Sweet Danger (28 page)

Slowly the great car slid into position and the enormous headlights picked out each blade of grass in the dell with startling vividness.

The well-head seemed to jump at them, and Campion's last hopes were dashed as Parrott started forward.

‘Well, that's a bit of luck, isn't it?' he said, his voice shrill with excitement.

The little group closed round the well save for the chauffeur, who still lingered by the side of his car, although even he had dismounted. The men who had come on motor-bicycles produced a crowbar and a pickaxe. They set to work at once on the stone slab, which had grown into its position and was firmly cemented there with weeds, moss, and soft earth.

Campion watched them anxiously. His position was desperate. He even had no revolver. He crouched there peering down at them, and although Savanake's broad back obscured the scene most of the time, he heard the grunt of satisfaction as the slab gave beneath the pick, and saw the crowd scattered for a moment as it was heaved out of its position.

They were all engrossed now; too excited by their discovery to heed anything else. Mr Campion began to descend. He came down cautiously, feeling his way on the side of the tree most in darkness.

At length he found himself on a branch not ten feet from the ground, and beneath him, leaning forward and craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the well-head, was the chauffeur. The shaft from the parking lamp lit up his wide shoulders.

Mr Campion felt for his only weapon, a heavy stone twisted in his handkerchief. He had armed himself with this elementary life-preserver when he had first made his way from Dr Galley's garden to find Lugg.

‘There it is! There it is!' said Parrott's voice excitedly. ‘Another bell slung on a crossbeam.'

‘Don't worry about that.' Even Savanake's voice sounded nervy. ‘It's the thing itself we want. Probably an iron box or a cylinder. Look for a hole in the brickwork. Don't fall in. We have nothing to get you up with. Hullo, what's that?'

There was a movement among the group, a ripple of smothered exclamations. The chauffeur took another step forward and at that instant Mr Campion dropped.

The interior of the well was dark. Its rounded sides were grey with lichen. From its depths a dank unpleasant odour arose, breathing the decay of centuries. But the excited men round the edge were oblivious of anything save the object of their quest.

Savanake himself was kneeling on the stones, wrenching at something embedded in moss just above the ear of the bell. Once his hand slipped and his arm shot back, so that his elbow struck the iron and a faint high note sounded for an instant in the night.

‘Here, you get it,' he said savagely, rising to his feet and rubbing his arm vigorously.

A man took his place eagerly. There was the sound of iron on the stones and someone swore.

‘Look out, it's heavy, sir.'

They dragged a square iron box on to the slab.

‘It's locked, of course.'

‘Shall I smash it open with the pick, sir?'

‘No, no. Isn't there a key somewhere?'

Once again the crevice in the well was explored, but without result. Savanake seemed to make up his mind.

‘I'll take it as it stands,' he said. ‘You three replace this stuff. You can use your torches. We're evidently not going to be disturbed. Then get back to town. Report to Mr Parrott to-morrow. Come on, Parrott. You and I will take this with us.'

He picked up the box by the iron ring in its lid and strode towards the car. In spite of its weight he carried it easily, as though it had been a toy in his hand.

‘Back, Everett,' he said, as he climbed into the body of the Rolls, his assistant scrambling after him.

The figure in the chauffeur's coat touched his peaked cap respectfully and the great car shot back over the grass and then, with rather more of a jerk than might have been expected from a man used to his machine, leapt forward on to the lane.

Down the narrow flint road, past the darkened ‘Gauntlett', Campion brought the great car like a whirlwind. The man in the seat behind him was ruthless, a giant, and armed; also he had a companion. But in his hands was the one thing above all others which at that moment Albert Campion most desired, and with a whirring flurry of wheels he brought the great car round the bend and down the narrow cul-de-sac at the far end of which stood the mill.

THE CAR SPED
down the narrow lane, its giant headlights picking out the familiar scene and lending it a strange unreality as if the mill and the silent house had been part of some enormous stage set. Only the roar of the water and the steady chugging of the wheel were alive.

