‘Suspicious?’ Mr Thewless would probably have recognized within himself a rising tide of indignation had this not been overtopped for the moment by bewilderment and dismay. ‘You surely don’t think–’
‘Ivor and I noticed at once that your mind was quite at rest. The significance of your adventure had quite escaped you. And we were most anxious not to spoil your holiday. But we have ourselves been uneasy – very uneasy. It is why we shut up the house so carefully last night. But the criminals managed to break in. Had we not changed the boy’s room – an excellent thought of Ivor’s, since information of where he was first put no doubt leaked out through the servants – they would have got him, you know; they would infallibly have got him. Tell me – did anything else out-of-the-way happen on your journey?’
‘Humphrey certainly told me a very odd story. The suggestion seemed to be that he had been kidnapped on the train, shut up in a dark, confined space, and then in some mysterious fashion rescued or released again. It seemed an extremely tall tale.’
‘Not at all. It would be the fellow you saw last night, you know, when you made such an excellent shot with the candlestick.’
‘I see.’ Mr Thewless was a good deal put to a stand by this incontinent promotion to a secure reality-status of what his host had so lately aspersed as mere vinous imaginings. And now a thought struck him. ‘Good heavens! I’ll tell you rather a significant thing. The man who was with us in the carriage – a bearded man with glasses, whom I really
am
sure I saw again last night – left the train at Morecambe – the stop, that is, just before Heysham Harbour. He appeared to be a fisherman, and he had a rod and so forth with him in the compartment. But when he did get off, and I saw him on the platform, he had a case containing some enormous musical instrument. It seemed quite unnaturally heavy. It could almost–’
‘Have held Humphrey!’ Cyril Bolderwood, triumphant for a moment, paused perplexed. ‘But it
didn’t
hold Humphrey so how–?’
Mr Thewless answered this abrupted question as by sudden inspiration. ‘In the luggage-van, when I come to think of it, as well as this double-bass or whatever it was, there was a weighing machine with a set of pretty heavy looking weights. So somebody–’
‘Exactly!’ Once more Cyril Bolderwood interrupted. ‘Somebody could have released Humphrey – it would tally perfectly with the story he told you – and tricked your friend for a time by shoving in the weights instead. I don’t like it – I don’t like it at all. The whole situation that is revealing itself, that is to say. Here is a responsibility that we ought positively not to have undertaken. Our invitation was ill-advised. And Bernard ought certainly not to have accepted it.’ Cyril Bolderwood shook a severe and judicial head. ‘The son of a man in his position, not only immensely wealthy, but doing secret work of the utmost national importance, ought not to have been sent off into the blue – not even to quiet relations like ourselves; not even under the guardianship of so responsible a person as you, my dear fellow. And I’m surprised – indeed I’m positively astounded – that the English authorities don’t provide a lad in such a position with a bodyguard. Now, in South America–’
Mr Thewless had risen and taken yet another prowl to the window. ‘Still nobody to be seen,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ He turned back again. ‘I fear I have been extremely remiss.’
‘And in this countryside, of all places in the world!’ Cyril Bolderwood spoke from out of the deepest gloom. ‘Full of lawless wretches, ready to cut your throat as soon as look at you. Danger on every side.’
‘On
every
side?’ Mr Thewless’ alarm grew greater still. ‘You think there might be more than one – gang, organization, or whatever it’s to be called – plotting against Humphrey?’
‘Oh, no – oh, dear me, no!’ Cyril Bolderwood was more swiftly emphatic than he had yet been. ‘That would be a most extravagant suggestion.
One
gang, my dear fellow, led by this abandoned desperado with the glasses and the beard. And quite enough, too, in all conscience. He probably had that motor-cruiser we saw in the bay. Any amount of resources, you know, agents of that sort have.’
‘Agents?’ Mr Thewless stared. ‘You mean emissaries of a foreign power?’
‘No, no – nothing of the sort.’ And Cyril Bolderwood violently shook his head. ‘Quite the wrong word. Straightforward kidnappers, I should say, out for a big ransom.’ He looked at his watch. ‘This is bad – really bad, is it not? I wish those two would come back. I wish I could contact Ivor and have his advice!’
Mr Thewless, for whom the excellent Killyboffin marmalade had ceased to have any savour, pushed away his plate and looked in sudden, perplexed speculation at his host. It struck him that in this last cry of the elder of the Bolderwoods there had been more sincerity than had sounded in anything uttered to him for some time.
‘I suppose you know,’ Ivor Bolderwood had said quietly as soon as he and Humphrey had gained the open air, ‘what those fellows in the night were after?’
‘Oh, yes – I know. Look, Ivor – is that a kestrel?’
And Ivor Bolderwood had stared upwards at the small black shape poised above the dawn – but not before his glance had travelled curiously over the lad at his side. Humphrey, he thought, was in some uncertain stage of development, and ready to take a push either way. It would not, surely, take much to thrust him back into childhood and its helpless fears; correspondingly, it would not take so very much to make a man of him. ‘A sparrow-hawk,’ he said. ‘It’s looking for something small and defenceless to pounce on, and carry off, and deal with at leisure… I was talking about these men that are after you.’
