The Dancing Druids

Chapter Twenty-One

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‘The wolf and the wild boar were first on the ground: and when they spied their enemies coming, and saw the cat’s long tail standing straight in the air, they thought she was carrying a sword.’

Ibid. (Old Sultan)

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The packing-cases full of pictures presented a difficult problem. The young men discussed its solution and came to the conclusion that the best plan was to rush the packing-cases up the ramp to the garage and get them into the village street. There they could be guarded (at the point of the revolver if necessary) until transport could be arranged for them to Cuchester, where the whole matter must be left to the police.

‘And I only hope we haven’t committed a felony,’ said Denis, grinning. ‘Now, who’s doing the haulage work, and who’s covering our retreat?’

‘Gerry is probably the best shot,’ said O’Hara, ‘unless it’s you, Bradley?’

‘Lord, no. Come on, then, George,’ said Denis. ‘O’Hara, you fight a rearguard action, if necessary, with the other gun.’

‘Queer they hadn’t the guns in their hands when they came down after us,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I suppose they thought we’d run straight into the party from the motor boat, and they might hit one of their own side if they fired.’

It was dawn by the time they reached the pull-in yard with the packing-cases, and at sight of the empty lorry Denis suggested that they might as well load the packing-cases on to it and drive them into Cuchester straight away.

‘The lorry must have brought them here,’ he argued, ‘so I don’t see why it shouldn’t take them back.’ This simple solution pleased everybody, and was about to be put into effect when into the yard ran three men.

‘Hello! Re’enter the spivs!’ said O’Hara. Gascoigne also recognized the newcomers, and, taking the gun in his hand, he waved it in ironic greeting. The spivs betrayed no surprise and no resentment.

‘Hey! Going towards London?’ yelled the foremost. ‘Give us a lift, will you, boys?’

‘Cuchester!’ shouted Denis. George let in his clutch, and the lorry moved slowly forward towards the entrance.

‘That’ll do fine!’ yelled the second of the men, moving out of the way as the lorry came out at the opening. The three men then hung on and tried to climb on to the tailboard, but Denis delicately stamped on the fingers of one, a Rugger shove in the chest from the large-palmed O’Hara settled the fate of the second, and a smack across the eyes from Gascoigne foiled the venturous tactics of the third. The last the lorry pirates saw of the wasp-waisted visitors was one on his back in the dust, another dabbing his nose with a bright silk handkerchief and the stamped-on one shaking be-ringed fists with histrionic gestures of hate and fury at the tailboard from which he had been dislodged.

‘I shouldn’t have told them Cuchester,’ said Denis. ‘I don’t think they have any connection whatever with the other lot, but we’ve annoyed them now, and they’ll give away our destination to anybody who happens to ask for it.’

The road from Slepe Rock to Cuchester was winding, hilly and lonely, and it was among what seemed the first created countryside that George left the road he was following and turned off down a lane which looked as though it ended in a river. Just before it reached the water, however, an ancient cattle-road, deep with hoof-marks and oleaginous with mire, turned off round the flank of a hill, and in this surprising spot the lorry drew up.

‘How come, George?’ enquired Denis, who, after the contest with the spivs, had seated himself beside the driver whilst the Irishmen, nursing their guns, lay bumpily asprawl among the cargo. ‘This ain’t the way to Cuchester!’

‘No, sir,’ George replied, unearthing and unfolding a map. ‘But to the best of my knowledge and belief, my tank’s nearly dry, and it’s better to remain in hiding than to break down in a lonely spot on a motor-road. Those fellows won’t let us get away with these packing-cases without a struggle, and, with your permission, I’m going back to the road to see their car go by. Then I can foot-slog it after them into Cuchester and bring out the police to this lorry.’

‘And, from all points of view, not at all a bad scheme,’ said Denis. ‘You mean that even if we’d had the petrol we’d hardly have outdistanced them to Cuchester?’

‘Well, it’s hard to determine that, sir, but the decision— mercifully, perhaps, as you suggest—is out of our hands. I will return and let you know when they pass, sir, before I commence my walk.’

‘Well, look here,’ exclaimed Denis, ‘let me walk! Dash it, I’m younger than you!’

