reference.
'If you want to see the old castle, you're going to be disappointed,'
shouted Warren. ' 'Tisn't a castle at all. It's just a few hillocks on the ground–a Roman camp it was. Not a proper one, either. The archaelogists said it was what they call a practice camp probably.
You wouldn't know what it was just to look at it.'
Audley listened with one ear, both eyes on the receding water dummy4
tower. The Nissen huts dwindled as the taxiing lane unrolled smoothly behind them.
Then slowly the tower began to sink from view. He looked round at the featureless meadow. Sure enough there was a gradual, almost imperceptible slope to it now, a gentle undulation. The Hump!
Steerforth's safe deposit hut must now be somewhere to the left, what was left of it. To the right was the line of the runway, and there'd be no buildings on that side. He looked backwards: the water tower had disappeared completely. On either side the empty airfield stretched, with not a thing in sight.
'Slow down a bit,' he commanded Warren. 'I seem to remember there were one or two odd huts down here, weren't there?'
'Nothing much down here. The old shooting range's over to the left, ahead, near the Roman camp. There was a hut hereabouts, and another down the bottom there for the flare path gear, I think.'
'Where was the hut here?'
Warren braked and coasted to a stop. 'Just over there. There's a bit of concrete still in the grass–it's a damn nuisance every time we're haymaking. I've never got round to grubbing it up — some of those concrete bases are a foot thick and more.'
Audley could just distinguish a break in the waving grass. So there it was: the last known resting place of the golden treasures of Troy.
A few square yards of wartime concrete, annoying an English sheep-farmer! And that was where the real search had to begin tomorrow. It would be easy enough to find the spot again, anyway.
dummy4
'Hey! Come to think of it, there's an old map of my father's which has the old buildings and the runways marked on it–at least, I seem to remember them marked on it,' said Warren with a flash of inspiration. 'I'm sure it's in the attic somewhere with his papers. I could look it out for you if you're interested.'
'That would be very civil of you–it would be a great help,' replied Audley. Actually, wherever the boxes were, they were certainly not going to turn up on the site of any demolished airfield structure. But an accurate map of the area was essential: it had been the one thing which had not been included in the Steerforth file among either the old or the newer papers, understandably, since the airfield itself had been of no significance.
Warren let in the clutch. 'Right, then! We'll be getting back, if you don't mind. I won't be able to find your map straight away–wife's uncle'll be here any moment. I'm making silage for him this year–
but when he's gone I'll get up into the attic and have a look round.
Are you staying round here?'
'We're at the Bull.'
'Phew! Then you'd better have your cheque book at the ready.
Won't let you bend down to pick up your handkerchief at the Bull now, but they don't forget to charge you for it afterwards! Food's good, too–if you can afford it. But it's only the taxpayer's money you're spending, isn't it?'
Warren's combination of self-confidence and casual familiarity grated on Audley's nerves. But the man's grin took the sting out of the jibe. He was being perfectly natural, treating them as he probably treated everybody, and it was impossible to be stuffy with dummy4
such open good humour. And not just impossible–ridiculous too.
Audley suddenly felt tired and very sorry for himself. Somewhere along the way over the last few years he seemed to have lost both his sense of proportion and his sense of humour. Their arrival at the Bull had been a case in point: Faith had seen the joke and he hadn't. And now this.
Then there had been Fred's original warning about the sheltered existence which had divorced him from reality: it had been a delusion of intellectual grandeur which had got him into this business.
Except that Fred wasn't reality either. Nor was Panin. Warren and Faith and Mrs Clark were reality.
Or perhaps he was simply in the eye of the hurricane, in a moment of sanity surrounded by trouble. Tomorrow, certainly, he would have to face up to the fact that he didn't really know where to begin to look for the treasure, or even why he was looking for it. But in the meantime he could enjoy himself.
XIII
The atmosphere of sanity created by Keith Warren saw Audley a long way. It saw him back to the heated comfort of the Bull –Faith even remembered to borrow two suitcases from a sympathetic Mrs Warren. What explanation she gave he never knew, but he suspected it was more for his sake than her own that she added this dummy4
touch of respectability.
It saw him through dinner, which was not quite as good as Warren had forecast, but good enough to cancel- out the sly looks presumably reserved for newly-married guests.
But it didn't quite see him to bed.
Audley sat in his shirtsleeves watching Faith strip down to an absurdly inadequate matching set of multi- coloured underclothes, reflecting that schoolmistresses had never been like that in the old days. Or maybe they had. But she was not so much shameless as quite without shame, and his mingled lust and embarrassment was outweighed by a tenderness which confused him. He had never felt like this about Liz, who had been so much more spectacular.
He shook his head. 'What am I going to do with you?' he said, half to himself.
