Safe Custody and Laughing Bacchante

by Dornford Yates

  “So I will,” said I, firmly. “I’ve told you again and again that it’s only a matter of form.”

  Palin let out a maniac’s laugh.

  “God knows you have,” he screeched. “But you can’t tell Vienna or Rome. What does my sight matter? In the sight of the world she’s Lady Olivia Ferrers. And even if you get your annulment, you can never cross out the fact that for six months she bore your name.”

  “I don’t want to,” said I, hotly. “I’m damned proud of it and shall be as long as I live. But I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I was desperate. Desperate. And in spite of all you’ve told me, I’d do it again.”

  Palin looked at me very hard. Then he turned to Olivia.

  “He’s shut my mouth,” he said quietly. “And you?"

  Olivia looked him full in the eyes.

  “What d’you think, Andrew?” she said.

  His words and her answer were so much Greek to me, but she and Palin very clearly understood one another, for after a little the latter nodded his head.

  “Then—then that’s all right,” he said slowly.

  Olivia’s hand caught his, as it made for his glass.

  “Honour Andrew, John,” she said gently, looking across to me. “He’s the best friend I ever had.”

  “Love me, love my sheep-dog,” said Palin, with half a laugh.

  “I meant no harm,” I said quickly.

  “That’s all right,” said Palin, blinking. “If I’d known before I shouldn’t have twisted your tail.”

  “I told you,” I said reproachfully.

  “Yes, I—I didn’t get it,” said Palin. “I’m not very quick in the uptake.”

  “That’s my failing,” said I.

  “Oh, go on,” said Palin, and the three of them laughed. . . .

  Then Palin stood up and solemnly drank to Olivia, and Hubert did the same: and Olivia coloured and thanked them both with her eyes.

  Then Palin returned to me.

  “You’re a strange young man,” he said. “I think you belong to the Stone Age. Your single mindedness certainly does. And the bricks you drop are the biggest I’ve ever seen. But I can’t help liking you. There’s an honesty in your eyes that looks me down: and your manner with the steward to-day was that of the blood royal.”

  With that he drank to me, as did Hubert, both looking very grave: and I said “Thank you,” and could have sunk through the floor.

  Then I saw Olivia smiling and lifting her glass to me. And at once my heart leaped up, because her look was so gentle and set me thinking of things which were ours alone and especially of our progress down the mountain and the precious words she had breathed and how, as I truly believed, she had touched my hair. Of such was the understanding which she seemed to me to invoke, and I think that she did so of pity, because she saw how much embarrassed I was. Be that as it may, I drank to her gratefully, for, though I had stood up to Palin, I felt the force of his words.

  My conduct had been that of the Stone Age: I seemed to have taken my cue from a Nursery Rhyme. I had rushed in, where he, my elder and better, would not have dared to tread. I had been charged with Olivia—and I had married my ward. My one and only idea had been to save her from lying without our walls: it had not occurred to me that I was achieving that object to my immeasurable profit, but to her loss. Such simplicity was unpardonable . . .

  Yet, strangely enough, I found Palin’s hostility less disconcerting than the sudden end of it which he made, while his formal recognition of my exalted estate seemed to me to be low comedy mouthed through a tragic mask.

  Then Olivia rose, and we all went into the gallery.; and while she and Hubert and I sat still by the fire, Palin sang and played upon a grand piano with which, when he had proved it, he seemed remarkably pleased. Though he rendered nothing more serious than two of Shakespeare’s songs, it was easy to see how fine an artist he was: beneath his touch the place became quick with melody and, no doubt because of its proportions, we’ heard to great advantage his most engaging voice. Such was the music he gave us that with one accord we laid aside for the morrow the consideration of the problems which we were to solve: and that, I think, should show how potent was the spell which he cast. Indeed, we forgot all time, and the tall clock was chiming midnight before Olivia rose.

