He described this place to me, and it seemed to me hours before the train stopped at a station. When it did I got out and took the next train back. I did not even wait for lunch. I had my bicycle with me, and I went straight there. It was--well, it was the house I wanted. If it had vanished suddenly, and I had found myself in bed, the whole thing would have seemed more reasonable. The proprietor opened the door to me himself. He had the bearing of a retired military man. It was afterwards I learnt he was the proprietor.
"I said, 'Good afternoon; if it is not troubling you, I would like to look over the house.' We were standing in the oak-panelled hall. I noticed the carved staircase about which the man in the train had told me, also the Tudor fireplaces. That is all I had time to notice. The next moment I was lying on my back in the middle of the gravel with the door shut. I looked up. I saw the old maniac's head sticking out of a little window. It was an evil face. He had a gun in his hand.
"'I'm going to count twenty,' he said. 'If you are not the other side of the gate by then, I shoot.'
"I ran over the figures myself on my way to the gate. I made it eighteen.
"I had an hour to wait for the train. I talked the matter over with the station-master.
"'Yes,' he said, 'there'll be trouble up there one of these days.'
"I said, 'It seems to me to have begun.'
"He said, 'It's the Indian sun. It gets into their heads. We have one or two in the neighbourhood. They are quiet enough till something happens.'
"'If I'd been two seconds longer,' I said, 'I believe he'd have done it.'
"'It's a taking house,' said the station-master; 'not too big and not too little. It's the sort of house people seem to be looking for.'
"'I don't envy,' I said, 'the next person that finds it.'
"'He settled himself down here,' said the station-master, 'about ten years ago. Since then, if one person has offered to take the house off his hands, I suppose a thousand have. At first he would laugh at them good-temperedly--explain to them that his idea was to live there himself, in peace and quietness, till he died. Two out of every three of them would express their willingness to wait for that, and suggest some arrangement by which they might enter into possession, say, a week after the funeral. The last few months it has been worse than ever. I reckon you're about the eighth that has been up there this week, and to-day only Thursday. There's something to be said, you know, for the old man.'"
"And did he," asked Dick--"did he shoot the next party that came along?"
"Don't be so silly, Dick," said Robin; "it's a story. Tell us another, Pa."
"I don't know what you mean, Robina, by a story," I said. "If you mean to imply--"
Robina said she didn't; but I know quite well she did. Because I am an author, and have to tell stories for my living, people think I don't know any truth. It is vexing enough to be doubted when one is exaggerating; to have sneers flung at one by one's own kith and kin when one is struggling to confine oneself to bald, bare narrative--well, where is the inducement to be truthful? There are times when I almost say to myself that I will never tell the truth again.
"As it happens," I said, "the story is true, in many places. I pass over your indifference to the risk I ran; though a nice girl at the point where the gun was mentioned would have expressed alarm.
Anyhow, at the end you might have said something more sympathetic than merely, 'Tell us another.' He did not shoot the next party that arrived, for the reason that the very next day his wife, alarmed at what had happened, went up to London and consulted an expert--none too soon, as it turned out. The poor old fellow died six months later in a private lunatic asylum; I had it from the station-master on passing through the junction again this spring. The house fell into the possession of his nephew, who is living in it now. He is a youngish man with a large family, and people have learnt that the place is not for sale. It seems to me rather a sad story. The Indian sun, as the station-master thinks, may have started the trouble; but the end was undoubtedly hastened by the annoyance to which the unfortunate gentleman had been subjected; and I myself might have been shot. The only thing that comforts me is thinking of that fool's black eye--the fool that sent me there."
"And none of the other houses," suggested Dick, "were any good at all?"
"There were drawbacks, Dick," I explained. "There was a house in Essex; it was one of the first your mother and I inspected. I nearly shed tears of joy when I read the advertisement. It had once been a priory. Queen Elizabeth had slept there on her way to Greenwich. A photograph of the house accompanied the advertisement. I should not have believed the thing had it been a picture. It was under twelve miles from Charing Cross. The owner, it was stated, was open to offers."
"All humbug, I suppose," suggested Dick.
"The advertisement, if anything," I replied, "had under-estimated the attractiveness of that house. All I blame the advertisement for is that it did not mention other things. It did not mention, for instance, that since Queen Elizabeth's time the neighbourhood had changed. It did not mention that the entrance was between a public-house one side of the gate and a fried-fish shop on the other; that the Great Eastern Railway-Company had established a goods depot at the bottom of the garden; that the drawing-room windows looked out on extensive chemical works, and the dining-room windows, which were round the corner, on a stonemason's yard. The house itself was a dream."
"But what is the sense of it?" demanded Dick. "What do house agents think is the good of it? Do they think people likely to take a house after reading the advertisement without ever going to see it?"