The Trail of Fear (7 page)

He waited several minutes. He had to get down because that was the only way out—through the back garden. The street and the front door would be watched, the other windows were too far off the ground. He wondered whether Sam was following. He had heard nothing of him since that exclamation at his laugh.

He set a foot on the first step. As he did so, he could have sworn he saw right down at the bottom a faint reflected glow, as of a torch somewhere round the corner and shrouded by the hand. He stopped where he was and a board creaked under him at the change of weight. The glow disappeared—and the moment it had gone he could not have told whether he had imagined it or not.

Then his attention was again arrested by a sound. This time without doubt it was a sound of human agency. It was not the cat and it was not his imagination. He knew now that there were men in the house at the bottom of those stairs, men too who also knew that he was somewhere in the house and were watching for him. He stood still, listening further. Once the certainty had come to his mind, his fear left him. He was back at his old game again—his wits against theirs, and despite the odds, he was backing his own. But he had a handicap in Sam. Had it not been for Sam he would have long ago walked out in safety as Mr. Carlyle, and would have been calmly sleeping the sleep of the just at some hotel preparatory to driving down to Beaulieu in his car the next day. Now, thanks to Sam, it was nearly ten o'clock and he was only a short distance from where he started and with the police on his trail. He wondered whether he could not give Sam the slip, and then he thought of Sam's vindictive words—of Sam's thin cruel knife. He knew Sam would have no mercy on him. He thought again of Sam's knife. He would rather give himself up and take his imprisonment than find himself at Sam's mercy, having betrayed him.

Of course, the thought slipped into his mind for the first time, he might betray Sam and get away, but if he did so he would have to be absolutely certain that Sam would be definitely caught by the police. If Sam got away after that, he would not rest till he had revenged himself. He thought, a third time, of Sam's knife and shuddered…

Then he stiffened to attention. His thoughts had wandered. A sense of danger descended on him. There was movement in the darkness below him. Without knowing how, he became aware that the police had left the floor below and were on the stairs. They were beginning to advance—he could almost hear restrained breathing—and in another minute they would meet. He must get back, and must get back in absolute silence, or the torch would flash out. He had no torch and would be helpless. The torches were the key to the situation. If only he could get possession of them or destroy them…

Cautiously he began again to back up the stairs, setting his feet down silently in the dust. He fervently hoped that Sam had not been following him up, to collide with him or speak to him at the top of the stairs.

He reached the top and backed round behind a thin wooden panel that cut off the kitchen stairs from the hall. There was a small lavatory at the end of the hall, and the door of this stood open, so that the window showed up a faint oblong of dark sky a little lighter than the surrounding blackness. By crouching down he could get the doorway to the kitchen stairs between himself and this window, so that anyone coming up would pass across the square of light. He took his revolver out of his pocket, holding it club fashion by the barrel and waited. He had a plan—desperate enough, it was true—but he had to do something. His position was indeed hopeless, as long as his opponents had the only torches.

On the other side of the panel he could now distinctly hear the guarded breathing of the first man. Soon he would leave the last step and be in the hall a foot or so away—and between Rezaire and the lavatory window.

He crouched there in absolute silence, his eyes glued to the oblong of night sky.

Slowly it began to darken; something was crossing it. He made out the vague profile of a face with a moustache, and below it the outline of a hand holding a torch, ready to switch on. The other hand he knew—after the interchange of shots with Harrap on the roof—would be holding a revolver.

He took silent aim, and then struck out with his revolver butt. There was a sudden sharp cry, a crash, and a tinkle of broken glass as the torch fell. Almost at the same instant a shot went off, as if a startled finger had pressed too heavily on the trigger. The shadow had drawn back and was no longer between him and the window. A voice cried out: “Come on! Hands up! You haven't got a chance.” Another torch went on on the kitchen stairs, but Rezaire stayed still on the ground, and the light, cut off by the panel against which he crouched, did not reach the hall. He heard a hoarse whisper—“Put it out, you fool!” and the light went off again.

