“They’re talking pretty hard. I think it’s the only way.”
I scudded after them. That part wasn’t difficult. There were three of them in boots, going slowly. I was in rubber soles and alone. Once when the road forked I thought I had lost them but Wachs’ blessed cigar suddenly shone out like a beacon.
“Cloud by day and fire by night,” I quoted blasphemously to myself.
The trouble was I could hear Messelen’s car every time it started and stopped. I was nearer, of course, and was listening for it, but I wondered it didn’t penetrate their talk. Once I thought it had. They all stopped and seemed to look back and listen. At that moment we had a stroke of luck. Three army lorries rolled past. By the time they had got by, Messelen was up with me, his engine safely switched off.
“I’ve got a feeling they’re wise to us,” I said.
“Don’t think so,” said Messelen.
“Then why have they stopped?”
“My guess would be their car’s near here. I was right. Jump in. Now we’re off.”
A pencil of light crept out of a side-turn and swung away from us. It was a big old fashioned machine. So much I could see in the silhouette of its own lights.
As soon as the three men were aboard, it swung away, gathering speed as it went. How we hung on I know not. We were the disreputable little terrier that has got its teeth into the tail of the greyhound.
We never, of course, used our own lights. I had time to notice that we were going east, out of town, and towards the frontier; and that we seemed to be passing through an interminable area of vineyard. Then we were clear and climbing. The white road unrolled, the red light ahead of us swayed and darted like an uncertain shooting star.
Then it blinked, slowed and disappeared.
Messelen trod on his brake, and we pulled up in a swirl of our own dust.
“It’s a private house,” I croaked. “Driveway. Some sort of lodge gates.”
“Must get clear of the road,” said Messelen. “See if you can find an opening.”
I scrambled out and ran back. A short way down the road I found a field gate. It was wired, but I lifted the wire off and pushed it open. Inside there was a rutty track which looked as if it would take a small car.
Messelen was already backing. A neat turn, and he brought her in. I shut the gate behind him and got back into the car.
“Run fifty yards and stop,” I said.
The track swung in, towards the house, and I thought for a moment it was going to bring us back into the grounds.
Then I saw that there was a thick belt of wood ahead of us.
We stopped under a tree, and as soon as the engine was switched off the silence and the darkness dropped back over us like a warm cloak.
I said, “It looks as if we may have pulled a fifty-to-one chance out of the hat. We can’t be more than a couple of miles from the frontier. A lonely house like this in its own wood—”
“It is possible,” said Messelen.
“You don’t sound terribly happy about it.”
“I dislike the obvious. Let’s find out where we are. There’s a map in the door pocket in your side.”
I found the map and handed it to Messelen. He unfolded it on to his knee and turned on the dashboard light, which gave a single flicker and went out.
(On such small things hang our lives.)
“Bulb,” said Messelen. “Curse.” He fumbled in his pocket pulled out a cigarette lighter and clicked it on. It wasn’t much use for reading maps by. The yellow flame jumped, flickered. Then I remembered.
“I’ve got a torch,” I said, breathlessly. “Gheorge insisted I take one. Sensible chap, Gheorge. Hold on a moment.”
The light from my torch cut across Messelen’s hand, on to the map.
“Where did you get that lighter?”
“Curious, is it not,” said Messelen. “But pleasant. A girl gave it to me. Hold the light steady.”
My hand was shaking. I snapped off the light.
“What is it?”
“It sounded,” I said, with a conscious effort, “like footsteps. Might have been imagination.” But I knew it was not imagination. I was out on my own now, and everything was real.
Very gently I eased open the door on my side of the car. Then I bent across to Messelen and whispered, scarcely moving my lips, “Watch that patch of darkness ahead.” He nodded, and I stepped out on to the grass.
The blood was drumming such a devil’s tattoo in my head that I could hear nothing outside.
I moved round, came back again on Messelen’s side, slipped my hands through the open window of the car and got him round the neck.
Messelen was a much bigger and heavier man than me, and stronger in almost every way, but his body was wedged into the bucket seat, and that took away nine tenths of his advantage. He couldn’t even bring his knees up.
A rock climber is not a gymnast, but his life may hang on his wrists and his fingers. Mine were the strongest part of me, and training had doubled their strength.
Even then, if Messelen had been able to think, he could have saved himself. His best chance would have been to have sounded the horn. That would have brought his friends running. But it is difficult, even for a brave clearheaded man to think, when life is going out of him.
He made the mistake of trying to pull my hands off. He might as well have tried to unlock a bolt without a spanner. Then, but too late, he went for my face and eyes. I buried my head in the small of his back. He could only catch a piece of my hair, and that he pulled right out. I think I laughed at that.
At the end of two minutes, his body had stopped threshing, and in four I was sure that he was dead.
I shifted the body across to the other seat, and got in beside it. Then I started the car, turned it and started back towards the gate. My hands were shaking so badly that I needed both of them on the gear lever to change gear.
At the gate I stopped. I realised the danger, but there was nothing I could do about it. It took an age to get the gate open, and another age to get the car out onto the road. Messelen had swung in with one confident movement. It took me four shots, backing and starting again each time to get out on to the road and pointed back towards Steinbruck. I must have left a track like the entrance to a tank lager.
