It is really much more like a thoroughbred with a wonderfully fine mouth.”
“And the moods of a thoroughbred?” I asked.
“No; it’s got an excellent temper, I’m glad to say. It doesn’t mind being checked, or even stopped, when it’s going its best. Some of these big cars can’t stand that. They get sulky—I assure you it is literally true—if they are checked too often.”
He paused on his way to ring the bell. “Guy Elphinstone’s car, for instance,” he said: “it was a bad-tempered brute, a violent, vicious beast of a car.”
“What make?” I asked.
“Twenty-five horse-power Amédée. They are a fretful strain of car; too thin, not enough bone—and bone is very good for the nerves. The brute liked running over a chicken or a rabbit, though perhaps it was less the car’s ill-temper than Guy’s, poor chap. Well, he paid for it—he paid to the uttermost farthing. Did you know him?”
“No; but surely I have heard the name. Ah, yes, he ran over a child, did he not?”
“Yes,” said Harry, “and then smashed up against his own park gates.”
“Killed, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, killed instantly, and the car just a heap of splinters. There’s an old story about it, I’m told, in the village: rather in your line.”
“Ghosts?” I asked.
“Yes, the ghost of his motor-car. Seems almost too up-to-date, doesn’t it?”
“And what’s the story?” I demanded.
“Why, just this. His place was outside the village of Bircham, ten miles out from Norwich; and there’s a long straight bit of road there—that’s where he ran over the child—and a couple of hundred yards further on, a rather awkward turn into the park gates. Well, a month or two ago, soon after the accident, one old gaffer in the village swore he had seen a motor there coming full tilt along the road, but without a sound, and it disappeared at the lodge gates of the park, which were shut. Soon after another said he had heard a motor whirl by him at the same place, followed by a hideous scream, but he saw nothing.”
“The scream is rather horrible,” said I.
“Ah, I see what you mean! I only thought of his syren. Guy had a syren on his exhaust, same as I have. His had a dreadful frightened sort of wail, and always made me feel creepy.”
“And is that all the story?” I asked: “that one old man thought he saw a noiseless motor, and another thought he heard an invisible one?”
Harry flicked the ash off his cigarette into the grate. “Oh dear no!” he said. “Half a dozen of them have seen something or heard something. It is quite a heavily authenticated yarn.”
“Yes, and talked over and edited in the public-house,” I said.
“Well, not a man of them will go there after dark. Also the lodge-keeper gave notice a week or two after the accident. He said he was always hearing a motor stop and hoot outside the lodge, and he was kept running out at all hours of the night to see what it was.”
“And what was it?”
“It wasn’t anything. Simply nothing there. He thought it rather uncanny, anyhow, and threw up a good post. Besides, his wife was always hearing a child scream, and while her man toddled out to the gate she would go and see whether the kids were all right. And the kids themselves—”
“Ah, what of them?” I asked.
“They kept coming to their mother, asking who the little girl was who walked up and down the road and would not speak to them or play with them.”
“It’s a many-sided story,” I said. “All the witnesses seem to have heard and seen different things.”
“Yes, that is just what to my mind makes the yarn so good,” he said. “Personally I don’t take much stock in spooks at all. But given that there are such things as spooks, and given that the death of the child and the death of Guy have caused spooks to play about there, it seems to me a very good point that different people should be aware of different phenomena. One hears the car, another sees it, one hears the child scream, another sees the child. How does that strike you?”
This, I am bound to say, was a new view to me, and the more I thought of it the more reasonable it appeared. For the vast majority of mankind have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual world (which, I hold, is thick and populous around us), sealed up, as it were; in other words, the majority of mankind never hear or see a ghost at all. Is it not, then, very probable that of the remainder—those, in fact, to whom occult experiences have happened or can happen—few should have every sense unsealed, but that some should have the unsealed ear, others the unsealed eye—that some should be clairaudient, others clairvoyant?
“Yes, it strikes me as reasonable,” I said. “Can’t you take me over there?”
“Certainly! If you will stop till Friday I’ll take you over on Thursday. The others all go that day, so that we can get there after dark.”
I shook my head. “I can’t stop till Friday, I’m afraid,” I said. “I must leave on Thursday. But how about tomorrow? Can’t we take it on the way to or from Hunstanton?”
“No; it’s thirty miles out of our way. Besides, to be at Bircham after dark means that we shouldn’t get back here till midnight. And as host to my guests—”
“Ah! things are only heard and seen after dark, are they?” I asked. “That makes it so much less interesting. It is like a séance where all lights are put out.”
“Well, the accident happened at night,” he said. “I don’t know the rules, but that may have some bearing on it, I should think.”
I had one question more in the back of my mind, but I did not like to ask it. At least, I wanted information on this subject without appearing to ask for it.
“Neither do I know the rules of motors,” I said; “and I don’t understand you when you say that Guy Elphinstone’s machine was an irritable, cross-grained brute, that liked running over chickens and rabbits. But I think you subsequently said that the irritability may have been the irritability of its owner. Did he mind being checked?”
“It made him blind-mad if it happened often,” said Harry. “I shall never forget a drive I had with him once: there were hay-carts and perambulators every hundred yards. It was perfectly ghastly; it was like being with a madman. And when we got inside his gate, his dog came running out to meet him. He did not go an inch out of his course: it was worse than that—he went for it, just grinding his teeth with rage. I never drove with him again.”
He stopped a moment, guessing what might be in my mind. “I say, you mustn’t think—you mustn’t think—” he began.
“No, of course not,” said I.
Harry Combe-Martin’s house stood close to the weather-eaten, sandy cliffs of the Suffolk shore, which are being incessantly gnawed away by the hunger of the insatiable sea. Fathoms deep below it, and now any hundred yards out, lies what was once the second port in England; but now of the ancient town of Dunwich,
