The Haunting of Low Fennel Read online

  The Blue Monkey

  I

  A tropically hot day had been followed by a stuffy and oppressiveevening. In the tiny sitting-room of our tiny cottage, my friend--who,for the purposes of this story, I shall call Mr. East--by the lightof a vapour lamp was busily arranging a number of botanical specimenscollected that morning. His briar fumed furiously between his teeth,and, his grim, tanned face lowered over his work, he brought to bearupon this self-imposed task all the intense nervous energy which washis.

  I sat by the open window alternately watching my tireless companion andthe wonderful and almost eerie effects of the moonlight on the heather.Then:

  "We came here for quiet--and rest, East," I said, smiling.

  "Well!" snapped my friend. "Isn't it quiet enough for you?"

  "Undeniably. But I don't remember to have seen you rest from the momentthat we left London! I exclude your brief hours of slumber--duringwhich, by the way, you toss about and mutter in a manner far fromreposeful."

  "No wonder. My nerves are anything but settled yet, I grant you."

  Indeed, we had passed through a long and trying ordeal, the particularswhereof have no bearing upon the present matter, and in rentingthis tiny and remote cottage we had sought complete seclusion andforgetfulness of those evil activities of man which had so long engagedour attention. How ill we had chosen will now appear.

  I had turned again to the open window, when my meditations wereinterrupted by a sound that seemed to come from somewhere away behindthe cottage. Cigarette in hand, I leaned upon the sill, listening, thenturned and glanced toward the littered table. East, his eyes steelybright in the lamplight, was watching me.

  "You heard it?" I said.

  "Clearly. A woman's shriek!"

  "Listen!"

  Tense, expectant, we sat listening for some time, until I began tosuspect that we had been deceived by the note of some unfamiliar denizenof the moors. Then, faintly, chokingly, the sound was repeated,seemingly from much nearer.

  "Come on!" snapped East.

  Hatless, we both hurried around to the rear of the cottage. As we cameout upon the slope, a figure appeared on the brow of a mound some twohundred yards away and stood for a moment silhouetted against themoonlit sky. It was that of a woman. She raised her arms at sight ofus--and staggered forward.

  Just in the nick of time we reached her, for her strength was almostspent. East caught her in his arms.

  "Good God!" he said, "it is Miss Baird!"

  What could it mean? The girl, who was near to swooning and inarticulatewith fatigue and emotion, was the daughter of Sir Jeffrey Baird, ourneighbour, whose house, The Warrens, was visible from where we stood.

  East half led, half carried her down the slope to the cottage; and thereI gave her professional attention, whilst, with horror-bright eyes andparted lips, she fought for mastery of herself. She was a rather prettygirl, but highly emotional, and her pathetically weak mouth wasdoubtless a maternal heritage, for her father, Sir Jeffrey, had themouth and jaw of the old fighter that he was.

  At last she achieved speech.

  "My father!" she whispered brokenly; "oh, my poor father!"

  "What!" I began----

  "At Black Gap!..."

  "Black Gap!" I said; for the place was close upon half a mile away."Have you come so far?"

  "He is lying there! My poor father--dead!"

  "What!" cried East, springing up--"Sir Jeffrey--dead? Not drowned?"

  "No, no! he is lying on the path this side of the Gap! I ... almoststumbled over ... him. He has been ... murdered! Oh, God help me!..."

  East and I stared at one another, speechless with the sudden horror ofit. Sir Jeffrey murdered!

  Suddenly the distracted girl turned to my friend, clutching frenziedlyat his arm.

  "Oh, Mr. East!" she cried, "what had my poor father done to merit suchan end? What monster has struck him down? You will find him, will younot? I thank God that you are here--for although I know you as 'Mr.East,' my father confided the truth to me, and I am aware that you arereally a Secret Service agent, and I even know some of the wonderfulthings you have done in the past...."

  "Very indiscreet!" muttered East, and his jaws snapped togetherviciously. But--"My dear Miss Baird," he added immediately, in thekindly way that was his own, "rely upon me. Myself and my fellow-worker,the doctor here, had sought to escape from the darker things of life,but it was willed otherwise. I esteemed Sir Jeffrey very highly"--hisvoice shook--"very highly indeed. I, too, thank God that I am here."

