Bobby gave it another and a closer glance and stiffened to attention. He examined it again, standing on tiptoe to get a nearer view, to bring his eyes on a level with the board. He assured himself that in each of the four corners was a small, fresh mark, as if a tintack had been recently driven in and then extracted. Extracted somewhat hurriedly, too, for two of the holes were slightly splintered as if the nails or tacks had been pulled out with more haste than care.
Very clearly Bobby remembered thinking how easy it would be to fake a ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ or similar notice and then to nail it over a ‘danger’ warning. Perfectly easy to secure a piece of wood of the required size—plywood could be used as being thin and light—and fasten it in position, then remove it again when its mission had been accomplished. At close quarters, of course, the substitution would be quickly noticed. No one would be deceived. But a motorist driving by at his normal forty miles an hour or more, would have no chance of noticing anything suspicious and would go on unwarned to almost certain death—a death made quite certain if in addition round some convenient turn or corner, a temporary obstacle had been placed at a suitable spot.
Had that, in fact, been done, he asked himself, and he began a hasty search, thinking that possibly any such substituted board might still be lying about in the vicinity. He found instead, close by, behind some bushes, signs in the long grass where apparently someone had been lying, someone who watched and waited in concealment, or so it seemed, and if so, waited and watched for what? Looking more closely Bobby saw that near by were two half-smoked cigarettes and some match stalks. Carefully he picked them up. The cigarettes were of the somewhat rare Balkan brand Mr. Goodman smoked. The match stalks were of the ‘book’ type, and Bobby remembered how Mr. Goodman had once chanced to remark that the only matches in the house, the only ones they had been able to obtain, were of this ‘book’ variety.
Too late? Bobby asked himself. Was that what all this meant? And his look was dark and angry as he went back to the roadside again. On the other side of the road, on the quarry side, the fence guarding the quarry edge, though in bad repair and with many broken slats, was still upright, giving no indication of any major break. But further on the road curved sharply, and it seemed likely enough that that curve presently developed into one of those sharp hairpin bends of which Morgan had spoken. Had something happened here, just out of sight from where he stood, and was it because it had happened, whatever it was, that the ‘danger’ sign had been restored to its former condition? He felt guilty that he had rested so long, though indeed his exhaustion had been complete and utter, leaving him for the time being hardly the strength with which to think, much less to stir or stagger another yard.
He started off to run now and was at once checked by a sharp pain in his side, another in one foot. When he looked he found his foot was naked and bleeding. Both sock and shoe had been torn away at one time or another. He was very surprised. He had had no idea. He had felt no pain. His nerves had been too busy conveying to body the relentless demands of spirit that knows nor bounds nor limit, to have had any time to bring any such smaller matter as hurt or wound to his attention.
Fortunately now he was on a comparatively smooth and level road, very unlike the rough surface of the forest land. He had to give up attempting to run, but he was able to progress well enough by the aid of a sort of hop and skip and jump movement; even though, on each spot where he put that one foot to ground, a red stain showed.
He reached the corner where the road turned and then the sharper bend beyond. There, only a little further on, was a gap in the fence, a fresh break with broken slats lying near. Plain enough to see what had happened. He forgot his injured foot. He began to run again and now once again spirit asserted supreme authority and forbade that pain in his side to make itself felt. When he had thrust aside the smashed and splintered remnants of the broken slats, he was right upon the quarry edge where marks deeply scored in the earth showed what had happened only a brief time before.
He knelt down, for he was still a little dizzy, and peered over. Below a dull expanse of water lapped against the steep quarry sides and extended half-way back across the quarry floor. He saw, too, where twenty or thirty feet or so down that precipitous descent, ten feet or so above the silent, sullen, waiting water lay a man’s unconscious form, caught on a projecting spur that was already showing signs of crumbling under the weight resting upon it. Of the motor cycle there was no trace. Deep beneath the surface of the water, no doubt. Even as Bobby was looking he saw a piece of that projecting spur fall off, break away, drop with a dull splash into the water and vanish.
CHAPTER XXVIII
RESCUE
In such a moment as this, Bobby’s mind always worked swiftly and clearly. On a public platform, facing an audience, it might suddenly become the complete vacuum, in which he could search vainly for a thought or even for a word. As on that ever to be forgotten occasion when speaking on behalf of a charity, the name of that charity had fled from him, fled entirely away, so that he had had to be reminded of it by the chairman.
