Read Online The Secret Vanguard by Michael Innes - Free Book Online Page B

Sheila thought – and suddenly felt her heart pound within her. For out of the mist there had emerged, enormous, the figure of a man. He advanced slowly up the path, shrinking oddly as he did so to a natural size. ‘Why,’ whispered Sheila with relief, ‘it’s only an old shep–’ Evans’ hand closed like a vice on her arm.
    An old man, bearded, in patched lovat tweed, over his shoulder a plaid, in his hand a crook that might have come straight out of the Old Testament…he trudged up the path towards the croft and disappeared within. And a voice breathed in Sheila’s ear. ‘You see that flat slab? I want him there. When he comes out give a hail. But don’t show yourself.’ She turned her head. Evans was gone.
    It was very still. Far away she could hear mountain sheep faintly bleating. Momentarily the mist thickened and the white walls of the croft faded; only the doorway was a low pool of darkness. Something stirred in it. He had come out. The mist cleared and she saw him clearly – his crook was gone and he stood erect and alert, listening, one hand in the pocket of his patched coat.
    Sheila called out. ‘Hoy!’
    He turned instantly towards the sound and rapidly advanced. Too far to the right… Sheila crouched low and ran. ‘Shepherd!’ He turned again and advanced unerringly. He was halfway towards her when he threw his arms strangely above his head and fell. An ugly fall, such as she had never before seen. She closed her eyes…
    ‘All right, Sheila.’ Evans was kneeling over his quarry.
    She went forward. ‘However–’
    ‘Didn’t I tell you I was crazy on Caravaggio’s David ? I practised with the regular sling for years the same as most boys do with a sling-shot. And with shoestrings and a bit of leather what more does one want? This gives us perhaps another hour. Wait.’ He got up and ran into the croft.
    Sheila studied the fallen man. He was a figure of patriarchal dignity and quite unconscious; from a long gash on his temple blood slowly trickled down his beard… Evans was beside her again with a pannikin and a length of rope. ‘He delivered your milk,’ he said curtly. ‘Drink it up.’ Sheila looked from the wounded head of the old man – he appeared really to be that – to the pannikin, and from the pannikin to Dick Evans. Perhaps this blood business had turned him primitive; the thing could be divined as a species of ordeal or test. She sat down and drank the milk – rather slowly. By the time she had finished half of it Evans and the problematical shepherd had disappeared. So had the rope.
    ‘A shepherd at all points’ – Evans had appeared again in the doorway – ‘except that he had a gun.’ With curious diffidence he held out an automatic pistol. ‘Do you know’ – he looked at her positively warily – ‘I’ve never handled one of these things?’
    For the first time in an unknown number of hours Sheila laughed outright. ‘Why ever should you have – particularly when you’re so handy with shoelaces and tobacco pouches? But stick it in your rucksack; it may be useful all the same. And drink your milk.’
    He drank. ‘And now we’re quitting. Our friend came up the path; we’ll go dead the other way. Over this moor for a good bit and then find a burn and follow it down. That will get us within hail of your policeman if we’ve any luck.’
    ‘I want to go down the path.’
    Evans stopped in the act of putting on his rucksack. ‘Don’t you see you have what may be valuable information? Your job’s to get it safe to your own base.’
    ‘But we’re lord knows where. And there’s that element of time: you say this is our second day here. I want to go down the path.’
    ‘You know what this is? It’s some two hundred million people crouching ready to cut each other’s throats. And you want to walk right in between.’
    ‘But, Dick, that’s not quite right. I’m one of the two hundred million–’
    Dick Evans’ lips appeared to be framing the words