Sweet Danger (25 page)

‘What do you know about Galley?' he demanded.

She did not move away, but turned her head and gazed thoughtfully through the open doorway into the yard beyond.

‘He's very harmless, really,' she said suddenly, her voice unusually soft. ‘I don't suppose he ever kills anybody who wouldn't die anyway, and I do believe he does a lot of good. Of course, it's all childish and not at all serious, but there's always that uncomfortable feeling that there might be something in it.'

Mr Campion's eyes were very stern. ‘Does he take some sort of dope?' he demanded. ‘I didn't recognize it when I saw him. What is his poison?'

‘Oh no, it's not that,' said Amanda, still not meeting his eyes. ‘I've never said anything because I thought he might get kicked out of the profession for it, and I do think he does a lot of good in a way. But all the really queer things you've noticed around here – the fear sign and that sort of thing – are mainly due to him and his habits for the last twenty years or so. He's mad, you see.'

He laughed. ‘Most people are a little.'

She turned her head sharply and looked him full in the eyes, and he was startled by her expression.

‘I mean insane,' she said. ‘Or at least that's the only comfortable way to look at it.'

Something about her calm sincerity was very convincing and he reseated himself upon the stairs.

‘Out with it.'

Amanda stirred uncomfortably. ‘I haven't told anyone this,' she said. ‘In fact, I once swore a most frightful oath I never would. But I think you'd better know.' She paused to consider her confession, but finally the words came with a rush. ‘This is how I worked it out,' she said. ‘Dr Galley was only just qualified when he came down here forty years ago. I don't know much about it, but as a rule doctors learn a great deal after they're qualified, don't they? When Dr Galley came down here at first he didn't have anyone to talk to except country people, and I think he had a lot of time on his hands. Naturally, he took up reading.

‘Well' – her voice sank – ‘that library he inherited from his great-uncle is an enormous affair, and it contains some very queer books and manuscripts.'

She paused and glanced dubiously at Campion, but he was following her intently and she continued:

‘This is only my theory,' she said, ‘and, of course, I know hardly anything about it. But even fifty years ago medicine and – and superstition were rather mixed, weren't they?'

Campion was frowning and his eyes seemed to have become darker as he stared thoughtfully into her face.

‘You're suggesting, I take it, that Dr Galley is actually practising archaic medicine, herbalism and that sort of thing, I suppose?' he said.

‘Oh yes,' agreed Amanda with a flash of her old cheerfulness. ‘He's always done that. But what I'm getting at is this. Ever since I've known him he's gone a step or two further than that. You see, what it boils down to is that ancient medicine was often – 'she paused again.

‘A variety of witchcraft,' said Mr Campion dryly.

The girl regarded him with complete gravity. ‘Yes,' she said at last. ‘That's it. It sounds silly, doesn't it?'

Mr Campion was silent for some moments. In a long
experience of the more out-of-the-way corners of life he had met with some curious phenomena, some odd forms of mania, and some amazing cases of retrogression. Suffolk, one of the oldest counties, was virtually unexplored, and little local papers whose very names were unknown to the great London dailies sometimes printed strange tales of ignorance and superstition which had found their way to tiny rustic police courts. It did not seem incredible to him, therefore, that, in a county where whole districts go for years without seeing their local police constable, very strange things should occur which never reached the maw of any printing press.

The more he considered Amanda's revelation the less unlikely, if not the less extraordinary, it seemed to be. The fact that the little doctor had bought no practice, but had put up his plate uninvited, would have automatically ostracized him from any professional folk in the district and his patients would have been gathered naturally from the ignorant, trusting country people, very few of whom could read at the time of his arrival.

Campion considered Amanda's theory set forward so ingenuously and found that with her he could imagine any impressionable youngster left to solitude and a library delving amongst the ancient volumes, and consuming greedily anything which touched his own subject, however remotely. He could guess at the temptation to try an early remedy thus discovered on some unsuspecting patient, and the surprise at some coincidental cure. He could see the man growing older, becoming more and more bigoted, obsessed by his dangerous hobby.

