The Man from the Sea

by Michael Innes

  Abruptly Cranston realised that he had got it all wrong. Day’s trouble was not embarrassment but some sort of distraction. The man was failing to keep his attention civilly on what was being said – whether by Lady Urquhart on the subject of Skye Terriers or by her husband on the insufficiencies of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Perhaps it was sheer fatigue. Perhaps it was pain. Or perhaps – Cranston suddenly found himself thinking – it was a trick. Perhaps it was some sort of trick within his own trick – a matter of Day going one better.

  “Cranston tells me that the man we had better get you to is Lockhart in Edinburgh.” Lord Urquhart had come back to his plan. “I have told him to send the fellow a wire, to make sure you don’t miss him. Eyes, you know, are not things to take risks with. It would be a thousand pities, my dear Dr Knight, if this deplorable incident were to cripple a career like yours. Dash it all, we can’t – um – know too much about fish. All very well for old savages like myself to catch them and eat them and order plaster casts of the big ones. But science is another matter.” Having delivered himself of this amiable generality, Lord Urquhart returned to business. “So I propose, as I was saying, to fly you to Edinburgh… By the way, I hope you got through on the telephone to your wife?”

  “Not actually to my wife, Lord Urquhart.” Day passed a hand across his forehead. “I had, as a matter of fact, rather worrying news. It bothers me much more than this business of my eyes.”

  “My dear sir, I am sorry to hear it.” Lord Urquhart was concerned and benevolent. “Not, I hope, sudden serious illness?”

  “A street accident. You must forgive me if I am rather upset, and inattentive to your great kindness. My wife is in one of the metropolitan hospitals. And it seems that she is on the danger list.” Day paused. “If you will really have the extreme goodness to fly me to Edinburgh, I can possibly get a commercial plane from there, or at least catch the night train.”

  “There is not a moment to lose.” Lord Urquhart strode to the side of the room and rang a bell. “I shall fly you straight in to Northolt myself.”

  “My dear Lord Urquhart!” Day appeared painfully agitated. “I really could not think of it.”

  “Nonsense, my dear sir. It is my pleasure.” Lord Urquhart was courteously concerned to minimise the sense of obligation his offer must impose. “Cranston will tell you that this is my great interest. There ought to be nobody in a position like mine in this country who is not equipped, and willing, to do precisely this. We must come down at Turnhouse to refuel, but after that it will be only one hop. And at Northolt my town car will be waiting to take you straight to your wife, and to such treatment as you require yourself.”

  Lord Urquhart, flushed and triumphant, turned aside to give orders to a servant who had entered the room. Cranston looked cautiously at George. It was evident that she shared his discomfort before this mounting duplicity. But decidedly they were in for it now. And with luck this amiable peer would never know that his confidence had been abused. Not, that was to say, unless the enemy won out after all, and riddled the anxious husband with a burst of bullets. Or unless… Cranston knew – indefinably but with increasing certainty – that there were other possibilities. For John Day continued to be an enigma. His story was plausible – even convincing. But it remained true that to stick to him was to make oneself a fellow traveller into the unknown. It was possible –

  Cranston’s speculations got no further. Lord Urquhart had turned to his wife. “My dear,” he said, “I find that I must fly our guests south. Expect me home tomorrow. And don’t blame our friends if their leave-taking seems a little abrupt. I am hurrying them along. We must leave now.”

  Lady Urquhart had listened carefully – and now her face lit up. “Precisely!” she said. “It has been in my own mind all the time. Alice shall have a Chow.”

  16

  They skimmed over Scotland. Lord Urquhart – Cranston had found with relief – admitted the company of some sort of technical assistant in aeronautics. These two sat in front, and the three passengers in a small compartment behind. But Day had once more dropped off to sleep, and Cranston and George talked. He told her now all that he knew about the man from the sea. He tried to make clearer – he scarcely knew whether it was to her or to himself – the impulse prompting him to see Day through. But George appeared not much disposed to any large analysis. She was looking ahead. “Let’s accept this business of seeing his wife. Even if it’s genuine I’m not clear that it’s admirable. But we can’t possibly pretend to judge it, so we must take it as read. The question is: what then?”

  “Yes – I know.”

  “I suppose, by the way, that the business about a street accident was a pure lie – something cooked up to prompt Lord Urquhart to take him all the way south?”

  Cranston shook his head. “I haven’t had a chance to ask him – and I’m not inclined to wake him up now. But I suppose it’s almost certainly untrue.”

  “Did he really make a long-distance call from Urquhart?”

  “I can’t even tell you that. But I suppose so. It would be a pointless deception, surely, simply to say he had. He wasn’t going to ring up his wife herself. That would spoil the surprise.”

  “I think it’s horrible.” George was suddenly emphatic. “His eye must be entirely on himself.”

  “You said we couldn’t judge.”

  “All right. But what about this telephone-call?”

  “It was to be a cautious enquiry, I gathered, made somewhere else, to find out if his wife was still where he left her.”

  George looked puzzled. “Isn’t that precisely where he might expect not to find her? Didn’t you say there were children – sons? Surely when a thing like that happens one makes what break one can?”

