The Dancing Druids

Chapter Three

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… and rode so quickly that he did not even see the golden road, but went with his horse straight over it.’

Ibid. (The Water of Life)

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O’hara glanced down at his shorts, once white, now very grimy. Apart from the mud, however, from waist to knee on the left side he was an unpleasant mess of dark blood washed brownish by the rain.

‘Good Lord!’ he said. ‘I helped to carry a man…! Here, give me a drink!’

‘Been mixed up in an accident, I doubt?’ said the barman, eyeing the bottles dubiously. ‘What be goin’ to have?’

‘Whisky—a double,’ said O’Hara. He unpinned a pound note from inside the breast of his running-vest and placed it upon the counter. ‘I helped to lift the fellow on to the back seat of somebody’s car to get him to hospital,’ he added. The implied suggestion that he had been mixed up in a road crash seemed the best explanation of his plight.

‘Must have been in a bad way to bleed on you like that,’ said one of the men at the bar. O’Hara nodded, and took the end seat on a bench.

‘He was pretty bad,’ he said briefly. ‘I didn’t see the accident, though.’ He hoped there would be no further questions, and, having drunk his whisky in three gulps, he asked whether it was possible to telephone to the Royal Hotel at Welsea. He then rang up his cousin, the hare, presuming rightly that he would have finished the course.

‘I say, Gerry,’ he said. ‘I’m in rather a spot. Could you possibly send somebody with a car and an overcoat to the Spotted Lion, Upper Deepening? That’s where I seem to be. No, I’m all right. Yes, more when we meet. Too long to tell you over the ’phone. No, I’m not injured. Turned my ankle, that’s all.’

‘Well, you are an old ass!’ said his cousin cheerfully. ‘Bad luck, though, all the same. All right, I’ll come myself. We’ve reached the strawberry ices, and I don’t mind missing the speeches if I have to. Jolly glad you rang through. We couldn’t think what had happened!’

O’Hara went back to the bar and ordered a pint of beer and some bread and cheese. The curiosity of the customers and the barman appeared to be sated. They were discussing League football. O’Hara had just finished his very belated meal when the handsome Gascoigne walked in, carrying over his arm an overcoat and a pair of grey flannel trousers.

‘I’ve got Featherstone’s bus outside,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Feathers wants to get back to Town to-night, so I promised I wouldn’t be long. I suppose you’ve seen nothing of Firman? He said he probably shouldn’t be able to finish. I expect he got a train at Cann’s Crossing and went to his uncle’s. He said he probably should if his gammy leg gave up. How bad is your ankle? Can you manage to hop to the car?’

While his cousin drove him into Welsea, O’Hara recounted his adventure. Gascoigne made no comment except to say:

‘It’s odd they told you the fellow had an infectious illness if he’d really met with an accident. And why give him hot water bottles? Although that might have been their idea of treatment for shock. And—I don’t know! Oh, well, you missed a jolly close finish.’

‘You got in first, I suppose?’

‘By about a hundred yards. Had to put my head down and sprint like the devil to make it. Eaves nearly caught me. He’s very persistent, that bloke. Says he shall try for the marathon next season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he won.’

‘I’m glad you won,’ said O’Hara. ‘Can I get any dinner, do you think?’

‘Sure. I took care of that before I came away. And they’re giving us some quite decent port, unless it’s all been finished before we get there.’

They arrived when the dinner was nearly over, but food was procured for O’Hara, and the port was all that Gascoigne had promised. O’Hara was the butt of a number of crude jokes because of his late appearance, and he made such responses as seemed necessary, but his adventure was in the forefront of his mind. The party broke up at last, and he went rather thankfully to bed.

The cousins had booked a twin-bedded room, and at just after midnight O’Hara was able to give his cousin a complete account of his afternoon and evening.

A comparison of times, distances and places produced, not greatly to O’Hara’s surprise, the unassailable fact that the runner he had seen from the vantage point of the prehistoric fort could not possibly have been Gascoigne. It remained to be seen whether it could have been Firman.

After considerable discussion, Gascoigne closed the matter in the early hours of the morning by saying drowsily :

‘Look here, then, I suggest we sleep on it, and, if you feel the same ’orrid doubts in the morning, we’ll go out and have a look-see. But I expect you saw Firman. I suppose he was packing up the run. Nothing very odd about that.’

‘Nothing odd at all. Where does his uncle live?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Somewhere around these parts, from what he said when he told us he might not finish.’

‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose it matters. By the way, I haven’t any clothes except my running togs. I sloshed them about in the bath a bit when I’d taken them off, but they don’t look too good even now, and probably won’t be dry first thing in the morning. Of course, there’s my soup and fish, but I can hardly career about the countryside on a fine Sunday morning in braided bags and a dinner jacket. We weren’t proposing to spend the night here, you know.’

