A Rough Shoot (13 page)

It was a moment of hopeless, helpless disappointment. We stood up in my lookout post–between the back of the van and the buffers–and waited to be revealed in all our guilty nakedness to the shunter and assistant stationmaster as soon as the dining car drew out. I don’t know who first saw the way of escape. Even Lex didn’t miss it, for he was trying to scramble up before I shoved him from behind. On the far side of the bay was a ledge, hardly wide enough to be called a platform. We had only to walk along that as the car pulled out, and nobody–provided neither driver nor fireman looked to their right–could see us.

It worked. We trotted along by the flank of that friendly restaurant car, and when we were clear of the bay we saw salvation. There was a goods train standing on the far side of the London train, which we couldn’t get a glimpse of from where we had been. We had only to walk up the permanent way between the two trains and get in from the wrong side.

The doors were already shut, and the night mail might start at any moment. We were weary of precautions. We crossed the rails in a bunch. I don’t know if anyone saw us. If he did, he must have been too tired to bother with trespassing passengers. Once between the two trains, the rest was simple. We settled Lex in a steaming hot empty compartment, put his overcoat under his head, and went into another ourselves to breathe freely. Two minutes later the train left.

“Now,” said Sandorski, “where’s that needle and thread?”

Lex by this time had complete trust in us, and was convinced that the life we had led him for the last twenty-four hours was all for his own good. Every one of our actions was consistent with a desperate attempt to pass him through a cordon of police and private enemies, and deliver him to Heyne-Hassingham. Of course–for that was just what we were trying to do. He no longer worried about his briefcase; in any event he could be sure it hadn’t been tampered with, since it had not gone up in a burst of flame.

Sandorski undid our precious brown paper parcel. The bottom of the briefcase, relieved of string, gaped. The stuffing of paper fell out.

“Can you ever make a job of it?” I asked.

“Must,” he answered. “And I made my own shoes in prison camp. How long have I got?”

“Well, expresses take an hour and a half. We can safely add another hour for this train.”

I think I never admired him so much as during that journey. I had no idea that he could be so meticulous. Every stitch that I had cut was lifted out, and with infinite care he drove his needle through the same holes. First he sewed the cardboard roll back to the inner side of the bag, leaving slack the wire between the latch and the incendiary, so that even when the device was set it wouldn’t go off. Then he put back the loose paper and stitched up the seam. The only thing he could not restore exactly as we found it was the sealed tape that ran the length of the roll and round the two ends. We stuck the cut edges of the tape to the cardboard, and hoped that Heyne-Hassingham, in his general state of agitation, wouldn’t notice. The trigger wire of the incendiary still ran through the tape, so it was pretty certain he would cut, withdraw his documents and never look at roll or tape again.

Lex had not seen his briefcase at all since he packed. He had only seen the parcel, which was beginning to look disreputable. We brushed the drying mud from our clothes, remixed it and smeared it artistically here and there over the case to hide the newness of the thread. Then we wrapped up the parcel again, and soaked the lower end in mud and water. When Lex handled it, the paper would certainly disintegrate and the dirt of the case would need no explanation.

While Sandorski was working on his long task I stood in the corridor, in case Lex should take it into his head to get up and disturb us. He didn’t. He was only too thankful to be able to lie down in peace. I visited him occasionally. At Winchester he stared into the night, and burbled something about King Alfred and Law. He was a well-read blighter.

After Basingstoke, where the line from Salisbury joined that from Southampton, we were–potentially, at any rate –in danger again. I felt it was slight. To the police, after checking the likely trains, it must appear that we were still in or around Salisbury. It was certain, however, that there would be a routine control at Waterloo. I wanted to leave the train at one of the suburban stations, but Sandorski wouldn’t have it; he feared that, as the only passengers getting out, we should attract attention.

Three quarters of our job, he said, was now done. Lex had his briefcase and papers seemingly intact, and so long as he kept away from us there was nothing to prevent him from leaving the terminus and taking a taxi to 26 Fulham Park Avenue. The police had no description of him. What happened to us didn’t matter much, but it would be more comfortable and discreet to be arrested in Fulham Park Avenue than elsewhere.

