E R PUNSHON
‘Life sleeps in the stone, dreams in the plant, wakens in the animal.’
1
There was a general giggle.
The quaint little gentleman from London, beaming on them through his enormous horn-rimmed glasses, might be as learned as learned professors must always be, but fancy asking a question like that when the name of their little inn, The Missing Men, was the general jest all through this lonely Cornish district. Why, whenever any of the local inhabitants was missing from his own hearthside, here in the comfortable warm bar of The Missing Men was the place to seek and generally to find. One or two of those present laboriously explained the point of the pleasantry, and the little professor listened gravely.
‘I see,’ he said.
It was the chair of comparative religion at the Great Southern University that he held, and though few there knew what comparative religion was, and probably none had ever heard of his great work on Human Sacrifice in which was traced the history of that dark, evil rite from early days — the days of Abraham and Isaac — down to the faint traces of it still surviving, as when the small boy in city streets asks for a penny for the guy he means presently to offer up in fire, or, more sinister, in the offering of the youth of the nation on the sacrificial altar of that new god, the State, yet all knew what awe and reverence are a professor’s due. For a professor is a person of strange knowledge, and therefore of strange powers, since knowledge is always power.
But now they felt more at their ease, now that he had shown he shared their common humanity by asking so simple a question and needing to have so simple a pleasantry explained to him. The professor took the giggling in good part. He wondered how long the name had been in use. No one knew. Most thought name and inn were co-existent.
‘I asked,’ explained the professor, ‘because I noticed on the map there’s a lane near here that seems to be called Missing Lane.’
The jesting suddenly ceased, as abruptly as though those fatal words: ‘Time, gentlemen, time,’ had boomed out suddenly from behind the bar.
‘I was wondering,’ the professor explained, ‘whether the inn took its name from the lane, or the lane from the inn.’
No one seemed to know. No one seemed to care. The conversation showed a tendency to revert to football pools, an engrossing if limited topic. The professor did not seem interested in football pools. He had arrived by car that afternoon from London, a late survival of the touring season since now it was dark and chilly November when motorist and hiker alike seek their repose. He took an opportunity of a pause, while all were wrapped in silent contemplation of the curious fact that others habitually won enormous prizes in the pools, but none of them ever did, to remark:
‘I couldn’t make out from the map where that lane led.’
‘Well, it doesn’t rightly lead nowheres in particular,’ explained the landlord.
‘Well, now, that’s odd,’ murmured the professor. ‘If it goes nowhere, why is it at all?’
No one seemed to know that either. It was just there. It had always been there. That was all. Went to the top of the hill, and, so to say, got lost there.
‘Missing Lane, in fact,’ mused the professor. ‘Perhaps how it got its name. I suppose, if it goes nowhere, it’s not often used?’
It began to appear that the lane was in fact very seldom used. Continued over the hill it would have provided a short and convenient way to the nearest market town. Only, somehow, no one seemed ever to have thought of that. Men working in the fields by which it ran used it sometimes, and, in the autumn, blackberrying parties, since the summit of the hill, where finally the lane lost itself, was famous for blackberries. But the blackberry pickers went always in parties, it seemed, and never stayed late.
‘Not if they’ve sense, they don’t,’ said an old man who hitherto had hardly spoken. ‘And if they do, maybe it’s them that’s missing or some of ’em.’
‘Now grandpa,’ interposed the landlord warningly.
‘Thirty years ago,’ said the old man, ‘and never none to tell to this day what became of Polly Hill.’
‘Wasn’t there something in the paper the other day about a young woman who had disappeared from somewhere about here?’ asked the professor.
‘That would be Aggie, little Aggie Polton,’ said someone else.
‘Good-looking piece,’ said the landlord. ‘Lordy, when girls take themselves off, they have their own reasons. Flighty, that was Aggie.’
It appeared that Aggie had had something of a reputation. Most evenings, the tale went, she had a ‘date’ with one or other of the young men of the neighbourhood. On one occasion, a little time previously, there had been one of these ‘dates’ with the son of the local butcher. He had not been able to keep it. His mother had had suspicions, and naturally looked higher than poor little Aggie for her son, no matter how fascinating Aggie’s blue eyes and curls might be. The general opinion was that Aggie had ‘taken the huff’, had been afraid of being laughed at, and had gone off to London, as she had often spoken of doing, in order to become one of those fascinating young ladies known as Nippies whose portraits in the papers had aroused her mingled admiration and envy.
