Chapter 2

So he charged her that she
and the children after her keep the play in trust, to be given the
world a hundred years from the date of his death."

* * * * *

Pursuivant cleared his throat. "I was under the impression that Byron
had only one child by Claire Clairmont, Mr. Varduk. Allegra, who died
so tragically at the age of six."

"He had two," was Varduk's decisive reply. "A son survived, and had
issue."

"Wasn't Claire's son by Shelley?" asked Pursuivant.

Varduk shook his curly head. "No, by Lord Byron." He paused and drew
a gentle breath, as if to give emphasis to what he was going to add.
Then: "I am descended from that son, ladies and gentlemen. I am the
great-grandson of Lord Byron."

He sank back into his shadows once more and let his luminous face seem
again like a disembodied mask against the dark tapestry. He let us be
dazzled by his announcement for some seconds. Then he spoke again.

"However, to return to our play. Summer is at hand, and the opening
will take place at the Lake Jozgid Theater, in July, later to come
to town with the autumn. All agreed? Ready to discuss contracts?"
He looked around the circle, picking up our affirmative nods with
his intensely understanding eyes. "Very good. Call again tomorrow.
Mr. Davidson, my assistant, will have the documents and all further
information."

Jake Switz was first to leave, hurrying to telephone announcements to
all the morning newspapers. Sigrid, rising, smiled at me with real
warmth.

"So nice to see you again, Gib. Do not bother to leave with me--my
suite is here in this hotel."

She bade Varduk good-night, nodded to the others and left quickly.
I watched her departure with what must have been very apparent and
foolish ruefulness on my face. It was the voice of Judge Pursuivant
that recalled me to my surroundings.

"I've seen and admired your motion pictures, Mr. Connatt," he said
graciously. "Shall we go out together? Perhaps I can persuade you to
join me in another of my enthusiasms--late food and drink."

We made our adieux and departed. In the bar of the hotel we found a
quiet table, where my companion scanned the liquor list narrowly and
ordered samples of three Scotch whiskies. The waiter brought them. The
judge sniffed each experimentally, and finally made his choice.

"Two of those, and soda--no ice," he directed. "Something to eat, Mr.
Connatt? No? Waiter, bring me some of the cold tongue with potato
salad." Smiling, he turned back to me. "Good living is my greatest
pursuit."

"Greater than scholarship?"

He nodded readily. "However, I don't mean that tonight's visit with Mr.
Varduk was not something to rouse any man's interest. It was full of
good meat for any antiquary's appetite. By the way, were you surprized
when he said that he was descended from Lord Byron?"

"Now that you mention it, I wasn't," I replied. "He's the most Byronic
individual I have ever met."

"Right. Of course, the physical resemblances might be accidental, the
manner a pose. But in any case, he's highly picturesque, and from what
little I can learn about him, he's eminently capable as well. You feel
lucky in being with him in this venture?"

I felt like confiding in this friendly, tawny man. "Judge Pursuivant,"
I said honestly, "any job is a godsend to me just now."

"Then let me congratulate you, and warn you."

"Warn me?"

"Here's your whisky," he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself
mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other
in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, "Warn me,
you were saying, sir?"

"Yes." He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline
mustache. "It's this play, _Ruthven_."

"What about it?"

His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He
lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.

"This is very good, Mr. Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were
we? Oh, yes, about _Ruthven_. I was quite unreserved in my opinion,
wasn't I?"

"So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the
manuscript being genuine."

"So I did," he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. "And
I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content,
albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The
handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron's. Yet I felt like staking my
reputation on something else."

He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor
seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.

"It's a paradox, Mr. Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes
as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most
certainly wrote _Ruthven_, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked
less than ten years ago."

_4. Into the Country_

The judge would not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he
would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the
extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he
complimented me on my steadiness of hand and head. When we parted I
slept well in my little room that already seemed more cheerful.

Before noon the following day I returned to Varduk's hotel. Only
Davidson was there, and he was far more crisp and to the point than
he had been when his chief was present. I accepted the salary figure
already set down on my contract form, signed my name, received a copy
of the play and left.

