SERIAL STORY “The Devouring Fire”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 188, 11 August 1931, Page 12

SERIAL STORY “The Devouring Fire”

BY

LORD GORELL

CHAPTER XXXll.—(Continued.) That evening l she had the horrors. Wherever she sat she caught sight of her shadow leering at her from the wall; whenever she moved, she saw i; shifting- to attack her: she had to gaze fixedly at it to make sure that it was only a shadow. She made a frenzied dart from her room up the stairs. The door moved ft® she fled by; she could swear it did. With a shriek she hurled herself des perately into her room. There, in a frenzy of fear she piled furniture against her door and cowered down into bed without daring Io undress. The next Gay, as soon as it was light, Hilda left the Little Lodge. Not for all the money in the world would she have passed another night with that shaking door on the landing opposite with that unseen, moaning vindictive presence struggling to get at bar from the room beyond. 1 CHAPTER XXXIII. Frost at the Grange. Richard Scott, charged during the absence of his friend and client on a prolonged honeymoon with responsibility for seeing to its arrangements soon came to curse the Grange and • everything connected with it. The girl who had accelerated Hilda’s flight from the Little Lodge by chiming in with an imagination so uncomfortably opposite to her own was typical: Scott found himself faced by a steady succession of irritating domestic interviews. Miss Oliver, Murrell, and all the servants had left on their own initiative as soon as possible after the tragedy. With the verdict Latham became the unchallenged heir and Scott his representative. He had speedily found his task no sinecure. In the first place servants were difficult to secure: there seemed to be universal reluctance to take service at all in a house where a murder had been committed. That Scott was prepared for and he combated the prejudice by offering good wages. To his annoyance he discovered that to be a palliative, not a remedy: not. only were servants difficult to secure, but e when secured, would not stop. As the time drew' near for the La- ; thams’ return and a. fresh batch of • servants, after much discussion among ■ themselves, showed signs of meaning ; io follow their predecessors’ example, i Scott became obstinate. He went . down end had & talk with the very | respectable butler he had recently | lured there., “What is Richards?” he asked, i “Of course I know what prejudice ; there is, but after all’s said and done i it’s a good place; nothing violent has ' ever happened here before or is ever 1 likely to again, and I’ve taken the rei sponslbility of increasing wages a bit all round to make up, and still no one seems to be contented." ‘‘Well, sir,” replied Richards, “it’s not altogether unnatural. You know what young females sue. «!r, and they don’t like it.” “But, hang It all. you’re not a young female, and you're as bad as any of them. What Is it?” “Well, sir, 1 hardly like to tell you.” “I insist upon knowing. ' “Well then, sir, they say the place is haunted. I won't say I believe it. sir,’’ remarked Richards, coming closer to Scott" in a kind of agitated confidence; “but I have seen things myself.” * 1 Thin g sWha t things?' “Well, sir, .cast Friday night I happened to look out of the window; about. half past ten It was and I was just making sure everything was fastened. There was a bit of a moon, sir,” Richards’s voice sank dramatlcdly, “and I sec a female figure, sir, on the lawn where no female has a right to be at that hour, sir. I threw open the window', and was going to call out to her, but she’d gone. And t wasn’t any one of the servants or any one about the place: I made inluirles.” “Some tramp prowling or else you imagined the whole thing,” said Scott contemptuously. “She was walking away from th* library window, sir.” rejoined Richards impressively, “the library sir, where—” he broke off with dramatic suppression: then he added impulsively, “.And what’s more, that careaker at the Little Lodge, where she—” he dwelt significantly upon the pronoun, making It a long-drawn, ominous sound—“was staying—she’s cleared out, sir, sent the gardener aere a note to say she couldn't stand it any longer: she’s heard noises and things.” “Well, but really, are you going to Ihrow up a good place—and Just as Mr and Mrs Latham are returning—because of this sort of thing, because i caretaker gets scared of being all by herself at night and because you or think you see. some stranger on the prowl?” Scott, had a hard task: the servants had all been talking and frightming one another: they had got themselves. he said bitterly, into a state Alien they would see anything. But •onfession relieved the tension a little, md by dint of much persuasion and a further iincrease of wages, Scott nanaged to avoid a second wholesale nigralion. Richards and three others consented f a favour, to remain at my rate, lung enough to settle the .athams in. The Lathams’ return was nevertheess hardly the joyous homecoming characteristic of a young heir bringing down liis bride. Latham had not set foot in the Grange since his acquittal. and it was inevitable that Hi.’ .houghts, both of himself and France*, should go irresistibly to the night when he had last been there. They ought against them, but it was oppressive that there should be thoughts jii such an occasion against which H was necessary to fight. Each forced ■x note of gaiety, and the odd feeling hat s p emed to penetrate the house they put down to the weather. “I believe I’ve got hold of it." said Frances one day. ‘Tve been having i great pow-vvow with the cook: very respectable she is, so far. But tins morning somehow we slipped into affability, and she let the cat out of the bag. it’s the servants, I’m sure, who've been making us feel sort of uneasy. They’re still as nervous as kittens. You’d hardly believe it, but none of them, even now, will go

