Her captor grunted with pain, shook his wrist a little, and then clamped the other more firmly still about the small of her back.
April's head bumped five more times against the giant's back as it hung down over his shoulder –– and then suddenly he was staggering, mouthing animal cries, lurching into bushes and trees. A moment later he crashed to the ground and lay like a man dead.
The girl rose shakily to her feet, picked up her bag, and retraced her steps. At the stile, she touched the wooden crosspiece with the bag before she dared to put a hand on it — but there was no shower of sparks, no shot from a booby-trap gun, no electrical discharge. Whatever the seaward defences of Sir Gerald Wright's house were, she was through them.
She climbed over and looked down. To one side, a finger of light probed the boathouse where the chauffeur was searching the cove. Below, breakers snarled in the dark — and round the corner lay the lights of Porthallow.
Then she was in the open, scrambling, running, her hair streaming in the wind, stumbling down the slope towards safety.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH
APRIL DANCER stopped three times on her way down to Porthallow to try and contact Mark Slate on the Communicator. Each time she drew a blank: the device's bleeping call- sign remained unanswered. She fell twice in the darkness along the rocky path, and ripped her sheepskin coat on a strand of barbed wire while trying to find a short cut from the cliff to the harbour. By the time she regained the circus field at the top of the town, she was breathless, bedraggled, bleeding from half a dozen minor cuts, and covered in burrs from some bush into which she had stumbled on her way.
The nagging worry she felt at Mark's inexplicable silence was resolved as soon as she had negotiated the noisy crowd thronging the sideshows and gained the comparative quiet of her own caravan. There was an envelope propped up on the table beside the bed, sealed, but with no name and no address on it.
The girl ripped open the flap and drew out the single sheet of paper it contained. He must have been in a hurry, she thought; he had written to her in clear! She read:
Having discovered something rather disquieting about the host of your tea party, I have driven up to see whether I can offer you a lift home. If you read this, of course, my journey will not have been really necessary!... In which case I shall merely make my excuses and leave. Dinner at the Crabber at nine?—M.
With an exclamation of dismay, she crumpled the paper involuntarily into a ball and dropped it to the floor. Foolish, quixotic Mark! After all the trouble she had had in escaping from the THRUSH headquarters, he had himself learned the truth — and dashed in impulsively to rescue her... only far from being able to "make his excuses" and leave, he would find a much warmer welcome than he expected, for the inhabitants of the house up on the moors would know all about him and be only too glad to lay their hands on him.
And now, instead of coding a message reporting to Waverly in New York and awaiting instructions, she would have to dash out again, back into the lion's mouth (to keep the circus parlance) and do her best to rescue him!
There was just one small problem: how was she going to do it?
Mark had taken his car, she thought as she picked the locks of her anklet and bracelet and stripped them off. Even if she could hire or borrow another, it would take time — and time was precious. Whatever Wright's mission was, he had said it was due to end this evening. On the other hand, to struggle all the way up the cliff path again would take even longer — and to go to the house by the inland road, climbing the moors and skirting the DEWS station, was unthinkable on foot. Besides which, the landward side of the place was certain to be the one most closely guarded. If only she could think of some way to land herself on the inside of the defences, there might be a chance...
Staring blankly out of the window, her eyes fell on the figure of Ernie Bosustow, tramping past on his way from the trailer to the sideshows.
Perhaps that was the answer — he was only a boy, but he loathed Sir Gerald Wright, he knew the area, and he'd plenty of guts and defiance and determination himself... which were not bad qualities for a sidekick, in the circumstances!
And she had to have a sidekick: courageous and resourceful though she was, April felt the need for the moral support of a second person on this adventure, even if that person was going to be only a passenger. She strode to the door and flung it open. "Ernie!" she called. "Can you come here a minute?"
The boy strolled across. "Hallo, hallo," he said with an impish look up at her. "What happened to you? You look as though you'd been dragged through a hedge backwards!"
"That's just exactly what did happen to me," April said grimly. "I want to get my own back on the people responsible, and I wondered... Look. Can you come in for a moment?"
He nodded, ran across to the steps leading to the caravan door, and swung himself up. "What's on your mind, then?" he asked.
"Ernie, I need help. I can't go into details but... you were right about Sir Gerald Wright. Not only that: he appears to be tied in with the other thing, the secret thing we're investigating — which is probably why he killed your girlfriend... not because she was embarrassing him with his wife but because she knew too much of his affairs. The point is, Sir Gerald and his people have probably captured Mr. Slate. He went up there to the house, not knowing they realised who he was... and I have to get him out. Will you help me?"
"Right about Wright, eh? That's a bit of a right about turn for a lad as everybody suspects of murder, isn't it?" chuckled the youngest Bosustow.
"Oh, Ernie — don't hold the police attitude against Mr. Slate and me," she implored.
"Don't worry: I'll help you all right. If it's to avenge Sheila, like — and especially if it does that toffee-nosed bastard in the eye — I'm on! But what d'you want me to do?"
"If they have Mr. Slate... and I'm afraid they must have by now... then they're holding him in Wright's house, beyond the radar station up on the moor. My problem is to get inside the grounds without crossing the boundaries in any of the usual ways: they have electrified fences and men with guns and so on." The girl stared at the table for a moment, absently stooped down to pick up the crumpled note from Mark, and struck a match which she held to one corner of it. "You know this region well, don't you?" she asked.
Ernie grinned. "Bet your life. I was at school here — though the family originally comes from further north. But the old man's always said Porthallow was his real home: that's why he winters here every year."
"Well, can you think of any way we could get in there undetected?"
"Hire a helicopter from Goonhilly?"
"I could even arrange that, as it happens. But it'd take too long."
"Of course," the boy said slowly, "there's always the Keg-'ole."
"The what?"
"The Keg-Hole. Natural curiosity, they call it. It's kind of a cave where the sea runs into the cliffs below the old coastguard station — but inside the cave it suddenly opens out and there's the sky above you again. From the landward side, it's like a hole in the ground where you can see the sea at the bottom."