Hiding place

“ The position of this house is so remote, its precincts are so well guarded, that, even if your friends were to discover your hiding-place—which is most unlikely—and were in hot cry hither, I should have ample leisure to devise and carry out even the most lingering form of death for you. ”

“ Since you are now sure that the enemy is not lurking in this house, he must be even nearer home. I mean that the chances are he is still hiding in the old barn. By the way, do you happen to know of any secret place of concealment in that building?"
"No; that I do not. But I feel sure, from the manner in which the creature escaped from me on the night when I encountered him in the dark, that there must be such a hiding-place. Strange that a new arrival should discover a secret room, when I, [Pg 146] who have explored the barn scores of times, have not even learned of its existence." ”

“ Within an hour, I warrant you, there will be spies out in every quarter of the city to try and find your hiding-place. You are safe so long as you remain here. What an advantage it is to have such a reputation for empty-headedness as I have. ”

“ I try to put myself in the position of a burglar leaving my house with his loot, desirous of avoiding all roads and tracks, and of finding a safe hiding-place until excited policemen have calmed down sufficiently to make it safe for him to get away. ”

“ Yet it is a good hiding-place for them that are in trouble; and many a night have little Peter and I sheltered us beneath the ruined roof, with little fear of either ghosts or Injuns; though, truly, we have sometimes heard strange and mournful noises among the trees around us. ”

“ Now that they had a secure hiding-place, almost a home, it did not even seem a hardship that they couldonly meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time. What mattered was that the room over the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it.The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk. ”

“ The door of the hiding-place swings upon a pivot, and externally is thickly covered with plaster, so as to resemble the rest of the wall, and is so solid that when sounded there is no hollow sound from the cavity behind, where, no doubt the crucifix and sacred vessels were secreted.
HIDING-PLACE, UFTON COURT
HIDING PLACE, UFTON COURT Not far off, in an upper garret, is a hiding-place in the thickness of the wall, large enough to contain a man standing upright. ”

“ CHAPTER V HARVINGTON, UFTON, AND INGATESTONE
We will now go in search of some of the most curious hiding-places in existence. There are numerous known examples all over the country, and perhaps as many again exist, which will preserve their secret for ever. For more than three hundred years they have remained buried, and unless some accident reveals their locked-up mysteries, they will crumble away with the walls which contain them; unless, indeed, fire, the doom of so many of our ancestral halls, reduces them to ashes and swallows up the weird stories they might have told. ”

“ How could I help writing romances," he says, "after living amongst the secret panels and hiding-places of our dear old home? How often have I trembled with fear at the sound of my own footsteps when I ventured into the picture gallery! How fearfully have I glanced at the faces of my ancestors as I peered into the shadowy abysses of the 'secret chamber.' It was years before I could venture inside without my hair literally bristling with terror." ”

“ Imagine hiding in a place where all is invisible! But I must go some place, and finally I dashed past the foot of the great staircase until I reached a wall directly under the landing on which I had stood, and against this I crouched, praying that the deepening shadows of dusk might hide me from the gaze of the creature whose lair this was.
"I knew instantly when the thing entered the gate through which I too had come. Pad, pad, pad—that was the soft, cushioned sound of its passage. I heard the feet stop for a moment by the opened door at the end of the corridor. ”

“ Another large hiding-place is situated in one of the rooms at the back of a tall press or cupboard. The space in the wall is sufficiently large to contain eight or nine people, and entrance to it is effected by unloosing a spring bolt under the lower shelf, when the whole back of the press swings aside.
Whether the mystery of the famous secret room at Glamis Castle, Forfarshire, has ever been solved or satisfactorily explained beyond the many legends and stories told in connection with it, we have not been able to determine. ”

“ An excellent hiding-place [Pg 126] for a fugitive certainly, particularly, as I suspected, if he had relatives residing there. Far away from the swift and powerful messengers of steam and electricity, he might safely repose in quiet seclusion until the excitement had died away and pursuit was abandoned. Such places as these afford a secure harbor for the stranded wrecks of humanity, and many a fleeing criminal has passed years of his life in quiet localities, where he was removed from the toil and bustle, and the prying eyes of the officers of the law in the more populous cities and towns. ”

“ Its chimneys, too, rise in a veritable forest of quaintly-shaped stacks, and form as puzzling a labyrinth as the windows.
There was a meaning in this tangle of windows and chimneys, for Compton Wynyates is full of secret hiding-places. Hundreds of years ago there was need of them. To-day no man needs to hide himself unless he has done wrong. Then, an innocent man might stand in great danger of a powerful enemy or of an unjust law. So the old houses were furnished with places where men could hide from their foes until an opportunity came for escape. ”

“ Again, here there is a communication with the outside world. An oblong aperture in the top oak beam of the entrance gateway to the house, measuring about four inches across, is the secret opening—small enough to escape the most inquisitive eye, yet large enough to allow of a written note to pass between the captive and those upon the alert watching his interests. [1]
[Footnote 1: N.B.—In addition to the above hiding-places at Harvington, one was discovered so recently as 1894; at least, so we have been informed. This was some years after our visit to the old Hall.] ”

“ Therefore, any who escaped in the attack on the house may have hidden themselves from the first search, and we may possibly come across them at night. They would assuredly never leave their hiding-places until darkness had fallen. ”

“ It is only as an extreme resource that you could need to take to these hiding-places. As far as passers-by are concerned you might remain outside altogether, but in that case you would run some risk of being noticed. You may be sure that the hills will be closely scanned, and if figures were seen moving about here a party might set out to see whether these were the fugitives so eagerly sought for. Therefore I say, during the daytime keep yourselves concealed here. As soon as it is dark you can of course issue out and pass the night wherever you may think fit. ”

