The Trail of Fear (22 page)

CHAPTER XXIV

SURROUNDED

Rezaire rose to his feet and began to tiptoe silently away from the road. He passed quietly through a bed of flowers and found himself on a lawn on the wet turf of which his feet made no sound. Before him the dark mass of the house loomed up and he turned to the left. He was not quite certain now where the quay side was, except that it was beyond “Joyner's End,” the last house on this road. But as he left the lawn he heard a shout of triumph from the road where the car, slowly backing, had at last brought the handle-bar of his bicycle within its light.

The air instantly seemed full of noise. They must almost have known that they were very close on his tracks. He could hear the rustling of laurel bushes, the scrunch of feet in the drive, Harrison's voice bawling to someone apparently on the main road to come on up, to someone else to take his men on to the far end.

He broke into a run. It was going to be a near thing, for the launch must get away without being noticed. Besides,—a new and horrible fear gripped him,—supposing in their search for him in this neighborhood the police were to find the launch and there lay wait for him?

With this thought uppermost in his mind, he ran on and burst through a hedge into the garden of the next house. Behind him the night was alive with sound—the shouting of men, the baying of dogs belonging to the various houses, the rustle and crack of bushes and twigs. From the various commands he heard, it was evident that some sort of preconcerted plan was being put into action. Bearing to his left he came upon the road once more and seeing that it was deserted he got on to it; for there he could run better, and by now the lights of the car were hidden round a bend further back.

He had run barely a few paces before a slight noise or even some instinct made him swerve aside to the right once again and double himself up in the bushes. He was not a moment too soon, for there overtook him from behind man after man on bicycles. Rezaire lay there and wondered as the dark figures went swiftly and silently by. They did not seem to be searching for him; it was as though they were carrying out some special orders. Scotland Yard had indeed begun to get the situation in hand. There must have been over a score of police and detectives by now searching for him in this small area. Why had they all concentrated? Was it just luck and good work on their part, or was there something behind it? Something that had given them a clue?

The men on the cycles went past—with the exception of the last one who dismounted some distance away and stood there in the shadows. Away to the left he heard a cough and knew that another one was in that direction. He realized then what they were doing. They had drawn a cordon along the road, to prevent him crossing it. He was now hemmed in in the area between the road and the river, which was in places not fifty yards away. At one end of this area, in the direction of Beaulieu, he could hear the moving line of pursuit, gardens being searched, windows being thrown up, altercations, threats, expostulations, in progress. His capture was evidently far more important than damage to gardens.

He began to work himself silently backward into the hedge in which he was crouched. He was halfway through when a twig snapped loudly against his side and he paused, heart in mouth. Footsteps came nearer along the road; a torch flashed; a voice cried: “Who's there?”

Desperately Rezaire gave up the attempt at silence, wriggled backward into another drive, fled away up toward the house, his footsteps loud on the gravel. Shouts again split the air, whistles blew, but, ominous sign, the man who had discovered him did not leave the road upon which he was stationed.

Swerving to the left as he reached the buildings just in front of him, Rezaire darted into a yard under an archway, past a wooden erection like a garage. A dog chained to his kennel suddenly sprang to life a few feet from him, barking furiously. Within the house a Pekinese was also yapping in answer. He sped through the yard, almost ran into the wall of another building, turned, heard renewed barking as someone entered the yard behind him, and plunged wildly into the open doorway of the first outhouse he saw.

He moved swiftly across this in the darkness. The place smelled like a stable or a barn, but he was seeking only to conceal himself when suddenly out of the blackness someone dealt him a blow on the forehead.

For a moment he staggered, hand to head, then hit out wildly—to realize that no human agency had dealt him that blow; he had but run into a post standing upright out of the floor which had come between his outstretched hands. Still slightly dazed he caught hold of it for support and the next moment discovered that it was not a post but a ladder—a ladder leading upward.

Without hesitation—for already above the barking of the dog he could hear the footsteps in the yard outside—he ran up it. Even blacker darkness and a smell of hay greeted him as he crawled over the edge at the top. He guessed he was in a loft of some kind. Remembering how he had got onto the roof in Carlyle's house—ages ago it seemed now—he caught hold of the end of the ladder and tried to draw it up after him. Luckily it was light, and by exerting all his strength he managed to drag it upward bit by bit.

But not without noise. The grating scrape as the ladder passed over the edge sounded very loud in the darkness, but he worked on madly, unheeding. It was better he knew to get the ladder up and let his pursuers wonder what the noise had been, than to leave it there, a glaring notice to point the way he had taken. The last few inches scraped over the edge and the ladder fell with a thump on the thin wooden floor. He lay panting by the edge, peeping over into the black void below—a void that now was suffused with light from the cautious torch of a man who stood in the doorway.

For several minutes the fellow stood there. The beam travelled up and down the walls, along the floor, and up to the roof. Here it hung for a moment poised, as if it were considering, on the black opening to the loft where Rezaire lay, head and shoulders drawn back out of the light. Then it resumed its wandering and finally went out altogether. Rezaire lay quite still. Knowing what he would have done under similar circumstances, he did not move or peer over to see if the man had gone, with the result that he was not caught when a moment later the rays of the torch shot out into the darkness again without warning, this time straight at the opening to the loft. He lay as still as death, the beam of light passing over and above him to fall on a pile of loose hay that lay against the side.

But the other was not yet satisfied. He advanced with his torch right into the building and stood flashing it about in likely hiding places. The dog gave tongue outside once more and another dark figure appeared in the doorway to join him. They stood together for a moment talking in undertones, then Rezaire's quick ears caught the word “loft” and knew that they were suspicious of the place where he lay hid.

“Must be up there,” one of them added at last, in slightly louder tones.

“If you saw anyone at all go in?”

