The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other Stories (32 page)

“Darling!” was what Shaun said.

I strode briskly up the long beech avenue. The snow that later was to carpet the drive, and to clothe the limbs of the great trees, now hung suspended in dull grey cloud banks over Devrers Hall. Thus I first set eyes upon the place.

W. Earl Ryland had seen it from the car when motoring to Stratford, had delayed one hour and twenty-five minutes to secure the keys and look over the house, and had leased it for three years. That had been two days ago. Now, as I passed the rusty, iron gates and walked up the broad stairs of the terrace to the front door, the clatter of buckets and a swish of brushes told me that the workmen were busy within. It is, after all, a privilege to be the son of a Wall Street hustler.

Faithful to my promise, I inspected the progress made by the decorating contractor, and proceeded to look over the magnificent old mansion. Principally, I believe, it was from designs by Vanbrugh. The banqueting hall impressed me particularly with its fretwork ceiling, elaborate mouldings, and its large, stone-mullioned windows with many-hued, quarrel-pane lattices.

I had this wing of the building quite to myself, and passing through into what may have been a library, I saw at the farther end a low, arched door in the wall. It was open, and a dim light showed beyond. I approached it, passed down six stone steps and found myself in a small room, evidently of much earlier date than the rest of the house.

It had an elaborately carved chimney piece reaching to the ceiling, and the panelling was covered with extraordinary designs. One small window lighted the room. Before the window, his back towards me, stood a cowled monk!

At my gasp of mingled fear and surprise, he turned a red, bearded face to me. To my great amazement, I saw that the mysterious intruder was smoking a well-coloured briar!

“Did I frighten you?” he inquired, with a strong Irish brogue. “I’m sorry! But it’s years since I saw over Devrers, and so I ventured to trespass. I’m Father Bernard from the monastery yonder. Are you Mr Ryland?”

I gasped again, but with relief. Father Bernard, broad-shouldered and substantial, puffing away at his briar, was no phantom after all, but a very genial mortal.

“No,” I replied. “He will be down later. I am known as Cumberly.”

He shook my hand very heartily; he seemed on the point of speaking again, yet hesitated.

“What a grand old place it is,” I continued. “This room surely, is older than the rest?”

“It is part of the older mansion,” he replied, “Devereaux Hall. Devrers is a corruption.”

“Devereaux Hall,” I said. “Did it belong to that family?”

Father Bernard nodded.

“Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, owned it. There’s his crest over the door. He never lived here himself, but if you can make out medieval Latin, this inscription here will tell you who did.”

He watched me curiously while I struggled with the crabbed characters:

“Here by grace of his noble patron, Robert Devereaux, my lord of Essex,” I read, “laboured Maccabees Nosta of Padua, a pupil of Michel de Notredame, seeking the light.”

“Nosta was a Jewish astrologer and magician,” explained the monk, “and according to his own account, as you see, a pupil of the notorious Michel de Notredame, or Nostradamus. He lived here under the patronage of the Earl until 1601, when Essex was executed. Legend says that he was not the pupil of Nostradamus, but his master the devil, and that he brought about the fall of his patron. What became of Nosta of Padua nobody knows.”

He paused, watching me with something furtive in his blue eyes.

“I’m a regular guidebook, you’re thinking?” he went on. “Well, so I am. We have it all in the old records at the monastery. A Spanish family acquired the place after the death of Robert Devereaux—the Miguels, they called themselves. They were shunned by the whole country; and it’s recorded that they held Black Masses and Devil’s Sabbaths here in this very room!”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “The house has an unpleasant history!”

“The last of them was burned for witchcraft in the marketplace at Ashby, as late as 1640!”

I suppose I looked as uncomfortable as I felt, glancing apprehensively about the gloomy apartment.

“When Devereaux, or Devrers, Hall was pulled down and rebuilt, this part was spared for some mysterious reason. But let me tell you that from 1640 till 1863—when a Mr Nicholson leased it—nobody has been able to live here!”

