by John Buchan
“Never mind me,” said Harry. “All I want is to get on. Can’t you spring them again?”
But to get on was just what Sir Turnour could not achieve. The pair would walk uneasily and could even manage a shambling trot, but any increase of pace set the new animal plunging and the bay misbehaving in tune. Fortunately, the road was empty, and they were passing over heathy downs where a prospect could be had for a mile ahead. But soon the country became more enclosed and populous, and farm wagons appeared on it, and now and then a bagman’s trap; and at every such encounter there was a performance like a demented circus. . . .
The sun rose higher in the sky, the hours moved towards midday, and Harry’s impatience grew beyond bounds.
“We have lost the trail,” he cried. “Cranmer will have been out of Lynn by dawn, and we’ll never get word of him.”
Sir Turnour growled assent.
They passed no villages bigger than a hamlet, and no inn better than an alehouse, but Harry was urgent to stop at one of them and seek better horses.
“No earthly good,” said Sir Turnour. “We’re out of the horse country now and could pick up nothing but a farm nag. Besides, I’ve never yet been beat by anything that walked on four hooves, and I’ll be shot if I’ll begin now. I swear I’ll bring these two devils into Lynn, though I nave my arms palsied — they’re devilish near it now, I can tell you. Then they can go to the knacker’s yard, which is all they’re fit for. We’ll get something better in Lynn.”
“But we’ll have lost Cranmer,” Harry moaned.
“Very likely. But confound you, Belses, let’s take one job at a time.”
At last they saw before them a far-away strip of water with the sun on it, which was Lynn Deeps, and nearer the twin towers of a great church, and came into the outskirts of a town.
“We’ll leave these brutes at the Three Tuns,” Sir Turnour said, “for I’m not going to make a spectacle of myself with them on the Lynn cobbles.”
It was very plain that the brutes were of the same mind, for as houses closed in on the road, and a boy appeared trundling a hoop, and a brick-layer with a hod, and a posse of schoolchildren, they became all but unmanageable. The last hundred yards of the journey saw a crab-like motion which took up the whole width of the street. The curricle came to a standstill with the bay on the pavement and his nose inside the inn door.
“Get to their heads,” Sir Turnour shouted to a couple of ostlers who, recognising him, pulled their forelocks. “Get them out of my sight.” He and Belses tumbled off different sides of the vehicle, so cramped and bruised that they all but fell on their faces. Sir Turnour felt his fore-arms as if he were uncertain whether they still belonged to his body. . . . Then the two saw a sight which caused them to forget their aches. For on the sidewalk stood the square figure of Eben Garnock, and Bob Muschat in his borrowed blacks, and the wondering Mr Dott, and Jock Kinloch with a grin of welcome broadening into amusement.
“We have forgathered, sir, as ye observe,” said Eben. “Man, I’m blithe to see ye. I was feared ye had fallen by the road.”
Sir Turnour strode into the inn, beckoning the rest with a nod over his shoulder. “A room,” he cried to the landlord, “and something to eat. Something to drink, too — ale in buckets — for my throat is like the nether millstone.” He shepherded the others before him, and, when the ale came, buried his head in a quart pot.
“Now,” he said. “What news? Good, I hope, for we’ve need of it. My lord and I have been enduring the tortures of the damned behind two fiends of the Devil’s own siring.” He looked round the company, and his eyes fell on Jock, and it was Jock who took up the tale.
“Eben and Mr Dott arrived two hours ago,” he said. “Bob and I have been here since yesterday morning waiting for you, and an anxious wait we’ve had.”
“Where is Mr Lammas — the Professor?”
“He stayed behind to keep guard. A place called Fenny Horton. We have found the Merry Mouth inn.”
“The deuce you have!” Sir Turnour cried, and as Jock expounded the whereabouts of the inn, he got to his feet and strode excitedly about the floor.
“Fenny Horton! I know the place. Not far from Landbeach, where old Madame Horningsea roosts. That is forty miles off — nearer fifty — and the fen roads are not like Norfolk. I know their foul ‘droves’ as they call ‘em, which they plough up when they want to mend ‘em. Six inches of black dust and as hummocky as a fallow. But at any rate we know where to point for. We’ll have Cranmer out of his earth by to-morrow morning.”
