She hurried up the stairs and along the passage to hers and Betty’s room.
A minute or two later they heard her footsteps running wildly along the landing. She rushed down the stairs like a demented woman and clutched Major Bletchley’s hand from the telephone receiver, which he was just about to lift.
“No, no,” she panted. “You mustn’t—you mustn’t. . . .”
And sobbing wildly, she collapsed into a chair.
They crowded round her. In a minute or two, she recovered her composure. Sitting up, with Mrs. Cayley’s arm round her, she held something out for them to see.
“I found this on the floor of my room. It had been wrapped round a stone and thrown through the window. Look—look what it says.”
Tommy took it from her and unfolded it.
It was a note, written in a queer stiff foreign handwriting, big and bold.
WE HAVE GOT YOUR CHILD IN SAFEKEEPING. YOU WILL BE TOLD WHAT TO DO IN DUE COURSE. IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE YOUR CHILD WILL BE KILLED. SAY NOTHING. WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS. IF NOT—
It was signed with a skull and crossbones.
Mrs. Sprot was moaning faintly:
“Betty—Betty—”
Everyone was talking at once. “The dirty murdering scoundrels” from Mrs. O’Rourke. “Brutes!” from Sheila Perenna. “Fantastic, fantastic—I don’t believe a word of it. Silly practical joke” from Mr. Cayley. “Oh, the dear wee mite” from Miss Minton. “I do not understand. It is incredible” from Carl von Deinim. And above everyone else the stentorian voice of Major Bletchley.
“Damned nonsense. Intimidation. We must inform the police at once. They’ll soon get to the bottom of it.”
Once more he moved towards the telephone. This time a scream of outraged motherhood from Mrs. Sprot stopped him.
He shouted:
“But my dear madam, it’s got to be done. This is only a crude device to prevent you getting on the track of these scoundrels.”
“They’ll kill her.”
“Nonsense. They wouldn’t dare.”
“I won’t have it, I tell you. I’m her mother. It’s for me to say.”
“I know. I know. That’s what they’re counting on—your feeling like that. Very natural. But you must take it from me, a soldier and an experienced man of the world, the police are what we need.”
“No!”
Bletchley’s eyes went round seeking allies.
“Meadowes, you agree with me?”
Slowly Tommy nodded.
“Cayley? Look, Mrs. Sprot, both Meadowes and Cayley agree.”
Mrs. Sprot said with sudden energy:
“Men! All of you! Ask the women!”
Tommy’s eyes sought Tuppence. Tuppence said, her voice low and shaken:
“I—I agree with Mrs. Sprot.”
She was thinking: “Deborah! Derek! If it were them, I’d feel like her. Tommy and the others are right, I’ve no doubt, but all the same I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk it.”
Mrs. O’Rourke was saying:
“No mother alive could risk it and that’s a fact.”
Mrs. Cayley murmured:
“I do think, you know, that—well—” and tailed off into incoherence.
Miss Minton said tremulously:
“Such awful things happen. We’d never forgive ourselves if anything happened to dear little Betty.”
Tuppence said sharply:
“You haven’t said anything, Mr. von Deinim?”
Carl’s blue eyes were very bright. His face was a mask. He said slowly and stiffly:
“I am a foreigner. I do not know your English police. How competent they are—how quick.”
Someone had come into the hall. It was Mrs. Perenna, her cheeks were flushed. Evidently she had been hurrying up the hill. She said:
“What’s all this?” And her voice was commanding, imperious, not the complaisant guesthouse hostess, but a woman of force.
They told her—a confused tale told by too many people, but she grasped it quickly.
And with her grasping of it, the whole thing seemed, in a way, to be passed up to her for judgement. She was the Supreme Court.
She held the hastily scrawled note a minute, then she handed it back. Her words came sharp and authoritative.
“The police? They’ll be no good. You can’t risk their blundering. Take the law into your own hands. Go after the child yourselves.”
