The Searcher of the End House

IT WAS STILL EVENING, as I remember, and the four of us, Jessop, Arkright, Taylor and I, looked disappointedly at Carnacki, where he sat silent in his great chair.

We had come in response to the usual card of invitation, which—as you know—we have come to consider as a sure prelude to a good story; and now, after telling us the short incident of the Three Straw Platters, he had lapsed into a contented silence, and the night not half gone, as I have hinted.

However, as it chanced, some pitying fate jogged Carnacki’s elbow, or his memory, and he began again, in his queer level way:—

“This ‘Straw Platters’ business reminds me, you know, of the ‘Searcher’ Case, which I have sometimes thought might interest you.

It was some time ago, in fact a deuce of a long time ago, that the thing happened; and my experience of what I might term ‘curious’ things was very small indeed.

“I was living with my Mother, when it occurred, in a small house just outside of Appledorn, on the South Coast. The house was the last of a row of detached cottage-villas, I might call them, each house standing in its own garden; and very dainty little places they were, exceedingly old, and most of them smothered in roses; and all, you know, with those quaint, leaded windows, and the doors built of genuine oak. You must just try to picture them for the sake of their complete niceness.

“Now I must remind you at the beginning, that my Mother and I had lived in that little house for two years, and in the whole of that time there had not been a single thing peculiar to worry us.

“And then, you know, something happened.

“It was about two o’clock one morning, just as I was finishing some letters, that I heard the door of my Mother’s bedroom open, and she came to the top of the stairs, and knocked on the banisters.

“ ‘All right, dear,’ I called; for I supposed that she was merely reminding me that I should have been in bed long ago; then I heard her go back to her room, and I hurried my work, for fear that she should lie awake, until she had heard me safe up to my room.

“When I was finished, I lit my candle, put out the lamp, and went upstairs. As I came opposite to the door of my Mother’s room, I saw that it was open, and called good-night to her, very softly, and asked whether I should close the door.

“As there was no answer, I knew that she had dropped over again to sleep, and I closed the door very gently, and turned into my room, just across the passage. As I did so, I had a momentary, half-aware sense that there was a faint, peculiar, disagreeable odour in the passage; but it was not until the following night that I realised that I had seemed to smell something that offended me. You follow me, don’t you? I mean, it is so often like that—one suddenly knows about a thing that really recorded itself on one’s consciousness, perhaps a year before.

“The next morning at breakfast, I mentioned casually to my Mother that she had ‘dropped-off’, and that I had shut her door for her. But, to my surprise, she assured me that she had never been out of her room. I reminded her about the two raps that she had given upon the banister; but she was still certain that I must be mistaken; and in the end I teased her that she had got so accustomed to my bad habit of sitting up late, that she had come to call me in her sleep. Of course, she denied this, and I let the matter drop; but I was more than a little puzzled, and did not know whether to believe my own explanation, or to take the Mater’s, which was to put the noises to the blame of mice, and the open door to the fact that she may not have properly latched it when she went to bed. I suppose, away in the subconscious part of me, I had a stirring of less reasonable-seeming thoughts; but certainly, I had no knowledge of real uneasiness at that time.

“Then, the next night there came a further development, for about two-thirty a.m., I heard my Mother’s door open, exactly as on the previous night, and immediately afterward she rapped sharply, on the banister, as it seemed to me. I stopped my work a moment, and called up to her that I would not be long; but as she made no reply, and I did not hear her go back to bed, I had a quick wonder whether she might not be doing it in her sleep, after all, just as I had said.

“With the thought, I stood up, and taking the lamp from the table, began to go towards the door, which was open into the passage. And then, you know, I got a sudden nasty sort of thrill; for it came to me, all at once, that my Mother never knocked, when I had sat up too late, but called. But you will understand that I was not really frightened in any way; only vaguely uneasy, and pretty sure that she must be really doing the thing in her sleep.

“I went up the stairs quickly, and when I had come to the top, my Mother was not there; but her door was open. I had a little bewildered sense that she must have gone quietly back to bed, after all, without my hearing her; but, for all that I thought I believed this, I was pretty quick into her room. Yet, when I got there, she was sleeping quietly and naturally; for the vague sense of trouble in me was sufficiently strong to make me go over to look at her, to make certain.

“When I was sure that she was perfectly right in every way, I was still a little bothered; but much more inclined to believe that my suspicion was right and that she had got quietly back to bed in her sleep, without waking to know what she had been doing. This was the most reasonable thing to think, as you must see.

“And then, it came to me, suddenly, that there was a vague, queer, mildewy smell in the room; and it was in that instant that I became aware that I had smelt the same strange, uncertain smell the night before, in the passage, as you remember.

“I was definitely uneasy now, and began quietly to search my Mother’s room; though with no aim or clear thought of anything, except to assure myself that there was nothing in the room. And all the time, you know, I never expected really to find anything; only that my uneasiness had to be reassured.

“In the middle of my search round, my Mother woke up, and of course I had to explain. I told her about her door opening, and then the knocks on the banister, and that I had come up and found her asleep. I said nothing about the smell, which was not very distinct; but told her that the thing happening twice had made me a bit nervous, and possibly fanciful, and that I thought I would take a look about, just to feel satisfied.

“I have thought since then that the reason I made no mention of the smell, was not only that I did not want to make my Mother feel frightened—for I was scarcely that way myself—but because I had a vague half-knowledge that I associated the smell with fancies too indefinite and peculiar to bear talking about. You will understand that I am able now to analyse and put the thing into words; but then I did not even know my chief reason for saying nothing; let alone appreciate its possible significance. You follow me?

“It was my Mother, after all, who put part of my vague sensations into words:—

“ ‘What a disagreeable smell,’ she exclaimed, and was silent a moment, looking at me. Then:— ‘You feel that there’s something wrong,’ still looking at me, very quiet, you know; but with a little, questioning, nervous note of expectancy.

“ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t understand it, unless you’ve really been walking about in your sleep.’

