The mist at Bodmin had a highly developed sense of the dramatic. It knew exactly when to come down and when to keep away. And I could see the windows steaming up as I stood there. The small ventilation pane at the top had been left open, and long tendrils of the mist were already reaching into the little cubicle.
Wilton had already picked up the Luger case by the strap and had wrapped it up in the old pyjama jacket. As for the messages he didn’t seem to be nearly as interested in them as I was. He simply scooped them up into a ball and shoved them all in his pocket. It was Gillett he turned to, not to me.
“Lock the door after us, there’s a good fellow,” he said.
It was noticeable that his manner towards Gillett had changed considerably during the last few minutes. Wilton was now trying all he could to rub out those nasty marks that the thumb-screws had left. And the change showed itself in the confidence that he placed in him.
“Better put the key on your key-ring,” he added. “I don’t want anyone else coming in here until I get back.”
That left me free to go off with Wilton. But Wilton was doing his ostrich-racing act again, and it was as much as I could do to keep up with him. He was looking for Dr. Mann.
The first place that we went to was the lab. But that didn’t help us very much. Nor did Kimbell. He was the only person in the lab. when we got there. And I thought he looked a bit startled.
“Last time I saw Mann he was going out somewhere,” he told us. •
“How d’you know?”
“He’d got his raincoat on.”
“Was it like this?”
Wilton indicated the window. Visibility was practically nil by now. It was as though someone had hung up a wet bath-towel across the woodwork.
“Not so thick,” Kimbell replied, and went on pretending to screw up a clamp that looked to me perfectly firm already.
“How long ago?”
“About half an hour. I was just coming in.”
“See which way he went?”
“Over towards the kennels.”
Kimbell paused.
“Pretty sure,” he said. “I didn’t notice him particularly.”
And giving the clamp an extra turn that I had known all the time it didn’t need, he splintered the S-bend that it was holding. It was quite good acting, so far as it went. But it just didn’t go far enough. A better actor would have asked if there was anything wrong.
Wilton had set his own pace, and I followed behind like a pet Corgi. I’d never known Wilton so energetic before—I think that Gillett’s threat of the Bodmin J.P. must have scared him. And he was inclined to be irritable. The first thing that he did was to get the Old Man to call the roll. But everyone had knocked off by now, and getting them together was work for a good pair of sheep dogs. It took twenty minutes before he’d got all of them assembled. All of them in the Institute, that is. Swanton wasn’t there because he was keeping a date with a dentist in Bodmin. Hilda had left early saying that she wanted to get away while she could still see to drive. Dr. Mann we had known all the time wasn’t there to show up. And Una was the one missing one.
It shook Gillett when he discovered this. He had kept his profile under strict orders for years. But he had nothing like the same degree over his complexion. It went suddenly pale when he heard. And he wanted to go out there at once and start searching. But Wilton stopped him.
“Got to be done properly,” he said, his voice taking on that hard edge which I had heard only once before—the time one of the cub captains had put too much pressure on to a loaded soda siphon. “I don’t want everyone getting lost.”
He turned to the Old Man.
“Better ring up for an ambulance,” he said. “I’m going out with them.”
We were lined up in the hall by now, and Wilton addressed us.
“It’s thick already, and it’s getting thicker,” he said.
“That means it’s going to be difficult. Don’t forget to keep within calling distance. And if you don’t get an answer yell harder.”
He was right to be careful. For all the good it did going out into the courtyard, we might just as well have remained inside. The mist wasn’t just the standard Grade A white stuff. It was a real mid-Atlantic sea-fog that had overshot itself. The other side of the courtyard was blotted out completely even though it was only about fifteen feet away. Even getting across to the gate was largely guesswork.
Suddenly there was the strange throbbing bleat of a police whistle. But it was only Wilton putting his scout troop through their battle training.
“If you hear that again,” he said, “it’ll be me. And it means ‘Stop where you are.’ Don’t forget: when you hear that, stand still until I tell you what to do.”
“Aye aye, sir,” I answered.
“You and Gillett stay next to me,” Wilton went on. “I may need you.”
“At thy side, master,” I promised for both of us.
If it had been thick in the courtyard, it was simply silly out there on the moor. Your own mother might have been a couple of feet away from you and you would never have known it. First, we combed the kennels but without catching a glimpse of anyone. And now we were moving forward in a long half-crescent. It was actually a straight line that Wilton had ordered. But the direction from which the shouts were coming to us showed that the two ends were already getting a bit ragged.
Wilton blew his whistle twice. Once was because Rogers had fallen into a ditch with water at the bottom of it and seemed to be having some difficulty in getting out again, and once because Bansted thought that he had heard something. It had been like voices, he said, and had come from somewhere on the left. Nobody took it very seriously. But at least Wilton decided to wheel round in that direction. Heads down so that we could see what was underneath our feet, we went plunging on through the mist and into the darkness.
Then everyone of us heard the sound that we’d been afraid of hearing. It came from farther on the left still, right from the very heart of the blackness. And there were two parts to the sound. The first was the high-pitched report of a Luger. And the second was a scream. Una’s scream.
The scream itself was not so loud because it was mingled with the throb of Wilton’s police whistle. But it was loud enough for Gillett to hear. And forgetting everything that he had been told about standing still, Gillett was off in that direction like a gazelle. But gazelles, like racing cyclists, need clear weather. And Gillett had to pass close beside Wilton. Too close it turned out. Because Wilton was just getting himself under way at that moment and his long legs were straddled out all round him. There seemed to be more of them than usual. And he was as evenly distributed as a camera tripod. Gillett accidentally got one foot entangled and went flying. I heard him land with a loud crunch of wet crushed heather. But by then Wilton was off on his own account. And I was following, even though I still couldn’t see anything.
That was where Wilton’s deployed formation came in useful. And, actually, it was Kimbell who was the first to get there. His loud, corncrake yell sent us swerving round still farther. In the ordinary way, mist does a lot of funny things to noises. It seems to twist them up into kinks in the middle before handing them on to the next patch. But Kimbell’s pure Manchester proved superior. No power on earth could give that accent a kink that wasn’t there already. It came through the mist as straight and sharp as a skewer. And I don’t think that I have ever heard any voice quite so shrill or so urgent.
I wasn’t surprised when I saw why. There was Una with her two hands covering up her eyes. And Kimbell was on his knees, bending over something on the ground. It was wearing Dr. Mann’s German mackintosh. And it had Dr. Mann’s little pink hand protruding from the sleeve. But where the two big flaps of the collar came together something was missing.
There was a gap where the top of his head should have been.