Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

The Tale of the Moor Road-1

The Tale of the Moor Road

“The medical profession must always have its own peculiar offshoots,” said Mr. Flaxman Low, “some are trades, some are mere hobbies, others, again, are allied subjects of a serious and profound nature. Now, as a student of psychological phenomena, I account myself only two degrees removed from the ordinary general practitioner.”

“How do you make that out?” returned Colonel Daimley, pushing the decanter of old port invitingly across the table.

“The nerve and brain specialist is the link between myself and the man you would send for if you had a touch of lumbago,” replied Low, with a slight smile. “Each division is but a higher grade of the same ladder – a step upwards into the unknown. I consider that I stand just one step above the specialist who makes a study of brain disease and insanity; he is at work on the disorders of the embodied spirit, while I deal with abnormal conditions of the free and detached spirit.”

Colonel Daimley laughed aloud. “That won’t do, Low! No, no! First prove that your ghosts are sick.”

“Certainly,” replied Low gravely. “A very small proportion of spirits return as apparitions after the death of the body. Hence we may conclude that a ghost is a spirit in an abnormal condition. Abnormal conditions of the body usually indicate disease; why not of the spirit also?”

“That sounds fair enough,’ observed Lane Chaddam, the third man present. “Has the Colonel told you of our spook?”

The Colonel shook his handsome grey head in some irritation. “You haven’t convinced me yet, Lane, that it is a spook,’ he said dryly. “Human nature is at the bottom of most things in this world according to my opinion.”

“What spook is this?” asked Flaxman Low. “I heard nothing of it when I was down with you last year.”

“It’s a recent acquisition,’ replied Lane Chaddam. ”I wish we were rid of it, for my part.”

“Have you seen it?” asked Low as he relit his long German pipe.

“Yes, and felt it!”

“What is it?”

“That’s for you to say. He nearly broke my neck for me – that’s all I can swear to.”

Low knew Chaddam well. He was a long-limed, athletic young fellow, with a good show of cups in his rooms, and was one of the various short-distance runners mentioned in the Badminton as having done the hundred in level time, and not the sort of man whose neck is easy to break.

“How did it happen?” asked Flaxman Low.

“About a fortnight ago,” replied Chaddam. “I was flight-shooting near the burn where the hounds killed the otter last year. When the light began to fail, I thought I would come home by the old quarry, and pot anything that showed itself. As I walked along the far bank of the burn, I saw a man on the near side standing on the patch of sand below the reeds and watching me. As I came nearer I heard him coughing; it sounded like a sick cow. He stood still as if waiting for me. I thought it odd, because amongst the meres and water-meadows down there one never meets a stranger.”

“Could you see him pretty clearly?”

“I saw his outline pretty clearly, but not his face, because his back was toward the west. He was tall and jerry-built so to speak, and had a little head no bigger than a child’s, and he wore a fur cap with queer upstanding ears. When I came close, he suddenly slipped away, he jumped behind a big dyke, and I lost sight of him. But I didn’t pay much attention; I had my g*n, and I concluded it was a tramp.”

“Tramps don’t follow men of your size,” observed Low, with a smile.

“This fellow did, at any rate. When I got across to the spot where he had been standing – the sand is soft there – I looked for his tracks. I knew he was bound to have a big foot of his own considering his height. But there were no footprints!”

“No footprints? You mean it was too dark for you to see them?” broke in Colonel Daimley.

“I am sure I should have seen them had there been any,” persisted Chaddam quietly.

“Besides, a man can’t take a leap as he did without leaving a good hole behind him. The sand was perfectly smooth, because there had been a strong east wind all day. After looking about and seeing no marks, I went on to the top of the knoll above the quarry. After a bit I felt I was followed, though I couldn’t see any one. You remember the thorn-bush that overhangs the quarry pool? I stopped there and bent over the edge of the cliff to see if there was anything in the pool. As I stooped I felt a point like a steel puncheon catch me on the small of the back. I kicked off from the quarry wall as well as I could, so as to avoid the broken rocks below, and I just managed to clear them, but I fell into the water with a flop that knocked the wind out of me. However, I held on to the g*n, and, after a minute, I climbed to a ledge under the cliff and waited to see what my friend on top would do next. He waited too. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him – he coughed up there in the dusk, the most ghastly noise I ever heard. The Colonel laughs at me, but it was about as nasty a half-hour as I care to have. In the end, I swam out across the pool and got home.”

“I laugh at Lane,” said the Colonel; “but all the same, it’s a bad spot for a fall.”

“You say he struck you in the back?” asked Flaxman Low, turning to Chaddam.

“Yes, and his finger was like a steel punch.”

“What does Mrs. Daimley say to this affair?” went on Low presently.

“Not a word to my wife or Olivia, my dear Low!” exclaimed Colonel Daimley. “It would frighten them needlessly; besides, there would be an infernal fuss if we wanted to go flighting or anything after dark. I only fear for them, as they often drive into Nerbury by the Moor Road, which passes close by the quarry.”

“Do they go for their letters every evening as they used to do?”

“Just the same. And they won’t take Stubbs with them, in spite of advice.” The Colonel looked disconsolately at Low. “Women are angels, bless them! but they are the dickens to deal with, because they always want to know why.”

