The Trail of Fear (19 page)

Rezaire, wiser, did not get into a carriage, but crouched where he was watching the shadowy figures of the detectives also running for the train. He counted one, two get on board and heard their shouts. The next moment the train, which had barely got under way, came to a jerky standstill. They had pulled the signal cord. Rezaire, doubled up on his footboard, peered back into the night. Figures seemed on all sides, some with light from the windows occasionally falling on them; some keeping to the shadow. Further behind him he heard shouts and unexpectedly ringing through the dark a woman's cry of “Help!” Dixon, he thought to himself. Heads were out of windows and he kept still, hoping the train would go on.

Someone was signaling from the platform with a hand lamp and in another moment the train began to back to the station it had just left. Rezaire knew he must act instantly if he were to win through. Already a man at a level crossing they were passing noticed him and called out. Quickly he opened the nearest door, scrambled into the compartment, where two elderly ladies were sitting in open-mouthed terror and amazement at this apparition from the night. Without a word he ran through the carriage, opened the door at the far side and so out into the other footboard. With a quick glance round he dropped off on the opposite side.

He stumbled and fell, picked himself up and began to run. As he sped, he saw the engineer and fireman of the passing train looking at him in astonishment. The next moment he was in the darkness of a timber yard, with its huge piles and stacks of timber. Instead of running further, he dodged behind one of these and crouched down out of sight.

Lying there in the poor concealment, he hoped he had thrown his pursuers off the track for the moment. He could not, as far as he could see, get out of the yard, but he did not want to; houses, gardens, streets, were all around and besides it was not part of his plan, which was bolder and cleverer than that—if it should succeed.

He could hear men on the track round the moving train which soon came to a standstill in the station once more. Rising half to his feet he peered out over the top of the timber and could look back on the whole scene spread out before him—the lighted station platform and the moving figures hurrying this way and that like a hive disturbed. He could see the engineer of the passenger train still peering out into the night in his direction and trying to make out what had become of him. A little way to his left was the signal box, within which he could see the signalman, pipe in mouth, moving about.

Then he became aware of a scuffle on the platform and a crowd gathering round one of the carriage doors and strained his eyes to see what it was. He could make out policemen and busy-looking men in felt hats and the station-master with gold lace on his cap. They were searching the carnages one by one under the impression he was hidden inside.

Suddenly the crowd parted and he saw what in the excitement of his own escape he had forgotten—Dixon. Dixon with a face and head covered with blood, handcuffs on his wrists, and a policeman at either shoulder. Dixon had not been so quick-witted as he had, or more likely had been half-stunned by the blow on the head he had received when jumping into the train. Dixon, battered and manacled, looked very dejected—a tiny figure amongst all the others on the lighted platform. Rezaire was sorry for him, but it was his own fault.

It had been every man for himself and Dixon had lost. Then the crowd closed round once more. Dixon, swaying slightly, as if he had been badly hurt, was hustled out of the station to where, as far as he could see, the police had their car waiting.

The scene on the platform redoubled in activity. Doors were being banged open and shut every few minutes. The guard and the station-master were speaking with one of the detectives and Rezaire thought he could see one of the old ladies whom he had frightened talking to a policeman. Then the bustle seemed to be temporarily arrested as though a further development were on foot. A new issue of some kind was arising. The engineer had got down and was shouting something to a porter. He was pointing along the line and Rezaire suddenly realized what all this sudden change portended. Both the old ladies and the engineer were persons who knew he was not in the train and had run off on into the darkness, and in another minute this would be realized by the detectives. For a moment the picture stayed as it was; then on a sudden it had changed. The guard was waving his lantern as he signaled the delayed train onward, and police, detectives, men of every sort, were running along the platform and down the line out in the direction he had been seen to take into the timber yard.

At sight of the sudden advance upon him Rezaire almost lost, his nerve and took to his heels, but he mastered himself in a moment. He had made his plan and he must stick to it, although it seemed it would be a near thing.

The engine started to move heavily forward. Slowly it gathered speed, passing out of Totton Station, leaving the excited chattering groups on the platform. At an increasing rate it approached—but so did the little crowd of his pursuers with their lanterns and torches. They were level with the engine now and spreading out. Down the side of the train appeared rows of curious heads, craning forth eager to see who was being pursued. It was a sensation indeed.

