Bab Bab 3 · THE NEMESIS OF FIRE

. THE NEMESIS OF FIRE

I

By some means which I never could fathom, John Silence always contrived

to keep the compartment to himself, and as the train had a clear run

of two hours before the first stop, there was ample time to go over

the preliminary facts of the case. He had telephoned to me that very

morning, and even through the disguise of the miles of wire the thrill

of incalculable adventure had sounded in his voice.

“As if it were an ordinary country visit,” he called, in reply to my

question; “and don’t forget to bring your gun.”

“With blank cartridges, I suppose?” for I knew his rigid principles

with regard to the taking of life, and guessed that the guns were

merely for some obvious purpose of disguise.

Then he thanked me for coming, mentioned the train, snapped down the

receiver, and left me vibrating with the excitement of anticipation

to do my packing. For the honour of accompanying Dr. John Silence on

one of his big cases was what many would have considered an empty

honour--and risky. Certainly the adventure held all manner of

possibilities, and I arrived at Waterloo with the feelings of a man who

is about to embark on some dangerous and peculiar mission in which the

dangers he expects to run will not be the ordinary dangers to life and

limb, but of some secret character difficult to name and still more

difficult to cope with.

“The Manor House has a high sound,” he told me, as we sat with our

feet up and talked, “but I believe it is little more than an overgrown

farmhouse in the desolate heather country beyond D----, and its owner,

Colonel Wragge, a retired soldier with a taste for books, lives there

practically alone, I understand, with an elderly invalid sister. So you

need not look forward to a lively visit, unless the case provides some

excitement of its own.”

“Which is likely?”

By way of reply he handed me a letter marked “Private.” It was dated a

week ago, and signed “Yours faithfully, Horace Wragge.”

“He heard of me, you see, through Captain Anderson,” the doctor

explained modestly, as though his fame were not almost world-wide; “you

remember that Indian obsession case----”

I read the letter. Why it should have been marked private was difficult

to understand. It was very brief, direct, and to the point. It referred

by way of introduction to Captain Anderson, and then stated quite

simply that the writer needed help of a peculiar kind and asked for a

personal interview--a morning interview, since it was impossible for

him to be absent from the house at night. The letter was dignified

even to the point of abruptness, and it is difficult to explain how

it managed to convey to me the impression of a strong man, shaken

and perplexed. Perhaps the restraint of the wording, and the mystery

of the affair had something to do with it; and the reference to the

Anderson case, the horror of which lay still vivid in my memory, may

have touched the sense of something rather ominous and alarming. But,

whatever the cause, there was no doubt that an impression of serious

peril rose somehow out of that white paper with the few lines of firm

writing, and the spirit of a deep uneasiness ran between the words and

reached the mind without any visible form of expression.

“And when you saw him----?” I asked, returning the letter as the train

rushed clattering noisily through Clapham Junction.

“I have not seen him,” was the reply. “The man’s mind was charged to

the brim when he wrote that; full of vivid mental pictures. Notice

the restraint of it. For the main character of his case psychometry

could be depended upon, and the scrap of paper his hand has touched

is sufficient to give to another mind--a sensitive and sympathetic

mind--clear mental pictures of what is going on. I think I have a very

sound general idea of his problem.”

“So there may be excitement after all?”

John Silence waited a moment before he replied.

“Something very serious is amiss there,” he said gravely, at length.

“Some one--not himself, I gather,--has been meddling with a rather

dangerous kind of gunpowder. So--yes, there may be excitement, as you

put it.”

“And my duties?” I asked, with a decidedly growing interest. “Remember,

I am your ‘assistant.’”

“Behave like an intelligent confidential secretary. Observe everything,

without seeming to. Say nothing--nothing that means anything. Be

present at all interviews. I may ask a good deal of you, for if my

impressions are correct this is----”

He broke off suddenly.

“But I won’t tell you my impressions yet,” he resumed after a moment’s

thought. “Just watch and listen as the case proceeds. Form your

own impressions and cultivate your intuitions. We come as ordinary

visitors, of course,” he added, a twinkle showing for an instant in his

eye; “hence, the guns.”

Though disappointed not to hear more, I recognised the wisdom of

his words and knew how valueless my impressions would be once the

powerful suggestion of having heard his own lay behind them. I likewise

reflected that intuition joined to a sense of humour was of more use to

a man than double the quantity of mere “brains,” as such.

Before putting the letter away, however, he handed it back, telling me

to place it against my forehead for a few moments and then describe any

pictures that came spontaneously into my mind.

“Don’t deliberately look for anything. Just imagine you see the inside

of the eyelid, and wait for pictures that rise against its dark screen.”

I followed his instructions, making my mind as nearly a blank as

possible. But no visions came. I saw nothing but the lines of light

that pass to and fro like the changes of a kaleidoscope across the

blackness. A momentary sensation of warmth came and went curiously.

“You see--what?” he asked presently.

“Nothing,” I was obliged to admit disappointedly; “nothing but the

usual flashes of light one always sees. Only, perhaps, they are more

vivid than usual.”

He said nothing by way of comment or reply.

“And they group themselves now and then,” I continued, with painful

candour, for I longed to see the pictures he had spoken of, “group

themselves into globes and round balls of fire, and the lines that

flash about sometimes look like triangles and crosses--almost like

geometrical figures. Nothing more.”

I opened my eyes again, and gave him back the letter.

“It makes my head hot,” I said, feeling somehow unworthy for not seeing

anything of interest. But the look in his eyes arrested my attention at

once.

“That sensation of heat is important,” he said significantly.

“It was certainly real, and rather uncomfortable,” I replied, hoping

he would expand and explain. “There was a distinct feeling of

warmth--internal warmth somewhere--oppressive in a sense.”

“That is interesting,” he remarked, putting the letter back in his

pocket, and settling himself in the corner with newspapers and books.

He vouchsafed nothing more, and I knew the uselessness of trying to

make him talk. Following his example I settled likewise with magazines

into my corner. But when I closed my eyes again to look for the

flashing lights and the sensation of heat, I found nothing but the

usual phantasmagoria of the day’s events--faces, scenes, memories,--and

in due course I fell asleep and then saw nothing at all of any kind.

When we left the train, after six hours’ travelling, at a little

wayside station standing without trees in a world of sand and heather,

the late October shadows had already dropped their sombre veil upon the

landscape, and the sun dipped almost out of sight behind the moorland

hills. In a high dogcart, behind a fast horse, we were soon rattling

across the undulating stretches of an open and bleak country, the keen

air stinging our cheeks and the scents of pine and bracken strong

about us. Bare hills were faintly visible against the horizon, and the

coachman pointed to a bank of distant shadows on our left where he told

us the sea lay. Occasional stone farmhouses, standing back from the

road among straggling fir trees, and large black barns that seemed to

shift past us with a movement of their own in the gloom, were the only

signs of humanity and civilisation that we saw, until at the end of a

bracing five miles the lights of the lodge gates flared before us and

we plunged into a thick grove of pine trees that concealed the Manor

House up to the moment of actual arrival.

Colonel Wragge himself met us in the hall. He was the typical army

officer who had seen service, real service, and found himself in the

process. He was tall and well built, broad in the shoulders, but lean

as a greyhound, with grave eyes, rather stern, and a moustache turning

grey. I judged him to be about sixty years of age, but his movements

showed a suppleness of strength and agility that contradicted the

years. The face was full of character and resolution, the face of a man

to be depended upon, and the straight grey eyes, it seemed to me, wore

a veil of perplexed anxiety that he made no attempt to disguise. The

whole appearance of the man at once clothed the adventure with gravity

and importance. A matter that gave such a man cause for serious alarm,

I felt, must be something real and of genuine moment.

His speech and manner, as he welcomed us, were like his letter, simple

and sincere. He had a nature as direct and undeviating as a bullet.

Thus, he showed plainly his surprise that Dr. Silence had not come

alone.

“My confidential secretary, Mr. Hubbard,” the doctor said, introducing

me, and the steady gaze and powerful shake of the hand I then

received were well calculated, I remember thinking, to drive home the

impression that here was a man who was not to be trifled with, and

whose perplexity must spring from some very real and tangible cause.

And, quite obviously, he was relieved that we had come. His welcome was

unmistakably genuine.

