The Counsellor Page 8

  “Ah! So that sprain can’t have been serious,” said The Counsellor with admirable readiness. “I suppose they made a bit of a fuss about rooms,” he added, sympathetically. “They’re too dashed particular, I always think.”

  “No, not here,” the girl replied. “They had No. 19. It’s quite a nice double room.”

  “I’ll take it myself,” announced The Counsellor, catching at the faint possibility that the couple might have left some traces behind them which had been overlooked by a housemaid. “If it satisfied them, it’ll be good enough for us.”

  But again the girl shook her head.

  “I’m afraid you can’t have it, sir. It’s occupied.”

  “Well, the two best single rooms you have,” ordered The Counsellor, accepting defeat placidly. “And, by the way, can you give me a list of all the garages in the town? And then I’d like to use the ’phone.”

  After a minute or two, he got the list and rang up those which happened to be on the telephone. None of them had any information about Car No. EZ 1113.

  “Well, we’ll try the rest after breakfast to-morrow,” he decided. “And the steamship office to see if they gave their names when they went aboard, though that’s not likely. And now, Wolf, if you’ll make yourself presentable, I’m quite ready for dinner.”

  An afterthought struck him and again he went to the reception desk.

  “When did Mr. and Mrs. Querrin leave, can you tell me?”

  “Just before seven o’clock on Saturday evening,” the clerk replied, after consulting her books. “They didn’t wait for dinner. I remember, now, that they must have gone to Castle Kennedy during the day. At least, they asked me about the grounds in the morning and how one got permission to visit the place.”

  “Thanks,” said The Counsellor. “Could you let me look at Bradshaw for a moment?”

  The girl handed him the timetables and he turned over the pages for a minute or two before giving the book back to her.

  “If they left just before seven,” he explained to Standish later, “it looks as if they were going to catch the Larne steamer which sails at 7.20 p.m. on Saturday. There’s another boat at 6.5. a.m. but they obviously didn’t get up early enough to catch that, so they filled in their day partly by visiting the Castle Kennedy estate. Next to Kew, it’s supposed to be the best bit of landscape gardening in the country. But that doesn’t exclude other possibilities. We’ll know more to-morrow.”

  Next morning, leaving his unwilling assistant at the hotel, The Counsellor went out in search of further information. He was back sooner than Standish expected.

  “‘Curiouser and curiouser’,” he declared on his return. “But not altogether unexpected by me. I’ve been to every garage in this place, and Car No. EZ 1113 hasn’t been seen by any of them. Nor was it embarked on the Larne steamers. Nor yet is the name Querrin on the passenger lists on Saturday. Nor did anyone corresponding to their description stay at any other hotel in Stranraer on Saturday night.”

  “It’s only a two-hour daylight crossing,” Standish pointed out. “They’d just pay for their tickets. No one would ask their names unless they booked a berth; and they wouldn’t do that. And now, what about it? Are you still bent on hunting down a pair of honeymooners and breaking into their privacy? That’s bad taste, and none of your business, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  The Counsellor made a soothing gesture.

  “You can keep your honeymooners, if such they be,” he explained. “Though my impression is that a legal marriage usually precedes a honeymoon, in the ordinary way. I shan’t disturb their transports. What I do want to know is what’s become of Car No. EZ 1113. It’s got no feelings to be ruffled if I intrude upon it.”

  “Well, cry for it in next Sunday’s broadcast,” suggested Standish.

  “I shall, unless I can tree it sooner myself. It’s always worth trying. Now, look here, Wolf. This is how it is.”

  The Counsellor spread out a map and took a notebook from his pocket.

  “That car was last seen at Crocketford about 5.40 p.m. on Friday. Crocketford’s 66 miles from Stranraer—say a couple of hours drive at the rate these people were averaging on the way up north. And yet, as I ascertained by scattering some largesse to a porter this morning they came here by a train which leaves Dumfries at 7.35 p.m. and comes into Stranraer at 10.3 p.m. My porter friend remembered the two suit-cases and the attaché case. Also the girl in the light coat and skirt. But they had no car concealed about their persons. Puzzle, find the car.”

