The Screaming Gull Page 12

  She smiled.

  “Bill,” she asked, “once the show is over, what are you going to do then?”

  “I’m going to make you marry a — a damned draper!”

  “Oh, goodness!” sighed Maureen. “Imagine the man’s conceit!”

  I grinned.

  “Of course I’m conceited. And you’re to blame.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Oh, darling!” I whispered. “You’ve done more for me than any other person could possibly have done. You’ve made me feel I’m worth something. And yet quite often, when I look into your eyes, I feel like a wee speck of dust before the sun. You’re so lovely, Maureen. You make me want you so much.”

  “Bill,” she said, “I’m a tiny bit ashamed, but — but I love you to say these things. And you mean them, don’t you?”

  “Mean them!” I exclaimed, puzzled. “Why — of course I mean them.”

  She gripped my arm between her two small hands, and I noticed with wonder that the look in her eyes was strained. There was little colour in her cheeks.

  “You’re so precious, Bill!” she said. “I — I’m afraid tonight.”

  I caught her close. Why was she harking on this theme? The thing seemed strange to me for two reasons. One was that Maureen was usually so self-reliant and confident; the other, that I felt rather unafraid myself that night.

  “Maureen,” I asked, “what’s the matter?”

  “I — I don’t know, Bill. There’s something in my mind which seems to warn me of unexpected danger. I wish you were back from that horrible farm.”

  “It’s a kind of droll little girl tonight,” I said; but I shivered as a blast of wind howled in the chimney.

  Then suddenly Maureen’s mood changed. She was, of course, an amazing person.

  “Aren’t I being silly!” she exclaimed. “I think it’s just because nowadays I’m beginning to need you near me rather desperately… Don’t listen, Bill. Give me a row! A fine lot of help I am to this very large gentleman who intends to marry me.”

  I had to explain things to her…

  Lawson was a man of great insight. It was five minutes to one when we heard him come striding along the corridor and pause outside the door to indulge in a lengthy bout of coughing. Then he put his head into the room.

  “Ready, Bill?” he asked. “We’d better be on our way. Don’t worry about us, Miss MacLaren. We ought to be back before daylight.”

  Maureen bade us goodbye and good luck. I remember that her blue eyes were bright like stars and that one corner of her mouth was tilted up tremulously. It was a memory which returned to me frequently during the day that followed.

  Chapter 10

  Lawson and I decided that if possible we should try to leave the hotel by an exit other than the front door, which had been locked for the night at eleven o’clock. The key, of course, was on the inside, and it would have been a simple matter for us to have slipped out and for Maureen to have locked the door behind; but we were all afraid that we might be recognized on the main street by policemen on night duty, and our movements at such a strange hour suspected.

  We made our way carefully, therefore, to one of the bathrooms on the ground floor, and, clambering through the narrow window, dropped out on to the cement of a little courtyard. Lawson, apparently, had made himself acquainted with the lay of the land, for he guided me unerringly in the darkness to a swing-gate which led out on to a back alley. Once outside the hotel premises we made swiftly for the Blaan road.

  In the slum-like part of the town which we traversed we met no one save a solitary tramp, who took not the slightest notice of us as we passed, our rubber-soled shoes padding softly on the pavements. It was clear enough in the streets with the gas-lamps burning; but once out in the country I was glad that Lawson had brought with him a small pencil-torch.

  The night was as black as a peat-bog, for the young moon had gone down within the last hour; but luckily there was no rain. I had an idea, however, that behind us, to the north-west, a great heavy cloud was rearing. The whole vault of the sky, however, was so dark that I could not be certain. A chill wind whistled eerily in the telegraph wires which lined the road, and once or twice, though I was wearing a light waterproof and though the quick walk should have kept me warm, I shivered violently. Nothing seemed to stir on the face of the country, and the broad, tarmacked road was empty, save for ourselves.

