The Whisper on the Stair/Chapter 26
The black night oppressed Val as he hastened along the almost blotted-out road towards the old house. He traveled swiftly now, having been over the ground in the afternoon, but he could not throw off the feeling of espionage; the knowledge that he could not shake off this thing that was following him, whether human or something other than human. He laughed to himself, softly, in derision at this unaccustomed emotion of, say, something that was not quite fear, and yet approximated it in some way.
If it were only something that one could grip with both hands, something of fighting flesh and blood, he would not have given it another thought; but it seemed to Val that it was more than that; as he looked around he could see nothing but the inky vegetation at the side of the road, above him was a dull, gray-black sky, with a faint phosphorescence in the east; and around him, all around him, hemming him in on all sides were unseen hands plucking at him to hold him back, almost-heard voices warning him to turn his face away from the old house, nebulous, smoke-like specters which he could not see, yet which he felt he could almost see.
He laughed aloud once, just to hear his voice, and to throw off this feeling; his voice sounded strange and unaccustomed in the night air, as though it belonged to a different being; he could scarcely recognize it. And then, suddenly, the old house loomed up directly before him, black as anything this side of the pit could be, with deeper black where the windows should be.
Even from where he stood he could see that the house was the veriest shell, standing erect simply because nobody had thought to push it down. As he looked at the house, the first drop of rain fell. He moved towards the veranda, and in the shelter of the overhanging roof of the veranda he lighted his lamp quickly. Suddenly the rain came down in full force, without any more warning or preliminary; the water fell in solid sheets, beating upon the house like a waterfall on the eternal rocks.
With his lantern dispelling feebly only a trifle of the surrounding darkness, Val pushed his way in through the door, which hung precariously on one hinge. There was a vicious stab of lightning, and a rumbling of thunder, first in the distance and gradually growing closer until it terminated in a tremendous clap that shook the house to the eaves.
Val found himself in the entrance foyer, bare of furniture of any kind, with plaster hanging perilously from the walls and ceiling, his lantern making flickering shadows on the walls and in the comers. He felt something brush his feet, and heard something padding away swiftly in the darkness. Rats! Well, he wasn’t afraid of rats—not after the kind he had known in the trenches.
He looked around the foyer swiftly. Outside the rain flooded the earth, a cloudburst of continuous pouring water that beat on the thin roof and walls of the house, making it reverberate like a drum. It splashed in through the entrance door and through the windows in great splashes, as though someone outside were pouring it in in buckets. Val shivered slightly, and made his way into the living room, which opened into the entrance hall.
This was an immense room, and his little light could make but small headway against the encircling gloom that shrouded the walls and corners. He made out, in his first quick glance, that it seemed to be devoid of furniture, with the exception of a kitchen table and a pine chair that stood in the middle of the room. On the table was a tallow candle, half used. He moved forward to examine the table, for no other reason than because he was interested in these signs of recent human habitation.
The shadows danced strangely on the walls, and a spider shaded its way swiftly across the table, away from the candle, as his light fell upon it. Without warning, he heard something that momentarily turned the blood in his veins to ice.
There was the tinkling of piano keys in the room, the sound of notes as though a light finger had run rapidly up the scale. A shiver ran through him, and he whirled quickly. He saw something he had overlooked; in one of the corners was a dilapidated old square piano, of the oldest possible vintage, and a tiny shadow leaping off the brown case showed him that a rat had run across the keyboard.
He had to laugh at his attack of nerves; to think of Valentine Morley being afraid of an empty house at night, of his own shadow! Yet he realized, of course, that it was more than that; it was an atmosphere of the dark and the supernatural in which he had enveloped himself.
With an effort he threw off the feeling of oppression. A quick glance around the bare living room convinced him that, with the massive fireplace, the interior of the piano, the old fashioned mantel, and all the various other natural hiding places, it would take quite a while to go over this room as thoroughly as he should have liked. He resolved, then, to leave it for the last, in the meantime examining the rest of the house swiftly, and coming back to this room later. He had no great hope of discovering anything this night, yet he thought that, perhaps, he might have a stroke of luck; he might, in a flash, be drawn to investigate something that might otherwise take months of searching for. Anyway, he was spying out the lay of the land; he would come again, of course, and when he did he would have more than a vague notion of where to look.
He wished now he had brought Eddie Hughes with him; it would have made him feel more comfortable. That was too late, however, so with a shrug of his shoulder that was meant to be philosophical and that turned out to be a cold shiver, he went out into the entrance hall again, where he had noted the stairs that led to the upper part of the deserted house.
