“But what are you thinking of?” Lomas objected.
“I think it isn’t as natural as it looks,” said Mr. Fortune.
In the morning his car picked up Sergeant Underwood and bore that officer away on the Southampton road. Sergeant Underwood, who looks like a nice, innocent undergraduate, lay back luxuriously enjoying the big car’s purring speed. Reggie was studying an ordnance map of large scale. They were rushing the hill to Bagshot before he put it away and smiled on Underwood. “Well, my child, do you think you’ll like it?”
“I like working under you, Mr. Fortune. But I don’t know what I have to do.”
“You have to catch butterflies. You’re a promisin’ young entomologist lookin’ for rare species round the New Forest.” He proceeded to give a lecture on English butterflies and moths. “Entomology in one lesson: by R. Fortune. Got that?”
Sergeant Underwood gasped a little. The labours of his intellect were betrayed on his comely face. “Yes, sir. Some of it. But Mr. Lomas said something about a long barrow. I don’t rightly know what a long barrow is. But how does that come into butterflies?”
“It doesn’t. A long barrow is the mound over an old grave. Thousands of years old.” He opened the ordnance map. “This is our long barrow. Mr. Larkin and Miss Woodall—who live in that house—want to dig it up. And funny things have been happening. You’re going to find a room in a nice pub somewhere near, but not too near, and watch the barrow and watch them and watch everybody—while catching butterflies.”
In Southampton he bought Sergeant Underwood the complete equipment of a butterfly hunter and put him on the train to find his own way to Stoke Abbas. The car bore Mr. Fortune on through the green glades of the New Forest to the bare heath country.
It was a day of cloud, and the very air over the moors was grey, and the long waves of heather were dark as the black earth, the distant woodland had no colour, the form of the chalk hills to northward was vague and dim. Mr. Fortune stopped the car and looked about him. Some grey smoke hung in a hollow from unseen houses. As far as he could see there was no man nor any of the works of man. The moor carried no cattle. There was no sign of life but the hum of bees and the chirp of grasshoppers and the flies and butterflies in the heavy air.
“Empty, isn’t it, Sam?” said Mr. Fortune, and got out of the car.
“Brighter London!” said Sam the chauffeur.
Mr. Fortune took a track across the heather. It was heavy going, rather like a ditch than a path, an old track long disused and overgrown, but its depth showed that many feet must have passed that way once. It passed by a grey hovel lurking in a dip of the moor where a shaggy donkey was tethered and some fowls of the old game-cock breed scratched in the sand. The thatch of heather was ragged, the mud walls crumbling here and there showed the wattle framework, the little windows were uncurtained.
The track led on to a bluff hill. Mr. Fortune groaned (he does not love walking) and set himself to climb. The hill-side was seared by a long scar. When he came to it he found the double ditch and bank of an old fort. He scrambled in and out and reached the flat hill-top. There rose the mound of the long barrow of Stoke Abbas.
Mr. Joseph Larkin had done no digging yet. Nor anyone else. The mound was clothed in heather and old gnarled gorse. The black sods beneath had not been turned for many a year.
Reggie looked over miles of bare moor and saw no one between him and the horizon. But on one side the hill was scooped out like a bowl, and down in the depths a rabbit scuttered to its burrow. Mr. Fortune went down that way. A man was squatting in the heather, binding bunches of it into little brooms, far too busy to look at him. “Oh, good day,” said Mr. Fortune, and stopped. “What’s the name of that thing up there?”
The man lifted his bent shoulders and showed a dark beardless face, wide across the cheekbones, a big head for his small size. He stared like a startled animal.
“Do you know the name of that thing up there?” Reggie said again.
“Dragon Hill, ’tis Dragon Hill,” the man cried, gathered up brooms and slid away through the heather. His legs were short, he was broad in the beam, his speed was surprising.
Mr. Fortune trudged back to his car and was driven to the house of Mr. Joseph Larkin. It stood beyond the village in a shrubbery of rhododendrons, a plain red-brick box. Mr. Larkin was out. Miss Woodall was out too.
The conventional furniture of the drawing-room was dismal. It seemed to contain no book but “Paradise Lost,” illustrated by Gustave Doré. Mr. Fortune shuddered and wandered drearily to and fro till he found on the writing-table the catalogue of a second-hand bookseller.
