Sixty Days to Live (17 page)

‘But, don’t you see, it’s not myself I’m worried about,’ Derek cried in desperation. ‘It’s Lady Curry. God knows where they’ve taken her and she was lugged off among a lot of drunken women.’

The Officer shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine how any decent woman got mixed up in a show like this and, for all I know, you’re just trying to put one over me. Any number of people are to-night. I’m really very sorry but I can’t give you any more time. Take him away.’

The wretched Derek was pulled from the table, thrust out of the hut and handed over to a Corporal, who passed him in through the iron gates of the barbed-wired prisoners’ cage.

He looked gloomily round him. There was no moon but it was a fine night and the stars gave enough light to see by. In the
big encampment there were hundreds of men standing, sitting or lying on the grass. On speaking to some of them he soon discovered that comparatively few had been brought in from the Dorchester. Most of them had been rounded up from other hotels, restaurants and bars, as, apparently, the riot in the Dorchester was only symptomatic of the sort of thing that was happening all over London that night wherever supplies of drink could be got for the taking; and the police were now systematically clearing and closing down such places.

There were no troops in the encampment but plenty of sentries outside it and, after walking a little way round its rim, Derek saw that he would not stand the least chance of getting away even if he could have wriggled through the eight-foot-high mesh of barbed-wire which fenced in himself and his fellow prisoners.

He was acutely worried about Lavina. The shock of seeing Roy killed before her eyes was quite enough to have sent such a highly-strung girl out of her mind. Again and again he cursed himself for having allowed her to remain there among such a crowd when they were so clearly boiling up for trouble. Yet so strong a personality animated her slender body that he doubted if anyone else would have succeeded, where he had failed, in persuading her to go home before she wanted to.

As he let his imagination race over the possibilities of her present situation, he groaned. He had just got to get free himself and find her somehow.

Retracing his steps to the gate, which was some twelve feet wide, made of steel bars and hinged on two great posts, he peered through it. The sentry remained as though dumb and ignored his questions but, after a little, Derek managed to attract the attention of a Sergeant-Major and, beckoning him over, offered him a cigarette. The Sergeant-Major took it through the bars of the gate with a polite ‘Thanks, old chap.’

‘What chance is there of getting out of this place?’ Derek asked.

‘Not an earthly, until you’ve been before the Court in the morning,’ the man replied, with a friendly grin.

Derek then told his story of Roy’s murder and how Lavina had been dragged off by the police.

The Sergeant-Major was sympathetic, but unhelpful. ‘Hard
luck, that,’ he nodded, ‘but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.’

After a little hesitation Derek produced his note case. It had about £50 in it and, opening it up so as to make certain that the Sergeant-Major could see its contents, he said:

‘I’m not trying to bribe you but I’ll make it very well worth your while if you can help me. The girl I was with must be in a shocking state and I’ve absolutely got to get to her somehow.’

‘It’s no good, sir,’ the Sergeant-Major shook his head. ‘I’d help you gladly if I could, but I can’t. The sentries on the gate have their orders and no one’s to be let out unless an officer signs a written form releasing them.’

‘Couldn’t you talk to one of the officers for me, then?’ urged Derek.

‘Yes. I might do that, though I doubt if it will do much good. They’re a pretty decent lot in the ordinary way but just now being so overworked makes ’em a bit abrupt and disinclined for conversation. Still, when the Lieutenant does his rounds I’ll wait my chance and have a word with him.’

‘Thanks—thanks most awfully,’ Derek muttered. ‘Look, take this on account and drink my health with it to-morrow.’ He thrust a couple of pounds into the Sergeant-Major’s hand.

‘Very good of you, I’m sure.’ The notes disappeared into the Sergeant-Major’s pocket. ‘I can’t promise anything, though, and the Lieutenant won’t be round for another three-quarters of an hour or so. If I have any luck with him, where’ll I find you?’

‘I’ll be about here. My name’s Derek Burroughs. If you give a shout, I’ll hear you.’

‘Right-o, sir.’ The Sergeant-Major gave a perfunctory salute and moved away into darkness.

