Be Shot For Six Pence (23 page)

If I had a penny.

Quite suddenly I started to laugh. Kneeling beside the bed, I was overcome with the sheer, ludicrous perversity of my position. How did the rhyme go? Water, water quench fire, fire won’t burn stick, stick won’t beat dog, dog won’t bite pig, pig won’t get over the stile, and I shan’t get home tonight.

When I had finished laughing I examined the bed once more. It occurred to me that something might be done with the brass knobs. I think what put it into my head was that at school we had slept in beds of much this mark, and it had been one of our ploys to unscrew the knobs, and leave notes for each other inside the shank of the post. It occurred to me that if the knob was indeed hollow, it might supply just the edge I wanted.

The first one I tried was stiff, but I could tell that it was made to move, I exerted pressure, and started it. Quietly, quietly. I dared not hurry for fear of making a noise. At last the knob was clear. I shook it, and a folded spill of paper fell on to the floor.

With fingers that hardly seemed to belong to me I unfolded the paper. Then I carried it across to the window and spread it clumsily out on the sill.

It started without preamble:

“I wonder if you will catch up? You are such a devilish determined person that I believe you will. A slow starter, Philip, but I’ve never known anything in this world to stop you when once you get going. As you will gather, I’m writing this as my last will and testament. This is the end of the road. I’m afraid I know something that Dru will stop at nothing to extract, and I have not got enough confidence in my powers of detachment to face him again. Luckily I am equipped to deal with this situation.”

(They must have found the cyanide capsule
after
Colin had used it. That, of course, was why they had examined my teeth so carefully).

“It’s quite possible that this will all be old news to you. It may already have reached you by another route. More by luck than judgement I managed to tip the wink to one of Schneidermeister’s boys. He was on hand when they unloaded me from the boat. He couldn’t help me, but the word should get back, through their frontier networks. I doubt it can be in time to do me any good, but I hope it may stop someone else dropping down the same hole.

The main thing, as you have probably guessed, is to deal with Trüe. You realise that she was selling us all up the river? I confess it came as a complete shock to me. But I am not sure that I feel able to judge her. Her father and mother (did she tell you they were dead?) are very much alive, and stand surety to her masters for her good behaviour.”

(Yes, I think I had guessed. She had sold her body to me so coldly that it could not have been for other than adequate consideration.)

“Nothing more to say, Philip, and this pen is running out.”

Then a scrawl which might have been “Goodbye” or “Goodnight.”

I refolded the paper, very carefully, and put it into my pocket. Then I picked up the brass knob, inserted its hollow edge behind the wire of the bed spring, and twisted until the wire came loose; bent open the wire and drew it out. Then I went across to the window, fiddled the end of the wire behind the wooden slat, and worked the slat out far enough to get a finger under it. It was only a question of time and patience before I had loosened the wood enough to lift it out. (It was simply held by two short nails, and was, I fancy, left like that for convenience when a sash cord needed mending.)

On reflection, I decided, at the cost of a little extra time and labour, to take out both sides and remove the bottom window bodily. As long as I was fiddling with one side only I was in deadly danger of making some noise that would bring my guard out of his uneasy dreams of beer and sauerkraut.

When I had got both the side-slats out, I raised the bottom window as high as it would go, thus lowering the counterweights until they rested on the sill. Then I untied the cords and, holding them in one hand, lowered the window again until the cords ran out of the pulleys at the top. Then I lifted the whole window clear and stood it against the wall behind the door. Even if my guard happened to look at the window, I did not think it would have been easy for him to see that one half was gone entirely.

Then I lifted out the left-hand sash weight. It was a trifle shorter than I had hoped, a fat, cylindrical pig of lead with a loop at the top for the cord.

Before using it I swathed it carefully with a long strip off my blanket and then inserted the tip between the two top rails of the centre piece of the bed back and pressed gently downwards.

Both bars bent, but neither gave way entirely.