As I got going down the road, I thought I heard a car starting, either in the woods, or in the grounds beyond. I had no attention to spare for it. Something was wrong with my wrists and if I got up any speed at all this was translated into a horrid wheel wobble.
Luckily the road was straight, downhill, and absolutely deserted.
“Get off the road,” said the monitor inside me. “Stop behaving like a fool and get off the road.” I was running back in to the vineyard area which I had noticed on our way out. There was a gate on the right. I swung round towards it. It was a single gate and it may have had some flimsy sort of lock. I butted the radiator straight into it; the gate gave way, and I was headed down a flint gravel path.
Ten yards along I stopped, got out, walked back, and lifted the gate back onto its catch. It didn’t seem to be much the worse for its experience.
At that moment I heard a big car coming. Heard, not saw; because it was carrying no lights. I went down flat on my face and stayed there until it was past.
Then I got up, walked back to Messelen’s car, and drove on. I hoped that the path led somewhere. It wandered down, between the rows of the vines, which sprawled in a patchwork along the side of the hill. Presently I had gone far enough to be out of sight of the upper road. Below me, a long way below, I could see the silver line of the river. I drew up and saved myself the trouble of switching off by clumsily stalling the engine.
I have no idea how long I sat, in the blessed silence and starlight. I could hear a passing and re-passing of cars on the upper road and once I saw the fan beam of what looked like a searchlight. But no one came near me.
I was in baulk.
When my thoughts began to run consecutively I foun
d I was thinking about my first meeting with Messelen. How I had come into the room and had seen him, standing, with the sun behind him, in a blaze of quiet glory. And how I had liked him. That was the bitter thing. Just how stupid can you be?
It was absolutely plain to me now; the steps by which he had led me on; his well judged reluctance to help; his tit-bits of information, each one served up at the exact moment; his, “no, you make the plan. You’re the leader. I’ll play second fiddle.” (In fact, he the conjurer, me the stooge.)
What had been his plan for me that night? First, I judged, a very unpleasant reception had been awaiting me in the Blue Cinema. It could have been almost anything. The cards were stacked for them. It was their stamping ground.
Gheorge, good patient Gheorge, had put a stop to that. It had been a word from him which had had the cinema surrounded, and had caused my enemies to remake their plans on the spur of the moment. A miracle of improvisation. All the same, if I had not been asleep, besotted by my confidence in Messelen, I must have seen the raw edges and the joints. (However hard three people were talking, could they walk through those silent streets and fail to hear a car starting and restarting behind them? People like Wachs and the Margrave. People who only remained alive as long as they remained suspicious?)
But I had swallowed it all. When the fish is once on the hook he does not easily fall off.
What had been planned for the final act? A stealthy approach to the house. A quick coshing. A quiet disposal of the body. Good Lord, they need not have troubled themselves about that. I could have been left to lie. What was I, a foreigner, unaccredited, in disguise, with a gun in my pocket, doing on private property at that time of night? Lady might have guessed the truth. He could have done nothing. He would have done nothing.
And how pleased Captain Forestier would have been. How pleased everyone would have been.
A little shiver ran through me, and I found myself smiling. If I was starting to feel sorry for myself I was, indeed, cured. For I well knew that I had no reason for complaint. On the contrary, fate, in that last moment, had dealt me a fifth ace, right off the bottom of the pack.
If Messelen had not taken out his cigarette lighter I should now have been as dead and as cold as he was.
I leant over him, felt in his side pocket, and pulled it out. It was a heavy, chased silver lighter designed in the shape of a book.
I knew it well. I had given it to Colin Studd-Thompson on his twenty-first birthday.
I climbed stiffly out of the car and looked about me. I knew, now, roughly what I wanted. It took me ten minutes search before I located the vigneron’s hut, away to my left, down a side track. The door was on the latch, and inside were mattocks and spades. I was careful to touch nothing, and I had my handkerchief round my fingers before I would even lift the latch.
I made my way back to the car. I had noticed a pair of chamois leather driver’s gloves in the dashboard locker and I got them out and put them on. If I had been stupid so far, I must try to redeem it by extra care from now on.
There was a rug on the back seat. I folded it across my back. Then I got Messelen out, and up onto my shoulder. He was heavy, but my mountaineer’s technique helped, and I was confident that I could carry him down as far as the hut.
When I got there I laid him carefully, on the edge of the flint path.
The moon was well up now, and by its light, I looked around for the exact spot I needed. The careful vigneron fights a year-long battle, hoeing and digging and clearing the soil round the roots of his beloved vines. I wanted a place where the soil had been turned recently, but not too recently. I found the exact spot, some fifty yards down the hill and set to work.
First I spread the car rug on the path. Then, using a spade, very, very carefully, I took off the top layer of earth and piled it on the rug. Then I got busy with the mattock and hollowed out a shallow grave. It had to be shallow. The ground was too hard for deep digging. I got down about two feet.
Then I laid Messelen in his grave. Before doing it I searched his pockets but got nothing more for my pains than an automatic pistol, a door key and a handkerchief.
