“I low many people were there in the car?” he asked.
“The two you know and the driver.”
“Not the man you call Teddy Bear?”
“No.”
“Then they left him behind to telephone the police.”
“If he did, we’re mighty near the end,” I said. “One of the springs is on its last legs, and we must be nearly out of petrol.”
He bounced into the lane, and beckoned me to join him where Lex could not hear what we said.
“Why not telephone for a car?” he suggested.
“And some oysters too.”
“Hadn’t thought of it! Just what we need! But would the Teddy Bear’s Picnic have oysters?”
“Meat loaf,” I said. “Pigs lung and soya bean. Ministry of Food Special. What the hell are you talking about?”
‘Telephoning for a car, Colonel my lad. Mr. Heyne-Hassingham’s secretary speaking–ha? Hiart’s car smashed up. Wants another to take him to London at once. Heil People’s Union! Off we go! Why not?”
I looked at my watch and shook it. It was working all right. What I couldn’t believe was that only some fourteen minutes had passed since I rejoined Sandorski and started up the lane. Still, it was enough for a patrol car to have arrived, if one was coming at all.
“Isn’t it possible that Hiart saw his chance to settle accounts with us alone?” I asked. “It would be a god-send to him if he could keep the police out of it. Suppose he just sent Bear home to stand by for orders?”
“Home? Pub after all that excitement! I’ll get him out of it. It’s a bloody awful gamble. Come on!”
We drove hard through the village, seeing no one on the way, and stopped a little distance up one of the tracks at that cross where Bear had met Hiart and Pink. Sandorski jumped out and ran back to Hinton FitzPaine.
He went straight to the pub and hauled out Bear, who of course didn’t know him and had no description of him. It was touch and go, for at any moment somebody from the wrecked car might be down in the village. Bear didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t possibly doubt any man who knew as much about his recent movements as Sandorski did; and
I expect he remembered Hiart’s remarks on getting used to obedience.
They came striding past the crossroads, with Bear chattering away in a state of tremendous excitement. I cleared my car of all possessions and followed with Lex at a reasonable distance. We walked along the main road until Teddy Bear’s Picnic came in view. Then I parked Lex behind a tree, and went forward to reconnoiter. I had his brown paper parcel. He was no longer worrying about it. He had resigned all responsibility into our hands.
Teddy Bear’s Picnic consisted of three loathsome arches facing the petrol pumps and the main road. It had pleased Mr. Bear and his builder to disguise the nakedness of concrete with a vast thickness of plaster decoration–now cracked–representing boughs, wattle and odd chunks of rock. The righthand arch contained the cafe, and the left the office. Both were closed. The doors of the center arch were open, and the blaze of light revealed a too ambitious and untidy workshop, with Mr. Bear pouring oil into a six-seater limousine.
Sandorski was strolling up and down the road, giving an excellent imitation of an important and impatient politician. He was keeping a careful watch on the hedgerow, and when I waved a handkerchief he came over and whispered the news.
It was good and bad. Hiart’s driver had telephoned to the garage for a car and had been answered, after much delay, by Mrs. Bear. That put our bona fides beyond a doubt. It was a safe assumption that he had also telephoned the police, so that a patrol car could be expected any minute.
The driver must have been in the telephone box when Sandorski and Bear came out of the pub. He had left it to Mrs. Bear to get hold of her husband. We couldn’t understand why he had been in such an unthinking hurry. The explanation–as we found out afterwards–was that Pink and Hiart were both hurt, Hiart badly, and the driver didn’t want to leave them alone at the mercy of a desperado who might return any minute.
I was hesitant about car stealing and knocking out Bear. Even if we were eventually proved innocent of major crimes, the police couldn’t overlook gangsterism of that sort.
“People’s Union require me to drive!” Sandorski assured me. “And People’s Union pay cash down for hire. Where’s the stealing?”
“You can get away with that?”
“Why not–ha? Shan’t we want good men at the People’s Ministry of Transport? Ruthless men like Bear! Obeying orders without question! Nip up the road with Lex and bundle in when I come abreast of you.”
“How are you going to account for starting out the wrong way?”
“Pick up a parcel!” he snorted. “Chaps who want reasons for everything don’t join the People’s Union.”
Sandorski kept Bear occupied while we sneaked past the garage along the grass verge of the road. Lights came tearing towards us, and I shoved Lex down in the ditch and joined him. A black saloon whistled smoothly past us, and I saw inside it the peaked caps of the police. We hadn’t much time–perhaps five minutes before the cops joined Hiart and Pink at the top of the lane, and anything up to a quarter of an hour before somebody got onto Bear to find out why the car hadn’t arrived. Meanwhile the alarm would go out for my gray car, or, if they found it, for a man or men on foot. Twenty miles to Salisbury. We might just have time to reach the town before the make and number of our limousine reached the patrol cars and the constables on point duty.
When I had experienced a few minutes of Sandorski’s driving, I had no doubt that we should make Salisbury if we didn’t die horribly first. He seemed to forget that the
English rule of the road was the left, or perhaps he was merely holding the middle at all costs. When I protested, he had the ignorance to say that he was a damn sight safer than I was. It was not true. I am a most careful driver. I resented it very strongly.
Salisbury streets were comforting, and not only because at last I could relax. The pubs were just closing. There were people about, people with whom we could mix, among whom we could be lost. We were plain citizens, not outlaws, for the moment; but it would be a short moment.
“Where to?” the general asked.
I directed him out of the center into quiet residential streets. A dark house with a longish drive looked tempting. We ran the car into the drive, turned off the lights and left it. That was a good choice. We could count on all the car parks and streets being searched immediately; but in a private garden we were safe until the owner discovered our car next morning. And if he were out and returned that night, he would probably be content to curse the impudence of unknown persons for parking in his drive.
What to do now? Sandorski was all for stealing a car, but I wouldn’t have it. Hiring was too dangerous, for the police would certainly do the rounds of garages. Hitchhiking? Well, if Sandorski and I had been alone, we might have tried to stop a friendly lorry driver on the outskirts of the town. But Lex was nearly finished–so done that we desperately considered putting him in a hotel and hiding ourselves wherever we could. Lex kept on saying he was sorry but that he wasn’t used to such exertion. Again I found myself liking the man. He might fairly have blamed us for using drugs on him, but he didn’t; he just blamed himself.
“We’re not far from the station,” I said. “Shall we take a chance?”
It was a pretty desperate chance, for Sandorski’s description as well as mine would now be known. I went first, leaving the general and Lex in the shadows behind the parcels office. If I were arrested, there was still hope that they might get through and do our business at 26 Fulham Park Avenue.