Lord of the Hollow Dark by Kirk Russell Page A

longer was trickling into his eyes. He was a deep-chested man, muscular, with no superfluous flesh about him, well tanned, healthy-seeming. “Did I hear you say”—the words required some effort—“did I hear you say that this place is Balgrummo Lodging?” he asked.
    “Good, your brain functions also!” Having borrowed a third handkerchief from Madame, the Archvicar was fastening it over the cut on the stranger’s calf. “Yes, my dear sir, you’ve fallen into Balgrummo Den. Have you heard of the property?”
    “I knew it well once, my lord.” The hill-walker now stood unsupported.
    The Archvicar paused in his bandaging, then resumed to tie a knot, and said to Madame and the Sicilian girl, “Help me.” They assisted Gerontion to his feet; his debility seemed to have fallen upon him again. Looking the stranger cannily in the face, the old man told him, “I’m not a peer. As you can see, I’m a clergyman, Archvicar Gerontion.”
    The stranger blinked. “I beg your pardon, padre: that bashing I took must have put a silly notion into my head. Somehow I thought old Alec Balgrummo...”
    “He died three years ago.” The Archvicar was soft-voiced, almost unctuous, again. “Perhaps you were acquainted with the last Lord Balgrummo? The title is extinct now.”
    “My father knew him well, poor chap, and I was in the Lodging once or twice. I’m Bain, Ralph Bain.”
    The Archvicar continued to watch this man’s face. “An officer, possibly?”
    “Yes, I think so.” Bain pressed his hands to either side of his head. “What was my regiment? I took a bad head wound, in Libya. Yes, I was a captain. Some things are clear in my memory, and some foggy. I tramp about much of the time. This morning I came over the hills in this direction, for no especial reason, with no map in my sporran. I’d no notion that I had come close to Balgrummo Lodging. Then I found myself at the head of this den, and it looked vaguely familiar, so I thought I’d come down; and I did, don’t you see, with a thump.” The lean man was smiling. “Who’s at the Lodging now, with Balgrummo gone?”
    “Come along to the house,” the Archvicar answered. “You actually can walk, after that tumble? Incredible: you’re all bruises, and soon you’ll ache like fury. I hope that cut on your forehead hasn’t stirred up that old head wound of yours; that happens sometimes.
    “The Lodging belongs to the Balgrummo Trust now. A Mr. Apollinax is holding a conference there; he’s taken the Lodging on six months’ let. Are you stopping anywhere in particular?” The Arch vicar was leaning heavily upon his stick again, seemingly having relapsed into feebleness.
    “I simply tramp about,” said Bain, apparently unembarrassed, “and whatever I need is in this rucksack.” He had hung it over one shoulder by a strap.
    “Then why not spend the week with us?” the Archvicar suggested. “Having known Lord Balgrummo once, you’ve as much a claim to be at the Lodging as has anyone, I suppose.”
    Sweeney doubted very much whether Apollinax would be delighted to welcome this shabby-genteel tramp into his hocus-pocus “gathering.” Had Gerontion been shaken in his wits by his long ordeal in that Haggat prison? The Archvicar’s rambling conversation and mysterious hints; the remarkable oddity of that memorandum he had submitted to Apollinax; the sudden burst of violence against Pereira; now this positively senile invitation to the kilted tramp-was the Archvicar turning out to be crazier than Apollinax’s disciples? And would Apollinax think that he, Sweeney, had a hand in this invitation? He meant to get out of this loony bin as soon as he could, but meanwhile he wanted no more trouble with Apollinax.
    “Hold on a minute,” Sweeney said to the Archvicar. “You’d better ask Apollinax...”
    The Archvicar beamed upon him, but the old man’s voice had that hard ring of command in it. “Sweeney, trot ahead of us, like a good chap, and tell Grishkin