The Dancing Druids

‘I know, child, and you have my utmost sympathy. And I did hear you arrange it. I was, however, desirous of changing the subject. You alarm me very much when you get ideas into your head. Now, whilst you are occupying the attention of David Battle, I am going to London. I may be away for a day or two, and I do not want anybody to know that I have left you here alone. In fact, I do not intend that you shall be alone. You will take Mr. Gascoigne to Cuchester with you to-morrow, and you will not go anywhere without him. We have made enemies, I suspect, over this business, and it would be most embarrassing for me to have to explain to your mother that you had met with an accident.’

‘Nothing would surprise her less than to hear I’d broken my neck,’ said Laura cheerfully. ‘All right. I’ll watch my step. But I’m not prepared to promise not to go out and about, and not to poke my nose here and there if it seems to be needed. You can’t ask that sort of thing. I’m turned twenty-one, and…’

‘I ask you to exercise reasonable discretion and to take reasonable precautions,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Not that I think you understand the meaning of the words, but to quiet my conscience, that’s all.’

‘If you’re so bally anxious and old-hen, why on earth don’t you take me with you? Oh, I know! I’ve got to keep Battle in play. Never fear. I’ll watch him like a hawk. How long do you want me to keep a line on him?’

‘Until four o’clock to-morrow afternoon, child.’

‘Easy!’

Escorted by Gascoigne, she went again to Battle’s studio on the following day. They took Mrs. Bradley’s car, for its owner’s mysterious errand could best be accomplished, it appeared, by taking the train.

‘But where will you get the train?’ Laura had demanded. ‘It’s miles to a station from here.’

‘I shall manage,’ Mrs. Bradley had replied.

‘She told me not to get into mischief,’ said Laura gloomily, when she and Gascoigne had garaged the car at the Bournemouth end of the town and were going towards David Battle’s studio, ‘but she’s far more likely to get landed in the soup than I am! I don’t like this business of going off cagily by herself. It must be something dangerous, or I’m sure she’d have taken me with her. It’s all poppycock pushing me off like this for this beastly portrait.’

‘Never mind. Play up, and for heaven’s sake look pleasant,’ said Gascoigne. ‘You don’t want that horrible expression bequeathed to posterity. Think what your grandchildren would say. And, another thing. Mike is coming down this evening. Says he’s got news and must see me. What do you say to that? Look here, if we can get hold of another female, let’s go to Welsea for dinner. I’m becoming rather tired of Slepe Rock. What do you say?’

Laura accepted the invitation immediately, and they mounted to Battle’s studio. The artist was already in front of the portrait.

‘Come on, come on!’ he said irritably, ‘I’m in form to-day. How long can you give me, Miss Menzies?’

‘Oh, an hour,’ said Laura, picking up a piece of newspaper and dusting the model throne before she sat down. ‘This is Mr. Gascoigne.’

The two men nodded to one another. Then Gascoigne said, ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Battle, messing with oil paint which he squeezed from fat and filthy-looking tubes. ‘I have never seen you, anyway. I’d remember if I had. I always remember faces.’

Laura thought that this was not an idle boast. A painter most likely would always remember faces. No more was said, and Battle was soon at work, concentrating with a frown, and never stepping away to look at his work. Gascoigne had brought a book, and, after glancing a little doubtfully at the only chair in the studio, he surreptitiously placed the jacket of the book on the seat of the chair before he sat down to read.

An hour passed, and Battle continued to paint. Laura, catching Gascoigne’s eye, shrugged helplessly. Mrs. Bradley’s witching hour was past. It was five o’clock by Laura’s wrist-watch.

‘I say, aren’t we nearly through for to-day? I can come again to-morrow, if you like,’ she said at last.

‘Keep still,’ said Battle, squeezing out more paint and daubing it rapidly and in chunks and lumps on to his canvas. ‘I’ve got it! And you can’t have the portrait until after I’ve shown it. It’s good.’

‘But, look…’ said Laura. The artist took no notice. He put down his brushes, and, going at the picture with great energy, proceeded to work at the oil colour with his fingers, a dirty piece of thick linen, and what looked like an empty paint-tube.

‘There,’ he said at last, stepping back. ‘You can go home when you like now.’

Laura got down stiffly.

‘Thank heaven for that,’ she observed. She walked over and looked at the painting. ‘Hm! Not bad.’

