by John Creasey
On the seat by Palfrey’s side was a milk churn.
In the boot were several cans.
If the octi burst . . .
They drew nearer the lights. Now, Woburn could see men moving against them; and could see machines moving, too. Bulldozers. At first, he hardly believed it. Then they drew nearer, and turned a corner. A bulldozer was biting jaggedly into the earth, already going down several feet below the surface. It looked as if a hundred men, swarming over the field, were digging a great trench.
Then, he understood.
Palfrey was afraid that the octi would spread. He had called in the military, and the men were working wildly, desperately, to dig a trench so wide and deep that the octi could not cross it.
As he saw that, Woburn exclaimed: “A trench won’t stop them. They burrow underground, otherwise—”
“We don’t know how long they take to go deep,” Palfrey pointed out, “and we have a chance of trapping thousands of them here. If we can keep them away from Scourie—”
He broke off.
They turned another corner.
Here, half a dozen bulldozers and several grabs were working. Machines had been brought up over the fields, no one took much notice of the road. Palfrey didn’t stop, but glanced from side to side, as if satisfied.
He didn’t look round, but said: “At least they got a move on.”
“You scared them,” said Andromovitch.
“They needed scaring.”
Woburn made himself break in: “How big an area are you trying to isolate?”
Without looking round, Palfrey answered: “Not really a big one. We’ve drawn a semi-circular line around the farm, about five miles away from it. We’ve followed low lying land, and have the mountains on three sides, the coast on the other. If we have any luck at all, we’ll confine the things for a while. We’re working like furies in research laboratories to find out what we can about them – that’s why we want more samples. As to whether we can keep them at bay for hours, days or weeks – well, we just don’t know. But all cottages, farms and villages in the area are being evacuated. Ronoch Castle is just outside the boundary of the area,” he added, and then went on almost to himself: “I hope I haven’t made a mistake in leaving it.”
“Is. . . Davos still there?”
“As far as I know,” said Palfrey.
They drove past the military, and the light fell behind them. Ahead was the dimmer light, from Scourie’s street lamps. Palfrey still drove very carefully. Once, a pothole made the car sway, and all three men held their breath.
Another car was just behind them. Woburn was looking through the rear window, when he saw its headlights lurch, as if it had fallen into a ditch. He gritted his teeth. He saw the lights moving up and down, and then go out. He couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, but he sensed the truth.
Octi in the other car had burst.
The car behind switched on its headlights, they shimmered on a sheet of water which splashed upwards and then fell. The car immediately behind Woburn seemed to split its side.
Woburn did not know whether his brother-in-law was in that car or the one behind.
Bill Robertson was safe, in the third car.
The two men in the second car were trapped in the wreckage, and water streamed out of it in all directions.
When they were brought out, one was badly injured and the other dead.
Woburn spent the night with Jenny’s sister-in-law’s family, sleeping on a sofa in the front room. Before turning in, he had spent another hour with Palfrey, learning off by heart the questions and answers of the false interview he’d had with Palfrey. He had seen Jenny for a few minutes. She had not been told of the damage to the farmhouse, or the danger that it would collapse.
Bill Robertson was under oath not to talk about the octi.
Woburn woke to the unfamiliar sounds of a small Scottish highland town. The rattle of milk cans and bottles. The clip clop of the horse drawing the float. A whistling newsboy. Hurrying cars. He was stiff, in his right leg and at the back of the neck. He sat up, yawning and rubbing his neck – and then he remembered what had happened.
He sat quite still for a long time.
He got up. Someone was moving about the house, but he had no desire to talk to people whom he hardly knew. He drew the curtains and looked out of the window. A policeman was strolling by, and a man was cleaning a window at a shop across the road. Trust the Scots to behave as if everything were normal! A little Austin passed, driven by a fair-haired girl who was smiling. Morning had brought relief from of the nightmare.
Had it?
Well, here he was, sleeping in a strange house in Scourie. The farm – the farm might have crumbled away to nothing.
