At last:
“Let’s have a cup of tea,” I said, and rang the bell for Rogers.
She murmured composedly that that would be lovely. She was not upset, or noticeably so. Girls are so much stronger than men are in many ways; that night she sat and talked about this quietly, restrained. And her case was quite clear. She would not bind me with a marriage—that was how she looked at it—till we had lived together for a time.
“People don’t see things right when they’re in love,” she said, a little sadly. “I know.”
Rogers brought the tea, and we sat and drank it as if this evening had been ordinary. I could see no way out of this impasse except with time; in a few days I thought perhaps she’d change her mind, and I could bring her to my point of view. And so when we had drunk our tea I raised her to her feet, and said:
“My dear, I’m not going to worry you, or cag about this any more. Let’s go to bed—and I mean go to bed alone, too.” She smiled at that. “We’ll argue this out later, when this other thing’s all straightened up. But till then, I want you to know that I love you. That … that’s all.”
She took my hand and kissed the back of it. “I don’t know what to say … ” she said at last, very softly. And so we stood like that together for a minute till I sent her up to bed.
Next morning I reviewed the situation as I dressed. Stenning was coming down, and would be with me by the afternoon. By the afternoon I expected to hear something of Norman and Billy; I rang up Fedden after breakfast, and found that he did not know when they were likely to arrive. He thought not till nightfall perhaps. He had all arrangements in hand, so that there was plenty of time.
As regards Mollie, there was nothing I could do till this thing was cleared up. I did not think she would go back up North; we had this common ground, at any rate, that it was better for us both to be together. I thought that if I left things for a day or two till the immediate rush of this affair was over it would give her time to think about it, and I hoped that then I should be able to persuade her to my point of view.
If not—well, I should have to come to hers. At the end of our honeymoon, I thought, she’d probably agree to marry me.…
I went down to the yard that day and took Mollie with me in the car. They were getting Irene up on the patent slip when I got there; we stood and watched them till the vessel slowly slid up out of the water on the traveller. Mollie was amazed.
“She’s ever such a size underneath the water, isn’t she?” she remarked. “You’d never think!”
I gave instructions for them to start on scraping her; there was nothing the matter with her seams. Then I put Sixpence in a pram and she went paddling around the harbour, while I went into the office and went through my letters; an hour later I went round the yard and had a look at the Sweet Anna’s rudder with old Sammy Gore. His pintles were all right, to his regret I think, but he succeeded in wheedling a lot of unnecessary running gear out of me, and a new stove for the galley.
That took me all the morning. Coming off on to the quay I looked about for Sixpence, and saw the pram alongside Runagate. I took the quay punt and went off to her; she put her head up from the forecastle hatch as I came up alongside. “I’ve been looking at the boat,” she informed me. “It is funny in this little cooking place.”
I dropped down through the hatch beside her in the forecastle. “There’s plenty of room to cook sitting down,” I said. “And anyway, you can reach everything.”
She stared round. “It’s sort of cosy,” she remarked at last. “I never knew ships were like this inside.” She stared through at the bulkheads of the saloon. “All this polished wood.…”
We went up through the forehatch and sat upon the bitts for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette. “It’s ever so lovely here,” she said at last. “The ships, and things.”
I blew a cloud, and laughed at her. “You’d better stay here, then,” I said. “It’s up to you!”
She laughed with me. “You must think me ever so soft,” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t.”
She said: “Don’t let’s talk about it now.” And a little later on she said: “It would be lovely to live here, with the ships and the seabirds, and all.” She turned to me: “Do you know, I feel as if I’d lived here all my life, and my father and mother and all before. Just as if I’d been brought up here.…” She sat there staring up the river. “As if I knew what was up there, round the bend, with the river and the sea-shore in the middle of the land, like.”
I nodded slowly. “I expect you do,” I said absently. I knew just what she meant. Where a long estuary runs into the land, an estuary with a rocky bottom, you do get just what she had spoken of—the sea-shore in the middle of the land. Little sandy beaches all among the hayfields and the woods. She knew it all, and yet I had not taken her up there.
We went ashore and got into the car, and drove up to the house. And as we went indoors she said to me:
“Is Lady Stenning coming down this afternoon?”
I shook my head. “Just Philip. Why?”
She turned away. “I think I’d like to have a talk with her,” she said quietly. “She was ever so nice to me.”
I took her hand and smiled at her. “My dear,” I said, “don’t worry about it now. Leave it for a couple of days till this other thing has quieted down, and then we’ll have a talk about it, and you can see her and hear what she has to say.”
“All right,” she said, “if that’s the best.”
I rang up Fedden after lunch and had a talk with him. He told me that Norman was coming down that night with Gordon, in readiness for the events of the following day. He said that they would not arrive till after dark—he thought about eleven o’clock at night. There were to be considerable movements of police in preparation for the landing, and it had been arranged that these movements should take place at night, to obviate the risk of a leakage of information. He asked if Gordon might remain in my house for the time being. He suggested that he should be brought straight there that night.
