All three men were now in the room with them. Mike was unbundled and efficiently gagged before he had a chance to speak. He exchanged a miserable glance with Carrie and they looked away from each other. So far as she could see, he was unhurt. Beard said coolly that they all deserved some breakfast and went to the larder. He came back with three bottles of beer, only remarking that the little blighters must have pinched the bread and the ham. Carrie expected to get at least a kick in the ribs as he passed but he paid no attention to her. That frightened her more than if he had sworn at her. All three ignored them. They didn’t exist any more once they were caught.
The distant noise of a car coming down the lane was unmistakable. Mike and Carrie stared at each other, round eyes sparkling with hope. Someone was coming, would break in, would find them.
‘There’s a car!’ Screw exclaimed, and threw open the window at the back of the house ready to jump through it.
‘Shut that!’ Beard ordered sharply, and went on in a gentle voice, ‘No hurry. Nobody knows a thing. Whoever they are, I’ll let ’em walk round. One never knows. They might be useful witnesses if there’s ever any trouble. You keep these two quiet!’
The car stopped outside. Beard went into the office and slid back the ticket window. They heard him say:
‘I’m sorry. We’re not open yet … Oh well, if it’s your only chance to see the Abbey … Two? Forty pence, please … Yes, founded in 1146, dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539 … Yes, extraordinary how little is left, isn’t it? But when one remembers that everything of value was carted away and that then people came from miles around to pull down stone and timber for building it is not surprising that the rest collapsed. After that the Abbey just vanished under weeds and woodland. Very wild country up here! Big sheep runs, and that’s all. So nobody cared until sixty years ago Lord Hilcote bought the estate and took his title from it. He had the ruins cleared and opened to the public … Yes, certainly I will walk round with you if you like. I’ve nothing else to do so early.’
Beard closed the ticket window and went out through the front door. They heard his voice lecturing away as footsteps crunched on gravel and disappeared.
‘Cor! He’s got a nerve!’ Chauffeur said.
‘Comes easy! He does it every day.’
‘I don’t know how he finds time for other business.’
‘The Abbey’s closed in winter.’
‘What else has he used it for – I mean, down there?’
‘Art robberies. Anything else that needs keeping on ice,’ Screw said. ‘And there was the French boy. When he was returned to his dear parents, he couldn’t tell ’em a thing. Never knew he had left France!’
‘A pity he can’t sell this pair!’ Chauffeur complained. ‘We’ll have to wait for the next job before we can retire.’
‘He’ll never let you.’
‘Then the job has to be big enough. That’s all I say!’
The unseen visitors returned. Beard kept them in conversation outside the open front door, even allowing them a view of the unoccupied end of the living-room.
A woman’s voice said:
‘What a wonderful thing religion was!’
‘And is. Is still,’ Beard replied reverently.
‘My husband and I are so glad that the Abbey has somebody like you to look after it, and not a student or a little man in a peaked cap.’
‘I am afraid they are all the Trust usually can afford, madam. But fortunately I have a small income of my own and can make myself useful where I see a need.’
The car drove off, and hardly had the hum of its engine died away when a motor-bike came roaring down the lane. Carrie’s agonised disappointment again turned to hope. The place was waking up.
‘God! The gardener!’ Chauffeur muttered. ‘The risks he runs!’
‘There wouldn’t be any if that boy hadn’t got loose.’
The motor-bike stopped, started again, and the silence of the hills returned. Beard came in.
‘I sent him down to the village to mow the churchyard,’ he explained. ‘That’ll take him all the morning. Always glad to help the Vicar, we are!’
‘You ought to have a car here,’ Screw said.
‘I never have a car where I live. It’s just one more thing that can be traced. Now it’s time to take sweetie and her boy friend back to their home.’
‘Got some more dope to give ’em a shot?’
‘It will not be used. It’s getting late and we’ll take no chances. Do you want to be seen carrying two bodies from here to the wood? Put your packs on your backs and lead them over into the trees! No gags. No lashings. From a distance you will appear natural – two men and their children happily camping. If they start to utter a sound, you will make them wish they hadn’t and prevent any more. Then come back here and leave the rest to me! I’m going over now to check up on the wood itself.’
In five minutes Beard returned from reconnoitring the path and reported that all was clear. Lashings on wrists and ankles were cut and gags removed; but Carrie and Mike were utterly helpless. Screw took her arm and Chauffeur took Mike’s. From a distance, as Beard had said, the contact may have looked affectionate; in fact each powerful arm was interlocked with a small one and a brutal grip kept on the wrist.
Carrie did not struggle. Mike tried to drag his feet in the hope of that unlikely person on the horizon noticing that this was no friendly walk with Dad. Chauffeur threatened to break his arm and gave him such agony for a moment that he waited for the crack. Neither of them dared to make a sound.
They came to the bank at the edge of the wood and the entrance to their prison. As they stood there, Carrie gave Mike a smile and half a wink in full view of Chauffeur. It was unlike her, and Mike could not understand what she had to smile about. He assumed it was just bravado and did his best to smile back. Chauffeur looked from one to the other suspiciously. Carrie met his eyes with an angelic look of innocence.
