"Are you quite comfortable?*' he asked, without turning his head.
"I guess so,’ replied his passenger, and the meekness in her voice at once kindled his suspicion. That air of demure femininity had led him up the garden path on their first meeting. He wasn't going to be caught again.
Silence reigned. They sped past Anniesland Cross, turned right on to the Boulevard. At a steady fifty miles per hour they approached Alexandria and Loch Lomond. So engrossed were they in their own thoughts that neither of them noticed the sun coming out to give promise of a beautiful day.
Farm-workers were busy in the fields, sowing and harrowing — and it did occur to Kenneth that never before had he seen so many tractors at work and so few horses. Farming, it seemed, like police detection, was becoming an exact science.
He thoroughly approved of the idea — though at the back of his mind there was beginning to form a suspicion that science might not, after all, provide the answer to everything.
It was only a passing reflection, however, and he was mainly preoccupied with making plans for the anxious days ahead in Glendale. But something always seemed to interrupt his train of thought. It was a picture of Veronica Jane as she had entered the car. That wisp of a hat, for instance, perched so provocatively on her head; those lowered eyelashes, long and expressive; that swinging skirt and the dainty ankles beneath it…
He looked in the driving-mirror and met her eyes. She smiled at once, like a naughty child caught in the act and trying quickly to come to terms with an irate parent; but he was so embarrassed that his hand jerked on the wheel and he had difficulty in avoiding an oncoming lorry stacked high with boxes of herring from Tarbert.
Thereafter, for a considerable time, he studiously avoided even a glance in the direction of the mirror.
When they reached it, Loch Lomond sparkled in the sun; and beyond the woods and hills on its opposite bank, the Ben stood snow-capped and quiet, a streamer of mist encircling its summit like the gauzy scarf of a noble lady. By the roadside, trees and meadows were bursting with green life. There was excitement in the countryside — the pulsing excitement of spring — and as time went on Kenneth, to his surprise, found it present in himself.
Near Luss he slowed down behind a column of red buses filled with tourists on their way to Inverary.
Veronica Jane leaned forward. “Couldn’t we stop for a moment? I’d love to take a photograph of Loch Lomond — and it would allow these smelly old buses to get clear ahead of us.”
The odour of burnt diesel oil was certainly becoming a nuisance.
“By all means,” he said, bringing the car to a smooth stop.
Her hat and jacket had now been discarded. She emerged on to the road slimly elegant in a turquoise-shaded blouse, her hair rippling like spun gold in the breeze. Kenneth thought she looked younger and more innocent than ever.
She bent over her camera, shading the lens with one hand.
“That should make a good picture,” she said, finally. “All those trees over there, the islands and the glint of the lake.”
“The loch,” he corrected her.
“Why, yes — the loch! I do show my ignorance, don’t I! Well, as I was saying, this ought to make a good picture, but it lacks — well, it lacks human interest. Could you stand over by the fence, Sergeant MacDonald, and…”
“I’m sorry,” he said, hardening his heart. “Being photographed isn’t part of my job.”
She sighed. “Oh, well, if you object” Then an idea occurred to her. She broke off and smiled. “Say, could you take the photograph? I mean, if I went and stood by the fence”
In his turn Kenneth sighed. “All right,” he said, inwardly annoyed by his own weakness in giving way. “Give me the camera.”
“Thank you ever so much! You must think me an awful nuisance?”
“Not at all!”
He examined the various levers, tucked the camera firmly against his chest and manoeuvred himself into a suitable position, with the sun behind him. Then he looked up and saw that Veronica Jane had perched herself on the white fence and, with hands clasped about one knee, was smiling towards him in anticipation. Her skirt billowed out above one silken leg, which pointed down and maintained her balance on a lower rung. He had to admit that for a picture of the loch she was the perfect embodiment of “human interest.”
“Shoot, Arthur Rank!” she said.
In spite of himself he chuckled, and in happy surprise she flung back her head and laughed. He snapped her like that.
