The E.F. Benson MEGAPACK ®. E.F. Benson

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СКАЧАТЬ the stone that lay shattered there to the edge of the pool we groped and stumbled, but found nothing. At length we gave it up: it seemed morally certain that she, too, had rolled down the bank after the lightning stroke, and lay somewhere deep in the pool from which she had called the dead.

      None fished the pool next day, but men with drag-nets came from Brora. Right under the rock in the backwater lay two bodies, close together, Sandy and the dead girl. Of the other they found nothing.

      It would seem, then, that Catrine Gordon, in answer to Sandy’s letter, left Inverness in heavy trouble. What happened afterwards can only be conjectured, but it seems likely she took the short cut to Gavon, meaning to cross the river on the boulders above the Picts’ pool. But whether she slipped accidentally in her passage, and so was drawn down by the hungry water, or whether unable to face the future, she had thrown herself into the pool, we can only guess. In any case they sleep together now in the bleak, wind-swept graveyard at Brora, in obedience to the inscrutable designs of God.

      THE DUST-CLOUD

      The big French windows were open on to the lawn, and, dinner being over, two or three of the party who were staying for the week at the end of August with the Combe-Martins had strolled out on to the terrace to look at the sea, over which the moon, large and low, was just rising and tracing a path of pale gold from horizon to shore, while others, less lunar of inclination, had gone in search of bridge or billiards. Coffee had come ’round immediately after dessert, and the end of dinner, according to the delectable custom of the house, was as informal as the end of breakfast.

      Every one, that is to say, remained or went away, smoked, drank port or abstained, according to his personal tastes. Thus, on this particular evening it so happened that Harry Combe-Martin and I were very soon left alone in the dining-room, because we were talking unmitigated motor “shop,” and the rest of the party (small wonder) were bored with it, and had left us. The shop was home-shop, so to speak, for it was almost entirely concerned with the manifold perfections of the new six-cylinder Napier which my host in a moment of extravagance, which he did not in the least regret, had just purchased; in which, too, he proposed to take me over to lunch at a friend’s house near Hunstanton on the following day. He observed with legitimate pride that an early start would not be necessary, as the distance was only eighty miles and there were no police traps.

      “Queer things these big motors are,” he said, relapsing into generalities as we rose to go.

      “Often I can scarcely believe that my new car is merely a machine. It seems to me to possess an independent life of its own. It is really much more like a thoroughbred with a wonderfully fine mouth.”

      “And the moods of a thoroughbred?” I asked.

      “No; it’s got an excellent temper, I’m glad to say. It doesn’t mind being checked, or even stopped, when it’s going its best. Some of these big cars can’t stand that. They get sulky—I assure you it is literally true—if they are checked too often.”

      He paused on his way to ring the bell. “Guy Elphinstone’s car, for instance,” he said: “it was a bad-tempered brute, a violent, vicious beast of a car.”

      “What make?” I asked.

      “Twenty-five horse-power Amédée. They are a fretful strain of car; too thin, not enough bone—and bone is very good for the nerves. The brute liked running over a chicken or a rabbit, though perhaps it was less the car’s ill-temper than Guy’s, poor chap. Well, he paid for it—he paid to the uttermost farthing. Did you know him?”

      “No; but surely I have heard the name. Ah, yes, he ran over a child, did he not?”

      “Yes,” said Harry, “and then smashed up against his own park gates.”

      “Killed, wasn’t he?”

      “Oh, yes, killed instantly, and the car just a heap of splinters. There’s an old story about it, I’m told, in the village: rather in your line.”

      “Ghosts?” I asked.

      “Yes, the ghost of his motor-car. Seems almost too up-to-date, doesn’t it?”

      “And what’s the story?” I demanded.

      “Why, just this. His place was outside the village of Bircham, ten miles out from Norwich; and there’s a long straight bit of road there—that’s where he ran over the child—and a couple of hundred yards further on, a rather awkward turn into the park gates. Well, a month or two ago, soon after the accident, one old gaffer in the village swore he had seen a motor there coming full tilt along the road, but without a sound, and it disappeared at the lodge gates of the park, which were shut. Soon after another said he had heard a motor whirl by him at the same place, followed by a hideous scream, but he saw nothing.”

      “The scream is rather horrible,” said I.

      “Ah, I see what you mean! I only thought of his syren. Guy had a syren on his exhaust, same as I have. His had a dreadful frightened sort of wail, and always made me feel creepy.”

      “And is that all the story?” I asked: “that one old man thought he saw a noiseless motor, and another thought he heard an invisible one?”

      Harry flicked the ash off his cigarette into the grate. “Oh dear no!” he said. “Half a dozen of them have seen something or heard something. It is quite a heavily authenticated yarn.”

      “Yes, and talked over and edited in the public-house,” I said.

      “Well, not a man of them will go there after dark. Also the lodge-keeper gave notice a week or two after the accident. He said he was always hearing a motor stop and hoot outside the lodge, and he was kept running out at all hours of the night to see what it was.”

      “And what was it?”

      “It wasn’t anything. Simply nothing there. He thought it rather uncanny, anyhow, and threw up a good post. Besides, his wife was always hearing a child scream, and while her man toddled out to the gate she would go and see whether the kids were all right. And the kids themselves—”

      “Ah, what of them?” I asked.

      “They kept coming to their mother, asking who the little girl was who walked up and down the road and would not speak to them or play with them.”

      “It’s a many-sided story,” I said. “All the witnesses seem to have heard and seen different things.”

      “Yes, that is just what to my mind makes the yarn so good,” he said. “Personally I don’t take much stock in spooks at all. But given that there are such things as spooks, and given that the death of the child and the death of Guy have caused spooks to play about there, it seems to me a very good point that different people should be aware of different phenomena. One hears the car, another sees it, one hears the child scream, another sees the child. How does that strike you?”

      This, I am bound to say, was a new view to me, and the more I thought of it the more reasonable it appeared. For the vast majority of mankind have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual world (which, I hold, is thick and populous around us), sealed up, as it were; in other words, the majority of mankind never hear or see a ghost at all. Is it not, then, very probable that of the remainder—those, in fact, to whom occult experiences have happened or can happen—few should have every sense unsealed, but that some should have the unsealed ear, others the unsealed eye—that some should be clairaudient, СКАЧАТЬ