The Man from the Sea

by Michael Innes

  “That’s difficult to say.” Day fell silent. It might have been because a policeman was going past with a heavy and unhurried tread. Or it might have been in calculation – only by this time, surely, all his calculating had been done. “That’s difficult,” he repeated. “But I think not.”

  “Why?” Cranston made the question a challenge.

  Day slightly shook his head. It was like a gesture of embarrassment. “Look,” he said, “need we end on any sort of dismal note? We’ve had rather a good show.”

  “I want you to tell me, please.”

  “It’s the top flat – five storeys up. Don’t ask how I propose to leave it. Say…just rather suddenly.”

  “You can’t. It’s abominable!” Cranston suddenly knew that he was revolted. “I can’t criticise the act. I’ve no right to. But you should have done it at once – long before you got yourself on that ship and within hail of this country. Let alone within hail of this house! Go away. Go away, man, and drown yourself. Only, if your wife’s here, spare her this vicious stunt. You once said you wondered if what you’d got in your head was crazy. Well, it is. I see it now as utterly that. I ought never to have brought you.”

  Day’s reply to this was to walk up the short flight of steps to the door of the house. There was a row of bells, but the door was open upon a staircase leading to the flats above. He turned. “If my wife is here? You don’t believe me? I think you never did.”

  “If your story’s true, and if you mean to do as you say, I can’t see that there’s anything I can do.” Looking up at Day from the pavement, Cranston was seeing him rather as he had done during their first exchange of words among the rocks at Dinwiddie. “I urge you to give up this plan. But I can’t do more… Is it true?”

  “It is true.” Day’s inflamed eyes held his squarely. “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman.”

  “Very well.” Cranston turned and walked away.

  It seemed to him that he had walked for hours. It was dark by the time that he went into a café and ate something – something tasteless and lumpish, washed down with what was perhaps coffee. He went out and again walked about London. He hadn’t solved his problem; he had simply dropped it. He saw that he must begin with what he really knew – with what he really knew about the man from the sea. But his mind, as it tried to face this, went off elsewhere. Sally looking down at him as he descended the cliff – looking at him as if she never expected to see him again, as if it was all hopeless, as if this was the end… It meant something, he now knew, that he didn’t understand. This enigma worried at his mind. But so did another – and perhaps more keenly. George hadn’t walked out on him. He was certain of that. Almost the only thing he had to hold to was that she was stopping in. But then why – ?

  He drove his mind back to Day. He tried to imagine George walking beside him – here in the London dark – and giving him a line on Day. He tried this for a long time. The spectral colloquy seemed fruitless – but presently he noticed the direction he was now walking in. He was going back to Kensington.

  He must begin with what he really knew about the man from the sea. And the area of certainty was quite small. When one’s head was clear it could be surveyed at a glance. The man from the sea was John Day – a scientist deeply compromised and immensely dangerous. Cranston found that his pace had quickened. When he reached the square he walked to the house with certainty and mounted the steps. There was a little frame for a card beside each bell, and a light good enough for reading. He looked at the one on top. It was something that he might have done before, he thought. If it said Day then his mind could be a little at rest, surely, about the man from the sea. If it didn’t, he was little farther forward. The poor woman might well be prompted to live behind somebody else’s name… There was a printed card in the frame…DAY.

  For a moment he stared at it fixedly. He heard his own breath going out in a gasp of relief. The business was over – or over so far as he was concerned. Up there the abominable denouement had by this time accomplished itself. Day had made his submission, penance, apology – whatever he conceived it. By this time, perhaps, he was dead. It was to be supposed that he would have the decency to choose a window at the back… Cranston turned, descended the steps and walked away. It wasn’t for him, he supposed, to do anything about the poor devil’s wife – or not now. He didn’t even know how she would feel about it. Perhaps she was not altogether hating that it had happened that way. Perhaps she was proud, happy, exalted. Day in his action might have been absolutely right. Cranston quickened his pace. It was beyond his experience. He just couldn’t know.

