The Secret of Sarek
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Though the fire had disappeared almost instantly, the three men retained the fantastic vision of the old oak, all aglow, vomiting flames and smoke of many colours.
"This is the entrance leading to the God-Stone," said Vorski, solemnly. "Destiny has spoken, as I said it would: and it has spoken at the bidding of me who was once its servant and who am now its master."
He advanced, carrying the lantern. They were surprised to see that the tree showed no trace of fire and that the mass of dry leaves, held as in a bowl where a few lower branches were outspread, had not caught fire.
"Yet another miracle," said Vorski. "It is all an inconceivable miracle."
"What are we going to do?" asked Conrad.
"Go in by the entrance revealed to us.. Take the ladder, Conrad, and feel with your hand in that heap of leaves. The tree is hollow and we shall soon see."
"A tree can be as hollow as you please," said Otto, "but there are always roots to it; and I can hardly believe in a passage through the roots."
"I repeat, we shall see. Move the leaves, Conrad, clear them away."
"No, I won't," said Conrad, bluntly.
"What do you mean, you won't? Why not?"
"Have you forgotten Maguennoc? Have you forgotten that he tried to touch the God-Stone and had to cut his hand off?"
"But this isn't the God-Stone!" Vorski snarled.
"How do you know? Maguennoc was always speaking of the gate of hell. Isn't this what he meant when he talked like that?"
Vorski shrugged his shoulders:
"And you, Otto, are you afraid too?"
Otto did not reply: and Vorski himself did not seem eager to risk the attempt, for he ended by saying:
"After all, there's no hurry. Let's wait till daylight comes. We will cut down the tree with an axe: and that will show us better than anything how things stand and how to go to work."
They agreed accordingly. But, as the signal had been seen by others besides themselves and as they must not allow themselves to be forestalled, they resolved to sit down opposite the tree, under the shelter offered by the huge table of the Fairies' Dolmen.
"Otto," said Vorski, "go to the Priory, fetch us something to drink and also bring an axe, some ropes and anything else that we're likely to want."
The rain was beginning to pour in torrents. They settled themselves under the dolmen and each in turn kept watch while the other slept.
Nothing happened during the night. The storm was very violent. They could hear the waves roaring. Then gradually everything grew quiet.
At daybreak they attacked the oak-tree, which they soon overthrew by pulling upon the ropes.
They now saw that, inside the tree itself, amid the rubbish and the dry rot, a sort of trench had been dug, which extended through the mass of sand and stones packed about the roots.
They cleared the ground with a pick-axe. Some steps at once came into sight: there was a sudden drop of earth: and they saw a staircase which followed a perpendicular wall and led down into the darkness. They threw the light of their lantern before them. A cavern opened beneath their feet.
Vorski was the first to venture down. The others followed him cautiously.
The steps, which at first consisted of earthen stairs reinforced by flints, were presently hewn out of the rock. The cave which they entered was in no way peculiar and seemed rather to be a vestibule. It communicated, in fact, with a sort of crypt, which had a vaulted ceiling and walls of rough masonry of unmortared stones.
All around, like shapeless statues, stood twelve small menhirs, each of which was surmounted by a horse's skull. Vorski touched one of these skulls; it crumbled into dust.
"No one has been to this crypt," he said, "for twenty centuries. We are the first men to tread the floor of it, the first to behold the traces of the past which it contains."
He added, with increasing emphasis:
"It is the mortuary-chamber of a great chieftain. They used to bury his favourite horses with him.. and his weapons too. Look, here are axes.. and a flint knife; and we also find the remains of certain funeral rites, as this piece of charcoal shows and, over there, those charred bones.."
His voice was husky with emotion. He muttered: "I am the first to enter here. I was expected. A whole world awakens at my coming."
Conrad interrupted him:
"There are other doorways, another passage; and there's a sort of light showing in the distance."
A narrow corridor brought them to a second chamber, through which they reached yet a third. The three crypts were exactly alike, with the same masonry, the same upright stones, the same horses' skulls.
"The tombs of three great chieftains," said Vorski. "They evidently lead to the tomb of a king; and the chieftains must have been the king's guards, after being his companions during his lifetime. No doubt it's the next crypt."
