And suddenly she struck the flagged floor of a room with a jar, and a shower of dust and small stones followed her from the dark hole opening in the wall above and behind her.
Mark Slate was sitting in an iron chair cemented to the floor. His lips were swollen and cracked. He had a black eye. There were ugly bruises on his face. His jacket was torn and there were three thin streams of dried blood across his shirt front. The ankles and wrists wired to the chair were purple from loss of circulation.
"My God!" he croaked through puffy lips. "What happened to you?"
April looked at herself and laughed hysterically. Her knees showed through her trousers, her sweater was ripped, there was mud in her hair, and she was covered all over in green slime from the Keg-Hole. Apart from which her boots were rimed with salt and her face was bleeding from half a dozen small cuts. "Excuse me," she said. "I didn't bother to dress."
Ernie was staring at the complexity of wires and valves and detonators surrounding a huge hour glass in a wooden stand, from the top half of which the pepper-and-salt grains of sand were silkily pouring. On the dwindling remnant of sand spiral ling towards the hole, a tiny square of metal attached to a hair-thin wire was riding.
"Ernie!" she almost screamed. "I know a bit about explosives — but the complexity of that defeats me! I'd have to trace back... I couldn't... I mean we can't release him and go — and we've only got... we've only got a minute and a half..."
The boy looked up. He was smiling. "Not to worry," he said. "I'm not as young as I look, you know. I did my military service — in the Sappers, as a matter of fact. I was in a special unit... Bomb disposal!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A DEAD LIBERTY!
"The one thing I don't really get," Mark Slate said two days later, "is the bit about the burglaries. If Sheila Duncan was a double agent, knowingly passing on microfilm to THRUSH couriers who called for it at her booth, and if she was killed because they found out she also worked for us, then I still can't see why they had to break in. What were they after?"
"The last roll of film delivered to her," April said. "They wanted it back." They were in the Matra-Bonnet, speeding along the empty roads between Porthallow and Falmouth on their way back to London. It was warmer and the sun was shining.
"You mean it hadn't been collected? Nobody had asked for a pixie in Porphyry and been given a lighthouse instead?"
"No, that's just the point. When he killed her, Wright found nothing and assumed it had already been collected. But then when an agent came — and after him another — and neither burglaries nor enquiries did the trick, then they reported to their controls, and it filtered back to Wright. So he sent his wife to ask, and when she drew blank, burgled the place again to see if he could discover where she'd hidden the film."
"So it was Wright we chased that night?"
"Yes. He did the break-in while Mason and Jacko manoeuvred poor Harry Bosustow on to Wright's boat and murdered him."
"That Jacko!" Slate said ruminatively, massaging his chin and shaking his head. "No wonder he was able to uproot boulders and heave them at this car! I guess he and Wright will both get life, eh?"
April nodded. "They're lucky there's no more death penalty in Britain these days," she said.
"And the wife got clean away?"
"Yes, she must have seen the police when they arrived and decided that discretion was the better bet for THRUSH. They haven't seen a sign of her since."
"She wasn't on the sub?"
"No... the sub was boarded by a party from a naval frigate called urgently by the Admiralty from a courtesy visit to Falmouth... but there was no Lady Wright aboard. I guess she'll live to fight another day!"
Mark changed down to third and snarled through the twisting main street of a small village. "What about the mysterious Colonel Forsett — and of course his lady?" he asked.
"Forsett was the chief of the THRUSH Satrap at the Tor. He was called to the Wright home while I was a prisoner there so that he could be warned to keep away that night when the explosion was supposed to occur."
Slate's hands, still bandaged at the wrist after his ordeal being wired to the chair, moved easily and expertly on the wheel. They drifted round a hairpin at the head of a valley, streaked up a long, curving bill, and sped across a straight section traversing a tract of moorland beyond. The Matra-Bonnet's exhaust note settled down to a heady roar. "This has been my day for questions, hasn't it?" he said. "I have just two more, lovey."
"All right then," the girl replied, leaning back and closing her eyes to the sun. "Let's have them."
"One: who did make the Porphyry lighthouses with the secret hole?"
"Mason. They found a wheel in the boathouse at the cove."
"Two: you never did say — where was the missing roll of film? What had Sheila Duncan done with it?"
April Dancer sat up and stared ahead through the wind screen. She sighed. "Sheila Duncan was a very brave girl," she said soberly. "She wasn't a double agent at all, in fact. She only pretended to be so that she could get next the THRUSH Satrap at Trewinnock Tor. Ditto her affair with Wright. I heard from Waverly in New York this morning: the missing roll of microfilm, together with a report on Wright and his activities, arrived on his desk yesterday. Sheila had mailed it just before Wright caught up with her..."
There was a sudden alarming clangor from behind. A large black saloon, with bell trilling, swept past and edged Mark into the side of the road. An illuminated sign on the car's roof spelled out Police.
A big man in uniform got out of the police car and walked ponderously back. He leaned down to Mark's window. It was Superintendent Curnow.
"Well, well, well," he said. "If it isn't Mr. Slate... Good day, Miss. I'll have to trouble you for your driving licence, if you please, sir."
"Oh, good lord!" Slate groaned. "This is murder, Superintendent... and you know the death penalty has been abolished!"
"Just so, sir. But there is a seventy mile an hour speed limit has been imposed by the Minister of Transport. And you were doing a hundred and six."
"Now look," the agent said, "surely you're not going to book me, Superintendent? I mean, after all... after leading you to your murderers... why, it'd be a dead ruddy liberty, that's what it would be!"
The policeman smiled. "That's right, sir," he said, taking out his notebook. "Law... the enforcement of law and order for the public good... that's what liberty is all about, isn't it?"
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: MURDERER'S SHY
CHAPTER TWO: MARK GETS SET
CHAPTER THREE: THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE NO BUSINESS
CHAPTER FOUR: AN OVERSEAS MISSION FOR APRIL
CHAPTER FIVE: IN THE STEPS OF THE DEPARTED
CHAPTER SIX: THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG
CHAPTER SEVEN: SOMETHING THE TIDE BROUGHT IN…
CHAPTER EIGHT: "ALL THE BEST LIGHTHOUSES ARE HOLLOW!"
CHAPTER NINE: OBSTRUCTIONS AND INTRUSIONS!
CHAPTER TEN: THE JEALOUS YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE
CHAPTER ELEVEN: A WALK OVER THE CLIFFS
CHAPTER TWELVE: APRIL'S BAG OF TRICKS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MISS DANCER DOES THE TRICK!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A DEAD LIBERTY!