Bletchley said, shrugging his shoulders:
“Very well. If you won’t call the police, it’s the best thing to be done.”
Tommy said:
“They can’t have got much of a start.”
“Half an hour, the maid said,” Tuppence put in.
“Haydock,” said Bletchley. “Haydock’s the man to help us. He’s got a car. The woman’s unusual looking, you say? And a foreigner? Ought to leave a trail that we can follow. Come on, there’s no time to be lost. You’ll come along, Meadowes?”
Mrs. Sprot got up.
“I’m coming too.”
“Now, my dear lady, leave it to us—”
“I’m coming too.”
“Oh, well—”
He gave in—murmuring something about the female of the species being deadlier than the male.
III
In the end Commander Haydock, taking in the situation with commendable Naval rapidity, drove the car, Tommy sat beside him, and behind were Bletchley, Mrs. Sprot and Tuppence. Not only did Mrs. Sprot cling to her, but Tuppence was the only one (with the exception of Carl von Deinim) who knew the mysterious kidnapper by sight.
The Commander was a good organiser and a quick worker. In next to no time he had filled up the car with petrol, tossed a map of the district and a larger scale map of Leahampton itself to Bletchley and was ready to start off.
Mrs. Sprot had run upstairs again, presumably to her room to get a coat. But when she got into the car and they had started down the hill she disclosed to Tuppence something in her handbag. It was a small pistol.
She said quietly:
“I got it from Major Bletchley’s room. I remembered his mentioning one day that he had one.”
Tuppence looked a little dubious.
“You don’t think that—?”
Mrs. Sprot said, her mouth a thin line:
“It may come in useful.”
Tuppence sat marvelling at the strange forces maternity will set loose in an ordinary commonplace young woman. She could visualise Mrs. Sprot, the kind of woman who would normally declare herself frightened to death of firearms, coolly shooting down any person who had harmed her child.
They drove first, on the Commander’s suggestion, to the railway station. A train had left Leahampton about twenty minutes earlier and it was possible that the fugitives had gone by it.
At the station they separated, the Commander taking the ticket collector, Tommy the booking office, and Bletchley the porters outside. Tuppence and Mrs. Sprot went into the ladies’ room on the chance that the woman had gone in there to change her appearance before taking the train.
One and all drew a blank. It was now more difficult to shape a course. In all probability, as Haydock pointed out, the kidnappers had had a car waiting, and once Betty had been persuaded to come away with the woman, they had made their getaway in that. It was here, as Bletchley pointed out once more, that the cooperation of the police was so vital. It needed an organisation of that kind who could send out messages all over the country, covering the different roads.
Mrs. Sprot merely shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.
Tuppence said:
“We must put ourselves in their places. Where would they have waited in the car? Somewhere as near Sans Souci as possible, but where a car wouldn’t be noticed. Now let’s think. The woman and Betty walk down the hill together. At the bottom is the esplanade. The car might have been drawn up there. So long as you don’t leave it unattended you can stop there for quite a while. The only other places are the car park in James’s
Square, also quite near, or else one of the small streets that lead off from the esplanade.”
It was at that moment that a small man, with a diffident manner and pince nez, stepped up to them and said, stammering a little:
“Excuse me . . . No offence, I hope . . . but I c-ccouldn’t help overhearing what you were asking the porter just now” (he now directed his remarks to Major Bletchley). “I was not listening, of course, just come down to see about a parcel—extraordinary how long things are delayed just now—movements of troops, they say—but really most difficult when it’s perishable—the parcel, I mean—and so, you see, I happened to overhear—and really it did seem the most wonderful coincidence. . . .”
Mrs. Sprot sprang forward. She seized him by the arm.
“You’ve seen her? You’ve seen my little girl?”
“Oh really, your little girl, you say? Now fancy that—”
Mrs. Sprot cried: “Tell me.” And her fingers bit into the little man’s arm so that he winced.
Tuppence said quickly:
“Please tell us anything you have seen as quickly as you can. We shall be most grateful if you would.”
