The Journeying Boy (43 page)

‘That is distinctly unlikely. But half an hour will be time enough, I don’t doubt.’ And Ivor turned to Mr Thewless. ‘It’s a great shame,’ he said with a faint grin, ‘but I’m afraid we shan’t be able to show you that defensive earthwork at Ballybags, after all.’

‘I think it very unlikely that either of you will be in a position to show anybody anything for a great many years to come.’

Ivor’s grin widened, as if in amiable acknowledgement of the very proper spiritedness of this reply. ‘That’s as maybe – and I won’t deny we take a risk. But you ought to be grateful to us, Thewless. We took much our biggest risk simply in order to ensure that you should come on this nice trip – or that somebody else
shouldn’t
come. And things certainly haven’t gone quite right. My father and I are obliged to quit these ancestral halls for good today. We certainly didn’t envisage
that
. Nor did we envisage that the game of kidnapping this delightful Humphrey would become so deplorably popular with the underworld of which we are ourselves, so to speak, honorary members. I wonder who that bearded fellow is? And so you think that all
he
has been after is cash? That isn’t
our
object, I need hardly say.’

‘Not’ – Cyril Bolderwood interrupted – ‘that with things going well we mightn’t have taken it out a bit in cash as well. Poor Bernard would have been in no position to refuse.’

Mr Thewless looked from father to son. ‘You strike me as two singularly foolish, as well as two singularly wicked and contemptible, men. The bearded ruffian of whom you speak is, after all, a ruffian merely. He could not, in fairness, be described as basely treacherous. Nor has he concocted a futile and elaborate plot such as yours. He has simply tried to grab – and he has come uncommonly near being successful. The same cannot be said for you. And you don’t cover the complete failure of your design by whipping out and brandishing a revolver. Your servants, who are as numerous as they are clearly innocent, must many of them be within hail. You haven’t a card in your hand. My blindness has been great. But I can see
that
.’

‘I don’t think you have the situation quite clear.’ Ivor spoke in a reasonable voice. ‘Our boats are burnt, you know. And our strength lies precisely in that. By noon Cyril and Ivor Bolderwood will simply have ceased to exist. And the question is just this: Will anyone else have ceased to exist as well? For instance, there are Billy Bone and Denis. It seems most unlikely that they would regard anything you started shouting at them as other than the outcries of madmen. But if they did come in on your side, so to speak, it would cost us nothing to shoot our way out. It would cost us nothing, for that matter, to shoot our way out through the whole of Killyboffin.’ Ivor paused. ‘But I think it is with Humphrey that we had better do the talking at present. He strikes me, my dear Thewless, as having a much clearer head than his tutor can boast of. Come, Humphrey, are you ready to talk?’

Humphrey was still perched on the edge of his chair, like a very small boy uneasily present upon the fringes of a grown-up party. But he answered with a strange tranquillity. ‘Yes, Mr Bolderwood, I’ll talk.’

‘Very well.’ Ivor had faintly flushed again at this address. ‘I think you and I can still be very good friends.’

‘And I think you are almost as reliable a friend now as any I shall ever again be able to feel that I have.’ Humphrey was tranquil still as he enunciated this rather complicated belief. And he turned to his tutor. ‘Do you know, this must be what I came for, really? Not to discover if I could keep the stiff upper lip of a great big boy while being chased by thugs through horrible caves. But to see what I could salvage out of – well, of being utterly betrayed. And I do salvage something – although it’s a very little something, I suppose. The power, you know, to take it quietly.’ The boy paused, and for a moment he might have been thought to be anxiously listening. ‘Well, Mr Bolderwood, talk away. You do it very well. Better, really, than you arrange bogus kidnappings in caverns. They had you caught out nicely, hadn’t they? And – by the way – what happened to the chaps you must have had lurking and ready to go through their act? I seem to remember them now, uncomfortably trussed up in a corner. Did the rival gang pitch them into the sea as well; and did they have poorer luck than you?’

‘The point is this.’ Ivor had stood up rather unsteadily and now planted himself before the boy. ‘We were going to have you held as by persons quite independent of us – were they not to have knocked me out in that cave? – and while there was the appearance of their demanding money from your father we were quite quickly and quietly going to get from him – well, something else. That has all broken down. And, as a result, we should have completely failed but for one fact. You yourself, with incredible folly, my poor child, brought that something else away with you from London. And so my father and I are in a position very nicely to retrieve our fortunes. You understand?’