I moved my lever up to one end, and tried again. Flushed with success, I forgot all caution. There was an appallingly loud crack.

I held my breath.

It had sounded like a gun going off. If that didn’t wake the guard, he was a good sleeper. I think it did something to his subconscious, for I heard the rattle of a chair down the corridor. Then blessed silence. I gave him a full five minutes to settle back into dreamland before I moved again. Then I found that the results exceeded my expectations. The bottom of the two cross bars had broken clean away. The top one was so far bent up that I could draw out all four of the uprights. The middle ones came easily. The two end ones needed more work, but they came finally. I simply took their tops and bent them, one by one, out of their sockets.

I suppose that I assumed that having got so far the other bars would somehow come too. I was wrong. The side portions were independent of the centre and, since they had only one cross bar I was unable to get any purchase for my home-made lever. I tried to bend the bars separately, but they were beyond my strength.

When the sweat ran cold down my face and I found my fingers trembling with the effort I had wasted, I pulled myself up.

It was maddening to be so near and yet so far. Four pegs for fifteen feet. An acrobatic monkey might have made it. Not me. I should need at least seven – preferably nine.

And then I remembered old Rannecker’s account of how he had got himself singlehanded out of a crevasse on the Costa Brava. Captive pitons! Could I do it? Dare I do it? Using proper equipment, with rings at the piton ends and nylon rope it was perilous enough. Rannecker did it to save his life, and it was the last time he ever climbed alone. But he had covered sixty feet, shifting his pitons
twelve
times. I had to go fifteen feet and should have to make, perhaps, only three independent moves.

The sweat stood out on me again as I thought of it. A climb with pitons is a thing outside the experience of the ordinary mountaineer in this country. The placing of an isolated peg might be tolerated in an emergency. That is all. Nevertheless, it
is
quite possible to make a straight climb up a sheer face using pegs all the way. You make it in exactly the same way as a climb with an ice axe. First, you cut grips for right hand and right foot; then, using the grips you have cut, fashion further grips, higher up, for left hand and left foot; and so on, whilst strength and nerve last. When working with pitons the same process is employed, a peg being driven instead of a slot being cut. The effort is the same. The difficulty is simply that you must carry with you sufficient pegs for the whole journey.

And that was where Rannecker’s ingenuity came in. He had only four pegs and he had sixty foot to cover. Therefore he attached a length of cord to each peg and dragged the pegs he stood on with him as he went;
using the same pegs over and over again.

But he was using mountaineering gear. Not soft iron rods broken from a bedstead and lengths of rotten sash cord.

I took another look at my watch, and thought for a moment that my eyes were playing tricks. It was already nearly a quarter to four.

If I was going to make the effort I had about an hour in hand. Between half-past four and five would be the ideal time. There would be just enough light to see what I was doing. And perhaps even a kindly early morning mist to seal the eyes of any watchers on the ground.

First I must bend the ends of two of my bars far enough round to take a cord without slipping.

This was difficult, but not impossible. I pushed each bar in turn back into the slot and bent it as far as I dared. Then I tore the sash cords out of their grooves in the side of the window, jerking the nails out, carefully, one by one. I had thought, to start with, that I should need to cut them, but it now occurred to me that I only needed to rope the bottom two pitons.

The next question was whether I climbed with shoes or without. There were dangers both ways. The danger of slipping if I kept them on. The dangers of bruising and of cramp if I dispensed with them.

In the end I decided on a compromise. I took out the thick cork undersole from each shoe and put it inside my woollen sock. This gave me a grip and afforded a degree of protection. Incidentally, it also solved the question of the mallet. A heavy shoe, the heel muffled in several thicknesses of blanket, was as good a hammer as I could have devised.

I was well aware that if once I stopped to think I should never go. So I gave myself no chances.

I put the spare shoe into my trouser pocket, tied the ends of the two cords to my wrists, took my home-made pitons in one hand and my shoe in the other, and stepped out on to the window sill.

