There May Be Danger

by Ianthe Jerrold

  “Oh, there’ve been a lot of people who’ve thought they’d seen him in all sorts of places, but when the police come to investigate, it always seems to come to nothing.”

  Now that all her cats were out of the room, Miss Brentwood seemed a little more able to concentrate on the comparatively unimportant matter of her nephew’s disappearance. She was a very thin, stooping little lady with an aquiline profile that had been pretty and now was rather too bird-like, and a quantity of untidy, fluffy grey hair.

  “Of course,” she pursued, “one mustn’t give up hope. But I’m dreading the day when his poor father gets home to England—his only child, you know, that makes it so much worse, doesn’t it? And of course, for my own sake—well, you can’t help getting fond of a child when you’ve looked after him for over a year, can you? Not that Sidney wasn’t a dear little boy, he was, but of course like all boys he was a handful and I must admit I was glad of the rest when he was evacuated! Children keep you on the go so! And of course with the cats, I really had my hands full already when his father left him here. Still I was very glad to do what I could for him. It’s his father that’s my nephew really—in the Merchant Navy, he is. Little Sidney’s my great-nephew. His mother died when he was a baby.”

  Poor little Sidney! thought Kate: no mother, a father on the high seas, and only a great-aunt who prefers cats to care whether you live or die!

  “Are you a friend of his father’s?” asked Miss Brentwood curiously.

  “No,” replied Kate. “I didn’t know anything about it until this morning. But I’ve got nothing to do just at present...” She paused, but only for a second, to listen to the voice of reason telling her not to be a fool, then took the plunge. “I thought I’d go and look for him.”

  “Oh, my dear!” stammered his great-aunt. “But—! The police are looking for him, you know—and it’s three weeks since he disappeared!” She looked sidelong at Kate, as if doubtful of her sanity. “Of course, I should be very, very grateful, but I’m afraid-—well, how would you set about it? I mean, I’m beginning to think—”

  “That he’s dead?” asked Kate baldly.

  Miss Brentwood looked pained.

  “Well, three weeks without sight or sound of him! And that wild, mountainous country! What I can’t help thinking is, that he must have gone off by himself into the hills—some boy’s adventure, you know—and broken his leg or something, and—oh, poor little Sidney! Too awful to think of!”

  “But surely the hills have been searched?”

  “Oh yes, of course, but still people do get lost in such places—very wild, I believe, though I’ve never been there. I should have liked to go and see Sidney in his billet, but I find it so difficult to get away! My cats tie me so, you see! Is that Bobbie outside the window?”

  But luckily for the continuity of their conversation the cat who was busily scratching a hole in her front garden was not Bobbie, but a low stranger. She made a few indignant shooing sounds at him, and returned to her chair.

  “Sidney’s billet was in a village in the hills. From their letters, they seemed nice people. The village postman, the man was, and his wife keeps a little shop.”

  “What happened exactly?” inquired Kate.

  “Well, my dear,” said Miss Brentwood unhappily, “it seems the child got up in the middle of the night, dressed, went off on his bicycle, without saying a word to anybody, and simply never came back! Disappeared! For no reason at all—I mean, there hadn’t been any trouble, either at school or at his billet. And since that day—October the 1st, it was, a Tuesday—nobody’s seen a trace of him. His bicycle’s not been found, either. What can one think, except that he must have gone off and got lost in those wild, treacherous mountains?” said Miss Brentwood helplessly. “Any other kind of accident, you see—well, he’d have been found, wouldn’t he, by now? Even if he was drowned, poor little Sidney, surely his bicycle would have been found by now! But with those miles and miles of wild, uninhabited country,” said Miss Brentwood, who seemed, Kate thought, to regard Radnorshire as first cousin to the Arizona desert, “almost at his door, all rocks and forests and—”

  “Could I have the name and address of the people he was living with?” asked Kate, taking an envelope and pencil from her handbag.

  “Certainly, but do you really intend then—? It’s very, very good of you, Miss Mayhew, but—”

  Miss Brentwood gazed doubtfully at Kate with her faded blue eyes.

