Adders on the Heath (24 page)

'Nonsense! I'm going to Hamish's room.'

Gavin followed her up the stairs and Henri, with his axe and with an uneasy recollection of the blunt-edged carving-knife he had supplied to the boy, brought up the rear. At her son's bedroom door, Laura paused to listen. There was nothing to be heard, so she turned the handle and switched on the light. Hamish's pyjamas were on the floor and there were neither other clothes nor his shoes to be seen. She swung round on her husband, but Gavin gripped her and put a hand over her mouth.

'The light, Henri!' he said. Henri switched it off and Gavin released his wife. All three listened intently. Somebody was approaching by car. Then there was silence. 'May be all right,' said Gavin. 'Probably is. But I don't like the youngster being out on his own at this time of night. I suppose he's in the garden somewhere. He'd hardly wander away. I'll go and call him in, curse his little nylon socks.'

That car's in the drive,' murmured Laura. 'It can't be callers! It
could
be the Superintendent, but I should have thought he'd phone.' Suddenly she gripped her husband's arm. There was a slight scrabbling sound on the porch below the window, and Hamish tumbled into the room. Gavin called for a light. As it was switched on, the bedroom door opened and Dame Beatrice appeared. She had her small revolver at the ready.

'Oh, golly!' exclaimed Hamish. 'How good! But no time for that now. The house is surrounded. Two of them. Came by car. Did you hear it?'

'Get into bed at once!' said his father. Hamish glanced at him and obeyed, dropping his things on the floor and hastily pulling on his pyjamas. 'Now get to sleep and we'll settle things in the morning.' He put out the light.

They're coming here, you know,' said Hamish, softly. 'I wasn't making it up. I wasn't, really!'

That he was right was soon proved. There was another scrabbling sound on the roof of the porch and the window was pushed further open. A voice said, 'Ladder! I'm not a blasted monkey on a stick!'

Gavin put out his hand to touch and reassure his son, but Hamish needed no such comfort. He was having the thrill of a lifetime. Gavin moved like a cat to the door. From the window came a grunt and the sound of a light ladder being rested against the sill. Then the window was filled with a monstrous, bulky shadow. The torchlight was blotted out as the man turned to aid his companion. Gavin waited, his hand on the switch, until they were both in the room. Then he gave an Indian war-whoop and turned on the light. Then he sprang. Henri, who had remained on the landing, came in again, waving his axe and chanting a Gallic battle-cry. He was followed by Laura, a tigress coming to the rescue of her young. Dame Beatrice followed, nursing her gun.

There was nothing to it. The intruders were taken by surprise and what with that and having to face Gavin with his police training, Henri with his fearsome weapon and Dame Beatrice with her small revolver, they offered no resistance. Laura, to her chagrin, was left with nothing to do. The men were taken downstairs to the dining-room and while Laura telephoned the Superintendent, Gavin questioned the intruders after informing them that he was a Detective Chief-Inspector from Scotland Yard.

They told him at once that they had been sent to kidnap the child by a man who had assured them that he was the boy's father. Gavin demanded the man's name. At first they protested that they did not know it; that they knew him only as 'the governor.'

At this Gavin turned to Dame Beatrice and asked,

'Do you think you could refresh their memories?'

At the mention of Campden-Towne, Maidston, ponies and ships, which she made implacably and with a mesmeric intensity which obviously unnerved them, they gave up the struggle.

'He had us sewn up,' said one. 'We didn't want to do it, sir, and that's a fact.'

'Are you sailors?' asked Gavin.

'Ah, we are that,' said the other. 'He's got the goods on us, else he'd never have talked us into this.'

'Well, we've got the goods on
him
,' Gavin told them pleasantly. 'He's a murderer with two deaths to his credit, and it's a good thing for you both that you didn't succeed in kidnapping my son, for-mark this!-at whatever risk to the boy, we should have been bound to pull Towne in. He's been selling State secrets. How does that strike you?'

The two men swore incredulously, and protested that they certainly had known nothing about it. Gavin believed them and said so.

'We knew there was funny business over the ponies,' said one. 'Leastways, we guessed as much. But we only thought he knocked 'em off.'

'The ponies were a secret code, and a very simple and clever one. I'm not giving it away, of course, but I can assure you chaps that you're well out of this business.'

'Well out, sir?'

'Yes, well out, unless Dame Beatrice wants to prosecute you for breaking into her house.'

Dame Beatrice leered at the men and they flinched.

'I imagine that they will be more useful in court as witnesses than as defendants,' she said.

'Yes, you'll have to give evidence as to the shipping of the ponies,' agreed Gavin.

'Knowing them to have been knocked off, Guv.?'

'I hardly think that need come into it. The less complicated your evidence the better, I should say, but of course, I'm not a lawyer.'

The Superintendent turned up at this juncture and was admitted by Henri, who, after a hasty dash upstairs to reassure his wife, had returned to his self-imposed guard duty.

'And I think, Superintendent, that, for the sake of their own safety, it would be as well to take these men into protective custody until Campden-Towne and Maidston have been arrested,' observed Dame Beatrice.

'We've got them, ma'am. Picked them up this afternoon as soon as your little party left the hotel. You convinced us all right, and I must apologise to Mr Richardson for keeping the tabs on him like I have done,' concluded the Superintendent handsomely. The young men, it transpired later, had not heard a sound of what had been going on, but had slept through everything.

