There May Be Danger

by Ianthe Jerrold

  Colin also felt that he might improve the occasion.

  “There’s no more treasure to be found in the tump, anyway,” he said firmly. “Just old bones.”

  “I am sure I do not know about that,” said Gwyn Lupton with the greatest indifference. “I has never thought about it. But I knows, of course, that whatever treasure is there, belongs first to the king that is buried there, and after him to the king that is not buried, which is His Majesty King George.”

  “His Majesty King George wouldn’t thank you for an old clay pot, which is probably all you’d find, apart from the bones inside it.” Colin added quickly, as it was obvious that Gwyn Lupton was about to launch another and stronger repudiation of any further designs on the tumulus: “May I come and see the putty mould this evening?”

  “You will be welcome, young gentleman, at any time you chooses to come. And I will show you at the same time some other curiosities which will interest you—an old book of the Bible, with pictures in it, that my wife had left her in a will, and a thorn tree root that is almost, but not quite, in the shape of a weazel,” said Mr. Lupton graciously, and, somewhat to Kate’s surprise, allowed Mr. Davis to gee-up his horse, and strode off beside him across the field towards the brackeny upper slope.

  “You seem to have a slightly damping effect on Gwyn Lupton, Colin.”

  “He’s wondering how much I know about his excavations on Pentrewer Tump.”

  “Has he been digging there again, do you think?”

  “No. He’s waiting till I’ve departed, I expect. It’s a great pity that Saxon coin couldn’t have been found somewhere else! Nothing I can say will ever convince these people now that Pentrewer Dump isn’t just full of silver pennies waiting to be dug up and exchanged for five-pound-notes! Well, I’ve reminded Mr. Davis he’s laying himself open to heavy penalties if he allows digging to go on, so perhaps he’ll do something to curb Mr. Gwyn Lupton’s enthusiasm.”

  “Perhaps he daren’t. Perhaps he’s got a skeleton in his own cupboard. Mrs. Howells says Gwyn Lupton is intimately acquainted with all the skeletons in the local cupboards, being a house-carpenter, you see, and having had a good deal to do with those same cupboards at one time and another in a professional way.”

  Colin smiled.

  “Yes, really, Colin. It never occurred to me before what a grand opportunity a carpenter has for knowing all about skeletons. But one day Miss Gilliam from the Cefn was making herself disagreeable in the shop. And Gwyn was there, and he fixed her with his beady black eye and made some vague remarks about an occasion when he had earned somebody’s gratitude by not saying something he might have said. And Miss Gilliam crumpled up in the most dramatic manner and trickled out of the shop as if he’d put a spell on her. And when I was up at the Cefn a few days later, I guessed why. She’s the uncrowned queen of food-hoarders, and Gwyn Lupton, you see, having worked at the Cefn recently, knows it.”

  Colin laughed.

  “Well, not being the owner of a skeleton in these parts, I stand in no awe of Gwyn Lupton. And I shall take the opportunity, when I go to see his mould to-night, of impressing him with the risks he’s running in trying to acquire a skeleton of his own. If only I could make him believe that a skeleton is, literally, all he’ll find!”

  Some gruesome application of these last words to her own case took place in Kate’s mind against her will. Stifling a sigh, she said buoyantly:

  “Well, let him! Compared with other things, it doesn’t matter much!”

  Colin, unaware of the shiver Kate was stifling with these unusually philistine sentiments, remonstrated:

  “It does matter, Kate, a good deal, if valuable antiquities are allowed to be destroyed by avaricious ignoramuses!”

  “Compared with life and death, it doesn’t matter!”

  “Perhaps not. But nobody’s life’s in danger, is it?”

  “Yes! Sidney Brentwood’s is! And here we stand talking about bones that have been buried about three thousand years as if they mattered! Colin, that man I saw at Hymns Bank wasn’t Dai Lewis!”

  “So I gather.”

  “Why did he pretend he was?”

  “He didn’t want you to know who he really was, I suppose. And he wanted you to go away without suspecting anything seriously wrong.”

  “He didn’t want me to see him. Was that because I should have recognised him if I had?”

  “Either that, or he was afraid you might see him later and recognise him.”

