Read Online The Flood by John Creasey - Free Book Online

before?”
    “No.”
    “You’re quite sure?”
    “I’m positive,” Woburn asserted.
    “Have you told anyone else?”
    “Only Campbell. Miss Davos saw them, of course.”
    “One of the things I’m going to ask is that you don’t say a word about them to anyone else,” Palfrey said. “But we can come to that later. Do you know Miss Davos well?”
    “We’d never met before,” Woburn answered.
    Something about the way Palfrey looked at him suggested doubt. It was a probing, questioning look; the big Andromovitch had it, too.
    “You’ve never been to Ronoch Castle, I gather,” Palfrey said at last.
    “I only arrived in England eleven days ago,” Woburn told him. “One night in London, off the ship from New York, and I came straight down here. It’s my first visit home for five years. I’d heard about the Castle being sold and the Davos family being there, with a big zoo, but—”
    “Did you know anything about the Davos family?”
    “Only what my sister and her husband told me,” said Woburn, “and that was so little that I didn’t even know there was a daughter.”
    There had been two, remember.
    Palfrey said: “I see. And Miss Davos saw some of these things?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did she see any burst?”
    “One, at least – the one that fell on her lap, and I threw over.”
    “Did she give you the impression of being under any kind of strain when she first arrived at the A.A. box?”
    Woburn said: “No, not at first. She was certainly under a strain after what we saw down in the valley, though. At first I thought it was shock, but soon found out that it was more than that.” He was increasingly aware of a tension in the two men, and he made himself go on quite calmly, although they passed something of the tension on to him. “Then she told me that her sister had been in the village.”
    Palfrey nodded, and asked: “Did you see anyone else near Red Deer Point, Mr. Woburn?”
    “No.”
    “Would you have seen them, if any had been near?”
    “I think so. Not many people go over the cliffs to the loch. Parties of hikers do, sometimes, but mostly they go through the village. That’s my brother-in-law’s opinion, not just mine. Does it matter?”
    “Yes, it matters a great deal,” said Palfrey. “You know we’ve been at pains to prevent you from talking to the Press. We want to make quite sure that you don’t say a word to anyone. We want to make sure that Miss Davos doesn’t, either.”
    “But why?” Woburn asked roughly. “What difference can it make?” He remembered the boulder and the two men who had tried to kill him in the lane; and that had been a different way of making sure that he didn’t talk. He jumped up, and smacked a clenched fist into the palm of his other hand. “What’s it all about? Who are you? By what authority can you tell me I mustn’t speak about this?”
    “We can show you our authority, a little later,” Palfrey said, “but we’d much rather avoid any form of compulsion.” He gave a little, placating smile; unexpectedly, it calmed Woburn. “Have you any theory about what happened, Mr. Woburn?”
    The big Russian moved, for the first time.
    Woburn picked up his glass and sipped. Then, he gulped. He didn’t quite know how to put what he had to say into words; in one way, the idea seemed fantastic. In another, it was feasible.
    He said abruptly: “All I can think of is that millions of those crawling things were crushed at the same time. The water was like an explosion. If you’d seen the force of the water in that dog’s mouth – well, it must have broken its jaw. I’ve been thinking about it. Nearly driven me crazy. I know you’ll think I am crazy, but—”
    “Not crazy at all,” Palfrey interrupted. “Very sane. That is exactly what did happen. Millions of the octi – the name given to them, it doesn’t mean anything particularly – were inside the cliff. They burst. The force of the water erupting from them undermined the cliff.