  II

  Five minutes later, East and I set out across the moor, leaving MissBaird at the cottage. By reason of the lonely situation, and the factthat the nearest house, The Warrens, was fully a mile and a halfaway, no other arrangement was possible, since delay could not beentertained.

  East had managed to glean some few important facts. Sir Jeffrey, whosemuseum at The Warrens was justly celebrated, had been to London that dayto attend an auction at Sotheby's. His Greek secretary, Mr. Damopolon,and his daughter had accompanied him. Returning by train to Stanby, thenearest station, Miss Baird had called upon friends in the village (Mr.Damopolon had remained in London on business), and Sir Jeffrey had setout in the dusk to walk the two miles to The Warrens; for the car wasundergoing repairs.

  Pursuing the same path later in the evening, the girl had come upon thebody of her father in the dramatically dreadful manner already related.He had no enemies, she declared, or none known to her. She did notbelieve that her father was carrying a large sum of money, nor--althoughshe had scarcely trusted herself to look at him--did she believe thatrobbery had been the motive of the crime.

  Sir Jeffrey had been carrying a large parcel containing one of hispurchases, and I remembered, as we silently pursued our way to the sceneof the murder, how East's keen eyes had seemed to dance with excitementwhen Miss Baird, in reply to a question, had told us what this parcelcontained. It was a large figure, in blue porcelain, of a sacred ape,and was of Burmese or Chinese origin; she was uncertain which.

  Her father had apparently attached great importance to this strangepurchase, and had elected to bear it home in person rather than to trustit to railway transport.

  "Did you notice if this parcel was there," East had inquired eagerly,"when you discovered him?"

  Miss Baird had shaken her head in reply.

  And now we were come to Black Gap, a weird feature in a weird landscape.This was a great hole in the moor, having high clay banks upon one sidedescending sheer to the tarn, and upon the other being flanked by low,marshy ground about a small coppice. The road from Stanby to The Warrenspassed close by the coppice on the south-east.

  Regarding this place opinions differed. By some it was supposed to be anatural formation, but it was locally believed to mark the site of anabandoned mine, possibly Roman. Its depth was unknown, and the legendof the coach which lay at the bottom, and which could be seen undercertain favourable conditions, has found a place in all the guide-booksto that picturesque and wild district.

  Whatever its origin, Black Gap was a weird and gloomy spot as oneapproached and saw through the trees the gleam of the moonlight onits mystic waters. And here, passing a slight southerly bend in thetrack--for it was no more--we came upon Sir Jeffrey.

  He lay huddled in a grotesque and unnatural attitude. His right hand wastightly clenched, whilst with his left he clutched a tuft of rank grass.Strangely enough, his soft hat was still upon his head. His tweed suit,soft collar and, tie all bore evidence of the fierce struggle which theold baronet had put up for his life. A quantity of torn brown paper layscattered near the body.

  I dropped on my knees and made a rapid examination, East directing theray of a pocket-lamp upon the poor victim.

  "Well?" rapped my friend.

  "He was struck over the head by some heavy weapon," I said slowly,"and perhaps partly stunned. His hat protected him to a degree, andhe tackled his assailant. Death was actually due, I should say, tostrangulation. His throat is very much bruised
."

  East made no reply. Glancing up from my gruesome task, I observed thathe was looking at a faint track, which, commencing amid the confusedmarks surrounding the body, led in the direction of the coppice. East'ssteely eyes were widely opened.

  "In heaven's name, what have we here!" he said.

  A kindred amazement to that which held East claimed me, as I studiedmore closely the mysterious tracks.

  The spot where Sir Jeffrey had fallen was soft ground, whereon thelightest footstep must have left a clear impression. Indeed, around therecumbent figure the ground showed a mass of indistinguishable marks.But proceeding thence, as I have said, in the direction of theneighbouring coppice, was this faint trail.

  "It looks," I said, in a voice hushed with something very like awe, "itlooks like the track of ... _a child_!"

