Part 8

“The staircase with which we are concerned goes up from the dining hall. A much finer, more modern way ascends from the entrance hall. This earlier one, however, only gives access now to three rooms, a lovely oak-panelled chamber occupied by my patient and two small rooms, turned nowadays into a boudoir and a bathroom. When Swarbrick had left me in an easy-chair, wrapped in a couple of rugs, in a corner of the dark dining hall, I waited for half-an-hour and then proceeded to make my own preparations. Moving very quietly, I crept up the stairs, and at the top drove one drawing-pin into the lintel about a foot up, another at the same height into the baluster opposite, and across the stairs fastened a black thread, with a small bell hanging over the edge. A touch and the bell would ring, whether the thread broke or not. At the foot of the stairs I made another attachment and hung another bell.

“‘I think, my unknown friend,’ I said, as I went back to the chair, ‘you are cut off above and below now.’

“I won’t say that I didn’t close my eyes for a minute through the whole night, but if I did sleep it was only as a watchdog sleeps. A whisper or a creak of a board would have found me alert. As it was, however, nothing happened. At six o’clock Swarbrick appeared, respectfully solicitous about my vigil.

“‘We’ve done it this time, Swarbrick,’ I said in modest elation. ‘Not the ghost of a ghost has appeared. The spell is broken.’

“He had crossed the hall and was looking rather strangely at the stairs. With a very queer foreboding I joined him and followed his glance. By heavens, Wynn, there, on the sixth step up, was a bright red patch! I am not squeamish; I cleared four steps at a stride, and stooping down I dipped my finger into the stuff and felt its slippery viscidity against my thumb. There could be no doubt about it; it was the genuine thing. In my baffled amazement I looked in every direction for a possible clue to human agency. Above, more than twenty feet above, were the massive rafters and boarding of the roof itself. By my side reared a solid stone wall, and beneath was simply the room we stood in, for the space below the stairway was not enclosed.

“I pointed to my arrangement of bells.

“‘Nobody has gone up or down, I’ll swear,’ I said a little warmly. Between ourselves, I felt a bit of an ass for my pains, before the monumental Swarbrick.

“‘No, sir,’ he agreed. ‘I had a similar experience myself on Saturday night.’

“‘The deuce you did,’ I exclaimed. ‘Did you sit up then?’

“‘Not exactly, sir,’ he replied, ‘but after making all secure at night I hung a pair of irreplaceable Dresden china cups in a similar way. They were both still intact in the morning, sir.’

“Well, there you are. I have nothing more to say on the subject. ‘Hope not,’ you’ll be muttering. If the thing doesn’t tempt you, say no more about it. If it does, just wire a time and I’ll be at the station. Welcome isn’t the word.--Yours as of yore,

“JIM TULLOCH.

“_P.S._--Can put your man up all right.

“J. T.”

Carrados had “wired a time,” and he was seized on the platform by the awaiting and exuberant Tulloch and guided with elaborate carefulness to the doctor’s cart, which was, as its temporary owner explained, “knocking about somewhere in the lane outside.”

“Splendid little horse,” he declared. “Give him a hedge to nibble at and you can leave him to look after himself for hours. Motors? He laughs at them, Wynn, merely laughs.”

Parkinson and the luggage found room behind, and the splendid little horse shook his shaggy head and launched out for home. For a mile the conversation was a string of, “Do you ever come across Brown now?” “You know Sugden was killed flying?” “Heard of Marling only last week; he’s gone on the stage.” “By the way, that appalling ass Sanders married a girl with a pot of money and runs horses now,” and doubtless it would have continued in a similar strain to the end of the journey if an encounter with a farmer’s country trap had not interrupted its tenor.

The lane was very narrow at that point and the driver of the trap drew into the hedge and stopped to allow the doctor to pass. There was a mutual greeting, and Tulloch pulled up also when their hubs were clear.

“No more sheep killed, I hope?” he called back.

“No, sir; I can’t complain that we have,” said the driver cheerfully. “But I do hear that Mr Stone, over at Daneswood, lost one last night.”

“In the same way, do you mean?”

“So I heard. It’s a queer business, doctor.”

“It’s a blackguardly business. It’s a marvel what the fellow thinks he’s doing.”

“He’ll get nabbed, never fear, sir. He’ll do it once too often.”

