“Hang it all, Addison! I don’t know what you’re talking about at all, but nevertheless your hints are sufficiently unpleasant. A tumulus! No man likes to know he’s sleeping in a graveyard, not even if it is two or three thousand years old. D’you think the chap who surveyed the ground for me knew of it?”
“By the fact that he planned the new wing so as to avoid excavation, I think probably he did. He was wise enough to surmise that the order might be cancelled altogether and the job lost if you learnt the history of the mound adjoining your walls.”
“A barrow under the study floor!” groaned the Major—“damn it all! I’ll have the place pulled down—I won’t live in it. Gad! if Marjorie knew, she would never close her eyes under the roof of Low Fennel again—I’m sure she wouldn’t, I know she wouldn’t. But what’s more, Addison, the thing, whatever it is, is dangerous—infernally dangerous. It nearly killed young Wales!” he added, with a complacency which was significant.
“It was the fright that nearly killed him,” I said shortly.
Major Dale stared across the table at me.
“For God’s sake, Addison,” he said, “what does it mean? What unholy thing haunts Low Fennel? You’ve studied these beastly subjects, and I rely upon you to make the place clean and good to live in again.”
“Major,” I replied, “I doubt if Low Fennel will ever be fit to live in. At any time an abnormal rise of temperature might produce the most dreadful results.”
“You don’t mean to tell me——”
“If you care to have the new wing pulled down and the wall bricked up again, if you care to keep all your doors and windows fastened securely whenever the thermometer begins to exhibit signs of rising, if you avoid going out on hot nights after dusk, as you would avoid the plague—yes, it may be possible to live in Low Fennel.”