  "Look again!" snapped East.

  I stooped over the first set of marks. Clearly indented, I perceived theimpressions of two small, bare feet, and, eighteen or twenty inchesahead, those of two small hands. I experienced a sudden chill; my bloodseemed momentarily to run coldly in my veins, and I longed to departfrom the shadow of the trees, from the neighbourhood of the Black Gap,and from the neighbourhood of the man who had died there. For it seemedto me that a barefooted infant had recently crawled from the side of thedead man into the coppice overhanging the tarn.

  Looking up, I found East's steely eyes set upon me strangely.

  "Well!" said he, "do you not miss something that you anticipatedfinding?"

  I hesitated, fearfully. Then:

  "Sir Jeffrey carries no cane," I began----

  "Good! I had failed to note that. Good! But what else?"

  Closely I surveyed the body, noting the disarranged garments, thediscoloured face.

  "What of this torn brown paper?" snapped my friend.

  "Good heavens!" I cried; and like a flash my glance sought again thosemysterious tracks--those tracks of _something_ that had crawled awayfrom the murdered man.

  "Where," inquired East deliberately, "is the Burmese porcelain ape ofwhich we have heard? And, since there are no tracks _approaching_ thebody, where did the creature come from that made those retiring from it,and ... what manner of creature was it?"

  III

  At East's request (for my friend was a man of very great influence) thepolice, beyond the unavoidable formalities, took no steps to apprehendthe murderer of Sir Jeffrey. East had a long interview with the deadman's daughter, and, shortly afterwards, went off to London, leaving meto my own devices.

  The subject of the strange death of the baronet naturally engrossedmy attention to the exclusion of all else. Especially, my mind keptreverting to the tracks which we had discovered leading from the deadman's body into the coppice. I scarcely dared to follow my ideas to whatseemed to be their logical conclusion.

  That the track was that, not of a child, but of an _ape_, I was nowconvinced. No such track approached where the victim had lain; no trackof any kind, other than that of his own heavy footprints, led to thespot ... but the track of an ape receded from it; and the baronet hadbeen carrying an ape (inanimate, certainly, according to all knownnatural laws), which was missing when his body was found!

  "These are the reflections of a madman!" I said aloud. "Am I seriouslyconsidering the possibility of a blue porcelain monkey having come tolife? If so, since no other footprints have been discovered, I shall becompelled, logically, to assume that the blue porcelain monkey strangledSir Jeffrey!"

  My friend, East, attached very great importance to the missing curio;this he had not disguised from me. But, beyond spending half an hour orso among the trees of the coppice and around the margin of the BlackGap, he had not to my knowledge essayed any quest for it.

  Finding my thoughts at once unpleasant and unprofitable company, Isuddenly determined to make a call at The Warrens, in order to inquireabout the health of poor Miss Baird, and incidentally to learn if therewere any new development.

  Off I set, and failed to repress a shudder, despite the blazingsunlight, as I passed the gap and the spot where we had found the deadman. A tropical shower in the early morning had quite obliterated themysterious tracks. Coming to The Warrens, I was shown into the fine oldlibrary. That air of hush, so awesome and so significant, prevailedthroughout the house whose master lay dead above, and when presently Mr.Damopolon entered, attired in black, he seemed to complete a picturealready sombre.

  As East and I had several times remarked, he was a singularly handsomeman, and moreover, a very charming companion, widely travelled anddeeply versed in those subjects to which the late baronet had devoted somany years of his life. I had always liked Damopolon, though, as a rule,I am distrustful of his race; and now, seeing at a glance how hard thedeath of Sir Jeffrey had hit him, I offered no unnecessary word ofcondolence, but immediately turned the conversation upon Miss Baird.

  "She has but just hurried off to London, doctor," he said, to mysurprise. "A telegram from the solicitors rendered her immediatedeparture unavoidable."

  "She has sustained this dreadful blow with exemplary fortitude," Ireplied. "Are you sure she was strong enough for travel?"

  "I myself escorted her to the station; and Mrs. Grierson, the latebaronet's sister, has accompanied her to London."

