They return at evening A book of ghost stories
blown them into the trees,” he said, unconvincingly. “It’s rather a
gloomy spot in there, and it’s hard to follow the flight exactly.”
After tea the secretary went round to see Dakers.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve tried the new hole.”
“I saw you out, sir,” said the Pro., smiling. “Did you get your four?”
“I almost deserved it,” said Mr. Baxter. “My third was played like a
golfer, and lined on the pin. I found it in a rabbit hole underneath
the left bank.”
“That’s what I told you, sir. It’s that sort of hole. I shall be
interested to see how the members like it next week. In this wind it’s
certainly _some_ hole.”
“You mentioned last night something about talk in the village,”
insinuated Mr. Baxter. “What kind of talk?”
“Well, sir, there’s been quite a clack, still is, for that matter;
they’re a funny, old-fashioned lot, with funny ideas. Do you know, sir,
they won’t go into that wood after dusk!”
“Why on earth not?”
“They don’t seem to think it’s healthy somehow; they call it ‘Blood
Wood,’ some old superstition or other. I think some of them were a bit
ashamed of feeling that way till the contractor’s men died; but that
started them off again.”
“It’s a pretty vague sort of yarn,” said the secretary musingly. “Do
they go into detail at all?”
“No, sir, it’s a village tradition of very old standing, I should say.
They are scared of the wood. Old Jim the Cobbler’s father was found
dead, apparently murdered, in it, and there are other tales of the old
times like that.”
* * * * *
Sunday was a busy day for Mr. Baxter. The Dormy House filled up
steadily, and by the evening the highly satisfactory total of
forty-four, mostly hale and slightly too hearty, elderly gentlemen had
assembled.
The Autumn meeting opened in a full easterly gale, and it was a
battered and weary collection of competitors who arrived back at the
club house.
Mr. Baxter, greeting them as they came in, found them on one subject
unanimously eloquent. They one and all cherished loathing mingled with
respect for the new seventeenth. The secretary examined their cards
with curiosity. Only one five was recorded, the average was eight. When
young Cyril Ward, the only scratch player in the club, came in, the
secretary asked him how he had fared. “My ancient friend,” he replied,
“I accomplished seventeen holes in seventy-two strokes; good going in
this wind; my total is eighty. I give you one guess as to the other
hole.”
“Oh, the seventeenth, I suppose.”
“You’ve said it. Baxter, there’s something funny about it. I hit two
perfect shots and then took six more to hole out.”
“I’m sure of it,” said the Secretary, “but I’m getting most remarkably
sick of hearing about it.”
After the second round of the thirty-six holes stroke competition Mr.
Baxter found himself the centre of one of the fiercest indignation
meetings in the history of the golf game. Everyone had something
to say. Eventually he was forced to promise that, if at the end of
the week they were still of the same opinion, he would have the old
seventeenth restored. “But,” said he, “all this chopping and changing
will cost us a lot of money.”
“More likely save us a bit,” grumbled a protestant. “I lost three new
balls there to-day. Have you noticed what a stench there was coming
from the back of the green?”
Cyril Ward went for a stroll with Mr. Baxter when the debate was over.
“I wish the old boys weren’t so impatient,” he said. “That hole has
beaten me badly twice, but I’d like to have many more shots at it. I
shall protest strongly if they decide to change back. Look at it now,
the green’s like a pool of blood!”
(“A sinister but apt description,” thought Mr. Baxter.)
The sun was setting in a wild and tortured sky, and its fiery dying
rays certainly painted the seventeenth a sanguine hue.
“It’s funny you should say that,” he remarked. “It’s called ‘Blood
Wood’ by the locals.”
“From what I heard of the expletives used by our worthy fellow
foozlers, they certainly agree with them,” laughed Ward.
That night Mr. Baxter had a short but disturbing dream. He seemed to
hear a deep bell tolling sullenly, and then suddenly a voice cried,
“Sacred to the memory of Cyril Ward, who screamed once in Blood Wood,”
and then came a discordant chorus of vile and bestial laughter, and he
awoke feeling depressed and ill at ease.
“This absurd business is getting on my nerves,” he thought, “I’m even
dreaming about it,” and he suddenly felt he wanted to leave Duncaster,
and the sooner the better. It was too lonely and idle a life, he
decided.
The next day the gale continued, bringing torrents of rain with it,
and there was no competition. The course was a melancholy and deserted
waste. Mr. Baxter, as he worked in his office, could hear the great
breakers booming beyond the Dunes. About six the rain dwindled to a
light drizzle, and Cyril Ward came in to see him, a couple of clubs
under his arm. “There’s just enough light to let me defeat that blasted
hole,” he said; “the swine fascinates me!”
Mr. Baxter found himself rather vehemently trying to persuade him
otherwise. “I shouldn’t; it’s still raining, and it will be almost dark
in the wood.”
“Oh, rot,” said Ward, and presently the Secretary saw him tee up and
drive off. He watched him until he had almost reached the wood, and
then someone called him to settle a point of bridge law. The windows of
the smoking-room were open, and the gale suddenly increased in fury.
Mr. Baxter had just given his decision when there came a long scream of
agony shaking down the wind. He rushed to the door, the other occupants
of the room hustling after him.
