Tender to Danger

Ten

The first thing he saw was that something had upset her very considerably, but even as he stood aside for her to come in, she burst out exasperatedly.

“Where have you been? I came here looking for you before. I phoned! I phoned and phoned! Where have you been?”

“Looking for you. You told me you were going home. I had to see you, so I went out there.”

“To Cheriton Shawe?”

“Yes, but what on earth’s happened to you?”

She limped past him into the room. There was a long scratch on her face and mud on her coat.

“I fell down,” she said wearily. “And I think I’d like a brandy-”

Something in her tone stilled the questions crowding to his lips. He went to her quickly.

“Here, you’d better sit down. I’ll get you something.”

She sank into a chair exhaustedly. “I ought to have gone back to Palgrave Street,” she said. “But like a fool I didn’t. You see, I got frightened.”

“Oh.” He handed her a glass. “Don’t sip it. Drink it right down.”

She did, then gasped a little. He took the glass away and refilled it.

“What scratched your face?” he asked.

“A bramble.”

‘What about your leg?”

“I’ve bruised my knee. It’s a bit stiff, that’s all.” He gave her the refilled glass. “You’d better sip that one.”

“I shall be drunk.”

“No, you won’t. Do you feel like telling me what happened now?”

She nodded and then, to his relief, she smiled. “It was that wretched boat,” she said. “I tried to find it for you.”

“You did what?”

And then she told him.

Throughout the morning her thoughts had kept going to the boat. For that reason, perhaps, she had failed to take any interest in the American dealer and, in the end, had asked him to postpone his visit to Cheriton Shawe until his return from Paris a fortnight hence. She pleaded that she would then have more work to show him. They had argued about schedules and sailing dates with Mr. Hinckleigh, and finally it was agreed. Then Mr. Alec Foster bought them a good lunch. He was really a very nice person, and she liked him very much.

“But the boat?”

“I’m telling it just as it happened,” she said. “After lunch I went to see the lawyer. He didn’t know anything about the boat, but he remembered the mill.” She paused. “It’s a windmill,” she said.

“A windmill!” With his knowledge of John Quayle Meriden’s peculiarities, the information should not have been startling. He was surprised because he had visualised something else. A windmill did not seem to go with streams and landing stages. It was rather a thing of bleak uplands and windswept plains.

“Is it the mill we’re looking for?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It seems likely, from the position. I was too frightened to make certain.”

“What do you mean?”

She said irritably: “Why did you go down to Cheriton Shawe this afternoon?”

“Never mind that now. Tell me about the mill.”

It seemed that years ago Uncle John had gone duck shooting at Groper’s Wade on the Thames Estuary and had returned in a state of high excitement about this windmill. He had recently read a magazine article on the production of electricity by wind power, and had been inspired by the idea. He would buy the ruined mill, restore it, equip it with a generating plant and demonstrate that the theories of the magazine writer were sound. Then he would buy up windmills all over the country and furnish enough cheap electricity to supply the nation’s needs. The Meriden System would be the salvation of industry, and John Quayle would be honoured wherever a spark was required to turn a wheel or light the darkness.

“You find out who owns that mill,” he had instructed the lawyer. “Get it for me cheap, and keep your mouth shut. Once my plan is known, the price of windmills will go up.”

The lawyer had opened his mouth only to make objections, but Uncle John had remained firm. When he had heard the price, he had been delighted. He had never known anything so cheap, a bargain! The owner threw in the mill cottage, landing stage, all appurtenances, and riparian rights, if any. The agreement had been signed and the price paid. Within a week he had forgotten about it, and nobody had been inclined to remind him.

“That’s what one might have expected,” Ruth Meriden commented. “Do you know where Groper’s Wade is?”

“Not exactly,” Andrew confessed.

“You take the train to Britsea and then you walk across the marsh or fen or whatever you call it.”

“All right. I’ll go down tomorrow and explore.” At the moment it did not seem so important. “What I want to know is how you got yourself into this state?”

“I went down to Britsea.”

“You what?”

