If Anything Happens to Hester Read online

  “He’s gone off in a huff. The less you have to do with that family the better,” Horton said. “Come back and forget him.”

  “I’ll be back later,” Mannering said, brusquely. “Good night.”

  He got back into the car.

  He was not often completely nonplussed, as he was now. If anything had seemed certain, it was that young Vane would stand by the side of the car. Had he heard the beginning of the conversation and jumped to conclusions which made him turn against him, Mannering? Or had he grown tired of waiting, and decided to walk on? His home was at least three miles away and his bicycle was still in the boot of the big car. If he had decided to walk, he was probably expecting to be picked up at any moment.

  Horton was standing and watching Mannering.

  “Give it up, John,” he urged.

  Mannering thought: “I hope I haven’t let you fool me, Barry,” waved and started off. The car hardly made a sound as it rolled forward along the wide road. Not far ahead the wooded land became thinner, and soon there were meadows on either side, open to the sky. Mannering did not see the shape of a man nor hear the sound of anyone walking. He judged that he had driven half a mile, and doubted whether there had been time for young Vane to have walked so far, but drove on another half mile. Then he was quite sure that no one could have walked the distance in that time. He watched for a side turning, and reversed into it. He was feeling real alarm now.

  He reached the spot where he and Horton had talked, recognising a signpost near it. The Jaguar had gone. He stopped the engine and peered ahead into the darkness; they were half a mile from the scene of the murder and from the bustling activity of the police. Would Guy Vane have gone back to talk to Hennessy?

  It was the last thing Mannering would have expected.

  His hand was on the ignition key again, to start the engine, and he was trying to make up his mind what to do when he heard a sound which startled him. He waited, tensely, listening for a repetition; and suddenly it came.

  Someone was calling, and now the word was clear on the still night air.

  “Help!” a man cried. “Help!”

  Chapter Eight

  Danger List

  Mannering moved on the instant that he recognised the single word. He snatched a flashlight from the pocket of the door nearest him, thrust the door open, and jumped out. The cry came again, and seemed a little more clear. “Help!”

  Mannering pressed the horn of the car and it blared out SOS. He kept it up just long enough to repeat the signal, then ran towards the woods and the direction of the cry.

  He heard the cry again, and could only guess where it came from, but his torch shone on the thick trunks of trees and on dense undergrowth. He had to twist this way and that, it was almost impossible to keep his bearings.

  “Help!” the cry came.

  He raised his voice: “Where are you?”

  “Help!”

  “That’s—right. Keep—shouting.”

  Thoughts flashed through Mannering’s mind. That this was Guy Vane; that if he had been attacked, as Morgan had, he must have escaped or he could not keep calling; that the desperation in his cry told of terrifying urgency, which probably meant that others were near, and menacing him; if they were, they would be waiting for Mannering, able to hear him as he forced his way towards the spot.

  “Help!”

  It was much nearer, and undoubtedly came from the right.

  Mannering turned towards it. “What’s wrong?”

  “Two men – look out!”

  “Just keep shouting.”

  As Mannering’s voice faded, silence fell. The interval between Guy’s calls seemed to get longer. Then, they stopped. Why? Mannering found himself longing for a call. Here in darkness broken only by the single beam of light, danger could strike from the right, from the left or from behind him.

  “Keep shouting!”

  There was no response.

  Why had the youth stopped so abruptly? There had been no choked cry, no sudden scream of alarm; just the continuing quiet. The mystery of that made the situation worse, while Mannering became aware of shadows, as of men, creeping about the woods. They were not of men but the shapes of bushes and trees distorted by the beam of the torch, movements made by him alone.

  He stopped in a small clearing, surrounded by the trees, and there was silence.

  “Guy!” he called. “Where are you?”

  Not far from this spot a man had died, killed by a knife wound, swift and silent. Had it happened again? How else had it been possible for anyone to silence the boy so swiftly and so completely.

  “Guy!”

  It was useless to shout any more, and it might make the danger greater; he might be attacked next, to give the boy’s assailants time to get away. Mannering was acutely aware of this danger, and he went more slowly to the spot where he believed he had heard the last sound. He might be wasting his time, might be going round in circles, but he could not give up yet.

  Then he heard a moan.

  He stopped, and swung the beam towards the sound. It came again. He swung the torch round, lighting up the saplings, a thicket, hawthorn, and the fat trunks of oak trees. He saw a huddled figure on the ground beneath one of the trees, and heard a moan. He jumped forward, and doing so, caught sight of a man moving stealthily on his right.

  He pretended not to notice, but hurried to the huddled figure. Dark, glossy hair was towards him, and he was sure that this was Guy. He darted a glance towards the left and saw that the man was drawing nearer, keeping a little way behind. Mannering glanced in the other direction, but saw no one else. Staring down at Guy, he went down on one knee, then shifted his position so that the trunk of a tree protected him at the back; he could not be taken by surprise from there.

  The boy’s face looked starkly pale in the bright torchlight. His black eyebrows showed up vividly. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slack. There was no sign of blood at his throat, nothing to suggest that he had been wounded with a knife. Watching from beneath his lashes, tensed up because he was sure that he was going to be attacked, Mannering felt the boy’s long, strong limbs; none seemed broken. Then he saw the ugly wound at the base of the neck.