“ ‘But the smell,’ she said.

“ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘That’s what puzzles me, too. I’ll have a walk through the house; though I don’t suppose it’s anything.’

“I lit her candle, and then taking the lamp, I went through the two other bedrooms, and afterwards all over the house, including the three underground cellars, which I found a little trying to the nerves.

“Then I went back to my Mother, and told her that there was really nothing to bother about; and, you know, in the end, we talked ourselves into believing that it was nothing. My Mother would not agree that she might have been sleep-walking; but she was ready to put the door opening, down to the fault of the latch, which certainly snicked very lightly. As for the knocks, they might be the old warped woodwork of the house, cracking a bit, or a mouse rattling a piece of loose plaster. The smell was a little more difficult to explain; but finally we agreed that it might easily be the queer night-smell of the moist earth, coming in through the window of my Mother’s room, from the back garden, or—for that matter—from the little church-yard beyond the big wall at the bottom of the garden.

“And so, at last, we quietened down, and finally I went off to bed, and had some sleep.

“I think this is certainly a good lesson on the way in which we humans can delude ourselves; for there was not one of these explanations that my reason could really accept. You just try to imagine yourselves in the same circumstances, and you will see how absurd our attempts to explain the happenings really were.

“In the morning, when I came down to breakfast, we talked it all over again, and whilst we agreed that it was strange, we also agreed that we had begun to imagine queer things in the backs of our minds, which now we felt half ashamed to admit. I think this is very funny, when you come to look into it; but it’s absurdly human.

“And then, you know, that night, my Mother’s door was slammed once violently, just after midnight.

“I caught up the lamp, and when I reached her door, I found it shut. I opened it quickly and went in, to find my Mother lying with her eyes open, and rather nervous; having been waked by the slam of the door. But what upset me more than anything, was the fact that there was a simply brutal smell in the passage and in her room.

“Whilst I was asking her whether she was all right, a door slammed twice downstairs; and you can imagine how it made me feel. My Mother and I looked at one another; and then I lit her candle, and taking the poker from the fender, went downstairs with the lamp, feeling really horribly nervous. The culminative effect of so many queer little things was getting hold of me; and all the apparently reasonable explanations seemed abjectly futile.

“The horrible smell seemed to be very strong in the downstairs passage; also in the front room and the cellars; but chiefly in the passage. However, I made a very thorough search of the house, and when I had finished, I knew that all the lower windows and doors had been properly shut and fastened, and that there was certainly no living thing in the house, beyond our two selves.

“Then I went upstairs again to my Mother’s room, and we talked the thing over for an hour or more, and in the end came to the conclusion that we might, after all, be reading too much into a number of little things; but, you know, inside of us, we did not believe this. You just think!

“Later, when we had talked ourselves into a more comfortable state of mind, I said good night, and went off to bed; and presently managed to get to sleep.

“Then, in the early hours of the morning, whilst it was still dark, I was waked by a loud noise. You can imagine that it made me feel rather queer, after the little unexplained things that had been happening; and I sat up pretty quick in bed, and listened. And then, downstairs, I heard:—bang, bang, bang, one door after another being slammed; at least, that is the impression that the sounds gave me.

“I jumped out of bed, with a tingle and shiver of sudden fright on me; and at the same moment, as I lit my candle, my door was pushed slowly open; you see, I had not latched it, so as to feel that my Mother was not shut off from me in any way.

“ ‘Who’s there!’ I shouted out, in a voice about twice as deep as natural, and with that queer breathlessness, that a sudden fright so often gives one. ‘Who’s there!’

“Then I heard my Mother saying:—

“ ‘It’s me, Thomas. Whatever is happening downstairs?’

“She was in the room, by this, and I saw that she had her bedroom poker in one hand, and her candle in the other. I could have smiled at her, if it had not been for the extraordinary sounds downstairs; for, you know, she was such a little woman; but with heaps of pluck.

“I got into my slippers, and reached down an old sword-bayonet from the wall. Then I picked up my candle, and begged my Mother not to come; but I knew it would be little use, if she had made up her mind; and she had, with the result that she acted as a sort of rearguard for me, during our search. I know, in some ways, selfishly, I was very glad to have her with me.

“By this time, the door-slamming had ceased, and there seemed, probably because of the sheer contrast, to be a simply beastly silence in the house. However, I led the way, holding my candle high, and keeping the sword-bayonet handy.

“When we got downstairs, I saw that all the room doors were wide open; and when we had made a thorough search, and found the outer doors and the windows all secured, I tell you, I wondered whether the noises had been made by the doors at all. Of one thing only we were able to make sure, and that was that there was no living thing in the house, beside ourselves. But everywhere, in the whole house, there seemed the taint of that extraordinarily horrible smell.

“Of course, it was absurd to try to ‘make-believe’ any longer. There was something strange about the house; and as soon as it was daylight, I set my Mother to packing. After breakfast, I saw her off by train to one of my aunts, with a wire in advance, to prepare them.

“Then I set to work to try to clear up this mystery. I went first to the landlord, and told him all the circumstances. From him, I found that twelve or fifteen years back, the house had got rather a curious name from three or four tenants; with the result that it had remained empty for a long while; and in the end he had let it at a low rent to a Captain Tobias, on the one condition that the Captain should hold his tongue, if he saw anything peculiar. The Landlord’s idea—as he told me frankly—was to free the house from these tales of ‘something queer’, by keeping a tenant in it, and then to sell it for the best price he could get.

“However, when Captain Tobias left, after a ten years’ tenancy, there was no longer any ‘talk’ about the house; so that when we came and offered to take it on a five years’ lease, he had jumped at the chance. This was the whole story; at least, so he gave me to understand. When I pressed him for details of the supposed peculiar happenings in the house, all those years back, he said that the tenants had talked about a woman who was always going about the house at night. Some tenants never saw anything; but others would not stay the first month’s tenancy.