They passed the children from one to another down the ladder. It seemed that Chauffeur had never entered the barn before. He held the lantern high above his head and said it all looked very dangerous.
Seeing the ruinous mess lit up for the first time, Mike agreed with him. No wonder they could not find their way at night! Unlike the cellar below with its solid arches and pillars, the barn was a shapeless maze of fallen beams, broken posts and roots, the hollows beneath them separated by mounds of earth and timber.
‘It’s all safe enough if we keep close to the wall,’ Screw assured his companion. ‘Those monks couldn’t scamp the job in case the Abbot sacked ’em. Wonderful thing is religion, as the lady said. Come on! We have only to put them down.’
Screw lifted the grating and dragged Mike and Carrie to the bottom of the steps. Neither of them tried to resist. This was the end.
‘I don’t think we should leave them here alone,’ Chauffeur said.
‘Gawd! Going soft on us?’
‘Not me! I use my loaf, that’s all. I was just thinking that the boy escaped down the well.’
‘Well, he won’t any more. There’s no way down and he’d break his neck.’
‘The water may be too deep for that. Where is it?’ Chauffeur asked.
‘Through the arch there, in the far corner. What’s wrong with you? He told us just to shut them up and clear off.’
The two were about to leave them when Chauffeur uneasily returned to the subject.
‘That girl – I caught her smiling at her little boy friend when she saw they were being put down again.’
‘Maybe it’s a home from home by this time.’
‘It looked to me as if it was what they wanted.’
Screw hesitated. He acknowledged there might be something in that and said he didn’t want to spend the rest of his young days in the nick.
‘Well, you stay here while I run over and see the boss and tell him what you suspect,’ he suggested.
He went up the stone stairs and put back the grating in passing. Chauffeur sat on the second
step with the lantern.
Carrie broke down and started to cry pitifully.
‘Let us go, mister,’ she sobbed. ‘You can’t do this. It isn’t fair. You’re a kind man really. You know you are.’
She knelt at his feet, stroking his leg. Chauffeur was embarrassed.
‘Now, now!’ he said. ‘Don’t cry! Perhaps your Dad will pay up yet. Just you wait and see!’
With a sweep of the hand which had been stroking his leg Carrie knocked over the lantern and jumped on it.
‘The well!’ she snapped at Mike, grabbing his hand.
They could see almost nothing in the sudden darkness, but they knew without eyes the way to the second cellar and the well. As soon as they were through the archway, Carrie pulled him round the corner and both stood flat against the wall. Chauffeur felt his way after them, bumping into a pillar but very close behind. When he was past the arch and aiming for the well, Carrie tip-toed fast for the steps, Mike with her. He did not dare to speak for fear of being heard, but thought it useless to go back to the main cellar – the one place where there was a little light.
Carrie rushed up the steps and threw back the grating with a clang. Only then did he remember that he had never heard the bolt go home. She must have noticed it at the time.
Chauffeur could see them now. There was no chance even to think of shutting him in. They ran straight for the grey light of the entrance, jumping fallen beams while Chauffeur pounded after them, taking more care with his route through obstacles which he did not know and could barely see.
Carrie was up the ladder in a second. Mike, following her through the hole, felt a grab for his leg and kicked out with the other. A hardness at the heel of his boot and a yell of pain told him he had connected.
The wood was too open and unsafe. He knew that in the end they could be surrounded and caught there. He raced across the clearing where the tents had been, Carrie following his lead. Chauffeur was up the ladder and out. He heard him yelling to Beard and Screw. The only chance was to get clear of the trees before they came up.
Out in the open he swerved left in the opposite direction to the ruins, not working it out but obeying an instinct which told him that the pursuers would expect them either to hide in the wood or to run straight down hill across the bare fields for the unknown village.
A bunch of sheep, peacefully grazing, was in front of them. They lifted their heads, about to trot away. The gang could hardly miss the meaning of a flock of sheep charging off over the grass.
‘Don’t let them run! Don’t let them run!’ Mike prayed.
He dropped flat and signalled Carrie to do the same. The sheep watched them suspiciously but still did not run. Mike, now with shoulders raised, was behaving exactly like a sheep dog holding them steady. They moved off a little, looked back and continued to graze.
Very slowly he twisted his head to see what was happening. Screw was working his way through the sparse undergrowth at the edge of the wood. He did not stop to examine the open ground at all. Obviously he must have given it a casual glance – in the wrong direction – as soon as he arrived; but since the fugitives were not running for dear life they could not be there.
The obliging sheep, finding that they were not expected to do anything in particular and that the human dog had apparently gone to sleep, quietly moved further on. Where they had been was now revealed as a very slight fold of ground sprinkled with molehills of rich, red-brown earth, some trampled flat, some of overnight freshness. It occurred to Mike that the lump of Carrie’s back, plastered with the drying mud of the trench, was much the same colour. If only they could reach the molehills unobserved, the dip might be just enough to protect them, lying flat, from eyes in or outside the wood. It gave no cover from anyone out in the open below the Abbey, but at that distance it would be hard to distinguish them from the work of moles.