“Hope so,” said the doctor. “Good-day.” He shook the reins and turned to his visitor. “One of our local ‘Farmer Jarges.’ It’s part of the business to pass the time o’ day with them all and ask after the cow or the pig, if no other member of the family happens to be on the sick list.”

“What is the blackguardly business?” asked Carrados.

“Well, that is a bit out of the common, I’ll admit. About a week ago this man, Bailey, found one of his sheep dead in the field. It had been deliberately killed--head cut half off. It hadn’t been done for meat, because none was taken. But, curiously enough, something else had been taken. The animal had been opened and the heart and intestines were gone. What do you think of that, Wynn?”

“Revenge, possibly.”

“Bailey declares that he hasn’t got the shadow of an enemy in the world. His three or four labourers are quite content. Of course a thing like that makes a tremendous sensation in a place like this. You may see as many as five men talking together almost any day now. And here, on the top if it, comes another case at Stone’s. It looks like one of those outbreaks that crop up from time to time for no obvious reason and then die out again.”

“No reason, Jim?”

“Well, if it isn’t revenge, and if it isn’t food, what is there to be got by it?”

“What is there to be got when an animal is killed?”

Tulloch stared without enlightenment.

“What is there that I am here to trace?”

“Godfrey Dan’l, Wynn! You don’t mean to say that there is any connection between----?”

“I don’t say it,” declared Carrados promptly. “But there is very strong reason why we should consider it. It solves a very obvious question that faces us. A pricked thumb does not produce a pool. Did you microscope it?”

“Yes, I did. I can only say that it’s mammalian. My limited experience doesn’t carry me beyond that. Then what about the entrails, Wynn? Why take those?”

“That raises a variety of interesting speculations certainly.”

“It may to you. The only thing that occurs to me is that it might be a blind.”

“A very unfortunate one, if so. A blind is intended to allay curiosity--to suggest an obvious but fictitious motive. This, on the contrary, arouses curiosity. The abstraction of a haunch of mutton would be an excellent blind. Whereas now, as you say, what about the entrails?”

Tulloch shook his head.

“I’ve had my shot,” he answered. “Can you suggest anything?”

“Frankly, I can’t,” admitted Carrados.

“On the face of it, I don’t suppose anyone short of an oracle could. Pity our local shrine has got rusty in the joints.” He levelled his whip and pointed to a distant silhouette that showed against the last few red streaks in the western sky a mile away. “You see that solitary old outpost of paganism----”

The splendid little horse leapt forward in indignant surprise as the extended whip fell sharply across his shoulders. Tulloch’s ingenuous face seemed to have caught the rubicundity of the distant sunset.

“I’m beastly sorry, Wynn, old man,” he muttered. “I ought to have remembered.”

“My blindness?” contributed Carrados. “My dear chap, everyone makes a point of forgetting that. It’s quite a recognised form of compliment among friends. If it were baldness I probably should be touchy on the subject; as it’s only blindness I’m not.”

“I’m very glad you take it so well,” said Tulloch. “I was referring to a stone circle that we have here. Perhaps you have heard of it?”

“The Druids’ altar!” exclaimed Carrados with an inspiration. “Jim, to my everlasting shame, I had forgotten it.”

“Oh, well, it isn’t much to look at,” confessed the practical doctor. “Now in the church there are a few decent monuments--all Aynosfordes, of course.”

“Aynosfordes--naturally. Do you know how far that remarkable race goes back?”

“A bit beyond Adam I should fancy,” laughed Tulloch. “Well, Darrish told me that they really can trace to somewhere before the Conquest. Some antiquarian Johnny has claimed that the foundations of Dunstan’s Tower cover a Celtic stronghold. Are you interested in that sort of thing?”

“Intensely,” replied Carrados; “but we must not neglect other things. This gentleman who owned the unfortunate sheep, the second victim, now? How far is Daneswood away?”

“About a mile--mile and a half at the most.”

Carrados turned towards the back seat.

“Do you think that in seven minutes’ time you would be able to distinguish the details of a red mark on the grass, Parkinson?”

Parkinson took the effect of three objects, the sky above, the herbage by the roadside, and the back of his hand, and then spoke regretfully.

“I’m afraid not, sir; not with any certainty,” he replied.

“Then we need not trouble Mr Stone to-night,” said Carrados philosophically.