“One thing the landlord was particular to point out, that no tenant had ever complained about knockings, or doors slamming. As for the smell, he seemed positively indignant about it; but why, I don’t suppose he quite knew himself, except that he probably had some vague feeling that it was an indirect accusation on my part that the drains were not right.

“In the end, I suggested that he should come down that evening and spend the night with me. He agreed at once, especially as I told him that I intended to keep the whole business quiet, and try to get really to the bottom of the curious happenings; for he was very anxious to keep the rumour of the haunting from getting about again.

“About three o’clock that afternoon, he came down, and we made a thorough search of the house, which, however, showed us nothing unusual. Afterwards, the Landlord made one or two tests, which showed him that the drainage was in perfect order; and after that, we made our preparations for sitting up all night.

“First, we borrowed two policemen’s dark lanterns from the station near by, where the Superintendent and I were very friendly; and as soon as it was really dusk, the Landlord went up to his house for his gun. I had the sword-bayonet that I have told you about; and when the Landlord got back, we sat talking in my study until nearly midnight.

“Then we lit the lanterns and went upstairs on to the landing, where I brought a small table and a couple of chairs out of one of the bedrooms. We put the lanterns and the gun and bayonet handy on the table; then I shut and sealed the bedroom-doors; after which we took our seats, and turned off the lights.

“From then, until two o’clock, nothing happened; but a little after two, as I found by holding my watch near to the faint glow of the closed lanterns, I had a time of quite extraordinary nervousness. At last I bent towards the Landlord, and whispered to him that I had a queer feeling that something was about to happen, and to be ready with his lantern. At the same time, I reached out towards mine. In the very instant that I made this movement, the night which filled the passage seemed to become suddenly of a dull violet colour; not, mind you, as if a light had been shone; but as if the natural blackness of the night had changed colour, as I might say from the inside. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you? And then, coming through this violet night, through this violet-coloured gloom, came a little naked child, running. In an extraordinary way, the child seemed not to be distinct from the surrounding gloom; but almost as if it were a concentration of that extraordinary atmosphere; almost—can you understand?—as if that gloomy colour which had changed the night, came from the child. It seems impossible to make clear to you; but try to take hold of what I’m saying.

“The child went past me, running, quite naturally, as a chubby human child might run; only in an absolute and inconceivable silence. I remember that it was a very small child, and must have passed under the table; but I saw it through the table, as if the table had been only a slightly darker shadow than the coloured gloom. In the same instant, I saw that a fluctuating shimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun-barrels and the blade of the sword-bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of glimmering light, floating unsupported where the table-top should have shown solid.

“Now, curiously, as I saw these things, I was subconsciously aware that I heard the anxious breathing of the Landlord, quite clear and laboured, close to my elbow, where he waited nervously with his hands on the lantern. And, you know, I realised in that moment that he saw nothing; but waited in the darkness, for my warning to come true.

“Even as I took heed of these minor things, I saw the child jump to one side, and hide behind some half-seen object, that was certainly nothing belonging to the passage. I stared, intently, with a most extraordinary thrill of expectant wonder, and fright making goose-flesh of my back. And even as I stared, I solved for myself the less important problem of what two black clouds were that hung over a part of the table. I think it is very curious and interesting, that double working of the mind, often so much more apparent during times of stress. The two black clouds came from two faintly shining shapes, which I knew must be the metal of the lanterns; and the things that looked black to the sight with which I was then seeing; could be nothing else but what to normal human sight is known as light. This phenomenon I have always remembered. I have twice seen a somewhat similar thing, in that Dark Light Case, and in that trouble of Maaetheson’s, which you know about.

“Even as I understood this matter of the lights, I was looking to my left, to understand why the child was hiding. And suddenly, I heard the Landlord shout out:— ‘The woman!’ But I saw nothing. I had a vague, disagreeable sense that something repugnant was near to me, and I was aware in the same moment that the Landlord was gripping my arm in a hard, frightened grip. Then I was staring back to where the child had hidden. I saw the child peeping out from behind its hiding-place, seeming to be looking up the passage; but whether in fear or not, I could not tell. Then it came out, and ran headlong away, through the place where should have been the wall of my Mother’s bedroom; but the sense with which I was seeing these things, showed me the wall only as a vague, upright shadow, unsubstantial. And immediately the child was lost to me, in the dull violet gloom. At the same time, I felt the Landlord press back against me, as if something passed too close to him; and he gave out again a hoarse little cry:— ‘The Woman! The Woman!’ and turned the shade clumsily from off his lantern, which seemed to let loose instantly a great fan-shaped jet of blackness across the violet-coloured gloom. But I had seen no Woman. Abruptly, the violet tint went out of the night, and the fan-shaped jet of blackness became plain to me as the funnel of light from the landlord’s lantern. I saw that the passage showed empty, as he shone the beam of his light jerkily to and fro; but chiefly in the direction of the doorway of my Mother’s room.

“He was still clutching my arm, and had risen to his feet; and now, mechanically and almost slowly, I picked up my own lantern and turned on the light. I shone it, a little dazedly, at the seals upon the doors; but none was broken; then I sent the light to and fro, up and down the passage; but there was nothing there; and I looked at the Landlord, who was saying something in a rather incoherent fashion. As my light passed over his face, I noted, in a stupid sort of way, that it was drenched with sweat.

“Then my wits became more handleable, and I began to catch the drift of his words:— ‘Did you see her? Did you see her?’ he was saying, over and over again. I found myself telling him, in quite a level voice, that I had not seen any woman. He became more coherent then, and told me that he had seen a Woman come from the end of the passage, and go right past us; but he could not describe her, except that she kept stopping and looking about her, and had even peered at the wall, close beside him, as if looking for something. But what seemed to trouble him most, was that she had not seemed to see him, at all. He repeated this so often, that in the end I told him, in an absurd sort of way, that he ought to be very glad that she had not. You can imagine what my nerves felt like. What did it all mean? was the one question; and somehow I was not so frightened, as utterly bewildered. I had seen less then, than since; and knew less of possible and actual dangers. The chief effect of what I had seen, was to make me feel adrift from all my anchorages of Reason.

