Man in the Queue

by Robert Barnard

  Grant was still fuming and glowering and promising himself all sorts of fancy retributions when the man passed the gate. I have always wished that I could have seen Grant’s face at that moment—seen the disgruntled anger and resentment of a man who had tried to do things decently, only to have had his decency taken advantage of, change to the sheer unbelieving astonishment of a small boy beholding his first firework. He blinked hard, but the picture remained the same; what he saw was real. The man had passed the gate. He was now at the end of the manse wall, and making for the bridge. What was the fool doing? Yes, Grant thought of him as a fool. He had worked out a perfectly good way of escape for him—to appeal to Miss Dinmont and lie doggo at the manse—and the fool wasn’t taking advantage of it. He was near the bridge now. What was he doing? What was in his head? There was purpose in every movement. It was not an aimless or even a particularly furtive progress. He seemed to be too wrapped up in the thought of the business ahead to pay much attention to his present circumstances, beyond an occasional glance behind him up the river-bed. Not that there would be much good looking for cover so near the village. Even at this deserted hour, when every one was eating his evening meal and no one was abroad until, an hour later, they came to smoke pipes in the dusk at the bridge-end, there was always the chance of a passer-by, and any appearance of deliberate hiding would defeat its own ends. The man climbed on to the road beside the bridge, but went neither north to the right nor left towards the village. He crossed the road and disappeared on to the river-bank again. What could he get there? Was he going to work round to the hotel, which stood on the point where the river joined the sea, and try to steal the Ford? But he had obviously expected Grant to give the alarm. He would never venture up from the shore to the garage after waiting so deliberately to let Grant give warning. The shore?

  Shore! Good heavens, he’d got it! The man had gone for a boat. They would be lying on the deserted shore, out of sight of the village. The tide was in—just on the ebb, in fact—and not a soul, child or adult, would be abroad to witness his departure. Grant hurled himself down the hillside, cursing in a reluctant admiration of the man’s ingenuity. Grant knew the west coaster, and he had a shrewd idea how often these boats were used. If you stay in a west-coast village, you find that the scarcest commodity of all is fresh fish. It might be literally days before any one discovered that MacKenzie’s boat was missing, and even then they would decide that some one had borrowed it, and would save up “the rough side of their tongues”—a course which involved no expenditure of energy—for the borrower when he should put it back. Had Lamont sat and thought all that out at the tea at the manse, Grant thought, as his feet touched the cart-track, or was it a Heaven-sent inspiration in the moment of need? If he had planned it, he thought, racing down the road to the bridge that seemed so strangely distant, then he had also planned that murder in the queue. When one came to think of it, even if one’s grandmother was an Italian, one doesn’t carry daggers about on the off-chance of their being useful. The man was a more accomplished villain than he had given him credit for, in spite of his lack of self-control on two occasions.

  Long before Grant had reached the cart-track in his first avalanche down the hillside he had decided on his course of action. This morning, when he had emerged from Carninnish House with Drysdale, he had noticed a boathouse just beyond the house itself, and protruding from it, alongside the little jetty that led from its shelter to the sea, was what Grant in retrospect was sure was the stern of a motorboat. If he was right, and Drysdale was at home, and the light held, then Lamont was as good as caught. But there were three if’s in the affair.

  By the time he reached the bridge he was very nearly winded. He had come from the other side of the valley, and now down this one in his heavy fishing boots, with his wet tweeds weighing him down. Keen as he was, it required a real effort of will to make him double that last hundred yards up the north road to the gates of Carninnish House. Once there, the worst was over; the house lay only a few yards inside the gate, in the narrow strip between the road and the sea. When Drysdale’s butler beheld a damp and breathless man at the door, he immediately jumped to conclusions.

  “It is the master?” he said. “What’s wrong? Is he drowned?”

  “Isn’t he here?” said Grant. “Damn! Is that a motorboat? Can I have a loan of it?” He waved a none too accurate hand towards the boathouse, and the butler looked suspiciously at him. None of the servants had been present at Grant’s arrival in the morning.

  “No, you cannot, my lad,” said the butler, “and the sooner you get out of this, the better it will be for you. Mr. Drysdale will make you look pretty small when he comes, I can tell you.”

  “Is he coming soon? When is he coming?”

  “He’ll be here any minute.”

  “But any minute’s too late!”

  “Get out!” said the butler. “And have one less next time.”

  “Look here,” said Grant, gripping him by the arm, “don’t be a fool. I’m as sober as you are. Come down here where you can see the sea.”

  Something in his tone arrested the man’s attention, but it was with obvious fear of personal violence that he approached the sea in company with the madman. Out in the middle of the loch was a rowing-boat, being rapidly propelled seawards down the narrow estuary on the ebbing tide.

  “Do you see that?” Grant asked. “I want to overtake that boat, and I can’t do it in a rowing-boat.”

  “No, you can’t,” said the man. “The tide goes out there like a mill stream.”

