June 10, 2025 • 24 mins
When English professor William A. Porter unexpectedly inherits a grand seaside mansion from his late Uncle Horace, his curiosity is piqued by the unexplained circumstances surrounding his uncles death. Along with his wife and niece, he decides to spend the summer in the propertys lodge, renting out the main house. As darkness falls, the quiet seaside neighborhood takes a sinister turn, with strange occurrences and eerie events becoming the norm. At the heart of these mysteries is an ominous red lamp, a subject of local folklore and believed to cast a malevolent spell. Can Professor Porter unravel the truth behind these oddities, or will he himself become a suspect in this webs of mysteries?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eleven of The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Reinhardt.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain August sixth.
Halliday's expert was not particularly helpful. I gather we have
this to our advantage. However, if a vintage it be
the typing was done on a Remington machine, as I
had expected. He does not take any Cochrane's story very seriously,
(00:20):
but he bases his skepticism rather on the beginning of
the terror before the boy came, than on the attack
on the boy himself. After all, he says, how do
we know that it wasn't the old man himself who
knocked him out? I imagine he has considerable strength in
that one arm of his. It's difficult, but I'll suppose it.
Suppose the old chap heard him outside, he went on
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trying to get back into the house, and thought it
was somebody else. The killer will say he'd be pretty
well justified in banging him on the head with a poker,
granting he could have got there, which I doubt. How
could he have tied him? One point for you, he said,
And one more theory hanged with its own rope. Still,
he admitt it's a nice idea to play with. Mister
Bethel kills a burglar with poker, sees it as his
(01:01):
secretary rings the bell and calls help, and then gets
up to his room and pretends to be asleep. It
was Gordon who rang the bell. Oh well, have it
your own way, he said, disgustedly. But it was a
pretty thing while all lasted. And it's my opinion still
that there is morning than meets the eye. Aside from
this blind alley up which any Cochrane started us, we
are all more nearly normal than we have been since
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the early days of the summer. I rise, shave and bathe,
and go to my breakfast, no longer with the feeling
that it may be figuratively speaking, my last Jane's at
the table freshened the crisp ginghams she affects, and which,
in their turn on no crisper than the bacon. She
must have been sadly puzzled the last few weeks. She
shows such evident relief. Now sometime during the meal, Edith,
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who has been awaiting her turn at our solitary tub,
breezes into the room and, surrounded by her usual aura.
Pat's Jock kisses Jane and takes from me the society
portion of the morning paper. After a casual glance at
the mail, any step outside Tomas preparing to watch the
Verandah or the boy who has taken poor Maggie's place,
brings a faint color to her face. But in Kisa
turns out to be Halliday. She has cavalier in the
(02:05):
extreme morning, she says airily, and it maybe adds, where
on earth did you get that shirt? What's the matter
of a des shirt? Nothing at all, she says, resuming
her breakfast. I just thought maybe someone had given it
to you. It isn't exactly the sort of shirt one buys,
is it? Her glance appeals to me. I am for
a moment, the arbiture between them. It is a perfectly
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good shirt, I say, with decision, and I'm accused of sex,
solidarity and poor taste, both apparently equal sins in Edith's eyes,
it is the apotheosis of the trivial small things once
more make up our lives, and we find a pleasure
in them. Clara brings in more bacon catches the reflection
of our morning cheerfulness, and smiles with us, and even Jock,
hearing unaccustomed laughter, joins in with sharp stacato barks. We
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are not worried by the uncertainty of the prospects before us,
the long period ahead of Edith and Holiday before they
can marry, that next year, and the year after that,
and God knows how many years to come. I shall
be pouring the priceless treasures of the English language into
ears that will not hear. My vacation is more than
half over, and that does not result so far as
a loss to me of some odd pounds of weight.
We are once more safely behind the drain pipe. August seventh.
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Edith has today received a large sum of ten dollars
for the lighthouse story. While she is still far from
the opulence she has anticipated, there has been great excitement
here to day. On receipt of the check. She has
kept a carbon copy and has let me read it.
It is only enough done in her breezy fashion. But
I find she has used the story of the so
called ghost at Twin Hollows as a basis to work from,
and that she uses my name as the owner of
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the property. Quite aside from a distaste for seeing my
name in print, I feel that the mere fact of
its publication will give it a substantiality. It is hitherto lacked.
It is characteristic of the average mind often to question
what it hears, but to believe wholeheartedly what it reads.
I find that Holliday has been quietly working along the lines,
not by any Cochrane. He is convinced that Gordon has
been going out at nights clandestinely, and using the car
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to do so. I don't blame him for that, he
said to day. The cars there are not being used,
and I am not keen about Gordon. But for such
views as I've had of mister Bethel, a little of
him would go a long way. Gordon's disconnected the speedometer,
by the way. But there's something else. He thinks it
was Gordon set fire to the boat house. He found
a bit of waiste outside the garage hanging on a
(04:15):
limb of blue spruce there, and a similar scrap on
the raced walk over the marsh to the boat house.
Of course that isn't evident, Skipper, he said, except what
the trout in the milk might be put. The stuff's
there and did some thinking about But why, I asked,
There has to be a reason, I can go a
long way, for one, he said thoughtfully. And imagine he
knows I've been working on the case and wants to
get rid of me. But I grt. That's not good
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burning me out. Wouldn't do that unless he hoped I
was inside. But that is to imply that he is
guilty of the crimes. And I don't believe it, but
head doesn't. Afterthought, there's one curious thing, though, that is
it may be curious. I'm not sure the machine he's
using as a Rummington August eighth. This has been a
nerve wrecking day. I, for one, am willing to cry quits,
to compromise with crime, and to say, in e fact
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that if the murderer leaves us alone, we will disturb him.
And yet the reason for a moral surrender does not
lie any event to day on which I can place
my hand. I cannot say that for this reason, or
for that I am through discouraged, ready to go to
the mountains and come back from a walk with a
withered bunch of wild flowers held in my clenched hand,
or to sit on some piazza with my after dinner
cigar and talk politics in the presence of the universe,
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or to go back to town and help Jane select
a new wallpaper for my study. My condition probably arises
from sheer confusion. For the life of me, I cannot
see where the results of Halliday's search can lead us,
nor I think does he. Edith. This morning, at Halliday's
request telephone to Gordon, asked him to lunch with us.
