They return at evening A book of ghost stories
a mystery of such possibilities for many moons, and the whole country
was stirred. Murder so foul cried out for vengeance. But there was
no arrest, “And there never will be,” thought Mr. Baxter as he took
his stand in the improvised witness-box in the village school. The
Coroner, a corpulent, hirsute and pompous person, soon put to him the
question he had anticipated. “I understand that you started to run
towards the scene of the tragedy before these screams were heard: is
that so?”
“Yes,” replied the secretary.
“Why was that?”
And then Mr. Baxter uncontrollably laughed.
“I may be mistaken,” said the Coroner, “but this hardly seems a
laughing matter.”
“I must beg your pardon,” said Mr. Baxter, “I laughed against my will,
I laughed because I suddenly realised how absurd you would consider my
explanation to be.”
“That is quite possible,” said the Coroner, “but I must ask you to let
me hear it.”
“I had a premonition, a dream.”
“Of what character?”
“Well, I dreamed that Miss Grant would be killed.”
“Did you warn her?”
“I had never heard of her except in this dream. I did not know she was
here till I was so informed a moment before these screams were heard.”
“A curious story,” replied the representative of Law and Order, who
clearly regarded Mr. Baxter as a person of limited intelligence and
dubious veracity.
“Murder by some person or persons unknown,” was the verdict, and
unknown he, she or they remained.
* * * * *
The nine days ran their course, police and reporters departed, and Mr.
Baxter went off to London, where he secured a job at a new course in
Surrey. He was to have no successor at Duncaster. Resignations poured
in, and it was decided at a final meeting of the committee that the
links should be abandoned.
On arriving in London it occurred to Mr. Baxter to call upon a friend
of his, a Mr. Markes. He very much wanted an expert confidant, and Mr.
Markes, besides being very wealthy, was by some trick of temperament
fascinated by all types of psychic phenomena, and had amassed the
finest library on such matters in the world.
“Jim,” asked the Secretary, “is there any mention of Duncaster in your
records?”
“When I read about your troubles there,” replied Mr. Markes, “I thought
they sounded rather in the tradition, and so I looked up the history
of Duncaster and was unexpectedly fortunate; for it is mentioned in
a work, which, for the most part, is deservedly forgotten. _The
Memoirs of Simon Tylor_, a peculiarly dull dog. I have them here,” he
continued, walking over to a shelf and taking down a bulky volume.
“In the year 1839 Simon took a walking tour through Norfolk and arrived
at Duncaster on September 10th. He liked the look of it, and decided to
spend a couple of days there at the inn, ‘The Sleeping Sentinel.’”
“It is there still,” said Mr. Baxter.
“All this,” went on Mr. Markes, “is described at vast and damnable
length, but his adventure, which occurred on the second evening of his
stay, is much more crisply done. I will read it to you:
“‘I spent a pleasing and invigorating morning wandering over the wild
expanse of moor and “dunes,” as they call the great sand mounds; and
afterwards dined, rested and had some talk with my good host of the
inn. Late in the afternoon I decided to make further exploration of the
neighbourhood, and, noticing a fine wood of tall trees some distance
away across the moor, I remarked to my host that I proposed to visit
it. Greatly to my surprise he strongly opposed my doing so, but when
I asked him for what reason, he returned me evasive replies--“No one
wanders there after nightfall,” he said, “It has a bad repute.”
“‘On account of robbers?’ I asked. And though he replied with a short
laugh that that was so, I did not believe it was the thought in his
mind. To satisfy him, I declared I would but walk towards it, a promise
I had better have kept.
“‘So I wandered out as the light was fading, and drew near to the wood.
Then I put it to myself that such village gossip was in most cases but
idle tradition inscribed in the long and sparsely furnished memories
of country folk. And this decision prevailing, I entered the wood,
following a rough pathway. And then I had reason to doubt my host’s
word, for instead of it being shunned by the local folk it seemed that
the wood did house quite a company. The light being low and the trees
growing close, I failed clearly to distinguish my companions, but only,
as it were, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed them many times.
“Lovers,” thought I. After I had traversed some two hundred paces I
noted some little way in front of me a low mound with a single fine
tree at its back. I was just fancying that I would go so far and then
return when a movement in the gloom caught my eye, and at the same
instant I perceived a very vile and curious stench. Something seemed
to be reclining on the mound, a beast of some sort, and slowly gaining
its feet. And then I knew the beginning of fear. This thing seemed to
rise and rise till it towered above the tree, and then it couched its
head as for a spring. I have no wish to see its like again. Seized with
a great loathing and horror, I ran back along the path, and as I ran it
seemed that many were running beside me and closing in upon me. I felt
the Thing was close beside me, but I dared not turn to look. Just as my
breath was leaving me I found myself at the edge of the wood, and then
something seemed to touch me, and I screamed and swooned.
“‘When I regained my senses I found I was prone on the ground and my
host and some others were standing round me conversing in low tones.
They helped me back to the Inn, no one saying a word. I left early the
next morning, that stench still lingering in my nostrils and the host
seeming to avoid talk with me. All this is the truth as I have set it
down.’
“And that’s what happened to Simon,” said Markes.
