The Man from the Sea (18 page)

The trick worked. Even as Cranston bolted he saw both men turn and make for the pub. He had a good start, and was securely invisible among the trees before they could catch a glimpse of him.

George was over the high-road. Provided she tried no more tricks, she was tolerably safe in the northern part of the forest, for the enemy was unlikely to spare it much immediate attention while they knew that their true quarry was close at hand in the south. And now he had better find Day again, if that was possible. It would be rash to shout, or even to give a low call. He must simply find his bearings, and then push cautiously about. Day could not be more than a couple of hundred yards away now.

He came upon him quite suddenly, sitting with his back against a tree, but alert and listening. “It’s me – Cranston.” He dropped down beside Day. The man was evidently tiring, but he knew how to conserve his strength. “Listen. It’s not too bad.”

“And what about your colonial giant?” Day had recovered his poise, and his question sounded decently concerned. “Have we lost her?”

“Yes. But I think she’s got away. And we can get away too. We have this whole forest, after all. And these people can’t run their hue and cry indefinitely.”

“They have pertinacity.”

“No doubt. And these are lonely parts. But it’s not Siberia, and there are limits to what they can get away with. All this land is Lord Urquhart’s – and he’s pretty strict and enormously wealthy. He has no end of keepers. They’ll be on top of this invasion in no time.” Cranston realised that he had taken up the role of encouraging an exhausted man. “Even if there are a dozen of these chaps – two dozen – we can extend them hopelessly. We needn’t turn back. We can move eastwards through the forest, parallel to the high-road. And after a couple of miles we can reconnoitre it again. With luck we can be across it after all – and within an hour. After that, Urquhart’s no distance, and we’ll put our first plan through. You’ll be airborne, man, by tea-time. So come along.”

Day had listened in silence to the whispered words. Now he was on his feet. “That damned swim,” he murmured. “Astonishing that I could race you straight after it, and feel like death now. But I can do another couple of hours. Or six at a pinch.” His laugh was low but harsh. “Lead the way. I can make you out.”

Cranston turned silently and moved off through the trees. It came to him that whether he in his turn could make Day out was an open question still.

Within five minutes he knew that he had been wildly optimistic in speaking of reaching Urquhart by tea-time. If they could have brought themselves to walk straight forward, with no more deviation than was required in order to thread their way among the trees, the estimate would no doubt have been reasonable. But that was impossible – because foolishly rash. Anywhere on their left the enemy might be infiltrating into the forest. Indeed, they were bound to do so, since they could scarcely afford merely to command the high-road and play a waiting game. Some sort of driving or encircling movement was essential if they were to succeed. At any moment one of them might appear, working forward from the road. Against this threat there was considerable advantage to be gained by studying the configuration of the trees so as to find a route affording a maximum of concealment. This made progress very slow – and also distance hard to calculate. Cranston aimed at getting at least two miles east of the Canty Quean before any attempt to break through to the north.

They made perhaps a little more than half that distance in an hour. He was beginning to think of risking a turn to the left when something pulled him up. Only a short distance ahead, and directly across their path if they went on, there lay what it first occurred to him to think of as a great bar of light. For a moment the effect was of an enormous searchlight trained upon the forest. And then he realised that the occasion of it was very simple. What lay ahead was clear sunshine. But it could not, he knew, be the eastern boundary of Urquhart Forest. That, at this point, could not be less than five miles away. “Wait,” he said to Day, and went cautiously forward.

A great straight ride was here cut through the forest – whether as a fire-break or for the convenience of sportsmen, Cranston didn’t know. But for one set of hunters its utility was obvious. He stood still, listening. The only sound was the cooing of pigeons, invisible in the tree-tops overhead. It was a peaceful sleepy sound that made him only more aware of his own strained nerves. He moved forward to the edge of the ride – once more it was a matter of nerve-racking, time-consuming caution – and found a couple of tree-trunks from between which he could make a survey with reasonable safety. The high-road was a quarter of a mile away, beyond a long straight fall of ground. He could distinguish a figure on it – immobile and looking down the ride. Still with steady precaution, he looked the other way. At about an equal distance up the ride there was another figure.

Cranston turned and walked back to Day. “About turn,” he said briefly.

“We can’t go on?”

“There’s a straight swathe cut through the forest. They command it.”

