Nightmare Farm E-Book

Jack Mann

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

A TALL, pleasantly ugly, youngish sort of man, with very large hands and feet, stood gazing out from an upper window into Little Oakfield Street, which is in the southwestern district of London and lies off the Haymarket, in mid-afternoon of a chilly day in May. Beneath him, and on the opposite side of the street, was an outfitter’s shop, and, eyeing the display in the shop window as well as he could at this height and distance, he meditated over buying ties. There was nothing else to do, it appeared, so why not go out and buy ties?

Leseprobe

NIGHTMARE FARM

Jack Mann

1937

© 2021 Librorium Editions

ISBN :       9782383830658

Contents

1: The Tale Of Angus Hunter

2: At The Hunters’ Arms

3: Phil Bird

4: May Norris

5: Nightmare Farm

6: Perivale

7: Isabella

8: Expulsion

9: Dismissed

10: Not Illegal

11: Celia, One Other, And May

12: Madame Stephanie

13: Recall

14: Unlawful Entry

15: The Dweller On The Threshold

16: Merely Homeless

17: Where? Norris, Utterly Flabbergasted.

18: Retribution

19: Hunter’s Apology

1: The Tale Of Angus Hunter

A TALL, pleasantly ugly, youngish sort of man, with very large hands and feet, stood gazing out from an upper window into Little Oakfield Street, which is in the southwestern district of London and lies off the Haymarket, in mid-afternoon of a chilly day in May. Beneath him, and on the opposite side of the street, was an outfitter’s shop, and, eyeing the display in the shop window as well as he could at this height and distance, he meditated over buying ties. There was nothing else to do, it appeared, so why not go out and buy ties?

He faced about, still considering the idea, and looked at his well-appointed desk in the middle of the room, with its swivelling chair for himself, and comfortable leather-upholstered armchair for clients— but it appeared that there were no clients. Therefore, ties!

Lots of ties. Striped ties, speckled ties, plain-coloured ties— any old ties! He had reached that point in his meditations when a tallish, graceful girl entered, approached him, and silently handed him a card. Gazing at it, he postponed the expedition in quest of ties.

“Angus d’Arcy Hunter,” he read out. “Does he look it, Miss Brandon?”

His secretary, used to his ways, neither smiled nor frowned. She merely looked at him with that superior air which, for over a year, now, had impressed on him that familiarities would not be tolerated.

“Oldish, stout, and red-faced,” she said.

“High blood-pressure,” he diagnosed. “All right, I’ll see him.”

She left the door open as she went out, and presently returned.

“Mr. Hunter, Mr. Green,” she announced and also introduced. The visitor proved decidedly stout, bay-windowed, in fact. He had scant grey hair, grizzled eyebrows, deeply-set and widely-spaced grey eyes, a purplish nose, and a firm, rather thin-lipped mouth. The younger man sized him up as good-tempered in a general way, but choleric, and, on sight, liked him. He stood at gaze, two paces inside the room, as Miss Brandon closed the door on him.

“Won’t you sit down?” the younger man inquired politely, indicating the comfortable armchair intended for clients— such as this.

“Young man”— Hunter spoke clearly and incisively— “can you lay ghosts?” And he made no move to accept the invitation.

“Well”— Green spoke in a thoughtful way, as if doubtful of committing himself— “so far, I’ve only laid two. Both at once, though.”

“How?” This second question was even more incisive.

“Shot ’em, and then burnt ’em,” Green replied. “To make sure, you know. But do sit down, won’t you, Mr. Hunter?”

Hunter advanced toward the indicated chair, lowered himself into it, and shook his head gravely as the other took the swivel chair at the desk. “No good, I’m afraid,” he said. “Not for mine, I mean.”

“My secretary brought in your card,” Green observed, rather abstractedly, “but there was no address on it.”

“No. Well, that can wait. Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Which way did you come here?” Green inquired in reply.

“Which way? Why, Piccadilly Circus and the Haymarket, of course.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Hunter! Not of course. You might have rolled up from Charing Cross. But if you think of all that Piccadilly Circus and the Haymarket are— if you consider this mechanised city, you will realise it as impossible to believe in ghosts, here. In the quiet places of the earth, though, one is forced to admit, sometimes, a belief.”

“The quiet places of the earth,” his visitor echoed thoughtfully.

“I see, Mr. Green, that you are not altogether a fool.”

“If ever we get to know each other, I hope to be able to return your compliment, Mr. Hunter,” Green said. “Meanwhile— ?” He paused, suggestively, and lifted his wrist to look at his watch.

“Yes,” said Hunter, quite unabashed. “But— this Gees. Who is he?”

“I am,” Green said. “I have four names, and it is my solitary initial. Therefore, when I founded this firm, I used that name.”

“And the firm?” Hunter asked.

Gees frowned slightly at this apparently unreasonable inquisitiveness. “Myself, and my secretary,” he (answered. “I had thoughts of an office boy, but decided against it. Too banal. Too conventional.”

