by Jack Mann
“What do you propose to do?” she asked. “What can you do, in fact? As that truck driver said, mention of flies would merely be sure to raise a laugh.”
“Quite so, but it won’t be MacMorn who does the laughing,” he said grimly. “It’s fairly obvious to me that there’ll be another move on his part, and soon, too — which brings me to my first hunch, the one that dovetails in on yours. You’re quite right about his wanting to eliminate me, and I can see his reason for it too. Quite a good reason.”
“Do you propose to tell it to me?” she asked, after waiting awhile.
“Obviously. I said we’d swap, didn’t I? Have a cigarette?”
He moved to lean over her desk and offer his case.
“All MacMorn knows is that I went to Brachmornalachan, stayed at The Rowans, and came away again because there was nothing doing at the time. That is to say, I think it is all he knows, though after the infernal exhibition at which we had front seats yesterday, I’d hesitate to say quite definitely how much he does know, or how far his information service can reach. I don’t believe he can find out anything of what goes on at The Rowans. The four trees cut him off from there.”
“Then, you mean, he will not know that you have refused to act for Miss Aylener,” she suggested, “but thinks you are merely waiting for some — something to justify you in taking action against him.”
“It makes no difference either way, whether I intend to act or no,” he said. “That is, as far as MacMorn’s obvious actions against me go. From his point of view, the trouble is that I know, and if he carries out any plan against Helen Aylener, I may be able to pin it on him.
“We were both incautious when I had that talk with him. He gave away too much, and so did I. He knows now that I might be dangerous, might turn up evidence against him. Therefore, clear me out of the way before he attempts to transfuse Helen’s life to his own, to put that plainly.”
“But then there is Miss Aylener — the aunt,” she objected.
“Her word against his, and a fantastic, unbelievable accusation, if she makes it,” he rejoined. “Be quite assured there will be no trace left of Helen, if he succeeds — except, that is, a wandering shadow like the others. Nothing as evidence of what he has done.”
“The man Callum, for one, would confirm Miss Aylener,” she urged.
“Callum’s evidence — if he had any — would be suspect,” he said. “Employed by Miss Aylener, he would naturally side with her. Further, you cannot allege murder, which is what this would be — you cannot allege it unless you produce a body. And there would be no body.”
“But there must. What could he do with it?”
“I don’t know. I do know that thirteen deaths — sacrifices — went to the erection of every one of the stones in that circle of his, and even after thousands of years there ought to be at least a bone or two. But I’m quite certain there isn’t.
“Why, I don’t know. What happens at the time of sacrifice, I don’t know. One has to be initiate — like MacMorn — to know. Which is to say, one has to hand one’s soul over to the object of that altar of his, to whatever it is he serves.”
“But if no evidence would be left, why does he want to get rid of you?” she asked. “Surely you are no more danger to him than Callum and Miss Aylener? And he is not trying to remove them.”
“MacMorn is afraid of me because he doesn’t know the extent of my knowledge,” he explained. “He showed it when he warned me away from Brachmornalachan, and now he’s thought it over and suspects I may trace Helen Aylener to him — when she goes.
“Probably there is suspicion, unexpressed but there all the same, about the disappearance of Margaret Gralloch some four decades ago, and if another disappearance could be traced to him, it might mean trouble. You see, Margaret Aylener and Callum are there all the time, and probably he knows what to do about them.
“I’m an outsider butting in, an unknown quantity both as to knowledge and power, and he doesn’t know what to do about me — doesn’t feel safe. You couldn’t trace any of yesterday’s happenings to him, any more than you could connect him with my experiences in the fog, the morning I left the place. He’d feel safer if I were inexpensively removed.”
“What are you going to do about it, then?”
“Watch my step, and nothing more, for the present,” he answered. “Think the whole thing over, and you’ll see there’s absolutely nothing in it — nothing but a lot of wild fancies, practically speaking. I had a talk with MacMorn, and he was quite polite, just warned me that places like pre-Druidic circles have uncanny influence over some people. Which is a general belief — the warning is justifiable, a kindness to a stranger.
