Sweet Danger Read online

  ‘I went back to get a lantern when I couldn’t hear any noise at all except them breathing, and when I came back Lugg was sitting on the man’s chest showing Scatty how to use a life-preserver. They were both awfully happy, but I stopped it. I’m afraid it may be awkward, aren’t you?’

  She stood fidgeting from one foot to the other, waiting for their verdict.

  ‘It sounds like a drunken brawl,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Scatty and Lugg seem to be a pair of daisies, as we say on the Bench. There’s only one interesting point which arises. Did you notice who their unfortunate playmate was?’

  ‘Oh, I thought you’d guess that,’ said Amanda. ‘That was all right. It’s Widow’s Peak. Serve him right. There’s only one thing that makes it so very difficult. I’m afraid they’ve killed him.’

  A muttered exclamation escaped Eager-Wright, Guffy whistled, and Campion rose to his feet.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ he muttered deprecatingly. ‘Oh, dear!’

  ‘Perhaps he’s not quite dead,’ said Amanda hopefully. ‘But you see, Lugg and Scatty were getting so excited that I shut them up in the garage and bolted the door. They can make as much noise as they like in there and no one will hear them. I sent them in to find me a spanner and then I pushed the door to and bolted it. Then I went back and had a look at the man. I put a couple of sacks under his head and I couldn’t be sure whether it was his heart beating or if it was mine. You know how when you’re – well – just a bit frightened, your own heart seems to be louder than anything else in the world. I gave it up after a bit and came out here to wait for you. I began to dislike the mill without a light.’

  ‘I say, you poor little kid,’ said Eager-Wright, moved to comment by this frank avowal of humanity.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Amanda stiffly. ‘I wasn’t afraid. I was only put out, as anybody would be, and very cross with Scatty. I think he was showing off to Lugg. Still, it’s the man we’ve got to think about, even if he did attack poor Aunt Hatt. He still looked very queer when I had a peep at him about ten minutes ago.’

  Campion cut off down the lane. ‘I’m sorry Lugg’s breeding has let him down again,’ he said, but his tone was grave, and as he strode on his face was anxious in the moonlight.

  Amanda pattered along beside him, and Guffy and Eager-Wright hurried after them.

  It was a grim and silent party which entered the mill some three minutes later. Curious sounds which had been emerging from the garage ceased abruptly as they passed. Amanda produced a hurricane lamp from behind a corn measure and turned up the wick.

  Then she led the way up the dangerous staircase to the first floor. The yellow light glinted on her wonderful hair and the brown skin of her unstockinged legs. They followed her into the great dusty apartment above and she stopped and pointed to an alarming bundle stretched upon the boards near the open sack shoot.

  ‘There he is,’ she whispered, and held the lantern high.

  Campion and Guffy dropped on their knees beside the prostrate man and it became evident that in spite of her alarm Amanda had retained sufficient presence of mind to loosen the man’s collar and prop up his head.

  After a rapid examination Mr Campion heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank God he’s all right,’ he said. ‘His little friend was lucky to get away. We’ll leave those two thugs to cool their heels till the morning if you don’t mind, Amanda. Meanwhile, there’s this person to be attended to. He looks as if the depression had found him out. Still, I think he’ll live to be beaten up another day. Really, this is most unfortunate. I don’t know what he’ll think of us.’

  He produced a flask from his hip pocket and poured enough spirit between the livid lips to lay out an ordinary undergraduate. The man groaned and stirred.

  As he lay there in the light of the oil lamp they had ample time to examine him. At the best of times he could not have presented an attractive appearance, and of course at the moment the odds against him doing so were heavy.

  He was a great lank individual, loosely but powerfully made, with a face heavily creased and lined beneath a single day’s growth of beard. But by far his most interesting feature was the tremendously deep peak of hair which slanted down across his high forehead to meet the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Extraordinary-looking egg,’ said Eager-Wright judicially. ‘He’s the chap who fired at us at Brindisi all right.’

  ‘Still, a rather bad effort coming here alone and being set on by two murderous heavyweights. Rather a sitting bird, what?’ said Guffy, in whom the sporting instinct was strong.

