Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror (6 page)

'Thank goodness he's gone,' Barbara
shuddered, sitting up and loosening the bodice of her dress a little
in the oppressive heat.

Susan opened her eyes. 'We'll never get
out of this awful place, never,' she said in a hollow voice. '-Not
until they come to take us to the guillotine.'

'Now we mustn't just give up like that,
Susan,' Barbara retorted sharply in her schoolmistress tone.

Susan sat up abruptly. 'I'm certainly
not going to fool myself!' she declared with a trace of desperate
smugness.

Barbara tried to smile. 'But think of
all the times we've been in danger before. We've always found a way
out in the end.' Susan fixed her large widely-spaced eyes on Barbara.
'Oh yes, we've had our share of luck. But you can't go on and on
being lucky,' she objected. 'One day things are bound to catch up
with you.'

Barbara gazed at her, shocked and
puzzled by the teenager's cold pessimism. 'Susan, I've never heard
you talk like this before,' she exclaimed. 'You're usually so ...
well, so optimistic'

Susan turned away to the wall. 'I just
think something awful's happened to Grandfather,' she said. 'It's
hopeless.'

Barbara desperately tried to adopt a
cheerful air. 'Oh, I'm sure the Doctor's all right, Susan.'

'You keep saying that!' Susan snapped,
resentment firing her anxiety. ' I just want to know the truth, that's all.'

Barbara stood up purposefully. 'Susan,
we must try to find a way out of here,' she insisted. 'And it hasn't
always been luck in the past, you know. We used our initiative.'

Susan grimaced at Barbara's classroom
manner and kept quiet.

'Now, we came along the River Seine . .
. ' Barbara murmured, turning this way and that as if trying to
orientate herself.

Susan snorted with scornful mockery.
'You're surely not suggesting we dig our way out and swim for it?'

Barbara turned on her. 'And why not,
Susan Foreman?'

'But the walls are solid stone!'

Ignoring her, Barbara felt around the
drainage hole under the window. 'Look how damp the wall is here,' she
exclaimed. 'The stone's quite crumbly in places.'

Susan came and peered over Barbara's
shoulder. 'That's great. All we need is a couple of pneumatic drills
and a gang of navvies.' *

Straightening up, Barbara pushed Susan
brusquely out of the way and lifted up a corner of the rotting
mattress on the bed. 'Well, we'll just have to make do with crowbars
instead,' she retorted, tugging at one of the loose iron struts which
formed the base of the decaying bed.

'Crowbars?' Susan echoed incredulously.

Barbara nodded in deadly earnest.
'Perhaps we can lever some of the blocks away and make a small hole
... It might be possible to break into the sewer and eventually reach
the river,' she suggested. 'You keep an eye out for that nasty
gaoler.'

Susan watched Barbara wrenching at the
rusted strut as if she were out of her mind. With a shrug she went
over to the door and listened at the spyhole, shaking her head at
Barbara's bizarre undertaking.

At last, after an exhausting effort,
the determined Barbara managed to work the iron bar free from the
frame of the bed. Without pausing to rest, she knelt at the foot of
the wall and set to work using the strut as a crowbar to lever out
the softened mortar between the huge damp blocks of stone around the
drainage hole.

When he got back to his makeshift
office in the alcove of the vault, the gaoler found two soldiers
waiting for him with a 'new prisoner slumped between them
like a sack. The prisoner had been shot in the side and his torn
and grubby shirt bore a livid dark red patch around the blackened
hole. He was moaning pitifully and his dulled blue eyes stared
giazedly around as he rolled his head agonisingly from side to side.

The gaoler consulted his stained and
crumpled schedules on the table. 'The Hotel Conciergerie is full up.
No vacancies ... ' he chuckled, selecting from his ring the key to
Ian's cell and swaggering over to the door. 'He'll have to share with
this one.' He peered through the shutter. 'Stand back against the far
wall!' he roared at Ian. He unlocked the door and the mortally
wounded prisoner was hurled brutally into the cell, screaming out in
agony as he collapsed onto the floor. The gaoler locked the door
again and banged on the grille with his keys. 'Stop making so much
damned noise!' he hissed. 'You'll give the hotel a bad name.' And he
shuffled away to have a celebratory drink, chuckling throatily at his
own joke.

