Now Screw was the danger. Carrie had been simply guessing when she exclaimed that he would be underground. It was more likely that Screw would loose off a shout of triumph and come charging out of the wood towards him before he could get to his feet. Then Beard would race up past Carrie and couldn’t miss her.
He must go faster, faster! But faster he could not without getting to his feet. He did the last bit scurrying on hands and knees. The wood remained quite silent. He entered the undergrowth and stood up.
Moving from tree to tree, he crossed the path through the wood and caught a glimpse of Chauffeur guarding the way to the Abbey. Screw was up on the bank with a full view over the fields to the road. So Carrie’s plan was hopeless. But she had been partly right. Screw must have made a quick search underground, for the ladder had been pulled up, ensuring that if they were hiding down there after all and he had missed them they could not get out.
Mike returned to the undergrowth at the edge of the trees to see what Beard was up to now. After searching the length of the wall until satisfied that the children could never have got so far unseen, he was coming back, continually making sudden changes of direction like a hound following a scent.
His plan was easily understood by Mike, who had often been out with his great-uncle to watch shoots over the big estate where he had been gamekeeper, and himself had earned some pocket money as a beater. Chauffeur and Screw were like the guns at the edge of a covert, and Beard was going to drive the game towards them, wherever the hell it was. For the moment he was safe enough, but Beard was bound to spot that Carrie was not a molehill.
There was no way to help her. He realised with horror that there was nothing he could do. Carrie lying down was out of sight, so he could not signal her to run. And if she did run it would be for the wood, which was just what Beard wanted.
Beard abruptly changed direction again, this time heading for the Abbey and walking fast. It was essential to know what had disturbed him, and Mike risked a short sprint along the turf of the path before popping back into cover. Chauffeur was where he ought to be, blocking the way to the ruins and waving to his boss to come up. Mike approached as closely as he dared without leaving the trees and soon saw the reason. Three bicycles were leaning up against the notice board. They must have free-wheeled silently down the lane while he was watching Beard.
Finding nobody to sell them a ticket, the cyclists were strolling round the Abbey. He caught a glimpse of them on the far side of the cloisters. Three hearty young men they were, busily taking notes. He thought of yelling, ‘Help! I am Mike Prowse!’ but they had passed beyond the cloisters to the excavations, where they might hear a shout but not what he said. Screw had moved closer; Chauffeur and Beard were only a stone’s throw away. They would have him down in the dark again before the cyclists came along to investigate, if they ever did. So it was best to wait for them to return to the cycles.
That soon became impossible. He heard Chauffeur say:
‘Right, boss! Through the wood again and look up into every tree!’
Beard remained where he was, watching from a safe distance every move of the cyclists. From his point of view it was just conceivable that Mike and Carrie might be found by them in the ruins and, if they were, he wanted to be the first to know. Meanwhile Screw and Chauffeur were about to enter the wood. Mike slipped away in front of them and dashed across the open to drop into position alongside Carrie.
He whispered quickly what had happened and that Beard would soon be back to continue his search.
‘Not soon. Not till the cyclists have gone,’ she said. ‘He must be afraid – so very afraid – that we can reach them somehow. Beard won’t take his eyes off them till they have ridden away.’
‘Then we’ll try and get behind the wall down there. He’s already searched it. When they spot us, keep running for the hanger in the valley! It’s a rotten chance, Carrie, but I think it’s our only one.’
‘It’s a jolly good one,’ she replied. ‘Remember that if either of us gets clear they daren’t do anything much to the other!’
Mike did not feel at all sure of that, considering all the anger they must be feeling. He crawled a few yards until he could look out of the dip. Beard was still watching the cyclists. Chauffeur and Screw could be heard plunging about in the wood and certainly were not anywhere near the edge of it.
‘Run, Carrie!’
They reached the dry-stone wall, scrambled over and dropped behind it. They had not been seen, but they had startled the sheep. Beard at once showed up on the slope below the ruins and a moment later Screw dashed out of the trees. They did not immediately aim for the wall, assuming that the children had started from the ground where the sheep had been and were trying to run right round the wood.
