Sixty Days to Live (19 page)

Stretching out a hand, Babforth grabbed Derek’s elbow and for a second he regained his feet; but Babforth was swept on by the swirling stream of prisoners who were still stampeding through the gate, and a violent thrust behind sent Derek spinning to the ground once more. He felt a heavy boot descend in the middle of his back and the mob came surging over him.

Instinctively he threw up his arms to protect his head. It seemed quite certain that he would be trampled to death. For the second time in twenty-four hours he was kicked, bashed, stamped on. As he was far from recovered from his first flailing the second was even more painful, yet now he was at least face down and the blows that rained upon him were not deliberate.

After what seemed an eternity the human herd had passed. He lay still for a moment, half-stunned and breathless. Then he
managed to raise his head again and saw that the red glow in the western sky was fading. Dimly he realised that very soon the troops, whom the comet must also have affected, would regain their senses and start rounding-up such prisoners as they could. He must get away at once or he would be recaptured.

All about him lay the bodies of crushed and trampled men. Some of them were now sitting up groaning over their injuries; others lay still where they had fallen, never to rise again. In the distance a number of the escaped prisoners were still running towards Park Lane.

Aching in every limb he swayed to his feet and set off at a drunken run; several of the fallen, who had not been too badly trampled, were also staggering up and running with him.

When they reached Grosvenor Gate a trickle of escapers was still passing through it but behind them angry shouts to halt told them that the soldiers were already giving chase. The great iron gates of the Park had been burst by the same method as those of the encampment. The bodies of more dead and injured were strewn in the roadway outside. Derek did not pause to look at them but lurched on down Upper Brook Street into Grosvenor Square.

The comet had now set and full night was come. Police whistles were shrilling from both behind and in front as Derek ran. Ahead of him, on the Carlos Place corner of Grosvenor Square, he saw a body of police heading back the escapers, so he turned on his track and ran down South Audley Street.

Except for the prisoners, who had scattered in all directions, the street was empty. Every shop was in darkness and the blinds of most of the houses were drawn. As he reached the
cul-de-sac
which ends in Mount Street Gardens he noticed that the windows of the wine-merchant’s shop on the corner opposite Grosvenor Chapel had been smashed. At the same moment he saw some police coming round the corner of South Street, just ahead of him, so he halted, turned abruptly, and scrambled in through the broken window of the wine-merchant’s.

The place had been looted; it was a shambles of broken bottles and spilt liquor. Feeling his way forward in the darkness, he found some offices behind the shop. Entering one, he closed the door behind him, tripped over something, and fell upon the carpet.

For a moment he was so exhausted that he could not move but lay panting where he had fallen. When he got his breath back a little he lit a match from a box that Babforth had given him. The thing he had tripped over was the dead body of a man.

The match having burnt down to his fingers he did not light another, but remained sitting on the floor with his back propped against a desk. Apparently, the police had not seen him enter the shop or they would have followed him already, so he felt that the best thing he could do was to remain there until the excitement had subsided.

A quarter of an hour later he lit another match and peered round him by its feeble light. Apart from the dead man, there was nothing unusual about the office. The looters had evidently contented themselves with drinking or smashing the bottles on the shelves in the shop outside during their drunken orgy. At one side of the room there was a mahogany cupboard, the top of which formed a tasting table, and, above it, shelves backed by mirrors with glasses upon them.

Crawling to the cupboard, he opened it and found some bottles inside. Picking one up he poured himself a drink without bothering to find out what the bottle contained. On sipping it he found it to be sherry and swallowed a couple of glasses one after the other.

The generous wine restored him a little, so leaving the office, he went out into the shop and peered through the broken windows. As there was no one about he slipped out into the street again and set off, at a walk this time, towards St. James’s Square.

He could hardly see from the pain that racked him but he managed to find his way somehow down Curzon Street, through Lansdowne Passage and up Berkeley Street.