Woburn stood by the window.
He went over everything he had discussed with Palfrey, and with the ‘questions and answers’ that they had agreed upon. It was like learning a stage part; but he’d had no experience and it wasn’t easy. He kept stumbling. The main thing, Palfrey had said, was to remember the drift of the conversation, there was no need to keep a verbatim account. The assumption was that one day, Sir Gabriel Davos or someone else would want to know what had happened between him and Palfrey; and there was that almost ludicrous suggestion that he might be questioned under duress.
Two small children passed, hand in hand. The policeman appeared, and escorted them across the road. Gravely, they thanked him. The window cleaner grinned. The morning’s sun already cast shadows on to the solid walls and the roofs of the houses and shops opposite. A faint mist hung in the air, it was going to be hot again.
A few miles away, the water of the loch had swallowed up part of Scotland.
Woburn ventured out of his room. Jenny’s sister-in-law, Marjorie, was bustling about the kitchen, a bigger woman than Jenny, buxom, bright-eyed in spite of a short night’s sleep and everything that had happened. He’d want a cup of tea: there it was, on the hob, why didn’t he help himself? Was he a silent breakfaster or could he stand a woman’s chatter? On and on she went, without irritating him; there was some kind of innate goodness which seemed to go with the Robertson family.
Woburn shaved, had a good fried breakfast, and left the house uneasily. He hadn’t seen Bill or Jenny. He didn’t know how they were. Marjorie had sent him off, cheerfully; she would look after them, and it wouldn’t help anyone if she were to go about with a long face. God knew she’d been fond of Reggie. That crack in the cheerfulness impressed Woburn more than anything about her.
It was warm in the street.
A man was standing at the corner, reading a newspaper. More children came along, hurrying. Woburn reached the corner, and the man said: “Palfrey can’t see you again this morning. Handle it as you think best.”
The man spoke out of the corner of his mouth, without looking at Woburn. It couldn’t have been more obvious that he didn’t want them to be seen talking. Woburn missed a step, and then walked on. By the time he reached the next corner, he was facing up to the fact that he was now completely on his own. In a way that he couldn’t control, his heart began to beat faster.
He drew within sight of Gimmick’s garage.
As he hurried towards it, a church clock struck; it was a quarter to nine. Early. A mechanic was underneath an old car outside the garage, another was serving petrol. Woburn looked round for Reggie’s motor-cycle; it wasn’t there. His own car was; obviously it had been towed in. As obviously, he wouldn’t be able to use it today. It took him only a few minutes to arrange to hire a car; he was known as Bill Robertson’s brother-in-law, so the question of deposit didn’t arise. The car was an old Riley. He took it out at once, and tried it on the main road leading east. It had a nice turn of speed and was well-tuned.
He knew that he was stalling; evading the issue.
He went back to the house, and set the nose of the borrowed car towards the Castle. As he did so, he could imagine the two men jumping at him from the hillside. If they hadn’t bungled the job, he would
have been dead.
Palfrey had said: ‘You might even get away alive.’
To get to the Castle, he had to go a long way round on a narrow, one-track road full of dangerous bends and sheer falls down to jagged rocks. There was no more desolate part of Scotland, here; the nearly barren earth, the rocks, the mountains, all seemed as hard as granite itself. Here and there were stacks of peat, but no one was about, and Woburn felt absolutely defenceless.
Yet if Palfrey were to have him followed, it might warn Davos.
Davos might be absolutely innocent.
And Eve—
There was a spot higher even than Red Deer Point, and Woburn drove up, teeth set, until he reached the top. He looked down over the countryside.
The loch was there, five times the size that it had been. Great hills had disappeared, the whole contours of the countryside had changed.
The farmhouse wasn’t there.
The water was now within half a mile of the huge trench which was still being dug.
