That usually means that Abibel is coming, he said, with withering sarcasm. Come along, Abibel were waiting. Give me the trumpet, whispered the miserable medium. Oh, please give me the trumpet! I shall do nothing of the kind, said Mr. Tilly indignantly. I would sooner use it myself. She gave a sob of relief. Oh do, Mr. Tilly! she said. What a wonderful idea! It will be most interesting to everybody to hear you talk just after youve been killed and before they know. It would be the making of me! And Im not a fraud, at least not altogether. I do have spiritual perceptions sometimes; spirits do communicate through me. And when they wont come through its a dreadful temptation to a poor woman toto supplement them by human agency. And how could I be seeing and hearing you now, and be able to talk to youso pleasantly, Im sureif I hadnt supernormal powers? Youve been killed, so you assure me, and yet I can see and hear you quite plainly. Where did it happen, may I ask, if its not a painful subject? Hyde Park Corner, half an hour ago, said Mr. Tilly. No, it only hurt for a moment, thanks. But about your other suggestion While the third verse of Lead, Kindly Light was going on, Mr. Tilly applied his mind to this difficult situation. It was quite true that if Mrs. Cumberbatch had no power of communication with the unseen she could not possibly have seen him. But she evidently had, and had heard him too, for their conversation had certainly been conducted on the spiritplane, with perfect lucidity. Naturally, now that he was a genuine spirit, he did not want to be mixed up in fraudulent mediumship, for he felt that such a thing would seriously compromise him on the other side, where, probably, it was widely known that Mrs. Cumberbatch was a person to be avoided. But, on the other hand, having so soon found a medium through whom he could communicate with his friends, it was hard to take a high moral view, and say that he would have nothing whatever to do with her. I dont know if I trust you, he said. I shouldnt have a moments peace if I thought that you would be sending all sorts of bogus messages from me to the circle, which I wasnt responsible for at all. Youve done it with Abibel and Mespot. How can I know that when I dont choose to communicate through you, you wont make up all sorts of piffle on your own account? She positively squirmed in her chair. Oh, Ill turn over a new leaf, she said. I will leave all that sort of thing behind me. And I am a medium. Look at me! Arent I more real to you than any of the others? Dont I belong to your plane in a way that none of the others do? I may be occasionally fraudulent, and I can no more get Napoleon here than I can fly, but Im genuine as well. Oh, Mr. Tilly, be indulgent to us poor human creatures! It isnt so long since you were one of us yourself. The mention of Napoleon, with the information that Mrs. Cumberbatch had never been controlled by that great creature, wounded Mr. Tilly again. Often in this darkened room he had held long colloquies with him, and Napoleon had given him most interesting details of his life on St. Helena, which, so Mr. Tilly had found, were often borne out by Lord Roseberys pleasant volume The Last Phase. But now the whole thing wore a more sinister aspect, and suspicion as solid as certainty bumped against his mind. Confess! he said. Where did you get all that Napoleon talk from? You told us you had never read Lord Roseberys book, and allowed us to look through your library to see that it wasnt there. Be honest for once, Mrs. Cumberbatch. She suppressed a sob. I will, she said. The book was there all the time. I put it into an old cover called Elegant Extracts.  But Im not wholly a fraud. Were talking together, you a spirit and I a mortal female. They cant hear us talk. But only look at me, and youll see.  You can talk to them through me, if youll only be so kind. I dont often get in touch with a genuine spirit like yourself. Mr. Tilly glanced at the other sitters and then back to the medium, who, to keep the others interested, was making weird gurgling noises like an undervitalised siphon. Certainly she was far clearer to him than were the others, and her argument that she was able to see and hear him had great weight. And then a new and curious perception came to him. Her mind seemed spread out before him like a pool of slightly muddy water, and he figured himself as standing on a headerboard above it, perfectly able, if he chose, to immerse himself in it. The objection to so doing was its muddiness, its materiality; the reason for so doing was that he felt that then he would be able to be heard by the others, possibly to be seen by them, certainly to come into touch with them. As it was, the loudest bangs on the table were only faintly perceptible. Im beginning to understand, he said. Oh, Mr. Tilly! Just jump in like a kind good spirit, she said. Make your own testconditions. Put your hand over my mouth to make sure that Im not speaking, and keep hold of the trumpet. And youll promise not to cheat any more? he asked. Never! He made up his mind. All right then, he said, and, so to speak, dived into her mind. He experienced the oddest sensation. It was like passing out of some fine, sunny air into the stuffiest of unventilated rooms. Space and time closed over him again his head swam, his eyes were heavy. Then, with the trumpet in one hand, he laid the other firmly over her mouth. Looking round, he saw that the room seemed almost completely dark, but that the outline of the figures sitting round the table had vastly gained in solidity. Here I am! he said briskly. Miss Soulsby gave a startled exclamation. Thats Mr. Tillys voice! she whispered. Why, of course it is, said Mr. Tilly. Ive just passed over at Hyde Park Corner under a traction engine.  He felt the dead weight of the mediums mind, her conventional conceptions, her mild, unreal piety pressing in on him from all sides, stifling and confusing him. Whatever he said had to pass through muddy water.  Theres a wonderful feeling of joy and lightness, he said. I cant tell you of the sunshine and happiness. Were all very busy and active, helping others. And its such a pleasure, dear friends, to be able to get into touch with you all again. Death is not death it is the gate of life.  He broke off suddenly. Oh, I cant stand this, he said to the medium. You make me talk such twaddle. Do get your stupid mind out of the way. Cant we do anything in which you wont interfere with me so much? Can you give us some spirit lights round the room? suggested Mrs. Cumberbatch in a sleepy voice. You have come through beautifully, Mr. Tilly. Its too dear of you! Youre sure you havent arranged some phosphorescent patches already? asked Mr. Tilly suspiciously. Yes, there are one or two near the chimneypiece, said Mrs. Cumberbatch, but none anywhere else. Dear Mr. Tilly, I swear there are not. Just give us a nice star with long rays on the ceiling! Mr. Tilly was the most goodnatured of men, always willing to help an unattractive female in distress, and whispering to her, I shall require the phosphorescent patches to be given into my hands after the sance, he proceeded, by the mere effort of his imagination, to light a beautiful big star with red and violet rays on the ceiling. Of course it was not nearly as brilliant as his own conception of it, for its light had to pass through the opacity of the mediums mind, but it was still a most striking object, and elicited gasps of applause from the company. To enhance the effect of it he intoned a few very pretty lines about a star by Adelaide Anne Procter, whose poems had always seemed to him to emanate from the topmost peak of Parnassus. Oh, thank you, Mr. Tilly! whispered the medium. It was lovely! Would a photograph of it be permitted on some future occasion, if you would be so kind as to reproduce it again? Oh, I dont know, said Mr. Tilly irritably. I want to get out. Im very hot and uncomfortable. And its all so cheap. Cheap? ejaculated Mrs. Cumberbatch. Why, theres not a medium in London whose future wouldnt be made by a real genuine star like that, say, twice a week. But I wasnt run over in order that I might make the fortune of mediums, said Mr. Tilly. I want to go its all rather degrading. And I want to see something of my new world. I dont know what its like yet. Oh, but, Mr. Tilly, said she. You told us lovely things about it, how busy and happy you were. No, I didnt. It was you who said that, at least it was you who put it into my head. Even as he wished, he found himself emerging from the dull waters of Mrs. Cumberbatchs mind. Theres the whole new world waiting for me, he said. I must go and see it. Ill come back and tell you, for it must be full of marvellous revelations.  Suddenly he felt the hopelessness of it. There was that thick fluid of materiality to pierce, and, as it dripped off him again, he began to see that nothing of that fine rare quality of life which he had just begun to experience, could penetrate these opacities. That was why, perhaps, all that thus came across from the spiritworld, was so stupid, so banal. They, of whom he now was one, could tap on furniture, could light stars, could abound with commonplace, could read as in a book the mind of medium or sitters, but nothing more. They had to pass into the region of gross perceptions, in order to be seen of blind eyes and be heard of deaf ears. Mrs. Cumberbatch stirred. The power is failing, she said, in a deep voice, which Mr. Tilly felt was meant to imitate his own. I must leave you now, dear friends He felt much exasperated. The power isnt failing, he shouted. It wasnt I who said that. But he had emerged too far, and perceived that nobody except the medium heard him. Oh, dont be vexed, Mr. Tilly, she said. Thats only a formula. But youre leaving us very soon. Not time for just one materialisation? They are more convincing than anything to most inquirers. Not one, said he. You dont understand how stifling it is even to speak through you and make stars. But Ill come back as soon as I find theres anything new that I can get through to you. Whats the use of my repeating all that stale stuff about being busy and happy? Theyve been told that often enough already. Besides, I have got to see if its true. Goodbye dont cheat any more. He dropped his card of admittance to the sance on the table and heard murmurs of excitement as he floated off. The news of the wonderful star, and the presence of Mr. Tilly at the sance within half an hour of his death, which at the time was unknown to any of the sitters, spread swiftly through spiritualistic circles. The Psychical Research Society sent investigators to take independent evidence from all those present, but were inclined to attribute the occurrence to a subtle mixture of thoughttransference and unconscious visual impression, when they heard that Miss Soulsby had, a few minutes previously, seen a newsboard in the street outside recording the accident at Hyde Park Corner. This explanation was rather elaborate, for it postulated that Miss Soulsby, thinking of Mr. Tillys nonarrival, had combined that with the accident at Hyde Park Corner, and had probably (though unconsciously) seen the name of the victim on another newsboard and had transferred the whole by telepathy to the mind of the medium. As for the star on the ceiling, though they could not account for it, they certainly found remains of phosphorescent paint on the panels of the wall above the chimneypiece, and came to the conclusion that the star had been produced by some similar contrivance. So they rejected the whole thing, which was a pity, since, for once, the phenomena were absolutely genuine. Miss Soulsby continued to be a constant attendant at Mrs. Cumberbatchs sance, but never experienced the presence of Mr. Tilly again. On that the reader may put any interpretation he pleases. It looks to me somewhat as if he had found something else to