The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

THE TRAVELLING GRAVE by L. P. Hartley

Hugh Curtis was in two minds about accepting Dick Munt’s invitation to spend Sunday at Lowlands. He knew little of Munt, who was supposed to be rich and eccentric, and, like most people of that kind, a collector. Hugh dimly remembered having asked his friend Valentine Ostrop what it was that Munt collected, but he could not recall Valentine’s answer. Hugh Curtis was a vague man with an unretentive mind, and the mere thought of a collection, with its many separate challenges to the memory, fatigued him. What he required of a week-end party was to be left alone as much as possible, and to spend the remainder of his time in the society of agreeable women. Searching his mind, though with distaste, for he hated to disturb it, he remembered Ostrop telling him that parties at Lowlands were generally composed entirely of men, and rarely exceeded four in number. Valentine didn’t know who the fourth was to be but he begged Hugh to come.

“You will enjoy Munt,” he said. “He really doesn’t pose at all. It’s his nature to be like that.”

“Like what?” his friend had inquired.

“Oh, original and—and queer, if you like,” answered Valentine. “He’s one of the exceptions—he’s much odder than he seems, whereas most people are more ordinary than they seem.”

Hugh Curtis agreed. “But I like ordinary people,” he added. “So how shall I get on with Munt?”

“Oh,” said his friend, “but you’re just the type he likes. He prefers ordinary—it’s a stupid word—I mean normal, people, because their reactions are more valuable.”

“Shall I be expected to react?” asked Hugh with nervous facetiousness.

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Valentine, poking him gently—“we never know quite what he’ll be up to. But you will come, won’t you?”

Hugh Curtis had said he would.

All the same, when Saturday morning came he began to regret his decision and to wonder whether it might not be honourably reversed. He was a man in early middle life, rather set in his ideas, and though not specially a snob he could not help testing a new acquaintance by the standards of the circle to which he belonged. This circle had never warmly welcomed Valentine Ostrop; he was the most unconventional of Hugh’s friends. Hugh liked him when they were alone together, but directly Valentine fell in with kindred spirits he developed a kind of foppishness of manner that Hugh instinctively disliked. He had no curiosity about his friends, and thought it out of place in personal relationships, so he had never troubled to ask himself what this altered demeanour of Valentine’s, when surrounded by his cronies, might denote. But he had a shrewd idea that Munt would bring out Valentine’s less sympathetic side. Could he send a telegram saying he had been unexpectedly detained? Hugh turned the idea over; but partly from principle, partly from laziness (he hated the mental effort of inventing false circumstances to justify change of plans) he decided he couldn’t. His letter of acceptance had been so unconditional. He also had the fleeting notion (a totally unreasonable one) that Munt would somehow find out and be nasty about it.

So he did the best he could for himself; looked out the latest train that would get him to Lowlands in decent time for dinner, and telegraphed that he would come by that. He would arrive at the house, he calculated, soon after seven. “Even if dinner is as late as half-past eight,” he thought to himself, “they won’t be able to do much to me in an hour and a quarter.” This habit of mentally assuring to himself periods of comparative immunity from unknown perils had begun at school. “Whatever I’ve done,” he used to say to himself, “they can’t kill me.” With the war, this saving reservation had to be dropped: they could kill him, that was what they were there for. But now that Peace was here, the little mental amulet once more diffused its healing properties; Hugh had recourse to it more often than he would have admitted. Absurdly enough he invoked it now. But it annoyed him that he would arrive in the dusk of the September evening. He liked to get his first impression of a new place by daylight.

Hugh Curtis’s anxiety to come late had not been shared by the other two guests. They arrived at Lowlands in time for tea. Though they had not travelled together, Ostrop motoring down, they met practically on the doorstep, and each privately suspected the other of wanting to have his host for a few moments to himself.

But it seemed unlikely that their wish would have been gratified even if they had not both been struck by the same idea. Tea came in, the water bubbled in the urn, but still Munt did not present himself, and at last Ostrop asked his fellow-guest to make the tea.

“You must be deputy-host,” he said; “you know Dick so well, better than I do.”

This was true. Ostrop had long wanted to meet Tony Bettisher who, after the death of someone vaguely known to Valentine as Squarchy, ranked as Munt’s oldest and closest friend. He was a short, dark, thick-set man, whose appearance gave no clue to his character or pursuits. He had, Valentine knew, a job at the British Museum, but to look at, he might easily have been a stockbroker.

“I suppose you know the place at every season of the year,” Valentine said. “This is the first time I’ve been here in the autumn. How lovely everything looks.”

He gazed out at the wooded valley and the horizon fringed with trees. The scent of burning mould drifted in through the windows.

