Jonathan clung to the shuddering wall of the carriage and tried to think. The sight of her, the sound of that husky voice, had merely reminded him of how desperately tired he was, of how much had happened during the previous twenty-four hours, of how only the day before yesterday he had been strolling along the front at Bognor, with Craufurd. He thought he would give a great deal for a sight of that arrogant bald head at this moment.
Then he was afraid. Anna Cantelna was a murderess, and she had been behind him. It must have been her looking into his compartment which had awakened him in the first place, and but for his sudden return along the corridor she would never have allowed him to see her at all. He ran along the swaying train, burst into his compartment. Helen continued to lie facing the wall. He bent over her, rolled her on her back. Of course she was unharmed. Because Anna Cantelna had been unarmed. Had she carried the gun which had killed Enwright she might well have settled him there and then.
Helen opened one eye, smiled at him. “Do go to sleep, Jonny, dear,” she muttered, and closed her eye again.
Jonathan sat down, scratched his head, rubbed his eyes and cheeks, shook his head to and fro. Anna Cantelna was on the train. This was a fact. Now he must dismiss her homily, her contempt as much as her threats. No matter what happened, he did not think she would risk involving the authorities any more than he. But she would not let him follow her all the way to Barra. She could not.
So what other facts could be gleaned from their meeting? One, of great importance. Anna Cantelna had struggled ashore from the wrecked trawler with only the clothes on her back. Now she was wearing a dressing gown and slippers which looked as if they fitted her. Hence she had used her extra hour in London to contact the Embassy, and of course the Embassy would already have secured clothes for her to wear on her scheduled trip north tomorrow. This posed another question. Why hadn’t she waited until tomorrow? Probably because the weather was so uncertain, and she could not be sure it would be possible to fly in to Northbay Airport. A more important question was, had she been provided with a traveling companion as well as with clothes? He had to assume that she had, that there were at least two, possibly more enemy agents on this train.
Then what would she and her companions do now? He found himself staring at the door, expecting someone to appear, this time armed. But this was absurd. Because she would have to make certain deductions as well, certain assumptions on which to base her strategy: One, that Helen was also a British agent; two, that the British agents also would be armed; three, that they were now fully alerted. Anna Cantelna would be cutting her own throat if she risked a gun battle on board a crowded train.
So what facts did she possess? Only that he had discovered where she was going, and was sticking closer than a leech. This meant that she had to assume that either Robert or Edna had cracked, that the Guernsey end of the operation had been blown apart. For the first time, he realized, for all her coolness, her problems were greater than his.
He smiled, and then frowned. He had accepted her bluff of five minutes ago. Therefore she could be quite sure the security forces were still not involved. Therefore the only British agent who was in touch with her, who knew what she looked like, and who knew where she was going, was Anders. She had to assume that. Therefore, her most urgent problem was how to drop him and his companion. At this moment, he decided, she would be dressing, and alerting her companions. But that done, what next? The train was hurtling through the windswept night at something approaching a hundred miles an hour. She could not get off before Glasgow, unless . . .
As if in answer to his thoughts, the train stopped.
*
The brakes clamped on with a deafening squeal, accompanied by a heart-rending groaning and clanking and jolting of carriages cannoning into the buffers in front of them Helen attempted to sit up, and was propelled from her seat as if from a gun, landing squarely on Jonathan’s chest. They both collapsed to the floor, where they were joined by her overnight bag, crashing from the rack.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. “What’s happened? We’ve hit something.”
“Someone pulled the emergency cord,” he snapped. “Come on.” He dragged her to her feet, retrieved her jacket from the seat, slung her bag over his shoulder.
“But where are we going?”
“I’ll explain later.” He held her wrist, pulled her into the corridor, suddenly full of startled, sleepy, angry people. A guard appeared at the far end. “Now then, ladies and gentlemen,” he called. “There’s nothing to worry about. Just return to your compartments, please. We’ll soon find out what this is all about. Now then, ladies and gentlemen . . .” he came up to Helen and Jonathan “There’s no necessity to take your bag, sir,” he said. “We’ll be on our way again in a moment. Now you and the young lady just settle yourselves again . . . not hurt, are you, madam?”
