Unholy Relics and Other Uncanny Tales

THE DEMONIAC GOAT

“Well, of all the coincidences!”, exclaimed Alan Granville, suddenly emerging from behind a mountain of tomes and papers, and peering over at me through the thick fog of tobacco smoke hanging over the study.

“What’s that?” I inquired, laying down my pen to refill a foul but trustworthy briar by way of a brief respite from my struggles with the discrepant texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

“Why,” replied my colleague, “that wretched press-cutting agency to which we made a subscription about a year ago has at last sent us something really useful—which saves us the trouble of wading through the columns of politics and other ignorant rubbish written by reporters.

“The coincidence,” he added, “is that it immediately concerns the matter in hand.”

This, I should explain, was our joint volume of research on the Anglian kingdom of Mercia, a companion volume to the one we wrote on The Rise and Fall of Wessex which received so favourable a reception at the hands of the few reviewers who have any knowledge of the subjects dealt with in the books they review.

“Listen to this, Gregs,” Alan went on, holding up the cutting. He proceeded to read:

“We needn’t trouble about what he told the imaginative and obviously half-educated reporter fellow,” Alan broke off. “Let’s see if there is anything else of real information-value.

“Ah, yes,” he proceeded, reading from a patch further down the cutting, “here is something specially in your line, Gregs:—

“Yes, that seems to be all of technical interest—there follows a lot of journalese rubbish about Offa of Mercia, mostly wrong, including the dates, apparently slung together by some hasty sub-editor with the aid of a few popular works of reference, as usual.”

“Well,” I remarked, “before we go any further with our work, seeing that my own section has just reached the career of Offa, I think we ought to go up to Derbyshire and see these finds, don’t you? No doubt the mint-moneyers’ names will give us some valuable evidence. It’s not every day that an Anglian coin-hoard turns up.”

Alan agreed that the discovery, coming at this juncture, was most opportune and that we certainly ought, as he jocularly put it, to inspect the body, “preferably before some fool of a coroner impounds the hoard,” he added caustically.

So it was that this bright June morning after breakfast found us poring over the maps, for I had to confess complete ignorance as to the whereabouts of this Cademan Tor.

“The Lord alone knows where it is,” said Alan. “I never heard of the place till I took up this cutting. The name, however, is definitely Keltic as to the last part, and I shouldn’t wonder if the Cademan is, not the Old English name it looks on paper, but the Keltic roots—”

“All right, old man,” I interrupted. “Suppose we try to find the place first? Anyway, you ought to know it, with all the hill-climbing you used to do in the Long Vacs.”

It was very ridiculous of me, I know, but somehow I felt slightly irritated that my encyclopedia had let me down—for I have never known a man of so vast a range of knowledge as my collaborator, an accomplishment borne out by his looks, for Alan Granville resembles a compound-portrait of Dante, Savonarola, and the traditional idea of Sherlock Holmes, with ascetic features and an enormous dome of a head.

I buried my nose again in my Anglo-Saxon texts, Granville meantime nosing about in a dim corner at the top of the bookshelves which stretch, crammed full, from floor to ceiling of our den. Suddenly, he descended the library step-ladder empty-handed, exclaiming,

“Why, hang it, I ought to have remembered, without wasting time looking for the general atlas I have heard of Cademan Tor. It’s about two miles from the famous Elden Hole, that queer ravine in Elden Hill, near the road from Buxton to Castleton.”

“Then how do we get there?” I asked, cheered by the rehabilitation of my encyclopaedia.

“Ah, that I don’t know,” Alan smiled; but the question was soon settled by reference to the A.A. and other maps, which show Elden Hill to be about four miles from Castleton, in the heart of the Peak Forest district, with a little station called Edale, on a branch line, as the nearest railway communication.

“So our Ali Baba’s cave of the coins is still further in the wilderness,” said Alan, “and the question is, where we shall find the reverend explorer?”

“Well,” I suggested, “look him up in Crockford; he’s probably one of these country parsons with a nice fat living and nothing to do, somewhere in the district.”

We were considerably astonished to find that the “cave-hunting clergyman,” as the newspaper dubbed him, did not honour the pages of the ponderous Church of England clerical directory with his name or benefice.

“Funny,” I mused, “unless, of course, he isn’t really a cleric, but only some dissenting minister—though they don’t usually go in for historical research. Try the list of new ordinations since the work was in the press; perhaps he has only just donned the dog-collar.”