Mr. Larkin seemed to have an odd taste in books. Those which he had chosen to mark were a mixed lot—somebody’s sermons, a child’s picture book, Mr. Smiles on Thrift, a history of aviation, Izaak Walton. He marked them in a queer way. A line was drawn under one letter. Reggie Fortune pondered. The letters underlined were
S K U T H A I: probably more farther on in the catalogue. But some one was talking outside. Reggie put the catalogue back.
A chubby old fellow came in smiling. “Mr. Reginald Fortune? I don’t think I have the pleasure— ”
“You called on Scotland Yard, Mr. Larkin.”
“Oh, you’ve come from Mr. Lomas! That’s very good of you, very good indeed.” He smiled all over his rosy face. “Now let’s just go into the study and I’ll tell you all about it.”
He did. He told at great length, but he did not say anything new, and in the midst of it Miss Woodall arrived in a hurry. “Mr. Fortune! You’ve come down yourself! But how very kind.” While she took Reggie’s hand she smiled on Joseph Larkin.
He needed it. He had been much disconcerted. “Oh, do you know Mr. Fortune, my dear?” he said, frowning.
“I didn’t. But he is the great expert, you know. I went to him to ask his advice about this horrible business.”
“But, my dear child, you didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t bear you to be so worried, Mr. Larkin,”—she laid her hand on his arm.
“There, there. But you shouldn’t, you know. You really shouldn’t, my dear. Leave everything to me.”
“You are kind,” she murmured.
“I have arranged it all,” Mr. Larkin chirped. “I went to the fountain head, Mr. Sidney Lomas. And here is our expert.” He beamed on Reggie. “Now—now I think I’ve told you everything, Mr. Fortune.”
“Well, not quite,” Reggie murmured. “Why are you specially keen on this long barrow, Mr. Larkin?”
Mr. Larkin began to explain. It took a long time. It was something about Phoenicians. The Phoenicians, Reggie gathered, had been everywhere and done everything before the dawn of time. Mr. Larkin had given his life to prove it. He had found evidence in many prehistoric remains in many countries. When he came down to Stoke Abbas to complete his great book on “The Origins of Our World” he found this fine barrow at his very door. Miss Woodall very properly suggested to him that—
“Oh, Mr. Larkin, I’m afraid it wasn’t me.” Miss Woodall smiled. “I’m not expert enough to advise.”
“Well, well, my dear, you’re a very capable assistant. We decided that when we’d finished the book we must excavate the barrow on Dragon Hill, Mr. Fortune.”
“And that’s how the trouble began,” Reggie murmured. “Yes. Any particular reason why you came to Stoke Abbas?”
Mr. Larkin looked at Miss Woodall. “I—I really don’t know. I think this house was the most suitable of any that you saw, my dear.”
“Oh, much the most suitable. Mr. Larkin must have quiet, you see, Mr. Fortune.”
“And this is charmingly quiet, my dear.” They purred at each other and Reggie felt embarrassed. “Charming—if only Mr. Fortune can stop this annoyance. I hope you’ll stay with us, Mr. Fortune.”
They went early to bed at Restharrow. About midnight Mr. Fortune, just droppi
ng off to sleep, was roused by an odd whistling roaring noise, such a noise as a gale might make. But there was no gale. He went to the window and peered out. The moon was rising behind clouds, and he could see nothing but the dark mass of rhododendrons. There was a tap at the door and Mr. Larkin came in with a candle showing his pale face. “That’s the noise, Mr. Fortune,” he said. “What is it?”
“I wonder. Miss Woodall sleeps on the other side of the house?”
“Yes. I don’t think she has ever heard it. It only comes and goes, you know. There! It’s stopped. It’ll come again. Off and on for half an hour or so. Most distressing. What can it be, Mr. Fortune?”
“I should rather like to know,” Reggie murmured. They stood and listened and shivered, and when all was quiet at last he had some difficulty in getting Mr. Larkin to bed.
Reggie rose early. He saw the post come in, but Mr. Larkin and Miss Woodall were both down to take their letters. There was some mild fun about it. Mr. Larkin took the whole post by playful force and sorted it with little jokes about “censoring your correspondence, my dear.” It appeared to Reggie that the old gentleman was jealous in the matter of his fair secretary. But the only thing for her was a bookseller’s catalogue.
