Dark Peril

John Creasey

1

The Men Who Could Not See

The round-shouldered man sitting at the large, littered desk, drew in his breath and pushed his chair back. The electric lamp, immediately above his head, reflected from his bald pate and cast the shadows of his bushy eyebrows on a sheet of paper covered with figures. Except for his heavy breathing, the large, book-lined room was very quiet, but now and again a howl of wind outside disturbed the silence.

The man closed his eyes. He sat like that for fully five minutes, then opened them and leaned forward, looking down at the paper. The rows of figures remained clear for only a few seconds; they gradually merged into one another, and he could not read them. He stood up abruptly, with his hands clenched.

“I can’t go on like this!” he muttered, “it’s fantastic. I can’t even see!”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his watery eyes. They were painful and red-rimmed. He went out of the room and walked along the dimly-lighted passage, but before he reached the landing he blundered into the wall, and stopped short.

“It can’t be as bad as that!” he said aloud.

He replaced his glasses, and peered ahead of him. At first, the richly-carved balustrade along the landing showed clearly, but gradually the dark line thickened and moved until it merged with the oak panelling of the wall behind. He stood quite still, with his lips parted and one hand stretched out, as if to fend off some evil thing.

A door opened downstairs.

He heard voices, and the light laughter of a girl, yet they hardly registered on his mind. He did not move as the voices drew nearer and footsteps sounded on the stairs. A deep voice alternated with the girl’s.

“I’m not a bit sure that I ought to worry him now.”

“Oh, Daddy won’t mind,” said Julia Hartley, confidently. “Don’t be put off by his forbidding manner, Mike, and don’t be offended if he suddenly looks away from you and starts scribbling: I don’t think he really cares tuppence about anything but his work.”

“A pillar of reconstruction,” said the man called Mike.

“Daddy!” gasped the girl.

Sir Basil Hartley had not understood the conversation, and had not realised that they had reached the landing. He had not moved from the moment the wooden balustrade had become part of the background. At the girl’s exclamation, he started and looked towards the sound, and he could vaguely discern the shapes of his daughter and her companion.

“Daddy, what on earth—”

“It’s–it’s nothing, my dear, nothing,” muttered Hartley. “I have a severe headache, and I must go and rest.” He turned abruptly–and walked straight into the wall. He reeled back and put his hand to his forehead, his whole body trembling. “I–I have been overworking,” he went on. “My eyes have given out, but a night’s sleep will put them right. Lead–lead me to my room, Julia, will you, please.”

The girl went forward and took his arm, then shot a glance at her companion, a tall, good-looking man, who was dressed in a well-cut suit of light grey. His hair, a little untidy, was inclined to curl.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” she said.

“All right,” said Mike Errol, quietly, “but you ought to send for a doctor. Your father mustn’t take risks with his eyesight.” He was looking oddly at Hartley, frowning and paying little attention to Julia. She was as tall as her father, and her dark, wavy hair showed up against Hartley’s baldness. “Can I telephone for you?”

“Do you really think it’s necessary?” asked Julia, dubiously.

“No, there is no need to send for Lewis,” said Hartley, sharply; “it is just that I have been overdoing it. Perhaps–perhaps if you will make a solution of boracic acid powder and tepid water, Julia. I will bathe my eyes.”

“Yes, of course,” said Julia. “Oh, Mike, would you mind going into the bathroom, and—”

She had started to speak while looking at her father, but now she turned her head, and saw Mike Errol walking down the stairs. She opened her mouth to call him back, but changed her mind. She led her father to his bedroom, which was next to his study, and, when he was sitting back in an easy chair, she went to the bathroom and opened the first-aid box and the medicine cabinet. She took out what she wanted, and hurried downstairs. There was no sign of Mike Errol, and she went to the kitchen to put on a kettle.

“I hope he isn’t telephoning for Lewis,” she said, uneasily.

Mike Errol was at the telephone; he had just replaced the receiver, after putting in a call to a Whitehall number. He stood with one hand in his pocket and a cigarette jutting from his lips, frowning towards the door.

