The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

"Yes, a very good idea," he said, after a moment. "The keys are in the cabinet there; two of the same, the same key fits both. Indeed"—and his pen began slowly moving again—"indeed, you will find plenty of cobwebs there. The summerhouse is the one on the left as you ascend the knoll going from the house. Don't go plunging into the ice house by mistake. They are both shuttered on the inside; it would be a good thing if you were to open all the windows, and let them get a good blow out. Shall I—oh, no! I must stick to my work."

Harry found the keys, and as he turned to leave the room—

"The one on the left is the summerhouse?" he asked again.

"Yes, the one on the left," said Mr. Francis, again fully absorbed in his writing.

Harry, key in hand, went out whistling and hatless. The morning was a page out of heaven, and as he strolled slowly up the steep, grassy bank, where the two outhouses stood, with the scents and sounds of life and summer vivid in eye and nostril, he felt that his useful occupation of the hours since breakfast had been a terrible waste, when he might have been going quietly and alert with Geoffrey through cover and up hedgerow, to the tapping of sticks and the nosing of the spaniels. However, he had been through the farm accounts with minute care; there would be no call for such another morning till the closing of the next quarter.

The two buildings toward which he went were exactly alike, of a hybrid kiosk sort of appearance, fantastic and ridiculous, yet vaguely pleasing. Each was octagonal, with three blank sides, four windows, and a door. Still whistling and full of pleasant thoughts, he fitted the key into the lock of the one to the left hand, and turning it, walked in. The interior was dark, for, as Mr. Francis had told him, all the windows were shuttered inside, and coming out of the bright sunlight, for a moment or two he saw nothing. For the same reason, no doubt, it struck him as being very cold.

He had taken three or four rather shuffling steps across the paved floor when suddenly he stopped. Somehow, though he saw nothing, his ear instinctively, hardly consciously, warned him that the sound of his steps was not normal. There should have been—the whole feeling was not reasoned, but purely automatic and instinctive—no echo to them in so circumscribed a building, but an echo there was, faint, hollow, and remote, but audible. At this his whistling stopped, his steps also, and drawing a loose match from his trousers pocket he struck a match. Less than another pace in front of him was a black space, on which the match cast no illumination; it remained black.

Harry felt a little beady dew break out on his forehead and on the short down of his upper lip, but his nerves did not tell him that he was afraid. He waited exactly where he was, till the match had burned more bravely, and then he chucked it forward over the blackness. It went through it, and for two or three seconds no sound whatever came to him. Then he heard a little expiring hiss.

Still not conscious of fright, he went back, with the light of another match, for the door had swung shut behind him, and in another moment was out again, with the sweet, soft sunshine round him and the firm grass beneath his feet. He looked round; yes, he had gone to the left-hand building, the one his uncle had told him was the summerhouse. He had nearly, also, not come out again.

At this sobering reflection a belated spasm of fear, for he had felt none at the moment of danger, seized him, but laying violent hold of himself he marched up to the other door, unlocked it, and throwing it open, waited on the threshold till his eyes had got accustomed to the darkness. Then seeing a couple of wicker tables and some garden chairs peer through the gloom, he went in turn to each window, unshuttered it, and threw it open.