22-Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair

by John Oram

  It made a wonderful exit. Illya almost forgot himself and clapped.

  After Davis had gone he sat on, thinking. It looked as if he might have struck oil with the first drill. Totting the score he had a screwball nationalist who had done time for sabotage, a mysterious philanthropist who let the hired help loaf around all day, a bunch of possibly phony nuclear disarmers, and a warranted genuine haunted house for them all to play in without fear of local peek-a-booing. And the philanthropist had a record of long absences from the home base.

  The indications were that Cwm Carrog should be inspected without delay. The wailing wonder intrigued him.

  After an early lunch of Welsh lamb and all the trimmings Illya went up to his rooms and changed his suit for a black sweater, black windbreaker and dark gray flannel slacks. A flashlight and a pair of rubber-soled sneakers went into the knapsack he carried for form's sake.

  He walked downstairs to the office and got general sailing directions from the landlord. He told him he was planning a long hike and would not be back until late next day.

  The landlord made him pay for his room in advance.

  Chapter Five

  It was a five-mile hike to the foot of Berwyn. Illya had plenty of time, so he took it easy.

  The road led through two neat little villages, all lime-wash and slate roofs, with shops and inns hardly distinguishable in size or appearance from the cottages. Between the hamlets he had the Dee on one side of him and woodland on the other. There was plenty to see, including a couple of patient herons on the river bank and an old forsaken church that might have been St. David's original curacy.

  At last, on the farther outskirts of the second village, he found himself looking up at the great rounded mass of Berwyn. Its lower slopes were thick with pines. The upper reaches were all bracken and heather, with a curious ring of firs like a crown on top. He could see a white cottage or two but nothing that looked like a sizable farm.

  He crossed an iron footbridge over a stream that might have been the Carrog and took a narrow lane which climbed up the hillside. It was bordered by high hazed hedges and crowding close were the pines, thousands of them. Once he had got started the only sound was the crunch of flints under his boots. He felt as if he were clattering along the aisle of a cathedral.

  After he had been climbing for about thirty minutes he began to wonder whether there was anything in old man Davis' tales. The green stillness was uncanny. It was as if all those damned trees were watching him.... waiting for something....

  He was glad when they thinned out and the hedges gave way to unmortared stone walls, letting in the wind and the sunlight. Behind the walls he could hear sheep crashing about in the miniature jungle of bracken fern. At least he hoped they were sheep. The way his nerves were, he would not have been surprised if a brace of pixies had sneaked up on him.

  A few minutes more brought him to the end of the bracken belt and also to a gate in the wall. Tired of the flinty lane he pushed the gate open and trudged on among the heather, keeping the wall on his right-hand side. The going was more slippery but not so hard on his aching feet.

  He was now nearing the skyline. Just in case of accidents he got closer to the wall and moved forward more cautiously.

  It was as well that he did. Over the shoulder of the hill some hundreds of feet below, he saw what could only be Cwm Carrog. He dropped flat and studied the farm.

  There was the usual assemblage of barns and pens, only larger than seemed usual in the neighborhood. The farmhouse itself was a square-built gray structure, almost hidden on three sides by ancient macrocarpas. In the westering sunlight it looked unbelievably sinister. There was no sign of life in the yard or around the buildings.

  Illya crawled back to the safe side of the hill and thoughtfully chewed a blade of grass. This lone expedition was beginning to look less and less attractive.

  Not that he was frightened, but he was slightly out of his depth. Most of his assignments had previously been in cities, with trucks and cars making a friendly murmuring background to his investigation. It's pretty hard to take ghosts seriously under such conditions. Cwm Carrog was something else again. At the very least, if his suspicions were confirmed, he stood a fair chance of getting his teeth kicked in by Mr. Price Hughes's proteges. At worst — well, sitting there on the bare hillside in territory where folks were still apt to put out bowls of bread and milk for night-prowling goblins, he was prepared to believe that anything could happen.

