“Can I — what!" The ex-paratrooper folded it quickly and tucked it away in his wallet. “Thanks, pal," he said, with the flicker of a smile. “You're a gentleman — in spite o' being a cop!"
Kenneth was relieved at the outcome; but the incident had certain implications which did nothing to dispel his underlying anxiety. For the next three weeks — until Veronica Jane's father concluded his case against the O'Sullivan gang and so rendered any further activity on the part of the Actor unnecessary — his peace of mind would be at the mercy of every unidentified stranger who appeared in Glendale.
Veronica Jane called that afternoon to have tea with Mrs. Connacher. Kenneth was out at the time, discussing with Jamie Smith a minor repair to the police-car; but on his return to the cottage he found that the two ladies had already struck up a warm friendship. He was surprised at this, for they appeared to be opposites in almost every respect — the one elderly, sharp-tongued and sourly practical; the other young, gay — and “flighty”, as Wee Ned called it. What he failed to realize was that Nellie and Veronica Jane were both essentially feminine and intelligent characters, with a common interest in Glendale — and in himself.
Shortly afterwards, Sheena Mathieson came in from school; and though there was at first a certain coolness between herself and Veronica Jane, this was soon forgotten when Hector, carrying easel and paint-box, thrust his way into the kitchen and brought down a pot-stand with an appalling clatter. Veronica Jane was interested to note the amused but motherly way in which the efficient young schoolteacher ran to help him.
She left Mrs. Connacher's about six o'clock. Sheena, Hector and Kenneth escorted her along the road. At the foot of the avenue leading up to the square, white-coloured hotel they stopped and sat in the sunshine, dangling their legs over the sea-wall.
Sheena picked a sea-pink from a crack among the stones and put it in Hector's lapel. He blushed and thanked her in an embarrassed way, like a child receiving an unexpected present.
“If you don't watch, Sheena,'' said Veronica Jane, “you'll make him fall off the wall on to the shore! He might break his neck.”
Hector laughed uproariously at this, flinging his head back and slipping a little on his perch. Protectively Sheena caught his arm.
“I told you!” said Veronica Jane.
The air was mild, and the salt smell of the sea and of the wet tangle eddied about them. Fifty yards away small waves slid up against the shingle, with lazy persistence. Far across the North Channel the hills of Northern Ireland lay dreaming in the misty sun. It was an evening for careless jokes and subtle intimacies; but Kenneth did not allow himself to be carried away by its spell. Veronica Jane's shoulder pressed warmly against his arm; but he ignored it with puritan rectitude. "Keep your eye on the ball” — that was the golfer's motto. The policeman’s motto, to which he clung with desperate seriousness, was similar: "Keep your eye on the job.” Distractions like Veronica Jane’s voice, fair hair and dancing eyes, like her long, slim legs displayed to such exquisite advantage against the grey stone wall — all such had to be ignored. Like Christian he walked along the flinty road of his choice, trying hard to ignore wayside delights.
He sighed. "Sorry to talk business,” he said, heavily. "In spite of everything we must remember that Miss MacKay is in danger. I have a feeling that Max Bergman is already here in Glendale, waiting.”
"Oh, dear!” said Veronica Jane. "Must we, Sergeant MacDonald?”
"Yes, we must… I — er” He hesitated.
Hector coughed, sensing his friend’s difficulty. "Don’t mind Sheena and me,” he put in. "We’re here to help.”
"Of course,” said Sheena. "It seems to me that if Bergman is acting a part he’s probably disguised himself either as a workman on the Hydro-Electric Scheme or as a visitor to the hotel. Otherwise he’d be too conspicuous in a small place like this.”
"That’s what I was thinking,” returned Kenneth, with a faint smile of gratitude. "I’ll have to check up on the workmen later. But in the meantime perhaps Miss MacKay could tell us about her fellow-guests.”
She pouted. "Oh, Sergeant — you make me sound like a witness in a murder trial!”
"It’s for your own good,” he reminded her.
"I know.” She smiled suddenly and for a moment leaned against him. "I’ll tell you… I don’t suppose you want everybody? Just the people who arrived yesterday and today.”
