Weird Tales volume 24 number 03
Page 11
"Well, I had thought of asking you to act as my Man Friday for a bit, but it's not fair to make you neglect your practise."
Ronnie Brewster gave a somewhat rueful laugh.
"Up to the present my practise is still in the nebulous stage of development," he <:onfessed. "If Moor Lodge were connected with the town by phone I would almost as easily make my calls from there. But it wouldn't be worth while to run a line out here "
"Why not install a couple of wireless sets?" Hugh made the suggestion half in jest, but to his surprize Ronnie jumped at the idea.
"The very thing!" he exclaimed. "It ought not to be difficult to get a transmitting license, and then we could be in touch with each other even when I was not stopping at your place. And it would be very handy to be able to send out an S. O. S. if you happened to wake up in the night and find a gentleman with a cloven foot leaning over the bed-rail, asking you if it is to be roast or boiled."
Ronnie was on his favorite subject now, and he kept on in the same vein of half-cynical banter until they came in sight of the red-tiled gables and quaint, twisted chimneys of Moor Lodge softly outlined against the grayish-purple sweep of the distant hills.
"Creepy-looking shack, isn't it?" was his final comment as they alighted. "If
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there isn't a genuine, blown-in-the-glass, dyed-in-the-wool family spook on the premises—well, all I can say is that the builder ought to be prosecuted for obtaining shudders under false pretenses."
"Obtaining shutters?" Hugh repeated, in a tone which showed his thoughts had been wandering from the other's light-hearted chatter.
"Wake up!" cried the indignant Ron-iiie. "Who said anything about shutters? I was talking about shudders —s-h-u-d-d-e-r-s—two 'd's,' and the 'h' is silent, as fli 'pudding.' "
"I getyou," laughed his friend. "What a lad you are for a joke, Ronnie! You really must take up your quarters here— the murmur of your baby prattle will be like a ray of sunshine in this gloomy old house."
"Anything to oblige, old bean," Ronnie smirked with the air of one acknowledging a well-deserved compliment. But the next moment his grin vanished as he laid his hand on the other man's shoulder. "But, seriously, Hugh, I hope you don't mind my silly nonsense," he went on in an altered voice. "You see, I have to be so preternaturally wise and solemn when I've got my bedside manner en, that it's quite a relief to blow the cork out now and again."
"Come and stay with me," invited Hugh Trehchard, "and you never need put the cork in at all."
Ronnie gave a laugh and smacked his lips with mock gusto.
"That sounds alluringly festive. I'll think it over."
Hugh had not been jesting when he had described the house as a "gloomy old place," for it looked almost as eery in the bright sunshine as it had looked in the mist-dimmed moonlight when he had first seen it. It was a structure of tol-
erable antiquity, and had probably been built as a lodge for one of the Yeoman Rangers when Exmoor was one of the royal preserves. One had not to look very closely to detect the marks imprinted by the passing years. The tiles of the high-pitched roof were toned to a deep, mellow red; the oaken beams of the half-timbered walls were weathered to a grayish drab; the intersecting plaster was in places stained a sickly green by the drippings from the eaves, and its whole surface starred and cracked until it resembled the face of a wrinkled hag. There are some houses upon which the hand of Time seems to have been laid with benign touch — gray havens of peace and quietude, or stout old manor-houses whose wide hearths remind one of the crackling of Yule logs; whose cheerful, panelled walls still seem to retain a kindly echo of the songs and laughter of top-booted, red-faced squires; oak-roofed halls which still seem to ring with the merry strains of Sir Roger de Coverly; painted and gilded salons where one seems to catch the measured rhythm of viols and harpsichord, and the light tapping of red-heeled shoes in the stately minuet.
But there are others whose dusty chambers are shadowy, aloof, and mysterious —fit settings for whispered plots, cloaked and masked figures flitting like sinister shadows, or stealthy deeds which shunned the light of day. And of such was the house of which Hugh Trenehard had come to take possession.
