The Man from the Sea (17 page)

“The Canty Quean. It means the cheerful girl.”

“It doesn’t look cheerful – only rather lonely and forlorn. I can’t think where it gets its customers.” George swept the binoculars to the left. “But wait a minute. Perhaps there are some approaching now. Can you see? A car – a large closed car – coming slowly along the high-road from the west.”

“I can see. It probably hasn’t any idea of stopping. But we’ll approach with a good deal of caution if it does. And now we take to the woods.”

And presently they were moving silently through the trees. It made, quite suddenly, another world. Day would no longer be guided. The going had ceased to be treacherous underfoot, and out of the sunlight he seemed to find himself among massively distinguishable shapes. He went forward groping and peering. The effect was of something curiously savage. It was possible to feel that he would have been more congruously dressed in skins than in Sir Alex Blair’s eminently civilised clothes. And if his sight was virtually useless still, his other senses appeared to have gained an almost primitive acuteness. “Listen.” He had stopped – and the word was uttered only in a whisper. “There’s a noise – a queer whistle.” He relaxed. “Are there telephone wires?”

Cranston thought for a moment. “I think so.”

George nodded. “I know there are – along the high-road. I noticed the posts.”

“Then it’s only the wind in them.” Day had a strained smile that showed ghastly on his injured face. “But there’s another thing. Somebody’s cooking.”

Cranston sniffed, but was aware of nothing. “Picnickers? It’s more likely to be the old wife in the pub. It’s not fifty yards away. But I don’t think we’ll linger to see what she has in the pot. Let’s trust Lord Urquhart to put on a magnificent cold collation round about three o’clock.”

“Do I get in on that?” George presented this question with some urgency. “Your mother’s was a dinkum breakfast. But I’m beginning to feel–”

Cranston nodded. The sun in some mysterious way manufactures its own fuel. But it would be only reasonable to suppose that George required substantial stoking. “You’re a problem,” he said. “But my idea is to treat you as Lord Urquhart’s problem, and not mine. I hope that
noblesse
oblige
will do the rest… And now, if you ask me, the critical moment comes. Once across the high-road, and I think we’ve beaten them. Come along.”

They advanced until they were once more looking out into bright sunlight. They were here among larches, and these, running right up to the yard of the Canty Quean, cast perpendicular lines of shadow across its white-washed walls. The outlines of the building were uncertain, and from their vantage-point it had the appearance of some shapeless fleecy creature slumbering behind enormous bars. The only sounds at first were that of a turkey gobbling and a few poultry scratching in dust. It was possible that to the high-road the Canty Quean presented an aspect more in keeping with its name. The back was dismal.

Cranston put his mouth to Day’s ear. “Stay where you are. I’ll move round a bit and see what’s doing.”

Day nodded. “Very well. But be careful. I thought I heard voices. And hadn’t we better go east for a little way and cross the high-road where it’s running through the forest?”

“Perhaps so – but I’ll spy out the land.” There was a low tumbledown wall round the yard, and Cranston began to skirt it. The turkey still gobbled and there was the smell of a pig. He found that George was by his side. “Hadn’t you better stop with him?” he murmured.

She shook her head. “Let’s leave him for a minute. With any luck he may vanish.”

“Vanish?” he was alarmed.

“Magically, I mean. Perhaps he isn’t true. I’m sure I hope so.”

Cranston glanced at her oddly, but had no time to speak. For suddenly there were voices from the front of the building. They stood quite still, straining their ears.

“Gentry,” George whispered. “Or is it what Sandy calls half-gentry? I wouldn’t know. But I think they must be from that car.” Without waiting for a reply she tiptoed away, and he saw that she was determined to have first peep. He let her go. For he knew by now that George, although physically overwhelming, had a very adequate command over her slightest movements. And within a minute she was back. “It is. An enormous vintage Daimler, I think. And it’s stopped with its bonnet turned down the road to Urquhart. It looks as if it might belong to your old Lord Urquhart’s grandmother.”

“It may at least belong to one of his venerable friends. I wonder –” Cranston hesitated. “Could you see who’d got out?”

“No – but it sounds like an elderly man. And I think he’s talking to the woman of the place – the pub-keeper’s wife.”

