THE HOUSE OF BEATING HEARTS
In the short dusk of a Friday afternoon in March Joe Morrow came toward home from the village school pleasantly concerned with plans for the week-end holiday. There was a hint of spring in the air, and the hard crust of the winter’s snow had begun to soften. At the top of the last rise out of the village he passed Roscoe Sweetman’s farm, and it seemed to the boy that the burly Mr. Sweetman, busy outside the barn, turned and looked after him as he passed. From there a section of the road spread out before him—the deserted, abandoned Farley place and, beyond that, the rock-and-timber house which Frederick Wingate had built and in which he painted pictures that were sent to art dealers in New York. Queer pictures, the village said—pictures of queer blurs and shadows, pictures in which men did not look like men nor did horses look like horses. Frederick Wingate, according to village suspicion, was slightly mad.
But Joe Morrow’s thoughts were far removed from men who might be mad. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you found an apple imprisoned under the snow—a late windfall that was almost a ball of liquid cider. He swung off the road and, back in the Farley orchard, rooted diligently. Presently, triumphant, he gave a shout. He had found not one apple, but two. He bit through the skin, and the cold, imprisoned juices oozed into his mouth. When the fruit was sucked dry he tossed it aside and bit into the second. And only then did he notice how much the day had darkened.
And suddenly, for no reason at all, he was filled with a creeping, apprehensive dread. His eyes, startled, rested on the house where Matt Farley had once lived, and he forgot to suck nectar through the punctured hole in the apple. Often, since the house had been abandoned, he had romped around the wide porches and climbed over the heavy railings. But now, in the gathering gloom, the structure had ceased to be friendly and inviting. Against the darkening sky this old friend of a house had all at once become a threatening, nameless thing—a monster of lightless windows, and locked doors, and stark, inner silence. The boy, uneasy, began to move toward the road. Without warning he broke into a run as though peril clutched at his heels.
Back on the road he felt safe. Outside the house of Frederick Wingate two men stood talking; he saw, with surprise, that one of them was Mr. Sweetman. A little while ago the farmer had been working at his own barn, and he was not the type given to hurry. Why, then, had he hurried over here? The boy was conscious, as he approached, that the talking stopped. Roscoe Sweetman called in his slow, heavy, rumbling voice:
“Why were you running, Joe?”
The boy gulped. “N—nothing.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” the farmer cried.
But the artist only laughed. “Coincidence, Roscoe.” The laugh lingered in the boy’s ears, amused, scoffing. “Your uncle going to be home tonight, Joe?”
“I think so, Mr. Wingate.”
“Tell him we’ll be over.”
Joe trudged on through the snow. What was this coincidence? Why had Mr. Sweetman cried out, “Didn’t I tell you?” Why were they coming to see Uncle David? Had it something to do with the Farley house? Why had he fled in panic from the orchard? Now that he was away from the place the action seemed foolish and cowardly. It was one thing he would not tell his uncle, for he could not imagine Dr. David Stone, blind though he was, fleeing from anything.
At eight o’clock the artist and the farmer came to the house. Frederick Wingate called: “Don’t get up, Doctor,” and Dr. Stone held out a hand of warm greeting. Lady lay at his feet and stared unwinking at the visitors.
Joe Morrow stared, too. Was it the Farley house? Roscoe Sweetman, ungainly and burly in his leather coat, his corduroy trousers and his heavy boots, sat uncomfortably in a chair and rubbed a calloused hand across a stubble of beard. Frederick Wingate, lithe and jaunty, walked the floor and filled the boy’s eyes. An opera cloak draped his shoulders, his shirt was pleated, his collar was long and loose, and a silk tie was gathered in a limp, nondescript bow. He seemed, in his dress, to belong to another age; and this passion for adornments of the past was reflected in his jewelry. His watch was old—a thick, heavy silver timepiece elaborately scrolled that had been converted into an ungainly wrist watch. And on the finger of his right hand was an enormous old-fashioned ring of gold curiously twisted and knotted.
“Doctor,” the artist announced, “I have brought you a man half out of his wits.”
“I know what I have heard,” the farmer said, slowly and heavily.
“Just what did you hear, Sweetman?” Dr. Stone asked.