Ian's cell was larger and cleaner than
the dungeon. It contained two beds and there was a largish grilled
window in the far wall which admitted quite a lot of daylight.

Ian lifted the wounded man up and
carried him as carefully as he could over to one of the beds where he
made him as comfortable as possible with pillows and moth-eaten
blankets. The man was about his own age, well-built, with fine
chiselled features and thick fair hair reaching to his shoulders. His
clothes suggested solid bourgeois respectability.

'Make the most of this, old chap ...' Ian murmured, putting the rim of his water jug to the man's parched
lips. 'This is the last of it, I'm afraid.'

The man drank thirstily and then fell
back on the pillows, gritting his teeth and staring at Ian in
astonishment, almost as if he had seen a ghost. 'You're ... You're
English ... ' he gasped, a faint smile cracking his pain-wracked
features.

Ian introduced himself.

'I'm Webster ... ' the man croaked,
coughing up a mouthful of blood. 'My stomach ... On fire ... '

Ian dabbed the man's mouth with a
corner of a blanket. 'I think the bleeding's stopped, but you've lost
a lot of blood,' he said quietly. 'You must rest.'

Webster closed his eyes. 'Those vermin
couldn't wait to pull the trigger on me ... ' Reaching convulsively
for the jug, he fumbled it to his lips and drained it, spilling much
of the precious water over himself.

'Maybe I can get you out of here
somehow,' Ian said after a pause. 'Escape isn't completely
impossible, and you need a doctor.'

Webster folded his weakened arms over
his wound. 'It is for me ... ' he whispered. 'I'll never get up
from here.' He lay in silence for a while, shuddering with pain and
gasping pitifully for breath. Then he suddenly opened his eyes wide.
'Are you really an Englishman?' he asked, clutching at Ian's hand.
'What are you doing in France?'

Ian mopped the sweat from his face and
the blood from his mouth. 'I was going to ask you the same question
later,' he said. 'It's a hell of a long story, Webster. Let's just
say I'm a traveller.'

Webster tried to sit himself up, his
eyes staring wildly with the excruciating effort, but he was getting
weaker by the minute and he fell back helplessly. 'I've every reason
to disbelieve you ... ' he muttered, the blood gurgling in his
throat. 'But the cards have been dealt now ... If it's a trap ...
' His voice trailed into silence.

Ian leaned closer, trying to catch
Webster's failing words. 'A trap, Webster? What do you mean? I don't
understand.'

The dying man's breath came in
convulsive gasps and his face was the colour of chalk. With a
gigantic effort he flung his arm round Ian's neck and hauled himself
more upright. 'Just listen ... Listen to me ... ' he pleaded. 'We
know that one day ... one day soon, France will stop this suicidal
madness and ... and turn her attention across the Channel ... to
England ... '

Ian nodded encouragingly, supporting
Webster in his arms. His mind was filled with a sense of irony that
he, Ian Chesterton, knew from history the truth of what Webster was
prophesying.

'England must be ready for that day . .
. ' Webster said hoarsely, almost strangling Ian in his fierce
determination to convey his important message. 'There is a man here
... an Englishman in France, working to this end ... ' Webster
struggled on with failing breath. 'He must warn England when that day
draws near ... You understand, Chesterton?' Webster clutched at
Ian's shirt collar with his free hand. 'I was sent here to contact
the Englishman ... Take him back ... The day is near ... and
his information is vitally important ... Find him, Chesterton ...
Find him and tell him ... '

Ian almost had to fight Webster off, so
fiercely did he cling to him in his death throes. 'I know that France
will ... ' he began.

'Try to escape!' Webster burst out in
his face with a last heroic rally of his remaining strength. 'Promise
to find James ...James Stirling ... To England ... Promise . .
. !'

'I do promise,' Ian vowed, flinching at
the bubbles of blood frothing out of Webster's chattering teeth.
'I'll find James Stirling and tell him to return to England with his
information. I understand, Webster, and I promise.'

Barely alive, Webster released his
grasp round Ian's neck and lay in his arms, his breathing now
intermittent and shallow.

'But Webster, how shall I find him?'
Ian suddenly asked, realising what an impossible thing he had
undertaken.