After my frugal lunch--I was still living on the money Jake Switz
had lent me--I walked to the library and searched out a copy of
_Contemporary Americans_. Varduk's name I did not find, and wondered
at that until the thought occurred that he, a descendant of Byron, was
undoubtedly a British subject. Before giving up the volume I turned to
the P's. This time my search bore fruit:

PURSUIVANT, Keith Hilary; b. 1891, Richmond, Va., only son
of Hilary Pursuivant (b. 1840, Pursuivant Landing, Ky.; Col.
and Maj.-Gen., Va. Volunteer Infantry, 1861-65; attorney and
journalist; d. 1898) and Anne Elizabeth (Keith) Pursuivant (b.
1864, Edinburgh; d. 1891).

Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A. B., male,
1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL.
B., Columbia, 1911. Ph. D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar,
1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917,
to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U. S. A., 1917-19, D. S.
C., Cong. Medal of Honor, _Legion d'Honneur_ (Fr.). Ret. legal
practice, 1919.

Author: _The Unknown That Terrifies_, _Cannibalism in America_,
_Vampyricon_, _An Indictment of Logic_, etc.

Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.

Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.

Protestant. Independent, Unmarried.

Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.

Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard
task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a
Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and
writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of
his existence--had she died in giving him life?--Keith Pursuivant was
born, it seemed, to distinction. To graduate from Yale in 1908 he must
have been one of the youngest men in his class, if not the youngest;
yet, at seventeen, he was an honor student, an athlete, member of
an exclusive senior society and an orator. After that, law school,
practise and election to the bench of his native community at the
unheard-of age of twenty-three.

Then the World War, that sunderer of career-chains and remolder of men.
The elder Pursuivant had been a colonel at twenty-one, a major-general
before twenty-five; Keith, his son, deserting his brilliant legal
career, was a major at twenty-six, but in the corps of brain-soldiers
that matched wits with an empire. That he came off well in the contest
was witnessed by his decorations, earnest of valor and resource.

"Ret. legal practise, 1919." So he did not remain in his early
profession, even though it promised so well. What then? Turn back for
the answer. "Ph. D., Oxford, 1922." His new love was scholarship.
He became an author and philosopher. His interests included the
trencher--I had seen him eat and drink with hearty pleasure--the study
hall, the steel blade.

What else? "Protestant"--religion was his, but not narrowly so, or
he would have been specific about a single sect. "Independent"--his
political adventures had not bound him to any party. "Unmarried"--he
had lived too busily for love? Or had he known it, and lost? I, too,
was unmarried, and I was well past thirty. "Address: Low Haven"--a
country home, apparently pretentious enough to bear a name like a
manor house. Probably comfortable, withdrawn, full of sturdy furniture
and good books, with a well-stocked pantry and cellar.

I felt that I had learned something about the man, and I was desirous
of learning more.

* * * * *

On the evening mail I received an envelope addressed in Jake Switz's
jagged handwriting. Inside were half a dozen five-dollar bills and a
railway ticket, on the back of which was scribbled in pencil: "Take
the 9 a. m. train at Grand Central. I'll meet you at the Dillard Falls
Junction with a car. J. Switz."

I blessed the friendly heart of Sigrid's little serf, and went home to
pack. The room clerk seemed surprized and relieved when I checked out
in the morning, paying him in full. I reached the station early and
got on the train, securing a good seat in the smoking-car. Many were
boarding the car, but none looked at me, not even the big fellow who
seated himself into position at my side. Six years before I had been
mobbed as I stepped off the Twentieth Century Limited in this very
station--a hundred women had rent away my coat and shirt in rags for
souvenirs----

"Would you let me have a match, Mr. Connatt?" asked a voice I had heard
before. My companion's pale blue eyes were turned upon me, and he was
tucking a trusty-looking pipe beneath his blond mustache.

"Judge Pursuivant!" I cried, with a pleasure I did not try to disguise.
"You here--it's like one of those Grand Hotel plays."

