old-fashioned bathroom to fix Orsen’s first camera and his sound machine. As they entered the room Bruce wrinkled his nose. “What a filthy smell! The drainage must be terrible.”
Neils agreed as he placed one instrument on the window-sill and one on the broad mahogany ledge that surrounded the old-fashioned bath. He sealed the windows with fine silken threads and did the same to the door. Then, with their footsteps echoing behind them, they made a tour of the silent chateau, leaving the Swede’s cameras in carefully selected places, till they came to the front hall, where Orsen left his last camera, and sealed the door leading to the back stairs with the remains of the reel of silk. Their job done they returned to the ballroom, and having made themselves as comfortable as possible with the rugs and cushions, settled down for the night.
Bruce could not sleep. They had lit a fire with some dry logs found in the kitchen and its dying flames sent a cavalcade of writhing shapes racing across the walls and ceiling.
Presently a moon shone through the uncurtained windows; propping himself on his elbow Bruce started at the unfamiliar lines it etched on Neils’s face as he lay on his back, breathing gently. Orsen’s enormous domed forehead shone like some beautiful Chinese ivory as the cold white light glanced across it, and his heavy blue-veined lids and sensitive mouth were curiously like those of a woman. He was sound asleep, yet Bruce knew that if there were the slightest sound or if an evil presence approached, he would be alert and fully in command of all his faculties in a fraction of a second.
Bruce lay back reassured. He could hear the muffled scuffling of rats behind the wainscoting. At length he dozed off.
Suddenly a shrill scream rent the silence, tearing it apart with devastating hands of terror. Bruce sprang to his feet and rushed to the window. The driveway was brilliantly illuminated by the glare of the moon, but he could see nothing. Orsen sat up slowly. “It’s all right,” he murmured; “only an owl.”
Nodding dumbly, Bruce returned to his couch, his heart thudding against his ribs.
Morning came at last, and after breakfast Orsen went off to examine his cameras. He found their plates negative and his seals all undisturbed, whilst the sound-machine recorded only the scrambling noise of rats. Re- setting his apparatus, he returned to the ballroom. Bruce was staring gloomily out of the window at the steady downpour of rain now falling from a leaden sky. He wheeled round as Neils came in. “Well?”
“Nothing. I think we’ll go down to the village now. We might get a hot bath and you can have a drink. You look pretty done in.”
“Yes,” Bruce agreed laconically.
After lunch in the officers’ mess, Neils arranged with his friend to bring their provisions up to the chateau before dark and left him in the genial company of the officers. As the rain had ceased he had decided to go for a walk and wandered off, a queer little figure in the misty yellow light of the afternoon.
The woods that almost covered the estate were full of a quiet beauty as the dusty sunlight filtered through their branches on to the sharply scented earth below and their calm, ageless indifference to the travails of men filled Orsen with a delightful sense of being in another world.
The evening passed slowly. Bruce played patience, whilst Orsen paced up and down like a small caged animal. He would never have admitted it, but his nerves were badly on edge, for, although they had lit a fire, the cold was intense, a thing that always made him feel ill. After dinner, having made a final inspection of his cameras, he boiled some water on the primus for a hot-water-bottle, and settled down in his improvised bed. Bruce followed suit.
The black moonless night dragged by on crippled feet, its silence disturbed only by the rats and the faint boom of gun-fire in the distance. Morning found the two men pale and haggard. They fried themselves eggs and bacon, then went along to the bathroom, where the stench was now so appalling that they had to hold their noses.
Once again the camera plates proved negative and the seals were untouched; but on the record of the sound-machine there was a new noise. It came at intervals above the scuffling of the rats and was like that of someone beating with his fingernails irregularly against a pane of glass.
“What do you think it is?” Bruce asked excitedly.
Neils went over to the window and peered out. “It’s possible that it was caused by this branch of creeper,” he said, opening the window and breaking off the branch. “If it was, the noise won’t recur tonight.”
