Fear by Night (22 page)

“However did you get there?”

“Mr. Halliday, he's coming! He's trying to kill me!” Ann's voice was choked with terror. She looked sideways and saw Gale Anderson smile. Not a bored young man any longer, but a pleased young man with something he desired just within his grasp. Her voice rose to a shriek. “Save me! He's coming!
Mr. Halliday!
”

It was at this moment that Jimmy saw Gale Anderson. He roared out,

“Let her be, Gale! Give over!”

And then, as he realized that he was wasting his breath, he shouted to Ann.

“Jump! The water's deep—it won't hurt you.”

“My skirt's caught!” Ann's voice shook in an extremity of terror. She had never thought to admire Jimmy Halliday, but her heart gave a jump of hope and gratitude as he dived into a capacious pocket, produced a clasp knife and a ball of twine, fastened the end of the twine to the knife, and with a brief “Catch!” tossed it up to her. She missed it, and it went down into the water with a splash.

Gale Anderson was clear of his bad place and was swinging himself round a jutting boulder. She looked down and saw the knife in Jimmy's hand. He said “Catch!” again and threw it up, and this time she caught not the knife, but the string.

Gale Anderson was round the boulder and out of sight, but she could hear him. She could hear him coming, his boots grinding and slipping on the rock. And she couldn't open the knife. Her wet, bleeding fingers fumbled with it. She felt the blade move. She dragged at it with breaking nails and got it open. She had to reach up and slash at her skirt, and as she did so, Gale Anderson came into view again, not two yards away on her left with a great stone poised in his hand. Something like a mist came between them. She felt her skirt give way and the knife drop from her nerveless hand. She heard Jimmy bellow, “Jump!” and felt herself falling blindly down, and down, and down.

CHAPTER XXV

When Charles Anstruther had got out of his dripping clothes and into some dry ones he went over his boat with an electric torch and found that the canvas was split and the wooden framework damaged. He gave a whistle of dismay. The damage could be put right, but not here. A patch on the canvas and a splint to strengthen the frame, and he could get over the strait and back again with Ann. But to put on the patch he would want some canvas and a sail-maker's needle. He whistled again. There was no possibility of keeping his appointment. He would have to run out to Ardgair, get the boat mended, and come back again.

He stood there with the bright ray of the torch making a dazzle of light on the stones at his feet and considered. A couple of hours to Ardgair, an hour there, and two more to come back. And it would be no good starting until five or so. He supposed that Ardgair would be awake at seven. Well, even allowing a couple of hours in Ardgair, he ought to be back here by eleven. That wasn't so bad. He wished he could have let Ann know, but since he couldn't, it was no good bothering about it, and he had better get some sleep whilst he could.

He did not, however, immediately get on with the business of going to sleep. Up to now he had not let himself think of anything except the practical needs of the moment, and of the immediate future. You can stop yourself thinking when you are doing things all the time, or when you are actively considering what must next be done, but when all this is over, thoughts which have been forbidden come out and have their say. Charles switched off his torch and frowned at his own shadow on the moonlit road. The fold of the hill hid the loch, but it lay there under the moon only just out of sight. If he were to walk a few hundred yards down the track, he could stand there and look at it.

He didn't think he would. He felt as if he had had enough of the loch. He had a horribly clear picture in his mind of the Thing that had risen out of it and run him down. He had had only an instant's sight of it, but he had seen it quite clearly—a serpentine head and neck coming up dripping out of the hands-breadth of mist which covered the water. He thought there was not much more than four or five feet of the neck, perhaps not so much. The head was horrible—shapeless, and uncouth—a snake's head monstrously enlarged.

His frown deepened. He couldn't reconcile that head and neck with the force that had knocked him spinning. He supposed a great snake would strike a tremendous blow, but it would surely strike with its head—and he felt certain that it was not the head that had struck him.

Or was he certain? Was he certain about any of it?

All at once he wasn't certain. The thing was a sheer impossibility. He was dog-tired and he didn't want to think about it, but his brain went on thinking.