  “You may play me upstairs, Orpheus: and then you really must stop. You’ve made us forget that we’re tired: but we’ve got to get up to-morrow and put in a good day’s work.”

  Palin looked up from the keys.

  “Motley,” he said, “is surely the only wear. And, that being so, the castle fool must earn his keep. And now he shall play you upstairs. Does my lady like Wagner?”

  “No,” said Olivia steadily. “Nor Mendelssohn.”

  Palin raised his eyebrows.

  “I invoke tradition,” he said. “The castle fool has a certain licence.”

  “Which he will be well advised not to overstep.”

  Palin fingered his chin.

  “But I don’t know the music to The Taming of the Shrew”

  As he spoke the words, the lilt of a Nursery Rhyme came swelling out of the rosewood. A Frog he would a-wooing go . . .

  Olivia began to laugh helplessly. . . .

  Stiven was by Hubert’s side.

  “Someone’s using a torch, sir, upon the road of approach.”

  For what it was worth we all of us made for the ramparts: but, though we watched for some minutes, the light did not reappear.

  As we turned to re-enter the castle, I saw that Olivia was gone.

  Brutally early next morning the rasp of curtain-rings haled me out of a slumber which I had thought belonged to the dead alone.

  Too sleepy to focus the dial of my wrist-watch—

  “What time is it, Stiven?” I yawned.

  For a moment there was no answer. Then—

  “Will Monsieur take tea?” said Gertrude, standing beside the bed.

  I suppose my demeanour was comic, for after a little she smiled.

  “Monsieur is very tired.” She spoke in French. “He did not hear me knocking, and so I made bold to come in. Shall I bring Monsieur some tea? Or turn on his bath?”

  With an effort I collected my wits.

  “Turn on the bath, please, Gertrude. I don’t take tea.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  As in a dream I heard her turn on the water and watched her laying out linen and carefully folding the clothing which I had cast carelessly off.

  Then—

  “Is that all, sir?”

  “That’s all, thank you,” I stammered.

  “Thank you, sir. Now I will call Madame.”

  With that she opened a door which I had believed to be locked—a door which opened directly into Olivia’s room.

  As it closed behind her, I lay back and shut my eyes.

  Not that I still felt sleepy: I never felt more wide awake. And the truth was standing out most painfully clear.

  It was, of course, too late now: but Olivia had made a mistake. Gertrude should have been told that it was ‘only a game.’

  Chapter 10. Breathing Space

  When Palin handed me his rendering of Olivia’s share of the clue, I must confess that I was profoundly dismayed.

  I will not set it out here, for, read alone, it told us next to nothing and doorway, arras and shutter were its three most valuable words. But their contexts, of course, were not there.

  The doorway to. . .

  An arras hangs . . .

  The shutter belonging . . .

  And most of the word ‘belonging’ was Palm’s guess.

  It was, therefore, arranged that Olivia and Palin should take Father Herman’s breviary and do their best to wring from its pages the secret we were sure that they held, while Hubert and Stiven and I explored the castle itself.

  Now the plans we had found upon the priest made one thing perfectly plain, namely, that the Castle of Hohenems had once been rather less than a third of its present size.
But this original building had not been destroyed. Instead, it had been embodied in the edifice afterwards raised, and it stood, complete and almost untouched, between the gallery and the gate-house, making of the whole that portion which two nights before we had found it so hard to search. And here we had little doubt that the ‘vestments’ lay.

  We, therefore, attacked this very ancient stronghold with torch and measuring-tape, but even with the help of the plans it was most hard to survey, and though by midday we could find our way to and fro with scarce a mistake, I know that I did so by recognizing stairways and halls, and not by my sense of direction which was continually at fault. As Olivia had predicted, there were eleven stairways, all of them stone and some of them shut by doors, and the whole of this fastness seemed to have been built at haphazard without regard to method of any sort. It was fully three times as large as we had believed, and again and again we were confounded by the mysteries of length and breadth. How many doorways there were, I dare not say: there was very little arras, and what there was hid nothing but smooth, stone wall: shutters there were none.

