Actually (so he now tells me) the ghastly features of the Reisby drama had already presented themselves in the mind of Ellingham, though not in the full amplitude of horror which afterwards came to be revealed. Knowing what he did know about the Professor, and having observed many things which a less observant, penetrating intelligence could easily have overlooked, he was drawn, almost against his will, to a terrifying conclusion. If he was right, the evidence—the astounding, fantastic evidence of a crime—was actually available, it existed in a recognisable and a material form… But I am forgetting my duty and my purpose as a mere narrator, the humble recorder of these bizarre events.
3
In the summer of 1926 Ellingham decided that he would take his wife and son with him on a visit to Aberleven. He asked me if I would accompany him, and of course I said I should do so with the utmost pleasure.
My own status at Aberleven was that of a regular visitor, but Ellingham had not been there for nearly six years.
Ellingham’s boy was about nineteen; an undergraduate at Balbus. He was less of a lout than the ordinary undergraduate—in fact, he was rather a cryptic fellow, like his father, with a sharp, enquiring countenance, and a cynical degree of caution in speaking. I do not mean to say that he was unpleasant. He had a brilliant intellect, and he did not see any reason for pretending to be unaware of it.
Our good host at the hotel, “Buffalo” Morgan, received us with his customary warmth of greeting. Yet I could see that he was more thoughtful, more sedate than usual. At first I put this down to the fact of two of our party being strangers, but his manner did not change when he strolled down to the foreshore with me for a short talk before dinner.
“This is a damned unlucky place, Mr. Farringdale,” he said. “We’ve just had another disappearance.”
“A—what?”
“Another disappearance. About three weeks ago. I thought you might have heard of it.”
“No. I’ve heard nothing. Tell me—” (I had not received a letter from Mrs. Reisby for more than a month.)
“Jimmy Pollard—”
“Jimmy Pollard! Why, that’s the name of the boy who used to work for Professor Reisby before the War.”
“Yes, it’s him. He joined up in 1915 and came through the War without a scratch. Lived with his uncle, old Ebenezer Pollard.”
“But how did he come to—to disappear?”
Morgan looked back over his shoulder.
“That’s the mystery. He was a queer, discontented fellow. Couldn’t settle to anything. I believe he wanted Professor Reisby to take him back, but they’ve had Anderson’s boy at Scarweather now for more than eight years. There was a bit of talk about Jimmy Pollard being cheeky to the Professor, but I don’t know if there was any truth in it. He got into the way of hanging about near Scarweather when he was out of a job.”
I waited for a moment while Mr. Morgan thoughtfully kicked a pebble in front of him.
“Three weeks ago on Tuesday, Pollard said he was going to walk over to Branderswick. He was after some work in a garage there; or maybe he was going to see a girl. As far as we knew, he was last seen at about seven o’clock in a public house in Branderswick, where he happened to meet a friend. He said he would go in the bus to Kinkell Cross and walk the rest of the way home. Apparently quite sober, nothing wrong. Never went to the bus at all—simply disappeared in broad daylight. Now, what do you make of that, Mr. Farringdale?”
“Of course there have been enquiries?”
“All the usual enquiries, with no result. I think they’ve given ’em up already.”
“He may have got into the train at Branderswick and gone off somewhere.”
“He may have. But he had no money with him.”
“Money could have been provided by someone else. You say that he was queer and restless.”
“Yes, I know. It’s unlikely that many people in Branderswick knew him, and he could easily have got away without being noticed. That’s plain enough, I’ll allow. But I can’t help thinking it’s damned odd; or, as I said just now, damned unlucky.”
He looked me squarely in the face.
“People are saying that Scarweather must be unlucky.”
When I had an opportunity for seeing him alone, I mentioned this to Ellingham.
“Oh, yes! I remember Pollard,” he said, “a moody, unstable youth. Probably he has gone away on some squalid adventure—or even a criminal adventure. We are not going to bother about him anyhow.”
