Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [122]
Nothing but his own words came back at him.
The moonlight seeping through the stained glass of the windows cast awkward patterns around the pews, gray here, black there, and the shape of a poppyhead outlined against a pane.
Rutledge thought, He’ll be impossible to find before daylight, if he’s here.
Blevins turned on the torch, blinding them and spoiling their night vision. Flashing it around the stone floor, across the backs of the pews, toward the choir screen in sweeps that raked the great nave with crossbars of light, he covered as much of the darkness as possible.
Rutledge said, “He has the advantage now. We’ll have to guard the doors until morning.”
“No, I intend to finish this now. You go toward the tower. I’ll move toward the choir.” He turned among the pews, his heels scraping on the stone flags. A man determined to get what he wanted.
Rutledge went on toward the tower, letting his eyes readjust to the darkness, using the great window there as his mark. Hamish, whose hearing had always been keen on night watches, said, “There isna’ anyone here—”
Blevins blundered into something. He grunted heavily and then called, “I’m all right.”
Rutledge made his way along one wall, reached the tower, and started into the opening.
His foot caught something on the floor, and the rattle of chain startled him. Leaping back out of reach, he knelt and began to sweep the floor with his hands. Nothing. Neither flesh nor cold iron. He moved six inches forward and repeated his sweep.
His fingers touched iron this time, and fumbled across thick links of chain.
“Blevins,” he called, not raising his voice. “I’ve found something. Bring your torch.”
Blevins turned and came toward Rutledge, the silvery light shining on his face.
“Down here, man!” Rutledge snarled. “Not into my eyes!”
The torch reached Rutledge’s knees and moved ahead.
On the stone floor lay a chisel, a great hammer, and the chains that had been around Walsh’s wrists and ankles.
But there was no sign of Blevins’s prisoner.
CHAPTER 20
RUTLEDGE DROVE EAST ON THE MAIN road out of Osterley, a ruddy-faced, yawning farmer beside him in the motorcar.
In the rear seat, Hamish stirred uneasily, and Rutledge felt every shift and movement as if it were real.
Blevins had acted swiftly, sending constables and any able-bodied man they could rouse to knock on doors, recruiting more men as the search for the Strong Man widened.
One party went out into the marshes to look for missing boats. The greengrocer and the barman at The Pelican accompanied Dr. Stephenson in his motorcar driving out on the western road toward Wells Next The Sea and Hunstanton.
Six men set out on the road toward East Sherham, while others fanned out through Osterley, looking behind fences, opening the doors of sheds, waking householders to ask if they’d heard anything, seen anyone. Bobbing lanterns marked their progress through the darkness like a great Chinese dragon, and wives watched from windows, shushing children who were unsettled by the night’s noises.
The road east toward Cley was the least likely direction to search, but it had to be covered. There was nothing here but the North Sea and a dead end—a man on the run would quickly find himself in a box, with nowhere to turn but south. Still, several roads that led down toward Norwich branched off from the Cley Road, and these were Rutledge’s goals.
The farmer, a man of few words, roused himself to remark, “ ’Course he might be clever enough to come this way, on purpose to throw the hunt off.”
Driving slowly, his headlamps scouring the road ahead while the farmer watched the verges, Rutledge could feel nothing—no sense of a fugitive hiding in the edges of the marsh or ducking behind trees and garden gates. He’d mastered that instinct during the War, where German snipers were skilled at picking off the unwary, and machine gunners hidden in cleverly disguised trenches and shell holes and uprooted trees waited for the onslaught of troops, holding fire until the unsuspecting were well within range. Hamish, behind