The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories

TABOO by Geoffrey Household

I had this story from Lewis Banning, the American; but as I also know Shiravieff pretty well and have heard some parts of it from him since, I think I can honestly reconstruct his own words.

Shiravieff had asked Banning to meet Colonel Romero, and after lunch took them, as his habit is, into his consulting room; his study, I should call it, for there are no instruments or white enamel to make a man unpleasantly conscious of the workings of his own body, nor has Shiravieff, among the obscure groups of letters that he is entitled to write after his name, any one which implies a medical degree. It is a long, restful room, its harmony only broken by sporting trophies. The muzzle of an enormous wolf grins over the mantelpiece, and there are fine heads of ibex and aurochs on the opposite wall. No doubt Shiravieff put them there deliberately. His patients from the counties came in expecting a quack doctor but at once gained confidence when they saw he had killed wild animals in a gentlemanly manner.

The trophies suit him. With his peaked beard and broad smile, he looks more the explorer than the psychologist. His unvarying calm is not the priestlike quality of the doctor; it is the disillusionment of the traveller and exile, of one who has studied the best and the worst in human nature and discovered that there is no definable difference between them.

Romero took a dislike to the room. He was very sensitive to atmosphere, though he would have denied it indignantly.

“A lot of silly women,” he grumbled obscurely, “pouring out emotions.”

They had, of course, poured out plenty of emotions from the same chair that he was occupying; but, since Shiravieff made his reputation on cases of shell shock, there must have been a lot of silly men too. Romero naturally would not mention that. He preferred to think that hysteria was confined to the opposite sex. Being a Latin in love with England, he worshipped and cultivated our detachment.

“I assure you that emotions are quite harmless once they are out of the system,” answered Shiravieff, smiling. “It’s when they stay inside that they give trouble.”

“Çà! I like people who keep their emotions inside,” said Romero. “It is why I live in London. The English are not cold—it is nonsense to say they are cold—but they are well bred. They never show a sign of what hurts them most. I like that.”

Shiravieff tapped his long forefinger on the table in a fast, nervous rhythm.

“And what if they must display emotion?” he asked irritably. “Shock them—shock them, you understand, so that they must! They can’t do it, and they are hurt for life.”

They had never before seen him impatient. Nobody had. It was an unimaginable activity, as if your family doctor were to come and visit you without his trousers. Romero had evidently stirred up the depths.

“I’ve shocked them, and they displayed plenty of emotion,” remarked Banning.

“Oh, I do not mean their little conventions,” said Shiravieff slowly and severely. “Shock them with some horrid fact that they can’t blink away, something that would outrage the souls of any of us. Do you remember de Maupassant’s story of the man whose daughter was buried alive—how she returned from the grave and how all his life he kept the twitching gesture with which he tried to push her away? Well, if that man had shrieked or thrown a fit or wept all night he mightn’t have suffered from the twitch.”

“Courage would have saved him,” announced the colonel superbly.

“No!” shouted Shiravieff. “We’re all cowards, and the healthiest thing we can do is to express fear when we feel it.”

“The fear of death——” began Romero.

“I am not talking about the fear of death. It is not that. It is our horror of breaking a taboo that causes shock. Listen to me. Do either of you remember the Zweibergen case in 1926?”

“The name’s familiar,” said Banning. “But I can’t just recall . . . was it a haunted village?”

“I congratulate you on your healthy mind,” said Shiravieff ironically. “You can forget what you don’t want to remember.”

He offered them cigars and lit one himself. Since he hardly ever smoked it calmed him immediately. His grey eyes twinkled as if to assure them that he shared their surprise at his irritation. Banning had never before realized, so he said, that the anti-smoke societies were right, that tobacco was a drug.

“I was at Zweibergen that summer. I chose it because I wanted to be alone. I can only rest when I am alone,” began Shiravieff abruptly. “The eastern Carpathians were remote ten years ago—cut off from the tourists by too many frontiers. The Hungarian magnates who used to shoot the forests before the war had vanished, and their estates were sparsely settled. I didn’t expect any civilized company.

“I was disappointed to find that a married couple had rented the old shooting box. They were obviously interesting, but I made no advances to them beyond passing the time of day whenever we met on the village street. He was English and she American—one of those delightful women who are wholly and typically American. No other country can fuse enough races to produce them. Her blood, I should guess, was mostly Slav. They thought me a surly fellow, but respected my evident desire for privacy—until the time when all of us in Zweibergen wanted listeners. Then the Vaughans asked me to dinner.

