Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

RICHARD RIDDLE, BOY DETECTIVE IN “THE CASE OF THE FRENCH SPY”

by KIM NEWMAN

I

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“ GOSH, DICK,” SAID Violet, “an ammonite!”

A chunk of rock, bigger than any of them could have lifted, had broken from the soft cliff and fallen on the shingle. Violet, on her knees, brushed grit and grime from the stone.

They were on the beach below Ware Cleeve, looking for clues.

This was not strictly a fossil-hunting expedition, but Dick knew Violet was mad about terrible lizards—which was what “dinosaur” meant in Greek, she had explained. On a recent visit to London, Violet had been taken to the prehistoric monster exhibit in Crystal Palace Park. She could not have been more excited if the life-size statues turned out to be live specimens. Paleontology was like being a detective, she enthused: working back from clues to the truth, examining a pile of bones and guessing what kind of body once wrapped around them.

Dick conceded her point. But the dinosaurs died a long, long time ago. No culprit’s collar would be felt. A pity. It would be a good mystery to solve. The Case of the Vanishing Lizards. No, The Mystery of the Disappearing Dinosaurs. No, The Adventure of the Absent Ammonites.

“Coo,” said Ernest. “Was this a monster?”

Ernest liked monsters. Anything with big teeth counted.

“Not really,” Violet admitted. “It was a cephalopod. That means “head-foot.”

“It was a head with only a foot?” Ernest liked the idea. “Did it hop up behind enemies, and sink its fangs into their bleeding necks?”

“It was more like a big shrimp. Or a squid with a shell.”

“Squid are fairly monstrous, Ernest,” said Dick. “Some grow giant and crush ships with their tentacles.”

Ernest made experimental crushing motions with his hands, providing squelching noises with his mouth.

Violet ran her fingers over the ammonite’s segments.

“Ammon was the ram-headed god of Ancient Egypt.”

Dick saw Ernest imagining that—an evil god butting unbelievers to death.

“These are called ‘ammonites’ because the many-chambered spiral looks like the horn of a ram. You know, like the big one in Mr. Crossan’s field.”

Ernest went quiet. He liked fanged monsters, giant squids and evil gods, but had a problem with animals. Once, the children were forced to go a long way round to avoid Mr. Crossan’s field. Ernest had come up with many tactical reasons for the detour, and Dick and Violet pretended to be persuaded by his argument that they needed to throw pursuers off their track.

The three children were about together all the time this summer. Dick was down from London, staying with Uncle Davey and Aunt Maeve. Both were a bit dotty. Uncle Davey used to paint fairyland scenes for children’s books, but was retired from that and drawing only to please himself. Last year, Violet showed up at Seaview Chase unannounced, having learned it was David Harvill’s house. She liked his illustrations, but genuinely liked the pictures in his studio even more.

Violet had taken an interest in Dick’s detective work. She had showed him around Lyme Regis, and the surrounding beaches and countryside. She wasn’t like a proper girl, so it was all right being friends with her. Normally, Dick couldn’t admit to having a girl as a friend. In summer, it was different. Ernest was Violet’s cousin, two years younger than her and Dick. Ernest’s father was in Africa fighting Boers, so he was with Violet’s parents for the school holidays.

They were the Richard Riddle Detective Agency. Their goal: to find mysteries, then solve them. Thus far, they had handled the Matter of the Mysterious Maidservant (meeting the Butcher’s Boy, though she was supposed to have a sweetheart at sea), the Curious Affair of the Derelict Dinghy (Alderman Hooke was lying asleep in it, empty beer bottles rolling around his feet) and the Puzzle of the Purloined Pasties (still an open case, though suspicion inevitably fell upon Tarquin “Tiger” Bristow).

Ernest had reasoned out his place in the firm. When Dick pointed the finger of guilt at the villain, Ernest would thump the miscreant about the head until the official police arrived. Violet, Ernest said, could make tea and listen to Dick explain his chain of deduction. Ernest, Violet commented acidly, was a dependable strong-arm man… unless the criminal owned a sheep, or threatened to make him eat parsnips, or (as was depressingly likely) turned out to be “Tiger” Bristow (the Bismarck of Bullies) and returned Ernest’s head-thumping with interest. Then, Dick had to negotiate a peace, like between Americans and Red Indians, to avoid bloodshed. When Violet broke off the Reservation, people got scalped.

It was a sunny August afternoon, but strong salt wind blew off the sea. Violet had tied back her hair to keep it out of her face. Dick looked up at Ware Cleeve: it was thickly wooded, roots poking out of the cliff-face like the fingers of buried men. The tower of Orris Priory rose above the treetops like a periscope.

Clues led to Orris Priory. Dick suspected smugglers. Or spies.

Granny Ball, who kept the pasty-stall near the Cobb, had warned the detectives to stay away from the shingle under the Cleeve. It was a haunt of “sea-ghosts”. The angry souls of shipwrecked sailors, half-fish folk from sunken cities and other monsters of the deep (Ernest liked this bit) were given to creeping onto the beach, clawing away at the stone, crumbling it piece by piece. One day, the Cleeve would collapse.

Violet wanted to know why the sea-ghosts would do such a thing. The landslide would only make another cliff, further inland. Granny winked and said, “Never you mind, lass” in a highly unsatisfactory manner.

Before her craze for terrible lizards, Violet had been passionate about myths and legends (it was why she liked Uncle Davey’s pictures). She said myths were expressions of common truth, dressed up to make a point. The shingle beach was dangerous, because rocks fell on it. People in the long ago must have been hit on the head and killed, so the sea-ghost story was invented to keep children away from danger. It was like a BEWARE THE DOG sign (Ernest didn’t like this bit), but out of date—as if you had an old, non-fierce hound but put up a BEWARE OF DANGEROUS DOG sign.

Being on the shingle wasn’t really dangerous. The cliffs wouldn’t fall and the sea-ghosts wouldn’t come.

Dick liked Violet’s reasoning, but saw better.

“No, Vile, it’s been kept up, this story. Granny and other folk round here tell the tale to keep us away because someone doesn’t want us seeing what they’re about.”

“Smugglers,” said Ernest.

Dick nodded. “Or spies. Not enough clues to be certain. But, mark my word, there’s wrong-doing afoot on the shingle. And it’s our job to root it out.”

It was too blowy to go out in Violet’s little boat, the SS Pterodactyl, so they had come on foot.

And found the ammonite.

Since the fossil wasn’t about to hop to life and attack, Ernest lost interest and wandered off, down by the water. He was looking for monster tracks, the tentacle-trails of a giant squid most likely.

“This might be the largest ammonite ever found here,” said Violet. “If it’s a new species, I get to name it.”

