The Box of Delights (18 page)

He fell asleep again, but could dream of nothing but caves, dark and damp, with the noise of dripping water and long stalactites hanging from the roofs. When he would wake up from being, as he
thought, a prisoner in one cave he would fall asleep and dream of another, black as a pocket, with water falling into some almost bottomless pit. Now he remembered something that somebody had said
to him of the people at Chester Hills in the old days stealing and killing sheep and dropping them down potholes into the underground waters, which would carry the carcasses of the sheep for some
miles and bring them out at other potholes where people waited for them. He seemed to remember that in the story somebody had said that once, when the people were waiting for the sheep to appear,
the body of the thief appeared. ‘That was at Chester Hills,’ he thought. Then he slept again and seemed to hear the voice of Caroline Louisa calling to him in great distress from a
great distance and, in his dream, it seemed that he answered her and asked, ‘Where are you?’ and heard her cry, ‘Here,’ and ran towards the voice and found nothing but stone
walls, against which he beat and thrust, but could find no door nor any window. But through the thickness of the stone came the voice, ‘I’m shut up here in the darkness, Kay. I don’t know where it is, but
it’s somewhere where I can hear the noise of water falling.’ Then he woke up, but found nothing but the dark night with a little glimmer of moonlight coming through the curtain and the
fire in the grate almost out. ‘I’m almost sure that they’ve got her in Chester Hills, somehow,’ he muttered. ‘Though why,’ he wondered, ‘and how? Of
course, if they’d got her into one of those taxis they could have flown her to Chester Hills in less than an hour, even from London.’ He fell asleep again, but passed an uneasy night.
When he woke again it was time to get up, so he dressed and was down by eight o’clock. By some fortune or freak the post was in, in spite of the Christmas rush, but, as Ellen said, it was
probably the post of two days before. There was no letter from Caroline Louisa.

W
hile he was looking through the letters Ellen brought in the paper. ‘Oh, Master Kay,’ she said, ‘have you heard the news? The
Bishop of Tatchester has disappeared.’

‘What?’ Kay said.

‘The papers are full of it,’ Ellen said. ‘The reverend gentleman went out of the Palace last night for a brisk walk before going to bed according to his custom and he
hasn’t come back, Master Kay.’ Kay opened the paper:

‘Considerable alarm was caused,’ he read, ‘in ecclesiastical circles last night when it was known that His Grace, the Bishop of Tatchester, had failed to
return to the Palace and was not heard of at the time of our going to press. The very reverend gentleman had passed the evening at the Palace in making ready for the Christmas season and in
dispatching his Christmas cards to the clergy of his Diocese, a duty that His Grace leaves to no hands but his own. On conclusion of this pleasant duty His Grace signified to his sister, Dame
Eleanor Chasuble, that he would go for a brisk walk through the Precincts before retiring to rest. According to her nightly custom, Dame Chasuble prepared tea for His Grace on his return. As he had
not returned at the accustomed time she proceeded to the Precincts, but could not see him. At first she thought it likely that His Grace had joined some body of carol-singers and might be singing
carols in the neighbourhood, but at midnight as he had not returned she became alarmed and telephoned to the Dean, who enquired at once at the Hospital if His Grace had been the victim of some
accident, but, receiving a negative response, they communicated with the Police and, although an active search was at once instituted, we regret to announce that no news has been received of His
Grace’s whereabouts. It will be remembered that the Palace was the scene of a serious burglary the night before last and it is thought that the Bishop’s disappearance may be connected
with that earlier outrage. Dame Chasuble is confident that the Bishop has no enemy who would lay violent hands upon him and flouts the opinion that he may have become subject to some sudden loss of
memory. The Police are inclined to the view that the reverend gentleman may have received some shock, as from a passing motor car, which may have caused a temporary aberration. Anyone who may have
seen anyone answering to the description of His Grace or any occurrence which may seem to throw light on his disappearance is earnestly asked to communicate with New Scotland Yard, or with the
Tatchester Constabulary: Tatchester 7000.

