And, so said the chauffeur, there was something wrong with the monster’s
spoon (ignition), and he didn’t rightly know what, and therefore it
seemed the prudent part not to go to Hunstanton (lunch, a thing of the
preterite, having been the object), but to the well-supplied King’s
Lynn. And we all breathed a pious hope that we might get there. Whizz: hoot: purr! The last boot held, the spoon went busily to the
monster’s mouth, and we just flowed into King’s Lynn. The return
journey, so I vaguely gathered, would be made by other roads; but
personally, intoxicated with air and movement, I neither asked nor
desired to know what those roads would be. This one small but rather
salient fact is necessary to record here, that as we waited at King’s
Lynn, and as we buzzed homewards afterwards, no thought of Bircham
entered my head at all. The subsequent hallucination, if hallucination
it was, was not, as far as I know, self-suggested. That we had gone out
of our way for the sake of the garage, I knew, and that was all. Harry
also told me that he did not know where our road would take us. The rest that follows is the baldest possible narrative of what actually
occurred. But it seems to me, a humble student of the occult, to be
curious. While we waited we had tea in a hotel looking on to a big empty square
of houses, and after tea we waited a very long time for our monster to
pick us up. Then the telephone from the garage inquired for “the
gentleman on the motor,” and since Harry had strolled out to get a local
evening paper with news of the last Test Match, I applied ear and mouth
to that elusive instrument. What I heard was not encouraging: the
ignition had gone very wrong indeed, and “perhaps” in an hour we should
be able to start. It was then about half-past six, and we were just
seventy-eight miles from Dunwich. Harry came back soon after this, and I told him what the message from
the garage had been. What he said was this: “Then we shan’t get back
till long after dinner. We might just as well have camped out to see
your ghost.”

As I have already said, no notion of Bircham was in my mind, and I
mention this as evidence that, even if it had been, Harry’s remark
would have implied that we were not going through Bircham. The hour lengthened itself into an hour and a half. Then the monster,
quite well again, came hooting round the corner, and we got in. “Whack her up, Jack,” said Harry to the chauffeur. “The roads will be
empty. You had better light up at once.”

The monster, with its eyes agleam, was whacked up, and never in my life
have I been carried so cautiously and yet so swiftly. Jack never took a
risk or the possibility of a risk, but when the road was clear and open
he let the monster run just as fast as it was able. Its eyes made day of
the road fifty yards ahead, and the romance of night was fairyland round
us. Hares started from the roadside, and raced in front of us for a
hundred yards, then just wheeled in time to avoid the ear-flaps of the
great triumphant brute that carried us. Moths flitted across, struck
sometimes by the lenses of its eyes, and the miles peeled over our
shoulders. When It occurred we were going top-speed. And this was
It--quite unsensational, but to us quite inexplicable unless my midnight
imaginings happened to be true. As I have said, I was in command of the hooter and of the syren. We were
flying along on a straight down-grade, as fast as ever we could go, for
the engines were working, though the decline was considerable. Then
quite suddenly I saw in front of us a thick cloud of dust, and knew
instinctively and on the instant, without thought or reasoning, what
that must mean. Evidently something going very fast (or else so large a
cloud could not have been raised) was in front of us, and going in the
same direction as ourselves. Had it been something on the road coming to
meet us, we should of course have seen the vehicle first and run into
the dust-cloud afterwards. Had it, again, been something of low speed--a
horse and dog-cart, for instance--no such dust could have been raised. But, as it was, I knew at once that there was a motor travelling swiftly
just ahead of us, also that it was not going as fast as we were, or we
should have run into its dust much more gradually. But we went into it
as into a suddenly lowered curtain. Then I shouted to Jack. “Slow down, and put on the brake,” I shrieked. “There’s something just ahead of us.”

As I spoke I wrought a wild concerto on the hooter, and with my right
hand groped for the syren, but did not find it. Simultaneously I heard a
wild, frightened shriek, just as if I had sounded the syren myself. Jack
had felt for it too, and our hands fingered each other. Then we entered
the dust-cloud. We slowed down with extraordinary rapidity, and still peering ahead we
went dead-slow through it. I had not put on my goggles after leaving
King’s Lynn, and the dust stung and smarted in my eyes. It was not,
therefore, a belt of fog, but real road-dust. And at the moment we crept
through it I felt Harry’s hands on my shoulder. “There’s something just ahead,” he said. “Look! don’t you see the tail
light?”

As a matter of fact, I did not; and, still going very slow, we came out
of that dust-cloud. The broad empty road stretched in front of us; a
hedge was on each side, and there was no turning either to right or
left. Only, on the right, was a lodge, and gates which were closed. The
lodge had no lights in any window. Then we came to a standstill; the air was dead-calm, not a leaf in the
hedgerow trees was moving, not a grain of dust was lifted from the road. But, behind, the dust-cloud still hung in the air, and stopped
dead-short at the closed lodge-gates. We had moved very slowly for the
last hundred yards: it was difficult to suppose that it was of our
making. Then Jack spoke, with a curious crack in his voice. “It must have been a motor, sir,” he said. “But where is it?”

I had no reply to this, and from behind another voice, Harry’s voice,
spoke. For the moment I did not recognise it, for it was strained and
faltering. “Did you open the syren?” he asked. “It didn’t sound like our syren. It
sounded like, like----”

“I didn’t open the syren,” said I. Then we went on again. Soon we came to scattered lights in houses by the
wayside. “What’s this place?” I asked Jack. “Bircham, sir,” said he. GAVON’S EVE


It is only the largest kind of ordnance map that records the existence
of the village of Gavon, in the shire of Sutherland, and it is perhaps
surprising that any map on whatever scale should mark so small and
huddled a group of huts, set on a bare, bleak headland between moor and
sea, and, so one would have thought, of no import at all to any who did
not happen to live there.