The Secret Vanguard (18 page)

‘He’s one of the people I get imagining things about. Often happens when I’ve a job of work. Incipient paranoia or something. Swearing I’m not Rodney Orchard is part of the same thing, no doubt. For that matter
you
are part of it, too. I’m imagining you, if you ask me.’

Sheila felt suddenly helpless and hopeless. Here was a state of affairs with which it seemed almost impossible to cope. But now Hetherton interposed. ‘Do I understand, Mr Orchard, that recently – and purely as a matter of nervous illness – you have been imagining–’

‘There’s that old woman. She looks damned solid.’

It was true that ahead of them, and as if sprung from nowhere, an old woman was hobbling.

‘–you have been imagining people spying on you, following you?’

‘Just that.’ Orchard spoke with dark satisfaction. ‘But I’ve been told that the best thing to do is just to take no notice. Then they go away.’

‘Possibly you have been told too, that a change of scene is beneficial?’

‘Yes, I have. Nuisance, though. Takes me away from the labs.’

‘I wonder if it would be a good idea if you tried that now? If, for instance, you slipped into the woods ahead and gave us your company to Fortmoil?’

It was a useless wile. The tall stranger shook his head. ‘Later perhaps – not now. Not till I get this thing. It’s hovering, you know, just below the surface of my mind. A little more coffee and it may pop up. And here we are. I lit a fire when I got up, so it won’t be long… I say, there are those damned hikers again. Been hiking round and round in circles for days.’

The cottage lay in a fold of the hills as desolate as anything Sheila had yet seen: a quieter place for wooing the depths of the mind with caffeine it would have been difficult to find. The shepherd had been reasonable; the old woman odd; two or three figures in walking clothes whom Sheila had seen out of the tail of her eye were sinister indeed. And she spoke as soon as Orchard had flung the door to. ‘Have you a wireless here? They’ve been appealing for you, you know.’

‘The devil they have.’ He crossed the stone-flagged floor with nervous strides. ‘But they do that sort of thing quite often.’ He opened a cupboard. ‘Coffee for the phantoms – a good technique, don’t you think? Feed the apparitions whenever they begin to creep out at one from the corners of one’s mind. A sop for Cerberus. Miss Grant, my mind will always have a warm corner for you to return to; you are the most pleasing of my visions to date.’

Sheila sat down limply. It made her feel rather like Ophelia. There seemed no way of telling whether the man were really crazy or elaborating a wild joke. But perhaps there was a way. She remembered Harry McQueen: he had been crazed indeed. Set the two men up against each other and it might be possible to judge. She made this bizarre effort and decided provisionally that Orchard was sane. And Hetherton seemed to have come to the same conclusion. ‘Your visions,’ he said sharply, ‘are a joke in the wrong place. You are in danger – and in danger because in some way your safety is of importance to the country. Pull yourself together, man, and consider what’s to be done.’

Orchard was standing over a peat fire measuring coffee into a
filtre
with the rapid precision of a scientist. ‘I’ll grant you this,’ he said; ‘if you were real what you are saying wouldn’t make bad sense. I should certainly have to consider. Because, of course, they would be real, too. In which case it would be simplest
not
to get it, wouldn’t it? Only unfortunately I
have
got it. This very moment. Put it down to the stimulating presence of Miss Grant.’

He was not, thought Sheila – the old social estimations working – a gentleman. Perhaps he was something newer and more attractive. But it made him unfamiliar and difficult to get hold of. ‘It,’ she said; ‘what’s it?’

‘Formula I’m hunting. Of course they couldn’t
know
I’ve got it.’

‘Then,’ said Hetherton – he hesitated and fell into Orchard’s conditional manner of speech – ‘there would be stalemate.’

‘Not at all. If I started to quit they’d guess. And take a chance. But as long as I mooned about like a moron they’d feel I was still on the hunt.’

‘Need you,’ asked Sheila, ‘write it down?’

‘Lord, yes. That’s what I’m doing now. You don’t imagine a thing like this can be carried in the head like the time of a train?’ He spoke absently, and was scribbling the while. A minute later he had perched an envelope covered with chemical formulae against the mantelpiece. ‘If I don’t deserve some breakfast after that.’

‘At least,’ Sheila said, ‘you can burn it if they rush us.’

