Rolling Stone (24 page)

“I don't know how I'm supposed to drive with all this sort of thing going on,” said Peter gloomily. “What happens if we have a smash?” He was wondering if it wouldn't be a good thing to stage one. A nice mild smash—nothing like it for collecting a crowd and a policeman. “Ten to one I'll run into something, with all this going on and a car I've never driven before. What happens then?”

Maud Millicent addressed him with sweetness.

“A bullet for you, and another for her. So you'd better give your mind to your driving,” she said.

CHAPTER XXXIV

They had been driving for the best part of an hour. Peter had become to all appearance an automaton. When Maud Millicent said “Faster,” he accelerated. When she said “Slow down here,” he slowed down. When she said “Next turning to the left”—or right, as the case might be—he took it. They had cleared London long ago. He was no longer quite sure where they were, but presently they came out upon what he thought was the Guildford by-pass. Then the directions began again.

She had a map spread out upon her knees. He could hear it crackle, and he caught the flicker of a torch as she moved it to and fro. No, perhaps not she. Perhaps it was Jake who held the torch, because whether they were in traffic or in dark lanes, whether they dropped to twenty or raced along the straight at fifty-five, Maud Millicent's hand with the pistol in it stayed just there at Terry's ear. She was thorough, she was careful, and she was utterly ruthless. She would shoot Terry Clive with as little compunction as she had shot Louisa Spedding. She had explained that in her most mellifluous voice—any trouble of any sort, and she would shoot them both. The car would be found stranded by the side of the road. One of those murder-suicide cases so dear to the sensational press—SOCIETY GIRL AND GANGSTER—FATAL ROMANCE. It sounded horribly plausible. If she didn't choose this way out, it was because she had some better plan up her sleeve. Peter kept wondering what it was, and whether it would offer him a chance of getting away with his life and Terry's. Because he was under no illusion. They were in one danger, he and Terry Clive. They had seen too much, they knew too much, they were inconvenient. And they were about to be eliminated.

Peter had no intention of being eliminated if he could help it. Maud Millicent had said something about Sussex, and Sussex suggested the sea. A good way of eliminating them would be to have the car driven over a cliff. He had certainly gathered that an accident was to be staged. Well, if there was to be an accident, Jake and Maud Millicent must avoid the actual crash. They would find some excuse to leave the car, some means to ensure that he remained in it. He wondered how they were going to manage that. Spike Reilly, even if not a highly intelligent person, might be supposed to possess the elementary instincts of self-preservation. How did Maud Millicent expect or hope to induce him to drive himself and Terry Clive over a cliff? No, it would have to be something not quite so crude as that. He would very much have liked to know what. One thing was certain, if Jake and Maud Millicent left the car, his number and Terry's were up. And yet it was only there that he could see the faintest chance of escape. As long as that pistol was trained on Terry the slightest move on his part would touch it off. But if he could lull their suspicions, play the stupid grumbling dupe, and blunt even in a small degree the keen razor edge of Maud Millicent's watchfulness, there might be a moment, just one, in which he could make a desperate bid for safety.

All the chances were against a chance for him and Terry. He was already distrusted, already condemned. He couldn't speak to her or warn her. The critical moment might find her drowsy, dulled with misery, half fainting—and he needed to have her every sense alert, responsive.

Why should she respond? She had despised him, liked him in spite of herself, trusted him greatly, and dropped from that to a shattering sense of betrayal. Would she trust him again in some perilous instant of which she knew nothing, and could know nothing until it broke upon them both? How could she? How could he have the faintest hope of it? She sat there, drawn away from him, pressed against the side of the car, quite silent, quite motionless. He had not looked at her once, and he was sure that she had not looked at him. Yet he knew just how she sat, just how she held her head, just how her hands gripped one another. He knew that she was wounded past belief. He did not think she was afraid. He felt as if he had stabbed her and was leaving her to bleed to death. He felt the conflict of her thoughts, the conflict of his own.

