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 circ.u.mstantial 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 repet.i.tion 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 coa.r.s.e white gra.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysed 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 trespa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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.