I congratulated her warmly. She was highly embarrassed, and immensely proud. I don’t think she would have given it up for forty ancestors. That’s women for you.
“I cannot approve of what you’ve been up to, Osborne,” she said solemnly. “If you go on like this you’ll completely undermine folkloric research. After this I can never again be sure what is genuine and what is humbug.”
“That’s just it,” he replied. “That’s how it must have been in the olden days — half miraculous happening and half practical joke.”
“Were you perhaps the midnight horseman as well?” I asked.
At that precise moment a loud report was heard.
“What’s that?” cried Cynthia. “A revolver!”
“Never,” said Osborne. “A revolver at Llanvygan? Someone must have slammed a door.”
“No, no, that was a revolver,” she yelled. “Come on. Let’s go and see what’s happening.”
We dashed out into the corridor and raced wildly through several rooms and hallways. And how different they looked, in the terror of night. The furniture seemed curiously elongated, and black hooks protruded from beneath the carpets, tripping you as you ran. Footsteps were heard approaching, and terrified servants burst in from all sides — there were at least two hundred in the building.
We found nothing on the first floor. But we did encounter Maloney, coming out of his room in his pyjamas, looking extremely dishevelled.
“You heard it too? Like someone being shot … ”
Then Rogers, the butler, appeared, and took charge of the situation.
“Quite possibly the shot was fired upstairs, on the second floor. We will have to break into the Earl’s apartments.”
The same thought was forced on everyone … Cynthia had turned a deathly pale. The Earl … perhaps he had taken his own life, after reaching the nadir of depression, with no hope of relief? Had the omens and prophecies been correct?
We hurriedly climbed the narrow staircase, the only way up to his suite of rooms, and stopped before a vast iron door bearing the Pendragon-Rosicrucian crest.
“How do we get in?” asked Osborne. “This door is always locked.”
Rogers pulled out a key.
“The Earl’s instructions are, sir, that I may enter at any time.”
He opened the door and went in.
But after passing through a second room, he stopped.
“Household staff must remain here. It’s quite sufficient if only we go in.”
The next room must surely have been part of the Earl’s secret laboratory. It wasn’t so much dark as filled with a greenish light, like an underwater cave.
And in fact we were in just such a cave. The walls were lined with immense glass tanks, filled with water and adorned with artificial rocks, between which strange aquatic plants grew on long, ungainly, wandering stems. And among the rocks and the flowers swam creatures so horrific they are burned into my memory: they still haunt my dreams. And they are even more horrific when I wake in the dark, remembering them.
They were shaped like lizards but were very much larger, a metre or more in length; and they had no eyes. Their soft, gelatinous bodies were palely translucent or whitish, like those of huge molluscs. From their temples sprouted fantastically shaped and coloured feelers, and two legs grew at the front of their eyeless heads. They circled slowly among the artificial rocks with a ghostly motion.
The next room was ice-cold, like a refrigeration chamber. The walls were lined with chests of drawers made of lead. In the middle was a white operating table, with three of the same animals lying motionless on it, together with a collection of surgical instruments, scalpels, rubber gloves, glass bottles and syringes. The Earl must have been using them just minutes earlier.
The next moment a door opened on the other side of the room and in he stepped, wearing a white operating gown.
He stared at us in a most unfriendly way, and did not say a word.
At last Rogers summoned up the courage to speak.
“I beg your pardon, My Lord … we heard a gunshot.”
“Yes,” he replied. “But that is no reason for you all to come flocking in.”
Then, filled with embarrassment, he said, with a hint of a smile:
“Forgive me … I’m not used to receiving visitors here. Would you mind if we went somewhere a little more congenial?”
And he led us to the room next door, which was furnished rather more conventionally.
“Do take a seat.”
“What’s been happening?” asked Cynthia. “I was terrified.”
“Well, to tell the truth, someone took a shot at me.”
Cynthia screamed. The Earl went over to her and stroked her head.
“As you see, I’ve come to no harm. At the precise moment I bent over to retrieve an instrument I’d dropped. I think, if I had remained upright … but no matter.”
But by then we were all on our feet and shouting in confusion at him, forgetting the deference due to his rank.
“Who was it? How? Where?”
“Do please sit down. I can’t tell you anything. I’ve searched the entire floor and found no one. Was the iron door locked?”
“Yes, My Lord,” replied Rogers.
“I don’t understand any of it. Unless the shot was fired through the open window … But that’s impossible. How could anyone get up there — unless he could fly? But Cynthia … and the rest of you … please calm down. No harm has been done; there’s no damage, not even to the building. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to lie down.”
“But for Heaven’s sake!” cried Osborne. “Whoever did this is clearly still here on the second floor, hiding. Please, allow us to search your apartment.”
“No, my boy, that’s out of the question. Rogers, and perhaps Ifan, will remain here, and we’ll take another look through everything. Now go to bed, and don’t let anything trouble you. We Pendragons have nine lives … ”
As he spoke, I had the distinct impression that he cast a meaningful glance at me and Maloney. Surely he didn’t think that we …?
And thus, very graciously, he dismissed us.
That was the second night. We stayed up for hours, discussing things. Maloney in particular had some wonderful proposals for solving the mystery, and an equal number of tropical yarns. As for me, I had abandoned all hope of a good night’s sleep at Llanvygan.
The next morning, all was revealed to me — or at least, a fair bit. Maloney and Osborne had been indulging themselves in the role of amateur detectives and had established the possibility that while the staff had been diverted by the ‘supernatural’ gramophone a door could have been left unlocked, allowing someone to slip into the house, who could then have opened the iron door with a skeleton key, and locked it behind him as he left.
Cynthia and I went off to the library. We browsed among the books, but without the enthusiasm of the previous day. I lacked sleep; I was melancholy and restless. And I was no longer in any doubt. My forebodings had been fully justified. I was up to my neck in a dark and dangerous escapade, in the thick of a siege. My greatest desire was to get away from a situation where earls were shot at in my presence. Back to the British Museum, to the impregnable calmness of books …
“‘Inter arma silent musae,’” I quoted. “I feel I’ve come here at a very bad moment. I’m an intruder, a reluctant witness of the trials and tribulations of this house. The Earl hasn’t honoured me with a single look since I arrived. He obviously isn’t happy about my visiting … I must go back to London. I only hope that our friendship — may I call it that? — might continue.”
“If you truly are my friend,” said Cynthia, “don’t leave us now. If for no other reason … if you feel the atmosphere isn’t appropriate for your research … then stay a few more days for my sake.”