‘True, sir,’ said George impassively, ‘but, if I may say so, the known tendency of the police to view with suspicion the humoristic tendencies of young College gentlemen, sir, leads me to presuppose that my story might be received at the Cuchester police station with more credulence and with less embarrassment to the narrator than your own, sir.’

Denis was compelled to agree with this reasonable and tactfully-worded exposition, and said reluctantly:

‘You think the police would imagine I was pulling their legs, eh? Yes, there’s something in that. All right, carry on, George, and God bless you!’

George had a further reason for selecting himself as victim. He had a shrewd suspicion that the mealy-mouthed and rather impressive Mr. Cassius, with his air of breeding, his respectable grey hairs and his impeccable clothing and manners, might, if he reached the Cuchester police station first—as, with a fast car, he was almost bound to do, once the angry spivs had mentioned the destination of the lorry—he might, thought George (stepping out with an infantryman’s marching ryhthm) have lodged a complaint with the police of such a nature that whoever came in behind him with news of the lorry would inevitably find himself held for police questioning.

George had that old-fashioned conception of a wage-earner’s loyalty to an employer which socialism has done so well, no doubt, to deflect, emasculate and destroy. He saw it as his plain duty to provide the police with their victim in the form of his own person rather than in that of Mrs. Bradley’s nephew, and was cheerfully prepared to be detained at, and, if necessary, incarcerated in, Cuchester police station. Noblesse oblige was not George’s family motto, but it was his philosophy where his employer was concerned.

Before he commenced his preliminary task, that of watching for a car containing Mr. Cassius (or any other of the men who had been associated so far with the enquiry) to go by, George cut from among the reeds by the water’s edge a fan of leaves, flowers and stems with which, when he returned to the junction of the main road with the turning he had taken, he could sweep away the traces of the lorry’s wheels, for where the lane left the Cuchester road there was a sandy surface, and this continued round the first of the bends. With the tracks in the muddy cattle walk he could do nothing, but this did not matter so long as the passing car went straight on past the turning without the occupants realizing that the lorry was no longer ahead of them. Even if Mr. Cassius-Concaverty stopped to work out the simple mathematical evidence of time, distance and pace it was likely, George thought, that he would believe that the spivs had been mistaken in the exact minute when the lorry had been driven out of the yard. The chances were that Mr. Cassius, intent upon retrieving his pictures before it was too late, would not enter into any calculations at all, but would drive hell-for-leather after the spoil. This was exactly what he did.

Pleased with this proof of a criminal’s psychology, George returned to the lorry, acquainted the young men with the news that the car had passed the turning, and then set out for Cuchester. Denis, Gascoigne and O’Hara took out pipes and indulged in undergraduate speculations upon art, life, sex, politics, ratting in barns, trout-fishing, salmon-fishing, music-hall stars they wished they had seen, Ellen Terry, George Bernard Shaw, religion, the Norfolk Broads, and other subjects upon which it was equally possible for all to talk at once and none to listen.

By the time they had exploited these themes, the police arrived and took them and the lorry in charge. Mr. Cassius, it seemed, had claimed his own, but, pending further enquiries, had not yet been permitted to take the pictures away.

Mrs. Bradley performed her errand of reporting to the police at Welsea Beaches, and then she telephoned the Chief Constable, waking him, to his peevish annoyance, from his light, pleasant sleep of the early morning.

‘You ought to be up and about,’ said Mrs. Bradley firmly. ‘Now get out of bed at once, and come and see me. I’ve all sorts of things to tell you, and your Superintendent at Welsea will have things all his own way if you don’t come along and begin to order him about.’

‘But what mare’s-nest have you got for us this time?’

‘A dead body, of course. Two, as a matter of fact, only one was murdered and the other was killed accidentally. Still, you ought to be on the spot. The Druids have danced.’

Upon this infuriatingly mysterious information she hung up and caught the next bus back to Upper Deepening. There was an excellent early morning service of country buses between Welsea and the villages that way, because of a large factory two miles the other side of Cuchester which had been transferred there at the beginning of the war and had not, so far, returned to its base.

Laura’s adventures had taken less time than Mrs. Bradley’s travels and telephoning, and she was already back in position behind the hedge before her employer arrived. She gave an account of herself and was warmly congratulated.

