ARTHUR MACHEN Ultimate Collection: The Greatest Occult & Supernatural Classics in One Volume (Including Translations, Essays & Autobiography). Arthur MachenЧитать онлайн книгу.
again?”
“No; but look here, look at the wall. There; don’t you see it?”
“There’s another of those eyes!”
“Exactly. Drawn, you see, at a little distance from the first, almost on the same level, but slightly lower.”
“What on earth is one to make of it? It couldn’t have been done by the children; it wasn’t there last night, and they won’t pass for another hour. What can it mean?”
“I think the very devil is at the bottom of all this,” said Dyson. “Of course, one cannot resist the conclusion that these infernal almond eyes are to be set down to the same agency as the devices in the arrow-heads; and where that conclusion is to lead us is more than I can tell. For my part, I have to put a strong check on my imagination, or it would run wild.”
“Vaughan,” he said, as they turned away from the wall, “has it struck you that there is one point — a very curious point — in common between the figures done in flints and the eyes drawn on the wall?”
“What is that?” asked Vaughan, on whose face there had fallen a certain shadow of indefinite dread.
“It is this. We know that the signs of the Army, the Bowl, the Pyramid, and the Half moon must have been done at night. Presumably they were meant to be seen at night. Well, precisely the same reasoning applies to those eyes on the wall.”
“I do not quite see your point.”
“Oh, surely. The nights are dark just now, and have been very cloudy, I know, since I came down. Moreover, those overhanging trees would throw that wall into deep shadow even on a clear night.”
“Well?”
“What struck me was this. What very peculiarly sharp eyesight, they, whoever ‘they’ are, must have to be able to arrange arrow-heads in intricate order in the blackest shadow of the wood, and then draw the eyes on the wall without a trace of bungling, or a false line.”
“I have read of persons confined in dungeons for many years who have been able to see quite well in the dark,” said Vaughan.
“Yes,” said Dyson, “there was the abbé in Monte Cristo. But it is a singular point.”
3. The Search for the Bowl
“Who was that old man that touched his hat to you just now?” said Dyson, as they came to the bend of the lane near the house.
“Oh, that was old Trevor. He looks very broken, poor old fellow.”
“Who is Trevor?”
“Don’t you remember? I told you the story that afternoon I came to your rooms — about a girl named Annie Trevor, who disappeared in the most inexplicable manner about five weeks ago. That was her father.”
“Yes, yes, I recollect now. To tell the truth I had forgotten all about it. And nothing has been heard of the girl?”
“Nothing whatever. The police are quite at fault.”
“I am afraid I did not pay very much attention to the details you gave me. Which way did the girl go?”
“Her path would take her right across those wild hills above the house: the nearest point in the track must be about two miles from here.”
“Is it near that little hamlet I saw yesterday?”
“You mean Croesyceiliog, where the children came from? No; it goes more to the north.”
“Ah, I have never been that way.”
They went into the house, and Dyson shut himself up in his room, sunk deep in doubtful thought, but yet with the shadow of a suspicion growing within him that for a while haunted his brain, all vague and fantastic, refusing to take definite form. He was sitting by the open window and looking out on the valley and saw, as if in a picture, the intricate winding of the brook, the grey bridge, and the vast hills rising beyond; all still and without a breath of wind to stir the mystic hanging woods, and the evening sunshine glowed warm on the bracken, and down below a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the stream. Dyson sat by the window as the day darkened and the huge bastioned hills loomed vast and vague, and the woods became dim and more shadowy: and the fancy that had seized him no longer appeared altogether impossible. He passed the rest of the evening in a reverie, hardly hearing what Vaughan said; and when he took his candle in the hall, he paused a moment before bidding his friend good-night.
“I want a good rest,” he said. “I have got some work to do to-morrow.”
“Some writing, you mean?”
“No. I am going to look for the Bowl.”
“The Bowl! If you mean my punch-bowl, that is safe in the chest.”
“I don’t mean the punch-bowl. You may take my word for it that your plate has never been threatened. No; I will not bother you with any suppositions. We shall in all probability have something much stronger than suppositions before long. Good-night, Vaughan.”
The next morning Dyson set off after breakfast. He took the path by the garden wall, and noted that there were now eight of the weird almond eyes dimly outlined on the brick.
“Six days more,” he said to himself, but as he thought over the theory he had formed, he shrank, in spite of strong conviction, from such a wildly incredible fancy. He struck up through the dense shadows of the wood, and at length came out on the bare hillside, and climbed higher and higher over the slippery turf, keeping well to the north, and following the indications given him by Vaughan. As he went on, he seemed to mount ever higher above the world of human life and customary things; to his right he looked at a fringe of orchard and saw a faint blue smoke rising like a pillar; there was the hamlet from which the children came to school, and there the only sign of life, for the woods embowered and concealed Vaughan’s old grey house. As he reached what seemed the summit of the hill, he realized for the first time the desolate loneliness and strangeness of the land; there was nothing but grey sky and grey hill, a high, vast plain that seemed to stretch on for ever and ever, and a faint glimpse of a blue-peaked mountain far away and to the north. At length he came to the path, a slight track scarcely noticeable, and from its position and by what Vaughan had told him he knew that it was the way the lost girl, Annie Trevor, must have taken. He followed the path on the bare hill-top, noticing the great limestone rocks that cropped out of the turf, grim and hideous, and of an aspect as forbidding as an idol of the South Seas; and suddenly he halted, astonished, although he had found what he searched for.
Almost without warning the ground shelved suddenly away on all sides, and Dyson looked down into a circular depression, which might well have been a Roman amphitheatre, and the ugly crags of limestone rimmed it round as if with a broken wall. Dyson walked round the hollow, and noted the position of the stones, and then turned on his way home.
“This,” he thought to himself, “is more than curious. The Bowl is discovered, but where is the Pyramid?”
“My dear Vaughan,” he said, when he got back, “I may tell you that I have found the Bowl, and that that is all I shall tell you for the present. We have six days of absolute inaction before us; there is really nothing to be done.”
4. The Secret of the Pyramid
“I have just been round the garden,” said Vaughan one morning. “I have been counting those infernal eyes, and I find there are fourteen of them. For heaven’s sake, Dyson, tell me what the meaning of it all is.”
“I should be very sorry to attempt to do so. I may have