The Moor

held us in silence.

Three minutes passed, four, before it came: the briefest flicker lit up the heavy clouds.

No matter it was past the season; a thunderstorm was on its way to Dartmoor.

TWENTY-FIVE

All at once I uttered a cry of 'Help me!' and sank to my armpits. It was instantaneous. I was in water, not on moss; and in sinking all I could do was to catch at some particles of floating moss, slime, half-rotten weed and water weed…

I felt as if I were striving against a gigantic octopus that was endeavouring with boneless fleshy arms to drag me under water.

—Further Reminiscences

You don't think—' I started to say. The entire day's long and elaborate plans had all rested on the assumption that the two Americans planned to use the following evening's artillery fire to cover their noise, that they were unlikely to wait for a natural thunderstorm. Probably, they would remain snug at home tonight. Still —

'We cannot take the chance,' he snapped. 'I will bring the dog cart up; you fetch the waterproofs and put on your boots, find two torches. And, Russell? My revolver is in the drawer. Bring it.'

Without another word he dashed out of the door, leaving me to soothe the affronted Baring-Gould. I could only tell him that the case was coming into its final stages, and we would explain it all very soon; with any luck, tomorrow. As I left him, I heard him declare in a querulous voice, 'He always was a headstrong boy.'

I diverted through the kitchen to ask Mrs Elliott to throw together a packet of sandwiches, as it looked to be a long night, and ran upstairs to pull every warm and watertight garment we possessed out of the drawers and wardrobes. Holmes' revolver, with its box of bullets, was in the drawer beside the bed. I loaded it and put it in my pocket.

Downstairs I found Rosemary in the kitchen wrapping a stack of sandwiches in greased paper. Mrs Elliott, by the sound of it, was in the dining room, the object of Baring-Gould's feeble anger, so I asked Rosemary, 'Is there a shotgun in the house?'

'In the pantry, mum,' she said promptly, pointing to a door on the other side of the room. It took me a moment to see it, lying flat on a high shelf. There were six cartridges as well, standing in a neat row, which I scooped up and dropped into another pocket. I checked to be sure the gun was not loaded, asked Rosemary for a length of oiled cloth, and gathered up everything, leaving the house through the kitchen door.

Down in the stables, I helped Holmes with the last of the buckles and walked the shaggy pony out into the drive. Holmes lit a lamp and hung it off the side—highly inadequate as a headlamp, but enough to warn other vehicles we might meet on the road. I flicked the reins as soon as he was beside me and we trotted up the road, pulled by the bewildered but willing pony.

Holmes began to pull on layers of the clothing I had brought. Within a mile the first drops of rain fell, and by the time we passed through Bridestowe the rain was heavy and the going slowed. The pony was indomitable, as might be expected of a Dartmoor native, and he had no problem distinguishing the way even when we left the high road for the lesser road and, later, the lesser road for the farm track.

At the farm, Holmes splashed across the yard to the well-lit farmhouse while I began to loose the pony from its traces. Before I had finished, a pair of thick hands took over from me.

'I'll finish that, mum,' said the man. I left him to it, taking the shotgun from under the seat and tucking its oiled cloth securely around it, then handing Holmes his gun and the bag of provisions.

The rain pelted down, and we set off for the moor.

It was a hair-raising two miles, up the steep side of the moor wall and across the river to Black Tor Copse. I have never had very good nighttime vision, even without the downpour that made my spectacles approximately as effective as my uncorrected vision. The flashes from the slowly approaching storm provided me with the only illumination we could afford, not knowing when and from where Ketteridge and Scheiman would come (the question of if was momentarily shelved; time alone would answer that).

When we had splashed and stumbled up the bed of the stream for what seemed hours, finally the stunted trees of the copse began to rise up around us. There was no path, just hillside, and I wondered how Holmes thought we were going to fight our way across to the other bank without giving the two men enough prior warning for them to flee halfway to Mary Tavy.

'It's clearer farther up, and there is a path of sorts,' Holmes said in answer to my question. 'We need to be here to see them, but there should not be a problem with crossing over when the time comes.'

I had to take his word for it, because we seemed to be at the place he had in mind. A slab of rock had fallen from above and lodged against two large standing pillars, giving us a small shelter, open at the back but keeping off the rain. I loosened three layers of buttons and found a shirttail to wipe my lenses.

Holmes excavated similarly for his pipe and tobacco pouch, and waited for the next lightning strike to light the match, with his back turned to the gorge and his shoulders hunched. He smoked with one hand cupped over the bowl, that no giveaway glow might be seen.

We settled in to wait.

The rain poured down and the gorge was sporadically illuminated by the stark blue lightning, and I sat and sometimes squatted and every so often stood upright, bent over double beneath the stone ceiling, in order to ease my legs. I tucked my hands under my arms and rubbed my gloves together briskly and wriggled my toes inside my damp boots, and we waited.

Time passed, the centre of the storm drew closer, and the rain fell, and still we waited. Holmes did not light a second match, sucking instead at his empty pipe, and the harsh light flashed with increasing regularity along the gushing river and the bank of rock across from us and the furiously blowing branches of the oak wood, followed at ever more brief intervals by the grumble and crack of thunder, and still the two men did not come.

' 'Those dark hours in which the powers of evil are exalted,' ' I thought I heard Holmes murmur.

'An evil night,' I agreed.

'An evil place,' he said.

'Come now, Holmes,' I protested. 'Surely a place cannot be inherently evil.'

'Perhaps not. But I have noticed that the great bowl of Dartmoor seems to act as a kind of focussing device, exaggerating the impulses of the men who come within its sphere, for better or for worse. Gould might well have been a petty tyrant if left in his parish in Mersea, bullying his wife and driving his bishop to distraction. Here, however, the very air allowed him to expand, to become something larger than himself. Similarly Stapleton—I've wondered if he mightn't have continued as a minor crook had he not come here, where he filled out into a deft manipulator of local lore and a would-be murderer. And now these two.'

I did not answer. After a while I pulled the bag over and offered Holmes a sandwich. Rosemary had cut meat from the carcass of the goose for them, and laid them in the bread with a layer of rich herb stuffing. They were delicious, but still the storm beat at the stones around us, and still we waited, and still the men did not come.

The hands of my pocket watch crept around, and the powers of darkness moved over the face of the moor. Midnight came and midnight passed, and neither of us had moved or spoken for some time, when I began to feel a strange sensation in the air around me. Looking back, it was probably only the psychic eeriness of the night combined with the physical sensation brought by the electric charges of the storm, building and ebbing, but it began to feel almost as if there were another person in the rock shelter with us—or if not a person, then at least a Presence. It did not seem to me, as Holmes had suggested, an evil presence, nor even a terribly powerful one, but I thought it old, very old, and patient. It felt, I decided, as if the moor itself were holding watch with us. Holmes did not seem aware of anything other than discomfort and impatience, and I did not care to mention my fancies to him. I was, however, very grateful for his warm bulk beside me.

And then, just when I was on the edge of giving up on our expedition, the two men came, with a brief bobble of a hand torch from upriver. My paranormal phantasms burst with the sight, and the spirit of Dartmoor sank back into the stones. Holmes put his empty pipe into his pocket and leant forward. I unwrapped the shotgun far enough to slide two cartridges into it, then laid it back down by my feet.

Two lights appeared, tight beams that lit the feet of the men and, as they came closer, the tool bag each carried in his left hand. They crossed by in front of us, picking their way along the edge of the stream, and stopped