She Fell Among Thieves (18 page)

‘I rather imagine,’ said I, ‘you’d have done the same. Half Biarritz was crossing the frontier that afternoon. There was a queue before me of fifty or sixty cars. And those that were touring on
triptiques
were being turned aside and made to wait to the last, while those on passes went through. I didn’t take long to decide. I left my man with the car, crossed the road to a garage and paid them to make out a pass.’

‘How long did you stay at Burgos?’

I touched my head.

‘I don’t feel like addition this morning, so perhaps you will work it out. I stayed two nights at Bayonne, but I haven’t been anywhere else.’

‘I suggest that you have.’

‘I daresay you do,’ said I. ‘But I can’t help that.’

‘This manner won’t help you, Mr Chandos.’

‘It is perfectly clear that nothing will help me, madam – except a full confession of something I haven’t done.’

I am glad to record that that shook her. With the tail of my eye I could see the knit of her brows, and, after a little, a hand stole up to her chin.

Then –

‘Do you know the country about here?’

‘I know the country,’ said I, ‘which lies between here and Bayonne.’

‘More to the south.’

‘I’ve been over the Col de Fer.’

‘I know. And so to Gobbo, and there turned north for Bayonne. What I–’

‘As a matter of fact, I turned at Lally,’ I said.

‘Why at Lally, instead of Gobbo? Most people turn at Gobbo, if they’re
en route
for Bayonne.’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘It’s of no importance,’ I said, ‘but I think you’ve got the towns mixed. Gobbo lies west of Lally, about five miles.’

‘Would you like to bet, Mr Chandos?’

I shook my head.

‘That’s as well,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘You see, I know you’re right.
But if you turned north at Lally, how do you know?
’

I had walked clean into the trap. The only thing to do was to brazen it out.

‘I can only suppose,’ said I, ‘that I know from the map.’

‘Haven’t you been to Gobbo?’

‘No.’

‘Yet you know its name: and you know it’s five miles from Lally, travelling west. Can you tell me as much of any other town – that does not lie on the road from here to Bayonne?’

‘I don’t know that I can,’ said I. ‘But Gobbo’s a curious name. I suppose it stuck in my mind.’

‘Like the distance and the direction? Well, well…’ She rose to her feet. ‘I suppose you didn’t notice that Gobbo would have lain on your road, if you had been travelling south.’

I stood up straight.

‘Madam,’ said I, ‘I am sick of supposition. For all I knew you can go to hell through Gobbo. Well…what if you can?’

‘Only this,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘You’d be going out of your way. You don’t have to go by Gobbo…to get to hell…from Jezreel.’

With that, she turned and left me: and the door of the chamber was shut.

I think I could fill up a book with the many meditations to which I gave myself up for the next two hours: but since they may be imagined, I will do no more than report that one and all pointed to misfortune and some to catastrophe.

That my days were numbered was clear: so far as I was concerned, Vanity Fair had stepped over the safety line: though she were to find me guiltless, she simply could not afford to let me live. Virginia would go to pieces: the shock of her brutal betrayal would break her down. Mansel was presently doomed: when he learned that I was not at Anise, he would instantly seek to unearth me – at any cost: his attempt must needs unmask him, and Vanity Fair would award him a traitor’s end. And Jenny would be left high and dry, to make what she could of life – and to find it a broken dream, that no one could ever mend. But one thing, at least, I was spared, and that was the contemplation of heart-ache to come.
What is love? ’Tis not hereafter
… Jenny might have come into my life, but her tenancy did not matter – because the head lease was up.

Soon after noon Lafone appeared with some luncheon, and when I had eaten, I made up my mind to rest: in spite of all my troubles I slept very well for four hours: and I think I might have slept longer, but for the slam of my door: but that, no doubt, was Lafone’s idea of attention, for when I sat up I saw some tea by my side.

No doubt my sleep refreshed me, for whilst I was taking my tea the thought came into my head that though things were desperate enough, something might be saved from the wreck if only I could escape.
Something
?
All
could be saved…

At once I began to consider this most forlorn of all hopes and, for what it is worth, I will say how I went to work.

I remembered the famous Jack Sheppard and how that great-hearted man had escaped from ‘the Castle’ in Newgate, the strongest ward in the jail. Five doors had barred his passage, and he had reduced them all – and that, with irons on his legs…

Again I inspected my bonds. They might, I thought, be broken: but that I dared not attempt until it was dark. I then regarded my prison, inch by inch. Fireplace there was none. The ceiling, like the walls, was of stone. The door looked immensely strong, and the plate which accepted its lock was clearly outside the chamber – an ugly thought. The window remained – the window I could not reach.

