Run! (28 page)

“Ah—it is there! Henri, it is there! Oh,
mon ami
—what a relief—what a relief! You do not know what bad dreams I have had ever since it was lost! Embrace me!”

James drew back just in time. If Hildegarde was about to fling herself upon Henri's neck, she would inevitably be in a position to observe the half open door. She might be too much overcome with emotion to notice him, or she might not. He had no desire to take the risk. He thought he heard a kiss, and then he certainly did hear Henri say in a voice of gentle sarcasm,

“There are more comfortable places than this, I think. Perhaps the old lady's ghost walks—it is cold enough. Let us go down and make sure that our good Ambrose is not allowing his feelings to run away with him in the pantry. I do not like to trust him too long with Sally. I do not trust him too far in any case.”

Hildegarde's voice had a muffled sound as she said,

“There is something else in here—something done up in paper—heavy.”

“Bring it then—but come!”

James sympathised with Henri's impatience, because he was sharing it. He wanted to get a move on and find Sally. He heard Hildegarde say, “What can it be? The letter spoke about a secret.” And then he didn't wait to hear any more. There was a door on the other side of the passage a little nearer the stair. He slipped across and into the dark room beyond. The footsteps and voices in Lady Clementa's room came nearer. He stood well back with the door ajar and heard them go past.

This was a matter for very careful timing. The stair came from the hall to a half-landing, where it divided and so ran up to a corridor on either side. He decided to make his rush the moment they got past the stair head, because the farther there was for them to fall the better, and if there was going to be any sort of mix-up on the landing, there might be a chance of heaving Henri over the balustrade, or at any rate chucking him down the rest of the stair.

With his shoes in his left hand, he padded noiselessly along the passage, Hildegarde and the torch about four yards in front of him, Henri a shadow at her side. They were talking, arguing, perhaps quarrelling. At the stair head they checked for a moment, and he heard Hildegarde say in a low, angry voice,

“You can weep afterwards! For me, I tell you I shall laugh to see Sally die.”

James felt the raging fury which comes upon sane men once or twice in a lifetime. It gave him the strength of the man who is not sane. He came leaping out of the dark with an extraordinary velocity, and before either of them knew what was happening they were off their balance. James's right hand, open and flat, caught Hildegarde between the shoulders and sent her flying. Henri got the shoes in his face as he turned at the sound of the padding feet. He cried out in pain. The shoes went after Hildegarde, and he was taken by the shoulders, spun round, and kicked over the edge of the stair. There was a confusion of sound from below. The torch had gone out.

James ran down the dark stair and barged in to Henri, who was getting painfully to his feet on the half-landing. He had a hand at his hip pocket, but no time to draw before James hove him clear over the balustrade into the hall below.

In the dark behind him Hildegarde screamed, and James remembered that she had the book. Now that he had dealt with Henri, he could remember that. He made towards the scream, and a shot fired from not more than a yard away went by his temple. So it was a pistol after all and not a knife. He lunged out and caught a wrist. Twisting it, he had the satisfaction of hearing the weapon drop.

With her free hand Hildegarde clawed at him like a furious cat till he got hold of her other wrist, when she went suddenly limp and he had to hold her up. He spoke as one speaks to a deaf person, loudly and slowly, “Where is Sally? What have you done with her?” and got no answer. He was wasting time. Sally was in the pantry. He had heard them say so.

He felt about with his foot and found the pistol, got both Hildegarde's wrists into the grip of his right hand, picked it up, and put it in his pocket. He did not think she could do much harm without it, which goes to show that you never can tell. She gave a sudden wrench as he was putting the pistol away, and nearly got free.

By the time he had got her under control they were hard up against the bottom step of the stair down which he had pushed her, and there, where it had fallen, his foot encountered the missing book. As he stooped for it, his fingers touched something else, a small package done up in paper—the other thing which Hildegarde had taken out of the secret place. He pushed it down on top of the pistol, picked up the book, crammed it into a trouser pocket, and considered what he should do with Hildegarde. He knew what he would have liked to do with her, but civilization tells.

