Devil's Tor (12 page)

Thus it was mirror, microscope and magic crystal, combined. And he had begun to chart that sky of stars from day to day, but doubted if the exact information so obtained would form a sufficient basis for calculation within his time. To map the
fourth—or
as they would say in these days, the
fifth dimension
—it was fantastic enough! Yet if the theory was glib, what other covered the thing at all? Such a sky must be near enough for sight, while actually it was not in sight; therefore he must be regarding a part of physical space in another way. To state one possibility out of hundreds, he might be looking behind him, instead of before him round the extension of a prodigious circle. The same star might be seen by the eye in those two different manners.

The flint itself might originally have dropped from the stars. There it might have been the product of an intelligence higher than any on earth, which had known how to construct such a celestial spy-glass. Some intuitive ancient on earth had recovered its properties, and had split it, to see inside. The other half had been lost; perhaps fifty thousand years since. This had travelled from temple to temple. Not inconceivably, it might have been so.

A second of his senses had co-operated. One day, chancing to hold the stone nearer to ear than eye, he had
heard
too. The throb of what might be music was sounding; but so faintly, he could hardly distinguish between it and the vast silence of the Himalayan amphitheatre enclosing him as a mighty crescent during their midday halt.

Afterwards his hearing, like his seeing, had adapted itself queerly to receive the elfin beating with a magnified distinctness, and then not quite the tune, almost the rhythm, came to him; perhaps from across space, the breadth of a universe away, the distance being mystically diminished. A strange half-caught pulse, quite beautiful in its suggestiveness. He had never been able, however, to better that achievement on that line. His brain, framed by Nature for practical use in a starved world, lacked delicacy for picking up any such unearthly musical message, if it were one.

The flint in those days only moved between his hand and his pocket. When the monotonous caravan duties of the daily trek were again concluded each evening, supper consumed, and the log and records written up, he would seclude himself in his personal tent, or if it were warm, windless and still light, wander off to the nearest convenient open solitude, away from the range of inquisitive native eyes, and there once more lose account of time in a fruitless wrestling with those shifting hieroglyphics of another sphere. The idea had occurred to him, he forgot at which one of such camps, that the thing might literally be a communication from some planet of another far-distant sun; which opened other possibilities. As the communication was to rwo of his senses, while the transmission to both was imperfect, might not it be that the message was intended for a third sense, unknown on earth, perhaps lying midway between sight and hearing, and so being distantly related to both? It was a thought that impressed him tremendously; for then a sensible writing by a spirit differing from all human spirits was displaying itself there before him, signalling matters which it might be highly essential for the world to know.

Uncomfortable had been his hesitations during those mountain days, as to whether or not he should wait for Arsinal on the border, to get the whole story from him, and probably learn something of the right manipulation of the flint. Yet already the determination was concreted in his mind not to give up again this prize, come into his hands by the wheel of fortune. So that meant that he would need to lie to Arsinal, declaring it to be mislaid or lost; for brass enough in his constitution to deny him the thing outright, he had not. And next the smell of death had begun to be in his nostrils, persuading him that he might be soon to die. Since all was so uncertain for him, it would be better for the present to lead the pair to suppose that he had merely gone on ahead without word, on a call of private business.

But the spell of the stone had grown and grown within his head, until now no threat or counter-temptation on earth would induce him to part with it, and he had at last that 'brass enough' to face Arsinal, with the other at elbow, and simply notify to him the fact that this running-away of his was no piece of mere caddish indifference on his part, but a deliberate escape, covering a confiscation to be upheld.

Latest of all—between Leh and Simla, he thought it was—had appeared, in extremest subtlety, the third of his three strains, yet still only as a rudiment. It was the instinct or occult attraction that was not to cease its silent work until he should be standing on a Dartmoor height, in England, over he knew not how many thousand miles of sea and land; yet that height he had never heard of, while in England itself he had had no business. Nor could he at the present moment be certain that the attraction had run its course. He was being further drawn to the
interior
of Devil's Tor. There it might be intended he should find his own grave; and so this instinct and that other of approaching death would have coalesced and come to a common fulfilment.

But the instinct of death had known his other strain for its fellow in the affair's beginning; and this, as he had to-day begun to see, constituted the linking, or a linking, of all the three.

For once he had decided to keep his prize, and once his presentiment had become too strong to ignore, he had had these two motives for getting back to England; to put distance between himself and Arsinal, and to settle with his lawyers in London the posthumous restitution of the stone. Neither reason for going home was over-strong, since he might have written the lawyers, and escaped to any other country; however, he had booked a passage. And in the very act of paying for it, it had flashed into his head that ever since Simla at least he had definitely planned to travel straight through to England, so that this later revolving of other motives for the journey was supererogatory. But on what account he had so planned to come at once to England, he puzzled himself over repeatedly, but never could remember. It had worried him greatly, in a minor way.

Then, sailing from Bombay, he had arrived in London near the end of July; where three or four days had not passed before the same extraordinary mental freak overtook him. The weather in town during that week before last had been insufferably hot and close, there had been nothing to do, and the visit to the lawyers he had kept putting off; their trained questioning might elicit the theft, to his infinite humiliation. He had gone to a show or two, and been abominably bored.

And so he had thought of his uncle and cousins in Devonshire. Helga was to be his executrix, and should be told of the will and its contents. Uncle Magnus might be the right person to address in the matter of Arsinal's treasure. There would at least be fresh air to breathe, and corners of the moor to escape to, away from people. He had not seen any of them since boyhood. He wondered how Helga would appear to him now; while her daughter too should be interesting—a grown-up, doubtless pretty girl. Accordingly he had written off, proposing a week's stay. And at the actual moment of posting the letter, he had realised—this time with a following shock that closely resembled fear—that it was on board ship, before his arrival in England at all, that the intention of inviting himself to Helga's had been fast fixed in his head. Yet, cudgel his brains as he might, he couldn't for the life of him recover under what circumstances he had come to the decision; what his special reasons had been, or what had started them.

