AT THE BECKFOOT GATE
“If she only knew,” said Dorothea, “how dreadful everything’s going to be.”
More motor cars passed on the road below them.
“I simply must go down and see what’s happening,” said Dick.
“We won’t go out on the road at all,” said Dorothea. “We’ll go along through the trees, so that we can keep out of sight, and be near enough to the road to catch Nancy or Peggy if they’re on their way to our house.”
Twenty yards above the road they dodged through the hazel bushes and young birches. Below them was the fringe of larches and pines at the bottom of the wood. It would have been easier walking on the smooth carpet of brown needles, but not so safe. At the edge of the coppice, though all the time they had to be pushing branches out of their way, they had only to sit down and stay still to be invisible, while they themselves could see down between the tree trunks to the low wall and the road beyond it.
There was a tremendous noise of people talking near the Beckfoot gate, and every few minutes yet another car came along the road. Presently they could see a whole row of cars waiting.
“I’m not going any nearer,” said Dorothea.
Lurking low and looking down through the larches opposite the house they saw a shortish, stout man, with a hunting-horn on a sling about his shoulders, get into an open motor car and stand up on the seat. There was a sudden silence.
“That’s Colonel Jolys himself,” said Dorothea.
“I expect all those men are firefighters,” said Dick. “Or most of them. There’s Jacky, close to Colonel Jolys’s car.”
“Shut up, Dick. Listen. What’s he saying?”
The Colonel, for all that he was a smallish man, had a big, carrying voice.
“Now, men,” he boomed. “We want one chap to every fifty yards. Ten to a team. That’s five hundred yards a team. We start at the lake shore, and work up the woods to the fell. Each team leader sounds his horn from time to time so that we can keep in touch, and the moment she’s found the nearest leader gives a single long blast, as long as he can blow. Understand? Our usual coach calls to each other, and a single long blast when she’s found … like this …” He reached down into the car and took up a long, straight coach-horn, not like the curved hunting-horn he carried to signal to his men. He put it to his lips and blew … on … and on … and on.
“He’ll burst,” said Dick at last.
But the Colonel only got very red. He did not burst and even from where they were crouching, Dick and Dorothea could see that he was thinking he could still blow a good blast for his age.
“Off you go,” he shouted, after waiting a moment to get his breath. “Drop your men by numbers, fifty yards apart.”
There was a great noise of starting engines. One or two of the leaders blew their horns to call their teams together. Men were piling into the cars, and one after another the cars moved off.
“There’s Nancy,” said Dick. “And look how she’s dressed!”
“That’s to please the Great Aunt if they find her. … She’s getting into Colonel Jolys’s car … Peggy too … They aren’t coming up for us at all. We’d better go back. …”
“That blue car’s police,” said Dick. “I say, just look at the bloodhound. They’ll take it to the place where the car was left and start from there. There won’t be any need to look for tracks. Look. That policeman’s got a cloak or something. Hers, to give the bloodhound a taste of the right scent.”
“There’s Timothy, just come out of the gate. He’s talking to Colonel Jolys. He’s going, too.”
“No, he isn’t. They’re off. Timothy’s stopping behind. For fear of meeting her. It would be pretty awful if he did.”
Colonel Jolys’s car, with Nancy and Peggy sitting beside the Colonel, four men crammed into the back and two more standing on the running-boards, moved off, after the blue police car with the bloodhound. Another car, crowded with men, followed the Colonel’s. Carload after carload of men was getting underway. They saw that Jacky had managed to find a place.
“Why is Cook crying?” said Dick, seeing her standing at the Beckfoot gate, looking down the road and mopping her eyes with her apron.
Dorothea did not answer. Somehow seeing all those cars moving off to hunt for the Great Aunt made her own eyes inclined to blink … not for any reason, she told herself angrily, but she could not help it.
“I say,” said Dick, “I never saw Rattletrap.”
“Timothy’ll be going in that,” said Dorothea.
