“Down this street, right at the end and then—hullo. What’s this?”
Messelen, who was walking ahead, stopped so suddenly that I bumped into him.
“What is it?”
“Police cars.”
We had reached the first corner, and looked round it. In the next street three cars and a tender were packed nose to tail. There was a driver in the first one. The others seemed to be empty.
We crossed the road, and strolled down the farther pavement. The driver looked blankly ahead of him, but I knew he had seen us.
“Don’t like it,” said Messelen. “What are they up to?”
Before we got to the second corner, Messelen said, “Down here. Don’t hurry.” He seemed to have a surprising knowledge of the by-ways of Steinbruck. The alley we had got into twisted and turned until I had lost all sense of direction; then we were looking out into a better-class street.
The Blue Cinema lay some twenty yards up and on the opposite side of the road. Across the road, between us and the lighted foyer, was a barrier of trestles. There were half a dozen policemen there, and they were stopping everyone who went by. Farther up the street, beyond the cinema, was a second barrier.
Across the side street which ran down behind the cinema was a police car, and there were policemen at the front and side entrances.
As we watched, a man and woman came out. They seemed surprised at the reception committee. A few questions, and they were passed along to the barrier. Someone wrote something down, the barrier opened, and they went through.
“It must be quite a film,” I said.
Messelen said nothing. I could tell that he was worried. Presently he touched me on the arm and we crept back the way we had come.
When we were safely in the car I said (the relief in my voice was probably only too evident): “Well that’s the end of that. Since the local force has chosen tonight for a Cleaner Films Drive there doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do.”
Messelen said: “I can believe in a good many things, but in a coincidence as big as that, no.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me. Who exactly have you taken into your confidence about our trip tonight?”
“One person only.”
“And he is?”
“A character called Gheorge. He’s Lady’s Personal Assistant. I had to tell him roughly what I was up to, to get hold of this outfit.”
“I see.” Messelen’s breath came out slowly.
“Just what are you getting at?” I said, patiently. “Do you suppose that immediately my back was turned Gheorge rang up the local police and asked them to parade three deep round the cinema just to prevent us getting in? Why should he? And even if he had asked them, why should they have done it?”
“I just don’t believe in coincidences,” said Messelen. I had never heard his voice so ugly.
“Whether you believe in them or not,” I started to say, felt his hand on my arm, and stopped short. Then I heard them too. Measured footsteps coming towards us, from the direction of the Cinema. They came nearer, hesitated at the corner, and then swung towards us.
“Duck,” said Messelen. There wasn’t much room in the car, but we got our heads down as far as we could.
The steps came slowly up to us, went past. I could hear three men. The smell of cigar smoke drifted into the car.
“So you don’t believe in coincidences,” I said into Messelen’s ear, which was a few inches from my mouth.
“Get out quietly. See if you can spot their car. I’ll be turning. Catch you up.”
By the time I was out, the three men were gone. I ran to the corner and looked up the street. They were moving, quite slowly, away from me; Wachs I would have known anywhere, and the tall knife expert; the third man was a stranger.
Messelen had turned his car, and its bonnet came to rest by my left elbow.
“I’ll follow on foot,” I said. “When I’ve gone a reasonable distance, bring the car up to me.”
“
Das Bockspringen
. Good.”
“If they turn a corner I’ll wait for you. The only trouble is, they may hear the car starting and stopping behind them.”
“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 found 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.