Traitor's Purse (19 page)

Amanda drew her hand away. Then she boxed his ears.

It was a gesture rather than a blow, very light and very quick. There was no smile on her face now and no animation. Her fine bones made a stamp, a die of quality, and she was as remote from him as if she had died.

He stumbled to his feet and stood looking at her wildly. At that moment every restraining consideration seemed utterly absurd. She was part of himself and she was lost. Her going would mean partial disintegration. He felt himself cracking hopelessly, shamefully, before her eyes.

The tap on the inner door came from another world. They both swung round to stare at the handle as it turned. Lugg came tip-toeing in, bouncing a little like a descending balloon.

‘Watch out,’ he said. ‘They’re on the doorstep.’

‘Who?’ It was Amanda who spoke. She seemed perfectly normal and at ease.

‘The busies are downstairs. The Inspector is in the lounge and ’e’s got two men just outside on the door. The proprietor ’ere doesn’t want any fuss on ’is premises, thank you, and the Inspector’s being obliging.’ The fat man dominated the room and his little eyes were bright and excited under the jutting peak of his flat cap. ‘The back doors aren’t ’ealthy either,’ he went on. ‘I see the Lily ’imself down there, not to mention Nervy Williams and one or two more. You got a hornet’s nest on your tail and no mistake. Anyone’d think you was a classic race meeting.’

‘How did they find me here?’ said Campion.

Lugg shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ask me another. The police followed young Amanda, I should say, and the other little syndicate of blossoms must have a tip-off in the police somewhere. I merely strolled down after you to satisfy myself that everything was okay and I walked right into it. The police don’t know me ’ere, so I came in through the lounge,
’ad
a drink in the saloon, and nipped up the first staircase I could find as soon as I ’ad a chance. I’ve been all over the ’ouse. There’s no one upstairs at the moment. I tell you what, there’s a cat-walk over the roofs if you want it, but I’d think twice before I took it with your ’ead.’

Campion shot a glance at Amanda and turned the flat of his hand to Lugg. It was an entirely spontaneous gesture but miraculously the man seemed to understand in time.

‘’E’s ’ad a ’eadache,’ he said to the girl. ‘Still, it’s up to ’im.’

Amanda turned to Campion. ‘What are you going to do?’

She was as natural and polite as if Lugg had interrupted nothing more important than a tea-party. Her poise was imperturbable and he knew that she must always have possessed it.

‘I must see Bull,’ he said. ‘You’ll go back to Bridge, won’t you? Lugg can wait at the paper shop. I’ll try the roof. I must get on. It’s so urgent, you see. If fifteen isn’t a date the whole thing may cook up at absolutely any moment. I’ve got to stop it. Whatever it is I’ve got to stop it.’

He saw that he was speaking with unusual violence, for they both looked at him under their eyelashes and there was an awkward pause when he finished.

‘You’d better try it at once, then,’ said Lugg practically. ‘We don’t want the busies coming up ’ere, do we?’

‘Very well.’ Campion had no idea what he proposed to attempt nor if he could make any serious physical effort without collapsing. It was obviously the next move, that was all.

His programme was unfolding before him like sealed orders and there was only the passionate anxiety raging behind the dark curtain in his mind to drive him on to follow it.

Lugg went over to the inner door and opened it.

‘You wait a second while I make sure the coast’s still clear,’ he said over his shoulder.

Campion nodded and glanced at Amanda. She was
looking
at him and as he caught her eye she smiled with sudden frank generosity, her eyes dancing.

‘The best of luck,’ she said. ‘You’ll do it. How’s the head?’

‘Fine.’

‘Honest? Oh well then, that’s all right. I’d back you to get to hell and home again. “
Begone! she stormed, Across the raging tide
”.’

It was part of a couplet, of course, and he saw by her expression that she expected him to supply the missing line. It was doubtless some old joke they had shared since her childhood, something he knew so well that it should have come to his tongue without thinking. His mind remained obstinately blank. He could not remember ever having heard the melodramatic doggerel before. Amanda was waiting confidently, all her glorious natural friendliness ready to go back to him. He could snub and hurt her, or explain.

