The Secret Vanguard (7 page)

‘Yes?’

‘Sheila.’

‘Yes, Dick Evans.’

‘Forget it. I went into the little yard and the train went out and there you were climbing into the car. Then one of them flashed a torch – it was a mistake – and they were putting your head in a bag. Not another soul about – the station doesn’t run to any staff. So I piled in. For a bit I felt good. But there were just too many of them. Four, I reckoned.’

‘You were always a bit of a rabbit, weren’t you?’ Sheila felt shockingly and primitively happy; at the same time she wondered if Dick Evans was a young man of genteel appearance. ‘Did they put your head in a bag, too?’

‘No – just slugged it. And here we are.’

‘What’s here?’

‘I expect it’s a shepherd’s cottage at the other end of nowhere. And, at the moment, buried in night. Not, incidentally, the night you might think. I reckon we got here in the small hours, and you’ve slumbered through a longish day since then. Have you drunk that milk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there a bed or something?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then lie down and go to sleep.’

‘About getting yourself out of that rope–’

‘That,’ said the voice of Evans rather grimly, ‘is going to take some time – and a bit of effort. I want you to go to sleep. Good night.’

‘Good night.’ Sheila lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. Instantly she was in a dreamless slumber.

She awoke in what appeared a matter of minutes – and to cold terror. Her knees were like pools of water and she was unable to utter a sound. There was something in the room. And it had touched her hair.

Flut. A small, heavy sound. Flut…flut…flut – it rounded the room and touched her hair again. A bat. Nothing but a bat. But her terror was undiminished; she lay helpless and waiting. Flut-flut-flut – the blundering little creature was going faster round the room. Not coming so near her now… Sheila lay still – terrified by the knowledge that she knew it was a bat and was terrified nevertheless.
Flut
– it had brushed her mouth; and suddenly her voice was restored to her. ‘Mr Evans!’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s something in the room. And I’m–’

‘Sure. Is there a fireplace down there?’ Evans’ voice was exhausted but level.

‘I think so.’

‘Then it’s a bat. And a bat down the chimney’s lucky.’ Sheila said nothing; she felt her voice leaving her again. ‘Sheila!’ He spoke peremptorily. ‘It’s a lucky bat – do you hear? Mother once had a bat down the chimney and was scared no end. But the next day Dad made the biggest deal of his career. Presently it will hang itself up by the toes and go to sleep. And you’d better do the same.’

Sheila gave a sigh longer than she knew she could utter. ‘But I haven’t that sort of toes.’

‘There – you see? Good night.’

When Sheila awoke again clear, cold light was streaming through an open door. And a naked young giant, somewhat in need of a shave, was watching her with friendly eyes from the foot of the bed.

The giant proved to be wearing ragged khaki shorts and an enormous pair of walking shoes. Sheila sat up and was the first to speak. ‘Your wrists!’ she exclaimed.

Evans nodded. ‘They knew their job,’ he said dismissively. And added: ‘What shall we do now?’

‘Tell the police.’

He smiled. ‘You all right? Then come outside.’

They went through a second small low room and into the open air. It was raw and chill and caught the throat, so that Sheila gasped. But the gasp was partly for what lay about her. They were standing on high stony ground, ground seemingly as barren as if it had been utterly cast out from nature’s usefulness or care. And all around – here subtly shifting and here as still as a shroud – stretched a great system of mist and cloud: mist that hung like an uncertain curtain or that flowed glancingly before the few visible spurs and shoulders of earth; cloud in great flat stretches of stratus that roofed invisible valleys and joined invisible peak to peak. And across all this the sun was rising. Or all this was heaving itself upward and over into light: all this fluid world and – sharply distinct from it and far to what must be the west – a single dazzling pinnacle of snow.

‘Perhaps,’ said Evans, ‘the police don’t often come this way. It’s what you’d call a croft, I think, and lonesome and abandoned at that. But we’ll waste no time; I kind of feel our friends have a base of sorts not too far off. I wonder did they bring my rucksack, though? We could do with that.’ He spoke disjointedly, his eye upon the distant mountain top. ‘Wait.’ And he slipped back into the oddly prosaic little stone building which had recently been their prison.

