‘Would you really take me home?’ he bleated hopefully. ‘I’m Adrian Bowen, my dad lives at the Moor Farm in Abbot’s Bale. I don’t care if I do get into trouble, I want to go home!’ If a miracle happened, and he was believed and duly delivered there, the Bowens would at any rate haul him into the house, if only to demand explanations, and it would be too late then to drag him out again by force. But he didn’t believe in it! He worked at it, but he knew he was up against a stone wall. Solider than the one now flanking them!
The man leaning back against the door never moved, never took his eyes from Bossie, and as yet said no word. His smile had vanished, he peered from beneath brows drawn and morose, almost irritable, and jutted a thoughtful lower lip as he wrestled with this problem. But the false name did not make the slightest impression on his fierce concentration.
‘And for a while there you almost had me fooled,’ he mused at last, as much to himself as to Bossie. ‘Why the hell did you have to go and get mixed up in this business? Why did you meddle? You’re the one who’s made this necessary, you know that?’ Downright accusingly, as if Bossie owed him an abject apology for forcing his hand like this to a repugnant act. ‘What am I going to do with you now?’ he demanded, in tones decidedly aggrieved.
‘You could drive me home, like you offered,’ sniffed Bossie, determinedly obtuse. But the disguise was thinning; what was the use of it, if it was ineffective?
‘Knowing as much as you know, James Boswell Jarvis?’ said his enemy, and heaved his broad shoulders with an effort away from the door, and took a long stride forward into the north walk. ‘Not bloody likely!’
‘Your show, Toby,’ said George, marshalling his handful of men within the barrier, and casting a glance aside at the ticket-office, where a uniformed constable had taken over the-switchboard and re-established contact with the system, and was at this moment engaged in the first of a series of calls designed to run to earth the truant warden of Mottisham Abbey, who apparently had all available keys with him, since they had found none in the office. ‘Lead on, you know where Bossie’s liable to have holed up.’
In the complex of buildings, gardens, excavations and reserves of plant and scaffolding, Toby moved with cautious speed. Things had changed since last he gate-crashed this enclosure.
‘The stable-block’s this way.’ He went ahead steadily, and brought them face to face with the long line of the eighteenth-century wall. The night remained dark, and George had thought it best to work as far as possible without lights, using torches only fleetingly where necessary. He had given no voice to his misgivings, but Toby had grasped that the absence of John Stubbs was a matter for anxiety. He was one of the names against which a question-mark reared, he was here conveniently installed on the spot, and he was not where, by the terms of his appointment, he should have been. Moreover, he had been absent now for a length of time which should have allowed him to make the round of his charge, and be back at his post, but there was still no sign of him.
The gate that guarded the archway was closed, but yielded to a touch. The key was not in the lock. Toby pushed the gate open and slid through, with George and Sergeant Moon at his heels, and turned right, to make for the door in the north-east corner of the yard. And there he halted at the first step. The range of small, high windows in the inner wall of the north range glowed hollowly with a steady but muted light, reflected from below and patterned with shadows from the network of roof rafters.
‘There’s somebody—’ began Toby, low-voiced, and bit off the rest as George laid a warning hand on his arm. For there was indeed somebody within there, and though it might be Bossie, was it likely that a boy playing the secret investigator by night would run the risk of betraying his presence by switching on a whole array of lights, in a place where he had no right to be? Not a boy as bright as Bossie!
George went forward alone, moving silently along the wall to the door, beneath which a very thin line of light showed. He grasped the handle, and very gingerly turned it, but it did not yield to pressure. Locked! And locked with someone inside, and the lights on.
Correction, with two people inside. For hollowly from within he heard voices.
‘What the hell can you expect, now you’ve put me in this position?’ The once-amiable and encouraging guide looked a very different person now, coming forward slow step by step, glaring annoyance and genuine resentment from under brows tight and creased as though in pain. ‘It’s your own damned silly fault, you should have let well alone. You don’t think I like having to do this, do you?’
‘You don’t have to.’ Bossie was backing cautiously away along the rope, feeling his way. Not that it was going to do him much good even if he could dodge round to the other side and make a dash for the door, because he had watched his enemy withdraw and pocket the keys. ‘Nobody’s making you do anything. And if you know what’s good for you you won’t try, because my friends who were here with me this afternoon are coming back for me. They’ll be here any minute, you won’t have time to get away.’
‘What a hope!’ said his enemy with a tired and petulant smile. ‘You’ve made it clear enough that nobody knows where you are, and nobody’s going to know where you disappear from. I’ve got plenty of time.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. There are five of them who know exactly where I am, and if I don’t show up again they’re going to tell…’
He wasn’t believed, of course. There was no way of making that story convincing now. And he had reached the place where the piled junk and the hand-cart narrowed the way, and was feeling his way blindly past the obstructions when his foot slipped over the edge of the excavated section, and slight though the drop was, it threw him off balance. He fell against the rope, and rolled under it, and then a large hand had him by the back of his blazer, hauled him upright, and slammed him against the stone wall, and its fellow was clamped over his mouth just too late to suppress a single yell of indignation, rage and terror.
As if that one shout had set off a chain reaction of unnerving assaults upon the silence of the night, there was a sudden thunderous salvo of knocks on the locked door, a violent rattling of the handle, and a peremptory voice ordering: ‘Open up in there! This is the police! We’re here in force, you can’t get away. Unlock this door!’
Silence again, absolute silence. No querulous baritone and no reedy, wavering treble to be heard now inside the long room, not the least sound of movement or even breathing. Outside the door George leaned with an ear against the wood, straining to hear if any indication of struggle or distress stirred within, but there was nothing. Behind him Sam and Toby stood painfully still.
Presently George began to talk, clearly, reasonably, deliberately, without haste.
‘We know you’re in there now. We know the boy is with you. We know there’s no one else in there. Whatever happens to him will be your doing, no one else’s. Your responsibility. Think about it! What a fool you’d be to harm him now! You can’t get away. Touch him, and you destroy yourself. Only the desperate do that, and why should your case be desperate? You’re a reasoning man, you can see what’s in your own best interests. It’s only a matter of time, why prolong it? You may as well open the door now, it will make no difference in the end, and spare you and us a great deal of trouble. Mitigating circumstances always count.’