The Dancing Horse

by Angus MacVicar

  ‘Listen, my friend. I will tell you.’

  The small, quiet man took out a number of photographs and laid them on the desk. As the Inspector looked at them and nodded, soberly, he began to talk.

  NINETEEN

  Making themselves as conspicuous as possible, Donald and Bulldog continued to walk across the moor. The main part of their scheme was now in operation. They were satisfied that they could be seen plainly from several vantage points: from the station, for instance, from the road near the telephone kiosk, and from ‘The Dancing Horse’ itself.

  The heather was wiry and tough and beginning to sprout green, and after trudging through it for an hour or more they needed a rest. They found a grassy hillock and sat down on the naked rock which pierced its summit like lead in an old pencil. Focusing his binoculars, Donald surveyed the countryside.

  Nothing stirred. The wind sighed over the heather, while now and then a snipe or peewit raised a lonely cry. The sun shone down, but at times they shivered a little, and the lacrid scent of the peat-hags added to their discomfort.

  Donald said, at last: ‘Fishing’s been a dead loss, so far.’

  Bulldog grunted. ‘The main attribute of a good fisherman is patience. See anything interesting?’

  ‘Not a thing. I’d swear no one’s been in or out of the main gate of the station since we’ve been here. And no one’s been near the car.’

  ‘What about the other direction — towards “The Dancing Horse”?’

  ‘Nothing there but sheep, as far as I can make out.’ Donald put down the binoculars. He rubbed his big nose and went on: ‘We’ve made ourselves obvious enough, especially on this hillock. You’d think if anyone was interested they’d have shown their hand by now.’

  ‘They may not want to show their hand, just yet.’ For once it was Bulldog who stood guard on their emotions. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m getting hungry. What about a sandwich?’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll be glad to get these bottles out of my pockets, too.’

  The clean, fresh air had given them an appetite, and they enjoyed the sketchy meal. Later they buried the bottles and the sandwich-wrappings in a rabbit-hole on the flank of the hillock.

  The white-coated figures still moved about inside the station, but the main gate remained closed, except when a brown and yellow grocery van came bowling along the road, past the red kiosk, and was admitted by the gateman. In half an hour it reappeared and went back towards Southend.

  Donald and Bulldog got up and walked deeper into the moor. The afternoon wore on, and a dark cloud came drifting in over the western horizon, blotting out the sun. The small stretch of sea visible beyond the hills, which comprised an area immediately north of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, began to assume the colour of cold steel. In spite of the overcast conditions, however, it didn’t look like rain.

  When they were about half-way between the station and ‘The Dancing Horse’ they came upon a huge grey boulder lying like a giant’s coffin among the heather. One end was broken and chipped by wind and rain and sun, and this they used as a climbing place. When they reached the top they found it to be flat and smooth and an ideal observation post. But the minutes passed and still nothing happened.

  ‘It’s getting damned cold,’ said Bulldog at last, flapping his arms. ‘Any comment?’

  Donald was looking through the binoculars. ‘We decided we’d rather meet them in the open, and it’s open enough here in all conscience! I can stick it if you can.’

  ‘H’m. Glad to hear it.’

  ‘That telephone kiosk. D’you know, boss, it must have been from somewhere near it that Sorley Hetherington painted his picture.’

  ‘I believe you’re right. Otherwise he couldn’t have brought in the wooded glen to the east yonder. But I don’t think he included this boulder.’

  ‘Too far to his left. He carefully avoided the station.’

  ‘Don’t blame him! An atomic station’s as much out of place among this heather and peat as a bulldozer in Kew Gardens.’

  They moved about on the flat rock, aware that they could be seen for miles. But the afternoon wore on, and the dark cloud drifted across the sky, unveiling the sun again. Five o’clock came, then six, and to all appearances the moor remained empty. The bustle of the white coats in the station came to an end.

  They came down off the boulder and walked back towards the hillock on which they had rested earlier in the day. Their patience was beginning to wear thin.

