There were no thoughts of Robert Adam in Appleby’s head this time as he tumbled himself dangerously down the elegant main staircase of Ledward Park. In the hall he scribbled a note and then shouted directions to a policeman, but didn’t pause to see with what speed this mustered support behind him. He had no doubt whatever of the particular dire hazard which had suddenly presented itself, and no disposition to deny that in his assessment of the situation he had failed to take account of the one bizarre possibility that might lead to it. So it was very much up to him to move quickly now.
When he emerged from the house it was momentarily into an effect of darkness, but this was only because he had been passing once more through that oppressively over-illuminated interior. As his vision accommodated itself he saw that the columns of the great portico outside the front door stood dark against a sky faintly flushed with rose, and as he dropped down the elaborately balustraded stone steps to the level of the gardens and the drive he received an impression that daylight was farther advanced than he had supposed.
But there was another factor at work, and of this he became aware as soon as he had negotiated a ha-ha and entered the park itself. The morning mist which from the height of Mrs Anglebury’s window had suggested no more than the thickness of a blanket on the ground was in fact a shifting and opaque integument in places more than head-high. And the little fleecy sheep which had appeared to move grazing over the surface of this chilly pasture were tall enough to envelop whole trees for a time in a magic cloak of invisibility.
Appleby paused to listen. In these conditions – familiar only to those who go abroad at dawn – sound might be muted too, and any quarter from which it did come not easy to be certain of. But at least he did again hear voices, although they sounded far away. So he set off again at a run. There was now a broad stream on his left hand. Presumably it was the River Ledward to which Mrs Anglebury had referred in one of her more rambling moments. A couple of herons were standing in the water; their heads rotated with the suggestion of some malign scanning mechanism as they watched Appleby go by. He turned his own head and glanced behind him. There was no sign of any of Stride’s men.
And there was no sign of Ledward either. As if it really were the monstrous scurrying crustacean of Appleby’s earlier fantasy, it had picked itself up and vanished. But what had really happened, of course, was that mist and indeed fog, far from progressively dispersing before the cheerful sun as had at first appeared, were now in fact billowing into the park with the sudden exuberance of foam from a fire-extinguisher. Appleby hadn’t a sufficient sense of the emergency confronting him – or not, at least, in its likely detail – to be confident whether there was advantage or disadvantage in this change. At least he himself was now depending wholly on sound for the opportunity to be of any effectiveness at all. But then the same circumstance could equally impair the operations of others as well. And probably this sudden effect of what astronauts call visibility degradation would last no more than a few minutes.
There was now only one voice calling, and it still seemed to come from straight ahead of him. It was David Anglebury’s voice, and it was repeatedly calling out a name – the name of Snodgrass. Was it Basil, or was it the Professor who was thus being conjured to reveal himself?
Appleby didn’t think it made much difference.
And then – hard upon this thought – came the crisis. David’s voice was still to be heard, but had grown fainter. It was much as if he had taken a wrong cast in the children’s game known as ‘Hot and Cold’. Appleby had briefly to debate whether to give the young man a shout himself – since to call him to heel, so to speak, would be a desirable measure in face of what was afoot. On the other hand, to give such a shout was to announce himself as an intrusive presence upon whatever was going forward. So Appleby decided to accept a further measure of risk, and thus maintain himself as an unknown factor in the proceedings.
He came abruptly to a halt, and in another instant was prone in wet chill grass. The vapour had parted in front of him, to reveal a low stone wall (no more, indeed, than the vestige of a wall, now no longer with any function) which ran down a gentle slope towards the stream. It was behind the shelter of this that he was flat on his tummy now. Beyond it, he had glimpsed a dim light – whether of torch or lantern – which mysteriously suggested itself as in some way buried in the earth. And, from the same enigmatical quarter, there came a murmur of voices. They were voices speaking in a foreign tongue.
This last was a circumstance by which Appleby might be said to have been favourably impressed.