Dick wondered how to get the fossil to Violet’s house. It would be a tricky endeavour.

“You, children, what are you about?”

Men had appeared on the beach without Dick noticing. If they had come from either direction along the shore, he should have seen them.

“You shouldn’t be here. Come away from that evil thing, at once, now.”

The speaker was an old man with white hair, pince-nez on a black ribbon, an expression like someone who’s just bit into a cooking apple by mistake, and a white collar like a clergyman’s. He wore an old-fashioned coat with a thick, raised collar, cut away from tight britches and heavy boots.

Dick recognized the Reverend Mr. Sellwood, of Orris Priory.

With him were two bare-armed fellows in leather jerkins and corduroy trousers. Whereas Sellwood carried a stick, they toted sledge-hammers, like the ones convicts use on Dartmoor.

“Foul excrescence of the Devil,” said Sellwood, pointing his stick at Violet’s ammonite. “Brother Fose, Brother Fessel, do the Lord’s work.”

Fose and Fessel raised their hammers.

Violet leaned over, as if protecting a pet lamb from slaughter-men.

“Out of the way, foolish girl.”

“It’s mine,” she said.

“It’s nobody’s, and no good to anybody. It must be smashed. God would wish it…”

“But this find is important. To science.”

Sellwood looked as if that bite of cooker was in his throat, making his eyes water.

“Science! Bah, stuff and nonsense! Devil’s charm, my girl, that’s what this is!”

“It was alive, millions of millions of years ago.”

“The Earth is less than six thousand years old, child, as you would know if you read your scriptures.”

Violet, angry, stood up to argue. “But that’s not true. There’s proof. This is…”

Fose and Fessel took their opportunity, and brought the hammers down. The fossil split. Sharp chips flew. Violet—appalled, hands in tiny fists, mouth open—didn’t notice her shin bleeding.

“You can’t…”

“These so-called proofs, stone bones and long-dead dragons,” said Sellwood, “are the Devil’s trickeries.”

The Brethren smashed the ammonite to shards and powder.

“This was put here to fool weak minds,” lectured the Reverend. “It is the Church Militant’s sacred work to destroy such obscenities, lest more be tempted to blasphemy. This is not science, this is sacrilege.”

“It was mine,” Violet said quietly.

“I have saved you from error. You should thank me.”

Ernest came over to see what the noise was about. Sellwood bestowed a smile on the lad that afforded a glimpse of terrifying teeth.

Teeth on monsters were fine with Ernest; teeth like Sellwood’s would give him nightmares.

“A job well done,” said the Reverend. “Let us look further. More infernal things may have sprung up.”

Brother Fose leered at Violet and patted her on the head, which made her flinch. Brother Fessel looked stern disapproval at this familiarity. They followed Sellwood, swinging hammers, scouting for something to break to bits. Dick had an idea they’d rather be pounding on something that squealed and bled than something so long dead it had turned to stone.

Violet wasn’t crying. But she was hating.

More than before, Dick was convinced Sellwood was behind some vile endeavor. He had the look of a smuggler, or a spy.

Richard Riddle, Boy Detective, would bring the villain to book.

II

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Uncle Davey had let Dick set up the office of the Richard Riddle Detective Agency in a small room under the eaves. A gable window led to a small balcony that looked like a ship’s crow’s-nest. Seaview Chase was a large, complicated house on Black Ven, a jagged rise above Lyme Bay, an ideal vantage point for surveying the town and the sea.

Dick had installed his equipment—a microscope, boxes and folders, reference books, his collection of clues and trophies. Violet had donated some small fossils and her hammers and trowels. Ernest wanted space on the wall for the head of their first murderer: he had an idea that when a murderer was hanged, the police gave the head as a souvenir to the detective who caught him.

The evening after the fossil-smashing incident, Dick sat in the office and opened a new file and wrote Qrs Ndps ja qrs Dggjhbqs Dhhbrbfdqjm on a fresh sheet of paper. It was the RRDA. Special Cipher for The Case of the Ammonite Annihilator.

After breakfast the next day, the follow-up investigation began. Dick went into the airy studio on the first floor and asked Uncle Davey what he knew about Sellwood.

“Grim-visage?” said Uncle Davey, pulling a face. “Dresses as if it were fifty years ago? Of him, I know, to be frank, not much. He once called with a presentation copy of some verminous volume, printed at his own expense. I think he wanted me to find a proper publisher. Put on a scary smile to ingratiate. Maeve didn’t like him. He hasn’t been back. Book’s around somewhere, probably. Must chuck it one day. It’ll be in one of those piles.”

He stabbed a paintbrush towards the stacks which grew against one wall and went back to painting—a ship at sea, only there were eyes in the sea if you looked close enough, and faces in the clouds and the folds of sail-cloth. Uncle Davey liked hiding things.

When Violet and Ernest arrived, they set to searching book-piles.

It took a long time. Violet kept getting interested in irrelevant findings. Mostly titles about pixies and fairies and curses.

Sellwood’s book had migrated to near the bottom of an especially towering pile. Extracting it brought about a bad tumble that alerted Aunt Maeve, who rushed in assuming the whole of Black Ven was giving way and the house would soon be crashing into Lyme Bay. Uncle Davey cheerfully kicked the spill of volumes into a corner and said he’d sort them out one day, then noticed a wave suitable for hiding an eye in and forgot about the children. Aunt Maeve went off to get warm milk with drops of something from Cook.

In the office, the detectives pored over their find for clues.

“Omphalos Diabolicus, or: The Hoax of ‘Pre-History’,” intoned Dick, “by the Reverend Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood, published 1897, Orris Press, Dorset.” Uncle Davey said he paid for the printing, so I deduce that he is the sole proprietor of this phantom publisher. Ah-hah, the pages have not been cut after the first chapter, so I further deduce that it must be deadly dull stuff.”

He tossed the book to Violet, who got to work with a long knife, slitting the leaves as if they were the author’s throat. Then she flicked through pages, pausing only to report relevant facts. One of her talents was gutting books, discovering the few useful pages like a prospector panning gold dust out of river-dirt.

Daniel Sellwood wasn’t a proper clergyman any more. He had been booted out of the Church of England after shouting that the Bishop should burn Mr. Darwin along with his published works. Now, Sellwood had his own sect, the Church Militant—but most of his congregation were paid servants. Sellwood came from a wealthy Dorset family, rich from trade and shipping, and had been packed off to parson school because an older brother, George, was supposed to inherit the fortune—only the brother was lost at sea, along with his wife Rebecca and little daughter Ruth, and Daniel’s expectations increased. The sinking of the Sophy Briggs was a famous maritime mystery like the Mary Celeste and Captain Nemo: thirty years ago, the pride of the Orris-Sellwood Line went down in calm seas, with all hands lost. Sellwood skipped over the loss in a sentence, then spent pages talking up the “divine revelation” which convinced him to found a church rather than keep up the business.

