Ossian's Ride (19 page)

And of course by this combined tactic it was perfectly straightforward, if not “easy.” It was certainly a far simpler matter than the pitches we had just come up. So I gave her a shoulder, and with something of a struggle she managed to heave herself over the rounded top of the boulder. “Harder for her than for me,” I thought, as I looked at my holds four yards away to the left. They looked rather good.

“I’m up,” she shouted, as she started to take in the rope. She kept taking in slack until the rope tightened between us.

“That’s too much. Give me about three yards,” I shouted back. The rope slithered on the rock, and I saw an end come down, not the usual end, but an end that had been neatly cut. Equally neatly, I had been limed and snared.

I was now alone with an unclimbable boulder above and an almost unclimbable cliff below. And with devilish forethought the girl had left me with only twelve feet of useless rope. I shouted furiously, but there was no reply. I heard the faint sound of boots on rock, and that was all.

I find it difficult, even months afterward, to write of this situation without my feet sweating. The route up the cliff must have been chosen with appalling cunning. My first move, if I was to descend, lay over the steep nose, and this is the one sort of pitch that it is genuinely more difficult to descend than to ascend. The trouble with descent is to find holds for the feet, since they cannot readily be seen. When the rock is steep and the holds are small, one is only too likely to be left scrabbling vainly with the feet, hanging by the fingers—for a little while.

This I realized as I looked stupidly at the severed rope. What I did not realize was that all the clues were now in my hand, all the clues necessary for solving the mystery of I.C.E. Yet I wasn’t to arrive at the solution for nigh onto another year, perhaps because I was to be led away from the main issue by clues apparently more patent, but in fact misleading.

Right now, however, I was congealed on the cliff, unable to move up or down. And as I stood immovable and irresolute, I became acutely aware of the boom of the sea striking the base of the cliff 250 feet immediately beneath my feet. I tried not to look down, but my eyes seemed ever drawn to the blue water. I watched it heave and burst into masses of foam.

I expected to become crag-fast, a state of paralysis in which the climber loses all sense of balance. He clings desperately to the rock until exhaustion comes and at last he falls to his death. Instead I became furiously angry. Suddenly I had a desperate desire to catch up with this hellcat of a blonde. I would knock all Hades out of the girl once I caught up with her.

It would help to descend in stocking feet, for then my toes could feel the indentations in the rock. I managed to get my boots off, but one of them slipped. It hit the cliff face once on its journey to the sea, disappearing with a slight splash. My morale must have been greatly improved by the flaming rage that consumed me, for deliberately I also dispatched the fellow to a watery grave. The faithful boots in which I had walked through Ireland were gone, and with them a chapter closed.

Although I was now almost anxious to begin the descent, there was one thing more to be done. I have a good photographic memory. I forced myself to review all the holds by which I had climbed. I made a mental map of each of the separate pitches. Then at last I started downward.

The bulge was terribly difficult. I forced myself to take the weight on my toes. I would explore downward with one foot, find at last some indentation and then gradually transfer the weight to the lower foot. The climbing was very slow; the danger and temptation was to make too much use of the hands. Even at a distance in time of nearly a year, as I write these words I notice little beads of perspiration on my thumbs.

The “very difficult” pitch seemed easier than on the ascent, and no wonder after the steep bulge I had just come down. Then I reached the top of the great slab. But now it was less difficult to see the holds, and I had two advantages that I didn’t have in the ascent. My stockinged feet were more sensitive to the nicks and knobs in the rock, and the friction of any clothing on the rock provided a useful upward force. The last step down the slab onto the ample foothold below proved exceedingly awkward, however. I was trembling very markedly when I reached the foothold, the trembling coming from muscles that had been taut and strained for too long.

But now I knew that I would get down. There were still two shortish severe pitches before I reached the lower easy rocks. I took the pitches without undue haste, but I went down the lower rocks very quickly.

“Now my girl, you can look out for yourself,” I thought, as I felt in my inner coat pocket. My fingers closed on the distributor cap of the motorboat engine. I had removed it before we started off in the morning, when I was pretending to look to the mooring ropes; for as I have said before, I am of a suspicious mind. The girl had cleverly taken me in, I must admit, but now the score was even. She couldn’t start the boat, and my turn was to come, very shortly.

And so in a fine old temper I scrambled rapidly along the rocks that bordered the sea, in haste to get back to the anchorage. But I was still a way off when I heard a familiar roar, a damned helicopter again. Somehow the genuine blonde must have got word across that she was marooned on the island. Obviously they had come to pick her up.

I raced up the slope, trying to reach the top of the island before the girl could be taken off. But human muscles compete poorly with the internal combustion engine, and I was still some way from the summit when the helicopter rose again and moved away over the sea. I had to be content with the futile and ineffective gesture of shaking my fist at the wretched thing as it passed almost overhead.

There was no point on this occasion in trying to conceal myself, since my safe descent of the cliff would be obvious as soon as the boat put out from the island;
if
the boat put out, that is to say, for there was just the possibility that the girl might have put the engine completely out of operation. There seemed little reason why she should have done so, but I was apprehensive as I made my way downhill to the mooring spot.

“How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” My fears were groundless; nothing in the boat had been touched except that a small W/T set had been taken from its container. This was how the girl had managed to bring help so quickly. I had been foolish not to have noticed this little piece of radio equipment.

It took but five minutes to replace the distributor cap, turn on the petrol and start the engine. Although I was in a tearing hurry to get back to Inishvickillane, I made a detour to the end of the island to a point where I could see the horrible climb on the cliff. From a quarter of a mile out to sea it seemed impossible that even a fly could have come down it. With a shiver I realized something that had not occurred to me before—this part of the cliff was indented in such a way that it could not be seen from the mainland. If I had stayed stuck to the rock I wouldn’t have been seen, and there would have been no real hope of rescue.