  Strangely enough, I did not feel long the six-miles’ walk to the side road leading over the moorland to Innish-na-gobhar. I think one reason may have been that I was dreading what might happen at the farm; while another was certainly the constant stream of whispered conversation kept up by my companion. There is no doubt he purposed to keep my fearful mind off the coming ordeal, but, at the same time, I think I learned more of Lawson’s character during those two hours than I could have done under ordinary circumstances in two years.

  He told me of his wife who lived in Edinburgh and of his little daughter, aged three, whose name was Mary. And for the sake of those two ladies I believe Lawson would have endured any evil. But when he spoke of them he grew wistful.

  “You know, Bill,” he said once, “a Secret Service man ought never to marry. His job is too dangerous. And his home life is practically nil. I haven’t seen my wife and baby for three weeks.”

  “But then,” I argued, “if you love a girl and if she loves you — well, you just can’t help yourself. It’s better to be married little than not to be married at all.”

  He chuckled to himself in the darkness.

  “You have a remarkably direct and simple way of putting things, Bill,” he said. “Of course, you’re absolutely right. And when one does get a week or two at home…”

  “Must be pretty good,” I agreed. “For your wife, too.”

  “I know. Poor Janet has a beastly time when I’m away; for she seldom knows where I am at a stated moment.”

  “Is Mary kind of big for her age?”

  “By Jove, yes! And she can talk like a book. And she’s got her mother’s dimple on the right side of her mouth… It’s the queerest thing! But Janet was telling me the last time I was at home that the baby is beginning to demand the reason why I am away so often. Oh, good lord, Bill, you must come and see them when all this — all this is over!”

  “Most certainly I must. I like kids, too. They’re the only ones practically who take me seriously.”

  Lawson grunted, and for a long moment he was silent. When he spoke again I was surprised to discover that, temporarily at least, he had forgotten about his family.

  “Now, Bill,” he said in a fatherly way, “don’t let me hear you talk of this inferiority complex of yours again. You’re always harking back to it. The thing, I can see, has become your pet obsession. Can’t you see that the best way to make people take you seriously is to ‘gang yer ain gait’, without worrying at all about whether your fellow-beings take you seriously or not? If you were a small, puny man I could see some reason for your daft notions; but a great, hulking brute like yourself ought to be able to assert his personality more vigorously.”

  I sighed.

  “I’m sorry, Lawson. There’s good sound sense in what you say. And I realize well enough that to a great extent my constant shrinking is a form of rank selfishness.”

  “Of course!” agreed the Secret Service man. “Sheer egotism!”

  We laughed together in the darkness.

  *

  We talked for a while, too, on the subject of ‘The Screaming Gull’. Lawson, apparently, was well versed in the matters brought to light by Merriman and other of his colleagues. He had been in Perthshire when the mysterious message had been sent out over the wireless, and had immediately set out for Campbeltown. He had, it appeared, expected other members of the Service to be in the district and was surprised and a little disappointed to have made contact only with Maureen.

  He imagined that Wotherspoon and his friends had picked up his trail in Glasgow, where his pocketbook had been stolen
. The theft had taken place at the Central Station when he had been buying a ticket for his journey to Campbeltown on the following day.

  “They’re a well-known trio at headquarters,” he said. “For months we’ve had them watched, and apparently they are what you might call the Blind One’s executives. They are the heads of the militant side of the Society. All the dangerous jobs that have to be carried out on the Blind One’s orders are directed personally by them. It was rather a stroke of luck that we caught them napping on Saturday. It will keep them out of the way until after Friday at least. They’d have had a big say in whatever scheme the Blind One has in mind for the rising… By the way, I think Mason is the name of the grey-headed youth.”

  “Do you think,” I asked, “that if we fail to prevent it this rising will actually be as bad as Merriman seemed to fear? I can scarcely credit that this mysterious society has the power to upset completely the balance of things in Britain. And though we hear plenty about Scottish Nationalism, the thought of a body prepared to shed blood for the setting up of a separate Scottish state seems almost beyond belief. If I hadn’t actually got first-hand evidence of the desperate lengths to which ‘The Screaming Gull’ will go I should imagine myself in the midst of some weird dream.”