The last car was gone. They saw Timothy, talking to Cook, who turned and went in through the gate. Timothy, alone in the road, set off, almost at a run, in the opposite direction to that taken by the hunt.
“He’s going to our house,” said Dorothea. “Stop him.”
Dick plunged out of the hazels and raced along through the larches.
“Hullo!” he called quietly, and then again, a little louder.
Timothy stopped short, looked up and down the road, caught sight of Dick, jumped over the wall and came up into the wood to meet them. His eyes were tired. He had not shaved. He looked as if he had been up all night, as indeed he had, except for a few minutes when he had fallen asleep in a chair by the kitchen fire.
“Good,” he said. “No one’s seen you? I was just coming up to tell you what we think you’d better do. It’s like this. If we don’t find her where we think she is, in the wood at the side of the road, those lads will be hunting here, there and everywhere, and if they come on you, they’ll be asking questions. We don’t want to have to do any explaining to anybody if we can help it. I wish to goodness Nancy hadn’t … but it’s no good talking about that. I’m to blame, too …” He brushed a hand across his forehead. “Nancy meant well, and so did you, and it wouldn’t have mattered if nothing had gone wrong. But when there’s trouble it always means a whole lot of questions that otherwise wouldn’t be asked. You’re best out of the way. Yes. Yes. Nancy agrees.”
“Do you think Miss Turner’s all right?” asked Dorothea.
“Sure she is,” said Timothy. “Broken ankle, perhaps. Anything. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with her heart. That was what I was afraid of. She may have called on a friend and stayed the night. She may turn up at any minute. Don’t you worry about that. The main thing is, we’ve got to keep you out of her way. Out of everybody’s way. There really might be a bit to explain if she met you.”
“But where can we go?” asked Dorothea.
“There’s only one place where you’ll be sure of meeting nobody. You can slip down to your boat now. They’ve all gone the other way. Nobody about. Off you go. Get your boat and go and wait for me on Jim’s houseboat. Plenty of grub there. Everything but matches. Take a box with you. Key’s in the door. You slip out and away. Once you’re on the lake there’ll be no one to ask questions. Go along to the houseboat. … Take what you can put in a knapsack, so that you can doss down there if you have to. But go now. I’ll be along as soon as I can. I’ll see that anything you leave in that hut’s all right. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Dick.
“Yes,” said Dorothea.
“You see the one thing that mustn’t happen is for you to meet the old lady.”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ONE THING THAT MUSTN’T HAPPEN
THEY did exactly what they had been told. Dorothea packed their pyjamas and washing things and two boxes of matches into her knapsack, adding at the last moment one of her exercise books. Dick, in case they might not come back for some days, took his collecting box with the caterpillars in it, as well as the telescope, and Scarab’s flag, and Knight’s Sailing. Other things were hurriedly stowed in their suitcases. These they locked. Now and then, while they were packing, they heard the sound of distant horns. The hunt had begun. They took a last glance round to see if there was anything they had forgotten. They went out with the odd feeling of deserting an old home. Dick tied up the door with a bit of string, as it had been on t
he day they had first seen it.
“Of course anybody could get in at the window if they wanted,” said Dorothea.
“Or untie the string,” said Dick.
Not another word was said as the Picts left what had been their home for ten days, and hurried down the wood, and so to Scarab lying in her reedy harbour.
They poled her out into the lagoon, where Dick took the oars and rowed fast down the river. As they left the shelter of the trees and looked up across the lawn, Beckfoot might have been an empty house but for the curtains in the windows. They saw no one.
“Timothy’s gone after the others,” said Dick.
“Cook’s sobbing in the kitchen,” said Dorothea. “She’s thinking of Mrs Blackett and having to tell her what’s happened.”
“I think I could have got out of that window,” said Dick, “and she wouldn’t have seen me. But if I had I couldn’t have got in again after she shut it and we wouldn’t have had the things he wanted most.”