Unarmed save for his improvised sling, Campion drove on savagely and brought the car to a standstill within a foot of the race.

‘Lost your way, Everett?' Savanake's voice sounded hearteningly casual.

Campion made an inaudible reply and, springing out of the car, threw up the bonnet. He bent over the spotless engine for some moments, trusting to the shadow of the hood to hide his face.

Presently, as he had hoped, the car door opened and footsteps advanced. Mr Campion gripped his handkerchief in which the heavy stone still rested.

The new-comer proved to be Mr Parrott. He came up out of the darkness, officious and trembling.

‘I say, Everett, this is disgraceful at such a time. You'll get into trouble. Mr Savanake's very upset.'

Campion raised his head and looked at the new-comer. The expression on the pompous little face as Mr Parrott recognized the man he thought he had put so safely on board the
Marquisita
was remarkable.

Campion did not permit his surprise to subside. On top of the realization that the incredible does sometimes occur,
Mr Parrott received a blow on the skull which sent him down like a sack.

But even as he fell a voice in which there was an unmistakable ring of satisfaction said sharply: ‘Put your hands up, Campion. I've got you just where I want you.'

Mr Campion, looking lanker and more pale than usual in the chauffeur's cap and the coat which was much too wide for him, had no alternative but to obey. He had no illusions concerning the man with whom he had to deal. He raised his hands above his head, therefore, and waited.

Savanake came towards him. The side-lights fell upon the gleaming barrel of the revolver he levelled. In his left hand he still carried the iron box, as though he had been loath to set it down even for an instant.

Campion felt the gun muzzle in his ribs. His captor glanced down at the race.

‘That's no good,' he said suddenly, and went on, his voice still soft, his tone still conversational. ‘You're going to walk in front of me, Campion, with this gun just where it is now, until you get to the millpool. For obvious reasons I don't want you to be found with a bullet from my gun in your body. But any sidestepping, any tricks, any stumble, and I pull the trigger. Understand? This time I'm doing the job myself, so that there can be no mistake.'

Mr Campion did not reply, but his silence was pointed. They might have been standing at the end of the world, so remote did they seem from any interruption. Parrott lay where he had fallen.

The big side door of the mill stood open, as it always did, and through it, across a concrete way, a faint gleam showed in the darkness where the second door, which was the main exit to the sluices and the gangway round the river, stood wide also.

Mr Campion walked slowly into the mill. On the threshold the increase in the pressure of the muzzle against his ribs arrested him.

‘Why are you leading me in here, Campion?' demanded the same ominously soft voice. ‘You know me well enough not to play the fool.'

‘This is the only way to the millpool,' said Mr Campion plaintively. ‘The gangway at the back of the mill below the grille is so rotten that the millers have put a barrier of hurdles across the path, and unless you intend us to swim the river this is the only means of reaching the pool. I don't mind you shooting me so much, but I won't be bullied.'

‘Go on,' said the man behind him. ‘Lead me to the millpool. I've heard a great deal of your cleverness lately, but how you could have come out on a job like this without a gun is beyond me.'

‘I don't like the idea of being hanged,' confided Mr Campion in the darkness. ‘You just don't worry about that, I take it?'

They passed through the mill and now came out on the mouldering wooden way which skirted the dynamo wheel and led on to the top of the millpool floodgates. On their right the river flowed silently through the grille and under the broken gangway, which was so badly in need of repair that for safety's sake Amanda had placed a couple of hurdles across the path, one in the angle of the wall near the door through which they had come and one further on at the opposite bank of the river.

They passed the shed over the dynamo wheel and came out on to a narrow bridge with the river on their right and the steep sides of the millpool on their left. There seemed to be more light here and the water which surrounded them looked sinister and uninviting.

The floodgates, a little farther on down the path on which they stood, were closed to permit the full force of the river to flow through the mill into the main stream.