Normally the walk from South Audley Street to St. James’s Square would not have taken him more than fifteen minutes, but he was so exhausted that he had to go very slowly. The street lamps were only on at half-pressure and there was no traffic except for an occasional police car or military lorry. There were a few pedestrians hurrying along here or there and a certain number of police patrolling in couples, but wherever Derek saw these he avoided them by crossing to the other side of the road.
He instinctively felt like a hunted criminal and, in any case, his state might have caused them to ask questions.

Crossing Piccadilly, he turned down St. James’s Street, along King Street and at last entered St. James’s Square. Staggering up the steps of Sam Curry’s house, he rang the bell and banged violently with the knocker. Almost at once the door was thrown open and Hemmingway stood there framed against a dim light in the hall.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, as Derek clutched at him and fell forward on the mat; and, hauling him to his feet, he went on angrily: ‘Where the devil have you been, man? I’ve been waiting here all day for you.’

‘I—I got caught—arrested by the police,’ Derek muttered. ‘I’ve only just escaped.’

‘Never mind that. You can tell me about it later. What have you done with Lavina?’

‘I’ve lost her,’ Derek moaned. ‘She’s imprisoned somewhere but I don’t know where.’

A strange light suddenly leapt into Hemmingway’s eyes. ‘You fool!’ he breathed, with menacing quietness. ‘If I can’t find her I’ll break your neck for this.’

Derek suddenly slumped forward and catching him as he fell, Hemmingway saw that he had fainted. Pulling one of the unconscious man’s arms round his neck he heaved him up in a fireman’s lift across his shoulders, carried him into the lounge and gently lowered him on to a sofa.

At first, in the dim light of the hall, Hemmingway had not fully grasped the shocking state Derek was in but it was now clear that he had been through a terrible gruelling.

His suit was so torn, bloodstained and dirty that it would have disgraced a tramp. His collar was gone, his tie a rag knotted round his neck; even his shoes were cut and filthy. Sweat, dust and congealed blood matted his light-brown, wavy hair. His left eye was closed and the swollen flesh all round it had a horrid purplish hue. Cuts and abrasions disfigured his regular features and his hands were as grimy as if he had been crawling across a ploughed field.

Crossing the hall to the downstairs cloakroom, Hemmingway picked up a jug to fill it with hot water but as he turned the tap he suddenly remembered that the boilers in the house were out. He himself had had to make do that morning with a quick splash in a cold bath—a thing he hated. Filling the jug with cold water and collecting a couple of towels, he carried them back to Derek and, kneeling down, began to sponge some of the grime off his injured face.

After a few moments Derek began to groan.

‘It’s all right, old chap. You’re safe enough now,’ Hemmingway comforted him.

‘Lavina,’ muttered Derek, coming round. ‘Lavina——’

‘Yes, I know.’ Hemmingway’s face darkened. ‘But we’ll go into that in a moment.’

Walking over to a side-table he mixed a stiff whisky-and-soda.
‘Here, drink this,’ he said, propping Derek’s head up on one arm and holding the glass to his lips.

Derek swallowed some of the whisky, choked a little, and sat up. ‘God knows where she is,’ he murmured, ‘but we’ve got to find her.’

‘Sure.’ Hemmingway continued his ministrations with a towel and water. ‘But I want to get you cleaned up a bit first, otherwise the dirt will get into those cuts and inflame them. Here, take the towel yourself and do what you can, while I go and put on some hot water.’

Going down to the kitchen he filled the largest kettles he could find and put them on the stove. When he returned, Derek had finished his drink but was lying back on the sofa, evidently too weak to be able even to bathe his wounds.

‘Now, d’you think you can tell me your story?’ Hemmingway said, sitting down beside him. ‘I’m afraid you’re pretty done, but I must know what happened before I can go into action.’

Derek nodded weakly and gave a more or less coherent account of what had happened since he had left St. James’s Square with Lavina and Roy the previous evening. Hemmingway listened without making a single comment. He was not particularly distressed when he heard of Roy’s death, as he only knew him very slightly and had not been at all favourably impressed with what little he had seen of him. With Derek, on the other hand, he was furiously angry. Derek had been responsible for Lavina and it was not his fault that she had not had her brains bashed out by that bottle descending upon
her
head. As it was, they did not know if she was alive or dead and it was going to be the devil’s own job to trace her. Hemmingway knew that, if he had been in Derek’s shoes, he would have taken Lavina out of the Dorchester no matter what she said—even if he’d had to yank her out by the scruff of the neck—long before the trouble had started. But he did not allow the least sign of his inward feelings to show in his face as he listened to the injured man’s story.

