I will be ready for it at the other end. Supposing I am rung up, I will, when it has finished, ring you up to make sure that I was not being called inin the usual way. And there is nothing to be afraid of, sir? asked the man. Dr. Teesdale remembered his own moment of terror this morning, but he spoke quite sincerely. I am sure there is nothing to be afraid of, he said, reassuringly. Dr. Teesdale had a dinner engagement that night, which he broke, and was sitting alone in his study by half past nine. In the present state of human ignorance as to the law which governs the movements of spirits severed from the body, he could not tell the warder why it was that their visits are so often periodic, timed to punctuality according to our scheme of hours, but in scenes of tabulated instances of the appearance of revenants, especially if the soul was in sore need of help, as might be the case here, he found that they came at the same hour of day or night. As a rule, too, their power of making themselves seen or heard or felt, grew greater for some little while after death, subsequently growing weaker as they became less earthbound, or often after that ceasing altogether, and he was prepared tonight for a less indistinct impression. The spirit apparently for the early hours of its disembodiment is weak, like a moth newly broken out from its chrysalisand then suddenly the telephone bell rang, not so faintly as the night before, but still not with its ordinary imperative tone. Dr. Teesdale instantly got up, put the receiver to his ears. And what he heard was heartbroken sobbing, strong spasms that seemed to tear the weeper. He waited for a little before speaking, himself cold with some nameless fear, and yet profoundly moved to help, if he was able. Yes, yes, he said at length, hearing his own voice tremble. I am Dr. Teesdale. What can I do for you? And who are you? he added, though he felt that it was a needless question. Slowly the sobbing died down, the whispers took its place, still broken by crying. I want to tell, sirI want to tellI must tell. Yes, tell me, what is it? said the doctor. No, not youanother gentleman, who used to come to see me. Will you speak to him what I say to you?I cant make him hear me or see me. Who are you? asked Dr. Teesdale suddenly. Charles Linkworth. I thought you knew. I am very miserable. I cant leave the prisonand it is cold. Will you send for the other gentleman? Do you mean the chaplain? asked Dr. Teesdale. Yes, the chaplain. He read the service when I went across the yard yesterday. I shant be so miserable when I have told. The doctor hesitated a moment. This was a strange story that he would have to tell Mr. Dawkins, the prison chaplain, that at the other end of the telephone was the spirit of the man executed yesterday. And yet he soberly believed that it was so that this unhappy spirit was in misery, and wanted to tell. There was no need to ask what he wanted to tell. Yes, I will ask him to come here, he said at length. Thank you, sir, a thousand times. You will make him come, wont you? The voice was growing fainter. It must be tomorrow night, it said. I cant speak longer now. I have to go to seeoh, my God, my God. The sobs broke out afresh, sounding fainter and fainter. But it was in a frenzy of terrified interest that Dr. Teesdale spoke. To see what? he cried. Tell me what you are doing, what is happening to you? I cant tell you; I maynt tell you, said the voice very faint. That is part and it died away altogether. Dr. Teesdale waited a little, but there was no further sound of any kind, except the chuckling and croaking of the instrument. He put the receiver on to its hook again, and then became aware for the first time that his forehead was streaming with some cold dew of horror. His ears sang; his heart beat very quick and faint, and he sat down to recover himself. Once or twice he asked himself if it was possible that some terrible joke was being played on him, but he knew that could not be so; he felt perfectly sure that he had been speaking with a soul in torment of contrition for the terrible and irremediable act it had committed. It was no delusion of his senses, either; here in this comfortable room of his in Bedford Square, with London cheerfully roaring round him, he had spoken with the spirit of Charles Linkworth. But he had no time (nor indeed inclination, for somehow his soul sat shuddering within him) to indulge in meditation. First of all he rang up the prison. Warder Draycott? he asked. There was a perceptible tremor in the mans voice as he answered. Yes, sir. Is it Dr. Teesdale? Yes. Has anything happened here with you? Twice it seemed that the man tried to speak and could not. At the third attempt the words came. Yes, sir. He has been here. I saw him go into the room where the telephone is. Ah! Did you speak to him? No, sir I sweated and prayed. And theres half a dozen men as have been screaming in their sleep tonight. But its quiet again now. I think he has gone into the execution shed. Yes. Well, I think there will be no more disturbance now. By the way, please give me Mr. Dawkinss home address. This was given him, and Dr. Teesdale proceeded to write to the chaplain, asking him to dine with him on the following night. But suddenly he found that he could not write at his accustomed desk, with the telephone standing close to him, and he went upstairs to the drawingroom which he seldom used, except when he entertained his friends. There he recaptured the serenity of his nerves, and could control his hand. The note simply asked Mr. Dawkins to dine with him next night, when he wished to tell him a very strange history and ask his help. Even if you have any other engagement, he concluded, I seriously request you to give it up. Tonight, I did the same. I should bitterly have regretted it if I had not. Next night accordingly, the two sat at their dinner in the doctors diningroom, and when they were left to their cigarettes and coffee the doctor spoke. You must not think me mad, my dear Dawkins, he said, when you hear what I have got to tell you. Mr. Dawkins laughed. I will certainly promise not to do that, he said. Good. Last night and the night before, a little later in the evening than this, I spoke through the telephone with the spirit of the man we saw executed two days ago. Charles Linkworth. The chaplain did not laugh. He pushed back his chair, looking annoyed. Teesdale, he said, is it to tell me thisI dont want to be rudebut this bogeytale that you have brought me here his evening? Yes. You have not heard half of it. He asked me last night to get hold of you. He wants to tell you something. We can guess, I think, what it is. Dawkins got up. Please let me hear no more of it, he said. The dead do not return. In what state or under what condition they exist has not been revealed to us. But they have done with all material things. But I must tell you more, said the doctor. Two nights ago I was rung up, but very faintly, and could hear only whispers. I instantly inquired where the call came from and was told it came from the prison. I rang up the prison, and Warder Draycott told me that nobody had rung me up. He, too, was conscious of a presence. I think that man drinks, said Dawkins, sharply. The doctor paused a moment. My dear fellow, you should not say that sort of thing, he said. He is one of the steadiest men we have got. And if he drinks, why not I also? The chaplain sat down again. You must forgive me, he said, but I cant go into this. These are dangerous matters to meddle with. Besides, how do you know it is not a hoax? Played by whom? asked the doctor. Hark! The telephone bell suddenly rang. It was clearly audible to the doctor. Dont you hear it? he said. Hear what? The telephone bell ringing. I hear no bell, said the chaplain, rather angrily. There is no bell ringing. The doctor did not answer, but went through into his study, and turned on the lights. Then he took the receiver and mouthpiece off its hook. Yes? he said, in a voice that trembled. Who is it? Yes Mr. Dawkins is here. I will try and get him to speak to you. He went back into the other room. Dawkins, he said, there is a soul in agony. I pray you to listen. For Gods sake come and listen. The chaplain hesitated a moment. As you will, he said. He took up the receiver and put it to his ear. I am Mr. Dawkins, he said. He waited. I can hear nothing whatever, he said at length. Ah, there was something there. The faintest whisper. Ah, try to hear, try to hear! said the doctor. Again the chaplain listened. Suddenly he laid the instrument down, frowning. Somethingsomebody said, I killed her, I confess it. I want to be forgiven. Its a hoax, my dear Teesdale. Somebody knowing your spiritualistic leanings is playing a very grim joke on you. I cant believe it. Dr. Teesdale took up the receiver. I am Dr. Teesdale, he said. Can you give Mr. Dawkins some sign that it is you? Then he laid it down again. He says he thinks he can, he said. We must wait. The evening was again very warm, and the window into the paved yard at the back of the house was open. For five minutes or so the two men stood in silence, waiting, and nothing happened. Then the chaplain spoke. I think that is sufficiently conclusive, he said. Even as he spoke a very cold draught of air suddenly blew into the room, making the papers on the desk rustle. Dr. Teesdale went to the window and closed it. Did you feel that? he asked. Yes, a breath of air. Chilly. Once again in the closed room it stirred again. And did you feel that? asked the doctor. The chaplain nodded. He felt his heart hammering in his throat suddenly. Defend us from all peril and danger of this coming night, he exclaimed. Something is coming! said the doctor. As he spoke it came. In the centre of the room not three yards away from them stood the figure of a man with his head bent over on to his shoulder, so that the face was not visible. Then he took his head in both his hands and raised it like a weight, and looked them in the face. The eyes and tongue protruded, a livid mark was round the neck. Then there came a sharp rattle on the boards of the floor, and the figure was no longer there. But on the floor there lay a new rope. For a long while neither spoke. The sweat poured off the doctors face, and the chaplains white lips whispered prayers. Then by a huge effort the doctor pulled himself together. He pointed at the rope. It has been missing since the execution, he said. Then again the telephone bell rang. This time the chaplain needed no prompting. He went to it at once and the ringing ceased. For a while he listened in silence. Charles Linkworth, he said at length, in the sight of God, in whose presence you stand, are you truly sorry for your sin? Some answer inaudible to the doctor came, and the chaplain closed his eyes. And Dr. Teesdale knelt as he heard the words of the Absolution. At the close there was silence again. I can hear nothing more, said the chaplain, replacing the receiver. Presently the doctors manservant came in with the tray of spirits and syphon. Dr. Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had been. Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker, he said. There was a moments silence. There is no rope, sir, said Parker. The DustCloud The big French windows were open on to the lawn, and, dinner being over, two or three of the party who were staying for the week at the end of August with the CombeMartins had strolled out on to the terrace to look at the sea, over which the moon, large and low, was just rising and tracing a path of pale gold from horizon to shore, while others, less lunar of inclination, had gone in search of bridge or billiards. Coffee had come round immediately after dessert, and the end of dinner, according to the delectable custom of the house, was as informal as the end of breakfast. Everyone, that is to say, remained or went away, smoked, drank port or abstained, according to his personal tastes. Thus, on this particular evening it so happened that Harry CombeMartin and I were very soon left alone in the diningroom, because we were talking unmitigated motor shop, and the rest of the party (small wonder) were bored with it, and had left us. The shop was homeshop, so to speak, for it was almost entirely concerned with the manifold perfections of the new sixcylinder Napier which my host in a moment of extravagance, which he did not in the least regret, had just purchased; in which, too, he proposed to take me over to lunch at a friends house near Hunstanton on the following day. He observed with legitimate pride that an early start would not be necessary as the distance was only eighty miles and there were no police traps. Queer things these big motors are, he said, relapsing into generalities as we rose to go. Often I can scarcely believe that my new car is merely a machine. It seems to me to possess an independent life of its own. It is really much more like a thoroughbred with a wonderfully fine mouth. And the moods of a thoroughbred? I asked. No; its got an excellent temper, Im glad to say. It doesnt mind being checked, or even stopped, when its going its best. Some of these big cars cant stand that. They get sulkyI assure you it is literally trueif they are checked too often. He paused on his way to ring the bell. Guy Elphinstones car, for instance, he said it was a badtempered brute, a violent, vicious beast of a car. What make? I asked. Twentyfive horsepower Amde. They are a fretful strain of car; too thin, pot enough boneand bone is very good for the nerves. The brute liked running over a chicken or a rabbit, though perhaps it was less the cars illtemper than Guys, poor chap. Well, he paid for ithe paid to the uttermost farthing. Did you know him? No; but surely I have heard the name. Ah, yes, he ran over a child, did he not? Yes, said Harry, and then smashed up against his own park gates. Killed, wasnt he? Oh yes, killed instantly, and the car just a heap of splinters. Theres an odd story about it, Im told, in the village rather in your line. Ghosts? I asked. Yes, the ghost of his motorcar. Seems almost too uptodate, doesnt it? And whats the story? I demanded. Why, just this. His place was outside the village of Bircham, ten miles out from Norwich; and theres a long straight bit of road therethats where he ran over the childand a couple of hundred yards farther on, a rather awkward turn into the park gates. Well, a month or two ago, soon after the accident, one old gaffer in the village swore he had seen a motor there coming full tilt along the road, but without a sound, and it disappeared at the lodge gates of the park, which were shut. Soon after another said he had heard a motor whirl by him at the same place, followed by a hideous scream, but he saw nothing. The scream is rather horrible, said I. Ah, I see what you mean! I only thought of his siren. Guy had a siren on his exhaust, same as I have. His had a dreadful frightened sort of wail, and always made me feel creepy. And is that all the story? I asked that one old man thought he saw a noiseless motor, and another thought he heard an invisible one? Harry flicked the ash off his cigarette into the grate. Oh dear no! he said. Half a dozen of them have seen something or heard something. It is quite a heavily authenticated yarn. Yes, and talked over and edited in the publichouse, I said. Well, not a man of them will go there after dark. Also the lodgekeeper gave notice a week or two after the accident. He said he was always hearing a motor stop and hoot outside the lodge, and he was kept running out at all hours of the night to see what it was. And what was it? It wasnt anything. Simply nothing there. He thought it rather uncanny, anyhow, and threw up a good post. Besides, his wife was always hearing a child scream, and while her man toddled out to the gate she would go and see whether the kids were all right. And the kids themselves Ah, what of them? I asked. They kept coming to their mother, asking who the little girl was who walked up and down the road and would not speak to them or play with them. Its a manysided story, I said. All the witnesses seem to have heard and seen different things. Yes, that is just what to my mind makes the yarn so good, he said. Personally I dont take much stock in spooks at all. But given that there are such things as spooks, and given that the death of the child and the death of Guy have caused spooks to play about there, it seems to me a very good point that different people should be aware of different phenomena. One hears the car, another sees it, one hears the child scream, another sees the child. How does that strike you? This, I am bound to say, was a new view to me, and the more I thought of it the more reasonable it appeared. For the vast majority of mankind have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual world (which, I hold, is thick and populous around us), sealed up, as it were; in other words, the majority of mankind never hear or see a ghost at all. Is it not, then, very probable that of the remainderthose, in fact, to whom occult experiences have happened or can happenfew should have every sense unsealed, but that some should have the unsealed ear, others the unsealed eyethat some should be clairaudient, others clairvoyant? Yes, it strikes me as reasonable, I said. Cant you take me over there? Certainly! If you will stop till Friday Ill take you over on Thursday. The others all go that day, so that we can get there after dark. I shook my head. I cant stop till Friday, Im afraid, I said. I must leave on Thursday. But how about tomorrow? Cant we take it on the way to or from Hunstanton? No; its thirty miles out of our way. Besides, to be at Bircham after dark means that we shouldnt get back here till midnight. And as host to my guests Ah! things are only heard and seen after dark, are they? I asked. That makes it so much less interesting. It is like a sance where all lights are put out. Well, the accident happened at night, he said. I dont know the rules, but that may have some bearing on it, I should think. I had one question more in the back of my mind, but I did not like to ask it. At least, I wanted information on this subject without appearing to ask for it. Neither do I know the rules of motors, I said; and I dont understand you when you say that Guy Elphinstones machine was an irritable, crossgrained brute, that liked running over chickens and rabbits. But I think you subsequently said that the irritability may have been the irritability of its owner. Did he mind being checked? It made him blindmad if it happened often, said Harry. I shall never forget a drive I had with him once there were haycarts and perambulators every hundred yards. It was perfectly ghastly; it was like being with a madman. And when we got inside his gate, his dog came running out to meet him. He did not go an inch out of his course it was worse than thathe went for it, just grinding his teeth with rage. I never drove with him again. He stopped a moment, guessing what might be in my mind. I say, you mustnt thinkyou mustnt think he began. No, of course not, said I. Harry CombeMartins house stood close to the weathereaten, sandy cliffs of the Suffolk shore, which are being incessantly gnawed away by the hunger of the insatiable sea. Fathoms deep below it, and now many hundred yards out, lies what was once the second port in England; but now of the ancient town of Dunwich, and of its seven great churches, nothing remains but one, and that ruinous and already half destroyed by the falling cliff and the encroachments of the sea. Foot by foot, it too is disappearing, and of the graveyard which surrounded it more than half is gone, so that from the face of the sandy cliff on which it stands there stick out like straws in glass, as Dante says, the bones of those who were once committed there to the kindly and stable earth. Whether it was the remembrance of this rather grim spectacle as I had seen it that afternoon, or whether Harrys story had caused some trouble in my brain, or whether it was merely that the keen bracing air of this place, to one who had just come from the sleepy languor of the Norfolk Broads, kept me sleepless, I do not know; but, anyhow, the moment I put out my light that night and got into bed, I felt that all the footlights and gasjets in the internal theatre of my mind sprang into flame, and that I was very vividly and alertly awake. It was in vain that I counted a hundred forwards and a hundred backwards, that I pictured to myself a flock of visionary sheep coming singly through a gap in an imaginary hedge, and tried to number their monotonous and uniform countenances, that I played noughts and crosses with myself, that I marked out scores of double lawntennis courtsfor with each repetition of these supposedly soporific exercises I only became more intensely wakeful. It was not in remote hope of sleep that I continued to repeat these weary performances long after their inefficacy was proved to the hilt, but because I was strangely unwilling in this timeless hour of the night to think about those protruding relics of humanity; also I quite distinctly did not desire to think about that subject with regard to which I had, a few hours ago, promised Harry that I would not make it the subject of reflection. For these reasons I continued during the black hours to practise these narcotic exercises of the mind, knowing well that if I paused on the tedious treadmill my thoughts, like some released spring, would fly back to rather gruesome subjects. I kept my mind, in fact, talking loud to itself, so that it should not hear what other voices were saying. Then by degrees these absurd mental occupations became impossible; my mind simply refused to occupy itself with them any longer; and next moment I was thinking intently and eagerly, not about the bones protruding from the gnawed section of sandcliff, but about the subject I had said I would not dwell upon. And like a flash it came upon me why Harry had bidden me not think about it. Surely in order that I should not come to the same conclusion as he had come to. Now the whole question of haunthaunted spots, haunted houses, and so forthhas always seemed to me to be utterly unsolved, and to be neither proved nor disproved to a satisfactory degree. From the earliest times, certainly from the earliest known Egyptian records, there has been a belief that the scene of a crime is often revisited, sometimes by the spirit of him who has committed itseeking rest, we must suppose, and finding none; sometimes, and more inexplicably, by the spirit of his victim, crying perhaps, like the blood of Abel, for vengeance. And though the stories of these village gossips in the alehouse about noiseless visions and invisible noises were all as yet unsifted and unreliable, yet I could not help wondering if they (such as they were) pointed to something authentic and to be classed under this head of appearances. But more striking than the yarns of the gaffers seemed to me the questions of the lodgekeepers children. How should children have imagined the figure of a child that would not speak to them or play with them? Perhaps it was a real child, a sulky child. Yesperhaps. But perhaps not. Then after this preliminary skirmish I found myself settling down to the question that I had said I would not think about; in other words, the possible origin of these phenomena interested me more than the phenomena themselves. For what exactly had Guy Elphinstone, that savage driver, done? Had or had not the death of the child been entirely an accident, a thing (given he drove a motor at all) outside his own control? Or had he, irritated beyond endurance at the checks and delays of the day, not pulled up when it was just possible he might have, but had run over the child