Fire Below by Yates Dornford

Author:Yates, Dornford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fire Below
ISBN: 9780755127146
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

6: I Keep Fair Company

For some moments I stood in the passage, staring at a case full of harness which many museums would have been glad to display. Then I pulled myself together and stepped to the door on my left.

As I had half expected, this opened into the hall we had entered the night before. There was the grand staircase and there the front door of the house, as well as three other doors, admitting, no doubt, to rooms: and, though it was just possible that Grieg would not enter from the drive, the place was so much of a junction that anyone using the house would be certain sooner or later to come by this way.

I, therefore, took up a position beneath the spring of the staircase, by the side of a tall oak press, and made up my mind to attack, the instant Grieg showed his face.

Whilst I was waiting, I sought to consult with myself, but, though I did not feel tired, I think that my brain was weary, for I could not digest the matter which I had learned, and my thoughts kept returning to Littai and the horrid peril to which my wife was to come.

At last I beat out some conclusions, and I think they were more or less just.

In order to obtain his freedom, Grieg had taken conjecture and dressed it up as a fact. He had reason to think we should take the bridle-path, and take it as soon as we could. If he was well served at Littai, he might have reason to think that my wife was going to move. He had drawn a bow at a venture in all that he said: and tonight he would picket the path, to see whether in fact his shaft would bring anything down: and if it did not, he would himself leave the country by the bypass the smugglers used.

Now with Grieg’s death – and that I hoped would occur at any moment – the danger would not disappear, for I could not forget the intentness with which the police had been listening to what he said and I had no doubt whatever that, though Grieg himself might fail them, from this night on an ambush was to be laid between the waterfall and the mouth of the bridle-path.

When, therefore, he was dead, we must somehow find George and the Countess and stay their attempt, and when that was done, I must contrive to cross the water in case by some shocking chance Leonie verily meant to attempt to come in that way.

Now when ten minutes had passed, but Grieg had not come, I began to wonder what he was doing, for I was almost certain that when the girl was crossing the sward, I heard the sound of a car. If I was right in this, the police had been gone very nearly a quarter of an hour. Yet Grieg had not come.

It occurred to me suddenly that something might have impelled him to visit his car.

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