“I went down to Britsea,” she repeated calmly. “I telephoned you here from the lawyer’s office. I telephoned three times from different places. Then I decided to go down and check on the mill. I thought you’d like to know definitely if the yawl was there.” “Good God!” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have done that alone! Didn’t you realise there was danger? After all I told you about my being shadowed?”

“I didn’t think there’d be any danger to me.”

“Look! I went out to Cheriton Shawe today because I wanted to bring you back to town. I was afraid for you, alone in that crazy house. I thought the gang who killed Kusitch might find the link and go after you. And you walk right into their hands. You’re lucky to have got away from them. They might have killed you. Now that they’ve found the yawl, there’s nothing more we can do. We’d better call up Scotland Yard at once and let the police clear things up.

“Will you stop being melodramatic and listen to me? I didn’t walk into anybody’s hands. And nobody has found the boat. At least, not as far as I know. When I got down to Britsea it was later than I expected,” she said. “Have you any idea what Britsea’s like?”

“Well, what is it like?”

“Hell,” she said simply.

Britsea, it appeared, was a bungalow colony with a few Nissen huts added for architectural variety. It had a station. She had asked the solitary porter if there were a windmill and cottage in the neighbourhood, and he had pointed to the North Sea and said: “That would be Groper’s Wade. First to the right past the garbage tip.

The lawyer had told her that it was a short walk to the mill, but when she came in sight of it, it seemed to be miles away-a squat stump on the edge of nowhere with dark clouds piling up behind it and the day looking as if it were going to do an early fade-out. It was cold, too. A wind blew in from the sea and across the marsh unhindered. She went on a little farther. Then she became afraid that she could not reach the mill and get back to the station before nightfall, and the idea of darkness on the marsh was not pleasant.

“Even in the daylight it’s bad enough,” she said. “The fact is, I wouldn’t have gone on in any circumstances. I was scared of the loneliness. I can’t stand it when I find myself in the middle of nothing. Then I got the idea I was being followed, and-well, I suppose I fell into a panic.”

Andrew cut in with a question. “What gave you the idea? Did you see anyone?”

“Yes. A man was poking about in the garbage dump. There’s a level, filled-in patch and the trucks tip their loads into the hollow. The man was by the edge of the hollow when I passed, poking about with a stick.”

“He was there before you?”

“Yes, but he could have come on the train, except that I never noticed anyone like him at the station. I think I would have, because he was very tall and thin.”

“Don’t tell me! A tall thin man with a cloth cap and a long grey coat that flaps round his legs when he walks?”

“No. Nothing like it. He didn’t have a hat or coat; just slacks and a rough sort of seaman’s sweater.”

Andrew let out a sigh of relief. “Just an old tramp,” he decided. “You’ll find one on every garbage dump, looking for bits of metal and other things that might bring in a few pence.”

“That’s what I thought,” she agreed. “If you hadn’t put this shadowing business into my head, I wouldn’t have taken any notice. I didn’t at first, but I happened to look back, and he’d come over the edge of the hollow and seemed to be watching me. That was the first thing that started me off. When I looked back a little later, he had disappeared. I told myself that it was all right, but it wasn’t. I believed he might be following me to snatch my bag. Then I thought he might have something to do with the Kusitch business, and that was when I really panicked.”

She paused a moment, not happy in the recollection of it. When she went on, she made him feel the strain of it.

It was pretty bad, she said. When she decided that she could not go on any farther, she found that she was too scared to go back. Dusk was coming quickly across the marsh, or it may have been the lowering clouds. Already there were lights in some of the bungalows, and they seemed far away, unreachable. She took a step towards them, and halted. Thirty yards or so from her, she saw a dark movement behind the fringing reeds and rushes of a pool at the track’s edge; a shadow diving for cover, but diving too late.

“I was paralysed. I just stood there, staring at the reeds, waiting.”

All over the desolation were pools with screens of reeds and rushes, tall enough to hide a man bent double, and the track between the windmill and the station found a winding way among them.