as he would have run over a rabbit or a hen, or even his own dog? And what, in any case, poor wretched brute, must have been his thoughts in that terrible instant that intervened between the childs death and his own, when a moment later he smashed into the closed gates of his own lodge? Was remorse hisbitter, despairing contrition? That could hardly have been so; or else surely, knowing only for certain that he had knocked a child down, he would have stopped; he would have done his best, whatever that might be, to repair the irreparable harm. But he had not stopped he had gone on, it seemed, at full speed, for on the collision the car had been smashed into matchwood and steel shavings. Again, with double force, had this dreadful thing been a complete accident, he would have stopped. So thenmost terrible question of allhad he, after making murder, rushed on to what proved to be his own death, filled with some hellish glee at what he had done? Indeed, as in the churchyard on the cliff, bones of the buried stuck starkly out into the night. The pale tired light of earliest morning had turned the windowblinds into glimmering squares before I slept; and when I woke, the servant who called me was already rattling them briskly up on their rollers, and letting the calm serenity of the August day stream into the room. Through the open windows poured in sunlight and seawind, the scent of flowers and the song of birds; and each and all were wonderfully reassuring, banishing the hooded forms that had haunted the night, and I thought of the disquietude of the dark hours as a traveller may think of the billows and tempests of the ocean over which he has safely journeyed, unable, now that they belong to the limbo of the past, to recall his qualms and tossings with any vivid uneasiness. Not without a feeling of relief, too, did I dwell on the knowledge that I was definitely not going to visit this equivocal spot. Our drive today, as Harry had said, would not take us within thirty miles of it, and tomorrow I but went to the station and away. Though a thoroughpaced seeker after truth might, no doubt, have regretted that the laws of time and space did not permit him to visit Bircham after the sinister dark had fallen, and test whether for him there was visible or audible truth in the tales of the village gossips, I was conscious of no such regret. Bircham and its fables had given me a very bad night, and I was perfectly aware that I did not in the least want to go near it, though yesterday I had quite truthfully said I should like to do so. In this brightness, too, of sun and seawind I felt none of the malaise at my waking moments which a sleepless night usually gives me; I felt particularly well, particularly pleased to be alive, and also, as I have said, particularly content not to be going to Bircham. I was quite satisfied to leave my curiosity unsatisfied. The motor came round about eleven, and we started at once, Harry and Mrs. Morrison, a cousin of his, sitting behind in the big back seat, large enough to hold a comfortable three, and I on the left of the driver, in a sort of tranceI am not ashamed to confess itof expectancy and delight. For this was in the early days of motors, when there was still the sense of romance and adventure round them. I did not want to drive, any more than Harry wanted to; for driving, so I hold, is too absorbing; it takes the attention in too firm a grip the mania of the true motorist is not consciously enjoyed. For the passion for motors is a tasteI had almost said a giftas distinct and as keenly individual as the passion for music or mathematics. Those who use motors most (merely as a means of getting rapidly from one place to another) are often entirely without it, while those whom adverse circumstances (over which they have no control) compel to use them least may have it to a supreme degree. To those who have it, analysis of their passion is perhaps superfluous; to those who have it not, explanation is almost unintelligible. Pace, however, and the control of pace, and above all the sensuous consciousness of pace, is at the root of it; and pleasure in pace is common to most people, whether it be in the form of a galloping horse, or the pace of the skate hissing over smooth ice, or the pace of a freewheel bicycle humming downhill, or, more impersonally, the pace of the smashed ball at lawntennis, the driven ball at golf, or the low boundary hit at cricket. But the sensuous consciousness of pace, as I have said, is needful one might experience it seated in front of the engine of an express train, though not in a wadded, shutwindowed carriage, where the wind of movement is not felt. Then add to this rapture of the rush through riven air the knowledge that huge relentless force is controlled by a little lever, and directed by a little wheel on which the hands of the driver seem to lie so negligently. A great untamed devil has there his bridle, and he answers to it, as Harry had said, like a horse with a fine mouth. He has hunger and thirst, too, unslakeable, and greedily he laps of his soup of petrol which turns to fire in his mouth electricity, the force that rends clouds asunder, and causes towers to totter, is the spoon with which he feeds himself; and as he eats he races onward, and the road opens like torn linen in front of him. Yet how obedient, how amenable is he!for with a touch on his snaffle his speed is redoubled, or melts into thin air, so that before you know you have touched the rein he has exchanged his swallowflight for a mere saunter through the lanes. But he ever loves to run; and knowing this, you will bid him lift up his voice and tell those who are in his path that he is coming, so that he will not need the touch that checks. Hoarse and jovial is his voice, hooting to the wayfarer; and if his hooting be not heard he has a great guttural falsetto scream that leaps from octave to octave, and echoes from the hedges that are passing in blurred lines of hanging green. And, as you go, the romantic isolation of divers in deep seas is yours; masked and hooded companions may be near you also, in their drivingdress for this plunge through the swift tides of air; but you, like them, are alone and isolated, conscious only of the ripped ribbon of road, the two great lanterneyes of the wonderful monster that look through drooped eyelids by day, but gleam with fire by night, the two earlaps of splashboards, and the long lean bonnet in front which is the skull and braincase of that swift, untiring energy that feeds on fire, and whirls its two tons of weight up hill and down dale, as if some new law as everlasting as gravity, and like gravity making it go ever swifter, was its sole control. For the first hour the essence of these joys, any description of which compared to the real thing is but as a stagnant pond compared to the bright rushing of a mountain stream, was mine. A straight switchback road lay in front of us, and the monster plunged silently down hill, and said below his breath, Hahahahahaha, as, without diminution of speed, he breasted the opposing slope. In my control were his great vocal chords (for in those days hooter and siren were on the drivers left, and lay convenient to the hand of him who occupied the boxseat), and it rejoiced me to let him hoot to a ponycart, three hundred yards ahead, with a hand on his falsetto scream if his ordinary tones of conversation were unheard or disregarded. Then came a road crossing ours at right angles, and the dear monster seemed to say, Yes, yessee how obedient and careful I am. I stroll with my hands in my pockets. Then again a puppy from a farmhouse staggered warlike into the road, and the monster said, Poor little chap! get home to your mother, or Ill talk to you in earnest. The poor little chap did not take the hint, so the monster slackened speed and just said, Whoof! Then it chuckled to itself as the puppy scuttled into the hedge, seriously alarmed; and next moment our selfmade wind screeched and whistled round us again.


Napoleon, I believe, said that the power of an army lay in its feet that is true also of the monster. There was a loud bang, and in thirty seconds we were at a standstill. The monsters off forefoot troubled it, and the chauffeur said, Yes, sirburst. So the burst boot was taken off and a new one put on, a boot that had never been on foot before. The foot in question was held up on a jack during this operation, and the new boot laced up with a pump. This took exactly twentyfive minutes. Then the monster got his spoon going again, and said, Let me run oh, let me run! And for fifteen miles on a straight and empty road it ran. I timed the miles, but shall not produce their chronology for the benefit of a forsworn constabulary. But there were no more dithyrambics that morning. We should have reached Hunstanton in time for lunch. Instead, we waited to repair our fourth puncture at 145 p.m., twentyfive miles short of our destination. This fourth puncture was caused by a spicule of flint threequarters of an inch longsharp, it is true, but weighing perhaps two pennyweights, while we weighed two tons. It seemed an impertinence. So we lunched at a wayside inn, and during lunch the pundits held a consultation, of which the upshot was this We had no more boots for our monster, for his off forefoot had burst once, and punctured once (thus necessitating two socks and one boot). Similarly, but more so, his off hindfoot had burst twice (thus necessitating two boots and two socks). Now, there was no certain shoemakers shop at Hunstanton, as far as we knew, but there was a regular universal store at Kings Lynn, which was about equidistant. And, so said the chauffeur, there was something wrong with the monsters spoon (ignition), and he didnt rightly know what, and therefore it seemed the prudent part not to go to Hunstanton (lunch, a thing of the preterite, having been the object), but to the wellsupplied Kings Lynn. And we all breathed a pious hope that we might get there. Whizz hoot purr! The last boot held, the spoon went busily to the monsters mouth, and we just flowed into Kings Lynn. The return journey, so I vaguely gathered, would be made by other roads; but personally, intoxicated with air and movement, I neither asked nor desired to know what those roads would be. This one small but rather salient fact is necessary to record here, that as we waited at Kings Lynn, and as we buzzed homewards afterwards, no thought of Bircham entered my head at all. The subsequent hallucination, if hallucination it was, was not, as far as I know, selfsuggested. That we had gone out of our way for the sake of the garage, I knew, and that was all. Harry also told me that he did not know where our road would take us. The rest that follows is the baldest possible narrative of what actually occurred. But it seems to me, a humble student of the occult, to be curious. While we waited we had tea in a hotel looking on to a big empty square of houses, and after tea we waited a very long time for our monster to pick us up. Then the telephone from the garage inquired for the gentleman on the motor, and since Harry had strolled out to get a local evening paper with news of the last Test Match, I applied ear and mouth to that elusive instrument. What I heard was not encouraging the ignition had gone very wrong indeed, and perhaps in an hour we should be able to start. It was then about halfpast six, and we were just seventyeight miles from Dunwich. Harry came back soon after this, and I told him what the message from the garage had been. What he said was this Then we shant get back till long after dinner. We might just as well have camped out to see your ghost. As I have already said, no notion of Bircham was in my mind, and I mention this as evidence that, even if it had been, Harrys remark would have implied that we were not going through Bircham. The hour lengthened itself into an