The Shivering Mountain

by Paul Somers

  I said, “Well—hallo! This is a surprise.”

  “Is it? You know I promised to ring you.”

  “You’re such an early bird.”

  “I wanted to be sure of getting you.… Look, I’ve got the day off—is there any chance you could take me out to lunch?”

  I cursed inwardly. Of all the bad luck …! But there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I said, “Mollie, there’s nothing I’d like better—but the fact is I’ve got a date already.”

  “Oh, dear …” She sounded really disappointed. “Is it very important …?”

  “I’m afraid it is, rather.”

  “I would like to see you to-day … You once said you’d break any date for me!”

  “Unfortunately, this is work,” I said. “I—I’m meeting a Belgian, a friend of the Editor’s. I’ve got to tote him around.”

  “Too bad … What about dinner, then?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll still have him on my hands.”

  “Well, come along to the flat when you’re through—I’ll make you some coffee.”

  “Taking chances, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps I’m in the mood!”

  This was getting worse and worse! “Look,” I said desperately, “I know I’ll be tied up with this man till midnight—can’t we fix it for some other time? Tomorrow …?”

  “To-morrow I’ll be busy,” Mollie said. The friendliness had gone from her voice—she sounded like something left behind by the Ice Age. “It doesn’t matter—it was just an idea … Good-bye!” Abruptly, she rang off.

  I felt very fed up. I’d half a mind to ring her back and try to pacify her, but I didn’t see how I could without telling her more than she ought to know. I’d have to wait till the Landon affair was over, and then explain. She’d understand then. Still, it was damned annoying.…

  I was out of temper for quite a while, but I had things to do and the irritation gradually wore off. I got the car out, and had it fuelled, and then I drove to my favourite map shop in Long Acre. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that somebody might be taking an interest, so just to be on the safe side I bought a whole lot of inch-to-the-mile maps and guide-books covering various parts of the country, including the Castleton area. Back at the flat, I read up all about Mam Tor in the Castleton guide-book. It was a small mountain in the High Peak district, its top about 1700 feet above sea-level, with a precipitous semi-circular edge on the Castleton side. It was known locally as the “Shivering Mountain”—apparently in frosty weather its shale and gritstone layers sometimes disintegrated, so that it gave the appearance of shivering. I hoped it wasn’t an omen! Presently I turned to the inch-to-the-mile of the district. The nearest point to the mountain on the road was about a mile and a half to the west of Castleton. From there it would be about half a mile to the foot of the precipitous face. The road itself was over a thousand feet high, so I guessed the intervening ground would probably be rough moorland.

  I put the map and guide-book in my bag, and cut some sandwiches and made a flask of coffee so that Clara and I wouldn’t have to call in anywhere in the early evening. At noon I slipped out and had lunch in a pub that newspapermen didn’t normally go to. Then, shortly after one, I put my bag in the Riley and set off through the thick traffic to the park. I was a little early, and stopped for a few minutes near Hyde Park Corner. It was exactly one-thirty when I reached Marble Arch. Clara was waiting just outside the gate—though if she hadn’t seen me and waved I’d scarcely have recognised her. She was wearing low-heeled shoes and almost no make-up, and the difference was quite remarkable. Her hair, which she usually wore drawn back tight on one side in a rather sophisticated style, was now loose and girlish. She could have been anyone. She got quickly in beside me, and I drove off.

  “Everything okay?” I said.

  “I think so.…” She sounded a bit tremulous. “That man rang me up again this morning.”

  “Again!”

  “Yes—he said it was the last warning. He was threatening dreadful things if we—if we tried to bring the police in. He was horrible.”

  “Well, we’re not going to, so I shouldn’t let it disturb you.… When did he ring?”

  “About ten.”

  “H’m—that means he’ll have had plenty of time to get to Castleton before us if he wants to. Did he say anything else—apart from the threats?”

  “No, he rang off practically at once.… That awful voice!—it gives me the creeps.”

  “Did you tell Ronald?”

