Death by the Mistletoe

by Angus MacVicar

  Dr. Black was bending over Professor Campbell, making an intent examination.

  “Slight shock,” he announced, straightening. “Loss of memory.” And in a whisper he muttered to himself:“The blackguards! The damned blackguards!”

  “Is he … is he in danger?” asked Eileen.

  “No,” returned the doctor sharply. “Temporary aphasia. He is in no danger of his life. And with care he ought to recover speech and memory in a week.”

  A week … James met Dr. Black’s choleric eye. In a week’s time it would be too late to learn the vital secrets hidden in the blank mind of the Professor. Once more they realised that the evil power of Na Daoine Deadh Ghinn had beaten them; for it was clear that the Professor’s condition had been deliberately brought about. Dr. Black later tried to explain to James the strange affliction which he imagined had been imposed upon the minds both of the Professor and of Miss Dwyer. It had to do with hypnotism, and the doctor used a long word which James could never remember, but which meant “long-lasting.” Professor Campbell himself, when he had completely recovered, stated that it had been forced upon his brain by the white-robed man, as he lay bound in the side cave. He likened the experience to that of receiving a heavy dose of chloroform. He had struggled madly against it; but over his mind had come the evil power in a singing, surging flood. It had at last been pleasant to submit.

  But Eileen’s eyes showed only her relief. She looked round on them all, smiling.

  “Oh, thank you … all of you!” she said simply. “If you will excuse me I will help Doctor Black to put Daddy to bed. Please sit down, and I will get the maid to bring you something to drink. Millicent, you must he down too. Your room is ready.”

  “I will go home now, I think,” returned Miss Dwyer, dully.

  Major Dallas bowed.

  “I’m afraid we must get back to town at once. Miss Campbell,” he said, speaking for the policemen, “We will drop Miss Dwyer on the way, if she cares, and explain things to her uncle.”

  “Please do,” agreed Miss Dwyer. She turned and left the room without another word.

  Major Dallas, Inspector McMillan and Detective-Inspector McKay followed her, joining the other members of the force outside. The purr of the cars passing down the avenue faded into the sounds of the morning. Birds were singing in the garden and the sea was breaking lustily on the beach.

  When Eileen and Dr. Black had roused the Professor and led him from the room, James, the Rev. Duncan Nicholson and Mr. Archibald MacLean sat silently round the dead embers of the fire.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Dr. Black was summoned away in the early morning to attend an urgent appendicitis case in Campbeltown, but the other three men stayed in Dalbeg at Eileen’s request, snatching a few hours of much needed sleep in the drawing-room easy-chairs. Eileen had wanted to prepare a bedroom for them, but they had been unanimous in their decision to rest downstairs. They would be more ready to deal with another possible emergency, and more wakeful.

  James had ’phoned his landlady to allay her anxiety. The Fiscal, apparently, had told his wife that he would be waiting the night at Dalbeg; while the Rev. Duncan Nicholson’s housekeeper had telephoned from the “Laich” Manse earlier in the night, receiving a reply from Eileen not to expect her master until the morning.

  It was after ten o’clock when Eileen woke them. She was fresh and almost happy again, and James was acutely aware of his own dishevelled and rakish appearance. His red hair stood up in a tremendous cloud above his forehead, while his eyes were bleared and glum. His pale face seemed even thinner than usual.

  “I must get a wash!” he stated decisively, though with some drowsiness.

  Eileen laughed softly, and then, suddenly, her expression changed.

  “Your cheek is all cut, Mr. MacPherson!” she exclaimed anxiously.

  James attempted a nonchalant grin.

  “It’s nothing … a mere scratch,” he said, with a heroic air, and a sidelong glance at the Rev. Duncan Nicholson, who had no cuts to arouse trepidation in Eileen’s heart.

  The young minister beamed.

  “He said a rat bit him, Eileen!”

  “You must tell me seriously about everything after breakfast.” Eileen was determined. “Just now I am going to bathe that cut, Mr. MacPherson.”