He accepted after a brief hesitation, and promptly at one
o'clock came down the drive, clad in white flannels and
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with an additional dose of pomade on his hair. Whether
he was suspicious or not, we cannot tell. I know
that watching him from a window part way down the drive,
he came to a dead stop and then turned as
if he had some idea of going back on some
pretext or other, but he evidently thought better of it,
looked at his watch, and came on again. He made
a poor impression on us, furtively watching Jane's choice of
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fork or spoon, and otherwise bestowing most of his attention
on Edith, such attention, that is, as he bestowed on
anybody at the beginning. He was what a novelist loves
to call destray. Although any question about himself roused him
to a faint enthusiasm. He has I suspect an inordinate vanity.
I am a sort of wanderer, he said. Once A
proposed some questionous statement of mine, I asked Diana place
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long enough to look about me, and then I get
the itch to move on. Restless, he added, And restless
he was. From where he sat. He had his back
to the windows, but more than once he managed to
turn and look out. I had the feeling that the
small room enclosed him too much, that he felt somewhow trapped.
And more than once I found his eyes on me,
and felt that he suspected me of some purpose. He
was attempting to discover his nervousness friendly infected me, and
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even Jane began to show signs of distress. The small
lunch party, for some reason you could not understand, was
going badly. Oh, the Edith played up well. She pushed
back her plate at last, and with her elbows on
the table and her chin in her hands, said, and
now tell us about the night you were hurt. He
was laying a cigarette at the moment, and he halted
the match held in mid air, and glanced from her
to me. I'll do that, he said, with his twisted smile,
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if mister Parter will tell me how he and the
doctor both happened to be such Johnny's on the spot.
But he carried that no further, And although the covert
insolence of the speech brought the color to Edith's face,
she continued to smile. There isn't much to tell, he
went on. The fellow got into the house, all right.
I turned to go in by the door and hunt
him off, and that's all I remember. But he rang
the bell first, didn't you, Whether because he had to
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acknowledge that call for help or for some reason none
of us can determine. To night he hesitated, Yes, he
said finally, I was pretty well excited. But I suppose
I did. On the subject of the house itself, he
was more fluent, showing a considerable curiosity as to its history,
and inquiring with more particularity than delicacy as to the
circumstances serrounding Uncle Horace's death. The Cockorn woman has a
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line of talk about it. He gave his explanation. Seems
to think he was done in or something. I told
him of the doctor's verdict of heart failure, and he
seemed to be considering that, but almost immediately he asked
me if I had tried hearing the bow as far
away as the high road by the motor engine going.
I don't believe it could be done, he said, with
a sideways glance at me. He's got good ears. The doctor,
(08:11):
he said something before he left, but looking for another job,
as this one was too confining, and the old man
not easy to live with. And I took it for
the summer, he said, and I'm about fed up by it.
It's too confining. And he'd let that car off his
rot before he'd let me take it out, with which
Colmsy attempt to aliby himself regarding the car he took
his departure. Edith believes that in some manner he knows
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the car has been examined, and she may be right.
Halliday's investigation of his room during his absence proceeded without difficulty.
With my keys and any Cochrane's connivance. He made an
easy entry, mister Butthle, having retired for his after luncheon siesta.
At first glance the room offered nothing, and leaving any
crockran on guard outside under pretensive cleaning the passage, Halladay
made a more intensive search. The bed disclosed nothing, nor
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did the closet. His suit case was locked and over
at Halliday spent more time than was entirely safe. Towards
the end, he says, I was pretty shaky. I kept
thinking I heard him, and of course the more I hurried,
the more I bungled the thing. He got it open
at last without breaking the lock, and found in it
the note book I found. I have given no description
of the notebook in the original journal. As it played
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a considerable part in the approaching tragedy, it deserves some attention.
It was a small compact volume of the loose leaf type,
a sort of diary, but not regularly kept. Most of
the entries, due to the complication of the cipher, were
very brief. One or two, however, occupied almost a page,
and all of them had been typed. Needless to say,
a cipher was the one we had found in the
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scrap of paper picked up in my garage. The discovery
of the notebook with its cipher sent his excitement to
fever pitch. He ran through it for the code word,
but was unable to find it. Then replacing the book,
and leaving the suitcase as he had found it, he
set to work more carefully on the room itself. The
coil of opened the knife were behind a row of
books on the bookshelf, A packet of typing paper and
a box of carbon sheets thrown over them with apparent
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casualness to conceal them. Still further closely had he calculated
the time that he had barely restored them to their
places when Gordon slammed the entrance door downstairs, and he says,
if he had come straight up with to Bencott, I
could have got out, but I do not believe I
could have locked the door. But he stopped there a
second or two and I just made it. He had
not time to make the bike staircase. However, any Cockran
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opened the linen closet door, and he bolted in there.
He heard Gordon unlock his room and enter it, and
almost immediately reappear and demand of any Cochran if she
had been in it during his absence. An angry dispute
followed within a foot or two of the linen closet,
not the less acrimonious because of its lowered voices and
of an almost hysterical quality in Gordon's every particle of
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his veneer had dropped from him, and the threats he
made if he should find she had been in his room,
or not even to be recorded here and now once again,
where are we? We have as against Gordon A the
knife and the coil of rope b our belief that
he uses the car clandestinely at night, c at least
an indication that he set the fire under the boat house.
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D the cipher found in my garage, e the notebook
in the same cipher. A man does not record his
thoughts in this manner unless he wishes to keep them hidden.
F The linen strips muffling the oar locks, and suggested
to Halliday to day by his place of concealment. The
inventory of the main house shows a certain number of
linen sheets. If one is missing, it will prove a
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strong factor in connecting him with the boat g The
locking of his bedroom h last not least an unpleasant personality.
Halliday uses the word degenerate, but I am not prepared
to go so far as against all this, However, we
have a the attack on him at the kitchen door,
and the manner in which he was tied corresponding to
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the rope about Carraway B the sheep killing and murder
of Caraway taking place as they did before his arrival.
C The fact that Halladay cannot identify him as the
man he picked up in his car. D. The distinguishing
mark by which the criminal has signed his crimes, so
to speak, is the circle and triangle run in chalk.
