Traitor's Purse (2 page)

He had no time to speculate on his own somewhat
peculiar
accomplishments. The bent wire flicked over the lock easily, as if he had done it a hundred times. The absence of oilskin trousers bothered him, but the boots were tremendous. They came well up over his thighs and the coat had a belt which took off and could be slipped through the boot-loops. The sou’-wester cap which fell out of the ensemble struck him as amusing, but he put it on and buttoned the coat up to his throat with deep relief.

Any incongruity in the costume did not occur to him. He was still moving with the simple directness of emergency. There was danger behind him and something tremendously important ahead. He was going away from the one and approaching the other. It appeared both sensible and elementary.

The row of doors still remained closed. There was no sound anywhere and no draught. The corridor was blank and quiet, but all the same it breathed. It was alive. He had no illusions about that. Wherever he was, whoever he was, drunk, mental, or dreaming, he was still wide awake enough to be able to tell a live building from an empty one. There were people about all right.

The door of the case imperfectly closed swung open again and startled him as it touched him. That was no good. That would give him away at once. If that crackling nurse put her head out of the ward that would be the first thing her pince-nez would light on. He thrust it back into its place, using far more force than he had intended. The thin glass splintered easily. The gentle clatter it made on the tiles was almost musical, but the automatic bell, which he had failed to notice above the case, was a different matter.

It screamed at him, sending every nerve in his body tingling to the roots of his hair. It bellowed. It raved. It shrieked, tremblingly hysterical in the night, and from every side, above him, and beneath him, other bells echoed it in a monstrous cacophony of alarum.

II

THE BUILDING WAS
alive all right. His senses had not deserted him. Doors swung open, rushing feet swept down on him, cries, sharp demands for information, raised anxious voices, they whirled round his head like bees from an overturned hive.

He ran for it, with his oilskin coat flapping and scraping round his hampered limbs. He passed the lift cages and sped on to the staircase. As he reached the second landing he collided with an elderly man in a white coat, who caught his sleeve.

‘Can’t wait, sir.’ The words escaped him as he wrenched himself free. ‘Look after your patients,’ he shouted as an afterthought as he took on the next flight.

Meanwhile the blessed bells continued. Their shrill clamour was inspiring. If only they kept it up until he made the ground.

He arrived in the main entrance hall sooner than he expected. Here too there was wild excitement. Someone had lowered most of the lights so that the large double doors could be thrown open, and a porter was exhorting everyone in sergeant-major tones to go quietly.

The man in the oilskins plunged across the tiled floor, guided instinctively by the nearest blast of cold air. A nurse stepped aside for him and a doctor touched his shoulder.

‘Where is it, fireman?’

‘Round the back. No danger. Keep them quiet. No danger at all.’ He succeeded in sounding wonderfully authoritative, he noticed. He had almost reached the threshold of the emergency doors when a girl slipped in front of him. As he dodged round her she spoke quietly.

‘Is it by the gate?’ she inquired idiotically.

He glanced at her over his shoulder and received a momentary impression of a heart-shaped face and disconcertingly intelligent brown eyes.

‘The fire’s at the back, Miss. Nothing serious,’ he said briefly and passed on.

It was a completely meaningless encounter and the girl might well have been half-witted for all he knew, but she left an uncomfortable doubt in his mind and he dived out into the darkness eagerly.

It was not a pitch-black night. There was a moon behind the thin coverlet of clouds and, as soon as his eyes became accustomed to the change, the shadowy greyness of the darkened town became fairly negotiable.

The scene meant nothing to him. He was in a large semicircular drive in which a dozen cars were parked, while beyond roofs and spires rose up in velvet silhouette against the lighter sky.

He took the nearest car. It seemed the wisest thing to do at the time, although he had some difficulty in managing the controls, hampered as he was by the mighty boots. Still, the little runabout started and he took her gently down the slope to the open gates. He turned east when he reached the high road, mainly because it seemed more likely to be lucky than the other direction, and, treading hard on the accelerator, he rattled on down the dim ribbon of asphalt which was just visible in front of his single hooded headlight.

