Chapter XVI.Corfe CastleFor a couple of days after Inspector Hanslet’s last visit to the house in Westbourne Terrace, Dr. Priestley’s attitude had sorely puzzled Harold. He had hardly spoken a word, and the greater part of his time had been spent in sorting out the mass of documents which had accumulated during the course of years in the massive presses which lined the walls of his study. Harold said nothing, knowing from past experience that it was useless to ask questions. When the Professor was ready to issue his instructions he would do so. Until then, untimely questions would merely be rewarded with a rebuff.It was therefore with intense eagerness that Harold replied, one morning shortly after breakfast, the Thursday following the death of Mr. Copperdock, to an abrupt question by his employer: “My boy, what I am about to say to you must remain a secret between ourselves, until either my death occurs or I give you leave to speak. Is that understood?”“I undertake not to breathe a word to anybody,” replied Harold.“To nobody,” repeated the Professor emphatically. “Not even to Hanslet, however urgent the need may seem. I am going away for a time; how long that time may be I cannot tell. I do not wish my whereabouts to be known, as that would possibly place me in considerable danger.”“You’re not surely going alone, sir!” exclaimed Harold. “You’ll let me come with you, especially as you say there is danger attached to your journey?”But the Professor shook his head. “The danger may exist in London equally,” he replied. “It is essential that someone I can trust should remain here. Otherwise, my boy, I should be more than pleased to take you with me. Now, listen very carefully to these instructions. Do not leave the house for long at a time, especially in the evening. Open all my correspondence, and deal with it to the best of your ability. Should there be among it any letter of a startling character, put a message in the personal column ofThe Times, ‘The asp has struck,’ and sign it ‘Cleopatra.’ Do you follow this so far?”“Yes, sir,” replied Harold simply, but gazing at his employer in bewilderment. There was something theatrical about these extraordinary precautions utterly foreign to the Professor’s usual methods of procedure.“Very well,” continued the Professor. “If I find it necessary to communicate with you it will be by letter. The contents of the letter you may neglect. It may be typewritten, or in a disguised hand. You will know the letter is from me by the fact that it will be addressed in the first place to Westbourne Grove. The wordGrovewill be ruled through, and the correct wordTerracesubstituted for it. The envelope will in fact, convey the message. If the contents of the letter are to be read, which will only be if any unexpected developments take place, the envelope will be stamped with a three-halfpenny stamp. If, on the other hand, it is stamped with a penny and a halfpenny stamp, you will immediately proceed to the Post Office from which it was sent, which you will discover from the post-mark, where you will wait till I join you. If the envelope is stamped with three separate halfpenny stamps, you will go to Inspector Hanslet, explain what I am now telling you, and persuade him to come with you at once to the place indicated by the post-mark. Is that clear?”“Perfectly clear, sir,” replied Harold. “I’ll just make a note of that code, if you don’t mind, sir.”“No, make no notes!” commanded the Professor. “I have purposely contrived the code so simply that you can carry it in your head. You must realize that our actions will very probably be watched, in fact, I should not be surprised to learn that they have been under observation for some considerable time. Now, the next thing I want you to do is to type out a few copies of this paragraph and distribute them to the news agencies.”He held out a scrap of paper as he spoke, and Harold took it from him. It ran as follows: “Dr. Priestley, whose scientific writings have rendered his name familiar to the British public, has received a cablegram begging him to deliver a series of lectures at a number of the Australian Universities. Dr. Priestley, who has just completed the manuscript of his forthcoming book,Some Aspects of Modern Thought, has accepted the invitation. Since he is anxious to return to England before the end of the year, he has left London hurriedlyviaSouthampton and Havre, in order to catch the Celestial linerOportoat Marseilles. He will travel by theOportoto Sydney.”In spite of several attempts upon Harold’s part, he could elicit no further information from the Professor. He typed out the paragraph, and took it round to the agencies himself. When he returned, he found the Professor upstairs busily engaged in piling a quantity of clothes, which he was never likely to wear, into three or four large trunks.“You aren’t really going to Australia, are you, sir?” he ventured.