Benighted Read online

  Mr. Femm bit his lip and then looked apologetic. ‘Listen,’ he began, ‘I want you to excuse me from accompanying you. I am tired and I am not strong. I cannot face any more stairs. I should have told you before, but vanity—the vanity of age—would not allow me. You know where it is, I believe. You will find it on a small table nearly at the end of the next landing above’—he pointed—‘at the top of the stairs there.’

  The man was so obviously lying that Philip could have laughed in his face. His excuses were sheer impudence. There was something very strange in all this, but there was nothing to be done about it. ‘All right. I see,’ he said, looking him steadily in the eyes. ‘I’ll go and get it. I suppose,’ he added, remembering his companion’s objection downstairs, ‘it’s not too heavy for me to carry?’

  ‘Not at all,’ came the reply. So that had been a lie too. The man was made up of them. What an extraordinary shifty, spectral creature he was! That’s what’s the matter with him, why I haven’t liked him from the first, Philip told himself: he’s a born liar himself and he makes everything, yes, the whole world, seem hollow and false.

  ‘I shall want that, you know.’ And Philip held out his hand for the candle. Mr. Femm begged him to wait a moment and disappeared into his room. When he returned he was carrying a burning night-light and, without a word, he now handed over the candle and remained standing at his door while Philip hurried forward to the foot of the next staircase.

  He was not half-way up when he heard the sound of a door closing behind him. Evidently Mr. Femm had retired into his room. And the next moment there came the sound of a door either being bolted or locked. It seemed as if Mr. Femm were determined to feel secure. It was all very strange, and Philip stopped to tell himself so and to listen again. Somehow he didn’t like the sound of that door. It was odd how a little thing like that could leave you feeling uncomfortably insecure yourself, almost as if you were left naked. He went on, but now he trod very lightly on the stairs. They were narrower than those below, uncarpeted and given to creaking long after your feet had passed over them. In the moving glimmer of candle-light everything here looked very uncared for and melancholy. Above his head was a little black skylight where the rain went rap-rapping. It was a place of dust and mildew and long decay, of things forgotten by the sunlight, as strangely remote as some house, fragmentary, shadowy, in the dark of a dream.

  Here was the landing before him, and there, nearly at the end of it, were the little table and the lamp. To examine them coolly was to disperse the fairy-tale dusk that had somehow gathered in his mind as this absurd little errand had lengthened out and become touched with fantasy. The lamp was one of those old-fashioned double-branched affairs, its twin glass cylinders covered with dust. With care, he ought to be able to carry it down in one hand. The light of his candle fell on an old steel engraving hanging above the table, and it showed him a bewhiskered officer standing, sword in hand, in front of a large cannon, while in the background there towered a quite impossible pagoda. For a moment he stopped to gaze at this unknown, evidently a hero of one of the old Chinese wars, and to wonder how he came to be there, with his sword and his cannon and his pagoda. Then he took up the lamp, held out the candle at arm’s length, and returned, more slowly and carefully now, along the landing.

  He had been in such a hurry to discover the table and the lamp that he had never noticed that door on the left. Now, as he walked slowly back, it invited his attention, then arrested it. There was nothing very odd about its appearance; it was merely a stout old door that had lost most of its paint; but there was something very odd about the way in which it was closed. Then he saw what it was. The door had two large bolts. It was fastened on the outside. Why should they have done that? Did they suppose someone would break into the house that way? The very idea of anyone breaking into this house was monstrous. Pondering these things, he had actually passed the door, when something pulled him up. He seemed to hear somebody moving about. Surely there was the sound of a voice too, a kind of muttering not very far away? It could only come from behind that door. There was somebody inside that room, the thickness of a wall away from him, behind that bolted door. And what about that stifled cry he had heard a few minutes ago, that battering noise? Curiosity, like a little flame in the mind, burned and brightened for a moment and then suddenly went out, leaving him in a crawling darkness, with doubt and terror. He felt suddenly sick and terrified of life.