  The Fiscal and the Rev. Duncan Nicholson left the room to perform their ablutions upstairs, and when Eileen returned with a glass bowl of tepid water, some lint and sticking plaster, James found himself in full possession of the field.

  Just for one short moment he wondered if, after all, he might not have the slightest of slight chances against that great ass, Nicholson. But he thrust the thought from him, fiercely and savagely. What was the good of giving way to his love for Eileen when her regard for the young minister was so obvious? To do so would bring no happiness to Eileen, and would only mean pain and misery for himself. And James was not going to be hurt … if he could possibly help it.

  Nevertheless, it was very pleasant to have her close to him, the fresh perfume that she used eddying round him as she dabbed his cheek with a small piece of lint. And wasn’t she perfectly lovely wearing that white blouse and neat blue skirt? He liked the rosy tinge of colour on her throat, which rose up so charmingly to that round, brave chin. And these little court shoes …

  “Hold up your head, Mr. MacPherson!” commanded Eileen, and James jerked it back with a start.

  “How is Professor Campbell this morning?” he asked, and that annoying warmth again suffused his cheeks.

  “He is sleeping quite quietly still. Doctor Black tells me not to worry about him at all. And really, I try not to. I’m just so glad to have him back after that dreadful night … ”

  Her eyes clouded.

  “Everything will be all right now,” James told her, with a confidence he was far from feeling.

  Eileen bent down and looked more closely into the wound on his left cheek.

  “You know,” she said, “it’s a little inflamed … I’m terribly sorry I didn’t notice it last night.”

  “You had plenty of other more important things to worry about, Miss Campbell. The old cheek is a mere detail.”

  “What happened?” Eileen put the question straightly and held his eyes.

  James hesitated, but her gaze compelled him to answer truthfully.

  “A fellow threw a knife at me in the cave,” he said.

  “A knife … ” Eileen applied the lint very gently to the red weal. “Are you not wishing you were out of all this terrible trouble?”

  “No,” returned James slowly, “I’m not … for various reasons.”

  He looked away. He was afraid to meet those steady blue eyes. She might see something in his own which he was striving desperately to hide.

  “It will make a tremendous newspaper story, of course.”

  “By Jove, it will!” agreed James with instinctive enthusiasm. Then he grew sombre again. “I wish you could go away somewhere till it was all over, Miss Campbell,” he added.

  “I’m all right … James,” she said. “Oh, I say, why did you pull your head back like that? I’ll have to start all over again with the sticking-plaster.”

  James was contrite. But, good Lord! Wasn’t it enough to make any fellow start? She had called him James — plain James, and no ‘Mr. MacPherson’ about it. Eileen had … He would have endured fifty cuts for just such a reward.

  “I’m sorry,” he returned. “I’m a clumsy idiot … er … Miss Campbell.”

  He couldn’t manage it. He wanted to call her Eileen. He wanted to do all sorts of mad things. But he just couldn’t manage it. She was so lovely; so much finer and … and better than he was.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, going off at a practical tangent; and James suddenly came to himself.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said, and then wondered why on earth she laughed so merrily.

  But Eileen understood. She herself, in fact, required to think of something practical just then to bring
her back to realities. She put the finishing touches to the last strip of plaster.

  “There!” she said, stepping back and standing with her dark brown head on one side to view her handiwork. “You’re quite like a hospital now, James

  “It’s jolly decent of you … er … Eileen!” He swallowed hard and watched her eyes with suspicion and trepidation.

  But no! She didn’t seem to mind that. It was remarkable how care-free and happy she seemed after all that she had come through on the previous night. Of course, she had her father back now and he was in absolutely no danger; but at the same time could these facts alone have caused the flush in her cheeks and that adorable smile? Come to think of it; had that confounded fellow Nicholson anything to do with it?

  “Nonsense,” said Eileen. “It is the least I can do for you, after … last night. But, I say, James, you must really go and brush that hair of yours. It’s terrible.”

  “I know.” James’s big mouth widened into a smile. “And doesn’t a dinner-jacket look daft at this time in the morning?”