When Derek had done, Hemmingway left him again, carried the kettles of hot water up to his own bathroom, got out a clean suit of pyjamas and turned down his bed, which he had remade himself that morning.

On his return to the lounge Derek asked weakly: ‘What had
we better do now? Is it any good trying to telephone anywhere before we set out to try and find her?’

‘You can leave all that to me,’ Hemmingway replied briefly. ‘You’re going to bed, my boy. Come on, up you get!’

‘But I can’t. I’ve got to …’ Derek began to protest.

‘You’re going to do as I tell you. You’re about all-in, my friend; and in your present state instead of a help you’d be a hindrance. I doubt if you could walk another hundred yards and you couldn’t run if your life depended on it.’

Without further argument he hauled Derek to his feet, supported him up the stairs to the bathroom and began to undress him.

Derek knew that Hemmingway was right as, in a mist of pain, he allowed himself to be stripped and bathed like a child in the luke-warm water to which Hemmingway had added a good ration of disinfectant.

Actually, Hemmingway grudged every moment of the time he was giving to his self-imposed duties as Derek’s nurse. The stupid fool deserved all he had got and was lucky to be alive at all, was what he was thinking. But Derek was much too weak to look after himself and Hemmingway had not the heart to leave him, perhaps for many hours, uncared for; so he put a cheerful face on the business and got through with it as quickly as he could.

At last when Derek was rebandaged, his cuts and bruises eased by a liberal application of healing ointment, and safely tucked up in bed, Hemmingway said to him:

‘You’ve lost your own car, I suppose?’

‘Yes, we left it outside the Dorchester.’

‘Well, fortunately mine’s still in the garage at the back of the house. Now get this clearly before you go off to sleep. I’m going out now to try and find Lavina. It’s impossible to say how long I’ll be, but we’ve still got the best part of forty-eight hours before the balloon goes up. If I run her to earth I shall bring her back here and we’ll all go down in the car to Stapleton together. But if I don’t return, you’ll know I’ve had no luck. In that case, after two nights and a day in bed you’ll be fit enough to walk down to Stapleton, if need be. Don’t wait for us any longer, as we may not get back at all, but start out on your own early in the morning on the day after to-morrow. You ought to make it in about eight hours, allowing for plenty of rests, or less if you can manage to
get a lift part of the way. But in the meantime, if you feel fit enough to get up you’re not to leave the house because, if I
do
find Lavina, I’ll want to get her out of London without the least delay. Have you got that?’

Derek nodded feebly. ‘Yes. I wish to God I could come with you, but I can hardly lift a finger. Best of luck!’

‘Thanks. I’ll need it.’ Hemmingway smiled with a friendliness he was far from feeling as he switched out the light and closed the door behind him.

On coming downstairs that morning he had naturally assumed that Lavina, Derek and Roy had returned from their previous night’s joy-ride after he had gone to bed and were somewhere in the house still sleeping.

Having made tea, put some eggs on to boil and banged loudly on the gong to let them know that breakfast was nearly ready, he had expected that they would come down in dressing-gowns. When none of them appeared, he had visited their rooms and, finding them empty, realised at once that something very serious must have happened to keep them out all night.

His first thought was to telephone Scotland Yard and the hospitals, but the exchange informed him they were now only working on skeleton staffs and that since six o’clock that morning they had had to refuse all private calls in order to devote the lines exclusively to Government business. They also refused to take any telegrams, which prevented him from communicating either with Sam—who was by that time presumably at the Edmonton factory—or with Stapleton Court to try and ascertain if Lavina’s party had, for some reason unknown, decided to drive down there direct during the night after their trip round the West End of London.