Locris of the Tower by Barry Pain

“Locris of the Tower” is taken from the Barry Pain anthology Stories in Grey, first published in 1911 by T. Werner Laurie.

 

About Barry Pain

Barry Eric Odell Pain was a British Journalist, poet, humorist, novelist, and short story writer. He was born on September 28, 1864, into a working class family. He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He left Cambridge in 1886, with a B. A, in Classics.

After his graduation, Pain took a position in Surrey as a secondary school master, leaving in 1888, when he became a coach for the army exam at Guildford. During his time at Guildford, Pain began writing for The Granta. Then, in 1889, Cornhill magazine published his short story “The Hundred Gates”.

In 1890, Pain moved to London and joined the staff of the Daily Chronicle and Black & White, also contributing to Punch, The Speaker. and Windsor Magazine.

Although much of Pain’s work was humorous, he also wrote a number of ghost stories and similar tales of terror. It’s now these spine-tinglers, he is mostly remembered for.

Barry Pain died in Bushey, Hertfordshire in May 1928.

 

Locris of the Tower

By Barry Pain

(Online Text)

 

I

I am by profession an architect. For the last eight years I have practised in my native town at Stannoke in Gloucestershire, at first in partnership with my father, and after his retirement alone and on my own account. The greater part of my boyhood was spent in Stannoke, and I have early recollections of the family solicitor, William Locris. Twenty years ago I used to see Locris in church every Sunday morning. He sat with his wife, a rather heavy and plethoric woman, in the pew just in front of our own, accompanied by their son, a boy of my own age. Locris cannot have been more than thirty-five then, and his hair had not yet begun to turn grey. He assisted in the collection of the offertory, and throughout the service maintained an air of decent interest. His son sometimes fell asleep in the sermon, and so did I. My father always did, and, I think, made a point of it, but Locris was always wakeful and quietly attentive. He had an office in the High Street and a villa outside the town — rather an abominable modern construction called “The Elms.” He must have been fairly well off, for he had all the best of the business in Stannoke, but he was not reputed to be a rich man. He was regular in his attendance at business, and regular in taking walking exercise. He went away at the right time every year for his summer holiday at the seaside. If at that time, or indeed for many years afterwards, I had wished to express the quintessence of the commonplace, I should have described Locris.

I believe he was a fairly good, but not a brilliant, solicitor. He was honest and punctual and painstaking. He always discouraged litigation, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for having prevented my father from embarking on a very expensive and probably fruitless lawsuit.

I was quite a young man when Mrs Locris died. I remember she was buried rather sumptuously, and that Locris and his son wore deep mourning for the prescribed time. I no longer saw him in church, for I had ceased to go to church, but I often saw him on his way there, carrying a prayer-book in his gloved hands. He wore black kid gloves, the most rancid form of gloves that has yet been devised. On weekdays I used to see him on his way to the office with the same loathsome gloves, but with a copy of the Times newspaper in place of the prayer book.

Later, I came upon him two or three times in the course of business. I am inclined to think the man happy who seldom requires the services of a solicitor, and that good fortune was mine. When he had any work to do for me, I always found him able and practical, and his charges were fair enough.

Five years ago, when I was nearly thirty, and Locris must have been quite fifty, he called on me one morning at my office. He gave me a commission that was quite worth having, but it was of an extraordinary character. Looking at him now closely, I saw something in his eyes which seemed rather to belie the dull and even tenor of his life. I accepted the commission without hesitation, because, although the work was of a kind that I had never done before, I knew where I could get good advice. I had only to run up to London and see my old father about it.

II

My father had lived for by far the greater part of his life in a provincial town, but he preferred London. As soon as circumstances made it reasonable for him to retire and to hand over the business to me, he took a flat in Jermyn Street and went to live there. He had many friends in London and was a member of two clubs. He was glad enough to be free of routine work, but he was still interested in his profession, and was always glad to help me where his greater experience was useful.

We lunched together at his club, and then, in a retired corner of the smoking-room, he asked me what the trouble was.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know that I should call it trouble. It’s rather a nice little commission. But before we start on that I’d like you to tell me all you can about old Locris.”