‘It’s good,’ said Battle, shortly. ‘And I’m tired.’

Gascoigne looked at his watch.

‘Let’s all go and have some tea,’ he suggested. ‘Plenty of places in the town.’

‘Not for me,’ said Battle. ‘I’ll clean this muck off my hands and then I’m going out to get drunk. I’ll never do better work than I’ve done this afternoon, and I’m going to celebrate. So long.’

‘I suppose,’ said Gascoigne, detaining him, ‘you don’t know a fellow named Firman?’

‘Firman? I’ve some cousins named Firman, I believe. I’ve never met them. My father’s sister’s kids. Gosh awful, at that. Why do you want to know? I hate the thought of them.’

‘It isn’t you I’ve met before, then; it’s your cousin, that’s all,’ said Gascoigne. He enlarged on the resemblance between Battle and Firman to Laura on the way back to Slepe Rock. ‘And the queer thing is, of course,’ he added, ‘that Firman was one of the hounds that day when Mike helped to carry that fat fellow to the car. It seems to me that we might do worse than get Firman to answer a few questions. It wouldn’t do any harm. And I’ll put Mike on to this chap Battle. He may get more out of him than I can.’

‘I should hardly think so,’ said Laura. ‘If your fatal charm doesn’t do the trick I shouldn’t think Mike would get anywhere. Still, anything you say. And although I’ve more or less promised Mrs. Croc. that I won’t step high, wide and handsome while she’s out of the way, I don’t see why we shouldn’t explore an avenue or two now she’s gone. You go ahead and get Mike down here, and let’s see what we can ferret out amongst us. I should like to surprise the Old Lizard. She’s been putting on dog a bit lately.’

O’Hara arrived by motor cycle at ten o’clock that night, too late for dinner. He was in high spirits and announced that he was ready and willing to take part in carrying out any plans that might be proposed by the others.

‘And what I wanted to tell you is this,’ he added. ‘You know that queer house—the big one with the four dead trees in its grounds? I’ve discovered, from looking up old records, that it used to be called Nine Acres. The recurrence of the number noted by Miss Menzies and sent along by you, Gcrry, seems a bit of a pointer, and so I propose that, instead of keeping out of that house as ordered by the notice on the gate, we jolly well go in. I’ve been thinking over the details of that day we had our run and I think I’ve stumbled on a clue.’

‘Say on!’ said Laura, with enthusiasm. Gascoigne looked interested but said nothing. O’Hara continued quietly:

‘It’s this: you know I thought I spotted you, Gerry, from the path round Grimston Banks? Well, the fellow I saw was Firman. We’re pretty certain of that. He was making for a gap in the hills, and he wasn’t so very far ahead of me. I ought to have caught him, but I didn’t, because of my gammy ankle. After that, I was misdirected by that fellow in the car. Now, if Firman had turned into that house, that would account for my having seen no more of him. It’s a long shot, I know, but the house is on the way to that farm, and we’ve had a hunch, all along, that there’s something fishy about Firman.’

‘It’s odd you should revive that,’ said Gascoigne. ‘A fellow down here, whose father disappeared and has never been traced, is cousin to Firman. It’s a coincidence, certainly, but there it is. I still don’t see, though, what the house has to do with it, or quite why Firman should turn in there.’

‘It’s only this,’ said O’Hara. ‘If Firman had done what he said he did, and gone to his uncle’s, I shouldn’t have spotted him at all. You remember we worked that out from the map. Also, if you did what you said you did—and I’m absolutely certain you did, allow me to say!—I couldn’t have seen you either. Therefore we inferred that it was Firman I saw. Now, Firman has a gammy leg, and I know I had a gammy ankle, but, even so, I ought to have caught him. Instead of that, I never saw him again. Ergo, he went to ground and for that there’s still no explanation, nor is there any explanation of why he said he went to his uncle’s.’

‘Well,’ said Gascoigne, looking at Laura. ‘We mustn’t be hampered. There’s a club event billed for Saturday which I had not intended to dignify with my presence, but in a good cause… What do you say?’

‘We’ve no guarantee that Firman will turn up for the run,’ protested O’Hara.

‘He’ll turn up all right, if only to disarm suspicion,’ said Gascoigne shrewdly. ‘Therefore— ’