Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
available, I doubt if he could have done much for me. I made Brown
write off to you, and spent a second terrible night. And, Gregory, of
this I am sure, and I think it affected me more than the first shock,
for it lasted longer: there was someone or something on the watch
outside my door the whole night. I almost fancy there were two. It
wasn’t only the faint noises I heard from time to time all through the
dark hours, but there was the smell—the hideous smell of mould. Every
rag I had had on me on that first evening I had stripped off and made
Brown take it away. I believe he stuffed the things into the stove in
his room; and yet the smell was there, as intense as it had been in the
well; and, what is more, it came from outside the door. But with the
first glimmer of dawn it faded out, and the sounds ceased, too; and
that convinced me that the thing or things were creatures of darkness,
and could not stand the daylight; and so I was sure that if anyone
could put back the stone, it or they would be powerless until someone
else took it away again. I had to wait until you came to get that done.
Of course, I couldn’t send Brown to do it by himself, and still less
could I tell anyone who belonged to the place.
“Well, there is my story; and, if you don’t believe it, I can’t help
it. But I think you do.”
“Indeed,” said Mr Gregory, “I can find no alternative. I _must_ believe
it! I saw the well and the stone myself, and had a glimpse, I thought,
of the bags or something else in the hole. And, to be plain with you,
Somerton, I believe my door was watched last night, too.”
“I dare say it was, Gregory; but, thank goodness, that is over. Have
you, by the way, anything to tell about your visit to that dreadful
place?”
“Very little,” was the answer. “Brown and I managed easily enough to
get the slab into its place, and he fixed it very firmly with the irons
and wedges you had desired him to get, and we contrived to smear the
surface with mud so that it looks just like the rest of the wall. One
thing I did notice in the carving on the well-head, which I think must
have escaped you. It was a horrid, grotesque shape—perhaps more like a
toad than anything else, and there was a label by it inscribed with the
two words, ‘Depositum custodi’.”[9]
[9] “Keep that which is committed to thee.”