‘Yes. Indoors,’ she said. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and get it.’
O’Hara began to feel chilly. He swung his arms and stamped his feet, and hoped that soon the key would be forthcoming. The woman was gone about ten minutes, which seemed an unduly long time, considering that the house was less than fifty yards off.
He was beginning to wish that he had never stopped at the house at all when he heard the sound of voices and saw the gleam of an electric torch. The woman was returning. With her she had a tallish man, and it was he who was carrying the torch. He shone it on to O’Hara, allowing the light to travel slowly over the young man’s long, thin body, over his grimy shorts and sweat-stained running-vest, over his long, thin legs, and at last to his face.
‘Not at all a bad notion,’ he said to the woman. Then he turned the light on to the lock and fitted a key. He pushed the door open with his shoulder. It swung inward, and as the man shone the torch into the darkness O’Hara could see the gleaming coachwork of a car.
‘Keep back,’ said the man. ‘I’ll bring her out, and then you’ll have to help me with him. You’re very late, aren’t you?’
He climbed into the driver’s seat and backed the car out without troubling to wait for an answer. He got out, opened the door of the car, and invited O’Hara to get in.
‘Might as well take a seat. We’ll be a few minutes.’ he said. ‘Wrapping him up, you know. It wouldn’t do for him to get cold.’ He concluded these words with a very sinister chuckle.
‘There are rugs,’ said the woman to O’Hara, ‘if you’re cold. We’ll be as quick as we can. I’m stirry. I didn’t know…’
‘Make yourself at home,’ said the man. He chuckled again. ‘It’s the whale of a notion. Gets us out of a very nasty mess.’
Rather astonished, O’Hara listened to their retreating footsteps. The whole business seemed to him more than a trifle mysterious.
‘I hope the fellow hasn’t got bubonic plague,’ he thought. ‘Why did the woman say she was alone when this chap was there all the time? There’s something fishy going on. I wish to the Lord I’d never stopped here. Oh, well, I’m in for it now!’
Thankful for the rugs, he wrapped one round his body and one round his long legs, and reclined against the upholstery of the car. He felt sleepy, and, becoming warm, began to doze. The sound of footsteps brought him wide awake again.
‘Now then, cully,’ said the man’s voice, ‘you’d better come along and help me lift him. Here, I’ve brought you a coat.’
O’Hara discarded the rugs, opened the door of the car and groped his way out. His arms were thrust roughly and strongly into the sleeves of an overcoat. It was full big for him, and, although he was an unusually tall and long-armed young man, the sleeves came almost to his knuckles. ‘Now, then, let’s get a move on,’ the man added. He led the way back through the cartshed, and O’Hara followed.
He was taken by a gravel path to the side of the house, where the man pushed open a door which led into a narrow passage. At the end of the passage was a staircase and at the top of the staircase, which was lighted by a blue-shaded lamp of tiny size and very feeble glimmer, was a bedroom. The bedroom door had been lifted off its hinges and was flat on the floor.
‘I thought we might need it,’ said the man. He led the way into the bedroom, and flashed his torch on to a camp bed. Lying on it, in a face-downwards position, was an enormously broad figure so wrapped and entwined in blankets that it resembled nothing so much as a gross and ape-like mummy. Even the head was completely hidden, so that nothing of the face or even the hair could be seen. Great motoring gloves covered the hands and had been tied round the wrists with tape. So much O’Hara could see, but nothing more, and that he saw only as his guide flashed the torch.
‘Now,’ said the man, ‘as you see, he’s a pretty tidy weight to lift and carry, so if you find him too heavy you’ll need to give me plenty of warning, so that we can set him down gently. I think I’ve fixed him all right, but we don’t want to bruise him or anything. You take his legs, and don’t be hasty. The stairs are steep and I don’t want to break my neck. Rather a joke if I did, but I should have to miss the laugh, and that would be rather a pity.’
The weight of their burden was not short of fifteen or sixteen stones. O’Hara was a powerful fellow and in excellent training, but he could scarcely stagger down the stairs. His companion appeared in like case, for he grunted and groaned as they descended, and, in the hall, had to beg for a respite whilst they put the sick man down. A hot-water bottle which was evidently wrapped up in the blankets had been burning O’Hara’s wrist, and his ankle was now very stiff. The extra weight on it was very nearly unbearable.
‘Ready again?’ said the man. ‘Then up-se-daisy!’
The journey in the dark to the yard seemed endless, and even when it was over there was the difficulty of getting the sick man into the back of the car. At last they managed to place him along the back seat, and O’Hara ducked in after him.
‘Hold on to him, now,’ said the man, ‘and on no account let him fall off!’
O’Hara grunted, liking the business less and less, and the man climbed into the driver’s seat and slowly drove off up the hill. How he managed to find his way, much less to pick a track on the cart-ruts they seemed to be following, O’Hara had no idea, for the car was not lighted at all, either inside or out. It crawled along in what was now the thick darkness of a misty and moonless night, and, except for the occasional swish of the branches from an untrimmed hedge against the window, O’Hara would not have known that they were not bucketing their way across a desert.
There was no conversation. He himself had all he could do to keep the mummy-like invalid on the back seat as the car slowly jolted and swung. The driver, he assumed, had all his work cut out to find the way and to keep the car on its track for not once did they drive on a road.
The further they went, the less and less O’Hara liked what was going on. He could not desert the sick man, and yet there was something so corpse-like about the inert and swaddled body that he began to feel a horror of it similar to the horror he had felt for the house with the four dead trees.
He found himself holding his breath and trying to hear the sound of the invalid’s breathing. There was no sound at all, so far as he could determine, but he thought perhaps the noise of the car was enough to blanket other sounds.
Suddenly the car pulled up, and O’Hara was flung sideways. The driver put his head out.
‘You there, Willie?’ he called. There was no answer. The driver pulled in his head again with an oath. ‘What’s the matter with everyone?’ he added.
At the notion that they were to meet someone else in this curious spot, O’Hara decided that he had had enough of the affair. He was crouched on the floor to hold the invalid in place, and from this position he put his head to the man’s chest to hear his breathing. He could hear nothing, although the car had stopped.
‘I say!’ he cried. ‘I think this chap’s worse! I believe he’s dead!’
Upon these words, he slipped out of the enormous, borrowed overcoat, opened the door of the car as it began to crawl forward, crouched on the step and then fell gently on to soft, wet turf.
‘What the devil are you doing?’ cried the driver, as the door swung to. O’Hara did not reply. He was too busy rolling down a hill. The grass of the hillside was soaking, and rain was now falling fast. The car, he knew, had pulled up. He got to his feet and ran.
‘What’s the matter there, Con?’ cried a new voice behind him. There was nothing strange to an Irishman in hearing another man addressed as Con, in England the name of a girl. O’Hara took no notice, intent only on getting away.