Part 17

A few minutes passed, then the door of the library was flung violently open, and Phyllis, half fainting, looking ghastly pale, and with a ‘scared-to-death’ appearance of face, rushed in and clung wildly to me.

‘What’s the matter, child; what’s the matter?’ I cried in alarm; but she remained speechless. Moments, perhaps minutes, slipped by, during which I kept urging her to speak. She found her voice at last sufficient to jerk out in a breathless way:

‘Oh, pa, I’ve had such a fright. When I got up to the first landing such a strange-looking man was standing there. I was about to ask him what he was doing, when he raised his hand in a sort of warning way and disappeared.’

I laughed, but it wasn’t a genuine laugh, and I pretended to speak lightly, as I said:

‘My dear child, I’ve been over-working you and your poor tired brain has seen visions. Come, let me take you upstairs to your room. You must try and get a good night’s rest. You will be all right to-morrow.’

She gave me a look that was full of meaning. She said with her eyes as plainly as possible, ‘Don’t try to turn it off in that way. I have seen what I have seen.’ She had mastered her feelings by this time, and though she spoke no words, she went upstairs with me until we reached the first landing, which was lighted in the daytime by a long stained-glass window. Edging a little closer to me, she whispered, ‘This was where I saw him.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ I answered, though I was far from believing it was nonsense, but I wanted to reassure her. I escorted her to her door, saw that her lamp was burning, then kissed her good-night and descended, and as I went down the last flight of stairs I turned suddenly, for I was sure I heard footsteps. And close behind me was a weird-looking man dressed in the costume of a gentleman of Charles II.’s reign. He appeared to be about sixty-five years of age. Long, grey, ringleted hair hung about his shoulders. His face wore an expression of awful anguish.

For a moment I experienced a shock, but I quickly recovered myself and tried to grasp him, but he was as unsubstantial as the air, and the uncanniness of the whole business made me involuntarily shrink back. Then he raised his hands, and drawing down the large lace collar from his neck, he bared his throat, showing me a tremendous gash that had severed the windpipe, and from which the blood seemed to pour in a stream. It was a fearsome sight, I must confess, and I had never before in the whole course of my existence experienced such an utterly ‘gone’ and helpless feeling as I did in the presence of that supernatural visitant, and before I had pulled myself together, as the saying is, the weird spectre raised his hand, pointed upward with an extended finger, and in an instant had disappeared.

I returned to my library and flung myself into a chair, and I asked myself seriously whether the incidents of the last quarter of an hour were not the result of some morbid condition of my own brain. That is to say, I was disposed to doubt whether my daughter had really rushed pale and fainting into the room, as I have described, or whether it wasn’t a figment of my own imagination. But here let me say that I had always been regarded as an unimaginative person, with, as I have before said, a scientific mind, which required hard, stern facts to convince it. How was it then I had come to see visions?

I asked myself this question, and mentally argued the whole thing out, trying to explain away the vision; but, firstly, there were the mysterious hand and the sliding panel, and now here was a man of a bygone age who had horrified me by showing me his throat gashed, and rent, and bleeding.

I don’t know really how long I sat revolving the problem in my brain, but I do know that I crept up to bed at last feeling terribly fagged mentally and physically.

I slept far beyond my usual hour the following morning. My family had already breakfasted, but Phyllis came and sat with me, and recounted her previous night’s experiences. There was an unwonted paleness in her pretty face and a scared look in her eyes. I felt it wise not to say anything to her about what I myself had seen; but, moved by a sudden impulse, I said I was going up to London by the next train and would take her with me.

It was no unusual thing for me to be called away from home at a moment’s notice, so that my wife was not surprised. Phyllis expressed her delight at going, and two hours later we were seated in the up express. On arriving at our destination, I quartered Phyllis at the house of my sister, while I went to an hotel where I was in the habit of staying when in town. The following day I called on an old and esteemed medical friend--a man not only eminent as a physician, but famous as an author of several erudite works dealing with all forms of mental disease. I detailed the experiences of myself and daughter to him, and he looked very grave and puzzled, but before venturing to express any opinion he said he would like to see Phyllis. So I drove off at once to my sister’s, and took Phyllis back with me, and without entering into any particulars I simply remarked that I wanted the doctor to see her. She expressed surprise by her face, but remained silent. On arriving at the doctor’s house I requested her to tell him what she had seen, which she did in a plain, intelligent way. My friend appeared more than ever puzzled, and, having sent Phyllis out of the room, he delivered himself somewhat as follows:

‘Well, now, my dear fellow, the facts of the case are these. Both you and Phyllis are more impressionable than you imagine, and you have gone through a great deal of excitement lately in connection with your new quarters. Last night you overtaxed the girl’s brain, and what she thought she saw was a pure fancy. Her sudden appearance in your room in a state of nervous agitation, her story, her manner, made a great impression on you, and what she told you she had seen suggested the same thing to you.’

‘But how about the hand and the sliding panel?’ I asked.

‘The result also of a morbid condition of the mind,’ he answered. ‘Fancy, fancy, all fancy, my dear sir. Now you and Phyllis go and make a little journey somewhere. A trip to the South of France, a month at Monte Carlo, will do you all the good in the world.’

I left my friend’s house far from satisfied. I knew he was sincere in his belief, but he was wrong in his diagnosis. Nevertheless, I began to think of carrying out his suggestion and visiting the Riviera. No doubt I should have done that if it hadn’t been for the fact that three days later I received a telegram from home, summoning me back at once, as my wife had been taken ill.

I began to fear now that Rislip was to prove a curse instead of a blessing to me; and, depressed by an anxiety I had never known before, I caught the next train out. Phyllis, of course, accompanied me, and we reached Rislip about ten o’clock at night. I learnt that my wife had had a fit. The cause nobody knew, but she told me. She had been sitting in the dining-room alone, when she felt a draught as I had done. Then to her horror she saw a deathly-white hand sliding the panel 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 could not melt, nor even temper, the hardness of his deep-seated malice; he again looked sternly, and then coldly uttered these slow, soul-withering words, ‘Woman, you are doomed to be a murderess!’ At first she sneered at his prediction, and then laughed at him; but with greater solemnity, and speaking as if he were inspired, he exclaimed, ‘I tell you, Ruth, you will become a murderess! I see blood upon your hands and blood upon your face, and the black stain of awful guilt upon your immortal soul.’

Her arrogance was subdued, her haughty spirit overcome, and with something liked a groan she hurried away. But from that day she found that she was a marked woman. The superstitious villagers shunned her, and she became, as it were, an outcast.

Abhorring Morgan, she yet felt drawn towards him, and while she sat by his side felt as if he alone could avert the evil destiny which he himself had foretold. With him only was she seen to smile; elsewhere, sad, silent, stern; it seemed as if she were ever occupied in nerving her mind for that which she had to do, and she grew melancholy and morbid.

But there were moments when her naturally strong spirit, not yet wholly subdued, struggled against her conviction, and endeavoured to find modes of averting her fate; it was in one of these, perhaps, that she gave her hand to a wooer, from a distant part of the country, a mariner, who either had not heard or did not regard the prediction, upon condition that he should remove her far from her native village to the home of his family and friends, for she sometimes felt as if the decree which had gone forth against her could not be fulfilled except upon the spot where she had heard it, and that her heart would be lighter if men’s eyes would again look upon her in kindliness and she no longer sat beneath the glare of those that knew so well the secret of her soul. Thus thinking, she quitted the village with her husband; and the tormentor, who had poisoned her repose, soon after her departure, left the village as secretly and as suddenly as he had entered it.