But Humphrey was still looking into the sky. ‘Did you ever,’ he asked, ‘see an eagle fighting with a snake – high up, like that?’
‘No, never.’
‘Do you think Shelley did?’
‘Shelley!’ exclaimed Ivor. ‘And what has Shelley got to do with it?’
Humphrey turned to him in surprise. ‘Got to do with what, Ivor?’
‘Why, this that you’re up against. This situation.’
‘Oh, that!’ Humphrey’s gaze went seawards. ‘Are there any gannets?’
‘Gannets? If we went along the cliffs we might see some now.’ And for some minutes Ivor obligingly talked about gannets – and only the more coherently because he was aware of the unexpected appearance of something imponderable in the situation. Was it possible that the boy’s fantasy life had led him to a point at which he was a little astray in his wits? Or – a totally contrary hypothesis – had somebody already been on that job of making a man of him? Ivor paused to fill a pipe. It was a disordered thing to do long before breakfast, but the last few minutes had made him feel oddly in need of steadying. Much more so than the mere fact that, as things had turned out, it was necessary to keep a revolver next to his tobacco-pouch, and to scan every hedgerow as he neared it. That sort of thing was part of the day’s work with him; he had made his life of it. But this…
He let the subject of gannets, sufficiently explored, easily drop. ‘You are fond of Shelley?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. The subject seemed one upon which Humphrey was indisposed to be communicative. But for a moment Ivor kept it up. ‘I don’t know much about him,’ he said. ‘But I seem to remember that he once lay down on the bottom of a pool just to see what it would be like to drown. And, if somebody hadn’t interfered, drowned he would in fact have been. I suppose people do sometimes court danger even of quite a deadly kind just to know what it feels like.’
‘Oh, yes – I’m sure they do.’ Humphrey’s reply was entirely ready. ‘In fact, Ivor, I’d say you were rather the type yourself.’
‘We go down this little path.’ Ivor glanced first warily about him, and then with an almost equal wariness at his companion. ‘But look here, Humphrey, would you like to go back? The truth is, you know, that we’re courting danger ourselves, and I don’t know that I ought to do it.’
‘Do you think this might be gold?’ Humphrey had picked up a stone and was pointing with childish
naïveté
at a streak of copper pyrites. With an inconsequence that was equally childish, he threw the stone away, and it bounded down the cliff they were now approaching. ‘But you are armed, aren’t you?’
‘I certainly am. I have a revolver in my pocket.’
‘Then I think we may perfectly reasonably go on. How green the sea is between the rocks!’
‘Good. That at least means that you trust me.’ Ivor paused for another of his wary reconnaissances. ‘You
do
trust me, don’t you?’
And at this Humphrey stopped. His glance – as a glance should do upon such a question – met Ivor’s direct. It was wholly candid. ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘I trust you as much as I trust any man.’
The reply had an oddly mature ring, and for a moment it held Ivor up. But Humphrey, he realized, did mean what he said. ‘Good!’ And he touched the boy lightly on the shoulder, ‘Then we can face it out quite comfortably. Be careful at this next corner; there’s a pretty sheer drop.’
‘I don’t mind heights. What I do hate is the dark. Sometimes it can make a kid of me at once.’
‘Is that so?’ For an instant Ivor might have been detected bearing the appearance of one who makes a useful mental note. ‘Don’t you like the headland straight in front? And there’s a big cave beneath it. We might just have time to get to it now. You might as well see what you can
while
you can.’
‘While I can?’ Humphrey was startled.
‘Well, you see, this can’t go on. There has been an attempt to kidnap you, and that is a very serious thing. My father and I couldn’t possibly take the responsibility of not letting Sir Bernard know at once; and Mr Thewless is certain to feel just the same. It will certainly mean policemen investigating, and that sort of thing. And I am afraid it is likely to mean the end of your Irish holiday as well.’
‘I see. I’m glad I saw the gannets.’
Ivor received this with a glance askance; it was too like a remote irony to be altogether comfortable to him. But presently he spoke again. For the right ideas had to be injected, and moreover he was increasingly curious about this out-of-the-way boy. ‘It all sounds more like America than England or Ireland, doesn’t it? But there it is. You are the son of a very rich man. And somebody wants to kidnap you and extort, no doubt, a very large sum of money. You understand that that’s it?’
‘That’s certainly it.’ Humphrey paused, apparently in hopeful inspection of another ore-bearing stone. ‘And
precisely
it, isn’t it?’
A stone rattled on the cliff-path behind them, and Ivor swung round upon it. Nothing was visible, and its dislodgement must be a delayed effect of their own passage. But had something else startled him as well? ‘We should hate to think of your father having to pay up some enormous sum,’ he said.
‘Yes – it would be too bad.’