“Oh, well, really, of course, it may be nothing at all. But the description fitted so well—”
Tuppence felt the woman beside her trembling, but she herself strove to keep her manner calm and unhurried. She knew the type with which they were dealing—fussy, muddle-headed, diffident, incapable of going straight to the point and worse if hurried. She said:
“Please tell us.”
“It was only—my name is Robbins, by the way, Edward Robbins—”
“Yes, Mr. Robbins?”
“I live at Whiteways in Ernes Cliff Road, one of those new houses on the new road—most labour saving, and really every convenience, and a beautiful view and the downs only a stone’s throw away.”
Tuppence quelled Major Bletchley, who she saw was about to break out, with a glance, and said:
“And you saw the little girl we are looking for?”
“Yes, I really think it must be. A little girl with a foreign-looking woman, you said? It was really the woman I noticed. Because, of course, we are all on the lookout nowadays for Fifth Columnists, aren’t we? A sharp lookout, that is what they say, and I always try to do so, and so, as I say, I noticed this woman. A nurse, I thought, or a maid—a lot of spies came over here in that capacity, and this woman was most unusual looking and walking up the road and on to the downs—with a little girl—and the little girl seemed tired and rather lagging, and half-past seven, well, most children go to bed then, so I looked at the woman pretty sharply. I think it flustered her. She hurried up the road, pulling the child after her, and finally picked her up and went on up the path out on to the cliff, which I thought strange, you know, because there are no houses there at all—nothing—not until you get to Whitehaven—about five miles over the downs—a favourite walk for hikers. But in this case I thought it odd. I wondered if the woman was going to signal, perhaps. One hears of so much enemy activity, and she certainly looked uneasy when she saw me staring at her.”
Commander Haydock was back in the car and had started the engine. He said:
“Ernes Cliff Road, you say. That’s right the other side of the town, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you go along the esplanade and past the old town and then up—”
The others had jumped in, not listening further to Mr. Robbins.
Tuppence called out:
“Thank you, Mr. Robbins,” and they drove off, leaving him staring after them with his mouth open.
They drove rapidly through the town, avoiding accidents more by good luck than by skill. But the luck held. They came out at last at a mass of straggling building development, somewhat marred by proximity to the gas works. A series of little roads led up towards the downs, stopping abruptly a short way up the hill. Ernes Cliff Road was the third of these.
Commander Haydock turned smartly into it and drove up. At the end the road petered out on to bare hillside, up which a footpath meandered upwards.
“Better get out and walk here,” said Bletchley.
Haydock said dubiously:
“Could almost take the car up. Ground’s firm enough. Bit bumpy but I think she could do it.”
Mrs. Sprot cried:
“Oh yes, please, please . . . We must be quick.”
The Commander murmured to himself:
“Hope to goodness we’re after the right lot. That little pipsqueak may have seen any woman with a kid.”
The car groaned uneasily as it ploughed its way up over the rough ground. The gradient was severe, but the turf was short and springy. They came out without mishap on the top of the rise. Here the view was uninterrupted till it rested in the distance on the curve of Whitehaven Bay.
Bletchley said:
“Not a bad idea. The woman could spend the night up here if need be, drop down into Whitehaven tomorrow morning and take a train there.”
Haydock said:
“No sign of them as far as I can see.”
He was standing up holding some field glasses that he had thoughtfully brought with him to his eyes. Suddenly his figure became tense as he focused the glasses on two small moving dots.
“Got ’em, by Jove. . . .”
He dropped into the driver’s seat again and the car bucketed forward. The chase was a short one now. Shot up in the air, tossed from side to side, the occupants of the car gained rapidly on those two small dots. They could be distinguished now—a tall figure and a short one—nearer still, a woman holding a child by the hand—still nearer, yes, a child in a green gingham frock. Betty.
Mrs. Sprot gave a strangled cry.