Lyddon House, on the outskirts of Woking, was large enough to need a staff of three or four. Only one old servant, the housekeeper, remained, and she was out for the evening. Julia Hartley had prepared dinner, taken a tray up to her father, and had enjoyed having her meal with Mike Errol, a comparatively new acquaintance who both appealed to and puzzled her. It had been an unconventional evening and Mike had sprung another surprise when he had said that he would very much like to ask her father one or two questions. He had been vague, but he had a way with him, and she had assured him that her father would not object.

There was a brief delay on the Whitehall call. As Julia walked along the hall, with the small glass of boracic acid solution in her hand, the telephone bell rang. She heard Mike answer it, and went straight to the drawing-room, which was long, narrow, and furnished in neo-Jacobean style.

“You aren’t telephoning the doctor, are you?”

“Oh, no,” said Mike, with an engaging smile. “Orders are orders! I forgot a call I should have made earlier, and I didn’t think I need worry to ask you just now. Do you mind?”

“No, of course not.”

“Can I help?”

“No, I shall be all right,” she said, and hurried out.

Mike Errol’s smile faded as he spoke into the mouthpiece again, and he did a curious thing. He spelt his surname, backwards, very quickly. Gordon Craigie, the man at the other end, did not seem to find this peculiar, for he said:

“Yes, go on, Mike.”

“It’s happened again,” said Mike Errol, in a voice which was barely audible two yards away from him. “I didn’t have a chance to see Hartley before it was too late. My fault, I’m afraid, I didn’t expect anything to happen so quickly. The symptoms are the same, as far as I can tell. I met him a few minutes ago. He was as blind as a bat, and looked as if he had just discovered it. What’s my best move?”

“Have you sent for a doctor?”

“Hartley rejected the idea at once. He doesn’t want to admit that it’s anything serious. I don’t know either him or Julia Hartley well enough to show the iron hand, unless you think it’s worth causing offence.”

“Stay there and do whatever you think best until Faversham arrives,” said Craigie. “I’ll get him to come over at once. You’ll have to handle the situation as best you can, Mike–sorry.”

“No need to be sorry,” said Mike Errol. “Right-ho, old chap. I’ll get well dug in. Shall I say I’ve sent for Faversham?”

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”

“May Hartley know that it’s not the first time such a thing has happened?”

“It won’t surprise me if he knows about the other cases,” said Gordon Craigie. “I give you a free hand, Mike. I must go, a bell’s ringing.”

Craigie rang off and Mike Errol replaced his receiver, then shrugged his wide shoulders and stubbed out his cigarette. Julia Hartley was an unpredictable young woman who might resent any high-handed action on his part; his best plan would be to tell her a little of what he knew, and thus justify himself. Even after that she might accuse him of trying to worm his way into her confidence on a false pretext, and might not be appeased. He was thoughtful as he went into the hall, in time to hear her calling from the head of the stairs.

“Mike!”

“Can I help?” He hurried up, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Yes–would you mind helping him into bed? He really can’t manage, and he doesn’t want me to help him. I–I hate asking you.”

Mike smiled and squeezed her arm before hurrying along to Hartley’s room. The old man was sitting in his shirt-sleeves and struggling to unfasten his shoe-laces. A surgical eye glass and a piece of cotton-wool were on a bedside table.

“Let me give you a hand,” said Mike, cheerfully.

“There is no need—” Hartley began, but his protest faded.

Five minutes later he was in bed, with his eyes closed. Mike put out the main light, but left on a subdued bedside tablelamp, and went out. He closed the door softly. Julia was not in sight, and he stepped across to the bathroom, and looked through the medical cabinet swiftly. He took out a small, blue bottle bearing the label: “Eye Lotion–For Tired Eyes.” For a moment he hesitated, then he slipped the bottle into his pocket, and went out.

Julia was coming up the stairs, carrying a tray with a glass of milk; steam was rising from it. Mike said: “That’s a good thought,” and opened the door for her, but he did not go into the bedroom again. Instead, he waited near the open door of the study until she came out with the empty glass. Her fine grey eyes were narrowed, and her full lips set.

“I’m beginning to think we ought to send for Dr. Lewis,” she said. “Daddy seems absolutely exhausted. I told him a hundred times that unless he rested much more than he did, he would crack up.”

