She Fell Among Thieves (8 page)

Where I stood, the turf was marshy, for a rill had sprawled out of its bed, but the ground rose sharply before me, and there wild box was growing and a parcel of rocks was thrusting out of the bushes, to offer at least a lodging which was not wet.

I, therefore, put up my torch and set out to take this shelter for what it was worth, but the slope was more steep than the light of the torch had told and the box bushes fought against me as though they would keep me out. At last, however, my hands encountered a ledge, and, using what strength I had left, I hauled myself on to this lodgment, to sit there, blown and battered, under the lee of the boulders for which I had made.

When I had got my breath, I stood up and took out my torch, to see if I could do better than use the ledge as a bed. And then I saw what, had I had not been so weary, I might have guessed.

The ledge was no ledge, but a path – the path which I had been seeking for seven hours.

I shall never forget that moment or the thrill of relief and excitement which lifted my heart. My weariness fell away and I felt as much refreshed as when I set out. And though I knew I must eat and must take some rest, I decided to walk for a while until I should come to some harbour which would offer me comfort less cold than the parcel of rocks.

The path rose steadily. It was always very narrow and only at very few places could two men have walked abreast: but, its surface was very good and except at one or two points, I do not think a blind man could have gone astray. After my tribulation, I trod upon air.

So for, perhaps, a mile. Then I came to a little hollow where a sudden grove of beeches had laid a carpet of leaves and the wind had swept and gathered them into a bed.

I turned aside from the path and sat down luxuriously.

I intended, when I had eaten, to take some rest, but if my flesh was weary, my spirit was fresh, and, though I shut my eyes, the slumber which I was inviting refused to come. My brain, as a naughty child, would not put away its toys, but played with my late adventure and the gambler’s luck I had had. To be honest, I did not much care, for I wanted to be afoot when the dawn came up, and though the chill of that hour was likely enough to rouse me, the chance that I might sleep on presented itself to my mind. And that, no doubt, was why I could not fall asleep. Be that as it may, I presently gave up trying and raised myself up. Then I lighted a pipe and sat musing, relaxed in body and mind, and finding my humble lodging a great deal more to my taste than all the sumptuous appointment of ‘the corner suite’ at Jezreel.

I knew that I must be at least four thousand feet up, for the spot was wrapped in that lovely mantle of silence which only high places wear. Till now, since I had left Bell, I had hardly been out of earshot of falling water, but now I could hear no springs, and, except when the leaves above me sighed at some fickle air, there was no sound.

I had rested for more than an hour, chewing the cud of fancy and lazily reflecting that the closer you creep to Nature, the more liberal she is of her charms, when, all of a sudden, the lovely shield was smirched.

Somewhere below in the darkness somebody laughed.

I think the hair rose upon my head.

The laughter was wild, and the virtue of the silence it outraged lent it a hideous likeness to the mirth of some unclean spirit in search of rest. For a moment I wondered if the tales of such things were true and if I was to be beset by some power of darkness whose writ was running in the region in which I lay.

Then I heard a man mouthing French – a flurry of violent words.

In that instant I knew three things.

I knew that the man was coming the way I had come, for when I had entered my hollow I had just surmounted a zigzag of two or three bends. I knew that the man was alone, for the style and the tone of his threats were those of soliloquy. And I knew that the speaker was Jean, late chauffeur and private assassin to Vanity Fair.

Because of the leaves below me I dared not move, but unless he was using a torch, I was sure that I could not be seen. Still, to sit there, breathless and waiting for the man to come up and go past was very trying, for I was sitting full in the open and only four feet from the path.

With a pounding heart, I sat peering for the tell-tale glow of a torch…

If the man had a light, I should have to take my pistol and shoot him dead – directly and indirectly in self-defence. But I did not want to do murder, although he did. To judge from the incoherence which he had been letting fly, my lingering death was among his heart’s desires. But I did not want him to die. I wanted him to lead me…to lead me up to my goal. Though I knew not what I was seeking, I had no shadow of doubt that if I could follow Jean, I should find it and find it out. He was, of course, hot from Jezreel. And he was bound for the bourn from which ‘my wallah’ had come, where was springing that fountain of knowledge, a draught of which had cost poor Julie her life.

I could hear his footsteps now, but I saw no light. Then he rounded the last of the zigzag, and I knew I was safe. He raved no more, for he had no breath to spare: the way was steep, and he was fat and unused to such exercise.

He hove into view – I could see him against the stars…

And then he was by…and I was padding behind him…wondering what I had done to deserve such astonishing luck.