“All right now, my dear,” said Major Bletchley, patting her kindly. “We’ve got ’em.”
They went on. Suddenly the woman turned and saw the car advancing towards her.
With a cry she caught up the child in her arms and began running.
She ran, not forwards, but sideways towards the edge of the cliff.
The car, after a few yards, could not follow; the ground was too uneven and blocked with big boulders. It stopped and the occupants tumbled out.
Mrs. Sprot was out first and running wildly after the two fugitives.
The others followed her.
When they were within twenty yards, the other woman turned at bay. She was standing now at the very edge of the cliff. With a hoarse cry she clutched the child closer.
Haydock cried out:
“My God, she’s going to throw the kid over the cliff. . . .”
The woman stood there, clutching Betty tightly. Her face was disfigured with a frenzy of hate. She uttered a long hoarse sentence that none of them understood. And still she held the child and looked from time to time at the drop below—not a yard from where she stood.
It seemed clear that she was threatening to throw the child over the cliff.
All of them stood there, dazed, terrified, unable to move for fear of precipitating a catastrophe.
Haydock was tugging at his pocket. He pulled out a service revolver.
He shouted: “Put that child down—or I fire.”
The foreign woman laughed. She held the child closer to her breast. The two figures were moulded into one.
Haydock muttered:
“I daren’t shoot. I’d hit the child.”
Tommy said:
“The woman’s crazy. She’ll jump over with the child in another moment.”
Haydock said again, helplessly:
“I daren’t shoot—”
But at that moment a shot rang out. The woman swayed and fell, the child still clasped in her arms.
The men ran forward, Mrs. Sprot stood swaying, the smoking pistol in her hands, her eyes dilated.
She took a few stiff steps forward.
Tommy was kneeling by the bodies. He turned them gently. He saw the woman’s face—noted appreciatively its strange wild beauty. The eyes opened, looked at him, then went blank. With a
sigh, the woman died, shot through the head.
Unhurt, little Betty Sprot wriggled out and ran towards the woman standing like a statue.
Then, at last, Mrs. Sprot crumpled. She flung away the pistol and dropped down, clutching the child to her.
She cried:
“She’s safe—she’s safe—oh, Betty—Betty.” And then, in a low, awed whisper:
“Did I—did I—kill her?”
Tuppence said firmly:
“Don’t think about it—don’t think about it. Think about Betty. Just think about Betty.”
Mrs. Sprot held the child close against her, sobbing.
Tuppence went forward to join the men.
Haydock murmured:
“Bloody miracle. I couldn’t have brought off a shot like that. Don’t believe the woman’s ever handled a pistol before either—sheer instinct. A miracle, that’s what it is.”
Tuppence said:
“Thank God! It was a near thing!” And she looked down at the sheer drop to the sea below and shuddered.
Eight
The inquest on the dead woman was held some days later. There had been an adjournment whilst the police identified her as a certain Vanda Polonska, a Polish refugee.
After the dramatic scene on the cliffs, Mrs. Sprot and Betty, the former in a state of collapse, had been driven back to Sans Souci, where hot bottles, nice cups of tea, ample curiosity, and finally a stiff dollop of brandy had been administered to the half-fainting heroine of the night.
Commander Haydock had immediately got in touch with the police, and under his guidance they had gone out to the scene of the tragedy on the cliff.
But for the disturbing war news, the tragedy would probably have been given much greater space in the papers than it was. Actually it occupied only one small paragraph.
Both Tuppence and Tommy had to give evidence at the inquest, and in case any reporters should think fit to take pictures of the more unimportant witnesses, Mr. Meadowes was unfortunate enough to get something in his eye which necessitated a highly disfiguring eyeshade. Mrs. Blenkensop was practically obliterated by her hat.
However, such interest as there was focused itself entirely on Mrs. Sprot and Commander Haydock. Mr. Sprot, hysterically summoned by telegraph, rushed down to see his wife, but had to go back again the same day. He seemed an amiable but not very interesting young man.