Only it was true no trace of her in London had as yet been found.
‘No great loss, a girl like her, setting all the lads at odds,’ said someone else. ‘But I reckon Mr Phelps up at Tor Farm would give a deal to know what’s become of Beauty of Bolton Three.’
‘What’s that?’ asked the professor.
He was told that Beauty of Bolton Three was a prize bull, worth some two or three hundred pounds, perfect in every way, and so tame and peaceable that it was allowed to graze out in the fields without any special precautions being taken. It was always brought in at night, but the other evening, when a farm lad went to fetch it as usual, though at a later hour than was customary, it wasn’t there. No sign of it. Nothing to show what had happened to it.
‘Curious,’ said the professor. ‘Curious, too, about Polly Hill thirty years ago. Curious again that in the Annual Register of sixty years back there’s mention of a valuable stallion that vanished in this neighbourhood. Supposed to have been stolen by the groom, as he vanished himself next day.’
‘That’s sixty years gone,’ said the landlord doubtfully. ‘I wasn’t born then,’ and he had the air of suggesting that what happened before he was born really didn’t matter very much.
‘Lot of interesting reading in the Annual Register,’ observed the professor, ‘and odd how often there is a mention of this neighbourhood at intervals of thirty years. Was Mr Phelps’s bull in the field near the Hunting Stone? That stands at the top of Missing Lane, doesn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ said the landlord, somewhat surprised at this display of local knowledge; ‘but there’s no mystery about the bull being missing. Worth a mort of money. ’Ticed away and hidden somewhere till he can be smuggled off to foreign parts.’
‘Not so easy to ’tice away,’ interposed the old man who had spoken of the missing Polly Hill of long ago, ‘and someone got hurt, too, for there was blood on the Hunting Stone. I seen it myself and didn’t stop to look for long, neither.’
‘Why is it called the Hunting Stone?’ asked the professor.
The landlord said he supposed it had always been called that. The professor asked if the stains supposed to be blood seen on the base of the Hunting Stone had been examined or analysed. No one had thought of having that done. There seemed no reason. It was mentioned that the only trace of the recently vanished Aggie, the girl with the fondness for making ‘dates’ and the ambition some day to become a Nippy, had been her handbag found near this same Hunting Stone. Probably her ‘date’ with the youthful heir of the local butcher had been made for the foot of Missing Lane. When he failed to keep it, she might well have wandered up the lane rather than go straight home, but what had happened to her after that was entirely a matter for conjecture.
The door opened and an elderly woman looked in.
‘Our Tim here?’ she asked. ‘He’s not been home.’
No one had seen her Tim and she went away grumblingly. The landlord winked at the professor.
‘Out after rabbits,’ he said, ‘that’s where her Tim is, and he’ll be copped some day. But there’s a mort of them up by that there Hunting Stone.’
The old man in the corner got up to go. In the doorway he turned: ‘Tim’s a fool if he goes after rabbits there,’ he said, ‘for if there’s rabbits there, there’s more than rabbits, too.’
He went out, and the landlord laughed, though a trifle uneasily.
‘To hear him talk,’ he said, ‘there might be something queer about that there lump of granite what’s been standing up on the hill ever since the Flood, so to say.’
‘I think I’ll have a look at it myself,’ observed the professor, ‘but not tonight.’
‘No, I wouldn’t tonight,’ agreed the landlord.
2
It was in fact high noon before the professor next day walked slowly and warily up the Missing Lane that was hardly a lane at all but rather a rough track with fields on one side — the south — and the bare slope of the hill on the other, the north. Where the cultivated land ceased and the ground grew rough and bare with scattered blackberry bushes at intervals and many rabbit holes all around, stood the Hunting Stone, a huge upright oblong block of granite, standing on a sort of rough base. It was some eight or nine feet high and must have weighed many tons. On its face were carved signs that once may have been letters or symbols of some kind but that the wind and the rain of innumerable years had worn in part away. Reared by who could tell what strange distant tribe of men in what strange dawn of humanity, or by what pain or sacrifice in dragging that enormous weight from the distant quarry where it had been carved, all through the slow centuries it had stood on this bare hillside. Now at its base there sat a burly man in plus fours, smoking a pipe, and the professor nodded a greeting.
‘Nice morning, chief inspector,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t sit there if I were you.’
Chief Inspector Harris of Scotland Yard looked surprised, but got up all the same, for his was a disciplined mind and for all professors he had a proper respect.