It was a rickety old winding staircase that led upstairs, giving off the dust in clouds as Val’s feet fell on the steps; each stair creaked loudly, as though in protest at this unwarranted intrusion of an age-long privacy. Mice and rats scurried away at his approach, and the spiders in the comers of the stairs moved warningly as his shadow fell upon them.
He found nothing of any assistance to him in the upper part of the house, though he went over the empty rooms carefully. Great cracks were opened in the ceiling over his head, and in the floors under his feet. What paper there was on the walls hung down to the floor in long panels, and in many places the plaster had come off, exposing the laths and logs beneath.
Outside the rain beat down heavily, soggily, having settled into a steady, monotonous downpour. The empty chambers and halls echoed and re-echoed to the dull beat of the storm, and the sense of oppression that Val had been experiencing all evening was heightened by the gloomy rooms and leaping shadows caused by his lantern. In the corners his light reached not at all, unless he stepped right up to them.
Once or twice he thought he heard a step downstairs, but he put it down to his imagination and to his overwrought nerves.
“Steady, Val!” he spoke aloud to himself, to calm his nerves. Don’t be a baby, you big mutt. His voice rumbled peculiarly in the empty rooms, where a voice had not been raised for perhaps a generation.
He examined each room carefully, and decided there was little hope of finding anything upstairs. The walls were almost bare; there were no panels, the floors and ceiling were thin, so that nothing could be hidden in them; so thin was the floor that if it had been light, in one of the rooms he examined that he thought must have been over the living room, he would have been able to see into the room below.
In the attic he found nothing of any value whatever, though he examined it carefully and meticulously.
“Well, Peter Pomeroy, old chap, if you’ve hidden anything in this house, which I doubt, I think it must be downstairs—in the living room, maybe, or the kitchen.” He remembered that he had yet to examine the dining room, kitchen, butler’s pantry, and any other rooms that were downstairs in addition to the living room. There must also be a cellar, he decided; would not a man bent on hiding treasure think naturally of the cellar? Val thought that it was possible.
Turning towards the stairs, he creakily made his way down to the foyer. What was that? He heard a sibilant hissing, a whisper on the stairs he had just descended.
He whirled swiftly, thinking he heard a noise of some kind above the beating of the storm. He strained his eyes into the darkness and could see nothing.
With a muttered imprecation at the jumpy state of his nerves, he groped his way through the dark hall in what he supposed was the general direction of the kitchen and dining room. He stopped suddenly again, thinking he heard a slight movement.
Holding the lantern high over his head, he examined as much of the place as he could, the moldy plaster around him, the dilapidated ceiling and the half falling stairs. Nothing. He went on.
Around the bend he went, into the darkest place he had seen yet, sheltered from all possible light by the overhanging stairs. A dark, swift figure moved, and then another.
His quick eye caught it. He put down the lantern and reached for his automatic, but he was not quick enough. Two figures hurled themselves on him. His right arm shot out in a short jolt, and caught the first assailant under the ear, flinging him down hard on the creaking floor half a dozen feet away.
A great figure loomed in front of him now. Even in the darkness he could see who it was. There was no mistaking that menacing bulk.
“Oh, so it’s you, Iggy!” he shot out.
“Yes, it’s me, you⸺ ⸺!” cursed the handless one, grating and sinister.
With a shock that shook the narrow hall the two big men thudded together, and Val remembered a distinct surprise at the great strength of the man with no hands. He felt no alarm, however, because how could Teck have a weapon? He had no hands in which to hold it.
That being the case, he disregarded the flailing arms of the big fellow and reached for his throat. He saw the other’s right arm come up suddenly, flicking up like the head of a rattlesnake, and he had no time to duck, even if he had wanted to.
It was a glancing blow on the head. That was all he knew. In front of him everything went black and silent, and he slumped down into a muscleless heap at Teck’s feet.
•••••••
Val came out of it slowly. He saw a gleaming light, getting farther away, and now drawing closer. His head ached badly, and now the light began to come closer to him, and still closer, until finally it rested next to him, and he discovered it was the candle, lighted now, on the plain kitchen table in the living room, next to which he sat in the pine chair.
He tried to arise, and found that he could not. He was bound to the chair. For some moments he sat perfectly still, trying to piece together the happenings of the last few minutes. He found it difficult.