  “I suppose one might be determined to face it out. The address is somewhere in Kensington, and it seems she has remained there. I suppose it’s an anonymous sort of place. And it’s where Day asks to be taken to for this horrible reunion.”

  George was silent. She had turned away to look down at the country beneath. Its character was changing. There was a town. The sight of it prompted George to another topic. “Richard, what happened to my rucksack?”

  He stared. “I’m frightfully sorry. It simply got left behind during the chase. I can’t even remember where. Is it a disaster?”

  She laughed. “We’ll do well if we get away with no worse disaster than that – although I did like that frock. Is Turnhouse any sort of fashionable resort?”

  “I’d hardly suppose so.”

  “Or Northolt? I do cut a frightful figure.”

  Cranston was taken by surprise. He even felt some sort of sudden shyness. His respect for George was now very wholesome, but he had started by regarding her as a figure of fun. This sudden unselfconscious emergence in her of matter of purely feminine concern for a moment disconcerted him. “You’ll be all right if it doesn’t turn cold,” he said – and glanced at her cautiously to see how she would take this determined masculine impercipience. “And I have an aunt in London. She could–”

  “That’s all right.” George was clearly not enchanted with the prospect of being rescued by Cranston’s aunt. “My own base is in London for the time being, you know. I’m sharing a flat with another girl. And I do possess a spare frock there.”

  “Then that’s fine.” He hesitated. “Are you thinking of stopping in this country long?”

  “Oh, no.” She was briskly decided. “I’ll make that visit to your mother, if I’m still wanted. But soon after that I’ll be off. I’ve a job at home, you know.”

  “With the Merinos?”

  Instead of replying, George pointed. “Are we there? Is that Edinburgh Castle?”

  “Stirling. But we shall be at Turnhouse in no time now. The old boy wasn’t boasting about the turn of speed he can manage.”

  “Must he really take us all the way? Isn’t it a bit steep? There must be ordinary passenger flights from this Turnhouse place?”

  Cranston nodded
. “There are. In fact, there’s bound to be one out just about the time we get there. But I suppose Day is going to feel safer tucked up cosily in private.”

  “It seems to me that John Day has it all his own way. If you ask me, this doomed-to-die business has got us both down.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s only fair to remember that it has got him down too. I think we can trust Day to die.”

  “Do we leave him to it?”

  For a moment Cranston was silent, staring in sombre perplexity at the sleeping man. “I’m sure it’s true – that part of his story. But I’m not clear about just when the thing is – well, scheduled. It would be irresponsible, wouldn’t it, just to say goodbye to him at the moment of tipping him into the bosom of his family?”

  “Decidedly.”

  “In fact, one must whistle up a policeman at just that point? I’ve absolutely not given any undertaking not to. But it seems pretty squalid, all the same.” He looked at her anxiously – caught himself, indeed, so looking, and suddenly realised that he was in a sense handing over to her. “Or doesn’t it?”

  George seemed not immediately disposed to tackle the question head-on. “Perhaps he means to do away with himself. That must have occurred to you.”

  “Yes, it has. I can’t imagine that the sort of disease one gets from a slip-up with his kind of stuff can be other than unspeakably horrible. Suicide must almost certainly be in his mind. But it seems a bit mean to hope that the poor devil will hang himself just in order to get me out of a hole. I should never be quite sure afterwards that I hadn’t actually bought him the rope.”

  “You’ve certainly given him a lot already.” George shot this at him. “I’m a crude self-confident colonial, as you’ve noticed. But your self-confidence – your awful cheek, Richard Cranston, positively takes my breath away.”

  “My cheek?” He was startled and disturbed.

  “Taking on a thing like this by way of getting straight with yourself over some small hole-and-corner immorality. It’s outrageous. My younger brother once nearly started a bush fire.”

  “I don’t see–”

  “He had been shockingly careless. And it was about the very worst thing that he could have done. He saw it, poor kid, as a crime, a sin. He came back to the homestead feeling like death. But do you know what I found him doing half an hour later? Juggling with Dad’s billiard balls before a mirror and showing off to himself no end.”

  “And I’m like that?” Cranston was looking at her round-eyed.

  “Exactly. Except that your billiard balls are fissionable.”

  Cranston was silent for some minutes. The Firth of Forth had begun to broaden out on their left. The first part of their flight was almost over. “I wasn’t regardless,” he said. “I did think of bringing in Sir Alex Blair. But I found I just couldn’t.”

  “Because of something about Blair himself? Or because he stood for society, the law – that sort of thing?”

  Cranston found himself bewildered. “I don’t know,” he said. “Although obviously I ought to.” He seized on a clarifying idea. “If Blair stands for society, then there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  “So instead of Sir Alex Blair you brought in his step-daughter, who is unquestionably sound? At least I think you described her to Lord Urquhart that way?”

  “It wasn’t like that, George. I’ve told you how Sally was dragged in. It was absolutely rotten for her, and she was frightfully decent.”

  “You don’t think she–” George checked herself. “Do you think the enemy can have another shot?”

