Bat Wing

upon me!”

“Yet, if I may say so,” murmured Harley, “your will to live seems to have become somewhat weakened.”

“What do you mean?”

Colonel Menendez stood up, his delicate nostrils dilated. He glared angrily at Harley.

“I mean that I perceive a certain resignation in your manner of which I do not approve.”

“You do not approve?” said Colonel Menendez, softly; and I thought as he stood looking down upon my friend that I had rarely seen a more formidable figure.

Paul Harley had roused him unaccountably, and knowing my friend for a master of tact I knew also that this had been deliberate, although I could not even dimly perceive his object.

“I occupy the position of a specialist,” Harley continued, “and you occupy that of my patient. Now, you cannot disguise from me that your mental opposition to this danger which threatens has become slackened. Allow me to remind you that the strongest defence is counter-attack. You are angry, Colonel Menendez, but I would rather see you angry than apathetic. To come to my last point. You spoke of a neighbour in terms which led me to suppose that you suspected him of some association with your enemies. May I ask for the name of this person?”

Colonel Menendez sat down again, puffing furiously at his cigarette, whilst beginning to roll another. He was much disturbed, was fighting to regain mastery of himself.

“I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” he said, “for a breach of good behaviour which really was unforgivable. I was angry when I should have been grateful. Much that you have said is true. Because it is true, I despise myself.”

He flashed a glance at Paul Harley.

“Awake,” he continued, “I care for no man breathing, black or white; but asleep”— he shrugged his shoulders. “It is in sleep that these dealers in unclean things obtain their advantage.”

“You excite my curiosity,” declared Harley.

“Listen,” Colonel Menendez bent forward, resting his elbows upon his knees. Between the yellow fingers of his left hand he held the newly completed cigarette whilst he continued to puff vigorously at the old one. “You recollect my speaking of the death of a certain native girl?”

Paul Harley nodded.

“The real cause of her death was never known, but I obtained evidence to show that on the night after the wing of a bat had been attached to her hut, she wandered out in her sleep and visited the Black Belt. Can you doubt that someone was calling her?”

“Calling her?”

“Mr. Harley, she was obeying the call of M’kombo!”

“The call of M’kombo? You refer to some kind of hypnotic suggestions?”

“I illustrate,” replied the Colonel, “to help to make clear something which I have to tell you. On the night when last the moon was full— on the night after someone had entered the house— I had retired early to bed. Suddenly I awoke, feeling very cold. I awoke, I say, and where do you suppose I found myself?”

“I am all anxiety to hear.”

“On the point of entering the Tudor garden— you call it Tudor garden?—  which is visible from the window of your room!”

“Most extraordinary,” murmured Harley; “and you were in your night attire?”

“I was.”

“And what had awakened you?”

“An accident. I believe a lucky accident. I had cut my bare foot upon the gravel and the pain awakened me.”

“You had no recollection of any dream which had prompted you to go down into the garden?”

“None whatever.”

“Does your room face in that direction?”

“It does not. It faces the lake on the south of the house. I had descended to a side door, unbarred it, and walked entirely around the east wing before I awakened.”

“Your room faces the lake,” murmured Harley.

“Yes.”

Their glances met, and in Paul Harley’s expression there seemed to be a challenge.

“You have not yet told me,” said he, “the name of your neighbour.”

Colonel Menendez lighted his new cigarette.

“Mr. Harley,” he confessed, “I regret that I ever referred to this suspicion of mine. Indeed it is hardly a suspicion, it is what I may call a desperate doubt. Do you say that, a desperate doubt?”

“I think I follow you,” said Harley.

“The fact is this, I only know of one person within ten miles of Cray’s Folly who has ever visited Cuba.”

“Ah.”

“I have no other scrap of evidence to associate him I with my shadowy enemy. This being so, you will pardon me if I ask you to forget that I ever referred to his existence.”

He spoke the words with a sort of lofty finality, and accompanied them with a gesture of the hands which really left Harley no alternative but to drop the subject.

Again their glances met, and it was patent to me that underlying all this conversation was something beyond my ken. What it was that Harley suspected I could not imagine, nor what it was that Colonel Menendez desired to conceal; but tension was in the very air. The Spaniard was on the defensive, and Paul Harley was puzzled, irritated.

It was a strange interview, and one which in the light of after events I recognized to possess extraordinary significance. That sixth sense of Harley’s was awake, was prompting him, but to what extent he understood its promptings at that hour I did not know, and have never known to this day. Intuitively, I believe, as he sat there staring at Colonel Menendez, he began to perceive the shadow within a shadow which was the secret of Cray’s Folly, which was the thing called Bat Wing, which was the devilish force at that very hour alive and potent in our midst.

Chapter 9 OBEAH

This conversation in Colonel Menendez’s study produced a very unpleasant impression upon my mind. The atmosphere of Cray’s Folly seemed to become charged with unrest. Of Madame de Stamer and Miss Beverley I saw nothing up to the time that I retired to dress. Having dressed I walked into Harley’s room, anxious to learn if he had formed any theory to account for the singular business which had brought us to Surrey.

Harley had excused himself directly we had left the study, stating that he wished to get to the village post- office in time to send a telegram to London. Our host had suggested a messenger, but this, as well as the offer of a car, Harley had declined, saying that the exercise would aid reflection. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find his room empty, for I could not imagine why the sending of a telegram should have detained him so long.

Dusk was falling, and viewed from the open window the Tudor garden below looked very beautiful, part of it lying in a sort of purplish shadow and the rest being mystically lighted as though viewed through a golden veil. To the whole picture a sort of magic quality was added by a speck of high-light which rested upon the face of the old sun-dial.

I thought that here was a fit illustration for a fairy tale; then I remembered the Colonel’s account of how he had awakened in the act of entering this romantic plaisance, and I was touched anew by an unrestfulness, by a sense of the uncanny.

I observed a book lying upon the dressing table, and concluding that it was one which Harley had brought with him, I took it up, glancing at the title. It was “Negro Magic,” and switching on the light, for there was a private electric plant in Cray’s Folly, I opened the book at random and began to read.

“The religion of the negro,” said this authority, “is emotional, and more often than not associated with beliefs in witchcraft and in the rites known as Voodoo or Obi Mysteries. It has been endeavoured by some students to show that these are relics of the Fetish worship of equatorial Africa, but such a genealogy has never been satisfactorily demonstrated. The cannibalistic rituals, human sacrifices, and obscene ceremonies resembling those