“Well, Mr. Green”— Hunter appeared to have made up his mind to get to business at last— “happening to be in town—”

Then he paused, and Green waited, but in vain. “One might almost say it is obvious,” he prompted gently.

“Yes.” Hunter appeared to rouse himself. “In the club to-day, I happened to meet your father, and he recommended me to you.”

“Well, well!” Green observed, with mild surprise. “Getting liberal-minded— and at his age, too! Recommended me as a ghost-layer?”

“As nearly as I can remember, he said you were fond of cock-and-bull tales, and fool enough to undertake anything. Murmured something about mumps to murder, in a tone of extreme disgust.”

“Ah! That will be my slogan. ‘Consult Gees for anything from mumps to murder.’ He doesn’t like it, I know. But— I conclude, from your knowing him, you are one of the Shropshire Hunters?”

“The last one, except for my son,” Hunter admitted, “and he is at present with his battalion in India. I may tell you, Mr. Green, that my object in calling on you is neither mumps nor murder. Er— were you serious when you said you had laid two ghosts?”

“Perfectly serious,” Green answered gravely.

“Then you might undertake to lay another— for a consideration?”

“The consideration would be serious, too,” Green informed him.

“Name your own terms,” Hunter said promptly. “For laying the ghost, I mean— not for merely attempting to lay it.”

“Then”— Green settled himself comfortably in his chair, and put his foot on a button which warned Miss Brandon to take down a conversation— the microphone which would give it her was in front of Hunter, but invisible to him— “if you will particularise, Mr. Hunter, I will decide whether the undertaking would appeal to me.”

There was a momentary gleam of anger in Hunter’s eyes. He had come here to employ a certain man for a certain task, arid give him his orders, but it was not working out like that at all. He controlled himself, though, and proceeded to detail his affair.

“We Shropshire Hunters, Mr. Green— that is, my family, own practically all Denlandham, as probably you know,” he said. “Have you been there, though? Your father knows it, but—”

“I have not been there, nor met any of your family,” Green interposed. “Miss nothing out— tell it as to a stranger.”

“Very well, then,” Hunter assented. “An ancestor of mine received the estate from Henry the Eighth as reward for services when the monasteries were being broken up— I believe it was entirely church lands, till that time. And the family residence was a house called Knightsmere, now known as Knightsmere Farm, and still belonging to the estate.”

“But no longer the home of the Hunters,” Green suggested.

“No. It ceased to be that early in the eighteenth century. Through siding with Charles against the Parliament, the family lost everything. The second Charles gave back the estate— the lands, that is— but forgot the very large sum of money which my ancestor of that day contributed to the royal cause. Knightsmere was half ruined by the Parliamentarian troops, and was restored to no more than a farmhouse, with the rooms all set round one tremendous chimney, when an Angus Hunter took back the estate after the accession of Charles the Second. The family was too poor to make a mansion of it again.”

“I have an idea it is not a poor family now,” Green remarked.

“Since I am the family,” Hunter said, “I may as well own that I do not consider myself poor. Because, toward the end of the seventeenth century, a certain Robert Hunter went adventuring in the East, slave-trading, and what-not. He was a younger son, and went to make his fortune, but returned in middle age to find his brother had died childless so that he was next in succession, with enough of capital to build the present Denlandham House and still leave a respectable fortune in addition to the income from the land. That income has dwindled till the land is more of a responsibility than an asset, in these days.”

“As is the case with our Shropshire estate,” Green put in.

“Yes. Taxation, hen-roost-robbing by the Criccieth charlatan, and— but if I begin on that, I shall never put my case before you. The ghost, Mr. Green, begins with Robert Hunter, the adventurer.”

“Oh! Not before his time?” Green inquired in surprise.

“No. No shadowy monk, and not the knight who was murdered by being drowned in the mere— which gives the old house its name. It never appeared, as far as family records and traditions go, until Robert came back from the East and built our present home.”

“It sounds slightly interesting,” Green remarked thoughtfully.

“Are you being sceptical?” There was a hint of anger in the query.

“No,” Green answered. “An open mind is as good as a banking account, though one may make an overdraft on either. Proceed, Mr. Hunter. The ghost came in with your ancestor Robert— and still walks?”

“Never has walked,” Hunter demurred. “It whirls and gurgles— I call it gurgling, and it’s like the noise of liquid being poured from a bottle, nearly, a sort of clucking, gurgling noise. And it only appears intermittently. It seems to have been quiet after Robert’s death till his grandson had inherited, missing out a generation entirely.”

“What sort of man was the grandson?” Green interrupted.

“Rather— well, not an attractive character,” Hunter confessed.

“In fact, a murder was traced to him, but after his death.”

“Ye— es.” He sounded thoughtful over it. “And after his death it went quiet again— refrained from appearing, that is?”

“Exactly.” Hunter sounded pleased as he confirmed the surmise.