  “No, I thought I’d better not.… It wouldn’t have taken much to upset him all over again. I told him everything was fine, and that I’d see him tomorrow.… Let’s hope I was right!”

  I concentrated on the traffic after that, with one eye on the clock. We were just about on schedule. We skirted Lords and joined the Finchley Road and ran through Golders Green and up past Temple Fortune. As we dropped down the slope on the other side I spotted Grant’s grey Jaguar, drawn up on the near side just beyond the traffic lights. We were checked at the lights. Grant was looking round—he’d seen us. As the lights turned green I trickled across and pulled up ahead of the Jag. Grant was opening the car door. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us. I got out quickly and took the case from him. It was a brown fibre one, new and pretty heavy. The keys were tied to the handle. Grant gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Everything all right?” he asked. I nodded. “Good luck, then—I’ll expect to hear from you tonight.” He waved to Clara. I slung the case in the back of the Riley, and drove on.

  The first hurdle was behind us, anyway!

  Chapter Eight

  I was very much aware of all those notes in the back and I kept a sharp look-out for possible trouble, both ahead and in the driving mirror. There’d been too much gossip about me and the money for me to feel entirely comfortable. Many a hi-jacking job had been staged for a fraction of what was in that suitcase, and if the talk in the Fleet Street pubs had happened to reach the underworld it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that an eye had been kept on me. But it was only a precautionary thought, and I wasn’t really worried.

  Actually, my first anxiety was of quite another sort. There was a fair amount of traffic on the stretch of road after Barnet, and as I wasn’t hurrying, most of the stuff going my way was passing me. But after a while I noticed that one car—a black Wolseley—was keeping its place behind me all the time, and only about fifty yards away. I slowed a little, and it slowed too. I accelerated to sixty and left it behind, but in a few moments it had caught up again. It had no aerial or police sign, but I could see a uniformed man behind the wheel and another one beside him and I was pretty sure they were police. I didn’t say anything to Clara, but I kept watching. They shouldn’t have been following me, even to give protection—not after the guarantee of non-interference the Record had been given.… Suddenly, a nasty suspicion entered my mind. Had I, perhaps, been a little too innocent in accepting Grant’s assurances at their face value? Was it possible, in spite of all the pledges, that we were secretly playing in with the authorities—that there was going to be a trap …? Yet the police surely wouldn’t have used uniformed men to follow me?—that would have been crazy. Anyway, I didn’t think Grant would do that to me. It was an unworthy thought—but I continued to keep an eye on the car. Then, at Potters Bar, it turned off, and that was that.

  Presently, Clara began to talk to me. Until now she’d always struck me as a rather intense, smouldering sort of person—with explosive possibilities, I suspected, but hardly vivacious. However, I’d only seen her under the worst conditions. Now that she had a real hope her father might be freed, she was much more lively and cheerful. She asked me how long I’d been on the Record, and if I enjoyed being a reporter, and I told her a bit about the life as we cruised along. She asked me if I had many jobs to do that were as exciting as this one, and I said that happily I didn’t.

  There was a little pause then. I was curious about her, too. I couldn’t forget the thin
gs Lawson had said about her, and I wondered how much truth there’d been in his account. After a moment I said, “How do you like being an actress?”

  She made a deprecatory sound. “I’m not much of an actress, I’m afraid. I’m not much of anything, really.…”

  “Oh, come!”

  “It’s true … I was a frightful flop at drama school. I get a booking occasionally, but it never amounts to anything much. I call myself an actress because it sounds better but that’s not how I earn my living—when I do earn one! I’m really a model.”

  “You mean you—wear clothes?”

  She gave a wry sort of smile. “Very much the reverse!”

  “Oh, I see—that sort of model.… Well, I suppose you don’t mind it?”

  “I don’t specially like it—but it’s something I can do.”

  “What does your father think about it?”

  “Not much.”

  “Perhaps he’d have preferred you to be a physicist!”