hour and a half. Then the monster, quite well again, came hooting round the corner, and we got in. Whack her up, Jack, said Harry to the chauffeur. The roads will be empty. You had better light up at once. The monster, with its eyes agleam, was whacked up, and never in my life have I been carried so cautiously and yet so swiftly. Jack never took a risk or the possibility of a risk, but when the road was clear and open he let the monster run just as fast as it was able. Its eyes made day of the road fifty yards ahead, and the romance of night was fairyland round us. Hares started from the roadside, and raced in front of us for a hundred yards, then just wheeled in time to avoid the earflaps of the great triumphant brute that carried us. Moths flitted across, struck sometimes by the lenses of its eyes, and the miles peeled over our shoulders. When It occurred we were going topspeed. And this was Itquite unsensational, but to us quite inexplicable unless my midnight imaginings happened to be true. As I have said, I was in command of the hooter and of the siren. We were flying along on a straight downgrade, as fast as ever we could go, for the engines were working, though the decline was considerable. Then quite suddenly I saw in front of us a thick cloud of dust, and knew instinctively and on the instant, without thought or reasoning, what that must mean. Evidently something going very fast (or else so large a cloud could not have been raised) was in front of us, and going in the same direction as ourselves. Had it been something on the road coming to meet us, we should of course have seen the vehicle first and run into the dustcloud afterwards. Had it, again, been something of low speeda horse and dogcart, for instanceno such dust could have been raised. But, as it was, I knew at once that there was a motor travelling swiftly just ahead of us, also that it was not going as fast as we were, or we should have run into its dust much more gradually. But we went into it as into a suddenly lowered curtain. Then I shouted to Jack. Slow down, and put on the brake, I shrieked. Theres something just ahead of us. As I spoke I wrought a wild concerto on the hooter, and with my right hand groped for the siren, but did not find it. Simultaneously I heard a wild, frightened shriek, just as if I had sounded the siren myself. Jack had felt for it too, and our hands fingered each other. Then we entered the dustcloud. We slowed down with extraordinary rapidity, and still peering ahead we went deadslow through it. I had not put on my goggles after leaving Kings Lynn, and the dust stung and smarted in my eyes. It was not, therefore, a belt of fog, but real roaddust. And at the moment we crept through it I felt Harrys hands on my shoulder. Theres something just ahead, he said. Look! dont you see the tail light? As a matter of fact, I did not; and, still going very slow, we came out of that dustcloud. The broad empty road stretched in front of us; a hedge was on each side, and there was no turning either to right or left. Only, on the right, was a lodge, and gates which were closed. The lodge had no lights in any window. Then we came to a standstill; the air was deadcalm, not a leaf in the hedgerow trees was moving, not a grain of dust was lifted from the road. But, behind, the dustcloud still hung in the air, and stopped deadshort at the closed lodgegates. We had moved very slowly for the last hundred yards it was difficult to suppose that it was of our making. Then Jack spoke, with a curious crack in his voice. It must have been a motor, sir, he said. But where is it? I had no reply to this, and from behind another voice, Harrys voice, spoke. For the moment I did not recognise it, for it was strained and faltering. Did you open the siren? he asked. It didnt sound like our siren. It sounded like, like I didnt open the siren, said I. Then we went on again. Soon we came to scattered lights in houses by the wayside. Whats this place? I asked Jack. Bircham, sir, said he. The Gardener Two friends of mine, Hugh Grainger and his wife, had taken for a month of Christmas holiday the house in which we were to witness such strange manifestations, and when I received an invitation from them to spend a fortnight there I returned them an enthusiastic affirmative. Well already did I know that pleasant heathery countryside, and most intimate was my acquaintance with the subtle hazards of its most charming golflinks. Golf, I was given to understand, was to occupy the solid day for Hugh and me, so that Margaret should never be obliged to set her hand to the implements with which the game, so detestable to her, was conducted.  I arrived there while yet the daylight lingered, and as my hosts were out, I took a ramble round the place. The house and garden stood on a plateau facing south; below it were a couple of acres of pasture that sloped down to a vagrant stream crossed by a footbridge, by the side of which stood a thatched cottage with a vegetable patch surrounding it. A path ran close past this across the pasture from a wicketgate in the garden, conducted you over the footbridge, and, so my remembered sense of geography told me, must constitute a shortcut to the links that lay not half a mile beyond. The cottage itself was clearly on the land of the little estate, and I at once supposed it to be the gardeners house. What went against so obvious and simple a theory was that it appeared to be untenanted. No wreath of smoke, though the evening was chilly, curled from its chimneys, and, coming closer, I fancied it had that air of waiting about it which we so often conjure into unused habitations. There it stood, with no sign of life whatever about it, though ready, as its apparently perfect state of repair seemed to warrant, for fresh tenants to put the breath of life into it again. Its little garden, too, though the palings were neat and newly painted, told the same tale; the beds were untended and unweeded, and in the flowerborder by the front door was a row of chrysanthemums, which had withered on their stems. But all this was but the impression of a moment, and I did not pause as I passed it, but crossed the footbridge and went on up the heathery slope that lay beyond. My geography was not at fault, for presently I saw the clubhouse just in front of me. Hugh no doubt would be just about coming in from his afternoon round, and so we would walk back together. On reaching the clubhouse, however, the steward told me that not five minutes before Mrs. Grainger had called in her car for her husband, and I therefore retraced my steps by the path along which I had already come. But I made a detour, as a golfer will, to walk up the fairway of the seventeenth and eighteenth holes just for the pleasure of recognition, and looked respectfully at the yawning sandpit which so inexorably guards the eighteenth green, wondering in what circumstances I should visit it next, whether with a step complacent and superior, knowing that my ball reposed safely on the green beyond, or with the heavy footfall of one who knows that laborious delving lies before him. The light of the winter evening had faded fast, and when I crossed the footbridge on my return the dusk had gathered. To my right, just beside the path, lay the cottage, the whitewashed walls of which gleamed whitely in the gloaming; and as I turned my glance back from it to the rather narrow plank which bridged the stream I thought I caught out of the tail of my eye some light from one of its windows, which thus disproved my theory that it was untenanted. But when I looked directly at it again I saw that I was mistaken some reflection in the glass of the red lines of sunset in the west must have deceived me, for in the inclement twilight it looked more desolate than ever. Yet I lingered by the wicket gate in its low palings, for though all exterior evidence bore witness to its emptiness, some inexplicable feeling assured me, quite irrationally, that this was not so, and that there was somebody there. Certainly there was nobody visible, but, so this absurd idea informed me, he might be at the back of the cottage concealed from me by the intervening structure, and, still oddly, still unreasonably, it became a matter of importance to my mind to ascertain whether this was so or not, so clearly had my perceptions told me that the place was empty, and so firmly had some conviction assured me that it was tenanted. To cover my inquisitiveness, in case there was someone there, I could inquire whether this path was a shortcut to the house at which I was staying, and, rather rebelling at what I was doing, I went through the small garden, and rapped at the door. There was no answer, and, after waiting for a response to a second summons, and having tried the door and found it locked, I made the circuit of the house. Of course there was no one there, and I told myself that I was just like a man who looks under his bed for a burglar and would be beyond measure astonished if he found one. My hosts were at the house when I arrived, and we spent a cheerful two hours before dinner in such desultory and eager conversation as is proper between friends who have not met for some time. Between Hugh Grainger and his wife it is always impossible to light on a subject which does not vividly interest one or other of them, and golf, politics, the needs of Russia, cooking, ghosts, the possible victory over Mount Everest, and the income tax were among the topics which we passionately discussed. With all these plates spinning, it was easy to whip up any one of them, and the subject of spooks generally was lighted upon again and again. Margaret is on the high road to madness, remarked Hugh on one of these occasions, for she has begun using planchette. If you use planchette for six months, I am told, most careful doctors will conscientiously certify you as insane. Shes got five months more before she goes to Bedlam. Does it work? I asked. Yes, it says most interesting things, said Margaret. It says things that never entered my head. Well try it tonight. Oh, not tonight, said Hugh. Lets have an evening off. Margaret disregarded this. Its no use asking planchette questions, she went on, because there is in your mind some sort of answer to them. If I ask whether it will be fine tomorrow, for instance, it is probably Ithough indeed I dont mean to pushwho makes the pencil say yes.  