‘I shall report them,’ the old man muttered. ‘They’re not allowed in. They know that just as well as I do. I shall report them. It’s not the first time. I’ll report them as sure as my name’s in the Bible. It was that girl and boy who cried “Hoi!” at me, and I shall report them and they’ll get stick pie, as sure as my name’s in the Bible. I’ll teach them to cry “Hoi!” at me!’
He kept muttering how he would report them and how his name was in the Bible as he began to sweep out the hall. The broom began its work under the window-seat. In one instant the broom was rushing at Kay with a row of bristling hairs like a small plantation. They were soft hairs but they did not seem soft to Kay. They swept him off his feet into a collection of dust, pins, wool, matches which looked like stakes of wood, and cigarette ends which to Kay seemed like great logs all covered with charred grass. Kay was rolled over and over into the open hall, with his eyes tight shut for fear of being blinded and clutching the Box of Delights lest he should lose it. Another thrust of the broom buried him deep in grits, bits of gravel, mud and dead leaves which had been knocked off on the hall floor from boots coming in. He saw the old man’s foot poised above him and thought, ‘Now I shall be trodden on and squashed flat.’ The old man pitched the doormat out of doors, picked up his broom, gave three vigorous thrusts with it and rolled Kay with the last of them right out on to the porch.
Kay picked himself up and contrived to press the knob on the Box, saying, ‘I want to go fast to the chief room in this place.’
Instantly he was plucked through the hall, along a corridor into a room where he was set down on a shelf of books, six feet from the floor. Near to him on the shelf was a sand-glass and behind him a row of the works of the English Poets, edited by somebody called Gilfillan. The walls were hung with hunting pictures and one especially he noticed which represented a small waterfall sweeping away a fox and three hounds; just beside the waterfall a hunter in a red coat was climbing to his feet from a fallen horse; with the legend: ‘The Chester Hills Day: February, 1841.’
He heard the bell of the house chime for half-past eight. Then a pleasant, silky voice came towards him from along the passage singing a popular song.
‘That’s Abner Brown,’ Kay muttered; ‘and he wouldn’t sing unless he were doing something pretty bad.’
Kay slipped in between two of the English Poets as Abner entered the room.
‘What news? What news?’ Abner muttered.
He pressed the button of a bell and sat at his desk. Presently someone entered.
‘Did you please to ring, oh Father?’ the newcomer asked.
‘Yes, Nineteen,’ Abner said, ‘I did ring. Send Seven here, will you, please?’
Kay saw Abner take up various typewritten slips.
‘The latest wireless,’ he said. ‘Ho, he won’t, won’t he? Oh, so the Police have a clue, have they? Clever chaps, the Police; clever fellows. Ha! She offers seventy thousand for the sapphires. Ah no, Madam: this is not a bargain-sale. Eighty-five thousand is our price.’
Presently a robust voice was heard approaching from the back of the house. It was singing a song which was certainly not the song for a young clergyman:
‘A rum-tum-tiddily-um,
Who’ll have a drink with me?’
The door was shoved open and a man came striding in. He was the big man whom Kay had seen at the Rupert’s Arms: the man called Joe. He was laughing and singing in a breath.
‘You want me, Chief?’ he said.
‘You might close the door, perhaps,’ Abner said: ‘Gently.’
The man, from where he stood, made a long leg and kicked the door to; then he drew near to Abner’s desk and stood there, waiting.
‘You sent for me, Chief?’ he said at last.
‘Yes,’ Abner said. ‘I hear you’ve permitted yourself some little criticisms of my orders about these clergymen.’
Kay, who could see Joe’s face, saw at once that Joe was asking himself, ‘Who on earth could have told him that?’
‘Odd how the news gets about here, isn’t it?’ Abner said.
‘You’re right,’ Joe said.
‘So you have been criticising my orders. Why?’
‘Well,’ Joe said, ‘if I knew why the orders were given I might see sense in them, but to kidnap a lot of clergymen, who can’t afford any ransom worth your while, seems to me a lot of foolishness. You’ve roused the Press, you’ve roused the Yard and you’ve roused the Nation . . . here’s the morning papers . . . all to get a Box, you say, that belongs to the Punch and Judy man.’
