"I don't like threats, and it must have shown, because although it would have looked bad as all hell, still I wasn't going to be a party to any murders, no matter how well-planned. I told him so, bluntly, and he looked sad and reflective, but not particularly worried.
" 'Very well,' he said at length, 'I can't really blame you, because you are in a very odd position.' His striking head turned toward the window in brief thought, and then he turned back to face me directly and spoke.
" 'I will make a bargain with you. Attest my statement to the police, and then let me have the rest of the day to talk to you. If, at the end of the day, I have not satisfied you about my aunt's death, you have my word, solemnly given, that I will go the police station and attest your story, the fact that I have been lying and anything else you choose to say.'
"His words were delivered with great gravity, and it never for one instant occurred to me to doubt them. I can't give you any stronger statement to show you how the man impressed me. I agreed straightaway.
"In about ten minutes the police arrived, and an ambulance came with them. They were efficient enough, and very quick, but there was one thing that showed through the whole of the proceedings, and it was that the Baron Nyderstrom was somebody! All he did was state that his aunt had died of a heart attack and that was that! I don't mean the police were serfs, or crooks either for that matter. But there was an attitude of deference very far removed from servility or politeness. I doubt if royalty gets any more nowadays, even in England. When he had told me earlier that his name was 'known in these parts,' it was obviously the understatement of the decade.
"Well, the police took the body away in the ambulance, and the baron made arrangements for a funeral parlor and a church with local people over the telephone. All this took awhile, and it must have been four-thirty when we were alone again.
"We went back into the library. I should mention that he had gotten some cold meat, bread and beer from a back pantry, just after the police left, and so now we sat down and made ourselves some sandwiches. I was ravenous, but he ate quite lightly for a man of his size, in fact only about a third of what I did.
"When I felt full, I poured another glass of an excellent beer, lit a cigarette, sat back and waited. With this man, there was no need for unnecessary speech.
"He was sitting behind his big desk facing me, and once again that singularly attractive smile broke through.
" 'You are waiting for your story, my friend, if I may call you so. You shall have it, but I ask your word as a man of honor that it not be for repetition.' He paused briefly. 'I know it is yet a further condition, but if you do not give it, there is no recourse except the police station and jail for me. If you do, you will hear a story and perhaps—perhaps, I say, because I make no promises—see and hear something which no man has seen or heard for many, many centuries, save only for my family and not many of them. What do you say?'
"I never hesitated for a second. I said 'yes,' and I should add that I've never regretted it. No, never."
Ffellowes' thoughts seemed far away, as he paused and stared out into the murky New York night, dimly lit by shrouded street lamps, and the fog lights on passing cars. No one spoke, and no sound broke the silence of the room but a muffled cough. He continued.
"Nyderstrom next asked me if I knew anything about Norse mythology. Now this question threw me for an absolute loss. What did a dangerous animal and an awful death, to say nothing of a possible murder, have to do with Norse mythology?
"However, I answered that I'd read of Odin, Thor, and a few other gods as a child in school, the Valkyries, of course, and that was about it.
" 'Odin, Thor, the Valkyries, and a few others?' My host smiled, 'You must understand that they are rather late Norse and even late German adaptions of something much older. Much, much older, something with its roots in the dawn of the world.
" 'Listen,' he went on, speaking quietly but firmly, 'and when I have finished we will wait for that movers' truck to return. I was able to intercept it, and what it took, because of that very foolish woman, must be returned.'
"He paused as if at a loss how to begin, and then went on. His bell-like voice remained muted, but perfectly audible, while he detailed one of the damnedest stories I've ever heard. If I hadn't been through what I had that day, and if he hadn't been what he was, I could have thought I was listening to the Grand Master of all the lunatics I'd ever met.
" 'Long ago,' he said, 'my family came from inner Asia.' They were some of the people the latercomers called Aesir, the gods of Valhalla, but they were not gods, only a race of wandering conquerors. They settled here, on this spot, despite warnings from the few local inhabitants, a small, dark, shore-dwelling folk. This house is built on the foundations of a fortress, a very old one, dating at the very least back to the Second Century B.C. It was destroyed later in the wars of the Sixteenth Century, but that is modern history.
" 'At any rate, my remote ancestors began soon to lose people. Women bathing, boys fishing, even full-grown warriors out hunting, they would vanish and never return. Children had to be guarded and so did the livestock, which had a way of disappearing also, although that of course was preferable to the children.
" 'Finally, for no trace of the mysterious marauders could be found, the chief of my family decided to move away. He had prayed to his gods and searched zealously, but the reign of silent, stealthy terror never ceased, and no human or other foe could be found.
" 'But before he gave up, the chief had an idea. He sent presents and a summons to the shaman, the local priest, not of our own people, but of the few, furtive, little shore folk, the strand people, who had been there when we came. We despised and avoided them, but we had never harmed them. And the bent little shaman came and answered the chiefs questions.