After dinner there was the peaceful pipe that Tulloch had forecast, and mutual reminiscences until the long clock in the corner, striking the smallest hour of the morning, prompted Tulloch to suggest retirement.

“I hope you have everything,” he remarked tentatively, when he had escorted the guest to his bedroom. “Mrs Jones does for me very well, but you are an unknown quantity to her as yet.”

“I shall be quite all right, you may be sure,” replied Carrados, with his engagingly grateful smile. “Parkinson will already have seen to everything. We have a complete system, and I know exactly where to find anything I require.”

Tulloch gave a final glance around.

“Perhaps you would prefer the window closed?” he suggested.

“Indeed, I should not. It is south-west, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And a south-westerly breeze to bring the news. I shall sit here for a little time.” He put his hand on the top rail of a chair with unhesitating precision and drew it to the open casement. “There are a thousand sounds that you in your arrogance of sight ignore, a thousand individual scents of hedge and orchard that come to me up here. I suppose it is quite dark to you now, Jim? What a lot you seeing people must miss!”

Tulloch guffawed, with his hand on the door knob.

“Well, don’t let your passion for nocturnal nature study lead you to miss breakfast at eight. My eyes won’t, I promise you. Ta-ta.”

He jigged off to his own room and in ten minutes was soundly asleep. But the oak clock in the room beneath marked the quarters one by one until the next hour struck, and then round the face again until the little finger stood at three, and still the blind man sat by the open window that looked out over the south-west, interpreting the multitudinous signs of the quiet life that still went on under the dark cover of the warm summer night.

“The word lies with you, Wynn,” remarked Tulloch at breakfast the next morning--he was twelve minutes late, by the way, and found his guest interested in the titles of Dr Darrish’s excellent working library. “I am supposed to be on view here from nine to ten, and after that I am due at Abbot’s Farm somewhere about noon. With those reservations, I am at your disposal for the day.”

“Do you happen to go anywhere near the ‘Swinefield’ on your way to Abbot’s Farm?” asked Carrados.

“The ‘Swinefield’? Oh, the Druids’ circle. Yes, one way--and it’s as good as any other--passes the wheel-track that leads up to it.”

“Then I should certainly like to inspect the site.”

“There’s really nothing to see, you know,” apologised the doctor. “Only a few big rocks on end. They aren’t even chiselled smooth.”

“I am curious,” volunteered Carrados, “to discover why fifteen stones should be called ‘The Judge and Jury.’”

“Oh, I can explain that for you,” declared Tulloch. “Two of them are near together with a third block across the tops. That’s the Judge. The twelve jurymen are scattered here and there. But we’ll go, by all means.”

“There is a public right of way, I suppose?” asked Carrados, when, in due course, the trap turned from the highway into a field track.

“I don’t know about a right,” said Tulloch, “but I imagine that anyone goes across who wants to. Of course it’s not a Stonehenge, and we have very few visitors, or the Aynosfordes might put some restrictions. As for the natives, there isn’t a man who wouldn’t sooner walk ten miles to see a five-legged calf than cross the road to look at a Phidias. And for that matter,” he added thoughtfully, “this is the first time I’ve been really up to the place myself.”

“It’s on Aynosforde property, then?”

“Oh yes. Most of the parish is, I believe. But this ‘Swinefield’ is part of the park. There is an oak plantation across there or Dunstan’s Tower would be in sight.”

They had reached the gate of the enclosure. The doctor got down to open it, as he had done the former ones.

“This is locked,” he said, coming back to the step, “but we can climb over easy enough. You can get down all right?”

“Thanks,” replied Carrados. He descended and followed Tulloch, stopping to pat the little horse’s neck.

“He’ll be all right,” remarked the doctor with a backward nod. “I fancy Tommy’s impressionable years must have been spent between the shafts of a butcher’s cart. Now, Wynn, how do we proceed?”

“I should like to have your arm over this rough ground. Then if you will take me from stone to stone.”

They paced the broken circle leisurely, Carrados judging the appearance of the remains by touch and by the answers to the innumerable questions that he put. They were approaching the most important monument--the Judge--when Tulloch gave a shout of delight.

“Oh, the beauty!” he cried with enthusiasm. “I must see you closer. Wynn, do you mind--a minute----”

“Lady, Jim?” murmured Carrados. “Certainly not. I’ll stand like Tommy.”

