Gale Warning (15 page)

(Here perhaps I should say that I sometimes think that in fact I was unconscious for two or more miles, for, try as I will to remember the last of that drive, there is a clear hiatus for which I cannot account.)

“Steady now,” Plato was saying. The car had slowed down. “I don’t want to get too far in.” I heard him turn round in his seat. “All clear behind – for the moment. D’you see a street on your left?”

“There’s one comin’ now,” said the chauffeur, and set a foot on the brake.

“Take it,” said Plato. “And stop – about forty yards down.”

Almost at once I felt the car swing to the left, and two or three moments later the chauffeur brought her to rest.

“Switch off your lights and your engine an’ follow me.”

As Plato gave that order, he opened his door…

The chauffeur was quick to obey. His door was slammed but a moment later than Plato’s. I heard their footfalls retreating the way we had come.

And then somehow I was clinging to the sill of a window, conscious of a pain like a sword in the small of my back and drinking great draughts of an air that seemed cooler and sweeter than any I ever encountered before or since.

A very few moments sufficed to make me myself again, and almost at once I began to prepare to escape.

Through the window at the back of the car, I could see the main road or main street, out of which we had turned: but I could see no one standing – at the corner or anywhere else. Straining my ears, I could hear no footfalls or voices. It looked as if, for the moment, I had the side street to myself.

To this day I do not know how I managed to turn myself round without crying out, for my legs were as though paralysed and their slightest movement caused me the sharpest pain: but by holding on to the back of the driver’s seat I dragged myself up and, propped between that and the luggage, I dragged myself round, and then once more I subsided on to the floor, with my legs stuck out before me instead of folded beneath. Then I set to work to massage them back into life.

I was, of course, terribly tempted to open the door behind me and drag myself out of the car: but, though I may have been wrong, I felt that it would have been folly to leave my cover before I could trust my feet. So I sat, in fear and trembling lest Plato or his man should come back, and worked upon my legs like a madman, plucking and pinching and slapping the helpless flesh.

Those two or three minutes were almost the worst I passed, for, the pain apart, I could keep no sort of look-out, and if someone had come to the car, he must have heard my movements before I so much as heard his. Still, after what seemed an age, the pain began to grow less and at last when I called upon an ankle, it haltingly did as I said.

That was enough for me.

At once I raised myself up and looked out of the window again: and since I could see no being, I ventured to open a door.

My legs were still so faithless and I was trembling so much that I very nearly fell down when I stepped into the street: but I steadied myself by holding fast to the door, and after a moment I felt my strength coming back.

It was my actual emergence that made me well. The blessed knowledge that I was clear of the trap uplifted my heart and drove the blood through my veins. I no longer hoped to be saved. I intended to win the rubber – and put the blackguard enemy where he belonged.

As though I had an hour to myself, I held that door into its frame and then released its tongue by sixteenths of an inch. Then I pulled its handle towards me and found it locked. And then, with uncertain steps, I padded away…away from the corner and Plato and all his works…exalted by the knowledge that I had escaped unseen and that Plato would never know that he had given John Bagot the lift of his life.

I took a street on the right and glanced at my watch.

Twenty-five minutes to eleven. And Plato was not proposing to leave until eleven-fifteen.

At once I saw that I must report to Tours, and then, if I could, beat Plato to Poitiers Station, from there to follow the fellow and see where he meant to lie.

Unless I reported to Tours, God only knew what action the others would take. When Bell found the Swindon gone, as he would at eleven o’clock, he would instantly give the alarm. My own disappearance would have a sinister look: and, as Audrey was sure to take charge, as like as not both cars would be manned forthwith to go different ways – with Audrey, unfit to drive, at the Lowland’s wheel. And unless I went on to Poitiers, I could not be sure that Plato had done as he said; and in any event I should not know where he was staying – in fact, I should lose the fox with which I had managed to stay for two hundred and fifty miles. But of course
I must precede
him. I must be at Poitiers before him, because if I came behind him, the man would never rest till he saw my face.