  “I want to go to Radnorshire, anyhow. I’ve got a friend there,” said Kate briskly, since it seemed necessary to rationalise her impulse for the benefit of the old lady.

  Miss Brentwood brightened immediately at what she took for a sign of normality, and it did not seem to occur to her that Radnorshire was rather a large place. Searching behind a hideous black marble clock on the mantelpiece, she sorted out a collection of old letters and handed the address to Kate.

  Mrs. Cornelius Howells

  Sunnybank

  Hastry

  nr. Llanfyn, Radnorshire.

  Kate copied it carefully.

  “I shall be glad to hear from you, Miss Mayhew,” said old Miss Brentwood, “even if you don’t find anything out at once. I’m naturally very anxious. Of course, nobody can hold me responsible, but still, Sidney was in my care, in a way, and— oh dear! If only he’d gone to High Wycombe, where some of the other children went! Radnorshire is so far away, actually in Wales, isn’t it? Acres of mountain country, I believe, worse than Cumberland, and we know what a lot of poor people lose their lives on those hills!”

  Putting the address away, Kate asked:

  “Is there anything you can tell me about Sidney that might help? I mean, the kind of boy he is?”

  It was evident from Sidney’s great-aunt’s puzzled and vague expression that this question would get no useful answer. She looked as if she had never really noticed what kind of boy Sidney was.

  “Well, I don’t know, my dear. He was a nice, good- tempered boy, rather disobedient sometimes. I don’t think he was specially clever at school, just average, you know. He was better at doing things with his hands than book-work,” said Miss Brentwood rather helplessly.

  Kate thought it would be useless with this unobservant aunt to pursue the subject further, and got up to go, narrowly avoiding treading in a saucer containing a little stale and dusty milk.

  “I’ll write to you, Miss Brentwood.”

  “Do, do! I am sorry I can’t come with you!” said the old lady regretfully. “But of course it’s impossible! My cats tie me so!”

  Kate did not share her regrets. At the area door Pixie, who seemed to be a cat of one idea, was sitting with his nose against the crack waiting the opportunity to bolt from his loving owner into the wide world. To his furious indignation, Miss Brentwood picked him up before she opened the door for Kate.

  “If you see Bobbie, do tell him to come home!” said Miss Brentwood. “I don’t like the cats to be out in front, with all this traffic about, and now I hear there’s cat-flu. Good-bye!”

  They clasped hands, awkwardly, for the irate Pixie was lolloping, a dead weight, under his mistress’s right arm.

  “You know,” said Miss Brentwood, “if I don’t seem to express my gratitude to you very well, it’s partly because I am so very much surprised!”

  Her old blue eyes once again studied Kate’s face half-doubtfully, half-admiringly, as if for the signs of insanity that did not appear on the surface. “Take care of yourself, Miss Mayhew! Don’t you go doing anything rash and risking your life!”

  “Not I!” said Kate, smiling at what seemed to her, then, a very absurd idea.

  At the corner of the road she saw Bobbie sitting on the pavement watching the traffic, his pink tongue hanging out to catch any microbes of cat-flu that might be flying around in the dust.

  “Go home, Bobbie,” said Kate reprovingly.

  He leered at her.

  Chapter Three

  The rest of Kate’s day was occupied with prep
arations for departure, which included the purchase of a canvas knapsack and a pair of rubber wellingtons, for Miss Brentwood had conveyed to her a picture of unlimited wild forest, and herself tramping through it, though common-sense told her that a boy could not be lost in such country for three weeks, and still survive, and that it was at least equally possible that Sidney had never gone near the hills at all, but had headed back for London. At the same time, though of course she could not answer for Sidney, Kate felt that she herself would have had to be wretched indeed in her country billet before she would have headed back towards Bobbie, Pixie and Ki-Ki!

  “Going hiking, dear?” inquired her landlady, bringing her a nice cup of tea, and some stockings and a brassiere she had kindly washed out for her.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mander, I’m going to wild Wales.”

