The White Witch of the South Seas gs-11

by Dennis Wheatley

  Later that afternoon a Juge d'Instruction questioned both of them. Gregory again gave the true story, but James, as instructed, refused to talk. Back in his cell, Gregory could now only wait and hope that Ribaud would succeed in arranging their escape without compromising himself, and that they would get away safely.

  At ten o'clock that night an Inspector whom Gregory had not previously seen came to his cell and said abruptly, `Now that you have been committed to trial, in accordance with usual practice, we are transferring you from this headquarters to the prison. Come along now.'

  In an outer office Gregory found James, already handcuffed to one gendarme. He was handcuffed to another, then the Inspector led the way out to a large car. The gendarmes and their prisoners got into the back, the Inspector took his seat beside the driver, and the car moved off.

  They had covered about a mile and were passing through a slum quarter when a lorry emerged without warning from a side turning. Their driver sounded his klaxon, then gave a shout. Next moment the police car hit the lorry amidships and, with a grinding crash, came to a halt. This, Gregory instantly realised, was it.

  Even before the gendarme to whom he was handcuffed had said in a swift whisper, `Out you get and pull me after you,' he had his free hand on the handle of the door. Turning his head, he shouted to James, `Get out. Pick up your man and carry him if necessary. Then follow me.'

  Pandemonium followed. The lorry driver, the Inspector and his men were all shouting. Gregory was no sooner in the road with his gendarme staggering after him than the man said, `Quick; down that alley opposite:

  Gregory dived into it, dragging the gendarme, who put up only a token resistance, after him. James was hard on their heels, the gendarme to whom he was handcuffed slung over his shoulder. The Inspector had jumped from the car and drawn his pistol. Had the escape been unplanned, he might well have hesitated before firing at the fugitives, for fear of hitting one of his men. To the few onlookers who were about, he appeared to chance that, but actually sent three bullets swishing over their heads.

  The end of the alley was crossed by another. `Turn right, then left,' gasped the man Gregory was dragging along. It was dark there and as they pulled up, the gendarme said with a laugh, `You boys in the Deuxième

  Bureau certainly lead exciting lives.!

  'So that's who old Ribaud has said we are,' Gregory thought gleefully. `Damned clever of him.' By then his companion had got from his pocket the key of the handcuffs. As he unlocked himself from Gregory, he said, `You and your big friend are supposed to have knocked us out. Run on for a hundred yards and you'll find a car a blue Citroen. It will take you where you are to go.'

  Having said that, he knocked his forehead against a nearby wall, so that the skin was torn and began to bleed a little, then lowered himself to the ground. James, meanwhile, had set down his gendarme and had his handcuffs unlocked. After a hasty word of thanks to the men who had helped them escape, they ran side by side down the alley. At its end they found the Citroen. A man in plain clothes was sitting at the wheel. As they came pounding up, he threw open the rear door. They scrambled in and Gregory slammed the door behind him. Without a word the driver let in the clutch. Still maintaining silence, he twisted his way through several short, mean streets, then, by way of a long, straggling suburb, to the low land behind the town.

  By then the moon had risen and by its light there could be seen a row of low hangars and a building surmounted by a squat tower. It was the Magenta airport. The driver did not take them to the office but pulled up a hundred yards short of it. Putting his finger to his lips to enjoin continued silence, he got out and led them across the grass to the end of the line of hangars, signed to them to go round to the front, whispered 'Bonne chance', then turned and hurried back to his car.

  Walking cautiously round the corner, they saw that a small aircraft was standing in front of one of the hangars. Beside it there were two men quietly talking. On seeing Gregory and James they stopped and waved a greeting. One was dressed in pilot's kit, the other was an Army officer.

  `Messieurs,' said the officer, whom Gregory now saw to be a Major, `you will appreciate that the fewer people who see you leave, the better. Be pleased to go aboard before I summon the ground staff.'

  The plane was a four seater reconnaissance aircraft. As James and Gregory settled themselves in the rear seats, the latter asked, 'What about our baggage. Is it here?'

  The Major shook his head. `No. Were you expecting it to be? If so, I am sorry; but I was told nothing of this. And we cannot delay. You must leave without it.'

  Gregory was annoyed, as to land in Tujoa without his passport, his clothes and other belongings, was going to cause him considerable inconvenience. But he felt that in all other respects, Ribaud had planned their get away so efficiently that he could not he greatly blamed for this one oversight.

  The Major blew a whistle, then got in beside the pilot. Vaguely seen figures of ground crew moved round the aircraft, the propellers began to turn, she glided down the runway, halted while the engines revved up, then took off.

  The tension in case some hitch occurred to prevent their escape had been so considerable that neither of the passengers felt like sleep, and for Gregory the flight proved a fascinating one. Since the war, nearly all his air travel had been in jets, flying at a height of many thousand feet, whereas the small prop plane was travelling at an altitude of only about two thousand.

  As the nearly full moon gradually mounted higher in the sky, he could see the scene below quite clearly. Rarely for long were they out of sight of one of the innumerable islands that in the South Pacific seem almost as numerous as the stars overhead. The majority were no more than atolls set in a blue black sea that, here and there, broke in white foam on these coral strands. But when they passed over some of the larger islands in the Loyalty Group, mountains, rivers and little clusters of white buildings could be made out.

