He was certain that some form of deception was being practised upon him, and, knowing full well how often he had got away with other people’s money, often considerable sums, by means of one clever scheme after another, he understood that there was motive enough, and many a man alive who might want to strike back in some way. But despite thinking so, he continued to hurry, as if by haste to leave his fear behind.

  Half a block onward, he glanced again behind him. There was Alder still. The same distance from him, a dim figure, but certainly Alder, for his face was quite clear despite the darkness all around. Hawk began to feel a coolness on his forehead and knew that perspiration stood there. Yet he steeled himself to wait. Whatever it was must pass him by. The muscles of his jaw tightened, and he waited.

  But nothing whatever passed him.

  The figure of Alder came on and was lost suddenly in deep shadows lying upon the walk there. Once more Hawk thought that he must have hidden. Once more he ran back, and again he saw no one, no living thing save a nocturnal bird darting and swooping with harsh cries among the moths and insects about the nearest street light.

  This time Sanders Hawk went toward his home at a running walk. Fear and terror had him and held him, impelling him at last to rapid flight. It may have been that in this extremity Hawk remembered the misery and tragedy he had caused wherever he had gone with his plans and schemes, the trust and faith he had broken time and again, the source of his comfortable income. But now, uppermost in his mind, was the thought of reaching the haven of his house, the security of his room.

  He did not once look behind him.

  He reached the house safely, though once or twice he fancied he heard running footsteps behind him. But he did not turn to see. He ran into the house and locked the door behind him, his breath coming in gasps, and without pausing to turn up the lights, he raced up the long stairs to the second floor.

  That was his mistake. The light might have given him some additional security, might have lent his fear-distorted mind some stability. As it was, he saw Alder coming toward him down the hall, coming with incredible speed, it seemed, just as he reached the top of the stairs.

  He cried out, stepped back, clawed for the rail, and missed it. His legs crumpled grotesquely beneath him, his fingers closed on air, and Sanders Hawk rolled down the stairs. Hawk was no longer young enough to withstand such an acrobatic feat without danger to himself; he broke his neck.

  Ten minutes later, Richard Alder came to the medium’s house and went in.

  Mrs. Elting glowed at him. “Mr. Alder, I know everything’s all right. How you got in behind his chair and stood there is more than I can understand!”

  Paying her, he looked at her a little curiously, but smiled glumly. “You’ve got an imagination,” he said wryly. “I wasn’t able to carry out my plan. I’ve just now come back from two hours at the police station explaining an accident I got into.”

  Ironically, for one in her profession, it did not occur to Mrs. Elting for some time after he had left, that the man she had seen behind Hawk at the seance had a moustache considerably larger and grayer than Richard Alder’s.

  Mrs. Bentley’s Daughter

  Sac Prairie sweltered in the July sun. The warm, dusty air was lifeless, and in the heat of early afternoon the green of the trees was lost in the dull gray haze. The drooping flowers made curious splotches of color around Mrs. Vaile’s porch; the light pink of late roses, the red of garden carnations, the orange and yellow of nasturtiums, and the deep blue of canterbury bells and clematis, that crept up along the porch floor and trailed along over the rail and the pillar.

  The door of her house opened, and Mrs. Vaile herself came out upon the porch. She was dressed for the street, and as she came out she drew on her white gloves, holding her sunshade close to her body with the pressure of her elbow. She had trouble with the gloves and finally put the sunshade down to get at them better. One was already on, the other halfway on, when she drew them both off again and flung them to a chair on the porch.

  “It’s too hot to wear them, anyway,” she said.

  Then she raised her sunshade and stepped out into the sun. A car came down the road and swung around the corner in a perfect storm of dust.

  “Land’s sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Vaile. “Never saw such dust.” She reflected that unless they had rain soon, the house and the flowers would soon be a dusty brown. She turned and looked at the flowers, bent away from the sun.

