I had not gone ten yards before I realized that there was somebody or something else in the thicket. There was a sound of plunging ahead of me, then the crack of a rotten log, then the noise of a falling stone. It might be a beast, but it struck me that no wild thing would move so awkwardly. Only human boots make that kind of clumsy slipping.
If this was somebody from Snaasen, what was he doing off the track? Could he be watching me? Well, I proposed to do a little stalking on my own account. I got down on all-fours and crawled in cover in the direction of the sound. It was very dark there, but I could see a faint light where the scrub thinned round the stream.
Soon I was at the edge of the yeasty water. The sounds had stopped, but suddenly they began again a little farther up, and there was a scuffle as if part of the bank had given way. The man, whoever he was, seemed to be trying to cross. That would be a dangerous thing to do, for the torrent was wide and very strong. I crawled a yard or two up-stream, and then in an open patch saw what was happening.
A fallen pine made a crazy bridge to a great rock, from which the rest of the current might conceivably be leaped. A man was kneeling on the trunk and beginning to move along it… But as I looked the rotten thing gave way and the next I saw he was struggling in the foam. It was all the matter of a fraction of a second, and before I knew I was leaning over the brink and clutching at an arm. I gripped it, braced one leg against a rock, and hauled the owner close into the edge out of the main current. He seemed to have taken no hurt, for he found a foothold, and scarcely needed my help to scramble up beside me.
Then to my surprise he went for me tooth and nail. It was like the assault of a wild beast, and its suddenness rolled me on my back. I felt hands on my throat, and grew angry, caught the wrists and wrenched them away. I flung a leg over his back and got uppermost, and after that he was at my mercy. He seemed to realize it, too, for he lay quite quiet and did not struggle.
‘What the devil do you mean?’ I said angrily. ‘You’d have been drowned but for me, and then you try to throttle me.’
I got out my torch and had a look at him. It was the figure of a slight young man, dressed in rough homespun such as Norwegian farm lads wear. His face was sallow and pinched, and decorated with the most preposterous wispish beard, and his hair was cut roughly as if with garden shears. The eyes that looked up at me were as scared and wild as a deer’s.
‘What the devil do you mean?’ I repeated, and then to my surprise he replied in English.
‘Let me up,’ he said, ‘I’m too tired to fight. I’ll go back with you.’
Light broke in on me.
‘Don’t you worry, old chap,’ I said soothingly. ‘You’re going back with me, but not to that infernal saeter. We’ve met before, you know. You’re Lord Mercot, and I saw you ride “Red Prince” last year at the “House” Grind.’
He was sitting up, staring at me like a ghost.
‘Who are you? Oh, for God’s sake, who are you?’
‘Hannay’s my name. I live at Fosse Manor in the Cotswolds. You once came to dine with us before the Heythrop Ball.’
‘Hannay!’ He repeated stumblingly – ‘I remember – I think – remember – remember Lady Hannay. Yes – and Fosse. It’s on the road between –’
He scrambled to his feet.
‘Oh, sir, get me away. He’s after me – the new devil with the long face, the man who first brought me here. I don’t know what has happened to me, but I’ve been mad a long time, and I’ve only got sane in the last days. Then I remembered – and I ran away. But they’re after me. Oh, quick, quick! Let’s hide.’
‘See here, my lad,’ I said, and I took out my pistol. ‘The first man that lays a hand on you I shoot, and I don’t miss. You’re as safe now as if you were at home. But this is no place to talk, and I’ve the devil of a lot to tell you. I’m going to take you down with me to my lodging in the valley. But they’re hunting you, so we’ve got to go cannily. Are you fit to walk? Well, do exactly as I tell you, and in an hour you’ll be having a long drink and looking up time-tables.’
