“Just my luck!” he commented. “Greta’s read your book, Mr. Klaw, and if she hasn’t fixed it yet she’s sure to come to it that The Park and The Grove are one and the same. It was largely because of her I arranged this trip,” he added. “The trouble I’ve told you about got on her nerves and she had the idea some guy was tracking her around. The medicos said it was a common enough symptom and ordered a change. Anyhow, I quitted, to give her a chance to tone up. Confound this business!”
He ultimately left quite determined to change his place of residence. But so averse was his practical mind from the idea of inconveniencing oneself on such ghostly grounds, that two weeks slipped by, and still the Haufmanns occupied The Grove. The decoration of Moris Klaw’s establishment being presumably still in progress, Klaw accompanied me on more than one other occasion to visit Shan Haufmann and the girls. At last, one afternoon, Greta asked him point-blank if he thought the house to be that dealt with in “Psychic Angles.”
Of course, he had to admit that it was so; but far from exhibiting any signs of alarm, the girl appeared to be delighted.
“How dense I have been!” she cried. “I should have known it from the description! As a matter of fact, I might never have found out, but this morning the servants resigned unanimously!”
Klaw looked at me significantly. All was befalling as we had foreseen.
“They told you, then!” he said. “Yes? No?”
“They said the house was haunted,” she replied, “but they didn’t seem to know much more about it. That simple fact was enough for them!”
Haufmann came in and in answer to our queries declared himself helpless.
“Lal and Greta won’t quit,” he declared; “so what’s to do? I’ve cabled for servants from home. Meanwhile, we’re at the mercy of day girls and charwomen!”
The concern evinced by Moris Klaw was very great. He seized an early opportunity of taking Haufmann aside and questioning him relative to the situation of the rooms occupied by the family.
“My room overlooks the avenue,” replied Haufmann, “and so does Greta’s. Lal’s is on the opposite side. Come up and see them!”
Klaw and I accompanied him. It was a beautiful clear day, and from his window we gazed along the majestic ranks of poplars, motionless as a giant guard, in the still summer air. It was difficult to conjure up a glamour of the uncanny, with the bright sunlight pouring gladness upon trees, flowers, shrubs, and lawn.
“This is the room from which the whisper is the most clearly audible!” said Moris Klaw. “I could tell you--ah! I spent several nights here!”
“The devil you did,” rapped Haufmann. “I must sleep pretty soundly. I’ve never heard a thing. Greta’s room is next on the right. She has said nothing.”
Klaw looked troubled.
“There is no sound unusual to hear,” he answered. “I quite convinced myself of that. But it is the tradition that speaks, Mr. Haufmann! In those silent watches, even so insensible an old fool as I can imagine almost anything, aided by such gruesome memories. Excepting the monk, who probably fell foul of a prowler thief, the tragedies are easily to be explained. The old antiquarian died of syncope, and the poor girl, in all probability, fell from the balcony in her sleep. She had a tremendously neurotic temperament.”
“It’s bad, now Greta knows,” mused Haufmann. “Her nerves are all unstrung. It’s just the thing I wanted to avoid!”
“Can’t you induce her at any rate to change her room?” I suggested.
“No! She’s as obstinate as a pony! Her poor mother was the same. It’s the Irish blood!”
Such was the situation when we left. No development took place for a couple of days or so, then that befell which we had feared and half expected.
Haufmann walked into my office with:
“It’s started! Greta says she hears it every night!”
Prepared though I had been for the news, his harshly spoken words sent a cold shudder through me.
“Haufmann!” I said, sternly. “There must be no more of this. Get the girls away at once. On top of her previous nerve trouble this morbid imagining may affect her mind.”
“You haven’t heard me out,” he went on, more slowly than was his wont. “You talk of morbid imagining. What about this: I’ve heard it!”
I stared at him blankly.
“That’s one on you!” he said, with a certain grim triumph. “After Greta said there was something came in the night that wasn’t trees rustling, I sat up and smoked. First night I read and nothing happened. Next night I sat in the dark. There was no breeze and I heard nothing for my pains. Third night I stayed in the dark again, and about twelve o’clock a breeze came along. All mixed up with the rustling and sighing of the leaves I heard a voice calling as plain as I ever heard anything in my life! And it called me!”
“Haufmann!”
“It blame-well called me! I’d take my oath before a jury on it!”
“This is almost incredible!” I said. “I wish Moris Klaw were here.”
“Where is he?”
“He is in Paris. He will be away over the week-end.”
“I met a man curiously enough,” continued Haufmann, “just outside the Charing Cross Tube, on my way here, who’s coming down to have a look into the business--a hot man on mysteries.” He mentioned the name of a celebrated American detective agency. “I’m afraid it’s right outside his radius, but he volunteered and I was glad to have him. I’d like Klaw down though.”
“What about the girls?”
“I was going to tell you. They’re at Brighton for a while. Greta didn’t want to quit, but poor Lal was dead scared! Anyway, I got them off.”