“We talked nothing but commonplaces during the meal, which was, by the way, excellent. There were a joint of venison and some wild strawberries, I remember. We took our coffee on the lawn in front of the house, and sat for a moment in silence—the mountain silence—staring out across the valley. The pine forest, rising tier upon tier, was very black in the late twilight. White, isolated rocks were scattered through it. They looked as if they might move on at any minute—like the ghosts of great beasts pasturing upon the treetops. Then a dog howled on the alp above us. We all began talking at once. About the mystery, of course.

“Two men had been missing in that forest for nearly a week. The first of them belonged to a little town about ten miles down the valley; he was returning after nightfall from a short climb in the mountains. He might have vanished into a snowdrift or ravine, for the paths were none too safe. There were no climbing clubs in that district to keep them up. But it seemed to be some less common accident that had overtaken him. He was out of the high peaks. A shepherd camping on one of the lower alps had exchanged a goodnight with him, and watched him disappear among the trees on his way downwards. That was the last that had been seen or heard of him.

“The other was one of the search party that had gone out on the following day. The man had been posted as a stop, while the rest beat the woods towards him. It was the last drive, and already dark. When the line came up to his stand he was not there.

“Everybody suspected wolves. Since 1914 there had been no shooting over the game preserves, and animal life of all sorts was plentiful. But the wolves were not in pack, and the search parties did not find a trace of blood. There were no tracks to help. There was no sign of a struggle. Vaughan suggested that we were making a mystery out of nothing—probably the two men had become tired of domestic routine, and taken the opportunity to disappear. By now, he expected, they were on their way to the Argentine.

“His cool dismissal of tragedy was inhuman. He sat there, tall, distant, and casually strong. His face was stamped ready-made out of that pleasant upper-class mould. Only his firm mouth and thin sensitive nostrils showed that he had any personality of his own. Kyra Vaughan looked at him scornfully.

“ ‘Is that what you really think?’ she asked.

“ ‘Why not?’ he answered. ‘If those men had been killed it must have been by something prowling about and waiting for its chance. And there isn’t such a thing.’

“ ‘If you want to believe the men aren’t dead, believe it!’ Kyra said.

“Vaughan’s theory that the men had disappeared of their own free will was, of course, absurd; but his wife’s sudden coldness to him seemed to me to be needlessly impatient. I understood when I knew him better. Vaughan—your reserved Englishman, Romero!—was covering up his thoughts and fears, and chose, quite unconsciously, to appear stupid rather than to show his anxiety. She recognized the insincerity without understanding its cause, and it made her angry.

“They were a queer pair, those two; intelligent, cultured, and so interested in themselves and each other that they needed more than one life to satisfy their curiosity. She was a highly strung creature, with swift brown eyes and a slender, eager body that seemed to grow like a flower from the ground under her feet. And natural! I don’t mean she couldn’t act. She could—but when she did, it was deliberate. She was defenceless before others’ suffering and joy, and she didn’t try to hide it.

“Lord! She used to live through enough emotions in one day to last her husband for a year!

“Not that he was unemotional. Those two were very much alike, though you’d never have guessed it. But he was shy of tears and laughter, and he had armed his whole soul against them. To a casual observer he seemed the calmer of the two, but at bottom he was an extremist. He might have been a poet, a Saint Francis, a revolutionary. But was he? No! He was an Englishman. He knew he was in danger of being swayed by emotional ideas, of giving his life to them. And so? And so he balanced every idea with another, and secured peace for himself between the scales. She, of course, would always jump into one scale or the other. And he loved her for it. But his non-committal attitudes got on her nerves.”

“She could do no wrong in your eyes,” said Romero indignantly. His sympathies had been aroused on behalf of the unknown Englishman. He admired him.

“I adored her,” said Shiravieff frankly. “Everybody did. She made one live more intensely. Don’t think I undervalued him, however. I couldn’t help seeing how his wheels went round, but I liked him thoroughly. He was a man you could trust, and good company as well. A man of action. What he did had little relation to the opinions he expressed.

“Well, after that dinner with the Vaughans I had no more desire for a lonely holiday; so I did the next best thing, and took an active interest in everything that was going on. I heard all the gossip, for I was staying in the general clearing house, the village inn. In the evenings I often joined the district magistrate as he sat in the garden with a stein of beer in front of him and looked over the notes of the depositions which he had taken that day.

“He was a very solid functionary—a good type of man for a case like that. A more imaginative person would have formed theories, found evidence to fit them, and only added to the mystery. He did not want to discuss the case. No, he had no fear of an indiscretion. It was simply that he had nothing to say, and was clear headed enough to realize it. He admitted that he knew no more than the villagers whose depositions filled his portfolio. But he was ready to talk on any other subject—especially politics—and our long conversations gave me a reputation for profound wisdom among the villagers. Almost I had the standing of a public official.