  “And he didn’t want me to see into that upstairs room. What had he got there? Not ferrets!”

  “Probably something more incriminating than ferrets.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, say, an apparatus for signalling to the enemy. You saw a light flickering from the house, didn’t you? Perhaps a secret radio transmitter too.”

  “Ronnie said he heard a clicking noise coming from the house,” said Kate thoughtfully.

  “Well, there you are. I doubt if whatever’s going on there has anything to do with your Sidney, Kate.”

  “But the green tinfoil! He had been there!”

  “Perhaps. But keeping a small boy prisoner—if Sidney is being kept a prisoner—certainly isn’t the raison d’être of what’s going on at Hymns Bank.”

  “Well, I’m here to look for Sidney, and I must follow up every possibility.”

  “Kate,” said Colin earnestly, “if you want to find Sidney, the first essential is, not to lose yourself. Don’t take absurd risks. Every soldier, everybody’s who’s got a serious job on hand, knows better than that. Don’t go to Hymns Bank again alone. Let me go with you. Or let me go instead of you. But don’t go alone. Promise.”

  Kate hesitated, for form’s sake, and promised. She had, as a matter of fact, no desire to go alone again to Hymns Bank, which, terrifying enough at the churchyard hour last night, loomed now, since her talk with Mr. Davis, full of more tangible terrors than ghosts and voices on the wind.

  “I wonder who the place belongs to.”

  “As it happens, I can tell you. Mrs. Davis told me, when we were having a chat about the de-population of the countryside yesterday. An old aunt of Mr. Davis lived there till about seven years ago, when she died, and left the place to a cousin of Davis in Australia. The cousin’s never shown any interest in his property, and as this country was getting more and more de-populated and tumbledown cottages on the wilds were practically a drug in the market, nobody’s ever wanted to buy it off him. Legally, it still belongs to the absentee.”

  “I see,” said Kate, dismissing rather regretfully her notion that it might be the property of Gideon Atkins.

  “But I don’t think it matters who it belongs to,” said Colin. “Anybody can get into a tumbledown cottage and use it for whatever purpose they please. The doors and windows won’t be burglar-proof, if it’s been tumbling down for seven years.”

  “Only seven years! It looks as if it had been tumbling down for centuries. It’s a very, very old cottage,” said Kate, who was no more averse than most people from trotting out a newly- acquired piece of knowledge. “Mediaeval, in fact.”

  Colin glanced at her with a smile.

  “Kate taking up architecture? How do you know?”

  “By the wall-timbering,” said Kate with dignity. “Very heavy timbers, and set close together. Rosaleen told me. I’m going up to Llanhalo this afternoon to ask Aminta how Ronnie’s settling down.”

  She did not add, that she was expecting a report from Ronnie on the condition of the iron grating in Llanhalo cellar, for she did not want to be damped further by Colin’s talk of danger.

  “Don’t tell anybody about Hymns Bank and what happened there last night, will you, Kate?”

  There he went again! Colin nowadays seem obsessed with the necessity for caution.

  “Not if you think I’d better not. I probably shouldn’t anyway.”

  “Not even Aminta. Not anybody.”

  “All right,” said Kate, puzzled, but willing to oblige.
<
br />   “And don’t tell the police either—just yet.”

  “Why not just yet?”

  “Well, because country police are a bit heavy-handed sometimes, and might put their foot in it.”

  Kate reflected that, after four weeks, the police had not succeeded in tracing Sidney, and agreed.

  “Don’t tell them, or anyone, without consulting me. Trust me, Kate.”

  “I do, of course. How could one help trusting anybody so cautious as you are these days?” inquired Kate, not quite without friendly malice. “You remind me of the old family lawyer who comes on in a white wig in the middle of the first act to advise the heroine not to go on with the plot of the play.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Aminta was over at the Veault, carting litter. Miss Atkins, who appeared at the scullery door with drifts of steam about her and a wash-day spongy pinkness of face and forearms, remarked in her odd, grating little voice which always sounded as if she grudged words, that Miss Hughes would be back at milking-time, and Miss Mayhew might come in and wait, if she wished.

