"He croaked rather than spoke in reply as he rose slowly to his feet.
"'And I thought you said there wasn't going to be any trouble.'
*
"Scotch, as it usually does, did the trick of reviving him, although I believe the poor inspector may still be bruised about the body even now, almost a month later. We stayed close to the defenses while we had a drink and a smoke, but there was no sign of any return of the serpent. Once he felt sufficiently recovered, Inspector Whittaker took his leave, taking the locket with him to expedite its return to the rightful owner.
"I have continued to stay close to the defenses myself all through the month, ready to defend myself at the slightest hint of an attack. I already knew, from poor Edwards' experience, that the physical presence of the locket was not required for the serpent to do its worst. But this morning I got a message from the inspector that I could rest easy. I am pleased to say that the locket is back in Cairo and has been returned to the tomb from where it was taken."
*
Carnacki rose, his tale done. As he did so, I saw the patch of skin below the nape of his neck and above the collar. It was still purple and yellow with old, fading bruising, but if it pained my friend, he did not reveal it as he showed us to the door.
"Now, out you go," he said.
A Sticky Wicket
From the personal journal of Thomas Carnacki, 472 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea
I have a tale to relate here in my journal that once again cannot be told to Dodgson and the others after dinner. The reason this time is not one of national security or of saving the reputation of a Duke or Duchess. Rather, it is a much more prosaic matter. By retaining this note only in this written form, and by dint of having it locked safely away here in my personal journal, it will keep a secret that is only known to myself and one other of our dining group. It is for the best that it remains that way.
It is also for the best if I start at the very beginning.
*
It was a month ago after a story, and Arkwright held back from departing to have a word with me after the others had gone.
"I need a favor, old chap," he said to me, somewhat sheepishly. "I've been over and over this in my mind for bally weeks now, and I cannot for the life of me come to any other conclusion but that this matter lies fair and square in your domain. And if you do not help me, it'll be a blasted disaster all round."
Whatever it was that he had on his mind, he appeared to be genuinely upset about it, and of course I could do nothing else but hear him out. We went back to the parlor, I poked the fire to get a bit more life out of it, and over a brandy and cheroot I finally got out of him what the trouble was.
*
"It's the blasted wicket at Carlside, my cricket club," he said. "You know I play there every Sunday? Well, for six home games in a row, since the start of the season, we've lost every bally game. And we've lost them badly at that, by big, almost embarrassing scores. It's not that we're batting like beginners, Carnacki, it's that the ball is doing dashed peculiar things on our home turf. When we bowl, it slows off the pitch and the opposition whack us around the ground, yet when we bat, it's fizzing and popping all around the houses, bouncing up into our faces or straightening up at the ankles to slap us in the pads. We haven't scored more than fifty among the lot of us all summer, we're stuck at the bottom of the Sunday league, and it is all starting to get jolly annoying."
I had not been expecting anything so prosaic, and I was more than a tad relieved to find that my old friend's problem was only one of a game of cricket or two. I tried my damnedest to keep a straight face, but I'm afraid that was one battle I was destined to lose, and my amusement must have showed.
"Dash it, Carnacki, this is no laughing matter," Arkwright said, immediately taking umbrage. He was almost shouting, and had gone quite red in the face. "This is cricket I'm talking about here. It's bally important."
I refrained from suggesting that perhaps more practice on the playing fields and less time in the bar might ensure a better performance, as that wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to hear. Instead, I decided to take him at his word and assume he was right that there was indeed something affecting the outcome of his team's games. I owed my old friend at least that much respect. And as an exercise in detection, I thought that it might even prove interesting.
I poured him another brandy and we lit up another smoke. It was late now, but Arkwright was still muttering away under his breath and I could not let him leave in a state. I quizzed him for another quarter of an hour, but learned little else of substance beyond the fact that it was all dashed peculiar, and that the poor chap was indeed in quite a worry over the matter.
"I can't sleep for the thought of it, old man," he said. "We won the league last year. It would a damnable, intolerable, disaster to come bottom the very next season."
I promised to go down to Carlside with him that very Sunday to see what could be seen, and that settled Arkwright somewhat, although he was still far from his usual voluble self when I finally showed him out as the clock in the hall struck midnight.
*
The following Sunday was a gorgeous, clear, summer day with little wind and the promise of a warm afternoon. Carlside C.C. belongs to the quaint and charming school of local cricket grounds. It was originally built on an expanse of flat common land on the edge of the village some ninety years or so ago. It has an old coaching inn doubling as the clubhouse, a sturdy Norman church with adjoining cemetery over the southern boundary and a slow, meandering, trout stream along the north side in which I imagine many balls have been lost over the years.
I caught the early train down to Kent to arrive in time to be allowed an inspection of the wicket before the match started. Arkwright joined me at the crease, pointing to where this or that ball had misbehaved and caused him or one of his team to lose their wicket. I looked closely, searching for a clue, but I could see nothing untoward on the surface. It looked flat and hard, with no cracks despite the dryness of the soil and thinness of the grass. I anticipated a closely fought match that afternoon.