Was there, for a fraction of a second, something like a secret smile about Humphrey’s mouth? Ivor was prompted to heartiness. ‘Well, we jolly well won’t let them get away with it.’
‘No, they won’t get away with it – whatever it is.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ But, to a greater extent than before, Ivor was sensibly troubled. The peculiar confidence with which the boy had spoken might be mere childishness – but could it be something else? ‘I’m glad you’re quite sure of it, Humphrey.’
‘Oh, I’m sure, all right. It comes of not playing the game.’
‘Not playing the game! I don’t think I understand you.’
‘I suppose they’ve told you that I am a problem-child?’ And Humphrey turned upon his companion a glance of which the innocent seriousness was decidedly baffling. ‘It’s been going on for some years – and, of course, one of the grand signs is that I don’t play the game. If I get a hack at rugger I think they’re being nasty to me, and I bite. If I’m bowled at cricket I say it isn’t fair, and I throw the bat at them.’
‘How very odd.’ Ivor found himself quite unable to decide whether these shocking revelations were fact or fantasy. ‘But I don’t see what they have to do with–’
‘Just that I’ve cheated this time too. They think I’m playing the game according to the idiotic rules they’ve thought up for it – the sort of rules that mean that they’re bound to win. But I’m jolly well not. You see, I’ve kept the ace up my sleeve. Or rather–’
‘Yes?’
This prompting word had escaped Ivor in spite of himself. Almost certainly, Humphrey was now delivering himself of no more than the meaningless boasts of infancy. And yet –
‘Yes, Humphrey?’
It dried the boy up at once. ‘Where’s the cave?’ he asked. ‘Does the sea go right inside? Do you need a torch for it?’
‘You’ll see in a few minutes. But you were telling me how you were going to cheat them. I’m awfully interested. Do go on.’
Humphrey laughed. ‘You would pluck out the heart of my mystery, Ivor.’ He paused, suddenly frowning. ‘Hamlet said that, didn’t he? Who did he say it to? Was it a friend? Can you remember?’
‘I think it was a thoroughly bad hat.’ Humphrey, Ivor realized, was momentarily suspicious of him after all; some drift of association from Shakespeare’s play – the false professions, presumably, of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – had disturbed him.
‘I know! It was one of the men that Hamlet thought was on his side, but who took him away to England to be murdered.’ Humphrey had stopped on the perilous little track they were following down the cliff, and now he looked at Ivor with what really was swift distrust. ‘Shan’t we be late for breakfast?’
‘Good gracious, no! We got up ever so early. But of course, if you like, we can turn back. Look! There’s the first of the trawlers going out.’
‘And the motor-cruiser’s gone already. It’s a terribly lonely sea. From up here it looks like a single toy steamer on an enormous pond.’ Humphrey moved to the very edge of the track and gazed down. ‘We’re still tremendously high up. Like one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade.’ He repeated the line, and his spirits seemed to rise. ‘Come along, Ivor! Does the cave have an echo in it? Is it very cold?’
They climbed down steadily. The face of the cliff now screened them entirely on the land side. Below them, where first a line of tumbled rock and then a long, thin sickle of sand separated the base of the cliff from the sea, the prospect was utterly deserted at this early hour – and looked, indeed, as if it might commonly remain so all day. They walked in shadow; the rock face was cold as they pressed against it; with the smell of brine there was as yet only faintly mingled any of the awakening scents of heath and ling. But already the sea was a sheet of silver under the sun, its surface disturbed only by the long, lazy undulations in the wake of the vanishing trawler, or by the sudden plummet-fall of a gannet from the sky. Lesser gulls were wheeling above and below them as they walked, making the still air vertiginous to the eye, exploiting in shrill cries their power to evoke haunting suggestions of loneliness, desolation, pain. The path turned and for a few yards ran through the cliff like a cutting. Ivor, who was ahead, walked with one hand always in his jacket-pocket. His expression, as soon as his face was averted from Humphrey, had hardened into that of one whose senses are on the stretch for tiny physical things. And Humphrey too, when he ceased to converse, had a look not altogether ordinary. Sometimes his glance rested on the figure immediately before him, and in these moments a spectator would have found it readily interpretable, for it was the glance of one who sees, and would fain solve one way or the other, a known and finite problem. But at other times his eyes changed focus and glinted upon something very far away; his breath came faster through parted lips; his chin went up; he trod with a certain automatism the rough path beneath his feet. The swooping gulls, had they been anthropologically inclined, might have reflected that here was a stripling warrior advancing upon unpredictable rites. And thus this odd pair picked their way – having nothing of the appearance, to an intimate regard, of persons proposing a before-breakfast stroll to a place of local curiosity. They were almost at sea-level now, and could hear the flap and murmur of small waves stealing in from an ocean still half asleep – an ocean wholly and vastly indifferent to what transacted itself upon its verge. Ivor turned his head for a moment. ‘It will be dark in the cave. Did you say darkness frightens you?’