But to his right, Ronoch Castle stood solid and massive and grey, pale in the sunlight. It was a fabulous place, almost medieval, with its turrets, its narrow windows; its moat and its massive, iron-studded doors. And its secrets?
9
Palfrey and Andromovitch were driving towards Inverness later that morning, Palfrey at the wheel with his foot well down, the Russian behind him. Ahead was a motor-cyclist policeman, keeping the way clear. They were already out of sight of Scourie, and the horror of the floods; in a world which was still normal. At Inverness, they would pick up an aircraft and fly south with the precious specimens.
“I wonder if we shall ever see Woburn again,” the Russian said, in just the quiet tone that he had used the previous night. “And also – I wonder if any man could be relied on to do what we’ve asked of him.”
“We stand to lose nothing and gain a lot if he’s any good,” Palfrey said, almost flatly. “He might be very good, partly because he’s bitterly angry. That should help. He’d be going round beating the air in his rage if he weren’t doing this for us, so he’d be a target for the other side, anyhow.”
They went on for a while in silence. Then: “We shall soon know,” the Russian said at last. “What will you do, if he should not come out of the Castle alive? If they kill him there, or if they let him come out, and kill him on the road.”
Palfrey said: “I don’t know, Stefan, I simply don’t know.” He had to slow down behind a lorry and trailer, and he watched the big, turning wheels. “At least we’ve something to tell the Cabinet now,” he went on, “they’ll really believe us this time. And the lab can work on the new specimens, too. But if the octi spread from that loch—”
Andromovitch nodded; Palfrey passed the lorry and the Jaguar sped on.
Book II
THE CASTLE
10
The nearer Woburn drew towards the Castle, the more imposing it looked. Obviously soil had been transported, many years ago. The grounds were beautifully kept. Sweeping lawns running right up to the massive grey stone walls, the turrets and the drawbridge, gave that medieval appearance. The arched doorway beyond the drawbridge was open, and no one was in sight. The position was superb; it stood in the narrow entrance to a rocky valley, with mountains towering behind it. No natural fortress could have been better sited, three hundred years ago. Stretching from either side were high stone walls, like a part of Hadrian’s wall, dug out of the past. The wall stopped only when great rocks took its place; and the Castle stood guard over that great, rocky valley.
Woburn turned towards the drawbridge, without being challenged.
The wheels rumbled over the bridge itself, as if some of the original timber were there. Metal chains clanked. He passed through the arched doorway into an enclosed courtyard with the Castle itself in front of him, and the great walls all around. Here were more lawns, sleek as in a cathedral close, and beds of flowers, which Woburn hardly knew at all. Each bed seemed as if it had been freshly turned that morning; the earth was dark, rich brown. The drive itself was of large flagstones, the smaller paths the same.
Tall, arched windows flanked a high, arched doorway which led into the main building itself. This was closed. The whole place had a strange quietness.
Near the wall opposite him, a peacock stood with tail opened wide, staring at the hen, which pecked at weeds growing between the flagstones.
Woburn pulled up outside the front door, and got out.
He had to force himself to move to the front door, but didn’t touch the iron knocker. He heard a sound, and it made him start; then, the door opened.
A manservant dressed in black said: “Good morning.” The sun shone over his head, into a vast, semi-circular hall on suits of armour, medieval weapons, tapestries, paintings.
“Good morning,” Woburn said. “Is— is Miss Eve Davos in?”
“If you will come in, sir, I will find out,” the man said.
It was as simple and as formal as that. Nothing sinister, nothing unusual; instead of that rock strewn valley bounded by mountains, there might have been parkland and lush green. Yet as he stepped across the threshold, Woburn felt chilled.
“If you will be good enough to wait here, sir.”
This hall was vast, and there was no staircase. Against the inside wall was a huge open fireplace, with its gate, dogs and hooks still in position, and huge logs of wood waiting in readiness for the bleak winter. The floor was of stone, with rich Persian carpets. The furniture was all oak, old and nearly black. It struck cold after the warmth of the morning.
