The Dancing Druids

Chapter Seventeen

—«♦»—

‘ “That is strange,” said the other; “let us follow the cart and see where it goes.” ’

Ibid. (Tom Thumb)

« ^ »

Laura had seen the man, too. ‘Oh, lor!’ she said. ‘Here we come!’ The horseman gained the summit and reined in his mount. He seemed to be trying to make out the lie of the land in the greyish deception of the half-light, and took some time to satisfy himself. He then turned his horse and thundered off.

‘I suppose he will bring his friends to finish the task,’ said Mrs. Bradley grimly. ‘I wonder how soon we may expect them?’

She took out her revolver, and she and Laura stood behind their respective stones and waited for what might be coming. They had not long to wait. There was the sound of hoofs over the hill, and the horseman reappeared, the darkish shadow of a centaur against the grey of the sky. He turned in his saddle to look behind him. After a short pause, three men came after him on foot, lumbering up the slope at a half-trot. He spurred forward, followed by these companions, and rode straight towards the stone beneath which the dead man was pinned. Here he dismounted, and waited for the others to come up. It was the biggish man whom O’Hara had recognized as the one whom he had assisted on the Saturday evening of the hare and hounds.

‘Quiet enough,’ he remarked. ‘Now we’ve got to get him away, and we haven’t much time. Get busy. Free him first, and then for the box. All set? Now get a move on. Con’s expecting us.’

He received no answer, so he remounted, and remained on watch. Paying no attention to him, the other three knelt beside the hole from which the stone had come, and one of them reached down into it. He found nothing, so, changing his position to that of lying flat on his face, he thrust his arm further into the hole. The others watched him. He got up, shrugged, and the three of them glanced towards the horseman, whose back was towards them, and then went over to where the dead man lay with his face in the turf, and looked attentively at the respective positions of the man and the fallen stone.

Meanwhile Mrs. Bradley and her secretary, behind their respective stones, were playing a grim game of hide and seek with the horseman, moving stealthily round the stones as he kept his watch so as to remain out of sight whichever way he manoeuvred his horse. As the last place from which he was expecting scrutiny was from behind the stones, their task was fairly simple.

He soon seemed satisfied that there was nothing to be feared, and rode quietly back to where the men were working. The one who had groped in the hole had unwound a grappling chain which ended in a hook, and this he passed round the end of the stone and secured it. When he had tested it, he passed the end of the chain to one of the others. This man carried it to the horseman, who turned his mount so that the chain could be fastened at the back of his saddle.

‘All set?’ he called, when this was done. He obtained a growling assent from his obviously unwilling helpers, and turned in the saddle to say angrily:

‘Well, you take your cut, don’t you? And you’ve got to do what’s to be done!’

‘Us didn’t reckon on deaders,’ said one of the men very sullenly.

‘Oh, go to hell, and do as you’re told, or we’re all in the cart,’ said the horsemen. ‘Once let anybody find poor Bud like this, and they’ve got us all in the bag.’

At this, the men, one at the mouth of the hole and astride the stone, the others between him and the horseman, took the chain in hands on to which they had pulled stout gauntlets, and, at a word from the first man, took the strain and began to haul and tug with the greatest determination with the object of lifting the stone from the body of their dead companion.

The man at the hole was the biggest and presumably the strongest. He gave the orders, panting them out as though the strain of the lifting was almost too much for his strength. The others, too, strained and sweated, and the rider, urging his horse, was swearing softly and continuously as, for half an hour by Mrs. Bradley’s watch, they toiled (though with frequent pauses for rest and to wipe off the sweat which was running into their eyes), to move the great stone off the body. Their efforts were vain.

Mrs. Bradley and Laura watched with the greatest interest. At last the two men stood back, then flung themselves on the ground and declared that the job could not be done. The big man, who at first had been as unwilling as they, now cursed, cajoled and bullied them, but they refused to go back to the work. He spoke to the horseman, who glanced at the eastern sky, and then unhooked the grapple from his foam-flecked horse and rode off. He was absent for about a quarter of an hour, during which time the others, although they were resting, betrayed all the known and obvious signs of anxiety, for the sun was rising and their time, it was clear, was running out. At last the horseman came back, flogging his horse up the hill and over the turf to the stones, as though he, too, was most desperately pressed for time.

