Collected Stories – Part 2 – Day 60 of 274

“Please wait a moment! How can I follow all these clues in pitch darkness, without ever having been near here before, and with only an indifferent pair of headlights to tell me what is and what isn’t a road? Besides, I think it’s going to storm pretty soon, and my car is an open one. It looks as if I were in a bad fix if I want to get to Cape Girardeau tonight. The fact is, I don’t think I’d better try to make it. I don’t like to impose burdens, or anything like that–but in view of the circumstances, do you suppose you could put me up for the night? I won’t be any trouble–no meals or anything. Just let me have a corner to sleep in till daylight, and I’m all right. I can leave the car in the road where it is–a bit of wet weather won’t hurt it if worst comes to worst.”

As I made my sudden request I could see the old man’s face lose its former expression of quiet resignation and take on an odd, surprised look.

“Sleep–here?”

He seemed so astonished at my request that I repeated it.

“Yes, why not? I assure you I won’t be any trouble. What else can I do? I’m a stranger hereabouts, these roads are a labyrinth in the dark, and I’ll wager it’ll be raining torrents outside of an hour–“

This time it my host’s turn to interrupt, and as he did so I could feel a peculiar quality in his deep, musical voice.

“A stranger–of course you must be, else you wouldn’t think of sleeping here, wouldn’t think of coming here at all. People don’t come here nowadays.”

He paused, and my desire to stay was increased a thousandfold by the sense of mystery his laconic words seemed to evoke. There was surely something alluringly queer about this place, and the pervasive musty smell seemed to cloak a thousand secrets. Again I noticed the extreme decrepitude of everything about me; manifest even in the feeble rays of the single small lamp. I felt woefully chilly, and saw with regret that no heating was provided, and yet so great was my curiosity that I still wished most ardently to stay and learn something of the recluse and his dismal abode.

“Let that be as it may,” I replied. “I can’t help about other people. But I surely would like to have a spot to stop till daylight. Still–if people don’t relish this place, mayn’t it be because it’s getting so run-down? Of course I suppose it would a take a fortune to keep such an estate up, but if the burden’s too great why don’t you look for smaller quarters? Why try to stick it out here in this way–with all the hardships and discomforts?”

The man did not seem offended, but answered me very gravely.

“Surely you may stay if you really wish to–you can come to no harm that I know of. But others claim there are certain peculiarly undesirable influences here. As for me–I stay here because I have to. There is something I feel it a duty to guard–something that holds me. I wish I had the money and health and ambition to take decent care of the house and grounds.”

With my curiosity still more heightened, I prepared to take my host at his word; and followed him slowly upstairs when he motioned me to do so. It was very dark now, and a faint pattering outside told me that the threatened rain had come. I would have been glad of any shelter, but this was doubly welcome because of the hints of mystery about the place and its master. For an incurable lover of the grotesque, no more fitting haven could have been provided.

There was a second-floor corner room in less unkempt shape than the rest of the house, and into this my host led me, setting down his small lamp and lighting a somewhat larger one. From the cleanliness and contents of the room, and from the books ranged along the walls, I could see that I had not guessed amiss in thinking the man a gentleman of taste and of breeding. He was a hermit and eccentric, no doubt, but he still had standards and intellectual interests. As he waved me to a seat I began a conversation on general topics, and was pleased to find him not at all taciturn. If anything, he seemed glad of someone to talk to, and did not even attempt to swerve the discussion from personal topics.

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