According to Violet, a lot of folk around Lyme resented being thrown out of work when Sellwood dismantled his shipping concern and dedicated the family fortune to preaching anti-Darwinism.

“What’s an omphalo-thing?” asked Ernest.

“The title means ‘the Devil’s Belly-Button’,” said Violet, which made Ernest giggle. “He’s put Greek and Latin words together, which is poor Classics. Apart from his stupid ideas, he’s a terrible writer. Listen… ‘all the multitudinarious flora and fauna of divine creation constitute veritable evidence of the proof of the pellucid and undiluted accuracy of the Word of God Almighty Unchallenged as set down in the shining, burning, shimmering sentences, chapters and, indeed, books of the Old and New Testaments, hereinafter known to all righteous and right-thinking men as the Holy Bible of Glorious God.’ It’s as if he’s saying ‘this is the true truthiest truest truth of truthdom ever told truly by truth-trusters’.”

“How do the belly-buttons come into it?” asked Dick.

“Adam and Eve were supposed to have been created with navels, though—since they weren’t born like other people—they oughtn’t to have them.”

This was over Ernest’s head, but Dick knew how babies came and that his navel was a knot, where a cord had been cut and tied.

“To Sellwood’s way of thinking, just as Adam and Eve were created to seem as if they had normal parents, the Earth was created as if it had a pre-history, with geological and fossil evidence in place to make the planet appear much older than it says in the Bible.”

“That’s silly,” said Ernest.

“Don’t tell me, tell Sellwood,” said Violet. “He’s a silly, stupid man.

He doesn’t want to know the truth, or anyone else to either, so he breaks fossils and shouts down lecturers. His theory isn’t even original. A man named Gosse wrote a book with the same idea, though Gosse claimed God buried fossils to fool people while Sellwood says it was the Devil.”

Violet was quite annoyed.

“I think it’s an excuse to go round bullying people,” said Dick. “A cover for his real, sinister purpose.”

“If you ask me, what he does is sinister enough by itself.”

“Nobody did ask you,” said Ernest, which he always said when someone was unwise enough to preface a statement with “if you ask me”. Violet stuck her tongue out at him.

Dick was thinking.

“It’s likely that the Sellwood family were smugglers,” he said.

Violet agreed. “Smugglers had to have ships, and pretend to be respectable merchants. In the old days, they were all at it. You know the poem…”

Violet stood up, put a hand on her chest, and recited, dramatically.

“If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.

Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie,

Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.

Five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark,

Brandy for the parson, ’baccy for the clerk;

Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

And watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.”

She waited for applause, which didn’t come. But her recitation was useful. Dick had been thinking in terms of spies or smugglers, but the poem reminded him that the breeds were interdependent. It struck him that Sellwood might be a smuggler of spies, or a spy for smugglers.

“I’ll wager ‘Tiger’ Bristow is in this, too,” he said, snapping his fingers.

Ernest shivered, audibly.

“Is it spying or smuggling?” he asked.

“It’s both,” Dick replied.

Violet sat down again, and chewed on a long, stray strand of her hair.

“Tell Dick about the French Spy,” suggested Ernest.

Dick was intrigued.

“That was a long time ago, a hundred years,” she said. “It’s a local legend, not evidence.”

“You yourself say legends always shroud some truth,” declared Dick. “We must consider all the facts, even rumors of facts, before forming a conclusion.”

Violet shrugged. “It is about Sellwood’s house, I suppose…”

Dick was astonished. “And you didn’t think it was relevant! Sometimes, I’m astonished by your lack of perspicacity!”

Violet looked incipiently upset at his tone, and Dick wondered if he wasn’t going too far. He needed her in the Agency, but she could be maddening at times. Like a real girl.

“Out with it, Vile,” he barked.

Violet crossed her arms and kept quiet.

“I apologize for my tactlessness,” said Dick. “But this is vitally important. We might be able to put that ammonite-abuser out of business, with immeasurable benefit to science.”

Violet melted. “Very well. I heard this from Alderman Hooke’s father…”

Before her paleontology craze, Violet fancied herself a collector of folklore. She had gone around asking old people to tell stories or sing songs or remember why things were called what they were called. She was going to write them all up in a book of local legends and had wanted Uncle Davey to draw the pictures. She was still working on her book, but it was about Dinosaurs in Dorset now.

“I didn’t make much of it, because it wasn’t much of a legend. Just a scrap of history.”

“With a spy,” prompted Ernest. “A spy who came out of the sea!”

Violet nodded. “That’s more or less it. When England was at war with France, everyone thought Napoleon…”

“Boney!” put in Ernest, making fang-fingers at the corners of his mouth.

“Yes, Boney… everyone thought he was going to invade, like William the Conqueror. Along the coast people watched the seas. Signal-fires were prepared, like with the Spanish Armada. Most thought it likely the French would strike at Dover, but round here they tapped the sides of their noses…”

Violet imitated an old person tapping her long nose.

“…and said the last army to invade Britain had landed at Lyme, and the next would too. The last army was Monmouth’s, during his rebellion. He landed at the Cobb and marched up to Sedgmoor, where he was defeated. There are lots of legends about the Duke of Monmouth…”

Dick made a get-to-the-point gesture.

“Any rate, near the end of the eighteenth century, a man named Jacob Orris formed a vigilance patrol to keep watch on the beaches. Orris’s daughter married a sea-captain called Lud Sellwood; they begat drowned George and old Devil’s Belly-Button. Come to think, Orris’s patrol was like Sellwood’s Church Militant—an excuse to shout at folk and break things. Orris started a campaign to get “French beans” renamed “Free-from-Tyranny beans”, and had his men attack grocer’s stalls when no one agreed with him. Orris was expecting a fleet to heave to in Lyme Bay and land an army, but knew spies would be put ashore first to scout the around. One night, during a terrible storm, Orris caught a spy flung up on the shingle.”

“And…?”

“That’s it, really. I expect they hit him with hammers and killed him, but if anyone really knows, they aren’t saying.”

Dick was disappointed.

“Tell him how it was a special spy,” said Ernest.

Dick was intrigued again. Especially since Violet obviously didn’t want to say more.

“He was a sea-ghost,” announced Ernest.