“I turn out in a fog and very nearly drive into a hole that might have wrecked the car and killed me — more fool me for not waiting till the fog cleared. My tire marks disappear — as they would, on that resilient peat turf. You and I go for a drive and run into a swarm of flies — nothing in that. A forest pony jumps out in front pf the car — I believe quite a few of those animals get killed by cars, and cause accidents to motorists.
“Another swarm of flies — I know it’s the same swarm, but I’d be a fool to say so — another swarm blots out a truck driver’s sight so that he nearly runs me down. What about it? All perfectly natural, and no sign of MacMorn anywhere in it.”
“And Helen Aylener, and her aunt?” she asked.
“An eccentric, elderly lady has a phobia about a neighbor of hers, for no reason whatever. A highly-strung girl let her mind dwell too much on the Eleusinian mysteries, whatever they were, and has enough theatricality in her makeup to believe she is in some way connected with them. Delusion due to brooding on them too much, of course.
“Callum, if you want to ask about him, has a very good and well paid job with Miss Aylener, and expresses belief in her phobia because he doesn’t want to lose his place. And there you are!”
“Nothing whatever in it,” she observed reflectively.
“Nothing whatever.”
She looked at his eyes and smiled at him gently. “And yet you’re frightened. Terribly frightened, and I’ve never seen you afraid before.”
Gees crushed out his cigarette. “That’s the damnable part of it. There’s something about this whole thing that makes me realize I never have been afraid before. That I didn’t know what fear was until I met Gamel MacMorn . . .”
CHAPTER XII
the fifth attempt
On two successive Fridays, Miss Brandon paid herself at her new salary, having done nothing whatever to earn it, since there was nothing to do.
The Rolls-Bentley had been returned, its replaced guard indistinguishable from the others, as far as glossy perfection went. Gees had taken it out twice, once out of boredom and once to drive his father to Cheltenham to visit another old soldier, and the two trips had been eventless.
MacMorn and Brachmornalachan receded to the back of Gees’ consciousness; the series of incidents connected with them was closed, evidently, and the shadow of fear was fading out within him.
He left the office on that last Monday in May, and went to his club, the Junior Nomads. Gees found a vacant armchair in the smoking room, ordered a pint of bitter, and surveyed the sporting pages of the Times. This club, he decided irritably, was as anti-social as mumps: every Junior Nomad in sight was either gray-headed or bald. Sleepy, beefy, unadventurous. As dull as if being that way was their profession.
Tony Briggs, of the Foreign Office, joined him presently, looking — as usual — like an adventurous tailor’s dream. Gees looked up from his paper.
“Y’know, Tony,” Gees snarled, “whenever I see you in soup and fish like this, I wonder in what joint the bird’s lurking.”
“Roberts told me you asked if I were in,” Tony retorted, “but if I’d known you were in that sort of temper I’d have gone straight out again after getting my letters. What’s wrong with you?”
“Have a beer.” Gees rattled his tankard on the table besi
de him, and sundry members frowned fiercely while a waiter hurried over. “Repeat this, Henry — and you, Tony? One like it?”
“Double Haig well splashed, Henry,” Tony amended. “You dining, Gees, or have you?”
“I intend to wrap myself round a steak in an hour or so,” Gees answered. “Eating early is a mistake — it makes a long evening, especially this time of year. What’s going to win the Derby?”
“There’s only one horse worth backing, and he won’t win,” Tony prophesied. “He can’t, because I’ve backed him, and that’s fatal.”
Gees paid for the drinks and took his change, and the waiter left them. After the merest taste at his tankard, Gees put it down.
“Y’know, Tony, you give tone to the place, sitting there like that. Did you know I’ve been away in the wilds? The far north?”
“Labrador, or Iceland?” Tony inquired skeptically.
“Brachmornalachan.” He gurgled the gutturals. “I met Gamel MacMorn, and Bathsheba Gralloch — and came back.”
“Just as well. And do not injure your tonsils by trying to tell me any more about it.”