‘I thought you’d be mad,’ said Laura candidly. ‘I felt an awful idiot, getting boxed up at Cottam’s like that. Still, all’s well that ends well, I suppose. Do you think the police have got that little van by now?’

‘Do you imagine that you would have been allowed to telephone the numbers on its plates if the driver had not intended to change them, child?’

‘’Oh!’ said Laura, considerably dashed by this hypothesis. ’So I’ve done no good after all!’

‘You have relieved your feelings about little Cassius-Concaverty,’ Mrs. Bradley pointed out. ‘Unsatisfied longings may easily lead to a state of trauma. This you will now escape.’

‘I certainly gave the little thug a pasting,’ agreed Laura, with satisfaction. ‘Still, it hasn’t helped the enquiry.’

‘It has not hindered it, child. And we should not have been able to stop the lorry, in any case. I confess that I had not thought they would need to remove the identifiable portions of the dead man quite so soon. It sounds as though there have been deep doings at Slepe Rock, and thither I think we should repair as soon as we have breakfasted.’

‘Anything you like. Come on, then. Dead men or no dead men, I could eat a horse.’

‘What I like about you,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘is your genius for putting first things first.’

They got back to Welsea half an hour after the arrival of the Chief Constable, and discovered him in a fine mixed state of anxiety and fury.

‘Where on earth have you been, Adela?’ he demanded. ‘I thought you were here! You might have been murdered yourself, for all I knew!’

‘For all you know, I might be yet,’ retorted Mrs. Bradley. ‘Come and have breakfast with us, and I’ll tell you all you want to know.’

By the time the meal and the recital were concluded, the Chief Constable’s ill-humour had given place to surprise and interest.

‘Faked pictures, you say? And possibly some stolen Old Masters? We can check up on all that, of course. I’ll get an expert from the National Gallery at once. But the deaths! The deaths! How do you know it is Allwright?’

‘I don’t. I’m relying on you to prove it. It seems to me that it must be, and I think we’ve got the body for you to see.’

‘Really! Good heavens! Where is it?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Oh, good heavens, Adela! Don’t play the fool! Where is it?’

‘I tell you that I don’t know. I gave it to my nephew.’

‘Now, look here…’ said the Chief Constable dangerously.

‘But I did! He went off with it, he and George, and, until I contact them again, I don’t know where they’ve hidden it. But please don’t worry. You shall have it.’

‘Then where is Denis now?’

‘He’s gone to Slepe,’ said Mrs. Bradley, with an innocent expression.

‘Gone to sleep?’

‘Well, I’m very much afraid so, which means, of course, that we shall have to go and find him. I do know that he was going to Slepe, but I shouldn’t think he took the body with him. Still, there’s another body you could see. That’s the one that was killed accidentally… unless you think the Druids did it on purpose, which would not surprise me in the least.’

‘That I should think it?’

‘That it should happen. We still know far too little about the religious beliefs of pre-history, don’t you feel?’

The Chief Constable, in hasty rather than in well-chosen words, consigned the religious beliefs of pre-history to a religious belief of the mediaeval Church. He got up from table as soon as Mrs. Bradley rose, and stamped about in the hotel vestibule whilst she and her secretary prepared themselves for an excursion less exacting than the one which they had undertaken over-night.

‘So!’ said the Chief Constable, brought face to face, although hardly literally, with the headless, handless corpse. Laura, who did not want to see it, remained at a safe distance. ‘Now what’s all this about, I wonder?’

‘I should think that the man was a local person, or, at any rate, easily recognizable locally,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

‘Ah! His death would lead us to the rest of the gang? Yes, I see. Yes, that must be it. Horrid fellers!’ said the Chief Constable, turning away. ‘You’ve told the Welsea police, you say? Well, they ought to have been here by now!’

As though these words were their cue, the Welsea police, in the person of their Superintendent, a sergeant and four constables, appeared at this point over the brow of the hill complete with haulage tackle for removing the stone from the body.

‘Got the doctor coming right away, sir,’ said the Superintendent, in reply to a question from the Chief Constable. ‘An accident, so we understand.’

