The Moor - Laurie R. King [124]
"An evil night," I agreed.
"An evil place," he said.
"Come now, Holmes," I protested. "Surely a place cannot be inherently evil."
"Perhaps not. But I have noticed that the great bowl of Dartmoor seems to act as a kind of focussing device, exaggerating the impulses of the men who come within its sphere, for better or for worse. Gould might well have been a petty tyrant if left in his parish in Mersea, bullying his wife and driving his bishop to distraction. Here, however, the very air allowed him to expand, to become something larger than himself. Similarly Stapleton—I've wondered if he mightn't have continued as a minor crook had he not come here, where he filled out into a deft manipulator of local lore and a would-be murderer. And now these two."
I did not answer. After a while I pulled the bag over and offered Holmes a sandwich. Rosemary had cut meat from the carcass of the goose for them, and laid them in the bread with a layer of rich herb stuffing. They were delicious, but still the storm beat at the stones around us, and still we waited, and still the men did not come.
The hands of my pocket watch crept around, and the powers of darkness moved over the face of the moor. Midnight came and midnight passed, and neither of us had moved or spoken for some time, when I began to feel a strange sensation in the air around me. Looking back, it was probably only the psychic eeriness of the night combined with the physical sensation brought by the electric charges of the storm, building and ebbing, but it began to feel almost as if there were another person in the rock shelter with us—or if not a person, then at least a Presence. It did not seem to me, as Holmes had suggested, an evil presence, nor even a terribly powerful one, but I thought it old, very old, and patient. It felt, I decided, as if the moor itself were holding watch with us. Holmes did not seem aware of anything other than discomfort and impatience, and I did not care to mention my fancies to him. I was, however, very grateful for his warm bulk beside me.
And then, just when I was on the edge of giving up on our expedition, the two men came, with a brief bobble of a hand torch from upriver. My paranormal phantasms burst with the sight, and the spirit of Dartmoor sank back into the stones. Holmes put his empty pipe into his pocket and leant forward. I unwrapped the shotgun far enough to slide two cartridges into it, then laid it back down by my feet.
Two lights appeared, tight beams that lit the feet of the men and, as they came closer, the tool bag each carried in his left hand. They crossed by in front of us, picking their way along the edge of the stream, and stopped perhaps forty feet away. The next burst of light from the sky revealed two heavily swathed figures, one taller than the other, both looking down at a stretch of rocky hillside. The shorter of the two dropped to one knee, and the light flickered out, and a great thump of thunder rumbled down the riverbed.
We were still waiting, but at least now we had something to watch other than the rocks. Ketteridge knelt down for two or three minutes at his bag, and although I could not see what he was doing there, he had to be preparing the equipment for wiring the charge. While he was there, the taller man, who had to be Scheiman, moved around the area, stopping every few feet to bend to his bag and do something on the ground. Once I saw the gleam of a shaft of metal.
"He's sliding the smaller pipes, which are perforated and loaded with gold-bearing sand and the charge of black powder, into the holes, and removing the larger ones from around them," Holmes murmured.
It was quite clearly a thing Scheiman had done any number of times before. Despite the furious weather beating at his slick coat, his movements were quick and sure. He planted six of the charges, and Ketteridge was beginning to unfurl a spool of wire when Holmes touched my arm. "We've seen enough. Come."
I pulled my clothes back around me, tucked the gun under my right arm, and followed Holmes, patting