He led us at once into a room, half library, half smoking-room,

that opened out of the low-ceilinged hall. The Manor House gave the

impression of a rambling and glorified farmhouse, solid, ancient,

comfortable, and wholly unpretentious. And so it was. Only the heat of

the place struck me as unnatural. This room with the blazing fire may

have seemed uncomfortably warm after the long drive through the night

air; yet it seemed to me that the hall itself, and the whole atmosphere

of the house, breathed a warmth that hardly belonged to well-filled

grates or the pipes of hot air and water. It was not the heat of the

greenhouse; it was an oppressive heat that somehow got into the head

and mind. It stirred a curious sense of uneasiness in me, and I caught

myself thinking of the sensation of warmth that had emanated from the

letter in the train.

I heard him thanking Dr. Silence for having come; there was no

preamble, and the exchange of civilities was of the briefest

description. Evidently here was a man who, like my companion, loved

action rather than talk. His manner was straightforward and direct. I

saw him in a flash: puzzled, worried, harassed into a state of alarm by

something he could not comprehend; forced to deal with things he would

have preferred to despise, yet facing it all with dogged seriousness

and making no attempt to conceal that he felt secretly ashamed of his

incompetence.

“So I cannot offer you much entertainment beyond that of my own

company, and the queer business that has been going on here, and is

still going on,” he said, with a slight inclination of the head towards

me by way of including me in his confidence.

“I think, Colonel Wragge,” replied John Silence impressively, “that we

shall none of us find the time hang heavy. I gather we shall have our

hands full.”

The two men looked at one another for the space of some seconds, and

there was an indefinable quality in their silence which for the first

time made me admit a swift question into my mind; and I wondered a

little at my rashness in coming with so little reflection into a big

case of this incalculable doctor. But no answer suggested itself, and

to withdraw was, of course, inconceivable. The gates had closed behind

me now, and the spirit of the adventure was already besieging my mind

with its advance guard of a thousand little hopes and fears.

Explaining that he would wait till after dinner to discuss anything

serious, as no reference was ever made before his sister, he led the

way upstairs and showed us personally to our rooms; and it was just as

I was finishing dressing that a knock came at my door and Dr. Silence

entered.

He was always what is called a serious man, so that even in moments of

comedy you felt he never lost sight of the profound gravity of life,

but as he came across the room to me I caught the expression of his

face and understood in a flash that he was now in his most grave and

earnest mood. He looked almost troubled. I stopped fumbling with my

black tie and stared.

“It _is_ serious,” he said, speaking in a low voice, “more so even than

I imagined. Colonel Wragge’s control over his thoughts concealed a

great deal in my psychometrising of the letter. I looked in to warn you

to keep yourself well in hand--generally speaking.”

“Haunted house?” I asked, conscious of a distinct shiver down my back.

But he smiled gravely at the question.

“Haunted House of Life more likely,” he replied, and a look came into

his eyes which I had only seen there when a human soul was in the toils

and he was thick in the fight of rescue. He was stirred in the deeps.

“Colonel Wragge--or the sister?” I asked hurriedly, for the gong was

sounding.

“Neither directly,” he said from the door. “Something far older,

something very, very remote indeed. This thing has to do with the ages,

unless I am mistaken greatly, the ages on which the mists of memory

have long lain undisturbed.”

He came across the floor very quickly with a finger on his lips,

looking at me with a peculiar searchingness of gaze.

“Are you aware yet of anything--odd here?” he asked in a whisper.

“Anything you cannot quite define, for instance. Tell me, Hubbard, for

I want to know all your impressions. They may help me.”

I shook my head, avoiding his gaze, for there was something in the eyes

that scared me a little. But he was so in earnest that I set my mind

keenly searching.

“Nothing yet,” I replied truthfully, wishing I could confess to a real

emotion; “nothing but the strange heat of the place.”

He gave a little jump forward in my direction.

“The heat again, that’s it!” he exclaimed, as though glad of my

corroboration. “And how would you describe it, perhaps?” he asked

quickly, with a hand on the door knob.

“It doesn’t seem like ordinary physical heat,” I said, casting about in

my thoughts for a definition.

“More a mental heat,” he interrupted, “a glowing of thought and desire,

a sort of feverish warmth of the spirit. Isn’t that it?”

I admitted that he had exactly described my sensations.

“Good!” he said, as he opened the door, and with an indescribable

gesture that combined a warning to be ready with a sign of praise for

my correct intuition, he was gone.

I hurried after him, and found the two men waiting for me in front of

the fire.

“I ought to warn you,” our host was saying as I came in, “that my

sister, whom you will meet at dinner, is not aware of the real object

of your visit. She is under the impression that we are interested in

the same line of study--folklore--and that your researches have led to

my seeking acquaintance. She comes to dinner in her chair, you know. It

will be a great pleasure to her to meet you both. We have few visitors.”

So that on entering the dining-room we were prepared to find Miss

Wragge already at her place, seated in a sort of bath-chair. She was

a vivacious and charming old lady, with smiling expression and bright

eyes, and she chatted all through dinner with unfailing spontaneity.

She had that face, unlined and fresh, that some people carry through

life from the cradle to the grave; her smooth plump cheeks were

all pink and white, and her hair, still dark, was divided into two

glossy and sleek halves on either side of a careful parting. She wore

gold-rimmed glasses, and at her throat was a large scarab of green

jasper that made a very handsome brooch.

Her brother and Dr. Silence talked little, so that most of the

conversation was carried on between herself and me, and she told me a

great deal about the history of the old house, most of which I fear I

listened to with but half an ear.

“And when Cromwell stayed here,” she babbled on, “he occupied the very

rooms upstairs that used to be mine. But my brother thinks it safer for

me to sleep on the ground floor now in case of fire.”

And this sentence has stayed in my memory only because of the sudden

way her brother interrupted her and instantly led the conversation

on to another topic. The passing reference to fire seemed to have

disturbed him, and thenceforward he directed the talk himself.

It was difficult to believe that this lively and animated old lady,

sitting beside me and taking so eager an interest in the affairs of

life, was practically, we understood, without the use of her lower

limbs, and that her whole existence for years had been passed between

the sofa, the bed, and the bath-chair in which she chatted so naturally

at the dinner-table. She made no allusion to her affliction until the

dessert was reached, and then, touching a bell, she made us a witty

little speech about leaving us “like time, on noiseless feet,” and was

wheeled out of the room by the butler and carried off to her apartments

at the other end of the house.

And the rest of us were not long in following suit, for Dr. Silence and

myself were quite as eager to learn the nature of our errand as our

host was to impart it to us. He led us down a long flagged passage to a

room at the very end of the house, a room provided with double doors,

and windows, I saw, heavily shuttered. Books lined the walls on every

side, and a large desk in the bow window was piled up with volumes,

some open, some shut, some showing scraps of paper stuck between the

leaves, and all smothered in a general cataract of untidy foolscap and

loose half sheets.

“My study and workroom,” explained Colonel Wragge, with a delightful

touch of innocent pride, as though he were a very serious scholar.

He placed arm-chairs for us round the fire. “Here,” he added

significantly, “we shall be safe from interruption and can talk

securely.”

During dinner the manner of the doctor had been all that was natural

and spontaneous, though it was impossible for me, knowing him as I

did, not to be aware that he was subconsciously very keenly alert and

already receiving upon the ultra-sensitive surface of his mind various

and vivid impressions; and there was now something in the gravity

of his face, as well as in the significant tone of Colonel Wragge’s

speech, and something, too, in the fact that we three were shut away in

this private chamber about to listen to things probably strange, and

certainly mysterious--something in all this that touched my imagination

sharply and sent an undeniable thrill along my nerves. Taking the chair

indicated by my host, I lit my cigar and waited for the opening of the

attack, fully conscious that we were now too far gone in the adventure

to admit of withdrawal, and wondering a little anxiously where it was

going to lead.

What I expected precisely, it is hard to say. Nothing definite,

perhaps. Only the sudden change was dramatic. A few hours before the

prosaic atmosphere of Piccadilly was about me, and now I was sitting in

a secret chamber of this remote old building waiting to hear an account

of things that held possibly the genuine heart of terror. I thought of

the dreary moors and hills outside, and the dark pine copses soughing

in the wind of night; I remembered my companion’s singular words up in

my bedroom before dinner; and then I turned and noted carefully the

stern countenance of the Colonel as he faced us and lit his big black

cigar before speaking.

The threshold of an adventure, I reflected as I waited for the first

words, is always the most thrilling moment--until the climax comes.

But Colonel Wragge hesitated--mentally--a long time before he began.

He talked briefly of our journey, the weather, the country, and other

comparatively trivial topics, while he sought about in his mind for an

appropriate entry into the subject that was uppermost in the thoughts

of all of us. The fact was he found it a difficult matter to speak of

at all, and it was Dr. Silence who finally showed him the way over the

hedge.

