by Cave, Hugh
"If you know where they are, why didn't you and Sergeant Wray bring them back with you?"
He only shrugged.
She gazed at him. Except to turn his head toward her and move his shoulders in the shrug, he had scarcely moved on his chair. But that lost, empty look had gone from his eyes now, and they returned her gaze in such a challenging way, she felt they were seeing into her mind.
"I . . . shall have to put on some clothes," she said. She still wore the blue pajamas and dressing gown in which she had stepped from her room, half a lifetime ago, to find Peter Sheldon seated here on the Great House veranda.
"And I," Alton Preble said. He still wore his white pajamas and dark dressing gown.
"Very well." Private Pennock nodded as he put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet. "But be quick about it, both of you. We are wasting time here."
She glanced at Alton and went to her room, knowing full well that something was happening to her mind. But was the man named Pennock wholly responsible? She felt the way she had at the John Crow's Nest with Peter—as though some implacable force were taking charge of her mind and would soon be able to make her do anything it wished. Pennock hadn't been there when that happened.
Another thing. The takeover obviously wasn't complete yet—it couldn't be—or she would not even be aware it was happening. But all too soon it would be, so if she were to leave a warning for Peter, she must do so at once!
Reaching her room, she ran to a desk Peter had provided for her and snatched pencil and paper from one of its pigeonholes. Desperately she tried to put her thoughts down before they might be driven from her mind. But after only a few words, the pencil fell from her fingers and dropped to the floor.
The paper itself fell to the floor, too, caught up by a current of air as she turned blindly to her clothes closet. But already she had forgotten about it.Discarding her dressing gown and pajamas, she mechanically put on slacks, shirt, and sneakers and returned to the veranda.
Alton Preble was already there, dressed as she was to go wherever Private Paul Pennock might lead them. Seemingly unaware of her presence, he stared at the Defence Force man as though awaiting instructions.
They came, those instructions, with something very like a sneer. "All right now. Follow me, the two of you, and don't bother talking to each other. There's nothing you can say that will change any of this, so just accept it."
With that, the man who had pretended to be what he was not, fooling Peter Sheldon and perhaps even his own sergeant, turned and walked along the veranda to the steps leading down to the Great House yard—so confident they had to obey him that he did not even bother to glance back at them.
At the Cedar Ridge police post, Peter lingered only long enough to be sure the sergeant had made contact with his superiors and would not have to be driven to some other phone. The island's rural telephone service could never be taken for granted.
As soon as he heard Wray begin to repeat the story of what had happened in the mountains, he nodded to the corporal at the desk and hurried back out to the Armadale jeep. Wray would not return to the Great House, they had decided. For a while, at least, he should stay close to the phone.
The little mountain village was just stirring from sleep. Mangy dogs yawned themselves into their daylong search for food. With buckets on their heads for water, half-awake children trudged barefoot to the nearest standpipe.
Driving through, Peter asked himself what the Defence Force would do in response to their sergeant's shocking report. Would they send more soldiers to search for those missing, as they had sent Wray's group to look for the scouts?
There may be no end to this nightmare, he thought. But he knew what he himself must do. His housekeeper would be at the house when he got back there. In a short time she would be serving breakfast. Over coffee he would announce to Edith Craig and Alton Preble that he was driving them to the airport, whether they approved or not.
Edith might not like it, but her fiancé would. And with Preble's help he should be able to persuade her it was in their best interest.
It would mean the end of his stay at Armadale, of course. Once Edith left, she would not return, and the plantation out of sight would soon be out of mind. Back in London she would marry her barrister and arrange for the property to be sold; Preble would no doubt be delighted to assist her in finding a buyer for it.
Recalling the barrister's brief mention of her father's will, though, Peter was again puzzled. Could Philip Craig have requested her not to sell the property? No, that was beyond reason. No matter how fond he had been of the place, he would not have tried to burden her with it. St. Alban had long since ceased to be an English colony.
End of the line, he thought glumly as he turned the jeep in at the gate and drove up the plantation road.
There was no one on the veranda when he walked from the carriage house to the steps. Edith must have taken Private Pennock inside to look after his maccatorn face. Alton Preble was probably helping her. Passing through the dining room on his way to the quartets he had assigned to the Defence Force men, Peter saw that Coraline had arrived and set the table for breakfast. In the kitchen, downstairs, her radio throbbed out a popular Jamaican reggae tune.
No one was in the soldiers' rooms, though. He looked in Edith's room—her door was open—and she was not there. He knocked on Preble's door, got no answer, opened it, and found that room empty also.
Puzzled now, he went down to the kitchen and found his housekeeper standing at a counter, turning the handle of a coffee mill.
"'Morning, Coraline. Where is everybody?"
"Me don't know, suh. Wasn't them with you?"
"Me?"
Her face filled with sharp lines. "Wasn't the three of you at the river, suh? Me did see three people going along the river track when me coming from Look Up."
"You saw three persons going to the river?"
"Yes, suh. Me was not close enough to see who them was before them passed from sight, but me took for granted it was you and Miss Craig and Mr. Preble."
