Adders on the Heath

'I think a better idea would be to have a look round first. All the same, if you did lock and bolt the door, I don't see how anybody from outside could get in. Locks, I grant you, can be picked, but a couple of hefty bolts, top and bottom, are a different matter. You can see for yourself that the door is quite undamaged and the hinges are still functioning. Still, we'll take a look round, first securing the door and then giving the once-over to the windows and the side entrance. If you're right, it seems to me more than likely that somebody must have got in through a window and then left by the back door. Wonder what they were after?'

'If burglars, the silver, and madame's antique clocks, most likely, monsieur.'

'She's got some pretty good china, too. All right. Let's go and check up. I suppose you'd know if anything was missing.'

'Of the silver and the clocks, undoubtedly, monsieur. Of the china, I am less sure.'

'Oh, well, I can remember that, I think.'

They made a methodical search, but nothing appeared to be missing and the house was its usual serene, untroubled self. As they came out of the dining-room they met Laura at the foot of the stairs.

'What is all the hoo-ha?' she enquired.

'Don't know yet,' her husband replied. 'Back door open, kitchen light on, nothing missing, nobody about.'

'Except Hamish,' said Laura immediately. 'I knew he was up to something. I said so. I'm going up to his room, whether you like it or not.'

'Hold on a minute,' urged Gavin. 'I'm not going to snoop around outside. It's hardly likely to be Hamish. He always scrambles down that porch over the front door. It's bang outside his bedroom window.'

'He wouldn't climb down in the dark.'

'Probably got eyes like a cat. Anyway, he must know the way blindfold. Besides, it wasn't really dark when he went to bed. You go on up and turn in.'

'Nonsense! I'm going to Hamish's room.'

Gavin followed her up the stairs and Henri, with his axe and with an uneasy recollection of the blunt-edged carving-knife he had supplied to the boy, brought up the rear. At her son's bedroom door, Laura paused to listen. There was nothing to be heard, so she turned the handle and switched on the light. Hamish's pyjamas were on the floor and there were neither other clothes nor his shoes to be seen. She swung round on her husband, but Gavin gripped her and put a hand over her mouth.

'The light, Henri!' he said. Henri switched it off and Gavin released his wife. All three listened intently. Somebody was approaching by car. Then there was silence. 'May be all right,' said Gavin. 'Probably is. But I don't like the youngster being out on his own at this time of night. I suppose he's in the garden somewhere. He'd hardly wander away. I'll go and call him in, curse his little nylon socks.'

That car's in the drive,' murmured Laura. 'It can't be callers! It could be the Superintendent, but I should have thought he'd phone.' Suddenly she gripped her husband's arm. There was a slight scrabbling sound on the porch below the window, and Hamish tumbled into the room. Gavin called for a light. As it was switched on, the bedroom door opened and Dame Beatrice appeared. She had her small revolver at the ready.

'Oh, golly!' exclaimed Hamish. 'How good! But no time for that now. The house is surrounded. Two of them. Came by car. Did you hear it?'

'Get into bed at once!' said his father. Hamish glanced at him and obeyed, dropping his things on the floor and hastily pulling on his pyjamas. 'Now get to sleep and we'll settle things in the morning.' He put out the light.

They're coming here, you know,' said Hamish, softly. 'I wasn't making it up. I wasn't, really!'

That he was right was soon proved. There was another scrabbling sound on the roof of the porch and the window was pushed further open. A voice said, 'Ladder! I'm not a blasted monkey on a stick!'

Gavin put out his hand to touch and reassure his son, but Hamish needed no such comfort. He was having the thrill of a lifetime. Gavin moved like a cat to the door. From the window came a grunt and the sound of a light ladder being rested against the sill. Then the window was filled with a monstrous, bulky shadow. The torchlight was blotted out as the man turned to aid his companion. Gavin waited, his hand on the switch, until they were both in the room. Then he gave an Indian war-whoop and turned on the light. Then he sprang. Henri, who had remained on the landing, came in again, waving his axe and chanting a Gallic battle-cry. He was followed by Laura, a tigress coming to the rescue of her young. Dame Beatrice followed, nursing her gun.

There was nothing to it. The intruders were taken by surprise and what with that and having to face Gavin with his police training, Henri with his fearsome weapon and Dame Beatrice with her small revolver, they offered no resistance. Laura, to her chagrin, was left with nothing to do. The men were taken downstairs to the dining-room and while Laura telephoned the Superintendent, Gavin questioned the intruders after informing them that he was a Detective Chief-Inspector from Scotland Yard.

They told him at once that they had been sent to kidnap the child by a man who had assured them that he was the boy's father. Gavin demanded the man's name. At first they protested that they did not know it; that they knew him only as 'the governor.'

At this Gavin turned to Dame Beatrice and asked,

'Do you think you could refresh their memories?'

At the mention of Campden-Towne, Maidston, ponies and ships, which she made implacably and with a mesmeric intensity which obviously unnerved them, they gave up the struggle.

'He had us sewn up,' said one. 'We didn't want to do it, sir, and that's a fact.'

'Are you sailors?' asked Gavin.

'Ah, we are that,' said the other. 'He's got the goods on us, else he'd never have talked us into this.'

'Well, we've got the goods on him,' Gavin told them pleasantly. 'He's a murderer with two deaths to his credit, and it's a good thing for you both that you didn't succeed in kidnapping my son, for-mark this!-at whatever risk to the boy, we should have been bound to pull Towne in. He's been selling State secrets. How does that strike you?'

The two men swore incredulously, and protested that they certainly had known nothing about it. Gavin believed them and said so.

'We knew there was funny business over the ponies,' said one. 'Leastways, we guessed as much. But we only thought he knocked 'em off.'

'The ponies were a secret code, and a very simple and clever one. I'm not giving it away, of course, but I can assure you chaps that you're well out of this business.'

'Well out, sir?'

'Yes, well out, unless Dame Beatrice wants to prosecute you for breaking into her house.'

Dame Beatrice leered at the men and they flinched.

'I imagine that they will be more useful in court as witnesses than as defendants,' she said.

'Yes, you'll have to give evidence as to the shipping of the ponies,' agreed Gavin.

'Knowing them to have been knocked off, Guv.?'

'I hardly think that need come into it. The less complicated your evidence the better, I should say, but of course, I'm not a lawyer.'

The Superintendent turned up at this juncture and was admitted by Henri, who, after a hasty dash upstairs to reassure his wife, had returned to his self-imposed guard duty.

'And I think, Superintendent, that, for the sake of their own safety, it would be as well to take these men into protective custody until Campden-Towne and Maidston have been arrested,' observed Dame Beatrice.

'We've got them, ma'am. Picked them up this afternoon as soon as your little party left the hotel. You convinced us all right, and I must apologise to Mr Richardson for keeping the tabs on him like I have done,' concluded the Superintendent handsomely. The young men, it transpired later, had not heard a sound of what had been going on, but had slept through everything.