A Pigeon Among the Cats (21 page)

The cars moved slowly on to the train, Owen and Mrs. Lawler got back into their seats. The space in front filled, grew less, Owen moved on, bumper to bumper, careful, persistent.

There was an argument in front. He moved on very gently. No room! Yes, just room! Yes, there must be room!

For Gwen sat forward suddenly, fumbling for the door handle and Mrs. Lawler swung round in her seat, leaned over to beat Gwen's hand from the handle.

“Look behind, Owen!” she gasped, still fighting off Gwen.

He had already looked. A big black car, more powerful than the one Tito had found for him, was coming up the road fast. He did not need to see the faces: the heads and headgear told him who they were.

Owen had not stopped moving and was now driving very slowly up the ramp into the train, though the argument in mixed Italian and French had not stopped. But his calm insistence, together with the fact that there really was room for one but only one more car, triumphed in time. As he put on the brake and switched off the engine, he turned to look at Gwen.

“You bloody goddamed bitch!” he said with such cold steel in his voice that even Rose's besotted confidence was shaken.

“When …?” Rose began.

Gwen turned to her with a vicious look.

“Never you mind, you silly old cow!” she snapped. “Needn't think you could keep your eye on me every bloody minute. He'd kill me if I didn't report as he ordered.”

“Judging by his expression as we beat him to the train he'll do that anyway,” Owen said. Gwen inevitably began to cry.

The tunnel seemed to Mrs. Lawler to go on for ever. But at last they came again into daylight and at the first station, Andermatt, they left the railway. This was done easily and quickly, since Owen's car had been the last to go on and therefore was the first to drive off. He wasted no time as he did so and very soon they were driving up the straight approach to the Furka Pass.

Mrs. Lawler was still in the front seat of the car. If she had not been so terrified of nemesis behind them, she would have been delighted with their magnificent surroundings, the great mountain glacier on their right, the wide view rising to further heights on the left.

But as they came to the beginning of the twists and turns, the sharp bends and unexpected loops in the road, she clung to the strap of the door handle, thankful for her safety belt, thankful she was on the right hand side of the continental car, thankful she was not in Owen's place, the side of the drop. Not that they sped along the edge of a precipice; the land fell away very steeply from the road, covered closely with pines; but it fell for thousands of feet and she could imagine the car plunging and somersaulting and crashing through the trees as it fell. Owen must have realised the danger, too, for he slowed up after one rather dangerous skid on a bend, slowed up and then swung into a space on the right below overhanging rocks and stopped.

“Listen!” he said gently.

They all heard it, a car on the road behind them. Just forty minutes since they left Andermatt, Mrs. Lawler saw, taking a swift look at her watch.

“Stay where you are, both of you!” Owen ordered.

He was out of the car, running back, disappearing round the buttress of rock that hid them from the road behind.

Gwen flung herself at the rear door of the car, wrenched it open and was out, also running back, disappearing behind the rock as Owen had done a few seconds before.

Rose had some difficulty in following. Owen had parked so near the wall of rock that she could not get out of the door beside her but had to slide across the driver's seat. She did not attempt to run, she was still too stiff from her long swim and the hours of driving. But she moved fast enough for all that, trying to catch up with Gwen. She saw the girl, still running, disappear round the next corner of the road.

The sound of the oncoming car was louder now, nearer. Mrs. Lawler broke into a desperate sort of sprint, shouting – “Gwen! Gwen, come back!”

She could not remember afterwards in quite what order everything happened from that moment. There was a shot and a scream. She rounded the bend of the road and she found Owen at her side. Gwen was lying on her face where she had been stopped by the shot. Jake's car, not fifty yards away was still advancing. Abe, with a long handled gun was leaning from the front passenger seat, taking aim.

“Get down!” Owen yelled, dropping to one knee.

As she did so she saw that he held a pistol and was pointing it at the advancing car. But she dropped to her own knees beside Gwen, instinctively putting up both arms as she did so, which made her lose her balance so that she toppled over beside the prostrate girl.

She heard another scream, two more shots, Jake's car roaring close. The end, she thought, shutting her eyes, thinking of her son, whom she would never see again, his wife whom she would never meet.