“Old Locris? Oh, damn it, James, he’s not so very old. He’s younger than I am. I’ve only known him professionally. We never had any social relations. He’s all right, quite a solid man, I should say.”

“Yes, I know that. You wouldn’t call him romantic?”

“No, not now. There was a story when he was very much younger, before he married. He wanted to marry Sir Luke Mallow’s daughter — Grace her name was. She was a pretty girl, with a lot of golden hair, the kind that you read about in storybooks and never see in real life. They didn’t think Locris was good enough, and I suppose from a social point of view they were right, though, for that matter, in spite of her beauty, it was not every man who would have married her. I wouldn’t myself. The poor girl was short of one finger on her left hand. She smashed it up when she was a kid, and it had to be amputated.”

“So she chucked Locris?”

“No. She did not. He and Sir Luke were fighting it out together, and if Sir Luke did not give way, I fancy Locris meant to run away with her. He is an obstinate chap. However, while they were disputing, Grace settled the question for them by dying quite suddenly — diphtheria, I believe. There was a lot of it about at the time. And within a month Locris was married — daughter of a poor parson and very appropriate. So it’s Locris who has given you this commission, is it? Well, the money will be all right. He’s never spent half his income. It’s quite time he had a better house.”

“And suppose I told you that Locris had gone mad?”

“Any man may. It’s possible. In his case I should think it is extremely unlikely. Has he gone mad then?”

“Well, he says he has not. While he was talking to me he made his scheme seem perfectly reasonable, but if he is not mad, he is at any rate extremely eccentric.”

“Oh, come, come,” said my father impatiently. “Let’s have it. What is it the man wants?”

“Locris has bought land on the east coast not far from Aldeburgh. He wishes to do there what the old Duke of Portland did before him.”

“I see. Rooms underground.”

“Yes. One biggish room, forty by thirty, and a smaller anteroom communicating with it. From the anteroom is to be a flight of steps up to the surface, and the entrance is to be masked by a small tower with two or three living rooms in it. Do you call that the project of a sane man?”

“If you wanted to do it yourself I should certainly say you were insane. But I do not think so in the case of Locris. It is not unnatural in a man of a certain history who has come to his time of life. After all, there are days that one does not wish to see. Speaking frankly, the idea has occurred to my own mind before now. I have never done it, and never shall do it. But it is by no means without its fascination.”

“That is very much the way in which he put it. In a year’s time he means to retire and to leave Stannoke. And during that year this house is to be got ready for him.”

“Is the construction to be secret?”

“I asked him that. He said he should make no effort at secrecy, as such efforts always attracted too much attention. He says that people will find their own explanation — that he wants an inordinately big wine-cellar, or something of that kind. In any case, before the tower had been built three years, people would have forgotten that there is this big room below it. I gather that he has chosen rather a lonely spot where he won’t be troubled by many callers.”

“Did he tell you in so many words what his reason was — why he is doing this?”

“No. But he said it was a thing which he had had in his mind for very many years past, and that he was glad now to have the opportunity to carry the idea out. You see, he is quite alone in the world. His wife’s dead, and his son’s away.”

“The son,” said my father, meditatively. “What’s the boy doing?”

“Professorship of Greek in an Australian university— I forget which. I don’t know what they’ll make of him out there. He was an appalling prig.”

“Yes,” said my father. “I remember him. He was very, very Oxford. Well now, it seems to me you’ve got nothing to do but to go ahead. Excavation’s a much easier job now than it was twenty years ago. I can’t go into it now, because I’ve promised to play bridge. But we will dine at my flat and spend the evening over the plans afterwards.”

“Oh, thanks very much, dad, that will suit me admirably. Meanwhile, I will go and have a look at the winter show at the Academy. Oh, by the way, on that question of secrecy — he did say that he didn’t want the thing talked about in Stannoke, said it would be unpleasant to be bothered with questions, and that clients would regard him as a lunatic and leave him, and that this would have a bad effect on the value of his practice when he came to sell it. I don’t think that anybody but myself knows that he means to leave Stannoke. Down in Suffolk, though, there is to be no secret about the excavation.”

