by Mark Hansom
“Oh,” I said, laughing, “I don’t think we need make any plans to cover that possibility . . . Tell the others that you’ve been called away — somebody ill. And have a good time.”
I was keenly affected by Makepeace’s manner as he mournfully set about the business of preparing to have a good time. I ought to have explained my plans and suspicions more fully to him, for he certainly merited my fullest confidence. But, to tell the truth, I was half afraid that if he knew the risk I intended to run he might have definitely refused to leave me, and that would have ruined everything.
“Good-bye, Mister Martin!” he said, an hour or so later, when a taxi stood out by the kerb and a porter was carrying his case downstairs.
“Not ‘good-bye’!” I said, smiling.
“Ah!” he murmured. “I’d better say it — in case.”
CHAPTER XV
Out of the Darkness
T
hat evening happened to be a free one for me, and, after dressing, I wandered into the hall, trying to decide what to do with myself.
I could run round to Park Lane, I reflected; but I was not in the mood for going round to Park Lane. I was restless and impatient I wanted something freer and less personal than the atmosphere of Park Lane.
There was the club. I would be sure to find one or two pleasant sparks there who would do all that could be done in the way of making the evening pass quickly. I decided to go to the club.
It was then that Mr. Ashton crossed the hall.
“Are you busy, Mr. Ashton?” I asked.
“Why, no, sir. I have one or two things that — ”
“Do you think you could leave the one or two things, and come with me to the theatre?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Mr. Ashton would insist on the “sir.” But perhaps, I reflected while I was waiting for him to dress, an evening of social intimacy would soften his austere formalness in that respect.
We dined at a restaurant, Mr. Ashton and I; and after dinner we strolled forth and took our seats to witness one of the most successful plays that was then running in London.
I found Mr. Ashton to be as great a success socially as he was secretarially; and I was glad that I had chosen to spend the evening with him. He had the supreme skill to keep the conversation away from “shop” — a feat that requires no little genius — and not once during the whole evening did he mention any of the hundred little matters that are continually crying for remark between secretary and employer.
He did, it is true, mention Makepeace; but that was not a matter of business. He had understood that my old retainer was ill, and was glad to learn that not only was he not ill but that he had gone away on a visit to someone who was ill.
Yes, Mr. Ashton was an accomplished social companion, besides being an accomplished secretary, and at odd moments during the evening I wondered why I had not sought his company earlier.
But the main point was that the evening passed quickly and that my mind was kept from dwelling upon the ordeal through which I might have to go when I left the pleasant company of Mr. Ashton and retired to my bedroom.
The time for retiring quickly arrived. And though I was eager to be alone in order to test the correctness of my suspicions, I was, at the same time, unwilling to part with the company of another human being.
“We’ll have a drink before we turn in,” I suggested, as we stood in the hall of the flat. “Come through to the dining-room for a minute.”
The dining-room was at the back of the hall. Its door was next to that which cut off the servants’ domain — next to that green baize-covered door that was symbolic, in Makepeace’s mind, of the line of demarcation between master and man.
I remarked on that point to Mr. Ashton — not for the sake of telling him anything so much as for the sake of expressing my own fears to myself.
“Makepeace is the supreme autocrat,” I said. “He has given this door the virtues of a portcullis and a drawbridge combined. I understand that instant dismissal is the punishment should any of the servants be found on this side of it after nine o’clock at night.”
Mr. Ashton laughed. Somehow I could not bring myself to laugh. Now that the time for retiring was so near, the confidence that I had formerly felt began to diminish. There was something profoundly significant in that green baize-covered door. It gave me a sense of being apart from the rest of mankind, of going forth unattended to meet a foe of whose powers I was in total ignorance.
I might have told Mr. Ashton of my fears. I might have overruled Makepeace’s orders and had two of the menservants through to keep watch. There was no physical reason why I should go through with the grim ordeal that I had set myself.
We lingered a long time over our drinks. I was unwilling to lose sight of the solid, squarely built figure of my secretary. My confidence was oozing rapidly. What, in daylight, had seemed comparatively easy and free from terror was now charged with all the circumstances of doubt and apprehension. I had thought only of the ninety-nine chances of success, and not at all of the one chance of failure. But now it was the one chance of failure that impressed itself upon me; for if my suspicions were wrong it meant that I was putting myself unreservedly into the hands of forces of whose intentions I had no conception.
“Good night, Mr. Ashton!” I said suddenly, putting down my glass. “Thanks very much for your company. It’s been a delightful evening.”
I dared not linger there, thinking over the possible outcome of my night’s vigil. I walked determinedly through to my bedroom.
As I undressed I whistled. There was a steadying influence in whistling. The chief thing was not to give way to panic. If I allowed my thoughts to dwell on ghostly matters I would be done for. Terror, I argued, was a state of mind. There are some people so grossly equipped, mentally, that terror for them is a thing unknown. There are others so acutely sensitive to impressions that they start at a shadow. I, with nerves frayed through my recent experiences in the world of the supernatural, was one of these latter.