The footsteps of Hugh and his companion echoed eerily as they passed along the passage on the ground floor, entering each room in turn and throwing back the curtains which shrouded the windows. Passing through the darkest part of the passage, Hugh's left-hand sleeve caught in something which projected from the
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357
wall. He drew his hand over the surface of the panelling and uttered an exclamation as he felt an unmistakable doorknob.
"Hullo! I never noticed a door here before. I wonder where it leads to?"
"If it leads to the wine-cellar I'll give an unsolicited testimonial to your detective abilities right now!" laughed Ronnie. "Come on, let's see what sort of a tap the old boy kept."
"It's locked," said Hugh, tugging in vain at the handle.
"Try some of the keys that Shale gave you," suggested his friend. "If they fail we'll have to try a little gentle persuasion with the kitchen poker."
But there was no need for the burglarious proposals to be put into operation, for the lock clicked smoothly back when Hugh inserted the third key on the bunch.
"Ah-ha! the mystery deepens!" Ronnie exclaimed dramatically, as he peered through the open doorway. "Who would expect to find an up-to-date chemical laboratory in the wilds of Exmoor?"
Hugh nodded in silent agreement. The room in which they found themselves could have been used for no other purpose. The whole of one wall was covered with glass-fronted cupboards, and inside could be seen row upon row of jars, bottles and phials. Standing against another wall was a long, breast-high bench bearing an orderly array of retorts, test-tubes, scales and recording-instruments. A powerful electric battery stood in one corner, flanked, in the opposite angle of the room, by a large and very modern-looking safe. A roll-top desk and a filing-cabinet occupied the center of the room, and toward these Ronnie gave an expressive nod.
"There ought to be plenty of data for your investigations here," he observed with a smile. "There seem to be enough
papers and memoranda to clear up a thousand mysteries. And the desk is not even locked—or the cabinet, either. See here!"
He thrust back the cover of the desk and began to rummage among the papers, only to give vent to a grunt of disappointment.
"Nothing that is likely to help us here," he declared. "Bills, invoices for chemicals and apparatus supplied—the old boy seems to have been a whale for experimental chemistry. Stop a moment, though!" he added suddenly as he opened the lowest drawer. "Here's something that may shed a little light on our darkness. Just run your eagle eye over these——"
Glancing at the official-looking documents which Ronnie spread on the desk, Hugh saw that one was a printed form bearing the royal arms at its head. It was an official certificate of discharge, and the words which had been filled in by hand intimated that MARLE, Silas James, had been employed in the INVESTIGATION BRANCH of THE RESEARCH LABORATORIES of the ROYAL ARSENAL, WOOLWICH, from April the 23rd, 1915, to October the 11th, 1918, being discharged therefrom at his own request. Another was a well-worn pass, enclosed in a leather case, authorizing the same MARLE, Silas James, to enter the area of the "Danger Buildings" at the royal arsenal.
"Evidently our friend was a retired expert in explosives," Ronnie remarked. "I don't think there's much to be gathered from these papers beyond that not very interesting fact."
Trenchard did not answer immediately. He was staring at the blue-gray papers, his mind working rapidly. At length he turned to Brewster with an unexpected question.
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"Does the date, April the 23rd, 1915, suggest anything to you?"
The other man thought for a few moments, then shook his head.
"Of course the War was on at that time—that accounts for Marie being employed in manufacturing, o
r inventing, explosives "
"But he need not have had anything to do with explosives at all," Hugh broke in excitedly. "It was on April the 23rd that the first German attack was made in which they used asphyxiating gas! Silas Marie may have been employed in evolving retaliatory counter-measures."
Ronnie Brewster received his chum's suggestion with a careless shrug.
"Interesting, but scarcely informative," was his comment. "I flatter myself I'm not particularly slow in the uptake, but I'm hanged if I can see any connection between a retired government chemist and that precious cloven-hoofed Terror of yours. Why not see what is in the safe?"