It seemed pretty clear that the street which I was using led into the heart of the town, but since there was no one to ask, for the place seemed dead, I began to run along it as fast as I could. And then I saw a station…and two or three taxis waiting…and an omnibus bearing the name of the Grand Hotel.

I chose the best-looking taxi, and two minutes later I entered that kindly house…

I tremble to think what I looked like – hatless, coatless, tieless and stained with travel and sweat: but I could not have been better served had I been a millionaire. Maybe they thought I was, for before I did anything else I made the porter a present of two hundred francs and showed him another two hundred which might be his.

Then I bade him bring someone who spoke English.

He not only did as I said, but he raised the house.

By the time he was back, with a nice-looking lad of eighteen, waiters and maids and a valet were smiling and bowing about me and asking me how I did, while the lady who owned the hotel was standing at the top of some staircase, commending various cordials which she considered could usefully serve my need.

As I presently found, the nice-looking boy was a guest – or, rather, the son of a doctor who lived next door: and the English he spoke was nearly as good as mine.

In two minutes’ time I had a room with a bath, a waiter was pouring me beer, a maid was running water and a valet was cleaning my shoes: downstairs, the porter, abetted, of course, by his mistress and half the staff was alternately calling on God and commanding an obstructive exchange to ‘give me Tours…
Hotel Le Panier d’Or
…Milady Audrey Nuneham…on a matter of life and death.’ And the nice-looking lad had gone off to a garage near by,
to get his own Bugatti to drive me to Poitiers
.

For all this precious attention, I very near missed the tide, for I never got through to Tours till past eleven o’clock. Indeed, I was writing my message and the doctor’s son was translating it into French, when at last the telephone went and I snatched the receiver up.

“Is that you, Audrey?” I cried.

“Mansel speaking,” said Mansel. “Is that you John?”

I could hardly believe my ears. Four hours ago he had been at Amiens. And now he was speaking from Tours. And from Amiens to Tours is two hundred and thirty miles.

Listen,” I said. “Where’s Audrey?”

“She’s here – by my side.”

“Thank God for that,” said I. “And now – all’s well. Meet me at Poitiers Station – but not before one o’clock. Don’t enter the town before one, whatever you do.
And Audrey is not to drive
.”

“She shan’t,” said Mansel. “I promise. Anything else?”

“Keep the Vane in the background,” said I.

“I understand.”

“Goodbye,” said I.

“Goodbye.”

I paid my debts and fairly ran out of the house.

And then I was in the Bugatti, and Réné de Boulon was streaking out of the town.

Poitiers was not very far – as Plato had said, ‘a matter of twenty-one miles.’ Indeed, I had time to burn, for Réné covered the distance in twenty-two minutes dead.

Had I allowed him to do so, he would have stayed on; but I thought he had learned quite enough, so I took his address and did my best to thank him and told him that, for what it was worth, that night he had made four friends.

And then I watched him drive off the way he had come, and heard the professional stammer of his exhaust ripping the mantle of silence for nearly a league.

I found a hut in the shadows by the side of the station-yard: and in its mouth I sat down, to wait until Plato should come.

The man was as good as his word.

Precisely at a quarter to midnight, the Swindon swept into the yard. There master and man got out: and when they had entered the station, I left my hut for the road.

There I stopped a taxi, which was coming to meet the train, gave the driver a note and bade him draw up in the shadows some fifty yards off. But I stood still where I was, by the mouth of the station-yard.

The Paris train came in, a few minutes late: but Plato was taking no risks: not until the train had departed did he come back to his car.

To my surprise, he did not enter the Swindon, but walked to the nearest taxi and spoke to the man at its wheel. And then I saw that he was engaging a pilot…

Yet, there again I was wrong, for the taxi followed the Swindon out of the yard.

At once I turned to run for my waiting taxi – for they had turned to the left, but I had told my driver to wait to the right. But after two or three paces I stopped in my tracks, for the taxi which I had taken was not to be seen. With my fifty francs in his pocket, its driver had let me down and gone to his bed.