I must keep my thoughts on innocent, everyday things, I told myself. Will — that was the secret. The will to think of the prosaic, the commonplace. If my mind were occupied with other thoughts there would be no room for terror. Terror, I told myself again, was merely a state of mind.
I went over the plot of the play that we had witnessed that evening. I followed every detail of the first scene, and was surprised at the calmness that the exercise induced. I could walk about the room as coolly as though I were walking in the crowded street at midday.
The door leading into the study was shut. I strolled over and opened it, looking for an instant into the half dark interior. And I deliberately turned and came back into the middle of the bedroom. The slightest flicker of my strong hold upon myself would have caused me to wheel round and face that door, for it was through that door that the terror would come.
But — I cannot help saying it — I took pride in the manner in which I kept my back to the door. My casualness was sublime. So far, at least, I was master of myself. If I could retain that mastery I should have nothing to fear.
I switched off the lights. The room was in utter blackness. Then I walked to one of the windows and drew aside the heavy curtains. 1 even stood by the window for a time looking down into the Square. The sound of the midnight traffic of Oxford Street came to me in an uncertain murmur. The night sky glowed mysteriously.
Down in the Square — on the same side as I, but at some distance along the pavement — a man was standing. I smiled. He was another of those who walk with slow, large-gestured strides. That they were watching me — or, at least, someone connected with me or with my establishment — I had not the faintest doubt. My smile turned into an expression of seriousness. It was not a thing to smile at, even though one is constrained to smile at the thought of someone hunting for a mare’s nest. All the tragedy and the mystery that had come within my knowledge since the fateful night of my first meeting with Sylvia Vernon must, I thought, be trac
eable to one single cause. Christopher Knight’s death, my cousin’s death, my own weird experiences, the presence of the policeman down on the pavement — that these all rose from the one fundamental spring I was certain.
Would the mystery ever be solved? Would I ever be rid of the unearthly genius that was interposing itself between me and the innocent cultivation of life’s pleasures? Was I now about to solve the mystery — or part of it?
I turned from the window and faced the darkened room. Objects in it were now visible by the faint glow that came from the night sky. The room was just a shade less than intensely dark. My nerves were already beginning to get the upper hand of me. I turned my thoughts to the play at the theatre again, and, by an effort, kept them there. Meanwhile I got into bed.
I came, in thought, to the final “curtain.” Then I started all over again. I told myself that I must not allow my thoughts to wander indiscriminately. They would lead me back to the present, if I did, and I should find myself lying in wide-eyed anticipation of some queer happening. I must keep them fixed on one set of circumstances that would call for my whole powers of concentration over a considerable period. To review the play in detail was a perfect exercise for the occasion.
It must have been about an hour later — when I was puzzling over the manner in which one of the characters came up stage — that I heard a sound in the study.
In an instant my sublime self-control vanished. I might as well have been lying in shivering, fearful expectation all the time for all the difference it made now that the supreme moment had come.
My useless revolver was in my hand. To Makepeace I had argued lightly that cartridges didn’t matter. What a self-sufficient fool I had been! A cartridge would at least arouse the household.
I ought to be feigning sleep and watching the door of the study through half closed eyelids. In bitter truth I was wide-eyed and was straining every nerve to pierce the gloom of the chamber.
After that first faint sound there was a deathly, sinister silence.
Then the blackness that was the oblong of the study door was disturbed. The blackness became less intense — seemed to mould itself into the rudiments of form. Something was evolving out of darkness. Something wraith-like was standing there in the doorway.
I could not move. I could only stare at the apparition standing motionless and silent, only vaguely distinguishable in the enveloping darkness of the room.
“Don’t look at its eyes — if it has eyes,” I told myself, grasping fearfully in my mind for some point by which I could retain my last vestige of self-control, and lighting, fortunately, upon a precaution that I had instilled into myself earlier. “Don’t look at its eyes.”
The apparition, vague as a wisp of fog in the darkness, seemed to be moving forward into the room. Yet the silence was unbroken. It seemed to move without effort. It had grown less indistinct. It was coming towards me.
I cannot say how I should have behaved had it continued to advance in that same stealthy, noiseless manner. Probably I should have swooned outright, for with every second I could feel the control ebbing from my limbs.
A board creaked. And with that sound the sense of control came back to my limbs. My tenseness relaxed. I found that I was breathing regularly, and that to feign sleep was no very difficult matter. “Boards,” I told myself, “don’t creak under the weight of wraiths.”
The thing had advanced, as nearly as I could judge in the darkness, to about the centre of the room.
It was still only a shadow, and it still advanced with infinite slowness and without apparent effort.
I had become extraordinarily cool. That creak of a board had proved part of my theory to be correct, and though I was perhaps in some danger I was only in physical danger, and that was a comparatively small matter: bad enough, no doubt, but nothing in the light of my recent experiences in the supernatural world.
