Tales of terror
back. Suddenly a quaintly-dressed man, with a haggard, anguished face,
appeared before her, and, baring his throat, displayed it gashed and
bleeding as he had done to me. She was conscious of uttering a loud,
shrill scream of terror. Then all was blank until she awoke to find a
doctor attending her.
As she finished telling me her story, she expressed great anxiety lest
her brain was giving way, and she only grew calm when I assured her
that I had seen what she had seen, and that Phyllis had also met the
ghostly man on the stairs. My medical friend’s theory would not now
hold water, because my wife had been ignorant of my own and Phyllis’s
experiences, so that she was not influenced by a recital which might
have set up a morbid set of conditions in her own brain.
Up to this time I had always regarded spiritualism so-called as
abominable quackery, and it always made me angry when I heard of the
antics and silly pranks which the spirits called up at the _séances_
the professional humbugs indulged in. But now I myself had seen a
spirit, my daughter had also seen it, and my wife had seen it. We all
three claimed to be people of common sense, free from morbid taint,
and not given to conjuring up bogeys out of every shadow that came
in our path. And yet it seemed to me that the spirit that had made
itself manifest unto us had behaved in a very idiotic way, for if it
had a grievance why did it try to frighten us all to death. Of course,
the matter was too serious to be pooh-poohed with a scornful laugh
and a sceptical toss of the head. The statement of three persons, not
quite fools, could not be ignored. I began to feel deeply interested
in the psychological problem that was suggested to me, and after much
cogitation I mentally asked myself whether the ghostly visitor had any
particular reason for pointing upward. Anyway, I was prompted to try
and find out, and made my way to the top of the house, where there was
a range of garrets. Here I began to pry about in a very inquisitive
way, and after long and patient searching for I knew not what, I
chanced to strike a portion of the wall in a back garret with a stick
I carried, and was rather astonished to find that it gave out a hollow
sound. I rapped it again. The same sound; but a yard on either side and
there was solidity.
I lost no time in getting the assistance of two of my men servants. I
simply told them that I had accidentally discovered what I believed
to be a door, and, prompted now more by curiosity than anything else,
I, with their help, tore off the paper, then a lining of canvas, then
more paper, till we got to some wood that had once been painted. Close
examination revealed that it was a door, and not without considerable
trouble we got it open, disclosing a deep recess. Lights were
procured, and from out the recess we dragged a heavy mass of dusty and
time-stained metal. It was apparently a bundle of lead rolled up. We
unrolled it, and brought to light a quantity of human bones, including
a singularly well preserved skull, to which a mass of hair still
adhered.
What my feelings were I will not attempt to describe. Of course the
servants were amazed. I sent them to their duties, again cautioning
them to say nothing at present of our find. My next step was to lodge
information with the county police, and in due course the inevitable
coroner’s inquiry was held, but elicited nothing beyond the medical
opinion that the bones must have been where they were found for
generations. Whose bones they were no one could even conjecture. Why
they had been wrapped in lead, and hidden in the secret cupboard was
no less inscrutable. The coroner’s jury could return but one verdict.
The remains were those of some person unknown, and how he had met his
death it was impossible to say. The bones were ordered to be buried in
consecrated ground, and with Christian burial, and that was done. At my
own expense I placed a slab over the grave, bearing this line:
‘Sacred to the memory of a stranger. Date of birth and death unknown.’
With the finding and burial of those bones the spectre of Rislip Abbey
departed, and troubled us no more.
Now, the story I have told you is a true one. There is the independent
testimony of my wife and daughter to corroborate mine. My theory is
that in some far-off time a brutal crime had been committed, and the
murdered man’s body had been rolled in a sheet of lead and thrust in
the secret closet; but while the murderers could confine his body they
could not confine his spirit. Though why, after so many generations had
passed, I should have been selected to bring the matter to light I know
not, and cannot even possibly suggest a theory, nor can the mystery
of the crime be cleared up. Who the murdered man was, and why he was
murdered, will never be known until the secrets of all hearts are
revealed in the burning light of the Judgment Day.
X
THE CAVE OF BLOOD
THE STORY OF A DOUBLE CRIME
On the south-west coast of the Principality of Wales stands a romantic
little village, inhabited chiefly by the poorer class of people,
consisting of small farmers and oyster dredgers, whose estates are the
wide ocean, and whose ploughs are the small craft in which they glide
over its interminable fields in search of the treasures which they
wring from its bosom. It is built on the very top of a hill, commanding
on one side a view of an immense bay, and on the other of the peaceful
green fields and valleys, cultivated by the greater number of its quiet
inhabitants. At the period of this story distinctions were unknown in
the village--every man was the equal of his neighbour.
