I laughed. ‘Oh, as to that, my nerves are good enough.’ I took down a hunting-knife from a stand on the wall, and did the old Mashona trick of tossing it and catching it in my lips. That wants a pretty steady heart.
He watched me with a smile. ‘I don’t want proof. I may be an ass on the platform, but I can size up a man. You’re no murderer and you’re no fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth. I’m going to back you up. Now, what can I do?’
‘First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I’ve got to get in touch with the Government people sometime before the 15th of June.’
He pulled his moustache. ‘That won’t help you. This is Foreign Office business, and my uncle would have nothing to do with it. Besides, you’d never convince him. No, I’ll go one better. I’ll write to the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office. He’s my godfather, and one of the best going. What do you want?’
He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation. The gist of it was that if a man called Twisdon (I thought I had better stick to that name) turned up before June 15th he was to entreat him kindly. He said Twisdon would prove his bona fides by passing the word ‘Black Stone’ and whistling ‘Annie Laurie’.
‘Good,’ said Sir Harry. ‘That’s the proper style. By the way, you’ll find my godfather—his name’s Sir Walter Bullivant—down at his country cottage for Whitsuntide. It’s close to Artinswell on the Kenner. That’s done. Now, what’s the next thing?’
‘You’re about my height. Lend me the oldest tweed suit you’ve got. Anything will do, so long as the colour is the opposite of the clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then show me a map of the neighbourhood and explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police come seeking me, just show them the car in the glen. If the other lot turn up, tell them I caught the south express after your meeting.’
He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off the remnants of my moustache, and got inside an ancient suit of what I believe is called heather mixture. The map gave me some notion of my whereabouts, and told me the two things I wanted to know—where the main railway to the south could be joined and what were the wildest districts near at hand. At two o’clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the smoking-room armchair, and led me blinking into the dark starry night. An old bicycle was found in a tool-shed and handed over to me.
‘First turn to the right up by the long fir-wood,’ he enjoined. ‘By daybreak you’ll be well into the hills. Then I should pitch the machine into a bog and take to the moors on foot. You can put in a week among the shepherds, and be as safe as if you were in New Guinea.’
I pedalled diligently up steep roads of hill gravel till the skies grew pale with morning. As the mists cleared before the sun, I found myself in a wide green world with glens falling on every side and a far-away blue horizon. Here, at any rate, I could get early news of my enemies.
CHAPTER 5
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTACLED ROADMAN
I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position.
Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance. To left and right were round-shouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south—that is, the left hand—there was a glimpse of high heathery mountains, which I remembered from the map as the big knot of hill which I had chosen for my sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a huge upland country, and could see everything moving for miles. In the meadows below the road half a mile back a cottage smoked, but it was the only sign of human life. Otherwise there was only the calling of plovers and the tinkling of little streams.
It was now about seven o’clock, and as I waited I heard once again that ominous beat in the air. Then I realized that my vantage-ground might be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald green places.
I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder. Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the east. It was flying high, but as I looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle round the knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the observer on board caught sight of me. I could see one of the two occupants examining me through glasses.
Suddenly it began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I knew it was speeding eastward again till it became a speck in the blue morning.
That made me do some savage thinking. My enemies had located me, and the next thing would be a cordon round me. I didn’t know what force they could command, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The aeroplane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude that I would try to escape by the road. In that case there might be a chance on the moors to the right or left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards from the highway, and plunged it into a moss-hole, where it sank among pond-weed and water-buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll which gave me a view of the two valleys. Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon that threaded them.
I have said there was not cover in the whole place to hide a rat. As the day advanced it was flooded with soft fresh light till it had the fragrant sunniness of the South African veld. At other times I would have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate me. The free moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of a dungeon.
I tossed a coin—heads right, tails left—and it fell heads, so I turned to the north. In a little I came to the brow of the ridge which was the containing wall of the pass. I saw the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down it something that was moving, and that I took to be a motor-car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green moor, which fell away into wooded glens.
Now my life on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and I can see things for which most men need a telescope… Away down the slope, a couple of miles away, several men were advancing. like a row of beaters at a shoot …
I dropped out of sight behind the sky-line. That way was shut to me, and I must try the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway. The car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long way off with some very steep gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching low except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the brow of the hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures—one, two, perhaps more— moving in a glen beyond the stream?
If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land there is only one chance of escape. You must stay in the patch, and let your enemies search it and not find you. That was good sense, but how on earth was I to escape notice in that table-cloth of a place? I would have buried myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or climbed the tallest tree. But there was not a stick of wood, the bog-holes were little puddles, the stream was a slender trickle. There was nothing but short heather, and bare hill bent, and the white highway.
Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the roadman.
He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his hammer. He looked at me with a fishy eye and yawned.
‘Confoond the day I ever left the herdin’!’ he said, as if to the world at large. ‘There I was my ain maister. Now I’m a slave to the Govrenment, tethered to the roadside, wi’ sair een, and a back like a sickle.’
He took up the hammer, struck a stone, dropped the implement with an oath, and put both hands to his ears. ‘Mercy on me! My heid’s burstin’!’ he cried.
He was a wild figure, about my own size but much bent, with a week’s beard on his chin, and a pair of big horn spectacles.
‘I canna