  He had walked a hundred yards when he suddenly pulled up dead. They wouldn’t, Day had said, have a couple of machine-guns waiting on the pavement. But didn’t that mean that he had left Day – been obliged to leave him – just at the very most dangerous point of all? Would Day’s late employers much consider the feeling, or for that matter the life, of his wife? Had the affair had – or was it even now still having – a denouement quite other than he had lately been imagining?

  Cranston turned and walked quickly back. He must know. Even if it was the end of him – and it might be – he must know. He stopped and stared again at the card. DAY. It looked, he now saw, oddly new. Perhaps the poor lady lived here no longer, and it was by some trick that Day had been persuaded she did. Perhaps the top flat had been empty – until hastily invaded and transformed into a trap this very afternoon. With his imagination racing and his heart pounding, Cranston walked into the house and hurried upstairs, taking the treads two at a time. There would be another bell at the top. He had only to ring it and he could hardly escape finding out the truth either way.

  He reached the top landing without consciousness of physical effort. There was another bell – and another little frame also. But this frame was empty. He could only barely distinguish the fact, because the landing was poorly lit. He paused to let his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom. He thought he heard voices.

  Cranston strained his ears. One got odd effects in flats, and these voices might really be coming up from somewhere down below. If not, he thought, he knew where he was. Because they were the voices of men – several men – and they all appeared to be talking together. He put his ear to the door, and at once he was certain that the sound came not from downstairs but from inside. Suddenly the voices were louder, as if some inner door had been opened. And now he could distinguish something of their quality. They were foreign voices.

  Some instinct made him draw back. Almost in the same moment the door by which he had been crouching opened. It opened precipitately and a man hurried out. He was thrusting a soft dark hat on his head, and the movement took him past Cranston unheeding. He ran downstairs. The door began to close, as if somebody was shoving it to with a foot from inside. The voices were still talking, and in some sort of mounting excitement. Cranston couldn’t be said to have made up his mind. His body acted for him. He moved up to the door, shoved against it hard, and walked into the flat.

  18

  He was confronting a small dark man with frightened eyes. The man began stuttering and stammering in an unknown tongue. As a door-keeper he was distinctly not formidable, but Cranston didn’t delude himself he would find only the same sort inside. He put a hand on the small man’s neck, swept him without much gentleness against the wall, and walked on.

  He was making, he supposed, a demonstration – showing his private little Cranston flag. Well, that was how he had begun, and it did seem up to him to carry it through. Once more he recalled the bullets spraying on the beach. And this time he remembered also the voices calling from the quarry. They had been particularly detestable. And presumably it was the same voices – or the same sort of voices – that now came to him from some farther room. Decidedly, Day’s pursuers had won. Day must have known about just this risk. But he had gone ahead. Dead or alive, he was worth some sort of salute… Cranston pushed open another door. “Good evening,” he said.

  There
was sudden dead silence, and then a small startling crash as somebody knocked over what must have been a bottle or a glass. Day was in a corner, and four men appeared to have been sitting round him in a close circle. Now they had sprung up and turned upon Cranston, staring. Only Day made no move. Even his bloodshot eyes were motionless in a face that had gone like chalk.

  One of the men threw a swift question at Cranston – but not in English. Then he turned and talked volubly to one of his companions. A third joined in. But the fourth was silent, and this drew Cranston’s eyes to him. Like the other three he was dark, and in dress he was not much distinguished from them. But he was very different, all the same. It was difficult to tell why. Perhaps it was simply because he assumed he was. And now he spoke a single sharp word. There was immediate silence.

  Cranston took advantage of it. “It’s all right, Day. I’ve got things in hand.” He spoke slowly and distinctly. Then he turned to the others. “I suppose,” he said, “that your trade makes it necessary for you to understand English. So listen. You are in the heart of London, and your chances are even smaller than those of your friends in the Highlands. I think you’d better give over. These antics are fit only for a comic strip – a decadent, bourgeois comic strip. I don’t know whether this is still Mrs Day’s flat. But I’m pretty sure it’s not yours. Clear out.”