‘This will do very nicely, I think,' said Savanake quietly. ‘Turn round.'

The lank figure in front of him turned obediently. The expression on his face was still affable and vacant. Savanake could see him clearly in the faint light.

As they faced one another the incredible loneliness of the spot became more apparent. Both men were deadly serious, but while Savanake betrayed a certain tension, Mr Campion remained foolish-looking and ineffectual as ever.

‘One moment,' he murmured. ‘Would you like me to take off my coat? It belongs to your chauffeur, you know. The police get hold of a thing like that. They're great lads for the obvious.'

‘Keep your hands above your head,' said the other man warningly, but the notion evidently appealed to him, for he set the precious iron box down on the path and with his left hand caught the coat collar firmly. ‘Stretch your arms out behind you.'

He stripped the garment off his captive and laid it on the ground, but did not pick up the iron box again.

‘I'm quite sorry to have to kill you,' he remarked. ‘And it may seem foolish of me, although there seems to be plenty of time, but I should like to explain that I am not taking this way of getting rid of you as a form of revenge for the insignificant little trick you played upon the arch-idiot Parrott. I have only one reason for wishing you out of the way, and that is sufficient. You are the only man who knows exactly what it is that I have obtained to-night. None of my assistants have any idea what is in the iron box, or of the story concerning it. You see, in the circumstances the course I am taking is the only intelligent thing to do.'

Mr Campion shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don't know why it should occur to you that my last moments would be comforted by an assurance of your intelligence,' he said. ‘What method are you thinking of employing? I hate to seem lowbrow, but in the circumstances that subject interests me more. Or perhaps it's a secret?'

Savanake laughed. He towered over Campion and the
young man became suddenly aware of his enormous strength.

‘There's no secret,' he said. ‘Your body will be found floating in the pool. You will be bruised, naturally, but it will be assumed that you met your death by accident. There will be no awkward bullet, no ridiculous clues for half-educated policemen to follow. How do you imagine I'm going to kill you, you little rat, you? With my hands.'

There was a tinge of satisfaction in the tone, an almost brutish savagery which lurked behind the soft voice.

Mr Campion remained thoughtful.

‘I see,' he said slowly. ‘But there's something you've overlooked. I can't worry about your affairs now, though. I've got my own eternity to think of. Still, perhaps I may as well mention it. This iron box' – he glanced down at it on the gangway – ‘what exactly
is
in it?' And moving his foot sharply he toppled the precious trophy over the edge and in to the millpool.

The splash it made as it hit the water was audible above the throbbing of the wheel.

Savanake, taken off his guard for an instant, swore violently and turned instinctively to the dark water. In that moment Campion leapt.

He caught the man round the shoulders and swung himself up, kicking the gun out of his hand. It fell to the path but did not slide on into the water. Any ordinary adversary would have staggered back or fallen beneath this sudden attack, but Savanake was a person of no ordinary strength. He braced himself to meet the onslaught, exerting the tremendous force concealed in his huge body. One mighty hand closed round Campion's ankle like a vice, and with a wrench of the gigantic shoulders the young man's grip was prised open. Campion slipped down and caught his enemy round the knees, thrusting his head forward savagely into his stomach.

Savanake grunted and pitched forward, but his grip on
the young man's ankle did not loosen as together they plunged down into the cold dark waters of the pool ten feet below.

When Campion came to the surface some seconds later his first feeling was of relief. He was free. The paralysing grip on his ankle had gone. He struck out cautiously, swimming half under water. His clothes weighed him down and it was numbingly cold after the storm.

He found himself just below the alcove in the brick wall of the pool which housed the floodgates. When the main shuts were closed and the mill was not working the water was released through the pool by means of these gates, and at such times the alcove, or ‘apron', was a race, with the water pouring down from above. But now all was quiet and the little trickle of water escaping through the gates barely wetted the stones.