Shrieking Pit

J. Rees Arthur

Description

American detective Grant Colwyn is on vacation in eastern England when he's forced to put his sleuthing cap back on to crack a tough case. A fellow guest of the hotel begins acting oddly and soon finds himself at the center of a murder investigation. Can Colwyn figure out what's actually going on before it's too late?

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776590377
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SHRIEKING PIT
* * *
ARTHUR J. REES
 
*
The Shrieking Pit First published in 1918 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-037-7 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-038-4 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Preface Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX
*
To
MY SISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
ANNIE AND FRANCES
The sea beats in at Blakeney— Beats wild and waste at Blakeney; O'er ruined quay and cobbled street, O'er broken masts of fisher fleet, Which go no more to sea.
The bitter pools at ebb-tide lie, In barren sands at Blakeney; Green, grey and green the marshes creep, To where the grey north waters leap By dead and silent Blakeney.
And Time is dead at Blakeney— In old, forgotten Blakeney; What care they for Time's Scythe or Glass; Who do not feel the hours pass, Who sleep in sea-worn Blakeney?
By the old grey church in Blakeney, By quenched turret light in Blakeney, They slumber deep, they do not know, If Life's told tale is Death and Woe; Through all eternity.
But Love still lives at Blakeney, 'Tis graven deep at Blakeney; Of Love which seeks beyond the grave, Of Love's sad faith which fain would save— The headstones tell the story.
Grave-grasses grow at Blakeney Sea pansies, sedge, and rosemary; Frail fronds thrust forth in dim dank air, A message from those lying there: Wan leaves of memory.
I send you this from Blakeney— From distant, dreaming Blakeney; Love and Remembrance: These are sure; Though Death is strong they shall endure, Till all things cease to be.
A. J. R.
Blakeney,Norfolk.
Preface
*
As the scenes of this story are laid in a part of Norfolk which will bereadily identified by many Norfolk people, it is perhaps well to statethat all the personages are fictitious, and that the Norfolk policeofficials who appear in the book have no existence outside these pages.They and the other characters are drawn entirely from imagination.
To East Anglian readers I offer my apologies for any faults there may bein reproducing the Norfolk dialect. My excuse is the fascination thelanguage produced on myself, and that it is as essential to the scene ofthe story as the marshes and the sea. Though I have found it impossibleto transliterate the pronunciation into the ordinary English alphabet, Ihope I have been able to convey enough of the characteristic speech ofthe native to enable those familiar with it to put it for themselvesinto the accents of their own people. To those who are not familiar withthe dialect, I can only say, "Go and study this relic of old English inthat remote part of the country where the story is laid, where theghosts of a ruined past mingle with the primitive survivors of to-day,who walk very near the unseen."
A. J. R. LONDON
Chapter I
*
Colwyn had never seen anything quite so eccentric in a public room asthe behaviour of the young man breakfasting alone at the alcove table inthe bay embrasure, and he became so absorbed in watching him that hepermitted his own meal to grow cold, impatiently waving away the waiterwho sought with obtrusive obsequiousness to recall his wanderingattention by thrusting the menu card before him.
To outward seeming the occupant of the alcove table was a good-lookingyoung man, whose clear blue eyes, tanned skin and well-knit frameindicated the truly national product of common sense, cold water, andout-of-door pursuits; of a wholesomely English if not markedlyintellectual type, pleasant to look at, and unmistakably of good birthand breeding. When a young man of this description, your fellow guest ata fashionable seaside hotel, who had been in the habit of giving you acourteous nod on his morning journey across the archipelago ofsnowy-topped tables under the convoy of the head waiter to his owntable, comes in to breakfast with shaking hands, flushed face, andpasses your table with unseeing eyes, you would probably conclude thathe was under the influence of liquor, and in your English way you wouldseverely blame him, not so much for the moral turpitude involved in hisexcess as for the bad taste, which prompted him to show himself in publicin such a condition. If, on reaching his place, the young man's conducttook the additional extravagant form of picking up a table-knife andsticking it into the table in front of him, you would probably enlargeyour previous conclusion by admitting the hypotheses of drugs ordementia to account for such remarkable behaviour.
