Devil's Tor (60 page)

"You would stand out of to-morrow's settlement, but for other circumstances: then what are they?"

"When you know as much as I, we shall discuss it."

Peter, with an unwonted spot of red in his cheeks, relapsed to silent smoking; but Arsinal had glanced sharply at his alienated friend. He guessed the allusion, and thought to turn it.

"Indeed a great deal of this electricity in all of us is arising from our talking in the dark. Let me set the example of openness, Mr. Copping, even though my confession be of matters such as have come to be treated too falsely and apologetically in our heavy working world. For, undoubtedly, the supernatural must be all around us and is true enough, were it not that for the most part it has fallen into wrong hands—into the hands of the gullers and the too-easily gulled. …

"On his return from your Tor this morning, Mr. Saltfleet told me of a psychic adventure he had had up there, in company with Miss Fleming. Your own words seem to imply that you have had the other side of the story from her mother. Whether it be so or not, I found myself sufficiently interested to wish to see something of this haunting with my eyes, so
we
went up together after lunch. … In a state of trance, I witnessed very strange things, from near the foot of the hill, just above the stream. The whole mass should therefore be subject to such manifestations. … I can't spend time now on describing the particulars of my vision, but I was carried back to immense antiquity; while Mr. Saltfleet saw something, not the same. I am telling it, to invite you to an equal candour. There is a process of wireless telegraphy called
syntonising:
the despatcher and receiver are tuned to the same wave-lengths. Let us employ that process here, Mr. Copping. Apart from what you may have learnt to-day, what, if anything, do you directly know of the Tor's wonders you have referred to so eloquently, so curiously as well? ..."

"You may not have been the only ones privileged; but what then? Are we to shake hands, or be awarded medals?"

"Were you alone?"

"If you will insist on a particular occasion... whereas my relation to the Tor's activities is rather that of compound to compound... no, I was accompanied. It was before Drapier's catastrophe, and
he
was there. We weren't together."

"Perhaps one of the stones was in his hand?"

"So I think."

"And you saw—what?"

"I saw a Stone-Age funeral party."

"And Miss Fleming—what has
she
seen up there, to-day or at any other time?"

"I don't know."

Arsinal paused; then went on:

"Thank you for your sincerity... and simplicity. … Thus it is put beyond doubt that these hauntings are objective, not figments of the fancy. But also it is established that we may scarcely dare to set ourselves against them; and I think you do wrong, Mr. Copping, to allow a persistent defeating of your will in the matter to swell into ill-will against persons. At another time, I could tell you much else, to demonstrate to you how broad this great general movement of the invisible should be; then anger, I am sure, would depart from a mind of which it cannot be a habit. Meanwhile, what exactly is it that you are asking us to do? I shall say without concealment that I can't afford to go on risking Mrs. Fleming's displeasure. My sole aim in these negotiations is the procuring of that stone. Put it in my hand to-day, and cancel the Tor meeting to-morrow in any fashion you please; but the stone I must have."

"Saltfleet knows where it is"—the dropping of the title for the first time was noticeable—"let him go and bring it away, as suggested. I will take any responsibility."

Saltfleet came back to them from the window, but did not sit down.

"Being only a party to a trust, I cannot do that."

"Are you a married man?" Peter seemed to smile, but it was rather a contortion of transition and unpleasantness.

"No. Why?"

"I am throwing myself on your charity, and would have appealed to the relation. Have mercy on this unfortunate girl. I address you, because you are the recurrent and permanent block. Don't go for the stone if it's against honour; but at least suggest another means. Stop this wretched gathering, by... raising objections—or accepting and failing to turn up in time... I don't care how it is. Miss Fleming and I will see to it that you lose nothing, gentlemen, by the underground frustration. I don't ask you even to
offend
her mother: there is plenty of difference between disappointing and slighting."

But Saltfleet remained cold.

"The nature of the transactable business up there would seem not to require the attendance of Miss Fleming. That should be your way out. It is of course your affair, not ours."

