He felt too uneasy even to light another cigarette, and he had quite forgotten he was hungry. He wondered if he dared make an arrest. It would delay and disturb any plans being made, but only delay, only disturb, not frustrate. It would be a gamble. Doubtful if he could justify it, doubtful if the magistrate would commit. And it would be a gamble with the lives of others at stake, for any delay and disturbance caused might only result in the provision of firmer ground for the next leap forward, for the perfecting of plans of whose purpose and intention he had so little proof or even evidence, of which he could only be sure that they were deadly in their aim.
In such troubling thoughts he was still deeply immersed when he saw another cyclist approaching. Denis Kayes he hoped this time, and then he saw it was a woman and recognized Janet Jebb.
“What’s brought her here?” he asked himself and hurried down the drive to meet her, for he had the thought that it might be better if no one at Four Oaks knew of her arrival.
Probably, though, Theresa knew. Probably she was already watching from one of the windows of the house. Perhaps even it was Theresa who had brought it about that Janet should be there. Not very likely he knew, but better to suspect Theresa everywhere than to overlook her anywhere.
Janet alighted as she saw him coming. She said:
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here still. Mr. Kayes had gone before the sergeant came to say he mustn’t.”
“Gone where? What for?” Bobby asked quickly.
“I don’t know, he didn’t say,” Janet answered. “Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby answered in his turn. “I wanted to get in touch with him. Didn’t he say anything at all before he went?”
“There was a phone call,” Janet said. “Mr. Kayes seemed rather puzzled. He said he didn’t know what on earth it meant, but he supposed he had better go and see. He said he thought it was a woman’s voice, and he thought anyhow he had enough petrol.”
“He went on his motor cycle?”
“Yes. He said there wasn’t much time and he would have to hurry if he was to be there when it said.”
“But he didn’t say where?”
“Only something about a café in Wychwood Forest—the Hiker’s Arms. I remember the name because I thought it was rather silly. I thought it was legs with hikers, not arms. He was to turn right when he got there and then go straight on. He said it didn’t seem very clear but he might as well see what it was all about.”
“The Hiker’s Arms,” Bobby repeated, searching his mind. “Closed I think.” He remembered some argument about an allocation of food in which a cafe of that name had been mentioned, until the discovery was made that it had been shut down at the beginning of the war. This fact, its proprietors who were also owners of other places of refreshment, had forgotten to mention when applying for their share of the food supplies available. “It’s a rather out of way place, I think,” he said. “Did Mr. Kayes know where it was?”
“I think they told him on the phone,” Janet said, “and we looked at the map, too. I mean, how to get there.”
Bobby was rubbing the end of his nose as hard as ever he had done in the days before, under wifely injunction he had tried to abandon a habit that, she told him, was fast becoming a rather silly mannerism. But now he rubbed and rubbed; and, as he rubbed, memory began to grow clearer. The Hiker’s Arms was in a lonely part, deep in Wychwood Forest, but close he thought to a well-known beauty spot; and close to one of the favourite walks for less ambitious hikers, those who looked forward to a good tea and a comfortable rest and were not of that stalwart breed content with a packet of sandwiches, a pocket flask, and thirty miles twixt dawn and dusk. But now that hikers were mostly doing their hiking in different conditions, in far-off lands, the place had become as solitary as it had been before people discovered nature by force of living only in towns. Less and less did Bobby like the idea of this rendezvous given to Denis in so lonely a spot. Janet was speaking again. She said:
“The sergeant told us it was you said Mr. Kayes wasn’t to go anywhere. So I rang up to ask why and they said they didn’t know, but it was your orders, and you were here, and so I thought I had better come and tell you.”
“I’m very glad you did,” Bobby exclaimed fervently. “I don’t know what it all means but I think I had better go along to this cafe place and try to find out.”
“Oh, thank you,” Janet breathed. “Oh, I hoped you could help.”
“What we are for,” Bobby told her. “To help—or to hinder,” and he wondered grimly enough if there was much chance of his arriving in time to do either.
He asked quickly one or two more questions. Janet answered briefly and sensibly. A big car came round the corner of the road and drew up. It was one belonging to the county police that had been laid up almost since the beginning of the war because it used so much petrol —not to mention its own special and remarkable gift for breaking down at critical moments. Two of his men got out and Bobby was glad to see them. One of them he knew had at one time been stationed in the district near the Hiker’s Arms. He said:
“Oh, Morgan, lucky it’s you. You know a cafe, the Hiker’s Arms? Somewhere in Wychwood Forest, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Morgan answered. “It’s shut down now, but it used to do a big summer trade.”
“What’s the best way to get there from here?”
“Well, sir,” Morgan said, considering the point, “it’s not such an awful distance in a straight line, but you would have to go a long way round by car. Quickest way would be to cycle. There are good paths. Not for cars, but all right for cycling. It’s downhill most of the way and you can’t go wrong because there’s the tower on the top of Quarry Hill for a landmark. You can see it everywhere.”
“Quarry Hill?” repeated Bobby, startled. “Isn’t that where there were so many accidents before the war? I remember someone writing to the papers to say it ought to be called Quick Death Hill.”
