by Jack Mann
Then the stone itself.
High up, within two or three feet of the top, were faint lines which centuries of weathering had not quite erased. Enough was left to convince Gees that they were not runic characters, which he could read with a fair amount of ease. Nor did they correspond to lettering of any alphabet he knew or had ever seen.
Studying them till his neck ached, he realized that a group of the lines toward the right edge of the pillar made a symbol, so crudely executed that he had not at first recognized it. He had met it only once before, far more precise on a pre-Roman piece of sculpture in North Africa; and it had been pointed out as the sign of Kore, forerunner of Persephone, queen of Hades.
If that symbol had been put there to testify to the belief held by the worshippers of the shrine, then the Druids and their ritual were mere modernities by comparison. Then he was standing at the edge of a circle in which had been practiced one of the vilest and most bestial, as well as one of the oldest, cults of this earth. He drew back from the ground of which this pillar marked a limit, and, as he did so, realized anew that MacMorn did not fear to live in a house within the circle.
CHAPTER V
the noonday shadow
Except for that symbol, Gees could make nothing of the inscription. Careful to keep outside the circle, he went on.
He counted a dozen or so low mounds marking where fallen pillars lay buried in the soil, and followed their curving line until he was in sight of the eastern end of MacMorn’s house.
He saw that its windows were even smaller than they had appeared at a distance. Those six in the frontage, on the ground floor, were hardly big enough for a man like himself to crawl through, and in the eastern end of the structure were no windows at all, though it extended back a good thirty feet. The six first-floor windows were rather larger; in the rooms of the ground floor, though, must be a stifling gloom.
Another monolith topped by a single tenon reared up to mark another gateway, that of the north-eastern extremity of the circle, through which the first ray of the rising sun would strike at midsummer, just as at Stonehenge.
Here, though, was no sign that a stone had ever been raised outside the circle to cast the shadow of the rising sun toward the central altar. The devotees of Kore had fashioned their shadows in other ways, Gees knew. Nor, when he stood beside the stone and looked up at its outer surface — for he would not enter the circle — could he see any trace of such an inscription as its southern fellow bore.
Either it had not been carved at all, or else the weathering of thousands of years had erased all marks. The single tenon indicated that it was a gateway pillar, as did its position in relation to the center of the circle.
“You are interested in archaeology?”
A second before the words were spoken, Gees would have sworn that he had been alone. His spine crinkled with a sense of the uncanny rather than with fear as he gazed at the man who had stepped out from beyond the stone to face him.
A man about six inches short of his own height, with black hair and — yes, fully black eyes, those abnormalities in which the iris is so dark as to be indistinguishable from the pupil, and with bloodless, almost chalky white skin.
As Margaret Aylener had said, one who looked as if he lived always in the dark. He appeared to be about Gees’ own age, or at most only a few years older, and his voice was cultured and friendly.
“Very,” Gees answered, as soon as he could trust his own voice. “Especially in a circle as old as this. I hope I am not trespassing in walking round it. You are Mr. MacMorn?”
“I am. That is so. And you are not trespassing, Mr. — ?”
Gees supplied: “Green.”
“Mr. Green — yes,” said MacMorn, courteously. “I am happy to welcome a fellow enthusiast. Though I am but an amateur dabbler, myself, and very little remains above ground here for study. Practically nothing, in fact. What lies underground, of course, I do not know.”
“Under the roots of that thorn tree, for instance.”
“Why?” MacMorn asked, with a sort of innocent interest. “What difference would there be between that spot and any other?”
“For one thing, abnormal fertility of soil, compared with that about it,” Gees pointed out. “Quite abnormal fertility.”
“I suppose it is, though I should never have thought of that if you had not noticed it.” MacMorn met his gaze steadily. “You are staying here?”
“With Miss Aylener.” Gees saw a change in the expression of those intense, strangely black eyes. For a moment they appeared to be specked with dots of fire, and then as MacMorn spoke they softened again.
