Chapter XVIII

McNab said nothing for a long time. He stood gazing, hands clasped loosely behind his back, at the various articles and implements which had been abruptly abandoned by the blind man and the men set to watch him. One or two pedestrians, seeing him thus absorbed, cast half curious eyes on him as they passed, glancing about to see what attracted his attention. McNab did not seem to like what he saw. When at length he turned to me with a question there was a quiver, a nervous sort of quiver about the corners of his mouth.

"Well, Godfrey," he said, "what do you make of it?"

"Your bait's been taken," I hazarded.

He nodded gravely.

"No nibbling at it this time. Swallowed, and carried away."

"And presently your men will come back and tell us where it was taken to. All according to plan, isn't it?" I asked.

"I hope so," he rejoined slowly. "I hope so. Still, something my men didn't expect to happen has happened here. They were certainly taken by surprise." His eye travelled over the place again. "Look at Peters' brush. It dropped handle downwards out of his hand into the pot. And he was wearing an apron. Did he follow them in that? It isn't anywhere about. The hoe, too, looks as if it had been dropped in the midst of a stroke; and Pilcher appears to have gone off still wearing his weeding gloves, though he has left his cap behind." McNab indicated the cap, which I now perceived lying under a shrub on the dark mould inside the railings.

"Something took them unawares," he said.

He gazed up and down the road. As usual, our side had little on it except nurses with perambulators and a few toddling children. And on the busier side, if any in that stream had witnessed anything startling, they had already passed on elsewhere.

For some fifteen minutes, which must have seemed as many hours to McNab, we paced up and down, waiting.

"Peters is a reliable young fellow," he said once. "Never has failed me. Jenkins is up to a thing or two as well," he went on, stooping to lift the Braille book from the ground.

"Then," I said, "Peters and Jenkins between them will have followed Kinloch. It's only a matter of the distance from here to the house they've taken him to. Sooner or later one of your men will come back with the information."

"That was the plan," he replied as mechanically he smoothed out the crumpled leaves of the book. "But the best laid schemes o' mice and men sometimes miscarry. And I begin to suspect this one has. It all looks as if the bait had been lifted clean out of the trap. And that means we have lost contact with Ponsonby Paget's assassin--lost contact just at the one point where contact could have been established."

He shut the Braille book and laid it on the camp-stool.

And within the next few minutes the proof came which justified McNab's foreboding. It was the little man, Peters, who first turned up, looking both hot and sheepish. His crest-fallen look was eloquent of failure, and the shake of the head which he gave as soon as he met McNab's eyes was not really necessary.

"So he's got clean away?" McNab said.

Peters nodded breathlessly.

"A blind man, from four of you? It should be interesting to hear how."

Peters found his voice at last.

"He gave us the slip, sir, all right, but he isn't a blind man; no more a blind man than I am."

"What!" McNab cried. "What's that you say? 'Not blind?' Are you gone crazy, Peters?"

"No more blind than myself, he wasn't," the man repeated stubbornly.

I well remember how McNab stared. Stared at first in almost angry incredulity. And then a change shot over his face. The look of blank unbelief vanished from his eyes to be replaced by a swift light that revealed understanding.

"I see," he said slowly and as if to himself. "Yes, I see now. So that was why Dunn laughed." He turned and nodded to Peters. "But come and tell your story. There's a seat near the gate inside the gardens."

And there presently we were sitting with Peters between us.

"It's not yet an hour," the little man began with a sigh, "since the thing happened. We had all settled down to our work, Jenkins with his matches, the others at their weeding and me with the brush. Between Jenkins and me the man on his little stool. Safe as houses it all seemed. Jenkins, of course, had the best chance of seeing what was up, for he had nothing to do, and his face turned on the road all the time, whereas I naturally had my back to the road. It was a cry from Jenkins that came first. I looked round and saw him being grabbed tight by a gentleman, and him shouting out something which I didn't catch. But what I saw next was that blind man bolting out into the road, and him neatly dodging a cyclist too." Peters paused momentarily. "I own up to it, I was so taken aback at that sight that I didn't act near quick enough. In fact, sir, I was in a manner of speaking so struck all of a heap by discovering the man wasn't blind at all that I stood all agape and paralyzed. He was so mighty spry too--quick as lightning. You'd never have guessed he was the same sort of down and out looking chap sitting so quiet on his stool. The result was he got pretty well into the car before any of us got a move on."