  ‘Not a very good effort, beating up poor Aunt Hatt,’ observed Amanda dryly. ‘And Scatty’s no heavyweight. It was the beer.’

  Eager-Wright switched the conversation into more pertinent channels.

  ‘An unpleasant-looking man,’ he remarked. ‘Got a gun in his pocket, I see. I suppose they hit him before he had time to draw. Any idea at all who he is, Campion?’

  ‘Alas! poor Yorick,’ said that worthy. ‘I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite pest. But I don’t think we’ll go into that now. Dear, dear! This is unfortunate. He never liked me. We shall never be all boys together now. Look here, Amanda, could you get me an old blanket – one that you don’t really care if you never see it again? We’ll meet you outside in five minutes. I wonder if you, Mr Randall, and you, Mr Wright, would help me carry him downstairs? Treat him very tenderly. He’s quite one of our nicest enemies.’

  When Amanda returned with the blanket they met her in the yard, the limp body of Widow’s Peak between them.

  The journey down the lane to the heath was tedious, since he was unexpectedly heavy, but they accomplished it eventually, treading cautiously to avoid making any unnecessary noise and taking care to jolt their burden as little as possible.

  When at last they reached a convenient patch of heather, sheltered alike from the road and the wind by a gorse bush, they set him down gently, and Campion covered him with the blanket, using extreme solicitude.

  Eager-Wright bent over the man for an instant and emitted a little grunt of satisfaction as he took a scrap of paper from the waistcoat pocket.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘See? He’s copied down the rhyme. Amanda didn’t disturb him soon enough. He’d finished his work when she heard him. Let’s hope he’s forgotten it when he comes to himself.’

  Mr Campion sighed and, taking the paper from the other man’s hand, returned it carefully to the pocket.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘I think that’s the least I can do in the circumstances. That may compensate him a little for the inhospitality of the crétin Lugg.’

  They stared at him. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Guffy demanded. ‘It’s mad enough to leave this fellow here when we’ve got a perfectly good excuse to drop him into gaol while we hunt round at leisure. Just because a fellow gets beaten up by accident you don’t have to give him the game.’

  Eager-Wright did not join in this outcry. He was regarding Campion speculatively, trying to discover the logical reason which he felt must be beneath this apparently imbecile behaviour. Guffy, who was more single-minded, persisted in his objections.

  ‘Let’s put him in the car and cart him off to the county police headquarters.’ He moved over to his friend and looked earnestly into the pale vacant face. ‘Look here, Campion,’ he began, ‘I appreciate your sporting spirit, old fellow, and I think it’s a very fine thing. But I can’t help feeling that we’re up against something rather serious just now, you know. It’s too important a thing to take chances with. We’ve got to fight, and even to fight dirtily if it comes to it. There’s a lot at stake.’

  ‘Stout fella,’ said Mr Campion affably, shaking the embarrassed Guffy’s hand with awful fervour. ‘But consider, my dear old flag-wagger, how on earth do you imagine this beautiful soul down here ever heard about the oak? He heard about it because little Albert sent him a note with “Look what I’ve found in the mill loft, Ducky”, or words to that effect, neatly written above my usual signature.�
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  As Guffy fell back in shocked amazement and the others regarded the pale young man dubiously, Mr Campion stirred the figure in the blanket with the tip of his shoe.

  ‘This fellow isn’t very bright. In fact, his cleverness is barely more than low cunning, but since he’s working for the old firm, as it were, we have one of the most astute brains in the world against us. That’s why I thought he was just the man to be supplied with this information as soon as we got hold of it. If it wasn’t a riddle it’d be different, of course, but in this case it was senseless to try and hold it back, especially when time is so precious.’

  ‘Well, I’m hanged if I see it,’ said Guffy stoutly. ‘I think you’ve gone completely nutty. Why? That’s what I want to know; why?’

  Mr Campion linked his arm through the other’s.

  ‘Because, little inquisitive,’ he said, ‘two heads are better than one. That’s all.’

  CHAPTER IX

  Question Time

  ‘IF I WERE in residence, so to speak,’ said the Hereditary Paladin from his seat of honour on the work-bench which ran along a wall in the dynamo room of the mill, ‘I should have you two beheaded. As it is, you’ll be lucky if you get off with the sack.’