“Yes, I’m a pretty frequent visitor,” answered Bettisher, busy with the teapot.

“I gather from bis letter that Dick has just returned from abroad,” said Valentine. “Why does he leave England on the rare occasions when it’s tolerable? Does he do it for fun, or does he have to?” He put his head on one side and contemplated Bettisher with a look of mock despair.

Bettisher handed him a cup of tea.

“I think he goes when the spirit moves him.”

“Yes, but what spirit?” cried Valentine, with an affected petulance of manner. “Of course our Richard is a law unto himself: we all know that. But he must have some motive. I don’t suppose he’s fond of travelling. It’s so uncomfortable. Now Dick cares for his comforts. That’s why he travels with so much luggage.”

“Oh does he?” inquired Bettisher. “Have you been with him?”

“No, but the Sherlock Holmes in me discovered that,” declared Valentine triumphantly. “The trusty Franklin hadn’t time to put it away. Two large crates. Now would you call that personal luggage?” His voice was for ever underlining; it pounced upon “personal” like a hawk on a dove.

“Perambulators, perhaps,” suggested Bettisher laconically.

“Oh, do you think so? Do you think he collects perambulators? That would explain everything!”

“What would it explain?” asked Bettisher, stirring in his chair.

“Why, his collection, of course!” exclaimed Valentine, jumping up and bending on Bettisher an intensely serious gaze. “It would explain why he doesn’t invite us to see it, and who he’s so shy of talking about it. Don’t you see? An unmarried man, a bachelor, sine prole as far as we know, with whole attics-full of perambulators! It would be too fantastic. The world would laugh, and Richard, much as we love him, is terribly serious. Do you imagine it’s a kind of vice?”

“All collecting is a form of vice.”

“Oh no, Bettisher, don’t be hard, don’t be cynical—a substitute for vice. But tell me before he comes—he must come soon, the laws of hospitality demand it—am I right in my surmise?”

“Which? You have made so many.”

“I mean that what he goes abroad for, what he fills his house with, what he thinks about when we’re not with him—in a word, what he collects, is perambulators?”

Valentine paused dramatically.

Bettisher did not speak. His eyelids flickered and the skin about his eyes made a sharp movement inwards. He was beginning to open his mouth when Valentine broke in:

“Oh no, of course, you’re in his confidence, your lips are sealed. Don’t tell me; you mustn’t, I forbid you to!”

“What’s that he’s not to tell you?” said a voice from the other end of the room.

“Oh Dick!” cried Valentine, “what a start you gave me! You must learn to move a little less like a dome of silence, mustn’t he, Bettisher?”

Their host came forward to meet them on silent feet and wearing a kind of soundless smile. He was a small, thin, slightly-built man, very well turned out and with a conscious elegance of carriage.

“But I thought you didn’t know Bettisher?” he said, when their greetings had been accomplished. “Yet when I come in I find you with difficulty stemming the flood of confidences pouring from his lips.”

His voice was slightly ironical, it seemed at the same moment to ask a question and to make a statement.

“Oh, we’ve been together for hours,” said Valentine airily, “and had the most enchanting conversation. Guess what we talked about.”

“Not about me, I hope?”

“Well, about something very dear to you.”

“About you, then?”

“Don’t make fun of me. The objects I speak of are solid and useful.”

“That does rather rule you out,” said Munt meditatively. “What are they useful for?”

“Carrying bodies.”

Munt glanced across at Bettisher, who was staring into the grate.

“And what are they made of?”

Valentine tittered, pulled a face, and answered, “I’ve had little experience of them, but I should think chiefly of wood.”

Munt got up and looked hard at Bettisher, who raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

“They perform at one time or another,” said Valentine, enjoying himself enormously, “an essential service for us all.”

There was a pause. Then Munt asked:

“Where do you generally come across them?”

“Personally I always try to avoid them,” said Valentine. “But one meets them every day in the street and—and here, of course.”

“Why do you try to avoid them?” asked Munt rather grimly.

“Since you think about them, and dote upon them, and collect them from all the corners of the earth, it pains me to have to say it,” said Valentine with relish, “but I do not care to contemplate lumps of human flesh lacking the spirit that makes flesh tolerable.”

He struck an oratorical attitude and breathed audibly through his nose. There was a prolonged silence. The dusk began to make itself felt in the room.

“Well,” said Munt at last, in a hard voice. “You are the first person to guess my little secret, if I can give it so grandiose a name. I congratulate you.”

Valentine bowed.

