Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

“But what about your leg, sir?” said Dikon. “How’s it holding out?”

“Never you mind about my leg. You go ahead with Claire. We’ll take it in our own time.”

Dikon, having gathered from sundry pieces of distressingly obvious pantomime on Simon’s part that this suggestion met with his approval, followed him at a gruelling pace up the track. The ocean spread out blandly before them as they mounted. Dikon, unused to such exercise, very rapidly acquired a pain in the chest, a stitch, and a thudding heart. Sweat gathered behind his spectacles. The smooth soles of his shoes slipped on the dry grass, and Simon’s hobnailed boots threw dust into his face.

“If we kick it in,” said Simon presently, “we can get up to the place where I reckon I saw the signalling on Thursday night.”

“Oh.”

“The others won’t come any farther than this.”

They had climbed to a place where the track widened and ran out to a short headland. Here they found a group of some ten or twelve men who squatted on the dry turf, chewed ends of grass and stared out to sea. Two youths greeted Simon. Dikon recognized one of them as Eru Saul.

“What d’you know?” Simon asked.

“She’s out there,” said Eru. “Going down quick, now. You can pick her up through the glasses.”

They had left the Colonel’s glasses with Gaunt, but Eru lent them his. Dikon had some difficulty in focussing them but eventually the hazy blue field clarified and in a moment or two he found a tiny black triangle. It looked appallingly insignificant.

“They’ve been out to see if they could salvage anything,” said Eru, “but not a chance. She’s packed up all right. Tough!”

“I’ll say,” said Simon. “Come on, Bell.”

Dikon returned the field-glasses, thanked Era Saul and with feelings of the liveliest distaste meekly followed Simon up the fence line which now rose precipitously before flattening out to encompass a higher shoulder of the Peak. At last they reached a very small platform, no more than a shelf in the seaward face of the mountain. Dikon was profoundly relieved to see Simon, who was well ahead, come to a halt and squat on his heels.

“What I reckon,” said Simon as Dikon crawled up beside him, “he must have worked it from here.”

Dry-mouthed and still very short-winded, Dikon prepared to fling himself down on the ledge.

“Here!” said Simon. “Better cut that out. Stay where you are. We don’t want it mucked up. Pity it rained yesterday.”

“And what do you expect to find, may I ask?” asked Dikon acidly. Physical discomfort did not increase his tolerance for Simon’s high-handedness. “Are you by any chance building on footprints? My poor fellow, let me tell you that footprints exist only on sandy beaches and in the minds of detective fiction-mongers. All that twittering about bent blades of grass and imprints slightly defaced by rain! In my opinion they do not occur.”

“Don’t they?” returned Simon combatively. “Somebody’s been up this track ahead of us. Didn’t you pick that?”

“How could I ‘pick’ anything when you did nothing but kick dust in my glasses? Show me a footprint and I’ll believe in it. Not before.”

“Good-oh, then. There. What’s that?”

“You’ve just made it with your own flat foot,” said Dikon crossly.

“What if I have? It’s a print, isn’t it? Goes to show.”

“Possibly.” Dikon wiped his glasses and peered round. “What are those things?” he said. “Over by the bank. Dents in the ground?”

He pointed and Simon gave a raucous cry of triumph. “What did I tell you. Prints!” He removed his boots and crossed to the bank. “You better take a look,” he said. Dikon removed his shoes. He had a blister on each heel and was glad to do so. He joined Simon.

“Yes,” he said. “The footprints after all, and I can tell you exactly how they would be described by the know-alls. ‘Several confused impressions of the Booted Foot, two being more clearly defined and making an angle of approximately thirty degrees the one with the other. Distance between inside margins of heel, half an inch. Distance between position of outside margin of big toes, approximately ten inches. This latter pair of impressions was found in damp clay but had been protected from recent rain by a bank which overhung them at a height of approximately three feet.’ There’s great virtue in the word ‘approximately.’ ”

“Good-ow!” said Simon on a more enthusiastic inflection than he usually gave to this odious expression. “Nice work. Go on.”

“Nails in the soles and heels. Toes more deeply indented than heels. Right foot, four nails in heel; six in sole. Left foot, three in heel, six in sole. Ergo , he lost a nail.”

“How much, he lost a nail?”

“ Ergo . I’m being affected.”

“Huh! Yeh, well, what sort of chap is he? Does he act like Questing? Stands with his heels close together and his toes apart. Puts more weight on his toes than his heels. Say what you like, you can deduce quite a bit if you use your nut.”

“As, for instance, he must be a dwarf.”

“Eye?”

“The bank overhangs the prints at a height of three feet. How could he stand?”

“Aw heck!”

“Would squatting fill the bill? The other prints show where he scuffled round trying to settle.”

“That’s right. O.K., he squatted. For a good long time.”

“With his weight forward on his toes,” Dikon suggested. He had begun to feel mildly stimulated. “The clay was damp at the time. Yesterday’s rain was easterly and hasn’t got in under the bank. On Thursday night there was a light rain from the sea.”

“Don’t I know it? I was away out there, don’t forget.”

Dikon looked out to his left. The shoulder of the hill hid Harpoon and the harbour, but Simon’s rock was just visible, a shapeless spot down in the blue. “If you stand on the edge you can just see the other boulders leading out to it,” said Simon.

“Thanks, I’ll take your word for them.”

“Gee, can’t you see the sand spit under the water clearly from up here? That’s what it’ll be like from the air. Coastal patrol work. Cripey, I wish they’d get on with it and pull me in.”

Simon stood on the lip of the shelf and Dikon looked at him. His chin was up. A light breeze whipped his hair back from his forehead. His shoulders were squared. Human beings gain prestige when they are seen at a great height against a simple background of sea and sky. Simon lost his uncouthness and became a significant figure. Dikon took off his glasses and wiped them. The young Simon was blurred.

“I envy you,” said Dikon.

“Me? What for?”

“You have the right of entry to danger. You’ll move out towards it. I’m one of the sort that sit pretty and wait. Blind as a bat, you know.”

“Tough luck. Still, they reckon this is everyone’s war, don’t they?”

“They do.”

“Lend a hand to catch this joker Questing. There’s a job for you.”

“Quite so,” said Dikon, who already regretted his digression. “What have we decided? That Questing climbed up here on Thursday night, wearing hobnailed boots. That he signalled to a U-boat information about a ship loading at Harpoon and sailing the following night? By the way, can you visualize Questing in hobnailed boots?”

“He’s been mucking about on the Peak for the last three months. He must have learnt sense.”

“Perhaps they are hobnailed shoes. Was there moonlight on Thursday night?”

“Not after the rain came up, but he was here by then. There was, before that.”

“They’ll have to look at all his shoes. Should we perhaps try to make a sort of record of these prints? Glare at them until they leave an indelible impression on our minds and we can take oaths about them hereafter? Or shall I try to make a sketch of them?”