  "By the way," I said, "whilst I remember--was Sir Jeffrey carrying acane at the time of his death?"

  "He had with him a heavy ash stick, as usual, when we parted atSotheby's, doctor; but, of course, he may have left it there, as he hada large parcel to take."

  "Ah! that parcel! You can no doubt enlighten me, Mr. Damopolon? What,roughly, were the dimensions of this Burmese idol?"

  "The monkey? I don't think it was actually an idol, doctor; it was,rather, a grotesque ornament. Oh, it was about the size of a smallMoorish ape, hollow, and weighing perhaps six or seven pounds."

  "Was it upon a pedestal?"

  "No. It was completely modelled, even to the soles of the feet and thenails."

  "Extraordinary!" I muttered. "Uncanny!"

  Some little while longer I remained, and then set out, my doubts in nomeasure cleared up, for the cottage. To my surprise--for I had no ideathat I had tarried so long--dusk was come. I will frankly confess it--Iexperienced a thrill of supernatural dread at the thought that my pathled close beside Black Gap. However, it was a glorious evening, and Ishould have plenty of light for my return journey. I walked brisklyacross the moorpath toward the scene of the mysterious crime, hopingthat I should find East returned when I gained the cottage.

  Perhaps in a wandering life I have known more thrilling moments thansome men; but never while memory serves shall I forget that, when,coming abreast of the coppice, and glancing hurriedly into the shadow ofthe trees ... I saw a crouching figure looking out at me!

  Speech momentarily failed me; I stood rooted to the spot. Then:

  "All right, old man!" I heard. "Shall be with you in a moment!"

  It was East!

  Fear changed to the wildest astonishment. Carrying a strange-lookingbundle, he came out and joined me on the path.

  "Did I frighten you?"

  "Is it necessary to ask!" I cried. "But--whatever were you doing thereby the Black Gap?"

  "Fishing! Look what I have caught!"

  He held up for my inspection the object which he carried, by means oftwo loops of stout cord bound about it. It was a large china figure ofan ape!

  "The blue monkey!" he snapped. "Come! I am going to The Warrens."

  IV

  Again I sat in the fine old library of The Warrens. At the furtherend of the long, book-laden table, facing me, sat East; Mr. Damopolonoccupied a chair on the right, and midway between us, in the centre ofthe table, presiding over that strange meeting, was the fateful bluemonkey.

  "You see, Mr. Damopolon," said East, "I knew that Sir Jeffrey wascarrying this thing"--he indicated the image--"at the time of his death,and, since it had disappeared, I assumed at first that it had been themotive of the crime. Sir Jeffrey had money and oth
er valuables upon him;therefore we were obviously dealing with no ordinary thief.

  "Accordingly, I made inquiries respecting the history of the thing,and found that it possessed but little market value and next tono historical importance. It was of comparatively modern Chineseworkmanship, and Sir Jeffrey had bought it, apparently, because itamused him, though why he should have taken the trouble to carry ithome, heaven only knows. My first idea--that the curio was a very rareand costly piece--was thus knocked on the head.

  "I sought another motive for a crime so horrible and, by a stroke ofintuition, I found one. You may not have had an opportunity of studyingthe mysterious tracks which so puzzled us, Mr. Damopolon, before theywere obliterated, but my friend, the doctor, will bear me out. Theycommenced, then, close beside the body of the murdered man, and theywere, as I now perceive, made by the feet of this blue monstrosity uponthe table here!"

  "Impossible," murmured the secretary incredulously.

  "So it appeared to me at the time, when, although I had not thenseen the image of the monkey, I perceived, by the absolutely regularcharacter of the impressions, that they were made, not by a livingcreature, but by the model of one which had been firmly pressed intothe soft ground at slightly varying intervals. Since no footprintsother than those of Sir Jeffrey were to be found in the vicinity, I wasunable to account for the presence of the person who had made theseimpressions. I devoted myself to a close scrutiny of those footprintsof Sir Jeffrey's which led up to the scene of the attack. It becameapparent, immediately, that some one had _followed_ him ... some one whocrept silently along behind the unsuspecting victim ... some one soclever that he placed his feet _almost exactly_ in the marks made by thebaronet!

