The Rainbow
October 5. 10.18 P.M.
I slipped on my rough shoes, thus completing my toilet, scribbled a
note for Crofts, and passed out of the door. From the top of the
stairs came a soft recurrent sound. Bob Cullen had insisted on
sentinelling outside Maryvale’s apartment during the night; now the
guardsman slept industriously, his head reclining in the angle of the
doorpost, the rest of him curled up, his jaws alarmingly open.
Not disturbing him, I descended to the first storey, where I placed my
note under Crofts’ door, and continued down. My previous night’s
experience had taught me how to find the food supply readily, and I
stocked my pockets with concentrated nutriment. Letting myself out by
the front entrance, I turned to the left and directed my steps toward
the kitchen demesne betwixt House and stables.
I was in luck. Twenty yards of fairly stout clothes-line were mine for
the taking.
With the rope bent over my arm, I hastened past the dinner-room
windows toward the cypresses that marked the first point on any
journey up the Vale. Then I stopped dead.
For a woman was standing by the far corner of the conservatory,
half-turned from me, looking at an object which she held in her hand.
With her other hand she made a slight gesture to someone around the
corner, and the next moment I beat a swift retreat to the shelter of a
rank of low birch trees. A man in his shirt sleeves dashed out from
the behind the House, running like mad. He was a man I had never seen
before!
With great galloping strides, his arms working like pistons, his knees
rising incredibly high, he rushed straight for the clump of cypresses;
there he turned as sharply as his momentum would permit and sped back
to his starting point out of my view.
He had come and gone so quickly that I had little chance to take in
his appearance. Decidedly, however, he was a long, lank man, and there
was a touch of red about his face in hair and beard. But any attempt
to mark him closely was defeated by mere astonishment at his presence,
and wonder, in the name of reason, at what he was doing.
I quickly balanced the courses open to me. Should I reveal myself and
challenge these unknowns? Or return secretly to the house and awake
Crofts and Salt? Or continue my journey?
This last was what I did, for the cloaked woman happened to turn her
head in my direction, and I saw that she was one of the Clays. Unless
the Clays are to be relied on, no one is. As for my curiosity, which
was more than a little, I smothered it. If the many perplexing
incidents in the Vale have not by this time chastened the
inquisitiveness of each one of us, we are difficult to school.
I went safe in the hiding of the birches until I reached the unshorn
grass of the summer-house park; the blades were loaded with dew. While
I crossed toward the regular path, I caught sight of the unknown
racing again in my direction, and was half-alarmed for fear that he
had espied me and was on my trail. Once more, however, he turned
beneath the cypresses and fled back full tilt.
I had much to ponder on while I marched through the bleak and clammy
dawn, and pondering made the miles seem shorter. I thought of
Maryvale, who had walked here with me yesterday, of his dark sayings
and the blight upon his spirit—of Doctor Aire, whose theorisings
strike a vague discomfort into my mind. He, by the way, has taken full
responsibility for the sudden madness of Maryvale. He blames himself
for relating the story of the man found decapitated near the
summer-house. That account, together with my yarn a little later about
the witch sisters and the subsequent failure of Maryvale to destroy
the cat, turned the balance of the unfortunate man’s intellect, which
had previously given token of a disposition towards instability. The
incredible fact that three bullets did not injure the beast Aire says
he cannot account for; yet I suspect him, somehow, of keeping close
counsel on the point.
But even with these matters to turn over and over in a tussle of
thought, constantly I kept wondering about the pair on the lawn, the
man from nowhere practising his uncouth capers, the woman so intent on
what she held in her hand.
I came to the spot where Salt and the others had parted from Maryvale
and me the evening before, and now I turned aside too, for my
determination was to cross the stream by the fallen tree and to
assault the eastern wall of the Vale. There was no trouble in
clambering along the improvised bridge; I leaped to the ground and in
ten minutes reached the steep base of Great Rhos, prepared for an
hour’s battle with the densely-wooded slope.
Finally, wet to the waist as if I had waded a stream, I emerged on the
brow of the hill where the heatherstems lay wriggling like the hair of
a thousand Medusas. I walked rapidly, waiting for the sun to break
through and dry me, and when it came soon afterward, I sat under a
whinberry bush by a bank of rare Welsh poppies and ate a few dried
figs and a piece of nut-bread for breakfast. From Shepherd’s Well
nearby I took a long draught.
The day promised to be glaring hot and abundantly clear on the
uplands, and doubtless steaming in the Vale. I passed on to find some
brink for reconnaissance. Among the hilltops, what a difference a few
feet may make in the prospect!