On my way to the Academy I was greatly surprised to see Locris himself. He was coming out of a shop where they sell ecclesiastical furniture and vestments. He did not see me, but got into a cab and drove off. I wondered what he could be doing in a shop of that description, and reflected that it was quite possible that he intended to make some presentation to his parish church before leaving Stannoke.

Ill

During the next year I saw a good deal of Mr Locris. He liked to be consulted about the details of the work which I had in hand, and he was not an unreasonable man; that is to say, he always gave me my own way in the end. His general principle seemed to be to spend as much money as possible on the underground rooms, and as little as possible on the tower, in which I presumed he would generally live. I did not ask him in so many words if there was any special purpose for which he needed these underground rooms. It might of course be an elderly man’s weariness — the fact that, as my father put it, there were some days he did not wish to see, and another explanation also occurred to my mind.

I went up to “The Elms” one night to show Locris, at his own request, the estimates I had obtained for carrying out some elaborate metalwork. The servant, who showed me into the drawing room, told me that Mr Locris was in the laboratory. When he came in a minute or two later, I spoke to him chaffingly [1] about this, and asked him if it was another new idea.

“Oh, no,” said Locris. ” Every man must have a hobby. The law is a very interesting profession, but it would interest me very much less if I did nothing else. I have been a student of chemistry for many years past in my leisure time.”

“Going to invent a new poison? ” I suggested.

“No,” he said. “Something new, perhaps, but not a poison. Shall we get to business?”

In some ways Locris was a disappointment to me. He would not fit in at all with my preconceived idea of what a man should be like who builds himself an underground dwelling. I had to consult him about this time with reference to the renewal of the lease of my house. I wanted to get the renewal, and I did not want the rent to be put up. Locris managed it for me, showing tact and intelligence and all good business qualities in the negotiation. It was true that the law interested him. He would break off his examination of drawings of details for his new abode, in order to speak again of that lease. It contained one or two unusual clauses.

But at any rate I had this other possible explanation for his actions. He was keen on chemistry and was expecting to produce some new discovery. Inventors are jealous people. He might perhaps think himself safer if his laboratory were underground.

He showed himself to be a kindly man. This was particularly the case with regard to poor old Simpson, the verger at the church which Locris attended. Simpson was a man of well over sixty, and incapable of doing any hard work. Rheumatism had compelled him to give up the grave-digging many years before. He was an intermittent drunkard. He had long spells of total abstinence, interspersed with brief bursts of intoxication. As a rule he timed his breakdowns very carefully, so that they should not attract the attention of his employers. But on one occasion he had been found drunk in the churchyard, and he had now been guilty of a still more horrid delinquency. He had been found incapacitated by drink in the church itself, and had been promptly dismissed.

Locris was quite angry about it. He kept on repeating that Simpson was an old man and that there was no chance of his getting any other berth, and that it was a shameful thing to allow the one or two days when he had yielded to temptation to counterbalance his many years of faithful and effective service. It was plausible, but it did not prevail. Locris moved heaven and earth to get Simpson kept on, and Locris had a good deal of influence with the vicar. But the thing was too heinous, and the old man was turned out. It was expected, of course, that, as he had no one to support him, he would have to go to the workhouse. But Simpson did not go to the workhouse. He kept on his small cottage and worked in the scrap of garden which belonged to it. When questioned by the philanthropical or the curious, he maintained that he had private means. Most people guessed that Locris was allowing him a small pension.

In due course the work at Mangay near Aldeburgh was completed, and Locris sold his practice to a couple of young solicitors who were in partnership together. It was announced that he was about to leave Stannoke, and the vicar, in one of his sermons, made a very feeling and sympathetic reference to the impending departure. Locris found himself referred to as “one who has set such an excellent example, not only in the rectitude of his professional career and his private life, but also in his regular attendance at divine worship.”

At the same time, the vicar did not know everything about Mr Locris. He met me in the street one day and stopped me. “So sorry,” he said, “you are to lose your friend, Mr Locris. He tells me that he is going to live in the country.”

“That is so, I believe.”