“You idiot,” growled Alan testily, “this cutting says he has been cave-exploring in the district for years. I read it out, didn’t I?”

None the less, as I pointed out that the rev. gentleman might have been ordained recently and late in life, he went on industriously hunting through the book in search of the list of new names; but here also he drew blank. In the act of shutting the directory, however, he gave a start of surprise.

“Well, if this doesn’t take the biscuit,” he exclaimed (for my worthy collaborator has a habit of using slang when surprised at anything). “I just happened to see the obituary page of fresh corpses since the last edition, and behold, it says that the Rev. Ashley Tudor, who retired in 1925 from the living of Snuffleby Parva (which by the way is in south Derbyshire) died on May 10th last year. There must be some awful mistake. I’ve never known Crockford make an error like that before.”

“The best thing we can do,” I opined, “is undoubtedly to take the risk and bank on the allegedly-deceased cleric being alive, and running him to earth at the scene of his labours. Alive he is, all right—why, he gave this reporter fellow an interview—when was it?” (I consulted the date of the cutting) “only three days ago—on Monday.

“As we don’t know where to write to him,” I added, seeing that Crockford gave no address for the deceased, “we had better go up in the car to-morrow. Trains don’t seem much use in that wild region.”

It was settled, then, and we compiled the route from our Leicestershire Wold manor-house up to Castleton without difficulty. Alan agreed that we had best take the Apostles, our two faithful manservants, with us, as they would be useful if there was any mountain-scrambling to be done, and we thought we might as well seize the opportunity to descend the famous Elden Hole itself.

So James and John were rung for, and merely told to get everything ready for a possible three days’ stay in the Derbyshire hill-district. It was quite sufficient for those excellent fellows. We knew that early next morning we should find the luggage-compartment of the car neatly packed with handbags, stout boots and leggings, climbing-irons, ropes, and Norfolk suits, cameras, specimen-cases, and archæological “restoring” chemicals—how different from the unnecessary questions and fussing of fool female housekeepers and wives!

I heed not waste the reader’s time with any rhapsody over the route or the wonderful Derbyshire scenery. Those who have once succumbed to it go there again and again; those who have not seen it have missed a precious possession of this our England.

Suffice it to say that, making an early start and taking our time on the journey, we found ourselves at Castleton in comfortable time to choose a hotel as headquarters, and to have lunch. After the meal, we took the precaution of getting our directions for reaching Cademan Tor from the landlord, who knew every inch of the district—as innkeepers in that region have to, indeed, owing to the annual stream of visitors for hill-climbing.

He gave us clear instructions as to reaching the hill itself, but about the man we had come to seek he was less certain, even with the aid of the newspaper cutting.

“Hm! Rev. Ashley Tudor? The most I know about him is that he’s reputed to live in a sort of old army-hut bungalow of his own up there in the hills,” said Mine Host. “I’ve never seen him, and he’s said to be a bit unsociable, except to others that studies what he does—I remember the reporter-chap havin’ a bite here and inquirin’ for him. The reverend never comes down to the villages—but you’d best do what the reporter did: I sent him along to old Robbins’ store for directions, as Robbins delivers the rev.’s groceries each week.”

This was a bit of luck, and, armed with the address of, Mr. Robbins’ general emporium, we lost no time in seeking him out. The old tradesman scratched his head vigorously when asked for directions for reaching our excavator’s hill-stronghold, and the best he could suggest was that, as we had a car, and the next day was Friday, the day his van always went up there with supplies, we’d best follow the van from the shop at nine a.m. next day. The reporter chap, he said, had tipped his vanman handsomely to run him up there; but Joe was a good lad an’ often stayed overtime, so Mr. Robbins magnanimously didn’t mind!

The worthy Joe had evidently been informed, and no doubt saw visions of rolling in wealth from tips this week, for he was plainly on the look-out for us next morning, and warned us to be prepared suddenly to follow his van off the Elden Hole road on to a bumpy cart-track, which, he hinted, we’d never find without his aid. Automatically I made sure I had a couple of half-crowns in readiness, and got behind our wheel.

The previous afternoon and evening we had devoted to touring round a little, picking out the various hills with the aid of the map, so that we knew Cademan Tor on approaching it now.

