Rolling Stone (23 page)

He stood respectfully before her and listened to his orders.

“I want this business closed down. We can finish it tonight. I shall go into the upper part of the house. Presently I shall call for Jake, and he will come up to me. The area door will be unlocked. You will pretend to discover this, and you will make the girl believe that you are going to get her away. She's got to leave this house of her own free will and without a finger laid on her. If any busybody happens to be looking out of a window, they will see a girl getting into a car with her young man, and they'll never give it another thought. You understand, that's what it's got to look like—a young man going out with his girl. I'll give you a quarter of an hour for talking, and then if the street is clear, Bert will whistle
Tea for Two
. You'll wait long enough for him to pass, and then you'll bring her along. I suppose you can drive a Morris?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Very well—you will drive out of London by the Great West Road.”

Peter's heart leapt. Let him get Terry away in a car, and he would back himself to win the game. But was it possible that they would let him get away with the car and Terry? If he was unsuspected, why not? Or was there a trap? On this road he had taken there was no step which might not send him crashing into some hidden pit. Yet the step must be taken. He repeated her last words,

“The Great West Road. And then?”

“We shall catch you up. You wouldn't be able to manage alone. We shall be in a Packard saloon, and we shall toot three times as we pass you. After that all you have to do is to follow us. Do you think you can get the girl to go?”

“Oh, yes—we're quite friendly—she'll jump at the chance. It's as easy as kissing your hand.”

She smiled. It did actually make Peter feel physically sick to see the slow, painted smile beneath the painted mask.

“Kiss as much as you like,” she said, “and make the most of your time. She won't be so pretty to kiss after tonight.”

She turned round to straighten her hat at the glass and to smile at her reflection there. Peter could almost have shot her then if his pistol hadn't been dead. For the first time in his life he wanted to kill. He stood aside as she came past him to the door, pausing there a moment to say,

“You understand? A quarter of an hour for talk—Bert whistling
Tea for Two
when the street is clear—a minute to let him get away—and then you take her out to the Great West Road and drive on until we pass you. You've got all that?”

“Oh, yes—it ought to be easy enough.”

“Five hundred pounds if you bring it off,” she said, and walked away down the passage to the door which gave upon the stair.

He heard the jingle of a key-ring. He saw the door he had wanted so badly to open swing back against the wall. Maud Millicent went up the stairs. Bert opened the area door and went out. Jake remained where he was.

Peter set his teeth and went into the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Terry was standing by the table. She had put on her dress again. Her face had no colour. Her eyes were bright and strained. She had a flinching look as he came in, but she controlled it. It hurt him so much that he could hardly control himself. He shut the door and came to the other side of the table.

Terry said, “What are you going to do with me?”

He put his hands on the table and leaned across it.

“Terry—don't look like that.”

Her eyes dwelt on him. They were burning bright.

“What are they going to do with me? What is that woman going to do? You won't tell me, but I know. They're going to kill me—you know that. She's given you your orders, hasn't she?”

“Terry!”

Her look changed to a puzzled one.

“Why are you doing it? Is it for money?”

“No, it isn't for money.”

She leaned on the table.

“Then why? You don't hate me, do you? I haven't done anything to make you hate me. You're not like Jake. You don't
want
to hurt me, do you? I can't see why you should.”

“Don't, my dear! Terry, please don't!” He took her hands across the table and held them. They were very cold indeed. “Terry—don't! I won't let them hurt you. I'll get you away.”

Her hands stirred in his.

“Get me away?”

“If you'll do exactly what I tell you. She's gone upstairs. Listen—she's calling to Jake.”

They stood there hand in hand, and heard Jake come along the passage and go clattering up the stairs a couple of steps at a time. Terry said in a whisper,

“He's gone upstairs.”

They waited. Her hands clung to Peter's. Warmth was coming into them.

“Yes, he's gone upstairs,” said Peter. “They've both gone up. And Bert went out—he's the driver—so that means there's no one on guard. Wait a minute till I go and see if there's anyone at the door.”

He went to the area door and opened it. A cold, heavy air flowed sluggishly into the house. There was no fog but a pitch-dark night heavily clouded and without star or moon. He went half-way up the area steps, and saw the car, and the driver leaning against it.

Bert came over and whispered, “Are you ready?” And when Peter nodded he began at once to whistle stridently and rather out of tune:

“Tea for two, and two for tea,

Me for you, and you for me—”

He walked away. The sound of his feet on the pavement and the sound of the whistling receded.

Peter went back into the kitchen. He said quickly,

“Get your coat. The car's there. We've got a chance of getting away with it.”

He saw her face change. Colour came into it. She went past him quick and light—so light that he could hear no sound of her feet as she ran down the passage. Then she was back, the coat flying loose and a hand on his arm. But at the area door she checked. There was a whisper close at his ear.

“Why it is open? Why have they left it open?”

He whispered back, “I'm supposed to be on guard. It's all right.”

And then up the steps and across the pavement to the car.

He had a moment's indecision as they emerged from the area. Suppose they linked arms and ran for it to the corner. Suppose they were to ring the next-door bell. He took a quick look up and down. The road fairly bristled with “To let” boards. They stretched misshapen hands in the dim light of a street-lamp which seemed a long way off. A deserted road, a dead road, a road of derelict houses leading to a dark square. He could just distinguish a blur of trees.

No, better take the car, steer for some frequented road, and stop the first policeman.

The whole thing passed like a flash. Then they were in the car. The first tremor of movement, the gathering speed, the wheel between his hands, gave him an intoxicating sense of power, so easily, so lightly, so quickly they were away.

Terry's shoulder was tense against his. As they turned the corner and began to skirt the square, he said, “We're off!” and felt her relax. He could have shouted.

And then from behind him came the voice of Maud Millicent Simpson.

