Читать книгу The Lonesome Swamp Mystery - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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“Murdered Old Sharpe?” Hal had risen from behind the wheel and got out of the roadster. He pointed toward the gaunt house vaguely outlined now in the stormy darkness. “In there? Murdered him in there?” he asked incredulously.

Denis Keen nodded and got out of the roadster on the other side.

“I’ll tell you all about it, Hal—from the beginning. But let’s get out of this and under some partial shelter at least. I’m too soaked to think of anything else at present. Sharpe’s veranda will give us ample protection. It was built for three generations of the family to gather on at once. Come! Will the car dry out standing just as she is?”

Hal nodded and hurried after his uncle through the creaking gate and up the broken flagstone walk. Neither of them spoke a word, feeling awed by the imperiousness of the storm’s harsh voice as it swept through the weed-choked garden. Tragedy had laid a heavy hand upon the place—everything seemed weighted down with black memories.

On either side of the walk, they were assailed with wet, waving weeds and the low, overhanging branches of trees. More than once, Hal struck out instinctively as the foliage brushed over his wet cheeks and murmured mournfully past his ear. He could only liken it to some bodiless, spectral hand reaching out from the dim, dead past and trying to detain him from going further.

There was a hush in that long deserted garden that made itself felt despite the blustering of the storm. Hal sensed it with every step and wished heartily that his uncle would talk, for he, himself, felt suddenly unable to utter a word. Before them, the narrow house with its crazy turret loomed up out of the darkness like a sentinel of Death.

Five broad steps led up to the porch; three of them were already in the last stages of neglect and splintered audibly under Hal’s firm step. The sound caused him to shiver a little. A loose shutter somewhere on the house slammed, startling them both.

“Next thing I’ll be telling myself the durned place is full of ghosts—haunted!” Hal laughed.

“As a matter of fact, the old timers all say it is!” chuckled Denis Keen. “It has borne the reputation since it was built fifty years ago. Old Eli’s second wife, who was then a delicate young woman of about thirty, fell down the main stairway and was killed the first night she spent in the newly-built house.”

“Whew!” Hal ejaculated. “This house hasn’t done anything but make things happen, huh? What a history!”

They clattered over the porch and around on the veranda. There they drew close to the French windows whose shutters were tightly drawn. Denis slapped his hands against his wet clothing and nodded.

“We ought to dry out a little. At least the rain won’t hit us here. Wish I had a coat though—I’m rather chilly.”

“So am I,” Hal admitted. “But when it comes to a wish nearest the heart—mine is for a flashlight! Couldn’t do more with a match in this wind than just get a light on a cigarette.”

“You’d be lucky to do that much. Why wish for a flashlight?”

“Just to snoop about a bit. Thought maybe I’d find some loophole by which we could crawl inside these dusty old diggings. The place has kind of got under my skin, Unk! I’m inspired to explore a real haunted house!”

“You would be,” Denis chuckled. “Thank heavens we are without a flashlight! I haven’t your explorer’s fine appreciation of dusty, haunted houses. Besides, I find the memories of those days twenty years ago are still vivid and prevent me from wanting to linger here any longer than is necessary. You’re thrilled by the place and I’m saddened by it—there’s the difference between youth and approaching middle-age.”

“I suppose so, Unk,” said Hal sympathetically. “Gosh, I realize how you must sort of live an episode like that all over again even if you weren’t connected with it in any way.”

“Ramapo was a tiny village in those days and Lonesome Swamp seemed nearer to us, I guess. In any event, we felt, all of us, very close to it in that time of tragedy.”

Hal nodded, drew a package of cigarettes out of his back trousers pocket and lighted one. While the tiny flame of the match still flickered, he critically surveyed the rust-colored shingles at his back, then turned and poked at the shutter at his elbow. To his surprise it yielded slightly, just enough to cause two of the wooden cross-strips to clatter out of place and down on the veranda floor. He glanced quickly at the little aperture which the fallen cross-strips had made in the shutter.

“Cross-strips are rotted with age and disuse,” said Denis, picking one up from the floor and examining it. “Wonder the whole shutter didn’t come down when you rattled it—guess the whole business is about ready to fall away at that. Time and weather are relentless with the house deserted, particularly this one. She’s exposed to all the elements standing as she does. See something in the opening of that shutter?” he asked, suddenly noticing Hal’s intent scrutiny.

