The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes (7 page)

             
"Well, we tore back up the road, into and up his driveway and without a word, he slammed on the brakes and rushed into the house as if all the demons of hell were at his heels. I was left sitting stupefied in the car. I was not only physically exhausted and sick, but baffled and beginning again to be terrified. As I looked around the pleasant green lawn, the tall trees and the rest of the sunny landscape, do you know I wondered if through some error in dimensions I had fallen out of my own proper space and landed in a world of monsters and lunatics!

             
"It could only have been a moment when the immense figure of my host appeared in the doorway. On his fascinating face was an expression which I can only describe as being mingled half sorrow, half anger. Without a word, he strode down his front steps and over to the car where, reaching in, he picked me up in his arms as easily as if I had been a doll instead of 175 pounds of British subaltern.

             
"He carried me up the steps and as he walked, I could hear him murmuring to himself in Swedish. It sounded to me like gibberish with several phrases I could just make out being repeated over and over. 'What could they do, what else could they do! She would not be warned. What else could they do?'

             
"We passed through a vast dark hall, with great beams high overhead, until we came to the back of the house, and into a large sunlit room, overlooking the sea, which could only be the library or study. There were endless shelves of books, a huge desk, several chairs, and a long, low padded window seat on which the baron laid me down gently.

             
"Going over to a closet in the corner, he got out a bottle of aquavit and two glasses, and handed me a full one, taking a more modest portion for himself. When I had downed it—and I never needed a drink more—he pulled up a straight-backed chair and set it down next to my head. Seating himself, he asked my name in the most serious way possible, and when I gave it, he looked out of the window a moment.

             
" 'My friend,' he said finally, 'I am the last of the Nyderstroms. I mean that quite literally. Several rooms away, the woman you met earlier today is dead, as dead as you yourself would be, had I not appeared on the road, and from the same, or at least a similar cause. The only difference is that she brought this fate on herself, while you, a stranger, were almost killed by accident, and simply because you were present at the wrong time.' He paused and then continued with the oddest sentence, although, God knows, I was baffled already. 'You see,' he said, 'I am a kind of game warden and some of my charges are loose.'

             
"With that, he told me to lie quiet and started to leave the room. Remembering something,
however, he came back and asked if I could remember the name of the firm which owned the mover's lorry I had seen. Fortunately I could, for as I told you earlier, it was seared on my brain by the strange attack I had suffered while watching it go up the road. When I gave it to him, he told me again not to move and left the room for another, from which I could hear him faintly using a telephone. He was gone a long time, perhaps half an hour, and by the time he came back, I was standing looking at his books. Despite the series of shocks I had gone through, I now felt fairly strong, but it was more than that. This strange man, despite his odd threat, had saved my life, and I was sure that I was safe from
him
at least. Also, he was obviously enmeshed in both sorrow and some danger, and I felt strongly moved to try and give him a hand.

             
"As he came back into the room, he looked hard at me, and 1 think he read what I was thinking, because he smiled, displaying a fine set of teeth.

             
" 'So—once again you are yourself. If your nerves are strong, I wish you to look on my late aunt. The police have been summoned and I need your help.'

             
"Just like that! A dead woman in the house and he needed my help!

             
"Well, if he was going to get rid of me, why call the police? Anyway, I felt safe as I told you, and you'd have to see the man, as I did, to know why.

             
"At any rate, we went down the great hall to another room, much smaller, and then through that again until we found ourselves in a little sewing room, full of women's stuff and small bits of fancy furniture. There in the middle of the room lay the lady whom I had seen earlier telling the movers to go away. She certainly appeared limp, but I knelt and felt her wrist because she was lying face down. Sure enough, no pulse at all and quite cold. But when I started to turn her over, a huge hand clamped on my shoulder and the baron spoke.
'I
don't advise it,' he said warningly. 'Her face isn't fit to look at. She was frightened to death, you see.'

             
"I simply told him I had to, and he just shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. I got my hands under one shoulder and started to turn the lady, but my God, as the profile came into view, I dropped her and stood up like a shot. From the little I saw, her mouth was drawn back like an animal's, showing every tooth, and her eye was wide open and glaring in a ghastly manner. That was enough for me.

             
"Baron Nyderstrom led me from the room and back into the library, where we each had another aquavit in silence.

             
"I started to speak, but he held up his hand in a kind of command, and started talking.

             
"
'I
shall tell the police that I passed you bathing on the beach, stopped to chat, and then brought you back for a drink. We found my aunt dead of heart failure and called the police. Now, sir, I like you, but if you will not attest to this same story, I shall have to repeat what I told you I would say at the beach, and I am well known in these parts. Also, the servants are away on holiday, and I think you can see that it would look ugly for you.'

             
"I don't like threats, and it must have shown, because although it would have looked bad as all hell, still I wasn't going to be a party to any murders, no matter how well-planned. I told him so, bluntly, and he looked sad and reflective, but not particularly worried.

