1955-07-21 — Page 4

· Page 4

THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, JULY 21, 1955.

MY NIGHT IN ENGLAND'S MOST HAUNTED HOUSE WAS A LARK

LARK UNTIL.

• •

By ROBERT ROBINSON

T had all seemed like a turned off towards

bit of a lark around of Newton, Green.

dark It was quite

1

the village

when I 11.30 that morning, reached Abbass Hall, and the The sun was shining noon was hanging in the sky brilliantly in Fleet Street, like a half-sucked acid drop."

looked

the house up at and a I sat in

n pub with

perched

on a small hill, a mlie somo pals,

from any human habitation. "Staying the night in 非 "Come and see our ghost-f haunted house." I said chirplly, you

Mr Cecil Wells, "down in Suffolk. Place callesi Sudbury solicitor, who owns Abbass Hall-fificenth century, (but does not live in) the house, They're opening it to the public had said. "It's quite empty. No next Saturday the most haunt use will disturb you." ed house in England some people

sby

33

My friends clapped me on the back and made ribald retirks,

A

can,'

AWFUL SILENCE

A

E

THE SUMMIT

that

pored In the candleight I over the old brown script, picking my

way through variety of hands-hands had belonged to lawyers clerks long dead, clerks who had ved in the reigns of George II,

George 11, James....

ENOUGH....

CAME to the end of one tattered screed and there, scrawled across. the bottom, was A name. !! เคร my own! ROBINSON....

swishing up

I looked up. The had begun again. I stood and said out loud: "I've had enough.

S1 say, around 11.30 that But one chap just saith: "P'm

A morning IL had seemed glad I'm not going," and rather a lark.... rather took the edge off the

I started to push my way

I walked to the door, opened joke....

through the waist-high masa,

it, and went out quickly into the dump with dew, flashing my torch

on the empty windows, sweel-smelling night plunging Everything was terribly, terribly down through the soaking grass I drove off as the first light still. A cricket started up in the to my car. Krass near me - raarch

Barch rasarch Taaaarch, of dawn shot down the sky and the mist was rising across the

50 FLAT. SO OPEN SET off by car with the sun still bright in the sky, driving out of London and inta the Suffolk flatlands,

I have always been a little frightened of Suffolk. It is o ftal. So open

in.

When land is opon, things get

I swept down the green lanes, past the summer fields, and it

went in.

Thore was no light, for the folds. generator was not working. hud brought candles and

I'

tereh, and I found my way Into the maln lower om, which boasts the biggest replace in

e county of Suffolit,

seemed to me that the birds flew it my candles, stuck BELO"K the ineadows more swiftly, more urgently, han. In the vast

had noticed before.

Almost

if they were

frightened of being caught out in the open when anything be- "yan....

rim of the land as 1 drove through arwight Sudbury and

them

blackened grate, then set off to tour the empty house.

Huge oak beams soared away into the darkness above me.

The floors ercaked, and 1 hell teurful

The sun sank below the fatty breath, irrationally

that someone might hear me. The beam of my torch lit up odd truer and old all paintings, Ishone back at me from mirrors, ng, sinuous, moving

معدون

1790

(NEGISTERED TRADE HARAJ

threw shadows....

was uneasy.

went 15 A window and

stared out. A great black wooi marched down to the back of the house right to the very door, and

above it the moon floated, suspended in the awful.

SANDEMAN palpable, solid silence. SCOTCH WHISKY

The King of Whiskies

SOLE ADENTB: 'DODWELL & CO., LTD.

!

B

SECRET. PASSAGE

ETWEEN this wood and the

house

people SJ

[secret passage runs.

to

siry, 45

by

And knew that the house HAD been haunted. Not Ghosts, not by chaith.

But by fear....MY tear.

DID IT

HAPPEN?

THE MAKE-READY SQUAD

World Copyright by arrangement with the Manchester Guardian

UNDER the MISTLETOE

All the stories in this could-be-true series might have happened. But did they? Can YOU tell the truth from the fiction? Tomorrow

own

the answer will be published.