  “Before the Great War,” returned Lawson, “there were thousands of people in Britain who thought of war with Germany as being more impossible than an internal war in Britain today. And you must remember that common or garden Scottish Nationalism has nothing whatever to do with this business. It is, in fact, a vast political plot, run by a criminal organization for financial gain. As you know well enough, the setting up of a separate state in Scotland would put millions into the pockets of certain individuals whose interests are centred north of the Tweed. These are the persons who are backing the Blind One. You remember when King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated that a huge secret movement was unearthed in Europe, whose aim, ostensibly, was to establish the Croats as a separate nation. The thing created a tremendous sensation in political circles all over the world, but the facts could not be gainsaid. This affair, Bill, has many points in common with the Yugoslavian business, and Sir David MacLaren is of the opinion that there is a definite connection… If luck is with us, we shall know for certain within a week.”

  Another topic which we discussed was the strange wireless message.

  “If it was Merriman who spoke,” I said, “then he must have had free access to some powerful transmitting station. And it must be in Britain somewhere, for if he was at Cairngarroch on Thursday morning he had no time to reach a foreign country.”

  “He might, of course, have gone by aeroplane,” Lawson reminded me. “But did it ever strike you that Merriman might actually have been speaking from the Scottish Regional Station? You remember all the newspapers said that the message came through on the Regional wave-length, and, if Merriman could have persuaded the officials to keep his secret, in the interests of the public, what was there to prevent them from telling the reporters a long story about nothing?”

  “Good lord!” I gasped. “I never thought of that!”

  “Merriman,” said Lawson, “is a resourceful individual.”

  “Maureen seems to think so,” I agreed. “Who is he, exactly?”

  “No one knows. He doesn’t appear to have any living relatives. He was first heard of during the Great War, when he volunteered for one of the most dangerous Secret Service jobs ever handled. He lived in Germany for two years — between 1915 and 1917 — and was afterwards in Turkey until peace was declared. Although he’s pretty reticent about his own affairs, there are a few amazing tales in existence regarding his adventures. I believe he was almost shot in Constantinople once, but escaped by pretending he had gone mad… And with all his daring and fearlessness he is the quietest, most unassuming fellow you could find — and full of humour. Not a trace of snobbery about him, either.”

  *

  We must have tramped some five miles when the rain began to fall in great chilling drops. The wind rose, too, and howled round us in great gusts. Every now and then Lawson would flash on his torch for an instant, trying to find the Innish-na-gobhar side road.

  Once I said:

  “Lawson, aren’t you curious to know who I am?”

  “Not a bit,” he returned quietly. “I know already. You’re William Dunbar, and you are wanted for murder. I recognized you when you took off your glasses yesterday afternoon. I noticed then that you weren’t used to wearing them, for there was no little ridge across your nose. I saw, too, that you had recently shaved off a moustache and had a hair-cut… Of course, I had the advantage of the police, knowing that Miss MacLaren and Peter aren’t actually your wife and son. By the way, I rather think this is the track we’ve been looking for.”

  We turned to our left into a rutted cart-road. Before us in the distance a pin-prick of light shone through the howling dark.

  Looking at the illuminated dial of my wristwatch I saw that it was a quarter past three.

  *

  Once we began our walk along the rough side-road, which led up to Innish-na-gobhar Farm, Lawson dared not, of course, use his torch. We stumbled and slithered among the cart-ruts, and on one occasion I put my foot into a water-filled hole, making a mighty splash and spattering Lawson beside me. I swore roundly as I felt the water oozing in my shoes.

  My companion chuckled.

  “We mustn’t let our emotions get the better of us!” he whispered.

  “Sorry!” I muttered.