"She has promised her mother to go with her. That may be the tap-root of the entire idea; and Mrs. Fleming, after all, may have an excellent insight into the demands of the situation. She wants to discover what this appalling tangle is, that is so rapidly paralysing her daughter’s functions and making of her present hours an unutterable misery; and so she is inspired to bring everything together, in such a way as to leave nothing out—you two men, and her daughter, and my humble self, and Devil's Tor, and Drapier's stone. From these psychic and psychological ingredients, she will attempt the construction of a diagnosis, that she hopes may suggest the remedy and bring the cure. … I do not agree with her that the best method of studying a serious disease is to heighten its ravages."

"You have the general intuition," said Saltfleet, "and, like all general intuitions, it is both true and false, right and wrong. Accordingly, there is this distinction between our two attitudes towards Miss Fleming’s coming to a meeting on the proposed lines: you
feel
a danger to her, Mr. Copping; I nearly
know of one.
But the danger presenting itself in my mind is probably the one of all others you have never dreamt of. …"

He proceeded, while Peter fixed him with his steady greenish eyes of genius:

"The quite likely accident of another occult seizure on the Tor would assuredly be a painful enough shock to her system, already much shaken; but would not kill her, or more than slightly affect the future course of her life. Neither are
we
bandits, to terrify or distress her on another account. Her mother would be there; and you. The flint is to be surrendered to us, so that there could be no scene of violence on that score. These are all the common threats to Miss Fleming. They are negligible, as against the inconvenience of attempting to prevent her attendance: she has promised her mother, you say; I fancy her sense of the supernatural in these things will be a bar to the retractation of her promise on purely cautionary grounds. We must make up our minds, therefore, that she will accompany her mother to-morrow evening. Yet a peril for her does exist, that will render the action most inadvisable unless a safeguard can be found. And it can be found; but will depend upon the benevolence of an individual."

"Who?"

"Arsinal here. … Arsinal, I beg you to do one of these two things... or there are three. Either keep away from to-morrow's settlement and let me deputise for you; or let me receive the property from Mrs. Fleming's hands, and I will pass it to you afterwards; or, if you must be present and take it yourself, at least give your word of honour now that you will refrain from joining it to the other while on the hill—anyway, so long as Miss Fleming is within range; and the range, we know, is considerable. In courtesy, I include her mother; of course they will be together. When they shall be out of range, then you may fly to your experiment as fast as may be. … The delay, if it is only one, won't be inordinate. If it is also a balk—that, I fear, must be your own private chastening. …"

"The two stones, supposed to be fragments, will naturally tempt a fitting." Peter musingly examined the cigarette between his fingers. "And as each is strong-natured in itself, the united product may be even dangerous to handle. That is feasible. Yet a few points occur to me. Why is Mr. Arsinal imagined to be rash enough to wish to expose outsiders—and women—to a first trial of unknown forces? And, the whole supposition being rather far-fetched, why are you stressing it? ... Also, why is Miss Fleming being singled out as the one with most to fear from such a trial? ... Or is this all an oblique resumption of some directer discussion gone before?"

Arsinal looked ill, and was clenching and unclenching his hand repeatedly. Giving no time to his associate to answer the other's questions, he broke in quickly, though quietly:

"So now it has arrived at a public attack, Saltfleet! Yet, in our after-lunch talk together, didn't I offer
not
to meet,
not
to know, Miss Fleming?"

"Truth to tell, you did."

"Then was the talk for nothing? In silencing you, was I merely driving back malice into its hole?"

"Hardly malice. Our terms have always been too equal for that. An idea was nearer inception a few hours ago, and proportionally weaker. This assembly, that wasn't on the table then, has put stature and vigour into it. … It is not prepossessing, Arsinal!"

"The conceit is as fantastic as disloyal. What! I must submit ignominiously to be excluded or bound, when my honesty will be admitted? The logic is strange."