“May I ask how you discovered it? While I was detained upstairs, I suppose you—you—poked about?” His voice had a disagreeable ring; but Valentine, unaware of this, said loftily:

“It was unnecessary. They were in the hall, plainly to be seen by anyone. My Sherlock Holmes sense (I have eight or nine) recognised them immediately.”

Munt shrugged his shoulders, then said in a less constrained tone:

“At this stage of our acquaintance I did not really intend to enlighten you. But since you know already, tell me, as a matter of curiosity, were you horrified?”

“Horrified!” cried Valentine. “I think it a charming taste, so original, so—so human. It ravishes my aesthetic sense; it slightly offends my moral principles.”

“I was afraid it might,” said Munt.

“I am a believer in birth control,” Valentine prattled on. “Every night I burn a candle to Stopes.”

Munt looked puzzled. “But then, how can you object?” he began.

Valentine went on without heeding him.

“But, of course, by making a corner in the things you do discourage the whole business. Being exhibits, they have to stand idle, don’t they? You keep them empty?”

Bettisher started upon his chair, but Munt held out a pallid hand and murmured in a stifled voice:

“Yes, that is, most of them are.”

Valentine clapped his hands in ecstasy.

“But some are not? Oh, but that’s too ingenious of you. To think of the darlings lying there quite still, not able to lift a finger, much less scream! A sort of mannequin parade!”

“They certainly seem more complete with an occupant,” Munt observed.

“But who’s to push them? They can’t go of themselves.”

“Listen,” said Munt slowly. “I’ve just come back from abroad, and I’ve brought with me a specimen that does go by itself, or nearly. It’s outside there where you saw, waiting to be unpacked.”

Valentine Ostrop had been the life and soul of many a party. No one knew better than he how to breathe new life into a flagging joke. Privately he felt that this one was played out; but he had a social conscience, he realised his responsibility towards conversation, and summoning all the galvanic enthusiasm at his command he cried out:

“Do you mean to say that it looks after itself, it doesn’t need a helping hand, and that a fond mother can entrust her precious charge to it without nursemaid and without a tremor?”

“She can,” said Munt, “and without an undertaker, and without a sexton.”

“Undertaker! Sexton!” echoed Valentine. “What have they to do with perambulators?”

There was a pause, during which the three figures, struck in their respective attitudes, seemed to have lost relationship with each other.

“So you didn’t know,” said Munt at length, “that it was coffins I collected.”

An hour later the three men were standing in an upper room, looking down at a large oblong object that lay in the middle of a heap of shavings and seemed, to Valentine’s sick fancy, to be burying its head among them. Munt had been giving a demonstration.

“Doesn’t it look funny now it’s still?” he remarked. “Almost as though it had been killed.” He touched it pensively with his foot and it slid towards Valentine, who edged away. You couldn’t quite tell where it was coming; it seemed to have no settled direction, and to move all ways at once, like a crab. “Of course the chances are really against it,” sighed Munt. “It’s very quick and it has a funny gift of anticipation. If it got a fellow up against a wall, I don’t think he’d stand much chance. I didn’t show you here, because I value my floors, but it can bury itself in wood in three minutes and in newly turned earth, say a flower bed, in one. It has to be this squarish shape, or it couldn’t dig. It just doubles the man up, you see, directly it catches him—backwards, so as to break the spine. The top of the head fits in just below the heels. The soles of the feet come uppermost. The spring sticks a bit.” He bent down to adjust something. “Isn’t it a charming toy?”

“Looking at it from the criminal’s standpoint, not the engineer’s,” said Bettisher, “I can’t see that it would be much use in a house. Have you tried it on a stone floor?”

“Yes, it screams in agony and blunts the blades.”

“Exactly. Like a mole on paving-stones. And even on an ordinary carpeted floor, it could cut its way in, but there would be a nice hole left in the carpet to show where it had gone.”

Munt conceded this point, also. “But it’s an odd thing,” he added, “that in several of the rooms in this house it would really work, and baffle anyone but an expert detective. Below, of course, are the knives, but the top is inlaid with real parquet. The grave is so sensitive—you saw just now how it seemed to grope—that it can feel the ridges, and adjust itself perfectly to the pattern of the parquet. But of course I agree with you. It’s not an indoor game, really; it’s a field sport. You go on, will you, and leave me to clear up this mess. I’ll join you in a moment.”

Valentine followed Bettisher down into the library. He was very much subdued.

“Well, that was the funniest scene,” remarked Bettisher, chuckling.

“Do you mean just now? I confess it gave me the creeps.”

“Oh no, not that: when you and Dick were talking at cross-purposes.”

“I’m afraid I made a fool of myself,” said Valentine dejectedly. “I can’t quite remember what we said. I know there was something I wanted to ask you.”

