The Journeying Boy (39 page)

His path was sloping downwards now, and an occasional glint from the water came up to him as he ran. His breath was coming very short and his heart was pounding; he had the swift, horrible knowledge that, unexpectedly soon, his strength was going to fail. He had been pretty roughly handled in the little cave; his knee as he ran hurt in a fashion quite outside his experience, and it was this that took it out of him most. Hitherto, moreover, he had thought of his danger and this hideous, subterraneous place as being coterminous. But now he realized that there was only childish instinct behind this coupling of daylight and safety. He remembered the long beach, the long climb across the face of the cliff. Barring the unlikely chance of some sufficiently numerous assemblage of persons in that solitary spot, he had really no hope at all. He was simply giving the creatures behind him a run for their money.

Meanwhile, he was still heading them. But this start, after all, had been of the slenderest, and they were so close that, on rounding a bend, the torchlight they cast before their own feet afforded him, too, some illumination as he ran. And now one of them, realizing this, advanced his beam, for an instant let it rest on him, and then made it dance in rapid zigzags immediately before him. It was a cunning move, so bewildering as almost to take him into the water at once, and for the time he could only reduce speed so that he knew that they were gaining on him – so that he expected to feel, indeed, at any moment the hot breath of a pursuer on his neck. But still he ran, for the good reason that there was nothing else to do. They were not even the sort of urbane kidnappers who had frequently entertained him in fiction; if he was not to be booted and wrenched and tugged – treated worse than one might be treated at the most horrid of schools – he must keep out of their heavy hands. Particularly, he grimly thought, after having so gloriously landed that wallop with the rope’s end, that extremely ungentlemanlike kick… One of them had begun to shout. The sound, although in itself alarming, raised his spirits once more, since it seemed the distinctly futile expedient of an angry and baffled man. But this luxury he enjoyed only for a second; there was an answering shout from straight ahead, and the darkness was cut by a dazzling ray that leapt up and took him full in the eyes like a blow. It brought him up dead. And as the torches behind him advanced, and as the first blinding effect subsided, he saw enough to know that any faint hope of its being succour that lay ahead of him was vain. For here was simply another ruffian of the deepest dye.

The man advanced. The footsteps behind were now only a score of yards off. Only one resource was left to him: to take a header into the black waters below. But, even so, he could not swim
away
; he could swim only up or down, and most certainly not so fast as his enemies could run. They would only have to wait, and presently haul him out like a half-drowned rat… And now from in front and from behind they were upon him; their hands were stretching out to clutch, to wrench. Terror pouring over him, he cowered, shrank back against the face of the rock as if in very pity it might open and receive him. His shoulders were crushed as in a vice; he twisted, thrust, squirmed – and the rock
had
received him. He was
through
. In a fraction of a second’s complete clarity he realized what had happened. This was the little cave into which Ivor had not been since he was a kid. This was the little cave through the narrow cleft to which no grown man could hope to penetrate. He fell on his hands and knees, and a strange new clamour was all around him. He listened to it with curiosity, but without alarm. It was, he discovered, his own wildly pealing laughter.

There was clamour from outside too, and for the moment it was merely bewildered. The speed of what had so unexpectedly happened had given to his disappearance all the effect of something out of Nature, and his adversaries were utterly at a stand. But his laughter had betrayed him; there was a shout of comprehension; once more torchlight was playing full upon him as he crouched. And like a minnow in a tank Humphrey started into movement and scurried to the most inviolate corner of his fastness. There he huddled, his heart pounding with the force of hammer strokes in his chest. Had Ivor’s calculation been correct? Or could one of these men, if not too bulky, actually, fatally, squeeze through? There was a sickening sound from the aperture of successful heave and shove; then an exclamation of discomfort, of pain; there was a grunt as somebody freed himself from the constricting rock; there was imprecation, hurried and murmured talk. Humphrey waited, and this process repeated itself – again with no ill result. And at this Humphrey stretched himself out in utter luxury on the ground, his every limb relaxed. And as he did so the possibility of an ease yet more exquisite dawned on him. He could allow himself the extravagance of speech. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Hullo, you silly asses – won’t you come in?’