  Guy had almost certainly fainted from loss of blood, or from exhaustion.

  Mannering glanced up. There was an overhanging branch of an oak tree; Guy must have been perched on that, wounded and calling for help, and then collapsed and fallen. Not only Mannering but his assailant had been looking for him. Had the assailant been planning to finish him off?

  The man had edged round so that he could approach from Mannering’s left. Mannering began to talk to the boy in undertones, to create the impression that he could think of nothing else. He heard the rustle of movement, the faint crack of a twig trodden into the ground. The man stopped, as if fearful of being heard, then came on again. He was nearly within striking distance, and he had a weapon in his hand, like an old knopkeirie, but with a spiked ball-shaped head. Such a weapon could have inflicted the wound on Guy’s neck.

  Any moment, the man would leap and strike.

  Mannering tensed himself, only one thought in his mind: to get a prisoner. A moment’s misjudgement would be fatal.

  The man leapt.

  Mannering swivelled round, still crouching, flung himself at the other’s ankles, clutched and pulled. He felt the man topple, heard him gasp. He jumped to his feet as the other fell backwards, the weapon falling from his fingers, and Mannering felt a moment of exultation, because it had worked so perfectly. Before the victim had a chance to recover he could be knocked out; then it would be a simple matter of fetching help.

  That was when he saw the movement from his right, and realised that there was a second man. He had to turn away from the one who had fallen. He saw the other, short and stocky, strangely distorted in the reflected light from the torch. He met a full-blooded assault with both fists, but the weight of the other man’s attack carried him back. He caught the torch with his heel, a
nd it went out.

  There was pitch darkness.

  He felt the heavy, stocky body brush against him, struck out, and landed a blow which brought a grunt of pain.

  A man muttered: “Come on.”

  “We’ve got to get—”

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  The darkness made it very eerie. Any moment a beam of light might shine out, but there would be great danger for the others if they used a torch; the light would tell him where they were. He heard their heavy breathing, their whispering. One wanted to go, the other to stay and finish the job. Close by Mannering lay Guy Vane, unconscious, and Mannering could not leave this spot without Guy.

  Then, a long way off, he heard a whistle; a police whistle. He raised his voice and shouted, the only one useful word.

  “Help!”

  That would carry for hundreds of yards.

  A man muttered: “Shut him up.”

  “Help!”

  “Shut him—” the speaker began. Then came a louder rustling among the trees, and Mannering stood still and tense, knowing that he might be viciously attacked, that the others might be able to pick out his figure against the light-coloured trunk of the tree. The rustling seemed to become louder. He backed against a tree. The whistle sounded again, and was nearer.

  “Come on!” one of the men gasped.

  Mannering heard the rustling getting further and further away. Then a beam of light shot out, at least twenty yards off. Against it he saw the figures of the two men, one so short and stocky, the other taller and leaner, as they hurried away.

  Not far off in the other direction came the cry: “Where are you?”

  Now there were powerful lights coming towards Mannering as he knelt over the boy, who lay as still as death. Mannering’s torchlight attracted the police, who came crashing through the undergrowth, going all round him because they were not sure who he was. Then one of the men recognised him, and another called: “How’s that boy?”

  “It’s touch and go,” Mannering said, and knew that it was true.

  Alicia Vane said for the third time in five minutes: “It’s after one o’clock.” In fact it was nearly half-past one. No one had called and there had been no message since the police had left and the call had come from Guy. It was nearly an hour and a half since they had finished telephoning, and the result had been negligible; they knew nothing more about Hester, and Guy hadn’t come home.

  “You must ring the Hall again,” Alicia said, swinging round on Michael. “We just can’t sit here. Either we must ring the Hall or ring the police.”

  “Ally, Lord Horton himself spoke to me, and promised to telephone the minute Mannering got back.”

  “He probably forgot all about it the moment he put down the receiver.”

  “He said he would leave a message in Mannering’s room,” Michael said. “We can’t make nuisances of ourselves.”

  Something seemed to snap in Alicia’s mind. She had been trying to keep calm, fighting against the desire to shout and cry, but now she gave up the struggle. One part of her mind knew that she was wrong, the other part accepted the inevitability of raging at Michael. She stood close to him, knowing that her eyes were glittering and her cheeks very pale, spitting words at him.

  “What’s happened to you? Have you lost your mind? How can you stand there and talk about making nuisances of ourselves when our children might be in deadly danger? I always knew you were spineless, I didn’t think you were this much of a coward. Stand away from that telephone. I’ll talk to his precious Lordship, even if it means getting him out of bed.”

  “Ally,” Michael said, in a very quiet voice, “it won’t help.”

  “It’s got to help. Even if we make a nuisance of ourselves to his lordship, even if we make a nuisance of ourselves to Mr. John Mannering, even if we make a nuisance of ourselves to the police, we have to do something to help our children.”

  “Ally, Guy will be all right.”