At that moment he saw his choice as clearly as if it had been presented to him in pictorial form, like one of the old morality pictures of the primrose path flanked with gin palaces on one side and the steep track amid the chasms on the other. It would be so easy to explain and so pleasant. Lugg was there to back him up and she was eager, too, forgiveness and intelligent understanding in every inch of her young body. Aubrey could be kicked out of her life as easily as if he’d been a hedgehog in the road. She would be so sorry, so abominably dutifully sorry …

He laughed. ‘I’ve forgotten my cue. I’ll always be able to get in touch with you at Bridge, shan’t I?’ he said.

The last thing he saw of her was the smile fading out of her eyes.

XV

‘THERE YOU ARE.
It’s a straight drop to begin with and then you ’ave to start the fancy-work. Can you see anything at all?’

Lugg’s whisper came gustily to Campion across the narrow corridor at the top of the old inn. The dark cul-de-sac in which they stood, bowing their heads to avoid the low ceiling, was warm and breathless and possessed a faint smell of dust and old wallpaper. Outside the narrow casement window the night was practically black, but the wet tiles showed occasional high lights under the far-away stars.

‘I don’t like you going off like this in the state your ’ead’s in,’ the fat man whispered, ‘but I don’t see what else you can do, do you? Besides, you can climb like a perishing cat, can’t you?’

Campion sincerely hoped so, otherwise the project seemed suicidal.

Lugg touched his arm. ‘I’ve brought this along,’ he said, thrusting a package into his hand. ‘It’s some of that money out of the drawer. It never hurts to have plenty of cash on one. Then there’s this little torch. It doesn’t give no more light than a pin-’ead. Shade it with your ’and and nobody won’t see it. Now listen, when you get to the ground make for the main road and turn down the hill. When you get to the bottom you’ll see an archway on your right. There’s a sort of alley through there. Take it and go up the steps at the end and there’s the station right in front of you. You may ’ave to wait about a bit for a London train, but there’s bound to be one for the mail even in these times. I’ll sit tight until I ’ear from you.’

He broke off abruptly. Someone was moving very close to them. Heavy footsteps rang out blithely on old boards and someone’s sleeve brushed against panelling which might have been directly behind them. Lugg opened the window.

‘Out yer get,’ he whispered. ‘These old places either ’ave walls eight feet thick or a thin slice of canvas between two sheets of wallpaper. Button that old raincoat round yer neck. Pity you left the cap but it can’t be ’elped. Ready?’

Campion slipped through the narrow aperture and hung dangerously over the pit below.

To his relief, his muscles obeyed him miraculously. He was aware of them like a great webbing basket enclosing
his
bones. The discovery gave him first an enormous sense of relief and then of excitement. Ever since he had left Amanda alone with the unanswerable line in her lips a recklessness quite different from anything he ever remembered experiencing before had taken possession of him. He felt so bitterly free, and so much alone, that the night itself seemed to have taken on a new quality. The darkness had become an element, like water on air, treacherous but stimulating. The soft moist wind on his skin was invigorating and his dizziness had gone, leaving him super-sensitive, as though every nerve in his body had become exposed.

Lugg’s white face loomed close above him.

‘Don’t forget,’ he whispered. ‘Police in the front and the gentry all round the back. Good luck.’

Campion dropped. He landed very lightly on his toes and finger-tips. Good lord, he could climb like a cat! His own skill astounded him, but he thrust the astonishment away from him in panic lest it should destroy this instinctive efficiency.

The little torch proved invaluable. It shed only a pinpoint of light, too small to be detected immediately from the street below.

He edged his way carefully up the sloping pantiles, paused a second astride a gable, and then slid down noiselessly the other side. He went most cautiously, allowing himself to lie full length against the sharp slope and feeling his way with his feet.

He was hanging there, supporting himself with remarkably little effort, when he heard the voices. There were two of them, male, and apparently directly beneath him. He lay motionless, pressing himself into the protecting blackness of the tiles.

The two men were keeping very quiet themselves. No words were distinguishable but the murmur was furtive and secret. Presently one of them spat and, at a whisper from the other, laughed aloud. He cut it off short immediately, but the sound had not been attractive. Campion was not sure that he recognized it but he had a warning instinct that he
ought
to do so. He gathered that he must be at the back of the building, probably looking down on some sort of semi-enclosed yard.

