The Mystery of Devil's Forest
Adapted from THE HAUNTED FOREST by Anon. Amalgamated Press, 1926.
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The Smoke Signal
At Bridgestock Station a car was waiting to meet them, driven by a smartly liveried chauffeur. Their luggage was placed on top — only one suitcase between them — and away up the hilly road on its way to the castle the car went speeding.
Blake leaned forward and addressed the chauffeur.
"The police have been at the castle, of course?"
"Yes, sir."
"Have they discovered anything that might throw light on Lord Bridgestock's disappearance?"
"Something has been found, yes, sir." The man seemed to hesitate. "Oh, but I don't like it!" he burst out suddenly. "It's all so weird! Flint spear-heads, sir, found at dawn in the castle grounds! The prints of naked feet in the forest — "
He broke off with a shudder. Blake and Tinker glanced at one another.
"I dare say you'll laugh at me, sir," the chauffeur went on, "but though I'm a level-headed man, I've grown to be scared when near Morfran Forest after dark. I used to laugh at the tales when first I was taken on by his lordship. Somehow up to date high-power cars don't fit in with ghosts. But I know too much now — "
Again he broke off. He glanced at his passengers in the rear-view mirror, then continued:
"It's my belief that the forest is inhabited by something unnatural, sir. Something that is responsible for his lordship's disappearance. He was last seen on his horse, riding off down one of the tracks into it. His horse came back but he didn't! Bloodshot it's eyes were, and covered with a lather of foam, and there was a strange wound on its flank, such as would be made by a flint spear-head — "
"What makes you suggest a flint spear-head?" put in Blake sharply.
"Because, like I said, sir, that's what they find in the forest and around the castle," came the dogged answer, as though the chauffeur expected to be disbelieved. "Not old ones, but new-made! That's the honest truth!"
His earnestness was unmistakable. Even as he was speaking the powerful car topped a rise and they were in sight of both the castle and the mysterious forest.
Bridgestock Castle stood on a hummock of rising ground across a shallow valley, through which the road wound like a white ribbon. Beyond, the vast sea of stirring greenery could be seen stretching away over the undulating ground farther than the eye could reach. Morfran Forest!
"There are thousands of acres of that forest, sir," muttered the chauffeur, slowing the car so that they could see the striking view. "Who's to find my missing master in all that horrible place? They've been searching ever since he vanished, but nothing's found. They couldn't even trace the tracks of the horse."
It was another quarter of an hour before they reached the castle.
Lord Bridgestock was a bachelor and it was his secretary, a young, pleasant-looking man named Michael Peel, who had sent for Blake.
There was very little that he could tell the detective. As the chauffeur had already explained, Lord Bridgestock had gone riding into the forest. His horse had come back, and he had not. The animal had been in a strangely exhausted, excited state, and there was a curious wound in its left flank, which it could scarcely have got through scraping itself against a tree. Search-parties had scoured the corner of the forest in which the missing peer had last been seen, but to no avail.
"By the way, what's all this I hear about flint spear-heads and naked footprints in the forest?" asked Blake casually.
The secretary glanced at him sharply. "Oh, that's just wild gossip, most of it," he said. "Spear-heads have been found, even in the grounds of the castle. But that's natural enough. Prehistoric men quarried for their flints hereabouts, as you know. It's said that some of the flints found have been judged by experts to be of modern make, but that only shows that dealers in fakes have been sowing wild oats around here, ready to reap 'em next day, I suppose. As for the naked footprints — " The young man shrugged his shoulders. "I've never seen one. It's all rot!"
Blake went to the stables shortly afterwards, and there examined the horse that Lord Bridgestock had last been seen riding. The wound on its flank was certainly rather odd looking — a jagged, deep cut that might well have been made by a flint spear-head, as the chauffeur had suggested.
"But there must be some other explanation, guv'nor!" said Tinker.
