Red Stefan
Page 23
“Better not, my lad—I can tell you that.”
Stephen changed his tone.
“Look here, sergeant—if I tell you the truth, will you let me go?”
The sergeant swore.
“If you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll burn the hide off you!”
“No need,” said Stephen. “Now look here, sergeant—what I told you was the truth, but I’m free to admit that it wasn’t the whole truth. I did find the ring in that crack under the window, but that wasn’t the first time I’d found it.”
Irina set her chin in her hand and scowled. The sergeant swore again.
“Now we’re getting at it! Go on.”
“You’ll let me off if I tell you? Well, I really found it first down in the cellar.”
And with that the top of the broken pillar overbalanced as Elizabeth thrust at it for the third time. The noise of its crashing fall filled all the house with clamouring echoes. Glinka, nearest the door, ran to it and shouted that the roof was falling in. Irina, the sergeant, and the guard who had been making up the fire followed him, but the men who sat on Stephen’s either side held their ground.
Glinka had run out of the room and out of sight. Irina and the sergeant were a little beyond the doorway, still visible as shadows in the dusk. The guard came to a halt a yard or two beyond the threshold. Stephen had his moment, but he also had two guards to reckon with. As they both craned forward, intent upon what was happening in the hall, he slipped his hands free, took them by the scruff of the neck, and brought their heads together with a vigorous bang.
One stride took him clear. The slumped bodies had barely reached the floor before he had his foot in the niche which had held the rose-crowned Flora. A second step, and he had reached the mantelshelf, and even as the guard beyond the threshold turned bewildered, to see two men lying in a tumbled heap instead of three sitting quietly on a bench, the panel had swung out and back again and Stephen was fastening the catch on the inner side.
Elizabeth moved in the darkness of the passage with a beating heart. She had shot the bolt between her and the landing. Now her foot felt for the steps, now she went down them, one hand on the wall and one stretched out before her. She could not see anything at all. She could hot hear anything either except the beating of her own heart.
And then suddenly in the dark her hand touched Stephen’s face. She did not cry out, but she gave a very faint gasp, and in a moment his arms were round her and he was whispering in her ear, first her name, and then,
“How clever of you! It did the trick all right! But I don’t know whether anyone saw the panel shut. They didn’t see it open.” He laughed a little. “Have you got the candle?”
“No—I don’t know—I think I dropped it.”
“It doesn’t matter—they left me my torch. We’d better run for it.”
Without more ado they ran—up the steps, past the door on the landing—down more steps, and through the lowest, narrowest part of the passage, with stone on one side and wooden panelling on the other. The ray of the torch flickered and danced before them. They came to the ruinous wooden stair which led to the cellar level.
Stephen stood still to listen for a moment. Then he said, “Quick, Elizabeth!” and took her down the stair as he had brought her up, trying each tread before he put his weight on it and swinging her over the gaps.
As they ran down the incline beyond, the first sound that was not of their own making reached them—the confused and hollow sound of following feet.
“All right,” said Stephen—“we’ve got them beat.” And with that their feet were on the earth they had dug out.
They came into the main passage and ran down it. Stephen focussed his torch on the rough tunnel which pierced the fall of earth.
“Quick!” he said again, “you first! There’s just room!” And Elizabeth found herself on her hands and knees crawling into a thick, clammy darkness.
It was the worse moment of all. Her body filled the hole, so that the light could not help her. The loose stuff gritted and slid beneath her as she crawled. The roof let down a continual shower of pebbles and earth upon her hair, her face, her neck. She did not know how long the tunnel might be. If it fell in upon her, she would be buried alive. It might fall in and crush her, in an instant. That would not be so bad. But if it were to pin her here alive—or come down ton upon ton between her and Stephen … A terror such as she had never known swept over her at the thought. She felt, or imagined, a tremor that shook the whole earthy mass.
Then, as she crawled, Stephen’s hand touched her foot. The nightmare lifted a little. She blinked the earth out of her eyes and suddenly found her head and shoulders free. Next moment she was out of the tunnel and scrambling to her feet in the passage beyond. She leaned against the wall, pushing back her hair, and drawing a long sweet breath of relief.
Stephen followed her.
“Lord—what a tight squeeze!” he said.
Then his torch went on and the ray swept to and fro overhead. She heard him give a whistle between his teeth and, looking up, she saw how the roof of the passage sagged and bulged. Great cracks showed black in the ray. She thought she saw them tremble. Was it the light that shook, or was it she herself? She thought the wall shook too. She thought it moved when she leaned against it. This all in one flash of fear. In another flash the fear had become a certainty of terror. The wall bulged, and the cracks were widening. And then Stephen had her by the arm, and they were running faster than she had ever run in her life. His arm came round her, sweeping her along. She stumbled on the uneven floor and he held her up. She gasped and strained for breath, but he urged her on.
And then it came—the shaking and heaving of the earth, the horrible dull boom, the rush of driven dusty air, overtaking and half choking them. It came with its stunning noise, its merciless reverberations, its terror. It came, and passed. The sound of it died away. The earth was steady under them again. The walls stood, and the roof covered them.
Stephen stopped running and sent the ray exploring once again. There were no cracks here, no bowing of the arch, no horrible gradual slipping out of the true.
