The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (2 page)

             
Perhaps a banker was needed to break the ice, the image of bankers being so stuffy and conventional, even to those of us who knew better. It turned out that a whole lot of us read ghost stories, horror stories, wild fantasy, and so on. In no time an argument was raging over who wrote what, who wrote best (and worst!), and various schools of opinion began to get sorted out
.
For the
library it was a pretty noisy scene. Two old gentlemen drowsing by the fire got up and left, muttering about seeing someone on the house committee, but we paid them no attention, being busy attacking H. P. Lovecraft or someone similar.

             
During a lull, the younger guy who had started the whole thing suddenly asked, "But why do you all enjoy these things? Is it because your lives are so dull today? Or is it that you'd really like to believe that there are things beyond our level of knowledge, powers of darkness, say, that still can reach us at times and in certain places? In other words, friends, what grabs you about all this, as the kids say now?" He was quite excited.

             
We all thought for a minute. Frankly, I don't think any of us had ever given a hell of a lot of thinking time to why we enjoyed being frightened or whatever.

             
The young guy, whose name turned out to be Simmons, went on. "Is it the same reason children ride roller coasters? Or do you think it may be something deeper, such as a feeling that the ancients, perhaps, knew more than we do, that a deep well of lost knowledge underlies all the broomstick and Halloween nonsense? And that by reading the stuff,
you both acknowledge its reality and in a subconscious way, well, pay it a sort of respect?"

             
Well, the argument started afresh. Some of us admitted we liked being scared (I was one), especially if we knew we could always close the book! But a few others picked up Simmons' idea of a racial memory of the Ancient Past, and started telling of strange things that had happened to them or to people they knew. I noticed the really strange things were always those that had happened to someone else, while the ones that they had experienced in person sounded pretty flat.

             
I think almost everyone present must have had the same sequence of thoughts simultaneously. They ran: Yes, these experiences are dull and banal-sounding, and next Ffellowes!

             
And, of course, there he was. Leaning against the end bookcase in the alcove, just as if he'd been there all evening, and none of us, as usual, had even seen him come in! God knows how long he had been there, or how much he had heard. He was smoking a long thin cigar, very pale in color, and sipping brandy, which he took,
incidentally
, in a tumbler.

             
We introduced him to Simmons, who had never met the Brigadier before, and rather confusedly explained what we had been talking about, then more or less sat back, not quite panting, but pretty obvious.

             
Our English member smiled politely around at us. His pink face was bland, but the bright blue eyes were amused. Oh, he knew what we wanted, all right! If anyone in the room could lay claim to knowing the strange and the inexplicable, the man who had served the Empire all over the world, who had encountered more weird things in person than we had ever read about, was surely the man. And he knew we wanted a story. He teased us a little.

             
"I just had a nice brisk walk through the park. You chaps ought to get out more. You're all simply getting fat, sitting around here."

             
I ask you! A nice brisk walk, at
38
°
F
, through Central Park at eleven at night! That was Ffellowes, all right. If a gang of muggers jumped him he probably became invisible! Yet none of us doubted he had come that way.

             
He turned to look at Simmons for a moment, in a reflective way, and I rang a bell for a waiter to bring us a fresh round. I had learned the signs by now.

             
"You postulate, Mr.
er
ah, Simmons," he was saying when I looked back, "that we are subconsciously aware of older things, or past, well,
unpleasantnesses
, which once had power, and might still, under certain circumstances? May I ask if those are in any way your own beliefs or are simply put forward as the basis of a discussion?"

             
Simmons kind of drew back a little. "It is a theory, I believe, that some people hold: that some places and some persons even, are influenced by the Ancient Past, and that certain things can allegedly be summoned by the right people, in the right place, and even at the right time. Personally, I have no views on the matter." His face turned a little pink. "I should say," he added, "no views that I care to give at the present time or verbally." He retired into his glass of Madeira, leaving us a little puzzled.

             
"I see," said Ffellowes, and I had the idea he did see, though what it was he saw, I was damned if I knew.

             
A waiter had drawn up another chair, and the brigadier sat down and took a dip of his brandy. The room was suddenly very quiet.

-

             
"Many years ago," came the clipped English tones, "I had a friend who was Cornish. I don't mean he lived in Cornwall; I mean rather that he was Cornwall. His family, and, yes, he had a title, had lived there since time immemorial. They owned a ruined castle, and I mean a really frightful ruin, all tumbled stones, and also a delightful manor house, called Avalon House. Goodness knows how old the castle was, but the house was 18th century, a lovely thing of aged brick, surrounded by wild gardens and overlooking the Atlantic. It could be most windswept but was very wonderful even in Winter. There were great tangled hedges, which had been planted strategically, to keep off the worst of the wind, you know, but it still could howl about the eaves in a full gale. The family were not of great wealth, but not poor either. Occasional judicious marriages with nabob's daughters and city merchants, I expect
.
A very normal county custom and a very normal county family, of no particular note, with a fat paragraph in
Debrett's
Peerage.