  “Had a breakdown, perhaps, and couldn’t wait for a repair since they had to get on to Moville to catch the Anchor Line there.”

  “And yet they wasted a day here, fooling about. It must have been a pretty extensive breakdown,” commented The Counsellor. “If you’re right, then EZ 1113 is in some garage along the line Crocketford to Stranraer, and we’ll get news of it from Sunday’s broadcast as you suggest. But there’s another possibility. Suppose they abandoned it.”

  “Why should they?”

  “Because,” said The Counsellor with emphasis, “a car’s easily traceable.”

  “‘Ada had romantic notions,’” quoted Standish. “You seem to suffer from the same disease.”

  “I’m just exhausting the possibilities,” declared The Counsellor, unperturbed. “What we actually know is that they were at Crocketford at 5.40 p.m. and they joined the train that leaves Dumfries at 7.35 p.m. That gives them two hours to dispose of the car and join the train, doesn’t it? Now look at the map. If they went north of Crocketford into the hill-country round Loch Urr, it would take them further and further from the railway; and how could they get back to the line in time? That’s out of the question. If they went south to find a lonely spot to leave the car, the Criffell massif’s the only hope. But if they got their car into that, they’d have to get out again on their ten toes. It’s almost roadless and they couldn’t reckon on getting a lift from anyone. No good. Well, that leaves two possibilities. One is that they dumped EZ 1113 in a Solway quicksand. You can rule that out. Only the natives know where the quicksands are, and even then there’s a lot of shifting about. And you’d need to know about the times of low tide. And you’d be miles away from the railway when you’d finished. So that leaves only one likely place that I can think of: Lochar Moss.”

  “Fantastic,” was Standish’s verdict.

  “Watson,” said The Counsellor severely, “this is not in your best vein. We’ll now apply the time-factor. To get from Crocketford to the edge of Lochar Moss, you go back through Dumfries, and at Collin you take the Mouswald road. Crocketford to Mouswald is a matter of seventeen miles. Call that a thirty-five minute run, and you have them at Mouswald about 6.30 p.m., allowing a quarter of an hour for the A.A. man to change their wheel for them. Actually, it might have been a shade later.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when the A.A. man left them, he was under the impression they were going on to Stranraer. Suppose he went on towards Stranraer himself, they’d have to pass him and they can’t have turned back without his noticing them. Suppose he went towards Dumfries, again they’d have passed him and he’d have mentioned it in his letter. The only solution is that they turned off in Crocketford and went back by the secondary road through Milton and Lochfoot, which is a shade longer than the main road. Anyhow, they could reach the neighbourhood of Mouswald somewhere round about 6.40 at latest.”

  “Well, go on with the pretty story.”

  “The bother is that between the Mouswald road and Lochar Moss there’s the railway, cutting through the edge of the Moss; and there aren’t many places where you can get a car past the line. But there are one or two, judging by the map. A mile or so down one of these cul-de-sac tracks would land you well into the Moss and you could drive the car into the Moss itself, amongst the heather, and hide it fairly easily in some depression of the ground. Specially if you piled cut heather round the sides to screen it.”

  “It’s possible,” Standish adm
itted without enthusiasm.

  “That leaves the pair to walk back to the road. Allow a quarter of an hour each way, including hiding the car. They’d dump the luggage where they left the main road, so as not to be laden with it on the way back. Once on the road again, they’d have no difficulty in getting a lift either on a bus or on a passing car. Having to catch a train would be excuse enough, especially if a pretty girl made it. That gives them time enough to get into Dumfries and catch the 7.35. And we know they did catch the 7.35 somehow.”

  “So you think EZ 1113 is somewhere in Lochar Moss? Like looking for a needle in a haystack to find it, then, if you ask me.”

  “Not from a plane, perhaps,” The Counsellor pointed out. “They’d camouflage the car against people on ground level. I’ll bet they didn’t think of covering the roof. Anyhow, I’m going to have a look. So back we go to Carlisle, Wolf. It’s just over a hundred miles. We can get there in time to have a try before dark.”

