Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘but don’t blame me if we fall behind schedule.’

‘I won’t,’ said Leyland. ‘Good night, Roy. I hope you’ll be all right in the morning.’

‘Good night, and I hope I’ll have some information for you soon.’

‘Well, look out for yourself. It’s more than possible that you were watched this morning.’

‘I will, but two can play at that game. I’ve done a little watching at times myself, but I’ll be careful.’

‘See that you are. Don’t underestimate the Delouris crowd. They mean business.’

Miss Silvers led Roy down another labyrinth of galleries, Angus following. She did not speak, and he sensed that she was feeling a little resentful. As they neared an opening, through which he could feel the night air, a figure flitted in front of them. Roy caught Miss Silvers by the arm and drew her to one side.

‘It’s all right,’ she said rather impatiently. ‘That’s only one of the guards.’

‘My dear friend Joe?’

‘No, Joe will be off duty by this time. It’s Spud. He was one of the sea-going engineers who had charge of the spud piers of the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches. That’s how he got his name.’

‘’Evening, Spud,’ she said as they came up to the man. He was holding a Sten gun under his arm and stood to one side to let them pass. ‘All quiet?’

‘’Evening, Miss Silvers. Yes, it’s quiet as a grave. Not going out, are you?’

‘No, just seeing our guest off. I shan’t be a minute.’

Spud grinned. ‘’Evening, sir,’ he said to Roy. ‘I hope Joe didn’t hit you too hard. He had a shock when he found out who he’d hit. We heard quite a bit about you during the war, you see. But it was nothing to the shock he had when your dog bit him. Plucky little fellow, I must say.’ He bent down and patted Angus’s head, chuckling. ‘Joe was never much of a one for dogs, I’m afraid.’

‘And I,’ said Roy, ‘was never much of a one for being hit on the head. Anyway, you can tell him from me there’s no hard feelings – except in my head.’

Spud laughed. ‘I’ll tell him. Good night, sir.’

‘Good night.’

They walked on a few yards until they were out of sight of Spud and at the entrance of the tunnel, which was well screened by bushes and shrubs. Roy stopped, looked up at the clear, star-filled sky and sighed.

‘What a lovely night! It’s perfect for a walk. I suppose you wouldn’t care to see me safely back to the chalet? I think I shall sleep out tonight.’

‘It is a lovely night,’ said Miss Silvers, a little less grudgingly, he thought, ‘but I’ve got work to do and I’ve wasted too much time already.’

‘Wasted? That’s not very flattering.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be. I regard anything that takes me away from my work as a waste of time.’

‘What a slave-driver you are and what fun you’re missing! Fancy talking about work on a night like this – the air soft as silk, a sky like black velvet, studded with jewels, the sea murmuring gently in the background. It’s perfect – and you talk about work!’

She did not speak. His hand touched hers. It was cold, and he took it between his own as if to warm it. She did not withdraw it, but it remained limp in his without answering the pressure of his own. He looked at her and in the starlight he could see that she was steadily returning his gaze. He bent his head and the thought that came absurdly into his mind was what Jim Tailby would say if he could see him now.

She did not move away and he kissed her on the mouth, gently at first and then more warmly. But there was no response from the body he held in his arms. The feeling of tenderness died in him like a flower withered in a drought. Damn it all, he thought savagely, as, feeling a complete fool, he let her go and stood silently beside her, what can the woman be made of? It had been like kissing a block of wood, even though she was softer.

It was Miss Silvers who broke the uncomfortable silence.

‘I suppose I should feel flattered,’ she said, and her voice was cool and calm, ‘but I don’t. Now, if you’ve quite finished, I’ll go. Good night.’

CHAPTER VIII (#ulink_2a05ce67-2a60-5e4d-bd23-08d545401fd7)

A Shot in the Dark (#ulink_2a05ce67-2a60-5e4d-bd23-08d545401fd7)

She turned and left him standing there. He had never felt more deflated in his life. The thought uppermost in his baffled mind was that it was as if she had been experimenting with his emotions and her own – if she had any – as coolly and detachedly as if she’d been in her damned laboratory. Was she all scientist, he asked himself, this woman who was unlike anyone he had met before, or was there flesh and blood and a heart in her as well as a brain? He had thought so once or twice in the mine, but to have tried him out like a guinea pig – that was insufferable.

Roy swore, and kicked furiously at a broken branch. Angus, who had stood patiently by during all this, went haring off into the bushes after it. Roy set off towards the chalet. Well, he reflected, he’d take damned good care he didn’t make a fool of himself again, or give her the opportunity of making him one. It was incredible that a woman so physically attractive as she was could be so cold and indifferent. Or perhaps he just wasn’t her type, if she had a type. Maybe she’d thought he’d just been trying to get fresh with her and resented it in the only way she could without making a scene. Somehow he felt she would dread scenes. Oh, hell, Roy my boy, forget it, he told himself.

He tried to do so all the way back to the chalet, but could not forget the feel of her body in his arms and the touch of her lips on his, cool and impersonal though they had been. Jim Tailby would certainly have had a laugh if he’d been there to see what happened and if he knew how he was still thinking about her. He would have twitted him unmercifully. What was it he had said – ‘Mark my words, one of these days you’ll fall good and proper. You’ll pick up some nice girl somewhere and you’ll find you can’t put her down.’