"That’s right.”
"Oddly enough,” she said, "quite a number checked in yesterday — after I did.”
"Thursday is a favourite day for visitors,' put in Sheena. "Long weekends, you know."
Veronica Jane nodded. "Heading the list is a dashing old soldier — Colonel Huskisson-Smythe, he calls himself. Came in his own car just before dinner."
"Sounds promising," remarked Hector. "What vintage?"
"Car or Colonel?" inquired Veronica Jane, so light-heartedly that Kenneth once again experienced a pang of hopelessness. Would she never learn to take things with proper seriousness?
"I mean Colonel," grinned the artist.
"Quite recent. Last war, I guess — probably between forty and fifty. Kind of contemporary with the Sergeant here."
"Oh, I say!" exclaimed Hector.
Sheena chuckled. "Poor Kenneth!" she said. "Never mind — to me you'll always be the big, shy boy who looked after me when I was little."
Veronica Jane cut short this sentimental interlude. "As I was saying," she went on, "the Colonel isn't very old. Ruddy complexion, fair moustache, uptilted smile which shows a couple of front teeth on one side only."
"Nothing like the chap we saw on Rest-and-be-thankful?" said Kenneth.
"No — but he’s fairly slim and tightly built." Veronica Jane was pensive. "He asked me if I'd care to go walking one day — I reckoned at the time it was my fatal charm. Now I'm beginning to wonder."
"Avoid him!" said Kenneth, dourly. "Who else is there?"
Veronica Jane flushed, but gave no other sign that his tone annoyed her. "There’s a young couple — on their honeymoon, I think. They came on a bus yesterday afternoon, and I saw flakes of confetti fluttering out of her handbag at dinner. I don't know what their name is. They pay no attention to anyone but themselves.
"Then there’s Miss Cunningham — a retired missionary by all accounts. I tried to talk to her this morning, but she sniffed — 'more than somewhat' as Damon Runyan would say — and I don’t think she quite approves of me. However, I guess I'll persevere. I rather like her."
"The Colonel seems our best bet," said Hector. "Did anyone else arrive last night?"
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But just as I came down to breakfast this morning a man passed me on the stairs — somebody I hadn’t seen before. The manager’s wife told me later that he’s a Mr. Thomson — a commercial traveller. Pince-nez and a dry, precise manner, even though he does appear to peddle Scotch whisky. I didn’t like to ask Mrs. McShannon whether he arrived late last night or early this morning. She might have thought I was a Yankee snooper.”
'Til investigate Mr. Thomson,” promised Kenneth. "Who else came today?”
"A Mrs. Enterkin from London,” replied Veronica Jane, who had obviously been more interested in the visitors’ book than she cared to admit. "A big florid lady — accompanied by a little girl of about eleven who simply adores horses. Also a man with a bagful of golf-clubs. Paterson, I think his name is. About thirty, with a hawk-face and the quick eye of a ballplayer. Talked to me about the abolition of the stymie for nearly half-an-hour after lunch. Nice and interesting, if it wasn’t for the golf!” She smiled. "And that’s all, Sergeant. Definitely all.”
"You’ve remembered very well,” he commended her, in the tone of a teacher with a bright but temperamental pupil.
"I should think Miss MacKay would make a good artist,” remarked Hector. "She has an eye for character.”
"Sometimes.” She nodded. "Sometimes I can read people very easily… Oh, well” — she sighed — "maybe I oug
ht to be going. It’s nearly dinner-time.”
They got up off the wall; and as Veronica Jane went by herself up the steep avenue towards the hotel, Kenneth looked after her. Somehow she looked a small and lonely figure: one small innocent against a cunning, unscrupulous enemy…
"She’ll be all right,” Hector said, divining his thoughts.
"Yes. Come on, Kenneth.” Sheena smiled and took his arm.
He grinned with some embarrassment. "She’ll be all right,” he agreed, "as long as she obeys orders and doesn’t go roaming off by herself.”