  He nodded seriously. “I think they can. The business of the hearse wouldn’t baffle them for long, and they would see that the trail led to Urquhart. When they saw Lord Urquhart’s plane take off they would feel decidedly interested. I don’t suggest we’re going to be shot down in the air – but it’s not at all certain what may be waiting for us, whether here at Turnhouse or in London. Then again, there’s Day’s wife. It wouldn’t be beyond their imagination to fancy that he might make for her. And he is making for her. They may be waiting on her doorstep for him. In other words, despite bringing off this rapid move south, we have quite a bit of thinking to do.”

  “And surely with Day in on it? Mightn’t it be suggested to him that he could find a healthier place for his bit of theatre than the known home of his wife?” She pointed. “Isn’t that the Forth Bridge?”

  “Yes – and we’re coming down.”

  The plane banked and turned. An airfield appeared and disappeared, to be replaced alarmingly by hurtling roofs and haystacks. There was the slightest of quivers beneath them. “Nicely done,” George said.

  “There’s the plane for London – that Admiral.” Cranston nodded at a farther corner of the airfield. He glanced at his watch. “Due out, I think, in about half an hour.”

  “It will beat us, won’t it?”

  “I’ve no idea. Presumably we’ll be off again within ten minutes ourselves. But there’ll be time to stretch our legs. This plane isn’t really built for you and me.”

  “I’d say we’d stretched them quite substantially today already.”

  For a moment they found themselves contemplating each other’s sprawled limbs with frank amusement and satisfaction. Then Lord Urquhart turned round and gave them a triumphant wave. “First stage,” he said.

  They got a cup of tea, and afterwards George wandered off by herself. The whole business of air-travel fascinated her almost as much as it did Lord Urquhart. The great Constellations were to her generation what the mail steamers had been to her parents’ – the magically punctual carpets that carried one home – always, in a sense, “home” whether one were travelling in the one direction or the other. And the small fry – the DH Drovers and the Doves – represented the means of fetching the doctor or dropping in on the neighbours. But on this occasion she had only an absent eye for the traffic of the place. It had become clear to her that there was a sense in which her cousin Richard Cranston had been hypnotised by his man from the sea. Cunningly – she was sure it was that – John Day had touched off in him something that was not so much simply romantic as positively atavic – a touchy quirky sense of personal honour that she knew in Cranstons on the other side of the world as well. Her own father called it the pride of folk who fetch long pedigrees from small places. And she wondered if the day’s events didn’t show her as a little tarred with the same brush – as indeed it was only natural that she should be.

  So far, they had been rescuing Day from the people to whom he had formerly, for one reason or another, sold himself. What if the situation suddenly and sharply changed, and they had to shelter him – positively and immediately, in some concrete situation – from the law of his own country? How far was her cousin prepared to carry this hazardous business of a private judgment on the thing? And how far was she?

  George stopped to look at the Admiral that would presently be taking off for London. Was it possible that the law had already been invoked, and that interest in John Day had spread beyond the small band of secret agents who had made all the running so far? Was Richard perhaps too confident that –

  She turned away, seeing that it was time to go back to Lord Urquhart’s plane. She was walking rapidly when she happened to turn her glance on the main entrance to the airfield. It was like the crisis when she had first spied the tell-tale cobweb on the door of the Canty Quean. But it was, for the moment, a good deal more bewildering. There was no sense in it. There was no sense in it unless – George found that she had stopped dead in her tracks. She heard a faint hail and turned her head to see her cousin standing by their plane and waving to her. She hurried forward. By the time she reached him her mind was made up. “Richard,” she said, “I’m not coming further.”

  “Not coming?” He spoke above the roar of the engine. The plane was ready to take off. He was astonished and dismayed. “Why ever not?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “George!” He made a movement to
wards her.

  “I can’t tell you – yet.”

  “You’re not – ?” He paused, confused.

  “Do you think I would?” She flashed it at him. “Where can I contact you?”

  He saw that she meant it. “At my aunt’s. Malvern Court. It’s a big block of flats off–”

  “I know. And now – get in.”

  Cranston gave her a single long look and obeyed.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” she said – and turned away.

  He didn’t see it, she said to herself. For a wonder he didn’t see it. And it sticks out a mile. It would be quite noticeable if it were black or a sober grey. But as it is –

  There was only a chauffeur left in the great yellow car. It was drawing away from the low building marked Departures. George remembered thankfully that she had a belt – like Day she had a belt – and that there was quite a lot of money in it. Until she knew what was happening she couldn’t afford to let go. She wished she was less absurdly dressed. Probably she was as noticeable as the yellow Cadillac itself.

  She glanced quickly at the nearest group of people, with a notion that she would find them staring, and instead found to her astonishment that they were dressed exactly like herself. She drew nearer. They were young men and women of about her own age, talking a foreign language. For a brief moment – such is the power of recent associations – she was suspicious and alarmed. Then she slipped into the middle of them. They were blonde, and most of them were enormous. She guessed that they were Norwegians or Swedes. Certainly they were perfect cover. She stood in the middle of them, amiably smiling, and knew that for the moment she had found a sort of cloak of invisibility.