“So, when a third man disappeared, this time from Zweibergen itself, the mayor and the village constable came to me for instructions. It was the local grocer who was missing. He had climbed up through the forest in the hope of bagging a blackcock at dusk. In the morning the shop did not open. Only then was it known that he had never returned. A solitary shot had been heard about 10.30 p.m., when the grocer was presumably trudging homewards.

“All I could do, pending the arrival of the magistrate, was to send out search parties. We quartered the forest, and examined every path. Vaughan and I, with one of the peasants, went up to my favourite place for blackcock. It was there, I thought, that the grocer would have gone. Then we inspected every foot of the route which he must have taken back to the village. Vaughan knew something about tracking. He was one of those surprising Englishmen whom you may know for years without realizing that once there were coloured men in Africa or Burma or Borneo who knew him still better, and drove game for him, and acknowledged him as someone juster than their gods, but no more comprehensible.

“We had covered some four miles when he surprised me by suddenly showing interest in the undergrowth. Up to then I had been fool enough to think that he was doing precisely nothing.

“ ‘Someone has turned aside from the path here,’ he said. ‘He was in a hurry. I wonder why.’

“A few yards from the path there was a white rock about thirty feet high. It was steep, but projecting ledges gave an easy way up. A hot spring at the foot of it bubbled out of a cavity hardly bigger than a fox’s earth. When Vaughan showed me the signs, I could see that the scrub which grew between the rocks and the path had been roughly pushed aside. But I pointed out that no one was likely to dash off the path through that thicket.

“ ‘When you know you’re being followed, you like to have a clear space around you,’ Vaughan answered. ‘It would be comforting to be on top of that rock with a gun in your hands—if you got there in time. Let’s go up.’

“The top was bare stone, with clumps of creeper and ivy growing from the crannies. Set back some three yards from the edge was a little tree, growing in a pocket of soil. One side of its base was shattered into slivers. It had received a full charge of shot at close quarters. The peasant crossed himself. He murmured:

“ ‘They say there’s always a tree between you and it.’

“I asked him what ‘it’ was. He didn’t answer immediately, but played with his stick casually, and as if ashamed, until the naked steel point was in his hand. Then he muttered:

“ ‘The werewolf.’

“Vaughan laughed and pointed to the shot marks six inches from the ground.

“ ‘The werewolf must be a baby one, if it’s only as tall as that,’ he said. ‘No, the man’s gun went off as he fell. Perhaps he was followed too close as he scrambled up. About there is where his body would have fallen.’

“He knelt down to examine the ground.

“ ‘What’s that?’ he asked me. ‘If it’s blood, it has something else with it.’

“There was only a tiny spot on the bare rock. I looked at it. It was undoubtedly brain tissue. I was surprised that there was no more of it. It must, I suppose, have come from a deep wound in the skull. Might have been made by an arrow, or a bird’s beak, or perhaps a tooth.

“Vaughan slid down the rock, and prodded his stick into the sulphurous mud of the stream bed. Then he hunted about in the bushes like a dog.

“ ‘There was no body dragged away in that direction,’ he said.

“We examined the farther side of the rock. It fell sheer, and seemed an impossible climb for man or beast. The edge was matted with growing things. I was ready to believe that Vaughan’s eyes could tell if anything had passed that way.

“ ‘Not a sign!’ he said. ‘Where the devil has his body gone to?’

“The three of us sat on the edge of the rock in silence. The spring bubbled and wept beneath, and the pines murmured above us. There was no need of a little particle of human substance, recognizable only to a physiologist’s eye, to tell us that we were on the scene of a kill. Imagination? Imagination is so often only a forgotten instinct. The man who ran up that rock wondered in his panic why he gave way to his imagination.

“We found the magistrate in the village when we returned and reported our find to him.

“ ‘Interesting! But what does it tell us?’ he said.

“I pointed out that at least we knew the man was dead or dying.

“ ‘There’s no certain proof. Show me his body. Show me any motive for killing him.’

“Vaughan insisted that it was the work of an animal. The magistrate disagreed. If it were wolf, he said, we might have some difficulty in collecting the body, but none in finding it. And as for bear—well, they were so harmless that the idea was ridiculous.

“Nobody believed in any material beast, for the whole countryside had been beaten. But tales were told in the village—the old tales. I should never have dreamed that those peasants accepted so many horrors as fact if I hadn’t heard those tales in the village inn. The odd thing is that I couldn’t say then, and I can’t say now, that they were altogether wrong. You should have seen the look in those men’s eyes as old Weiss, the game warden, told how time after time his grandfather had fired point-blank at a grey wolf whom he met in the woods at twilight. He had never killed it until he loaded his gun with silver. Then the wolf vanished after the shot, but Heinrich the cobbler was found dying in his house with a beaten silver dollar in his belly.

