The Man from the Sea

by Michael Innes

  “I don’t care tuppence.” Aware that this was rather a boorish reply, Cranston made the more haste to throw open the door of the ambulance. The action revealed Sandy Morrison, scratching his tousled head and gazing round the deserted quarry in slow consternation. “Sandy,” he called out, “what’s taken you?”

  “It’s no’ onything that’s tak’n me, ye great gaup. It’s some loon that’s tak’n your auld rattletrap.”

  Cranston leapt to the ground. A single glance told him that Sandy spoke the truth. His car was gone.

  10

  “You’re sure it’s the same place?” Day spoke from the interior of the ambulance. He had not been prevented by Sandy Morrison’s inelegant vocabulary from tumbling instantly to what had happened.

  “Of course it’s the same place – damn you!” Hearing himself swear, Cranston knew that he was rattled. His plan had been clever – but it looked as if somebody else had been cleverer still. And there was this girl. She was a tiresome irruption, certainly, from her uncouth wilderness. But she had played up very decently. And now he had allowed himself to land her in a trap. A single quick look round this lonely quarry had left him with no illusions. It was not the sort of spot in which professional car thieves find it profitable to lurk. His car had vanished as a move – probably a final and decisive move – in the melodrama in which this accursed John Day had involved him.

  “In that case we know where we are.” Day’s tone had all its irritating calm.

  “And what the hell does it matter to you?” Cranston rounded on him stupidly. “You’re going to die – aren’t you? But we don’t all share your blasted simple plan. Do you think I want to see this girl riddled with bullets – or Sandy here, or myself?”

  “I’m sure you don’t. And that being so, perhaps we should attempt to drive on in this ambulance. It’s what they call a forlorn hope.”

  “We can try.” Recovering himself, Cranston swung round quickly. “Sandy, climb in – and drive for all you’re worth. I’ll explain later. But it’s life or death, I promise you.”

  “But, man, I’ve got to be back in the forenoon!” Sandy raised a protesting wail. “Gin I jine in your daft ploy ony mair, d’ye think I’ll ever hae that hearse?”

  “You’ll have a hearse, all right – if we don’t get out of this.” It was Day who spoke, and again impassively. “But first, they’ll have to collect what’s left of you with a shovel.”

  “And what sort of a daft speak is that, ye plookfaced–”

  A sharp report from the edge of the quarry made Sandy break off. It was followed by a quick hiss of escaping air. Cranston turned round in time to see one of the rear wheels settle flat on its rim. By a single neat shot the ambulance had been virtually immobilised.

  So that was that. Cranston took a quick survey of the terrain and acknowledged – what he already knew – that it could not be worse. Behind them, in an unbroken semicircle, was the face of the quarry. In front was the unfrequented road leading to the glen and to the moors beyond. On the other side of the road a bare brae rose gently to a sky-line perhaps a couple of hundred yards away. The enemy was presumably looking down from somewhere at the top of the quarry. Even if no more than a single person lurked there, it was a position admirably chosen. There was no conceivable line of flight that offered the slightest hope of a successful get-away… He found that George was standing beside him. “Get back,” he said. “Get back at once.”

  “Nonsense. I was brought up on this.” Very deliberately, she took a dozen paces into the open. And he saw suddenly that she was an extraordinary sight. His joke about Apollo’s big sister had been only too near the mark; she was a divinity disguised as divinities must be disguised in opera – with grotesque inadequacy. In Elspeth’s clothes she had the appearance of some resplendent symbol of earth – say a great sheaf of corn – unconvincingly masquerading as a scare-crow. That whole business at the castle had been too clever by half. Or rather it had been too light-hearted – the sort of thing one contrives in a rag, and not in a desperate battle for survival. He watched her with compunction as she strolled back to him.

  “I mean, of course, in my reading. Bush-rangers. Here’s a coach or a waggon, and there” – she pointed upwards to the lip of the quarry–“is Ned Kelly… Sandy Morrison, did you ever hear of Ned Kelly?”