  “He’d have preferred me to keep house for him, actually, but I’m hopeless at domestic things.”

  We broke off while I manœuvred my way past a convoy of lorries. Then I said, “You’re not very like your father, are you?—not like the photographs I’ve seen, anyway.”

  “No, I’m not a bit like him. I’m exactly like my mother—or so he always says. She was Italian, you know.”

  “Yes, I heard that.… She must have been very lovely.”

  “Thank you …! I don’t actually remember much about her—she died when I was quite small. Father was absolutely devoted to her, I know that. She was a gay, vital, temperamental person—really just the opposite of him. He worshipped her.…” Her voice trailed off.

  I said, “Are you very fond of your father?”

  “Well—yes. He’s—he’s a wonderful man.”

  “Is he fond of you?”

  “Very.”

  “It seems odd that you didn’t see more of each other.”

  I felt her swivel round to stare at me. “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, I heard someone talking—another reporter. He knew one of the scientists at Crede, and apparently this chap had said your father had been complaining because he hadn’t had a chance to see you for eight months.”

  The engine suddenly seemed very noisy. I almost wished I hadn’t said it—her relations with her father weren’t really my business. And yet, in a way, they were, because she had been less than frank at that conference. I wondered what she’d say now.

  She said, in a very subdued voice, “Actually, that’s true.”

  “Is it …? At the Ministry, you said you hadn’t seen him for ‘a month or two.’ ”

  “I know—I just didn’t want to have to explain.…” There was another pause.

  “Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t—but I don’t mind telling you. In fact, I’d like to.”

  I waited.

  “The truth is,” she said, “I wasn’t on very good terms with my father—though I am now. It’s the old story—I wanted to live my own life, and he didn’t like the way I was going about it. We looked at everything differently. He’s rather an ascetic and I’m just the opposite. His idea of enjoying himself is to get on with his work. I’m afraid mine was quite different. As soon as I could I got away on my own. I wanted to have a fling. When I was just twenty-one I married a man I met at a party. I married him two days after the party. I thought I was terribly in love with him. Father was horrified, because I really didn’t know anything about the man. As it turned out, Father was right. The marriage was an utter disaster from the very beginning. I ought to have made it up with him then, but I didn’t. I felt I didn’t care what happened. I had a few affairs, and I drank a lot, and I got in with some pretty frightful people. Father found out what was happening, and he came up and we had rows—but the more fuss he made the more determined I was to go my own way. I was an utter fool—and I wrote some beastly things to him.…” She broke off. She seemed to be in great distress.

  I said, “Look, I wish I hadn’t brought it up. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I’ve told you the worst,” she said. “After that, things suddenly got better. I met Ronald. Ronald did something to me. You only know him as a rather angry man, but actually he’s terribly kind and gentle. About the first thing he wanted to do was meet my father, so I wrote to Crede and of course Father came like a shot. That was the first time we’d met for eight months. Father liked Ronald at once—they got on splendidly. After that it was easy. Father and I became friends again. We were wonderfully happy—for about three weeks. Then this ghastly thing had to happen to him. When I think how much I hurt him, how badly I treated him, I can hardly bear it.… It’s hell to feel remorse when you know it may be too late.”

  “Let’s hope it won’t be,” I said.

  She nodded. The tears were flowing unchecked down her cheeks. I watched the road. It was extraordinary, I thought, how right Lawson had been about her in some ways, and yet how completely wrong in others. I could well understand why she hadn’t wanted to say all that in public.… Presently she dried her eyes and began to powder her face. By the time we reached Welwyn she was back to normal.

  We were just leaving Bedford when I first noticed the grey car on my tail. At least, that was when I became conscious of it—I had an idea I’d seen it before, a long way back, but I’d been talking then and I hadn’t bothered. Now I did. We were cruising at a fairly steady fifty. The grey car was keeping about a quarter of a mile behind, but I noticed that it closed up through villages and whenever the road started to wind. I thought there was only one person in it, but I couldn’t be sure. It was a newish-looking car, with a lot of chromium. I told myself I was imagining things, but it seemed better to make sure, all the same. I slowed to thirty. A couple of cars rushed by, but neither of them was the grey one. I slowed still further, and it still didn’t pass me. The distance between us was about the same.