‘Yes. Mrs. Bradley here, who gave you the information, is a material witness,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Well, you might as well carry on, Ellis. Not that the doctor can do anything. Still, you’d better carry on according to pattern. Now, Beatrice what about this nephew of yours and the other body you promised me? Ellis, I think you’d better put Fielding on to all that.’

‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said the Superintendent, ‘but we’ve had a message through from Cuchester to know if we can find anybody to identify a certain Mr. Denis Bradley who’s being held there, with another three men and a stolen lorry full of crates of pictures, pending a complaint from a Mr. Cassius that the pictures belong to him and that he claims them.’

‘So they got them!’ said Laura, who had heard the Superintendent’s remarks from where she was standing in the ditch which surrounded the stone circle. ‘Good old Denis! And good old Mike! And good old Gerry! And good old George! Whoopee!’

‘Laura! Behave!’ said Mrs. Bradley urgently. ‘Don’t incriminate us!’

‘Come, come!’ said the Chief Constable ill-temperedly.

‘Yes, let us all come,’ Mrs. Bradley agreed. ‘It is more than time. I don’t suppose those boys or my poor George have had any breakfast.’

Mr. Cassius was full of his woes, and tackled the Chief Constable as soon as the latter arrived at Cuchester police station.

‘I recognize these two men!’ he said, waving towards Gascoigne and O’Hara. ‘They’ve been dogging me for this very purpose! They even had the colossal impudence to put up at the same hotel at Slepe Rock.’

‘There is only the one hotel at Slepe Rock,’ Mrs. Bradley soothingly pointed out. ‘They could hardly have used any other. ’

‘They’ve stolen my property, anyway, and I’ll prosecute to the top of my bent!’ said Mr. Cassius. ‘You know, Sir Crimmond, it’s a most disgraceful thing if a man of my standing cannot claim back his own property without being detained here like this by your policemen! I’ve a good mind to have a question asked in the House!’

‘Perhaps I’d better hear what these fellows have to say, Mr. Cassius,’ observed the Chief Constable. ‘By the way, have you changed your name since you let Cottam’s to the Gonn-Brown film company for the summer?’

‘Changed my name? Certainly not!’ Mr. Cassius replied with spirit. ‘Cassius happens to be my business name, that is all. I used it in making myself known to your policemen in order to establish my title to those pictures. I deal in pictures, and I trade under the name of Cassius. My real name, as you perfectly well know, is Rufus Concaverty.’

‘Ah,’ said the Chief Constable. This, it seemed, was too non-committal a rejoinder to suit the claimant to the pictures.

‘I dare those men to tell you how they came by my property,’ he said. ‘If they do dare, you will hear a story of assault and battery which will shake your faith in the public school system, Sir Crimmond.’

‘Well, hardly. You see, I’m a product of it myself,’ said the Chief Constable, with most unusual mildness. Ill-tempered always in his affectionate dealings with Mrs. Bradley, he was smoothness itself to Mr. Cassius, whom, it was plain, he disliked very much indeed. ‘’Now, let’s hear what you have to say for yourselves,‘ he added, looking at the three young men and George.

‘If I might venture, sir?’ said George.

‘Yes, of course, man. You’re the oldest. Carry on,’ said Sir Crimmond, who knew George well, and respected him.

‘Thank you, sir. The matter fell out as follows:’

‘Take a note, Superintendent,’ said the Chief Constable to that officer, who, supported by the sergeant, was burning to get in a word.

‘Oh, we have the whole story, sir,’ said the Superintendent.

‘Naturally.’ (‘What the hell do you think we’ve been doing?’ he added under his breath.)

‘Never mind. You can check it against what they’re going to tell us now,’ observed Sir Crimmond.

‘Take a note, sergeant,’ said the Superintendent angrily. ‘He can write shorthand, sir,’ he added, to cover himself against any act of disobedience.

‘All right. Now, George—er—now you,’ said the Chief Constable.

‘George, sir?’ said the Superintendent disagreeably.

‘Proceeding, as per instructions, to drive Mr. Denis to Slepe Rock, sir,’ George began, ignoring the fact that the Chief Constable had been addressed.

‘What, at that time of night!’ said Cassius.

