The Secret Vanguard by Michael Innes Page A

a great curve round this higher ground, falling as it did so towards lower ground to the south. She saw, straight before her, the halt or station where the smoke had been; it lay on her side of the line and consisted of a long barn-like structure of two low storeys – an affair for trucking sheep. She saw – unbelievingly for a moment – the smoke of another train.
    North of the shed projected an empty freight truck and the tail of a second. And from behind the shed at its farther end there rose the leisurely puff upon puff of an engine at rest. A goods train. But at least with the engine there must be two men – men capable of whirling with their locomotive rapidly down the line. And at any moment the train might begin to move. Sheila broke cover and ran.
    She ran down a steep slope and jumped a ditch. She rounded the shed. She saw two solitary trucks on a little siding. In the middle of an empty line smouldered a sodden peat fire and over it two men manipulated a sheet, so that puff upon puff of smoke rose leisurely in the air.
    It was the trap.

 
     
12:   News from Norway
    ‘I don’t know of any Garden,’ said the tall man by the window. ‘Your garden’s an Orchard, if you ask me.’
    Appleby raised his eyes from the paper before him. ‘Rodney Orchard, sir?’
    The tall man turned quickly. ‘Rodney Orchard – no less. And now read that thing again.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ And Appleby looked up at the ceiling – it was painted all over with some riotous occasion on Olympus – and recited:
     
    Deep in a garden
    Far to the north–
     
    ‘No, no.’ The tall man snapped an impatient finger and turned to pace the long room. ‘I mean what comes out of it. Wait… I can remember. Garden fled north warn Forth branch . That right?’
    ‘Yes, sir. You get it – if you substitute warn for warm – by taking the last word of each line in the order Ploss discovered: 162543.’
    ‘It’s plain enough. But I never came across just that trick before.’
    ‘Nor I, sir. But it’s close to what we call cant: a criminals’ language that can be used before outsiders. And it has a touch of rhyming cant, too: like twist and twirl for girl . That’s Cockney originally – and now we’re getting it back from Australia by way of America.’
    The tall man halted. ‘You’re a damned academic policeman. Sit down and take a cigarette.’
    ‘Thank you, sir. The point is that the same trick – or a variant of it – was used in the presence of this girl who disappeared from the train.’
    ‘The devil it was. But never mind your girl. Plenty of them in the country still, praise God. There’s only one Orchard.’
    ‘No doubt.’ Appleby looked curiously at the tired man who was pacing up and down before him. ‘But Orchard and this girl are mixed up. She stumbled not only on the same trick as did Ploss. She stumbled on that trick being used once more to convey information about Orchard. From Perth she telephoned to a Colonel Farquharson, a relation with whom she was going to stay in Inverness-shire. She said something he didn’t quite understand about a poem of Swinburne’s.’
    ‘Not that thing about a garden ?’
    ‘Yes, sir. She named it. And I’ve got it here.’ Appleby produced a book from his pocket and laid it on the desk before him. There was a pause. ‘Rodney Orchard,’ he asked, ‘is important, I suppose?’
    The tall man stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. ‘Orchard is a great mathematician. For some reason – I don’t understand such things – that makes him the best chemist in the country. We’ve been trying to rope him in for years. No good – a very abstract scientist indeed. But he walked into the Ministry the morning after Prague.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘He is very important. And quite a bit mad. In Germany his opposite numbers have a bodyguard and travel behind four-inch glass. We don’t need all that – if a man has some sense. Orchard has none – only genius. Garden fled north warn