The Man from the Sea (16 page)

George was silent for a moment. “But you didn’t go.”

“There were difficulties.” Day looked up sombrely. Dimly, it appeared, he could now distinguish them as figures. “Had we better be getting along?”

They moved forward. It was still heavy going – the more so because, as George had foretold, the day was indeed a cow. A light breeze that had been whispering in the dried bells of the old heather had now died away, and the warm dry scent came up to them in waves. They had made another mile before George spoke. “Is it like this all the way?”

“We finish on a road – if we think it safe.” Cranston stopped and fished out the map. “Let’s get it clear. The high-road runs parallel to the road to Drumtoul we were travelling on. The distance between the two roads is about eight miles across this moor. But after about six miles we begin to have Urquhart Forest on our right. We could take to it, if the worst came to the worst.”

“As it very conceivably may.” Day, unable to see the map, was looking up at the sky. “I don’t deny that this is a good move of yours, Cranston. But it’s one they may well take a guess at.
They
would see that
we
must see the danger of simply driving into Drumtoul.”

“That’s clear enough.” George was impatient. “But would they reckon on our moving almost due north?”

“They’d consider it. But they certainly couldn’t risk throwing all their force into quartering this moor.” Day spoke slowly, as one carefully weighing chances. “They haven’t got companies at their command – or even platoons – after all. Their best chance is with the roads. What are they like round here?” He tapped the map irritably. “I wish I could see that damned thing.”

“Imagine two adjacent squares,” Cranston said. “Imagine them lying almost north, and south. The southernmost line is the sea – the Firth. The line which they have in common is the Drumtoul road. And the line to the north is the high-road.”

“Which we have to cross?”

“We have to cross the high-road to get to Urquhart, which is two miles beyond. We’re going to make the high-road, I hope, at a pub, the Canty Quean. And there we can leave the heather. Imagine an inverted T. The arms are the high-road. We go straight down the stem, which is a by-road leading to Urquhart.”

“I see. Would it be right to say that, until we get over the arms of the T, we are on a rectangular of bare moor, bounded by straight and virtually unfrequented roads?”

“Yes – and we are on a line that pretty well bisects that rectangle now. And it’s bare enough – except for the forest, which lies north-east of us.”

Day nodded. “Their plan will be to contain us, won’t it? It’s not too difficult to keep an eye on long stretches of straight moorland road.”

“Quite so.” Cranston folded up the map and prepared to walk on. “That’s why I want to cross the high-road by the Canty Quean. The woods come right up to it there, both on this and the Urquhart side. We can reconnoitre without being seen… George, it’s my turn with the rucksack.”

She handed it over. “What about people at this pub?”

“There may be nobody more than the man and his wife. And after that I don’t think there’s a habitation until we drop into the clachan of Urquhart itself.”

“The what?” George was at a loss.

“The village. It lies just south of the house.”

Again they moved forward. It seemed to Cranston that Day was tiring. Perhaps it was the man’s terrific swim beginning to tell. “If we just make the Canty Quean,” he said, “ – or the forest close by it – you can shelter, if you like, and I can go on. Lord Urquhart would send down a car.”

Day shook his head. “I don’t think I shall be beaten by a remaining six or seven miles. But aren’t you rather confidently banking on the benevolent interest of this nobleman?”

Cranston laughed. “It’s going to involve telling some lies. Do you mind?”

“Not if they are convincing lies, my dear young man.”

“Well – I rather do mind, as a matter of fact.” Cranston felt a now familiar irritation rising in him. “I rather like old Lord Urquhart.”

“But I understood you to say that he was the deadly enemy of your good friends at the castle. Perhaps that’s irrelevant?”

“It’s not, I’m afraid.” Cranston frowned. “It’s what I’ll have to exploit. And I’ll have to exploit your eyes, damn them.” He flushed. “I’m sorry.”

“Not at all, not at all.” Day was bland. “You interest me. Did the castle folk blind me in an access of hideous barbarity?”

“Something of the sort. You’ll have to back up the story that–”

Cranston broke off. George had stopped dead. “Listen!” she said.

“I wondered when you’d hear it.” Day was at his most detached. “An aeroplane, without a doubt.”