“What do you mean? Ghosts?”

“No, fires!”

“Fires!”

“That same! If you’ll examine the rooms closely, you’ll find that some of them have been rebuilt and some partially rebuilt, at dates long after Vanbrugh’s day. It’s where the fires have been! Seven poor souls have burned to death in Devrers since the Miguels’ time, but the fires never spread beyond the rooms they broke out in!”

“Father Bernard,” I said, “tell me no more at present! This is horrible! Some of the best friends I have are coming to spend Christmas here!”

“I’d have warned Mr Ryland if he’d given me time,” continued the monk. “But it’s likely he’d have laughed at me for my pains! All you can do now, Mr Cumberly, is to say nothing about it until after Christmas. Then induce him to leave. I’m not a narrow-minded man, and I’m not a superstitious one, I think, but if facts are facts, Devrers Hall is
possessed
!”

* * *

The party that came together that Christmas at Devrers Hall was quite the most ideal that one could have wished for or imagined. There was no smartset boredom, for Earl’s friends were not smart set bores. Old and young there were, and children too. What Christmas gathering is complete without children?

Mr Ryland, Sr, and Mrs Ryland were over from New York, and the hard-headed man of affairs proved the most charming old gentleman one could have desired at a Christmas party. A Harvard friend of Earl’s, the Rev. Lister Hanson, Mrs Hanson, Earl’s sister, and two young Hansons were there. They, with Mrs Van Eyck, a pretty woman of thirty whose husband was never seen in her company, completed the American contingent.

But Earl had no lack of English friends, and these, to the round number of twenty, assisted at the Christmas housewarming.

On the evening of the twenty-third of December, as I entered the old banqueting hall bright with a thousand candles, the warm light from the flaming logs danced upon the oak leaves, emblems of hospitality which ornamented the frieze. Searching out strange heraldic devices upon the time-blackened panelling, I stood in the open door in real admiration.

A huge Christmas tree occupied one corner by the musicians’ gallery, and around this a group of youngsters had congregated, looking up in keen anticipation at the novel gifts which swung from the frosted branches. Mr Ryland, Sr, his wife and another grey-haired lady, with Father Bernard from the monastery, sat upon the black oak settles by the fire; they were an oddly assorted, but merry group. In short, the interior of the old hall made up a picture that would have delighted the soul of Charles Dickens.

“It’s just perfect, Earl!” came Hanson’s voice.

I turned, and saw that he and Earl Ryland stood at my elbow.

“It will be, when Mona comes!” was the reply.

“What has delayed Miss Verek?” I asked. Earl’s fiancée, Mona Verek, and her mother were to have joined us that afternoon.

“I can’t quite make out from her wire,” he answered quietly, a puzzled frown ruffling his forehead. “But she will be here by tomorrow, Christmas Eve.”

Hanson clapped him on the back and smiled. “Bear up, Earl,” he said. “Hello! Here comes Father Bernard, and he’s been yarning again. Just look how your governor is laughing.”

Earl turned, as with a bold gait the priest came towards them, his face radiating with smiles, his eyes alight with amusement. It was certainly a hilarious group the monk had left behind him. As he joined us, he linked his arm in that of the American clergyman and drew him aside for a private chat, I thought what a broad-minded company we were. When the two, in intimate conversation, walked off together, they formed one of the most pleasant pictures imaginable. The true spirit of Christmas reigned.

I passed to an oak settee where Justin Grinley, his wife and small daughter were pulling crackers with Mrs Hanson, just as young Lawrence Bowman appeared from a side door.

“Have you seen Mrs Van Eyck?” he inquired quickly.

No one had seen her for some time, and young Bowman hurried off upon his quest.

Grinley raised quizzical eyebrows, but said nothing. In point of fact, Bowman’s attentions to the lady had already excited some comment; but Mrs Van Eyck was an old friend of the Rylands, and we relied upon her discretion to find a nice girl among the company—there were many—to take the romantic youth off her hands.