Joe duly led us into the wilds and up his villainous cart-road, finally halting his van in front of a big, sprawling bungalow concocted out of a variegated collection of old army-huts and log-cabins built on the Elizabethan E-plan, with a grassy plot between the main block and the two side-wings.

On what appeared to be the front door, out of about half a dozen, fluttered a paper, which the worthy Joe informed us was the rev’s shopping list for next week. Joe had never set eyes on the occupant, but “he allus paid ’is bills regl’ar by them cheque things, so nubuddy didn’t worry!”

We tipped Joe handsomely and let him depart, then took a look round after knocking without response. It was evident that no-one was at home, and heavy curtains screened every window. On the verandah was piled, in indiscriminate confusion, all the paraphernalia of a cave-exploring antiquary—irons, ropes, spiked boots, a theodolite tripod, and every conceivable sort of excavated object, from mere fossil ammonites to Roman and Bronze Age pottery and flint implements. Evidently his reverence had been haying a good bag of late, but was not very methodical with his finds, unless these were throw-out pieces.

Concluding that our quarry would no doubt be found already at work in his cave, we surveyed with our binoculars the hillside which we now knew to be Cademan Tor; in the valley between it and the opposite hill, the bungalow stood securely sheltered from view. Finally Alan saw signs of a dark cave-mouth half-way up the slope so, leaving the Apostles in the car for the time being, we struggled up the loose débris to the cave.

We had been lucky in our selection, for as we finally staggered on to a fair ledge in front of its mouth, we heard the vigorous sound of a pickaxe proceeding from the depths, and hallooed, “Anyone there?”

Instantly the axe was dropped, footsteps approached, and there emerged, blinking in the sunlight, an extraordinary figure. He was well over six feet in height, but bent with the appearance of great age, borne out by a withered, absolutely vulturish face, surmounted by the most weird dome of a head I have ever seen, which in its turn was crowned by a large, wide-spreading biretta such as the high-church Anglican clergy affect. The whole structure looked as though it would part company at any moment from the scraggy neck, which was encircled by an orthodox clerical dog-collar, none too clean. Our parson was coatless, but retained his clerical waistcoat, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing thin, sinewy arms as long as a gorilla’s, and the way he walked, bent and somewhat bow-legged, added to the impression. His eyes belied the rest of his aged appearance. They should, one felt, have been pale and watery, but as he came out of his cavern they glowed a queer fiery-green, like a cat’s; and I took an instinctive dislike to the man.

“What’s this?” he snapped, “more reporters?”

We hastened to disillusion him, and presented our credentials, at which his manner underwent an immediate change.

“You see,” he said somewhat apologetically, “that fool of a coroner must have told the newspaper-people about the coins when I reported the find. I hate society and being disturbed—but of course your visit’s a different matter, and you are very welcome to examine the hoard. I know your Wessex study, of course—I keep in touch with the scientific world through technical reviews.”

“Better come in and view the site while we’re here,” he added, leading the way back into his cave, “the coins are down at my house.”

We followed our sinister-looking guide through a maze of passages, some of which, he held, were natural, with enlargements made artificially; and as we went, we noticed an extraordinary and increasingly powerful odour of goats.

I saw Alan sniff, and some instinct warned me that he was about to comment on it; an even deeper instinct made me nudge him and lay a hand on my lips in warning. He understood.

Our guide finally stopped in a particularly fine cavern, well lit with oil-flare lamps, its floor now pretty well ravaged by his explorations. He obligingly indicated the spot where he had found the jar and coins, and we soon forgot the man’s repulsive appearance in his obviously expert knowledge, which came out in an animated discussion as to the probable historical reasons for the burial of the hoard just after the death of King Offa.

I suppose we must have involuntarily sniffed despite our caution, for he said suddenly, “Ah, yes, you can probably smell goat! It’s only the pet companion of my labours.”

Turning towards a corner in the shadows, before we could make any comment on this surprising piece of information, he croaked:

“Asmodeus, come here, old fellow!”

There was a pattering of hooves, an uncanny bleat; and there trotted into view, from some other cavern whose entrance we could not have noticed, a most noble outsize in billygoats.

“I call him Asmodeus after the famous demon, you know,” said the ancient cleric with a queer chuckle—and I could have sworn the beast pricked up its ears and knew every word he said.