“Ask away, but I can’t promise to answer.”

Valentine pondered a moment.

“Now I remember what it was.”

“Spit it out.”

“To tell you the truth I hardly like to. It was something Dick said. I hardly noticed at the time. I expect he was just playing up to me.”

“Well?”

“About those coffins. Are they real?”

“How do you mean ‘real’?”

“I mean could they be used as——?”

“My dear chap, they have been.”

Valentine smiled, rather mirthlessly.

“Are they full-size—life-size, as it were?”

“The two things aren’t quite the same,” said Bettisher with a grin. “But there’s no harm in telling you this: Dick’s like all collectors. He prefers rarities, odd shapes, dwarfs and that sort of thing. Of course any anatomical peculiarity has to have allowance made for it in the coffin. On the whole his specimens tend to be smaller than the general run—shorter, anyhow. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“You’ve told me a lot,” said Valentine. “But there is another thing.”

“Out with it.”

“When I imagined we were talking about perambulators——”

“Yes, yes.”

“I said something about their being empty. Do you remember?”

“I think so.”

“Then I said something about them having mannequins inside, and he seemed to agree.”

“Oh yes.”

“Well, he couldn’t have meant to, it would be too—too realistic.”

“Mannequins aren’t very realistic.”

“Well then, any sort of dummy.”

“There are dummies and dummies. A skeleton isn’t very talkative.”

Valentine started.

“He’s been abroad,” said Bettisher hastily. “I don’t know what his latest idea is. But here’s the man himself.”

Munt came into the room.

“Children,” he called out, “have you observed the time? It’s nearly seven o’clock. And do you remember that we have another guest coming? He must be almost due.”

“Who is he?” asked Bettisher.

“A friend of Valentine’s. Valentine, you must be responsible for him. I asked him partly to please you. I don’t know him. What shall we do to entertain him?”

“What sort of man is he?” Bettisher inquired.

“Describe him, Valentine. Is he tall or short?”

“Medium.”

“Dark or fair?”

“Mouse-coloured.”

“Old or young?”

“About thirty five.”

“Married or single?”

“Single.”

“What, has he no ties? No one to take an interest in him, or bother what becomes of him?”

“He has no near relations.”

“Do you mean to say that very likely nobody knows he is coming to spend Sunday here?”

“Probably not. He has rooms in London, and he wouldn’t trouble to leave his address.”

“Extraordinary the casual way some people live. Is he brave or timid?”

“Oh come, what a question! About as brave as I am.”

“Is he clever or stupid?”

“All my friends are clever,” said Valentine, with a flicker of his old spirit. “He’s not intellectual: he’d be afraid of difficult parlour games or brilliant conversation.”

“He ought not to have come here. Does he play bridge?”

“I don’t think he has much head for cards.”

“Could Tony induce him to play chess?”

“Oh no, chess needs too much concentration.”

“Is he given to wool-gathering then?” Munt asked. “Does he forget to look where he’s going?”

“He’s the sort of man,” said Valentine, “who expects to find everything just so. He likes to be led by the hand. He is perfectly tame and confiding, like a nicely-brought-up child.”

“In that case,” said Munt, “we must find some childish pastime that won’t tax him too much. Would he like Ring-a-ring-a-Roses?”

“I think that would embarrass him,” said Valentine. He began to feel a tenderness for his absent friend, and a wish to stick up for him. “I should leave him to look after himself. He’s rather shy. If you try to make him come out of his shell, you’ll scare him. He’d rather take the initiative himself. He doesn’t like being pursued, but in a mild way he likes to pursue.”

“A child with hunting instincts,” said Munt pensively. “How can we accommodate him—I have it. Let’s play Hide and Seek. We will hide and he shall seek. Then he can’t feel that we are forcing ourselves upon him. It will be the height of tact. He will be here in a few minutes. Let’s go and hide now.”

“But he doesn’t know his way about the house.”

“That will be all the more fun for him, since he likes to make discoveries on his own account.”

“He might fall and hurt himself.”

“Children never do. Now you run away and hide while I talk to Franklin,” Munt continued quietly, “and mind you play fair, Valentine—don’t let your natural affections lead you astray. Don’t give yourself up because you’re hungry for your dinner.”

The motor that met Hugh Curtis was shiny and smart and glittered in the rays of the setting sun. The chauffeur was like an extension of it, and so quick in his movements that in the matter of stowing Hugh’s luggage, putting him in and tucking the rug around him, he seemed to steal a march on time. Hugh regretted this precipitancy, this interference with the rhythm of his thoughts. It was a foretaste of the effort of adaptability he would soon have to make; the violent mental readjustment that every visit, and specially every visit among strangers entails: a surrender of the personality, the fanciful might call it a little death.