"Not so much coincidence as that," he smiled, taking the match I had
found. "You see, I am still intrigued by the paradox we discussed the
other night; I mean, the riddle of how and when _Ruthven_ was set down.
It so happens that an old friend of mine has a cabin near the Lake
Jozgid Theater, and I need a vacation." He drew a cloud of comforting
smoke. "Judiciously I accepted his invitation to stay there. You and I
shall be neighbors."

"Good ones, I hope," was my warm rejoinder, as I lighted a cigarette
from the match he still held.

By the time our train clanked out of the subterranean caverns of Grand
Central Station, we were deep in pleasant talk. At my earnest plea, the
judge discussed Lord Byron.

"A point in favor of the genuineness of the document," he began, "is
that Byron was exactly the sort of man who would conceive and write a
play like _Ruthven_."

"With the semi-vampire plot?" I asked. "I always thought that England
of his time had just about forgotten about vampires."

"Yes, but Byron fetched them back into the national mind. Remember,
he traveled in Greece as a young man, and the belief was strong in
that part of the world. In a footnote to _The Giaour_--you'll find his
footnotes in any standard edition of his works--he discusses vampires."

"Varduk spoke of those who fancied Byron to be the devil," I remembered.

"They may have had more than fancy to father the thought. Not that
I do not admire Byron, for his talents and his achievements; but
something of a diabolic curse hangs over him. Why," and Pursuivant
warmed instantly to the discussion, "his very family history reads
like a Gothic novel. His father was 'Mad Jack' Byron, the most sinful
man of his generation; his grandfather was Admiral 'Foul-weather Jack'
Byron, about whose ill luck at sea is more than a suggestion of divine
displeasure. The title descended to Byron from his great-uncle, the
'Wicked Lord,' who was a murderer, a libertine, a believer in evil
spirits, and perhaps a practising diabolist. The family seat, Newstead
Abbey, had been the retreat of medieval monks, and when those monks
were driven from it they may have cursed their dispossessors. In any
case, it had ghosts and a 'Devil's Wood.'"

"Byron was just the man for that heritage," I observed.

"He certainly was. As a child he carried pistols in his pockets and
longed to kill someone. As a youth he chained a bear and a wolf at
his door, drank wine from a human skull, and mocked religion by
wearing a monk's habit to orgies. His unearthly beauty, his mocking
tongue, fitted in with his wickedness and his limp to make him seem an
incarnation of the hoofed Satan. As for his sins----" The judge broke
off in contemplation of them.

"Nobody knows them all," I reminded.

"Perhaps he repented," mused my companion. "At least he seems to have
forgotten his light loves and dark pleasures, turned to good works and
the effort to liberate the Greeks from their Turkish oppressors. If he
began life like an imp, he finished like a hero. I hope that he was
sincere in that change, and not too late."

I expressed the desire to study Byron's life and writings, and
Pursuivant opened his suitcase on the spot to lend me Drinkwater's and
Maurois' biographies, a copy of the collected poems, and his own work,
_A Defense of the Wickedest Poet_.

We ate lunch together in the dining-car, Pursuivant pondering his choice
from the menu as once he must have pondered his decision in a case at
court. When he made his selection, he devoured it with the same gusto I
had observed before. "Food may be a necessity," quoth he between bites,
"but the enjoyment of it is a blessing."

"You have other enjoyments," I reminded him. "Study, fencing----"

That brought on a discussion of the sword as weapon and symbol. My
own swordsmanship is no better or worse than that of most actors, and
Pursuivant was frank in condemning most stage fencers.

"I dislike to see a clumsy lout posturing through the duel scenes
of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ or _Hamlet_," he growled. "No offense, Mr.
Connatt. I confess that you, in your motion-picture interpretation
of the rôle of Don Cæsar de Bazan, achieved some very convincing
cut-and-thrust. From what I saw, you have an understanding of the
sport. Perhaps you and I can have a bout or so between your rehearsals."

I said that I would be honored, and then we had to collect our luggage
and change trains. An hour or more passed on the new road before we
reached our junction.

* * * * *

Jake Switz was there as he had promised to be, at the wheel of a sturdy
repainted car. He greeted us with a triumphant story of his astuteness
in helping Elmo Davidson to bargain for the vehicle, broke off to
invite Pursuivant to ride with us to his cabin, and then launched into
a hymn of praise for Sigrid's early rehearsals of her rôle.