There was a long silence and then
Webster opened his eyes for the last time. His lips moved but hardly
any sound emerged. Ian bent closer, barely able to distinguish the
feeble, breathy words.

'Ask Jules ... Jules Renan ... The
sign of Le Chien Oris ... ' Ian repeated, watching for some
acknowledgement that he had understood Webster correctly.

Webster's lips stopped moving and his
mouth hung open. His body gave a brief shudder and his head lolled
sideways. Ian gazed sadly at him for a moment and then lowered him
gently onto the pillows. He closed the sightless eyes and covered the
dead face with the blanket.

The Doctor had been walking for several
hours through sparse woodlands, across hilly meadows covered in
buttercups and long grass and now along a narrow pot-holed road
running between tall rough hedgerows. At first he had started off at
a lively pace despite the ill effects of his ordeal in the burning
farmhouse, but now the heat and the humidity had slowed him down and
he frequently stopped to rest on his stick and mop his glistening
face. He had shed his frock-coat and slung it over his arm and as he
walked he slashed at the hedges to give vent to his irritation and
his anxiety about the fate of his granddaughter and her two friends.

Approaching a sharp bend, he noticed a
number of crudely repaired patches in the road's stony surface.
Rounding the bend, he came upon a small gang of peasants
half-heartedly mending yet another pot-hole under the watchful eye of
a fat, bullying foreman dressed in ragged trousers, a sleeveless
jerkin, calico shirt and a torn straw hat. With his huge black beard
and a pistol sticking out of his belt the foreman resembled a pirate
captain. He also carried a bulging leather purse on his chubby hip.
..

'Come on, you layabouts, you can work
faster than that,' the foreman was bellowing in his broad country
accent.

The Doctor raised his stick in
greeting. 'Good day to you,' he cried, his thoroughbred French accent
sounding oddly pompous. 'What a pleasant day it is, is it not?'

The gang stopped tinkering with the
road and glanced languidly at the cultured stranger. The Doctor
nodded and smiled affably. The gang
returned reluctantly to their labours.

The foreman screwed up his eyes warily.
'I've seen better,' he growled surlily.

The Doctor smiled again. 'Perhaps you
could help me? I am bound for Paris. I take it that I am still on the
correct road?'

The foreman pulled a face at the word
'road' and spat into the hedge. 'You are ...What's left of it,' he
replied sullenly.

'Splendid. I was beginning to have
my doubts,' the Doctor admitted. 'I haven't seen a soul for hours.'
He sighed and sat down on the grassy bank beside the hedge.

Intrigued by the stranger and his
unusual clothes, the foreman sat down beside him. 'You've come a long
way, Citizen?' he inquired.

'Yes indeed, Citizen. Much further than
you can imagine,' the Doctor replied, mopping his brow and loosening
his cravat.

The gang had stopped work again and
were leaning on their picks and shovels idly scrutinising the Doctor.

The foreman uttered a curse, picked up
a flint from the ditch and flung it at them with savage contempt.
'Get on with it. Nobody told you to have a rest!' he roared. He
nudged the Doctor, 'You have to watch them all the time,' he
complained, his garlicky breath making the Doctor sneeze. 'Can't
think why the authorities bother to put them to work. Know what I'd
do with tax-dodgers, all right.'

The Doctor nodded slowly. 'I see. So
they are not voluntary workers, Citizen?'

The foreman guffawed heartily.
'Voluntary? That's a good one. I have to drive them like donkeys,' he
snarled, glowering at his men. 'I'm given a schedule ... Finish
this section by tomorrow they told me ... And if I don't ... '

The Doctor nodded sympathetically. 'Yes
indeed, Citizen. I can see that it is quite a responsibility for
you.'

'But it'll be finished on time!' the
foreman roared, pulling out the loaded pistol and brandishing it at
the gang. 'Even if I have to drive them into the ground.'The Doctor cleared his throat in the
way that he always did when he found himself confronting some
particularly irritating aspect of human behaviour.
'I see that you believe in drastic measures,' he muttered, eyeing the
resentfully lazy peasants.

The foreman put away the pistol and
weighed the bulging pouch in his vast hairy hand. The coins inside
chinked pleasingly.

'I am sure you are very experienced in
this job, Citizen,' the Doctor said thoughtfully. 'But would you
allow an impartial observer to offer you a modest suggestion?'