“Old Hooke said the spy had walked across the channel,” admitted Violet. “On the bottom of the sea, in a special diving suit. He was a Frenchman, but—and you have to remember stories get twisted over the years—he had gills sewn into his neck so he could breathe underwater. As far as anyone knew round here, all Corsicans were like that. They said it was probably Boney’s cousin.”

“And they killed him?”

Violet shrugged. “I expect so.”

“And kept him pickled,” said Ernest.

“Now that isn’t true. One version of this story is that Orris had the dead spy stuffed, then hidden away. But the family would have found the thing and thrown it out by now. And we’d know whether it was a man or, as Granny Ball says, a trained seal. Stories are like limpets on rocks. They stick on and get thicker until you can’t see what was there in the first place.”

Dick whistled.

“I don’t see how this can have anything to do with what Sellwood is about now,” said Violet. “This may not have happened, and if it did, it was a hundred years ago. Sellwood wasn’t even born then. His parents were still children.”

“My dear Vile, a century-old mystery is still a mystery. And crime can seep into a family like water in the foundations, passed down from father to son…”

“Father to daughter to son, in this case.”

“I haven’t forgotten that. This mystery goes deep. It’s all about the past. And haven’t you said that a century is just a heartbeat in the long life of the planet?”

She was coming round, he saw.

“We have to get into Orris Priory,” said Dick.

III

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“Why are we on the shingle?” asked Ernest. “The Priory is up there, on top of the Cleeve.”

Dick had been waiting for the question. Deductions impressed more if he didn’t just come out with cleverness, but waited for a prompt.

“Remember yesterday? Sellwood seemed to turn up suddenly, with Fose and Fessel. If they’d been walking on the beach, we’d have seen them ages before they arrived. But we didn’t. Therefore, there must be a secret way. A smugglers’ tunnel.”

Violet found some pieces of the fossil. She looked towards the cliff.

“We were facing out to sea, and they came from behind,” she said.

She tossed her ammonite-shard, which rebounded off the soft rock-face.

The cliff was too crumbly for caves that might conceal a tunnel. The children began looking closely, hoping for a hidden door.

After a half-hour, Ernest complained that he was hungry.

After an hour, Violet complained that she was fed up with rocks.

Dick stuck to it. “If it was easy to find, it wouldn’t be hidden,” he kept saying.

Ernest began to make helpful suggestions that didn’t help but needed to be argued with.

“Maybee they came up under the sea and swam ashore?”

“They weren’t wet and we would have seen them,” countered Dick.

“Maybee they’ve got invisible diving suits that don’t show wetness?”

“Those haven’t been invented yet.”

“Maybee they’ve invented them but kept it quiet?”

“It’s not likely…”

“But not impossible, and you always say that ‘when you’ve eliminated the impossible…’”

“Actually, Ernest, it is impossible!”

“Prove it.”

“The only way to prove something impossible is to devote your entire life to trying to achieve it, and the lives of everyone to infinity throughout eternity, then not succeed…”

“Well, get started…”

“…and that’s impractical!”

Dick knew he was shouting, but when Ernest got into one of these maybee moods—which he called his “clever spells”—everyone got a headache, and usually wound up giving in and agreeing with something they knew to be absurd just to make Ernest shut up. After that, he would be hard to live with for the rest of the day, puffed up like a toad with a smugness that Violet labeled “very unattractive,” which prompted him to snipe that he didn’t want to attract anyone like her, and her to counter that he would change his mind in a few years, and him to… well, it was a cycle Dick had lived through too often.

Then Violet found a hinge. Two, in fact.

Dick got out his magnifying glass and examined the hinges. Recently oiled, he noted. Where there were hinges, there must be a door. Hidden.

“Where’s the handle?” asked Ernest.

“Inside,” said Violet.

“What’s the use of a door it only opens from one side?”

“It’d keep out detectives, like us,” suggested Violet.

“There was no open door when Sellwood was here,” observed Dick. “It closed behind him. He’d want to open it again, rather than go home the long way.”

“He had two big strong men with hammers,” said Violet, “and we’ve got you and Ernest.”

Dick tried to be patient.

He stuck his fingers into a crack in the rock, and worked down, hoping to get purchase enough to pull the probable door open.

“Careful,” said Violet.

“Maybee…”

“Shut up, Ernest,” said Dick.

He found his hand stuck, but pulled free, scraping his knuckles.

There was an outcrop by the sticking point, at about the height where you’d put a door-handle.

“Ah-hah,” said Dick, seizing and turning the rock.

A click, and a section of the cliff pulled open. It was surprisingly light, a thin layer of stone fixed to a wooden frame.

A section of rock fell off the door.

“You’ve broken it now,” said Ernest.

It was dark inside. From his coat-of-many-hidden-pockets, Dick produced three candle-stubs with metal holders and a box of matches. For his next birthday, he hoped to get one of the new battery-powered electrical lanterns—until then, these would remain RRDA standard issue.

Getting the candles lit was a performance. The draught kept puffing out match-flames before the wicks caught. Violet took over and mumsily arranged everything, then handed out the candles, showing Ernest how to hold his so wax didn’t drip on his fingers.

“Metal’s hot,” said Ernest.

“Perhaps we should leave you here as look-out,” said Dick. “You can warn us in case any dogs come along.”

The metal apparently wasn’t too hot, since Ernest now wanted to continue. He insisted on being first into the dark, in case there were monsters.

Once they were inside, the door swung shut.

They were in a space carved out of the rock and shored up with timber. Empty barrels piled nearby. A row of fossil-smashing hammers arranged where Violet could spit at them. Smooth steps led upwards, with the rusted remains of rings set into the walls either side.

“‘Brandy for the parson, ’baccy for the clerk’,” said Violet.

“Indubitably,” responded Dick. “This is clear evidence of smuggling.”

“What do people smuggle these days?” asked Violet. “Brandy and tobacco might have been expensive when we were at war with France and ships were slow, but that was ages ago.”

Dick was caught out. He knew there was still contraband, but hadn’t looked into its nature.

“Jewels, probably,” he guessed. “And there’s always spying.”

Ernest considered the rings in the wall.

“I bet prisoners were chained here,” he said, “until they turned to skellytones!”

“More likely people hold the rings while climbing the slippery stairs,” suggested Violet, “especially if they’re carrying heavy cases of… jewels and spy-letters.”

Ernest was disappointed.

“But they could be used for prisoners.”

Ernest cheered up.

“If I was a prisoner, I could ’scape”, he said. He put his hand in a ring, which was much too big for him and for any grown-up too. Then he pulled and the ring came out of the wall.

Ernest tried to put it back.

Dick was tense, expecting tons of rock to fall on them.

No collapse happened.

“Be careful touching things,” he warned his friends. “We were lucky that time, but there might be deadly traps.”