  Then she went on her way, marching sedately down the walk and out upon the street. From the shade of her parasol she looked over at the house that was her destination. She should really have called sooner, she reflected, it being her place as a new neighbor to do so.’ Oh, well. She crossed the dirt road with little, mincing steps and came up before the whitewashed fence about the house. She opened the gate and began to walk up the path toward the house.

  Then she saw the child. It was sitting on the stone curb of an old, evidently unused well, for the opening was neither covered over nor marked with the paraphernalia of usage. The child was playing about, quite dangerously, too, Mrs. Vaile thought. It was a little girl, Mrs. Vaile saw as she came closer. What if she should fall into the well? The thought sent Mrs. Vaile from her path over to the child.

  “Hello, darling,” said Mrs. Vaile in her kindest voice.

  The child looked up at her. “H’lo!” she said.

  “Does your mother know you’re out here, sitting at the well?” asked Mrs. Vaile, leaning slightly forward.

  “Mama doesn’t care.”

  Mrs. Vaile puckered her brow. She smiled a bewildered smile, and looked more closely at the child. The little girl smiled back at her.

  “I don’t think you ought to sit on the curb there, darling; you might fall into the well.”

  The child turned her head slightly and. looked down into the well. She laughed gayly and tossed her curls. Then she shook her head.

  “I can’t fall down into the well,” said the child simply.

  Mrs. Vaile glanced nervously toward the house, half expecting the child’s mother to come out to her. She thought it very odd that they should leave the well uncovered with a child about the house. Once more she entreated her.

  “Do come with me to your mother, won’t you? Come to the house with me.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t. I must stay here.” The child shook her head vehemently.

  Mrs. Vaile sighed. “Oh! very well, then.” She picked her way over the grass back to the walk and went on up toward the house. She mounted the porch steps and rang the bell; then she looked back at the child. Somewhat unruly, that girl; Mrs. Vaile felt it.

  Then suddenly she saw her neighbor’s smiling face framed in the doorway, and in a moment she was sitting in a rather old-fashioned parlor—there were so many of them in Sac Prairie, she had been told. The walls were papered with light tan paper, on which were great red splotches of flowers—almost gaudy, thought Mrs. Vaile—but she was smiling at her hostess who was saying something about her flowers. The horsehair furniture felt very odd, somehow. Across from her on the mantel she saw several old chromos. On one of these she saw three people—a woman, a man—her husband, no doubt—and a child. The woman was her hostess, and the child was the child on the well curb. A family group, thought Mrs. Vaile. She turned to her hostess now, and smiled as if she had heard and appreciated every word that had dimly come to her.

  “I know I should have come sooner, but I was frightfully busy. Moving, you know. And if it hadn’t been for your adorable little girl, whom I saw on the well curb as I came in—”

  Mrs. Vaile stopped abruptly. There was a sudden odd pallor on the face of her hostess. She heard the woman saying, more to herself than to her:

  “On the well curb again?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Vaile affably. “She was sitting there quite pertly, and answered me when I spoke to her.”

  “Ah!” the woman exclaimed, and leaned forward. “And what did she say?”

  Mrs. Vaile hesitated. Would it do to tell this woman that she had reprimanded her child? “Not much, certainly not,” said Mrs. Vaile. “I told her I thought she hadn’t ought to sit on the well curb, but she said you didn’t mind; so I came on in.”

  “Ah! yes. Dorothy was always like that. A bit unruly, perhaps, just a little bit. But such a dear, and such a comfort to me. She comes and she goes, but she seems to like the well curb best. It’s a bit extraordinary, too, when you come to think of it.”

  Mrs. Vaile thought her hostess was becoming steadily more incoherent; she thought it best to change the subject. She led off on the last meeting of the Ladies’ Aid, and her hostess entered into this topic with fervor.

  It was after five when Mrs. Vaile emerged from the house. She saw as she came down the path that the child was no longer at the well. She was most probably playing in the dense bushes to the left, from which came the shrill screaming of a group of children at play. Behind her, the woman was leaning over the porch railing and staring at the well.

