Pursuit of a Parcel (27 page)

He got no farther than that with her. She went on saying it, and when he came to shouting his questions and thrusting his big white face to hers, she stopped answering at all and slipped into a faint.

Her pallor frightened him, and he called Ina Long.

“Get her round! Give her brandy—anything you've got!”

Ina looked at him sideways like an animal that would snap if it dared.

“She doesn't want brandy—she wants food, and to be let alone till she's got over the shock. What are you in such a hurry for? You can't do anything until it's dark.…”

The afternoon was of an interminable length. Jimmy Nash found a bottle of whisky and drank a good deal of it. A remonstrance evoked a Jimmy whom Barend did not know, a Jimmy fed to the teeth and ripe for mutiny and desertion. Threats fell off him like water off a duck's back. He wanted whisky and he was going to have it, and if he couldn't get it he'd just as soon be dead. All this ornamented with some very fancy language. He got his whisky, because the one thing Barend could not afford was a row. People had the most extraordinarily quick ears for a row. A shout, a scream, a bit of furniture knocked over, and some miserable errand-boy, some meddling old woman, would go away with the story that there was something wrong at The Acacias.

The telephone bell rang a good deal. Barend made Ina Long answer it. By standing at her elbow he could catch what was said. He could even feel a faint amusement at her nervous discomfort.

The calls were monotonously alike. Dr. Long appeared to be a popular young man. Everyone wanted to know how he was. “I'm sure he's been quite a hero,” and, “He's getting on well? You must have been terribly worried. Don't overdo it. He will want you when he gets out of hospital.”

There had been three like that, but when the bell rang for the fourth time there was a man's voice asking, “Can you take a message for my friend Mr. Brown? Is he perhaps at your house?”

Barend snatched the receiver from Ina's hand. He nodded towards the door, and she went out, shutting it behind her, and then stood against it listening. What were they going to do now? First the car, then the house, and now the telephone. Ernest would be ruined, and it would be she who had ruined him. There wasn't anything she could do—that was the dreadful part. If she slipped out of the house now, it wouldn't save him. She could run in next door and telephone to the police. It would save the girl upstairs, but it wouldn't save Ernest. It would all come out about her helping them, and about the car, and there would be headlines in the papers. Ernest would be ruined, and she would have killed Clara.

She leaned against the door in an agony and listened. Barend was saying,

“The house was bombed. You know that of course—such terrible destruction. Can you perhaps tell me whether the occupants escaped?… Yes, two of them … What—
killed?
That is very unfortunate. It makes my plans very difficult. I do not like to be a burden to my friends, but I must have somewhere to go.” His voice left off.

He heard the man at the other end of the line suppress a vexed exclamation.

“Yes, very unfortunate. Can't you stay where you are until you've finished your business?”

“Not very well.”

“Going all right?”

Barend repeated the same phrase.

“Not very well.”

“You'd better hurry things up. Quite definitely there's nothing in the house. A thorough search has been made without any result.… Yes, of course I'm sure. I don't employ bunglers. If he says there isn't anything there, there isn't, and that's that.”

Barend said, “What do you suggest?”

“Well—let's see—We'd better meet. Same place as last time—say nine o'clock. I shall be alone, but with three of you we shall be just right for a pleasant party.”

“I am to bring the others?”

“Of course, my dear fellow! I wouldn't leave them out for the world.
Au revoir
.”

As the receiver clicked, Ina ran noiselessly back to the stairs. The opening door showed her on the third step from the bottom, apparently coming down. Barend came out, looking at his watch. A quarter to seven.… No use starting for more than an hour yet—say an hour and a half. He had made up his mind to leave Delia alone until then. Get her away from houses, and people, and a sentimental fool like Ina Long, and she could be made to talk easily enough. But not here where you couldn't risk a scream.

“Well, how is she? Have you given her something to eat?”

She gave him that sidelong look again.

“She'll be all right if you leave her alone.”

“Well, I am going to. There is good news for you! And soon after eight o'clock I shall take her away and you will not be troubled any more. Are you not pleased?”

She came right up to him and said in a terrified whisper,

“What are you going to do with her?”

She wasn't looking at him, or she might have been still more terrified. There was the look in his eyes which had frightened Delia, but hers were cast down and half blinded with tears. His hand came down on her shoulder.

“That has nothing to do with you—do you hear? I shall take her away and we shall be gone. You will not see us again—you will not hear of us. You will be quite safe, quite free—as long as you hold your tongue. You can say to yourself that it was a bad dream from which you have waked up. Your husband will come home and all will be well. Unless you are such a foolish woman that you talk. Then you will ruin your sister, who will go to a concentration camp, and your husband, who will lose his practice, and yourself because he will separate himself from you, and you are so fond of him that that will break you up. You do not wish all this ruin, do you? Then you have only to hold your tongue. One word to your husband, to your best friend, and the ruin is there. Do not cry about it afterwards when it is too late. No one will be able to help you then, but now you can help yourself. You can keep back the words that would ruin you. You can be silent, and you can begin by not asking questions. It is your business to feed Miss Merridew and get her strong enough to go with me. I cannot drug her again, so I shall be obliged to put a gag in her mouth. You will tell her this beforehand and advise her not to resist. I do not want her to struggle and perhaps to faint again. Tell her it is just a precaution, and that she must tell us what we want to know and then she will be quite safe.”

Ina jerked up her head and stared at him. Her tears had ceased. She said with a kind of desperate courage,

“Would that be true?”

His face did not change at all. He stared back at her contemptuously. “Why shouldn't it be true?” he said.

Ina Long did as she was told. She went upstairs looking like a ghost. She sat down on the end of the bed and showed Delia a white, frightened face.

