and the fugitive knew that another man was at High Garth. If instinct urged the man to run, cunning urged him to seek cover. A moment after Betty had turned from the window, the fugitive was lying flat on the rough ground among the dead heather and the dried bents. He lay there for some moments until he was satisfied that there was no immediate pursuit, then he raised his head just enough for him to see over the intervening ground. There was nobody on the fell between him and the enclosing wall of Fellcock, no one in the garden, no one at the windows. Satisfied of this, he began to crawl, very slowly, on his belly, his face close to the ground. He knew the background well and he-believed that if he could gain a hundred yards he could elude any pursuit. After the first hundred yards he crept into a cleft in the ground, it was deep enough to hide him from any observer save one who stood immediately above him. That cleft, he knew, continued up the fell side, getting deeper and deeper: it was the bed of a beck which had once run down the fell side from a spring higher up. The course of the beck had been diverted to fill the water tanks at Fellcock. Higher up, the cleft opened into a pit which had been scoured out over the course of centuries by the water which was collected on the ridge of the fell, flowed underground, and broke surface at the “well” or spring, whence the farmers of Fellcock had once watered their beasts and obtained their domestic supply. Since the beck had been diverted, there was a deep hole or pit and the cleft the fugitive followed led him directly to this hiding place. Again he risked a reconnaissance; he saw two men hurry out from High Garth and later he saw them carry Mr. Brough on a hurdle to Fellcock. Still later he saw one man go to a car, start it up, and turn off down the hillside in the direction of Greenbeck. There was another car standing there—Mr. Brough’s car, and for a moment the fugitive was sorely tempted to go and try to start it up. He was a skilled car thief and the lack of an ignition key did not bother him. He had a variety of ignition keys and substitutes for same in his own pockets and he could generally start up any old car without difficulty (modem cars were a different matter, but Mr. Brough’s car was very old). Although he toyed with the temptation of making off with the car, intelligence warned him against it—he was an intelligent fellow (that was why he was lying on the fell side under a blue sky instead of in a prison cell as many of his friends were at that moment). Intelligence reminded him that there was only the one road down to the valley, the road by Greenbeck and through Crossghyll, and that everybody on that road would know Mr. Brough’s car. Seeing a stranger driving it, they would assume the driver to be a thief. They might block the road with a tractor and drag him from the car. No, however tempting the thought of driving, the fugitive knew that it was safer to keep to the fell side. He could stay where he was, safely hidden, until evening, and then, when dusk fell, he could get to his feet and get a move on, and find a vehicle which would take him down from the heights of Bowland to the railway line. That would be a better bet than the old rattle-trap yonder which was known to everybody for miles. From his hiding place, the fugitive was able to see all the arrivals which had caused so much excitement in the neighbourhood. The constable on his motor bike, followed by Macdonald in his gleaming new Vauxhall. These two walked across to High Garth and shortly after a police car arrived, and Inspector Bord followed the two earlier arrivals: then came an ambulance and finally a mortuary van. . . . The fugitive saw these with a sinking heart: he was a cowardly fellow and he felt sick and chilled as he thought out the implications of all these comings and goings, but he was glad he hadn’t attempted to get away in Mr. Brough’s car.
“The road’s lousy with police,” he thought, and wondered if the fell side would shortly be too. Not that he bothered a great deal about an immediate search; he was too well concealed and he could see without being seen—an enormous advantage. If pursuit came his way he could crawl up the gully to the crest of the fell before anybody could reach him, and once over the top—well, he knew the ground and he counted on being able to get away, or to take cover in the gullys which sloped down to the next small valley. The fell side, which looked an unbroken stretch, covered with last year’s heather and grasses, was cut up by small ravines or ghylls, and offered a lot of excellent cover.
The fugitive stayed for a long while in his pit, comfortably aware of the crevices into which he could crawl if any pursuit occurred; he had known his hidey hole for a long time, and no one had ever found him once he had taken to this particular burrow. He watched until he saw the two men leave High Garth and then he risked creeping on. The sun was going down now, and soon the evening shadows would crop on. He hauled himself over the lip of the pit and crawled up one of the dry ravines to the ridge immediately above him. Beyond that there was a dip in the ground and beyond that dip the fell side rose again steadily to the ridge which formed the skyline to the south of Fellcock
