“Trust me, man!”
They were both pale-faced and avoided looking each other in the eye.
They stood up and walked in circles a few times to stretch their legs. They swung their arms too…
“What next?” murmured Hal. He went on: “Yes, I know, the keys and the gun… But after that, Frank, what do we do then?”
Frank gave a weary shrug.
“What do you want me to say?… We go to the end of the corridor—at least we hope so. There’s a big iron door. We open it with the keys. On the far side is the screws’ surveillance post. I hope there’s not too many of them there and that they won’t put up a fight because I shoot fast…”
“Hold it!” Hal broke in. “You say you’re quick on the draw. Does that mean you’re assuming you’ll have the gun?”
“Like I said, I shoot fast and don’t miss!”
“So do I, Frank. I can shoot fast and straight too.”
“On a good day I can drill the ace of hearts out of a playing card at fifteen paces!”
“And on a bad day I can drill a man though the heart at twenty! That’s as good, isn’t it?”
Frank burst out laughing.
“Just listen to us!” he said. “Our little outing has got off to a good start! We’re already arguing about the gun!”
“We’re not arguing,” said Hal. “I’m only saying I’ve got as much right to have the gun as you!”
“OK, let’s toss for it.”
Hal wrenched a button off his fatigues.
“If you guess which hand the button’s in,” he said, “you get the piece.”
“Agreed.”
Frank screwed up his eyes and stared at the two clenched fists which were being held out to him. He hesitated.
“Right,” he said after a while.
Hal opened his left hand and revealed the button.
“That’s it, then,” said Frank stoically. “All square and above board.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.”
Hal flexed his fingers as if they were already gripping the steel butt of a gun.
“Listen, when we burst in on the screws I’ll shout: ‘Get your hands up!’ Right?”
“Wrong!” Frank said. “It’s only in films that they do it that way. Remember, a man who shouts makes less of an impression than a man who doesn’t say anything. Wave the gun in their faces and they’ll get the message without any need to draw a picture…”
“Right… And then what do we do?”
“If they don’t make any trouble I’ll get their guns… That’ll give us firepower in reserve. You can’t have too many shooters when you go AWOL…”
“And what if they do make trouble?”
“You say you’re quick on the draw?”
“But after that… What happens after?”
“Well, we’ll see. I’ll unlock the door to the courtyard. We’ll be through it like a bat out of hell. We’ll still have a fair stretch of open ground to cover. The machine gun on the watchtower will open up. We’ll have to keep ducking and weaving…”
“Not me!” Hal growled. “I’m going in a straight line. Oh yes! I’m a guy in a hurry…”
“Suit yourself… So, assuming we make it to the main exit, we’ll try to talk down the guard on the gate. If that doesn’t work at least we’ll have had a sniff of fresh air…”
Suddenly, Hal, who had been going round in circles, stopped in front of the barred door.
His companion joined him. He’d understood. The Bull was walking along the main stem of the T. He was alone.
Without wasting a moment, Frank grabbed Hal to him and gave him a deafening slap across the face.
“Take that, you swine!” he cried.
The blow spurred Hal to action. He threw himself wildly into battle slinging wild punches at his companion in earnest, and cursing at the top of his voice…
The Bull came at a run, drawn by the disturbance. But contrary to expectations, he did not enter the cell but stayed outside, content to watch the fight through the bars.
Both opponents, who kept watching him out of the corner of their eyes, almost had their hearts in their mouths. They suddenly stopped hitting each other and, breathing hard, turned towards the Bull.
“Seems like you just put the rematch off till now,” the chief warder said smoothly.
“Is he going to make up his mind to come in?” the two cellmates wondered anxiously.
Hal had a brainwave.
“You got to excuse us, boss… We…”
He backed away as if the Bull were about to come in and he were afraid he’d get beaten up. The ploy galvanized the Bull. He wanted part of this action. With a practised gesture he unlocked the door. His small, pig-like eyes were bloodshot.
“No!…” pleaded Hal. “Please don’t!… We… we won’t do it again, boss…”
The fat man’s stick whistled as he waved it in the air. He bore down on Hal, who flattened himself against the wall, ready to strike. Quick as a dog, Frank sprang. The Bull gave a short grunt and went down. Then Hal piled in and his strong hands closed around the chief screw’s neck. But it’s not easy to strangle a large man with bare hands.
Still struggling, the Bull succeeded in crying out. Seeing the danger, Frank began to sing. Now, sometimes a prisoner started singing a song which the others then picked up and joined in with all together. As a general rule, the screws never interfered. They knew that men need to shout and yell. So it was better that they got it off their chest by singing.
“Down at La Bastille, Nini Dog-skin’s the girl for us…”
Other voices took it up:
“She’s so cute and she’s so sweet…”
As he sang, he went on putting his boot into the chief warder’s belly while Hal gritted his teeth and squeezed the throat of his victim like a madman.
Suddenly, their mute cellmate realized what was happening. He’d been asleep and a kick from the Bull’s boot had rattled the side of his bed and woken him up. He threw himself between his two companions and tried to separate them.