He led the way up.

IV

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The steps weren’t steep, but went up a long way. The tunnel had been hewn out of rock. New timbers, already bowed and near-cracking, showed where the passage had been shored after falls.

“We must be under the Priory,” he said.

They came to the top of the stairs, and a basement-looking room. Wooden crates were stacked.

“Cover your light,” said Dick.

Ernest yelped as he burned his hand.

“Carefully,” Dick added.

Ernest whimpered a bit.

“What do you suppose is in these?” asked Violet. “Contraband?”

“Instruments of evil?” prompted Ernest.

Dick held his candle close to a crate. The slats were spaced an inch or so apart. Inside were copies of Omphalos Diabolicus.

“Isn’t the point of smuggling to bring in things people want?” asked Violet. “I can’t imagine an illicit market for unreadable tracts.”

“There could be coded spy messages in the books,” Dick suggested hopefully.

“Even spies trained to resist torture in the dungeons of the Tsar wouldn’t be able to read through these to get any message,” said Violet. “My deduction is that these are here because Sellwood can’t get anybody to buy his boring old book.”

“Maybee he should change his name to Sellwords.”

Dick had the tiniest spasm of impatience. Here they were, in the lair of an undoubted villain, having penetrated secret defenses, and all they could do was make dubiously sarky remarks about his name.

“We should scout further,” he said. “Come on.”

He opened a door and found a gloomy passageway. The lack of windows suggested they were still underground. The walls were panelled, wood warped and stained by persistent damp.

The next room along had no door and was full of rubble. Dick thought the ceiling had fallen in, but Violet saw at once that detritus was broken-up fossils.

“Ammonites,” she said, “also brachiopods, nautiloids, crinoids, plagiostoma, coroniceras, gryphaea and calcirhynchia.”

She held up what looked like an ordinary stone.

“This could be the knee-bone of a scelidosaurus. One was discovered in Charmouth, in Liassic cliffs just like these. The first near-complete dinosaur fossil to come to light. This might have been another find as important. Sellwood is a vandal and a wrecker. He should be hit on the head with his own hammers.”

Dick patted Violet on the back, hoping she would cheer up.

“It’s only a knee,” said Ernest. “Nothing interesting about knees.”

“Some dinosaurs had brains in their knees. Extra brains to do the thinking for their legs. Imagine if you had brains in your knees.”

Ernest was impressed.

“If I’d found this, I wouldn’t have broken it,” said Violet. “I would have named it. Biolettosaurus, Violet’s Lizard.”

“Let’s try the next room,” said Dick.

“There might still be useful fragments.”

Reluctantly, Violet left the room of broken stone bones.

Next was a thick wooden door, with iron bands across it, and three heavy bolts. Though the bolts were oiled, it was a strain to pull them—Dick and Violet both struggled. The top and bottom bolts shifted, but the middle one wouldn’t move.

“Let me try,” said Ernest. “Please.”

They did, and he didn’t get anywhere.

Violet dipped back into the fossil room and returned with a chunk they used as a hammer. The third bolt shot open.

The banging and clanging sounded fearfully loud in the enclosed space.

They listened, but no one came. Maybee, Dick thought—recognizing the Ernestism—Sellwood was up in his tower, scanning the horizon for spy-signals, and his Brethren were taking afternoon naps.

The children stepped through the doorway, and the door swung slowly and heavily shut behind them.

This room was different again.

The floor and walls were solid slabs which looked as if they’d been in place a long time. The atmosphere was dank, slightly mouldy. A stone trough, like you see in stables, ran along one wall, fed by an old-fashioned pump. Dick cupped water in his hand and tasted it. There was a nasty, coppery sting, and he spat.

“It’s a dungeon,” said Ernest.

Violet held up her candle.

A winch-apparatus, with handles like a threshing machine, was fixed to the floor at the far side of the room, thick chain wrapped around the drum.

“Careful,” said Violet, gripping Dick’s arm.

Dick looked at his feet. He stood on the edge of a circular Hole, like a well. It was a dozen feet across, and uncovered.

“There should be a cap on this,” announced Dick. “To prevent accidents.”

“I doubt if Sellwood cares much about accidents befalling intruders.”

“You’re probably right, Vile. The man’s a complete rotter.”

Chains extended from the winch unto a solid iron ring in the ceiling and then down into the Hole.

“This is an oubliette,” said Violet. “It’s from the French. You capture your prisonnier and jeté him into the Hole, then oublié them—forget them.”

Ernest, nervously, kept well away from the edge. He had been warned about falling into wells once, which meant that ever since he was afraid of them.

Violet tossed her rock-chunk into the pool of dark, and counted. After three counts—thirty feet—there was a thump. Stone on stone.

“No splash,” she said.

Up from the depths came another sound, a gurgling groan—something alive but unidentifiable. The noise lodged in Dick’s heart like a fish-hook of ice. A chill played up his spine.

The cry had come from a throat, but hardly a human one.

Ernest dropped his candle, which rolled to the lip of the pit and fell in, flame guttering.

Round, green eyes shone up, fire dancing in the fish-flat pupils.

Something grey-green, weighted with old chains, writhed at the bottom of the Hole.

Ernest’s candle went out.

Violet’s grip on Dick’s arm hurt now.

“What’s that?” she gasped.

The groan took on an imploring, almost pathetic tone, tinged with cunning and bottomless wrath.

Dick shrugged off his shiver. He had a moment of pure joy, the click of sudden understanding that often occurs at the climax of a case, when clues fit in the mind like jigsaw pieces and the solution is plain and simple.

“That, my dear Vile, is your French spy!”

V

OBDIJFBNTP GDMBQBGS

“Someone’s coming,” said Ernest.

Footfalls in the passageway!

“Hide,” said Dick.

The only place—aside from the Hole—was under the water-trough. Dick and Violet pinched out their candles and crammed in, pulling Ernest after them.

“They’ll see the door’s not bolted,” said Ernest.

Violet clamped her hand over her cousin’s mouth.

In the enclosed space, their breathing seemed horribly loud.

Dick worried. Ernest was right.

Maybee the people in the passage weren’t coming to this room. Maybee they’d already walked past, on their way to smash fossils or get a copy of Sellwood’s book.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

Maybee this person didn’t know it was usually bolted. Maybee this dungeon was so rarely visited they’d oubliéd whether it had been bolted shut after the last time.

Maybee…

“Fessel, Fose, Milder, Maulder,” barked a voice.

The Reverend Mr. Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood, calling his Brethren.

“And who’s been opening my door,” breathed Violet.

It took Dick long seconds to recognize the storybook quotation.

