We put our trust in his instinct.
This subterranean wandering had a strangely familiar feel. I had so often dreamed that I was walking down endless dark corridors, not knowing where I was going, and in mounting terror. I knew there was one door I must not open, a room I was forbidden to enter or something unspeakable would happen to me.
Maloney went ahead with the torch. Osborne and I tried to keep close behind, in hopes of at least seeing something. But his instinct carried him along so rapidly, and our way was so meandering, that we finally lost sight of both him and his torch.
I staggered on after Osborne, unable to make anything out, and then, at a bend in the passage, fell somehow further behind, with only my ears now to guide me. From time to time Maloney would give a shout to tell us which way to go.
Osborne, now fully ten paces ahead of me, suddenly cried out in terror. I rushed towards him.
“Doctor, have you a match?”
“No … but my lighter might work … ”
I tried it. We gazed around, in its dim, flickering radiance. At first we noticed nothing unusual, then, a few steps along, in the direction we were supposed to have taken, an open trapdoor gaped. Had we gone any further we — or rather Osborne, being the one in front — would have plummeted into its pitch-black emptiness
“Didn’t you hear anything?” he asked, struggling to master his shock.
“Only you, when you yelled out.”
“Doctor, do you know what happened? … Just as I got there, someone caught hold of my arm and said, ‘Stop!’ So I stopped. Didn’t you see, or hear, anything?”
“No.”
“Very strange. If I’d taken another three steps, Miss Jones would have been proved right.”
Meanwhile the light reappeared: Maloney had returned.
“Why aren’t you coming?” he shouted. “What’s going on here?”
“Stay where you are!”
He came to a halt. We closed the trapdoor.
“How come you didn’t fall down it?” Osborne asked.
“I suppose I went some other way. That’s Connemara instinct for you.”
We stood there for a long time, deep in thought. We were all shocked, our minds filled with superstitious notions of fate. Eventually we set off again, and soon found ourselves back in the daylight.
But by the time we got back to Llanvygan one thought was nagging away inside my head with such unpleasant persistence it took all the pleasure from my amazing discovery. Even the crestfallen faces of my fellow scholars were banished from my mind by the idea: Maloney must have found and deliberately opened the trapdoor, so that Osborne would fall into it.
Back at Llanvygan, we found a lot more going on than usual. The Earl had returned.
Over dinner I told Cynthia I had found the tomb of Rosacrux, and explained to Osborne how I had known of its existence. Osborne listened with unusual seriousness, like a man in the grip of a major spiritual crisis. It was as if he had become truly aware of the remarkable ambience around him.
Hearing the story, Cynthia went pale.
“Didn’t I say that the Rosacrux legend had a peculiarly Welsh feel to it? … but how terrible … how unspeakably terrible … ”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t put it into words … Can’t you sense it? It’s like being in another age … and where is the body? Where is Asaph’s body?”
After dinner, the Earl summoned Osborne to him, and Cynthia retired to her room. Maloney and I were having a couple of drinks.
“Listen, Doctor,” he said, looking directly at me in a way he had never done before. His glance generally wavered, roving about constantly.
“Listen to this. Sitting here as we are now makes me think of the time, about ten years ago, when the IRA took me prisoner. They claimed I’d betrayed their secrets to the security forces. It wasn’t in fact true, but appearances were against me. In those days, back home, human life didn’t count for much. Thirty minutes stood between me and death. Eileen St Claire saved my life. Those men gave her absolute obedience.”
He stopped, and gazed at me expectantly.
“Why are you telling me this, Maloney?”
“Because … had I been smart at the time … I would have betrayed everything to the security forces. By now I’d have a fat job in India, in the Civil Service. But because I was stupid and kept my mouth shut, my only reward was to get out alive. Now you, Doctor, could also be smart.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Just think about what I’ve said.” And off he went.
A terrible nervousness seized me. I got up and went to my room.
For some time I paced back and forth at frenetic speed. It was as if my nerve ends were raw and exposed. Everything irritated me: the room I was in, the rough touch of my trousers (which hadn’t been properly ironed) rubbing against my knees; the sudden realisation that I should have written to a female acquaintance two weeks before.
After a while these different worries seemed to fuse into a single one, which proved all the more distressing: I no longer knew what I was distressed about — the worst state of mind possible.
I seated myself in the armchair, took out my writing pad, as I always do in times like this, and began jotting down a list of causes for alarm.
1 Who tried to shoot the Earl, in whose interest?
2 Who left the trapdoor open?
3 Who held Osborne back in the darkness?
4 Rosacrux’ tomb.
5 Any connection between the above, the old man beside the lake, and the Earl’s monsters?
The answer to the third question was probably ‘no one’. The instinct for self-preservation can lead us to do things which might easily be thought miraculous. I knew a man who shot himself in the heart, having first made certain where it was under his ribs. He’s still alive today (if he hasn’t died of something else). According to his doctors his heart jumped aside at the very last minute.
Instinct warns us of mortal danger. Some organ we haven’t yet discovered senses the approach of death. In the Pendragons this organ must have been particularly well-developed. The Earl pulled his car up just a few yards from the cable, and Osborne stopped before the trapdoor. The inner command was so urgent he imagined someone had actually seized his arm and spoken: a momentary division of consciousness.
And to the second question — who left the trapdoor open? — the same answer might also apply: no one. It could well have lain open for three hundred years. However you could not say the same for the shot taken at the Earl …
Now, if anyone had deliberately left the trapdoor open, it could only have been Maloney. He’d been no more than a few steps ahead of us and, by some miracle, hadn’t fallen through it himself. And then the shot … Maloney could nip up the ancient, fluted walls and their buttresses like a scalded cat. I’d seen it with my own eyes.
At that moment the door opened and Maloney was standing at my side. He glanced rapidly all round the room, clearly searching for something, then tore the pad from my hand and rushed with it over to the lamp.
“Are you mad?” I shouted at him, jumping to my feet.
“What have you written here?” he demanded. “I don’t know your lingo, but I can read the word Roscoe here.”
He pointed to the paper, where my crabbed hand had written Rózsakereszt sírja.
“That’s not Roscoe; it’s Rosacrux. But what’s it to do with you?”
Suddenly he burst into a gabble:
“Doctor, don’t be angry … you’re so incredibly clever, you know everything anyway … But you must sit down … we may only have a minute or two.”
He rushed to the door, glanced along the corridor, and returned.
“Tell me, Doctor,” he began, seizing my arm in a fever of excitement, “have you seen the documents?”