  The sun called it a day and sank behind a convenient mountain. Out of the pines far below a silver mist came up like a sea. A chilly night breeze began to hunt for Illya's spine through windbreaker and sweater. Sheep bleated forlornly.

  Illya crawled up to take another look at Cwm Carrog. It was already half submerged in the mist. He decided zero hour had come.

  The journey down that hillside was to remain forever one of his major nightmares. By day it would have been easy enough but in the near-darkness he had plenty of troubles.

  At first the wall was a guide but when the last of the light had faded it became a menace. Many of the top stones had fallen among the heather. Illya found them every time, and every time he took a dive. Seen on the movies it would have been a riot, but somehow he missed the comic angle. He dared not use his flashlight, and if he got too far from the wall he lost his bearings. And at any minute he expected to hear the whine of a bullet heading in his direction, especially when he got down among the bracken. No matter how cautiously he trod, the stuff crackled like a forest fire with every step. He could only hope that Mr. Hughes's sentries, if he had posted any, would blame the sheep.

  When he was near enough to get the full bouquet of the Cwm Carrog cow pens he called a halt and sat down. He was almost through the bracken, which was now no more than knee-high. Before he started across the paddock he needed a rest.

  A hint of moonrise in the east warned him that he would have to get going again. Already it was light enough for him to see ahead the outline of the farmyard wall, a shed or two, and the great macrocarpas looming black against the sky.

  He slipped off his walking shoes and took the sneakers and flashlight out of his knapsack. He clipped the flashlight to his belt, packed the shoes in the knapsack, slung the bag over his shoulder again.

  As he was lacing the sneakers he got his first jolt. It was a light — a cold greenish light about as big as a fair-sized grapefruit. And it was moving slowly along the base of the farmyard wall. Suddenly it stopped, wavered, changed direction and came uphill toward him. It moved with a queer jerky roll.

  There was only one thing to do. Illya crossed his fingers, said stoutly, "Ghosts are only your father, like Santa Claus," and went to meet it.

  It came on unsteadily, a wobbling disembodied eye, glowing weirdly.

  When it got within reach Illya grabbed.

  His hand blotted out the light. Closed on something hard and smooth. The thing stopped, went dead under his grasp.

  Wriggling closer so that he got it under cover of his body, Illya fumbled with his free hand for the flashlight and pressed the button.

  The beam stabbed briefly, flooding a small tortoise. Some humorist had thought up the idea of painting its shell with phosphorescent paint. Illya let it go and lay still. After a minute or so a puzzled crustacean wobbled off to spread panic and despondency elsewhere.

  Illya pressed on, much heartened. The tete-a-tete had not only put paid to David Davis' fairy tales, it had also proved that whatever funny business was going on at Cwm Carrog, it had human brains behind it. In a way Illya was disappointed. If luminous tortoises were the best the Price Hughes faction could do they didn't come in the same class with some of the gangs he had bucked.

  Between the edge of the bracken and the yard wall there was a short stretch of open turf. Illya covered it very slowly like Napoleon's army. On his belly.

  Once safe in the shadow of the wall he straightened up and felt his way back to where it joined the lane wall. He tucked his knapsack a
way in the angle, where he could find it again. It was too awkward to lug around on his sleuthing. On the other hand he did not fancy the long hike back to Corwen in sneakers.

  Getting a toehold among the rough stones, he pulled himself up and with a hand cupped over the lens of the flashlight examined the top of the yard wall for possible alarm wires. There was none. A second later he was in the yard.

  By this time the moon was well up. He thanked his stars that the sky was cloudy. A clear night would have been fatal. He hugged the wall for a space, getting his bearings. Fifty feet away was a Dutch barn, half full of hay. If he could make that safely it was an easy step, all in shadow, to the shelter of the macrocarpas around the house. Offering up a prayer against shepherd dogs and watchmen, as soon as the moon passed behind a cloud drift he sprinted.

  It was then that he got his second taste of the amenities of Cwm Carrog. And this time it shook him.

