The following day I decided to apply something of the Mellon technique on my own account. What I wanted to do was to keep my Padstow appointment that evening. And what I didn’t want was to have Wilton out looking for me.
“Ouch,” I said very loudly for the third time since lunch.
“This wet weather plays hell with me. Thank goodness I’m seeing the chiropodist this evening.”
The fact that I had shown the forethought to be wearing one of my big woolly bedroom slippers on the left foot added just that touch of drama that was needed. And by the time five-thirty arrived both Bansted and Rogers had come round to my side of the bench and advised me to take things easily for a bit. Rogers even had some kind of crack-pot radium-impregnated sock that he wanted me to wear inside the bedroom slippers. But I declined politely and hobbled off to my bedroom with all the dignity of a confirmed sufferer who doesn’t want to have his pain snatched away from him quite that quickly. And five minutes afterwards, having changed into my brogues, I was going pit-a-pat down the back stairs and out across the courtyard towards the car.
There was no moon that night. And whatever stars there might have been were obscured by a layer of cloud that was still undecided whether to remain aloft or come down and blot out everything. Not that it need have troubled itself. As it was, the night could have put extra shadows into the original Egyptian plague of darkness and still have had some.
A younger man could probably have gone straight on without falling over anything. But there’s nothing like a combination of alcohol and nicotine for cutting down on the eyesight. With my habits I’d have been disqualified years ago even from shunting engines. I just had to stand where I was waiting for the tired old pupils to adjust themselves. And it was while I was still waiting that I heard someone coming.
Judging by the sound, whoever it was must have been in a hurry. There was a kind of flick and scurry rather than a good solid crunch about the footsteps. And they were heading straight in my direction. Either I had a bat for a co-worker, or somebody was taking risks in the darkness.
It wasn’t a bat. And apparently I wasn’t the only person in Bodmin with a marked vitamin A deficiency. For the next moment I was bumped into. Bumped into hard by someone who was running. And that someone was carrying something small but heavy that went clattering across the courtyard.
But then came the unlikeliest part of all. Because it was a woman who had cannoned into me. And, as a sex, women don’t usually go dashing about from place to place the way men do. There is some protective biological reason that usually makes them take far better care of themselves.
But this was a woman all right. And, when I heard the gasp she gave, I recognised it. I knew then that it was Una that I had grabbed hold of.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
But she was evidently in no mood for being held. She still seemed pretty frantic about something.
“Help me find it,” was what she said. “You’ve got to help me find it.”
“Find what?” I asked.
It was obviously no use expecting to get a reasonable answer out of her in her present mood. She was already down on her knees searching. And I went down on all fours and began searching too. It seemed thoroughly silly, the pair of us playing bears out there in the darkness, especially as one of the bears didn’t even know what it was looking for.
And the next moment I put my hand right on top of something. It was a leather case, half jammed down into what seemed to be a lady’s handbag. And from as much as I could feel of it, it seemed to be a very ordinary pair of binoculars that Una had been carrying.
“Here it is,” I said. “You can stop worrying.”
But that was apparently the one thing that Una couldn’t do.
“Mind,” she said. “Don’t point it at yourself. It’s loaded.”
I lowered the case and handbag gently into my raincoat pocket. Then I put my arm round Una.
“Come and tell me all about it,” I said.
But she was too nervy.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she answered. “I just want you to get rid of it for me.”
I still had my arm round her, and we were walking over in the direction of the car.
“Look here, lady, I said. “That doesn’t make sense. You were trying to find it just now.”
“I wanted to give it to you.”
“But you didn’t know I’d be here.”
“Yes, I did. I saw you come out.”
“And you came after me?”
“Yes.”
“That makes a difference,” I agreed. “But what am I supposed to do?”
“Throw it into the sea,” she replied. “It’s safest.”
“Why, what’s it done?”
“I can’t tell you. I just want you to get rid of it.”
“And if I don’t?”
