by J. R. Trtek
“Very clever, indeed,” whispered Sir Walter, and I saw Holmes silently nod.
“I got on a southbound train, eventually taking company with an old shepherd and his dog, the two that both of you encountered on your own journeys,” he told Holmes and me. “The four-legged one was a wall-eyed brute that I mistrusted from the start.”
“Hear, hear,” I intoned, and Holmes’s eyes sparkled. “The herd related a story about a man leaving a rail carriage outside a station,” I said, “and I took that man as having been you.”
“It was,” said Hannay. “As I suppose he told you, the train came to a standstill at the end of a culvert spanning a river. There was another train waiting for us to pass, we were told, but then I saw that three men had left that train and were headed in our direction. I figured they must be the police, and so I decided then and there to drop from the carriage and slip away. The dog thought I was trying to steal its master’s belongings, perhaps, and started to bark. The herd, who was asleep—”
“From drink, no doubt,” I interjected.
“Oh, you are quite right there, Doctor,” Hannay agreed. “Nonetheless, he woke and began to holler. By this point, I had put several yards between myself and the carriage, but I had been noticed by several onlookers. Fortunately, the dog chose that moment to leap after me, taking his master with him, for the man was tied to the animal by means of a rope. His tumbling off the train stole everyone’s fancy, and they dropped any interest in me to laugh at the dog and the herd. I then took that opportunity to dart into cover and start running.
“I had gotten rather far from the train when I first spotted that monoplane rising up from the south. Suddenly, it seemed as if my choice of hiding in the barren countryside had been a poor one, given the likelihood of now being seen from the air, and so I decided to leave the moorland and head for the green country to the south, in search of woods and stone houses in which to hide.”
“As Holmes thought you might,” said Bullivant.
“Yes,” replied Hannay, smiling boyishly at all of us. “Well, later that day, I came to a small plateau where there was a house sitting beyond a bridge, against which a young man leaned, reading Milton.”
“Milton?” I said, recalling Ewan Clark. “Did this house serve as an inn? And on the grounds was there a shed in which sat—”
“A motor bicycle?” completed Hannay. “Yes, Dr. Watson, there was. So you passed that way also?”
“I did,” I replied, glancing at Bullivant, who knew my own tale already. Holmes stared at me expectantly, but I waved my hand at the South African. “But go on, Mr. Hannay, please. Forgive my interruption.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I made up a story about being a mining magnate from Kimberley, claiming I was being pursued by illegal diamond buyers whose plans I had thwarted. The innkeeper was more than happy to take me in, give me a room, and supply me with meals. The next day, two men came round in a motorcar, and my host, on his own initiative, told them I had stayed the night before and then left.”
“An enterprising and inventive lad,” said Sherlock Holmes.
“Yes, he was, as well as trusting,” said Hannay. “He came up while they were still there to inform me of all this, and I sweetened the pot by penning a false note in German. I then had the innkeeper take it to the men and tell them that I’d inadvertently left it behind, with the request that they return it to me should they find me.”
Holmes chuckled and looked at me. “I told you this man must be salvaged, did I not?”
“Indeed, you did. Then what happened, Mr. Hannay?” I asked.
“Well, the two men apparently swore mightily and took off in pursuit. I had the innkeeper go tell the police about the pair and suggest they might have been involved in the Portland Place murder. I expected the men to return later, after they had failed to come across me, you see.”
“And they did return?” said Sir Walter.
“Yes,” replied Hannay. Looking down into his now empty cup, the man tilted his head slightly. “Thanks to the innkeeper, however, the police had already arrived—two constables and a sergeant—and taken up station within the house, all without knowing I was still holed up inside my bedroom. I saw the two strange men approach in the distance, coming up the hill in their automobile. They stopped the vehicle some two hundred yards away, in the shelter of a patch of wood, and walked the rest of the way up to the inn.”
“And had you intended to remain hidden in your room?” I asked.
“At first, yes, but then a better idea occurred to me. I opened a window and dropped to the ground, cushioned by a gooseberry bush. I then proceeded unobserved across the dyke and crawled down the side of a burn to reach the car. I started her, jumped into the chauffeur’s seat, and stole away.”
Holmes raised his chin and smiled, his brows raised whimsically.
“I immediately left the main roads and took to the byways,” said Hannay. “And it was then that I realised what a fool I had been to steal the automobile in the first place, for it was a big green brute that would clearly give me away to anyone who had been told of the theft. I therefore headed for even more lonely roads and made it almost to evening without encountering anyone, but by now I was furiously hungry. Just then, I heard a noise in the sky, and lo and behold, there was that monoplane again, flying near the ground, about a dozen miles to the south of me and approaching rapidly.
“I drove on toward a thick wood I had espied, and once under its cover slackened speed. But then I heard the hoot of another car, and I realised I was almost upon the entrance to a private road from which another motor was emerging. I clapped on my brakes, but the automobile’s speed was too great, and I saw that my present course would cause me to ram the other vehicle in the middle. I did the only correct thing and veered to the right, into a hedge, hoping to find something soft beyond.”
“And did you?” asked Bullivant.