“But he did not happen in his conversation with me to mention what part of the country.”

“Oh,” I said, “there’s no secret about it, I believe. He’s going to live in Suffolk.”

I hurried on. Suffolk as a postal address is perhaps somewhat vague, but I do not like curious vicars. If Locris had meant to have told him everything, he would have done so himself.

 

IV

For three years I never saw Locris and had no news of him. For a provincial architect I was doing fairly well in my profession. I specialized in bungalows and small houses, and had as much work as I could do. My father thought that I should leave Stannoke and come to London, and I was not altogether averse to making the plunge; but still, the local connection meant a good deal to me, and I did not want to lose it. Life at Stannoke went on with its customary placidity. Market-day was the one day in the week when we all of us seemed to be alive. And Sunday was the one day in the week when we all of us seemed to be dead. On the other days we were in a condition of mild lethargy. In such a town very small things make a sensation. Sir Luke Mallow, son of the Sir Luke to whom my father referred, had an old cart-horse stolen from one of his fields. We talked about it for weeks, and our best policeman seemed practically to live on his bicycle. But neither he nor anybody else ever found the horse or the man who had stolen it. Then old Simpson sold his few sticks of furniture to a dealer one day, paid the three weeks’ rent he still owed, and started off into the unknown. We talked a good deal about the fate of Simpson too. There were many theories, but alcohol and sudden death had their part in all of them. A week later, a touring company was unwise enough to visit Stannoke, and the sensation caused wiped out all recollections of Simpson.

And then a man, whose brother lived at Stannoke, decided to build himself a bungalow at Aldeburgh. I knew the brother, and I received the commission. I went down to Aldeburgh to spend some days over the business, and it occurred to me that I was within an easy drive of the tower where Locris lived. I managed to hire a dog-cart [2] of sorts, and drove out there one afternoon.

I left my dog-cart at the one little inn in Mangay, and struck across the fields on foot towards the tower. I had mentioned at the inn that I was going to see Mr Locris, and found that any interest which might have been taken in him, or his unusual dwelling, had entirely subsided.

“Nice old gentleman,” said my landlord. “Wish I had his cellars. I could buy my winter coal in the summer then, and save a bit. There’s a fine view, they say, from that tower of his. I suppose that’s what he built it for.”

“Do you see much of him?” I asked.

“Not to say much,” the landlord admitted. “Sometimes when he’s out for a walk he’ll drop in here for a glass of bitter, but he’s not been of late. He doesn’t enjoy the best of health, they tell me, and — well, we’re none of us so young as we were.”

The tower had changed very little since I last saw it. As a piece of work I was not very proud of it. I could have made a good thing of it, but Locris had been very skimpy and ignoble about that tower. He would not let me have the materials I wanted. It seemed absurd enough too, when he was burying good black-and-white marble underground.

Greatly to my surprise the door of the tower was opened to me by old Simpson. He had resumed the suit of black broadcloth, with the boot-lace neck-tie, which had been his official costume as verger. He must have recognized me, but he gave no sign of it. He waited there like a stone image for me to speak. I asked if Mr Locris was in.

“He is, sir,” said Simpson, severely. “Kindly wait where you are. I’ll inquire if he can see you.”

He returned in a moment with the announcement that Mr Locris would be pleased to see me, and showed me into one of the small living-rooms, where Locris sat writing at a cheap American desk. I noticed at once that he had aged very much in these last few years. He was more bent. He seemed to have shrunken.

He rose as I entered, and shook hands with me.

“It is strange that you have come,” he said. ” I had just written to you.”

He showed me a sealed letter addressed to myself, which was lying on the desk, but he did not give it to me.

“The fact of the case is,” he said, “that my son being out of England, I have made you the executor of my will. It will give you very little trouble. I hope you will not refuse to act.”

I answered, of course, that I was quite willing to undertake the work, and made the usual banal observation that I hoped the time was still far distant for it.

“I should not say that,” said Locris. “I am not well. I am far from well. Dr Hanneford from Aldeburgh is coming up to see me tomorrow morning. However, I do not want to bore you about my health. I should perhaps tell you that by my will I am leaving you my land here.”

