Chapter III: The Monster

The party was waited on by two pretty French maids, while Monsieur Severin served the wine. The latter interested Wallace. He was somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age, with a cadaverous face and small, bird-like eyes. Although he fulfilled his functions perfectly, he had a habit of constantly looking over his shoulder, which detracted from his deportment considerably. Having heard what he had heard, Wallace could not do other than ascribe these frequent nervous acts to the Monster. Severin evidently expected him everywhere. He was like a man at his last gasp, hiding his terror by a commendable effort of will.

“We must give Severin a rest,” said Fallières. “I am afraid he is approaching a nervous breakdown.”

“Has he been with you long?” asked Wallace.

“Oh, yes. Nearly twenty-five years now. An excellent fellow, and a connoisseur in wines.”

“I can quite believe that,” said Conrad, as he lifted his glass.

“There! I quite forgot to telephone to Rheims about the car,” said Fallières. “I will do so immediately after dinner.”

“You need not bother,” put in Wallace. “The car is in going order.”

“You have discovered the trouble?”

“Mademoiselle and I--between us. It was nothing much.”

“Splendid! These trivial accidents are very annoying.”

“Talking about accidents,” said Conrad, “I regret that I have had one in my room. Rather an inexplicable one, too.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“No damage to myself--but to your property, monsieur. I can’t imagine how it happened. I went to the bathroom, and on returning found the dressing-table mirror shattered to atoms. It was lying on the floor, and seemed to have suffered a severe blow. The window was open, but there was no wind that could have blown so heavy an article to the floor.”

The face of Fallières went pallid, and Yolande started noticeably. Conrad was evidently at a loss to understand this rather strange reception.

“It--it is of no consequence whatever,” stammered Fallières, after a brief pause. Then, recovering his equanimity, “This is an unfortunate place for mirrors, Mr. Conrad. We do not seem to be able to keep a mirror intact for more than a few weeks. There seems to be an evil spirit here who hates them.”

“Well, it means seven years’ bad luck for me, anyhow,” replied Conrad with a laugh. “I suppose you find your family quite small now that your two younger children are away?”

“_Too_ small. I like to have young people about me. I like their laughter--their high spirits. I am a little concerned about Yolande, too. I fear it is not much of a life for a young woman, imprisoned in a kind of hermitage.”

“Father!” remonstrated Yolande. “You know I love the château, and the beautiful country.”

“Because it is home to you. I wish you would go away for a period. A change is good for everyone. There is Uncle Bernard at Nice and your cousins----”

“You know we never get on together. Are you anxious to be rid of me, father?”

He smiled and touched her arm affectionately, then he decided to confide a little in his guests.

“To be quite frank, there is something a little strange about the château. If I were a superstitious man I should put the estate into the market and seek for a place that was less charged with the spirits of the past, but I am rational enough to set at defiance strange signs and warnings----”

“Warnings!” said Conrad.

“One might interpret them as such. Now, Yolande, I am making your flesh creep.”

“It has crept before now,” she said, with a wan smile. “I know what you mean, father. It is everybody’s secret, and we all try to keep it from each other for fear of ridicule.”

Fallières stroked his chin reflectively. This assertion evidently did not surprise him greatly, but he was obviously a little distressed.

“This is very interesting,” said Conrad. “But of course every château has its family ghost. Usually they are accounted for by rats in the walls, or wind in the chimneys.”

Yolande shot him a swift glance, but held her peace. At that moment Severin came in to inform her that she was wanted on the telephone, and, as the call was a long-distance one, she left at once.

“This is no rat in the walls, monsieur,” said Fallières, “nor wind in the chimneys. It is a perplexing, worrying mystery. Something that can be seen and touched walks this old place intermittently. For periods it seems to sleep, and peace reigns, but suddenly it becomes active--and its activity is daily increasing. But you are right to be sceptical. I was sceptical until I was compelled to accept the truth.”

“But if it is human, surely the remedy is simple.”

“What is the remedy?”

“To lay hands on it and deal with it.”

“I have tried to for years. See, I do not go about unprepared.”

