It struck me at once that he was even more wary and more reticent than before, but I was determined to extract some information.
"I have been guarding you against the Germans! Last night I patrolled your coast!" I informed him with great enthusiasm.
He looked at me rather curiously, I thought.
"Did ye see anything?" he enquired.
"I thought I did, but ach! how can one be sure in the dark?"
"It"s no easy," he agreed.
"Then you have tried too, my friend?"
"Ay," he admitted, splashing on the paint.
"Were any of your family patrolling last night?"
"No," said he curtly.
"Who was guarding this part here?" I asked.
"I dinna ken."
I wondered, but I saw that there was not much more to be learned here. He had denied that any of his household were out, for what that was worth, and at that I bade him good morning and turned back.
I fell to walking more and more slowly and at last I stopped and decided to accompany my thoughts with a little lunch. The boundary wall at this point ran close to the edge of the rocks and was rather higher than usual. I thought for a moment of sitting down and lunching under its lee, and then I noticed that it was very loosely built of large beach boulders and that the off sh.o.r.e breeze was whistling through it like a sieve; so I decided to descend to the sheltered beach and lunch there. That decision saved my life.
I clambered down, chose a rock to sit behind, and was just putting my hand in my pocket for my packet of sandwiches, when "Crack!"--something whistled close to my head and smacked against a ledge behind me. "Crack!"
again, and the smack this time resounded from the rock beside me. At the third "Crack!" I was flat on my face behind that rock and my hand was in another pocket. It brought out something more to the point than sandwiches.
I had a pretty good idea by this time where the shots were coming from and I risked a quick rise of my head to make quite sure. I just had time to see a flash through one of the holes in the wall and down went my head again as a bullet smacked once more upon the ledge behind. Yet another shot followed and seemed to miss everything, for I heard no sound of lead on stone, and then up went my head and hand together and I was covering that bit of wall with my own revolver. I saw that my enemy was no very dead shot and I meant to risk his fire and snap at the flash through the wall. I knew I could get quite near enough his peep hole to startle him, and after I had sprinkled the near neighbourhood of that aperture for five or six seconds I thought it probably odds against his keeping his head sufficiently to do much aiming. To be quite candid I must confess that it was a soothing sensation to feel I was the better man with a gun, and that I should have been in a proper fright if it had been the other way about. One hears a good deal of discussion on the quality of courage nowadays, and there is my own small contribution.
The seconds pa.s.sed, my finger on the trigger and my eyes glued to the largest crevice I could spy in that wall, but there was never another flash or crack. And then it suddenly struck me that the man might be moving down the wall to get a shot at me from another angle. As usual I acted on impulse, and this time I think correctly. Scarcely had the thought struck me than I was up and rushing forward to the shelter of the gra.s.s bank where the rocks began. There, quite safe but rather cramped, I crept along parallel to the wall for about a hundred yards. And then I jumped up, charged the wall, and brought half of it down as I hurled myself over. As my feet touched the ground I looked in both directions, very nearly simultaneously, and saw--nothing.
Whether in that first instant I was more disappointed or relieved, I should be afraid to say, but as soon as I had had a few seconds to think, my one feeling was disgust that the fellow had given me the slip. I took to my heels and ran along that wall first in one direction and then in the other, but there was not a sign of a living creature. And the sickening thing was that by this time he might have done one of several things--headed away from the sh.o.r.e at top speed as soon as he ceased firing, in which case he would be far enough by now, or lain down in one of the several fields of corn near by, or crossed the wall further along and hidden among the rocks; and it was quite impossible to guess which. I pondered over the problem for a few moments and then decided that as it was perfectly hopeless to search the corn or the beach I would risk it and hasten inland on the off chance of getting a clue, so I chose a gra.s.s field and set off across it at a trot.
The ground rose for about fifty yards and then fell sharply, and as I topped this rise I came right on to a familiar figure. It was my friend Jock and he seemed unusually excited; almost, in fact, intelligent.
"Stranger!" he gabbled, pointing in the direction I was going. "Jock seen stranger!"
