In one corner a drunk sprawled across a table face-down, his breath whistling uneasily through the stillness. Two men sat beside a small coal fire talking softly as they played cards. They turned to look at her and she closed the door and walked past them.
The barman was old and balding, with the sagging, dis-illusioned face of a man who had got past being surprised at anything. He folded his paper neatly and pushed it under the bar.
“What can I do for you?”
Tm looking for a Mr. Van Sondergard,” she said. “I understand he’s staying here.”
Beyond the barman the two men by the fire were watch-ing her in the mirror. One of them was small and squat with an untidy black beard. His companion was at least six feet tall with a hard, raw-boned face and hands that never stopped moving, shuffling the cards ceaselessly. He grinned and she returned his gaze calmly for a moment and looked away.
“Sondergard?” the barman said.
“She’ll be meaning the Norwegian,” the tall man said in a soft Irish voice.
“Oh, that fella?” The barman nodded. “Left yesterday.”
He ran a cloth over the surface of the bar and Anne Grant said blankly: “But that isn’t possible. I only hired him last week through the seamen’s pool. I’ve a new motor-cruiser waiting at Lulworth now. He’s supposed to run her over to the Channel Islands tomorrow.”
You’ll have a job catching him,” the Irishman cut in. “He shipped out as quartermaster on theBen Alpin this morning.
Suez and all points east.” He got to his feet and crossed the room slowly. “Anything I can do?”
Before she could reply a voice cut in harshly: “How about some service this end for a change?”
She turned in surprise, realising for the first time that a man stood in the shadows at the far end of the bar. The collar of his reefer jacket was turned up and a peaked cap shaded a face that was strangely white, the eyes like dark holes.
The barman moved towards him and the Irishman leaned against the bar and grinned at Anne. “How about a drink?”
She shook her head gently, turned and walked to the door. She went out into the corridor and paused at the top of the steps. The taxi had gone and the fog was much thicker now, rolling in across the harbour, swirling round the street-lamps like some living thing.
She went down the steps and started along the pavement. When she reached the first lamp she paused and looked back. The Irishman and his friend were standing in the doorway. As she turned to move on, they came down the steps and moved after her.
Neil Mallory lit another cigarette, raised his whisky up to the light, then set it down. This glass is dirty.”
The barman walked forward, a truculent frown on his face. “And what do you expect me to do about it?”
“Get me another one,” Mallory said calmly.
It was some indefinable quality in the voice, a look in the dark eyes, that made the barman swallow his angry retort and force a smile. He filled a fresh glass and pushed it across.
“We aim to please.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mallory said, his eyes following the Irishman and his friend as they went through the door after the woman. He took the whisky down in one easy swal-low and went after them.
He stood at the top of the steps listening, but the fog smothered everything, even sound. A ship moved across the water, its fog-horn muted, alien and strange, touching some-thing deep inside him. He shivered involuntarily. It was at that moment that Anne Grant cried out.
He went down the steps and stood listening, head slightly forward. The cry sounded again from the left, curiously flat and muffled by the fog, and he started to run.
He turned the corner on to a wharf at the far end of the street, running silently on rubber-soled feet, and took them by surprise. The two men were holding the struggling woman on the ground in the yellow light of a street-lamp.
As the Irishman turned in alarm, Mallory lifted a foot into his face. The man staggered back with a cry, rolled over the edge of the wharf and fell ten feet into the soft sludge of the mudbank.