“Mr Hubbard will take a few notes when you are ready--you won’t

object,” he suggested; “I can give my undivided attention in this way.”

“By all means,” turning to reach some of the loose sheets on the

writing table, and glancing at me. He still hesitated a little, I

thought. “The fact is,” he said apologetically, “I wondered if it

was quite fair to trouble you so soon. The daylight might suit you

better to hear what I have to tell. Your sleep, I mean, might be less

disturbed, perhaps.”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” John Silence replied with his

gentle smile, taking command as it were from that moment, “but really

we are both quite immune. There is nothing, I think, that could prevent

either of us sleeping, except--an outbreak of fire, or some such very

physical disturbance.”

Colonel Wragge raised his eyes and looked fixedly at him. This

reference to an outbreak of fire I felt sure was made with a purpose.

It certainly had the desired effect of removing from our host’s manner

the last signs of hesitancy.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Of course, I know nothing of your methods in

matters of this kind--so, perhaps, you would like me to begin at once

and give you an outline of the situation?”

Dr. Silence bowed his agreement. “I can then take my precautions

accordingly,” he added calmly.

The soldier looked up for a moment as though he did not quite gather

the meaning of these words; but he made no further comment and

turned at once to tackle a subject on which he evidently talked with

diffidence and unwillingness.

“It’s all so utterly out of my line of things,” he began, puffing out

clouds of cigar smoke between his words, “and there’s so little to tell

with any real evidence behind it, that it’s almost impossible to make

a consecutive story for you. It’s the total cumulative effect that is

so--so disquieting.” He chose his words with care, as though determined

not to travel one hair’s breadth beyond the truth.

“I came into this place twenty years ago when my elder brother died,”

he continued, “but could not afford to live here then. My sister, whom

you met at dinner, kept house for him till the end, and during all

these years, while I was seeing service abroad, she had an eye to the

place--for we never got a satisfactory tenant--and saw that it was not

allowed to go to ruin. I myself took possession, however, only a year

ago.

“My brother,” he went on, after a perceptible pause, “spent much of

his time away, too. He was a great traveller, and filled the house

with stuff he brought home from all over the world. The laundry--a

small detached building beyond the servants’ quarters--he turned into a

regular little museum. The curios and things I have cleared away--they

collected dust and were always getting broken--but the laundry-house

you shall see tomorrow.”

Colonel Wragge spoke with such deliberation and with so many pauses

that this beginning took him a long time. But at this point he came to

a full stop altogether. Evidently there was something he wished to say

that cost him considerable effort. At length he looked up steadily into

my companion’s face.

“May I ask you--that is, if you won’t think it strange,” he said, and a

sort of hush came over his voice and manner, “whether you have noticed

anything at all unusual--anything queer, since you came into the house?”

Dr. Silence answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“I have,” he said. “There is a curious sensation of heat in the place.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the other, with a slight start. “You _have_ noticed it.

This unaccountable heat----”

“But its cause, I gather, is not in the house itself--but outside,” I

was astonished to hear the doctor add.

Colonel Wragge rose from his chair and turned to unhook a framed map

that hung upon the wall. I got the impression that the movement was

made with the deliberate purpose of concealing his face.

“Your diagnosis, I believe, is amazingly accurate,” he said after a

moment, turning round with the map in his hands. “Though, of course, I

can have no idea how you should guess----”

John Silence shrugged his shoulders expressively. “Merely my

impression,” he said. “If you pay attention to impressions, and do not

allow them to be confused by deductions of the intellect, you will

often find them surprisingly, uncannily, accurate.”

Colonel Wragge resumed his seat and laid the map upon his knees. His

face was very thoughtful as he plunged abruptly again into his story.

“On coming into possession,” he said, looking us alternately in

the face, “I found a crop of stories of the most extraordinary and

impossible kind I had ever heard--stories which at first I treated with

amused indifference, but later was forced to regard seriously, if only

to keep my servants. These stories I thought I traced to the fact of my

brother’s death--and, in a way, I think so still.”

He leant forward and handed the map to Dr. Silence.

“It’s an old plan of the estate,” he explained, “but accurate enough

for our purpose, and I wish you would note the position of the

plantations marked upon it, especially those near the house. That

one,” indicating the spot with his finger, “is called the Twelve Acre

Plantation. It was just there, on the side nearest the house, that my

brother and the head keeper met their deaths.”

He spoke as a man forced to recognise facts that he deplored, and would

have preferred to leave untouched--things he personally would rather

have treated with ridicule if possible. It made his words peculiarly

dignified and impressive, and I listened with an increasing uneasiness

as to the sort of help the doctor would look to me for later. It seemed

as though I were a spectator of some drama of mystery in which any

moment I might be summoned to play a part.

“It was twenty years ago,” continued the Colonel, “but there was much

talk about it at the time, unfortunately, and you may, perhaps, have

heard of the affair. Stride, the keeper, was a passionate, hot-tempered

man, but I regret to say, so was my brother, and quarrels between them

seem to have been frequent.”

“I do not recall the affair,” said the doctor. “May I ask what was the

cause of death?” Something in his voice made me prick up my ears for

the reply.

“The keeper, it was said, from suffocation. And at the inquest the

doctors averred that both men had been dead the same length of time

when found.”

“And your brother?” asked John Silence, noticing the omission, and

listening intently.

“Equally mysterious,” said our host, speaking in a low voice with

effort. “But there was one distressing feature I think I ought to

mention. For those who saw the face--I did not see it myself--and

though Stride carried a gun its chambers were undischarged----” He

stammered and hesitated with confusion. Again that sense of terror

moved between his words. He stuck.

“Yes,” said the chief listener sympathetically.

“My brother’s face, they said, looked as though it had been scorched.

It had been swept, as it were, by something that burned--blasted. It

was, I am told, quite dreadful. The bodies were found lying side by

side, faces downwards, both pointing away from the wood, as though they

had been in the act of running, and not more than a dozen yards from

its edge.”

Dr. Silence made no comment. He appeared to be studying the map

attentively.

“I did not see the face myself,” repeated the other, his manner somehow

expressing the sense of awe he contrived to keep out of his voice,

“but my sister unfortunately did, and her present state I believe to

be entirely due to the shock it gave to her nerves. She never can be

brought to refer to it, naturally, and I am even inclined to think that

the memory has mercifully been permitted to vanish from her mind. But

she spoke of it at the time as a face swept by flame--blasted.”

John Silence looked up from his contemplation of the map, but with the

air of one who wished to listen, not to speak, and presently Colonel

Wragge went on with his account. He stood on the mat, his broad

shoulders hiding most of the mantelpiece.

“They all centred about this particular plantation, these stories. That

was to be expected, for the people here are as superstitious as Irish

peasantry, and though I made one or two examples among them to stop the

foolish talk, it had no effect, and new versions came to my ears every

week. You may imagine how little good dismissals did, when I tell you

that the servants dismissed themselves. It was not the house servants,

but the men who worked on the estate outside. The keepers gave notice

one after another, none of them with any reason I could accept; the

foresters refused to enter the wood, and the beaters to beat in it.

Word flew all over the countryside that Twelve Acre Plantation was a

place to be avoided, day or night.

“There came a point,” the Colonel went on, now well in his swing, “when

I felt compelled to make investigations on my own account. I could

not kill the thing by ignoring it; so I collected and analysed the

stories at first hand. For this Twelve Acre Wood, you will see by the

map, comes rather near home. Its lower end, if you will look, almost

touches the end of the back lawn, as I will show you tomorrow, and its

dense growth of pines forms the chief protection the house enjoys from

the east winds that blow up from the sea. And in olden days, before my

brother interfered with it and frightened all the game away, it was one

of the best pheasant coverts on the whole estate.”

“And what form, if I may ask, did this interference take?” asked Dr.

Silence.

“In detail, I cannot tell you, for I do not know--except that I

understand it was the subject of his frequent differences with the head

keeper; but during the last two years of his life, when he gave up

travelling and settled down here, he took a special interest in this

wood, and for some unaccountable reason began to build a low stone wall

round it. This wall was never finished, but you shall see the ruins

tomorrow in the daylight.”

“And the result of your investigations--these stories, I mean?” the

doctor broke in, anxious to keep him to the main issues.

“Yes, I’m coming to that,” he said slowly, “but the wood first, for

this wood out of which they grew like mushrooms has nothing in any way

peculiar about it. It is very thickly grown, and rises to a clearer

part in the centre, a sort of mound where there is a circle of large

boulders--old Druid stones, I’m told. At another place there’s a small

pond. There’s nothing distinctive about it that I could mention--just

an ordinary pine-wood, a very ordinary pine-wood--only the trees are a

bit twisted in the trunks, some of ’em, and very dense. Nothing more.