“To-morrow will be too late,” said Jock. “This is the day. Tonight is the night.” And he told of the great fight at Fenny Horton, at that moment in full blast, of an empty countryside, and of all things secluded and guarded for a secret purpose. He told his tale diffidently, for he knew that Sir Turnour was incredulous about Mrs Cranmer’s revelations.
But Overy had made the sceptic a believer.
“And that poor woman is alone!” he cried. He looked at the spaniel Benjamin, which sat on its haunches gazing at him with languishing eyes, and the sight stirred him to action.
“Where do you say Lammas is?” he demanded.
“God knows,” said Jock. “I hope he be not in peril of his life. Nanty’s a paladin before he’s a professor.”
Sir Turnour plucked his watch from his fob.
“Half an hour after midday! Your Merry Mouth is five hours off by the best going — more, for the last part of the way will be a cart track. It means turning from the London road at Ely and bearing west across-country by the Cottam River. There’s no great choice of horses in Lynn fit for that pace, and we daren’t risk bad cattle. A moment, sirs! At two sharp the Rover Mail starts from the Crown with a team of short-legged cats as prettily matched as Mr Bicknell’s greys on the Holyhead road. I’ve handled ‘em more than once, and I’d wish for none better. It’s horsed down the road by old Jabez Bellwether who has a conscience and an eye for blood. . . . By God, gentlemen, there’s but the one way of it. We must play highwaymen and take possession of the Rover. Robin Trimmle will be driving her, and Abel Cross is the guard, both of ‘em friends of mine. I have purchase enough in this shire to condone the villainy, and if we save the life of his Majesty’s Prime Minister, how the deuce should his Majesty’s Post Office complain? Swallow your food, sirs, and let us be off. It’s a plaguey long mile through Lynn streets to the spot beyond the South Gate where I hope to have a word with Robin!”
“Sir, I do not like it,” said Mr Dott, alarmed by the fire in the baronet’s eye. “Cannot you persuade the proprietor and get lawful possession?”
“Not a chance,” said Sir Turnour cheerfully. “Old Utterson is as stiff as a poker and would keep us arguing till midnight. We’re six stout fellows, and might’s right in a good cause. Nothing for it but to hold up the Rover. I reckon to persuade Robin and Abel.”
“But the seats will be taken. There will be no room for us.”
“Then by heaven we’ll decant the passengers! Come along. It’s the Saturday market, and all the wharf side will be packed like a barrel of herrings. I know the place, and can lead you by quiet streets. Belses, you walk with me, and the rest scatter and follow. Pick up the dog if he looks like straying. Our baggage can abide in the one Merry Mouth till we have done with the other. Sharp’s the word, for it’s neck or nothing.”
Half an hour later his Majesty’s Mail, in all the glory of crimson paint and gilding, scarlet-coated guard and emblazoned royal arms, drew up sharply at the first turning, out of Lynn on the London road. It carried but three passengers — a young gentleman on the box seat, and inside a very pretty young lady and an elderly man who held on his knee a portfolio of papers. By the wayside, in the lee of a copse, stood an odd little company of six.
The driver saluted with his whip in response to the imperious summons from the roadside.
“Do I see Sir Turnour Wyse?” he asked. “How can I oblige ‘ee, sir?”
“You see Sir Turnour Wyse, and
you can oblige him mightily. I and my friends are travelling with you, Robin.”
“Have you your tickets took, sir? There’s no other names on my way-bill.”
“No, we’re shouldering! We’re coming with you, for it’s a matter of life and death. When I tell you it concerns his Majesty’s service, knowing me you’ll take my word for it.”
The driver looked embarrassed, and Abel the guard climbed down from his perch.
“I dunno as I can, Sir Turnour. . . . You see, it’s amazin’ irregular. I’ve got my orders, and I knows my dooties—”
“Of course, of course. But I promise you it will all be set right. You have my word for it that Abel and you will not be blamed. The responsibility is mine, and you never heard of me backing out of a promise.”
“But . . . but . . . I’m bound to say it, Sir Turnour, supposin’ my dooty compels me to refuse?”
“Then my duty will compel me to pitch you off the seat and take the ribbons myself. Call it a highway robbery. I summon you to stand and deliver.”
