White took the sharp S bend at Woodman’s Corner and was out on the arterial road. Anthony said again:
‘Push her along.’
White put down his right foot.
IX
The Horse and Hound did not see Anthony again upon that Saturday. At eight they fetched Lucia to the telephone.
‘That you, dear?’ said the telephone. ‘I shan’t be back till tomorrow. Probably evening. Dyson’s staying up with me. Look after her.’
‘I am, dear,’ Lucia said. ‘She slept until nearly six, d’you know.’ Her voice was strained. ‘It’s done her good, of course. Her voice was strained. ‘It’s done her good, of course. But only in one way. She … she … she can feel more now …’ She broke off.
‘Stick it!’ said Anthony’s voice. ‘You all right?… Good … What did the girl say about Curtain?’ His voice gave hint of eagerness repressed.
‘Sorry, dear. She’d never heard even the name.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’ The telephone’s voice was not a downcast voice. ‘Could you get Pike?’
‘He’s waiting,’ Lucia said. ‘And Mr Flood.’ And presently Pike spoke. He said:
‘We’ve been over the whole countryside, sir. So far as we can find there’s not a soul knows anything of any Curtain. The name’s not known. I saw Inspector Fox in the late afternoon. I couldn’t pump him—very discreet these country policemen—but it doesn’t look to me, sir, as if they’d had any more luck than we have.’ Pike’s voice did not commit him to either sorrow or pleasure at the work’s result.
The telephone grunted. Pike’s hearing, strained for a note, a tone, to indicate Colonel Gethryn’s feelings, was strained in vain. The telephone said:
‘Try this for me. You and Flood. Find out if the Carter-Fawcett woman’s at Weydings or gone. If she’s there, keep an eye on the place and her if she leaves it. Only for tonight, though.’
Pike’s eyes shone. ‘Right, sir. Anything else?’
‘No. In a hurry,’ said the telephone. ‘’Bye.’ The click of the receiver came to the listener’s ear. He went in search of Flood.
Lucia Gethryn went slowly up the stairs and into the room where this morning she and Anthony had watched a woman fall into her first sleep for many days.
Selma Bronson was no longer asleep. She was walking the small room. The light, firm sound of her heels was steady and rhythmic like the beat of an engine. She went from door to window … window to door … door to window … Up, down … up, down …
Lucia sat upon the window-seat. The walking went on.
CHAPTER VI
SUNDAY
IT was a grey day and hopeless. The frost had gone, and so had the sunshine. There was a high wind from the south-east, and the country was dim behind a veil of constant rain, fine like needles. The wind, driving this curtain of rain before it but never driving it away, had risen in the night, and throughout the day remained.
There were idleness and depression and misery behind the walls of The Horse and Hound.
‘It would,’ said Flood, gazing out of the Smoking Room window, ‘be a Sunday.’ He watched the rain while it hissed in a myriad tiny rivers between the cobbles which paved the yard. ‘No news; nothing to do; a hanging over the house; a vile day. It only wanted the usual, decayed feeling of a British Sabbath to put the lid on it. And it is on; and it’s damn’ well tied on.’
Pike was slightly shocked. ‘Nothing to do with Sunday,’ he growled.
Flood laughed, a sound dismal and hollow. ‘Have a drink?’ he said. ‘We’d better get tight.’
Pike grunted. ‘By yourself!’ He jerked himself out of his chair and wandered from the room.
Flood gazed after him. Flood shrugged, and walked to the bell and pressed it. While he waited for his drink he kept glancing up to the ceiling. Faintly, there came down to his ear the sound, steady and rhythmic, of light, firm steps which went, across a small space, up, down … up, down.
Lucia was again in that room whence came the sound of pacing. Once more she sat upon the window-seat. A book lay open, face downwards, upon her lap. She said once:
‘Would you rather I stayed. Or went? Do I worry you?’
Selma Bronson did not pause in her walk. She answered, but her eyes though they looked into Lucia’s eyes did not seem to see them. She said:
‘Stay. Please stay. I would rather … I should not care to … I would be glad if you stay. Please.’
