‘With or without him,’ said George, ‘we’re going in.’
‘That’s what I thought, so I fetched Grainger along with me.’ Grainger was the best man in the Midshire force on locks, and happened to live in Moon’s territory. ‘The telephone switchboard is in the ticket-office, we’re going to need that, and of course the office is locked. Even if Stubbs is off with the keys to everything in his pocket, there should be a second set in there somewhere. Has he got your authority to break in?’
‘As fast as possible,’ said George without hesitation, and led the way. Authorisation could be legalised afterwards.
‘History repeats itself,’ murmured Toby, following, and shook his shoulders to dislodge a foreboding that was not so easy to jettison. ‘Well, I got out again all right!’
CHAPTER NINE
« ^ »
Bossie was relieved but vaguely disquieted when he tried the door at the corner of the northern walk, to find that, like the gate, it was still unlocked. But after all, there was nothing here to steal, nothing profitable even from the point of view of an antique dealer, except the tiles in the flooring, and it was doubtful if they carried a great commercial value. Dispersed from their proper site, they were just moderately-priced antiquarian junk. In situ they were treasure. And nobody was going to bring a fleet of pantechnicons and remove the stable block en masse.
Once inside, he eased the latch softly back into its cradle, and stood for a moment in the vast darkness, sensible of the shape it took, feeling his hair erected by the soaring of the timbered roof, and his vision channelled into the form of its noble length, closed in on either side, on his left by the eighteenth-century brickwork with its high, small windows that hardly showed at all for relief against the dark, on his right by the huge, decrepit stone wall that had survived at least six hundred years. Under that wall his membrane had been found, lying among the growth of grass and weeds nurtured on years of rubble, dust and moisture. And he was sure now that it had been one among many, very many, and could not by any accident have been winnowed far enough away from its fellows to be discovered in absolute solitude. And nobody else had even made similar finds here, or they would have been written up for everybody to read, and photographed and made much of. No, the secret was here, somewhere, however obscurely hidden. He was certain.
When he had stood still long enough to have his breathing under control, and to be sure he was really alone, he switched on his torch. The long vista of the north walk opened before him, the ancient vaulting gone, the complex timbering of the later roof making a shadowy pattern overhead. The stones of the north wall showed wonderfully jagged and crude in the cross-light, and at their foot the earth flooring, swept bare and trodden hard, looked the least likely hiding-place for secrets that he could imagine. He walked its length, searching the angle of floor with wall, and could see no possible place where anything could have been hidden from those who had done this thorough job of cleaning the ground.
Bossie drew back and viewed the whole. There was a quantity of stuff, old wood, fragments of carved, weathered stone retrieved from various places about the site, rope and twine, all piled in the far corner, together with a handcart and some brushes and brooms. Nothing there to conceal treasure, though they might, if necessary, conceal somebody who wanted to be invisible here. Then there was the area of relaid paving tiles, inside the ropes, and a heap of excavated tiles, some whole, some broken, waiting to be assembled into the pattern, after due repairs.
And outside everything, wherever he turned the tiny beam of his torch, the huge, impersonal darkness, distorted by enormous shadows that dwarfed the little light, and a smell of disturbed earth, like a cemetery. It was getting distinctly chilly, too, he felt himself shivering.
Well, if there had been anything concealed in the upper layers here, in the centre, where they were working on the tiling, they would certainly have found it. No need to disturb anything there. All that remained was the wall itself, and the flooring under it, which was certainly where Toby had found his leaf, even if it didn’t look very promising now.
He was working his way methodically along the rim of the roped-off area, where the earth flooring was excavated to a depth of about three inches, and the raw edges at least offered a possibility that a corner of parchment might show among the soil and gravel, when a sudden small sound caused the hair to rise on the nape of his neck, and sent him diving into the corner behind the hand-cart, his torch hastily extinguished. The grate of a key in the lock might have alerted him more rapidly, but the door was not locked, and what he heard was the neat click of the latch yielding, and without even a full second in between, the door swung silently open. It was new, light and noiseless; it ought to have been heavy, creaky and slow, to give him time to make the best of his inadequate cover. But if this was simply a routine round, there would be the merest flick of a torch round the interior, and then the warden would move on, satisfied.
Bossie had miscalculated, owing to inadequate data. The careful restorers of the paving, salvaging broken tiles from under layers of soil, matching and repairing and patiently assembling the fours into their patterns of coiled leaves and tendrils, had sometimes worked both early and late, and fitted up for their needs a highly efficient temporary lighting system, which was not used during show hours. Of all the things to which Bossie was blind, the marvels of technical efficiency came at the head of the list. Probably Ginger could have told him the place was wired for a perfect blaze of light, but Bossie had noticed nothing, neither the switch by the door nor the dangling bulbs all along the north walk. And the flood of light that suddenly sprang up overhead almost flattened him into the floor with its unexpected force. Crude white light that threaded through the wheels of the handcart, probed behind the stacked wood, and reduced the derelict stones to unhelpful pebbles. Light crashed down on his head and pressed him to his knees, but he knew at once that if this person in the doorway came on into the room, he could not possibly avoid being seen. His heart stopped for one frightful instant, and then sturdily picked up its beat. Being scared was no protection whatever, he might as well go on breathing, after all. There could be credible, if not respectable, reasons for being here at this hour.
‘Well, well!’ said a familiar voice, mild, amused, even teasing. ‘This is really excess of enthusiasm. I gathered you were a devotee, but don’t you think this is carrying it to absurd lengths? Oh, do come on out of there! You might as well, I can see you perfectly, and I don’t get one like you every trip. I’ve recognised you already, and you don’t look at all comfortable’
Bossie wasn’t comfortable, and besides, he had recognised the intruding voice as quickly as its possessor had recognised him, and the relief was enormous. Not the warden, after all, but the nice guide who had been so patient and accommodating in showing them round in the afternoon. In any case, Bossie’s dignity was affronted at crouching behind a handcart in full view of an eye-witness. He rose to his full unimpressive height, and came out from behind his barricade. The big, fair-haired, amiable young man grinned at him from just within the doorway, and made no intimidating move to approach nearer.