  He had just made it to the barn and was cuddling the hay when it came — a ghastly sound that began with a low sobbing wail and rose to a long-drawn-out hysterical scream with insane laughter in it. It sounded as if a dozen cougars had sat down suddenly on the same number of electric stoves. Illya could feel every one of the hairs on his scalp rising individually and icy fingers played along his backbone.

  The cry died away into broken moaning. Illya strained his ears but nobody in the house seemed to be paying any attention. Not a light went on. The only sound now was the whisper of the wind through the barn. He got a grip on himself and went on, picking his steps carefully. He did not want to tangle with trip wires or spring guns, and Mr. Price Hughes was evidently a considerable joker.

  At last he was on the father side of the trees, looking up at the house. He could see six windows, three up and three down, all shuttered tightly.

  He scouted along to the left and found himself at the back of the premises. Here, too, the windows were close-shuttered. The blackness was relieved only by one of the fiery tortoises, which was pottering about moodily. Illya tried the solid-looking door. It had no latch or handle. Nothing but some kind of patent lock that fit flush. He ran his hand over the surface of the door. It was cold metal.

  Suddenly the howling started again, this time apparently right overhead. Illya looked up. There was nothing to see but the dark oblongs of the windows, like sightless eyes, and the denser shadow of the overhanging eaves.

  The noise went through the same routine, a crescendo shriek dying away into sobbing. When it stopped there was no sound but the wind in the trees.

  Illya grinned. He had the answer to Winnie the Wailer though he couldn't quite place her hideout. That could come later.

  He was working around the end of the third wall to the front of the house when he heard a car approaching. Across a widish gravel drive, facing the main entrance, there was a clump of laurels. He nipped among them quickly.

  The purr of the engine got louder. Headlights swept the drive. The car, a big sedan, stopped. A man got out, held the rear door wide. After an interval two more men appeared.

  The door of the house opened. Light streamed out brightly, enabling Illya to get a look at the new arrivals.

  The man who had got out of the driver's seat was a stocky, broad-shouldered character, clean-shaven, with horn-rimmed spectacles and a mean expression. The second had a skinny frame, nutcracker nose and chin, and a high-domed skull with just a fringe of white hair above the ears. The third man was Huge ap Morgan.

  Illya took a sub-miniature camera from the inside pocket of his windbreaker. It had a special lens and was loaded with supersensitive sixteen mm. film capable of getting pictures in almost total darkness. Illya checked with his fingertips on the Braille-type indicator that the focus was set at twelve feet. Then he photographed the group and then each man in turn.

  Morgan went around to the back of the car, unlocked the trunk and dragged out two heavy suitcases. He took one in each hand and lugged them with some difficulty into the hall. The other two men hurried after him and the door swung shut.

  It opened again a minute later. The stocky man reappeared, got into the car and drove it around the yard.

  Illya decided to call it a night. He had plenty to think about and there was no use straining the luck.

  Getting out of Cwm Carrog was no trick. He went out the front way — along the edge of the drive to the lane — then walked uphill to the place where he had left the knapsack. He picked up the sack but left his sneakers on. When he had walked about half a mile he changed them for his shoes, climbed over the lone wall and nested down among the bracken for the remainder of the night.

  At first light he worked his cramped muscles into a state approaching normal, climbed the hill to the ring of pines and hiked down into Corwen from the other side.

  Illya timed his arrival at the hotel for a late breakfast. Since he had to pay for it he thought he might as well eat it. Afterward he had a hot bath and changed into more civilized clothes. Then he hung a sign outside his bedroom door: Do not disturb, and went to work on the film.

  At noon he left the hotel and hunted out David Davis. He found the old man sitting hopefully on a bench outside a small beerhouse. He took him inside, propped him against the bar with a pint in front of him, and produced one of the prints he had made that morning. It showed the thin man with the nutcracker features.

  Illya said, "Do you know this man?"