  “That’s why I must have the motorboat. Who runs the motor? Mr. Drysdale?”

  “No; I do usually when he goes out.”

  “Come on, then. You’ll have to do it now. Mr. Drysdale knows all about me. I’ve been fishing the river all day. That man has a stolen boat, to begin with, and we want him very badly for other reasons, so get busy.”

  “Are you going to take all the responsibility of it if I go?”

  “Oh, yes; you’ll have the law on your side all right. I promise you that.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to leave a message”—and he darted into the house.

  Grant put out a hand to stop him, but was too late. For a second he was afraid that he was not, after all, convinced, and was merely making his escape; but in a moment he was back and they were running across the long, narrow lawn to the boathouse, where Master Robert floated. Drysdale had evidently christened the boat after the horse whose winning of the National had provided the money for her purchase. As the butler was fiddling with the engine, which uttered tentative spurts, Drysdale came round the end of the house with his gun, evidently just back from an afternoon on the hill, and Grant hailed him joyfully, and hurriedly explained what had happened. Drysdale said not a word, but came back to the boathouse with him and said, “It’s all right, Pidgeon; I’ll see to that, and take Mr. Grant out. Will you see that there is a good dinner waiting for two—no, three—when we get back?”

  Pidgeon came out of the boat with an alacrity he took no trouble to hide. He gave Master Robert a push, Drysdale set the engine going, and with a roar they shot away from the jetty out into the loch. As they swerved round into their course down the loch, Grant’s eyes fixed themselves on the dark speck against the pale yellow of the western sky. What would Lamont do this time? Come quietly? Presently the dark speck altered its course. It seemed to be making in to the land on the south side, and as it went away from the lighted skyline it became invisible against the background of the southern hills.

  “Can you see him?” Grant asked anxiously. “I can’t.”

  “Yes; he’s making in to the south shore. Don’t worry; we’ll be there before he makes it.”

  As they tore along, the south shore came up to meet them in fashion seemingly miraculous. And in a moment or two Grant could make out the boat again. The man was rowing desperately for the shore. It was difficult for Grant, unacquainted with distances on water, to measure how far he was from the shor
e and how far they were from him, but a sudden slackening in Master Robert’s speed told him all he wanted to know. Drysdale was slowing up already. In a minute they would have overhauled him. When the boats were about fifty yards apart, Lamont suddenly stopped rowing. Given it up, thought Grant. Then he saw that the man was bending down in the boat. Does he think we’re going to shoot? thought Grant, puzzled. And then, when Drysdale had shut down the engine and they were approaching him with a smooth leisureliness, Lamont, coatless and hatless, sprang to his feet and then to the gunnel, as if to dive. His stockinged foot slipped on the wet gunnel, his feet went from under him. With a sickening crack that they heard quite distinctly, the back of his head hit the boat and he disappeared under water.

  Grant had his coat and boots off by the time they were up to him.

  “Can you swim?” asked Drysdale calmly. “If not, we’ll wait till he comes up.”

  “Oh yes,” Grant said, “I can swim well enough when there is a boat there to rescue me. I think I’ll have to go for him if I want him. That was a terrific crack he got.” And he went over the side. Six or seven seconds later a dark head broke the surface, and Grant hauled the unconscious man to the boat, and with Drysdale’s help pulled him in.

  “Got him!” he said, as he rolled the limp heap on the floor.

  Drysdale secured the rowing-boat to the stern of Master Robert and set the engine going again. He watched with interest while Grant perfunctorily wrung his wet clothes and painstakingly examined his capture. The man was completely knocked out, and was bleeding from a cut on the back of the head.

  “Sorry for your planking,” Grant apologized as the blood collected in a little pool.

  “Don’t worry,” Drysdale said. “It will scrub. This the man you wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  He considered the dark, unconscious face for a while.

  “What do you want him for, if it isn’t an indiscreet question?”

  “Murder.”

  “Really?” said Drysdale, very much as though Grant had said “sheep-stealing.” He considered the man again. “Is he a foreigner?”

  “No; a Londoner.”

  “Well, at the moment he looks very much as if he would cheat the gallows after all, doesn’t he?”

  Grant looked sharply at the man he was tending. Was he as bad as that? Surely not!

  As Carninnish House swam up to them from across the water Grant said, “He was staying with the Logans at the manse. I can’t very well take him back there. The hotel is the best place, I think. Then the Government can bear all the bother of the business.”

  But as they floated swiftly in to the landing-stage, and Pidgeon, who had been on the lookout for their return, came down to meet them, Drysdale said, “The man we went for is a bit knocked out. Which room was the fire lit in for Mr. Grant?”

  “The one next yours, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll carry this man there. Then tell Matheson to go over to Garnie for Dr. Anderson, and tell the Garnie Hotel people that Mr. Grant is staying the night with me, and bring over his things.”