Father Bernard presently beckoned to me from the door beneath the musicians’ gallery.

“You have, of course, said nothing of the matters we know of?” he asked as I joined him.

I shook my head, and the monk smiled around on the gathering.

“The old sorcerer’s study is fitted up as a cozy corner, I see,” he continued, “but between ourselves, I shouldn’t let any of the young people stay long in there!” He met my eyes seriously.

“If, indeed, the enemy holds power within Devrers, I think there is no likely victim among you tonight. The legend of Devrers Hall, you must know, Mr Cumberly, is that Maccabees Nosta, or the arch enemy in person, appears here in response to the slightest evil thought, word or deed within the walls! If any company could hope to exclude him, it is the present!” This he said half humorously and with his eyes roaming again over the merry groups about the great lighted room. “But, please God, the evil has passed.”

He was about to take his leave, for he came and went at will, a privileged visitor, as others of the Brotherhood. I walked with him along the gallery, lined now with pictures from Earl Ryland’s collection. One of the mullioned windows was open.

Out of the darkness we looked for a moment over the dazzling white carpet which lay upon the lawn, to where a fairy shrubbery, backed by magical, white trees, glittered as though diamond-dusted under the frosty moon. A murmur of voices came, and two figures passed across the snow: a woman in a dull red cloak with a furred collar and a man with a heavy travelling coat worn over his dress clothes. His arm was about the woman’s waist.

The monk made no sign, leaving me at the gallery door with a deep “Good night.”

But I saw his cowled figure silhouetted against a distant window, and his hand was raised in the ancient form of benediction.

Alone in the long gallery, something of the gaiety left me. By the open window, I stood for a moment looking out, but no one was visible now. The indiscreet dalliance of Mrs Van Eyck with a lad newly down from Cambridge seemed so utterly out of the picture. The lawn on that side of the house was secluded, but I knew that Father Bernard had seen and recognised them. I knew, too, the thought that was in his mind. As I passed slowly back towards the banqueting hall, my footsteps striking hollowly upon the oaken floor, that thought grew in significance. Free as I was, or as I thought I was, from the medieval superstitions which possibly were part of the monk’s creed, I shuddered at remembrance of the unnameable tragedies which this gallery might have staged.

It was very quiet. As I came abreast of the last window, the moonlight through a stained quarrel pane spread a red patch across the oaken floor, and I passed it quickly. It had almost the look of a fire burning beneath the woodwork!

Then, through the frosty, night air, I distinctly heard the great bell tolling out, from up the beech avenue at the lodge gate.

* * *

I was anxious to know what it meant myself. But Earl, whose every hope and every fear centred in Mona Verek, out ran me easily. I came up to the lodge gates just as he threw them open in his madly impulsive way. The lodge was unoccupied, for the staff was incomplete, and a servant had fastened the gates for the night after Father Bernard had left.

The monk could not have been gone two minutes, but now in the gateway stood a tall man enveloped in furs, who rested one hand upon the shoulder of a chauffeur. It had begun to snow again.

“What’s the matter?” cried Ryland anxiously, as the man who attended to the gates tardily appeared. “Accident?”

The stranger waved his disengaged hand with a curiously foreign gesture, and showed his teeth in a smile. He had a black, pointed beard and small moustache, with fine, clear-cut features and commanding eyes.

“Nothing serious,” he replied. Something in his voice reminded me of a note in a great organ, it was so grandly deep and musical. “My man was blinded by a drive of snow and ran us off the road. I fear my ankle is twisted, and the car being temporarily disabled…”

With the next house nearly two miles away, that was explanation enough for Earl Ryland. Very shortly we were assisting the distinguished-looking stranger along the avenue, Earl pooh-poohing his protests and sending a man ahead to see that a room would be ready. The snow was falling now in clouds, and Ryland and I were covered. At the foot of the terrace stairs, with cheery light streaming out through the snow-laden air, I noted something that struck me as odd, but at the time as no more than that.