by Peter Leslie
Next she advanced as far as the chain would allow, then lifted her left leg until the links were parallel to the floor, and hopped forward the additional step that this permitted. But with her right wrist attached to the raised leg, the resulting contorted posture left her worse off than before. Finally she cast herself down on her side, flattened her shoulder-blades on the flagstones, and groped blindly up behind her head in the manner of a swimmer's backstroke. She couldn't see where her hand was going, but it seemed a little nearer.
A moment later, her outstretched fingertips touched the hard, cold surface of the crocodile bag.
She turned her hand this way and that but could find nothing to grasp hold of. Frenziedly, she shifted her position, brushing the backs of her knuckles along the smooth skin. The bag moved slightly away from her.
April bit back a groan of disappointment. Then, struck by an idea, she sat up and stared at the bag, pursed her lips, and lay down once more on the floor. If she was able to move one end of the bag away from her... and if the floor was not too rough... and if she could hit the crocodile blindly, in the right place.. . then the other end might swivel round towards her and give her fingers something they could grab hold of. It was worth a try.
Again the stretched fingers brushed the hard base of the bag, seeking the end. Ah — this was it! Holding her breath, she drew two fingers slightly towards her and then jerked them outwards, against the bag.
There was a slight scraping noise and her fingers touched air… Now — had she merely pushed the whole thing away, or had it swivelled?
Carefully, she eased her hand back the other way. The side of the little finger touched a cold surface. Hardly daring to breathe, she turned her wrist over. The tip of her middle finger, exploring, found the sewn edge of the bag, beyond which the calf sidepiece concertinaed inwards.
With infinite care, she closed middle finger and forefinger over the edge, and with the bag thus scissored between them precariously, began to draw it towards her. The hard skin grated, scraping against the coarse flag, and once some obstruction halted it and she lost it. But eventually, inch by slow inch, she drew it within reach until at last she could turn over and seize it properly with her whole hand.
Now, perhaps, with luck, she might be able to do something about escaping, for the crocodile handbag — although Wright had accurately catalogued its contents — was not entirely what it seemed. Many of the things inside had been endowed at the U.N.C.L.E. laboratories with a double purpose.
But first, should she call Mark?
She felt the reassuring shape of the Communicator in its secret pocket beneath the lining of the bag. No... time was too short. She must get out of here herself and call him afterwards, for if she did summon him to the rescue, he might well be too late to help her by the time he could get there from the town. She drew the bag towards her and rummaged inside.
The cigarette lighter she produced was very slightly larger than standard. It would also cut through various metals if properly handled, being a miniature blowtorch of considerable power...
As she picked up the tiny knob with her nails and began pumping the shaft to which it was attached in order to raise the pressure, she pondered on her best course of action. Obviously she would be unable to use the flame to cut through the wristlet or anklet, so it was a matter of attacking either the chain shackling her to the wall or the padlock securing wrist and ankle...judging by the thickness of the iron, there would not be enough in the reservoir to attempt both.
She reached into the handbag again and drew out what looked like an ordinary hairpin. The light was fast fading, but she would have to do what she could... Twisting the special wire into a convoluted shape, she inserted it into the keyhole of the padlock and attempted a turn. It would not move.
She withdrew it and made a minute adjustment to one end. This time, it began to turn and then apparently fouled on some thing inside. For the second time she took it away and effected an alteration. It turned further but still would not go the whole way. On the third attempt, the wire she was manipulating bent slackly at a corner and then parted, so she had to begin all over again. But with the new piece, she was lucky first time: there was a firm click and the padlock tongue sprang open.
With a gasp of relief, April turned to the lighter again. Now that she had two hands, the task would be that much simpler — especially as she no longer had that agonisingly cramped posture imposed on her. It was, however, going to be no easy job: in the first place, she would be unable to look directly at the fierce flame, so that accuracy would be a hit-and-miss matter. There were specially tinted glasses for use with the blowtorch lighter, but she did not have them with her. Secondly, the combustible by-products of the oxy-acetylene flame made a pungent and instantly recognisable smell... and she had no idea how far away she was from the main part of the house where Wright and his henchmen had no doubt gathered with the mysterious Colonel Forsett — whoever he was.
