Part 6 (1/2)
”Yes, it was hot weather a” early in August. This room has not been occupied since. After Platt's affair, I have always avoided this side of the house, so that it was only by chance that Lawrence and I came round to this part of the lawn to smoke.”
”Then we may suppose that the danger, whatever it is, exists on this side of the house only?”
”So it seems,” replied Montesson.
”Your sister was last seen alive in this room? Platt in the room directly below? And your friend a” what of him?”
”Lawrence was lying on the gravel path under the study window. All of them have died under the shadow of the cedar. Did Fremantle give you his idea? Poor Lawrence's death disposed of that theory. No big ape could live in England all those five years in the open and in any case it must have been seen sometime in the interval!”
”I think so,” replied Low abstractedly. ”Now as to what we must do to try and get at the meaning of all this: considering all you have gone through in this house, do you feel equal to remaining here with me for a night or two?”
Montesson again glanced over his shoulder nervously. ”Yes,” he said. ”I know my nerves are not as stiff and steady as they should be, but I'll stand by you a” especially as you would not find another man about here willing to run the risk. You see, it is not a ghost or any fanciful trouble; it means a, real danger. Think over it, Mr. Low, before you undertake so hazardous an attempt!”
Low looked into the blue eyes Montesson had fixed upon him. They were weary, anxious eyes, and, taken in combination with his compressed lips and square' chin, told Low of the struggle this man constantly endured between his shaken nervous system and the strong will that mastered it. Montesson was a fighter.
”If you'll stand by me, I'll try to get to the bottom of it,” said Low.
”I wonder if I should allow you to risk your life in this way?” returned Montesson, pa.s.sing his hand over his prematurely lined forehead.
”Why not? Besides it is my own wish.
As for risking our lives a” it is for the good of mankind.”
”I can't say I see it in that light,” said Montesson in surprise.
”If we lose our lives, it will be in the effort to make another spot of earth clean and wholesome and safe for men to live on. Our duty to the public requires us to run a murderer to earth. Here we have a murderous power of some subtle kind. Is it not quite as much our duty to destroy it if we can, even at risk to ourselves?” Low asked.
The result of this conversation was an arrangement to pa.s.s the night at the Grey House. About ten o'clock they set out, intending to follow the path they had more or less successfully cleared for themselves in the afternoon. By Flaxman Low's advice, Montesson carried a long knife.
The night was unusually hot and still, and lit only by a thin moon as they made their way along, stumbling over matted weeds and roots and literally feeling for the path, until they came to the little gate by the lawn. There they stopped a moment to look at the house standing out among its strange sea of overgrowth, the dim moon low on the horizon, glinting palely upon the windows and over the deserted countryside. As they waited a night bird hooted and flapped its way across the open.
At any moment they might be at handgrips with the mysterious power of death which haunted the place. The warm lush-scented air and the sinister shadows seemed charged with some ominous influence.
As they drew near the house Low perceived a sweet-heavy odor. ”What is it?” he asked.
”It comes from those scarlet Rowers. It's unbearable! Lampurt imported the thing,” replied Montesson irritably.
”Which room will you spend the night in?” asked Low as they gained the hall.
Montesson hesitated. ”Have you ever heard the expression 'gray with fear'?” he said, laughing in the dark; ”I'm that!”
Low did not like the laugh a” it was only one removed, and that a very little one, from hysteria. ”We won't find out much unless we each remain alone, and with open windows as they did,” said Low.
Montesson shook himself. ”No, I suppose not. They were each alone when a” good night, I'll call if anything happens, and you must do the same for me. For Heaven's sake, don't go to sleep!”
”And remember,” added Low, ”with your knife to cut at anything that touches you!” Then he stood at the study door and listened to Montesson's heavy steps as they pa.s.sed up the stairs, for he had elected to pa.s.s the night in his sister's room. Low heard him walk across the floor above and' throw wide the window.
When Mr. Low turned into the study and tried to open the window there, he found it impossible to do so; the creeper outside had fastened upon the woodwork, binding the sashes together. There was but one thing left for him to do a” he must go outside and stand where Lawrence had stood on that fatal night. He let himself out softly and went round to the south side of the house. There he paced up and down in the shadows for perhaps an hour.