  “You’ll find nothing. Pure waste of time, if you ask me,” said Standish discouragingly.

  “You think so? Well, we’ll have a dash at it, anyhow.”

  As it turned out, Standish was wrong. In fact it was he who, from the plane, caught the first glimpse of shining metal amid the waste of heather, roughly in the position which The Counsellor had suggested as likely. Flying over the spot, they were able to recognise the brown roof of the missing car.

  “Fantastic!” said The Counsellor, with heavy irony, as he turned the plane towards Carlisle again. “Now we take our car and visit that mare’s nest. It’ll be an experience for you, Wolf, seeing a mare’s nest. Almost as good as hearing a true cock and bull story.”

  A little over two hours later, they had found their way into the Moss and come upon the hidden car. Just as The Counsellor had inferred, it had been run off the track into the heather; and though care had evidently been taken to conceal its passage by choosing the best route, they found it without much difficulty, standing in a slight depression and stacked about with cut heather so that even at a short distance it was unnoticeable.

  The Counsellor could not resist a final flourish.

  “Temple Sowerby to Crocketford, 67 miles,” he said. “Crocketford to here, say twenty. Eighty-seven miles. Call it three gallons. They took in eight gallons at Temple Sowerby, which must have filled the tank. There ought to be between five and six gallons in hand now. Observe the triumph of brains, Wolf.”

  He opened the door of EZ 1113, switched on the ignition, and pointed to the petrol gauge.

  “Something gone wrong with the works,” said Standish with a grin. “The tank’s bung full, by the gauge.”

  The Counsellor stared at the dial in some dismay. He hated to find himself mistaken.

  “Not so brisk,” he objected. “Just take something and sound the tank, Wolf. I’ll bet it isn’t full.”

  Standish obeyed and, much to his disgust, found that The Counsellor was right. The tank was no more than two-thirds full at the most.

  “These gauges sometimes strike work,” he commented.

  The Counsellor seemed to pay no attention. He was giving the car a minute examination, evidently in hopes of finding something important; but apparently he discovered nothing that interested him. Diving into the driver’s door pocket, he fished out a driving-licence. “Helen Treverton” he read when he had opened the booklet.

  “It’s hers, all right,” he vouchsafed to Standish.

  He considered for a few moments.

  “No use leaving this car here to stand the weather. We’ll leave word at one of the Annan garages for them to send out and bring it in. Let’s see.”

  He slipped into the driving seat, worked the self-starter, and assured himself that the engine was intact.

  “Right! We can’t do any more here. Let’s get back to Carlisle. Too late to fly to London to-night. I hate night flying. We’ll start early to-morrow, if you can get out of bed as soon as there’s light enough, Wolf.”

  They stopped at Annan on the way back and gave the necessary directions about salvaging the car.

  “And when it comes in,” directed The Counsellor, “just take a look at the petrol gauge. And wire me what’s wrong with it. Here’s my card. Charge expenses to me. Want a deposit? How much?”

  He counted out some notes, got into his car, and drove off towards Carlisle.

  “That’s a rum business,” he said thoughtfully. “I said it was rum at the start. Now it seems rummer than ever. That tale about Moville, for instance. They’d have been just as quick to go direct to Glasgow and catch the liner before she started, instead of wasting time going round by Stranraer and Larne and Moville.”

  He paused for a moment or two, then continued:

  “There’s a train leaving Stranraer for Glasgow at 7.13 p.m. They left their hotel at about 7 p.m. In time to catch either the Larne steamer or that train. Well, let’s leave that for the moment. One point’s clear. They’d plenty of spare cash.”

  “Why?” demanded Standish.

  “Because if they’d been hard up, they could have sold EZ 1113, of course, and they didn’t. They preferred to leave it hidden in a bog. If you don’t see there’s something rum in that, then you need medical attention.”

  “Something in that,” admitted Standish. “I don’t see myself throwing away anything up to a hundred quid’s worth of car.”

  “That’s your Scots blood, perhaps. Anyhow, this Anglo-American alliance took a different line.”