“Ah! My charming neighbor,” he said. “Not that we see much of each other. I am so often away, and so is she. Why — ”
He broke off. A coal black goat had come galloping from the back of the house toward the edge of the circle of fallen stones, and, following it, ran a kilted, wild-looking being with long, shaggy black hair flying back about his ears. A murderous knife was clutched in his hand.
The goat was giving little bleats of terror — and was increasing its lead when it came to the edge of the circle.
There, although it faced open plain, it recoiled abruptly as if it had butted into a solid stone wall, and staggered back as if dazed. The kilted man hurled himself on the animal, knocking it off its feet, and Gees’ breath hissed out as he saw the shining blade lifted to kill.
But MacMorn interposed with a shout which to Gees was utterly unintelligible, except for the first two syllables, “Partha!”
The kilted man got on his feet, and lifted the goat by its horns so that it stood passive and trembling in his hold, and began its bleating again. Then the would-be slayer turned back toward the house, dragging the animal along beside him by its horns.
“We kill our own meat,” MacMorn said in explanation.
“And fence it in till killing time,” Gees observed.
Again for a moment there were fiery dots in MacMorn’s eyes. “Fence it in?” he echoed, with all the appearance of innocence. “There is no fence.”
“The goat imagined one,” Gees remarked gravely.
“Stumbled, and gave Partha time to reach him,” MacMorn said. “And I told him in Gaelic to take the goat back, not slaughter it there.”
“Yes,” Gees said, “the blood would have been wasted — there.”
It was MacMorn’s turn to draw his breath hissing between his teeth. “We have no use for it,” he said, “but — this soil breeds flies.”
“Of course you have no use for it.”
“I am sorry,” MacMorn said gravely. ‘The sight of slaughter, or of attempted slaughter is always unpleasant.”
“A sort of instinct that the victim hasn’t a fair chance,” Gees remarked. “I once saw a black goat like that sacrificed to the Daughter.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” MacMorn said coldly. “There is no analogy between killing for food and sacrifice.”
“No, of course not. The influence of this circle and the hidden altar in its center set me thinking about it, I expect. I’m rather sensitive to influences, and this place to me reeks of — dark people.”
He made a little pause before uttering the last two words. MacMorn, quite unmoved, smiled slightly and shook his head.
“You appear conversant with many old superstitions, Mr. Green,” he said, “and I am inclined to envy you your knowledge. Yet, if I were you, I would not stay long in Brachmornalachan. It might be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Gees echoed the word with an effectation of incredulity, even of lack of comprehension. “How could that be?”
“If one is — not exactly credulous, but inclined to believe old fables as you seem to be, one sometimes gets — well, carried away by them. Especially in places like this.”
“Held, one might say, by a thread,” Gees suggested.
“Held by a thread, as you say,” MacMorn agreed calmly. And for a third time his eyes held sparks of flame.
&nb
sp; “Yes . . . Hullo! There are Miss Aylener’s visitors.” He pointed across the loch at a low-slung, small sports car headed toward The Rowans. “Glad to have had a chance to talk with you, Mr. MacMorn, but I mustn’t be late for lunch. Excuse me, won’t you?”
“Only too pleased,” MacMorn assured him smoothly — and ambiguously. “But don’t forget my warning — you are much too sensitive to influences to remain in a place like this. Goodbye, Mr. Green.”
Gees went thoughtfully back by the brink of the loch. MacMorn’s eyes, the rarity of a coal-black goat, the language — not Gaelic, whatever it might be — in which MacMorn had shouted the command to his man Partha, the way in which he had circled to keep himself concealed behind the monolith while Gees approached it, and the sincerity and obvious threat of his warning — plenty to think about.
Partha, evidently, had let his thirst for blood master him, and MacMorn had stopped him, just in time, from robbing the Daughter of the sacrifice which must be offered on her altar —
Offered simultaneously with the arrival of Helen Aylener? . . . Or was it all fantasy?
