Dead or Alive (30 page)

“Meg,” he called—“Meg! My dear, are you there?”

Bill felt completely flabbergasted. He said in a low, astonished voice.

“Professor—is that you?”

Henry Postlethwaite stepped back, picking up the lantern and raising it above his head.

“My dear Bill! What a surprise—an exceedingly pleasant surprise! How did you come here? And is Meg with you? We are in some concern about her. The chauffeur, foolish fellow, is unfortunately the worse for drink, and I am afraid he frightened her just now. Will you tell her I am here, and that there is no cause for alarm?”

Meg's hand fell gently on Bill's shoulder. She put her lips to his ear, whispered “It isn't Uncle Henry—it's the Cannock—I watched her making up,” and was gone again.

Bill followed her.

“Do you mean it isn't the Professor? Meg—are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure! I watched her—stuff out of a bottle, and a wig, and a beard. I should think she's the cleverest actress in the world. Oh Bill—what are you going to do?”

Bill took the spanner out of his pocket and opened the door at the top of the stairs.

“I'm going to let her in,” he said.

But when he opened the front door there was nobody there. Had some extra sense warned the woman who had stood there in Henry Postlethwaite's clothes? Or had her abnormally sharp ears caught, not the words, but the sound of Meg's whisper? She owed a good deal of her success in the life she had chosen to a lightning-quick reaction to the merest hind of danger. She had not waited for Bill to open the door. The lantern stood against the step, and somewhere beyond its circle of light a dark figure watched the house.

Bill stared at the lantern and the empty space around it, but only for the smallest measurable time. He was behind the door before he banged it to, and the bullet that was aimed at him crashed through the old wood and buried itself in the plaster of the inner wall. It missed the hand on the latch by an inch, and if he had been less quick to move, it would not have missed his heart, for the latch stood breast-high.

He shot two bolts, and met Meg at the stair foot.

“Bill—you're not hurt!”

“Not this time.”

They went upstairs again.

A voice hailed them from the back, and the horrible thing was that it was still Henry Postlethwaite's voice. Even in this tight place, there was a touch of macabre humour in the idea of the gentle, absent Professor flourishing around with a revolver and taking pot shots at them.

The voice said, “Coverdale—” and, Bill having opened the small dirty window to its fullest extend when they first came in, the name was perfectly audible.

He pushed Meg into the corner, stood well to one side of the casement himself, and said, “Well, Miss Cannock?”

“
Really
, Coverdale!”

“Come off it!” said Bill succinctly.

There was the sound of a laugh. It was Miss Della Delorne's laugh, and it made Meg's spine creep. Then Miss Cannock's earnest high-pitched voice said,

“Well, Mr Coverdale,
really!
What a way to speak to a lady! I am surprised—I really am!”

“You'll be a great deal more surprised before you're through,” said Bill.

“Oh, I don't know. Do you really think so? Now I've got an idea—but perhaps I shouldn't mention it—it's only just an idea—that the—er—shoe might be on the other foot.”

“Now look here,” said Bill, “you can stop all this play-acting, because it doesn't cut any ice with me! Let's get down to brass tacks. I'm willing to come to terms with you, because Mrs O'Hara's had enough and I want to get her away. Your game's up.”

“Oh no,” said the voice from the darkness. “Oh no, Mr Coverdale.”

“Oh yes, it is—and you know it. We can stick it out up here for a great deal longer than you can afford to wait. Colonel Garratt knows where I am, and if I don't ring him up within the hour, he'll get going.”

“Dear me,” said Miss Cannock's voice, “how very thoughtful of you! But you said something about terms—”

“Yes, I did,” said Bill. “For the sake of getting Mrs O'Hara away I'll undertake that we'll hold our tongues till tomorrow morning, and you can clear out and be damned to you!”

Miss Cannock's voice sounded shocked.