‘Naturally His Grace’s disappearance has cast a gloom upon what would otherwise be a festal city. We would remind our readers that on Christmas Eve at midnight His Grace hoped to
celebrate the thousandth anniversary of the dedication of the Cathedral, for which great occasion the usual Christmas decorations and expectations have been increased thousand-fold. We are sure
that we voice the feelings of thousands of our readers when we extend to Dame Chasuble our heartiest sympathy in her anxiety, and our liveliest hopes that His Grace may soon be restored to the
bosom of his household and his Diocese.

‘Few figures in the Church of today are more eminent for piety and the Christian virtues than His Grace, the Very Reverend Michael Chasuble, D.D. Our readers will remember that Dr Chasuble
in his young days was a famous oarsman, long-distance runner, cricketer and heavyweight pugilist. In the scholastic field he carried away not only the prize for Greek verse, the Newdigate, the
Latin Oration and the Ponsford Laurel Crown for Hebrew, but took first class honours in Natural Science and in what are known as “Greats”. Few people of his time at the University have
attained such universal distinction in the provinces of sport and learning.’

‘I say,’ Kay said to himself, when he had read this, ‘now they’ve got the Bishop. I won’t mind betting it’s the same gang, and they’re
after this Box of Delights and they think that the Bishop’s got it.’

While he was meditating this in the dining-room, Peter came down. It was about ten minutes past eight, and, being a dark winter morning, was still hardly full daylight. ‘You look pretty
gloomy, Kay,’ Peter said.

‘I am pretty gloomy,’ Kay said. ‘They’ve scrobbled the Bishop. I’ll bet it’s the people who scrobbled Maria.’

‘And who d’you think they are?’ Peter said.

‘Well, I’m worried, Peter,’ Kay said. ‘I know you think it’s absurd, but I think they’re the Missionary College people out at Chester Hills. Would you come
with me, Peter,’ he said, ‘to Chester Hills, to see what kind of place it is?’

‘Well, I don’t mind,’ Peter said. ‘Shall we go after breakfast?’

‘I was thinking we might get there and back before breakfast,’ Kay said, leading the way to the door. ‘Breakfast won’t be till nine.’ He paused just outside the
door. It was a gloomy morning.

‘How on earth could we get about forty miles and back?’ Peter said.

Kay caught hold of Peter’s arm and, with his other hand, twitched the button on the magic box and, instantly, both of them were plucked through the air in a north-westerly direction so
swiftly that they saw the fields and the brooks in a kind of blur beneath them. Then, suddenly, they were whirled downwards and there they were, on a hillside, standing on what was the rampart of
an old camp. Both the boys were a little out of breath.

‘Now, this is Chester Hills,’ Kay said. ‘Look there: that’s Hope-under-Chesters, the railway station where the curates got into the train who I believe picked my pocket.
And you can see that this was once a Roman Camp. This is the Chester.’

‘Well, where d’you want to go now?’ Peter said.

‘I think down there, into that valley,’ Kay said.

Looking down on the valley the boys saw nothing but a great sea of woodland which began a little way below the camp and filled all the valley; but there were folds in the valley and what there
was in the folds they could not see.

‘I say, it’s a lovely country,’ Kay said.

‘It looks all right,’ Peter said. ‘I vote we go and explore in the woods.’

Kay looked first at the Roman Camp. The line of the rampart was still firm and sharply cut; the gates were just as they were when the Romans had marched out of them for the last time.

‘Jolly good chaps, the Romans,’ Kay said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Peter. ‘They were rather a mouldy lot. They were lucky chaps not to have to learn Latin grammar, but to know it naturally.’

‘I don’t know, I admire them enormously,’ Kay said. ‘You see, we are a thousand miles from Rome and they hadn’t any trains and they hadn’t any steam and they
walked here, carrying all that they wanted on their backs; and when they came to the sea they made ships and sailed here. And when they were here they made the only roads that we had, that were any
good, for the next eighteen hundred years, and the only baths that people took until about fifty years ago. You see there, you can see from the lie of the land that a road ran out of this gateway
down the hill. I’ll bet if you had a spade to clear away the turf you’d come upon a pavement underneath.’

