Chapter One

  Mr Pottermack Makes a Discovery

  A conscientious desire on the part of the present historian to tell his story in a complete and workmanlike fashion from the very beginning raises the inevitable question, What was the beginning? Not always an easy question to answer offhand; for if we reflect upon certain episodes in our lives and try to track them to their beginnings, we are apt, on further cogitation, to discover behind those beginnings antecedents yet more remote which have played an indispensable part in the evolution of events.

  As to this present history, the whole train of cause and consequence might fairly be supposed to have been started by Mr Pottermack’s singular discovery in his garden. Yet, when we consider the matter more closely, we may doubt if that discovery would ever have been made if it had not been for the sundial. Certainly it would not have been made at that critical point in Mr Pottermack’s life; and if it had not – but we will not waste our energies on vain speculations. We will take the safe and simple course. We will begin with the sundial.

  It stood, when Mr Pottermack’s eyes first beheld it, in a mason’s yard at the outskirts of the town. It was obviously of some age, and therefore could not have been the production of Mr Gallett, the owner of the yard; and standing amidst the almost garishly new monuments and blocks of freshly hewn stone, it had in its aspect something rather downfallen and forlorn. Now Mr Pottermack had often had secret hankerings for a sundial. His big walled garden seemed to cry out for some central feature of interest; and what more charming ornament could there be than a dial which, like the flowers and trees amidst which it would stand, lived and had its being solely by virtue of the golden sunshine?

  Mr Pottermack halted at the wide-open gate and looked at the dial (I use the word, for convenience, to include the stone support). It was a graceful structure, with a twisted shaft like that of a Norman column, a broad base and a square capital. It was nicely lichened and weathered, and yet in quite good condition. Mr Pottermack found something very prepossessing in its comely antiquity. It had a motto, too, incised on the sides of the capital; and when he had strolled into the yard, and, circumnavigating the sundial, had read it, he was more than ever pleased. He liked the motto. It struck a sympathetic chord. Sole orto: spes: decedente pax. It might have been his own personal motto. At the rising of the sun, hope: at the going down thereof, peace. On his life the sun had risen in hope: and peace at eventide was his chief desire. And the motto was discreetly reticent about the intervening period. So, too, were there passages in the past which he was very willing to forget so that the hope of the morning might be crowned by peace when the shadows of life were lengthening.

  “Having a look at the old dial, Mr Pottermack?” said the mason, crossing the yard and disposing himself for conversation. “Nice bit of carving, that, and wonderful well preserved. He’s counted out a good many hours in his time, he has. Seventeen thirty-four. And ready to count out as many again. No wheels to go rusty. All done with a shadder. No wear and tear about a shadder. And never runs down and never wants winding up. There’s points about a sundial.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “I took it from the garden of Apsley Manor House, what’s being rebuilt and brought up to date. New owner told me to take it away. Hadn’t any use for sundials in these days, he said. More hasn’t anybody else. So I’ve got him on my hands. Wouldn’t like him for your garden, I suppose? He’s going cheap.”

  It appeared, on enquiry, that he was going ridiculously cheap. So cheap that Mr Pottermack closed with the offer there and then.

  “You will bring it along and fix it for me?” said he.

  “I will, sir. Don’t want much fixing. If you will settle where he is to stand, I’ll bring him and set him up. But you’d better prepare the site. Dig well down into the subsoil and make a level surface. Then I can put a brick foundation and there will be no fear of his settling out of the upright.”

  That was how it began. And on the knife-edge of such trivial chances is human destiny balanced. From the mason’s yard Mr Pottermack sped homeward with springy step, visualizing the ground-plan of his garden as he went; and by the time that he let himself into his house by the front door within the rose-embowered porch he was ready to make a bee-line for the site of his proposed excavation.

  He did not, however; for, as he opened the door, he became aware of voices in the adjacent room and his housekeeper came forth to inform him that Mrs Bellard had called to see him, and was waiting within. Apparently the announcement was not unwelcome, for Mr Pottermack’s cheerfulness was in nowise clouded thereby. We might even go so far as to say that his countenance brightened.

  Mrs Bellard was obviously a widow. That is not to say that she was arrayed in the hideous “weeds” with which, a generation ago, women used to make their persons revolting and insult the memory of the deceased. But she was obviously a widow. More obviously than is usual in these latter days. Nevertheless her sombre raiment was well-considered, tasteful and becoming; indeed the severity of her dress seemed rather to enhance her quiet, dignified comeliness. She greeted Mr Pottermack with a frank smile, and as they shook hands she said in a singularly pleasant, musical voice:

  “It is too bad of me to come worrying you like this. But you said I was to.”

  “Of course I did,” was the hearty response; and as the lady produced from her basket a small tin box, he enquired: “Snails?”

  “Snails,” she replied; and they both laughed.

  “I know,” she continued, “it is very silly of me. I quite believe that, as you say, they die instantaneously when you drop them into boiling water. But I really can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Very natural, too,” said Pottermack. “Why should you, when you have a fellow conchologist to do it for you? I will slaughter them this evening and extract them from their shells, and you shall have their empty residences tomorrow. Shall I leave them at your house?”