Silence descended. He knew his opponents were on the stairs, debating what they should do. They did not care, without preparation, to rush the hall with the top of the stairs held by, as far as they knew, three armed and desperate men. Rezaire crouched there waiting. He could hear nothing of Sam and wondered again where he was. The tense expectant silence lay heavy upon the house once more.

CHAPTER VII

HIDE AND SEEK

As Rezaire crouched there, he swiftly began to form some plan of action. As usual, he attacked the problem from his opponents' point of view, by trying to guess what they would expect him to do next, and then doing the opposite. He now believed that after a moment they would rush the stairs, with their torches held in front of them from the moment they started, so that they would have the full advantage of the light. They would do this thinking he was still at the top of the stairs to catch them against the window. Against this attack he would not have much chance, unless, as just now, he were to be near enough at hand when the torch was actually switched on to knock it out. But by this time they had guessed that he was crouched at the top of the stairs.

All this reasoning took but a few seconds, for to put himself in his opponents' place was by now almost an instinct with him. Pausing only to grope for the dropped torch which he put in his pocket, he retreated as silently as possible to the doorway he had felt previously. This, he surmised, led into a room off the hall facing the back of the house, and he proposed to hide there and, if possible, get past the police when, as he calculated they were sure to do, they made a rush along the hall from the kitchen stairs.

As he felt his way into the open doorway, he wondered again where Sam was and wished he knew. He wanted very strongly to impress on Sam the fact that he was not to shoot. Though he was involved in the game as well as Sam, he did not want the stakes higher than they were already.

He waited but a minute before the anticipated rush came. In the brief second between his hearing the preparatory noise and seeing the bright gleam of a torch, he felt a quick pride in the fact that he had foreseen so accurately.

The police rushed up the last stairs and along the passage—the beam of light before them. Rezaire, just behind the door, gripped his revolver tightly. He hoped to be able to repeat his trick from the back room and then get past in the darkness and confusion. The whole scene momentarily impressed itself on his mind in the reflected light—the dirty house, bare walls with marks of vanished pictures, the banisters showing up white against the shadow behind—and peeping through them, right up at the top, Sam's face, with leveled revolver.

He had barely time to take in the significance of this last when there was a sudden report, a cry, and the place was once again plunged in darkness. Something that must have been the torch smashed against the doorway in which Rezaire was standing. Sam had fired at the light.

Rezaire, strung up to tense excitement, could have cried out aloud. Despite his relief at the fact that the rush had been stopped, the very thing he had dreaded had come to pass. Sam had fallen back on his gun. Now the police would shoot without hesitation.

The next moment the air seemed full of bullets. Sam had fired again in the darkness and they were firing back at him. Evidently they had only had the two torches as no other light appeared. Rezaire, thoroughly frightened, drew well back into the room and crouched behind the door. His first thought was to get away; and the next moment he decided quite definitely that he must part with Sam despite the other's threats of what he would do if he were “double-crossed.” But he dared not do it unless he could be certain that Sam were not in a position to take revenge.

The firing stopped. An idea struck him and he crawled over to the window and raising himself peered out. But as far as he could make out he could not get out that way; there was too big a drop into an area beneath. He would have to get down into the basement. He turned away, and as he did so, there was a hum past his head and a crash behind him. Someone creeping into the room had fired at his silhouette before the window. He dropped to the ground quaking with fear and crawled silently to a corner. A momentary panic descended on him. There was someone else in the darkness of the room with him—someone who had fired. Outside there was silence; inside there was even deeper silence, the stillness that reigns when two men are close to one another in the dark seeking to kill.