“A beauty!” he said, with unexpected enthusiasm. “Let’s try one or two more in case it doesn’t come out.”
When the spool was finished they returned to the car. Kenneth prepared to assist her into the back, but with one foot on the running-board she hesitated.
“Do you mind if I come beside you in front? It seems silly to be so far away from each other.”
In common politeness he couldn’t refuse, though the idea caused him uneasiness.
“I don't mind in the least,” he said, hoping that she wouldn't find him too awkward and uninteresting.
After a while, however, it dawned on him that he liked her to be there beside him. They didn't speak much, but oddly enough there was no constraint in their silence.
At Arrochar they passed the red buses, parked in a double row outside a hotel. And though Kenneth scarcely noticed it, they also passed a powerful grey car which stood at the far end of the village. Its engine was running, and almost as soon as the police-car went by it moved off in pursuit.
As they began the steep ascent into Argyll, with the Cobbler craggy and majestic on their right, Veronica Jane took out her cigarettes.
‘‘Shall I light one for you?" she inquired.
“Er — thank you very much.''
When he got it there was a smear of lipstick on the end. They laughed about that, and for a time they were more at ease than they had ever been in each other's company.
All at once she turned to him. “I'm sorry about last night. When you lifted me so suddenly I got a fright, and — and I just said the first thing that came into my head.”
He saw the road winding up into the bare, lonely hills. So she had decided to grasp the nettle of their tacit enmity. In a way he admired her for it and attempted to match her courage.
“You called me ‘insufferable',” he reminded her, pressing his foot more firmly on the accelerator as the car checked on a steeper gradient.
“I know. I also said you had done it to annoy Hugh, but I didn’t mean that. I apologize.”
Was she sincere — or had she an ulterior motive in thus humbling herself?
“I may as well admit,” she went on, “that I didn't like the idea of having a policeman butting into my private life. I still don't. But you have your orders from Uncle Bill. I realize that now.”
He wanted to tell her how glad he was that she understood at last; but shyness held his tongue.
“Both Dad and Uncle Bill imagine I'm in danger,” she continued. “I don’t agree. But for their sakes I think we should try to make the best of it. I don't suppose you like this business any more than I do?” she added, with a quick glance in his direction.
She saw his mouth harden.
“I hate it,” he confessed.
It was as if a cold, inimical air had entered the car, and almost at once Kenneth wished he hadn’t spoken. The comradeship that had grown up between them after the incident of the photograph was suddenly dead, and he cursed himself for a clumsy-tongued idiot…
They were nearing the top of Rest-and-be-thankful Hill, with the old road winding down like a thread into the valley far below, when Veronica Jane made an attempt to revive the shattered conversation.
"Do you believe those two men last night were trying to get me?”
He changed down and let the car climb easily over the brow of the hill.
"I’m not quite certain,” he answered, carefully.
"Surely Mike O’Sullivan would never dream of send
ing anyone over here?”
"In my opinion he has already done so. I didn’t tell you last night, in case it would spoil your party, but you should know that a man called Max Bergman — alias the Actor — is thought to have arrived in this country within the past few days. He’s an associate of the O’Sullivan gang.”
She smoothed her skirt and smiled. "Then I do need a watch-dog!” she remarked, but it was obvious from her slightly mocking tone that she remained only partially convinced of the threat to her safety. "Tell me,” she went on, "do the police often get jobs like this? Protection jobs, I mean.”
He nodded. "More often than the public realize. People think a policeman is concerned solely with the punishment of crime. In fact, his main job is to prevent it.”
She had been annoyed by his blunt disregard for her feelings. Perhaps that was why the mischief which always entered her mind when he became heavy and pompous suddenly took control.
"Did you get that out of a book?” she inquired, with engaging innocence.
He saw trouble ahead.
"I did not!” he answered, reddening.
“You thought it all out for yourself? How clever!"
A grey car went past, travelling in the same direction. Kenneth ignored it.
