Merlin's Furlong Read online

  Piper said courteously, “We’ve come to see a man about a doll.”

  The professor’s large-eyed, spiritually beautiful face began to brighten, but not to its aesthetic advantage, for two yellow wolf-teeth appeared with Satanic effect.

  “Sit down,” he said. “My dear sirs, do sit down.” He indicated the object on the hatstand. “There is the person in question. Its name is Aumbry, Nabob Aumbry, Collector Aumbry, Thief Aumbry. He stole my diptych, my Isaurian diptych, and he denies that he’s got it, and I’ve no proof that it really is in his possession. But he’s got it, and he shall die.”

  He pronounced the last sentence with the greatest possible earnestness and intensity. A cold breeze blew suddenly on to the back of Harrison’s neck. He glanced round, but the door behind him was closed. Piper was gazing fixedly at the doll as though to imprint its appearance on his memory.

  “I think, sir,” he said, “that you should describe the diptych in detail. It might be as well that we should know what we are looking for.”

  “But I didn’t…I don’t expect to see the diptych again. It was the doll,” said Havers, his querulous, complaining voice belying his saintlike appearance as much as his smile had done. “I thought you would make the doll work. Are you not witches and warlocks?”

  “Witches only,” Piper courteously replied. “In disguise, of course,” he added, indicating Harrison’s large trousers.

  “We left the blasted heath at home,” said Harrison, with ill-timed levity. His friend rewarded him with a surreptitious hack on the shin.

  “To be plain with you, sir,” he said, gravely, “we propose to use the doll to recover the diptych.”

  “But that won’t work,” protested the professor. “The doll is for the untying of Aumbry’s life-knot, not for recovering the diptych.”

  “There is such a thing as frightening a man into giving up stolen property,” said Piper. “That is how we modern witches work. The method you are employing”—he strolled over to the doll—“is out of date. Now tell me all about the diptych.”

  “It is famous,” said Havers peevishly. “It is the Isaurian diptych, so called because it was made in defiance of the edict of Leo the Isaurian that the Second Commandment should be observed to the very letter, and neither image nor statue, picture nor representation be made of anything in heaven or earth. It was the bishops’ fault,” he concluded violently. “Imagine iconoclastic bishops in the city of Constantine the Great! Puritans at the apex of the Eastern Roman Empire! Infidels anticipating the Camel Driver of Mecca! Gah!”

  “And the description of the Isaurian diptych?” persisted Piper, with a patient, gentle smile. The professor sighed heavily.

  “Ah, yes, the diptych,” he said. “No doubt you are interested to know what it looks like. Well, it is of great intrinsic value, apart from its historic worth. It is of gold and enamel, and dates, as you will realise from what I have already said, from about 730 AD, Leo’s famous edict having been proclaimed some four years earlier. Another name for it is the Ravenna diptych, for it reproduces four of the most famous mosaic pictures to be found in the churches there, and the artist was almost certainly a native of that place although he may have been domiciled for a time in Constantinople.

  “The diptych, as I told you, is of gold. The decorations enameled on the inside leaves represent the mosaic pictures of, on the top half of the left-hand leaf, the Emperor Justinian clad in purple, crowned with a coronet of red, blue, green, and pearl, making his offering of a gold cup to the Church of San Vitale. On the lower half of the same leaf is an exact copy in miniature of the charming decoration patterned with stylised lilies, small roses, and birds of variegated plumage, which is to be seen in the vaulting of the forecourt of the archiepiscopal chapel and the oratory of Saint Andrew in Ravenna. You will fully realise the beauty of this patterning against the flat bright gold of the background.”

  There was no doubt now of the intense interest of his hearers. Even the flippant Piper was impressed. The sensitive Harrison had his mouth open, and was leaning slightly forward, his forehead creased in a frown of concentration.

