LITMIR.BIZ

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that trim academic air that is characteristic of the Bar, in spite of his twenty-two hours journey; and was dressed in an excellently made grey suit. He was very slightly bald on his forehead, and had those sharp-cut mask-like features that mark a man as either lawyer, priest, or actor; he had besides delightful manners and even, white teeth. I do not think I could have suggested any improvements in person, behaviour, or costume.

      By the time that my coffee had arrived, the Father Rector had run dry of conversation and I could see that he was relieved when I joined in.

      In a few minutes I was telling Mr Percival about the symposium we had formed for the relating of preternatural adventures; and I presently asked him whether he had ever had any experience of the kind.

      He shook his head.

      ‘I have not,’ he said in his virile voice; ‘my business takes my time.’

      ‘I wish you had been with us earlier,’ put in the Rector. ‘I think you would have been interested.’

      ‘I am sure of it,’ he said. ‘I remember once – but you know, Father, frankly I am something of a sceptic.’

      ‘You remember—?’ I suggested.

      He smiled very pleasantly with eyes and mouth.

      ‘Yes, Mr Benson; I was once next door to such a story. A friend of mine saw something; but I was not with him at the moment.’

      ‘Well; we thought we had finished last night,’ I said, ‘but do you think you would be too tired to entertain us this evening?’

      ‘I shall be delighted to tell the story,’ he said easily. ‘But indeed I am a sceptic in this matter; I cannot dress it up.’

      ‘We want the naked fact,’ I said.

      I went sight-seeing with him that day; and found him extremely intelligent and at the same time accurate. The two virtues do not run often together; and I felt confident that whatever he chose to tell us would be salient and true. I felt, too, that he would need few questions to draw him out; he would say what there was to be said unaided.

      When we had taken our places that night, he began by again apologising for his attitude of mind.

      ‘I do not know, Reverend Fathers,’ he said, ‘what are your own theories in this matter; but it appears to me that if what seems to be preternatural can possibly be brought within the range of the natural, one is bound scientifically to treat it in that way. Now in this story of mine – for I will give you a few words of explanation first in order to prejudice your minds as much as possible – in this story the whole matter might be accounted for by the imagination. My friend who saw what he saw was under rather theatrical circumstances, and he is an Irishman. Besides that, he knew the history of the place in which he was; and he was quite alone. On the other hand, he has never had an experience of the kind before or since; he is perfectly truthful, and he saw what he saw in moderate daylight. I give you these facts first, and I think you would be perfectly justified in thinking they account for everything. As for my own theory, which is not quite that, I have no idea whether you will agree or disagree with it. I do not say that my judgment is the only sensible one, or anything offensive like that. I merely state what I feel I am bound to accept for the present.’

      There was a murmur of assent. Then he crossed his legs, leaned back and began:

      ‘In my first summer after I was called to the Bar I went down South Wales for a holiday with another man who had been with me at Oxford. His name was Murphy: he is a J.P. now, in Ireland, I think. I cannot think why we went to South Wales; but there it is: we did.

      ‘We took the train to Cardiff; sent on our luggage up the Taff Valley to an inn of which I cannot remember the name; but it was close to where Lord Bute has a vineyard. Then we walked up to Llandaff, saw St Tylo’s tomb; and went on again to this village.

      ‘Next morning we thought we would look about us before going on; and we went out for a stroll. It was one of the most glorious mornings I ever remember, quite cloudless and very hot; and we went up through woods to get a breeze at the top of the hill.

      ‘We found that the whole place was full of iron mines, disused now, as the iron is richer further up the country; but I can tell you that they enormously improved the interest of the place. We found shaft after shaft, some protected and some not, but mostly overgrown with bushes, so we had to walk carefully. We had passed half-a-dozen, I should think, before the thought of going down one of them occurred to Murphy.

      ‘Well, we got down one at last; though I rather wished for a rope once or twice; and I think it was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen. You know perhaps what the cave of a demon-king is like, in the first act of a pantomime. Well, it was like that. There was a kind of blue light that poured down the shafts, refracted from surface to surface; so that the sky was invisible. On all sides passages ran into total darkness; huge reddish rocks stood out fantastically everywhere in the pale light; there was a sound of water falling into a pool from a great height and presently, striking matches as we went, we came upon a couple of lakes of marvellously clear blue water through which we could see the heads of ladders emerging from other black holes of unknown depth below.

      ‘We found our way out after a while into what appeared to be the central hall of the mine. Here we saw plain daylight again, for there was an immense round opening at the top, from the edges of which curved away the sides of the shaft, forming a huge circular chamber.

      ‘Imagine the Albert Hall roofless; or better still, imagine Saint Peter’s with the top half of the dome removed. Of course it was far smaller; but it gave an impression of great size; and it could not have been less than two hundred feet from the edge, over which we saw the trees against the sky, to the tumbled dusty rocky floor where we stood.

      ‘I can only describe it as being like a great, burnt-out hell in the Inferno. Red dust lay everywhere, escape seemed impossible; and vast crags and galleries, with the mouths of passages showing high up, marked by iron bars and chains, jutted out here and there.

      ‘We amused ourselves here for some time, by climbing up the sides, calling to one another, for the whole place was full of echoes, rolling down stones from some of the upper ledges: but I nearly ended my days there.

      ‘I was standing on a path, about seventy feet up, leaning against the wall. It was a path along which feet must have gone a thousand times when the mine was in working order; and I was watching Murphy who was just emerging on to a platform opposite me, on the other side of the gulf.

      ‘I put my hand behind me to steady myself; and the next instant very nearly fell forward over the edge at the violent shock to my nerves given by a wood-pigeon who burst out of a hole, brushing my hand as he passed. I gripped on, however, and watched the bird soar out across space, and then up and out at the opening; and then I became aware that my knees were beginning to shake. So I stumbled along, and threw myself down on the little platform on to which the passage led.

      ‘I suppose I had been more startled than I knew; for I tripped as I went forward; and knocked my knee rather sharply on a stone. I felt for an instant quite sick with the pain on the top of jangling nerves; and lay there saying what I am afraid I ought not to have said.

      ‘Then Murphy came up when I called; and we made our way together through one of the sloping shafts; and came out on to the hillside among the trees.’

      Mr Percival paused; his lips twitched a moment with amusement.

      ‘I am afraid I must recall my promise,’ he said. ‘I told you all this because I was anxious to give a reason for the feeling I had about the mine, and which I am bound to mention. I felt I never wanted to see the place again – yet in spite of what followed, I do not necessarily attribute my feelings to anything but the shock and the pain that I had had. You understand that?’

      His bright eyes ran round our faces.

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said Monsignor sharply, ‘go on please, Mr Percival.’

      ‘Well then!’

      The lawyer uncrossed his

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