  Mr. Davis cackled. "Der! There's a joker you are. Making me tell you all about him — and all the time you do know him well enough to carry his picture. Yes, indeed. Mr. Price Hughes himself. A speaking likeness."

  Illya put a pound note in his willing palm. He said, without optimism, "Forget I ever mentioned him."

  Down at the post office he met an official obviously fitted for bigger things. Without asking too many questions he got an ex-directory number in Newport and handed Illya the receiver.

  Blodwen's voice said, "How're they coming, my Russian cousin?"

  "Like gold," he said happily. "Has Solo arrived?"

  "He's here now — punishing my Scotch. Want to talk to him?"

  "Not right now. Tell him I'm sending some pictures by special delivery. I want them checked."

  "The hunch came off?"

  "And how! I've found a bunch of weirdies living the simple life behind bullet-proof doors — with aeolian harps and livestock in gorgeous Technicolor to keep the locals at bay."

  She said, "And what the hell is a you-know-what harp?"

  "Oh, that! It's a quaint gadget of piano wires or guitar strings. You fix it some place where the wind can blow through it and it sounds like slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Just the thing for the baby's nursery."

  There was a pause. Then Solo's voice came over the wire. He said, "Nice work, Illya. But play it cool."

  Illya grinned into a fly-specked mirror tilted above the switchboard. "I won't life a finger till the gang arrives. Just a unit in one great army, that's me."

  He put a bunch of prints into a distinctively colored envelope, gave the postal official some instructions, and walked out into the sunshine.

  Chapter Six

  Illya pottered around the town for the rest of the day, looking in at the cattle market, buying picture postcards, sharing the joys and sorrows of the granddads on the bowling green. He let it be generally understood that he was a footloose Canadian with no more on his mind than a few days' relaxation. David Davis might have his own ideas, but as long as the free beer held out, Illya didn't think he would talk.

  Around dusk he went back to the hotel. The landlord said there had been no messages for him. He ate a leisurely dinner and spent the rest of the evening in the bar. Neither David Davis nor Hugh ap Morgan showed up. At ten o'clock he shut himself in the telephone box in the lobby and dialed Blodwen's number.

  Solo answered the call.

  Illya asked, "Did you get the pictures?"

  "I did, and I've run a check. The old man is Price Hughes, all right. He seems to be a professional eccentric but oth
erwise his reputation is unblemished. He has more money than Fort Knox and he spends it on good works. Apart from the nut colony you've uncovered he heads an organization for reforming ex-convicts, which he runs from his apartment in Newport Street, London."

  "In Soho? That's an odd address for a philanthropist."

  "I told you. He's an eccentric."

  "Sure." Illya sounded unconvinced. "What about the other two?"

  "The guy in the cheaters is one of his strayed lambs. A simple soul called Rafferty with a list of convictions from here to Glasgow. Grievous bodily harm, shooting with intent, mugging — you name it, he's done it. He's worked as a strong-arm man in race-track protection, organized prostitution and smuggling. But now, he claims, he's seen the light. He's been in the clear since he came out of Dartmoor a year ago."

  "And Morgan?"

  "That," said Solo, "is the jackpot question. You know some of the answers. He got mixed up with politics and did three years for arson. Maybe that's how he got in touch with Price Hughes. But here's the interesting thing. Before he got into trouble he was in line for a professorship at the University of Wales. It seems he was some kind of boy genius with a special bent for electronics. According to my sources he was tinkering about with one of the first experimental computers when the blow fell."

  "Intriguing," Illya murmured.

  "Wait. It gets better. He did his time in Wakefield, where a prisoner gets a reasonable choice of studies. Morgan elected to work in the printing shop. He knew he was washed up academically and he wanted to learn a trade.

  "When he was released the Ministry of Labor found him a place with a firm that specializes in fine printing and engraving, but it didn't work out. He got restless and quit. He joined the army, volunteered for special duties, and was next heard of in one of the hush-hush outfits, forging document for the Resistance movements.