“It would be quite useless for me to announce the fact unless I were to make every appearance of so doing,” replied the Professor tartly. “The boat train for Havre leaves Waterloo at half-past nine, I understand. You will arrange for two taxis to be here at a quarter to nine. I always like to give myself plenty of time to catch the train.”The Professor was normally one of those people who travel without any fuss. But on this occasion it seemed that he could not accept anything unless he had seen it done with his own eyes. He stood on the steps of the house for at least five minutes, directing the taxi-drivers where and how to distribute his trunks. When he and Harold arrived at Waterloo, he insisted upon interviewing innumerable officials, to each of whom he gave his name, asking endless and apparently irrelevant questions. Finally, having secured his seat, he walked up and down the platform several times the whole length of the train, instructing Harold as to the disposition of his household in his absence. It was not until the train was on the point of starting that he took his seat.“Remember what I told you, my boy,” were his last words as the train moved off.The Professor had booked to Paris, where he arrived before noon on Friday. He fussed about the Gare St. Lazare for some little time, and finally put his trunks in the cloak-room. He then went to one of the smaller hotels in the Quartier de l’Europe, booked a room, for which he paid in advance, and arranged for the collection of his trunks from the station. He lunched at a big restaurant in the boulevards, and spent the afternoon at the Louvre. In the evening he returned to the Gare St. Lazare, ten minutes before the Southampton boat train was due to leave. He booked a ticket for Southampton, and with a directness in singular contrast with the indecision he had displayed on the outward journey, took his seat in the train. He reached Southampton early on Saturday morning, and remained in his cabin until the London train had left the docks. Then, carrying a single suit-case, he walked to the West station and took a ticket to Corfe Castle.Dr. Priestley, although he was known by name to a very large circle of newspaper readers, who were periodically entertained by one or other of his thrusts at some pet nostrum of the moment, such as the craze for brown bread or the discovery of vitamines, rarely or never appeared in public. He had even escaped the doubtful honour of having his photograph reproduced in the evening papers, though this perhaps was a disadvantage, since it would certainly have been unrecognizable. He was therefore in no sense a public figure, in that he was most unlikely to be distinguished from the ordinary crowd of travelling humanity. He sat in the train without any attempt at disguise, studying an ordnance map which he had laid open upon his knees.It was still early when he reached Corfe Castle. The village, with its commanding ruin perched upon the summit of a conical hill, was in full flood of its morning activity. Dr. Priestley, standing at the station gate, watched the passers-by for a moment with keen interest. Not one of them paid him the compliment of more than a fleeting and incurious glance.He walked towards the heart of the village, and entered the first inn he came to. Having ascertained that he could have a single room for as long as he liked, he announced his determination of spending a few days, and was finally shown into a comfortable room with a view of the Castle. Here he remained until lunch.The Professor lunched with keen enjoyment. His adventure was giving him an appetite. In spite of the amount of travelling which he had done during the last couple of days he felt thoroughly fit and well, much better than he had during the winter in town. The menace which had been revealed to him seemed far away to him in this peaceful spot, it almost seemed to him as though the whole of his discoveries had been merely some impossible dream, the penalty of overwork, and that the fresh country air, tinged with the faintly salt tang of the sea, had swept it from his brain into the realms of the unreal. Perhaps, after all, he was entirely wrong in his deductions. Those mysterious murders in Praed Street might have been the result of some entirely different influence. He had merely conjecture to guide him: somehow, now he had reached the place where alone the corroborative facts could be gathered, it seemed as though his actions and his fears were the effect of a sudden and unaccountable impulse.He wandered from the luncheon room past the little saloon bar, and glanced in at the open door. The place was empty; it was past two o’clock, and the local habitués had returned to their labours. It was too early in the year for visitors. The Professor walked into the bar, and took a seat by the side of the counter.The proprietor, who was serving a few belated customers in the tap-room, came in at the sound of the Professor’s entrance, and greeted him with professional courtesy.“Good afternoon, Mr. Deacon,” he said cheerfully. (Deacon was the name which the Professor had inscribed in the hotel register—it said much for the proprietor’s skill that he had deciphered it correctly.) “I hope you found your room to your liking, and enjoyed your lunch?”“Yes, thank you,” replied the Professor. “I think I shall be very comfortable here for a day or two. I looked in here to ask you for a liqueur after my lunch. Perhaps you will join me in one?”“Liqueurs ain’t much in my line, thankee, sir,” replied the landlord. “But I’ll take a drop o’ gin with you, since you’re so kind. What’ll be yours, sir? I’ve got Benedictine, Crème de Menthe——”“I should prefer some old brandy, if you have it,” interrupted the Professor.