“I’ve tried every way possible to trap whatever it is that’s scaring my niggers white, but so far I haven’t got a bite. I’ve got a standing offer of a thousand dollars to any one who can prove the ghost is some malicious human playing a practical joke on me, too; but no one’s made good on the offer to date.” He bit savagely at the end of a cigar, set it aglow with an electric lighter attached to the cabin dashboard, and spun his steering wheel over sharply. “Here we are,” he announced, warping the boat into her slip with the skill of a practical yachtsman, then clambering out to the cement landing and giving the painter a half turn about an iron stanchion. “Welcome to spooky hollow! Watch your step getting up that ladder, there’s half an inch of ice on the rungs.”
* * * *
It was a royal feast which Towneley spread before his Christmas-week guests that night. About forty people from New York, Baltimore and Washington were gathered at the old country seat at the invitation of the financier and his twin daughters, and nothing had been left undone to make the guests’ visit an outstanding experience. Canvasback ducks, killed in the Potomac marshes a week before, and “gamed” to perfection, stewed green celery tops, quince jelly after the recipe of a seventy-year-old colored cook, spoon bread as golden as new coin from the mint and port as mellow as summer moonlight combined to make dinner a Lucullian banquet, and ten o’clock had struck on the tall mahogany clock in the hall and echoed by the library banjo clock and the ormolu timepiece on the drawing room mantel before the long Madeira cloth was cleared of gold plate and Wedgwood.
“Now, as a little surprise,” the host announced, gazing benevolently about the company, “I propose giving you something you don’t often find these days. Procter—” he turned to the solemn-faced Englishman who presided over the household domestics, and tendered him a bunch of keys—“two bottles of the Napoleon brandy.”
A hum of respectful, expectant voices went round the table as the butler stalked majestically from the room. Napoleon brandy is a comparative luxury in Europe. In prohibitionized America it is rarer than roast pork at a Jewish wedding breakfast.
“Mr. Towneley, sir, if you please—” Procter returned to the dining room, his florid face slightly paler than its wont, his long, smooth-shaven upper lip trembling visibly, and no bottles in his hands—“may I speak with you a moment in private, sir?”
“What’s the matter?”
“If you please, sir, I’d rather not enter the smoke house. I thought I saw—”
“Oh, good Lord! You, too? Take a couple of the stable boys—take half a dozen, if two aren’t enough—and go get that brandy!”
“Yes, sir.” The servant bowed with frigid respect and departed.
“I hope the superstitious fools don’t get scared at their own shadows and drop one of those bottles,” the host remarked as he cast a worried glance toward the door through which the butler had vanished. “If anything more were required to make me go mad—”
“Mr. Towneley!” The butler was once more in the dining room, his face positively gray with fright.
“Well, what’s the matter now?”
“Oh, sir,” the servant interrupted, his thick, throaty voice gone high with terror, “it’s Thomas, sir; Thomas, the ’ostler. ’E’s dead, sir!” Excitement had played havoc with Procter’s aspirates, and his h’s dropped like autumn leaves in Vallombrosa.
“Dead?” repeated Towneley. “Yes, sir. You see, sir, I asked ’im and James and Thaddeus to accompany me to the smoke ’ouse, as you said, sir, and they went, though most reluctantly. When we got there, and I hopened the door, sir, somethink hinside laughed right in our faces, most ’ornble, ‘ha-ha-ha!’ just like that, sir. I thought it might be some of the servants making game of us, if I may use the hexpression, sir, and was about to hadmonish ’im, sir, when Thomas—who always was a vexatious little fighter, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so—rushes into the ’ouse, sir, and the next thing we knows we ’eard ’im scream and choke, and when I played the light from my flash hinto the ’ouse, there ’e lay, all sprawled hout, as you might say, with a broken bottle on the floor beside ’im, and a great ’ole in ’is throat, sir!”