"The lady had stopped her car on the other side?" McNab asked.

Peters looked up quickly.

"That's right, sir, on her near side coming from Campden Hill Road, that is. But she hadn't stopped her engine, though she had the door open and was in the act of rising to get out, I thought, when the man seemed to say something to her and jump in by the offside door. The lady seemed taken by surprise. She did nothing for a second or two. Then I dropped my brush and ran. I'd have got there, too, but for a taxi that nearly ran into me. It blocked me out just long enough for the car to get moving."

"What was the car's number?" McNab asked.

Peters fairly wrung his hands in despair.

"Oh, sir, all that sort of thing had been taken thought of. The number was hidden by a rug hanging over the back; the front wasn't in sight, and all I saw as I made a grab and missed was the letter 'K' when the rug swung up a little as the car accelerated."

A groan came from McNab.

"No need to ask what happened next," he said.

"Well, sir, by this time our other two men had scrambled somehow over the railings and Jenkins had got free from his gentleman."

"So you all four ran down the road after the car, didn't you, with a crowd at your heels, eh? What good did you think that would do?"

Peters looked rather aggrieved and perplexed.

"Well, sir, we divided at the end of the road, Jenkins and I getting a taxi there. We went up towards Bayswater, leaving the other two to go down Kensington way, whenever they found another taxi. And, sir, there wasn't a crowd following us, not what you'd call a crowd; it's--it's too genteel a neighbourhood for that, sir," Peters protested.

McNab replied with an impatient snort.

"Peters, you might just as well have gone on at your painting. Better, indeed, for then you might have helped Jenkins to collar his gentleman."

"Collar the gentleman!" Peters exclaimed. "But, sir, it was the gentleman that collared Jenkins. He had stopped for a box of his matches just as the car came along, giving him half a crown, and he held on to Jenkins till he got his change. Jenkins told me in the taxi, said the man thought he was doing a bolt with the half-crown."

"Rubbish. That man was there to delay Jenkins, to divert the attention of the one man who had his eyes on the road, and to draw the eyes of you others towards Jenkins and himself. Jenkins was a fool. But _not_," McNab declared, with flashing eyes and an outward lift of his clenched fist from which Peters quailed, "a greater fool than I have been."

His wrath and disgust, however, quickly simmered down. And when, after a few more questions, Peters was sent away, in his dour, tenacious fashion he set about making the best of what seemed a very bad job. That the upset to his plan had stunned McNab I did not need to be told. For a little he seemed like a man dazed by a blow, incapable of connected thought. He needed a minute or two to recollect himself. And without fuss or flurry he took those few moments' rest on that seat in the gardens, sitting there stolidly, unmindful of the children's shouts, and the subdued expostulations of the genteel nurses as they strolled past us.

At what point of time McNab again got a grip on the situation I could not tell. An unforgettable impression he made on my mind as he sat there. Every sense, every nerve and muscle, even his breathing, appeared to be stilled, so that thought might function unimpeded. In the end I saw him, as it were, come back to an awareness of a world outside his own mind, and I wondered what, if anything, he had salved from the wreck of his plans. Yet his first words to me seemed unconnected with his defeat that day.

"This," he said gravely, "now becomes a race to prevent a second murder."

The words startled me. Then I saw what he meant.

"You mean he will murder Kinloch?"

"Yes, he will eliminate Kinloch."

This was so far away from the directions in which I had supposed his thoughts to be running while he sat there that I was taken aback. That Kinloch might be in danger had not occurred to me. He had been our quarry so long that it was somehow hardly possible all at once to apprehend he might be also another's quarry.

McNab took me by the arm.

