The Quest of Julian Day (26 page)

The Stygian blackness into which the whole house had been plunged was not as great a handicap to the enemy as to myself, since they could retreat without giving away their position whereas I could not; yet it was probably because of it that they held their fire, waiting for me to move, in order to make quite certain on annihilating me with a fusilade before the flashes of their pistols revealed the place where they stood to the people behind me.

The palms of my hands were moist, my forehead was damp and I had an awful, tight feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew that at any moment I might be riddled with lead and I tried frantically to think what it was best to do.

For a second I was buoyed up by the delusion that, knowing the police had broken in, the men on the landing above had taken advantage of the darkness to slip away in the hope of making their escape by some other exit; but almost as soon as the thought came to me I knew I was only fooling myself. I'd seen, by the one glimpse I'd had of them, that they numbered five or six at least so they could not possibly have beaten a retreat without my hearing them. They were up there waiting—waiting for me to move before they fired the shots which would tear my flesh and send me reeling back to die in tortured agony.

I suppose if I had been a real he-man I would have dashed up those stairs into the darkness firing right and left; but I simply could not bring myself to do it. I have always had a particular horror of being shot in the face and the mental images of my own features pulped and bleeding which my mind conjured up absolutely paralysed me.

Suddenly it came to me that to lie down was my only chance of escaping at least some of their bullets. Harry was not directly behind me, but partially covered by the turn of the stairs, so it was unlikely that the first burst of bullets intended for me would harm him. With infinite caution I stooped and extended my hands until they touched a higher stair, then I bent my knees until they touched another and, lastly, turning my head sideways, I lowered it between my shoulder blades until it was below the level of the stair on which my hands rested and my right cheek was pressed flat upon the stair-carpet.

It was, admittedly, an ostrich-like position as my shoulders were still fully exposed to any shots fired low but I make no excuse for my cowardice; I crouched there sweating with sheer blue funk while I waited for some move on either side.

It was at last, precipitated by Longdon, although that ‘at last' was probably no more than a hundred seconds from the time the lights had gone out. His voice came sharply from the hall below.

‘Come on, there! What are you waiting for? Up you go!'

I clenched my teeth and the nails of my left hand bit into my palm, but I did not budge. In my right I was still clutching my automatic.

There was a mutter of voices at the bottom of the stairs, then one of the police leaned past Harry and pushing an arm round the banisters sent a pot-shot flying up into the darkness above. His gun was hardly a foot behind and two above my buried head and the explosion sounded like the Crack of Doom.

‘There! There!' I heard Harry cry. He had evidently seen the enemy in the flash of the policeman's pistol, but his shout was cut short by a thunder that seemed to rock the staircase. The enemy had opened fire, aiming at the flash, and it was that which doubtless saved me.

A banister-rail splintered with a tearing sound. Bullets thudded into the plaster behind me and the stench of cordite was strong in my nostrils. I knew then that I had to move; I did not even think about it, but jerking myself erect I pelted up the stairs firing as I went.

The darkness was alive with flashes. How I escaped being hit I shall never know. There was a scream from somebody in front of me as one of my bullets hit a man, and a curse from one of the people behind who had stopped one from above. Next second I was up on the landing right in the thick of it.

One of them slashed at me with a fist that held a pistol but in the darkness he could only guess at the position of my head and the blow took me on the shoulder, sending me spinning sideways. I turned and pistoled him where he stood. Someone else fired an instant afterwards and by the flash I saw the horror on my victim's face. His eyes were bulging from his
dark face and his tongue was hanging out as he slipped down on to his knees.

For a moment the firing was so continuous that the flash of the guns was enough to give me some idea of the geography of the place. From the landing a passage ran the whole length of the house; fifteen feet from the head of the main stairway another staircase led up through a narrow arch to the second floor. A dozen figures were milling wildly on the landing but I caught sight of one who was firing into the mêlée from a vantage-point on the lowest of the upper stairs. I only saw his face for an instant but I knew those lean, jutting features too well to be mistaken. It was O'Kieff.

