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Authors: Eleanor Scott

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It was the head of a man, apparently a priest, in the dress of the sixteenth century. The forehead was high and narrow, the cheeks sunken, the line of the jaw long and prominent. The mouth, thin– lipped and drooping, showed faintly through a straggling beard; the ears were singularly fine and sensitive. The eyes were so sunken under the overhanging, almost hairless, brows that it was difficult to see how the artist had managed to give them their expression of brooding horror. They were like the eyes of a haunted man.

Mr. Matthews felt strangely stirred by the portrait. He could hardly take his eyes from the fascinating, fascinated gaze of the picture.

“If it’s not valuable, it ought to be,” he muttered. “The thing looks alive! He might speak any minute – and I guess he’d have some pretty awful things to tell.”

The light was fading now, and the American, wishing to study his find more carefully, carried it downstairs with him. As he examined the drawing by the newly–lit lamp, it occurred to him to look for a signature on the back of the portrait. There was, however, no mention of the artist; all he could see were words written in the crabbed and angular print often used in ecclesiastical documents of the period. “Dom: Hierime Lindalle: 1562. Eccles. XIV, 121,” he read: and lower down two texts in full – “Have regard unto My Name; for it shalle be to thee for greate Treasures of golde. Eccles XLI, 15,” and “And he finisht alle the worke that he didd in ye Hous of ye Lorde and browght in ye thinges that were Dedicated, ye Golde and ye Siluere and ye Vesells, and layd up ye Treasoure in ye House. 1 Kings VII, 51.”

These did not interest Mr. Matthews greatly, and when he had studied the curious, painful drawing a little longer, he put it away. It was about nine that evening when, having nothing to do, he decided to get on with the sorting of some papers he intended to arrange in the form of a pamphlet on the Colour Question in the United States. They were in his bedroom, and he went up at once for them.

As he reached the head of the stairs he noticed Sharpe in the north passage. He could not quite see what he was doing; but he noticed that the door of the north room was shut.

“Sharpe,” he said quietly, “have you just shut that door?” ’

The man jumped violently, and dropped, with a crash and a spatter of liquid, something that he had been carrying in his hand.

“What’s that?” asked the American, his suspicions at once aroused.

“It’s – I-I’ve just been fillin’ up the ’oly water stoups, sir,” stammered Sharpe. “It’s a thing we never leave undone, sir, and I’d nearly forgot it. They’ve been kep’ filled ever since the ’ouse was built, so they say, and I promised Mr. Langtre as I would see to it.”

The American bent down to the splash that spread right across the passage from wall to wall. It certainly had no scent. A glance assured him that the little receptacles on the walls had been recently filled.

“Right,” he said, “and can you give me as good a reason for shutting that door? I said it was to be left open.”

Sharpe muttered something by which he gave his employer to understand that he ” ’adn’t understood as the door was to be left open at night,” that it didn’t do the rooms no good, and that he hoped Mr. Matthews wouldn’t insist. It was all very incoherent and very rapidly spoken, and the American again entertained doubts as to the man’s
bona fides:
but he contented himself with repeating his orders to Sharpe to open the door of the north room, and standing to watch him do it.

The man went with infinite reluctance, like one walking to a torture chamber. He turned the key – Mr. Matthews noted grimly that the door was locked – and then, flinging open the door, fairly ran down the passage to the place where his employer stood awaiting him. He was white–lipped and shaking, and suddenly the American saw – the man was afraid! He had, of course, been brought up on village traditions of the haunted room, and he had intended to keep that door locked at all costs. Matthews half thought of reassuring him by going and relocking the door: but no, he wouldn’t pander to these superstitions. He fetched his papers and spent a long evening in their classification and arrangement; then, happily conscious of time well spent, he went up to bed.

He woke once or twice in the night, and once thought he heard a faint scraping rustling sound, such as he had heard while waiting in the passage the day before. He listened intently, but heard nothing; and attributing the impression either to a dream or to the same natural cause that had occasioned it before, he curled up comfortably and went to sleep.

He woke vigorous and cheerful, full of the determination to call on Mr. Molyneux and ask him about the picture and the panels. He dressed with speed and energy, and went out of his room with happy anticipations of breakfast.

As he came out on the landing he noticed that the dark splash caused by the fallen holy water still stained the floor; and then he saw that another stain – a bright glistening trail – led from the open door of the north room to the splash on the floor.