“ For every still that is captured I reckon there must be a hundred at work that no one dreams of, and will be as long as barley grows and there are bogs and hills all over the country, and safe hiding-places where no one not in the secret would dream of searching. ”

“ The moral side of overcrowding must not be forgotten, but it is not necessary to dwell upon it, as the Whitechapel horrors are still fresh in the memory, and the difficulty of detecting crime in a labyrinth of hiding-places has been demonstrated. ”

“ They hide them, therefore, in the forest at a safe distance from the village, where the ghosts can never find them; and when the spirits are weary of the fruitless search, they go away back to their dead bodies lying, it may be, among the blackened ruins of their {125} desolated home. Then the victors come forth, and taking up the weapons from their hiding-places, wash them clean of blood and bring them back to the village.125.1 But “as more or less of the soul-stuff of their slain foes always sticks to the victors, none of their people may touch them after their return to the village. ”

“ What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their hiding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night! ”

“ To hide successfully in such a neighborhood he must be one of those who dwelt here and dodged the law and defied it, knowing the manners and the codes of the underworld. Yet he must have some place to hide away, to sleep, to wait the coming of the morning and the announcement of the newspapers. ”

“ As she hastened to don her hat and coat she was almost overwhelmed by a revulsion of feeling. Two days ago the world about her had seemed a carefree, pleasant, even if sometimes boresome place. Now she shudderingly saw it stripped of its mask and revealed for the first time in all its hideousness, a place of murders and spying and secret machinations. People about her were no longer more or less interesting puppets in a play-world. ”

“ In the secret chamber, however, we have something tangible to deal with—a subject not only keenly interesting from an antiquarian point of view, but one deserving the attention of the general reader; for in exploring the gloomy hiding-holes, concealed apartments, passages, and staircases in our old halls and manor houses we probe, as it were, into the very groundwork of romance. ”

“ It was a horrible idea that she should be sleeping alone, or as good as alone, in a house which bore the reputation of being haunted. Not that I placed any credence in such rubbish myself, but when she was concerned it was a different matter.
“I can’t say why; but it’s known as such, in the force, and, I believe, among the people in the neighbourhood.”
“Ah! Well, officer, two friends of mine—ladies—young ladies—have taken up their residence at No. 84, and as they’re all alone I shall be obliged if you’ll keep an eye upon the house. If you see any ghosts about the place you run ’em in.” ”

“ The secret door, the darkness that seemed palpable, all must be parts of some infernal contrivance to shroud in secrecy and mystery some diabolical outrage, from the contemplation of the probable nature of which she shrank in horror. Through that concealed door which she could not discover, but which she yet knew to exist, the perpetrator would enter—those walls would shut in every sound, and deaden every shriek—that palpable darkness would veil the crime, and guard from the chance of future recognition the criminal! ”

“ To let any one into our secret, to reveal that hidden land to a gaping world, would be to destroy it. We should be followed, tracked by the newspapers, written up, judged eccentric—mad. And I do not wish to be judged at all. ”

“ But, outside, the whole place is alive with stealing, skulking shapes. Here and there a subdued snarl, or some snapping, is audible, but they are all converging on one point—the structure which as their scent informs them contains fresh blood; and the pointed ears and bared fangs of the hideous, blunt-snouted brutes, show plain in the moonlight. And now the foremost is standing snuffing within the open doorway, while others are stealing up, by dozens, behind the first. ”

“ With the darkness, came an intolerable feeling of loneliness and dread. For the first time, I thought of the Pit, and its inmates. After that, there rose in my memory the still more terrible Thing, that had haunted the shores of the Sea of Sleep, and lurked in the shadows of this old building. ”

“ When such sturdy vagabonds come, and first cringe and beg in a piteous tone, till, having spied out the real nakedness of the place, as to physical strength, they rise in their demands, hint strange things; instead of going away when desired, walk into the house, grow insolent, and at length downright thievish and outrageous,—these are circumstances of peculiar terror not to be exceeded in human experience, and which yet have been often experienced by the dwellers in solitary houses. ”

“ A parallel phenomenon to my mind is exhibited in what we know as haunted houses, houses in which, as a rule, some crime or act of extreme emotion or passion has been committed, and in which some echo or re-enactment of the deed is periodically made visible or audible. A murder has been committed, let us say, and the room where it{266} took place is haunted. The figure of the murdered, or less commonly of the murderer, is seen there by sensitives, and cries are heard, or steps run to and fro. ”

“ It is a strange, weird, mysterious place, filled with uncanny sights and sounds, haunted by the ghosts of former dusky inhabitants, whom it swallowed without warning and extinguished in a twinkling of an eye in the most diabolical manner, and whose tortured spirits even now cry out for relief and freedom from cruel bondage on every dark and stormy night. ”

“ Finally, the passing faces became sometimes penetrable, betrayed by some chance gleam of the eyes, some flicker of the lips, a secret to be shared, or conveyed by a hint some stabbing message out of the deep into the deep. That is what I mean by the soul at the window. Every one of us lives in a guarded house; door shut, windows curtained. Now and then, however, you look up above the street level and catch a glimpse of the scared prisoner inside. He may be a satyr, a fairy, an ape or an angel; he's a prisoner anyhow, who sometimes comes to the window and looks strangely out. ”

“ The walls were thick with grime and smoke, the floor mildewed and cracked; dirt vied with squalor to make the place a fitting abode for thieves and cut-throats, for some of those sinister night-birds, more vile even than those who shrieked with satisfied lust at sight of the tumbril, with its daily load of unfortunates for the guillotine. ”

“ A ghostly visitant dressed in drab would appear and disappear mysteriously, a female figure was often seen to rush through the apartments, and other supernatural occurrences at length became so intolerable that the inmates of the house sought refuge in flight. ”