"If you don't," she called as I left the room, "I shall ring them up myself."
I drew a blank at the station: a chap wandering about told me the booking-office would not be open for half an hour. I filled in the time by walking up to the bridge that spanned the railway-line and gave a view of the valley. Once this would have been wide estuary; Bodrugan's ship, dismasted by the gale, would have drifted past this very spot, driven by wind and tide, seeking shelter up the creek and finding death instead. Today, part reedy marsh, part scrub, it was still easy enough to trace the original course of the river from the winding valley itself. A man, sick or in some way hurt, might lie beneath those stubby, close-packed trees for days, for weeks, and no one know of it. Even the marsh ground on which the station stood, the wide, flat expanse between Par and neighbouring Saint Blazey, was still waste land to a large extent; even here there were large tracts where no one wandered. Except, perhaps, a traveller in time whose mind trod a vessel's deck upon blue water while his body stumbled amongst scrub and ditch.
I returned to the station and found the booking-office open, and for the first time proof that Magnus had arrived. The clerk had not only taken his ticket but remembered the holder of it. Tall, he said, going grey, hatless, wearing a sports jacket and dark trousers, with a pleasant smile, and carrying a stick. No, the clerk had not seen which way he had gone after leaving the station.
I got into the car and drove half-way up the hill, to where a footpath went off to the left. Magnus could have taken it, and I did the same, striking across country to the Gratten. It was warm and misty, foretelling a hot day. The farmer the land belonged to must have opened a gate somewhere since the preceding night, because cows wandered on the hillside now, amongst the gorse-bushes and the mounds, following me in curiosity to the entrance of the overgrown quarry itself. I searched it thoroughly, every corner, every dip, but found nothing. I looked down into the valley below, across the intervening railway line, to the sweeping mass of trees and bushes covering the one-time river bed. They might have been woven tapestry, coloured with silken threads in every shade of golden green. If Magnus was there, nothing would ever find him but tracker dogs.
Then I knew I must do what I should have done earlier, what I should have done last night. I must go to the police. I must go, as any other man would go whose guest had failed to arrive over twelve hours earlier, though his ticket had been given up at the station at the correct time. I remembered there was a police-station at Tywardreath, and I wound my weary way back again and drove straight there. I felt inadequate, guilty, like all persons who have been lucky enough never to have found themselves involved with the police, beyond minor traffic offences, and my story, as I told it to the sergeant, sounded shamefaced, somehow, irresponsible.
"I want to report a missing person," I said, and instantly had a vision of a poster with the haunted face of a criminal staring from it, and the word WANTED in enormous letters underneath. I pulled myself together, and told the exact story of all that had happened the preceding day.
The sergeant was helpful, sympathetic and extremely kind. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Professor Lane personally," he said, "but we know all about him, of course. You must have had a very anxious night."
"Yes," I said.
"There's been no report to us of any accident," he said, "but of course I will check with Liskeard and Saint Austell. Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Young?"
I accepted the offer gratefully, while he got busy on the telephone. I had the sick feeling at the pit of my stomach that people get waiting outside a hospital ward during an emergency operation performed on someone they love. It was out of my hands. There was nothing I could do. Presently he came back.
"There's been no report of any accident," he said. "They're alerting the patrol cars in the district, and the other police stations. I think the best thing you can do, sir, is to go back to Kilmarth and wait there until you hear from us. It could be that Professor Lane twisted an ankle and spent the night at one of the farms, but they're mostly on the telephone these days, and it's strange he shouldn't have rung you up to let you know. No previous history of loss of memory, I suppose?"
"No, I told him, never. And he was very fit when I dined with him in London a few weeks ago."
"Well, don't worry too much, sir," he said, "there'll probably be some simple explanation at the end of it."
I went back to the car, the sick feeling with me still, and drove down to the church. I could hear the organ — they must have been having choir practice. I went and sat on one of the graves near the wall above the orchard — Priory orchard once. Where I sat would have been the monks dormitory, looking south over the Priory creek; and close at hand was the guest-chamber where young Henry Bodrugan had died of smallpox. In that other time he could be dying still. In that other time the monk, Jean, could be mixing some hell-brew that finished off the business, then sending word to Roger that he must carry the news to the mother and the aunt, Joanna Champernoune. Ill-tidings were all about me, in the other world and in my own. Roger, the monk, young Bodrugan, Magnus; we were all links in an interwoven chain, bound one to the other through the centuries.
In such a night
Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Aeson.
Magnus could have sat here and taken the drug. He could have gone to any of the places where I had been. I drove down to the farm where Julian Polpey had lived six centuries ago, and where the postman had found me a week ago, and walked down the farm-track to Lampetho. If I had traversed the marsh at night, my body in the present, my brain in the past, Magnus could have done the same. Even now, with no water and no tide filling the inlet, only meadow-marsh and reeds, the route was familiar, like some scene from a forgotten dream. The track petered out, though, into marsh, and I could see no way forward, no means of crossing the valley to the other side. How I had done it myself at night, following, in that earlier world, Otto and the other conspirators, God only knew. I retraced my footsteps past Lampetho Farm, and an old man came out of one of the buildings, calling to his dog, who ran towards me, barking. He asked if I had lost my way and I told him no, and apologised for trespassing.
"You didn't by any chance see anyone walking this way last night?" I asked. "A tall man, grey-haired, carrying a stick?"
He shook his head. "We don't get many visitors coming here," he said. "Doesn't lead anywhere, just to this farm. Visitors stay mostly on Par beach."
I thanked him and walked back to the car. I was not convinced, though.
He could have been indoors between half-past eight and nine; Magnus could be lying in the marsh below his farm… But surely someone would have seen him? The effect of the drug, if he had taken it, would have worn off hours ago; if he had taken it at half-past eight, or nine, he would have come to by ten, by eleven, by midnight.
There was a police car drawn up outside the house when I arrived, and as I entered the hall I heard Vita say, "Here's my husband now."
She was in the music-room with a police officer and a constable.
"I'm afraid we've no definite news for you, Mr. Young," the Inspector said, "only a slight clue, which may lead us to something. A man answering to the description of Professor Lane was seen last evening between nine and half-past walking along the Stonybridge lane above Treesmill past Trenadlyn Farm."
"Trenadlyn Farm?" I repeated, and the surprise must have shown in my face, for he said quickly, "You know it, then?"
"Why, yes," I said, "it's much higher up the valley than Treesmill, it's the small farm right on the lane itself."