“Very neatly done, Spike. I'll give you a bonus for that.”

Peter held the wheel steady. He felt as he had felt when a brickbat had dropped on his head when he was ten years old and he had gone in too close to watch the fascinating business of demolishing a rickety old house. There was the same horrid shock, the same angry surprise. But, whereas the brickbat had plunged him into unconsciousness, this shock intensified consciousness to an almost unbearable degree. With every sense heightened, he realized how cleverly, how fatally he had been tricked. What a fool he had been to dream that they would let him get away with Terry and a car. Before she had finished promising him a bonus it was all there in his mind—the complete picture of the dupe he had been and the danger they were in. The bonus he was likely to get was death, and he knew it. He spoke without undue delay in a rather grumbling voice,

“What's all this? I thought you were following us.”

He heard Jake laugh. So the two of them were there in the back of the car. He hadn't thought to look, and there hadn't been time. They must have come out of the front door as soon as she had called Jake up to her and just got in there at the back and ducked down. It was the simplest, the easiest trick in the world.

Maud Millicent said in her hard, sweet voice, “I thought we'd give you a surprise. No use taking out two cars when one will do, and you might have had trouble with her—later on in the lighted streets. She might have wanted to stop a policeman and have one. I thought we'd really do better all together.”

“It looks to me as if you didn't trust me,” said Peter, still in that grumbling voice.

He mustn't take it too smoothly. If they had a chance at all, it lay in letting them think that he had no real suspicions. A man who thinks he's going to be murdered doesn't grumble.

Maud Millicent laughed quite musically.

“What a thing to say—and when I've just promised you a bonus! Don't be foolish, Spike—you've done very well. Here she is without a mark on her, and if anyone saw her get into the car, they would swear she came of her own free will, which is just what you were told to contrive. I'm sure she believed every word you said about getting her away. Almost any girl will fall for a repentant crook. It's so flattering to feel you've converted someone—isn't it, Miss Terry Clive? Quick, Jake!”

Terry had snatched at the handle, throwing her weight against the door, but even as she did it, Peter's hand left the wheel and caught her arm. There was a moment of horror, a moment of breaking strain, and then Jake had her wrists, pulling her back. She had no chance. He held her, not tightly, but in a clasp she could not shift. Peter's hand went back to the wheel.

Maud Millicent said, “Turn her!” and Terry was pushed into the corner of the seat against the door she had tried to open. She saw the outline of a hand. The light of a street-lamp passed across the hand. She saw that it held a pistol.

What sort of nightmare was this? She looked at the pistol with wide, straining eyes. Why hadn't she been quicker? If she had got the door open—She hadn't got it open. He had stopped her. He had tricked her, lied to her, betrayed her. It was not fear that drained the blood from her lips and the courage from her heart, but the agonizing pain of betrayal. It hurt so much that she had not cared what would happen to her after her desperate thrust at the door. It was not a bid for freedom, it was the blind panic instinct of escape from a proximity which had become unendurable. To sit beside him with her shoulder touching his, to hear him speak—it was more than she could bear. She thrust wildly at the door, and his hand came out and stayed her.

Now she stared at the pistol, and wondered whether they were going to shoot her, and whether it would hurt very much. She wasn't afraid. She leaned back against the side of the car where Jake had pushed her, and heard Maud Millicent say with an edge on the sweetness of her voice,

“You really are a fool, Terry Clive. We've got a fairly long drive before us, and you wouldn't enjoy it much with a broken arm or a broken leg. Hasn't anyone ever told you it's dangerous to jump out of a moving car? We were doing about twenty-five, I should think. You wouldn't have been killed, you know—no such luck. But you might have broken most of your bones, or you might have been dragged and got your face messed up, and that really would have been a pity—wouldn't it, Spike?”

Peter hunched his shoulders and put a growl into his voice.

“Oh, come off it! What's the good of this sort of thing? How do you expect me to drive in traffic with a girl trying to throw herself out of the car? Why couldn't you leave her to me like you said you were going to? She was as pleased as Punch until you butted in. First you say how well I've done, and then you go and spoil it. Why can't you leave the girl alone?”

Maud Millicent laughed a little.

“Very cock-a-hoop all of a sudden, aren't you, Spike? Now, Terry Clive, will you listen to me. We're taking you down into the country. If you do what you're told you'll be all right. If you give any trouble you won't. And if you try to call out or put your hand on that handle again, I shall shoot you. Don't buoy yourself up by thinking that this is a bit of bluff—it isn't. Or that I wouldn't dare, because I would. I could have shot you a dozen times in the last five minutes, and no one would have turned his head. Everyone's taken up with the noise they're making themselves. Now—are you going to be sensible?”

“What do you call sensible?”

“You'll go quietly and not give us any trouble.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“That is our affair. You do what you're told and I'll tell Jake to let go of you.”

“Tell him to let go,” said Terry.

“Do you hear, Jake? She doesn't really care about having you so close. Not very flattering, but one just has to take the rough with the smooth. I expect she'd be kinder to Spike. What a pity we didn't think of it before. I could have driven the car, and we could have let Spike sit behind with her. She wouldn't have minded his arm round her.”

Terry was quite rigid with anger. She didn't feel hurt and vulnerable any more. She felt hard enough to break anyone who touched her. She could have smashed that door open now, she could have jumped out of the car without hurting herself. She said in a small, clear voice,

“Tell him to take his hands away.”

“Well, Jake, there you are. Go on—take them away. Now, Terry Clive, let's see how nicely you can behave. You lift a hand or open your mouth, and it's the last thing you'll ever do in this world. Jake's going to change places with me, and I'm going to keep this pistol resting on the seat where you'll feel it against the back of your neck. You needn't work up a faint or anything like that. It won't go off so long as you behave yourself.”