‘Run!’ Mike snapped again.
As soon as they jumped up they were seen, but they had a useful lead which might be enough to take them into the hanger. All three were after them – Chauffeur the most dangerous since he only had to go straight down the hill to cut them off.
7
Mike Breaks Away
Over the short, sheep-cropped turf they went, racing down the hill to the hanger where Mike had emerged from the spring into daylight. Far off, rising above soft green waves of rich, well-timbered land, was the church tower which promised safety if once they could escape from these bleak uplands. Carrie tripped and fell, but Chauffeur could get no closer; he had lost ground while clumsily climbing over the wall. Screw had jumped a gap in his stride and was overhauling them fast. Beard with his usual cunning had left the direct chase and was going hard for the bottom end of the hanger to stop the way out of it.
Chauffeur, now plugging along, swung right for the top, leaving it to Screw to run down the pair. Mike began to tire and to trail behind Carrie whose legs twinkled down the hill. She reached the cover first and vanished into the hazels. Remembering that it was enough if only one of them could escape, Mike swerved away and gave Screw the choice of which he would catch. He chose Carrie, determined not to let her out of his sight, for he must have been exasperated by the continual nuisance she had made of herself.
Mike now had a few seconds to find a refuge, for he could go no further. Though his pursuers had been warned to look up into trees, he had to take one. It was the only possible place. Thick boa constrictors of old ivy were strangling a dying ash; falling strands and a dead branch offered a way up. He wriggled into a fork and clung there panting. At least he would be invisible to anyone directly underneath. Neither the dead branch nor the ivy would support the weight of a grown man, which was so much to the good. On the other hand it would be very simple for Beard to blast a shot into the curtain of green on the off-chance that he was there.
He could not see where on earth Carrie had got to. Screw from time to time was in view, beating out the hazels. The perpetual, snarling smile was off his face at last. He, too, was exhausted and stopped for a moment with his hand on a tree to get his breath back. It was lucky that he had never come to a standstill earlier or he would have heard Mike.
Carrie seemed to have learned quickly from experience. The moss under her light feet would have helped quiet movement, but she was the wrong colour now – brownish when she should have been green. Could she have escaped? He thought it unlikely, for the hazels were well spaced and the hanger more open than the Abbey wood. She had not a long enough lead.
He saw the vixen and her two cubs slip out of the depression where her earth was and noticed how cleverly she did it, not caring how close she passed Screw so long as he was upwind and weeds were high enough to cover the family. Nearly under his tree they froze and he could see the vixen’s muzzle twitching. They slipped back into cover and broke out lower down, loping leisurely off across the open and shining red and white in the sun.
He looked for the reason why she had changed her mind, and then saw Carrie – or rather her two feet. She was in an appallingly dangerous position, not far from Screw and not in cover at all. What she had done was to twist back
on her tracks into the open again. She was lying outside the hanger, hidden from Screw by a low, thin straggle of bramble and not hidden at all if he left the trees. Beard was a still worse threat; he had only to walk up over the turf and he would not have to chase Carrie any more. He could deal with the body after dark.
Screw shouted that he had lost them. Beard from somewhere down below shouted back that he should work uphill, crossing and recrossing the copse. They were trapped again, and the chance of anyone coming along was even less likely than at the Abbey. Chauffeur was ready for them at the top of the hanger. At the bottom was Beard with his gun. The three could spend the day there if necessary and leave the ruins to look after themselves.
Screw moved off. Mike dropped to the ground and hissed to Carrie to join him quickly.
‘I knew you were there,’ she said. ‘I saw you.’
‘How did you fool him?’
‘I dodged round the trunk of that big beech. I could nearly have touched him as he passed. And then I crawled.’
‘I know where to put you if we can reach it. We’ll have a few minutes before Screw reaches the top and comes back.’