The car slowed down, left the main road, passed through white gate-posts and followed for two or three minutes a gravel drive shadowed by trees. In the dusk, Hugh could not see how far to right and left these extended. But the house, when it appeared, was plain enough. A large, regular, early-nineteenth-century building, encased in cream-coloured stucco and pierced at generous intervals by large windows, some round-headed, some rectangular. It looked dignified and quiet, and in the twilight seemed to shine with a soft radiance of its own. Hugh’s spirits began to rise. In his mind’s ear he already heard the welcoming buzz of voices coming from a distant part of the house. He smiled at the man who opened the door. But the butler didn’t return his smile and no sound came through the gloom that spread out behind him.

“Mr. Munt and his friends are playing ‘Hide and Seek’ in the house, sir,” the man said, with a gravity that checked Hugh’s impulse to laugh. “I was to tell you that the library is home, and you were to be ‘He’, or I think he said, ‘It’, sir. This is the way to the library. Be careful sir, Mr. Munt did not want the lights turned on till the game was over.”

“Am I to start now?” asked Hugh, stumbling a little as he followed his guide, “or can I go to my room first?”

The butler stopped and opened a door. “This is the library,” he said. “I think it was Mr. Munt’s wish that the game should begin immediately upon your arrival, sir.”

A faint coo-ee sounded through the house.

“Mr. Munt said you could go anywhere you liked,” the man added as he went away.

Valentine’s emotions were complex. The harmless frivolity of his mind had been thrown out of gear by its encounter with the harsher frivolity of his friend. Munt, he felt sure, had a heart of gold, which he chose to hide beneath a slightly sinister exterior. With his travelling graves and charnel-talk he had hoped to get a rise out of his guest, and he had succeeded. Valentine still felt slightly unwell. But his nature was remarkably resilient, and the charming innocence of the pastime on which they were now engaged, soothed and restored his spirits, gradually reaffirming his first impression of Munt as a man of fine mind and keen perceptions, a dilettante with the personal force of a man of action, a character with a vein of implacability, to be respected but not to be feared. He was conscious also of a growing desire to see Curtis; he wanted to see Curtis and Munt together, confident that two people he liked could not fail to like each other. He pictured the pleasant encounter after the mimic warfare of Hide and Seek—the captor and the caught laughing a little breathlessly over the diverting circumstances of their introduction. With every passing moment his mood grew more sanguine.

Only one misgiving remained to trouble it. He felt he wanted to confide in Curtis, tell him something of what had happened after tea, and this he could not do without being disloyal to his host. Try as he would to make light of Munt’s behaviour about his collection, it was clear he wouldn’t have given away the secret if it had not been surprised out of him. And Hugh would find his friend’s bald statement of the facts difficult to swallow.

But what was he up to, letting his thoughts run on like this? He must hide, and quickly too. His acquaintance with the lie of the house, the fruit of two visits, was scanty, and the darkness did not help him. The house was long and symmetrical; and its principal rooms lay on the first floor. Above were servants’ rooms, attics, box rooms, probably—plenty of natural hiding places. The second storey was the obvious refuge.

He had been there only once, with Munt that afternoon, and he did not specially want to re-visit it; but he must enter into the spirit of the game. He found the staircase and went up, then paused; there was really no light at all.

“This is absurd,” thought Valentine, “I must cheat.” He entered the first room to the left, and turned down the switch. Nothing happened; the current had been cut off at the main. But by the light of a match he made out that he was in a combined bed and bathroom. In one corner was a bed, and in the other a large rectangular object with a lid over it, obviously a bath. The bath was close to the door.

As he stood debating he heard footsteps coming along the corridor. It would never do to be caught like this, without a run for his money. Quick as thought he raised the lid of the bath, which was not heavy, and slipped inside, cautiously lowering the lid.

It was narrower than the outside suggested, and it did not feel like a bath, but Valentine’s inquiries into the nature of his hiding-place were suddenly cut short. He heard voices in the room, so muffled that he did not know at first whose they were. But they were evidently in disagreement.

Valentine lifted the lid. There was no light, so he lifted it farther. Now he could hear clearly enough.

“But I don’t know what you really want, Dick,” Bettisher was saying. “With the safety catch it would be pointless and without it would be damned dangerous. Why not wait a bit?”

“I shall never have a better opportunity than this,” said Munt, but in a voice so unfamiliar that Valentine scarcely recognised it.

“Opportunity for what?” said Bettisher.

“To prove whether the Travelling Grave can do what Madrali claimed for it.”