  Cranston realised that the incredible girl was acting with deliberation and in the interest of Sandy’s morale. Something of the sort was needed, for this was plainly his baptism of fire and he had been a little taken aback by it. Now he grinned slowly, although his eye was apprehensively on the quarry. “I’ve seen something like,” he said, “at the picture-hoose in Dindervie. Ye mind the way they end episodes in the serials? A fine skirry-whirry we’re landit in.”

  “Will they do…absolutely anything?” She had turned to Cranston. “Is this it?”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I’m terribly sorry – and it seems incredible. But they’re – well, entirely serious.”

  “Then I propose to get into other clothes.” George swung herself back into the ambulance. “And you needn’t turn out our purblind friend. I don’t mind him. But I do mind going to my last account dressed like something in Sir James Barrie.”

  “Day – come out!” Cranston had realised what he must do. “We’re beaten.”

  “So soon?” Day came to the rear of the ambulance but made no move to emerge. George was wasting no time; Cranston could see her scrambling out of her dress in the semi-darkness beyond. “Right at the start, in fact?” Day was almost mocking. “Is that what you call resource?”

  “Don’t be a fool, man. They’ve caught us, and the circumstances leave only one thing to do. Will you do it?”

  “I think I know what you mean.” Day paused and appeared to be listening carefully. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that they seem in no hurry with their next move? My guess is that it’s just as it was last night. There’s only one man. He’s taken your car, and he’s got us, I suppose, neatly immobilised. There’s no cover to get away behind?”

  “Not a scrap.”

  “On the other hand, he may be immobilised too.”

  Cranston shook his head. “I don’t see it. Again, it’s just like last night. All he need do is come over and blow our brains out.”

  “He can’t be certain that by this time we haven’t got a gun – or several guns – ourselves.” Day was patiently expository, like a teacher before a dull class. “He may be reckoning that he can do no more than just pin us here until some of his associates turn up. Actually, something else may turn up instead – and entirely to our advantage. It’s unlikely, but one never knows. So I don’t at all see that we need throw up the sponge. Courage, my dear young man, courage.”

  “My guess is that they’ve mustered quite a force by now.” Cranston kept his temper with difficulty. “And if they simply open up on us here there’ll be a massacre – including this girl. I think you’d better consider whether it isn’t up to you–”

  “To go quietly?” Day asked the question reasonably. “To walk straight towards the cliff or quarry or whatever it is and let them finish me? You think they’d then let the rest of the party off?”

  “I want you to come with me – you need a guiding hand, after all – and talk to them, whoever they are.”

  “You’re a fool. You don’t know them.” Day was sharply impatient. “They’d shoot us down, I tell you, and then turn on the others. They’re going to leave no witness of this. Our only–”

  “Mr John Day!”

  Cranston swung round. The voice had come from somewhere high up in the quarry – and even as he searched the rock the figure of a man stood boldly up on the skyline and then dropped out of sight again.

  “Mr John Day!” It was a second voice – and simultaneously a second figure rose momentarily into view. The first had been English; this was markedly foreign.

  “Mr John Day – please!” A third voice, also foreign, quickly followed, and again
the owner briefly showed himself. But this time the same voice continued to speak from cover. “Will Mr John Day please join us? Nobody else need come. Will Mr John Day kindly join us?”

  The summons was utterly bizarre – like the call of a pageboy in a nightmarish hotel. But Day appeared unperturbed by it. “You see? They’re not really anxious to present themselves in person. But they’d be quite willing to get on with the job from a distance. I’d advise the young man and yourself to come inside.”

  Cranston thought for a moment. “Sandy – can we make a dash for it? We can drive on as we are?”

  “Aye, Dick – we can that, at a kin o’ crawl. But ye maun mind they’ve got your rattletrap – and mebbe a car o’ their ain foreby roon the next bend. It’s an unco awkward thing.” Sandy scratched his head again. “I dinna ken what for’s a’ this stour. Thae voices are fair scunnererfu’ and I canna’ thole them. But I’m thinking I hear an engine. Might it be the polis, do you think, in their bit car from Dindervie?”

  Cranston listened. There was certainly an odd throb or rumble in the air. But it didn’t sound like a car. “Farm machinery somewhere,” he said…“Listen.”