‘Correct,’ Abner said. ‘That was in the possession of the Punch and Judy man would be better, perhaps.’
‘Well, then, that’s why we criticise,’ Joe said. ‘You know that this old man, Cole Hawlings, had the Box when he went to Seekings House. You know that he hadn’t got it next morning. Well, you’ve got Him, haven’t you? What we can’t understand is why you don’t make him tell you where he put it.’
‘How would you make him?’ Abner asked.
‘He’s an old man: a bit of talking-to would make him tell. No need to hurt him; threaten him with a red-hot poker, or keep him awake with Itchy Powder. If he’d scratched all these last two nights he’d have told you by this time.’
‘Then you don’t realise who Cole Hawlings is?’
‘We don’t. To us, he’s a prisoner with information which you want. I say threaten him (or hurt him, if he’s stubborn) till he gives you the information. If that’s not cold sense, what is?’
‘Cold sense,’ Abner said; ‘the English strong point, like “fair play” and “justice” and these others.’
‘Well, they’re things you get the benefit of,’ Joe said, ‘little as you may like them. What about it?’
‘Ah,’ Abner said, ‘what indeed?’
Some of his words had been spoken with such savage sarcasm that Kay had trembled in his shoes; now all the savagery went out of his voice; he spoke again, with the utmost gentleness.
‘Joe,’ he said, ‘can I trust you with a secret?’
‘Why, Chief,’ Joe said, ‘you know you can trust me with anything, except perhaps a cold drink on a hot summer day.’
‘I think I can, Joe,’ Abner said. ‘As a general rule, if a man can’t keep a secret he needn’t expect anybody else to keep it for him. Still, in this case, I will tell you why even I dare not threaten or hurt Cole Hawlings. It will go no further, of course,’ Abner said.
‘It will be secret as the grave with me,’ Joe said.
‘Yes,’ Abner said. ‘As secret as the grave; I think it will be; as secret as a very secret grave.
‘Did you ever heard of Ramon Lully, Joe?’ Abner asked.
‘You mean the chap who did the box trick at the Coliseum?’ Joe asked.
‘No, Joe, not the Coliseum man,’ Abner said. ‘The man I mean was a philosopher of the Middle Ages. They show his tomb at Palma. Remember the name, for I shall allude to it later.’
‘Right,’ Joe said. ‘I can remember. But if you are going opening tombs don’t ask me. It’s a job I don’t hold with, though, of course, I know some people have done very well out of it.’
‘Well,’ Abner continued, ‘did you ever hear of Arnold of Todi?’
‘No, I can’t say I ever did,’ Joe said. ‘What was he, or is he?’
‘Well, he too was a philosopher of the Middle Ages,’ Abner said, ‘and not very, very much is known of him. But the son of one of his disciples left some papers which say that he and Lully were rivals. Lully was all for finding an Elixir of Life that would make him last through the Future: Arnold was always trying to find some power of entering the Past.’
‘Golly!’ Joe said, ‘they were a couple of queer cough drops, if you ask me.’
‘I’m not asking you,’ Abner said: ‘I am telling you. This unknown man whom I mentioned says in his papers that Arnold, by some extraordinary magic power, created a Box, by means of which he could enter the Past at will.’
‘In
fact, he did the box trick,’ Joe said; ‘like that chap at the Coliseum.’
‘Now,’ Abner said, ‘some think that Arnold entered the Past by means of this Box and could not get out of it, but is wandering there for ever. Anyhow, he disappeared; but the Box, the man says, remained. He thinks that Dante had it, and that two of the great painters of Italy had it, and then a lesser painter, Zaganelli. I have reason to believe that Shakespeare had it and that he gave it to a poet called Wilkins, who was afraid to use it; and Wilkins gave it to a lady – one of the Stiboroughs – who was afraid of it. She kept it in Stiborough Castle, about twenty miles from here. In the Civil War Stiborough was besieged and she buried the Box in the Castle vaults. When the Parliament took the Castle they blew up most of it, so that the vaults were filled with the ruins.
‘This woman, Aurelia Stiborough, when she was old repented of her folly. She wrote down the bearings of the hiding-place.
‘The actual bearings were in cipher, but above the cipher she wrote some verses in English, which suggested that the cipher was worth deciphering.