He glanced at Amanda. ‘The first night we came to the village Lugg saw – or thought he saw – a corpse laid out on the heath,' he said. ‘Was that anything to do with Galley?'

Amanda took a deep breath. ‘It isn't often done here,' she said. ‘Anyway, it did no harm. The village only consented because Galley wanted it. Fred Cole died quite naturally,
and really he was rather a bad lot. You wouldn't understand or I'd explain.'

‘In certain uncivilized countries,' remarked Mr Campion, his eyes still fixed on her face, ‘the natives believe that if one of their number dies, whose private life has not been quite as beautiful as it might have been, then it is a good idea to let the corpse lie out in the moonlight for three nights running so that the evil spirit may escape completely and not be shut in a grave, where it may grow fierce and dangerous. The bravest natives watch the body to see, so they say, the hour at which the spirit escapes, so they may be able to tell to which angle they must appeal for protection from it.'

Amanda sighed, a little escaping breath of pure relief.

‘You know all about it. I'm so glad. It saves a lot of explaining. Yes; that's it exactly. I'm not sure whether old Galley had ever actually had it done before, but he's talked about it for years. I fancy Fred Cole was the first person to die with a reputation bad enough to allow Galley to make the experiment without offending anyone. Well, that's all there is to that, so we can forget it, can't we?'

Campion had not taken his eyes from her face.

‘You were there, I suppose?' he said.

Amanda grew slowly crimson. ‘It was wrong,' she burst out at last. ‘Wrong, and rather horrible. But you see, Galley's brought the whole village up – and me, too, in a way – to believe, or at any rate to know, a lot about witchcraft, and when he actually summoned me I didn't like to disobey.'

Mr Campion remained very grave. ‘Did Dr Galley tell you that according to superstition to perform this rite satisfactorily one of the watchers should be a magician and the other “a fair young maid, chaste and untaught, so that the spirit may enter into her, and when she runs mad may be kept close and of no danger to her fellows”?'

Amanda stared at him. ‘No,' she said at last. ‘No, he didn't. Perhaps he didn't know about that bit,' she went on,
wrestling with this new sidelight on Dr Galley's character. ‘Or perhaps he realizes there's nothing serious in it after all.'

‘Optimism and loyalty will be your downfall, young woman,' said Mr Campion grimly. ‘To my less charitable mind this story shows one thing very clearly: Dr Galley has a mania and his malady has at last reached a point when his concern for his friends is less important to him than his rather nasty hobby. This is very disturbing, Amanda.'

She was silent for some moments. She seemed to be considering the situation gravely, for her brown eyes were dark and troubled, and there was an alarmed expression in their depths.

‘I've had my doubts about this party all along,' she said at last. ‘You see, I found a bit of vervain stuck up on the lintel over the front door after Dr Galley went yesterday, and he asked particularly if Hal and I and Guffy and Mary would wear clean clothes for the party. The others put it down to sheer eccentricity, but I did wonder . . .'

Campion bounded to his feet. ‘I'm going up there with you,' he said. ‘You ought to have come out with this before. As soon as I've discarded this hampering garment we'll clear off through the wood.'

‘But what about the signal?' demanded Amanda.

‘Signal be hanged!' said Campion unexpectedly. ‘D'you realize that we've sent your poor aunt, the unfortunate Guffy and those two children into the hands of a lunatic with a mania for demonology, and the black art, a form of madness which, after all, had all England by the ears three hundred years ago? And now we find two evidences of the more common preparations for sacrifice planted neatly under our noses.'

MR CAMPION STRODE
along the narrow footpath through the woods which had once formed part of the grounds of the Pontisbright house. Amanda plodded at his heels. In spite of their haste they went cautiously. An ominous silence hung over the village, and the storm which had been threatening all day was now billowing up out of the south in great inky clouds of trouble. It was insufferably hot, the air stifling.