  Again one of the voices was speaking from the quarry. This time it was nearer, and from lower down on the left. “We’re coming,” it said. “I think you have a lady? There need be no violence – nothing distressing. Simply an appointment with Mr Day. We advise him to join us.”

  “Awa’ and bile your heids!” Suddenly moved to wrath, Sandy Morrison made the quarry ring with this rude injunction. Then he made a dash for the cabin of his ambulance, and reappeared brandishing a spanner. “I’ll learn ye!” he bawled. “Come awa’ doon here, ye lurking loupers, and I’ll learn ye.”

  It was a challenge that was immediately accepted. There was a whistle from somewhere in the quarry, and two men appeared simultaneously at each end of it. A fifth rose up from behind a heap of stone straight in front of them. Cranston caught a glint on his face that he recognised. He had doffed his trilby, but there could be no doubt about his identity. All the men began to advance with deliberation in a contracting half-circle. They were all much like the man in the middle. They all wore the same sort of townee clothes. If anything could be more sinister than the simple fact of their threatening advance it was this displeasing incongruity with their surroundings. They should have been lurking under lamp-posts in disreputable streets or keeping furtive observation on others of their own kind in undesirable pubs.

  The advance continued. The men made no display of weapons, but each kept one hand in a pocket of his jacket. George dropped to the ground again beside Cranston. She was once more in her khaki walking kit. “It’s not quite real – is it?” Her voice was steady. “It ought to be flickering faintly – and in glorious Technicolor.” She was watching the man with the glinting glasses. “And they ought to keep on coming at us until they’re enormously larger than life.”

  “Life-size will do.” From behind them in the ambulance Day’s voice for the first time was savage. “There’s no sign of traffic in this damned solitude you’ve trapped us in? Don’t I hear something?”

  Even as Day spoke the line of men came to a halt. The throb and rumble in the air had rapidly increased – and now there was added to it a sort of clattering tramp, as of an army of booted giants pounding up the road to the glen. Cranston swung round. What was in fact advancing upon them was a line of tanks.

  The uproar grew. A second line of the monsters had appeared over the brae straight ahead. They had enormous guns that gave them the appearance of a herd of trumpeting elephants. And they came lumbering and lurching down the hill, apparently intent upon a rendezvous with their fellows at this point where the quarry made a great scar on the answering slope. For a second Cranston stared unbelievingly. He could think of the irruption only in terms of a planned spectacular act of rescue, and the forces being hurled into the battle seemed fantastically disproportioned to their task. Then he realised that the appearance was of course fortuitous. The tanks had no interest in the ambulance standing in the quarry. And presently they would be gone.

  He turned round again. The five men had vanished. Very understandably, this abrupt appearance of the armed forces of the Crown had a little thrown them out of their stride.

  “It’s thae Tank Corps chiels frae the camps ahint Drumtoul. They’ve been scurryvaiging ouer the moors these ten days syne. It’s tairrible bad for the birrds.” Sandy was wholly disapproving. “And they’ll no’ even gae lounlie on the sabbath. The meenister at Auchinputtock has preached a sairmon on it.”

  When not more than twenty yards away, the first of the monsters drew to a halt. One by one, lurching, coughing and spluttering, the others did the same. There was a long line of them on the road. Those on the brae had spread out as they descended, and they were now immobile on its slopes as if they had been frozen while they grazed. Trapdoors opened and beret-clad heads looked out. A group of officers appeared from nowhere and applied themselves to conversing importantly over a map. Some of the beret-clad heads, becoming aware of George, emitted significant whistles and cautiously improper cries. Cranston glanced at the girl. “Well,” he said, “Day was right. Something has turned up. And I’d better go and nobble that Major.”

  “No!” She put an urgent hand on his arm. “You wouldn’t think of throwing up the sponge if you didn’t feel you had me on your hands. Sandy and you must change the wheel, and get clean away from under their noses. If you like, I’ll stop behind.”

  “With the licentious soldiery?”

  “I expect they’ll be frightfully decent. The Major looks most fatherly.”