While this is not vital, Halliday found no chalk in
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the room. I have put to Halliday the boy's veiled
inquiry about the doctor. It is impossible for us to
experiment with the bell, but he thinks it could be
distinctly heard from the main road. On the other hand,
the arrival of Heyward on the scene almost as soon
as I had got there is extremely puzzling. We have
tonight paced off the distance, and you have my statement
that I had lighted only one match and the doctor's
flashlight was turned on me. There seems to be no
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doubt that Hayward was on the property that night, but
I do not accept the possibility suggested by Halliday that,
as he was in Greenow's confidence, he had been watching me.
A man does not, I imagine, go out on such
an errand with his medical bag in his hand, and
the doctor had carried his bag, I recondistinctly has taken
from it the dressings for Gordon's head. August ninth, Leonardo
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da Vinci said patience serves as a protection against wrongs,
as clothes do against cold. For if you put on
more cloth as the cold increases, it will have no
power to hurt you. But I have put on all
the extra patients I can find in my mental closet,
and I am still uncomfortable. Whether Jane has noticed our ostracism,
I do not know, but I have, and so I
think as Edith has it to become that today I
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greeted missus Livingstone with a warmth that slightly puzzled her.
Nothing else new to day. Halliday watched the main house
last night, but no one left it any. Cochran reports
that mister Bethel was suspicious of Gordon, and that the
feud between them still continues. He declines the Secretary's assistance
as much as possible. That he is not certain, however,
is shown by the care with which he now has
the house locked up at night. He wait said the library,
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she says, And how I have locked all the doors
and windows. Then I bring him the keys, except the
one at the kitchen door. He lets me have that
to get in within in the morning. He has drun
considerable courage to my mind. Missus Livingstone was slightly ruffled
on her arrival. It appears she had tried to leave
her cards and Livingston's on the old gentleman at the
main house, was finally compelled to put them under the door,
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although she could hear voices in the library. But she
recovered sufficiently to tell us a new story illustrative of
the general state of the local mind. She says that
three nights ago Hadley, who keeps the hardware store in Oakville,
when passing the cemetery where Caraway is buried, saw a
figure walking slowly passed the grave. It stopped, looked at
the mound, and then moved on, fading into nothing at
the clump of evergreens beyond it. Hadley seems to have
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made no further investigation. It is unfortunate, however, that Edith's
story appeared to day, evidently syndicated and receiving wide publicity.
The confirmation is sufficient to send off most of the
summer visitors looking back over their shoulders like Hadley as
they run. August tenth. At midnight last night, Holliday wakened
me by throwing pebbles against the screen of my window.
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He was standing close underneath, and asked me to put
on something and work my way quietly toward the other house.
What's wrong, I asked, He's getting ready to go out.
I think he put his light out at eleven and
turned it on again a few minutes ago. Halliday moved away,
and as quickly as possible, I dressed and followed him.
He was under the trees waiting when I joined him,
and together we worked quietly across the garden and toward
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the garage, coming out beyond it toward the lane. Here,
while concealed ourselves, we had a full view of the house,
but the light was out again, and for a time
it looked as though nothing were to happen. Holliday's the
plan was as follows. In case Gordon took the car,
I was to follow it on foot out safe distance
as he went along the lane, while Halliday himself ran
for my car. He would meet me at the fork
of the road, and I would be able to tell
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him which of the two roads Gordon had taken. We
stood together, well hidden in the shrubbery for some time.
A slight wind had come up, and we could hear
small waves laughing against the piles of the pier, and
the monotonous wail of the whistling buoy beyond Robinson's point,
always an eerie sound. Halliday, who has not had much
sleep for a night or two, fell to yawning, and
I was not much better off when I heard some
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sort of stealthy movement in the woodland to our left.
Attached Halladay on the arm to find him rigid and
bending forward, staring toward the house. He's coming, he said quiet.
The boy was raising his window screen with all possible caution,
even when it was accomplished. He stood so long, probably
listening and watching, that I began to think he had
changed his mind and gone back to bed. But as
events strode, he had done nothing of the sort. Up
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to this moment, I had not suspected the use of
the rope, although I believe Halliday had. I know my
gaze was fixed on the kitchen door with now and
then a glance at the windows of the laundry into
the gun room, or rather in their direction the darkness
was extreme. But now I heard a faint scraping against
the wall of the house itself, and realized that he
was coming down by means of the rope. His coming
was as stealthy as the preliminaries had been. He was
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probably half way down, coming hand over hand before I
had interpreted the sound. I was not even whether he
had reached the ground when I saw him, a blacker
shadow among other shadows near at hand, But he did
not come directly toward the garage. He walked along under
the walls of the west wing to the gun room window,
and stood there. Then, with extreme caution, he raced it
an inch or two, as if to reassure himself that
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it had been unlocked from within, and closed it again.
From there, with somewhat less caution, he moved to the
corner of the house and seemed to be surveying the
water front and the boat house. We had our only
real view of him then, as he stood silhouetted on
the top of the rise. Note the main house stands,
as I think I have already recorded, rather higher than
the remainder of the property. But suddenly something alarmed him.
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Neither Halliday nor I saw or heard anything, but evidently
he did every last to his exposed position, he dropped
to the ground. So unexpected was his sudden disappearance that
I gasped. It was not until I heard him creeping
along the ground I understood his maneuver. He lost no
time in his retreat, nor did he attempt to use
the rope again. He raised the unlocked window, crept over
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the sill, and closed it again, all with surprising rapidity
and silence, and sooner than we could have expected to
be heard him drawing up the rope from his room overhead.
No interpretation of this is possible without taking into a
consideration the really horrible stealth of the boy's manner. He
was engaged on some nefarious business of his own, whether
we can connect that with the crimes or not. As
to the extremely dramatic manner in which he chose to
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escape from the house when he had already unlocked the
gun room window, Holliday is divided between two theories, of
which he himself favors. The second. He may be merely
dramatizing himself. You'll find a certain type of degenderate mind
which is always acting for its own benefit or and
this is more likely. Our old friend Bethel was suspicious
and is watching him. The old man's door commands his.