“You will pardon me,” I said, “but I don’t think you should do that. I hope you will reconsider it. You have a son, you know, and I believe you have not quarrelled with him.”

“I am on perfectly good terms with my son. I have been in communication with him on this very matter. He is quite content that it should be so. You must remember that these three acres represent a very small portion of my property, and that he will have the rest.” He paused and looked at me very intently, as if he were trying to read my thoughts. “Are you wondering,” he said, ” what you will do with a house like this?”

He had guessed my thoughts exactly, but I told him that the idea had not occurred to me.

“I ask,” he said, “because you will not have the house. You will have the land, but not the house.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“An explanation will be forthcoming. I may give it to you today perhaps — tomorrow perhaps — any day. If you have not received the explanation at the time of my death, it will be waiting for you in my writing. You will have the land, and you will not have the house.”

At this moment Simpson brought in some very strong and bitter tea, and some untidy bread and butter. These are not things that I love precisely, but I partook of them meekly. I asked the old man if he found Simpson a useful servant.

“Simpson has been invaluable to me. From the domestic point of view he is perhaps the worst servant that ever existed, but that is a matter of comparatively little importance. I am not a very particular man. Almost anything does. Nowadays I live principally on tea, and I fancy it is not very good tea, is it?”

“Since you ask me, it is a very low grade of Indian tea, and I should imagine that the continued consumption of it might have something to do with the ill-health of which you complain. Really, Mr Locris, I think you ought to get yourself looked after better.”

“I have thought so myself,” said Locris, sadly, “Something perhaps must be done. But in any case I must keep Simpson, because he is a faithful man and holds his tongue. You see? He goes down below with me, and he comes up with me, and he does what he is told, and no one hears anything about it. I am never bothered.”

I could not quite make out to what he was referring. I suppose I looked puzzled.

“Yes,” said Locris, suddenly. “Why not? Better perhaps on the whole. You shall have your explanation now. You shall come down with me.”

I consented at once. I was human enough to be rather curious as to the use to which he had put these underground rooms.

He rang the bell, and told Simpson to bring the lanterns. They were just ordinary candle lanterns of japanned tin. The spiral staircase which went up to the top of the tower also descended below the surface to the underground rooms. They were not very far down, the roof of them being twenty feet below the surface. We went through the iron gate and down the stairs together. Old Simpson went first with a lantern, and I followed him. Behind me came Locris with the other lantern.

The aspect of the anteroom seemed to show me that my conjecture had been right. It was fitted as a laboratory and looked as if it had been in recent use. Locris waved his hand towards the shelves and bottles. “What do you know about that kind of thing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “It is not in my line. Is there anything very wonderful there?”

“Yes,” said Locris, pointing to a bottle which seemed to contain some brown resinous powder. “That stuff in there is very wonderful.”

I raised my hand to take it down and have a look at it, and found my arm struck down at once by old Simpson. Locris could see that I was angry, and hastened to apologize.

“Sorry,” he said. “But Simpson was quite right. He had to do it in the interests of your safety.”

“I don’t see how my safety was concerned. It doesn’t kill a man to touch a bottle. Did he think I was going to eat the stuff?”

“No, no,” said Locris. “The thing is very simple. You asked me once if I was inventing a new poison. I told you that I was not. It would not interest me in the least. And besides, we have plenty of the old-fashioned poisons which do their work in a perfectly satisfactory manner. What I really have invented is a new explosive. There is a specimen of it in that bottle. Had you dropped the bottle, it would have been the end of all of us.”

“Cheerful work,” I said. “And the big room beyond? Is that a continuation of the laboratory?”

“Hush!” said Locris, impressively. “It is not. The room beyond is a tomb — a chapel of the dead. Come, Simpson, give me the keys. We shall show this gentleman everything.”

I picked up one of the lanterns.

“We shall not need that,” said Locris. ” The chapel is always lighted.”

Simpson was already pulling back the heavy sliding-doors between the two rooms, and I could see the bright light beyond. Simpson and Locris entered first. Locris went down on his knees on a faldstool near the door, and Simpson, a grotesque figure, knelt on a hassock behind him. I myself stood for a moment in the doorway, astonished by the scene which I witnessed.

