William followed me. His voice was doubtful. "Ought we to!"
"It's faster. The key's in. Oh, William, hurry!"
"Okay."
And then we were away. Our wheels whined round in the same circle, skidding on the gravel. Our lights raked the trees, the lodge, the willows fronded with weeping mist… We took the gate cautiously, gained the road, and swung right.
Along the narrow, fog-dimmed road with its soaring dark trees; a sharp turn left, a steep little climb between echoing walls; right again, then a series of dizzy, whipping turns through the steep streets that climbed up to the town. Now we had reached the upper level, and were clear of the mist. We swept along a wide curved boulevard where lamps flickered by among the pollard-willows… A sharp swing right, and we scudded across the empty market-place where cobbles gleamed damply and a few flattened cabbage-leaves lay in a gutter like a drift of giant leaves. William had got the feel of the car now. We swirled right-handed into a badly-lit avenue and gathered speed. The lopped chestnuts flicked past us one by one, faster, faster, faster…
We were out of the little town. Our headlights leaped out ahead of us, and the engine's note rose powerfully, and held steady.
Ahead of us the road forked. A signboard flashed up in the white light and tore towards us.
We took the left for Valmy.
William was, I thought, as good a driver as Raoul, but Raoul had not only a start, but a faster car which was, moreover, the one he was accustomed to drive. But after a while I began to hope that even these advantages might not help him too much, for very soon after leaving Thonon we met the mist again. Not the tree-haunting grey mist that had risen from the lake to moat the Villa Mireille, but little clouds and clots of white brume, breathed up from the river to lie in all the hollows of a road that was never far from the water. Each time the car's nose dipped a dazzling cumulus of white struck back the light at us, swept over us, blinded, engulfed us, then even as the engine slowed and hesitated we roared up out of cloud again into the calm black air. At first the experience was unnerving; the moment of blindness was like a great white hand thrust against your face, so that you flinched backwards against the upholstery, and were conscious of your eyes' catlike dilation. But with each succeeding dive into the cloud the car's hesitation became less apparent and after a while I realised that William was losing very little speed. He seemed to know unerringly just how the road lifted and curved, where the mist would lie for fifty yards and where for five, and he sliced through the fog-patches with the confidence of the man who-literally-knows his road blindfold. He must have driven up and down it scores of times in the course of his job; it was even probable that he knew it better than Raoul, who for some time had lived most of his year between Bellevigne and Paris. We might catch him yet…
So at any rate I told myself, huddled down in the seat beside William and staring with eyes that winced through the marching clouds of mist to catch a glimpse of a vanishing tail-light round some curve ahead.
William said: "What was all that about, Linda?"
"What d'you mean? Oh-I keep forgetting you don't speak French." I gave a shaky little laugh. "I'm sorry, William. I- I’m not thinking very clearly tonight. I haven't even said thank you for coming. I've just rushed you into my affairs and used you like this. I-I'm terribly grateful. I really am."
"Think nothing of it. But you'd better put me in the picture hadn't you?"
So I told him the story from the beginning-not very clearly, I’m afraid, and with halts and pauses due to weariness and the fear that clawed at me, while the car roared on up that wicked valley-road and the night went by us smoothly as a dream. The dark road fell away, streamed, poured away behind us; the thin grey trees reeled past us into nothingness; the mist-clouds marched, fled, broke and streamed away from us in mackerel flakes like rack in the wind.
The red tail-light struck at my eyes like a dagger.
I said hoarsely: "There. William. Look, there."
He didn't answer, but I knew he'd seen it. Then it vanished and a moment later the blinding white swamped us again. Out into a patch of clear darkness, and then another cloud was on us, but this time thin, so that our yellow-dimmed lights made rainbows in it that wisped away along our wings, and we were through.
The car gathered speed up a steady straight. rise. And the fleeing red light was there, not three hundred yards ahead.
He didn't seem to be travelling so very fast. We were gaining, gaining rapidly. Two hundreds yards, a hundred and fifty… the gap dwindled. We were coming up fast. Too fast.
"It's only a lorry," said William, and lifted his foot.
We ran up close behind it and asked to be by.
It was one of those appalling monsters so common in France, far too high and wide for any road, and far too fast for their size. And it became obvious very soon that this one had no intention of allowing us the road. Ignoring the flickering of our lights it roared along, rocking a little on the bends, but never yielding an inch of the crown of the road.
I don't know how long we were behind it. It seemed a year. I sat with my nails driving holes into the palms of my hands, and my teeth savaging my lip while I stared with hatred at the dirty back-board of the lorry held in our lights. It was carrying gravel, which dripped through the cracks onto the road. Someone had chalked a face like a gremlin on the left-hand panel. To this day I can see the number-plate with the chip off the corner and read the number. 920-DE75… I stared at it without consciously seeing it at all, and thought of the Cadillac roaring on ahead, of Raoul and Léon and the terrible little scene that, unbelievably, was so soon to be acted out in the Valmy library.
I said again: "William…”
“If the Caddy passed him," said William calmly, "we can. Hold on."
There wasn't even a trace of impatience in his voice. He drew out to the left, flickered his lights again, and waited. The lorry lumbered on. We were on an up-grade now, and the lorry was slowing. It held the road, and once again we drew patiently in behind it.
So we went in procession up the hill. A sob rose and burst in my throat and I put the back of my hand hard against my teeth in an effort for self-control.
The lorry slowed, slowed again, and checked as it was rammed into bottom gear. We crawled towards the head of the rise.
The trees that crowned the hill-top swelled into light that soared towards us. Lights were coming up the other side of the hill, and coming fast. Their grey aurora spread, splayed brighter, lifted into gold. The lorry topped the crest of the road, black against the approaching glare, and swung sharply over to its right to make way for the oncoming car.
Our own lights flashed once, and dimmed. Something hit me in the small of the back as the Chevrolet shot forward like a torpedo into the gap.
Lights met lights with a clash that could be felt. Then we whipped to the right almost under the lorry's front bumper. I heard the yell of a horn and something that might have been a shout, but we were through with a little to spare and dropping downhill with the rush of a lift.
"Oh, you honey," said William affectionately to the car, and then sent me a grin. I had bitten the back of my hand but his breathing wasn't even ruffled. "It's nice," he said mildly, "to have the horses…"
The road lifted once more, to shake itself clear of mist. William's foot went down and those horses took hold. My eyes strained through the darkness ahead for that tell-tale light among the trees.
But no light showed till we rounded the curve where the road begins the long drop to the Valmy bridge, and saw the lurch and sway of lights that cut their way up the zigzag nearly half-a- mile ahead.
I must have made some small sound, for William gave me a glance and said: "Don't fret, my dear. They'll talk it over, surely?" But he didn't sound convinced, and neither was I. We'd both seen Raoul's face. And the way those distant headlights now slashed their way up the zigzag was some indication that the mood still held.