“Ask that question in six weeks and it won’t need an answer,” I said. “If you’ll give me your attention for half an hour I am going to tell you a story.”
I can see yet that bright room with the deers’ heads and the old prints on the walls, Sir Harry standing restlessly on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself lying back in an arm-chair, speaking. I seemed to be another person, standing aside and listening to my own voice, and judging carefully the reliability of my tale. It was the first time I had ever told any one the exact truth, so far as I understood it, and it did me no end of good, for it straightened out the thing in my own mind. I blinked no detail. He heard all about Scudder, and the milkman, and the note-book, and my doings in Galloway. Presently he got very excited and walked up and down the hearthrug.
“So you see,” I concluded, “you have got here in your house the man that is wanted for the Portland Place murder. Your duty is to send your car for the police and give me up. I don’t think I’ll get very far. There’ll be an accident and I’ll have a knife in my ribs an hour or so after arrest. Nevertheless it’s your duty, as a law-abiding citizen. Perhaps in a month’s time you’ll be sorry, but you have no cause to think of that.”
He was looking at me with bright steady eyes. “What was your job in Rhodesia, Mr Hannay?” he asked.
“Mining engineer,” I said. “I’ve made my pile cleanly and I’ve had a good time in the making of it.”
“Not a profession that weakens the nerves, is it?”
I laughed. “Oh, as to that, my nerves are good enough.” I took down a hunting-knife from a stand on the wall, and did the old Mashona trick of tossing it and catching it in my lips. That wants a pretty steady heart.
He watched me with a smile. “I don’t want proofs. I may be an ass on the platform, but I can size up a man. You’re no murderer and you’re no fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth. I’m going to back you up. Now, what can I do?”
“First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I’ve got to get in touch with the Government people sometime before the 15th of June.”
He pulled his moustache. “That won’t help you. This is Foreign Office business, and my uncle would have nothing to do with it. Besides, you’d never convince him. No, I’ll go one better. I’ll write to the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office. He’s my godfather, and one of the best going. What do you want?”
He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation. The gist of it was that if a man called Twisdon (I thought I had better stick to that name) turned up before June 15th he was to entreat him kindly. He said Twisdon would prove his
“Good,” said Sir Harry. “That’s the proper style. By the way, you’ll find my godfather—his name’s Sir Walter Bullivant—down at his country cottage for Whitsuntide. It’s close to Artinswell on the Kennet. That’s done. Now, what’s the next thing?”
“You’re about my height. Lend me the oldest tweed suit you’ve got. Anything will do, so long as the colour is the opposite of the clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then show me a map of the neighbourhood and explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police come seeking me, just show them the car in the glen. If the other lot turn up, tell them I caught the south express after your meeting.”
He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off the remnants of my moustache, and got inside an ancient suit of what I believe is called heather mixture. The map gave me some notion of my whereabouts, and told me the two things I wanted to know—where the main railway to the south could be joined, and what were the wildest districts near at hand.
At two o’clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the smoking-room arm-chair, and led me blinking into the dark starry night. An old bicycle was found in a tool-shed and handed over to me.
“First turn to the right up by the long fir wood,” he enjoined. “By daybreak you’ll be well into the hills. Then I should pitch the machine into a bog and take to the moors on foot. You can put in a week among the shepherds, and be as safe as if you were in New Guinea.”
I pedalled diligently up the steep roads of hill gravel till the skies grew pale with morning. As the mists cleared before the sun, I found myself in a wide green world with glens falling on every side and a far-away blue horizon. Here, at any rate, I could get early news of my enemies.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman
I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position.
Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance. To left and right were round-shouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south—that is, the left hand—there was a glimpse of high heathery mountains, which I remembered from the map as the big knot of hill which I had chosen for my sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a huge upland country, and could see everything moving for miles. In the meadows below the road half a mile back a cottage smoked, but it was the only sign of human life. Otherwise there was only the calling of plovers and the tinkling of little streams.
It was now about seven o’clock, and as I waited I heard once again that ominous beat in the air. Then I realized that my vantage-ground might be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald green places.
I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder. Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the east. It was flying high, but as I looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle round the knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the observer on board caught sight of me. I could see one of the two occupants examining me through glasses.
Suddenly it began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I knew it was speeding eastward again till it became a speck in the blue morning.
That made me do some savage thinking. My enemies had located me, and the next thing would be a cordon round me. I didn’t know what force they could command, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The
