The Lost Cavern

by H. F. Heard

  After that successful day in the capital, I went next to our big local town, flattered their best printer by saying that my uncle, the Dean of the Episcopalian Cathedral at Blue Springs in the Middle West, had asked me to have all his letterheads printed there, and would they give me a few specimen sheets with what they thought the most suitable cathedral-embossed engraving for me to send over for him to see. After which he would order from them and them only, saeculum saeculorum. Within a week they had sent me by post some very nice sheets, at the top of which, in type of perfect taste, ran the superscription (all about Saint Conan’s Cathedral and its Divinity-Doctored Dean)—such a convincing mass of address information, that for a moment I almost believed myself that not only Blue Springs but its beautiful first-class-taste cathedral and its quite elegant dean all existed. By the time I had typed his letter to me, his nephew and legate, and signed his name in a hand that Roger Ascham himself mightn’t have been ashamed of, I felt sure not only that the dean lived, at least in the Platonic realm of ideas, but that with this, his instrument and sign-manual, I should carry all before me.

  I called on the vicar here. The letter explained that I, the dean’s nephew, was a boy of quite amazing talent and devoted to the church, and that, therefore, he had empowered me, and requested of the incumbent of this church to permit, that I should make a copy of the wonderful world-renowned chalice for the cathedral. So many American cathedrals now had copies of the great treasures of the British and other churches that he was sure that his British colleague would permit this, and they would be prepared on its completion to pay for the copy one thousand dollars toward church expenses.

  The old man read the paper carefully and then handed it back to me. He rose and said slowly, “Very kind; most generous, I’m sure. Quite out of the question, quite, quite.”

  I was taken aback, quite! “Why?” I asked.

  He paused. “Well,” he said at last, “you see, it would have to be handled, wouldn’t it—taken away and handled?”

  “It would be treated with the greatest care,” I urged. “I would do the work here in the village.”

  “I fear I haven’t made myself clear. It would be difficult to—to an American—forgive me, I ought to say a modern. You see I don’t quite like its being photographed. I know it sounds sheer superstition. I can only act up to my lights.” And then, almost to himself, “And I have been given some very remarkable insights, inlights. I must not be untrue to them—‘disobedient to the heavenly vision,’ as St. Paul says. I’m so sorry,” he said, going toward the door. “It is quite impossible. Will you explain to your uncle? I feel he may understand. Indeed, perhaps you would like me to write a few lines to him—yes, I think I should, I gladly will, I do appreciate his wish.”

  This was getting more than I expected. I hastened to say he mustn’t trouble, I would explain, I understood, quite, quite. The mails are all too efficient. Many a more closely self-guarded crook than I had been caught by that sort of thing. Back would come his letter, without a doubt of it, marked that no such place existed and probably with the damning information that there was no dean and no cathedral. So all I could do was to face up to the fact that I was completely stymied. But I remained both sore and puzzled as to why. The old fool refused a thousand bucks in order that he might be left with something he couldn’t really value while, on the handsome exchange I offered, he’d be left with something he would never know wasn’t the real thing. And, on my side, I would go lightly over the waves, explain to the Customs in New York that this was an electrotype copy that I was going to sell to one of the big church-furnishing companies in the city. And then, to the curio-collecting millionaire with his crooked millions and his crookedly won collection, I’d prove the gold and jewels were real. The Customs would make no tests, for I’d carry my priceless loot wrapped in a little wadding and paper in one of my suit cases. Would a man carry a quarter of a million of species and jewels stuffed in his personal luggage and lug it out to show the Customs, if it wasn’t a copy? Of course, that part of the plan wasn’t mine. It was a copy of the famous way the biggest diamond in the world was sent from South Africa by the owners to Amsterdam to the cutters, with all crookdom on edge to get it. They sent a glass copy with a corps of detectives with Thompson guns, by stateroom and first-class liner accommodation. The crooks hung about that, and meanwhile the real thing went through, marked “measured glass copy,” right by ordinary parcel post from Africa to Holland.