do. Mrs. Amworth The village of Maxley, where, last summer and autumn, these strange events took place, lies on a heathery and pineclad upland of Sussex. In all England you could not find a sweeter and saner situation. Should the wind blow from the south, it comes laden with the spices of the sea; to the east high downs protect it from the inclemencies of March; and from the west and north the breezes which reach it travel over miles of aromatic forest and heather. The village itself is insignificant enough in point of population, but rich in amenities and beauty. Halfway down the single street, with its broad road and spacious areas of grass on each side, stands the little Norman Church and the antique graveyard long disused for the rest there are a dozen small, sedate Georgian houses, redbricked and longwindowed, each with a square of flowergarden in front, and an ampler strip behind; a score of shops, and a couple of score of thatched cottages belonging to labourers on neighbouring estates, complete the entire cluster of its peaceful habitations. The general peace, however, is sadly broken on Saturdays and Sundays, for we lie on one of the main roads between London and Brighton and our quiet street becomes a racecourse for flying motorcars and bicycles. A notice just outside the village begging them to go slowly only seems to encourage them to accelerate their speed, for the road lies open and straight, and there is really no reason why they should do otherwise. By way of protest, therefore, the ladies of Maxley cover their noses and mouths with their handkerchiefs as they see a motorcar approaching, though, as the street is asphalted, they need not really take these precautions against dust. But late on Sunday night the horde of scorchers has passed, and we settle down again to five days of cheerful and leisurely seclusion. Railway strikes which agitate the country so much leave us undisturbed because most of the inhabitants of Maxley never leave it at all. I am the fortunate possessor of one of these small Georgian houses, and consider myself no less fortunate in having so interesting and stimulating a neighbour as Francis Urcombe, who, the most confirmed of Maxleyites, has not slept away from his house, which stands just opposite to mine in the village street, for nearly two years, at which date, though still in middle life, he resigned his Physiological Professorship at Cambridge University and devoted himself to the study of those occult and curious phenomena which seem equally to concern the physical and the psychical sides of human nature. Indeed his retirement was not unconnected with his passion for the strange uncharted places that lie on the confines and borders of science, the existence of which is so stoutly denied by the more materialistic minds, for he advocated that all medical students should be obliged to pass some sort of examination in mesmerism, and that one of the tripos papers should be designed to test their knowledge in such subjects as appearances at time of death, haunted houses, vampirism, automatic writing, and possession. Of course they wouldnt listen to me, ran his account of the matter, for there is nothing that these seats of learning are so frightened of as knowledge, and the road to knowledge lies in the study of things like these. The functions of the human frame are, broadly speaking, known. They are a country, anyhow, that has been charted and mapped out. But outside that lie huge tracts of undiscovered country, which certainly exist, and the real pioneers of knowledge are those who, at the cost of being derided as credulous and superstitious, want to push on into those misty and probably perilous places. I felt that I could be of more use by setting out without compass or knapsack into the mists than by sitting in a cage like a canary and chirping about what was known. Besides, teaching is very bad for a man who knows himself only to be a learner you only need to be a selfconceited ass to teach. Here, then, in Francis Urcombe, was a delightful neighbour to one who, like myself, has an uneasy and burning curiosity about what he called the misty and perilous places; and this last spring we had a further and most welcome addition to our pleasant little community, in the person of Mrs. Amworth, widow of an Indian civil servant. Her husband had been a judge in the Northwest Provinces, and after his death at Peshawar she came back to England, and after a year in London found herself starving for the ampler air and sunshine of the country to take the place of the fogs and griminess of town. She had, too, a special reason for settling in Maxley, since her ancestors up till a hundred years ago had long been native to the place, and in the old churchyard, now disused, are many gravestones bearing her maiden name of Chaston. Big and energetic, her vigorous and genial personality speedily woke Maxley up to a higher degree of sociality than it had ever known. Most of us were bachelors or spinsters or elderly folk not much inclined to exert ourselves in the expense and effort of hospitality, and hitherto the gaiety of a small teaparty, with bridge afterwards and goloshes (when it was wet) to trip home in again for a solitary dinner, was about the climax of our festivities. But Mrs. Amworth showed us a more gregarious way, and set an example of luncheonparties and little dinners, which we began to follow. On other nights when no such hospitality was on foot, a lone man like myself found it pleasant to know that a call on the telephone to Mrs. Amworths house not a hundred yards off, and an inquiry as to whether I might come over after dinner for a game of piquet before bedtime, would probably evoke a response of welcome. There she would be, with a comradelike eagerness for companionship, and there was a glass of port and a cup of coffee and a cigarette and a game of piquet. She played the piano, too, in a free and exuberant manner, and had a charming voice and sang to her own accompaniment; and as the days grew long and the light lingered late, we played our game in her garden, which in the course of a few months she had turned from being a nursery for slugs and snails into a glowing patch of luxuriant blossoming. She was always cheery and jolly; she was interested in everything, and in music, in gardening, in games of all sorts was a competent performer. Everybody (with one exception) liked her, everybody felt her to bring with her the tonic of a sunny day. That one exception was Francis Urcombe; he, though he confessed he did not like her, acknowledged that he was vastly interested in her. This always seemed strange to me, for pleasant and jovial as she was, I could see nothing in her that could call forth conjecture or intrigued surmise, so healthy and unmysterious a figure did she present. But of the genuineness of Urcombes interest there could be no doubt; one could see him watching and scrutinising her. In matter of age, she frankly volunteered the information that she was fortyfive; but her briskness, her activity, her unravaged skin, her coalblack hair, made it difficult to believe that she was not adopting an unusual device, and adding ten years on to her age instead of subtracting them. Often, also, as our quite unsentimental friendship ripened, Mrs. Amworth would ring me up and propose her advent. If I was busy writing, I was to give her, so we definitely bargained, a frank negative, and in answer I could hear her jolly laugh and her wishes for a successful evening of work. Sometimes, before her proposal arrived, Urcombe would already have stepped across from his house opposite for a smoke and a chat, and he, hearing who my intending visitor was, always urged me to beg her to come. She and I should play our piquet, said he, and he would look on, if we did not object, and learn something of the game. But I doubt whether he paid much attention to it, for nothing could be clearer than that, under that penthouse of forehead and thick eyebrows, his attention was fixed not on the cards, but on one of the players. But he seemed to enjoy an hour spent thus, and often, until one particular evening in July, he would watch her with the air of a man who has some deep problem in front of him. She, enthusiastically keen about our game, seemed not to notice his scrutiny. Then came that evening, when, as I see in the light of subsequent events, began the first twitching of the veil that hid the secret horror from my eyes. I did not know it then, though I noticed that thereafter, if she rang up to propose coming round, she always asked not only if I was at leisure, but whether Mr. Urcombe was with me. If so, she said, she would not spoil the chat of two old bachelors, and laughingly wished me good night. Urcombe, on this occasion, had been with me for some halfhour before Mrs. Amworths appearance, and had been talking to me about the medieval beliefs concerning vampirism, one of those borderland subjects which he declared had not been sufficiently studied before it had been consigned by the medical profession to the dustheap of exploded superstitions. There he sat, grim and eager, tracing, with that pellucid clearness which had made him in his Cambridge days so admirable a lecturer, the history of those mysterious visitations. In them all there were the same general features one of those ghoulish spirits took up its abode in a living man or woman, conferring supernatural powers of batlike flight and glutting itself with nocturnal bloodfeasts. When its host died it continued to dwell in the corpse, which remained undecayed. By day it rested, by night it left the grave and went on its awful errands. No European country in the Middle Ages seemed to have escaped them; earlier yet, parallels were to be found, in Roman and Greek and in Jewish history. Its a large order to set all that evidence aside as being moonshine, he said. Hundreds of totally independent witnesses in many ages have testified to the occurrence of these phenomena, and theres no explanation known to me which covers all the facts. And if you feel inclined to say Why, then, if these are facts, do we not come across them now? there are two answers I can make you. One is that there were diseases known in the Middle Ages, such as the Black Death, which were certainly existent then and which have become extinct since, but for that reason we do not assert that such diseases never existed. Just as the Black Death visited England and decimated the population of Norfolk, so here in this very district about three hundred years ago there was certainly an outbreak of vampirism, and Maxley was the centre of it. My second answer is even more convincing, for I tell you that vampirism is by no means extinct now. An outbreak of it certainly occurred in India a year or two ago. At that moment I heard my knocker plied in the cheerful and peremptory manner in which Mrs. Amworth is accustomed to announce her arrival, and I went to the door to open it. Come in at once, I said, and save me from having my blood curdled. Mr. Urcombe has been trying to alarm me. Instantly her vital, voluminous presence seemed to fill the room. Ah, but how lovely! she said. I delight in having my blood curdled. Go on with your ghoststory, Mr. Urcombe. I adore ghoststories. I saw that, as his habit was, he was intently observing her. It wasnt a ghoststory exactly, said he. I was only telling our host how vampirism was not extinct yet. I was saying that there was an outbreak of it in India only a few years ago. There was a more than perceptible pause, and I saw that, if Urcombe was observing her, she on her side was observing him with fixed eye and parted mouth. Then her jolly laugh invaded that rather tense silence. Oh, what a shame! she said. Youre not going to curdle my blood at all. Where did you pick up such a tale, Mr. Urcombe? I have lived for years in India and never heard a rumour of such a thing. Some storyteller