‘You won’t have heard of the Historical Commissions, which went about examining papers in old houses all over the country and printing brief summaries of all that they found. In their wanderings they came upon the Stiborough papers and printed the cipher for the sake of the verses at the beginning: that was in 1882; and there were the bearings for anybody with the wit to see what they meant. But perhaps, my dear Joe, I worry you with this. I should be desolated to inflict boredom on an old friend.’
‘Go ahead,’ Joe said. ‘Now we’ve begun I may as well know it all.’
‘Well, we came here,’ Abner said. ‘I have always been interested in magic, as you know. For many years I have been aware of all the stories about Arnold of Todi, but, like most students of magic, I believed that the Box must have fallen into the hands of Inquisitors or Puritans and been burned.
‘I have always been interested in ciphers of different kinds and, quite by accident, came upon this Stiborough cipher while I was stopping with the Bishop at the time of the Missionary Conference. As I said, the poem at the beginning of the cipher showed that it referred to something very important. You are not interested in ciphers, Joe?’
‘Well, I did a little ciphering at school,’ Joe said. ‘That’s been enough for me so far.’
‘So I gather,’ Abner said. ‘Well, a cipher will always yield its secret if you go on long enough and this one gave way to me, although it was a very ingenious thing. That Aurelia Stiborough was not the fool I thought her by any means.
‘You’re not an imaginative man, Joe, but you can imagine my excitement at finding that this amazing treasure of one of the amazing men of all time was buried in the earth less than twenty miles from here – a thing that Shakespeare and Dante and the great painters had used? That I had only got to go and dig it up and have it for my own – a thing that Ramon Lully had sought to buy from Arnold and been refused? Think, Joe, if you can think; there were those two great men, each supreme in his own way of thought. Lully travelled through Spain and across France and over the Alps and down through Italy to Todi to offer his secret for Arnold’s, and Arnold refused.’
‘So then, I suppose, you got busy,’ Joe said.
‘Busy!’ Abner said. ‘You little know, Joe, what I went through. I learned what the cipher contained at two in the morning here. Before three I was on the site of Stiborough Castle; pitch dark night, gale blowing, rain coming down in torrents, the ivy blowing loose from the walls, bits of boughs flying everywhere, the Castle in such a mess of old broken stones and earth and bramble that I almost broke my neck half a dozen times. And then gradually the autumn dawn appeared and I could get proper bearings: a hill with a nick cut in it, a church spire and the entrance gate of Stiborough; and then, Joe, I made my measurements. I was wet through: was cold to the marrow. I didn’t mind wet: I didn’t mind cold. And there, by the first rays of light, I saw that I was too late: someone had read the cipher a little before me. There were the brambles cut away and the shaft sunk in exactly the right place and, at the bottom of the pit, the marks showed that I was too late.’
‘Gee!’ Joe said, with feeling, ‘it isn’t often you’re too late.’
‘I was too late. Here,’ Abner said. Kay saw Abner pull open one of the drawers of the desk. He took out some wrappings and covers of leather, much perished, of rotten wood, of a harder wood that was not rotten, and what looked like wool and silk. ‘These were the outer wraps,’ he said. ‘Inside was this jewel-case – plain silver: time of James the First – marked ‘A.S.’ for Aurelia Stiborough; but the inside box was gone. I had been beaten, as you would put it in your poetical way, on the post by a short head. He had got the things at sunset on the night before, just before the rain began.
‘Well, there it was: the Box was gone but it hadn’t been gone long, and the next question was to get it from the man who had it. Who had it? Who’d been digging at Stiborough and making enquiries there? It is not difficult to find out in a countryside as lonely as that. The only man who had been near the ruins was a little old man who played a Punch and Judy show.’
‘Cole Hawlings,’ Joe said.
‘As he calls himself now,’ Abner said. ‘He was the man who had been taking measurements at Stiborough and borrowing a billhook to cut away some of the brambles and undergrowth.’
‘Well, you’ve got Cole Hawlings all right,’ Joe said. ‘You’ve no cause to complain. I suppose it wasn’t hard to run him down: an old man with a Punch and Judy show?’
‘I have other ways of finding things that I want,’ Abner said, ‘than by questioning all those who happen to be in the taproom of the Blue Dragon. I used certain magical ways. But, of course, you don’t believe in magic, Joe.’