‘I did not mention that it was at night,’ said George. ‘Might I have leave, sir,’ he added, with earnest dignity, to the Chief Constable, ‘to give my account without any but the official interruptions?’

‘Certainly,’ the Chief Constable replied. ‘Mr. Cassius, you will not improve your case if you do not allow this man to speak. You may question his story afterwards.’

‘I was proceeding according to schedule,’ continued George, ‘when I heard a party or parties by the nine stones they call the Druids. Actuated by curiosity, I became aware that there was something amiss, and, on looking into the matter, I discovered that a person unknown to me had been killed by reason of one of the stones tumbling down on top of him. The removal of the head and hands of the defunct party by some of the interested persons led me to believe that a crime of some magnitude had been in progress…’

‘What!’ shrieked Cassius. ‘You dare to stand there telling the police those lies!’

‘But they’re not lies,’ said the Chief Constable smoothly. ‘I’ve seen the body myself. Somebody didn’t intend that the corpse should be identified. That is abundantly clear. The police have the corpse at the mortuary by now, I imagine. I think, Mr. Cassius, that you had better be very careful.’

Cassius for the first time looked unsure of himself. His eyes glanced towards the door, as though he half-thought of making a dash from the room. The heavy young constable standing near it met his glance with such coldness, however, that he thought better of the impulse, if he had had it, and merely asked :

‘Well, but what’s all this to do with my stolen pictures?’

‘All in good time, sir,’ said George, with a snake-like benevolence worthy of his employer herself. ‘And if I might not be interrupted…?’

‘Look here, Cassius, you’ll have to be taken away to another room if you can’t let the fellow finish,’ observed the Chief Constable. ‘Dash it, we shall be all day at this rate. And you, George—er—get a move on.’

‘Driving Mr. Denis on to Slepe Rock, the occurrences aforementioned being no business of ours, sir, until we were in a position to report them to the police,’ continued George, ‘we decided we had need of a garage. Being loth to knock up the hotel people at so late an hour—for you must understand, sir, that we did not get to Slepe Rock until after midnight—we essayed the garage attached to, and/or erected upon, the yard where the lorries and motor coaches pull in during the daytime.’

‘Yes, yes, man! Get on!’

‘We knocked at the door of the shack and were met by a man with a revolver who chased us towards the garage, the doors of which were unlocked. To escape our assailant—presumably a man non compos mentis—we leapt into the inspection pit and proceeded to descend a flight of steps to a kind of cellar beneath it. In the cellar, which debouches on to a cave with a seaward entrance, we came upon these packing-cases which Mr. Cassius claims to be his property. And if Mr. Cassius will explain how they came to be down there, and why he has gunmen to guard them, then I am willing to be questioned by him as to the truth or otherwise of my story; and if not, not,’ said George with finality; adding, as a courteous afterthought, ‘by your leave, Sir Crimmond, sir.’

‘You mean you haven’t told the truth?’ thundered the Chief Constable.

‘I mean I have told the truth in a slightly camouflaged form, sir,’ George replied. ‘It would hardly do to put all our cards on the table, since it seems likely that Mr. Cassius will be charged with murder before he’s through.’

‘Murder!’ said Cassius, curling his lip. ‘Don’t you dare to use such a word in connection with me!’ But his face had gone greasy and his eyes looked anywhere but at George. ‘What in hell are you talking about?’

‘He is talking about Mr. Allwright,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘I think I’d like to take up the story myself.’ And she recounted to the dry-lipped Cassius the things she had seen and heard at the Stone Circle of the Druids.

‘Do you deny that your collection of pictures consists partly of stolen property and partly of clever fakes?’ she concluded.

Cassius had nothing to say for more than a minute.

‘You’ll never pin murder on me,’ he muttered at last. ‘And those pictures are my property. And the fellow’s death was an accident. If you saw it, you know that as well as I do.’

‘You’d better caution this man and arrest him, Superintendent,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘There’s obviously something behind all this, and it won’t do for us to let him slip through our fingers.’

‘You can’t arrest me! What for? I’ll sue you for this!’ shouted Cassius, struggling under the iron hand of the Superintendent which was now upon his shoulder.

‘George,’ said Mrs. Bradley, some hours later, ‘where did you learn the art which conceals art?’

