Dark Encounters: Ghost Stories

  ‘What an extraordinary business,’ said the Dean, when I had recounted the circumstances to him. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it of Finlayson. I would have said he was far too intelligent to let anything like that upset him. There’s surely something wrong with that computer. It’s a very old instrument. Let’s have a look at it.’

  And, naturally, ‘having a look at it’ included feeding in the calculations which I had previously given to Finlayson. The computer quickly gave us the result. And it was a result far different from Finlayson’s simple number, 585244. Although it would have taken me days to check it, the result was a complex formula like the one I had expected.

  The Dean muttered something to himself and then turned to me. ‘We’ll try it again. I have some calculations of my own to which I know the answer.’

  He went to his room, came back with his calculations and fed them into the machine. A few seconds later, out came the computer’s sheet bearing the answer.

  ‘Perfectly correct,’ said the Dean, crisply. ‘Finlayson must have been imagining things. Or else, for some unknown reason, he has three times fed a wrong programme into the computer. Even then, he couldn’t get an answer like 585244.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied, slowly. ‘He’s too good a technician to make mistakes. And carelessness is no explanation. He’s convinced he has received that six-figure number on the last three occasions on which he has used this machine. I’m beginning to think he did — though don’t ask me why. But he’s also convinced that there’s some premonition in it. “His own number” has turned up three times. And “the third time” is a kind of final summons. Superstition if you like, but I’m beginning to feel for him. I think we should let him go.’

  ‘Very well,’ returned the Dean with a sigh of resignation. ‘Have it your own way. I’ll tell him he can leave at the end of the week. But you know as well as I do how difficult it is to get good technicians.’

  We sought out Finlayson and the Dean told him that if he was determined to go he could be released at the end of the week. The man’s eyes lit up at the news, and his relief was obvious.

  ‘I’ll away to my brother’s,’ he said, delightedly. ‘He’ll be glad of my help, and I’ll be glad to be helping him. Not that I’ve been unhappy in my work here, sir. I would not be saying that. But I’m kind of feared to be staying. And if ye had not said I could go, I doubt I would have been going all the same. Though it would not be like me to be doing a thing like that.’

  ‘Where does your brother live?’ the Dean asked, quickly changing the conversation.

  ‘In Glen Ogle, sir, on the road from Lochearnhead to Killin.’

  ‘A beautiful stretch of country,’ I put in. ‘Do you know, I’ll drive you there on Saturday morning if you like. It will be a lovely run. Where shall I pick you up?’

  He accepted my offer with alacrity, and gave me the address of his lodgings.

  I did not tell him of the two tests of the computer which the Dean and I had carried out.

  The Saturday morning was fine and clear. I called for him at the address he had given me, and found him waiting, with his possessions packed into a large grip.

  Once we had passed through Stirling and had reached the foothills of the Highlands, the beauty of the country seized hold of me. Finlayson’s desire to join his brother amid these browns and purples, golds, blues and greens, seemed the most sensible thing in all the world. The sun made the hills a glory; Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich raised their heads in the distance; and, as we left Callander, the long-continuing Falls of Leny cascaded over their rocks by the side of the road. Finlayson’s thrice-recurring number was surely a blessing and not a curse.

  We had run through Lochearnhead and had entered Glen Ogle when, just as I was about to ask Finlayson for the whereabouts of his brother’s farm, the car suddenly slowed down and stopped. I knew the tank was practically full, for I had just put in eight gallons at Callander. My first thought was carburettor-trouble, or possibly a blocked feed. I loosened the bonnet-catch, got out, raised the bonnet, and went through all the usual checks. But, to my annoyance, I could find nothing wrong. The tank was full; feed, pump and carburettor were all functioning properly. I gave myself a few minor shocks as I tested the electrical circuits. Nothing wrong there. Coil, battery, distributor, plugs, were all in order. I reached over to the fascia board and pressed the self-starter. The starter-motor whirred noisily in the stillness, but the engine did not respond. Once more I tested every connection and every part. Again I pressed the self-starter, and again with no effect. Thoroughly exasperated, I turned to Finlayson who had joined me in this exhaustive check and who was as puzzled as I was.

  ‘Well, and what do we do now?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll walk the two–three miles to my brother’s,’ he said. ‘He has the tractor, and can tow us to the farm. Then maybe we can find out what has gone wrong.’

  ‘Excellent!’ I agreed. ‘Off you go.’

  I sat down on the grass and I watched him striding away until he disappeared round a bend in the road. A little later I got up, closed the bonnet of the car, and took a road map from one of the door-pockets. Perhaps there was an alternative route for my way back.

  I had barely opened the map and laid it out on top of the bonnet when a car came tearing round the bend ahead. As soon as the driver saw me, he pulled up with a screech of his brakes and jumped out.

  ‘For God’s sake come back with me,’ he cried. ‘I’ve killed a man, just up the road. He walked right into me.’

  For a moment the shock of his words stunned me, and I stood irresolute.

  ‘Quick!’ he continued. ‘We’ll take your car. It will save the time of reversing mine.’

  Without further ado, he jumped into the driver’s seat of my car, pressed the self-starter and impatiently signalled to me to get in beside him.