  She closed the gate after her, and stepped briskly across the street. It was at her doorstep that she met Mrs. Walters, from the other end of the block. Mrs. Vaile did not like Mrs. Walters; she had been warned that Mrs. Walters was an accomplished gossip, and she detested gossip. But she was already coming to feel that gossiping was one of the few means of passing the time in Sac Prairie.

  She greeted Mrs. Walters, and the woman responded with a sharp nod.

  “Have you been visiting Mrs. Bentley?” she asked.

  Mrs. Vaile nodded. “Yes. We h&ve had a very pleasant chat about”—she could not tell this woman that they had been discussing the Ladies’ Aid—“about Mrs. Bentley’s daughter, Dorothy.”

  Mrs. Walters jerked her head about and stared at Mrs, Vaile in open-eyed astonishment.

  “Do you tell me she talks about her?” she demanded.

  “Why, yes,” answered Mrs. Vaile. “After I saw the girl on the well curb—”

  “Saw the girl on the well curb!” Mrs. Walters almost screamed the words; she seemed to be leaning away from Mrs. Vaile, and at the same time boring her eyes into her.

  Mrs. Vaile was nonplussed. What had she said now? Dear me! she thought, what a queer person! But something Mrs. Walters was saying brought her up sharply.

  “How you talk, Mrs. Vaile! Why, that girl fell into the well over a year ago. I can’t believe that Mrs. Bentley would talk about it!”

  Mrs. Vaile nodded. “It is rather queer, isn’t it? If a daughter of mine fell into the well once, I’d be sure not to let her play around it again. But there she was, smart as you please, sitting right on top of the well curb!”

  “What are you saying, Mrs. Vaile?” asked Mrs. Walters coldly. Then, in a voice that seemed to come from far away, “Surely you know that the child drowned when she fell into the well!”

  Those Who Seek

  Jason Phillips had no intention of going to the abbey, but when young Arnsley discovered that he was an artist, he had to go—there was no getting out of it. He had protested mildly at first; he had still to finish the painting of the castle, and he had promised himself a few spare moments in which to ramble around the estate of Lord Lever-edge, Arnsley’s father. But his objections were overruled by a wave of the hand, and consequently Phillips found himself on this October morning seated before his easel, staring miserably at the ruins of the abbey that had so caught young Arnsley’s fancy.

  It was very old, and quite like many other abbeys that Phillips had had the pleasure of seeing. However, Phillips noticed at once that the building was fairly well preserved for its age—which Arnsley said, dated back into the Roman invasion period, some said long before. The second and third floors of the building were almost gone; only a few supports projected into the air here and there. But the first floor, hidden for the most part by a dense growth of vines and bushes, was remarkably well preserved. Deep-set windows could be seen through the bushes, and over toward the cloister walk was a huge door which so engaged the artist’s fancy that he decided to paint the abbey so as to feature the cloister walk and the door.

  Phillips started his charcoal drawing. He made a few tentative strokes and erased them. After a moment of study, he repeated the process. There was something about the view of the cloister walk that escaped Phillips. He leaned away from the canvas and regarded the abbey in silent irritation. He tried the charcoal drawing again, with more precision this time. After a short time he put down his charcoal. He did not seem to be able to sketch the abbey as he saw it—there was a feeling as of someone guiding the charcoal. Phillips felt vaguely and unreasonably ill at ease.

  It was due perhaps to the gruesome history of the abbey with which Arnsley had regaled him on the way up, added to his own previous knowledge. Of the actual building of the abbey, little seemed to be known. There was one date, the earliest, at 477 A. D., which Lord Leveredge had given out as the date the abbey was taken from the Celts by the Saxons. It was Lord Leveredge’s idea that the Celts had erected the abbey first as a temple of Druidic worship, and recent discoveries about the grounds had unearthed nothing to oppose the theory. Indeed, several of the leading authorities were in agreement with Lord Leveredge, and in a subsequent history of the place, this point was emphasized beyond all proportions. There was then a gap of three hundred years in the abbey’s history. In 777 A. D. the abbey appeared in contemporary histories once more. There was a curious story of the strange disappearance of a party of Danes who besieged the place at the time still a temple. Phillips recalled that he had read of old-time bards who sang about this legend. This was perhaps the first of the incidents that gave the abbey a sinister reputation. Another occurred in 1S37, during the time of Henry VIII, when the temple, then an abbey, was raided by a band of His Majesty’s Reformation mercenaries. The abbey was at the time unoccupied, but strange unaccountable rumors had reached from generation to generation hinting at the awful things that happened there at the time of the raid. Armsley recalled newspaper accounts of the “dark people” of the Abbey, the ghosts of long-dead monks who marched forever along the cloister walk, telling their beads and reading their breviaries. The abbey had, in consequence, got a reputation of being haunted.

