Cargo of Eagles by Margery Allingham Page A

he’d turn off, but not on your sweet life. He was right with me all the way, ma’am. Once I stopped and smoked a cigarette just to let him get clear of me in his darned old white jalopy with a bashed-in tail, but in ten minutes I caught him up again, still dodging along, just as I was. He even used my special cut through the ghost town which I always thought was pretty fancy and custom built for me alone. He fetched up in Saltey. How about that?’
    â€˜Now that certainly
is
odd.’ Dido straightened her back. ‘Do you know who it was?’
    â€˜Mr Jonah Woodrose,’ said Morty, ‘whose family name if you trace it back is as ancient as anything in England. Woodrose—Woodwose. The Foliate Man, the Green Man, Robin Good-fellow, the nigger in the original woodpile of Christianity in this country.’
    â€˜Play it cool,’ advised Dido. ‘Fairies and sprites don’t drive elderly cars. They go in for nutshell chariots, if I remember. But you’ve got a point there. What’s your theory, master?’
    He considered. ‘Could be a sort of inherited memory,’ he said at last. ‘More likely tradition and force of habit. This was the track his forebears always took to Stratford and the other markets, so this is the way he goes. With all that inbred blood in his veins he’s likely to be a creature of habit. I wonder what he was doing in London in any case?’
    â€˜You sound as if you knew the answer.’
    Morty hesitated. ‘I don’t, and I wish I did,’ he confessed.‘But it did occur to me that he might have gone to post a letter, something that he didn’t want to arrive with a Saltey postmark.’
    Dido shivered involuntarily and to Morty’s delight moved her shoulder a little closer to him.
    â€˜It’s beastly,’ she said at last. ‘You know, if there was any sentiment involved in all this I’d give up. I mean, if I was grinding the faces of the widow and orphan by accepting the house, or doing some splendid young farmer out of his rightful home I’d be off like a flash. But I’m not. This is just pure venom and wickedness, and I won’t put up with it. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’
    â€˜I love a good fight,’ said Morty. ‘I’m right by your side, lady. When you stick out your chin like that you could have my entire kingdom just for the pleasure of holding your coat. I could start, of course, by holding your hand.’
    â€˜You’ll keep your hands on the wheel,’ said Dr Jones tartly.
    Morty, sliding a glance at her, realised not without surprise that she was a grown woman, competent, finely tempered and not quite the beleaguered sylph he had been picturing in his daydreams. The thought depressed him and he drove in silence for a twisting mile.
    â€˜I suppose you do know where you’re going?’ she enquired at last. The road they were following had become little more than an open track through coarse grassland. An occasional broken fence marked a boundary and an empty bungalow standing isolated in an expanse of uneven ground, distemper peeling from its blind stucco face, emphasised the desolation. A narrow board nailed to a post displayed the words ‘Victoria Crescent’ in fading gothic print.
    â€˜This is my Ghost Town,’ explained Morty with a certain pride. ‘Not unlike the shanty towns of the Gold Rush days—very like them in spirit, now I come to think of it. It’s a derelict area and I’d say it always will be. A swamp which used to be called The Trough. In fact it is the site of an old land swindle, the sort of thing which was popular at the turn of the century.The operator bought a parcel of quite useless country, fairly near to one of the newish rail tracks, marked out a grandiose development scheme on a map—the Royal Esplanade, the shopping centre, Empress Avenue and so on—and divided the whole area into plots of