The Man from the Sea by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

Garden?”
    “We’ve agreed, I think, that Hatton Garden is a fiction.” The man from the sea produced his accurately contrived yet spurious effect of humour. “I can’t expect you to believe that diamond smugglers go to quite the lengths we’ve just been witnessing.” He paused. “I wish that fellow hadn’t got away.”
    “He can do more damage – arm himself again?”
    The man from the sea shook his head. “He can contact…others. Again, it’s a complication.”
    “There’s the house.” Cranston pointed, momentarily forgetful of his companion’s condition. “We skirt this wall, and then go through a gate to the summerhouse. The clothes will be waiting. And that will be a start. It could be an end, as far as I’m concerned, except for this business of your eyes. If you want more help, you must tell the truth.”
    “My dear young man!” The voice beside Cranston had taken on a tone of mock alarm. “That might be stiff, you know – very stiff, indeed. Patricide, fratricide and all unmentionable crimes may be on my hands.”
    “I’m bearing that in mind.” Cranston spoke grimly.
    “My advice to you is to give me more help – just a little more help – while asking no questions. It will be more comfortable…all round.”
    “Is that a threat again?”
    “I suppose it is.” The man from the sea paused. “Would you have Sir Alex Blair know?”
    “Blast Blair.”
    “Or…the daughter?”
    There was a long silence. Cranston was waiting for the blood to stop hammering in his head. “Aren’t you,” he asked carefully, “a pretty great blackguard?”
    “I am what you knew me to be in the first minutes of our meeting. The right word for it is desperate. Do you know what it is to be desperate?”
    “I’m learning.”
    The man from the sea had paused in his halting walk. Now he moved on. “One can talk to you,” he said unexpectedly. “You’re beyond your years.”
    “So wise, so young – ?”
    “You’ll live long enough, so far as I’m concerned. It’s not all that catching.”
    Cranston looked sharply at the man treading carefully beside him. But he could distinguish no play of expression accompanying this odd speech. What the moonlight did sufficiently reveal was the fact that the man’s face was a mess. He must be in considerable pain – but after that first sharp cry he had given no sign of it. If he was a blackguard he was other things as well. And his real life – it came to Cranston – lay far below any facet of himself that he had yet revealed. He had come naked out of the sea – but in an impenetrable disguise. There was nothing about him that one could be sure of – except some underlying intensity of purpose, some dark obsession, which it was impossible to define. There was that – and there was this last queer little speech. It had seemed to slip up, eluding the vigilance of some censor, from a hitherto hidden stratum of his mind. But even of that one could not be certain. The man from the sea was subtle and formidable. His most spontaneous-seeming utterance might be a premeditated and planted thing.
    “We go through here.” Cautiously, Cranston eased open a door in the high stone wall. “I hope I’m right about those dogs. Better take my hand again. There’s a winding path to the summerhouse. I can just make it out. The moon’s going down.”
    “And that means dawn in no time. We can be clear in half an hour?”
    “We could be. But it all needs thinking about. And what’s possible depends upon the truth of your situation, you know, and the risks you may actually have in front of you.” Cranston was briskly practical. “That’s why it’s just no good keeping me in the dark.”
    “I wish I could keep myself there. Is this summerhouse we’re making for safe?”
    “No one comes near it, day or night. It’s perfect for–” Cranston broke off, and he knew that his cheeks had flushed as at a monstrous recollection. “The house is a quarter of a mile