I will not describe our progress, but I very soon found that until the moon rose or the dawn came up, I need have no fear of giving my presence away, for I was shod with rubber, but Jean was shod with leather and made enough noise for four.

To my surprise and relief – for now I blessed the darkness as truly as I had cursed it three hours before – the fellow hardly rested and never sat down, but held on his way at a steady two miles an hour; and we must have gone nearly six miles when a radiance began to lighten the dark of the eastern sky.

I had now to be most careful.

The dawn was coming – I knew it. The moon as well, perhaps. But the dawn was coming to peel off the cloak of darkness which was all the cover I had.

And so it did.

I began to be able to see the fellow before me, and once he glanced over his shoulder, to observe the state of the sky and bring my heart into my mouth.

After that, I began to fall back.

Little by little I had to increase my distance: then I had to wait at the bends and peep and crouch and use the traditional aids of a man who is stalking his prey.

For more than an hour now we had been going downhill, and since we had on the whole been moving south, I knew we must be close to the frontier, if indeed we were not in Spain. Where Carlos lay, I had but the faintest idea.

The daylight was growing broad when I rounded a rockbound spur to see my man before me crossing a little plain. The path was gone, the soil was poor and stony, and the plain was ringed with mountains the sides of which were most sheer. Except for the way we had come, there seemed to be no entry, and since the plain was round and the walls which kept it were steep, the place had the look of a circus perhaps three furlongs in width.

It was a most curious and something sinister sight, for though it belonged to Nature, there was no sign of life. There were no birds or beasts, no foliage or running water to ruffle by sound or movement the trance which lay like a mantle upon this unearthly spot: but what was more strange and more compelling, I could have sworn that once it was not deserted… The empty bed of a torrent seemed to confirm this view.

If the bed of the torrent was empty, the ground was bare. There was no cover at all. And I saw at once that cost what it might, I must advance no further till Jean was out of my sight.

He was now some sixty yards off.

Trembling with impatience, I took out my glasses and set my back to a rock…

He was heading straight for the opposite side of the circus, where a slender cascade fell down in a single leap: but even this died before it could reach the plain, for half-way down it lost its elegant form and came to a lovely end in a mist that hung like smoke at the foot of the cliff.

In vain I raked the crag for some sign of a path…

I lowered my glasses, to see if I dared advance, but the sun was about to rise and had the man turned when once I was out on the plain, he could no more have failed to see me than if, two hours before, I had crossed with a lamp in my hand.

Cursing this change of fortune, I took again to my glasses, to see what I could.

The man walked on, without swerving, straight for the elegant fall. At its foot he paused for a moment, and raised his eyes. Then he hunched his shoulders and disappeared in the smoke.

For ten minutes or more I watched the face of the cliff. Then I put up my glasses and crossed the plain.

Not until I was close to the fall, was I able to read the riddle which Jean’s disappearance had set.

There was a cleft or fissure, the foot of which was masked by the mist of the fall. Thousands of years ago the mountain had been riven by some supernatural shock. As those of a flint that is struck with a hammer, its halves had started apart – no more than that. The cleft thus formed was irregular, doubling upon itself, so that no light was appearing between its sides: from end to end it was less than five feet wide: and since Nature had been at some pains to cover the damage up, very few men, I think, would have seen that the mountain was split, and none, I am sure, would have dreamed that there was a natural passage, not quite two hundred yards long.

The exit was clothed with bushes of great luxuriance, and when I had picked my way clear, I saw before me what I can only describe as a rolling park. It seemed to be as fast land-locked as the circus which I had left, but there the resemblance ended, for here was as lovely a pleasance as ever made glad the heart of man. I have seldom seen finer timber or richer turf, and in all my life I never saw two such beauties so well disposed. The flower-starred fields gave to the trees a standing beyond compare: the grateful trees turned meadows into glades fit for a king’s pleasures: and the two together made vistas like those which Watteau has limned. That there was water abundant was very clear, and a long way off I could see a lively ribbon sunk in the vivid leafage with which the mountains were hung.

And something more I could see – a splash of white against the trunk of a chestnut, a furlong away.

In a flash I had found my glasses…

A girl was standing, peering at something out of my field. I could see that her hair was fair, but her back was turned to me and she stood behind the chestnut, as though she wished to see, yet not to be seen. One hand was against the trunk and the other was holding a dog, a huge Great Dane. Between the leaves of the chestnut I could see the flash of a rill that fell into a pool.