“If he’d rested for a month it wouldn’t have helped him,” Mike said.

“It wouldn’t have—” she broke off, frowning. “What do you mean? What are you making a mystery about?”

She was a striking-looking woman when she was frowning, and a creature of contrasts, for in her light moods she was almost kittenish. There were people who said that her father had thoroughly spoiled her, and that he had been wrong not to allow a relative to bring her up, after her mother had died when she was four–twenty years before. Instead, Hartley had employed a woman who was partly a foster-mother and partly governess, and had kept the reins of control himself. She had a wide face, a fine complexion, and a short nose, which was quite straight. None of her features was particularly good, but the general effect was pleasing.

Some said that she was headstrong; Mike, who had known her for a little less than a week, agreed. She was also generous to a fault, often impulsively so, and he did not think it wrong that she held some strong opinions.

“Will you please explain?” she demanded.

Mike grinned.

“Not while you’re fixing me with the evil eye!”

In spite of herself, she smiled.

“Mike, what are you driving at?”

“Well, it’s like this,” he said, lightly. “I am not soldier, sailor nor airman, as you perceive, but I have a job to do, and in my humble way I do it as best I can. Often it sends me to strange places, and often it gives me work which is distasteful. I didn’t like pretending that I was only attracted by the glow in your eyes when we met at Chubby Foster’s, but I had to pretend that was so. Actually I wanted to meet you because you are who you are–daughter of Sir Basil Hartley. My mission was purely protective. It’s failed, horribly. You see, three other men, working along similar lines to him, have been suddenly afflicted by blindness.”

She took the shock well. Her hands clenched and her head lifted a little, thrusting her square chin forward.

“I see,” she said slowly. “So you expected this to happen?”

“I didn’t so much expect it as feel afraid that it might,” said Mike. “I was detailed to try to find out whether there was any suggestion of eye trouble with your father. How long has he used that eye lotion?”

“For years. I–what do you mean?”

“In at least two cases the trouble was caused by an irritant put into an eye-lotion which was in daily use,” said Mike, “and the same thing might have happened again. Julia, don’t ask me dozens of questions, because I don’t know the answers. I’m only doing my little bit in the work of finding out what is behind it. I think you’ll have to take it for granted that the trouble with your father’s eyes is not the result of overstrain, but has been deliberately contrived.”

“Are you suggesting that someone has tampered with the lotion?” demanded Julia.

“It’s possible. I’ve the bottle here, and I’ll have it examined,” said Mike, taking the bottle out of his pocket to show her, and then putting it back. “It’s not easy to advise this course or that, and I know you must be feeling pretty worked up. Actually, I’ve gone further than I should have done in saying so much. You’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you?”

“I see no reason why I should,” she said, coldly. “I don’t even know that you are telling the truth. You may pretend to be working under orders for some Government department–that is what you’re implying, I suppose?–but actually you may be doing nothing of the kind.”

“I can’t complain about that reasoning,” admitted Mike. “Let’s put it this way: will you keep quiet until I’ve had the chance of proving that I’m on the square–say, until tomorrow mid-day? That isn’t asking too much, is it?”

“I suppose not,” she conceded, “but I can’t admit that you were justified in tricking me. Nothing you say will alter the fact that I resent it very much. You should have come to me and told me what you suspected, and I would have done everything I could to help.”

Mike grinned.

“You would probably have told me that I was talking nonsense, and shown me the door! You would certainly have told your father and worried him when worry might not have been necessary. The main point is that I acted under orders.” He stood up, and rested a hand lightly on her arm. “Julia, I’ve come to know you fairly well. I know now that you’re quite trustworthy, but I didn’t a week ago, and I might not be able to convince everyone concerned. They’re a cynical, hard-bitten crowd, who take a lot of convincing. Yes,” he added, squeezing her arm gently, in spite of her growing anger, “they will think it possible that you doped the eye lotion! Until, of course, we’ve convinced them to the contrary.”

“I have never heard anything so ridiculous!” stormed Julia, wrenching her arm away.

She broke off abruptly, for downstairs there was a bump, followed by a muttered imprecation, then silence as Mike stepped swiftly to the door.