I said that that would be agreeable to me, and I mentioned to him that Stenning was coming down. I asked him what he wanted done about the tug.
He replied that he could not say definitely what the plans would be till he had had a talk with Norman. Could we arrange about the tug that night, after Norman came?
I frowned. “You mean to-night—after eleven o’clock?”
He said that they would probably be working all night. He had been up most of the previous night, and was going to snatch a little sleep after tea, if possible.
“All right,” I said. “You’d better come up here with him when you send Gordon. You’d better all come up, and talk about it here. You’ve got to bring up Gordon, anyway.”
“That’s very good of you,” he said.
“Not at all. I’ll expect you about half-past eleven, or some time like that?”
He agreed that that would be about the time, and I rang off.
I remember glancing at the barograph as I set down the telephone. It had gone down again and this time rather sharply: in the Range an on-shore wind was getting up.
Stenning arrived a little later in the afternoon, and I took him down to see his vessel on the slip. That was the ostensible purpose of his visit, and I thought it was as well that it should be carried out in full. As we pottered about the yard I told him all that had been going on; I found him intensely interested. He was worried that I had asked the police up to my house, that I had offered to take in Gordon. I expostulated with him over that, and he listened patiently to what I had to say.
“I see your point,” he said at last. “It’s probably as well to have Gordon. But if the police have got to have a meeting they should have it in their own place. I don’t see that you want them in your house particularly.”
We went up to the house and dined with Mollie, changing into dinner-jackets. She had been walking in the town that afternoon while we had been away, looking at the s
hops and exploring the streets and quays. She was especially intrigued by a crew of cadets that she had seen down on the water-front, sailing a Navy cutter. She thought they looked ever such nice boys.…
And afterwards she sang to us. We sat in the darkened library, Stenning in a chair beside the fire, and Mollie at the piano in a little pool of light. I sat over by her as she played and sang the lyrics that she knew, the dance songs that were folk tunes of the young. We made no pretence. It must have been quite obvious to Stenning that we were deeply in love; he sat apart and puffed at his cigar, and took but little notice of us at the other end of the room. Joan had probably been talking to him and he accepted us for what we may have been—a pair of silly fools behaving as if this had been our first calf love.
Presently she was tired of singing, and we went over to him by the fire. I ordered the whisky and her tea, and we sat drinking this together, chatting of ships and of the flights that he had made, and ventures that he hoped to make. We sat there for a long time talking in that way, till at last we heard a car, and it was Fedden and his crowd.
I took them into the dining-room, as being more suitable for the meeting that we had to hold. I had had a few sandwiches and whisky placed upon the table, and a writing-pad. The room was brightly lit. The curtains were drawn over the east window looking out over the harbour mouth, but the alcove with the oriel north window was uncurtained. That window looks out on to the north lawn.
There was Fedden and Norman and a police superintendent that they had brought with them, Gordon, and Mollie, and myself, and Stenning. We started the proceedings with a drink, standing beside the table before sitting down. I was with Stenning and Norman, talking to Fedden; Mollie and her brother were a little way apart.
Till Norman put his glass down, and remarked: “I think we’d better get to work.”
CHAPTER XII
THAT finishes the story that I set out to write when I began this book. I started on it so that I could keep the memory of what were very happy days for me; by writing so far I have satisfied myself, and that is all that I set out to do. There is nothing more that I would wish to tell or to remember. If I go on, it is because a job once started should be finished off; I would not leave the tag end of this story hanging in mid-air. In writing what remains I shall try to stick to facts and let the fancy go. Cold facts should not be difficult to put down.
Perhaps cold facts are harder than I thought. I have sat for a long time, and I am at a loss to convey in writing the great suddenness and violence of the shots. For they shot at us from the garden with an automatic gun, shot from the darkness into the bright radiance of the lighted room. We were so unprepared, so stupefied, when it began.
We were in the dining-room, all standing up and about to move forward to sit down round the table. Mollie and her brother were standing a little way apart from the rest of us, to our right as we stood facing the north window. It came so very suddenly. The first thing I can remember was the crash of broken glass, and the sharp clamour of the gun outside. In the frozen silence of the moment, broken only by the gun, I heard the bullets hit.
Eighteen bullets came into the room, not more than that, but in five seconds two of us were dying on the floor. I think the first shots missed. There was a low cry from Mollie as her brother threw her to the ground, and a sort of gasping as he spun around, tottering above her with the bullets pumping into him. Then as he fell they traversed; Stenning and I were down behind the table by that time, and Fedden went down with a bullet in the neck. The Superintendent was too slow, and fell, shot cleanly through the heart. A shot ripped Norman’s sleeve, but he got down unhurt.
In the infinite, stunned silence when the firing stopped, I remember Stenning said:
“Get these damned lights out!” But the switches were high up upon the wall, and nobody was fool enough to stand upright to turn them off. I crawled across towards Mollie, and as I went I saw Norman wriggle out through the service door into the kitchen quarters, and I saw Stenning creeping forward by the wall towards the broken window. I got to her and found her conscious on the floor, her eyes filled with pain. Her left shoulder was a mass of blood. “My dear,” I whispered, “is this all?”