“Who was last here?” shouted Sellwood. “This is inexcusable. With the Devil, one does not take such risks.”

“En cain’t git ouwt of thic Hole,” replied someone.

“Brother Milder, it has the wiles of an arch-fiend. That is why only I can be trusted to put it to the question. Who last brought the slops?”

There was some argument.

Maybee they’d be all right. Sellwood was so concerned with stopping an escape that he hadn’t thought anyone might break in.

One of the Brethren tentatively spoke up, and received a clout round the ear.

Dick wondered why anyone would want to be in Sellwood’s Church Militant.

“Stand guard,” Sellwood ordered. “Let me see what disaster is so narrowly averted.”

The door was pushed open. Sellwood set a lantern on a perch. The children pressed further back into shrinking shadow. Dick’s ankle bent the wrong way. He bit down on the pain.

He saw Sellwood’s shoes—with old-fashioned buckles and gaiters—walk past the trough, towards the Hole. He stopped, just by Dick’s face.

There was a pumping, coughing sound.

Sellwood filled a beaker.

He poured the water into the Hole.

Violet counted silently, again. After three, the water splashed on the French spy. It cried out, with despair and yearning.

“Drink deep, spawn of Satan!”

The creature howled, then gargled again. Dick realized it wasn’t making animal grunts but speaking. Unknown words that he suspected were not French.

The thing had been here for over a hundred years!

“Fose, Milder, in here, now. I will resume the inquisition.”

Brethren clumped in. Dick saw heavy boots.

The two bruisers walked around the room, keeping well away from the Hole. Dick eased out a little to get a better view. He risked a more comfortable, convenient position. Sellwood had no reason to suspect he was spied upon.

Brother Fose and Brother Milder worked the winch.

The chains tightened over the Hole, then wound onto the winch-drum.

The thing in the oubliette cursed. Dick was sure “f’tagn” was a swear-word. As it was hauled upwards, the creature struggled, hissing and croaking.

Violet held Dick’s hand, pulling, keeping him from showing himself.

A head showed over the mouth of the Hole, three times the size of a man’s and with no neck, just a pulpy frill of puffed-up gill-slits. Saucer-sized fish-eyes held the light, pupils contracting. Dick was sure the creature, eyes at floor-level, saw past the boots of its captors straight into his face. It had a fixed maw, with enough jagged teeth to please Ernest.

“Up,” ordered Sellwood. “Let’s see all of the demon.”

The Brethren winched again, and the thing hung like Captain Kidd on Execution Dock. It was man-like, but with a stub of fishtail protruding beneath two rows of dorsal spines. Its hands and feet were webbed, with nastily curved yellow nail-barbs. Where water had splashed, its skin was rainbow-scaled, beautiful even. Elsewhere, its hide was grey and taut, cracked, flaking or mossy, with rusty weals where the chains chafed.

Dick saw the thing was missing several finger-barbs. Its back and front were striped across with long-healed and new-made scars. It had been whipping boy in this house since the days when Boney was a warrior way-aye-aye.

He imagined Jacob Orris trying to get Napoleon’s secrets out of the “spy”. Had old Orris held up charts and asked the man-fish to tap a claw on hidden harbours where the invasion fleet was gathered?

Ernest was mumbling “sea-ghost” over and over, not frightened but awed. Violet hissed at him to hush.

Dick was sure they’d be caught, but Sellwood was fascinated by the creature. He poked his face close to his captive’s, smiling smugly. A cheek muscle twitched around his fixed sneer. The man-fish looked as if it would like to spit in Sellwood’s face but couldn’t afford the water.

“So, Diabolicus Maritime, is it today that you confess? I have been patient. We merely seek a statement we all know to be true, which will end this sham once and for all.”

The fish-eyes were glassy and flat, but moved to fix on Sellwood.

“You are a deception, my infernal guest, a lure, a living trick, a lie made flesh, a creature of the Prince of Liars. Own that Satan is your maker, imp! Confess your evil purpose!”

Sellwood touched fingertips to the creature’s scarred chest, scraping dry flesh. Scales fluttered away, falling like dead moths. Dick saw Sellwood’s fingers flex, the tips biting.

“The bones weren’t enough, were they? Those so-called ‘fossils’, the buried lies that lead to blasphemy and disbelief. No, the Devil had a second deceit in reserve, to pile upon the Great Untruth of ‘Pre-History’. No mere dead dragon, but a live specimen, one of those fabled ‘missing links’ in the fairy tale of ‘evolution’. By your very existence, you bear false witness, testify that the world is older than it has been proved over and over again to be, preach against creation, tear down mankind, to drag us from the realm of the angels into the festering salt-depths of Hell. The City of the Damned lies under the Earth, but you prove to my satisfaction that it extends also under the sea!”

The man-fish had no ears, but Dick was certain it could hear Sellwood. Moreover, it understood, followed his argument.

“So, own up,” snapped the Reverend. “One word, and the deception is at an end. You are not part of God’s Creation, but a sea-serpent, an monstrous forgery!”

The creature’s lipless mouth curved. It barked, through its mouth. Its gills rippled, showing scarlet inside.

Sellwood was furious.

Dick, strangely, was excited. The prisoner was laughing at its captor, the laughter of a patient, abiding being.

Why was it still alive? Could it be killed? Surely, Orris or Sellwood or some keeper in between had tried to execute the monster?

In those eyes was a promise to the parson. I will live when you are gone.

“Drop it,” snapped Sellwood.

Fose and Milder let go the winch, and—with a cry—the “French spy” was swallowed by its Hole.

Sellwood and his men left the room, taking the lantern.

Dick began breathing properly again. Violet let Ernest squirm a little, though she still held him under the trough.

Then came a truly terrifying sound, worse even than the laughter of the fish-demon.

Bolts being drawn. Three of them.

They were trapped!

VI

WSFF IMJTURQ-TK BH M’FYSR

Now was the time to keep calm.

Dick knew Violet would be all right, if only because she had to think about Ernest.

For obvious reasons, the children had not told anyone where they were going, but they would be missed at tea-time. Uncle Davey and Aunt Maeve could easily overlook a skipped meal—both of them were liable to get so interested in something that they wouldn’t notice the house catching fire—but Cook kept track. And Mr. and Mrs. Borrodale were sticklers for being in by five o’clock with hands washed and presentable.

It must be past five now.

Of course, any search party wouldn’t get around to the Priory for days, maybe weeks. They’d look on the beaches first, and in the woods.

Eventually, his uncle and aunt would find the folder marked Qrs Ndps ja qrs Dggjhbqs Dhhbrbfdqjm. Aunt Maeve, good at puzzles, had taught him how to cipher in the first place. She would eventually break the code and read Dick’s notes, and want to talk with Sellwood. By then, it would probably be too late.