“And—”
“Yes, sir. Quite dead. The hother boys are bringing ’is body back now, sir. I ran along to tell you—”
“I’ll bet you did,” his master cut in. “Very well, that’ll do, Procter.
“By Heaven, this is too much!” he stormed as the servant withdrew. “This foolishness has gone too far. It was bad enough when this ‘ghost’ hung around scaring my servants into fits; but murder is no joke and murder’s been done here tonight. I suppose I’ll have to communicate with the county authorities, and I’ll have to ask you to remain here overnight, at least. You’re at liberty to leave, if you wish, as soon as the inquest has been held. Meantime, I’m going to increase my offer to anyone who captures this supposed ghost to twenty-five hundred dollars, spot cash. Maybe that’ll get some action.”
“I’ll take you on, sir,” Rodney Phillips, a young Baltimore lawyer, who had pretensions to the hand of one of the Towneley twins, remarked in a voice rendered somewhat unsteady by excitement and too much port. “I’ll get your ghost for you and make a clean job of it, too.”
“I’ll go with you, Rod,” announced Waterford Richie, rising and extending his hand, but the volunteer ghost-breaker waved the offer aside.
“This is my personally conducted spook hunt, old son,” he replied. “I’ll get Mr. Towneley’s ghost single-handed, or perish mis’rably in the attempt.”
Details of the ghost hunt were quickly arranged. With a pair of double blankets, two serviceable revolvers and a thermos bottle of hot coffee, young Phillips was accompanied to the smoke house by the rest of the company. At his request the single door and window of the building were sealed with gummed paper to testify to the continuity of his vigil when the other members of the party should come for him the following morning.
“I’ll be here, ready and waiting,” he boasted as the door closed behind him, “and if any of you chaps think you can get my goat with some monkey tricks, you’d better put on your bullet-proof vests before you start, for I’m going to shoot the first thing that tries to cross that doorsill between now and six o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Hum, the more I think of it, the less I’m inclined to believe there’s been a murder, after all,” declared Mr. Towneley as the company turned toward the house. “What probably happened was an accident. Poor Thomas ran into the dark house and stumbled over something, and that broken bottle was standing on the floor and gashed his throat. It’s a ghastly business, I’ll admit, but I’m beginning to think we sha’n’t need the county officers, after all.”
It was Gladys Towneley who put the consensus of opinion into bald words: “Well,” she announced, “I’m terribly sorry for poor Thomas, and all that sort of thing, but we can’t bring him back by being gloomy. I’m going to dance. Who’s with me?”
Apparently they all were, for the radio was soon relaying the latest jazz from New York, and the faint whisper of thin-soled shoes slipping over the drawing room’s polished floor mingled with the crooning of the saxophone and the titillation of mandolins two hundred miles away.
About half-past eleven Professor Forrester excused himself from the group of older men gathered in the library and turned toward the stairs. “Not dancing, dear?” he asked as he espied Rosalie sitting in the hallway, a thoughtful look on her face.
“No, Uncle Harvey,” she replied, “it is an evil thing to dance in the house of death, and brings no good to those who do it. Moreover, I have a feeling that more misfortune is to follow.”
The Professor smiled understandingly. Born in the Philippines, reared and tutored in the household of a ringleader of Singapore’s criminal population, the girl had been less than two years in American society, and her mental attitude was still fundamentally that of the Oriental. Also, while she spoke English proficiently, there were times when she expressed herself aft
er the manner of the East, and when she became greatly excited she was wont to lapse into Hindustani or one of the Malay dialects which had been the tongues of her childhood and youth.
“I agree with you, my dear,” he nodded. “As Gladys said, our being gloomy won’t revive the poor fellow, but it does seem heartless to indulge in a dance while—”
“Wallah,” the girl burst out, “while his soul still hovers over us? Thou hast said.” She recovered herself with a flush of confusion, and added in conversational English:
“Are you going up? I’ll go, too, if you don’t mind, for I want to rise early tomorrow.”