Alan and I exchanged glances that communicated a mutual opinion that we had better make friends with the beast and act as though there was nothing unusual in a retired clergyman being kept company by a goat on an excavating expedition.

“I hope he’s friendly,” said I with an assumed jocularity. “The last goat with which I tried to get on good terms simply butted me into a village duckpond, and I’ve been a bit scared of them since.”

Asmodeus looked at me reproachfully, and I am ready to this day to swear that his beard bristled up. He tapped up to me and actually put out a forehoof, which I shook gravely, whereat he gave a pleased bleat that had in it the suggestion of a nasty chuckle.

Alan bent down and patted him gently on the head, trying hard to disguise a look of repulsion, for the creature stank to high heaven as only a goat can, though its coat was snow-white.

Asmodeus gave a grave nod, as though to say he was pleased with this reception of him, and retired respectfully to stand immediately in his master’s rear. There he remained till we had finished our examination of the cavern-flooring, and the discussion about the hoard.

“Well, we had better go down now and see the coins,” said the Rev. Ashley Tudor—and before we even moved towards the passage-way, that infernal goat trotted forward to lead the procession.

“I say,” I exclaimed, quite taken off guard by this, “that animal seems amazingly intelligent, Mr. Tudor!”

“Ye-es!” replied the old priest slowly, “he knows every word you say. He even knows whether one is thinking good or evil of him! Don’t you Asmodeus?”

“Ma—a—aa—ah! Ma!” replied the beast, and trotted before us into the sunshine. It preceded us, with little consideration for the human foothold as compared with its own, down a vile and dangerous path among the loess to the bungalow, where it walked round our car, inspecting it and our worthy servants with evident disapproval.

The Rev. Ashley Tudor, whose appearance was something of an apparition to the Apostles, to judge by the scared expression of their faces when our party hove in sight, fished out a key from his waistcoat and opened the front door, into a passage as cluttered with pottery and apparatus as the verandah. As he opened it, there emerged, even more powerfully than in the cavern, that appalling odour of goat.

“The beast must live in the place with him,” I thought.

The uncanny parson whipped round.

“Yes, Mr. Wayne,” he said with some asperity, “Asmodeus does live in the house. He is cleaner than many human beings and more intelligent than ninety per cent of the fools!”

This thought-reading gave me a shock; I felt it safer to concentrate my mind purely on our archæological mission.

Opening a door on the right into a study surprisingly tidy after what we had seen so far, and crowded with learned books, our host waved a hand to a huge table, on which were laid out methodically, each on a card, and with some of the legends already copied on to the cards, the coins of his hoard.

“As you see,” he said, “I’ve already started on the classification; but a few points puzzle me, and I shall be very glad of your expert help.”

For the next couple of hours, the mutual task drove out all the unpleasant impressions we had formed, especially as, when motioning us to take chairs and begin our examination, Mr. Tudor had surprisingly lit up some kind of a brazier and thrown into it a form of incense, remarking that we naturally couldn’t be expected to be accustomed to the aroma of a goat, as we didn’t live there. So, with this, and all three of us smoking pipes, friend Asmodeus was temporarily forgotten.

What the wretched creature was doing in the meantime, I have no idea; but the door had been left ajar, it being summer, and finally he butted it gently open, stood on the threshold, and tapped twelve times with a hoof on the wooden floor.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the priest, “it is noon. He has come to tell me, you see. You really must have something to eat—I have plenty in. What about your servants out in the car? I’d quite forgotten them.”

We thanked him, and accepted for ourselves, but I knew that on such expeditions as this the Apostles always brought their own snacks and a thermos flask which, I happen to know, contained something stronger than tea. However, I went out to see if they were all right, and found them seated comfortably on the mossy grass playing chess, to which they were much addicted, with a pocket set.

“Gor lumme, guv’nor,” said James, a somewhat superstitious Cockney, “I wouldn’t go in that ’eowse, beggin’ your pardon. That there ’eathen goat’s bin a-iffin’ rahnd us till it fair give me the cripes, it did!”

Being permitted to have their own snack in privacy, the good fellows were much relieved, and I left them to it.

I must do our peculiar host the justice to say that for a bachelor in the wilds he put up an excellent lunch, apparently single-handed, and the man was certainly deeply learned in the archæology of his district, no less than in the technique of cave-exploration.

