Witching Hill

"'Ow awful!" she ejaculated in hushed tones. "Madness, I call it. Setting fire to a nice 'ouse like this! But there, he's been getting queer for a long time. I've often said so – to myself, you know, sir – I wouldn't say it to nobody else. That burgular business was the beginning."

"Well, Sarah," I said, "he's got so queer that we must think what's to be done, and think quickly, and do it double-quick! But I shall be obliged if you'll stick to your excellent rule of not talking to outsiders. We've had scenes enough at Witching Hill, without this getting about."

"Oh! I shan't say a word, sir," said Sarah, solemnly. "Even pore Mr. Nettleton, he shall never know from me how I found him out!"

I could hardly believe my ears. "Good God, woman! Do you dream of spending another night under this maniac's roof?"

"Why, of course I do, sir," cried old Sarah, bridling. "Who's to look after him, if I go away and leave him, I should like to know? The very idea!"

"I'll see that he's looked after," said I, grimly, and went and bolted the front door, lest he should return before I had decided on my tactics.

In the few seconds that my back was turned, Sarah seemed to have acquired yet another new and novel point of view. I found the old heroine almost gloating over her master's dreadful handiwork.

"Well, there, I never did see anything so artful! Him at his theatre, to come home and look on at the fire, and me at my concert, safe and sound as if I was at church! Oh, he'd see to that, sir; he wouldn't've done it if he 'adn't've arranged to put me out of 'arm's way. That's Mr. Nettleton, every inch. Not that I say it was a right thing to do, sir, even with the 'ouse empty as it is. But what can you expect when a pore gentleman goes out of 'is 'ead? There's not many would care what 'appened to nobody else! But the artfulness of 'im: in another minute the whole 'ouse might've been blazing like a bonfire! Well, there, you do 'ear of such things, and now we know 'ow they 'appen."

To this extraordinary tune, with many such variations, I was meanwhile making up my mind. The first necessity was to place the intrepid old fool really out of harm's way, and the next was to save the house if possible, but also and at all costs the good name of the Witching Hill Estate. We had had one suicide, and it had not been hushed up quite as successfully as some of us flattered ourselves at the time; one case of gross intemperance, most scandalous while it lasted, and one gang of burglars actually established on the Estate. People were beginning to talk about us as it was; a case of attempted arson, even if the incendiary were proved a criminal lunatic, might be the end of us as a flourishing concern. It is true that I had no stake in the Company whose servant I was; but one does not follow the dullest avocation for three years without taking a certain interest of another kind. At any rate I intended the secret of this locked room to remain as much a secret as I could keep it, and this gave me an immediate leverage over Sarah. Unless she took herself off before her master returned, I assured her I would have him sent, not to an asylum, but to the felon's cell which I described as the proper place for him. I was not so sure in my own mind that I meant him to go to one or the other. But this was the bargain that I proposed to Sarah.

It came out that she had friends, in the shape of a labouring brother and his wife and family, whom I strongly suspected of having migrated on purpose to keep in touch with Sarah's kitchen, no further away than the Village. I succeeded in packing the old thing off in that direction, after making her lock her door at the top of the house. Previously I had removed the marks of my boot from the extinguished candles, and had left the locked room locked once more and in total darkness. Sarah and I quitted the house together before ten o'clock.

"I'll see that your master doesn't do himself any damage to-night," were my last words to her. "He'll think the candles have been blown out by a draught under the door – which really wouldn't catch them till they burnt quite low – and that you are asleep in your bed at the top of the house. You've left everything as though you were; and that alone, as you yourself have pointed out, is enough to guarantee his not trying it on again to-night. You see, the fire was timed to break out before you left your entertainment, as it would have done if you'd seen the programme through. Tell your people that Mr. Nettleton's away for the night, and you've gone and locked yourself out by mistake. Above all, don't come back, unless you want to give the whole show away; he'd know at once that you'd discovered everything, and even your life wouldn't be safe for another minute. Unless you promise, Sarah, I'll just wait for him myself – with a policeman!"