Hugh nodded and, selecting the likeliest-looking key on the ring, inserted it in the brass-rimmed keyhole. It fitted— it turned—the ponderous bolts slid back. Grasping the handle, Hugh gave it a half-turn and the heavy door swung open, and as it did so, a loud gasp of amazement escaped his lips.
Until that moment he had scarcely paused to consider what a safe of these dimensions might contain; for all he knew he might be confronted with the dead body of Marie in a repulsive state of decomposition. But the object which met his gaze was less gruesome, though not less surprizing.
The sole content of the safe was a long, bulky, sealed packet, in every respect the counterpart of the one given to him by Joan Endean!
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A look of the blankest mystification spread over Hugh's features as his eyes fell on the duplicate sealed packet. For it was an exact duplicate, not only in its general size and bulk, but down to such details as the peculiar texture of the paper and the heraldic device which adorned the large red seal. Such a likeness could not possibly be accidental. Either the packet lying before him was the same one that had been stolen from him in the Valley of Rocks, or else this was the genuine packet which the decoy one—containing nothing but blank papers—had been intended to safeguard. In any case, the presence of the latter in Marie's safe formed a strange and unexpected link between him and the mysterious Joan Endean.
"What's wrong, old man?" Ronnie's voice, tinged with a note of amused surprize, brought Hugh's speculations to an abrupt end. "You've been staring at that letter as though you were expecting to see it vanish in a whiff of brimstone. I believe the greedy beggar is disappointed because the safe wasn't packed tight with wads of bank-notes!"
"Scarcely that." Hugh forced a smile as he shook his head. "But that letter happens to be a perfect facsimile of"— he paused, suddenly calling to mind Joan's stipulation of secrecy; adding, a trifle lamely—"of—of another letter that I have seen."
"Nothing wonderful in that," was the other's careless rejoinder. "Most letters have a family likeness on the outside—■ it's what is inside them that makes all the difference between a tender missive of love and a curt intimation that a check by return mail will oblige."
Trenchard picked up the letter and balanced it thoughtfully in his hand as he read the superscription:
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359
To Hugh Trenchard, M. D.
Beneath, apparently written by the same hand, though in weak and shaky characters, was the injunction: Only to be opened in the event of the Death or Disappearance of Mr. Silas Marie.
"Pardon my idle curiosity," said Ronnie, trying to speak indifferently in spite of his impatience at his friend's tardiness. "Aren't you going to open the thing?"
Hugh again weighed the letter in his hand; then he shook his head.
"Not here, old chap. Judging by the weight, this is a somewhat lengthy communication. I think it would be more cheerful and comfortable to read it before a nice bright fire. Besides" — Hugh pointed to the single window of the laboratory, already dimming in the early dusk—"probably it will be dark in here before I've finished, and—unless I'm very much mistaken—the contents of this packet will not sound any the better for being read in the gloaming."
Returning to the library, they lighted ■ the lamp, drew the curtains and set a match to the fire which was ready laid in the grate. Then and then only did Hugh break the seal, draw forth several closely written sheets of foolscap, and commence to read:
"Dear Doctor:—
"When you read these lines I shall be dead (or I shall have disappeared, which practically amounts to the same thing) and you may regard what I have to state as a revelation coming from the grave. Considering the very short time I have known you, it will undoubtedly come as a surprize to you that I should single you out as my confidant. But you may believe me when I say that I have not reposed this trust in you because my time is short and I have little choice in the matter. I flatter myself that I am a keen and
accurate judge of character, and I know that your acceptance of the strange task which I have imposed on you will not be actuated by the mere sordid desire to possess my money. Moreover, I have travelled in the East long enough to have my mentality tinged and more than tinged, with the fatalism of the Orient. I do not believe that it was mere blind chance that led your footsteps through the mist, guiding you to me in my hour of need, sending in you a champion, young, clear-thinking, with sound nerves and a healthy body. Surely it was Fate—maybe a Power even higher—that ordained the appearance, at the very moment I was stricken down, of the very man whom I should have chosen out of all the world as the one best fitted to carry on the work I had begun. That the work is not free from danger, my own fate will be sufficient proof; whether the end justifies the risk you must judge for yourself. But this much I will say here—no mail-clad Crusader knight ever rode forth on a holier or more righteous cause than the one you will follow in ridding the earth of the Terror of the Moor.
