No Man's Island Part 16

"Well, it seems to me we're not much for'arder."

"Quite a mistake. The issue is narrowed down. Clear our minds of the foreign menagerie and all that, and concentrate on Rush. That's the ticket."

Calling at the post office, he was handed a letter from his London friend, who reported that the sc.r.a.p of paper was torn from a copy of the _Pravda_. Only part of the date of issue was visible--the word June; and the incomplete paragraph of text appeared to relate to the high prices of perambulators.

"There you are," said Pratt. "Much cry and little wool. It proves nothing except that some one, some time or other, had a Russian newspaper, which was partly burnt along with other papers, no doubt equally uninteresting and unimportant. What we have to do is simply to weave a spider's web for Rush."

"You change your mind twice a day, and are c.o.c.k-sure every time,"

Warrender remarked.

"A clear proof that I ought to go in for politics, after all. I'm glad it's settled at last. Percy Pratt, M.P.--reverse 'em, you get P.M., Prime Minister; then Sir Percy, Bart.; Baron Pratt, Viscount, Earl--why not Duke while I'm about it? But do dukes play the banjo, I wonder?"

"You're better qualified for the part of Mad Hatter, I fancy. Come, let's step it out."

The evening of that day turned out rather cool and overcast. A breeze sprang up in the south-west, refres.h.i.+ng after the still heat. After early supper, Armstrong, declaring that he was getting flabby for want of exercise, set off in the dinghy for a pull down the river. Pratt thought it a good opportunity for testing Armstrong's report of the sounds he had heard in the cottage, and went off alone, leaving Warrender on guard at the camp.

He had not yet come within sight of the ruins when, above the rustle of the stirred leaves, a strange moaning broke upon his ear. He stopped to listen. While far more impressionable than Armstrong, he had solid musical knowledge which his schoolfellow lacked, and he was struck at once by an unusual quality in the sound he heard.

"That's not the wind in the eaves," he thought. "It's more like the whining of an organ pipe when a lazy blower is letting the wind out."

He hurried on. The sound rose and fell. For some moments it maintained a steady, pure organ note; then with rising pitch it became almost a shriek.

"I don't wonder the rustics are a bit scared," he thought, "but no ghost could produce a tone like that--unless he'd been a cathedral alto in his lifetime. It's due, I expect, to some metal chimney-pot that's got displaced and partly closed. Wonder if I can find it?"

He entered the ruins, and ran up the staircase. A roseate twilight suffused the western sky. Led by the persistent sound, he came to the unroofed room facing the west. The moaning proceeded from some spot above his head. He tried to clamber up the ma.s.s of broken masonry that littered the floor, but found that he could not gain the level of the roof except by climbing the jagged brickwork of the broken wall, a feat too perilous in the half light.

"That's the worst of being fat," he said to himself. "I believe Armstrong could do it."

Leaving the room presently, he went idly, without definite motive, into the second room, facing east and overlooking the river and his uncle's grounds. In this direction dusk was already deepening into night; the nearer trees were still distinguishable, but beyond the river all individual objects were blurred by the darkness.

He sat on the paneless window-sill, listening to the strange sound from above, looking out towards the Red House, wondering whereabouts in the wide world his uncle was travelling. All at once, far away, almost on a level with his eyes, he thought he saw a faint red glow. It disappeared in a moment--so quickly that it seemed an illusion. But there it was again, indubitably some small luminous body. "Some one with a lamp in one of the top rooms of the Red House," he thought. Again it disappeared, only to show again after an interval--a third time--a fourth.

To Pratt these phenomena were at first merely sensations of sight, not perceptions of intelligence. But by and by he was struck by the fact that the glow always appeared at the same spot, not here and there, like a lamp carried by a person moving about a room. Then he found himself mentally measuring the intervals between its appearances, expecting their occurrence as regularly as the beats of a striking clock. It was with surprise and a sort of disappointment that he discovered that the intervals were irregular, and with curiosity, after a while, that they were regular and irregular both, as it seemed, fitfully; the glow appeared two or three times at equal intervals, then the intervals became shorter or longer. "Signals, of course," he thought, when the impression of order and purpose became fixed in him. "Who is it? Where is it? What's the game?"

The alternations continued for several minutes, then finally ceased.

Pratt got up, left the ruins, and made his way with some difficulty back to camp.

"Armstrong back?" he asked.

"Not yet," replied Warrender. "Time he was. This is the darkest evening we've had. See any one?"

"Not a soul. All quiet here?"

"Absolute peace. _You_ weren't here."

"Thanks. Glad you missed me. Will the sweet, melodious strains of my gentle banjo disturb your serenity?"

"Not a bit. Strum away. But hadn't you better turn in? It's past nine. Old Jack won't get much sleep before second watch if he isn't here soon; no reason why you shouldn't have your full whack, especially after last night's affair."

"I'll stay up till he comes."

Pratt softly thrummed his strings, musing on his discoveries. Half-past nine came; ten o'clock.

"I say, what's happened to Armstrong?" said Warrender. "Surely he hasn't been carried out to sea? Come and help me shove off; I'll run down and see if I can find him. You won't turn in, so you won't mind taking part of my watch."

"Righto! But I dare say Jack's enjoying himself."

