Airs Above The Ground Part 22

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails.

keats: The Eve of St. Agnes

As timothy and I emerged from the Gasthaus, it came somehow as a surprise to realize that it was full light. Cloud or mist still hung round the summit of the mountain, so that it was impossible to see into the distance, but the visibility was now two or three hundred yards, and clearing every moment. The air seemed thin, grey and chill, but the hot coffee had worked wonders for us.

I said: "Have you the foggiest idea what time it is? I didn't put my watch on."

"Nor did I, but I noticed the time by the kitchen clock. It's about half past four."

"It's a mercy that didn't get smashed too. Poor Frau Becker. Lewis seems pretty sure she knows nothing about it, so the worst she'll suffer is being deprived of her husband's company for a bit."

"I'd have said the worst was the bust dishes."

"You've got something there. Oh gosh, and the gra.s.s is wet. It's beastly cold, isn't it?"

"What's that to us?" said Timothy buoyantly. "Intrepid, that's us. Archie Goodwin also ran."

I said, a little sourly: "You got some sleep, I didn't."

"There's that," he admitted. "And then you've had a pretty rough time, belting about like that on the roof."

"I suppose you don't reckon you had it rough, being hit on the head by Sandor in the stable? Or do you take that kind of thing in your stride? Look, for goodness' sake, don't try to go at such a speed. This gra.s.s is beastly slippery, and there's a lot of loose rock about. And you're carrying that thing."

"That thing" was Sandor's automatic, which Timothy handled with what was to me a terrifying and admirable casualness.

"I hope you do know all about those things?"

He grinned. "Well, yes, it's dead easy. As a matter of fact this is rather a neat little thing. My grandfather had an old Luger left over from the war. The first war. I used to go potting rabbits with it."

"You loathsome boy. I wouldn't have thought it of you."

"Oh," he said cheerfully, "I never got one. Have you any idea how difficult it is to pot at rabbits with a Luger?"

"I can't say that I have."

"As a matter of fact it's impossible. My hands so far are pretty clean of blood, but at this rate whether they'll stay so or not I just have no idea. I say, that was some sc.r.a.p up there in the kitchen, wasn't it?

Why did he burn Sandor's hand? To frighten him and make him talk?"

"I don't think so. It was a private thing."

"Oh? Yes, I remember, he said so. You mean they got across one another in the circus or something?"

I shook my head. "Sandor hit me."

His eyes flew to my bruised face. "Oh . . . oh, I see." I could see myself that his admiration for Lewis had soared to the edge of idolatry. I thought with resignation that men seemed in some ways to pa.s.s their lives on an unregenerately primitive level. Well, I could hardly cavil. I had had a fairly primitive reaction myself to my husband's eye-for-an-eye violence in the kitchen. That I was coldly ashamed of it now proved nothing.

"Well, whatever it was for," said Timothy, "it did the trick. He didn't know how fast to spill the beans.

Did you understand any of it?"

"No," I said. Lewis's quick interrogation-since it included the Beckers-had been in German. "Suppose you tell me now."

So, as we hurried down through the damp greyness, he pa.s.sed the main items across to me. The important thing from our point of view I knew already: that (as Lewis had overheard before he even entered the room) Sandor had managed to cache the drugs on his way up the mountain, in a tree on a section of railway that Lewis and I had short-circuited. He had in fact got to the Gasthaus only a few minutes before we did, and had still been telling Becker about his flight with the drugs when Lewis arrived under the window to listen. This bit of information Lewis could probably have got out of them later: where the luck had come in was in the timing of his own attack through the window. He had managed to delay it just long enough to hear the Vienna number that Sandor had given over the telephone.

So there had not been much difficulty with Sandor. Tim was right; I had seen for myself that he hadn't known how fast to talk. I supposed that, as well as his immediate fear of Lewis, there was some hope of leniency if he turned State's Evidence. And Becker had followed suit. At first he had tried to shout Sandor into silence but soon changed his tune when he realized how much Lewis knew. And presently the facts- and the names-began to emerge. . . .