“I gather you know something about this type of ghost, Mr. Green?”

“No. I have not— well, collected ghosts, as one might say. I’ve never collected them enough to range them in types, I mean. Then— the next appearance, if there were one prior to your own annoyance over it.”

“Did I say I was annoyed?” Hunter spoke rather testily. “Never mind, though, because I am, and worse. The next appearance was in my grandfather’s days— my father was at Cambridge at the time. There is some doubt as to whether it were an actual appearance, or a hoax played for his own ends by a man named Utter— Henry Utter. He was the son of one of the estate tenants, and grew up as a ne’er-do-well, eventually drifting to crime and going to serve a two-year sentence for a particularly despicable type of offence. The ghost is said to have reappeared for the period between his coming out of gaol, and his death.”

“A fairly long period, then?” Green asked.

“No. Oh, no! Henry Utter broke into Denlandham House one night and gathered up the family silver and some other trifles. A branch of ivy gave way as he was climbing down from an upper window— the one he had used for entry— and he fell. There was a gold-hafted poniard, one of the curios our adventurer Robert brought back, among the loot, and Henry was so unfortunate as to fall on the point of it. That was eighteen months after his release from prison, and the ghost was seen during that time, but not after. So it was generally thought that he resurrected the old story by playing ghost, though I don’t see what he gained by it, if he did that. And the description of the thing tallies with the old stories, and with what I know.”

“Appeared with Robert, vanished at Robert’s death,” Green summarised reflectively. “Again appeared with an ancestor who was a murderer, and vanished at his death. Appeared again with Henry Utter, and vanished at his death. Only those three appearances, Mr. Hunter?”

“Only those three periods of appearance, as far as I know,”

Hunter answered. “That is, until this present outbreak.”

“Which began when?” Green asked.

“Last November. There is neither rhyme nor reason in it, as far as I can see. The thing seems to haunt Knightsmere Farm and the roadway leading to it— that has always been its location, according to the records of it. It delights in frightening women.”

“As how?” Green appeared to take all this as matter of course.

“Merely by appearing to them,” Hunter answered, rather nervously. “I, of course, give out that I don’t believe in the supernaturalness of it, but when I tell you that the only time I saw it myself, I emptied two twelve-bore cartridges of number five shot into it, and saw it caper away utterly unharmed, you will realise that I am forced to believe there is something uncanny about it.”

“Or a shot-proof suit,” Green suggested. “But supposing you had killed someone quite human, how would you have accounted for your act?”

“I don’t know,” Hunter confessed frankly, “but after Norris’s daughter— Norris was my tenant at Knightsmere Farm— after the girl had been taken to a mental home through encountering the ghost, I gave out that I intended to shoot the masquerader on sight, and he must take the risk if he persisted in his horrible impersonation.”

“I see. And was it dusk, or full dark, when you shot this ghost?”

“How do you know it wasn’t daylight?” Hunter demanded.

“I don’t,” Green answered. “What was it, anyhow?”

“The last of the dusk. I’d been to Knightsmere to inquire about the girl, and was coming back along the roadway— that is, the private lane between the farmhouse and the road, and I had a double-barrelled twelve-bore hammerless loaded in the crook of my arm— I’d been potting rabbits, which are a nuisance on that farm. The roadway is enclosed between two enormous hawthorn hedges, each well over twenty-five feet high and quite impenetrable for all their length, so it was practically dark between them— and it’s about half a mile from the house to the gate leading into the road. Half way between the house and the road I first heard this thing and then saw it. I called to it, ‘What are you doing here?’ or something of that sort— I don’t remember clearly what I said, because, I’ve got to confess, I was in a more awful state of fear than I’d thought possible to myself. It didn’t answer, and I managed to get the gun to my shoulder and loose off both barrels. And— and it just went twirling and gurgling in among the hawthorns on one side of the roadway, and disappeared, with no trace of how it had got away.”

“Climbed through the hedge,” Green conjectured.

“Haven’t I told you that’s impossible?” Hunter exclaimed angrily, “A child of five couldn’t squeeze through between those hawthorn stems, and certainly nobody could climb through. Both hedges are utterly impenetrable to anything bigger than a small terrier. They’re the pride of Knightsmere, and haven’t been more than slashed back to shape— the outer branches trimmed back— for over half a century. No. The thing vanished as a ghost vanishes, not humanly at all.”

“And at what distance were you when you shot at it?” Green asked.

“Anything between twelve and twenty yards— not more than twenty.”

“Being what sort of shot?” The question came after a long pause.

“I don’t miss, with a twelve-bore only left-choked, at that distance,” Hunter answered. “And if you’ve got another question in mind, I’ve been a teetotaller for over twenty years, by medical orders.”

“Yes.” He thought over it. “And this girl— in the mental home?”