“No,” said Hannay. “My motorcar shot through the hedge as if it were butter and careened toward the edge of a precipice. I stood on the seat and prepared to jump, but the branch of a hawthorn caught me in the chest and lifted me up, holding me there as the vehicle slipped over the edge and pitched down the slope, perhaps fifty feet in all. It landed with a crash in the bed of a stream.”
“Well,” I said, “your luck was with you.”
“The man in the other car was a local politician, as it turned out,” Hannay added.
“Yes, Sir Harry Christey,” I remarked.
“You met him?”
“I did, within an hour of your having left his residence on bicycle.”
“Ah, then you know the rest of the story.”
“I witnessed part of it, actually,” I said, and proceeded to relate my experience at the political rally, including my unsuccessful attempts to reach Hannay and Sir Harry in the hall, followed by my long nocturnal hike afterward, adding as well the motor bicycle ride with the very innkeeper who had previously sheltered the South African.
“What befell you after you left Sir Harry’s, however, I do not yet know,” I added expectantly.
“Nor do I,” said Bullivant.
“I bicycled that night into the hills,” Hannay told us. “However, by seven the next morning, I realised I had made perhaps another fatal choice, for on the summits I once more stood out like a sore thumb. And, sure enough, the ominous beat of the monoplane’s engine suddenly sounded from above. Before I could act this time, however, the aircraft had dropped several hundred feet and began circling around my position, and the observer on board caught sight of me through glasses. Then the aeroplane rose and turned eastward, receding until it was only a speck.
“I knew the enemy had located me at last, and that made me do some savage thinking. I wheeled my bicycle a hundred yards from the highway and plunged it into a moss hole, where it sank among water buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll that gave me a view of the two valleys on either side. The long winding road between them was empty. I could go north or so
uth, but I could not decide which. I felt rather like Buridan’s ass.68
“And so I pulled a coin from my pocket and tossed it in order to decide. Heads came up, and I turned northward. I had gone perhaps ten miles or so along the high road, when in the distance I saw a motorcar. And then, very far beyond it, away down the slope, I spotted several men advancing like a row of beaters at a shoot.”
“Pursuers,” said Bullivant. “Germans or police?
“It didn’t matter to me at the time,” Hannay replied. “I immediately dropped down out of sight behind my own ridge. The automobile was still a ways away, and so I ran across the road, intending now to head south. Suddenly, ahead, I espied two new figures in the glen beyond, moving toward me. I realised that I was hemmed in on all sides of a relatively barren patch of land.”
“Good lord,” I said. “What choice did you then have?”
“The only one possible in that situation, Watson,” declared Sherlock Holmes. He cast an admiring glance at Hannay. “Stay in the patch, and let your enemies search it and not find you.”
“Exactly, Mr. Holmes,” replied the South African. “The problem, of course, was how to escape notice. There were no trees. The bog holes were but small puddles, and the stream I encountered merely a trickle. It was all heather, hill grass, and highway. For lack of a better option, I ran farther along the road, where I came to a bend, and there I found my salvation.”
Bullivant and I tilted forward in our chairs, while Holmes leaned back contentedly.
“I saw a roadman,” said Hannay. “He was tending to his repairs, splitting stones with a hammer. Suddenly, he dropped his tool and, seeing me approach, began to wail about his headaches.”
“Migraines, perhaps?” I asked. Holmes covered his mouth and shook his head.
“What?” said Hannay. “No, not migraines. The man had just caroused a bit too much the night before, against his better judgment, and now found himself in an awful state the morning after. And to top off matters, a road surveyor was due presently to inspect his work, which had hardly progressed at all since the day before.
“I immediately suggested that we trade places. Without much need for coaxing, he gave me his spectacles and dirty hat, as well as an old clay pipe. I, in turn, stripped off my jacket, waistcoat and collar, and gave them him to carry to his cottage, which was visible in the far distance. He briefly instructed me in his tasks, and I sent him off to his home to sleep the rest of the day. Then, after roughing myself up a bit to look the part, I assumed the man’s identity, in order to fool anyone who might pass by.”
“And you made certain that you fooled yourself as well,” said Bullivant.
“Oh yes, I did.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I believe Sir Walter means that Mr. Hannay needed to convince himself that he was the roadman,” explained Holmes.
“You see,” said Hannay, “it’s like an old scout in Rhodesia once told me: the secret to playing a part is to think yourself into it. You can never keep it up unless you can manage to convince yourself that you are it.”
“Yes,” said Holmes wistfully. “You must shut out your real identity entirely.”
“And so I did,” Hannay affirmed. “I thought of the little white cottage in the distance as mine. I made up false memories of sleeping there in a box bed69 beside a bottle of cheap whisky. I made the road the only purpose I had in life.”
“And you escaped detection?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Hannay. “The motor I had seen stopped at my worksite. Two men got out and spoke to me, and I was certain they were among my German pursuers, but I deceived them completely. Then, toward the late afternoon, another man happened by in a touring car and stopped. I recognised him as a London stockbroker with whom I had once been very slightly acquainted, and on a daft notion, I revealed my true identity. He’d heard the news of the Portland Place murder and believed me the killer. That fear was enough to coerce him into following my instructions.