Once, when they had almost traversed the clump of pines which grew on the western extremity of the open space where the house had stood, Campion paused, and whistled softly.

The sound was echoed from somewhere high in the branches of a cedar which stood just to the right of the cavity which had once contained the foundations of the Hall.

Mr Campion seemed satisfied, for he pushed on, Amanda still pattering behind him.

By the time they reached the low hedge that separated Dr Galley's garden from the Hall grounds the storm was perceptibly nearer, casting an unnatural light over the vivid flowers which grew round the rectory. The flowers of the sun, Mars and Jupiter, which were all in the front garden, seemed to favour peculiarly bright colouring, and it was not difficult to remember that spellmongers of ancient times professed an ascendancy over the weather and plant life.

Mr Campion glanced back at Amanda, and the glimpse
of her white face suddenly brought home to him the full drama of their mission.

‘They'll be in the long room at the back,' she whispered.

He nodded. ‘Is there a window we can look through?'

‘I think so. Come on.'

She slipped in front of him, and set off down a path between two great banks of giant sunflowers. The battered white house stood out startlingly amid the swirling shadows. The aromatic scent of the garden was so strong that it was almost overpowering. The wind had risen in the last few minutes, and it was as though the doctor's garden had been caught by a fury. The flowers and leaves danced wildly in the breeze.

When they reached the side of the house the girl motioned her companion to keep back, and they crept along the mouldering wall until they approached a window set in an alcove and partially hidden by heavy curtains on the inside.

Pulling herself up cautiously Amanda peered in and Campion looked over her shoulder. They were looking down upon the scene within, for the ground sloped away in front of them.

Amanda nudged Campion. She dared not speak, for the window was partially open. He nodded, but did not take his eyes off the little group within.

Dr Galley's drawing-room had been dismantled. The furniture was piled against the walls and a dark curtain hung across the bay window in the far wall.

Aunt Hatt, looking comfortably conventional in her walking suit and serviceable hat, sat nursing her gloves in a chair by the fireside. Guffy and Mary sat on a couch opposite her, while Hal stood directly beneath the window through which they watched. An awkward silence appeared to be in progress and it was some time before Amanda located Dr Galley. When she saw him at last he was bending over a side table on which was a decanter and glasses. Presently his voice sounded fretfully out of the shadows.

‘I wish Amanda would come. We really can't get on without Amanda. It's most important. The time's going, too.'

‘I'm sure she won't be long,' said Aunt Hatt comfortingly. ‘I really don't think we need wait for her, Doctor. Won't you tell us some more about your exciting discovery?'

The old man looked at her vaguely. ‘Oh yes,' he said at last. ‘
That
discovery. Yes, yes, of course. But there's no time for that now. The hour is at its height.'

It was evident to everyone that he was labouring under some tremendous emotion, and Campion, who caught a glimpse of his eyes as he looked up, felt that sudden thrill of mingled pity and nausea which a healthy mind must always feel before such a revelation.

‘The hour is at its height,' the doctor repeated. ‘We must begin without her. Mary, my dear, will you pour a glass of wine for each of you? Don't worry about me; I shan't drink myself. I have to keep my mind very, very clear.'

Aunt Hatt and Mary exchanged glances as the old man brought the table into the very centre of the room. His hands were trembling, and the glasses tinkled and rattled alarmingly. The two outside the window caught the dull gleam of the wine in the white decanter.

It was evident that Mary felt the sinister atmosphere in the room, for she did not stir, and for some seconds after the doctor stood back the table remained unattended.

Mr Campion frowned and Amanda noticed that his usually expressionless face showed definite signs of alarm. He felt in his pocket.

‘It's a pity,' he whispered. ‘Such a nice bottle. Still, they really mustn't drink that stuff.'

And before the girl realized what he was doing, he had raised his revolver and fired through the narrow crack between the lower sash and the sill. She had just time to see the slender cut-glass bottle split to atoms, and its crimson contents spurt out over the floor, when Campion seized her
hand and dragged her headlong over the grass to a vantage spot among the sunflowers.