“Ah! I'm not certain of that.”

“Well, where's the ladder? We'll soon see.” They looked round for a bit and, not finding the ladder, conferred once more: “Looks as though he couldn't be there,” replied one.

“How do you make…” began the other, when suddenly he broke off in mid sentence, saying in a quick whisper: “Look!”

There was a dead silence. Rezaire, wondering what on earth it was that had thus suddenly attracted their attention, craned over as far as he could with safety. Below him the men were standing quite still, but he saw that the hand of one pointed to the far end of the building where in the beam of his torch was something that moved.

At first to Rezaire's startled imagination it appeared to be snow, then he realized that it was only dust falling from the roof, the little specks dancing in the rays of the light. Dust falling from a crack in the ceiling, or rather from a crack in the floor of the loft above. For a moment the same processes were at work in the minds of all three men, the two on the ground and Rezaire. Then each realized what that sudden slow movement, which now had almost ceased, meant. There was someone in the loft who, by moving slightly, had sent a shower of dust, hayseeds, meal, and such like, down through the floor into the light of discovery. But while to the two detectives it meant but confirmation of their suspicions, to Rezaire it meant far more. For the dust had fallen from the other end of the loft, away from where he himself lay. It meant that there was someone else in the dark loft with him.

Vaguely he heard the detective say in loud tones: “Well, there doesn't seem to be anyone here,” and go out noisily, but even while he accepted at its true value the ruse, obvious enough to him, who knew they had seen the dust, his brain was busy with the new problem. Who was the other person in the loft? What was he doing up there? A detective? Very improbable. Some person on their lawful occasions? Then why the concealment? A criminal? But what other could there be down here at this particular time? Was it just some chance burglar or pilferer that he had run up against? Rezaire almost laughed as he thought of the bewilderment of the local Bill Sykes on attempting to outwit the village constabulary and finding a score of detectives from Scotland Yard on his heels.

But all these thoughts flashed through his mind in a few seconds, even while he had got quietly to his feet. For he knew he was not safe where he was; the detectives would return shortly with help. He ignored for the moment the unknown in the loft with him, and, moving quickly and silently, began to explore his end of the loft for some way out other than the dangerous one of descending the ladder.

Half-way he stopped dead as his practised ears caught the sound of movement at the far end. He stayed still listening intently, and heard a scraping sound, repeated once or twice. He moved up closer. He was not afraid. Who ever this strange personage might be they had this much in common, they were both evidently trying to avoid meeting the police. He moved cautiously toward the sound, and rounding a pile of hay saw the faint outline of a patch of sky, some aperture looking out into the night.

The patch seemed to move and waver, and he then realized what was happening. Something was partially obscuring it, moving in front of it. Then it was clear once more and he heard the scraping again much fainter. In a flash it came to him what had happened. The unknown had found the way out for which he had been looking, had got out of the small opening and was now getting away down the outside in some fashion. He tiptoed quickly to the aperture and looked out. There just by the small opening was a water spout or pipe or some other method of getting to the ground, and halfway down it was a dark figure silently descending.

He wondered again who it could possibly be, then suddenly his hearing was caught away to the other direction by a faint sound in the bam below. There were men there again; perhaps they had got a ladder from somewhere; he must be quick.

He swung himself out and onto the descent which, proving to be the projecting beams and uprights of the barn, was much easier than he had at first imagined. He could not now see the other figure that had preceded him. It had reached the bottom and gone off into the night, and Rezaire forgot at once about it in the more urgent matter of his own escape, as the lion ignores the jackal caught in the same net.

He reached the ground in safety, stole through some bushes and emerged into a well-kept garden at the far side of the house. The moonlight gleamed on a smooth lawn, on trellised archways and stone walls, paved winding pathways and long flower beds, all silver under the beams. Away out on the far side he thought he once more caught a glimpse of the shadowy figure that had been in the loft with him, and wondered what on earth the fellow, whoever he was, was doing. He hoped and prayed fervently that this unknown would not find the launch or, by inadvertently leading the police to it, give away his own escape. An idea flashed across his mind that perhaps he might turn the presence of the newcomer to account. The fellow might, in fact, be the saving of him by attracting the attention of the police while he got away. For the police were only after one person and did not know there were two somewhere in their trap. Then a movement behind him at once recalled his thoughts. Someone was approaching through the bushes at his back. Further, he could now distinctly hear others in the loft he had left, where soon they would discover his absence.

He moved on into the garden and sped across a short length of lawn to a bed of shrubs, where he crouched down. A man came to the edge of the bushes behind him and stood looking out silently over the garden. A moment later another appeared visible in the moonlight to his right. Behind them, standing up dark against the sky, Rezaire could see the house and outbuildings that he had just left. He realized with a sudden thrill of joy that he was now very near safety, for that house was the last on the road and was therefore the house called “Joyner's End,” near which somewhere was the quay. But where exactly he did not at the moment know, for he had rather lost his bearings. He decided that the best thing to do would be to get down to the riverside and work along it till he came to the quay, and there lie in wait for a suitable opportunity. For he knew well enough that he could not get away in the launch in a moment of time. If he only escaped by the skin of his teeth it would give the police an opportunity of perhaps stopping him elsewhere. Inconsequently he thought of the sea journey to the Channel Islands in the small boat and realized, now that he had run it so close, how much he had been dependent on good weather.

He began to move slowly along the bed of shrubs till he reached the end. Here he paused and looked back. He could not now make out the two figures he had seen in the bushes, but he knew that they were there, still watching, probably joined by others. He dared not get up and run, for the garden was full of moonlight and an upright moving figure would be noticed at once. He left the actual shelter of the shrubs, but still, he hoped, concealed by them from actual vision, and began to crawl across another piece of lawn, wondering whether he would be seen.