She Fell Among Thieves (7 page)

‘They’ll do each other credit,’ said I. ‘He’s awfully good.’

‘So I’m told. If he does her well, I’m going to have him do Gaston and Father Below. The two together, you know – a conversational piece.’

‘I do not want to be painted,’ said Gaston violently.

‘That I can well believe. But I think you’ll appeal to Candle. There’s something about your smile that won’t go into words. There’s a note of interrogation about it which is curiously repulsive. And Father Below is pure Flemish.’

‘I say I do not want to be painted.’

‘I know. I heard you just now. If you say it again, I’ll point the obvious and have you done in a kilt.’

We all broke down at that, and decency went to the winds. Virginia was simply convulsed. For the fiftieth time I wondered what manner of match this was.

Vanity Fair was speaking.

‘Where shall you go, Mr Chandos?’

‘To Biarritz, I think. There may be some letters there. And so into Spain.’

Vanity Fair nodded.

‘Send me a line,’ she said. ‘And a postcard of Burgos Cathedral. I was married there, but I haven’t seen it for years.’

‘Of course,’ said I.

Father Below looked up.

‘May I ask your servant,’ he said, ‘to buy me some boots?’

‘Ask me,’ said I.

‘You’re very kind,’ said the priest. ‘Years ago I purchased some boots in Spain. I never knew such comfort. They had elastic sides.’

‘I won’t forget,’ I said, laughing.

The priest blinked across the table.

‘I’m sorry you’re going,’ he said irrelevantly.

‘So are we all,’ cried Virginia.

‘Why?’ said Vanity Fair.

‘Madam,’ said Father Below, ‘he’s an honest face.’

I felt very much ashamed.

‘His face is his fortune,’ said Vanity Fair.

‘And ours,’ said Acorn, suddenly.

‘Speech!’ shrieked Virginia. ‘Richard, you’ve got right off.’

‘Stay and be painted,’ said her mother. ‘Conversational piece with Virginia. And what did you think of the lanterns that came from Prague?’

Her smile was dazzling: her gaze seemed to pierce my brain.

‘I shall never forget them,’ said I.

‘I think you’re rather like them.’

‘Like the lanterns?’ said I.

‘Yes,’ said Vanity Fair. Her eyes were like dancing flames. ‘They’re so very easy to see through, and yet, when one looks, one can hardly believe one’s eyes.’

There was a moment’s silence.

Then Gaston sniggered.

Quick as a flash, the whip was laid to his back.

‘Have I said anything vulgar?’ said Vanity Fair.

By noon the next day Lally was peeping below me and Jezreel was twenty miles off. The Col de Fer lay between us… For all that, I berthed the Rolls at a point from which I could see the road back for more than a mile. Such precaution seemed fantastic: but then you never knew – with Vanity Fair.

I left the car and lighted a cigarette. As I threw the match into a runnel, Bell handed me Mansel’s note.

The position is most obscure, but I think that the death of Julie offers a definite line.

Julie was undoubtedly murdered.

Jezreel was Julie’s first place.

I believe that she was engaged – to be put to death.

If I am right, she must have given offence by something she did at her home, the little village of Carlos, forty miles off, by road.

Her offence must have been the grave one of knowing too much.

I want you to try to find out what Julie knew.

Get a map and see the relation which Carlos bears to Jezreel. Reconnoitre the vicinity of Carlos and follow all paths till you strike the one you saw leading out of the Jezreel valley.

Note.

It is vital that we should be in communication. Let Bell get in touch with Carson, who is in touch with me.

Note.

Your visit has been invaluable. For one thing only, Candle’s an acquaintance of mine. Had I not learned that he was coming, I might have walked into his arms.

Without a word, I handed the sheet to Bell.

Then I strolled down the road and started to lay my plans.

My orders were clear. I meant to carry them out with the utmost dispatch. I felt like some prisoner enlarged – that has left his fellow behind in the gloom of the jail. It made me much more than uneasy to think of Mansel alone within the verge of Jezreel.