My reasoning was cogent enough for that simple mind; on the other hand, the word of such an obviously faithful soul was better than the bond of most; and altogether it was with considerable satisfaction that I heard old Sarah trot off into the night, and then myself ran every yard of the way back to the Delavoyes' house.

Up to this point, as I still think, I had done better than many might have done in my place. But for my promise to Uvo, and the fact that he was even then lying waiting for me to redeem it, I would not have rushed to a sick man with my tale. Yet I must say that I was thankful I had no other choice, as matters stood. And I will even own that I had formed no definite plans beyond the point at which Uvo, having heard all, was to give me the benefit of his sound judgment in any definite dilemma.

To my sorrow he took the whole thing in an absolutely different way from any that I had anticipated. He took it terribly to heart. I had entirely forgotten the gist of our conversation before I left him; he had been thinking of nothing else. The thing that I had expected to thrill him to the marrow, that would have done nothing else at any other time, simply harrowed him after what it seemed that I had said three-quarters of an hour before. Whatever I had said was overlaid in my mind, for the moment, by all that I had since seen and heard. But Uvo Delavoye might have been brooding over every syllable.

"You said you wouldn't envy me," he cried, huskily, "if poor old Nettleton fell under the influence in his turn. You spoke as if it was my influence; it isn't, but it may be that I'm a sort of medium for its transmission! Sole agent, eh, Gilly? My God, that's an awful thought, but you gave it me just now and I sha'n't get shot of it in a hurry! None of these beastly things happened before I came here – I, the legitimate son of this infernal soil! I'm the lightning-conductor, I'm the middleman in every deal!"

"My dear Uvo, we've no time for all that," I said. He had started up in bed, painfully excited and distressed, and I began to fear that I might have my work cut out to keep him there. "We agreed to differ about that long ago," I reminded him.

"It's only another way of putting what you said just now," he answered. "You said you did believe in my power of infecting another fellow with my ideas; you spoke of my responsibility if the other fellow put them into practice; and now he's done this hideous thing, had done it even when we were talking!"

"He hasn't done it yet, and I mean to know the reason if he ever does," said I, perhaps with rather more confidence than I really felt. I went on to outline my various notions of prevention. Uvo found no comfort in any of them.

"You can't trust him alone there for the night, after this, Gilly! He'll pull it off, Sarah or no Sarah, if you do. And if you send him either to prison or an asylum – but you won't be sending him! That's just it, Gilly. He'll have been sent by me!"

It was a case of the devil quoting scripture, but I was obliged to tell Uvo, as though I had found it out for myself, that criminals and criminal lunatics were not made that way. Villain-worshippers did not go to such lengths unless they had the seeds of madness or of crime already in them. Uvo could not repudiate his own thesis, but he said that if that were so he had watered those seeds in a way that made him the worst of the two. There was no arguing with him, no taking his part against this ruthless self-criticism. He owned that in Nettleton he had found a sympathetic listener at last, that he had poured the whole virus of his ideas into those willing ears, and now here was the result. He threatened to get up and dress, and to stagger into the breach with me or instead of me. No need to recount our contest on that point. I prevailed by undertaking to do any mortal thing he liked, as long as he lay where he was with that quinsy.

"Then save the fellow somehow, Gilly," he cried, "only don't you go near Nettleton to-night! He obviously isn't safe; take the other risk instead. Since the old soul's out of the house, let him set fire to it if he likes; that's better than his murdering you on the spot. Then we must get him quietly examined, without letting him know that we know anything at all; and if a private attendant's all he wants, I swear I'm his man. It's about the least I can do for him, and it would give me a job in life at last!"

I did not smile at my dear old lad. I gave him the assurance his generosity required, and I meant to carry it out, subject to a plan of my own for watching Nettleton's house all night. But all my proposals suffered a proverbial fate within ten minutes, when I was about to pass the still dark house, and was suddenly confronted by Nettleton himself, leaning over the gate as though in wait for me.

