Lawson stood for minute, regarding the two young people with a wondering gaze. Then he smiled, went over, and patted the horse’s flanks.
“Well, well, Quicksilver. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again.”
May climbed down, held the reins, and spoke quietly to the stallion. Chip introduced her to the anthropologist.
Lawson pulled off his white outback hat, scratched his head, and looked at Chip. “The big fellow belongs to Sabrina, the young lady you met at my office and gave the note to. She’s Dr. Gwynn’s granddaughter, as she may have told you. She’ll be awfully glad to see her horse again.”
“That’s just great,” Chip said.
“But we’ve got to get back to my place and make some phone calls. Mind telling me what happened? Why were those guys harassing you?”
Chip stood uneasily in the roadway, and explained, in a rush of words, how he had decided that May had been kidnapped, how he had found her, and the details of their escape together. As he spilled out the story, he watched Lawson’s reactions with some attention. His idea of breaking into Dalton’s house sounded a little foolish when he recounted it.
But the anthropologist listened quietly, merely raising his eyebrows at a few points in silent exclamation. When Chip had finished Lawson said, “Well, all’s well that ends well, I guess. I always had my suspicions about those guys. A couple of jerks, but I think the police can finally nail them. All the same, it’s lucky for you guys I happened to be on my way to Westport. Young lady, you did well, very well. Think you can ride that horse along the lake road to the dock? I don’t want you out of my sight.”
He ushered Chip into the car, politely assisted May to mount up, and the odd group headed back along the curving lake road in the direction of the dock.
Once in the car, Lawson turned to Chip. “You say your parents are down in Kingston talking to the Children’s Aid people? We’ll have to call them right away. They’ve probably got the OPP heading over to that cottage to check out what you found there, and when the police don’t find you, your mum and dad may get upset. We’ll call from my office so we can all keep in touch — cellphones are bit chancy in the sticks.”
“That’s great,” Chip said, very relieved. “I want to talk to Mum and Dad as soon as possible.”
Lawson smiled. “Yeah, you’ve got some explaining to do.” He was silent for a moment and then he added, “And by the way, Chip, I got your written questions about those names and markings connected with Dr. Gwynn. I think I can help you figure them out. But there’s more to it than that. I don’t want to lean on you, but I can see that you’re the proactive kind of guy. That being the case, I don’t think you’re going to like the advice I’m about to lay on you. Which is, to put it bluntly, to keep out of Dr. Gwynn’s orbit. You’ve already had more excitement at this lake than you could expect in half a lifetime. Now just forget about the old man and enjoy your vacation with your folks.”
The anthropologist gave him a quick glance. He continued to drive at a measured pace some distance behind May and Quicksilver.
Chip frowned, took a deep breath, and started to explain.
“I’m already more involved than you might think. I haven’t told anybody, not even told my parents, but some weird things have already happened on Freya’s Island.”
He proceeded to recount his night terrors, but so much had taken place in the meantime that the eerie noises, the crying voice, the lights in the tower, already seemed like a vivid dream, and not a real experience.
The anthropologist took it all in without interrupting, then turned to him with a grave look.
“That’s odd about the missing diary. I’ve never seen that book.” He shook his head sadly. “I was afraid of this. Maybe it’s what I’ve been waiting for. Maybe it’s time to confront the ghosts of the past.”
Minutes later, they arrived at the dock. Lawson parked his car, then led the pair into his office and sent May upstairs to get cleaned up.
“We’ve got some cotton shorts, T-shirts, and socks here. Grab a couple of packets, take them upstairs, and put them on after you wash. Chip, you come with me; we’ve got to call the OPP and try to get hold of your parents.”
Lawson dialled the police first. When he got off the phone, he explained to Chip that the OPP had already heard from his parents. A car was on the way to the cottage to investigate. He asked the operator to let the patrol officers know that the girl had been found. She and the young man who helped her escape would be waiting at the dock to answer questions.
He then tried the Children’s Aid Society in Kingston. He conversed for a while with various persons, then, with a faint smile of amusement, he handed the phone to Chip.
“It’s your dad,” he explained. “Best of luck.”
Chip heard the anxiety in his father’s first words, and gushed out everything that had happened. His father listened patiently, but when Chip had finished, Mr. Mallory did not sound as relieved as he’d hoped.
“We have to have a talk about how to take responsibility in the right way,” his father said, “You could have gotten yourself killed or injured, and that young lady too! We’re ecstatic that you’re okay, but next time —”
Then his mother came on the line. “You have to consider others when you decide to play the hero,” she told her son. She explained that Cal and Rachel were on their way back to the cottage with Lee. Luckily, now that Lawson had phoned, the OPP would arrive and explain to Lee what had happened. Otherwise she would have been confused or anxious about Chip’s disappearance.
Chip squirmed and quickly switched the topic to May. “The Children’s Aid is investigating her case,” his mother told him. “If the girl agrees, they want us to keep her with us for a day or so. Lee doesn’t mind, either. It’s gotten through to her how serious this is, and now that she’s seen the shanty village and met May’s mother she feels a lot more sympathy for that girl. Mrs. Bates seems to live in a dream world. She’s quite irresponsible, but of course, it’s the poverty, and the terrible social conditions. I never thought such things existed in this province!”
When his phone ordeal was over, Chip sat down with Lawson to talk about the markings he had found in Dr. Gwynn’s tower.
“I’ll tell you what I know, and what I’ve found out,” the anthropologist agreed, but his look was troubled. “I don’t feel happy about you getting any deeper into this, but, as I said in the car, maybe it’s time to try to close the book on all these troubles, and just maybe — without doing anything foolish — you can help.”