He had picked a terrible car. The discovery was particularly disconcerting because he fancied he was in the habit of driving something different altogether. Not only was this uncomfortable little machine cramped, but the steering was alarming, with a full turn play on the wheel at least, while somewhere behind him a suggestive clanking was growing noticeably louder.

The road, which was broad and lined with dim houses set back behind overgrown shrubberies, was quite new to him. It might have been any road in England for all he knew. There was no traffic and no street lamps. He drove anxiously, coaxing the unresponsive machine to further effort. Now it was a real nightmare, the familiar kind, in which one struggles down a dark tunnel with terror behind one and feet which become more and more laden at every step.

He had travelled half a mile or so before he met another
vehicle
and it was with relief that he saw a pair of darkened sidelights swaying down the road towards him. They turned out to belong to a bus. The interior was darkened, but as it came up with him he caught a glimpse of the dim number over the cab. It was a 15. The sight jolted him and for an instant recollection rushed at him in a great warm sweep of bright colours, only to recede again, leaving him desperate. Something was frighteningly urgent and important. There was something he had to do instantly and the responsibility concerned was tremendous.

For a moment he had had it almost within his brain’s grasp and yet now it was all gone again, all lost. What he did know was bad enough, he recollected with something of a shock. The police were after him, apparently for murder. The clanking at the back of the car ceased to be ominous and became downright sinister. At any moment now the big-end must go and he would find himself stranded in the suburbs of an unknown town where his present costume would damn him the instant he was seen.

It was at this point that he became aware of the car behind. There was no way of telling its size or make, for its single eye was as dim and downcast as his own. He pulled in a little to allow it to pass, but the driver behind made no attempt to overtake and appeared to be content to keep at a distance of twenty-five yards or so. This was definitely alarming.

He estimated that he was doing a little over forty miles an hour at the outside, although from the way his machine was heaving and rolling her speed might well have been nearing three figures. Cautiously he slackened speed a trifle. The car behind slowed also and at the same time the death-rattle in his own back axle increased noticeably.

A smile of pure amusement twisted the mouth of the thin man in the oilskins. This was so disastrous that it was ridiculous. This was attempted cat burglary on roller-skates. The odds against him were immeasurably too great. He had no chance even to run for it in these colossal boots.

A side turning yawning in the darkness on his left decided
him
and he swung round into it for a final spurt. The driver behind him overshot the corner and a flicker of hope flashed through his mind, but before he had reached the next road junction the following car was back on his trail again.

The open country took him by surprise. The hospital must have been nearer the outskirts of the town than he had imagined. It was coming now, he supposed as he drove down a tunnel of bare trees into the lonely darkness beyond. They must make their arrest at any moment now, and he prepared himself for them to shoot past him and stop. But meanwhile there seemed no point in pulling up himself and he continued on through deeply wooded country with his silent attendant just behind him.

As the minutes passed his resignation gave place to nervous irritation and he drove squarely in the middle of the road. Whenever a convenient turning presented itself he took it, but always his companion followed him. If he eluded the car for a moment or so by some adroit piece of driving, invariably it put on speed and caught up with him again.

He seemed to travel for hours, even for weeks. It was bitterly cold and his mind, which was in darkness save for the one single pinpoint of illumination which was the immediate present, appeared to him for the first time as a machine independent of himself and about as unsatisfactory as the car he drove.

The dreadful thudding between the back wheels was now deafening. His speed had slackened considerably also and the engine was missing on at least one cylinder. A sudden dip in the road was his undoing. He hit the watersplash at the bottom without seeing it and a wall of spray rose up over him, rushed in through the radiator and obscured the windscreen. The engine coughed apologetically and died.

He sat where he was. After the crashing of the big-end the silence was sweet but uncanny. He waited. Nothing happened.