Tulloch shot off with a laugh and Carrados heard him racing across the grass in the direction of the trilithon. He was still amused when he returned, after a very short interval.

“No, Wynn, not a lady, but it occurred to me that you might have been farther off. A beautiful airy creature very brightly clad. A Purple Emperor, in fact. I haven’t netted a butterfly for years, but the sight gave me all the old excitement of the chase.”

“Tolerably rare, too, aren’t they?”

“Generally speaking, they are. I remember waiting in an oak grove with a twenty-foot net for a whole day once, and not a solitary Emperor crossed my path.”

“An oak grove; yes, you said there was an oak plantation here.”

“I didn’t know the trick then. You needn’t go to that trouble. His Majesty has rather peculiar tastes for so elegant a being. You just hang a piece of decidedly ripe meat anywhere near.”

“Yes, Jim?”

“Do you notice anything?” demanded the doctor, with his face up to the wind.

“Several things,” replied Carrados.

“Apropos of high meat? Do you know, Wynn, I lost that Purple Emperor here, round the blocks. I thought it must have soared, as I couldn’t quite fathom its disappearance. This used to be the Druids’ altar, they say. I don’t know if you follow me, but it would be a devilish rum go if--eh?”

Carrados accepted the suggestion of following Jim’s idea with impenetrable gravity.

“I haven’t the least doubt that you are right,” he assented. “Can you get up?”

“It’s about ten feet high,” reported Tulloch, “and not an inch of crevice to get a foothold on. If only we could bring the trap in here----”

“I’ll give you a back,” said Carrados, taking a position against one of the pillars. “You can manage with that?”

“Sure you can stand it?”

“Only be as quick as you can.”

“Wait a minute,” said Tulloch with indecision. “I think someone is coming.”

“I know there is,” admitted Carrados, “but it is only a matter of seconds. Make a dash for it.”

“No,” decided Tulloch. “One looks ridiculous. I believe it is Miss Aynosforde. We’d better wait.”

A young girl with a long thin face, light hair and the palest blue eyes that it would be possible to imagine had come from the wood and was approaching them hurriedly. She might have been eighteen, but she was “dressed young,” and when she spoke she expressed the ideas of a child.

“You ought not to come in here,” was her greeting. “It belongs to us.”

“I am sorry if we are trespassing,” apologised Tulloch, coloring with chagrin and surprise. “I was under the impression that Mrs Aynosforde allowed visitors to inspect these ruins. I am Dr Tulloch.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said the girl vaguely. “But Dunstan will be very cross if he sees you here. He is always cross if he finds that anyone has been here. He will scold me afterwards. And he makes faces in the night.”

“We will go,” said Tulloch quietly. “I am sorry that we should have unconsciously intruded.”

He raised his hat and turned to walk away, but Miss Aynosforde detained him.

“You must not let Dunstan know that I spoke to you about it,” she implored him. “That would be as bad. Indeed,” she added plaintively, “whatever I do always makes him cruel to me.”

“We will not mention it, you may be sure,” replied the doctor. “Good-morning.”

“Oh, it is no good!” suddenly screamed the girl. “He has seen us; he is coming!”

Tulloch looked round in the direction that Miss Aynosforde’s frightened gaze indicated. A young man whom he knew by sight as her brother had left the cover of the wood and was strolling leisurely towards them. Without waiting to encounter him the girl turned and fled, to hide herself behind the farthest pillar, running with ungainly movements of her long, wispish arms and uttering a low cry as she went.

As young Aynosforde approached he courteously raised his hat to the two elder men. He appeared to be a few years older than his sister, and in him her colourless ovine features were moulded to a firmer cast.

“I am afraid that we are trespassing,” said the doctor, awkward between his promise to the girl and the necessity of glossing over the situation. “My friend is interested in antiquities----”

“My unfortunate sister!” broke in Aynosforde quietly, with a sad smile. “I can guess what she has been saying. You are Dr Tulloch, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“Our grandmother has a foolish but amiable weakness that she can keep poor Edith’s infirmity dark. I cannot pretend to maintain that appearance before a doctor ... and I am sure that we can rely on the discretion of your friend?”

“Oh, certainly,” volunteered Tulloch. “He is----”

“Merely an amateur,” put in Carrados, suavely, but with the incisiveness of a scalpel.

