Within minutes the rest of the cars came in, and as the Assistant Commissioner’s car and escort drew up with a flourish in the yard, Mr Canasset was already leaving his home near Grays. But now he was no longer Mr Canasset but a very much changed man whose name was Peters and who had an impeccable passport, quite recently issued, to prove it. In his pocket, as he got back into the rakish car in which he had left the Canning Town garage and which had been waiting for him, was a ticket for the next B.E.A. flight to Madrid.
Once he was inside again the car headed back westward, going fast.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shaw knew for certain now that he hadn’t a hope of holding on for much longer, and when he heard the sounds above him again, much closer and louder this time, he had a moment of sheer nightmare when he fancied it was all over and he’d somehow passed straight into the voodoo realms of Esamba and Edo and the Dark Gods… and then, through the gathering mists, he realized that some one very solid, some one very much more of this world, was above him.
Summoning all his ebbing strength he managed a weak cry, and at once the footsteps above him stopped. He called out again and after that he heard the excited shout from above.
“Sir — here, sir, there’s some one down here!”
A powerful torch beamed downwards through the smashed boards, slicing into the dark.
Shaw gasped, struggled, thrashed at the water, feeling himself slipping away. That wild thrashing disturbed something.
In the broad ribbon of light from overhead Shaw caught another glimpse of the naked body that had brushed across his face earlier, the body that was now moving slowly across below the hole in the floor above as though it, too, awaited rescue. Floating there, face upward… and in that one moment Shaw could see it quite clearly enough to recognize the ghastly smirk, the twisted face of fear that told him the man had died in agony and terror. The body had been wickedly mutilated, mutilated to the point of slow death, and it was black, and it must be the remains of Patrick MacNamara.
Shaw looked away, hung grimly on to life. There were sounds above, and soon a man came down on the end of a rope attached to a steel bar laid across the now open trap, and then, when he felt firm hands reach his shoulders and take his weight, Shaw let go. Overcome with exhaustion and the nausea of that place, he simply passed right out.
He was out all the rest of that day and a good deal of the next.
He came round slowly and found himself in bed in a small room with a single window looking out on to smoke-blackened brick. As he stirred a little, a girl who had been sitting by the bedside got up and leaned over him, smoothed his forehead, and he saw that she was a nurse.
Brightly she said, “There we are, then! How do you feel, Commander Shaw?”
He muttered with difficulty, “Perfectly bloody, if you really want the truth.”
“Bad headache?”
He winced. “An understatement.”
“It’ll pass.”
He thought; She does sound as though she really means that! In a feeble voice he asked, “Am I in hospital?”
She nodded, smiling down at him. “Yes, of course.”
“How… long have I been here?”
“Nearly twenty-four hours.”
“Oh…” He didn’t tick over right away. “Twenty-four hours…" Minutes later he had hoisted it in, and he knew there was something of tremendous urgency which he had to do, and if he didn’t do it right away there was going to be big trouble, because the birds would have flown from the nest well and truly already, and nobody except himself knew about Wiley… He muttered something and tried to struggle up, but the young nurse pushed him down firmly. His head swam, the room rocked around him, and he lay still while she wiped a heavy, cold sweat from his face and neck. His mind was slipping away again now, he couldn’t remember, simply couldn’t remember the essentials… then he asked painfully, “How… long do I stop here?”
“That’s for the doctor to say. Not very long, though, if you take things quietly.”
“Take things quietly… Good God, Nurse… listen now.” He stopped. It was no good, it had gone again. He asked, “Is there much wrong with me?”
She laughed quietly, confidently. “Not a thing that a bit of rest won’t cure. You must have a very tough constitution, you know — or a lot of luck! They did all kinds of tests on you, but there’s nothing wrong at all.”
He nodded, and smiled up at her weakly, and then the mists closed in again.
After a while that dead-out sleep, the sleep of exhaustion and a small degree of shock, changed into a light and refreshing sleep, and when he woke again some hours later it was night and he felt a good deal better. This time he woke to full and immediate awareness of his surroundings and he saw a night nurse sitting sewing by a shaded table-lamp. She came over when she heard him stirring.
He grinned at her and said, “I do believe I’m going to live after all!”
Tweaking at a sheet, she said briskly, “There never was any doubt of that… good gracious me, the things patients say!” She went on, “I’ve orders to tell you, as soon as you wake — there’s some one waiting to see you. If you don’t feel like visitors I shan’t say you are awake. Well?”
He lifted himself on one elbow. There was a slight feeling of dizziness but it passed quickly. He asked, “Who’s the visitor, Nurse?”
She said, “A gentleman that’s been waiting for you in sister’s sitting-room. A Mr Latymer.”
“You’d better bring him in right away, please, Nurse. It’s important, and there’s — things — I’ve got to talk to him about.”
Latymer had a way with him, Shaw decided with amusement, there was no doubt about that. The nurse had seemed to want to stay in the room, but the Old Man had simply opened the door and glared at her, then barked at her not to come back unless she was sent for. She’d given that scarred, square face and the steel-green eyes just one astonished look and then she’d gone without another word, and Latymer, grinning away and dusting his hands together, had marched over to the bed. He came straight to the point. He said abruptly, “Well, my boy. Damned glad we got there in time.
Now — tell me exactly how you’re feeling. And I want the truth.”
Shaw said, “Better than I ever thought I would, sir. All things considered, I think I’m fairly fit.”
“Good.” The eyes examined him critically, brows thickly lowered. “Now — give me the whole story from top to bottom and in detail.”
Latymer listened intently and in silence for the most part, only asking a brief and pointed question here and there. When Shaw had finished he said harshly, “They’ll have got a flying start. Clear away by this time, I shouldn’t wonder. There’s already a warrent out for Canasset, and a full-scale search is on for the girl. The ports and airfields had a watch put on ’em as soon as we could arrange it—”
“When was that, sir?”
“Not till Canasset had had that good start, unfortunately. You see, there wasn’t anything to incriminate him personally at first so far as we knew — and his wife put us off with some yarn that he’d gone down to Plymouth for the week-end. She sounded as though she genuinely believed that, and Verity’s story tied up too at first. Anyhow, I had a check made on friend Canasset. The results were perfectly all right to begin with, but then later on some information came to hand that he was known to have Communist sympathies, for what that’s worth, and when we couldn’t find him in Plymouth — well, we went into action. By the way, I didn’t tell you when you mentioned it — we did get confirmation that the body in the pit was definitely MacNamara’s. So that settled him, poor feller — we cancelled the call for him right away. Pity, as it happens… if the call had still been out for him, we might’ve netted this whatsisname, Wiley, instead.” Shaw said, “I can’t understand why MacNamara was down there. You remember I said Wiley’s idea was for my death and Pelly’s to look natural. Well, MacNamara’s was obviously anything but that, and it’d have been suspicious just to find him there, I’d have thought… unless…” He hesitated, thinking back to the pit.