" 'What he said amounted to this. We, that is my people, had settled on the land made sacred in the remote past to Jormungandir. Now Jormungandir in the standard Norse sagas and myths is the great, world-circling sea serpent, the son of the renegade Aesir Loki and a giantess. He is a monster who on the day of Ragnarok will arise to assault Asgard. But actually, these myths are based on something quite, quite different. The ancient Jormungandir was a god of the sea all right, but he was here before any Norsemen, and he had children, who were semi-mortal and very, very dangerous. All the Asgard business was invented later, by people who did not remember the reality, which was both unpleasant and a literal, living menace to ancient men.
" 'My ancestor, the first of our race to rule here, asked what he could do to abate the menace. Nothing, said the shaman, except go away. Unless, if the chief were brave enough, he, the shaman, could summon the Children of the God, and the chief could ask them how they felt!
" 'Well, my people were anything but Christians in those days, and they had some rather nasty gods of their own. Also, the old chief, my ancestor, was on his mettle, and he liked the land he and his tribe had settled. So—he agreed, and although his counselors tried to prevent him, he went alone at night to the shore with the old shaman of the shore people. And what is more, he returned.
" 'From that day to this we have always lived here on this stretch of shore. There is a vault below the deepest cellar where certain things are kept and a ceremony through which the eldest son of the house of Nyderstrom must pass. I will not tell you more about it save to say that it involves an oath, one we have never broken, and that the other parties to the oath would not be good for men to see. You should know, for you have seen one!'
"I had sat spellbound while this rigmarole went on, and some of the disbelief must have shown in my eyes, because he spoke rather sharply all at once.
" 'What do you think the Watcher in the Sea was, the "animal" that seized you? If it had been anyone else in that car but myself—!'
"I nodded, because after recalling my experience on my swim, I was less ready to dismiss his story, and I had been in danger of forgetting my adventure. I apologized and he went on talking.
" '
The woman you spoke to was my father's much younger sister, a vain and arrogant woman of no brainpower at all. She lived a life in what is now thought of as society, in Stockholm, on a generous allowance from me, and I have never liked her. Somewhere, perhaps as a child, she learned more than she should about the family secret, which is ordinarily never revealed to our women.
" 'She wished me to marry and tried ceaselessly to entrap me with female idiots of good family whom she had selected.
" 'It is true that I must someday marry, but my aunt irritated me beyond measure, and I finally ordered her out of the house and told her that her allowance would cease if she did not stop troubling me. She was always using the place for house parties for her vapid friends, until I put a stop to it.
" 'I knew when I saw her body what she had done. She must have found out that the servants were away and that I would be gone for the day. She sent men from Stockholm. The local folk would not obey such an order from her, in my absence. She must have had duplicate keys, and she went in and down and had moved what she should never have seen, let alone touched. It was sacrilege, no less, and of a very real and dangerous kind. The fool thought the things she took held me to the house, I imagine.
" 'You see,' he went on, with more passion in his voice than I had previously heard. 'They are not responsible. They do not see things as we do. They regarded the moving of those things as the breaking of a trust, and they struck back. You appeared, because of the time element, to have some connection, and they struck at you. You do see what I mean, don't you?'
"His green eyes fixed themselves on me in an open appeal. He actually wanted sympathy for what, if his words were true, must be the damnedest set of beings this side of madness. And even odder, you know, he had got it. I had begun to make a twisted sense of what he said, and on that quiet evening in the big shadowed room, I seemed to feel an ancient and undying wrong, moreover one which badly needed putting right.
"He seemed to sense this and went on, more quietly.
" 'You know, I still need your help. Your silence later, but more immediate help now. Soon that lorry will be here and the things it took must be restored.
" 'I am not now sure if I can heal the breach. It will depend on the Others. If they believe me, all will go as before. If not—well, it was my family who kept the trust, but also who broke it. I will be in great danger, not only to my body but also to my soul. Their power is not all of the body.
" 'We have never known,' he went on softly, 'why they love this strip of coast. It is not used so far as we know, for any of their purposes, and they are subject to our emotions or desires in any case. But they do, and so the trust is honored.'
"He looked at his watch and murmured 'six o'clock.' He got up and went to the telephone, but as his hand met the receiver, we both heard something.
"It was a distant noise, a curious sound, as if, far away somewhere, a wet piece of cloth were being dragged over stone. In the great silent house, the sound could not be localized, but it seemed to me to come from deep below us, perhaps in a cellar. It made my hair stiffen.
" 'Hah,' he muttered. 'They are stirring. I wonder—'
"As he spoke, we both became conscious of another noise, one which had been growing upon us for some moments unaware, that of a powerful motor engine. Our minds must have worked together for as the engine noise grew, our eyes met and we both burst into simultaneous gasps of relief. It could only be the furniture van, returning at last.
"We both ran to the entrance. The hush of evening lay over the estate, and shadows were long and dark, but the twin lights turning into the drive cast a welcome luminance over the entrance.
"The big lorry parked again in front of the main entrance, and the two workmen I had seen earlier got out. I could not really understand the rapid gunfire Swedish, but I gathered the baron was explaining that his aunt had made a mistake. At one point both men looked appalled, and I gathered that Nyderstrom had told them of his aunt's death. (He told me later that he had conveyed the impression that she was unsound mentally: it would help quiet gossip when they saw a report of the death.)
"All four of us went around to the rear of the van, and the two men opened the doors. Under the baron's direction they carried out and deposited on the gravel the two pieces of furniture I had seen earlier. One was the curious chair. It did not look terribly heavy, but it had a box bottom, solid sides instead of legs and no arm rests. Carved on the oval-topped head was a hand grasping a sort of trident, and when I looked closely, I got a real jolt. The hand had only two fingers and a thumb, all without nails, and I suddenly felt in my bones the reality of my host's story.
"The other piece was the small, plain, rectangular chest, a bit like a large toy chest, with short legs ending in feet like a duck's. I mean three-toed and webbed, not the conventional 'duck foot' of the antique dealers.
"Both the chair and the chest were made of a dark wood, so dark it looked oily, and they had certainly not been made yesterday.
"Nyderstrom had the two men put the two pieces in the front hall and then paid them. They climbed back into their cab, so far as I could make out, apologizing continuously for any trouble they might have caused. We waved from the porch and then watched the lights sweep down the drive and fade into the night. It was fully dark now, and I suddenly felt a sense of plain old-fashioned fright as we stood in silence on the dark porch.
" 'Come,' said the baron, suddenly breaking the silence, 'we must hurry. I assume you will help?'
" 'Certainly,' I said. I felt I had to, you see, and had no lingering doubts at all. I'm afraid that if he'd suggested murdering someone, by this time I'd have agreed cheerfully. There was a compelling, hypnotic power about him. Rasputin was supposed to have had it and Hitler also, although I saw him plenty, and never felt it. At any rate, I just couldn't feel that anything this man wanted was wrong.
"We manhandled the chair and the chest into the back of the house, stopping at last in a back hall in front of a huge oaken door, which appeared to be set in a stone wall. Since the house was made of wood, this stone must have been part of the original building, the ancient fort, I guess, that he'd mentioned earlier.
"There were three locks on the door, a giant old padlock, a smaller newer one and a very modern-looking combination. Nyderstrom fished out two keys, one of them huge, and turned them. Then, with his back to me, he worked the combination. The old house was utterly silent, and there was almost an atmospheric hush, the kind you get when a bad thunderstorm is going to break. Everything seemed to be waiting, waiting for something to happen.
"There was a click and Nyderstrom flung the great door open. The first thing I noticed was that it was lined with steel on the other, inner side, and the second, that it opened on a broad flight of shallow steps leading down on a curve out of sight into darkness. The third impression was not visual at all. A wave of odor, strong but not unpleasant, of tide pools, seaweed and salt air poured out of the opening. And there were several large patches of water on the highest steps, large enough to reflect the light.
"Nyderstrom closed the door again gently, not securing it, and turned to me. He pointed, and I now saw on one wall of the corridor to the left of the door, about head height, a steel box, also with a combination lock. A heavy cable led from it down to the floor. Still in silence, he adjusted the combination and opened the box. Inside was a knife switch with a red handle. He left the box open and spoke, solemnly and slowly.
" 'I am going down to a confrontation. You must stay right here, with the door open a little, watching the steps. I may be half an hour, but at most three quarters. If I come up alone, let me out. If I come up not alone, slam the door, turn the lock and throw that switch. Also if anything else comes up, do so. This whole house, under my direction, and at my coming of age, was extensively mined and you will have exactly two and a half minutes to get as far as possible from it. Remember, at most, three quarters of an hour. At the end of that time, even if nothing has happened, you will throw that switch a
nd run ...!'
"I could only nod. There seemed to be nothing to say, really.
"He seemed to relax a little, patted me on the shoulders, and turned to unlock the strange chest. Over his shoulder he talked to me as he took things out. 'You are going to see one thing at any rate, a true Sea King in full regalia. Something, my friend, no one has seen who is not a member of my family since the late Bronze Age.'
"He stood up and began to undress quickly, until he stood absolutely naked. I have never seen a more wonderful figure of a man, pallid as an ivory statue, but huge and splendidly formed. On his head, from out of the stuff in the chest, he had set a narrow coronet, only a band in the back, but rising to a flanged peak in front. Mounted in the front peak was a plaque on which the three-fingered hand and trident were outlined in purple gems. The thing was solid gold. Nyderstrom then stooped and pulled on a curious, short kilt, made of some scaly hide like a lizard's and colored an odd green-gold. Finally, he took in his right hand a short, curved, gold rod, ending in a blunt, stylized trident.
"We looked at each other a moment and then he smiled. 'My ancestors were very successful Vikings,' he said, still smiling. 'You see, they always could call on help.''
The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 5