On the other hand, if one set forth with Lieutenant Lanory, that gentle, modest soul whose manner seemed more suited to a Press seminary than an army

would Service," the expedition

bý

N November, 1944,

I was

reduced to innumerable the Midi, it might well mean a was a war correspon- skirmishes in the dark woods, hair's-breadth escape from being prisoner. Sarrac loved dent attached to the and infantry attacks in villages made

and valley farms. Our hopes of baiting German outposts. French army. The

progress sank even lower when I went back to my rand. French were trying to drive one day communique alt- What could I do? I could only the Germans. out of the nounced: "Snow has begun to sit, and Isten....linten, and hope

hear nothing. The Vosges, that mountain chain fall in the High Vosges,

divides

Nevertheless, candles sputtered but there was that

the atmosphere the great

in that "Armée de Lattr was no other sound. I fell asleep. Eastern province of Alsace anything but

trl. feel- I woke up with a start,

from the rest of France, despondent.. ing terribly cold, still listening

that mountain The French gone out. Once over candles had my listened. Was it my imagina- | barrier, the

army of were fighting tion, the pulsing in my ears, General de Lattre de Tas- on their

signy, with the American for

its every Army Seventh southern flank, hoped to was

adventure, hurl the enemy back across A

they. shook in the night breeze.

the Alsace Plain and torch and get up with my

were deter There was the Rhine beyond. explored the room.

mlacd that chest in

Allied correspon- dants should not have a dull moment. Every morning,

did hear a soft swish-swish through the empty house?

The sound went on, and I set Still, staring out through the window where a

bush solitary

one corng",

ETHI I opened it. Ipside there wore papers-title-deeds, cen- turies old.

I took them back to my seat

by the great empty fireplace, it two fresh candles and thought to occupy myself, by reading

thom.

CHINESE

CREEDS

and

CUSTOMS

by

V.R. BURKHARDT

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR

HONGKONG

IDEAL GIFT

FOR FRIENDS AŬROAD

SEVENTH IMPRESSION

$18.00

5. C. M. POST OFFICES.

KOWLOON

on

Yellow torrents

over

soil

wo

A few months later it did in that rainy this, but November the Alsace Plain seemed very far away, and soon the forests of the Vosges, our bristling

with German the strong points, appeared

officers

most redoubtable barrier.

接

again; them, hour new

05

wo

COLIN. WILLS

ATHENS, Atrice,

Cyprus, -the

Pennine Way... think of a place and you will probably find Cofin Wills has not only been there but told millions of BBC listeners about it. One of his most mamotoble programmes was Sentimentol Journey (1948),, when he sought out five Franch people he had met four years earlier as a war Enerespondant.

Born at Toowoomba, Queensland, 47 years epo, Wills represents the colonial spirit uratze--coming from the Australian buth, where he was ante a boundary elder, to selfie in St. John's Wood, where he fires with hi second wife and daughter.

-

few IC-

ANORY led.

us along

the

edge of

the forest to an oran UTGAV level...

CAPE COLD TO CAPE HOT

By RICHARD PAPE

Author of the best seller, 'Boldness Bo My Friend'.

London,

JELL, which would you have chosen a cottage in the

country or the toughest car trip in the world?

WE

I have made my cholce. And that cottage in Sussex I had set my heart on will probably seem mighty pleasant when I am alogging the 14,000 miles from the Arctle to Africa.

Yes that is the trip from North Cape, Norway, to Cape Town, South Africa. From Cape Cold to Cape Hot.

I sot off on July 24 with my Norwegian co-driver, photographer. Gunnar Melle. I Orst met him five weeks ago. We drive the length of Norway, across Europe, across the Saliara at its hottest, through the Congo, the Rhodesias and the Union.

Richard Pape

I want to show how wrong are the people like a big export firm director who said recently: "Surely there are no more world records remaining to be broken and, if there are, what is the use of breaking them?"

Plenty of use. For I am making this trip in a British car, and British cars can do with a boost just now.

let me stress that, t

It is a purely personal mission Ls not sponsored in any way. I paid fall price for the 22

h.p. car we are taking.

How long will the whole trip take? Less than a month, we hope that is quite long enough on the diet.

Sardines, glucose, and biscuits those will be the main ingredients.

We hope, naturally, to get someling out of the trip for ourselves. Gunnar is taking £5,000 worth of camera equip- ment to make a documentary film. That will be his reward. Mino? I shall write a book about it. Maybe in that Sussex cottage,

Drawing by Shawell

there were the

kuked up at the trunk of wire, Lanory took me truly touching; their own excite-

their valour and their the nearest tree, and then at its for a longer drive than usual. ment, There

was no warmth in the honour provided a better Dutch branches. There I saw a great

than numb courage sun, tnd my legs were

for a while to let a chilly sun- picase us by exposing us to and anyway, light glitter on pine-boles and needless risk of destruction was tree-trunks. barbed

In a near the edge of a belt of

when at last We descended from the Jeep

amali

or hanging garland of mistletoa..