The local police, whom Blake had a long consultation with, were of opinion — though they had not given it out publicly — that the vanished peer was somewhere at the bottom of one of the water-filled shafts that were scattered through Morfran Forest. In his heart, Tinker was inclined to agree with them.
"Let me show you one or two of these spear-heads we talking about," suggested Peel, the secretary, when Tinker and the detective had returned to the castle that evening after their preliminary investigations. He led them into the library, and there in a glass case were displayed over a dozen flaked flints, labelled with the spots in which they were picked up.
"See that big chap there?" said Peel. "That was found by a stable-boy over in one of the paddocks. He swore at the time — it was seven months ago — that it hadn't been there the day before, or he must have seen it. Not that I believe that! The ancient people quarried all about here, and the flint heads, probably lightly covered by soil, are washed visible by the rain."
"In one of the paddocks?" murmured Blake. "That is pretty near."
"Yes, it's seldom the flints are found so far from the edge of the woods. Generally it is deep in the forest that they are picked up. But lately people seem to have been finding them more frequently. Only the other day an old woman from the village found one lying outside her back door. It's my opinion some boy had picked it up the forest and dropped it there. He wouldn't claim it because he would've had to explain what he was doing in her garden — stealing apples, I expect!"
After dinner that evening Blake retired to his room and sat by the open window, smoking a pipe and frowning thoughtfully. Tinker played chess in the library with Peel. But it was hard to concentrate on the game — especially when Blake quietly entered the room, perused the books as if searching for a particular volume, then, with a grunt of satisfaction, took one from the shelves and disappeared again.
"I wonder what that book was?" muttered Tinker.
An hour or so later he found out when Blake made another fleeting appearance to return the volume. As the door silently closed behind his master, Tinker got up and padded across to the shelf where he saw that Blake had borrowed an ephemaris; a book of tables giving the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at any given time.
The youngster scratched his head. "What the dickens did he need that for?" he exclaimed.
The evening wore on. A queer atmosphere of disquiet seemed to be in the air of Bridgestock Castle; seemed to pervade every room. That was natural enough, with the cloud of its master's strange disappearance hanging over it like a dark shadow. But it made the youngster restless, and when finally he went to his room it was not to sleep.
A door opened from Tinker's bed-room on to the old ramparts of the castle, and Tinker went out on to the leads and paced up and down in the shadow.
The night was very warm and clear. A breeze was blowing carrying strange sounds with it — creaks and groans, knocks and snaps; the whispered words of the vast forest. The youngster could see by the light of the starry sky the dark swaying tree-tops at the edge of the castle's grounds. Morfran seemed alive; a pool of seething black into which a person could disappear forever, as if swallowed. Despite the warmth, Tinker shivered.
He sat down on the battlements, staring towards the brow of a nearby hill. What was the secret of Morfran Forest? Could it really be that there were strange, undreamed of things existing in its secret heart? It was hard for Tinker to believe that. And yet Blake had not been prepared to ignore the possibility.
Suddenly Tinker's eyes fixed themselves on something. He leaned forward, staring out from the ramparts into the starlit night.
"My hat!"
In a moment he had darted back into his room. Out into the corridor he hurried, and entered Blake's room.
Half a minute later Tinker was back on the ramparts, accompanied by the detective.
"Look, guv'nor, over there! See?"
Blake's keen face, outlined sharply against the sky, peered in the direction of the youngster's outflung arm. He drew a sharp breath.
Miles away, far beyond the nearby hill, a thin ribbon of ghostly smoke could be seen rising. The breeze was dropping but the gusts still turned the smoke-pillar into a sinuous zigzag against the stars.
But what had brought the eager, intent look into the faces of both the watching figures on the battlements of Bridgestock Castle was the fact that every now and again the trail of smoke would be cut off, so that long and short puffs were rising into the sky.
"Morse code!" whispered Tinker.
Blake nodded without speaking.
He was spelling out the letters as they rose, and the word that they made was:
"HELP!"
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