In the middle of the following morning Miss Sparrow turned up on me. The trains, she explained, were still running, although to any sort of chaotic timetable, and she had walked from the nearest railway station. There was nothing like brisk walking, she said, to keep the blood in circulation. As the station was five miles away, and walking can scarcely be brisk when it is through snow eight inches deep and drifting into the bargain, I judged this to be a stout effort on Miss Sparrow’s part. Her holiday milieu had in any case threatened boredom, she went on, and in present conditions it had occurred to her that there might be one or two things to do. The women upon whom we relied in the village might be refusing to budge if unprovided with a tractor or snow-shoes, and there were all those beds to change. It was fortunate our sixty-odd boys were snugly at home, since at Heynoe they would be an infernal nuisance if the electricity failed. This was indisputable. Heynoe was without its own generator (a circumstance over which I had known clever prospective fathers shake their heads) and when breakdowns occurred (as they were already doing in those years when the weather turned even a shade unreliable) we were at once down to oil-stoves and candles. (It was the insurance company that shook its head over this.)
‘And what about Hayes and Daviot?’ Miss Sparrow asked with a briskness that failed to mask her concern.
‘There’s very bad news,’ I said. And I told her the whole thing.
‘I see one small satisfaction in it,’ Miss Sparrow declared. ‘It explains the inexplicable.’
‘As a crumb of comfort, I think rather poorly of that.’
‘Well, yes—but I do like to think of Robin Hayes as essentially a sensible boy.’
‘I think you’ve said that before.’
‘No doubt. But it’s important. Bound to have second thoughts quickly. And to act on them, even if still besotted with that silly little Daviot. As it was, he was overtaken by events.’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t much like ‘events’. ‘And now the police have to discover where and when and how and why.’
‘Just that. Are they going to keep us posted?’
‘I suppose so. There was this man Ogilvy who is presumably in charge. He seems to regard me as fairly reliable, despite the frightful fool I made of myself in that hotel.’
‘Oh, that! I’d have got in just the same fix.’ Miss Sparrow took a good look at me. ‘You’d better settle down and write letters or something. I’ve got those beds.’ And she left me.
Hard upon this my telephone rang. I had to force myself to take up the receiver. My imagination suggested to me that I was going to hear of something dire beyond conceiving: news of two dead bodies, perhaps, found in a ditch.
‘Ogilvy,’ a voice said. ‘Is that Syson?’
‘Yes—Syson.’
‘Do you mind having your telephone monitored? I’ve just arranged the same thing with your headmaster and your colleague Taplow.’
‘That’s all right.’ I had only an indistinct idea of what the man was talking about.
‘There are circumstances in which it might save a few valuable minutes. There’s been a development.’
‘You’ve discovered something?’
‘Not exactly that. But anything’s useful. It’s nothing at all that we’d really have to worry about.’
It took me a moment to decipher this grammatical ambiguity.
‘The villains are now in a hurry, Syson, and that’s in our favour. The judge has had his wrist-watch.’
‘His wrist-watch? In heaven’s name . . .’
‘His equivalent of the Hayes wrist-watch. Through the post, and in a shoe-box. Unnaturally light. Daviot, who’s decidedly shattered, kept on saying that to me. Unnaturally light. But not when you know what it contained. Locks.’
‘Locks? Why should locks be light?’
‘Not that sort. Golden locks. And curly.’
‘David Daviot!’
‘It seems so. I’ve checked with Taplow, just in case the old gentleman was imagining his grandson’s hair to be as it isn’t. Shaved, we think, rather than just clipped.’ Ogilvy didn’t pause to let me respond to this. ‘What about you? Anything to report?’
‘I’m afraid not. Except that yesterday I had a visit from my boy’s uncle – that fellow Tandem. I can’t think why. It seemed quite pointless.’
‘Pointless?’ Ogilvy’s voice had sharpened, ‘I specialise in pointlessness. It interests me. What pointless things had the man to say? Tell me.’
It would have been easy to find this coolness of tone abrasive. But at once I did my best.
‘He was chiefly on about money. If there was any move to pay a big ransom for the boys, he couldn’t himself do anything about it. His affairs are embarrassed. But I had a queer feeling he hadn’t come down here to exhibit himself in such a disgusting light. Why should he? I felt he felt—’ I stumbled over the inelegance of this—’that he was lying about something quite other than his pretended impecuniosity. It was most perplexing.’
‘I’d call it most significant, Syson. We’ll have a little research done in that quarter. A word, by the way, about the press.’
