“There, Faulks, there,” rumbled Sir Harry, moving smoothly into the entrance with the unstoppable authority of a great clipper ship under full sail. “It can’t be as bad as all that now, can it?”
“Oh, it can, sir, it can,” said Faulks, following in Mandifer’s wake down the hall. “You just can’t get a hold on it, sir, is what it is, and every time it’s back, it’s bigger, sir!”
“In the study, isn’t it?” asked Sir Harry, opening the door of that room and gazing inside.
He stood stock-still and his eyes widened a trifle because the sight before him, even for one so experienced in peculiar sights as he, was startling.
Imagine a beautiful room, exquisitely furnished, impeccably maintained. Imagine the occupant of that room to be a thin, tallish gentleman, dressed faultlessly, in the best possible taste. Conceive of the whole thing, man and room in combination, to be a flawless example of the sort of styled perfection that only large amounts of money, filtered through generations of confident privilege, can produce.
Now see that man on his hands and knees, in one of the room’s corners, staring, bug-eyed, at the wall, and, on the wall, picture:
“Remarkable,” said Sir Harry Mandifer.
“Isn’t it, sir?” moaned Faulks. “Oh, isn’t it?”
“I’m so glad you could come, Sir Harry,” said Archer, from his crouched position in the corner. It was difficult to make out his words as he spoke them through clenched teeth.
“Forgive me for not rising, but if I take my eyes off this thing or even blink, the whole—oh, God damn it!”
Instantly, the
vanished from the wall. Archer gave out an explosive sigh, clapped his hands to his face, and sat back heavily on the floor.
“Don’t tell me where it’s got to now, Faulks,” he said, “I don’t want to know; I don’t want to hear about it.”
Faulks said nothing, only touched a trembling hand on Sir Harry’s shoulder and pointed to the ceiling. There, almost directly in its center, was:
Sir Harry leaned his head close to Faulks’s ear and whispered: “Keep looking at it for as long as you can, old man. Try not to let it get away.” Then in his normal, conversational tone, which was a kind of cheerful roar, he spoke to Archer: “Seems you have a bit of a sticky problem here, what?”
Archer looked up grimly from between his fingers. Then, carefully, he lowered his arms and stood. He brushed himself off, made a few adjustments on his coat and tie, and spoke:
“I’m sorry, Sir Harry. I’m afraid I rather let it get the better of me.”
“No such thing!” boomed Sir Harry Mandifer, clapping Archer on the back. “Besides, it’s enough to rattle anyone. Gave me quite a turn, myself, and I’m used to this sort of nonsense!”
Sir Harry had developed his sturdy technique of encouragement during many a campaign in a haunted house and ghost-ridden moor, and it did not fail him now. Archer’s return to self-possession was almost immediate. Satisfied at the restoration, Sir Harry looked up at the ceiling.
“You say it started as a kind of spot?” he asked, peering at the dark thing which spread above them.
“About as big as a penny,” answered Archer.
“What have the stages been like, between then and now?”
“Little bits come out of it. They get bigger, and, at the same time, other little bits come popping out, and, as if that weren’t enough, the whole ghastly thing keeps swelling, like some damned balloon.”
“Nasty,” said Sir Harry.
“I’d say it’s gotten to be a yard across,” said Archer.
“At least.”
“What do you make of it, Sir Harry?”
“It looks to me like a sort of plant.”
Both the butler and Archer gaped at him. The
instantly disappeared.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the butler, stricken.
“What do you mean, plant?” asked Archer. “It can’t be a plant, Sir Harry. It’s perfectly flat, for one thing.”
“Have you touched it?”
Archer sniffed.
“Not very likely,” he said.
Discreetly, the butler cleared his throat.
“It’s on the floor, gentlemen,” he said.
The three looked down at the thing with reflectful expressions. Its longest reach was now a little over four feet. “You’ll notice,” said Harry, “that the texture of the carpet does not show through the blackness, therefore it’s not like ink, or some other stain. It has an independent surface.”
He stooped down, surprisingly graceful for a man of his size, and, pulling a pencil from his pocket, poked at the thing. The pencil went into the darkness for about a quarter of an inch, and then stopped. He jabbed at another point, this time penetrating a good, full inch.
“You see,” said Sir Harry, standing. “It does have a complex kind of shape. Our eyes can perceive it only in a two-dimensional way, but the sense of touch moves it along to the third. The obvious implication of all this length, width and breadth business is that your plant’s drifted in from some other dimensional set, do you see? I should imagine the original spot was its seed. Am I making myself clear on all this? Do you understand?”
Archer did not, quite, but he gave a reasonably good imitation of a man who had.
“But why did the accursed thing show up here?” he asked.
Sir Harry seemed to have the answer for that one too, but Faulks interrupted it, whatever it may have been, and we shall never know it.
“Oh, sir,” he cried. “It’s gone, again!”
It was, indeed. The carpet stretched unblemished under the three men’s feet. They looked about the room, somewhat anxiously now, but could find no trace of the invader.
“Perhaps it’s gone back into the dining room,” said Sir Harry, but a search revealed that it had not.
“There is no reason to assume it must confine itself to the two rooms,” said Sir Harry, thoughtfully chewing his lip. “Nor even to the house, itself.”
Faulks, standing closer to the hallway door than the others, tottered, slightly, and emitted a strangled sound. The others turned and looked where the old man pointed. There, stretching across the striped paper of the hall across from the door was:
“This is,” Archer said, in a choked voice, “really a bit too much, Sir Harry. Something simply must be done or the damned thing will take over the whole, bloody house!”
“Keep your eyes fixed on it, Faulks,” said Sir Harry, “at all costs.” He turned to Archer. “It has substance, I have proven that. It can be attacked. Have you some large cutting instrument about the place? A machete? Something like that?”
Archer pondered, then brightened, in a grim sort of way.
“I have a kris,” he said.
“Get it,” said Sir Harry.
Archer strode from the room, clenching and unclenching his hands. There was a longish pause, and then his voice called from another room:
“I can’t get the blasted thing off its mounting!”
“I’ll come and help,” Sir Harry answered. He turned to Faulks who was pointing at the thing on the wall like some loyal bird dog. “Never falter, old man,” he said. “Keep your gaze rock steady!”
The kris, an old war souvenir brought to the house by Archer’s grandfather, was fixed to its display panel by a complicatedly woven arrangement of wires, and it took Sir Harry and Archer a good two minutes to get it free. They hurried back to the hall and there jarred to a halt, absolutely thunderstruck. The
was nowhere to be seen, but that was not the worst: the butler, Faulks, was gone! Archer and Sir Harry exchanged startled glances and then called the servant’s name, again and again, with no effect whatever.