‘Simply Sir Bernard Paxton’s inactivity – his immobilization. With his son in those hands, he could neither be trusted nor could he trust himself. On the sort of work for which he is needed he would crack up almost at once. It has been the position, as you must know, with scores of scientists on the Continent whose families are in alien hands. That is what our friends are after. I have been watching them through binoculars’ – Miss Liberty patted her bag – ‘holding a sort of battle conference. Their zero hour will be in about ten minutes. And we have an hour or so in which survival is all our own affair.’
‘An hour or so!’ Mr Thewless was aghast. ‘But surely the police–’
‘The first thing I did in the village just now was to get through on the telephone to my brother, Sir Charles. He told me quite a lot. The London police have got entirely on the track of the affair, and one has been given permission to fly here direct. He is in the air now. Two senior officers of the Irish police are coming, also by air, from Dublin. And a local force, available about forty miles away, will be setting out any time by car. I had learnt just so much when I was cut off. The girl at the exchange investigated, and she says that the line must have come down outside Killyboffin. Well, we know what that means.’
‘God bless my soul!’ Mr Thewless tightened his grip on the poker. ‘It means that we are completely cut off in this singularly isolated spot.’
‘Exactly so. I went round to find the local guarda, for what his help might be worth, and discovered that he has been called away – no doubt on some fool’s errand. The two cars one can hire have gone too. Your own car – it must have happened last night – has its tyres slashed to ribbons.’ Miss Liberty had turned to Cyril Bolderwood. ‘And, if you wonder how I managed to walk straight in, it was because your servants seem to have made themselves scarce as well.’
‘The good-for-nothing rascals! The dishonest–’ Cyril Bolderwood, about to launch upon his old star turn as the irascible squire, thought better of it. ‘Ivor,’ he demanded, ‘whatever are we to do?’
Ivor said nothing, his brows knitted in thought. And Miss Liberty answered for him. ‘It is quite fantastic, is it not? Here is your son pointing a revolver at me – and knowing that, through this convenient tweed pocket, I am pointing one at him. Here is Mr Thewless standing over you with a poker. And here is Humphrey, who has had a very rough time, with the light of battle beginning to show again in his eye. One possible way of proceeding is, of course, clear.’
‘Clear?’ said Mr Thewless.
‘To our friends here, that is to say. They can try to do a deal with their rivals. Mr Ivor is thinking that out now. But you can see from his expression that he regards it as not altogether promising. Earlier this morning they attacked him in the cave and pitched him into the sea as dead. It was not a good prelude to any relationship of confidence. He knows these people to be as treacherous and dishonourable as himself… I think, Mr Ivor, that that expresses the situation?’
‘Certainly.’ Ivor remained calm. ‘It expresses it tactlessly, Miss Liberty, but accurately enough.’
‘Whereas you know equally well that Mr Thewless and Humphrey and myself are fowl of another feather. We subscribe to the old-fashioned idea of keeping promises, and that sort of thing.’
‘That is true enough.’ Ivor was positively handsome. ‘And the conclusion is that my father and I had better make our bargain with you.’
‘Then I will make a proposal to you. Our interests are different, are they not? We, on our part, are simply concerned to hold on until help arrives. You, on the other hand, are anxious to go while the going is good. I suspect that your normal course would be to get away in your car to somewhere along this coast where you keep a sea-going boat. But your car is out of action, and you must take what other means you can. Well, my suggestion simply is that you set about it.’ Miss Liberty was brisk, colloquial. ‘In fact, that you clear out.’
‘And you?’
‘We shall endeavour to hold Killyboffin, or some part of it, until help does arrive. And we definitely don’t want you as part of the garrison.’
Ivor considered. ‘Just how are those people disposed?’
‘They are assembling in surprising numbers in the village, where they have two large cars. And, of course, somewhere or other there is their motor-cruiser.’
Ivor Bolderwood’s eyes for a moment sought his father’s – but less for counsel, it appeared, than in command. ‘Very well – we’ll go. But we must have another revolver from the drawer of that desk, and also the grip that my father is pleased to describe as holding brandy.’