in the bazaars must have invented it they are famous at that. I could see that Urcombe was on the point of saying something further, but checked himself. Ah! very likely that was it, he said. But something had disturbed our usual peaceful sociability that night, and something had damped Mrs. Amworths usual high spirits. She had no gusto for her piquet, and left after a couple of games. Urcombe had been silent too, indeed he hardly spoke again till she departed. That was unfortunate, he said, for the outbreak ofof a very mysterious disease, let us call it, took place at Peshawar, where she and her husband were. And Well? I asked. He was one of the victims of it, said he. Naturally I had quite forgotten that when I spoke. The summer was unreasonably hot and rainless, and Maxley suffered much from drought, and also from a plague of big black nightflying gnats, the bite of which was very irritating and virulent. They came sailing in of an evening, settling on ones skin so quietly that one perceived nothing till the sharp stab announced that one had been bitten. They did not bite the hands or face, but chose always the neck and throat for their feedingground, and most of us, as the poison spread, assumed a temporary goitre. Then about the middle of August appeared the first of those mysterious cases of illness which our local doctor attributed to the longcontinued heat coupled with the bite of these venomous insects. The patient was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, the son of Mrs. Amworths gardener, and the symptoms were an anaemic pallor and a languid prostration, accompanied by great drowsiness and an abnormal appetite. He had, too, on his throat two small punctures where, so Dr. Ross conjectured, one of these great gnats had bitten him. But the odd thing was that there was no swelling or inflammation round the place where he had been bitten. The heat at this time had begun to abate, but the cooler weather failed to restore him, and the boy, in spite of the quantity of good food which he so ravenously swallowed, wasted away to a skinclad skeleton. I met Dr. Ross in the street one afternoon about this time, and in answer to my inquiries about his patient he said that he was afraid the boy was dying. The case, he confessed, completely puzzled him some obscure form of pernicious anaemia was all he could suggest. But he wondered whether Mr. Urcombe would consent to see the boy, on the chance of his being able to throw some new light on the case, and since Urcombe was dining with me that night, I proposed to Dr. Ross to join us. He could not do this, but said he would look in later. When he came, Urcombe at once consented to put his skill at the others disposal, and together they went off at once. Being thus shorn of my sociable evening, I telephoned to Mrs. Amworth to know if I might inflict myself on her for an hour. Her answer was a welcoming affirmative, and between piquet and music the hour lengthened itself into two. She spoke of the boy who was lying so desperately and mysteriously ill, and told me that she had often been to see him, taking him nourishing and delicate food. But todayand her kind eyes moistened as she spokeshe was afraid she had paid her last visit. Knowing the antipathy between her and Urcombe, I did not tell her that he had been called into consultation; and when I returned home she accompanied me to my door, for the sake of a breath of night air, and in order to borrow a magazine which contained an article on gardening which she wished to read. Ah, this delicious night air, she said, luxuriously sniffing in the coolness. Night air and gardening are the great tonics. There is nothing so stimulating as bare contact with rich mother earth. You are never so fresh as when you have been grubbing in the soilblack hands, black nails, and boots covered with mud. She gave her great jovial laugh. Im a glutton for air and earth, she said. Positively I look forward to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind earth all round me. No leaden caskets for meI have given explicit directions. But what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one cant have everything. The magazine? A thousand thanks, I will faithfully return it. Good night garden and keep your windows open, and you wont have anaemia. I always sleep with my windows open, said I. I went straight up to my bedroom, of which one of the windows looks out over the street, and as I undressed I thought I heard voices talking outside not far away. But I paid no particular attention, put out my lights, and falling asleep plunged into the depths of a most horrible dream, distortedly suggested no doubt, by my last words with Mrs. Amworth. I dreamed that I woke, and found that both my bedroom windows were shut. Halfsuffocating I dreamed that I sprang out of bed, and went across to open them. The blind over the first was drawn down, and pulling it up I saw, with the indescribable horror of incipient nightmare, Mrs. Amworths face suspended close to the pane in the darkness outside, nodding and smiling at me. Pulling down the blind again to keep that terror out, I rushed to the second window on the other side of the room, and there again was Mrs. Amworths face. Then the panic came upon me in full blast; here was I suffocating in the airless room, and whichever window I opened Mrs. Amworths face would float in, like those noiseless black gnats that bit before one was aware. The nightmare rose to screaming point, and with strangled yells I awoke to find my room cool and quiet with both windows open and blinds up and a halfmoon high in its course, casting an oblong of tranquil light on the floor. But even when I was awake the horror persisted, and I lay tossing and turning. I must have slept long before the nightmare seized me, for now it was nearly day, and soon in the east the drowsy eyelids of morning began to lift. I was scarcely downstairs next morningfor after the dawn I slept latewhen Urcombe rang up to know if he might see me immediately. He came in, grim and preoccupied, and I noticed that he was pulling on a pipe that was not even filled. I want your help, he said, and so I must tell you first of all what happened last night. I went round with the little doctor to see his patient, and found him just alive, but scarcely more. I instantly diagnosed in my own mind what this anaemia, unaccountable by any other explanation, meant. The boy is the prey of a vampire. He put his empty pipe on the breakfasttable, by which I had just sat down, and folded his arms, looking at me steadily from under his overhanging brows. Now about last night, he said. I insisted that he should be moved from his fathers cottage into my house. As we were carrying him on a stretcher, whom should we meet but Mrs. Amworth? She expressed shocked surprise that we were moving him. Now why do you think she did that? With a start of horror, as I remembered my dream that night before, I felt an idea come into my mind so preposterous and unthinkable that I instantly turned it out again. I havent the smallest idea, I said. Then listen, while I tell you about what happened later. I put out all light in the room where the boy lay, and watched. One window was a little open, for I had forgotten to close it, and about midnight I heard something outside, trying apparently to push it farther open. I guessed who it wasyes, it was full twenty feet from the groundand I peeped round the corner of the blind. Just outside was the face of Mrs. Amworth and her hand was on the frame of the window. Very softly I crept close, and then banged the window down, and I think I just caught the tip of one of her fingers. But its impossible, I cried. How could she be floating in the air like that? And what had she come for? Dont tell me such Once more, with closer grip, the remembrance of my nightmare seized me. I am telling you what I saw, said he. And all night long, until it was nearly day, she was fluttering outside, like some terrible bat, trying to gain admittance.


Now put together various things I have told you. He began checking them off on his fingers. Number one, he said there was an outbreak of disease similar to that which this boy is suffering from at Peshawar, and her husband died of it. Number two Mrs. Amworth protested against my moving the boy to my house. Number three she, or the demon that inhabits her body, a creature powerful and deadly, tries to gain admittance. And add this, too in medieval times there was an epidemic of vampirism here at Maxley. The vampire, so the accounts run, was found to be Elizabeth Chaston  I see you remember Mrs. Amworths maiden name. Finally, the boy is stronger this morning. He would certainly not have been alive if he had been visited again. And what do you make of it? There was a long silence, during which I found this incredible horror assuming the hues of reality. I have something to add, I said, which may or may not bear on it. You say that thethe spectre went away shortly before dawn. Yes. I told him of my dream, and he smiled grimly. Yes, you did well to awake, he said. That warning came from your subconscious self, which never wholly slumbers, and cried out to you of deadly danger. For two reasons, then, you must help me one to save others, the second to save yourself. What do you want me to do? I asked. I want you first of all to help me in watching this boy, and ensuring that she does not come near him. Eventually I want you to help me in tracking the thing down, in exposing and destroying it. It is not human it is an incarnate fiend. What steps we shall have to take I dont yet know. It was now eleven of the forenoon, and presently I went across to his house for a twelvehour vigil while he slept, to come on duty again that night, so that for the next twentyfour hours either Urcombe or myself was always in the room where the boy, now getting stronger every hour, was lying. The day following was Saturday and a morning of brilliant, pellucid weather, and already when I went across to his house to resume my duty the stream of motors down to Brighton had begun. Simultaneously I saw Urcombe with a cheerful face, which boded good news of his patient, coming out of his house, and Mrs. Amworth, with a gesture of salutation to me and a basket in her hand, walking up the broad strip of grass which bordered the road. There we all three met. I noticed (and saw that Urcombe noticed it too) that one finger of her left hand was bandaged. Good morning to you both, said she. And I hear your patient is doing well, Mr. Urcombe. I have come to bring him a bowl of jelly, and to sit with him for an hour. He and I are great friends. I am overjoyed at his recovery. Urcombe paused a moment, as if making up his mind, and then shot out a pointing finger at her. I forbid that, he said. You shall not sit with him or see him. And you know the reason as well as I do. I have never seen so horrible a change pass over a human face as that which now blanched hers to the colour of a grey mist. She put up her hand as if to shield herself from that pointing finger, which drew the sign of the cross in the air, and shrank back cowering on to the road. There was a wild hoot from a horn, a grinding of brakes, a shouttoo latefrom a passing car, and one long scream suddenly cut short. Her body rebounded from the roadway after the first wheel had gone over it, and the second followed. It lay there, quivering and twitching, and was still. She was buried three days afterwards in the cemetery outside Maxley, in accordance with the wishes she had told me that she had devised about her interment, and the shock which her sudden and awful death had caused to the little community began by degrees to pass off. To two people only, Urcombe and myself, the horror of it was mitigated from the first by the nature of the relief that her death brought; but, naturally enough, we kept our own counsel, and no hint of what