But though rank and its unpolished distinctions were strange in the
village, the superiority of talent was felt and acknowledged almost
without a pause or a murmur. There was one who was as a king amongst
them, by the mere force of a mightier spirit than those with whom he
sojourned had been accustomed to feel among them. He was a dark and
moody man--a stranger--evidently of a higher order than those around
him, who had but a few months before, without any apparent object,
settled among them. Where he came from no one knew. He was a mystery,
and evidently knew how to keep his secrets to himself. He was not
rich, but followed no occupation. He lived frugally, but quite alone,
and his sole employments were to read during the day and wander out,
unaccompanied, into the fields or by the beach during the night. He was
a strange, silent, fearsome sort of man, with a certain uncanniness in
his appearance that commanded respect no less than fear. It soon became
a common belief that this man possessed miraculous powers, not only as
a healer of human ailments, but as a prophet. It was, therefore, not to
be wondered at that in that little community of simple fisher-folk he
was looked up to as a superior being, who not only held the power of
life and death in his hands, but was able to draw aside the veil that
screened the future.
Sometimes he would relieve a suffering child or rheumatic old man by
medicinal herbs, reprove idleness and drunkenness in the youth, and
predict to all the good and evil consequences of their conduct. And in
his success in some cases, his foresight in others, and his wisdom in
all, won for him a high reputation among the cottagers, to which his
taciturn habits contributed not a little, for, with the vulgar as with
the educated, no talker was ever seriously taken for a magician, though
a silent man is often decided to be a wise one.
There was but one person at all disposed to rebel against the despotic
sovereignty which John Morgan--such was the name he chose to be known
by--was silently establishing over the quiet village, and that was
precisely the person most likely to effect a revolution. She was a
beautiful young woman, the glory and boast of the village, who had been
the favourite of, and to a certain degree educated by, the late lady
of the manor; but the lady had died, and her _protégée_, with a full
consciousness of her intellectual superiority, had returned to her
native village, where she determined to have an empire of her own which
no rival should dispute. She laughed at the girls and women folk who
listened to the predictions of Morgan, and she refused her smiles to
the young men who consulted him upon their affairs and their prospects;
and as the beautiful Ruth was generally beloved, the silent Morgan was
soon in danger of being abandoned by all save doting men and paralytic
women, and feeling himself an outcast in the village.
But it was soon made clear that Morgan had no intention of allowing
pretty Ruth to oust him from his position. He had essayed to rule
the village, and he was resolved to retain his hold over the people.
He knew, too, that from another point of view this ascendency was
necessary to his purposes, and as he had failed to establish it by
wisdom and benevolence, he determined to try the effect of fear. The
character of the people with whom he sojourned was admirably calculated
to assist his projects. His predictions were now uttered more clearly,
and his threats denounced in sterner tones and stronger and plainer
words, and when he predicted that old William Williams, who had been
stricken with the palsy, would die at the turn of the tide, three
days from that on which he spoke, and that the light little boat of
gay Griffy Morris, which sailed from the Bay on a bright winter’s
morning, would never again make the shore--the man died, and the storm
arose, even as he said--men’s hearts died within them, and they bowed
down before his words, as if he had been their general fate and the
individual destiny of each.
Ruth’s beautiful face grew pale for a moment as she heard of these
things; in the next her spirit returned, and she told some friend that
she was going to Morgan to have her fortune told, and she would prove
to everyone that he was an impostor. She had no difficulty in getting
up a party of young men and women to accompany her, and she set off for
Morgan’s house with the avowed intention of ‘unmasking and humiliating
him.’ It was rather remarkable, seeing that the man had never done her
any harm, that she should have taken such a prejudice against him.
When they reached his residence they made it very evident that they
intended to insult him. They made jests at his expense, and rudely
and satirically alluded to his professed powers of prophecy. Had Ruth
been more observant and less self-conscious, she could not have failed
to note that Morgan was far removed above the common-place, and was
possessed of mental powers far above anyone else in the village. He
was greatly annoyed by her insulting manner and intentional rudeness,
but he concealed his feelings, though he silently resolved to humble
her pride. ‘I will make him tell my fortune,’ she said. His credit
was at stake; he must daunt his enemy, or surrender to her power; he
foretold sorrows and joys to the listening throng, and he made one of
the young men present and Ruth herself feel exceedingly uncomfortable
by revealing a secret which they themselves thought no human soul knew
beside themselves. Then for the first time Ruth began to think she had
made a mistake, and had underrated her opponent. Nevertheless, her
self-possession did not desert her, and in an easy, flippant manner,
in which there was a challenge as well as a sneer, she bade him read
her future. Morgan remained silent for some moments, and steadily
gazed at her. He had a large book before him, which he opened, shut,
opened again, and again looked sadly and fearfully upon her; she tried
to smile, but felt startled--she knew not why; the bright, inquiring
glance of her dark eye could not change Morgan’s manner. Her smile