  At noon we sent Stiven to his dinner, cleansed ourselves and made for the library, to find Olivia and Palin working with slips of paper on each of which they had written the alphabet down, and spelling out what seemed to be nonsense with infinite care.

  “As you’ve no hats on,” said Palin, “you’d better take off your shoes. The floor upon which you are standing is holy ground. There is no goddess but Olivia: and I am her prophet.”

  Olivia looked up and laughed.

  “We’ve found the cipher,” she said. “Not the key, you know—the cipher.”

  “ ‘We’?” said Palin. “I shouldn’t have found the cipher in fifty years. More. Thanks to the misrepresentation which that serpent saw fit to employ, I should have wasted my life in a labour the futility of which would have passed all comprehension. The bare thought of it makes me go all gooseflesh.”

  With that, he showed us that throughout the breviary little groups of words were occasionally underlined.

  “Puzzle—find the cipher,” he said, and lighted a cigarette. “And not to make it too hard, I’ll give you a clue. The cipher is underlined.”

  Hubert and I stared at the open book. At length—“I’ll buy it,” said I. “Don’t those words contain the cipher?”

  “No,” said Palin, “they don’t. The cipher is contained in groups of three words. In fact I strongly suspect that it always lies in the middle word of the three. But here, for instance, there are only two words: and here again there are four.”

  Hubert shook his head.

  “I’m utterly beaten,” he said. “Put me out of my pain.”

  Palin lifted the book and held a page to the light.

  “Dirty work,” he said. “That line is marking three words on the opposite side of the page. So’s every other line in the book.”

  My cousin regarded my wife.

  “How ever did you get it?” he said. “It wouldn’t have entered my head in a thousand years.”

  “Pure fluke,” said Olivia. “The words didn’t look right somehow, and so I held a page to the light. But we’re not there yet. I’m inclined to think there’s a code-word we’ve got to guess. And now what d’you think of your castle? Can you honestly say you’ve been into every room?”

  “Except the dungeons,” said Hubert, sinking into a chair. “We’ll do them this afternoon.”

  “Arras?” said Palin.

  “About fifty feet,” said Hubert. “And behind it, a wall like marble. There’s nothing there.”

  “Shutters?” said Olivia.

  “Never a one,” said I. “Plenty of doorways, though. I should think there are fifty-five.”

  “Electric light?” said Palin.

  “Next to none,” said Hubert. “We shall have to run out a wire.”

  “That’s easy,” said Palin. “A word to the steward will certainly do the trick. I never saw such a man. You ought to have seen the menus he brought Olivia to-day.”

  “Yes, but what shall we tell him?” said Hubert.

  “If I were you,” said Olivia, “I’d tell him the truth.”

  “Not the whole truth?” said Palin.

  “No. But nothing but the truth.”

  “She’s right,” said I. “I’m sure we can trust the man.”

  After a little discussion we decided to take this step as soon as luncheon was done. Then Olivia and Palin returned to their Gordian knot, while Hubert and I inspected such drawers and cupboards as our great-uncle’s keys would unlock.

  Here we found nothing that had any bearing at all on the matter in hand. Though it was possible that Harris had discovered papers which Bunch and Bugle had been careful to take away, I do not believe this was so: and I think the truth is that our great-uncle kept no record of his efforts to find out the secret the castle kept. I shall always believe that he was upon its track—how close, I have no idea: but, though he had lived and had brought us out to help him, I cannot think that we should have found the ‘vestments,’ because they were hidden so well.

  It was I, after luncheon, that told the steward our needs, and, as before, Olivia translated my words. When I revealed our purpose, the light of understanding came into his eyes.

  “The impostors, sir, were hoping to steal this treasure away.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said I. “My great-uncle trusted his secretary, and his secretary was playing him false. And her ladyship’s uncles are against us. They, too, know of the treasure and they would make it theirs.”