  Perhaps it was because I had felt that my scheme was so sure-fire and now I was being tripped up by the superstitious prejudice of an old fossil who didn’t want money and yet was too stupid to see through me—the old sheep who had preached on innocent wisdom while I thought up the plan to strip him—I think it was just that which made me grow slowly quite mad. Unless I could get the old man to give me leave, I couldn’t take another step forward. And so I couldn’t get the confounded cup—that was my name for it—confounding would have been better—out of my head. HIS Grace had again evacuated the ancestral Abbey, and my major-domo had begun to show that he thought I had been hanging about long enough and ought to clear off with my Tiepolo—copy as he thought, original as I was determined. Finally he remarked, with a compliment to cover the point of his dismissal: “Why they’re now as like as two peas. If you go on, you soon won’t be able to know if you’re taking the right one!”

  But leave this other treasure behind, I felt I couldn’t. It was mine more than the Tiepolo; for hadn’t I invented the way to earn it? And as I had to act quickly, the next plan that popped into my head seemed quite sound. And I think it was, in its way, though simple and perhaps a bit crude. You’ll have guessed it, no doubt? One evening I called at the parsonage. I was in rough clothes, had a cap over my eyes and a pretty good imitation of a British “laboring” accent. When the vicar’s housekeeper came to the door, I said huskily, “Sick call. Would the reverend gentleman come out to Potters’ Rents at once?” Potters’ Rents were some mean houses out along a nicely deserted road. I added that the poor old body was so far gone that if the vicar would bring the Communion she’d be ever so grateful. I knew that he did a lot of that sort of thing, and I knew that, as chalice, on these occasions, he took—superstitious old fellow—this piece of jewelry. Made me smile, even to fancy someone taking such a piece of treasure-work for a poor, dying, old woman to get a sup of wine from.

  The housekeeper’s answer took me back. “He’s got another call on.”

  “Is he out?”

  “No, not exactly. Indeed he’s only just come in. But he’s going out straight again as soon as he’s ready.”

  Then, as I paused, wondering what to do next, she added with that need to talk that women who live with silent men often experience as strongly, as painfully, as babies experience flatulence, “I don’t hold with it. And Dr. Rowan doesn’t either. Farmer Martin’s wife was always all pickled tongue and temper. Lord, how that woman could rage! You’d think that Martin would be glad it’s got her now. For, heaven knows and be thanked, she’ll never come back hence on. Dr. Rowan’s always said the vicar’s all wrong, was always bad for her with all his soft talk. She showed it, too. If there was one person who could set her off, with no provocation, far as I could see, as a sleeping old cat will set off a hysteric dog, it was Parson. She’d start at him as soon as she saw him. And the more he’d wave his hand and bow and coo, the more she’d spit like a cornered cat. It really was comic. When she got really going, she’d sound so like a grimalkin you’d think she’d turn into one any instant. I reckon it’s just because he does make her so wild that he feels he must turn out to see her now. ‘Forgiveness’! Forgiveness, indeed! If she’d been ducked in the pond when she started we’d have heard no more of that spit and scream, I warrant. That type of man just feeds the flames in that kind of shrew. Now, I’ll give my word for it, he’ll drive her, as we say, to the devil. From what I hear she’s gone this time over the edge. An asylum’s the only place for her, and good riddance, I say. Dr. R
owan says what with sedatives and then with brain operations and such like things, no end of ways can be found to keep them quiet and with a civil tongue in their heads—quiet as babies given one of those good old soothing syrups that the health people now won’t let pore mothers have a quiet night with. Myself, I’d nip a bit off that tongue of hers, quite a big piece, too. But Doctor says the brain does better. But the vicar’s a conservative, all love and prayer. That’s all right for us who go to church, but for a hellcat like that Martin woman—why as much use as warm lemonade to a man who’s on raw spirits.”

  Then with a sudden feeling that, no doubt, she had been forgetting herself and her station with someone obviously of lower class, she shot a suspicious glance at me. “By the way, I don’t seem to know your looks in the village. There, I’ve left my long specs on the kitchen table. Drat it. I’m always forgetting them and leaving them about. But anyhow,” and her self-talking mood had taken her again, “Potters’ Rents aren’t the village proper. Anyone might be living there. ‘Come and go, like the snow.’ No stability at all, none with that sort.”