“Stupid bastard, poking his nose in!…” Hal said savagely.
He released the Bull’s throat and using both hands punched the mute who staggered backwards onto his cot. Then, to settle the hash of the chief warder, who was still squealing like a wounded horse, he yanked the latter’s revolver from its leather holster and started hitting him over the head with the butt. The large man went slack. His mouth opened and he gave a solemn sigh. Frank stopped singing. Sweat was pouring down his face. All the prisoners on their floor were now giving Aristide Bruant’s ditty all they had:
“She’s so cute and she’s so sweet… the girl for us… Nini Dog-skin… Down at La Bastiiiille…”
“Quick!” said Hal. “Have you got the keys?”
“Here they are.”
“So let’s go, man! Chop chop!…”
They quickly stepped out into the corridor. There were no screws in sight. Suddenly the singing stopped because the prisoners had just realized what was going on. Faces, hands gripping bars—it was the same as the day they’d been brought in.
Then voices starting shouting excitedly:
“Come on, boys! You’re not going without us? Quick! Open this door! Hurry up! Let us out!”
But Hal and Frank did not listen. They were half out of their minds. They felt as if they were naked in the middle of a crowd… Or that they were crossing a river on a tightrope.
They ran to the end of the corridor… The iron door opened just as they reached it and two warders came through saying:
“What the hell is…”
Hal showed them the gun. One of them put his hands up. The other reached for his holster. There was a dry crack! Hal had fired. The warder went down. Frank head-butted the other man savagely in the chest.
“Come on!” he cried. “Move it!”
They went through the door and came out inside the surveillance post. There was only one screw there. He had his hand on t
he internal phone.
“Leave it!” barked Hal.
The man obeyed.
Frank passed behind him and took his revolver. Then he poked the barrel into the defenceless man’s broad back and pulled the trigger five times. There was an exalted look on his face that sent a shiver down Hal’s spine.
8
The man who could not speak sat up and rubbed his skull. His head was spinning. He staggered out of his cell and stared uncomprehendingly at the dozens of hands which were being brandished through the bars on both sides of the corridor. At the far end of the central walkway two men were lying on the floor… One was starting to get up but the other was dead. A large red pool was spreading under him.
The mute walked through the double row of waving hands. Behind the hands were faces, wild faces, with mouths which kept opening. He did not understand. To him, there was only silence, as usual—cold, frightening silence. It was all beyond him; it was happening in another world, from which he was separated by a wall of thick glass.
The uninjured warder drew his revolver and waved it at him. The deaf mute continued to advance. He also saw the warder’s mouth open but he did not understand the words at all. There was a burst of flame at the end of the barrel and he suddenly felt as if a warm sheet had been thrown over him, enveloping him completely… It was a good feeling. A wave of weakness took his legs from beneath him. He fell on his knees. Above him, the forest of hands continued to flap in the air. His head whirled… He fell at an angle across the corridor and died understanding nothing.
A hail of bullets raised a cloud of dust under Hal’s feet. He looked at Frank, who was high-tailing it in front of him. Another two metres and they would be out of sight of the machine gun, for the prison gate was recessed into the wall.
He put on a tremendous spurt, kicking hard to overcome his own weight. Then they’d made it! At least for the moment. Gasping for breath he leant against the gate and looked around. Nothing moved in the courtyard. All there was in the whole world was the chatter of the machine gun, which went on firing blind, and the wail of the siren that sounded the alarm.
The duty guard was standing at the door of the gatehouse. He’d seen them coming and one absurd detail turned the drama of the scene into farce: he couldn’t get his gun out of his holster. The mechanism which held the cover shut had jammed and the little sliding catch would not budge. The man’s panic was doubtless partly responsible.
“Come on, come on!” snarled Frank. “Pull your finger out and open up!”
The guard abandoned his uncooperative holster. He made a jittery movement as if one of his senior officers had been watching him.
“Move it!” growled Hal. “If this gate isn’t open in ten seconds, you’re dead meat!…”
The man unhooked a massive key from his belt.
The wail of the siren and the rattle of the machine gun had cut the festivities short. Or, more accurately, they had scattered the festive crowd. The wide esplanade which ran from the prison down to the port was deserted when the two fugitives emerged onto it.
To encourage the travelling-show people to return to their caravans and discourage heroics, Frank loosed off a shot in the general direction of the now petrified fairground. A merry-go-round went on turning to the sound of faltering music… His bullet ended up in a lottery wheel, which was sent spinning. It made an eerie whirring noise.
“What number did you put your money on?” asked Hal with a laugh.
But it wasn’t really a laugh, more a savage bark. Freedom had unnerved him.
He led the way at a run, his head well down as if he were expecting to get hit by a bullet. But the machine gun suddenly stopped firing. The guard manning it must have just realized the pointlessness of shooing at nothing.
Hal took a quick look back over his shoulder.
“Here they come!” he cried. “Get going!…”
Uniformed guards were emerging at the top of the esplanade.