             
" 'Very well,' he said at
l
ength,
'I
can't really blame you, because you are in a very odd position.' His striking head turned toward the window in brief thought, and then he turned back to face me directly and spoke.

             
" 'I will make a bargain with you. Attest my statement to the police, and then let me have the rest of the day to talk to you. If, at the end of the day, I have not satisfied you about my aunt's death, you have my word, solemnly given, that I will go the police station and attest
your
story, the fact that I have been lying and anything else you choose to say.'

             
"His words were delivered with great gravity, and it never for one instant occurred to me to doubt them. I can't give you any stronger statement to show you how the man impressed me. I agreed straightaway.

             
"In about ten minutes the police arrived, and an ambulance came with them. They were efficient enough, and very quick, but there was one thing that showed through the whole of the proceedings, and it was that the Baron Nyderstrom was
somebody
!
All he did was state that his aunt had died of a heart attack and that was that! I don't mean the police were serfs, or crooks either for that matter. But there was an attitude of deference very far removed from servility or politeness. I doubt if royalty gets any more nowadays, even in England. When he had told me earlier that his name was 'known in these parts,' it was obviously the understatement of the decade.

             
"Well, the police took the body away in the ambulance, and the baron made arrangements for a funeral parlor and a church with local people over the telephone. All this took
awhile
, and it must have been four-thirty when we were alone again.

             
"We went back into the library. I should mention that he had gotten some cold meat, bread and beer from a back pantry, just after the police left, and so now we sat down and made ourselves some sandwiches. I was ravenous, but he ate quite lightly for a man of his size, in fact only about a third of what I did.

             
"When I felt full, I poured another glass of an excellent beer, lit a cigarette, sat back and waited. With this man, there was no need for unnecessary speech.

             
"He was sitting behind his big desk facing me, and once again that singularly attractive smile broke through.

             
" 'You are waiting for your story, my friend, if I may call you so. You shall have it, but I ask your word as a man of honor that it not be for repetition.' He paused briefly. 'I know it is yet a further condition, but if you do not give it, there is no recourse except the police station and jail for me. If you do, you will hear a story and perhaps—perhaps, I say, because I make no promises
—
see and hear something which no man has seen or heard for many, many centuries, save only for my family and not many of them. What do you say?'

             
"I never hesitated for a second. I said 'yes,' and I should add that I've never regretted it. No, never."

             
Ffellowes' thoughts seemed far away, as he paused and stared out into the murky New York night, dimly lit by shrouded street lamps, and the fog lights on passing cars. No one spoke, and no sound broke the silence of the room but a muffled cough. He continued.

             
"Nyderstrom next asked me if I knew anything about Norse mythology. Now this question threw me for an absolute loss. What did a dangerous animal and an awful death, to say nothing of a possible murder, have to do with Norse mythology?

             
"However, I answered that I'd read of Odin, Thor, and a few other gods as a child in school, the Valkyries, of course, and that was about it.

             
" 'Odin, Thor, the Valkyries, and a few others?' My host smiled, 'You must understand that they are rather late Norse and even late German adaptions of something much older. Much, much older, something with its roots in the dawn of the world.

             
" 'Listen,' he went on, speaking quietly but firmly, 'and when I have finished we will wait for that movers' truck to return. I was able to intercept it, and what it took, because of that very foolish woman, must be returned.'

             
"He paused as if at a loss how to begin, and then went on. His bell-like voice remained muted, but perfectly audible, while he detailed one of the damnedest stories I've ever heard. If I hadn't been through what I had that day, and if he hadn't been what he was, I could have thought I was listening to the Grand Master of all the lunatics I'd ever met.

             
" 'Long ago,' he said, 'my family came from inner Asia.' They were some of the people the
latercomers
called
Aesir,
the gods of Valhalla, but they were not gods, only a race of wandering conquerors. They settled here, on this spot, despite warnings from the few local inhabitants, a small, dark, shore-dwelling folk. This house is built on the foundations of a fortress, a very old one, dating at the very least back to the Second Century B.C. It was destroyed later in the wars of the Sixteenth Century, but that is modern history.

             
" 'At any rate, my remote ancestors began soon to lose people. Women bathing, boys fishing, even full-grown warriors out hunting, they would vanish and never return. Children had to be guarded and so did the livestock, which had a way of disappearing also, although that of course was preferable to the children.

             
" 'Finally, for no trace of the mysterious marauders could be found, the chief of my family decided to move away. He had prayed to his gods and searched zealously, but the reign of silent, stealthy terror never ceased, and no human or other foe could be found.

             
" 'But before he gave up, the chief had an idea. He sent presents and a summons to the shaman, the local priest, not of our own people, but of the few, furtive, little shore folk, the strand
people, who had been there when we came. We despised and avoided them, but we had never harmed them. And the bent little shaman came and answered the chiefs questions.