“Oh, Mr
Coverdale!
” And then it ceased to be Miss Cannock's voice and took on the hard, ringing tones of Miss Della Delorne. “Nothing doing, I'm afraid. And you can't bluff me. All that about Garratt's bluff. If you'd got anything like that fixed up, you'd see us somewhere before you gave us the chance of clearing out. And now here are
my
terms. You'll come down, Mrs O'Hara first, and I'll give you the same sort of chance you've offered me. We'll lock you up on the island, and you can stay there till Garratt fetches you.”

Meg clutched at Bill's arm and put her lips to his ear to whisper breathlessly,

“No, Bill—
no!
She wouldn't dare to let us go—we know too much.”

He pressed her shoulder.

“All right—leave it to me.”

Then he said aloud,

“That's not good enough. We're staying here.”

“Just as you like,” said Miss Della Delorne.

He heard her laugh as if she were amused at something. Then she called,

“All right, Johnny, bring them along.”

There was a sound of feet, a sound of voices. The handle of the back door was shaken. Della Delorne said without troubling to drop her voice,

“The window's broken—you can get in that way and open the door.”

They heard him below them in the house. They heard the bolts go creaking back. Then Cannock's voice came from the dark,

“Mr Coverdale—”

“Yes?” said Bill. He was listening for a step on the stairs and didn't intend to be diverted.

“I thought you would like to know what is happening. I think you had really better reconsider your decision. At the time it was taken you had not all the—er—data before you, if I may say so, but when I tell you that Johnny has just taken three tins of petrol into the lodge, and that as soon as I give him the word he will—er—decant them, you may wish to change your mind. A match thrown in through the window would have very unhappy consequences.”

“Keep on listening at that door, Meg!” said Bill. Then he turned perforce to the window. “Talk about bluff!” he said. “Do you expect me to believe you'd risk a bonfire? Why, you'd have the whole village here before you could turn round.”

The amused laugh came again.

“Oh yes, Mr Coverdale—I'd thought of that. But I'm afraid—I'm very much afraid that the village wouldn't get here in time to save you—and Mrs O'Hara. I'm really very much afraid they wouldn't. I've got an idea that the lodge will burn like tinder. I'll give you two minutes to make up your mind. Personally, I would—er—prefer being drowned to being burned if it came to a choice.” There was a mocking note in the voice, which just at the end was a strange voice and not Miss Cannock's at all. “Two minutes,” it said, and there was a silence.

Meg turned from the door, and Bill put his arms round her.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don't know, my dear—try and make a dash for it. It's the only change.
Now
—before they're expecting it.”

When he began to speak he had no plan. They couldn't stay here—they couldn't surrender. He had got no farther than that. But even as he said, “I don't know,” thought and impulse rushed together into action. He had the door open and Meg half way down the stair before she realized what had happened. The faint candle-light pursued mem. There was no light below. Someone loomed out of the darkness of the passage and went down with a clatter across a petrol-tin as Bill rushed him. Meg found herself jumping across the sprawled body. And then they were at the front door and the bolts had to be shot back. The top one stuck, and as Bill struggled with it, there was a sound of light running feet behind mem, a small strong hand caught Meg by the shoulder, and the muzzle of a revolver was jammed hard against her spine. She made a little gasping sound as the bolt gave. The hand pulled her and she went back step by step until the width of the room was between her and the opening door. Then Della Delorne's voice spoke sharply over her shoulder.

“If you open that door, I shall shoot! I've got Mrs O'Hara over here.” The hand on Meg's shoulder shook it. “Tell him to put up his hands! If he moves, you're dead. Tell him so!”

“She's got a revolver sticking into my back,” said Meg with dry lips.

“Put up your hands!” said Della Delorne. Then she called over her shoulder, “Here you, grandma—bring a light!”

It was a most horrible moment. Bill had put up his hands because he could do nothing else. He stood with his back against the door, and very faintly he could see Meg on the other side of the room. The door opened directly into the living-room. A very faint glimmer of candle-light came down the stair and through the inner door. He could just see Meg against the jamb, with the black figure behind her which was, and wasn't, Della Delorne—the Cannock—horribly garbed as Henry Postlethwaite.