He produced an automatic pistol from his hip pocket and smiled as he gazed on it.

“Not a very nice thing for a gentleman to carry about in his own home in the twentieth century,” he said. “I think it is better to lock your door to-night. I am sorry to have to advise that.”

Conrad began to take him seriously for the first time. He looked at Wallace, whose face was like the Sphinx.

“What do you make of this, Ralph?” he asked.

“Frankly, I don’t know.”

“Neither do I. But, by Jove, I’d like to meet this thing. Has anyone ever really seen it face to face?”

“Yes--Severin.”

“Someone else has,” blurted Wallace.

Fallières stared at him in surprise.

“I--I am afraid I have betrayed my trust,” murmured Wallace. “Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter so much now. Your daughter saw it years ago--in her room.”

“Great God!”

“Did she tell you that?” asked Conrad.

Wallace nodded, and hoped Fallières would not question him further, for he was not anxious to relate the incident of the car to the stern old man. But the horror of this discovery was sufficient temporarily to stun Fallières.

“She must leave,” he said. “I will send her down to Nice. I fear that these happenings are working up to a crisis. For myself, I mean to stay. Nothing shall drive me from this place.”

“Well spoken,” said Conrad. “There must be an explanation--a very simple one. We live in the twentieth century, and ought not to tolerate superstition.”

“Is it superstition? Who breaks the mirrors and befouls the furnishings? What is it that utters horrible noises in rooms and galleries? What was it my daughter saw? I admit it may have been a hallucination, brought about by a dream and by the gossip in the servants’ hall; but, on the other hand, I should have to be insane to believe that all I have heard was due to my own imagination.”

When Yolande reappeared, they changed the conversation quickly. At her father’s request she agreed to play for them, and for two hours the sweet strains of music filled the place. It changed the brooding atmosphere at once.

“Do you sing?” asked Yolande of Wallace. “I have lots of English songs.”

He was not unwilling, for he possessed a very fair baritone voice and knew a whole host of songs. She proved to be an excellent accompanist, and in one or two duets their voices blended well.

“Bravo!” said Fallières. “That was charming. Yolande seldom has an opportunity of singing duets. Find another, please.”

Thus the evening passed, and at midnight the party retired. Before going to his room, Wallace stepped on to the terrace with Yolande to get a last breath of fresh air. A brilliant moon illumined the valley and the dark forest.

“Thank you for changing my wires over,” he said. “This has been a most enjoyable evening. I should not brood too much on that other business. I feel sure there must be a very simple solution that you will discover before long.”

“I wish there were,” she replied.

“What a queer yarn that was,” mused Conrad, as he sat and smoked a cigarette in Wallace’s room. “Of course there is nothing in it. They have let themselves get into that state.”

“I wonder.”

“Then I am surprised at you. A young hefty lump of bone and muscle prepared to accept fairy-tales! Shame on you!”

“Fallières doesn’t strike me as being hysterical, nor does Yolande.”

“Well, what will you do if you meet _IT_?” jested Conrad.

“Hit it as hard as I know how.”

“If it is not human, I don’t think that will disconcert it much.”

“It will disconcert me if I don’t find something to stop my fist. What a curious day it has turned out! I quite imagined we should be sleeping in Rheims to-night.”

“What does the poet say? ‘The best-laid schemes of mice and men----’ Jove, what a night! A full moon and not a breath of wind. These are sensible windows.”

He pushed the casement open wider and leaned out. They were on the side of the château facing the valley, and the drop from the window to earth proper was tremendous, for below the level of the ground floor there was nearly a hundred feet of buttress.

“Fine place to commit suicide,” he said, flinging the end of his cigarette into the abyss. “There it goes, down--down-- What was that?”

“I heard nothing.”

“I thought I heard a cry--kind of snarl. Must have been fancy.”

“Imbibing the atmosphere,” said Wallace. “Now turn out. I’m going to bed.”

But Conrad still stood by the window with his head inclined to one side.

“I could have sworn----”

The next moment a reverberating report came from within the building, followed by a loud yelling.