"Not everything by a long chalk," said Tim, "but then they're only messengers. But Lewis says there'll be plenty to find when the police start to take the Gasthaus apart, and he did get the Vienna number just before Sandor had to slam the phone down. Of course, the exchange may have put the call through before they knew he'd rung off, and the Vienna end may have got the wind up; but Lewis says they'll hardly fold their tents like the Arabs when it might just be a wrong number, and even if they tried, they couldn't clean up before Interpol starts moving. In any case there'll be more than enough for Interpol to get a wedge in here and there, and crack the ring open. I suppose, if Sandor was pa.s.sing the stuff along through Yugoslavia into Hungary, Interpol could fix a trap up to catch the people at the other end. Or so Lewis seems to think."

Something about his voice as he spoke made me shoot a glance at him. Not quite authority, not quite patronage, certainly not self-importance; but just the unmistakable echo of that man-to-woman way that even the nicest men adopt when they are letting a woman catch a glimpse of the edges of the Man's World. Timothy had joined the club.

I said, not quite irrelevantly: "He thinks a lot of you, too. Now, for heaven's sake, I hope we can find this blighted tree where Sandor said he'd put the stuff."

"The stretch between the tunnels. A lonely, blasted pine. It's just as good," he said joyously, "as a one-eyed Chinaman with a limp. Oh, we'll find it, don't you worry! There's the railway again now."

We had gone at a fair speed down the first long slope of rock-strewn gra.s.s, cutting across one of the arms of the rack railway. This went in a wide sweep for some quarter of a mile to the right but curved back again to pa.s.s about two hundred and fifty yards below us. We could just see the pale-coloured cutting in the rock where the line lay, and, beyond it, the grey distances of morning with one or two darker shapes of bushes looming like ghosts. The gra.s.s was soaking. The thick turfs squelched under our feet like sponges, and the longer fronds swung heavy with drops like dimmed crystals which drenched us to the knee. Everywhere among the grey rocks there were clumps of some large violet gentian,just unfurling, a sight which would have stopped me in my tracks at any time but this. As it was, I don't think I even took particular trouble not to tread on them, but hurried on down the hill, intent only on one thing, speed.

We reached the shallow cutting where the railway ran and I jumped down into it with a thump. Behind me Timothy slithered with a rattle of stones and a sharp lamentable phrase as he slipped on the wet gra.s.s and almost lost his balance.

"Watch it. Are you okay?"

"Yes. Sorry. I wish I'd my boots here. These shoes are murder on wet gra.s.s. Can you see the next bit of line below this?"

"Not from here. The slope's more gradual, but we'll go straight on." Once again we ran forward and down over the tufted alpine gra.s.s. Timothy was ahead of me now. Visibility was getting better, and the colours even seemed to be growing warmer towards sunrise. On this part of the mountain there were more bushes, thick clumps of juniper and mountain rhododendrons, and sometimes we had to make longish detours round hollows where rocks had fallen in long since, and which were treacherously overgrown with thistles and long gra.s.s.

In front of me Timothy faltered, seemed to cast round like a hound at fault, and then stopped. I came up to him.

"What is it?"

"There's no sign of the railway. Surely it should be there?" He turned a dismayed face to me. "Supposing we've lost it? When it went back there to the left it must have been going round the other side of the mountain. We're probably on the wrong bit altogether now. ... It all looks so much alike. I wish to goodness we could see farther. ... If only we could see right down, we'd probably be able to see the lake and the village and everything, then we'd know where we were. D'you think we'd better go back to find the railway and follow it down?"

"Surely not. I don't see how we can have missed it. Wait a minute, Tim, stand still. It's getting clearer every minute. . . . Look down there. . . . No, farther to the right. That tree, that dead one, with the divided trunk. It's just the way he described it. What d'you bet that's the very one? Straight bang on the target, who'd have thought it? Come on!"

He caught at my arm as I ran past him. "But where's the railway? Between two tunnels, he said."

"Don't you see?" I threw it at him over my shoulder. "That's why we can't see the line. . . . We're probably crossing the upper tunnel now. Between the tunnels, the line'll be in a cutting. I'll bet you it's lying down there, just below that little cliff where the pine is. Come on, let's look."

And sure enough, it was. The dead pine stood, split and hollow, clinging to the face of a low cliff, and there, some fifteen feet below its exposed roots, ran the railway. Seventy yards down the track yawned the black exit of the first tunnel, and about the same distance the other way was the entrance to the second. It was the place.

