Rolling Stone (25 page)

Terry said, “It fell—”

“I think it fell. I think they knew it was ready to fall. It stood farther back than the house, nearer the sea, nearer the edge of the cliff. It must have been left like that, with the cliff fallen away underneath it. It would hang on for a bit, but it wouldn't bear the weight of a car. They knew that.”

Terry drew away a little.

“Did you know it?”

Why did she say that? She didn't know why. It said itself.

Peter stepped back against the wall.

“No, I didn't know. I don't know now—I'm guessing.”

She said in a passionate voice through the wind, “Who are you—who are you—who
are
you?”

“I'm Peter Talbot.”

Terry's heart sang, and stopped singing.

“But he's dead—Peter Talbot is dead.”

“Not yet,” said Peter, and laughed a little grimly. He took her by her two shoulders and shook her. “Look here, Terry Clive, you've got to make up your mind about me. It mayn't be easy, but you've got to do it. If you keep shilly-shallying, we shall probably both be dead quite soon. Maud Millicent is an accomplished murderess, and she's out to get us. I hope she's under the impression that she has got us, but I'm not as sure as I'd like to be. She may have seen us get out of the car—it depends on how good she is in the dark. And Jake—if he had cat's eyes he might have seen us. But I don't think they did see us, or we shouldn't have got away.” He laughed and added—“as far as this. We haven't got away yet. When that garage went I didn't hear any splash. There was every other sort of noise in the world—there was too much noise. If the garage had gone down into the sea it wouldn't have made so much row—at least I don't think it would. So I'm pretty sure it crashed on a dry beach. If we'd gone into the sea, they wouldn't have had to worry about us any more, but if the car is high and dry at the foot of the cliffs, I think they'll want to make sure we're safely dead. I don't know how much of a drop there is, or whether there's any way down. If there is, I should think she'd send Jake to have a look-see, and wait for him to come back.”

Terry caught at his arm.

“There's a car! I heard it!”

There was a sudden lull in the wind. It dropped between two gusts, and in the silence Peter heard what Terry had heard, the sound of a car coming nearer. He left the recess, and saw headlights—coming on—quite near. He sprang back just in time. The car swung round in front of the house.

What a damnable complication. It had been in his mind to give Terry time to take breath, and then make off by way of the trees on this side of the house. But they gave no real cover. They ceased a hundred yards away, and to wander in the darkness on this crumbling cliff would be a good deal like jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. He had just decided that to try and make the main road by way of the drive would be the lesser risk, when that confounded car came butting in. It was one thing to chance pursuit on foot, and quite another to risk being run down by a car. There was no cover of any sort once you got away from the house. They had not passed a farm or a dwelling for at least three miles. The downs—well, it might come to that, but he hoped not. He knew this sort of country, with the chalk crumbling away, undercut, hollowed by water, breaking into clefts, dropping in sudden deep holes. And the night as dark as storm could make it.

He said quickly, “Don't move. I'll reconnoitre,” and slipped out of the shelter into the wind again.

The car was at the front door, lights on and engine running. He tried to think what this would mean. He had rejected at once any idea that the car might belong to the owner of the house upon his lawful occasions. Two things determined this—certainly that Maud Millicent would never have risked staging her “accident” in the neighborhood of an inhabited house, and an overwhelming conviction that the house was not inhabited. It was a shell, a dead thing, the corpse of a house abandoned to decay.

Then why was the car left here at the front door with lights on and engine running? The answer was that someone was in a hurry. He thought if he were Maud Millicent Simpson he would be in a hurry to leave the place where he had just sent two people crashing to their death. He deduced Bert and a second car—Bert with orders to follow at a safe distance and be ready to pick her up as soon as the job was done. He had wondered a little at Bert walking off into the night whistling
Tea for Two
. He felt quite sure now that he had merely walked off to de-park this other car.

Peter got near enough to be sure that the car was empty. This meant that Bert had joined the other two. Presently they would get into the car and drive away. Would they—would they, by gum? Or would they find nothing but the smell of the exhaust, and a tail-light well away down the drive?

He pelted back to Terry.

No.

He pelted back. But Terry wasn't there. There were the three steps up. There was the recess and the door. But no Terry. He felt along the wall outside towards the back of the house. The wind blew in from the sea. He reached the corner, looked round it, saw a dazzle of light, the beam of a powerful electric lamp, and sprang back. He thought he was in luck. If the beam had been swinging his way it must have caught him full in the face. But it was swinging back again—over the cliff—and down. In the flash of it he had seen how near the house stood to a raw, broken edge—how very near to its fall. Half a dozen yards away, no more, the cliff fell sheer.

Terry wasn't here.

He turned and went back again, and just as he came level with the recess where he and Terry had stood, someone came round from the front of the house swinging a small bright torch.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Peter didn't wait to see who it was. At the first flash he jumped for the little porch. He flattened himself against the door, pressing back against it, and saw the torch cut across his line of vision with its narrow ray. If they came as far as the porch they couldn't miss him. They were bound to come as far as the porch.

His hand went behind him almost mechanically and felt for the handle. The door gave suddenly as he leaned against it and nearly brought him down. He staggered, and saved himself, blessing the wind which would cover the noise of his feet on a bare boarded floor. He got the door shut and stood leaning against it. Why was it unlocked? Where was the key? And was this where Terry had gone?

He ran his left hand down the inside of the door. The key was sticking in the lock. He turned it, and felt an illusory sense of safety. In point of fact the house might very easily prove a trap. But it seemed likely enough that Terry was here, and if she was here, he had to find her. He groped his way along a passage, and came to doors that faced each other across the narrow space.