Lawson explained that Dr. Gwynn had been a recluse for many years, living in isolation in his house on his private island, tended only by Cal and Rachel. Few of the locals had seen him and none had spoken with him. Rumours had spread that he was a haunted man, and that strange phenomena were taking place at all three of his properties — at his own house, at the one on Freya’s Island, and at the Jackson cottage, which Dr. Gwynn had acquired a few years before old Mrs. Jackson’s death.
“As I told you when we first met,” Lawson continued, “I investigate magic. My academic specialty really is magic practices in the ancient Near East, and I did post-graduate studies for a while with Dr. Gwynn. He was a famous professor at one point. But in recent years, I’ve been trying to help the old man fight his own battle with some pretty nasty phenomena — which I don’t quite understand the nature of. All right, I can read your look. I’m not supposed to believe in magic, not really. Well, I agree, but call it what you will, there’s been some trouble. Dr. Gwynn has had some terrible experiences, and so have some others connected with him, including you. I’m sure there’s an explanation, and maybe a secret behind it all, but so far I haven’t been able to figure everything out.”
Chip leaned forward eagerly. It sounded a bit scary, but intriguing.
“Did the stuff I copied down help out?”
Lawson smiled. “Well, I have to confess, I’ve seen it before. I’ve examined the tower pretty closely more than once. For one thing, Dr. Gwynn, like his favourite Sumerians and Babylonians, is a great sky watcher. I think he got into it in the Middle East, where the sky is usually clear and good for astronomy. You certainly picked out a couple of interesting things. ‘73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann. 1930 –__’ — that’s the scientific file name for a comet. A fairly significant comet, but not a hugely bright one, that enters the solar system periodically. Nineteen-thirty is the year the comet was first recorded by the two German astronomers who got their names attached to it. It also happens to be the year Dr. Gwynn was born.”
“Wow! So the blank at the end is the year that comet may return?”
“No, the blank at the end has been filled in. The comet has returned and is visible — just barely visible — right now.”
Chip looked at the anthropologist. “What does that mean, Lawson?”
“He’s never admitted it, but I think Dr. Gwynn, a bit like the famous writer Mark Twain, associates his birth and death with the appearance of a comet. I think Dr. Gwynn thinks, or fears, that he may well die this year, now that ‘his’ comet has returned.”
Awestruck, Chip could find nothing to say.
“The sad thing is,” Lawson continued, “that he may be right. He’s very sick, I believe, or at least Sabrina has suggested as much. That’s why she’s come back here again this summer. She was here last year, too — she bought the horse then — but she left in disgust when it was stolen. She made such a fuss about the theft, though, that I think Dalton and Garth were afraid to try to sell Quicksilver in these parts. They were probably planning to do that out west, where I hear they go, sometimes.”
“And what about Larsa?” Chip asked. “It was mentioned in Dr. Gwynn’s diary. I know it’s an ancient Sumerian city — I looked it up. I thought that some of Dr. Gwynn’s statues and things must be from that place. But there was some kind of trouble — they turned out to be fake… or some people thought they were.”
Lawson shook his head; his expression was sombre. “It’s a long story, Chip. A few of his colleagues thought that Dr. Gwynn had been taken in by dealers in fake artefacts — that he might have bought some of the things he’d claimed to have excavated near Larsa from dubious sources. Or that he’d made wrong identifications of the things he did dig up. The controversy upset him so much that he quit the university. It came about the time of the death of his wife, Freya; it was a second bad blow, and turned him into a recluse for the rest of his life.”
“But he was right about the things he’d found, wasn’t he? It turned out that he was right in the end. There’s something about it in his diary.”
“Yes, he was right. He got a lot of support from a colleague named Porter, who helped defend him, and the university tried to make it up to him. But it was too late. Dr. Gwynn was embittered forever. I think he’ll die an embittered man.”
May came down the stairs. She looked fresh, and odd, and rather lovely, Chip thought, in her borrowed white clothing. She sat quietly in a corner as Lawson continued.
“As for those markings under the names of the trees — those lines you copied down so nicely — they happen to be Celtic letters. ‘Ogham,’ they’re called. They’re something like Viking runes. Some people think they had magic significance for the Celtic peoples or their druid priests and were used for spells, prophecies, and such things. The lines you copied are simply the names of the trees written in the ogham alphabet.”
“Why would he write the names of the trees like that?”
“According to some ancient beliefs, the trees have magical and protective powers, as do the letters themselves, so if you put them both together they make pretty big magic.”
“You think Dr. Gwynn was trying to put a spell on someone?”
“No. I think he’s been terrified by something, and he’s trying to use the letters to deal with it. It’s a well-understood practice among some ancient peoples. It’s called ‘apotropaic’ magic, which means, roughly, ‘magic to fend off some evil.’ That’s why they put those gargoyles on the cathedrals, you know.”
Chip’s eyes widened in amazement.
“But what could Dr. Gwynn be so afraid of?”
“I don’t know. It could be something from the lake, but more likely it might be something connected with the past, maybe in the Near East. And I hate to say it, Chip, but I have a feeling it’s the same thing that terrified you.”
Lawson got up and walked across the room, pondering for a minute. “You two will have to wait here to talk to the OPP. May, the Children’s Aid Society has decided that you can stay with Chip’s family for a few days, if you’d like to. Chip, I’m going to invite Sabrina and myself over to Freya’s Island tonight. If your parents agree, there’s a door in a room that I’d like to see opened.”