That night I lay at Bayonne, and at two o’clock the next day Bell set me down at a point three miles from Carlos, where the road was shadowed by beeches and borne by an old stone bridge.

When he had gone about –

‘Tomorrow night,’ said I, ‘between twelve and one. If I’m not here, I’ll be here the night after that. If we simply have to write, that crevice there will serve as a letter-box. And now you get off to Anise. And mind you take it easy tomorrow and let the Rolls care for herself.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Bell, slowly. And then, ‘You will watch out, sir? I – I know you don’t care any more, but there’s others that value your life.’

‘I promise,’ I said.

‘Good luck, sir,’ said Bell, and held his hand to his hat.

Then he let the Rolls steal forward…

A moment later she rounded a bend in the road and passed out of my sight.

The weather seemed set fair, and I was travelling light. My clothes were more easy than handsome, and a little haversack was all the luggage I had. And in that there was food for two days.

Once again I looked at my map. Then I set off up the road, towards the village I sought.

I was in the heart of the mountains, very close to the borders of Spain. The road which the Rolls had been using was little more than a shelf. The country was very lonely, yet showed on every side the traces of man’s acceptance of Nature’s gifts. A patch of scythe-mown meadow sloped to a belt of forest no axe had touched: sheep, like toys, clung to a strip of pasture neighboured by angry crags: a tumbling rill had been switched to water a field that hung like an apron over this shapely spur, and there was a piled-stone wall, with a barn thrusting up beside it, to house the hay. There were several such barns hereabouts, all standing alone and remote and often perched upon heights to which no waggon could ever have made its way: it was clear that what hay they kept was carried by hand.

For a mile I followed the road: then I turned to strike up a mountain whose top, if the map was faithful, commanded the village of Carlos and, beyond, the marches of Spain.

Once I had viewed the village, I meant to make at once for the head of the valley of Jezreel.

In this way I hoped to short-circuit the system which Mansel had set, for, when I had found the valley, I could take the path that I knew and prove at once the relation it bore to Carlos and where it led.

More than an hour went by before I was able to gain the position I sought. Indeed, for the last hundred yards I had to cover ground which, had I not come so far, I would not have essayed; for I have no head for heights, yet had to go up an array of rock and verdure which was handsome enough to look at, but more like a wall than a slope.

Then I scrambled over a ridge and lay down, spent and panting, to look upon Carlos below me, grey and white in the sunshine, some two miles off.

I wiped the sweat from my face and took out my map…

A compass-bearing showed me that the valley I meant to make for lay almost due north, and after resting five minutes I got to my feet and set out for a sugar-loaf peak, which lay more to the east than I liked, yet made a better landmark than anything else I could see.

That my progress was watched by peasants, I make no doubt, but I never saw man or woman that afternoon. Flocks I saw and cattle, but only so far away that I could not hear their bells. Fountains and crags and forests were all my company, and once and again a meadow that seemed to have strayed from its fellows into a haughty pageant to which it did not belong.

The going was most severe, but I dared not spare myself, because the night was coming when, unless I was sure of my bearings, I could not march. For more than half the time the sugar-loaf peak was wholly out of my sight and, though I have what is called an eye to country, more than once I blundered and had to retrace my steps. By dint, however, of going as hard as I could, I made the foot of my landmark just as the sun went down.

I was now in a tract which was wilder than any that I had trodden that afternoon, and as I sat down by some water to break my fast, I saw that, direction apart, I could not hope to traverse country so rugged when once it was dark. I, therefore, ate no more than a crust of bread and then set about the business of crossing the vigorous torrent which barred my way.

At the price of ten precious minutes I found a spot at which I could leap the stream, but I very soon saw that I might have spared my pains, for that the water was going the way I believed to be mine. For a quarter-of-an-hour I followed its brawling course: then, to my vexation, it curled sharp round to the right and once again barred my way.