For minutes she could not take her eyes off the spot where the shadow had vanished. Then her mind began to work again. She must go forward to the windmill, or back to the station. But there was no real alternative. The farther she went towards the windmill, the worse her position became. She must go back, must risk the danger that waited behind the screen of reeds. Perhaps there would be no challenge; perhaps the game of shadowing would go on. If the main purpose was to observe her movements, there could be no purpose in any interference. She had led the watcher nowhere. She had merely walked out into the middle of a wilderness; now she proposed to walk back again.

It took all her will power to make her legs move. Keeping her eyes focused on the reed screen, she went forward slowly. Every moment she expected the man to rise up and block her path, but nothing happened. The wind from the sea was behind her now, and gulls rode in on it, screaming and squawking. There was no other sound except the dry rustle of the reeds. She went on tiptoe, as if that might help her to pass the screen, and as she approached it she edged towards the far side of the track. She had a plan now. If the man waited a fraction too long, she might evade him. She could run. She selected the spot from which she would start. It was a little forward of the screen, and the turf on the side of the track was obviously firm enough for her to take an oblique course. That oblique course was essential for the first twenty yards or so. The track curved slightly, so she could gain an advantage.

She walked boldly now, with a pretence of ease. She reached the chosen spot and dashed off, leaving the track in her desperate race. Five yards, and her left foot caught in a trailing bramble. She crashed down, barking her knee on a stone and tearing her cheek on another bramble. As she fell, a wild bird rose from the screen of reeds and went off with a whir of dark wings.

“A bird!” she said. “A damn silly bird!”

Andrew made a sympathetic sound.

“I started to cry,” she admitted. “I think it was rage more than anything else, but I was still frightened. I believe I was more frightened. I lay there on my face, crying, till I found I was partly in a pool of water. Then I got up and went on. I ran. I imagined a man was coming after me. I imagined a shadow behind every clump of reeds. It was all imagination. I should have gone on. I had time to get to the windmill and back. I might have found out about the boat.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Andrew told her. “We’ll go together in the morning. I’ll hire a car and drive you.”

“We’ll have to leave it till the afternoon. I must go to the gallery in the morning. Hinckleigh is furious over the way I behaved today.”

Something in her intonation took away all his animus against Hinckleigh. Besides, there was the way she had behaved today.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll leave it till the afternoon. Now we’ll go and get something to eat.”

“Like this?”

“You can tidy up here. Anyway, we’ll go somewhere quiet.”

“Well, if you don’t mind…”

He decided on the restaurant where he had dined with Charley Botten two nights ago. It was an admirable place for the occasion. It was unpretentious, the food was excellent and the wine reasonable. The only drawback was that Charley Botten used it regularly, and might well be there tonight. He liked Charley, he was even fond of his company at times, but on this occasion, no.

Andrew’s anxiety was relieved in part as soon as he entered the place. Mr. Botten was there, but he had a companion, a grey-haired man, and they were already halfway through their dinner. When the headwaiter suggested a table on the other side of the room, Andrew raised no objection. Mr. Botten saw the newcomers and made a crouching rise, clutching his napkin, in acknowledgement of Andrew’s nod.

“Somebody you know?” Miss Meriden inquired.

“A stockbroker,” Andrew said.

She smiled across the table when they were seated, and Andrew was glad that the stockbroker had a companion. Possibly a client. Andrew glanced at the man but got nothing much more than the back view of a rather worn jacket that looked like a Harris tweed, badly cut and very creased. To judge from what could be seen, the man was of medium height and on the portly side. His grey hair, fluffed out round a bald spot, gave the effect of a monk’s tonsure.

But Andrew gave him no more than a glance. Ruth Meriden had smiled and the promise of her smile was fulfilled. The meal was a success. Andrew never could recall afterwards exactly what they had talked about; all he ever knew was that they had both talked a great deal and that what they said had been trivial and light-hearted and yet, in some magical way, profoundly important. Then, as he turned to order coffee, he became aware of a movement on the other side of the room. He was conscious of Charley Botten again, and glanced round.