So mysterious a second case of losing and regaining a practical design affecting his movements excited in him, the more he thought about it, a rising though still sluggish curiosity concerning his whole present condition of soul, with its various quite unassociated stresses. He told himself that he might be in an abnormal state all round. But still his foretaste of death had prevented him from really feeling anything of the natural alarm of a man whose mind should begin to crack. He did nothing about it; indeed, there was nothing to do. A doctor might certainly inform him that he was mad—and how would that help?

Helga's reply had been friendly and pressing. During the first few days of a pleasant enough stay, nothing more had happened in the way of this sympathetic sounding of forgotten plans. But then at lunch only the day before yesterday, the name of Devil's Tor was for the first time in his life (so far as he was aware) mentioned in his hearing. Helga, solicitous for his entertainment, had introduced the hill as an excuse for an agreeable walk over the moor; of no especial interest in itself. Ingrid had said nothing. He had put a conventional question or two about it, and said in the end quite carelessly that he might make the trip next day; when of a sudden had come the same trick of astonishing memory. Not only had he very certainly heard of Devil's Tor before, but already, at some time since the beginning of his stay, had he made it a settled thing that he was to go out there.

And now this was lunacy absolute. For how could he possibly have intended any such excursion to an unknown spot? It looked like imperfect control, or adhesiveness, or both jointly. A name was suggested to him, a plan followed, and the two became stuck together for him; then some fault of memory, always in the one direction, antedated the first suggestion of the name, putting it back half a week, a week or a month, as the case might be; and still the plan went with it. The explanation was grotesque, but might be correct. At least, there was no other at hand.

Lastly—a minute later at table—Helga had proposed to him her daughter's company and guidance for the walk. Ingrid had expressed her willingness; whereupon he, though still stunned by this new prank of recollection, had returned his civil thanks and acceptance of the offer. But nearly simultaneously had he been struck by that final shock, which was like a reinforcing wave to the not yet subsided last. Ingrid's society as well had been provided for in that previous design of his! ... So other persons too were to confirm and fall in with his forgotten plannings! Yet that would surely make it occult.

This, then, was the third and most recent of his strains. By now he seemed to guess that it was not insanity. With the dawn, its linking to the other two appeared a theory impossible to discard; nor could there be much doubt that it was his last night's talk with Helga that had wrought the development. He had told her so much that he had not meant to, and still he was feeling that he had told her nothing. What had he kept back of such supreme importance that it could be thought to constitute the whole difference between a confession and a non-confession? He had said nothing about this unconscious gradual drawing of the Tor. It was not that omission. It was the larger linking of all three of his prepossessions that had not been discussed with her, as he himself was unaware of it last night. Just because he knew this morning that there was something big that had not come up between them, his mind was sniffing this new scent of a connection. The notion itself had appeared in advance of any experimenting with it.

He
was
to die in these next few coming days, on Devil's Tor.

He stopped short where he was, on the moor. It had not been a voice in his ears, it was still but a silent thought, yet just as unmistakably was it an announcement. Before, it had been a mere idea, a question, a playing with possibility, but now it was a declaration from somewhere outside himself. He
was
to die on this height he was making for; though not necessarily as yet. And this should be his triple link that he was seeking.

He walked on again.

He had known that he was to die. He had begun to know that Devil's Tor had brought him step by step from India. Now quietly he was inspired that it was his possession of Arsinal's sacred stone that was at the root of all. If so, it should not be this morning, for he had left the stone at the house. But Ingrid's part?—for she too had been included in that magnetic pull; it had been in his unearthly consciousness that she was to accompany him.

But for her, he would have turned back home on account of the weather last evening. He could not say what difference that might have made.

Perhaps Devil's Tor long ages ago had been the original sanctuary of the stone. He who bore it, should be borne with it towards and to the Tor, by the latter's irresistible attraction. Perhaps it was to be redeposited in the dark recesses of that ancient tomb. Then he who served such a purpose might be to lose his life down there, that there might be no living witness of the transaction. …

He recalled those three flashes of ghastly lightning that had glittered round them on the Tor's slope yesterday. What if they had symbolised these three linkings of his strains a few hours later? Indeed, his soul was being lit by the awful violet glare of this sudden threefold enlightenment.

Without troubling himself to look for Ingrid's path of last evening, Drapier had struck off at an instinctive tangent up the long heave, confident in his sense of general direction. His shoes were already soaked by the wet of the moor. The dawn had nearly changed to day. There was no sun, but the eastern sky at his back was all pearl, rose and silver.

If that fragment of a stone was truly responsible for his gathered night of soul, which needed for its penetration these lightning-blazes of inspiration, surely there presented itself one very easy way of refinding his old happier state. He had but to make a parcel of the little talisman, and post it to his agent in Bombay for delivery to Arsinal, wheresoever he was to be found. Thus its sinister spell would cease for him; Devil's Tor would no longer pull, death would no longer come grinning at him.

But he could not do it. The business had not clutched him for nothing; it was no accident that this magnetic death-hill lay within an hour's walk of a house to which he had the
entrée
. He was the wanted person for a commission, which therefore also included his individual case.

And supposing he elected to try to ignore the commission, still he knew that it was too late in the day to escape the stone's magic—its wonder, beauty, and message. It was impossible now for his imagination to shake itself free before the right nature of that enigmatic hieroglyphic sky should be better understood; its particular meaning read. On such a shifting tablet might be set down the symbolic representation of his own required work and fate. If it were meant that he should decipher the cryptogram, he must still live till then.