The engine overtook them and drew level with his hiding place. Rezaire shrank back yet further as the bright glow from the driver's cab passed over him. The fireman was leaning out scanning the ground at the side. Then came the carriages with their excited inmates moving slowly past. He heard scraps of conversation floating from the windows, curious, incredulous, fearful, sensational, pleased… The next minute he heard close at his ear the voices of his pursuers among the timber stacks, saw the searching beams of their torches.

“Quick there, Jameson, straight ahead! He's made for the level crossing. Two of you down to the left there to the main road…”

All around him were figures, detectives and police with torches, voluntary helpers, porters, curious idlers, plunging through the yard in every direction. He lay absolutely still, frozen to the ground. Discovery was imminent. In another minute one of them would stumble on him and the game would be up.

But the moment for putting his plan into execution had arrived. The last carriages of the train were going past now at an increasing speed, fairly fast, but not so fast that a determined man might not catch them.

He took a deep breath, rose to his feet, and ran straight for the train, leaping wildly over the logs that lay scattered about. He passed just behind a policeman who had his back to him, heard his exclamation, caught a shout from someone further away, then he was running for the last carriage as it slipped past him.

“Stop him!” came in a bull-like roar in Harrison's voice a short distance away, then a confused medley of shouts and orders. A man ran at him, tripped over the rail and fell. Someone else caught at his coat, but he struck out wildly and the man dropped away. Then he was on the track running after the train.

Thank Heaven it was not yet going too fast. The red tail lamp, a foot in front of him, glowed and beckoned, offering him safety, and he strained every sinew to get it, running awkwardly over the ties and stones of the track. A horrible fear came to him that he might trip and fall. He heard a murmur from a little group of people as he re-passed the level crossing.

The next moment he caught it up at his maximum speed and, catching hold of the brake connection, with a superhuman effort leaped up and forward and pulled himself onto a buffer. A moment later and the train would have been going too fast for him; he would not have been able to catch it.

A few feet behind a man, more active than the others, was straining every nerve to draw up. But he could not do it. His tense face, red in the glow of the tail lamp, dropped slowly behind as the train put on speed. Rezaire, sitting panting on the butler, felt his old spirit returning and to the accompaniment of the cheery rattle of the wheels, he grinned in a friendly fashion at the face of his pursuer before it slipped back into the darkness.

CHAPTER XX

A PERILOUS RIDE

Rezaire sat there for a little while trying to regain his breath, and looking back at the receding lights of Totton Station. He could just make out the figures of his pursuers. Some were still dotted about the line where they had given up the chase, but others were running back purposefully to the station. Hurriedly Rezaire ran over in his mind what their next move would be. Could they have the train stopped? That would not be much good if no one was there when it was stopped. He was now considered a desperate man and they would not rely on the station-master or porters at the next stop arresting him. Yet they must know that he would in all probability choose the first opportunity to leave the train on which he was known to be.

Then suddenly the solution jumped into his mind. The car! They had a car, the one by which they had come to Totton Station and into which he had seen Dixon being taken. That was what they would use. If the road was at all straight they would get to the next station almost as soon as the train. The train rattled over a small level crossing and bore off to the right. Before the station vanished from sight, he almost thought he could see the powerful headlights of the police car outside.

He clung to his perilous seat on the end of the rocking carriage. He must leave the train before they could get to him, but it did not look hopeful. He would not after all be able to go on to Beaulieu Road Station. He would have to make his way to Beaulieu from the next stop which would be Lyndhurst Road, about seven miles across country as far as he remembered. And almost certainly they would be at Lyndhurst Road before he was. The situation did not look hopeful. The only point in his favor, as far as he could see, was that owing to his having got on to the train from directly behind, none of the people on it, not even the guard, could know that he was there.

The car rocked and swayed, almost throwing him from his precarious hold. He wondered whether he could get to a safer position, into a compartment perhaps—if he could find an empty one and could reach it without being seen. It was worth trying at all events if he could screw up his courage.

Clinging desperately to the poor handholds that the back of the car gave, he pulled himself upright on to the buffers and held himself there a moment to accustom himself to the motion and balance. Then with infinite difficulty and trembling with a genuine fear, he worked round on to the footboard of the car on the off side.