4
It is not necessary that I should describe at any length our delightful family excursions at Aberleven.
The Reisbys and the Ellinghams got on very well together. Mrs. Reisby and Mrs. Ellingham at once appreciated each other (they had only met on formal occasions previously) and were soon on terms of real friendship. An equal appreciation, though of a more romantic nature, almost at once united the junior members of our party—Frances Reisby, who was then between sixteen and seventeen, and Peter Ellingham.
We spent our time very harmoniously and pleasantly, and in a manner that was decidedly sociable without being too restrained. It has always been my belief, that only intelligent people know how to enjoy themselves.
We were more of an organised party than we had been on former visits—the addition of Mrs. Ellingham and Peter made a great difference—and if any regret was admissible, it was the regret that one had fewer opportunities for solitude or for intimate conversation.
Morgan had got a new motor-boat, which could be launched at any time from a boat-house with a long slipway, and in this we used to go out fishing or cruising within a radius of twenty or thirty miles. She was a fast and roomy boat, and the fact of her being quickly available at any state of the tide made her extremely popular. I have a particularly good reason for remembering this boat—the Mirabelle—as the reader will discover.
Professor Reisby was now sixty-six, and he intended to retire from his university appointments in the following year. Certainly he was not retiring on account of ill-health, for he still had a marvellously powerful physique and a copious flow of energy. He wished to devote himself, he said, to his own work, to the production of scientific books, and above all to researches in archaeology.
His collection of mortuary and funerary objects was now of alarming extent. He sat in his study completely surrounded by urns and ashes and the parts of innumerable skeletons, to the great annoyance of Mr. Goy, who declared that all these things ought to be safely deposited and properly labelled—properly labelled, mark you!—in the Northport Museum. There was now a sort of competitive body-snatching going on between the Professor and Mr. Goy, resulting in fierce attacks upon tumuli.
Goy denounced the Professor as a mere collector, and hinted that he was becoming childish and that all his theories were out of date. For his part, the Professor declared that Goy was both impertinent and ignorant, not even aware of the difference between blue glass and lapis lazuli. He also overwhelmed the unfortunate man with ponderous variations of his joke about labels—how Goy transmuted things by merely fixing his labels on them, how he referred to his own catalogues as if they were biblia sacra, and so forth. Indeed, he came down to the level of a practical joke, for he thrust into one of Mr. Goy’s diggings the broken handle of a toothbrush, and Mr. Goy found it and immediately labelled it as “perforated bone object of unknown use, possibly ritualistic”—whereupon the naughty Professor came forward with the rest of the toothbrush and there was a very boisterous and embarrassing scene.
But in spite of this rivalry and these hearty explosions of contempt or rudeness, there was a singular kind of alliance between the Professor and the curator; they were nearly always invited to each other’s diggings, and they invariably united to repel an outsider.
I thought Mr. Goy was rather precise, rather pernickety, and certainly dressed in a style unbecoming to the keeper of a museum; but I liked hi
m—his very superiority was of a bland or simple kind, his little airs and ways, instead of infuriating me, made me laugh. And Ellingham (who ought to know) assured me that Mr. Goy had a better idea of what was Halstatt and what was not than any other man he had ever met. It was true, he admitted, that the Goyan hypothesis of “pygmy industries” was of doubtful value…
The reader is not to suppose that I am deliberately mocking at archaeology, the most respectable of English pastimes. But the crisis of this drama is to some extent an archaeological crisis, deeply involving archaeological personalities and archaeological methods. A knowledge of these personalities and their methods is therefore indispensable if the reader would properly understand and appreciate the narrative.
Let me now continue.
Although Professor Reisby, hugely jocose as usual, joined us in many of our expeditions, there was another change in his manner.