It had not even occurred to me that we might find him there and my heart positively leapt with exaltation at the thought that he, of all people, was fast in our trap.

Once in the scrimmage I had too much to think of to be frightened any longer and now all sense of personal danger left me entirely. At the sight of O'Kieff I literally flung myself into the mob and sent a great Arab hurtling backwards in my endeavour to get at the man I hated so bitterly.

The firing had lessened now and it was almost impossible to pick out friend from foe. The bodyguard on the House of the Angels had proved bigger than we had bargained for and, besides those who were putting up a fight downstairs, there must have been at least eight or ten of them on the landing when I had first charged it.

Half a dozen hand-to-hand conflicts were in progress as I barged and fought my way towards O'Kieff. Flashes still coming at fairly quick intervals showed him to me standing there—the one calm figure in this wild gun-fight—picking his human targets with quiet deliberation as each flash revealed the mêlée to him.

At last I was through the screaming, cursing mass; still miraculously unharmed, except for a slight gash in the upper arm where a bullet had seared it, and that my right ear felt the size of a cauliflower from a blow that had descended on it in the darkness. I raised my gun, aimed carefully for the place at the bottom of the upper stairs where I knew O'Kieff was standing, and waited for the next flash.

It came, and from him, giving me a perfect target. I
squeezed the trigger; in the pandemonium I did not even hear it click, but nothing happened. I squeezed again and again; then I realised that my magazine was empty.

With frantic fingers I slipped out the empty clip and rammed home a new one but, just as I raised the gun again, another flash showed me that O'Kieff was no longer there; he had abandoned the fight and fled upstairs. I flung myself forward and hurtled up them after him.

On reaching the top of the next flight I could hear his light, swift footfalls as he raced along an unseen passage. It was black as night up there but at that very moment the lights came on again; evidently Hanbury had got control of the situation on the ground floor and found the main switch. After the darkness the lights blinded me for a second, then I saw O'Kieff twenty yards away at the far end of a long, narrow corridor. I jerked up my gun and fired.

Till then I don't think he realised that anyone was after him and, for a second, I thought I had scored a bull as he halted dead in his tracks. But I was mistaken, for he instantly swung round and fired in reply. Both of us were normally good enough shots to have killed each other at fifty feet but his bullet went wide too, whipping past my ear. The light was not good as only a single small bulb lit the whole of the long corridor and, in addition, our recent exertions had left us breathless, upsetting our aim.

Before I had time to get in another shot O'Kieff dived through a nearby doorway and there was a loud metallic clang. I raced down the passage and hammered on the door but I knew then that he had escaped me. It was a steel door with a spring lock and it cut me off from him completely.

Evidently there was a second staircase somewhere behind it and I could only hope now that he would be caught by the police on the lower floor or out in the grounds. Nevertheless, I burned with such hate against him that my one thought was to get downstairs again as swiftly as I could to ensure that every possible effort should be directed towards cornering him.

I rushed back to the staircase up which I had come but, to my surprise and fury, I found that a door which I had not seen in the dark had closed at the end of the passage, cutting me off from it. This door was also made of steel and I guessed in a
flash that it, and the one through which O'Kieff had disappeared, must be operated by electricity. He had obviously closed and locked them both simultaneously by pressing a controlling switch before he fled down the further stairs, making me a prisoner in the upper floor of the house.

It was barely a minute since O'Kieff had disappeared from view. As I stood there panting for breath and fuming with anger a dull explosion reverberated through the house; it sounded as if a bomb had been thrown somewhere on one of the lower floors but there was no repetition of it and the steel doors cut off any sounds of further fighting.

Along the upper passage there were five or six doors on either side and I was just wondering what next it was best to do when, one after another, four of them opened a few inches in as many seconds and were promptly shut again. At the nearest I caught a glimpse of a young black woman who gave me one terrified glance before slamming her door and locking it.