“Ah, you know a thing or two, Mr. Deacon, I can see that,” replied the landlord with a knowing wink. “I’ve got a rare drop of brandy put away in the cellar. I never had only six bottles of it, and there’s still four left. My customers don’t hardly ever ask for it, it’s mostly beer or whiskey with them. Unless it happens to be a gentleman from London like yourself, sir.”He disappeared, and returned in a few moments with a long-necked bottle, from which he poured a glass of pale amber liquid. “There, just try that, sir,” he exclaimed proudly.The Professor picked up the glass and sampled the contents gravely. “Excellent, very excellent indeed!” he commented approvingly. “I am quite sure that my doctor would have prescribed this as part of the cure, had he known of it.”“Cure, sir?” enquired the landlord sympathetically. “I hope the illness has not been serious?”“Oh, no, not at all,” replied the Professor. “One could scarcely call it an illness. I have been rather run down, that is all. Men of my age have to take care of themselves, you know, and I have been devoting rather more time and energy than was perhaps wise to my business in the City. I found myself suffering from headaches and loss of appetite, so my doctor ordered me a complete rest. He said it was the only thing to set me up again.”“Well, here’s your very good health, sir,” said the landlord, tossing off his gin. “You couldn’t have come to a better place than this for a rest. I was afraid, when you comes in, that you’d find it too quiet at this time of year. I says to myself, ‘Here’s a gentleman from London who’ll be looking for a band and a promenade and what not?’ Why, sir, there isn’t even a sharry running at this season.”“That fact adds another attraction to your most comfortable house,” replied the Professor. “It was my doctor who recommended me to come here. He motored through on his way to Swanage last year. He recommends me to take a fairly long walk after every meal. I understand that you have some very beautiful heaths around here?”“They may be beautiful, but they’re precious lonely,” said the landlord. “They may suit you all right, sir, but for my part I take the bus into Wareham or Swanage when I wants to get out for a bit.”“I shall not be sorry to enjoy the loneliness of the countryside, after the bustle of London,” replied the Professor. “But I suppose people do live on these heaths, do they not?”“Well, there’s a few clay pits, and now and then a gravel quarry,” said the landlord. “But, take it all round, you can walk a long way without meeting a living soul, so long as you keep off the main road. It is like that all over Purbeck, whichever way you go. Of course, there’s a few cottages where the clay-workers live, but that is about all, outside the villages, and there ain’t many of them.”“What an ideal spot on which to build a country retreat!” exclaimed the Professor. “Not one of those villa residences, which are growing up so plentifully all over the country, but just a cottage, in the true sense of the word, where one could enjoy without distraction the glories of nature!”The landlord looked at the Professor with a curious expression. “You wasn’t thinking of doing anything like that, was you, sir?” he enquired.“Why, no, not at present, however much the idea might appeal to me,” replied the Professor, artlessly. “I fear that my duties in London would not allow me sufficient leisure.”“Queer thing, now, that you should say that about a cottage, sir,” said the landlord confidentially. “It puts me in mind of an odd thing that happened in these parts, not so many years ago. All along of another gentleman, about the same age as you might be, sir, coming into this very bar and asking me if I knew of a lonely cottage for sale.”“Indeed?” replied the Professor casually. “Perhaps you would refill my glass with that most excellent brandy. And if you will do me the honour of taking another glass of gin with me——”“You’re very kind, sir,” said the landlord, filling up the glasses. “I thought you’d take to that brandy. As soon as I sees you taste it, I says to myself, ‘Here’s a gentleman that knows a good drop of liquor when he sees it.’ ’Tisn’t every gentleman that takes kindly to the drink nowadays, sir. Why, there’s some of them what drops in here for lunch as takes water with it! Can’t say I hold with it myself. Well, here’s your very good health, sir!”He consumed his glass of gin at a gulp, and stood with his elbows on the counter, looking at the Professor. “Your saying that about the cottage does put me in mind of that other,” he said, reminiscently. “Mind you, sir, not that he was like you at all. Of course I didn’t know who he was when he came in, but I say to myself, ‘That fellow’s no business man, I’ll warrant!’ And, as it turned out, I was right! But you can always tell, can’t you, sir?”“Usually,” agreed the Professor. “He was not a business man then?”“Not he!” exclaimed the landlord, contemptuously. “He was one of them scientific chaps, like you reads about in the papers. What good they does I don’t know! Always seems to me as though they’d be better employed doing something useful instead of talking a lot of gibberish decent folks don’t understand. Well, this poor chap suffered for his folly, anyhow.”“Why, what happened to him?” enquired the Professor without any great show of interest.