  “Well, you’ve tried your hand on this business, Mark, and all you’ve got out of it isn’t much, so far. Take my advice and drop it.”

  “Always discouraging,” said The Counsellor cheerfully. “Why, it’s just getting interesting.”

  “What’s your next idea, then? Count me out, anyhow.”

  “Go back six squares and start afresh,” said The Counsellor, obviously undepressed. “To-morrow I shall go down to Grendon St. Giles again and fish out some more information. The original premises don’t seem to have been broad enough to reason from. I’ll look up our friend Inspector Pagnell. . . .”

  “Now, look here, Mark,” interrupted Standish rather crossly, “it’s over the score to go stirring up the police in this affair and putting them on the track of these two. That kind of thing simply isn’t done—you know that well enough.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” protested The Counsellor. “I’m just going to have a nice little gossip about local conditions. No harm in that, is there? And I’m going to send round to Somerset House, where they keep wills and all that sort of thing. No harm in that, is there? They welcome inquiries there, if you pay a small fee. And I may get in touch with the Anchor Line, too. Quite the busy little bee, in fact, flitting from flower to flower to collect the honey of information.”

  “But why?” asked Standish, irritably. “It’s no affair of yours.”

  “Why?” echoed The Counsellor soberly. “Because I don’t want to see any harm come to that girl, Wolf. That’s why. I liked the look of her, in that snapshot I saw. And from what I’ve seen, I’m beginning to be damnably worried about her. So now you know. And will you kindly keep quiet for a while. I want to think.”

  Standish was surprised to see the expression on his face.

  Chapter Six

  The Local Situation

  NEXT morning, Standish found that The Counsellor meant to let no grass grow under his feet. He was roused at an early hour, given a minimum time for breakfast, hurried to the flying-ground, and embarked on the plane with the least possible delay. When they reached London, The Counsellor’s car was waiting at the aerodrome.

  “You can go to the office,” The Counsellor curtly informed Standish, handing over a paper as he spoke. “I’ll be back later on. Here are the directions about some things you’re to do.”

  He gave an order to his chauffeur and the car drove off, leaving Standish to find a taxi for himself.

  On reaching Grendon St. Giles, The Counsellor directed his chauffeur to sto
p before the local police station. As he got out of the car all signs of haste and worry left his face. He walked into the station and inquired for Inspector Pagnell, offering his card as he did so. He had two kinds of visiting-card: a private one, and another which emphasised the fact that he was The Counsellor. It was one of the latter which he handed over to the constable. By good luck, Inspector Pagnell was on the premises; and apparently the card was sufficient to draw him from whatever work was occupying him at the moment. In a couple of minutes he came into the room: a big burly man with red hair and a faintly cynical expression about his lips. He walked with a slow, heavy tread; but the deliberation of his movements seemed out of keeping with the alertness of his eyes, which took in his visitor’s figure with one comprehensive glance. Apparently the loudness of The Counsellor’s tweeds made some impression on him. It seemed as though he had been prepared for something more distinguished in appearance and less striking in attire.

  The Counsellor gave him no time to bring his new impressions to a focus.

  “Inspector Pagnell? Glad to have been able to give you a little assistance, a month or two ago. Hope you’ll be able to do me a good turn now. This is how it is.”

  The inspector pushed forward a chair and invited The Counsellor to sit down. He himself leaned against the edge of a desk, examined The Counsellor again, and then, unexpectedly, took the lead in the conversation.

  “I heard your broadcast last Sunday, sir. Did you get any answers about that car?”

  “I did,” The Counsellor admitted. “But what do you know about that car?”

  “I’ve seen it every day for months, nearly,” the inspector deigned to explain. “Miss Treverton’s car. I knew that from the number, straight off. And what set you asking for it, if I may ask?”

  “Somebody asked me to broadcast about it,” said The Counsellor cautiously. He glanced at his watch. “It’s about lunch time. Come and have a bite with me at the inn down the street. The atmosphere here’s too official for a quiet chat,” he added with a smile.