  At least they were startled. The fourth man glanced at Cranston for a moment and then looked at Day. It almost had the appearance of being interrogatively. “This is altogether unforeseen,” he said in English. “And most awkward. I appear to have been badly served.” He turned and spoke rapidly to his companions in his own language. Cranston didn’t understand a word. And yet suddenly the language told him a great deal. It was, in a fashion, speaking to him. It couldn’t be the language it ought to have been. It wasn’t nearly remote enough. In fact, it was Latin, not Slavonic, and distinguishably first or second cousin to languages he knew.

  He took another look about the room – and then turned to the corner in which, according to his first impression, Day had been surrounded by a threatening group. Beside Day he now saw a low table. It held a decanter, a syphon, glasses and an open box of cigars. Cranston, who had been without consciousness of fear, suddenly felt rather sick. He walked up to Day and just managed to speak to him steadily. “Your wife – does she live here?”

  They looked at each other directly. A muscle quivered at the corner of Day’s mouth, and then with an effort he seemed to turn his face to stone. “My wife? Certainly not.” He spoke with his old irony. “You must have been misled by the little card downstairs. But that was provided by these gentlemen, you know – just in case you happened to take a look.”

  “Have you a wife?”

  “Dear me, yes. She is said to be living at Marlow.” He shook his head. “But I doubt whether she would care to see me again. I would certainly not be so inconsiderate as to intrude upon her.”

  “I see.”

  There was a long silence. Cranston found that he was hoping to feel in himself some flare of anger. But it didn’t come. Only the sense – the acute physical sensation – of sickness increased. He was learning that betrayal is the worst thing of all.

  The fourth man took a step forward. “There is a distressing side to this,” he said. “But, sir, you must take a balanced view. Thanks to you – for I am sure it is largely your doing – our friend here has got safely through. And from this point we know how to look after him. He is enlisted once more under the banner of the free peoples.”

  With an enormous effort, Cranston gave some attention to the man thus orotundly addressing him. “Are you Spanish?” he asked.

  “My culture is Spanish. Let that for the moment suffice.”

  “In fact you come from South America somewhere? And you’re proposing to smuggle Day away in your own interests? He’s been plotting this with you – for a long time, and under the noses of the people he’s been working for? If he managed to get clear of them and make this rendezvous you’d pick him up and get him away?”

  “I must dispute the terms in which you express the matter.” The fourth man suddenly smiled charmingly. “May I offer you a whisky-and-soda? No? Then let me put it rather differently. Let me ask you to consider this matter from the point of view of a civilised man, unfettered by narrow nationalistic notions. Our friend here is in great difficulty. He has abjured the errors into which he had lately fallen. You agree?” The fourth man paused. He was clearly pleased with his own excellent English. “But his own country can scarcely welcome him, or at once reinstate him in his labours – labours, mark you, invaluable for the cause of the free world. There would be vulgar outcry at once. You follow me, Mr – ?”

  “Cranston.” It was Day who composedly supplied the name.

  “Thank you. We see, then, that Mr Day is obliged to seek asylum – would you agree that asylum is the word? – elsewhere. And my country is honoured to provide it.”

  “I see.” Cranston felt horribly tired. The whole business appeared weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. He couldn’t look at Day now. It would be like looking on the very face of treachery… Yet underneath the numbness and shock his brain was working. “Oughtn’t you,” he said to the fourth man, “to have a little talk about this with our Foreign Secretary? And haven’t you, in joining in personally like this, rather overreached yourself?” He pointed to the fourth man’s silent companions. “It’s all very well sending people of that sort along to play a hand like this. But weighing in yourself is another matter. As you said a few minutes ago, it’s most awkward.”