“Burnt to death!” replied the landlord, impressively. “Burnt till there wasn’t nothing but a heap of charred bones left, sir. Terrible thing it was, and him all alone out on the heath there. Quiet enough chap he seemed too. Why, I couldn’t believe my ears when the constable told me about him afterwards. You wouldn’t have guessed what the chap was really, not if you was to try for a twelvemonth.”“I daresay not,” remarked the Professor dryly. “I never was good at guessing. What was he?”“Ticket o’ leave man!” exclaimed the landlord, leaning over the counter confidentially. “If you’ll believe me, that man had just served fourteen years hard on Dartmoor for murdering a Duke, when he walked into my bar as cool as a cucumber. Oh, he was a deep one, was that Mr. Morlandson! And not a soul bar the super knew a word about it!”“Burnt to death, was he!” remarked the Professor. “Dear me, what a terrible end. How did it happen?”“No one knows rightly,” replied the landlord. “He lived all alone on the heath, over yonder towards Goathorn. Built himself a concrete place, I can’t remember what the super said he called it. Word something like lavatory?”“Laboratory, perhaps?” suggested the Professor.“Aye, that’s it, sir. You can see the ruins of it still, they tell me. I haven’t been out that way since it happened. Used to lock himself up in this place of his, and fiddle about with all sorts of inflammable stuff. Bound to go up it was, and sure enough it did. Just after closing time one evening, Old George what lives way out towards Studland, comes knocking at my door and says the heath’s on fire. ‘Heath on fire!’ I say, ‘Why, it’s been raining for a week. What are you talking about?’ ‘ ’Tis that for sure!’ says old George. ‘You can see the flames up along my way.’ ‘Flames!’ I says, ‘It’s the stuff they gives you at the Red Bull over yonder that makes you see flames, and I don’t wonder at it!’ Well, he keeps on, and at last I goes half a mile or so up the road with him. Sure enough, there was a great pillar of flame coming up from the middle of the heath.“We hadn’t been there more than a minute when the constable comes along. ‘What’s up yonder?’ I says. ‘Morlandson’s place on fire,’ says he. ‘Super he’s gone off on his bike. You chaps best come along and see what you can do.’“Well, sir, it weren’t no manner of good to take the engine. She’s only one of them hand concerns, and last time we’d had her out to practice, she pumped back’ards like into the river instead of out of it. Joe Stiggs, him what looks after her, said he found he’d put the valves in the wrong way. Besides, it would have taken us best part of an hour to push her out there, there ain’t no regular road. And, what’s more, all the water out at Morlandson’s place was a well what ran dry every summer.”“Then there was nothing to be done?” commented the Professor.“Nothing whatsoever,” replied the landlord emphatically. “Mind, we didn’t know Morlandson was inside. We expected to find him running round outside chucking water at it from a bucket. However, off we goes, and as we gets close we catches the stink of it. Lord! I shan’t forget it in a hurry. It was like the smell what comes from the pits when they burns carcases when the foot-and-mouth’s about.“The super he meets us, and I reckon I hollered out when I saw him by the light of the fire. He was black as a sweep, and all the hair singed off his face. Told us he’d been into the cottage, which was burning like a dry rick, and that he couldn’t find Morlandson anywhere. ‘I reckon he’s in there,’ he says, pointing to the lav——labor——what you call it. ‘There’s a horrible smell of burnt flesh about.’“He was right there, it fair made me sick. But there was nothing to be done. You couldn’t get within fifty yards of the place. We waited till nigh on midnight, but even when the flames went down the walls was red-hot and we weren’t no further for’ard. Super, he stays on all night, and in the morning he finds what’s left of Morlandson, and that’s precious little.”“Dear me, what a terrible thing!” exclaimed the Professor.“Aye, that it was,” agreed the landlord. “They brought back what there was of the poor chap in a potato sack, held an inquest on him, and buried him in the churchyard yonder. And that is what happened to the last gent what fancied a lonely life on the heath, sir.”The landlord glanced up at the clock, the hands of which pointed to five and twenty minutes to three. “Hallo, I must close the bar, or I’ll be getting into trouble,” he said, reluctantly removing his arms from the counter.“A visit to the scene of the tragedy would provide me with an object for a walk,” said the Professor. “Which is my best way to it?”“You can’t go wrong, provided you don’t mind a bit of rough going,” replied the landlord. “If you go out of the village towards Wareham, you’ll come upon a railway track, what they runs the trucks of stones along. That goes to Goathorn pier, a matter of six mile away or more. Follow the line for nigh on three mile, and you’ll come to a clay-pit. Then, about a quarter or half a mile away, on your right, you’ll see what’s left of the place, standing up among the gorse and heather. There is a track, but it’s a long way round and plaguey hard to find if you don’t know it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, it’s past closing time.”