MacMorn had been courteous, almost friendly. The goat might have stumbled, as he had said. Partha, the shaggy herdsman, might have been only slaughtering a beast for meat. And those mere scratches on the pillar of the southern gateway might mean nothing at all. The circle might be only slightly pre-Druidic . . .
Why should he puzzle over it? He had declined to do anything at all, and tomorrow he’d be on his way back to London.
CHAPTER VI
blood in the mist
At the sound of Gees’ approach, the two young occupants of the car looked up to greet him. One was a tall man with brown eyes and dark hair and a finely-cut, aristocratic-looking face; the girl was like enough to Margaret Aylener to show the relationship, but she lacked the rare beauty of the older woman.
“You are Mr. Green,” she said. “I’m Helen Aylener. I’ve heard about you already. Do you know anything about carburetors?”
“Twins,” the young man beside her put in. “My name’s Kyrle, and I expect you’ve heard about me.”
Gees smiled. “Indeed I have.”
“I’ve always believed the other one ought to be drowned, when there are twins,” the girl said.
“Give him a chance to answer what you asked,” Kyrle urged. “Besides, you don’t know which is the other one, in this case.”
“Then they ought both to be drowned,” she declared. “But do you, Mr. Green? Because this pair has stumped us. Stumped him.”
“I believe the connecting rod has shrunk,” Kyrle asserted.
“Now who won’t give him a chance to answer?”
Gees went round by the radiator. Kyrle rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and left a black smudge on it, while the girl took a cigarette case out of his pocket, snapped it open, and offered it to Gees, who shook his head.
“Not just now, thank you,” he said “The trouble, I take it, is uneven firing. It’ll be inside one or other of the carburetors, or both. You can see for yourself there’s no adjustment on that rod.”
“We’ve had both carburetors down to their inmost innards, Mr. Green. She began traveling like an inebriated cow almost as soon as we left Joppa this morning, and we’ve stopped three times and tried to get the — what he called them — right. I won’t tell you what he called them, but it’s what they are.”
“Ignition?” Gees asked.
“Like a song of angels, to mortals given,” Kyrle half-chanted. “That is, perfectly sweet and no fault whatever there.”
“I’ll start her up.” The girl swung up a long leg and stepped behind the wheel. “Then you can hear for yourself. He thinks he’s an engineer, too!”
“Structural, nothing to do with — ” Kyrle began a protest, but the whir of the starter and then a roar as the engine picked up drowned the rest of it. The girl took her foot off the accelerator, and a sort of cockety-cock noise indicated trouble of some sort. Gees held up his hand, and she switched off and got out again.
“I knew he was a good scout, Twister,” she said. “You’re a dud. Now tell us what’s wrong, Mr. Green, and how to put it right.”
Without speaking, Gees turned to the tool roll laid out on the running board. Presently he was tinkering happily with as haphazard a collection of innards he had ever seen on any machine.
He turned to Kyrle.
“Have you had it decarbonized lately?”
“Took it back yesterday,” Kyrle answered, and wiped another black smudge on to his nose.
“We’d better tighten these bolts then,” Gees said.
With smoke pouring from his nostrils, Kyrle obeyed.
“What did you say your car was?” Helen asked.
“I didn’t, but it’s a Rolls-Bentley,” Gees answered her.
“Then there is that amount of money in the world.” Kyrle grunted again. “This is a scrap-heap composite, my own design.”
“You needn’t shout the obvious,” Helen said. She turned to Gees with a smile that made her brilliantly attractive. “You know, we’re both quite mad,” she told him. “If you think it’s drink, you’re wrong.”
“If I were you,” Gees said, “I’d pull down one or two of the front nuts and then come back to the middle. You’ll tighten it more evenly. And then a final pull-down all round before trying it.”
“I might have thought of that for myself.” Kyrle attacked one of the pair of nuts at the front end as he spoke.