“May Norris. Yes. Will recover, they say, in time. Mind deranged by shock. I offered anything Norris chose to ask, but he refused everything and left the farm at the April quarter. I put a bailiff in to manage, since I took over the growing crops at a valuation when Norris left, and now he— the bailiff— is quitting my employ altogether at the end of this month. Would have left sooner, if I hadn’t almost begged him to stay till I could get another man to replace him.”

“Is he married, this bailiff?” Green asked.

“Yes, and says he’s leaving on account of his wife— at her wish.”

“Ah! Have you seen this wife lately?”

“Not since they went to Knightsmere. Why? Do you think— ?”

“A lot,” Green said in the pause. “Now tell me, Mr. Hunter, are you overstocked with bad characters round about Denlandham just now?”

“Overstocked— bad characters?” Hunter echoed in a puzzled way. “Why— what on earth has that got to do with it, even if we are?”

“Possibly nothing,” Green admitted— but he shifted his ground of questioning at once. “What’s this poltergeist of yours like, Mr. Hunter, since you’ve actually seen it yourself and—”

“Poltergeist be damned!” Hunter interjected angrily. “They’re things that throw plates and crockery about, mischief and no more— not one atom impressive, by all I’ve read and heard. And this is impressive! I know that from my one encounter with it.”

“But not impressionable,” Green observed. “At least, it doesn’t react to two charges of number five shot in the way one might expect. Could you give me any description of it, though?”

“Does that mean you’re going to lay it?” Hunter asked.

“You haven’t told me enough about it, yet,” Green countered.

“Well, it’s”— he hesitated— “it’s tall. Taller than I am. Taller than you are, I’d say. Mind, it was practically dark when I shot at it, but light enough for me to align the gun on it, though I couldn’t see the bead of the foresight. And it seemed to be wearing— well, a thin sort of fur, I suppose it was. Something that looked all fuzzy, and made it look broad as well as tall. But whatever that was, it was thin stuff— almost semi-transparent by daylight, I should say. Features I couldn’t see— if it had any. And it didn’t keep still.”

“Do you mind explaining that?” Green asked.

“Well, I got the impression that it was twirling and twisting all the time,” Hunter said. “Rather like— like one of those miniature whirlwinds that gather up dust and leaves in harvest time, twirling round and round as if it were on a pivot instead of feet— till I shot at it. Then it appeared to run, tremendously fast, till I lost sight of it.”

“No blood, nor any trace of the results of your shots?”

“Nothing whatever. That roadway was muddy, but there was no footprint, apart from my own. I struck matches, and came back the next morning as well, to look, but there was no trace of it at all.”

“Has it done anything?” Green asked abruptly, after a pause.

“Done anything— what do you mean?” Hunter snapped.

“Exactly what I say. Can you trace any activities to it?”

“If you don’t call frightening a girl into a mental home, and driving one man after another out of living at a farmhouse, doing anything, I don’t know what is,” Hunter snapped still more sharply.

“The girl may have had delusions, her father may have believed her story and left on account of it, and your bailiff may be a superstitious type that gets frightened of living in an old house,” Green said.

“And I— in such terror of the sight of it as I had never believed possible of myself— what am I?” Hunter demanded. “A rank coward?”

“No-o-o,” Green conceded, rather dubiously. “It seems that there may be something in it. And you say you are willing to pay for results over laying it. Well, money is generally truthful, even if—”

“If you mean that you are prepared to put an end to this— this haunting, call it— name your own terms. Payable for success, mind. I pay nothing at all if you fail, not even your expenses.”

“Very well,” Green said calmly. “Two hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Agreed!” The word was uttered eagerly, without a second’s delay.

“Very good, Mr. Hunter.” Green stood up as he spoke. “Put that in writing and send the letter to me here— no conditions or stipulations, only that when you are satisfied that this ghost is laid, you will pay me the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds. I think that is all.”

“Yes, I’ll send you the letter. And when shall I see you at Denlandham, ready to begin on it?”

“I said, no conditions or stipulations, Mr. Hunter,” Green reminded him quietly. “Send the letter, and leave the rest to me.”

For some few seconds Hunter looked as if he would not merely repudiate the bargain, but speak a piece of his mind as well. Then, meeting Green’s steady, tranquil gaze, he thought better of it.

“Very well, I will send the letter,” he said. “It commits me to nothing, until you can report success. Good afternoon, Mr. Green.”

“Good afternoon, sir. My secretary will see you out.”

Hunter, quite unaware that Miss Brandon had heard that last remark through the microphone, was not a little surprised to see her open the door and stand ready to escort him to the exit from the office— and from Green’s residence as well, since all but the two rooms which he and his secretary used as offices were living quarters. He left, and Green lighted a cigarette and then went from his own room to Miss Brandon’s, to see her stand gazing down at the pothooks in her notebook.

“I think we’d better have a transcript, Miss Brandon,” he remarked.

“Then I will get on with it,” she answered, and seated herself at her desk in readiness to begin.

