Mystery of Mr. Jessop (35 page)

Bobby pressed a little harder on the accelerator. It did not make much difference. The car was already travelling at a rate that would have set the joint hair of all concerned in its manufacture on end with mingled pride and terror and incredulity. There were times when the wheels seemed hardly to touch the ground, as though the car no longer ran upon the solid earth but went by long leaps through the air. A hare the headlights dazzled, and that tried to lollop along in front, was swept over as if it had been standing still; the dogs in the farms and cottages Bobby passed had hardly begun to bark before he was out of hearing; through the darkness he fled and was gone; the night opened before him and closed again in the same instant; a watcher from afar wondered whether the trail of light he made as he traversed higher ground was on earth or a meteor on the horizon; when he came to a hill, he devoured it as though it had been a level racing-track; with every yard or two he threw dice with disaster and with death; the wind itself seemed to follow him in vain, the gusts of rain to toil helplessly behind.

Marlborough he had left behind; Wansdyke he had crossed without knowing; now he had come into a great level plain, and he was no longer on the road that somehow, somewhere, he must have left, and he was altogether lost. He slackened speed, and, as if they had been waiting for the chance, the wind snarled at him in angry gusts, the rain dashed against the side of his car, and in the distance he thought that he heard thunder.

His headlights showed that he was on a mere track across a close-growing turf. He supposed that the track would lead somewhere – at any rate, he hoped so. It was very dark, lonely, quiet, save for the angry wind and the swift, pattering rain. On the wet turf his wheels had small grip, and more than once he skidded. Of those whom he pursued there was no sign; only the impenetrable night was there, and the wind, and the rain it flung against his windows. It seemed he was quite alone in this bare, unfenced land, primitive as when the Romans had known it, or those who were here before even man had won his kingdom from the animals.

His compass gave Bobby his direction. The track he was on seemed to be following a southerly course, and he decided to continue on it. But that was not easy, and he had not gone more than a few hundred yards before he had hopelessly lost it, and then quite suddenly he was in the midst of a flock of sheep that rose up all around him, vague bundles of dingy white the earth seemed to be spawning and that ambled slowly away to resume elsewhere their disturbed rest.

“Only hope,” he muttered, “I don't get into some blessed hole or gully.”

A flash of unexpected lightning – for he had heard no more thunder – threw the landscape into vivid momentary relief, and showed at a little distance what seemed a series of vast and upright stones, standing there as they had stood all through the passing of the troubled and uneasy centuries. Could it be Stonehenge, he wondered? If so, that would give him his position. He wondered if there were guardians of the place in permanent residence, and, if so, if they would possess a telephone. If it were Stonehenge, Amesbury and Salisbury would not be far, and anyhow there would be telephones there. Scotland Yard would want to know as soon as possible what had happened. Only then this might not be Stonehenge. He had a memory of having read of other such relics of the Dawn on Salisbury Plain that were to Stonehenge as a cathedral is to a parish church. The momentary glimpse the lightning had given had not been enough for recognition. He drove slowly and carefully in the direction of the stones; and then became aware of a light on his right hand, a light at first but a tiny flicker, almost as though someone were lighting a cigarette, then flaring up suddenly, becoming at once a pyramid of leaping flame that the wind fanned joyously, that the rain assailed in vain.

“Car overturned and caught fire,” Bobby said to himself.

Instinctively he quickened speed, and almost at once his own car plunged deep into an abrupt hollow in the ground. Bobby jumped down. He saw that the two off-wheels were fixed deep in a rut, so that there was no hope of extricating them without help. He began to run towards the fire. Then came a sharp crackle of pistol shots, and he could see figures outlined before the fire, distinct for a moment in its glow, and then vanishing again into the dark. From a distance he could hear the chug-chug of a motor-cycle thumping its way nearer across the turf.

Another shot rang out. Bobby reflected uncomfortably that Ulyett had had an automatic but that he himself was quite unarmed.

