required to turn a wheel or light the darkness.
“You find out who owns that mill,” he had instructed the lawyer. “Get it for me cheap, and keep your mouth shut. Once my plan is known, the price of windmills will go up.”
The lawyer had opened his mouth only to make objections, but Uncle John had remained firm. When he had heard the price, he had been delighted. He had never known anything so cheap, a bargain! The owner threw in the mill cottage, landing stage, all appurtenances, and riparian rights, if any. The agreement had been signed and the price paid. Within a week he had forgotten about it, and nobody had been inclined to remind him.
“That’s what one might have expected,” Ruth Meriden commented. “Do you know where Groper’s Wade is?”
“Not exactly,” Andrew confessed.
“You take the train to Britsea and then you walk across the marsh or fen or whatever you call it.”
“All right. I’ll go down tomorrow and explore.” At the moment it did not seem so important. “What I want to know is how you got yourself into this state?”
“I went down to Britsea.”
“You what?”
“I went down to Britsea,” she repeated calmly. “I telephoned you here from the lawyer’s office. I telephoned three times from different places. Then I decided to go down and check on the mill. I thought you’d like to know definitely if the yawl was there.” “Good God!” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have done that alone! Didn’t you realise there was danger? After all I told you about my being shadowed?”
“I didn’t think there’d be any danger to me.”
“Look! I went out to Cheriton Shawe today because I wanted to bring you back to town. I was afraid for you, alone in that crazy house. I thought the gang who killed Kusitch might find the link and go after you. And you walk right into their hands. You’re lucky to have got away from them. They might have killed you. Now that they’ve found the yawl, there’s nothing more we can do. We’d better call up Scotland Yard at once and let the police clear things up.
“Will you stop being melodramatic and listen to me? I didn’t walk into anybody’s hands. And nobody has found the boat. At least, not as far as I know. When I got down to Britsea it was later than I expected,” she said. “Have you any idea what Britsea’s like?”
“Well, what is it like?”
“Hell,” she said simply.
Britsea, it appeared, was a bungalow colony with a few Nissen huts added for architectural variety. It had a station. She had asked the solitary porter if there were a windmill and cottage in the neighbourhood, and he had pointed to the North Sea and said: “That would be Groper’s Wade. First to the right past the garbage tip.
The lawyer had told her that it was a short walk to the mill, but when she came in sight of it, it seemed to be miles away-a squat stump on the edge of nowhere with dark clouds piling up behind it and the day looking as if it were going to do an early fade-out. It was cold, too. A wind blew in from the sea and across the marsh unhindered. She went on a little farther. Then she became afraid that she could not reach the mill and get back to the station before nightfall, and the idea of darkness on the marsh was not pleasant.
“Even in the daylight it’s bad enough,” she said. “The fact is, I wouldn’t have gone on in any circumstances. I was scared of the loneliness. I can’t stand it when I find myself in the middle of nothing. Then I got the idea I was being followed, and-well, I suppose I fell into a panic.”
Andrew cut in with a question. “What gave you the idea? Did you see anyone?”
“Yes. A man was poking about in the garbage dump. There’s a level, filled-in patch and the trucks tip their loads into the hollow. The man was by the edge of the hollow when I passed, poking about with a stick.”
“He was there before you?”
“Yes, but he could have come on the train, except that I never noticed anyone like him at the station. I think I would have, because he was very tall and thin.”
“Don’t tell me! A tall thin man with a cloth cap and a long grey coat that flaps round his legs when he walks?”
“No. Nothing like it. He didn’t have a hat or coat; just slacks and a rough sort of seaman’s sweater.”
Andrew let out a sigh of relief. “Just an old tramp,” he decided. “You’ll find one on every garbage dump, looking for bits of metal and other things that might bring in a few pence.”
“That’s what I thought,” she agreed. “If you hadn’t put this shadowing business into my head, I wouldn’t have taken any notice. I didn’t at first, but I happened to look back, and he’d come over the edge of the hollow and seemed to be watching me. That was the first thing that started me off. When I looked back a little later, he had disappeared. I told myself that it was all right, but it wasn’t. I believed he might be following me to snatch my bag. Then I thought he might have something to do with the Kusitch business, and that was when I really panicked.”
She paused a moment, not happy in the recollection of it. When she went on, she made him feel the strain of it.
It was pretty bad, she said. When she decided that she could not go on any farther, she found that she was too scared to go back. Dusk was coming quickly across the marsh, or it may have been the lowering clouds. Already there were lights in some of the bungalows, and they seemed far away, unreachable. She took a step towards them, and halted. Thirty yards or so from her, she saw a dark movement behind the fringing reeds and rushes of a pool at the track’s edge; a shadow diving for cover, but diving too late.
“I was paralysed. I just stood there, staring at the reeds, waiting.”
All over the desolation were pools with screens of reeds and rushes, tall enough to hide a man bent double, and the track between the windmill and the station found a winding way among them.
For minutes she could not take her eyes off the spot where the shadow had vanished. Then her mind began to work again. She must go forward to the windmill, or back to the station. But there was no real alternative. The farther she went towards the windmill, the worse her position became. She must go back, must risk the danger that waited behind the screen of reeds. Perhaps there would be no challenge; perhaps the game of shadowing would go on. If the main purpose was to observe her movements, there could be no purpose in any interference. She had led the watcher nowhere. She had merely walked out into the middle of a wilderness; now she proposed to walk back again.
It took all her will power to make her legs move. Keeping her eyes focused on the reed screen, she went forward slowly. Every moment she expected the man to rise up and block her path, but nothing happened. The wind from the sea was behind her now, and gulls rode in on it, screaming and squawking. There was no other sound except the dry rustle of the reeds. She went on tiptoe, as if that might help her to pass the screen, and as she approached it she edged towards the far side of the track. She had a plan now. If the man waited a fraction too long, she might evade him. She could run. She selected the spot from which she would start. It was a little forward of the screen, and the turf on the side of the track was obviously firm enough for her to take an oblique course. That oblique course was essential for the first twenty yards or so. The track curved slightly, so she could gain an advantage.
She walked boldly now, with a pretence of ease. She reached the chosen spot and dashed off, leaving the track in her desperate race. Five yards, and her left foot caught in a trailing bramble. She crashed down, barking her knee on a stone and tearing her cheek on another bramble. As she fell, a wild bird rose from the screen of reeds and went off with a whir of dark wings.
“A bird!” she said. “A damn silly bird!”
Andrew made a sympathetic sound.
“I started to cry,” she admitted. “I think it was rage more than anything else, but I was still frightened. I believe I was more frightened. I lay there on my face, crying, till I found I was partly in a pool of water. Then I got up and went on. I ran. I imagined a man was coming after me. I imagined a shadow behind every clump of reeds. It was all imagination. I should have gone on. I had time to get to the windmill and back. I might have found out about the boat.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Andrew told her. “We’ll go together in the morning. I’ll hire a car and drive you.”
“We’ll have to leave it till the afternoon. I must go to the gallery in the morning. Hinckleigh is furious over the way I behaved today.”
Something in her intonation took away all his animus against Hinckleigh. Besides, there was the way she had