He hung there for a considerable time, the strain on his arms growing slowly intolerable.

The two men stirred at last and he heard their light footsteps moving away in the darkness. He saw the glow of a cigarette slowly disappearing into the gloom. Once it paused and they seemed to be settling. Campion felt he must lose his grip and come hurtling down on to the cobbles, but the moment passed, the men went on, and soon all was quiet.

Finally Campion let himself down into the guttering and edged along it perilously until he came to a gable and had to climb again. This time he was more lucky. On the other side of the mountain of tiles he came down quietly on to a perfectly good flat roof. It belonged to an old coach-house, reconditioned as a garage perhaps, and it was set back a few feet from a narrow side road. His eyes were becoming more and more accustomed to the darkness, and here, with a comparatively wide expanse of sky above him, he could almost see.

There was no traffic in the road below him, but farther away to the right he could hear an occasional car engine revving as its driver changed gear. That must be the high road and the hill that Lugg had spoken of, of course.

He came quietly across the leads and paused with his hands on the low parapet. Beneath him was pitch darkness, but he could just see a gleam of wet pavement on the far side of the narrow road opposite. There was no movement, no sound, not a step on the stones.

He leant over the concrete ledge and flashed his torch. The little beam was so small that it shed scarcely any glow.

He flicked it off at once. He had seen what he wanted to. Garage, or coach-house, or whatever it was, the roof-high doors were ajar.

Lying on his stomach, with his thighs hooked over the parapet, he leant down and pulled one door wider. It was unexpectedly well hung and moved so easily that he almost
overbalanced
. He let it swing right back until it rested across the angle made by the building on which he lay and the blank wall of the next house. He waited.

There was not a breath from within, not a whisper, not a rustle.

Far away in the direction of the High Street a girl laughed foolishly as though someone had tickled her and afterwards shouted something which he could not catch, but here, close to him in the narrow alley, there was nothing, only silence and the soft damp kisses of the rainy wind.

He climbed on to the door and began to descend deftly by way of the old harness pegs. He made no sound at all and when his foot touched the paving stone it was very gently, as if he had been coming down carpeted stairs.

He had just straightened himself when the door moved. It was swung back forcefully as the man who had been standing hidden behind it saw his opportunity and leapt for it. Campion side-stepped him with an instinctive swiftness nothing to do with his conscious thoughts. It was instinct, too, which made him thrust his foot out at the same moment that he struck blindly in the dark. He touched cloth and a hard shoulder beneath it, but the man went down over the outstretched foot and as he fell his cosh rattled in the gutter.

Campion ran and again he experienced a shock of delight in his own freedom of movement. All the unsteadiness of earlier in the day had vanished under the tremendous pressure of this new excitement. His illness had given place to a period of complete irresponsibility, coupled, of course, with the
idée fixe
which had never left him. Physically, he was in perfect training. He moved like a whippet, easily, gracefully, and so lightly that his feet scarcely sounded upon the tarmac.

The High Street was dark and empty but as he turned down the hill the row started behind him. Shouts and heavy footsteps echoed from the side-streets, and these were answered by others outside the front of the hotel. He put on more speed so that the falling ground sped from under him.

Someone behind blew a police whistle. He ducked through
the
archway, just in time. It opened at his side like a huge mouth and he slid into it. The street was waking up behind him. He could hear cries and shouted enquiries and over his shoulder caught a glimpse of torches.

The lighting restrictions were on his side. His uncanny gift for finding his way in the dark, and above all his tremendous speed, were going to save him if he was lucky. He kept to the wall, found the stone steps, and emerged to find himself just across the road from a railway station. It was the only building in the town not quite in complete darkness and he found the entrance without difficulty. With remarkable presence of mind he took off his torn and dirty mackintosh and folded it over his arm as he walked in. He could hear a train panting in the station, but his ears were still strained to catch any ominous sound behind him. They would find him, of course. It was such an obvious place to come. The police, who never make the mistake of neglecting the obvious, would certainly look for him here, if the others didn’t.