The Secret Vanguard Read online

  The elderly man glanced first about the hall and then at Sheila in polite surprise. ‘Spies!’ he said. ‘This sounds more important than all these goodbyes and God bless yous.’ He chuckled, urbanely sceptical. ‘Had we better go into the library? But what about a cup of tea? My dear boy, if you will only give the lady some tea, then in just five minutes I shall be able to join you.’

  Sheila’s companion hesitated. ‘Very well. I expect Miss Grant would be the better–’

  ‘Miss Grant?’ The elderly man’s face changed and he spoke almost brusquely to Sheila. ‘You’re not Ned Farquharson’s niece that we’re all hunting for?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ve–’

  ‘And you’re all right? Praised be! We’ll go into the library and telephone him at once. And you shall tell me all about it. I ought to say my name’s Belamy Mannering. I’ve known your uncle for years. Spies! We’ll have our chief constable over in half an hour. Be a good fellow’ – he turned to the younger man – ‘and apologize for me to the folk who are left. We mustn’t forget that tea. Could you eat a crumpet? This way.’

  And Sheila was swept down a long corridor and into a shadowy, book-lined room. The tea followed almost instantly; doors were closed; she was left alone with her host. He placed her in a low chair in a window embrasure, sat himself down at a desk and reached for a telephone. ‘I shall have Farquharson and the police,’ he said, ‘before you’ve helped yourself to sugar and cream.’ He turned and talked with brisk authority into the receiver. From far away came the sound first of one and then of another smoothly retreating car.

  Sheila poured out a cup of tea and glanced through the French window before her. It gave upon a terrace with a light balustrade, and beyond this a long flight of steps, more Italian than feudal Scottish, led down to a landing stage and an expanse of water. This ancient pile – or a modern wing of it – was built directly upon a loch – a loch which stretched between precipitous pinewoods into distance, like a sinuous streak of silver on the dark fur of a slumbering beast… From the other side of the house came the hum of a third car departing down the avenue. The party was breaking up.

  ‘And now tell me about it.’ Belamy Mannering took a piece of notepaper from a drawer beside him and fished for a gold pencil. ‘Tell me about it and let us see if there is anything more we can do at once.’

  It was a task from which she suddenly wavered. She must be more horribly tired than she knew. Sheila’s glance strayed through the window once more and caught a little motorboat moored below. It was rocking slightly to some swell on the loch – and she felt her head rock with it. Horribly tired. She braced herself, focused her eyes on the square of paper before Mannering, and began to talk – slowly, clearly.

  She told her story and here and there he asked a question, scribbled on the notepaper… Something was tugging at her mind.

  ‘And – except for the young American – nobody knows about all this, about the poem and the rest of it? I am the first person you’ve managed to tell?’

  His tone was polite again rather than eager: it was an odd story, but until the proper authorities came there was nothing much to be done. He seemed to be feeling like that… And again Sheila felt a queer tug at her mind. It was with an unnatural fixity that she was now staring at the little sheet of notepaper on the desk. Surely she was hypnotizing herself with it, as one can do with a highlight on glass, a glittering coin.

  ‘Nobody knows about the poem?’ She was echoing his words mechanically. Which was stupid. And there was something she had forgotten: something more to tell.

  The top right-hand corner. The tug came from there. From the letterhead, upside down and foreshortened before her:‘Knows about the poem?’ she reiterated – and made a great effort of concentration.

  CASTLE TROY

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re the first person I’ve managed to tell, Mr – Mannering.’

  This was Castle Troy. It was by this immemorial pile that Harry McQueen had stood and seen the wind-cuffer. And she remembered Dick Evans’ words: ‘It needs a starting point. If you know where you are to begin with…’

  That was it. If possible the starting point would of course be the home base. The postman, thought Sheila. The young man with the blue eyes who had taken quiet pleasure in telling her that his name was Alaster Mackintosh; who had, in fleetingly un-English idiom, asked if she was an educated lady. The pistol now lying in the glove box of his car. The casual question of the man sitting in front of her: I am the first person you’ve managed to tell?

