The Hand in the Dark

The Hand in the Dark, by Arthur
J. Rees

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Title: The Hand in the Dark
Author: Arthur J. Rees
Release Date: February 8, 2007 [EBook #20546]
Language: English
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THE HAND IN THE DARK
BY ARTHUR J. REES

AUTHOR OF "THE SHRIEKING PIT"

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE,
THE BODLEY HEAD Copyright, 1920
PRESS OF THE VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON, N. Y.,
U. S. A.

THE HAND IN THE DARK
CHAPTER I
Seen in the sad glamour of an English twilight, the old moat-house,
emerging from the thin mists which veiled the green flats in which it
stood, conveyed the impression of a habitation falling into senility,
tired with centuries of existence. Houses grow old like the race of men;
the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay is
hastened by events as well as by the passage of Time.
The moat-house was not so old as English country-houses go, but it had
aged quickly because of its past. There was a weird and bloody history
attached to the place: an historical record of murders and stabbings and
quarrels dating back to Saxon days, when a castle had stood on the spot,
and every inch of the flat land had been drenched in the blood of serfs
fighting under a Saxon tyrant against a Norman tyrant for the sacred
catchword of Liberty.
The victorious Norman tyrant had killed the Saxon, taken his castle,
and tyrannized over the serfs during his little day, until the greater
tyrant, Death, had taught him his first--and last--lesson of humility.
After his death some fresh usurper had pulled down his stolen castle,
and built a moat-house on the site. During the next few hundred years
there had been more fighting for restless ambition, invariably
connected with the making and unmaking of tyrants, until an English
king lost his head in the cause of Liberty, and the moat-house was

destroyed by fire for the same glorious principle.
It was rebuilt by the freebooter who had burnt it down; one Philip
Heredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed
in the Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke
William which had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England.
Philip Heredith, who was as great a fighter as his Norman ancestor,
established his claim to his new estate, and avoided litigation
concerning it, by confining the Royalist owner and his family within
the walls of the moat-house before setting it on fire. He afterwards
married and settled down in the new house with his young wife. But the
honeymoon was disturbed by the ghost of the cavalier he had
incinerated, who warned him that as he had founded his line in horror it
would end in horror, and the house he had built would fall to the
ground.
Philip Heredith, like many other great fighters, was an exceedingly
pious man, with a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer. He
endeavoured to thwart the ghost's curse by building a church in the
moat-house grounds, where he spent his Sundays praying for the
eternal welfare of the gentleman he had cut off in the flower of his
manhood. Perhaps the prayers were heard, for, when Philip Heredith in
the course of time became the first occupant of the brand-new vault he
had built for himself and his successors, he left behind him much
wealth, and a catalogue of his virtues in his own handwriting. The
wealth he left to his heirs, but he expressly stipulated that the record of
his virtues was to be carved in stone and placed as an enduring tablet,
for the edification of future generations, inside the church he had built.
It was a wise precaution on his part. The dead are dumb as to their own
merits, and the living think only of themselves. Time sped away, until
the first of the Herediths was forgotten as completely as though he had
never existed; even his dust had been crowded off the shelf of his own
vault to make room for the numerous descendants of the prolific and
prosperous line he had founded. But the tablet remained, and the old
moat-house he had built still stood.
It was a wonderful old