"Bang on," I said. "This is it. How's that for radar?"

"Do you home on to drink as well as drugs?" asked Timothy. "Vanessa March, dope hound. This is terrific! Let's have a look!"

When, from the top of the little cliff, we examined the tree, we realized that it was not quite as easy to get at as it looked. A six-inch-wide track, presumably made by rather athletic goats, twisted its way down towards the permanent way. One had to step off this track, and, hanging tightly to the trunk of the dead tree, reach up to the obvious hiding place, a hole in the main trunk some five feet from ground level.

"Airs above the naming ground," said Timothy. "I suppose it would be dead easy for Sandor. Well, you'd better let me have a go. You go on down to the bottom, and I'll chuck the packages to you."

"If they're there."

"If they're there," he agreed, and set his foot gingerly on one of the exposed roots of the tree, while equally gingerly I slithered past him and edged my way down the goat track onto the permanent way.

And they were there. As Tim, clinging like a monkey, managed to shove a hand into the hollow of the tree, I heard him give a barely suppressed whoop of triumph. "I can feel them! I can't get high enough up to see, but there's the corner of one, two . . . yes, three . . .

"He said there were eight. With the one you've got, that makes seven in the tree."

"There's another, that makes four. I wish I dared stand up. If I hitch myself a bit higher I may be able to reach down and feel to the bottom of the hollow. Yes . . . five, six ... and seven. Gosh, if there's one thing I hate it's putting a hand into a hollow tree. You always feel as if a squirrel's going to latch on with all its teeth."

"If Lewis is right it's a wonder that stuff isn't biting. Can you just chuck them down to me one by one?"

"Can do," said Tim, and the first one came flying. It was solidly packed, a nice oblong package with what felt like several smaller packets inside it, flat and neat and wrapped in waterproof and sealed down. A few hundred pounds' worth of dreams and death. I shoved it in my anorak pocket. "Okay, next, please."

The others came dropping down in turn and I stowed half away and left the others out for Tim.

"There," he said from above, "I think that's the lot. Was that seven?"

"Yes, seven, don't bother any more, I'm sure he was telling the truth. Watch yourself."

"It's all right, I'm hanging on like a Bandar-log. No, I can feel, there's nothing more. Right, I'm coming down."

It was as he eased his way off the tree roots back onto the goat track that it happened. Either he trod on something loose, or else those treacherous soles slid on the damp rock, for he missed his footing and came hurtling down to the railway track in a sort of slithering feet-first fall which would have landed him in an unpleasant little drainage gully at the edge of the track which was filled with broken stones, but that in a frantic effort to save himself he managed a wide sprawling leap which carried him clear of it and onto the railway itself.

He landed completely out of control, his feet skidding on the wet gravel, his left foot coming hard up against the metal line, his right just missing this, but being driven against the raised central rail, the rack; and next moment, with a sharp cry of pain, he was sprawling right there at my feet, among the scattered packets which I had laid aside for him.

"Tim, Tim, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

I went down on my knees beside him. He had made no attempt to pick himself up but seemed to be bunched all anyhow, ungainly over the rails. His head was down. He was making gasping sounds of pain, his body hunched tightly over the right foot.

"I ... I think it's stuck . . . my foot . . . Oh, G.o.d . . . it's broken or something."

"Here, let me see. Oh, Tim!"

It was the right foot. By the force of his hurtling, feet-first fall, it had been driven hard forward into the little s.p.a.ce underneath the center rail where this was lifted clear of the gravel, and the solid sole of his shoe had jammed there, with the foot twisted at a horrible angle.

"Hold on, I'll try to get it out." But wrestle as I would with the shoe, it was fixed tight, and though Tim had now got control of himself and was making no sound, I was afraid how much I might hurt him if I persisted.

"We'll get the shoe undone, then you can try to slip your foot out of it."

The laces, of course, were soaked, and knotted tightly. I said: "We'll have to cut them. Have you a knife?"

"What?" He was very white and there was sweat on his face. He looked as if he might faint. I had once sprained an ankle badly myself, and could distinctly remember the feeling of nausea that came through the pain.

"A knife. Have you a penknife?"

