The stranger complied, and the effect was nearly instantaneous. His chattering teeth were stilled, and the awful numbness that held his frame, relaxed, as the generous warmth of the spirit ran through his veins. Still he did not speak. Mervyn eyed him critically.
“Come along,” he said. “My crib’s just handy. Sooner we get there the better, for I’m in as risky a state as you are. Man, but I’m just steaming with perspiration, and a chill upon that on an icy night like this – at my age – no thank you! Here – I’ll give you an arm. You must be clean played out.”
“I am,” said the other, speaking for the first time. But that was all he said. No words of thanks, of explanation. Mervyn passed a tolerably strong arm through that of his guest, and piloted him along the path beneath the trees, athwart whose frosted boughs the moon was networking in fitful strands of light. The ladder he did not trouble his head further about. It would be there in the morning. Two owls, floating over the tree-tops, hooted sepulchrally but melodiously to each other.
“That’s how I heard them when I was in there. They sounded like the voices of devils.”
Mervyn looked at the speaker curiously. They had nearly gained the gate which opened out of the sombre woods on to the sluice. The voice was rather deep, not unpleasing, but strained. Lord! what if a touch of brain fever followed on the strain of the long immersion? What on earth was he going to do with a raving delirious man, in his lonely, haunted abode? thought Mervyn.
“Oh, that’s how they struck you!” he answered, bluffly. “No ‘devil’ about them. They’re jolly beggars and I like to hear them. I dare say, though, when you’re hanging on for dear life in a freezing ice hole at midnight anything strikes you as all distorted – eh? Well, here we are – that’s my crib. Hold up, go easy down this path. It’s really a flight of steps, you know. By the way, as you see, I’m yards below the level of the pond. If that sluice were to give way it’d sweep me and my shack to Kingdom Come before you could say knife. I shouldn’t like to say how many million gallons of water there are in that pond. It’s about half a mile long, and fills what is really the bottom of a valley, so you can imagine it’s astonishingly deep.”
Thus chatting, he had piloted the man he had rescued safely down the staircase-like path and had gained the front door, which had been left half open in his hurried exit. The lamp in the inner room was still burning, and into this he led the stranger.
“Now, peel off all your wet clothes,” he went on. “This is the only decent fire in the house – the one in my bedroom has burnt low. But – lose no time about it. I’ll get you a couple of rough towels for a glowing rub down – then you’ll be none the worse.”
Mervyn stirred up the fire and piled on it several great billets. In a moment they were roaring up the chimney. But as he did so his glance quickly sought the mysterious door in the shadowy corner. It was tight shut – moreover the long loop handle was in its normal position – at the horizontal.
“I must have been dreaming,” he said to himself, as he went upstairs to rummage out the towels aforesaid, and anything else that his new-found guest would be likely to need. “And yet – if that devilish rum optical delusion hadn’t come off – why I should have dozed on comfortably, and never have heard that chump’s shout for help. Well I’ve read of that sort of thing, but here’s a first-class case in point.”
But at this decision his meditations stopped short, and that uncomfortably. For the dread legends that hung around his lonely abode invariably had it that any manifestations within the same boded ill – were productive of ill – to the witness or witnesses thereof; certainly not good, to any living soul. Yet this manifestation – if manifestation it were – had been directly instrumental in the saving of a human life. And with this came another uncomfortable reflection – to wit, the proverb that if you save anybody’s life, he – or she – is bound to do you an injury.
“All bosh,” he decided, next minute, as he proceeded to get out a suit of clothes, in fact a complete outfit, for his guest. Both were tall men, and much of the same build. The things would fit admirably. But this sudden acquisition of human companionship had made all the difference in Mervyn. An imaginative man when alone, he was as hard-headed and matter of fact as could be in the society of his fellows. He did not disguise from himself that the society of this one, whoever he might be, had come right opportunely just now.
“Here you are,” he cried, flinging the bundle of things down on the table. “Get into these while I go and rummage out some supper. You can do with some I expect after your ‘dip.’ But I warn you it’s all cold, and there’s no kitchen fire. There isn’t a soul on the premises but myself.”
The stranger protested that he really required nothing. His voice was rather a pleasing one, with ever so slight a foreign intonation and accent. He had a well-shaped head, straight features, and a short dark beard trimmed to a point. On the whole, rather a striking looking man.
While he was changing Mervyn made several expeditions to the back premises, and by the time these were completed the table looked alluring by reason of the adornment of a cold silverside, half a Stilton cheese – and the usual appurtenances thereto.
“Rough and ready,” declared Mervyn, “but all good of its kind. I thought we could dispense with laying a cloth.”
The other bowed a smiling assent. If his dark eyes flashed round the room in a quick appraising glance when his host was not, looking he evinced no appreciable curiosity otherwise, either by look or speech. The latter, for his part, was equally contained. He detested being cross-questioned himself, consequently forebore, as second nature, to subject other people to that process. If his guest chose to volunteer information about himself he would do so, if not – well, he needn’t.
A renewed whirl of dismal wind round the gables of the house, and a fine clatter of sleet against the windowpanes as they began their meal. The stranger looked up.
“I am fortunate indeed,” he said, “to have fallen upon such hospitality as yours to-night, Mr – ?”
“Mervyn,” supplied his host. But hardly had he uttered his own name, than a very strange and unaccountable misgiving struck root within his mind. Was it some long-forgotten brain wave that suggested to him that he had seen this man somewhere or other before – and that under circumstances which would in no way render it desirable that he should see him again? Yet, like a long-forgotten dream which locates us in similar place or circumstances, it was an impression to vanish as completely and as bafflingly as recalled.
“Hark! That is not the wind,” went on the stranger, looking up.
“No, it isn’t,” said Mervyn, on whose ears the sound of a scratching on the windowpane and a plaintive little cry at the same time struck.
He raised the sash, admitting a whirl of icy sleet, also the little black kitten, its fur plentifully powdered with the white particles. It had slipped out of the door when he had started upon his rescue quest, and he had been too much occupied with this and the sequel to give it another thought just then.
“Why, Poogie, you little fool, what did you want to leave a snug fire for at all on a night like this?” he apostrophised as the tiny creature sprang lightly to his shoulder, and sat there purring and rubbing its head against his cheek. He sat down with it at the table, and began feeding it with scraps from his plate. The stranger looked on with a slightly amused smile.
“I see you are a lover of cats, Mr Mervyn,” he remarked.
“Why, rather. They’re such jolly, chummy little beasts. Look at this one,” holding it up. “Isn’t it a picture, with its little tufted ears and round, woolly face?”
But somehow the object of this eulogy did not seem appreciative. It struggled, and half struck its claws into its owner’s hand, which held it up under the armpits. But its said owner realised that its resentment was not directed upon him. It was viewing the stranger with much the same manifestations of disapproval and distrust as when gazing at the weirdly opening door, earlier in the night. And to its owner was borne in the consciousness that it