  So Finlayson was dead. Somehow I knew it was Finlayson. Dead in Glen Ogle where sheep were safer than machines. He had walked from my useless car to meet his death round the bend in the road.

  My useless car! With a sudden tremor of every nerve I realized that the engine was turning over as smoothly as it had ever done.

  Had the whole world turned upside down?

  Mechanically I got in and sat down beside the man. He drove a short distance round the bend and then slowly came to a halt. I saw at once that my fears were only too true. Finlayson was dead. The man had lifted him on to the grass that verged the road. I got out and bent over him. There was nothing I could do.

  ‘I saw him walking on his own side of the road,’ I heard the man saying to me. ‘And I was on my own side too. But he couldn’t have seen me or heard me. Just when I should have passed him, he suddenly crossed over. My God! He crossed right in front of me! Do you think he was deaf? Or perhaps he was thinking of something. Absent-minded. How else could he walk right into me?’

  The man was talking on and on. Later, I realized he had to talk. It was the only relief for him. But I was not listening. Finlayson lay there, broken, still. Seeking life, he had found death, His ‘number’ had ‘come up’ three times. It was ‘unchancy’. To hell with his number! What had that to do with this?

  At the subsequent inquiry, the driver of the car was completely exonerated. In a moment of absent-mindedness Finlayson had stepped across the road right into the path of the oncoming car. The finding was clear and definite. Yet for me, I could not forget that the unhappy man had felt some premonition of mischance. He had decided to cheat mischance and seek safety amid the hills. And mischance and death had met him there. Yet what possible connection could there be between ‘his number’, 585244, and his death?

  At first I thought that Finlayson had possibly seen ‘his number’ on a telegraph pole, or perhaps on a pylon, and, startled, had crossed the road to look at it more clearly. I made a special journey to Lochearnhead, parked my car there, and examined every bit of the road from the place where my car had ‘broken down’ to the place where Finlayson had been killed. B
ut I could find nothing to substantiate my theory.

  And why had my car so mysteriously broken down and then so mysteriously started again? Could it be that the fates had decreed the time and place of the death of Murdoch Finlayson and had used the puny machines of man’s invention for their decree’s fulfilment? An electronic computer that could be made to give the one number, and an internal combustion engine that could be brought to a halt. And why that number? Why that number?

  That one question so dominated my mind that it ruined my work by day and my rest by night. And then, perhaps a fortnight after Finlayson’s death, I was given an answer; yet it was an answer that still left everything unexplained.

  I had gone over to the Staff House for lunch, and had joined a table where, too late, I found an animated discussion in progress to the effect that members of the Faculty of Arts were too ignorant of elementary science, and members of the Faculty of Science too ignorant of the arts. I was in no mood to join in the discussion, though politeness demanded that occasionally I should put in my word. The table gradually emptied until only Crossland, the Professor of Geography, and I were left.

  ‘Neither Science nor Arts can answer some of our questions,’ I said to him, bitterly.

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘It must have been a terrible shock for you. I suppose we shall never know why that computer returned the one number to Finlayson three times. That is, if it did. And what was the number, by the way? I never heard.’

  ‘A simple line of six digits — 585244.’

  ‘Sounds just like a normal national grid reference,’ Crossland commented.

  ‘A normal national grid reference?’ I queried.

  ‘Yes. Surely you know our national grid system for map-references. Or,’ he continued with a smile, ‘is this a case of the scientist knowing too little of the work in the Faculty of Arts?’

  ‘You’ve scored a point there,’ I replied. ‘I’m afraid I’m completely ignorant of this grid system of yours.’

  ‘Probably you’ve been using motoring-maps too much,’ he conceded. ‘But the grid is quite simple. If you look at any sheet of the Ordnance Survey you will see that it is divided into kilometre squares by grid lines, numbered from 0 to 99, running west to east, and 0 to 99, running south to north. Then, within each kilometre square, a closer definition is obtained by measuring in tenths between the grid lines. Thus a particular spot, say a farm-steading or a spinney, can be pin-pointed on the map, within its numbered square, by a grid-reference which runs to six figures: three, west to east; and three, south to north. A six-figure number, which is known as the “normal national grid reference”.’

  For a minute or so I digested this in silence.

  ‘Can we go over to your map-room?’ I asked.

  ‘Surely,’ he said, a little surprised. ‘And see on a map how it works?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We went over to Crossland’s department.

  ‘Any particular map?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. A map of Western Perthshire.’

  Crossland produced the Ordnance Survey Sheet. I looked at it almost with reluctance.

  Taking out a pencil, I pointed to the place on the map where, as near as I could judge, Finlayson had met his death. ‘What would be the grid reference for that particular spot?’ I asked, and wondered at the strangeness of my voice.

  Crossland picked up a transparent slide and bent over the map. I heard him take in his breath. He straightened himself, and when he turned to look at me his eyes were troubled and questioning.

  ‘Yes,’ concluded Munro. ‘I needn’t tell you what the grid reference was. But can anyone tell me why Finlayson was given that number three times on an electronic computer? Or why my car “broke down”, so that he could walk of his own accord to that very spot?’

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