  “I wondered to see them here, sir. It was their very first visit in twenty-one years.”

  “That I can well believe. And now tell me this, Sarem. Did my great-uncle spend much time in the older part of the castle?”

  “Now and again, sir. Sometimes he would not go there for several months: and then he would spend some hours there day after day. He would have the light laid on from a plug in the hall—I have the reels all ready for you to use. What he did there, I never knew: but Harris went always with him, bearing a measuring-rod.’’

  “Did he spend any time there shortly before he died?”

  “Yes, sir, he did. Just before he left for England he was going there every day. And the last day or two he spent some time in the drive—close to the gate-house, sir, as though he were viewing the walls. I remember that well, sir, for, while he was there, by his orders the drawbridge was taken up.”

  “That’s very curious, Sarem.”

  “Yes, sir. I find it strange.”

  “Well, keep your own counsel,” I said. “We shall let you know how we go on. And if at any time you’ve any suggestion to make, come to me and make it without a moment’s delay.”

  “I will, indeed, sir,” said Sarem: and, with that, he withdrew to fetch us the reels of wire.

  “ ‘As though he were viewing the walls,’ ” said Palin. “And what on earth does that mean?”

  “I can’t conceive,” said Hubert. “And why’d you imagine he had the drawbridge raised?”

  “The presumption is,” said Olivia, “that the drawbridge was obstructing his view. When it was down, I mean. But why should he want to look at the wall of the windlass-room?”

  “Let’s hope it was a whim,” said Palin. “If we’ve got to do any work outside these walls . . .”

  “Quite so,” said Olivia. “I don’t think you’d do it long.”

  There was an uneasy silence. If the finding out of the secret required the performance of some labour upon the outside of the castle, we should, indeed, be hoist with our own petard.

  “It was a whim,” said Palin. “Fate’s not so unkind as all that.” He got to his feet. “My lady, you and I need exercise. You mustn’t adorn the ramparts till after dark, so let us try the courtyard. I don’t actually need your husband, but if you feel you must have him, he can bring his scooter and he and Hubert can run along by our side.”

  Olivia rose, smiling.

  “John,” she said
, “ask Gertrude to give you some gloves. You’re going to show me the dungeons, and I don’t want to dirty my hands.”

  The way to the dungeons was shut by two mighty doors, the one at the head of the stairway and the other half way down. The moment we had opened the first we could hear the sound of water—water other than that of the castle fall. Indeed, it was clear that some substantial cascade was falling within the dungeons, for the uproar was that of water which tumbles within a cave. When we opened the second door, this truth leaped out with the roar of a pent-up beast and a bitter chill smote upon us, like the rude breath of Death himself.

  I have often pitied such captives as were no doubt in time past conducted this dreadful way. I hope they were few, for the stoutest heart must have quailed before the awful greeting which issued out of this jail: the darkness and the bellow of the water and the unearthly chill were big with hideous promise, and I can conceive men turning lunatic on being thrust down by turnkeys to such a doom.

  Before we descended further, Hubert and Stiven went back to fetch us coats to put on against the cold, and whilst they were gone, I wedged the great door open with a block which I found in the kitchen which was close to the head of the stair. This was the ancient kitchen which served the original castle, but was now no longer in use.

  The hand-lamp the steward had brought us was the one my great-uncle had used: it was fitted with a fine reflector which must have near doubled its light. We had, therefore, no fear of falling or of coming to any harm, and as soon as my cousin was back, I led the way down the stair.

  This brought us into a chamber some thirty feet square, but, though the noise was now deafening, there was here no sign of the water which was roaring so loud.

  The first thing we saw was a fireplace, with a hood to receive the smoke, and, beneath this, the wreck of a cage which rust had so much corrupted that there was little left. To the right, a structure of stone was standing clear of the wall: this was some two feet high and had very much the shape of an altar tomb. On the left was an open doorway, some five feet high, and through this was coming the uproar of which the chamber was full.