FUGUE

'How all ye powers that rule above

Grant we may evil shun

And that henceforth such dreadful acts

May never more be done.'

Victorian Street Ballad

'Just fancy,' said Aileen Crumb to Doreen Dodds, 'what some of we girls might have been letting ourselves in for!'

'Glad we're sprinters and not milers.'

'There's the cross-country runs old Artie is always belly-aching us into doing.'

'I don't really dig that lark. Tiring, that's what I call it, and might any minute rick your ankle. Now this indoor work is a bit of all right. Under cover, and matting where it's needed, and no occasion to wear yourself out.'

'See them Americans in the Indoors has to run into a bar at the finish of the sprints, save them concussing themselves against a wall or something?'

'Oh, well, they runs faster over there. Anyway, it's men, not us. Besides, if enough of them Yanks concusses themselves, we might stand a chance of a few more golds in the next Olympics. That's the way I look at it.'

They giggled and then did a little 'running on the spot' in order to warm up before they began any serious training.

'Let's barge that Corinna and that Dulcie off the track for a bit. Them hurdlers always thinks they should ought to have priority,' said Doreen.

'Wonderful how Corinna got over Albert Colnbrook,' she added unkindly. 'She's going steady with Bob Chichester now, so I heard.'

'Bob's treated himself to one of them fibre-glass poles. It bends like a bit of rubber piping. He'll break his neck one of these days,' said Aileen, pleased by this thought.

'I'm glad, in a way, Mr Towne only got life,' said Doreen, changing the subject. 'I couldn't really fancy seeing him hung.'

'Huh!
I
could! He'll really do about nine years and then come out and do in somebodies else. You see if he don't!'

'Get on with some work, you girls,' said the trainer. 'What you think you're here for?'

'To keep you in a job,' said Doreen pertly. However, she walked over to the hurdlers and requested the favour of a few minutes' use of the track. The hurdlers, with a prospect of nearly eight months of non-competitive sport before them, were only too glad to step aside and take a rest.

'Hey, you girls, what about your exercises?' demanded the coach. 'Some of you perishing little lie-abouts makes me wonder why I give up my time!'

'So do
we
wonder, thinking what perishing help you are!' retorted Dulcie, who was tired of playing second string to Corinna and firmly believed that, with better coaching, she could beat her. The trainer, whose defensive motto was
Never argue with women
, walked away and contented himself with a sardonic look at Penny the Putt, who was contorting herself into a series of fancy attitudes but without handling the shot. She had no intention of using it that winter, because she thought she was over-developing her biceps and might not look sufficiently attractive at the dances she proposed to attend.

'Well, Face?' she demanded tartly, suspending her operations. 'What's given
you
the stomach-ache?'

'Well, Margot Fonteyn?' retorted the coach. 'What you think
you're
practising? Swan Lake?'

'I'm loosening up, like you told us.'

'Blimey! Your boy friend's going to be lucky!' Delighted with this pithy comment, he walked away before Penny could hurl a shoe at him or find any other reply, and joined the milers Judy and Syl, who were in a corner of the arena putting in a stint of slow skipping. He advised them to 'let the
knees
go, girls,' before he passed on to the high jump and altered the position of a mat. Out of his range and orbit, Judy and Syl abandoned exercise and subsided on to a bench.

'What say we pack it in for tonight?' suggested Syl. 'We got that cross-country run Saturday. Besides, giving evidence at that trial wasn't half an ordeal. I'll never feel the same again, especially after reading about it when it was over.'

'Good thing it's all come out. Fancy Mr Towne being a secret agent as well as a double murderer, and getting the poison through that boy of that other guilty lot! I couldn't hardly believe it, although it was all in the papers.'

'Secret agent? That's only what they're called when they're on
our
side.
I
should call him a dirty spy. And what a lousy trick finding out all about that young What's 'is name what used to be a master at the school and then trying to frame him into the murders!'

'Oh, they're a crafty lot! In my opinion, Bert Colnbrook and that there Bunt never ought to have had nothing to do with them.'

'I expect the money was good. And then, of course, they had to go and get above themselves and start a bit of blackmail.
That's
what got them done in. They ought to have known it was daft, as well as dangerous, to put pressure on a man like that.'

'Mr Towne wasn't all that daft. Fancy poisoning 'em at that Mr Maidston's house, Mr Towne knowing it was empty because of knowing the Maidstons-and I bet
she
knew all what was going on, for all they dismissed her from the case...'

'You mean, knowing they'd gone up to London in Mr and Mrs Towne's name, so the house would be empty with the servants being give the evening off. But the cook said they never smelt a rat. A bit dumb, if you ask
me
. I bet I'd have had my suspicions if my boss had started throwing
me
favours out of the blue. Oh, well, come on, let's beat it. You can come to supper if you like. I'll send my kid brother out for pease pudden and faggots. My mum likes that. And we could take in some cider and p'raps a packet of fags.'

'Well, all right. I'll treat us to the cider and the fags if you're doing the rest. But don't let Dad Artie know. He doesn't half create if he finds us breaking training.'

'He's got a single-track mind. Sometimes I wonder if we girls are wise to put ourselves in the power of a man like that. I mean, look at Svengali.'

'Look at who?'

'Oh, lose it! Do you know what my own dad calls Towne and Company?-a nest of adders. And so they are.'

'Adders?' Judy ventured upon the witticism of a lifetime. 'The way they knocked off them ponies, I reckon it was subtraction they done, not addition. What do
you
say?'

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