The sight of her gave me just the impetus I needed for fresh action. Evidently it was up in these rooms that the ‘Angels' of various nationalities were kept before being exported from East to West and West to East, and they had all been thrown into a dither by the sounds of the firing. If Sylvia were in the place at all she must be somewhere among them.

In two strides I was outside the door; lifting my right foot I brought it down crashing with all my force against the lock. The wood splintered and the door flew open; but the little black woman had completely disappeared.

The room was comfortable and well-furnished; a couple of trunks stood in one corner, a dress and some undies were neatly folded on a chair and the bed-clothes had been tossed aside, suggesting that the girl had been asleep when the riot started.

At first I feared that in her terror she had thrown herself out of the window but a quick look under her bed showed me that she was crouching there.

‘Don't be frightened,' I said in Arabic, thinking that the language she would be most likely to understand. ‘Come out of there. I'm not going to hurt you.' But she only glared at me like a wild animal and suddenly began to whimper.

Thrusting my hand under the bed I grabbed her by the arm and began to drag her out. She fought like a tiger-cat and gave
me a nasty bite on the wrist before I had managed to pull her from her hiding-place and on to her feet. Apparently she had been sleeping naked and only thrown on a wrap when she got out of bed to investigate the din below. The wrap had got badly torn in our struggle and now dangled wide open from one of her shoulders exposing her whole figure.

Although she was probably not more than fifteen she was perfectly developed with the sort of lithe, rounded young body that an artist would have given anything for as a model. She was black as your hat with an almost bluish tinge on her velvet-soft, ebony-skin and evidently she had already been groomed for marketing, since she was clean as a new pin and smelt faintly of some pleasant perfume.

I did my utmost in both Arabic and French to reassure her and try to get her to talk sense, as my one anxiety was to learn from her as quickly as I could anything she could tell me about the place and which room Sylvia was in, if Sylvia was there; but my efforts were quite unavailing. She would only jibber at me in her own tongue, so after a moment I let her go and dashed out into the corridor again to try the door opposite.

It was locked so I applied the same process as before and burst in.The room was furnished like the other but sitting on the bed was a white girl, calmly smoking a cigarette and perfectly self possessed. Her pretty mask of a face suddenly dissolved into a rather sickening leer as she asked in French:

‘What is the excitement,
cheri
? Are they having trouble with some drunks?'

It was clear that in spite of her youth she was not a new hand at the game but naturally most of the white girls sent East are shop-soiled goods.

‘I'm with the police,' I said at once. ‘And this place is being
raided. Can you tell me anything of a fair-haired English girl who was brought in here today?'

She let out a filthy expletive which seemed, somehow, peculiarly shocking on the lips of a young girl of carefully tended appearance and seeming innocence; then she gave a resigned shrug of her slim shoulders. Evidently she knew enough of this business to realise that the worst that could happen to her was a short spell in prison. She smiled again.

‘What misfortune! I thought it was only a few foolish ones letting off their guns and that Monsieur was a customer. I am dying of
ennui
in this place and would have welcomed a little diversion; especially with
un beau garçon comme Monsieur
.'

I ignored the compliment and repeated, ‘Can you tell me anything of a fair-haired English girl who was brought here today? If you can, I'll ask the police to make it easy for you.'

She shook her head. ‘
Mais non
. This is a very unusual establishment. We girls aren't even allowed to see each other and we're only here for a night or two before they send us on our way.'

‘Thanks,' I nodded and strode out of this particular little spider's parlour. Back in the corridor I heard somebody battering on the steel door which shut me off from the staircase up which I had come. I could only hope that they would find some means of forcing it quickly and, since I could give them no assistance from my side of it, I began to shout for Sylvia as a quicker way of finding her than by breaking in the door of every room. Although I bawled her name at the top of my voice half a dozen times there was no reply, so I had to go back to my original method.