‘Agreed.’
Mr Thewless, who was still grasping the poker, had listened to these exchanges with some reluctance. ‘I am bound’, he said, ‘to express my heartfelt hope that you will both be in gaol before sunset. And it must be understood clearly that our engagement to let you go terminates two minutes after you leave this house. Thereafter we shall hold ourselves at liberty to assist in your apprehension and subsequent condign punishment by any means in our power.’
‘Dear old Thewless, full of choice eloquence to the last!’ And from beneath his bandages Ivor Bolderwood gave his last malicious grin. ‘Well, you have about five minutes left to polish a period or two for our bearded friend. Goodbye.’
The door closed and they were gone. There was a moment’s silence. ‘I say,’ said Humphrey, ‘do you think they’ll really beat it?’
Miss Liberty nodded. ‘I think they will – as long as the son stays in charge.’
Mr Thewless demurred. ‘It struck me as being the father who is in a panic.’
‘Precisely. And it is he who might lose his head and senselessly turn and fight. Ivor is prepared to cut his losses and start life again elsewhere.’
‘Life? It strikes me as a grave responsibility to let him loose again on what he calls that.’
‘Our responsibility at the moment is towards Humphrey.’ Miss Liberty was grim.
Humphrey produced a rather battered smile. ‘I’m afraid’, he said, ‘that I have a grave responsibility towards you. I did start all this.’
‘You must not be too hard on yourself.’ Miss Liberty too smiled. ‘After all, you were very young then, weren’t you?’
‘So I was.’ Humphrey, offering this reply with perfect seriousness, crossed to the window. ‘They are going. I think they’re making for the shore. They’re doubled up behind a dyke. Now they’ve vanished.’
‘Capital.’ Miss Liberty paused to consider. ‘One revolver, Humphrey’s shot-gun – and, no doubt, other sporting weapons if we have time to hunt them up. A large and rambling house to defend against at least half a dozen armed men. A hamlet not far off, but with a population chiefly disposed to keep out of trouble. Rescue on its way, but uncomfortably far off still. Those seem to be the terms of the problem.’
‘Just so.’ Mr Thewless too had moved to the window, and was scanning a prospect that already seemed wholly familiar. ‘It might be called a problem that requires a little imagination in the solving. And that, of course, ought to be Humphrey’s province. But do you know’ – and Mr Thewless looked at his companions in mild surprise – ‘do you know that, although my own mind is so desperately prosaic, I positively believe myself to have got there before him?’
27
Ireland, a brilliant disc of many greens, circled, tilted, side-slipped beneath Cadover’s eyes. The pilot had slightly altered course and was now pointing straight ahead. There, beyond the shoulder of a mountain and an arm of ocean, a tiny speck of white showed dazzling in the sun. It was the lighthouse. Cadover took a deep breath and a little relaxed the pressure of his toes on the metal bar beneath them. Like a lover in an overdue train, he had been absurdly employing his muscles to urge the aeroplane on. He peered downwards and, leaning forward, pointed in his turn. On a long white ribbon of road his eye had caught the dark shape of three large cars. A trail of dust behind them told of their headlong speed. That would be the Irish police.
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sp; The mountain melted on their flank and in their place, he saw cliffs, sea, a village like a scatter of white pebbles on grass, a single isolated house. These all dipped and swung away; the mountain had taken their place and was charging at him; again the mountain vanished and his ears were singing. He glimpsed the house again, close beneath him, in a violent foreshortening capped by expanses of ribbed lead. Then his horizon contracted to a rushing river of green and he bounced gently in his seat. They taxied on grass, their wing-tip almost brushing a hedge. On the other side a flow of darker green slowed and took form. Fleetingly Cadover’s mind essayed comparisons with the back garden in Pinner. They knew about potatoes; there could be no doubt about that. He clambered out. His pilot came behind him, tugging off gloves, pulling out a revolver. They had polished off queer jobs between them before now. But this time their wireless had told them of astonishing things. They ran. A blackthorn hedge was before them and they burst through it. The lane led straight to the village. Everything was very still. Far away they could hear the cry of gulls and a wash of waves. The sunshine was warm on the fields, hard and brilliant on the white cottages ahead.