I followed his dirty finger and a couple of hundred yards or so ahead I spied a figure strolling along a by road, rather ostentatiously strolling, it seemed to me.
"Thank you, Jock," said I, "you"re a good man! Here"s your half crown!"
I dropped to a walk now and by the time the stranger and I met I think I looked about as cool as he did. It was Mr. O"Brien, as I had guessed at the first glance.
"Been for a walk?" he enquired.
"Having a stroll along the sh.o.r.e," said I.
He started a little and looked at me hard.
"Hullo!" said he, "I could have sworn you talked like a foreigner the last and first time I had the honour of meeting you. Were we both sober, do you think?"
I in turn looked at the man keenly. If his surprise was not genuine, it was as good a bit of acting as I ever saw, on or off the stage, and it was exactly the most disarming thing he could possibly say. Indeed it turned the tables on me completely and it was I who was now left in the position of having something awkward to explain away.
"It must have been the weather," I said lightly, "I"m never drunk before lunch;"
"And be d.a.m.ned if I get the chance at any time of day! You"ve heard of my sad complaint, eh?"
"No," said I, "I"m afraid I haven"t. Nothing infectious?"
He gave one of his unpleasant hoots of laughter.
"Lord, you think I"m a respectable member of society then? Good for you, keep on thinking it--but you"ll have to keep away from my friends!"
"It takes me all my time to keep clear of my own," said I.
His narrow eyes seemed to approve of me.
"You"re not Irish?" he enquired.
"No; I"ve enough to answer for without that."
"You ought to be," said he. "You"ve got some wit. d.a.m.n the English, and double-d.a.m.n the Scotch! Well we"re evidently both going in the other direction, so good-bye to you!"
What was I to make of this? What was to be thought of the whole morning"s adventure? Only one thing was perfectly clear to me: that I had a very dangerous, very determined, and very artful enemy in this island--or, almost certainly, several enemies, and that instead of the hunter I had become the hunted. They might fear me but they certainly did not fear to attack me whether by day or night. Had I sat down behind that trellis-like wall as I intended, I shivered a little to think of my fate.
I should have been shot at twelve inches range, and that would have been the end of my spy hunt. I began to realise that it was much longer odds on my being dead within the next forty-eight hours than on my getting on the traces of that oilskinned man.
And then as I was walking back thinking these none too cheery thoughts, something put the parachute into my head. I had not thought of it before since the first night when I hid it. It took me a little time to get my bearings, but I found my way to the clover field at last and then made for the low wall with the bed of rank gra.s.s and docken leaves beneath it.
I hunted up that wall and down that wall, but never a sign of the parachute was there.
"That is how they"ve bowled me out!" I said to myself. "They have heard by this time of the missing balloon; then they found the parachute, saw that the dates coincided, and spotted me!"
XII
THE KEY TURNED
When I got back I felt very little inclined for society. I pa.s.sed through the hall as quietly as I could, went straight up to my room, and heaved a sigh of relief when the door was safely shut behind me. Perhaps my adventures had been following a little too quickly on the heels of one another; anyhow it was quiet which I craved at that moment. It was a reposeful room, scented with honeysuckle, and for a few minutes I enjoyed an unwonted sensation of peace; and then my eyes chanced to fall on the chest of drawers. I stared for a moment and then bent over the lock of the upper drawer, that drawer which concealed the mythical uniform coat with the important mythical papers in the pocket.
There could not be a shadow of doubt as to what had happened. The lock had been taken off and put in again since I last saw it. And now of course my hosts knew as well as I did that no uniform coat had ever lain there, and consequently that their guest had never worn one.
I had meant to slack, but this situation obviously required some thinking over, so I lit a pipe, threw myself down on the bed, and began.
"Bowled out again!" I thought. "At the rate the wickets are going down, the innings must be dashed near over. They"ve found out my German accent was a fake, they"ve discovered the parachute and know I neither landed from a British cruiser nor a German submarine, and now they know that I lied about that coat.