  “I’m afraid that shirt-front is ruined,” lamented Eileen.

  James looked down at his crumpled garment, then straightly at Eileen. Her glance did not waver, but slowly her cheeks flooded with colour. Her breast began to rise and fall, fluttering beneath the white blouse.

  “Oh, Eileen!” said James …

  Then with a despairing gesture he plunged his right hand through his red mop of hair; for the Rev. Duncan Nicholson and Mr. Archibald MacLean had chosen that very moment to return to the drawing-room.

  *

  While they smoked their after-breakfast cigarettes, the three men, by turns, told Eileen the story of their adventures in the cave. By the time they had finished, Major Dallas, dapper and smart, had arrived at Dalbeg, bringing with him Constable Wallace and Constable Stewart.

  “I want them to guard the house, Miss Campbell,” he said, “At Lagnaha, where the place is filled with men servants, there is no need of police protection for Miss Dwyer. But it is different here.”

  Eileen nodded slowly.

  “I understand,” she replied.

  “Your father — is he better?”

  “There is no change. But he is very peaceful and comfortable. I shall summon you at once, Major Dallas, if he comes round.”

  “Thank you, Miss Campbell.”

  James and the Fiscal left for town with Major Dallas in the police car. As they moved off the Rev. Duncan Nicholson, still lingering on at Eileen’s side, beamed on James.

  *

  Major Dallas, who drove the hired tourer himself, was in a talkative mood during the run back to Campbeltown. Unlike James and the Fiscal, he felt a certain sense of exhilaration as the cool wind, created by the rush of the car, whirled around him. The grinding worry of his task was momentarily lightened.

  Again the sun shone down from a cloudless sky, and, indeed, it may be commented upon here that the good weather continued to hold until the last act of this queer drama of the “Mistletoe Murders” had been played out.

  James, who sat in front with the Chief Constable, had three important questions to ask; and Major Dallas was able to supply an answer to each of them.

  First of all, the editor of the Gazette learned to his relief that “Kate” had been recovered. The car had been found, strangely enough, nowhere near the Piper’s Cave, but in a small side road at the foot of Lagnaha Brae, not a hundred yards from where the body of the Rev. Archibald Allan had lain. It was quite undamaged. The police were of the opinion that after discharging his passengers at the Kiel entrance to the Piper’s Cave, the driver had continued his journey, returning to the main Blaan road by a devious route and finally abandoning the stolen property as far away from the cave as was possible without going near the town. No trace of the driver however, had been discovered.

  Secondly, the mystery of the man’s white handkerchief found in Dalbeg garden by Inspector McMillan had been cleared up to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. The laundry mark, E 19, was ascertained to be that used on all articles belonging to Lagnaha House dealt with by the Campbeltown Steam Laundry Company. Miss Dwyer, whose mind seemed also to be an utter blank as far as the events of the previous night was concerned, had been unable to speak with Sergeant MacLeod during his call at Lagnaha that morning; but Mr. Anderson Ellis had put forward the theory that before leaving for Dalbeg his niece had inadvertently picked up one of his handkerchiefs instead of one of her own. The police agreed with this opinion.

  In the third place, Major Dallas told James that the constables who had been stationed at the cave-entrances, near the Mull and on Bengullion, had been undisturbed during their four hours’ watch the night before. But both couples, it transpired, had shown considerable initiative. Instead of remaining stolidly on guard outside, they had penetrated some distance underground in each instance, and similar reports had been received from both parties. A wall of stone, apparently solid and immovable, brought the two caves to an abrupt end, in each case about a hundred yards from the entrance. Further, there were no signs, as far as the constables could see, of the caves having been used within recent times. It was Major Dallas’s opinion, however, that the huge stones blocking the way of visitors had been placed there by human agency at a fairly recent date.

  “But it is obvious,” he said, “that there must be still another entrance to the Piper’s Cave — an entrance of which we know nothing. If such were not the case, then the cave-dwellers wouldn’t have sprung that booby trap on us, thereby blocking their own exit — as well as our entrance — at the Kiel end. As I see it, the ‘well-meaning ones’ in Blaan are as safe as ever from the police.”