Impossibilities don't happen. Suppose he had run on a rock, bust his boat, concussed himself, and imagined that serpentine head and neck. Sea-serpents don't exist. Officers of British warships who report having seen a sea-serpent are laughed out of court. Fellows of the Royal Society who describe a sea-serpent are told in scientific language that they are lying. Who was Charles Anstruther that he should think he had seen what he
had
seen?

“
Eppur si muove
,” as the late Galileo remarked.

If he couldn't explain what he had seen, he was hanged if he'd explain it away.

He got into the car, and within five minutes was soundly and dreamlessly asleep.

It was some little time after this that the man called Hector came round the turn of the road behind the car. How he had reached this point was his own affair. It must certainly have involved some climbing. He came silently up to the Morris and stood in a crouched attitude, listening. After a while he straightened up and looked over the back of the hood at Charles, who lay peacefully asleep in the moonlight with his head on a cushion and his feet on an assortment of suit-cases.

Hector's features twisted in an expression of savage contempt. With a shrug of the shoulders he went past the car to where the canvas boat was lying. He squatted down beside it and examined the damage which it had sustained. It ought to have been smashed, and he ought to have been drowned—a thousand devils fly away with him! It would be easy to make the damage worse. He slipped his hand into his pocket and got out a large, serviceable knife. With the blade bare in the moonlight and his left hand grasping the edge of the boat, he hesitated. His brows drew together in a frowning line. Then all at once he pursed up his lips, nodded as if in satisfaction, and with a muttered word or two of Gaelic put the knife away, got up, and made off down the track. As soon as he was round the bend he left the road, climbed a little way up the side of the hill, and sat down to wait.

Charles woke with the first of the light. It came late because of the fog. He frowned with annoyance, because it would take him a good bit more than two hours to get to Ardgair if it was going to be as thick as this all the way. He boiled a kettle and a couple of eggs, made tea, and consumed a quantity of well-buttered scones. Then he loaded the boat into the car—an untidy job, as it refused to fold up—and took the road for Ardgair.

Hector got up and stretched himself. Unlike Charles, he was quite pleased with the fog. He went briskly down to the loch, collected his motor-bicycle, and followed the car.

At some fifteen miles from Loch Dhu the rough track emerged upon something which more nearly resembled a road. Twenty miles farther on this road divided, the right-hand branch bearing back to the coast and so to Ardgair. As Charles approached the fork, going slow because he was on the look-out for it and afraid that he might take the wrong turn in the fog, he heard the chug-chug of a motor-cycle coming up behind him. To his surprise, it came to within a certain distance and then no nearer. The fellow must be playing the same game as himself, going slow and looking for the fork. He concluded that he was right when, as soon as he had passed the turn, the motor-cycle shot ahead and went away out of sight.

Hector, who had only been making sure that the car was really going to Ardgair, now desired to arrive there before it. He had people to see and arrangements to make. It suited him very well indeed that Charles should go to Ardgair, since he had very good friends there and could rely on their help. When, therefore, Charles in due course arrived and made inquiries as to the repair of his boat, he found himself directed to the same black-haired and black-browed Donald McLean whom he had before approached with a view to hiring. He had not on that occasion received any encouragement, but to-day Donald was a good deal more forthcoming. He could mend the boat easily enough. It would take a little time, but—

“What do you mean by time? How much time? I'm in a hurry.”

Well then, it appeared that Donald couldn't just say. He would have to get a piece of canvas. His sister's husband had some that might do, but he was out with the boat.

“In this fog?”

The fog was lifting—it was going to be a grand day. But besides his brother-in-law there was his brother James—he might have a piece of canvas that would do—he would very likely have a piece. If Mr. Anstruther would go up to the hotel, Donald would report to him there.

It was then about ten o'clock. The drive had been slow and wearisome in the extreme, but the exasperations of the road were as nothing to the exasperations of Ardgair. The business of getting the boat mended was dragged out until it resembled a slow-motion picture. Donald's brother James had no canvas, but suggested that his cousin Ewan might have some. Ewan in his turn suggested someone else. When, at long last, a piece of canvas had been produced, Donald McLean drew Charles' attention to the fact that the damage was much greater than he had supposed. Besides the original split there was a second long jagged tear at which Charles stared incredulously.