“Just startled,” Helen said. “I was asleep.”
“So was everybody else, madam. But we’ll get to the bottom of it, you may be sure of that.” He went on.
“Come on,” Jonathan whispered, and dragged her along the corridor.
“No panic, old boy,” said a stout gentleman. “That’s what he said, no panic.”
“Excuse us, will you.” Jonathan pushed past him toward the door, Helen close to his shoulder.
“But Jonny,” she said. “The guard did ask us to go back to our compartment . . .”
“Listen,” he said, bringing her against him and whispering in her ear. “Who do you think pulled that cord?”
She moved her head away to stare at him. “Not you, I hope.”
“Of course not. Anna Cantelna.”
“Anna . . . but why?”
“Because she knows we’re on this train. So she’s leaving. She’s probably gotten off already.”
“Oh! But . . .”
Jonathan opened the door. The wind plucked at them like a series of whips, thrashing their faces. The rain slashed downward, splattering across the side of the carriage like a handful of pebbles.
“We’ll never find anyone out there!” Helen shouted.
“Look!” Jonathan pointed. A small figure in a fur coat was scrambling up the far side of the embankment. It reached the top, stood there for a moment, gazing back at the train. “Let’s go!”
“Hey!” shouted the guard, who had started his return journey. “You there! Stop!”
Jonathan jumped down, turned to help her. Helen closed her coat, handed him the overnight bag, fell forward into his arms.
“Hey!” The guard tried to grab her, missed, remained framed in the doorway. “You come back here.”
Jonathan held Helen’s hand, pulled her away from the side of the train. They lost their footing, tripped, and went rolling down the side of the embankment, arms and legs flailing like windmills.
“Hey, you!” The guard climbed down after them, peered into the slanting rain. “You won’t get away with this, you know. Hey!”
There was water gathered at the foot of the embankment; it seeped up their legs and penetrated their clothing, damp and near freezing. The wind pounded their heads and shoulders; Helen’s hair swirled around her face like shredded clothing. “Jonny . . .”
“Come on!” He dragged her to her feet, and they splashed across the muddy ditch.
“I see you!” shouted the guard, but he was standing in the shelter of the train, peering into the darkness, and not in their direction.
“My shoe . . .” Helen gasped.
“I can’t stop now. And if we lose sight of each other in this rain we’ll never get together again. Careful, now.” They scrambled up the farther side of the embankment, knelt behind a wire fence, looked across a meadow. There were sheep here, dozens of large black lumps, all moving restlessly to and fro in the wind.
“My shoe came off,” Helen whispered. “It’s back there, in the water. Jonny . . .”
“There she goes!”
A small figure left the cluster of sheep and ran for the far side of the m
eadow, stumbling over the uneven ground.
“Now remember,” Jonathan panted. “She’s certain to be armed.” He crawled through the fence, dragging Helen behind him, and stood up again.
The wet earth clung to their clothing and set their teeth rattling. Behind them the train whistled, and a door slammed. But already the long, snakelike row of lights were lost to view, faded to an immense glow rising from the culvert. They ran across the field, staggering and slipping, toward the point on the far side where the figure had disappeared.
“Jonny!” Helen gasped. “My foot hurts. And I just stepped in some . . .”
“Down!” he snapped, and forced her to her knees in the shelter of some bushes. The sheep were restless now, turning to peer at these fresh intruders. But they had reached the far side of the pasture, and knelt on the edge of another slope. Beneath them was a hollow, containing a clump of trees. “She’ll have gone in there.”
“And she’s armed?” Helen wailed. “Jonny, this is crazy. We’re going to get ourselves shot.”
“Not if we use our heads. Listen! Feel these pebbles and tufts of earth? If anything moves down there, I want you to start heaving things at it. Don’t expose yourself more than you have to.”
“Don’t expose myself?” she cried, and dragged wet hair from her face, only to have it promptly blown back again. “We’re both going to catch pneumonia.”