“Look here, Miss MacKay," he said, stung to reckless speech. “Get this straight! You're in danger. Your father and Superintendent McIntosh — expert policemen both — are agreed on that. So you've just got to take it seriously and stop trying to make me look foolish!
“I don't give a damn what happens to you personally," he continued, warming to his theme. “But I'm not going to fail in my job, just because you choose to act like an irresponsible adolescent!"
She bent her head. With nervous fingers she tugged at the hem of a handkerchief in her lap. He felt pretty rotten himself.
“So that's it," she said, quietly. “It's your job you’re thinking about all the time?"
“Of course. What else?"
He was lying. Within the past hour he had been thinking far too much about Veronica Jane. But he stuck out his jaw and concentrated on his driving. If you relaxed at all with this girl, he told himself, she took it out of you.
Twenty-four hours ago Veronica Jane might have been amused by the situation. But not now.
“Sergeant MacDonald" she began, in a tight small voice.
Then she broke off, for at that moment, as Kenneth negotiated a sharp bend, she saw a grey car standing by the roadside, less than a hundred yards in front. Its bonnet was open. Two heavily built men were bending over the engine, their faces hidden.
Beside them was a slim, ascetic-looking man with grey hair. When he saw the police-car he smiled deprecatingly and raised his hand, as if begging for assistance.
Kenneth applied his brakes.
Chapter 4
Enter A Thin Man
It was a lonely, unfrequented part of the road. On the right-hand side barren hills swooped down to the verge of the tarmac. On the left a stream cascaded through a rocky, fern-encumbered gorge, and beyond that a grim mountainside soared jaggedly into the sky.
There was not a house in sight, and the distances were so vast that sheep dispersed along the lower slopes were scarcely visible. Even in spring, Glen Croe has an air of lifeless loneliness that daunts a stranger.
On seeing the stationary car in front Kenneth was unsuspicious. He was relieved, in fact, at the prospect of a diversion. His argument with Veronica Jane had become altogether too personal and disturbing.
Pulling up beyond the group by the roadside, he climbed out and saluted the grey-haired stranger.
“In trouble?” he asked.
The other nodded. Kenneth noticed that with the fingers of his right hand he was drumming out a silent tune against his own thigh.
“Carburettor, I think. Decent of you to stop. My men are competent electrical engineers, but they don’t know much about the internal combustion engine, I’m afraid. Perhaps you could help us?’’
Kenneth liked him at once.
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
The two men moved aside as he approached the bonnet. He noticed that the red-haired one was holding a heavy spanner, an inappropriate tool in relation to the delicate mechanism of a carburettor. And he was even more surprised when both of them turned away, so that he was unable to see their faces. An instinct of danger stirred in his subconscious mind, but it was stifled immediately by the friendly voice of the car-owner.
“The tools are in the box there — beside the battery. Could the feed pipe be choked, do you think?”
“Probably. There’s a lot of dirty petrol about.”
Kenneth selected a screw-driver and, with the pleasant stranger by his side, bent over to slacken the clip which secured the air-filter to the carburettor. Out of the corner of his eye he observed that the baldish man had begun to stroll towards the police-car, where Veronica Jane was sitting by herself. The other — the one with the spanner — was out of sight, at his back somewhere.
For some reason this worried him. He straightened up with a jerk and looked behind him. And in that moment a number of things happened.
The red-haired 4 'engineer’’ stood poised, the spanner swinging high above his head. Kenneth recognized him at once as one of the hard-faced men he had seen the night before; and as he lunged forward to save himself, he heard three sounds which occurred almost simultaneously: a thin-lipped blistering curse from Max Bergman; the purr of a two-stroke engine as a motor-cycle came speeding round the bend, and a startled scream from Veronica Jane as Wilkes appeared stealthily at the window of the police-car.
Then the spanner whistled down, striking the screw-driver out of his hand and narrowly missing his shoulder. Next moment he was fighting desperately with Mullingar.