And here I feel an almost apologetic sense of the inadequacy of Nettleton's personality to the part that he was playing that night; for there was nothing terrifying about him, nothing sinister or grotesque. The outward man was flabbily restless and ineffective, distinguished from the herd by no stronger features than a goatee beard and the light, quick, instantaneously responsive eye of an uncannily intelligent child. And no more than a child did I fear him; man to man, I could have twisted his arm out of its socket, or felled him like an ox with one blow from mine. So I thought to myself, the very moment I stopped to speak to him; and perhaps, by so thinking, recognised some subtler quality, and confessed a subtle fear.

"I was looking for my old servant," said Nettleton, after a civil greeting. "She's not come in yet."

"Oh! hasn't she?" I answered, and I liked the ring of my own voice even less than his.

"Anyhow I can't make her hear, and the old fool's left her door locked," said Nettleton.

"That's a bad plan," said I, not to score a silly point, but simply because I had to say something with conviction. It was a mistake. Nettleton peered at me by the light from the nearest lamp-post.

"Have you seen anything of her?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes!" I answered, in obedience to the same necessity of temperament.

"Well?" he cried.

"Well, she seemed nervous about something, and I believe she has gone to her own people for the night."

We stood without speaking for nearly a minute. A soft step came marching round the asphalt curve, throwing a bright beam now upon its indigo surface, and now over the fussy fronts of the red houses, as a child plays with a bit of looking-glass in the sun. "Good-night, officer," said Nettleton as the step and the light passed on. And I caught myself thinking what an improvement the asphalt was in Witching Hill Road, and how we did want it in Mulcaster Park.

"We can't talk out here, and I wish to explain about this wretched rent," said Nettleton. "Come in – or are you nervous too?"

I gave the gate a push, and he had to lead the way. I should not have been so anxious to see a real child in front of me. But Nettleton turned his back with an absence of hesitation that reassured me as to his own suspicions, and indeed none were to be gleaned from his unthoughtful countenance when he had lit up his hall without waiting for me to shut the front door. At that I did shut it, and accepted his invitation to smoke a pipe in his den; for I thought I could see exactly how it was.

Nettleton, having found his candles out and his servant flown, having even guessed that I knew something and perhaps suspected more, was about to show me my mistake by taking me into the very room where the conflagration had been laid for lighting. Of course I should see no signs of it, and would presently depart at peace with a tenant whose worst crime was his unpunctuality over the rent. Nothing could suit me better. It would show that the house really was safe for the night, while it would give time for due consideration, and for any amount of conferences with Uvo Delavoye.

So I congratulated myself as I followed Nettleton into the room that had been locked; of course it was unlocked now that he was at home, but it was still in perfect darkness as I myself had left it. The shavings rustled about our ankles; but no doubt he would think there was nothing suspicious about the shavings in themselves. Yet there was one difference, perceptible at once and in the dark. There was a smell that I thought might have been there before, but unnoticed by Sarah and me in our excitement. It was a strong smell, however, and it reminded me of toy steamers and of picnic teas.

"One moment, and I'll light the gas. We're getting in each other's way," said Nettleton. I moved instinctively, in obedience to a light touch on the arm, and I heard him fumbling in the dark behind me. Then I let out the yell of a lifetime. I am not ashamed of it to this day. I had received a lifetime's dose of agony and amazement.

My right foot had gone through the floor, gone into the jaws of some frightful monster that bit it to the bone above the ankle!

"Why, what's the matter?" cried Nettleton, but not from the part of the room where I had heard him fumbling, neither had he yet struck a light.

"You know, you blackguard!" I roared, with a few worse words than that. "I'll sort you for this, you see if I don't! Strike a light and let me loose this instant! It's taking my foot off, I tell you!"

"Dear, dear!" he exclaimed, striking a match at once. "Why, if you haven't gone and got into my best burglar-trap!"

He stood regarding me from a safe distance, with a sly pale smile, and the wax vesta held on high. I dropped my eyes to my tortured leg: a couple of boards had opened downward on hinges, and I could see the rusty teeth of an ancient man-trap embedded in my trousers, and my trousers already darkening as though with ink, where the pierced cloth pressed into quivering flesh and bone.