For a couple of days after Inspector Hanslet’s last visit to the house in Westbourne Terrace, Dr. Priestley’s attitude had sorely puzzled Harold. He had hardly spoken a word, and the greater part of his time had been spent in sorting out the mass of documents which had accumulated during the course of years in the massive presses which lined the walls of his study. Harold said nothing, knowing from past experience that it was useless to ask questions. When the Professor was ready to issue his instructions he would do so. Until then, untimely questions would merely be rewarded with a rebuff.
It was therefore with intense eagerness that Harold replied, one morning shortly after breakfast, the Thursday following the death of Mr. Copperdock, to an abrupt question by his employer: “My boy, what I am about to say to you must remain a secret between ourselves, until either my death occurs or I give you leave to speak. Is that understood?”
“I undertake not to breathe a word to anybody,” replied Harold.
“To nobody,” repeated the Professor emphatically. “Not even to Hanslet, however urgent the need may seem. I am going away for a time; how long that time may be I cannot tell. I do not wish my whereabouts to be known, as that would possibly place me in considerable danger.”
“You’re not surely going alone, sir!” exclaimed Harold. “You’ll let me come with you, especially as you say there is danger attached to your journey?”
But the Professor shook his head. “The danger may exist in London equally,” he replied. “It is essential that someone I can trust should remain here. Otherwise, my boy, I should be more than pleased to take you with me. Now, listen very carefully to these instructions. Do not leave the house for long at a time, especially in the evening. Open all my correspondence, and deal with it to the best of your ability. Should there be among it any letter of a startling character, put a message in the personal column ofThe Times, ‘The asp has struck,’ and sign it ‘Cleopatra.’ Do you follow this so far?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Harold simply, but gazing at his employer in bewilderment. There was something theatrical about these extraordinary precautions utterly foreign to the Professor’s usual methods of procedure.
“Very well,” continued the Professor. “If I find it necessary to communicate with you it will be by letter. The contents of the letter you may neglect. It may be typewritten, or in a disguised hand. You will know the letter is from me by the fact that it will be addressed in the first place to Westbourne Grove. The wordGrovewill be ruled through, and the correct wordTerracesubstituted for it. The envelope will in fact, convey the message. If the contents of the letter are to be read, which will only be if any unexpected developments take place, the envelope will be stamped with a three-halfpenny stamp. If, on the other hand, it is stamped with a penny and a halfpenny stamp, you will immediately proceed to the Post Office from which it was sent, which you will discover from the post-mark, where you will wait till I join you. If the envelope is stamped with three separate halfpenny stamps, you will go to Inspector Hanslet, explain what I am now telling you, and persuade him to come with you at once to the place indicated by the post-mark. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly clear, sir,” replied Harold. “I’ll just make a note of that code, if you don’t mind, sir.”
“No, make no notes!” commanded the Professor. “I have purposely contrived the code so simply that you can carry it in your head. You must realize that our actions will very probably be watched, in fact, I should not be surprised to learn that they have been under observation for some considerable time. Now, the next thing I want you to do is to type out a few copies of this paragraph and distribute them to the news agencies.”
He held out a scrap of paper as he spoke, and Harold took it from him. It ran as follows: “Dr. Priestley, whose scientific writings have rendered his name familiar to the British public, has received a cablegram begging him to deliver a series of lectures at a number of the Australian Universities. Dr. Priestley, who has just completed the manuscript of his forthcoming book,Some Aspects of Modern Thought, has accepted the invitation. Since he is anxious to return to England before the end of the year, he has left London hurriedlyviaSouthampton and Havre, in order to catch the Celestial linerOportoat Marseilles. He will travel by theOportoto Sydney.”
In spite of several attempts upon Harold’s part, he could elicit no further information from the Professor. He typed out the paragraph, and took it round to the agencies himself. When he returned, he found the Professor upstairs busily engaged in piling a quantity of clothes, which he was never likely to wear, into three or four large trunks.
“You aren’t really going to Australia, are you, sir?” he ventured.
“It would be quite useless for me to announce the fact unless I were to make every appearance of so doing,” replied the Professor tartly. “The boat train for Havre leaves Waterloo at half-past nine, I understand. You will arrange for two taxis to be here at a quarter to nine. I always like to give myself plenty of time to catch the train.”