  There was, too, a story not so legendary, that had happened only four years before. A fisherman had wandered into the abbey to sleep; it was common for these fisher folk to sleep in secluded places along the nearby coast where they plied their trade. The following morning this man was found wandering in a dazed condition on the sea coast. At first he could say nothing, and later, when some semblance of speech had been restored, he mumbled incoherently about songs and prayers, and there had been something of green eyes watching him. Two days after he had partly recovered,- he disappeared. When a searching-party had been sent out, he was found dead and horribly mangled in the abbey. Of the means by which he came by his death, nothing was subsequently discovered. There were curious marks on the man’s body, deep claw-like tears in the flesh, and a ghastly whiteness led to the examination which showed that there was little blood in the body—the man had apparently bled profusely.

  But this rumination was taking time, and Phillips, suddenly coming back to reality, reached quickly for his charcoal and again began his sketch, which seemed to go somewhat more easily this time.

  Phillips had just completed his charcoal drawing when Arnsley appeared from inside the abbey and called to the artist to come in for a moment. With an annoyed smile, Phillips rose and made his way slowly through the bushes to the spot where Arnsley stood.

  “Well, what is it?” There was a petulant note of vexation in his voice which quite escaped Arnsley.

  “I came across an inscription, old man, and I wonder if you could read it. It’s Latin, I think, but so curiously wrought and so old, that I’m not sure if I’m reading it rightly—though I seem to be able to make out the lettering.”

  “Oh!” said Phillips, somewhat nettled.

  “Just follow me,” said Arnsley. He turned and entered the abbey and progressed swiftly along the corridor parallel to the cloister walk. “It’s along in the corridor here,” his voice came over his shoulder to Phillips, and he half turned to regard the artist in the subdued light of the corridor walk.

  “Go on,” said Phillips quickly, thinking of the charcoal drawing he was about to paint.

  “Seems to be on some sort of slab, I should say,” continued Arnsley, as if he had not heard. “And it’s almost obliterated—you’d expect, that, wouldn’t you?” Arnsley stopped suddenly. “Here we are.”

  Arnsley had come up before a rectangular slab of stone, set, as closely as the artist could determine, directly in the center of the corridor. Phillips bent to peer at the inscription that Arnsley indicated with his cane.

  “What is it?” asked Arnsley after a moment.

  “It’s Latin, of course—just as you thought.”

  “Well, that seems to indicate that this place has Roman beginnings after all; eh?”

  Phillips grunted irritably; he remembered that despite the authorities, Arnsley had held to his belief regarding the Abbey as a product of the Roman invasion. “If this building was founded by the Romans of the first invasion, that inscription was put on a considerable time after. As nearly as I can make it out it reads QUI. PETIVERENT. INVENTIENT., and that, literally translated, is a quotation from the Christian Bible—’Those Who Seek Shall Find.’ Where did you get the idea that this place is Roman, Arnsley?”

  “Oh! I strike upon that as the best bet,” said Arnsley, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m told, though, that there’s a priest over in Wallington who’s got an old paper on the abbey, and he seems to think much as I do. I went over once to see his paper, but the old fellow wasn’t at home, and his housekeeper was pretty chary about letting strangers mess about the priest’s papers. The name’s Richards, Father Richards; I’ve an idea you could get quite a bit of material from him if you want it. He’s an authority on old abbeys and cathedrals.”