  “Could we not dig a way through the earth and stones?” suggested James, without much enthusiasm.

  The Fiscal was leaning over the centre partition of the car.

  “Damn it, man!” he exclaimed irritably. “It would take weeks. Before we had the job completed the ‘well-meaning ones’ would be in Timbuctoo. Seems to me as if we are up against a blank wall every time — metaphorically as well as literally. Our prisoners escape as if the police were children. The information which we might get from Professor Campbell and Miss Dwyer is hidden from us, because these blasted cave-men are too clever for us … and because they have some strange power over ordinary, decent men and women. They must consider us a gloriously inept mob, unworthy of more than a moment’s consideration.”

  “I sincerely hope that such is exactly their opinion,’ returned Major Dallas, who showed no sign of annoyance at Mr. Archibald MacLean’s rather unfair reflection on the work of his policemen. “Our one big chance of success is that we find out their place of worship in Blaan before Wednesday, and that they will hold their customary Festival that night. This they certainly will not do unless they are confident regarding our ignorance of their movements.

  “And another thing, MacLean,” continued-the Chief Constable, scarcely pausing for breath, “you must remember that Blaan, after all, is only one of over thirty different points of concentration all over the kingdom. If you view the national situation generally there is no need for such pessimism. Even though we fail here others will not fail. We are in constant touch with the heads of police in certain districts, and this morning we learned that everything is in readiness for a general series of arrests on Wednesday. The members of Professor Campbell’s society have done their work well. In Devonshire, in Yorkshire, in Peeblesshire, in Aberdeenshire — to mention only one or two of the areas concerned — there is a great deal of quiet confidence among those who know the ropes. Blaan is the only parish in which complications have arisen, and in which the secret shrine is as yet undiscovered. I grant you, of course, that the leaders of the cult reside in this part of the country, and that it is of great importance that we should be successful.”

  “Don’t I know it!” rapped out Mr. Archibald MacLean, who, it appeared to James, was somewhat envious of the Chief Constable’s flow of cold, incisive argument.

&n
bsp; “But, my dear fellow,” returned Major Dallas, “we still have almost a week in which to work. Even though we get no further information from Professor Campbell, surely we shall ourselves light on some valuable facts relevant to the case.”

  “What puzzles me,” said James, “is how that High Priest — or whatever he is — manages, with his satellites, to eke out an existence in the cave. And how have they been able to live there — obviously for several months at least — without having raised suspicions in the parish? How do they get their food, clothes, petrol, everything? And how do visitors manage to enter the cave without being spotted? How did they manage to get that engine and dynamo down into the cave? Although they did assemble them inside, they certainly couldn’t have brought in all the parts through the Kiel, Bengullion or Mull entrances. They are too narrow. The easy chairs, too, that McKay and I saw in the side cave, couldn’t have been carried through the ‘lobby’ — for the same reason. The bed — were it taken to pieces — and the electric fire might have been.”

  Major Dallas, to a casual observer intent only upon his driving, nodded.

  “Which simply brings us back to the point from which we have wandered,” he said. “We must discover another entrance to the cave, one which, unlike the openings at Kiel, Bengullion and the Mull, is large enough to admit the passage of an engine and dynamo. And I think it is clear that such an entrance must connect with some private house, whose owner is himself one of the ‘well-meaning ones.’ There can be no other explanation of what we discovered this morning. It would be a simple matter for men to exist in the cave — for a short time at any rate — under such conditions. They could suddenly appear in the house as guests, and take their exercise in the grounds without inconvenience and without arousing suspicion. Food, clothes, and oil for the engine could be bought by the owner as if for the use of his own household … Yes, we must discover another entrance to the cave.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot that we have to discover,” snapped Mr. Archibald MacLean.

  He was anxious and worried, and his heavy, domineering face had become strained and lined since the previous night. James felt he could not blame him too much for the bitterness in his tone.