‘At Army courts-martial, madam,’ replied the imperturbable man.

‘You, George? Gourt-martialled? I have never heard anything of this!’

‘Yes, madam. Once. I have also been called as a witness, but only once have I had to play the principal rôle.’

‘But, George! I’ve never been so much intrigued since Henri was run in at Bow Street for biting an unknown woman on the shoulder on Peace Night! What were you court-martialled for?—or can’t you discuss the subject?’

‘I called my officer a bloody monkey, madam.’

‘You—oh, George, no! Whatever had he done to deserve it?’

‘He had called me a something basket, madam.’

‘And what had you done to deserve that?’

‘I had no-balled him three times running in an inter-Company cricket match, madam, a feat of umpiring which he did not appreciate.’

‘And how many days C.B. did you get for it, George? I can’t imagine you incarcerated for insolence.’

‘I was discharged, madam, without a stain on my character.’

‘Good heavens, George! Discharged! For…’

‘I upheld a son’s right to defend the good name of his mother, and won the day. The presiding officer had just been apprised of the birth of his first child, a boy, madam. I was aware of this fact, and prepared my defence accordingly.’

‘Strategy, George, with a vengeance!’

‘One should always reconnoitre the terrain, madam, before deciding upon one’s tactics.’

‘Well, old Cassius-Concaverty won’t get a chance to reconnoitre much terrain,’ said Laura, who had just come in. ‘How are you going to pin the murder on him, Mrs. Bradley?’

‘Mrs. Croc. to you,’ said the saurian, sunnily. ‘And the answer to that is that I haven’t the faintest idea. Besides, our first task must be to have the two Battles arrested as well. They are sharers in Concaverty’s guilt, although to what extent I cannot tell at the moment.’

‘But we don’t even know for certain that the older Battle is still alive!’

‘We must get the younger Battle to swear to him when we have caught him. I have hopes that that can be managed.’

‘Not if they’re in this together! He wouldn’t incriminate himself.’

‘I am under the impression, child, that he would even go so far as to hang himself if he could get his father hanged, too.’

‘But what makes you think——-?’

‘I will tell you all about it. I shan’t need the car after tea, George. Take the evening off and have too much to drink. I feel I’ve missed the cream of you. Court-martialled for insolence! Dear, dear! And why couldn’t you give your name to the Superintendent? Didn’t you perceive how embarrassing it was for Sir Crimmond to have to keep calling you George?’

‘I am sorry, madam, but I have recently changed my name, to be ratified by Deed Poll shortly, and I have not yet accustomed myself to the sound in public of the new one.’

‘And what is the new one?’ asked Laura, who invariably rushed in where Mrs. Bradley feared to tread.

‘Cuddle-Up, miss, with a hyphen,’ said George, with a wooden expression.

‘What!’ said Mrs. Bradley and Laura, speaking in unison.

‘Yes, madam. On account of the Sex. They pursue me. I have been badgered once too often. Don’t, please, misunderstand me, miss,’ he added, turning to Laura, ‘but the fact is that young women are apt to think twice before making up their minds to be called Mrs. George Cuddle-Up. It makes for awkwardness.’

‘True,’ Mrs. Bradley agreed, not daring to look at Laura who was showing signs of incipient hysteria. ‘But how will you explain to the authorities why you wish to change to such a name? I should think they are certain to ask.’

‘On the basis of being left a legacy, madam. Not for nothing did Mr. Milne write Wurzel-Flummery.’

‘But, George, you chump, that defeats your argument!’ shouted Laura. ‘The name Wurzel-Flummery did not act as a deterrent ! And the legacy will attract the girls!’

‘And, George,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘pause and consider. What will you do when you leave my employment and seek another situation? Your expectation of life is considerably greater than my own. Have you thought that not only a wife but also another employer may be of the opinion that the name Cuddle-Up is not the sort of thing to call after a man in public?’

‘I confess, madam, that the thought had not crossed my mind,’ said George, looking slightly less austere.

‘Then give it a chance, George, to do so. Besides (as we are already upon what presents itself to me as a morbid subject), think what it will look like on a tomb!—that is, if any self-respecting cemetery will allow it to be so perpetuated!’