The Mystery of Devil's Forest
Adapted from THE HAUNTED FOREST by Anon. Amalgamated Press, 1926.
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In the Heart of the Devil's Forest
The gentle breeze moaned through the restless branches of Morfran Forest as Blake and Tinker, with the horses lent them from the castle stables, pressed on down a narrow track in the heart of the forest of mystery. All day they had been penetrating deeper and deeper into the untrodden glades of Morfran. Both were as good as cowboys in the saddle, having 'ridden the range' in America on more than one occasion, but as a rule the branches grew so low here that it was necessary to lead their horses.
They had covered nearly twelve miles, working by compass in the direction of the spot from which that far-off smoke signal had risen on the night before.
And now dusk was setting in.
"Well, I've not seen any of these spear-heads there's been so much talk about," said Tinker. "Nor a single naked footprint, guv'nor! And as for hobgoblins, not a solitary! I almost feel like asking for my money back, so to speak!"
"We must be pretty near the place where the smoke signal came from, young 'un," said Blake thoughtfully. "I wonder if it really did come from Lord Bridgestock, or whether it was just some Boy Scouts practising for their signaller's badge?"
"If it was, they're pretty far off the beaten track," noted Tinker.
The trees seemed to be growing less dense now, and they mounted their horses again, trotting over the turfy ground. A sloping ridge rose before them, on which a copse of thin firs grew from the carpet of bracken.
Suddenly Tinker pointed off to the right.
"Look, guv'nor, there's one of those prehistoric quarries!"
A yawning grass-grown pit lay a few hundred yards away. Blake nodded.
"Yes, that looks like one of the ancient quarries right enough," he agreed. "A nasty place to encounter in the dark! I don't wonder people come a cropper in this forest with things like that to break their necks in!"
Tinker turned his horse's head.
"Carry on, guv'nor! I'll catch you up, I just want to have a look at it," he said, and quickened his horse's pace.
It was a sudden cry from the youngster that brought Blake round, too; the detective trotted swiftly to Tinker's side.
"What's up, lad?"
"Guv'nor, look at that!"
Tinker had reined in his horse and, with eyes wide, was pointing down at a sandy patch near the lip of the flint-pit.
Among the bracken, clear enough on the sandy soil, was the imprint of a small naked foot!
* * *
Night had fallen.
With their horses tethered near at hand, Sexton Blake and Tinker were stretched full length in the bracken. It was useless to attempt to keep on now that night had come. It was pitch-black beneath the trees, despite the starlight, and in consequence progress would have been too slow to be worthwhile.
Tinker, with one of the blankets they'd brought, had rolled himself up comfortably and was dropping into a doze, dog-tired. Sexton Blake was smoking his pipe, wakeful still. With his head on his pack, Tinker began to breathe deeply.
Sleep came to him — a ghastly, shadow-haunted slumber.
Ghostly figures flitted through his dreams — bent, dwarfish forms, crawling up out of the grass-grown quarries that had been worked thousands of years ago by men of the prehistoric ages. Gnarled creatures, skin-clad, that crept through the gloomy depths of the Devil's Forest.
One of them seemed to be bending over him. He felt its brown hand touch his face, slip down to his throat, tighten! He was fighting for breath, choking —
Tinker awoke with a strangled gasp.
He tried to sit up — only to find that a hand really was clutching at his throat! He saw the crooked figure that crouched above him — the very figure of his nightmares!
With a choking cry the youngster yanked his pistol from beneath the blanket only to have it knocked from his hand by a bony fist. He hit up at the face that was glaring down into his own. The creature, whatever it was, went reeling back. Tinker sprang to his feet.
"Guv'nor! Guv'nor!"
Then he saw that the clearing was filled with little dark figures. Blake was struggling with a surging crowd that had fallen upon him as he slept. And now a score of others closed upon Tinker.
He fought wildly — grappling, clawing, punching and kicking as the strange men swarmed over him. They were small of build and very dark of complexion — scarce above four feet stood the tallest — and their eyes were black like tiny beads glittering with malevolence. Many were tattooed from head to foot in ocher and woad, and in posture they were stooped, as if from a lifetime spent in crouching and hiding. They were armed with spears, bows and arrows, and daggers, all pointed with flint.
What sort of men were they? If they were, indeed, men!
He hit out savagely and the little scurrying creatures dropped before his lashing fists. Then Sexton Blake suddenly burst from their midst, throwing two of them high into the air. He grabbed Tinker's arm and cried, "Run, lad! Run for your life!"
Blake yanked his assistant from the clutching, claw like hands of their assailants and dragged him into the trees. Regaining his balance, Tinker took to his heels, running beside his master, his legs pumping, his heart pounding, his lungs gasping for air. In the darkness, roots snagged at both men's ankles, causing them to fall again and again. Twigs and leaves slapped across their faces and once the youngster ran into a branch which hit him square between the eyes so hard that he reeled and saw stars. Blake grabbed him and pushed him on, running, running, and ever behind them the scurrying rustle of close pursuit.
On, on, their breath coming in great sobs.
"Keep going Tinker!" panted Sexton Blake. "We have to stay out of their hands at least until seven o'clock!"
Amidst the nightmarish chase, this strange statement seemed to Tinker like weirdness piled upon weirdness. Seven o'clock? What had seven o'clock to do with anything?
Fingers dug into his wrist as one of the creatures caught up with him. Desperately, without thinking, he whirled, swinging the gnarled little figure around, allowing its momentum to carry it with a sickening crunch into the bole of a tree.
