Altogether, he was one of the most remarkable specimens I ever beheld and the more I saw of him the more my initial impression of unpleasantness and shiftiness was reinforced. But Solar Pons seemed oblivious of all this and smiled at him pleasantly enough through his pipe smoke, as he sat back in his easy-chair and favored me with a subtle droop of his right eyelid.
"Well, Mr. Grimstone," he said at length. "Just how can I serve you?"
The old man looked at him suspiciously.
"You got my letter, Mr. Pons?"
"Indeed," said my companion. "In fact there was some difficulty in the matter. Some trifling oversight in the matter of the stamp. There was a surcharge of three pence that my landlady had to pay."
I was astonished at Pons' words but even more so at our client's response. Far from being offended he drew himself up frostily and his eyes positively twinkled as he looked at Pons with something like admiration.
"A minor matter, my dear sir," he snapped. "No doubt covered by the overcharges on my bill."
He wagged his grubby forefinger at Pons.
"I have never yet met anyone who failed to overcharge Solar Pons looked at him imperturbably, his penetrating yes shot with humor through the pipe smoke.
"In that case had you better not consult someone else in our problem?" he said mildly.
Grimstone jerked in his chair as though stung by some venomous insect. His voice rose to a high, strangled squawk. "After having come all this way up from Kent, Mr. Pons? With the scandalously expensive fares imposed by the railways…?"
There was dismay as well as anger in the tones and Solar 'Pons glanced at me with an open smile.
"I have touched upon your Achilles heel, it would appear, Ir. Grimstone. Pray lay your problem before me without further ado."
Grimstone fixed Pons with glittering eyes.
"Ah, then you have decided to take the case, Mr. Pons?"
My companion shook his head slowly.
"I have not said so. If it presents points of interest I may agree to do so."
Our visitor actually rocked to and fro in his chair as though with anguish.
"And if you do not?" he snapped. "The railway fare, Mr. Pons! The fare! I shall write to my Member of Parliament." Solar Pons chuckled easily, sending a lazy plume of smoke p toward the ceiling.
"I am not quite sure whether you are referring to the iniquitously high cost of railway travel, Mr. Grimstone, or to my conduct. But in either event your M.P. will be no more pleased to having to pay a surcharge on his letter than I was."
Grimstone was off on another tack. He crossed his bony hands and smirked.
"Ah, then we are at one, Mr. Pons," he mumbled, as though my companion had agreed with him. "I must have your help in this monstrous persecution to which I am being subjected. 'When could you come down? We do not exactly keep open house but we could accommodate you in some corner of the manor."
"I should first prefer to hear something of the business which brings you here, Mr. Grimstone. Your letter was nothing if not sensational in its implications."
Grimstone drew down the corner of his mouth as though Pons had said something distasteful and momentarily lapsed into silence. For a second or two I glimpsed such fear on his face as I have seldom seen on a human being. It was obvious to me that Pons had also seen it and that Grimstone's newly assumed business-like manner was a mere façade, which might crack at any moment.
Solar Pons paused a little to allow our visitor to recover himself, looking not unsympathetically at our strange caller through the aromatic clouds of tobacco smoke.
"You spoke of a crawling horror, Mr. Grimstone?" he said at length. "Can you amplify that somewhat enigmatic statement?"
Grimstone shook his head, waving it from side to side so agitatedly that it looked as though he had palsy.
"I can, Mr. Pons," he said in a dead voice. "It is something that haunts me; something that I can never forget."
"You had better start at the beginning, my dear sir," said Solar Pons softly. "Take your time and tell the story in your own words."
Our client sat puffing his cheeks in and out for a few moments, looking with cunning eyes first at me and then at my companion. I must say that my distaste for him and his malodorous clothing was growing by the minute but Solar Pons stared imperturbably in front of him and continued ejecting sweet-scented smoke from his pipe until our bizarre visitor should be ready to continue.
He began abruptly, without preamble, with the look upon him of a man who has suddenly made up his mind to take the plunge only because of dire necessity at his elbow.
"You probably know about me, Mr. Pons. My activities have not passed unnoticed in the city. I have amassed a certain amount of money, it is true, but I am a poor man in comparison with many I could name; and my expenses have been heavy — extremely heavy."
He paused as though expecting Pons to agree with him and receiving no reaction continued in a disappointed tone.
"I live quite frugally as befits my station, Mr. Pons, in an old manor house on the marshes near Gravesend. My niece, Miss Sylvia Grimstone, lives with me and keeps house and we do tolerably well. I am not much in the city these days and keep in touch by telephone. My health has not been too good these last few years and I have had to ease up a little."
Solar Pons ejected a cloud of blue smoke into the air of our sitting room.
"What staff have you at the manor, Mr. Grimstone?"
Our visitor looked startled.
"Staff, Mr. Pons?"
He smirked.
"Good gracious me, I cannot run to that. My niece sees to all our wants. In return she receives bed and board and a yearly stipend."
His voice dropped on the last words as though the stipend were a matter of great regret to him. Pons could not forbear in amused glance across at me.
"We lived an uneventful life until a few months ago, Mr. Pons, when these terrible things happened."
"What terrible things, Mr. Grimstone? You have told me little as yet. Pray be most precise as to circumstance and details.."
Solar Pons tented his thin fingers before him and fixed our visitors with a steady glance.
"As I have indicated, Mr. Pons, we live an isolated and sheltered life there on the marsh. The manor has been in our family for centuries and descended to me from my brother. Its solution suited me and the property, which is a curious one, is actually on an island in the marsh and approached by a causeway."
Solar Pons glanced at Grimstone, his eyes penetrating beneath his half-lowered lids.
"The marsh is dangerous?"
"Oh, yes indeed, Mr. Pons. In some places it is actual swamp, though sheep and cattle graze on it here and there. sometimes it claims an unwary beast and some areas are reputed to be literally bottomless."
"I see. But you know it well?"
"Certainly, Mr. Pons. I spent some time there with relatives when a child. But the manor itself and the area immediately surrounding it is safe enough, and the causeway which links it with the firmer ground runs direct to a good secondary road."
Solar Pons nodded.
"It is as well to get the background details firmly in one's mind, Mr. Grimstone. I find it a great aid to the ratiocinative processes. Eh, Parker?"
"Certainly, Pons."
Our client nodded, his mean little eyes gleaming.
"Well, Mr. Pons, Grimstone Manor may seem a somewhat strange and out of the way place to a stranger, but it suits me and my niece."
He shifted in his chair and once again I caught the unpleasant smell of mold and old clothing.
"It was October, Mr. Pons. A cold, windy day, but toward sunset the wind dropped and a thin mist began to rise. I had been in to our local village of Stavely, some miles from Allhallows, and was walking back along the marsh road, which is, as you may imagine, elevated some way about its surroundings. It is a wild, bleak, lonely place even in summer and you can imagine what it must be like at dusk on a bitter autumn day."