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He locks his door from the inside, uses his rope,
and is free to go where he pleases. But he added,
after a pause, he unlocks the gun room window too,
so he can be a retreat if he has to.
That's the best I can do. And if it isn't correct,
it ought to be. Today. I am convinced beyond doubt
that Gordon is our a criminal, and I think even
Halliday is shaken. I am no detective, but it seems
to me that the boy coming here during the height
(18:20):
of the excitement about the shipkiller and young Caraway by
the way, already paved for a career of secret crime
and adopting the methods in the symbol of some so
undiscovered religious maniac has carried on, one may say, under
his banner. My psychiatric friends have discussed with me the
herotic aftermath of the war, the search for the sensational,
the wooing of fugitive and secret pleasures, often brutal and violent,
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and the apotheosis of the criminal. They quote too von
kraft Ebbing's theory that the instincts to kill us purely
a legacy from the past, atavistic and more or less
non deliberate. In other words, that culling is inherent in
all of us, and that to the ill balanced the
destruction of the artificial inhibition from any cause turns them
loose on the world, hereditary slayers and doers of violence.
It would, excepting that, be possible to see in young
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Gordon the heir not only to his own past, but
to the crams which preceded his arrival. Here to see
also that gradual process of identification by which he assumed
his predecessor's attributes, and even the symbol by which he
signed his deeds. I believe that in such cases the
mental degeneration sometimes continues to the point of a complete
loss of personality. In that case, accepting this theory, it
may even be that the boy now believes that he
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killed Caraway and takes a secret and gloating pleasure in it,
a theory which I shall be happy to place at
Greenow's disposal. If the opportunity arrives, it should be one
after his own heart. Certainly, one fact at least supports
the idea. How it day may be right, and the
attack on him not have been made by Gordon, but
there seems no reason to doubt that sometime on the
day before we got back he crept into my garage
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and put the infernal symbol where we found it. We
have discussed to day at some length the desirability of
notifying the police once more, but our recent experience with
them was not reassuring. On the other hand, I feel
strongly that mister Bethel should be warned, but how it
argues against it. He knows something already. He says he
is on guard, and the boy knows it. Then you
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have to remember that the game so far has been
to strike in the darkened run, that is, if you
are a correct skipper and daisy game without motive. Probably
he is right. There would be little chance for him
if he attacked the old man. He is too well
known to be on bad terms with him. Such a
warning also might alarm mister Buckle's the point of getting
rid of him, and after all, the only chance we
have is to let him go a certain length and
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then with our proofs, calling the police. But I am
very uneasy to night as I make this entry. I
have not Holliday's easy optimism that he won't get away
with anything without our knowing it. August eleventh, to day
is bright and sunny, and I am in a better mood.
Edith came down this morning to enormous stack of mail
and stared at it incredulously. Great heavens, she said, not bells.
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As it turned out, however, they were not bills. Her
article has brought out a curious fact. Almost everybody has
a ghost story and is anxious to tell it to
somebody else. Even the most incredulous of us apparently has
some incidents stored in his memory not capable of explanation,
and a visible percentage of these victims of thrills and
shivers have written to her about the ghost in the
light tower. She and Halliday are reading them on the
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veranda at this moment. Each has a heap of them,
and such bits as these are to be heard. Here's
a wonder, says Halliday. Hold my hand, won't you all
read it to you? There's some ghostly thing touching my
neck at this minute. It's a spider, says Edith Coolly.
You can wait listen to this. I'm so on which
reminds me that I had a visit last night from
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Cucko Hedley, our village Don Juan, who sells hardware over
his contort pretty village matrons, and who was dubbed Cucko
some years ago by a summer visitor who saw a
resemblance to Byron in him and evidently knew the quotation
note quote the cuckoo shows melancholia, not madness. Like a Byron,
he goes about wailing his sad lot and now with
then dropping an egg into someone else's nest. Close quote.
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Hedley was slightly sheepish. He knows, and he knows I
know that his rode home at night lies nowhere near
the cemetery. The same time, he had something to tell
me and was determined to go through with it. I
guess you've heard the starry mister Porter, he said, I
don't suppose I'll ever hear the last of it, but
there's a mistake being made, and I thought, if miss
Edith was from Goun to write it up, you'd better
have it straight. It appears then that it was not
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near Kurway's grave that Hardly saw the figure, but at
the old part of the cemetery, that there are some
facts which he has not given out. The cemetery is
surrounded by a white fence, and inside it is shrubbery. Hadly,
it seems, was not alone, but was standing in the
road talking to a friend. If, as I imagine, the
friend was a woman, it was surely a safe place
for a rendezvous. It was the friend who saw the light,
(22:36):
and who accounts for the suppression of this portion of
the tale. It shone through the shrubbery a small blue
white light, about two feet from the ground and directly
in front of the headstone of one George Pierce, who
died in the late seventeen hundreds. Hardley did not see
the light, but the friend, persisting, he crept through the
shrubbery to take a look around. It was then that
he saw the figure moving slowly and deliberately toward the trees.
(22:59):
He seems to have no doubt that he saw an apparition.
Was that the information belongs to me? The reason he
gives for the latter being that George Pierce is the
gentleman who was, according to local tradition, shotened coldal attempting
to escape the excise in the old farmhouse, which is
now a part of Twin Hollows. I have entered this
here because the day seems given over to the supernatural.
We have breakfasted with the spirit world and seem about
(23:19):
to lunch with it. Everything continues quiet at the other house.
Jane and Knight and Day returned to Livingstone's call. Although
it seems absurd, I have never quite a been to
the hope of finding an Uncle Horace's unfinished letter a
clue to the present mystery. I therefore took it with me,
hoping for an opportunity to show it to Missus Livingstone.
But none came. Doctor Hayward was there when we arrived
and remained after we left. Perhaps because my own world
(23:40):
is awry, I think the universe is so. But it
seems to me that we were shown into what almost
amounted to a situation, that Livingstone, usually nupper and calm,
was flushed, that Missus Livingstone was on the verge of tears.
The doctor, standing by the window, hardly acknowledged our entrance
and remained standing, glowering and biting his fingers until we left. He,
as I understand, soon leave for a holiday. August twelfth,
(24:03):
no entry. August thirteenth, no entry. End of section eleven.
Section eleven of The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Reinhardt.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain August sixth.