The sound hung, minute after minute, in air. In volume it rose, dropped, rose again, and then once more dropped. The suggestion was unmistakable; it was of a machine lazily circling somewhere far to the south. George searched the horizon with the binoculars. “Nothing to be seen. And I hardly suppose–” She was silent for a moment. “But one does come to feel that anything’s possible.”

Cranston nodded, but without much appearance of worry. “That’s true enough. And it may be worth while, as we get along, keeping an eye open for cover.”

“Are we likely,” Day asked, “to find any – short of that forest?”

“I don’t know that we are. But my guess is that the thing’s harmless. If it comes in sight, we’ll think again.”

“Wait.” George had turned a little to the west. “There it is – just coming over the horizon. It must be flying quite low. And it’s only a little one.”

“The job scarcely requires a B47.” Day had one of his flashes of savagery. “A ditch would help.”

“Unfortunately we’ve hardly time to dig one.” George got her own back with some energy. “There’s just heather. Given a little time, you could do something quite effective with that. But it’s not exactly stuff you can climb under. What about sitting down on it for a start? They say it’s movement that’s first spotted from the air.”

“Then we’ll sit down.” Cranston was still easy. “It should pass straight over us.”

They sat down. The plane was revealing itself as a small flimsy thing. But for the increasingly audible throb of the engine one might have taken it for a glider. “A sort of run-about,” George said.

Cranston followed it with his eye. “It’s going straight home.”

“Home?” She was puzzled.

“Lunch-time.” Cranston spoke confidently. “And I’m hungry myself. Let’s get on.”

“Wait.” George pointed. “You’re wrong – whatever you mean by home. It’s started fooling around again.”

This was true. The little plane had banked and begun its lazy circling. It dropped in a wide spiral and rose again. Its movement was entirely the movement of a mechanical thing. Nevertheless, the suggestion it conveyed was that of a hawk.

Cranston spoke abruptly. “We’ll take no extra risks. Down on our tummies is the thing. Heads under heather – and feet too, if it can be managed. Then don’t move. And don’t look up.”

They got down as he directed, and lay quite still. “What’s odd,” George said, “is that we can talk – or even sing. Do you still think it isn’t the enemy?”

Cranston laughed. “I think it’s somebody quite different – our prospective host.”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“Old Lord Urquhart. He’s air crazy, and has a little fleet of aircraft of his own. He’s one of the Scottish Representative Peers–”

“What does that mean?”

“That he’s in the House of Lords. And he’s constantly making speeches there about opening up the Highlands by means of air transport. Most enterprising, too.” Cranston raised his voice, for the sound of the engine was now rapidly increasing. “Last summer he sold a herd of Highland cattle to the Duke of Horton – and dropped them by parachute into the park at Scamnum Court. And he does a lot of flying himself. It’s my guess that here he is, having a little morning spin.”

“I hope you’re right. And I hope it’s cooler up there than it is grovelling like this… Listen!”

What there was to listen to was sudden silence. It was a good deal more unnerving than the mounting roar of the engine had been. Then suddenly the heather was whipping and tossing around them, and for a fraction of a second they lay not in bright sunshine but in shadow. It passed over them like a blade and in the same instant the engine broke into life again. Cranston looked up. The little plane seemed to skim the heather straight in front of his nose. Then it climbed and vanished from his field of vision. He had caught a glimpse of the pilot, a white-helmeted figure in an open cockpit. He had a confused impression that the man had waved an arm.

For minutes they continued to lie still. But the sound of the engine now steadily receded, and as it died away they sat up. It was only a speck in the sky in front of them. It glinted momentarily in the sun and then vanished.

“I hope you were right.” Day spoke rather grimly as they trudged on.

“It’s in the direction of Urquhart, more or less, that it has vanished.” Cranston was still cheerful. “So I still think it’s our eccentric peer. And I hope I’m right about his going home to lunch. If we don’t find him about the place, we shall be badly held up.”

George, who had retrieved the rucksack, hitched it higher on her shoulders. “Richard, what sort of a place is this Urquhart anyway? Is it grander than Dinwiddie Castle?”

“Good lord, yes. It’s one of Scotland’s best attempts at a great house.”