  “The top half of the right-hand leaf,” continued the professor with animation, “is a perfect representation of the Empress Theodora and her court. She also is offering a cup to San Vitale, and the coloring of this picture is truly exquisite, from the detail of the Three Kings of the Orient on a band of embroidery on the hem of the purple robe worn by the Empress, to the tiny blue flowers on the golden dress which is worn by one of her ladies. On the lower half of this leaf is some decorative detail from the barrel vault of the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. This decoration is in brilliant white stars and red and white roses in circles of blue and gold, all this against a background of indigo. Oh, it is ravishing! Ravishing!” His voice suddenly changed. “And that fool, that devil, has stolen it, and for that desecration he shall die!”

  “Good show,” said Piper in businesslike tones, “and now, sir, for Mr. Aumbry’s address.”

  The professor went over to a small bureau, unlocked it, produced an address book, thumbed it over, and dictated: “Merlin’s Furlong, Moundshire. That’s it. That’s where Aumbry lives.” He went to the doll and threw the address book at it. Having done this, he glowered at the doll, dragged out the hatpins, and shook his fist in the doll’s face. “Do your worst,” he concluded.

  “Our best, I think you mean,” said Piper. “Very good, sir. I suppose we shall find this Mr. Aumbry at home?”

  “Still here,” said the professor morosely. “How, otherwise, do you think I could have obtained his hair with which to decorate my doll? Fortunately we patronise the same barber.”

  “Then he is still in this very city?” Piper enquired.

  “So far as I know. Go, gentlemen, and the good luck of Priapus go with you.”

  They left, shown out by the Negro maidservant, who had obviously been listening at the door. Another shining dark face, split by an ivory grin, peered at the departing visitors from behind a curtain of beads which hung across the hall.

  “What now?” asked Piper, as they walked the short distance to a bus stop, where, by previous arrangement, they met Waite.

  “To lunch, and then home,” said Waite, with immense relish, when he had heard their story.

  “Then what?” demanded Harrison, who again felt the call of slumber.

  “Then you are going to become a cat burglar, dear,” replied Waite. “You are going to shin up water-pipes and crawl in through window-cracks nine floors up from the ground. You are going to insinuate yourself and those indecently hirsute trousers into the plug-holes of baths and wash-basins, and from those plug-holes you are going down, down, down…down! Won’t that be nice? Aren’t you glad you sold your little farm and went to sea?”

  “Look here, you’re not really going any further with this dreary, dirty little business, are you?” asked Harrison apprehensively. His friends looked surprised.

  “My bite is worse than my bark,” Waite informed him, “and my bark is simply dreadful. Have you never been bitten by a cat-burglar, dear?”

  “If you ask me,” said Harrison soberly, “the biter is going to be bit, but I suppose you’ve both made up your minds.”

  “Here comes a bus,” said Waite. They mounted and rode to the center of the city. As soon as they got off, Piper, who was still holding the doll, walked into the middle of the street and harangued the effigy of the unknown Mr. Aumbry in Greek, answering himself from time to time in a high, ridiculous voice as though he were practicing ventriloquism. At intervals he wiped the doll’s nose, disregarding entirely the rapidly-collecting crowd on both pavements and the looming figure of the law.

  “Move along there, sir, please,” said the law. “You are causing an obstruction.”

  Piper kissed the doll passionately, thrust it with a low sob into the policeman’s arms, and, leaping like a deer, rejoined his companions on the pavement, and they moved with dignity towards the hotel where they proposed to have
lunch. The policeman, who was just going off duty, took the doll to the police station. For one thing, he was doubtful whether it had really been Piper’s own property, and, for another, he was not at all sure that it was the sort of thing to appeal to his little girl.

  “I’m not sure you ought to have parted with the doll,” said Waite to Piper. “It was a kind of talisman, you know. I don’t see how we are to obtain the desired result without it.”

  “Be your age,” said Piper.

  “I’m thirty-two,” said Waite. Harrison, who knew this to be the truth, felt thoroughly uneasy. He and Piper were twenty, an age at which ragging, he felt, was a serious, necessary business. That Waite, who was known to have knocked about all over the world before he decided to read law at the university, should also take ragging seriously seemed rather in the nature of a fully-grown dog taking pleasure in the puppy antic of chewing a shoe.

  “Cheer up, David,” said Piper, as the three young men sipped sherry, “even if you would rather have beer. This idea of Polly’s is quite good, on the whole.”

