Читать книгу The Factory on the Cliff - A. G. Macdonell - Страница 5

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THE three men waited in the dark passage for a moment or two, and at last Snell said quietly: "I vote we stay indoors for the rest of the evening. There may be more of them waiting for us outside. What do you think it was?"

"A bomb, of course," answered Armstrong, "only it didn't go off."

"A very odd sort of bomb," said Templeton, "to make all that flash and no noise."

"Well, whatever it was," said Armstrong, "I am going to stay indoors. I think we've had a narrow squeak."

Next morning they examined the front of the hotel with the utmost care, but found nothing. There were no marks in the road or on the gravel path which led up to the hotel steps, either of a bomb exploding or failing to explode, or of an effort to remove tracks or traces. They finally dismissed the incident with the verdict that it was typical of Griffin's eccentricity to play an idiotic practical joke that had neither joke nor point.

"All the same," added Templeton, "there are a lot of funny things happening round here."

"Come on and play golf," said Armstrong impatiently to Snell; and the two men departed in the direction of the first tee, leaving Templeton to nurse his dislocated thumb and to occupy himself as best he could in the hotel.

He spent an hour carefully examining the visitors' book and the entries contained in it for the last few years. The names, as might have been expected, were mainly those of holidaymaking golfers like himself, for the hotel was famous in a small circle of Englishmen as a cheap and comfortable inn, near a little-known but first-class golf-course. There were, however, at intervals in the visitors' book, names that were obviously foreign. There were two Chinese names, for instance, and one that might have fitted the Oriental whom he had seen in the limousine car, and the name Alexandrovski appeared no fewer than eight times. Templeton casually asked the landlord about this "Alexandrovski" and found that he was an enthusiastic golfer who visited the hotel solely for the purpose of playing golf. He was hardly ever off the links, according to the landlord. It was a foreign sort of name but the man was English all right. Templeton made a note of the man's address which was in a fashionable square near the centre of London. He also made a complete list of the foreigners' names and addresses which occurred in the book on the off chance that they might have some bearing on the peculiar establishment on the cliffs.

Just before lunch a small motor-car drew up in front of the hotel and two strangers descended. Templeton, who was smoking a pipe by the steps, could not fail to notice the strong Irish accent in which they asked for rooms. They were both small men, with sharp eyes and an alert, determined manner. They appeared to know exactly what they wanted and the best way of getting it.

They sat by themselves at lunch and said not a word; afterwards, one of them retired upstairs while the other pulled an easy chair out to the front door and sat in the sun at the top of the hotel steps. He remained there, apparently without moving, until about five o'clock, when his companion came downstairs and took his place.

The day was fine and all the other golfers in the hotel were out on the links. The stranger who had been relieved from his post at the front door walked briskly through the public rooms of the hotel until he found George Templeton sitting alone in a corner of the smoking-room. In a few minutes a conversation had begun, of the light, disconnected sort that is common between two strangers in a hotel lounge. Templeton, however, had been so interested and excited by the curious recent incidents that he suspected everyone in the hotel and outside it of being engaged in some mysterious plot. He therefore treated the Irishman's advances with the utmost caution and said as little as possible.

"It's a long way from here to Wicklow," said the little man, to which proposition Templeton cautiously assented.

"You won't get many Irishmen up in these parts," went on the other, but this time Templeton declined to be drawn, and said nothing. "Though, I expect," pursued the other, almost to himself, "you would get a few in the Catholic College in Aberdeen or perhaps they come to Banffshire. There are a lot of Catholics up there, I am told."

Templeton said nothing, and the Irishman eyed him sharply.

"It's bad luck you should have come by your accident," he said. "It keeps you indoors, I suppose."

"Oh, I go out walking," said Templeton.

"Walking is a great sport for those that like it," said the Irishman. "I hate it."

"So do I."

"You haven't had much of a walk today, for instance," went on the little man. "Is this your normal day's exercise?"

"No, I have been unusually lazy today," admitted Templeton. "As a rule I go for at least an hour in the morning."

There was a pause, and then the Irishman said, "Is there much shooting up here? Grouse, I mean, and partridges, or whatever you have in this country?"

"I believe there are a few partridges," replied Templeton, "but I don't know. I'm not interested in shooting myself, and I don't believe I have handled a gun since I left the Army."

"Or a bomb?" said the Irishman swiftly, and Templeton started in spite of himself. The Irishman saw the start and instantly his alert manner subsided, and he lowered for the first time his sharp, bright little eyes. "I haven't seen a bomb myself," he went on easily, "since we signed the treaty and Ireland became a free country. Personally, I never want to see one again. Is there any fishing up here?"

Templeton was now watching the little man as closely as he had himself been watched.

"I don't know," he answered slowly. "I am a stranger to these parts like yourself."

"Fishing is a mighty good sport," said the Irishman. "I've done a lot of fishing at one time or another. Did you ever see a big, black Irishman, with broad shoulders and black eyebrows, staying in this hotel?"