“Something special to do in the morning?”
“Yes, I’m afraid—I think so,” she returned. “Will you rap on my door early in the morning? I want to go down to the smoke house before the others and see that all is well.”
“You don’t think young Phillips will stick it out?”
“I’m afraid he’ll try to, and—”
“Why, you don’t actually believe there’s anything supernatural in this business, do you?” he demanded. His ward’s affirmed belief in djinn, ghosts and devils was a never-failing source of amusement to him.
The girl turned big, serious eyes up to him.
“This is an old, old house, Uncle Harvey,” she replied, “and old houses often grow evil spirits, even as they grow poisonous mosses. Who knows what wicked thing may seek to do him harm this night?”
“H’m, well,” the Professor returned, “the young man appears quite able to look after himself.”
“But you will call me—early?” she persisted.
“Of course, if you wish it. Goodnight, dear,” he responded, bending to kiss the lips she turned up to him as naively as a child.
II
A shrieking blast of north wind, driving a rout of scurrying snowflakes before it, hallooed through the open window of the Professor’s room, shaking the chintz curtains furiously and raising the blankets and coverlet of the bed. The Professor drew the disturbed bedclothes tighter about his chin, then, realizing that a faint gray light showed at the window’s square, reached beneath his pillow, fished out his watch and inspected it. “Half-past six,” he muttered gloomily. “I suppose I might as well go for Rosalie; she seemed set on making an early inspection of that confounded smoke house.” Reluctantly, he disengaged himself from the bed, dashed across the chamber and slammed down the window, then started the water running in the bath room.
Already dressed in sweater, knickers, knitted barret and brushed wool muffler, Rosalie was awaiting his tap on her door half an hour later.
A heavy fall of wind-driven snow greeted them as they let themselves out the back door of the silent house and floundered across the rear yard toward the small brick building where Rodney Phillips watched for ghostly visitants.
“I don’t quite see the urgency of this call,” the Professor grumbled as he bent his head against the howling December blast, “and I’m not so sure Phillips will thank us for our interest. He’s probably just settling down for his second nap—”
“Uncle Harvey!” the girl’s exclamation cut his observations in two, “Look!” Her mittened hand pointed dramatically to the door before them.
Professor Forrester obeyed her imperative gesture and a grin spread over his cold-stiffened features. “Umpf,” he remarked with a chuckle, “he lost his taste for it, eh?” The seals of gummed paper with which the door had been fixed were broken from their places and the door itself swung open some five or six inches.
Taking one of her guardian’s hands in hers, the girl crept across the intervening stretch of snow, her head thrust forward, her big, amber eyes wide with apprehension.
“No use going in,” the Professor decided as they neared the threshold. “Phillips has probably been gone since midnight. He must have found it too cold for comfort in there and decided—ha?”
The sharp exclamation ended his speculations as he stepped over the low doorsill and accustomed his eyes to the dull light inside the little building. Three feet before them something half leaned, half knelt in the gloom, its outlines proclaiming it a man, but its attitude terrifyingly inhuman.
It was, or rather had been, Rodney Phillips—Rodney Phillips, fully clothed, even to his hat and gloves. Rodney Phillips, leaning obliquely forward with half bent knees and dangling hands, his head oddly twisted sidewise and his mouth partly opened to permit half an inch of livid, empurpled tongue to protrude between his lips. A three-foot strand of knotted rope was about his neck and made fast to a hook halfway up the smoke house wall.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed the Professor. Shrinking from the contact, yet impelled to act, no matter how his instincts rebelled, he put out a hand and felt the young man’s cheeks. They were cold as the surrounding atmosphere, and stiff with the chill of the December snowstorm.
“Poor chap,” he murmured, attempting ineffectually to undo the knot about the dead boy’s throat, finally taking out his pocket knife and severing the strand. “Whatever could have possessed him to do it?”
