by Ronald Seth
"Good evening, Captain Martel," he said with false pleasantness. "So we meet again."
He chuckled quietly when I did not answer.
"You must be wondering how I knew you would be coming here at this hour. Well, we were very fortunate in picking up Francis Maran. You see, one of the gunsmiths talked. He gave us the first clue. But you must not have any harsh thoughts about young Maran. We have ways and means of making anyone talk that we want to. Unhappily, he was not a strong boy, and I'm afraid he won't be able to testify against you at the expertly managed public trial which we are preparing for you. The old man, George Manek, took his own way out as soon as he saw the game was up, and my fools of men were not quick enough to stop him."
My heart sank. Two of the men who had helped me were already dead! How many more would go the same way before the Monster was finished? I should not have let Raymond get involved in my escape, though if he did get through he would be safer in England from Gombroch's terror than he would be working in his uncle's garage.
The Monster was going on.
"I notice, Captain Martel," he was saying, "that you do not seem to be carrying the gun. Will you be kind enough to tell us where we can find it? It must be quite near. I presume you left it under a bush outside, but it will save us quite a bit of trouble if you will be sensible and tell us where."
The voice was persuasive, but nothing he could do could disguise the underlying harsh, vicious cruelty of it.
By this time I had been able to collect my wits and had decided that my main concern at the moment was to play for time until the train was safely over the frontier, always providing, of course, that all had gone well with Raymond. It would pass within a few feet of where I was standing. So I spoke for the first time.
"I don't know what you mean," I said.
Gombroch sighed.
"Oh, dear!" he said. "I did so hope you would be sensible. I'm afraid that if you won't talk I shall have to shoot vou."
"That would be stupid," I laughed. "You would never find the gun then, even if I had had it and had hidden it—which I don't admit at all—and also, what about this fine trial which you are preparing for me?"
"I only said that hoping to flatter you, my dear fellow. You know as well as I do that we do not accord the dignity of a trial to dirty spies, and nothing would give me greater pleasure personally than to take my revenge for all the trouble you have caused me these last two or three days. Now, won't you tell us? Be reasonable!"
"How can I tell you when I don't know where it is?" I asked.
While the sound of my last word was still vibrating in the hut a violent explosion seemed to rock the shaky structure, and I felt the warm breath of the bullet on my cheek as it flew past my face and bedded itself with a sharp thud in a beam somewhere behind me.
"Now, what about it? You thought perhaps that I am not a very expert shot?" Gombroch sneered. "I will count three, and then, if you are not wise, my second bullet will make a neat round hole in the middle of your forehead!"
As he said "two," I spoke.
"All right," I said. "I'll tell you," and I went into a long explanation of where I pretended I had hidden the gun.
Without rising from the upturned box on which he was sitting, Gombroch brought from his pocket a small silver whistle and blew on it. Almost at once the door of the hut opened and I heard a voice behind me say: "Yes, comrade commissar?"
Gombroch repeated my description and told the man to have some of his men make a search for it.
For the next five minutes or so there was a tense silence in the hut, broken only by the heavy breathing of the vast fat man. How long they would search before reporting that they could find nothing I did not know, but every minute they were looking brought my mission nearer success—if Raymond got through.
When the men had not returned after some time had passed, Gombroch said: "I do hope for your sake, captain, that you are not—as you say in English—pulling my legs."
"Why should you think that, commissar?" I asked.
"I know that many of the men I am compelled to employ are not, to put it kindly, men of great intelligence, but even—" his voice rose to a high shriek of mounting anger—"even complete fools should have been able to find the gun by this time, if the gun is there." And as his voice shrilled upward in its high-pitched scream, it seemed to blend with the whistle of a train in the distance. The night train had left Kotka station and was whistling to warn the guards to open the frontier gates for it to pass through.
I cannot describe the relief I felt. Somehow I was certain that Raymond would get through. Whatever Gombroch did to me would not matter now. My relief was so great that I think I must have shown some of it on my face.
Several people when talking to me about Gombroch had said: "The man is no fool, believe me!"
As the train whistled again, now much nearer to us, the Monster, whose beady eyes had been fixed on me, suddenly exclaimed: "The train! Stop the train! It's on the train! Stop the train!" And completely forgetting about me he jumped up from his seat with the most extraordinary agility for so vast a man and pushed me out of the way as he dived past me driving the men who had been holding me before him.
I followed quickly after them and outside saw the train less than fifty yards away. Gombroch was shrieking, men were shouting and most were trying to get through the wire fence onto the track.
I moved a little away from them, toward the train. No one seemed to be paying any attention to me at all. With a quick leap I vaulted the fence, and as I reached the side of the track the engine passed me at a leisurely pace, for it would soon have to pull up at the Austrian frontier station. As the second coach passed me I leaped up onto the buffer and worked my way between the two buffers until I could sit astride the coupling.
Gombroch and his men, instead of coming to meet the train, had gone in the opposite direction, hoping, I suppose, to close the frontier gates. But they did not move fast enough, and as we overtook them I could hear Gombroch's shriek of "Stop! Stop!" and saw the reflected beams of his powerful flashlight waving from side to side.
But the driver did not stop. Instead he accelerated.
Shots rang out and men's voices were added to the sounds of helpless fury now coming from the Monster.
Presently a great splintering of wood reached me and the train gave a little shudder and went on. Someone must have shut the gates, for as we passed through where they had been, I saw mangled metal and splintered wood lying by the side of the track in grotesque heaps.
When we were quite through the barrier the shots and the shouting died away and their noise was replaced by the squealing of brakes as the driver attempted to pull up at the Austrian frontier station.
Even before the train was stopped passengers were pouring onto the platform talking excitedly and loudly, wondering what had happened. No one took any notice of me in the confusion as I slipped from between the second and third coaches and hurried toward the freight cars at the rear.
As I came up with them, I saw a moving bulge in one corner of the tarpaulin covering the last car. A moment later it was thrown back and Ray's head appeared.
He was smiling excitedly and as he handed the rucksack containing the gun down to me before climbing out himself he said: "Well, captain, we've done it!"
"Yes," I said, giving him a hand down. "Thanks to you and all your friends in Gallia we've done it. But particularly you."
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE The Tortoise
CHAPTER TWO The Roadside Encounter
CHAPTER THREE A Pause for Breath
CHAPTER FOUR The Cottage in the Clearing
CHAPTER FIVE Old George Calls In a Friend
CHAPTER SIX Another Traveling Salesman
CHAPTER SEVEN The Maran Farm
CHAPTER EIGHT The First Step in Plan-Making
CHAPTER NINE Tredentz
CHAPTER TEN The Monster
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Central Hospital
CHAPTER TW
ELVE The Real Jo
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Waiting for Jo
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Dr. Paranu Again
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Sewers of Tredentz
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Tomb of the Grand Dukes
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Ambush
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Gombroch Strikes
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Linesmen's Shack