The place was an ice-house. It was this not in the loose modern sense of an environment very much colder than is comfortable, but literally and technically. Here, in fact, was one of those caverns, dug into conveniently rising ground and provided with such insulating walls as our rude forefathers could devise, in which, for the use of great houses like Ledward, ice was formerly stored throughout the year. A century might have passed since this particular ice-house had been functioning; gardeners or a gamekeeper might have used it since; its entrance was now so overgrown as to suggest a long period of absolute desuetude. It was a good hide-out. It would be a handy place in which to tuck away objects which there might be awkwardness in being found in possession of.
‘Snodgrass?’
Appleby glanced up, to find David Anglebury standing beside him in the mist. He could see that the young man was in a state of high excitement.
‘Oh – I thought you were Basil Snodgrass. I got separated from him. He and I have been…’ David broke off. ‘Listen!’
‘David, get down!’
‘Spanish…it’s them!’ David had sprung forward, thereby unconsciously eluding a ruthless sweep which Appleby had aimed at his legs. ‘We’ve got them…come on!’
The young man was over the wall – he had taken it like a hurdle almost from a standing start – and was charging the ice-house much as if it represented a pair of goal-posts and he had a rugger ball under his arm. Appleby, fortunately already on his feet, managed a fairly rapid vault. He gave another warning shout, but it was of no avail. Perhaps the young idiot took it for encouragement – as a kind of hunting cry. There was nothing for it but for Appleby to get up a quite improbable speed. And this – it was for no more than a few yards, all told – he did in some miraculous manner achieve. The young man with an imaginary rugger ball was brought abruptly to earth by a far from imaginary tackle. In the same instant there was the crack of a pistol from dead ahead. Appleby was aware of it as a good shot. The bullet had passed through empty air which, a split second before, was being displaced by David’s flying body.
As it happened, the grass was long, and the ground broken, so that some sort of minimal cover was not hard to find. There was still a light – it might have been designed as a little beacon – in the ice-house; and it was to this that Appleby might now have been conceived as addressing himself in unemotional tones.
‘That was it,’ Appleby said. ‘The last boss-shot in a pathetically incompetent affair. Ingenious in places, yes. But well-conceived, no. And it won’t be any good now having a go at hunting us down. The police will be trotting up at any minute, and we could dodge you, off our own bats, for an hour. Nor am I the only man who now knows the facts of the case. I took the precaution of making a progress report to somebody – I won’t name him – from which the whole set-up can certainly be worked out. So – as I said – that was it. Finish.’
Silence greeted this speech. The only sound was a faint rustle in the grass, and in trees which seconds ago had been invisible, but which now showed as dark, crag-like islands from which a milky sea-spray was falling away. The vapours were departing. The entrance to the ice-house revealed itself as a mouldering wooden door on broken hinges. It was rather a pitiful refuge.
Suddenly there was a second shot – so that Appleby threw an arm round David’s shoulders and forced him farther to the ground. Then, almost immediately, there was a third. Immediately, and from somewhere still in mist on the right, a small hubbub arose. It might have been the police, emerging, in a belated but spectacular fashion, and with much banging of doors and stamping of feet, from some unsuspected hiding-place near by. Appleby didn’t turn his head. Herons behave like that when getting under way. Here were simply two or three more, justly alarmed, hastily quitting some invisible plantation and proposing to join their fellows in the water.
It was for something else that Appleby was listening: for so much as a single cry or moan from the direction of the ice-house. Nothing. Nothing came from the place except a small drift of vapour darker than the pearl-grey mist now everywhere in retreat from the park; except this, and a faint acrid smell.
Appleby stood up.
‘A very old-fashioned weapon,’ he said. ‘Could it even be a double action Colt?’ He paused, and looked appraisingly at the boy now scrambling to his feet beside him. ‘I’m afraid it might be a good idea if we went in there together. The spectacle mayn’t be very agreeable, but that would be the best course from the point of view of giving evidence later on. Do you mind, Snodgrass?’
‘No – although I think I know what we’re going to find.’ Although very pale, the young man took a brisk pace forward. Then he paused. ‘Snodgrass?’ he repeated.
‘The truth is as you can’t but have imagined it at times. Snodgrass has never been other than your true name. And – since very early this morning – Ledward has belonged to you.’