That night, before he went to bed, he called at the hotel. Donald McShannon and his wife Morag, who managed the place for a company, were old friends of his; and though he did not explain the reason for his visit in detail, they gave him all the information he required, and, as he drank a glass of beer in the hall, allowed him a glimpse of most of the people in whom he was interested.
The whisky-traveller, Mr. David Thomson, proved to be a personal acquaintance of the McShannons, who bought all the spirits used in the bar from his firm. It seemed, therefore, that this man at least must be eliminated from Kenneth’s unofficial list of suspects. None of the others — with the exception, perhaps, of Colonel Huskisson-Smythe — displayed the hard, athletic figure of the Actor; and as it happened, the Colonel’s identity seemed to be fool-proof, for Morag McShannon was able to produce for Kenneth’s benefit a glossy magazine of the previous month, with a photograph of the Colonel judging spaniels at a show. The trim erect bearing, the small bristling moustache and the characteristic curl of the upper lip — all were faithfully reproduced by the camera.
It looked as if the hotel-guests were above suspicion; and as he walked back to Mrs. Connacher’s through the gathering dusk, along the cliff-path by the coastguard’s hut, Kenneth decided that his next step must be an investigation of the workers on the Hydro-Electric Scheme. That could be done, he thought, on the following day. Veronica Jane wanted to visit Drumeden Farm, where her father had been born; and the track to Drumeden led past the nearly completed dam. As her escort, he would arouse no suspicion if he stopped to chat with one of the foremen.
It might be, of course, that Max Bergman had not yet arrived in Glendale. But an instinct of evil and danger — the instinct which so often comes unbidden to the mind of an experienced policeman — was warning him that his chief opponent was somewhere near. It drew his nerves as tight as fiddle-strings.
He passed the coastguard’s hut, waving to the man in blue uniform who had just gone on watch inside. About two hundred yards farther on the path curved close to the edge of Dunaverty Rock, and as he reached this point he stopped and sat down to have a cigarette. He was worried and anxious. This shadow-boxing with an invisible, elusive opponent was getting him down, and he wanted to make sure that Sheena, Hector and Mrs. Connacher would all be in bed before he returned home. In his present uneasy state of mind he did not relish the prospect of conversation, no matter how gay and warm-hearted it might be.
The quiet of the evening gave him an opportunity to compose his thoughts. The sun had gone down an hour before, but a silver glow still lingered in the western sky, making the fall of darkness an almost imperceptible process. Far below the sea crawled in deep shadow.
As he sat there, listening to the faint sounds of the countryside — the complaint of a corn-crake in a distant hayfield, the hush of the sea on a shingly beach, the intermittent rustle of a breeze through the whins at his back — as he sat there with the night closing in around him, he felt a sudden premonition of danger. He turned away from the swooping cliff of earth and sandstone and looked behind him. But there was nothing to be seen, except the shadowy line of whins. His skin prickled. The idea came to him that if he were in the Actor’s shoes — and possessed the Actor’s criminal mind — he might be tempted to stage an accident to Veronica Jane’s escort. That would make an attempt at kidnapping a great deal more simple.
He listened with tense concentration. But he heard nothing to make him suspicious. He had been sitting with his legs dangling on the edge of the cliff; but now, as hot tobacco ash suddenly burnt his fingers, he got up. He threw the stub of his cigarette over into the void, and he saw it falling down and down, a tiny red star sparking out into nothingness.
Then he went straight towards the whins. As he did so he thought he heard the pad of footsteps; but he couldn’t be sure, and when he reached the bushes there was nothing at all to be seen.
Imagination — that’s what it was. He told himself not to be a fool. He had spent part of his life as a policeman in bustling streets; but he had been brought up as a countryman, and he must remember that the quietness of a summer evening is somehow threatening. The result of primordial memories, perhaps — memories handed down from terror-ridden ancestors who waited in silence for the sound of a tiger’s snarl.
He decided, however, not to stay in the vicinity of the cliff. Going along the path, he continued to listen intently. Every few seconds he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. But though his instinct of fear remained, nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening.