greater horror had been thus averted was ever let slip. But, oddly enough, so it seemed to me, he was still not satisfied about something in connection with her, and would give no answer to my questions on the subject. Then as the days of a tranquil mellow September and the October that followed began to drop away like the leaves of the yellowing trees, his uneasiness relaxed. But before the entry of November the seeming tranquillity broke into hurricane. I had been dining one night at the far end of the village, and about eleven oclock was walking home again. The moon was of an unusual brilliance, rendering all that it shone on as distinct as in some etching. I had just come opposite the house which Mrs. Amworth had occupied, where there was a board up telling that it was to let, when I heard the click of her front gate, and next moment I saw, with a sudden chill and quaking of my very spirit, that she stood there. Her profile, vividly illuminated, was turned to me, and I could not be mistaken in my identification of her. She appeared not to see me (indeed the shadow of the yew hedge in front of her garden enveloped me in its blackness) and she went swiftly across the road, and entered the gate of the house directly opposite. There I lost sight of her completely. My breath was coming in short pants as if I had been runningand now indeed I ran, with fearful backward glances, along the hundred yards that separated me from my house and Urcombes. It was to his that my flying steps took me, and next minute I was within. What have you come to tell me? he asked. Or shall I guess? You cant guess, said I. No; its no guess. She has come back and you have seen her. Tell me about it. I gave him my story. Thats Major Pearsalls house, he said. Come back with me there at once. But what can we do? I asked. Ive no idea. Thats what we have got to find out. A minute later, we were opposite the house. When I had passed it before, it was all dark; now lights gleamed from a couple of windows upstairs. Even as we faced it, the front door opened, and next moment Major Pearsall emerged from the gate. He saw us and stopped. Im on my way to Dr. Ross, he said quickly. My wife has been taken suddenly ill. She had been in bed an hour when I came upstairs, and I found her white as a ghost and utterly exhausted. She had been to sleep, it seemedbut you will excuse me. One moment, Major, said Urcombe. Was there any mark on her throat? How did you guess that? said he. There was one of those beastly gnats must have bitten her twice there. She was streaming with blood. And theres someone with her? asked Urcombe. Yes, I roused her maid. He went off, and Urcombe turned to me. I know now what we have to do, he said. Change your clothes, and Ill join you at your house. What is it? I asked. Ill tell you on our way. Were going to the cemetery. He carried a pick, a shovel, and a screwdriver when he rejoined me, and wore round his shoulders a long coil of rope. As we walked, he gave me the outlines of the ghastly hour that lay before us. What I have to tell you, he said, will seem to you now too fantastic for credence, but before dawn we shall see whether it outstrips reality. By a most fortunate happening, you saw the spectre, the astral body, whatever you choose to call it, of Mrs. Amworth, going on its grisly business, and therefore, beyond doubt, the vampire spirit which abode in her during life animates her again in death. That is not exceptionalindeed, all these weeks since her death I have been expecting it. If I am right, we shall find her body undecayed and untouched by corruption. But she has been dead nearly two months, said I. If she had been dead two years it would still be so, if the vampire has possession of her. So remember whatever you see done, it will be done not to her, who in the natural course would now be feeding the grasses above her grave, but to a spirit of untold evil and malignancy, which gives a phantom life to her body. But what shall I see done? said I. I will tell you. We know that now, at this moment, the vampire clad in her mortal semblance is out; dining out. But it must get back before dawn, and it will pass into the material form that lies in her grave. We must wait for that, and then with your help I shall dig up her body. If I am right, you will look on her as she was in life, with the full vigour of the dreadful nutriment she has received pulsing in her veins. And then, when dawn has come, and the vampire cannot leave the lair of her body, I shall strike her with thisand he pointed to his pickthrough the heart, and she, who comes to life again only with the animation the fiend gives her, she and her hellish partner will be dead indeed. Then we must bury her again, delivered at last. We had come to the cemetery, and in the brightness of the moonshine there was no difficulty in identifying her grave. It lay some twenty yards from the small chapel, in the porch of which, obscured by shadow, we concealed ourselves. From there we had a clear and open sight of the grave, and now we must wait till its infernal visitor returned home. The night was warm and windless, yet even if a freezing wind had been raging I think I should have felt nothing of it, so intense was my preoccupation as to what the night and dawn would bring. There was a bell in the turret of the chapel, that struck the quarters of the hour, and it amazed me to find how swiftly the chimes succeeded one another. The moon had long set, but a twilight of stars shone in a clear sky, when five oclock of the morning sounded from the turret. A few minutes more passed, and then I felt Urcombes hand softly nudging me; and looking out in the direction of his pointing finger, I saw that the form of a woman, tall and large in build, was approaching from the right. Noiselessly, with a motion more of gliding and floating than walking, she moved across the cemetery to the grave which was the centre of our observation. She moved round it as if to be certain of its identity, and for a moment stood directly facing us. In the greyness to which now my eyes had grown accustomed, I could easily see her face, and recognise its features. She drew her hand across her mouth as if wiping it, and broke into a chuckle of such laughter as made my hair stir on my head. Then she leaped on to the grave, holding her hands high above her head, and inch by inch disappeared into the earth. Urcombes hand was laid on my arm, in an injunction to keep still, but now he removed it. Come, he said. With pick and shovel and rope we went to the grave. The earth was light and sandy, and soon after six struck we had delved down to the coffin lid. With his pick he loosened the earth round it, and, adjusting the rope through the handles by which it had been lowered, we tried to raise it. This was a long and laborious business, and the light had begun to herald day in the east before we had it out, and lying by the side of the grave. With his screwdriver he loosed the fastenings of the lid, and slid it aside, and standing there we looked on the face of Mrs. Amworth. The eyes, once closed in death, were open, the cheeks were flushed with colour, the red, fulllipped mouth seemed to smile. One blow and it is all over, he said. You need not look. Even as he spoke he took up the pick again, and, laying the point of it on her left breast, measured his distance. And though I knew what was coming I could not look away.  He grasped the pick in both hands, raised it an inch or two for the taking of his aim, and then with full force brought it down on her breast. A fountain of blood, though she had been dead so long, spouted high in the air, falling with the thud of a heavy splash over the shroud, and simultaneously from those red lips came one long, appalling cry, swelling up like some hooting siren, and dying away again. With that, instantaneous as a lightning flash, came the touch of corruption on her face, the colour of it faded to ash, the plump cheeks fell in, the mouth dropped. Thank God, thats over, said he, and without pause slipped the coffin lid back into its place. Day was coming fast now, and, working like men possessed, we lowered the coffin into its place again, and shovelled the earth over it.  The birds were busy with their earliest pipings as we went back to Maxley. Negotium Perambulans.  The casual tourist in West Cornwall may just possibly have noticed, as he bowled along over the bare high plateau between Penzance and the Lands End, a dilapidated signpost pointing down a steep lane and bearing on its battered finger the faded inscription Polearn 2 miles, but probably very few have had the curiosity to traverse those two miles in order to see a place to which their guidebooks award so cursory a notice. It is described there, in a couple of unattractive lines, as a small fishing village with a church of no particular interest except for certain carved and painted wooden panels (originally belonging to an earlier edifice) which form an altarrail. But the church at St. Creed (the tourist is reminded) has a similar decoration far superior in point of preservation and interest, and thus even the ecclesiastically disposed are not lured to Polearn. So meagre a bait is scarce worth swallowing, and a glance at the very steep lane which in dry weather presents a carpet of sharppointed stones, and after rain a muddy watercourse, will almost certainly decide him not to expose his motor or his bicycle to risks like these in so sparsely populated a district. Hardly a house has met his eye since he left Penzance, and the possible trundling of a punctured bicycle for half a dozen weary miles seems a high price to pay for the sight of a few painted panels. Polearn, therefore, even in the high noon of the tourist season, is little liable to invasion, and for the rest of the year I do not suppose that a couple of folk a day traverse those two miles (long ones at that) of steep and stony gradient. I am not forgetting the postman in this exiguous estimate, for the days are few when, leaving his pony and cart at the top of the hill, he goes as far as the village, since but a few hundred yards down the lane there stands a large white box, like a seatrunk, by the side of the road, with a slit for letters and a locked door. Should he have in his wallet a registered letter or be the bearer of a parcel too large for insertion in the square lips of the seatrunk, he must needs trudge down the hill and deliver the troublesome missive, leaving it in person on the owner, and receiving some small reward of coin or refreshment for his kindness. But such occasions are rare, and his general routine is to take out of the box such letters as may have been deposited there, and insert in their place such letters as he has brought. These will be called for, perhaps that day or perhaps the next, by an emissary from the Polearn postoffice. As for the fishermen of the place, who, in their export trade, constitute the chief link of movement between Polearn and the outside world, they would not dream of taking their catch up the steep lane and so, with six miles farther of travel, to the market at Penzance. The sea route is shorter and easier, and they deliver their wares to the pierhead. Thus, though the sole industry of Polearn is seafishing, you will get no fish there unless you have bespoken your requirements to one of the fishermen. Back come the trawlers as empty as a haunted house, while their spoils are in the fishtrain that is speeding to London. Such isolation of a little community, continued, as it has been, for centuries, produces isolation in the individual as well, and nowhere will you find greater independence of character than among the people of Polearn. But they are linked together, so it has always seemed to me, by some mysterious comprehension it is as if they had all been initiated into some ancient rite, inspired and framed by forces visible and invisible. The winter storms that batter the coast, the vernal spell of the spring, the hot, still summers, the season of rains and autumnal decay, have made a spell which, line by line, has been communicated to them, concerning the powers, evil and good, that rule the world, and manifest themselves in ways benignant or terrible.  