"Never," said Templeton, without the quiver of an eyelid. He was determined not to be drawn again.

"You know a lot more than you pretend," said the other quietly, and then he leant forward and tapped the young Englishman on the knee. "Take my advice and keep out of this," he said. "You are a nice boy and I wouldn't like to see you come to harm."

"I don't know what you mean," said Templeton stiffly.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn, you," said the Irishman, getting up. "It's a bad business, and you ought to keep out of it. Do you remember what happened after the Treaty was signed?"

"No," said Templeton.

"Well, it was Irishman against Irishman then and you English kept out of it. I advise you to do the same now," and with that he left the room.

Templeton's bewilderment had increased during this peculiar interview. After thinking hard for a few minutes he determined to stroll down towards the golf-course in order to meet Snell and tell him what had happened. On the doorstep he found both the Irishmen standing silently looking out at the sea. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to him and the one who had spoken to him in the smoking-room looked at him as if he had never seen him. Templeton determined not to be cut, and he paused and said, "It's a fine evening." They paid no attention to him and with a shrug of his shoulders he passed on.

As it chanced, Snell was holing out on the last green as he approached the links, and as soon as he and Armstrong had paid their caddies, the three of them wandered back to the hotel, while Templeton recounted the story of the interview. The side-road from the links met the main road a few hundred yards from the hotel. On reaching the junction of the two roads, Templeton suddenly halted and pointed to a tall figure which was striding in front of him towards the inn. "And there's the big black Irishman, I'll swear that's his back," he said. "I think we had better tell him that there are friends of his looking for him."

They quickened their steps but were still a hundred yards behind him when he turned into the little enclosure which served as a front garden. The figures of the other two Irishmen were standing on the steps as Templeton had left them. As the tall man entered the garden the two men on the top of the steps simultaneously whipped out pistols and let loose a fusillade of shots. The tall man crumpled up and fell forward in a heap on the gravel.

Without an instant's delay, one of the attackers moved rapidly but without any sign of panic to their small motor-car which was standing in the road, while the other knelt over the body and deftly went through the pockets of the murdered man. Then in another second the two men were moving swiftly down the road in their car.

The whole drama had taken perhaps ten seconds. It was so sudden and unexpected that Templeton and his friends remained rooted to the spot for the brief interval that elapsed between the firing of the first shot and the sound of the small motor-car changing into second gear; then they sprang forward and ran to the assistance of the prostrate man. Pursuit of the car was out of the question. A single glance was sufficient for three ex-soldiers to realize that the man had been killed instantaneously. Windows were flung up in the hotel and anxious chambermaids peered out, while the landlord himself came, as rapidly as he could, round the outside of the hotel from the back entrance. In a few minutes the apparently deserted neighbourhood was peopled as if by magic with chauffeurs, golfers, caddies, hotel servants and casual passers-by.

Telephone messages were dispatched to the nearest police-station, and a doctor was found among the golfers. But the latter shook his head and said, after a quick examination: "It is not my business. It's a police affair."

The village constable arrived hot-foot on a bicycle and shook his head solemnly. He was not one of the traditional village policemen who are thirsting for glory and promotion, and who look upon a crime as a heaven-sent opportunity of proving their extraordinary abilities as a detective.

He was a quiet man, whose proudest boast was that in eighteen years' service in the force he had never arrested anyone, and only four times had he cautioned motorists for exceeding sixty miles an hour through the ten mile speed limit at the end of the village. His first action, therefore, was to telephone to the headquarters of the county constabulary, giving as full information as he could of the crime, and asking for assistance to be sent over as soon as possible.

It was past nine o'clock that evening when a fast motor arrived with the county officers. In the meantime, information about the small motor-car and a description of its occupants had been circulated to all police stations in the North-East of Scotland, and a keen and energetic watch was being kept.

There was no means of identifying the body of the dead man. The murderer had with amazing deftness made a clean sweep of any documents that he might have been carrying. His clothes were not marked.

Next morning the small motor-car in which the men had escaped was found abandoned in a field, and the farmer who lived in the neighbouring croft was able to tell the police that two days previously he had rented a large grass-field to a stranger, to be used as a landing-ground for an aeroplane. The aeroplane, said the farmer, had arrived the same afternoon, and he and his family had distinctly heard it leaving again late on the preceding night.

It subsequently turned out that people in Glasgow, Stranraer, and the northern parts of Ireland, had heard an aeroplane passing over during the night, and it was assumed that the two men had made good their escape into the fastnesses of Western Ireland. At any rate, nothing further was heard of them from that time on, and in spite of the most determined efforts by the police of the Irish Free State they vanished as completely as if they had never existed.

The murdered man was never identified. No one came forward to claim the considerable reward that was offered for his identification, and what was popularly called "The Irishmen's Battle" was ascribed to a personal vendetta such as used to flourish in Corsica, and such as English people assume still flourishes in Ireland.