She nodded slightly. “I do feel so sick.” She had gone very white. “But it’s all right. Please, see after Billy.”
I turned and bent over him without much hope, for I had seen men fall that way before. And while I was examining him the door moved open and the lights went out; Norman had come in from the back and thrust his hand through, well protected by the door.
The room was very dark. A little light came filtering through the shattered window, and a little breeze came into the room; outside, the wind was strong. Billy was dead. I laid the body down and crawled towards the other two. Fedden was unconscious and bleeding a good bit from the neck wound; I found the Superintendent dead.
A shadow darkened the window and I looked up in alarm, but it was Stenning getting out into the garden. In the hall I heard Norman’s voice upon the telephone, speaking quite quietly. “I want nine one, please—nine one. The police station. Will you hurry it? Yes.”
I could not but admire the courage of the man. He was audible all over the house, which was in complete darkness; he had pulled out the master switch. He could not have known what enemy was lurking within hearing; he sat there, tied to the telephone, a sitting shot for anyone who cared to shoot at him. In a minute I heard him speaking to the police station. Crouching over Mollie in the darkness, I knew that help was on the way.
I got up and moved out of the door to him, saying as I went in the darkness: “It’s Stevenson. Ring up eight two. That’s Dr. Dixon. Tell him to come here, and have the fire brigade ambulance brought up.”
I heard him start that call and ran upstairs to get some shirts for bandages. And as I came down to the hall again someone else came from the dining-room. It was Stenning, and he said:
“I saw them go. There were two of them, carrying one gun, on the north lawn. They went down through the fuzzy to your bathing beach. They’ve gone right down. You can put the lights on now.”
Norman said quickly: “Which way is that? There’s landing for a boat?”
Outside, the wind howled dolefully; it was getting up in earnest. Stenning nodded. “You can get a boat in there, but it’s a rotten night for it.”
Norman hesitated for a moment. “Get down to the beginning of the path and watch they don’t come up again,” he said. “I’ll join you when we get the men up here.”
He moved away and suddenly the lights came on again. Stenning went out into the night. I went through into the dining-room and found Norman bending critically over Fedden. “Give me a pad here, quick,” he said. “Have a look at the girl.”
I stooped by Mollie and began to strip her shoulder. The bullet had gone through, breaking her shoulder-blade; it was a clean wound in front and torn and ragged at the back. I remember that I thanked my stars that it was not more serious, and wondered, as I put a pad on it, whether or not old Fedden would pull through. It would be terrible if he died, I thought.
Mollie was quite awake, and in some pain. I moved her as little as I could, but I could not help hurting her a good deal. And when I had finished she whispered: “Please, Commander Stevenson. Is Billy dead?”
I remember that I thanked my stars I had not got to tell her that. “My dear,” I said, “I’m afraid so.”
She said no more, but lay there crying quietly. I glanced across at Norman working over Fedden, and asked him if he wanted help. He said he was all right, and where were those infernal police? And so I sat there holding her uninjured hand among the ruins of my blood-soaked dining-room, wiping away the tears that trickled from her eyes and doing what I could to comfort her.
And presently the room was full of people standing over us, Dixon, alert and competent, with a fellow from the fire brigade, and very many police. “Have a look at Fedden first,” I said. “He’s bad.”
Then there were stretch
ers and a clearing of the room; Norman had gone and there was a policeman at the door. And after what seemed many ages Dixon came across to me and said: “I think he’ll do all right. Now for the young lady.” And he stooped over her, undoing all my pads with his deft hands and talking in his best professional manner—he made a quick inspection—“That’s not very bad,” in cheerful manner, and began bandaging again with proper things. Finally he gave her a morphia injection, and they got her on to a stretcher and went out to the car. I followed it, and saw it move away.
Dixon lingered for a moment before following in his own car. “Fedden is serious, I’m afraid,” he said. “I don’t say critical, but serious. The girl is not so bad.”
Freed from anxiety I felt the anger rising in me in a slow, cold tide. “This girl,” I said bluntly. “She’s all I’ve got. Ought I to stay near her?”
He looked at me curiously. “I don’t think she’s in any danger,” he remarked; “although, of course, there’ll be some pain. There will probably be a disability in some degree, more or less permanent. Why—are you thinking of going away?”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I only know that two men have been murdered in my house to-night.”
He turned briskly to the door. “The girl should be all right if things go normally,” he said. “I am more concerned for Fedden than for her.”
He went off in his car to follow up the ambulance, a fine, competent fellow and a man that one could trust. I turned back to the hall, and there was Norman with Stenning by his side, and a police official of some sort.
Stenning said: “They got away. They’ve got a vessel in the Range. They went out in a dinghy, sculling.” He said that a rift in the clouds had shown them that much from the top of the cliff.
Norman said grimly: “They’ve arrived a day before their time—and they were warned. That fellow Palmer has been wise to all that we’ve been doing here.” He turned. “I must get off. We’ll warn the ports all up and down the Channel. They can’t get away.”