“And the stories? Well, none of them had anything to do with my poor

brother, or the keeper, as you might have expected; and they were all

odd--such odd things, I mean, to invent or imagine. I never could make

out how these people got such notions into their heads.”

He paused a moment to relight his cigar.

“There’s no regular path through it,” he resumed, puffing vigorously,

“but the fields round it are constantly used, and one of the gardeners

whose cottage lies over that way declared he often saw moving lights in

it at night, and luminous shapes like globes of fire over the tops of

the trees, skimming and floating, and making a soft hissing sound--most

of ’em said that, in fact--and another man saw shapes flitting in and

out among the trees, things that were neither men nor animals, and all

faintly luminous. No one ever pretended to see human forms--always

queer, huge things they could not properly describe. Sometimes the

whole wood was lit up, and one fellow--he’s still here and you shall

see him--has a most circumstantial yarn about having seen great stars

lying on the ground round the edge of the wood at regular intervals----”

“What kind of stars?” put in John Silence sharply, in a sudden way that

made me start.

“Oh, I don’t know quite; ordinary stars, I think he said, only very

large, and apparently blazing as though the ground was alight. He was

too terrified to go close and examine, and he has never seen them

since.”

He stooped and stirred the fire into a welcome blaze--welcome for its

blaze of light rather than for its heat. In the room there was already

a strange pervading sensation of warmth that was oppressive in its

effect and far from comforting.

“Of course,” he went on, straightening up again on the mat, “this was

all commonplace enough--this seeing lights and figures at night. Most

of these fellows drink, and imagination and terror between them may

account for almost anything. But others saw things in broad daylight.

One of the woodmen, a sober, respectable man, took the shortcut home to

his midday meal, and swore he was followed the whole length of the wood

by something that never showed itself, but dodged from tree to tree,

always keeping out of sight, yet solid enough to make the branches sway

and the twigs snap on the ground. And it made a noise, he declared--but

really”--the speaker stopped and gave a short laugh--“it’s too

absurd----”

“_Please!_” insisted the doctor; “for it is these small details that

give me the best clues always.”

“----it made a crackling noise, he said, like a bonfire. Those were his

very words: like the crackling of a bonfire,” finished the soldier,

with a repetition of his short laugh.

“Most interesting,” Dr. Silence observed gravely. “Please omit nothing.”

“Yes” he went on, “and it was soon after that the fires began--the

fires in the wood. They started mysteriously burning in the patches of

coarse white grass that cover the more open parts of the plantation. No

one ever actually saw them start, but many, myself among the number,

have seen them burning and smouldering. They are always small and

circular in shape, and for all the world like a picnic fire. The head

keeper has a dozen explanations, from sparks flying out of the house

chimneys to the sunlight focusing through a dewdrop, but none of them,

I must admit, convince me as being in the least likely or probable.

They are most singular, I consider, most singular, these mysterious

fires, and I am glad to say that they come only at rather long

intervals and never seem to spread.

“But the keeper had other queer stories as well, and about things that

are verifiable. He declared that no life ever willingly entered the

plantation; more, that no life existed in it at all. No birds nested in

the trees, or flew into their shade. He set countless traps, but never

caught so much as a rabbit or a weasel. Animals avoided it, and more

than once he had picked up dead creatures round the edges that bore no

obvious signs of how they had met their death.

“Moreover, he told me one extraordinary tale about his retriever

chasing some invisible creature across the field one day when he was

out with his gun. The dog suddenly pointed at something in the field at

his feet, and then gave chase, yelping like a mad thing. It followed

its imaginary quarry to the borders of the wood, and then went in--a

thing he had never known it to do before. The moment it crossed the

edge--it is darkish in there even in daylight--it began fighting

in the most frenzied and terrific fashion. It made him afraid to

interfere, he said. And at last, when the dog came out, hanging its

tail down and panting, he found something like white hair stuck to its

jaws, and brought it to show me. I tell you these details because----”

“They are important, believe me,” the doctor stopped him. “And you have

it still, this hair?” he asked.

“It disappeared in the oddest way,” the Colonel explained. “It was

curious looking stuff, something like asbestos, and I sent it to be

analysed by the local chemist. But either the man got wind of its

origin, or else he didn’t like the look of it for some reason, because

he returned it to me and said it was neither animal, vegetable, nor

mineral, so far as he could make out, and he didn’t wish to have

anything to do with it. I put it away in paper, but a week later, on

opening the package--it was gone! Oh, the stories are simply endless. I

could tell you hundreds all on the same lines.”

“And personal experiences of your own, Colonel Wragge?” asked John

Silence earnestly, his manner showing the greatest possible interest

and sympathy.

The soldier gave an almost imperceptible start. He looked distinctly

uncomfortable.

“Nothing, I think,” he said slowly, “nothing--er--I should like to rely

on. I mean nothing I have the right to speak of, perhaps--yet.”

His mouth closed with a snap. Dr. Silence, after waiting a little to

see if he would add to his reply, did not seek to press him on the

point.

“Well,” he resumed presently, and as though he would speak

contemptuously, yet dared not, “this sort of thing has gone on at

intervals ever since. It spreads like wildfire, of course, mysterious

chatter of this kind, and people began trespassing all over the estate,

coming to see the wood, and making themselves a general nuisance.

Notices of man-traps and spring-guns only seemed to increase their

persistence; and--think of it,” he snorted, “some local Research

Society actually wrote and asked permission for one of their members

to spend a night in the wood! Bolder fools, who didn’t write for

leave, came and took away bits of bark from the trees and gave them

to clairvoyants, who invented in their turn a further batch of tales.

There was simply no end to it all.”

“Most distressing and annoying, I can well believe,” interposed the

doctor.

“Then suddenly the phenomena ceased as mysteriously as they had begun,

and the interest flagged. The tales stopped. People got interested in

something else. It all seemed to die out. This was last July. I can

tell you exactly, for I’ve kept a diary more or less of what happened.”

“Ah!”

“But now, quite recently, within the past three weeks, it has all

revived again with a rush--with a kind of furious attack, so to speak.

It has really become unbearable. You may imagine what it means, and the

general state of affairs, when I say that the possibility of leaving

has occurred to me.”

“Incendiarism?” suggested Dr. Silence, half under his breath, but not

so low that Colonel Wragge did not hear him.

“By Jove, sir, you take the very words out of my mouth!” exclaimed

the astonished man, glancing from the doctor to me and from me to the

doctor, and rattling the money in his pocket as though some explanation

of my friend’s divining powers were to be found that way.

“It’s only that you are thinking very vividly,” the doctor said

quietly, “and your thoughts form pictures in my mind before you utter

them. It’s merely a little elementary thought-reading.”

His intention, I saw, was not to perplex the good man, but to impress

him with his powers so as to ensure obedience later.

“Good Lord! I had no idea----” He did not finish the sentence, and

dived again abruptly into his narrative.

“I did not see anything myself, I must admit, but the stories of

independent eye-witnesses were to the effect that lines of light, like

streams of thin fire, moved through the wood and sometimes were seen

to shoot out precisely as flames might shoot out--in the direction of

this house. There,” he explained, in a louder voice that made me jump,

pointing with a thick finger to the map, “where the westerly fringe of

the plantation comes up to the end of the lower lawn at the back of

the house--where it links on to those dark patches, which are laurel

shrubberies, running right up to the back premises--that’s where these

lights were seen. They passed from the wood to the shrubberies, and

in this way reached the house itself. Like silent rockets, one man

described them, rapid as lightning and exceedingly bright.”

“And this evidence you spoke of?”

“They actually reached the sides of the house. They’ve left a mark of

scorching on the walls--the walls of the laundry building at the other

end. You shall see ’em tomorrow.” He pointed to the map to indicate the

spot, and then straightened himself and glared about the room as though

he had said something no one could believe and expected contradiction.

“Scorched--just as the faces were,” the doctor murmured, looking

significantly at me.

“Scorched--yes,” repeated the Colonel, failing to catch the rest of the

sentence in his excitement.

There was a prolonged silence in the room, in which I heard the

gurgling of the oil in the lamp and the click of the coals and the

heavy breathing of our host. The most unwelcome sensations were

creeping about my spine, and I wondered whether my companion would

scorn me utterly if I asked to sleep on the sofa in his room. It was

eleven o’clock, I saw by the clock on the mantelpiece. We had crossed

the dividing line and were now well in the movement of the adventure.

