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‘I’m sure I didn’t.’
‘Not consciously, of course, but the subconscious plays us some funny tricks, you know. But anyway, that explanation won’t wash. If it was a case of suggestion, you would have heard the cry at twenty-five minutes past seven by your watch, and you could never have heard it when the time, as you thought, was past.’
‘Well, then?’
‘Well – it’s obvious, isn’t it? This cry for help occupies a perfectly definite place and time in space. The place is the vicinity of that cottage and the time is twenty-five minutes past seven.’
‘Yes, but why should I be the one to hear it? I don’t believe in ghosts and all that spook stuff – spirits rapping and all the rest of it. Why should I hear the damned t
hing?’
‘Ah! that we can’t tell at present. It’s a curious thing that many of the best mediums are made out of confirmed sceptics. It isn’t the people who are interested in occult phenomena who get the manifestations. Some people see and hear things that other people don’t – we don’t know why, and nine times out of ten they don’t want to see or hear them, and are convinced that they are suffering from delusions – just as you were. It’s like electricity. Some substances are good conductors, others are non-conductors, and for a long time we didn’t know why, and had to be content just to accept the fact. Nowadays we do know why. Some day, no doubt, we shall know why you hear this thing and I and the girl don’t. Everything’s governed by natural law, you know – there’s no such thing really as the supernatural. Finding out the laws that govern so called psychic phenomena is going to be a tough job – but every little helps.’
‘But what am I going to do?’ asked Jack.
Lavington chuckled.
‘Practical, I see. Well, my young friend, you are going to have a good breakfast and get off to the city without worrying your head further about things you don’t understand. I, on the other hand, am going to poke about, and see what I can find out about that cottage back there. That’s where the mystery centres, I dare swear.’
Jack rose to his feet.
‘Right, sir, I’m on, but, I say –’
‘Yes?’
Jack flushed awkwardly.
‘I’m sure the girl’s all right,’ he muttered.
Lavington looked amused.
‘You didn’t tell me she was a pretty girl! Well, cheer up, I think the mystery started before her time.’
Jack arrived home that evening in a perfect fever of curiosity. He was by now pinning his faith blindly to Lavington. The doctor had accepted the matter so naturally, had been so matter-of-fact and unperturbed by it, that Jack was impressed.
He found his new friend waiting for him in the hall when he came down for dinner, and the doctor suggested that they should dine together at the same table.
‘Any news, sir?’ asked Jack anxiously.
‘I’ve collected the life history of Heather Cottage all right. It was tenanted first by an old gardener and his wife. The old man died, and the old woman went to her daughter. Then a builder got hold of it, and modernized it with great success, selling it to a city gentleman who used it for weekends. About a year ago, he sold it to some people called Turner – Mr and Mrs Turner. They seem to have been rather a curious couple from all I can make out. He was an Englishman, his wife was popularly supposed to be partly Russian, and was a very handsome exotic-looking woman. They lived very quietly, seeing no one, and hardly ever going outside the cottage garden. The local rumour goes that they were afraid of something – but I don’t think we ought to rely on that.
‘And then suddenly one day they departed, cleared out one morning early, and never came back. The agents here got a letter from Mr Turner, written from London, instructing him to sell up the place as quickly as possible. The furniture was sold off, and the house itself was sold to a Mr Mauleverer. He only actually lived in it a fortnight – then he advertised it to be let furnished. The people who have it now are a comsumptive French professor and his daughter. They have been there just ten days.’
Jack digested this in silence.
‘I don’t see that that gets us any forrader,’ he said at last. ‘Do you?’
‘I rather want to know more about the Turners,’ said Lavington quietly. ‘They left very early in the morning, you remember. As far as I can make out, nobody actually saw them go. Mr Turner has been seen since – but I can’t find anybody who has seen Mrs Turner.
Jack paled.
‘It can’t be – you don’t mean –’
‘Don’t excite yourself, young man. The influence of anyone at the point of death – and especially of violent death – upon their surroundings is very strong. Those surroundings might conceivably absorb that influence, transmitting it in turn to a suitably tuned receiver – in this case yourself.’
‘But why me?’ murmured Jack rebelliously. ‘Why not someone who could do some good?’
‘You are regarding the force as intelligent and purposeful, instead of blind and mechanical. I do not believe myself in earthbound spirits, haunting a spot for one particular purpose. But the thing I have seen, again and again, until I can hardly believe it to be pure coincidence, is a kind of blind groping towards justice – a subterranean moving of blind forces, always working obscurely towards that end . . .’
He shook himself – as though casting off some obsession that preoccupied him, and turned to Jack with a ready smile.
‘Let us banish the subject – for tonight at all events,’ he suggested.