He led the way to the fox’s earth, slinking over the mossy floor into the middle of the hanger. Close around the earth weeds and stunted elders were mixed with the hazel, all looking untidy and twisted, with dead roots trailing on the surface. The entrance was on the bank of a hollow – the only part of the hanger where the slope was not even – and below it was scattered raw, fine soil, more yellow there than red.
‘Phew! It pongs!’ Carrie whispered.
‘Never mind that! Some people like it. Get in feet first and go down as far as you can!’
‘Are you coming in too?’
‘No. I’ll get clear – or make them think I have, which comes to the same thing. Now I’m going to cover you up.’
At some time in the winter the earth had been blocked by the hunt to prevent a fox taking refuge in it. Old hawthorn and bits of wood were lying close by.
‘Wait! I’ve got an idea!’ she exclaimed. ‘Take my shoes and – oh, anything! – my hair ribbon! Put them by the spring you came out of! They’ll think we are inside.’
It was brilliant. Beard could not know it was impossible to force a way in through the spring. Mike had only said that he got out that way, without details.
She squirmed up and passed out the shoes and hair ribbon. Mike quickly stopped the earth well enough to hide her, leaving most of the hunt’s debris where it was. It was unlikely that Screw on his return would look too closely at the patch of bare, broken ground all over again.
He was coming back now. Mike smoothed the soil so that no tracks remained and slipped away ahead of him just in time. He crept down the hanger to find out what Beard was doing and found him out in the open patrolling the bottom. That was all right. Evidently he meant to wait there until the fugitives dashed out or Screw joined him. Mike then visited the spring pool and left Carrie’s shoes at the edge of the water as if they had been carelessly kicked off and forgotten – just like a fleeing, frightened girl, Beard would think, but not in the least like the real Carrie. Her hair ribbon he wound into the rushes at the outlet of the pool, apparently washed there by the water.
The best plan now was to lie up as near to the open as he could get and wait for a chance to escape. Anything might happen, but there was a fair chance that Beard would go rushing up to the spring without searching on the way as soon as Screw made the discovery.
The most tempting cover was in the stream under a wild rose bush which arched over it. Mike did not like it. For one thing he had had quite enough of icy water; for another it might occur to Screw or Beard to look for more clues downstream. The only alternative was a fallen fir, half of which lay in the open. That would have to do, provided he could crawl there while Beard’s back was turned.
It was the sort of risk he would never have dreamed of taking if he had not got used to risks during the hours since dawn. As it was, he did not even crawl but made four quick, silent steps and dropped to the ground alongside the tree trunk and half under it. He heard Screw coming nearer. The man was doing a more thorough job than when he had made a snap search of the hazels, sure he would find Carrie. On each journey across the hanger he went right outside before returning. Mike squeezed himself still further under the log. He had reckoned on being fairly safe from Beard, but Screw might well take more than a casual glance.
All was silent. Mike hoped that Screw had arrived at the pool and was examining it with special curiosity.
‘Boss! Here! Take a look at this!’
Beard charged into the hazels.
‘I don’t believe it’s possible,’ Mike heard him say.
‘Well, he told you he had come out there, and he couldn’t have broken out of the well any other way. He can’t fly!’
Beard splashed through the pool.
‘Here’s a vent big enough for a child’s body,’ he said doubtfully, ‘but the water is coming up through gravel. Hey, and this one! This is it! The boy’s footmarks and turf torn away. Solid rock it looks on both sides. You and I wouldn’t have a hope, but they could get in if they didn’t drown doing it.’
There was more splashing. They had found the hair ribbon now.
‘So that’s the end of our troubles!’ Beard exclaimed with relief. ‘Lucky for us she forgot to take her shoes with her! Now you two can go back and clean up all trace of them. I’ll stay here above the spring all day and all night if I must. I can see them as soon as they come out and they can’t see me. They never will see me if it comes to that.’