  “Sandy, man – come on.” Cranston made a dive for the tool-kit. “We’ll get away yet.”

  “And that we will.” Sandy Morrison dropped the spanner with which he had armed himself and went to work furiously. The ambulance was jacked up before he spoke again. “Dick,” he said in a low voice, “ye’ll no really leave the quean-bairn wi’ the sodjers?”

  “We ought to, Sandy. You see now what sort of a business this is. It’s not for a girl.”

  “I dinna’ ken that she’s ony less apt to it than ye are yersel’, Dickie Cranston. See her getting oot the spare whiles you dae na’ mair than stand by like a gumphie.” Sandy was withering. Then he paused to draw from a pocket an enormous watch. “I can get ye a’ to Drumtoul halt, man, in time for the wee diesel-car tae the junction. And there ye can tak’ the express. Hae ye siller?”

  “Quite a lot. And Day claims to have a fortune.”

  “Does he that?” Sandy spoke with respect. “Haud the thing fast, man, whiles I get the nuts off. The tanks are no’ for moving yet?”

  “No, thank goodness. Some of the men are out on the heather and smoking. My guess is that the Major has got lost and won’t admit it.”

  “Praise the Lord!” Sandy ejaculated this with genuine piety. “And the preen-heidit foo’s in the quarry?”

  “They’re not so witless, if you ask me. But they’re giving no sign.”

  “We’ll jink them yet…right, lassie – pass it ou’er.” Sandy took the spare wheel from George with an approving nod. “Ye’re warth twa o’ this feckless loon Dickie. Ye’ll hae the hearse, mebbe, afore mysel’. There’s a lum hat gaes wi’ it. You’d look braw in that.” Sandy laughed extravagantly at this fantasy. “Praise-be-thankit, it’s on.” Sandy looked up, and paused indignantly. Several of the more enterprising youths from the tank-crews had slipped across the road and formed an admiring group round the ambulance. Ostensibly they were appraising the technique of its driver. But their real interest was, of course, in George. The classically educated among them might have likened her to an Amazon, dropped in, appropriately girt, to do a turn of work in Vulcan’s smithy. The bolder could be heard comparing her points, audibly and favourably, with those of such young ladies as had recently figured on the front page of Blighty. Sandy tightened a final nut with energy. “It’s no daecent,” he said. “A loon has but tae put on a bit uni
form and syne he sheds a’ the godliness that was skelpit into him as a wean. Awa’ wi’ ye!” He looked up and waved an oily hand at the young men. “First scaring the birrds that ought to be reservit for the gentry in the lodges and the half-gentry in the hotels. And then making profane talk aboot the fore and aft o’ a maiden that’s worth the pack o’ ye. Awa’, I say.”

  Much as if endorsing the injunction, the Major at this point gave a shout, and somebody farther back blew a whistle. The soldiers went off at the double. Tanks here and there began to snort and shake themselves. George finished strapping the punctured wheel into its place and turned to Sandy. “Where will they be going?”

  “Back to Drumtoul for their brose. Eating by day, and sprunting after the village lasses by nicht, is a’ they’re fit for.”

  “Then we can go too.” George gave a single glance at Cranston – too swift to be an appeal – and swung herself up into the seat beside the driver’s. In a moment Sandy had followed her.

  Cranston picked up the jack and pitched it into the ambulance. He took a careful look at the quarry. There was no sign of the enemy, but he had no doubt that they were still lurking there. The first of the tanks were already moving. It was clear that the exercise was in fact over, and that they were minded to trundle decorously home. He glanced into the ambulance. Day was sitting quietly on a stretcher. In Sir Alex Blair’s expensive tweeds and the dark glasses he was unrecognisable. Cranston could almost persuade himself that here was somebody with whom he had nothing to do. But that, unfortunately, would be an illusion. “You were right,” he said abruptly. “And we’re getting away. For the moment.”

  “It’s from moment to moment, my dear fellow, that I’ve lately learned to live.” Day stretched himself. “We’ve picked up some sort of miraculous convoy to a place called Drumtoul?”

  “Just that. As my friend here would say, the deil looks after his ain.”

  “How long until we get there?”