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by Gladys Mitchell

  “Going to try to persuade my friend to come back with me,” he had said. “Nervous chap, and a week of the Sanctuary will set him up in health and temperament for the winter.”

  So now they were received with the Leader’s blessing, and shared a hut. By the time they had taken off the trappings of civilised life and were wearing the brown blankets, which were permitted to the residents from six o’clock onwards, and in which they lay down to sleep, the colony was already at song.

  Bassin and Carey seated themselves modestly at the end of the back row. Some attempt had been made, it seemed, to produce a camp-fire atmosphere at the sing-song, but the evening was not yet sufficiently advanced for the fire to look at its best. It was quite an impressive, flaming, crackling affair built up and refuelled from time to time not by the colony members but by Rover Scouts, whose Good Deed it was, every evening. They took it in turns, coming up from their camp in the valley. The voices, also, of the nudists, raised in song, were not sufficiently robust, and were far too delicately refined, to make a good effect. The general impression was that the majority of the company were where they were, and were employed as they were employed, simply because there was nothing else to do.

  The Rovers, Bassin supposed, were able only by virtue of the brown blankets to be present. He whispered this suggestion to the Leader, who was smilingly making his rounds. It was received with a wider smile and a deep nod of assent. The revels, or, as Carey preferred to call it, the seance, continued until half-past eight, and then the blanketed inmates moved in droves to the house (a strangely impressive mansion whose ground plan had originally been that of a Carthusian monastery and which had been successively built on and added to by Elizabethans, Sir Christopher Wren and, lastly, the Hell-fire Club) for hot milk and charcoal biscuits.

  Carey and Bassin made a discreet withdrawal at the conclusion of the ceremonies, and were about to congratulate themselves—in fact, had begun to do so—that they had gained the trees which veiled the approach to George, the cigarettes, and the drinks, without arousing curiosity and suspicion, when their dreams were rudely shattered by a female voice, pitched low, but hideously clear.

  “I say, you two,” it said. “You can’t do it. I’ve tried twice. They set kind of sentries.”

  In another second she was with them. They could not see her, for it was very dark among the trees, but she put her hand suddenly on Carey’s shin, tightened her grip, and repeated her observations.

  “Don’t be silly, my good child,” said her prisoner testily. “Who’s proposing to do anything?”

  “You are. You had a look in your eye. I spotted it while we were singing ‘Pioneers.’ You two don’t belong here, any more than I do.”

  “This sounds to me like an ally,” said Carey to Bassin. He reached out in his turn and managed to grip the girl by the elbow. “Tell me,” he said, “who you are.”

  “Name’s Ermyntrude,” said the girl.

  “Rot. I don’t believe it.”

  “Usually known as Truda.”

  “All right. Take it as read. Now, Truda, listen. You are in the clutches of two dangerous, man-eating, he-men, who will have not the faintest compunction in throttling away your probably misspent and, in any case, useless life, if you make yourself the kind of nuisance that I think you’re going to.”

  The girl giggled with gratification.

  “I knew you two were the right kind,” she said. “But, honestly, take my advice, you’ll never do it.”

  “And this,” said Carey, “to the man who once debagged a Proctor’s bull-dog.”

  “Liar! I bet you didn’t!”

  “Well, actually, no.”

  “There you are! Oh, if you only knew how I’ve longed for, and watched out for, somebody like you two, since I’ve been in this ghastly hole.”

  “But when did you come?” asked Carey, who could not remember her voice.

  “This morning. God and the Rabbit, brothers!” Her voice quivered with self-pity. “To think that I could have been camping with my angel Lionel!”

  Carey sympathised with her, and then released her grip.

  “We must be off,” he said. “No, we’re not trying to make a bolt up to Town, arriving back on a milk-train, or anything, really, so do let go.”

  “Then,” said the girl, who still retained her hold on the calf of his leg with a scientific grip, which informed him that any attempt on his part to escape would be fraught with horrible agony, “you’ve got a private still, or something, haven’t you?”