The fight between my interest and my dread became acute. But, even if

turning back had been possible, I think the interest would have easily

gained the day.

“I have enemies, of course,” I heard the Colonel’s rough voice break

into the pause presently, “and have discharged a number of servants----”

“It’s not that,” put in John Silence briefly.

“You think not? In a sense I am glad, and yet--there are some things

that can be met and dealt with----”

He left the sentence unfinished, and looked down at the floor with

an expression of grim severity that betrayed a momentary glimpse of

character. This fighting man loathed and abhorred the thought of an

enemy he could not see and come to grips with. Presently he moved over

and sat down in the chair between us. Something like a sigh escaped

him. Dr. Silence said nothing.

“My sister, of course, is kept in ignorance, as far as possible, of all

this,” he said disconnectedly, and as if talking to himself. “But even

if she knew, she would find matter-of-fact explanations. I only wish I

could. I’m sure they exist.”

There came then an interval in the conversation that was very

significant. It did not seem a real pause, or the silence real silence,

for both men continued to think so rapidly and strongly that one almost

imagined their thoughts clothed themselves in words in the air of the

room. I was more than a little keyed up with the strange excitement

of all I had heard, but what stimulated my nerves more than anything

else was the obvious fact that the doctor was clearly upon the trail of

discovery. In his mind at that moment, I believe, he had already solved

the nature of this perplexing psychical problem. His face was like a

mask, and he employed the absolute minimum of gesture and words. All

his energies were directed inwards, and by those incalculable methods

and processes he had mastered with such infinite patience and study, I

felt sure he was already in touch with the forces behind these singular

phenomena and laying his deep plans for bringing them into the open,

and then effectively dealing with them.

Colonel Wragge meanwhile grew more and more fidgety. From time to time

he turned towards my companion, as though about to speak, yet always

changing his mind at the last moment. Once he went over and opened

the door suddenly, apparently to see if any one were listening at

the keyhole, for he disappeared a moment between the two doors, and I

then heard him open the outer one. He stood there for some seconds and

made a noise as though he were sniffing the air like a dog. Then he

closed both doors cautiously and came back to the fireplace. A strange

excitement seemed growing upon him. Evidently he was trying to make up

his mind to say something that he found it difficult to say. And John

Silence, as I rightly judged, was waiting patiently for him to choose

his own opportunity and his own way of saying it. At last he turned and

faced us, squaring his great shoulders, and stiffening perceptibly.

Dr. Silence looked up sympathetically.

“Your own experiences help me most,” he observed quietly.

“The fact is,” the Colonel said, speaking very low, “this past week

there have been outbreaks of fire in the house itself. Three separate

outbreaks--and all--in my sister’s room.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, as if this was just what he had expected to

hear.

“Utterly unaccountable--all of them,” added the other, and then sat

down. I began to understand something of the reason of his excitement.

He was realising at last that the “natural” explanation he had held to

all along was becoming impossible, and he hated it. It made him angry.

“Fortunately,” he went on, “she was out each time and does not know.

But I have made her sleep now in a room on the ground floor.”

“A wise precaution,” the doctor said simply. He asked one or two

questions. The fires had started in the curtains--once by the window

and once by the bed. The third time smoke had been discovered by the

maid coming from the cupboard, and it was found that Miss Wragge’s

clothes hanging on the hooks were smouldering. The doctor listened

attentively, but made no comment.

“And now can you tell me,” he said presently, “what your own feeling

about it is--your general impression?”

“It sounds foolish to say so,” replied the soldier, after a moment’s

hesitation, “but I feel exactly as I have often felt on active service

in my Indian campaigns: just as if the house and all in it were in a

state of siege; as though a concealed enemy were encamped about us--in

ambush somewhere.” He uttered a soft nervous laugh. “As if the next

sign of smoke would precipitate a panic--a dreadful panic.”

The picture came before me of the night shadowing the house, and the

twisted pine trees he had described crowding about it, concealing some

powerful enemy; and, glancing at the resolute face and figure of the

old soldier, forced at length to his confession, I understood something

of all he had been through before he sought the assistance of John

Silence.

“And tomorrow, unless I am mistaken, is full moon,” said the doctor

suddenly, watching the other’s face for the effect of his apparently

careless words.

Colonel Wragge gave an uncontrollable start, and his face for the first

time showed unmistakable pallor.

“What in the world----?” he began, his lip quivering.

“Only that I am beginning to see light in this extraordinary affair,”

returned the other calmly, “and, if my theory is correct, each month

when the moon is at the full should witness an increase in the activity

of the phenomena.”

“I don’t see the connection,” Colonel Wragge answered almost savagely,

“but I am bound to say my diary bears you out.” He wore the most

puzzled expression I have ever seen upon an honest face, but he

abhorred this additional corroboration of an explanation that perplexed

him.

“I confess,” he repeated; “I cannot see the connection.”

“Why should you?” said the doctor, with his first laugh that evening.

He got up and hung the map upon the wall again. “But I do--because

these things are my special study--and let me add that I have yet

to come across a problem that is not natural, and has not a natural

explanation. It’s merely a question of how much one knows--and admits.”

Colonel Wragge eyed him with a new and curious respect in his face. But

his feelings were soothed. Moreover, the doctor’s laugh and change of

manner came as a relief to all, and broke the spell of grave suspense

that had held us so long. We all rose and stretched our limbs, and took

little walks about the room.

“I am glad, Dr. Silence, if you will allow me to say so, that you are

here,” he said simply, “very glad indeed. And now I fear I have kept

you both up very late,” with a glance to include me, “for you must be

tired, and ready for your beds. I have told you all there is to tell,”

he added, “and tomorrow you must feel perfectly free to take any steps

you think necessary.”

The end was abrupt, yet natural, for there was nothing more to say, and

neither of these men talked for mere talking’s sake.

Out in the cold and chilly hall he lit our candles and took us

upstairs. The house was at rest and still, every one asleep. We moved

softly. Through the windows on the stairs we saw the moonlight falling

across the lawn, throwing deep shadows. The nearer pine trees were just

visible in the distance, a wall of impenetrable blackness.

Our host came for a moment to our rooms to see that we had everything.

He pointed to a coil of strong rope lying beside the window, fastened

to the wall by means of an iron ring. Evidently it had been recently

put in.

“I don’t think we shall need it,” Dr. Silence said, with a smile.

“I trust not,” replied our host gravely. “I sleep quite close to you

across the landing,” he whispered, pointing to his door, “and if

you--if you want anything in the night you will know where to find me.”

He wished us pleasant dreams and disappeared down the passage into his

room, shading the candle with his big muscular hand from the draughts.

John Silence stopped me a moment before I went.

“You know what it is?” I asked, with an excitement that even overcame

my weariness.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m almost sure. And you?”

“Not the smallest notion.”

He looked disappointed, but not half as disappointed as I felt.

“Egypt,” he whispered, “Egypt!”

II

Nothing happened to disturb me in the night--nothing, that is, except a

nightmare in which Colonel Wragge chased me amid thin streaks of fire,

and his sister always prevented my escape by suddenly rising up out of

the ground in her chair--dead. The deep baying of dogs woke me once,

just before the dawn, it must have been, for I saw the window frame

against the sky; there was a flash of lightning, too, I thought, as I

turned over in bed. And it was warm, for October oppressively warm.

It was after eleven o’clock when our host suggested going out with

the guns, these, we understood, being a somewhat thin disguise for

our true purpose. Personally, I was glad to be in the open air, for

the atmosphere of the house was heavy with presentiment. The sense

of impending disaster hung over all. Fear stalked the passages, and

lurked in the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, but really

haunted; not by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite

though incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous.

At the least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour

of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the

servants, though professedly ignorant by the master’s unspoken orders,

yet shared the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with

this display of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity,

provided a kind of black doom that draped not only the walls, but also

the minds of the people living within them.

Only the bright and cheerful vision of old Miss Wragge being pushed

about the house in her noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly

to every one she met, prevented us from giving way entirely to the

depression which governed the majority. The sight of her was like a

gleam of sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened wood, and just

as we went out I saw her being wheeled along by her attendant into the

sunshine of the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she turned

her head and wished us good sport.

The morning was October at its best. Sunshine glistened on the

dew-drenched grass and on leaves turned golden-red. The dainty

messengers of coming hoar-frost were already in the air, asearch for

permanent winter quarters. From the wide moors that everywhere swept up

against the sky, like a purple sea splashed by the occasional grey of

rocky clefts, there stole down the cool and perfumed wind of the west.

