Apart from minor difficulties and excitements, all went well at first. Some of the Birmingham men grumbled at what they called ‘a God-forsaken hole’, missing their cinemas and pubs and street-corner fish-and-chip shops, but the majority were glad to sleep sound in their beds after nights spent in air-raid shelters. Clegg was worried about the rats in the foundry. In spite of a systematic poisoning campaign, and the introduction of new moulding sand on to the floor, the holes continued to appear. They were only a minor irritation so long as they were casting in boxes, but he realised that if ever they had occasion to run a big cast moulded in the floor, the trouble might become serious. He repeatedly complained to George Frimley about it, but George, who was not a practical man and was overwhelmed with administrative work, told him brusquely that he had rats on the brain and that he had better put more water with it.
‘Try a couple of cats,’ he added facetiously as his office door closed behind his disgruntled Manager.
Strangely enough, Clegg accepted this advice. A few mornings later, much to the amusement of the staff, he arrived in his car accompanied by two lean tom cats which he had procured in the village on the assurance that no rat could live within sight of them. At no little inconvenience, he kept them in the office that day but, having given instructions that all the moulds should be covered to avoid possible damage, the cats were shut in the foundry for the night. Next morning, as soon as he arrived, a grinning foundry foreman came to the office door.
‘That chap you got the poison from, Mr Clegg,’ he said. ‘He must’ve thought you said cats, not rats.’
‘What d’you mean?’ snapped Clegg, who was feeling tired and in no mood for jokes.
‘Your cats,’ said the other, slightly aggrieved at his reception, ‘they’re dead, both on ’em.’
And sure enough they were. They were also curiously limp, as though every bone was broken through falling from a great height. As Clegg reflected, it was a curious end for one cat to meet, let alone two.
The holes continued to appear in the foundry floor, but Clegg made no more experiments with cats. His absorption with the rat problem was becoming a works’ joke, and this made him self-conscious about it. But the thing worried him, and one evening after the moulders had knocked off he went down to the foundry and examined the holes minutely, looking for footmarks or droppings in the soft sand. He found neither, though the sand appeared to be tamped smooth by something at the entrances to the holes. This discovery only perplexed Clegg the more, but he said nothing about it at the time.
The next incident worthy of note was the spy scare. To begin with, this wasn’t taken very seriously because the story came from little Tommy Callow, a fifteen-year-old apprentice. Sent on an errand from the foundry to the office he returned almost breathless with excitement, claiming that he had seen a spy. Scenting a good opportunity for a leg-pull, the moulders affected to take this announcement very seriously.
‘What did ’e look like, Tommy lad?’ asked one.
‘How d’you know ’e was a spy?’ asked another. ‘Did ’e say “ ’eil ’itler” when ’e saw you comen?’
‘ ’Corse not,’ said Tommy, ‘ ’e was a little ole feller in funny cloes, an’ I know ’e was a spy ’cos ’e ’ad false whiskers on.’
‘Ow could yer tell, Tommy? Did yer pull ’em?’
‘No, but I know they was ’cos they was all kind o’ white an’ straggly like.’
‘Go on, you’re thinking of Father Christmas; it ’ent time fer ’im yet.’
‘Where was ’e, and where did ’e goo?’
‘ ’E was a-lookin’ round the side o’ the cupaloe, just out there,’ said Tommy, pointing to the doorway. ‘Then ’e popped ’is ’ead back, an’ when I went round to look for ’im, why, ’ed gorn.’
‘Cor!’ ejaculated the first moulder, sounding deeply impressed, ‘ ’e must’ve jumped inter the bleedin’ cupaloe. Must’ve bin Ole Nick hisself you sin, not one o’ them Nasties.’
‘Go on,’ said his mate. ‘That was never Ole Nick, that was ole Josh Darley a-hoppin’ around, him what they say disappeared and wasn’t never seen no more.’
But at this a third moulder, a local man, spoilt the fun.
‘ ’Old tha rattle,’ he said, giving the last speaker a queer look. ‘What dust tha went ter goo puttin’ such notions in the kid’s yead for?’
There was a moment’s awkward pause, and then the little group split up rather sheepishly and went on with their work.
It was when two or three of the moulders claimed to have seen the figure by the cupola that Tommy’s story ceased to be regarded as a joke, and the spy scare spread through the works until at length it reached the ears of George Frimley himself. His reaction was typical.
‘Damn nonsense,’ he retorted. ‘We had enough of these tom-fool yarns about spies and fifth column in 1940; don’t let me hear any more of it. In any case, who in hell would want to spy on us? There’s no secret in cast iron.’
Arthur Clegg agreed. He did not believe the spy story either. On the other hand, he did recall a certain occasion when both he and Frimley had peered out of that doorway by the cupola expecting to see—what? It had been an inquisitive yokel from the village then. Upon reflection, he decided that it might be wiser if he did not ridicule the spy yarn quite so forcibly as Frimley was disposed to do. Some other and more disturbing theory might take its place.