“That’s all right,” he said cheerfully. “A near shave—wasn’t it? But nobody will follow us now. It’s the west wing of the house coming down that’s done it—too much weight on the roof of the passage. Well, there goes a very convenient back door.”
They walked on in silence. Elizabeth felt dazed and weak. She walked on because Stephen expected her to walk on. If she had stopped, she would not have been able to start again. The passage went on, and on, and on. The air was heavy and cold. She went on walking.
Then they stopped. Stephen stopped, and as soon as he stopped, Elizabeth stopped too. The passage had come to an end. The torch showed old broken steps rising steeply upwards. Elizabeth looked at them and roused a little from the daze that hung about her like a fog.
“Are we over the frontier?” she said.
Stephen nodded.
“Yes, we’re in Poland. The steps come out in the ruin of the chapel I told you about. The opening’s very well hidden.”
Elizabeth put her hand against the wall to steady herself.
“And then?” she said.
“There’s a farm-house about a quarter of a mile away where the people know me. You won’t find that too far to walk.”
“And then?” said Elizabeth again. The words were so faint that he hardly caught them. She might have been speaking to herself—perhaps she was.
Russia was behind them. Their danger, their close companionship, the days and nights when he, and he alone, had stood between her and the nightmare that threatened—these too lay behind.
In front of them—what? Separations—a divided path.… The future looked as cold as ice and as barren as the snow. She saw these things, like two painted pictures, in a moment of time.
Then Stephen was answering her.
“They’ll set us on our way with a horse and sledge in the morning. They’re used
to my comings and goings, and they don’t ask questions. We’ll get to the railway and be in Warsaw by the afternoon.”
Warsaw—civilization.… She would have to get a passport—clothes.… She remembered suddenly and bleakly that she hadn’t a penny in the world. She leaned a little more heavily against the wall, and as she did so, the topmost row of Fay Darenska’s pearls slipped from the torn collar of her blouse. She put up her hand, remembering. Stephen had given her the pearls to take care of—and the rings—his mother’s rings. She must give them back again.
She lifted the pearls over her head and held them out. He had set the torch on a step at the level of his shoulder. The ray cut the darkness between them like a sword. The pearls dipped into the light and slid away to the shadows below.
“What’s this?” said Stephen in a startled voice.
“The pearls. Will you take them?”
Her hands felt weak, but they were steady. She thanked God that they were steady.
“But they’re yours,” said Stephen with devastating simplicity.
Elizabeth’s hands began to shake. Her whole body began to shake. She took a sobbing breath and tried to speak, but the words that should have come failed and became just a stammering murmur of sound.
Stephen took the pearls, knotted them in a dirty red cotton handkerchief, and dropped them into his pocket.
“I’ll keep them for you,” he said. Then all at once his voice changed. “Elizabeth—you did know that they were for you?”
She leaned against the wall. One moment not to have a penny piece in the world, and the next to be given the Darensky pearls. One moment to be poor and lonely, and the next to have Stephen’s voice changing for her like this. She said,
“How could I know?”
Stephen put his arms round her.
“Didn’t you really know? I knew the first time I saw you in that damned bread queue at Tronsk. I knew that I belonged to you, and I knew that I could make you belong to me. And when I found you on the bridge, I knew it all over again. You were all frozen and dead, but I knew that I could get you to come alive. I told you right away that I wasn’t going to let you die.”
“My face is dirty,” said Elizabeth. “You mustn’t kiss me with a dirty face.”
“Mine’s dirty too,” said Stephen. “We’ll get baths when we get to Warsaw, but I’m not going to wait to kiss you till then.”
He kissed the eyes which he had always thought were like stars and the soft trembling lips, and then he set her down.
“I want to get you to the farm before it’s dark.”
“Won’t it be dark yet?”
“Not quite.”
“They won’t come after us?”
“They can’t. There’s a great wire entanglement all along this part of the frontier, and we’re on the Polish side of it.”
He picked up the torch and began to help her up the steps—old broken steps and slippery at the edges. Elizabeth went up them in a dream. Stephen loved her. Stephen really loved her. They belonged to each other. Their love made a safe, light place about them. She would have walked with him through the loneliest, darkest place in the world without a tremor of fear.
They came to where the steps ended beneath a slab of stone. The torch showed a niche with a rude lever. As Stephen put his hand on it, he said,
“We’ll get married in Warsaw. I should think it would take about three days.”
Then, before she could speak, the stone pivoted and he was swinging himself through the opening. A sharp piercing air brought down a flurry of snow. Stephen took her under the arms and lifted her up and out. The stone fell back into its place.
It was late dusk. The sky was dark overhead. Black formless shapes of ruined arch and fallen pillar were about them. A glimmering snowfield stretched away on every side.
“Poland!” said Stephen.
About the Author
Patricia Wentworth (1878–1961) was one of the masters of classic English mystery writing. Born in India as Dora Amy Elles, she began writing after the death of her first husband, publishing her first novel in 1910. In the 1920s, she introduced the character who would make her famous: Miss Maud Silver, the former governess whose stout figure, fondness for Tennyson, and passion for knitting served to disguise a keen intellect. Along with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Miss Silver is the definitive embodiment of the English style of cozy mysteries.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1935 by J.B. Lippincott Company
Cover design by Maurcio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3318-3
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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