“What did it mean? He had seen a Woman, searching for something. I had not seen this Woman. I had seen a Child, running away, and hiding from Something or Someone. He had not seen this Child, or the other things—only the Woman. And I had not seen her. What did it all mean?

“I had said nothing yet to the Landlord about the Child. I had been too bewildered in the first few moments; and afterwards, I realised immediately that it would be futile to attempt to explain it to him. He was already frightened and stupid, with the thing that he had seen; and not the kind of man to understand. All this went through my mind very quickly, as we stood there, shining the lanterns to and fro; and as a result, I said nothing of what I had seen. And all the time, intermingled with this streak of practical reasoning, I was questioning to myself, what did it all mean; what was the Woman searching for, and what was the Child running from? You can understand the multitude of vague minor questions that kept rising.

“And suddenly, as I stood there, bewildered and nervous, and making random answers to the Landlord, a door was violently slammed downstairs; and directly I caught the horrible reek of which I have told you before.

“ ‘There!’ I said to the Landlord, and caught his arm, in my turn. ‘And the Smell! The Smell, do you smell it?’

“He looked at me, stupidly, so that I shook him, with a sort of nervous anger.

“ ‘Yes,’ he said, at last, in a queer voice, and trying to shine the light from his shaking lantern at the stair-head.

“ ‘Come on!’ I said, and picked up my bayonet; and he came, carrying his gun awkwardly. I think he came, more because he was afraid to be left alone, than because he had any pluck left, poor beggar. I never sneer at that kind of funk, at least very seldom; for when it takes hold of you, it makes rags of your courage, as I know.

“I began to go downstairs, shining my light over the banisters into the lower passage, and afterwards at the doors to see whether they were shut; for I had closed and latched them, leaning a corner of a mat up against each door, so that I should know which had been opened, in the event of anything happening.

“I saw at once that none of the doors had been opened; then I paused and threw the beam of my light down alongside of the stairway, so as to see the mat that I had leaned against the door at the top of the cellar stairs. In a moment, I got a horrid thrill; for the mat was flat. I waited a couple of seconds, shining my light to and fro in the passage. Then, holding pretty solid on to my courage, I went down the remainder of the stairs.

“As I came to the bottom step, I saw suddenly that there were wet patches all up and down the passage. I shone my lantern on to one of them. It was the imprint of a wet foot on the black oak floor; not an ordinary footprint, but a queer, soft, flabby, spreading imprint, that gave me an extraordinary feeling of horror.

“Backward and forward I flashed the light over the impossible footprints, and saw them everywhere. And suddenly I saw that they led to each of the closed doors. I felt something touch my back, and glanced round swiftly, to find that the Landlord had come down close to me, almost pressing against me, in his fear.

“ ‘It’s all right,’ I said, but in a rather breathless whisper, meaning to put a little courage into him; for I could feel that he was shaking through all his body. And then, you know, even as I tried to get him steadied enough to be of some use, his gun went off with a tremendous bang and knocked the seat clean out of one of the hall chairs. He jumped, and yelled with sheer terror; and I swore at the top of my voice, because of the shock.

“ ‘For God’s sake give it to me!’ I said, and slipped the gun from his hand; in the same instant there was a sound of running footsteps up the garden path, and immediately the flash of a bull’s-eye lantern upon the fanlight over the front door. Then the door was tried, and directly afterwards there came a thundering knocking, which told me that the policeman on the beat had heard the shot, and run up to see what was wrong.

“I went quickly to the door, and opened it. Fortunately the Constable knew me well, and when I had beckoned him in, I was able to explain matters in a very short time.

“Whilst I was doing this, Inspector Johnstone, whose round lay that way, came up the path, having missed the officer, and seen the lights and the open door. I told him as briefly as possible what had happened; but nothing about the Child or the Woman; for it would have seemed too fantastic for him to notice seriously. Then I showed him the queer, wet footprints and how they went towards the closed doors. I explained quickly about the mats, and how that the one against the cellar door was flat, which showed that the door must have been opened.

“The Inspector nodded, and told the Constable to draw his staff and guard the door. He asked then for the hall lamp to be lit; after which he took the policeman’s lantern, and led the way into the front room. He paused with the door wide open, and threw the light all round; then jumped into the room, and looked behind the door; there was no one there; nor had I expected that there would be anyone; but all over the polished oak floor, between the scattered rugs, went the marks of those horrible spreading footprints; and the whole room was tainted with the disgusting smell.

“The Inspector searched carefully but quickly, and then came out and went into the middle room, using the same precautions. You can imagine just how beastly it was going into those rooms. There was nothing, of course, in the middle one, or in the kitchen and pantry; but everywhere went the wet footmarks about all the rooms, showing plain wherever there was clear woodwork or oilcloth; and always wherever we went there was the smell.

“The Inspector ceased from his search, and spent a minute in trying whether the mats would really fall flat when the doors were open, or merely ruckle upward again, in such a way as to appear that they had been untouched. But in each case, the mats fell flat, and remained so.

“ ‘Most extraordinary!’ I heard Inspector Johnstone mutter to himself. Then he went towards the cellar door. He had inquired at first whether there were any windows to the cellars, and when he knew there was no way out, except by the door, he had left this part of the search to the last.

“As Johnstone came up to the door, the policeman made a motion of salute, and said something in a low voice; and something in the tone made me flick my light across him. I saw then that the man was very white, and he looked scared and bewildered.

“ ‘What?’ said Johnstone, impatiently. ‘Speak up!’

“ ‘A woman come along ’ere, sir, and went through this ’ere door,’ said the Constable, clearly, but with that curious monotonous intonation that you sometimes get from an unintelligent human who is badly frightened.

“ ‘What!’ shouted the Inspector.

“ ‘A woman come along ’ere, sir, and went through this ’ere door,’ said the man, monotonously.

“The Inspector caught the man by the shoulder, and deliberately smelt his breath.