For a moment Bobby stood still. The flames from the burning car leaped higher, fanned by the wind, indifferent to the driving rain. He saw again dark figures running to and fro before it and behind. The light it cast round showed where, close by, there reared itself in the darkness, twelve feet into the air, a huge and upright stone that had watched there for ten thousand years, perhaps, but had seldom seen stranger happenings – a pagan stone that could well have thought this night that pagan times had come again. Near it lay another, enormous as itself, full length upon the earth, as though it at least had bowed beneath the passage of the years, and the wind blew more fiercely still and the rain came down more heavily.

Bobby grabbed a spanner from the tool-box. It would at least be better than nothing, he thought, since bullets were flying so freely. He ran forward and, catching his foot on a huddled form he had not seen, went headlong, shaking himself badly, and letting the spanner fly off into the darkness, irretrievably lost. The huddle he had fallen over emitted a squawk of terror, and Bobby, scrambling to his knees, seized it, not too gently.

“What's all this?” he said. “Let's have a look at you.”

“Oh, my God,” wailed a faint voice Bobby recognised at once for T.T.'s. “Oh, it's the C.I.D., thank God,” moaned T.T., who seldom before had thanked God for anything, and certainly never for the C.I.D.

“What's up?” demanded Bobby. “Where's Wynne? He was with you. Where's Wright and Jacks?”

But at this moment another shot rang out, not very far away. T.T. screamed, jerked away from Bobby's grasp, flattened his body passionately against the earth, as though in his extremity of terror he would force himself for shelter to be one with it.

There was plainly nothing to be got out of him who was but a shivering jelly of panic. Bobby got to his feet and ran on, thankful for the darkness, that at any rate gave him some measure of security. He was careful to leave well to the side the circle of light cast by the fire, for he had the idea that to enter it would mean swift death.

Somewhere near by in the night he was sure hid Wynne, lurked Wright, each armed with a pistol, one with the necklace, both equally reckless and resolute. Nearer came the chug-chug of the motor-cyclist. The sound gave the direction, but no headlight showed. Probably the shooting had been heard and the headlight prudently extinguished. As cautiously, as silently as he might, so that he might take every advantage from the wind, the rain, the night, that were here his only help, Bobby ran on. A hand shot out of the darkness and caught him by the ankle. He went down with violence. Before he could recover from the shock of this second fall, a voice whispered:

“Look out, you fool. He's got a gun; he's done in Jacks already.”

“You're Wright?” Bobby asked.

“Yes. Wynne's there. Quite close. Keep quiet. He'll get us both if you don't mind.” Bobby tried to rise, but Wright's heavy hand pressed him down again. With his mouth close to Bobby's ear, though indeed the wind, the pattering of the rain, muffled all other sounds, Wright went on: “You showed up against the fire. I saw you. If it had been him you would be dead by now. He's taking no chances. Got a gun?”

“No,” Bobby answered. “Have you?”

“Empty,” Wright answered. “No more ammunition.”

“Can't lie here,” Bobby muttered, “and let him get away.”

“He won't,” Wright answered grimly. “I've the necklace. I saw him and another fellow looking at it. I grabbed it. Like that. I started up and went off top speed. They followed – shooting. Edged us away from houses. We didn't dare stop. Knew they would shoot and grab and run. Only chance to shake them off, and we couldn't, or get to a town, and we couldn't.” He added: “There's someone coming.”

But, as he said this, the chug-chug of the motor-cycle bumping its way towards them across the short cropped turf, ceased abruptly.

“Who is it? One of your pals?” Wright muttered.

Bobby did not think so, and he said nothing, though he believed he could make a good guess at the identity of the new-comer.

“We can't stop here for ever,” he muttered, after a brief pause.

“If you don't shut up, we will all right,” retorted Wright grimly. “Listen.”

Footsteps were drawing near – the slow and careful footsteps of some intent searcher.

“Oh, there you are, I see you now,” a voice said loudly. “Look here, Wright, I don't want to hurt you. Why should I? Hand over the necklace and we'll go fifty-fifty.”

