The Four Corners of the World

by A. E. W. Mason

"Yes, you look tired," she said. The head waiter approached the table, and the party broke up and mounted the steps into the hall. Caston handed Mrs. Wordingham into her carriage.

"I shall see you when I come back?" said he, and Mrs. Wordingham answered with a well-assumed carelessness:

"I shall be in London in the autumn. Perhaps you will have some story to tell me of your old house. Has it a name?"

"Oh, yes--Hawk Hill," replied Caston. "But there's no story about that house," he repeated, and the carriage rolled away. Later on, however, he was inclined to doubt the accuracy of his statement, confidently though he had made it. And a little later still he became again aware of its truth.

Here, at all events, is what occurred. Harry Caston idled through his mornings over his books, sailed his sloop down the creek and out past the black booms into the Solent in the afternoon, and came back to a solitary dinner in the cool of the evening. Thus he passed a month. He was not at all tired with his own company. The inevitable demand for comrades and a trifle of gaiety had not yet been whispered to his soul. The fret of his nerves ceased; London sank away into the mists. Even the noise of the motor-horns in the hidden road beneath his lawn merely reminded him pleasantly that he was free of that whirlpool and of all who whirled in it. If he needed conversation, there were the boatmen on the creek, with their interest in tides and shoals, or the homely politics of the village. But Caston needed very little. He drifted back, as it seemed to him, into the reposeful, lavender-scented life of a century and a half ago. For though the house was of the true E shape, and had its origin in Tudor times, it was with that later period that Caston linked it in his thoughts. Tudor times were stirring, and the recollection of them uncongenial to Caston's mood.

He had furnished the house to suit his mood, and the room which he chiefly favoured--a room at the back, with a great bay window thrown out upon the grass, and the floor just a step below the level of the garden--had the very look of some old parlour where Mr. Hardcastle might have sipped his port, and Kate stitched at her samplers. Here he was sitting at ten o'clock in the evening, about a month after he had left London, when the first of the incidents occurred. It was nothing very startling in itself--merely the sound of some small thing falling upon the boards of the floor and rolling into a corner--a crisp, sharp sound, as though a pebble had dropped.

Caston looked up from his book, at the first hardly curious. But in a minute or so, it occurred to him that he was alone, and that he had dropped nothing. Moreover, the sound had travelled from the other side of the room. He was not as yet curious enough to rise from his chair, and a round satin-wood table impeded his view. But he looked about the room, and could see nothing from which an ornament could have dropped. He turned back to his book, but his attention wandered. Once or twice he looked sharply up, as though he expected to find another occupant in the room. Finally he rose, and walking round the table, he saw what seemed to be a big glass bead sparkling in the lamplight on the dark-stained boards in a corner of the room. He picked the object up, and found it to be not a large bead, but a small knob or handle of cut-glass. He knew now whence it had come.

Against the wall stood a small Louis Seize table in white and gold, which he remembered to have picked up at a sale, with some other furniture, at some old mansion, across the water, in the New Forest. He had paid no particular attention to the table, had never even troubled to look inside of it. It had the appearance of being a lady's secretaire or something of the kind. But there were three shallow drawers, one above the other, in the middle part of it--it was what is inelegantly called a kidney table--and these drawers were fitted with small glass knobs such as that which he held in his hand.

Caston went over to the table, and saw that one of the knobs was missing. He stooped to replace it, and at once stood erect again, with the knob in his hand and a puzzled expression upon his face. He had expected that the handles would fit on to projecting screws. But he found that they were set into brass rings, and firmly set. This one which he held seemed to have been wrenched out of its setting by some violent jerk. He tried the drawers, but they were locked. There were some papers and books spread upon the top. He removed them, and found upon the white polish a half-erased crest. It was plain that the middle part of the top was a lid and lifted up, but it was now locked down. Caston did not replace the books and papers. He returned to his chair. The servants probably had been curious. No doubt they had tried to open the drawers, and in the attempt had loosened one of the handles.

Caston was content with the explanation--for that night. But the next evening, at the same hour, the legs of the table rattled on the wooden floor. He sprang up from his seat. The table was shaking. He stepped quickly across to it, and then stopped with his heart leaping in his breast. The books and papers had not been replaced, and he had seen--it might be that his eyes had played him a trick, but he had seen--a small slim hand suddenly withdrawn from the lid of the table. The hand had been lying flat upon its palm--Caston had just time enough to see that--and it was the left hand.