Halliday's expert was not particularly helpful. I gather we have
this to our advantage. However, if a vintage it be
the typing was done on a Remington machine, as I
had expected. He does not take any Cochrane's story very seriously,
(00:20):
but he bases his skepticism rather on the beginning of
the terror before the boy came, than on the attack
on the boy himself. After all, he says, how do
we know that it wasn't the old man himself who
knocked him out? I imagine he has considerable strength in
that one arm of his. It's difficult, but I'll suppose it.
Suppose the old chap heard him outside, he went on
(00:40):
trying to get back into the house, and thought it
was somebody else. The killer will say he'd be pretty
well justified in banging him on the head with a poker,
granting he could have got there, which I doubt. How
could he have tied him? One point for you, he said,
And one more theory hanged with its own rope. Still,
he admitt it's a nice idea to play with. Mister
Bethel kills a burglar with poker, sees it as his
(01:01):
secretary rings the bell and calls help, and then gets
up to his room and pretends to be asleep. It
was Gordon who rang the bell. Oh well, have it
your own way, he said, disgustedly. But it was a
pretty thing while all lasted. And it's my opinion still
that there is morning than meets the eye. Aside from
this blind alley up which any Cochrane started us, we
are all more nearly normal than we have been since
(01:22):
the early days of the summer. I rise, shave and bathe,
and go to my breakfast, no longer with the feeling
that it may be figuratively speaking, my last Jane's at
the table freshened the crisp ginghams she affects, and which,
in their turn on no crisper than the bacon. She
must have been sadly puzzled the last few weeks. She
shows such evident relief. Now sometime during the meal, Edith,
(01:43):
who has been awaiting her turn at our solitary tub,
breezes into the room and, surrounded by her usual aura.
Pat's Jock kisses Jane and takes from me the society
portion of the morning paper. After a casual glance at
the mail, any step outside Tomas preparing to watch the
Verandah or the boy who has taken poor Maggie's place,
brings a faint color to her face. But in Kisa
turns out to be Halliday. She has cavalier in the
(02:05):
extreme morning, she says airily, and it maybe adds, where
on earth did you get that shirt? What's the matter
of a des shirt? Nothing at all, she says, resuming
her breakfast. I just thought maybe someone had given it
to you. It isn't exactly the sort of shirt one buys,
is it? Her glance appeals to me. I am for
a moment, the arbiture between them. It is a perfectly
(02:26):
good shirt, I say, with decision, and I'm accused of sex,
solidarity and poor taste, both apparently equal sins in Edith's eyes,
it is the apotheosis of the trivial small things once
more make up our lives, and we find a pleasure
in them. Clara brings in more bacon catches the reflection
of our morning cheerfulness, and smiles with us, and even Jock,
hearing unaccustomed laughter, joins in with sharp stacato barks. We
(02:47):
are not worried by the uncertainty of the prospects before us,
the long period ahead of Edith and Holiday before they
can marry, that next year, and the year after that,
and God knows how many years to come. I shall
be pouring the priceless treasures of the English language into
ears that will not hear. My vacation is more than
half over, and that does not result so far as
a loss to me of some odd pounds of weight.
We are once more safely behind the drain pipe. August seventh.
(03:11):
Edith has today received a large sum of ten dollars
for the lighthouse story. While she is still far from
the opulence she has anticipated, there has been great excitement
here to day. On receipt of the check. She has
kept a carbon copy and has let me read it.
It is only enough done in her breezy fashion. But
I find she has used the story of the so
called ghost at Twin Hollows as a basis to work from,
and that she uses my name as the owner of
(03:32):
the property. Quite aside from a distaste for seeing my
name in print, I feel that the mere fact of
its publication will give it a substantiality. It is hitherto lacked.
It is characteristic of the average mind often to question
what it hears, but to believe wholeheartedly what it reads.
I find that Holliday has been quietly working along the lines,
not by any Cochrane. He is convinced that Gordon has
been going out at nights clandestinely, and using the car
(03:54):
to do so. I don't blame him for that, he
said to day. The cars there are not being used,
and I am not keen about Gordon. But for such
views as I've had of mister Bethel, a little of
him would go a long way. Gordon's disconnected the speedometer,
by the way. But there's something else. He thinks it
was Gordon set fire to the boat house. He found
a bit of waiste outside the garage hanging on a
(04:15):
limb of blue spruce there, and a similar scrap on
the raced walk over the marsh to the boat house.
Of course that isn't evident, Skipper, he said, except what
the trout in the milk might be put. The stuff's
there and did some thinking about But why, I asked,
There has to be a reason, I can go a
long way, for one, he said thoughtfully. And imagine he
knows I've been working on the case and wants to
get rid of me. But I grt. That's not good
(04:37):
burning me out. Wouldn't do that unless he hoped I
was inside. But that is to imply that he is
guilty of the crimes. And I don't believe it, but
head doesn't. Afterthought, there's one curious thing, though, that is
it may be curious. I'm not sure the machine he's
using as a Rummington August eighth. This has been a
nerve wrecking day. I, for one, am willing to cry quits,
to compromise with crime, and to say, in e fact
(04:58):
that if the murderer leaves us alone, we will disturb him.
And yet the reason for a moral surrender does not
lie any event to day on which I can place
my hand. I cannot say that for this reason, or
for that I am through discouraged, ready to go to
the mountains and come back from a walk with a
withered bunch of wild flowers held in my clenched hand,
or to sit on some piazza with my after dinner
cigar and talk politics in the presence of the universe,
(05:19):
or to go back to town and help Jane select
a new wallpaper for my study. My condition probably arises
from sheer confusion. For the life of me, I cannot
see where the results of Halliday's search can lead us,
nor I think does he. Edith. This morning, at Halliday's
request telephone to Gordon, asked him to lunch with us.
He accepted after a brief hesitation, and promptly at one
o'clock came down the drive, clad in white flannels and
(05:41):
with an additional dose of pomade on his hair. Whether
he was suspicious or not, we cannot tell. I know
that watching him from a window part way down the drive,
he came to a dead stop and then turned as
if he had some idea of going back on some
pretext or other, but he evidently thought better of it,
looked at his watch, and came on again. He made
a poor impression on us, furtively watching Jane's choice of
(06:01):
fork or spoon, and otherwise bestowing most of his attention
on Edith, such attention, that is, as he bestowed on
anybody at the beginning. He was what a novelist loves
to call destray. Although any question about himself roused him
to a faint enthusiasm. He has I suspect an inordinate vanity.