And then it usually rains, remarked Hugh. Not always dont interrupt. The interesting thing is to let the pencil write what it chooses. Very often it only makes loops and curvesthough they may mean somethingand every now and then a word comes, of the significance of which I have no idea whatever, so I clearly couldnt have suggested it. Yesterday evening, for instance, it wrote gardener over and over again. Now what did that mean? The gardener here is a Methodist with a chinbeard. Could it have meant him? Oh, its time to dress. Please dont be late, my cook is so sensitive about soup. We rose, and some connection of ideas about gardener linked itself up in my mind. By the way, whats that cottage in the field by the footbridge? I asked. Is that the gardeners cottage? It used to be, said Hugh. But the chinbeard doesnt live there in fact nobody lives there. Its empty. If I was owner here, I should put the chinbeard into it, and take the rent off his wages. Some people have no idea of economy. Why did you ask? I saw Margaret was looking at me rather attentively. Curiosity, I said. Idle curiosity. I dont believe it was, said she. But it was, I said. It was idle curiosity to know whether the house was inhabited. As I passed it, going down to the clubhouse, I felt sure it was empty, but coming back I felt so sure that there was someone there that I rapped at the door, and indeed walked round it. Hugh had preceded us upstairs, as she lingered a little. And there was no one there? she asked. Its odd I had just the same feeling as you about it. That explains planchette writing gardener over and over again, said I. You had the gardeners cottage on your mind. How ingenious! said Margaret. Hurry up and dress. A gleam of strong moonlight between my drawn curtains when I went up to bed that night led me to look out. My room faced the garden and the fields which I had traversed that afternoon, and all was vividly illuminated by the full moon. The thatched cottage with its white walls close by the stream was very distinct, and once more, I suppose, the reflection of the light on the glass of one of its windows made it appear that the room was lit within. It struck me as odd that twice that day this illusion should have been presented to me, but now a yet odder thing happened. Even as I looked the light was extinguished. The morning did not at all bear out the fine promise of the clear night, for when I woke the wind was squealing, and sheets of rain from the southwest were dashed against my panes. Golf was wholly out of the question, and, though the violence of the storm abated a little in the afternoon, the rain dripped with a steady sullenness. But I wearied of indoors, and, since the two others entirely refused to set foot outside, I went forth mackintoshed to get a breath of air. By way of an object in my tramp, I took the road to the links in preference to the muddy shortcut through the fields, with the intention of engaging a couple of caddies for Hugh and myself next morning, and lingered awhile over illustrated papers in the smokingroom. I must have read for longer than I knew, for a sudden beam of sunset light suddenly illuminated my page, and looking up, I saw that the rain had ceased, and that evening was fast coming on. So instead of taking the long detour by the road again, I set forth homewards by the path across the fields. That gleam of sunset was the last of the day, and once again, just as twentyfour hours ago, I crossed the footbridge in the gloaming. Till that moment, as far as I was aware, I had not thought at all about the cottage there, but now in a flash the light I had seen there last night, suddenly extinguished, recalled itself to my mind, and at the same moment I felt that invincible conviction that the cottage was tenanted. Simultaneously in these swift processes of thought I looked towards it, and saw standing by the door the figure of a man. In the dusk I could distinguish nothing of his face, if indeed it was turned to me, and only got the impression of a tallish fellow, thickly built. He opened the door, from which there came a dim light as of a lamp, entered, and shut it after him. So then my conviction was right. Yet I had been distinctly told that the cottage was empty who, then, was he that entered as if returning home? Once more, this time with a certain qualm of fear, I rapped on the door, intending to put some trivial question; and rapped again, this time more drastically, so that there could be no question that my summons was unheard. But still I got no reply, and finally I tried the handle of the door. It was locked. Then, with difficulty mastering an increasing terror, I made the circuit of the cottage, peering into each unshuttered window. All was dark within, though but two minutes ago I had seen the gleam of light escape from the opened door. Just because some chain of conjecture was beginning to form itself in my mind, I made no allusion to this odd adventure, and after dinner Margaret, amid protests from Hugh, got out the planchette which had persisted in writing gardener. My surmise was, of course, utterly fantastic, but I wanted to convey no suggestion of any sort to Margaret.  For a long time the pencil skated over her paper making loops and curves and peaks like a temperature chart, and she had begun to yawn and weary over her experiment before any coherent word emerged. And then, in the oddest way, her head nodded forward and she seemed to have fallen asleep. Hugh looked up from his book and spoke in a whisper to me. She fell asleep the other night over it, he said. Margarets eyes were closed, and she breathed the long, quiet breaths of slumber, and then her hand began to move with a curious firmness. Right across the big sheet of paper went a level line of writing, and at the end her hand stopped with a jerk, and she woke. She looked at the paper. Hullo, she said. Ah, one of you has been playing a trick on me! We assured her that this was not so, and she read what she had written. Gardener, gardener, it ran. I am the gardener. I want to come in. I cant find her here. O Lord, that gardener again! said Hugh. Looking up from the paper, I saw Margarets eyes fixed on mine, and even before she spoke I knew what her thought was. Did you come home by the empty cottage? she asked. Yes why? Still empty? she said in a low voice. Oror anything else? I did not want to tell her just what I had seenor what, at any rate, I thought I had seen. If there was going to be anything odd, anything worth observation, it was far better that our respective impressions should not fortify each other. I tapped again, and there was no answer, I said. Presently there was a move to bed Margaret initiated it, and after she had gone upstairs Hugh and I went to the front door to interrogate the weather. Once more the moon shone in a clear sky, and we strolled out along the flagged path that fronted the house. Suddenly Hugh turned quickly and pointed to the angle of the house. Who on earth is that? he said. Look! There! He has gone round the corner. I had but the glimpse of a tallish man of heavy build. Didnt you see him? asked Hugh. Ill just go round the house, and find him; I dont want anyone prowling round us at night. Wait here, will you, and if he comes round the other corner ask him what his business is. Hugh had left me, in our stroll, close by the front door which was open, and there I waited until he should have made his circuit. He had hardly disappeared when I heard, quite distinctly, a rather quick but heavy footfall coming along the paved walk towards me from the opposite direction. But there was absolutely no one to be seen who made this sound of rapid walking. Closer and closer to me came the steps of the invisible one, and then with a shudder of horror I felt somebody unseen push by me as I stood on the threshold. That shudder was not merely of the spirit, for the touch of him was that of ice on my hand. I tried to seize this impalpable intruder, but he slipped from me, and next moment I heard his steps on the parquet of the floor inside. Some door within opened and shut, and I heard no more of him. Next moment Hugh came running round the corner of the house from which the sound of steps had approached. But where is he? he asked. He was not twenty yards in front of mea big, tall fellow. I saw nobody, I said. I heard his step along the walk, but there was nothing to be seen. And then? asked Hugh. Whatever it was seemed to brush by me, and go into the house, said I. There had certainly been no sound of steps on the bare oak stairs, and we searched room after room through the ground floor of the house. The diningroom door and that of the smokingroom were locked, that into the drawingroom was open, and the only other door which could have furnished the impression of an opening and a shutting was that into the kitchen and servants quarters. Here again our quest was fruitless; through pantry and scullery and bootroom and servants hall we searched, but all was empty and quiet. Finally we came to the kitchen, which too was empty. But by the fire there was set a rockingchair, and this was oscillating to and fro as if someone, lately sitting there, had just quitted it. There it stood gently rocking, and this seemed to convey the sense of a presence, invisible now, more than even the sight of him who surely had been sitting there could have done. I remember wanting to steady it and stop it, and yet my hand refused to go forth to it. What we had seen, and in especial what we had not seen, would have been sufficient to furnish most people with a broken night, and assuredly I was not among the strongminded exceptions. Long I lay wideeyed and openeared, and when at last I dozed I was plucked from the borderland of sleep by the sound, muffled but unmistakable, of someone moving about the house. It occurred to me that the steps might be those of Hugh conducting a lonely exploration, but even while I wondered a tap came at the door of communication between our rooms, and, in answer to my response, it appeared that he had come to see whether it was I thus uneasily wandering. Even as we spoke the step passed my door, and the stairs leading to the floor above creaked to its ascent. Next moment it sounded directly above our heads in some attics in the roof. Those are not the servants bedrooms, said Hugh. No one sleeps there. Let us look once more it must be somebody. With lit candles we made our stealthy way upstairs, and just when we were at the top of the flight, Hugh, a step ahead of me, uttered a sharp exclamation. But something is passing by me! he said, and he clutched at the empty air. Even as he spoke, I experienced the same sensation, and the moment afterwards the stairs below us creaked again, as the unseen passed down. All night long that sound of steps moved about the passages, as if someone was searching the house, and as I lay and listened that message which had come through the pencil of the planchette to Margarets fingers occurred to me. I want to come in. I cannot find her here.  Indeed someone had come in, and was sedulous in his search. He was the gardener, it would seem. But what gardener was this invisible seeker, and for whom did he seek? Even as when some bodily pain ceases it is difficult to recall with any vividness what the pain was like, so next morning, as I dressed, I found myself vainly trying to recapture the horror of the spirit which had accompanied these nocturnal adventures. I remembered that something within me had sickened as I watched the movements of the rockingchair the night before and as I heard the steps along the paved way outside, and by that invisible pressure against me knew that someone had entered the house. But now in the sane and tranquil morning, and all day under the serene winter sun, I could not realise what it had been. The presence, like the bodily pain, had to be there for the realisation of it, and all day it was absent. Hugh felt the same; he was even disposed to be humorous on the subject. Well, hes had a good look, he said, whoever he is, and whomever he was looking for. By the way, not a word to Margaret, please. She heard nothing of these perambulations, nor of the entry ofof whatever it was. Not gardener, anyhow who ever heard of a gardener spending his time walking about the house? If there were steps all over the potatopatch, I might have been with you. Margaret had arranged to drive over to have tea with some friends of hers that afternoon, and in consequence Hugh and I refreshed ourselves at the clubhouse after our game, and it was already dusk when for the third day in succession I passed homewards by the whitewashed cottage. But tonight I had no sense of it being subtly occupied; it stood mournfully desolate, as is the way of untenanted houses, and no light nor semblance of such gleamed from its windows. Hugh, to whom I had told the odd impressions I had received there, gave them a reception as flippant as that which he had accorded to the memories of the night, and he was still being humorous about them when we came to the door of the house. A psychic disturbance, old boy, he said. Like a cold in the head. Hullo, the doors locked. He rang and rapped, and from inside came the noise of a turned key and withdrawn bolts. Whats the door locked for? he asked his servant who opened it. The man shifted from one foot to the other. The bell rang half an hour ago, sir, he said, and