It was the long slimy trail that a snail leaves, only it was quite unusually large. It was as if a slug or snail thirty or forty times bigger than the usual variety had crawled from the room along the passage until it came to the splash of water on the floor.

“Very curious,” he thought. “I never knew before that slugs got up so high into a house. Thought it was the ground floor for theirs… By gosh!” he added, struck by an idea, “that was the sound I heard! Of course it was. But, my word, it must be some snail to make a noise you can hear! Only one trail, too.”

After breakfast, Mr. Matthews decided that, raw and damp as the morning was, he would stroll down to the Vicarage with his newly–discovered picture: and he accordingly went, the portrait under his arm.

The Vicar was in, and pleased to see him. They exchanged civilities, and then Mr. Matthews, producing the portrait, broached the subject of his call.

“Well?” he asked, when the other had studied the drawing for some minutes in silence, “what do you think of it?”

“It’s an extraordinary thing,” said the Vicar slowly. “Quite unique, and, I should say, valuable. And yet, Mr. Matthews,” he went on, taking off his
pince–nez
and laying down the picture, “if that portrait were mine, I declare to you I should burn it here and now. It is the picture of a fiend,” he added with energy. “I consider it to be an unholy thing.”

The American was considerably surprised at this outburst of fanatical superstition – for so he could not help thinking it – from a man as shy and reserved as the Vicar.

“Oh, come, sir,” he said, laughing a little. “It’s not as bad as that. It’s odd, I admit, and it has a trick of haunting one; but after all the poor chap’s dead, and I guess he had to pay for what he did.”

“That’s true,” said the Vicar. Repugnance and antiquarian enthusiasm struggled within him as he picked up the drawing again.

“Oh, by the way,” said Matthews, “I wanted to ask you about those texts on the back. What Book do they come from? I thought I knew my Bible tolerably well – New England, you know – but I don’t just get the ones he’s copied out.”

The Vicar turned over the portrait and read the inscription.

“‘Dom. Hierime Lindalle, 1562.’ That would be about the year of his death,” he remarked. “Then a text from Ecclesiasticus. Then here, lower down, another text from the same Book – ’Have regard unto My Name, for it shall be unto thee for a Treasure of gold.’ Then a third, from the Book of Kings. It’s not surprising you didn’t recognise it, Mr. Matthews: Ecclesiasticus is an apocryphal Book, admitted by the Romans. It’s not in the Anglican Bible at all. Still, the text from Kings doesn’t strike me as quite accurate. Stay, I have the Latin Vulgate here somewhere.”

He turned to his bookshelf.

“Here we are. Let’s see, what’s the first? Eccles, XIV, 121, copied just after the date.”

“Will you translate?” asked the American. “Latin wasn’t included in my schooling.”

“Well, it’s roughly this: ’Remember that death is not slow and the covenant of hell hath been shown to thee.’ That was in the year of his death. No doubt the poor man, poring alone over his books and incantations, allowed the idea of his seven years’ pact with the devil so to prey on his mind that he did in fact die in the given year.”

“And left this as a kind of warning to other necromancers? I dare say you’re right, sir. And the other reference, the one from Kings?”

Slowly the Vicar translated.

“And he finished all the work that he did in the house of the Lord, and brought in the things that were dedicated, the gold and the silver and the vessels, and laid them up in the treasures of the house of the Lord.’ He hasn’t copied it accurately, you see. He has ’and laid up the treasure in the house.’ And he has left out the reference to David.”

“And what’s the other from Eccle–what’s–his–name?”

“That, again, is inaccurately copied,” said the Vicar, turning over the leaves of his book. “It should be, ’Have regard to
thy
name: for it shall abide with thee for a great and precious treasure.’ ”

“It’s queer, isn’t it, that when he went to the trouble of copying out the whole texts he should have done it wrong? Say, Mr. Molyneux, I can’t help sort of wondering–”

Their eyes met.

“The same thought occurred to me,” said the Vicar quietly. “I believe the misquotations are intentional. I believe it’s a clue to the place where he concealed the treasure – the stolen gold and jewelled plate of the chapel. You see,” he went on with growing excitement, “the first of the misquoted texts concerns church vessels, and implies, or so I take it, that the plate was not melted down in his chemical experiments, but that he ’laid up the treasure in the house.’ ”

“That’s what I make of it,” said the American. “But the other one does me. Let’s see: ’Have regard unto My Name, for it shall be unto thee for a treasure of gold? Why, say, Vicar, that’s it – the clue to the hiding–place is in the man’s name!”