“And now, Low, what have you to say about it?” asked Chaddam.

“Have you told me all?”

“Yes. The only other thing is that Livy says she hears someone coughing in the spinney most nights.”

“If all is as you say, Chaddam – pardon me, but I cases like this imagination is apt to play an unsuspected part – I should think that you have come across a unique experience. What you have told me is not to be explained upon the lines of any ordinary theory.”

After this they followed the ladies into the drawing-room, where they found Mrs. Daimley immersed in a novel as usual, and Livy looking pretty enough to account for the frequent presence of Lane Chaddam at Low Riddings. He was a distant cousin of the Colonel, and took advantage of his relationship to pay protracted visits to Northumberland.

Some years previous to the date of the above events, Colonel Daimley had bought and enlarged a substantial farmhouse which stood in a dip south of a lonely sweep of Northumbrian moors. It was a land of pale blue skies and far-off fringes of black and ragged pine-trees.

From the house a lane swept over the windswept shoulder of the upland down to a hollow spanned by a railway bridge, then up again across the high levels of the moors until at length it lost itself in the outskirts of the little town of Nerbury. This Moor Road was particularly lonely; it approached but a single cottage the whole way, and ran very nearly over the doorstep of that one – a deserted-looking slip of a place between the railway bridge and the quarry. Beyond the quarry stretched acres of marshland, meadows and reedy meres, all of which had been manipulated with such ability by the Colonel, that the duck-shooting on his land was the envy of the neighbourhood.

In spite of its loneliness the Moor Road was much frequented by the Daimleys, who preferred it to the high-road, which was uninteresting and much longer. Mrs. Daimley and Olivia drove in of an evening to fetch the letters – being people with nothing on earth to do, they were naturally always in a hurry to get their letters – and they perpetually had parcels waiting for them at the station which required to be called for at all sorts of hours. Thus it will be seen that the fact of the quarry being haunted by Lane Chaddam’s assailant formed a very real danger to the inhabitants of Low Riddings.

At breakfast the next day Livy said the tramp had been coughing in the spinney half the night.

“In what direction?” asked Flaxman Low.

Livy pointed to the window which looked on to the gate and the thick boundary hedge, the last still full of crisp ruddy leaves.

“You feel an interest in your tramp, Miss Daimley?”

“Of course, poor creature! I wanted to go out to look for him the other night, but they would not allow me.”

“That was before we knew he was so interesting,” said Chaddam. “I promise we’ll catch him for you next time he comes.”

And this was in fact the programme they tried to carry out, but although the coughing was heard in the spinney, no one even caught a glimpse of any living thing moving or hiding among the trees.

The next stage of the affair happened to be an experience of Livy. In some excitement she told the assembled family at dinner that she had just seen the coughing tramp.

Lane Chaddam changed colour.

“You don’t mean to say, Livy, that you went to search for him alone?” he exclaimed half-angrily.

Flaxman Low and the Colonel wisely went on eating oyster patties without taking any apparent notice of the girl’s news.

“Why shouldn’t I?” asked Livy quickly, “but as it happens, I saw him in Scully’s cottage by the quarry this evening.”

“What?” exclaimed Colonel Daimley, “in Scully’s cottage. I’ll see to that.”

“Why? Are you all so prejudiced against my poor tramp?”

“On the contrary,” replied Flaxman Low, “we all want to know what he’s like.”

“So odd-looking! I was driving home alone from the post when, as I passed the quarry cottage, I heard the cough. You know it is quite unmistakeable; I looked up at the window, and there he was. I have never seen anybody in the least like him. His face is ghastly pale and perfectly hairless, and he has such a little head. He stared at me so threateningly that I whipped up Lorelie.”

“Were you frightened, then?”

“Not exactly, but he had such a wicked fact that I drove away as fast as I could.”

“I understand that you had arranged to send Stubbs for the letters?” said Colonel Daimley, with some annoyance. “Why can’t girls say what they mean?”

Livy made no reply, and after a pause Chaddam put a question.

“You must have passed the moor road about seven o’clock?”

“Yes, it was after six when I left the Post Office,” replied Livy. “Why?”

“It was quite dark – how did you see the hairless man so plainly? I was round on the marshes all the evening, and I am quite certain there was no light at any time in Scully’s cottage.”

“I don’t remember whether there was any light behind him in the room,” returned Livy, after a moment’s consideration; “I only know that I saw his head and face quite plainly.”

There was no more said on the subject at the time, though the Colonel forbade Livy to run any further risks by going alone on the Moor Road. After this the three men paraded the lane and lay in wait for the hairless tramp of ghost. On the second evening their watch was rewarded, when Chaddam came hurriedly into the smoking-room to say that the coughing could at that instant be heard in the hedge by the dining-room. It was still early, although the evening had closed in with clouds, and all outside was dark. “I’ll deal with him this time effectually!” exclaimed the Colonel. “I’ll slip out the back way, and lie in the hedge down the road by the field gate. You two must chivy him out to me, and when he comes along, I’ll have him against the sky-line and give him a charge of No. 4 if he shows fight.”