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘It’s firm enough. I thought I felt a tremor when I sat down, but it won’t fall over just yet.’
The professor said: ‘Know anything about a local lad called Tim something?’
‘Reported missing,’ said the chief inspector. ‘You heard about that?’
‘Yes,’ said the professor.
‘Maybe he had something to do with the Beauty of Bolton Three case,’ observed the inspector musingly, ‘but it’s not so likely a smart, lively young girl like this Aggie Polton would mix up with cattle thieving.’
‘No,’ said the professor.
‘Well, there you are,’ said the chief inspector.
‘Noticed anything about here?’ asked the professor.
‘Not a thing, except —’ and he pointed to a strange, plainly marked trail on the ground as though something immensely heavy had passed that way. ‘Looks like a steam roller has been by,’ he remarked, ‘only there can’t have been, can there?’
‘No,’ said the professor. ‘Noticed that?’
He pointed to a reddish-brown stain on the stone base just where the chief inspector had been sitting. The chief inspector shook his head. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said the professor, ‘but I think it might be blood.’
He walked away a little distance and presently paused where the rabbit holes seemed most numerous in a low bank at a little distance. It was a fragment of a net he had picked up and he came back carrying it in his hand.
‘Useful for snaring rabbits?’ he suggested.
‘Might be,’ agreed the chief inspector. ‘Why?’
‘In the pub they seemed to think Tim was very likely out after rabbits,’ the professor explained.
‘Well then,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Don’t think someone’s kidnapped him, do you?’
‘Not kidnapped, no,’ said the professor.
The chief inspector strolled away and seated himself again on the base of the Hunting Stone. He got up hurriedly. He said: ‘Gosh! I believe you’re right.’
‘What’s that?’ asked the professor, turning sharply.
‘I thought I felt the thing move,’ the chief inspector answered. ‘When I sat down, I mean. A sort of movement, a tremor. As if it might topple over.’ He put his hand against the stone and pushed. ‘Seems firm enough,’ he said.
The professor was looking at the sky. ‘High noon,’ he said. ‘Just as well. No, I don’t think there’s any chance of its toppling over.’
‘Well, then,’ said the chief inspector. He looked very worried and a trifle pale. He said: ‘I’ll swear I felt — something.’ After a pause, during which the professor was silent, he added: ‘If I didn’t know I hadn’t, I should think I had been drinking.’
‘I think we’ll go, shall we?’ said the professor.
The chief inspector agreed, somewhat hurriedly. He was looking back over his shoulder as they walked away. He said: ‘It must be the mist; it gives the thing a sort of swaying sort of look, sort of to and fro, if you know what I mean.’
‘There isn’t any mist,’ said the professor.
He was walking very quickly. At times he almost ran.
The chief inspector said: ‘What’s the hurry?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered the professor. He added presently: ‘I think where you were sitting is where the victims were offered when that was a stone of sacrifice.’
‘Ugh,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Enough to make anyone a bit jittery if they knew that.’
‘Or even if they didn’t,’ said the professor. When they had come to the bottom of the lane, he said: ‘I want you to get me a bullock, white, without spot or blemish.’
‘Eh?’ said the chief inspector. ‘What’s that?’
The professor explained. The chief inspector said firmly: ‘That’s plumb crazy.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said the professor.
‘If it hadn’t been for what I felt up there …’ said the chief inspector.
‘White from head to tail, without spot or blemish,’ the professor repeated.
‘Right-oh,’ said the chief inspector. ‘It’s a screwy business,’ he said. ‘I feel I want to report myself off my head.’
‘You mean you want to report me,’ said the professor grimly. ‘I know. Only what happened to little Aggie Polton? Where is she? What’s become of Mr Phelps’s prize bull? Where’s Tim who went up there snaring rabbits, and now it seems he isn’t anywhere? And why almost every thirty years does the Annual Register report some mysterious disappearance in this district?’
‘Oh, have it your own way,’ said the chief inspector angrily. ‘I don’t believe a word of it, and what’s more, I don’t know where to get a what-is-it white bullock without spot or blemish! We aren’t cattle-dealers at the Yard.’
The professor gave him an address.
‘Friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Big noise in the farming way. Ring him up. I asked him to see what he could do.’
The chief inspector went away to find a telephone. It was dusk when there arrived a lorry containing a fine young bullock, its hide snowy white, no spot or blemish on it from head to tail.