I came to Polearn first at the age of ten, a small boy, weak and sickly, and threatened with pulmonary trouble. My fathers business kept him in London, while for me abundance of fresh air and a mild climate were considered essential conditions if I was to grow to manhood. His sister had married the vicar of Polearn, Richard Bolitho, himself native to the place, and so it came about that I spent three years, as a paying guest, with my relations. Richard Bolitho owned a fine house in the place, which he inhabited in preference to the vicarage, which he let to a young artist, John Evans, on whom the spell of Polearn had fallen, for from years beginning to years end he never left it. There was a solid roofed shelter, open on one side to the air, built for me in the garden, and here I lived and slept, passing scarcely one hour out of the twentyfour behind walls and windows. I was out on the bay with the fisherfolk, or wandering along the gorseclad cliffs that climbed steeply to right and left of the deep combe where the village lay, or pottering about on the pierhead, or birdsnesting in the bushes with the boys of the village. Except on Sunday and for the few daily hours of my lessons, I might do what I pleased so long as I remained in the open air. About the lessons there was nothing formidable; my uncle conducted me through flowering bypaths among the thickets of arithmetic, and made pleasant excursions into the elements of Latin grammar, and above all, he made me daily give him an account, in clear and grammatical sentences, of what had been occupying my mind or my movements. Should I select to tell him about a walk along the cliffs, my speech must be orderly, not vague, slipshod notes of what I had observed. In this way, too, he trained my observation, for he would bid me tell him what flowers were in bloom, and what birds hovered fishing over the sea or were building in the bushes. For that I owe him a perennial gratitude, for to observe and to express my thoughts in the clear spoken word became my lifes profession. But far more formidable than my weekday tasks was the prescribed routine for Sunday. Some dark embers compounded of Calvinism and mysticism smouldered in my uncles soul, and made it a day of terror. His sermon in the morning scorched us with a foretaste of the eternal fires reserved for unrepentant sinners, and he was hardly less terrifying at the childrens service in the afternoon. Well do I remember his exposition of the doctrine of guardian angels. A child, he said, might think himself secure in such angelic care, but let him beware of committing any of those numerous offences which would cause his guardian to turn his face from him, for as sure as there were angels to protect us, there were also evil and awful presences which were ready to pounce; and on them he dwelt with peculiar gusto. Well, too, do I remember in the morning sermon his commentary on the carved panels of the altarrails to which I have already alluded. There was the angel of the Annunciation there, and the angel of the Resurrection, but not less was there the witch of Endor, and, on the fourth panel, a scene that concerned me most of all. This fourth panel (he came down from his pulpit to trace its timeworn features) represented the lychgate of the churchyard at Polearn itself, and indeed the resemblance when thus pointed out was remarkable. In the entry stood the figure of a robed priest holding up a Cross, with which he faced a terrible creature like a gigantic slug, that reared itself up in front of him. That, so ran my uncles interpretation, was some evil agency, such as he had spoken about to us children, of almost infinite malignity and power, which could alone be combated by firm faith and a pure heart. Below ran the legend Negotium perambulans in tenebris from the ninetyfirst Psalm. We should find it translated there, the pestilence that walketh in darkness, which but feebly rendered the Latin. It was more deadly to the soul than any pestilence that can only kill the body it was the Thing, the Creature, the Business that trafficked in the outer Darkness, a minister of Gods wrath on the unrighteous.  I could see, as he spoke, the looks which the congregation exchanged with each other, and knew that his words were evoking a surmise, a remembrance. Nods and whispers passed between them, they understood to what he alluded, and with the inquisitiveness of boyhood I could not rest till I had wormed the story out of my friends among the fisherboys, as, next morning, we sat basking and naked in the sun after our bathe. One knew one bit of it, one another, but it pieced together into a truly alarming legend. In bald outline it was as follows A church far more ancient than that in which my uncle terrified us every Sunday had once stood not three hundred yards away, on the shelf of level ground below the quarry from which its stones were hewn. The owner of the land had pulled this down, and erected for himself a house on the same site out of these materials, keeping, in a very ecstasy of wickedness, the altar, and on this he dined and played dice afterwards. But as he grew old some black melancholy seized him, and he would have lights burning there all night, for he had deadly fear of the darkness. On one winter evening there sprang up such a gale as was never before known, which broke in the windows of the room where he had supped, and extinguished the lamps. Yells of terror brought in his servants, who found him lying on the floor with the blood streaming from his throat. As they entered some huge black shadow seemed to move away from him, crawled across the floor and up the wall and out of the broken window. There he lay adying, said the last of my informants, and him that had been a great burly man was withered to a bag o skin, for the critter had drained all the blood from him. His last breath was a scream, and he hollered out the same words as parson read off the screen. Negotium perambulans in tenebris, I suggested eagerly. Thereabouts. Latin anyhow. And after that? I asked. Nobody would go near the place, and the old house rotted and fell in ruins till three years ago, when along comes Mr. Dooliss from Penzance, and built the half of it up again. But he dont care much about such critters, nor about Latin neither. He takes his bottle of whisky a day and gets drunks a lord in the evening. Eh, Im gwine home to my dinner. Whatever the authenticity of the legend, I had certainly heard the truth about Mr. Dooliss from Penzance, who from that day became an object of keen curiosity on my part, the more so because the quarryhouse adjoined my uncles garden. The Thing that walked in the dark failed to stir my imagination, and already I was so used to sleeping alone in my shelter that the night had no terrors for me. But it would be intensely exciting to wake at some timeless hour and hear Mr. Dooliss yelling, and conjecture that the Thing had got him. But by degrees the whole story faded from my mind, overscored by the more vivid interests of the day, and, for the last two years of my outdoor life in the vicarage garden, I seldom thought about Mr. Dooliss and the possible fate that might await him for his temerity in living in the place where that Thing of darkness had done business. Occasionally I saw him over the garden fence, a great yellow lump of a man, with slow and staggering gait, but never did I set eyes on him outside his gate, either in the village street or down on the beach. He interfered with none, and no one interfered with him. If he wanted to run the risk of being the prey of the legendary nocturnal monster, or quietly drink himself to death, it was his affair. My uncle, so I gathered, had made several attempts to see him when first he came to live at Polearn, but Mr. Dooliss appeared to have no use for parsons, but said he was not at home and never returned the call. After three years of sun, wind, and rain, I had completely outgrown my early symptoms and had become a tough, strapping youngster of thirteen. I was sent to Eton and Cambridge, and in due course ate my dinners and became a barrister. In twenty years from that time I was earning a yearly income of five figures, and had already laid by in sound securities a sum that brought me dividends which would, for one of my simple tastes and frugal habits, supply me with all the material comforts I needed on this side of the grave. The great prizes of my profession were already within my reach, but I had no ambition beckoning me on, nor did I want a wife and children, being, I must suppose, a natural celibate. In fact there was only one ambition which through these busy years had held the lure of blue and faroff hills to me, and that was to get back to Polearn, and live once more isolated from the world with the sea and the gorseclad hills for playfellows, and the secrets that lurked there for exploration. The spell of it had been woven about my heart, and I can truly say that there had hardly passed a day in all those years in which the thought of it and the desire for it had been wholly absent from my mind. Though I had been in frequent communication with my uncle there during his lifetime, and, after his death, with his widow who still lived there, I had never been back to it since I embarked on my profession, for I knew that if I went there, it would be a wrench beyond my power to tear myself away again. But I had made up my mind that when once I had provided for my own independence, I would go back there not to leave it again. And yet I did leave it again, and now nothing in the world would induce me to turn down the lane from the road that leads from Penzance to the Lands End, and see the sides of the combe rise steep above the roofs of the village and hear the gulls chiding as they fish in the bay. One of the things invisible, of the dark powers, leaped into light, and I saw it with my eyes. The house where I had spent those three years of boyhood had been left for life to my aunt, and when I made known to her my intention of coming back to Polearn, she suggested that, till I found a suitable house or found her proposal unsuitable, I should come to live with her. The house is too big for a lone old woman, she wrote, and I have often thought of quitting and taking a little cottage sufficient for me and my requirements. But come and share it, my dear, and if you find me troublesome, you or I can go. You may want solitudemost people in Polearn doand will leave me. Or else I will leave you one of the main reasons of my stopping here all these years was a feeling that I must not let the old house starve. Houses starve, you know, if they are not lived in. They die a lingering death; the spirit in them grows weaker and weaker, and at last fades out of them. Isnt this nonsense to your London notions?  