Less than two hours later, Inspector Weymouth and a party of men from
Scotland Yard raided the house in Museum Street. They found the stock
of J. Salaman practically intact, and, in the strangely appointed rooms
above, every evidence of a hasty outgoing. But of the instruments, drugs
and other laboratory paraphernalia not one item remained. I would gladly
have given my income for a year, to have gained possession of the books,
alone; for, beyond all shadow of doubt, I knew them to contain formula
calculated to revolutionize the science of medicine.
Exhausted, physically and mentally, and with my mind a
whispering-gallery of conjectures (it were needless for me to mention
whom respecting) I turned in, gratefully, having patched up the slight
wound in my calf.
I seemed scarcely to have closed my eyes, when Nayland Smith was shaking
me into wakefulness.
“You are probably tired out,” he said; “but your crazy expedition of
last night entitles you to no sympathy. Read this; there is a train
in an hour. We will reserve a compartment and you can resume your
interrupted slumbers in a corner seat.”
As I struggled upright in bed, rubbing my eyes sleepily, Smith handed
me the Daily Telegraph, pointing to the following paragraph upon the
literary page:
Messrs. M---- announce that they will publish shortly the long delayed
work of Kegan Van Roon, the celebrated American traveler, Orientalist
and psychic investigator, dealing with his recent inquiries in China. It
will be remembered that Mr. Van Roon undertook to motor from Canton
to Siberia last winter, but met with unforeseen difficulties in the
province of Ho-Nan. He fell into the hands of a body of fanatics and was
fortunate to escape with his life. His book will deal in particular with
his experiences in Ho-Nan, and some sensational revelations regarding
the awakening of that most mysterious race, the Chinese, are promised.
For reasons of his own he has decided to remain in England until the
completion of his book (which will be published simultaneously in New
York and London) and has leased Cragmire Tower, Somersetshire, in which
romantic and historical residence he will collate his notes and
prepare for the world a work ear-marked as a classic even before it is
published.
I glanced up from the paper, to find Smith’s eyes fixed upon me,
inquiringly.
“From what I have been able to learn,” he said, evenly, “we should reach
Saul, with decent luck, just before dusk.”
As he turned, and quitted the room without another word, I realized, in
a flash, the purport of our mission; I understood my friend’s ominous
calm, betokening suppressed excitement.
The Fates were with us (or so it seemed); and whereas we had not hoped
to gain Saul before sunset, as a matter of fact, the autumn afternoon
was in its most glorious phase as we left the little village with its
oldtime hostelry behind us and set out in an easterly direction, with
the Bristol Channel far away on our left and a gently sloping upland on
our right.
The crooked high-street practically constituted the entire hamlet of
Saul, and the inn, “The Wagoners,” was the last house in the street.
Now, as we followed the ribbon of moor-path to the top of the rise, we
could stand and look back upon the way we had come; and although we had
covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the sunlight
gleaming now and then upon the gilt lettering of the inn sign as it
swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm, but was
relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had in it
the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us, then, the foot-path sloped
down to Saul, unpeopled by any living thing; east and northeast swelled
the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy distance where the sky
began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west fell the gentle gradient
from the top of the slope which we had mounted, and here, as far as the
eye could reach, the country had an appearance suggestive of a huge
and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for
sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then
a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that
bird’s-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which
merged into a dun-colored smudge and again into the brilliant green;
then the moor would begin once more.
“That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose,” said Smith, suddenly
peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction; “and yonder,
unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire Tower.”
Shading my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead, and saw the place for
which we were bound; one of those round towers, more common in Ireland,
which some authorities have declared to be of Phoenician origin.
Ramshackle buildings clustered untidily about its base, and to it a sort
of tongue of that oddly venomous green which patched the lowlands, shot
out and seemed almost to reach the towerbase. The land for miles around
was as flat as the palm of my hand, saving certain hummocks, lesser
tors, and irregular piles of boulders which dotted its expanse. Hills
and uplands there were in the hazy distance, forming a sort of mighty
inland bay which I doubted not in some past age had been covered by
the sea. Even in the brilliant sunlight the place had something of
a mournful aspect, looking like a great dried-up pool into which the
children of giants had carelessly cast stones.
We met no living soul upon the moor. With Cragmire Tower but a quarter
of a mile off, Smith paused again, and raising his powerful glasses
swept the visible landscape.
“Not a sign. Petrie,” he said, softly; “yet...”
Dropping the glasses back into their case, my companion began to tug at
his left ear.
“Have we been over-confident?” he said, narrowing his eyes in
speculative fashion. “No less than three times I have had the idea that
something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind me, as I
focused...”
“What do you mean, Smith?”
“Are we”--he glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled with
listening Chinamen--“followed?”
Silently we looked into one another’s eyes, each seeking for the dread
which neither had named. Then:
“Come on Petrie!” said Smith, grasping my arm; and at quick march we
were off again.
Cragmire Tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had looked
like a green tongue, from the moorland slopes above, was in fact a
creek, flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the sea.
The house which we were come to visit consisted in a low, two-story
building, joining the ancient tower on the east with two smaller
outbuildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden, and a few stunted
fruit trees in the northwest corner; the whole being surrounded by a
gray stone wall.
The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path, which ran up
almost alongside of it. We were both extremely warm by reason of our
long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have been
grateful to us. In short, I find it difficult to account for the
unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found myself
at the foot of the time-worn monument. I know that we both pulled up
sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by some mutual
disturbance.
But not a sound broke the stillness save a remote murmuring, until a
solitary sea gull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower,
uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically to my mind sprang
the lines of the poem:
Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen,
With God’s creatures I bide, ‘mid the birds that I ken;
Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea
Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.
Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human
activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced
back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I
beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we walked
up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows of the
house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above. Those on
the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though glazed,
boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not the
slightest evidence of tenancy.
We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken
door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the
door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring and tugged it.
From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clangor, a
cracked and toneless jangle, which, seeming to echo through empty
apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of the
openings in the round tower; for it was from above our heads that the
noise came to us.
It died away, that eerie ringing--that clanging so dismal that it could
chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming down out of
the blue; it awoke no other response than the mournful cry of the sea
gull circling over our heads. Silence fell. We looked at one another,
and we were both about to express a mutual doubt when, unheralded by
any unfastening of bolts or bars, the oaken door was opened, and a huge
mulatto, dressed in white, stood there regarding us.
I started nervously, for the apparition was so unexpected, but Nayland
Smith, without evidence of surprise, thrust a card into the man’s hand.
“Take my card to Mr. Van Roon, and say that I wish to see him on
important business,” he directed, authoritatively.
The mulatto bowed and retired. His white figure seemed to be swallowed
up by the darkness within, for beyond the patch of uncarpeted floor
revealed by the peeping sunlight, was a barn-like place of densest
shadow. I was about to speak, but Smith laid his hand upon my arm
warningly, as, out from the shadows the mulatto returned. He stood on
the right of the door and bowed again.
“Be pleased to enter,” he said, in his harsh, negro voice. “Mr. Van Roon
will see you.”
The gladness of the sun could no longer stir me; a chill and sense of
foreboding bore me company, as beside Nayland Smith I entered Cragmire
Tower.