“I swear that wasn't there last night.”

“It might have been done getting her into the car,” suggested Donald.

“Well, it wasn't!” Charles' temper was getting short.

“There is no way that it could have been done here,” said Donald sullenly. And then,” I'll need some more canvas.”

The day wore on. The mist drew up. A pale clouded sun looked down upon a pale clouded sea. Ardgair appeared to have run out of canvas altogether. Donald's manner suggested that the boat might be ready by Christmas. It was, in fact, ready by six o'clock.

Charles drove away from Ardgair hoping fervently that he would never see it or any of its inhabitants again. He had his first puncture when he had gone about five miles. There was a flat-headed nail in the tyre—he supposed a parting souvenir of that blighted place. He put on a spare wheel, and had run another two miles, when he had a second puncture. This one seemed to be due to a nasty gash in the outer cover. Broken glass would make a cut like this,
or a knife
. He thanked heaven he had a second spare wheel. When, about four miles farther on, a third tyre went flat, he had no words, but he had some very serious thoughts. This time he found that the valve was loose. If someone had unscrewed it slightly, it would have produced a slow leak like this. Looking back, Charles remembered Ardgair's reluctance to help him on his way to Loch Dhu by water. It began to look as if someone was interested in preventing his getting there by road. He screwed up the valve and pumped the tyre. It was now past seven o'clock, and the fog was coming down. He would be lucky if he reached the loch by daylight.

Hector did not pass him on the return journey. After a pleasant day amongst old cronies, he had started for home some hours before. When Ann saw him come to the shores of the loch and row across with Jimmy Halliday, he had just put the finishing touches to a most satisfactory day's work.

“Full of tricks as a monkey—aren't you?” was Jimmy's comment. And then, “Suppose someone else comes along first.”

Hector snapped his fingers.

“Who else would be coming?”

“You never can tell,” said Jimmy gloomily. He bent to his oars, and had a last word. “You'll be getting wind in the head if you don't look out, and then you'll be sorry, my lad. I'm captain here, and don't you forget it.”

When they had landed, Hector put a hand in his pocket and produced a slightly crumpled orange envelope.

“There was this for him at Ardgair—I was to ask for it. He will be expecting it,” he said.

The envelope bore the name of Gale Anderson. Jimmy breathed on the flap until the melted gum permitted him to raise it, pulled out the telegram which the envelope contained, unfolded it, and read:

Uncle sinking. Doctors say not more than twenty-four hours. Please come. Hilda
.

Jimmy read this through twice. Then he folded the message, put it back in its envelope, and stuck down the flap.

“I'll give it him,” he said shortly.

The fog was really bad by the time Charles came to the long steep hill that led down to the loch. It would have been a nasty hill on a made road in daylight; on the roughest of tracks, in a perfectly horrible mixture of fog and dusk, it was a nerve-racking business. Charles had done it by night before, but it had been clear, and he had not then any idea of what it was going to be like. He had therefore been spared the pleasures of anticipation. He knew now that there were two hair-pin bends, and that the second and steeper sloped to an undefended drop where the rocky hill-side went down a sheer forty feet or so.

He managed the first bend, and then racked his memory for the distance between that and the other. It was no distance from the loch; he was sure of that. The next turn had brought him to the quarry where he had parked his car. But whether the distance between the two hair-pins was two hundred yards or four, he couldn't for the life of him remember. He proceeded with caution, crawling along with his headlights dipped and hugging the inner side of the track. The fog threw the light back at him, and he had to strain to make out where he was on the road.

After what seemed like an interminable period of strain he came on the bend. As he slowed the car to take it, his near front wheel rose with a bump and stubbed itself against rock. Under the impression that he had run into the bank he pulled the steering-wheel over, bumped sharply over another of the rocks which Hector had thoughtfully disposed in a pile round the inner side of the bend, and before he realized what was happening the off front wheel was over the edge. He wrenched at the steering, but too late. He felt the car tilt to the fall, hang for a sickening second, and then plunge down. After which he felt nothing for quite a long time.