There certainly weren't any dead wolves lying around, not even a trace of blood. Not that he expected to find any.
'Come on,' he said pushing on ahead, 'the sooner we get back to the house, the better. There's water seeping up everywhere, this place is getting like a bath sponge.' He was concerned, had that awful feeling that they were never going to get out of the wood.
Once the sunlight broke through the fog but the vapour instantly closed in, shut it out again. Droy Wood was fighting desperately to preserve its evil secrets, determined that those who entered should not leave. Andy peered ahead. The house could not be far away now. He experienced a sinking feeling; suppose the powers that controlled this domain of evil had snatched it away like they had removed the German. Here, anything was possible. His mouth was dry and if the path had not been a veritable quagmire he would have broken into a run.
There was something on the track ahead of them. At first he thought it was a sapling and then it moved, stepped out to bar their way. Instinctively the Luger came up, his finger resting on the trigger. It was a human being, a female, even in the dim outline in the fog, sensuous, naked like Carol Embleton had been.
'Thelma!' Carol gave a cry, but even then she could not be sure, the wisps of grey mist almost obliterating the features although it could not destroy the overall picture of a girl she had grown up with. Her instinct was to rush forward but for some reason she held back. Something wasn't quite right. Ten yards separated them, it might as well have been a hundred. Thelma Brown's eyes flickered behind the opaqueness, a dim torch-bulb that was faulty, threatening to go out.
'Do not go on.' Her voice was a scarcely audible whisper as though it required a tremendous effort to speak; hoarse and straining, trying to say more but the words would not come. 'Go back… go back… go back., ' The mist thickened, covered her, and when it swirled again she was gone.
'Where is she?' Carol Embleton asked in a hushed whisper. But Andy Dark was not listening; he was running forward, ploughing his way through mud and pools of water that splashed up, saturating his already damp trousers. He did not expect to catch a glimpse of Thelma, no more than he had expected to find the body of Bertie Hass lying back there where the wolves had ravaged him. He stooped down, examined the ground, saw the remnants of their own footmarks from the previous night, his own criss-crossed Wellington imprints, Carol's bare feet. But neither the German's nor Thelma Brown's!
'Why did she run away?' Carol sensed the stupidity of her own question, half-guessed the answer that hammered in her brain. Because she's already dead like the others here. And they snatched her away because she tried to warn us.
'It was some kind of hallucination.' Andy could not think of a better reply on the spur of the moment. 'It wasn't really her at all.' Not a deliberate lie, just a guess.
'She warned us,' Carol whispered, 'We can't go back to the house.'
'Then where else are we going to go, you tell me?'
'I. don't know.'
'And neither do I. We can't stop out here another night. I doubt if the house is any more dangerous than the wood. And, anyway, they should be looking for us soon. If we can only let them know where we are.'
They walked on in silence. The sunlight seemed to have given up its battle with the Droy fog; it was impossible to judge what time of day it was but surely it was still morning. It could riot be more than an hour since daylight had broken.
They came upon the house suddenly, a huge turreted shape rearing up out of the gloom, frowning down on them. Go back, go back. Carol heard Thelma's warning again, would have turned and run had not Andy been holding her. A token resistance but where he went, she would go.
The hall looked exactly the same as it had when they had left it a few hours ago, that same stench of decay, the panelling rotting with age, the trap door in the far corner.
She didn't want to look at it, didn't dare guess what lay in the dungeons below, elevated her eyes to the crumbling stairway. It looked dangerous in places, entire steps missing, as though it would collapse if anyone put their full weight upon it.
Andy walked towards the stairs, noticed that the floor was wet, small puddles lying on the uneven surface. Somewhere water was trickling; the dungeons, they were flooded. He could hear the water lapping below the trap door. Soon it would push upwards and lift the hatch.
His foot was on the bottom step, Carol close behind him, when something made him glance up. The landing was in shadow, a dark damp platform with half the balustrade missing. Something moved, came forward and for one terrible second Carol thought that it was Thelma again, but the silhouette was wrong, too bulky. A man.
Now they could see him clearly, the silken clothes which had once been the finery of gentry, the waistcoat straining on the protruding stomach, the jowled scowling features, thinning long grey hair. Eyes that flicked and pierced the watchers like rapiers, thick lips curling into a sneer. The spider viewed the flies in its web with loathsome gloating.
'I was expecting you.' Nasal tones, wheezing as though even speech required a considerable effort. 'Let us go and view the Droy lands for the fast time, for now the sea, which had been kept back for thousands of years, has come to reclaim its own.' He laughed, a hollow chuckle that echoed across the empty hall. 'A few more hours and the lands of my forefathers will have gone for ever. Yet it is a fitting end.' A sigh that embodied deep sadness. 'Far rather that than that it should be wrested from us by usurpers to the title.'
Andy Dark stared up at the man on the landing, felt a fleeting humility as a serf might have experienced centuries before when summoned before his master, wilted beneath the gaze from those deep set small eyes. One who juggled with the fate of others.
'The police are coming.' It sounded trite, a last desperate throw, your final card when muggers cornered you in an ill-lit subway. Remembering the loaded Luger in his hand; token bravado, just a gesture of defiance. 'They'll pull this place apart.'
'They'll be too late, the sea will do it for them. For years Droy Wood had been eroded, the water creeping in, until it was virtually floating. A waterlogged sailing-ship that is ready to be submerged. Everything will be lost for ever without trace,' the other gave another forced laugh, 'and maybe then none of us will be forced to live on any longer. Come though, we are wasting time. Let us go aloft and bid the Droy lands farewell ere we go down with them.'
Andy felt his feet beginning to move, mounting the steps slowly, heard Carol following. The stairs seemed firm and strong. Perhaps they had recently been renovated and the repairs were not visible. Oak panelling that no longer bore the pockmarks of woodworm. Shadowy, so that the figure at the top of the stairs was a silhouette again, his arrogant features fading back into the darkness.
There was a roaring in Andy Dark's ears; it could have been the distant angry sea. A stench that reminded him of rotting seaweed. He lurched, clutched at the stair-rail to steady himself, his stomach rolling like it might have done on board a ship floundering in tempestuous seas; the captain up there on the bridge. We're sinking, we're all going down with the ship. Let's drown with dignity, not panicking like bilge rats.
Going on up, the man at the top turning as if to lead the way, his ungainly bulk moving surprisingly gracefully.
'Andy,' said Carol in a frightened whisper, 'we shouldn't have come here, we should have heeded Thelma's warning.'
Now they were standing on a stone balcony that jutted out at the back of the big house which had once been a castle, floating in a white swirling mist. And somewhere far down below they heard the lapping and splashing of water.
Fourteen
Muffin was back close at Roy Bean's heels, so close that at times she threatened to obstruct his difficult progress through the swampy ground. Angrily he kicked back at her, heard her whimper but she did not move away, just cringed.
'Stupid bitch,' he grunted. 'You're supposed to be working the rough, searching for a scent like those bloody police dogs are.' Strangely, the Alsatians had gone quiet. Perhaps they were trained to work silently. Or else they