What I got was anything but close. I sat, sipping some very fine ale and watching Arkwright's team field while their opponents, a burly bunch of farm lads from a neighboring village, dispatched fours and sixes all over the ground. Several balls were lofted for sixes into the trout stream as they piled up over two hundred runs, for the loss of only two wickets in their allotted number of balls. By the end of the innings, the home side were all red in the face with exertion and more than a tad dejected, even before it came to their turn to bat.
As the teams walked in to the clubhouse, a chap with a heavy grass roller went out to prepare the wicket for the second innings. A light tea of sandwiches and ale was taken, and Arkwright looked as glum as I had ever seen him as he prepared for batting.
"Did you see that?" he said as he sat beside me fastening on heavy pads to protect his shins and knees. "We bowled the right line, there was scarcely a bad ball in the lot, and despite that, each of the balls sat up ready to be whacked. I'm telling you, Carnacki, there's some kind of malarkey at work here."
I myself am not an aficionado of the game, but it had looked to me that the other side was made up of good batsmen and that Arkwright was perhaps not quite the good sport he wanted to be. I could not find it in myself to tell him though, so I held my peace at the time. Besides, any response would have been futile, as Arkwright was already walking away from me, heading onto the field of battle to open the batting with his partner.
*
It went well to begin with, for Arkwright at least. Whether it was my presence, or his belligerence at the thought that foul play might have been brought to his beloved game, he set about the bowling attack with quite some gusto. Although his batting partners came and went for low scores, Arkwright stood firm and managed to send some big hits over the boundary rope, one of which came perilously close to clattering against the old Norman church's stained glass window
s. For a time it appeared that Arkwright might even win the match on his own. Then there came the thing that made me finally sit up and take notice.
The bowler sent down a slower, spinning ball. Arkwright stepped forward to defend it staunchly, but the ball hit the turf and went backwards for a split second, as if deliberately avoiding the bat, before scuttling forward again, through Arkwright's legs and knocking over middle stump.
*
I saw, even at a distance, that my old friend was almost apoplectic, but he was too good a sport to argue with the umpire, and he strode off to warm applause on a score of seventy-five. Unfortunately, the rest of his team could not manage that much among the rest of them, and Carlside went down by over sixty runs not too long afterward.
Drinks were taken, congratulations were given, and Arkwright maintained the dignity of a sporting loser long enough to see the winning side fed and watered and sent home. It was only as darkness settled on the ground that he allowed his feelings to be shown. Even then, he waited until I was the only other person left with him in the quiet bar.
"Did you see that bally ball?" he said.
"I did. Dashed bad luck, old man," I replied.
"Luck? Luck had nothing to do with it. And it wasn't the skill of the bowler either. I was reading his bowling fine until the damned ball decided to get a mind of its own. You saw it, didn't you? It went backward, back up the wicket. You can't tell me that's natural, Carnacki."
On that, at least, I had to agree with him, for I could not deny what I had seen with my own eyes. But from what I knew of the Outer Darkness, I could not see what benefit was to be gained for any entity to come to this plane only to frustrate one particular team of middle-aged Sunday cricket players in a sleepy, English country village.
I did not mention this to Arkwright, of course. He would merely have taken it as evidence that even the Outer Darkness had an understanding of the serious nature and importance of the game of cricket. Instead, while Arkwright went to the bar, I studied the balls that had been used that day.
There was nothing untoward about any of them. If there was a presence here causing mischief, it was not doing it through the red leather of the balls. After that I looked at Arkwright's bat and leg pads, I even went so far as to study his cap, although I did not linger over that for the smell of hair cream and sweat was rather too heady.
Arkwright returned with another beer for each of us, and we talked for a while, about the recent history of the club, and whether there was any bad blood among any of the team members that might account for sabotage or trickery.
"There's the usual petty local politics that turn up in small town clubs," Arkwright agreed. "But there's nothing I can think of that would make anybody cause trouble out on the field of play. The game's too important for that kind of nonsense."
I waited while he fetched us both a last pint of beer from the bar.
"All this talk has indeed jogged my memory, Carnacki. There is one thing I've remembered," Arkwright said as he returned with the drinks. "Although it was last season, about this time, so it surely can't mean much of anything."
"And what was that?"
"We almost had a disaster. There was a bally great hole in the wicket, and it was right on the bowler's line. It was found in the morning before a match and it looked like a stone had fallen from the sky and embedded itself in the ground."
"A meteorite?"
"That's what Sergeant Wills said. He's no expert, but he's officialdom, if you see what I mean?"
"How big was this stone?"
"I prized it out with a trowel myself. It was no bigger than my thumb, but it felt heavier than it looked. As we didn't want any fuss, we got rid of the dashed thing, and rolled the wicket flat that same morning. It was just a bit of bother, and it was all over in a couple of minutes. I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with anything."