“ ‘No!’ he said. And then sarcastically:— ‘I hope you held the door open politely for the lady.’

“ ‘The door weren’t opened, sir,’ said the man, simply.

“ ‘Are you mad—’ began Johnstone.

“ ‘No,’ said the Landlord’s voice from the back, and speaking steadily enough. ‘I saw the woman upstairs.’ It was evident that he had got back his control again.

“ ‘I’m afraid, Inspector Johnstone,’ I said, ‘that there’s more in this than you think. I certainly saw something very extraordinary upstairs.’

“The Inspector seemed about to say something; but, instead, he turned again to the door, and flashed his light down and round about the mat. I saw then that the strangely horrible footmarks came straight up to the cellar door; and the last print showed under the door; yet the policeman said the door had not been opened.

“And suddenly, without any intention, or realisation of what I was saying, I said to the Landlord:—

“ ‘What were the feet like?’

“I received no answer; for the Inspector was ordering the Constable to open the cellar door, and the man was not obeying. Johnstone repeated the order, and at last, in a queer automatic way, the man obeyed, and pushed the door open. The disgusting smell beat up at us, in a great wave of horror, and the Inspector came backward a step.

“ ‘My God!’ he said, and went forward again, and shone his light down the steps; but there was nothing visible, only that on each step showed the unnatural footprints.

“ ‘The Inspector brought the beam of the light vividly on to the top step; and there, clear in the light, there was something small, moving. The Inspector bent to look, and the policeman and I with him. Now I don’t want to disgust you; but the thing was a maggot. The Policeman backed suddenly out of the doorway.

“ ‘The churchyard,’ he said, ‘…at the back of the ’ouse.’

“ ‘Si-lence !’ said Johnstone, with a queer break in the word, and I knew that at last he was frightened. He put his lantern into the doorway, and shone it from step to step, following the footprints down into the darkness; then he stepped back from the open doorway, and we all gave back with him. He looked round, and I had a feeling that he was looking for a weapon of some kind.

“ ‘Your gun,’ I said to the Landlord, and he brought it from the front hall, and passed it over to the Inspector, who took it and ejected the empty shell from the right barrel. He held out his hand for a live cartridge, which the Landlord brought from his pocket. Then he loaded the gun and snapped the breech. He turned to the Constable:—

“ ‘Come on,’ he said, and moved towards the cellar doorway.

“ ‘I ain’t comin’, sir,’ said the policeman, very white in the face.

“With a sudden blaze of passion, the Inspector took the man by the scruff, and hove him bodily down into the darkness, and he went downward, screaming. The Inspector followed him instantly, with his lantern and the gun; and I after the Inspector, with the bayonet ready. Behind me, I heard the Landlord come, stumbling nervously.

At the bottom of the stairs, the Inspector was helping the policeman to his feet, where he stood swaying a moment, in a bewildered manner; then the Inspector went into the front cellar, and his man followed him in a quiet, stupid fashion; but evidently no longer with any thought of running away from anything we might find dangerous or horrible.

“We all crowded into the front cellar, flashing our lights to and fro, over the place. Inspector Johnstone was examining the floor, and I saw that the footmarks went round the cellar, into each of the corners, and across and across the floor. And I thought suddenly of the Child that was running away from Something. Do you realise the thing that I was seeing vaguely?

“We went out of the front cellar, in a body, for there was nothing to be found. In the next, the footprints went everywhere in that same queer erratic fashion, as of something or someone searching for something, or following some blind scent.

“In the third cellar the prints ended at the shallow well that had been the old water-supply of the little house. The well was full to the brim, and the water so clear that the pebbly bottom was plain to be seen, as we shone the lights into the water. The search came to an abrupt end, and we stood about the well, looking at one another, in an absolute, horrible quiet.

“Johnstone made another examination of the footprints; then he shone his light again into the clear shallow water, searching each inch of the plainly-seen bottom; but there was nothing there. The cellar was heavy with the dreadful smell; and we all stood silent, turning the beams of our lamps constantly to and fro around the cellar.

“The Inspector looked up from his search of the well; and nodded quietly across at me; and with his sudden, dumb acknowledgment that our belief was now his belief, the smell in the cellar seemed to grow more dreadful, and to be, as it were, a menace—the material evidence that some monstrous thing was there with us, invisible.

“ ‘I think—’ began the Inspector, and shone his light towards the stairway. With the hint, the Constable’s restraint went utterly, and he ran for the stairs, making a queer sound in his throat.

“The Landlord followed, at a quick walk, and then the Inspector and I. He waited a single instant for me, and we went up together, treading on the same steps, and with our lights held backwards. At the top, I slammed and locked the stair door, and wiped my forehead. By Jove! my hands were shaking.

“The Inspector asked me to give his man a glass of whisky, and then he shunted him out on to his beat. He stayed a short while with the Landlord and me, and it was arranged that he would join us the following night, and watch the Well with us from midnight until daylight. When he left us, the dawn was just coming in; and the Landlord and I locked up the house and went over to his own place for a sleep.

“In the afternoon, the Landlord and I returned to the house, to make arrangements for the night. He was very quiet, and I felt that he was to be relied on, now that he had been ‘salted’, as it were, with his fright of the previous night.

“We opened all the doors and windows, and blew the house through thoroughly; and in the meanwhile, we lit all the lamps we could find, and took them down into the cellars, where we set them all about, so as to have light everywhere. Then we carried down three chairs and a table, and put them in the cellar where the well was sunk. After that, we stretched thin piano wire across the cellar floor, at such a height that it should trip anything moving about in the dark.

“When this was done, I went through the house with the Landlord, and sealed every window and door in the place, excepting only the front-door and the door at the top of the cellar stairs.

“In the meanwhile, a local wire-smith was making something to my order; and when the Landlord and I had finished tea at his house, we went down to see how the smith was getting on.

“We found the thing completed. It looked rather like a huge parrot’s cage, without any bottom, made of heavy-gauge wire, and about seven feet high. It was exactly three feet in diameter. Fortunately, I had remembered to have it made longitudinally in two halves, or else we should never have got it through the doorways and down the cellar stairs.