‘Well, sometimes, Chief,’ Joe said, ‘sometimes you talk in a way that makes me think you’ve got bats in your belfry.’
‘Ah, so you don’t believe in magic,’ Abner said. ‘That’s a pity. Just look at me, Joe.’
Joe looked at Abner, who moved his left hand strangely. Instantly, the door opened and through it came queen after queen, crowned, smiling and wearing scarlet. They looked into Joe’s face and said, ‘Don’t you believe in magic, Joe?’ then smiled and passed out at the door. After them there came little scarlet horses that whinnied and tossed their manes. They too looked into Joe’s face and whinnied, ‘Don’t you believe in magic, Joe?’
Then, immediately it seemed to Kay that the room had disappeared into a waste of thistles and dried grass blowing in the wind. Over this expanse came an old donkey with a matted, thick fell, one ear lopped down and the other cocked. He trotted up and turned to look at Joe. He looked extraordinarily perverse and very clever. Then he brayed, ‘Don’t you believe in magic, Joe?’ Then he cocked the ear that was lopped and lopped the ear that was cocked and brayed again, ‘No, Joe doesn’t believe in magic:’ and there was the room just as it had been before.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Joe, ‘how did you do that? I suppose you’ve got a magic lantern somewhere.’
‘You might call it that,’ Abner said. ‘But by some such body of friends as those you have just seen I was able to find out who Cole Hawlings really is.
‘When you see your friends again, Joe, you will be able to tell them who he is and why I have never hurt him. Cole Hawlings is Ramon Lully.’
Kay, who was watching Joe’s face, saw Joe gasp, and then assume a look of pity, contempt and tolerance for a man plainly gone mad.
‘But you said he was dead, Chief,’ Joe said at last.
‘I said, “They show his tomb at Palma.” He discovered the Elixir of Life and flew away from his disciples in the likeness of a golden cock, and here he is now as Cole Hawlings.’
There was a pause at this, Joe looked at Abner, and at the floor, then back to Abner: he was plainly trying to find something tactful to say: at last he found it:
‘That thing you say he discovered, the liquor of Life and that, would tha
t be a kind of cough mixture?’
‘If you can imagine a cough mixture that will make a man eternal, able to survive pestilence or any other way of death . . .’
‘It would be a good mixture to get on the market, I can see,’ Joe said. ‘Abner’s Cure-All, at one and six the half-pint bottle. These patent medicines just rake in the money. But it wouldn’t cure crashing in an aeroplane nor being run over by a lorry, you don’t pretend?’
‘Why not?’ Abner asked. ‘Why shouldn’t that which makes tissue unkillable make bone unbreakable?’
‘I see,’ Joe said, scratching his head, ‘it’s like one of those rubber solutions they used to pump into tyres; they made the tyres solid, so then you couldn’t puncture. Well, if you could get a stuff like that on the market you’d beat all the pill-merchants, and all the salts fellows. And should we all be in it with you?’
‘My dear Joe,’ Abner said, ‘if there is one thing I pride myself on it is my loyalty to my colleagues. For whom do I toil here? For whom do I think and worry and scheme, but for the Brotherhood? We have lived through all these years of danger and adventure together. What could be a greater joy to me than to share all our little takings and enter into partnership for the marketing of the Elixir, for an eternity of happy quiet?’
‘Chief,’ Joe said, ‘if you don’t mind, I’ll sit down. Some of what you’ve told me is a bit of a knock out.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said at last.
‘That is that,’ Abner answered.
‘About these clergymen,’ Joe said; ‘what still we don’t see, is why you keep scrobbling the clergymen. See here now in The Daily Thriller :
‘The latest outrage at Tatchester, culminating in the disappearance of the Bishop’s Chaplain, the Reverend Edward Charity, B.D., and his friend, the Chief Theologian, Doctor Isaiah Dogma, points to the existence of an organised conspiracy, possibly, as has been suggested, to prevent the holding of the Millennial Christmas Service advertised for the early hours of Christmas morning. If this be so, and no other explanation of the outrage, so far suggested, seems to meet the case, we would warn the scoundrels responsible that the Establishment will contrive to defeat their machinations.
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