“Mrs Brash, I think she’s called. If this is somebody going to Urquhart, do you think we might bag a lift? Could there be any risk – after we’ve taken a better look? It would mean we had it in the bag. Let’s go round.”

She looked at him in surprise – perhaps guessing that he had somehow become infected with Day’s new impatience. Then she put her hand on his arm. “I’ll go. A lone girl’s more appealing at a first shot. If he’s nice I can spin a yarn and fetch you both out. But I won’t break cover until I get a better look.”

“George, no–”

She slipped away before he could say more. He had been on the verge of going forward himself, and her action was taken on the strength of some sharp instinct. She rounded the corner of the yard and looked up the high-road as it ran through the forest. For as far as she could see, it was deserted. She looked across to the road that led, as she knew, to Urquhart. The big car was still stationary – but in shadow, so that she could not distinguish its occupants. She took a few steps farther and peeped cautiously round the corner of the building. The main door was there, sheltered by a small porch. The elderly man appeared just about to turn away from it, and his voice now came to her clearly. It was a Scottish voice – dry, cultivated and full of authority.

“Then good day to you, Mrs Brash. If your son still seeks the tenancy, send him to see my factor. And I’ll speak to Lord Urquhart this afternoon.”

The elderly man turned away from the door with a nod. George made up her mind, and stepped into the road. The elderly man saw her at once, and took off his hat politely as he turned away to his car. His glance had been appraising, courteously brief, and carefully unsurprised and unamused. She made up her mind that he was a judge. “Excuse me,” she said, “but can you tell me the road to Urquhart?”

He raised a silver-topped walking-stick and pointed. “Two miles ahead – and well worth seeing. You can’t miss it.” He appeared about to walk on, when a further thought struck him. “Would you by any chance care for a lift? And have you friends with you? I think there is room for two or three.”

“Thank you very much. I–” George stopped. Her eye had gone past the elderly man to the front of the Canty Quean. It was as forlorn as the back. But for the noise of domestic animals, one would have taken it to be deserted. She glanced at the little porch and the door within it – and suddenly her heart pounded. A shaft of sunlight, creeping round from the south-west, was playing full upon a large cobweb that draped alike the handle and the jamb of the door. The thing was as good as a seal. The elderly man had been conversing with nothing but a surface of blank wood.

He was looking at her with a changed expression. But it was only for a split second that she distinguished it, for a sound behind her made her turn in a flash. The doors of the big car were open, and she had a glimpse of a figure disappearing behind a dyke. She shouted with all her might. “It’s a trap!” Then she ran.

The elderly man attempted no pursuit of her. She had the impression that he had instantly turned away, shouting orders. She ran to retrace her steps to the point at which she had left Cranston. Then it came to her that this was to give too much away. She wheeled and ran for the other side of the building. The move was a bad one. Another man was coming head on at her, and she had a confused impression of being caught between high walls. The man held something in a raised arm. It was as if he was going to strike her down as he ran and then hurry on to other quarry. There was a door on her left. She had no time to turn a handle, but she lunged at it and it gave. She was inside and she banged it to. There was a bolt and she shot it. The door rattled briefly, furiously, and then she heard the man hurry on. Despite the uproar outside, there was no sound inside the building. She appeared to be alone in the Canty Quean.

She saw in a swift glance that it was a miserable place; she was even conscious that it smelled dismally of stale beer and stale tobacco. She was in a low back passage, and she ran forward into a kitchen. There was somebody in the place after all. A bent old woman was standing by a stove, stirring at something in a frying-pan. George called out and the old woman turned round. She stared at George vacantly and without surprise. Then she turned back, muttering, to her cookery. There could be no help there, and George ran on. She found herself in some sort of tap-room or bar. It was deserted except for a black cat, asleep on top of a barrel. She looked quickly round. It was her idea to find a weapon. She had a dim notion, picked up from stories, that such places often, for some reason, kept a loaded shot-gun over a fire-place. But what her eye fell upon was a telephone.

For a moment she stared at it, stupid and incredulous. The notion that she could have any link with an outer world seemed quite unreal. Then she ran to it. The instrument was fixed to the wall. There was a handle to turn – rather as if one were going to crank up an ancient car… But almost at once a soft Scottish voice spoke. “Number please?”