He hesitated to go farther, not from fear, but from excessive excitement and a sense of inflamed vanity which he was enjoying to the full:
"I am on the verge of knowledge," he declaimed, in dramatic tones. "Vorski is approaching the goal and has only to put out his hand to be regally rewarded for his labours and his struggles. The God-Stone is there. For ages and ages men have sought to fathom the secret of the island and not one has succeeded. Vorski came and the God-Stone is his. So let it show itself to me and give me the promised power. There is nothing between it and Vorski, nothing but my will. And I declare my will! The prophet has risen out of the night. He is here. If there be, in this kingdom of the dead, a shade whose duty it is to lead me to the divine stone and place the golden crown upon my head, let that shade arise! Here stands Vorski."
He went in.
The fourth room was much larger and shaped like a dome with a slightly flattened summit. In the middle of the flattened part was a round hole, no wider than the hole left by a very small flue; and from it there fell a shaft of half-veiled light which formed a very plainly-defined disk on the floor.
The centre of this disk was occupied by a little block of stones set together. And on this block, as though purposely displayed, lay a metal rod.
In other respects, this crypt did not differ from the first three. Like them it was adorned with menhirs and horses' heads, like them it contained traces of sacrifices.
Vorski did not take his eyes off the metal rod. Strange to say, the metal gleamed as though no dust had ever covered it. He put out his hand.
"No, no," said Conrad, quickly.
"Why not?"
"It may be the one Maguennoc touched and burnt his hand with."
"You're mad."
"Still."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of anything!" Vorski declared taking hold of the rod.
It was a leaden sceptre, very clumsily made, but nevertheless revealing a certain artistic intention. Round the handle was a snake, here encrusted in the lead, there standing out in relief. Its huge, disproportionate head formed the pommel and was studded with silver nails and little green pebbles transparent as emeralds.
"Is it the God-Stone?" Vorski muttered.
He handled the thing and examined it all over with respectful awe; and he soon observed that the pommel shifted almost loose. He fingered it, turned it to the left, to the right, until at length it gave a click and the snake's head became unfastened.
There was a space inside, containing a stone, a tiny, pale-red stone, with yellow streaks that looked like veins of gold.
"It's the God-Stone, it's the God-Stone!" said Vorski, greatly agitated.
"Don't touch it!" Conrad repeated, filled with alarm.
"What burnt Maguennoc will not burn me," replied Vorski, solemnly.
And, in bravado, swelling with pride and delight, he kept the mysterious stone in the hollow of his hand, which he clenched with all his strength:
"Let it burn me! I will let it! Let it sear my flesh! I shall be glad if it will!"
Conrad made a sign to him and put his finger to his lips.
"What's the matter?" asked Vorski. "Do you hear anything?"
"Yes," said the other.
"So do I," said Otto.
What they heard was a rhythmical, measured sound, which rose and fell and made a sort of irregular music.
"Why, it's close by!" mumbled Vorski. "It sounds as if it were in the room."
It was in the room, as they soon learnt for certain; and there was no doubt that the sound was very like a snore.
Conrad, who had ventured on this suggestion, was the first to laugh at it; but Vorski said:
"Upon my word, I'm inclined to think you're right. It is a snore.. There must be some one here then?"
"It comes from over there," said Otto, "from that corner in the dark."
The light did not extend beyond the menhirs. Behind each of them opened a small, shadowy chapel. Vorski turned his lantern into one of these and at once uttered a cry of amazement:
"Some one.. yes.. there is some one.. Look.."
The two accomplices came forward. On a heap of rubble, piled up in an angle of the wall, a man lay sleeping, an old man with a white beard and long white hair. A thousand wrinkles furrowed the skin of his face and hands. There were blue rings round his closed eyelids. At least a century must have passed over his head.
He was dressed in a patched and torn linen robe, which came down to his feet. Round his neck and hanging over his chest was a string of those sacred beads which the Gauls called serpents' eggs and which are actually sea-eggs or sea-urchins. Within reach of his hand was a handsome jadeite axe, covered with illegible symbols. On the ground, in a row, lay sharp-edged flints, some large, flat rings, two ear-drops of green jasper and two necklaces of fluted blue enamel.
The old man went on snoring.
Vorski muttered:
"The miracle continues.. It's a priest.. a priest like those of the olden time.. of the time of the Druids."
"And then?" asked Otto.