The uncanny business claimed entire possession of my mind, and further work was out of the question. I accordingly accompanied Haufmann to the hotel where the detective was lodged and made the acquaintance of Mr. J. Shorter Ottley. He was a typical New Yorker, clean-shaven and sallow complexioned with good gray eyes and an inflexible mouth.
“We don’t deal in ghosts!” he said, smilingly; “I never met a ghost that couldn’t stop a bullet if it came his way!”
“I’ll make a confession to you,” remarked Haufmann. “When I heard that soft voice calling, I hadn’t the sand to go and look out! How’s that for funk?”
“Not funk at all,” replied Ottley, quietly. “Maybe it was wisdom!”
“How do you mean?”
“I’ve got an idea about it, that’s all. Did Miss Haufmann hear it the same night?”
“Not the same night I did--no. She seems to have dozed off.”
“When she did hear it, was it calling you?”
“She couldn’t make out what it called!”
“Did she go to the window?”
“Yes, but she only looked out from behind the blind.”
“See anything?”
“No.”
“I should have very much liked an interview with her,” said Ottley, thoughtfully.
“She could tell you no more than I have.”
“About that, no! There’s something else I would like to ask her.”
That evening we all three dined at The Grove, dinner being prepared by a woman who departed directly we were finished. A desultory game of billiards served to pass the time between twilight and darkness, and the detective and I departed, leaving Haufmann alone in the house. This was prearranged by Ottley, who had some scheme in hand. Side by side we tramped down the poplar avenue, went out by the big gate, and closed it behind us. We then skirted the grounds to a point on the side opposite the gate, and, scaling the wall, found ourselves in a wilderness of neglected kitchen garden. Through this the American cautiously led the way toward the house, visible through the tangle of bushes and trees in sharp silhouette against the sky. On all fours we crossed a little yard and entered a side door which had been left ajar for the purpose, closing it softly behind us. So, passing through the kitchen, we made our way upstairs and rejoined Haufmann.
A post had been allotted to me in the room next to his and I was enjoined to sit in the dark and watch for anything moving among the trees. Haufmann departed to a room on the west front with similar injunctions, and the detective remained in Haufmann’s room.
As I crept cautiously to the window, avoiding the broad moonbeam streaming in, I saw a light on my left. Ottley was acting as Haufmann would have done if he had been retiring for the night. Three minutes later the light vanished, and the nervous vigil was begun.
There was very little breeze, but sufficient to send up and down the poplar ranks waves of that mysterious whispering which Klaw and I had previously noted. The moon, though invisible from that point, swam in an absolutely cloudless sky, and the shadow of the house lay black beneath me, its edge tropically sharp. A broad belt of moon-bright grass and gravel succeeded, and this merged into the light-patched gloom of the avenue. On the right of the poplars lay a shrubbery, and beyond that a garden stretching to the east wall. Just to the left, an outbuilding gleamed whitely. Some former occupant had built it for a coach house and it now housed Haufmann’s car. The apartments above were at present untenanted.
I cannot say with certainty when I first detected, mingled with the whistling of the branches, something that was not caused by the wind. But ultimately I found myself listening for this other sound. With my eyes fixed straight ahead and peering into the shadows of the poplars I crouched, every nerve at high tension. A slight sound on my left told of a window softly opened. It was Ottley creeping out on to the balcony. He, too, had heard it!
Then, with awful suddenness, the inexplicable happened.
A short, shrill cry broke the complete silence, succeeding one of those spells of whispering. A shot followed hot upon it--then a second. Somebody fell with a muffled thud upon the drive--and I leapt to the window, threw it widely open, and stepped out on the balcony.
“Ottley!” I cried. “Haufmann!”
A door banged somewhere and I heard Haufmann’s muffled voice:
“Downstairs! Come down!”
I ran across the room, out on to the landing, and down into the hall. Haufmann was unfastening the bolts. His injured arm was still stiff, and I hastened to assist him.
“My God!” he cried, turning a pale face toward me. “It’s Ottley gone! Did you see anything?”
“No! Did you?”
“Curse it! No! I had just slipped away from the window to get my repeater! You heard the voice?”
“Clearly!”
The door was thrown open and we ran out into the drive.
There was no sign of Ottley, and we stood for a moment, undecided how we should act. Then, just inside the shadow belt we found the detective lying.
Thinking him dead, we raised and dragged him back to the house. Having refastened the door, we laid him on a sofa in the morning room. His face was deathly and blood flowed from a terrible wound on his skull. Strangest of all, though, he had a gaping hole just above the right wrist. The skin about it was discoloured as if with burning. Neither of us could detect any sign of life, and we stood, two frankly frightened men, looking at each other over the body.
“It’s got to be done!” said Haufmann, slowly. “One of us has to stay here and do what he can for him, and one has to go for a doctor! There’s no telephone!”
“Where’s the nearest doctor?” I asked.
“There’s one at the corner of the first road on the right.”
“I’ll go!” I said.
Without shame I confess that from the moment the door closed behind me, I ran my hardest down the poplar avenue until I had passed the gate! And it was not anxiety that spurred me, for I did not doubt that Ottley was dead, but stark fear!