“You just do as I say.” He crawled away from her, on his stomach on the soaking earth, then slipped over the edge of the shallow hill and wormed his way downward toward the trees, to check as the dark figure suddenly emerged from the wood and looked toward Helen.
“I see you, up there,” said a man’s voice.
*
Jonathan sat up, despair thumping at his heart with a force which made the wind seem insignificant. Only one person had left the train.
“You may as well stand up,” said the man, climbing the slope, his right hand thrust forward, the shape of the pistol visible even in the darkness. He still wore Edna’s fur coat. “I know you’re there, Mr. Anders.”
But he was still looking toward Helen, who slowly got to her feet. Jonathan dug his fingers into the soft earth, dislodged a heavy clod of soaking mud.
“And you, Mr. Anders,” said the man, obviously a Scot. “No tricks, now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Helen’s voice trembled.
“Now look here, missy, I know you didn’t come on this walk by yourself. I know all about you. You’d better understand that. Where’s your boy friend?”
“Over here!” Jonathan shouted, standing up and hurling the lump of earth with all his force. It broke up in the air, showering the gunman with pellets of mud and water. The man fired, the bullet whining away into the teeming rain, and Jonathan raced forward. But Helen was in front of him, throwing herself to the ground and wrapping her arms around her captor’s knees. He grunted and fell backward as Jonathan got up to them, while the pistol exploded again. The three of them rolled down the hillside in a sodden, struggling mass. Jonathan grasped his opponent’s right wrist, cracking it across his knee, bringing a moan of pain and sending the pistol flying to the ground, and then crossed his fist hard on to the little man’s jaw. His knuckles were still raw from where he had hit Sergeant Miller, and now they became clammy with his own blood. But the little man tumbled away from him, rolling farther down the slope before he could halt himself and sit up to rub his chin. Helen had fallen away from the fighting men, and now she struggled to her feet, dragging hair from her face and gasping for breath.
“Oh, brother! I’m covered in mud from head to foot.”
Jonathan swept his hands over the soaking grass and located the gun. Its shape indicated it was a Luger, so there were certain to be several bullets left. “Up you get,” he said.
The little man hesitated, then stood up.
“Put your hands on the back of your neck,” Jonathan said. “And tell me where Madam Cantelna is.”
The little man grinned. “Ah, well, Mr. Anders, she’s pretty near to Glasgow, by now.”
“You mean she never got off the train at all?” Helen cried.
“Now why would she do that, missy?” asked the little man. “She’s in a hurry to be away north.”
“She’s made a monkey out of me, as usual,” Jonathan said. “I’m sorry, Helen.”
Helen sat on the grass, her head dangling between her knees. Her shoulders trembled.
“I said I’m sorry, Helen,” Jonathan cried.
She raised her head. “Believe it or not, I was laughing. I know it’s unkind. Maybe I’m just hysterical. You mean we’ve been rushing across half of Scotland behind nobody?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly, missy,” said the little man.
“So you were ordered to decoy us away from the train while Madam Cantelna got away. What were you supposed to do then?”
The little man gazed at the gun, and then looked over Jonathan’s shoulder. “Man, I do believe it’s coming on to snow. It was forecast on the television. Do you think we could step into the shelter of the trees, Mr. Anders?”
Helen turned up the collar of her jacket, held out her hands. “Oh, my God!” she said. “He’s right, Jonny. It is snowing. That’s all we need.”
“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Into the trees. But you try just one little thing, and I’ll blow you into two parts.”
“Oh, I won’t try anything at all, Mr. Anders. You may be sure of that. It’s the young lady I was thinking of, and her with only one shoe between two feet. You wouldn’t want her to get frostbite now, would you?”
The trees clustered close together, and to some extent broke the force of the wind, but the night had become distinctly colder, and the snowflakes sifted between the tree trunks to fleck their clothes and hair.
“Oh, yes,” said the little man, seating himself with a tree between his body and the wind. “The man on the television did say there was going to be quite a heavy fall of snow along the high ground in the western half of the country. Add the gale force winds and you could have a blizzard, he said. I never thought I’d be out in it.”