Naturally I accepted with warmth this tentative arrangement, and on an evening in June found myself at the head of the lane leading down to Polearn, and once more I descended into the steep valley between the hills. Time had stood still apparently for the combe, the dilapidated signpost (or its successor) pointed a rickety finger down the lane, and a few hundred yards farther on was the white box for the exchange of letters. Point after remembered point met my eye, and what I saw was not shrunk, as is often the case with the revisited scenes of childhood, into a smaller scale. There stood the postoffice, and there the church and close beside it the vicarage, and beyond, the tall shrubberies which separated the house for which I was bound from the road, and beyond that again the grey roofs of the quarryhouse damp and shining with the moist evening wind from the sea. All was exactly as I remembered it, and, above all, that sense of seclusion and isolation. Somewhere above the treetops climbed the lane which joined the main road to Penzance, but all that had become immeasurably distant. The years that had passed since last I turned in at the wellknown gate faded like a frosty breath, and vanished in this warm, soft air. There were lawcourts somewhere in memorys dull book which, if I cared to turn the pages, would tell me that I had made a name and a great income there. But the dull book was closed now, for I was back in Polearn, and the spell was woven around me again. And if Polearn was unchanged, so too was Aunt Hester, who met me at the door. Dainty and chinawhite she had always been, and the years had not aged but only refined her. As we sat and talked after dinner she spoke of all that had happened in Polearn in that score of years, and yet somehow the changes of which she spoke seemed but to confirm the immutability of it all. As the recollection of names came back to me, I asked her about the quarryhouse and Mr. Dooliss, and her face gloomed a little as with the shadow of a cloud on a spring day. Yes, Mr. Dooliss, she said, poor Mr. Dooliss, how well I remember him, though it must be ten years and more since he died. I never wrote to you about it, for it was all very dreadful, my dear, and I did not want to darken your memories of Polearn. Your uncle always thought that something of the sort might happen if he went on in his wicked, drunken ways, and worse than that, and though nobody knew exactly what took place, it was the sort of thing that might have been anticipated. But what more or less happened, Aunt Hester? I asked. Well, of course I cant tell you everything, for no one knew it. But he was a very sinful man, and the scandal about him at Newlyn was shocking. And then he lived, too, in the quarryhouse.  I wonder if by any chance you remember a sermon of your uncles when he got out of the pulpit and explained that panel in the altarrails, the one, I mean, with the horrible creature rearing itself up outside the lychgate? Yes, I remember perfectly, said I. Ah. It made an impression on you, I suppose, and so it did on all who heard him, and that impression got stamped and branded on us all when the catastrophe occurred. Somehow Mr. Dooliss got to hear about your uncles sermon, and in some drunken fit he broke into the church and smashed the panel to atoms. He seems to have thought that there was some magic in it, and that if he destroyed that he would get rid of the terrible fate that was threatening him. For I must tell you that before he committed that dreadful sacrilege he had been a haunted man he hated and feared darkness, for he thought that the creature on the panel was on his track, but that as long as he kept lights burning it could not touch him. But the panel, to his disordered mind, was the root of his terror, and so, as I said, he broke into the church and attemptedyou will see why I said attemptedto destroy it. It certainly was found in splinters next morning, when your uncle went into church for matins, and knowing Mr. Doolisss fear of the panel, he went across to the quarryhouse afterwards and taxed him with its destruction. The man never denied it; he boasted of what he had done. There he sat, though it was early morning, drinking his whisky.  Ive settled your Thing for you, he said, and your sermon too. A fig for such superstitions. Your uncle left him without answering his blasphemy, meaning to go straight into Penzance and give information to the police about this outrage to the church, but on his way back from the quarryhouse he went into the church again, in order to be able to give details about the damage, and there in the screen was the panel, untouched and uninjured. And yet he had himself seen it smashed, and Mr. Dooliss had confessed that the destruction of it was his work.


But there it was, and whether the power of God had mended it or some other power, who knows? This was Polearn indeed, and it was the spirit of Polearn that made me accept all Aunt Hester was telling me as attested fact. It had happened like that. She went on in her quiet voice. Your uncle recognised that some power beyond police was at work, and he did not go to Penzance or give information about the outrage, for the evidence of it had vanished. A sudden spate of scepticism swept over me. There must have been some mistake, I said. It hadnt been broken.  She smiled. Yes, my dear, but you have been in London so long, she said. Let me, anyhow, tell you the rest of my story. That night, for some reason, I could not sleep. It was very hot and airless; I dare say you will think that the sultry conditions accounted for my wakefulness. Once and again, as I went to the window to see if I could not admit more air, I could see from it the quarryhouse, and I noticed the first time that I left my bed that it was blazing with lights. But the second time I saw that it was all in darkness, and as I wondered at that, I heard a terrible scream, and the moment afterwards the steps of someone coming at full speed down the road outside the gate. He yelled as he ran; Light, light! he called out. Give me light, or it will catch me! It was very terrible to hear that, and I went to rouse my husband, who was sleeping in the dressingroom across the passage. He wasted no time, but by now the whole village was aroused by the screams, and when he got down to the pier he found that all was over. The tide was low, and on the rocks at its foot was lying the body of Mr. Dooliss. He must have cut some artery when he fell on those sharp edges of stone, for he had bled to death, they thought, and though he was a big burly man, his corpse was but skin and bones. Yet there was no pool of blood round him, such as you would have expected. Just skin and bones as if every drop of blood in his body had been sucked out of him! She leaned forward. You and I, my dear, know what happened, she said, or at least can guess. God has His instruments of vengeance on those who bring wickedness into places that have been holy. Dark and mysterious are His ways. Now what I should have thought of such a story if it had been told me in London I can easily imagine. There was such an obvious explanation the man in question had been a drunkard, what wonder if the demons of delirium pursued him? But here in Polearn it was different. And who is in the quarryhouse now? I asked. Years ago the fisherboys told me the story of the man who first built it and of his horrible end. And now again it has happened. Surely no one has ventured to inhabit it once more? I saw in her face, even before I asked that question, that somebody had done so. Yes, it is lived in again, said she, for there is no end to the blindness.  I dont know if you remember him. He was tenant of the vicarage many years ago. John Evans, said I. Yes. Such a nice fellow he was too. Your uncle was pleased to get so good a tenant. And now She rose. Aunt Hester, you shouldnt leave your sentences unfinished, I said. She shook her head. My dear, that sentence will finish itself, she said. But what a time of night! I must go to bed, and you too, or they will think we have to keep lights burning here through the dark hours. Before getting into bed I drew my curtains wide and opened all the windows to the warm tide of the sea air that flowed softly in. Looking out into the garden I could see in the moonlight the roof of the shelter, in which for three years I had lived, gleaming with dew. That, as much as anything, brought back the old days to which I had now returned, and they seemed of one piece with the present, as if no gap of more than twenty years sundered them. The two flowed into one like globules of mercury uniting into a softly shining globe, of mysterious lights and reflections. Then, raising my eyes a little, I saw against the black hillside the windows of the quarryhouse still alight. Morning, as is so often the case, brought no shattering of my illusion. As I began to regain consciousness, I fancied that I was a boy again waking up in the shelter in the garden, and though, as I grew more widely awake, I smiled at the impression, that on which it was based I found to be indeed true. It was sufficient now as then to be here, to wander again on the cliffs, and hear the popping of the ripened seedpods on the gorsebushes; to stray along the shore to the bathingcove, to float and drift and swim in the warm tide, and bask on the sand, and watch the gulls fishing, to lounge on the pierhead with the fisherfolk, to see in their eyes and hear in their quiet speech the evidence of secret things not so much known to them as part of their instincts and their very being. There were powers and presences about me; the white poplars that stood by the stream that babbled down the valley knew of them, and showed a glimpse of their knowledge sometimes, like the gleam of their white underleaves; the very cobbles that paved the street were soaked in it.  All that I wanted was to lie there and grow soaked in it too; unconsciously, as a boy, I had done that, but now the process must be conscious. I must know what stir of forces, fruitful and mysterious, seethed along the hillside at noon, and sparkled at night on the sea. They could be known, they could even be controlled by those who were masters of the spell, but never could they be spoken of, for they were dwellers in the innermost, grafted into the eternal life of the world. There were dark secrets as well as these clear, kindly powers, and to these no doubt belonged the negotium perambulans in tenebris which, though of deadly malignity, might be regarded not only as evil, but as the avenger of sacrilegious and impious deeds.  All this was part of the spell of Polearn, of which the seeds had long lain dormant in me. But now they were sprouting, and who knew what strange flower would unfold on their stems? It was not long before I came across John Evans. One morning, as I lay on the beach, there came shambling across the sand a man stout and middleaged with the face of Silenus. He paused as he drew near and regarded me from narrow eyes. Why, youre the little chap that used to live in the parsons garden, he said. Dont you recognise me? I saw who it was when he spoke his voice, I think, instructed me, and recognising it, I could see the features of the strong, alert young man in this gross caricature. Yes, youre John Evans, I said. You used to be very kind to me you used to draw pictures for me. So I did, and Ill draw you some more. Been bathing? Thats a risky performance. You never know what lives in the sea, nor what lives on the land for that matter. Not that I heed them. I stick to work and whisky. God! Ive learned to paint since I saw you, and drink too for that matter. I live in the quarryhouse, you know, and its a powerful thirsty place. Come and have a look at my things if youre passing. Staying with your aunt, are you? I could do a wonderful portrait of her. Interesting face; she knows a lot. People who live at Polearn get to know a lot, though I dont take much stock in that sort of knowledge myself. I do not know when I have been at once so repelled and interested. Behind the mere grossness of his face there lurked something which, while it appalled, yet fascinated me. His thick lisping speech had the same quality. And his paintings, what would they be like?  