  I was certainly glad her “long specs” had been left behind, and more glad a moment after when she began to swing to the door, remarking, “Well, I can’t be wasting my time talking to anyone or no one. And here’s him coming down the stairs. If you’re serious, and not just cadging a soup-ticket, better call in daylight tomorrow.”

  I’d been quite at a loss when I thought my man wasn’t going to rise to my cast. But now’ I saw, as we crooks know, that suddenly luck was barring my throw just in order that it might play the deal for me. I knew where Farmer Martin lived, an even better waylayer’s route than Potters’ Rents. Here was my quarry not even having to be called by me and going in a different and better direction than I had thought to lure him to. So, muttering thanks, I made off.

  Everything was right: the village as quiet as a mouse and a fine moon rising. I swung off and was out on the field footpath in two minutes. When it had left the last garden plots behind, it went down a long pasturage into a dip. There it passed through a small grove, in which rose one of the sources of the small chalk stream which the butler and I used to fish. The grove was called Drew’s Dale. The local schoolmaster, one of those men who must tell you all the local archaeology—and, after all, one never knows when that sort of stuff may come in useful—I remember him saying that its real name was Druids’ Dale and that when he was a boy the old women were scared of it, because of that. I swung down the slope to get to my post and be comfortably ensconced before my quarry would pass along.

  It was darker, however, when I reached the dip of the dale than I’d thought it would be. The moonlight broke through in patches where some fine oaks still rose out of the tangled underbrush. They were beginning to decay and threw twisted arms up to the sky. The place was still, and the ground mottled with patches of light and holes of dark so it was hard to see where the path ran. Once I stepped into the small brook which here rose and seeped quietly. Nothing was moving. There should have been owls, I thought to myself, for I could see that oaks as old as that were hollow and would give them fine cover. But I didn’t hear a whoop even in the distance. Perhaps it was because I was listening a bit, and, of course, keeping an ear cocked for the oncoming footsteps of my pursuing prey, that I was a little startled to hear three taps. And then, after a pause, as though someone were trying to catch someone else’s attention, there came a chuckle. Perhaps I was more tense than I thought, though I used to be cool on my jobs—you’re not much use, you’ll agree, if you’re not—but that laugh seemed to me curiously out of place, ill placed. Then I made up my mind what it was. My mentor joined birds with fishes in his natural-history interests and had often mentioned to me the “laugh” of the yaffle, the woodpecker that haunts those coppices. That was it, of course. I’d roused a woodpecker and, half in sleep, he’d tapped at the tree in which he was roosting and emitted his automatic cry. But I got out of the wood as soon as I could and pushed up the opposite hill. I had no time for natural-history puzzles or supernatural queries; I was on business bent.

  I gained the place I’d seen in my mind’s eye from earlier walks in this direction. Yes, there it was. The path had been used so long that it had made a deep groove for itself as it breasted the crest of the rise and so ran in a natural cutting. On the sides of this, some quite fair-sized trees had grown and one had died. I think it was an ash. It was hollow at the back, and indeed the bark made only a kind of breastwork that, with a fringe of small branches, hung out like a large bracket over the path that ran some six feet under. Anyone going along had to pass right under this sloping beam. “Yes,” I said to myself, “what thoughtful luck!” and ensconced myself in my neatly made little butt where I’d wait for my game to run right under. Then all I’d have to do would be literally to drop on him. Down he’d go. The bundled-up cup would fly from his hands, and, without having to tap him on the skull, I could just spring up and make off with the loot.

  Then, of course, I’d take it to my studio. I had a back room in which I worked, and which I always kept locked. There I had all my materials ready, as I’ve said. Next, one more day in London with my Soho colleague, and I’d have those difficult pieces made from my drawings. I could sketch well enough but couldn’t actually make such parts as, for instance, that boss. Then I’d take the sham cup and bury it. “He who hides can find”: and he can also lay clues that none can see till he shows them. I join the hunt, and it’s I, the man the parson wouldn’t do the courtesy to let copy his treasure, who restores it! Then, even if he says I can, I’m too generous. So I leave Saxlin with not only two fortunes under my neat parcels but the blessing of the village on the keen sweet American boy who was so ’cute in finding what poor Parson had lost.