Day had taken off the dark glasses and was cautiously dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “And you really have the entrée, my dear young man, to its splendours? We shall try not to be visibly over-awed.”

“I know Lord Urquhart quite well.” Cranston was curt. “How are your eyes?”

“Call them five per cent – which is a good deal better than they were. But they get more deucedly painful as they insist on seeing a little. Your father with his bandages might have been not a bad idea… Isn’t there a breeze again?”

George stopped. She was excited. “There is. And it’s because we’re at the top. Richard, what a tremendous view!”

“I hope I may be told about it.” Day was ironic. “But if this means that we’re posturing happily on a skyline, I suggest that we move down a little.”

“Quite right.” Cranston moved on, pointing ahead as he did so. “There’s Urquhart Forest, George, in the distance on the right. You can just see the high-road running from the left and plunging into it.”

“And just there I see smoke – blue smoke.”

“Peat smoke. That’s the Canty Quean. It’s all a good deal farther than it looks. Nearly a couple of hours, I’d say. Now look a little to the left – at about ten o’clock from the edge of the forest and on the very horizon. Can you just see a pale streak? That’s Urquhart. A tremendous Doric façade.”

“We’ll make it yet.” George spoke with sober confidence. “And I think I can now take a guess at why it’s so desirable. You’re reckoning that Lord Urquhart, if properly approached, will–”

George paused, and Cranston nodded. “Yes…fly us out.”

Day was suddenly in a fever. It was as if energy had poured back into him so abundantly that he was unable to use it with economy. Cranston realised that until this moment he had been accompanying a man without hope. When in the quarry he had told Day that they were beaten, it had been something which Day already believed. He had been carrying on not out of any substantial hope but as the consequence of a sheer effort of will. Now he had seen a real chance. Only a few miles away there was waiting something that could transform his situation. He was moving forward with complete concentration on the physical task of covering with all possible speed this uneven and impeded ground. He was treating the moor as he had treated the ocean not many hours before.

But it was still a slow progress. Sandy Morrison – if he had been sufficiently impressed to do as he was told – was by this time in Constable Carfrae’s lock-up in Drumtoul. Lord Urquhart had landed and was addressing himself to his luncheon – with a copy of
The Aeroplane
, Cranston seemed to remember, propped up against a large kebbuck of cheese. Caryl Blair was very probably consulting his father about her sprained ankle – and perhaps asking more questions than she ought to about the movements of the doctor’s son. Sally –

Cranston checked himself and carefully scanned the country ahead. “I think,” he said presently, “that we had better bear to the right now and skirt the forest. When we come to the last stretch – I mean before the high-road and the Canty Quean – we ought to do it through the trees. It’s bound to slow us down a lot, but we can afford to be prudent before the last lap.”

“And on the other side of the high-road?” Sweat was trickling down Day’s forehead. It was clear that he still found it difficult and almost useless to open his eyes. His face looked as if it had been brutally scrubbed with some abrasive substance.

“We can either chance it and walk straight along the road. Or we can do a sort of Red Indian approach through the trees.”

“Pine trees, I suppose?”

“Almost entirely.” Cranston turned to George. “Did you ever play hide-and-seek in a pine wood? It’s rather fun. You don’t make a sound, because the ground is thick with the fallen needles. But you can’t just hide behind a tree. It doesn’t often have sufficient girth. And there’s hardly any undergrowth. You have to keep far enough away from the chap that’s after you to be screened by a whole band of trunks. It’s like a game in some enormous colonnade… Do you notice how the smell of the forest is getting on top of the smell of the heather as we approach? Do you like it?”

George sniffed. “It’s all right. But it’s not my idea of what trees should smell like. Did you ever smell eucalypts?”

“Gum trees?” He smiled. “Only in a botanic garden. Is it something hard to do without?”

She nodded. “Impossible.”

Cranston glanced at her curiously. It hadn’t occurred to him that a sun-goddess could be home-sick. “We’ll get into the trees just there,” he said – and pointed ahead. “But have a go at the high-road with the glasses first.”

George sat down and carefully focused the binoculars, balancing bare elbows on bare knees. “There’s no sign of life about the pub. What did you say it’s called?”