"This way!" cried Blake, veering to the left and running up a slope. Tinker followed, vaguely aware that he had somehow acquired the creature's spear.
Up they raced, over the summit and down again, with leaves and twigs cascading down around their ankles. They both stumbled over the uneven ground, fell, and rolled into a dried creek bed. Up, again, running, the susurrous pad of many pairs of bare feet close at their backs.
Following the course of the creek, the detectives sped as fast as they could through the darkness, their pace never slackened, though their bodies were wracked with agony. Tinker was beyond thought. He was focused on just two things: keeping moving and staying at his guv'nor's side.
Sexton Blake was slightly more conscious of the environment. He could hear that the primitive man-things were close behind and getting closer. He could see that the banks of the dried creek were growing higher and rockier. This latter fact gave him cause for hope and, as he ran, he peered through the gloom, scanning the banks.
At last he saw what he had hoped to see; a blacker patch of darkness in a steep, root-entangled rock face.
"Follow!" he barked.
Blindly, unthinkingly, Tinker obeyed.
They dodged through stony outcrops, grabbed at the roots and hauled themselves up. Ahead of Tinker, Blake seemed to suddenly vanish.
Lack of oxygen had reduced Tinker's eyesite to tunnel vision. He turned his head this way and that, deperately trying to locate his guv'nor. A hand reached out of the shadows and grasped his collar, pulling him up. He slithered over the hard stone and into a small cave, collapsing into an exhausted heap.
"Lie still!" hissed Blake
The youngster needed no second telling. He lay prone, sucking in huge draughts of air. Dimly, he felt something sliding out of his hand.
"A spear," came Blake's whisper. "Good lad! I lost my pistol back there."
Tinker opened his mouth to say 'me too' but, now that the running was done, the crack he'd taken between the eyes registered — and he slipped into merciful oblivion.
* * *
He dreamed of chanting; a distant, repetitive dirge that sounded something like "Thoo loo faa tang! Thoo loo faa tang!", sung over and over.
A hand shook his shoulder.
"Scrambled eggs," he mumbled thickly.
"Tinker!" snapped Sexton Blake. "Wake up lad!"
Painfully, the youngster sat up. "We're safe?" he croaked.
"No," answered Blake. "We're surrounded."
Tinker rubbed his eyes. He tried to stretch his arms over his head but there wasn't room. He smacked his lips. He was terribly thirsty.
"I dreamed they were chanting." he said.
"Not our pursuers," answered Blake, "but others. Very distant. Maybe it came from their village. It started with the dawn and ended about a quarter of an hour ago."
The detective was outlined against the small entrance to the tiny, cramped cave. Beyond him, pale yellowish light was filtering through the trees.
"As for our friendly neighbourhood hunting party, well they poked in their noses a few times and those noses got pricked with this spear," said Blake. "But for the past couple of hours, they've just been waiting. We've no scrambled eggs I'm afraid, young 'un, or any other food for that matter — and they know it. They intend to starve us out."
"Then they'll have a long wait!" growled Tinker resolutely.
Blake chuckled. "That's the spirit, old son. But on this occasion I think we'll wait until seven o'clock-ish then give ourselves up."
"Seven o'clock? What happens at seven o'clock?" asked Tinker, puzzled.
"Nothing, young 'un. I just want to be sure the sun is well over the horizon."
"But — !"
"Patience, lad!"
And with that, Sexton Blake withdrew into himself, and Tinker, so familiar with his master's unique personality, knew that, for the time being, he would gain no better response from the detective than if he tried to converse with the cave wall.
Why they were going to give themselves up to the creatures, why they were waiting, what seven o'clock and the position of the sun had to do with it, these things he simply couldn't understand. But in Sexton Blake he had absolute, unwavering trust.
And so he waited.
The forest was silent. The breeze had passed; the air was still. No birds sang.
Shafts of sunlight lanced through the trees, blinking through the branches. Thin whorls of mist rolled at the foot of the trunks and flowed into the creek bed in which the man-things crouched, resting on their haunches, watching the mouth of the cave.
It was not long before the creatures' patience was rewarded.
A spear dropped from the gloomy gap in the rock and clattered down over the roots and stone. Two figures emerged, their clothes ragged, stained with earth and blood.
One of the dwarfish hunters stood and broke the silence with a howl of triumph — but it was cut short as, to his evident amazement, the two figures, rather than seeking escape, calmly clambered down the rock face towards the gathered throng.
Sexton Blake and Tinker stepped onto the creek bed. There was a sudden explosion of movement as the creatures pounced. Tinker, offering no resistance, was dragged to earth by his horrible assailants, and a minute later he lay with his hands lashed behind him, a helpless prisoner.
He looked to his right and saw Blake receiving the same treatment.
A skin-clad dwarf spoke in a queer gabbling voice. The detectives were each lifted by a dozen little figures and felt themselves being carried off swiftly through the trees.
In Tinker's brain a wild, half-impossible idea was forming.
What if prehistoric man was not the extinct creature he was supposed to be? What if in this wild corner of the Welsh hills a little band of them had lived on through the changing years, themselves unchanging, cut off from the rest of the world, hiding in the secret depths of Britain's remotest forest?
What if these were the descendants of the old Picts, driven westward into their forest retreat when the Ancient Britons invaded our island thousands of years ago? The Picts, Tinker knew, had been little men like these. What if the ancient Picts still lived today in Morfran Forest?
And while the strange thought built up in his mind, Tinker was borne on swiftly through the flickering shadows of the dense trees. Behind came a second party, bearing the bound figure of Sexton Blake.
They had fallen into the hands of the devils of Morfran Forest!
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