The Outcast: And Other Dark Tales by E. F. Benson by E. F. Benson

Author:E. F. Benson [Benson, E. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: zombies, gothic, Horror, hauntings, haunted house, British ghost stories, modernist
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2020-03-18T23:00:00+00:00

‌By the Sluice

My friend Louis Carrington, with whom I was to spend a liberal week-end, met me in his car at Whitford Station on Friday afternoon. There had been a long spell of damp and windless weather, and the fog which had been so thick in London was scarcely less dense down here; the whole of Surrey seemed to be blanketed in this white opacity. Even when we got free of the town we could do no more than crawl along the road with prolonged hoots at every turn and corner. Occasionally, when the air was somewhat clearer, a glimpse could be seen of a sombre copper-plate low in the west, which one supposed was the sun, for the reason that it could scarcely be anything else.

Louis was unusually silent; his attention, of course, was largely taken up by this blind progression, but I soon became aware, through that perception which long intimacy gives, that there was something on his mind. In answer to a direct question he admitted this was so, and said he would tell me about what he called ‘this very painful affair’ when we got home. It did not, he relieved me by saying, directly affect him or his immediate circle, but it was a very sad thing, very sad indeed, and he fell to silence and knitted brow again.

We arrived at the end of our four-mile drive without accident, and found his wife in the jolly, spacious hall which they used as a general sitting-room. It was pleasant to come out of that inhospitable dimness into the warmth and light, but over Margaret also there was this same shadow of anxiety or suspense, and even as she greeted me she said to him:

‘Any news yet about him, Louis?’

‘No, poor chap, not a word,’ said he; ‘I’ve communicated with the police, and search parties are going out.’

‘And you’ve advertised?’ she asked.

‘Yes: county and London papers, telling him to come back without any fear. I signed it myself, and I think he trusts me. Now I’m going to tell Frank the whole story to see if there is anything else he can suggest.’

The story certainly was a painful one, though to me, personally, it concerned a man whom I had never seen in my life, and of whose existence till this moment I had never heard. Louis is the manager of the local branch of a big banking house in Whitford, and his sub-manager, Thomas Oulton, had worked his way up through thirty years of industrious and honourable service to his present position. He was respected and liked in the town, he had a good salary with an ample pension ahead, and, as far as was known, he had no money worries of any kind.

‘And then without warning,’ said Louis, ‘only yesterday came the crash. A client of ours came to see me about some securities we held for him. Among them were a hundred shares of a certain cement company, which had lately offered new shares to its holders at a price considerably below the market quotation.

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