  Doubts possessed them. So far they had been inept and clumsy in their efforts to find the truth about the Soho murder. As heroes of a conventional newspaper story they were utterly miscast. There was no reason to suppose that success should now fall to their lot, so late in the adventure.

  Nevertheless, they were reluctant to give up. They had a dogged and slightly pathetic belief in what Bulldog called a ‘feeling’, for it was on such that they based their whole existence as journalists. And so, as the day grew colder and began to die, they remained true to their ‘feeling’ and continued to await developments from a vantage point on one shoulder of the hillock.

  It would be about seven o’clock in the evening, and the sun was moving down above the black outline of ‘The Dancing Horse’, when two men appeared among the heather, coming over a ridge about three hundred yards to their left.

  Donald spotted them at once, and his pulses leapt with excitement. After a moment he handed the binoculars to Bulldog.

  ‘Yes!’ said the News Editor, suddenly his old brisk self again. ‘Between us and the car. Wait a minute — these blasted glasses need adjusting again! That’s it. Well, I’m damned!’

  What’s the matter?’

  ‘One of them is the chap who borrowed the ashtray, last night at the ceilidh. Our friend with the big moustache.’

  ‘Wing Commander McCall. Very interesting. Who’s his pal?’

  ‘I’m not sure. A stranger, I think. No! By heaven, he’s not! He’s the man who was talking to Jimmy the waiter. Remember — two nights ago in the hotel — when we came in late? He’s wearing the same American style tweed jacket.’

  ‘The driver of the Austin-Healey?’

  ‘Right, boy! And you’ll be interested to learn that both of them are carrying shotguns.’

  ‘What! Let’s have a shufti.’

  Donald took the binoculars. It was quiet on the moor, except for a small sighing wind.

  At last, quite slowly, he said: ‘They’re carrying shotguns all right. But this is the season for hares, boss, and Nellie did say the big guy was on a shooting holiday.’

  ‘Sure,’ replied Bulldog, heavily. ‘That’s what Nellie said.’

  They waited. The men came closer; but there was no sign that recognition was mutual.

  Bulldog said: ‘I think we ought to try an experiment.’

  Donald glanced at him, sideways. ‘Make a detour, as if we’re trying to dodge them and get back to our car?’

  ‘Great minds, Donald boy!’

  ‘But are you fit enough? I mean — ’

  ‘Dammit, I’m still on the right side of sixty! Come on.’ They walked away from the hillock, showing neither haste nor panic but making it their obvious intention to avoid the strangers and regain the road. Almost at once McCall and his friend moved in the same direction, cutting off their line of retreat.

  ‘They’ve spotted us, boss!’

  ‘They spotted us a long time ago, if you ask me.’ They increased their pace and bore farther to the right. So did the others, moving on a parallel course.

  ‘Aye,’ said Bulldog, ‘this is instructive, to say the least! Stop a minute.’

  They stood still in their tracks. About a hundred yards away McCall and his companion stopped, too.

  The spacious moor seemed to hold its breath. Boredom and uncertainty forgotten, Donald and Bulldog rested beside a rocky knoll. The strangers looked in their direction, apparently talking to each other.

  In
the end McCall stepped forward, his friend at his heels. Donald’s mouth became dry and salty. Trouble he had bargained for — and now, almost certainly, it had come. But here among the hills he had hoped for quick action, and this slow game promised to be wearing on the nerves.

  He said: ‘I wonder what would happen if we made a dash back the way we’ve come, towards the hillock?’

  ‘H’m.’ Bulldog had shed his nervous irritation of the past few days and was now presenting an appearance of stoic courage. ‘I see what you mean. Proof positive, eh? Well, practice is always better than theory.’

  ‘Right!’

  Crouching down and taking cover behind a series of old peat-diggings, they swung back and raced diagonally to the left. The others hesitated only for a split second. Then they, too, began to run.

  Gradually their routes converged. A white hare leaped up between them and went lolloping away towards the wooded glen in the distance. A grouse erupted from a patch of heather, rocketing up into the pale sky. A sense of desperate urgency settled over the moor, like a thundercloud.