He left the cliff-path and climbed down to the edge of the burn, which here ran under the beetling northern face of Dunaverty to its mouth a few hundred yards away. It flowed turgid and black between perpendicular walls of broken turf, and its smooth murmur, mingling with the hush of the sea, had a lulling effect on his mind.
Darkness was now almost as complete as it would be throughout the night, though the sky still retained some of the opal glow of daylight. A moon was coming up. As he strode along the burnside, towards a short-cut which would lead him across behind the village, Kenneth's thoughts turned for a moment to his walk that morning with Veronica Jane. In many ways she was a good companion — and, when she chose to be natural, a most entertaining one. It was the imp of mischief in her character that troubled him. She probably thought him an unmitigated bore and for this reason made him the butt of her pert humour. He sighed. Oh, well — why worry? He was doing his job — much as he disliked this particular side of it. And a policeman’s job should always be regarded impersonally…
Some distance behind him a stone fell with a splash into the water. He wheeled round, his nerves jangling. A shadow moved on the steep bank — he could have sworn to it — then vanished into the shadows of a half-grown hayfield.
For a time he stood still, wondering what he should do. That someone was following him, intent on finding an opportunity to do him harm, he was at last fully convinced. He was convinced, too, that the unknown person was the Actor. If Veronica Jane’s escort could be put out of action — even for a short time — Max Bergman’s task would be made much easier.
On the other hand, it seemed to Kenneth that if he could now locate his enemy and come to grips with him, his own job would be practically over. With the Actor in the cells at Campbeltown, charged as instigator of the assault on Rest-and-be-thankful, Veronica Jane would be rid of the threat to her safety. And before the O’Sullivan gang could arrange for someone else to take Bergman’s place, Fraser MacKay’s investigations in America would be complete and he would be in Scotland himself to look after his daughter.
He did not think that the Actor, if it could be avoided, wanted to kill him. An accident which would render him incapable of guarding Veronica Jane even for a few hours would suit Bergman just as well as putting him out of the way altogether. And the American criminal was shrewd enough not to risk his neck if he could achieve his purpose by other means.
In the silent, shadowy light, the difficulty was to find his opponent. But within a few seconds of hearing the stone fall into the river, Kenneth had made up his mind. Directly underneath him, where he had stopped, the bank was steep; but there was a sandy margin below it, against which the water lapped in smooth eddies. Quietly he dropped down on to the sand, knowing that if his tracker had been watching him, he would thus disappear entirely from his view. If the other chose to wait where he was, Kenneth could reach his p
osition in a couple of minutes by means of a steady crawl down the burnside.
His shoes sank in the soft, damp sand, making no noise. He kept himself hunched forward, so that no part of him would be visible above the bank. The point where the stone had dropped into the water was about thirty yards downstream, and when he estimated that he had gone this distance, he gingerly raised his head over the top of the bank.
With an eye trained to notice detail, he saw at once that quite recently someone had stood almost directly above his present position. A small divot had been removed from the turf, as if the edge of someone’s shoe had slipped on it. Not only that. On the very edge of the bank this divot merged with an indentation — probably where a stone had lain before its dislodgment. But the place was otherwise empty, though a few yards in front of the burn young grass sprouted up, waving gently in the moonlight. It occurred to Kenneth that the Actor might be lying there, among the hay, waiting — and still watching.
He hesitated only for a moment. Then he sprang up the bank and ran straight into the hay field. Somewhere to his left there was the suggestion of a rustle. He turned and moved quickly in the direction of the sound, the tops of the wiry grasses crackling round his ankles. But he saw nothing and heard nothing more. He could find no traces of anyone having been in the field before him.
After a minute or two of fruitless casting about he felt that he was making a fool of himself and, after a while, retraced his steps to the edge of the burn. Slowly he resumed his walk back to Mrs. Connacher's.
Strangely enough, the feeling of danger left him as soon as he was out of the hay field. He tried to convince himself that the whole experience had been the result of nervous reaction. But as he crossed the water-meadows and approached the village from the rear, he couldn't be sure about anything. There was that divot cut out of the turf — and the falling stone…
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