The peacefulness of it sharply taxed belief as to what could lie in front. As to what did lie in front – for suddenly the air was torn by a rapid fusillade. Cadover gave a gasp of relief as he ran. They were holding out.
The village stretched out two lines of straggling cottages and received them. But it might have been a village of the dead. Its doors were closed; many of its windows were shuttered; it was as if the Troubles had come again and pacific folk kept indoors when the gunmen were abroad. And the nearer fields were deserted. Only on the farther hillsides, a mile or more away, scattered figures in their bright homespuns were going about their rural tasks. This gave, as it were, the scale of the affair. And it was a scale formidable enough. And now – as if to enforce this – Cadover’s companion grabbed him by the arm and drew him sharply into the hedge.
They had been told of astonishing things; they saw them now. At a turn of the lane before them two large grey cars were parked, and on guard beside them was a man armed with a revolver. But it was to something else that Cadover’s pilot pointed. Close beside them, on rising ground, was a tall white barn. Straddled on its thatched gable a hazardously perched figure slowly swept the countryside through field-glasses. Below him, two more men crouched on stationary motor-cycles, like competitors at the start of a road-race.
Cadover felt himself tugged through a hedge, and heard his companion’s voice in his ear. ‘Can they have missed us coming down?’
‘I doubt it. They saw the size of our plane, and feel they can still stick it out a bit.’
‘And when the Irish chaps come?’
‘It will be a score of men with tommy-guns and a wireless transmitter. They’ll know they’re done for then, all right. Listen! They’re still fighting back from the house.’
Another fusillade had reached them. Stooping low, they pressed forward. The firing grew more rapid. But behind it now was another sound – explosive too, but accompanied by a low, deep roar, a dry crackling…
‘It’s on fire!’
They had pressed on regardless and scrambled through another hedge, so that Killyboffin Hall was full in front of them. From now one and now another upper window came an intermittent flash from some species of small arms; this was drawing an answering fire from various points about the grounds; and inside the house, too, there appeared to be shooting. But more startling was the fact that a large part of the structure was indeed blazing – whether as the consequence of accident or design it was impossible to say. One wing, indeed, was almost consumed, and showed as a mere glowing shell against which was oddly silhouetted a line of broken statuary which lined a terrace in front. The effect of outrage and mutilation was sufficiently bizarre to hold Cadover for a moment at a pause. And upon this new sounds broke: the roar of an aeroplane engine overhead, and an answering roar, scarcely less loud, of powerful motor-cars rapidly approaching the village behind.
‘That’s them! The police and the Dublin men too!’ And Cadover leapt forward with an impetuosity quite beyond his years. His companion followed. Bullets sang about their heads; from somewhere a whistle blew shrilly; they ran up a flight of shallow stone steps and dashed into the house through a broken window. The place was full of smoke through which they could see several forms in rapid retreat. It was clear that all effective siege was already over. From somewhere quite close at hand came the crash of a falling beam. Cadover, his eyes smarting, blundered out into a long corridor. ‘A staircase!’ he shouted. ‘If we can’t get them down in five minutes it will be all up with them.’
They pushed along the corridor and found the smoke clearing; they passed through a baize door and found themselves in a part of the house not immediately threatened by fire. Presently they came to a narrow service staircase and climbed. They paused on a small landing, their eyes drawn to a window in which every pane had been shattered. Glass and splintered wood lay everywhere, and a white-painted chest of drawers, apparently tumbled down from some further floor above, lay sprawled before them, its drawers fantastically spilling a profusion of housemaids’ aprons and caps. Cadover glanced out, and glimpsed a number of men disappearing round a group of outbuildings, shooting as they went; glimpsed too, advancing across the park, a grim sickle of green-coated figures – police or soldiers – with formidable automatic rifles in their hands. Eire, he reflected, had done the situation proud… And then he heard once more the crackle of flames and the roar of a ceiling coming down. Humphrey Paxton’s kidnappers were a menace no more. The remnant of that astonishing organization was in flight. But another enemy, quite as lethal, was advancing fast.