"It's the very same thing that happened to that last maid of mine," continued Nettleton. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd never seen a trap like that before. There aren't so many of 'em, even in museums. I picked this one up in Wardour Street; but it was my own idea to set it like that, and I went and quite forgot I'd left it ready for the night!"

That was the most obvious lie. He had set the thing somehow when he had pretended to be going to light the gas. But I did not tell him so. I did not open my mouth – in speech. I heard him out in a dumb horror; for he had stooped, and was lighting the candles one by one.

They were all where they had always been, except one that I must have kicked over on entering. Nettleton looked at that candle wistfully, and then at me, with a maniacally sly shake of the head; for it lay within my reach, but out of his; and it lay in a pool, beneath glistening shavings, for the whole room was swimming in the stuff that stank.

The lighting of the candles – in my brain as well as on the floor – had one interesting effect. It stopped my excruciating pain for several moments. We stood looking at each other across the little low lights, like Gullivers towering over Lilliputian lamp-posts; that is, he stood, well out of arm's-length, while I leant with all my weight on one bent knee. Suddenly he gleamed and slapped his thigh.

"Why, I do believe you thought I was going to set fire to the house!" he cried.

"I knew you were."

"No – but now?"

"Yes – now – I see it in your damned face!"

"Really, Mr. Gillon!" exclaimed Nettleton, with a shake of his cracked head. "I hadn't thought of such a thing. But I am in a difficulty. The gas is on your side of the room, just out of your reach. So is the control of the very unpleasant arrangement that's got you by the heel. Is it the ankle? Oh! I'm sorry; but it's no use your looking round. I only meant the trap-door control; the trap itself has to be taken out before you can set it again, and it's a job even with the proper lever. After what's happened and the language you've been using, Mr. Gillon, I'm afraid I don't care to trust myself within reach of your very powerful arms, either to light the gas or to meddle with my little monster."

"See here," I said through the teeth that I had set against my pain. "You're as mad as a hatter; that's the only excuse for you – "

"Thank you!" he snapped in. "Then it won't be the worse for me if I do give you a taste of hell before your death and – cremation!"

"I'm sorry for you," I went on, partly because I did not know that the insane call for more tact than the sane, and partly because I was far from sure which this man was, but had resolved in any case to appeal with all my might to his self-interest. "I'm sorry for anybody who loses his wits, but sorriest for those who get them back again and have to pay for what they did when they weren't themselves. You go mad and commit a murder, but you're dead sane when they hang you! That seems to me about the toughest luck a man could have, but it looks very like being your own."

"Which of these four candles do you back to win?" inquired Nettleton, looking at them and not at me. "I put my money on the one nearest you, and I back this one here for a place."

"Two people know all about this, I may tell you," said I with more effect. Nettleton looked up. "Uvo Delavoye's one, and your old Sarah's the other."

"That be blowed for a yarn!" he answered, after a singularly lucid interval, if he was not lucid all the time. "I think I see you walking into a trap like this if you knew it was here!"

"It's the truth!" I blustered, feeling to my horror that the truth had not rung true.

"All right! Then you deserve all you get for coming into another man's house – "

"When your servant came for me, and when we found out together that you were trying to burn it down?"

I was doing my best to reason with him now, but he was my master, sane or crazy. His cleverness was diabolical. He took the new point out of my mouth. "Yes – for going away and standing by to see me do it!" he cried. "But that's not the only crow I've got to pluck with you, young fellow, and the other jacks-in-office behind you. Must pay your dirty extortionate rent, must I? Very last absolutely final application, was it? Going to put a man in possession, are you? Very nice – very good! You're in possession yourself, my lad, and I wish you joy of your job!"

He made for the door, hugging the wall with unnecessary caution, leaving a bookcase tottering as an emblem of his respect. But at the door he recovered both his courage and his humour.

"I always meant to give him a warm reception," he cried – "and by God you're going to get one!"

