The Coming of The Strangers Read online

  He looked at her, took her hands in his and squeezed them, and in that touch she could feel his affection, and a misery or a fear that she could not understand.

  “I don’t know, Laura. I just feel –”

  “I want you to marry me, John,” she said. “Darling, I know all about your debts. They don’t mean anything. They can be wiped out. They don’t matter at all. Don’t feel about them, as if they could come between us. I know—I can understand, but don’t let it mean anything to us. We love each other and that means we start afresh. Everything will be new and different.

  We’ll go away from here. It’ll be a secret, we – ”

  “No, darling,” he said, almost in agony. “No! ”

  Her mouth set firm, determined and she clutched his hands to her bosom.

  “Marry me, John,” she whispered. “Please, please, John! ” He stood there motionless. She let his hands go. He turned suddenly and covered his face with his hands.

  “I can’t, Laura. I can’t, my darling. It’s too late. Oh, God! it’s too late.” She dropped his hands and he went away from her, staring at nothing.

  “Too late!” Her eyes were wide, incredulous. “John! How can it be? How can it be?”

  ‘Laura–” He turned back to her. “Laura, I can’t explain.

  Don’t ask me, Laura.”

  “There’s no woman, John. T would know. I would know that.”

  “No. Since you came there’s been no other woman, Laura. Of course you know that.”

  “But if it isn’t the debts—the—the feeling of–- ”

  “They don’t exist! ” he cried desperately.

  “What! ” She became still.

  ‘‘They–- ” He looked at her, scared now. “They—they’ve

  been paid, Laura. I—made an arrangement.”

  “Then there can be nothing else!” she said. “John, look at me –”

  “Laura,” he said, and came back to her, “you love me. You’re wrong to love me, my darling. But I’ll trade on it as I’ve always traded on everything else. I’ll ask you, because you love me— not to ask me any more whys.”

  There was a flush in her cheeks, as she searched his grey eyes for the truth that was hidden there.

  “I don’t understand/’ she whispered, shaking her head.

  Then she saw his eyes grow bright with a sudden line of tears as he watched her, and he turned away.

  “Let me have a drink,” he said, huskily. “We’re chasing poltergeists. Remember?” He crossed to where the cocktail cabinet stood, lit like a crystal cave; truly every light in the house had been put on.

  She watched him go there, and then shrugged angrily.

  “Get me a good, stiff one, John,” she said bitterly. “I seem to have made a fool of myself.”

  He turned abruptly.

  “Laura! Don’t say that! ” he said as if he had been physically hurt. “Don’t feel that. I am grateful—more, more grateful than you can know. But what should have made me great can only hurt more and more. I asked you, please, not to query. Will you—be kind?”

  She took a cigarette from a box.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “And knowing what I do, I don’t believe that anything can stop us being together. I don’t believe that anything can. Anything at all! John. I’m not going to let it.”

  tie watched her, firm and resolved, and a bright flash of uneasiness went through him, for he knew so well how determined she could be once she decided that she would have her own way.

  “It isn’t worth it, Laura,” he said, turning back to the cabinet. “You know I’m no good. You can’t make anything out of me.” “That’s when you make me angry,” she said, and she looked it. She put the cigarette down unlit. “So, John, I warn you ”

  There was a light tapping at the French windows, and she stopped and looked round.

  “Elfrida ! ” she said.

  “Hallo,” John Sebastian said, and looked relieved at the interruption.

  “Oh, dear Mr. Sebastian, too,” said Elfrida, drawing a great skirted, frilly dressing gown around her. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to run in on anything, but—it’s all rather odd, and I hardly know what to do, that is – ”

  “Don’t worry,” Sebastian said. “We are all neighbours together. We help one another when need be. What’s up?”

  Elfrida Bontrer-Gosse was a fine, straight lady of seventy-five. She had something of the uprightness of fictional aristocracy, but in her faded blue eyes there remained a twinkle which burnt with fascinating fury when young men paid her compliments, which they often did. A widow now, she had the small bungalow next to Laura’s.

  “As you know, seeing you two together, anything—anything in the world would have been better than coming in at such a time,” said Elfrida, quickly, and rather breathlessly, “but this is just anything else in the world.” She tightened her gown about her, a fine flouncing mass of frills and lace and bows that might have come from Drury Lane, and looked meltingly at John Sebastian. “It is just.”

  “What is it?” Laura asked, curiosity growing as she connected it with her own alarm.

  Sebastian said nothing.

  “Why—all I can think of it’s a ghost,” said Elfrida, almost in triumph. “And it’s cut the phone off, too. Really I’m all of a tizzy with it. The only thing I could think of was to come and find you, dear.”

  “What sort of a ghost?” said Laura.