And the keen taste of the sea ran through all like a master-flavour,

borne over the spaces perhaps by the seagulls that cried and circled

high in the air.

But our host took little interest in this sparkling beauty, and had

no thought of showing off the scenery of his property. His mind was

otherwise intent, and, for that matter, so were our own.

“Those bleak moors and hills stretch unbroken for hours,” he said, with

a sweep of the hand; “and over there, some four miles,” pointing in

another direction, “lies S---- Bay, a long, swampy inlet of the sea,

haunted by myriads of seabirds. On the other side of the house are the

plantations and pine-woods. I thought we would get the dogs and go

first to the Twelve Acre Wood I told you about last night. It’s quite

near.”

We found the dogs in the stable, and I recalled the deep baying of the

night when a fine bloodhound and two great Danes leaped out to greet

us. Singular companions for guns, I thought to myself, as we struck out

across the fields and the great creatures bounded and ran beside us,

nose to ground.

The conversation was scanty. John Silence’s grave face did not

encourage talk. He wore the expression I knew well--that look of

earnest solicitude which meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed

and preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, but anxious

often--it always moved me to witness it--and he was anxious now.

“On the way back you shall see the laundry building,” Colonel Wragge

observed shortly, for he, too, found little to say. “We shall attract

less attention then.”

Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed able to dispel the

feelings of uneasy dread that gathered increasingly about our minds as

we went.

In a very few minutes a clump of pine trees concealed the house from

view, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a densely-grown

plantation of conifers. Colonel Wragge stopped abruptly, and, producing

a map from his pocket, explained once more very briefly its position

with regard to the house. He showed how it ran up almost to the walls

of the laundry building--though at the moment beyond our actual

view--and pointed to the windows of his sister’s bedroom where the

fires had been. The room, now empty, looked straight on to the wood.

Then, glancing nervously about him, and calling the dogs to heel,

he proposed that we should enter the plantation and make as thorough

examination of it as we thought worth while. The dogs, he added, might

perhaps be persuaded to accompany us a little way--and he pointed to

where they cowered at his feet--but he doubted it. “Neither voice

nor whip will get them very far, I’m afraid,” he said. “I know by

experience.”

“If you have no objection,” replied Dr. Silence, with decision, and

speaking almost for the first time, “we will make our examination

alone--Mr. Hubbard and myself. It will be best so.”

His tone was absolutely final, and the Colonel acquiesced so politely

that even a less intuitive man than myself must have seen that he was

genuinely relieved.

“You doubtless have good reasons,” he said.

“Merely that I wish to obtain my impressions uncoloured. This delicate

clue I am working on might be so easily blurred by the thought-currents

of another mind with strongly preconceived ideas.”

“Perfectly. I understand,” rejoined the soldier, though with an

expression of countenance that plainly contradicted his words. “Then I

will wait here with the dogs; and we’ll have a look at the laundry on

our way home.”

I turned once to look back as we clambered over the low stone wall

built by the late owner, and saw his straight, soldierly figure

standing in the sunlit field watching us with a curiously intent look

on his face. There was something to me incongruous, yet distinctly

pathetic, in the man’s efforts to meet all far-fetched explanations

of the mystery with contempt, and at the same time in his stolid,

unswerving investigation of it all. He nodded at me and made a gesture

of farewell with his hand. That picture of him, standing in the

sunshine with his big dogs, steadily watching us, remains with me to

this day.

Dr. Silence led the way in among the twisted trunks, planted closely

together in serried ranks, and I followed sharp at his heels. The

moment we were out of sight he turned and put down his gun against the

roots of a big tree, and I did likewise.

“We shall hardly want these cumbersome weapons of murder,” he observed,

with a passing smile.

“You are sure of your clue, then?” I asked at once, bursting with

curiosity, yet fearing to betray it lest he should think me unworthy.

His own methods were so absolutely simple and untheatrical.

“I am sure of my clue,” he answered gravely. “And I think we have come

just in time. You shall know in due course. For the present--be content

to follow and observe. And think steadily. The support of your mind

will help me.”

His voice had that quiet mastery in it which leads men to face death

with a sort of happiness and pride. I would have followed him anywhere

at that moment. At the same time his words conveyed a sense of dread

seriousness. I caught the thrill of his confidence; but also, in this

broad light of day, I felt the measure of alarm that lay behind.

“You still have no strong impressions?” he asked. “Nothing happened in

the night, for instance? No vivid dreamings?”

He looked closely for my answer, I was aware.

“I slept almost an unbroken sleep. I was tremendously tired, you know,

and, but for the oppressive heat----”

“Good! You still notice the heat, then,” he said to himself, rather

than expecting an answer. “And the lightning?” he added, “that

lightning out of a clear sky--that flashing--did you notice _that_?”

I answered truly that I thought I had seen a flash during a moment of

wakefulness, and he then drew my attention to certain facts before

moving on.

“You remember the sensation of warmth when you put the letter to your

forehead in the train; the heat generally in the house last evening,

and, as you now mention, in the night. You heard, too, the Colonel’s

stories about the appearances of fire in this wood and in the house

itself, and the way his brother and the gamekeeper came to their deaths

twenty years ago.”

I nodded, wondering what in the world it all meant.

“And you get no clue from these facts?” he asked, a trifle surprised.

I searched every corner of my mind and imagination for some inkling of

his meaning, but was obliged to admit that I understood nothing so far.

“Never mind; you will later. And now,” he added, “we will go over the

wood and see what we can find.”

His words explained to me something of his method. We were to keep our

minds alert and report to each other the least fancy that crossed the

picture-gallery of our thoughts. Then, just as we started, he turned

again to me with a final warning.

“And, for your safety,” he said earnestly, “imagine _now_--and for that

matter, imagine always until we leave this place--imagine with the

utmost keenness, that you are surrounded by a shell that protects you.

Picture yourself inside a protective envelope, and build it up with the

most intense imagination you can evoke. Pour the whole force of your

thought and will into it. Believe vividly all through this adventure

that such a shell, constructed of your thought, will and imagination,

surrounds you completely, and that nothing can pierce it to attack.”

He spoke with dramatic conviction, gazing hard at me as though to

enforce his meaning, and then moved forward and began to pick his way

over the rough, tussocky ground into the wood. And meanwhile, knowing

the efficacy of his prescription, I adopted it to the best of my

ability.

The trees at once closed about us like the night. Their branches met

overhead in a continuous tangle, their stems crept closer and closer,

the brambly undergrowth thickened and multiplied. We tore our trousers,

scratched our hands, and our eyes filled with fine dust that made it

most difficult to avoid the clinging, prickly network of branches and

creepers. Coarse white grass that caught our feet like string grew here

and there in patches. It crowned the lumps of peaty growth that stuck

up like human heads, fantastically dressed, thrusting up at us out of

the ground with crests of dead hair. We stumbled and floundered among

them. It was hard going, and I could well conceive it impossible to

find a way at all in the night-time. We jumped, when possible, from

tussock to tussock, and it seemed as though we were springing among

heads on a battlefield, and that this dead white grass concealed eyes

that turned to stare as we passed.

Here and there the sunlight shot in with vivid spots of white light,

dazzling the sight, but only making the surrounding gloom deeper by

contrast And on two occasions we passed dark circular places in the

grass where fires had eaten their mark and left a ring of ashes. Dr.

Silence pointed to them, but without comment and without pausing, and

the sight of them woke in me a singular realisation of the dread that

lay so far only just out of sight in this adventure.

It was exhausting work, and heavy going. We kept close together. The

warmth, too, was extraordinary. Yet it did not seem the warmth of the

body due to violent exertion, but rather an inner heat of the mind that

laid glowing hands of fire upon the heart and set the brain in a kind

of steady blaze. When my companion found himself too far in advance,

he waited for me to come up. The place had evidently been untouched by

hand of man, keeper, forester or sportsman, for many a year; and my

thoughts, as we advanced painfully, were not unlike the state of the

wood itself--dark, confused, full of a haunting wonder and the shadow

of fear.

By this time all signs of the open field behind us were hid. No

single gleam penetrated. We might have been groping in the heart of

some primeval forest. Then, suddenly, the brambles and tussocks and

string-like grass came to an end; the trees opened out; and the ground

began to slope upwards towards a large central mound. We had reached

the middle of the plantation, and before us stood the broken Druid

stones our host had mentioned. We walked easily up the little hill,

between the sparser stems, and, resting upon one of the ivy-covered

boulders, looked round upon a comparatively open space, as large,

perhaps, as a small London Square.