I am a sort of wanderer, he said. Once A
proposed some questionous statement of mine, I asked Diana place
(06:24):
long enough to look about me, and then I get
the itch to move on. Restless, he added, And restless
he was. From where he sat. He had his back
to the windows, but more than once he managed to
turn and look out. I had the feeling that the
small room enclosed him too much, that he felt somewhow trapped.
And more than once I found his eyes on me,
and felt that he suspected me of some purpose. He
was attempting to discover his nervousness friendly infected me, and
(06:47):
even Jane began to show signs of distress. The small
lunch party, for some reason you could not understand, was
going badly. Oh, the Edith played up well. She pushed
back her plate at last, and with her elbows on
the table and her chin in her hands, said, and
now tell us about the night you were hurt. He
was laying a cigarette at the moment, and he halted
the match held in mid air, and glanced from her
to me. I'll do that, he said, with his twisted smile,
(07:10):
if mister Parter will tell me how he and the
doctor both happened to be such Johnny's on the spot.
But he carried that no further, And although the covert
insolence of the speech brought the color to Edith's face,
she continued to smile. There isn't much to tell, he
went on. The fellow got into the house, all right.
I turned to go in by the door and hunt
him off, and that's all I remember. But he rang
the bell first, didn't you, Whether because he had to
(07:31):
acknowledge that call for help or for some reason none
of us can determine. To night he hesitated, Yes, he
said finally, I was pretty well excited. But I suppose
I did. On the subject of the house itself, he
was more fluent, showing a considerable curiosity as to its history,
and inquiring with more particularity than delicacy as to the
circumstances serrounding Uncle Horace's death. The Cockorn woman has a
(07:51):
line of talk about it. He gave his explanation. Seems
to think he was done in or something. I told
him of the doctor's verdict of heart failure, and he
seemed to be considering that, but almost immediately he asked
me if I had tried hearing the bow as far
away as the high road by the motor engine going.
I don't believe it could be done, he said, with
a sideways glance at me. He's got good ears. The doctor,
(08:11):
he said something before he left, but looking for another job,
as this one was too confining, and the old man
not easy to live with. And I took it for
the summer, he said, and I'm about fed up by it.
It's too confining. And he'd let that car off his
rot before he'd let me take it out, with which
Colmsy attempt to aliby himself regarding the car he took
his departure. Edith believes that in some manner he knows
(08:31):
the car has been examined, and she may be right.
Halliday's investigation of his room during his absence proceeded without difficulty.
With my keys and any Cochrane's connivance. He made an
easy entry, mister Butthle, having retired for his after luncheon siesta.
At first glance the room offered nothing, and leaving any
crockran on guard outside under pretensive cleaning the passage, Halladay
made a more intensive search. The bed disclosed nothing, nor
(08:55):
did the closet. His suit case was locked and over
at Halliday spent more time than was entirely safe. Towards
the end, he says, I was pretty shaky. I kept
thinking I heard him, and of course the more I hurried,
the more I bungled the thing. He got it open
at last without breaking the lock, and found in it
the note book I found. I have given no description
of the notebook in the original journal. As it played
(09:15):
a considerable part in the approaching tragedy, it deserves some attention.
It was a small compact volume of the loose leaf type,
a sort of diary, but not regularly kept. Most of
the entries, due to the complication of the cipher, were
very brief. One or two, however, occupied almost a page,
and all of them had been typed. Needless to say,
a cipher was the one we had found in the
(09:35):
scrap of paper picked up in my garage. The discovery
of the notebook with its cipher sent his excitement to
fever pitch. He ran through it for the code word,
but was unable to find it. Then replacing the book,
and leaving the suitcase as he had found it, he
set to work more carefully on the room itself. The
coil of opened the knife were behind a row of
books on the bookshelf, A packet of typing paper and
a box of carbon sheets thrown over them with apparent
(09:57):
casualness to conceal them. Still further closely had he calculated
the time that he had barely restored them to their
places when Gordon slammed the entrance door downstairs, and he says,
if he had come straight up with to Bencott, I
could have got out, but I do not believe I
could have locked the door. But he stopped there a
second or two and I just made it. He had
not time to make the bike staircase. However, any Cockran
(10:17):
opened the linen closet door, and he bolted in there.
He heard Gordon unlock his room and enter it, and
almost immediately reappear and demand of any Cochran if she
had been in it during his absence. An angry dispute
followed within a foot or two of the linen closet,
not the less acrimonious because of its lowered voices and
of an almost hysterical quality in Gordon's every particle of
(10:37):
his veneer had dropped from him, and the threats he
made if he should find she had been in his room,
or not even to be recorded here and now once again,
where are we? We have as against Gordon A the
knife and the coil of rope b our belief that
he uses the car clandestinely at night, c at least
an indication that he set the fire under the boat house.
(10:58):
D the cipher found in my garage, e the notebook
in the same cipher. A man does not record his
thoughts in this manner unless he wishes to keep them hidden.
F The linen strips muffling the oar locks, and suggested
to Halliday to day by his place of concealment. The
inventory of the main house shows a certain number of
linen sheets. If one is missing, it will prove a
(11:18):
strong factor in connecting him with the boat g The
locking of his bedroom h last not least an unpleasant personality.
Halliday uses the word degenerate, but I am not prepared
to go so far as against all this, However, we
have a the attack on him at the kitchen door,
and the manner in which he was tied corresponding to
(11:38):
the rope about Carraway B the sheep killing and murder
of Caraway taking place as they did before his arrival.
C The fact that Halladay cannot identify him as the
man he picked up in his car. D. The distinguishing
mark by which the criminal has signed his crimes, so
to speak, is the circle and triangle run in chalk.