The Professor was normally one of those people who travel without any fuss. But on this occasion it seemed that he could not accept anything unless he had seen it done with his own eyes. He stood on the steps of the house for at least five minutes, directing the taxi-drivers where and how to distribute his trunks. When he and Harold arrived at Waterloo, he insisted upon interviewing innumerable officials, to each of whom he gave his name, asking endless and apparently irrelevant questions. Finally, having secured his seat, he walked up and down the platform several times the whole length of the train, instructing Harold as to the disposition of his household in his absence. It was not until the train was on the point of starting that he took his seat.
“Remember what I told you, my boy,” were his last words as the train moved off.
The Professor had booked to Paris, where he arrived before noon on Friday. He fussed about the Gare St. Lazare for some little time, and finally put his trunks in the cloak-room. He then went to one of the smaller hotels in the Quartier de l’Europe, booked a room, for which he paid in advance, and arranged for the collection of his trunks from the station. He lunched at a big restaurant in the boulevards, and spent the afternoon at the Louvre. In the evening he returned to the Gare St. Lazare, ten minutes before the Southampton boat train was due to leave. He booked a ticket for Southampton, and with a directness in singular contrast with the indecision he had displayed on the outward journey, took his seat in the train. He reached Southampton early on Saturday morning, and remained in his cabin until the London train had left the docks. Then, carrying a single suit-case, he walked to the West station and took a ticket to Corfe Castle.
Dr. Priestley, although he was known by name to a very large circle of newspaper readers, who were periodically entertained by one or other of his thrusts at some pet nostrum of the moment, such as the craze for brown bread or the discovery of vitamines, rarely or never appeared in public. He had even escaped the doubtful honour of having his photograph reproduced in the evening papers, though this perhaps was a disadvantage, since it would certainly have been unrecognizable. He was therefore in no sense a public figure, in that he was most unlikely to be distinguished from the ordinary crowd of travelling humanity. He sat in the train without any attempt at disguise, studying an ordnance map which he had laid open upon his knees.
It was still early when he reached Corfe Castle. The village, with its commanding ruin perched upon the summit of a conical hill, was in full flood of its morning activity. Dr. Priestley, standing at the station gate, watched the passers-by for a moment with keen interest. Not one of them paid him the compliment of more than a fleeting and incurious glance.
He walked towards the heart of the village, and entered the first inn he came to. Having ascertained that he could have a single room for as long as he liked, he announced his determination of spending a few days, and was finally shown into a comfortable room with a view of the Castle. Here he remained until lunch.
The Professor lunched with keen enjoyment. His adventure was giving him an appetite. In spite of the amount of travelling which he had done during the last couple of days he felt thoroughly fit and well, much better than he had during the winter in town. The menace which had been revealed to him seemed far away to him in this peaceful spot, it almost seemed to him as though the whole of his discoveries had been merely some impossible dream, the penalty of overwork, and that the fresh country air, tinged with the faintly salt tang of the sea, had swept it from his brain into the realms of the unreal. Perhaps, after all, he was entirely wrong in his deductions. Those mysterious murders in Praed Street might have been the result of some entirely different influence. He had merely conjecture to guide him: somehow, now he had reached the place where alone the corroborative facts could be gathered, it seemed as though his actions and his fears were the effect of a sudden and unaccountable impulse.
He wandered from the luncheon room past the little saloon bar, and glanced in at the open door. The place was empty; it was past two o’clock, and the local habitués had returned to their labours. It was too early in the year for visitors. The Professor walked into the bar, and took a seat by the side of the counter.
The proprietor, who was serving a few belated customers in the tap-room, came in at the sound of the Professor’s entrance, and greeted him with professional courtesy.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Deacon,” he said cheerfully. (Deacon was the name which the Professor had inscribed in the hotel register—it said much for the proprietor’s skill that he had deciphered it correctly.) “I hope you found your room to your liking, and enjoyed your lunch?”
“Yes, thank you,” replied the Professor. “I think I shall be very comfortable here for a day or two. I looked in here to ask you for a liqueur after my lunch. Perhaps you will join me in one?”
“Liqueurs ain’t much in my line, thankee, sir,” replied the landlord. “But I’ll take a drop o’ gin with you, since you’re so kind. What’ll be yours, sir? I’ve got Benedictine, Crème de Menthe——”
“I should prefer some old brandy, if you have it,” interrupted the Professor.
“Ah, you know a thing or two, Mr. Deacon, I can see that,” replied the landlord with a knowing wink. “I’ve got a rare drop of brandy put away in the cellar. I never had only six bottles of it, and there’s still four left. My customers don’t hardly ever ask for it, it’s mostly beer or whiskey with them. Unless it happens to be a gentleman from London like yourself, sir.”