The clouds had cleared a little and in the moonlight he could see on either side of him low hedges, and beyond, the dark spikes of an osier bed. There was not a breath of wind,
not
a rustle. It was as still and cold as the bottom of the sea.

He turned his head cautiously and peered through the rear window. The other car was in its familiar place, a few yards behind him. It too was stationary and there was no telling who sat behind that single downcast headlamp.

Then, as he watched it, the car began to move. Very slowly it crawled down the road behind him, turned its long sleek body gently to one side, and, entering the water so quietly that there was hardly a ripple, it came up close to him so that the driving seat was on a level with his own.

III

THE SIDE WINDOWS
of the two cars slid down simultaneously and the man in the fireman’s coat braced himself to meet whatever was coming.

‘Would you care for a lift by any chance?’

The question, put with a certain grave politeness, came quietly out of the darkness in a clear young voice which might have belonged to some nice child.

‘Do you know where we are? We’re relying on you. I hope you realize that.’

The second voice, which was elderly and querulous besides being practically in his ear, startled half the life out of him, it was so close.

‘Driving at night is difficult at the best of times,’ it rambled on hollowly, ‘and night comes so early this time of year. I must have hunted over this country as a young man, but that’s many years ago. Many. I don’t know what road we’re on at all.’

After a moment’s incredulous silence the explanation of this apparent hallucination occurred to the fugitive with a second shock. Whoever these good people were they either knew him or his car very well indeed. He replied cautiously, relying on his voice to identify him or not as the case might be.

‘I’m afraid this car has died,’ he said clearly and waited for their reaction.

‘With a beautiful smile on its bonnet, no doubt.’ The young voice sounded gently reproachful. ‘Do you mind getting in the back? Mr Anscombe is in the front with me. We shall all be rather late for dinner, I’m afraid, and I’ve phoned Lee once. Leave George’s car where it is.’

The man who could not remember pricked up his ears. There had been definitely a warning emphasis on the Christian name.

‘Our George has a depraved taste in machinery,’ he remarked tentatively as he clambered out of the farther door and came round to the back of the second car. When he entered the warm darkness of the limousine the girl gave him the hint for which he had asked.

‘It’s not George’s taste, poor child. It’s his pocket,’ she said firmly. ‘Er – all undergraduates are a little trusting when confronted by a second-hand car salesman, aren’t they? Still, it was very nice of him to lend it to you. I’m so sorry I missed you. I was waiting in the vestibule and only caught a glimpse of you as you shot through and you’d started off in George’s car before I could catch you.’

She let in the clutch as she spoke and they moved away into the darkness.

‘I’m sorry, too. Very silly of me,’ murmured the man in the oilskins. He was feeling his way very cautiously. Clearly they were on dangerous ground and now was not the time for explanations. Whoever this blessed girl was she was certainly helpful and appeared to rely on him to play up to her.

He leant back among the cushions and strained his eyes in the darkness. Gradually he made out the two silhouettes against the windscreen. The girl was small but erect and the line of her shoulders was square, like a boy’s. Of course! She was the young woman with the heart-shaped face and the disconcertingly intelligent light brown eyes who had spoken to him in the hospital vestibule. She must have been trying to tell him that this car was by the gate. No wonder
she
was treating him now as if he were mentally deficient. So he was, God help him. So he was.

The man who sat beside her was less definite in outline. He appeared to be a spreading bundle with a large head adorned by a flat cap which sat upon it like a lid. He turned presently and leant over the back.

‘Rather a disturbing adventure,’ he remarked conversationally. His windy voice was old and foolish but it was also dangerously inquisitive.

The man in the back of the car hesitated.

‘It was, in a way,’ he said at last.

‘I know. I know.’ The old man was determined to talk, whatever the effort. ‘Still, you did your duty. There’s a great comfort in that. Probably the only thanks you’ll get out of it. A Good Samaritan…’