The Shrieking Pit

The Shrieking Pit, by Arthur J. Rees

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Title: The Shrieking Pit
Author: Arthur J. Rees
Release Date: February 2, 2007 [EBook #20494]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE SHRIEKING PIT
BY
ARTHUR J. REES
CO-AUTHOR OF THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS, THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY.
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Notes: Obvious printer errors have been corrected, all| |other inconsistencies are as in the original. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

TO
MY SISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
ANNIE AND FRANCES
The sea beats in at Blakeney-- Beats wild and waste at Blakeney; O'er ruined quay and cobbled street, O'er broken masts of fisher fleet, Which go no more to sea.
The bitter pools at ebb-tide lie, In barren sands at Blakeney; Green, grey and green the marshes creep, To where the grey north waters leap By dead and silent Blakeney.
And Time is dead at Blakeney-- In old, forgotten Blakeney; What care they for Time's Scythe or Glass; Who do not feel the hours pass, Who sleep in sea-worn Blakeney?
By the old grey church in Blakeney, By quenched turret light in Blakeney, They slumber deep, they do not know, If Life's told tale is Death and Woe; Through all eternity.
But Love still lives at Blakeney, 'Tis graven deep at Blakeney; Of Love which seeks beyond the grave, Of Love's sad faith which fain would save-- The headstones tell the story.
Grave-grasses grow at Blakeney Sea pansies, sedge, and rosemary; Frail fronds thrust forth in dim dank air, A message from those lying there: Wan leaves of memory.
I send you this from Blakeney-- From distant, dreaming Blakeney; Love and Remembrance: These are sure; Though Death is strong they shall endure, Till all things cease to be.
A. J. R.
Blakeney, Norfolk.

PREFACE
As the scenes of this story are laid in a part of Norfolk which will be readily identified by many Norfolk people, it is perhaps well to state that all the personages are fictitious, and that the Norfolk police officials who appear in the book have no existence outside these pages. They and the other characters are drawn entirely from imagination.
To East Anglian readers I offer my apologies for any faults there may be in reproducing the Norfolk dialect. My excuse is the fascination the language produced on myself, and that it is as essential to the scene of the story as the marshes and the sea. Though I have found it impossible to transliterate the pronunciation into the ordinary English alphabet, I hope I have been able to convey enough of the characteristic speech of the native to enable those familiar with it to put it for themselves into the accents of their own people. To those who are not familiar with the dialect, I can only say, "Go and study this relic of old English in that remote part of the country where the story is laid, where the ghosts of a ruined past mingle with the primitive survivors of to-day, who walk very near the unseen."
A. J. R. LONDON

THE SHRIEKING PIT
CHAPTER I
Colwyn had never seen anything quite so eccentric in a public room as the behaviour of the young man breakfasting alone at the alcove table in the bay embrasure, and he became so absorbed in watching him that he permitted his own meal to grow cold, impatiently waving away the waiter who sought with obtrusive obsequiousness to recall his wandering attention by thrusting the menu card before him.
To outward seeming the occupant of the alcove table was a good-looking young man, whose clear blue eyes, tanned skin and well-knit frame indicated the truly national product of common sense, cold water, and out-of-door pursuits; of a wholesomely English if not markedly intellectual type, pleasant to look at, and unmistakably of good birth and breeding. When a young man of this description, your fellow guest at a fashionable seaside hotel, who had been in the habit of giving you a courteous nod on his morning journey across the archipelago of snowy-topped tables under the convoy of the head waiter to his own table, comes in to breakfast with shaking hands, flushed face, and passes your table with unseeing eyes, you would probably conclude that he was under the influence of liquor, and in your English way you would severely blame him, not so much for the moral turpitude involved in his excess as for the bad taste,