Thirdly, the flame — even a tiny one like this — was noisy. And lastly, she had no idea if it would last long enough to cut through the chain.
Feverishly, she took the links between her two hands. It must be cut as near to her foot as possible, for with a clanking length of chain fixed to her ankle, she would be a sitting target. On the other hand, since she could not for long look at what she was doing, there was a very real risk that she would sear through her boot and injure her leg. Eventually she decided on the third link out from the anklet and thumbed the mechanism of the lighter.
A thin tongue of flame shot ten inches into the air with a muted roar. Setting the torch on the floor, she twisted a couple of tiny handkerchiefs around the two links between the area of operations and her boot to insulate them from each other and try to minimise the heat transference. Then, picking up the lighter, she directed the flame at the third link.
In an instant, it seemed to her, the cellar became an inferno of odours and noise. The hiss of the pressurised flame and the rattle of the chain on the stone flags warred for attention in her over-sensitive mind with the acrid, throat-catching tang of the gas, the flat, sour smell of heating metal, and the stench of charred handkerchief and varnished leather.
Averting her eyes from the fierce incandescence which lay at the centre of the shower of sparks, she held the torch grimly in place. The centre of the link was cherry red when she turned off the flame and paused to listen.
In the sudden silence, the assorted smells of the operation seemed stronger than ever. Far away, a motor car engine started, revved up, and then died away into silence. Otherwise there was no sound. Colonel Forsett and his wife, she imagined with an inward smile, had either just arrived or just left. Or perhaps Wright's wife had returned. Or Wright himself had gone. In any case, it was perhaps a good thing, for whichever of those alternatives was true, it was likely that its result would be momentarily to focus attention away from her.
Pumping at the handle, she returned to her task.
Several times, the intense heat transmitted by the links forced her to snatch her foot away; once the agony of looking too closely at the flame caused her to waste a half minute of flame on the stone floor. But finally there was an appreciable opening in the curved iron of the link.
And then the flame dwindled, guttered, and died out.
Desperately, April pumped and pumped; furiously she clicked at the mechanism — but there was no response. The little tank was exhausted.
The girl was almost crying with exasperation. So very near, and yet...She set her teeth and waited for the hot metal to cool. Once it was brittle again, there was a faint chance that she could utilise the gap she had made to force the link apart. Planting her shackled foot at the full stretch of the chain away from the wall, she placed the other at the height of the ring, flexed her knee and began to push.
There was a tiny metallic chink! and she was suddenly pitching over backwards, to land with a jar against the opposite wall. But she was free!
Panting, she leaned against the cold grani
te and listened. No sound interrupted the laboured breathing exuding from her own lungs. Picking up her handbag, she dropped the lighter inside, twisted the opened padlock out of her wrist iron, and walked across to the window. There was a light metallic tapping from the two links of chain still attached to her anklet, but it was not too bad.
The window opened on an ordinary latch. She swung it outwards, hauled herself up, and climbed into a narrow area.
It was quite dark now, and the wind was moaning softly among the tops of the tall trees which sheltered the house. In the flagged yard above the area, now that she could see all of it, a Humber shooting brake stood outside the barn whose roof she had been looking at from inside her cell. Beyond, light streamed from an open doorway leading into an immense garage, winking from the sophisticated curves delineating the body of a D.S.21 Citroen. The main part of the house bulked against the sky behind her — and she imagined from the suffused radiance outlining the roof that the lighted windows were all on the far side.
For a moment, she toyed with the idea of trying to steal one of the cars — then prudence overrode imagination: Wright had spoken of special devices to stop people trying to escape, and they would be on to her as soon as she pressed the starter. No, the stealthy exit to the cliffs, followed by a run down to Porthallow and a return in force with Mark — that was what was needed now.