I was just going home, I said. Ill gladly come in, if youll allow me. He took me through the untended and overgrown garden into the house which I had never yet entered. A great grey cat was sunning itself in the window, and an old woman was laying lunch in a corner of the cool hall into which the door opened. It was built of stone, and the carved mouldings let into the walls, the fragments of gargoyles and sculptured images, bore testimony to the truth of its having been built out of the demolished church. In one corner was an oblong and carved wooden table littered with a painters apparatus and stacks of canvases leaned against the walls. He jerked his thumb towards a head of an angel that was built into the mantelpiece and giggled. Quite a sanctified air, he said, so we tone it down for the purposes of ordinary life by a different sort of art. Have a drink? No? Well, turn over some of my pictures while I put myself to rights. He was justified in his own estimate of his skill he could paint (and apparently he could paint anything), but never have I seen pictures so inexplicably hellish. There were exquisite studies of trees, and you knew that something lurked in the flickering shadows. There was a drawing of his cat sunning itself in the window, even as I had just now seen it, and yet it was no cat but some beast of awful malignity. There was a boy stretched naked on the sands, not human, but some evil thing which had come out of the sea. Above all there were pictures of his garden overgrown and junglelike, and you knew that in the bushes were presences ready to spring out on you.  Well, do you like my style? he said as he came up, glass in hand. (The tumbler of spirits that he held had not been diluted.) I try to paint the essence of what I see, not the mere husk and skin of it, but its nature, where it comes from and what gave it birth. Theres much in common between a cat and a fuchsiabush if you look at them closely enough. Everything came out of the slime of the pit, and its all going back there. I should like to do a picture of you some day. Id hold the mirror up to Nature, as that old lunatic said. After this first meeting I saw him occasionally throughout the months of that wonderful summer. Often he kept to his house and to his painting for days together, and then perhaps some evening I would find him lounging on the pier, always alone, and every time we met thus the repulsion and interest grew, for every time he seemed to have gone farther along a path of secret knowledge towards some evil shrine where complete initiation awaited him.  And then suddenly the end came. I had met him thus one evening on the cliffs while the October sunset still burned in the sky, but over it with amazing rapidity there spread from the west a great blackness of cloud such as I have never seen for denseness. The light was sucked from the sky, the dusk fell in ever thicker layers. He suddenly became conscious of this. I must get back as quick as I can, he said. It will be dark in a few minutes, and my servant is out. The lamps will not be lit. He stepped out with extraordinary briskness for one who shambled and could scarcely lift his feet, and soon broke out into a stumbling run. In the gathering darkness I could see that his face was moist with the dew of some unspoken terror. You must come with me, he panted, for so we shall get the lights burning the sooner. I cannot do without light. I had to exert myself to the full to keep up with him, for terror winged him, and even so I fell behind, so that when I came to the garden gate, he was already halfway up the path to the house. I saw him enter, leaving the door wide, and found him fumbling with matches. But his hand so trembled that he could not transfer the light to the wick of the lamp. But whats the hurry about? I asked. Suddenly his eyes focused themselves on the open door behind me, and he jumped from his seat beside the table which had once been the altar of God, with a gasp and a scream. No, no! he cried. Keep it off!  I turned and saw what he had seen. The Thing had entered and now was swiftly sliding across the floor towards him, like some gigantic caterpillar. A stale phosphorescent light came from it, for though the dusk had grown to blackness outside, I could see it quite distinctly in the awful light of its own presence. From it too there came an odour of corruption and decay, as from slime that has long lain below water. It seemed to have no head, but on the front of it was an orifice of puckered skin which opened and shut and slavered at the edges. It was hairless, and sluglike in shape and in texture. As it advanced its forepart reared itself from the ground, like a snake about to strike, and it fastened on him.  At that sight, and with the yells of his agony in my ears, the panic which had struck me relaxed into a hopeless courage, and with palsied, impotent hands I tried to lay hold of the Thing. But I could not though something material was there, it was impossible to grasp it; my hands sunk in it as in thick mud. It was like wrestling with a nightmare. I think that but a few seconds elapsed before all was over. The screams of the wretched man sank to moans and mutterings as the Thing fell on him he panted once or twice and was still. For a moment longer there came gurglings and sucking noises, and then it slid out even as it had entered. I lit the lamp which he had fumbled with, and there on the floor he lay, no more than a rind of skin in loose folds over projecting bones. Outside the Door The rest of the small party staying with my friend Geoffrey Aldwych in the charming old house which he had lately bought at a little village north of Sheringham on the Norfolk coast had drifted away soon after dinner to bridge and billiards, and Mrs. Aldwych and myself had for the time been left alone in the drawingroom, seated one on each side of a small round table which we had very patiently and unsuccessfully been trying to turn. But such pressure, psychical or physical, as we had put upon it, though of the friendliest and most encouraging nature had not overcome in the smallest degree the very slight inertia which so small an object might have been supposed to possess, and it had remained as fixed as the most constant of the stars. No tremor even had passed through its slight and spindlelike legs. In consequence we had, after a really considerable period of patient endeavour, left it to its wooden repose, and proceeded to theorise about psychical matters instead, with no stupid table to contradict in practice all our ideas on the subject. This I had added with a certain bitterness born of failure, for if we could not move so insignificant an object, we might as well give up all idea of moving anything. But hardly were the words out of my mouth when there came from the abandoned table, a single peremptory rap, loud and rather startling. Whats that? I asked. Only a rap, said she. I thought something would happen before long. And do you really think that is a spirit rapping? I asked. Oh dear no. I dont think it has anything whatever to do with spirits. More perhaps with the very dry weather we have been having. Furniture often cracks like that in the summer. Now this, in point of fact, was not quite the case. Neither in summer nor in winter have I heard ever furniture crack as the table had cracked, for the sound, whatever it was, did not at all resemble the husky creak of contracting wood. It was a loud sharp crack like the smart concussion of one hard object with another. No, I dont think it had much to do with dry weather either, said she smiling. I think, if you wish to know, that it was the direct result of our attempt to turn the table. Does that sound nonsense? At present, yes, said I, though I have no doubt that if you tried you could make it sound sense. There is, I notice, a certain plausibility about you and your theories Now you are being merely personal, she observed. For the good motive, to goad you into explanations and enlargements. Please go on. Let us stroll outside, then, said she, and sit in the garden, if you are sure you prefer my plausibilities to bridge. It is deliciously warm, and And the darkness will be more suitable for the propagation of psychical phenomena. As at sances, said I. Oh, there is nothing psychical about my plausibilities, said she. The phenomena I mean are purely physical, according to my theory. So we wandered out into the transparent half light of multitudinous stars. The last crimson feather of sunset, which had hovered long in the west, had been blown away with the breath of the night wind, and the moon, which would presently rise, had not yet cut the dim horizon of the sea, which lay very quiet, breathing gently in its sleep with stir of whispering ripples. Across the dark velvet of the closecropped lawn, which stretched seawards from the house, blew a little breeze full of the savour of salt and the freshness of night, with, every now and then, a hint so subtly conveyed as to be scarcely perceptible of its travel across the sleeping fragrance of drowsy gardenbeds, over which the white moths hovered seeking their nighthoney. The house itself, with its two battlemented towers of Elizabethan times, gleamed with many windows, and we passed out of sight of it, and into the shadow of a boxhedge, clipped into shapes and monstrous fantasies, and found chairs by the striped tent at the top of the sheltered bowlingalley. And this is all very plausible, said I. Theories, if you please, at length, and, if possible, a full length illustration also. By which you mean a ghoststory, or something to that effect? Precisely and, without presuming to dictate, if possible, firsthand. Oddly enough, I can supply that also, said she. So first I will tell you my general theory, and follow it by a story that seems to bear it out. It happened to me, and it happened here. I am sure it will fill the bill, said I. She paused a moment while I lit a cigarette, and then began in her very clear, pleasant voice. She has the most lucid voice I know, and to me sitting there in the deepdyed dusk, the words seemed the very incarnation of clarity, for they dropped into the still quiet of the darkness, undisturbed by impressions conveyed to other senses. We are only just beginning to conjecture, she said, how inextricable is the interweaving between mind, soul, life, call it what you willand the purely material part of the created world. That such interweaving existed has, of course, been known for centuries; doctors, for instance, knew that a cheerful optimistic spirit on the part of their patients conduced towards recovery; that fear, the mere emotion, had a definite effect on the beat of the heart, that anger produced chemical changes in the blood, that anxiety led to indigestion, that under the influence of strong passion a man can do things which in his normal state he is physically incapable of performing. Here we have mind, in a simple and familiar manner, producing changes and effects in tissue, in that which is purely material. By an extension of thisthough, indeed, it is scarcely an extensionwe may expect to find that mind can have an effect, not only on what we call living tissue, but on dead things, on pieces of wood or stone. At least it is hard to see why that should not be so. Tableturning, for instance? I asked. That is one instance of how some force, out of that innumerable cohort of obscure mysterious forces with which we human beings are garrisoned, can pass, as it is constantly doing, into material things. The laws of its passing we do not know; sometimes we wish it to pass and it does not. Just now, for instance, when you and I tried to turn the table, there was some impediment in the path, though I put down that rap which followed as an effect of our efforts. But nothing seems more natural to my mind than that these forces should be transmissible to inanimate things. Of the manner of its passing we know next to nothing, any more than we know the manner of the actual process by which fear accelerates the beating of the heart, but as surely as a Marconi message leaps along the air by no visible or tangible bridge, so through some subtle gateway of the body these forces can march from the citadel of the spirit into material forms, whether that material is a living part of ourselves or that which we choose to call inanimate nature. She paused