Suddenly there came a breaking sound and a crash outside in the hall, as of a heavy body falling from a height. Vaguely Rezaire wondered whether Sam had fallen through the banisters or had jumped, but his thoughts were mainly concentrated on the enemy in the room with him. A single shot followed the crash, and then another unaccountable watchful silence. He thanked Heaven that the police appeared to have no more torches, or he would have been completely cornered, and then suddenly he remembered the torch he had picked up himself. He had a light and they had not. He might turn that fact to advantage.

He drew it quickly from his pocket and held it in his left hand. He could feel that he was shaking badly. This was not the sort of work he was accustomed to. The pitting of wits and words and nimble brain against those of others, was what he excelled in—not this, what Sam had called “Sydney Street business.” He pulled himself together and ran over in his mind what he was going to do. Present the torch and the revolver in the direction in which he believed his foe was; switch on the torch, shouting “Hands up!” fire, if necessary, at his opponent's leg or revolver arm; then make a rush for it. Of course he would have to be prepared to shoot once or twice; for at the moment he was badly cornered. He gripped the torch more firmly and nerved himself to what he was going to do.

A very slight noise came from the opposite corner of the room, giving him an idea of his enemy's whereabouts. Slowly and quietly he leveled the torch and the revolver and took a deep breath. At the last moment he remembered to hold the torch away from him at arm's length in case the other should fire at the light.

Then he pressed the switch.

“Hands up!” he called in a voice that woke the tense silence of the house.

But no beam of light leaped from the torch as he touched the switch. It had of course been broken in its fall and like a fool he had not thought. Before hardly his mind could realize that he had given his position away, he saw a quick stab of flame on the darkness opposite and something hit the wall with a crack just by his ear. His opponent had fired at the sound of his voice and had nearly got him too.

Whether it was fear or excitement or whether he intentionally pressed the trigger he could not be certain, but close on the heels of the first came that of his own revolver, and almost immediately after that another answer came from his opponent. Rezaire crouched down, fear-stricken, in his corner. He could not compete with this at all. It was not his game—this firing in the dark at the sound or sight of an enemy. These men had been brought up to it—to deal with desperate criminals; but he was not a desperate criminal. Sam, he felt almost sure, playing the same game of cat and mouse outside, was enjoying it.

An overwhelming desire came to him to get out of this room where death was watching for him and right out of the house. He thought longingly for a moment of his car in the Jermyn Street Garage and of his launch waiting for him at Beaulieu. Why could he not just get up and walk out? It all suddenly seemed to him to be like some monstrous dream. Barely two hours ago he was just Mr. Carlyle, the author, without a care in the world and without a policeman on his track, yet with everything ready and planned to the last item in case he should have to take to flight, owing to his activities as James Robinson. Now he was hemmed in in a dark house with police all round him ready to fire at his slightest movement, and a probable murderer for companion.

At length he collected his courage and began to crawl as quietly as he could to the door on his hands and knees, making each move with infinite caution. After what seemed like several hours he at length reached the doorway and put his head round into the hall. Here too he experienced that same feeling of tenseness all about him, of men strung up to the highest pitch—listening. He could hear a very vague movement along the hall in the direction of the front door and something that might have been restrained breathing somewhere close at hand. From outside in the street came a confused murmur; probably that of a crowd attracted by the chase over the roofs and the shooting.

In the hall there had now been silence for some time. The police did not like to fire because they did not want to hit one of their own men, while Sam with so many against him would probably not fire unless he was certain. The whole tense silence was leading up, he felt, to some climax.

Rezaire wondered where Sam was. From the noise he had heard some time previously he guessed that he was no longer on the staircase.

With infinite caution he crawled slowly round the doorpost and out into the hall in the direction of the back stairs, keeping as close to the wall as possible. His whole mind was concentrated on silence. Every breath, every step he took was a business in itself. With slow cautious movement, each hand went in front like a feeler before he definitely put it down.