Altogether, Arthur Clegg did not feel happy. He had disliked the place at first sight. The gloomy, deserted buildings with those dripping trees pressing round them on all sides had, to use his own phrase, ‘given him the willies’. But this was his job and had he raised any objection to the move on such vague grounds he knew quite well what George Frimley’s response would have been. But now these first vague premonitions appeared to be confirmed; to be taking a tenuous shape which seemed to him to bode trouble. Apart from the ‘spy’ story he was still worried about the inexplicable holes in the sand of the moulding-floor. Surely this mystery could be solved? If whatever it was that made the holes was never visible in daylight, then it followed that it must be nocturnal. They were not working a night-shift. He resolved to come back to the works the following night in an attempt to settle the matter once and for all.
He stopped his car by the engine-house. It was a still, clear night, but moonless, and the tall, black finger of the chimney-stack was faintly silhouetted against the cold starlight. He was reminded of his first visit, for although it was almost uncannily quiet—not a leaf or twig moving in the woods—he experienced the same sensation of discreet but purposeful surveillance. At that moment he would have given a great deal to be by the fireside in his comfortable billet reading the latest ‘who-done-it?’, but Mr Arthur Clegg was no coward. Resisting the temptation to jump back into his car, he walked resolutely, torch in hand, towards the foundry. Far away in the east, search-lights suddenly slashed the night sky, wheeling in great tentative arcs for a while before concentrating in a dense pyramid of light.
‘Hell!’ he swore to himself. ‘Give me Jerry sooner than this, any day.’ But what exactly there was to be afraid of he could not have said.
When he reached the foundry he switched off his torch, opened the door very gently, and stepped inside. It was pitch dark. It was also quite silent except for the fact that his heart seemed to be thumping like a pile-driver. He knew there were no mould-boxes near the door, so he advanced a few inaudible paces over the sand. Then he stopped again, listening intently. His plan was to wait in darkness until he heard a movement and then shine his torch in the direction of the sound. He stood perfectly motionless for what seemed ten minutes, but was probably not more than two. At length his straining ears caught what he could only describe later as ‘a kind of slithering sound’. It was so faint, and the stillness was so intense, that he thought it might merely be caused by some small settling movement of the sand. Also the direction of the sound was indeterminate, it seemed to be everywhere and yet nowhere, so that he did not switch on his
torch. The next instant the suspense was terminated in so sudden and shocking a fashion that fifty-year-old Arthur Clegg cried out involuntarily like a man on the point of waking from a nightmare. His left ankle was so abruptly and strongly gripped that he lost his balance and fell heavily, dropping his torch. Through his thin sock he could feel that whatever held him with such crushing force was cold and slimy and that it was moving in what he afterwards called ‘a heaving sort of way’. He groped desperately for his torch. As he did so he felt a clammy, tentative touch upon his face, but, fortunately for his reason, upon that instant his fingers found the torch and he switched it on. He had fallen with his head beside one of the holes, but there was nothing to be seen. In the instant of turning on the light, the grip on his ankle had relaxed and, twisting round, he directed the beam in that direction. As he did so he thought he saw something of indeterminate shape and of dirty white colour disappearing into the sand. Clegg scrambled to his feet and was back at his car in a time that did credit to a man of his age and lack of training. When he got to the main road he stopped and smoked a cigarette to steady his nerves. Then he drove home and drank three times his customary tot of whisky before he went to bed. But he did not sleep very well.
He came to the office next morning very shaken and considerably perturbed in mind. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky, birds sang in the woods, and from the works came the familiar and, to him, very comfortable sounds of human activity. His experience of the previous night seemed as remote as an evil dream. Yet he knew very well that it was no dream, but that, in the night-time, something nameless, but peculiarly horrible, stalked, or rather crawled, abroad in the foundry. His previous vague uneasiness now crystallised into the certainty that some power of malevolent and hostile purpose was fast gathering strength in the ironworks, pressing close about the place like the encircling woods. But what was he to do about it? The premises upon which his conviction was based were so slender. He knew only too well what George Frimley’s reaction would be if he attempted to relate to him his experience of the previous night. He would probably lose his job.
A conversation which he had with the foundry foreman later that morning in no way reassured him. As he had feared, the ‘spy’ rumour was no longer current. It had been superseded by another of an even less credible but more disquieting kind. Through the agency of local gossip in their billets or in the bars of the New Invention and The Woodcollier, the men had got hold of the whole story of old Josiah and Druce. They had also been told the usual village yarn that the ironworks was haunted and that no villager would ever go near the place. The actual form of the haunting varied according to the fertility of rural imagination. Druce was to be seen hanging from the crane hook in the foundry. Druce haunted the track through the woods, pacing up and down with his head lolling on one side and his eyes hanging from their sockets. It was not Druce at all, but old Josiah Darley who haunted the place. He had been seen standing in the doorway of the engine-house with a long, white beard down to his knees and his eyes glowing like fiery coals. Against all these versions old Charlie Penrice, one of the Woodcollier’s ‘regulars’, stoutly maintained that it was neither one nor the other that haunted the place but both. Hadn’t he seen them with his own eyes one moonlight night chasing each other round and round the foundry, Druce with a bit of rope round his neck, and old Josh hopping after him like a spider?