I had no doubt she was looking after the chauffeur and at once I turned my glasses to follow her gaze.

But the fellow was out of my sight.

And out of hers, too, I fancy, for when I returned to the girl, she was standing stripped to the skin on the edge of the pool.

If I lowered my glasses of instinct, I had my reward.

I have seen many lovely pictures, but the rarest of all was the picture I saw at that moment in the heart of a thousand hills.

The sun was up and over the mountain-tops and was laying long, clean-cut shadows upon the dew: the majestic trees stood breathless: the meadows were quick with the magic that night had left: and in the midst of this beauty, a slim, straight, girlish figure remembered Artemis.

The pleasance became her temple: the groves and lawns and fountains became her courts: and she became the darling for whom the dawn had discovered a golden world.

For a moment she stood like an arrow. Then –

The snap of a twig behind me brought me about in a flash.

Twelve feet away was crouching a giant of a man. He was very dark and though he was not ill-favoured, I shall see the look on his face till my dying day. It shook me more, I think, than the look of the knife he was holding close to his ribs.

I owe my life to the fact that the grass was wet.

As the fellow launched himself at me, I made to leap to one side, but I slipped and fell. Unable to stop himself – for he had expected my body to check his rush – he measured his length across mine, and his knife drove into the turf a foot from my groin. But, as he fell, I had the time and the instinct to turn on my back, and before he could strike again, I let him have my binocular full in his face.

The glasses were very heavy and weighed between three and four pounds. I had often cursed the day when I bought them, because of their weight. But now, as a knuckle-duster, they were beyond all price.

Because I was lying, no strength was behind the blow, but the weight of them knocked him sideways, and I was up before he.

I think the man must have been dazed or else was no sort of fighter and only good at exploiting the upper hand, for I well remember that, as he rose, he had a hand to his head and that, just before I struck him again, he took it away to stare at the blood upon his fingers as though he was loth to believe the tale it told.

His blood was the last thing he saw.

As a man puts the weight, I planted those heavy glasses full on the side of his head, not letting them go, but with all my weight behind them – and I am a heavy man.

I believe that he died there and then, but I cannot be sure. From that time on he certainly never moved. But, though I was shaken, I felt no compunction at all, for the fellow had sought to kill me behind my back. As for Julie… He was, of course, ‘my wallah’, the man I had seen in the meadows the night before Julie died.

As I stood, nursing my hand, which was very much bruised, I began to wonder what Vanity Fair would say…

Suddenly I thought of the girl, but she was not to be seen. Only the hound lay couched by the white of her frock. This suggested that she had seen nothing: but since I had run risk enough, I dragged the body into a dip of the ground and then sat down close by behind a swell of the turf.

It was then that I realised how badly shaken I was, and when I had found my brandy, I had to take two hands to hold the flask to my mouth.

This was, no doubt, reaction, for I had just walked with Death. It had been a very near thing. There had, in fact, been no fight. The man had allowed me to kill him, as the ox allows the butcher to take his life. But, but for the grace of God, our roles would have been reversed. Had the grass not hidden the twig upon which he had stepped, he would have played the butcher, and I the ox: and my body would have lain in the hollow, and he would have been sitting down and draining my flask. It had been a very near thing.

I wiped my face and my hands and tried to think what to do.

I had, it seemed, scrambled home – by the skin of my teeth. I had made a discovery which I had survived to recount. I had found out ‘what Julie knew’.

This park was a private domain of Vanity Fair’s. And Julie had found it – had found the secret way in.

That I was right in this, I had next to no doubt. If Carlos was not very far…

I decided to look for Carlos without delay. Once I had found the village, my job was done. Before I began, however, I had to dispose of my dead. Burial was out of the question. Yet if they sought for the man and employed the dog…

I decided to look for a pool.

This made me remember the girl, but when I peered at the chestnut, the dog and her dress were gone. Straining my eyes – for, apart from their horrid condition, my glasses were out of shape – I thought I could see in the distance a flutter of white.

I could hardly employ the pool which the girl had used, but I could find no other, search as I would. I dared not go far, of course: I had no desire to be seen. And in the end I could do no more than drag the corpse into the bushes, perhaps twenty paces beyond the mouth of the cleft.

I had some hazy idea of bringing back Bell that night to help me to other rites, but the honest truth is that I was too tired to think. My one idea was to locate the village and then repair to the bridge and sleep until Bell arrived. I must be there by midnight, whatever befell. But first I had to find Carlos. Till then I dared not rest, for such was my state that if once I had closed my eyes, I should, as like as not, have slept the sun out of the sky.

