“What a perfectly wonderful story!”
Anne Edgeware turned to the others as she spoke. “Isn’t it?” she continued. “It just sort of fits in with this house!”
“Let’s play it.” It was the bright young man with the teeth again, and he beamed round fatuously at the company as he spoke. “For sixpences if you like,” he ventured as an added inducement, as no one enthused immediately.
Anne looked at Wyatt. “Could we?” she said.
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” remarked Chris Kennedy, who was willing to back up Anne in anything she chose to suggest. The rest of the party had also taken kindly to the idea, and Wyatt hesitated.
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t,” he said, and paused. Abbershaw was suddenly seized with a violent objection to the whole scheme. The story of the dagger ritual had impressed him strangely. He had seen the eyes of Gideon fixed upon the speaker with curious intensity, and had noticed the little huddled old man with the plate over his face harking to the barbarous story with avid enjoyment. Whether it was the great dank gloomy house or the disturbing effects of love upon his nervous system he did not know, but the idea of groping round in the dark with the malignant-looking dagger filled him with a distaste more vigorous than anything he had ever felt before. He had an impression, also, that Wyatt was not too attracted by the idea, but in the face of the unanimous enthusiasm of the rest of the party he could do nothing but fall in with the scheme.
Wyatt looked at his uncle.
“But certainly, my dear boy, why should I?” The old man seemed to be replying to an unspoken question. “Let us consider it a blessing that so innocent and pleasing an entertainment can arise from something that must at one time have been very terrible.”
Abbershaw glanced at him sharply. There had been a touch of something in the voice that did not ring quite true, something hypocritical—insincere. Colonel Coombe glanced at the men on either side of him.
“I don’t know …” he began dubiously.
Gideon spoke at once: it was the first time Abbershaw had heard his voice, and it struck him unpleasantly. It was deep, liquid, and curiously caressing, like the purring of a cat.
“To take part in such an ancient ceremony would be a privilege,” he said.
The man who had no expression bowed his head.
“I too,” he said, a trace of foreign accent in his voice, “would be delighted.”
Once the ritual had been decided upon, preparations went forward with all ceremony and youthful enthusiasm. The manservant was called in, and his part in the proceedings explained carefully. He was to let down the great iron candle-ring, extinguish the lights, and haul it up to the ceiling again. The lights in the hall were to be put out also, and he was then to retire to the servants’ quarters and wait there until the dinner-gong sounded, at which time he was to return with some of the other servants and relight the candles with all speed.
He was a big man with a chest like a prizefighter and a heavy florid face with enormous pale-blue eyes which had in them an innately sullen expression. A man who could become very unpleasant if the occasion arose, Abbershaw reflected inconsequentially.
As head of the family, Wyatt the last of the Petries took command of the proceedings. He had the manner, Abbershaw considered, of one who did not altogether relish his position. There was a faintly unwilling air about everything he did, a certain over-deliberation in all his instructions which betrayed, the other thought, a distaste for his task.
At length the signal was given. With a melodramatic rattle of chains the great iron candle-ring was let down and the lights put out, so that the vast hall was in darkness save for the glowing fires at each end of the room. Gideon and the man with the face like Beethoven had joined the circle round the doorway to the corridors, and the last thing George Abbershaw saw before the candles were extinguished was the little wizened figure of Colonel Coombe sitting in his chair in the shadow of the fireplace smiling out upon the scene from behind the hideous flesh-coloured plate. Then he followed the others into the dim halls and corridors of the great eerie house, and the Black Dudley Ritual began.
III
In the Garage
The weirdness of the great stone staircases and unlit recesses was even more disquieting than Abbershaw had imagined it would be. There were flutterings in the dark, whisperings, and hurried footsteps. He was by no means a nervous man, and in the ordinary way an experience of this sort would probably have amused him faintly, had it not bored him. But on this particular night and in this house, which had impressed him with such a curious sense of foreboding ever since he had first seen it from the drive, he was distinctly uneasy.
To make matters worse, he had entirely lost sight of Meggie. He had missed her in the first blinding rush of darkness, and so, when by chance he found himself up against a door leading into the garden, he went out, shutting it softly behind him.
It was a fine night, and although there was no moon, the starlight made it possible for him to see his way about; he did not feel like wandering about the eerie grounds alone, and suddenly it occurred to him that he would go and inspect his A.C. two-seater which he had left in the big garage beside the drive.
He was a tidy man, and since he had no clear recollection of turning off the petrol before he left her, it struck him that now was a convenient opportunity to make sure.
He located the garage without much difficulty, and made his way to it, crossing over the broad, flagged drive to where