“It was last night. I was coming home from the village and took a short cut across the Farley place to get quicker to my back door. I came close past the house, and there were voices coming from the inside. That was strange because there was no light on the inside. I have long had a key from Mr. Rodgers, the real estate man, so I went home and got the key and opened the front door. From inside came groans and cries of suffering. Then I went and shouted for Mr. Wingate.”
“And then?” the doctor asked.
The artist shrugged. “I brought flashlights. We searched the house from cellar to attic. There was nobody there—nothing had been disturbed.”
“Voices?” Dr. Stone suggested.
“He’s imagining things,” Frederick Wingate said impatiently. “There were no voices.”
“I heard them plain,” the farmer insisted stonily.
“‘Them’?” The blind man’s voice had taken on a note of quick interest. “What do you mean by ‘them’?”
“Ghosts,” said Mr. Sweetman. “If it was imagination with me, what was it with Joe when he came running hard this afternoon?”
Ice crept up and down the boy’s back, and his stomach chilled. His uncle whistled long and softly.
“What did you hear or see, Joe?”
“Nothing.”
“But you ran?”
“Yes, sir. From the orchard.”
“Why?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“I do,” Mr. Sweetman said with stolid insistence.
Frederick Wingate laughed. “A boy’s vivid imagination, Doctor. A sudden fear of the dark.”
“I never knew Joe to be afraid of the dark,” Dr. Stone said quietly. “You still have the key, Sweetman? By the way, how did you come into possession of the key?”
“I was thinking of buying,” the farmer explained. “Mr. Rodgers gave me the key so that I could look long at the house. Before that Mr. Wingate had the key.”
The doctor asked: “Were you thinking of buying, Fred?”
“Yes. Rodgers came to me three months ago and offered it for eight thousand dollars. It’s worth far more than that to a man who could use it. With its good lines and its solid construction it has possibilities. However, after looking it over I decided it wouldn’t answer my purpose. I gave the key back to Rodgers two months ago.”
“Rodgers came to me,” Mr. Sweetman added. “I think maybe I will buy, maybe for seven thousand dollars, but I do not tell him. It is bad business to buy quick and pay what is first asked.”
“You won’t want it now,” Dr. Stone said.
“Maybe. First I must think.”
After that there was a silence in the room. Joe looked from his uncle to Frederick Wingate. The artist leaned against the mantel and seemed to find a cynical amusement in watching the man who had come with him. Strained lines had formed suddenly around the blind man’s mouth.
“You are afraid of ghosts, Sweetman?” he said softly.
“I am afraid,” the farmer answered heavily.
“Yet you might buy?”
“It is good land. I could tear down the house and sell it away, some here and some there.” Joe saw greed gleam in the dull eyes. “Maybe with ghost talk around it will come a better price. Maybe I could yet buy for three thousand dollars.”
“Business first, Sweetman,” the doctor said pleasantly. He snapped a finger, and at once Lady arose; and Joe, his heart pounding, hurried to get the dog’s harness. Frederick Wingate still leaned against the mantel above the fireplace.
“Going ghost hunting, Doctor?”
“You can never tell what you’ll find on a hunt,” the doctor answered dryly. “Coming?”
“This is the year 1934,” the artist said, amused again. “Ghosts have gone out of fashion. I have letters to write.”
The doctor slipped the harness on the dog. Lady, alert, waited beside him for the signal to go. Mr. Sweetman had lumbered to his feet.
“Care for it, Joe?” Dr. Stone asked.
The boy felt the chill again in his spine. And yet——
“I’ll get flashlights,” he said huskily.
They went up the road through the snow in silence—three men, a boy and a dog. A pale quarter of moon had risen, and the world was all white silver, and even the trees seemed ghostlike and unreal. The artist dropped out at his house to write his letters, and the others went on to Farley’s. The place, Joe thought, did not look so forbidding under the softening touch of the moon. Frost had come with darkness, and the porch floor creaked under their feet. Mr. Sweetman thrust a key into a lock, the front door opened on complaining hinges, and they stepped into the damp, black, moldiness of a deserted, closed-up dwelling.
“The light!” the farmer cried. “Where is the light?”
Joe jumped, and switched on a flash. He had a momentary glimpse of his uncle, standing in the eternal darkness of the blind, serene and untroubled, and the sight gave him courage. The beam picked out faded walls, a chair, broken and discarded, the dusty floor, a doorway, a yawning staircase. Outside the yellow shaft of light there was naught but a blank, impenetrable, stealthy darkness. Darkness, and the hushed, unbroken silence.
