A Christmas Mystery: The Story of Three Wise Men | Page 4

place where no man lived and only ghosts could have a bleak and unsheltered being. A porter came up and helped the guard with the luggage. Then they realized that the station was built on a small embankment, for, looking over the railing, they saw below the two great lamps of a motor car. A fur-clad chauffeur met them at the bottom of the stairs. He clapped his hands together and informed them cheerily that he had been waiting for four hours. It was the bitterest winter in these parts within the memory of man, said he, and he himself had not seen snow there for five years. Then he settled the three travellers in the great roomy touring car covered with a Cape-cart hood, wrapped them up in many rugs and started.
After a few moments, the huddling together of their bodies--for, the Professor being a spare man, there was room for them all on the back seat--the pile of rugs, the serviceable and all but air-tight hood, induced a pleasant warmth and a pleasant drowsiness. Where they were being driven they knew not. The perfectly upholstered seat eased their limbs, the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home which, after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed, Professor Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Doyne twisted the stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire to relight it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness of the world to right and left and in front of the talc windows still darker. McCurdie and Biggleswade fell into a doze. Lord Doyne chewed the end of his cigar. The car sped on through an unseen wilderness.
Suddenly there was a horrid jolt and a lurch and a leap and a rebound, and then the car stood still, quivering like a ship that has been struck by a heavy sea. The three men were pitched and tossed and thrown sprawling over one another onto the bottom of the car. Biggleswade screamed. McCurdie cursed. Doyne scrambled from the confusion of rugs and limbs and, tearing open the side of the Cape-cart hood, jumped out. The chauffeur had also just leaped from his seat. It was pitch dark save for the great shaft of light down the snowy road cast by the acetylene lamps. The snow had ceased falling.
"What's gone wrong?"
"It sounds like the axle," said the chauffeur ruefully.
He unshipped a lamp and examined the car, which had wedged itself against a great drift of snow on the off side. Meanwhile McCurdie and Biggleswade had alighted.
"Yes, it's the axle," said the chauffeur.
"Then we're done," remarked Doyne.
"I'm afraid so, my lord."
"What's the matter? Can't we get on?" asked Biggleswade in his querulous voice.
McCurdie laughed. "How can we get on with a broken axle? The thing's as useless as a man with a broken back. Gad, I was right. I said it was going to be an infernal journey."
The little Professor wrung his hands. "But what's to be done?" he cried.
"Tramp it," said Lord Doyne, lighting a fresh cigar.
"It's ten miles," said the chauffeur.
"It would be the death of me," the Professor wailed.
"I utterly refuse to walk ten miles through a Polar waste with a gouty foot," McCurdie declared wrathfully.
The chauffeur offered a solution of the difficulty. He would set out alone for Foullis Castle--five miles farther on was an inn where he could obtain a horse and trap--and would return for the three gentlemen with another car. In the meanwhile they could take shelter in a little house which they had just passed, some half mile up the road. This was agreed to. The chauffeur went on cheerily enough with a lamp, and the three travellers with another lamp started off in the opposite direction. As far as they could see they were in a long, desolate valley, a sort of No Man's Land, deathly silent. The eastern sky had cleared somewhat, and they faced a loose rack through which one pale star was dimly visible.
* * * * *
"I'm a man of science," said McCurdie as they trudged through the snow, "and I dismiss the supernatural as contrary to reason; but I have Highland blood in my veins that plays me exasperating tricks. My reason tells me that this place is only a commonplace moor, yet it seems like a Valley of Bones haunted by malignant spirits who have lured us here to our destruction. There's something guiding us now. It's just uncanny."
"Why on earth did we ever come?" croaked Biggleswade.
Lord Doyne answered: "The Koran says, 'Nothing can befall us but what God hath destined for us.' So why worry?"
"Because I'm not a Mohammedan," retorted Biggleswade.
"You might be worse," said Doyne.
Presently the