All at once the whole absurd Mirabelle.

nixed-up feeling of Christmas Lanory led us along the edge came around me like cloud of

where a sort warmth and I started slapping my thighs, of the forest, to

of trees hilarity, the disgust of as we walked forward through of spit or peninsula

stopped ended in the midst of an open, clal Christmasry,

Kirsch

*

The childish

the bar-

the trees, but Landry

me with a sign. He raised a grassy level. On all sides, the of Christmas Eve in town, the Inger to his lips, and his light wooded hills rose silently over- ghostly hirit of a true mystery

45. looking

The biue eyes twinkled.

lieutenant somewhere behind the banality leaned towards me and' whis-. ....and the horrible irony of a pered: "This is the true front season of good will in wartime. line, here." Much as an English

Needless risk

did 1.

The Beris

when

equire might say to a guest: This is the best view in the county."

"Where are the troops?" I

There's a French outpost in

The Jeep driver, a somewhat had

sent of segin quietly, with

scur and cynical type, made a routine

marks about the scenery, a chat ruggestive noise with the bolt of reports on

the about families, and a diffident his rifle, and an even more sug- asked. situation, military

of the Press Service order now and then to the Jeep gestive nolso with his lips. He pointed across to another would present

Obviously themselves to driver.

like it. jutting spur of forest. Individual correspondents, or to

Nelther, at that But it did 1101 do to be

I think most

there deceived by Lanory's manner. feet com Lunory had a proper sense of w

busy

big events, but his duty, which, as he saw it,

less ro

when merely Idiing was to take his correspondent

the front line to "see. rivers; the armour slithered and

Something Interesting invari- where. he could see something sound

something interesting." However, nteresting. bogged in sides of mud. Apart ably meant something hazardous.

the mood of foreboding passed, from artillery ducts

On which If one's conducting officer wer

one delightful morning, as it always did when I was with Feemed to achieve little but de- Captain Sarrac, that flamboyant, when the rain had stopped and these French conducting officers, struction of Umber, fighting rollicking ex-Maquisard from the clouds had lumbered aside Their nalve joy in trying to

The rivers that wound through groups who usually worked to- the valleys were frothing yellow gether, and demand: "Well now turrents, the roads that crept you would like to see some- around the pine-clad flanks of thing interesting today?" the hills were themselves Jike

ALL

DON IDDON'S DIARY

AMERICAN EYES ARE ON

EDEN

THE SUMMIT AND ON

T

commentator

the Red sido

been one

The

Л

"And the Germans?" "Oh, the Germans."

Riflemen...

He pointed straight ahead, then to the right of us, then to the left.

"They are there there

and there,"

·

Fact of war

But this is the oddest part of this story.

I cannot remember why it was I wanted a piece of mistletoe. That is, I know wanted it to send home to my small daughter, buy why? Was It scarce i England? I can't remember. Anyway, I said quita Idly to Lantry, who was looking at mo rather meditatively, that I wished I could find a picco near the ground. Before I realis- cd what he was doing he was up the tree,

There was a renewal of the rific-Are, but I could not tell and whether it was aimed at the man in the tree, For his part, he

As though to lend credence to

to obviously noither knew nor nls words invisible riflemen cared. Rifle-fire was a fact of opened up from all three sides. war

reen, rolled his eyes

rar!

the

When we got to the outpost, it poselens obliteration. ivas deserted. There were threw "Larry," I said to him, when rines, a French steel helmet of he came and stood beside me,

Thore wasn't much Arc, but He reached the mistletoe, cut cnough to cause 4 certain off large plece, and throw it of bullet-whistle and down. I walked to where it hadi enicking of twigs.

I expected a fallen in the long_grass. I had retirement toward the Jeep. flattened down the grass in a Instead, Linory dashed from the rough circle, and there, in the New York, Tuesday. Every

Mayor Robert Wagner edge of the wood and sprinted centre of the circle, was agrces ference for months and according riów."

foreign correspondents and his blonde wife are back across towards where he said the wicked little arkig-pin of a HIS country, at first that it was bad diplomacy and to U.S. apathetic towards the particularly ill-timed to publish in Geneva has really got things with kind things to say about French outpost, was, I looked at

cicanlinces of Mr Dulles a teatimeny before a in a tangle. Accommodation has the

London the driver. The driver gave the mine.

