Pole and Darwin began to walk cautiously down the wide steps, looking about them with every pace they took. The white walls of the pit reflected the moonlight, making the lantern unnecessary until they were close to the bottom.
On the final steps, Darwin unshuttered the lamp and swung it to illuminate the shadowed areas of the pit. The dark shapes seemed to flee before its beam. There was nothing to be seen, and no sound but the creaking of the mill sweeps and gears, and the soft whistle of the wind through the wooden lattice. The usual night noises were silent, cut off by the damp chalk walls.
Jacob Pole eased his pistols from their case, primed them, and quietly laid the case on the floor of the pit. The two men stepped cautiously across the uneven surface, exploring the dark clefts and overhangs where the moonlight never penetrated. On the side farthest from the mill, the chalk floor had a smooth, level area, like an oval table top. After a few minutes of fruitless search, they paused there together to decide their next actions.
The moonlight reached this part of the pit, with the moon standing almost exactly behind the mill. The latticed sweeps of the mill sails broke the beams to a pattern of rapidly moving black bars across the pit floor. Darwin watched the sweeps as they turned rapidly against the backdrop of the rising moon. His manner had become tense and silent.
“Well, ’Rasmus,” said Pole at last. He was reluctant to speak above a whisper. “What now? There’s no sign of the Beast. It will soon be midnight, by my guess, but where’s the Immortal? Did Gerald Alderton’s message tell us how long we have to wait to have it appear?”
Darwin did not answer. His eyes had fixed on the moon, as it flickered into sight through the turning mill-sweeps. His countenance was set in a frown, as though he was groping for something that was just beyond his recall. At last he nodded. He began to mutter to himself, as though counting, his left index finger firmly set on the pulse in his right wrist.
After a minute or two, he seemed to have come to some decision.
“All right, Jacob,” he said, “I don’t think we’ll be seeing the Immortal here tonight. Or tomorrow night, either. We may as well make our way back to the manor, before Bretherton begins to wonder about us.” His manner had become relaxed and yet resolved. “Could we get over to Kings Lynn, do you think, and back here again in three days?”
“Easily.” Pole drew a deep breath, and began to unload his pistols and put them in their case. “But I must say, Erasmus, this is a bit of a letdown. Where’s the Immortal? And why Kings Lynn? I thought we’d be stopping off at Stiffkey next. Is there a Beast, or isn’t there? Only yesterday, you were saying that no beast could be immortal, by its nature.”
“I’ll explain about Kings Lynn later. As for the other, I said only that no beast could ever advance the place of its species in the world, unless it would yield to its own offspring.” Darwin was beginning to retrace their steps back to the manor. “I did not say that a beast could not be immortal, in theory; only that any natural beast would at last die, as an individual, by accident or by sickness. So it must propagate its kind, if its race is to survive; and once propagation is admitted as a necessity, immortality or very long life must then appear as a disadvantage, since it reduces the rate at which the race has scope for improvement. Ergo, the Lambeth Immortal, regarded as an immortal being that has been living in the Alderton Pit for hundreds of years, must be revealed as a most improbable animal.”
Jacob Pole snorted, and jerked his thumb back in the direction of the pit. “Are you denying that Tom Barton was killed there? Do you dispute the reality of his death, or of Philip Alderton’s wounds?”
“Not at all.” They had reached the side door of the manor. “That death was very real, and the wounds fully tangible. That does not change my argument. Ghosts, if they exist— and as you know I am skeptical—cannot inflict real, corporeal wounds when they are themselves nonmaterial. And conversely, real beasts, for the reasons I have given you, cannot be immortal. Our problem, to my mind, consists only in providing the compatible link between immortality and the reality of those injuries sustained by Barton and Alderton. I prefer not to discuss this once we are again within Alderton Manor. We can go into chapter and verse on the road to Kings Lynn. I would like to leave early tomorrow morning. For now, that is enough philosophizing.”
Pole had followed most of Darwin’s comments with a look of incomprehension. “First time I’ve ever heard you call for less talk, ’Rasmus,” he grunted, as they opened the door.
The other man puffed out his pudgy cheeks thoughtfully, and turned back to look again at the dark and silent pit. “There’s good reason, Jacob, that I assure you. If ghosts were anywhere, I would have expected to meet them in that excavation. Couldn’t you almost see it, in your inner eye? The crouching figures, there in the dark, freeing the flint from the chalk, chipping away at the stone.” He shook his heavy head. “And I am not a man of a neurasthenic temperament. Well, let us defer speculation. I feel sure that no one in the manor has yet retired for the night. They are hoping or fearing a second appearance of the Immortal. I would like to have ten minutes of conversation with Alice, Alderton and James Ledyard. And I suppose we should have Bretherton present, too. Get rid of your pistols, prop your eyes open for another hour, and let us see what we can arrange.”
The coach was stuck. Despite their mightiest efforts, it would not budge from the mire that three days of rain had made of the carriage road. Darwin, cloaked against the brisk wind, looked apprehensively at the eastern sky. Far out over the metallic grey of the sea, the cloud was beginning to break.
“It’s clearing,” he said gloomily. “And the rain is over. Tonight it will be fair again, if the barometer is any guide.”
Jacob Pole looked up briefly from the side of the coach, where he was directing four local farm laborers, hastily recruited, in placing a heavy baulk of timber beneath the left side axle.
“We stayed over-long in Kings Lynn,” he said. “My fault. I had no idea that this road would become so bad with the rain. The chalk surface drains well, but there must be clay beneath. Give me two more hours, and we may be on our way again. If we hold closer to the dike for the rest of the trip I think we’ll not be mired a second time.”
Darwin had walked over to the side of the coach and was looking ruefully at the heavy clockwork instrument that lay there, carefully swaddled in gunnysacks and oilskin.
“Not your fault, Jacob. Mine. I needed to remain there until they had this ready for me. Were it not for this, I would favor going the rest of the way on foot. We cannot be above six miles from Alderton Manor. But having borne it these many miles, I reject the idea that we should leave the instrument behind.”
“Is it so all-important that we be there tonight? You told them there would be nothing of interest in the pit until we got back. Surely they will avoid it until then.”
“Not so, Jacob.” Darwin shook his head. “I wish that I had been so precise. I told them there would be nothing there for three days—which was true. But I was confident that we would be back before then. Now I regret that I did not speak more of what was on my mind. I wished to avoid starting a hare that might prove to be no more than my imagination working to excess. That would serve no purpose.”
The left timber was in place, and the right side was already similarly buttressed. Two other stout logs had been placed to serve as twin fulcrums. With the old mare pulling hard ahead, the men began to bear down on the levers that the long timbers provided.