The day passed uneventfully and both men were curiously relieved when darkness fell once more.
Close on midnight Orsen slid out of bed noiselessly and crept along to the bathroom. On reaching it he stood motionless for a second. In the queer half-green light of his torch he resembled a ghost himself.
Not a sound disturbed the silence; even the rats seemed to have disappeared. Putting his ear to the keyhole he listened, but could hear nothing. He hesitated, then, grasping the door-handle, he twisted it sharply and with a vicious kick sent the door flying open, at the same instant flattening himself back against the wall.
Breathlessly, he waited, the unearthly quiet singing in his head. Still nothing happened. Making the sign of the Cross he muttered four words of power and, easing himself forward, peered into the bathroom. Only the horrible stench of decaying life and the heavy tomb-like atmosphere greeted him. He flashed his torch across the ceiling and sent its beams piercing into every corner, but his cameras were all unviolated. With a sigh of disappointment he closed the door softly behind him and retraced his steps.
After breakfast the next morning they developed the plates from those in the bathroom last, having found all the others blank. Those of the one on the window-sill showed the door open and Neils’s head and shoulders. On the other was only the flash of his torch. They tried the sound-machine and a puzzled frown crossed Orsen’s brow as once again they heard the faint noise like fingernails beating against the window.
“This is most peculiar,” he murmured, as the record ceased. “I tore off that branch and I’ll swear there was no sound perceptible to human ears when I was in the room ten hours ago.”
“Perhaps it had started before – or afterwards,” Bruce hazarded.
“No; the sound-machine does not start recording until the cameras operate. On our first night I set them to function automatically at midnight; but last night I fixed them so that they should not operate at all unless someone or something broke the threads across the window or the door. I set them off myself by entering the room, so that noise must have been going on.” He paused. “I shall spend the coming night there myself.”
“Not on your own!” Bruce declared quickly. “Remember, a man died in that room from – well, from unknown causes little more than a fortnight ago.”
A gentle smile illuminated Neils’s face. “I was hoping you would offer to keep me company; but I wouldn’t agree to you doing so unless I felt confident I could protect you. I intend to make a pentacle; one of the oldest forms of protection against evil manifestations, and, fortunately, I brought all the things necessary for it in my luggage. But we must get a change of clothes in the village.”
That afternoon they began their preparations with handkerchiefs soaked in eau-de-Cologne tied over the lower part of their faces to counteract the appalling smell. First, they spring-cleaned the whole room with infinite care, Bruce scrubbing the floor and bath with carbolic soap, whilst Orsen went over the walls and ceiling with a mop which he dipped constantly in a pail of disinfected water.
“There must not be a speck of dust anywhere, particularly on the floor,” the Swede explained, “since evil entities can fasten on any form of dirt to assist their materialization. That is why I asked the captain to lend us blankets, battle-dresses, and issue underclothes straight from new stocks in the quarter-master’s stores. And now,” he went on, “I want two glasses and a jug of water, also fruit and biscuits. We must have no material needs to tempt us from our astral stronghold should any dark force try to corrupt our will-power through our sub-conscious minds.”
When Bruce returned, Neils had opened a suit-case and taken from it a piece of chalk, a length of string, and a foot-rule. Marking a spot approximately in the centre of the room, he asked Bruce to hold the end of the string to it and, using him as a pivot, drew a large circle in chalk.
Next the string was lengthened and an outer circle drawn. Then the most difficult part of the operation began. A five-rayed star had to be made with its points touching the outer circle and its valleys resting upon the inner. But, as Neils pointed out, while such a defence could be highly potent if constructed with geometrical accuracy, should any of the angles vary to any marked degree or the distance of the apexes from the central point differ more than a fraction, the pentacle would prove not only useless, but even dangerous. “This may all be completely unnecessary,” he added. “We have no actual proof yet that an evil power is active here, but I have always thought that it was better not to spill the milk than to have to cry when it was done.”