They were just about to launch the motor-boat when they caught the dull sound of oars in the distance. They waited. The rising moon struggled through the rack, and cast a faint light on the stream. Presently the dinghy appeared from among the overarching foliage. Armstrong was sculling very quietly.

"Thought you were lost," said Warrender. "It's past ten; your watch starts at eleven-forty."

"All right. Pratt, tie up, will you? Come with me, Warrender."

Armstrong led the way at a long, rapid stride across the clearing and into the thicket. He said nothing, and did not pause until he came to the sh.o.r.e of the western channel.

"Keep well behind this tree," he said, in a whisper, placing himself in shadow.

In a few minutes they heard the splash of oars. A boat emerged from the shades down stream, lit up fitfully by the transient moonbeams. It pa.s.sed close beneath their hiding-place. It held a single oarsman, whose thickset frame would have been unmistakable even if the moonlight had not touched his face. He pulled out of sight.

"What's he been up to?" said Warrender.

"Let's get back," replied Armstrong. "I wanted a second witness. Pratt will wish to start a new career now, I expect."

CHAPTER XII

QUEER FISH

When Armstrong had started in the dinghy for a pull down the river his intention was to scull easily on the current to the mouth, then to turn westward, and exercise his muscles more strenuously in a contest with the wind. On reaching the coastline, however, he found that there was much more force in the breeze than had appeared inland, and a considerable swell on the sea, and he contented himself with hugging the sh.o.r.e, protected in some measure by the cliffs that swept round to a promontory in the distance.

After a stiff pull for half an hour or so he turned. The last faint radiance of sunset was behind him, and as he approached the river mouth, being himself shadowed by the cliffs, he noticed signs of activity about the fisher's hut on the beach beyond the farther bank. Two men were carrying what appeared to be fis.h.i.+ng gear down to a boat at the water's edge. The weather seemed scarcely to promise good fis.h.i.+ng, and, knowing from his friends that the hut was in the occupation, if not the possession, of Rush, he was sufficiently interested to decide upon watching the men's proceedings. He pulled a little more closely insh.o.r.e, s.h.i.+pped his oars, and lay to under cover of a ma.s.s of rock.

In a few minutes the men got aboard the boat, and pulled out to sea in the direction of a small tramp steamer which was just visible on the eastern horizon, and, as the trail of smoke from its funnel showed, was coming down channel. It seemed to Armstrong a good opportunity for examining the hut; possibly he might find there some clue to Rush's mysterious activities. a.s.sured that under the shadow of the cliffs he would be invisible to the boatmen, he pulled across to the opposite beach, and ran the dinghy ash.o.r.e in a small, sheltered cove two or three hundred yards from the hut. Leaving the boat high and dry, he made his way back along the beach at the foot of the cliffs, and approached the hut, which stood on a rocky platform above high-water mark. As he neared it he was careful to keep it between himself and the boat at sea; Rush, if he were one of the two, was probably long-sighted.

By the time he reached the hut the boat was nearly a mile out, and the men appeared to be letting down a net. He slipped in through the open door, and threw a glance round the interior, seizing the last moments of twilight for his rapid scrutiny. He saw, as might have been expected, the usual fisherman's gear: old nets, lobster pots, cork floats, a broken oar, part of a rudder, an old sou'wester, baskets, ropes--nothing that had any particular interest or significance. But, just as he was about to leave, he noticed in the darkest corner half a dozen tins strung by the handles upon a length of trailing rope. Their shape suggested paraffin or petrol rather than any material useful to fishers; yet they were not the common petrol cans; they were larger and wider-necked than those that held the ordinary motor-spirit. He lifted one; it was empty, but very firmly corked, as likewise were the others.

Armstrong took one of the cans, stretching the rope, towards the door, to examine it more closely in what was left of the twilight. On the shoulder, enclosed in a panel, was an embossed description, the characters reminding Armstrong of the printed letters of the Russian newspaper.

"Rummy," he thought. "Gradoff, judging by his name, is a Russian, and the only Russian hereabouts. Yet we find a Russian newspaper in the cellar, and Russian petrol tins in Rush's hut. Queer!"

He replaced the cans, and left the hut. As he did so he saw, out at sea, the steamer he had noticed as a distant smudge some twenty minutes before. No smoke was now pouring from her funnel; apparently she had stopped or slowed down some distance beyond the small boat. While he was watching, the vessel went ahead. The small boat rowed farther out; then appeared to beat about for a time; finally stopped, and from the movements of the figures Armstrong saw aboard, they were lifting something from the water. The steamer, meanwhile, was proceeding steadily on her course down channel.

The growing dusk had rendered it impossible for the watcher to discern anything clearly; steamer, boat, and men were merely indistinct shapes.

But the boat, without doubt, was the one that he had seen leave the beach; its movements were strange, and Armstrong decided to await its return. Who were its occupants? What was their errand? What were they bringing back with them?

The enlarging boat was evidently coming ash.o.r.e. Armstrong looked rapidly around, and spied, close to the hut, and, between that and his own boat, a ridge of rock that would give him cover. Posting himself there, he waited. The dusk deepened. Presently he heard the faint, slow, regular thuds of oars in the rowlocks, then low voices. He could now discern the boat as a dark patch on the white crests of the rollers. It came steadily in, grounded; the two men sprang into the surf. The tide was going out. They did not haul the boat up, but lifted from it the bundles of gear and carried them into the hut. But there was no fish.