There was no argument about that one.
“You’ve got to.”
“Leave it to me,” I said.
Then I had an afterthought.
“That your handbag it’s wrapped up in?” I asked.
“It’s only an old one,” she replied, in the way that makes all female reasoning seem as though it’s being carried on according to a quite different set of regulations.
“But it’s still yours,” I pointed out. “Could be awkward, you know, if that got fished up in a lobster-pot.”
“Oh, very well then, give it back to me.”
She was so obviously impatient that I think she suspected me of simply raising difficulties. But she seemed relieved by one thing. She had got rid of the revolver, and that was all that mattered.
“Where d’you find it?” I asked.
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Not even in a hundred years’ time when we’re both of us old and grey.”
“Not even in a hundred years.”
She turned away as she said it without even so much as a thank you or a sorry-to-be-such-a-nuisance.
“I’ve got to go back now or they’ll be missing me,” she said.
“Who’s they?”
“Mrs. Clewes and the Old Man,” she said. “They don’t know I’ve ever had the revolver. I’ve been hiding it . . . ”
But by then Una had gone. She was running again.
I got the car out, and about half a mile along the road I parked. The one thing that I had been thinking about was the bulge in my pocket. And I wanted to examine it. The holster looked to me extraordinarily like the one that I had seen come falling out of Dr. Mann’s wash-basket. And this wasn’t surprising. Because when I opened it and put the weapon on my knees, there was the word “Luger” stamped into the gun-block. Evidently there must have been quite a cache of Lugers up at the Institute.
A moment later I had to cover the Luger up with the corner of my raincoat. That was because there was a sudden glare of headlights from behind me as young Mellon whooshed past at about eighty. I let him disappear into the distance with the array of rear lamps on his Buick as bright and lustrous as a firework display. Then I concentrated on the Luger again. Something told me that before getting rid of it the most important thing was to discover whether it had been fired recently. I’m not, however, very much of a gunsmith. As a matter of fact, this was the first automatic I’d ever handled. I knew enough not to look down the barrel while pulling at the trigger to see if it worked properly. But that was all that I knew enough not to do. And when I removed the safety-catch to see if I could remove the clip I made the mistake of not removing my finger from the mischief point. That trigger, moreover, must have been on the light side. And my finger evidently wasn’t. There was suddenly a noise as though a land-mine had gone off right under my nose, and for the moment I thought that I was blinded. But the business end of the Luger had been pointing up into the night sky, and this was one of the occasions when I was glad that there was no hood to my car.
I sat on there quietly thinking things over. I have a real affection for anything mechanical that works smoothly. And I had just proved that this Luger would have passed any gunnery sergeant’s inspection. To throw the thing away as Una wanted me to do would have been nothing less than sinful. Besides, it wasn’t really the manner of its disposal that concerned Una. All that she wanted was to get rid of it. Inside my pocket would be every bit as safe as lying on the sea-bed for the first low-tide to uncover. Women don’t remember about natural phenomena like tides.
So, having settled that point, I began thinking about Una. I’d got two girls on my hands by now. But there was a big difference somewhere. One of them trusted me, and one didn’t. While I was still wondering why, a voice spoke to me close at hand out of the darkness.
“That you, Hudson?”
I jumped as though the Luger had gone off again. The voice was familiar. It was Bansted’s voice. He must have been walking along the grass verge, and I hadn’t heard a hint of him until he was right on top of me.
“You going into Bodmin?” he asked. “Can I get a lift?”
“Sure,” I said, transferring the Luger into my other pocket so that it wouldn’t bump against us as we drove. “That is if I can get her to go. The timing’s all to hell or something. She’s been back-firing like a machine-gun all evening.”
“I know,” Bansted replied candidly, “I heard you. I thought for a moment you’d shot yourself.”
That wasn’t so good coming from Bansted. Because Bansted was our ballistics man. And he’d been hearing rather a lot of Lugers lately.