Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John
was a different noise. The wind is from the west and the sea carries sound.”
“Where might it have been?”
“I think near the rock beyond the water.”
“Same place as I thought I saw the light.” Corbett rubbed his bristly chin. “Can’t say I like that. Jones and me may be dreaming, but it’s the first time we’ve ever imagined anything like it. We’d better get the patrols out. Bill, you stay here, with Jones and his two mates. Keep your ears cocked and your eyes skinned. And you’d better call up Number One and tell ‘em that we’re a bit anxious. Kittredge will take the southern beat up to the head of the gulf—same three as last night—and I’ll go north. It’s the water’s edge we’ve got to watch, so there’s no call to go fossicking in the bush… Remember the drill, you all, if you hear a shot. We meet here again at midnight, hen Bill and his little lot turn out. No smoking for you boys. Keep your pipes in your pockets till you get back.”
We are concerned only with the doings of Kittredge and his party of three, whose beat lay south along the shore of the little gulf to where the land swung round in a horn of cliff to form the breakwater which separated the inlet from the ocean. He had with him one Indian and two of Luis’s mestizos. Beyond the jetty the trees descended almost to the water’s edge, high timber trees festooned with lianas, but for a yard or two on the seaward side the western winds had thinned the covert a little, and the track zigzagged among bare boles. Beyond, the hill dropped almost sheer, so that the traveller was wet by the tides, but farther on there was a space of treeless ground, covered with light grass and thorn bushes, and at the water’s edge, where other stream entered the sea, a reed-swamp, haunted by wildfowl.
Kittredge divided his patrol. To the Indian he relegated the patch of forest, since he was the best man for a tangled country. The place where the cliffs dropped sheer to the water he left to one of the mestizos, for it seemed the easiest to watch, since its rear was protected. He himself and the other mestizo took the patch of savannah which etched to the head of the gulf. They did not keep very in the sea because of the swamps, but chose the higher ground among the grass and scrub. It was not a good place for observation, since the ears were filled with the rustling of dry sedge in the wind, and the eyes in the darkness could have made out nothing except a light.
Kittredge and his man saw no light, and they heard little but the wind in the grass and reeds and an occasional stirring of wild duck. They made their way to the head of the gulf and about eleven o’clock turned for home. They expected to pick up the other mestizo in the cliff section, but could nut find him, so they assumed that, since they were a little behind time, he had gone back according to instructions to the rendezvous in the hut. The Indian in the forest belt was still awaiting them. He had seen and heard nothing.
But the man in the cliff area had not gone home. He had sat for half an hour on the shelf of rock straining his eyes into the gloom. Then, being alone, he had become the prey of fears, for he was superstitious. He had said his prayers, and moved a little north, so that he could have the sheer rock-wall at his back. A movement in the set startled him, till he decided that it was a fish. But he had become restless and nervous and again shifted his post this time to a boulder which overhung deep water. He was just about to squat himself on it, when a sound halted him and in a moment of panic he felt for his pistol. It was his last earthly act, for at that instant a knife was neatly drive between his shoulder-blades, and almost in the same movement his pistol was taken from his hand and his body slid quietly into the sea.
At Post No. 1, two-thirds of the way up the ravine, the telephone message from the shore had been duly received. It was a small post, and the officer in charge, an old colleague of Corbett’s, was not inclined to disregard his warning. But since the post was at a turning, where the cliff was sheer above and below the path, there seemed no need for special precautions. Anything which came up the path would instantly observed. But it occurred to him that it might just possible to avoid the path and make a way across the creeper-clad precipice and the steep glen up a tributary stream, so he sent a man up the road to the only corner where such a short-cut could debouch.
This man, an Indian of the Gran Seco, was not accustomed to forests, nor to the thick steamy darkness of that gash in the mountains. He started at every sound—the cry of a piripipi bird, the rustle of a dead branch, the rooting of a wild pig, for all were unfamiliar. Presently, being a philosopher, he decided that every noise was alike and innocuous, and relapsed into meditation. His philosophy was his undoing. About a quarter of an hour before midnight, he sat sleepily perched on the end of one of the many wooden bridges, something struck him, something as sudden and secret and deadly as a serpent’s fang. Quick hands thrust his dead body into the thicket. He was not missed by Post No. 1 till next morning at breakfast.
At Post No. 2, the half-way post, placed beside one of the main platforms of the chute, the night passed without incident. There the ravine was broad and densely wooded, and the angle of the slope was only some 30 degrees. Nothing that night appeared on or near the path.
The garrison at the summit were in tents strung out on both banks of the stream before it began its descent, and completely commanding the path and the off-take of the chute and the wire ropeways. The current of the stream had been used to develop electric power for haulage, and the engine-house stood close to the left bank. The post was admirably sited to command the path, but, owing to the obstruction of the buildings, it had no long field of view to left or to right. The uppermost part of the ravine was wider than the lower, and very steep, but ribbed with lateral spurs. It was possible for an active man to make the ascent by one of these spurs without the cognisance of the summit garrison.
Geordie Hamilton, late of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was not only in charge of the garrison but also of the engine-house, since by profession he was a mechanic. He and his men, mostly Mines workmen, were stalwart bulldogs to guard a gate, but they were not greyhounds to range at large. They had received Corbett’s warning from the shore and till well after midnight were very alert to watch the only area from which they anticipated danger… The wind was rising, and the glen was full of sound. The did not hear, and if they had heard they would not have regarded, the fall of a stone in a subsidiary gully a quarte of a mile to their left, the creak of a log, and the long screech of metal on stone which means that nailed boots have slipped…
Janet had gone to bed in a happier frame of mind. The Gobernador had caught cold, and Barbara, fearing fever, had given him a sleeping-draught and packed him between blankets. Moreover, she had shifted him from his ordinary quarters to another hut, one with a fireplace, which Jane and Archie had hitherto occupied, Janet removing herself to his in exchange. His new hut was close to the mess room in the very centre of the compound; his old one was on the northern outskirts, selected originally in order that it might be specially guarded by sentries without making the fact too obvious.
Janet slept till a little after midnight, and then for no apparent reason she found herself wideawake. This was constantly happening to her nowadays, and she lay for a little with her nerves on stretch, listening for she knew not what. There was no sound except the wind, making odd little noises in the thatch and among the unseasoned plank of the hut. There were sounds, too, coming from inside, so she snapped her bedside switch and stared into the corner. But it was only the wind stirring a pile of old picture papers and flapping a waterproof on a peg. Janet turned off the light and tried to compose herself to sleep again. She thought of a procession of ducks on a common and sheep coming through a gate, but it was no use. Very soon she realised that she was hopelessly wide awake and would not get to sleep again that night. She realised something more—that her nervous unrest had come back with redoubled force. She felt her heart beating and her fingers twitching and a ridiculous, unreasoning fear at the back of her head.
Very much ashamed of herself, she decided that there was thing for it but to get up and dress. It was a wild night, she saw when she opened the door, but there was some sort of moon, and her first idea was to go for a ride on the downs… She wished she had a dog; Archie had had a mongrel terrier with the army and had meant to bring it to her but had forgotten… She thought of going to look for Barbara, but felt some scruples about making into the beauty-sleep of one who slept like a log and had apparently no tremors.
She