In his left hand he held a short axe, or, rather, a billhook. Mrs. Bradley watched interestedly, but Laura covered her face, for both had guessed the use to which the implement was to be put. The rider handed the billhook to the biggest man, and the others got to their feet and stood away. The biggest man looked at the billhook and then at the corpse, whilst the rider dismounted and pulled a large sack from his saddle.

‘Now then,‘ he said, ‘have a smack at it.’

‘Not me,’ said the big man, dropping the billhook on the grass. ‘Do your own bloody butchering.’

The horseman lost no more time. There was a horrid interval, during which Laura, behind her stone, was sick twice, and then the horseman kicked the head and hands of the dead man into the sack, wiped his boots very carefully on the turf, twisted the neck of the sack, and approached the horse with his burden.

The animal, however, squealed and backed, and the horseman could not control it. It would not suffer the sack to be brought nearer than about three yards, and the horseman was dragged at the end of the rein as the animal pranced and whinnied. It was not until two of the others came to his assistance that the horse was brought sufficiently to a standstill to enable him to get upon its back. As he did this, another sound could be heard, and over the brow of the hill came an ancient and lumbering farm-wagon half-filled with dirty straw which looked as though it had made a bedding for calves and stank accordingly. It stopped at the open gateway, and then creaked onward again, but remained on the rough but well-defined path which led along the side of the field.

The carter jumped down as soon as it stopped next time, and clumped across the turf towards the hole. As he came up, the men beside it indicated the corpse—or what remained of it—and the carter swore with horror, and for some time argued whether or not he should take the sack on the wagon.

‘It’s worse nor a murder,’ said he. ‘I tell ee, it’s worse nor a murder.’

‘Oh, don’t talk such muck,’ said the horseman. He tossed the reeking billhook on to the straw in the wagon. ‘Listen, now, cully,’ he went on. ‘That’ll take some explaining if I don’t pick it up out of there. You’ve heard of fingerprints, haven’t you? Well, it’s more than your neck’s worth…’ he made a suggestive gesture indicative of the tightening of a noose… ‘to touch that billhook and leave your fingerprints on it. His are on it…’ he jerked his head towards the big man, who with the other two, was making off towards the farm… ‘and mine are superimposed on his. Follow? So if yours get on top of mine, you know what the police’ll think, don’t you? Now don’t be a fool. I don’t touch that billhook again until we get to the farm with that sack and I can get it into a safer place, and you know where that is, don’t you?’

The carter was not so easily bullied or convinced. He turned stubborn.

‘You promised me it ’ud be poor Bud’s body, and willing enough I am to take that along to the farm. But this is different. Bodies do be resurrection matter, but ’eads and ’ands be offal and most on-Christian.’

‘Oh, don’t be a fool!’ shouted the horseman, almost dancing with impatience and fury. ‘Do you want your cut or don’t you? I’ll report you to Mr. Concaverty, that’s what I’ll do, and when the next pay-off comes you’ll be left with nothing except a prison sentence. How would you like to do a three-year stretch, eh?’

‘Not by myself I shouldn’t be, nohow,’ said the carter morosely. ‘Still, suit yourself. But I ain’t going to touch the sack, mind that. Dollars is dollars, and if they turns into a quid or two now and then, that ain’t no odds to no one, supposing a man keeps his mouth shut…’

‘Oh, go to hell! Off with you! Off with you! It’ll be full daylight in half an hour, and we’ll have people all over the place,’ yelled the horseman furiously. ‘Here, take the beastly thing, and shut your trap!’

‘It’s again my conscience and it’s a-dimmin’ of my holy lights,’ said the carter. The horseman, consigning his holy lights, in a crisp phrase which Mrs. Bradley appreciated without wishing ever to employ, to what he suggested would be their ultimate destination, slung the sack into the cart on top of the billhook, heaped the filthy straw over both, and, having caught his horse which seemed to have forgotten the sack and was grazing quietly at a short distance from the cart-track, he mounted and galloped away.

The carter, with fearful mutterings and some darkly suspicious glances towards the stones, drove slowly off down the hill towards the farm.

When both horseman and wagon had disappeared, the witnesses quietly emerged.

‘If anybody comes, pretend to be gathering mushrooms—or at any rate, looking for some,’ said Mrs. Bradley producing two large paper bags from her pocket and handing one over to her secretary.