A flickering candle came along the passage. The old woman carried it, holding it up above her head. It showed her white wild hair, her expression of malicious glee. It showed Meg, very white, in the dark blue cardigan and black knickers. It lit up that presentment of Henry Postlethwaite, less like him now that ulster and wideawake had been discarded. It showed the hand on Meg's shoulder, the hand on the revolver. It showed Johnny getting to his feet and coming forward.

Meg stood against the jamb. A sharp edge ran into her shoulder as she pressed against the wooden upright. She felt that, and the revolver against her spine, and the cruel grip of the hand on her other shoulder. She did feel these things, but she felt them with an effort, as if they were happening a long way off to somebody else. And the sound of the voices was far away in a fog, and the sound of Johnny groaning, and scrambling up. She gave a little choking sigh and slipped from the hand that was holding her down on to the dirty floor, and in that moment Bill got his hands on a chair and charged with it straight into the group at the door. It was a kitchen chair with a solid wooden seat and heavy splayed legs. The old woman screamed and ran back. The woman in Henry Postlethwaite's clothes fired two shots, one before the chair leg struck her, and the other from the ground to which she had been hurled. And then, sharp on that, the front door swung in and Bill went down under Henderson's weight and a cracking blow on the head. The man had jumped for him, landing with a fearful impetus. For a moment they were all on the floor together, and then Henderson was uppermost and Bill found himself held in a grip against which he could do nothing. If he struggled he would break an arm—both arms. If this was Henderson, he knew a thing or two about jujitsu.

Bill let himself go limp. He had shot his bolt, and they were in a pretty bad way. There was no point in getting his arms broken. He wondered if Garratt would really come and look for them, and how much chance he had of finding them alive. If he hadn't unbolted the front door before the woman came up, Henderson wouldn't have been able to get in, and they might have had a chance of getting away—a pretty desperate chance, but when it's a choice between a desperate chance and no chance at all you have to take what you can get and be thankful. He had these thoughts in his mind whilst Henderson knelt on the small of his back and the old woman brought a rope and they tied him up, elbows together behind his back and knees hobbled. After which Henderson jerked him to his feet—the man had the strength of a bull—and told him he could walk to the car—“And no tricks, or I'll shoot. And mind you, I'd like to shoot, so you watch your step, Mr Blooming Coverdale!”

The woman had got to her feet. She straightened the wig and beard calmly and without haste. Then she bent down and gave Meg's arm a vicious pinch. There was no response. No shudder passed over the slumped figure. There was no wincing of the flesh, no indrawn breath. She pinched again, and straightened up.

“You'll have to carry her,” she said. “I don't think she's shamming, but you can tie her wrists to be on the safe side.”

Bill's boiling fury must have showed in his face, for she came up to him, laughed a little, and flicked him lightly on the cheek.

“You big fool!” she said, and laughed again.

They came out of the lodge, Henderson first with Meg over his shoulder, head and hands hanging limp, face deathly pale in the candle-light. They had set the candle down on the table. It guttered in the wind of the open door, and the room they were leaving was full of shadows. Bill could just shuffle along. The old woman laughed at him and pulled mocking faces. It was a singularly ignominious approach to death.

Neither Bill nor Meg had heard the car. It was out of sight of the lodge just round the bend of the drive, with the engine ticking over but no lights showing. The most humiliating part of a humiliating experience was being hoisted and dragged into the back seat, with Meg flung down on it like a dead thing. He had a moment's horrible fear that she was dead, that one of the shots had struck her and she was dead—already. And then it came to him that he ought to be glad, because they were going to kill them anyhow, and Meg would be saved the pain and fear of dying.

The car began to back along the drive until it came to the first of the open ground, where Henderson made his turn and took them smoothly up to the house. There were six of them in the car, the woman and Henderson in front, and Miller and Johnny at the back. He didn't know where Miller had sprung from, but he was here now, and when they got out of the car and came in at the door, it was he who carried Meg, and Johnny who shoved Bill up the steps, while Henderson turned the car again and then stayed there ready at the wheel, with the engine running.