“You mean whether it can disappear? We know it can.”

“I mean whether it can effect somebody else’s disappearance.”

There was a pause. Then Bettisher said, “Give it up. That’s my advice.”

“But he wouldn’t leave a trace,” said Munt, half petulant, half pleading, like a thwarted child. “He has no relations. Nobody knows he’s here. Perhaps he isn’t here. We can tell Valentine he never turned up.”

“We discussed all that,” said Bettisher decisively, “and it won’t wash.”

There was another silence, disturbed by the distant hum of a motor car.

“We must go,” said Bettisher.

But Munt appeared to detain him. Half imploring, half whining, he said:

“Anyhow, you don’t mind my having put it there with the safety-catch down?”

“Where?”

“By the china-cabinet. He’s certain to run into it.”

Bettisher’s voice sounded impatiently from the passage.

“Well, if it pleases you. But it’s quite pointless.”

Munt lingered a moment, chanting to himself in a high greedy voice—greedy with anticipation: “I wonder which is up and which is down.”

When he had repeated this three times he scampered away, calling out peevishly: “You might have helped me, Tony. It’s so heavy for me to manage.”

It was heavy indeed. Valentine, when he had fought down the hysteria that came upon him, had only one thought: to take the deadly object and put it somewhere out of Hugh Curtis’s way. If he could drop it from a window, so much the better. In the darkness the vague outline of its bulk, placed just where one had to turn to avoid the china-cabinet, was dreadfully familiar. He tried to recollect the way it worked. Only one thing stuck in his mind: “The ends are dangerous, the sides are safe.” Or should it be, “The sides are dangerous, the ends are safe”? While the two sentences were getting mixed up in his mind, he heard the sound of “coo-ee”, coming first from one part of the house, then from another. He could also hear footsteps in the hall below him.

Then he made up his mind, and with a confidence that surprised him, put his arms round the wooden cube and lifted it into the air. He hardly noticed its weight as he ran with it down the corridor. Suddenly he realised that he must have passed through an open door. A ray of moonlight showed him that he was in a bedroom, standing directly in front of an old-fashioned wardrobe, a towering majestic piece of furniture with three doors, the middle one holding a mirror. Dimly he saw himself reflected there, his burden in his arms. He deposited it on the parquet without making a sound; but on the way out he tripped over a footstool and nearly fell. He was relieved at making so much clatter, and the grating of the key, as he turned it in the lock, was music to his ears.

Automatically he put the key in his pocket. But he paid the penalty for his clumsiness. He had not gone a step when a hand caught him by the elbow.

Left by himself in the library, Hugh Curtis took stock of his position. In all the many visits he had paid, he had never met a reception quite like this. But it might have been worse. Adults, when they play children’s games, are never so formidable and relentless as when they play their own. He wondered how much effort was expected of him; how far he ought to sacrifice his worn, but still respectable train-clothes. He had never caught anyone in his life, and did not expect to do so now. He would just patrol the main thoroughfares like a good-natured policeman, not looking for trouble, but ready to take in charge anyone who ran into him. He had mounted the stairs and was marching majestically along the landing, when he heard a noise so loud that even his curiosity was aroused. For once completely forgetting himself he plunged clumsily forward and caught his quarry.

“Why it’s Valentine!” he cried. “Now come quietly, and take me to my host. I must have a drink.”

“I should like one, too,” said Valentine, who was trembling all over. “Why can’t we have some light?”

“Turn it on, idiot,” commanded his friend.

“I can’t—it’s cut off at the main. We must wait till Richard gives the word.”

“Where is he?”

“I expect he’s tucked away somewhere. Richard!” Valentine called out. “Dick!” He was too self-conscious to be able to give a good shout. “Bettisher, I’m caught! The game’s over!”

There was silence a moment, then steps could be heard descending the stairs.

“Is that you, Dick?” asked Valentine of the darkness.

“No, Bettisher.” The gaiety of the voice did not ring quite true.

“I’ve been caught,” said Valentine again, almost as Atalanta might have done, and as though it was a wonderful achievement reflecting great credit upon everybody. “Allow me to present you to my captor. No, this is me. We’ve been introduced already.”

It was a moment or two before the mistake was corrected, the two hands groping vainly for each other in the darkness.

“It will be a disappointment when you see me,” said Hugh Curtis in the pleasant voice that made many people like him.

“I want to see you,” declared Bettisher. “I will, too. Let’s have some light.”

“I suppose it’s no good asking you if you’ve seen Dick?” inquired Valentine facetiously. “He said we weren’t to have any light till the game was finished. He’s so strict with his servants; they have to obey him to the letter. I daren’t even ask for a candle. But you know the faithful Franklin well enough.”