“Well?” Dr. Stone asked.
There was a sound. At first it might have been the whimper of a wind around the eaves of the house. It rose, and fell away, and rose again. It fell away to a plaintive, worried whimper. And then, without warning, it became a human cry that filled the house with ghastly echoes. A voice—unmistakably a voice—sobbed wildly in writhing anguish. As abruptly as it had risen the cry was gone, and there was only a low, plaintive, heartbroken lamentation.
Mr. Sweetman’s teeth chattered. “You hear it, Doctor? From all over the house—upstairs, downstairs, everywhere.”
“Quiet,” said Dr. Stone.
There was a new sound. It seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere. It was gone—it came again. A measured beat, a steady rhythm that hammered and throbbed like an unchanging pulse. Hammer and throb, hammer and throb! It beat upon the ears. Hammer and throb! All at once the sound stopped in the middle of a stroke and did not come again. The dark house lay in frozen silence.
“Doctor!” The farmer’s voice shook. “You know what that was?”
“Do you, Sweetman?”
The man’s answer came in a hoarse whisper. “I think it was a heart beating.”
Joe’s throat was a cramped vice. The flashlight shook in his hand and made fantastic splotches of light upon the floor.
“Upstairs,” Mr. Sweetman croaked.
They heard the sound of footsteps on the floor above. A child’s footsteps. Footsteps that ran and skipped lightly and gayly. Suddenly the sound was gone from above and in the same room in which they stood the same footsteps gamboled. Joe made a frantic circle of the room with the flash.
“See!” the farmer choked. “Nothing!”
A new sound joined the footfalls. Joe recognized it, and his scalp prickled. The beat of a heart! It throbbed momentarily and was gone. The unseen child continued to romp.
Dr. Stone’s voice, low and clear, came out of the darkness. “Lady!”
Joe’s light focused on the dog. Lady, her tail whipping restlessly, had eyes only for the blind master who had spoken.
“Find the baby,” Dr. Stone said.
Joe’s breath came and went in short, choking spurts. Find a ghost? He kept the unsteady light trained upon the man and the dog. The merry romp of invisible feet still filled the room. Lady, her tawny body red in the beam from the flash, went without hesitation to the nearest wall. And there she stopped, defeated, and whined.
“It’s all right, Lady,” the blind man said quietly. His left hand held the handle-grip of the dog’s harness; his right hand thrust out the cane until it touched the wall. He came closer and laid one hand upon the wall itself.
The echo of young footsteps had stopped.
“Come.” Mr. Sweetman trembled. “It is enough.”
“Wait,” said Dr. Stone.
Without warning the dark house was awake again with sound. Upstairs a childish voice sang softly. Then footsteps once more filled the room. Not footsteps in a home, but footsteps crunching over a graveled walk. Sounds, for a moment, became confused and fragmentary—the icy-clutch beating of that heart, a child humming, the wash and gurgle of water. Footsteps again crunching gravel. Joe could almost vision a child at play.
The idyllic picture was broken. All at once there was a piercing, terror-stricken scream. With amazing speed it thinned, waned, grew fainter, as though somebody was falling, falling—. Abruptly there was a heavy splash, the sound of water in commotion, a gurgling, strangling voice calling faintly for help.
Joe dropped the flash, and it went out. Mr. Sweetman cried something inarticulate and plunged for the porch. Outside they heard him shouting:
“Wingate! Wingate! Come quick! Wingate!”
The doctor’s voice, in the darkness, was steady. “Frightened, Joe?”
The boy fought for control. “Not—not when I’m with you and Lady.”
“Good lad. Find your flash. Got it? Spot it on the wall. Look sharply, now. Does that wall look strange in any way, in any way at all?”
Joe compelled himself to make the inspection. “No, sir.”
Roscoe Sweetman’s boots thudded on the porch. The farmer came in, panting, followed by Frederick Wingate. Dr. Stone had moved away from the wall.
“What’s this?” the artist demanded. “Moans, screams, footsteps? It sounds like a dime novel. Let’s hear them.”
But the house now held to a soundless quiet. Ten or fifteen minutes passed.
