by Burke, John
“No! How on earth could a handful of men strike so lucky so fast? The technique’s still in its infancy. It’s not just a matter of leaching out pure gold and flogging it to the first buyer who happens to be waiting on the corner of the street.”
“If you know so much...”
“I’ve told you, it’s beginning to fit. But there are big gaps. No tidy solution. There’s something queer – something extra.”
They drove into Wales, still arguing.
Mark approached Bryncroeso along the ridge opposite the Hall. The air was still and clear in the sheltered valley.
Ellen thought they would pursue the narrow road which must sooner or later turn down into the valley, but abruptly Mark swung along a bumpy track.
She gripped the edge of the seat. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“I trust you when we need to find Joe’s Cafe. Trust me when it comes to rural diversions.”
“Depends what you mean by diversions.”
The car lurched over ruts and loose stones, and halted near the edge of a steep drop. As they got out, Ellen reached automatically for her shoulder-bag, and Mark took a binocular case from the back seat.
There was a metallic glint on the hillside near the Hall. Mark examined it, then handed the heavy binoculars to Ellen.
“Is that the tripod you were telling me about – the one you saw when Mrs Parr escorted you around?”
“That’s it.”
“Would you say it was capable of piping commercial quantities of gold mulch up out of the earth?”
“It looked pretty flimsy to me,” Ellen admitted.
“Anything else you spotted on your tour?”
She wondered if she had omitted anything when she gave him her summary. “The old workings. The shed and the wheels. I told you about them?”
“You did.”
“And the waterfall?”
“What about the waterfall?”
“Well, it was just a waterfall. Very picturesque. Only, Fiona said it wasn’t coming down the same way it used to. She seemed to think it had been deflected.”
“Did she, now?” Mark reclaimed the glasses and shuffled forward a step or two.
“Careful!” warned Ellen.
Mark sat down to steady himself. Fighting down her vertigo, she edged alongside him. The rocks that were smooth and mossy above Bryncroeso Hall were raw and vicious here. Below the perilous edge, the first shelf some thirty feet down was a litter of loose, splintered boulders around spiky outcroppings.
“Well,” said Mark at last, after a prolonged scrutiny, “something must certainly have happened over there. You can see the line of the original fault from here. The logical course for a stream and its waterfall. The course it obviously used to take. But there’s been a landslip.”
“Like that subsidence under the road?”
“There were over a hundred shafts, trial levels and excavations in this immediate area. If one of the tunnels under the road caved in, and another one under the waterfall...or maybe one’s just the extension of the other...” Mark shook his head. “But why? There hasn’t been a recent earthquake here.”
“Couldn’t the workings just have collapsed of old age?”
“It’s feasible. But that fault shift is a mighty severe one. I can’t help feeling something’s gone badly wrong. Something they weren’t expecting. Something the Cadwallader Foundation hasn’t been told about.”
“You think we ought to report it?”
“I do. My guess is that Dr Mansell wanted to report it, and...” Mark began to get up. “Come on. It’s time we left here.”
“On that, at least, we are agreed.”
The voice came from behind them. Ellen let out a little shriek and clung to a tuft of grass. The cruel stones below reeled and seemed to suck her down. Mark was on his feet.
“Stay where you are, Mr Nicholson. I don’t think we have been formally introduced, but you are of course Mr Nicholson.”
“Dr van Lynden, I presume?”
"You are guessing.”
“What’s known as an informed guess. Or logical extrapolation, if you like.”
Ellen risked turning her head, without getting up.
Two men stood a few feet away. One of them was the driver of the truck.
“Still meddling?” said the softly inflected, epicene voice of the other. He was a man with sallow, ascetic features and long hands. His fingers were outspread as though to snare Mark and Ellen if they tried to make a run for it.
“Didn’t know you were behind us,” said Mark. “You’ve certainly made good time.”
“You will come with us, please.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But yes. Unless you would prefer a quicker descent into the valley.”
“All those accidents, all at once? You wouldn’t dare. People would get suspicious.”
“There are many regrettable accidents round here, in the mountains. Especially in the tourist season. Especially to people who take stupid risks.”
Mark tensed.
“You are prepared to risk the young lady’s life, Mr Nicholson?”
Van Lynden’s left forefinger twitched. His companion stepped closer to Ellen.
Chapter Nine
David Parr’s expression would have been comic if it had not been so contorted.
“You again? And I see you’ve got your pet Nazi with you this time.”
Mark said: “Your vocabulary’s a bit old-fashioned, Commander Parr.”
Fiona came into the hall with a glass in her hand. It looked like a rather oily gin and tonic – a lot more gin than tonic.
“Oh, great. We’re having a party? Or are we open for business again?”
She swung the flap of the reception desk up and went behind it. With an accomplished gesture she flipped open the register and turned it to face the four arrivals.
Van Lynden was as furious as David but with a deadly cold fury. “What is she doing here?”
“This is my wife,” said David.
“You fool.”