Cautiously Sheila explored her immediate surroundings. A barely discernible path ran from the door and into the mist – downhill, it might be said at a guess. And from it branched a second path to what appeared to be a rude outbuilding some twenty yards away. She had barely noted this when Evans was back again. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Over there and we’ll take stock.’

Of the outbuilding little more was left than the angle of two walls. They sat down where they could command the croft and Evans unpacked; he worked with a businesslike haste which was comforting in itself. ‘Map and compass,’ he said; ‘the first essential. Chocolate, the second – have some. Sweater, an acceptable luxury. Billfold, can-opener, jackknife–’

‘Hadn’t you better put it on?’

He put on the sweater. ‘Raincoat – that’s for you. Pipe. Tobacco. Spare pair leather shoestrings–’ He stopped and Sheila saw that he was inspecting a tobacco pouch critically. ‘Did you ever see Caravaggio’s
Young Warrior
?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sheila found herself answering this wayward question as if it were wholly relevant to the problems of the moment.

‘I started with that as a kid – fascinated me. It’s David going for Goliath. And I used–’ He stopped again and opened the jackknife. ‘Have some more chocolate. And when you’ve finished tell me everything useful.’

Sheila considered. ‘The important thing is to remember some poetry – some poetry I heard on the train.’

‘Sure,’ said Evans impassively. His fingers were busy with the tobacco pouch; every now and then his eye warily swept the uncertain horizons about them.

‘Listen:

Where the westerly spur of the furthermost mountain

Hovers falcon-like over the heart of the bay,

Past seven sad leagues and a last lonely fountain,

A mile towards tomorrow the dead garden lay.

Evans frowned. ‘It needs a starting point,’ he said.

‘I suppose so.’ She looked at him appraisingly in the cold light. ‘You’re quick on the uptake,’ she added.

‘Say?’

She smiled. ‘Yours isn’t the only variation on the English language. But go on.’

‘The poem is just accurate directions for finding the dead garden, whatever that may be. But it needs a starting point. If you know where you are to begin with, then the westerly spur and the heart of the bay will give the line you want… This stuff was passed under someone’s nose on the train – is that it?’

‘I think that was it.’ And Sheila gave a brief account of what had happened.

Evans nodded. ‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘In a Pickwickian or European use of the word, that’s to say.’

‘Yes,’ said Sheila meekly.

‘A smart way of going about something plumb crazy. This Pennyfeather was being trailed – or thought he was being trailed – mighty close by the sandy-haired fellow. He had to pass his information on, and Dousterswivel was there to get it. But time must have been a pressing factor when they risked a trick like that.’

‘That’s what I think.’ Sheila looked troubled. ‘And the whole thing may be frightfully important.’

‘Our business is a getaway. Then we’ll find that policeman and let him figure it all out – nice problem for a Highland cop.’

‘I’m not feeling altogether like that.’

‘Ah.’ He looked at her in obscure calculation. ‘You’ll be missed?’

‘Yes. I was going to cousins beyond Drumtoul. They knew I was on the train.’

‘But this poetry business: nobody knows of that except you and me?’

‘No – yes. I telephoned when I’d arrive from Perth. And I made a joke of it. They asked me about the journey and I said I was travelling with the shade of Swinburne and he was extemporizing on his
Forsaken Garden
. I don’t know if they even got it; it was a silly thing to try putting across on the telephone – just something to say.’

Evans nodded. ‘It will take a clever cop to make much of it. And now we’d better quit. We can make all the running, in a way. Scotland’s all round us and these folk can’t be that. Only I’m wondering if we hadn’t better wait for the letter-carrier and the milk. We might gain–’ He stopped and laid a hand on Sheila’s arm. ‘Get down,’ he whispered.

They crouched down. From somewhere in the shifting curtain of mist before them had come a little rattle of falling stones. Perhaps a sheep, Sheila thought – and suddenly felt her heart pound within her. For out of the mist there had emerged, enormous, the figure of a man. He advanced slowly up the path, shrinking oddly as he did so to a natural size. ‘Why,’ whispered Sheila with relief, ‘it’s only an old shep–’ Evans’ hand closed like a vice on her arm.