  “Well”—Elfrida cuddled herself while she thought—“well, it’s just like somebody moving about—I mean, in the living-rooms, of course. I thought it was Kissen, but as you know, she’s in a difficult period and she’s shut up in the little box-room, poor darling, until it’s over and she stops that dreadful hooting noise—but the noises weren’t coming from there. The ghost noises, I mean. They were coming from the front of the house. I was reading in bed, propped up like the late Queen, and very distinguished I don’t doubt, when I heard these noises and said, ‘Goodness! I’ve got a burglar at last and too old to enjoy it!’ Then I shouted, ‘Who’s there?’ Naturally I didn’t want him to answer. I wanted him to run away, but the noise still went on, like someone in seaboots lumbering about, and I began to get all sort of pattery here”—she patted her left breast—“you know how one does, and when I get these feelings that I’m getting old and feeble it makes me cross, which of course is the worst thing, as Doctor Jim says, but he’s so young,

  of course Well, so I got angry with this man in the seaboots,

  and I got up and I got Edward’s old twelve-bore, which I always keep in case of burglars though heaven knows what would happen to me if the wretched thing went off—and I went out into the hall. Now I could still hear him moving about, and I didn’t actually want to see him you understand, I just wanted him to go. So I banged the dinner gong with the gun to let him know that I was awake, and even after that, dear, I still heard him moving in the drawing-room. Well, that seemed just a piece of monstrous impertinence, sort of throwing a woman’s age in her face, and so I pushed the door wide open and switched on the light in there and pointed the gun and said, ‘Come out, or I’ll blow your head off!’ And nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. I went in, and the room was empty. I pointed the gun all round. I used it to lift the covers and look under the sofa, and I poked the curtains apart with it and pulled them right back and there was nobody behind. Of course, it frightens me now to realise what I did—I mean, supposing there had been somebody there, oh dear! …

  “Well, I was befuddled. You see I knew the noises had come from there, and no mistake, and then comes the terrible part”

  She drew a great breath and pointed at Laura with a bony, dramatic finger.

  “There’s a small round table by the fireplace—you remember, dear ”

  “I remember, too,” John said.

  Elfrida nodded.

  “Well, on that table I keep an old brass shellcase and usually it has spills in it—I must remember to get some more. No matter. As I w
ent to the door, right the other side of the room from the table, the shellcase toppled over, by itself., and went over to the floor with a frightful bang ! Well, that did it.

  “I went out and tried the telephone in the other room, but it didn’t work—didn’t even make that horrible purring noise like a permanent cat—so I came here, and goodness—I’m glad I did! I didn’t realise I was so scared, really.”

  “Here,” John said, giving her a glass. “Take this. It’ll do you good.”

  “What is it?” she said, and tasted. “Oh, brandy. Yes, that’s all right. Some of the other things are too fattening, you know, and if one is to grow old gracefully one doesn’t want to spoil it with a figure like a bus, does one?”

  “Elfrida” Laura said gently. She said it to stem the flow of startled words, because Elfrida was really letting it go in a kind of semi-hysteria, and if a brake was not put on she might not stop until exhausted. “Elfrida, I had the same thing here. That’s why I fetched John.”

  “Oh, I love John. He’s so handsome,” said Elfrida, staring at him. “He’s certainly the kind of man I would have fetched in my younger days. Even now, perhaps.” Her eyes twinkled and she laughed and patted the front of her voluminous skirt. “Well, what are we going to do about it?”

  “I think we’d better get the police,” said Laura, slowly.

  John turned quickly.

  “What on earth good will that do?” he said abruptly. “They won’t take the slightest notice. They’re not ghost hunters.” Laura looked at him steadily, and held out a hand.

  “Give me the phone, John,” she said, quietly.

  He shrugged, and almost angrily took the phone from the table by the window and handed it to her. She had her eyes on him, wondering, as she lifted the receiver. The tiny silence that came from the instrument settled on the room like a petrifying chill.

  “Oh my goodness!” gasped Elfrida. “No cat?”

  “No cat,” said Laura, and looked at John.

  “Perhaps the whole circuit’s out,” he said shortly. “You know it sometimes happens up this end.”

  Laura put the phone back and let it lie on the arm of the sofa.

  “I know one thing”‘ Laura said, “you didn’t shut your house when we left, John. All the balcony windows were wide open. If there’s anything about – “

  “It’s rented” he said carelessly. “And insured. As a matter of fact, I didn’t remember it till you mentioned it then. But it’ll be all right.”

  “Well, that’s very silly of you, John dear,” said Elfrida.

  “I was so on edge I didn’t notice it until now,” Laura confessed. “I had too much on my mind.”

  She jammed out a cigarette in an ashtray.

  “Well, what are we going to do, John?”

  “Be sensible,” he said. “The best thing to do is wait till morning and then try and get somebody who understands—poltergeists”

  “Do you really think that’s it?” Laura said. “Poltergeists?”

  “Laura, think what happened to you before you came for me,” John Sebastian said. “There were noises, somebody moving about—moving things—but there was nobody here. Elfrida had the same thing. A man in seaboots, big, clumsy sounds which couldn’t be burglars, and then, while the room was empty, the shellcase fell over. Now what in the world else could that be? You know such things have happened before now. They’re not uncommon. They crop up in all sorts of houses. Quite often they’re genial sort of fellows, throwing things about, just for kicks. Let’s make a night of it and see what it looks like in the morning. I mean, look at it this way. I believe you two, but who else is likely to, right now? A police sergeant at the station. Do you think he’ll interrupt his three a.m. breakfast and bite his finger instead of his sausage roll? No. He’ll say, ‘Oh go to sleep and you’ll feel better in the morning.’ And could you blame him? Do you really think that after talking him round for a half hour he would send out a car full of detectives—to look for a ghost? Nothing’s stolen, nothing’s missing, nothing’s damaged.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I believe you two, but I wouldn’t like-to have the job of telling this story to any outsider. There’s only one way it would click—as a roaring joke. Leave it till the morning. While we’re all together we must be all right. And don’t forget, nothing’s happened here since I came.