“Josef Weiss, his son, who did most of the work on the preserves and was seldom seen in the village unless he came down to sell a joint or two of venison, was indignant with his father. He was a heavily built, sullen fellow, who had read a little. There’s nobody so intolerant of superstition as your half-educated man. Vaughan, of course, agreed with him—but then capped the villagers’ stories with such ghastly tales from native folklore and mediæval literature that I couldn’t help seeing he had been brooding on the subject. The peasants took him seriously. They came and went in pairs. No one would step out into the night without a companion. Only the shepherd was unaffected. He didn’t disbelieve, but he was a mystic. He was used to passing to and fro under the trees at night.

“ ‘You’ve got to be a part of those things, sir,’ he said to me, ‘then you’ll not be afraid of them. I don’t say a man can turn himself into a wolf—the Blessed Virgin protect us!—but I know why he’d want to.’

“That was most interesting.

“ ‘I think I know too,’ I answered. ‘But what does it feel like?’

“ ‘It feels as if the woods had got under your skin, and you want to walk wild and crouch at the knees.’

“ ‘He’s perfectly right,’ said Vaughan convincingly.

“That was the last straw for those peasants. They drew away from Vaughan, and two of them spat into the fire to avert his evil eye. He seemed to them much too familiar with the black arts.

“ ‘How do you explain it?’ asked Vaughan, turning to me.

“I told him it might have a dozen different causes, just as fear of the dark has. And physical hunger might also have something to do with it.

“I think our modern psychology is inclined to give too much importance to sex. We forget that man is, or was, a fleet-footed hunting animal equipped with all the necessary instincts.

“As soon as I mentioned hunger, there was a chorus of assent—though they really didn’t know what I or the shepherd or Vaughan was talking about. Most of those men had experienced extreme hunger. The innkeeper was reminded of a temporary famine during the war. The shepherd told us how he had once spent a week stuck on the face of a cliff before he was found. Josef Weiss, eager to get away from the supernatural, told his experiences as a prisoner of war in Russia. With his companions he had been forgotten behind the blank walls of a fortress while their guards engaged in revolution. Those poor devils had been reduced to very desperate straits indeed.

“For a whole week Vaughan and I were out with the search parties day and night. Meanwhile Kyra wore herself out trying to comfort the womenfolk. They couldn’t help loving her—yet half suspected that she herself was at the bottom of the mystery. I don’t blame them. They couldn’t be expected to understand her intense spirituality. To them she was like a creature from another planet, fascinating and terrifying. Without claiming any supernatural powers for her, I’ve no doubt that Kyra could have told the past, present, and future of any of those villagers much more accurately than the travelling gipsies.

“On our first day of rest I spent the afternoon with the Vaughans. He and I were refreshed by twelve hours’ sleep, and certain that we could hit on some new solution to the mystery that might be the right one. Kyra joined in the discussion. We went over the old theories again and again, but could make no progress.

“ ‘We shall be forced to believe the tales they tell in the village,’ I said at last.

“ ‘Why don’t you?’ asked Kyra Vaughan.

“We both protested. Did she believe them, we asked.

“ ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered. ‘What does it matter? But I know that evil has come to those men. Evil . . .’ she repeated.

“We were startled. You smile, Romero, but you don’t realize how that atmosphere of the uncanny affected us.

“Looking back on it, I see how right she was. Women—good Lord, they get hold of the spiritual significance of something, and we take them literally!

“When she left us I asked Vaughan whether she really believed in the werewolf.

“ ‘Not exactly,’ he explained. ‘What she means is that our logic isn’t getting us anywhere—that we ought to begin looking for something which, if it isn’t a werewolf, has the spirit of the werewolf. You see, even if she saw one, she would be no more worried than she is. The outward form of things impresses her so little.’

“Vaughan appreciated his wife. He didn’t know what in the world she meant, but he knew that there was always sense in her parables, even if it took one a long time to make the connection between what she actually said and the way in which one would have expressed the same thing oneself. That, after all, is what understanding means.

“I asked what he supposed she meant by evil.

“ ‘Evil?’ he replied. ‘Evil forces—something that behaves as it has no right to behave. She means almost—possession. Look here! Let’s find out in our own way what she means. Assuming it’s visible, let’s see this thing.’

“It was, he still thought, an animal. Its hunting had been successful, and now that the woods were quiet it would start again. He didn’t think it had been driven away for good.

“ ‘It wasn’t driven away by the first search parties,’ he pointed out. ‘They frightened all the game for miles around, but this thing simply took one of them. It will come back, just as surely as a man-eating lion comes back. And there’s only one way to catch it—bait!’

“ ‘Who’s going to be the bait?’ I asked.

“ ‘You and I.’

“I suppose I looked startled. Vaughan laughed. He said that I was getting fat, that I would make most tempting bait. Whenever he made jokes in poor taste, I knew that he was perfectly serious.

“ ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘Tie me to a tree and watch out with a gun?’

“ ‘That’s about right, except that you needn’t be tied up—and as the idea is mine you can have first turn with the gun. Are you a good shot?’

“I am and so was he. To prove it, we practised on a target after dinner, and found that we could trust each other up to fifty yards in clear moonlight. Kyra disliked shooting. She had a horror of death. Vaughan’s excuse didn’t improve matters. He said that we were going deer stalking the next night and needed some practice.

“ ‘Are you going to shoot them while they are asleep?’ she asked disgustedly.

“ ‘While they are having their supper, dear.’

“ ‘Before, if possible,’ I added.

“I disliked hurting her by jokes that to her were pointless, but we chose that method deliberately. She couldn’t be told the truth, and now she would be too proud to ask questions.

“Vaughan came down to the inn the following afternoon, and we worked out a plan of campaign. The rock was the starting point of all our theories, and on it we decided to place the watcher. From the top there was a clear view of the path for fifty yards on either side. The watcher was to take up his stand, while covered by the ivy, before sunset, and at a little before ten the bait was to be on the path and within shot. He should walk up and down, taking care never to step out of sight of the rock, until midnight, when the party would break up. We reckoned that our quarry, if it reasoned, would take the bait to be a picket posted in that part of the forest.

“The difficulty was getting home. We had to go separately in case we were observed, and hope for the best. Eventually we decided that the man on the path, who might be followed, should go straight down to the road as fast as he could. There was a timber slide quite close, by which he could cut down in ten minutes. The man on the rock should wait awhile and then go home by the path.

“ ‘Well, I shall not see you again until tomorrow morning,’ said Vaughan as he got up to go. ‘You’ll see me but I shan’t see you. Just whistle once, very softly, as I come up the path, so that I know you’re there.’

“He remarked that he had left a letter for Kyra with the notary in case of accidents, and added, with an embarrassed laugh, that he supposed it was silly.

“I thought it was anything but silly, and said so.

“I was on the rock by sunset. I wormed my legs and body back into the ivy, leaving head and shoulders free to pivot with the rifle. It was a little .300 with a longish barrel. I felt certain that Vaughan was as safe as human science and a steady hand could make him.

“The moon came up, and the path was a ribbon of silver in front of me. There’s something silent about moonlight. It’s not light. It’s a state of things. When there was sound it was unexpected, like the sudden shiver on the flank of a sleeping beast. A twig cracked now and then. An owl hooted. A fox slunk across the pathway, looking back over his shoulder. I wished that Vaughan would come. Then the ivy rustled behind me. I couldn’t turn round. My spine became very sensitive, and a point at the back of my skull tingled as if expecting a blow. It was no good my telling myself that nothing but a bird could possibly be behind me—but of course it was a bird. A nightjar whooshed out of the ivy, and my body became suddenly cold with sweat. That infernal fright cleared all vague fears right out of me. I continued to be uneasy, but I was calm.

“After a while I heard Vaughan striding up the path. Then he stepped within range, a bold, clear figure in the moonlight. I whistled softly, and he waved his hand from the wrist in acknowledgment. He walked up and down, smoking a cigar. The point of light marked his head in the shadows. Wherever he went, my sights were lined a yard or two behind him. At midnight he nodded his head towards my hiding place and trotted rapidly away to the timber slide. A little later I took the path home.

“The next night our roles were reversed. It was my turn to walk the path. I found that I preferred to be the bait. On the rock I had longed for another pair of eyes, but after an hour on the ground I did not even want to turn my head. I was quite content to trust Vaughan to take care of anything going on behind me. Only once was I uneasy. I heard, as I thought, a bird calling far down in the woods. It was a strange call, almost a whimper. It was like the little frightened exclamation of a woman. Birds weren’t popular with me just then. I had a crazy memory of some Brazilian bird which drives a hole in the back of your head and lives on brains. I peered down through the trees, and caught a flicker of white in a moonlit clearing below. It showed only for a split second, and I came to the conclusion that it must have been a ripple of wind in the silver grass. When the time was up I went down the timber slide and took the road home to the inn. I fell asleep wondering whether we hadn’t let our nerves run away with us.

“I went up to see the Vaughans in the morning. Kyra looked pale and worried. I told her at once that she must take more rest.

“ ‘She won’t,’ said Vaughan. ‘She can’t resist other people’s troubles.’

“ ‘You see, I can’t put them out of my mind as easily as you,’ she answered provocatively.

“ ‘Oh Lord!’ Vaughan exclaimed. ‘I’m not going to start an argument.’

“ ‘No—because you know you’re in the wrong. Have you quite forgotten this horrible affair?’