I told the wire-smith to bring the cage up to the house right away, so that he could fit the two halves rigidly together for me; and as we returned, I called in at an ironmongers, where I bought some thin hemp rope and an iron rack-pulley, like those used in Lancashire for hauling up the ceiling clothes-racks, which you find in every house and cottage. I bought also a couple of pitchforks.

“ ‘We shan’t want to touch it,’ I said to the Landlord; and he nodded, looking rather white all at once, but saying nothing.

“As soon as the cage had arrived, and been fitted together rigidly in the cellar, I sent away the smith; and the Landlord and I suspended it exactly over the well, into which it just fitted easily. In the end, and after a lot of trouble, we managed to hang it so perfectly central from the rope over the iron pulley, that when hoisted to the ceiling, and dropped, it went every time plunk into the well, like a candle-extinguisher. When we had got this finally arranged, I hoisted it up once more, to the ready position, and made the rope fast to a heavy wooden pillar, which stood in the middle of the cellar, near to the table.

“By ten o’clock I had everything arranged, with the two pitchforks and the two police lanterns; also some whisky and sandwiches on the table; and underneath, I had several buckets full of disinfectant.

“A little after eleven o’clock, there was a knock at the front door, and when I went, I found that Inspector Johnstone had arrived, and brought with him one of his plain-clothes men. You will understand how pleased I was to see that there would be this addition to our watch; for he looked a tough, nerveless man, brainy and collected; just the man I should have picked to help us with the horrible job I felt pretty sure we should have to do that night.

“When the inspector and the detective had entered, I shut and locked the front door; then, while the Inspector held the light, I sealed the door carefully, with tape and wax. At the head of the cellar stairs, I shut and locked that door also, behind us, and sealed it in the same way.

“As we entered the cellar, I warned Johnstone and his man to be careful not to trip over the wires; and then, as I saw his surprise at my arrangements, I began to explain my ideas and intentions, to all of which he listened with a very strong approval. I was pleased to see also that the detective was nodding his head, as I talked, in a way that showed he appreciated all my precautions.

“Both Johnstone and his man had brought police lanterns with them, and these they put on the table, by the two that we had borrowed from the station. As he put his lantern down, the inspector picked up one of the pitch-forks, and balanced it in his hand; then looked at me, and nodded.

“ ‘The best thing,’ he said. ‘I only wish you’d got two more.’

“Then we all took our seats, the detective getting a washing-stool from the corner of the cellar, as we had brought down only three chairs. From then, until a quarter to twelve, we talked quietly, whilst we made a light supper of whisky and sandwiches; after which, we cleared everything off the table, excepting the lanterns and the pitch-forks. One of the latter, I handed to the Inspector; the other I took myself, and, then, having set my chair so as to be handy to the rope which lowered the cage into the well, I went round the cellar and put out every lamp.

“I groped my way back to my chair, and arranged the pitchfork and the dark lantern ready to my hand; after which I suggested that everyone should keep an absolute silence throughout the watch. I asked, also, that no lantern should be turned on, until I gave the word.

“I put my watch on the table, where a faint glow from my lantern made me able to see the time. For an hour nothing happened, and everyone kept an absolute silence, except for an occasional uneasy movement.

“About half-past one, however, I was conscious again of the same extraordinary and peculiar nervousness, which I had felt on the previous night. I put my hand out quickly, and eased the hitched rope from around the pillar. The Inspector seemed aware of the movement; for I saw the faint light from his lantern, move a little, as if he had suddenly taken hold of it, in readiness.

“About a minute later, I became aware that there was a change in the colour of the night in the cellar, and it grew slowly violet-tinged upon my eyes. I glanced to and fro, quickly, in the new darkness, and even as I looked, I was conscious that the violet colour of the night deepened. In the direction of the well, but seeming to be at a great distance beyond, there was, as it were, a nucleus to the night; and the nucleus came swiftly towards us, appearing to come through a great space, almost in a single moment. It came near, and I saw again, as on the previous occasion, that it was a little naked child, running, and seeming to be of the violet night in which it ran.

“The child came with a natural running movement, exactly as I have already described it; but in a silence so peculiarly intense, that it was as if it brought the silence with it. I don’t suppose you understand what I am trying to tell you; but I cannot make it clearer. Seemingly, about half-way between the well and the table, the child turned swiftly, and looked back at something invisible to me; and suddenly it went down into a crouching attitude, and seemed to be hiding behind something shadowy that showed vaguely; but, you know, there was nothing there, except the bare floor of the cellar; nothing, I mean, in our world.

“About this time I remember thinking to myself in a queerly collected way that I could hear the breathing of the three other men, with a wonderful distinctness; and also the tick of my watch upon the table seemed to sound as loud and as slow as the tick of one of those old grandfather’s clocks. And, you know, I knew that none of the others saw what I was seeing.

“Abruptly, the Landlord, who was next to me, let out his breath with a little hissing sound; and I knew that something was visible to him. There came a creak from the table, and I had a feeling that the Inspector was leaning forward, looking at something that I could not see. The Landlord reached out his hand through the darkness, and fumbled a moment to catch my arm:—

“ ‘The Woman!’ he whispered, close to my ear. ‘Over by the well.’

“I stared hard in that direction; but saw nothing, except that perhaps the violet colour of the night seemed a little duller just there.

‘I looked back quickly to the shadow where the child was hiding. I saw that it was peering backward from the hiding-place. And suddenly it rose and ran straight for the middle of the table, which showed only as a vague shadow half-way between my eyes and the unseen floor. As the child ran under the table, I saw that the steel prongs of my pitch-fork were glimmering with a violet, fluctuating light. A little way off, there showed high up in the gloom, the vaguely shining outline of the other fork, so that I knew the Inspector had it raised in his hand, ready. There was no doubt but that he saw something. On the table, the metal of the five lanterns shone with the same strange glowing; and about each lantern there was a little cloud of absolute blackness, where the phenomenon that is light to our natural eyes, came through the fittings; and through each complete blackness, the metal of each lantern showed plain, as might a cat’s-eye stone in a nest of black cotton-wool.