“It looks,” Dr. Stone observed, “as though our ghost has called it a day.”
“Sweetman,” Mr. Wingate snapped impatiently, “this is the second time you’ve called me from my work for nothing. Where’s your ghost?”
“He was here,” the farmer insisted. He appeared to be filled with a dull surprise.
“The second time,” Dr. Stone repeated thoughtfully. “I’d call that strange, Fred.”
“You, too, Doctor.” The artist’s impatience had given place to amusement. “I thought better of you than that.”
“Did you?” the blind man asked mildly. Joe stood rigid. His uncle’s voice had carried an undertone that had not been there before.
But nothing more was said. They came from the house, and Roscoe Sweetman’s fumbling hand clattered the key against the lock. In the road Frederick Wingate paused.
“Doctor,” he asked curiously, “do you actually believe in ghosts?”
“I believe what I hear,” the blind man said without emotion.
Joe, struck with terror, hugged close to the safety of the dog. That night his sleep was broken by dreams—dreams of a great, monstrous heart throbbing so that all could hear it and of strange screams that faded into a swift, strange silence. In the morning an east wind blew down from the mountains and the sky was gray and overcast. Twice Joe walked toward the Farley farm, and twice he turned back. He saw Mr. Sweetman, hulked over the wheel of a small car, drive toward the village and, an hour later, drive back. And all through the morning Dr. Stone sat with his beloved pipe unlighted in his hands, and by that token the boy knew that his uncle was buried in disturbed thought.
Early in the afternoon Police Captain Tucker and Mr. Rodgers, the real estate man, came to the house in the captain’s car. Joe hovered in the doorway.
“Doctor,” Mr. Rodgers demanded, “what’s this talk about a ghost at Farley’s? Sweetman came in to see me this morning—”
“Sweetman?” The blind man was intent.
“Rubbed it under my nose that there was no market for a haunted house. Said you had heard the ghost. How about it?”
“Did Sweetman happen to be in a buying mood?” Dr. Stone asked quietly.
“An eager mood. That’s what I can’t understand.”
“How much did he offer?”
“Twenty-five hundred.”
And yesterday, Joe thought, the farmer had mentioned $3,000. He glanced at his uncle. The blind man had struck a match to the unlighted pipe.
“We heard a little of everything, Rodgers—groans, screams, the footsteps of a child, singing.” Blue smoke rose fragrantly from the pipe. “A child singing,” the doctor added, and turned sightless eyes toward the captain. “What brings you into this, Tucker. Planning to arrest a ghost?”
“Ghost?” Captain Tucker snorted. “I don’t believe in ghosts. There’s such a thing as hocus-pocus to steal away the value of a piece of property. Did you know Matt Farley?”
“No.”
“Rodgers and I did. A friend to tie to. Matt was doing well here, but his youngest boy, about four, died. It broke him up. Two years later he closed the house and went away. Now he’s out on the Coast, sick and penniless, and he asked Rodgers to sell the place and get money to him. I’m in on this to see that no swindle is put over on him.”
Dr. Stone asked: “How did the boy die, Tucker?”
“He fell down a well and was drowned.”
Horror froze Joe Morrow’s blood. Words passed back and forth in the room—he did not hear them. By and by the three men were in the road and headed for Farley’s. He trailed along. They stopped at Mr. Sweetman’s for the key.
“Doctor,” the farmer said heavily, “not for one thousand dollars would I go into that house again.”
“You’d buy it though,” Dr. Stone said mildly.
“Not now. Since this morning I am told that when you tear down a ghost house the ghost follows you into yours. Maybe it is so. I do not take a chance.”
“Who told you that?” the real estate man snapped.
Mr. Sweetman’s eyes shifted. “I do not say.”
The house, on this drab, gray day, was bleak and forbidding in its emptiness. Cold shadows lurked in the corners. However, there was daylight, you could see, and Joe did not feel the frozen terror of last night. Captain Tucker relentlessly searched the house. In the end he came up from the cellar with a paper in his hand.
“Find anything,” Mr. Rodgers asked eagerly.
“The cover from a magazine and a scrap torn from a page. Matt’s been out of here for years; this magazine is a last August issue. How did it get here?”
“What magazine?” Dr. Stone asked.
“It’s called Wonder World. How did it get here?”
