'It's forever cold on the moors, Sharon dear,' Lena told her. 'Especially at this time of the year, when the wind starts howling over them. But Marlowe Manor is well-insulated, with central heating, and you won't feel chilly at all inside.'
'Is there a fireplace?' Sharon wanted to know.
'Oh yes, a grand old Inglenook. Mark always keeps a roaring fire going. It's very cozy.'
Sharon's enthusiasm for the visit to the baronial home of the wealthy young aristocrat was rapidly returning now that the immediate danger of Neal's leaving had been seen safely through. 'I can hardly wait to see Marlowe Manor,' she said. 'From what you've told me about it, it must really be magnificent.'
'Oh it is, it is indeed,' Lena said. She smiled. 'It's like nothing you've ever seen before, dear. I don't think you're going to forget your stay there; I don't think you ever will.'
Not if everything goes according to plan, you won't. And my plans never fail, especially when I have such eager partners as Mark Marlowe and Wafto and Rajah, the incomparable…
Lena started the expensive English car, putting on the heater; moments later, warm air flooded the comfortable interior and quickly dissipated the chill which had overcome Sharon. Once they were out of the airport, and on their way, she settled back in complete luxuriousness to enjoy the lengthy drive.
It took them several hours, traveling leisurely across southern England, to reach Dartmoor. The sky was dark and overcast, and the wind whistled mournfully at the windows of the sleek Jaguar. They passed through Exeter shortly past five, and before long Lena had taken them onto a sparsely-traveled back road. She was an excellent driver, and handled the car with ease.
'We're just about to enter the moors now, dear,' she told Sharon. 'I'm glad there's still plenty of light left, so you can see what they're like; I'm afraid if you came upon them in the dark, without knowing what to expect, they might be more than a little frightening.'
Sharon sat forward expectantly on the seat, peering out through the windshield. The fog was very thick and wet — Lena had had to put the windshield wipers on, and they made rhythmic little sounds as they swept arcs clear on the glass — but it was high enough so that it did not obliterate the surrounding countryside. Visibility was still very good.
The young blonde wife's first impression of the mysterious moors was that they were bleak and barren and terribly lonely. She had the feeling of having been swallowed up by their vast, rolling emptiness, conveying to her the image of being trapped on some uninhabited wasteland planet far removed from earth. For as far as her eye could see the terrain was covered with low-growing heather and a few stunted, gnarled trees which the fog made ghostly and unreal. Every now and then great stone ruins could be seen — they were ancient, Lena explained, perhaps not as old as Stonehenge but antediluvian nonetheless; they were forboding and cold and lifeless, making Sharon think of things long dead. She shuddered involuntarily, and pulled her coat tighter about her shoulders.
'About the only people who live on the moors, except for semi-recluses with stately old manors like Mark, are sheep ranchers,' Lena told her. 'They allow the animals to run free over the heather. There — you can see a flock of them off on your left.'
Sharon looked, and indeed several dozen of the thick-wooled animals were grazing in the distance. As she watched them, she saw set back from the narrow, winding untraveled road a small stone structure with a slant roof, resembling a shed; the front was completely open. She asked her companion, 'What's that?' pointing to the structure.
'Shepherd's hutch,' Lena answered. 'Every now and then you'll see a shepherd — usually an old man — sitting inside one of them with his staff.'
They proceeded deeper into the moors, and the desolation seemed to Sharon to become more pronounced. She wasn't so sure now that she liked the idea of spending a week or more — and the first three or four days without Neal — in this Godforsaken wilderness. But then, she was probably being silly again; there wasn't anything to worry about. She was among friends, wasn't she?
Suddenly, ahead on the right, a narrow unpaved lane loomed in the young wife's vision. Lena slowed, touching the Jaguar's brakes, and said, 'We're almost there, dear. This is the private road to Marlowe Manor.'
After they had traveled some five hundred yards on the lane, two huge stone cairns, with a massive iron gate heavily padlocked in the center, blocked the way; high stone fencing, with spikes rusted and needle sharp jutting up into the bleak gray sky, meandered off in both directions from the cairns. Apparently, Sharon thought as Lena brought the sedan to a stop in front of the locked gate, Mark Marlowe or his ancestors — demanded complete privacy for their holdings.
Lena took a huge iron key from the glove compartment and stepped out of the Jaguar. She went to the gate and unlocked the padlock, swinging both halves of the great iron barrier aside. Then she returned to the car, drove through and closed and relocked the gate before continuing on.
The road wandered through the eerie, desolate moors for perhaps a mile and Sharon found herself sitting tensely, rigid on the leather seat, peering expectantly through the windshield for her first glimpse of Marlowe Manor. It couldn't be very far off, she thought; Lena had said that [missing text]. Suddenly, she saw it.
A small gasp of wonder burst from her ovaled lips, and a delicious chill wound its way along her spine. She had known from Lena's description of the baronial mansion about what to expect, but actually seeing Marlowe Manor for the first time, through the thin wisps of gray fog that floated ghost-like before it and above it, was almost a shocking experience.
It was a massive, rambling dwelling, with gables and turrets and huge jutting towers that were all but consumed by the trailing vapors of fog; it was fashioned of thick gray-stone blocks upon which ivy and green moss grew in heavy profusion, giving the ancient structure a sinister, awesome air of decaying ruins. Sharon could see stone outbuildings — what had once been, and perhaps still were, servants' quarters — on the left of the manor proper, and high mossy stone walls perhaps enclosing a garden of some type jutted out sharply to the right. A monstrous wooden door, rounded at the top and set deep into an arch decorated with gargoyles and other hideous stone carvings, sat in the middle of the main front wall, and even at a distance the young blonde wife could see a great, heavy, ornate door-knocker in its center.
'Quite a sight, isn't it, dear?' Lena asked softly, as she brought the sedan off the access road and onto a wide sweeping drive that circled an immense stone fountain-and-pond.
'Lord yes,' Sharon whispered, repressing a shiver, her eyes still wide. 'All it needs is a moat encircling it to make a medieval castle!'
'Mark is fond of saying the same thing,' chuckled Lena. 'He says that one of these days he's going to have one dug and filled with alligators.'
'Surely he's joking!'
'Oh of course. Mark has a wonderful sense of humor, you know.'
'He seemed very charming on the two occasions I met him.'
'He is, very,' Lena said. 'I think you'll find him a gracious host,' — her eyes gleamed brightly — 'and very eager to please.'
There was an area widened out near the wide stone path leading up to the door, and Lena took the Jaguar in there, saying, 'Mark's man-servant, Wafto, will see to it the car is put in one of the outbuildings for shelter after the trunk is unpacked.'
Sharon nodded, still staring up at the slippery-looking, bare stone walls of the manor house. Well, she thought with a nervous little laugh, I hope the interior is more cheerful than the exterior. But Lena said it was very cozy, and I have no reason to doubt her word.
The two women got out of the car, pulling their coats tight around them, and hurried along the path to the door. Sharon saw then that there was a huge plaque, in the shape of a shield, which was set into the left side of the arch; it was made of bronze, with the words MARLOWE MANOR in a bas-relief half-circle across the top. Below, there was a depiction of a lion and a great, snarling mastiff and a grim-jawed man in armor plating, forming an interlocking circle by being joined with bunches and clusters of small round fruit.
Lena saw Sharon looking at the plaque and said, 'That's the Marlowe family crest; quite impressive, isn't it?'
'Oh yes,' replied Sharon. 'What does it mean?'
'Well, I'm not sure,' Lena said, 'but I think it has something to do with the ancestral heritage, virility and honor of the Marlowes.'
'How fascinating!'