Lucia, not trusting her voice, nodded to show that she would. She felt suddenly a need for action; for any movement; any doing. She rose and crossed to the hearth and knelt beside it and stirred and fed the blazing fire.
She turned from this task with a quick movement. The sound of the footsteps had ceased.
Selma Bronson was standing beside her writing-table which was in a corner near the bay window. She was as motionless as just now she had been mobile. She was staring down at a sheet of paper which lay upon the blotting-pad. Lucia, watching, saw that there was a pencil in the hand upon which the woman was resting her weight. And now the body straightened and the pencil made one stroke upon the paper.
There was a little clatter as the pencil, discarded, rolled from desk-top to floor. The paper still between her fingers, the woman began again her pacing. Lucia, kneeling yet, watched her with an ache in her heart which seemed to send pain to the whole of her body.
Up, down … window, door … door, window … up, down …
Lucia found herself to be growing half-hypnotised by her watching of this ceaseless, never-varying movement. But she could not move, and she could not speak. Merely could she go on watching, turning her head … left, right; left, right … to follow that marching figure; that tall figure whose very beauty made its agony the more dreadful.
And now, as the march brought her abreast of the kneeling Lucia, the sheet of paper fluttered from her fingers. She did not notice its falling; she went on … window, door … door, window …
The sheet lay, a white square upon the dark carpet, by Lucia’s knee.
She stretched out a hand and picked it up. Unconsciously, using it as a lever to bring back her mind from this dazed state of watching, watching, she looked down at it. There seemed to be writing upon it. Still unthinking, she raised it nearer to her eyes. And she saw that there was no writing but a series of strokes—plain, upright strokes in ink. Three lines of them there were, each line stretching across the page. And all these, save only the last two, had been cancelled with the cross-stroke of a pencil.
There swept over Lucia a sudden, appalled rush of pity. Where a man might have pondered over these hieroglyphics and not seen for many moments their significance, Lucia understood with her first glance. How often, as a schoolgirl, had she not planned a chart such as this? Every stroke a day; every cancelled stroke a day gone. But her charts had been to mark a happiness to come! And this …
Again the pacing stopped. Selma Bronson stood over this woman who stared, white-faced, at the little paper. There came from Selma Bronson’s throat a sound which was a dreadful travesty of laughter. She said:
‘You know that?… It is silly … Very silly. But I do it because it hurts.’
Once more came the sound of her feet; a sound light and firm; a ceaseless and unchanging sound …
The day wore on. And nothing happened save the wind and rain. At two o’clock came the Chief Constable, driving himself in his battered-seeming car. He looked weary and dispirited, and a heavy frown marred his fair good-looks. He asked for Anthony. Pike spoke to him; told him that Colonel Gethryn was not expected before evening. He grunted thanks and went out to his car again. Pike followed him. Pike ventured:
‘Anything turned up, sir?’
Ravenscourt climbed into his car. He shut its door with a slam. He shook his head. He said, through the open window:
‘Nothing. Not even about this Curtain.’
Pike was left alone in the rain, his trousers were spattered with mud from the big car’s wheels.
The af
ternoon dragged itself by. The weather did not mind; if anything it grew worse. With the going of daylight, the wind, as always it does, seemed to increase in violence. And still the steady, slanting curtain of rain draped the world.
At six, Ravenscourt came back. Lucia saw him. She shook her head at his question.
‘But if he doesn’t come,’ she said, ‘he’ll telephone. He’s certain to. Shall I tell him to ring you up, too?’
Ravenscourt smiled; a tired twisting of his pale face. He said:
‘If he’s got anything.’
He would not stay for a drink. Once more his car roared out of the yard.
At six-thirty the telephone-bell pealed. Flood was at it first. But it was not Anthony who called. Sir Richard Brocklebank wished to know if Colonel Gethryn …
‘Sorry,’ said Flood shortly. ‘Not in. Any message?’
There was no message.
But Anthony did ring up. At half-past seven. This time Pike answered.
‘That you, sir?’ Pike said. ‘Good.’
‘Not coming down tonight,’ said Anthony’s voice. ‘Anything doing?’ He was curt. He sounded like a tired man in a hurry.