‘My dear lady, I should hate to do anything so enormously wasteful of intellectual labour. And really there will be no need. There won’t be a rush. Just keep quiet. You people are an unforeseen complication, I admit, and I heartily wish you had never got hold of the story and come bouncing in. Still, I think it will be all right.’

Suddenly he was looking at them dominantly and kindly: his manner had completely changed. Hetherton put down the coffee cup he had been offered and sat bolt upright. ‘You mean,’ he asked, ‘that behind this affectation of unbalance you have the situation – whatever it may be – under control?’

‘Just that. The shepherd rather worries me: he spotted you. But quite possibly he’s just a genuine shepherd – in which case they don’t know that you’ve reached me with your story. And they’ll think they can afford to go on waiting. Actually I spotted what was going forward last night, and I got a message off by a tinker in the small hours of this morning. We’ll be relieved – that’s what it comes to – before nightfall. Meanwhile we have to keep you two concealed, and every now and then I have to take one of my loony walks. Forgive my practising on you, by the way. I wish you could risk watching from a window. I prowl up and down tearing my hair out in handfuls. Perfect picture of the distracted scientist baffled in his quest.’ Orchard gave a deep subdued laugh that filled the small shuttered room with something which was not, Sheila felt, quite sanity yet. However the man might talk he was plainly at a considerable strain.

‘Do I understand–’ Hetherton began.

But Orchard held up a hand. ‘Look here, nobody’s likely to come up to the house. But we’re being a bit careless all the same. Better not talk. Sit by the fireplace, take a book if you like, and let me prepare a proper meal. My little walk can wait till after that.’

They breakfasted in silence. Sheila, through an increasing drowsiness, struggled with the queer situation around her. The enemy’s task was snatching something out of this eccentric scientist’s brain – only it was no longer in his brain, but scribbled on the back of an envelope above her head. And he had evolved an odd technique for holding them off. And help was going to arrive. But if they knew that she and Hetherton had managed to join their quarry? Then surely – She looked across at Orchard; he sat smoking a pipe, confident, nervous, quite incurious. She looked at Hetherton; he was staring mildly into the fire; perhaps his mind had taken advantage of this lull in action to return to the disastrous deluge at Dabdab… Somewhere in the cottage a clock ticked – ticked as a clock ticks when it is measuring out empty time. Belamy Mannering and the false Alaster: how near were they now? From far out on the moor came the cry of some solitary bird.

Orchard jumped up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m off. And I think it wouldn’t be a bad plan to leave the cottage more or less open to inspection.’ He picked the envelope off the mantelpiece and stuffed it casually in his pocket. ‘Would you mind a spell in the loft? Here’s the ladder and there’s the trap. If you pull the one up after you and close the other the place will seem empty for the purpose of any quick hunt they can make. And I needn’t put up more than a fifteen-minute performance this time.’

They climbed to the loft and then with some difficulty hauled up the ladder. The place was no more than a confined space under thatch, and chilly after the warm room below: Sheila hoped that Orchard would not be beguiled by the pleasures of his part into prolonging his walk. Hetherton sat down in philosophic silence; Sheila found a chink in the thatch near the eaves and peered out.

Orchard had just strolled from the cottage; he stood in mild morning sunshine, as if undecided in which direction to turn. Then he moved off on an oblique line; Sheila could see him take the envelope from his pocket and study it with poised pencil as he walked. Once, twice he halted and moved on again; suddenly he crumpled the envelope in vexation, tossed it in the air, caught it and thrust it negligently away again; he walked on, a picture of dejection, and disappeared from view.

Thorough… Sheila stretched her limbs, which were cramped and still weary. ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that anyone will really come rooting round?”

‘
Shh!
’

Hetherton’s warning was just in time; from below there came the click of a latch cautiously lifted. Then footsteps – light, purposeful, knowing exactly what they were about. Somebody searching the cottage, and making a professional job of it. A deftness one could guess at even from the muted sounds that came up: the experience was curiously disturbing. And surely the existence of this loft would not be overlooked? And in this sort of position did not people often uncontrollably cough, sneeze? Sheila began to breathe with great caution… And then the click again. The searcher was gone. Presumably he could not reckon on Orchard’s being away very long.

