I had a blurred impression of his strained face, mouth open, eyes huge, dried blood still dark on his cheek. For an instant he didn’t move and I thought he wouldn’t go, but when I next caught a glimpse of the doorway, it was empty.
Whether or not he’d been actively lying in wait for me, there was no doubt that now that I was there Ganser Mays was trying to do to me what he’d already done to my possessions. I learned a good deal from him in the next few minutes. I learned about mental terror. Learned about extreme physical fear. Learned that it was no fun at all facing unarmed and untrained a man with the will and the weapon for murder.
What was more, it was my own axe.
We played an obscene sort of hide and seek round the wrecked machines. It only needed one of the ferocious chops to connect, and I would be without arm or leg if not without life. He slashed whenever he could get near enough, and I hadn’t enough faith in my speed or strength to try to tackle him within slicing range. I dodged always and precariously just out of total disaster, circling the ruined lathe... the milling machine... the hacksaw... back to the lathe... putting the precious bulks of metal between me and death.
Up and down the room, again and again.
There was never a rigid line between sense and insanity and maybe by some definitions Ganser Mays was sane. Certainly in all that obsessed destructive fury he was aware enough that I might escape through the door. From the moment I’d first stepped past him into the workshop, he gave me no chance to reach safety that way.
There were tools scattered on the floor from the torn-down racks, but they were mostly small and in any case not round the machines but on the opposite side of the workshop. I could leave the shelter of the row of machines and cross open space to arm myself... but nothing compared in weight or usefulness with that axe, and chisels and saws and drill bits weren’t worth the danger of exposure.
If Owen came back with help, maybe I could last out...
Shortage of breath... I was averagely fit, but no athlete... couldn’t pull in enough oxygen for failing muscles... felt fatal weaknesses slowing my movements... knew I couldn’t afford to slip on the oil or stumble over the bolts mooring the base plates to the floor or leave my hands holding on to anything for more than a second for fear of severed fingers.
He seemed tireless, both in body and intent. I kept my attention more on the axe than his face, but the fractional views I caught of his fixed, fanatical and curiously rigid expression gave no room for hope that he would stop before he had achieved his object. Trying to reason with him would have been like arguing with an avalanche. I didn’t even try.
Breath sawed through my throat. Owen... why didn’t he bloody well hurry... if he didn’t hurry he might as well come back tomorrow for all the good it would do me...
The axe crashed down so close to my shoulder that I shuddered from imagination and began to despair. He was going to kill me. I was going to feel the bite of that heavy steel... to know the agony and see the blood spurt... to be chopped and smashed like everything else.
I was up at one end, where the electric motor which worked all the machines was located. He was four feet away, swinging, looking merciless and savage. I was shaking, panting and still trying frantically to escape, and it was more to distract him for a precious second than from any devious plan that I took the time to kick the main switch from off to on.
The engine hummed and activated the main belt, which turned the big wheel near the ceiling and rotated the long shaft down the workshop. All the belts to the machines began slapping as usual, except that this time half of them had been cut right through and the free ends flapped in the air like streamers.
It took his eye off me for only a blink. I circled the electric motor which was much smaller than the machines and not good cover, and he brought his head back towards me with a snap.
He saw that I was exposed. A flash of triumph crossed his pale sweating face. He whipped the axe back and high and struck at me with all his strength.
I jumped sideways in desperation and slipped and fell, and thought as I went down that this was it... this was the end... he would be on me before I could get up.
I half saw the axe go up again. I lunged out with one foot in a desperate kick at his ankles. Connected. Threw him a fraction off balance. Only a matter of a few inches: and it didn’t affect the weight of his downward swing, but only its direction. Instead of burying itself in me, the blade sank into the main belt driving the machines, and for one fatal moment Ganser Mays hung on to the shaft. Whether he thought I had somehow grasped the axe and was trying to tug it away from him, heaven knows. In any case he gripped tight, and the whirling belt swept him off his feet.
The belt moved at about ten feet a second. It took one second for Ganser Mays to reach the big wheel above. I dare say he let go of the shaft at about that point, but the wheel caught him and crushed him in the small space between itself and the ceiling.
He screamed... a short loud cry of extremity, chokingly cut off.
The wheel inexorably whirled him through and out the other side. It would have taken more than a soft human body to stop a motor which drove machine tools.
He fell from the high point and thumped sickeningly on to the concrete not far from where I was still scrambling to get up. It had happened at such immense speed that he had been up to the ceiling and down again before I could find my feet.
The axe had been dislodged and had fallen separately beside him. Near his hand, as if all he had to do was stretch out six inches and he would be back in business.
But Ganser Mays was never going to be back in business. I stood looking down at him while the engine hummed and the big killing wheel rotated impersonally as usual, and the remaining belts to the machines slapped quietly as they always did.
There was little blood. His face was white. The spectacles had gone and the eyes were half open. The sharp nose was angled grotesquely sideways. The neck was bent at an impossible angle; and whatever else had broken, that was enough.
I stood there for a while panting for breath and sweating and trembling from fatigue and the screwed tension of past fear. Then whatever strength I had left drained abruptly away and I sat on the floor beside the electric motor and drooped an arm over it for support like a wilted lily. Beyond thought. Beyond feeling. Just dumbly and excruciatingly exhausted.
It was at that moment that Owen returned. The help he’d brought wore authentic navy blue uniform and a real black and white checkered band on his cap. He took a long slow look and summoned reinforcements.
Hours later, when they had all gone, I went back downstairs to the workshop.
Upstairs nothing, miraculously, had been touched. Either our return had interrupted the programme before it had got that far, or the workshop had been the only intended target. In any case my first sight of the peaceful sitting-room had been a flooding relief.
Owen and I had flopped weakly around in armchairs while the routine police work ebbed and flowed, and after lengthy question-and-answer sessions and the departure of the late Mr Mays we had found ourselves finally alone.
It was already Sunday morning. The sun, with no sense of fitness, was brightly shining. Regent’s Park sparkled with frost and the puddles were glazed with ice.
‘Go to bed,’ I said to Owen.
He shook his head. ‘Think I’ll go home.’
‘Come back when you’re ready.’
He smiled. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘For a spot of sweeping up.’
When he’d gone I wandered aimlessly about, collecting coffee cups and emptying ashtrays and thinking disconnected thoughts. I felt both too tired and too unsettled for sleep, and it was then that I found myself going back to the devastation in the workshop.