  Yet he had not halted a minute when his ears seemed to catch another cry, this time from below, out of another world. Margaret. Surely that was her voice calling his name? Or was it that old trick of memory, a phantom call? There was silence now and he moved forward, but doubtfully. No, there was no mistake. ‘Philip, Philip!’ All of her in the cry, and a terrible urgency. Still mechanically clutching at the lamp, with neither hand free to balance himself, he rushed down the stairs, miraculously without falling; and immediately that feeling of mental sickness and terror vanished and a curious kind of anger stirred in him. He’d left her confident and smiling, and now even she’d been dragged into it. It couldn’t leave even her alone. His mind, outracing him, found an opposing presence, an enemy, but no name for it; a density of evil, something gigantic, ancient but enduring, only dimly felt before, but now taking the mind by storm; it was working everywhere, in the mirk of rain outside, here in the rotting corners, and without end, in the black between the stars. Margaret never seemed to understand about it, but now it had made her understand or she wouldn’t be calling like that. He’d been telling himself it was high time she did understand, but as he hurried on now to find her, the thought that it had got at her while she had been waiting, smiling there, below, roused him to fury.

  As soon as he reached the lower landing, he hastily set down the lamp and ran forward. There was a flash of blue, a flying fair head, and she was clinging to him, her hands grasping the lapels of his coat. She was battling for breath. ‘Morgan—drunk—got hold of me—coming now’ was all that he could catch, but it was enough. The next moment the man himself, incredibly hulking in that light, had appeared, but he stopped short, a few yards away, when he saw the candle and the two of them standing there.

  Margaret swiftly turned her head, then tugged at his coat. ‘He’s there. Let’s get away from him.’

  Philip shook his head, gave a quick glance round, then fixed his eyes on Morgan’s dark bulk. ‘There’s a doorway just behind us,’ he told Margaret. ‘If he comes on, get behind me and stay in the doorway. There’ll be plenty of time to run afterwards, if it’s necessary.’

  ‘Let’s go, Philip. I’m terrified of him.’

  He watched Morgan steadily. The man was swaying a little, but otherwise he made no movement. ‘He’s probably drunk himself silly and is only wandering about aimlessly. Are you sure he was after you?’

  ‘He followed me round downstairs,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I was all alone. Then he caught hold of me, and when I escaped he followed me up the stairs.’ He could feel her trembling. ‘Let’s go now. We might find the others.’

  ‘I don’t know where they are.’

  What was Morgan going to do? Philip watched him with anxiety, for the fellow was obviously as strong as a gorilla and was probably half-crazy, and Philip, though he was fairly tough and was at least sober, was by no means confident that he could stand up to the brute, let alone overpower him. He didn’t even know what exactly he would do if Morgan advanced. He hadn’t used his hands on a man for years, though there was a time when he had known how to box. Nevertheless, he was determined not to turn his back on the man, not to budge. The anger that had been so curiously fired in him on the way down still remained. Whatever the man may have done already, he still seemed a mere foolish lump; but if he changed to anything worse, Philip would oppose him whatever it cost. And anyhow Margaret could easily escape, could run downstairs—not upstairs, to that landing above, to that room.

>   ‘If he comes on,’ he whispered, ‘and you want to escape, slip past and run downstairs. Don’t forget.’

  Her eyes met his for a second. ‘I shall stay here,’ she said very quietly. She was composed now. ‘Let me have the candle.’ And she took it from him, moving a little to one side.

  Morgan shuffled his feet and then suddenly lurched forward.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Philip called sharply. ‘What do you want?’

  He contrived to pull himself up. Then his great shaggy head came forward and they could see his eyes, fixed in a stare. As if in reply to Philip’s question, he made a gobbling noise in his throat and slowly raised a hand until it pointed at Margaret.