when I came to answer it there was a man standing outside, and Well? asked Hugh. I didnt like the looks of him, sir, he said, and I asked him his business. He didnt say anything, and then he must have gone pretty smartly away, for I never saw him go. Where did he seem to go? asked Hugh, glancing at me. I cant rightly say, sir. He didnt seem to go at all. Something seemed to brush by me. Thatll do, said Hugh rather sharply. Margaret had not come in from her visit, but when soon after the crunch of the motor wheels was heard Hugh reiterated his wish that nothing should be said to her about the impression which now, apparently, a third person shared with us. She came in with a flush of excitement on her face. Never laugh at my planchette again, she said. Ive heard the most extraordinary story from Maud Ashfieldhorrible, but so frightfully interesting. Out with it, said Hugh. Well, there was a gardener here, she said. He used to live at that little cottage by the footbridge, and when the family were up in London he and his wife used to be caretakers and live here. Hughs glance and mine met then he turned away. I knew, as certainly as if I was in his mind, that his thoughts were identical with my own. He married a wife much younger than himself, continued Margaret, and gradually he became frightfully jealous of her. And one day in a fit of passion he strangled her with his own hands. A little while after someone came to the cottage, and found him sobbing over her, trying to restore her. They went for the police, but before they came he had cut his own throat. Isnt it all horrible? But surely its rather curious that the planchette said Gardener. I am the gardener. I want to come in. I cant find her here. You see I knew nothing about it. I shall do planchette again tonight. Oh dear me, the post goes in half an hour, and I have a whole budget to send. But respect my planchette for the future, Hughie. We talked the situation out when she had gone, but Hugh, unwillingly convinced and yet unwilling to admit that something more than coincidence lay behind that planchette nonsense, still insisted that Margaret should be told nothing of what we had heard and seen in the house last night, and of the strange visitor who again this evening, so we must conclude, had made his entry. Shell be frightened, he said, and shell begin imagining things. As for the planchette, as likely as not it will do nothing but scribble and make loops. Whats that? Yes come in! There had come from somewhere in the room one sharp, peremptory rap. I did not think it came from the door, but Hugh, when no response replied to his words of admittance, jumped up and opened it. He took a few steps into the hall outside, and returned. Didnt you hear it? he asked. Certainly. No one there? Not a soul. Hugh came back to the fireplace and rather irritably threw a cigarette which he had just lit into the fender. That was rather a nasty jar, he observed; and if you ask me whether I feel comfortable, I can tell you I never felt less comfortable in my life. Im frightened, if you want to know, and I believe you are too. I hadnt the smallest intention of denying this, and he went on. Weve got to keep a hand on ourselves, he said. Theres nothing so infectious as fear, and Margaret mustnt catch it from us. But theres something more than our fear, you know. Something has got into the house and were up against it. I never believed in such things before. Lets face it for a minute. What is it anyhow? If you want to know what I think it is, said I, I believe it to be the spirit of the man who strangled his wife and then cut his throat. But I dont see how it can hurt us. Were afraid of our own fear really. But were up against it, said Hugh. And what will it do? Good Lord, if I only knew what it would do I shouldnt mind. Its the not knowing.  Well, its time to dress. Margaret was in her highest spirits at dinner.


Knowing nothing of the manifestations of that presence which had taken place in the last twentyfour hours, she thought it absorbingly interesting that her planchette should have guessed (so ran her phrase) about the gardener, and from that topic she flitted to an equally interesting form of patience for three which her friend had showed her, promising to initiate us into it after dinner. This she did, and, not knowing that we both above all things wanted to keep planchette at a distance, she was delighted with the success of her game. But suddenly she observed that the evening was burning rapidly away, and swept the cards together at the conclusion of a hand. Now just half an hour of planchette, she said. Oh, maynt we play one more hand? asked Hugh. Its the best game Ive seen for years. Planchette will be dismally slow after this. Darling, if the gardener will only communicate again, it wont be slow, said she. But it is such drivel, said Hugh. How rude you are! Read your book, then. Margaret had already got out her machine and a sheet of paper, when Hugh rose. Please dont do it tonight, Margaret, he said. But why? You neednt attend. Well, I ask you not to, anyhow, said he. Margaret looked at him closely. Hughie, youve got something on your mind, she said. Out with it. I believe youre nervous. You think there is something queer about. What is it? I could see Hugh hesitating as to whether to tell her or not, and I gathered that he chose the chance of her planchette inanely scribbling. Go on, then, he said. Margaret hesitated she clearly did not want to vex Hugh, but his insistence must have seemed to her most unreasonable. Well, just ten minutes, she said, and I promise not to think of gardeners. She had hardly laid her hand on the board when her head fell forward, and the machine began moving. I was sitting close to her, and as it rolled steadily along the paper the writing became visible. I have come in, it ran, but still I cant find her. Are you hiding her? I will search the room where you are. What else was written but still concealed underneath the planchette I did not know, for at that moment a current of icy air swept round the room, and at the door, this time unmistakably, came a loud, peremptory knock. Hugh sprang to his feet. Margaret, wake up, he said, something is coming! The door opened, and there moved in the figure of a man. He stood just within the door, his head bent forward, and he turned it from side to side, peering, it would seem, with eyes staring and infinitely sad, into every corner of the room. Margaret, Margaret, cried Hugh again. But Margarets eyes were open too; they were fixed on this dreadful visitor. Be quiet, Hughie, she said below her breath, rising as she spoke. The ghost was now looking directly at her. Once the lips above the thick, rustcoloured beard moved, but no sound came forth, the mouth only moved and slavered. He raised his head, and, horror upon horror, I saw that one side of his neck was laid open in a red, glistening gash.  For how long that pause continued, when we all three stood stiff and frozen in some deadly inhibition to move or speak, I have no idea I suppose that at the utmost it was a dozen seconds. Then the spectre turned, and went out as it had come. We heard his steps pass along the parqueted floor; there was the sound of bolts withdrawn from the front door, and with a crash that shook the house it slammed to. Its all over, said Margaret. God have mercy on him! Now the reader may put precisely what construction he pleases on this visitation from the dead. He need not, indeed, consider it to have been a visitation from the dead at all, but say that there had been impressed on the scene, where this murder and suicide happened, some sort of emotional record, which in certain circumstances could translate itself into images visible and invisible. Waves of ether, or whatnot, may conceivably retain the impress of such scenes; they may be held, so to speak, in solution, ready to be precipitated. Or he may hold that the spirit of the dead man indeed made itself manifest, revisiting in some sort of spiritual penance and remorse the place where his crime was committed. Naturally, no materialist will entertain such an explanation for an instant, but then there is no one so obstinately unreasonable as the materialist. Beyond doubt a dreadful deed was done there, and Margarets last utterance is not inapplicable. The HorrorHorn For the past ten days Alhubel had basked in the radiant midwinter weather proper to its eminence of over 6,000 feet. From rising to setting the sun (so surprising to those who have hitherto associated it with a pale, tepid plate indistinctly shining through the murky air of England) had blazed its way across the sparkling blue, and every night the serene and windless frost had made the stars sparkle like illuminated diamond dust. Sufficient snow had fallen before Christmas to content the skiers, and the big rink, sprinkled every evening, had given the skaters each morning a fresh surface on which to perform their slippery antics. Bridge and dancing served to while away the greater part of the night, and to me, now for the first time tasting the joys of a winter in the Engadine, it seemed that a new heaven and a new earth had been lighted, warmed, and refrigerated for the special benefit of those who like myself had been wise enough to save up their days of holiday for the winter. But a break came in these ideal conditions one afternoon the sun grew vapourveiled and up the valley from the northwest a wind frozen with miles of travel over icebound hillsides began scouting through the calm halls of the heavens. Soon it grew dusted with snow, first in small flakes driven almost horizontally before its congealing breath and then in larger tufts as of swansdown. And though all day for a fortnight before the fate of nations and life and death had seemed to me of far less importance than to get certain tracings of the skateblades on the ice of proper shape and size, it now seemed that the one paramount consideration was to hurry back to the hotel for shelter it was wiser to leave rockingturns alone than to be frozen in their quest. I had come out here with my cousin, Professor Ingram, the celebrated physiologist and Alpine climber. During the serenity of the last fortnight he had made a couple of notable winter ascents, but this morning his weatherwisdom had mistrusted the signs of the heavens, and instead of attempting the ascent of the Piz Passug he had waited to see whether his misgivings justified themselves. So there he sat now in the hall of the admirable hotel with his feet on the hotwater pipes and the latest delivery of the English post in his hands. This contained a pamphlet concerning the result of the Mount Everest expedition, of which he had just finished the perusal when I entered. A very interesting report, he said, passing it to me, and they certainly deserve to succeed next year. But who can tell, what that final six thousand feet may entail? Six thousand feet more when you have already accomplished twentythree thousand does not seem much, but at present no one knows whether the human frame can stand exertion at such a height. It may affect not the lungs and heart only, but possibly the brain. Delirious hallucinations may occur. In fact, if I did not know better, I should have said that one such hallucination had occurred to the climbers already. And what was that? I asked. You will find that they thought they came across the tracks of some naked human foot at a great altitude. That looks at first sight like an hallucination. What more natural than that a brain excited and exhilarated by the extreme height should have interpreted certain marks in the snow as the footprints of a human being? Every bodily organ at these altitudes is exerting itself to the utmost to do its work, and the brain seizes on those marks in the snow and says Yes, Im all right, Im doing my job, and I perceive marks in the snow which I affirm are