Free Death by the Mistletoe by Angus MacVicar Page B

James was surprised, but endeavoured to show it as little as possible.
    Introductions were exchanged until the dinner-gong sounded and the strangely assorted company filed through to the dining-room. James, with a foresight as great as he had ever shown in the ring, manoeuvred himself into such a position that at table Eileen placed him quite naturally on her right-hand side. The Rev. Duncan Nicholson, however, sat on her left.
    *
    Dusk was beginning to fall when Eileen and Miss Dwyer left the dining-room and Professor Campbell asked his guests to smoke. Two shaded incandescent oil-lamps were lit, which spread a flood of light on the white napery and gleaming coffee-cups, leaving the faces of the eight men grouped around the table in soft shadow. James suddenly sensed tension and expectancy in the atmosphere of the room. Everyone seemed to realise that the purpose of his invitation would now be made clear.
    Professor Niven Campbell cleared his throat. Though small and stout, the strength of his personality was immediately apparent.
    “Gentlemen,” he said, and the mask of good-humour and jollity fell quickly from his face, leaving it worried and sombre, “I have asked you here tonight to discuss with me a matter of the gravest import to the wellbeing of the nation. I have asked you here to aid me in a task which may bring to each of you horror and pain and even death. And before I go farther — before I communicate to you certain information which to know is to be in constant danger — I would give such of you as may desire it a chance to leave my house in safety, while yet there is the opportunity.”
    The Professor looked at his guests with a keen and level glance. A restless air ran round the table like a flutter of wind through a grove of trees. Then Dr. Black, his fighting jaw thrust forward, spoke.
    ‘‘Damn it, Professor!” he exclaimed in his rather high-pitched voice, “get it over! We’ve all a fair idea it concerns these ‘Mistletoe Murders’ that young MacPherson has been so excited about. I for one am not afraid of knowing the truth. And I’m sure none of the others are. Be damned to anyone who would try to electrocute me!”
    Professor Campbell smiled crookedly.
    “Thank you, Doctor,” he said shortly. “I take it then, that there are no cowards here … The matter of which I am about to speak has to do, as Doctor Black says, with these awful tragedies which occurred on Tuesday evening, and I have chosen you seven gentlemen to hear of it — five of you because of a close connection with the investigations into the death of the Reverend Archibald Allan, and Mr. Nicholson and Mr. MacPherson for a special reason which I shall later explain.”
    James noticed the instinctive manner in which the right hand of Detective-Inspector McKay had dropped to the pocket of his jacket, and he marvelled at the calm of Inspector McMillan, who was usually so distressed and uncertain of himself. Like Nicholson, MacLean and Major Dallas, he himself had drilled his features into a semblance of impassivity, though he was burning with excitement and expectation. He allowed himself to wonder, for a fleeting moment, what Eileen was doing and saying in the drawing room. He wished — for what reason he could not tell — that she was not on such friendly terms with Miss Millicent Dwyer.
    “To make the matter clear to you,” continued Professor Campbell, leaning forward in his high-backed chair, “I must go back many centuries into a period of twilight knowledge of which few of us realise the full significance. It is a period in the history of the Celtic race which pre-dates even the cult of Druidism; a period of unimaginable terror and sadness, which, nevertheless, was not without a certain beauty …
    “In the mist of the years there arose in Britain a religious order of which we have few records, and which by the majority of modem scholars has been completely and erroneously confused with Druidism. I can only hint at