"Hurry up. There's no time to lose."

We turned our backs finally on Enderby Gardens. Where we were hurrying to I had no notion. He had called it a race to stop a second murder. But whether he knew what direction the chase was to lead us, north, south, east or west, was more than I could tell; and certainly it was more than Peters, or any of his men, had been able to tell him. The pace which McNab set as we hurried along the road, however, revealed a definite purpose. It proved to me he had a definite objective before him; but I spared him questions, saving my breath for the pace he set me.

A few minutes later and he doubled into Notting Hill Tube Station. We got clear of the lift as a train came hissing and rumbling out of the tunnel. It was not a "rush" hour--with any except ourselves at least--and the carriage into which we tumbled proved to be nearly empty. The sprint through the corridor and down the steps had been hot. I flung myself into one of the cross seats facing McNab.

"In an ideal world," I complained, as breath returned, "Peters would have got that car's number, and except for the hanging the case would be over."

"Maybe. But in an ideal world nobody would need hanging."

This wasn't quite what I meant. What I meant was that if we had merely been two figures in a work of fiction we should have had an easier job. This I explained in repeating my remark.

"But Peters did get us something," he objected. "Peters saw the letter K on the registration plate. And that information, though not all I schemed and hoped to obtain, is good enough to go on with."

"Sure it isn't false?"

"No, I'm not. For though the registration was draped by a rug over the back of the car, it may have been false all the same. Still, half an hour or so will decide whether the K is genuine."

On that I learned where we were going. An odd place, it struck me, to go for the purpose of deciding whether the K on the car was genuine or not. For I learned we were heading towards the docks, to Trinity House in fact, the headquarters of the Channel pilots. How the Channel pilots could be connected with a motor's registration I could not imagine. But McNab, though ready enough to talk after that long meditation of his in the gardens, would not enlighten me on this particular point. I dare say my wide-open stare was responsible.

"It's just a hint picked up," he said. "I'm acting on the off chance there's something in it. If we draw a blank it's all up with Kinloch."

Now it seemed to me that if he did not overrate Kinloch's danger at least he underrated Kinloch's ability to take care of himself.

"He's a wily bird, Kinloch," I said. "Look how he took you in about being blind."

McNab smiled ruefully.

"He did. But it was a part he could play to the life, for he had been blind for years."

The carriage was now filling up at every stop, and it became safe to talk only when the train was roaring through the tunnels. McNab bent towards me.

"If the hint I'm working on turns up trumps," he said, "a lot will depend on you. But don't be deceived about this man's danger. This Kinloch is nearer death now than he ever was in Flanders." He tapped my knee and almost roared at me. "Be clear on that point or you'll make a mess of the job I'm now forced to place in your hands."

Then the train shot out into daylight and we were soon crossing Tower Hill towards Trinity House.

To the official in the hall McNab explained his visit. He wanted to see some one familiar with the Kent coast. The official scratched his chin, however, in doubt, when McNab said it was not shoals, tideways or lighthouses, but roads, bays and headlands, on which information was needed.

"Looks as if you'd come to the wrong shop, sir," he remarked. Then he brightened. "There's old George; he was in the coast-guards, in Kent I fancy 'twas. He'd be the very man if he's anywheres about."

Something passed from McNab's hand to the other's palm, with the result that old George was quickly produced from somewhere in the basement. He was a ruddy-faced, blue-eyed old fellow, still with a wind-blown appearance for all his service in the serene quietness of Trinity House.

"You know the Kentish coast?" McNab began at once.

"Reckon I do, sir, every inch of it from Rochester to Rye."

McNab beamed satisfaction.

"You think you could identify any part of it from a description?"

"For sure, sir, provided you gave me enough to go on."

"Ah, that's where I'm doubtful. This is rather difficult. Listen." McNab spoke slowly--softly and very slowly. "There's a road down a steep, long hill, a road with a sharp, right-hand turn. At the foot of the hill there's a village. In a car you'd be through the place in a couple of minutes. Then you'd find yourself suddenly running close to the sea, so close that on a stormy day you might feel the spray on your face. After about a mile you turn away from the sea and don't hear it again."