At the transmitter Pike shook his head wearily. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Colonel Ravenscourt’s been here after you twice. Would you ring him if you’ve got anything. And Sir Richard Brocklebank telephoned, sir. No message from him … Is there … How’re you getting on, sir?’
‘Can’t tell.’ The voice was very curt. ‘It’s a slow job. Slow, slow!… How’s Mrs Bronson?’
‘Same, sir. Wonderful, that control. But it’s pretty awful too. Mrs Gethryn’s with her all the time; shall I get her?’
‘No. Give her my love. And make her have a good dinner, Pike … The Carter-Fawcett, what about her?’
‘Nothing to report, sir. She didn’t leave the house all last night.’ Pike’s voice was savagely dismal.
‘Well, well!’ said the telephone. ‘I’ll be down in the morning. If you want me, ring Buckingham 87X4 or Mall 1736.’
‘Right, sir,’ said Pike. He hung up the receiver and wrote the numbers in his notebook. He went slowly upstairs and knocked upon the door at the left.
Again the dull, looming silence filled the house. It was, somehow, not broken by the screaming whistle of the wind and the rain’s unending hiss; rather was it intensified by them.
CHAPTER VII
MONDAY
I
ANTHONY and Dyson came back at nine-forty-five upon the Monday morning. Anthony drove; Dyson like a sleepy eagle huddled beside him. At the back were White—his face in keeping with his name—and, secured ingeniously to a running-board by rope and straps, Dyson’s motor-cycle.
The morning was grey and cold. The rain had gone, for the wind was now dead in the East and a roaring, tearing gale.
In the doorway beneath the faded sign Lucia looked at her husband. There was a question aching in her eyes. He kissed her. He smiled; but it was not the smile she had longed to see and yet had known impossible. He said, though she had not spoken with her voice:
‘Might be worse. Might be a whole lot worse. But I’m not shouting, dear.’ The smile had gone. He took her by the shoulders and turned her face to the light. ‘You look nearly played out.’
Lucia shook her head. ‘I’ve been with her all night—It … she likes having me … She was silent all day yesterday … She walked … walked up and down that room. Up and down … But suddenly, last night, she stopped that. She … she got more—what shall I say?—natural. She began to talk. We talked all night.’ She wriggled free of Anthony’s hands; in her turn she inspected him. ‘And you’re tired, too. Very, very tired.’
Anthony suddenly grinned. ‘I, too, have not been idle.’ He took her by the arm and led her into the house. ‘Let’s go and have breakfast. Several breakfasts.’
After the meal he rose and stretched himself and went, with murmured excuses, to the telephone. He asked for his number and got it in a time unusually short.
‘I want,’ he said, ‘Colonel Ravenscourt …’
The blurred official voice at the other end became galvanised into something sharper and quicker. It said:
‘Colonel Gethryn, sir?… Yessir … One moment.’
The moment passed. There came Ravenscourt’s voice, sharp and short, but with weariness blurring its edges. It said:
‘Gethryn? Good man! Been waiting to hear from you … Got anything?’
Anthony lowered his voice. ‘A bit. I know a lot about Mr Curtain.’
The voice at the other end of the wire grew, on a sudden, thick with astonishment. ‘You know … What the hell are you talking about, Gethryn?’
‘What I said … Look here: I want to set a few wheels working here and then come and see you. Give me an hour. Or two hours. Will you be there just before noon?’
‘If you’ve got all this, I’d be here at Doomsday!’ The voice of the telephone was brusque and eager.
‘Right!’ said Anthony. ‘Wait.’ He rang off.
II
Anthony’s car came to a sudden and gravel-kicking stop rather hard upon its tyres.
Anthony said, to the constable before the small door at the head of the steps:
‘Chief Constable? Appointment.’
He was led, with a speed which showed his coming more than adequately prepared for, into the Chief Constable’s presence.