After breakfast the two shut themselves into the study to work. Mr. Fortune went walking, and upon the moor found Sergeant Underwood in pursuit of a cabbage butterfly. His style with the net was truculent. “Game and set,” Mr. Fortune smiled. “Fierce fellow. Don’t be brutal, my child. No wanton shedding of blood.”
Sergeant Underwood retrieved his net from a bramble. “I never hit the perishing things,” he said, and mopped his brow.
“Never mind. You look zealous. Keep an eye on the hut over there in the hollow. I want to know who comes out and what he does.”
After lunch Mr. Larkin and Miss Woodall rested from their labours. The old gentleman withdrew to his bedroom. The lady sat in the garden. Reggie went out. To the west of the grounds of Restharrow a clump of lime and elm rose to shelter the house from the wind. Reggie went up into one of the elms and climbed till he was hidden and high. He saw Miss Woodall leave the garden alone. She turned off the road by a footpath which led across the moor. Reggie took binoculars from his pocket. She went some way, looked about her and sat down in the heather. Her back was towards him, but he could see that she bent over a paper. Ahead of her a little dark shape moved in the heather, came near the path, and turned away and was lost in the folds of the moor. Miss Woodall rose and walked on. She stopped, she drew aside, looked all about her, and went on more quickly. Reggie steadied his binoculars on the bough. She was going into the village, and among the houses he lost sight of her.
He slid to the ground and met her on her way back. “Alone, Miss Woodall? That’s very brave.”
“Isn’t it?” She was flushed. “Do you know what I found on the path?”
“Yes. I’ve seen it. A dead stoat.”
“Oh, horrible! What does it mean, Mr. Fortune?”
“I shouldn’t worry about that,” said Reggie. He went on. He saw a butterfly net waving.
“This is a rum business, sir,” Sergeant Underwood protested. “A little fellow came out of that hut, kind of gipsy look, and he mooched about over the heath. Seemed to be looking at snares he had set. He found a beast over that way, and sat down there making brooms. Then a woman came down from the house, and he scuttled along and chucked the beast on to the path and cut off. Very rum game.”
“Nothing in it,” said Reggie sadly. “Well, we’d better deal with him. Go to your pub, my child, and have some food and a nap. I want you outside that hut after dark.”
Soon after dinner that night Mr. Fortune professed himself sleepy and went to his room. He smoked a cigar there, heard the household go to bed, changed into flannels and rubber shoes, and dropped unostentatiously out of the window. Among the rhododendrons he waited. It was a calm, grey night; he could see far, he could hear the faintest sound. Yet he had seen and heard nothing when from behind the hedge which marked off the kitchen garden came that whistling roaring noise. Mr. Fortune made for it, stealthily, as it seemed to him, silently. But he had only caught sight of a little man whirling something at the end of a string when the noise ended in a whiz and the fellow ran off. Mr. Fortune followed, but running is not what he does best. The little man was leaving him from the start and soon vanished into the moor. Mr. Fortune at a sober trot made for the hovel under the hill, and as he drew near whistled.
He arrived to find Sergeant Underwood sitting on a little man who wriggled. “I’m a police officer, that’s what I am,” Underwood was saying. “Now don’t you be nasty, or I’ll have to be harsh with you.”
Reggie flashed a torch in the wide, dark face of the broom-maker, and signed to Underwood to let him sit up. “You’ve given me a lot of trouble,” he said sadly. “Why do you worry the lady? She don’t like dead stoats.”
“Her don’t belong on the moor,” said the little man sulkily. “Her should bide in her own place.”
“The old gentleman, too. You’ve worried him with your nasty noises. It won’t do.”
“He should leave the land quiet. ’Tis none of hisn.”
“They are quiet. Quite quiet. They’ve never done any harm.”
“Fie, fie! That they have surely, master. They do devise to dig up old Dragon’s grave. ’Tis a wicked, harmful thing.”
“It don’t hurt you if they see what’s inside the old mound.”
“Nay, it don’t hurt Giles. Giles was here before they come, me and mine, ten thousand year and all. Giles will be here when they be gone their way. But ’tis evil to pry into old Dragon’s grave. There’s death in it, master.”