“I gathered up the reins of the conversation, and gentled it into easier topics. As I did so, I was conscious of resistance from Kyra; she evidently wanted to go on scrapping. I wondered why. Her nerves, no doubt, were overstrained, but she was too tired to wish to relieve them by a quarrel. I decided that she was deliberately worrying her husband to make him admit how he was spending his evenings.

“That was it. Before I left, she took me apart on the pretext of showing me the garden and pinned the conversation to our shooting expeditions. Please God I’m never in the dock if the prosecuting counsel is a woman! As it was, I had the right to ask questions in my turn, and managed to slip from under her cross-examination without allowing her to feel it. It hurt. I couldn’t let her know the truth, but I hated to leave her in that torment of uncertainty. She hesitated an instant before she said goodbye to me. Then she caught my arm, and cried:

“ ‘Take care of him!’

“I smiled and told her that she was overwrought, that we were doing nothing dangerous. What else could I say?

“That night, the third of the watching, the woods were alive. The world which lives just below the fallen leaves—mice and moles and big beetles—were making its surprising stir. The night birds were crying. A deer coughed far up in the forest. There was a slight breeze blowing, and from my lair on top of the rock I watched Vaughan trying to catch the scents it bore. He crouched down in the shadows. A bear ambled across the path up wind, and began to grub for some succulent morsel at the roots of a tree. It looked as woolly and harmless as a big dog. Clearly neither it nor its kind were the cause of our vigil. I saw Vaughan smile, and knew that he was thinking the same thought.

“A little after eleven the bear looked up, sniffed the air, and disappeared into the black bulk of the undergrowth as effortlessly and completely as if a spotlight had been switched off him. One by one the sounds of the night ceased. Vaughan eased the revolver in his pocket. The silence told its own tale. The forest had laid aside its business, and was watching like ourselves.

“Vaughan walked up the path to the far end of his beat. I looked away from him an instant, and down the path through the trees my eyes caught that same flicker of white. He turned to come back, and by the time that he was abreast of the rock I had seen it again. A bulky object it seemed to be, soft white, moving fast. He passed me, going towards it, and I lined my sights on the path ahead of him. Bounding up through the woods it came, then into the moonlight, and on to him. I was saved only by the extreme difficulty of the shot. I took just a fraction of a second longer than I needed, to make very sure of not hitting Vaughan. In that fraction of a second, thank God, she called to him! It was Kyra. A white ermine coat and her terrified running up the path had made of her a strange figure.

“She clung to him while she got her breath back. I heard her say:

“ ‘I was frightened. There was something after me. I know it.’

“Vaughan did not answer, but held her very close and stroked her hair. His upper lip curled back a little from his teeth. For once his whole being was surrendered to a single emotion: the desire to kill whatever had frightened her.

“ ‘How did you know I was here?’ he asked.

“ ‘I didn’t. I was looking for you. I looked for you last night, too.’

“ ‘You mad, brave girl!’ he said.

“ ‘But you mustn’t, mustn’t be alone. Where’s Shiravieff?’

“ ‘Right there.’ He pointed to the rock.

“ ‘Why don’t you hide yourself, too?’

“ ‘One of us must show himself,’ he answered.

“She understood instantly the full meaning of his reply.

“ ‘Come back with me!’ she cried. ‘Promise me to stop it!’

“ ‘I’m very safe, dear,’ he answered. ‘Look!’

“I can hear his tense voice right now, and remember their exact words. Those things eat into the memory. He led her just below the rock. His left arm was round her. At the full stretch of his right arm he held out his handkerchief by two corners. He did not look at me, nor alter his tone.

“ ‘Shiravieff,’ he said, ‘make a hole in that!’

“It was just a theatrical bit of nonsense, for the handkerchief was the easiest of easy marks. At any other time I would have been as sure as he of the result of the shot. But what he didn’t know was that I had so nearly fired at another white and much larger mark—I was trembling so that I could hardly hold the rifle. I pressed the trigger. The hole in the handkerchief was dangerously near his hand. He put it down to bravado rather than bad shooting.

“Vaughan’s trick had its effect. Kyra was surprised. She did not realize how easy it was, any more than she knew how much harder to hit is a moving mark seen in a moment of excitement.

“ ‘But let me stay with you,’ she appealed.

“ ‘Sweetheart, we’re going back right now. Do you think I’m going to allow my most precious possession to run wild in the woods?’

“ ‘What about mine?’ she said, and kissed him.

“They went away down the short cut. He made her walk a yard in front of him, and I caught the glint of moonlight on the barrel of his revolver. He was taking no risks.