“No hurry— we’ve got to wait for his letter,” he said, and leaned against the doorpost to exhale smoke. “What did you think of him?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she answered emphatically.

“No? It’s a wide term, though— takes in quite a lot of things. His is a wealthy family, I happen to know— my father is vaguely acquainted with him, as he let me know, and two hundred and fifty pounds to him is equal to the same number of shillings to me, which is why I fixed that figure. And he’ll pay it, too,” he ended with conviction.

“For what?” she asked, gazing straight at him.

“Laying the ghost,” he answered tranquilly, and blew more smoke.

“You talk about it— and he talked about it too— as if he were asking you to go and shoot rabbits,” she declared with some impatience.

“Well, I might do that,” he admitted, “since he says they’re a nuisance in his part of the country. But how should we have talked?”

“The supernatural— or whatever you choose to call it— one hardly considers it— well— I mean— in that everyday sort of fashion.”

“And why not?” He smiled slightly as he put the question.

“Well, I should think—” She hesitated. “And are you, as he puts it, going to lay this ghost— going there to do it?”

“I certainly am,” he answered decidedly.

“There is no such thing,” she declared with equal decision.

“Then I am going to persuade him I have laid it.”

“And take the money for doing it?”

“Inevitably,” he said coolly. “You don’t think I’d waste the time it will take, all for nothing, do you, Miss Brandon?”

“It wouldn’t be you if you did,” she answered with conviction.

“No. Meanwhile you haven’t answered my question— what you think of him. You deliberately hedged away from it to state a disbelief in the existence of ghosts, without defining what you mean by ghosts.”

“I mean—” she began, but he held up a protesting hand.

“No, no, Miss Brandon. I rely at times very largely on your— your feminine intuition, call it. What did you think of him?”

“On the strength of this, you mean?” She pointed down at her notes of the conversation that she had taken down.

“On that, since it’s more than what you saw of him,” he assented.

“Well, I don’t believe in ghosts,” she repeated.

“In other words, Angus d’Arcy Hunter is a liar. Feminine intuition wins once more. I began by being prepared to like him, but when he passed out that my father had recommended him to come to me— well!”

“But if there isn’t any ghost, why?” she began, and broke off.

“Oh, that part of it is sound enough,” he assured her. “He believes in his twirling gurgler, whatever it is. But my father has gone all wild over my revival of that mumps to murder slogan in the personal columns of his favourite dailies, and he wouldn’t recommend a goat to come to me to be groomed. Moreover, I know he’d studiously ignore Angus— there’s been a coolness between the two families ever since a Green went off with a Mrs. Hunter and didn’t come back. And because Hunter knew that I’m the son of General Green, owner of the Shropshire property, he pitched me that tale to get me there, hoping I wouldn’t contact my father and get put off going to Denlandham for him.”

“But, if so, how did he know of you?” she asked.

“Through that Cumberland business, of course, when I put an end to the grey shapes. Somebody told him all there is known of that story, but I think he got it that the business was done by Gees, not me, which is why he asked after Gees— whoever told him knew that name for me.”

“But why— why not be straight about it?” she demanded. “Why should he lie about General Green, or— or be roundabout over it?”

“You’ll find, Miss Brandon,” he said, “that it suits some natures to be roundabout. They’ll go to no end of trouble, and even make trouble for themselves, rather than take a straight course. Hunter knew that a Shropshire Green would have no great liking for any one of his family, he wanted Gees to come and lay his ghost, and he found himself faced by a Shropshire Green for a beginning, and then found that particular Green was the Gees he was after. He hoped to get straight to Gees, missing out Green, and told that little tale when he found they were one and the same. But”— he straightened himself with a start— “by the holy pancake, I forgot all about the two guineas for initial consultation!”

“I didn’t.” She took up her note-book, and revealed two pound notes and a two shilling piece which it had concealed.

“Miss Brandon, you’re a pearl of exceeding price,” he told her feelingly. “If that letter arrives to-morrow morning, I’ll start for Denlandham after lunch, and meanwhile I want to consult some authorities on twirling gurglers, so you can mind the office.”

“You don’t mean you believe in it, Mr. Green?” she asked.

“An open mind,” he answered, “is as valuable as an account with a bookmaker, and I keep both. That two guineas will help to pay the bookmaker’s account for last week— if I hand you the account, you can make out the cheque for me to sign, Miss Brandon. Thanks so much.”

2: At The Hunters’ Arms

THE ROLLS-BENTLEY, smoke grey with black wings, drew up outside the town house of General Sir George Green, K.G.V.O., D.S.O., and the general’s son got out and, with one glance of pardonable pride in ownership at the quiet aristocrat of sports cars— he had bought it out of the somewhat illicit proceeds of his first case as Gees— rang the bell and got himself admitted to the house. In the library, his father gazed at him in a way that indicated a possible storm.

“Well, what do you want?” the general snapped out.