As I shambled across the circus, I tried to determine the angle at which I should bear to the west… And that shows the state I was in. Nearly two hours went by before it entered my head to look at my map.

Upon this the circus was marked – a natural colosseum entitled the
Cirque des Morts
. And Carlos lay two miles west. Of the park I had found, the map showed no sign at all.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when I stumbled into the road and plodded down to the bridge by which I had spoken with Bell.

On its coping I scrawled a note.

Don’t go. I’m asleep in the leaves by the side of the rill.

I folded it up and stuffed it into the crevice. Then I left the road, to slide and scramble into a drift of leaves.

A touch on my arm woke me, and I started up, blinking and helpless before the glare of a torch.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ said Bell.

‘Yes,’ I said, yawning. ‘I think so. I’m still damned tired. Did you get to Anise all right?’

‘There’s blood on your sleeve, sir.’

‘Is there?’ said I, sitting up. ‘Well, it isn’t mine.’

‘Tell me the worst,’ said Mansel. ‘Whom have you hurt?’

That brought me up to my feet.

‘By Jove,’ I cried, ‘I’m thankful to hear your voice. You’re not going back, are you?’

‘Well, I was,’ said Mansel slowly: ‘but now I’m less sure. Come to the Rolls, William. Bell’s got some beer.’

As we scrambled on to the road, Carson rose out of the shadows and touched his hat.

‘Hullo, Carson,’ I said. And then, ‘Hullo, it’s your car.’

‘Yours is at Anise,’ said Mansel. ‘We didn’t need two, and I didn’t want your number-plates showing round here. And now you get in and sit down.’

Though he must have been very eager to hear my news, since I was very hungry, he made me eat: and whilst I ate, I listened to what he said.

‘My hand has been forced, William. For twenty-four hours I tried to find a way out, but it couldn’t be done. Vanity Fair never mentioned Candle to me, but he’s due to arrive tomorrow at ten o’clock. Well, I couldn’t put him off, so I had to go. Candle knows me quite well. If I could have seen him alone, I might have stopped his mouth: but that would have been no good, for Vanity Fair would have had it open all right. And so I had to be gone.

‘Well, that was easy enough. I’ve always a bolt-hole ready, by day and night. I said I was in touch with Carson. Well, off he goes to Bordeaux and gets on the telephone: and last night I get a wire to say that my little girl is dangerously ill. You know I’ve no little girl: but Vanity Fair has seen her photograph… So this morning I left – much to her suspicion and entirely to her disgust. I certainly meant to go back, when Candle had gone: but now that depends on your news. Who did you have your scrap with?’

‘“My wallah,”’ said I. ‘The fellow I saw in the fields.’

‘Dead?’ said Mansel.

I nodded.

‘I killed him in self-defence.’

‘That I can well believe. Does anyone know?’

‘Nobody saw,’ said I. ‘But I couldn’t bury the body. I hid it as well as I could.’

‘And the shot,’ said Mansel. ‘Was anyone thereabouts?’

‘I didn’t shoot him,’ said I. ‘I did him in with my glasses. Cracked his skull.’

‘Did you, though?’ said Mansel. He laughed. ‘History repeats itself. Your prototype did his damage with the jawbone of an ass. And when and where did this happen?’

‘At five o’clock this morning, five miles from here.’

‘Then I can go back,’ said Mansel. ‘I’ve got a good alibi. All the same… And now you get on with your meal, and I’ll tell you the news of Jezreel.

‘Vanity Fair is peevish. She misses you very much, as I knew she would. She rang up Bayonne this morning, but they said that you’d left for Spain. Virginia is also peevish, and Gaston is getting the wet. He disparaged you yesterday: and she choked him off in terms that I wouldn’t have thought she knew. No love lost there. She’s marrying the man by order – no doubt about that. But why? That’s where I’m damned well stuck. They both hate de Rachel – loathe him, as he deserves. Yet they have agreed together, the one to become his wife and the other to make him a virtual millionaire. De Rachel has no hold upon them: that I’ll swear. Yet each is going to make him a present. Virginia is going to be joined, to use her own words, “to a dirty shop-soiled mutt that ought to be pushing soap in a fourth-rate store”: and Vanity Fair is going to part with a fortune which he will proceed to debauch with the hideous finesse of his kind.’

He lay back and closed his eyes.

‘Of course there’s a snag somewhere: but I’m damned if I see where it is.