The right-hand door was ajar. He opened it wide and went in. The room felt small. It was darker than it had been outside. There was a smell of rotting wood. After a moment he made out the window—just one on the right, looking to the side of the house from which he had just come. And then, startling and sudden, the beam of the torch stabbed in through the uncurtained pane. It missed him. He drew back in a hurry and sheltered behind the door. The momentary flash showed him a small, square, empty room with broken floor-boards.

He tried the room on the other side of the passage—warily, lest the beam should follow him there. He found a dilapidated cloakroom with a lavatory beyond, horribly damp, horribly mouldy, quite empty.

Along the passage again, and happier for getting away from that prowling torch. His outstretched hands touched something rough and clammy—a baize door closing the passage. It swung as he pushed it, and he came through into what he supposed to be the hall of the house. There was a feeling of space in front of him, on either side, and overhead. The place mouldered where it stood. It fairly reeked of decay.

He put his hand in his pocket and got out his own torch. It wasn't safe to use it, but he might have to use it. Actually, nothing was safe. He might have to weigh a danger against a danger and grasp the lesser evil. It would be madness to show a light in any of the rooms, since it appeared that the windows were all unscreened, but here in the hall it might be possible for a single guarded moment. Anyhow it must be risked, because he must find Terry, and find her quickly whilst the car was there for them to take.

He moved out into what he thought would be the middle of the hall, switched on the torch, and turned the light upon his own face. That was the safest way. If Terry was here she would see him, and if she saw him she would surely come to him—

That would depend on whether she really trusted him or not. He didn't know whether she trusted him. If she didn't, if she was running away from him, they might just go on playing devil-in-the-dark around this crazy house until it fell in on them or Maud Millicent came along and shot them down.

He kept the light on his face for something like a minute. Nothing happened. He switched it off and called Terry's name softly between the gusts of the wind. There was no answer. A quick, shattering anger ripped through him. If she had done what she was told and stayed where she was put, they would be away by now, getting out of this cracked murder-game, getting back to sanity and civilization. Why on earth couldn't she do what she was told? The uncivilized man in Peter could have taken a savage pleasure in knocking Terry's head against one of these dripping walls.

He went on across the hall, and found a door half open. Drawing-room or dining-room this would be, and it should have windows on two sides of it, to the front and to the side where Maud Millicent and Jake had got out. He saw the front windows at once—two of them, very high, very wide, very bare. The lights of the car outside showed them up and made a faint yellowish dusk at that end of the room. Right opposite him as he came in, three more windows looked out upon the way by which he had driven to the garage, and to what had been meant to be his death and Terry's. He could only just make them out. Terry wasn't here. She would not have taken refuge so near that waiting car.

He returned to the hall and felt his way towards the back of the house. He came upon a passage leading to the right. He thought it served the door by which he had set Maud Millicent down. He had barely passed it, and was feeling his way by the wall, when he heard a sound which turned him cold. The door at the end of the passage had been opened. The wind threw it back against the wall with a crash and rushed past it into the hall behind him. A man swore, the door was violently slammed. Light came from the passage, and for a moment he saw the place he was in as you see a place in a dream—the big empty hall, stairs going up wide and shallow to a landing where they branched right and left, a broken baluster, dark gaps where a tread had fallen in. All this in front of him and to the left. On his right, a yard away, a closing door. In that moment of half sight he could swear he had seen it move, and a hand moving it—just the fingers—holding the edge of the door and then withdrawn.

They must have turned their light away. Perhaps they had gone into some room that opened off the passage. The hall was dark again. It seemed darker than before. He reached the door with a stride, pushed it, was held by something that pushed from the other side, and lost his temper. The door jerked in. He followed it, and heard Terry catch her breath in the dark.

He said, “Terry—” and she ran to him, catching at his arm, holding on to him as if she would never let him go.

He swept her behind the door and pulled it back to cover them. If they came past and saw a door wide open on an empty room, they might let it go at that. What a hope. What a damned nightmare. If they were being seriously looked for, he thought they were as good as dead. Three to two, and the three armed and desperate.

They stood flattened against the wall, heard a trampling of feet, and saw the darkness in the room go grey. Terry pressed hard against him—hard. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and kept it there. He had no more anger. He knew it now for what it was, his fear for Terry—his fear—

The men stopped outside the open door—shone the torch into the room. A hole in the middle of the floor, a pile of dust and debris on the crumbling hearth, plaster fallen between the windows, the shape of a chandelier, stark and stripped of its dancing crystals—these things were there to be seen. Peter and Terry behind the door saw nothing—only the light flashing in and out again.

Jake said, “What's her game? How did they get in anyway? I want to get back out of this. Aren't they dead? Didn't I see them go down with my own eyes?”

“Perhaps you did—if you can see in the dark.” Bert's tone was contemptuous.

“Where else could they have gone?”

“Perhaps in here. That's why we're looking.”

Jake swore.

“I tell you they went over the cliff. What makes her think they didn't?”

“You heard what she said the same as I did—he shut off the lights too soon, and the girl didn't scream. She says the girl would have screamed.”

Terry made a fierce little movement. She felt Peter's hand heavy on her shoulder.

Jake said, “If a hundred perishing girls had all screamed together, you wouldn't have heard them. You couldn't hear nothing in that perishing wind.”

“You asked me what she said. I've told you, haven't I? She says the girl ought to have screamed. I'll say she knows what she's talking about. But if you don't think so, well, you just go and tell her.”

“Well, I say they're goners, the two of them. You can see the car down there on the rocks, and I say they're under it. It's turned over, isn't it? And that's where they'd be—under the car and all smashed to blazes. We ought to be half way back to town by now instead of searching a mouldy old house that's due to fall into the sea any perishing minute.”

“It'll last the night, I shouldn't wonder!” Bert's tone was sarcastic. “But you won't if you don't get on with the job. If you want her coming in to see what we're doing, I don't.”