Ahead of him the train curved away into the night like a snake, its lighted windows like gleaming scales on its sides and the pulsated glowing head far away at the front. The glow of the open furnace door lay on the flowing smoke above the engine; the reflection from the windows ran along the rails at the side.

The last half of the car was the guard and baggage section and along this he made his way without much difficulty. There was no window in it, and so he could stand upright. Then he came to the window of the guard's compartment itself and crouched down to pass it. Inside, above the rattle of the train, he could hear an occasional noise as the guard apparently moved some luggage about. Then he was past without being seen and was able to stand upright once more. He had chosen the off side of the train because passengers were less liable to look out on the side on which other trains passed.

He came to the front end of the car and crept round on to his old position on the buffers once more; thence across and finally on to the footboard of the car in front. Here came the most difficult part of his journey. He had to pass along the footboard, crouched down below the level of the windows, and yet had to obtain a glimpse of the inside so as to discover the empty compartment which he sought.

He bent down, hands upraised to grip the door handles, and crept past the first. From where he was he could see luggage on the rack and knew the compartment was occupied. He reached the next and suddenly, for a brief moment, his hand slipped. He gasped and clutched again, but at that moment all his old fear that he had been fighting off rushed back on him, the fear that had mastered him when he had clung to the roof edge the previous evening with Sam. He stopped there hardly daring to breathe, weak and sick with fear. His imagination pictured his body flung off the train, slipping downward with wildly clutching fingers, lying helpless on the track, mangled by the cruel inexorable wheels.

What was the use of all this struggling and striving, these constant dangers? Better by far surely to give himself up to the safety of a prison cell than risk all these terrible forms of death. He had not shot anyone, his hands were clean, and so they could not hang him; they could only imprison him for so many years. Safety for a term in Dartmoor seemed far preferable to this life of hairbreadth escapes, of playing with Death in all his most terrible forms. He knew he was not brave; he was afraid always and utterly of dying and physical pain. He thought of all the terrible, fearful things he had risked in the last twenty-four hours—the fall from the roof, the fight with the valet, and last but not least, Sam's cruel knife that, as its owner had threatened, would slowly cut him up rather than kill him outright, torture rather than death.

As if to complete his discomfort, at that moment there was a roar and a rattle and an express train passed on the other line, a whirling pulsating death within a few feet. He had an impression of heat and steam, of rushing wind and lighted windows streaming past—and then it had gone. His nerveless fingers almost lost their hold as he clung there. Crouched on the footboard, he became desperately, physically sick…

The spasm passed. He must nerve himself to do something. After all, the sooner he found an empty compartment the safer he would be. He pulled himself together and crept onward to the next. Raising himself by his hands ever so slightly, till his eyes were on a level with the top of the door, he looked in, and instantly sank down again. A man was inside reading a book. He moved on again. Two more occupied compartments he thus passed, knowing that he must look in, afraid lest he should be seen while doing so, and then he came to one that was empty, a first-class. With a sob of relief his fingers sought the handle and opened the door. More dead than alive from sheer physical fear, he crawled in, closed the door behind him, and sank onto the floor. He was safe for a while.

In a moment or two he pulled himself together. He had lost count of the passage of time, but he knew that they would be at Lyndhurst Road Station very shortly. He was terribly hungry and also, he saw from the glass, very dirty. He went into the lavatory to tidy himself up, then returned and looked out of the window. He was wondering whether he could see the main road from Totton, for along that he knew that his pursuers would come. If by chance they did not reach the station before him perhaps the best thing for him would be to go straight on to Beaulieu Road…

His eye fell upon a discarded newspaper and he instantly picked it up. He had not seen a paper since the hotel at Basingstoke and he fluttered the pages open with eagerness.

The headlines were there as before: “DESPERATE CRIMINAL,” “MIDNIGHT CHASE,” all the usual clichés that had been in the other papers. But the last news he had seen in the others was the report of the fire in the cinema. This one, an afternoon London edition, would have something later than that. He ran his eye down the stories, the eye-witnesses—the official statements. Ah! Challoner! The name leaped at him and he read eagerly on.