The afternoon sunshine showed me that the window faced south by east, and that meant that a man, leaning out, would find the terrace below him, perhaps some sixty feet down. Had the window faced north, a man, leaning out, would have found the roof below him – the steep-pitched roof of Jezreel. And the roof would be twenty feet down – perhaps twenty-five. And then there were dormer windows… But the window did not face north.

I asked myself what I should do if the tower was afire…

Then and there I decided that, once I had burst my bonds, I should let myself down by my sheets and do my best to swing myself on to the roof. I doubted that this would receive me, because the pitch was so steep: but, if it did, I should try to reach one of the dormers and so climb into a room.

And there I let my exercise go, for the thought of such a venture made the palms of my hands grow wet. For all that, I knew in my heart that Jack Sheppard would have escaped – and have gone that way.

It was not until seven o’clock that once more the shutter was drawn and Lafone looked into the cell. I supposed she had come with my dinner, but when the door was opened, it was Vanity Fair who appeared.

I shall always remember that moment – against my will.

She stood still as death in the doorway, while the door behind her was shut, and she made me think of some effigy, set in a niche in the wall. She was dressed, as always, in black and was holding one hand to her breast, while the other hung down by her side: since the oak behind her was dark and her little hood of black silk was hiding her hair, her face and her hands stood out in most sharp relief and might indeed have been waxen, they looked so pale. There was no denying her beauty, which, thus presented, seemed to have flouted age, and a smile that might have been Jenny’s hung on her parted lips. But the light in her eyes was not Jenny’s… I can only describe it as lazy – a lazy light. But a child could have read its meaning. The moment I saw it, I knew that the game was up.

‘I knew I was right,’ she said quietly. ‘The very first moment I saw you, I knew I was right.’

I made no answer, but only got to my feet.

‘Forgery, murder, abduction. If I chain you up, Mr Chandos, I don’t think you can complain.’

‘Have it your own way,’ said I.

‘I think that goes without saying,’ said Vanity Fair.

There was a little silence.

Then –

‘I’ve not come to ask questions,’ she said: ‘but I gave you some news this morning, and now I’ve come to give you some further news. It’s not very good news, Mr Chandos – from your point of view: but somehow or other I don’t think you’ll find it dull.

‘Marc left Jezreel in your car at a quarter to eight. His orders were to drive south, to berth the car near Carlos and leave her there. So he went by way of Gobbo – I think, though you’ve never been there, you know where that is. It was market-day in Gobbo, and Marc had to stop at the crossroads to let some cattle go by: and whilst he was sitting, waiting,
a gendarme touched his hat and gave him good day
.’

She paused, but I dared say nothing. I could not trust my voice.

‘Now Marc is no fool: and so he improved the acquaintance so unexpectedly made. “Out of the eater,” you know…

‘“You don’t know me,” said the gendarme, “but I know you.”

‘“Who am I?” said Marc, for he thought he might as well know.

‘“You’re the cousin of Mr Chandos and you’re driving his car.”

‘“Quite right,” said Marc, “but how on earth did you know?”

‘The gendarme told him, Mr Chandos…told Marc how he knew. And then – he – asked – after –
Miss
Chandos…the beautiful, delicate girl…who was sitting by the road to Carlos at four o’clock in the morning on Tuesday last…’

Though I knew her consumed with fury, her voice was gentle and steady as never before: and because it was so unnatural, I found this self-possession most hard to bear. Some string within me was taut: and every sentence she uttered strained it a little tighter… I almost prayed for an explosion. Such tension clawed at the nerves.

‘Well, Marc went on. And left the car by Carlos, as he had been told to do. But before he left her, he searched her – I told you the man was no fool. He found a document… Yes, I thought that that would surprise you. You left no document there.
But the garage did
, Mr Chandos. The
Garage
Central
at Anise – a little village, I think, some seventy miles from Bordeaux…

‘It was a bill for work done. If the bill is honest, they drained the oil from your engine and put in new. And they did it on Wednesday last…the day after you ran through Gobbo…you and your beautiful sister… And it gives your address, Mr Chandos.
The Black Lamb Hotel
, Anise…’

That I stood like a rock was natural. I was petrified with horror. The expression is literally true. Had the heaven itself fallen down, I could not have moved.

Vanity Fair nodded.