“I believe you’re right!” cried the Vicar. “Some hint – perhaps a cipher–”

“‘Dom: Hierime Lindalle.’ Hm. This needs some brain. Say, sir, what’s wrong with you coming up to the Manor to lunch and working it out? We might find another clue in the room.”

The Vicar agreed, and the two men set out for the Manor. They found a distinctly good meal awaiting them, and, after a quiet smoke, went up together to the north room.

“I guess Dom. Whats–his–name did these himself,” said Mr. Matthews, looking round the rough carvings. “These gentlemen are the twelve apostles I take it. I’m going by Peter here,” and he indicated the figure bearing a key.

“Yes, and that’s St. John with the eagle; and St. Andrew with the bread. Why, of course, they’re rough copies of the apostles in the Langtre Psalter,” he continued with increasing enthusiasm. “They are quite unique in design and conception, and in the Psalter each has a text attached. So against St. James, who is drawn as you see with his head half severed, is the text ’And James the brother of John he killed with the sword.’ Each one can be identified in the same way. But
the
curiosity of the set is the representation of Judas: an extraordinary drawing, showing him falling out of the tree in which he is attempting to hang himself. You must see that.”

And he began to make the circuit of the room.

“Pity the light is so bad,” said Matthews. “I can only just see the figures. But I don’t see one such as you describe.”

“Neither do I,” admitted the Vicar in some perplexity. “He has the Twelve, too.”

“Perhaps Judas touched him a little too near,” suggested the American. “He may count his twelve after the Acts.”

“Let’s see, said Mr Molyneux. “I ought to be able to identify them all from the Psalter.”

He again went slowly round the room, murmuring the names of the apostles.

“Philip, Thomas with his finger outstretched; and this, with the book and the lion, of course is Mark. Now that’s very odd,” he said, turning to the American. “I wonder why he included Mark?”

“To make up the dozen, I guess,” said Mr. Matthews. “After all, he was an evangelist, if he wasn’t an apostle. Now, sir, before the light quite goes, let’s just copy down these texts he has in the band round the wall, and then we’ll see what we can make of ’em.”

“The first,” said the Vicar, “is Psalms cxx, 6 – ’The sun shall not smite it by day, nor the moon by night.’”

Mr. Matthews wrote rapidly.

“Next, just a reference – Ecclesiasticus xxxi, 7. Then St. Matthew vi, 21 – ’Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.’ Then another reference to Ecclesiasticus xxii, 12. That’s all.”

Matthews shut his notebook and slipped it into his pocket. Now we’ll go down to the library and have a go at the puzzle,” he said genially.

“Of course,” said the Vicar as they descended the stairs, “that first text is another misquotation. In the Authorised Version, at any rate, the verse is ’The sun shall not smite
thee
by day.’ ”

“Why, you’re right,” said Matthews. “We’ll just see what the Papists say. But it strikes me, sir, that any text that’s copied in full is wrong and that’s the clue.”

In the library, established in armchairs, one with the paper of texts, the other with his Latin Vulgate, they traced out the references. The first was, as the Vicar had said, wrong.

“That don’t tell us much,” complained the American. “It applies to the treasure, I guess, but it’s not much help to know that ’the sun will not smite it by day nor the moon by night.’ ”

“It may refer to the hiding place,” said the Vicar. “That would suggest some hole or cellar or vault.”

“That’s so,” admitted the American. “Now, Ecclesiasticus xxxi, 7.”

The Vicar read aloud.

“‘Gold is a stumbling block to them that sacrifice for it; woe to them that eagerly follow after it: every fool shall perish by it.’ At once a lamentation and a warning from the dead devil–worshipper,” he said. Then, with some hesitation, “Mr Matthews, it’s evident the man had some horrible experience. Don’t you think it would be wiser to abandon the search?”

“Abandon it, Vicar? What, when we’re just getting on the track? Not if I know it,” cried Matthews. “Why, this is just the biggest thrill that ever happened! And if there’s any risk, why, that makes it all the better. Come on, what’s next? Matthew vi, 21.”

BOOK: Randalls Round
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