There was no use in
waiting. I faced the cavity, and looked in. There was nothing
immediately in the front of the hole. I put my arm in and felt to the
right, very gingerly…. “Just give me a glass of cognac, Brown. I’ll go on in a moment,
Gregory…. “Well, I felt to the right, and my fingers touched something curved,
that felt—yes—more or less like leather; dampish it was, and evidently
part of a heavy, full thing. There was nothing, I must say, to alarm
one. I grew bolder, and putting both hands in as well as I could, I
pulled it to me, and it came. It was heavy, but moved more easily than
I had expected. As I pulled it towards the entrance, my left elbow
knocked over and extinguished the candle. I got the thing fairly in
front of the mouth and began drawing it out. Just then Brown gave a
sharp ejaculation and ran quickly up the steps with the lantern. He
will tell you why in a moment. Startled as I was, I looked round after
him, and saw him stand for a minute at the top and then walk away a few
yards. Then I heard him call softly, ‘All right, sir,’ and went on
pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant
on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and _put
its arms round my neck_. “My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth. I believe I am now
acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can
endure without losing his mind. I can only just manage to tell you now
the bare outline of the experience. I was conscious of a most horrible
smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own, and
moving slowly over it, and of several—I don’t know how many—legs or
arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body. I screamed out,
Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the step on which
I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that same
step. Providentially the band round me held firm. Brown did not lose
his head, and was strong enough to pull me up to the top and get me
over the edge quite promptly. How he managed it exactly I don’t know,
and I think he would find it hard to tell you. I believe he contrived
to hide our implements in the deserted building near by, and with very
great difficulty he got me back to the inn. I was in no state to make
explanations, and Brown knows no German; but next morning I told the
people some tale of having had a bad fall in the abbey ruins, which, I
suppose, they believed. And now, before I go further, I should just
like you to hear what Brown’s experiences during those few minutes
were. Tell the Rector, Brown, what you told me.”

“Well, sir,” said Brown, speaking low and nervously, “it was just this
way. Master was busy down in front of the ’ole, and I was ’olding the
lantern and looking on, when I ’eard somethink drop in the water from
the top, as I thought. So I looked up, and I see someone’s ’ead lookin’
over at us. I s’pose I must ha’ said somethink, and I ’eld the light up
and run up the steps, and my light shone right on the face. That was a
bad un, sir, if ever I see one! A holdish man, and the face very much
fell in, and larfin’, as I thought. And I got up the steps as quick
pretty nigh as I’m tellin’ you, and when I was out on the ground there
warn’t a sign of any person. There ’adn’t been the time for anyone to
get away, let alone a hold chap, and I made sure he warn’t crouching
down by the well, nor nothink. Next thing I hear master cry out
somethink ’orrible, and hall I see was him hanging out by the rope,
and, as master says, ’owever I got him up I couldn’t tell you.”

“You hear that, Gregory?” said Mr Somerton. “Now, does any explanation
of that incident strike you?”

“The whole thing is so ghastly and abnormal that I must own it puts me
quite off my balance; but the thought did occur to me that possibly
the—well, the person who set the trap might have come to see the
success of his plan.”

“Just so, Gregory, just so. I can think of nothing else so—_likely_, I
should say, if such a word had a place anywhere in my story. I think it
must have been the Abbot…. Well, I haven’t much more to tell you. I
spent a miserable night, Brown sitting up with me. Next day I was no
better; unable to get up; no doctor to be had; and, if one had been
available, I doubt if he could have done much for me. I made Brown
write off to you, and spent a second terrible night. And, Gregory, of
this I am sure, and I think it affected me more than the first shock,
for it lasted longer: there was someone or something on the watch
outside my door the whole night. I almost fancy there were two. It
wasn’t only the faint noises I heard from time to time all through the
dark hours, but there was the smell—the hideous smell of mould. Every
rag I had had on me on that first evening I had stripped off and made
Brown take it away. I believe he stuffed the things into the stove in
his room; and yet the smell was there, as intense as it had been in the
well; and, what is more, it came from outside the door. But with the
first glimmer of dawn it faded out, and the sounds ceased, too; and
that convinced me that the thing or things were creatures of darkness,
and could not stand the daylight; and so I was sure that if anyone
could put back the stone, it or they would be powerless until someone
else took it away again. I had to wait until you came to get that done. Of course, I couldn’t send Brown to do it by himself, and still less
could I tell anyone who belonged to the place. “Well, there is my story; and, if you don’t believe it, I can’t help
it. But I think you do.”

“Indeed,” said Mr Gregory, “I can find no alternative. I _must_ believe
it! I saw the well and the stone myself, and had a glimpse, I thought,
of the bags or something else in the hole. And, to be plain with you,
Somerton, I believe my door was watched last night, too.”

“I dare say it was, Gregory; but, thank goodness, that is over. Have
you, by the way, anything to tell about your visit to that dreadful
place?”

“Very little,” was the answer. “Brown and I managed easily enough to
get the slab into its place, and he fixed it very firmly with the irons
and wedges you had desired him to get, and we contrived to smear the
surface with mud so that it looks just like the rest of the wall. One
thing I did notice in the carving on the well-head, which I think must
have escaped you. It was a horrid, grotesque shape—perhaps more like a
toad than anything else, and there was a label by it inscribed with the
two words, ‘Depositum custodi’.”[9]