"Nobody in America seems to think she ever made anything but movies,"
he pointed out. "At home in Sweden, though, she did deep stuff--Ibsen
and them guys--and her only a kid then. You wait, Gib, she'll knock
from the theater public their eyes out with her class."

The road from the junction was deep-set between hills, and darkly
hedged with high trees. "This makes the theater hard to get at," Jake
pointed out as he drove. "People will have to make a regular pilgrimage
to see Holgar play in _Ruthven_, and they'll like it twice as well
because of all the trouble they took."

Pursuivant left us at the head of a little path, with a small
structure of logs showing through the trees beyond. We waved good-bye
to him, and Jake trod on his starter once more. As we rolled away, he
glanced sidewise at me. His crossed eyes behind their thick lenses had
grown suddenly serious.

"Only one night Sigrid and I been here, Gib," he said, somewhat darkly,
"and I don't like it."

"Don't tell me you're haunted," I rallied him, laughing. "That's good
press-agentry for a horror play, but I'm one of the actors. I won't be
buying tickets."

He did not laugh in return.

"I won't say haunted, Gib. That means ordinary ghosts, and whatever is
here at the theater is worse than ghosts. Listen what happened."

_5. Jake's Story_

Sigrid, with Jake in attendance as usual, had left New York on the
morning after Varduk's reading of _Ruthven_. They had driven in the
car Jake had helped Davidson to buy, and thus they avoided the usual
throngs of Sigrid's souvenir-demanding public, which would have
complicated their departure by train. At Dillard Falls Junction, Varduk
himself awaited them, having come up on a night train. Jake took time
to mail me a ticket and money, then they drove the long, shadowy way to
the theater.

Lake Jozgid, as most rural New Yorkers know, is set rather low among
wooded hills and bluffs. The unevenness of the country and the poverty
of the soil have discouraged cultivation, so that farms and villages
are few. As the party drove, Varduk suggested an advantage in this
remoteness, which suggestion Jake later passed on to Judge Pursuivant
and me; where a less brilliant or more accessible star might be ignored
in such far quarters, Sigrid would find Lake Jozgid to her advantage.
The world would beat a path to her box office, and treasure a glimpse
of her the more because that glimpse had been difficult of attainment.

The theater building itself had been a great two-story lodge, made of
heavy logs and hand-hewn planks. Some sporting-club, now defunct, had
owned it, then abandoned it when fish grew scarce in the lake. Varduk
had leased it cheaply, knocked out all partitions on the ground floor,
and set up a stage, a lobby and pew-like benches. The upper rooms would
serve as lodgings for himself and his associate Davidson, while small
out-buildings had been fitted up to accommodate the rest of us.

Around this group of structures clung a thick mass of timber. Sigrid,
who had spent her girlhood among Sweden's forests, pointed out that
it was mostly virgin and inquired why a lumber company had never cut
logs here. Varduk replied that the property had been private for many
years, then changed the subject by the welcome suggestion that they
have dinner. They had brought a supply of provisions, and Jake, who is
something of a cook in addition to his many other professions, prepared
a meal. Both Sigrid and Jake ate heartily, but Varduk seemed only to
take occasional morsels for politeness' sake.

In the evening, a full moon began to rise across the lake. Sitting
together in Varduk's upstairs parlor, the three saw the great soaring
disk of pale light, and Sigrid cried out joyfully that she wanted to go
out and see better.

"Take a lantern if you go out at night," counseled Varduk over his
cigar.

"A lantern?" Sigrid repeated. "But that would spoil the effect of the
moonlight."

Her new director blew a smooth ring of smoke and stared into its
center, as though a message lay there. Then he turned his brilliant
eyes to her. "If you are wise, you will do as I say," he made answer.