‘Oh, that’s all right! I’ve collared Bodger’s tweeds. He’s near enough your height… a bit broader in the beam, but that won’t matter. He went off by car in his evening clothes, very tight. I’d have had to send the things on to him, any old way, so you might as well wear ’em first. And I’ve borrowed Smithson’s for myself. He took Bodger with him.’

‘You are the very pineapple of politeness,’ said O’Hara gratefully. ‘But what will Bodger say when he’s sobered up?’

‘Oh, he won’t mind at all. Well, let’s sleep on it, shall we? And then we’ll go over to the farm, or whatever it is, after breakfast. Good thing it will be Sunday. People will be the less suspicious of a couple of ignorant hikers.’

O’Hara was soon asleep, but Gascoigne lay awake for some time, thinking over the story his cousin had told him. The more he thought about it, the more unaccountable became the conversation and actions of the persons involved, and the less he liked the thought of O’Hara’s adventure.

‘A good thing for him he slid out of it when he did,’ was the final conclusion he reached before falling asleep.

They breakfasted at nine, and by ten were out on the road. The borrowed tweeds fitted O’Hara well enough, the morning was crisp and sunny, and the cousins, who had no car, stepped briskly along the road which led north from Welsea Beaches. It was well past opening time when they reached the Spotted Lion at Upper Deepening, so they went in and called for beer.

‘Now, then,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Where do we go from here?’

‘It was dark, you know,’ said O’Hara, ‘and I don’t remember any landmarks, but at any rate, we ought to keep straight along this road for quite two hundred yards, and then we turn off to the right across a stile.’

The road sloped uphill. The stile was gained. Regarding it doubtfully, O’Hara refused to commit himself to a definite statement that it was the right stile, but said he thought it must be.

‘It’s queer,’ he said. ‘It all looks so ordinary by daylight. I feel as though I’d dreamed the whole thing now. You don’t think I had delirium tremens, or a mental blackout, do you?’

‘Don’t weaken,’ said Gascoigne, grinning. ‘There must be a right of way, anyhow, if there’s a stile, so we shan’t be trespassing.’ He climbed over, followed reluctantly by his cousin.

The footpath was a very rough track which led upwards to a five-barred gate. Beyond the gate were two disc barrows on the side of the hill, and, further over, a circle of standing stones.

‘That’s where it was,’ said O’Hara suddenly. He pointed towards the stones. ‘That’s where I got out of the car. Let’s look for tracks. Would a car leave tracks on this turf? Anyway, it certainly does seem fishy. Where could one take a car from here?’

Gascoigne led the way to the circle of standing stones. None of the stones was more than seven feet high. Some were very much shorter. One was nothing more than a small boulder almost hidden in the grass. The ditch which would have surrounded the stones when they were used as a prehistoric temple was almost wholly ploughed out, but traces of it could be seen by those who knew what to look for, and Gascoigne was soon pacing a circular track about twenty yards distant from the stones, of which there were nine.

‘You know,’ he said, returning to O’Hara, who was looking for tracks of the car, ‘the best thing for us to do, I fancy, is to go to the local hospital. Hospitals always make Sunday a visiting day. If he did not arrive at the hospital we’ve got something definite to go on, and then, I suppose, we shall have to stir up strife.’

‘But can we? I can’t see us going to the police and telling them that a man ought to have arrived in hospital and hasn’t turned up,’ said O’Hara. ‘What reason could we give for butting in?’

‘The best of reasons—the one you gave me yourself. Why did that woman say it was infectious illness when all the time the fellow was bleeding?—possibly bleeding to death?’

‘I know. That is the point. Look here, then, I’ll tell you what. Let’s walk over the hill and make sure I can identify the farmhouse. Then, possibly, we could spy out the lie of the land, and, after we’ve been to the hospital, we could then perhaps go to the police. All the same, I’m not very keen. It isn’t our business. I mean, they didn’t attempt to coerce me. I helped them of my own free will. Besides, who’s going to believe me?’

Gascoigne gazed at his cousin. ‘Nonsense, man! What are you afraid of?’ he asked.

‘Being a nosey parker, I suppose. Come on, then. It ought to be this way. We never came out on to a road. I know that all right. I could hardly hold that poor blighter on to the seat.’

They returned to the path and followed it over rough grass until they came to a barn.

‘This isn’t the place,’ said O’Hara. ‘It was further off, and the house was quite a fair size.’

They went through a gate and the path changed into a cart-track beside a field. There was still another gate at the top, but, once through this, the track turned sharply to the left and sloped steeply down to a large collection of buildings grouped round a house among trees.

‘This is the place,’ said O’Hara, ‘but it seems such a short distance… I mean, we drove miles, I should have thought.’

At the foot of the hill they swung left again through a gateway which led to an open cartshed. Beyond the cartshed was the house. A narrow road climbed a hill to the east of the farmyard, but was soon lost to sight among the trees. Beyond the house, the lane, from which O’Hara had seen the light in the empty room, sagged sandily past the ruined cottages and into the woods.