Day nodded. He seemed again to be the calm Day of the earlier stages of the adventure. “Which leaves?”

“A damned sight less room for manoeuvre, one has to admit. A triangle, in fact, bounded by this ride, the open moor, and the high-road.”

“Listen.”

It was the sound of a motor-horn – particularly sepulchral in tone – that had caught Day’s attention. “Something on the road,” Cranston said. “Another proof that this isn’t Siberia. If we risk getting right up to the edge we might be able to dash out and intercept something. There’s military traffic, for one thing.”

“We could do quite a lot with just one of those tanks.” Day turned round on this note of grim pleasantry, prepared to follow Cranston’s retreat. Then he swayed on his feet and abruptly sat down. “Damn,” he said. “Give me just a couple of minutes. Damn, damn.”

“Take a rest – and spare your breath.” Cranston stood beside the exhausted man, frowning. The conviction was coming to him that it was the end of their tether. If the enemy really had a dozen men, seven or eight of them could effectively seal this corner of the forest. And the rest could beat through it at their leisure. He strained his ears, but heard nothing except the same motor-horn, grown fainter. Within the forest twenty men could be moving in perfect silence over the deep carpeting fallen from the pines. “We’ll try.” He spoke quietly but sharply in Day’s ear. “Get up. You can do it. You said you could. We’ll make for the high-road – and either lurk for a passing car or try a straight dash. Lean on me, if it’s any help.”

Day rose. His swollen eyelids had closed and he appeared drowsy. But he staggered on. “This Lord Urquhart,” he murmured presently. “Might he know me?”

For a moment Cranston thought that Day’s mind was wandering. “Know you?”

“I know he’s not another titled dabbler in physics, like our friend Blair. But my notoriety – and the photographs?”

“Time enough to worry about that if we ever make Urquhart. And your face is a bit of a mess, you know. I doubt if anybody would recognise you who wasn’t on the look-out for you.”

“It’s really nasty?”

“It certainly looks uncommonly painful.”

“Rather a shock for my poor wife?”

Cranston made no reply. There was something false in the question which queerly jarred on him. And he wanted absolute silence. They must now be very near the road. Once he thought he heard voices – quite far away. Round about – and apart from the laboured breathing of the man beside him – it was almost ominously soundless. It was a relief when, some minutes later, there were unquestionably voices. They were not near, but they were nearer. They were the voices of men calling to one another as they moved systematically through the trees. The outer guards were all posted. The drive had begun.

“Come on.” Cranston quickened his pace, and tightened his grip on Day’s arm. “It’s now or never, if you ask me.”

They hurried on. The voices had ceased and there was the silence again. But there was something wrong with it. Something that was wrong with it hammered at Cranston’s brain. Of course there were the peaceful sleepy pigeons – but their sound was so constant that it counted with the silence itself… He stopped dead in his tracks. Hundreds of pigeons. Perhaps thousands of them. But among them – a pigeon that was no pigeon at all…

He wondered if he could recall the knack of it. He pursed his lips. “
Coo-too!”

“Coo
-
too!”

“
Coo-too!
”

“In heaven’s name!” Day had swung round on him, bewildered and furious.

“Quiet.” Cranston breathed the word. He was intently listening. “I can’t be wrong,” he whispered. “I can’t be.”

“Coo-too!”

“This way.” He dragged Day forward. The voices made themselves heard again – very briefly, this time, but again from nearer at hand.

“
Coo-too!
”

“Coo-too!” The sound came from close to them. They advanced a few more paces. Cranston caught a glimpse of the road, and of a dark vehicle which had apparently been run a few yards off it into a small clearing. Then, immediately before them, a figure stepped from behind a tree – an extraordinary figure enveloped in black garments and wearing an ancient silk hat.

“Quick, man – for mercy’s sake!” The freckled and perspiring face of Sandy Morrison was in violent agitation beneath the hat. “They’re a’ roon’ us in thae lairicks.” He gestured at the larch trees. “An’ patrolling the road as thick as polis on a Saturday night on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. I’m jist hoping they’ll tak’ it I’ve steppit amang the trees for the sake o’ daecency… Noo, come awa’.”