  “You needn’t trouble to do that. Give them to your housekeeper and I will call for them on my way home from the shops. But I really do impose on you most shamefully. You kill the poor little beasts, you clean out the shells, you find out their names and you leave me nothing to do but stick them on card, write their names under them, and put them in the cabinet. I feel a most horrid impostor when I show them at the Naturalists’ Club as my own specimens.”

  “But, my dear Mrs Bellard,” protested Pottermack, “you are forgetting that you collect them, that you discover them in their secret haunts and drag them out to the light of day. That is the really scientific part of conchology. The preparation of the shells and their identification are mere journeyman’s work. The real naturalist’s job is the field work; and you are a positive genius in finding these minute shells – the pupas and cochlicopas and such like.”

  The lady rewarded him with a grateful and gratified smile, and, opening the little box, exhibited her “catch” and recounted some of the thrilling incidents of the chase, to which Pottermack listened with eager interest. And as they chatted, but half seriously, an observer would have noted that they were obviously the best of friends, and might have suspected that the natural history researches were, perhaps, somewhat in the nature of a plausible and convenient pretext for their enjoying a good deal of each other’s society. These little precautions are sometimes necessary in a country district where people take an exaggerated interest in one another and tongues are apt to wag rather freely.

  But a close observer would have noted certain other facts. For instance, these two persons were curiously alike in one respect: they both looked older to the casual stranger than they appeared on closer inspection. At a first glance, Mr Pottermack, spectacled, bearded, and grave, seemed not far short of fifty. But a more critical examination showed that first impression to be erroneous. The quick, easy movements and the supple strength that they implied in the rather small figure, as well as the brightness of the alert, attentive eyes behind the spectacles, suggested that the lines upon the face and the white powdering of the hair owed their existence to something other than the mere effluxion of time. So, too, with Mrs Bellard. On a chance meeting she would have passed for a well-preserved middle-aged woman. But now, as she chatted smilingly with her friend, the years dropped from her until, despite the white hairs that gleamed among the brown and a faint hint of crow’s-feet, she seemed almost girlish.

  But there was something else; something really rather odd. Each of the two cronies seemed to have a way of furtively examining the other. There was nothing unfriendly or suspicious in these regards. Quite the contrary, indeed. But they conveyed a queer impression of curiosity and doubt, differently manifested, however, in each. In Mr Pottermack’s expression there was something expectant. He had the air of waiting for some anticipated word or action; but the expression vanished instantly when his companion looked in his direction. The widow’s manner was different, but it had the same curious furtive quality. When Pottermack’s attention was occupied, she would cast a steady glance at him; and then the lines would come back upon her forehead, her lips would set, and there would steal across her face a look at once sad, anxious, and puzzled. Especially puzzled. And if the direction of her glance had been followed, it would have been traced more particularly to his profile and his right ear. It is true that both these features were a little unusual. The profile was almost the conventional profile of the Greek sculptors – the nose continuing the line of the forehead with no appreciable notch – a character very seldom seen in real persons. As to the ear, it was a perfectly well-shaped, proportionate ear. It would have been of no interest to Lombroso. But it had one remarkable peculiarity: on its lobule was what doctors call a “diffuse nævus” and common folk describe as a “port-wine mark.” It was quite small, but very distinct; as if the lobule had been dipped into damson juice. Still, it hardly seemed to justify such anxious and puzzled consideration.

  “What a dreadful pair of gossips we are!” Mrs Bellard exclaimed, taking her basket up from the table. “I’ve been here half an hour by the clock, and I know I have been hindering you from some important work. You looked full of business as you came up the garden path.”

  “I have been full of business ever since – land and fresh-water mollusca. We have had a most instructive talk.”

  “So we have,” she agreed, with a smile. “We are always instructive; especially you. But I must really take myself off now and leave you to your other business.”

  Mr Pottermack held the door open for her and followed her down the hall to the garden path, delaying her for a few moments to fill her basket with roses from the porch. When he had let her out at the gate, he lingered to watch her as she walked away towards the village; noting how the dignified, matronly bearing seemed to contrast with the springy tread and youthful lissomness of movement.

  As he turned away to re-enter the house he saw the postman approaching; but as he was not expecting any letters, and his mind was still occupied with his late visitor, he did not wait. Nor when, a minute later, he heard the characteristic knock did he return to inspect the letter-box; which was, perhaps, just as well in the circumstances. Instead, he made his way out by the back door into the large kitchen garden and orchard and followed the long, central path which brought him at length to a high red brick wall, in which was a door furnished with a knocker and flanked by an electric bell. This he opened with a latchkey of the Yale pattern, and, having passed through, carefully shut it behind him.

  He was now in what had probably been originally the orchard and kitchen garden of the old house in which he lived, but which had since been converted into a flower garden, though many of the old fruit trees still remained. It was a large oblong space, more than a quarter of an acre in extent, and enclosed on all sides by a massive old wall nearly seven feet high, in which were only two openings: the door by which he had just entered and another door at one side, also fitted with a Yale lock and guarded, in addition, by two bolts.