He opened the door – made me a grotesque salute – and it was all that I could do to keep a horrified face till he was gone. Never had I thought him mad enough to leave me before he was obliged. Yet the front door closed softly in its turn; now I was alone in the house, and could have clapped my hands with joy. I plunged them into my pockets instead, took out the small shot of my possessions, and fired them at the candles, even to my watch. But my hand had shaken. I was balanced on one leg and suffering torments from the other. The four flames burnt undimmed. Then I stripped to the waist, made four bundles of coat and waistcoat, shirt and vest. It was impossible to miss with these. As I flung the fourth, darkness descended like a kiss from heaven – and a loud laugh broke through the door.

Nettleton came creeping in along the wall, lit the candles one by one, and said he was indebted to me for doing exactly what he thought I would, and throwing away my own last means of meddling with his arrangements!

I went mad myself. I turned for an appreciable time into the madder man of the two; the railing and the raving were all on my side. They are not the least horrible thing that I remember. But I got through that stage, thank God! I like to think that one always must if there is time. There was time, and to spare, in my case. And there were those four calm candles waiting for me to behave myself, burning away as though they had never been out, one almost down to the shavings now, all four in their last half-inch, yet without another flicker between them of irresolution or remorse, true ecclesiastical candles to the end!

I had spat at them till my mouth was like an ash-pit; but there they burnt, corpse candles for the living who was worse than dead, mocking me with their four charmed flames. But mockery was nothing to me now. Nettleton had killed the nerve that mockery touches. When I shouted he gave me leave to go on till I was black in the face; nobody would hear me through the front of the house, and perhaps I remembered the heavy shutters he had made for the French windows at the time of the burglar scare? He went round to see if he could hear me through them, and he came back rubbing his hands. But now I took no more notice of his taunts. The last and cruellest was at the very flecks of blood on floor and shavings, flung far as froth in my demented efforts to tear either my foot from the trap or myself limb from limb… And I had only sworn at him in my terrible preoccupation.

"No, that's where you're going, old cock!" he had answered. "And by the way, Gillon, when you get there I wish you'd ask for your friend Delavoye's old man of the soil; tell him his mantle's descended on good shoulders, will you? Tell him he's not the only pebble on the shores of Styx!"

That gave me something else to think about towards the end; but I had no longer any doubt about the man's inveterate insanity. His pale eyes had rolled and lightened with unstable fires. There had been something inconsecutive even in his taunts. Consistent only in keeping out of my way, he had explained himself once when I was trying to picture the wrath to come upon him, in the felon's dock, in the condemned cell, on the drop itself. It was only fools who looked forward or back, said Edgar Nettleton.

And I, who have done a little of both all my life, like most ordinary mortals, as I look back to the hour which I had every reason to recognise as my last on earth, the one redeeming memory is that of the complete calm which did ultimately oust my undignified despair. It may have been in answer to the prayers I uttered in the end instead of curses; that is more than man can say. I only know that I was not merely calm at the last, but immensely interested in what Nettleton would have called the winning candle. It burnt down to the last thin disk of grease, shining like a worn florin in the jungle of shavings that seemed to lean upon the flame and yet did not catch. Then the wick fell over, the last quarter-inch of it, and I thought that candle had done its worst. Head and heart almost burst with hope. No! the agony was not to be prolonged to the next candle, or the next but one. The very end of the first wick had done the business in falling over. I had forgotten that strong smell and the pools now drying on the floor.

It began in a thin blue spoonful of flame, that scooped up the worn grease coin, grew into a saucerful of violet edged with orange, and in ten or twenty seconds had the whole jungle of shavings in a blaze. But it was a violet blaze. It was not like ordinary fire. It was more like the thin blue waves that washed over the rocks of white asbestos in so many of our tenants' grates. And like a wave it passed over the surface of the floor, without eating into the wood.

There were no hangings in the room. The incendiary had relied entirely on his woodwork, and within a minute the floor was a sea of violet flames with red crests. There was one island. I had stooped after Nettleton left me for the last time, and swept the shavings clear of me on all sides, garnering as many as possible into the hole in the floor where the trap had been set, and drying the floor within reach as well as I could with the bare hand. There was this island, perhaps the size of a hearth-rug; and I cannot say that I was ever any hotter than I should have been on such a rug before a roaring fire.