He could hear Henri groaning and cursing below. He really had no time to bother with Hildegarde. He pushed her down hard upon the bottom step, let go, and ran down the rest of the stair. He wanted to get to Sally. He ran past the cursing Henri and through the baize door into the corridor beyond it.

Sally was in the pantry, and he wanted to get to Sally. He felt quite capable of getting to her wherever she was. He felt that he could have gone through a stone wall. He raced into the pantry, and found it empty with the door at the far side standing wide. He did not hear the footsteps which raced behind him or Hildegarde's angry sobbing breath. He caught the lighted candle from the mantelshelf and went through the door, to see the old cellar door hanging open too, and, in the narrow space, Ambrose Sylvester looking down the dark, uneven steps and muttering to himself. James flung him aside, held him a moment, and said in a murderous voice, “Where's Sally? What have you done with Sally?” and getting no answer, let go of him and ran on down the steps and into the cellar.

He had the candle still, and at the foot of the steps held it up and looked about him. He saw the rubbish piled high—old tins, old papers, old boxes, and a mass of mouldy straw. A reek of petrol came up from it. He saw the long, dark passage down which Sally had run only a moment ago. He actually saw the movement of her dress as she ran. And he too ran, the candle flickering and guttering in his hand.

And then someone screamed behind him, and he looked back and saw Hildegarde Sylvester standing there at the top of the steps, a shrieking fury, with the Beatrice stove held high between her hands. Even as James looked, she flung it crashing into the pile of rubbish, and screamed again, and stood there screaming to watch the fire break out and go up in a roaring sheet of flame.

XXXVII

James did not wait to see what would happen next. He took to his heels and ran as fast as he had ever run in his life. Sally was in front of him, running away from him. No, not from him, because she didn't know he was there, but just running away, wild with fright, down a horrible dark passage which might end in a flight of steps, or a well, or any one of half a dozen other dangers. The fire roared and flared behind him and threw his own shadow in fantastic length upon the black, uneven flags, but it didn't show him Sally. He called her name, and his voice came back echoing from the roof and walls.

His shadow appeared before him, suddenly upright. He had very nearly run full tilt into a wall. It stood across his way, and the passage went off to the right. He swerved just in time, lost the Fiery glow, and was glad that he still held on to the candle. It had gone out, but it did not take him a moment to light it again. The passage stretched before him with doors opening upon it. He called again, “Sally—Sally—Sally!” and a horrid pack of echoes took the name, and mouthed it, and sent it back to him distorted and torn.

He went on, not running now because of the candle—a very good thing for him, because suddenly the flags ended and the steps went steeply down into a blacker dark. He stood still above it, and for the space of nearly half a minute his heart stood still too. Sally so afraid of the dark, Sally who hated cellars, Sally running wild—how easy for Sally to pitch headlong down these steps in the dark and be lost to him without so much as a cry. He made a strong effort, thrust out the thought, and called again. And again there was no answer except from those detestable echoes.

There was no time to be lost, because if the fire took hold, the house would probably fall in upon the cellars and bury them. He thought of this quite dispassionately, his mind being too much taken up with Sally to give it more than a very surface attention. He decided to go down the steps. They were very steep indeed, and some of them seemed to be broken away. About half way down he stopped, unable to believe that Sally had come this way. He remembered her saying that there were cellars under the cellars at Rere Place, and the bare thought of them had set her shuddering in broad daylight. From where he stood the candle-light showed him the bottom of the steps. If Sally had fallen, she would be there and he would see her. But there was no one—most blessedly there was no one there.

He drew a long breath, turned round, and came up again, and as he came up, the air of the passage met him, full of smoke and the smell of burning. He had a momentary sensation of horror—the old fear of the trap, the common fear which man must share with the creatures of the wild. The fear of the trap and the fear of fire are the two oldest fears of all. They came on James for a horrid moment, and then he beat them off. Panic meant death, and it meant death to Sally too. He beat it off.

He called her again, and this time amongst the echoes there was another sound, the sound of a key grating hard as it turned in a rusty lock.

And upon that, Jock West's voice saying, “Who is it?”

