Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

So convinced was he of their material reality that while he was dressing he opened his bedroom door, and examined its other side, fully expecting to see marks on it which might have been made by a sledgehammer. There were none; the off-white paint was as smooth and undented as it had always been. To make assurance doubly sure, he held the door open, where the light could catch it at different angles; and then he saw something which in all his twenty-odd years of opening the door, he had never seen.

Beneath its coating of thick paint, something was written, printed rather. White over white, very hard to decipher, but at last he made it out:

Well, that explained itself. Lieut.-Col. McCreeth had occupied Philip’s bedroom.

Sometime during the war years he may have used it as an orderly-room, a sitting-room, or a bedroom, but when using it he didn’t want to be disturbed. Was the repeated rat-tat-tat meant to disturb his privacy, perhaps for military reasons? The previous owners of the house, who had occupied it for a year or two after the Army left, had redecorated it, and tried to wipe out all trace of their military predecessors. They must have spent a lot of money on it, and then gone away, quite ready to go, apparently, for they had sold it to Philip at a reasonable price. No haggling. Why?

It was years since he had seen the vendors and he didn’t even know their whereabouts. And if he had, what could he ask them?

He began to entertain absurd fancies, such as that it was he who had been ordered to fall in at the double and the mysterious knocking was meant to awaken him to the urgency of some military exercise, for which he would otherwise be late. Perhaps the safety of the country depended on it. Perhaps an invasion was imminent?

Not now, of course, but then.

Gradually these fancies began to wear off, and only showed themselves in an almost invincible reluctance, on Philip’s part, to ask Alfred if he had had any more psychic experience. At last, when all seemed set fair, he put the question.

‘Oh yes, sir, often. But I didn’t want to tell you, because I thought it might bother you.’

Philip’s heart sank.

‘What sort of things?’

‘Well, nothing that I’ve heard myself, except those noises I’ve told you about, and the voice saying “Fall in at the double!” But anything may happen in an old house like this.’

‘But you haven’t heard anything else?’

‘As a matter of fact I have, sir, but it’s only gossip, things they natter about at the local. Places like this, so far from civilization, they haven’t much to talk about.’

‘Tell me what it was.’

‘May I sit down, sir?’

Alfred sat down, bent forward to get his shirt-cuffs into the correct position, leaned back and said:

‘Well, it was about this Colonel.’

‘You mean Colonel McCreeth?’

‘Yes, Colonel McCreeth. They couldn’t pronounce his name properly—they’re uneducated here. But they said he was unpopular with the other men who were living here, in this house I mean, at the time. He was a dictatorial type, like some of them are, and they had it in for him. He used to get them up from bed when it wasn’t a bit necessary, just to look at the moon, so to say, pretending there was an air raid, when there wasn’t. And so they got fed up.’

‘I don’t wonder. And then?’

‘Well, he picked on a certain bloke who had said or done something out of turn and gave him C.B.—this house counted as a barracks, I believe—and this bloke, and three or four others, slept in my room—you may remember how it was in the Army, sir, they didn’t always pay much attention to the comfort of the men.’

‘Yes, I do remember,’ Philip said.

‘Well, this fellow was a sort of trouble-maker, and he had it in for the Colonel, who wasn’t liked by any of them, and he got their sergeant, who didn’t like him either, to make a sort of plot. Very wrong of them, of course, and against discipline, but you can’t try people, even soldiers, beyond a certain point.’

‘Of course not.’

‘So, as I was saying, they put their heads together, and ran downstairs, saying “Fall in at the double”, and the sergeant knocked at the Colonel’s door—your door, sir—and he came out in his pyjamas—and said, “What the hell is this?” And the Sergeant said, “It’s someone down by the river, sir. He’s acting very suspicious. We think he may be a German spy.” The Colonel cursed, but he got into his coat and trousers—it was a cold night—and went with them—about three dozen of them—down to the river bank. And what happened afterwards no one seemed to know. You know what men are like when they get angry and excited. It spreads from one to another—a dozen men would do what one man wouldn’t—and the Colonel was a heavy drinker—but anyhow the upshot was he fell into the river, and was found drowned at the weir below your house. The river was low, so he wasn’t carried over it.’

‘Dear me,’ said Philip, though a stronger expression would have suited his feelings better. ‘Do you think any of this is true?’

Alfred smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘They’re that uneducated in these parts.’

A few nights later at the same hour as before, five o’clock, Philip was awakened by a knocking at his door. ‘Come in!’ he shouted, still fuddled with sleep, and still unaware if he was awake or dreaming, ‘Come in!’ he repeated, and it was then he heard the thrice-given order, ‘Fall in at the double, fall in at the double, fall in at the double,’ followed by the clatter of heavy footsteps on the bare boards of the staircase.

So intent was he on listening to this that he didn’t see his bedroom door open—it may have opened of itself as it sometimes did when not securely latched—but at any rate it was open, as he could tell from the moonlight from the hall window, above the staircase, struggling into the densely curtained room. Faint as it was, the moonlight showed him that someone had come in when the door opened, for he could dimly descry the head and the back of a tall man, edging his way round Philip’s bed, apparently looking for something. It was more like a presence than a person, a movement than a man, the footsteps made no sound on the thick carpet, but it seemed to stop in front of the wardrobe, and fumble there.

A burglar? If it was a burglar, and if all he wanted was a few clothes, well and good; he might be armed, and Philip was in no state to resist an armed man. Some said—the police even said—that in certain cases, in this age of violence, it was safer not to ‘have a go’ at a man who might be desperate.

The telephone was at his left hand, the switch of the bedside lamp at his right: yet he dared not use either, he dared not even stir, lest the intruder should realize he was awake.

After what seemed an unconscionable time, he heard or thought he heard, sounds of groping in the recesses of the wardrobe. This activity, whatever it was, ceased and a silence followed which Philip took to mean that the burglar (for who else could he be?) had finished his search and was taking himself off. Philip pressed the back of his head against the pillow and shut his eyes, for the man was now coming towards him, face forwards. But Philip’s pretence of sleep hadn’t deceived him; he stopped and peered down at him. Philip’s eyes opened: they couldn’t help themselves, and he saw the stranger’s face. Mask-like, the indistinct features kept their own secret, but their colour was the colour of the moonlight on them. Drawing nearer, stooping closer, outside the moonlight’s ray, they were invisible; but a voice which must have come through the unseen lips, though the whole body seemed to utter it, said: