“There he is,” he said.
And sure enough, there was Professor Reisby, in the fluffy brown suit and wearing the blue and yellow tie, seated at a table close to the wall about half-way down the room. He was not in a position to observe those who entered, and at the moment of our arrival he was engaged in fixing a chessboard between himself and his companion. This companion was a man of decidedly Anglo-Chinese appearance, but he was dressed, unlike most of the others, in a well-fitted suit of grey tweed.
“If we sit here,” said Ellingham quietly, guiding me to a table for two, “it is improbable that he will notice us; and I would rather, if you don’t mind, leave him to the undisturbed enjoyment of his game of chess.”
I was so much taken aback by the peculiarity of the whole situation that I sat down without a word. From our table we had an intermittent view of the Professor and his odd companion playing their game, and I could see that Ellingham was following the moves with considerable interest. But Ellingham was a man who kept his thoughts to himself. Having ordered lunch he started a long and illuminating discourse on the subject of modern French writers, and although he glanced from time to time at the Professor’s table he did not make a single comment on what he observed. I knew, however, that he was capable of giving close attention to one thing while he was talking with subtlety and ease about another; indeed, I have never met anyone in whom the faculties of dissociation were so curiously developed.
Before we had finished our lunch the Professor triumphantly concluded the game of chess, and almost immediately afterwards he left the place without seeing us. In ordinary circumstances I should have risen and accosted him, but Ellingham’s manner had shown me that the circumstances were not ordinary. The other player remained at the table, slowly imbibing a glass of stout.
“Well,” said Ellingham, “did you observe anything?”
“It was a very short game,” I replied feebly.
“Reisby plays a good game,” said Ellingham, “he opens with a variation of the Allgaier. Did you notice anything else?”
“No—at least—”
“The chessboard belongs to the house; it is now folded up on the table. The chessmen, on the other hand, were brought by that man with the yellow face—he is probably a steward. He brought them in a square mahogany box with a sliding lid, which he took out of that shabby bag of his; it is on the floor by his right foot. There is nothing very odd in that, because a good player likes his own men; but it is a little singular that Professor Reisby should have taken away both box and chessmen when he left the table. He put them into a large brown attaché case which he is now carrying in his hand.”
“Did he? But surely the explanation may be quite a trivial one.”
“Your sagacity is commendable, my dear friend. Now let us return for a moment to what we were saying about Lourdes and the decadence of realism.”
6
I did not mention the episode at the eating-house to my cousin Eric; I did not want him to think that I had been spying upon the hero; nor did I see why Professor Reisby, who was obviously an eccentric man, need be suspected of any sinister designs because he played a game of chess in Poplar. I felt that eccentricity alone would account for a great deal more than the mere exchange of a box of chessmen.
Ellingham showed a peculiar reticence in regard to the episode when I saw him on the day of his return to Cambridge. He treated it lightly, and gave me the impression that he was rather ashamed of himself. And I was greatly pleased when I heard him speak about the Professor in a warmly enthusiastic style, hoping that he would be able to spend a few days at Aberleven and see something of the excavation of Caer Carrws.
We agreed to go north together, if circumstances permitted, on the 8th or 9th of April. For my part, I was anxious to see more of the Reisbys, and the idea of a holiday with my cousin Eric was, of course, delightful.
I met the Reisbys on two other occasions before they left London. They invited me (with Eric) to dinner at their hotel, and they also invited me to an informal but very austere gathering of learned men at the Holborn Restaurant.
On both occasions I admired the colossal yet amiable presence of the Professor and the not less remarkable charm of his lovely wife. My youthful head was full, just then, of a somewhat undiscriminating Wagner cult; and as I looked at them—the man with his immense Nordic virility, his grandly rugged face and his flowing beard, and the woman with her steady grey eyes and her mass of blond hair—I could not help thinking of those divinities who march with trumpet music in the scenes of the Ring.
7
No doubt I was infinitely more romantic, at the age of twenty-one, than I am to-day. But I was not entirely without a little practical sense. When Eric told me that he was taking Mrs. Reisby to a theatre, taking her out to lunch, escorting her to a private view of the pictures in Berkeley Square, I told him, rather peevishly, that he ought to be careful. Perhaps I was really a frightful prig.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “We are great pals. I tell you, she’s a wonderful woman. I have never known anything like it before.”
Chapter II
1
Easter Day in 1914 was on the 12th of April. Eric went up to Aberleven on the 3rd or 4th, and I left Cambridge with Ellingham on the 8th. We were to pick up the express at Grantham, and we should be met at Northport by a car from the Aberleven hotel.
My companion, who seldom allowed himself a real holiday, was in excellent spirits, and I observed that he was taking with him a trout rod and a case of golf clubs. He also had a magnificent Zeiss camera, which I coveted greatly.
“If the Professor and his excavations are too boring,” he said, “I can run away and amuse myself. There are sea-trout in the Kinkell River, and I believe the fishing is not expensive.”
“Do you know that part of the coast?” I asked him.
“No, but I have been making some enquiries. It is a place, I am glad to say, not frequented by the vulgar, and so it does not come within the purview of the guide-book.”
“According to Eric, it is remote but altogether charming.”
“According to Scropersley Booth, it had an evil renown in the eighteenth century as the haunt of audacious wreckers and of desperate fellows whose doings were decidedly piratical. It is said that the officers of the law put up a gibbet on Scarweather Point, intending to use it for the hanging of sea-robbers. But one night the gibbet was taken away, and next morning it was discovered firmly planted on the magistrate’s lawn, at a distance of seven miles from the coast.”
“Must be frightfully lonely in winter.”
“There are one or two big houses within five miles of Aberleven, but I don’t suppose the people who live in them are particularly exciting. Probably the ordinary bibulous, broken-down squires, whose talk is of birds or dogs or horses and whose views on life are those of the stable-room. You will remember what Johnson said—‘Those who live in the country are only fit to live in the country’—or words to that effect.”
“But a highly intellectual man like Professor Reisby—”
“Ah! That’s the question. Why should a man like Reisby deliberately remove himself from the society of his proper fellows and bury himself on the edge of a desolate shore, within reach of nobody except a few rustic Yahoos or a few half-civilised fishermen? I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps he needs quiet and leisure for his researches.”
“Even then, you would have thought—”
“I tell you, my dear young friend, I don’t know! Perhaps he doesn’t look like a sea-dog for nothing. Perhaps he is really a king of smugglers, or the agent of a foreign power, or an international financier in disguise.”
This was unusually frivolous on the part of Ellingham, and I was glad to see him starting on his holiday in so light-hearted a mood.
We arrived at Northport late in the evening, and it was time for dinner when we got to the Aber
leven hotel. As for the hotel, it was very small and homely, though clean, comfortable and well conducted. The only other visitors were an elderly man and his wife who had come there for a little sea fishing. I found a message from Eric, who said that he was coming round to see us at nine o’clock.
2
It is now essential to give the reader some idea of the place in which we found ourselves.
The coastline at Aberleven runs in a north-easterly direction, just above the hollow of Drumadoon Bay. Immediately below the hamlet of Aberleven, which consists only of about a dozen cottages and the little hotel, the beach is covered with a shifting mass of grey shingle. Opposite to the beach, though not parallel with it, is a low rocky islet known as Dog Island. At low tide, the island is connected with the shore by a narrow ledge of sand and shingle, and it forms an effective natural breakwater to what is generally called the harbour, though it is merely a sheltered strip of the beach. South of the harbour, and curving out towards the island, is the bluff promontory of Scarweather Point. A narrow creek, with no particular name, bites into the coastline below the Point, and a steeper, more rugged shore runs thence in a slightly curving line towards the mouth of the Kinkell River. Stretching for some distance out to sea from the mouth of the river is a broad bank of sand, in shape not unlike a flounder, well known to seamen as the Yeaverlow Bank. It is never entirely covered by the sea, and in easterly gales is a source of grave danger to local shipping. A bell-buoy, painted in squares of black and white, is moored off the southern end of the Bank.
Above Aberleven run the long undulations of Seidal Moor, covered with a pale, scrubby grass and with tangles of gorse or bracken. Every archaeologist knows the earthworks of Caer Carrws which crown the highest part of the moor, and he will also remember the interesting group of Bronze Age tumuli in the same neighbourhood. Divided from Seidal Moor by the creek at Scarweather is the rounded eminence of Yeaverlow Hill, with a long plantation of young firs on the southern slope where the hill falls gently towards the Kinkell River. On the south-west side of the hill, just below the plantation, is a tumulus known locally as the Devil’s Hump.
I am aware of a sinister quality in the features of this description, and it is well to remember that the Aberleven district, far from being sinister, is extraordinarily beautiful. The moors are lovely at all seasons; the valley of the Kinkell River, with its trees and rocks, has a nobly romantic aspect; the shingle beach of Aberleven, intersected by wooden “croys” and rendered picturesque by the fishing-boats hauled up on the pebbly terraces, is one of the most delightful places I know. Indeed, when we made our first survey on the morning after our arrival, I felt that Professor Reisby had chosen his retreat with uncommon discernment.
Professor Reisby’s house was in a very isolated though charming position close to the edge of the Scarweather creek. A long drive, passing over a bare patch of heath before it entered his grounds, connected the Professor’s residence with the coastal road which ran across the upper part of the creek. This road swung in a westerly direction along the shoulder of Yeaverlow Hill, through the plantation by the Devil’s Hump, and along the valley of the Kinkell to Branderswick. In the other direction (i.e. towards the north) the road passed over the neck of Scarweather Point and then ran level to the hamlet of Aberleven. It was nearly a mile from the Professor’s house to the nearest of the Aberleven cottages. Three miles beyond Aberleven the road turned inland, bordering the Manor Park, and effected a junction with the main road to Northport.
In addition to the hotel, there was only one house of any size in Aberleven, and that was a general stores, whose proprietor supplied the district with groceries, tobacco, meat, milk, eggs, bread and vegetables. The stores also included a postal department, and letters were collected and delivered once a day by means of a motor service from Branderswick. There was a telephone line between Aberleven and Branderswick, and so it was possible to send and receive telegrams.
The nine or ten scattered cottages in the place were inhabited by fishermen, who sold their catches to a dealer in Branderswick and occasionally in the immediate neighbourhood. Most of them kept poultry and had little gardens of their own, and several of the older men had sons who were earning good pay in the merchant service.
As for “society,” the nearest representatives were the Macwardles of Aberleven Manor (Judge Macwardle, his wife, and his two middle-aged unmarried daughters), Major Dick Ugglesby-Gore, D.S.O. of Treddle Hall (wife but no child), and the Reverend Dr. Peter Ingleworth, Dean of Northport, who lived at Aggersdon (a bachelor). I shall introduce these people at the proper time.
Of course the main business of the hotel was that of a public house, and I was surprised to find the accommodation so good in view of the rarity of visitors. But the owner of the hotel was not by any means an ordinary inn-keeper. He was an elderly man of a ruddy and wholesome appearance whose name was Thomas Morgan, but he was known for miles round as “Jolly Morgan” or “Buffalo.” Mr. Morgan, it seems, had made money in South Africa. Having done this, he came back to England, married the Duke of Tiddleswade’s cook, bought the hotel, and settled down to the duties of a cheerful host, not caring whether he made a large profit and only anxious to have “something to do” in his old age. Mr. Morgan’s rifles, and various trophies of African hunting, were suspended from the walls of the dining-room. He was a pleasant fellow, a most ingenious gossip and a really entertaining narrator. At the time of our first visit I suppose he was not more than fifty. He treated me as men of age and experience generally treat a youngster, anxious that I should enjoy myself and refusing to take me seriously; but his manner with Ellingham, from the very first, was that of a man of the world talking to an equal.
3
Ellingham and I were in fine spirits as we set out for Scarweather after breakfast on Thursday morning. A lively breeze from the north-east blew fresh and free under a clear blue sky. The sea ran merrily past the heel of Dog Island, breaking in occasional spray on the rocks of Scarweather Point. Two fishing-boats, under reefed lugs, were creeping out along the lee side of the island.
These boats were being watched by a strange individual who stood at the door of an isolated cottage near the road, and at some distance from the main group of the hamlet.
He was a tall man, wearing the blue jersey and the grimy trousers of a fisherman, but his demeanour, unlike that of his fellows, was grim and forbidding. He stood bare-headed in the doorway, a tangle of black hair blowing in fierce curls above his forehead. His beard, also black and curly, straggled unevenly over his powerful throat. From the swarthiness and weathered appearance of his dark, vigilant face I judged him to be a man who had spent his life in ocean travel, and in circumstances which had made him familiar with danger and with hardship. In each of his ears he wore a heavy silver ring. The cottage behind him was little more than a hovel, the patch of ground at the back of it was barely cultivated, and both in the man and his habitation there was an air of something wild and foreign and ominous which immediately drew our attention.
“Good morning!” said Ellingham in a bright and friendly manner.
The man looked at us closely through his black, narrow eyes.
“Are you going to Scarweather?” he said.
The voice was totally unexpected. It was deep, gentle and altogether pleasing.
“Yes,” Ellingham replied, “we are going to see Professor Reisby.”
“He told me you were coming,” said the man. “I look after his boat and work in his garden now and then, and I dare say I shall be taking you gentlemen out for a bit of fishing. Mrs. Reisby and Mr. Foster went out with me the day afore yesterday. Joe Lloyd is my name. They call me Dollar.”
“No doubt we shall meet again, Mr. Lloyd,” said Ellingham. “Will you have a pipe of tobacco?” he added, taking his pouch from his pocket.
“No, thank you,” said Lloyd ungraciously, “I don’t smoke. There’s a short cut to the house, if you follow
that path to the left of the road and go over the Point.”
“That’s a rum fellow!” I said to Ellingham when we had got out of earshot.
“Undoubtedly one of our Professor’s gang of pirates,” Ellingham replied with a grin, “a really picturesque villain. But frankly, the most singular thing about him is that he won’t smoke tobacco.—Ah! Here’s the path.”
We swung along through the gorse and bracken, over the headland, and then down to the bridge over the creek on the other side.
Standing above the creek, Scarweather House was concealed by a plantation, and we did not see it until we had come round a corner of the drive. It would not serve any purpose if I described the appearance of the house in detail: it was rather small, decidedly plain, with grey slate roof and yellow plastered walls. On the seaward side there was a long verandah, and there was a curious addition, with large top-lights like a studio, which, we discovered later, was the Professor’s laboratory. Reisby had bought the house from its original owner, a retired sea-captain, in 1908. There was a small though trim and fruitful garden, and a lawn sloping down towards the creek. At the end of the lawn there was a fence with a gate in it, and below the gate there was a boat-house and a little stone landing-place.
Scarweather Page 3