It was evident that Humphrey understood. And in the little silence that followed Mr Thewless had his worst moment in the affair. ‘Humphrey,’ he said, ‘it is my fault. I found your diary, and I felt, since you had disappeared, that it was proper to read it for the sake of any light it might give.’

‘You were quite right.’ Humphrey had flushed, but his eyes went straight to his tutor’s. ‘You did just what you ought.’

‘Unfortunately, mistrusting nothing, I confided what I discovered there to the elder of these base men. And now they both know.’

‘And now we
all
know.’ Ivor’s grin had returned. ‘We all know precisely where we are. Humphrey has really been very fortunate. He does not need to suffer the inconvenience of being kidnapped, after all.’

‘I should have thought’ – Humphrey’s voice, interrupting, was still curiously mild – ‘that I am kidnapped
now
.’

‘Not at all. It is simply the second day of your Irish trip, and we are having a friendly family talk. Before my father and I are unexpectedly called away. Kidnapping is definitely off. The circumstances of our retreat, I can frankly tell you, are such that a reluctant small companion would be definitely embarrassing. But there will be no objection to our taking a small sheaf of papers. And the only question is this. Have you, my dear Humphrey, actually got them on you now, or have you hidden them somewhere about the house?’

Humphrey was silent, again like one who listens for a distant sound.

‘Come, boy, you must see how the thing stands. We win – at least your father falls into no disgrace. He cannot be held accountable for a disastrous domestic theft by an imaginative small boy. Everything, you see, really falls out quite nicely.’

‘You are awfully considerate. But I think, you know, that these papers may be rather too important to be used as a sort of challenge cup in the Killyboffin annual sports.’ Humphrey paused, evidently rather taken by this image. ‘You win, and we all shake hands, and then it will go to the shop to be engraved “Cyril and Ivor Bolderwood”. These papers – let’s call them simply the plan – are quite unsuitable for that. And I’ve thought so, Mr Bolderwood, for some time. You just can’t have the plan.’

Ivor shrugged his shoulders. ‘You foolish child! Will you force us to give this talk a really unpleasant turn – to think of the really nasty things that might presently happen to you?’

It was at this point that Mr Thewless saw what seemed likely to become his necessary course of duty. That the Bolderwoods were utterly desperate and utterly ruthless he could see. And it might well be that their household would not be rapidly or readily convinced of their criminality. Nevertheless, some definitely criminal deed, if accompanied by sufficient uproar, would probably finish them; in such circumstances they would simply have to go while the going was good. It was his business to see that the uproar occurred; to sell his life if not dearly at least noisily. And no sooner had this thought come to him than he saw that he might have to hurry if he was to have the chance. For Ivor had walked over to his father, taking from his hand the revolver which he had been holding during these exchanges, and was now aiming it directly at his, Mr Thewless’ heart. ‘Listen, Humphrey.’ Ivor’s voice was now very quiet. ‘We have got to have that plan. It means the difference for us between penury and a fortune. So we are not likely to boggle at a little bloodshed.’

‘You can’t have it.’ Humphrey spoke stoutly, but with fear creeping into his eyes. ‘It might mean far too big a difference for far too many other people as well.’

‘We have got to have it, all the same – and within a few minutes now. Well, we’ll make a very fair bargain. We’ll swop it for poor old Thewless here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t, myself, think he’s worth much. But it is possible that you think he is worth a good deal. I fancy he’s been quite decent to you, and that you have grown rather fond of him. Well, unless you tell us at once where to find the plan–’

Ivor left his sentence expressively in air. And Humphrey looked piteously at his tutor. ‘Do you think he means it?’ he asked.

‘Never mind whether he means it or not, Humphrey. This plan is much more important than my life. And it is my duty to tell you that it is much more important than your life too. You ought not to have taken it, and your notion that by doing so you might be protecting your father’s integrity was a mistake. You made a bad mistake, even if an honourable one. And I have made equally bad mistakes at every turn. If we are to be killed, my dear, dear lad, we must put up with it. These villains must on no account be told where the plan now is.’

‘As a matter of fact, I couldn’t tell them, even if I wanted to.’

