The Best Wadsworth Camp Mysteries. Charles Wadsworth Camp
took out his handkerchief and passed it across his face.
“And these other arguments?” Miller asked. “The ones that the judge couldn’t define, that wouldn’t hold water?”
“Of course he couldn’t convince us with his talk of native and negro superstition while the sun glinted on the inlet and bathed the scene of his atrocious yams.”
“Atrocious, you say, yet you—”
“They must be,” Anderson said. “Sitting here, face to face with you, I can say it. They must be—Superstitions founded on Noyer’s revolting cruelty to his black merchandise, on his terrible fits of rage, on the Arab girl who was pampered and murdered in our house. Beyond question the island is avoided, and these stories, rather than the snakes, are responsible. The boy who brought your telegram from Sandport yesterday stumbled in at dusk, in tears. He refused to go back until daylight—lay awake half the night, crying out These beliefs made it necessary from the first for us to bring our own provisions from Sandport—to drive or walk the three miles to the river end of the island, signal for a boat, and row across.”
“Pleasant!” Miller said. “What do the servants think of it?”
“Servants! Haven’t had one in the house for two months, except Jake. Same way with Morgan. He’s managed to keep his man and a cook. That’s all.”
“Of course Jake would be faithful,” Miller said.
“Yes, he’s faithful, but with a painful struggle. Sometimes I feel I have no right to make him stay here, loathing and fearing the place as he does.”
“As you do, too, Andy,” Miller said softly. “Tell me what has made you doubt the judge’s yarns were atrocious. What kind of spooks am I to lay? What do you think you’ve seen?”
“We’ve seen nothing. If one only could see! It’s more subtle than that. It began the moment we moved down. We had found we couldn’t get a native servant near the place so we sent North for Mary and Ellen. You know how attached they were to Molly, how long she had had them.”
“Yes,” Miller replied, “but ignorant women—easily scared by stories.”
“They heard no stories,” Anderson said. “There was no chance. We met them at the station in Martinsburg and started immediately on Bait’s launch which he had loaned us. He had taken our impedimenta down before, so everything was ready for us. Mary and Ellen were enthusiastic when we sailed into the inlet. They had never been South before. They were excited by the experience, and completely satisfied. But when we entered the house its damp, chill air repelled us.”
“It would,” Miller said. “I’m told the entire island is a jungle. Such places don’t get the sun, and, remember, your house had stood in that jungle, uninhabited, for decades.”
“Yes,” Anderson agreed, “I ascribed a great deal to the climate at first, and maybe it’s that, but—after awhile one wonders.”
“First, then, the girls became frightened!”
“I don’t know—at first. We all fell silent We started fires in every room, but it seemed as though no amount of warmth could cut that charnel house atmosphere. And the day went so quickly! Black night had trapped us before we had time to realise it. I looked at Molly.
“‘If the judge could peep in on us now,’ I said, ‘the laughing wouldn’t be all on one side.’
“So we smiled at each other and were more cheerful after that until dinner time. Then Mary, without warning, burst into tears.”
“Homesick in a strange house,” Miller suggested.
“We couldn’t find out what it was. She didn’t seem to know herself. Ellen, of course, had to see it. Their enthusiasm and satisfaction were dead.
“They wouldn’t go upstairs until we did. We had given them each a room, but they said they preferred to share one. They hung back from saying good night to Molly. This all drove our minds from ourselves. We went to bed talking about it, wondering what the upshot would be.
“A wild scream awakened me in the middle of the night. In such a place it was doubly startling. Molly was already up. I threw on a bathrobe and we hurried to Mary and Ellen. Their light was burning. They lay in bed trembling and clinging to each other.
“They wouldn’t talk at first—wouldn’t or couldn’t. Finally we got it out of them. They had heard something dreadful happening in the next room. Some one, they swore, had been murdered there. They had heard everything, and Mary had screamed. Jim, I know it sounds absurd, but those girls who had never dreamed of the existence of old Noyer or his Arab woman, described in detail such sounds as might have cursed that house seventy or eighty years ago the night of that vicious and unpunished murder.
“We tried to laugh them out of their fancy. We entered the next room—a large, gloomy apartment on the front, probably—if Balt’s story is true—the room in which the woman died. Of course there was nothing there, but we couldn’t get Mary and Ellen to see for themselves. Nor would they stay upstairs. They dressed, and spent the rest of the night in the diningroom. And when we came down for breakfast they told us what we had feared,—they wouldn’t spend another night in that house. They were ready even to pay their own fare home. They hated to leave Molly, they said, but they couldn’t help themselves. They were afraid. It was then that I sent for Jake. If Jake didn’t owe me so much, if he wasn’t so persistent in his gratitude and loyalty, he would have followed them long ago.”
“Nightmares! Nightmares!” Miller scoffed.
“Jim,” Anderson said slowly, “since then Molly and I have had the same nightmares.”
Miller glanced up.
“Possibly imagination after the girls’ story.”
“No,” Anderson answered with conviction. “We have heard—we still hear—sounds that are not imagination—sounds that suggest a monstrous tragedy. And the worst of it is there is no normal explanation—none, none. Jim, I’ve tried everything to trace these sounds, to account for them. And they’re not all. Aside from this recurrent experience the house is—is terrifying. It isn’t too strong a word. You remember all that stuff we used to laugh at in the reports of The Psychical Research Society—footsteps in empty rooms, doors opening and closing without explanation? Well, Molly and I don’t laugh at it now—but we want to laugh. Jim, make us laugh again.”
“Of course. Of course, Andy.”
“And always at night,” Anderson went on, “there’s that gruesome feeling of an intangible and appalling presence. In the dark halls and rooms you know it is there, behind you, but when you turn there is nothing.”
He shuddered. He drank some water.
“In an indefinite way the atmosphere of that house is the atmosphere of the entire island. I can’t explain that to you. It’s something one feels but can’t analyse—something you must know and—and loathe yourself before you can understand. As far as I can fix it, it’s the feeling of the snakes, of which I spoke, and something besides. It holds a threat of death.”
“And the snakes?” Miller asked; “you say they haven’t troubled y—?”
“I said we had seen none.”
Anderson paused.
“But,” he went on after a moment, “the other day we found Molly’s big Persian cat in the thicket between the shore and the old slave quarters. It had been struck by a rattlesnake.”
“Too inquisitive cat!” Miller said. “You know snakes don’t care about having their habits closely questioned by other animals.”
Anderson shook his head.
“If you had lived here the last two months as we have, you might feel as we do about it—that it’s a sort of warning. You know I said they were growing daring.”