Robin’s broad face expanded into a grin at words which at last he understood. “Well, sir, if you puts it that way, I’m bound to give in. Abel, you just present your blunderbuss at his honour for form’s sake, so as we can say we made a fight of it. It ain’t loaded.”
“Good,” said Sir Turnour, “and now for form’s sake we must make room for ourselves. Madame,” and he took off his hat with a flourish to the young lady whose face showed sign of alarm. “You are half a mile from the Duke’s Head, from which in one hour’s time the coach called the Norfolk Hero will carry you to whatever destination you desire. I grieve to incommode you, but I and my friends are on a desperate errand which involves the safety of the realm, and we are forced to desperate shifts.”
“But I will be too late,” she said. “Aunt Tabitha was to send her carriage to meet me five miles beyond Downham, and I was to travel by the Mail.”
“Your aunt’s horses, my dear, will take no harm from an hour’s wait in this brave weather, and I assure you we will take all the harm in the world if we do not instantly start.”
She still looked doubtful, but the young man who had descended from the box-seat proved an unexpected ally. He was her brother, a member of the University of Cambridge, and of a sporting inclination, as his cravat and waistcoat revealed. Also he recognised Sir Turnour, who had once been gracious to him at a cocking at Holkham.
“Nonsense, Sophy,” he said. “Aunt Tabby’s fat geldings are not worth a thought, and coachman Rufus will be glad of an extra hour in The Grapes. Sir Turnour, I have the honour of a slight acquaintance with you, and I think you know my father, Squire Petting of Langrish. Sophy, I present to you Sir Turnour Wyse. There’s no good Norfolk man who won’t bustle to oblige Sir Turnour. If he says his business needs haste, then other business must wait.”
The attorney proved more difficult. He flatly refused to budge, maintaining his right as a lawful traveller, quoting the regulations for a Royal Mail, and alleging an urgent duty that night in Cambridge. With the help of young Mr Petting, Sir Turnour very gently lifted him from the coach, and set him by the roadside. His portfolio burst open and his papers flew out, and as he collected them he threatened a variety of actions in tort.
“You’ll stand by me and Abel, Sir Turnour,” said the alarmed Robin, to whom the legal jargon seemed ominous.
“I’ll stand by you against any attorney in England. Hang it, man, don’t look so glum. You’re more likely to get a letter of thanks from the Government for this than a wigging. Let’s see to the harnessing, for we have the devil of a course before us.”
Very carefully Sir Turnour went over every detail. He examined the bitting and the coupling, saw that the traces were the proper length, the pole-chain in order, the curb properly adjusted, and the collars, pads and harness fitting sweetly. He made certain that each buckle and strap was in its right place. Then Eben and Bob and the dog Benjamin ensconced themselves in the inside, where they promptly went to sleep, while the others mounted to the top. Sir Turnour took the reins and gave the team the office. But first he looked at his watch. The time was two o’clock.
Fifty miles away at the same time Nanty had come out of his dazed sleep, and was beginning to feel his way round the room of the sheepskins. . . . Miss Kirsty Evandale at Landbeach had spent an unquiet forenoon. Nanty’s failure to return the previous night had filled her with anxiety, and, when no news had come of him in the morning, she had been the prey of acute forebodings. As he had predicted, the fight at Fenny Horton had drained the men from the estate. There was not a groom or a gardener left on the place, and in the house only the old butler remained and a consumptive footman. About eleven o’clock she had walked to the Merry Mouth inn, and had found it apparently shuttered and empty. She could not, in spite of much knocking, find the old woman who had received Nanty, though she thought she had a glimpse of a wicked old face at an upper window.
Two hours later she had walked in the same direction, but some instinct had kept her inside the park, and had taken her to a knoll from which she could overlook a patch of road near the inn. There she saw what she feared to see, the bustle of an arrival. Horses were being led round to the stable-yard, and she saw more than one figure by the inn-door, though she was too far off to make out the details. She noted that their movements were quiet and furtive, and in a few moments the inn had swallowed them up, and was again a blind face in the sunlight.
The spectacle confirmed her worst fears. That was happening which Nanty had foretold, and not a shadow of doubt remained to her. Nanty, she feared, was dead, the victim of his foolhardy courage. Somewhere in the inn was an unhappy woman, an innocent and unwilling murderess. Some time in the dusk or in the dark would come the victim.