We obtained valuable information from his find of coins, obtained his ready permission to use it in our book, and got on to discussing the question of the gap between the Roman occupation and the Anglian, comparing the ancient Derbyshire mines with those of the Mendips, and so on.

Finally, the meal over, the Rev. Ashley Tudor led us into another room, kept in perfect order as a museum, remarking, “Now I will show you something really curious.”

In splendid isolation on a raised pedestal in the middle of the floor stood a Roman altar, some three feet high, of the type you find on Hadrian’s Wall. In an instant we were on our knees to examine its dedicatory inscription, which, to our astonishment, was to a compound-deity of whom we had never heard anywhere else, “Apollo Lugtus”—obviously a mixture of the Latin sun-god Apollo and his Keltic counterpart, Lugh, god of the mid-summer festival.

“Good-heavens!” exclaimed Alan, “this is one of the sensations of the century, to students of Roman Britain! Why on earth haven’t you published it in the Journal of Roman Studies?”

Mr. Tudor gave that queer, unpleasant chuckle—and we were startled to hear in our immediate rear the sarcastic little bleat of his wretched goat, which had hoofed into the museum in our wake.

“Well,—er, you see,” he said, “for one thing, it is not long since I found it; for another, I find it far too—er—interesting, to want it carried off from its native surroundings.”

“There is more in this than meets the eye,” I thought to myself. “Most scholars would have itched to get the thing deposited safely in one of our national museums.” I asked, aloud:

“Is it permissible to ask where you found it, Mr. Tudor? It looks as if there ought to be a fine Roman villa somewhere around, by this altar.”

“Oh, yes,” he replied instantly, “there is no secret about that. I found the altar—or rather, dear Asmodeus found it” (here that vile animal gave a bleat of self-satisfaction) “in that inner cave from which you saw him emerge this morning. You see, he found the cave, nosing around while I was exploring the one outside it, from which the coins came.”

I observed that a contraption like a porter’s barrow, on which the altar had evidently been wheeled down from the cave, still stood just inside the door, but thought no more of it at the time. I was to recall the fact later with vividness.

There was much else in the museum-room to interest us, and before we realised how time had sped, we were having tea with the learned cleric. We then tried to make our excuses, saying we had detained him far too long, but with almost pathetic eagerness, he begged us to stay, pointing out that we had a long June evening before us to see other caves he had found, and that he had plenty of room, if only we would stay the night.

“But what about our two servants?” said Alan, “we shall want them to assist in the hill-climbing, from your description of the inaccessible nature of some of the caves, but we can’t possibly expect you to find room for them, also. Besides, what about the hotel, where we have already booked rooms?”

“My dear sir!” exclaimed Mr. Tudor. “I assure you I have room for all, and I shall be deeply disappointed if you don’t stay—for to-morrow I shall have an archæological marvel to show you, one which you will be the first scholars in all England to see—nay, the first people to see in nearly 2,000 years!”

I began to think the vulture-faced old scholar slightly mad, but my curiosity was piqued. Anyhow, he added sanely enough:

“I suggest your men, if one of them can drive, go back and tell the hotel people you will not be returning there tonight—I am not on the telephone.”

There seemed no other course open, so I went out and instructed James, who was a good driver, to do this, making sure he would find his way back easily. Fortunately, both James and John had an excellent ‘bump’ of locality, and I had no qualms on this score. They were enjoined to return as soon as possible, as their services would be needed with the climbing tackle. At first they were respectfully rebellious against the idea of sleeping in the weird old parson’s bungalow, but I reassured them and promised them they would not have the goat for company, so off they went; and until their return we passed the time with our host in going over a large-scale map he had made of all the caves on and around Cademan Tor, that he had so far discovered.

Here Alan triumphantly got on his place-name hobby horse.

“You know, Mr. Tudor,” he said, “it’s queer you should find that altar in a cave on a hill named Cademan Tor. Apparently the first part is the common Saxon names Cædmon, but the Keltic Tor belies it, and I have been wondering if—”

“Exactly,” broke in the cleric with an imperious wave of his hand, “I know just what you are going to suggest: that the Cademan is a corruption of the Keltic roots Cadh moin, meaning, the Holy Hill.”

Alan, now as much the victim of the uncanny old man’s thought-reading powers as I had been, registered astonishment, and agreed that this was in his mind.

