We all had lunch at Friars House, but were by no means a jovial party. Sir James seemed worried and preoccupied, and Clement Leyland even more reticent than usual. Moris Klaw talked, certainly, but his conversation turned entirely upon the subject of the Borgias, concerning which notorious family he was possessed of a stock of most unsavoury anecdote. So realistic were his gruesome stories, delivered in that rumbling whisper, wholly impossible to describe or imitate, that every mouthful of food which I swallowed threatened to choke me.
Afterward we wandered idly about the beautiful old grounds, which bore ineffaceable marks of monkish cultivation. Sir James, who was walking ahead with Moris Klaw and Isis, suddenly turned and waited for me. I had been examining a sundial with much interest, but I now walked on and joined our host.
“Mr. Searles,” he said, “may I press you to remain here over the week-end?”
“That’s very good of you,” I replied. “I think I could manage it, and I should enjoy the stay immensely.”
I concluded that Moris Klaw also was remaining, and consequently was surprised when a short time later he drew me aside into a rose-covered arbour and announced that he was leaving by the four-o’clock train.
“But I shall be back in the morning, Mr. Searles,” he assured me, wagging his finger mysteriously; “I shall be back in the morning!”
“And Miss Klaw?”
“She, too, goes by the four-o’clock train and will not be returning--for the present.”
“I understand that Sir James is taking up his residence here at Friars House from now onward?”
“It is so, my friend; he deserts Grange. The servants come over here to-day. Is he not well advised? Mr. Clement has all along recommended that this shall be his residence. He was against it, the idea of inhabiting Grange, from the first. He is wise, that Mr. Clement. He has lived in these parts so long. He knows that Grange is haunted, is uninhabitable.”
Later, then, Moris Klaw and Isis took their departure; and just as the car was about to drive off my eccentric friend removed his brown bowler and sprayed his bald brow with verbena. He bent to me:
“Day and night,” he whispered, huskily, “do not lose sight of him, Sir James! Above all, allow him not to explore!”
With that the car drove off, and I stood looking after it, wondering, utterly mystified. On the steps behind me stood Clement Leyland and his cousin. The latter’s gaze followed the course of the car along the picturesque winding road until it became lost from view. I thought I heard him sigh.
Ensued an uneventful day and night. Life was pleasant enough at Friars House, if a trifle dull; and Sir James seemed unsettled, whilst his disquietude was reflected in his cousin. The latter, now that his active labours in preparing this new residence for the baronet were checked, seemed a man at a loss what to do with himself. His was one of those quietly ardent temperaments, I divined, and idleness palled upon him. Apparently he had no profession, and although I presumed that he had some residence of his own in the neighbourhood, he, apparently, was prepared indefinitely to prolong his stay at Friars House. I think his companionship was welcome to Sir James, for the latter was yet strange to the new duties of a landed gentleman.
The next morning brought Moris Klaw, and I learned with ever-growing surprise that he had made arrangements to spend the following week beneath the hospitable roof of Friars House.
I have nothing to record of interest up to the time I left; but often during the ensuing six days the problem of the haunting of Grange, and the mystery of Moris Klaw’s protracted visit to Friars House came between me and my work. Then on the Saturday morning arrived a telegram:
“Can you join us for week-end--car will meet 2:30. Wire reply. Best wishes.--Leyland.”
I determined to accept the invitation; for respecting the nature of Moris Klaw’s business at Friars House--and that he had some other motive than ordinary in sojourning there I was persuaded--my curiosity knew no bounds. Accordingly, I packed my grip, and at about five o’clock on a delightful afternoon found myself taking tea in a cloister-like apartment of the former Friary.
“Grange,” said Sir James, in answer to a question of mine, “is shut up.”
“It is shut, yes,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “What a pity! What a pity!”
In the course of the day occurred incidents which I have since perceived to have been significant. I will pass over them, however, and hasten to what I may term the catastrophe of this very singular case.
Four of us sat down to dinner in an apartment which clearly had been the ancient refectory of the monks. Clement Leyland, who had arrived barely in time to dress, looked haggard and worried. I determined that he had some private troubles of his own, and beneath his quiet geniality I thought I could detect a sort of brooding gloom. His pale, clean-shaven face, so like yet so unlike that of his cousin, was a mask that ill repaid study; yet I knew that the real Clement Leyland was a stranger to me, perhaps to all of us.
I was most anxious to learn if Moris Klaw had divulged the secret of the hidden chamber at Grange to Sir James; and I was unspeakably curious concerning the box of which I had had but a glimpse--the box that he had found there. But he baffled my curiosity at every point.
Have you experienced that sense of impending calamity which sometimes heralds tragic things? It was with me that night, throughout dinner; and afterward, when we entered the library and sat over our cigars, it grew portentously. I felt that I stood upon the brink of a precipice. And literally I was not in great error. Moris Klaw, to the evident discomfort of Sir James, brought the conversation around to the subject of the haunting. I observed him to glance at his watch, with a rather odd expression upon his vellum-hued face.
“Is it not singular,” he said, “how poor spectres are confined, like linnets, to their cages? They seem, these spooks, never to roam. That laughing demon of Grange--look at him. He remains in that empty, desolate house; he----”
There was a dreadful interruption.
