COMPLETE STORIES

Taranaki Daily News, 17 December 1926, Page 6 (Supplement)

COMPLETE STORIES

worth while in what old Linthorpe says?” A creeping, slithering and patting noise eanie from the passage outside his door. Pad-pad, slip-slip. Featonby swiftly gained the door, swung it open, and looked out into the moonlit way. i The snow had ceased to fall; the sky was clear ami full of the bluewhite moon. Silence bareness - absolute emptiness! Nothing was to be seen in the panelled corridor; nothing affrighted; all was peace. “Yet,” muttered Featonby to himself, at last alarmed and sick at heart with dread, “someone, or something, passed this room; something!” Slowly he closed the door and went back to his undressing. Still the thin clear harping arose. He moved to the window and parted the curtains. He looked down on the snowy lawns and on the vast cypresses and cedars that studded the peaceful grounds of old Lone Hallowes. A figure moved among them, slipping slowly from each to each. Featonby let the curtains fall together, and staggered back, gasping and wild eyed. For the shape was that of a whiterobed monk, and as it moved there In tlie piercing moon glow it cast no shadow! Maybe Brian Featonby was held in the bondage of his terrible fear for five minutes; maybe only one. He could never, after that night, determine just how long the atrophied state continued. But then he recovered himself and grew grimly practical. He crossed over to his luggage and crashed open the lid of a suitease. From a pocket in it he withdrew a tiny revolver pouched in, leather. He threw away the casing and grasped the weapon firmly. He pushed back its safety catch and .flung it on the bed. Then, very methodically, he dressed himself, even to the putting on of his gloves. Pistol in hand he left his bedroom. Outside, in the corridor, about to rap j on the panels of the door, stood Brenda I Linthorpe. She moved to him, was in ; his arms, and she hid her face against ! him. “Oh, Brian. Brian,” she whispered the words hoarsely; she had been crying: “I—l'm nearly driven out of—of my mind with fear! Did —you hear it?” “Hear? Hear what, Brenda?” “That cry—that sound like a man—in pain. Oh, it was terrible! And I—l looked out of my window and saw him, too. Brian, don't think me absolutely mad. I swear I saw him. It—it was dressed like a monk and disappeared among the trees!” “I did not hear a cry.” said Brian Featonby, very slowly, “but I also saw

—it. You’re right, it did look like a monk, Brenda. As a matter of fact,” he grinned and showed her the tiny pistol, “I was just off to settle its hash, spectre or joker as it may be.” “Wait there,” said Brenda Linthorpe and was gone. Puzzled and disturbed, Brian Featonby waited. Ten minutes pa ssed. Brenda Linthorpe returned. She was dressed as completely as was her lover. She did not betray the slightest fear; only excitement. “Well,” and she smiled, “as you’re determined on ghost-hunting, can 1 be your pack? Please? It's a grand Christmas night’s adventure, Brian! ’ Featonby tried to dissuade the girl, but his words had no value in the face of her determination. He shrugged his shoulders and gave in at last. •Righto! You can join in. You ought to be a valuable ally, Brenda. I

suppose you know every nook and. corner of Lone Hallowes?” “Yes; why do you ask?” “For this reason,” Brian Featonby returned, “I want to be taken to the oldest part of it. If this place was onee a priory, where does the priory end and the house begin? Yly point is this: the ghostly monks, or whatever they are, dare to invade our privacy. Our best policy of attack, Brenda, seems to be an immediate invasion of theirs, you understand ?” For all that he was flippant and a smile was on his lips, Brenda Linthorpe made a serious answer. “I see what you mean, Brian. Strangely enough there is a very clear point of distinction between the habitable part of the Hallowes and the old Priory. If • you don’t mind getting your head | bumped a little, and the possibility of {barking your shins on lumber, we’ll go down to it if you like. ’

