The Moor - Laurie R. King [51]
Holmes' fingers slowly resumed their task. He pulled off his scarf and overcoat and tossed them across the back of a sofa, then walked across to close the inner doorway so our voices would not carry up the stairs. He then went over to the drinks cabinet, poured two glasses of brandy, walked over to where I was standing and handed me one, and finally took his drink over to the sofa, where he settled down, stretching his left arm casually along the cushioned back and propping his left ankle on his right knee.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," he said after he had taken a swallow of brandy, "but it sounds to me remarkably as if you pushed your way into Mr Baring-Gould's presence, drove him to seek refuge in his bedroom, followed him despite, no doubt, the objections of his servants, attempted to force your way through a locked door, and then retreated down here to lay siege, drinking the old man's liquor and burning his firewood, secure in the knowledge that everyone under this roof is twice your age and incapable of enforcing their master's wishes."
The man took a step forward and I thought for a moment that I was going to have to take action, since Holmes (another inhabitant nearly twice the man's age) was settled deep into the sofa. However, the fireplace poker in his hand seemed to have been forgotten, although I kept a close eye on it and mentally noted heavy objects within reach that I could grab up to pelt him with.
"No!" he protested furiously. "I only want to talk to him. He has to be made to understand—"
"Please keep your voice down, young man," Holmes interrupted sharply. "And we might begin with your name."
"Randolph Pethering," he said more quietly. "I'm a…I'm a lecturer. In Birmingham, at the teachers' training college. I must speak with Mr Baring-Gould about his anti-Druidical prejudice. He must withdraw the statements he has made, or at the very least speak up for my thesis. I can't get a publisher; they've all read his books and articles about the ruins on the moor, and they won't even listen to me. So I've drawn up a list of his mistakes, and if he doesn't help me by speaking to my publisher, so help me, I'll release it to the press. He'll be ruined. A laughingstock!"
His voice had climbed again during this all but incomprehensible tirade, but Holmes and I could only stare at him until he broke off, wiping his brow and panting with emotion and the heat of the fire and no doubt the alcohol he had drunk.
Holmes balanced his glass on the arm of the sofa, steepled his fingers, touched them to his lips, and addressed the distraught figure.
"Mr Pethering, am I to understand that you regard yourself as an antiquarian?"
"I am an archaeological anthropologist, sir. A good deal more of a scientist than that old man upstairs."
Holmes let it pass. "And yet you are convinced of the presence of Druidical remains up on the moor?"
"Most certainly! The stone rows for their ceremonial processions and the sacred circles for religious rites; the sacrificial basins on the tops of the tors and the places of oracle; those exquisitely balanced logan stones they used for oracular readings; the Druidical meeting place of Wiseman's Wood near Two Bridges, rich with the sacred mistletoe; the great tolmen in the Teign below Scorhill circle; the stone idols—why, it's as plain as the nose on your face," he exclaimed in a rush. "And Baring-Gould and his ilk would have us believe that the circular temples are mere shepherds' huts, and that the runic markings on the—"
The rapidity of Holmes' movement surprised me, and it must have terrified Pethering, who nearly tumbled backwards into the fire as Holmes leapt to his feet, took three long steps forward, twisted the poker from the man's hand, and snatched him back from the fire. He then stood looming over him with a terrible scowl on his face.
"You are