‘You have my sympathy. It must be extremely galling to see your achievement demolished because some clerk was too lazy to cross the road. Never mind. I’ve nearly done now. And I’ve no more surprises to spring, for the action I’ve taken is the action which you would have taken if you had been in my place.

‘Marc telephoned from Carlos. In view of his news, I told him to take your car and meet me at Maleton at four this afternoon. There he changed into clothes which I brought him, and at five o’clock he left in your car for Anise, bearing a note to your servant –
as a few days ago a note was borne to my servant…up in the hills
.

‘The note was written by Acorn – with the postcard you sent me from Burgos, he couldn’t go wrong. All the same he did it so well that I asked him to make me a copy. To tell you the truth, when he’d done so, I didn’t know which to send. I mean, they were both perfect – and if you’ll allow me to say so, much better than yours.’

She took the hand from her breast and I saw that it held a paper, folded again and again. She opened it carefully. Then she stepped forward and gave it into my hand.

I stared at my own handwriting.

Bell,

Bring Miss Jenny at once to Bayonne. Drop the bearer of this note at Bordeaux.

R C

Vanity Fair was speaking.

‘In a sense it’s a bow at a venture. But if Bell is at Anise, I think he’ll do as you say. At least, he’ll set out to do so – and, you know, it’s the effort that counts.

‘And now I must go. I’m afraid you’ll have to dine early, for Lafone has a journey to take and she wants to be off. She – has – to – get – a – room – ready…ready by dawn, Mr Chandos…a room at a house in the hills…

‘And so, good night. I will report progress tomorrow. If you try very hard I think you might break your chain. But I don’t think you’ll open that door. Of course, there’s always the window. But if you lean out, I think you’ll reject that way. And I shouldn’t call for assistance. The last man who called for assistance suffered terribly before he died.’

She turned and left me standing: and almost at once Lafone came in with my meal. And then she left me, still standing: and I had the cell to myself.

The castle clock roused me by chiming a quarter to eight, and I found myself still standing and still regarding the doorway where Vanity Fair had stood.

I sat down on my pallet and put my head in my hands.

‘She has to get a room ready…a room at a house in the hills.’

I could see that room – that hold. I could see the strength of its walls, its inaccessible window, the weight of its ponderous door. And the vision tore at my heart. The beautiful singing-bird had had a fine cage – of which we had opened the door, to let it go free: and now that it had tasted freedom, it was to be taken again and kept in a box. ‘And the last state of that man was worse than the first.’

I can think of no office more dreadful than to condemn to misery someone to gladden whom you are ready to sell your soul: and I think in the next ten minutes I aged ten months.

At last I looked up, to see on the stone before me the paper which I had let fall.

Bring Miss Jenny at once to Bayonne. Drop the bearer of this note at Bordeaux.

The hag was damnably clever. Suspicious as Bell would be, he would see slight danger in taking his charge to Bayonne; while the order to drop Marc at Bordeaux would make him dissociate Marc from the Château Jezreel. He had, of course, never seen him. When first I had stayed at the castle, Marc was not there.

The castle clock struck again.

Idly I regarded my watch.

Marc was not yet at Anise. He could hardly be there before ten. If they left at half-past ten, the Rolls could be at Carlos by four tomorrow morning, but not before. And now it was eight.

Instinctively I turned to the window.

The light was failing. Any moment dusk would come in. To attempt to escape by that way might well be hopeless: but it would be hopeless, unless I could determine by daylight the line I must take in the dark. If night were to fall before I had made my survey, the chance which might be there would pass out of my reach and would only return with the daylight –
at four tomorrow morning…when Marc was nearing Carlos
, with the singing-bird in his hand.

With trembling fingers I put my tray aside and turned to the instant business of breaking my chain.

Though the cuff lay close to my ankle, it was not tight, and by turning up the leg of my trousers I was able to lay a second thickness of flannel between the steel and my flesh. In other words, I turned up one leg of my trousers four inches instead of two, taking care to keep all the flannel within the cuff. I then took the slices of beef which lay on a dish on the tray and stuffed them into the ‘turn-up’, to make a still thicker cushion between the steel and my flesh. Then I sat down on my pallet and slowly turned head over heels.

By the time I had completed six somersaults, the chain, which could not turn with me, had shrunk to one half of its length: and when I had turned four more, its links were so locked together that it was almost rigid and less resembled a chain than a strangely distorted bar. I set out to turn my last somersault.

This I could not complete, for the chain was now too short to allow my leg to descend, and I lay on my back on the pallet with my right leg perhaps ten inches up in the air. Luck, of course, had been with me: by contracting so far, but no further, the chain had played into my hands.