“I myself went back by the path—carelessly, for I was sure that every living thing had been scared away by the voices and the shot. I was nearly down when I knew I was being followed. You’ve both lived in strange places—do you want me to explain the sensation? No? Well then, I knew I was being followed. I stopped and faced back up the path. Instantly something moved past me in the bushes, as if to cut off my retreat. I’m not superstitious. Once I heard it, I felt safe, for I knew where it was. I was sure I could move faster down that path than anything in the undergrowth—and if it came out into the open, it would have to absorb five steel explosive bullets. I ran. So far as I could hear, it didn’t follow.

“I told Vaughan the next morning what had happened.

“ ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I had to take her back. You understand, don’t you?’

“ ‘Of course,’ I answered in surprise. ‘What else could you do?’

“ ‘Well, I didn’t like leaving you alone. We had advertised our presence pretty widely. True, we should have frightened away any animal—but all we know about this animal is that it doesn’t behave like one. There was a chance of our attracting instead of frightening it. We’re going to get it tonight,’ he added savagely.

“I asked if Kyra would promise to stay at home.

“ ‘Yes. She says we’re doing our duty, and that she won’t interfere. Do you think this is our duty?’

“ ‘No!’ I said.

“ ‘Nor do I. I never feel that anything which I enjoy can possibly be my duty. And, by God, I enjoy this now!’

“I think he did enjoy it as he waited on the rock that night. He wanted revenge. There was no reason to believe that Kyra had been frightened by anything more than night and loneliness, but he was out against the whole set of circumstances that had dared to affect her. He wanted to be the bait instead of the watcher—I believe, with some mad hope of getting his hands on his enemy. But I wouldn’t let him. After all, it was my turn.

“Bait! As I walked up and down the path, the word kept running through my mind. There wasn’t a sound. The only moving thing was the moon which passed from tree top to tree top as the night wore on. I pictured Vaughan on the rock, the foresight of his rifle creeping backwards and forwards in a quarter circle as it followed my movements. I visualized the line of his aim as a thread of light passing down and across in front of my eyes. Once I heard Vaughan cough. I knew that he had seen my nervousness and was reassuring me. I stood by a clump of bushes some twenty yards away, watching a silver leaf that shook as some tiny beast crawled up it.

“Hot breath on the back of my neck—crushing weight on my shoulders—hardness against the back of my skull—the crack of Vaughan’s rifle—they were instantaneous, but not too swift for me to know all the terror of death. Something leapt away from me, and squirmed into the springhead beneath the rock.

“ ‘Are you all right?’ shouted Vaughan, crashing down through the ivy.

“ ‘What was it?’

“ ‘A man. I’ve winged him. Come on! I’m going in after him!’

“Vaughan was berserk mad. I’ve never seen such flaming disregard of danger. He drew a deep breath, and tackled the hole as if it were a man’s ankles. Head and shoulders, he sloshed into the mud of the cavity, emptying his Winchester in front of him. If he couldn’t wriggle forward swiftly without drawing breath he would be choked by the sulphur fumes or drowned. If his enemy were waiting for him, he was a dead man. He disappeared and I followed. No, I didn’t need any courage. I was covered by the whole length of Vaughan’s body. But it was a vile moment. We’d never dreamed that anything could get in and out through that spring. Imagine holding your breath, and trying to squirm through hot water, using your hips and shoulders like a snake, not knowing how you would return if the way forward was barred. At last I was able to raise myself on my hands and draw a breath. Vaughan had dragged himself clear and was on his feet, holding a flashlight in front of him.

“ ‘Got him!’ he said.

“We were in a low cave under the rock. There was air from the cracks above us. The floor was of dry sand, for the hot stream flowed into the cave close to the hole by which it left. A man lay crumpled up at the far end of the hollow. We crossed over to him. He held a sort of long pistol in his hand. It was a spring humane-killer. The touch of that wide muzzle against my skull is not a pleasant memory. The muzzle is jagged, you see, so that it grips the scalp while the spike is released.

“We turned the body over—it was Josef Weiss. Werewolf? Possession? I don’t know. I would call it an atavistic neurosis. But that’s a name, not an explanation.

“Beyond the body there was a hole some six feet in diameter, as round as if it had been bored by a rotary drill. The springs which had forced that passage had dried up, but the mottled-yellow walls were smooth as marble with the deposit left by the water. Evidently Weiss had been trying to reach that opening when Vaughan dropped him. We climbed that natural sewer pipe. For half an hour the flashlight revealed nothing but the sweating walls of the hole. Then we were stopped by a roughly hewn ladder which sprawled across the passage. The rungs were covered with mud, and here and there were dark stains on the wood. We went up. It led to a hollow evidently dug out with spade and chisel. The roof was of planks, with a trapdoor at one end. We lifted it with our shoulders, and stood up within the four walls of a cottage. A fire was smouldering on the open hearth, and as we let in the draught of air, a log burst into flame. A gun stood in the ingle. On a rack were some iron traps and a belt of cartridges. There was a table in the centre of the room with a long knife on it. That was all we saw with our first glance. With our second we saw a lot more. Weiss had certainly carried his homicidal mania to extremes. I imagine his beastly experiences as a prisoner of war had left a kink in the poor devil’s mind. Then, digging out a cellar or repairing the floor, he had accidentally discovered the dry channel beneath the cottage, and followed it to its hidden outlet. That turned his secret desires into action. He could kill and remove his victim without any trace. And so he let himself go.