  Then suddenly, when the pairs were about seventy yards apart, McCall stopped dead. Raising his gun to his shoulder, he aimed directly at Donald and Bulldog. They swerved violently and flung themselves down in the shelter of the hillock.

  The shot never came, but they knew at last that they had found the enemy.

  Panting a little, and with some of his assurance gone, Bulldog said: They mean to kill us, Donald.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  They lay still for a time, recovering from the shock of reality and trying not to contemplate too closely the raw threat of the future, when death might be the penalty for a single mistake.

  Finally the News Editor assumed an outward show of flamboyance. He said: ‘This is what we came to find out, boy. If we can get away now and tell the police our story’s made!’

  ‘Yes. Point is, how do we get away?’ Incongruously an early butterfly lit upon a stalk of wild clover not two feet from Donald’s face. He brushed it away, nervously, and went on: ‘I think our only chance is to keep going behind the diggings yonder and try to reach the wood. Back under “The Dancing Horse”.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it.’ Then abruptly, unexpectedly, Bulldog broke off. ‘Wait!’ he said, in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Near the telephone kiosk. Something moved. Use the binoculars.’

  Donald obeyed.

  In a moment he turned to his companion. His face was white. ‘I see it,’ he said.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a girl. She’s wearing a grey suit and a red tammy.’

  The News Editor nodded. A hint of subdued triumph gleamed momentarily in his eyes, but almost immediately it was wiped away by the warmth of genuine compassion.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, quietly. ‘We’re into our fish, and if we mean to land it we’ve got to stay alive.’

  ‘You’re right, boss,’ agreed Donald. ‘You’re dead right.’

  ‘That’s the spirit! Now, let’s get a move on.’

  They got up and prepared to manoeuvre out of range of the shotguns.

  TWENTY

  His faraway glimpse of Janet Marshall had made Donald’s sense of foreboding and isolation even more acute, though he was glad he wasn’t entirely alone and had Bulldog running heavily by his side.

  He felt as Jim Kenyon must have felt in his last long hour of living, before the rope at last mercifully tightened round his neck and his torture was snapped off like a hard and glaring light. The two men, he was now convinced, intended to follow them with patience until at last they could use their guns. Then they would allow his body — and Bulldog’s — to sink under the slime of a bog, and their secret — the secret on which the dead man in Soho had stumbled and at which he himself could still only guess — would remain inviolable.

  The main thing, he realized, was to avoid being cornered. For months, as an embryo soldier, he had been taught how to make use of ground and cover. Encouraged by fear and by the knowledge that in this situation Bulldog was depending on him for leadership, he kept dredging up from the dark of his memory almost forgotten skills.

  By a sudden quick dash into the moorland behind the hillock they had put about two hundred yards between themselves and McCall and his hard-faced companion. This was a safe distance, for a shotgun’s lethal range is not much more than fifty. Now they moved quickly towards the east, along the line of the old peat digging, hoping that they could keep in front for another hour or so, when darkness might enable them to escape and get in touch with the police.

  But there was always the possibility that they would stumble into an impassable area of marshland, where they might sink to their armpits and provide the sitting targets coveted by their pursuers. He had to keep looking and thinking ahead.

  The distant telephone kiosk, near which Janet Marshall had been seen and where the Oxford was still parked, sank slowly from sight behind the curve of the moor. Then the gaunt tower of the atomic station disappeared as well. Hazy clouds began to cover the sinking sun, and a cool wind fanned his heated face.

  He looked across at Bulldog. ‘Feeling all right, boss?’

  As his shoes ripped through the heather and squelched in the peat-hags, the News Editor’s red cheeks glistened with perspiration; but he was running on gamely, gulping down regular draughts of air. ‘Of course I’m all right! Only my wind. Too much smoking.’