Mike gave Screw and Chauffeur time to reach the Abbey. Then he crawled out and reconnoitred the pool. Beard was where he said he would be – sitting on the slab of rock above the spring where Mike had warmed himself back to life the day before. He was smoking a cigarette with his gun by his side. The range to those two heads which he expected to appear was not more than ten yards.
Satisfied that Beard could not see beyond the surrounding hazels, Mike slipped out of the hanger and trotted down to that longed-for, peaceful valley and the village which must be under the church tower.
He felt like Rip Van Winkle appearing after a hundred years. The world was going on as usual. It surprised him. Two women, gaily chattering, came out of the butcher’s. There were a pram and a dog outside the village shop. At the gate of an empty cottage a builder was taking ladders off his van. A man stood talking to another who was cutting the privet hedge in front of his garden. The church clock said quarter to eleven.
All this was unreal as a photograph. He realised that everyone was standing still and staring at the ragged, filthy boy running down the middle of the street. He chose the man talking over the hedge, who looked fatherly and responsible.
‘Is there a police station here?’ he asked.
‘Not any more. But we can usually call up one of their cars within ten minutes. What’s the trouble, son?’
‘I’m Mike Prowse. Have you heard of me?’
‘Heard of you! Look at that!’
He pointed to a placard outside ‘J. G. Midwinter, Newsagent and Tobacconist’. It read:
NO NEWS OF MISSING CHILDREN
POLICE BAFFLED
He ran into the shop with Mike, saying that he was Midwinter and had just stepped out for a breath of air. He grabbed the telephone on the counter.
‘Police? Listen, I’ve got Mike Prowse here … No, I’m not the kidnapper … He’s just walked into Hilcote … Damn my name and address! … Get a car here quick! He looks as if he’d been buried alive … Yes, Hilcote and I’m J. G. Midwinter … Hold on and I’ll ask him! Any news of Carrie Falconer, Mike?’
‘She’s all right but in danger.’
Mr Midwinter repeated it, and told the police to leave that cup of tea and hurry.
‘Can I call my parents?’ Mike asked.
‘Go right ahead!’
Mike dialled his home and at once heard his father’s voice. Being always out
and about he rarely answered the telephone, leaving it to Janet.
‘Dad, this is Mike. I’m free.’
He thought he heard a gasp and a sob. Anyway there was something wrong with his father’s voice, but he couldn’t be crying because he never did.
‘Where are you, dear?’
‘A place called Hilcote.’
‘Where’s that?’
Mike had to ask his friend.
‘It’s in Warwickshire, close to the Gloucestershire border. On the Cotswolds.’
‘Mum and I will be there in an hour and a bit.’
‘Let the Falconers know that Carrie is in a safe place and was O.K. when I went for help!’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ said Mr Midwinter. ‘What would you like while we wait for the cops?’
‘I’d like to go to sleep, but I mustn’t. Can I have a bath?’
‘No time for that either, son. Try a quick shower! And there may be some clothes around of your size that once belonged to our boy. The wife has gone into town, but I think I can find ’em. She can’t bear to throw them away, you know. Hungry?’
‘Very, Mr Midwinter.’
‘I’ll rustle up some breakfast while you change. No harm in talking to the police with your mouth full!’
The police car drew up outside Midwinter’s shop while Mike was still on his first egg. A constable came in, pulled out a photograph, compared it with Mike and said it was not the right boy.
‘You wouldn’t look the same, copper, either if you’d been kept in the dark for four days and had to run for your bleeding life,’ said Mr Midwinter, who had now heard part of Mike’s story. ‘He has just talked to his father.’
A second car arrived, this time with a uniformed Inspector and a detective sergeant in plain clothes. They sensibly let Mike run through his adventures without wasting time in questions until he came to Beard, when the Inspector exclaimed:
‘What! Botswinger, the Warden! But he’s never off the place except in winter.’
‘He doesn’t have to be when visitors can come and see him there,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Do you remember that Swiss crook, sir, whom we were asked to keep tabs on? He drove out to see the Abbey.’
Escape into Daylight Page 8