Then her frozen senses were aware of a different noise. Shouts, hoarse screams, the crashing of trees, splintering, falling metal clanging, thumping. The whole receding, but repeated until at last, at long last, silence, blessed, blessed silence.

Am I dead, she wondered, still not daring to move. And Owen, and Gwen? Are we all dead, at peace at last?

“Are you all right?”

It was Owen's voice and Owen's hands gently turning her over. She gasped, looked up at him, tried to smile.

“I think so.” With an effort she remembered. “Of course I'm all right. It was Gwen … Gwen! They shot her …”

She sat up, then got to her knees again. Gwen had vanished.

“No,” Owen said. “I've taken her to the car. She's hurt, but not badly. But I need your help. Can you get up?”

Rose got to her feet with his strong hands lifting her. She looked back down the road. A rifle lay there.

She remembered more. The man Abe, pointing it at her, throwing it away as he screamed. Herself dropping to the ground, over-balancing.

“He could have killed me,” she said slowly. “But he thought I was a ghost, drowning again as he thought he saw me drown last night, my arms thrown up as I sank.” She stared at Owen. He had heard her describe her escape from the launch, but had he understood?

“So that was it,” he breathed. “Providential, Rose, for all of us.”

“Gwen,” she said, beginning to walk away. No need to ask about Jake, the car, or any of those three abominable ruffians. She remembered all those noises and interpreted them without difficulty. If Owen's pistol had any part in their final fatal swerve from the road, he was not to be blamed. If any of them lived, it was not her responsibility, nor his to find out. But Gwen, that was different.

She found that Owen had pulled a rug from the car and laid the girl on it, with his own rolled-up jacket under her head. His handkerchief was tied round her shoulder, but it was already soaked through with blood.

There had been a pool of blood where she had lain on the road.

“My suitcase,” Mrs. Lawler ordered. “Quick, Owen!”

He brought it to her. She dived into the car for her handbag to get her keys. Gwen's bag was on the back seat where she had left it.

“Open it,” she ordered, throwing the keys to Owen. “Get out a long white cotton petticoat and tear it into strips about nine inches wide. My hands are too dirty.”

She wiped the road dust off on the rug before she began, very gently, to take away the blood-soaked handkerchief. The wound, when it was exposed, was messy but neither very wide nor deep. It was, however, awkwardly placed, being just below the collarbone, between it and the shoulder joint itself.

Owen worked quickly and was soon handing long cotton strips to Rose. She folded one into a pad to push against the ragged wound itself. With Owen holding the arm close, she bound the next across the wound and shoulder joint, with a twist round the upper arm to give leverage. She repeated this with a third strip, taking the end over the opposite shoulder.

“Now a sling,” Mrs. Lawler said. “You'll find three scarves down the left hand side of the case. Give me the green and brown one, it's the longest.”

While he was searching Gwen opened her eyes.

“Don't talk,” Mrs. Lawler said. “Those devils shot you, but not badly. This is First Aid. We'll soon have you in hospital with proper treatment.”

“Not hospital,” Gwen said faintly.

“Don't talk.”

They lifted her on to the back seat of the car and Rose got in beside her to take the stricken girl's head on her lap and protect her injured left shoulder from jolts and swerves.

Of these there were many as they drove cautiously over the pass and began the long descent. But Owen seemed to know his way. He asked no questions nor looked at the map. Rose forced herself to stay awake. The excitements of the last few hours, together with the removal of Jake and his friends had brought her once again to the edge of exhaustion. Gwen, suffering now from severe shock, sank into a semi-conscious state, broken from time to time by sudden twinges of pain. Soon they would be down from the mountain, Rose thought, some town nearer than Geneva, where Gwen could find a hospital bed and the necessary surgery for her wound.

When the great lake came into view for the first time through the tree belt that surrounded them Rose put this to Owen. But he shook his head.

“No go,” he said. “We've got to make Geneva. Got to get her case from the bank before it closes.”

Mrs. Lawler was outraged.

“She can't!” she cried. “She can't possibly do such a thing! There isn't time, anyway!”

