“Wait here,” Andrew said. “I’ll look around first.”
From the window of the opposite room he could see the yard and the car.
“There’s no one there,” he said. “We’d better not waste any time.”
“Please be careful.” She grasped his arm again. “I’m sure I heard someone at the car.”
He was recovering now. “We’ll both be careful,” he said.
She followed him nervously. When a stair creaked under his weight, she started and caught her breath. They went on down quickly to the plaster-strewn floor of the hall.
“Andrew!” They were close to the open doorway of the cottage when she called to him in a whisper of apprehension.
This time there could be no doubt about the noise. He heard it himself. A man coughed. Then footsteps sounded in the yard, approaching from the rear of the cottage. Andrew opened a door on his left, pushed Ruth ahead of him into the room, and closed the door again. He saw dimly, between the slats of a broken Venetian blind, the figure of a man. What he saw was enough to tell him that the man was neither Kretchmann nor Haller.
“It must be another of them,” he whispered to Ruth. “If he goes upstairs, we’ll make a dash for the car.” “He might come in here.”
There was one possible hiding place, a cupboard on one side of the fireplace. The shelves had been removed, the doors swung on broken hinges.
Andrew shook his head when Ruth pointed to it.
“If he comes in here, I’ll tackle him,” he said.
“He may have a gun.” She was trembling now. He could feel it through the hand resting on his arm.
“All right,” he said.
They crouched together in the cupboard. He tried to close the doors; they would not meet, but the gap was narrow enough. They waited, trying to control the sound of their breathing. The man seemed to be in no hurry. He had paused on the doorstep. He was still looking round outside.
They crouched there painfully, listening. The footsteps sounded again-this time on the littered floor of the hall passage. Then the room door opened, and, Andrew, peering through the gap between the cupboard doors, saw a hand advance with a finger ready on the trigger of an automatic pistol.
Except for a portion of fawn raincoat, the rest of the man was masked by the room door, and almost at once the door was closed again. The fellow had seen an empty room, and that had been enough for him. As he crossed the hall to the other front room, he began to whistle faintly, allaying his own anxiety. He whistled as he went along the hall and climbed the stairs, and the tune took shape, became identifiable.
It was the rhythmic, jigging phrase from Till Eulenspiegel.
Thirteen
Andrew’s head swam. He felt as if he had been kicked in the head again. Then, after the first shock, he had a new fear. Vague at first, like something seen in the far distance, it rushed upon him with the speed of an express train. He could not evade it. He was tied to the line. The train passed over him and swept on, leaving the clatter of a name in his head.
Charley Botten.
He shook his head, fighting off the implications. Mr. Jolly-Face and Charley Botten, the two of them at dinner last night, the departure of the guest, Botten’s return, his keen interest in Groper’s Wade, the pinpointing of the large-scale map…
But no, it was impossible! He had known Charley Botten for years. And, anyway, this was no moment to bother about him. There were other things to think of, and little time to act. When Mr. Jolly-Face found that the prisoners had flown, he would stop whistling Till Eulenspiegel.
Andrew forced his mind to deal in practicalities. “When we get to the car,” he said, “climb in the back and keep down on the floor. It will be safer if that bird starts shooting.”
“What about you?” she whispered.
“I’ll keep my head down. I don’t expect he could hit anything with that thing anyway.” He grasped her arm and pulled her towards the door. “Come on now, quick!”
They ran for it, but no bullets poured from the side window upstairs. Mr. Jolly-Face must have been in one of the other rooms. Ruth flung herself down in the back of the car. Andrew leaped into the driving seat, his hand reaching for the starter button. He was about to press it when a shock of despair paralysed him. He had left the ignition key in the instrument panel. It wasn’t there any longer.
“What’s the matter?” the girl demanded breathlessly.
“It’s no good. They’ve taken the key.”
He spoke dully, inwardly cursing himself. Had it been his own car he would have been more cautious; had he come upon anything but a seemingly empty wilderness, he might have remembered, before he left the car, that the key was where the garage hand had placed it for him. Even with the arrival of Haller and Kretchmann he had failed to think of the key.
“What do we do now?” Incredibly, it seemed to him, the girl still looked to him for help, and all he could do was sit there behind the wheel in a kind of daze. He could neither think nor move. In cramped suspense he awaited release, and found it quickly in the sound of a petrol can bumping on the handlebars of a bike. He looked through the windscreen and saw Kretchmann and Haller returning across the marsh.
He crouched down along the front seat. The car was a good enough hiding place for a moment or two, but they must find something better and quickly. To run for it was out of the question. The way was too exposed. If they were seen, they would have two armed men after them; and Haller, also, might be armed. Kretchmann, for one, would think nothing of shooting them.
“Keep down,” he said, “but get ready to go.”
“We can’t go back to the cottage,” she said.
He knew it. If he had anything in mind it was that they should make for the cover of the dunes beyond the cottage. Once the alarm was given, the three might disperse in a frantic search for the fugitives. If this happened there might be a slender chance of escape, how slender he did not dare to think.
Surely, by now, Jolly-Face had discovered their flight from the room upstairs. The broken door on the landing and the rope must have made the truth immediately apparent, and it was a little puzzling that he did not hurry down to take action, even if he had not yet realised that Kretchmann and Haller were back.
Andrew waited, head raised so that he could just see the door of the cottage.
At last the man emerged, still holding his automatic waist-high in front of him but with a vague abstracted look on his face; as if, under his breath, he was still trying to improvise something on the theme from Till Eulenspiegel. For a moment he paused and looked round him in a puzzled way. Either he did not care that the prisoners had escaped or he knew nothing of them. Then, suddenly, he turned and walked away in the direction of the sand dunes.
Andrew thought quickly. The dunes were no longer a possibility. They could not stay indefinitely in the car. The only alternative was the windmill.
He didn’t like it. They might simply be rushing from one trap into another. Besides, the door might not open. It could be locked or nailed up. But where else could they go? They would just have to take a chance. The enemy was pressed for time. They must sail at nightfall.
“We’ll try the mill,” he whispered.
“When?”
“Ill give the word.”
Kretchmann and Haller were close by now. The dull clunking sound of the full petrol tin against the bicycle grew louder and faded. Then after a moment or two there was the faint tinkling of a spanner on a cylinder block.
Now, while the two were concentrating on the engine, was the time to move.
“Now,” he said.
Andrew got out of the car and closed the door soundlessly. Ruth followed him.
They ran to the wall of the cottage, then halted for a moment.
Haller was swinging the starting handle of the engine now. The engine fired once and then died. Andrew pressed Ruth’s arm and they went stealthily round the corner and along the front of the cottage, then ran the few remaining yards to their objective.