“Ta ever so,” said Fiona. “Sign here, please. Let me see, now.” She sized up the driver. “You must be McIntyre. David’s sailing buddy – right? You don’t look the sort, I must say. Too thin. But I suppose it’s expertise rather than brawn and the old heave-ho?”
“Sailing?” said Mark. “So it could have been you who...”
“Quiet!” said van Lynden venomously. “You will all be quiet.” He bypassed the desk and padded towards David. “How much have you told her, you idiot?”
Fiona drank, and set her glass down on the open page. “You know what they’re like in the wee small hours,” she giggled at Ellen. “You can make them tell you anything.”
Mark said: “You see, Dr van Lynden, it’s impossible to indulge in crude violence in England.”
“Wales,” said Fiona.
“Wales. I beg its pardon. Not quite so reliable, but still roughly the same. Melodrama won’t work. Just when it’s getting rough, everyone knocks off for tea; or decides to go to bed.”
“Now you’re talking.” Fiona blinked covetously at Mark. “Couldn’t agree with you more.”
“It’s all rather absurd,” said Mark.
Ellen caught a glimpse of van Lynden’s face and knew that, however absurd it might be, it was all real.
He said: “I think there is nothing to laugh at.”
Fiona raised her glass again, tut-tutted over a damp ring on the page of the register, and shoved the book an inch or so towards Mark.
“Signing in? You can always put yourself down as Mr and Mrs Smith. We’re broadminded here.”
Van Lynden said to David: “Get rid of her.”
“It’s not that easy,” said Fiona, “as he’s just finding out.”
“And these other two? Where can we put them? There are things to be discussed. Where will they be safe?”
David hesitated.
“You can tell your friend to get the hell out of here,”
said Fiona. “When we want a commissionaire, we’ll advertise for one.”
“I warn you...”
“You’ve done your bit. And you’ve had your fun. Thanks for the contributions towards the emulsion paint and the flashy wallpaper. You’ve had your money’s worth. Time you moved on.” Fiona nodded affably at Mark. “And, you know, I think you two would be happier finding somewhere else for the night.”
“It’s a long walk to our car,” said Mark lightly, matching her tone. “We’d better get started.”
“You are not walking,” said van Lynden, “anywhere.”
Mark turned experimentally towards the door.
McIntyre suddenly had a gun in his hand.
“It won’t work,” said Mark.
“It will work,” said van Lynden with steely conviction.
Fiona looked from one face to another. She tried to stay flippant but, like Ellen, recognised the truth when she saw it.
“I might have known. All that big talk about having taken them...used them...done a big deal. Big deal! Of all people, I ought to have known.” She came round the desk with the empty glass in her hand. “Anyone for hemlock?”
“Stay where you are,” said McIntyre.
Van Lynden said: “I have asked you. Where can we put these two? There is a cellar
“No,” said David.
“If by cellar you mean our meagre wine racks,” chirped Fiona, “you’ll find them at the back of the old scullery, under the mangle.”
“Where, then?” asked van Lynden.
David looked sheepishly at Ellen. He did not dare to meet Fiona’s gaze. He said: “There’s the nursery.”
“I am in no mood for joking.”
“The nursery. At the top of the house. Barred windows, so the kids can’t fall out. Very securely barred.”
“Ah. I see.”
Fiona had stopped when McIntyre told her to. She was only a few feet away from him. The gun jutted towards her. She said: “Is it warm in Rhodesia? I’ve heard all about the wonderful sailing on the lakes in the old spoil pits. Only at second hand, of course. Or is it South Africa you’ll be going to now? David wasn’t too clear.”
“Be quiet,” said David.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that part of the world.” It was the same old ploy, Ellen realised. Fiona was talking ostensibly to McIntyre but really, now as ever, at David. “If there’s room for me in your executive jet...”
“How much have you told her?” asked van Lynden again. “Can’t you keep your hands off women?”
“His main fault,” purred Fiona, “is that he hasn’t the stamina to lay them on often enough.”
Mark said: “And how much is there to tell?”
McIntyre’s gun swung round.
“Go up with him,” said van Lynden. “Take the keys. McIntyre – check the room. Make sure it is safe.”
Mark said: “I don’t know how long you think...”
“I also. I do not know how long.”
David went behind the desk and took a key-ring from the peg-board at the rear.
Fiona said: “My God, I give up. I really do give you up.”
There were two single beds and a cot in the room. In addition to the door which
David opened to admit them, there was a door in the side wall.
“Where does that lead?” grunted McIntyre.
David opened it. There was darkness beyond. He reached in and tugged a light cord, and they saw that it was a bathroom. As the light went on, a fan began to whirr.
“There’s a double bedroom beyond,” David explained to all of them. “The parents’ room. Shared bathroom. The door there is locked from the other side.”
“Right.”
David displayed all the nervousness of a defiantly apologetic landlady in a seaside boarding-house that did not live up to the promise of its advertisements. “Look,” he said to Ellen, “I’m sorry about this. Not my idea. You do understand? Never dreamt it would get out of hand like...”
“All right,” said McIntyre. “Out.”
The gun jerked towards the outer door. David led the way out. McIntyre backed away. The door closed behind him, and they heard the rattle of the key in the lock.