human footprints. You know, even at this altitude, how restless and eager the brain is, how vividly, as you told me, you dream at night. Multiply that stimulus and that consequent eagerness and restlessness by three, and how natural that the brain should harbour illusions! What after all is the delirium which often accompanies high fever but the effort of the brain to do its work under the pressure of feverish conditions? It is so eager to continue perceiving that it perceives things which have no existence! And yet you dont think that these naked human footprints were illusions, said I. You told me you would have thought so, if you had not known better. He shifted in his chair and looked out of the window a moment. The air was thick now with the density of the big snowflakes that were driven along by the squealing northwest gale. Quite so, he said. In all probability the human footprints were real human footprints. I expect that they were the footprints, anyhow, of a being more nearly a man than anything else. My reason for saying so is that I know such beings exist. I have even seen quite near at handand I assure you I did not wish to be nearer in spite of my intense curiositythe creature, shall we say, which would make such footprints. And if the snow was not so dense, I could show you the place where I saw him. He pointed straight out of the window, where across the valley lies the huge tower of the Ungeheuerhorn with the carved pinnacle of rock at the top like some gigantic rhinoceroshorn. On one side only, as I knew, was the mountain practicable, and that for none but the finest climbers; on the other three a succession of ledges and precipices rendered it unscalable. Two thousand feet of sheer rock form the tower; below are five hundred feet of fallen boulders, up to the edge of which grow dense woods of larch and pine. Upon the Ungeheuerhorn? I asked. Yes. Up till twenty years ago it had never been ascended, and I, like several others, spent a lot of time in trying to find a route up it. My guide and I sometimes spent three nights together at the hut beside the Blumen glacier, prowling round it, and it was by luck really that we found the route, for the mountain looks even more impracticable from the far side than it does from this. But one day we found a long, transverse fissure in the side which led to a negotiable ledge; then there came a slanting ice couloir which you could not see till you got to the foot of it. However, I need not go into that. The big room where we sat was filling up with cheerful groups driven indoors by this sudden gale and snowfall, and the cackle of merry tongues grew loud. The band, too, that invariable appanage of teatime at Swiss resorts, had begun to tune up for the usual potpourri from the works of Puccini. Next moment the sugary, sentimental melodies began. Strange contrast! said Ingram. Here are we sitting warm and cosy, our ears pleasantly tickled with these little baby tunes and outside is the great storm growing more violent every moment, and swirling round the austere cliffs of the Ungeheuerhorn the HorrorHorn, as indeed it was to me. I want to hear all about it, I said. Every detail make a short story long, if its short. I want to know why its your HorrorHorn? Well, Chanton and I (he was my guide) used to spend days prowling about the cliffs, making a little progress on one side and then being stopped, and gaining perhaps five hundred feet on another side and then being confronted by some insuperable obstacle, till the day when by luck we found the route. Chanton never liked the job, for some reason that I could not fathom. It was not because of the difficulty or danger of the climbing, for he was the most fearless man I have ever met when dealing with rocks and ice, but he was always insistent that we should get off the mountain and back to the Blumen hut before sunset. He was scarcely easy even when we had got back to shelter and locked and barred the door, and I well remember one night when, as we ate our supper, we heard some animal, a wolf probably, howling somewhere out in the night. A positive panic seized him, and I dont think he closed his eyes till morning. It struck me then that there might be some grisly legend about the mountain, connected possibly with its name, and next day I asked him why the peak was called the HorrorHorn. He put the question off at first, and said that, like the Schreckhorn, its name was due to its precipices and falling stones; but when I pressed him further he acknowledged that there was a legend about it, which his father had told him. There were creatures, so it was supposed, that lived in its caves, things human in shape, and covered, except for the face and hands, with long black hair. They were dwarfs in size, four feet high or thereabouts, but of prodigious strength and agility, remnants of some wild primeval race. It seemed that they were still in an upward stage of evolution, or so I guessed, for the story ran that sometimes girls had been carried off by them, not as prey, and not for any such fate as for those captured by cannibals, but to be bred from. Young men also had been raped by them, to be mated with the females of their tribe. All this looked as if the creatures, as I said, were tending towards humanity. But naturally I did not believe a word of it, as applied to the conditions of the present day. Centuries ago, conceivably, there may have been such beings, and, with the extraordinary tenacity of tradition, the news of this had been handed down and was still current round the hearths of the peasants. As for their numbers, Chanton told me that three had been once seen together by a man who owing to his swiftness on skis had escaped to tell the tale. This man, he averred, was no other than his grandfather, who had been benighted one winter evening as he passed through the dense woods below the Ungeheuerhorn, and Chanton supposed that they had been driven down to these lower altitudes in search of food during severe winter weather, for otherwise the recorded sights of them had always taken place among the rocks of the peak itself. They had pursued his grandfather, then a young man, at an extraordinarily swift canter, running sometimes upright as men run, sometimes on allfours in the manner of beasts, and their howls were just such as that we had heard that night in the Blumen hut. Such at any rate was the story Chanton told me, and, like you, I regarded it as the very moonshine of superstition. But the very next day I had reason to reconsider my judgment about it. It was on that day that after a week of exploration we hit on the only route at present known to the top of our peak. We started as soon as there was light enough to climb by, for, as you may guess, on very difficult rocks it is impossible to climb by lantern or moonlight. We hit on the long fissure I have spoken of, we explored the ledge which from below seemed to end in nothingness, and with an hours stepcutting ascended the couloir which led upwards from it. From there onwards it was a rockclimb, certainly of considerable difficulty, but with no heartbreaking discoveries ahead, and it was about nine in the morning that we stood on the top. We did not wait there long, for that side of the mountain is raked by falling stones loosened, when the sun grows hot, from the ice that holds them, and we made haste to pass the ledge where the falls are most frequent. After that there was the long fissure to descend, a matter of no great difficulty, and we were at the end of our work by midday, both of us, as you may imagine, in the state of the highest elation. A long and tiresome scramble among the huge boulders at the foot of the cliff then lay before us. Here the hillside is very porous and great caves extend far into the mountain. We had unroped at the base of the fissure, and were picking our way as seemed good to either of us among these fallen rocks, many of them bigger than an ordinary house, when, on coming round the corner of one of these, I saw that which made it clear that the stories Chanton had told me were no figment of traditional superstition. Not twenty yards in front of me lay one of the beings of which he had spoken. There it sprawled naked and basking on its back with face turned up to the sun, which its narrow eyes regarded unwinking. In form it was completely human, but the growth of hair that covered limbs and trunk alike almost completely hid the suntanned skin beneath. But its face, save for the down on its cheeks and chin, was hairless, and I looked on a countenance the sensual and malevolent bestiality of which froze me with horror. Had the creature been an animal, one would have felt scarcely a shudder at the gross animalism of it; the horror lay in the fact that it was a man. There lay by it a couple of gnawed bones, and, its meal finished, it was lazily licking its protuberant lips, from which came a purring murmur of content. With one hand it scratched the thick hair on its belly, in the other it held one of these bones, which presently split in half beneath the pressure of its finger and thumb. But my horror was not based on the information of what happened to those men whom these creatures caught, it was due only to my proximity to a thing so human and so infernal. The peak, of which the ascent had a moment ago filled us with such elated satisfaction, became to me an Ungeheuerhorn indeed, for it was the home of beings more awful than the delirium of nightmare could ever have conceived. Chanton was a dozen paces behind me, and with a backward wave of my hand I caused him to halt. Then withdrawing myself with infinite precaution, so as not to attract the gaze of that basking creature, I slipped back round the rock, whispered to him what I had seen, and with blanched faces we made a long detour, peering round every corner, and crouching low, not knowing that at any step we might not come upon another of these beings, or that from the mouth of one of these caves in the mountainside there might not appear another of those hairless and dreadful faces, with perhaps this time the breasts and insignia of womanhood. That would have been the worst of all. Luck favoured us, for we made our way among the boulders and shifting stones, the rattle of which might at any moment have betrayed us, without a repetition of my experience, and once among the trees we ran as if the Furies themselves were in pursuit. Well now did I understand, though I dare say I cannot convey, the qualms of Chantons mind when he spoke to me of these creatures. Their very humanity was what made them so terrible, the fact that they were of the same race as ourselves, but of a type so abysmally degraded that the most brutal and inhuman of men would have seemed angelic in comparison. The music of the small band was over before he had finished the narrative, and the chattering groups round the teatable had dispersed. He paused a moment. There was a horror of the spirit, he said, which I experienced then, from which, I verily believe, I have never entirely recovered. I saw then how terrible a living thing could be, and how terrible, in consequence, was life itself. In us all I suppose lurks some inherited germ of that ineffable bestiality, and who knows whether, sterile as it has apparently become in the course of centuries, it might not fructify again. When I saw that creature sun itself, I looked into the abyss out of which we have crawled. And these creatures are trying to crawl out of it now, if they exist any longer. Certainly for the last twenty years there has been no record of their being seen, until we come to this story of the footprint seen by the climbers on Everest. If that is authentic, if the party did not mistake the footprint of some bear, or whatnot, for a human tread, it seems as if still this bestranded remnant of mankind is in existence. Now, Ingram, had told his story well; but