Charley and his guest had risen from their chairs. They came across the carpet to reach the central passage between the tables, Charley leading the way, his bulk obscuring the smaller man. He gestured vaguely in the direction of Andrew, something between a wave of farewell and a hiker’s hitch-signal. An instant later Andrew saw the face of the fluffy-haired guest. He stared. There was no mistaking that affable, beaming countenance above the rough tweed fabric of the ill-cut jacket. Clap a hat over the high bald forehead, and all you needed was the jigging phrase from Till Eulenspiegel to make the picture complete. Charley Botten’s guest was the supposed shadow, the siffleur of Holland Park, Mr. Jolly-Face himself. Andrew blinked, then laughed, turning to hide his laughter, but Jolly-Face had passed on towards the exit in the wake of his host.

Ruth said: “What’s the matter?”

He had begun to tell her when Mr. Botten re-entered the room and came towards their table. He was by himself now.

“Hello, Andrew,” he said. “Everything satisfactory? Are they treating you well?” He might have been the proprietor of the place, solicitous about the comfort of his clients. He canted the wine bottle and glanced at the label. “Not bad,” he conceded. “The Volnay here is better though.”

Andrew spoke without cordiality. “Miss Meriden, may I introduce Mr. Botten?”

“How do you do? I thought it must be Miss Meriden. I wanted to come across all the evening to meet you. Unfortunately I had to defer the pleasure on account of my guest.”

“Isn’t he waiting for you?” Andrew asked.

“No. I pushed him into a taxi.”

“Who is he, by the way? I seem to know him.”

“That’s improbable. He’s just a wartime colleague of mine. Hadn’t seen him for years.”

“I think he’s living in my neighbourhood.”

“Really?” Mr. Botten shrugged and felt vaguely in the pockets of his waistcoat. “He did give me his address. I put it in some pocket or other. Doesn’t matter.” He pulled up a chair. “May I join you for a moment?”

Andrew nodded coldly. Ruth was looking a little puzzled. Andrew explained Mr. Botten. He was not merely a stockbroker; he was the friend who had collected the facts about the boat.

“I want to ask about the mysterious yawl,” Charley said. “Have you had any luck?”

“We think we’ve found it,” Andrew informed him.

“That’s nice. So Miss Meriden is co-operating. Where do you think you’ve found it?”

Andrew explained. He described, with the girl’s assistance, the supposed location. Mr. Botten asked questions, and heard the de-tails of Ruth’s misadventure. Then he wondered whether they were on the right track. Mr. Meriden had talked of a mill, not a windmill. The landing stage seemed to be the important clue, and, in Mr. Botten’s view, landing stages didn’t seem to chime with windmills. “Have you checked the spot on a large-scale map?” he inquired.

Andrew had no suspicion that Mr. Botten was moved by anything but innocent curiosity. He thought the large-scale map was rather a good idea. That was where M.I. experience came in.

“Miss Meriden didn’t wait for maps. She dashed off to Britsea at once.”

“Anyway, we’ll know all about it tomorrow afternoon,” Miss Meriden asserted cheerfully. “Andrew and I are going down by car.

Andrew’s heart jumped. “Andrew and I”-it had a delightful sound.

“I’d have liked to go down with you,” Mr. Botten said.

“Can’t you?” Ruth asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Botten lamented. “We’ve a lot on just now, and my partner’s away. But you ought to check up on the map. If you know what you’re going to find, it will be easier to find it. There’s the matter of roads, too. Let’s all go to my place for coffee, and we’ll investigate.”

Andrew managed to sound dispassionate. “I think after the day she’s had, she ought to be in bed.”

“Dr. Maclaren,” the girl explained, “is treating me for a bruise.”

“Then come along,” Mr. Botten said playfully. “I’ll open a bottle of vintage arnica.”

Objection was useless. In half an hour they were in the Botten flat with coffee and liqueurs. The owner had a collection of maps most efficiently indexed. Groper’s Wade was contained within a small section, but the scale was enormous.

“Here you are!” Mr. Botten pointed with a pencil. “Groper’s Mill. The circle represents the mill structure, and here’s the landing stage all right.” The windmill was about a half mile inland, provided you gave the term “land” to the swampy reed beds that surrounded it. A creek wound in from the estuary-one of many creeks on the map-and close to the mill a small rectangle was drawn, jutting out from the bank into the narrow stream. The mill cottage was defined by a larger rectangle on the land side of the small circle.