“Oh, lots, father,” the son answered, “but I didn’t come here looking for any of it. Just a simple inquiry, if you don’t mind.”

“Which is the business of confidential agencies, as you call that preposterous pretence at occupation of yours,” the general observed.

“But it hasn’t been altogether preposterous,” Gees— as his intimate acquaintances usually called him— protested gently. “Even you yourself handed me a bouquet over the Kestwell case—”

“I don’t like your slang expressions, Gordon!” the general interrupted. “That one case is all you appear to have done or ever intend to do— except for maintaining a very pretty secretary on premises which include your living accommodation—”

“My secretary, father, could give Caesar’s wife ten yards in the hundred and come out an easy winner,” Gees interrupted in turn.

“It’s not the first time you’ve made that imputation against her, and I’d call any man but you a liar for making it, and hit him if he were not too old. Now do we drop this wrangling while I ask what I came to ask—”

“Quite apart from the girl, you’ve started that infernal advertising again, I see,” the general broke in again. “That ludicrous and perfectly damnable mumps to murder sentence that makes me ashamed to own that you are my son. Consult Gees! Consult the devil!”

“A matter of taste,” Gees said blandly. “Which you consult, I mean. But unless you have any more observations to hurl at me—”

“What do you want here?” the general interrupted yet once more.

“Being on my way to Denlandham—” Gees began, only to meet another interruption, uttered in a tone of wrathful surprise.

“Denlandham? You— going to Denlandham?”

“I believe I said so. To make an investigation—”

“Why— what has Hunter been doing?” the general broke in again.

“I don’t know what anyone has been doing till I’ve got on to my investigation,” his son told him as patiently as ever. “But I wanted to ask you— did you see Hunter in your club, the day before yesterday?”

“I did. What has that got to do with your investigation?”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Speak to him? What do you take me to be, Gordon? Of course I didn’t speak to him! How dare you suggest such a thing?”

“But you were talking to somebody about me,” Gees accused, “and you said whatever it was loudly enough for Hunter to overhear it.”

“I— what?” The general looked like making some outburst, but checked himself. “I— yes, I remember, now. Palliser was inquiring about you, questioning whether you were keeping on with that agency in co-operation with the man named Gees. I didn’t undeceive him, and I said that either you or Gees was fool enough to keep on with anything, or something of that sort. Hunter may have heard me— I don’t care if he did. Your mumps to murder advertisement is enough to make me say anything. I loathe and detest it. Hate it! Resent it!”

“You’re terribly redundant with your verbs, father,” Gees said placidly, “and now you’ve told me what I wanted to know, I’ll not trouble you any longer, but head for Denlandham to make it by nightfall.”

“If Hunter is the culprit and you land him, I’ll forgive you everything except that advertisement, Gordon,” the general promised.

“There appears to be precious little else to forgive, father,” Gees pointed out. “Besides, I’m acting for Hunter, not against him.”

It stands to General Green’s credit that he restrained himself. He merely pointed at the library door and said, “Get out of this house!” in a small voice— but it was like the rustle of a zephyr travelling just ahead of a tornado. And, foreseeing that the tornado was imminent, Gees got out of the house and set his course for Denlandham.

The quiet of the marshes, with old-world Ludlow behind and Shrewsbury ahead, at the end of the serene day. Limpid green over the sunset and opal shades in the lower west. Green meadows, placid streams, and the foliage of the trees at its best, with the scent of hawthorn blossom burdening the air after Gees had turned off from the Shrewsbury road to take the winding, narrower way to Denlandham, placid as the day itself after his late tea in the old, half-timbered Ludlow inn.

It was, he reflected, the first time since childhood that he had felt even reasonably cheerful over coming to Shropshire, for his father had designed that he, Gees, should manage the family estate as soon as he was old enough, and had made him learn all the intricacies of management so thoroughly that he detested the idea as much as the general detested his slogan. But this business on which he was engaged promised to be interesting, and probably profitable as well, so that he was quite prepared to concede to anyone that the scenery through which he drove was lovely, and that Shropshire as a county was worth knowing. Moreover, with the rattle and smoke of London hardly out of his ears and nostrils as yet, and the very last word in mechanical perfection under his control, he was half-inclined to regard Angus Hunter’s twirling gurgler as did Eve Madeleine, whom he called Miss Brandon in speaking to her. Yet, he knew, Hunter had detailed his case quite practically and reasonably, as if he knew rather than believed in its truth.