  There was something overpowering in the very tongueless bulk of the man, and his approach had shaken Philip at first, sending a flash of fear through all his nerves. Run, run, run, they screamed. But this amazing gesture, this raised and pointed hand, so angered him that his nerves were immediately mastered. He extended an arm and gently pushed Margaret so that she stepped back into the doorway behind him. The light she held fell on Morgan, but left Philip shadowy. He watched those little glassy eyes, now turned from Margaret to him; and leaning forward slightly, balancing himself upon his toes, he waited.

  Nor had he long to wait. Something flared up at last in Morgan’s dull brain. Suddenly his arms pawed the air and he hurled himself upon Philip. This blind rush was Philip’s opportunity and he leaped to take it, throwing all his weight behind one straight hard punch. Crack!—it went home, full in that lowered rushing face. Philip recovered himself and instantly stepped back, to be out of reach of those great arms. But for the moment he was in no danger. Only his sheer bulk had saved Morgan from being felled by the blow, which had been well-timed and had found his jaw; and even as it was he was sent reeling back. Philip did not follow up his advantage but remained where he was, at once bewildered and exultant, on the defensive. Perhaps that punch (undoubtedly a whacker) had knocked some sense into the brute, who had finished staggering back and was now gropingly bringing his hands to his head. He felt Margaret’s hand on his sleeve and turned to smile at her. She was standing pressed back into the doorway, and in the light of the candle she was holding she looked very pale and shining-eyed. A noise in front brought him sharply round again. And he was only just in time.

  Morgan had charged like a bull and was upon him. He had just time to raise his arms and tighten his body when the man’s whole weight was flung upon him and he found his arms gripped by those huge hands. All was lost. Instinctively, however, he immediately twisted his arms so that his hands clutched at Morgan’s coat sleeves, then he held on tightly, his arms rigid, and instead of trying to withstand the charging weight of his opponent, slackened his whole body. The result was that he did not go down but was rushed backward, past Margaret and down the landing, just as if Morgan were carrying him. It was a dreadful sensation, this of flying helplessly backward, but he contrived to keep his wits. So long as he was not actually borne down, with Morgan’s weight upon him, so long as one of those hands had not found its way to his throat, it might be still possible to master this brute, who seemed as gigantic but as brainless as a prehistoric monster.

  He had found his feet again. This was the moment. He relaxed his grip for a second, brought his arms down and then threw them upward and outward with all his strength. Morgan was not quick enough to retain his grip and Philip was free to throw himself backward. He went further than he intended, crashing against the wall, because as he moved a blind swing of Morgan’s clenched hand, as big as a mallet, caught him on the side of the head, nearly turning him sick. But the light was very dim here and Morgan’s own bulk now blotted out most of it. He didn’t seem to know exactly where Philip was, and when he charged again, he moved straight forward. Philip threw out a leg and, as Morgan went flying over it, summoned all the strength left to him and aimed a savage swinging blow at the man’s body, a blow that landed somewhere in the ribs and completed his destruction. There was a great thud and with it the sharper crash of broken glass. Morgan was there, measuring his length on the ground, and in his fall he had smashed the lamp that Philip had put down not so many minutes before. That was the end of the lamp then; and the end too, he hoped, for a time of Morgan, now a dark unstirring shape.

  Philip leaned against the wall, triumphant but dizzy and sick. For a moment he did not move, but then tried a few faltering steps towards the light. His head ached and this narrow place couldn’t contain the loud beating of his heart. Once more he leaned against the wall, and now he closed his eyes, desiring nothing but to be a breath in the darkness. But the light, coming nearer, forced his eyes open again. It was Margaret. Her arm was about his neck, her cheek pressed against his, and there came back to him, bringing a multitude of flashing little images from a life long lost, the scent of her hair. ‘It’s me, Phil,’ she was saying. He remembered that, too. It had come back with the rest, across a desert.

  Her fingers were moving gently across his face. ‘Are you hurt?’

  He opened his eyes very wide now and shook his head. ‘No, at least nothing much. Just one bang. I was very lucky though.’ He smiled at her and then looked down at Morgan, who was still lying there, motionless.

