“Who?”
“Doctor Fischer.”
“Oh,” said Roger. “I don’t know much about him. He’s a friend of Shawn’s as well as a doctor attached to the Embassy.”
“Attached nothing, he’s over here with Shawn now. Carl Fischer and the Meredith girl are trying to smooth him down, hoping to get him back to England. They haven’t a chance. Do you think they have a chance?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Roger wished the man would move, wished the stare from those dark eyes wasn’t so intense. He wanted to get up. Gissing crowded him, now. He was inviting an assault. It would be easy. A toecap cracking against his knee, a spring, a savage blow over the head, but — two men standing in the doorway.
Then a bell rang, blasting the quiet. It was no ordinary bell, but a harsh, strident warning. It made Gissing back away and swing round, it made the two men exclaim, it gave Roger a chance he wasn’t likely to get again. The bell wrenched their thoughts away from him, put alarm into them.
McMahon and Jaybird leapt out of sight.
17
DARK NIGHT
IT was only a lightning flash of time. Gissing stared at the doorway, the bell clanging, the men scrambling towards another door — then he moved back, his right hand dropped to his pocket, he actually started to say:
“Don’t mo —”
Roger slid forward in his chair, hooked the man’s feet from under him, sent him crashing. Gissing’s hand came from his pocket, the side that lay uppermost. Farther away, footsteps sounded like a stampede. Gissing lashed out with his foot, his hand went back to his pocket. Roger snatched at the ankle as the foot swung past him, caught hold, heaved Gissing’s leg backwards. The man gasped with pain. Roger let him go, bent down and knocked the hand away from his pocket. Gissing hadn’t any fight left.
Roger’s fingers touched cold steel. He drew out the gun. He saw Gissing’s face twisted, heard only the man’s harsh breathing, but knew the other threat might return. He turned the gun in his hand, struck Gissing on the base of the skull, heard the soughing breath as unconsciousness came. He turned the gun again, looked towards the doorway, and saw the drapes move.
He fired.
The bullet tore through the drapes, a man grunted and pitched forward into sight.
Throughout all this the bell was still clanging.
The falling man had a gun in his right hand but no control over it. Roger went forward. The gun fell at his feet, and he kicked it away. The man hit the floor with a heavy thud, and didn’t move. He wouldn’t move again by himself, Roger knew. He must have been crouching, and the bullet had hit him in the temple. It was a small, clean hole, and the blood hadn’t started to ooze out
Gissing unconscious, a dead man, and the helpless boy downstairs.
Suddenly the bell stopped. It was as if agonizing pressure had been eased from Roger’s ears.
If he could get that boy —
He heard a shot, and thought it came from outside. Footsteps thudded, their sound dulled by the closed windows; then more footsteps, nearer now and coming from the rooms through which Roger had been brought. Two men at least were approaching, and luck couldn’t last. He opened a door at the far end of the room. Another, just a gauze-filled wooden frame, was immediately beyond it The footsteps drew nearer inside the house, farther away outside. Roger unhooked the catch of the outer door, and found himself on a wide verandah lit only by the light from the room.
He heard a shout: “Get him!” A shot barked from behind him, and he heard the bullet bite into the door-frame. He swung right, jumped down the verandah steps and rushed towards the beckoning darkness. More shots barked as he raced blindly over the grass, but he wasn’t hit Against the grey sky he could see the dark outline of the spiked tops of trees. Some way off these trees offered shelter. His footsteps seemed to thump out a call. “Here I am, here I am: He could hear the others running, and looked up at the tops of the trees and wondered how far away they were, and whether he could reach them. He was breathing hard, but didn’t feel panic, just unnatural calm. Then he heard two more shots, farther away, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the flashes. He was running at right angles to that spot.
Brushing against a bush, he felt a branch hard against his shoulder, and ducked; another branch plucked at his hair. So he had reached the trees. He sensed rather than saw the straight trunks and the low branches. The men behind him were blundering through the undergrowth. They hadn’t gathered their wits yet, but soon they would use flashlights. He stopped running and walked on swiftly. A murmur of voices came from behind him, and then there was a shout from a long way off — where the last shooting had been. A shout of triumph?
He could see a little now, stopped and turned round. The light from the house, two hundred yards away at least, showed up the trees in silhouettes, and he saw he was in a small thicket. Between him and the house there were rows of young firs, then trees with taller, thicker trunks. Against the glow he saw a man appear from the house, running towards the thicket, light coming from his flashlight. With a powerful light they had a chance of finding him; and they knew where they were, what the ground was like. Roger moved cautiously, wondering whether caution would help him. He walked parallel with the edge of the turf and the first line of young trees, until the man with the flashlight was within a hundred yards. Then he turned towards the grass — the old gambit, doubling back; nothing else could help him.
Other flashlights were shining, on the far side of the turf. He stared towards them, fancying that one man was being dragged along by two others; a third and a fourth, lighting the way, were in the party. Then he heard the man coming towards the thicket call out:
“See him?”
“This way.”
They were heading for the spot where Roger had first disappeared into the trees. He reached the grass, then turned again and walked along the edge of the thicket away from the house, the light of which was now too far away to show him up. The shadowy darkness of the trees hid him.
One party with their prisoner was going towards the house, the other was looking for Roger in the wrong place. Grant him just a little luck, and he would get away. A little more still, and he would find a telephone and get help, bring a rescue party to the house in time to save the boy, perhaps catch Gissing.
How had that alarm been raised?
The grounds might be ringed with a trip-wire; or a gate protected with an alarm. Did it matter? Someone had blundered into the alarm system, and been caught; it didn’t seem to matter who. Roger quickened his step, sure that there was no immediate danger. He could no longer hear the men who were seeking him.
He could see much better now. Another row of trees was facing him; the trees seemed to grow completely round the grounds with the house built in a clearing. It was downhill, here — the big disadvantage was that he didn’t know what the ground would be like a few steps ahead. There was a danger of running round in circles, too. He mustn’t hurry, he must keep his bearings.
There were no stars.
He looked for a light, other than the lights at the house and those from the flashlights, but saw nothing. He had his back to the house, and the glow from that would shine for a long way, if he kept his back to it he could at least be sure that he was getting farther away.
The trees were thinning.
The ground was even but slippery with pine-needles; he couldn’t go too fast. The immediate danger was past, but any mistakes now could damn him. If he were taken back, he wouldn’t find a smooth-voiced Gissing, he would find a devil.
He kicked against something that struck his ankle, and then heard a sound — a long way off, like the ringing of a bell. It went on and on. He glanced over his shoulder. The flashlights had stopped moving towards the house. He felt sweat breaking out. This was the trip-wire, the alarm had gone off again. He hadn’t a knife, couldn’t break it. He didn’t try, but began to run along it, then realized that if the wire ran round the clearing, they wouldn’t know whereabouts it had been touched again. He climbed over, and ran on.