And now, ruminating, Gees wished he had his father’s knowledge of the Hunter family. Grandfather Green’s brother had annexed Celia Hunter three-quarters of a century before, making the breach between the families which still showed no sign of closing— Hunter’s lying about a talk with the general in the club could not be taken as a sign— and, knowing of the breach, Gees had made no attempt to learn the full history of these Hunters. Angus of that name had confessed to a slave-trader and a murderer in the family, and Gees had a half-memory of a legend to the effect that, when the first of the family to come to notice had dispossessed the monks of Denlandham, he had been guilty of senseless cruelties. There had been a convent, too, and the nuns—

Not nearly so placid as he remembered the old tales, Gees looked about him and felt that the May landscape was not quite as beautiful as it had appeared when he first began this train of reflection. It had already occurred to him that Hunter’s letter, which he carried in his note-case, had no more cash value in the event of his success on this mission than had the paper that contained it, but, bad though the record of the family was, in spots, and from the view-point of a Shropshire Green, Angus would surely not be swine enough to repudiate that obligation. Or would he? The sum was little enough to him, but—

A jab at the brake pedal, for a small boy of four or five darted into the narrow road from a wayside cottage gateway, almost under the front wheels of the slowly and silently moving car, which came to a standstill while the urchin completed his journey across the road and gained the bank on the far side from the cottage gateway, where, thumb in mouth, he stood divided between pride in his achievement and a desire to howl loudly over the narrowness of his escape.

A woman came out from the cottage to the gate, and looked out at the child and the long car. She was about to speak, but Gees forestalled her: he did not know if she would begin on him or the child.

“Madam,” he asked, removing his hat and speaking most ingratiatingly, “could you tell me how far it is to Denlandham?”

“Denlum?” she amended for him. “Why, this is it.”

“All of it?” He looked past her at the cottage.

“Willie!” she called past him to the child, “coom heer, you little davvle! Runnin’ out inter the rud like that, you!”

But heedless of whether the child obeyed or no, Gees let in his clutch and moved on. Denlandham or Denlum was somewhere handy, evidently, and there must be a hostelry somewhere about. He found it about a quarter of a mile farther on, and would have hated to total up the bends and twists in that quarter-mile, for the road could give a worm points and a beating on turning. Then, set back from a sort of forecourt, which was shaded by a chestnut tree that would have set any toiling village blacksmith rejoicing, he saw THE HUNTERS’ ARMS declare itself by means of a swinging signboard, and turned off the road to discover that one Nicholas Churchill was licensed to retail... but then Gees got out to search for Nicholas or some accredited representative, for the rest of the sign was of no consequence. Here was an inn, and the first of the May twilight was at hand. Leaving the car, he entered what proved to be the public bar.

Behind the bar was a red-faced man with a perceptibly humped back and a nose that would not have failed by comparison with Cyrano de Bergerac’s facial centre. Two youngsters paused from competing at darts on the far side of the low-ceiled room at the entry of this stranger, and two rather elderly men of the hedger-and-ditcher type, seated on a long settle at right angles to the bar, gave him a glance and then ignored him. He addressed the hunchback.

“Are you Mr. Churchill?”

Mr. Churchill made a shrill noise of assent, a sort of “Yeahp!”

“Well, then, Mr. Churchill, could you put me up for the night?”

Again Mr. Churchill made his noise, and added something like

“Sir.”

“Thank you,” said Gees. “I’ll go and get my belongings.”

He returned to the car, took out his suitcase, and faced about to see a woman as tall as himself standing in the inn doorway.

“Coom along o’ me, mister,” she invited or commanded. “Ah’ll show thee tha room, an’ what’ll tha loike to eaat?”

“Oh, anything that’s handy,” he answered, as he followed her to the staircase beyond the doorway leading to the bar.

“Ah’ve a gradely ham on coot,” she announced, “an’ happen tha’d loike eggs wi’t. An’ a pot o’ tea.”

“Splendid,” he assented, and came, at the top of the stairs, to a tidy bedroom with— the thing he noticed first— an illuminated

“God Bless Our Home,” over the head of the bed. Facing it from the opposite wall, he saw next, was an oleograph “Soul’s Awakening”— but there was room under the bed for both, he decided.

“An’ theer’s a staable at the back wheer thee can put thy car,” she told him. “When’ll thee loike tha sooper?”

“Oh, in an hour, say,” he suggested. “I’ll put the car away and drop into the bar for a bit. Mr. Churchill can tell me when the meal is ready, if you let him know. You don’t belong to this part of the country, I gather, Mrs. Churchill?” He risked calling her that.

“Noa. We coom fra nigh Sheffield,” she informed him, and added in a lower voice after a brief pause— “Worse luck,” before leaving him to a wash and brush-up after his journey.

He looked out from the casement window and saw a squat church tower and the slated roof of what he decided was the vicarage or rectory not far from the church. There was a row of aged cottages a little way along the road from the inn, and behind these tokens that this was indeed Denlandham— perhaps a mile distant from the inn— glimpses of a big residence set on a slight rise of ground were visible among trees. That, Gees reflected, would be Denlandham House, Hunter’s residence, for it was unlikely that two such— for this part of the country— imposing mansions would exist in one village.

He found the stable and backed the Rolls-Bentley inside, after driving out a half-dozen hens which, he decided, must roost elsewhere for the night. Then he returned to the bar, leaned against it, and requested a pint of bitter, which Nicholas Churchill provided without even a comment on the weather. Apparently the landlord was not loquacious.