“Nothing’s going to matter now,” said Dorothea.
“If only she’d waited till she got to Harrogate,” said Dick.
“If she’s broken her ankle,” said Dorothea, “she’ll be here for ages, waiting till it mends.”
They passed the Beckfoot boathouse, with the faded skull and crossbones, and thirty yards further down the river saw Amazon, pulled up, where she had been left the day before.
“Nancy must be in an awful stew,” said Dick, “not to have come down and put her away.”
He rowed gloomily on until, out in the lake, with the sail to set, they forgot for a moment the troubles that were closing down on Picts and Martyrs alike. Dorothea fitted the rudder in its place and waited, ready to steer, while Dick pulled Scarab round till she was heading straight into the southerly wind. He had made everything ready before leaving harbour. He stowed his oars and seized the halliard. “Now,” he said, and hauled up the sail. “Keep her going on the port … no … the starboard tack. Slack out just a bit while I haul down the boom. Tighten it in again. She’s off.” He lowered the centreboard. “Good. That’s the best we’ve done yet. Now for the flag … I ought to have had it up before. …”
“Do you think we ought to have a flag?” said Dorothea, her mind flying back to what was happening on shore, and thinking, if they had a flag at all, that perhaps they ought to hoist it to half-mast.
“It’ll be awfully hard to sail without it,” said Dick. “The book says you ought to sail by the feel of the wind on your cheek, but I’m sure I can’t … not yet. And you can’t either.”
“We’ll have the flag,” said Dorothea. “Of course we can have it. We’re not supposed to have anything to do with Beckfoot. We’re just a boat, sailing on the lake.”
“Good,” said Dick, and set about bending the little flagstaff to the flag halliards. This was the only thing that did not go like clockwork. Somehow, while he was hauling it up, the flagstaff turned upside down, and then entangled itself at the masthead. He hauled it down again. “I ought to keep just a little strain downwards even while hauling it up,” he said to himself. “And it ought to go up steadily, not in jerks.” The second try came off all right, and the green beetle on its white ground blew merrily out above the top of the mast as if nothing was the matter anywhere in the world. Dick made a neat coil of the end of the main halliard, arranged the oars on each side, with their blades meeting in the bows, and turned to take the tiller.
At the sight of Dorothea’s earnest face, watching the sail to see that it was full, watching the flag to see that she was not sailing further off the wind than she needed, he changed his mind and sat down on the middle thwart on the windward side of the boat. Dorothea was doing very well, and the mate ought to be able to handle the ship as well as the captain.
The faraway noise of a horn startled them both. For some time they had heard nothing of the hunt. For a moment they thought the Great Aunt had been found. But they remembered there was to be a long blast for that, and this was a regular coach call. It was answered by another and yet another a long way down the lake, the firefighters signalling to each other. Then there was silence again.
“Look out, Dot. She’s right off the wind.”
“Sorry. Let’s go round.”
“All right.”
Dick looked critically at the swirl in the water where Scarab had come about, but he did not say anything.
That first tack had taken them across the lake to the opposite shore. With Dorothea steering, and thinking not only of the wind in the sail but also of the search for the Great Aunt, Scarab had not done as well as she might, and when they crossed the lake again they found themselves still quite near the Beckfoot promontory.
“You’d better take her for a bit,” said Dorothea.
Dick changed places with her.
“I’ll take fairly short tacks,” he said, “and we’ll keep along this side.”
“Not too near,” said Dorothea. “But let’s go near enough to see. There are lots of other boats about. We’re just one of them. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t go anywhere.”
So, zigzagging down the lake in the sunshine against an easy wind from the south, they watched for signs of the hunt. There was very little to be seen. Here and there, they saw men on the shore below the woods. Here and there, where the road ran close to the lake, they could see a waiting motor car. Sometimes they heard coach calls answering each other. But, if they had not known what was going on, they would never have guessed that anything out of the ordinary was happening. People in rowing boats, people in sailing yachts, were moving about the lake and hearing the horns on shore without dreaming that close by them men were searching, combing the countryside for a human being.