I swung my right leg forward, well over my head. Then I brought it back like a flail, as hard as ever I could.

For an instant I thought that I had broken the bone, for I heard a snap, and a stab of pain, like a flame, ran up to my knee. Then I knew that the chain was broken, and when I got to my feet, my leg felt stiff and sore, but no more than that.

Swiftly I stepped to the window, pushed the casement open and put out my head…

The sill of the window was low, and I do not like heights. I recoiled instinctively. Then I took a firm grip of the stone-work and looked out again.

I was at least eighty feet up: directly below me the balustrade of the terrace was joining the wall of the tower: since the terrace was twenty feet wide, I was exactly that distance from the edge of the roof of the house: this edge was well below me – I made out, about forty feet: though this did not appear from within, the tower was octagonal, and my window was in the third face, if you count from the wall of the house: the sill of my window projected a short two inches beyond the face of the tower, and I saw no other projection of any kind.

I sat back on my heels and wiped the sweat from my face.

Vanity Fair was right, and I was wrong. I had thought the tower less high and my outlook more to the east. Sheets or trapese, only an ape could have leaped to the roof from my window. The bare thought of such a venture made me feel weak at the knees.

I lifted my head.

The shadows were falling now. I could see a long slice of the valley, but after a little its lovely detail was blurred. And the hanging forests beside it were losing their dainty colours and melting into a bulwark that served to make up a skyline, but nothing more. Very soon there would be nothing to see but the folds in the curtains of darkness made by the topless hills.

I remembered the night when out of my tribulation I stumbled upon the pathway which led to the
Cirque des Morts
: I saw Jean plodding before me and the rugged face of the country slowly shaping beneath the pencil of dawn: I saw the smile of the pleasance and the immemorial magic of sun and dew: and I saw a straight, girlish figure, standing ready to plunge, by the side of a pool…

With a groan of desperation, I put my head out of the casement, to measure once more a chance too slight to be measured, because it did not exist.

I shall never forget the masonry of that tower. Inch by inch I scanned it with hungry eyes – for anything that a desperate man could lay hold on, for anything that could raise a hope that was dead. And I scanned it in vain. It presented no handhold at all, within or out of my reach.

Frantically, I tried to look upward, craning my neck.

And then I saw the drip-course…

I drew in my head, turned on to my back and put out my head again.

I give it the name of drip-course, for that was what it appeared: but it may have been just decoration intended to please the eye. In fact it was a stone ledge, protruding at least two inches from the face of the tower. That it ran right round the tower, there could be no doubt. The tower was roofed with a conical cap of slates, and there were no eaves and no gutter that I could see: and the drip-course lay just midway between the first of the slates and my window-sill.

Carefully, I measured the distance – and found it near seven feet up.

I drew myself into my cell and sat up on the window-seat.

I had discovered a handhold which was within my reach. Once my hands were upon it, if I had the strength to hold on, I could shuffle my way round the tower until I hung over the junction of the tower with the roof of Jezreel. (I think I have said before that the tower rose out of the roof, as a chimney-stack which is built half within the house and half without.) The further I could shuffle, because of the pitch of the roof, the less would be the distance which I should have to fall and the safer would be my landing upon the slates. In a word, if Fortune were ready to help me from first to last, the drip-course offered a definite chance of escape.

If Fortune were ready to help me…

The protasis was vital. I could not see the top of the ledge, and a drip-course is sometimes loaded – with a slant of mortar, sloping away from the wall. In that case there was no handhold… Then again, I am no feather-weight, and unless I could make good progress, I could not hold on until I was over the roof. And when I let myself go, even though I fell on the saddle between the tower and the roof, a twenty-feet fall is no joke for a heavy man.

I had found a possible way: but I liked that way so little that there and then I got up and examined the door. But that, of course, was hopeless. Jack Sheppard could never have forced it without his bar.

There was nothing for it but the drip-course. And since it was growing dark, and since the peril was such that the longer one stared upon it the fouler it seemed, I made my preparations to brave it at once.

Not to make any bones about it, my case was this. If I stayed where I was in my cell, the game was lost. Jenny, Virginia, Mansel – all three were doomed. And I should very soon die at the hands of Vanity Fair. If I could make good my escape, the four of us might be saved. If I sought to escape – and failed, we were no worse off than before. In a word, I had nothing to lose – not even my life.