He turned to mount higher – and suddenly paused, aware that he himself was in new danger. For the top of this further staircase was roughly barricaded with wardrobes, cupboards, upholstered chairs; and the place reeked of powder. Here the real battle had been fought out. And it seemed only too likely that the defenders would still shoot at sight. ‘Hold your fire!’ he shouted. ‘We are the police.’
There was no reply. He heard instead only the crackle of the advancing fire, and the diminishing tumult outside, and his own voice strangely echoing in distant corridors.
‘Answer!’ he shouted. ‘Answer – whatever you think. The place is on fire. You must get out.’
Again there was only silence – silence that bred a sudden and horrible suspicion. He thrust his revolver away and ran up the remaining stairs, his companion behind him. Together they heaved at the barricade, tore at it, broke the banisters, heaved cupboard and wardrobe pell-mell down the stairs behind them. Cadover, straining to dislodge a chair, slipped and put down a hand to save himself. He looked at it and found it smeared with blood. Blood was trickling over the topmost tread and forming a little pool below.
But now they were through. Beyond a narrow landing two doors were open upon two small rooms. Their several windows showed beyond – and of these also every pane was shattered. A shot-gun lay on the floor of each. It was not to this, however, that Cadover’s eye first went. Supine beside the barricade lay an elderly man, a revolver in his outflung right hand, his face blackened by smoke, blood welling in an ominous pulse from a long gash on his wrist, Cadover dropped on this like a plummet. ‘Look after the others,’ he called. ‘I’ll fix this.’
He busied himself with his task of first aid, for it was more urgent even than getting the wounded man out of the burning building. Intent on it, he heard sounds of rapid search around him. Then his companion’s voice came for the first time since they had entered the house. ‘The others?’ it said. ‘There aren’t any others here.’
Mr Thewless opened his eyes, aware of the fresh air, of a cool breeze from the sea on his temples, of brandy sharp on his lips. He saw, first swimmingly and then coming into clearer focus, the face of a man of his own age, sombre in cast, crowned by close-cropped white hair. With considerable effort, Mr Thewless spoke. ‘You look’,
he said, ‘like an honest man.’
‘And you have behaved like one.’
Mr Thewless made nothing of this. He felt very dizzy, very weak. ‘The house,’ he asked, ‘is it burning?’
‘It is burning to ashes. Nothing can save it.’ The white-haired man paused to speak briefly to somebody behind him, and Mr Thewless was uncertainly aware of a background still of revolver shots, of shouted orders, of running men. ‘But what about the others?’ The white-haired man had turned to him again and his voice was urgent. ‘What about Humphrey Paxton? What about Sir Charles Liberty’s sister? Did they get the boy, after all?’
‘I was extremely obtuse.’ Words still came painfully to Mr Thewless, but he felt that this was an important point to make. ‘I was a sadly inadequate person for coping with such a situation…although I did, to be sure, have this odd flash of imagination at the end. But even that was – well, literary and derivative. Poe…a very well-known story by Poe.’ He paused, reading in the expression of the face before him that this was judged to be mere delirium. ‘I think it is called The Purloined Letter – What’s that?’
‘That?’ The white-haired man paused while the rattle of firing died away. ‘There were a lot of them, you know – quite an amazing gang. And they’re still rounding them up.’
‘All of them?’
‘Only the small fry so far. Apparently the leader–’
‘The bearded man?’
‘Yes, the bearded man. He turns out to be somebody pretty big. And he’s got down to the shore – somewhere under the cliffs – so that they haven’t got him yet. But I want you to tell me–’
‘He has a motor-cruiser!’ Mr Thewless struggled into a sitting posture. ‘In a cave down there. If he is allowed to reach that he will get away.’
‘The devil he has!’ And once more the white-haired man turned and talked rapidly to someone behind him. ‘We may get him, all the same. And I think we’ll get the others.’
The Journeying Boy Page 35