  “I can have beer with the lunch,” said Harrison, “and I’m not at all sure that it is a good idea. Suppose old Havers is leading us up the garden, and there isn’t a diptych at all?”

  “Then we shall look fools,” said Waite cheerfully. “Anyway, it will be something to do, and that’s always worth while.”

  “Not to me. I merely want to eat and sleep,” said Harrison. “And my parents won’t like me to become a cat burglar.”

  “Yes, they will. They’ll be ever so proud of you,” said Waite. “Who’s paying for the next round? Is it my turn? Yes, I was afraid it was.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Merlin’s Error

  “There must surely be great cause for secrecy when so many inconveniences were confronted to preserve it.”

  —Robert Louis Stevenson, The Pavilion on the Links

  Piper’s enthusiasm had waned with the passage of time. “You know, it’s a social crime to rag anybody as gullible as old Havers, devil-worshipper or whatever you will,” he said. “You’ll never be able to get your hands on that diptych, I didn’t at all like that doll, and, anyway, you won’t get David to come in.” He contemplated his sleeping friend. They were back where they had started. It was late at night and, although they were still up, Harrison’s long form was supine and his breathing was deep and regular.

  “Rag Havers?” asked Waite. He put down the motoring atlas he had been studying. “My dear chap, what gave you the idea that I’m ragging? I am, of course, in a sense, but about the project itself I am deeply and unfashionably serious. I fully intend to break into Merlin’s Furlong…it will be some decayed, mildewed dump, if I know anything of Havers’ acquaintances…and creep about like the family ghost until I spot the diptych, which I have no doubt is there. I shall simply impound it and restore it to its owner.”

  “We shall be jugged. Besides, it’s all such rot. Why should we sweat?”

  “Because I want to. There’s no need for you to come, although I could do with somebody at the wheel of the car for when I make my dash away with the treasure.”

  “The car? Oh, we’re not going to drive!”

  “Can’t cat-burgle without a car,” said Waite decisively. “And I note, to my relief, the use of the first person plural, so you’d better check the route with me. It’s all right as far as Moundbury, but then it looks all ‘other roads’ as the Ordnance Survey so euphemistically and optimistically calls them. And as we’re going to drive we’d better try to get the hang of them. I think we ought to get there by dawn and have a good look at the place before Aumbry and his people are up.”

  “Aumbry’s away from home, that’s one thing.”

  “He may not still be away. I’m going to assume that he isn’t. Actually, I hope to goodness he isn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to take a leaf out of Sherlock Holmes’ book, laddie.”

  “If you mean that gag about the dog that did nothing in the night, I should say that, if Aumbry’s got a dog, it won’t apply.”

  “I do not refer to the dog that did nothing in the night, but to the psychology of the most precious possession.”

  “Oh, Irene Adler! But if you begin raising a fire in Aumbry’s place for the satisfaction of seeing him make one leap for the diptych, you’ll probably get ten years. Besides, the diptych may not be his most precious possession.”

  “I do not propose to raise a fire. I should never dream of such a thing. I shall simply raise the cry, and, if David comes, I shall get him to ring the stable bell…a dump called Merlin’s Furlong is sure to have one.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” said Harrison, opening his eyes. “Either melted down for cannon balls in the Civil War or collected as scrap metal for this last one.”

  “Oh, well, never mind the bell. We can toot on the horn of the car,” said Waite, as Harrison relaxed once more. “Now, look here, Peter, the basic idea simply is that we get down to the job at night and are back here again before there’s a hue and cry. Not that there will be. If this man Aumbry has pinched the thing from Havers, he won’t care to create a stink if it’s taken back. You must see that. The whole point is that I’ve always wanted to do a cat-burglary, and now that the chance has presented itself it would be a sin to throw it away. Besides, I want to know more about Havers. He’s an interesting social study.”

  “All right,” said Piper. “I’d better wake David.”

