Titus Crow [1] The Burrowers Beneath Read Free Page A

Mr Crow. If there’s something else you’d like to know just drop me another line. Myself, I’d be interested to learn how you come to know so much about it all, and why you want to know more …
    Yrs sincerely, R. Bentham
    PS
    Maybe you heard how they were planning to send two more inspectors down to do the job I’d ‘messed up’? Well, they couldn’t. Just a few days ago the whole lot fell in! The road between Harden and Blackhill sank ten feet in places, and a couple of brick barns were brought down
    at Castle-Ilden. There’s had to be work done on the walls of the Red Cow Inn in Harden, too, and there have been slight tremors all over the area ever since. Like I said, the mine was rotten with those tunnels down there. I’m only surprised (and thankful!) it held up so long. Oh, and one other thing. I think that the smell I mentioned must, after all, have been produced by a gas of some sort. Certainly my head’s been fuzzy ever since. Weak as a kitten, I’ve been, and damned if I don’t keep hearing that awful, droning, chanting sound! All my imagination, of course, for you can take it from me that old Betteridge wasn’t even partly right in what he said about me …
    R.B.
    Blowne House 30th May
    To: Raymond Bentham, Esq.
    Dear Mr Bentham,
    I thank you for your prompt reply to my queries of the 25th, and would be obliged if you would give similar keen attention to this further letter. I must of necessity make my note brief (I have many important things to do), but I beg you to have the utmost faith in my directions, strange as they may seem to you, and to carry them out without delay!
    You have seen, Mr Bentham, how accurately I described the pictures on the walls of that great unnatural cave in the earth, and how I was able to duplicate on paper the weird chant you heard underground. My dearest wish now is that you remember these previous deductions of mine, and believe me when I tell you that you have placed yourself in extreme and hideous danger in removing the cave-pearls from the Harden tunnel-complex!
    In fact, it is my sincere belief that you are constantly increasing the peril every moment you keep those things! I ask you to send them to me; I might know what to do with them. I repeat, Mr Bentham, do not delay but send me the cave-pearls at once; or, should you decide against it, then for God’s sake at least remove them from your house and person! A good suggestion would be for you to drop them back into the shaft at the mine, if that is at all possible; but whichever method you choose in getting rid of them, do it with dispatch!
    They may rightly be regarded as being infinitely more dangerous than ten times their own weight in nitroglycerin!
    Yrs v. truly, Titus Crow
    To: Mr Henri-Laurent de Marigny
    Blowne House 5 p.m., 30th May
    Dear Henri,
    I’ve tried to get you on the telephone twice today, only to discover at this late hour that you’re in Paris at a sale of antiques! Your housekeeper tells me she doesn’t know when you’ll be back. I hope it’s soon. I may very well need your help! This note will be waiting for you when you get back. Waste no time, de Marigny, but get round here as soon as you’re able!
    Titus
    Marvels Strange and Terrific

    (From the Notebooks of Henri-Laurent de Marigny)
    I had known this strange and inexplicable feeling for weeks - a deep-rooted mental apprehension, an uneasiness of psyche - and the cumulative effect of this near-indefinable atmosphere of hovering hysteria upon my system, the sheer tautness of my usually sound nerves, was horrible and soul-destroying. I could not for my life fathom whence these brooding fears of things unknown sprang, or even guess at the source of the hideous oppressiveness of air which seemed to hang in tangible heaviness over all my waking and sleeping moments alike, but the combination of the two had been more than sufficient to drive me from London to seek refuge on the Continent.
    Ostensibly I had gone to Paris to seek out