Array Коллектив авторов - 30 лучших рассказов британских писателей / 30 Best British Short Stories

‘No, leave well alone. We’re not a couple of boarding-school misses fresh from a course of hygiene lectures. Get the chessboard out.’

They sat down and played. At ten o’clock Mrs. Prince came to the door with a note. ‘I am sorry I didn’t bring it before,’ she said, ‘but it was left in the letter-box.’

‘Open it, Saunders, and see if it wants answering.’

It was very brief. There was neither address nor signature.

‘Will eleven o’clock to-night be suitable for our last appointment?’

‘Who is it from?’ asked Borlsover.

‘It was meant for me,’ said Saunders. ‘There’s no answer, Mrs. Prince,’ and he put the paper into his pocket. ‘A dunning letter from a tailor; I suppose he must have got wind of our leaving.’

It was a clever lie, and Eustace asked no more questions. They went on with their game.

On the landing outside Saunders could hear the grandfather’s clock whispering the seconds, blurting out the quarter-hours.

‘Check!’ said Eustace. The clock struck eleven. At the same time there was a gentle knocking on the door; it seemed to come from the bottom panel.

‘Who’s there?’ asked Eustace.

There was no answer.

‘Mrs. Prince, is that you?’

‘She is up above,’ said Saunders; ‘I can hear her walking about the room.’

‘Then lock the door; bolt it too. Your move, Saunders.’

While Saunders sat with his eyes on the chessboard, Eustace walked over to the window and examined the fastenings. He did the same in Saunders’s room and the bathroom. There were no doors between the three rooms, or he would have shut and locked them too.

‘Now, Saunders,’ he said, ‘don’t stay all night over your move. I’ve had time to smoke one cigarette already. It’s bad to keep an invalid waiting. There’s only one possible thing for you to do. What was that?’

‘The ivy blowing against the window. There, it’s your move now, Eustace.’

‘It wasn’t the ivy, you idiot. It was someone tapping at the window,’ and he pulled up the blind. On the outer side of the window, clinging to the sash, was the hand.

‘What is it that it’s holding?’

‘It’s a pocket-knife. It’s going to try to open the window by pushing back the fastener with the blade.’

‘Well, let it try,’ said Eustace. ‘Those fasteners screw down; they can’t be opened that way. Anyhow, we’ll close the shutters. It’s your move, Saunders. I’ve played.’

But Saunders found it impossible to fix his attention on the game. He could not understand Eustace, who seemed all at once to have lost his fear. ‘What do you say to some wine?’ he asked. ‘You seem to be taking things coolly, but I don’t mind confessing that I’m in a blessed funk.’

‘You’ve no need to be. There’s nothing supernatural about that hand, Saunders. I mean it seems to be governed by the laws of time and space. It’s not the sort of thing that vanishes into thin air or slides through oaken doors. And since that’s so, I defy it to get in here. We’ll leave the place in the morning. I for one have bottomed the depths of fear. Fill your glass, man! The windows are all shuttered, the door is locked and bolted. Pledge me my uncle Adrian! Drink, man! What are you waiting for?’

Saunders was standing with his glass half raised. ‘It can get in,’ he said hoarsely; ‘it can get in! We’ve forgotten. There’s the fireplace in my bedroom. It will come down the chimney.’

‘Quick!’ said Eustace, as he rushed into the other room; ‘we haven’t a minute to lose. What can we do? Light the fire, Saunders. Give me a match, quick!’

‘They must be all in the other room. I’ll get them.’

‘Hurry, man, for goodness’ sake! Look in the bookcase! Look in the bathroom! Here, come and stand here; I’ll look.’

‘Be quick!’ shouted Saunders. ‘I can hear something!’

‘Then plug a sheet from your bed up the chimney. No, here’s a match.’ He had found one at last that had slipped into a crack in the floor.

‘Is the fire laid? Good, but it may not burn. I know – the oil from that old reading-lamp and this cotton-wool. Now the match, quick! Pull the sheet away, you fool! We don’t want it now.’

There was a great roar from the grate as the flames shot up. Saunders had been a fraction of a second too late with the sheet. The oil had fallen on to it. It, too, was burning.

‘The whole place will be on fire!’ cried Eustace, as he tried to beat out the flames with a blanket. ‘It’s no good! I can’t manage it. You must open the door, Saunders, and get help.’

Saunders ran to the door and fumbled with the bolts. The key was stiff in the lock.

‘Hurry!’ shouted Eustace; ‘the whole place is ablaze!’

The key turned in the lock at last. For half a second Saunders stopped to look back. Afterwards he could never be quite sure as to what he had seen, but at the time he thought that something black and charred was creeping slowly, very slowly, from the mass of flames towards Eustace Borlsover. For a moment he thought of returning to his friend, but the noise and the smell of the burning sent him running down the passage crying, ‘Fire! Fire!’ He rushed to the telephone to summon help, and then back to the bathroom – he should have thought of that before – for water. As he burst open the bedroom door there came a scream of terror which ended suddenly, and then the sound of a heavy fall.

It was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea.

With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forward in their den, while Will – my friend, and the master of our little craft – was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin.

Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail:

‘Schooner, ahoy!’

The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise.

It came again – a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our port broadside:

‘Schooner, ahoy!’

‘Hullo!’ I sang out, having gathered my wits somewhat. ‘What are you? What do you want?’

‘You need not be afraid,’ answered the queer voice, having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. ‘I am only an old – man.’

The pause sounded odd, but it was only afterward that it came back to me with any significance.

‘Why don’t you come alongside, then?’ I queried somewhat snappishly, for I liked not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken.

‘I – I – can’t. It wouldn’t be safe. I –’ The voice broke off, and there was silence.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, growing more and more astonished. ‘What’s not safe? Where are you?’

I listened for a moment, but there came no answer. And then, a sudden indefinite suspicion, of I knew not what, coming to me, I stepped swiftly to the binnacle and took out the lighted lamp. At the same time, I knocked on the deck with my heel to waken Will. Then I was back at the side, throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail. As I did so, I heard a slight muffled cry, and then the sound of a splash, as though someone had dipped oars abruptly. Yet I cannot say with certainty that I saw anything; save, it seemed to me, that with the first flash of the light there had been something upon the waters, where now there was nothing.