What was certain was that they had between them a treasure to hide. What was likely was that they had a place proved safe by long usage, in which to hide it. What was left to question was whether it was still there. Up to the appearance of the evening paper, probably he had no reason to see any urgency in its recovery, and every reason to avoid going near it. But now?
For some hours now he had known how closely he was hunted. Frightened, inexperienced, unable to confide in or rely on anyone but himself, how long would it take him to make up his mind? Or how long to panic? He might well have retrieved the money already. But he might not. And whether they were justified in all these deductions or not, there was nothing to be lost by keeping a watch on the Hallowmount, in case he did betray himself by making for his hoard. Heaven knew they had no other leads to him, except the mute girl in Fairford.
Price wouldn’t thank him for a chilly, solitary night patrolling the border hills, but anything was worth trying. George excused himself, and went to the telephone. When he came back into the room none of them had moved. They all looked up at him expectantly.
‘I’m putting a man on watch overnight,’ said George, ‘in case he goes to recover it during the dark hours. You may very well be right about it being hidden there, somewhere on the hill. Night’s the most likely time for him to go and fetch it, if by any chance he does know where to look, but covering the ground by daylight won’t be so easy. The last thing I want to do is put him off, and the sight of a plainclothes man parading the top of the Hallowmount would hardly be very reassuring. And man-power,’ he owned, dubiously gnawing a knuckle, ‘isn’t our long suit.’
‘We could provide you with boy-power,’ said Tom Kenyon unexpectedly. ‘Plenty of it, and it might be a pretty good substitute. Miss Darrill’s taking out the school Geographical Association on one of their occasional free-for-alls tomorrow. They were having a field-day on Cleave, but there’s no reason why they couldn’t just as well be switched to the Hallowmount. It’s geologically interesting, it would carry conviction, all right. And if we deploy about forty boys all over the hill it will make dead certain nobody can hunt for anything there without being spotted. As well as giving us three a chance to do some hunting on our own. If you gentlemen,’ said Tom, looking his two sixth-formers in the eye with respectful gravity, ‘wouldn’t mind joining in for the occasion?’
They had stiffened and brightened, and looked back at him as at a contemporary, measuring and eager, only a little wary.
‘If it would be any help?’ said Miles, casting a questioning glance at George. ‘And if you think we should involve Miss Darrill? We should have to tell her why.’
‘It would give me a day,’ said George, ‘the most important day, the day he’s likely to break. He knows now how he stands. Of course Miss Darrill must know what’s in the wind, but nobody else, mind. And if she does consent, she’s to do nothing whatever except what she was going out to do, take her members on a field expedition and keep them occupied in a perfectly normal way. All I need is that you should be there, and prevent him from getting near any possible hiding-place on the hill. If he’s collected his loot already, it can’t be helped. But if he hasn’t, that’s our only working lead to him.’
‘Jane will do it,’ said Tom positively. ‘And what if we should find the stuff ourselves? What do we do?’
‘You leave it where it is, but don’t let the spot out of your sight. I’m going to have to be in Birmingham part of the day, but before the daylight goes I’ll be ready to relieve you. Can you hold the fort until then?’
‘Yes, until you come, whenever that is.’ It was the only way he had of helping Annet. She might not be grateful, she might hate him for it, but there was no other way.
‘Good! I’ll try to be back in the station by four-thirty. Will you call me there then? If anything breaks earlier, I’ll get word to you as soon as I usefully can.’
‘I’ll do that. And may I call Jane Darrill now? Better give her what warning we can, if we’re upsetting her bus arrangements.’
He called her, and the light, assured, faintly amused voice that answered him manifested no surprise. Curious that he should be able to hear in it, over the telephone, wry overtones of reserve and doubt he had never noticed in it in their daily encounters.
‘That means switching tea to somewhere in Comerford,’ she said, sighing. ‘There won’t be time to take them out to the Border. And what do you suppose the Elliots will do with the provisions laid in for forty hungry boys?’
‘I didn’t think about that,’ he said, dismayed. ‘Well, if you can’t do it, of course—’
‘Who said I couldn’t do it? Twenty-four hours notice is required only for the impossible. Don’t worry, I live here, I can fix tea, all right. By the way, who’s asking me to do this, you or the police?’
‘Me,’ he said simply, without even the affectation of correctness.
‘Just as long as we know,’ said Jane, a shade dryly. ‘All right, it’s on.’
She hung up the receiver, and left him troubled by tensions newly discovered in himself, when he had thought that Annet had exhausted all his resources of feeling and experience. He wondered, too, as he went back to report to George in the living-room, why he should feel ashamed, but he had no leisure to indulge his desire to examine the more obscure recesses of his own mind. There had been, throughout, only one person who really mattered, and for the first time in his life it was not himself.
‘That’s that,’ he said. ‘It’s arranged. I think we’d better call it a day now, if we’re going to be on patrol between us all day tomorrow. Come on, Miles, I’ll run you home.’
In the hall he hung back and let the boys go out into the chill of the night ahead of him. There was still something he had to ask George. He could not remember ever feeling so responsible for any boy in his charge as he did now for Miles; the act of confiding had drawn them closer than he found quite comfortable, and probably the boy was chafing, too.
‘It’s definite, isn’t it?’ he asked in a low voice, as they emerged on the doorstep. ‘What you said about young Mallindine? They were up there in Snowdonia the whole time?’
‘Quite definite. We’ve already checked on their weekend.’ George remembered the mental clip over the ear that was in store for Dominic when the time was ripe, and smiled faintly in the dark. The two boys were talking in low tones, out there beside the Mini, small, taut, tired voices studiously avoiding any show of concern with the things that really filled their minds. ‘Don’t worry about them, they’re in the clear.’
‘I shouldn’t think you’ve ever been so glad to cross off your prime suspect,’ said Tom, feeling his own heart lift perceptibly, even in its passionate preoccupation with that other hapless young creature for whom there was no such relief.