  But Miss Mayhew judged that even the most hospitable of housewives does not really want visitors on washing-day, and preferred to walk on to the Veault across the field-track she had taken with Aminta. Before she went she inquired, however, after Ronnie Turner. Miss Atkins’ small inexpressive eyes, which the daylight showed to be of a child-like sapphire blue colour, blinked shyly. She smiled her rather difficult but sincere smile.

  “Eh, he’s a good boy. He’s na trouble.”

  “What does Mr. Atkins think about it?”

  “The maester’s reckoned out on paeper as I can feed the lad and keep him nicely on tha’billeting-money. So he doan’t object.”

  “Ronnie eats a good deal, I expect.”

  “He doan’t sleep so well as he eats, I reckon. He got up this morning wi’ rings under his eyes. The raid kept him awaeke, maybe. I didn’t hear nothing of it, and the master’s a sound sleeper, too. But Miss Hughes and Ronnie was full o’ it this morning.” With a faint smile she added: “I like to hear them chattering at breakfast-time,” before going to attend to her noisily-bubbling copper, from which great clouds of steam were now rising and hanging under the ceiling, obscuring the rafters.

  Kate, walking across the field, reflected that it was fortunate that Mr. Atkins and his sister were sound sleepers. If the bombers, to say nothing of the bombs, last night had not awakened them, it was unlikely that any nocturnal experiments of her own with the cellar-grating would do so.

  Kate was struck anew by the drowsy charm of the Veault as she approached it down the sloping field. Lucky little Londoners, about to be evacuated to such a spot, where nature and art had provided such beauty, and money was providing such comforts!

  In the sun-trap of the sheltered courtyard outside the back door, Rosaleen was sitting on the old mounting-block, swinging her trousered legs, with her satellite Major Humphries, whose small green car stood out in the farmyard, dose at hand. Nurse Maud was spreading newly-washed teacloths over the stone wall in the sunshine.

  “There, they’ll soon be dry!” said she, approaching and adding her amiable if off-hand nod to Rosaleen’s attentive and charming greetings.

  Rosaleen cocked an eyebrow at the display.

  “They’ll soon be dry, honey, but will they be so very, very clean?”

  “I’ve rubbed and I’ve scrubbed, and they won’t come cleaner than that.”

  “Gee, let us hope then that a domestic or two’ll turn up here before those forty infants!”

  Kate, realising that she had not on her previous visit seen any sign of a servant in the house, remarked:

  “You’ll need them, won’t you?”

  “I should just say we will! At present our domestic staff is limited to a gardener living out in a cottage, and his wife, who comes in daily and obliges us. I don’t know if the gardener will survive the impact of forty infants, but I am sure his wife won’t unless we can provide her with some underlings. Uncle tells us he has fixed up with a butler to come from London to-morrow, and his presence may help to save the situation—if he truly comes, but Auntie and I are not pinning our rosiest hopes on his arrival. Also, we do not feel so confident as Uncle does that butlers make good mothers. That reminds me, Maud. Did you remind Auntie about ordering those mackintosh sheets?”

  “You bet I did!”

  “It would be just too harassing if the first consignment of infants arrived before the first consignment of mackintosh sheets. Did Aminta tell you, Miss Mayhew, we’ve heard the first batch of five kiddies is coming at the end of next week? Auntie is very, very excited. She’s indoors writing orders for food and soap, and ultimatums to all the servants’ registry offices in England. You’d think there’d be plenty of domestics just too anxious to get away from London and the bombs, wouldn’t you? But no, it seems finding domestics for country places is the same old forlorn hope as ever.”

  Major Humphries cleared his throat and muttered something about “taking it.” Rosaleen nodded sympathetically, but Kate thought a faint flicker of amusement went across her fair charming face as she scored up the cliché.

  “And after all,” went on Major Humphries, rather pompously, “there’s no such thing as safety anywhere. Two bombs last night fell within five miles of here.”

  “Lord, what we country-dwellers go through!” said Nurse Maud, who seemed unable to handle Major Humphries gently.

  “Now, Maudie, a bomb’s a bomb whether it drops on you in the country or in the town!” said Rosaleen placably. But neither the Major nor Maud seemed anxious to be placated.