Silence—a dark car—dark by-ways—a dark windy night.… His thoughts were strange to him. He contemplated them with surprise, with quickening interest, with excitement. Terry and himself. He had the feeling that they were isolated from everyone else in the world, two creatures alone in a creation so new that it had all to be discovered. The first man and the first woman—Adam and Eve—Peter Talbot and Terry Clive.… He thrust with a savage jab of humour amongst these thoughts. What a garden of Eden! At any rate the serpent was not far to seek.

The jab fell harmless. He couldn't speak to Terry, but he was aware of her as he had never been aware of anyone before. It was just as if he could think her thoughts as well as his own. They filled him with compunction and with tenderness—a flood of pity and of love. All at once he was exalted, confident, secure. He felt invulnerable. It was his hour. And when a man comes to his hour he comes to mastery. Apprehension, doubt, uncertainty dropped away. He had no idea how he was going to save Terry, but he was quite sure he would save her. He continued to drive with the mechanical precision of a robot.

Terry sat quite still in her corner. At first the stillness was rigidity, paralysis. There had been shock, pain, anger, very sharp anger, and then—nothing at all. No thought, no feeling, no fear. Her eyes were open. They saw a continuous line of hedgerows slipping past. Sometimes there was a tree, sometimes there was a break where a side road came in. Sometimes, but not very often, another car went by, coming towards them with headlights dipped, or coming up from behind them in a glare of light. The trees and the tops of the hedgerows were blowing in a very high wind. When they slowed down she could hear the sound of it, blowing high up in the empty arch of the sky, tearing across the open fields, battering against the roof of the car. She did not think about the wind. She heard it, and she saw the trees bend. It blew across the surface of her mind. She did not think about anything.

Time passed, but she did not know how much. She began to feel again. First physical things. Her shoulder was stiff. Her left arm hurt where it was pressed against the side of the car. She moved it, shifting on the seat, and at once felt something else—the muzzle of the pistol against the back of her neck, and a wild, sudden stab of fear. She said in a small, piteous voice like a child's,

“Please, may I move? I'm so stiff.”

Maud Millicent said, “Anything in reason,” and Terry straightened herself so that she could lean into the back of the seat.

Now she could look straight down the road they were travelling on. It was a great relief. That sliding hedgerow had begun to make her feel giddy. The rigidity passed from her body. She relaxed. She began to think again. All her thoughts were slow and weak. Something had hurt her very much, and she didn't want to be hurt again.

She began to think about Peter. She didn't call him Peter of course, because she only knew him as Spike Reilly, but she didn't call him Spike. She had never called him Spike. She had no name for him. He had called her Terry, but she had no name for him. She thought about him. The thoughts got stronger. They didn't hurt any more.

She hadn't trusted him. She hadn't trusted what she knew about him. She had panicked, and hurt herself. Now she wasn't going to panic any more. He had said he would get her away if she did just what he told her. She thought they were in a very tight place. She thought, “I must be ready to do anything at any moment. Perhaps there isn't any chance—but perhaps there's just one chance in a thousand. If there is, I've got to be ready for it—I've
got
to be ready for it.”

Something strange had been happening. She had been cold through and through—rigid and paralysed—blind, deaf and idiotic with cold. And then very gradually she had become aware of a warmth that was melting the cold away. It was like coming out of icy weather into a warm, cheerful room. A comforting sense of safety was seeping into her, and she had the feeling that this warmth and this comfort were coming to her from Peter for whom she had no name. She began to feel very sure that she could trust him. No one who made you feel safe like that could possibly let you down. All she had to do was to make sure that she didn't let him down.

The car slid on into the dark, and the wind blew.

CHAPTER XXXV

The map on Maud Millicent's knee rustled. Her voice took a more definite tone. She said,

“Turn to the right, and in about a quarter of a mile right again to the top of the hill. There's a gate half way, but it will be open.”