‘The press, Ogilvy?’
‘The newspapers. We’re not giving out anything at the moment about this kidnapping having happened. But we may be forced to by the villains themselves. In fact they may drop the information of their achievement into the letter-boxes of Fleet Street at any moment. Their motive will be to start showing the police as baffled – a good journalistic word – and to stir up public anxiety. The sooner your fears become public property and generate sinister speculations and sensational headlines, the more quickly will your nerve break and leave you willing to treat. Or so I’d imagine. It’s all rather new ground, you know.
Not many case-histories to compare it with. But even if the villains keep mum, we can’t sit on the thing, announcement-wise, for long. Perhaps another twenty-four hours. Well, that’s it. We mustn’t be too glum. The situation’s grim, of course. But not desperate. Good-bye.’
I ate some bread and cheese, and then took Miss Sparrow’s advice and tried to write some letters. The effort didn’t achieve much. My mind turned from one perplexity to another. Ogilvy had added to them with his information that the police were seeking to delay giving out the news of what had happened to the two boys, and it was some time before I hit on the full and sinister explanation. The sense that a hunt was up, if it caught the criminals with their dispositions only in part achieved, might rattle them and imperil the safety of their captives. It must be something like that. It wasn’t a comforting thought, and I was digesting it when my front-door bell rang. As I had done with Tandem on the previous day, I answered it myself. This time my visitor was a young man, and unknown to me.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said politely. ‘Mr Syson?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder, sir, whether I might come in and have a word with you?’
I couldn’t very well have said, ‘Certainly not’, but I could at least have asked him his business before letting him cross my doorstep. Unfortunately I was less suspicious than I ought to have been. I think I supposed him to be some representative of a firm publishing school-books, to be listened to civilly for a few minutes and then bowed out. So I led the way into my study. Once there, the young man sat down at once.
‘The name’s Kilpin,’ he said. ‘And I’m afraid I’m only from the Gazette.’ The Gazette was our harmless local rag. ‘I wondered whether . . .’
‘I am afraid, Mr Kilpin, that I cannot help you.’ Now at least I could guess where I stood with this visitor.
‘Mr Stafford,’ Kilpin went on unheeding, ‘has been good enough to talk to me once or twice in the past, but today he is unfortunately unavailable for comment. So I thought I’d try you, sir. Being the housemaster – if that’s the word – of one of those lads. A couple of pars in humorous vein is what I’d be thinking of. Our readers, you know, are always interested in a bit of light stuff about a great school like Helmingham.’ Kilpin appeared to feel he might safely pause for a space on this, since it conveyed a handsome compliment. So I had a moment to think. I mustn’t, I saw, react too vigorously to his impertinent intrusion, since I might thereby simply provide him with a little gratuitous copy. And I saw something else. The man could be only scantily informed of what had happened, since a couple of pars in humorous vein could scarcely be concocted on the theme of criminal abduction. So the police silence held, and here was a more or less harmless annoyance. Nevertheless it must be ended at once.
‘Taken French leave, haven’t they?’ Kilpin said agreeably. ‘A funny phrase, that. It’s because in France they leave parties without a thank-you-kindly. I’m interested in such things, Mr Syson, language being important to a journalist, as you’ll agree. German measles, French letters, Dutch elm disease – that’s a new one.’ Kilpin paused again, and apparently saw that this philological discourse failed to enchant me. ‘But to business,’ he said. ‘A bit of a lark, it sounds to be, on the part of Master Hayes and Master Daviot. It wouldn’t be exactly what you call a rag. A prank, perhaps. Might I have a few words on it from you, Mr Syson?’
‘Definitely not, Mr Kilpin. I have nothing to say to you.’
‘But you’ll have something to say to those two when they turn up again, I don’t doubt. And something to do to them as well. Six of the best, will it be? May I put that down, Mr Syson—six of the best?’
At this I was tempted to tell myself that it would be pleasurable to come at Mr Kilpin with a belt. I contented myself, however, with rapidly crossing my study and opening the door.
‘Mr Kilpin,’ I said, ‘I have no doubt that you are exercising your profession in a perfectly proper way. I make no complaint. But I am sorry I must say good-afternoon to you. Just how, by the way, did you come by your information?’
‘Servants, Mr Syson. Servants will talk – particularly if stood a drink or two in a pub. I don’t like it.’ Kilpin remained entirely amiable; he even seemed gratified that I had run to a question myself. ‘It’s demeaning, sir, I don’t deny. But first steps, you see. A man must walk before he can run, if I may coin a phrase. Investigative journalism is what I aim at, Mr Syson. It’s something there’s a big future in. Very much obliged for your co-operation.’