I let the figure approach a step or two nearer.
“Don’t move!” I shouted suddenly, quickly. “Or I’ll blow your brains out!”
At the same instant I switched on the light at the head of my bed, and jumped out, getting between the intruder and the doors.
“Mr. Ashton?” I said. “I thought it might be you.”
And Mr. Ashton, in a dark suit and with the collar of his jacket folded over so as to hide the whiteness of his shirt, was too greatly surprised to make any comment. He just stood there, where my rather melodramatic words had arrested him.
But though he was startled he showed no sign of fear. He did not cower. Even at that moment, when he was caught in a situation the implications of which would make most of us take alarm, he showed the same cool self-confidence that had always marked his demeanour. There was nothing overbearing in his manner, but just the calm self-possession of a man who knew just where he stood in the world.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked.
His eyes were on my revolver.
“That thing might go off,” he said.
“It might very easily go off,” I answered. “What are you doing in here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Perhaps I should. Shall we try?”
“No,” he said, very deliberately; “we shan’t. But you said you thought it might be I. What made you think that?”
It was characteristic of his natural forcefulness — that quality that he had tried unsuccessfully to hide while he was playing the part of secretary — it was characteristic of that that he should now become the questioner and I the questioned.
I ought to have refused to answer. But I was answering him before I knew what I was about. I had caught him in a suspicious position, and I had a revolver. These two points in my favour ought to have made me capable of doing anything I liked to do with him. But I could not do what I liked with him: his stronger personality made me, even at this moment, treat him with respect.
“You were the only other person in the flat besides myself,” I said.
“Come, come!” he replied. “That’s not true. You had other reasons. How do you account for the revolver all ready in your hand? Were you expecting me?”
I blushed. I, with a revolver in my hand, facing an unlawful intruder, blushed because of his quietly stated “That’s not true.”
“Yes,” I said. “I was expecting you — you or Professor Wetherhouse.”
“And why should you expect one of us?” he asked.
I was undecided whether to tell him or not. That I had expected him was not exactly the truth. I had merely suspected that these night alarms were due to physical causes: I had been prepared — at what risk I shuddered to think — to find them due to supernatural causes.
Mr. Ashton was not the man to give any information away. I might stand there for the rest of the night trying to trick him into making a disclosure, and the only result would probably be that I would disclose something to him.
Yet I thought I might as well put an end to some of the things that had been troubling me, so I said:
“You were disturbed two nights ago: I was sure you would come back. To encourage you I sent Makepeace out of the way.”
Mr. Ashton, I think, was cursing himself inwardly for his stupidity in not having seen the trick.
“And I suppose,” I went on, “I suppose you are wondering whether I know what you are up to — you and the Professor. I suppose you think I don’t know.”
I didn’t know; but I had already guessed. I had guessed it when I was told by my young manservant that I had gone to the door and ushered the Professor into the study.
“You don’t, Mr. Strange. And you never will know.”
He spoke with a calm, professional assurance.
“You are trying to hypnotize me.”
For an instant his easy manner left him. Immediately afterwards he was smiling, respectfully scorning the idea, assuring me that the suggestion was preposterous. But his smiles and his respectful scorn came just too late. I had seen his start of surprise at the
neatness with which I had hit the mark. Nothing that he might now say could undo that lapse.
“Yes,” I said, interrupting him, “you tried it two nights ago and you didn’t get anywhere. Then the Professor tried it this afternoon and — and very nearly got somewhere. And now to-night — But you shan’t try it again.”
With that I crossed to the fireplace and rang the bell, keeping the button pressed for a considerable time. Then I threw the revolver on to the bed. It had served its purpose. Now that I was aware of their intentions neither this man nor the Professor could harm me.
And that I was aware of their intentions I had no doubt whatsoever. Mr. Ashton had not said a word in answer to my last assertions.
While waiting for someone to respond to my summons I took a turn or two about the room.
Mr. Ashton did the same.
He said nothing, though I have no doubt that he was in a perfect maze of bewilderment over my attitude. He must have been furiously asking himself how it was that I could take it all so calmly and why it was that I hadn’t asked him to tell me the reason for the attempts at hypnotizing me.
But I didn’t ask him, for I already knew. It was the Professor’s method of causing the wedding to be postponed. He had put Mr. Ashton into my household with the primary object of inquiring into the supernatural matters connected with my family — of the existence of which he had somehow been made aware. They had not yet discovered anything, apparently (I was certain that they never would); but they had been trying to use their position to influence me, by hypnotizing me, so that I might have the marriage put off for a time.
I had guessed all this, and to-night’s discovery had convinced me that my guess was not far from the truth.
There came a knock at the door, and it was opened by the young man whom Makepeace had apparently appointed his grand deputy.
“Help Mr. Ashton to pack,” I said. “While you are doing it I’ll telephone for a taxi.”