There was nothing she could do, and she wept at her impotence. To her aunt she wearily recounted what were no longer fears, but awful certainties.
“There’s just the one thing possible,” she said. “I might warn Mr Perceval. There are horses in the stable, and I could scour the road if I only knew which one he will take. I know what he looks like, and could not miss him. He may come by either of two roads, by Cambridge or by Huntingdon — I can’t see any third way if he is coming from London, and poor Mr Lammas was certain he would. But I can’t be on two roads at the same time.”
Then Miss Georgie surprised her niece, and maybe surprised herself.
“You’re not the only one, my bonny lamb. If there’s two roads to ride, there’s two folk here to ride them. I’m an auld woman, but you’ll admit I’m an active one, and I can back a horse as well as ever. What hinders you to take the one road and me the other? I’ll wager if I see anything in the living image of the Prime Minister I’ll have it stopped, for I can screech like a wild-cat.”
So about the time when Sir Turnour took the reins of the Rover outside the town of King’s Lynn, two ladies were busy in the stables of the manor of Landbeach. Only one lady’s saddle could be found, so Miss Kirsty rode astride. They spun a crown to decide which roads they would take.
Till his dying day Harry Belses remembered the hours which followed, when in the golden afternoon, through a world of essential light and clear spring shadows, he moved swiftly to the place of destiny. The fear which had been consuming him for days, which had made the time on the boat a purgatory, and the hours on the road that morning a hell, seemed to have left him. He had the sense that he was in the grip of fate, and must wait humbly on the pleasure of the gods, since all that man could do had been done. He did not look at his watch, he paid no heed to Sir Turnour’s shouted bulletins which chronicled their speed; the smooth, swift movement lulled his aching body into peace and was like an opiate to his nerves. He did not even pray, as he had done fervently for so long. His inward vision was filled with a woman’s face, and, whereas the same vision had hitherto shown him tragic eyes and the pallor of death, it now revealed what he had first loved in her, a spring-like innocence and an elfin mirth. He was comforted, but ev
ery now and then a pang of terror shot through his heart at his comfort. For the end was not yet. The moment of crisis was still to come.
Sir Turnour had often driven this road, and knew all the times allowed to the stages. He took five minutes to feel the quality of the team and then he handled what he had described as “short-legged cats” in a way which drew from Jock Kinloch a continuous mutter of praise. They were so perfectly balanced that the coach ran on even wheels, the surface was good, the hills easy, and for miles he sprung them in a steady gallop. The horn of Abel the guard advised the toll-keepers well in advance, and there was no slowing down. At the first change, which was done in fifty seconds, a team of blue roans replaced the greys, bigger animals with more promise of pace. “I’ve knocked three minutes off your time on that stage, Robin,” Sir Turnour observed, “and please God I’ll knock five minutes off the next. We must stretch ‘em while the going’s good, for the Lord knows what we may find after Ely.”
“There’s nothing to fear after Ely,” said Robin. “We reckons Ely to Cambridge one of the best bits of road, unless the waters be out.”
“We’re not going to Cambridge,” was the answer. “We’re for Fenny Horton by the Cottam Dyke.”
Robin cried out. “That ain’t no road for the Mail. It’s one of the wust of the droves.”
“All the same it’s our road. You cut out Cambridge, but I’ll promise you you’ll be at the Golden Cross in London up to time. No trouble for you on that score, though the Cambridge folk may complain.”
Jock Kinloch sat in an ecstasy of content, watching such coachmanship as he had never dreamed of. Mr Dott, having overcome his first terrors, fell asleep, for he had much lee-way to make up. Harry, wrapped in his own dreams, was only dimly conscious of the celestial landscape through which he swept. Now they were between hedges white with blossom, and in aisles of chestnut just breaking into bloom; now in lush green meadows with sheep and cattle at graze; now skirting a slow stream, where dark currents drowsed among pollarded willows. They passed hamlets of ancient brick houses festooned with honeysuckle, and through the cobbled streets of little market-towns. And sometimes from a rise they had a glimpse of infinite grassy levels studded with windmills and seamed and laced with shining waters. The afternoon was beginning to mellow towards evening when the white tower of Ely Cathedral rose before them over the plain like a lighthouse at sea.