‘Flack is a chemist: I think I impressed it upon you. Did you notice, Simpson, on the bridge, across the cutting, was an old water-cart? I think you have since learnt that it does not belong to the farmer who owns the land, and that he has never seen it before. It may be possible to discover where that was purchased. In all probability you will find that it was bought a few days ago at the sale of some municipal stores. I noticed in The Times there was an advertisement of such a sale. Do you realise how easy it would be not only to store under pressure, but to make, in that tank, large quantities of a deadly gas, one important element of which is carbon monoxide? Suppose this, or, as it may prove, a more deadly gas, has been so stored, do you realise how simple a matter it would be on a still, breathless morning to throw a big hose over the bridge and fill the hollow with the gas? That is, I am sure, what happened. Whatever else was used, there is still carbon monoxide in the cutting, for when I dropped a match it was immediately extinguished, and every match I burnt near the ground went out. If the car had run right through and climbed the other slope of the cutting, the driver and the men inside the trolley might have escaped death. As it was, rendered momentarily unconscious, the driver turned his wheel and ran into the bank, stopping the trolley. They were probably dead before Flack and his associate, whoever it was, jumped down, wearing gas masks, lifted the driver back into the trolley and drove on.’
‘And the farmer –’ began the Commissioner.
‘His death probably occurred some time after the trolley had passed. He also descended into that death hollow, but the speed at which his car was going carried him up nearer the cutting, though he must have been dead by the time he got out.’
He rose and stretched himself wearily. ‘Now I think I will go and interview Miss Belman and set her mind at rest,’ he said. ‘Did you send her to the hotel, as I asked you, Mr Simpson?’
Simpson stared at him in blank astonishment. ‘Miss Belman?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen Miss Belman!’
Chapter 14
Her head in a whirl, Margaret Belman had stepped into the cab that was waiting at the door of Larmes Keep. The door was immediately slammed behind her, and the cab moved off. She saw her companion: he had shrunk into a corner, and greeted her with a little embarrassed grin. He did not speak until the cab was some distance from the house.
‘My name’s Gray,’ he said. ‘Mr Reeder hadn’t a chance of introducing me. Sergeant Gray, C. I. D.’
‘Mr Gray, what does all this mean? This instrument I am to get . . . ?’
Gray coughed. He knew nothing about the instrument, he explained, but his instructions were to put her into a car that would be waiting at the foot of the hill road.
‘Mr Reeder wants you to go up by car. You didn’t see Brill anywhere, did you?’
‘Brill?’ she frowned. ‘Who is Brill?’
He explained that there had been two officers inside the grounds, himself and the man he had mentioned.
‘But what is happening? Is there anything wrong at Larmes Keep?’ she asked.
She had no need to ask the question. That look in J. G. Reeder’s eyes had told her that something indeed was very wrong.
‘I don’t know, miss,’ said Gray diplomatically. ‘All I know is that the Chief Inspector is down here with a dozen men, and that looks like business. I suppose Mr Reeder wanted to get you out of it.’
She didn’t ‘suppose’ – she knew, and her heart beat a little quicker. What was the mystery of Larmes Keep? Had all this to do with the disappearance of Ravini? She tried hard to think calmly and logically, but her thoughts were out of control.
The station fly stopped at the foot of the hill, and Gray jumped out. A little ahead of him she saw the tail light of a car drawn up by the side of the roadway.
‘You’ve got the letter, miss? The car will take you straight to Scotland Yard, and Mr Simpson will look after you.’
He followed her to the car and held open the door for her, and stood in the roadway watching till the tail light disappeared round a bend of the road.
It was a big car, and Margaret made herself comfortable in the corner, pulled the rug over her knees, and settled down to the two hours’ journey. The air was a little close: she tried unsuccessfully to pull down one of the windows, then tried the other. Not only was there no glass to the windows, but the shutters were immovable. Something scratched her knuckle. She felt along the frame of the window . . . Screws, recently inserted. It was a splinter of the raw wood which had cut her.
With growing uneasiness she felt for the inside handle of the door, but there was none. A search of the second door revealed a like state of affairs.
Her movements must have attracted the attention of the driver, for the glass panel was pushed back and a harsh voice greeted her.
‘You can sit down and keep quiet! This isn’t Reeder’s car: I’ve sent it home.’
The voice went into a chuckle that made her blood run cold.
‘You’re coming with me . . . to see life . . . Reeder’s going to weep tears of blood. You know me, eh? . . . Reeder knows me, I wanted to get him tonight. But you’ll do, my dear.’
Suddenly the glass panel was shut to. He turned off the main road and was following a secondary, his object being, she guessed, to avoid the big towns and villages en route. She put out her hand and felt the wall of the car. It was an all-weather body with a leather back. If she had a knife she might cut –
She gasped as a thought struck her, and, reaching up, she felt the metal fastening that kept the leather hood attached. Exerting all her strength, she thrust back the flat hook and, bracing her feet against the front of the machine, dragged at the leather hood. A rush of cold air came in as the hood began slowly to collapse. The closed car was now an open car. She could afford to lose no time. The car was making thirty miles an hour, but she must take the risk of injury. Scrambling over the back of the hood, she gripped tight at the edge, and let herself drop into the roadway.