Peter felt something small with many cold feet crawl over his skin, and his body responded with a shiver. "Are you sure of this, Coraline? You couldn't have seen some hunters going after pigs or birds?"
"Mr. Peter, me did see three people on the track to the river. That's all me sure of. Is only one or two places you can see that track coming up from where me live, remember. Me was not close."
"Nobody was here when you got here?"
"Nobody at all not here, suh."
Pennock, Peter thought. That look in his eyes. That empty look, as though something had possession of his mind. But why would Edith and Alton have gone with him?
"Coraline, listen to me now." He caught her by a wrist and drew her away from the coffee mill, which she seemed determined to finish using. "Never mind about breakfast. Something has happened here—something bad, I think—and I'm going to the river. What I want you to do is go for Manny Williams. You know where he lives, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Tell him I've gone to the river after those three people, and I may need his help. Tell him to come as quick as he can. Tell him I'm counting on him. You hear?"
"Yes, Mr. Peter."
"Don't let him say no!"
"No, suh."
Thoroughly apprehensive, Peter strode from the room.
From the very start of his stay at Armadale, walking to the river in the early morning had been one of his greatest pleasures. It was no joy this morning. The pigeons and doves were present, colorful lizards eyed him from rocks and branches, orchid scents filled the air, but fear hurried along with him. Why, for God's sake, had Edith and her barrister followed a man who had just been through a severe ordeal and almost certainly was not in his right mind? What could they have been thinking of?
As he strode along, he studied the ground for footprints. What they might tell him he did not know; Edith and her fiancé had been wearing slippers when he last saw the
m, but would have changed to something more solid, surely. The soldier had worn boots, or what was left of them. But there were no prints of any kind here; the ground was too hard. Perhaps at the river's edge.
His ears caught the sound of the stream and it was not so loud as when he had brought Edith and Alton here. They could have crossed the bridge, then, if that was what Pennock wanted. Who was Pennock, anyway? What was he up to? He had seemed almost a basket case after his experience at Blackrock.
Yes, the stream was normal. And there was no one on this side of it, so they must have crossed the tree bridge. Peter paused at the top of the descent, trying to see the steeply climbing path on the far side.
Nothing moved there. But then, the trees and bush were so thick he could see only parts of the trail.
He went down the steps swiftly, used to them now and having no pair of strangers to watch out for. And, yes, in the soft reddish earth at the river's edge were telltale prints, most of them smeared into smooth streaks where their makers had slid in the mud, but distinguishable here and there for what they were. Sneakers for Preble and Edith, it seemed. Boots, no doubt army issue, for the third person.
And there was something else. On a thorny wait-a-bit bush just short of the stream, where the macca must have tugged it from Edith's hand or pocket as she stepped forward to start across the bridge, hung a woman's handkerchief, small and white.
Or had she deliberately—perhaps surreptitiously—left it there for him to find?
Disengaging it from the bush's wicked thorns, Peter thrust it into his shirt pocket.
Then at the bridge he tensed himself. For five years the tree here had been as easy for him as walking the Great House veranda. Now, remembering the mist and his paralysis last time, he hung back.
But no green mist attacked him this time. His cautious steps carried him safely across, and through the forest's dark shadows he toiled upward to the intake pool.
Here, yes, he felt something. Something invisible but menacing, that caused him to stand trembling with his gaze fixed on the stream of water arching down from the unexplored gorge above. Something that chilled him with its threat of personal peril.
A presence? His mind was aware of it without even remotely being able to identify it. There seemed to be no mist this time, or if it existed, it was as wraithlike as a vapor rising from the pool itself. But something monstrous here was waiting to pounce. He was sure ofit.
Get out of here, Sheldon! his mind silently screamed. Get out!
Only the thought of Edith kept him rooted there, rejecting the warning. Only the certainty that she had come this way and had to be somewhere ahead of him, beyond or above the fall of water, perhaps desperately counting on him to follow and help. Why else would she have left the handkerchief at the river crossing?
But how could she have gone beyond this point? He had tried it with Manny Williams, and there was no way up to the gorge above. Absolutely no way, at least from here.
He stood there scowling at the cascade, numbed by its roar, not knowing what to do.
Then the mist.
As before, it seemed to flow down over the lip of the cascade, transforming the falling water into a thing that resembled a giant, slow-moving, green slug. Terror shattered his resolve as he stood there for a moment staring at it, then not even the thought of the woman from England could hold him. Lurching about, he fled in panic down the track to the tree bridge.
The mist did not follow him. On reaching the bridge, he was able to cross over without stumbling. Slowly his fear subsided. Then as he ran along the track to the Great House, annoyance took its place and anger set in.
There had been time enough for Manny Williams to get here, damn it. Why wasn't he here? Had Coraline failed to deliver the message? Had she delivered the wrong one?
They did that sometimes. You patiently explained the need for something and took time to make sure they understood, and then they thought it over and calmly decided you were wrong and they must save you from your folly by doing it their way.