The professor looked it over carefully and seemed satisfied. Later on, as it drew towards midnight, by the light of the moon could have been seen the unusual sight of a learned professor and a chief inspector of Scotland Yard solemnly driving a snow-white ox up a steep and narrow lane.
It was a perfect night. The moonlight lay on the land like a faint and silvery sea, lending to all things a distant, wan enchantment. Not a breath of wind stirred. Not a living creature was abroad. It might have been a land from which all life had fled, and through it there passed slowly that small and strange procession — the snow-white bullock and the two men behind.
‘Keep well back,’ the professor whispered.
The chief inspector needed no such warning. He muttered presently: ‘There’s lots of rabbits here, but there’s none about tonight.’
‘They know,’ the professor said.
Before them, plain in the white moonlight, the great stone showed, upright and waiting.
The chief inspector said: ‘This moonlight plays queer tricks with a man’s eyes.’
‘So it does,’ agreed the professor.
They walked on a little way. They were quite near now, or rather the bullock was quite near. The two men were some yards behind. The bullock paused and lowed uneasily and the sound seemed to travel far through the heavy silence of the moonlit night.
‘I’ve got the jitters,’ said the chief inspector. ‘I’ve no drink taken all this day, but I could have sworn the stone was on the right-hand side of the lane.’
‘So it was,’ said the professor. He added: ‘So it is.’
The chief inspector stood and stared.
‘Well, it was on our left just now,’ he said.
‘So it was,’ said the professor.
They stood still. The ox lowed again, a long low call. The professor took his companion by the arm. He said: ‘We won’t go any nearer.’
‘No,’ said the chief inspector. He said: ‘What’s that noise?’
‘I think it’s your teeth chattering,’ said the professor. ‘Or else it’s mine.’
The ox moved on. Again it lowed. It stood still and then once more moved forward, very slowly, as if irresistibly impelled.
‘Look,’ screamed the professor.
They saw. In the pale moonlight they saw clearly. They saw the great stone as it were heaving itself forward. Plainly they saw how it lifted itself from its base and propelled itself upon the approaching ox. Earth and sky were still, still and motionless were the two men, the ox was as still as they, as the vast immobile block of that huge stone lifted itself, left its firm base, flung itself in great leaps upon the motionless bullock. The chief inspector turned and ran. The professor followed. They ran as they had never run before, as few indeed have ever run but they, since few but they have ever had such need for fearful speed. Once the chief inspector fell, and as he fell, he screamed, for he had felt something plucking at his ankle. It was only a bramble that had tripped him, but he was still screaming as he got to his feet and ran on again, nor indeed has he ever been quite the same man again.
Not till they were near the inn, not till lights showed close ahead, not till friendly human voices could be heard, did they cease that wild and dreadful flight.
When at last they were both safe in the professor’s room at the inn, the professor said: ‘I knew. At least I think I knew. But it’s a different thing when you see it for yourself.’
‘No one will believe us,’ muttered the chief inspector. ‘I don’t think I believe it any more myself. I thought it had me when that thing caught my ankle.’ He said fiercely: ‘What’s it mean?’
‘No one will believe us,’ agreed the professor. ‘Why should they? For how long, no one can even guess, but all through the centuries that thing stood there and was offered every day perhaps the blood of living victims, human victims, too, till at last, for the blood is the life, it began to have a life of its own, as evil as what caused that life, and when its worshippers no longer brought it victims then it began to seek them for itself, so to preserve with their blood the dim life the blood of others had begun to create within itself.’
‘You mean the beastly thing grew alive?’
‘I think it was wakening to life,’ the professor answered.
The chief inspector went to the window and looked out into the palely lit night.
‘I don’t think I shall go to bed,’ he said. ‘I should dream — dream of that beastly thing making its way down here, crashing in the door or the walls — what could any man do against fifty tons of granite made animate?’
‘It’ll be safe tonight,’ the professor answered. ‘Safe and satiate. Satiate. Probably for another thirty years. Asleep again, the life within it. We won’t risk another wakening though.’ He motioned towards his luggage. ‘There’s enough high explosive there,’ he said, ‘to blow up half the hill. We’ll wait till high noon.’
‘No one will believe us,’ the chief inspector repeated. ‘I don’t think I do quite myself. If I did, I think I should go mad.’
‘We’ll neither of us believe it,’ agreed the professor. ‘Safer not to.’ After a time, he added: ‘Not only in those days of the dawn of humanity have men made for themselves a god to destroy themselves.’