The Dancing Druids

upon a pinnacle of slimy rock which stood up like a pointing finger.

Laura caught at it with the boathook, but the metal hook slipped off the weedy surface and the dinghy, answering the pull, began to heel. She drifted stern in and bows out, but, being well fended, she did no more harm to herself than to bump her port quarter gently against the side. At this, she tried to head herself towards the opposite wall, but Laura, leaning out boldly, caught at the slimy finger of rock, and held on long enough to arrest the drift of the boat and bring her head-on again. O’Hara came to the rescue with the deft dropping of a mooring rope over the pinnacle. Then he stepped ashore and made fast.

‘Take care how you come!’ he said, offering Mrs. Bradley a hand. ‘It’s beastly slippery up here.’ He was on the rocky shelf, which now formed an unsafe but possible path.

The elderly lady, disdaining assistance, landed without mishap and shone an inquisitive torch all over the walls before she led the way onwards. The cave, now an upward-sloping passage, still ran on into the hill.

It seemed a long way to walk, and the rock had changed to a damp and crumbling landslide of chalk, trampled and marked by footprints, before the smell of the seaweed was out of the venturers’ nostrils, and a strong reek of petrol took its place.

‘Stop!’ said Mrs. Bradley, speaking quietly. She had returned one of the torches to O’Hara, and Laura had a small one of her own. ‘Put out the lights. I think I know where we are! I took a compass bearing at the mouth of the cave, another as soon as we had tied up the dinghy, and a third one minute ago.’

Suddenly from over their heads came a noisy and terrifying rumble. O’Hara and Laura instinctively ducked their heads, but Mrs. Bradley, more knowledgeably, remained bolt upright and smiled into the petrol-scented darkness. She explained that she had no doubt whatever, from her compass bearings and from what rough estimate she had been able to make of the distance the three of them had travelled since the dinghy had entered the cave, that they were now below the concrete floor of the pull-in for coaches, and that the noise was that of a motor coach driver or a lorry driver racing his engine.

‘We can go back now,’ she added.

Laura, entranced by what she termed ‘the boys’-book atmosphere of the proceedings‘, was in favour of repairing forthwith to the pull-in and finding the trap-door or other aperture which opened on to the cave.

‘What we need,’ said O’Hara, ‘is a car that wants repairing. They’ve a pit for repairs at that place. I’ve seen it. I should think it is bound to be the opening we want. If the cave is used in the way Mrs. Bradley thinks, they wouldn’t risk having a suspicious-looking opening into it. Nobody would think of looking at an inspection pit in a biggish garage, which the pull-in certainly has. If we could only manage to get hold of a damaged car, we could gather round the inspection-pit while they dealt with it.’

‘We will see what can be done. George will know about things like that,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

‘One thing,’ said Laura, as they reached the tied-up dinghy, ‘it looks fishy about those people in that yacht.’ Mrs. Bradley did not question this statement.

‘I shall again appeal to the Chief Constable,’ she said. ‘He is so angry with me already that one more red herring—if it should turn out to be that—can scarcely annoy him more.’

This refreshing point of view appealed to her hearers, and it was with gusto that they climbed into the dinghy and reversed her out of the cave.

‘Well, you found plenty in the hole to interest you,’ said the boatman encouragingly when they rejoined the cruiser, and the dinghy, after some trouble, had been hoisted aboard. For answer, Mrs. Bradley peered with an expression of vulpine rapture into one of the little linen bags she had taken with her, and produced for the boatman’s inspection one or two specimens which she had had the forethought to borrow from her archaeological friend before she had returned from her visit to London.

‘Ah,’ said the fifteen-year-old mate, coming up and peering politely over Gascoigne’s left elbow, ‘if you found them there in that ’ole, it’s where somebody must have dropped ’em.’ To the horror of three of his hearers, the stupefaction of the fourth and the cackling delight of the fifth, he continued, pointing, ‘That there be a bone of bos longifrons; that be part of the blade of a Stone-Age sickle; and that un be a bit of the turnover top of a Neolithic collared urn. I don’t hardly reckon none of they would be found in a hole like that un, but maybe they would.’³

‘Well, here they are, anyway,’ Mrs., Bradley briskly replied, for she neither could nor would give the erudite child the lie.

The motor cruiser took up her anchor and moved off on her return journey to Welsea Beaches. The short passage was as uneventful as her crew and passengers could desire, and the latter were back at the hotel in time for dinner. They did not return to Slepe Rock. Mrs. Bradley feared for O’Hara’s safety there, although she did not give that as her reason for remaining in Welsea.

‘But when can we take the damaged car to the pull-in?’ asked Laura. ‘That is, how soon can we get a damaged car? George won’t let us mess up our own.’

‘Soon; I can promise that,’ said Gascoigne, looking at Mrs. Bradley. ‘You’ve simply got to say when. If we can’t find some legitimate means of getting into that pull-in and using their garage without exciting suspicion, I shall be surprised and will eat my hat.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think you wear a hat.’ observed Laura. ‘By the way, what about our film extras? I don’t think it’s much good depending on those people, somehow, at the house with the four dead trees. But perhaps you don’t want any now?’ she added, eyeing Mrs. Bradley narrowly.

‘Oh, yes, I do want them, and we shall get them,’ Mrs. Bradley responded. ‘My nephew Denis knows someone who is in film circles in some managerial capacity, and this man rang up the Gonn-Brown company and the extras will be sent to us on loan at the usual rates.’

‘Good,’ said Laura. ‘I shall sleep soundly to-night. Hope I don’t dream of our cave!’

‘And I that I do not dream of that terrifying child on board the cruiser!’ said Mrs. Bradley.

Chapter Fifteen

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‘… where they say the great Emperor Frederick Barbarossa still holds his court among the caverns.’

Ibid. (Peter the Goatherd)

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Mrs. Bradley, as always, was as good as her word. By nine o’clock in the morning she and her host of extras were in full swing. The stone circle presented a lively spectacle and was, as the now refreshed Laura expressed it, positively crawling with ant-like archaeologists, almost all of whom had been hired for the occasion, although not by Laura.

The work was in charge of Mrs, Bradley herself and a tall young man in disreputable shorts who turned out to be one of her many nephews. The expert upon whom Mrs. Bradley had been counting was suffering, it transpired, from lumbago, and could not come. He had, however, been responsible for providing the reason for hiring the helpers, for the excuse for all the activity (if anybody asked any questions) was that a ‘dig’ was to be filmed for educational purposes.

‘And if we can’t outshine Charley’s Aunt,’ announced Laura darkly, ‘in competing for the educational hogwash, I shall be gloriously surprised. By the way, how come Denis? I thought he only played the violin!’

‘I remembered Denis just in time. He helped to excavate some hut circles in Wiltshire last year. He will make it look as though we know what we’re doing, and will also prevent us from doing any damage,’ said Mrs Bradley, waving an explanatory claw. ‘The great thing,’ she added, gazing benevolently round upon her ant-heap, ‘is to have enough people busy. It disarms suspicion. And the Chief Constable, as I told you yesterday, is not pleased with me. I have kept him out of his bed and caused him to creep in the lee of hedges and get the knees of his trousers dirty. It will be as well to demonstrate our own continuing zeal.’

She concluded this peroration with a startling yelp of laughter, and then called up her nephew and presented him to the other young men.

‘Denis does play the violin,’ she added, waving a skinny claw again as though to excuse this idiosyncrasy on the part of her nephew. ‘You will have much in common.’ She walked off, hooting