  She followed his glance. ‘He’s not—not dead, is he?’

  He took the candle from her. ‘No fear. Probably hardly stunned. He went down with a fearful whack, but he’s obviously a tough subject and there’s probably nothing wrong with him. Let’s have a look at him.’ He held the light above the outstretched Morgan, who was stirring a little now and breathing heavily, and Margaret came peeping over his shoulder. ‘He’s only knocked himself out,’ Philip told her. ‘He’ll be conscious again in a minute unless he happens to fall asleep; and it’s more than likely that he will fall asleep, because he’s very drunk.’

  Margaret raised her eyes dubiously to his. ‘Suppose he—begins again?’

  ‘He won’t. Don’t worry about that.’ Philip took her arm and began moving away. ‘When he comes to his senses he won’t remember anything, and he probably won’t be fit for much, anyhow.’

  Margaret tightened her arm against his fingers. ‘I can’t imagine how you did it, Phil.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s obviously the right remark and just the right tone of voice, my dear. You caught the note of pride. Well, I can’t help feeling rather like Jack-the-Giant-Killer. And, as a matter of fact, I can’t imagine how I did it either.’

  They were walking slowly back along the landing now. Suddenly Margaret stopped. ‘Listen, Phil. You see that room there, the door where I was standing?’

  ‘Yes.’ What was this? The dark house closed round him again.

  ‘There’s someone in there, a man I think. When I was standing there I heard him call out, in a tiny weak voice.’

  ‘Femm’s in one of those rooms,’ he told her. ‘He left me and carefully locked himself in. But it’s the one behind, not this one.’ His mind was back on the landing above now, before that other door; it seemed a place in a nightmare. Should he tell Margaret about it? No; at least not yet.

  ‘I distinctly heard somebody. He seemed to want something. It must be that other one.’

  ‘What other one?’ He had forgotten who was here, feeling lost for the moment in a maze of dream-like corridors that offered nothing but mysterious doors and voices crying in the dark.

  ‘The oldest, the one they called the master of the house, Sir Roderick,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Don’t you remember, they said he was very old and ill? I’m sure he wanted something. And think of him lying there, hearing all that noise, quite helpless perhaps.’

  Yes, this must be old Sir Roderick, whose house had given them shelter. And what a house, what shelter! He looked at Margaret doubtfully, and then at the door itself. They were standing in front of it now, and its rubbed panels shone a little in t
he candle-light.

  ‘Listen!’ And Margaret’s hand went up as she leaned forward, her white shoulder curving through the blue silk where her dress had been torn, her head a medallion of bright gold. His heart went out to her as he listened. She turned her head, her eyes seeking his. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

  He nodded, then raised his brows in an unspoken question. There had come to them, as if from across a great space, the sound of a voice calling within, the tiny weak voice that Margaret had described. He read her decision in her face, and felt no surprise when he saw her hand creep forward to the door and tap-tap upon it gently. Her other hand sought his arm and rested there.

  ‘Come in.’ Their ears caught it as their eyes might have picked out a point of light on a midnight sea.

  Margaret hesitated, and Philip felt her hand squeezing his arm. He put the candle into her other hand, leaned forward and slowly opened the door. His shadow went wobbling into the room, he went after it, and Margaret followed him.

  CHAPTER X

  They were still sitting snugly in the back of the car, and now the talk had drifted round to Sir William Porterhouse. Gladys was determined to explain about him, rather to Penderel’s alarm, though he admitted to himself that he felt curious.

  ‘Of course I like him,’ she was saying, ‘or I wouldn’t go away with him. You can depend on that. But I’m just about as much in love with him as I am with old Banks, the doorkeeper at the Alsatia. I’m not going to put on any airs with you—we’re through with anything like that, aren’t we? And that’s funny too, when you think we’ve only just met.’

  ‘Yes, but we met in the middle of a black night,’ he told her. ‘And that makes the difference. It’s too damned lonely putting on airs a night like this. And then there isn’t much time.’