In the ordinary way, these local yarns, which attach themselves to thousands of deserted buildings, would have been merely amusing. But coupled with the persistent rumours of the unknown someone hanging around the big cupola, they did a lot of harm. True, the reports of those who claimed to have seen this lurking figure did not square with any of these lurid figments. Its eyes did not glow like coals or start from their sockets. It carried no spectral accoutrements of ropes or chains, though no doubt with the passage of time and the exercise of imagination it would acquire such embellishments. For the present it remained just ‘somebody’, and no one had yet succeeded in enlarging or elaborating upon young Tommy’s original description of ‘a little ole feller in funny cloes’ with whiskers ‘kind o’ white an’ straggly like’. Some did not see this much; some saw nothing, but said they felt he was there; others were never aware of anything at all. But Tommy’s ‘little ole feller’ had ceased to be a joke in the foundry. There was an uneasy atmosphere in the shop which effectually set at naught the Government exhortations for ‘Maximum Production’ which screamed from the posters on the walls. The men were nervy, there was no mistake about it, and it was probably this which was the cause of a number of minor accidents, burns or crushed fingers. But to the men it was proof of their conviction that there was no luck about the place. It was noticeable, too, that they always used the main doors at each end of the central bay, and that the side door by the big cupola was kept permanently bolted upon the inside. It was lucky that the two men whose job it was to charge the big cupola were not numbered among those who claimed to have seen or felt the presence of the stranger, otherwise work in the foundry might well have suffered more positive interruption.
These facts only increased poor Clegg’s perplexity. Things were becoming serious. Output was affected, and it was obviously his duty ro report the whole matter to George Frimley even though he dreaded the consequences. He was still trying to make up his mind that afternoon when the question was solved for him by a message to the effect that he was wanted at once in Frimley’s office.
‘Sit down and take a look at this,’ said George, as he entered. He slid across the desk a blue-print headed ‘Dulchester Machine Tool Co.’
‘New tool-up for the Achilles engine,’ George explained succinctly, ‘body casting for a new type of multi-spindle borer. Twelve off to begin with, probably more to follow if the job’s satisfactory; 1A Priority. Think we can tackle it?’
Clegg pondered the drawing for a few moments before replying. It was a straightforward casting, and the coring would be simple. The only difficulty was its size. He estimated its weight as little short of three tons. He knew that this was well within the capacity of the big cupola and that they had a three-ton ladle. The electric crane which they had introduced in place of the old manual one could swing this load. But he also knew, and with the realisation came an inexplicable sense of impending calamity, that he had no mould-boxes large enough. In fact, with a large, simple casting of this description the obvious course was to sink the mould in the floor of the shop.
‘Well?’ asked George impatiently, drumming with his fingers on the highly polished desk-top. ‘What about it?’
‘We could tackle it, all right,’ Clegg answered reluctantly, ‘only trouble is we have no mould-boxes big enough.’ Before the words were out of his mouth he knew what the answer would be.
‘Mould-boxes!’ stormed the other. ‘Mould-boxes! Who wants mould-boxes? Damn it, you’re the practical man, not me; what do I pay you for? Cast on the floor, man; even I know that much. Do I have to sit here to teach you your business?’
George’s answer roused poor Clegg to the pitch of desperation, and almost before he was truly aware of what he was doing he had blurted out the whole story beginning with the rat poison and the cats and ending with his own nocturnal experience. He also mentioned the stories which were circulating in the foundry. His halting narration was punctuated by a series of grunts and snorts from his impatient listener whose colour was mounting ominously. At length it was brought to a sudden conclusion as George Frimley struck the desk with such force that a little spurt of ink shot up from the ink-well to stain the virgin white of the blotting-pad.
‘Am I running a works or a bloody mad-house?’ he shouted, the veins bulging in his forehead. ‘First of all it’s spies, and now its some damn fool nonsense about ghosts started by a pack of country yokels with nothing better to think about. As for you, Clegg, it’s supposed to be your job to knock some sense into these idiots and get some output from them, instead of which you’re worse than the lot of ’em put together—you and your b
loody rat-holes! If there was no war on and I could replace you, I’d pack you off to a home for inebriates. Now,’ he concluded in a quieter voice, ‘let’s get down to the job and hear no more of this damned nonsense.’
But Arthur Clegg, though subdued, was still resolute. ‘Very Good, Mr Frimley,’ he agreed, ‘but I would like to make one stipulation.’
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