Have one?” he inquired.

  “Have I?” Hunter retorted fiercely. “Breaking and entering enclosed premises—malicious damage to property—the pair of you will sleep in cells to-night. As a justice of the peace I charge you—”

  “Don’t!” Gees’ command cut across his angry denunciation like a pistol shot. “Listen, first! Mr. and Mrs. d’Arcy, two hundred and twenty four A, Upper Gloucester Place. February fourteenth to twentieth of this year. Now think whether you’ll charge us with anything.”

  “Why—” Hunter began, and ceased to stand for some seconds, staring with dropped jaw. “Why, you blasted fool,” he went on,

  “you’ve no evidence! What the devil are you talking about?”

  “The very best of evidence,” Gees contradicted coolly. “Madame Stephanie, in fact, who believes—you know what she believes, though. Think hard, and then charge us if you feel like risking it.”

  Through another long pause Hunter stood staring. Again Gees held his cigarette case out toward Norris.

  “Do have one,” he said. “It goes well in a breather.”

  Norris took a cigarette, but did not put it to his lips. Gees closed his case and, dropping it on his coat, held out his lighter. Norris took that too, but did not use it. At last Hunter spoke.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded harshly.

  “Earning my pay—finishing the case,” Gees answered quietly, and flicked ash from his cigarette. “You told me yourself you mean to burn the house down, so I don’t see that any damage we do to it—”

  “Ah, finish it, then!” Hunter interrupted him, and took a step toward the door. “And may it land you in hell!” he added fiercely.

  “Curses of that sort sometimes come home to roost, Squire Hunter,” Gees warned him. “Do you still intend to charge us—”

  “Damn you—no!” Hunter interrupted again, and stamped out and down the stairs. Then Norris put his cigarette between his lips and lighted it, handing the lighter back to Gees, who dropped it beside the case.

  “Well!” he said softly, and left it at that.

  “Quite,” Gees told him. “Listen, though.”

  Through the window came the sound of Hunter’s voice, harsh, angry—

  “You can go back with that van. I’m not having the furniture taken away to-day, after all. Come again one day next week.”

  “But—all the way from Shrewsbury—” the driver protested.

  “Two of us, me and my mate, sir.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve come all the way from John-o’-Groats!

  That furniture is not being moved out to-day. You’re not going into this house to-day. Charge your time and the use of the van up to me, and it will be paid with the rest of the account. Here—give me that rein!”

  Gees saw him mount the horse and wrench it round to face toward the roadway. It went off at a gallop, and the van driver got back into his seat and started up his engine. The van went about, and began following Hunter as he disappeared between the hedges with sods of turf flying back from the horse’s hoof-falls. Then Gees turned away from the window.

  “Scuppered him,” he observed, “and now we can get on with it. If you’ll do a bit more with the pick, I’ll lever out some bricks with a crowbar. I think this one with the point will be handiest for it.”

  “You mean—he’s letting us carry on?” Norris asked.

  “It looks like that to me. We can tear the whole house down, if we like to keep at it for a week or two. Let’s get busy again.”

  CHAPTER XV

  THE DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD

  BOTH men stood back from the results of their work and mopped away perspiration. Where Gees had chipped lines in the plaster, there were now two jagged, nearly vertical slits in the brickwork, with a closely spaced, horizontal line of holes between the slits and just under the shallow arch that supported whatever ceiling there was to the hidden room, while before the wall lay a mess of broken bricks and rubble. Full daylight had given place to deep gloom, for now the sky was entirely hidden by the black cloud that had moved slowly up from the west.

  “As I said, they were good bricklayers, then,” Norris remarked.

  “I don’t think it was Union labour,” Gees admitted, “and probably they did more than an eight-hour day, too. Gosh, it was a tough job!”

  A few drops of rain pattered against the window. Norris started at the sound, and gazed behind him, rather nervously.

  “The weather makes me jumpy,” he said. “I wonder—is it going to be a thunderstorm, or just rain? Showery, the forecast was.”

  “Well, what about finishing it?” Gees suggested. “If you stick a crowbar through one of those slits, and I do the same with the other and we lever gently, that oblong ought to fall outward.”

  They acted on the suggestion, one on each side of the door-like oblong, and standing well back to be clear of the falling brickwork. Under their joint leverage, the brickwork cracked and bulged a little. The wall to either side cracked too, but the main effect of the pressure showed between the two cuts, the bulge growing more pronounced.

  “Try a shade lower,” Gees advised, and they shifted their crowbars six inches or more nearer to the floor. “Now—steadily—”

  The oblong was yielding—a loose brick thudded down on the boards. Then a blaze of lightning half-blinded both of them for seconds, and as fully two-thirds of the cut-out portion of wall crashed to the floor between them a deafening peal of thunder took on and prolonged the sound, to die to a rumble, in which the sharp rattle of rain and hail on the window panes became audible. And, vaguely, dimly, as the specks before their eyes ceased to dance as result of the lightning flash, they saw what Gees had foretold, a chamber extending back for a good six feet from the wall through which they had cut, to another wall of bare red brickwork—the chimney itself, thinned here for added width of the hidden room, which, if the daylight had been normal, would have been visible to within knee height above the floor, since below that level the brickword had held firm, and concealed what was inside. But now, with the less than half-light in which they stood, and the dust thrown up from their demolition, they could get no more than a vague glimpse of that farther wall, at first
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