“Nice map,” Charley commented. “Shows everything except the yawl. Here’s your road, Andrew. It must run parallel to the track you took, Ruth. There’s only the one way across the swamp. Here’s the station. Where would you place the garbage tip?”

Ruth took the map and indicated the place. Andrew frowned. He resented Mr. Botten’s easy friendliness. He also resented the way she accepted it. He got up from his chair. It was time to go, but Mr. Botten had not finished. He was almost as bad as Inspector Jordaens in his passion for interrogation, and now his line was to suggest that Ruth might not have been entirely mistaken in thinking she had been watched. She insisted that she had been the victim of an overheated and infantile imagination.

“In the matter of the bird among the reeds, yes,” Mr. Botten admitted, “but can you be quite sure about the man in the garbage tip?”

“I can be quite sure that he didn’t follow me,” Ruth answered.

“Yet you admit there was ample cover if he had wanted to use it?”

“I suppose so.”

Mr. Botten was like a prosecuting counsel with a shifty witness.

“You say that this man could not have followed you from town because he was unlike any of the passengers who left the train with you at Britsea?”

“Yes.”

“You base this assumption or conviction merely on the difference in dress?”

“Isn’t that enough? The man was tall; there was only one tall man at the station, and he was wearing a hat and some kind of overcoat. He was in the middle of a group round the exit gate. I remember him because of his height. My recollection is that all the men from the train wore hats and coats. It was fairly chilly with the wind coming across the river flats.”

“And the man in the garbage tip was in sweater and slacks?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that he might have taken off his hat and coat to deceive you?”

Andrew laughed. “Still on the old cloak-and-dagger stuff, Charley! Aren’t you forgetting the false beard and the dark glasses? Are you sure, Ruth, the fellow didn’t have a black patch over one eye?”

“I’m fairly sure he didn’t leave the garbage tip,” she said.

Mr. Botten was still suspicious. “He could have watched you from the hollow. He wouldn’t have had to leave the tip.” He turned to Andrew. “I wouldn’t go down there tomorrow if I were you. I think you ought to leave it all to me.”

“Leave it all…!” Andrew began indignantly and then swallowed his indignation. “We’re ahead of the enemy, we’re ahead of the police, and I’m not going to wait till they catch up with us. All this stuff about being followed is just nonsense. Why, the other night I believed I was being shadowed by the man you’ve just had as a dinner guest! Every time I notice a fellow in the street I think he’s on my trail. Ruth’s right. It’s all imagination. I’m even beginning to have doubts about that Brussels business.”

“And possibly there was no Kusitch,” Charley suggested. “All right. I wash my hands of you.” He grinned. “When you get the yawl in order, you may take me for a sail. My own opinion is that it was never brought back to England, but that’s just, as I say, an opinion. It might be as well, though, if it were at the bottom of the sea.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know.” Charley shrugged. “Put it down to a hunch. I don’t like trouble. I never did. If the yawl’s gone, there’s no more harm in it. If it’s tied up by that old windmill, heaven knows what sort of mess is going to come out of it.”

“What could come out of it?” Mr. Botten considered the question for a moment. About to reply, he hesitated and spread his hands helplessly. He said: “I learned to suppress ideas about second sight during the war. If you want to call in a crystal-gazer, don’t mind me. But there’s one bit of advice I can give you without a crystal ball. Keep a sharp lookout when you’re on the road tomorrow. If you’re followed by a car, don’t go anywhere near Groper’s Wade. Just take a joy ride into the country and come back to town.”

Andrew left Ruth at the door of the house in Palgrave Street. She said her knee felt better and she didn’t need any help up the stairs. She had been silent and thoughtful in the taxi from Charley Botten’s. On the doorstep she was practical.

“I shouldn’t keep the cab waiting,” she said. “I’ll be ready at one o’clock. Good night.”

On the way home and afterwards Charley’s final piece of advice recurred to him. He believed it was pointless, yet it continued to worry him. How could the enemy, not knowing his plans, have a car ready to follow him? Charley, of course, had intended no more than a cautionary hint, and, as a precaution, he would take the hint. He would keep a sharp lookout.