“There will be time — just about. You said yourself the wound wasn't deep.”

“I'm not a doctor!” Mrs. Lawler was still indignant. “I said it didn't
look
deep, or dangerous. But the bullet …”

“Never mind the bullet” he said rudely and called out to Gwen, “How does it feel now, love?”

“I'm thirsty,” Gwen answered, rallying. “My mouth's as dry as — as dust.”

“Will you be all right if I prop you up while I get at the thermoses?” Mrs. Lawler asked anxiously.

“Have to be,” the girl muttered, but she did nothing to help herself and it was quite a struggle for Mrs. Lawler to lift her away into a sitting position. Gwen moaned but did not scream, she coughed and retched but did not vomit. And when Rose gave her some ice-cold mineral water she sipped it eagerly and seemed to feel better afterwards.

Looking at her watch for the first time since the battle on the mountain top, as she described it to herself, Mrs. Lawler saw to her astonishment that the time was no more than three-thirty. The whole episode from leaving Andermatt and the railway had taken little more, than an hour. The actual encounter must have been over in a matter of minutes. Well, that was reasonable. Such violence, with those particular results, could not have been other than brief.

As Owen had promised they reached Geneva about ten minutes before the banks were due to close. Gwen gave the name of the one where she had deposited her case, but of course Owen knew it already.

“I know it,” he agreed.

He drew up at the steps and got out to help Gwen. Mrs. Lawler had put the girl's good right arm into the sleeve of her own summer coat, a light fawn wool one she had taken with her inside the car, but had not worn. She used her own brooch to fasten the coat over the sling.

“If you must get this case,” she said, “You'd better have your dress covered and that shoulder. The dress is badly stained, you know.”

Gwen nodded. Clearly she was making an immense effort, incapable of speaking or thinking, all her will and her courage bent upon getting into the bank. Mrs. Lawler, who had so far thought poorly of Gwen's qualities, was subdued by this near-heroism, and very ready to give all the help she could.

“Look,” Owen breathed. “I've got to park the car. I can't wait here. Other side of the road, O.K.? Get the case. Then wait here by the steps.”

“Ring for an ambulance,” Mrs. Lawler said, giving him a very hard look. “That's the first thing to be done, isn't it?”

He stared back at her.

“Of course,” he said.

Gwen, still in the trance of her supreme effort, walked slowly to the correct grille, produced paper, passport and keys. While the case was being brought, Rose made her sit on one of the many upholstered benches, but when her property appeared, she got up at once and went forward to receive it. Mrs. Lawler caught her up.

“I'll carry it,” she said.

“No.”

“Don't be silly. Gwen. You're not fit …”

“I'm O.K.”

No use struggling for possession Mrs. Lawler decided. The girl's beside herself, delirious perhaps. She managed to halve the weight of the case by slipping a couple of fingers into the handle beside Gwen's. In this fashion they reached the top of the three steps outside the door of the bank.

Owen was at the foot of them, waiting. He bounded up, snatched the case from the two women, held out his hand to Gwen.

“The key,” he said, “Give me the key.”

“No.” She pulled back, shaking off Mrs. Lawler as well. “No, Owen! Not now. Not yet! Not …”

“I say yes,” he snarled in a new voice that Rose had never heard before.

He tore the keys out of her hand, pulling her forward because she would not let go. She lost her balance, tripped on the next step and fell. As Rose jumped down to her side, Owen was away, running across the road to the car which he had parked as he intended, on the opposite side of the road in the shade of some trees.

Gwen lay where she had fallen. She began to cough, deep tearing coughs that made her cry out when she tried to take a breath. The coughing went on and now, to Mrs. Lawler's horror, a dribble of blood-stained froth appeared at the corner of her mouth and grew — and grew — to a slow, persistent stream.

People stopped to stare and walk away or stay as their nature directed. The older among them found nothing altogether new in the spectacle. In the old days a tubercular haemorrhage from the lungs was less common than it had been in Victorian times, but still occurred in public from time to time. The sufferers from that age-old disease “consumption” still came to Switzerland in hope of a cure. Now the TB patients were cured, for the most part, in their own countries before such dire symptoms had a chance to develop.