  “When we get near the house,” he continued, “we ought, I think, to leave the road. One never knows what booby-traps may be laid for us.”

  Lawson must have been in a prophetic mood at the moment; but I started to argue.

  “It’s so damned dark! We’ve only that pinpoint of light to guide us and if we take to the fields we may lose sight of it altogether.”

  “We’ll have to chance it, anyway. We can’t go walking up to the front door as if we were welcome guests. And if we are on the right track I rather think that pretty soon the clans will be gathering along the road. We’ll have to avoid bumping into people.”

  We had followed the road — and I hope I may never have to follow worse — for about half a mile, when Lawson decided that we should make a detour. Accordingly we negotiated the low wire fence fringing the right-hand side of the track and began to stumble through what in the autumn must have been a notable cornfield. The wiry stubble jabbed viciously at my ankles, and yet another terror presented itself before we had gone many yards. I pitched awkwardly over an evil-smelling dung-heap, and no sooner had I got to my feet than I heard Lawson take a header over another to my left. The field seemed to be almost completely filled by the little cone-shaped mounds. And all the while the rain lashed down in torrents.

  “Oh, my God!” I groaned. “If I had that Blind One!”

  “I’d give you every assistance,” gasped Lawson from the ground.

  It was a strange fact that nothing which had happened to me up to this stage of the adventure — not even the attempted kidnapping in the taxi, the affair in Princes Street, or the hold-up on the Campbeltown steamer — had so much incensed me as this blind stumbling in the rain along a filthy road and through a stubble-field dotted with dung-heaps. I began to hate the Blind One — whoever she was — with a great and bitter hatred — not because she was planning the downfall of the British Government, but because her machinations made it necessary for me to wet my feet and plunge headlong into cones of manure.

  We came to the farther extremity of the field at last, and it was with a sigh of relief that I climbed another fence to enter what appeared in the gloom to be a stack-yard. We still had the farm light in view, and now that we were close to the house we saw that it streamed out from a chink in a heavily curtained window on the ground-floor. But what caused us no little excitement and gratification, in spite of our uncomfortable slithering, was the fact that two cars, each showing only their sidelights, had come bumping
and churning over the side road and were now parked somewhere near the farm.

  For a while, during our progress to the window, we were lost among the corn-stacks. It was as if we had entered a maze. But finally we emerged carefully from the labyrinth to find ourselves close against a huddle of outhouses. We heard cows lowing in a byre and the clatter of a horse’s hooves in a stable.

  Momentarily we were out of view of the light; but both of us had a good idea of its position. Cautiously, therefore, we crept along the walls until we encountered a short, thickset privet hedge, which, apparently, surrounded a small garden in front of the dwelling-house. Through the interstices we saw the shaft of light from the window falling on a neglected rose-plot.

  “There must be a gate somewhere,” whispered Lawson.

  Round at the front we almost crashed into the two cars. They were standing untenanted on a kind of island in the midst of a sea of mud which marked the entrance of the road to the farm premises.

  Lawson put his hand on my arm.

  “We must get their numbers,” he said softly. “I’ll have to risk a light for a moment.”

  He knelt down at the rear of the foremost vehicle, and, shading the light from his torch with his hand, he discovered its registration. This operation he repeated behind the second car.

  “I think I’ll remember them,” he muttered. “But I’ll give you the numbers, too, in case I should let them slip. SB 2806 and SB 9019. Both Morrises. Fourteen-horse tourers.”

  “Right,” I whispered. “Now can’t we have a squint at that window? It’s almost a quarter to four by my watch.”

  Chapter 11

  We found the gate practically opposite the island on which the cars were parked. It was made of wood, but luckily it did not creak as we opened it slowly.

  Thereafter we ploughed our way through the rose-bed, carefully avoiding the shaft of light, and tiptoed across a patch of gravel to the window. The Aladdin lamp by which the room was illuminated had been placed immediately in front of the chink in the curtains and we were able to see nothing of the interior.