“Yes, sir, that’s the place,” agreed Morgan. “People used to say they put the cafe there so as to get the custom of what weren’t killed but only smashed up. Not much traffic now but a very nasty tricky bit of road—corkscrew turns and if you don’t mind you go bang off and into the quarry. There were danger signs put up but people don’t always notice. Regular death trap if you don’t; and now the roads are so neglected and no repairs done, it’ll be worse than ever.”
Bobby wondered if possibly someone had been busy there, removing those danger notices, or perhaps changing them—putting a sign ‘Turn right’ for example, where before there had been a notice ‘Turn Left.’ Or, perhaps, tacking, say, a previously prepared ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ notice over a danger sign. Or any similar trick. As, for example, placing an obstruction on the road in some strategic position, round a sharp bend very likely. Then a motorist coming round the corner at speed, hurrying, speeding a little, as Denis Kayes might well be, since he had remarked that there was not much time to get to the given rendezvous, would, seeing it, be sure to swerve, swerve instinctively, swerve so as to make it certain he would go over the quarry edge. All that would take hardly an hour to arrange, if a few preparations had been made beforehand, and less than half an hour to remove, leaving no trace. Nothing would remain except a dead man and a wrecked motor cycle at the foot of the quarry. Merely one more road accident and not so much as a breath of suspicion aroused—or if suspicions did stir in the mind of a nosey deputy chief constable, nothing he could do about it.
Impracticable in normal peace-time conditions, with other traffic on the road, but now that by-roads, side roads, were almost deserted, feasible enough.
“The quarry’s pretty deep, isn’t it?” Bobby asked, almost mechanically; his mind busy planning what to do, what precautions to take, how best to achieve the swift, decisive action called for.
“Oh yes, sir, thirty or forty feet,” Morgan assented. “And ten foot of water at the bottom now. The military had it flooded for one of their battl
e-training stunts and it’s never been drained.”
That would be fairly conclusive, Bobby told himself. A man might survive a fall. In some way a fall may be broken, extraordinary what the human frame can survive with just a modicum of good luck. But a fall into ten foot of water would be very sure. No room there for lucky escape. A ‘dead cert,’ as the racing men say—a very dead cert indeed. He said:
“Drive on to Chipping Up—full speed. Morgan, get a cycle there somehow. Beg, borrow, buy, steal if you must. But get it. It’s life and death, I think. When you get it, follow on to Quarry Hill. If you get there first or without seeing me, do what you can. I expect there’s been an arranged accident to a motor cyclist. Watch out for it if you get there first. Don’t ask at the house here for a cycle. Better they shouldn’t know. White,” he added to the second constable, a man much older than Morgan, “while Morgan’s getting busy, ring up H.Q. and tell them to send help to Quarry Hill. Say there may have been an accident and to bring a doctor. Then bring your car back here. Keep out of the way but wait. You may be wanted. Understand?” To Janet he said: “Give me your cycle. It’ll stand my weight, won’t it? Lucky you’re tall.”
“Oh, I’m coming,” she said. “I must.”
“Give it me,” he repeated. He took it from her without waiting for her consent, and though her foot was on the pedal, ready to mount. For there was a drumming in his brain, a clamour in his mind, like a warning bell to urge him on. “Every moment counts,” he said; and on her machine he flashed off down the road, bending low, riding as he had seldom ridden before.
CHAPTER XXVII
RUNNING EFFORT
The going was easy at first. The tower on Quarry Hill, visible for many miles, showed the direction. The road Bobby followed as he pedalled so desperately on, was still in good condition, not yet much affected by wartime neglect. But when presently it turned sharply north, he had to leave it for what began as a lane and so continued till it reached the farm it served—and here Bobby ran into a flock of sheep. Cows will scatter, pigs will grunt and run, but sheep remain. Nothing much to be done with sheep. A flock of sheep on the road resembles some natural phenomenon on which no effort of man avails. He is as helpless as he is in blinding snow or impenetrable fog. Except perhaps that fog and snowstorm grow at least no worse for all your efforts and your struggles, whereas the more you try to force a way through sheep, the more they mass themselves together defying all things but patience.
Nor was there any help for Bobby from the two or three men in charge. “What’s your hurry?” they said indignantly, and Bobby wasted no time in efforts to explain. “Thinks there’s no one going anywhere except him,” they told each other loudly. “Roads ain’t for racing,” they said, and Bobby had no leisure to explain that he was racing a rider on a pale horse, an invisible rider whose name was death.
At last though he was free of that difficult, amorphous, bleating barrier, but not until the lane he had been following had begun to degenerate into a track, a track, too, that presently became little more than an indication to show that once upon a time a track had been there. Now it had become much obliterated by a growth of grass and bramble, of intruding undergrowth and of bracken here and there and of fallen branches, relics of winter storms. Swiftly, strongly, silently, does nature resume her empire, once the restraining hand of man falters and withdraws.
