The Man from the Clouds Part 2

"Sheep?" I said with a laugh. "No, my friend, I have something else to do than count sheep."

Again he looked at me for a moment, his face now almost completely hidden by the peak of his sou'wester. If by any chance he were still doubting me the best thing seemed to be a touch of candour and an appeal he could scarcely resist.

"See here," I said, lowering my voice, "I want to stop in this island to-night. In fact those are my orders. Now where can you find me a safe place?"

He lowered his voice too. In fact he seemed to reciprocate my confidence very satisfactorily.

"We must be very careful. I must see that the coast is clear first. Just you sit and wait here for ten minutes. I will be back."

He nodded at me to enforce his injunctions and added as he turned away,

"Keep sitting down. Mind that!"

I sat down, finished filling my pipe, lit it, and waited. And as I waited I frankly confess I fairly hugged myself. Never before was there such a bit of luck, thought I. That that vagabond balloon should actually bring its pa.s.senger back to his native land instead of dropping him in the sea or landing him in Germany was fortunate almost beyond belief, but that he should then stumble on a German spy and actually convince the man that he was a confederate and lead him straight into the net already spreading for him, surely showed that after a considerable run of ill luck (and, I must confess, ill guidance), the pa.s.senger had suddenly become Fortune's prime favourite. Several very eligible and commodious castles were constructed in the night air by that lonely sh.o.r.e as I sat and smoked.

And then I heard a cautious but distinct whistle, and up I jumped and looked all round me. There was no one to be seen, but the sound came from the right--the way I had come, and I set off through the thickening dusk in that direction. But the odd thing was that I walked considerably further than the sound of the whistle could have carried and never a sign of human being or of house did I see--nothing but that desolate gra.s.sy sea-board and the faintly gleaming waters.

I stopped and began to wonder, and then I heard the whistle again. It was still ahead of me, so on I walked and once more the same thing occurred.

This time I paused for at least another ten minutes, but n.o.body appeared and nothing whatever happened. There I was, utterly alone once more, with the land growing black and the sea dim and not a sound now even from the sea gulls.

III

ALONE AGAIN

"The man has suspected me!" I said to myself.

It was an unpleasant conclusion, but the more carefully I thought over every little circ.u.mstance the more certain I felt it was the true one. To begin with, there was the way in which he kept his face concealed after the first few sentences we exchanged. Then there was that curious question about the sheep. It must have been a pa.s.sword--I saw that now, and I could have kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. Of course I had no idea of the proper answer, but I might at least have replied with some equally cryptic sentence and tried to bluff him into thinking I was using a different code. As it was, I had made it perfectly obvious that I had missed the point absolutely.

Finally there was his conduct in slipping away and leaving me stranded like this. Surely it was the very last trick to play on an accomplice. In fact it settled the matter. But why then did he whistle--and, moreover, whistle twice?

For a few minutes I was utterly puzzled, and then an explanation flashed upon me. He wished to lead me in this particular direction! And why?

Evidently because he himself was living or hiding in the other. I tried to put myself in his shoes and think what I would do myself, and if I had had the wit to think of it, that would obviously be the soundest thing.

So obvious did it seem to me that I decided to set to work on that a.s.sumption.

First of all I walked a little further to see if I could test this theory, and in a minute or two I saw dimly ahead of me houses near the beach. I stopped and thought again. Could it possibly be that this was the refuge he was providing and that he did not suspect me after all?

"In that case," I said to myself, "would any man in his senses use such a vague and misleading method of conducting a friend, especially when a mistake might be--and probably would be--fatal to his schemes?

Obviously not!"

On the other hand, these houses fitted excellently into the theory that he wanted me to take shelter there simply because they were well removed from his own lair.

"And then what's the fellow doing himself all this time?" I thought.

"Evidently scuttling back in the opposite direction!"

So back I turned and set out on a very cheerless and solitary walk. There was no sense of immediate action ahead now, no antic.i.p.ation of any further excitement this night, and, the more I came to think of it, not one chance in a thousand of stumbling upon the man again even though I were really heading towards him.

As I walked along that dark sh.o.r.e, I tried to think out all the possibilities of the situation.

"Is the man living on this island?" (a.s.suming it is an island, and as the sheep weren't real sheep it may not be a real island) I asked myself. "Or has he simply landed from a submarine or some other enemy craft, and by this time is hurrying off again?"

I recalled our conversation, especially his words when I said I had arrived in "the usual way." "Impossible! There was no signal. I have been looking out all the time," he had answered. Surely that implied he was living here on sh.o.r.e, and indeed his very presence alone by himself and his whole att.i.tude and behaviour were consistent only with that theory.

"What conclusions has he come to about me?" was my next question, and as I debated this problem my spirits began to rise a little.

"Hang it, he must be puzzled!" I said to myself confidently, and I do think justly. "For supposing I were on his job in Germany and an entire stranger suddenly sprang up out of nowhere, hailed me in excellent English, and then (even if he didn't know the particular riddle I used as pa.s.s-word) conducted himself like a confederate, made no attempt to arrest me or interfere with me, and spoke German with a distinct English accent, what would I think?"

I debated the answer for some minutes and then it came to me involuntarily and inevitably.

"I'd be dashed if I'd know what to think! And that's just exactly the hole this fellow must be in. I may be a fellow Hun and I may be an enemy, and he has got to make up his mind which. So far I'm quite certain he hasn't enough evidence either way."