  Sheila put out a steady hand and took another quarter of crumpet. An immense anger was deep inside her. Which was good, she said to herself. The right glands had opened. And she would get out of this toughest spot of all… ‘No,’ she heard herself saying calmly; ‘that’s not quite correct. I did say something to someone. I wonder if it was unwise? Only to one of your guests.’ She bit firmly into the crumpet.

  ‘Ah.’ Belamy Mannering put something like indulgent rebuke into the monosyllable. ‘One of my guests?’

  ‘It was when Mr Mackintosh ran back to get something from his car. An old lady – I can’t even remember her name, but she’s a friend of my mother’s and recognized me as she was getting into her car. I was so glad after all this of a face I knew, and I babbled rather. I had just told her how I’d been caught by spies and escaped, when Mr Mackintosh came back and rather hurried me away.’

  ‘Alaster is very discreet. But he should have had better manners, all the same.’

  He has a nerve, thought Sheila – an exquisite nerve. If this were true – and he believes it for the moment – it might mean the headlong break-up of his whole organization. And now, how is he going to react?

  He looked casually at his watch. ‘Would it be Lady Hern?’ he asked.

  It might be a trap. But Sheila saw a chance that made a risk worthwhile. ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied. ‘I remember now. I recognized her car. Mother calls it Lady Hern’s hearse. Because, you know, she won’t allow it to be driven above fifteen miles an hour.’ Sheila tucked her legs beneath her and took yet more crumpet.

  ‘Really? I never knew that.’ Belamy Mannering stood up. ‘I think – if you don’t mind – we’ll have Alaster in again.’

  ‘I think Mr Mackintosh is charming.’

  He was gone – with frank haste. And Sheila sprang to her feet. Lady Hern was all right: the false Alaster would explain at once that his captive had never been out of his sight. Which meant, incidentally, that she had about two minutes. She picked up the telephone.

  And nothing happened. Of course. Those fake conversations…the instrument had previously been cut off elsewhere. It was the first trick lost. But somewhere in the castle or its courtyard there might be guests still. She ran to the door.

  Locked. He had not after all taken chances. Perhaps half a minute to go. Sheila ran to the window, opened it, and was on the terrace. Still no chances: there was a man on guard at either end, and these converged on her instantly as she appeared. Just one chance: Sheila ran straight forward and leapt the balustrade.

  She landed on a lower terrace, and the drop was sufficient to give her a nasty jar. But she was uncrippled and scrambled up to find the broad stone steps before her. There were shouts behind. There were always shouts behind: they had become part of her normal background. She ran down the steps and jumped into the motorboat.

  At this point, she thought, the instalment should end. Will the heroine get away? Come next week and see. She had turned this and pulled that – controls exactly like those of a car. She had remembered to cast off. All without a hitch. The heroine has escaped – only she is heading at considerable speed straight for the bank. Swing the wheel. Remember to wave.

  Sheila waved.

  All about her the water leapt and spat.

  A machine-gun, perhaps.

  17: Appleby Looks on Both
Sides

  ‘They weren’t coupled?’ said Appleby. ‘Well, that seems pretty conclusive to me.’ He turned to one of the men standing beside him in the dusk. ‘Don’t you agree, Mackintosh?’

  Alaster Mackintosh nodded sombrely. ‘Oh, yes, I agree all right. It’s the trail at last.’

  ‘It’s virtually impossible,’ said the engineer, ‘that even one truck should have started off by itself. But that it should, and that then another truck not coupled to it should follow, is a thing unlikely to happen once in’ – he paused conscientiously – ‘about two million years.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Appleby. He had swung himself up into the first truck and was poking about with a torch.

  ‘The trucks were set successively rolling from their siding by some human agency. And not one hard upon the other. There was some sort of interval.’

  ‘You mean,’ asked Mackintosh, ‘because of this smash?’