“Good God!” ejaculated Conrad. “That is Fallières’s voice. He is only three rooms away. There is something wrong.”

“Come on,” said Wallace, and made for the door.

In the corridor they saw Yolande running towards them, clad in a kimono, and some distance behind her old Severin, with an antiquated firearm in his hand.

“I heard a shot,” she gasped, “and a voice that sounded like my father’s.”

“Which is his room?”

“There.”

Wallace rapped on the door, and, receiving no reply, opened it immediately. The room was empty, but the bed had been occupied, and across the pillow was a long streak of blood. On the floor was an automatic pistol, still warm.

“Queer!” muttered Conrad. “How could he have left the room?”

Wallace flung open the wardrobe cupboard and looked under the bed. He turned round on Severin.

“You heard the shot?”

“Yes, m’sieu. I ran up the stairs and along the passage immediately. The master never came that way or I should have seen him.”

Wallace went to the window, which was partly open, but below was the same abyss that fronted his own room.

“He shot at something,” said Conrad. “Look, the bullet is embedded in the wall here. He must have missed.”

“It was the Monster,” croaked Severin, crossing himself. “Always he comes at the full moon.”

“Full moon--fiddlesticks!” retorted Conrad. “How could anyone get into this room? The question is, where is Monsieur Fallières?”

Wallace heard a low sob, and turned to see Yolande totter. He caught her in his arms, and under Severin’s guidance carried her to her room. Having sent for a maid, he went back to Conrad. The latter was sitting on the bed, stroking his chin reflectively.

“I don’t like the look of this,” he said.

“Nor do I. Gad, it’s a bit uncanny. It seems impossible that anyone could have left the room by the door without being observed in the passage. But we mustn’t draw premature conclusions. I am going to gather together a search-party.”

“That seems to be the obvious thing to do. Let us make a start at once.”

The nerve-shattered Severin was found and some half-dozen male servants were mustered. The main apartments of the château were quickly ransacked, but there remained a very large number of unoccupied rooms and annexes, and these took time. Ultimately the possibility of finding Fallières inside the château was abandoned. The extensive vaults were explored, but these provided no clue of any kind towards the solution of the mystery.

“The next thing is to make a search under the window of Fallières’s room,” said Wallace. “We shall need lanterns or torches.”

To reach this spot necessitated the descent of many flights of steps leading from the terrace. That part of the cultivated grounds of the château was given up to rock-gardens, interspersed with winding gravel paths, by means of which, after a considerable detour, the more exotic flower-gardens could be reached. Severin pointed out Fallières’s still-lighted window, and the party walked to a spot immediately beneath it. Thick ivy scrambled up the wall, but there was no sign of any disturbance, and the freshly-raked gravel path showed no footprints but their own.

A search was made among the neighbouring bushes, but all in vain. They returned by the long path, and ultimately reached the château, tired out and baffled. Conrad dismissed the servants, and he and Wallace went and sat in the drawing-room.

“In the circumstances there is only one thing left to be done,” said Conrad.

“Notify the police?”

“Yes. What the etiquette is in such matters I don’t know, but I should imagine Paris will act immediately when it concerns a man so widely known as Fallières. I will telephone the Préfecture now. I daresay there will be considerable delay.”

He put the call through, and returned to yarn with Wallace until he was rung. Neither of them was a nervous man, but both looked very grim and thoughtful.

“We haven’t seen half the château,” said Wallace. “There were lots of passages that Severin passed by.”

“I noticed that--but the place is such a maze. Of course Severin was scared stiff.”

An hour passed before the telephone bell rang. Conrad went to the instrument, and was engaged in conversation for some minutes. At length he came back.

“It appears I ought to have informed the local police,” he said. “But, anyway, they are going to act at once. A good man is leaving Paris by the next train. I’m afraid we shall not be able to leave in the morning.”

“Rather not. I’m keen on seeing this thing through. It looks remarkably like murder to me.”

The first glad light of the dawn appeared in the eastern sky before they rose and went to their rooms. Even then Wallace did not undress, but reclined on his bed, with ears alert. Sometimes in the dead silence he thought he heard a woman sobbing.