Wright made no answer, though Bobby could feel with what intensity his whole body stiffened, understood with what an agony of apprehension it grew rigid, could hear the muffled panting breaths Wright drew. A gust of wind blew with renewed violence; in a fresh squall the rain rushed by, soaking them as they lay who were soaked through already. Wynne cried, his voice a high-pitched scream to make it carry above the storm:

“All right, all right. Now you've asked for it and now you'll get it. I'll give you till I've counted three. One –”

And Bobby knew rather than felt with what rigidity of purpose Wright held himself still.

“Two,” counted Wynne, his voice screaming against the storm, and Bobby thought to himself:

“If he gets Wright, he'll get me next.”

Both he and Wright had nearly ceased to breathe. Bobby wondered abstractedly how it was, when his face was sheltered by his arms as he lay, yet the rain was trickling down it; and then he realised that it was not rain, but sweat, and this puzzled him, for he felt very cold. He wondered who would be promoted to sergeant in his place. He wondered half a hundred other things; matter for more thought, indeed, passed through his mind than would, as a rule, have entered it in a week, with such a kaleidoscopic lightning-like speed was it working now.

“Three,” Wynne shrieked, and a flash of light stabbed the night, and the sharp whip-like crack of an automatic.

There followed a burst of rich profanity, and Wright permitted himself to mutter into Bobby's ear:

“Knew he was bluffing or he would have spotted there were two of us. Bit hard to lie still, though.”

Bobby fully agreed.

“We've got to do something. We can't stop like this,” he repeated.

“If we don't, he'll get us soon as we try to move,” Wright answered. “If we do, he'll get us soon as it's light.” This seemed likely enough to Bobby, and did not make him feel any more cheerful. He tried to think what to do and found his mind a blank.

“There was a motor-cycle coming,” Wright whispered. “I heard it. Perhaps it's bringing help.”

Bobby did not think so – not, at any rate, if his guess at the identity of the rider were correct. He found himself wondering what had happened. Probably Wright and Jacks in the first car had made the same error that he himself presumably had made, and had left the main road at the same spot, following the same track, to bring them here as it had brought him. Wynne and T.T. had followed. The police car in pursuit had most likely been out-distanced, and had probably proceeded along the main road. As for Denis and Hilda, they might be anywhere within fifty miles. Bobby thought the only chance was that the police car might give the alarm and that a search-party might be sent out to cover the Wiltshire Downs, somewhere whereon which he supposed they were, and so might find them in time to be of help. But this seemed to Bobby an extremely slender hope. He thought it more likely that by that time only a few dead bodies would be there to find, and this reflection gave him a curiously empty feeling in the pit of the stomach. Discovering again that he was very cold, and being obliged to smother at this moment a fit of sneezing, he reflected that, anyhow, he was perhaps going to be spared the discomfort of a bad cold in the head, or that rheumatic fever with which his landlady was constantly threatening him when he put on a fresh shirt without having let her previously air it. But this reflection did nothing to alleviate that uncomfortable feeling inside him. To Wright he whispered:

“Whose car is burning?”

“Mine,” Wright answered. “It overturned and caught fire.”

“Where's Mr. Jacks?” Bobby asked.

“Wynne got him while we were watching the fire. I fired back. It was the only shot I had left. He chased me round the fire. I dodged away, and it's so dark he couldn't see, only hear. He got so close I thought my best chance was to lie up. I saw Jacks crawling away. He wasn't dead then. Perhaps he is now. He was badly hit.”

“Got to do something,” Bobby muttered.

“Better keep quiet,” Wright advised. “He's got a gun. You haven't. He'll use it.”

“I know,” said Bobby, who had small liking for the job before him. “Look here,” he suggested, “you call him. He can't be far off. He's sure to hear. He'll think you want to make terms. As soon as he gets near, I'll rush him.”

“Not me,” said Wright frankly. “Not one chance in fifty to bring that off.”

“You're scared,” said Bobby. “So am I,” he sighed, and wriggled away into the darkness.

“You're a fool,” Wright whispered after him, and Bobby was quite of the same opinion.

When he had gone a little distance he got to his feet and shouted with the full force of his lungs:

“No gaps mind. Let every man keep in touch. Guns ready.”