“Yes,” said our host gravely, “and there is more in it even than that. Happily you will be with me to see the result of an unique experiment tomorrow morning at sunrise—may I remind you that it is Midsummer Day, the Day of Lugh, the Keltic Apollo?”

Our car now roared up the spring-racking track, the Apostles having safely completed their mission; and within half an hour they were assisting the three of us in a perilous scramble along the face of the cliff-like hill with ropes and grapples.

Until it was nearly dark we explored cave after cave with our amazing host, who had the agility of a man of twenty, and uncomfortably reminded me of a goat himself in his flair for footholds where we could see none.

Supper in his bungalow, at which he democratically insisted on James and John joining the table, was a pleasant enough meal in the soft lighting of oil-lamps, and for this brief space the Rev. Ashley Tudor seemed almost the country vicar or rector he was alleged to have been, drawing out our rather tongue-tied servants, helping them to excellent beer, talking to them about their past careers, their service as army batmen, and how they liked taking part in queer jobs connected with history. By the time they had been shown their room, furnished with a couple of camp-bedsteads (as also were ours) they had quite overcome their terror of the goat, who was nowhere to be seen or—mercifully—smelt! I heard John remark to James as they retired that “the old cove ain’t so bad arter all.”

Tired with the bracing Derbyshire air, we turned in early to the rough but substantial comforts of this lonely mountain camp, our ancient host lighting us to our rooms with a guttering oil-lamp and the peculiar wish that we would “Sleep well and await Apollo,” which I took to be a poetic way of saying, look for the sunrise—though somewhere in the back of my mind was a vague misgiving that caused me, I think, to sleep more lightly than usual. As for Alan, it would take a ton of bombs blowing up the Great Pyramid about his ears to wake him.

Whatever the cause, I slept very lightly, as I say, and was a prey to uneasy and confused dreams in which Shining Apollo and the wretched goat Asmodeus were accompanying the Rev. Ashley Tudor in a ludicrous dance to the tune of Greek pipes around the altar of Apollo-Lugtus, which somehow seemed to be in the cavern on Cademan Tor. Dimly I thought I heard a hoarse scream, instantly stifled; I half-woke, but dropped off again, fancying the sky was getting lighter.

It was a scream I had heard, though how long before, I could not judge, as I woke up suddenly in that warm balmy dawn one so often gets in June, at once sensing that something was wrong. Alert on the instant, I rushed to the next room, and with difficulty succeeded in rousing Alan.

“There’s something wrong in this place, I’m sure of it,” I whispered.

I ran across the wooden passage to the room allocated to the Apostles. They had vanished. The camp-bed clothes were strewn violently all over the floor, as though there had been a struggle, and one of the camp-beds had collapsed on the floor.

The room into which our host had turned after bidding us good-night was likewise empty; his bed had not been slept in. The air there was foul with goat-scent.

I looked in the museum-room. Both the altar and the porter’s barrow had vanished.

“Quick, Alan, for God’s sake!” I gasped, dashing back to his room, “quick, man—we may just save them! Sunrise—Midsummer Day—Lugh!”

I was beside myself with apprehension, and incoherent; but my colleague grasped what I meant, and flung himself into a dressing-gown and shoes, while I rushed next door to do the same. Into my pocket I slipped a small revolver I always carry—a habit born of much wandering in queer places.

We flew across the rugged ground and scrambled up the side of Cademan Tor in the ever-growing light, making direct for the cave of the coins.

Almost as we reached its mouth, there came a frightful, heart-rending yell, as of someone under torture, followed by a diabolical goat-bleating and a wild insane laugh.

The sun was rising, streaming from due east into the mouth of the cavern, its first rays falling on a terrible sight in the centre of the cavern floor.

There stood the altar we had seen the night before in the museum. On the altar squatted the great, evil billygoat Asmodeus, facing us; and behind it, on his knees in an attitude of obscene worship, was the Reverend Ashley Tudor, stark naked except for a gorgeous ecclesiastical cope round his shoulders and the clerical collar still round his neck, kissing the foul creature’s posterior—giving it the notorious osculum infame, or Kiss of Shame, the act of adoration to Satan in the ancient black magic. In his hand he held a curved sacrificial knife.

On the floor at the foot of the altar, bound hand and foot, lay our two dear, faithful servants, the Apostles, about to be offered as a living sacrifice to the hellish powers.