And Mr Kilpin withdrew – no doubt with his couple of pars already formed in his mind. When I returned to my study, it was to answer yet another telephone call.
‘Syson, come over here at once.’
‘Certainly, Head Master.’ To receive a command or instruction rather than a request or suggestion from John Stafford was altogether unusual, and at least suggested that he was as worried as anybody else. ‘I’ll come immediately.’
‘The noble six hundred’ – it was thus that Stafford occasionally designated the school as a body – ‘will be back with us in no time, and there are problems ahead. I’ve got Taplow here. Yours are the two houses chiefly concerned.’
‘Certainly they are. I’ll very much value your help.’
With this politic speech I hung up, and got into an overcoat. Even so, the walk through the grounds was a chilly business. The two men were drinking tea. Tim Taplow was looking gloomy. Stafford had very much the air of the man at the helm.
‘It mayn’t have occurred to you, Syson,’ he said, ‘but for a start we may probably have the press to contend with.’
‘Yes, so we may.’ Whether I got anything of what Robin Hayes would have called irony into this, I don’t know. ‘I’ve been trying to understand the police wanting to keep mum for a bit. They say the criminals themselves may come out with what they’ve achieved at any moment, but that they themselves don’t yet want to. It’s puzzling.’
‘The criminals have come out with it,’ Taplow said. ‘To both Hayes’s mother and the judge.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Stafford was impatient. ‘But they may believe that Mrs Hayes is still no more than bewildered – and distracted by her husband’s exploit into the bargain. And they can’t be certain that the judge isn’t keeping silent and thinking of coming to terms with them in a private deal.’
‘Daviot is certainly doing nothing of the kind,’ I said. ‘He started in on Scotland Yard and the Home Secretary and Lord knows who almost before his grandson’s disappearance became alarming. His paranoiac strain, you know. And he disclosed the arrival of that unspeakable parcel at once.’
‘Perfectly true.’ Stafford took this up incisively. ‘But this fellow Ogilvy – I gather he has been in contact with you, Syson – seems to believe in some kind of war of nerves. I get the impression that he has no high opinion of the average criminal intelligence – which may well be a mistake – and feels that keeping a low profile – an odd expression, to be sure – may lure them into some false step. Puzzle them, and they’ll commit themselves to something that gives them away. We can only hope he’s right.’
‘I take it,’ Taplow said, ‘that our trouble is this: in no time we’re going to have several hundred boys all agog to know what has become of Robert’s Head of House and his curly-headed little chum. And if we keep mum it mayn’t greatly help us that we are acting on police advice. I can even imagine, Head Master, the School Governors being eventually a little worried about it.’
This was at once an untimely and an implausible shaft, and I thought poorly of it. But it did no more than show that we were considerably shaken. Stafford, I thought, must be shaken if he really believed that the reassembling of the school after the half-term break constituted a problem anywhere near the heart of the matter. Inevitably it was the reputation of Helmingham that stood first in his mind, and he saw the whole shocking business, I suppose, in terms of degrees of scandal. Just why had the two boys run away? What were they running away from? If public attention were directed in this direction, the consequences might no doubt be uncomfortable. I was almost startled to find how little I myself seemed to be bothering about this. It might have been put that there were five hundred and ninety eight boys that I didn’t care tuppence for. There were two that I cared about very much.
This idle thought hadn’t time to grow, and I was never to know how Stafford received Taplow’s remark. For the telephone had rung – only this one discreetly buzzed – on his large and always impressively burdened desk.
He picked up the instrument. He said ‘Yes’. He listened, and said ‘Yes’ again. Then he listened silently for some time. It is impossible to be the part-auditor of an exchange of this sort without a sensation of awkwardness. Taplow and I tried muttering to one another in an unattending way. But then Stafford said firmly that it had occurred to him as a hopeful line of enquiry, and that his colleagues were with him and that he would tell them at once. After a further interval he said, ‘Thank you very much’, and hung up the receiver. He turned to us.
‘Ogilvy,’ he said. ‘He is most punctiliously keeping us informed. They’ve traced the taxi.’
‘The taxi?’ I asked, and immediately felt extremely stupid.
‘The taxi that the boys drove away in. They took it right across country to some inconsiderable station on a branch line. That has held things up a little. But now the police have located a booking-clerk who remembers them. Two lads, one a good deal older than the other. They bought a couple of second-class singles. To Uptoncester.’