At his words, the murmur outside stopped. He heard heavy and exhausted breathing, and realized that the condition of these great brutes was altogether inferior to his own; it was out of
them
that the headlong chase had really taken it. The knowledge went wildly to his head; his sprawled body curled itself like a spring; he was once more doubled up, dissolved, in helpless laughter. Through this he struggled again for speech, and presently it gloriously came – a torrent of childish mockery, rude epithets, snatches of verse, lavatory humour, farmyard imitations, puns. And when he had done himself this ease he was suddenly serious, practical, assured. There was a stick of chocolate in his pocket; he took it out and ate a piece with slow deliberation. Then again he spoke. ‘Hullo, chaps – you still there?’

‘We are here, Humphrey.’ It was the voice of the bearded man; Humphrey remembered it as it had sounded on the Heysham train.

‘Don’t you think you’d better be cutting along, you great ugly, stupid, incompetent, clumsy brute? You’ve lost, you know – and that’s that. If you hang about in this very unintelligent way you only increase your chances of an early appointment with the gallows.’ Humphrey paused, pleasurably savouring this superior flight of rhetoric. ‘The others realize that, you know. Just have a look at them; they’re dead scared at what they’ve done – the dirty, murdering swine.’ Exultation had suddenly left the boy; he was shaken from head to foot by what he realized was hatred and rage. ‘You killed my cousin, you low maggots! You killed him when he was fighting to get me out of this. And if you
do
cut off now, if you bolt to the furthest corners of the earth, I’ll never rest until I know that the law has brought you back and snapped your filthy necks.’

This speech was evidently not without effect. The murmuring outside was renewed, and this time it held a note of altercation. Presently, however, there was silence, and then the bearded man spoke. ‘We are going to wait for you, Humphrey. We are going to wait until you come out.’

‘And whatever is going to bring me out?’

‘Thirst might, for one thing.’

‘Never believe it. The moisture coming down these walls isn’t even brackish. Besides, the idea’s absurd. Ivor and I have been missed by now. And it’s very likely that the racket those pistol-shots made has been heard over half the countryside. Look at your low friends again.
They
feel that. They’ll be off without you, if you don’t quit. And I’m not absolutely convinced that they won’t put a bullet in you first – just for luck, you big stinker.’

‘We can smoke you out.’

‘Absolutely useless.’ Humphrey was in command of the situation, and he knew it. ‘I only got in with a tremendous effort and all my wits about me. Do you think I’d ever manage to get out again when half-stupefied? Besides, you sadistic moron, I’d rather die than fall into your hands. You know that – don’t you? And it goes for shooting, too. Fire often enough into this little cave and, sooner or later, a ricochet would get me. But it wouldn’t do you much good, would it?… Do I hear people coming?’

This last stroke was admirably calculated; it produced a moment’s near-panic in the enemy. On the strength of it Humphrey had another piece of chocolate.

‘Your only real chance is to clear out now and try again tomorrow. Or why not
pretend
to clear out now, and look somewhere for the innocent lad as he breaks cover and makes for home?’ And Humphrey laughed comfortably. ‘I expect you can answer that one. I’m not
going
to break cover; not until they’ve come down from the house to hunt for me. And not then either; not until they’ve sent for half a dozen armed policemen. I’m through with this as private fun, you great big ugly maggot. You’ve done something too jolly beastly. I’ll have detectives and all the rest of it now. So be off, and crawl back into the woodwork. After the rotten show you put up last night, creeping all round Killyboffin and getting nothing but a clip on the ear from Thewless, I wonder you have the face to stay in business. And besides, you know, that feeble performance hasn’t gone for nothing. It means that the police and the madhouse folk are out by now, scouring the country for a pack of half-wit, yellow, incompetent crooks.’

If there was much in all this of Humphrey’s that was deplorably lacking in elevation of thought and dignity of tone, it was a speech nevertheless persuasively grounded in solid sense. The assistant ruffians were now audibly for immediate retreat; only the bearded man was obstinate – was, indeed, whipped up to fury. There was a moment’s silence and then Humphrey was startled to hear the old heaving and straining begin again. The most formidable of his adversaries was having another try. But the boy was confident now. He crept up close to the aperture and substituted for his late loud tone a bloodcurdling whisper. ‘Come on, old mole – work away! Do you know what I’ve got here? A really nice lump of jagged rock. And when your rotten head comes six inches nearer I’ll pound and bash it into a pulp.’