  It was a pleasant place if quiet and seclusion were the chief desire of the occupant – as they apparently were, to judge by Mr Pottermack’s arrangements. The central space was occupied by a large, smooth grass plot, surrounded by well-made paths, between which and the wall were wide flower borders. In one corner was a brick-built summer-house; quite a commodious affair, with a good tiled roof, a boarded floor, and space enough inside for a couple of armchairs and a fair-sized table. Against the wall opposite to the summer-house was a long shed or outhouse with glass lights in the roof, evidently a recently built structure and just a little unsightly – but that would be remedied when the yew hedge that had been planted before it grew high enough to screen it from view. This was the workshop, or rather a range of workshops; for Mr Pottermack was a man of many occupations, and, being also a tidy, methodical man, he liked to keep the premises appertaining to those occupations separate.

  On the present occasion he made his way to the end compartment, in which were kept the gardening tools and appliances, and having provided himself with a spade, a mallet, a long length of cord, and a half-dozen pointed stakes, walked out to the grass plot and looked about him. He was quite clear in his mind as to where the sundial was to stand, but it was necessary to fix the spot with precision. Hence the stakes and the measuring-line, which came into use when he had paced out the distances approximately and enabled him, at length, to drive a stake into the ground and thereby mark the exact spot which would be occupied by the centre of the dial.

  From this centre, with the aid of the cord, he drew a circle some four yards in diameter and began at once to take up the turf, rolling it up tidily and setting it apart ready for relaying. And now he came to the real job. He had to dig right down to the subsoil. Well, how far down was that? He took off his coat, and, grasping the spade with a resolute air, gave a vigorous drive into the soil at the edge of the circle. That carried him through the garden mould down into a fine, yellowish, sandy loam, a small quantity of which came up on the spade. He noted its appearance with some interest but went on digging, opening up a shallow trench round the circumference of the circle.

  By the time that he had made a second complete circuit and carried his trench to a depth of some eight inches, the circle was surrounded by a ring of the yellow loam, surprisingly bulky in proportion to the shallow cavity from which it had been derived. And once more his attention was attracted by its appearance. For Mr Pottermack amongst his various occupations included occasionally that of metal-casting. Hitherto he had been in the habit of buying his casting-sand by the bag. But this loam, judging by the sharp impressions of his feet where he had trodden in it, was a perfect casting-sand, and to be had for the taking at his very door. By way of testing its cohesiveness, he took up a large handful and squeezed it tightly. When he opened his hand the mass remained hard and firm and showed the impressions of his fingers perfectly to the very creases of the skin.

  Very pleased with his discovery, and resolving to secure a supply of the loam for his workshop, he resumed his digging, and presently came down to a stratum where the loam was quite dense and solid and came up on the spade in definite coherent lumps like pieces of a soft rock. This, he decided, was the true subsoil and was as deep as he need go; and having decided this, he proceeded to dig out the rest of the circle to the same depth.

  The work was hard and, after a time, extremely monotonous. Still Mr Pottermack laboured steadily with no tendency to slacking. But the monotony exhausted his attention, and while he worked on mechanically with unabated vigour his thoughts wandered away from his task; now in the direction of the sundial, and now – at, perhaps, rather more length – in that of his pretty neighbour and her spoils, which were still awaiting his attentions in the tin box.

  He was getting near the centre of the circle when his spade cut through and brought up a piece of spongy, fungus-eaten wood. He glanced at it absently, and having flung it outside the circle, entered his spade at the same spot and gave a vigorous drive. As the spade met with more than usual resistance, he threw a little extra weight on it. And then, suddenly, the resistance gave way; the spade drove through, apparently into vacant space. Mr Pottermack uttered a startled cry, and after an instant’s precarious balancing saved himself by a hair’s breadth from going through after it.

  For a moment he was quite shaken – and no wonder. He had staggered back a pace or two and now stood, still grasping the spade, and gazing with horror at the black, yawning hole that had so nearly swallowed him up. But as, after all, it had not, he presently pulled himself together and began cautiously to investigate. A very little tentative probing with the spade made everything clear. The hole which he had uncovered was the mouth of an old well: one of those pernicious wells which have no protective coping but of which the opening, flush with the surface of the ground, is ordinarily closed by a hinged flap. The rotten timber that he had struck was part of this flap, and he could now see the rusty remains of the hinges. When the well had gone out of use, someone, with incredible folly, had simply covered it up by heaping earth on the closed flap.

  Mr Pottermack, having made these observations, proceeded methodically to clear away the soil until the entire mouth of the well was exposed. Then, going down on hands and knees, he approached, and cautiously advancing his head over the edge, peered down into the dark cavity. It was not quite dark, however, for though the slimy brick cylinder faded after a few feet into profound gloom, Mr Pottermack could see, far down, as it seemed in the very bowels of the earth, a little circular spot of light on which was the dark silhouette of a tiny head. He picked up a pebble, and, holding it at the centre of the opening, let it drop. After a brief interval the bright spot grew suddenly dim and the little head vanished; and after another brief interval there came up to his ear a hollow “plop” followed by a faint, sepulchral splash.