But now the one quick glance he threw around enabled him to grasp instantly every phase of the situation; reminded him that if the quarry face had been used in battle training, to climb it must be possible; showed him where faint signs suggested exactly where ascent had been found practicable and where therefore descent must be practicable, too; dismissed as irrelevant the suggestion that the soldiers might have been provided by their battle-training camp with toggle ropes; decided that a naked foot and consequently a prehensile toe would be a help rather than a hindrance; encouraged him with the reflection that, the ten foot of water immediately below—if it were ten foot—would be there to break his fall if he should slip; reminded him that he was a good swimmer so that it didn’t matter if it were twenty feet deep; cautioned him that it might not be either ten foot or twenty foot deep and that therefore it would be better not to fall and that certainly he must not try to dive; and presented all these considerations to his mind not so much in swift succession but as it were in such a whole, complete and simultaneous possession of the facts as would have reminded him, if he had ever heard of it, of the celebrated definition of eternity by Boethius.
To an onlooker it would have seemed that Bobby merely gave a casual glance around as he was rising to his feet, that he next walked a few yards, dangerously and impossibly balanced on the quarry edge where no space existed between it and the bordering fence, then in some fit of lunacy lowered himself over the edge at the exact spot where the quarry sides were more precipitous than elsewhere, and finally began to emulate the feat of the fly walking up and down the window pane.
The spectator, however, unless a graduate of the aforesaid battle school, would have failed to notice, as Bobby had noticed, that here, running down the quarry face, was a kind of slanting ridge, or one-sided chimney formation, that would support a pressure of the body held strongly against it. Also here and there in its neighbourhood were tiny knobs of stone or shallow hollowings that would give a measure of aid to clutching fingers or to groping toes—especially to a toe unhampered by shoe or sock. One or two of such outstanding knobs were probably of recent and artificial fabrication, the work of the battle-training school to make the climb possible and to test the candidate’s eye for picking out the best line to follow.
By this time Bobby was well over the brink of the quarry, clinging to its face as desperately as ever politician clung to office. With infinite care he made his way downwards, half inch by half inch, holding tightly with the tips of his fingers to any grip, however small and insecure, that they were able to find, groping with his bare toes to find other support, feeling none of the pain the wound in his foot would at other times have made him well aware of, careful never to relax for a moment the pressure of his body against the ridge that hitherto had served him well. But then that flattened out and now he hung precarious on a sheer wall. He had time to wonder how the soldiers under training had managed. He
felt himself slipping. Difficult to hold a hundred and seventy pounds of solid weight in position by the aid of two fingers in a hole the size and shape of a walnut and a bare toe on some knob of rock about the shape and size of the end of a cigar.
The path of his descent had brought him nearer to, and almost on a level with, the spot where lay Denis Kayes, caught on a crumbling ledge from which smaller or larger fragments were still breaking away at not infrequent intervals. To Bobby it seemed he must be dead or at least that he would be soon, so still he lay, so quiet. Bobby decided that the only thing for him to do was to let himself fall. Impossible, as far as he could see, to continue the descent. The soldier boys might have been able to ascend, but descent was different. Equally impossible to hold on in his present position. Nor for that matter would it have been any advantage to do so. A good deal depended now on the depth of the water below and on its freedom from obstruction. Bad if it were only a shallow covering over a hard floor. Worse still if by ill fortune it concealed some sharp pointed stake or some jagged end of stone. Deep water would be safer by far. It would preserve him from risk of injury that might effectively put him out of action. And he could not afford to be put out of action. He wasn’t going to allow that run of his that had tested him, his strength, his resolution, as seldom they had been tested before, to go for nothing. Janet’s bicycle, too. Very likely he would have to pay for that himself, since it would be no easy job to get it through an expense list. ‘Destruction of civilian property due to careless usage,’ would most likely be the verdict and a surcharge the result. If so, if he had to pay up, he didn’t mean it to be for nothing.
The time had come now to let go, to chance what the water below might hide. Best perhaps would be to slither and slide as best he could down the bare face of the rock and so into the water as gently as might be. He still hesitated though, for that would very possibly mean the end of the suit he was wearing, and where he would get another neither he nor his coupons knew.