“They're going to take you away,” she said in a whisper.

Delia said, “When?”

She had put on her skirt and jumper, and her shoes and stockings. Her big coat lay in a heap on the ottoman. Anyone might think that the other things were still there, concealed by its folds. She had had a good meal and she was feeling a good deal more equal to coping with Barend Roos, and quite, quite determined not to tell him anything that he wanted to know. She looked at Ina with young impatience. Gosh—what a dreep! Why didn't she do something instead of going down the drain?

Ina sniffed miserably and said,

“Some time after eight. It's nearly seven now.”

Delia frowned. There was at least an hour. You could do a lot in an hour. She said,

“What is this place? Are there other houses near?”

Ina looked down at her hands. She had long, pale fingers which moved continually, weaving in and out, twisting. She said in a choked voice, “I can't tell you.”

“Because if there are—”

Ina interrupted her passionately.

“It's no good—I can't do anything!”

“I don't want you to do anything. I only want a chance to get away. You can help me to do that.”

“I can't—I can't!”

Delia leaned right forward and caught at the twisting fingers.

“Do stop saying ‘I can't'! Just think what you'll feel like when they've murdered me and you wake up in the night and you think you might have stopped them. You'll feel like a murderess—anyone would—and when your husband comes home there'll be an awful secret between you always. Do you think you'll be able to stand it?”

Ina shook her head. “No—it would kill me.”

“Then let's have a stab at getting away. You go down and talk to them about something—anything. Get up an argument. Let them think they've got to persuade you. I'll come down after you and get out of a window in front of the house. They're at the back, aren't they? Give me five minutes, and then let them think you've given in. Say you must go back to me. But you won't go upstairs—you'll get out of the window, and we'll get away. See if we don't!”

“No—no—” The words were just a broken murmur. The hands pulled away from Delia. Then in a sharp whisper she said, “He's going to gag you.”

Delia's spine crept. She said, “Nonsense!”

Ina stared at her with pale, miserable eyes.

“He said I was to tell you. He said you mustn't resist, and you must tell them whatever it is they want to know. And then you will be all right.”

“I should be dead,” said Delia in a scornful voice. “The very minute they got what they wanted they'd want to get rid of me. You must see that.”

Ina got up off the bed and backed away from her. When she got to the door she stood there for a moment staring. Then she said, “No—no—they'll let you go. He said they would,” and ran out of the room.

“I might as well expect help from a jellyfish,” Delia told herself. For the moment she was more exasperated than frightened. Before the daylight went she had found out as much about her surroundings and the position of the house as the view from the windows could afford. This room looked upon the garden, a rambling old-fashioned place with a great many trees in it. There was no sign of any other house, and no possibility of climbing out of the window. When she leaned out she could hear the men's voices from the room below.

She slipped into a front bedroom and looked out from there. If there was a road, the house stood back from it and it could not be seen. There was a gravelled drive, more trees, and a great many shrubs. The window was much too high from the ground to make her feel that she would have any chance of reaching it without a broken limb. As to the time-honoured expedient of tearing a sheet into strips and making a knotted rope of the pieces, it was entirely impracticable without Ina Long's connivance, since she was never out of the room for more than five minutes at a time. If Ina did connive, it was quite unnecessary, and it would be so much simpler to walk downstairs and get out of a window on the ground floor.

But now what? Ina was a wash-out. The one and only person she could rely on was Delia Merridew. It was up to Delia Merridew not to get murdered. In the first place because it would be so rotten for Antony, and secondly because—well, because—She put Antony first, but she was prepared to risk Antony and herself for the other reason. But she wasn't prepared just to sit here in bed for seventy crawling minutes until Cornelius came and put a gag in her mouth, and took her away to goodness knew where, and tried to make her tell him something she didn't know. It was a most revolting thought. The only alternative that presented itself was to carry out the plan she had proposed to Ina, but with Ina left out of it.

There wasn't much chance of its succeeding. She faced that. With Ina to shut the consulting-room door and hold the men's attention for five minutes, it would have been a certainity, but without Ina it was about three to one against it coming off. All the same she was bound to try. If Cornelius was planning to start soon after eight, he would be planning to have some sort of meal before he started. The best time for her to try and get away would be as soon as they had gone into the dining-room to have their meal. But that meant she would have to get out at the back. She wouldn't dare risk the other front room just across the hall. The window might creak—

The next half hour was dreadfully long. She kept thinking, “Perhaps I'd better go now,” and, “Why didn't I try it before?” She got as far as the door once and stood there listening. And heard one of the men cross the hall. Ina Long came up every few minutes. The last time she brought a cup of soup. Her face was flushed as if she had been cooking. She said something about men making a lot of work in the house and went out again. Delia thought, “Now they'll be having their supper. She's been cooking it.”

She drank the soup. Then she put on her coat and went to the door again. She opened it and listened. In about five minutes she heard Ina go through to the front of the house. Then she heard her come back and call out to the men, and she heard them all go back across the hall.

She thought, “I'll count a hundred, and then I'll go.” All the time she was counting, her feet and her hands were getting colder and colder. When she said ninety-nine, a stab of fear went through her like a knife. She said one hundred, and came out on the landing in her stocking feet with her shoes in her left hand. The really frightful think was that one of the stairs creaked and she wasn't sure which it was. It was quite near the top, because she had heard it every time anyone went up or down. It might be the second step, the third, or the fourth, or even a little farther down, but not much.

She sat down on the top step and lowered herself sitting to the next. Things don't creak so much if you can spread the weight. The second step was all right. She came down on to the third, and heard it give a muffled creak. The stab went through her again. Had anyone heard it? They couldn't. It was only a ghost of a squeak, and her coat had smothered it.