I consider that journey back a creditable piece of piloting. The poor boy was underfed and shaking with excitement, but he stepped out gallantly, and obeyed me like a lamb. We kept off the track so as to muffle our steps in grass, and took every corner like scouts in a reconnaissance. We met Newhover coming back, but we heard him a long way off and were in good cover when he passed. He was hurrying as furiously as ever and I could hear his laboured breathing. After that we had a safe road over the meadow, but we crossed the bridge most circumspectly, making sure that there was no one in the landscape. About half-past one I pushed open Gaudian’s bedroom window, woke him, and begged him to forage for food and drink.
‘Did you get into Snaasen?’ he asked sleepily.
‘No, but I’ve found what we’ve been looking for. One of the three hostages is at the moment sitting on your cabin-box.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
I Return to Servitude
We fed Mercot with tinned meats and biscuits and bottled beer, and he ate like a famished schoolboy. The odd thing was that his terror had suddenly left him. I suppose the sight of me, which had linked him up definitely with his past, had made him feel a waif no more, and, once he was quite certain who he was, his natural courage returned. He got great comfort from looking at Gaudian, and indeed I could not imagine a better sedative than a sight of that kind, wise old face. I lent him pyjamas, rubbed him down to prevent a chill from his ducking, put him in my bed, and had the satisfaction of seeing him slip off at once into deep slumber.
Next morning Gaudian and I interviewed Peter Bojer and explained that a young English friend of ours had had an accident, while on a walking-tour, and might be with us for a day or two. It was not likely that Newhover would advertise his loss, and in any case Peter was no gossip, and Gaudian, who had known him for years, let him see that we wanted the fact of a guest being with us kept as quiet as possible. The boy slept till nearly midday, while I kept a watch on the road. Newhover appeared early, and went down to Merdal village where he spent the better part of the forenoon. He was probably making inquiries, but they were bound in his own interest to be discreet ones. Then he returned to Tryssil, and later I saw a dejected figure tramping up the Snaasen track. He may have thought that the body of the fugitive was in some pool of the torrent or being swirled down by the Skarso to the sea, and I imagined that that scarcely fitted in with his instructions.
When Mercot awoke at last and had his breakfast he looked a different lad. His eyes had lost their fright, and though he stuttered badly and seemed to have some trouble in collecting his wits, he had obviously taken hold of himself. His great desire was to get clean, and that took some doing, for he could not have had a bath for weeks. Then he wanted to borrow my razor and shave his beard, but I managed to prevent him in time, for I had been thinking the thing out, and I saw that that would never do. So far as I could see, he had recovered his memory, but there were still gaps in it; that is to say, he remembered all his past perfectly well till he left Oxford on February 17th, and he remembered the events of the last few days, but between the two points he was still hazy.
On returning to his rooms that February evening he had found a note about a horse he was trying to buy, an urgent note asking him to come round at once to certain stables. He had just time for this, before dressing for dinner, so he dashed out of the house – meeting nobody, as it chanced, on the stairs, and, as the night was foggy, being seen by no one in the streets. After that his memory was a blank. He had wakened in a room in London, which he thought was a nursing home, and had seen a doctor – I could picture that doctor – and had gone to sleep again. After that his recollection was. like a black night studded with little points of light which were physical sensations. He remembered being very cold and sometimes very tired, he recollected the smell of paraffin, and of mouldy hay, and of a treacly drink which made him sick. He remembered faces, too, a cross old woman who cursed him, a man who se
emed to be always laughing, and whose laugh he feared more than curses…
I suppose that Medina’s spell must have been wearing thin during these last days, and that the keeper, Jason, or whoever he was, could not revive it. For Mercot had begun to see Jason no longer as a terror but as an offence – an underbred young bounder whom he detested. And with this clearing of the foreground came a lightening of the background. He saw pictures of his life at Alcester, at first as purely objective things, but soon as in some way connected with himself. Then longing started, passionate longing for something which he knew was his own… It was a short step from that to the realization that he was Lord Mercot, though he happened to be clad like a tramp and was as dirty as a stoker. And then he proceeded to certain halting deductions. Something bad had happened to him: he was in a foreign land – which land he didn’t know: he was being ill-treated and kept prisoner; he must escape and get back to his old happy world. He thought of escape quite blindly, without any plan; if only he could get away from that accursed saeter, he would remember better, things would happen to him, things would come back to him.
