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“So Tollers, you’re off to America?”
“Sshh, few know of this, save those who plot around me!”
Laughter.
“In fact, no one but my Edith and my travel agent, one of whom apparently is your general informant—and now anyone within earshot.”
“Well, it’s always a small world, and this business with the inscription on the rock has to be the puzzler—or has the Mail got it wrong again?”
“On the condition of privacy, I’ll be in New York City for a few days to examine an interesting document that has turned up. An Old English text stuffed, quite out of place, in the Thornberry Collection at King’s College or, as they persist in calling it in rude defiance of dear George II, Columbia University. They’ve offered to help pay my way and insist on the importance of my personal review. So what the …”
“Yes, but what about the rock?”
“Well, I suppose ‘Elvish runes’ on a two-ton rock native only to the island of Britain, found buried in an undisturbed barrow, or ‘mound’ as they say there in Connecticut, and carbon-dated to one thousand A.D. is a bit of a strange affair. If they wish to catch up with me in the city, I shall oblige them.”
“Aye, and we’ll give you ale as wages for your report.”
“I’m afraid, on that topic, I don’t wish to over-commit. I carry another errand to America, one founded on a deep urge to tidy things up. Unbear some burdens. This journey is part of that, I suppose, especially the unbearing part.”
“Now what burden could you have?”
Long pause.
“I would rather not speak of that quite yet, or perhaps ever. I am thinking of leaving some papers in America where they may be better off than here.”
“Rubbish! Papers? They should be here, at Merton!”
“These papers are, I’ve decided, best left at a distance. They will not be still.”
“What is that? They move around?”
“Worse, Charles, you missed one of our prior discussions about these. As I said then, they are a trove of Elvish texts. Unfortunately they have a kind of voice — almost as if some … demonic energy was reaching through them.”
“I would make light of it Tollers, but you seem genuinely troubled.”
“This little I will say. Like my dwarves, I delved too deep. Something stirred. Documents unbidden, and more mysterious than I first imagined, came to me some years ago.”
Here there is a longer pause.
“But enough! Wish me well. I hope to return to sit at this very oak table that we have so profoundly educated these many years.”
“Tollers, I won’t let this go just yet. You are on edge about this.”
“More than I can say. But then, we are all haunted as old men. Swirlings of unease hover about our elder years, when there is more in the past than in the future.”
“Well, I wish you safe passage, good fortune, and a quick return. We all value your presence.”
“Thank you, Richard. And I feel the same about each of you. Even you, Jack!”
“Hah, you rump!”
A pause. Background sounds. The tape ends.