  “Perhaps they’re friends of yours,” Laura said.

  He turned upon her suddenly, almost fiercely, but she was smiling at Elfrida and he recovered his poise.

  “Maybe,” he said, easily. “Sometimes one’ doesn’t know one’s friends.

  “The phones ns well,” said Laura, slowly. “It seems so funny they should go at the same time as these other things. Do ghosts do that sort of thing? It seems a mixture of supernatural and super-menace.”

  “It could be plain coincidence,” John said, impatiently. “How do we know when the phones went off? Have you used it lately?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  “Then it could have gone off hours ago,” he went on, and looked at his watch. “I think the best thing is for you to stay here together, I’ll have a look at your house, Elfrida, just to make sure there are no burglars, then I’ll go and shut mine and hope he hasn’t been there already.” He laughed and went to the French windows. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  He went out. Elfrida sighed.

  “Such a nice man,” she said. “Thirty? Thirty-five? Why doesn’t he get married? A man by himself like that seems sort of unfair, doesn’t it, dear?”

  “You’re a sly old woman,” Laura said. “You know I agree.”

  “Heavens!” Elfrida said, jumping. “What’s that?”

  Laura listened, her face growing white, then she relaxed.

  “It’s a tap in the bathroom,” she said, with a sigh. “It’s been dripping all the evening. I must get the plumber tomorrow.

  hope John will be quick.”

  3

  John went swiftly through the adjoining gardens of the two bungalows. The front door of Elfrida’s was partly open and light streamed out. He stopped a moment by an apple tree, heavy with blossom, like paper in the warm, spring night, and wiped his face with a clean white handkerchief. He looked all round in the shadows, then went ahead and into the house. He knew, as he went in, that nothing remained in there. He had learnt to tell by now.

  He switched off Elfrida’s lights, one by one, and slammed the door locked. He went through the gate into the broad road. It stretched like a great highway down to the white mass of his house, like a sugar cake in the moonlight. On his right the shimmering sea whispered, and he looked along the broad sweep of the empty beach. He shivered suddenly, and looked right round towards the town end of the promenade. The lights had been switched off. On the black mass of the little building on the hill he saw the yellow melon face of the Town Hall clock.

  It all seemed so normal, so ordinary, so familiar, that the horror he knew was there seemed unbearably acute.

  He turned his back on the town, as if it accused him, and began to walk quickly back to his house, but halfway his emotion overcame him and he stopped, bent his head and covered his face with his hands.

  “Oh Laura, Laura!” he whispered. “For God’s sake why did we leave it so late?” He stood there, it seemed a long time, tears running between his fingers, his whole being racked with an unbearable torture. Into his mind came the mad thought of

  turning, running back to her, calling to her, ‘‘Laura, Laura ! Come quickly! Come with me. We’ll get away before they get me. We’ll get away! Quickly! ”

  Madness. The idea brought him to reality. He dropped his hands and looked round at the silent night. Physical feeling returned and the tears felt cold on his face. He used the hand-kerchief again, then straightened his back, and walked on towards Beach End.

  He went steadily through the garden and on to the balcony at the back. The light from the open windows spread yellow shades on the sand, like a distorted hand of ca
rds.

  He stopped, looking into the great room, this handsome, studio kind of lounge, main feature of a house that had but little else. He looked in, as if making a decision, then felt for his cigarettes, lit one and walked in steadily. He went to the wheeled table where the drinks always were. The ice in the glass jug had turned into inanimate jellyfish. He did not look around anymore but poured a drink. He drank it at a gulp, just as he had done on the first night. Then he poured another, and with that in his hand he turned and looked at the empty room. He looked everywhere around it, and at the rugs scattered about the fine pine floor.

  “Can you hear me?” He spoke firmly, strongly, like an actor throwing his voice to the last row. “Can you hear me? Are you

  here still?”

  He stopped, turned and looked back. Silence hummed in the place like secret laughter.

  “You!” he called. “I have something to say. Something important to say! ”

  Silence mocked him. He looked towards the open windows and the quiet, shimmering sea stretching out to the free horizon,

  making him feel a prisoner. He walked quickly to the windows.

  “I speak to you! I have something to say! ”

  He heard the faint whispering of the sea, and turned back into the room as if suspecting someone behind him.

  “You must be there,” he called. “Hear me! You must hear me! I have a message! A message! ”

  The silence hummed on. He drank again and looked around, eyes bright with desperation, the sweat beading in diamonds on

  his forehead.

  “Listen to me!” he cried, and then, as despair gripped him he shouted, “Set me free. I can be no use to you! Set me free! ”