“How do you feel?” Jonathan asked Helen.
“Cold!” She hugged herself. “Oh brother, do I feel cold.”
“Well, you sit against that tree and keep this pistol pointed at our friend.” He gave her the gun, squatted in front of her, and massaged her foot.
“Oh, I’m not going to move,” said the little man. “Not me, Mr. Anders. My name’s Fergus MacLennan, by the way. If we’re going to freeze to death in one another’s company, we may as well be friendly about it, eh?”
“Fergus MacLennan?” Helen asked.
“Me mother was Irish, bless her heart, miss.”
“And Madam Cantelna is traveling as your wife?”
“What, me married to that madam? She gives me the creeps, she does. You know, life and death don’t seem to make one bit of difference to her. Just now, for instance, she told me to forget the blizzard, just get you two well away from the train and then shoot you both. And me not a violent man. And not a suggestion about what I should do afterward. We’re miles from anywhere. Didn’t you know that, Mr. Anders? And we’re in the middle of a blizzard. Oh, we’ll freeze for sure.”
“Jonny . . .” Helen’s voice trembled.
“Keep that gun on Mr. MacLennan. How’s your foot feeling now?”
“Better. But surely the guard will be able to find out from which car the emergency cord was pulled? So won’t Madam Cantelna still be in Dutch?”
“Oh, I pulled the communication cord, missy,” Fergus MacLennan explained. “From an empty compartment close to yours. You won’t catch Madam Cantelna out so easily. In fact, you won’t catch her out at all. Eh, Mr. Anders?”
Jonathan looked at his watch, slapped his hands together to restore circulation. “It’s past five. In another hour we’ll be able to have a look around, see where we are.”
“Oh, we’re miles from anywher
e,” Fergus said. “And it’s desolate country. Oh, yes, desolate is the word to use about this country, all right. But you’re right, Mr. Anders. Dead right, if you’ll pardon the expression. You must try to survive. You must believe that you’re going to survive. Oh, yes, that’s a fact. Reminds me of the time I was torpedoed, during the war.”
“Were you torpedoed during the war?” Helen asked.
“Oh, yes, indeed, missy. Several times. I was just a lad, then, of course. I’d just joined the Party, bought myself a red tie. Pretty color it was, too. It’s queer, eh, but we were all fighting on the same side then, instead of everybody fighting everybody else. Because that’s what it’s coming to, you know. Everybody fighting everybody else. Eh, Mr. Anders?”
“Tell us what it’s like to be torpedoed,” Jonathan suggested. He continued to massage Helen’s foot; the steady, monotonous, and yet tiring movement prevented thought. Thought at this nadir of his life would be catastrophic.
“Ah, well, it was always terrible,” Fergus said. “But one time it was worst of all. Winter it was, Mr. Anders. January, and the sea was freezing. We were on the convoy to Archangel, you know, but we weren’t long out of Liverpool, and bang, we were hit close to the bows. We were making thirteen knots, and there we were, all of a sudden without a bow section. She just dived straight under, she did. And we were swimming. Swimming! It was like paddling in an ice tray. Twelve of us got to a life raft, and we sat there all night. We were still sitting there next morning, all twelve of us, when we were picked up by a fishing boat out the Faroes, and do you know what, missy? Those other eleven chaps were all stiff as they could be. The only survivor, I was.”
“Oh, shut him up, Jonny,” Helen begged.
“You’re not exactly cheerful company,” Jonathan said.
“Ah, but I’m doing you a good turn, Mr. Anders. Showing you the way, you might say. Do you know how I survived? I sang. The whole night. I figure we could do worse now.”
“You mean you want us to sing?” Helen cried.
“Well, and why not, missy? It warms up the whole body, it does. Dance a bit, too, I should. Oh, yes.” He got up, clapped his hands, and broke into a high-pitched version of “Annie Laurie,” stamping his feet and clapping his hands in accompaniment to himself. When at last he paused for breath, his cheeks were pink. “Now there’s the answer,” he said. “Who’s for a chorus of ‘Loch Lomond’?”
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