  “You know,” said Bassin, “we’d better let her in. She’s too intelligent to be wasted.”

  “Speaks our language, too,” said Carey admiringly. He edged a little closer to his captor, and slid an experienced arm round a smooth, slim body.

  “Hell! Get away!” said the girl, unwisely letting go of his leg in order to slap his head. In a split second she had lost her prey, and the two young men were wriggling silently, agonisingly, but triumphantly away.

  “You low, hornswoggling, Nazi half-breeds!” she yelled. They lay flat, but the girl did not attempt to follow them. Carey touched Bassin’s arm. Somewhere in front of them somebody was signalling with an electric torch.

  “Go up to him and lead him astray. It must be the sentry,” said Bassin. Carey stood up and walked towards the man.

  “My room-mate,” he said. “Gone mad. Says he must go to London tonight, or bust. What do we do? His mother made me swear that I’d never let him out of my sight. He’s on a treatment for alcohol. I don’t know what will happen if he’s allowed to be at large in London. He’s taken ten pounds of my money. You can get an awful lot of drink for ten pounds. Think on your feet, man! This way! This way!”

  By the time he had led the man sufficiently astray, Bassin had got back to their hut with four pints of ale, a hundred cigarettes, two boxes of matches, and a beer-opener, the whole in a wicker basket provided by the thoughtful George.

  “And now for the wench,” said Carey, whose sense of justice was elementary but sound. “If she hadn’t tipped us off about the sentry we’d never have established communication with George.”

  He made a danger-fraught, lightning round of the girls’ huts, whistling “Will ye no’ come back again” outside each. The quarry, who was as intelligent as they had hoped, glided out of the third hut, put her hand over Carey’s mouth, and whispered:

  “What have you got? Gin?”

  “Only beer and a few cigarettes,” said Carey, “but such as it is, you’re welcome. I drew the sentry, whilst Boy Scout Number One Bassin achieved the stuff.”

  “I adore beer,” said the girl.

  “As for gin,” said Carey earnestly, when the three of them were seated on his bed—a mattress on the floor of the hut—and the girl had just lifted her head from a long, deep drink of beer, “you leave it alone, young Truda. Time for gin when you’re a vamp of advanced years and reduced—or, rather enhanced—figure. Mother’s ruin, don’t you forget. I take it that you, so far—”

  “OK, Father Time,” responded she, accepting a cigarette and a light from Bassin. “Well, thanks ever so for the party. Suppose I’d better be crawling back unless I want to be flung out of the colony for immoral behaviour. I’ll tell you what. The New England States had nothing whatever on this place when it comes to the fraternising of the young, so just watch your step, Casanova.”

  “And that,” said Carey, after she had gone, “to a respectable married man and the father of a family. Never marry, Bassin. The lesser, or female, is an ungrateful sex.”

  “The thing is,” said Bassin, beginning to put away the bottle and glasses, “to decide what our next move will be. Personally, I’m all for a raid on the sleeping Call, or Carn, to see what we can bounce out of him.”

  “Sort of third degree, do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s marvellous what you can get a man to say if you wake him up suddenly enough.”

  “Heil, Hitler,” said Carey, piously.

  So they sneak
ed out, Carey in the lead; for his previous stay at the Sanctuary had acquainted him with the position of Mr. Call’s hut.

  “Remember, it’s his ears we’ve got to see,” said Bassin earnestly. “I’m heavier than you, so I sit on him whilst you take the torch and carry out the inspection. If they’re not pierced for earrings, of course we slide out muttering apologies and saying we mistook him for our boyhood friend named Ernest. If they are pierced for earrings—and something tells me they will be—we invite him to come across with information about the cash-box, and we don’t let up on him until we’ve dug something out about it. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Right. Let’s go.”

  The night was still very young. It was barely ten by Carey’s luminous watch when he laid a hand on Bassin’s arm to indicate that they were approaching Call’s hut.

  One useful piece of knowledge, which Carey had gleaned on his previous stay in the Sanctuary was that Call had no companion in his hut. They approached with the greatest caution, however, the clump of flowering bushes, which beautifully but effectively screened the door.

