So worried did he look that I readily gave him my assurance, adding that if he wished I would leave the undeveloped film with him and print the material with my own equipment the next time I came down.
He seemed pleased at this but as I left the tractor to seek my camera, he halted me at the doorway.
‘To be quite fair to you, Plowright, I will tell you a little more about this business before you go. My conscience will then be clear.’
I assured him that I had already made up my mind to accompany him as official photographer but if he liked to let me know more about his plans and the circumstances surrounding the expedition, then I would, of course, fully respect any confidences he cared to place in me.
The next hour was an extremely busy one; I took something like seventy photographs in that time, with particular regard to the detail of the specialised equipment Scarsdale and Van Damm had perfected. I knew this would be appreciated by the Professor. He, together with the scowling Van Damm, was persuaded to pose on the steps of one of the tractors. Then I went out again into the drizzling rain to photograph Van Damm’s extraordinary manoeuvres in the orchard, watched by an alarmed Collins, who had strict orders from Scarsdale to report even so much as a bruised pear from the fruit trees.
I went on from there back to the workshop where I recorded the others at work, until I had a fairly comprehensive picture record of the Great Northern Expedition’s activities to date. By this time it was five o’clock and I was already so far committed to the as yet mysterious preparations of my companions that I was delighted when the Professor suggested that I should stay the night and at once fell in with his suggestion.
One of Collins’ stranger duties was the formal serving of tea, complete with silver teapot and all the accoutrements of toast, crumpets and scones, among the rough surroundings of the workshop, when the scientists were too busy to come indoors to the house. He had a strange contraption like a hospital trolley, with a collapsible hood to keep the rain from his heated delicacies and he trundled this solemnly out to the courtyard at five o’clock.
So it was that I found myself sipping almost boiling tea from fine china at the chart-table of the Professor’s tractor while he sombrely explained to me something of the difficulties we would be facing. He repeated that he had been somewhat alerted to the dangers facing the world by his researches into certain forbidden books many years before, in the early twenties. It was not until very much later that he began to connect them with the inscriptions found on stone tablets in various parts of the world; and then, eventually, with last year’s strange spring; the shifting lights in the sky, which were observed almost on a global scale and which were connected, Scarsdale maintained, with something he called the Coming.
It was such a spring and such a sequence of events, he said, which were hinted at in blasphemous old books and forbidden treatises in Arabic and Hebrew which he had studied for years on end and which he eventually made to yield up their secrets. It was the Latin volume. The Ethics of Ygor, he added, which had produced the most worthwhile results; and the key-sig’ns and notably the Magnetic Ring which was said to spin beyond the farthest suns of the universe, had eventually been the cause of his stumbling on to some fantastic and unbelievable facts which the Professor hesitated even to mention to his most learned colleagues.
They concerned, Scarsdale believed, a portion of the universe which he called ‘the great white space’; it was an area which the Old Ones particularly regarded with awe and which they had always formally referred to, in their primeval writings as The Great White Space. This was a sacred belt of the cosmos through which beings could come and go, as through an astral door, and which was the means of conquering dizzying billions of miles of distance which would have taken even the Old Ones thousands of years to traverse.
Scarsdale believed he had discovered a key to the identity of the Old Ones, through the hieroglyphs discovered on earth and after long and profound study of the writings, coupled with the key books of The Ethics of Ygor, he had come to the conclusion that the riddle of their existence might be probed here on earth. It was then that he had set out on the first and most difficult of his exploratory journeys, which he had already mentioned.
If Scarsdale feared that I should disbelieve what to a layman might appear to be a somewhat wild narrative, my demeanour must have rapidly given him confidence, for he was able to speak more clearly and confidently as the minutes ticked past. For my part I had no cause to doubt his sincerity or sanity and the distinction of his colleagues on the expedition, plus the sober and impressive scientific preparations going ahead, were evidence in themselves that something serious and solidly based was afoot.
He searched for reassurance in my eyes and my continued silence encouraging him, he continued. We must have made a strange sight, he large and bearded, myself with one fragile china cup in my hand; the pair of us in earnest conclave within the conning tower of a grey metal tractor in a large shed set in the midst of the drizzling Surrey uplands. Yet neither of us thought it incongruous so sincerely did Scarsdale believe the truth of what he was relating; and no less sincerely did I receive his confidences.
‘Believe me, Plowright, if I could at this stage reveal the exact location of our destination I would do so,’ he said, fixing me earnestly with those arresting eyes. ‘Too much is at stake.
Let me just say, for the sake of coherence that it was Peru. It was not Peru, but no matter. I had spent years working on my calculations. There was no doubt in my mind that they were correct. My problem was that the need for secrecy meant my party must be small; there were but three of us. To my great sorrow and misfortune, there was treachery on the part of a local agent I trusted; my two companions fell sick. Foolishly, I decided to go on with the large party of porters. I had to engage bearers as the vast amount of equipment made it a necessity. Had I had the present vehicles, well then, I should have succeeded triumphantly. As it was, my efforts were foredoomed to failure.’
Scarsdale was not a man given to emotion, as I later came to know, but the recollection evidently moved him for his voice trembled and he drummed impatiently with strong, spatulate fingers on the chart-table before him. He recollected himself and the impassive exterior resumed itself again.
‘The wonder of it is that I got so far,’ he said. ‘I gained the mountains and the outer caves before the porters deserted. I won’t go into details because I want every man of you to start this venture with a fresh, clear mind. But there were the inscriptions, there were the tunnels you have seen in the library of the house; I took a pack and some provisions and marking my way, I went on. The nights were the worst. I spent many days in the tunnels and I slept badly. Then I came to a vast underground lake; and there, hunger, plus the sheer physical impossibility of continuing without specialist equipment, overcame me. I almost failed to make it, I was so weak by the time I gained the outer air. Fortunately, some of the guides had remained on the mountain and brought me down. The full affair never got into the papers. And that’s about it.’
He pointed out through the thick quartz windows to the far side of the hangar.
‘Collapsible rubber boats of specially toughened material. If necessary, four of them, suitably girdered could act as pontoons for ferrying tractors. I don’t think we’ll fail this time. We dare not fail.’
He clenched his fist on the table in front of him as he spoke and it seemed to me as though shutters momentarily closed over his eyes, but not before I had seen chaotic fires burning within. I then realised that Clark Ashton Scarsdale was a man of immense strength whose mental fortitude was under siege by equally strong pressures. I cleared my throat and the trivial sound seemed to recall the Professor to his surroundings. It appeared to me then as though he had been far away physically, and that once again he stood upon the shore of a vast tideless underground sea.