Rosalie looked steadily at the contorted body which her guardian eased to the brick floor. “Made him do what, Uncle Harvey?” she asked, removing her woolen mittens and bending to loosen the thick hempen loop from the young man’s neck.
“Why, kill himself,” the Professor responded, looking at her in amazement. “You can see it was suicide, and a mighty determined one, at that. The rope wasn’t long enough to lift his feet from the floor, and the poor boy actually had to lean forward—almost kneel—in order to get sufficient downward drag to strangle himself. H’m, I’ve heard of such cases, but I never thought I’d see one. When they set their minds to it, there’s nothing that will stop them. He could have saved himself easily, simply by straightening his knees, but he persisted until unconsciousness came; then, of course, it was too late.”
“Uncle Harvey,” Rosalie spoke slowly, choosing her words with deliberate care, for when she was excited her English was apt to become unintelligible, “I do not think this poor young man slew himself. The marks do not match.” She placed one slender, perfectly-manicured forefinger on the livid indentation showing on the dead man’s throat. “This rope, my master—” she threw aside the attempt at English and lapsed unconsciously into Hindustani—“it is a thick one, worthy to tether a cow or make a boat fast to its dock, while the scar on the poor one’s throat is much narrower—and double.”
“Why—” Professor Forrester knelt beside the body and struck a match to aid his inspection—“why, by George, you’re right, my dear! You can see the depression left by the rope he was hanged with here—” he laid a finger on the cold, white flesh—“and here, underneath the wide rope mark, is a well-defined spiral encircling the neck. Much deeper than the wider indentation, too. H’m, I wonder what the deuce that means?”
Rosalie’s long, almond shaped eyes were almost round with excitement, her breath came hissingly between parted lips and her slender bosom rose and fell with suddenly increased respiration. “My lord,” she whispered, glancing fearfully about, as though to make sure no eavesdropper lurked near, “my lord, it is the mark of the roomal!”
“The—what?”
“The roomal of Bhowanee the Black—the thags’ strangling-cord! I have seen its mark a score of times while I dwelt in the house of Chandre Roi, the accursed, my lord. See, ’twas a slim, strong cord, and nothing else, which killed the young Phillips sahib. From behind him—see where the cord crosses lightly at the front and heavily at the back?—the murderer tossed his roomal, and drew it tight, shutting off breath and cries for help at the same time. It is not long that a man can live without air, my lord. One minute will render him senseless, two more will kill him, even if the killer does not jerk his head forward and break his neck. Believe me, master, I know, for I have seen!”
Forrester bent down and examined the man’s bruised neck again under the flare of another match. As the girl had said, there was a well-defined double circular mark about the
throat, the lines running in a spiral form and crossing each other at the front slightly above the Adam’s apple, while at the base of the skull the horizontal X-shaped bruise was more pronounced. These circles were less than a half-inch in width, and of slightly purple shade, while running around, and almost obscuring them, was a line of white bruise, considerably wider, and with a marked depression, the indentation slightly deeper at the left side and rising gradually toward the base of the right ear, where the crude slip-knot of the noose had been tied.
“H’m, my dear, you’re right about these narrower bruises being made first,” the Professor conceded at the conclusion of his examination. “They have the familiar black-and-blue tint of a pressure applied to living flesh while the wider rope’s mark is dead-white, an almost certain sign of pressure applied after circulation of blood has ceased. But who would use a roomal here? We’re six thousand miles or so from India, and thaggee is a rather rare commodity in southern Maryland.”
“Even so, my lord,” the girl persisted, “the murderer has written his signature large for those to read who can.”
“Umpf,” the Professor murmured thoughtfully, “one thing is fairly certain; Rodney Phillips didn’t kill himself. It remains for us to find out who killed him, and why.”
“Thou hast said, my master,” his ward agreed, nodding solemnly. “Once more shall the secret deeds of the evil-doers be made manifest by the wisdom of Forrester sahib.”
The Horror Megapack Page 30