“Sweetman has a key,” the real estate man said. “Wingate did have a key. Either one of them could have brought it in.”
“How long did Wingate have his key?” the doctor asked suddenly.
“A month, probably. Painted in here for a while. Gave me back the key at last and said it would cost too much to change the upstairs to get a studio with a northern light.”
“Then these things mean nothing,” the captain grumbled in disappointment. He crumpled the cover and threw it into a blackened fireplace.
“That scrap of paper?” Dr. Stone asked.
“Half a dozen incomplete lines. Something torn out at random.”
“Might I have it?”
Captain Tucker grunted in impatience. “I tell you it’s merely a scrap——Oh, take it.”
They emerged from the house, and almost at once Frederick Wingate came out of his own dwelling wearing a paint-smeared apron.
“By Harry!” he cried angrily, “this ceases to be a joke. Now the police are here, and next it will be in the newspapers. They’ll howl it up with scare headlines, and the rabble will come down on us by train, and bus and private car. The neighborhood will be marked for sordid sensation. Sweetman’s place, Farley’s, mine—none of them will be worth a dollar. Nobody has heard these screams, and footsteps and heartbeats. It’s hysterical imagination.”
“I’ll come over tonight and try my imagination,” Captain Tucker said.
The artist stormed back into his house and slammed the door.
Dr. Stone, holding to Lady’s harness-grip, went serenely toward his home. Mr. Rodgers talked warmly. Wingate had the right idea—hysteria. But Joe, though silent, could still feel the tremor of his nerves. There had been screams and heartbeats. And a boy had fallen into a well and drowned!
Captain Tucker and the real estate man climbed into the police car and were off. Instantly the unconcern fell away from the blind man. He held out the scrap of paper.
“Read it, Joe?”
The boy read the few, disjointed words on the triangular strip:
If the effects sonority periments. By means of succeeded in
“Does it mean anything, Uncle Dave?” he asked, puzzled.
“Perhaps.” Dr. Stone’s face had become intent. “I think I’ll walk into the village with Lady. You’d better stay here, Joe. I may be gone a long time.”
He was gone three hours. When he returned he was whistling softly.
Darkness came early out of the drab day. Joe placed a log in the fireplace, and Dr. Stone smoked quietly and toasted his legs in the warmth of the blaze. At seven o’clock there were footsteps on the porch and a knock on the door. Frederick Wingate walked in.
“Still thinking of ghosts, Doctor?” he asked humorously. The afternoon’s ill-temper had disappeared.
The face of the blind man was inscrutable. “Still thinking,” he admitted.
And then, for a time, the Farley house and the ghoulish beat of its unseen heart seemed forgotten, and Joe listened to sparkling talk of the days when Mr. Wingate had been a student in Paris and Vienna. Abruptly, in the middle of a sentence, the man stopped short.
“What time will Tucker be back tonight, Doctor?”
“Eight-thirty.”
The artist pulled back the sleeve of his coat and glanced at the heavy, elaborately-scrolled, silver wrist watch. “Eight-ten,” he said. And then, seeing Joe’s fascinated eyes upon the watch, he continued to hold up the bared wrist. “A curious trinket, Joe. I picked it up in Austria. Keeps time to the split second. But it has a curious trick. Do you hear it ticking?”
“No, sir.”
“If your wrist happens to turn in exactly the right position——” The man moved his wrist, and all at once the boy heard the watch ticking out an emphatic, muffled stroke. Again the wrist moved, and the timepiece was no longer audible. The artist laughed. “Not bad, eh, Joe?”
Joe said “Gosh!” and looked at his uncle. Dr. Stone had ceased to smoke.
“It’s going to be a bad night, Doctor,” Frederick Wingate went on. “There’s snow in the air. I’d advise you to sit snug and let Tucker do his ghost-hunting alone. It will be wasted time.”
“Why are you so sure of that, Fred?”
“Come, come, Doctor. You know how I feel about goblins.”
“Of course. I was wondering. Last night you insisted we hadn’t heard sounds. Tonight you become more positive. You predict we’re not going to hear anything. Why this added certainty? Is it because you had removed the cable running between your house and Farley’s?”
Joe Morrow suddenly found himself tight and expectant. The good humor had been washed from the artist’s face.