“Dick will be here in a moment, surely,” Bettisher said, for the first time that day appearing undecided.

They all stood listening.

“Perhaps he’s gone to dress,” Curtis suggested. “It’s past eight o’clock.”

“How can he dress in the dark?” asked Bettisher.

“He kept us waiting to-day because he knows us so well,” remarked Valentine. “I don’t think he will keep you.”

Another pause.

“Oh, I’m tired of this,” said Bettisher. “Franklin! Franklin!” His voice boomed through the house and a reply came almost at once from the hall, directly below them. “We think Mr. Munt must have gone to dress,” said Bettisher. “Will you please turn on the light?”

“Certainly, sir, but I don’t think Mr. Munt is in his room.”

“Well, anyhow——”

“Very good, sir.”

At once the corridor was flooded with light, and to all of them, in greater or less degree according to their familiarity with their surroundings, it seemed amazing that they should have had so much difficulty, half an hour before, in finding their way about. Even Valentine’s harassed emotions experienced a moment’s relaxation. They chaffed Hugh Curtis a little about the false impression his darkling voice had given them. Valentine, as always the more loquacious, swore it seemed to proceed from a large gaunt man with a hair-lip. They were beginning to move towards their rooms, Valentine had almost reached his, when Hugh Curtis called after them:

“I say, may I be taken to my room?”

“Of course,” said Bettisher turning back. “Franklin! Franklin! Franklin, show Mr. Curtis where his room is. I don’t know myself.” He disappeared and the butler came slowly up the stairs.

“It’s quite near, sir, at the end of the corridor,” he said, “I’m sorry, with having no light we haven’t got your things put out. But it’ll only take a moment.”

The door did not open when he turned the handle.

“Odd! It’s stuck,” he remarked, but it did not yield to the pressure of his knee and shoulder. “I’ve never known it to be locked before,” he muttered, thinking aloud, obviously put out by this flaw in the harmony of the domestic arrangements. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll go and fetch my key.”

In a minute or two he was back with it. So gingerly did he turn the key in the lock, he evidently expected another rebuff; but it gave a satisfactory click and the door swung open with the best will in the world.

“Now I’ll go and fetch your suitcase,” he said as Hugh Curtis entered.

“No, it’s absurd to stay,” soliloquised Valentine, fumbling feverishly with his front stud, “after all these warnings, it would be insane. It’s what they do in a ‘shocker’, linger on and on, disregarding revolvers and other palpable hints, while one by one the villain picks them off, all except the hero, who is generally the stupidest of all, but the luckiest. No doubt by staying I should qualify to be the hero; I should survive; but what about Hugh, and Bettisher, that close-mouth rat-trap?” He studied his face in the glass; it looked flushed. “I’ve had an alarming increase in blood pressure; I am seriously unwell, I must go away at once to a nursing-home, and Hugh must accompany me.” He gazed round wretchedly at the warm, bright room, with its chintz and polished furniture, so comfortable, safe and unsensational. And for the hundredth time his thoughts veered round and flew from the opposite quarter. It would equally be madness to run away at a moment’s notice, scared by what was no doubt only an elaborate practical joke. Munt, though not exactly a jovial man, would have his joke, as witness the game of Hide and Seek. No doubt the Travelling Grave itself was just a take in, a test of his and Bettisher’s credulity. Munt was not popular, he had few friends, but that did not make him a potential murderer. Valentine had always liked him and no one, to his knowledge, had ever spoken a word against him. What sort of figure would he, Valentine, cut after this nocturnal flitting? He would lose at least two friends, Munt and Bettisher, and cover Hugh Curtis and himself with ridicule.

Poor Valentine! So perplexed was he that he changed his mind five times on the way down to the library. He kept repeating to himself the sentence, “I’m so sorry, Dick, I find my blood pressure rather high and I think I ought to go into a nursing-home to-night—Hugh will see me safely there,” until it became meaningless; even its absurdity disappeared.

Hugh was in the library alone. It was now or never; but Valentine’s opening words were swept aside by his friend who came running across the room to him.

“Oh, Valentine, the funniest thing has happened.”

“Funny? Where? What?” Valentine asked.

“No, no, don’t look as if you’d seen a ghost. It’s not the least serious. Only it’s so odd. This is a house of surprises. I’m glad I came.”

“Tell me quickly.”

“Don’t look so alarmed. It’s only very amusing. But I must show it you, or you’ll miss the funny side of it. Come on up to my room, we’ve got five minutes.”

But before they crossed the threshold Valentine pulled up with a start.

“Is this your room?”

