30 Suspense and Thriller Masterpieces. Гилберт Кит Честертон
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their souls hungered. There were three men sitting there, the dark, sallow one to whom they had first spoken, the sunburnt one with the pipe, and another, a tall, slim man with a thin face, high cheek-bones and a moustache which was going grey at the tips. All three rose politely at their entrance and bowed to Anna.
'Here are our visitors,' said the lady; 'and I'm sure they are hungry. They have come over from the Island. The fog is getting thicker, and I don't think we can let them go till it clears. What do you think, Joe?'
'It wouldn't be safe,' said the tall man. 'We must wait anyhow till the Skipper returns. The dory should be back in an hour or so.'
A steward brought in hot water and a big plate of toasted scones. The lady made tea, and much conversation. The sallow man she called Erick, and the sunburnt man Lancie, but most of her remarks were addressed to the tall man called Joe. She prattled of the weather and the Norlands, of London, of Cowes, of ships, and the sea. It was very clear that this company was English, and had nothing to do with marine biology, and Anna's eyes showed her bewilderment.
When the tall man spoke it was to ask questions about the Island of Sheep. His manners were good, and he showed no intrusive curiosity, but it was plain from the others' faces that this was a topic that interested them. They talked much as a yacht's party might have talked who had come into strange latitudes and had suddenly got news of other fellow-countrymen.
'Your father is at home?' the man called Lancie asked. 'He has a wonderful place over there, hasn't he? We heard about it at Hjalmarshavn. Are you two brother and sister?'
'We're no relations. This is my friend, Peter John Hannay. He is English. He is staying with us.'
Four pairs of eyes seemed to open wider.
'Are you by any chance Sir Richard Hannay's son?' the man called Joe asked, with a sudden eagerness in his voice.
Peter John nodded. 'Yes, and Sir Richard is staying with us,' added Anna.
'We must return your call,' said the lady. 'I've always longed to meet Sir Richard—and your father too, my dear.'
Peter John's mind had been working furiously, ever since the sight of Miss Ludlow had opened for him the door on a dark world. Anna was bewildered, but only because the Tjaldar was so different from the old Moe, and she had had to revise her marine biology notions, but the boy knew enough to realize that they had blundered into the enemy's camp. He had heard Sandy's talk, and I had told him the whole story, and ever since his coming to the Island of Sheep his business had been to be on the watch. Behind all his escapades with Anna had been this serious preoccupation. The sight of Lydia Ludlow had awakened him, and now in this little cabin he was face to face with Haraldsen's enemies, the sallow Albinus, the stalwart Troth, the lean, restless Barralty. Only one was missing, the most formidable of them all. At any cost he and Anna must get off and carry the fateful news.
'We should be going,' he said as he got up, 'or our people will be anxious.'
'You can't go in this weather,' said Barralty. He too rose and opened the door, and sure enough a solid wall of vapour had built itself beyond the vessel's side.
'I've got a compass,' said Peter John, 'and we can't miss the way.'
'We daren't risk it,' said the man. 'We should never be able to face your father if anything went wrong.'
'They must wait till the Skipper comes back,' said Troth, and the others agreed.
Peter John was getting desperate. 'We're rather grubby,' he said. 'Could we wash our hands?'
'Certainly,' said the lady. 'Come down to my cabin, both of you.' She seemed to Peter John to look meaningly at the others and slightly nod her head. She took Anna's hand and led her out, and the boy followed. He lingered a little beyond the door, and he heard, or thought he heard, some one of the three exclaim: 'My God, we have got the trump card now. This will keep the Skipper in order.'
Miss Ludlow took them down a steep companion into a narrow alley lined with cabins. The big one at the end was hers, and she ushered the children into it with the utmost friendliness. 'You'll find everything you want there, my dears,' she said. 'Towels and hot water. The bathroom is next door. I'll come down presently to fetch you.'
But as she left them she drew behind her a sliding door at the end of the passage. Peter John darted after her and tried its handle. It was locked from the outside.
Anna proceeded to scrub her hands and use a pocket comb to tidy up her hair. 'This is a queer ship,' she said, 'and queer people. But they're kind, I think. They're ordinary yachting folk, but the Tjaldar isn't much of a yacht. Too much of a grubby trawler for their nice clothes.'
Peter John was looking out of the port-hole into the wall of fog. 'They aren't kind,' he said. 'They're our enemies—your father's and my father's. They're the people who tried to catch you at school. They're the people we were always on the look-out for at Laverlaw. I must tell you all I know, for we're in an awful hole.'
There and then in that dim cabin he told her the story as he knew it, told her many things which Haraldsen had jealously kept hidden from her, and gave point and shape to suspicions which had long lain at the back of her head. He may have told the story crudely, with a boy's instinct for drama, but Peter John was also a realist who made no mistake about the fundamentals. She sat quiet as a mouse, but at the end she gave a low cry.
'They're going to attack our island? And we've let ourselves be made prisoners? Oh, Peter John, it is all my fault! I dragged you on this silly expedition.'
'It is my fault, for I should have remembered. You see, I knew and you didn't.'
Two miserable children clung to each other, while the fog thickened without and the cabin darkened.
Meantime, in the deck-house they had left, there was a feverish council. From what I learned later I can reconstruct the scene as if I had been listening outside the door. In an hour's time the man called the Skipper would arrive, and three men and one woman had much to talk of before then. I can picture their rapid, confused speech, their alternations of eagerness and diffidence, their sudden confidence dashed by sudden fears. Always in the background there must have been this shadow of fear. For the absent Skipper had become to them no longer a colleague but a master. They were people whose plans lay well inside the pale of what we call civilization. They had reputations to lose, ambitions which demanded some respect for the conventions, comfortable lives which they were not inclined to sacrifice. But they had become yoked to one who cared for none of these things, a man from the outlands who had long ago discarded their world. They were like schoolboys playing at pirates who had suddenly found themselves enrolled under the authentic Blackbeard. Barralty, I fancy, was the worst scared. Albinus was the common rogue who had already known the shady side of the law. Troth was a robust fellow, a sportsman accustomed to risks who would not be greatly rattled till he knew the full extent of the trouble. But Barralty was the brittle intellectual, who found himself in a world where his old skill went for nothing, and with him was the woman who had worked with him, and who now saw all their careful schemes on the edge of a fulfilment more disastrous than failure.
Troth must have spoken first, for he had the coolest head.
'Things are brightening,' he said. 'This is a piece of luck for us, for we've got our hostages. Now we can deal.'
'You think so?' said Barralty, in a voice which he tried to keep calm.
'Well, we've got the girl, and she's what Haraldsen cares most for in the world. And we've got the boy, who's the apple of Hannay's eye. There's only Lombard left, and he doesn't count for much. There's no word of Clanroyden.'
'What has happened to Clanroyden?'
'God knows! Run out, perhaps… . No, he's not that kind of fellow. The Skipper must have put a spoke in his wheel, for he's devil enough for anything.'
'Have you got a line on the Skipper's plan?'
'Plain enough. Old-fashioned piracy. He'll descend on the Island like a marauding Viking and hold 'em up. If they show fight, as they're likely to, he'll kill. He'll get what he wants and