Sweet Danger (27 page)

Then, just at the moment when the magician who had been Dr Galley had become transformed into a frothing screaming homicidal maniac, and the storm outside was at the height of its fury, a clock somewhere in the house struck
seven, and instantly a sound which none of them ever forgot swelled and reverberated through the valley until the whole world seemed to reel before its clamour.

It was as though a bell of gigantic proportions was tolling a peal to summon mankind. It was impossible to tell where the noise came from. It seemed to be all about them, an angry sea of sound.

And then, quite suddenly, it stopped, and in the peace which followed they became aware of an answering note, a shrill clear humming. It lasted for perhaps a minute and then the clamour of the great bell rang out again, drowning everything else.

Amanda, who in her position of superior knowledge had not been quite so shaken by these terrifying developments as the others, kept her head and remembered her part.

‘Guffy,' she whispered, ‘lock Galley in the first room across the hall, and the rest of you beat it back through the wood. We've got to. I can't explain now; there's hardly any time.'

The urgency in her tone lent her authority, and since her advice embodied the natural desire of everyone present, they obeyed her. Hal put his arm round Aunt Hatt's shoulders and seized Mary by the hand.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘We'll go straight to the boat, Amanda. You follow with Guffy. You'll see to the shuts, won't you?'

She nodded and on a sudden impulse thrust Campion's gun into his pocket.

‘You take this,' she said. ‘I can leave everything to you, can't I?'

He looked at her meaningly and nodded.

When Dr Galley had been disposed of safely in his own dining-room, Amanda and Guffy paused for a moment in the darkened hall.

‘This way,' she whispered. ‘We've got to get back to the mill before the bell stops ringing.'

The storm had abated a little, but the sky was still dark and a fine rain was falling as they came out into the tangled garden, thankfully leaving the house behind them. The body of Ashtaroth lay where it had fallen, its face hidden against the rudely decorated boards.

The rain had not cooled the atmosphere and a wave of hot scented air, heavy with moisture, met them as they plunged into the path between the sunflowers. All the time the tremendous clangour of the great bell, which now seemed louder even than before and was interrupted by fierce splitting sounds like rending stone, deafened Guffy's senses and added to his bewilderment.

Suddenly it ceased again and once more that high sweet echoing murmur soothed the battered valley.

Amanda turned to Guffy, her eyes dancing. ‘It works!' she said triumphantly. ‘It works!'

‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘What the hell is it?'

‘Oh, of course – you don't know. It's the great bell of St Breed, the convent in the Pyrenees. Campion fixed up with them to broadcast it on a private wavelength. That's what the wireless stuff was for. Scatty has the loud-speakers in the cedar as high as he could get them, so that they correspond more or less with the real bell in the old tower. Those awful crashes are atmospherics. This storm isn't very helpful. But it's the sympathetic vibrations that count. Don't you remember what it said on the oak? Don't you see, there's an answer!'

She dragged at his arm and forced him to plunge on through the undergrowth. As they crossed the narrow lane to the home wood a car, apparently driven by a madman, roared past and turned to skirt the old Pontisbright estate.

Amanda's eyes glinted. ‘The system' was beginning to work.

AT THE MOMENT
when Dr Galley was conjuring Ashtaroth to appear, Mr Campion was crouching in the hollowed-out centre of a bramble bush beneath the cedar tree talking to Lugg. The big man, looking even more unhappy than usual in his ear-phones, was expressing his views with his customary forthrightness.

‘We're askin' for trouble,' he said, looking down at some six square feet of accumulator while storm and lightning played round him and his paraphernalia. ‘Askin' for trouble,' he repeated. ‘If you want my views on this scheme of yours, it's perishin' awful.'

‘I don't,' said his master frankly. ‘Is Scatty ready?'

Mr Lugg held up his hand. ‘'Ullo,' he said. ‘'Ere it comes. With these atmospherics it sounds like a vaudeville turn.'

