They get sulky--I assure you it is literally
true--if they are checked too often.”

He paused on his way to ring the bell. “Guy Elphinstone’s car, for
instance,” he said: “it was a bad-tempered brute, a violent, vicious
beast of a car.”

“What make?” I asked. “Twenty-five horse-power Amédée. They are a fretful strain of car; too
thin, not enough bone--and bone is very good for the nerves. The brute
liked running over a chicken or a rabbit, though perhaps it was less the
car’s ill-temper than Guy’s, poor chap. Well, he paid for it--he paid
to the uttermost farthing. Did you know him?”

“No; but surely I have heard the name. Ah, yes, he ran over a child, did
he not?”

“Yes,” said Harry, “and then smashed up against his own park gates.”

“Killed, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yes, killed instantly, and the car just a heap of splinters. There’s
an odd story about it, I’m told, in the village: rather in your line.”

“Ghosts?” I asked. “Yes, the ghost of his motor-car. Seems almost too up-to-date, doesn’t
it?”

“And what’s the story?” I demanded. “Why, just this. His place was outside the village of Bircham, ten miles
out from Norwich; and there’s a long straight bit of road there--that’s
where he ran over the child--and a couple of hundred yards farther on, a
rather awkward turn into the park gates. Well, a month or two ago, soon
after the accident, one old gaffer in the village swore he had seen a
motor there coming full tilt along the road, but without a sound, and it
disappeared at the lodge gates of the park, which were shut. Soon after
another said he had heard a motor whirl by him at the same place,
followed by a hideous scream, but he saw nothing.”

“The scream is rather horrible,” said I. “Ah, I see what you mean! I only thought of his syren. Guy had a syren
on his exhaust, same as I have. His had a dreadful frightened sort of
wail, and always made me feel creepy.”

“And is that all the story?” I asked: “that one old man thought he saw a
noiseless motor, and another thought he heard an invisible one?”

Harry flicked the ash off his cigarette into the grate. “Oh dear no!” he
said. “Half a dozen of them have seen something or heard something. It
is quite a heavily authenticated yarn.”

“Yes, and talked over and edited in the public-house,” I said. “Well, not a man of them will go there after dark. Also the lodge-keeper
gave notice a week or two after the accident. He said he was always
hearing a motor stop and hoot outside the lodge, and he was kept running
out at all hours of the night to see what it was.”

“And what was it?”

“It wasn’t anything. Simply nothing there. He thought it rather uncanny,
anyhow, and threw up a good post. Besides, his wife was always hearing a
child scream, and while her man toddled out to the gate she would go and
see whether the kids were all right. And the kids themselves----”

“Ah, what of them?” I asked. “They kept coming to their mother, asking who the little girl was who
walked up and down the road and would not speak to them or play with
them.”

“It’s a many-sided story,” I said. “All the witnesses seem to have heard
and seen different things.”

“Yes, that is just what to my mind makes the yarn so good,” he said. “Personally I don’t take much stock in spooks at all. But given that
there are such things as spooks, and given that the death of the child
and the death of Guy have caused spooks to play about there, it seems to
me a very good point that different people should be aware of different
phenomena. One hears the car, another sees it, one hears the child
scream, another sees the child. How does that strike you?”

This, I am bound to say, was a new view to me, and the more I thought of
it the more reasonable it appeared. For the vast majority of mankind
have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual world
(which, I hold, is thick and populous around us), sealed up, as it were;
in other words, the majority of mankind never hear or see a ghost at
all. Is it not, then, very probable that of the remainder--those, in
fact, to whom occult experiences have happened or can happen--few should
have every sense unsealed, but that some should have the unsealed ear,
others the unsealed eye--that some should be clairaudient, others
clairvoyant? “Yes, it strikes me as reasonable,” I said. “Can’t you take me over
there?”

“Certainly! If you will stop till Friday I’ll take you over on
Thursday. The others all go that day, so that we can get there after
dark.”

I shook my head. “I can’t stop till Friday, I’m afraid,” I said. “I must
leave on Thursday. But how about to-morrow? Can’t we take it on the way
to or from Hunstanton?”

“No; it’s thirty miles out of our way. Besides, to be at Bircham after
dark means that we shouldn’t get back here till midnight. And as host to
my guests----”

“Ah! things are only heard and seen after dark, are they?” I asked. “That makes it so much less interesting. It is like a séance where all
lights are put out.”

“Well, the accident happened at night,” he said. “I don’t know the
rules, but that may have some bearing on it, I should think.”

I had one question more in the back of my mind, but I did not like to
ask it. At least, I wanted information on this subject without appearing
to ask for it. “Neither do I know the rules of motors,” I said; “and I don’t understand
you when you say that Guy Elphinstone’s machine was an irritable,
cross-grained brute, that liked running over chickens and rabbits. But I
think you subsequently said that the irritability may have been the
irritability of its owner. Did he mind being checked?”

“It made him blind-mad if it happened often,” said Harry. “I shall never
forget a drive I had with him once: there were hay-carts and
perambulators every hundred yards. It was perfectly ghastly; it was like
being with a madman. And when we got inside his gate, his dog came
running out to meet him. He did not go an inch out of his course: it was
worse than that--he went for it, just grinding his teeth with rage. I
never drove with him again.”

He stopped a moment, guessing what might be in my mind. “I say, you
mustn’t think--you mustn’t think----” he began. “No, of course not,” said I.

Harry Combe-Martin’s house stood close to the weather-eaten, sandy
cliffs of the Suffolk shore, which are being incessantly gnawed away by
the hunger of the insatiable sea. Fathoms deep below it, and now many
hundred yards out, lies what was once the second port in England; but
now of the ancient town of Dunwich, and of its seven great churches,
nothing remains but one, and that ruinous and already half destroyed by
the falling cliff and the encroachments of the sea. Foot by foot, it too
is disappearing, and of the graveyard which surrounded it more than half
is gone, so that from the face of the sandy cliff on which it stands
there stick out like straws in glass, as Dante says, the bones of those
who were once committed there to the kindly and stable earth.