Stifling an oath – for the shadows were coming in – I began to cast about for another way over the foam: but here the ground was against me and, what was worse, the water itself was swollen because, since I had crossed it, it had accepted the tribute of two or three lesser streams. Indeed, the head of water was now considerable, and though I was ready to ford it, rather than make my way back, if I had tried I must have lost my footing and might have been badly hurt.

I, therefore, turned to retrace my weary steps, when it suddenly entered my head that this might well be the torrent that entered the very valley to which I was trying to come.

A moment’s reflection convinced me that this was so. I could not, I knew, be far from the valley’s head, and though I had never before been over this ground, I had seen enough of mountains to know that that two such important streams should be flowing so close together was most improbable.

The water, therefore, would be the most faithful of guides and, what was more, the path which I hoped to discover lay the same side of the torrent as that upon which I now stood.

I hastened down stream excitedly…

I had hoped to spend some of the night in one of the barns, but hereabouts there were none, for the country was much too rude to allow of meadows: now, however, I would not have altered my course for the finest of beds, for if, before night fell, I could strike my path, I could follow this in the darkness without any fear of falling or losing my way.

The light was failing fast when I rounded a precipitous shoulder to hear the roar of a fall.

With a leaping heart I pushed on and, after a gruelling furlong, I stood looking into the gorge at whose mouth I had sat and rested three days before. There was no doubt about it. If I had cared to go down to the foot of the fall and then climb up the mountain that mothered the gorge, I could have seen in the distance the lights of Jezreel.

As I had thought, the water fell over a cliff some forty feet high, to enter at once the ravine which its own immemorial impatience had fretted out of the rock. For the gorge had been but a gully when the hills took up the order they still maintained.

After a swift inspection I set my face to the east, that is to say to my right. At once I observed a dip in the fading skyline, which had the look of a saddle, a mile away. I doubted if I could reach it before the stars came out. But if I could, and if Mansel’s theory was good, then the path which I was seeking would be lying right under my nose.

I set out feverishly…

I have often found that when one is bent upon something with all one’s might, one is apt to shut one’s eyes to the laws of Nature in a way that would discredit an infant of tender years. No mountain goat could have won the ridge I was seeking before night fell. The distance apart, until I came upon it, I could in no sort distinguish the country I had to cross, and before I had gone fifty paces the ground fell sharply away and I had to go down and so lose sight of the saddle I hoped to reach. When I was down, I found that my way was opposed by a spur which I could not scale, and I had to turn south, to round it as best I could. By the time I was round, it was almost too dark to see, and in any event a shoulder of hanging forest was now obscuring the background upon which I was depending for my direction. For all that, I struggled on, but the forest forced me still further out of my course, and when at last I was round, my skyline had gone. Night had come in.

I was now as much disheartened as, a quarter-of-an-hour before, I had been elated. I could not see: I had but the roughest idea of which way to go: another divergence and I should be utterly lost: the spot at which I was standing offered no sort of shelter against the keen, night air: the disorder of the country about me was not so much wild as savage: and the path which I could be treading the whole night long lay, I was sure, but the toss of a biscuit away.

I determined to go on – somehow…

For an hour and twenty minutes I wrestled, as Jacob wrestled, to overcome the darkness and the snares which an unkind Nature spread in my way. That I do not halt today, as Jacob halted, is not my fault, for a score of times I must have missed breaking a leg by the breadth of a hair. I stumbled, I slipped, I fell: I bruised myself upon rocks, I tore my skin upon briers and I sank to the knee in mold which a thousand autumns had been at pains to amass. And then at last I knew that I was beaten – that I had been beaten for more than an hour and a half, and that I should have done far better to pass the night where I was when darkness came down. For now I was lost.

The stars were out now and were shedding a little light, but their radiance was worse than useless and only served to deceive. I, therefore, drew my torch, to look for some cleft or hollow in which I could take some rest.

(Here I should say that when night came in, I had started to use my torch, but when I had fallen twice, I put it away, partly lest I should break it and partly because, if I was to save myself, I needed two hands.)