  Donald glanced back over his shoulder. The two men were plodding steadily after them, positioned well apart as if suspicious that their quarry might try an outflanking movement. They were still two hundred yards behind and within the past few minutes had gained no obvious advantage.

  ‘I think we can slow down a bit,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘We’re keeping well ahead of them.’

  Bulldog was grateful for the suggestion. His thoughts had lost resilience and were now hovering on the verge of panic; and the mental strain, imposed on the physical, was becoming almost as much as he could bear. In London it was necessary that he should be tough to hold down the job of News Editor of the Echo; but that kind of toughness was of little use on a high and lonely moor, with death at his heels. The momentary relaxation of effort, however, tended in a small degree to restore his strength and courage.

  ‘I hate the sight of this blasted peat-bog!’ he burst out, after a while. ‘Smells like ancient sin, too!’

  ‘Most of it’s fairly dry. That’s one blessing.’

  ‘Plenty of marshy bits, though. They may be hoping we’ll get stuck in one.’

  The idea, of course, had already occurred to Donald; but now he pretended to scoff at it. ‘Not much fear of that if we keep our eyes skinned! McCall and his pal are in open order behind us, I know, but we still have room for manoeuvre.’

  They hurried on, camouflaging from each other the true state of their feelings. Their feet made a quick rhythmic sound along the hard floor of the old peat diggings.

  Donald tried to look at the situation objectively.

  He and Bulldog were both wearing ordinary lounge suits, soft hats and black leather-soled shoes, which in this rough country were entirely out of place. His companion, so much a man of power and drive in the office, was on the verge of becoming a frightened old man, the veneer of civilized attainment rubbed harshly away. He himself, so slick and persuasive as a city reporter, was facing death — or, more accurately, running away from it — without even the self-deluding anodyne of being able to describe it in smart and fashionable journalese.

  When he came to think of it, in a moment of true objectivity, they had both made a sorry mess of the whole operation, blundering through a maze of half-understood intrigue just as they were now blundering through a maze of slime and dirt which splashed their well-creased trousers to the knee. They had done nothing clever, nothing brilliant. They had simply followed their feeling for a story, the final chapter of which might soon be writte
n as a tragic comment on misplaced enthusiasm.

  To an Olympian eye they must appear inept and ridiculous. Nevertheless, as he glanced across at the News Editor, he discovered that his affection for this red-faced, panting, slightly pathetic individual had grown stronger than ever before, and he knew instinctively that the emotion was reciprocated. He thought how strange it is that shared distress should be the real catalytic element in the love of a man for his neighbour.

  At last the digging petered out into an arena of bog and rock and the brittle stalks of recently burnt heather. Twice Bulldog tripped and almost fell, but Donald was ready on each occasion with a supporting arm. The distance between them and the men behind remained constant.

  A rosy glow faded behind the mighty crag of ‘The Dancing Horse’, and as the light began to fade hope brought a temporary buoyancy. A quick dash to one side or another in the dusk; an unexpected spurt which would turn them into shadowy targets before they disappeared — these, they considered, were definite possibilities. In this spirit of new optimism dignity returned to them. They smiled at each other.

  Bulldog stumbled yet again. As he regained balance — this time without assistance — he swore with safety-valve vigour. ‘Hell and blast! I didn’t notice that puddle. But I only got one foot wet.’

  ‘Not so bad. The going’s a bit tricky hereabouts.’

  The News Editor looked far ahead towards the mountain and the wooded glen on its eastern shoulder. He said: ‘It’ll be dark in about thirty minutes. By that time we ought to have reached the wood and be comparatively safe.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Donald led the way along a natural causeway of firm turf. ‘Then we can look out for a house with a telephone and inform the police.’

  ‘There’s one thing that puzzles me. Why don’t they try harder to overtake us?’

  ‘That’s occurred to me, too. They’ve never been within shotgun range since the beginning, when we dived behind the hillock.’

  He didn’t mention it, but one answer had already suggested itself. Might it not be the dark that their pursuers were waiting for — the thin dark which would conceal murderous intentions from prying eyes?