He remembered, of course, having put out his first assailant. He remembered recognizing Teck, and closing with him. He remembered the flick of the scoundrel’s wrist towards him, and then he remembered no more. It was plain, therefore, that Teck’s arm had found his mark.
Yet how could a man without hands knock him out? He puzzled about this for a little while, and then, his head aching, he had to give it up. For the matter of that, how could a man without hands beat out the brains of poor old Mat Masterson? He couldn’t.
That was where Val ended in his thought about Teck. The man couldn’t do it, of course. But he had done it.
Next to him the candle burned fitfully, almost going out, often, at the sudden draughts from the windows, lighting up the ceiling in quick light and extinguishing it in swift darkness as it leaped and fell. The rain increased in intensity, and there was the rolling and reverberating of distant thunder. Val glanced toward the door and saw that it was closed—locked probably. Though that was unnecessary, as the open window was before him, with neither pane nor sash.
The rain swirled into the room through the window viciously. Val could actually hear the intense silence that had settled down upon the house over the noise of the storm. The noise was external; inside it was still as the grave. He shuddered. He did not like to think about graves at this time and in this place. He cursed his stupidity again in not having had sense enough to bring Eddie Hughes along on this trip.
Perhaps Eddie, being alarmed at his absence, would follow along. That led to another train of thought. Eddie, too, might fall into the hands of the enemy, unawares. Given a moment to draw his gun, or room for a left hook, and Eddie would be able to take care of himself—but would he be given that moment? Val doubted it, and he gave himself over to the task of attempting to loosen his bonds.
He was satisfied now that he had indeed been watched as he peered into Jessica’s little house from the road. Of course he would have been watched. It was foolish to think that Teck would not have thought of that. A twinge went through his head, and he cursed Teck again, and promised himself an ample vengeance.
He could make no headway with the bonds. It was a clean, workmanlike job, and there was little chance of his being able to release himself. He would need some assistance. At his side the candle guttered and sputtered in its grease, and Val had that uneasy sense of another presence in the house with him. He could hardly define the feeling, but he felt certain there was someone there; he did now know how he knew, but he did not doubt the fact.
Was Teck, or his assistant, still in the house? That might be, though Val had not heard them. If not they, who could it be? Not Jessica, certainly. In this rain, and alone at this hour. Not, not Jessica.
Was it something human, then? After all, nobody had ever been able to prove that all supernatural visitations were false—actually did not exist. And this old house—there was something about it that savored of the other world, of the world beyond the grave. Its gaunt rooms and its isolated position, its resounding walls and floors, and its yawning, empty windows.
He could scarcely throw the feeling off, though he detested himself for it. Lower and lower the candle sputtered next to him. Higher and higher came the rumble of the storm. On the pine table, next to his elbow, something splashed, softly, yet he heard it. He turned quickly and his breath went short.
It was a crimson spot of warm human blood.
As he looked, another drop fell next to it. He looked up, in a sudden panic, and saw that it was coming from the ceiling—a thin, dark trickle that turned red when it came into the compass of the candle light.
What was it up there; bleeding, dying, dripping through this old ceiling in the black night? There was another splash of a drop of blood and another.
Suddenly, with a wet sobbing splash, one of the drops struck the candle wick full, extinguishing it instantly, leaving the room and Val in a black, velvet darkness. For an instant or two,—or was it an eternity or two?—he sat there, immovable, his face pale.
There was a sudden, leaping flash of sheet lightning, illuminating the room to the last, farthest corner for a brief instant. At the window toward which Val was looking, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
Framed in the window, a figure from the old world, was the upper part of a man. Although the time of seeing the apparition was only an instant, Val could remember every detail, so plainly did he see it. The figure was dressed in the frock coat affected by the old Virginia planters and gentlemen, and his face was shaded by a large soft hat. His face was pasty, old, with a white goatee and mustache, and the eyes were unutterably mournful and aged, dark windows that looked upon the world in sorrowful aloofness. Every line on the figure’s face was plain to Val in the fraction of a second in which he glimpsed it, standing there at the window.
In a part of a second he was in black night again, enveloped in it as though he were in bed with his head under the stifling covers. He could not put his hands up to feel of it, but he would not have been surprised to know that his hair was standing on end. He could feel his skin, all prickly, as though a cold blast had struck him.
Then there was a peal of thunder that shook the old house to its very foundations, and as silence succeeded that overwhelming noise, the scream of a woman, wild and shrill, cut through the night like a rapier blade, from somewhere inside the house.
It was a distorted cry drawn from the soul, the cry of a being in terror, in deadly fear.