  The planned route took them through Wallchester, where it seemed a good idea to Waite to leave Professor Havers a short note to inform him that they were setting out upon their quest. The note, written by Harrison, was put through the letter-box at an early hour of the morning and the car ran on into Faringdon. Here Waite recollected that he had an aunt, so, at a time unexpected by any respectable householder, this aunt received visitors.

  She proved to be a sardonic, muscular woman of forty-five to fifty who herself answered the front-door bell. She appeared in a striking orange and cobalt dressing-gown and she flourished a murderous-looking kukri. Fortunately for him and his companions, she recognised her nephew before her weapon came into action.

  “Off with his head,” she said, lowering the kukri as though this order had been complied with. “I’ve no food and no beds. Come in. Oh, wait a minute.” She took a minute sliver of skin from her wrist with the razor-edge of her weapon and drew blood. “That’s a superstition or a tradition. I forget which,” she said. “Anyway, it has to be done. Ritual must always be observed.”

  They supped upon cold chicken and champagne, and breakfasted on rashers, eggs, baked beans and sausages, and by eight o’clock in the morning there was a general feeling that bed was not only desirable but essential. The aunt, who had remained with them throughout the revels, discovered two spare beds and a settee. This last had an end that let down. The cat-burglars retired to rest and resumed their journey at midday. After lunch they went on in the late afternoon to Moundbury, the capital of Moundshire, and, after that, lost the way. Waite was driving.

  “You’re doing it on purpose,” said Harrison lugubriously to Waite. “Why not admit to cold feet and let’s go home? Second thoughts are always the best.”

  “You can’t have the best of only two,” argued Piper. “Let’s go back to Moundbury and have dinner.”

  When this was eaten they received some confused directions from the porter, who affected to know the place they mentioned (but referred to it throughout as Merlin’s Castle), and set out once more upon their quest.

  “You know,” said Piper, at the end of fifteen miles of hilly side-roads, “either this map is wrong or the landscape’s got itself bewitched. I’ll swear we passed that circle of standing stones five miles back.”

  “I keep expecting to see somebody in woad and a helmet with horns on it pop out and lob a chunk of limestone or an iron spear through our windscreen,” said Harrison.

  “I think that hotel porter was a loony,
” said Waite. “We’ve done exactly as he told us, and if he was right we could have found the place twice by now. Do you think it’s any good going on?”

  “I think we ought to go back and start again from where you turned off the Sherborne Road,” said Piper. “I thought that was wrong, but I trusted to your native intelligence. It is, perhaps, a mistake to think you have any. It makes me wonder, too, whether we heard the address Havers gave us quite correctly.”

  “The porter knew Merlin’s Furlong, except that he kept calling it a castle, which I don’t really think it can be,” said Harrison, “but we’ve certainly come the wrong way. I’m still in favour of packing up the whole thing. It’s quite clear that we’re not intended to find the diptych, and I’m very superstitious. I never dream of tilting against my luck. It’s always disastrous.”

  “I’ll turn the car as soon as I can,” said Waite. “There seems nothing for it but to do as Peter suggests, and get back on to the main road and ask again. Why can’t people who are going to be cat-burgled live in some sensible, get-at-able place such as Bournemouth or Harrogate? But give up the job I will not!”

  By nightfall the three undergraduates, still driven by Waite, who refused to give up the wheel, were bumping along a rough trackway bordered by wire fencing. They were following the direction of a signpost which bore the tantalizing legend, MERLIN’S FORT ONLY. UNSUITABLE FOR MOTORS.

  “Well, I’m dashed!” said Harrison. “It must be the place we’re looking for, but it looks as though this old man Aumbry doesn’t care for visitors.”

  “I don’t know so much. Merlin’s Fort isn’t quite the same as Merlin’s Furlong,” argued Piper. “What do you think, Polly?”

  Waite did not answer, and Harrison continued his criticism.

  “As soon as people begin to say that a road is unsuitable for motors I can’t help feeling what they mean is that they don’t really want motors, and here we are, in a motor. Isn’t it asking for trouble? I mean, I do hate to push myself in where I’m not welcomed,” he complained. “And it’s got so confoundedly dark. We shan’t be able to see anything, even if we do somehow find the beastly place.”