In the instant that the thought was formed — and before she had had time to look around and take notice of the lay of the land — a man in chauffeur's uniform walked out of the garage and saw her. His exclamation of surprise was echoed by an angry shout of alarm from the cellar from which she had just escaped.
In a flash, April turned and ran, away from the light, away from the cellar, away from the chauffeur who was tugging a gun from his waistband. Before she had gone three steps, light shafted into the darkness from the cell window, where Wright was climbing out with a torch in his hand.
A shot crashed out behind her and something whizzed into the dark above her head. Water, she thought frantically, I must have water... There was something dripping near the cellar, she remembered: it must have been a tap or a water butt. She clattered to a halt and looked around — yes, there it was! Just behind her. A main risertap with a bucket hooked over it by the handle, against the wall of the house.
"Don't shoot!" she cried. "I give up; I'm coming…"
Slowly, she walked back towards Wright. Beyond him, the chauffeur stood with his pistol cocked, full of suspicion.
"Put up your hands," Wright called. "Walk slowly towards the barn."
In her right hand, April was prising what looked like a life saver from the roll of mints which had been in her bag... but it was a disc that would have frightened the life out of anyone who tried to eat it! As she lifted her arms, she flipped the pellet neatly into the bucket of water and hurled herself to the ground.
The instant that the life-saver touched the surface, a vast outpouring of dense smoke surged from the bucket, rolled across the yard and blotted Wright, the chauffeur, the cars and the garage from sight.
Shots from two different guns thundered as the girl scrambled to her feet and began wildly running away from the life-saving screen. Wright was bawling something in the dark, a bell had begun ringing, ringing, and in the distance she could hear a woman's voice calling. She hurled herself through an arched doorway in a wall, ran along a brick path and blundered into a shrubbery. She knew she only had a moment before they rounded the house the other way to cut her off.
On the far side of the bushes, she found herself on a lawn. The front of the house, mullioned windows ablaze with light, was off to her right. And away beyond, the night sky was speckled with a rash of red lights warning low-flying aircraft away from the masts of Trewinnock Tor.
She realized she was running in the wrong direction, away from the town.
On an impulse, she dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling back the way she had come, behind a line of standard roses.
A moment later three figures ran round the corner of the house and fanned out across the lawn. "Gerry," a woman called, "I should go towards the South Gate if I were you: she may have a car in the lane."
"Good idea!" Wright's mannered voice replied. "I'll go that way. Mason — you head for the boathouse and cut her off if she goes that way."
"Very good, sir," the man in chauffeur's uniform called back.
Grinning, April rose to her feet at the end of the row and walked softly back through the archway into the yard. Most of the smoke screen had blown away, but there were still layers of it wreathing in the light from the garage.
She tiptoed across the swathe of brilliance and glanced into the building. The place was deserted. As she began hurrying back down the path she had taken with Wright earlier that afternoon, she could hear the voices of the pursuit growing fainter and fainter in the distance behind her. So far, so good, she thought... But the lord of the manor had said that there were two servants besides himself and his wife on the premises. There was still one unaccounted for. And there was still the possibility of trip wires, electric fences and other forms of man-trap before she was off the property... She would have to go carefully, especially as she was now out of range of the diffuse illumination from the house and it really was very dark. Later, there would be a moon, but just now it was positively Stygian!
The mystery of the second servant did not remain long unsolved. As she rounded a spinney at the entrance to a field she saw below her the stile over which she had entered silhouetted against the pale fury of the sea, giant hands plucked her from the ground as though she had been a baby.
"Ah, now! What have we 'ere?" a deep voice exclaimed. "You'm beant running away without sayin' thank'ee, be en?... Maister'd never hold with that. I think you'd better come over by the house along of me, my pretty one!"