“He’s structural, not mechanical,” Helen remarked gravely. “The structure’s got a slant in it this morning — commonly called a hangover. That’s why he doesn’t think for himself.”
Straightening up for a rest, Kyrle passed the back of his hand over his brow and left a black and oily streak there. “My child, you wait till we’re married,” he said softly. “Wife-beating runs in my family.”
“Will you never stop boasting about your ancestors?” she asked. “I hate snobbery.”
“Suppose you get inside instead of being rude, and fiddle with the starter?”
She got in and seated herself at the wheel again. Kyrle stood back. She pressed in the starter. The engine sputtered as it picked up, then steadied to a purr, and Kyrle grinned at Gees.
Helen switched off the engine and got out of the car. “We’re really grateful to you. Come inside and have a quick one before lunch?”
“If I make a third on that, there ought to be time for a wash and then another nip,” Kyrle said, “and I’ll drink your health both times, Mr. Green.”
“Make it Gees.”
“Well, Gees, I’m Twister — caught it off my real name at prep school, and it’s stuck ever since. Helen is just Helen unless I get really irritated with her, and then I call her Blazes.”
“How did you know those nuts needed tightening?” Helen asked.
“I didn’t,” Gees answered, “but I could see along the edge of the gasket that whatever composition had been put on to make a joint had not quite dried, and guessed it had been off recently for decarbonizing. And it seemed worth while to try whether the nuts had been pulled down.”
“Sherlock Gees,” she observed. “And he’s Structural Watson.”
Kyrle opened the door and stood back for her to enter first.
She led the way to the dining room sideboard, and there drew forward a decanter and syphon and two glasses.
Helen poured liberally. “Here’s to Gees, gasket-gluer,” she toasted.
Kyrle gulped his liquor down. “Helen, do you remember that drink that old MacMorn mixed us?”
“Could I ever forget it?” she answered. “He took two bottles and each had something in it as clear as colorless as water, and mixed us drinks, fifty-fifty out of each bottle. And as soon as he poured out of the second bottle, the mixture fizzed like champagne and then turned brilliant crimson. But it tasted like — like heaven in bottles. Old vintage heaven, too.”
“I know a little about chemical compounds, but I don’t know any mixtu
re of two water-white fluids that turns red,” Kyrle put in. “It did, though, just as Helen says. Have you any idea what it was?”
Gees shook his head. “It’s a new one on me,” he said. “What was the flavor?”
“Undiluted joy — wasn’t it, Helen? Indescribable.”
“Quite,” she agreed. ‘Like nothing else. I’ve never felt quite the same since I had that drink, and often and often I find myself wanting another one like it. I wonder how he — Twister, if you don’t go and scrub yourself, I’ll squirt soda water over you.”
“P’raps you’re right.” He drained his glass and went out.
“Sometimes I think he’s too good for me,” she said.
“Then he must be very good.”
“When we first met,” she pursued, “I knew I was much too good for him, but now I love him terribly. Aunt Marge told me about you before we went out to doctor the engine. Told me she actually got you to come here because of her bee. It is a bee, you know — nothing else.”
“I don’t know anything,” he said.
“It takes a wise man to say that. She told me you’re going back tomorrow, too. I don’t see what else you could do. I know Gamel’s got a face like death warmed up, but he’s a kind soul when you get to know him, and he is terribly — well, exciting. Twister likes him, too. But Aunt Marge has had that bee ever since I was old enough to remember.”
“What did she tell you about my coming here?” Gees asked.
“That she wanted you to investigate Gamel and see if there was anything in what she thinks about him. I’ve tried time and again to persuade her it’s a racial feud, born in the blood of both of them.”
“Did you mean what you said about wanting another of his drinks, and remembering it and not feeling the same after it?” he asked.
“Well — yes, I did.” She gazed at him dubiously. “Why — have you been stung by Aunt Marge’s bee?”
“I told you, I don’t know anything,” he answered, “and you know already that I’m going back to London tomorrow. Therefore.”
