“I think it’s the best we can do. It may be—” for the first time Alleyn’s voice faltered, “a long wait. That won’t — be easy.”
It was not easy. As they drew near the house they could make it out in a faint diffusion of light from the village below. They moved very slowly now, over soft, uneven ground, Plank leading them. He would stop and put back a warning hand when they drew near an obstacle, such as the bramble bush where Miss Harkness had tethered her horse and Ricky had so ostentatiously lit his pipe. No chink of light showed from window or door.
They inched forward with frequent stops to listen and grope about them. A breeze had sprung up. There were rustlings, small indeterminate sounds and from the pinegrove further up the hill, a vague soughing. This favored their approach.
It was always possible, Alleyn thought, that they were being watched, that the lights had been put out and a chink opened at one of the windows. What would the men inside do then? And there was, he supposed, another possibility — that Ricky was being held somewhere else, in one of the deserted cottages, for instance, or even gagged and out in the open. But no. Why “Pad” in the message? Unless they’d moved after sending the message. Should Fox return and try to screw a statement out of Mrs. Ferrant? But then the emergence from the Pad might happen and they would be a man short.
They had come to the place where a rough path branched off, leading around to the back of the house. Plank breathed this information in Alleyn’s ear: “We’ll get back to you double quick, sir, if it’s the front. Can you make out the door?” Alleyn squeezed his elbow and sensed rather than saw Plank’s withdrawal with P.C. Moss.
There was the door. They crept up to it, Alleyn and Fox on either side with P.C. Cribbage behind Fox. There was a sharp crackle as Cribbage fell foul of some bush or dry stick. They froze and waited. The breeze carried a moisture with it that tasted salt on Alleyn’s lips. Nothing untoward happened.
Alleyn began to explore with his fingers the wall, the door and a step leading up to it. He sensed that Fox, on his side, was doing much the same thing.
The door was weatherworn and opened inward. The handle was on Alleyn’s side. He found the keyhole, knelt and put his eye to it, but could see nothing. The key was in the lock, evidently. Or hadn’t Ricky, describing the Pad, talked about a heavy curtain masking the door? Alleyn thought he had.
He explored the bottom of the door. There was very little gap between it and the floor, but as he stared fixedly at the place where his finger rested he became aware of a lesser darkness, of the faintest possible thinning out of nonvisibility that increased, infinitesimally, when he withdrew his hand.
Light, as faint as light could be, filtered through the gap between the door and the floor.
He slid his finger away from him along the gap and ran into something alive. Fox’s finger. Alleyn closed his hand around Fox’s and then traced on its hairy back the word light. Fox reversed the process. Yes.
Alleyn knelt. He laid his right ear to the door and stopped up the left one.
There was sound. Something being moved. The thud of stockinged or soft-shod feet and then, only just perceptibly, voices.
He listened and listened, unconscious of aching knees, as if all his other faculties had been absorbed by the sense of hearing. The sounds continued. Once, one of the voices was raised. Of one thing he was certain — neither of them belonged to Ricky.
To Ricky, on the other side of the door. Quite close? Or locked up in some back room? Gagged? What had they done to him to turn his incisive Italianate script into the writing of an old man?
Monstrous it was, to wait and to do nothing. Should he, after all, have decided to break in? Suppose they shot him and Fox before the others could jump on them, what would they do to Ricky?
The sounds were so faint that the men must be at the end of the room farthest from the door. He wondered if Fox had heard them, or Cribbage.
He got to his feet surprised to find how stiff he was. He waited for a minute or two and then eased across until he found Fox who was leaning with his back to the wall and whispered:
“Hear them?”
“Yes.”
“At least we’ve come to the right place.”
“Yes.”
Alleyn returned to his side of the door.
The minutes dragged into an hour. The noises continued intermittently and, after a time, became more distant, as if the men had moved to another room. They changed in character. There was a scraping metallic sound, only just detectable, and then silence.
It was no longer pitch dark. Shapes had begun to appear, shadows of definite form and patches of light. The moon, in its last quarter, had risen behind the pine grove and soon would shine full upon them. Already he could see Fox and beyond him P.C. Cribbage, propped against the wall, his head drooping, his helmet inclined forward above his nose. He was asleep.
Even as Alleyn reached out to draw Fox’s attention to his neighbor, Cribbage’s knees bent. He slid down the wall and fell heavily to the ground, kicking the acetylene lamp. Wakened, he began to scramble to his feet and was kicked by Fox. He rose with abject caution.
Absolute silence had fallen inside the house.
Alleyn motioned to Fox and Fox, with awful grandeur, motioned to the stricken Cribbage. They cat-walked across to Alleyn’s side of the door and stood behind him, all three of them pressed back against the wall.
“If—” Alleyn breathed. “We act.”
“Right.”
They moved a little apart and waited. Alleyn with his ear to the door. The light that had shown so faintly across the threshold went out. He drew back and signaled to Fox. After a further eternal interval they all heard a rustle and clink as of a curtain being drawn.
The key was turned in the lock.
The deep framework surrounding the door prevented Alleyn from seeing it open but he knew it had opened, very slightly. He knew that the man inside now looked out and saw nothing untoward where Fox and Cribbage had been. To see them, he would have to open up wide enough to push his head through and look to his right.
The door creaked.
In slow motion a black beret began to appear. An ear, a temple, the flat of a cheek, and then, suddenly, the point of a jaw and an eye. The eye looked into his. It opened wide and Alleyn drove his fist hard at the jaw.
Ferrant pitched forward. Fox caught him under the arms and Cribbage took him by the knees. Alleyn closed the door.
Ferrant’s right hand opened and Alleyn caught the gun that fell from it. “Lose him. Quick,” he said. Fox and Cribbage carried Ferrant, head lolling and arms dangling, around the corner of the house. The operation had been virtually soundless and had taken a matter of seconds.
Alleyn moved back to his place by the door. There was still no sound from inside the house. Fox and Cribbage returned.
“Still out,” Fox muttered and intimated that Ferrant was handcuffed to a small tree with his mouth stopped.
They took up their former positions, Alleyn with Ferrant’s gun — a French army automatic — in his hand. This one, he thought, was going to be simpler.
Two loud thumps came from within the house followed by an exclamation that sounded like an oath. Then, soft but unmistakable, approaching footsteps and again the creak of the opening door.
“Gil!” Syd Jones whispered into the night. “What’s up? Where are you? Are you there, Gil?”
Like Ferrant, he widened the door opening and, like Ferrant, thrust his head out.
They used their high-powered torches. Syd’s face, a bearded mask, started up, blinking and expressionless. He found himself looking into the barrel of the automatic, “Hands up and into the room,” Alleyn said. Fox kicked the door wide open, entered the house, and switched on the light. Alleyn followed Syd with Cribbage behind him.