“What did you say is going to win the Derby?”
“It’ll either be disqualified or come in fourth, so I’m not telling you,” Tony answered. “Hullo! There’s that odd-looking beggar again!”
Turning his head, Gees too looked out of the window. “Again?” he asked. “When did you see him before?”
“Saturday — no, Friday evening, passing here just as he is now. I was just coming into the club, and met him face to face. And he’s got what I’ve never seen before — absolutely black eyes. He looked full at me, and I noticed them. All the more because I realized I’d never seen such a thing before. Very dark, I’ve seen, but not utterly and entirely black.”
“His name,” Gees said gravely, “is Gamel MacMorn, and he comes from Brachmornalachan. I met him there.”
“I came through Trafalgar Square just now,” Tony said with equal gravity. “Nelson climbed down his column and shook hands with me.”
“Do we each tell another before the next drink, or after?” Gees asked.
“Finish that, and I’ll buy you another,” Tony offered. “But don’t tell any more. I’m going on to one of Lady Benderneck’s small-and-earlies after eating.”
Gees took up his tankard, emptied it without taking breath, and put it down again. “I don’t see what that has to do with it,” he said. “In all our long and precious comradeship, Tony, never have you as good as called me a liar till now. I feel hurt. Mine is pink gin, a double. To drown the insult and give me an appetite for dinner.”
“Grant that I lied level with you,” Tony begged, and turned to the waiter to give the order for two more drinks. “I told the truth.”
“I take it back, Gees. If you know him — well, you know him.”
“That’s a sight worse! I do know him, and he is Gamel MacMorn from Brachmornalachan. Coincidences do happen.”
“I wouldn’t call him so much a coincidence as a — but if he’s a friend of yours I won’t say it. I’d hate to hurt your feelings.”
“He isn’t, and you wouldn’t,” Gees told him. “Oh, Henry” — he addressed the waiter, who had returned with their drinks — “tell the man on the grill to put me on a large fillet steak and cook it, but not shrivel it to splintering point. Tell him it’s for me — he’ll know, then.”
“Very good, sir. Chip potatoes?”
“None whatever. Green peas.”
“Very good, sir,” and Henry took the money Tony had put down, and went his way. Gees leaned back and looked at the heavy old chandelier pendent from the ceiling, just over his head.
“Junior Nomads,” he said, with an inflection of disgust. “And look at that thing! This club ought to be burnt down and rebuilt, Tony.”
“Put it in the suggestion book for the committee to consider,” Tony retorted. “Or set fire to it yourself.”
“You could get double the light out of a modern contraption at half the cost,” Gees pursued. “And those glass luster things are no more than a happy hunting ground for flies.”
“You need something to occupy your mind, obviously,” Tony observed. “Why not close down that fool agency of yours and do some work?”
“Ah! If only you knew, my lad!” He blew smoke up at the offending chandelier, watched it wreathe among the lusters.
Tony let the statement pass, and looked at his watch. Gees rose.
“If you’re in a hurry, go and eat by all means,” Gees advised. “I can’t alter the rate of grilling in this place, any more than I can make ’em put these infernal chandeliers on an ash-heap.”
“You’ve got chandeliers on the brain,” Tony interrupted.
“Commodious resting place for ’em, in my case.” Gees straightened his length out of his chair and moved over to the window to look out. “But you know those bowl lights, alabaster-looking things — ”
A thudding crash and a shout from Tony interrupted him, and he spun about to see the chandelier embedded in the chair in which he had been seated. The leather upholstery was torn in a score of places, the chair itself broken down, and Tony had a handkerchief out to staunch the trickle of blood where a splinter of broken glass had struck his hand.
A smile that was almost a sneer twisted Gees’ lips. “I wonder how he did it,” he said. “To plagiarize Mark Twain, this sort of thing is getting monotonous, but how the devil did he do it!”
“Who did what?” Tony inquired, as two waiters came hurrying.
“Gamel MacMorn of Brachmornalachan chopped it down,” Gees said.