He disappeared, and returned in a few moments with a long-necked bottle, from which he poured a glass of pale amber liquid. “There, just try that, sir,” he exclaimed proudly.
The Professor picked up the glass and sampled the contents gravely. “Excellent, very excellent indeed!” he commented approvingly. “I am quite sure that my doctor would have prescribed this as part of the cure, had he known of it.”
“Cure, sir?” enquired the landlord sympathetically. “I hope the illness has not been serious?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” replied the Professor. “One could scarcely call it an illness. I have been rather run down, that is all. Men of my age have to take care of themselves, you know, and I have been devoting rather more time and energy than was perhaps wise to my business in the City. I found myself suffering from headaches and loss of appetite, so my doctor ordered me a complete rest. He said it was the only thing to set me up again.”
“Well, here’s your very good health, sir,” said the landlord, tossing off his gin. “You couldn’t have come to a better place than this for a rest. I was afraid, when you comes in, that you’d find it too quiet at this time of year. I says to myself, ‘Here’s a gentleman from London who’ll be looking for a band and a promenade and what not?’ Why, sir, there isn’t even a sharry running at this season.”
“That fact adds another attraction to your most comfortable house,” replied the Professor. “It was my doctor who recommended me to come here. He motored through on his way to Swanage last year. He recommends me to take a fairly long walk after every meal. I understand that you have some very beautiful heaths around here?”
“They may be beautiful, but they’re precious lonely,” said the landlord. “They may suit you all right, sir, but for my part I take the bus into Wareham or Swanage when I wants to get out for a bit.”
“I shall not be sorry to enjoy the loneliness of the countryside, after the bustle of London,” replied the Professor. “But I suppose people do live on these heaths, do they not?”
“Well, there’s a few clay pits, and now and then a gravel quarry,” said the landlord. “But, take it all round, you can walk a long way without meeting a living soul, so long as you keep off the main road. It is like that all over Purbeck, whichever way you go. Of course, there’s a few cottages where the clay-workers live, but that is about all, outside the villages, and there ain’t many of them.”
“What an ideal spot on which to build a country retreat!” exclaimed the Professor. “Not one of those villa residences, which are growing up so plentifully all over the country, but just a cottage, in the true sense of the word, where one could enjoy without distraction the glories of nature!”
The landlord looked at the Professor with a curious expression. “You wasn’t thinking of doing anything like that, was you, sir?” he enquired.
“Why, no, not at present, however much the idea might appeal to me,” replied the Professor, artlessly. “I fear that my duties in London would not allow me sufficient leisure.”
“Queer thing, now, that you should say that about a cottage, sir,” said the landlord confidentially. “It puts me in mind of an odd thing that happened in these parts, not so many years ago. All along of another gentleman, about the same age as you might be, sir, coming into this very bar and asking me if I knew of a lonely cottage for sale.”
“Indeed?” replied the Professor casually. “Perhaps you would refill my glass with that most excellent brandy. And if you will do me the honour of taking another glass of gin with me——”
“You’re very kind, sir,” said the landlord, filling up the glasses. “I thought you’d take to that brandy. As soon as I sees you taste it, I says to myself, ‘Here’s a gentleman that knows a good drop of liquor when he sees it.’ ’Tisn’t every gentleman that takes kindly to the drink nowadays, sir. Why, there’s some of them what drops in here for lunch as takes water with it! Can’t say I hold with it myself. Well, here’s your very good health, sir!”
He consumed his glass of gin at a gulp, and stood with his elbows on the counter, looking at the Professor. “Your saying that about the cottage does put me in mind of that other,” he said, reminiscently. “Mind you, sir, not that he was like you at all. Of course I didn’t know who he was when he came in, but I say to myself, ‘That fellow’s no business man, I’ll warrant!’ And, as it turned out, I was right! But you can always tell, can’t you, sir?”
“Usually,” agreed the Professor. “He was not a business man then?”
“Not he!” exclaimed the landlord, contemptuously. “He was one of them scientific chaps, like you reads about in the papers. What good they does I don’t know! Always seems to me as though they’d be better employed doing something useful instead of talking a lot of gibberish decent folks don’t understand. Well, this poor chap suffered for his folly, anyhow.”
“Why, what happened to him?” enquired the Professor without any great show of interest.
“Burnt to death!” replied the landlord, impressively. “Burnt till there wasn’t nothing but a heap of charred bones left, sir. Terrible thing it was, and him all alone out on the heath there. Quiet enough chap he seemed too. Why, I couldn’t believe my ears when the constable told me about him afterwards. You wouldn’t have guessed what the chap was really, not if you was to try for a twelvemonth.”