Ravenscourt got up behind his table. He held out a hand which Anthony gripped; he was paler than Anthony had seen him and there were black half-circles beneath the blue eyes. He waved Anthony to a chair and dropped back into his own. He said at once:
‘I want you to know, Gethryn: this business has got me down. I’m on your side now—without any reservations. I’ve been doin’ a lot of thinking. I’m with you. You might—I don’t know—have persuaded me anyhow, but now I’m persuaded without your efforts. This Dollboys business has got me …’ He rose with a swift, jerky movement and stood, leaning over his wide table, supporting himself by palms flat upon the table’s top. He said:
‘Did you say, on the ’phone just now, that you knew where Curtain was? And who?’
Anthony’s face, graven into its leanness the deep, hard lines of fatigue, was lighted then with a sudden smile; almost a grin. He said:
‘I did, sir. But what I meant was that I thought I knew; was fairly certain … That’s what I’ve come about.’
Ravenscourt dropped back into his chair. He rested his hands upon its arms and stared across the table at Anthony.
‘The sooner,’ he said, ‘that you do tell me, the better.’ Suddenly he clenched his right hand into a fist and with it beat once upon the table so that in their wells the ink-pots leapt. A dark splash marred the table’s top.
‘Sorry!’ said Ravenscourt. He smiled. The harsh lines of fatigue about his mouth were lost in the blander lines of humour. He said:
‘But do tell … I’m sick of my fellers. Not one with more than half an ounce of brain. Hours they’ve been at it! And what do they bring me? Nothing and worse than nothing! A blistered lot of bloody fools! They want three-quarters of a year—all of ’em—in a continuous barrage. That’d either kill ’em or quicken ’em.’
Anthony said:
‘Listen. You’ve got to take me for granted, Ravenscourt. This much, I mean: I’m not going to say anything yet about who Mr Luke Curtain really is. Because, though in my own mind I’m sure I know, I want to be certain and dead certain before I speak. You understand that … I want you to follow me blind just as far only as will induce you to give me some men tonight, to go where I want ’em and wait. Wait until they see … something, and hear a signal from me to grab someone … Follow me? If the something happens, and I signal, then you’ll have Mr L. Curtain. If it doesn’t, I shan’t give the word and you won’t have Mr L. Curtain. Will you trust me?’
Ravenscourt smiled. A smile which lit up his stern, perhaps ordinarily too regular face. He said:
‘Will I?… I’m only too glad to.
But I’m coming on this job myself.’ He leant forward over the table, his chest borne up upon his folded arms. ‘That be all right?’
In his turn Anthony smiled. ‘All right? It’s just what I’d like.’ He hitched his chair a little closer to the table. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, ‘have worried you about this job, except that I’ve sent all my helpers on another, auxiliary, bit of work and that I thought, if it did come off, we’d be all the better for an official arrest.’
Ravenscourt nodded. The wearied, glazed seeming that his blue eyes had worn at the beginning of the interview was now vanished. The eyes were bright and keen; interest and excitement made them almost blaze.
‘It’s night-work,’ Anthony said. ‘I know, or think I know, where Mr Luke Curtain will be at some time between eight and ten tonight. And that’s the cattle-shelter shed on Dollboys’ third field—the last one up the hill to the west of the farm. I’ve been there—this morning. And there I found something. So easily did I find it that for a moment I thought he’d meant me to find it. But I’ve ruled that out now. I think he was just hurried. And I think, too, that he’ll come back to get it. And he won’t come back in daylight … Follow me?’
Again Ravenscourt nodded.
‘Bit of paper?’ Anthony asked, and drew a pencil from his pocket. A piece of paper was pushed across the table towards him. He began, with firm and accurate lines, to draw a sketch map. Ravenscourt rose and walked round the table’s end and came to stand at the drawer’s shoulder.
‘Here,’ said Anthony, ‘is the main road. Here’s Dollboys’ farm. Here’s his first field—the large one. Here’s the second, at the foot of the slope up to that copse … And here’s the third. And here, up next to the easterly hedge, is the shelter … Follow me?’
Ravenscourt smiled. ‘I’m ahead of you.’ Over Anthony’s shoulder his hand came, and its forefinger upon the map emphasised his words. He said:
‘Here’s the copse. And this hedge—here—is very thick. Suppose I come with you—wherever you’re going to be—and get men posted, early, here in the copse … and here and here, along the hedge … How’d that do?’
The Noose Page 20