Thinking of the ceremonies and sacrifices this rough circle of

prehistoric monoliths might have witnessed, I looked up into my

companion’s face with an unspoken question. But he read my thought and

shook his head.

“Our mystery has nothing to do with these dead symbols,” he said,

“but with something perhaps even more ancient, and of another country

altogether.”

“Egypt?” I said half under my breath, hopelessly puzzled, but recalling

his words in my bedroom.

He nodded. Mentally I still floundered, but he seemed intensely

preoccupied and it was no time for asking questions; so while his words

circled unintelligibly in my mind I looked round at the scene before

me, glad of the opportunity to recover breath and some measure of

composure. But hardly had I time to notice the twisted and contorted

shapes of many of the pine trees close at hand when Dr. Silence leaned

over and touched me on the shoulder. He pointed down the slope. And the

look I saw in his eyes keyed up every nerve in my body to its utmost

pitch.

A thin, almost imperceptible column of blue smoke was rising among the

trees some twenty yards away at the foot of the mound. It curled up and

up, and disappeared from sight among the tangled branches overhead. It

was scarcely thicker than the smoke from a small brand of burning wood.

“Protect yourself! Imagine your shell strongly,” whispered the doctor

sharply, “and follow me closely.”

He rose at once and moved swiftly down the slope towards the smoke,

and I followed, afraid to remain alone. I heard the soft crunching of

our steps on the pine needles. Over his shoulder I watched the thin

blue spiral, without once taking my eyes off it. I hardly know how

to describe the peculiar sense of vague horror inspired in me by the

sight of that streak of smoke pencilling its way upwards among the

dark trees. And the sensation of increasing heat as we approached was

phenomenal. It was like walking towards a glowing yet invisible fire.

As we drew nearer his pace slackened. Then he stopped and pointed, and

I saw a small circle of burnt grass upon the ground. The tussocks were

blackened and smouldering, and from the centre rose this line of smoke,

pale, blue, steady. Then I noticed a movement of the atmosphere beside

us, as if the warm air were rising and the cooler air rushing in to

take its place: a little centre of wind in the stillness. Overhead the

boughs stirred and trembled where the smoke disappeared. Otherwise, not

a tree sighed, not a sound made itself heard. The wood was still as a

graveyard. A horrible idea came to me that the course of nature was

about to change without warning, _had_ changed a little already, that

the sky would drop, or the surface of the earth crash inwards like a

broken bubble. Something, certainly, reached up to the citadel of my

reason, causing its throne to shake.

John Silence moved forward again. I could not see his face, but his

attitude was plainly one of resolution, of muscles and mind ready for

vigorous action. We were within ten feet of the blackened circle when

the smoke of a sudden ceased to rise, and vanished. The tail of the

column disappeared in the air above, and at the same instant it seemed

to me that the sensation of heat passed from my face, and the motion

of the wind was gone. The calm spirit of the fresh October day resumed

command.

Side by side we advanced and examined the place. The grass was

smouldering, the ground still hot. The circle of burned earth was a

foot to a foot and a half in diameter. It looked like an ordinary

picnic fire-place. I bent down cautiously to look, but in a second

I sprang back with an involuntary cry of alarm, for, as the doctor

stamped on the ashes to prevent them spreading, a sound of hissing rose

from the spot as though he had kicked a living creature. This hissing

was faintly audible in the air. It moved past us, away towards the

thicker portion of the wood in the direction of our field, and in a

second Dr. Silence had left the fire and started in pursuit.

And then began the most extraordinary hunt of invisibility I can ever

conceive.

He went fast even at the beginning, and, of course, it was perfectly

obvious that he was following something. To judge by the poise of his

head he kept his eyes steadily at a certain level--just above the

height of a man--and the consequence was he stumbled a good deal over

the roughness of the ground. The hissing sound had stopped. There was

no sound of any kind, and what he saw to follow was utterly beyond me.

I only know, that in mortal dread of being left behind, and with a

biting curiosity to see whatever there was to be seen, I followed as

quickly as I could, and even then barely succeeded in keeping up with

him.

And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the Colonel’s stories ran

through my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was only

held in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure before me.

For John Silence at work inspired me with a kind of awe. He looked

so diminutive among these giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that

his purpose and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he was

dignified. The fancy that we were playing some queer, exaggerated game

together met the fact that we were two men dancing upon the brink of

some possible tragedy, and the mingling of the two emotions in my mind

was both grotesque and terrifying.

He never turned in his mad chase, but pushed rapidly on, while I panted

after him like a figure in some unreasoning nightmare. And, as I ran,

it came upon me that he had been aware all the time, in his quiet,

internal way, of many things that he had kept for his own secret

consideration; he had been watching, waiting, planning from the very

moment we entered the shade of the wood. By some inner, concentrated

process of mind, dynamic if not actually magical, he had been in direct

contact with the source of the whole adventure, the very essence of the

real mystery. And now the forces were moving to a climax. Something

was about to happen, something important, something possibly dreadful.

Every nerve, every sense, every significant gesture of the plunging

figure before me proclaimed the fact just as surely as the skies, the

winds, and the face of the earth tell the birds the time to migrate and

warn the animals that danger lurks and they must move.

In a few moments we reached the foot of the mound and entered the

tangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field.

Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. There

were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless tree

trunks closing up to make a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silence

never seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, jumping, dodging,

ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail.

Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up

again, I saw him ahead of me, still forcing a way like a dog after

its quarry. And sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed--human

pointing it was, psychic pointing,--and each time he stopped to point I

heard that faint high hissing in the air beyond us. The instinct of an

infallible dowser possessed him, and he made no mistakes.

At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and found that we stood

at the edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his

account the night before. It was long and narrow, filled with dark

brown water, in which the trees were dimly reflected. Not a ripple

stirred its surface.

“Watch!” he cried out, as I came up. “It’s going to cross. It’s bound

to betray itself. The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the

direction.”

And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of a water-spider,

shot swiftly across the shiny surface; there was a ghost of steam in

the air above; and immediately I became aware of an odour of burning.

Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that made me think of

lightning. I began to shake all over.

“Quick!” he cried with excitement, “to the trail again! We must run

round. It’s going to the house!”

The alarm in his voice quite terrified me. Without a false step I

dashed round the slippery banks and dived again at his heels into the

sea of bushes and tree trunks. We were now in the thick of the very

dense belt that ran round the outer edge of the plantation, and the

field was near; yet so dark was the tangle that it was some time before

the first shafts of white sunlight became visible. The doctor now ran

in zigzags. He was following something that dodged and doubled quite

wonderfully, yet had begun, I fancied, to move more slowly than before.

“Quick!” he cried. “In the light we shall lose it!”

I still saw nothing, heard nothing, caught no suggestion of a trail;

yet this man, guided by some interior divining that seemed infallible,

made no false turns, though how we failed to crash headlong into the

trees has remained a mystery to me ever since. And then, with a sudden

rush, we found ourselves on the skirts of the wood with the open field

lying in bright sunshine before our eyes.

“Too late!” I heard him cry, a note of anguish in his voice. “It’s

out--and, by God, it’s making for the house!”

I saw the Colonel standing in the field with his dogs where we had left

him. He was bending double, peering into the wood where he heard us

running, and he straightened up like a bent whip released. John Silence

dashed passed, calling him to follow.

“We shall lose the trail in the light,” I heard him cry as he ran. “But

quick! We may yet get there in time!”

That wild rush across the open field, with the dogs at our heels,

leaping and barking, and the elderly Colonel behind us running as

though for his life, shall I ever forget it? Though I had only vague

ideas of the meaning of it all, I put my best foot forward, and, being

the youngest of the three, I reached the house an easy first. I drew

up, panting, and turned to wait for the others. But, as I turned,

something moving a little distance away caught my eye, and in that

moment I swear I experienced the most overwhelming and singular shock

of surprise and terror I have ever known, or can conceive as possible.

For the front door was open, and the waist of the house being narrow, I

could see through the hall into the dining-room beyond, and so out on

to the back lawn, and there I saw no less a sight than the figure of

Miss Wragge--running. Even at that distance it was plain that she had

seen me, and was coming fast towards me, running with the frantic gait

of a terror-stricken woman. She had recovered the use of her legs.

Her face was a livid grey, as of death itself, but the general

expression was one of laughter, for her mouth was gaping, and her eyes,

always bright shone with the light of a wild merriment that seemed the

merriment of a child, yet was singularly ghastly. And that very second,

as she fled past me into her brother’s arms behind, I smelt again most

unmistakably the odour of burning, and to this day the smell of smoke

and fire can come very near to turning me sick with the memory of what

I had seen.