I saw red. I drew my revolver and fired into the vile body of the vulturine priest, as he was about to draw the knife across John’s throat, then at the diabolical goat, in rapid succession, while Alan dashed forward to see if our men yet lived.

A crash like thunder reverberated through the cave; the spits from my weapon were followed by two bursts of sulphurous blue flame—and both priest and goat vanished.

As Alan dragged James and John clear, I fired again, shattering the altar of Apollo to fragments. The air was full of an appalling stench of goat, cordite, sulphur, and burning human flesh.

“He’s gone! That fiend’s escaped! See if he’s in the far cave,” yelled Alan. I did not move, however.

“No,” I said, “calm yourself, old man. He has gone where I hope we shall never see him again.”

Tenderly we unbound our henchmen, so nearly slaughtered by the vanished madman, and helped them out of the cave to rest on the grass and recover from their ordeal. Of the two of us, I think I was the less stunned, for I had more realisation than my friend of the significance of all this.

“Come and sit down a bit, old fellow,” I said, taking Alan by the arm.

Out in the air, with the sun now risen in all his splendour, unseeing, on the polluted spot, we collapsed on the rough ground.

“Now listen, Alan,” I said, as calmly as my rage would allow. “You will never see the Reverend Ashley Tudor or his goat again. They have gone back whence they came—to Hell. That priest did die a year ago, I am convinced. From what we’ve just seen, we know now he was a Satanist, and that unholy animal was the Goat of Mendes.

“How he did it, I don’t know, but he possessed a secret even occultists today know is not lost: he kept alive on earth, probably by vampirism, a visible image of himself—his thought-form, if you like.

“Before his actual physical death, I think, he had found this altar because he knew where to look for it, he knew what it meant. Has it occurred to you that the brother of Apollo was Hermes, and the son of Hermes was the goat-foot Pan of the Wild? Pan, the spirit of all living things, who lives on all things living. Pan of the light and the Darkness, who in his latter aspect became the Devil of the Christian Church. Perhaps, you didn’t notice, but there was something very queer about that altar. Scratched in sgraffito one one side of it, away from the normal inscription all would read, was this:—

“You know its meaning, of course: to Apollo, Lugh of the Shadows, Marcus Aelius put this up in fulfilment of a vow. I only noticed it just as our host turned away to point out something else to you in the museum, and thought I had better keep quiet about it then.

“Our coming thus at the moment of sunrise, the crucial moment of sacrifice to the ancient Lugh on his midsummer festival, and my firing, broke the spell. By some mysterious means, it has caused that evil thought-form of the satanist priest to dissolve for ever—and with him what I can only believe was an evil elemental in the form of the symbolic goat, which with grim humour he had named after the demon Asmodeus.”

“Do you feel like coming back now into the cave for a minute?” I asked in conclusion, seeing Alan was regaining something of his self-possession.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We nearly had the murder of those two poor fellows on our conscience—and if we hadn’t brought them, it might have been us.”

We returned to the scene of Satan’s holocaust.

“As I thought,” I remarked, stooping to pick up from the floor an object for which I was searching.

It was the clerical collar, all that remained of the Reverend Ashley Tudor, M.A.

“See this, Alan,” I pointed out to him: “The only material thing about him. Even his cope has gone. I wondered why he kept the collar on, though coatless, digging on a hot day, when we first set eyes on him. This collar is covered with celluloid coating, but it is made of human skin—the Satanic charm which at the last availed him nothing.”

“My God!” exclaimed Alan, “perhaps that explains the superhuman strength which he must have had to transport the altar up the mountain single-handed at dead of night.”

The Apostles, though shaken, were now able to walk. Slowly we helped them down the mountain-side, dragged our footsteps back to the valley, and collected our property from that evil house; we drove unseeing through the beauteous scenery back to Castleton, and thence to get into touch with the police and the appropriate coroner.

What a nation-wide sensation our evidence would have created, had there been an inquest! It would have provided the greatest puzzle ever known in English law, as to what verdict the coroner should bring in, on the alleged decease of a man whose death-certificate showed him to have been deceased over a year, yet who had undoubtedly tried to commit the double murder of our faithful servants. We saw the coroner, and, being a wise solicitor, he decided to do nothing whatever!

The only simple thing about it was the coins, which the coroner declared Crown property, and which we were subsequently able to get into a museum.