But no one appeared, and by the time they had reached the open gateway they could see the wagon almost at the bottom of the hill.

‘Keep under cover,’ said Mrs. Bradley, putting the paper bags away again, ‘and you had better begin cutting a stick from the hedge if the carter chances to look round. We’re a couple of holiday-makers out for an early-morning stroll.’

‘I could do with an early-morning breakfast,’ said Laura with feeling. ‘When do we resume our archaeological pursuits? I rather liked fooling about on these ancient hills.’

‘We could, of course, “discover” the corpse, child. Somebody will do so, sooner or later, you know.’

‘Oh, no! Not us!’ said Laura, horrified. ‘What on earth made me mention breakfast? I don’t think I’ll ever want anything to eat any more.’

‘We had better report to the Chief Constable as soon as we know what they propose to do with the wagon,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘After that, I think we will let the police discover the body. It will be less embarrassing for them and for us that way.’

‘No more archaeology, then?’

‘The police will provide all the digging that is necessary—at any rate for some time,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I anticipate their taking up all the nine stones to see whether anything else is buried beneath them. The police are nothing if not thorough.’

‘What do you think is in the box?’

‘I did think it was a body, but now I am not so sure. It is possible (as so many people seem to be involved) that it is the proceeds of robbery. But no doubt before long we shall know.’

‘I’m dying to get it open,’ said Laura. ‘At least, I think I am. It couldn’t be money, could it?’

The wagon bumped on down the deeply-rutted cart-track. Once or twice the carter looked back, as though aware that there were people behind him, but they were a long way off, and all that the man could see, Mrs. Bradley hoped and believed, were two early-morning walkers intent on the view, or deep in conversation, or, in the case of the young one, on switching at the nettles in the hedge.

The wagon made heavy weather of the turn at the bottom of the hill, but was into the farmyard at last, and there was left, an innocent-looking adjunct, in the cartshed, whilst the carter went off to his breakfast, or perhaps to polish up his holy lights, whatever these ostensible manifestations of dark superstition (for as such Mrs. Bradley interpreted them) might be.

She and Laura, who had hung back until it was certain that the carter had gone, now turned in their tracks, climbed part of the hill once more, kept low behind a hedge which ran at right-angles to the cart-track, and then sat down to keep an eye on the farmyard, which was now directly below them, and to decide what their next move should be.

‘One of us,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘had better remain whilst the other goes back to breakfast, and then we can perhaps change places. The vigil will not last long, because whichever of us goes first can inform the police of what has occurred, and no doubt they will very soon be on the spot.’

‘But what do you make of it all?’ enquired Laura. ‘I said it was a secret society, but it’s a gang of crooks, I should imagine. Have you heard of any robberies in the neighbourhood?’

‘No, child. Neither shall we do so. At least, if we do, they will not, I may venture to predict, be the work of those men.’

‘Do you think Mike’s fat man was murdered?’

‘I have very little doubt of it, child.’

‘You don’t think that’s him in the iron box?’

‘I have very high hopes of it, I confess.’

‘You really think that’s not treasure?’

‘I really think that the iron box contains the corpse of the painter Toro.’

‘Toro? Oh, but…’

‘If the rest of my deductions are correct, I do not see who else it can be but Toro, child. When we have concluded our present business, which is to see that the head and hands in the wagon come into the possession of the police so that the dead man can be identified, we will persuade my picture-dealer in Cuchester co describe Mr. Allwright for us.’

‘But why shouldn’t it be Mr. Battle? Why do you say so definitely that it’s Toro?’

‘I don’t say it definitely, child. It may not be a body at all. But if it is a body, then I say it is Toro. It could not possibly be Battle, because Battle, to the best of my belief, is not only alive, but is in constant touch with his son David.’

‘Then all that story of David’s is a lie?’

‘Most of it, I think, is untrue. Its own internal evidence is against it.’

‘And he doesn’t really hate his father at all?’

‘I think he hates his father as deeply as he says he does.’

‘Then… But why do you think his father is still alive?’

‘Because I think we have seen him this morning.’

‘This morning?’ Laura was almost shouting in her excitement.

‘Of course, the horse may have thrown him and broken his neck for him by now,’ said Mrs. Bradley.