sitting in this warm and civilised room, the horror which he had clearly felt had not communicated itself to me in any very vivid manner. Intellectually, I agreed, I could appreciate his horror, but certainly my spirit felt no shudder of interior comprehension. But it is odd, I said, that your keen interest in physiology did not disperse your qualms. You were looking, so I take it, at some form of man more remote probably than the earliest human remains. Did not something inside you say This is of absorbing significance? He shook his head. No I only wanted to get away, said he. It was not, as I have told you, the terror of what according to Chantons story, might await us if we were captured; it was sheer horror at the creature itself. I quaked at it. The snowstorm and the gale increased in violence that night, and I slept uneasily, plucked again and again from slumber by the fierce battling of the wind that shook my windows as if with an imperious demand for admittance. It came in billowy gusts, with strange noises intermingled with it as for a moment it abated, with flutings and moanings that rose to shrieks as the fury of it returned. These noises, no doubt, mingled themselves with my drowsed and sleepy consciousness, and once I tore myself out of nightmare, imagining that the creatures of the HorrorHorn had gained footing on my balcony and were rattling at the windowbolts. But before morning the gale had died away, and I awoke to see the snow falling dense and fast in a windless air. For three days it continued, without intermission, and with its cessation there came a frost such as I have never felt before. Fifty degrees were registered one night, and more the next, and what the cold must have been on the cliffs of the Ungeheuerhorn I cannot imagine. Sufficient, so I thought, to have made an end altogether of its secret inhabitants my cousin, on that day twenty years ago, had missed an opportunity for study which would probably never fall again either to him or another. I received one morning a letter from a friend saying that he had arrived at the neighbouring winter resort of St. Luigi, and proposing that I should come over for a mornings skating and lunch afterwards. The place was not more than a couple of miles off, if one took the path over the low, pineclad foothills above which lay the steep woods below the first rocky slopes of the Ungeheuerhorn; and accordingly, with a knapsack containing skates on my back, I went on skis over the wooded slopes and down by an easy descent again on to St. Luigi. The day was overcast, clouds entirely obscured the higher peaks though the sun was visible, pale and unluminous, through the mists. But as the morning went on, it gained the upper hand, and I slid down into St. Luigi beneath a sparkling firmament. We skated and lunched, and then, since it looked as if thick weather was coming up again, I set out early about three oclock for my return journey. Hardly had I got into the woods when the clouds gathered thick above, and streamers and skeins of them began to descend among the pines through which my path threaded its way. In ten minutes more their opacity had so increased that I could hardly see a couple of yards in front of me. Very soon I became aware that I must have got off the path, for snowcowled shrubs lay directly in my way, and, casting back to find it again, I got altogether confused as to direction. But, though progress was difficult, I knew I had only to keep on the ascent, and presently I should come to the brow of these low foothills, and descend into the open valley where Alhubel stood. So on I went, stumbling and sliding over obstacles, and unable, owing to the thickness of the snow, to take off my skis, for I should have sunk over the knees at each step. Still the ascent continued, and looking at my watch I saw that I had already been near an hour on my way from St. Luigi, a period more than sufficient to complete my whole journey. But still I stuck to my idea that though I had certainly strayed far from my proper route a few minutes more must surely see me over the top of the upward way, and I should find the ground declining into the next valley. About now, too, I noticed that the mists were growing suffused with rosecolour, and, though the inference was that it must be close on sunset, there was consolation in the fact that they were there and might lift at any moment and disclose to me my whereabouts. But the fact that night would soon be on me made it needful to bar my mind against that despair of loneliness which so eats out the heart of a man who is lost in woods or on mountainside, that, though still there is plenty of vigour in his limbs, his nervous force is sapped, and he can do no more than lie down and abandon himself to whatever fate may await him.  And then I heard that which made the thought of loneliness seem bliss indeed, for there was a worse fate than loneliness. What I heard resembled the howl of a wolf, and it came from not far in front of me where the ridgewas it a ridge?still rose higher in vestment of pines. From behind me came a sudden puff of wind, which shook the frozen snow from the drooping pinebranches, and swept away the mists as a broom sweeps the dust from the floor. Radiant above me were the unclouded skies, already charged with the red of the sunset, and in front I saw that I had come to the very edge of the wood through which I had wandered so long. But it was no valley into which I had penetrated, for there right ahead of me rose the steep slope of boulders and rocks soaring upwards to the foot of the Ungeheuerhorn. What, then, was that cry of a wolf which had made my heart stand still? I saw. Not twenty yards from me was a fallen tree, and leaning against the trunk of it was one of the denizens of the HorrorHorn, and it was a woman. She was enveloped in a thick growth of hair grey and tufted, and from her head it streamed down over her shoulders and her bosom, from which hung withered and pendulous breasts. And looking on her face I comprehended not with my mind alone, but with a shudder of my spirit, what Ingram had felt. Never had nightmare fashioned so terrible a countenance; the beauty of sun and stars and of the beasts of the field and the kindly race of men could not atone for so hellish an incarnation of the spirit of life. A fathomless bestiality modelled the slavering mouth and the narrow eyes; I looked into the abyss itself and knew that out of that abyss on the edge of which I leaned the generations of men had climbed. What if that ledge crumbled in front of me and pitched me headlong into its nethermost depths?  In one hand she held by the horns a chamois that kicked and struggled. A blow from its hindleg caught her withered thigh, and with a grunt of anger she seized the leg in her other hand, and, as a man may pull from its sheath a stem of meadowgrass, she plucked it off the body, leaving the torn skin hanging round the gaping wound. Then putting the red, bleeding member to her mouth she sucked at it as a child sucks a stick of sweetmeat. Through flesh and gristle her short, brown teeth penetrated, and she licked her lips with a sound of purring. Then dropping the leg by her side, she looked again at the body of the prey now quivering in its deathconvulsion, and with finger and thumb gouged out one of its eyes. She snapped her teeth on it, and it cracked like a softshelled nut. It must have been but a few seconds that I stood watching her, in some indescribable catalepsy of terror, while through my brain there pealed the paniccommand of my mind to my stricken limbs, Begone, begone, while there is time. Then, recovering the power of my joints and muscles, I tried to slip behind a tree and hide myself from this apparition. But the womanshall I say?must have caught my stir of movement, for she raised her eyes from her living feast and saw me. She craned forward her neck, she dropped her prey, and half rising began to move towards me. As she did this, she opened her mouth, and gave forth a howl such as I had heard a moment before. It was answered by another, but faintly and distantly. Sliding and slipping, with the toes of my skis tripping in the obstacles below the snow, I plunged forward down the hill between the pinetrunks. The low sun already sinking behind some rampart of mountain in the west reddened the snow and the pines with its ultimate rays. My knapsack with the skates in it swung to and fro on my back, one skistick had already been twitched out of my hand by a fallen branch of pine, but not a seconds pause could I allow myself to recover it. I gave no glance behind, and I knew not at what pace my pursuer was on my track, or indeed whether any pursued at all, for my whole mind and energy, now working at full power again under the stress of my panic, was devoted to getting away down the hill and out of the wood as swiftly as my limbs could bear me. For a little while I heard nothing but the hissing snow of my headlong passage, and the rustle of the covered undergrowth beneath my feet, and then, from close at hand behind me, once more the wolfhowl sounded and I heard the plunging of footsteps other than my own. The strap of my knapsack had shifted, and as my skates swung to and fro on my back it chafed and pressed on my throat, hindering free passage of air, of which, God knew, my labouring lungs were in dire need, and without pausing I slipped it free from my neck, and held it in the hand from which my skistick had been jerked. I seemed to go a little more easily for this adjustment, and now, not so far distant, I could see below me the path from which I had strayed. If only I could reach that, the smoother going would surely enable me to outdistance my pursuer, who even on the rougher ground was but slowly overhauling me, and at the sight of that ribbon stretching unimpeded downhill, a ray of hope pierced the black panic of my soul. With that came the desire, keen and insistent, to see who or what it was that was on my tracks, and I spared a backward glance. It was she, the hag whom I had seen at her gruesome meal; her long grey hair flew out behind her, her mouth chattered and gibbered, her fingers made grabbing movements, as if already they closed on me. But the path was now at hand, and the nearness of it I suppose made me incautious. A hump of snowcovered bush lay in my path, and, thinking I could jump over it, I tripped and fell, smothering myself in snow. I heard a maniac noise, half scream, half laugh, from close behind, and before I could recover myself the grabbing fingers were at my neck, as if a steel vice had closed there. But my right hand in which I held my knapsack of skates was free, and with a blind backhanded movement I whirled it behind me at the full length of its strap, and knew that my desperate blow had found its billet somewhere. Even before I could look round I felt the grip on my neck relax, and something subsided into the very bush which had entangled me. I recovered my feet and turned. There she lay, twitching and quivering. The heel of one of my skates piercing the thin alpaca of the knapsack had hit her full on the temple, from which the blood was pouring, but a hundred yards away I could see another such figure coming downwards on my tracks, leaping and bounding. At that panic rose again within me, and I sped off down the white smooth path that led to the lights of the village already beckoning. Never once did I pause in my headlong going there was no safety until I was back among the haunts of men. I flung myself against the door of the hotel, and screamed for admittance, though I had but to turn the handle and enter; and once more as when Ingram had told his tale, there was the sound of the band, and the chatter of voices, and there, too, was he himself, who looked up and then rose swiftly to his feet as I made my clattering entrance. I have seen them too, I cried. Look at my knapsack.