Feeling like murder, I turned to run after the Swindon as hard as I could, when to my surprise and relief I saw its satellite taxi slow down by the side of a garage a hundred yards off.

I had noticed the garage when I had gone past it with Réné some thirty-five minutes before, because it was open and lighted and seemed to be almost as busy as are such places by day. And I shall always believe that Plato, as he had gone past it, had noticed it, too, and had seen with half an eye that that was the very place in which to bestow his car.

For that was what the man did.

From a little way off, I watched him drive into the garage: and from very much closer I watched him come out on foot, a mechanic walking behind him, with a suitcase in either hand.

For what it was worth, I had taken his taxi’s number, but once again that night the Kingdom of Heaven played into my grateful hands.

He addressed the mechanic – in his atrocious French.

“The
Hotel Crystal
, you said? Are you sure it is quiet.”

I think the other said it was quiet and clean.

“And it’s not in the fashionable quarter? I don’t want that.”

“No, no. It stands by a church: and its rooms look over the park at the end of the town.”

Plato addressed his driver.

“The
Hotel Crystal
,” he said.

Then he gave the mechanic some money and followed his suitcases into the quivering cab.

Lying beneath a lorry, I watched his driver turn round.

And then he drove off past the station, making more noise with his gears than the train he had met.

I suppose it was the realization that now my duty was done that brought to my notice the truth that I was as good as worn out. This was scarcely surprising, for though I am very strong and was used to long stretches of work, I had been up and doing for more than twenty-four hours and more than once, during that period, Chance, so to speak, had driven me pretty hard. Be that as it may, as Plato drove off in his taxi, my energy seemed to fail, and, but for my appointment with Mansel, I think I should have lain where I was and have given way to the slumber of which I stood in such need. Because this need was so strong, I dared not lie still; but as I crawled backwards from under the lorry’s bulk, I wondered how on earth I had managed to occupy a post so hard of access with such rapidity.

Indeed, I was now so heavy that, as I stumbled back to the station, much of what had recently happened seemed to belong to some dream, and for the life of me I could not remember the name ‘Chatellerault’ – a detail which did not matter, but for some ridiculous reason caused me the gravest concern. When I entered the yard, I stood looking round for the Swindon and I remember crying, “My God, she’s gone”: but the very shock of this absurd discovery was just what was needed to rally my wandering wits.

Somewhat ashamed of myself, I made my way back to my hut and once again sat down in its dingy mouth…and the next thing that I remember was Audrey’s voice and a grateful stream of iced water trickling over my brow.

I shook myself and sat up, with a hand to my head.

“Are you all right, dear?” said Audrey.

“I’ve been asleep,” I said. “He promised you shouldn’t drive.”

“I know. I didn’t. I came in the Rolls with him. But tell me – are you all right?”

The moon was up now, and I stared at her kneeling beside me and sitting back on her heels. I inspected her bare, brown knees and the sponge on a cloth by her side. And I gazed at her parted lips and the eager light in her eyes.

“Yes, I’m all right,” I said slowly. I put out a hand, and she took it in both of hers. “Oh, Audrey, I’m so glad it’s you. I’ve got him, my darling. I know where he is – and the Swindon: the chauffeur’s gone. But I wanted to tell you first – before anyone else.” I dropped my head and brought her hands up to my lips. “You see, when you’re mad about someone, you want to lay down at their feet, what you happen to win.”

I looked up to see her smiling.

“St John the Gallant,” she said swiftly. Then she looked over my shoulder. “He’s all right now.”

“Good God,” said I – and Carson helped me to rise.

As in a dream, I watched Mansel hand Audrey up to her feet.

My head became painfully clear.

“And Bell and Rowley?” said I. “Why did you let me begin before they’d arrived?”

“Carson’ll tell them,” said Mansel, and the four of us laughed.

And then we went back to the road, and there was Richard Chandos, sitting on a step of the Lowland, smoking a pipe.