  “My sister-in-law’s daughter, she’s gone to Wales with ’er kiddies!” said Mrs. Mander. “You might see’er. It’s wild where she is, all right. Gives ’er the willies properly. Not many bombs in Wales, that’s one thing. There was a bomb on a farm, though, near where my sister-in-law’s daughter’s staying—killed nine sheep, it did. Bombing sheep, what next. Well, dear, I mustn’t hinder you. If you do see Edna—I’ll give you her address, in case—you tell her from me not to be a fool, and to stay where she is!”

  Purchasing, packing, letter-writing and tidying up her room, left Kate no time to reflect in cold blood upon what she was doing. But in the small hours of the night, when even the most impulsive blood runs somewhat tepid, she awoke and contemplated her project without enthusiasm, and even began to wonder whether there was insanity in her family, and her mother and father had kept it from her.

  She consoled herself by recalling other small-hour watches, before first-nights, when the most careful preparations would look like muddles, brilliant plays like hog-wash, and the rosy prospects of a run tinged all over with the grey hues of the bird. As usual, these vapours were dispelled by the sunrise.

  They returned to her in some measure, however, when she found herself on the last stage of her long journey, in a little train-coach with its seats arranged sideways, like a tube-train, puffing slowly out on the single line from Llanfyn to Hastry. The day, which had started with sunshine, was closing in with a thin, driving rain. The wooded hills on either side of the long valley looked flattened against the grey sky. Kate looked at those grey, wet hills, and thought of Sidney Brentwood, unseen for three weeks, and her folly in supposing there was anything she could do to find him almost overcame her.

  There were only two passengers in the coach beside herself, and both were sitting facing her. One was a small, round-faced woman in glasses, with a knitted wool cap on her head, who sat up in the corner nursing a shopping-basket on her knees, and looking at Kate and Kate’s haversack whenever Kate was looking elsewhere. The other was a tall, large-featured, rather good-looking young woman in the brown uniform of a children’s nurse, who sat with her elbow resting on the small suitcase on the seat beside her, looking in a rather melancholy fashion out of the window. Kate surmised that she was on her way to a new job in strange country, and that the sight of the wet, wild hills made her apprehensive for her comfort.

  “Wild country, isn’t it?” said Kate, happening to catch her pensive eye. Kate had scarcely spoken a word all day, except to an elderly evacuee who had not been able to decide whether her destination was Malvern Link or Great Malvern until it was too late to get out at either of them, and she had had to descend at Malvern Wells.

  “I’ll say it is,” replied the children’s nurse feelingly. “I’ve never been in this part before.”

  “Nor have I,” said Kate. They both glanced at the little woman in the corner, who had the look of a native. But she was looking straight in front of her, with an untouchable, wooden expression on her prim round face.

  “Going to a new job?” inquired Kate.

  “Yes. Place called the Vault. At least, I suppose that’s how you pronounce it. It’s spelt V-e-a-u-l-t.”

  Again they glanced at the little woman in the corner, but she did not enlighten them.

  “Yes, isn’t it? It’s a nursery-school for evacuated babies, or going to be. I don’t like nursery-school work much, it’s all running about and no thanks for it, but private work’s all over the place nowadays. And I suppose one ought to pull one’s weight when there’s a war on. And at any rate,” added the young nurse frankly, “I shall be away from the bombs. I’m not keen on bombs, are you?”

  Kate was about to agree that bombs did not attract her, when the little woman in the corner suddenly spoke in one of the clearest, sharpest, most incisive voices Kate had ever heard, on the stage or off it.

  “Indeed, and you have come to the wrong shop, then! There was a bomb over in a field to Aberwent last Tuesday fortnight.”

  The young nurse, with some facial skill, expressed polite interest to the speaker and extreme amusement to Kate.

  “And Aberwent is not so far from the Veault, not more than eight miles, whatever!” pursued the woman with the market basket. She pronounced it Vote.

  “Oh dear, my blood fairly curdles, doesn’t yours?” said the nurse to Kate, gathering her belongings together as the train began to slow down. “Well, I’m glad it isn’t a vault I’m going to, anyway. Good Lord, it’s raining horribly! If they haven’t sent a car to meet me, I shall go straight back to London by the next train!”