In the middle of this underground chapel there was erected a high catafalque, draped with gold and white. On the catafalque there lay in her white shroud the body of a young girl. Her hair, astonishingly golden and profuse, was loose about her shoulders. Her hands were clasped on her breast. As I looked at them, I saw what I had expected to see. The first finger of the left hand was missing. The face in profile, as I saw it, was very beautiful, and had not the yellowish waxy look of the face of a corpse. There was a tinge of colour in the cheeks. One could almost have believed that the girl was alive. On either side of the catafalque were three brass candlesticks, eight or nine feet in height. Each of these candlesticks had seven branches. There were thick yellow candles in them, now burning low. The candle flames lit up the red jewels in a high cross that stood behind the head of the girl. A faint scent of incense still lingered in the air. The walls of the room were draped with white and gold, and but for those things which I have mentioned, the room was empty. Locris and the old verger remained kneeling in silence for perhaps five minutes, but it seemed to me a very much longer time. Then Locris arose, and both of them stepped backwards from the room, closing the heavy door behind them.

The silence was perfectly terrible. I wanted to speak, in order to break the spell of it, but found nothing to say. At last came the voice of Locris, almost in a whisper.

“Now do you understand?”

“Partly, I think. Let us come upstairs again.”

As before each of the two men took a lantern, and I walked between them. Upstairs in the living room, Simpson began to clear away the strong tea and the untidy bread and butter. I waited until he had gone, and then I turned to Locris. “How is this to end?” I said.

“Quite simple,” said old Locris, rubbing his thin hands together. ” I shall know when my time has come, and it cannot now be long delayed. I shall go down to the chapel, and old Simpson with me. It is his own wish that he should not survive me. I shall have nothing to do then, but to start in the anteroom a little piece of clockwork apparatus. It is connected with that explosive which you have seen. In a few minutes, as we are kneeling there, the crash will come. All your good work will be spoiled, my friend. This tower will fall, and the rooms below it will be buried deep. You will have your simple explanation to give. You knew that I was interested in the chemistry of explosives, and that 1 worked at the subject in those rooms down there. You will say nothing more than this.”

“Very well,” I said. I was absolutely convinced of the man’s insanity, and was wondering what was the best thing to be done.

“You see nothing unnatural in this, I hope,” said Locris. ” That, you know, is the only woman whom I have loved or can love. Life would have taken me from her, but I could have prevailed over the living. Death was too strong for me. When she died I had no other aim in life but to do what I have done here. For that purpose alone were all my years of work, and all the money that I made. For me there has never existed any other woman.”

I ventured to remind him. ” But you were married, Mr Locris.”

“Never,” he said vehemently, “never! The man who passes as my son is not my son. I married his mother to save her from ruin, but there was in the marriage no more than the ceremony, and she understood that there never would be any more.”

There were other questions which I might have asked him, but I thought it better to get away and take the necessary steps as soon as possible. I did not know, for instance, how he had managed to remove the body from the vault in the churchyard at Stannoke, but the strange alliance between him and the old verger might be at the bottom of this. The details of that removal I never did discover. But I learned that the body had been embalmed, and a doctor told me that the method of embalmment adopted would account for that slight tinge of natural colour in the dead girl’s face.

I waited impatiently at the inn for my horse to be put in. My nerves were upset, and I left the man who was with me to do the driving.

“Back to the hotel, sir?” he said.

“No. You know where Dr Hanneford lives? Drive there, and drive as fast as you can.”

About two hours later Dr Hanneford and three other men, of whom I was one, were driving in the direction of the tower. We had got within a little more than a mile of it when we heard the roar of the catastrophe. The horse in the cart shied violently and fell.

“We are too late,” said Dr Hanneford, as he got down to see to the horse.

Barry Pain (1864 – 1928)

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1. The word chaff has several meanings. In the context of the story, it means to tease in a good-natured way.

2. A dog-cart (or dogcart) was a small horse-powered cart with an enclosure for transporting hunting dogs—hence the name “dog-cart”. [Further Reading]