             
"We'll call my friend the Earl of
Penruddock
, which sounds right and was neither his name nor his title. He and I had known each other since childhood, having gone to what we call a "little school" together, what you fellows call a grade school, I think. We were not the closest of chums, but rang each other up at times when one or another was in London, for a lunch or a drink. He was quite a normal specimen of his class, had served in the Grenadier Guards before succeeding to the title. He hunted with the
Quorn
and grew prize roses. When he married, I was an usher, and his wife was equally suitable, a distant cousin with some money of her own, a jolly girl, who loved the
country as he did.

             
"I was startled one day, therefore, to get a wire from James (that was his real given name) asking me down in a curiously urgent way, down for a visit to Avalon House. There was a sort of appeal in the wire, you know, something such as 'your advice most necessary' and 'would be extremely grateful if you could see your way,' and so on. All very peculiar from one of the most composed men I ever knew. I was doing odd jobs for the War Office already, and I found out James knew this, through what might be called the 'old boy's circuit
'
. Still, I couldn't imagine what had made him think of me in particular.

             
"I arranged a leave, ten days or so, with my chief, wired James to have me met and set off by train. It was late April, and as I changed to the small local train, a sort of Rowland Emmett affair with a staff all ninety in appearance, the countryside was really lovely. We went through a number of sleepy little towns and green valleys, until in late afternoon the creaky old car attendant warned me that
Tolferry
was next.

             
"James was there to meet me and I was shocked at his appearance. He was a big blond chap, like me in his late twenties, with a Guards mustache and normally a genial grin. Now, though, he looked both pale and harassed, as if some overpowering worry, some strain of
overwhelming proportions were eating at his vitals. He tried to smile as he seized my bags, but it was a poor effort
.
Yet there was nothing in the least false about his relief at seeing me.

             
" 'My dear man!' he said. 'This is really awfully good of you. I'm at my wit's end. I had heard
...
' and here he paused in some confusion, 'not to put too fine a point of it
...

             
"Lionel
Penruddock
,
at this Juncture
,
was one of the most controversial members of the younger o
rder
. He was also, in the opinion of many, a complete swine. He used women as if
they
were ca
ndy,
and at least one girl was known to have committed suicide over him. As a young man. he was asked to leave Italy, at roughly the same time as
Aleister
Crowley and his commune, and for the same reasons, or worse. He could now no longer dig in Egypt
,
even the easygoing
Egyptians having had enough of his treatment of native labor, which had culminated
i
n the deaths of three experienced men whom he had run afoul of, or the reverse. The verdict was 'loss of life due to a sandstorm,' but no one believed it
.
There was much more which I will not go into, and not all of it was this personal. The Foreign Office, as we knew, was beginning to take an interest in Lord Lionel, who had many strange and quite un-archaeological friends in many countries, including both Russia and Germany.

             
"When all this has been said, it has to be added that he was also a master of his chosen profession. He was that rare thing, a truly, all-round expert
.
One year he was astonishing the world with the work he did at
Gohklat
, and
its
amazing revelations of the
Sarmatian
Migrations. The next, he discovered the Codex
Panamensis
, extending the Old Empire Maya hundreds of miles beyond their previously known southern boundaries. And his fantastic recovery of a
Gokstad
type of Viking ship from the Namib Desert of Southwest Africa made even his most bitter professional rivals admit that he had genius.

             
"I had thought him to be in the Far East, but he was not
.
And as we drove, my poor friend
attempted to tell me why his brother's appearance had so upset him and his household.

             
" 'He simply popped up here, Donald, about a month ago. Had a couple of chaps, very rum ones, too, with him and asked if he could use the cliff cottage. Well, Isobel can't stand him, you know, and if he wanted to stay, this way he was at least out of the house. I've never got on with him, and he makes it plain he thinks, and always has, that I'm a complete ass. But, well, he is my only brother and he's never asked me for anything before. He's got his own money, you know, and lots of it
.
Mother left him a packet and he is no fool at business. So, the long and the short of it is ...'

             
"The long and the short of it was, of course, that James, good fellow that he was, had told his brother to use the cliff cottage as long as he liked, assuming not unnaturally that Lord Lionel sought no more than a quiet vacation. This building was a comfortable house made of stone and perched
on the edge of the cliffs not far from the ruined castle of the ancestral Penruddocks. They did not use it, and it was usually to let, often to artists of some means. It was a mile from Avalon House, and that was a million miles too close for my friend's wife. Lionel's wedding present (he did not attend at St
Margarets
, Westminster, needless to say) to James and Isobel had been a Tantric image of such startling and revolting obscenity that James, noting it to be covered with jewels of undoubted worth, instantly sent it under seal to the British Museum, where no doubt it still reposes in some obscure vault
.
It certainly could never be exhibited. That incident may give you all some small idea of Lionel, by the bye.