“Whoever died there in your time?” Reggie said quickly.
“Nay, none to my time. But there’s death in it, for sure. Bid ’em go their ways, master, and leave the moor quiet.”
“They’ll do you no harm, my lad. And you mustn’t bother them. No more of these tricks of yours, Giles, or we’ll have to put you in gaol.”
The little man squeaked and took hold of his knees and stroked them. “Ah, you wouldn’t be so hard. I do belong on the moor, me and mine. I don’t break no laws.”
“Oh yes, you do, hunting these folks. You ought to be in gaol now, my lad. You’ve made a lot of trouble. If there’s any more of it you’ll be shut up in a little close cell, not walking in the wind on the moor.”
“Nay, master, you wouldn’t do it to a poor man.”
“You be good, then. I know all about you, you know. If the Restharrow folks have any more trouble it’s gaol for Giles.”
The little man breathed deep. “The old Dragon can have them for Giles.”
“Don’t forget. By the way, where’s the thing you made the noise with?”
The little man grinned, and pulled out of his coat a bent piece of wood at the end of a cord. When he whirled it round his head it made the whistling roar of a gale.
Mr. Fortune came back to his bedroom by the window and slept the sleep of the just. He did not reach the breakfast table till Joseph and Isabel were nearly finished. “All my apologies. I had rather a busy night.” Miss Woodall hoped he had not been disturbed. “No, not disturbed. Interested.” Mr. Larkin visibly quivered with curiosity. He thought Mr. Fortune had gone out.
“Out on the moor at night?” Miss Woodall shuddered. “I wouldn’t do that for anything.”
Mr. Fortune tapped his third egg. “Why should you? But no one will meddle with you, Miss Woodall. The fellow that made the trouble won’t bother you any more.”
“Who was it?” she said eagerly.
“Well, I shouldn’t worry. One of the local people suffering from superstition. He thought it was dangerous to dig up the old barrow. He wanted to scare you off. But I’ve scared him, and he’s seen the evil of his ways. I think we’ll give him a free pardon. He wouldn’t have hurt you. You
can rule him out and get on with the excavation.”
“But that’s magnificent, perfectly magnificent,” Mr. Larkin chirped. “How quick too! You’ve really done wonderfully well.” He twittered thanks.
“You’re quite sure about it, Mr. Fortune?” said Miss Woodall.
“Nothing more to be afraid of, Miss Woodall.”
“How splendid!” She smiled at him. “Oh, you don’t know what a relief it is.”
Mr. Larkin plunged into plans for the excavation. Old White at the Priors had promised to let him have men at any time before harvest. No time to lose. Better see the old man at once. Why not that morning? He did hope Mr. Fortune would stay and watch the excavation. Most interesting. Mr. Fortune shook his head. Perhaps he might be allowed to come down and see the result.
“That’s a promise, sir. An engagement,” Mr. Larkin cried. “We shall hold you to that, shan’t we, my dear?”
“Of course,” said Miss Woodall.
They went off together to see old White—it seemed impossible for Mr. Larkin to make any arrangements by himself. Reggie was left in the house waiting for his car. He wandered into the study. Everything had been tidied away. Everything but the books was locked up. “Careful souls,” Reggie murmured, and paused by a waste-paper basket. It had some crumpled stuff in it. He smoothed out the catalogue of a draper’s sale. Some articles had been marked by a line under a letter. He ran his eye over the pages. T A P H O N O I G E I N he read, and heard the horn of his car. He dropped the catalogue back in the basket and slid out of the study as the door bell rang. The maid coming to tell him his car was at the door found him in his bedroom writing a letter.
The big car purred over the heath, passed a man pursuing butterflies, slowed and stopped. The chauffeur went to examine his back tyres. The passenger leaned out and watched. When the car rolled on again there was something white by the roadside. The butterfly hunter crossed the road and picked up a letter. The passenger glanced back. “Now let her out, Sam,” he said.
In the late afternoon the Hon. Sidney Lomas, making an end of his day’s work in Scotland Yard, was surprised by the arrival of Mr. Fortune. “Oh, Reginald, this is so sudden,” he complained. “Finished already? Has Isabel no charms?”
Serpents in Paradise Page 13
