Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 3 (1929-03).djvu/40

to find—as is only natural during the annual festival celebrations—that they are full up. This may be historic ground—I am quite willing to take your word for it—but I do not relish the prospect of having to sleep on it! So I propose that we get a move on."

"I second that," chimed in Dick Kinnaird. "In the morning I will be quite willing to view every relic, no matter how dubious, of the country-bumpkin play-actor whom, with a faith that is as touching as it is uncritical, you credit with the authorship of the immortal works. Meanwhile, as the poet himself says, 'Come on, then, let's to bed'—that is, if we can find one!"

Although quite normal in other respects, Dick Kinnaird held the unshakable belief that the whole of the works usually attributed to Shakespeare were in reality written by a gentleman known as Lord Bacon, who was living at the same time. Wilmer, on the other hand, regarded such an opinion as the vilest heresy. Each was a red-hot partizan, and many a long and heated argument had ensued between them on the subject. On one previous occasion they had come to actual blows, and I had no desire to see the contest renewed before the birthplace of the poet with me as the unwilling referee. I hastened to change the subject.

"Perhaps our driver will know of some vacant lodgings," I suggested, indicating the patriarch who sat dozing on the box of the ancient vehicle which we had chartered at the station.

"Good idea," agreed Wilmer. "Consult the oracle forthwith."

The driver was a venerable old gentleman with a long white beard. Had he been robed in a sheet, with an hour-glass slung at his girdle and a scythe in his hand, he would have made a very fair impersonation of old Father Time. Unfortunately he was a little deaf, and it was only on the third repetition of my question that a glimmer of understanding showed in his watery eyes.

"Whoi, I doan roightly know, zur," he said in his broad Warwickshire dialect. "Maybes old Martha Condell 'ud be willing to put 'ee up for the noight."

I jumped at the idea. "She has a vacant room?" I asked eagerly.

"Well, zur, she has a room, sartinly, and it's empty, as 'ee say, but"—he paused and shook his head slowly—"maybes ye'd better seek sumwheres else, arter all."

"Why?" I demanded. The man's manner puzzled me.

"It be a main queer sort o' room, that o' Martha Condell's," he anaswered.

"What's wrong with it, anyway?" put in Wilmer.

The old man favored him with a prolonged stare; then took off his battered hat and scratched his head. "Maybes that ain't for me to say, zur," he replied at last. "Her house be 'unnerds o' years old, with queer old furniture, an'—an' there be things there———"

"Things?" I echoed.

"Queer, creepy things. Cur'osities some folk may call 'em, but to my moind sichloike didn't ought to be kep' above ground. The graveyard's the place for the loike o' they, surely!"

Dick Kinnaird turned a bewildered face to me. "What can he mean?" he muttered.

"I don't know, and I don't greatly care." I pulled open the door of the cab as I spoke, and motioned them to enter. The rain was now falling with a steadiness that proved it to be no passing April shower, and a bleak east wind was rising. "I'd rather sleep in a veritable chamber of horrors than remain out longer on a night like this. Go ahead, driver!"

At a leisurely pace the cab began to thread its way through the now deserted streets. As it turned to the