He jerked a string which hung down beside the bole of a cedar tree and received an answering tug from Scatty, who was superintending the loud-speakers above.

‘Well, 'e's not bin struck by lightnin' yet,' he said. ‘Shall we let 'er rip?'

Campion nodded and his aide bent over the amplifier.

‘'Ere goes,' he said. ‘Eight times as loud as real. I'm very fond of bells.'

Instantly from above their heads came the sound which had such a profound effect upon the little group in Dr Galley's drawing-room and which was to be one of the wonders of Suffolk for many years to come. Even Campion was not prepared for the stupendous uproar which the
broadcast bell of St Breed, sister bell to the Pontisbright giant, could make when amplified. He could picture the effect which this mighty clangour must make upon the superstitious village folk, and, more important still, upon the camp on the heath. There the forces had been massing all day and now they would be stirred into action.

He permitted himself an anxious glance through the leaves towards Dr Galley's white house. If that little party came to any harm, he reflected, he could never forgive himself.

But behind all these considerations which raced through his mind was the one great hope which possessed him. When the deafening clangour above his head ceased for a moment's respite he would know the answer to a question which had been uppermost in his mind ever since he had read the couplet on the oak.

Everyone has noticed that in a room where there are hollow vessels certain sounds will produce answering murmurs. The sharp bark of a dog may set a row of cups ringing on a dresser. Certain notes on a piano will provoke answering vibrations from metal trays. Campion had hoped that some such phenomenon might give meaning to the remarkable instructions carved so laboriously under the sundial.

As he waited the great bell ceased and his heart leapt as from somewhere in the depths of the wood before him came the answering murmur he longed to hear; clear, high, sweet, and unmistakable, a humming beckoned him.

He turned to Lugg. ‘Don't forget they're broadcasting five times. After the fourth time get Scatty down, and as soon as the fifth is over smash a couple of valves and clear out.'

‘What if 'Is Nibs' boy friends spot us before?' demanded Mr Lugg not unnaturally.

‘Then you must fight for it. But they won't. They'll be following the second note. They're not fools. Good-bye. See you to-morrow.'

‘I 'ope,' said Mr Lugg, but this pious wish never reached his master, for, his lank figure bent against the storm, Mr Campion had plunged into the trees.

Although he had spent the best part of the past three nights in making himself familiar with the overgrown paths and ruined boundaries of the once magnificent garden, he found the task he had set himself to be quite as difficult as he had anticipated.

Another shattering peal from the bell of St Breed made him stop in his tracks and wait anxiously for the clatter to subside. The storm was still raging and the atmospherics tore through the pealing of the bell like miniature thunderclaps. He could hear the sound of a motor-car engine in the lane and recognized the Lagonda. Farquharson was doing his part, then.

From the heath there were other noises, only faintly discernible through the clangour.

Then again the noise above him stopped, followed by the sweet musical call ahead. He forced his way on towards it. There was very little time. The great bell would ring only thrice more. Between now and the dying away of the final vibration he must find the source of the answer.

As he pressed on he realized to his relief that it was nearer than he had suspected. It led him across the site of the old lawn and down a narrow path to what must once have been the stables, but over which the grass now grew in uneven mounds. It was risky business coming out into the open, but he ploughed on recklessly.

He had just reached a clump of overgrown laurels when again the loud-speakers in the cedar bellowed forth the challenge of the sister bell. Again the answer came, beckoning him ever forward through the rain-soaked leaves. Alarm seized him: only twice more now.

He pressed on. He was coming to the open field which skirted the lane below the church, the same lane which lay between Dr Galley's home and the heath. As in many
meadows that have once been parkland, a fine group of elms stood in the centre, forming a ring round a little depression in the grass. As soon as Campion saw them his heart sank. He wormed his way down the hedge and stood there, waiting, while for the fourth time the bell chimed and received its answer.

Yes, there was no doubt about it: the echo came from the elms.

There was no hedge between the meadow and the lane and the stately park railing had long since disappeared. Already two cars had passed. There was no time to be lost.