Something made me advance, summit conference, is congressional Committee

of the big problems strects and the quiet of the most violent shrug I have ever very cautiously, along the the now immensely interested. I which he said the Communist and there has been the touchy traffic in Parls and Rome.

till the of trees, peering into the grass. disappeared, and "I have irises muyor said: see that some people are system "is on the point of col- matter of wives accompanying

A line of mincs followed tho to learn after his lieutenant, I followed. ne of. trees; followed our pro- always been willing comparing the Geneva meet. lapsing" This hardly is the right delegates.

from Europe if it has anything

jected patir. Only the freak of Ing to the conference of way to make

The Secret Service has amenable.

go to teach us"

Tall trees

my hankering for a bit of mis- Alexander I. of Rusala and

Only a few months ago I to elaborate lengths to protect

This is a stimulating change

tletoe had stopped us from. ad- Ins zord of

that of vlow 'from Napoleon on a barge in the heard Americans going around the President. He

most

vancing to an absurd and pur- Niemen; to the meeting of and talking as it every Russian guards than President Roogevelt, returning Americans. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was an 8ft, tall superman loaded who was immobilised by in down with hydrogen bombs and fantile paralysis, had during war.

COOL GIRLS and Czar Nicholas On

ther with a spy system that had in time at

have not only had Wo

the 1914 pattern (equipment was looking down at the first minte, jyacht in the Baltie; and to nitrated every branch of the US.

If the conference is auc-

on the "boclay you have really shown the conference of Edward Government.

cong the President is expected temperature for days around short) and some bloed

The outpost had been mo

very interesting something to urge again the construction 95, but we've had suffocating leaves.

and the

troops, had ideed." of an atomic-powered merchant humility in which

punt shot-up. and

retired, taking their wounded. He smiled, and tools out his: calmer ship which will, sail around the

almost PRED taiding in

1. Latory was not at all" per-

notebook. This is all a bit too much for and surer of itself, is in danger world as part of the "atoms more modsure that air.

and strengely I'm very impressed by the

"I must tell the engineers,” he encugh the average Joe weating, in of golog to the other extreme for peace" programme.

His sweet calm said. New York's 95deg. temperature and uppraising the Russians as Geneva

commanding cool grooming of the American hellher was 1.

metres with their was infectious. He wanted to and the blast-furnace humidity, weaklings, suffering from all greater · attention

giris endi than bronzedi hero

WORLD · COPYRIGHT RESERVED barə, backs'and' nemo show me one (section, He was never very keep on sorts of maladies including mal- either Potalam.or Yalta did and meticulous malocus, their the lino-the flank of the ion of the Prealdent going to Geneva in nutriilen. There are even fen- I get the impression that the first place, and theorized that ture headlines

"How near Americans are looking to Bir best-coured non, cotton our left. Very interesting in

nylon

deed, He told the driver to circle, Anthony Edon to be the out when the thermometer back to

in the

ur at "home miles off.. his friend Sir Anthony · Edén a Under the

this blowing is top, the amazing a a rendezvous favour. My baber, who is a rangements of the

Already there Now York, girl looks as cool State Depart conference,

Then he

he pointed out to me the Hungarinn, weld to the: "ko ment Once of International a lot of talk about the Eden and deptable an amint Julep way we should follow across

the public here has os Fisker's, Punch. am afraid the genesy lovel to the hill, You can't trust them Euro allowance is officially only throu

that no one at cannot say in much for the We were walk beside let dollars a day, which would, of Cleneva pest Tours Foster Dulles, who our medly root his breskisen qualities and experience as a

Mr. Johns

Les attempt to kipe mu kdg. the clndringg almost aga though had been doing so well italy, bills organ

diplomap and statesman huh, he soon In to The most they had been planted as part of loth, for Genieya afterm 'chảnh, Tha

has bee

wo-way drama serowe - the puXONY-would an avenue, He did not thinkelwa tirement fobim, the Prom

katened and mackokous matte should be visible to the chomy,

IV. of England and Louis " OTHER EXTREME XI.

Now the US., much

Mr Eisenhower was merely doing is Toussaintle standing personally of

you

and

should stay away from Europe, Coolfertnots the President's food Plan Indeed! Eden Jever@EN. ÄITurloury male who of tall trend:Din) svin: ACTOSE

7

01D IT REALLY HAPPEN?

YES:

NO