Constable Morgan, in saying the way was clear, the paths good, had trusted too much to pre-war memories. Six long years of neglect and absence, six years when nature had been allowed to flood back like the incoming tide on the seashore, had sufficed for much of this part of the forest to return to almost primeval conditions. No longer did the hiker or the picnic party come all through the long summer days to trample down the uneven ground, to thrust aside intruding growths, to toss away fallen obstacles, to make clear and plain the footpaths and the byways. As he pedalled on, riding his cycle rather like a bucking pony on that uneven ground, its spokes and wheels snatched at by entangling bramble growth; sometimes not sure even whether he were still on a path; twice having to dismount where the overflow of a stream, choked by fallen forest debris, had turned the ground into a morass, Bobby began to feel he was making such slow progress he had small chance of arriving in time. Indeed it might well be too late already.
Though he had an unusually good sense of direction he might easily have lost his way in what was so swiftly becoming again primeval wilderness but for the glimpses he still got at times of the Quarry Hill tower. Then came disaster. He had already had cause to ask himself uneasily how long Janet’s bicycle would endure the combination of this rough usage and his own twelve stone or thereabouts of solid flesh and bone. Now as he tried to put on a burst of speed when he came to what seemed a clearer stretch of forest than usual, his front wheel went deep into a hidden cavity in the ground, an old burrow of some sort perhaps, and he himself went head first into a bush that did indeed break his fall but not without inflicting some slight facial damage and damage more serious to trousers that only Olive’s expert care had kept still fit to wear. Worse, when he extracted himself from the clinging embrace of a bush reluctant to release him, and dived to recover his cycle, he found the front wheel so badly buckled, the handle-bar so bent and cracked, that plainly it could be no longer of any use.
He flung it down and set himself to run. Arms pressed to side, head back, he ran. He was not dressed for it, his shoes were a light city pair, but he ran as not often athletes have run on smooth cinder tracks, with applauding crowds to cheer them. For he ran for no challenge cup, no silver goblet to display on dining-room sideboard. It was pale death he had to overtake and he knew the hope was small; and so the smaller the hope, the more desperate the need for all he had to give.
He ran. He ran beneath the unregarding skies, and only the trees and the bramble and the bracken, only the unheeding small things of the wood, saw as he flashed by. The ground slipped away under his flying feet, he crashed through obstacles rather than seek a way round, he took no heed of the clutching bramble that tore at his legs, of the overhanging branches that lashed so viciously at his face. Fiercely, more fiercely still, he fled on, with throbbing temples and a singing in his ears, with a daze before his eyes and no thought in his mind save of the need that drove him. Now, to his aid he called all he possessed of that strange reserve that lies somewhere hidden in all men, ready for the time when spirit makes on body its ultimate demand. So he fled, so he ran, all his being merged in the need for such speed as he could make; and it was as though all his world had ceased to be save as an urge to drive his reeling steps, his gasping self, to greater efforts and to effort greater still, and yet not enough, not enough, so that still more must body give to the call of spirit, master and lord of body.
He was still running, still on his feet, though the run had become little more than a blind reeling forward, though his steps were unsure and uneven, though three times he had fallen and hardly known why he had risen again, when at last he burst through the fringe of trees that here lined the road running down from the hill by the quarry edge. And there by the side of the road he fell down and lay.
Gradually consciousness of himself, of his errand, of why he was there, returned to him. Nothing to show whether he had come in time or whether he was too late. The road lay silent and still, it was as though its tranquil indifference mocked all that frantic effort which at last had brought him here. Nothing to show if any had passed all the long day, nothing to show whether or no, if they had done so, they had passed in safety.
His strength was beginning to come back now, his pumping heart to return to normal, return to its accustomed rhythm, his eyes to clear, the drumming in his ears to cease. There was a trickle of blood from a scratch above his eyes he had to keep wiping away and this annoyed him. He felt able to sit up now, but he did not try to stand. His legs were as yet hardly steady enough for that. The road was still deserted; peaceful, calm, in the pleasant afternoon sunshine. He began to wonder if he had been a f
ool to run and race like that. Very likely, he thought, he had been exciting himself unnecessarily. He tried to light a cigarette. His hands were still shaking from the effects of his exertions during that great run and he gave up the attempt. He lay back and waited. When he tried again after an interval, he succeeded. Cautiously he stood up. He was a trifle dizzy still, not quite sure of himself yet, not altogether sure of his ability to control his legs. They were still distinctly wobbly. But the store of strength he had so utterly expended was now beginning slowly to replenish itself. Leaning against a post stuck in the ground near by, he smoked reflectively. He supposed there was no need for further exertion, for haste, unthinking hurry, speed. If he had got here in time, before Denis Kayes arrived, it was all right. Kayes could be warned as soon as he appeared. If he were too late and Kayes had already gone by, then either he had ridden the hill in safety and the trap had failed, or else he was by now a dead man in ten foot of water at the bottom of the quarry.
Fortunately, so far as Bobby could tell, there was no sign that any such tragedy had happened. As calm, untroubled, peaceful a looking stretch of road as one could wish to see. Still, it would be as well, he supposed, now that he felt stronger, to make further investigation. He flung the butt of his cigarette away and noticed for the first time that the upright post against which he had been leaning bore one of those danger notices of which Morgan had spoken—a bold, conspicuous warning it would be difficult to avoid seeing or heeding.
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