the drive at night, alone.” “What on earth are they frightened of?” “They don't know. Richards, who’s the worst old woman of the lot, is v the bottom of it. He let out that he thought he saw something one night, the figure of a woman on the lawn by the library, ho told Mrs Adams. You know what, servants are; the} ve been revelling in it ever since ami making each other’s flesh creep. What they say in fact is that '.Miss Tressway walks. They like you—that's something for you—and they re fond of me—“ “Naturally.” “Or they wouldn't stop. Did you ever bear such nonsense.” “Well, what are we going to do about. 1t?” “Nothing as far as I can see- I suppose it’ll die out of itself some time. But I feel altogether betternow I know what's been subconscious ly bothering us." February slipped away and March came in like the traditional lion. The nights grew suddenly chill and one afternoon the air was filled with drifting flakes of snow. As is so often England's little way. sufficient spread just to spread a thin and Intermittent covering of white over the ground and no mere. A frost followed. The next morning the sun gleam ed out entrancingly on an invigorating world. Latham and his young wife were out before breakfast, walking in the garden to get up an appetite, laughing and running races in tnpride of their youth, their healtl and their happiness together. They went as far as the edge of the wood bordering the garden on -the north and then started back by the path that skirted the further side of the lawn. “Give me a start to that tree and I’ll beat you in to breakfas-t,” cried Frances merrily, as the distant sum moms O'f the gong travelled inviting to them. “Righto. Ready? One, two. three off!” Latham sped forward, but Frances did not stir, her pose was rigid, her eyes were s-taring. “Jim!’’ she said in e low, strained voice. He drew up beside her at once “What’s up?” he asked blankly. “Don’t you see?’’ she cried, point Ing unsteadily. “There 1 and there’ Faintly outlined in the hard enow in the bed lying in shadow In front of the gap in the palisade and run nlng diagonally across the lawn, waveringly indistinct in the patches of snow, already slushily melting, seemed to be some harrowing, un bellevabde marks, apparently those o a woman's footsteps. ‘‘•My God!" exclaimed Latham hoi lowly. “What the devil— ’’ He stared down, awestricken, at it a bed, and then turned bewildered eyes Lu follow the indications on the lawn. “They run—they seem to run. ’ murmured Frances wildly, From—the library’" They looked at one another In silent apprehension, memories flooding both. “■.Some darned fool trespassing." cried Latham at last, desperate!;seeking re-assurance. “But —but,' stammered Frances, “they’re all pointing away from l:.. house; no one has come In!'' “It—it can 4 be anything else. ' aserted Latham with a note of ter: gin his tones. “I’d better see about it at once.” lie was moving off to 1 . - ener when Frances laid a h imi "o > arm. “No. Jim,” she pleach'd Gi.’kly; “the less we say lhe heller 1 I don’t -think I’m fanciful, but It- t frightened me. It's—it's exactly what the sergeant found 1" “I know. Perhaps you’re right," Latham answered jerkily, "H.'s Iwi" rid, any way. Let’s go In ’ Witn impatient feet he obliterated the trar. that bad so suddenly struck al. gaiety from their hearts. A pair grown strangely silent -■ down Vi breakfast. CHAPTER XXXIV. Resurrection. Immediately after a breakfast n which both Latham and Frances lu i been wrestling doggedly with t;"- r uneasy reflections, Latham rose and said with an abrupt bringing of them to the surface, “This is Dell, Frau, eh? We can t wave it like his. !'. going out to search around: ‘her' must be traces leading inwards sun.' where. There's not a soul m house who was here last June >■ could possibly have had anything do with 11, and the other thoughtwell, that’s madness. We both spa the marks, didn't we’" He raised apprehensive eyes io h'-' White face for conflrmati m of h'-ti sanity, and she nodded. W.t.i a 1. . *•. of encouragement he went r, ut. morose determination Frances sat on alone in the breakfast room thinking. Mr Birch t whom her husband and she owned - now only because she again had net at her own- forgetfulness. sh'go and see him without ano;.'.*-? non” . delay; whatever the result uf .l.n. search; she could t least ’fitd on bow the old man had stood the mn winter and its very trying alternati n of weather. She got up with resolution, wen about the duties of her household, .m then made ready for the short wain to the village. As she came down stairs again, Latham strode ii. froi. the garden He looked at her queer.y ami, avoiding the library insiinc'live'i;« drew her into the breakfast-room and shut the door. "Nut a sign, ' he said gioonuly “I’ve been all round They called together at Mr Birch's Mary, now Mrs Farrant, was no longer there to open the door to them; in her place was a shy young Barber, a niece of Mrs Fitchett. They found Mr Birch huddled in a chair by the fire. In the three months "that had elapsed since Fran oes’s last visit he had aged greatly He coughed perpetually with a rasping struggle that shook his whole body, suffusing his face with momentary and unnatural colour. be contlnueO.!