"Why, then he's waiting for me!"
Conrad expressed his brutal opinion:
"I suggest we break his head with his axe."
But Vorski flew into a rage:
"If you touch a single hair of his head, you're a dead man!"
"Still."
"Still what?"
"He may be an enemy.. he may be the one whom we were pursuing last night.. Remember.. the white robe."
"You're the biggest fool I ever met! Do you think that, at his age, he could have kept us on the run like that?"
He bent over and took the old man gently by the arm, saying:
"Wake up!.. It's I!"
There was no answer. The man did not wake up.
Vorski insisted.
The man moved on his bed of stones, mumbled a few words and went to sleep again.
Vorski, growing a little impatient, renewed his attempts, but more vigorously, and raised his voice:
"I say, what about it? We can't hang about all day, you know. Come on!"
He shook the old man more roughly. The man made a movement of irritation, pushed away his importunate visitor, clung to sleep a few seconds longer and, in the end, turned round wearily and, in an angry voice, growled:
"Oh, rats!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE ANCIENT DRUID
The three accomplices, who were perfectly acquainted with all the niceties of the French language and familiar with every slang phrase, did not for a moment mistake the true sense of that unexpected exclamation. They were astounded.
Vorski put the question to Conrad and Otto.
"Eh? What does he say?"
"What you heard.. That's right," said Otto.
Vorski ended by making a fresh attack on the shoulder of the stranger, who turned on his couch, stretched himself, yawned, seemed to fall asleep again, and, suddenly admitting himself defeated, half sat up and shouted:
"When you've quite finished, please! Can't a man have a quiet snooze these days, in this beastly hole?"
A ray of light blinded his eyes: and he spluttered, in alarm:
"What is it? What do you want with me?"
Vorski put down his lantern on a projection in the wall; and the face now stood clearly revealed. The old man, who had continued to vent his ill temper in incoherent complaints, looked at his visitor, became gradually calmer, even assumed an amiable and almost smiling expression and, holding out his hand, exclaimed:
"Well, I never! Why, it's you, Vorski! How are you, old bean?"
Vorski gave a start. That the old man should know him and call him by his name did not astonish him immensely, since he had the half-mystic conviction that he was expected as a prophet might be. But to a prophet, to a missionary clad in light and glory, entering the presence of a stranger crowned with the double majesty of age and sacerdotal rank, it was painful to be hailed by the name of "old bean!"
Hesitating, ill at ease, not knowing with whom he was dealing, he asked:
"Who are you? What are you here for? How did you get here?"
And, when the other stared at him with a look of surprise, he repeated, in a louder voice:
"Answer me, can't you? Who are you?"
"Who am I?" replied the old man, in a husky and bleating voice. "Who am I? By Teutatès, god of the Gauls, is it you who ask me that question? Then you don't know me? Come, try and remember.. Good old Ségenax – eh, do you get me now – Velléda's father, good old Ségenax, the law-giver venerated by the Rhedons of whom Chateaubriand speaks in the first volume of his Martyrs?.. Ah, I see your memory's reviving!"
"What are you gassing about!" cried Vorski.
"I'm not gassing. I'm explaining my presence here and the regrettable events which brought me here long ago. Disgusted by the scandalous behaviour of Velléda, who had gone wrong with that dismal blighter Eudorus, I became what we should call a Trappist nowadays, that is to say, I passed a brilliant exam, as a bachelor of Druid laws. Since that time, in consequence of a few sprees – oh, nothing to speak of: three or four jaunts to Paris, where I was attracted by Mabille and afterwards by the Moulin Rouge – I was obliged to accept the little berth which I fill here, a cushy job, as you see: guardian of the God-Stone, a shirker's job, what!"
Vorski's amazement and uneasiness increased at each word. He consulted his companions.
"Break his head," Conrad repeated. "That's what I say: and I stick to it."
"And you, Otto?"
"I think we ought to be on our guard."
"Of course we must be on our guard."