A little smile curved his lips as he read. Mr. Challoner, it appeared, was almost a national hero. Recognizing his two visitors at once as criminals he had with the utmost coolness asked them in, intending to lock them up and telephone for the police. But unfortunately he had himself been overpowered… Bah! What rot! Rezaire skipped it angrily… Ah! The valet, the man who had nearly killed him. He was in hospital shot through the lung and not expected to live. That was Sam again. Rezaire shuddered. But where was what he wanted to see—the description of the fight, the statement of Sam's arrest? He turned the page anxiously, but he could find nothing.

There had been no eye-witnesses, no reporters and there was no official statement. Why? Surely they would announce the fact that they had captured one of the most dangerous of the gang? But there was nothing there. Had the paper been issued before the statement? A new fear took hold of him. Supposing Sam had not been captured after all and that was why it was not in the papers. Then his fear vanished as the real reason came to him. The police were withholding it because they had suffered heavily, too heavily perhaps to justify at first sight the capture of one man. For Sam was a fighter and had seemed half mad then with the lust of it. Rezaire would always remember his last glimpse of that face as the outside lift rattled him down to safety.

He flung the paper down in disgust. There was one thing that he wanted to see more than anything else and it was not there.

He glanced out of the window again and then suddenly looked out more intently. Some distance away there was a light, not the light of a house, but a moving light, as of a car on a road, which appeared and disappeared between the trees. Perhaps that was the main road to Lyndhurst. The moving light was again cut off by trees and houses, reappeared again closer. He watched it as the train went on, catching occasional glimpses. Yes, it certainly was a car, and on the main road, which appeared to be gradually converging on the railway. He remembered now from the map that the Southampton-Lyndhurst Road crossed the railway at Lyndhurst Road Station. But was that light the police car? He could not tell; he could see nothing but the light appearing and disappearing between the houses that lined the road. Behind he now could see the light of another car.

The cars certainly were going very fast. He could see that more easily as the rail and road converged. He was reminded suddenly of his mad ride of that afternoon, of Dixon at the wheel. What had happened to Dixon, he wondered. Probably on his way to London by now under custody—unless by chance he was still in the police car, to which he had seen him being led.

The train suddenly began to slow down. They were nearing the station. The road too was very close. The gardens of the houses that lined it now reached back to the railway itself.

Rezaire nerved himself for the last act of his drama. If the police were there, if those two cars did belong to them, it would be a close thing. At the end of this act the curtain would fall on success or failure, for in a few hours now he would either be safe on his launch or in the hands of the police. He drew down the blinds of his compartment and settled himself so that he could see through a chink without being seen.

The line of houses came closer, ending at last in one big house with a garden and tall trees that filled the angle. Then came the final convergence of the road with the railway at a level crossing. Rezaire peered out, anxious to see whether the police had arrived or not. He could see nothing at the level crossing, and wondered where they were. The entrance to the station was at the far side and the gates would have been shut long before they could have got across. Perhaps they had driven into the coal or freight yard which was on the near side to them.

Then suddenly he saw standing by the side gate to the level crossing two constables and a plainclothes man. In the freight yard just by a lamp he saw also the two cars. His heart leaped into his mouth. So the cars had been the police cars after all; and these men were waiting where they thought the rear of the train would halt, for they had last seen him on the buffers and probably thought he would still be there ready to jump off as the train stopped. The police had arrived and he must act instantly.

Swiftly he ran to the far side of the carriage and opening the door dropped out as the train came to a standstill, closing the door behind him. Then remembering his success with the freight car he bent down and crawled right underneath the train as it lay up against the platform. Peering out between the wheels he saw that fortune had indeed aided him in this maneuver, for the opposite platform of the small country station was empty, save for a porter who had his back turned and some people in the waiting room. No one had seen him get out. Above him on the down platform he could hear banging of doors, excited shuffling, and moving of feet, shouts, voices, a repetition almost of the search at Totton. The detectives, relying on the surprise of their quick move, evidently hoped to catch him just as they had caught Dixon at the previous station. He heard two men run hastily through the carriages to watch the far side, saw their legs as they descended.

With beating heart he commenced to crawl forward, as he had done before, along the track underneath the train, keeping well to the side in the sheltering shadow of the platform.