Men like Varduk are masterful and used to being obeyed. Sometimes
they lose sight of the fact that women like Sigrid are not used to
being given arbitrary commands without explanation. She fell silent
and a little frigid for half an hour--often I had seen her just as
Jake was describing her. Then she rose and excused herself, saying
that she was tired from the morning's long drive and would go to bed
early. Varduk rose and courteously bowed her to the stairs. Since her
sleeping-quarters, a cleverly rebuilt wood-shed, were hardly a dozen
steps from the rear of the lodge building itself, neither man thought
it necessary to accompany her.

Left alone, Varduk and Jake carried on an idle conversation, mostly
about publicity plans. Jake, who in the show business had done
successfully almost everything but acting, found in his companion a
rather penetrating and accurate commentator on this particular aspect
of production. Indeed, Varduk debated him into a new attitude--one of
restraint and dignity instead of novel and insistent extravagance.

"You're right," Jake announced at length. "I'm going to get the
releases that go out in tomorrow's mail. I'll cut out every
'stupendous' and 'colossal' I wrote into them. Good night, Mr. Varduk."

He, too, trotted downstairs and left the main building for his own
sleeping-room, which was the loft of an old boathouse. As he turned
toward the water, he saw a figure walking slowly and dreamily along its
edge--Sigrid, her hands tucked into the pockets of the light belted
coat she had donned against possible night chills, her head flung back
as though she sought all of the moonlight upon her rapt face.

Although she had wandered out to the brink of the sandy beach and so
stood in the open brightness, clumps of bushes and young trees grew
out almost to the lake. One tufty belt of scrub willow extended from
the denser timber to a point within a dozen feet of Sigrid. It made
a screen of gloom between Jake's viewpoint and the moon's spray of
silver. Yet, he could see, light was apparently soaking through its
close-set leaves, a streak of soft radiance that was so filtered as to
look murky, greenish, like the glow from rotting salmon.

* * * * *

Even as Jake noticed this flecky glimmer, it seemed to open up like a
fan or a parasol. Instead of a streak, it was a blot. This extended
further, lazily but noticeably. Jake scowled. And this moved lakeward,
without leaving any of itself at the starting-point.

With its greatening came somewhat of a brightening, which revealed
that the phenomenon had some sort of shape--or perhaps the shape was
defining itself as it moved. The blot's edges grew unevenly, receding
in places to swell in others. Jake saw that these swellings sprouted
into pseudopodal extensions (to quote him, they "jellied out"), that
stirred as though groping or reaching. And at the top was a squat
roundness, like an undeveloped cranium. The lower rays of light
became limbs, striking at the ground as though to walk. The thing
counterfeited life, motion--and attention. It was moving toward the
water, and toward Sigrid.

Jake did not know what it was, and he says that he was suddenly and
extremely frightened. Yet he does not seem to have acted like one who
is stricken with fear. What he did, and did at once, was to bawl out a
warning to Sigrid, then charge at the mystery.

It had stolen into the moonlight, and Jake encountered it there. As he
charged, he tried to make out the details; but what little it had had
of details in the darkness now went misty, as its glow was conquered
in the brighter flood of moonglow. Yet it was there, and moving toward
Sigrid. She had turned from looking across the water, and now shrank
back with a tremulous cry, stumbling and recovering herself ankle-deep
in the shallows.

Jake, meanwhile, had flung himself between her and what was coming out
of the thicket. He did not wait or even set himself for conflict, but
changed direction to face and spring upon the threatening presence.
Though past his first youth, he fancied himself as in fairly tough
condition, and more than once he had won such impromptu fist-fights as
spring up among the too-temperamental folk of the theater. He attacked
as he would against a human adversary, sinking his head between his
shoulders and flinging his fists in quick succession.

He got home solidly, against something tangible but sickeningly loose
beneath its smooth skin or rind. It was like buffeting a sack half full
of meal. Though the substance sank in beneath his knuckles, there was
no reeling or retreat. A squashy return slap almost enveloped his face,
and his spectacles came away as though by suction. At the same time
he felt a cable-like embrace, such as he had imagined a python might
exert. He smelled putrescence, was close to being sick, and heard, just
behind him, the louder screaming of Sigrid.

The fresh knowledge of her danger and terror made him strong again. One
arm was free, and he battered gamely with his fist. He found his mark,
twice and maybe three times. Then his sickness became faintness when he
realized that his knuckles had become slimy wet.

