Mr. Furbelow sniffed several times and stared into his goblet.
“Oh dear,” he said, “I suppose we ought to try. I do confess I don’t want to. I find him a very frightening creature. But it may be the only chance, the last chance. Ah, well . . .”
He drank the last mouthfuls of wine and stood quickly up.
“We must go now,” he said. “There is some chance of catching him at a good moment, when this world is real to him, when he’s not quite lost in dreams. He didn’t say anything to me this morning, but he ate what I gave him — perhaps the contact with a real person and the taste of real food on his tongue may make him more conscious of what is really happening. Come, let us get it over with. Geoffrey, you ran turn that filthy crank for me, but I will go down alone with Sally. You must promise not to follow us and come nosing down. I know how inquisitive young folks are. I put you on your honor.”
“I promise,” said Geoffrey. They followed Mr. Furbelow out of the hall.
The windlass was harder work than he’d supposed. There was a lot of friction in the wooden cogs and axles, and he wound on and on, surprised at the willpower that enabled Mr. Furbelow to drive his doddering body to work the contraption. At last the stone, a great tilted flap of paving, jarred against a crossbeam, and Geoffrey could see coarse steps leading into darkness.
“They’re rather steep,” said Mr. Furbelow. “I’ll show you the way.”
Sally followed him down.
At first Geoffrey mooned about the area round the windlass, but soon Maddox clumped up, snarling, and drove him off. The pony seemed to know where Sally was, and even tried putting a foot on the top step, but thought better of it and stood staring down into the burrow like a cat nosing at a mousehole or a lover gazing at the window of his beloved. Geoffrey left him to it.
The second time he passed the white cottage he decided to explore. He could see Maddox from the steps, still standing like a stuffed animal in a museum. Any movement from the pony would be a warning that someone was coming out. The yellow
door was ajar. The hall was a clutter of dumped objects, with just room to walk between them. There was that funny smell of damp and dirt that you sometimes find in houses where nobody does any proper cleaning. Upstairs were two rooms, one a dusty storeroom and the other a pretty, pink room with two beds in it. Downstairs was a kitchen with a Calor gas cooker, but it didn’t look as if it had been used for ages; a back door led out to the angle between the outer wall of the tower and the house. Opposite the kitchen, across the hall, was the room GeoErey wanted.
This was where Mr. Furbelow lived and kept his belongings. There were rows of chemist’s bottles on shelves, and more chemistry-looking things in cardboard cartons piled along a wall. Most of the books on the shelves were about chemistry and medicine, and there were piles of Pharmaceutical Journals. The only furniture in the room was a very ragged sofa with some rugs on it, which looked as though this was where Mr. Furbelow usually slept, and a big desk with an upright chair. There was a photograph on the desk, of a smiling, plump, dark-haired woman with her hair in a big bun. Beside her lay two dictionaries, one Latin-English and the other Eng-lish-Latin. In the middle of the desk was an account book. The latest entry, made only yesterday, read:
Very restless. Would not talk to me at all, but kept muttering to himself. Shouted “Quamdiu” several times, and once (I think) “Regem servavi dum infantem.” I begin to believe his speech is more slurred than it was. Hope this is no bad symptom, but can find nothing in my books. He suddenly was disturbed by something, and almost stood up. Instead he went into a trance, and I heard a tremendous noise of thunder outside. There was a small storm disappearing over the eastern hills when I came out. Nothing like this for months.
Geoffrey glanced out of the window. Maddox was still at his post. The rest of the book was full of short entries, every other day, sometimes just the two words, “No change.” There was always at least that. On the bookshelf Geoffrey found four similar account books, all full of entries, and next to them a proper diary with the dates printed on each page. Each book covered one year, so the diary must be five years old. Geoffrey leafed through it; the first half of the year was almost empty, except for notes of visit to K’s grave, but on the 17th of May there was a longer one:
A most extraordinary thing, which I must record in full. Last spring dear K planted at Llanthony a flowering cherry. Prunus longipes it said on the label. She used often to say, after Doctor H told us the ill news, that she would never see it in flower, but at our last visit before
she went into hospital — because of the shop we could only come up at weekends — it was in perfect flower, but deep yellow. This was October, and it was supposed to bear white flowers in late April. We laughed and cried and imagined the nursery had made a mistake. But when I came up here last month — I could not endure to come before — it was in flower again, big white dangling bunches like upside-down powder puffs. Perhaps I ought to have got in touch with some botanical body, but I felt it would be a desecration of dear K’s tree. Instead, thinking there might be some peculiarity in the soil, I took samples back to town for analysis. I did the work myself, and either I am mad or it is full of gold!
There were no entries for a week, then a short one:
I have begun to dig at Llanthony. Difficult without disturbing the roots of K’s tree. I am tunneling down and then sideways. I feel compelled to do this.
Next weekend he had dug still further and had taken more samples, which were also rich with gold. The entry after that was longer; Geoffrey read it, glancing out of the window between sentences.
Now I know! But I do not know what to do. I have been digging for the past two weekends, leaving little Gwynnedd to care for the shop on Saturdays. It was not for the gold — I felt I had to do it, just to know. It was hard work for a middle-aged man, but I kept on, and yesterday at noon I struck a smooth, sloping rock. It seemed that I must be at the end of my tunnel, and either give in or dig somewhere else. Then I saw a crack in the rock that seemed too straight to be a fault. I cleared a larger area and uncovered a shaped, rectangular stone. With great difficulty I levered this out. There was a hole behind it, into which I crawled and found myself in a low cavern, full of a dim green light. I thought it must be an ancient burial chamber, for on a slab in the center there was the body of a very big man, and very hairy. I thought he must be dead, and preserved by some freak which produced the green light too, but when I touched him his flesh was firm and far colder than the coldest ice. It burnt like solid CO2. But I knew for certain he was alive. Then I saw that there were letters on the side of the slab. They said merlinus sum. qui me tangit turbat mundum. Latin, I think, but I cannot buy a dictionary until tomorrow. I left, and leaned the stone back into its place.
There was a three-day gap, and then another entry.
I have decided what to do. I cannot leave him and go. I feel sure that I was meant to find him, and that the tree and the gold were signs for me, and me alone. I know that he has enormous powers. I could feel that in the cavern, and that in my hands he could use those powers for good. In what way I do not yet know. Perhaps he might even stop these wicked wars in the Far East, or bring dear K back to me.
The problem is how to wake him, so that I can best direct him to exert his powers where they can do most good. I have been reading about the process of reanimating patients whose metabolism has been slowed by refrigeration for the purpose of such operations as heart transplants (a very immoral process it seems to me, though I have no clear idea why).
There appears to be a new synthetic stimulant which can be injected into the veins in very precise doses, so that its effect on the patient can be very carefully watched, and I see that this drug is in the catalogues of one of the American companies who manufacture pharmaceutical products in England. I shall attempt to order a quantity of this. Alas, I shall have neither the equipment nor the knowledge which is avail-