I was noticing all this, when the form of a man in a mackintosh rose from the gorze close by my side, and, thrusting his head forward so that I could not see his face, walked with great swinging strides towards the pool. I thought this rather queer, but I thought it still queerer when the cries I had heard before broke out again with increased violence, unmistakably this time from the trees, and the man, breaking into a run, rushed up to the margin of the pool, where he abruptly disappeared.
I was close behind him at the time, and am positive he did not enter the water. His whole body seemed to melt away as he stood on the bank. What became of him I could not say, I only know he vanished. The incident so unnerved me that it was only with a considerable effort of mind I went on. I threaded my way through the trees, and looked everywhere, but there was no one about and nothing whatever, as far as I could see, to account for the sounds. I looked at the water: it was inky black, and there was something sinister about it, something that strangely suggested to me, that away down in its cold, still depths was life—some peculiar, venomous, repellant living thing that was watching me, and longing to entwine its arms round me, and drag me ruthlessly down. I was appalled. The apparent loneliness of the spot was frightful, and, as I tore myself away and renewed my journey home, I fancied I heard laughter—laughter in which all the trees seemed to join in chorus. On arriving at my rooms, I enquired about the pool, and my landlady informed me it bore a very evil reputation. Several people had been found drowned there, and no one would go near it after dark. This stimulated me to make further enquiries. I came across one or two men who testified to having heard cries there, and one old woman, who declared she had seen a curious figure, half human and half animal, vanish in the pine trees; but I could get nothing in the way of details for some months, not until I had returned to London, when, quite by chance and under rather extraordinary circumstances, I was introduced to a man, long since dead, who many years before had had a somewhat harrowing experience there. The gist of what he narrated to me was as follows:—
“Philip Delaney was a member of the London Stock Exchange, and at nine-thirty one August evening was sitting before the empty grate in his study, smoking. Though not naturally a pessimist, his thoughts were at that moment excessively gloomy; business during the past few years had been steadily getting worse and worse, and it now seemed as if the day of general stagnation must be very near at hand. From an average of fifteen hundred a year his income had fallen to less than eight hundred. Consequently, he could not as usual take his holiday abroad; he could only just afford to send his wife and children to Hastings, where he might possibly be able to join them for week-ends. As a fitting accompaniment to his thoughts, the weather was vile, cold and wet—eternally wet. He could hear the raindrops beating against the glass, and falling on the window-sill with an incessant, wearying and worrying patter. He was too depressed to read, it was too early to sleep, he could only sit and think, everlastingly think. Indeed, he was deeply engaged in thought—thought in which two, and two and a half percentages were paramount—when, hearing someone cough, he turned sharply round. No one was there.
“This was odd. He could have sworn the sound came from just behind him. With his eyes focussed on the door, he listened. The cough was repeated, footsteps accompanied it, and from out of the wall stepped the figure of a man. Philip Delaney gasped in astonishment. He recognised the figure at once. It was Markham Davidson, a very old friend of his, the author of several well-known works on Metaphysics and Psychology. There was nothing peculiar about him—features, complexion, expression, clothes, and walk were all perfectly natural. They belonged to the Markham Davidson he knew, but whom he had not seen for ages. And yet, how, if he were flesh and blood, had he passed through several inches of solid brick and mortar? How? Unquestionably he could not have done so, unless—well, unless he had suddenly acquired superphysical properties, and projected his immaterial body after the manner of one of the phantasms about which he was so fond of writing. Walking across the room with a quick tread, the figure displayed certain mannerisms—a forward poke of the head, a prematurely old stoop of the shoulders, and a bend of the arms—unmistakably those of Davidson. Delaney noted, too, that Markham looked remarkably well—his cheeks were ruddy and full, his eyes were bright, his movements full of energy. In one hand he carried a stamped envelope, and in the other an umbrella, with which he tapped the ground vigorously as he walked. He moved in a straight line without looking to the right or left, and, stepping into the wall a few feet from the window, disappeared before Delaney could utter a sound.
“As the whole occurrence had occupied so short a space of time—three or four seconds at the most—Delaney tried hard to persuade himself that the phenomena was an hallucination, but, try as he would, he could not bring himself to believe that what he had seen was entirely subjective. There on the wall was the very spot where the figure had emerged, and there, exactly opposite, the very spot through which it had vanished. No hallucination, he argued, could have been so vivid, nor could it have embraced so many graphic and minute details. Details! Yes, crowds of details. He remembered them all distinctly, especially the tie. There was a redness about it—a very peculiar redness he did not recollect seeing in any other tie. It impressed him greatly, and he could not eradicate it from his mind.
“He noticed the envelope, too, not so much because it was addressed to P. Delaney, Esq., as because it was white, startlingly white, whilst the stamp was the same very pronounced red as the tie. Long after the figure had gone, Philip pondered over these idiosyncrasies, and the more he thought of them, the more perplexed he grew. What he had seen was, without doubt, the phantasm of Markham Davidson—of the living Markham Davidson, identical with his old friend, Markham Davidson, in all but the colour of the tie. Red, blood-red! What one earth could have possessed Davidson to wear such a colour! He pondered over this as deeply as though it had been one of the most weighty problems of the Stock Exchange, and when he went to bed that night and looked in his mirror, he saw, instead of his own tie, a blood-red one.
“His dreams took disturbing forms. Three times following he saw Markham Davidson struggling for dear life in a dreary looking pool, situated by the side of a very lonely mountain road, and overshadowed by tall pines, that creaked and groaned like lost souls every time the wind smote them. With such perspicuity were the details in these dreams stamped on his mind, that each time he awoke he saw them again; there they were, everywhere he turned—the glimmering white road with the wide expanse of snow on one side and on the other the long line of low stone wall, beyond which lay darkness and the pool. Heavens! what a pool it was—inky black, unfathomably deep, and hideously suggestive of an antagonistic, insatiable something that lay crouching in its bosom, ever on the look-out for prey.
“Delaney was fascinated. Although he realised that the very atmosphere of the place was intensely evil, that it had a wholly demoralising effect and contaminated everybody and everything that came near it, although absolutely he understood all this, yet he allowed himself to be drawn unresistingly towards it.
“When he awoke from one vision of it, he craved heaven and hell to permit him to see another. And in this manner he passed the whole night.
“On coming down to breakfast, the first thing that arrested his attention was an envelope—an envelope addressed to him in the well-known writing of Markham Davidson. He tore it open, and with breathless excitement read as follows:—‘Dear Phil,—It is a very long time since I heard from you.... An irresistible craze has just come over me to go to North Wales. Strange, because, as I daresay you remember, I have always detested Wales. Now, however, I am eaten up with a mad desire to go to Llanginney, an out-of-the-way spot somewhere near Cader Idris. I never heard of it till yesterday, when it suddenly attracted my attention as I was gazing at an atlas. Will you join me there for a day or two? I go to-morrow (Wednesday), and intend staying a week. It would be very pleasant once again to tramp the country-side with you....’