A new force dragged at him behind. Another enemy ... then a terrible
voice of command, the voice of Varduk:

"Let go at once!"

The grasp and the filthy bulk fell away from Jake. He felt his knees
waver like shreds of paper. His eyes, blurred without their thick
spectacles, could barely discern, not one, but several lumpy forms
drawing back. And near him stood Varduk, his facial phosphorescence
out-gleaming the rotten light of the creatures, his form drawn up
sternly in a posture of command.

"Get out!" cried Varduk again. "By what power do you come for your
victim now?"

The uncouth shapes shrank out of sight. Jake could not be sure whether
they found shelter behind bushes and trees or not; perhaps they
actually faded into invisibility. Sigrid had come close, stepping
gingerly in her wet shoes, and stooped to retrieve Jake's fallen
glasses.

"We owe you our lives," she said to Varduk. "What were those----"

"Never mind," he cut her off. "They will threaten you no more tonight.
Go to your beds, and be more careful in the future."

* * * * *

This was the story that Jake told me as we drove the final miles to the
Lake Jozgid Theater.

He admitted that it had all been a desperate and indistinct scramble
to him, and that explanation he had offered next morning when Varduk
laughed and accused him of dreaming.

"But maybe it wasn't a dream," Jake said as he finished. "Even if it
was, I don't want any more dreams like it."

_6. The Theater in the Forest_

Jake's narrative did not give me cheerful expectations of the Lake
Jozgid Theater. It was just as well, for my first glimpse of the
place convinced me that it was the exact setting for a play of morbid
unreality.

The road beyond Pursuivant's cabin was narrow but not too bad. Jake,
driving nimbly over its sanded surface, told me that we might thank
the public works program for its good condition. In one or two places,
as I think I have said already, the way was cut deeply between knolls
or bluffs, and here it was gloomy and almost sunless. Too, the woods
thickened to right and left, with taller and taller ranks of trees
at the roadside. Springtime's leafage made the trees seem vigorous,
but not exactly cheerful; I fancied that they were endowed with
intelligence and the power of motion, and that they awaited only our
passing before they moved out to block the open way behind us.

From this sand-surfaced road there branched eventually a second, and
even narrower and darker, that dipped down a thickly timbered slope. We
took a rather difficult curve at the bottom and came out almost upon
the shore of the lake, with the old lodge and its out-buildings in
plain view.

These structures were in the best of repair, but appeared intensely
dark and weathered, as though the afternoon sky shed a brownish light
upon them. The lodge that was now the theater stood clear in the center
of the sizable cleared space, although lush-looking clumps and belts
of evergreen scrub grew almost against the sheds and the boathouse.
I was enough of an observer to be aware that the deep roofs were of
stout ax-cut shingles, and that the heavy timbers of the walls were
undoubtedly seasoned for an age. The windows were large but deep-set
in their sturdy frames. Those who call windows the eyes of a house
would have thought that these eyes were large enough, but well able to
conceal the secrets and feelings within.

As we emerged from the car, I felt rather than saw an onlooker. Varduk
stood in the wide front door of the lodge building. Neither Jake nor I
could agree later whether he had opened the door himself and appeared,
whether he had stepped into view with the door already open, or whether
he had been standing there all the time. His slender, elegant figure
was dressed in dark jacket and trousers, with a black silk scarf draped
Ascot fashion at his throat, just as he had worn at his hotel in New
York. When he saw that we were aware of him, he lifted a white hand
in greeting and descended two steps to meet us coming toward him. I
offered him my hand, and he gave it a quick, sharp pressure, as though
he were investigating the texture of my flesh and bone.

"I am glad to see you here so soon, Mr. Connatt," he said cordially.
"Now we need wait only for Miss Vining, who should arrive before dark.
Miss Holgar came yesterday, and Davidson this morning."

"There will be only the six of us, then?" I asked.

He nodded his chestnut curls. "A caretaker will come here each day, to
prepare lunch and dinner and to clean. He lives several miles up the
road, and will spend his nights at home.