  Carey went first, and opened up the hut. The doors were self-locking, like those of hotel bedrooms, but, as Carey had managed to discover—“more crude but useful sleuthing” as he himself expressed it—it was possible to open all the doors with his own key, as every lock was precisely similar to every other lock.

  Their burglarious entry did not disturb the sleeper. Whatever he had on his conscience, and whether or not he was Carn, the occupant of the hut slept deeply. It was the business of a moment to locate him, and of another, or less than another, for Bassin to sit on his head.

  He was a biggish fellow, but Bassin was compact and heavy. Carey shone the torch on to the ear, which Bassin, shifting position slightly, permitted to be disclosed.

  “Other one,” murmured Carey. “This one fills the bill.”

  Bassin got up, seized the captive by the beard, and wrenched his head round. The beard, not surprisingly, came away in his hands at this treatment, and Carey, who had managed to grip the ear long enough to examine its lobe, now flashed the torch full on the beardless face before the sudden bellow which their victim emitted brought reinforcements hastening from other huts in the vicinity.

  Carey touched Bassin’s arm. Bassin bumped Carn’s head on the floor to give him something to think about whilst they made their escape. They were none too soon. Scarcely had they reached the bushes and hidden themselves when a mixed mob of nudists, headed, it appeared from the voice, by the older Mr. Child, came running towards Carn’s hut.

  Carey touched Bassin again, and, the hut having swallowed up the rescue party, the two young men went quietly back to their own.

  “It occurs to me,” said Carey, “that it would be just as well for us to be able to produce an alibi. I’m a marked man among some of ’em here. Let’s go and dig out two girls with whom I have some slight influence, and prime them with a few well-chosen, foolproof lies against Carn’s accusations tomorrow morning. Good thing we arranged you should leave your beaver here and tackle him clean-shaven. It ought to help establish our bona fidey, as my tobacconist would say.”

  Cordial relations were soon established with the two girls, whose huts were some distance away, and who had not heard the disturbance, and after a pleasant visit the young men went away, loudly calling their good nights (to the annoyance of the nudists in the adjacent huts), and settled down on their mattresses to discuss the evening’s work.

  “We didn’t manage the cash-box interrogation,” remarked Carey discontentedly. “I’d no idea he’d yell the place down like that.”

  “Do you know, I think that part of it was really a bit providential,” said Bassin. “I mean, we know now that it’s Carn, because of the ears. Well done, Mrs. Saxant! We should never have got on to them at all, if it hadn’t been for her.”

  “Dirty trick of his to send those other ears,” said Carey.

  “Jolly clever of your aunt to have the police re-examine them and find they weren’t pierced.”

  “Jolly sensible of the police to have kept them pickled for reference!” said Carey, grinning. There was a bowl of fruit at hand. Bassin lobbed an orange.

  “Chuck it,” said Carey. “Oh, no! Jolly clever of you, Bassin—no, pax, you silly ass! Keep your fruit to yourself! It’s given me an idea.”

  “Tomatoes?”

  “You said it, brother.”

  “Can’t see the point, all the same.”

  “You will. Nighty-night. Sleep well.” He drew his blanket a little more snugly about him, for they had sallied forth naked to the fray and the evening was chilly. He and Bassin were both scratched from their enforced seclusion in the bushes, but as all the nudists had lacerations, abrasions and bruises—these being the minor penalties of the Back to Nature Campaign which they imagined themselves to be waging on behalf of their fellow human beings—their wounds, as Carey pointed out, would not count against them on the morrow.

  They slept well, but took the precaution, before they went to bed, of wedging a golf club under the handle of the door. Golf was recognised as a suitable nudist pastime, and the Sanctuary had its own nine-hole course. Nothing disturbed the night, however. Bassin was first awake, woke Carey, according to agreement, and they went to the lake for a swim.

  Although it was only six o’clock, the lake was dotted with the heads of swimmers. The water was very cold. They looked for Carn, but he was not there. The majority of the swimmers, in fact, were girls.

