第 15 页

good observation point on the edge of the golf-course. There I had

a view of the line of turf along the cliff top, with seats placed at

intervals, and the little square plots, railed in and planted with

bushes, whence the staircases descended to the beach. I saw Trafalgar

Lodge very plainly, a red-brick villa with a veranda, a tennis

lawn behind, and in front the ordinary seaside flower-garden full of

marguerites and scraggy geraniums. There was a flagstaff from

which an enormous Union Jack hung limply in the still air.

Presently I observed someone leave the house and saunter along

the cliff. When I got my glasses on him I saw it was an old man,

wearing white flannel trousers, a blue serge jacket, and a straw hat.

He carried field-glasses and a newspaper, and sat down on one of

the iron seats and began to read. Sometimes he would lay down the

paper and turn his glasses on the sea. He looked for a long time at

the destroyer. I watched him for half an hour, till he got up and

went back to the house for his luncheon, when I returned to the

hotel for mine.

I wasn't feeling very confident. This decent common-place dwelling

was not what I had expected. The man might be the bald

archaeologist of that horrible moorland farm, or he might not. He

was exactly the kind of satisfied old bird you will find in every

suburb and every holiday place. If you wanted a type of the perfectly

harmless person you would probably pitch on that.

But after lunch, as I sat in the hotel porch, I perked up, for I saw

the thing I had hoped for and had dreaded to miss. A yacht came

up from the south and dropped anchor pretty well opposite the

Ruff. She seemed about a hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she

belonged to the Squadron from the white ensign. So Scaife and I

went down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an afternoon's fishing.

I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon. We caught between us

about twenty pounds of cod and lythe, and out in that dancing blue

sea I took a cheerier view of things. Above the white cliffs of the

Ruff I saw the green and red of the villas, and especially the great

flagstaff of Trafalgar Lodge. About four o'clock, when we had

fished enough, I made the boatman row us round the yacht, which

lay like a delicate white bird, ready at a moment to flee. Scaife said

she must be a fast boat for her build, and that she was pretty

heavily engined.

Her name was the ARIADNE, as I discovered from the cap of one of

the men who was polishing brasswork. I spoke to him, and got an

answer in the soft dialect of Essex. Another hand that came along

passed me the time of day in an unmistakable English tongue. Our

boatman had an argument with one of them about the weather, and

for a few minutes we lay on our oars close to the starboard bow.

Then the men suddenly disregarded us and bent their heads to

their work as an officer came along the deck. He was a pleasant,

clean-looking young fellow, and he put a question to us about our

fishing in very good English. But there could be no doubt about

him. His close-cropped head and the cut of his collar and tie never

came out of England.

That did something to reassure me, but as we rowed back to

Bradgate my obstinate doubts would not be dismissed. The thing that

worried me was the reflection that my enemies knew that I had got my

knowledge from Scudder, and it was Scudder who had given me the

clue to this place. If they knew that Scudder had this clue, would they

not be certain to change their plans? Too much depended on their

success for them to take any risks. The whole question was how much

they understood about Scudder's knowledge. I had talked confidently

last night about Germans always sticking to a scheme, but if they had

any suspicions that I was on their track they would be fools not to

cover it. I wondered if the man last night had seen that I recognized

him. Somehow I did not think he had, and to that I had clung. But the

whole business had never seemed so difficult as that afternoon when

by all calculations I should have been rejoicing in assured success.

In the hotel I met the commander of the destroyer, to whom

Scaife introduced me, and with whom I had a few words. Then I

thought I would put in an hour or two watching Trafalgar Lodge.

I found a place farther up the hill, in the garden of an empty

house. From there I had a full view of the court, on which two

figures were having a game of tennis. One was the old man, whom

I had already seen; the other was a younger fellow, wearing some

club colours in the scarf round his middle. They played with tremendous

zest, like two city gents who wanted hard exercise to open

their pores. You couldn't conceive a more innocent spectacle. They

shouted and laughed and stopped for drinks, when a maid brought

out two tankards on a salver. I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if

I was not the most immortal fool on earth. Mystery and darkness

had hung about the men who hunted me over the Scotch moor in

aeroplane and motor-car, and notably about that infernal antiquarian.

It was easy enough to connect those folk with the knife

that pinned Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the

world's peace. But here were two guileless citizens taking their

innocuous exercise, and soon about to go indoors to a humdrum

dinner, where they would talk of market prices and the last cricket

scores and the gossip of their native Surbiton. I had been making a

net to catch vultures and falcons, and lo and behold! two plump

thrushes had blundered into it.

Presently a third figure arrived, a young man on a bicycle, with a

bag of golf-clubs slung on his back. He strolled round to the tennis

lawn and was welcomed riotously by the players. Evidently they

were chaffing him, and their chaff sounded horribly English. Then

the plump man, mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief, announced

that he must have a tub. I heard his very words - 'I've got into

a proper lather,' he said. 'This will bring down my weight and

my handicap, Bob. I'll take you on tomorrow and give you a stroke a

hole.' You couldn't find anything much more English than that.

They all went into the house, and left me feeling a precious idiot.

I had been barking up the wrong tree this time. These men might

be acting; but if they were, where was their audience? They didn't

know I was sitting thirty yards off in a rhododendron. It was simply

impossible to believe that these three hearty fellows were anything

but what they seemed - three ordinary, game-playing, suburban

Englishmen, wearisome, if you like, but sordidly innocent.

And yet there were three of them; and one was old, and one was

plump, and one was lean and dark; and their house chimed in with

Scudder's notes; and half a mile off was lying a steam yacht with at

least one German officer. I thought of Karolides lying dead and all

Europe trembling on the edge of earthquake, and the men I had

left behind me in London who were waiting anxiously for the

events of the next hours. There was no doubt that hell was afoot

somewhere. The Black Stone had won, and if it survived this June

night would bank its winnings.