The issue was suddenly decided. Without warning or apparent cause Denis Kayes’s body slid from the ledge on which it had balanced till now, and disappeared into the water that closed again above it with a sullen dull content, as though its evil patience had been satisfied at last.
Bobby followed instantly, sliding down the bare rock, dropping into the water, infinitely relieved to find himself safe in its cool depth that was fortunately really deep, then vigorously rising to the surface, and striking out towards the spot whence the slow ripples were still spreading outwards. He dived, he found Denis, luckily unentangled in the drowned bushes that had grown thickly here before the flooding, luckily unconscious, since so it was the easier to get him by his shoulders, turn him on his back, then, with a good strong kick come to the surface and with only another kick or two reach where the water was shallow enough for him to stand upright.
He took advantage then of the help given by the buoyancy of the water to get Kayes, alive or dead, Bobby did not know which, on his back in the position known as the fireman’s lift.
In that manner, the weight well balanced, Kayes’s inanimate body poised easily across his shoulders, head hanging down on one side, feet on the other, Bobby waded through the rapidly shallowing water to dry land, towards where he supposed must stand the deserted Hiker’s Arms Café, somewhere at the foot of Quarry Hill.
Soon it came in sight. His foot was hurting badly now. The nerves that before had been too pre-occupied to tell him of pain, seemed now to be making up for lost time by positively screaming for attention.
“Put that fellow down off your shoulder and attend to us,” they seemed to be shouting. “Foot’s bleeding like Old Harry. You’re losing pints and pints of blood, you’ll lose foot itself if you don’t mind. Won’t listen, heh? Well, how’s that for a twinge to help you think it over.”
It was a twinge all right, a twinge ‘and then some’, as they say to-day, but Bobby knew well that if he let Kayes drop, he would never get him up again. Bobby knew, too, that if he yielded, if he let Kayes fall, then he would probably collapse himself. If that happened, then in this tangled growth of weed and grass and bush through which he was forcing his way, it might well be long hours, perhaps not even till morning, before they were found. He was inclined to suspect that they might not both survive that ordeal.
Luckily the distance to the cafe building was not great. Soon he was in sight of it, shuttered and deserted, its back towards him as he came reeling from out the quarry. On its front, facing the road, it was provided with a deep verandah where, in happier days, teas had been served. There Bobby dropped and there he lay, he and Denis Kayes together, and the last thought he was conscious of was a wonder whether Kayes were alive or dead and what was that faint hooting he seemed to hear? Was it an approaching car or the beginning of an air raid warning? Because, if it were the latter, he ought to be up and doing. But he wasn’t going to stir, not he. He would just go on lying there, not budging for air raids or anything else, not even for the last trump for that matter, not now when it was bliss even to lie still; and the next thing he knew he was lying on cushions, in what once had been the café kitchen where someone now had lighted a fire. There was someone else pulling his foot about. Bobby made an effort to sit up. He said:
“Here, what are you doing? You’re hurting.”
“It’s this toe of yours. I’m afraid it’ll have to come off,” said the someone else.
“No, it won’t,” said Bobby.
“No good saying that,” declared the other. “If it has to, it has to.”
Bobby said unpleasantly:
“It’s my toe and don’t you play any tricks. Or there’ll be trouble.”
“Well, I’m a doctor,” came the somewhat indignant retort, but Bobby interrupted.
“I don’t care if you’re the college of physicians and the tower of London rolled into one,” he said. “That’s my toe, I tell you, and I’m keeping it.”
“Patients,” said the doctor, growing quite fierce, “are the limit, the absolute limit. Always think they know best. If only,” he sighed, “if only we could do without them.”
“Well, you do your best to get rid of them, don’t you?” Bobby asked, making his voice so amiable this time that it was a moment or two before the doctor got it.
When he did he flounced away indignantly and Bobby beckoned to Morgan of whom he was now aware in the background.
“Morgan,” Bobby said. “I want you to make a close search along the side of the road where it runs down Quarry Hill and see if you can find any bits of wood—plywood squares probably—with a notice ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ on them. Anything like that. Near the top of the hill most likely. If you find them, handle them carefully. There may be dabs. Get all the help you can. And look out for anything like a hurdle or rope or anything else that could have been used to make an obstruction in the road. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Morgan promptly. “Road trap suspected and we’re to look for evidence.”