“A curious story,” said Mr. Baxter.
“Far more curious than uncommon. I could find you a dozen almost
identical experiences. Almost certainly the work of our friends the
Druids, whoever they were! A mound and an oak--such places are death
traps. Not all the time; the peril is periodic, why, we don’t know.
But our friend Simon was very lucky to be able to leave ‘early next
morning,’ though he didn’t escape altogether. The rest of his book
reads like a coda to this adventure. Bad dreams, depression and always
that smell in his nose. He died within a year or two. And now tell
me exactly what happened at Duncaster, for I gather it is still a
disturbed area.”
So Mr. Baxter told him the curious events connected with the new
seventeenth.
A PEG ON WHICH TO HANG----
A PEG ON WHICH TO HANG----
Before telling Mr. James Partridge’s displeasing experience at
the Beach Hotel, Littleford, it may be as well to establish that
gentleman’s credentials by briefly describing him. He is a writer
by habit and inclination, though being the fruit of rich but honest
parents, he is not in the paralysing position of being compelled to
rely on his pen, ink and paper for his means of subsistence. He has
made a nice little reputation as an essayist of the lightest sort. He
has examined the surface of things, of persons and of life in general
with a tolerant, mildly cynical assiduity. Below that surface he very
sensibly refrains from looking. It is not in his character. He takes
some homely and familiar topic--let us say, a Number 11e Omnibus--as
his text, and manages to coax from a ruminating survey of its cargo
and its route two thousand bland and gently ironic words of amusement
without pedantry, for which he receives 25 guineas from a high-brow
weekly.
Though on the whole a modest man, he believes in his heart of hearts
that he does this sort of thing better than “Y.Y.”--an opinion not
widely shared, and least of all by Mr. Robert Lynd.
Being a journalist, you will naturally suspect that he invented this
narrative and foisted it on his credulous acquaintance. If so, you will
do him a serious injustice, for he has no gift for fiction and, indeed,
this is not the type of narrative he would care to pursue if he had.
You may take it for granted then that his version of what happened
on the night of March 23rd, 1924, at the Royal Hotel, Littleford, is
plain, untouched-up fact.
If you would like to know some details of his appearance, he is
thin, wiry, but lacking muscle, a mild edition of Sherlock Holmes,
facially--a bit dusty and musty and bachelory, a bit donnish and
British and formidable--a man’s man, but not every man’s man. People
who like him like him very much--that’s all he cares about.
He found himself at the Royal Hotel, Littleford, on March 23rd, 1924,
on this account. He has three firm and excellent friends about his own
age--which is 47--like himself all keen golfers. Their handicaps range
between nine and fourteen--almost certainly the most satisfactory range
of all; for those embraced within it are not unduly cast down by the
undesired uprising of playful divots, yet they can derive exquisite
satisfaction from the production of a Stout Blow, and are sufficiently
competent to perpetrate several in the course of a round--humble folk
who realise that, if they will never be mistaken for Bobby Jones, it is
hardly possible that they will be confused with Harry Tate. Mr. George
Dunbar, K.C., masterful, hirsute, with a hypnotic power over juries,
Mr. William Cranmer, who knows more about old books than most people,
Mr. Alexander Frith, Professor of Moral Philosophy at an Ancient
Foundation and a sceptic of sceptics, made up the four who journeyed
down to Littleford on this occasion.
It had been their cherished custom for many years to leave their
faithful readers, their burglarious clientèle, their candidates for
firsts in Greats, their cultured bibliophiles to their own disconsolate
devices at seasons of the year convenient to them all, and to forgather
at certain famous golf courses; and they had chosen that admirable
links, Littleford, for their spring pilgrimage in 1924. They intended
to stay a week, and had secured their rooms prudently in advance.
They travelled down together in Mr. Partridge’s car, and on entering
the Royal Hotel were met by a flaccid specimen of the genus Small
Hotel-keeper, who was chafing his palms in a deprecating manner.
Mr. Partridge addressed him sternly. “You have four rooms engaged for
us in my name, which is Partridge.”
“I regret to say, sir, only three,” replied the flaccid specimen, “but
I have secured an excellent room at a boarding-establishment close at
hand,” and he frotted his clammy hands again.
If Mr. Partridge had a failing it was a tendency to be choleric at
times--and this was one of them. As the organiser of the party it
would be his painful duty to sample the boarding-establishment, and,
cherishing a peculiar loathing for this type of accommodation, he
wasn’t having any.
“Look here,” he said with truculence, “I have your letter stating you
had reserved _four_ rooms, and I must ask you to keep to your word.”
Something in Mr. Partridge’s demeanour daunted the specimen, and he
shuffled off down the passage to his office.
Mr. Cranmer, who is incorrigibly a man of peace, began suggesting he
was rather partial to boarding-houses and wouldn’t mind a bit, but Mr.
Partridge waved him aside and strode menacingly down the passage after
the hotel-keeper, who went through the outer office into a small room
at the back, which Mr. Partridge saw was already occupied by a female
of the Buxom Brighton Barmaid type, with whom the landlord began a
colloquy, in a whisper sufficiently audible to allow Mr. Partridge to
catch a sentence here and there.
“Well, chance it,” murmured the female.