There seemed only one thing to do - go forward as if I had no

doubts, and if I was going to make a fool of myself to do it

handsomely. Never in my life have I faced a job with greater

disinclination. I would rather in my then mind have walked into a

den of anarchists, each with his Browning handy, or faced a charging

lion with a popgun, than enter that happy home of three

cheerful Englishmen and tell them that their game was up. How

they would laugh at me!

But suddenly I remembered a thing I once heard in Rhodesia

from old Peter Pienaar. I have quoted Peter already in this narrative.

He was the best scout I ever knew, and before he had turned

respectable he had been pretty often on the windy side of the law,

when he had been wanted badly by the authorities. Peter once

discussed with me the question of disguises, and he had a theory

which struck me at the time. He said, barring absolute certainties

like fingerprints, mere physical traits were very little use for

identification if the fugitive really knew his business. He laughed at

things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish follies. The

only thing that mattered was what Peter called 'atmosphere'.

If a man could get into perfectly different surroundings from

those in which he had been first observed, and - this is the important

part - really play up to these surroundings and behave as if

he had never been out of them, he would puzzle the cleverest

detectives on earth. And he used to tell a story of how he once

borrowed a black coat and went to church and shared the same

hymn-book with the man that was looking for him. If that man had

seen him in decent company before he would have recognized him;

but he had only seen him snuffing the lights in a public-house with

a revolver.

The recollection of Peter's talk gave me the first real comfort

that I had had that day. Peter had been a wise old bird, and these

fellows I was after were about the pick of the aviary. What if they

were playing Peter's game? A fool tries to look different: a clever

man looks the same and is different.

Again, there was that other maxim of Peter's which had helped

me when I had been a roadman. 'If you are playing a part, you

will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are

it.' That would explain the game of tennis. Those chaps didn't

need to act, they just turned a handle and passed into another

life, which came as naturally to them as the first. It sounds a

platitude, but Peter used to say that it was the big secret of all

the famous criminals.

It was now getting on for eight o'clock, and I went back and

saw Scaife to give him his instructions. I arranged with him how to

place his men, and then I went for a walk, for I didn't feel up to

any dinner. I went round the deserted golf-course, and then to a

point on the cliffs farther north beyond the line of the villas.

On the little trim newly-made roads I met people in flannels

coming back from tennis and the beach, and a coastguard from the

wireless station, and donkeys and pierrots padding homewards.

Out at sea in the blue dusk I saw lights appear on the ARIADNE and

on the destroyer away to the south, and beyond the Cock sands the

bigger lights of steamers making for the Thames. The whole scene

was so peaceful and ordinary that I got more dashed in spirits every

second. It took all my resolution to stroll towards Trafalgar Lodge

about half-past nine.

On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight of a

greyhound that was swinging along at a nursemaid's heels. He

reminded me of a dog I used to have in Rhodesia, and of the time

when I took him hunting with me in the Pali hills. We were after

rhebok, the dun kind, and I recollected how we had followed one

beast, and both he and I had clean lost it. A greyhound works by

sight, and my eyes are good enough, but that buck simply leaked

out of the landscape. Afterwards I found out how it managed it.

Against the grey rock of the kopjes it showed no more than a crow

against a thundercloud. It didn't need to run away; all it had to do

was to stand still and melt into the background.

Suddenly as these memories chased across my brain I thought of

my present case and applied the moral. The Black Stone didn't need

to bolt. They were quietly absorbed into the landscape. I was on

the right track, and I jammed that down in my mind and vowed

never to forget it. The last word was with Peter Pienaar.

Scaife's men would be posted now, but there was no sign of a

soul. The house stood as open as a market-place for anybody to

observe. A three-foot railing separated it from the cliff road; the

windows on the ground-floor were all open, and shaded lights and

the low sound of voices revealed where the occupants were finishing

dinner. Everything was as public and above-board as a charity

bazaar. Feeling the greatest fool on earth, I opened the gate and

rang the bell.

A man of my sort, who has travelled about the world in rough

places, gets on perfectly well with two classes, what you may call

the upper and the lower. He understands them and they understand

him. I was at home with herds and tramps and roadmen, and I was

sufficiently at my ease with people like Sir Walter and the men I

had met the night before. I can't explain why, but it is a fact. But

what fellows like me don't understand is the great comfortable,

satisfied middle-class world, the folk that live in villas and suburbs.

He doesn't know how they look at things, he doesn't understand

their conventions, and he is as shy of them as of a black mamba.

When a trim parlour-maid opened the door, I could hardly find my voice.

I asked for Mr Appleton, and was ushered in. My plan had been

to walk straight into the dining-room, and by a sudden appearance

wake in the men that start of recognition which would confirm my

theory. But when I found myself in that neat hall the place mastered

me. There were the golf-clubs and tennis-rackets, the straw hats

and caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walking-sticks, which

you will find in ten thousand British homes. A stack of neatly

folded coats and waterproofs covered the top of an old oak chest;

there was a grandfather clock ticking; and some polished brass

warming-pans on the walls, and a barometer, and a print of Chiltern

winning the St Leger. The place was as orthodox as an Anglican

church. When the maid asked me for my name I gave it automatically,

and was shown into the smoking-room, on the right side

of the hall.

That room was even worse. I hadn't time to examine it, but I

could see some framed group photographs above the mantelpiece,

and I could have sworn they were English public school or college.

I had only one glance, for I managed to pull myself together and go