Sipping at the pint glass, Gees watched the dart players in an abstracted, dreamy way, and presently had his reward. For the two elders on the settle, considering him not interested in them, renewed the conversation his entrance had interrupted. They talked with long pauses between sentences, and without emphasis: it was as if the conversation were part of their evening ritual, and not very interesting to them.

“My beans begun to flower,” said one.

“There be a mortal lot o’ fly this year,” the other observed.

“Aye, Tom, yu’re right,” said the first one.

Tom looked into his pint glass, and decided to drink no more yet. One dart-player missed the board altogether, and danged it loudly.

“Squire back yit?” Tom inquired of his fellow.

“Yistiddy,” was the reply.

“I did hear Norris’s gal is hoam.”

“Yistiddy,” said the other again.

Tom shook his head over his glass, gravely. “Still mazed,” he said, and Gees took care to avoid any expression of interest or look at them.

“Aye,” said Tom’s friend, with equal gravity.

“Stoppin’ at Cosham’s till Michaelmas, they say,” Tom observed.

“They’m cousins,” said the other.

“Aye, but Cosham’ll want pay for their keep, till Michaelmas,” Tom averred. “He ’on’t keep three on ’em till then for nothin’.”

“I ’ouldn’t neether,” said Tom’s friend, after thinking it over.

“An’ noobery know what did happen to that gal.”

“Narves. Growed too fast, I reckon, an’ got narves.”

“Then yu don’t believe?” Tom glanced at Gees, and did not end it.

“That?” The other spoke with his first sign of interest in what he or Tom was saying. “Them tales’ll do to frighten children with.”

Tom thought it over, and drank some beer to aid his reflections.

“I lay yu ’ouldn’t go oop to Nightmare alone i’ the dark, Jacob Hood,” he said eventually, very deliberately and with conviction.

“If there was,” Jacob Hood remarked after another long silence, “it ain’t never touched nobody that I heerd. Them as believe about them things do tell yu might shove a hand right through ’em, an’ they can’t feel it. An’ if there is things like them, which I ’on’t believe, they’m no more’n wind an’ shadder, an’ couldn’t so much as hit anyone.”

“But I lay yu ’ouldn’t go oop to Nightmare alone i’ the dark,” Tom repeated, as if he were challenging Jacob to make the trip.

“I ain’t got no call to go,” Jacob said. “Time I done for the day, I bin on my feet aplenty ’ithout traipsin’ up to Nightmare or anywhere else. I gotter soak my corns to-night afore I go to bed.”

“I did hear tell once,” Tom observed, after thinking it over, “as the right bottom end o’ a bindweed root’d cure any corn, an’ I’d got a right bad ’un jest then. So I took a spade down the end o’ my garden, an’ dug at a bindweed. I got the hole a good seven foot deep, an’ the bindweed was still agoin’ down as thick as ever.”

“So yu didn’t try it?” Jacob inquired.

“I don’t believe bindweed got a bottom end to the root,” Tom averred with a spice of disgust at the habits of the plant. “I believe they go right down to the middle o’ the earth, or nearabouts. Seven foot down I dug, an’ was about wore out at it, an’ still that root was agoin’ down as strong as ever. Bill Thacker next door, he wanted to know if I was diggin’ a well when I put my head up outer the hole.”

“An’ what’d yu say?” Jacob asked.

“I said what I’d bin diggin’ for, an’ he larfed like anything. So I filled up the hole, an’ got some green stuff in a little bottle off a pedlar, an’ it eased that corn most wonderful.”

At that point, the landlord consulted a little square wicket in the back of the bar, and learned from it that Gees’ supper was ready. He let his guest through by a side door into a room in which the meal was set, and paused to look over the table and assure himself that all was in order. An incandescent paraffin lamp lighted the room brilliantly, and showed Gees a bookshelf containing works one would scarcely expect to find in such a place as this. Frazer’s GoldenBough, in the condensed one-volume edition, Eliphaz Levi’s two big tomes on magic, and Lytton’s Zanoni, were volumes that Gees observed and recognised.

“Nice little library you have there,” he remarked.

Nicholas emitted his squeaky assent, and moved the mustard pot.

“Do you mind if I look at some of them?” Gees inquired.

“As many as thee like and as long as thee like, sir,” Nicholas shrilled. “They bean’t to my taste. Th’ wife’s first husband, they belonged. I’d burn the dinged lot, if I had my way.”

Which, Gees thought but did not say, indicated the superiority of the grey mare in this establishment. He gave up his scrutiny of the bookshelf, and seated himself at the table.

“I suppose you found trade brisker in the Sheffield district than it is here, Mr. Churchill,” he remarked pleasantly.

“So that dinged wife o’ mine been chatterin’ again, have she?”

Nicholas inquired morosely. “I don’t belong to that part. I married her there, that was all. She belonged that way.”