There was a moment’s stillness, followed by a sound of rapid extrication. The bearded man had given up. And Humphrey – who was undoubtedly behaving very childishly – had just begun to cast about in his mind for some further contumelious strain when the silence was cut, to positively electrical effect, by the shrill blast of a powerful whistle. The sound came apparently from that larger of the entrances to the long cavern by which Humphrey and Ivor had entered, but in a fraction of time its echoes were everywhere, so that it was impossible to tell by how many actual pairs of lungs the wild alarm was being sounded, By the ruffians without – whose morale, indeed, must have been considerably undermined by the implacable eloquence of their young antagonist – it was taken as a plain signal of whole cohorts advancing to the vindication of law and order. Humphrey glimpsed the torchlight through that blessedly narrow cleft waver and fade. Then he heard, first, a single, deep, panic-stricken curse; and, second, the sheer music of four heavy men taking to their heels. Again, and this time nearer, the whistle shrilly blew; and again echo wrought the same rich confusion of effect. With surprising speed the pounding footsteps – themselves augmented and distorted to render effects as of a whole herd of buffalo in stampede – faded and ceased. There was a second’s silence and then, from the direction in which they had departed, the roar of a powerful marine engine starting into life. Perhaps, Humphrey thought, it was the motor-cruiser. They would have had it lurking at that farther opening of the cavern by which Ivor had proposed that they should themselves leave it.

Anyway, they were gone. And – quite suddenly – Humphrey felt queer; far queerer than he had ever felt in his life before. There was now only darkness round him, but it was a darkness that danced and sickeningly swam. He had believed himself to be standing firmly on his feet. But to his surprise – the dim surprise of an already fading consciousness – he found that he was really crumpled up in a deflated, a quite desperately small and weary, heap. He had an uncertain impression of light footsteps near at hand; of his own name being called, and called again, in a familiar voice. But his bruised and exhausted body had already curled in upon itself. He lay in a posture of infancy, a thumb stolen to his mouth. Perhaps he had fainted. Perhaps he was simply asleep.

It was ten o’clock. Mr Thewless had retired to his bedroom and was finishing his unpacking. The operation was not exacting, and it need hardly be said that he performed it in almost complete absence of mind. His chief concern – apart from the almost intolerable one of simply
waiting
– was to decide whether the situation demanded any immediate initiative on his own part. By this he meant, say, action within the next half-hour. For it was quite clear to him (and he marvelled, indeed, that it was not quite clear to his host) that the sensational situation now admitted and to be faced decidedly forbade the whole morning’s passing without the taking of some quite obvious steps. He himself, he saw, had been extraordinarily obtuse; but he was by no means now – as the elder Mr Bolderwood appeared to be – markedly confused and dilatory. His initiation into the guardianship of Humphrey had been, thanks to the boy’s seemingly bizarre behaviour at Euston, a matter of wild and blundering suspicions; from this he had passed into a phase of stubborn scepticism; and that phase his host, until not much more than a few minutes ago, had sustained him in with what might appear, to a scrutiny more leisured than that which Mr Thewless now commanded, a positively mysterious answering obtuseness. But the events of the night had constituted a fence stiffer than any reassuring interpretation could readily take. And Mr Bolderwood, after what appeared in the retrospect a merely muddled endeavour to do so, had come round – dramatically and, to Mr Thewless’ recollection, upon no fresh presentation of argument or evidence – to the view that Humphrey was, and had been, very startlingly in danger. This being so, certain necessities were clear. The police must be told, and their protection claimed – a proceeding that doubtless involved calling upon forces considerably more substantial than the hamlet of Killyboffin could provide. If there was likely to be delay here, the making of some immediate appeal was only the more desirable. And, again, Sir Bernard Paxton must be communicated with at once. And this in particular, Mr Thewless thought, was his own responsibility. Only it raised one issue the undetermined nature of which would sound awkwardly on a trunk-line to London. Was the threat against Humphrey merely impending still? Or had it accomplished itself?