But half an hour went past and Orchard had not returned. The loft was now a little warmer, but irksome when one wanted to stretch. How long had they sat over that drowsy breakfast? A long time, Sheila thought, and presumably the morning was wearing away: she had let her watch stop and could only guess. But time past was all to the good; it brought nearer the evening and the relief Orchard had promised. A tinker, he had said; he had sent a tinker with a message. But to where? He had been vague –

Sheila’s thought was interrupted by voices raised below; quiet, rapid voices which rose towards vehemence as the outer door closed on them. Someone said something indistinguishable; then came Orchard’s voice. ‘You may be anything you please. But the fact remains you’re the second couple of fools to come near to wrecking my plans today. Upstairs there’s an old man and a girl. And now you. But just two of you! What’s the use of that? Don’t you know I was an ass to come here? And that these people think it so important they’ve got a little army out? I’ve got a message to Inverness. And said what is wanted is a platoon and a plane overhead. And now in walk two policemen! Hi, you’ – his voice was raised, apparently to the loft – ‘you’d better come down.’

They came down, Sheila first. She saw a young man warming his hands by the fire. ‘I’m afraid,’ he was saying amiably, ‘
I’m
not a policeman. But Appleby eminently is.’

‘Appleby!’ Hetherton’s voice came from behind Sheila. ‘I’ve been guessing poor Philip Ploss would lead you to this. We have found that garden – found it in Mr Orchard.’ Hetherton paused. ‘And, as you see, he is a lovesome thing, God wot.’

The witticism produced rather a startled silence. It was broken by the man called Appleby. ‘We can all sit down,’ he said, ‘for a quiet talk.’ He turned to Sheila. ‘You are Miss Grant? I’m from Scotland Yard. You did splendidly. And with luck we’re almost clear now.’ His eye, Sheila noticed, had gone to Hetherton, as if his mind were on something that lay between them. ‘Mackintosh and I,’ he said, ‘are certainly not a platoon. But we’re something.’

‘At least,’ said Orchard, ‘I slipped you in unseen. We’ve still only to lie low.’ He took the crumpled envelope from his pocket and perched it in its former position on the mantelpiece. ‘We sit tight and guard this – and wait either for your supports or mine from Inverness. I wish I knew how you all found me.’ He turned to Appleby. ‘Recognized me pat: how did you manage that?’

Appleby had been looking round the cottage room with an eye that fascinated Sheila; now he looked up and she was disconcerted to see in it nothing but vagueness. ‘Recognize you, Mr Orchard? Oh, photograph, you know; just a photograph.’

‘Well, I think it damned odd. In fact, I think we ought to have stories all round. I’ll begin, if you like.’

‘Yes: stories.’ Appleby sat back with an appearance of great comfort in an uncomfortable little chair. ‘Let’s get it all clear. Where’s your briefcase?’

The question was shot out. Orchard stared. ‘My briefcase – the one I left Earls Court with? With my bank in town. One or two things I thought had better be locked up. But nothing near so important’ – he jerked his thumb at the mantelpiece – ‘as that little effort.’

There was a silence. Appleby nodded into it sententiously. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘there’s more in this business than meets the eye. We know what they’re after you for, Mr Orchard, and how they tracked you down here and are waiting. But why should they take the trouble to send practically a double of you to Cirencester?’

‘A double? To Cirencester?’ Orchard was plainly startled.

‘Just that. Was it to confuse the trail? The police got this Cirencester fellow a few hours after we put out our net for you. We’re pretty smart in the Force at times, you know. Unfortunately he had a plausible tale and they let him go. But not before they’d taken a routine photograph to correspond with the one we’d sent out of you.’ He rummaged in a pocketbook. ‘Here you are. As Shakespeare says: look on this picture and on that.’ He put two squares of pasteboard on the table and, moving behind Orchard, looked over his shoulder.

Orchard looked at the photographs carefully; looked at them with something like concentration. He picked one up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this one’s me, all right. But who or why–’

‘What you feel in your back’ – Appleby’s voice was wholly unchanged – ‘is a revolver. So you can guess that this trick is ours.’

‘Thorough,’ said Sheila, looking with a new eye at the false Orchard. ‘They are thorough. While he was out on what he called his loony walk – in fact when they signalled to him with that bird call to come out and decoy you – they took the trouble to send someone to conduct a bogus search of the cottage. Just to build up the effect.’