  He made anything but an impressive figure seated cross-legged on the bench, his knees drawn up to his chin and his trouser-legs flapping; but his eyes were severe behind his spectacles and his curious personality dominated the scene.

  Amanda, very solemn and subdued, had perched herself on a heap of sacks in a corner, while Eager-Wright and Guffy kept guard over the delinquents, who, after their night in the garage, looked considerably the worse for wear in the morning sun.

  Scatty had apparently decided to take his tone from Mr Lugg, for whom it was evident he had formed a tremendous respect.

  That worthy was more truculent than apologetic, and was still inclined to treat the whole incident in the light of a night out rather than an affair of serious import.

  ‘The sack,’ said Mr Lugg grandly, ‘doesn’t come into it. Me and my pal ’ere ’ad a scrap with a party discovered on enclosed premises, probably with felonious intent. Lumme, we didn’t ought to get the sack for that. We ought to get the price of our time.’

  ‘Don’t say “didn’t ought,”’ said the Hereditary Paladin absently. ‘And,’ he went on with more judicial solemnity, ‘the price of your time is good! What would have happened if that man had died, as he probably would have done if it hadn’t been for Miss Fitton, who had the presence of mind to lock you two homicidal maniacs up for the night?’

  ‘Self-defence,’ said Mr Lugg promptly. ‘Peaky Doyle always carries a gun. It was Peaky, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was Peaky, as it happened,’ conceded Mr Campion. ‘But, as far as I can gather, in your condition last night it would have been all the same to you if it had been the local bobby.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Mr Lugg earnestly. ‘Not with my instinct. My instinct never tells me wrong. As soon as the young lady ’ere come in I said to myself, “That’s Peaky in the mill. Let’s go and bash ’im up and that’ll be a real help to his lordship.” I did say that, didn’t I, Scatty?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Scatty with the awful fervour of a man lying to save his skin. Of the two he made perhaps the more lamentable spectacle. He had a scar across the dome of his head, drowned eyes and a round pink tip to his nose. He studiously ignored Amanda’s reproachful gaze throughout the proceedings. It was evident that since he had put his faith in his new friend, although not sanguine, he was hoping for the best, or, at least, that the worst might not be unbearable.

  ‘Now look here,’ said Mr Lugg, eyeing the assembly warily, and at the same time favouring them with a horrific, but conciliatory smile, ‘let bygones be bygones. Me and my friend ’ere got a bit lit and p’raps we done a silly thing. But seeing as ’ow it’s all right and no ’arm done, let’s put that from our minds. What ’ave we learnt from the events of the last evening? Consider that; what ’ave we learnt?’

  Eager-Wright’s lips began to twitch ominously, and although Mr Campion remained cool and unfriendly the tension in the room had lessened considerably and Mr Lugg sensed that he was making headway.

  ‘We’ve learnt one ’orrible thing,’ Lugg continued, his voice sinking with fine dramatic effect. ‘Peaky Doyle is prepared to risk ’is skin, and for a funk like Peaky Doyle that means only one thing – that ’e’s workin’ for his old boss. And if ’e’s workin’ for ’is old boss, then the sooner we get ’ome and put the ’ole thing out of our minds the better.’

  There was silence after this remark, which was broken unexpectedly by Mr Lugg’s partner in adversity. Scatty Williams emitted the wheezy rasp of an alarm clock about to strike.

  ‘Seems like – er – seems like, Maggers, that ’owever dangerous that be us ought not to run away.’

  Mr Campion’s factotum was completely taken off his guard by this sudden avowal of courage on the part of his ally. He dived after the countryman’s retreating respect.

  ‘If you was to know ’ow dangerous that lot are you wouldn’t stand there swankin’,’ he said. ‘If you’d been through what I ’ave you’d know that there are times when it’s the article to retire graceful.’

  ‘Rather a sordid argument, don’t you think, Lugg?’ Mr Campion’s tone was enquiring.