“That’s it,” said Bobby. “Oh, and Morgan, warn my chaps to keep that doctor fellow off my toe, or—or I’ll see there’s no leave going till next Christmas.”
“I’ll warn ’em, sir,” Morgan promised, turning quite pale at the mere thought of the possibility of so dire a threat materializing into fact. “By the way, sir, the young lady’s bicycle. She seemed worried about it. If I could have it, I could put it in the back of the car to take back.”
“It broke down,” Bobby answered. “I don’t know if I could even find the place again. All smashed up anyhow. My weight and the rough going were too much for it. A total loss.”
“Bad luck, sir,” said Morgan. “I don’t know how you managed.”
“I had to push along on foot,” Bobby explained, and Morgan gave a satisfied nod; and no more was ever said about that great run for another’s life, only in Bobby’s memory does it still live as a fantastic nightmare of effort and struggle, of endurance and exertion.
CHAPTER XXIX
>
DUKE DELL TALKS
It was later in the day, much later, but still daylight, when Bobby came back to the house, Four Oaks. Previously he had sent a message asking that all there should stay on till his return. To Constable White, still on duty at the entrance, he said:
“Are they all here still?”
“Yes, sir, I think so, sir,” White answered. “Some of ’em may have slipped out at the back, but I don’t think so. I’ve kept an eye on the back, well as I could. The clergyman gent said it was most awkward as he had a mothers’ meeting, but I put it to him as orders were orders and he couldn’t say they wasn’t.”
“No, he couldn’t, could he?” agreed Bobby. “I’m sorry about the mothers’ meeting though.”
He had arrived in a small car with an inspector and two constables to give help should that be required. Another car followed behind, but this he had instructed to remain out of sight for the present, waiting and watching for a signal he might give presently. His own small car drove on up the short drive to the house. Theresa opened the door and stood there, grave and demure, to admit them.
“We’re all terribly frightened,” she said. “It’s that message we had that we were all to wait. It’s upset every-one most awfully. They can’t think why.”
“That’s what I’ve come to explain,” Bobby answered. “Do you think I could have a chat now with you all? Together somewhere. Would it be convenient?”
“Oh yes, I think so,” she said, and then with sudden concern, for Bobby was limping badly, supporting himself on a stick or sometimes accepting help from one of his companions: “Oh dear,” she said, “you’ve hurt your foot. Oh, I am sorry.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Bobby said, and beamed on her and she beamed back on him; and little was there to show what lay behind those smiles, given and returned.
Theresa tripped away and opened the door of the dining-room. Mr. Goodman and Mr. Childs were there already, talking together. Mr. Goodman was still looking heavy and sleepy, even curiously so. Theresa said she would tell the others and went off. Janet came in almost at once, pale and anxious-looking, and then appeared Langley Long, he with a sullen and a watchful air. Bobby noticed that his shoes had been recently cleaned and now were shining and spotless. Theresa returned and said Mr. Dell was still feeling ‘queer,’ but would be down in a few moments. Then she seated herself near the window, apart from the others, as one naturally but little concerned. She had brought some needlework with her, a table centre she was embroidering, but not very skilfully, for sewing was no great hobby of hers. She spread the table centre over her lap and grew busy. Bobby whispered to his inspector, who looked incredulous, but supposed the deputy chief knew what he was talking about. ‘Our Bobby’, as his men had begun to call him, had an odd trick of saying things you took to be mere guesses, and just luck if they turned out to be exceedingly good guesses. Only later did it appear that the apparent guess wasn’t a guess at all but a matter of careful reasoning, a deduction of probability from observed fact. Sometimes though some people didn’t like to acknowledge they might have made the same guess from the same premises, and then they shrugged their shoulders and said they didn’t trust luck, it didn’t last, and they didn’t like lucky detectives. You never knew. But the thought crossed this inspector’s mind, as he strolled over to take for himself a seat near the window and near Theresa, that very often ‘Our Bobby’ did know. All the same, even though the inspector was a recently married man, his heart did give a little jump—oh, only a very small one—when Theresa looked at him so trustfully, so sweetly, as much as to say that now he was sitting there she felt ever so safe.
It Might Lead Anywhere Page 22