Old George, who had listened intently, rubbed his ear thoughtfully.

"That is hard and no mistake. There's a score of places from Whitstable to Margate, and nigh Broadstairs too, like that. And besides them--"

McNab put up a hand.

"You would feel both the spray and the sun on your left cheek," he said.

The old coast-guardman's face brightened.

"Ah, that's better. Wipes out all the north coast, that do." He pondered for a moment and then looked up. "Sounds like a bit o' Pegwell Bay after you leave Ramsgate, except that the hill ain't right. And it would be Walmer to a T if you were going east instead of west. Dover 'ud do for that steep hill, and the right-hand turn all right, only Dover's 'ardly a village, and they wouldn't thank you in Dover to hear it called such."

"The sea is very noisy on the beach--a shingle beach," McNab said half despairingly.

Old George shook his head.

"All the beach's shingle thereabouts, leastways till you get to Dymchurch, but in Dover it ain't what you'd call noisy on account of the breakwater."

"Mingling with the noise of the surf," McNab interjected, "you might hear the notes of a bugle on your right, on higher ground."

I fancy this was McNab's last desperate throw. But at the mention of the bugle the old coast-guardsman suddenly looked up, slapping his thigh.

"Dang me if I ain't a proper fool," he cried excitedly. "Why, for twenty years I lived on the very spot! Lies between Folkestone and Hythe, it do. There's the long hill down afore you enter Sandgate. Then soon as you pass the coast-guard cottages you open out the sea till you lose it again when you reach Seabrook police station. And all along you've Shorncliffe Camp on your right. Suits it to a T if you've joined the main road by coming down the steep lane from the Downs nigh to the top of Sandgate Hill. That's your spot, sir, though if there's any prize going for this here guessing competition I 'ardly deserve it."

"The sea comes over sometimes there?" McNab asked.

"On a spring tide following a strong south wind it do. More than once the road's been washed away then."

McNab seemed contented by the information, and George got a prize before we left which appeared to make him equally content.

Recrossing Tower Hill McNab's satisfaction increased as he took out his watch. It was then twenty to four.

"We're beating the clock, as your cricketers say. Looks as if we might be in time to save him yet," he said. Then he added, "You can catch the five o'clock from Cannon Street, after we've had something to eat."

"Catch the five o'clock from Cannon Street!" I echoed in surprise. "Where to? What for?"

But nothing would he tell me then. He was hungry, he said, even if I was not, and we must go straight to the Adelphi. He had things to say before I left which could not be said except in private, and at his place he could give me my instructions while we ate. I was certainly hungry enough, having had nothing since my unusually early breakfast, but at the moment the hunger of my curiosity was even sharper.

Of what food passed my lips once we were again in McNab's flat I have no memory. But for the quick, almost fierce way in which he spoke to me I have an unfading memory, for this was McNab in a moment of crisis, when success or failure hung balanced on a hair. Even while he was poring in silence over the large-scale road map of Kent I recognized that his whole capacity for action, mental and physical, was at its fullest stretch. Yet he began his instructions quietly enough.

"I have decided not to call in Snargrove and the Yard," he said. "Partly because there isn't time--this is a matter now of hours at the most--and partly because Howley's description of the guilty man is too indeterminate to act on quickly. Heaven knows how many men in brown suits with tooth-brush moustaches would be detained all over the country within the next twenty-four hours. The man is like too many other men."

"Yes," I cut in, "that's what I meant before. If this were fiction that man would have had a drooping eyelid, an acid mark on his forehead, a finger missing from his left hand, ears pierced for earrings or--"

But he stopped me.

"We have no time, either, for that sort of talk," he said sharply. "There isn't even time to write out your instructions. Listen attentively or you may not remember them."

"If I can carry a political speech practically verbatim I'm not likely to forget this," I declared.