Behind Woburn was the arched door; in front of him, the fireplace; ahead of him on either side, a door. Apart from the tall, narrow windows, there was no other way in or out. The staircase must be on the other side of the fireplace.
“If you will be good enough to wait here, sir,” the man had said, and turned.
He hadn’t asked for Woburn’s name.
Woburn found himself with a cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t light it. A minute passed; two, three. It began to seem like an age. The silence was profound; nothing at all disturbed it. There was just the brightness of the sun shining through two of the windows.
Five minutes.
Woburn began to move about. The cigarette was damp and mangled, he wished he hadn’t lit it. He didn’t see an ash-tray. He could throw it into the fireplace, but there seemed hardly a speck of dust there, it would be a kind of desecration. Yet he tossed it in, to one side. Now, he gritted his teeth. From being chill, the hall seemed really cold. He wanted to turn and leave the hall. It scared him. He could argue with himself from now until Doomsday, but this scared him. He went towards a window, on the right of the front door, and looked into the flower-filled garden and the green lawns – and he saw that a portcullis was down.
He stared at the massive criss-cross of iron, which imprisoned him and anyone else here as securely as any prisoner had been held in the Bloody Tower. This side of the portcullis were the massive doors themselves, which could be closed to make an impassable barrier. Then Woburn heard a slight sound behind him.
He spun round.
“Good morning, Mr. Woburn,” Eve Davos said.
If she noticed his shocked look, she didn’t show it. She smiled, gravely; he thought then that he would always associate her with gravity. Her eyes were greeny-grey, bright and crystal clear. She wore a sheath-like dress of a subdued purple colour, and he was vividly reminded of her long, slender legs, and her height.
“Good morning,” he said.
“I’m very glad you called,” Eve declared, “I wanted to come and see you, but it wasn’t possible.”
“I wanted to make sure that you were all right,” Woburn said. “Half the telephones seem to be out of order.”
“Yes, I know,” said Eve. For a moment she stood in front of him, as if uncertain what to say next. Then: “Won’t you come and have some coffee?”
It was as casual as that.
“Thank you.”
&n
bsp; “This way,” she said, and led the way through the door which the manservant had used. Beyond was a circular hall and a huge staircase, much wider at the foot than at the top. Massive and imposing, it led up to a kind of landing with a carved wooden gallery; and beyond it, an archway without doors. On either side of the foot of the staircase were smaller doors. Woburn told himself that it would take an age to get to know the place, and he simply followed the girl.
Eve opened the door of one of the rooms. It was pleasant, and sunlit. The furniture here was modern, even the fireplace. The room struck warmer than the hall. The walls had been covered, either with a fibre board or plaster, and papered in the modern style, with one deep red wall, one cream, one pink.
She crossed to the fireplace and pressed a bell.
Woburn thought: “What the devil can I do here?” The whole situation was melodramatic and artificial. He hadn’t a chance of finding anything out. What was he to say? “Can you please tell me whether your father is responsible for the octi?” There was no sense in any of it.
But the portcullis was down.
A middle-aged maid came in; that was quite normal, too; there was no more panic or sign of alarm here than there had been in Scourie. Just the quiet formality, and too great a calm.
“Bring some coffee, Maggie.”
“Yes, Miss Eve.”
The maid went out, and the door closed quietly. Woburn felt as if he really had no excuse for coming; that he was trespassing.
Eve began to talk, of trifles. The weather, the summer in general, things which interested her no more than they did him. Underlying it all was tension and. . . fear?
She switched the subject abruptly: “Is it true that the Robertsons’ farm has gone?”
“Yes,” Woburn answered, and immediately felt better; they had stopped pretending. “It’s just disappeared.”
“Will it ever stop?” Eve Davos asked, and raised a clenched hand helplessly. Could she be acting? Could she talk like this if she knew the secret? Could she go on with such passion: “Acres and acres have just been swallowed up. What is being done to stop it? Anything at all?”