"It would be both tedious and unnecessary to give even a brief account of my eventful life; suffice to say that the outbreak of war in 1914 found me a lecturer on chemistry at a university in the North of England. I soon found my post a sinecure, however, for the whole of the students joined the army in a body one afternoon, and I was left facing rows of empty benches. I myself was too old for military service; so I transferred my activities to a munition factory that had been newly opened in the neighborhood, and for the next six months or so I was employed in the simple routine work of checking the purity of the various chemicals used in the manufacture of explosives. The work, though of course re-
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sponsible and fairly dangerous, was not hard in itself, and I frequently found myself compelled to wait for hours in the great, well-equipped laboratory with nothing whatever to do.
"It was during these periods that I began to make a few experiments on my own account, and as a result I was able to suggest some minor improvements both in the mode of handling and the actual proportions of the ingredients used. But beyond a mere formal acknowledgment of my communications, the War Office took no notice, and I quite thought that my letters were reposing in some dusty pigeon-hole, when, on the twenty-third of April, 1915, I received an urgent and imperative order to proceed to London.
"Upon my arrival at King's Cross Station I was met by an eminent statesman, a man whose features the cartoonist and camera-man have made familiar to every inhabitant of the Kingdom.
" 'Professor Marie, I presume?' he said, coming forward with outstretched hand.
"In the shock of surprize I blurted out his name, but he immediately shook his head in smiling remonstrance.
" 'I fear I can not lay claim to such a famous name'—even at the time I noted the ambiguous nature of his disclaimer— 'A moment's reflection should convince you that you have been misled by a chance resemblance.' He spoke coolly, but the twinkle in his eye told me that I was not intended to take his word too literally. "As a matter of fact, you must consider me as belonging to the good old Welsh family of "Jones." '
" An extensive clan,' I said, falling in with his humor. And what might your business be with me, Mr. Jones?'
" 'Important, but in no way official. I hope you understand that perfectly.' He
repeated the words slowly and emphatically, 'in no way official. You mu
st make up your mind to regard me as merely being a certain Mr. Jones, a private and undistinguished Englishman who has the welfare of his country at heart. Is that quite clear?'
" 'Quite.'
" "Then be pleased to follow me.'
"A big limousine was waiting a few yards away, the door held open by a liveried footman whose stature quite dwarfed my companion. As we emerged into the station courtyard, two other cars started into motion, taking up their position one ahead and one behind the car we were in, and my wonder grew as I noted the burly forms and watchful eyes of their occupants. 'Mr. Jones' might modestly proclaim himself an ordinary private citizen, but it was evident that he had the resources of Scotland Yard at his beck and call.
"The three cars turned west, zigzagging through the mean streets which lie between King's Cross and New Oxford Street", and as we headed south I made sure that we were bound for Downing Street. But we skirted the north side of Trafalgar Square, swinging down the darkened Mall, leaving Buckingham Palace on our right. There was a traffic block opposite Victoria Station, but a brief, silent signal from the leading car cleared a way as if by magic, and a few minutes later we were heading down the King's Road at racing speed. I caught a glimpse of the river as we passed over Putney Bridge, but lost my bearings completely in the dimly lighted suburban roads beyond. When at last we pulled up before a large country mansion, I knew that I must be somewhere in the neighborhood of Richmond, but that was all.
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"^T^ HE door swung open as we ascend-
-i- ed the front steps, and I was ushered into a cheerful dining-room where a rneal lay already spread. Mr. Jones was a brilliant talker, and throughout the meal he kept up a flow of interesting conversation, without, however, once hinting at the nature of the business which he had brought me there to discuss. It was only when we had adjourned to the smoking-room, with one detective patrolling the gravel walk in front of the windows and another keeping watch in the passage outside the door, that he placed his hand in his pocket and produced a small sheet of paper.