The Shrieking Pit

by Arthur J. Rees

"One moment," said the chief constable. "How do you propose to proceed when we get there?"

"Get Benson by himself and frighten him into a confession," was the terse reply. "I want your authority to threaten him with arrest. In fact, I should prefer that you or Superintendent Galloway undertook to do that. It would come with more force."

"Let it be Galloway," responded the chief constable. "You will act just as if I were not present, Galloway, and it is my wish that you do whatever Mr. Colwyn asks you."

"Thank you," replied the detective. "Let us go, now. There is no time to be lost. Somebody may have seen me speaking to Queensmead."

They descended the rise and, reaching the flat, discerned the gaunt walls of the old inn looming spectrally from the mist. A light glimmered in the bar, and loud voices were heard within. Colwyn felt for the door. It was shut and fastened. He knocked sharply; the voices within ceased as though by magic, and presently there was the sound of somebody coming along the passage. Then the door was opened, and the white face of Charles appeared in the doorway, framed in the yellow light of a candle which he held above his head as he peered forth into the mist. His black eyes roved from Colwyn to the forms behind him.

"I'm sorry you were kept waiting, sir," he said, in his strange whisper, which seemed to have a tremor in it. "But the customers will have the door locked at night now. They are frightened of this ghost—this White Lady—she's been heard shrieking——"

"Never mind that now," replied Colwyn. He had determined how to act, and stepped quickly inside. "Where's Benson?"

"He's sitting upstairs with his mother, sir. Shall I tell him you want him?"

"No. I will go myself. Take these gentlemen into the bar parlour, and return to the bar."

Colwyn made his way upstairs in the dark. He passed the rooms where Mr. Glenthorpe had been murdered and Penreath had slept, and the room from which he had watched Peggy's nocturnal visit to the death chamber. That wing of the inn was as empty and silent as it had been the night of the murder, but a lighted candle, placed on an old hall stand which Colwyn remembered having seen that night in the lumber room, flickered in the wavering shadows—a futile human effort to ward off the lurking terrors of darkness by the friendly feeble companionship of a light which could be extinguished even more quickly than a life.