As Derek turned, he bumped into a tall, thin, bony man who had been standing with a group of others just behind him. The tall man muttered an apology and went on talking to his cronies, a rough-looking lot in caps and scarves who looked as though they had been rounded up from some public-house.

For a few moments Derek stood still, then he began to walk up and down making a detour here and there to avoid little groups or some of the drunks, who were now huddled, snoring, on the grass; yet he hardly noticed them, his brain was so occupied with the thought of Lavina.

Where had they taken her? To Holloway? No, that would be full to overflowing. Much more probably it would be to some municipal building converted into a temporary prison or a barbed-wire cage for women in some other part of the Park. Anyhow, wherever she was, she must be in a most desperate state. Derek knew her well enough to realise that the toughness she sometimes displayed was not even skin-deep; it was only a sham armour of silver paper by which she deceived people so that she could force her will upon them. Underneath, she was just a rather fragile, delicately-nurtured girl, with quick sympathies and a special horror of any form of uncleanness.

As he thought of her, cooped up somewhere with a lot of prostitutes, drunks and the riff-raff of the streets, he seethed with rage at his inability to help her. The fact that she was at least indirectly responsible for Roy’s death would certainly have driven her half out of her senses with distress and remorse. All his old love for her had surged up again during this long day they had spent together. As he had told her in the afternoon, now that she was married he had every intention of suppressing it and, at the time, he had felt himself quite strong enough to do so; yet now, as he paced up and down, he would have given anything in the world to be able to get to her, put his arms round her, and comfort her.

The three-quarters of an hour he had to wait seemed absolutely interminable and, although he kept the gate in sight, each time he turned about he walked a little farther away from it. He had just covered his maximum distance so far and was about to turn again when somebody tapped him on the shoulder.

Looking up, he recognised the tall man who had been near him when he was speaking to the Sergeant-Major.

‘You’re Derek Burroughs, ain’t yer?’ the tall man asked in a husky voice.

‘Yes,’ said Derek quickly.

‘You was torkin’ to the Sergeant-Major ‘alf an hour ago, wasn’t yer? Well, ‘e’s lookin’ for yer.’

‘Is he?’ Derek started forward towards the gate but the man gripped him quickly by the arm.

‘Not that way, mate. The Serg’ says to me as ‘ow I was to find you and, when I did, bring you to the far side of the camp where
there ain’t so many people ‘angin’ around. I think ‘e’s got some idea in ‘is noddle for gettin’ you out of this.’

‘Thank God,’ breathed Derek, and, without further hesitation, he began to stride beside the tall man towards the less crowded section of the encampment.

The barbed-wire cage enclosed an oblong space running north and south, several hundred yards in length. The gate was at the southern end and comparatively few of the prisoners had bothered to move far from it after being ordered inside.

As they advanced, the sleeping forms scattered over the grass grew fewer and by the time they had covered two hundred and fifty yards the last of the prisoners had been swallowed up in the darkness behind them.

Suddenly Derek felt a vague sense of apprehension. There was a rustling in the grass at his rear. Glancing swiftly over his shoulder he saw that three men were padding softly on his heels.

He had just time to avoid a blow that one of the men aimed at his head, by springing aside, and all three were upon him.

In an instant he saw the trap into which he had fallen. The tall man had overheard his conversation with the Sergeant and seen him produce his wallet with the wad of notes in it. His treacherous guide and the three evil-looking thugs who had suddenly appeared now formed a circle round him. He had been lured to a quiet part of the camp so that they could attack and rob him.

The odds were heavy, but in his day Derek had been a runner-up for the Public Schools boxing championship. He was still under thirty and a healthy outdoor life and kept him remarkably fit. But he did not mean to rely on that. Lavina’s rescue from the purgatory she must be suffering now depended on his own escape. There were plenty of people within call.

He lashed out, giving one of the men a crack on the jaw that sent him reeling, and at the same moment opened his own mouth to shout for help. But at that very second the tall fellow struck him a savage blow on the head from behind. His shout was never uttered; instead, his back teeth clicked and his front teeth bit into the tip of his tongue, causing him almost to screech with pain. Instantly all four of his attackers flung themselves at him.