But I must be fair to myself. I have not a head for heights. And had I been free and a beggar, I would not have essayed to reach the roof by that drip-course though my success was to make me a millionaire.

One thing I was spared, and that was any fear of being disturbed. When Lafone had brought my dinner, she had taken up the linen and put it within my reach – a gesture which made it clear that I was to make my own bed, and, as there was no lamp in the room, I had no doubt at all that I was to be left to myself until the next day. There was, of course, always the grill: but though Vanity Fair might think it worth while to make sure that her prisoner was safe, I did not think she would do so till just before she retired.

The chain, as luck would have it, had broken quite close to my cuff, so at least I was not to be plagued by a length of loose links: but before I did anything else, I plucked the beef out of my trousers and slid the cuff into its room.

Then I turned to the wash-stand. This something resembled a tripod and was made of enamelled iron. I stripped it of basin and slop-pail, carried the frame to the window and laid it across the recess. Then I took one of my sheets and fastened one end to the wash-stand, drawing the knots as tight as ever I could.

Except that I drank some water, I made no more preparation – because there was none I could make: it is, of course, the unhappy lot of a captive who means to break out, that however shocking the risks his escape will entail, his precautions must be so makeshift as scarce to deserve that name.

For the twentieth time I wiped the sweat from my hands: then I took my seat on the wash-stand, now on its side, and leaned back slowly on to the window-seat.

Holding fast to the sheet, I worked my way gradually forward until my head and shoulders were out in the air. And there I rested a moment, to measure once more my distance and judge as well as I could the movements I had to make.

The casement was three feet high, and my plan was this – to pass backwards out of the casement and then stand up on the sill: still holding the sheet with my left hand, I could then put up my right and take hold of the ledge: and when I had hold of the ledge, I could let the sheet go.

But for the fall of night, to this day I do not believe that I should have made the attempt: but the light was now so dim that the ledge itself was only just to be seen, and since, if I was to go, I must go at once, I sat up without more delay and, bending well forward, began to project myself backwards out of the tower.

(Here, perhaps, I should say that, since I knew where the ledge was, whether or not I could see it was really of no account: for all that, I am perfectly sure that, so foolish and weak is the flesh, nothing on earth would have got me out of that casement, when once it was dark.)

As I thrust myself out of the tower I gradually pulled myself up by means of the sheet, and a moment later I was standing on the sill of the window with all of my body outside and my face to the wall. Holding fast to the sheet with my left hand, I put up my right, but I was trembling so much that I had to bring it back to the sheet and to wait for a moment or two until my nerve had come back.

It goes without saying, of course, that I was streaming with sweat, and I now was beset with a fear that the slippery state of my hands would betray the most resolute grip. And that made me sweat the more… Indeed, my condition was piteous. But at last the attack died down, and again I put up my hand.

I did not look up, for my face was against the wall, but my fingers encountered the ledge and then crept up to its top… With an effort I got them upon it – another inch and it would have been out of my reach… Slowly I pushed them on till their tips were against the tower…and then I took hold.

I shall never forget that moment.

The ledge was not a drip-course. It was a little stone gutter, more or less choked with dirt which the rain of the night before had made into mud.

I have often thought since – and Mansel agrees with me – that had it not been a gutter, but only a ledge, my fingers must have slipped off it before I had reached the roof. Be that as it may, from the moment I found it a gutter, I knew no more fear. Indeed, to be honest, I could have shouted and sung – and laughed at the depths below me because they had lost their sting.

Such jubilation was natural. From the time that I saw the ledge, it had been a question of handhold and nothing else. Any fool can hold on to a gutter… But I had not dreamed of such luck. Who would ever expect a gutter six feet from the top of a wall?

I must have let go the sheet and put up my other hand, but those things I did without thinking, for the next thing that I remember was finding half a slate in the gutter and pitching it into the meadows out of my way.

I think that will show the confidence which I had found. It was out of reason, of course. I was doing a dangerous thing. But it saw me through my gauntlet: and I moved two feet at a time until I judged I was hanging above the saddle – that is to say, the centre of the junction of the tower with the roof of Jezreel.

It was by now so dark that, except for outlines, I could see nothing at all. I could see the shape of the tower where it stood up against the sky, and turning my head, I could see the line of the ridge-pole that held up the roof of Jezreel. But I could not see what was below me. I judged that the saddle was roughly twenty feet down: I assumed that some sort of gully would lie between the tower and the roof: but judgment and assumption alike were really no more than guesswork, and indeed, for all I knew, I was not hanging above the saddle at all.