“It was hard,” the doctor said serenely, “to locate exactly where the sound originated. Lady, though, took me to one wall. After that, the trick was plain. A blind man’s touch is sensitive, Fred. I felt the vibration in the wall. I asked Joe if the wall looked at all strange. He said it didn’t. Who could break into a wall and then doctor it so it would let out sound freely and still look untouched? Who but an artist accustomed to skilfully blending colors?
“But at first I suspected Sweetman. The man’s anxiety to take advantage of a ghost scare and buy cheaply fooled me. We all stumble at times. I should have seen from the start it couldn’t be Sweetman. He was greedy, but he didn’t have the brains. Then, too, there were no creepy manifestations whenever you appeared. By the way, who told Sweetman the ghost would invade his house if he pulled down Farley’s? You?”
“You’re stumbling now, Doctor, aren’t you?” the artist asked. Joe saw that his eyes had become sharp and watchful.
“Not now,” the blind man said. “The road is too plain. Today, when Tucker searched the house, he found the cover of the August Miracle World and a fragmentary scrap torn from a magazine page. Only ten words were on that scrap, Fred, but one of them was ‘sonority.’ It’s a word dealing with sound. On a bare chance I dropped in at the public library. There I learned that one Frederick Wingate is a subscriber to Miracle World, and each month turns the magazine over to the library after he has read it. But this Mr. Wingate did not turn over his August copy; the library, wishing to keep a complete file, sent for the August number. There was a significant article in that number, Fred. The librarian read it to me. It had to do with sound effects by radio and telephone.”
Joe’s lips were parted breathlessly. Frederick Wingate stood as though he had lost the power of movement.
“I’m not up on those things. They developed after I became blind. Exactly how you worked the trick I do not know. After reading the August number you concocted your scheme. You took your time. But in December you got the key from Rhodes on the pretext you wanted to paint in the house and try out the light. In that month you did your wiring, broke through walls, inserted your loud speakers and tuned them to the proper pitch. The transmitting cable from your house to Farley’s was probably laid on the ground under the snow. No doubt you thought you would not have to give more than five or six manifestations. Let the ghost talk start. After that you could take up the cable. The thing would be done. Farley’s property would be ruined; you’d buy it in for a song.
“What did you do from December to March? Practice the act? Anyway, you ran into the unexpected. Sweetman also saw a chance to buy cheaply. So you filled him with the fear of inheriting a ghost. Then, when the road seemed clear, Tucker came in. You hadn’t expected the police. Today, when you protested to Tucker, Rodgers thought you were furiously indignant. I read your voice better. You were alarmed. So tonight, as soon as darkness fell, you took up the incriminating cable. You’re wealthy. Why does a man of means stoop to small cupidities? Is it because he thinks it clever and smart?”
The artist spoke hoarsely. “You’ll admit, Doctor, that this is all rather circumstantial?”
“It was until a little while ago. Then I found the absolute proof. Sometimes a thing becomes so much a part of a man that he forgets he has it and it betrays him. Do you mind telling me the time?”
The artist glanced at his wrist-watch. “It is now——” His eyes, startled, stared fixedly at the doctor. “I see,” he said.
Dr. Stone relighted the pipe. “Might I make a suggestion. We don’t want Tucker in on this. I’m more interested in Matt Farley. My suggestion is that you buy the place even below its worth, eight thousand dollars. Eight thousand will be a fortune to a man sick and penniless.”
Wet blotches fell against the windows. Snow!
“Doctor,” Frederick Wingate said, “will you believe me when I say I did not know Farley was destitute?” He picked his coat from a chair. “I’ll see Rodgers in the morning and put down a deposit. Good night.”
The blazing log broke and fell, and sparks showered up the chimney. So there really had been no ghost! Relief went through Joe Morrow in a fervent tide.
“Did—did you really have the proof, Uncle David?”
“The absolute proof, Joe. You saw it yourself.”
“I saw it?” The boy was bewildered.
Dr. Stone stretched back in the chair and placed his hands behind his head. “I don’t know whether he used a telephone mouthpiece or a microphone. Whatever he used he was right in front of it. His hands must have been active—he had to produce the sounds of water, footsteps, gravel. Every time the watch began its mystifying tick——”
“Oh!” Joe breathed.
“Yes,” the blind man said quietly. “You and Sweetman thought it was the beating of a human heart.”