“Just a horizontal area of dusty French window,” Hal smiled, turning around. “Gloom within as well as gloom without, hey? It’s the queerest house I’ve ever seen; so narrow, so high. The rooms must be like coffins.”

“Not quite, but they’re pretty narrow for a house built so high. Pretty odd architecture, I dare say. Even the main door is almost to the back of the house—look!” Denis motioned to a high, narrow door some thirty feet farther along the veranda. “Looks pretty stout though, eh?”

“Pretty much,” Hal admitted. He drew twice on his cigarette, then blew out a coil of smoke with one breath. “Whose idea was this Gaunt House?”

“A splendid name for it, certainly. It was Old Eli’s long-cherished idea, I was given to understand. He designed it and built it.” Denis laughed. “He was an architect and builder of the Gaunt period.”

“And how! Well, I’m glad he’s not of this period anyway. Somehow I feel safer with his kind safely murdered. Golly, he must have been eccentric, Unk.”

“Notably so. He inherited a large fortune from his father, turned it into cash and bonds, then quickly proceeded to build this queer house where he said he could guard it instead of entrusting it to the care of banks. Consequently, he built this place in such a way as to have a view of the surrounding country. People said he slept daytimes and sat up in the turret with his money at night watching for some chance thief who might amble up the hill. I don’t know how true it is.”

“Good Lord! His wife was lucky to be out of his way.”

“Everyone thought so, too. Poor thing, she had never set foot inside the house her eccentric mate was building until the day they moved in. And that was around after sunset and she was either on her way upstairs or on her way down when she met her death. She had a weak heart and the sounds she heard so frightened her that she dropped in a faint, fell all the way down the stairs and broke her neck. She died that night.”

“What sounds did she hear, Unk?”

“The sounds that everybody hears the moment they step in the house or attempt to go up the stairs. As one steps along, one hears strange footfalls just behind or just ahead. Sometimes it sounds like the footsteps of a superman following you up or advancing toward you. The walls quiver and shake, and in bad weather like tonight the desolate moans one hears in the house—well, there were several of us back in the old days that kept vigil with those ghosts. Two nights we made of it without seeing anything but our own vivid, youthful fancies. The trustees of the estate learned of these secret trysts of ours in the apparently closed house and set about making certain that it was securely locked and shuttered. And it has been locked ever since.”

“But what meaning is there to all those noises you heard?”

“I believe no one has answered that, Hal. It’s inexplicable. But we heard the noises just the same. I’ve never forgotten that experience.”

“I shouldn’t think you could. Do you think those noises are going on all the time—right now?”

“It’s very likely. There’s some reason for it and we would have found out if the estate trustees hadn’t interrupted our eager explorations. But don’t for a moment think I ascribe it to any supernatural cause. I don’t! We live in a material world, Hal, don’t forget that for an instant.”

“I don’t,” said Hal mildly, ruefully surveying the fresh downpour that lashed against the veranda. Thunder clanged and rolled over Lonesome Swamp Hill, sounding like an army in chains. Suddenly he glanced up at his uncle. “How does Cyrus Price come into all this—how did he come to be accused of murdering Old Sharpey?”

“It happened on a night much like this one,” Denis Keen began, “thunder and lightning and rain—squalls of short duration with calm intervals that were even shorter. Just like it is now....”

Hal became aware of a decided lull in the storm even as his uncle spoke. The dripping atmosphere had, for a moment, become as still as the proverbial tomb, when suddenly there came to their listening ears an eerie, clanging sound followed by a long, dismal moaning. The storm, not quite spent, however, drowned out this doleful moan by renewing its former activities.

Hal glanced up at his uncle and their eyes met.

“You mean to tell me that that’s what it’s like?” he asked in a hushed, fearful tone.

“That isn’t even the half of it, Hal,” Denis Keen chuckled. “Just wait till the next lull. Perhaps you’ll be entertained with the next in the category—The March of the Ghosts, we fellows used to call it. It sounds like people walking back and forth, up and down stairs—all over the house. Very spicy program you’d call it.”

“I dare say,” said Hal soberly, and betook himself to the veranda rail where he sat astride. “And about the night of the murder?”

“Dismal beyond words,” Denis Keen continued. “It was proven at Cyrus Price’s trial that he left his cottage bent on revenge—murder if necessary.”

“I’d almost agree with him if he walked all the way up here on a night like this,” Hal said with a deep, rumbling chuckle.