He led the way down the hill and presently, the line of the Roman track became more difficult to follow. When they came to the edge of the wood the track was barred with a locked and chained
gate. There was a notice nailed to a tree:

and on another tree there was a bigger notice:

The track inside the wood was hardly more than a narrow woodland path. The wood looked curiously forbidding and evil. It contained a great deal of yew and other dark evergreens.
The undergrowth was curiously grown and in the darkness and wetness, with its profuse mass of close, sinister growth, it put a chill on to both boys’ hearts.

‘It doesn’t look a very cheery place,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t think we ought to risk those notices.’

‘Oh, rats,’ Kay said. ‘I don’t believe in any of those notices. For years I was scared of a notice that said “Bloodhounds” and there wasn’t a bloodhound
within the county. Come along in. But we’d better not talk much and we won’t make more noise than we must.’

He clambered over the gate and Peter followed. They went down the woodland track. It was a still, sinister wood, very thick covert, even for the depths of winter. As they went along it seemed to
Kay that somewhere on his left hand there was the noise of water falling, much as he had heard it in his dreams. The little track led down the hill: it wasn’t straight, but bent and twisted;
Peter went with a beating heart: Kay went forward boldly.

‘I say, Kay,’ Peter said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t hurry on like this. You ought to go cautiously.’

‘It’s absolutely safe,’ Kay said. ‘Do look; nobody has been on this woodland track for weeks.’

‘But a keeper might come at any minute,’ Peter said.

‘There aren’t keepers,’ Kay said. ‘You can see that this place isn’t preserved. If it were preserved we should have seen pheasants long ago or, if not pheasants,
we’d have seen keepers’ vermin boards, or dead stoats and weasels and poor, beautiful owls.’

Presently they passed from the woodland into a rather denser part, that was more like a neglected shrubbery with azaleas and overgrown rhododendrons. In this part of the wood a very great deal
of box had once been planted. This had straggled and grown to a great height and made the wood even darker than it would otherwise have been. There the track ended in a double line of box trees. No
doubt the trees had once been trimmed into a box walk; now they were all straggled and overgrown and untidy. Between the lines of box trees, however, a path, that seemed to be in considerable use,
led to right and left, and through gaps in the dense shrubbery the boys saw the gleam of water just below them.

‘That will be the lake,’ Kay said; ‘it’s marked on the map. Let’s go on down and look at the water.’

They left the path and thrust through the shrubbery where it seemed thinnest and presently were just inside a rhododendron bush on the very lip of the water, which stretched to right and left in
a long and very beautiful lake of deep water. It was not much more than a hundred yards across, but it gave to Kay the illusion of great depth and of being very evil, it was so dark, being fringed
on both sides by beautiful trees nearly all dark.

‘I say,’ Kay said, ‘what a place!’

‘It gives me the fantods,’ Peter answered. ‘I don’t like this place.’

‘Well, we’ve come here now,’ Kay said; ‘do let’s examine it before we go.’

A little to the right of where they were they saw among the trees the roof and part of a building, and what was either a boat- or a bathing-house. Away to the left, about five hundred yards from
where they were the lake came to an end in some tumbled rocks and boulders. Beyond this the ground rose with shrubberies and ornamental trees and, beyond the trees, there were buildings seemingly
of great extent: yellowish, Kay thought, as though built of Cotswold stone, which must have been imported there. From somewhere in the mass of these buildings, which were mainly screened by the
trees, a little bell chimed gracefully for the half-hour.

‘Now, I’m going along here to have a look at the house,’ Kay said. ‘You coming?’

‘No, I don’t think I will, thanks,’ Peter said. ‘You go and look at the house if you like. I’ll just go along and look at the boat-house and to see if one could
come here in the summer for a swim.’

‘Well, do look out for yourself,’ Kay said. ‘That little clock has just chimed for half-past eight. When it chimes for nine, you be inside the track we came by. You can easily
take cover and wait for me.’

‘All right,’ Peter said, ‘but I do wish you wouldn’t go into this place. You’ll get dropped on most frightfully hot if they catch you.’

Kay went off along the path between the box trees, and he hadn’t gone very far before he heard footsteps and voices coming towards him. He nimbly took cover between the path and the water
and listened as the voices and steps drew nearer.