“You must, of course, have seen that Edith is a little unusual in her conversation,” continued the young man. “Fortunately, it is nothing worse than that. She is not helpless, and she is never violent. I have some hope, indeed, that she will outgrow her delusions. I suppose”--he laughed a little as he suggested it--“I suppose she warned you of my displeasure if I saw you here?”

“There was something of the sort,” admitted Tulloch, judging that the circumstances nullified his promise.

Aynosforde shook his head slowly.

“I am sorry that you have had the experience,” he remarked. “Let me assure you that you are welcome to stay as long as you like under the shadows of these obsolete fossils, and to come as often as you please. It is a very small courtesy; the place has always been accessible to visitors.”

“I am relieved to find that I was not mistaken,” said the doctor.

“When I have read up the subject I should like to come again,” interposed Carrados. “For the present we have gone all over the ground.” He took Tulloch’s arm, and under the insistent pressure the doctor turned towards the gate. “Good-morning, Mr Aynosforde.”

“What a thing to come across!” murmured Tulloch when they were out of earshot. “I remember Darrish making the remark that the girl was simple for her years or something of that sort, but I only took it that she was backward. I wonder if the old ass knew more than he told me!”

They were walking without concern across the turf and had almost reached the gate when Carrados gave a sharp, involuntary cry of pain and wrenched his arm free. As he did so a stone of dangerous edge and size fell to the ground between them.

“Damnation!” cried Tulloch, his face darkening with resentment. “Are you hurt, old man?”

“Come on,” curtly replied Carrados between his set teeth.

“Not until I’ve given that young cub something to remember,” cried the outraged doctor truculently. “It was Aynosforde, Wynn. I wouldn’t have believed it but I just caught sight of him in time. He laughed and ran behind a pillar when you were hit.”

“Come on,” reiterated Carrados, seizing his friend’s arm and compelling him towards the gate. “It was only the funny bone, fortunately. Would you stop to box the village idiot’s ears because he puts out his tongue at you?”

“Village idiot!” exclaimed Tulloch. “I may only be a thick-skulled, third-rate general practitioner of no social pretension whatever, but I’m blistered if I’ll have my guests insulted by a long-eared pedigree blighter without putting up a few plain words about it. An Aynosforde or not, he must take the consequences; he’s no village idiot.”

“No,” was Carrados’s grim retort; “he is something much more dangerous--the castle maniac.”

Tulloch would have stopped in sheer amazement, but the recovered arm dragged him relentlessly on.

“Aynosforde! Mad!”

“The girl is on the borderline of imbecility; the man has passed beyond the limit of a more serious phase. The ground has been preparing for generations; doubtless in him the seed has quietly germinated for years. Now his time has come.”

“I heard that he was a nice, quiet young fellow, studious and interested in science. He has a workshop and a laboratory.”

“Yes, anything to occupy his mind. Well, in future he will have a padded room and a keeper.”

“But the sheep killed by night and the parts exposed on the Druids’ altar? What does it mean, Wynn?”

“It means madness, nothing more and nothing less. He is the receptacle for the last dregs of a rotten and decrepit stock that has dwindled down to mental atrophy. I don’t believe that there is any method in his midnight orgies. The Aynosfordes are certainly a venerable line, and it is faintly possible that its remote ancestors were Druid priests who sacrificed and practised haruspicy on the very spot that we have left. I have no doubt that on that questionable foundation you would find advocates of a more romantic theory.”

“Moral atavism?” suggested the doctor shrewdly.

“Yes. Reincarnation. I prefer the simpler alternative. Aynosforde has been so fed up with pride of family and traditions of his ancient race that his mania takes this natural trend. You know what became of his father and mother?”

“No, I have never heard them mentioned.”

“The father is in a private madhouse. The mother--another cousin, by the way--died at twenty-five.”

“And the blood stains on the stairs? Is that his work?”

“Short of actual proof, I should say yes. It is the realisation of another family legend, you see. Aynosforde may have an insane grudge against his grandmother, or it may be simply apeish malignity, put into his mind by the sight of blood.”

“What do you propose doing, then? We can’t leave the man at large.”

“We have nothing yet to commit him on. You would not sign for a reception order on the strength of seeing him throw a stone? We must contrive to catch him in the act to-night, if possible.”