They gave the Brethren time enough to get beyond earshot before creeping out from under the trough. They unbent with much creaking and muffled moaning. Violet lit her candle.

Dick paced around the cell, keeping away from the Hole.

“I’m thirsty,” said Ernest.

“Easily treated,” said Violet.

She found the beaker and pumped water into it. Ernest drank, made a face, and asked for more. Violet worked the pump again.

Water splashed over the brimful beaker, into the trough.

A noise came out of the Hole.

The children froze into mannequins. The noise came again.

“Wah wah… wah wah…”

There was a pleading tone to it.

“Wah wah…”

“‘Water’,” said Dick, snapping his fingers. “It’s saying ‘water’.”

“Wah wah,” agreed the creature. “Uh, wah wah.”

“‘Water. Yes, water.’”

“Gosh, Dick, you are clever,” said Violet.

“Wat war,” said the creature, insisting. “Gi’ mee wat war, i’ oo eese…”

“‘Water’,” said Dick, “‘Give me—’”

“‘—water, if you please’,” completed Violet, who caught on swiftly. “Very polite for a sea-ghost. Well brought-up in Atlantis or Lyonesse or R’lyeh, I imagine.”

“Where?” asked Dick.

“Sunken cities of old, where mer-people are supposed to live.”

More left-overs from Violet’s myths and legends craze. Interesting, but not very helpful.

Ernest had walked to the edge of the Hole.

“This isn’t a soppy mer-person,” said Ernest. “This is a Monster of the Deep!”

He emptied the beaker into the dark.

A sigh of undoubted gratitude rose from the depths.

“Wat war goo’, tanks. Eese, gi’ mee moh.”

Ernest poured another beakerful. At this rate, they might as well be using an eye-dropper.

Dick saw the solution.

“Vile, help me shift the trough,” he said.

They pulled one end away from the wall. It was heavy, but the bolts were old and rusted and the break came easily.

“Careful not to move the other end too much. We need it under the pump.”

Violet saw where this was going. Angled down away from the wall, the trough turned into a sluice. It didn’t quite stretch all the way to the oubliette, but pulling up a loose stone put a notch into the rim which served as a spout.

“Wat war eese,” said the creature, mildly.

Dick nodded to Violet. She worked the pump.

Water splashed into the trough and flowed down, streaming through the notch and pouring into the pit.

The creature gurgled with joy.

Only now did Dick wonder whether watering it was a good idea. It might not be a French spy or even a maritime demon, but it was definitely one of Granny Ball’s sea-ghosts. If Dick had been treated as it had been, he would not be well disposed towards land-people.

But the water kept flowing.

Violet’s arm got tired, and she let up for a moment.

“I’ oo eese,” insisted the creature, with a reproachful, nannyish tone. “Moh wat war.”

Violet kept pumping.

Dick took the candle and walked to the edge of the Hole. Ernest sat there, legs dangling over the edge, fingers playing in the cool cascade.

The boys looked down.

Where water fell, the man-fish was changed—vivid greens and reds and purples and oranges glistened. Its spines and frills and gills and webs were sleek. Even its eyes shone more brightly.

It turned, mouth open under the spray, letting water wash around it, wrenching against its chains.

“Water makes the Monster strong,” said Ernest.

The creature looked up at them. The edges of its mouth curved into something like a smile. There was cunning there, and a bottomless well of malice, but also an exultation. Dick understood: when it was wet, the thing felt as he did when he saw through a mystery.

It took a grip on one of its manacles and squeezed, cracking the old iron and casting it away.

“Can I stop now?” asked Violet. “My arm’s out of puff.”

“I think so.”

The creature nodded, a human gesture awkward on the gilled, neckless being.

It stood up unshackled, and stretched as if waking after a long sleep in an awkward position. The chains dangled freely. A clear, thick, milky-veined fluid seeped from the weals on its chest. The man-fish carefully smoothed this secretion like an ointment.

There were pools of water around its feet. It got down on its knees—did it have spare brains in them?—and sucked the pools dry. Then it raised its head and let water dribble through its gills and down over its chest and back.

“Tanks,” it said.

Now it wasn’t parched, its speech was easier to understand.

It took hold of the dangling chains, and tugged, testing them.

Watering the thing in the Hole was all very well, but Dick wasn’t sure how he’d feel if it were up here with them. If he were the creature, he would be very annoyed. He ought to be grateful to the children, but what did anyone know about the feelings of sea-ghosts? Violet had told them the legend of the genie in the bottle: at first, he swore to bestow untold riches upon the man who set him free, but after thousands of years burned to make his rescuer suffer horribly for waiting so long.

It was too late to think about that.

Slick and wet, the man-fish moved faster than anything its size should. No sooner had it grasped the chains than it had climbed them, deft as a sailor on the rigging, quick as a lizard on the flat or a salmon in the swim.

It held on, hanging just under the ring in the ceiling, head swiveling around, eyes taking in the room.

Dick and Ernest were backed against the door, taking Violet with them.

She was less spooked than the boys.

“Bonjour, Monsieur le Fantôme de la Mer,” she said, slowly and clearly in the manner approved by her tutor, M. Duroc. “Je m’appelle Violette Borrodale… permettez-moi de presente a vous mon petit cousin Ernest… et Rishard Riddle, le detective juvenile celebré.”

This seemed to puzzle the sea-ghost.

“Vile, I don’t think it’s really French,” whispered Dick.

Violet shrugged.

The creature let go and leaped, landing frog-like, knees stuck out and shoulders hunched, inches away from them. This close, it stank of the sea.

Dick saw their reflections in its huge eyes.

Its mouth opened. He saw row upon row of shark-like teeth, all pointed and shining. It might not have had a proper meal in a century.

“Scuze mee,” it said, extending a hand, folding its frill-connected fingers up but pointing with a single barb.

The wet thorn touched Richard’s cheek.

Then it eased the children aside, and considered the bolted door.

“Huff… puff… blow,” it said, hammering with fish-fists. The door came off its hinges and the bolts wrenched out of their sockets. The broken door crashed against the opposite wall of the passage.

“How do you know the ‘Three Little Pigs’?” asked Violet.

“Gur’ nam ’Ooth,” it said, “ree’ to mee…”

“A girl read to him,” Dick explained.

So not all his captors had been tormentors. Who was ’Ooth? Ruth? Someone called Ruth fit into the story. The little girl lost with the Sophy Briggs. Sellwood’s niece.

The sea-ghost looked at Violet. Dick deduced all little girls must look alike to it. If you’ve seen one pinafore, you’ve seen them all.