“Just beyond the table, the Child paused again, and stood, seeming to oscillate a little upon its feet, which gave me a queer impression that it was lighter and vaguer than a cloud; and yet, in the same moment, another part of me seemed to know that it was to me, as something that might be beyond thick, invisible glass, and subject to conditions and forces that I was vacant to comprehend. In some ways, I might say that the impression left, was as if I had looked through thick, plate-glass windows at someone out in a strong wind; and all the time I could not hear or know of the wind, except by seeing the person rocked by it. Do I get the thing in any way clear to you ?

“The Child was looking back again, and my gaze went the same way. I stared across the cellar, and saw the cage hanging clear in the violet light, every wire and tie outlined with a glimmering of strange light; above it there was a little space of gloom, and then the dull shining of the iron pulley which I had screwed into the ceiling.

“I stared in a bewildered, abnormal sort of way, round the cellar; there were thin lines of vague fire crossing the floor in all directions; and suddenly I remembered the piano-wire that the Landlord and I had stretched. But there was nothing else to be seen, except that near the table there were indistinct glimmerings of light, and at the far end the outline of a dull-glowing revolver, evidently in the detective’s pocket. I remember having felt a subconscious satisfaction, as my brain reasoned out this trifle in a queer automatic fashion. On the table, near to me, there was a little shapeless collection of the light; and this I knew, after an instant’s uninterested consideration, to be the steel portions of the works of my watch.

“I had looked several times round the lost confines of the cellar, and at the child, whilst I was deciding these trifles; and had found it still in that attitude of looking at something. But now, suddenly, it ran clear away to my right into a great distance, and was nothing more than a slightly deeper coloured nucleus far off in the strange coloured night.

“Beside me, the Landlord gave out a queer little cry, and twisted over against me, as if to avoid something. From the Inspector there came a sharp breathing sound, as if he had been suddenly drenched with cold water. And abruptly the violet colour went out of the night, and the sense of distance and space; and I was conscious of the nearness of something monstrous and repugnant, that made me sweat.

“There was a tense silence, and the blackness of the cellar seemed absolute, with only the faint glow about each of the lanterns on the table. Then, in the dark and the silence, there sounded a faint tinkle of water from the well, as if something were rising noiselessly out of it, and the water running back off it with a gentle tinkling. In the same instant, there came to me a sudden waft of the disgusting smell.

“I gave a sharp cry of warning to the Inspector, and loosed the rope. There came instantly the sharp splash of the cage entering the water; and then, with a quick, stiff, frightened movement, I opened the shutter of my lantern, and shone the light at the cage, shouting to the others to do the same.

“As my light struck the cage, I saw that about two feet of it projected from the top of the well, and there was something protruded up out of the water, into the cage. I stared, with a feeling that I recognised the thing; and then, as the other lanterns were opened, I saw that it was a leg of mutton. The thing was held by a brawny fist and arm, which were rising out of the water; and I stood there, utterly stiff and bewildered, to see what was coming. In a moment there rose into view a great bearded face, that I felt sure in that grim instant was the face of a drowned man, long dead. Then the face opened at the mouth-part, and spluttered and coughed. Another big hand came into view, and wiped the water from the eyes, which were blinked rapidly, and then fixed themselves into a stare at the lights.

“From the Detective there came a sudden shout:—

“ ‘Captain Tobias!’ he shouted, and the Inspector echoed him, and instantly they burst into loud roars of laughter.

“The Inspector and the Detective ran across the cellar to the cage; and I followed, still bewildered. The man in the cage was keeping the leg of mutton as far away from him, as possible, and holding his nose.

“ ‘Lift thig dam trap, quig!’ he shouted in a stifled voice; but the Inspector and the Detective simply doubled before him, and tried to hold their noses, whilst they laughed, and the light from their lanterns went dancing all over the place.

“ ‘Quig! Quig!’ said the man in the cage, still holding his nose, and trying to speak plainly.

“Then Johnstone and the Detective stopped laughing, and lifted the cage. The man in the well threw the leg across the cellar and turned swiftly to go down into the well; but the two officers were too quick for him, and had him out in a twinkling; then whilst they held him, dripping upon the floor, the Inspector jerked his thumb in the direction of the offending leg, and the Landlord, having got the keys from me, harpooned it with one of the pitch-forks, ran it upstairs and so into the open air.

“In the meanwhile, I had given the man from the well a stiff tot of whisky; for which he thanked me with a cheerful nod, and having emptied the glass at a draught, held out his hand for the bottle, which he finished, as if it had been so much water.

“Now, as you will be guessing, this Captain Tobias who had appeared from the well, was the very man who had been the previous tenant. In the course of the talk that followed, I learned the reason why Captain Tobias had been forced to leave the house. He had been wanted by the police for certain smuggling, and had undergone imprisonment; having been released only a couple of weeks earlier.

“He had returned home, to find us tenants of his old home. He had then entered the house through the well, the walls of which were not continued right to the bottom (this I will deal with later); and gone upstairs by a little stairway in my cellar wall, which opened at the top through a panel beside my Mother’s bedroom. This panel was opened, by revolving the left doorpost of the bedroom door, with the result that the bedroom door always became unlatched, in the process of opening the panel.

“The Captain complained, without any bitterness, that the panel had warped, and that each time he opened it, it made a loud cracking noise. This had been evidently what I mistook for raps. He would not give his reason for entering the house; but it was pretty obvious that he had hidden something, which he wanted to get. However, as he found it impossible to enter the house, without the risk of being caught, he decided to try to drive us out, relying on the bad reputation of the place, and his own artistic efforts as a ghost. I must say he succeeded.