If it hadn’t been for the travelling fair, the two escaped prisoners would not have got ten paces across the space, which offered no cover. They would have been mown down as surely as if they had been facing a firing squad. But the rides and stands through which they sprinted acted as a series of providential screens.
They came out onto the quayside of the small port, where a few pleasure boats bobbed up and down next to the fishing vessels.
Frank spotted a small motorboat. It was like a floating spar to a drowning man—unless, that is, its engine were seized up. He took a quick look behind him. Everything seemed normal.
He jumped nimbly into it.
Hal followed him. The boat rocked.
“Any idea of how we can get this thing going?” asked Hal as he held his sides trying to catch his breath.
“Leave it to me. I’ve driven one of these before.”
Frank was calmer than his companion. His hands were not shaking and Hal felt something like admiration for him.
“Come on! Come on!” he said, quivering with impatience.
“Knock it off! Keep your damn trap shut!” said Frank savagely.
He tried to start the motor. It spluttered damply.
“Hurry it up, for God’s sake!” said Hal, who was now almost weeping. “They’re coming! Talk about sitting ducks! We can’t fight—there’s too many of them!”
Four prison guards appeared. Three were holding revolvers and stopped to open fire. But they were too far away to hit anything.
The fourth had a tommy gun crooked under one arm. He at least had realized that to bring down the fugitives he had to be within range.
He shouted to his colleagues to stop wasting bullets and ran onto the jetty.
Frank swore and turned the engine over for the third time. It caught. He opened the throttle.
Suddenly the launch was speeding over the water.
Frank had his back turned to the port. Hal, on the other hand, was sitting in the bow and saw the guard with the tommy gun get into position.
“Get down!” he yelled to Frank.
Frank turned instinctively to look behind him. A furious salvo came from the quayside. Bullets thudded into the wooden stern of the boat. Frank gave a cry and raised one hand to his head. When he lowered it, Hal was horrified to see that his comrade had a terrible wound to the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. Blood was pouring out of it. Frank’s face was already completely red with it.
But he did not seem to be in any pain. He went on holding the wheel.
There was a second volley of bullets but they dropped harmlessly behind them, cutting a furrow in the water.
“Hell’s teeth!” muttered Frank. “What’s happened to me, Hal?… I can’t see a damned thing!… I felt like something hit me and…”
Hal stared at the wound without saying a word. He wondered how Frank could still speak and move with a hole like that in the lower part of his forehead.
“It was a bullet. It grazed you as you turned round,” he said.
“Are you crazy? A bullet!… I’d be dead if I had taken a bullet in the forehead!”
Hal leant forward to get a closer look at the wound.
“It got you on the slant. It’s nicked a chunk out of the bone at the top of your nose. You were lucky.”
Some obscure instinct warned him that they were in great danger. He turned and saw that the boat was heading directly towards the breakwater of the port. Another ten metres and they would smash into the reinforced-concrete sea wall.
Hal threw himself on the steering wheel and turned it hard. The boat almost flipped over. It fishtailed violently and the bow dipped so savagely that the propeller emerged from the water for a moment and, encountering no resistance, revolved with a tormented screech. The boat lurched agonizingly several times and shaved the breakwater so closely that it scraped its right side.
“What’s happening?” asked Frank, who had almost been thrown overboard. “What’s got into you?”
“What’s got into me is that we damn near cr
ashed into the breakwater.”
“I can’t see zilch,” growled Frank.
“That’s because your eyes are covered with blood. Come on, move over so I can take the wheel.”
“Where are the screws now?” asked Frank.
“Standing on the far side of the port… they’re all arriving in a hurry but they can kiss goodbye to the idea of catching us now.”
Frank was using his sleeve to staunch the blood which was pouring down his face.
“Is there a motor launch in the harbour?” he asked. “If there is, we’ve had it.”
Hal looked.
“Can’t see one,” he said. “Anyway, if there was you can bet your boots they’d be aboard it already!”
“True…”
The quayside was now black with people.
The crowd was watching them the way people watch a sensational spectacle.
“We got a full house,” said Hal. “Dammit, the swine think they’re at the circus!”
He glanced at Frank, who was leaning forward with his head on his sleeve, which had now turned completely red.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Pretty bad, thanks… It burns like there was a red-hot poker on it and I’ve got shooting pains in my head.”
“Hang on, I’ll wash it with seawater in a while… The salt will help to sterilize it.”
The engine was running smoothly and the port was dropping away behind them. Hal looked all round him. The sea was grey and calm, turning bluish as it neared the horizon. It was warm and the sun’s rays fell gently on the surface of the water.
Coming hard on the heels of the narrow confines of the cell, this vastness unnerved him.
“What do we do next?” he asked.
“Where are we?” groaned Frank. “Don’t head out to sea, whatever you do. We’ll never reach America in this tub!”
“So?” asked Hal.
“Are we being followed?”
“Not for the moment…”
“Good… Turn in a wide arc and head back towards the coast… A quarter of an hour from now there’ll be police launches on our tail… And customs, the whole tribe… We get to the coast and we lie low. Shame I got hit…”
The Wicked Go to Hell Page 5