He had developed an uncouth and a very startling habit of breaking out into sudden thunderous gusts of laughter, volcanic spasms of merriment, apparently without rhyme or reason. These fits (or whatever you like to call them) came on without the slightest warning. They might occur in the midst of conversation or in the midst of silence. He would look at you gravely for a moment, and then throw back his head and go off in a shattering peal of demonic laughter, in booming bellows of terrifying hilarity. Whatever might be the secret of this tremendous joke, you never knew it. The laughter came to an end as unaccountably as it had begun: the Professor wiped his eyes on a monstrous blue and yellow handkerchief—doubtless the colours of some revered school—and resumed his normal social attitude.
This peculiar habit frequently had the appearance of rudeness. Perhaps Dean Ingleworth, or the excellent Goy, might be addressing the company, or perhaps Ellingham was giving an account of some interesting experiment, when all at once—crash!—the Professor threw up his arms, and out came peal after peal of inane mirth.
On more than one of these occasions, before I got used to them, I looked at Hilda Reisby, and when she saw me looking she blushed, and I felt both sorry and awkward.
I may as well say that I was now extremely fond of Hilda. I looked upon her as one of the most valuable of my friends. We were not in love with each other, I think—at least I am sure that neither of us would have allowed our intimacy to continue if we had even fancied this to be the case. We were both about the same age, between thirty-five and thirty-six, and I did not believe that I was likely to fall seriously in love with anyone. At the same time, I did admire Hilda Reisby more truly than I admired any woman I had ever seen. Now, at thirty-five, she was (I thought) even more beautiful than she had been in youth, and she had all those qualities of a cool and a harmonised intelligence which are of such extraordinary value. Our friendship had a singular charm and intimacy which I cannot very well describe, but I do not wish to make it appear more romantic than it actually was. I know there are people who say that a pure friendship between a man and a woman is impossible unless they are both octogenarians—but that is all nonsense.
5
One day the whole party, with the exception of the Professor himself, explored the valley of the Kinkell.
Naturally we ascended the bank in order to see that remarkable and inviting tumulus, the Devil’s Hump. There it was, partly concealed by the tangles of briar and bracken, partly covered with a mossy green turf, bare in places, crumbling, sandy, with a marked protrusion of the big slabs of granite which formed the burial-chambers.
Ellingham, of course, had a camera.
“A suitable occasion,” he said, “for making one of those pictures which appropriately record every respectable holiday. Mrs. Reisby—if you would kindly recline just below the corner of that stone… charming indeed! And you, Farringdale, a little to the right. No, no! I want the top of the mound unobscured.”
With a certain degree of excitement which I could not understand he placed the various members of the group and exposed three or four plates.
“Now, Farringdale, I want to photograph you alone, if you don’t mind, sitting close to the top—by the side of that curious recent disturbance which has revealed the angle of a tilted covering-stone. Do you see? That’s right!”
The shutter clicked. And then, instead of taking down his camera, Ellingham walked up the side of the mound and examined closely a tumbled mass of pebbles and sand at the top.
“Very curious old place!” he muttered, frowning, and looking at the soil and the stones with an almost fierce intensity.
“Really, father,” said Peter Ellingham with a youthful, supercilious drawl, “I don’t see anything very thrilling about it. Do you?” he added, turning to Frances Reisby.
She laughed, shaking her head and giving a toss to her fair curls.
“You ought to hear the Miss Macwardles on the subject! According to them, it’s a place of sacrifice, a Druid altar, and I don’t know what.”
In the meantime, Ellingham was poking about in the rubble with a pointed geological hammer which, as the reader may remember, formed a part of his expeditionary equipment.
Whatever his conclusions may have been, he said nothing. But he carefully took three more photographs of the upper part of the mound.
“Mr. Goy has been trying to get leave to open the barrow,” said Hilda Reisby, “but of course Mrs. Macwardle is loyal to Tolgen, and she says that he must open it if anyone does. She is not superstitious about it, like the old man, but I think she would rather it was left alone. The people in the village look on it with a sort of pious veneration, you know.”