  Kate struggled into her oilskin coat and picked up the one large knapsack in which she had packed all her luggage, and the three of them descended and straggled out into the yard, where stood a shabby old horse and trap, and a very expensive-looking little black car with a pretty girl in the driver’s seat. A man carrying a quantity of dead rabbits slung on sticks was standing and conversing with the elderly driver of the trap.

  The pretty girl swung open the door of the car, the children’s nurse got in, and they drove off. Kate felt envious. A chilly wind was blowing the rain aslant, it would soon be dark, and she did not know where she was going to sleep the night. The road curved away up-hill to the left, past the gaunt shoulder of a hill, and to the right ran along the valley beside the railway line. There was no village in sight.

  “Can you tell me which is the way to Hastry village?” asked Kate of the little round-faced woman who was settling her basket on the seat of the trap preparatory to climbing in herself.

  “Hastry village?” echoed the man with the rabbits, before the woman had time to answer the question. “It would depend what part of Hastry village you wass wanting!”

  Kate, who had not been so far west as the border before, had never heard such a melodious fall and rise of tone except on the stage, in the plays of Emlyn Williams. The man’s bright brown eyes were fixed in a sort of foxy curiosity on her face, as also were the eyes of the middle-aged woman, and those of the elderly driver, who sat, collar turned up and cap well pulled down, with rain dripping off the reddened nose between his straggling grey brows and straggling grey moustache.

  “It would depend, now, who you wass wanting in Hastry village,” said the man with the rabbits zestfully.

  “Mrs. Howells.”

  “Howells the farm, or Howells the post, would that be, I wonder?”

  “Mrs. Cornelius Howells, Sunnybank—”

  “Ah, that iss Howells the post! Well, now, Mr. Davis he iss going up by Sunnybank. He would let you ride in his tub, I shouldn’t wonder!”

  “Oh, ah!” said the driver of the vehicle affirmatively.

  “Please to get in,” said the little woman, as the tub, which was a sort of governess-cart, moved forward slightly, and the horse shifted his hooves under her own advent. “Well, goodnight, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Good-night, Mrs. Davis. Good-night, Mr. Davis. I shall be getting the rabbits from you on Monday?”

  “Oh, ah!” agreed the man in the tub. “I will be bringing them down myself, early. There will be some good ones I shouldn’t wonder.”

  His leathery cheek curved in a grin,
and a peculiar look of humorous, secret understanding crossed Mr. Morgan’s foxy face. It still lingered as he turned to Kate, who wondered passingly what there was about rabbits to cause this sub-humorous understanding.

  “Good-night, young lady! Mrs. Howells will be expecting you, I expect?”

  The grating of wheels, clattering of hooves and squeaking of springs made a reply impossible, so Mr. Morgan had to go for the present with his curiosity unsatisfied.

  “I’m afraid she isn’t,” said Kate to the little woman, drawing her oilskin over her vulnerable knees. “I only decided to come yesterday. Is there anywhere in Hastry where I’ll be able to get a room? An inn?”

  “Mrs. Howells the post has a room empty, now the boy she had there is gone,” replied Mrs. Davis, studying Kate with sharp grey eyes behind her round steel-rimmed spectacles. “Perhaps you are a relation of the boy—Sidney Brentwood his name was?”

  “Not a relation. Just a—friend.”

  “Oh, indeed!” cried Mrs. Davis, her voice sharper than ever, and even the taciturn Mr. Davis turned his head about one degree towards Kate as if to lend an ear to what was going on. The trap was climbing the long uphill road, and over the brow of the hill Kate could see farther hills standing high against the sky.

  These were certainly not the rocky and hazardous mountains of Miss Brentwood’s urban imaginings: but seen in this evening light, their tops in cloud, the grey rain driving round their feet, they looked formidable enough, unfriendly enough, secretive enough, to daunt even Kate.

  “There has been a lot of search-parties on the hills,” said Mrs. Davis, noticing Kate’s glance. “There was people from the villages making parties and helping the police, but nothing was found.

  Mr. Davis, with an eye upon the hills, said something which the unfamiliar intonation of his quick speech made unintelligible to Kate. His wife turned to Kate and said half-apologetically:

  “He is saying that the bracken-cutting has started, and perhaps something will be found now. The bracken is very high at this time of year.”