‘Oh, and poor old Below is peevish. At least he laments your loss. He talked to me about you, after you’d gone. He knew your father at Oxford.’

‘He never said so,’ said I.

‘I know. It was rather pathetic. “It would have seemed boastful,” he said: “and in the absence of proof…”’

‘Poor old fellow,’ said I. ‘She’s got him where he belongs.’

‘Perhaps she has. D’you pity the bears at the Zoo? They’re a damned sight better off there than taking their chance in the mountains. Look at the buns they get.’

‘I’ve broken my fast,’ said I, laughing. ‘And now you shall hear my tale. I’ll eat again presently.’

With that, I told him the truth from beginning to end.

When I had done –

‘Well, there you are,’ said Mansel. ‘And now you must see what I meant when I talked at Cleveland Row.
Only
an amateur could ever have done so well. No money on earth could ever buy service like that. Never mind. What a glorious show. But I’d like to have a look at that girl. Not a peasant, you say. Well bred. It looks to me as if
she
was “what Julie knew”.’

‘I never thought of that,’ said I.

‘You would have,’ said Mansel, ‘if you hadn’t been so tired. And why is she there? And what has she to do with Vanity Fair?’

‘And Jean?’ said I.

Mansel frowned.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘And Jean. Assassins don’t go with dryads… Can you eat as we go? I’ll drive. And I’m devilish glad I brought Carson, because we’ll have need of Bell.’ He asked for my map. ‘How close can you get to this pleasance, using the road?’

‘To within three miles,’ said I.

‘That’s not too bad,’ said Mansel. ‘When we take to our feet, d’you think you can find the way?’

‘I’ll do it somehow.’

‘That’s the stuff,’ said Mansel. ‘Now if you were being paid, you’d want a private bathroom and a couple of days in bed.’

The sky was not yet pale when Mansel and Bell and I passed under the fine cascade and into the cleft.

The corpse was as I had left it.

Mansel said it was that of a Spaniard, the moment he saw its face: then he went on his knees and proceeded to search the body with infinite care. The pockets yielded nothing, but the sash of coarse, red cloth, which had served the man as a belt, was containing two sealed letters, the superscriptions of which had been written by Vanity Fair. One was addressed to ‘Lafone’ and the other to ‘Jean’. We did not wait to read them, for we wished to bury the body before it was day, and, after a little discussion, Mansel and Bell took it up and bore it the way we had come.

We buried the corpse in the circus, scraping a hole in the bed of the stream that was dry. The only tools we had were the Spaniard’s knife and the two tire-levers which Bell had brought from the Rolls, but the bed was of stones and sand, so that, though we could have done with a shovel, the grave grew very much faster than if we had been digging earth. And, what was still more to the point, when the grisly business was over, no one could ever have told that the channel had been disturbed. We laid the man’s knife beside him and buried my useless glasses a hundred yards off.

As the dawn came up, the three of us stripped and bathed in the mist of the fall, and, though the water was icy, since I had a piece of soap, we did very well. This cost us full half an hour, for whilst one was making his toilet, the others were keeping watch upon either side: but it made a world of difference, and the delicate spray did more than wash the sweat from our skins. Then we set out, all three, to reconnoitre the park.

Though the letters burned his pocket, Mansel would not read them ‘because,’ he said, ‘we need every moment we’ve got. In less than an hour, this park will be full of light, and by then we must be hiding, if we are to do any good.’

(Here I may say that I dare say many will wonder why Mansel had not read the letters while Bell and I were bathing in the mist of the fall: but that was not Mansel’s way. He had set himself to play sentry, and, though he was always the captain of every enterprise, he did his share of duty with all his might.)

In single file we moved at the foot of the mountains confining the park, for so, of course, we were less easy to see, and if we had trodden the meadows, the print of our steps would have stayed till the sun was high. As we went, I began to see that the pleasance had the way of a river that bends and widens and narrows for no apparent cause, and when we had covered about three hundred paces, I saw the edge of some building that stood in a bay on our right.

Mansel had stopped, and I made my way on to his side.

From where he stood I could see a broad, grey house, some five hundred yards away. It was plainly very old and had, I judged, been built when worse than thieves broke in, to do worse than steal, for the windows were small and set high and there was no door, but an archway that gave to a court within. It must have looked grim, when new: but wind and rain and sun had softened its ancient face, and the chestnuts that crowded about it – and especially one that was growing within its court – gave it that air of security which only Nature can give.

Away to the left stood farm buildings, and around and beyond these were pastures, decently fenced.