The first moves were easy. All I had to do was to stop thinking about the drop underneath me.

I hammered one peg in at waist height, a couple of foot to the right of the window. It went in easily, but felt nice and firm, nevertheless. The peg was about twelve inches long, and I buried nine inches before I stopped hitting it. The hammering didn’t sound too loud, but it was clear that the blanket covering wasn’t going to last.

Standing on tiptoe, I then put in the second peg as high as I could above the first. This would have to be done one handed, and I found that the best way was to work the point in for an inch or two, then leave the peg, feel for the shoe which, when not in use, lay inside the front of my shirt, reach up, and hammer the peg home.

(You will understand that as I was standing on the window sill there was, at the moment, no necessity for such fancy work, but I thought it better to get the drill right whilst I was in a position to experiment.)

Then I stood, for a moment, mapping out the route. The strength of any climb is knowing exactly what you are going to do. One of the additional difficulties here was that the breast of the turret made it impossible to see the point I was aiming for, the junction with the main wall at gutter level. I deduced it must exist because I could, of course, see the main wall, and could judge where the join must come.

I reckoned that I had to make a sideways movement of perhaps twelve foot and an upward climb of a little more. Allowing that my reach was six foot, I had the best part of eight or nine foot to cover before I could scramble on to my objective.

Nine foot up; a little less than nine foot across.

In other words, once I was straddled, I had to move all four pegs three times each. That was the sum total. Provided my strength held out, and I didn’t get cramp and didn’t lose my head or my foothold, or arouse the guard by my knocking or the attention of anyone else by my manoeuvres.

The last was the least of the dangers. Being above the arc lights I was in shadow. And an observer, looking up, had the light to contend with.

Thinking was not going to cure any of my other problems.

I put my right foot on one peg, took hold of the other with my right hand, and pulled myself up. I balanced for a moment to get the feel of it. The piton was too thin, and bit into my foot through the cork sole. Nevertheless, it felt firm. If they all went as well as that, I could do it.

Using my left hand I drove in my two other pegs, one at waist height, the other above my head.

Then I transferred my weight to my left foot, and steadying myself with my left hand, stepped up.

Now for the pay-off. I gripped the cord firmly in my right hand, bent down as far as I dared, and pulled. The peg slewed towards me and stuck. I gave a little jerk in the opposite direction, like an awkward angler casting against the stream. Then back again. Once, twice, three times, and it was out.

Mixed with my triumph was a much colder feeling.

I was under no misapprehension as to what I had done. The way back was now sealed. I could pull the peg out by its cord all right but no contortion I could devise would get me into a position to hammer it back again.

I could only go up. Sideways and upwards.

The first two moves went with suspicious smoothness. I realised that the actual physical effort was not going to be the limiting factor; not at that point, anyway. Accidents apart, it seemed that it would be a question of whether I could reach the roof before I was crippled by cramp in my legs or the soft but repeated hammering brought my guard running into the room.

(The thought of what he would say, or do, almost made me laugh for the second time that night.)

It was the next move which started the trouble. I found the greatest difficulty in getting the peg in at all. I was well balanced, on my left foot and was using my right hand for hammering so there ought to have been no difficulty.

It occurred to me that I might have chosen an unlucky place. With great caution I pulled the peg clear, and tried again, one brick lower. It was a little better, but not much. It took a deal of uncomfortably noisy hammering to get the peg home.

In the end it was done; and I shifted my position for the third time.

At this point all my doubts became certainties. For some reason or other as I got higher, the mortar was getting harder. Possibly it was because I was now coming under the area sheltered by the overhang of the roof, and for this reason the wall face had suffered less from the weather.

This time I had to use my hammer left-handed. The results were unencouraging. The foot peg went in to about half its length, and there it stuck. The more I hit it the looser it became. The peg for my hand went in less than that.