  ‘Just that. The first truck was halted here without much damage: that is because this little place, being at the tail of a long gradient, has excellent buffers just in case. But the buffers, which are semi-pneumatic, were damaged; I’ve had them down and I can tell you what happened. They went slowly out of action. The second truck caused this considerable smash-up because when it arrived – at least two minutes after the first – there was practically no buffer action left.’

  ‘But mightn’t the trucks’ – Appleby’s voice came from within – ‘have started together and come down the line at different speeds?’

  ‘They’re identical trucks, both unloaded, and both recently overhauled. I don’t think they would string themselves out to that extent.’

  ‘Particularly,’ said Mackintosh, ‘if there were several people in the second and only one person in the first. And, if you ask me, that’s it: escape and pursuit. There’s this report of several prowling men about the village. You bet they all came in the second truck… Anything inside, Appleby?’

  The engineer interrupted quickly. ‘That reminds me. There was a bicycle. It seems to have been pitched out up the line just after the truck started. And that’s all we’ve found. Except that somebody appears to have had a campfire up there recently – right in the middle of the halt itself.’

  ‘Odd.’ The torch still flitted about; Appleby’s voice came unemotionally from behind it. ‘And as for anything inside – well, the girl was here.’

  ‘How on earth–’

  ‘A splintered floor and caught in it a tuft of blue West of England cloth. What she is described as wearing. Not an academic certainty, perhaps. But in the present crisis of our affairs worth taking as conclusive. Question is, which end to begin.’ Appleby scrambled out of the truck.

  Mackintosh stepped back and looked at the sky. ‘Both. We’ll split. You work the village there and follow the whither. I’ll take the maps along the line and tackle the whence. Reconnoitre the whole district round the halt. There’s a moon.’ He made an impatient movement. ‘But this is just the girl. It’s a long way round to Rodney Orchard either way.’

  ‘No doubt. But we have plenty of men taking what direct routes there are. As a matter of sober calculation I’m all for the detour by the girl. It’s a fair guess that she knows – and that no one else we can contact does.’ Appleby turned to the engineer. ‘What about the time-table of all this?’

  ‘Nothing had happened when the ten-forty went through this morning. The thing was spotted by the driver of the next train, the one-seven.’

  ‘What about comings and goings in this little station?’

  ‘Practically none. One passenger got off the ten-forty here. He turned up again and caught the six-fifteen back – that was just before you arrived. Apart from my own gang there has been nobody else all day. And this passenger is well known – in fact he’s one, of the established institutions of the line. Harry McQueen, the blind fiddler. I’ve been on the wire, but haven’t traced where he got off.’

  ‘While he was here he didn’t go to the village,’ said Mackintosh.

  ‘He may have been hanging about all the time. He’ll sit on a platform or in a nearby shed for hours just waiting for the next train.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘We add Harry McQueen to Rodney Orchard and Sheila Grant as people for whom every policeman in Scotland is searching. This fiddler spent hours round about here without going near the village or being seen by a soul. I like the sound of him.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ said Mackintosh, ‘he’s a poet. Rhymes of a Lossie Lad or something of the sort. I’ve bought a copy every year since I was fourteen. Never looked inside.’

  ‘This affair becomes a perfect nest of singing birds.’ Appleby laughed harshly. ‘And, as I remember an earnest don frequently saying, poetry alone is capable of saving us. It’s literally true. We just must have a piece of bogus Swinburne about the westerly spur of a mountain over the centre of a bay: it’s our only quick pointer to this foolhardy ass Orchard. And these people are an uncomfortable number of moves ahead – and the whole thing is so important that they shot the little fellow Ploss and risked a kidnapping just to prevent the chance of leakage…’ Appleby was striding rapidly down the platform; Mackintosh was beside him; the engineer had withdrawn. ‘We’ll split, as you say. But I think we’re beaten.’

  ‘This time.’

  ‘This time. Unless–’ Appleby paused. ‘Mackintosh, have you thought why Orchard went off like this?’