Although she turned a complete somersault, she escaped injury in some miraculous fashion, and, coming to her feet, cold with fear and trembling in every limb, she looked round for a way of escape. The hedge on her left was high and impenetrable. On her right was a low wooden fence, and over this she climbed as she heard the squeak of brakes and saw the car come to a standstill.
Even as she fled, she was puzzled to know what kind of land she was on. It was not cultivated; it was more like common land, for there was springy down beneath her feet, and clumps of gorse bushes sent out their spiny fingers to clutch at her dress as she flew past. She thought she heard the man hailing her, but fled on in the darkness.
Somewhere near at hand was the sea. She could smell the fragrance of it. Once when she stopped to take breath she could hear the distant thunder of the waves as they rolled up some unseen beach. She listened, almost deafened by the beating of her heart. ‘Where are you? Come back, you fool . . .’ The voice was near at hand. Not a dozen yards away she saw a black figure moving, and had all her work to stifle the scream that rose in her throat. She crouched down behind a bush and waited, and then to her horror she saw a beam of light spring from the darkness. He had an electric lamp and was fanning it across the ground.
Detection was inevitable, and, springing to her feet, she ran, doubling from side to side in the hope of outwitting her pursuer. Now she found the ground sloping under her feet, and that gave her additional speed. She had need of it, for he saw her against the skyline, and came on after her, a babbling, shrieking fury of a man. And now capture seemed inevitable. She made one wild leap to escape his outstretched hands, and her feet suddenly trod on nothing. Before she could recover, she was falling, falling. She struck a bush, and the shock and pain of the impact almost made her faint. She was falling down a steep slope, and her wild hands clutched tree and sand and grass, and then, just as she had given up all hope, she fou
nd herself rolling over and over on a level plateau, and came to rest with one leg hanging over a sheer drop of two hundred feet. Happily, it was dark.
Margaret Belman did not realise how near to death she had been till the dawn came up.
Below her was the sea and a slither of yellow sand. She was looking into a little bay that held no human dwelling so far as she could see. This was not astonishing, for the beach was only approachable from the water. Somewhere on the other side of the northern bluff, she guessed, was Siltbury. Beneath her a sheer fall over the chalky face of the cliff; above her, a terribly steep slope, but which might be negotiated, she thought hopefully.
She had lost one shoe in her fall, and after a little search found this, so near to the edge of the cliff that she grew dizzy as she stooped to pick it up.
The plateau was about fifty yards long, in the shape of a half-moon, and was almost entirely covered with gorse bushes. The fact that she found dozens of nests was sufficient proof that this spot was not visited even by the most daring of cliff-climbers. She understood now the significance of the low rail on the side of the road, which evidently followed the sea-coast westwards for some miles. How far was she from Larmes Keep? she wondered – until the absurdity of considering such a matter occurred to her. How near was she to starvation and death was a more present problem.
Her task was to escape from the plateau. There was a chance that she might be observed from the sea, but it was a remote one. The few pleasure-boats that went out from Siltbury did not go westward; the fishing fleet invariably tacked south. Lying face downward, she looked over the edge, in the vain hope that she would find an easy descent, but none was visible. She was hungry, but, though she searched the nests, there were no eggs to be found.
There was nothing to be done but to make a complete exploration of the plateau. Westward it yielded nothing, but on the eastern side she discovered a scrub-covered slope which apparently led to yet another plateau, not so broad as the one she was on.
To slide down was an easy matter; to check herself so that she did not go beyond the plateau offered greater difficulty. With infinite labour she broke off two stout branches of a thick furze bush, and, using these as a skier uses her stick to check her progress, she began to shuffle down, feet first. She could move slowly enough when the face of the declivity was composed of sand or loam, or when there were friendly bushes to hold, but there were broad stretches of weatherworn rock to slide across, and on these the stick made no impression and her velocity increased at an alarming rate.
And then, to her horror, she discovered that she was not keeping direction; that, try as she did, she was slipping to the left of the plateau, and though she strove desperately to move further to the right, she made no progress. The bushes that littered the upper slope were more infrequent here. There was indication of a recent landslide, which might continue down to the sea-level or might end abruptly and disastrously over the edge of some steep cliff. Slipping, sometimes on her back, sometimes sideways, sometimes on her face, she felt her momentum increase with every yard she covered. The ends of the ski-sticks were frayed to feathery splinters, and already the desired plateau was above her. Turning her head, she saw the white face of it dropping to the unseen deeps.
Now she knew the worst. The slope twisted round a huge rock and dropped at an acute angle into the sea. Almost before she could realise the danger ahead, she was slipping faster and faster through the loam and sand, the centre of a new landslide she had created. Boulders of a terrifying size accompanied her – by a hair’s-breadth she escaped being crushed under one.
And then without warning she was shot into the air as from a catapult. She had a swift vision of tumbling green below, and in another second the water had closed over her and she was striking out with all her strength . . .
It seemed almost an eternity before she came to the surface. Fortunately, she was a good swimmer, and, looking round, she saw that the yellow beach was less than fifty yards away. But it was fifty yards against a falling tide, and she was utterly exhausted when she dragged herself ashore and fell on the sand.