“I donned his driving coat and buttoned it to the top to hide my own filthy clothes, and then I told him to sit in the passenger seat and be still while I drove the two of us for several miles, through the cordon of pursuers and on into early evening. I left the frightened fellow to his vehicle and then wandered off to spend the night on a hillside.
“The following morning, I woke to a pale blue sky visible through a net of heather. I raised myself on my arms and looked at my empty boots sitting beside me, and then down into the valley. That one glance below set me to lacing up the boots as quickly as I could, for there were men approaching, not a quarter mile off. They were again spread apart across the hillside like a fan, and beating the heather.
“Keeping behind the local ridge as best I could, I ran on for perhaps half a mile, where I deliberately showed myself to them. That set the bunch running toward me, but I once more ducked down and then ran back the way I had come. I somehow slipped past them and did not look back after that. I knew, however, that my stratagem had gained me only a head start of a few minutes. I covered a good deal of ground, though, and came upon a deserted cottage, and beyond that a house with a smoking chimney—the same one you have described, Mr. Holmes.”
The detective nodded.
Hannay continued. “I wandered onto the grounds of the occupied house and saw, from various details, that it appeared to be an ordinary moorland farm, though with a pretentious white-washed wing added. The wing had a glass veranda, and through the panes, an elderly gentleman was studying me. I walked across a border of coarse hill gravel and entered the veranda, whose door was already open.
“The room where I found myself was pleasant, with a wall of books opposite the glass. Instead of tables and chairs, however, the floor supported a number of cases such as you see in museums, all filled with coins and odd stone implements. There was a desk in the middle, at which the old man was now sitting. His face was round and shiny. Big glasses sat on the end of his nose, and the top of his head was as bright and smooth as a glass bottle. He remained still as I crossed the room, raising his placid brows as if waiting for me to speak first. Yet, though tired, hungry, and feeling at the end of my rope, I hesitated to confess and seek help from him.”
“But did you?” asked Sir Walter.
“No,” said Hannay. “The gentleman himself spoke for me. He observed that I seemed in a hurry. I, in turn, nodded towards the window. He rose and picked up a pair of field glasses. Through the glass of the veranda, he scrutinised the distant heather.
“‘I see men coming this way,’ he said. ‘Police?’”
“I nodded, and he declared he would not have his privacy be broken by clumsy rural constables. The old man directed me to another room, where I bided my time in a dark chamber which smelt of chemicals and was lit only by a tiny window high up in the wall. Sometime later, the door opened, and I emerged to find the elderly gentleman, who directed me back into his study. I asked if my pursuers had left, and he said they had.
“He reached for a cigar and repeatedly tapped his knee in an odd way before finally lighting his smoke. As he took the first puffs, he said that he had told the men searching for me that I had passed through his property and on over the next hill. I sighed and thanked him, remarking that I was most fortunate.
“‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘This is a lucky morning for you, Mr. Richard Hannay.’”
Bullivant and I leaned back in our chairs.
“The moment he uttered my name without benefit of introduction, I realised I had walked straight into the enemy’s headquarters,” said Hannay. “I would have been safer with those who were beating the heather, who I now understood to have been the police.
“My first impulse was to simply throttle the old ruffian and make for the hills again. He seemed to sense my intention, however, and smiled gently before motioning to the doorway behind me. I turned and saw that two menservants were pointing at me with pistols—they were the same two I had encountered in my pose as the roadman. Sta
nding between them was another man, a plump fellow who studied me with a curious expression.
“‘And so our quarry has wandered in on his own?’ the plump man asked in a disbelieving voice. He then proceeded to estimate the distance I had walked in all, and speculated about the towns I might have passed through.”
“‘I am not concerned with his past itinerary,’ said the elderly gentleman, staring at me with eyes that were hooded, like those of a hawk. ‘What matters is that he is now here. Karl,’ he said, addressing one of the servants who held guns, ‘you will put this fellow in the storeroom till I return.’ I translate that final sentence, for the command was issued in German.”
“And so you were imprisoned?” I said.
“Yes,” Hannay replied. “Under supervision of the plump man, the servants marched me out of the study, a pistol at each ear, and deposited me in a damp chamber that was part of what had been the old farmhouse. The floor was uneven and uncarpeted, and it was black as pitch inside, for the windows were heavily shuttered. By groping about, though, I eventually determined that the walls were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy material. The whole place smelt of mould and disuse. My gaolers had closed the only door and turned the key in the lock, and after a while, I could hear someone shifting feet from moment to moment while standing guard outside the door.
“I didn’t know their plans for me,” said the South African, “and I could see no way out of the mess I was in. The more I thought of it, the angrier I became, and so I moved about the darkened room, trying the shutters to no avail and groping among sacks and boxes, finding nothing but what I took to be old grain and nuts. Then I discovered a handle in the wall and realised I had stumbled upon the door to a press.70 There was what felt like a flimsy lock on it, and by working the door steadily, I managed to break it open and, fumbling about, found what I took to be a little stock of electric torches on one shelf. They were in working order, and so now I was acting with benefit of light.