CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE DEMON’S IMAGE

Vera climbed over the stone edge slowly and held tenaciously to the ivy as she went down. Then to her relief Dick’s arm closed round her waist and drew her in. She finished round with her feet for the broad stone ledge and stood upright a trifle dizzily.

“Okay?” Dick asked, holding her close with one arm and gripping the ivy with the other.

“If I don’t look down, I am,” she answered.

“Right. Here’s the ghost!”

He flashed his torch back on the window, narrowing the beam down to a small circle that finally encompassed a tiny section at the top of the big area of glass. Vera peered at it earnestly, then her brows went up in surprise. She gave a gasp of astonishment.

There, embedded in the design of the glass—which was mainly composed of diamond-shaped squares of red and green—was a tiny image, not more than four inches high and completely transparent. An image of a demon, skilfully executed as though in Indian ink on a piece of plain glass. As she passed her fingers over it and felt no roughening Vera realized that it was a picture dyed in the glass.

“So—so this is it?” she whispered at last.

“It works like a slide in a magic lantern,” Dick explained. “I had my flashlight beam behind it when you saw it. The image is so small as to be unnoticeable in the room among all that mass of glass—and anyway, one is usually too frightened to pay close attention. But it is projected into the room by the light behind it, and the dust haze always hanging in the air acts as a kind of screen for it. Ever noticed when you’re at the movies how the picture on the screen is also visible in the haze of tobacco smoke? Same sort of thing. The light which seems to surround it is actually the projected ray behind it.”

“Well, that’s ingenious!”

“Several things led me to this deduction,” Dick went on, shifting his position uncomfortably. “The first thing was that it only appears on the three longest days of the year. Now, it is right at the top of the window, and we noticed earlier—at least I did—that only that part of the window was illuminated. Those three evenings—and maybe one or two on either side of them as well—are the only ones when the sun peeps high enough over that watch tower parapet opposite to illumine this piece of glass. I mentioned the other one or two nights because the longest day really means the greatest number of solar hours. It’s possible the sun peeps for about a week over that parapet there.”

“Anything else?” Vera asked excitedly.

“The fact that the phantom appeared every time lightning flashed finally convinced me. There must be a light behind it somehow. So I came out and had a look. I suppose really that the phantom would be visible in the dead of winter too, when the full moon takes the place of the sun—but that’s another story. What we’ve done is cross off a hefty problem. Now you’d better move. I’m getting cramped.”

Vera reached up to the ivy again and Dick helped her to get a hold. Steadily she fought her way up to the parapet above and within a few minutes he had joined her.

“Do you think,” she asked, “that the Falworths put that piece of glass in for themselves, or has it always been there?”

“That I don’t know: but I did notice that it is far cleaner that the rest of the window, so obviously they have kept it spotless inside and out to give the maximum effect.... I’ll hazard a guess—that the legend of the ghost of Sunny Acres is about as truthful as Ann Boleyn walking the Tower with her head tucked under her arm. Therefore, the Falworths decided to supply a ghost.”

“Think again,” Vera signed. “You told me that the history of this place stated that the ghost was known to appear on June 21st—and that book was published in 1912. So the legend can’t be just bosh.”

“You’re right,” Dick said. “Well maybe we’ll get the truth later on...incidentally, I imagine that on the two occasions it didn’t appear—according to Mrs. Falworth—the weather was probably cloudy.”

They fell silent, regarding the murky late evening. It was just starting to rain again in heavy drops.

“Well, we’ve progressed somewhat,” Vera decided. “This means we have only one last problem to solve—the horror sensation. Then the coast is clear.”

“We hope.... And we’d better get back in the house before we get drenched.”

They moved as fast as they dared along the roof through the downpour and descended the ivy again to Vera’s room. Dick closed the window silently.

“I wonder,” he said, “if Mrs. Falworth has given up trying to scare us? She vowed all sorts of things earlier in the evening but none of them seem to have materialised.”

“I think it was those gas masks that defeated her.” Vera gave a soft laugh. “But I’ll tell you what I think we should do. See where that pump hose of theirs goes and what it is really withdrawing. We might be able to get a sample of the water, and that will give the police the motive back of everything. Their chemists will soon find out what the stuff is....”

“Good idea....” Dick lighted the oil lamp and replaced the glass chimney. He looked at the girl and smiled. “Seems to me that we’ve earned a little rest after this lot! We might as well sit around for the time being, doze if we can, and then some time tonight we’ll dodge down to that cellar and grab a sample—if possible. Okay?”

“Okay,” Vera agreed. “And for the first time since I cam here I’m not afraid of ghosts!”