He was borne down, kneed a man in the stomach and, wriggling free, staggered to his feet again. With the strength of desperation he hit out right and left, the image of Lavina ever in his mind;
and many of his punches got home, as he knew from his smarting knuckles.

Suddenly the tall man landed a brutal kick on his shin, another of them got in a heavy blow on his ear and a third, charging him head downward, butted him in the midriff. With a gasp he was sent flying to the ground, the man on top of him.

For the next few moments he suffered indescribably. Heavy boots thudded into his ribs. One of the men jumped upon his stomach. Kneeling beside him, they wrenched out his pocket-book and delivered blow after blow on his face wherever he was unable to guard it. A vicious kick on the back of the head caused him to see red lights stabbing the blackness before his eyes; then he fainted.

As consciousness left him, his last coherent thought was that these devils had robbed him of all chance of getting free to find Lavina.

When Derek came round he was one mass of aches and bruises. With infinite caution and considerable pain he lifted his hand to his head. It felt the size of a pumpkin and as though the soft matter inside was gently surging to and fro, each beat of his heart propelling it backwards and forwards in great waves of pain.

At first he did not know where he was or what had happened to him, but gradually his thoughts became coherent and he remembered how he had been attacked and robbed by some of his fellow prisoners.

With a great effort of will he sat up and began to examine himself all over. His shin hurt abominably where he had been kicked and his ribs pained him every time he took a breath, but he did not think that any of his bones were broken. There was a lump on the back of his head and another on his jaw. One of his eyes was half-closed and from the sticky crust which had formed on his upper lip he knew that his nose had been bleeding.

It struck him then that the sky was much lighter. He must have been out for a long time, as dawn was approaching. He began again to wonder miserably about Lavina and in what wretched state the new day would find her.

Looking round him, he saw that nearly all his fellow-prisoners were lying on the ground asleep. There were many more of them than there had been when he was put in the cage. Evidently the police had been rounding up fresh batches of rioters and interning them all night. There were now several thousand men in the great oblong barbed-wired encampment. Vaguely he began to wonder if he would be able to find his assailants and charge them, but he had seen the tall, bony man only by starlight and the others had been no more than whirling figures in the semi-darkness. With such a vague memory of his face, to look for the
tall man among all these hundreds of prisoners would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Slowly he got to his feet and, limping painfully, made his way to the gate of the enclosure. About fifty men were congregated there; recent arrivals, who were still telling each other of their exploits during the night and how they had been captured.

Clinging on to the bars of the gate for support, Derek peered through them and called to the sentry. The man took no notice but, after a few moments, Derek managed to attract the attention of a passing Sergeant.

‘What do you want?’ asked the Sergeant gruffly.

‘I’ve been attacked and robbed,’ muttered Derek.

‘Been in a rough house trying to rob people yourself more likely.’ The Sergeant stared unsympathetically. ‘Plenty of your kind brought in to-night.’

‘No. It was here in the camp, a few hours ago. Some thugs beat me up and stole my money.’

The soldier peered a little closer in the uncertain light. ‘You do look a bit of a mess,’ he granted.

‘I’m pretty well all-in,’ Derek mumbled. ‘For God’s sake get me a doctor, can’t you.’

‘All right, then. You’ll have to wait your turn, though.’

‘My turn?’

‘Yes. The doctor’s been busy on casualties all night. He’s still got a dozen or so in that hut over there waiting to be patched up.’ The Sergeant nodded in the direction of a fair-sized wooden building some distance away then, turning, called a Guardsman out of the guard hut nearby.

The gate was unlocked and, taking Derek by the arm, the Guardsman led him over to the doctor’s quarters.

Inside a small ante-room two lines of men were sitting dejectedly on wooden benches. Some were already roughly bandaged with blood-soaked rags, and all had injuries received in fighting. One was sobbing quietly in a corner and another moaned monotonously. Derek took his place upon a bench and waited.

It was over an hour before his turn came to go inside and, in the meantime, other casualties had been brought in to replace those who had been treated.