“Lead on, Mae Brenda,” Featonby misquoted. The way that Brenda Linthorpe indicated was a narrow one and hazardous. It led from below the kitchens of Lone Hallowes, through the wine cellars to a eul-de-sac half filled by rubble; vaulted, low and tortuous. For nearly forty yards, fifteen feet below ground level, that naiTOw passage ran. It terminated ir a tall and panelled wall. “Nothing much to be ‘discovered’ here, Brenda!” Featonby laughed shakily. “The only thing I find it noted for is the creeps! Jove, my spine simply twitches.” "Mine also!” Brenda Linthorpe was equally as shaken. “I feel as though someone, something, devilish was looking at me.” Linthorpe slipped one arm about her waist and drew her to him. “When I confessed to creeps, Brenda, I did not suggest horrors! Anyhow, nothing is to be gained by fiddling about in this hole; we’d better get back to light and sanity, I think. By the way, what exactly was this passage made for, do you know ?” “They say it was the way made by one Brother Hugh d’Templehnrst, one of uncle’s monkish ancestors I should say; toward his organ, and ” “His what?” Featonby twisted about, a quick clear light burning in his eyes. “His organ, you say?” “Yes; why the excitement, Brian?” “Where’s the organ? Can you answer me that question, Brenda?” “In dust since the Reformation I should say! You surely don't suspect it of being in existence after all this time, Brian ?” Brian Featonby was very silent. lie seemed to be considering some weighty problem entirely pleasant in his thoughts. At last — “I don’t know a lot about monks and their ways,” he muttered, “but I do know sufficient to set me agog about this little problem. Now, I wonder, what lies behind that panelling? In the days of the Reformation, when monastic establishments were being razed wholesale, the monks, jealous of their treasures, were usually cute enough to hide them away—under the earth, for preference—to save them from the ravaging hands of Henry the Eighth’s merry men. An organ was a tremendous treasure.” He looked quizzingly at the panellings. All thoughts of ghosts and hauntings had been deterged from his mind. “I wonder now; I wonder! Has anyone ever been to the far side of that woodwork, Brenda?” “Why, no; it only stone walling and wood, flattened up against a bulwark of earth, dear! This passage leds to the end of the foundations, according to the plans of the place. As you say, and I agree, let’s go; it’s creepy down here; awful!” She sighed. “No adventure after all, Brian. Yet, you’ve had your wish; you’ve got as near to the mystery of Lone Hallowes as ever you’re likely to get——” A movement, a twist, it seemed, of vapour, like smoke passing through

flame; a cold draught; and—a face, k loathly awful head of death; a thing of horror piled upon an inchoate form of writhing lights and shades. A thing was this like a man; yet it was as unlike living men as any form of death. It had movement and being with them for one moment. Then, was not. Brenda Linthorpe screamed and fell half swooning to the dusty floor. Featonby fired straight at the dreadful I shape, two shots. j D ith a roar and a gust of foul air the i whole of the old panelling crashed to | ruin. With its piercing by the bullets | its ancient texture fell apart, as the j touch of a warm finger flings apart the | solid texture of a mummy, and no wall of stone, lay there, behind, hut a gap, i a doorway, giving on to a great and* I vaulted chamber. And in a faint line of I moonlight, creeping down from some rift in the roof of that cavernous place, towered the mighty pipes and mechanism of a great organ; missals, scrolls, books, plate, old furnishings, censers, sanctuary lamps, vessels of silver and of gold, and line on terrible line, bundles of sere rags headeel by grinning bones, dead, long-dead monks. The place was at onee a treasure house and a catacomb 1 Voices called; the rapid tread of feet sounded, doors clashed and the whole of Lone Hallowes, aroused by the shots, I was life. I o e * i Christmas morning and the softly | stealing sound of bells sweeping gladly across the snowy earth. The fields of Lone Hallowes lay in peace and all around the house was beauty. Yet in the house itself r.li was wild excitement. The treasures of the ancient monks lay piled in glittering rows. Thousands of pounds worth of gold, and silver was here, and manuscripts and chartularies of priceless worth. The dead still lay where they had lain for four long centuries. The organ was still silent down there in the cavern of the earth. “A marvellous find,” said Dr. Hinwell, speaking sibilantly and in awe. "A truly wonderful contribution to the intellectual wealth of the century!” Old Squire Linthorpe laughed shortly. “Maybe—maybe, Doctor Hinwell, but—but hang it all, Lone Hallowes has lost in assets; it’s lost its ghosts!” His eyes twinkled as he surveyed Brenda, his neice, and Brian Featonby, her lover. “We’ve taken from the shades their means of midnight worship!” “I agree,” said that wise young man. “Oh? That’s a climb down, if you please! Then do you withdraw?” “And apologise,” grinned Feat-nby. “What d’you say, Brenda?” “I think it’s about time. Brian. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ you won. If we saw death last night, dearest, it’s Christmas morning now; tlie festival of glad birth when one forgets the sorrows of a year aud looks forward to ” “.lust life, my Brenda, life,” murmured Brian Featonby, and unashamedly he kissed her.