  The fourth man took a second to turn this over. “May I ask,” he said, “what you take me for?”

  “I don’t know your country. Perhaps it’s a big one or perhaps it’s a little one. In either case it may well stand high in the world’s regard.” Cranston paused. “But I should take you to be its Minister at the Court of St James’ – or its Ambassador, if it runs to one. As I say, you’ve been indiscreet.”

  “It is arguable, Mr Cranston, that you have been guilty of some little indiscretion yourself.” The voice of the fourth man had taken on a new edge. “Let it be granted that publicity in the present matter would not be welcome to me. But no more, surely, would it be to you. There is again the factor of vulgar outcry. For nearly twenty-four hours you have been sheltering Mr Day from the law. An inhuman law, no doubt, which enlightened persons like ourselves must be anxious to mitigate. But there it is. Technically, Mr Day is chargeable with some very serious offence – and you have known it ever since you identified him.” Abruptly the voice of the fourth man changed once more. “My dear young man – had you and I not better come to an understanding?”

  “Look at Day.” Cranston now spoke with energy. “I don’t want to – but do you look at him. You’ll see he knows that that’s no good.” Cranston tilted his chin. “At least he knows that – that I won’t just say thank you and walk out quietly, promising to keep mum. Do you know what he is wondering? He’s wondering if you’re up to the standard of his former friends – those that he’s been plotting to swap for you. Are you tough enough? That’s his question. He knows that his only hope is in screwing you to murder.”

  “There is something in that.” As Day spoke he reached for the decanter. “Our young friend, who began so decidedly as a romantic, is developing a realistic temper very fast. Unfortunately he clings to certain ideals of conduct. He won’t, in fact, let go.” Day turned to the fourth man. “In other words, my dear Sagasta, the decision lies with you.”

  The man called Sagasta drummed with his fingers on the back of a chair. He didn’t like it. He walked slowly across the room and back, frowning. Then he gave a sudden nod. One of his assistants stepped instantly to the door.

  Day laughed softly. “That’s a little better. It looks as if we may reach your friends at Porthkennack – is it? – after all. But you’ll have to keep your nerve.”

  Sagasta liked this still less. He had turned very pale. Cranston decided th
at the game wasn’t quite lost. “It will never do,” he said. “Even if you brought it off, your Government would never support you in it. They may want a big man in his line, like Day here, very much. They may be prepared to put him right at the top of a whole big show – which is what it’s now clear to me he’s prepared to sell and resell himself for, poor devil. But your Government won’t stand for a big risk. They have no stomach, you know, for that sort of thing. Why should they have? The blood of the hidalgos doesn’t exactly run in them – does it? Merchants and shopkeepers. They’d let you down.”

  This was a bow drawn decidedly at a venture. Yet it discernibly went home. Sagasta produced a handkerchief and delicately mopped his forehead. “I will take my chance, Mr Cranston. There needn’t, I think, be much risk of unpleasant publicity. If we can smuggle Mr Day out of England alive, we can smuggle you out – how should I put it? – in another state of being. And we needn’t take you so far. Say, just a little beyond the Lizard.”

  Sagasta gave a nod at another of his assistants. The man’s hand went to a pocket. And at that moment an electric bell rang sharply somewhere in the flat.

  Cranston sat down. He was uncertain whether he did so as a gesture or because he was doubtful about the state of his knees. He still didn’t believe that he was frightened, but he felt physically fagged out. It was how the truth about John Day had taken him. His voice, however, was perfectly steady. “I imagine,” he said, “that we are now to be joined by the police. Tiresome for you all… Yes, there they are.”

  The ringing of the bell had been immediately succeeded by a formidable knocking on an outer door. Sagasta snapped out an order to one of the men, who made a dash from the room. It was as if they had recalled the unreliable character of their janitor. But it was too late. There was a sound of brief expostulation in the hall, and then a new figure walked into the room. It was not, however, a policeman. It was Sir Alex Blair.