An old man, bearded, in patched lovat tweed, over his shoulder a plaid, in his hand a crook that might have come straight out of the Old Testament…he trudged up the path towards the croft and disappeared within. And a voice breathed in Sheila’s ear. ‘You see that flat slab? I want him there. When he comes out give a hail. But don’t show yourself.’ She turned her head. Evans was gone.

It was very still. Far away she could hear mountain sheep faintly bleating. Momentarily the mist thickened and the white walls of the croft faded; only the doorway was a low pool of darkness. Something stirred in it. He had come out. The mist cleared and she saw him clearly – his crook was gone and he stood erect and alert, listening, one hand in the pocket of his patched coat.

Sheila called out. ‘Hoy!’

He turned instantly towards the sound and rapidly advanced. Too far to the right… Sheila crouched low and ran. ‘Shepherd!’ He turned again and advanced unerringly. He was halfway towards her when he threw his arms strangely above his head and fell. An ugly fall, such as she had never before seen. She closed her eyes…

‘All right, Sheila.’ Evans was kneeling over his quarry.

She went forward. ‘However–’

‘Didn’t I tell you I was crazy on Caravaggio’s
David
? I practised with the regular sling for years the same as most boys do with a sling-shot. And with shoestrings and a bit of leather what more does one want? This gives us perhaps another hour. Wait.’ He got up and ran into the croft.

Sheila studied the fallen man. He was a figure of patriarchal dignity and quite unconscious; from a long gash on his temple blood slowly trickled down his beard… Evans was beside her again with a pannikin and a length of rope. ‘He delivered your milk,’ he said curtly. ‘Drink it up.’ Sheila looked from the wounded head of the old man – he appeared really to be that – to the pannikin, and from the pannikin to Dick Evans. Perhaps this blood business had turned him primitive; the thing could be divined as a species of ordeal or test. She sat down and drank the milk – rather slowly. By the time she had finished half of it Evans and the problematical shepherd had disappeared. So had the rope.

‘A shepherd at all points’ – Evans had appeared again in the doorway – ‘except that he had a gun.’ With curious diffidence he held out an automatic pistol. ‘Do you know’ – he looked at her positively warily – ‘I’ve never handled one of these things?’

For the first time in an unknown number of hours Sheila laughed outright. ‘Why ever should you have – particularly when you’re so handy with shoelaces and tobacco pouches? But stick it in your rucksack; it may be useful all the same. And drink
your
milk.’

He drank. ‘And now we’re quitting. Our friend came up the path; we’ll go dead the other way. Over this moor for a good bit and then find a burn and follow it down. That will get us within hail of your policeman if we’ve any luck.’

‘I want to go down the path.’

Evans stopped in the act of putting on his rucksack. ‘Don’t you see you have what may be valuable information? Your job’s to get it safe to your own base.’

‘But we’re lord knows where. And there’s that element of time: you say this is our second day here. I want to go down the path.’

‘You know what this is? It’s some two hundred million people crouching ready to cut each other’s throats. And you want to walk right in between.’

‘But, Dick, that’s not quite right. I’m one of the two hundred million–’

Dick Evans’ lips appeared to be framing the words ‘I’m not.’

‘–and so it’s less simple for me than for you.’

He was suddenly indignant. ‘Look here, that flag-waggy line of talk–’ He stopped and looked down the path. It wound into mist and its end was utterly unknown. He frowned and stretched his arms – stretched them as if there lay some puzzle in his being able to do so. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Come along.’

They descended cautiously together.

‘It’s a long way,’ said Sheila. ‘Seven sad leagues, I mean. Twenty-one miles. I don’t see that to anything so far away as that, the spur and the heart of the bay can be a very accurate pointer.’

‘Don’t you?’ Evans was peering intently ahead. His voice, Sheila thought, was faintly mocking.

‘But perhaps if they were both in the distance–’

‘You’ve got it.’ He nodded quickly. ‘The leagues are from where you stand. The bay is some way off and the spur of the mountain is much farther. Given that and a little careful mapwork, you could arrive at a fairly small area as containing the last lonely fountain. What do you make of it?’

‘Not the sort of thing that spouts in a garden. Just a spring, I imagine; the highest spring to which you can trace some stream. What about “tomorrow”? “
A mile towards tomorrow the dead garden lay
.”’