  I was myself lost in this glow of anticipation but I was called back when my eye, which had been cocked on the slope and the path down which I had come ten minutes before, showed that there was a hurrying little figure coming down the same way. In due time it went low enough to be lost in the trees of the dell. And then I waited a couple of minutes to let it get through the thicket. I let my eye roam then. You see better for not straining. And when I looked back again, sure enough, the little figure was just coming out of the shadow of the glade. Then I was puzzled for a bit, and, a moment after, all my hopes seemed dashed. Moonlight, of course, is never nearly so bright as one thinks. When my parson-prey came hurrying out into the open from the dark of the trees, bundling along with his precious parcel held to his bosom, with that gait and the irregular going, his shadow bobbed and lunged behind him, for he was coming up toward me and the moon. But that shadow, after a few steps, began to behave with far too great extravagance for it to be the child of even the most extravagant of parents. It swung and danced about and then to my surprise—it’s strange how long one’ll cling to a notion once it’s formed, though the evidence is now denying it—to my surprise it suddenly broke away from what I took to be its source and was on its own. It wasn’t a shadow, the parson’s shadow—it was independent. He had a companion! Of course I was done, for I couldn’t take the risk of trying to rob two—too big a chance of one of them making a getaway.

  I stood up in my eyrie, looking as hard as I could down toward the figures that were making their way up toward me. I’d better clear out and start again from scratch thinking out a new plan. It was plain that the luck I thought was playing for me by seeming to take a hand at the start was really going against me. Of course you know we crooks who call ourselves realists are all double-crossed with superstition. I felt that queer little misgiving that you know—you’ve felt it more than once this night—when we wonder whether luck is our friend or really on the other side and sent to fool us. And then, would you believe it, the luck turned once more and I knew I was its white-headed boy. For, as they came up the slope and I was straining not only eye but ear while I watched them, I suddenly noticed two things, which, again, my leaping to conclusions had prevented me from noticing. The fi
rst thing was that the second figure, if it was a companion, was a queer one. It made no attempt to come abreast of the first. I can only say that it dogged him. When the first slowed his pace to take the steeper part of the slope, his follower made no attempt to overtake him but slackened too. In that respect it was more a patch of darkness than a companion. I could see then that the lead had no notion that he was being followed. And that made my ears work as hard as my eyes. I could hear the scrambling, shuffling steps of the parson as he made his way up the rough path. I couldn’t hear a sound made by the other. “That man knows how to stalk,” was my first involuntary thought. “He can get as close as that to the man he follows, and the other, in this still night, not have a notion he has a follower within pouncing distance of him.” “Then why doesn’t the follower pounce?” was my next-instant thought. No sooner asked than answered by, “Because he thinks that out on the open slope he might be seen, perhaps by someone out on the other slope by the last cottages. Cautious fellow, thoughtful fellow. He is going to follow right up to this quiet little shaded hollow and there, having judged neatly his spring, he’ll pounce.”

  You see, by now I was as quiet and content as ever I’d been. The whole little play was being played right into my hands, right under my eyes, and finally placed right at my feet. I remember I said to myself, “Luck, if I really believed in you, as at such moments I almost do, I’d vow you a share of the spoil in the good old-fashioned way, for more than half the game has been yours.” I had nothing to do but just to wait, so I could let my quick, clear mind have its little joke with itself. For here was I, the ideal highjacker, ready to rob the robber, ready for this poor country dolt to do for me what otherwise I’d have had to do for myself. When he fells poor Parson and makes off with the loot, off I go after him, fell him, and see that he gets a good enough knock on the head to suffer from that very convenient thing: post-amnesic concussion. For then he would honestly be unable to remember what had happened to his spoil or when he had lost it. I, of course, would take it from him as he lay stunned and, after I had made the copy, follow my original plan, turn detective. Wasn’t I the one who raced after him and didn’t I know that before I could come up with him, for my first concern was naturally poor Parson, he had run back downhill to the cover of the trees and must have just had time to plug the treasure into some brake or hole before he had to run for his life from me? Surely I couldn’t doubt that luck was real. It had read my mind and then like a true collaborator had approved my plot and made some charming and ever-so-helpful improvements on it.