Jack agreed readily enough, but did not find it so easy to banish the subject from his own mind.
During the weekend, he made vigorous inquiries of his own, but succeeded in eliciting little more than the doctor had done. He had definitely given up playing golf before breakfast.
The next link in the chain came from an unexpected quarter. On getting back one day, Jack was informed that a young lady was waiting to see him. To his intense surprise it proved to be the girl of the garden – the pansy girl, as he always called her in his own mind. She was very nervous and confused.
‘You will forgive me, Monsieur, for coming to seek you like this? But there is something I want to tell you – I –’
She looked round uncertainly.
‘Come in here,’ said Jack promptly, leading the way into the now deserted ‘Ladies’ Drawing-room’ of the hotel, a dreary apartment, with a good deal of red plush about it. ‘Now, sit down, Miss, Miss –’
‘Marchaud, Monsieur, Felise Marchaud.’
‘Sit down, Mademoiselle Marchaud, and tell me all about it.’
Felise sat down obediently. She was dressed in dark green today, and the beauty and charm of the proud little face was more evident than ever. Jack’s heart beat faster as he sat down beside her.
‘It is like this,’ explained Felise. ‘We have been here but a short time, and from the beginning we hear the house – our so sweet little house – is haunted. No servant will stay in it. That does not matter so much – me, I can do the menage and cook easily enough.’
‘Angel,’ thought the infatuated young man. ‘She’s wonderful.’
But he maintained an outward semblance of businesslike attention.
‘This talk of ghosts, I think it is all folly – that is until four days ago. Monsieur, four nights running, I have had the same dream. A lady stands there – she is beautiful, tall and very fair. In her hands she holds a blue china jar. She is distressed – very distressed, and continually she holds out the jar to me, as though imploring me to do something with it – but alas! she cannot speak, and I – I do not know what she asks. That was the dream for the first two nights – but the night before last, there was more of it. She and the blue jar faded away, and suddenly I heard her voice crying out – I know it is her voice, you comprehend – and, oh! Monsieur, the words she says are those you spoke to me that morning. “Murder – Help! Murder!” I awoke in terror. I say to myself – it is a nightmare, the words you heard are an accident. But last night the dream came again. Monsieur, what is it? You too have heard. What shall we do?’
Felise’s face was terrified. Her small hands clasped themselves together, and she gazed appealingly at Jack. The latter affected an unconcern he did not feel.
‘That’s all right, Mademoiselle Marchaud. You mustn’t worry. I tell you what I’d like you to do, if you don’t mind, repeat the whole story to a friend of mine who is staying here, a Dr Lavington.’
Felise signified her willingness to adopt this course, and Jack went off in search of Lavington. He returned with him a few minutes later.
Lavington gave the girl a keen scrutiny as he acknowledged Jack’s hurried introductions. With a few reassuring words, he soon put the girl at her ease, and he, in his turn, listened a
ttentively to her story.
‘Very curious,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘You have told your father of this?’
Felise shook her head.
‘I have not liked to worry him. He is very ill still’ – her eyes filled with tears – ‘I keep from him anything that might excite or agitate him.’
‘I understand,’ said Lavington kindly. ‘And I am glad you came to us, Mademoiselle Marchaud. Hartington here, as you know, had an experience something similar to yours. I think I may say that we are well on the track now. There is nothing else that you can think of?’
Felise gave a quick movement.
‘Of course! How stupid I am. It is the point of the whole story. Look, Monsieur, at what I found at the back of one of the cupboards where it had slipped behind the shelf.’
She held out to them a dirty piece of drawing-paper on which was executed roughly in water colours a sketch of a woman. It was a mere daub, but the likeness was probably good enough. It represented a tall fair woman, with something subtly un-English about her face. She was standing by a table on which was standing a blue china jar.
‘I only found it this morning,’ explained Felise. ‘Monsieur le docteur, that is the face of the woman I saw in my dream, and that is the identical blue jar.’
‘Extraordinary,’ commented Lavington. ‘The key to the mystery is evidently the blue jar. It looks like a Chinese jar to me, probably an old one. It seems to have a curious raised pattern over it.’
‘It is Chinese,’ declared Jack. ‘I have seen an exactly similar one in my uncle’s collection – he is a great collector of Chinese porcelain, you know, and I remember noticing a jar just like this a short time ago.’
‘The Chinese jar,’ mused Lavington. He remained a minute or two lost in thought, then raised his head suddenly, a curious light shining in his eyes. ‘Hartington, how long has your uncle had that jar?’
‘How long? I really don’t know.’
‘Think. Did he buy it lately?’
‘I don’t know – yes, I believe he did, now I come to think of it. I’m not very interested in porcelain myself, but I remember his showing me his “recent acquisitions,” and this was one of them.’