While this is not vital, Halliday found no chalk in
(11:58):
the room. I have put to Halliday the boy's veiled
inquiry about the doctor. It is impossible for us to
experiment with the bell, but he thinks it could be
distinctly heard from the main road. On the other hand,
the arrival of Heyward on the scene almost as soon
as I had got there is extremely puzzling. We have
tonight paced off the distance, and you have my statement
that I had lighted only one match and the doctor's
flashlight was turned on me. There seems to be no
(12:20):
doubt that Hayward was on the property that night, but
I do not accept the possibility suggested by Halliday that,
as he was in Greenow's confidence, he had been watching me.
A man does not, I imagine, go out on such
an errand with his medical bag in his hand, and
the doctor had carried his bag, I recondistinctly has taken
from it the dressings for Gordon's head. August ninth, Leonardo
(12:41):
da Vinci said patience serves as a protection against wrongs,
as clothes do against cold. For if you put on
more cloth as the cold increases, it will have no
power to hurt you. But I have put on all
the extra patients I can find in my mental closet,
and I am still uncomfortable. Whether Jane has noticed our ostracism,
I do not know, but I have, and so I
think as Edith has it to become that today I
(13:01):
greeted missus Livingstone with a warmth that slightly puzzled her.
Nothing else new to day. Halliday watched the main house
last night, but no one left it any. Cochran reports
that mister Bethel was suspicious of Gordon, and that the
feud between them still continues. He declines the Secretary's assistance
as much as possible. That he is not certain, however,
is shown by the care with which he now has
the house locked up at night. He wait said the library,
(13:24):
she says, And how I have locked all the doors
and windows. Then I bring him the keys, except the
one at the kitchen door. He lets me have that
to get in within in the morning. He has drun
considerable courage to my mind. Missus Livingstone was slightly ruffled
on her arrival. It appears she had tried to leave
her cards and Livingston's on the old gentleman at the
main house, was finally compelled to put them under the door,
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although she could hear voices in the library. But she
recovered sufficiently to tell us a new story illustrative of
the general state of the local mind. She says that
three nights ago Hadley, who keeps the hardware store in Oakville,
when passing the cemetery where Caraway is buried, saw a
figure walking slowly passed the grave. It stopped, looked at
the mound, and then moved on, fading into nothing at
the clump of evergreens beyond it. Hadley seems to have
(14:08):
made no further investigation. It is unfortunate, however, that Edith's
story appeared to day, evidently syndicated and receiving wide publicity.
The confirmation is sufficient to send off most of the
summer visitors looking back over their shoulders like Hadley as
they run. August tenth. At midnight last night, Holliday wakened
me by throwing pebbles against the screen of my window.
(14:29):
He was standing close underneath, and asked me to put
on something and work my way quietly toward the other house.
What's wrong, I asked, He's getting ready to go out.
I think he put his light out at eleven and
turned it on again a few minutes ago. Halliday moved away,
and as quickly as possible, I dressed and followed him.
He was under the trees waiting when I joined him,
and together we worked quietly across the garden and toward
(14:50):
the garage, coming out beyond it toward the lane. Here,
while concealed ourselves, we had a full view of the house,
but the light was out again, and for a time
it looked as though nothing were to happen. Holliday's the
plan was as follows. In case Gordon took the car,
I was to follow it on foot out safe distance
as he went along the lane, while Halliday himself ran
for my car. He would meet me at the fork
of the road, and I would be able to tell
(15:10):
him which of the two roads Gordon had taken. We
stood together, well hidden in the shrubbery for some time.
A slight wind had come up, and we could hear
small waves laughing against the piles of the pier, and
the monotonous wail of the whistling buoy beyond Robinson's point,
always an eerie sound. Halliday, who has not had much
sleep for a night or two, fell to yawning, and
I was not much better off when I heard some
(15:31):
sort of stealthy movement in the woodland to our left.
Attached Halladay on the arm to find him rigid and
bending forward, staring toward the house. He's coming, he said quiet.
The boy was raising his window screen with all possible caution,
even when it was accomplished. He stood so long, probably
listening and watching, that I began to think he had
changed his mind and gone back to bed. But as
events strode, he had done nothing of the sort. Up
(15:54):
to this moment, I had not suspected the use of
the rope, although I believe Halliday had. I know my
gaze was fixed on the kitchen door with now and
then a glance at the windows of the laundry into
the gun room, or rather in their direction the darkness
was extreme. But now I heard a faint scraping against
the wall of the house itself, and realized that he
was coming down by means of the rope. His coming
was as stealthy as the preliminaries had been. He was
(16:15):
probably half way down, coming hand over hand before I
had interpreted the sound. I was not even whether he
had reached the ground when I saw him, a blacker
shadow among other shadows near at hand, But he did
not come directly toward the garage. He walked along under
the walls of the west wing to the gun room window,
and stood there. Then, with extreme caution, he raced it
an inch or two, as if to reassure himself that
(16:35):
it had been unlocked from within, and closed it again.
From there, with somewhat less caution, he moved to the
corner of the house and seemed to be surveying the
water front and the boat house. We had our only
real view of him then, as he stood silhouetted on
the top of the rise. Note the main house stands,
as I think I have already recorded, rather higher than
the remainder of the property. But suddenly something alarmed him.
(16:57):
Neither Halliday nor I saw or heard anything, but evidently
he did every last to his exposed position, he dropped
to the ground. So unexpected was his sudden disappearance that
I gasped. It was not until I heard him creeping
along the ground I understood his maneuver. He lost no
time in his retreat, nor did he attempt to use
the rope again. He raised the unlocked window, crept over
(17:18):
the sill, and closed it again, all with surprising rapidity
and silence, and sooner than we could have expected to
be heard him drawing up the rope from his room overhead.
No interpretation of this is possible without taking into a
consideration the really horrible stealth of the boy's manner. He
was engaged on some nefarious business of his own, whether
we can connect that with the crimes or not. As
to the extremely dramatic manner in which he chose to
(17:38):
escape from the house when he had already unlocked the
gun room window, Holliday is divided between two theories, of
which he himself favors. The second. He may be merely
dramatizing himself. You'll find a certain type of degenderate mind
which is always acting for its own benefit or and
this is more likely. Our old friend Bethel was suspicious
and is watching him. The old man's door commands his.
(17:59):
He locks his door from the inside, uses his rope,
and is free to go where he pleases. But he added,
after a pause, he unlocks the gun room window too,
so he can be a retreat if he has to.