  “You don’t know that he will be all right, and I’m not going to be smarmed over. For all you know he might be in as much danger as Hester. And who is this man Mannering? He might be a criminal himself. Just because he gets his name in the newspaper and because the noble Lord makes a fuss of him, there’s no guarantee of his integrity. And Guy’s in trouble. He wouldn’t have kept away so late if he weren’t – he would have sent a message. You know he would. Hester would have sent a message if she’d been able to. I did nothing about that, but I don’t intend to stand aside and do nothing about this, and if you haven’t the courage to do it, I will.”

  She knew how much she was hurting, and almost hated herself for some of the things she was saying; but she could not stop herself. Fear drove her into more and more abuse and reproach. She had a presentiment that all was not well with Guy, that when news came it would be bad.

  “Please stand away from the telephone,” she requested, coldly.

  “All right, Ally,” Michael said. The quietness of his voice and the gentleness of his manner made a reproach in themselves. He stood aside. Alicia touched the telephone and looked into the street beyond the front garden, seeing the darkness, for the street lamps were put out at midnight. Then she saw a glow of light, as of a car coming some distance off. She did not lift the telephone but waited, mingled hope and dread rising in her.

  It might be someone bringing Guy home.

  It was too great a light for his bicycle.

  If it passed she would lift the receiver and telephone the Hall. Then—

  “It’s slowing down!” Michael exclaimed. He turned and strode towards the door and the passage, and was opening the door before Alicia reached the passage itself. The car had stopped outside. Alicia saw a man get out, but did not recognise him. She waited to make sure that no one else followed him; that Guy was not there. Suddenly, awfully, hope was replaced by dread. She went rushing towards the front door as Michael opened it. The light fell on the face of John Mannering, still with that striking handsomeness which she had seen in the restaurant, but there was one difference. He was not smiling.

  Alicia could not make herself go forward, could only stand and stare at the visitor as Michael demanded: “Have you seen our son?”

  Before he answered, Mannering looked at Alicia, and she sensed that there was great compassion in him; the reason for it struck like a knife into her breast.

  Chapter Nine

  Mannering

  Mannering sensed the turmoil in the minds of these two people as soon as he saw them. There was the man, so like his injured son, and the mother standing by a door, hands clenched and raised in front of her, eyes glittering, face very pale, as if she knew that he had brought bad news. For him, the worst of it was that he did not know for certain how bad it was.

  He could have left this to the police, and for a moment half wished that he had. There were only seconds to wait before telling them, and the right words were difficult to find.

  The right words were the simple words of truth.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve just come from the hospital. He’s been injured, but he’s in the best possible hands.”

  Michael Vane held the side of the door more tightly, and closed his eyes; that was the only sign he gave of the shock. Mrs. Vane dropped her hands. For a moment her body sagged, and Mannering thought that she would collapse. He actually moved forward, and his alarm must have shown in his face, for Vane swung round and reached his wife in a few long strides. She didn’t fall, but leaned against him.

  “How badly is he hurt?” he asked.

  “Seriously,” Mannering answered.

  The woman as well as the man were looking at him, and there was bitter reproach in the woman’s eyes; he could sense that she blamed him, and that mattered because he also blamed himself.

  “Is he dead?” Vane steeled himself to ask.

  “No, Mr. Vane.”

  “How seriously is he injured?”

  “He’s in the operating theatre at the Gilston Hospital now, and the
medical opinion is that he has a very good chance.”

  Mrs. Vane echoed in a strange voice: “Chance?”

  “Alicia, come and sit down,” her husband said.

  “Chance,” she repeated, and looked at Mannering as if she hated him. “What did you do to him? He came to see you, he trusted you, he believed in you. What did you do to my son?”

  “Ally—”

  “Let him answer for himself!”

  Mannering thought: “It’s worse than I feared” and told himself that it was partly due to the fact that this was the night’s second shock. First the missing daughter and the suspicion of murder, now this: the man was holding up remarkably well, and once the woman had worked off her hysteria, she would, too; he must spark that hysteria, and draw it out.

  “What did you do to my son?” She shook herself free of her husband’s grasp, and strode towards Mannering. The door was still open. He stepped forward, pushing the door behind him, and answered much more sharply than he felt: “I don’t like your tone, Mrs. Vane.”

  She drew a deep breath, and stood still.

  “Your son came to see me, unasked,” he went on.

  “Why don’t you tell us what you did to him? Why didn’t you look after him? He’s only a boy, couldn’t you see that? He’s only a boy. It’s your fault that he’s hurt.”

  “Is it my fault that your daughter is being hunted for murder?” Mannering asked, coldly. Something had to bring an eruption, and it had to come quickly.

  “You devil!” Alicia Vane said in a taut voice. “How dare you come and call my daughter a murderess? Why, I could—”

  She sprang forward, hand raised.

  “Alicia!” Vane cried, and leapt after her.

  She slapped Mannering in the face with such force that he staggered to one side. If her husband had not restrained her she would have slapped again and again, but after a moment or two a different expression appeared in her eyes, one of hopelessness rather than hysterical rage; as if she knew what she had done and the folly of it, but that did not matter.