Fast on her heels, too, came the terrified attendant, more mistress of

herself, and able to speak--which the old lady could not do--but with a

face almost, if not quite, as fearful.

“We were down by the bushes in the sun,”--she gasped and screamed in

reply to Colonel Wragge’s distracted questionings,--“I was wheeling the

chair as usual when she shrieked and leaped--I don’t know exactly--I

was too frightened to see--Oh, my God! she jumped clean out of the

chair--_and ran!_ There was a blast of hot air from the wood, and she

hid her face and jumped. She didn’t make a sound--she didn’t cry out,

or make a sound. She just ran.”

But the nightmare horror of it all reached the breaking point a few

minutes later, and while I was still standing in the hall temporarily

bereft of speech and movement; for while the doctor, the Colonel and

the attendant were half-way up the staircase, helping the fainting

woman to the privacy of her room, and all in a confused group of dark

figures, there sounded a voice behind me, and I turned to see the

butler, his face dripping with perspiration, his eyes starting out of

his head.

“The laundry’s on fire!” he cried; “the laundry building’s a-caught!”

I remember his odd expression “a-caught,” and wanting to laugh, but

finding my face rigid and inflexible.

“The devil’s about again, s’help me Gawd!” he cried, in a voice thin

with terror, running about in circles.

And then the group on the stairs scattered as at the sound of a shot,

and the Colonel and Dr. Silence came down three steps at a time,

leaving the afflicted Miss Wragge to the care of her single attendant.

We were out across the front lawn in a moment and round the corner

of the house, the Colonel leading, Silence and I at his heels, and

the portly butler puffing some distance in the rear, getting more and

more mixed in his addresses to God and the devil; and the moment we

passed the stables and came into view of the laundry building, we saw a

wicked-looking volume of smoke pouring out of the narrow windows, and

the frightened women-servants and grooms running hither and thither,

calling aloud as they ran.

The arrival of the master restored order instantly, and this retired

soldier, poor thinker perhaps, but capable man of action, had the

matter in hand from the start. He issued orders like a martinet, and,

almost before I could realise it, there were streaming buckets on the

scene and a line of men and women formed between the building and the

stable pump.

“Inside,” I heard John Silence cry, and the Colonel followed him

through the door, while I was just quick enough at their heels to hear

him add, “the smoke’s the worst part of it. There’s no fire yet, I

think.”

And, true enough, there was no fire. The interior was thick with smoke,

but it speedily cleared and not a single bucket was used upon the floor

or walls. The air was stifling, the heat fearful.

“There’s precious little to burn in here; it’s all stone,” the Colonel

exclaimed, coughing. But the doctor was pointing to the wooden covers

of the great cauldron in which the clothes were washed, and we saw that

these were smouldering and charred. And when we sprinkled half a bucket

of water on them the surrounding bricks hissed and fizzed and sent up

clouds of steam. Through the open door and windows this passed out with

the rest of the smoke, and we three stood there on the brick floor

staring at the spot and wondering, each in our own fashion, how in the

name of natural law the place could have caught fire or smoked at all.

And each was silent--myself from sheer incapacity and befuddlement, the

Colonel from the quiet pluck that faces all things yet speaks little,

and John Silence from the intense mental grappling with this latest

manifestation of a profound problem that called for concentration of

thought rather than for any words.

There was really nothing to say. The facts were indisputable.

Colonel Wragge was the first to utter.

“My sister,” he said briefly, and moved off. In the yard I heard him

sending the frightened servants about their business in an excellently

matter-of-fact voice, scolding some one roundly for making such a big

fire and letting the flues get over-heated, and paying no heed to the

stammering reply that no fire had been lit there for several days. Then

he dispatched a groom on horseback for the local doctor.

Then Dr. Silence turned and looked at me. The absolute control he

possessed, not only over the outward expression of emotion by gesture,

change of colour, light in the eyes, and so forth, but also, as I well

knew, over its very birth in his heart, the mask-like face of the dead

he could assume at will, made it extremely difficult to know at any

given moment what was at work in his inner consciousness. But now, when

he turned and looked at me, there was no sphinx-expression there, but

rather the keen, triumphant face of a man who had solved a dangerous

and complicated problem, and saw his way to a clean victory.

“_Now_ do you guess?” he asked quietly, as though it were the simplest

matter in the world, and ignorance were impossible.

I could only stare stupidly and remain silent. He glanced down at the

charred cauldron-lids, and traced a figure in the air with his finger.

But I was too excited, or too mortified, or still too dazed, perhaps,

to see what it was he outlined, or what it was he meant to convey. I

could only go on staring and shaking my puzzled head.

“A fire-elemental,” he cried, “a fire-elemental of the most powerful

and malignant kind----”

“A what?” thundered the voice of Colonel Wragge behind us, having

returned suddenly and overheard.

“It’s a fire-elemental,” repeated Dr. Silence more calmly, but

with a note of triumph in his voice he could not keep out, “and a

fire-elemental enraged.”

The light began to dawn in my mind at last. But the Colonel--who had

never heard the term before, and was besides feeling considerably

worked-up for a plain man with all this mystery he knew not how to

grapple with--the Colonel stood, with the most dumfoundered look ever

seen on a human countenance, and continued to roar, and stammer, and

stare.

“And why,” he began, savage with the desire to find something visible

he could fight--“why, in the name of all the blazes----?” and then

stopped as John Silence moved up and took his arm.

“There, my dear Colonel Wragge,” he said gently, “you touch the heart

of the whole thing. You ask ‘Why.’ That is precisely our problem.” He

held the soldier’s eyes firmly with his own. “And that, too, I think,

we shall soon know. Come and let us talk over a plan of action--that

room with the double doors, perhaps.”

The word “action” calmed him a little, and he led the way, without

further speech, back into the house, and down the long stone passage to

the room where we had heard his stories on the night of our arrival.

I understood from the doctor’s glance that my presence would not make

the interview easier for our host, and I went upstairs to my own

room--shaking.

But in the solitude of my room the vivid memories of the last hour

revived so mercilessly that I began to feel I should never in my whole

life lose the dreadful picture of Miss Wragge running--that dreadful

human climax after all the non-human mystery in the wood--and I was not

sorry when a servant knocked at my door and said that Colonel Wragge

would be glad if I would join them in the little smoking-room.

“I think it is better you should be present,” was all Colonel Wragge

said as I entered the room. I took the chair with my back to the

window. There was still an hour before lunch, though I imagine that

the usual divisions of the day hardly found a place in the thoughts of

any one of us.

The atmosphere of the room was what I might call electric. The Colonel

was positively bristling; he stood with his back to the fire, fingering

an unlit black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously roused

and ready for action. He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his

nature, and he longed to meet something face to face--something he

could gauge and fight. Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was sitting

before the map of the estate which was spread upon a table. I knew

by his expression the state of his mind. He was in the thick of it

all, knew it, delighted in it, and was working at high pressure. He

recognised my presence with a lifted eyelid, and the flash of the eye,

contrasted with his stillness and composure, told me volumes.

“I was about to explain to our host briefly what seems to me afoot in

all this business,” he said without looking up, “when he asked that you

should join us so that we can all work together.” And, while signifying

my assent, I caught myself wondering what quality it was in the calm

speech of this undemonstrative man that was so full of power, so

charged with the strange, virile personality behind it, and that seemed

to inspire us with his own confidence as by a process of radiation.

“Mr. Hubbard,” he went on gravely, turning to the soldier, “knows

something of my methods, and in more than one--er--interesting

situation has proved of assistance. What we want now”--and here he

suddenly got up and took his place on the mat beside the Colonel, and

looked hard at him--“is men who have self-control, who are sure of

themselves, whose minds at the critical moment will emit positive

forces, instead of the wavering and uncertain currents due to negative

feelings--due, for instance, to fear.”

He looked at us each in turn. Colonel Wragge moved his feet farther

apart, and squared his shoulders; and I felt guilty but said nothing,

conscious that my latent store of courage was being deliberately hauled

to the front. He was winding me up like a clock.

“So that, in what is yet to come,” continued our leader, “each of us

will contribute his share of power, and ensure success for my plan.”

“I’m not afraid of anything I can _see_,” said the Colonel bluntly.

“I’m ready,” I heard myself say, as it were automatically, “for

anything,” and then added, feeling the declaration was lamely

insufficient, “and everything.”

Dr. Silence left the mat and began walking to and fro about the room,