The obvious corollary to this was that he must be presented with evidence which would make him think me a fellow Hun. Of course this a.s.sumed that he would have some means of getting news of my doings and my movements and forming conclusions from what he heard. But I thought it a pretty safe a.s.sumption to make. Confederates the man must have, and he would certainly tell them of the mysterious stranger, and the whole gang as certainly would make it their business to learn everything about me.

"What would a fellow Hun do in my place?" I said to myself. "Knowing the breed as I do, he would certainly overdo the patriotic John Bull business, he would be a little too polite to everybody, and he would eat like a hog."

This then should be my role, and I may as well confess honestly that the last item appealed to me particularly. I kept on smoking till my head reeled in the hope of forgetting my hunger, but between pipes I felt ready to chew my oilskin. Of course I should also keep up a touch of the German waiter accent, and if this programme failed to lead either to my arrest or to my friend coming to my rescue, I felt that my reputation both as an ex-diplomatist and a rising young actor would be seriously tarnished.

And then all at once a light seemed to be extinguished in my brain. I ceased to be able to think any longer and my knees felt shaky as I walked. It was the reaction after what had really been a pretty long strain of one kind and another. Looking back, it seems now inevitable enough, but at the time I felt desperately ashamed of myself. Perhaps I might have been able to pull myself together had I chanced to fall in with that oilskinned figure again, but I thought at the moment I had become utterly useless and I felt inclined to throw myself down on the gra.s.s and go to sleep and forget everything. In fact I very soon should have, when I saw at last some farm buildings close ahead. They stood on the edge of a small cove and the ground dipped down to them so that they were not against the sky line, and I had nearly walked straight into the wall of an out-house before I saw a sign of them.

And then I remember rather hazily knocking at a door and presently finding myself in a low kitchen with a peat fire burning on an open hearth and what seemed to be dozens of people sitting round it. I probably counted each of them three or four times over.

They gave me a huge bowl of milk and a pile of oat cakes and cheese, and the one item of my programme I carried out faithfully was to eat like a famished animal. I believe I put some sort of an accent into the few words I murmured, but most of the time my mouth was too full for much conversation. I know that I never attempted any explanation of how I got there, and that night n.o.body asked me, and I certainly postponed the patriotic John Bull business.

When I finished my supper I felt better, but still a little dazed. There now seemed to be fewer in the family, but my eyes must still have been multiplying them for I thought there were three or four rather pretty girls, presumably daughters, with high pink cheeks, when there actually turned out next morning to be only two; and two poor idiots, presumably sons, with unpleasant stares and stubbly beards and open mouths, when daylight revealed only one. In fact the father of the household and his wife were the only people I counted accurately.

And then I remember being led to the barn, and seeing a vast pile of soft hay and throwing myself into the midst of it; and there my recollections of that day end. I actually had not even enquired into what part of the world I had dropped.

IV

THE SUSPICIOUS STRANGER

There seem to be two distinct kinds of dreamers; to judge at least from their confessions next morning. There is the superior kind which dreams a condensed novel and remembers it distinctly to retail at breakfast, and there is the inferior kind which only carries away a vague impression of having vaguely striven to stride out and escape from some nebulous horror, or of trying to purchase a pound of golf b.a.l.l.s at a counter which would persist in turning into a couple of parallel bars or a roll-top writing desk. Personally I belong to the inferior species, and I cannot even swear that I really had a dream at all that night. I only know that when I woke up at last I found that my oilskin was unb.u.t.toned and thrown back, whereas I thought I had gone to sleep with it b.u.t.toned up; and that when I noticed this, I then began to have a confused memory of a dream wherein I was seized by some one or something and struggled violently to free myself.

I sat up in my bed of straw and looked round me. The sunshine was streaming through a small window and under the door, but the door was closed, the bar was very still and quite empty save for my own presence, and the crowing of a c.o.c.k and the clucking of hens were at first the only sounds that reached me from outside. Then I became conscious of a soft and regular "swish," rising and falling constantly and perpetually, and I remembered the sea close at hand, and a shiver of grat.i.tude ran through me to think how narrowly I had escaped having that heaving surface fathoms over my head.

I have often wished since that I had lain there for a little while and tried to remember the dream, and whether I had actually gone to sleep with my oilskin b.u.t.toned, while the circ.u.mstances, such as they were, were fresh in my memory. When I thought of them afterwards I could swear to nothing and finally concluded the whole thing was probably fancy.

But if by any chance it were not, then evidently _some one_ had tried to search me in the night, and who would it be likely to be but my vanished acquaintance on the sh.o.r.e, or his confederates? And in that case one of them must have been lurking very close at hand. However, when I tried to piece my recollections together afterwards it was too late to make anything of them at all.

I only know for certain that I missed nothing from my pockets, and that as a matter of fact I had actually carried nothing in them that would have given me away--so far at least as I could judge.

These, as I say, were my subsequent reflections. What I did at the time was not to think about the matter any further, but jump up, open the barn door and walk out into the sunshine. It was now about ten o'clock on a flawless August morning, and not easily shall I forget the picture of that blue sea gently heaving far out to a bright horizon, and the semi-circle of white sand fringing the little cove, and the glimpse of green and smiling inland country, and the group of low grey farm buildings just out of reach of the wash of the waves. Whatever part of the world it might be, I felt entirely satisfied with it.

I stood for a few minutes gazing absently out to sea, and rehearsing in my mind my plan of campaign. My voice, manners and conduct must be such that if by some stroke of luck I actually fell in with my friend of last night or one of his confederates they would a.s.sume I was a friend and at least give me a nod, wink, pa.s.sword, or something to test me--and I vowed I would overlook nothing suspicious this time.