  “Always the hardier sex,” said Carey, diving almost on top of one in order to make her shriek. Having achieved this desirable result, he swam very fast to the opposite end of the lake, the girl pursuing him. Bassin, not nearly so enterprising, took a running dive off a springboard and solemnly swam up and down until he was tired. Then he got out and dried himself. Carey, who had got out long before, was playing round games, involving a good deal of pushing and giggling, with a group of girls and one rather pale young man whose contribution to the general joy was a weary but almost incessant cry of “Rah! Rah! Rah!”

  Bassin watched them for a moment, and then trotted, as seriously as he had swum, round the edge of the meadow in which the lake was situated. When he had done about a mile in this fashion, he performed a solemn ritual of exercises, and then waited for Carey.

  Carey broke from the bevy, and offered to race him up to the house for breakfast.

  “Not that there’s much to race for,” he admitted, when Bassin declined to take part in the contest. “Grapefruit or stewed figs, porridge, boiled or poached eggs, tomatoes, toast, marmalade.”

  “Ah, yes. Tomatoes,” said Bassin. “What’s the giddy scheme?”

  “Wait and see, big boy. Hey! Quick! Bag the last two places at the top table! The Leader grubs there in person, and the helpings are just that one most desirable degree more lavish than elsewhere in this ruddy orphanage.”

  They secured the places in the teeth of other claimants, and a little later were scanning the menu, which was exactly as Carey had quoted, except that there were also nuts.

  During the meal Bassin noticed that his companion had a more than usually roving eye. He ate, too, as though he were in danger of losing a train. Suddenly he got up, walked to a side-table on which were fruit and salads, picked up a couple of good-sized tomatoes, and walked over to another of the long tables.

  Bassin glanced at his own watch, which (in defiance he supposed, of the true spirit of nudism) he had elected to wear. He thought that Carey was planning to get back to George before the hour of eight, at which time George was due to take the car back to the “Lion,” so he finished his own breakfast, and made for the door. Nobody, he noticed, sat a moment longer at meals than was necessary. Some even walked to the door finishing the last mouthful as they went. Some took fruit or nuts out with them. It was all very informal and, to that extent, enjoyable.

  He had reached the door and was looking round for Carey to join him when a singular and impress
ive scene was presented. Carey, tomatoes in hand, was leaning on the back of the chair of the bearded man whom Bassin (safe behind the ramparts of his own large, curly beard) recognized for the man who had fired at him from the motor cycle. The man was conversing thickly, and with a marked German accent—the whole effect very different from the cultured voice of Senss—about Waterford glass, about which he knew a good deal.

  Suddenly, Carey tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hey! Just a minute!” he said. The man swung round, suddenly caught sight of the tomatoes and, with a scream, ducked his head aside, covering his beard and the lower part of his face with his table napkin.

  Carey politely withdrew the offending spheres, apologized very charmingly for having startled the gentleman, and order was soon restored.

  Bassin, not wishing to attract attention to himself during this interesting scene, had gone outside, and, Carey joining him, began to trot towards their hut. Once there, both seized their clothes and raced for the shelter of the woods.

  None too soon did they plunge in among the trees, for the bearded man went by the huts at a very creditable speed. He was muttering angrily.

  “Gone to get his gun,” said Carey. “Come on.”

  George was glad to see them. He had had a nice sleep, he said.

  “Have another,” said Carey. “Shove over, George. I’ll drive.”

  Mrs. Bradley was seated in the lounge. She had been up since half-past six, but had not gone in to breakfast, foreseeing that the two young men would join her.

  She went out to the yard when she heard the car draw up in front of the house, and told George to get his breakfast and then go straight to bed. Then she went in to greet Bassin and her nephew.

  “It’s him all right,” said Carey. “But we’re not convinced about Senss, except that the fellow Bassin plastered with the tomatoes is German. But he talks with a thick sort of accent, not a bit like Senss’s voice, Bassin says. However, he’s scared stiff of tomatoes. Got a permanent complex, I should say.”