Chapter Twenty-six

It was the worst kind of fortune that Michael Dorn received news of two early morning departures from aerodromes situated a hundred miles apart; and worse that he should have chosen the Cambridgeshire venue first. Here the telephone enquiries he made gave him little information, and it was not until he arrived at Morland that he found the early morning passenger was an undergraduate from Cambridge who had been summoned home through the serious illness of a sister and had left for Cornwall.

“I wasn’t in the office when you enquired,” said the aerodrome chief, “or I would have told you that.”

“It can’t be helped,” said Michael.

He went back to his car and studied the map. He was separated from Whitcomb by a hundred and seven miles of road, mainly indifferent; and, to add to his troubles, he had two bad punctures in the first twenty miles and went into Market Silby on a flat tyre. By the time the new tyre was purchased and fixed he had lost a good hour of daylight and had still the worst of the road to negotiate. And it was by no means certain, even when he reached his objective, that he would be any nearer to finding the girl.

During the period of waiting while the tyre was being fitted he studied the little time-table he had made that morning. The girl had been taken from the police station in the neighbourhood of two o’clock, he had discovered. She had left in the car for an unknown destination, and at eight o’clock--six hours later--Chesney Praye had wired him from Paris. Supposing he had flown from a private aerodrome near London, it would have taken him two hours to reach the French Capital, which meant that he must have departed somewhere about five o’clock.

Between two and five o’clock was the unknown quantity of distance. By accepting this period he had decided that Lois had been taken to a spot between an hour and a half and two hours distant from the metropolis. He also guessed the aeroplane theory was right, that the place of detention and the aerodrome were within twenty miles by car, and six or seven miles if the abductor drove or walked.

The Cambridge aerodrome was an ideal fulfilment of his calculations. So was Whitcomb, on the borders of Somerset. He came to the aerodrome in time to catch the manager just before he left for the night, showed his authority, which had a more official value than Lady Moron had imagined, and accompanied the manager to his office.

“The gentleman’s name was Stone. We had a telephone message late last night from London, asking us to have a machine waiting to take him to France, and he arrived on time.”

He described the traveller so faithfully that Michael could almost see Chesney Praye standing before him.

“That is the gentleman,” he said. “How did he get here?--Did he come here by car?”

The manager shook his head.

“No, he came up in a trap to the end of the field and walked the rest of the distance.”

“A horse-drawn trap? Who drove him?”

“That I cannot tell you. It was too far away to see. I know very few people here.”

Michael considered for a moment.

“Perhaps you will show me where the trap set down.” And, as a thought struck him: “Have you an Ordnance map of this district?”

This request the manager was able to satisfy. He could also show him on the plan the point at which the passenger had left the cart. Michael traced the road with the tip of his finger, and then began a wide sweep in search of houses.

“That’s Lord Kelver’s place. I do happen to know that, because I’ve been there. That’s the house of his bailiff.” When Michael touched another red square: “That’s the road to Ilfey Village. There is an inn there, the Red Lion, where he may have been putting up,” he suggested, but Michael rejected the likelihood of Chesney having stayed in the neighbourhood.

“What is this place?”

His finger paused, but the manager shook his head.

“I don’t remember it. Perhaps one of my mechanics will be able to tell us.”

He went out and came back with a workman who bent over the map.

“That is Gallows Farm,” he said. “It is an old place--been there for hundreds of years. I don’t know who has it now, but he isn’t a farmer--at least, I never saw any cattle coming out of his yard.”

There was a telephone on the table; Michael took it up and gave the number of the nearest police station. He introduced himself and then put his question and waited whilst the particulars were found.

“Gallows Farm was let twelve months ago to a Mr. ----” He gave a name which was unfamiliar to Dorn. “There’s nobody there except the gentleman and his housekeeper.”

This was not very informative, but Michael was not discouraged. Again he went over the map, and in the end concluded that Gallows Farm was the only house in the neighbourhood which was in any way under suspicion. He snatched a hasty meal in the aerodrome mess, and it was growing dark when he skirted the field and took the road along which the cart had come in the early morning. Presently, as he came over the crest of the hill, the farm showed dimly in the circle of his powerful headlamps. There were no lights or sign of life about the house. The long, white, ugly wall was surmounted by broken glass, and the gate, which opened on to the road, was securely fastened. There was no evidence of a bell-pull.

He went back to the car, and, finding an electric torch, continued his investigations. The farm building lay on the slope of the hill and he had to descend to get to the back of the premises. Here the gate was larger and more insecure, and his attempt to open it was followed by a furious barking and straining of chains. He listened, interested; the barking had a familiar sound. It was not the deep roar of the mastiff, or the half-frightened, half-angry discordance of the terrier; there was a howl in that note that he had heard before on dark nights as he had passed through sleeping Indian villages.

“If they’re not native dogs, I’ve never heard any,” he said softly, and continued his circuit.

From the declivity at the back of the house he could not see the top windows of the building, low as it was, and he turned to the front of the house and rapped on the heavy black wooden gate.

Somebody must have been aroused by the barking of the dogs, for almost immediately the sharp voice of a woman called:

“Who’s there?”

“I want to see the master of this house,” said Dorn.

“Well, you can’t see him, not at this time; he’s in bed.”

“Then let me see you. Open this gate,” said Michael.

There was an interval of silence, and then the woman said:

“Go away, or I’ll telephone for the police.”

That pause before she spoke betrayed the situation to the keen-witted man at the gate. There was somebody else behind that barrier, somebody who was prompting the woman in a whisper.

“Will you please tell your master, who is in bed, but not, I think, asleep, that unless you open the gate I’ll come over the top?”

This time the woman needed no prompting.

“If you dare, I’ll set my dogs on you!” she screamed.

He heard her footsteps running on the cobbled yard, and presently the throaty growl of the dogs as they came flying before her.

“Now will you go away?” shrieked the woman. “If they get out they’ll tear the heart out of you, _ek dum_!”

Michael Dorn uttered an involuntary exclamation. “_Ek dum_?” Who was this who used the Indian phrase?

“I think you’d better let me in, my sister,” he said, and he spoke in Hindustani.

There was no reply for a moment, and now he was sure somebody was whispering--whispering fiercely, urgently.

“I don’t know what you mean by your outlandish gibberish,” said the woman’s voice huskily. “You get away, mister, before you’re in trouble.”

Michael, thrusting his lamp in the direction of the gate-top, looked up at a row of rusty iron spikes. Should he take the risk? These people might be law-abiding, and it was not remarkable that the woman should have a few Indian phrases. She might have been a soldier’s wife who had lived in India and had acquired the habit of that pigeon talk.

“Won’t you be sensible and let me in? I only want to ask you a few questions.” And then, as an inspiration came to him: “I am from Mr. Chesney Praye.”

This time the silence was so long that he thought they had gone. Then the woman spoke.

“We don’t know Mr. Chesney Praye, and we’re going in.”

“We? Who’s your friend?” asked Michael, but there was no answer.

Presently the door was slammed ostentatiously. Behind the gates he could hear the growling and snuffling of the dogs, and when he put his toe cautiously under the space between earth and gate he heard the vicious snap of a jaw, and smiled in the darkness. Soon after, the man and woman at the upstairs window heard the whine of a motor and saw the two white beams of its head-lamps moving towards London.

And Lois Reddle lay sobbing on her bed, and in her heart the despair of hopelessness.