But the old Druid caught the word. Leaning on a staff, he helped himself up and exclaimed:
"What's the meaning of this? Be on your guard.. against me! That's really a bit thick! Treat me as a fake! Why, haven't you seen my axe, with the pattern of the swastika? The swastika, the leading cabalistic symbol, eh, what?.. And this? What do you call this?" He lifted his string of beads. "What do you call it? Horse-chestnuts? You've got some cheek, you have, to give a name like that to serpents' eggs, 'eggs which they form out of slaver and the froth of their bodies mingled and which they cast into the air, hissing the while.' It's Pliny's own words I'm quoting! You're not going to treat Pliny also as a fake, I hope!.. You're a pretty customer! Putting yourself on your guard against me, when I have all my degrees as an ancient Druid, all my diplomas, all my patents, all my certificates signed by Pliny and Chateaubriand! The cheek of you!.. Upon my word, you won't find many ancient Druids of my sort, genuine, of the period, with the bloom of age upon them and a beard of centuries! I a fake, I, who boast every tradition and who juggle with the customs of antiquity!.. Shall I dance the ancient Druid dance for you, as I did before Julius Caesar? Would you like me to?"
And, without waiting for a reply, the old man, flinging aside his staff, began to cut the most extravagant capers and to execute the wildest of jigs with perfectly astounding agility. And it was the most laughable sight to see him jumping and twisting about, with his back bent, his arms outstretched, his legs shooting to right and left from under his robe, his beard following the evolutions of his frisking body, while the bleating voice announced the successive changes in the performance:
"The ancient Druids' dance, or Caesar's delight! Hi-tiddly, hi-tiddly, hi-ti, hi!.. The mistletoe dance, vulgarly known as the tickletoe!.. The serpents' egg waltz, music by Pliny! Hullo there! Begone, dull care!.. The Vorska, or the tango of the thirty coffins!.. The hymn of the Red Prophet! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Glory be to the prophet!"
He continued his furious jig a little longer and then suddenly halted before Vorski and, in a solemn tone, said:
"Enough of this prattle! Let us talk seriously, I am commissioned to hand you the God-Stone. Now that you are here, are you ready to take delivery of the goods?"
The three accomplices were absolutely flabbergasted. Vorski did not know what to do, was unable to make out who the infernal fellow was:
"Oh, shut up!" he shouted, angrily. "What do you want? What's your object?"
"What do you mean, my object? I've just told you; to hand you the God-Stone!"
"But by what right? In what capacity?"
The ancient Druid nodded his head:
"Yes, I see what you're after. Things are not happening in the least as you thought they would. Of course, you came here feeling jolly spry, glad and proud of the work you had done. Just think; furnishings for thirty coffins, four women crucified, shipwrecks, hands steeped in blood, murders galore. Those things are no small beer; and you were expecting an imposing reception, with an official ceremony, solemn pomp and state, antique choirs, processions of bards and minstrels, human sacrifices and what not; the whole Gallic bag of tricks! Instead of which, a poor beggar of a Druid, snoozing in a corner, who just simply offers you the goods. What a come down, my lords! Can't be helped, Vorski; we do what we can and every man acts according to the means at his disposal. I'm not a millionaire, you know; and I've already advanced you, in addition to the washing of a few white robes, some thirty francs forty for Bengal lights, fountains of fire and a nocturnal earthquake."
Vorski started, suddenly understanding and beside himself with rage:
"What! So it was."
"Of course it was me! Who did you think it was? St. Augustine? Unless you believed in an intervention of the gods and supposed that they took the trouble last night to send an archangel to the island, arrayed in a white robe, to lead you to the hollow oak!.. Really, you're asking too much!"
Vorski clenched his fists. So the man in white whom he had pursued the night before was no other than this impostor!
"Oh," he growled, "I'm not fond of having my leg pulled!"
"Having your leg pulled!" cried the old man. "You've got a cheek, old chap! Who hunted me like a wild beast, till I was quite out of breath? And who drove bullets through my best Sunday robe? I never knew such a fellow! It'll teach me to put my back into a job again!"
"That'll do!" roared Vorski. "That'll do. Once more and for the last time.. what do you want with me?"
"I'm sick of telling you. I am commissioned to hand you the God-Stone."
"Commissioned by whom?"
"Oh, hanged if I know! I've always been brought up to believe that some day a prince of Almain would appear at Sarek, one Vorski, who would slay his thirty victims and to whom I was to make an agreed signal when his thirtieth victim had breathed her last. Therefore, as I'm a slave to orders, I got together my little parcel, bought two Bengal lights at three francs seventy-five apiece at a hardware shop in Brest, plus a few choice crackers, and, at the appointed hour, took up my perch in my observatory, taper in hand, all ready for work. When you started howling, in the top of the tree, 'She's dead! She's dead!' I thought that was the right moment, set fire to the lights and with my crackers shook the bowels of the earth. There! Now you know all about it."