‘What’s that?’ It was Cyril Bolderwood who spoke, and as he did so he advanced threateningly upon Humphrey. ‘What’s that, you horrible little rascal?’

‘So that if you do any killing – of one or other of us, or both – it will be mere spite.’ Humphrey paused; and it might have been evident that if he was facing death he was also, in a manner, enjoying his moment. ‘Of course, I can tell you approximately where it is.’ And he glanced at the clock on Cyril Bolderwood’s mantelpiece. ‘It must be somewhere between Preston and Crewe.’

Ivor Bolderwood cursed, and a dark flush overspread his pale face. ‘You little brute! Do you mean you posted it back to London?’

‘But of course! I only meant to hold on to it till I could
think
. And after what happened on the Heysham train I knew I hadn’t much time. So I posted it back to London yesterday afternoon when we were changing trains at Dundrane. Only my diary hasn’t got so far as to say so.’

‘By heaven, we’re back where we were!’ Cyril Bolderwood was pacing agitatedly about the room. ‘Bernard has the plan, and we have his boy. We must hang on to him. We must take him with us by hook or–’

‘Oh, my
father
won’t have the plan. I didn’t post it back to
him
. Then we certainly
would
be back where we were.’ Humphrey was looking from one to the other of his captors as if almost amused by the simplicity of their minds.

‘You mean that you posted it to somebody else?’

‘Of course I do. I wrote a little note – what they call a covering note, I think – and posted the thing off to the Prime Minister.’

‘To the
Prime Minister
?’ Cyril Bolderwood’s voice held a strangled note.

‘Why not?’ And Humphrey looked mildly surprised at the sensation he had achieved. ‘He is – don’t you know? – a terribly nice man. He’ll
quite
understand.’

At this Cyril Bolderwood, always inclined to display less finesse than his son, appeared about to hurl himself on the boy with a howl of fury. But in the same instant Humphrey himself gave a sudden shout. ‘Danger, Miss Liberty! Danger! Run!’

But this call, if heard, was without effect. The door opened and Miss Margaret Liberty walked into the room. Her eye travelled briskly round it, and evidently told her much. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Keep on distrusting everybody; I was remarking to Humphrey that it is the only safe rule. Mr Ivor, I see, has a revolver. Well, so have I, and that does just give us a chance.’

To Cyril Bolderwood nothing seemed to occur in this exigency but recourse to vituperation. ‘Why,’ he exclaimed, ‘you horrible old hag, what–?’

‘Don’t you dare to call Miss Liberty rude names!’ Humphrey jumped from his chair, bounded across the room, and kicked his distant relative expertly on the shins. Cyril Bolderwood let out a howl of pain and grabbed at him; Humphrey dodged; the situation had all the appearance of being about to degenerate from melodrama into rough-and-tumble farce.

But Ivor was otherwise-minded. He put a hand on his father’s shoulder and shoved him into a chair; he strode to the door, closed it and, weapon in hand, faced Miss Liberty. ‘If you have a revolver, madam, you will give it up to me at once.’

‘Don’t madam me, young man.’ Miss Liberty walked composedly across the room and looked out at the window. ‘And, Humphrey, stop knocking people about.’

Humphrey blushed. ‘They’re quite horrid people; they’ve been wanting to kidnap me too, all the time; and they were going to shoot Mr Thewless in cold blood.’

‘I have no doubt that some of their ideas have been
most
foolish. But now that they are in so tight a corner we had better leave their shins alone. Particularly as
we
are in the tight corner too.’

Mr Thewless, who had for some seconds found himself quite unattended to, had slipped over to the fireplace and possessed himself of the poker. ‘Miss Liberty,’ he said courteously, ‘I suspect that these are matters in which you have some experience; and I should wish to defer to your judgement. But it appears to me that, if I were to make a resolute attempt to dash out this elder ruffian’s brains, the younger would be constrained to fire at me with his pistol, and this might give you the necessary opportunity of bringing out your own. Shall we proceed after that fashion?’

‘Dear me! You are even more bloodthirsty than Humphrey. But the position is not quite so simple as that. Our friends here appear to have forgotten that they are not the only pebbles on the beach. It has really been very rash of them to suppose that their rivals were routed beyond recovery when Humphrey made one of his alarming attacks upon them in the cavern. That is not so. They are altogether more resolute than that. And they are, in fact, coming back at us now.’