We woke up Lex, who was feeling brighter, and Sandorski gave him instructions in rapid German, which he translated to me afterwards. Early in the morning Lex was to telephone Heyne-Hassingham and tell him that he had escaped during some trouble or other at the landing of the plane, which looked like an attempt to kidnap him. He had got clear, had spent the day in a village, lying low and finding out where he was, and had then taken a late train to London. He was to obey his instructions to hand over his briefcase to Heyne-Hassingham in person, and he was to ask Heyne-Hassingham to come to London to receive it. He was not to talk of his adventures or to mention his address on the telephone, but simply to say he was where he had been told to go in any emergency.

The train pulled into Waterloo. We pushed Lex out onto the platform, and said goodby. Then we hid under the seats, feeling unnecessarily cowardly. It was wiser, however, to reach Sandorski’s friend Roland, if we could, without a chance of police or Hiart or Hiart’s agents intervening.

We stayed under the seats for about twenty minutes while the train was trundled out, and banged back and forth in the yards. It stopped at one or two unpromising places, where we were in a blaze of lights and suspended above South London on arches. We didn’t like the look of them, and remained. Then an army of cleaners swarmed over our train.

“Quick! Sleep!” Sandorski ordered.

He pulled the cork out of the rum, and dropped the bottle on the floor. We lay back snoring. A fearsome female, all dirt, muscles and overalls, poked us with the end of her broom.

” ‘Ere!” she exclaimed. “Look what ‘appened to the drop you were tykin’ ‘ome for muvver!”

“Where are we?” I murmured, with a stage hiccup.

“On the bleedin’ British Rylewyes,” she said. “And don’t think because you own ‘em, you can myke ‘em a bleedin’ ‘otel.”

We staggered to our feet, and I’m damned if Sandorski didn’t try to kiss her. That got him altogether too much good will, and if some kind of official hadn’t come along I doubt if anything would have saved him from a fate worse than death right there in the compartment. The official was sternly humorous. He was evidently quite accustomed to finding bits of rubbish like ourselves routed out by cleaners from late trains. He collected our tickets, escorted us firmly to a gate and left us free in London.

It was dark and cold and raining. Somewhere near Vauxhall Bridge we found a taxi, and told the driver to take us to Fulham Park Avenue and stop at the corner. He seemed to know what corner, so I left it at that. The empty, mournful streets were unending. I hoped the children were asleep. I knew Cecily wouldn’t be.

“Now look here, Colonel, my lad!” said Sandorski. “You leave it all to me. Not a word about Riemann! You’ve just been helping me. I picked you up on your shoot. Thought you were obviously a useful chap. We don’t know anything about the corpse in the car. Leave him out altogether. Tell the rest as it happened.”

No. 26 was an unassuming block of flats, three stories high. No lift. No porter. Just the place for quiet comings and goings with no questions asked. As we hesitated invitingly in front of the closed door, I thought I saw somebody in the wet and gleaming patch of darkness across the road flash a torch quickly towards the roof of No. 26. Sandorski waited, confident in his friend’s arrangements.

The front door opened quietly.

“Well, Peter?” whispered a voice. “Got here after all, by Jove!”

“Anyone come in?” Sandorski asked.

“Yes. He’s up there.”

“With parcel?”

“With parcel.”

“Then you won’t have anything to do till morning. Take us where we can talk.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said the voice. “It’s cold up there on the water tank.”

Two men came out of the house and closed the door behind them. We all walked away together. The chap next to Sandorski was slim and fair. In dark sweater and wind-breaker, with a disreputable hat, he looked much like my idea of an enterprising burglar. His walk and bearing, however, were free and casual. The man as my side–and very close to my side he was–had a conventional hat and overcoat. His face was heavy but intelligent–and, at the moment, remarkably expressionless. We walked to the police car, which was parked some distance away, in an embarrassing silence. When we got there, my companion asked me if I were Colonel Taine.

“Mr. Taine,” I corrected him.

“I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder of a person unknown–” and he gave me the details and the usual caution.

I don’t mind saying that his neutral, even kindly voice moved me to a sheer panic such as I’ve never felt in all my life.