All these things were done by the young man at the alcove table in thebreakfast room of the Grand Hotel, Durrington, on an October morning inthe year 1916; but Colwyn, who was only half an Englishman, and,moreover, had an original mind, did not attribute them to drink,morphia, or madness. Colwyn flattered himself that he knew the outwardsigns of these diseases too well to be deceived into thinking that thesplendid specimen of young physical manhood at the far table was thevictim of any of them. His own impression was that it was a case ofshell-shock. It was true that, apart from the doubtful evidence of abronzed skin and upright frame, there was nothing about him to suggestthat he had been a soldier: no service lapel or regimental badge in hisgrey Norfolk jacket. But an Englishman of his class would be hardlylikely to wear either once he had left the Army. It was almost certainthat he must have seen service in the war, and by no means improbablethat he had been bowled over by shell-shock, like many thousands more ofequally splendid specimens of young manhood. Any other conclusion toaccount for the strange condition of a young man like him seemedunworthy and repellent.
"It must be shell-shock, and a very bad case—probably supposed to becured, and sent up here to recuperate," thought Colwyn. "I'll keep aneye on him."
As Colwyn resumed his breakfast it occurred to him that some of theother guests might have been alarmed by the young man's behaviour, andhe cast his eyes round the room to see if anybody else had noticed him.
There were about thirty guests in the big breakfast apartment, which hadbeen built to accommodate five times the number—a charming, luxuriouslyfurnished place, with massive white pillars supporting a frescoedceiling, and lighted by numerous bay windows opening on to the NorthSea, which was sparkling brightly in a brilliant October sunshine. Thethirty people comprised the whole of the hotel visitors, for in the year1916 holiday seekers preferred some safer resort than a part of theNorfolk coast which lay in the track of enemy airships seeking a way toLondon.
Two nights before a Zeppelin had dropped a couple of bombs on theDurrington front, and the majority of hotel visitors had departed by thenext morning's train, disregarding the proprietor's assurance that theaffair was a pure accident, a German oversight which was not likely tohappen again. Off the nervous ones went, and left the big hotel, thelong curved seafront, the miles of yellow sand, the high greenheadlands, the best golf-links in the East of England, and all the otherattractions mentioned in the hotel advertisements, to a handful ofpeople, who were too nerve-proof, lazy, fatalistic, or indifferent tobother about Zeppelins.
These thirty guests, scattered far and wide over the spacious isolationof the breakfast-room, in twos and threes, and little groups, seemed,with one exception, too engrossed in the solemn British rite ofbeginning the day well with a good breakfast to bother their heads aboutthe conduct of the young man at the alcove table. They were, for themost part, characteristic war-time holiday-makers: the men, obviouslyabove military age, in Norfolk tweeds or golf suits; two young officersat a table by the window, and—as indifference to Zeppelins is notconfined to the sterner sex—a sprinkling of ladies, plump and matronly,or of the masculine walking type, with two charmingly pretty girls and agay young war widow to leaven the mass.
The exception was a tall and portly gentleman with a slightly bald head,glossy brown beard, gold-rimmed eye-glasses perilously balanced on aprominent nose, and an important manner. He was breakfasting alone at atable not far from Colwyn's, and Colwyn noticed that he kept glancing atthe alcove table where the young man sat. As Colwyn looked in hisdirection their eyes met, and the portly gentleman nodded portentouslyin the direction of the alcove table, as an indication that he also hadbeen watching the curious behaviour of the occupant. A moment afterwardshe got up and walked across to the pillar against which Colwyn's tablewas placed.
"Will you permit me to take a seat at your table?" he remarked urbanely."I am afraid we are going to have trouble over there directly," headded, sinking his voice as he nodded in the direction of the distantalcove table. "We may have to act promptly. Nobody else seems to havenoticed anything. We can watch him from behind this pillar without hisseeing us."
Colwyn nodded in return with a quick comprehension of all the other'sspeech implied, and pushed a chair towards his visitor, who sat down andresumed his watch of the young man at the alcove table. Colwyn bestoweda swift glance on his co