Well, Roy reflected bitterly, it certainly hadn’t been a case of his putting Miss Silvers down. The boot had been on the other foot. She’d done it to him in very decided fashion and he hadn’t liked it one little bit. He had a sneaking feeling, too, that Jim would hardly approve of the way in which he was thinking of Miss Silvers now. He would probably regard it as a danger sign. Perhaps it was. He was surprised to find that, despite the rebuff, he didn’t care. After all, he’d been in some pretty dangerous spots before – but, he had to admit, none quite like this.

Angus broke into his train of thought by yelping excitedly as they neared the chalet.

‘Shut up, you idiot!’ Roy told him angrily as he put the key in the door and turned the lock. Angus took no notice and Roy bent to slap him, pushing the door open as he did so. Then the whole world seemed to explode in his face.

It took Roy a little time afterwards to recall the exact sequence of events, but it worked out something like this – first a flash of orange light with fiery red in its centre, which completely blinded him for a moment or two; then a cracking explosion, a whistle in the air over his bent head, and finally a faint clattering noise.

Instinctively, from his stooping position, he dropped flat on his face on the verandah. He remembered thinking as he fell, and feeling rather pleased about it, that he hadn’t forgotten his Service training. When, in the next few moments, as he lay there nothing else happened, he began slowly to worm his way on his stomach into the chalet, where he could hear Angus scuffling excitedly to and fro.

In the darkness he felt for the table in the middle of the room and cautiously raised himself. He reached up and his groping hand found the matches near the lamp where he always kept them. He waited a few moments, listening, then struck a match. A quick glance told him that the room was empty. He sighed with relief, got to his feet, lit the lamp and quickly closed the door.

Then he looked around, and on the mantelpiece, facing the door, he saw what he had expected to find. Lying on its side was a still-smoking pistol. It had been the central part of a neatly made booby trap, the sort of thing he had often come across during the war, arranged so that the pistol would fire immediately anyone opened the door.

He thought: If I hadn’t stooped to smack Angus I’d be a dead man now. Suddenly he felt clammily cold. He poured himself a stiff whisky and drank it. That made him feel better. You must have gone soft, he told himself. You never felt like this during the war. But that had been different. You expected this sort of thing then. Your life hung by a thread which might snap at any moment. But you didn’t expect to find booby traps in a little chalet tucked away in a quiet spot like No Man’s Cove.

He examined the pistol again. It was a German Luger and the trap had been very neatly arranged. The Germans were experts at booby traps, and Leyland had ‘guessed’ that Delouris and his other escaped friends were within five miles of the old mine. This looked like something more than a guess, but if Delouris and his crowd were responsible for this, how had they got on to him so soon, and why?

Angus was still sniffing all round the chalet, especially near the side window. Roy went over to it. One of the panes of glass near the catch had been neatly removed. So that was how they’d got in, if it was ‘they’. Quite simple, of course.

He stood holding the pistol in his hand, pondering his best line of action. His first impulse was to go back to the mine and tell Leyland what had happened, but, he reflected, he might still be under observation by the person or persons who had set the trap to see if it had claimed its victim. He decided that news of the incident could wait until morning when he went into Torcombe. He could leave a message for Leyland at the police station.

Roy turned down the lamp, walked to the door and looked cautiously out. It was a beautiful night. The air was soft and still warm. He could hear the sea murmuring quietly along the beach. On any other night he would have gone for a bathe before he went to bed, but the idea did not tempt him tonight. Orion was flashing jewelled messages in the sky and the perfume of the night-scented stocks he had planted near the stream was pleasant in his nostrils. This was a night for romance, if ever there was one, not for shootings and what-have-you, but all he’d got was something akin to a slap in the face. He sighed a little, turned and went inside.

He didn’t sleep on the verandah that night. Instead he locked the door of the chalet, saw that all the windows were securely fastened, took out his old Service revolver from his pack and saw that it was loaded. Then he lay down, but without taking off his clothes.

It was a long time before he got to sleep, though the night was calm and peaceful, except for Angus’s sighings and snorings. When he did get off, he dreamed an absurd boy’s adventure sort of dream in which he chased film gangsters all over England, and rescued Miss Silvers from their clutches in all kinds of extraordinary situations. But every time he tried to claim his due reward, she held him off with a pistol – a Luger pistol.

CHAPTER IX (#ulink_0651ba9a-4cb0-595e-857a-93afb43c5827)

Smugglers and Monks (#ulink_0651ba9a-4cb0-595e-857a-93afb43c5827)

Torcombe was almost unique in being a Cornish village which did not figure in the handsomely illustrated Holiday Haunts annuals with which the railway companies seek to beguile the jaded city-dweller with vistas of golden beaches and laughing bathing beauties perched nonchalantly on razor-edged rocks, which must have been extremely uncomfortably even to the photographers’ models who specialized in the type of work.

True, there was a year before the war when it did achieve a bare mention as a ‘quaint village with good fishing’, but not even the word ‘quaint’ was enough to cause a notable increase in Torcombe’s population that summer, and as only one of the residents, old Mrs Tregarthy, who everyone thought was a little touched anyway, took advantage of the opportunity to advertise board and lodgings, h. and c., one minute from sea, Torcombe was thereafter left to linger in obscurity, so far as the railway companies were concerned.