Vorski stepped forward, with his fists raised to strike. That torrent of words, that imperturbable composure, that calm, bantering voice put him beside himself.
"Another word and I'll knock you down!" he cried. "I've had enough of it."
"Is your name Vorski?"
"Yes; and then?"
"Are you a prince of Almain?"
"Yes, yes; and then?"
"Have you slain your thirty victims?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"Well, then you're my man. I have a God-Stone to hand you and I mean to hand it you, come what may. That's the sort of hairpin I am. You've got to pocket it, your miracle-stone."
"But I don't care a hang for the God-Stone!" roared Vorski, stamping his foot. "And I don't care a hang for you! I want nobody. The God-Stone! Why, I've got it, it's mine. I've got it on me."
"Let's have a look."
"What do you call that?" said Vorski, taking from his pocket the little stone disk which he had found in the pommel of the sceptre.
"That?" asked the old man, with an air of surprise. "Where did you get that from?"
"From the pommel of this sceptre, when I unfastened it."
"And what do you call it?"
"It's a piece of the God-Stone."
"You're mad."
"Then what do you say it is?"
"That's a trouser-button."
"A what?"
"A trouser-button."
"How do you make that out?"
"A trouser-button with the shaft broken off, a button of the sort which the niggers in the Sahara wear. I've a whole set of them."
"Prove it, damn you!"
"I put it there."
"What for?"
"To take the place of the precious stone which Maguennoc sneaked, the one which burnt him and obliged him to cut off his hand."
Vorski was silent. He was nonplussed. He had no notion what to do next or how to behave towards this strange adversary.
The ancient Druid went up to him and, gently, in a fatherly voice:
"No, my lad," he said, "you can't do without me, you see. I alone hold the key of the safe and the secret of the casket. Why do you hesitate?"
"I don't know you."
"You baby! If I were suggesting something indelicate and incompatible with your honour, I could understand your scruples. But my offer is one of those which can't offend the nicest conscience. Well, is it a bargain? No? Not yet? But, by Teutatès, what more do you want, you unbelieving Vorski? A miracle perhaps? Lord, why didn't you say so before? Miracles, forsooth: I turn 'em out thirteen to the dozen. I work a little miracle before breakfast every morning. Just think, a Druid! Miracles? Why, I've got my shop full of 'em! I can't find room to sit down for them. Where will you try first? Resurrection department? Hair-restoring department? Revelation of the future department? You can choose where you like. Look here, at what time did your thirtieth victim breathe her last?"
"How should I know?"
"Eleven fifty-two. Your excitement was so great that it stopped your watch. Look and see."
It was ridiculous. The shock produced by excitement has no effect on the watch of the man who experiences the excitement. Nevertheless, Vorski involuntarily took out his watch: it marked eight minutes to twelve. He tried to wind it up: it was broken.
The ancient Druid, without giving him time to recover his breath and reply, went on:
"That staggers you, eh? And yet there's nothing simpler for a Druid who knows his business. A Druid sees the invisible. He does more: he makes anyone else see it if he wants to. Vorski, would you like to see something that doesn't exist? What's your name? I'm not speaking of your name Vorski, but of your real name, your governor's name."
"Silence on that subject!" Vorski commanded. "It's a secret I've revealed to nobody."
"Then why do you write it down?"
"I've never written it down."
"Vorski, your father's name is written in red pencil on the fourteenth page of the little note-book you carry on you. Look and see."
Acting mechanically, like an automaton whose movements are controlled by an alien will, Vorski took from his inside pocket a case containing a small note-book. He turned the pages till he came to the fourteenth, when he muttered, with indescribable dismay:
"Impossible! Who wrote this? And you know what's written here?"
"Do you want me to prove it to you?"
"Once more, silence! I forbid you."
"As you please, old chap! All that I do is meant for your edification. And it's no trouble to me! Once I start working miracles, I simply can't stop. Here's another funny little trick. You carry a locket hanging from a silver chain round your shirt, don't you?"