Ellen let herself sag down on the nearest bed.
Mark said: “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“Don’t you start! Besides, you didn’t get me into it. We walked into it together. Hand in hand, you might say.”
“Might I?”
He came and sat on the bed beside her and took her hand. They stayed there for a few minutes, until Ellen was suffused with a quite inappropriate feeling of security. She was safe, shielded, protected.
Abruptly she kissed him; then stood up, sliding her hand away.
“Now. How do we get out of here?”
They examined the windows. The bars were vertical and set close together, screwed into the window-frames from outside. Immediately opposite but lower than this top storey was the undulating roof of the old stables, now garages with green-painted wooden doors. They could just see the edge of the cobbled patch in front of the doors. Tufts of green weed sprouted from between the cobbles. A few golden blobs of stonecrop clung to the ridge tiles of the slate roof. Trees climbing the hillside would keep this wall of the house in shadow for most of the day.
Mark went into the bathroom. The light went on, the fan began to revolve.
The fittings were modern. A short, narrow bath was cramped in against one wall with the lavatory tightly against it. A narrow washbasin protruding from the opposite wall would catch the hip of anyone hurrying in too impetuously. The nursery cornice and ceiling moulding continued through the wall, and it was obvious that this space had been chopped out of the original larger room. There was no window; only the grille of the extractor fan up near the ceiling.
Mark tried the door into the bedroom beyond. As David had told them, it was locked on the far side.
Ellen said: “We could put a message in a bottle and flush it down the loo.”
“We haven’t got a bottle.” As he twitched the cord again and they went back into the nursery, Mark added: “And we don’t have a toothbrush, a towel, a cake of soap – or anything.”
“We won’t be staying for long,” said Ellen bravely.
“I hope not.”
They sat down again, this time on separate beds. The room was pleasant enough but smelt stale. It had not been aired for some time.
The light through the window was dusky and unsatisfactory, yet still strong enough to make the yellow-shaded overhead bulb watery. Mark got up and sat down again several times. He went to the window and raised the lower sash. Ellen joined him. They tried to shake the bars, but they had been firmly fastened.
“This is ridiculous,” Mark exploded. “Bloody ridiculous. They can’t seriously think...” But he let it trail away. Who could tell what those men downstairs might seriously think?
Ellen ventured: “Who are they? I’m lost.”
“My own sense of direction isn’t functioning too well at the moment. But I still say that something went wrong in that experiment. They were supposed to be studying the effects of micro-organic action under strictly controlled conditions. Taking core samples, probably leaving small colonies of bacteria in one or two sealed shafts. Come back for a check after six months, another after twelve. But something ran wild. Deliberately provoked – or purely by chance? Either way, Dr Mansell came back at the wrong time. He had to be shut up.”
“But why? Who are they?” Ellen persisted. “If they were on the original Cadwallader team, why didn’t they go along with Mansell to report what’s happened? What’s in it for them?”
“Rhodesia,” mused Mark. “And South Africa. I wonder how long they’ve been in this country – and how long it took them to worm their way into the Research Centre? A South African...if he were employed by one of the big gold boys there, if he’d been on the payroll of a major consortium...he’d be interested in any new way of getting gold up, wouldn
’t he?”
“But the Cadwallader Foundation would have published the findings eventually, wouldn’t they? Everyone could have had the whole picture.”
“Maybe that’s just the point. The boys who are making all the profit wouldn’t want the whole world to know about the new process – a process that might tip the whole balance of gold distribution. When you’ve got a near monopoly, you don’t particularly want new methods to be made available to all. You don’t want new fields to be opened up. You don’t want the price of your commodity to slump. If there are going to be new techniques, you want them for yourself. Maybe van Lynden started out not knowing how big this thing was going to be. And when he did know, he also knew where the real money was. He had his contacts – old contacts, maybe – and he knew what they would pay for this kind of information. With the Cadwallader team out of the way, van Lynden’s backers could pay for further secret work on the site, could pay David Parr to keep his mouth shut and keep his guest-house closed through the height of the season...could pay enough to make murder worthwhile.”
“Thanks,” said Ellen. “That’s very cheering.”
“They can’t go on killing. Not on and on.”
“If the prize is that rich, they’re not likely to stop now.”
Mark turned away from the window. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stood in the middle of the room, pondering.
In the silence they heard the first faint sounds of somebody coming upstairs in the distance. The footsteps came closer. They reached the door, and stopped.
Mark took his hands out of his pockets.
There was a tap on the door.
“Sorry we can’t open up,” said Mark ironically. “I left the key in my other suit.”
The key squeaked. The door swung back. Fiona came in carrying a large tray. She set it down gingerly on the child’s play-table near the cot.
“Cold, I’m afraid,” she said. “But cold with style. Prepared by the hands of the master. With panache. With salade panachee, anyway.”
Mark strode to the door, his hand out to close it behind her. “Now, let’s get this straight...”
“Back.” McIntyre shouldered the door so that it hit Mark and jarred him backwards. “I share your views about melodrama, Mr Nicholson, but...”