Then Jason went and Newhover came, and Newhover drove him half crazy with fear, for the doctor’s face was in some extraordinary way mixed up with his confused memory of the gaps between the old world and the new. He was mad to escape now, but rather to escape from Newhover than to reach anywhere. He watched for his chance, and found it about eight o’clock the evening before, when the others in the house were at supper. Some instinct had led him towards Merdal. He had heard footsteps behind him and had taken to the thicket… I appeared, an enemy as he thought, and he had despairingly flung himself on me. Then I had spoken his name, and that fixed the wavering panorama of his memory. He ‘came to himself’ literally, and was now once more the undergraduate of Christ Church, rather shell-shocked and jumpy, but quite sane.
The question which worried me was whether the cure was complete, whether Newhover could act as Medina’s deputy and resurrect the spell. I did not believe that he could, but I wasn’t certain. Anyhow it had to be risked.
Mercot repeated his request for the loan of my razor. He was smoking a Turkish cigarette as if every whiff took him nearer Elysium. Badly shorn, ill-clad, and bearded as he was, he had still the ghost of the air of the well-to-do, sporting young man. He wanted to know when the steamer sailed, but there seemed no panic now in his impatience.
‘Look here,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you can start just yet. There’s a lot I want to tell you now you’re able to hear it.’
I gave him a rough summary of Macgillivray’s story, and the tale of the three hostages. I think he found it comforting to know that there were others in the same hole as himself. ‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘what a damnable business! And I’m the only one you’ve got on the track of. No word of the girl and the little boy?’
‘No word!’
‘Poor devils,’ he said, but I do not think he really took in the situation.
‘So you see how we are placed. Macgillivray’s round-up is fixed for the 10th of June. We daren’t release the hostages till the 9th, for otherwise the gang would suspect. They have everything ready, as I’ve told you, for their own liquidation. Also we can’t release one without the others, unless by the 9th of June we have given up hope of the others. Do you see what I mean?’
He didn’t. ‘All I want is to get home in double-quick time,’ he said.
‘I don’t wonder. But you must see that that is impossible, unless we chuck in our hand.’
He stared at me, and I saw fright beginning to return to his eyes.
‘Do you mean that you want me to go back to that bloody place?’
‘That’s what I mean. If you think it out, you’ll see it’s the only way. We must do nothing to spoil the chances of the other two. You’re a gentleman, and are bound to play the game.’
‘But I can’t,’ he cried. ‘Oh, my God, you can’t ask me to.’ There were tears in his voice, and his eyes were wild.
‘It’s a good deal to ask, but I know you will do it. There’s not a scrap of danger now, for you have got back your memory, and you know where you are. It’s up to you to play a game with your gaoler. He is the dupe now. You fill the part of the half-witted farm-boy and laugh at him all the time in your sleeve. Herr Gaudian will be waiting down here to keep an eye on you, and when the time is ripe – and it won’t be more than five weeks – I give you full permission to do anything you like with Dr Newhover.’
‘I can’t, I can’t,’ he wailed, and his jaw dropped like a scared child’s.
Then Gaudian spoke. ‘I think we had better leave the subject for the present. Lord Mercot will do precisely what he thinks right. You have sprung the thing on him too suddenly. I think it might be a good plan if you went for a walk, Hannay. Try the south side of the foss – there’s some very pretty scrambling to be had there.’
He spoke to me at the door. ‘The poor boy is all in pieces. You cannot ask him for a difficult decision when his nerves are still raw. Will you leave him with me? I have had some experience in dealing with such cases.’