“Oh, yes. Don’t look so upset. It’s a perfectly ordinary room, I tell you, except for one thing. No, stop a moment, wait here while I arrange the scene.”

He darted in, and after a moment summoned Valentine to follow.

“Now, do you notice anything strange?”

“I see the usual evidences of untidiness.”

A coat was lying on the floor and various articles of clothing were scattered about.

“You do? Well then—no deceit, gentlemen.” With a gesture he snatched up the coat from the floor. “Now what do you see?”

“I see a further proof of slovenly habits—a pair of shoes where the coat was.”

“Look well at those shoes. There’s nothing about them that strikes you as peculiar?”

Valentine studied them. They were ordinary brown shoes, lying side by side, the soles uppermost, a short pace from the wardrobe. They looked as though someone had taken them off and forgotten to put them away, or taken them out, and forgotten to put them on.

“Well,” pronounced Valentine at last. “I don’t usually leave my shoes upside-down like that, but you might.”

“Ah,” said Hugh triumphantly, “your surmise is incorrect. They’re not my shoes.”

“Not yours? Then they were left here by mistake. Franklin should have taken them away.”

“Yes, but that’s where the coat comes in. I’m reconstructing the scene you see, hoping to impress you. While he was downstairs fetching my bag, to save time I began to undress; I took my coat off and hurled it down there. After he had gone I picked it up. So he never saw the shoes.”

“Well, why make such a fuss? They won’t be wanted till morning. Or would you rather ring for Franklin and tell him to take them away?”

“Ah!” cried Hugh, delighted by this. “At last you’ve come to the heart of the matter. He couldn’t take them away.”

“Why couldn’t he?”

“Because they’re fixed to the floor!”

“Oh rubbish!” said Valentine. “You must be dreaming.”

He bent down, took hold of the shoes by the welts, and gave them a little tug. They did not move.

“There you are!” cried Hugh. “Apologise. Own that it is unusual to find in one’s room a strange pair of shoes adhering to the floor.”

Valentine’s reply was to give another heave. Still the shoes did not budge.

“No good,” commented his friend. “They’re nailed down, or gummed down, or something.”

“The dinner-bell hasn’t rung; we’ll get Franklin to clear up the mystery.”

The butler, when he came, looked uneasy, and surprised them by speaking first.

“Was it Mr. Munt you were wanting, sir?” he said to Valentine. “I don’t know where he is. I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find him.”

“Are these his shoes by any chance?” asked Valentine.

They couldn’t deny themselves the mild entertainment of watching Franklin stoop down to pick up the shoes, and recoil in perplexity when he found them fast in the floor.

“These should be Mr. Munt’s, sir,” he said doubtfully, “these should. But what’s happened to them that they won’t leave the floor?”

The two friends laughed gaily.

“That’s what we want to know,” Hugh Curtis chuckled. “That’s why we called you: we thought you could help us.”

“They’re Mr. Munt’s shoes right enough,” muttered the butler. “They must have got something heavy inside.”

“Damned heavy,” said Valentine, playfully grim.

Fascinated, the thee men stared at the upturned soles. They lay so close together that there was no room between for two thumbs set side by side.

Rather gingerly the butler stooped again, and tried to feel the uppers. This was not as easy as it seemed, for the shoes were flattened against the floor, as if a weight had pressed them down.

His face was white as he stood up.

“There is something in them,” he said in a frightened voice.

“And his shoes were full of feet,” carolled Valentine flippantly. “Trees, perhaps.”

“It’s not as hard as wood,” said the butler. “You can squeeze it a bit if you try.”

They looked at each other, and a tension made itself felt in the room.

“There’s only one way to find out,” declared Hugh Curtis suddenly, in a determined tone one could never have expected from him.

“How?”

“Take them off!”

“Take what off?”

“His shoes off, you idiot!”

“Off what?”

“That’s what I don’t know yet, you bloody fool,” Curtis almost screamed; and kneeling down, he tore apart the laces and began tugging and wrenching at one of the shoes.

“It’s coming, it’s coming,” he cried. “Valentine, put your arms round me and pull, that’s a good fellow. It’s the heel that’s giving the trouble.”

Suddenly the shoe slipped off, disclosing a slender brown object, the shape of a dog’s tongue.

“Why it’s only a sock,” whispered Valentine; “it’s so thin.”

“Yes, but the foot’s inside it all right,” cried Curtis in a loud strange voice, speaking very rapidly. “And here’s the ankle, see, and here’s where it begins to go down into the floor, see. He must have been a very small man, you see I never saw him, but it’s all so crushed——”

The sound of a heavy fall made them turn.

Franklin had fainted.