“Ah! Mrs. Reisby,” said Ellingham as he fastened the stand of his camera, “let me beg you to use your influence in this matter. Join us in a petition to your illustrious husband and also to the worthy widow Macwardle, and let us open the tumulus!”
“But, father,” said Peter in his new Balbus drawl, “surely it’s very much like any other of these cairns, or whatever you call them.”
“My dear Peter,” replied his father with some asperity, “when you have devoted a little attention to the subject your opinion may have more value than it has at present. I was addressing Mrs. Reisby—”
“If I’m not mistaken,” said Hilda, smiling, “I believe Tolgen really does intend to open the barrow before long. He feels that he has been rather hard on Goy, and he will probably invite him to cooperate. Then, if they get anything remarkable, he will ask Mrs. Macwardle to present it to Goy’s museum.”
“An admirable and a great-minded scheme,” replied Ellingham enthusiastically, though with his customary note of sarcasm. “It is our duty—positively our duty—to encourage the Professor in this resolve. And let me hope that it may be our privilege to assist him.”
“You can be quite sure of that in any case,” Hilda said, “and I hope it will induce all of you to come up for the occasion. But why is this mound so particularly interesting, Mr. Ellingham?”
“Yes, why indeed?” echoed the impertinent Peter.
“Pray, sir, be silent!” Ellingham pointed a stern finger at his son. “It is particularly interesting, Mrs. Reisby, because it has very uncommon features, and I am not at all sure—nobody can be sure—of its exact period. I will not bore you with details. Then again, compared with other mounds in the district, it is unusually big. Moreover, it is connected in living memory with the past by means of legend, a sinister name, a vague reverence. Possibly it is not so ancient as we imagine. Possibly it is a Viking burial.”
He turned aside, rubbing his chin, and again muttering in a peculiarly abstracted manner.
I recall one or two disjointed observations: “Never part of original chamber—obviously rebuilt—most irregular planning—do not wish to theorise prematurely—”
“Well,” said Peter, “I think we’ve seen quite enough of this hump, if you ask me: let’s go back to the jolly river.”
And he set off along the path with Frances Reis
by.
6
We had some other proofs of Reisby’s eccentricity which I thought were vaguely disquieting.
Morgan and his friends often went out in the motor-boat Mirabelle. In the course of these excursions, whether fishing or merely cruising, they had often come across the Professor, alone in his little open boat.
“More than once,” said Mr. Morgan, “I have seen the old gentleman three or four miles out, quite late in the evening, scudding along seaward under that old-fashioned lug. Of course there’s no man handles a boat better than he does, and he’s evidently strong as a bull. But it does seem a bit risky, somehow, doesn’t it?”
Also, we heard stories of unaccountable absence, of strange visitors at Scarweather, of lights burning all night in the laboratory.
These tales and rumours came from various sources—the servants at Scarweather, the fishermen, the shop-keepers of Branderswick or Northport, or Mr. Morgan himself. They were related to us as friends of the family, and as people with a general interest in the community of Aberleven. There was, I am sure, a friendly motive in the telling. The Reisbys were extremely popular. Mrs. Reisby was the friend, the adviser and the ready helper of all the worthier people in Aberleven and its neighbourhood. Frances was the “young lady” of the place, and they were proud of her; though she naturally spent a good deal of her time away at school, or staying with her friends and relations elsewhere. The eminent Professor was, of course, the great man of the district, the man whose name appeared in the London papers, the man who was visited by the learned from every part of the world, the man who wrote books—and even sold them.
Let not the admiration of these poor villagers be despised. They had the sense, not so common among the more exalted, to understand the real nature of celebrity, the real pre-eminence of the intellectual! It had always been Reisby, never Macwardle, who was the “great man.” Macwardle never got his name in the London papers!
And so the good people of Aberleven considered it proper that we should be made partakers of their uneasiness at the increasing oddities of Reisby. We were friends of the family, and we ought to be warned. We ought to be ready to help if we were called upon.
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