"Put that way; which I say is a wrong and crooked way. For you are professing an aim, a single aim, and your honesty depends on the truth of the profession. If you have some further aim that you wish to remain concealed, then you are so far dishonest—not for the concealment, to which you have the ordinary human right, but for the profession of a thing untrue. … Efface yourself at to-morrow's settlement, and we shall know you are sincere in wanting Drapier's stone and no more. But decline all my choices, wrap yourself in this cloak of darkness, and what can I suspect but something... degenerate underneath! ..."

Arsinal got up. Peter, not to be left sitting alone, joined the two on the floor, flicking ash from his cigarette and keeping his eyes down.

"That is a word the applicability of which I shall later have to ask you to explain, Saltfleet. I don't know if you have an intention in angering me before Mr. Copping, but, supposing you have, it is now sufficiently done and I would beg you not to go on treading the border of past confidences. … What I must think is that, having hitherto been content to confine yourself to helping me in all this pursuit, now all at once something in it is
personally
interesting you; and you wish to procure for yourself independence of action. So you insult me, in order to obtain your release: but the witness of a stranger will render the insult sharper, besides preventing the friendly return to understanding. … I won't indulge in the cynicism, that such an attack on me before a third may have been in your thoughts since that last unsatisfactory patching-up. … Neither will I have the primitive vindictiveness to suggest to Mr. Copping just
what
may be interesting you since yesterday in this business. But, taking leave altogether to ignore your interposition, Saltfleet, the covert threat in which I shall know how to despise ... here is my answer to Mrs. Fleming! The affair is mine, not Mr. Saltfleet's. We are to be considered dissociated: he desires it, and I am not unwilling. Therefore I ask you, Mr. Copping to instruct her, and her daughter also, that he is no longer authorised to act for me or represent my views. … There is your own attitude, and I am sorry to have to refuse it, but my interests are vital. Mr. Saltfleet's alarm you yourself have styled 'far-fetched'—it is its nearly weakest description... your own fears for Miss Fleming can hardly materialise in a gathering of four or five on a definite business; yet you will also observe to her mother that I am by no means requiring her attendance; I shall take her consent to the transaction as given. … With these preliminaries, and in simple acceptance of Mrs. Fleming's arrangements, I shall be on Devil's Tor tomorrow evening, at nine, to receive the property."

Peter shrugged, and was silent. Saltfleet, who had been standing very erect on his feet, looking half-haughtily away, listening, after an appreciable pause turned abruptly upon his old colleague.

"I am content. Nor is it necessary to inquire how, if Miss Fleming isn't to be there and I am to be excluded, you are to get your stone after all. For you are not an imbecile, Arsinal... and so perhaps you have a better knowledge that Miss Fleming
will
be there. …"

"The spot can be charted."

"Let it be. However, whether or no, I shall be there too, since I can't get to learn beforehand if she has stayed away. You claim no right to the private possession of the hill for your purposes?"

"What I can't understand and you haven't answered me," said Peter, addressing Saltfleet, "is why this tremendous solicitude of yours is on Miss Fleming's account alone."

"She is the younger and more influenceable of the two women to be exposed."

"Nothing else?"

"Ask Arsinal."

Peter turned in silent interrogation to the man named. A faint frowning struggle crossed his face, before he said:

"The verbal
riposte
would be easy. But what Saltfleet means is different. I don't wish to fence.

He refers to an ancient prediction, in which
he
has no faith, and I..."

"And you... ?" Saltfleet spoke.

"I have no grounds for applying it to a young woman I have never met; and am not so applying it. Please say no more of it, Mr. Copping."

The artist returned to Saltfleet. "You will be up, then. But tell me specifically what you are to do, in a party apparently not desiring your company."

"I shall be there to watch all; and, if needful, to take measures."

"Preventive measures?"

"You know the ultimate of arguments, Mr. Copping."

"And this is
your
message to Mrs. Fleming, that you want conveyed?"

"If you please."

"Certainly it may have the desired effect; and I thank you. … So, before clinching the arrangement, I shall need to go back for new directions, Mr. Arsinal."