“Most distressing and annoying, I can well believe,” interposed the doctor.
“Then suddenly, the phenomena ceased as mysteriously as they had begun, and the interest flagged. The tales stopped. People got interested in something else. It all seemed to die out. This was last July. I can tell you exactly, for I’ve kept a diary more or less of what happened.”
“Ah!”
“But now, quite recently, within the past three weeks, it has all revived again with a rush—with a kind of furious attack, so to speak. It has really become unbearable. You may imagine what it means, and the general state of affairs, when I say that the possibility of leaving has occurred to me.”
“Incendiarism?” suggested Dr. Silence, half under his breath, but not so low that Colonel Wragge did not hear him.
“By Jove, sir, you take the very words out of my mouth!” exclaimed the astonished man, glancing from the doctor to me and from me to the doctor, and rattling the money in his pocket as though some explanation of my friend’s divining powers were to be found that way.
“It’s only that you are thinking very vividly,” the doctor said quietly, “and your thoughts form pictures in my mind before you utter them. It’s merely a little elementary thought-reading.”
His intention, I saw, was not to perplex the good man, but to impress him with his powers so as to ensure obedience later.
“Good Lord! I had no idea—” He did not finish the sentence, and dived again abruptly into his narrative.
“I did not see anything myself, I must admit, but the stories of independent eyewitnesses were to the effect that lines of light, like streams of thin fire, moved through the wood and sometimes were seen to shoot out precisely as flames might shoot out—in the direction of this house. There,” he explained, in a louder voice that made me jump, pointing with a thick finger to the map, “where the westerly fringe of the plantation comes up to the end of the lower lawn at the back of the house—where it links on to those dark patches, which are laurel shrubberies, running right up to the back premises—that’s where these lights were seen. They passed from the wood to the shrubberies, and in this way reached the house itself. Like silent rockets, one man described them, rapid as lightning and exceedingly bright.”
“And this evidence you spoke of?”
“They actually reached the sides of the house. They’ve left a mark of scorching on the walls—the walls of the laundry building at the other end. You shall see ’em tomorrow.” He pointed to the map to indicate the spot, and then straightened himself and glared about the room as though he had said something no one could believe and expected contradiction.
“Scorched—just as the faces were,” the doctor murmured, looking significantly at me.
“Scorched—yes,” repeated the Colonel, failing to catch the rest of the sentence in his excitement.
There was a prolonged silence in the room, in which I heard the gurgling of the oil in the lamp and the click of the coals and the heavy breathing of our host. The most unwelcome sensations were creeping about my spine, and I wondered whether my companion would scorn me utterly if I asked to sleep on the sofa in his room. It was eleven o’clock, I saw by the clock on the mantelpiece. We had crossed the dividing line and were now well in the movement of the adventure. The fight between my interest and my dread became acute. But, even if turning back had been possible, I think the interest would have easily gained the day.
“I have enemies, of course,” I heard the Colonel’s rough voice break into the pause presently, “and have discharged a number of servants—”
“It’s not that,” put in John Silence briefly.
“You think not? In a sense I am glad, and yet—there are some things that can be met and dealt with—”
He left the sentence unfinished, and looked down at the floor with an expression of grim severity that betrayed a momentary glimpse of character. This fighting man loathed and abhorred the thought of an enemy he could not see and come to grips with. Presently he moved over and sat down in the chair between us. Something like a sigh escaped him. Dr. Silence said nothing.
“My sister, of course, is kept in ignorance, as far as possible, of all this,” he said disconnectedly, and as if talking to himself. “But even if she knew she would find matter-of-fact explanations. I only wish I could. I’m sure they exist.”
There came then an interval in the conversation that was very significant. It did not seem a real pause, or the silence real silence, for both men continued to think so rapidly and strongly that one almost imagined their thoughts clothed themselves in words in the air of the room. I was more than a little keyed up with the strange excitement of all I had heard, but what stimulated my nerves more than anything else was the obvious fact that the doctor was clearly upon the trail of discovery. In his mind at that moment, I believe, he had already solved the nature of this perplexing psychical problem. His face was like a mask, and he employed the absolute minimum of gesture and words.