He shook his head. "Sorry."

I bit my lip, and tackled the laces. I had nothing with me either, not even a nail file, and Tim's foot was swelling rapidly. After minutes, it seemed, of frantic wrestling, and a broken fingernail, I gave up. In a very short time it would be impossible to get the shoe off at all without cutting the leather. Scrabbling, searching desperately among the gravel, I found a sharp-edged stone, but after only a few moments'

experiment with that I had to give up. It wasn't possible to saw downwards on the swollen foot.

"I'll try to sc.r.a.pe out some of the gravel under your foot. Perhaps we can loosen the shoe that way." But when I attacked the ground underneath the rail I found that, for this short s.p.a.ce, the rail was running over solid rock. There was nothing to be done. And indeed I dared do no more. For all I knew the foot was broken, and the bitten-down pain in the boy's face terrified me.

All the same it was Timothy who made the only possible suggestion.

"You'll have to leave it. You can't do it yourself. Go and get help. I'll be all right. It's not so bad when we're not hacking at it, and if I turn myself like this . . . yes, that's better. I'll be okay. Honestly. I-I'll give it time and then try again. And anyway, it's Lewis who matters just now. You'd better do as he said, and send help. Even if you did get me out, you certainly couldn't get me down the hill. Go on, you'll have to leave me."

"Tim, I hate to, but-"

"It's the only thing to do." He was, understandably, curt. "You get down there to the telephone. Take the gun. I dropped it over there."

I picked the pistol up from where it had skidded, and pushed it into his hand. "I don't want it. I'd rather leave it with you. Here. All right, I'll go. I'll be as quick as I can."

"Don't forget the dope. You'd better take the lot. I don't exactly fancy being left stuck here with all that strewn round me, even if I do have a gun." He managed a smile. "Good luck."

"And to you."

And I turned and ran.

As I reached the first scattered trees at the edge of the wood the sun came up.

It was almost a surprise to find the shed, the jeep, and the quarry exactly as we had left them, except that now the early sun, streaming between the pines, took away some of the ghostly loneliness of the place and made it a picture of golden lights and sharp blue shadows. Thankful for this at least, I ran on past the quarry and down the road into the wood.

The Mercedes was there. And there, under the little stone beside the red and white elfin toadstools, was the key. I let myself into the car, stripped off my anorak with the clumsily bulging pockets and threw it into the back seat, then started the engine. It lit at a touch. The tires tore at the gravel as it lurched forward, and I turned it gently onto the rutted surface of the track and headed it downhill.

It was a heavy car, far heavier than I had been used to driving, and the bends were sharp. I had to make a severe effort to suppress in myself the feeling of hurry, to crush any feelings of urgency or danger right out of mind, and just concentrate on getting this powerful car down this very unpleasant and difficult little bit of road. What would happen if we met anything coming up, I couldn't even begin to imagine. . . .

But at least it was daylight. Already the sun was brilliant, laying great palisades of light between the pines all the way along the road. I wound my window down and let in the sharp sweet air. Birds were singing wildly, almost as if it were spring. I thought I heard a c.o.c.k crow not far off, and somewhere, nearer still, a train whistled. In spite of myself, my spirits lifted. It was morning, the sun was up, and soon all this would be over.

The road rounded a thick knot of pines, and below me, now, were the green rolling foothills, with beyond them the glitter of a spire and the glint of the lake. Smoke was rising from a farm chimney, and a little beyond that, behind a thick belt of pines, another column of smoke, black this time, spoke of some factory or other already at work. Seen in the morning light, this peaceful pastoral scene couldn't possibly hold any terrors. All I had to do was to go down into the pretty village and go to the hotel. They would be awake there, and moving, and they would speak English, and there was a telephone. . . .

I drove carefully round the last bend and headed the Mercedes down the straight slope, past the railway station and towards the village. I remember that the only thing which made me brake and pause as I pa.s.sed the station was that the gate was open and a man in blue dungarees was sweeping the little stretch of platform between the miniature ticket office and the siding where the train stood with its curious little tilted engine and its three carriages waiting for the day. There would certainly be a telephone here.

He had seen me. He paused in his sweeping and looked up. I stopped the car and hung out of the window.

"Excuse me, do you speak English?"