That's the best I can do. And if it isn't correct,
it ought to be. Today. I am convinced beyond doubt
that Gordon is our a criminal, and I think even
Halliday is shaken. I am no detective, but it seems
to me that the boy coming here during the height
(18:20):
of the excitement about the shipkiller and young Caraway by
the way, already paved for a career of secret crime
and adopting the methods in the symbol of some so
undiscovered religious maniac has carried on, one may say, under
his banner. My psychiatric friends have discussed with me the
herotic aftermath of the war, the search for the sensational,
the wooing of fugitive and secret pleasures, often brutal and violent,
(18:40):
and the apotheosis of the criminal. They quote too von
kraft Ebbing's theory that the instincts to kill us purely
a legacy from the past, atavistic and more or less
non deliberate. In other words, that culling is inherent in
all of us, and that to the ill balanced the
destruction of the artificial inhibition from any cause turns them
loose on the world, hereditary slayers and doers of violence.
It would, excepting that, be possible to see in young
(19:03):
Gordon the heir not only to his own past, but
to the crams which preceded his arrival. Here to see
also that gradual process of identification by which he assumed
his predecessor's attributes, and even the symbol by which he
signed his deeds. I believe that in such cases the
mental degeneration sometimes continues to the point of a complete
loss of personality. In that case, accepting this theory, it
may even be that the boy now believes that he
(19:24):
killed Caraway and takes a secret and gloating pleasure in it,
a theory which I shall be happy to place at
Greenow's disposal. If the opportunity arrives, it should be one
after his own heart. Certainly, one fact at least supports
the idea. How it day may be right, and the
attack on him not have been made by Gordon, but
there seems no reason to doubt that sometime on the
day before we got back he crept into my garage
(19:46):
and put the infernal symbol where we found it. We
have discussed to day at some length the desirability of
notifying the police once more, but our recent experience with
them was not reassuring. On the other hand, I feel
strongly that mister Bethel should be warned, but how it
argues against it. He knows something already. He says he
is on guard, and the boy knows it. Then you
(20:06):
have to remember that the game so far has been
to strike in the darkened run, that is, if you
are a correct skipper and daisy game without motive. Probably
he is right. There would be little chance for him
if he attacked the old man. He is too well
known to be on bad terms with him. Such a
warning also might alarm mister Buckle's the point of getting
rid of him, and after all, the only chance we
have is to let him go a certain length and
(20:27):
then with our proofs, calling the police. But I am
very uneasy to night as I make this entry. I
have not Holliday's easy optimism that he won't get away
with anything without our knowing it. August eleventh, to day
is bright and sunny, and I am in a better mood.
Edith came down this morning to enormous stack of mail
and stared at it incredulously. Great heavens, she said, not bells.
(20:50):
As it turned out, however, they were not bills. Her
article has brought out a curious fact. Almost everybody has
a ghost story and is anxious to tell it to
somebody else. Even the most incredulous of us apparently has
some incidents stored in his memory not capable of explanation,
and a visible percentage of these victims of thrills and
shivers have written to her about the ghost in the
light tower. She and Halliday are reading them on the
(21:10):
veranda at this moment. Each has a heap of them,
and such bits as these are to be heard. Here's
a wonder, says Halliday. Hold my hand, won't you all
read it to you? There's some ghostly thing touching my
neck at this minute. It's a spider, says Edith Coolly.
You can wait listen to this. I'm so on which
reminds me that I had a visit last night from
(21:31):
Cucko Hedley, our village Don Juan, who sells hardware over
his contort pretty village matrons, and who was dubbed Cucko
some years ago by a summer visitor who saw a
resemblance to Byron in him and evidently knew the quotation
note quote the cuckoo shows melancholia, not madness. Like a Byron,
he goes about wailing his sad lot and now with
then dropping an egg into someone else's nest. Close quote.
(21:53):
Hedley was slightly sheepish. He knows, and he knows I
know that his rode home at night lies nowhere near
the cemetery. The same time, he had something to tell
me and was determined to go through with it. I
guess you've heard the starry mister Porter, he said, I
don't suppose I'll ever hear the last of it, but
there's a mistake being made, and I thought, if miss
Edith was from Goun to write it up, you'd better
have it straight. It appears then that it was not
(22:14):
near Kurway's grave that Hardly saw the figure, but at
the old part of the cemetery, that there are some
facts which he has not given out. The cemetery is
surrounded by a white fence, and inside it is shrubbery. Hadly,
it seems, was not alone, but was standing in the
road talking to a friend. If, as I imagine, the
friend was a woman, it was surely a safe place
for a rendezvous. It was the friend who saw the light,
(22:36):
and who accounts for the suppression of this portion of
the tale. It shone through the shrubbery a small blue
white light, about two feet from the ground and directly
in front of the headstone of one George Pierce, who
died in the late seventeen hundreds. Hardley did not see
the light, but the friend, persisting, he crept through the
shrubbery to take a look around. It was then that
he saw the figure moving slowly and deliberately toward the trees.
(22:59):
He seems to have no doubt that he saw an apparition.
Was that the information belongs to me? The reason he
gives for the latter being that George Pierce is the
gentleman who was, according to local tradition, shotened coldal attempting
to escape the excise in the old farmhouse, which is
now a part of Twin Hollows. I have entered this
here because the day seems given over to the supernatural.
We have breakfasted with the spirit world and seem about
(23:19):
to lunch with it. Everything continues quiet at the other house.
Jane and Knight and Day returned to Livingstone's call. Although
it seems absurd, I have never quite a been to
the hope of finding an Uncle Horace's unfinished letter a
clue to the present mystery. I therefore took it with me,
hoping for an opportunity to show it to Missus Livingstone.
But none came. Doctor Hayward was there when we arrived
and remained after we left. Perhaps because my own world
(23:40):
is awry, I think the universe is so. But it
seems to me that we were shown into what almost
amounted to a situation, that Livingstone, usually nupper and calm,
was flushed, that Missus Livingstone was on the verge of tears.
The doctor, standing by the window, hardly acknowledged our entrance
and remained standing, glowering and biting his fingers until we left. He,
as I understand, soon leave for a holiday. August twelfth,
(24:03):
no entry. August thirteenth, no entry. End of section eleven.
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