  “In London there’s more risk from raids, certainly!” said Major Humphries stiffly. “But there are other dangers in the country, you know! Invasion—”

  A look of exaggerated incredulity came over Nurse Maud’s large handsome features.

  “Invasion! What, here?”

  “It’s on the cards, I assure you, Nurse.”

  “Where’d the Jerries come from? Up the river Wye in canoes?”

  “Troop-carrying planes and parachutes! We don’t know what that feller has up his sleeve. Got to be prepared.”

  “And what’d they come here for? To study botany?”

  “Plenty of good landing-places on these hills. You don’t think a troop-carrying plane’d try to land the troops in Piccadilly Circus, do ye, Nurse?”

  “Och. Major, all these Home Guard exercises have gone to your head!” said Maud, rudely.

  Major Humphries’ already rather boiled-looking eyes became still more suffused, and Rosaleen interposed, rather hurriedly:

  “You mustn’t mind Maud, Major Humphries! She’s a cynic about just everything! I’m sure I sleep all the sounder in my bed for knowing the Home Guard’s at its post, if she doesn’t! Kate, that nice Mr. Kemp was here yesterday afternoon, and wasn’t Uncle just pleased to see him! The way they enthused together about a place called Avebury, you’d have thought it was their old school they were talking about, until you found out it was just a place they’d both been to, where there are some stones.”

  Major Humphries, evidently still somewhat sore from Nurse Maud’s handling, remarked gruffly that this feller Kemp seemed to be quite a young feller, and therefore he supposed, damned queer as it seemed, that archaeology was a reserved occupation.

  Rosaleen laughed.

  “Well, if you’d heard Uncle Doug and Mr. Kemp yesterday, and seen them mingling their sighs and smiles, Major, you’d never have thought that archaeology was a reserved occupation! This Mr. Kemp is making a survey of the ruins at your great friend Mr. Atkins’ place, isn’t he, Miss Mayhew?”

  “He is,” said Kate, amused at the half-unwilling thaw that took place in Major Humphries’s umbraged expression when he met Rosaleen Morrison’s long-lashed, serious glance. He blinked once or twice, as if the light were too much for him, and the lines around his eyes softened. He muttered, however, that it struck him as dashed queer that such a footling occupation as archaeology
should still be allowed to carry on.

  “Oh, but Mr. Kemp’s doing this survey for the Government, I’m told!” said Rosaleen, smiling softly at Kate, as if asking her to excuse, on Colin’s behalf, Major Everyman’s ill-manners.

  “The Government!” echoed the major, snorting. “Don’t tell me that!”

  “Yes, really, Major. The Office of Works, it is, I believe.”

  “If he told you that, he’s pulling your leg,” said Major Humphries. “There aren’t any of these Government surveys being made in wartime.”

  Rosaleen looked inquiringly at Kate, but Kate could only reply:

  “I really don’t know who Colin’s making the survey for.”

  “Dark horse, evidently,” said Major Humphries.

  “Well, Major, you certainly never set eyes on anybody more candid and confiding and less resembling a dark horse than this friend of Miss Mayhew’s!” said Rosaleen spiritedly. She was evidently a little put out at having her suave social atmosphere ruffled by these arguments.

  The appearance of Aminta, leading a farm-cart piled high with bracken through the gate and into the farmyard, created a welcome diversion. Rosaleen stood up and hailed her joyfully over the low wall of the court.

  ‘‘Major Humphries, I guess your car’s in the way.”

  “No it isn’t,” called Aminta. “I haven’t time to unload this lot now. I’ve got to get back for milking. I’ll take old Lion out and leave the load in the cart till to-morrow.”

  She began to undo the traces. Nurse Maud went out to help her, and then strolled off by herself towards the field gate. Maud still had a suppressed but dangerous sparkle in her eye from her exchanges with Major Humphries. She seemed queerly intolerant of that conventional but harmless gentleman, Kate thought, considering for how short a while she had been acquainted with him, though what were the sources of their antagonism Kate could not see.

  “I’ve got a letter for you, Kate,” said Aminta, when she had, with Kate’s admiring assistance, come-upped and whoaed her horse out of the shafts. She put her hand in her breeches-pocket and fished out a rather crumpled envelope, which she handed to Kate, and led her horse away.