a moment. Under certain circumstances, she went on, it seems that the force which has passed from us into inanimate things can manifest its presence there. The force that passes into a table can show itself in movements or in noises coming from the table. The table has been charged with physical energy. Often and often I have seen a table or a chair move apparently of its own accord, but only when some outpouring of force, animal magnetismcall it what you willhas been received by it. A parallel phenomenon to my mind is exhibited in what we know as haunted houses, houses in which, as a rule, some crime or act of extreme emotion or passion has been committed, and in which some echo or reenactment of the deed is periodically made visible or audible. A murder has been committed, let us say, and the room where it took place is haunted. The figure of the murdered, or less commonly of the murderer, is seen there by sensitives, and cries are heard, or steps run to and fro. The atmosphere has somehow been charged with the scene, and the scene in whole or part repeats itself, though under what laws we do not know, just as a phonograph will repeat, when properly handled, what has been said into it. This is all theory, I remarked. But it appears to me to cover a curious set of facts, which is all we ask of a theory. Otherwise, we must frankly state our disbelief in haunted houses altogether, or suppose that the spirit of the murdered, poor wretch, is bound under certain circumstances to reenact the horror of its bodys tragedy. It was not enough that its body was killed there, its soul has to be dragged back and live through it all again with such vividness that its anguish becomes visible or audible to the eyes or ears of the sensitive. That to me is unthinkable, whereas my theory is not. Do I make it at all clear? It is clear enough, said I, but I want support for it, the fullsized illustration. I promised you that, a ghoststory of my own experience. Mrs. Aldwych paused again, and then began the story which was to illustrate her theory. It is just a year, she said, since Jack bought this house from old Mrs. Denison. We had both heard, both he and I, that it was supposed to be haunted, but neither of us knew any particulars of the haunt whatever. A month ago I heard what I believe to have been the ghost, and, when Mrs. Denison was staying with us last week, I asked her exactly what it was, and found it tallied completely with my experience. I will tell you my experience first, and give her account of the haunt afterwards. A month ago Jack was away for a few days and I remained here alone. One Sunday evening, I, in my usual health and spirits, as far as I am aware, both of which are serenely excellent, went up to bed about eleven. My room is on the first floor, just at the foot of the staircase that leads to the floor above. There are four more rooms on my passage, all of which that night were empty, and at the far end of it a door leads into the landing at the top of the front staircase. On the other side of that, as you know, are more bedrooms, all of which that night were also unoccupied; I, in fact, was the only sleeper on the first floor. The head of my bed is close behind my door, and there is an electric light over it. This is controlled by a switch at the bedhead, and another switch there turns on a light in the passage just outside my room. That was Jacks plan if by chance you want to leave your room when the house is dark, you can light up the passage before you go out, and not grope blindly for a switch outside. Usually I sleep solidly it is very rarely indeed that I wake, when once I have gone to sleep, before I am called. But that night I woke, which was rare; what was rarer was that I woke in a state of shuddering and unaccountable terror; I tried to localise my panic, to run it to earth and reason it away, but without any success. Terror of something I could not guess at stared me in the face, white, shaking terror. So, as there was no use in lying quaking in the dark, I lit my lamp, and, with the view of composing this strange disorder of my fear, began to read again in the book I had brought up with me. The volume happened to be The Green Carnation, a work one would have thought to be full of tonic to twittering nerves. But it failed of success, even as my reasoning had done, and after reading a few pages, and finding that the hearthammer in my throat grew no quieter, and that the grip of terror was in no way relaxed, I put out my light and lay down again. I looked at my watch, however, before doing this, and remember that the time was ten minutes to two. Still matters did not mend terror, that was slowly becoming a little more definite, terror of some dark and violent deed that was momently drawing nearer to me held me in its vice. Something was coming, the advent of which was perceived by the subconscious sense, and was already conveyed to my conscious mind. And then the clock struck two jingling chimes, and the stableclock outside clanged the hour more sonorously. I still lay there, abject and palpitating. Then I heard a sound just outside my room on the stairs that lead, as I have said, to the second story, a sound which was perfectly commonplace and unmistakable. Feet feeling their way in the dark were coming downstairs to my passage I could hear also the groping hand slip and slide along the bannisters. The footfalls came along the few yards of passage between the bottom of the stairs and my door, and then against my door itself came the brush of drapery, and on the panels the blind groping of fingers. The handle rattled as they passed over it, and my terror nearly rose to screaming point. Then a sensible hope struck me. The midnight wanderer might be one of the servants, ill or in want of something, and yetwhy the shuffling feet and the groping hand? But on the instant of the dawning of that hope (for I knew that it was of the step and that which was moving in the dark passage of which I was afraid) I turned on both the light at my bedhead, and the light of the passage outside, and, opening the door, looked out. The passage was quite bright from end to end, but it was perfectly empty. Yet as I looked, seeing nothing of the walker, I still heard. Down the bright boards I heard the shuffle growing fainter as it receded, until, judging by the ear, it turned into the gallery at the end and died away. And with it there died also all my sense of terror. It was It of which I had been afraid now It and my terror had passed. And I went back to bed and slept till morning. Again Mrs. Aldwych paused, and I was silent. Somehow it was in the extreme simplicity of her experience that the horror lay. She went on almost immediately. Now for the sequel, she said, or what I choose to call the explanation. Mrs. Denison, as I told you, came down to stay with us not long ago, and I mentioned that we had heard, though only vaguely, that the house was supposed to be haunted, and asked for an account of it. This is what she told me  In the year 1610 the heiress to the property was a girl Helen Denison, who was engaged to be married to young Lord Southern. In case therefore of her having children, the property would pass away from Denisons. In case of her death, childless, it would pass to her first cousin. A week before the marriage took place, he and a brother of his entered the house, riding here from thirty miles away, after dark, and made their way to her room on the second storey. There they gagged her and attempted to kill her, but she escaped from them, groped her way along this passage, and into the room at the end of the gallery. They followed her there, and killed her. The facts were known by the younger brother turning kings evidence. Now Mrs. Denison told me that the ghost had never been seen, but that it was occasionally heard coming downstairs or going along the passage. She told me that it was never heard except between the hours of two and three in the morning, the hour during which the murder took place. And since then have you heard it again? I asked. Yes, more than once. But it has never frightened me again. I feared, as we all do, what was unknown. I feel that I should fear the known, if I knew it was that, said I. I dont think you would for long. Whatever theory you adopt about it, the sounds of the steps and the groping hand, I cannot see that there is anything to shock or frighten one. My own theory you know Please apply it to what you heard, I asked. Simply enough. The poor girl felt her way along this passage in the despair of her agonised terror, hearing no doubt the soft footsteps of her murderers gaining on her, as she groped along her lost way. The waves of that terrible brainstorm raging within her, impressed themselves in some subtle yet physical manner on the place. It would only be by those people whom we call sensitives that the wrinkles, so to speak, made by those breaking waves on the sands would be perceived, and by them not always. But they are there, even as when a Marconi apparatus is working the waves are there, though they can only be perceived by a receiver that is in tune. If you believe in brainwaves at all, the explanation is not so difficult. Then the brainwave is permanent? Every wave of whatever kind leaves its mark, does it not? If you disbelieve the whole thing, shall I give you a room on the route of that poor murdered harmless walker? I got up. I am very comfortable, thanks, where I am, I said. Rodericks Story My powers of persuasion at first seemed quite ineffectual; I could not induce my friend Roderick Cardew to strike his melancholy tent in Chelsea, and (leaving it struck) steal away like the Arabs and spend this month of spring with me at my newly acquired house at Tilling to observe the spell of Aprils wand making magic in the country. I seemed to have brought out all the arguments of which I was master; he had been very ill, and his doctor recommended a clearer air with as mild a climate as he could conveniently attain; he loved the great stretches of drained marshland which lay spread like a pool of verdure round the little town; he had not seen my new home which made a breach in the functions of hospitality, and he really could not be expected to object to his host, who, after all, was one of his oldest friends. Besides (to leave no stone unturned) as he regained his strength he could begin to play golf again, and it entailed, as he well remembered, a very mild exertion for him to keep me in my proper position in such a pursuit. At last there was some sign of yielding. Yes. I should like to see the marsh and the big sky once more, he said. A rather sinister interpretation of his words once more, made a sudden flashed signal of alarm in my mind. It was utterly fanciful, no doubt, but that had better be extinguished first. Once more? I asked. What does that mean? I always say once more,  he said. Its greedy to ask for too much. The very fact that he fenced so ingeniously deepened my suspicion. That wont do, I said. Tell me, Roddie. He was silent a moment. I didnt intend to, he said, for there can be no use in it. But if you insist, as apparently you mean to do, I may as well give in. Its what you think; once more will very likely be the most. But you mustnt fuss about it; Im not going to. No proper person fusses about death; thats a train which we are all sure to catch. It always waits for you. I have noticed that when one learns tidings of that sort, one feels, almost immediately, that one has known them a long time. I felt so now. Go on, I said. Well, thats about all there is. Ive had sentence of death passed upon me, and it will probably be carried out, Im delighted to say, in the French fashion. In France, you know, they dont tell you when you are to be executed till a few minutes before. It is likely that I shall have even less than that, so my doctor informs me. A second or two will be all I shall get.