  Clara said, “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s a car behind that I can’t shake off … I think it’s following us.”

  She turned in alarm, gazing through the rear window. For a moment she watched in silence. Then she said, “Oughtn’t we to stop and make sure?”

  I was wondering about that. I said, “If it is following us, it’s probably the man who rang you this morning—the kidnapper. I don’t see who else it can be. And if it’s the kidnapper, I suppose we ought to ignore him. Our rendezvous is on Mam Tor, not A.5.”

  “Suppose it’s not the kidnapper—it could be terribly dangerous. …”

  “Yes, that’s just it.…”

  “If you drove faster perhaps you could leave him behind.”

  “We’ll try,” I said. “Hold on to your seat.”

  I opened up the Riley, and in a few seconds we were doing well over seventy. I passed the two cars that had just passed me, and got some ugly looks. The road was fairly clear and I stepped hard on the gas, pushing the needle up to eighty in places. Then there was a road-up sign, and a bit of a block, and afterwards there was a winding stretch that slowed me, and quite a lot of traffic. All the same, we covered ten miles at a pretty fast pace. Then, on a straight stretch, I looked in the mirror and saw that the grey car was still on my tail. There was no doubt about it now—we were being followed.

  “I do think we ought to stop,” Clara said again. She’d turned to take another look at the car. “I doubt if it is the kidnapper—I’m sure he’d never risk showing himself to us in daylight.”

  She had a point there. It didn’t seem very likely.

  Suddenly, out of the blue, she said, “You know, it looks a bit like Ronald’s car!”

  I nearly shot out of my seat. I remembered now that Barr had had a grey car. I said, “What is his car?”

  She frowned. “I think he said it was a Zephyr. It’s a new one.”

  I looked at the grey car again in the driving mirror. It was too far away for
me to be certain, but it could have been a Zephyr.

  I said, “Surely he wouldn’t have followed us—not after he’d agreed to keep out of it? Not after everything was settled?”

  “I can’t believe he would either,” Clara said. She looked as worried as I felt. “But he’s very stubborn, he might have done.… What are you going to do?”

  “I think you’re right—we’ll have to stop and make sure.”

  I drove on till I came to a lay-by in the middle of a mile-straight stretch. There was a lorry there, with a couple of tough-looking chaps standing talking beside it. I turned and parked behind it. The grey car was about four hundred yards away. Suddenly it pulled in to the side of the road and stopped. I got the binoculars from my bag and focused them on it. I couldn’t see the driver’s face because the windscreen was reflecting like a mirror—but the car was a Zephyr, a new one.

  “The stupid idiot!” I said savagely.

  Clara bit her lip. “Shall I walk back? Perhaps I can make him see reason.”

  “If you couldn’t before,” I said, “you probably can’t now.”

  “Well, if you think he’ll pay more attention to you.…”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t keen on leaving Clara alone there with thirty thousand pounds, even for a few minutes. I wasn’t sure I’d do any good, either. If Barr had disregarded the arguments of yesterday, I couldn’t see why he should be persuaded to-day. Perhaps if I drove flat out I’d be able to lose him in time—get far enough ahead to take a side turning anyway, and give him the slip.… But there was a lot of traffic about, and the very last thing we wanted was any kind of mishap, or trouble with the police.… Better, perhaps, to have a show-down. But not here. Somewhere where we could all join in.

  I told Clara what I was going to do. Then I started the engine and pulled out into the road again. The Zephyr followed. I finished the straight mile at speed and entered a village with a thirty-mile limit. The road curved in the middle of it. Just beyond the bend there was a cobbled parking place on the near side. I pulled in and stopped. In a few moments the grey car came cautiously round the corner. The driver was looking around, examining the parked cars before going on.…