"Right. Listen, then! As I've said, I am taking the risk of not calling in Scotland Yard for the reasons given and also--mark this--because we are acting at the moment less with a view to the murderer's arrest than to prevent a second murder. That, after all, is what the law intends, even when it hangs a man. Hanging the murderer does not restore his victim to life, but it doubtless has kept many others alive."

"You are sure Kinloch really is in danger? He himself doesn't--"

He almost stamped his foot at me.

"Listen! What motive do you suppose led to the murder of Ponsonby Paget? You know Paget and his paper. What was the motive for the murder but the fear of exposure and disgrace? Paget knew something and threatened him. Paget misjudged his man and paid the penalty. Well, at this moment with arrest threatening him he has a much stronger motive for murder, for it is not his name only that is in danger, but his neck. Further, don't forget that Kinloch _can now see_. That fact was not known to the pair when they carried him off to-day. It was, indeed, only known to the doctor who laughed at me. They didn't know it, though. You remember Peters telling how the woman was in the act of getting out of the car, obviously with the intention of leading him to it? Well, once it is known he can now see he becomes for the first time really dangerous. Got that?"

I nodded understandingly.

"You are convinced?"

Again I assented in the same fashion.

"Good. Now you know what we are up against we can get to business."

He rose and began to pace about, hands deep in his pockets.

"Follow this carefully, Chance," he said. "It will take some time, but you can go on eating. I now want to show you that you are not being sent off on a wild-goose chase." He paused a moment. "You recall, perhaps, Dr. Dunn's assertion that Kinloch heard the surf once, and once only, after leaving the house where they had sheltered since the murder? The bugle call came from the military barracks at Shorncliffe. But at no barracks is a bugle blown after 10.15 p.m., at which hour the 'Lights out' is sounded. Therefore it was not the 'Lights out' Kinloch heard while the Spring tide sprayed their car. It is also certain it was not on a date before the 22nd, for though the tide would have come up earlier than 10.57 its high-water mark then would have been too low to bring it over the road in any wind. The conclusion is therefore that it was the morning Spring tide that was coming over as they passed, and that the bugle heard was the 10 a.m. 'Orders' call. And the inference I draw from the fact that this point was passed so early in the day is that they had not come very far. That inference, however, hardened into a conviction the moment I looked at this map." McNab here spread the road map of Kent on the table before me. "You have but to look at the mere _shape_ of the county. See, it is like a spear head, with the place they passed at 10 a.m. well inside where it begins to taper to a point. Very well." McNab slapped me on the back as I bent over the map. "Unless they came into this eastern extremity merely to go out of it again, that unknown house in which they sheltered securely from about the 15th of January to the 22nd of March lies somewhere within this small spear point of country." As I stared at the map he added, "That's where we shall run them to earth. But there's no time to tell you about that now."

"And what am I to do?" I enquired.

"Go to Folkestone, hire a car--a four-seater open tourer--and try to locate that village alleged to be shut in by gates at each end. Don't believe in it myself. But we can't afford to miss the chance of its being a real place, so cover all the ground possible before dark. Explore, examine, question. In a crisis don't hesitate to call in the police. You know all the facts better than any one, and you could identify Kinloch at sight. As soon as it is dark be at the Westenhanger cross-roads to wait for me with anything you have gleaned." He indicated Westenhanger on the map. "See, there on the London road, where the road to the right leads to the Lympne Aerodrome, and that on the left is the old Roman road over the Downs to Canterbury. That is your job while I do mine here--see Snargrove perhaps, but at all events get hold of Dr. Dunn at Ealing." Then he added, "Look, you have just fifteen minutes to catch your train."

When I rose, pocketing the road map, McNab spoke in another tone as he opened a drawer in his bureau.

"One thing more I'd better warn you about. After the way affairs were mishandled this morning this case is not likely to end with the quiet arrest I like. More probably it will be a nasty, messy, violent business. So you'd better carry this." He stood up with an ugly-looking automatic pistol in his hand.

"As bad as that?" I whispered.

"Desperate," he nodded, handing over the weapon.

Then I bolted down the stairs for the five o'clock Folkestone express.