James ran towards the voice. He called out “James” as he ran, and kept the light up so that Jock might see him. But it was Sally who came running out of the third door on the left and flung her arms round him, and it was Sally whom he kissed. She put her face up to him and he couldn't help kissing it, but next moment he was talking over her shoulder to Jock.

“I think the place is on fire. Hildegarde pitched your stove in amongst the rubbish at the foot of the cellar steps, and the whole thing went with a bang.”

Jocko snuffed the smoky air.

Smells like it. But I shouldn't have thought it would take hold—everything's so damp. If it's only that rubbish heap, it'll burn itself out.”

Sally swung round in the circle of James's arm.

“They were meaning to burn the house. I'm sure they were. I'm sure that pile of stuff wasn't just accidental. I'm sure I smelt petrol. I wasn't
quite
sure because of the chloroform, but—yes, I smelt it when Jock went down.”

“Yes, I smelt it,” said James.

“And if they left those two doors open, it would draw like a chimney and the wood in the passage would catch. There are shelves, and a cupboard or two—old ramshackly things—and a wooden stair going up to the servants' quarters. It would burn all right.”

“Well, we've got to get out,” said James. “What's our best way?”

There was a pause. The smoke made Sally cough. It was blowing towards them steadily on a warm draught.

“There is only the one way out,” said Jock in an odd, casual voice.

“Well, what is it?”

“The way we came,” said Sally.

Nobody said anything for about half a minute. If the fire held, the way they had come would be its chimney—a chimney full of smoke and upward rushing flame. There was no way out there. But to stay where they were till the roof fell in—

James said, “Are you sure?”

“I've never heard of any other way,” said Jock. “I don't believe the place will burn—it's too damp.”

James thought this would depend on how much petrol had been used—he thought a goodish bit. He thought Henri Niemeyer had his head screwed on pretty tight. If he wanted Rere Place to burn, he would take good care not to make a boss shot at it. It wasn't any good saying these things, so he didn't say them.

“I expect they were going to have one more shot at finding whatever it was Aunt Clementa hid, and then if they didn't find it, burn the place about our ears.”

“They found it all right,” said James.

“Where?”

“In Lady Clementa's bedroom, behind the panel with the bat on it. You were quite right about the letter—you read it aloud in your sleep, and Hildegarde had it pat. The line that ended in ‘bats' was, ‘the panel with one of our bats on it.' And there was something about a family secret and not giving it away. The only part she hadn't got was the bit about the spring. So Henri forced it with a jemmy. I chucked him over the stairs and came down here after you, and Hildegarde lost her temper and pitched the stove after me. Sally, why on earth did you go into the cellars? You said you hated them.”

Sally rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.

“Jocko went down, and I thought I heard you in the passage and I ran back. But it was Henri.” She shuddered violently. “I think I began to faint, and he put a thing soaked with chloroform over my face. I can smell it still. And when I came round I was on the pantry floor and Ambrose telling me the story of his life. James, he's mad—he really is—quite, quite mad. He said they were going to kill us in a car accident, but he'd see I had some chloroform first, because he didn't want me to be hurt. And all the time I could hear Jocko kicking at the door of the cellar where Hildegarde had locked him in, so as soon as I got a chance I asked for some water, and whilst his back was turned I made a dash for it and unbolted Jocko's door. I was telling him what had happened when we heard you calling. At first we thought it was Ambrose, so we didn't answer. We just locked ourselves in and waited for him to go away. And then it wasn't Ambrose, it was you. James, what are we going to do?”

The smell of fire was all about them now. The candlelight showed how the smoke drove, and eddied, and swirled towards them from the corner where the passage turned. A terrible roaring sound came with it. James reckoned that the rubbish must have burned itself out by now or nearly so, unless there was wood in it. Paper and straw burn fiercely and give off a great heat, but they burn quickly and die back upon their own light ash. He let go of Sally, put the candle into Jock's hand, and ran towards the corner holding his breath and half closing his eyes against the heat. At the turn it met him full. The roar was prodigious. There was a fierce crackling and an orange glow.