The boat pitched and rolled quite considerably as I drove her at full speed into the waves. It was rather like taking a car rapidly along a road covered in potholes. But I cared nothing for the boat, only so long as it got me back safely to the island. What I wanted right now was an interview with Dr. Mitchell and his friends. I was too mad at the time to appreciate the methods of I.C.E. If the girl had got me to swing out to the boulder,
and then cut the rope while I was swinging,
nothing could have saved me. But that would have been murder direct, and apparently they drew the line at this. A fine sense of delicacy persuaded them to put me in a position where I would kill myself, where I had only myself to blame, a position from which I ought to be able to extricate myself—for it is a cardinal rule of rock climbing that nobody should ascend a crag unless he is competent to descend it.

Why had they decided to get rid of me? How had I given myself away? My impression was that I had told my story reasonably well. It was possible, and even likely, that they would still be suspicious of me, but there is a great margin between suspicion and certainty. And surely only people who were absolutely certain would commit murder? Attempted murder it had been morally, however one might play on words.

Then I saw where my mistake lay, glaringly obvious now. When I had stripped off in the bathroom the previous morning and taken my wet things to the kitchen I had unwittingly handed over my trousers without removing Colquhoun’s money. And the money had given me away. No student would carry anything like so much. I cursed myself for a wet fool.

Now I was a mad fool. I drove the boat, slapping and racketing along the same course that the galleon of the Armada had traveled four hundred years ago, and then I turned to the southwest, heading directly toward Inishvickillane. The boat ran more smoothly as I came into waters that were sheltered from the southwest wind. I brought her in quickly to the landing place, made fast and started up the path to the house.

In a powerful rage I opened the door without knocking.

There was nobody in the kitchen, nobody in the sitting room, nobody upstairs. It was plain that the birds had flown, probably taken off by helicopter or some such device. I went back to the kitchen and found my trousers still hanging before the fireplace. A quick inspection showed the money to be still there, but I did not draw the correct inference. By now I was shunted onto a logical sidetrack.

I had just decided that my trousers, the ones hanging there, were distinctly inferior to the ones I was now wearing, and I had just transferred the money, when I was startled by a voice behind me. “Mr. Sherwood, I believe.”

I swung around to find a small oldish fellow, to my jaundiced eye a little weasel of a fellow, standing in the doorway leading to the lounge. The adrenalin was still flowing strongly, so that my instinct was to pick him up and shake him soundly. I took a couple of steps forward, and then, only then, noticed the dark silhouettes of three massive men standing beyond the weasel. The four of them stepped into the kitchen and I saw that the weasel’s companions were in uniform. These were members of the I.C.E. police. The flow of adrenalin stopped, and discretion dominated.

“Yes, Mr. Sherwood? Shall we talk in here, or would you prefer the lounge?”

“There is little to be gained by disturbing ourselves,” I said taking a seat.

“Very well, then. Now I think we ought to have a quiet talk. Let me introduced myself. The name is Earnshaw, Howard Earnshaw.”

This was superfluous, for Howard Earnshaw, sometime professor of metallurgy in the University of London, was another of the people that I had been warned to look out for. “A wild man, a fanatic,” Parsonage had roared at me.

“My name is apparently already known to you,” I remarked.

“Your name, and your career. If I may say so you have the beginnings of a very fine career.”

I bowed, and this ratcatcher of a fellow went on. “But why, oh why, Mr. Sherwood, must you go about things in such an odd and roundabout way? Why not come straight to the front door if you are interested in I.C.E., and I gather by your presence here that you are. We are not in the habit of turning promising young men away empty-handed; just the reverse.”

“Well you see, there’s the possibility that I might stay on at Cambridge and take a Ph.D. But I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to have a look round before making up my mind.”

“And didn’t it occur to you that there might be some objection to your ‘taking a look around’? Suppose every prospective candidate for a job at I.C.E. were to decide to snoop around as you’ve been doing. Don’t you think that would be rather unpleasant for us?”

“I’m afraid it just didn’t occur to me to look at it in that way.”

“Well now, Mr. Sherwood, I’m going to speak quite frankly. Normally we deal very severely with people who deliberately make an illegal entry into Kerry. But I’m the first to admit this would be somewhat absurd in your case. To be shut away would do you no good, and it would do us no good either. So what I’m going to do is to treat your case exactly as if you’d made an application for a post directly from Cambridge.”

Somehow I managed to avoid any show of surprise. During the last few minutes it had gradually dawned on me that Mr. Weasel could know nothing at all about the business on the cliffs of Inishtooskert. But what did it all mean? Who in their senses would first try to kill a man, and then, when the attempt failed, would immediately turn round and offer him a job? The correct explanation actually occurred to me, but I dismissed it without much thought. I had become hopelessly confused, which was what the real authorities of I.C.E. wanted.

Aloud I said, “That seems a very fair offer in the circumstances, sir. But I think I ought to warn you that I’m rather an individual sort of worker.”

Plainly I was now back to winning small points again.

“I think you’ll find that I.C.E. has sufficient elasticity to provide the right sort of working conditions for even more curious people than yourself, Mr. Sherwood.”

“You said that you’d treat my case as if I’d applied for a job in the normal fashion. Can you tell me what this means?”

“It means that you’ll be entitled to the normal salary scale: for entrants with a good university degree, fifteen hundred Irish pounds per annum. That’ll be your case. Subsequent salary increases will be largely a matter for yourself. If you are good to the corporation, the corporation will be good to you.”

“That seems a very decent proposition.”

“I wonder if you realize what sort of organization it is that you’ll be joining, Mr. Sherwood?”

“To be frank, sir, it’s just because I can’t answer this very question that I hesitated about joining the corporation.”