“You can take down any damn thing you please in evidence against us,” interrupted Sandorski cheerfully. “Got a sharp pencil–ha?”

“Peter,” the other man said to him with the utmost seriousness, “you do understand that if you have broken the law I can’t help you, don’t you?”

“Haven’t even hit a policeman,” Sandorski replied. “Get on with it! Where can we talk?”

“Why not my flat–if you’ve no objection, Inspector?”

I think that perhaps this friend of Sandorski’s–and now of mine–would prefer me not to give his name and address. So I will continue to call him Roland, and merely say that his flat was warm and welcome–especially when he had produced something to eat from the icebox. The policeman was Inspector Haldon of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.

Sandorski told our story. He said that he had come to England on information received, and left it at that. He had run into me when exploring the shoot, and I had agreed to help him. We had found the beacons and intercepted the plane, and we knew nothing at all about the body in the car. Then he told them of the international connections of the People’s Union, and that it was Robert Heyne-Hassingham and Hiart who had organized the illicit landing.

Roland was at first inclined to think that Sandorski was romanticizing. He said that nobody could be such a fool as to take the People’s Union seriously, not even its founder; and he was horrified at the suggestion that Hiart, who was almost a colleague of his, could be implicated.

He appealed to Inspector Haldon, who grinned in answer.

“I must admit, sir,” he said, “that Colonel Hiart–well, it has been suggested that he was rather too thick with some of his opposite numbers abroad. We keep an open mind, of course, but–”

”Good God, Haldon!” Roland exclaimed, really shocked. “Do you watch me too?”

“Fatherly, sir, fatherly,” said the inspector. “Now General, I understand that you telephoned Mr. Roland last night to wire Flat 9 for sound in order that you could prove your innocence and Mr. Taine’s. What are we going to hear?”

“You are going to hear that courier speak to Heyne-Hassingham, and I hope you’re going to hear him hand over the documents.”

Then Sandorski told him what the documents were.

“Now you see why we ran for it–ha? If Hiart had got his hands on that briefcase, it soon would have gone up in smoke, wouldn’t it? And if the police had it first, he’d have sworn the papers were forged by a mad Pole. Crazy general. Brains removed for experiment in prison camp. Lands planes. Burns cars. And the passenger, so that he can’t talk–ha? I’d have had a hard time proving it wasn’t so. I may have, still. I’m not sure Heyne-Hassingham will come. He might send Hiart.”

“He won’t do that,” said Roland. “Hiart’s in hospital.”

“Pink shot him?”

“Good Lord, Peter, this is England! He fractured his skull when his car tipped over.”

“Now this is all very well, sir,” said the inspector genially. “But what we want to know is if General Sandorski can throw any light at all on that burned body.”

“I? Didn’t know a thing about it till the cops called on Taine.”

“Or you, Mr. Taine?”

“No,” I said, “no … no.”

“Would it surprise you to know that the man had been dead some weeks before he was burned?”

“It would delight me,” said Sandorski. “Here’s my passport! You can see I wasn’t in England.”

“And Mr. Taine?”

“It’s only a week since I met the general,” I replied, as if that fixed it.

Well of course it did. My life was an open book. Haldon must have been wholly content that I had no conceivable motive to go around murdering strangers until Sandorski turned up.

“By the way,” the inspector asked, “what did you do with Mr. Bear’s limousine? We’d better get hold of that before there is any trouble about it.”

“Left it at Salisbury.”

“Then youdidcome by train?”

“Sure we did,” said Sandorski. “Why not? Give your chaps a lecture any time you like, Inspector. Hints and Tips on Train Control.”

Roland let us camp in his flat, while he and Haldon returned to duty at 26 Fulham Park Avenue. The inspector didn’t exactly put us on parole, but he did warn us that he had a man outside, and that we couldn’t avoid publicity and a magistrate’s court if we tried to escape. As soon as they had gone, I tried to call Cecily. Only after sweating with fury did I remember that twelve hours before Sandorski had cut the line.

I thought that our excitement and exhaustion were too insistent for sleep but some time after dawn we must both have dozed off, for we were awakened by Roland returning with the news that it was eleven o’clock and that he had a transcript of the telephone conversation between Lex and Heyne-Hassingham.