So they were arriving. Peter took the right-hand turn, and found the hill a steep one. They were running over open down, no hedgerows now and no trees, and he thought they were running towards the sea. He had his window open, and the wind was salt against his lips.

Well, they were still in the car, Maud Millicent and Jake, and as long as that was the case he and Terry were safe. Unless she had planned a bullet for them both, and a convenient grave in the sea. But the sea had a way of giving up its dead, and a bullet would set Scotland Yard upon their track. No, they wouldn't shoot unless there was no other way. Suicide or death by misadventure—that was what it had got to look like.

They passed between crumbling gateposts with a rickety gate slanted back to leave the road open for them. It ran uphill all the way to where dark tossing trees opened fanwise about the tall shape of a house. The house stood up gaunt against the sky. A dark sky heavy with clouds. A black house just visible against it. No light anywhere—no faintest glow at any window, no brightness from the fanlight over the massive door.

He slowed down, and was about to stop, when Maud Millicent spoke.

“Not here. There's a side door. Go on round the house. The garage is there too.”

The house was large and square. The trees splayed out in front of it on either side.

Maud Millicent said, “Shut off your headlights now,” and he obeyed.

They skirted the house, and she said, “Stop! I'm getting out here. The garage is right in front of you. Drive in. I'll get this door open and meet you there. There's a way through from the house.”

As he drew up, she jumped out. Jake followed her. The door slammed. Maud Millicent called, “Straight on into the garage,” and turned to fit a key. Peter and Terry were alone in the car, and on the instant he said her name in a whisper desperately controlled.

“Terry—”

She said, “Yes—” in the same low, urgent tone.

The car was moving, because he dared not let it stand. He had a sense that they were watched, that Maud Millicent had turned from the door, and that she was watching them—watching the car, watching what was going to happen to the car.

Peter said, “Quick, Terry—unlatch your door! Be ready to jump—in an instant—”

She said, “What is it?” and he said, “I don't know.”

He took his right hand from the wheel and unlatched the door on his side.

The garage faced them. The door was wide open. It was quite empty, quite bare. As they moved slowly towards it, Peter could see how bare and empty it was. As a rule there is all sorts of truck in a garage. But not in this one. It was bare as the back of his hand.

They were double the car's length from the side door, and from Maud Millicent and Jake. They were a car's length from the garage. They moved slowly. The bonnet and the front wheels entered the garage.

Peter switched off the sidelights and said, “Jump, Terry!”

He saw her swing the door out and slip through the gap. He took his hands off the wheel and went out on the other side. The car went on at its slow, purring pace. Peter ran round the back of it, ran into Terry, clutched her, and ran back out of the garage, slanting away from the house—back, with a deafening sound in his ears, in his brain. There was a cracking and a breaking, a tremor beneath their feet as they ran, a grinding crash, and a great buffet of wind blowing in from the sea.

Peter looked back. He could see nothing. They went on running. He looked back again. There was the flash of a torch. He turned left-handed for the trees and then checked, because they had almost blundered in among them. He let go of Terry to feel his way. There were trees, but they stood apart from one another and gave no cover. He caught Terry's arm again and ran with her across the front of the house and round to the other side. It was all dark. The wind shouted overhead.

They felt their way along the wall of the house and came upon two or three steps leading up to a garden door. It stood recessed and made a shelter from the wind and from their own desperate confusion and hurry—a small space no more than a yard square, but a refuge. They stood there, shoulder pressed to shoulder, hearts beating, breath coming fast. It might have been a dozen years ago and a game of blindman's-buff or devil-in-the-dark—Terry eight years old in a party dress, and Peter rising seventeen. They would have been farther apart then. Twenty-eight is not so far from twenty. They were very close now, for safety, and for the need they had of one another. Peter's arm went round her. She said,

“What happened?”

“Everything went.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. I think we're on the edge of a cliff—this house—everything. I think that's why they brought us here. I think the house is derelict because the sea has eaten the cliff away. The garage—” He stopped.