I found a place on the edge of the sheer flank of the north of the
Forest where the wide plains and fastnesses for miles about were
revealed in shimmering prospect. I reclined and rested here for long,
dried out thoroughly, and had luncheon: two legs of chicken, a chunk
of unsweetened chocolate, and an orange which had wonderfully escaped
crushing in my ascent. While I ate, I looked at the cloud-flecked
hills spread all about in lovely confusion with fantastic writhen
crests and crowns of Silurian rock. They were scraped and clawed by
rivers channelling: Ithon and Clywedog and Wye gliding down their
shady courses with here and there among them a glimpse of hill-hung
woodlands, or church tower peeping over castle rise, or drowsy village
looking unchanged for centuries. Surely from Aidenn Forest one could
see the better half of Wales.
Of a sudden I slapped my thigh. “I’ll do it!”
My large-scale map of the Forest was in my pocket, as was a map of
greater scope, showing Wales and the western counties, from which I
could transfer the angles and make a fairly good job of it. I would
draw sighting lines on the Forest sheet, so as to identify those
magnificent and anonymous hills that showed crags and colours from
twenty, thirty, forty miles away.
I was at the northern end of the Forest. Should I work here? No, the
sun had not yet driven the vapour from the remotest peaks of which I
wished to find the names. Besides, there was no shelter near, and I
saw some cool-looking groves on Whimble. I headed south for Whimble.
Wryneck and woodlark sometimes came curiously past while I worked on
my maps under disadvantages, without table or board; I had to fold one
sheet for a straight-edge if I wished to make a mark on the other.
Sighting was difficult without a firm plane surface. But I had
enthusiasm, and patience. I fixed lines pointing to mountains that,
when I had found their names, for the first time seemed real to me,
Cader Idris, the Brecon Beacons, many others—as the tracing I include
here will remind me when I look through these pages in later years.
I still had some cheese in my pocket. I ate it for tea.
Then out of the sultry day came a sudden dash of rain along the
hilltops, blotting out my mountains, and hedging in my horizon to the
profiles of the nearby slopes. I realized that the copse of trees I
occupied abutted the field where I had fled from the bull. Fair
shelter must be near.
I made short work of hastening across the field and climbing down,
this time, to the long broad ledge upon which I had fallen on the
other occasion. There I found refuge from the weather, snugly
ensconced on a lichenous seat of stone where the slaty rock was
hollowed out underneath the eyelid of the hill. In my dim cubicle I
laughed at the storm that was sending down its battery of rain.
For the first time in the day, I bethought myself of smoking. I had
out pipe and tobacco, filled my pipe, and struck a match. It flamed
and died. I realized in an instant what a tragedy my carelessness had
caused.
That was my last match.
I would certainly have cursed myself in the limited number of
languages at my command, had not something I had seen in that moment’s
flare of the match caused me to catch my breath.
The little recess of the rocks where I had taken refuge was filled
with bracken and some coarse grass. The brief light had shown me that
at the rear of the cave, if I may call it so, the sparser growth had
been crushed down, thoroughly flattened—and the impress was that of a
human form. Someone had used this place of late as his sleeping
quarters!
I must have sat there stunned for several minutes before I stirred, or
even began to think. When I had gathered my wits, it was not hard
determining to get out of the place at once. Was this sleeper the man
who had shed Cosgrove’s blood? For all that had been discovered, he
might be. But whoever he was, I had no wish to encounter him alone,
and he might at that very moment be hurrying this way to escape the
rain.
The rain, to be sure, had almost ceased, a fact which did not alter my
determination to be quit of the ledge with all speed. Half a minute
later I was out of the shelter and clambering up the bank, with my
face set toward Mynydd Tarw’s gorsy slopes. And now I watched the
curving limits of the hills with half-apprehensive keenness, expecting
at any moment to see the black dot of the unknown head rise into
sight.
The shower had all but ceased; through a fine spray of rain the sun
came glinting. I looked across the Vale, over Great Rhos. Ahead of me
among the waste of hills beyond Aidenn Forest the land was black with
storm for leagues, save where one great monument of light rested
thirty miles away on Pen Plinlimon-fawr. On that bleak mountain-top
the zone of splendour shone like a spot of hell touched by some ray of
heaven.
I had the impulse then to look the opposite way. Yes, as I had
surmised, to the south-east the meadows of Herefordshire were steeped
in sun. And through the gauzy air with its wandering vapour-drops I
saw a rainbow’s glittering bridge from wooded slope to wooded slope
across the mown hayfields, an arch beneath which the distant Malvern
Hills lifted their profile against the sky.
I remembered then the great freedom and elation I had felt when on the
uplands only two days ago, and wished that among these wonders that
seemed spread for my eyes alone I might regain that long ebullient
rapture. But I could not. Why could I not?