He whispered to Carrie to crawl very slowly to the molehills and lie down.
‘I’ll be watching the wood,’ he added. ‘If there’s danger I’ll baa like a sheep. Then curl up and don’t move! When I baa again you can go on.’
Carrie set off. He could tell from rustling movements in the trees that someone there was fully occupied – only one of them, for he heard no voices. Probably the other was up on the bank, covering the far side of the wood in case they tried to break out there and run for the road. He risked twisting round to look behind him. It was as well that he did. Beard had left the searching of the wood to his accomplices and was walking down from the direction of the Abbey at his usual fast but unhurried pace. He carried a twelve-bore gun under his arm.
‘Baa! Baa!’
He did not dare to move his head back again and could only hope that Carrie had frozen.
Beard, half turned away, continued on over the open field.
‘Baa!’
He thought his second bleat sounded high and frightened like that of a late lamb left behind by its mother; but Beard noticed nothing wrong with it and went steadily on as if quite sure of what he had planned.
It was now safe to turn round and watch the wood again. Nothing was going on there. He caught a glimpse of Chauffeur at the corner nearest to the Abbey. He was holding a handkerchief to his nose and his shirt was striped with red.
He looked for Carrie but she had mysteriously vanished. A second glance discovered between two molehills a third which had an unnaturally round top. However, if it had not at first been obvious to him that it was Carrie’s bottom, it certainly wasn’t going to be obvious to anyone else.
Beard for the moment was out of sight, so Mike wormed his way over to the dip and lay down full length where the sheep had scattered and trampled the earth of several molehills. That ought to provide reasonable camouflage if not examined too closely.
‘Do you think we’re safe?’ Carrie whispered.
‘Yes, for where they are now. But Beard is below us somewhere and might come up past us.’
‘How did they catch you?’
‘A lousy hare!’
He explained that he had lured them into a patch of gorse which they were beating out, convinced that Carrie was hiding there. Meanwhile he was kneeling on one knee, not far away from them, where the bushes were more open and he could slip silently from one to another. Right under his nose a hare burst out of cover.
‘She was squatting down in her form as frightened as you had been,’ he said. ‘I could have touched her but I never saw her. Then her nerve broke and she galloped away. A big old lady she was, and she made a thud and a crackling which she’d never have done on grass. Beard was round my bush in a couple of jumps. By golly, he can move fast! I couldn’t shake him off and that was that.’
Carrie told him how she, too, had been caught, that the telephone had been cut and that visitors to the Abbey would be no help unless they could reach them before Beard.
‘And that’s not likely,’ Mike said. ‘Our only chance is to try for the hanger with the spring in it. They’ll never let us reach the ruins or the road. They have to get us. If they don’t they’ll be in for kidnapping and attempted murder. Oh, Carrie, you were so brave!’
‘Me? When?’
‘When we thought it was the end and you smiled at me.’
‘Oh, that! Chauffeur was losing his cool. Didn’t you notice?’
‘No, I did not. I was wondering if there was any way to get out by the well-head.’
‘I did notice. So I thought I’d try to fool him and then perhaps he would do something silly. That was why I smiled and winked at you – to make him think twice before shutting us up again. And then – well, the lantern was so close and I can always cry if it’s going to do me any good.’
‘I wish I paid more attention to people. You’re brilliant,’ Mike said.
‘And I wish I paid more to molehills. I think we’re rather good together, Mike.’
‘Keep your fingers crossed! What do you suppose they will do now?’
‘Well, they must be sure that we aren’t in the wood.
And we haven’t gone for the road and we aren’t in the open. I know! We must have gone back underground.’
‘If you’re right, Screw is searching that now.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Chauffeur is between the wood and the cottage, and Beard has gone to look for us lower down. He has a shot-gun with him now. I didn’t tell you.’
‘Is he allowed to carry one, Mike?’
‘Why not? He’s probably got the right to pot rabbits round the Abbey.’
‘I’d stop if he shot at me.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t and nor will you. Remember that if it’s more than fifty yards he is only going to pepper your bottom. You might have to eat your breakfast standing up for a day or two.’
‘How far is fifty yards?’
‘About half the distance to the edge of the wood.’
‘Do you think Beard can see us?’
Mike cautiously wriggled round. Below them was the long, dry-stone wall dividing the slope. They could never have reached it, but Beard evidently thought it possible that they had. His head was visible bobbing along behind it.
‘Yes, he could see us if we didn’t look like molehills. But I don’t think he can see the ground at the edge of the wood.’
‘Go on then! Try and reach it and run for the road while Screw is underground!’
It was the last thing Mike wanted to try. Carrie had far too much faith in his gift for moving unseen. But this was almost a dare. And it was true that if he could reach the top of the lane, he was bound to meet somebody before long.
‘All right! But, Carrie, you must promise to stay here and not move an inch.’
He set off, wishing to heaven that he really was a mole. At first it was Beard he was afraid of. He could only trust that the brute was occupied in poking about in thistles and bramble at the foot of the wall. Once out of the dip and on the flat, where he was above Beard’s line of sight, he lay still, panting with relief.
Escape into Daylight Page 7