For a few moments they heard the barking of the bloodhound, but it stopped almost at once.
“Do bloodhounds bay when they’re following a scent?” asked Dorothea.
“I don’t see how they can when they’re sniffing,” said Dick.
“They probably do when they get excited,” said Dorothea.
They were between Long Island and the western shore when they heard the bloodhound again, much further down the lake.
“That’s not really baying,” said Dorothea. “Just barking. He hasn’t found anything.”
A horn sounded high up in the woods.
“She’ll never have gone right up there,” said Dick. “I’m sure they ought to have looked for footprints close to where they found the car. They must have started the bloodhound in the wrong place. I wish they’d let us come, too.”
“They couldn’t,” said Dorothea. “You heard what Timothy said. If we were with them when they found her, and she saw us talking to them, they’d have to explain, and they’d be done for, and she’d be horrible to Mrs Blackett, and the postman would get in a row, and Cook, and Jacky, and Timothy, and the doctor. But, oh, I do wish she was safely found.”
“She can’t have gone far,” said Dick.
“Jacky said they were going to drag the lake,” said Dorothea.
They came out on the further side of Long Island and, looking across the lake, could see the old blue houseboat lying in its sheltered bay.
“Don’t let’s go there just yet,” said Dick. Somehow, while sailing, things did not seem so bad. The moment they stopped, there would be nothing to do but think.
“There isn’t really any hurry,” said Dorothea, “now we’re on the lake. All that matters is for us to keep out of the way.”
They sailed on, tacking this way and that, now and again hearing horn answering horn in the steep woods below the fells.
“Dick,” said Dorothea at last, “perhaps we’d better go there and get unpacked. And I ought to get some food ready. He said we were to take anything we wanted.”
“We’ll sail again later,” said Dick.
“If she’s all right when they find her, Timothy’s sure to come straight home. He won’t want her to see him. We’d better have everything ready.”
Dick swun
g Scarab round, eased out the sheet, and set his course for Houseboat Bay and their new hiding place.
“We haven’t slept in a boat since we were sailing in Teasel,” said Dick.
“No,” said Dorothea, but not as if she were looking forward to it. Sleeping in a boat for fun was one thing, but sleeping in a boat because everything had gone wrong was quite another. While Dick was steering Scarab across the lake to Houseboat Bay, Dorothea was looking back at the opposite shore, and listening, listening for the long-drawn blast that was to be the signal that the hunt was ended and the Great Aunt found. She wondered if anybody had thought of having a stretcher ready.
Dick, doing his best to remember not to grip the tiller but to steer with his fingers, doing his best to find exactly how far to ease out the sheet, to have Scarab making the most of the wind, for a few happy minutes forgot the Great Aunt altogether. He did not speak till Scarab was coming into Houseboat Bay, and, sheltered a little by the southern point, was heeling less and moving slower. Then he said, “Dot, I’m going to try coming alongside like Nancy, without lowering the sail first.”
“Do you think you can do it without bumping?”
“I shall steer as if I was going under her stern,” said Dick, “and then turn into the wind till the sail flaps. She ought to stop right alongside. Will you be ready to fend off and catch hold of the ladder? Look out for the boom. It’ll swing in when we come head to wind.”
“All right,” said Dorothea.
“The thing is to know just when to turn,” said Dick, not to Dorothea but to himself.
It takes practice and a lot of confidence to sail a small boat straight at the stern of a big one and then turn at the last minute and come sliding up alongside within reach but without touching. Dick turned too soon.
“Never mind,” he said, “I’ll come round again and do it next shot.”
He sailed off to windward, brought Scarab round with a most successful gybe and headed for the houseboat to try again.
“Dick,” said Dorothea, “there’s someone on board.”