The others had gathered round her, and she and Wyatt now stood in the centre of a group looking up at the trophy. Wyatt turned round to Abbershaw. “What do you think of it, George?” he said.
“Very interesting—very interesting indeed. It is very old, of course? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like it in my life.” The little man spoke with genuine enthusiasm. “It’s a curio, some old family relic, I suppose?”
Wyatt nodded, and his lazy grey eyes flickered with faint amusement.
“Well, yes, it is,” he said. “My ancestors seem to have had high old times with it if family legends are true.”
“Ah!” said Meggie, coming forward. “A ghost story?”
Wyatt glanced at her.
“Not a ghost,” he said, “but a story.”
“Let’s have it.” It was Chris Kennedy who spoke; the young rugger blue had more resignation than enthusiasm in his tone. Old family stories were not in his line. The rest of the party was considerably more keen, however, and Wyatt was pestered for the story.
“It’s only a yarn, of course,” he began. “I don’t think I’ve ever told it to anyone else before. I don’t think even my uncle knows it.” He turned questioningly as he spoke, and the old man shook his head.
“I know nothing about it,” he said. “My late wife brought me to this house,” he explained. “It had been in the family for hundreds of years. She was a Petrie—Wyatt’s aunt. He naturally knows more about the history of the house than I. I should like to hear it, Wyatt.”
Wyatt smiled and shrugged his shoulders, then, moving forward, he climbed on to one of the high oak chairs by the fireplace, stepped up from one hidden foothold in the panelling to another, and stretching out his hand lifted the shimmering dagger off its plaque and carried it back to the group who pressed round to see it more closely.
The Black Dudley Dagger lost none of its sinister appearance by being removed from its setting. It lay there in Wyatt Petrie’s long, cultured hands, the green shade in the steel blade more apparent than ever, and a red jewel in the hilt glowing in the candlelight.
“This,” said Wyatt, displaying it to its full advantage, “is properly called the ‘Black Dudley Ritual Dagger.’ In the time of Quentin Petrie, somewhere about 1500, a distinguished guest was found murdered with this dagger sticking in his heart.” He paused, and glanced round the circle of faces. From the corner by the fireplace Gideon was listening intently, his grey face livid with interest, and his little black eyes wide and unblinking. The man who looked like Beethoven had turned towards the speaker also, but there was no expression on his heavy red face.
Wyatt continued in his quiet voice, choosing his words carefully and speaking with a certain scholastic precision.
“I don’t know if you know it,” he said, “but earlier than that date there had been a superstition which persisted in outlying places like this that a body touched by the hands of the murderer would bleed afresh from the mortal wound; or, failing that, if the weapon with which the murder was committed were placed into the hand which struck the blow, it would become covered with blood as it had been at the time of the crime. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you, Abbershaw?” he said, turning towards the scientist, and George Abbershaw nodded.
“Go on,” he said briefly.
Wyatt returned to the dagger in his hand.
“Quentin Petrie believed in this superstition, it appears,” he said, “for anyway it is recorded that on this occasion he closed the gates and summoned the entire household, the family, servants, labourers, herdsmen, and hangers-on, and the dagger was solemnly passed around. That was the beginning of it all. The ritual sprang up later—in the next generation, I think.”
“But did it happen? Did the dagger spout blood and all that?” Anne Edgeware spoke eagerly, her round face alive with interest.
Wyatt smiled. “I’m afraid one of the family was beheaded for the murder,” he said; “and the chronicles have it that the dagger betrayed him, but I fancy that there was a good deal of juggling in affairs of justice in those days.”
“Yes, but where does the ritual come in?” said Albert Campion, in his absurd falsetto drawl. “It sounds most intriguing. I knew a fellow once who, when he went to bed, made a point of taking off everything else first before he removed his topper. He called that a ritual.”
“It sounds more like a conjuring trick,” said Abbershaw.
“It does, doesn’t it?” agreed the irrepressible Albert. “But I don’t suppose your family ritual was anything like that, was it, Petrie? Something more lurid, I expect.”
“It was, a little, but nearly as absurd,” said Wyatt, laughing. “Apparently it became a custom after that for the whole ceremony of the dagger to be repeated once a year—a sort of family rite as far as I can ascertain. That was only in the beginning, of course. In later years it degenerated into a sort of mixed hide-and-seek and relay race, played all over the house. I believe it was done at Christmas as late as my grandfather’s time. The procedure was very simple. All the lights in the house were put out, and the head of the family, a Petrie by name and blood, handed the dagger to the first person he met in the darkness. Acceptance was of course compulsory, and that person had to hunt out someone else to pass the dagger on to, and the game continued in that fashion—each person striving to get rid of the dagger as soon as it was handed to him—for twenty minutes. Then the head of the house rang the dinner gong in the hall, the servants relit the lights, and the person discovered with the dagger lost the game and paid a forfeit which varied, I believe, from kisses to silver coins all round.”
He stopped abruptly.
“That’s all
