The Dancing Druids

Chapter Eighteen

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‘… so at last he let them come in, and they bespoke a handsome supper, and spent the evening very jollily.’

Ibid. (Chanticleer and Partlet)

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There was a saloon bar at the side entrance to the hotel at Slepe Rock, and thither Gascoigne and O’Hara went to drink beer and pass the time away until the hour should come to carry out the instructions they had received from Mrs. Bradley. They discovered that it was the barmaid’s night off, and that the proprietor, a genial man (now in his waistcoat), was doing her work for the evening.

‘Quiet here to-night,’ said O’Hara.

‘Yes,’ the host replied. ‘People are going home from their holidays now. We shall be very quiet indeed until about the end of May. Then visitors start trickling in, and by July, of course, we’re full. Then they fall away in the first two weeks of September, and by the end of the month we’re practically clear. Funny thing happened this evening…’

‘No permanent guests?’ enquired Gascoigne.

‘Permanents? No. Don’t encourage ’em. My experience of permanents—not here, but when I was in Welsea—is that they get a wrong sort of vested interest in the place. They get to thinking they can always take the same seat in the lounge, and the same place by the fire or near the windows or in the garden, or wherever it might be. Why, some of them even look upon the hotel servants as their personal lackeys and chambermaids, and make all sorts of demands on them which no servant to-day will put up with. And not much in the way of tips or presents, either. No, when I took this place I said to Mrs. Cooke—that’s my wife—I said to her plainly: No permanents. So we don’t encourage them. I suppose Mr. Cassius and his ward are the nearest, but I don’t mind men. It’s the ladies… God bless ’em!… that make all the trouble in hotels. And talking of Mr. Cassius, that reminds me. Funny thing happened here this evening…’

‘Mr. Cassius?’ said Gascoigne. ‘Has he gone?’

‘Well, more or less. Said he might be back for a fortnight, later on, without the boy. The boy will be at school, no doubt, next week or the week after. Then Mr. Cassius will be down again, I daresay. But it will only be his usual short visit. We generally see him for the last fortnight in September, and then no more until May. But I was going to tell you…’

‘He’s a regular visitor, then?’

‘Regular enough, the last ten years.’

‘Don’t you mean nine years?’ asked Gascoigne. The landlord, who had accepted a half-pint of beer and was about to light his pipe, paused with the match already aflame. He shook it out as the flame reached his fingers, and scratched his head with the matchstick.

‘Funny you should ask that,’ he remarked. ‘Now let me see…’

‘Like to bet on it?’ asked O’Hara of Gascoigne, quickly taking up his cousin’s lead.

‘A pound,’ said Gascoigne.

‘Done. Come on, Mr. Cooke. The bet’s made.’

‘Let me just serve these three gentlemen, and I’ll get my book,’ said the host.

The three gentlemen wore padded overcoats, hats pulled well down, beautiful shoes, and indulged in almost no conversation. Their hands were in their overcoat pockets, but whether for warmth, or because they carried guns or knuckledusters, it would have been difficult to say.

‘Doubles,’ said the first of them, slapping a pound note upon the counter. ‘Serve yourself one.’

‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ The host, abandoning his custom of serving nothing but single whiskies, poured the drinks and placed them in front of his customers. He then raised his half-pint of beer. ‘I have a drink on, thank you all the same.’ He turned and placed the pound note in the small black japanned cashbox on the shelf behind the bar, took change from the till, placed it neatly on the counter, and resumed his conversation with O’Hara and Gascoigne. The three men drained off their whisky and went out.

‘Spivs,’ said Gascoigne. ‘How come, Mr. Cooke, in this part of the world?’

‘That’s just what I was wondering,’ replied the host. ‘I haven’t seen gentry of that kidney since I was in Brighton last. We certainly don’t see their like around here, and glad of it I am. I’ll get my book now, gentlemen, and you can settle your bet.’

Regardless of a prominently-displayed notice above the inner door of the bar which forbade any form of gambling on the premises, he departed.

‘Good for you, Gerry,’ said O’Hara. ‘That was very neat.’

‘You weren’t bad yourself at catching on and following my lead,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I say, he’s trying to tell us about this fellow Cassius getting knocked out, you know. I suppose we must give him his head. We can’t keep on fobbing him off. Oh, here he comes!’

The hotel register, to the great interest of two of the hotel guests, showed that the oddly-named Mr. Cassius and his ward Ivor—Sisyphus to Laura Menzies and Mr. Cassius-Concaverty’s son to Mrs. Bradley—had been regular visitors to the hotel at Slepe Rock during the past nine years, war or no war. Their permanent address, it seemed, was London.