“I daresay not,” remarked the Professor dryly. “I never was good at guessing. What was he?”
“Ticket o’ leave man!” exclaimed the landlord, leaning over the counter confidentially. “If you’ll believe me, that man had just served fourteen years hard on Dartmoor for murdering a Duke, when he walked into my bar as cool as a cucumber. Oh, he was a deep one, was that Mr. Morlandson! And not a soul bar the super knew a word about it!”
“Burnt to death, was he!” remarked the Professor. “Dear me, what a terrible end. How did it happen?”
“No one knows rightly,” replied the landlord. “He lived all alone on the heath, over yonder towards Goathorn. Built himself a concrete place, I can’t remember what the super said he called it. Word something like lavatory?”
“Laboratory, perhaps?” suggested the Professor.
“Aye, that’s it, sir. You can see the ruins of it still, they tell me. I haven’t been out that way since it happened. Used to lock himself up in this place of his, and fiddle about with all sorts of inflammable stuff. Bound to go up it was, and sure enough it did. Just after closing time one evening, Old George what lives way out towards Studland, comes knocking at my door and says the heath’s on fire. ‘Heath on fire!’ I say, ‘Why, it’s been raining for a week. What are you talking about?’ ‘ ’Tis that for sure!’ says old George. ‘You can see the flames up along my way.’ ‘Flames!’ I says, ‘It’s the stuff they gives you at the Red Bull over yonder that makes you see flames, and I don’t wonder at it!’ Well, he keeps on, and at last I goes half a mile or so up the road with him. Sure enough, there was a great pillar of flame coming up from the middle of the heath.
“We hadn’t been there more than a minute when the constable comes along. ‘What’s up yonder?’ I says. ‘Morlandson’s place on fire,’ says he. ‘Super he’s gone off on his bike. You chaps best come along and see what you can do.’
“Well, sir, it weren’t no manner of good to take the engine. She’s only one of them hand concerns, and last time we’d had her out to practice, she pumped back’ards like into the river instead of out of it. Joe Stiggs, him what looks after her, said he found he’d put the valves in the wrong way. Besides, it would have taken us best part of an hour to push her out there, there ain’t no regular road. And, what’s more, all the water out at Morlandson’s place was a well what ran dry every summer.”
“Then there was nothing to be done?” commented the Professor.
“Nothing whatsoever,” replied the landlord emphatically. “Mind, we didn’t know Morlandson was inside. We expected to find him running round outside chucking water at it from a bucket. However, off we goes, and as we gets close we catches the stink of it. Lord! I shan’t forget it in a hurry. It was like the smell what comes from the pits when they burns carcases when the foot-and-mouth’s about.
“The super he meets us, and I reckon I hollered out when I saw him by the light of the fire. He was black as a sweep, and all the hair singed off his face. Told us he’d been into the cottage, which was burning like a dry rick, and that he couldn’t find Morlandson anywhere. ‘I reckon he’s in there,’ he says, pointing to the lav——labor——what you call it. ‘There’s a horrible smell of burnt flesh about.’
“He was right there, it fair made me sick. But there was nothing to be done. You couldn’t get within fifty yards of the place. We waited till nigh on midnight, but even when the flames went down the walls was red-hot and we weren’t no further for’ard. Super, he stays on all night, and in the morning he finds what’s left of Morlandson, and that’s precious little.”
“Dear me, what a terrible thing!” exclaimed the Professor.
“Aye, that it was,” agreed the landlord. “They brought back what there was of the poor chap in a potato sack, held an inquest on him, and buried him in the churchyard yonder. And that is what happened to the last gent what fancied a lonely life on the heath, sir.”
The landlord glanced up at the clock, the hands of which pointed to five and twenty minutes to three. “Hallo, I must close the bar, or I’ll be getting into trouble,” he said, reluctantly removing his arms from the counter.
“A visit to the scene of the tragedy would provide me with an object for a walk,” said the Professor. “Which is my best way to it?”
“You can’t go wrong, provided you don’t mind a bit of rough going,” replied the landlord. “If you go out of the village towards Wareham, you’ll come upon a railway track, what they runs the trucks of stones along. That goes to Goathorn pier, a matter of six mile away or more. Follow the line for nigh on three mile, and you’ll come to a clay-pit. Then, about a quarter or half a mile away, on your right, you’ll see what’s left of the place, standing up among the gorse and heather. There is a track, but it’s a long way round and plaguey hard to find if you don’t know it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, it’s past closing time.”