Sandy made a dash towards the road and they followed. The vehicle was a hearse. Beside the driver’s empty seat was another sombrely clothed and hatted figure, oddly immobile. Sandy flung open a door and seized this appearance unceremoniously by the neck. Within a second he had it in the shelter of the trees, and Cranston found himself staring in stupor at a tailor’s dummy. Sandy was tearing off its coat. “Frae auld Munroe’s shop,” he said. “I thievit it, the Lord help me, frae the window and dressed it as ye see. Lord sakes, Dickie, ye muckle looster – get yoursel’ into the thing. They’ll be doon the road ony minute.”

Cranston did as he was told. “But Day?”

“The coffin, ye puir croot!” Sandy was in a frenzy. “I’ve backit the hearse so it canna well be seen. Ye maun thrust in the coarse creature and doon wi’ the lid. I’ve bored yin-twa holes – God forgi’ me for an irreligious man – that he can breathe through in the bottom. Quick man! Then I’ll come oot, looking as I should, and awa’ we gae.”

Within a minute this extraordinary programme had accomplished itself. As Cranston jumped in beside Sandy he had a glimpse of a man sweeping up on a bicycle. Sandy slipped into gear and the hearse moved decorously forward. “Ye needna’ look ower reverent,” Sandy whispered. “In the profession, ye keep that until ye see the mourners. But let the big lum hat come well down ower your e’en. Did the chiel Day mind the coffin?”

“I think he was a bit taken aback.”

“He’d be mair taken aback by a lang way if thae gomerils got at him with their guns. What kind of a daft gallivanting is this, I ask ye, to be rampaging in the ancient an’ godly kingdom o’ Scotland?” Sandy accelerated. “Where are ye for?”

“Urquhart. It’s the first road on the right.”

“Is it indeed?” Sandy was contemptuous. “If I didna’ ken these pairts weel, d’ye think ye’d be riding in your carriage at this moment, Dickie Cranston?”

“No, indeed, Sandy. But how – ?”

“Get your heid doon, man. Here’s more o’ them.”

Cranston glanced ahead. It was the big Daimler – drawn up at the side of the road as if for a picnic. A cloth had been laid, and there was a hamper apparently ready to be unpacked. The only person visible was an elderly man of distinguished appearance, in dark clothes and a black hat. He might, Cranston thought, have been an eminent QC. Somewhat surprisingly, he seemed to be occupying himself with a portable radio. But as the hearse approached he rose and strolled to the edge of the road. At the same moment another man, dressed like a chauffeur, appeared on the other side of the road, one hand deep in a pocket. Both men scrutinised the hearse. And then the eminent QC respectfully took off his hat. The chauffeur, accepting the cue, saluted. The hearse was past them. The Canty Quean was in sight.

“But, Sandy – how did you do it?”

The hearse was trundling down the side-road to Urquhart. The surface was bad, for Lord Urquhart disapproved of useless expenditure on facilitating surface travel. The trip could not be very comfortable for Day, but they had agreed that it would be imprudent to resurrect him yet.

“Man – it wasna’ me. It was the lassie.”

“The lassie?” For a moment Cranston’s mind was blank.

“The lassie frae Australia, ye gaup. She rang up the polis at Drumtoul – rang them up frae the Canty Quean – and persuaded that great sloupe Carfrae to let me oot. And me jiled na’ mair than twenty meenits. The puir traicle came for me tae the lock-up tae mak’ sense o’ it. So awa’ I went to find the ambulance. And then I saw there was little sense in that, for they’d mind it at yince after a’ that cookuddy in the quarry. So I got oot the hearse instead.” Sandy Morrison paused mournfully. “It seems no’ likely, Dick Cranston, that I’ll ever hae the chaunce o’ driving it again.”

Cranston laughed. “That you will, Sandy. I’ll speak to Lord Urquhart. Isn’t his word law from here to Inverness?”

“Even wi’ the Superintendent?”

“He appoints the Superintendent – and the folk that superintend the Superintendent as well.”

“Would that be so, now?” This was a new vista to Sandy, and he received it with gravity. “But here’s the lodge. Had we no’ better have oot the creature Day?”

Cranston thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “Decidedly not. We’ll drive up exactly as we are.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it.” Lord Urquhart flourished the knife with which he was dissecting a cold ham. “Not, that is to say, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” He turned to Lady Urquhart. “Might be something in a shocker – eh?”