  "Good! I had accounted for the presence of the murderer. He struck SirJeffrey with some heavy implement, but failed to stun him. Then beganthe struggle, which so churned up the ground that all tracks were lost.The murderer prevailed. He was a man of wonderful nerve. Never once didhe place his foot upon virgin ground; not one imprint by which he mightbe identified did he leave behind him!"

  "Then how," inquired Damopolon, who was hanging upon every word, "did heleave the scene if----"

  "Listen," snapped East. "I found by the body the torn paper in which thechina image had been wrapped--but no string! I went all the way toLondon to learn if the parcel had been tied with string and if SirJeffrey had been carrying a stick!"

  "But surely," said Damopolon, "I could have saved you the journey, sinceI was with the late baronet immediately before he set out for home."

  "Quite so--but I had another reason for my visit."

  East shot a sudden glance from Damopolon to myself, and there ensued amoment of electric silence.

  "Beside the track made by the feet of the image," he resumed slowly, "Ifound a series of wedge-shaped holes, one on either side of eachmonkey-impression. Do you follow me, Mr. Damopolon?"

  "Perfectly," replied the Greek, taking up and lighting a cigarette."Wedge-shaped holes, you say?"

  "They were the clue for which I sought! I saw it all! The china ape hadbeen used as a _stepping-stone_! The cunning criminal had thus gainedthe firm ground in the coppice without leaving a footprint behind!..."

  "But, my dear East," I interrupted, "I cannot follow you. He steppedfrom beside the body on to the image, which he had placed at aconvenient distance?"

  "Yes. Then, by means of loops of string--see, they are stillattached!--he lifted it forward with his feet----"

  "But----"

  "Supporting his weight upon two sticks--Sir Jeffrey's and his own! Hencethe wedge-shaped holes beside the track! He had actually reached firmground when his own stick snapped off short, and he made the fatal errorof leaving the fragment and the ferrule, imbedded in the hole! Here isthe fragment!"

  On the table East laid a fragment of an ebony cane, broken off shortsome three inches above the nickel ferrule.

  "Ebony is so brittle, is it not, Mr. Damopolon?" he said.

  "It is indeed," agreed Damopolon, standing up as though he believed Eastto have finished.

  "Yet this stick was made of a particularly fine piece," added East."Carter!" he cried loudly.

  The library door opened ... and Detective Sergeant Carter, of NewScotland Yard, entered, carrying a broken ebony stick. Damopolon droppedhis cigarette, and, whilst he stooped to recover it:

  "Carter and I went fishing this afternoon," said East, "in the BlackGap. The criminal had sought to hide the broken cane--which bears hismonogram--and also the image. He had tied them together, filled theimage with clay, and dropped them into the water. Fortunately, theystuck upon an outstanding mass of weeds, and we did not fish in vain.Is there any point, Mr. Damopolon, which I have not made clear? I don'tknow what implement you used to strike Sir Jeffrey, nor do I know whatyou did with his ash-stick!..."

  Clutching wildly at the table, I rose to my feet, my gaze set amazedlyupon the man thus accused, upon the man I had called my friend, uponthe man who owed so much to the dead baronet. And he?... He tossed hiscigarette into the hearth and shrugged his shoulders. But, now, I sawthat he was deathly pale. He began speaking, in a hoarse, mechanicalvoice:

  "I struck him with a broken elm branch," he said. "His hat saved him. Icompleted the matter with my bare hands. I was desperate. You need nottell me that Olive--Miss Baird--has confessed to our secret marriage,nor shall I weary you with the many reasons I had to hate her father andthe pressing need I had for the fortune which she inherits at his death.It is finished; I have lost, and----"

  "Carter!" cried East. "Quick! quick!"

  But though the detective, who had been edging nearer and nearer to thespeaker, now sprang upon him with the leap of a panther, he was toolate. The sound of a muffled shot echoed through The Warrens, and theGreek fell with an appalling crash fully over the library table, so thatthe blue monkey slid across its polished surface and was shattered tobits upon the oaken floor!