For a while they both contented themselves with following their own thoughts, but subconsciously each was listening for footsteps, either denoting the Falworths coming to bed or else setting out on a nocturnal excursion.

“Be some time yet, I expect,” Dick remarked presently. “It’s only ten o’clock—”

He broke off and sat up abruptly. Insidiously, a feeling of horrible nausea had crept through him—and moved on. His heart began to race abruptly.

“What the—” he began; then it came again, surging through him. At the same moment Vera’s face went deathly white in the lamplight.

“It’s—it’s that feeling—” she choked.

They jumped up and stared at each other, baffled. But there was no denying it. The same awful mental revulsion of the horror-room was squirming into their senses, tearing at their nerves, battering them down—

“Can’t be—in here!” Dick insisted, dry-mouthed.

With a huge effort he turned as Vera swayed giddily and caught at the chair for support. Half fainting she hung there, gasping for breath. In three strides that seemed to take him through a nether world, Dick reached the window and flung it open. Rain and cool air came sweeping inwards, clearing his brain somewhat.

Dazed, he lumbered across the room and caught at the girl. His arm round her waist he dragged her, stumbling and half conscious, to the sill. She moved dully as rain pelted on the back of her neck.

Dick left her there for a moment and looked round with aching eyes. Then suddenly he remembered his gas mask and searched for it. He found it, slipped it on and drew thankfully at the purified air through the respirator. Then he began a search for Vera’s, located it on the dressing table where she had tossed it, and quickly snatched it up. In thirty seconds he had it over her head. He waited beside her for a while, then she began to stir, and at last straightened up.

“Th-thanks,” she mumbled, through the folds. “You just about saved me, I think.... But, how did this happen?”

He looked about the room, and finally at the oil lamp. The flame was burning oddly, and with a brownish red tinge! Instantly he dived for it and using his handkerchief, took off the glass chimney. Something was visible now which he had not noticed before. On the edges of the wick holder’s broad brass bands, was a residue of brownish ash still smoking and sending thin tails into the air.

“I get it!” he shouted inside his mask. “Now I know what it is!”

He whirled the lamp up savagely and flung it clean through the open window. It went whirling down to smash and explode in a flash of burning oil on the driveway below. For a while he and Vera stood close together in the dark, waiting for the air to clear. In ten minutes it was breathable again, though a deadly stuffiness hung upon it.

“It’s the same stuffiness we noticed in the cellar the other night,” Vera said, taking off her mask and sniffing. “You remember? It must have been surplus fumes from the stuff burning in the chimney— But you say you know what it is...?”

“I remember now where I heard of it before, and where I saw it,” Dick answered. “Come with me!”

Grabbing her arm, he whirled her out of the room, along the corridor and down the staircase. Without a pause he raced—to the girl’s surprise—into the library. Muttering with impatience he lighted the oil lamps with his lighter and then hurried over to the specimen cases against the far wall.

“There!” he cried in triumph. “Pedis Diaboli Root! That’s it!”

Vera stared at the stuff, uncomprehending—two little pieces of substance like Coltsfoot rock.

“Translated it means Devil’s Foot Root,” Dick explained. “You say you’ve read Sherlock Holmes? Don’t you remember the ‘Case of the Devil’s Foot’?”

“Hazily...,” Vera mused. “Wasn’t it something about folks who went mad—? You don’t mean that this is the same stuff?”

“No doubt of it!” Dick tapped the showcase emphatically. “It belongs to West Africa and is known to only a few experts in toxicology. In Conan Doyle’s story it was used in almost identically the same fashion as it was used on us. When heated, it gives off fumes that create violent mental derangement and leaves behind a reddish brown ash. Obviously your uncle, in his various travels abroad, found some of it and brought it back as a specimen—in fact, quite a few specimens maybe. I don’t suppose he ever intended to put it to its real purpose which—according to Doyle—is that of a poison for West African natives.”

“And the Falworths knew what it was?” Vera exclaimed.

“Must have. The name card underneath is enough for any expert in toxicology—Pedis Diaboli Root. It was probably Carstairs who knew the value of the stuff. In the Sherlock Holmes story there was another Latin name added. Let’s see now....”

Dick crossed over to the bookshelves and took down Sherlock Holmes, Short Stories, turned to “The Devil’s Foot.” Then, amidst the context, he pointed to three words—Rex Pedis Diaboli.

“That’s it!” he cried. “Yes, and look here! The Falworths were even unoriginal enough to use the same method as Doyle’s character in that they put the stuff on the oil lamp! It was that very discovery that brought the whole thing back to my mind. I recalled a self-same incident somewhere that I’d read about.... After that the problem was solved for me.”