He sped across the short grass, trusting to the rain and the uncertain light to hide him. When he reached the trees, the humming had died away and he stood there, flattened against the trunk of an elm, while for the last time the great booming voice of the twin sister of the Bell of Pontisbright startled the countryside and reawakened old echoes long since forgotten.

Campion stood waiting and was rewarded. From somewhere among the trees, almost, it seemed at his very feet, the high clear voice of the answer rose to meet him.

He saw the explanation suddenly, an old half-broken well-head, the mossy stones quite clear among the short grass. He glanced about him and even as he did so a sleek black car, followed by three motor-cycles, swung round the bend and on to the meadow.

In his present position he was hidden, but discovery, it seemed, must be inevitable. If he were found then the hiding-place was found also. The short branches of the elm invited him. He caught at one and swung himself up swiftly into comparative safety among the leaves.

He went high and at length found himself in a position from which he could see down into the shadows and still descry the faint outlines of the well-head some twenty feet below.

He was craning round in an attempt to catch a glimpse
of the occupants of the car when another sound reached him which he recognized immediately as the roar of the mill wheel down in the valley. Amanda had reached the shuts, then.

He turned involuntarily towards the sounds and found that although he could not see the mill the lower portion of the river was visible to him from the height at which he sat, and he caught the chill gleam of water between the overhanging trees.

He watched it anxiously and it seemed to him that he saw a shadow passing swiftly down the stream; something that might have been a bundle of brushwood or some trusses of straw swept down from some flooded yard.

His attention was recalled immediately, however, by the sound of voices just below him. The light was getting worse at every moment in the shadows beneath the elm, but as a dark-coated figure leant for a moment against the trunk of the very tree up which he sat a thrill of surprise passed through him.

Those giant shoulders were unmistakable. Savanake had come himself.

There was still a murmur from the well-head. It was more than he could hope that they should not notice it, and when a voice which revealed startlingly the presence of Mr Parrott said clearly, ‘It's somewhere here – hark,' Campion's thrill of despair was mitigated by the knowledge that it was only to be expected.

The light was fading rapidly. Now he could no longer see the well-head himself, and the river was only visible in little silver patches among the grey meadows.

‘Yes,' said the voice of Savanake suddenly. ‘It is here. Of course, something like this was perfectly obvious from the time we first heard about the amplifier in the wood, but I didn't quite follow it until I heard the bell.' He laughed. ‘It's amusing that they should have taken all the trouble and left it to us to do the finding. We must hurry.'

‘Two cars left the mill, sir,' said one of the motor-cyclists, and Campion could see his dark form coming forward. ‘One turned to Sweethearting. The other took the lower road.'

‘That's all right,' said Parrott quickly. ‘Our people are following. They're making a get-away with the crown. Probably realize that this is too much for them. We shall collect all they have before morning.'

‘Why waste time?' said Savanake testily. ‘This all-important thing is at our feet, probably. It's infernally dark, isn't it?'

There was considerable movement at the foot of the tree and from Mr Campion's point of view the figures had almost melted into the darkness. But for the red tips of their cigarettes, and their voices, he would not have been able to locate them.

‘It's too dark to see anything,' grumbled Parrott. ‘If we use torches we shall be seen. Does that matter?'

‘I don't care what you do. Find the thing. Here, Everett.'

Campion heard the car door open and a figure stumble through the gloom.

‘Yes, sir.'

He guessed it was the chauffeur who spoke.

‘Bring the car up here and turn the headlights full on this dell. Understand?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Almost immediately the soft purr of a car engine sounded through the field as the Rolls crept forward and two great beams of light stretched out over the short grass.

‘I say, Mr Savanake.' Mr Parrott's voice sounded nervous and protesting. ‘We'll have them down on us.'

‘Who the hell cares if we do? We're armed, aren't we? They've gone off in those three cars with the rest of our fellows after them. We shan't get any villagers here for days. They're probably saying their prayers in pious terror as it is. Get on with it, Everett.'