“At dawn we were back at the cottage with the magistrate. When he came out, he was violently, terribly sick. I have never seen a man be so sick. It cleared him. No, I’m not being humorous. It cleared him mentally. He needed none of those emotional upheavals which we have to employ to drive shock out of our system. Didn’t I tell you he was unimaginative? He handled the subsequent inquiry in a masterly fashion. He accepted as an unavoidable fact the horror of the thing, but he wouldn’t listen to tales which could not be proved. There was never any definite proof of the extra horror in which the villagers believed.”

There was an exclamation from Lewis Banning.

“Ah—you remember now. I thought you would. The Press reported that rumour as a fact, but there was no definite proof, I tell you.

“Vaughan begged me to keep it from his wife. I was to persuade her to go away at once before a breath of it could reach her. I was to tell her that he might have received internal injuries, and should be examined without delay. He himself believed the tale that was going round, but he was very conscious of his poise. I suspect that he was feeling a little proud of himself—proud that he was unaffected. But he dreaded the effect of the shock on his wife.

“We were too late. The cook had caught the prevailing fever, and told that unpleasant rumour to Kyra. She ran to her husband, deadly pale, desperate, instinctively seeking protection against the blow. He could protect himself, and would have given his life to be able to protect her. He tried, but only gave her words and more words. He explained that, looking at the affair calmly, it didn’t matter; that no one could have known; that the best thing was to forget it; and so on. It was absurd. As if anyone who believed what was being said could look at the affair calmly!

“Sentiments of that kind were no comfort to his wife. She expected him to show his horror, not to isolate himself as if he had shut down a lid, not to leave her spiritually alone. She cried out at him that he had no feeling and rushed to her room. Perhaps I should have given her a sedative, but I didn’t. I knew that the sooner she had it out with herself, the better, and that her mind was healthy enough to stand it.

“I said so to Vaughan, but he did not understand. Emotion, he thought, was dangerous. It mustn’t be let loose. He wanted to tell her again not to ‘worry’. He didn’t see that he was the only person within ten miles who wasn’t ‘worried’.

“She came down later. She spoke to Vaughan scornfully, coldly, as if she had found him unfaithful to her. She said to him:

“ ‘I can’t see the woman again. Tell her to go, will you?’

“She meant the cook. Vaughan challenged her. He was just obstinately logical and fair.

“ ‘It’s not her fault,’ he said. ‘She’s an ignorant woman, not an anatomist. We’ll call her in, and you’ll see how unjust you are.’

“ ‘Oh no!’ she cried—and then checked herself.

“ ‘Send for her then!’ she said.

“The cook came in. How could she know, she sobbed—she had noticed nothing—she was sure that what she had bought from Josef Weiss was really venison—she didn’t think for a moment. . . . Well, blessed are the simple!

“ ‘My God! Be quiet!’ Kyra burst out. ‘You all of you think what you want to think. You all lie to yourselves and pretend and have no feelings!’

“I couldn’t stand any more. I begged her not to torture herself and not to torture me. It was the right note. She took my hands and asked me to forgive her. Then the tears came. She cried, I think, till morning. At breakfast she had a wan smile for both of us, and I knew that she was out of danger—clear of the shock for good. They left for England the same day.

“I met them in Vienna two years ago, and they dined with me. We never mentioned Zweibergen. They still adored one another, and still quarrelled. It was good to hear them talk and watch them feeling for each other’s sympathy.

“Vaughan refused his meat at dinner, and said that he had become a vegetarian.

“ ‘Why?’ I asked deliberately.

“He answered that he had recently had a nervous breakdown—could eat nothing, and had nearly died. He was all right now, he said; no trace of the illness remained but his distaste for meat . . . it had come over him quite suddenly . . . he could not think why.

“I tell you the man was absolutely serious. He could not think why. Shock had lain hidden in him for ten years, and then had claimed its penalty.”

“And you?” asked Banning. “How did you get clear of shock? You had to control your emotions at the time.”

“A fair question,” said Shiravieff. “I’ve been living under a suspended sentence. There have been days when I thought I should visit one of my colleagues and ask him to clean up the mess. If I could only have got the story out of my system, it would have helped a lot—but I couldn’t bring myself to tell it.”

“You have just told it,” said Colonel Romero solemnly.