He felt an arm like an iron band tighten around his neck and realized that he was up against a heavier and much stronger man. Then he was jerked sideways, and had he resisted the pressure his collar-bone might have snapped. But his training as a commando stood him in good stead. He allowed himself to fall; and as he went over he kicked up with his knee at the other’s stomach. Mullingar gasped, let go the spanner and loosed his left-hand hold. Kenneth broke free, and they rolled together in the dry ditch. Almost at once, however, they were on their feet again, facing each other.
Behind them, Wilkes had attempted to pull Veronica Jane from her seat; but he was suddenly attacked by a strange individual in goggles — the driver of the motor-cycle which had come on the scene so unexpectedly. This man was well over six feet in height and thin to the point of emaciation; but he had all his wits about him and had summed up the situation as he braked hard and jumped from his machine. Before Wilkes’s slow brain could function, a heavy stone struck him on the base of the skull. He slumped forward against the running-board of the police-car, partly unconscious.
Veronica Jane came out on to the road.
"Oh — well done!” she said, shakily.
"Keep calm!’’ advised the goggled stranger and looked round for new worlds to conquer.
But it seemed he was too late.
Kenneth was fighting toe to toe with Mullingar among the heather, and as Veronica Jane watched with a catch in her throat, the burly criminal took a straight right flush on the chin and went down as if poleaxed. Almost simultaneously she saw the grey car turning in the road, expertly handled by the man she now suspected to be Max Bergman — the Actor, as Sergeant MacDonald had called him — and before she or the motor-cyclist could take action, it was speeding away, back in the direction of Glasgow. The story of the breakdown had obviously been a blind.
At the wheel, Max Bergman was acutely conscious of having had a narrow escape. He had underestimated the resource and intelligence of Sergeant MacDonald; and Mullingar and Wilkes had made a complete and utter mess of things, as he had half-suspected they would. He ought never to have engaged them in the first place, even though Mike O’Sullivan had insisted they would be useful. Well — let them take w
hat was coming to them. A prison-sentence for assault might teach them to be more careful in future.
As for himself, if he escaped — and as time went on he was becoming more and more confident of his chances — he would work alone, relying on brain rather than on brawn. He would stop near Arrochar, change his appearance and character in the car and then abandon it in a side-road. Long before MacDonald and his new ally could deal with Mullingar and Wilkes and take up the pursuit, he would, with luck, have melted again into obscurity. His time would come…
Back alongside the police-car, Veronica Jane, Kenneth and the man with the goggles looked blankly and breathlessly at each other. Everything had happened so quickly that they required time to re-focus their ideas. Then Wilkes moved against the running-board in an effort to get up, and Kenneth bestirred himself.
He fumbled in his trousers’ pocket and took out a pair of handcuffs, with which he secured Wilkes’s wrists. Then he opened the boot of the car, found a piece of rope and did the same for Mullingar, who was also showing signs of recovery.
“What now?” inquired the stranger, with an uncertain grin. “Want me to go after the other chap?”
With a handkerchief Kenneth dabbed the bruised knuckles of his right hand. He was in something of a quandary.
It would be useless, he thought, to send this man after Bergman. For one thing, his motor-cycle was a much slower machine than the grey car; and for another, unarmed as he was, he would be no match for the criminal even though he did catch up.
Kenneth's first instinctive reaction was to make the effort himself in the police-car, taking the thin man along with him not only as a witness but also as a reinforcement in case of trouble. But that would mean leaving Veronica Jane alone with the two prisoners, which was altogether too risky. Better make sure of the men they had captured, he decided, than to risk further complications by attempting a chase — a chase which, in any event, would almost certainly prove abortive.
“No. But thanks for the offer," he replied, slowly. “He'll abandon the car almost at once, I should imagine — and it would be a waste of time looking for him. Best plan, I think, will be to take these two beauties to Inverary and hand them over to the Argyllshire police. It's their area. Then I'll get in touch with Glasgow, so that they can circulate a description of Max Bergman — though that won't do much good, I'm afraid. He’ll be acting another part already, or I'm a Dutchman."
Escort to Adventure Page 4