He worked his way about six feet along and then his gently-groping hand just brushed something. His heart almost stopped beating and he drew his hand back as if it had been stung, crouching into himself and expecting any moment to hear the report of a pistol in his ears. But nothing happened. Imperceptibly almost, so slowly did he move, he advanced his hand, till the very tips of his fingers just touched the obstacle again. It did not move. Like a breath of air his fingers wandered over it and recoiled once more as he realized what it was. It was part of a man's clothes—some tweed material. But still it had not moved, and emboldened he touched it again. It was a man's leg, and instead of being upright it was lying along the ground.

A fresh shock came to him as, after a minute, he realized that it was indeed a man, lying motionless on the floor. It was a body. Not Sam, for he knew the clothes Sam was wearing, so it must be one of the detectives or police. Sam had hit someone then, and the man was either dead or unconscious. Again the horror of Sam, the desire to be rid of him, came over him, swamping for a moment his memory of Sam's threats.

He crawled slowly over the inert body. He was now approaching the end of the hall and crossed over to the side from which the kitchen stairs started.

The same silence still hung about the whole place. The detectives, it seemed, knew Sam could not escape and that they only had to wait till he gave himself away by attempting to get past them. In the meantime they had probably sent out for more men and torches.

He came at last without hindrance to his original position, where he had first knocked the torch from the man's hand and here he waited for some time, trying to see by means of the lavatory window whether there was anyone there. The police, however, experienced in this sort of work, had pulled the door to, so that the light was cut off, and he could see nothing. But he was certain that one man at least was guarding the head of the stairs and he set himself hurriedly to devise a means of getting him out of the way.

About thirty seconds only had elapsed when suddenly he found himself in the midst of a hand-to-hand struggle. He could only vaguely tell how it had all happened. Someone advancing swiftly and silently from behind had collided with him and the next moment they were struggling together on the floor. He heard a voice call out somewhere down the hall. His opponent struck viciously at his head with some weapon, missed and hit him heavily on the shoulder. He heard the man grunt as he drew his arm back for another stroke and recognized the grunt. It was Sam's voice. He was fighting with Sam.

“Sam,” he whispered despairingly in the other's ear, overcome with terror lest Sam in his desperation should kill him. The grip relaxed for an instant, but the next moment another man had blundered into them, and the three of them were fighting together once more. The tense silence was all shattered. The climax had come.

They rolled this way and that, fell heavily against another man coming up somewhere in the darkness and then, locked in each other's arms, crashed against the partition that divided the hall from the kitchen stairs.

There was a rending of wood; an instant while they poised on the edge, during which Rezaire clung desperately to the man he was fighting with; and then they had crashed through the partition and fallen direct to half-way down the stairs whence they bumped heavily to the bottom.

For a moment Rezaire lay half unconscious from a blow on the back of the head. Dimly he realized that someone at his side was groaning. A revolver had gone off at some point during the fall, and the echo of it was still in his ears.

Then a hand seized him by the collar and he struck out feebly. A voice hissed in his ear: “Be quiet, you fool!”

He realized it was Sam and scrambled dizzily to his feet. Someone else was coming quickly down the stairs. A man was getting to his feet close by him, and he stepped clear just in time. Guided by Sam's hand he rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and was in the passage that, as in the other house, presumably led to a scullery and a back door.

They went several paces along, then suddenly drew into the side. The door was open into the back yard and silhouetted against it they could see another figure advancing toward them from outside.

“Let him pass,” whispered Rezaire as he felt Sam let go his arm and thought he was going to shoot, and they drew back against the opposite wall. At the same moment he had an idea, and pulling the useless torch once more from his pocket pitched it lightly down the passage away from the back door. It fell with a clatter at the far end just as though someone up at that end had stumbled.

Instantly the detective ran forward, passing so close that he almost touched their bodies pressed against the wall. Another man too made a rush from the stairs and apparently fell over the body of the one that lay unconscious at the bottom.

The next moment Sam and Rezaire had stepped out noiselessly into the scullery. The way was clear to the back garden and safety amid the crowds of London; and they had a definite start, for none had heard them go.