I, for my part however was not so sure of that. And it was the first indication I had that there might indeed be something to Arkwright's idea that this was in my area of expertise. I needed to have a closer look, and to pay more attention than I had been doing so far. I suggested we take a walk back over to the wicket for a closer look.
We headed outside and onto the field of play, where there was enough ambient light for us to make our way across to the wicket. I had Arkwright show me where the stone had fallen from the sky, passed him my glass, and got down on my hands and knees, patting at the turf, feeling for a cold spot, a presence, anything that might help me get to the bottom of Arkwright's problem.
But there was nothing of any note, just grass and dirt and a feeling that I was making myself look quite ridiculous. And my knees were damp from the gathering evening dew on the grass.
I stood, and we finished our beers there in the center of the field. All was silent in the cricket ground and the village beyond. A more peaceful and tranquil scene you will not find anywhere. If there was indeed an entity from the Outer Darkness present, it too was keeping quiet, perhaps even reveling in the tranquility.
I left to catch my train home without having been of much help to my friend at all.
*
My failure, as I saw it, preyed on my mind for much of the next week. I was spending the days at home, as I had put aside some time to study an obscure, dense, portion of the Sigsand mss, but my mind would not settle and kept returning to Arkwright's problem. I perused my library, looking for clues, searching for tales of meteorites and the magical effects thereof.
I already knew that the Oracle of Delphi was built around a stone from the sky, one that was said to have been regurgitated by Kronos. I also had some recollection of other, even older, tales in Babylonian myth and back, farther still, to cave drawings of our most distant ancestors that linked signs in the sky to high magic. I read tales of dark forces emanating from strange stones, of magic ritual summoning the power of the sky gods themselves, and of evil men wresting power from the rock. Of course I knew from my studies these were all merely facets of different views of the emanations from the Outer Darkness, and I now suspected some such to be at work on Arkwright's cricket wicket. But I could not for the life of me see how the trick with the bowlers might be accomplished.
After our dinner and story on the Friday, and, after ascertaining that Arkwright's team had another home match coming up, I asked him if I might be allowed to join them on the Sunday. He was only too happy to have me down to the ground again, although I think he was as unsure as I was myself whether I would be able to do anything to help the situation.
I traveled down on the early train on the Sunday morning, taking my box of defenses with me this time. I could not see a situation where I might be able to use them but I wanted them with me.
Just in case.
*
Arkwright was on the platform to meet me and helped carry the box of defenses the short distance down the lane to the cricket ground.
"I really hope you can help me out, old chap," he said. "We're still bottom of the bally league, and the season's half way over already."
"I'll do my best. This meteorite," I asked, "you said that you disposed of it. Can I see it? It might help if I had more of an idea as to what manner of rock it was."
Arkwright looked sheepish.
"I'm afraid I threw it in the bally river, old man," he said. "As far as I know, it's still down there with all the lost balls and sticklebacks."
But with that very thought, Arkwright had an idea.
"We do, however, have a small boat, and a fishing net. We pay a local lad tuppence for any balls he can fish out for us before they get too badly soaked to be of any use. We've got a few hours before the start of play. What do you say? Shall we go trawling?"
It was as good an idea as any one that I had, so after depositing my box of defenses in the clubhouse, we went out on the river. For the next few hours Arkwright rowed, enough to keep us from being carried away downstream, and I trawled along the riverbed with a long handled
net.
We did indeed bring up several balls, all of which were too badly soaked to be of any use whatsoever. Alongside that we dredged up a variety of objects; there were old bottles, pieces of children's toys and the like. I studied any thumb-sized stones we brought up, but they were all too mundane, all too clearly local rock, and definitely of earthly origin.
We gave up when we spotted the opposition team arriving at the clubhouse for the afternoon's match.
*
Arkwright groaned loudly as he saw them.
"Damn it all. I'd forgotten it was the Sevenoaks chaps today. Their captain is a real blowhard, and he's no kind of gentleman at all. Worse than that he works upstairs from me in the office and has been taking great delight in our misfortunes of the season so far. I had hoped you might have this matter done and dusted before they came round, Carnacki, for if we lose to them today, I shall never hear the bally end of it."
As the teams warmed up before the match, I guessed at the man that Arkwright meant before having to have him pointed out, for he was a big, blustery chap with a booming voice and a personality to match. He ran his team like a dictator. He barked orders, and raged, red faced, if they weren't complied with immediately. I could already tell that he always took pains to ensure he was center of attention, and his braying voice was loud enough to frighten any small children in the vicinity. Even without Arkwright's earlier warning, I would have taken an immediate dislike to the man.
I went to the bar for a beer while the teams prepared for their tussle, then went back out into another warm, sunny afternoon as they took to the field. I found a seat, and sat with a pipe lit while Arkwright lost the toss. The big man from the Sevenoaks team laughed loudly, the sound carrying all around the field, although there was little humor in it. He elected to bat first and off we went.
Carnacki: The Edinburgh Townhouse and Other Stories Page 8