  Grant protested at this unnecessary generosity. “Why, the man stuck his friend in the back!” he said.

  “It isn’t for him I’m doing it,” Drysdale smiled, “though I wouldn’t condemn my worst enemy to the hotel here. But you don’t want to lose your man now that you’ve got him. Judging entirely by appearances, you had a very fine time getting him. And by the time they had lit a smoking fire in one of the glacial bedrooms over there”—he indicated the hotel on the point across the river—“and got him to bed, your man would be as good as dead. Whereas here there is the room you would have had to wash in, all warm and ready. It is far easier and better to dump the man there. And, Pidgeon!” as the man was turning away, “keep your mouth entirely closed. This gentleman met with an accident while boating. We observed it, and went out to his assistance.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Pidgeon.

  So Grant and Drysdale, between them, carried the limp heap upstairs, and rendered first aid in the big firelit bedroom; and then, between them, Pidgeon and Grant got him to bed, while Drysdale wrote a note to Mrs. Dinmont explaining that her guest had met with a slight accident and would stay here for the night. He was suffering from slight concussion, but would they not be alarmed.

  Grant had just changed into some things of his host’s, and was waiting at the bedside until dinner should be announced, when there was a knock at the door, and in answer to his “Come in,” Miss Dinmont walked into the room. She was bareheaded and carried a small bundle under her arm, but appeared to be completely self-possessed.

  “I’ve brought down some things of his,” she said, and went over to the bed and dispassionately examined Lamont. For the sake of saying something, Grant said that they had sent for the doctor, but it was in his—Grant’s—opinion a simple concussion. He had a cut on the back of the head.

  “How did it happen?” she asked. But Grant had been facing this difficulty all the time he was changing out of his own wet things.

  “We met Mr. Drysdale, and he offered to take us out. Mr. Lowe’s foot slipped on the edge of the jetty, and the back of his head came in contact with it as he fell.”

  She nodded. She seemed to be puzzling over something and not to be able to make herself articulate. “Well, I’m going to stay and look after him tonight. It’s awfully good of Mr. Drysdale to take him in.” She untied her bundle matter-of-factly. “Do you know, I had a presentiment this morning when we were going up the river that something was going to happen. I’m so glad it’s this and nothing worse. It might have been somebody’s death, and that would have been incurable.” There was a little pause, and, still busy, she said over her shoulder, “Are you staying the night with Mr. Drysdale too?”

  Grant said “Yes,” and on the word the door opened and Drysdale himself came in.

  “Ready, Inspector? You must be hungry,” he said, and then he saw Miss Dinmont. From that moment Grant always considered Drysdale a first-class “intelligence” man wasted. He didn’t “bat an eyelid.” “Well, Miss Dinmont, were you anxious about your truant? There isn’t any need, I think. It’s just a slight concussion. Dr. Anderson will be along presently.”

  With another woman it might have passed muster, but Grant’s heart sank as he met the Dinmont girl’s intelligent eye. “Thank you for having him here,” she said to Drysdale. “There isn’t much to do till he comes round. But I’ll stay the night, if you don’t mind, and look after him.” And then she turned to Grant and said deliberately, “Inspector of what?”

  “Schools,” said Grant on the spur of the moment, and then wished he hadn’t. Drysdale, too, knew that it was a mistake, but loyally backed him up.

  “He doesn’t look it, does he? But then inspecting is the last resort of the unintellectual. Is there anything I can get you before we go and eat, Miss Dinmont?”

  “No. thank you. May I ring for the maid if I want anything?”

  “I hope you will. And for us if you want us. We’re only in the room below.” He went out and moved along the corridor, but, as Grant was following, she left the room with him and drew the door to behind her.

  “Inspector,” she said, “do you think I’m a fool? Don’t you realize that for seven years I have worked in London hospitals? You can’t treat me as a country innocent with any hope of success. Will you be good enough to tell me what the mystery is?”

  Drysdale had disappeared downstairs. He was alone with her, and he felt that to tell her another untruth would be the supreme insult. “All right, Miss Dinmont, I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t want you to know the truth before because I thought it might save you from—from feeling sorry about things. But now it can’t be helped. I came from London to arrest the man you had staying with you. He knew what I had come for when I came in at teatime, because he knows me by sight. But when he came with me as far as the top of the road he bolted. In the end he took to a boat, and it was in diving from the boat when we followed that h
e cut his head open.”

  “And what do you want him for?”

  It was inevitable. “He killed a man in London.”

  “Murder!” The word was a statement, not a question. She seemed to understand that, if it had been otherwise, the inspector would have said manslaughter. “Then his name is not Lowe?”

  “No; his name is Lamont—Gerald Lamont.”

  He was waiting for the inevitable feminine outburst of “I don’t believe it! He wouldn’t do such a thing!” but it did not come.

  “Are you arresting him on suspicion, or did he do the thing?”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t any doubt about it,” Grant said gently.