She found that her mind was a blank. And then she remembered. “I want the police-station, please. The police-station at Drumtoul.”

George’s shout had brought Cranston out on the high-road at the double. For the first time since that fatal moment on the beach beneath Dinwiddie, when John Day had risen from the waters to fasten mysteriously upon him like an incubus, his mind was free of any thought of the man from the sea. There was nothing in his head but the girl – whom he had unforgivably let push forward as she had done. He had no hope that her shout was a false alarm – George was too reliable for that – and not much that he could in any way redeem the situation. But he made his dash all the same. He was in time to see her disappear round the other side of the Canty Quean. Simultaneously he was aware of several figures moving on the road, and he heard a call which told him he had been spotted.

He turned and doubled round the building, expecting to meet George that way. But she had vanished. There was a wall in front of him, and she might have got on the farther side of that – in which case its shelter would take her right to the fringe of the trees. His best course was to bank on this, and himself beat a retreat. If they could all three reunite, then they might contrive to withdraw into the forest and find another plan. He heard more shouts as he ran – not random shouts, but the sharp calling out of one and another command. It seemed to him that they were in English. The impression – quite irrationally – angered him more than anything had done yet. He supposed that in addition to their own secret agents – who must at least be brave men – they hired anybody they could get. He hoped that it wouldn’t be before one of the hirelings that he would go down – if go down he must. And things looked bleak. A trap like this would take some escaping from. Once more he had been far too confident. He remembered his conviction that the little aeroplane had carried Lord Urquhart, and the recollection made him grin wryly as he ran.

Day was before him. Day was standing with his back to a slender larch and in an attitude that suggested desperate defiance. His face beneath its injuries was pale and blotched and his nostrils were quivering. The man did, at least, intensely care. And whether it was for his queer scheme of atonement, or for some cunningly concealed design, or again for mere life – the little of life that remained to him anyway – seemed at the moment unimportant. He would fight. Blinded and with bare hands he would yet fight. And Cranston felt once more the tug of whatever it had been that had first drawn him to the man. It was something very primitive and probably entirely worthless. It shocked him now, even as he felt it. For he ought still to have no other thought than for George. “Where is she?” he called. “Where’s the girl?”

“Ssh!” Day had gone rigid. Now he turned on him his furious purblind face. “You fool – don’t shout! What have you done? Another bungle?”

“Just that.” Cranston lowered his voice. He felt no animosity. “But haven’t you seen her?”

“Have I seen anything – except men as trees walking?” Day’s hiss was again savage. “Get me out of this! Haven’t you landed me in it?”

It seemed to Cranston that the man was cracking. His fighting would be that of a cornered animal. His swift brain would no longer be behind it. Cranston put out a hand to him. “Take hold,” he said. “I’ll get you a couple of hundred yards back into the forest, and then I must have another look for George. I don’t believe she made the trees at all. Perhaps she got into the pub.”

He led Day back as he had promised. The enemy, he guessed, were doing nothing precipitate. They would be stringing out along the high-road, and across the last stretch of the moor, preparatory to making a drive through this corner of the forest. They still couldn’t be legion – it strained credulity that there could be more than, say, a dozen of them all told – and they would have to spread themselves out thin, while carefully maintaining contact all the while.

Once more the Canty Quean appeared through the last fringe of trees. This time he decided to skirt it on the west, for it was on that side that George had vanished. He rounded the building – and there she was. But it was only for a second. She had darted out of some side door and bolted straight for the high-road before he could give a call. He ran after her. He supposed that she had got her directions wrong, and he risked a shout. “George – it’s this way!”

He was too late. George had vanished round the front of the building. He followed – so precipitately that he tripped on a loose cobble and lost ground. When he reached the high-road she was over it. Suddenly he saw that she knew where she was going, and he stopped. The nearest man was twenty yards up the road where it plunged into the forest. And straight in front was the big car, apparently empty. George was making a brilliant bid to capture the enemy’s transport. The man up the road had seen her and was pounding back towards the pub. It was just possible that she would bring it off, all the same. But even as her hand was on the door-handle she was beaten. Dead in front of her a second man sprang up as if from nowhere. George saw her danger, dashed across the narrow side-road, and vanished into the trees. Both men were after her. Cranston saw what he must do. “Day,” he shouted, “this way – quick!”