  Mr Lugg was not abashed. ‘You can talk,’ he said. ‘You always could. And what does it amount to? A lot of poppycock. ’Igh-sounding, I grant you that. ’Igh-sounding poppycock. I’ve looked after you like a perishing nursemaid for never mind ’ow long, and I know you. ’Ave we bin up against Peaky Doyle’s boss before? No. That’s why we’re ’ere to-day; stop me if I’m wrong. I’m all for loyalty and doin’ the job, but I don’t ask for trouble. Let me go and get out the car and we’ll all go back to town.’

  ‘An indecent revelation of a nauseating mind,’ observed the Hereditary Paladin judicially. ‘You will now go and clean the car, taking Mr Williams with you. Meanwhile, we shall consider whether we shall keep you here under observation or whether we shall ring up the governor of your old college to see if he has got a vacancy. You can go.’

  Mr Lugg’s small eyes flickered. ‘Bloomin’ fatigues!’ he said to Scatty, and they heard his husky confidential remark to the other man as the two offenders shuffled off down the stairs. ‘If you ’adn’t ’ave bin with me you’d ’ave bin for it. ’E trusts me.’

  Eager-Wright began to laugh.

  Mr Campion affected not to have heard. ‘Peaky Doyle was carrying a gun,’ he remarked. ‘Old Lugg might have been killed. You may think it odd of me, but I should have been sorry.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Guffy, whose bewilderment of the night before had not abated with the morning light. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening at all. I didn’t know you knew this fellow Doyle personally, Campion.’

  ‘We don’t know one another well,’ murmured the young man deprecatingly. ‘We met in the house of a mutual friend in Kensington. There was a fight going on at the time. Mr Doyle hit me over the head with a life-preserver. It wasn’t exactly a formal introduction, but I’ve always felt we were at least on bowing terms since then.’

  ‘I’m talking about the letter you said you wrote him,’ persisted Guffy. ‘Were you serious last night? You see, I didn’t even know he was in the village. Where did you send the note?’

  ‘That,’ said Mr Campion modestly, ‘was rather clever. A pure guess, but it happened to come off. You’d be surprised how it cheered me up. Yesterday afternoon something occurred which gave me the idea.’

  ‘The only thing that happened yesterday afternoon,’ said Amanda practically, ‘was the invitation from Dr Galley.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he agreed. ‘As soon as I received the one I wrote the other, addressed it to Peaky by name, and when we went up to the doctor’s house I stuck it on one of the railing spikes where it could easily be seen from the windows. I performed this feat with my natural skill and unobtrusive dexterity an
d neither of you spotted me. I deduced that Peaky would see that we were all visiting and that therefore the fort would be undefended, and would take advantage of our absence to reconnoitre. As it happened I was perfectly right.’

  ‘But why on Dr Galley’s railings?’ Guffy demanded.

  ‘Because our friend Peaky is a guest at the house,’ said Mr Campion. ‘See how the plot thickens.’

  They stared at him, and Amanda was the first to speak.

  ‘But this is absurd,’ she said. ‘I’ve known old Galley all my life, but he wouldn’t protect a man who’d attacked Aunt Hatt – really he wouldn’t. He’s queer, I know; awfully queer in some things.’ Her voice sank a little on the last words, but she controlled it and her final announcement was firm. ‘He just wouldn’t do it.’

  Mr Campion said nothing but remained where he was, perched on the bench, a more foolish expression than ever upon his pale face.

  ‘It’s the clue that’s worrying me,’ said Guffy. ‘That verse on the oak bole. I had a thought,’ he continued modestly. ‘That diamond, you know, might be just a diamond-shaped piece of glass, a window panel or something.’

  Eager-Wright nodded gloomily. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s the trouble. The house is no longer here. When the message was carved on the oak I imagine no one ever dreamed that it would be destroyed.’

  ‘Another thing’s rather odd,’ ventured Mr Campion from the bench. ‘The last two hints in the book of instructions refer quite definitely to sound. You see, “Thrice must the mighty bell be toll’d Before he shall the sceptre hold”; and likewise, “And ere he to his birthright come, Stricken must be Malplaquet drum.” It’s the musical element which confuses me. I mean, this snappy lyric may simply be the instructions for the ceremony at the accession party; directions to the local choirmaster and whatnot. It’s all very mysterious.’