The Man from the Sea by Michael Innes

made for gunplay any more than for –
    A faint sound behind him made him whirl round, taut and trembling. It was Sally. She had approached to within a few feet of him and was looking at him in cool astonishment. He suddenly felt a fool. But he kept a sufficient sense of the reality of the situation to raise a finger swiftly to his lips. Then he turned back to the bolt. When satisfied that it was secure he straightened up, beckoned, and walked off down the garden. Sally followed. From the instant of his making his gesture she had been very quiet. He walked far down the garden, but to a point from which he could command a view of most of the wall he had just left. Then he stopped. “It’s the chap who had the gun,” he said. “He’s hanging around.”
    “This is something you’ve got mixed up with quite by chance?”
    “Yes.”
    “And that you haven’t really got the hang of?”
    “I’ve got a good deal of it now.” Cranston looked at Sally cautiously. She must have returned to the garden for the purpose of talking to him again, but now she had an air of waiting for him to take some initiative. “It’s very queer.”
    “You seem to have thrown Alex off the scent. But isn’t it a little hard on whichever of the McGilvray girls he – ?”
    “That was simply a conclusion he jumped at. I didn’t mean to put into his head any particular – particular girl.”
    “I’m sure you are thoroughly thoughtful of female reputations.”
    She had forced herself, he felt, to come out with this hard stroke. And now she had gone pale and her eyes were on the ground. He felt desperate. “Look,” he said, “it’s no good pretending. I know it’s all been too rotten–”
    “All?” She seemed strangely startled – even frightened. And then she was cold again. “Don’t let’s start on heaven knows what. Isn’t this man of yours enough to be going on with? And he seems to be on our hands as well as yours. What does the other man want to do? Kill him? Carry him off?” Sally paused. “And who or what is he, anyway? Do you know that yet?”
    “He’s John Day.”
    Cranston had spoken on impulse, but vehemently. And it seemed to be the intensity of his words, not their content, that surprised her. “Day?” She shook her head. “Somebody well known?”
    He saw that it meant nothing to her. And he guessed that it was only the skin of her mind that she was contriving to give to this whole aspect of what the ghastly night had produced. But his understanding of her went no farther than this. He had for a moment the sense of some veiled element in their disastrous relationship. “Don’t you remember?” he asked. “A scientist who bolted to–”
    “Dick!” She had interrupted round-eyed. “He hasn’t come here because of… Alex?”
    “I’m sure he hasn’t. It’s pure coincidence that he’s now hiding in the summerhouse of a fellow-scientist. And he hasn’t come back to Britain because of that sort of thing at all. He’s a dying man. He had an accident with what was, I suppose, some sort of violently radio-active material. He wants to see his wife.” Cranston paused. “Or so he says.”
    She was puzzled. “But surely a man who has gone off like that can’t simply–”
    “Of course not. He’s virtually an outlaw. And the people he’s deserted are after him too. That’s the explanation of the chap outside. Do you see now that it all makes a sort of crazy sense?”
    “I suppose I do.”
    “Could you guard Day – just for an hour?”
    Sally looked at him in astonishment. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not a daft McGilvray.”
    “I’d only ask somebody I could trust.” Cranston hesitated. It occurred to him that she might answer “I might do it for somebody I could trust.” But she was silent, and he saw that her pallor had given way to a faint flush. “You see,” he said, “I am in a way mixed up with him quite a lot. It’s because of something I feel.” He stopped again,