When I got back for supper, after a climb which exercised every muscle in my body, I found Gaudian teaching Mercot a new patience game. We spent a very pleasant evening and I noticed that Gaudian led the talk to matters in which the boy could share, and made him speak of himself. We heard about his racing ambitions, his desire to ride in the Grand National, his hopes for his polo game. It appeared that he was destined for the Guards, but he was to be allowed a year’s travel when he left the ‘Varsity, and we planned out an itinerary for him. Gaudian, who had been almost everywhere in the world, told him of places in Asia where no tourist had ever been and where incredible sport was to be had in virgin forest, and I pitched him some yarns about those few districts of Africa which are still unspoiled. He got very keen, for he had a bit of the explorer in him, and asked modestly if we thought he could pull off certain plans we had suggested. We told him there was no doubt about it. ‘It’s not as tough a proposition as riding in the National,’ I said.
When we had put him to bed, Gaudian smiled as if well pleased. ‘He has begun to get back his confidence,’ he said.
He slept for twelve hours, and when he woke I had gone out, for I thought it better to leave him in Gaudian’s hands. I had to settle the business that day, for it was now the 27th. I walked down the fjord to Hauge, and told Johan to be ready to start next morning. I asked him about the weather, which was still cloudless, and he stared at the sky and sniffed, and thought it would hold for a day or two. ‘But rain is coming,’ he added, ‘and wind. The noise of the foss is too loud.’
When I returned Gaudian met me at the door. ‘The boy has recovered,’ he said. ‘He will speak to you himself. He is a brave boy and will do a hard task well.’
It was a rather shy and self-conscious Mercot that greeted me. ‘I’m afraid I behaved rather badly yesterday, sir. I was feeling a bit rattled, and I’m ashamed of myself, for I’ve always rather fancied my nerve.’
‘My dear chap,’ I said, ‘you’ve been through enough to crack the nerve of a buffalo.’
‘I want to say that of course I’ll do what you want. I must play the game by the others. That poor little boy! And I remember Miss Victor quite well – I once stayed in the same house with her. I’ll go back to the saeter when you give the word. Indeed, I’m rather looking forward to it. I promise to play the half-wit so that Dr Newhover will think me safe in the bag. All I ask is that you let me have my innings with him when the time comes. I’ve a biggish score to settle.’
‘Indeed I promise that. Look here, Mercot, if you don’t mind my saying it, I think you’re behaving uncommonly well. You’re a gallant fellow.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he said, blushing. ‘When do you want me to start? If it’s possible, I’d like another night in a decent bed.’
‘You shall have it. Early tomorrow morning we’ll accompany you to the prison door. You’ve got to gibber when you see
New-hover, and pretend not to be able to give any account of your doings. I leave you to put up a camouflage. The next five weeks will be infernally dull for you, but you must just shut your teeth and stick it out. Remember, Gaudian will be down here all the time and in touch with your friends, and when the day comes you will take your instructions from him. And, by the way, I’m going to leave you my pistol. I suppose you can keep it concealed, for Newhover is not likely to search your pockets. Don’t use it, of course, but it may be a comfort to you to know that you have it.’
He took it gladly. ‘Don’t be afraid I’ll use it. What I’m keeping for Newhover is the best hiding a man ever had. He’s a bit above my weight, but I don’t mind that.’
Very early next morning we woke Mercot, and, while the sky was turning from sapphire to turquoise, took our way through the hazy meadows and up the Snaasen track. We left it at the summit, and fetched a circuit round by the back of the saeter, but first we made Mercot roll in the thicket till he had a very grubby face and plenty of twigs and dust in his untidy hair. Then the two of us shook hands with him, found a lair in a patch of juniper, and watched him go forward.
A forlorn figure he looked in that cold half-light as he approached the saeter door. But he was acting his part splendidly, for he stumbled with fatigue, dropped heavily against the door, and beat on it feebly. It seemed a long time till it opened, and then he appeared to shrink back in terror. The old woman cried out shrilly to summon someone from within, and presently Newhover came out in a dressing-gown. He caught Mercot by the shoulder and shook him, and that valiant soul behaved exactly like a lunatic, shielding his head and squealing like a rabbit. Finally we saw him dragged indoors… It was horrible to leave him like that, but I comforted myself with the thought of what Newhover would be like in five weeks’ time.