‘Very nice little place you have here, Mr Askew,’ said Bobby kindly and condescendingly. ‘Very nice and snug.’ Mr Askew expressed gratification.
‘Merroway Court the only big place in the neighbourhood?’ ‘Well, there’s the Grange, Mr Hawkins. Not that you’d call that a place exactly. There’s no family living there. No, it had been empty for years until this American doctor took it.’ ‘An American doctor?’ ‘That’s it – Nicholson his name is. And if you ask me, Mr Hawkins, there are some very queer goings on there.’ The barmaid at this point remarked that Dr Nicholson gave her the shivers, he did.
‘Goings on, Mr Askew?’ said Bobby. ‘Now, what do you mean by goings on?’ Mr Askew shook his head darkly.
‘There’s those there that don’t want to be there. Put away by their relations. I assure you, Mr Hawkins, the meanings and the shrieks and the groans that go on there you wouldn’t believe.’ ‘Why don’t the police interfere?’ ‘Oh, well, you see, it’s supposed to be all right. Nerve cases, and such like. Loonies that aren’t so very bad. The gentleman’s a doctor and it’s all right, so to speak -‘ Here the landlord buried his face in a pint pot and emerged again to shake his head in a very doubtful fashion.
‘Ah!’ said Bobby in a dark and meaning way. ‘If we knew everything that went on in these places…’ And he, too, applied himself to a pewter pot.
The barmaid chimed in eagerly.
‘That’s what I say, Mr Hawkins. What goes on there? Why, one night a poor young creature escaped – in her nightgown she was – and the doctor and a couple of nurses out looking for her.
“Oh! don’t let them take me back!” That’s what she was crying out. Pitiful it was. And about her being rich really and her relations having her put away. But they took her back, they did, and the doctor he explained that she’d got a persecution mania – that’s what he called it. Kind of thinking everyone was against her. But I’ve often wondered – yes, I have. I’ve often wondered…’ ‘Ah!’ said Mr Askew. ‘It’s easy enough to say ‘ Somebody present said that there was no knowing what went on in places. And somebody else said that.was right.
Finally the meeting broke up and Bobby announced his intention of going for a stroll before turning in.
The Grange was, he knew, on the other side of the village from Merroway Court, so he turned his footsteps in that direction. What he had heard that evening seemed to him worthy of attention. A lot of it could, of course, be discounted.
Villages are usually prejudiced against newcomers, and still more so if the newcomer is of a different nationality. If Nicholson ran a place for curing drug takers, in all probability there would be strange sounds issuing from it – groans and even shrieks might be heard without any sinister reason for them, but all the same, the story of the escaping girl struck Bobby unpleasantly.
Supposing the Grange were really a place where people were kept against their will? A certain amount of genuine cases might be taken as camouflage.
At this point in his meditations Bobby arrived at a high wall with an entrance of wrought-iron gates. He stepped up to the gates and tried one gently. It was locked. Well, after all, why not?
And yet somehow, the touch of that locked gate gave him a faintly sinister feeling. The place was like a prison.
He moved a little farther along the road measuring the wall with his eye. Would it be possible to climb over? The wall was smooth and high and presented no accommodating crannies.
He shook his head. Suddenly he came upon a little door.
Without much real hope he tried it. To his surprise it yielded.
It was not locked.
‘Bit of an oversight here,’ thought Bobby with a grin.
He slipped through, closing the door softly behind him.
He found himself on a path leading through a shrubbery. He followed the path which twisted a good deal – in fact, it reminded Bobby of the one in Alice Through the Looking Glass.