It should not have taken her all this time to reach Grove Path and alert Manny. And not only was he the best mountain man in the district; he was the most loyal of Armadale's workers as well. He should be here by now.
Rounding the last bend of the track, Peter peered down at the house and saw no one—only the empty plantation road winding down through coffee and pine trees to the distant main gate. No pig hunter. Nobody.
"Coraline!" he yelled as he stormed into the house.
Only echoes answered.
"Coraline! Where are you?"
Again only echoes.
He searched the house, though all but certain it was empty. Only because Edith's door was still open did he enter her room and discover on the floor a sheet of scribbled-on paper he must have been too impatient to notice before.
He picked it up.
"Peter," she had written, "something is happening to me. The thing that took possession of my mind on the cliff is doing so again. I am being sent for and must go—can't help myself. Alton is, too, I think. Pennock is part of it. He is not what he seems. Try to follow if—"
Clutching the note, he walked out onto the veranda and looked in desperation down the plantation road again. This time Manny Williams was briskly striding up it. Over one shoulder the old man carried the shotgun he used when hunting wild pigs.
22
"I FOUND THE HANDKERCHIEF HERE," PETER SAID.
Halting at the stream's edge, he indicated the thorny shrub on which, he was now convinced, Edith Craig had deliberately left her handkerchief for him to find.
Manny Williams glanced from the shrub to the tree bridge. "If Pennock was in front, the lady most likely put it here whilst him watching him foot on the bridge." Moving on down to the bridge, he examined the soft earth there. "There was three of them, all right."
With a scowl Peter said, "But if they crossed here, Manny, where could they have been going except to the intake?"
"Nowhere, squire." The pig hunter shook his head. "But let we look anyhow." Crossing the bridge with the same care that marked everything else he did, he waited at the far end for Peter to join him. Then he plodded on up the path to the intake pool.
Remembering his headlong flight from the mind-bending green mist less than an hour before, Peter followed with trepidation. But there was no sign of the mist now as he and Manny stood at the pool's edge, gazing across at the waterfall.
"Did they reach here, Manny?"
The pig hunter lowered his head to peer at the ledge of stone on which they stood. He frowned, but that was to be expected—only rarely did his craggy face wear any other expression. Pacing slowly along the rock, he at last eased himself down on one knee, the shotgun still balanced in his right hand.
"Them was here, squire."
Peter stepped over to him. "How can you tell?"
"Look here at the moss."
Peter knelt beside him to examine the layer of bright green that blanketed most of the stone. It was always damp here, of course; the falling water flung out a spray, and the forest trees conspired to let in precious little sunlight. And, yes, there were marks in the shape of shoe prints where something had pressed the moss down so recently that it had not yet had time to spring up again. Three persons had stood here, it seemed, facing the cascade.
Manny placed his feet in a pair of the prints and looked across the pool. "We did try this before when the water was lower, if you remember," he said. "But me will try again." Handing Peter the shotgun, he stepped into the pool and waded slowly across toward the fall, the water rising to his waist as his feet felt their way carefully along the stony bottom. The pool was over one's head in places, Peter knew from having stepped into a deep spot one day while repairing the intake. But what Manny was doing was safe enough.
Halting just short of the fall of water, the pig hunter turned first to his left, then to his right, while Peter anxiously watched. Could there be some way of climbing to the top behind that vei
l of water? Anything was possible in a place such as this, no?
But, turning at last, Manny shrugged to admit failure, then trudged back through the pool and climbed out. "Me don't understand this," he said, shaking his head.
"You don't understand what?"
"Them was here, and there is no sign to show them returned back. So where them is now?"
"Manny, they got up into the gorge above here. I don't know how, but they must have."
"You say."
"Manny, hear me. When Miss Craig and I stood on the cliff above that gorge, something uncanny happened to us. When I stood here by this pool just a while ago, some god-awful misty thing came down out of that gorge to attack me. Pennock took these two up there into that gorge. I don't know how but, damn it, he must have!"
"It not possible from here," the pig hunter insisted.
"It has to be!"
"Well"—the shrug was eloquent—"if there is some secret way up there, we could be a long time finding it. Better we try to get down into the gorge from above."
"Can that be done? I always thought—"
"Me not saying we can do it, squire. Only that it more likely than from here. So come, huh? We just wasting time standing here talking."
To reach the coffee-field track to the John Crow's Nest it was necessary to go back past the Great House. Manny led the way and set a fast pace. Trotting along after him, Peter felt blessed in having such a man for a companion at such a time. Manny Williams represented the old, almost forgotten St. Alban of hard work, decency, and dignity. The island today was short of such qualities and far too long on politics and violence. Especially violence.
Emmanuel Williams at this moment wore patched, dark gray pants with a piece of rope for a belt, worn-out boots with tire-tread soles, an old, long-sleeved white shirt stained with a colorful assortment of bush saps—and Manny could tell you the source of each stain by its color—and, finally, a battered, gray felt hat without a band. But the same Manny Williams attended church on Sundays looking like the deacon he was, and the old shotgun in his right hand at this moment was "cared" as though for display in a museum.