In the deceptive, iridescent moonlight, a pallid head seemed to wag at him from the gloom below the cedar, but, moving towards it, he grasped only the yellow bunched blossom of a giant ragwort. Then he stood still and looked up into the branches above; the gnarled black branches with their fringes of black sticky leaves. Fremantle's theory of the ape pa.s.sing stealthily among them to spring upon his victims found a sudden horror of possibility in Low's mind. He imagined the girl awaking in the brute's cruel handsa”
Out upon the quiet brooding of the night broke a scream a” or rather a roar, a harsh, jagged, pulsating roar, that ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
Without a moment's consideration, Mr. Low seized the branch nearest to him and, swinging himself up into the tree, he climbed with a frantic effort towards the window of Montesson's room, from which he was almost sure the sound had come. Being an unusually active and athletic man, he leaped from the branch towards the open window, and fell headlong in upon the floor. As he did so, something seemed to pa.s.s him, something swift and sinuous that might have been a snake, and disappear out of the window!
Remembering a flashlight on the toilet table, he lit it, when he regained his feet, and looked around him.
Montesson lay on the floor ”crumpled up” as he had himself described Lawrence's position. Low recalled this with misgiving as he hurried to his side. A dark smear like blood was on Montesson's cheek, but though unconscious, he was still alive. Low lifted him on to the bed and did what he could to rouse him, but without success. He lay rigid, breathing the slow, almost imperceptible respiration of deep stupor.
Low was about to go to the window, when the flashlight suddenly went out, and he was left in the increasing darkness.
The low window sill was scarcely more than a foot above the floor, and presently he fancied something was moving along the carpet among the entangling shadows of the leaves, but the darkness was now intensified, and he could not be sure.
Suddenly Low felt a soft touch upon his knee. His whole consciousness had been so absorbed in the act of listening that this unexpected appeal to another sense startled him. Here and there, rapid, soft, and light, the touches pa.s.sed over his body. It might have been some animal nosing about him in the dark. Then a smooth, cold touch fell upon his cheek.
Low sprang up, and slashed about him in the darkness with his knife. In that instant the thing closed with him a” a flexuous, snaky thing that flung its coils about his limbs and body in one swift spring like a curling whiplas.h.!.+
Flaxman Low was all but helpless in the winding grasp of what? a” the tentacles of some strange creature? Or was it some great snake, this sentient thing that was feeling for his throat? There was not an instant to lose! The knife was pressed against his body; with a violent effort he drew it sharply, edge outwards, against those rope-like coils. A spurt of clammy fluid fell upon his hand, and the thing loosed and fell away from him into the stifling gloom.
In the morning, Montesson came to himself in one of the lower rooms at the other side of the house. Fremantle was beside him.
”What's the matter?” Montesson asked. ”Ah, I remember now. There's Low. It has beaten us again, Fremantle! It is hopeless. I don't know what happened a” I was not asleep, when I found myself seized, lifted up, drawn towards the window, and strangled by living ropes. Look at Low!” He went on harshly, raising himself. ”Why, man, you're all over blood!”
Flaxman Low glanced down at his hands. ”Looks like it,” he said.
Montesson, who had been looking at his neck in the gla.s.s, turned quickly.
”It's some horrible thing in nature! Something between a snake and an octopus! What do you say to it, Low?”
”First of all,” explained Low, ”we know where all the deaths have occurred.”
”To speak precisely, they have all occurred in different places,” interposed Fremantle.
”True; but within a strictly limited area. The slight differences have been of material help to me. In all cases they have occurred in the vicinity of one thing.”
”The cedar!” cried Montesson, with some excitement.
”That was my first idea a” now I refer to the wall. Will you tell me the probable weight of Lawrence and Platt at the date of death?”
”Platt was a small man a” perhaps under nine stone. Lawrence, though much taller, was thin, and could not have weighed more than eleven. As for poor little Fan, she was only a slip of a girl.”
”Three people have been killed a” one has escaped. In what way do you differ from the others, Montesson?” asked Low.
”If you mean I'm heavier, I certainly am. I scale something like fifteen. But what has that to do with it?”
”Everything. The coils have evidently not sufficient compressive power to destroy life by strangulation simply a” there must be suspension as well. You were simply too heavy for them to tackle.”
”Coils of what?”