Commencing with a sort of guttural rattle, out upon the cloisteresque stillness burst a peal of wicked laughter.
It rang throughout the room; it poured fear into my every fibre. It died away--and was gone.
Sir James, clutching the leather-covered chair-arms, looked like a man of stone. I was frankly terrorized. Moris Klaw stood behind me, by a bookcase, him I could not see. But Clement Leyland’s face I can never forget. It was positively deathlike. His eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and his teeth chattered horribly.
“God in Heaven!” he whispered, brokenly. “What is it? O God! What is it! Take it away--take it away!”
Then Moris Klaw spoke, slowly:
“It is for you to take it away, Mr. Leyland!”
Clement Leyland rose from his seat; he swayed like a drunken man, and there was madness in the glaring eyes that he turned in Klaw’s direction.
“You--you----” he gasped.
“I--I----” rumbled Moris Klaw, sternly, and took a step forward; “I have entered the Jacobite hiding place at Grange, and there I found a box! Ah! you glare! glare on, my friend! I returned that box to where I found it; but first I examined its contents! What! that demon laughter frightens you! Then descend, Mr. Leyland, descend and bring him out--the one who laughs!”
Rigidly, Sir James sat in his chair; I, too, seemed to be palsied. But at sight of the next happening we both stood up. Moris Klaw stamped heavily upon the oaken floor in a deep recess; then applied his weight to a section of the seemingly solid stone wall.
It turned, as on a pivot, revealing a dark cavity.
He stood there, a bizarre figure, pointing down into the blackness.
“Descend, my friend!” he cried. “The one who laughs is upon the seventh step!”
“The seventh step!”
In a whisper the words came from Clement Leyland. A draft of damp, cavernous air blew into the library out of the opening.
“Descend, my friend!”
Remorselessly, Moris Klaw repeated the words. In the centre of the room, Clement Leyland, a pitiable sight, stood staring--and hesitating. Suddenly his cousin spoke.
“Don’t go, Clement!” he whispered.
The other turned to him, dazedly.
“Don’t go--down that place. But--O God! I understand at last, or partly.… Quit! I give you half an hour!”
Sir James sank back into his chair and buried his face in his hands; Moris Klaw never moved from where he stood by the cavity. But Clement Leyland, with bowed head, walked from the room.
In the silence that followed his going--
“Await me, gentlemen,” rumbled Klaw; “I descend for the laughter!”
He stepped into the opening.
“One,” he counted, “two--three--four--five--” his voice came up to us from the depths--“six!”
We heard him ascending. Walking into the library he placed upon the table beside Sir James a very large and up-to-date gramophone!
“The laughter!” he explained, simply. “That night, my friends, when first I slept at Grange, I secured, among a host of other dreadful negatives, the negative of one who lurked in a secret hiding place. I saw him come creeping from the chimney corner, bearing a great mace which I recognized for one that had hung in the hall! Almost, the Science of the Mind betrayed me; for I mistook him for a thought-form! But the mind of Isis is en rapport with the mind of her poor old father. In her dreams she saw my peril, and she it was who, screaming, saved me!--saved me from the murderer with the mace!”
Sir James made no sign. Moris Klaw continued:
“I gathered, then, that the one who sometimes lurked in the Jacobite hiding place and who, somehow, made the demon laughter, and the other phenomena, sought one end. It was to cause you to leave Grange and to live in Friars House! Beyond so far, my science could not show me. I assisted, therefore, the project of the lurker; and came myself, too, in order to watch, my friend, to guard and to spy!
“His gramophone I found, examined, and replaced. It had a clockwork attachment, very ingenious, which both started and stopped it; there was little or no scraping. To-night, from his room, unknown to him, I removed the instrument from its case, which lay hidden at the bottom of his trunk. Yes! I stole his key! I am the old fox! Why did he bring it here? I cannot reply. Perhaps he meant again to use it; his future projects are dark to me, but their object is all too light.”
Sir James groaned.
“Old Clem!” he whispered, “and how I trusted him!”
“He did not quite believe in my science,” resumed Moris Klaw, “but he did not know that, hidden, I slept almost beside him as he sat, planning, in this very room! From his own bad mind I secured my second negative; and it showed me the death trap of some bad old son of Mother Church! At Grange there was but the Jacobite hiding place, but here was the devilry of feudal times! I returned to London. Why? To learn if my suspicions were well founded. Yes! You may or may not be aware; but if you die childless, the wicked Clement inherits Grange!”
“I knew that,” whispered Sir James.
“Ah! you knew? So. I returned to here, for, even at that time, I suspected that your accidental death was the object of removal! Then I secured it, my second negative. Biding my time, I explored that death-smelling place. Its wicked machinery had been freshly oiled! Ah! he knew its secrets well, the old house that he hoped to inherit!
“One night, all innocent, as you sat here, with other guests, he would have blundered upon that doorway! And you, the host, would have led the search party! But I saw that he feared to move whilst I remained, and so I played the ghost upon him with his own spook!”
Sir James Leyland looked up. His bronzed face was transformed with emotion.
“Mr. Klaw,” he said, huskily, “why did you lay so much emphasis upon the words, ‘the seventh step’?”
Moris Klaw shrugged, replying simply:
“Because there is no seventh step--only the mouth of a well!”