“ ’Ooth,” it said, with something like fondness. “’Ooth kin’ to mee. Ree’ mee story-boos. Liss in Wonlan… Tripella Liplik Pik… Taes o Eh Ah Po…”

“What happened to Ruth?” Violet asked.

“Sellwoo’ ki’ ’Ooth, an’ hi’ bro tah Joh-jee,” said the creature, cold anger in its voice. “Tey wan let mee go sea, let mee go hom. Sellwoo’ mak shi’ wreck, tak ever ting, tak mee.”

Dick understood. And was not surprised.

This was the nature of Sellwood’s villainy. Charges of smuggling and espionage remained unproven, but he was guilty of the worst crime of all—murder!

People were coming now, alerted by the noise.

The sea-ghost stepped into the passage, holding up a hand—fingers spread and webs unfurled—to indicate that the children should stay behind.

They kept in the dark, where they couldn’t see what was happening in the passage.

The man-fish leaped, and landed on someone.

Cries of terror and triumph! An unpleasant, wet crunching… followed by unmistakable chewing.

More people came on the scene.

“The craytur’s out o’ thic Hole,” shrieked someone.

A very loud bang! A firework stink.

The man-fish staggered back past the doorway, red blossoming on its shoulder. It had more red stuff around its mouth, and scraps of cloth caught in its teeth.

It roared in rage and threw itself at whoever had shot it.

Something detached from something else and rolled past the doorway, leaving a trail of sticky splashes.

Violet kept her hand over Ernest’s eyes, though he tried to pick at her fingers.

“Spawn of Satan, you show your true colours at last!”

It was Sellwood.

“Milder, Fessel, take him down.”

The Brethren grunted. The doorway was filled with struggling bodies, driving the children back into the cell. They pressed flat against the wet cold walls.

Brother Milder and Brother Fessel held the creature’s arms and wrestled it back, towards the Hole.

Sellwood appeared, hefting one of his fossil-breaking hammers.

He thumped the sea-ghost’s breast-bone with all his might, and it fell, sprawling on the flagstones. Milder and Fessel shifted their weight to pin the creature down.

Still, no one noticed the children.

The creature’s shoulder-wound closed like a sea anemone. The bruise in the middle of its chest faded at once. It looked hate up at the Reverend.

Sellwood stood over the wriggling man-fish. He weighed his hammer.

“You’re devilish hard to kill, demon! But how would you like your skull pounded to paste? It might take a considerable while to recover, eh?”

He raised the hammer above his head.

“You there,” said Violet, voice clear and shrill and loud, “stop!”

Sellwood swivelled to look.

“This is an important scientific discovery, and must not be harmed. Why, it is practically a living dinosaur.”

Violet stood between Sellwood and the pinned man-fish. Dick was by her side, arm linked with hers. Ernest was in front of them, fists up like a pugilist.

“Don’t you hurt my friend the Monster,” said Ernest.

Sellwood’s red rage showed.

“You see,” he yelled, “how the foulness spreads! How the lies take hold! You see!”

Something snapped inside Milder. He rolled off the creature, limbs loose, neck flopping.

The sea-ghost stood up, a two-handed grip on the last of Sellwood’s Brethren, Fessel.

“Help,” he gasped. “Children, help…”

Dick had a pang of guilt.

Then Fessel was falling into the oubliette. He rattled against chains, and landed with a final-sounding crash.

The sea-ghost stepped around the children and took away Sellwood’s hammer, which it threw across the room. It clanged against the far wall.

“I am not afraid of you,” announced the Reverend.

The creature tucked Sellwood under its arm. The Reverend was too surprised to protest.

“Shouldn’ a’ ki’ ’Ooth a’ Joh-jee, Sellwoo’. Shouldn’ a’ ki’.”

“How do you know?” Sellwood was indignant, but didn’t deny the crime.

“Sea tol’ mee, sea tel’ mee all ting.”

“I serve a greater purpose,” shouted Sellwood.

The sea-ghost carried the Reverend out of the room. The children followed.

The man-fish strode down the passage, towards the book-room. Two dead men—Maulder and Fose—lay about.

“Their heads are gone,” exclaimed Ernest, with a glee Dick found a little disturbing. At least Ernest wasn’t picking up one of the heads for the office wall.

Sellwood thumped the creature’s back. Its old whip-stripes and poker-brands were healing.

Dick, Violet and Ernest followed the escapee and its former gaoler.

In the book-room, Sellwood looked with hurried regret at the crates of unsold volumes and struggled less. The sea-ghost found the steps leading down and seemed to contract its body to squeeze into the tunnel. Sellwood was dragged bloody against the rock ceiling.

“Come on, detectives,” said Dick, “after them!”

VII

DHQRMJKJP BNQRYJP IBJFFSQQD

They came out under Ware Cleeve. Waves scraped shingle in an eternal rhythm. It was twilight, and chilly. Well past tea-time.

The man-fish, burden limp, tasted the sea in the air.

“Tanks,” it said to the children, “tanks very mu’.”

It walked into the waves. As sea soaked through his coat, Sellwood was shocked into consciousness and began to struggle again, shouting and cursing and praying.

The sea-ghost was waist-deep in its element.

It turned to wave at the children. Sellwood got free, madly striking away from the shore, not towards dry land. The creature leaped completely out of the water, dark rainbows rippling on its flanks, and landed heavily on Sellwood, claws hooking into meat, pressing the Reverend under the waves.

They saw the swimming shape, darting impossibly fast, zigzagging out into the bay. Finned feet showed above the water for an instant and the man-fish—the sea-ghost, the French spy, the living fossil, the snare of Satan, the Monster of the Deep—was gone for good, dragging the Reverend Mr. Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood with him.

“…to Davey Jones’s locker,” said Ernest.

Dick realized Violet was holding his hand, and tactfully got his fingers free.

Their shoes were covered with other people’s blood.

“Anthropos Icthyos Biolletta,” said Violet. “Violet’s Man-Fish, a whole new phylum.

“I pronounce this case closed,” said Dick.

“Can I borrow your matches?” asked Violet. “I’ll just nip back up the tunnel and set fire to Sellwood’s books. If the Priory burns down, we won’t have to answer questions about dead people.”

Dick handed over the box.

He agreed with Violet. This was one of those stories for which the world was not yet ready. Writing it up, he would use a double cipher.

“Besides,” said Violet, “some books deserve to be burned.”

While Violet was gone, Dick and Ernest passed time skipping stones on the waves. Rooting for ammunition, they found an ammonite, not quite as big and nice as the one that was smashed, but sure to delight Violet and much easier to carry home.