Twisting in the remorseless grip, April saw that the man was gigantic. He must have been fully seven feet high, and he was muscularly built to match. She chopped a karate blow at his neck, twisted again and seized his wrist in a judo grip— but the giant just laughed, hefted her over his shoulder like a roll of bedding, and began striding up the hill towards the house.
All right, the girl thought, if that's the way you want it... Maybe it's better like this!
Her handbag was looped over one wrist by the handles. Under cover of a girlish thrashing about with hands and feet, she manoeuvred yet another article out of it: a small gold lipstick case.
The hypodermic needle shot out at the touch of a catch, and the point was plunged into the vast wrist holding her on the man's shoulder before he had gone another three paces. The barrel was filled with chloral hydrate, and however tough the man was, this particular Mickey Finn would bring him down long before they reached the house.
Her captor grunted with pain, shook his wrist a little, and then clamped the other more firmly still about the small of her back.
April's head bumped five more times against the giant's back as it hung down over his shoulder –– and then suddenly he was staggering, mouthing animal cries, lurching into bushes and trees. A moment later he crashed to the ground and lay like a man dead.
The girl rose shakily to her feet, picked up her bag, and retraced her steps. At the stile, she touched the wooden crosspiece with the bag before she dared to put a hand on it — but there was no shower of sparks, no shot from a booby-trap gun, no electrical discharge. Whatever the seaward defences of Sir Gerald Wright's house were, she was through them.
She climbed over and looked down. To one side, a finger of light probed the boathouse where the chauffeur was searching the cove. Below, breakers snarled in the dark — and round the corner lay the lights of Porthallow.
Then she was in the open, scrambling, running, her hair streaming in the wind, stumbling down the slope towards safety.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH
APRIL DANCER stopped three times on her way down to Porthallow to try and contact Mark Slate on the Co
mmunicator. Each time she drew a blank: the device's bleeping call- sign remained unanswered. She fell twice in the darkness along the rocky path, and ripped her sheepskin coat on a strand of barbed wire while trying to find a short cut from the cliff to the harbour. By the time she regained the circus field at the top of the town, she was breathless, bedraggled, bleeding from half a dozen minor cuts, and covered in burrs from some bush into which she had stumbled on her way.
The nagging worry she felt at Mark's inexplicable silence was resolved as soon as she had negotiated the noisy crowd thronging the sideshows and gained the comparative quiet of her own caravan. There was an envelope propped up on the table beside the bed, sealed, but with no name and no address on it.
The girl ripped open the flap and drew out the single sheet of paper it contained. He must have been in a hurry, she thought; he had written to her in clear! She read:
Having discovered something rather disquieting about the host of your tea party, I have driven up to see whether I can offer you a lift home. If you read this, of course, my journey will not have been really necessary!... In which case I shall merely make my excuses and leave. Dinner at the Crabber at nine?—M.
With an exclamation of dismay, she crumpled the paper involuntarily into a ball and dropped it to the floor. Foolish, quixotic Mark! After all the trouble she had had in escaping from the THRUSH headquarters, he had himself learned the truth — and dashed in impulsively to rescue her... only far from being able to "make his excuses" and leave, he would find a much warmer welcome than he expected, for the inhabitants of the house up on the moors would know all about him and be only too glad to lay their hands on him.
And now, instead of coding a message reporting to Waverly in New York and awaiting instructions, she would have to dash out again, back into the lion's mouth (to keep the circus parlance) and do her best to rescue him!
There was just one small problem: how was she going to do it?
Mark had taken his car, she thought as she picked the locks of her anklet and bracelet and stripped them off. Even if she could hire or borrow another, it would take time — and time was precious. Whatever Wright's mission was, he had said it was due to end this evening. On the other hand, to struggle all the way up the cliff path again would take even longer — and to go to the house by the inland road, climbing the moors and skirting the DEWS station, was unthinkable on foot. Besides which, the landward side of the place was certain to be the one most closely guarded. If only she could think of some way to land herself on the inside of the defences, there might be a chance...