She ached from head to foot; her hands and limbs were lacerated. She felt that her body was one huge bruise. As she lay recovering her breath she heard one comforting sound, the splash of falling water. Half-way down the cliff face was a spring, and, staggering across the beach, she drank eagerly from her cupped hands. She was parched; her throat was so dry that she could hardly articulate. Hunger she might bear, but thirst was unendurable. She might remain alive for days, supposing she were not discovered before that time.
There was now no need for her to make a long reconnaissance of the beach: the way of escape lay open to her. A water-hollowed tunnel led through the bluff and showed her yet another beach beyond. Siltbury was not in sight. She had no idea how far she was from that desirable habitation of human people, and did not trouble to think. After she had satisfied her thirst she took off her shoes and stockings and made for the tunnel.
The second bay was larger and the beach longer. There were, she found, small masses of rocks jutting far into the sea that had to be negotiated with bare feet. The beach was longer than she had thought, and so far as she could see there was no outlet, nor did the cliff diminish in height. She had expected to find a cliff path, and this hope was strengthened when she discovered the rotting hull of a boat drawn high and dry on the beach. It was, she judged, about eight o’clock in the morning. She had started wet through, but the warm September sun dried her rags--for rags they were. She had all the sensations of a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island, and after a while the loneliness and absence of all kinds of human society began to get on her nerves.
Before she reached the end of the beach she saw that the only way into the next bay was by swimming to where the rocky barrier was low enough to be climbed. She could with great comfort to herself have discarded what remained of her clothes, but beyond these rocks might lie civilisation, and, tying her wet shoes and stockings together, she made fast her shoes, and, knotting them about her waist, waded into the sea and swam steadily, looking for a likely place to land. This she found – a step-shaped pyramid of rocks that looked easier to negotiate than in fact they were. By dint of hard climbing she came to the summit.
The beach here was shorter, the cliff considerably higher. Across the shoulder of rock running to the sea she saw the white houses of Siltbury, and the sight gave her courage. Descending from the rocky ridge was even more difficult than climbing, and she was grateful when at last she sat upon a flat ledge and dangled her bruised feet in the water.
Swimming back to the land taxed her strength to the full. It was nearly an hour before her feet touched firm sand and she staggered up the beach. Here she rested, until the pangs of hunger drove her towards the last visible obstacle.
There was one which was not visible. After a quarter of an hour’s walk she found her way barred by a deep sea river which ran under the overhung cliff. She had seen this place before: where was it? And then she remembered, with an exclamation.
This was the cave that Olga had told her about, the cave that ran under Larmes Keep. Shading her eyes, she looked up. Yes, there was the little landslide; part of the wall that had been carried away protected from a heap of rubble on the cliff side.
Suddenly Margaret saw something which made her breath come faster. On the edge of the deep channel which the water had cut in the sand was the print of a boot, a large, square-toed boot with a rubber heel. It had been recently made. She looked farther along the channel and saw another: it led to the mouth of the cave. On either side of the rugged entrance was a billow of firm sand left by the retreating waters, and again she saw the footprint. A visitor to the cave, perhaps, she thought. Presently he would come out and she would explain her plight, though her appearance left little need for explanation.
She waited, but there was no sign of the man. Stooping, she tried t
o peer into its dark depths. Perhaps, if she were inside out of the light, she could see better. She walked gingerly along the sand ledge, but as yet her eyes, unaccustomed to the darkness, revealed nothing.
She took another step, passed into the entrance of the cave; and then, from somewhere behind, a bare arm was flung round her shoulder, a big hand closed over her mouth. In terror she struggled madly, but the man held her in a grip of iron, and then her senses left her and she sank limply into his arms.
Chapter 15
Mr Reeder was not an emotional man. For the first time in his life Inspector Simpson learnt that behind the calm and imperturbable demeanour of the Public Prosecutor’s chief detective lay an immense capacity for violent language. He fired a question at the officer, and Simpson nodded.
‘Yes, the car returned. The driver said that he had orders to go back to London. I thought you had changed your plans. You’re staying with this bullion robbery, Reeder?’
Mr Reeder glared across the desk, and despite his hardihood Inspector Simpson winced.
‘Staying with hell!’ hissed Reeder. Simpson was seeing the real and unsuspected J. G. Reeder and was staggered. ‘I’m going back to interview that monkey-faced criminologist, and I’m going to introduce him to forms of persuasion which have been forgotten since the Inquisition!’
Before Simpson could reply, Mr Reeder was out of the door and flying down the stairs.
* * *
It was the hour after lunch, and Daver was sitting at his desk, twiddling his thumbs, when the door was pushed open unceremoniously and Mr Reeder came in. He did not recognise the detective, for a man who in a moment of savage humour slices off his side-whiskers brings about an amazing change in his appearance. And with the vanishing of those ornaments there had been a remarkable transformation in Mr Reeder’s demeanour. Gone were his useless pince-nez which had fascinated a generation of law-breakers; gone the gentle, apologetic voice, the shyly diffident manner.
The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder Page 47