That terrible cry had come from the wood, and they began running
towards it. Suddenly just visible in the gloom, a figure came
staggering out from the wood, threw up its arms, and fell. Mr. Baxter
dashed towards it as he had not run for twenty years, the others after
him.
Cyril Ward was lying on his back, his eyes wide, staring, and
horrible--obviously dead.
Amongst those who came up was the local doctor, who knelt down and
made a short examination. “Must be heart. I believe he had a weakness
there, poor Cyril!” Mr. Baxter helped to carry the body back to the
Dormy House; his burden was Cyril’s left leg, a disgusting dangling
thing. The memory of his dream came back to him, and his nerves shook.
He tried to find reassurance by telling himself that such premonitions
were common enough, however inexplicable.
It was decided at an informal meeting that the links should be closed
the next day out of respect for the dead, but that the foursomes should
be held on the Thursday. “A very typically British compromise,” thought
Mr. Baxter.
“Will an inquest be necessary?” he asked the doctor.
“I think not; it’s clearly a case of heart.”
“Did you notice his eyes?” asked the secretary.
The doctor gave him a quick glance. “I did,” he replied, “but these
attacks are often very painful. But did _you_ notice that appalling
stink coming from the wood?”
“Yes,” said the secretary shortly.
“Well, I should find out the cause, it can’t be healthy.”
“I will to-morrow,” said Mr. Baxter.
The next day he spent in his office, and never before had a sense
of the futility of his occupation so swept over him. This shifting
of pieces of india-rubber from one spot to another! Oh, that a man
should have to spend his few and gloriously potential days fussing
about such banality! Perhaps he was only pitying himself. He went back
to his card-marking. He felt utterly weary when he went to bed, and
fell immediately asleep. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” there came that terrible
tolling. He _must_ wake! He must not hear what was to come. “Sacred to
the memory of Sybil Grant, who screamed twice in Blood Wood,” and once
again came that foul and wicked laughter.
He awoke sweating and unnerved. He got up and mixed himself the
strongest whisky and soda of his temperate existence. “Sybil Grant!
Sybil Grant!” Thank God, he knew no one of that name! He tried to read,
till light came.
He went down to the club house after breakfast, and met the doctor.
“Hullo,” said the latter, “you’re not looking very fit! What’s the
matter?”
“Oh, just a rotten night,” said the secretary. “By the way, I sent the
green-keeper to find out about that smell, but he couldn’t discover
any cause for it; and, as a matter of fact, says he couldn’t smell
anything.”
“Well, he’s a lucky man,” said the doctor. “It was the most loathsome
reek I’ve encountered, and I’ve met a few!”
After the foursomes had started, everyone desperately light-hearted
and pathetically determined to allow no echo of the horror of a few
hours before to disturb the atmosphere of laboured cheerfulness, Mr.
Baxter felt he must be alone. He wandered off to the long No Man’s Land
between the dunes and the sea, a famous haunt of sea birds; the sand
showed everywhere the delicate tracings of their soft little feet.
As he reached the darker strata just surrendered by the angry, fading
tide, his eye was caught by a patch of scarlet moving down to the
sea some distance to his left. “A girl going to bathe,” he thought
casually. “She must have warm blood in her to face such a sea on such
a day. I hope she knows what she’s about. It’s none too safe a spot.”
Presently he saw a man run down to join her, and felt reassured and
yet depressed. “To be a dingy old bachelor like myself is the one
unanswerable indictment. Ten King’s Councillors could not make it seem
excusable.”
Then his mind turned to the question of the new post he was determined
to secure. He would go up to London as soon as the meeting was over and
get an exchange if possible.
* * * * *
His work kept him busy all the afternoon, and he did not emerge from
his office till dusk was falling. “Best figure in England,” he heard
the Colonel declaring, as he entered the smoking-room. “I believe she’s
engaged to Bob Renton.”
“Who’s that?” asked the secretary.
“The Grant girl,” said the Colonel, “Sybil Grant.”
The secretary felt a tug of horror at his heart.
“Is she coming down here?” he asked sharply.
“She _is_ here,” replied the Colonel. “If you’d been here ten minutes
ago you’d have seen her.”
“Well, where is she now?” asked the secretary, seizing his arm. “Where
is this girl?” he cried, his voice rising.
“Hullo, young feller, what’s all the excitement? I imagine she’s about
at the seventeenth green; she’s staying with the Bartletts at the Old
Cottage, and is walking back that way.”
At that moment a bell seemed to toll once shatteringly in the
Secretary’s ears. He put his hands to his head, and without a word
started running frantically down the seventeenth fairway. Suddenly
there sprang down the wind a terrible cry of terror, followed by a
desperate and prolonged scream. Mr. Baxter stopped dead and shuddered.
He heard shouts behind him and the patter of others running. He
tottered on. Somebody--several people--passed him; as he reeled into
the wood he could see the fire-fly gleam of electric torches, and as
he neared them he could see they were focussed on some object on the
ground. It was white, and someone was kneeling over it. When he saw
what it was he was suddenly and violently sick. It was flung down the
bank, it was naked, its head was lolling hideously. It was sprawling,
one knee flung high, its face--but someone covered that face with his
coat and told Mr. Baxter to go for the doctor. And that terrible Death
stench kept him company.
* * * * *
The inquest was fixed for the following Monday, and Mr. Baxter was told
that his testimony would be required.
The little village swarmed with police and reporters. There hadn’t been