‘Alias Cottam’s, alias Nine Acres,’ observed Gascoigne to O’Hara later.

An influx of thirsty customers prevented the two young men from hearing the story the host had been anxious to tell them. They were not at all sorry about this, although both, from valuable experience gained at school, were able to keep their countenances when their sins were mentioned in their hearing.

Having finished their drinks, they strolled down to the shore at Slepe Rock. Several of the guests at the hotel had done the same thing, so they lighted meditative pipes and discussed the business of the evening.

‘How are we going to get out to-night without being seen?’ enquired O’Hara, as they stepped on to the spit of dirty sand. ‘It seems to me absolutely necessary that we should manage without being spotted, but I don’t see how it’s to be done.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I think the best way will be to seem to go to bed at our usual time, and then come straight down the servants’ staircase. Of course, we may run into one of the maids, but we must risk that. If we do meet one of them, I shall act as though I’m tight, and you’ll have to pretend to get me back into our part of the house. After which, we’ll try again, and hope for better luck.’

‘What about the fire-escape?’ asked O’Hara.

‘I had thought of that, but I think we’d be spotted rather easily. Once we’re out at the servants’ door, we’ve nothing to do but shin over the wall at that place where the trees hang over. They should give us plenty of cover, and I loosened a brick this evening.’

‘And once we get down to the shore?’

‘I don’t know. Mrs. Bradley herself didn’t know. It’s a hunch she’s got that they’re going to take action to-night before the police get on to them. We’re to watch and wait, and not to attack anybody or join in any fights unless it’s to save our own skins. That’s all she could say. Our main job is to keep an eye on that cave. That’s where the fun may begin. It’s their last base on land, and is used, she thinks, to smuggle something out of the country.’

‘Stolen goods or faked money, I suppose,’ said O’Hara. ‘Well, there’s nothing doing at present, so let’s get back and make ourselves obvious, shall we?’

‘Oh, I say, no! There’s no need to be conspicuous! And, talking of that, we still haven’t settled with Firman.’

‘Finding him is going to be the trouble. And don’t repeat his name. We don’t know who knows it round here. And, to change the subject completely, it’s your turn to stand me a drink.’

They went back to the hotel, passing, on their way, the shack and the pull-in, interesting now not only because they were built on the site of the cottage from which the man named Bulstrode had disappeared, but because they were certainly screens to the uppermost entrance to the cave.

The night was not yet so dark as to obscure all objects from view, and O’Hara, without realizing that he had done so, noticed that the pull-in was occupied by a large lorry. This was unusual. It had so far been empty at night. The hotel had its own lock-up garages for the convenience of its guests, and the lorries and motor coaches which used the pull-in during the day were almost always gone by six o’clock.

The two young men went inside the hotel and to the lounge. They remained there until eleven, spoke to several of the guests, and then went up towards their room. At the top of the first flight of stairs was a long corridor. They traversed it, and, opening a baize-covered door, found themselves on the servants’ staircase.

They were lucky. It was long after the time when maidservants were likely to be about. In fact, they could hear girls’ laughter and snatches of talk from the floor above. The young men descended to the back door, which was not yet bolted and locked, crept out, slipped noiselessly across the garden, and were soon up and over the wall.

There was an alley at the side of the hotel. They emerged from it into the only street of Slepe Rock, and, keeping in the shadow of the wall, they gained the beach, and, with the utmost carefulness, made for a group of rocks, high and dry beyond the tide-mark, from which they could watch the sea, and the headland into which the cave penetrated.

‘Now for dirty work at the crossroads,’ said O’Hara with quiet enjoyment. ‘Sister Ann, Sister Ann, oh, do you see anyone coming?’

‘Dry up, you ass! You’ll attract attention. We don’t want the local watch committee down on us or something,’ said his cousin, with crude common sense.

‘Shouldn’t think there’s even a village policeman,’ replied O’Hara. ‘Still, perhaps, if you say so. Wonder how the old lady and Laura are getting on?’

‘Dry up!’ said his cousin, who seemed nervous. The beach was entirely deserted, and the snarling of the sea sounded ominous and might blanket, he thought, the approach of undesirable persons. It had occurred to him more than once that O’Hara’s recognition of Cassius as the Con of the first adventure might have placed his cousin’s life in some danger. He had put this to Mrs. Bradley. Her serious acceptance of the theory had done nothing to modify his anxiety, but he agreed with the elderly lady that, as nothing would impress O’Hara less than the fact that he might be in danger, Gascoigne should continue to shoulder the responsibility of acting in partnership with him, and guard him as far as that was possible.

‘For we’ll never get him to give up the fun at this stage,’ he observed.