‘This is the place, then?’ murmured Gascoigne, and gazed in great surprise at the house. Its windows were uncurtained, its appearance was that of dissolution and decay, and it seemed to have been tenantless for some time. The front door swung back as he put up his hand to knock, and disclosed a mildewed, stained, dilapidated hall, a picture frame hanging by one cord and part of an old mangle lying at the foot of the stairs.

He stepped aside to look in at the nearest window. He beckoned O’Hara to join him.

‘I’m going in,’ he whispered. ‘This is a very rum go. You stand by in case anybody comes who thinks we’ve no business in here.’

‘No, I’ll go first,’ said O’Hara. ‘I’d like to see it by daylight. I can hardly make any comparisons, though, because I saw so little last night.’

He was not gone very long. The side-door had been bolted on the inside, but he found his way to the bedroom by way of the front stairs, and explored the rest of the house before he returned to his cousin.

‘Nothing,’ he said, very briefly. ‘But the bedroom floor and the stairs have recently been scrubbed, I think. You go in and have a look.’

Gascoigne contented himself with the most cursory inspection of the house. It was the front room downstairs to which he devoted most attention. There were ashes in the grate which he took care not to disturb, and a circle of lighter film showed against the dust on the mantelpiece.

‘An oil lamp; the light you saw shining from the house,’ he said. ‘I wonder why they lit it? A signal to someone, I suppose.’

‘Did you go upstairs?’ asked O’Hara.

‘Yes. The room and the stairs have been scrubbed all right. Well, now for the hospital. We’d better get back to that pub and ask where it is. If the fellow isn’t there, I certainly think you ought to go to the police. In fact, I think you’ll have to.’

‘Yes, I think I must. The empty house settles that.’

‘Well, I hope to heaven he is at the hospital, that’s all, and then that will let you out.’

‘Yes, so do I. Good Lord! There’s old Firman in a car! Come on! He can give us a lift. Wonder what he’s up to round here? I expect he saw us go in.’

The car waited for them.

‘Why, Firman, you old ass!’ shouted Gascoigne, climbing in beside the driver. ‘Why on earth didn’t you join us last evening?’ O’Hara, surprised by the bonhomous nature of this greeting, for his cousin, so far as he knew, was not well acquainted with this particular member of their club and did not much like what he knew of him, waited for Firman’s reply.

‘I didn’t want to be roasted about not finishing,’ responded Firman, a round-shouldered man with eyes too old for his face. ‘My bones began to creak at the three-mile mark, so I packed up and went to my uncle’s house in Cuchester. What are you two doing, roaming so far off your beat? I should have thought bright lads like you would have been putting in a pleasant morning by the sea, and giving the girls a treat.’

‘We’re just out for a stroll,’ said Gascoigne, before O’Hara could answer. ‘Give us a lift to the nearest nice pub, and we’ll buy you a drink, old man.’

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Firman, ‘but I can’t stop, even for a drink. My uncle has his lunch at half-past twelve, and as I’m his heir I can’t afford to keep lunch waiting.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Hop in, and I’ll drop you at the Bell-Wether. That’s the best pub around here. Mention my name, and they’ll let you have anything you like and as much as ever you want.’

The cousins accepted the lift but did not take advantage of the advice. Over their drinks they asked the barman to direct them to the local hospital.

‘Which do you want—the Cottage or the County?’ enquired the man.

‘Both, then,’ Gascoigne replied. ‘A pal of ours was in a car crash last night. We only heard this morning, and we thought we’d go and look him up. Heard he’d busted a leg and a couple of ribs.’

The barman gave them the information they needed, and they caught a bus into Welsea, lunched, and then visited the hospitals. No patient except, at the County hospital, a six-year-old child who had swallowed a spool of silk, had been admitted within the past twenty-four hours.

‘So what?’ said O’Hara. ‘Oh, damn it, I don’t want to go to the police!’

‘Well, look, then,’ said Gascoigne suddenly. ‘I’ll tell you what! There’s a fellow my mother used to know when she was a girl… a chap called Ferdinand Lestrange. He’s a K.C., and what he doesn’t know about the law is certainly not worth knowing. Let’s put it up to him. He proposed to my mother once, so I feel I know him, although actually I’ve never met him in my life. Still, I know where he lives when he’s not in London, and that’s not so very far from here. We could go tomorrow. Of course, if he says go to the police, we’ll have to go. Now let’s forget the whole thing and go and have a look at the sea.’

‘Did you say Lestrange?’

‘I did. He’s got a quaint old mother—a psychiatrist or something. You must have heard of her. She’s famous.’

‘Is her name Lestrange?’

‘Only partly. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. She still believes in Freud—1856 and all that. Still, I believe she’s ninety.’

‘We’ll date her up,’ said O’Hara.