  ‘Couldn’t stand town. Disliked ARP trenches with ducks in them and sandbags sprouting grass. Rural holiday until the curtain goes up.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Or there’s Neaera’s hair. Tangled in the tresses of it. Girl who for some reason likes the very private life. Or other private foible.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Or job of work. Even chemists, I believe, do their critical bits just navel-gazing. And there was that briefcase.’

  ‘Exactly. And our chance is in that. We have to hope that the briefcase was empty, and continues so. These people are ahead. The clock’s against us. But suppose they are in the position of having to wait. You can’t steal another man’s work until his imagination has conceived it, can you? Orchard goes off to incubate something in solitude – and they’re around him, waiting. Pray for that.’ Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘If only the girl could have–’ He stopped in his stride. ‘Fool that I am!’ he said quietly. ‘I looked everywhere but in the place I ought.’ He turned and ran back along the platform.

  When Mackintosh overtook him he was down on the line, flashing his torch on the sides of the first truck. The circle of light moved across the open door, dropped, ran horizontally left and then right. ‘The point,’ Appleby was saying, ‘is that the girl is reported as having brains. But it’s a long chance, all the same. You’ve marked it a hundred times. It intrigued you as a boy… There.’ On the side of the truck the beam of light had picked out a little metal frame which enclosed a square of faded pasteboard. ‘A sort of case history of the truck, is it? Or its destination and loading? As often as not they don’t use it – just scribble on the side in chalk…’ His voice rose in sudden sharp excitement. ‘PTO. Did you ever see one that was pencilled with that?’ His hand went out and removed the card. There was a moment’s silence. And then Appleby’s voice came quietly out of the dusk.

  Where the western spur of the furthermost mountain

  Hovers falcon-like over the heart of the bay,

  Past seven sad leagues and a last lonely fountain,

  A mile towards tomorrow the dead garden lay.

  Again there was a pause, and Appleby spoke more quietly still. ‘It’s initialled S G and has been scribbled at top speed. Brains, Mackintosh. She’s done her part. And I nearly muffed mine.’

  ‘We’ll find that girl.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Appleby climbed back to the platform and handed over the card. ‘J
ust what would you say we’ve got now?’

  ‘We’ve presumably got all that the girl had when they felt it necessary to nab her. On the other hand, by this time she probably knows more. She’s been in their hands and escaped again. From a counter-espionage point of view hers may be about the most important life in these islands. Not an enviable role, poor child.’ Mackintosh stared at the square of soiled pasteboard, frowned. ‘The clue’s here, if we can follow it – the thread that will take us to Orchard.’ His voice rose. ‘If we can get down to five miles – to ten – we’ll have a battalion out. We’ll have a flight up at dawn that not a rabbit shall escape from on all these moors.’

  ‘My dear boy’ – Appleby’s voice was gentle – ‘that’s capital. But can we read the clue? This verse: it means something definite to them. You’re the topographer of the expedition. Does it mean anything to you?’

  Mackintosh nodded and read the verse through again. Then for a fraction of a second he looked up at the empty evening sky. It was, Appleby guessed, a moment in which thinking was no good: the thing had to come.

  ‘It means the Wind-cuffer,’ Mackintosh said.

  18: Deluge at Dabdab

  The loch was darkening; behind the motorboat a gash of foam pointed towards Castle Troy. It was a long, keen gash like a brush stroke – for a craft with the speed of this Sheila had never boarded before, let alone attempted to navigate. She praised heaven for two crumpets and a dish of tea: spoil which made all the difference to her hand and head.

  She had travelled a mile at least, but still she kept the throttle full out. It was scarcely an occasion to stand upon the order of her going, even if at this pace a touch from a floating log would mean the end of her. Better that than be beaten again by Belamy Mannering and the false Alaster. And there was exhilaration in swapping dangers; the motion was not in itself disconcerting – rather like a gargantuan canter – and she could concentrate on the difficult job. The difficult job was to look right and left; there was dizziness in turning one’s eyes anywhere but straight ahead.