“What bee have you got in your bonnet?” Tony inquired caustically.
“Exactly what Helen called it — a bee,” Gees said. “Don’t mind me, Tony — you don’t know the lady, anyhow. But it strikes me, with all we’ve seen tonight, things are about to happen.”
“You’re madder than usual,” Tony remarked.
“Three — four — the fifth attempt,” Gees reflected aloud. “Tony, you’re right. I’m so mad that if I could draw a bead on the right target, I should shoot to kill. And maybe I will. Maybe I’ll have to . . .”
CHAPTER XIII
the web is tangled
When Tony Briggs had gone his way, Gees loafed aimlessly through Piccadilly Circus toward Leicester Square. He had a nodding acquaintance with a number of its nocturnal frequenters — those of whom the average man disclaims all knowledge among his respectable fellows. But Gees said none never knew when they might be useful. Tonight, there were plenty of these weary ladies on parade.
He found one of them close beside him, from nowhere. She said, without looking at him, “Oh, puritan, got a few minutes to spare?”
“Now you know that’s no good with me, Betty.”
“Don’t I just? Might as well try to get a smile from the cenotaph. No, but I do want to get into the beer parlor, and you know they won’t let us girls in alone. Take me in, and I’ll pay for the drinks. Will you?”
He turned about with her. “I’ll buy ’em,” he said. “What’s he like — or do you want to scratch somebody’s eyes out?”
“Darling, you’re an angel,” she told him, “and I wouldn’t spoil my manicure for any doublecrosser. But it ain’t that at all. A pasty-faced josser I bumped into the other night — only I wasn’t quite stony then and didn’t like his complexion — he told me I could find him down in the beer place every night this week up to tomorrow. And I am stony now. If you hadn’t said you’d pay for the drinks, I’d had to borrow a half-crown off you to do it. I’ve only got threepence left.”
“The moral is obvious,” Gees observed, as they reached the doorway of the place she wanted to visit, and turned in.
She paused on the top step and said: “Moral be blast! I could get twenty pound on the piano, and I haven’t pawned a thing, yet.”
The commissionaire in the doorway, overhearing the statement, grinned, and caught the shilling Gees threw at him before following Betty do
wn the stairs. Inside, they took a bucket chair apiece and he ordered a small lager for himself and advocaat for her. She looked round the place carefully, and in the end shook her head.
“Not got here, yet,” she said. “You couldn’t mistake him.”
“You should have ordered a longer drink,” Gees painted out. “It’s rather late, though. What’s this prize packet like, when he arrives?”
“Oh, weird,” she said, and left it at that till the waiter had gone off with his tip. “Face like chalk and eyes like coals. He spoke quite good English, but I don’t think he was. Creepy sort of foreigner, I thought.”
“I’m interested.” Gees leaned his folded arms on the table between them. “Now tell me all about it, Betty. I’ve been batted in the face by so many coincidences lately that I think this may be another.”
“Well it was — let me see — yes, last Friday. I’d left the flat about seven, and came down here and ran straight into him, just about where I met you before we came in here just now. He looked at me, and I spoke. Without thinking, before I’d looked at him properly and got a sight of his eyes, really. And then I saw he was taking me all in from top to toe, as if he was measuring me up to see if I’d fit into a space or something.
“It was weird, I tell you. He wanted to stand there and talk, but I wouldn’t. So he walked along with me as far as the Circus, and I tell you I was glad to get his eyes off me. Weird, they were. Black as coals.
“I made up my mind to quit him at the Circus and turn back. He told me he’d give me twenty pound, cash down, if I’d promise to go to Bristol some time toward the end of this week — go by the train he’d tell me, from Paddington. He said he’d meet me there, and give me the twenty pound to start with so I’d know it was all right. But it smelt fishy to me.
“I couldn’t see what sort of decoy duck he was making out of me, and thought I might get landed in something nasty if I agreed. So I turned it down, but he slipped a ten-shilling note into my hand and said if I did happen to change my mini I’d only to look down here any night up to tomorrow, and the trip would be on.”