“He intended then to rent the house again, as before; when he would, of course, have plenty of time to get whatever he had hidden. Moreover, no doubt the house suited him admirably; for there was a passage—as he showed me afterwards—connecting the dummy well with the crypt of the church beyond the garden wall; and these, in turn, were connected with certain caves in the cliffs, which went down to the beach beyond the church.

“In the course of his talk, Captain Tobias offered to take the house off my hands; and as this suited me perfectly, for I was just about ‘stalled’ with it, and also satisfied the Landlord, it was decided that no steps should be taken against him; and that the whole business be hushed up.

“I asked the Captain whether there was really anything queer about the house; whether he had ever seen anything. He said yes, that he had twice seen a woman going about the house at night. You can imagine how we all looked at one another, when he said that. The Captain told us that she never bothered him, and that he had only seen her the two times; and on each occasion it had been just after a narrow escape from the Revenue People, and when he had been rather badly frightened; that is, I ought to add, so far as a man of his type was capable of feeling fright.

“Captain Tobias was a cute man; for he had seen how I had leaned the mats up against the doors; and after entering the rooms, and walking all about them, so as to leave the foot-marks of an old pair of wet woollen slippers everywhere, he had deliberately put the mats back as he found them, as he left each room.

“The maggot which had dropped from his infernal leg-of-mutton, had been an accident, and beyond even his horrific planning; but he was hugely delighted to learn how it had affected us.

“The faint, mouldy smell which I had smelled, before the leg-abomination, was probably from the little, closed stairway, when the Captain had opened the panel; at least, this was the conclusion I came to when he took me through, to show it to me. The door-slamming was also another of his contributions.

“Now I come to the end of the Captain’s ghost-play; and to the difficulty of trying to explain the other peculiar things. In the first place, it is obvious to you that there was something genuinely strange in the house; which made itself manifest as a Woman. So many people had seen this Woman, under different circumstances, that it is impossible to put the thing down to fancy; at the same time it must seem extraordinary that people should live years in the house, and see nothing; whilst the policeman saw the Woman, before he had been twenty minutes in the place; also the Landlord, the Detective, and the Inspector all saw her.

“I have thought a great deal about this, and I can only suppose that fear was in every case the key, as I might say, which opened the senses to an awaredness of the presence of the Woman. The policeman was a nervy, highly-strung man, and he got frightened. When he became frightened, he was able to see the Woman. The same reasoning applies all round. I saw nothing, until I became really frightened; then I saw, not the Woman, but a Child, running away from Something or Someone. However, I will touch on that later. In short, until a very strong degree of fear was present, the person was not capable of being affected by the Force which made Itself evident, as a Woman. I don’t think I can put it clearer than this. I think my theory explains why some Tenants were never aware of anything strange in the house, whilst others left immediately. The more sensitive they were, the less would be the degree of fear necessary to make them aware of the Force present in the house. This is a peculiar and interesting point.

“The curious shining of all the metal objects in the cellar, had been visible only to me. The cause, naturally, I do not know; neither do I know why I alone was able to see the shining.”

“The Child,” I said. “Can you explain that part at all, Carnacki… why you didn’t see the Woman, and why they didn’t see the Child. Was it merely the same Force, appearing differently to different people?”

“No,” said Carnacki. “I can’t explain that. But I am quite sure in my own mind that the Woman and the Child were not only two complete and different entities; but also that they were not even in quite the same planes of Existence.

“It is impossible to put the thing into words, because language is not enough developed yet, to have produced words with sufficiently exact shades of meaning to enable me to tell you just what I do know. At the time that the thing occurred, I was quite unable to understand it, even slightly. Yet, later I gained a vague insight into certain possibilities.

“To give you the root-idea of the matter, it is held in the Sigsand MS. that a child ‘still-born’ is ‘snayched bacyk bye thee Haggs’. This is crude; but may yet contain an elemental truth. But, before I attempt to make this clearer, let me tell you a thought that has often been mine. It may be that physical birth is but a secondary process; and that, prior to the possibility, the Mother Spirit searches for, until it finds, the small Element—the primal Ego or Child’s soul. It may be that a certain waywardness would cause Such to strive to evade capture by the Mother-Spirit. It may have been such a thing as this, that I saw. I have always tried to think so; but it is impossible to ignore the sense of repulsion that I felt when the unseen Woman went past me. This repulsion carries forward the idea suggested in the Sigsand MS., that primarily a still-born child is thus (eliminating obvious physical causes) because its ego or spirit has been snatched back, by the ‘Haggs’. In other words, by certain of the Monstrosities of the Outer Circle. The thought is inconceivably terrible, and probably the more so because it is so fragmentary. It leaves us with the conception of a child’s soul adrift half-way between two lives, and running through bye-ways of Eternity from Something incredible and inconceivable (because not understood) to our senses.

“The thing is beyond further discussion; for it is futile to attempt to discuss a thing, to any purpose, of which one has a conception so fragmentary as this. There is one thought, which is often mine. Perhaps there is a Mother-Spirit— No, it’s no use trying to get that into words.”

“And the well?” said Arkright. “How did the Captain get in from the other side?”

“As I said before,” answered Carnacki. “The side-walls of the well did not reach to the bottom; so that you had only to dip down into the water, and come up again on the other side of the wall, under the cellar floor, and so climb into the hidden passage. Of course, the water was the same height on both sides of the walls. Don’t ask me who made the well-entrance or the little stairway; for I don’t know. The house was very old, as I have told you; and that sort of thing was useful in the wild old days.”

“And the Child,” I said, coming back to the thing which chiefly interested me. “You would say that the birth must have occurred in that house; and in this way, one might suppose the house to have become en rapport, if I can use the word in that way, with the Forces that produced the tragedy?”

“Yes,” replied Carnacki. “That is, supposing we take the suggestion of the Sigsand MS., to account for the phenomenon.”

“There may be other houses—” I began.

“There are,” said Carnacki, and stood up.

“Out you go,” he said, genially, using the familiar formula. And in five minutes we were on the Embankment, going thoughtfully to our various homes.