"He told me a cock-and-bull story about his wife having seen an apparition, or some sort of fearsomely deformed creature of flesh and blood slithering along the walk outside her bedroom window. I read all the evidence — Ord's story and his wife's. She stuck to her 'apparition*. She was circumstantial about it. The thing — whatever it was — had the body of a man — a nude man who wriggled along on the ground and showed a repulsively contorted face. Well, I came to a prosaic explanation of the whole affair. The 'apparition* was simply Ord himself, coming home in the night from some drunken spree, making a disgusting spectacle of himself and preferring now to subscribe to his wife's superstitious fancies rather than confess his delinquency. I let them go.
"It's one thing to have a story like that from a local but—"
"Ah," I cut in, "you've had some sort of confirmation from a more credible source. Seen the thing yourself?"
"Thanks for not laughing at me," he replied, "though I shouldn't blame you if you concluded that I'd lapsed into the state of bigoted ignorance that rules the district.
"About our apparation and its second appearance," he resumed, with animation. "No, I did not see it myself. I just missed it. But Mrs Alson saw it as plainly as I see you. Mrs Alson is my wife's maid. She's Yorkshire. She's placid. She's literal. She's a teetotaller. Her eyes are excellent. In short I accept her account of what she saw as if I had seen it myself. It was about two months ago."
My brain made a swift calculation. The date he named would correspond to the period of the writing of Margery's letter to her father. Once again I recalled the outstanding phrase: "If it happens once again, papa, it will kill me." I listened to Drurock with sharpened attention.
"It was infernally hot that night," he was saying.
I interrupted him. "That's the second time you have mentioned the heat. I gather you trace some connection between the — phenomenon, and the thermometer."
"Excellent!" He purred applause. "Yoy are right up with me." He approved me with a warm glance of something like affection.
"Let's have Mrs Alson's tale," I said.
"She came down from her room on an upper floor about two a.m.," he obliged. "She was suffocating, she told me later, and the idea came into her head to go down into the cellar and draw herself a glass of cider. She was coming down the stairs and she reached the bend. There is a landing — or a wider step — at this point, and on this step stood the man — or thing. He was coming up. Moonlight was streaming in through the oriel and he stood fully revealed. Mrs Alson suffered grave shock, both to her nerves and to her English sense of the proprieties. The creature was stark naked. It had the body of a man, she says. The face! Well, she can only describe it as that of a demon, a contorted and devilish caricature of a human face, the eyes crossed and glaring like a mad dog's!
"Of course, she fainted on the spot. I really think she might have died there of shock if I hadn't awakened about that hour. I awoke parched and dripping out of the kind of stupor that sleep becomes in excessive heat and I also was driven downstairs in search of something to drink. I nearly fell over Mrs Alson's prostrate form. I got her into the room of one of the maids and we revived her. I sent the maid out while Mrs Alson whimpered her tale. That was a precaution. You'll understand."
I nodded. "You didn't want the story disrupting the whole household, naturally."
"And specifically," he said, "I didn't want it — don't want it to get to my wife."
"Oh," I asked, somewhat disingenuously, "then Mrs. Drurock knows nothing of all this?"
"Absolutely nothing," he affirmed. "And she must know nothing of it. My wife is rather finely strung. She is delicate. It's a matter of both breeding and health. If she should hear of our visitant, the effect on her system might be grave." He shook his head deploringly. "And if, by any chance, she were ever to encounter the thing itself, I shudder to think of the possible consequences."
"Why don't you close up the house and move away?"
He scowled. "The Drurocks belong here. A patrimony must not be renounced. If you do not understand the force which keeps me here, surely you will follow me when I say I can't go away from here with the mystery unsolved."
"Yes," I agreed, "as a scientist I can understand that."
He brightened again. "You must stay here and solve it with me. We'll compare notes."
"You have no further data?" I asked.
He hesitated. "In a way, I have. There's the miasma."
"Miasma?"
"Yes. A sort of thick vapour. Sometimes it becomes dense enough to form an opaque column, rather definite in outline. I've seen it. So have others. That's the source of another legend, of course. The house is haunted, in the approved manner, by a wraith that walks in white."
"It rises, then, within the house?"
He nodded.
"Where?"
He was evasive. I was certain of that and that he was withholding some definite knowledge he had. "Oh, here and there," he said, vaguely. "I'm not sure about the exact spot."
"Then that's all?"
Again he hesitated. "There's a document," he slowly said, and then leaped to his feet briskly. "But you've had enough for one sitting. You've got—" He counted off the elements of his account on his fingers. "You've got: the slithering visitant—"
"A naked man with a contorted face," I checked.
"— the heat—"
"Seen when the thermometer is high.", " — and the miasma," he concluded.
I waited, studying my own thoughts. When I looked over to him I caught him observing me from under lowered eyelids.
On impulse, I said, "Why.do you tell me all this?"
"Isn't it what you came here to find out?" he retorted, quietlyI digested the import of his words, which meant that he knew of our reasons for entering his home, that we were not the casual visitors in the neighbourhood that we professed to be — that he knew or guessed all this; and how much more? I traded boldness for boldness, frankness for frankness.
"Yes," I said. "I do want to get at the explanation for some curious'things I've observed."
"There speaks the scientist," he cried, with undisguised irony. "And your friend, Mr Alfred — or was it Aubrey? Hume — or is it Wales? Is his interest — zoological, too?"
I stood up. "Shall we leave?" I inquired.
"With curiosity unsatisfied?" he cried. "No, certainly not." And then he became earnest. "For some time, I've expected that outsiders would become interested in us down here. It was inevitable, with all the tales being spread around. I welcome investigation, Mr McAllister. I welcome having it conducted by one so competent as yourself, a fellow with 'RA' and 'FRGS' after his name. And—" he gave me a courteous nod — "I like its being done by a gentleman."
"And Aubrey Wales—" I began.
"— my wife's former fiance," he put in.
"Is he a welcome guest, too?"
"Why not? Why not?" he chuckled.
He gave my shoulder a friendly pat of dismissal. "Don't hurry your solution, Mr McAllister," he said, a light of mocking complacency dancing in his eyes. "Let's make it last. You can't imagine how this visit relieves the monotony which is the other disadvantage of Low Fennel."
I turned "and went up the hall. My foot was on the lower stair when I heard his low call behind me, and turned around. He had his head stuck through the study door and a smile of chummy complicity was on the large face.
"And — another thing, Mr McAllister," he whispered, loudly. "I propose a trade. Don't you tell young Mr Wales about this and I shan't bother Mrs Drurock with it. Have you ever noticed that young and beautiful people are entirely devoid of brains?"