There I was with pipe and tobacco, perishing for a match!
Unless the cave-dweller whom I wished not to meet were near, there was
no other smoking creature within miles.
But stay! I suddenly remembered the men from Penybont, repairing the
one sole path to the uplands. If they had succeeded in establishing a
new trackway, there was my best route back to Highglen House, toward
which I must be tending, since the hour was nearer five than four. And
one of them must have a match. If only they had not given over work
for the day!
I had still a little distance to go north along the edge of Mynydd
Tarw before reaching the top of the path. Signs of the landslide were
not apparent here; yet I had made but one of the hairpin bends when I
saw a broad scar and scoop where both earth and rock had torn asunder
from the hill. Not until I was half-way to the floor of the Vale did
the course of the landslide obliterate the zigzag path. The workers
had not dug all the earth and stone away, but had made a substantial
walking-surface some feet above the original one. And going a little
further down, I saw to my joy that the men had not yet departed. They
were not working, indeed, but standing about some object on the ground
at the foot of the hill—and I had a premonition like a sword-cut what
that object was.
It was the ill-clad, coatless body of the gorilla-man.
Not a quarter of an hour before, the men who had worked to the very
bottom of the path, where the wreckage of the avalanche tailed away,
had seen protruding from the earth a long and hairy arm and purplish
hand. A large stone weighted down the body when it was found, and it
appeared from the position of the corpse, and particularly from the
writhen expression of the features, that the stranger had not been
stricken instantly to death. Instead, he may even have been some way
up the path when he had seen the hillside falling, and may have fled
and nearly escaped. The groping arm upthrust seemed an indication that
had not the heavy stone pinned him under, he might have struggled to
the air, instead of being buried alive.
“Did any of you know him?” I asked, looking down at the face with its
long, uncouth jaw and narrow temples.
“No, sir. He must have been a foreigner in these parts.”
“This is a bit sickening.” I certainly needed a pipe now. “Who has a
match?”
They were quite as doleful as I. “Sorry, sir, our matches was all wet
in the rain just now. Our coats was lyin’ up beyond, and the shower
got to ’em before we did. Matches are fair ruined.”
I looked down at the ill-clad body. “By thunder, if I wouldn’t rob a
dead man for a match now. Were there any on him?”
“Not a one, sir.” The men seemed to regard the idea as a thing of
abhorrence, and I had to laugh my question away as a grim joke.
A couple of miles southward on the way home, I met the two workmen who
had gone to Highglen House for a shutter on which to transport the
body. Salt was with them, and all three regarded me queerly, which was
natural, for I was carrying, besides the clothes-rope, the umbrella
which I had left in the ruin last night.
“Decided not to hang yourself?” asked Salt, his eye on the rope.
I handed him the umbrella, which he received with puzzled brow.
“Item,” I said, “to prove the objective of the menagerie-keeper.”
“Quite,” he responded. “Have you seen what we’re goin’ after?”
“I have. He was the first of the men I encountered that night.”
“I guessed so. Well, this party’s out of it _al_together—time and
distance, you know, time and distance.”
“I suppose that’s so. Time and distance, the two greatest villains
that ever feazed the detective force. The landslide certainly did not
occur more than fifteen minutes after Cosgrove’s death.”
“And this man was in it, was he?”
“What do you mean? Of course he was.”
“Not just buried there afterward, maybe?”
“I should say not. By the way, Superintendent, don’t go without
letting me have a match.”
“Not afraid of the dark, I hope?” Salt looked significantly up among
the trees, where the light was thickening.
“No, not exactly, but I’m famished for a smoke.”
“Smokin’ is not one of my virtues,” he responded. “I’m sorry, sir;
you’ll have to wait until you get to the House.”
I was angry, yes poisonously angry with Salt. It takes all kinds of
lunatics to make up a world, but is there any lunatic as irritating as
the man who doesn’t smoke?
I returned to the House, having all the while the awareness that forms
were following and eyes watching me in the shadowy walks. To tell the
merciless truth, these episodes of the Unforthcoming Match had
chagrined me so that my nerves were teetering, and I had the
uncomfortable sense that if I were to step from the centre of the path
or make any untoward movement, something disagreeable might happen. I
felt like a prisoner, and even when I had emerged upon the lawn, I did
not like the way the black windows of the House stared at me.
“Great heavens,” I thought, “am I coming under the thumbs of the
Influences, as Mrs. Belvoir called them?”
The Vale was dim when I reached the House. I knew that I should surely
find a match-holder on the mantel in the Hall of the Moth. I did, but
some other smoker had abstracted the last match! I hope heaven’s ears
were closed at that moment.