Then I piled back the undersoil, pressing it as flat as I could; then I added as much of the dry topsoil as would go in without leaving a hump. I slashed lightly across the whole area with the mattock. Not just the grave but a good piece around it as well. There was a bit of topsoil left over. I dragged if off down the hill in the rug and sprinkled it broadcast among the vine roots.
When I came back past the spot where I had been digging I had genuine difficulty in locating it. Only morning would show if I had made a good job, but I fancied that if no one came with too critical an eye for twenty-four hours, Messelen might sleep there undisturbed till doomsday.
When I had polished the spade and mattock and put them away and got back to the car the stars were pale and the light of morning was coming back. Also a mist was creeping up from the river.
I still had a lot to do.
First I took off the brake and started the car downhill with a push. I guided it for about twenty yards along the path. Then I went back and examined the place where it had stood.
The flinty, chalky, soil which had been such a hindrance to digging was here a godsend. There were light marks of the tyres in the dust, but nothing permanent; nothing that a single farm cart or even a stiff breeze would not wipe out. I took a particular look to see if the car had dropped oil or left any other sign of where it had stood, but I could find nothing. There were one or two footsteps, where I had got out, but I brushed these over with the folded rug.
I then set to work on the car itself. First I went over the bodywork, holding the left-hand glove in my gloved right hand and using it as a polisher. Then I shook every bit of earth off the rug and folded it back onto the seat.
The next thing was to find a way out. Forward, if possible. The car would leave marks if I turned it, and I didn’t really fancy my chances on the upper road.
I had one or two bad minutes as the path wound and twisted its leisurely way down the slope. Once I thought it was petering out altogether; then I saw the turning, and shortly after that a gate. It led me out to a farm track. The gate was not locked.
Dawn was coming upon me in great strides. I ran the car slowly along the track until I could see the farm. The track went slap through the middle of the farmyard. It was quite a big place; probably the farm which owned the vineyard.
At the very last possible moment, I cut out the engine. The gradient was steep enough to carry me through. A dog barked twice, angrily, and then, with my last remaining momentum, I had swung round the corner and was out onto the main road.
I looked at my watch. It was five past four, and here came the mist, both to help and to hinder.
I had reached that stage of fatigue when my eyes were playing tricks, and twice I braked as shadowy vehicles loomed down on me, only to fade into nothingness as I stared at them.
I got to the Marienkirche, through the ghostly streets, as the bells sounded out the half-hour. I had seen no one; nor, I think, had anyone seen me.
I parked the car as nearly as I could remember the way that Messelen had parked it, switched off, and sat for a moment to think.
There were one or two things at the back of my mind. Things that I ought to do before I went home. My mind wasn’t turning over very fast, and the bell sounding the three quarter hour brought me up with a jerk. First, it warned me that if I didn’t keep moving I should sleep; and at the same time it started a useful train of thought.
Messelen was a solitary man. It might be some time before he was missed. Therefore, and plainly, the more doubt about his movements the better.
I climbed out of the car, eased the door shut, and stole into the house. Messelen’s front door opened to the key I had taken from his pocket. I left the door on the latch, and put the key on the mantleshelf. Then I went round the bird cages, carefully lifting off the cloth squares which covered them. The birds were very quiet,
and the big, yellow, cock-bird looked at me out of one eye as if he knew what I had done.
I got out the bowl of seed and piled up their dishes to overflowing and filled up their little water troughs. I reckoned they had enough to get by on for a day or two, probably longer.
Then I took out the gun Messelen had loaned me. I was pretty sure what I should find, but I examined it to make certain. The clip was all right, and the bullets in it looked genuine. I took it right out, pulled back the firing slide to eject the round in the breech, and then pulled the trigger. Nothing happened at all. I looked at it again. The spring was there, but the pin had been removed.
I polished it off carefully in my gloved hands, reloaded it, and put it back in the drawer of the table.
Then, after a final look round, I tip-toed back the way I had come, and was soon clear of the town, headed into the blessed mist.
I have no recollection of reaching the castle, but Lisa says that she was up early and saw me from her window. She says she knew from my walk that something was badly wrong and that she ran down and opened the side door for me; that I walked straight past her without a word, with a face like death, and went up to my room.
Chapter XI
FERENC LADY AND THE FACTS OF LIFE
I bobbed about for a few uneasy hours on the surface of sleep and waking. I dreamed no dreams; I was not deep enough for dreams. I knew that the hours were going by, and the shadows lengthening on the wall and I heard the small sounds as evening came on and the castle woke.
It was a barking of dogs which finally pulled me back to reality. I slipped off the bed, feeling for a moment that sort of spurious lightheadedness that comes when I am really tired, and walked across to the window.
Three storeys below, Tutti and Lippi came bounding out of the postern gate and caracoled off into the woods with Trüe behind them. She was taking them for their evening outing.
I ran a basinful of cold water, pushed my face into it, and held it there until I was seeing red spots, and then pulled it out and gave it a towelling. Then I combed and brushed my hair, hard. It made me feel a little better, but not much.
Be Shot For Six Pence Page 13