  After an hour or so he began to tire of sitting at an angle peering down, and his thoughts turned to speculation on the situation they would find in Tujoa. Lacost and his friends had had two clear months in which to work. It seemed as good as certain that their salvaging apparatus would have reached the island many weeks ago. But they had no licence, so it seemed probable that the French Resident on Tujoa would have prevented them from starting operations. Would Lacost have ignored the ban and endeavoured to salvage the treasure clandestinely on moonlit nights or, as de Carvalho apparently thought he would, got fed up and thrown in his hand?

  And de Carvalho? Having sailed from Noumea ten days previously, he could have been in Fiji for the past week. Was he idling his time away in Suva or had he decided that the time had come to go to Tujoa and find out how the land lay there?

  Thinking of Fiji brought `Gregory's thoughts to Manon. What would she be doing now? The story of James' attack on de Carvalho would for certain have been reported in the New Caledonian papers, and their escape afterwards. As James was a Ratu and the hereditary High Chief of the Nakapoa Group, it was a news item that would have been printed in the Fij Times, so Manon must have learned of it. But, as they had taken to sea in a small launch and she had heard nothing from him for over two months, the odds were that she would assume James and himself to have been drowned.

  Cynically, Gregory decided that by this time she would be consoling herself with another lover. The thought did not distress him, because he had never loved her. Love for him meant Erika, and only Erika. Other affaires were just fun, to be enjoyed as long as his virility remained. And Manon had been fun: a superb bedfellow, instinctively capable of providing as many amorous delights as if she had been a star pupil in a brothel and, to boot a highly intelligent companion. In his mind's eye he could see her now: no true beauty, owing to her receding chin, overlarge mouth and sallow skin; but the skin of her body was satin to the touch, her figure that of a dryad, her commonsense refreshing and her laughter infectious. He decided that, as soon as the situation on Tujoa was cleared up, he would re
turn to Fiji and seek her out. He felt fairly confident that if she had taken another lover he would find a way to induce her to give him up and again become his mistress. To spend further nights with her would be well worth taking quite a lot of trouble.

  The aircraft droned on. James was dozing and so was the Major. Gregory decided that he now would also take a nap. As he settled back, he became conscious that the plane had started to come down. Sitting up again, he looked out of the window. They were near quite a big island. The moonlight threw up its mountain’s and cast deep shadows in its valleys. But there was one broad, open space almost immediately below them. As Gregory stared out, he could hardly believe his eyes. There were buildings down there clustered round a dozen huge rockets.

  The truth flashed upon him. Ribaud had proved cleverer than himself. To make certain of keeping France 's dangerous secret he had double crossed them and sent them back to Yuloga.

  12 ?Land Safely or Die

  From having been half asleep, Gregory's brain instantly began to turn over as fast as a dynamo. He could not altogether blame Ribaud for having done this to him. The General's first duty lay not to an old friend, whatever trouble he might be in, but to France. Had Gregory been responsible for keeping a British secret of equal importance, he felt he would have done the same. Short of having him and James shot, this was the only way in which Ribaud could make absolutely certain of ensuring their silence. That Gregory might have escaped from a fortress in New Caledonia he had accepted, but to escape from the Russians on Yuloga was a very different matter. As he had done so once,’ they would make certain that he was given no chance to do so a second time. And the first time had been difficult enough.

  There flashed through Gregory's mind the many nights which they had spent laboriously working with the steel half shoe heel on the screws that held in place the gratings of their cells, the scores of hours spent cautiously exploring the island, the nerve racking delay while the Melanesians repaired the sail of the big canoe, then the desperate risk they had taken of being shot to pieces before they cleared the reef and reached the open sea.

  By now those gratings would have been made permanent fixtures and there would be surprise visits by the guards to the prisoners' cells, some time each night. Gone for good was any chance of carrying out midnight reconnaissance’s and, even if one could, there would be little point in them, for it was quite certain that the Russians would have scoured the island for any other abandoned canoes and would have destroyed them. All this made the possibility of another escape about as remote as had been the chances of getting away from Devil's Island in the Victorian era.

  The future, then, held the awful prospect of imprisonment for an indefinite period certainly for many months, perhaps for several years with no hope of a reduction of sentence or reprieve. Perhaps even worse. On finding that no fewer than six of their prisoners had escaped and got clean away from the island, the Russians must have been furious. Now that two of those escapers were being returned to them they might well take strong measures.

  Gregory suddenly had an awful vision of himself and James tied to stakes in the courtyard of the prison while a firing squad lined up to shoot them just as an example to the other prisoners of what might happen to them should they give any trouble. The Russians were a law unto themselves. No one could call them to account for such an execution or, the odds were, would even hear about it. If Ribaud chanced to do so he would probably consider Gregory fortunate not to have met such a fate much earlier in life, drink an extra glass of cognac after dinner to the memory of an ace secret agent, then forget the incident.

  All these thoughts rushed through Gregory's mind in a matter of seconds. Looking down again, he saw that they had passed over the rocket launching site and that the aircraft was slowly circling to come down in another valley in which rows of lights showed there to be an airstrip. The fact that they were on was a clear indication that Ribaud had sent a signal to the Russian Commandant, telling him to expect the aircraft.

  Gregory knew that there was only one thing for it. James, beside him, and the Major, in front of him, were still dozing. With his right elbow he gave James a fierce dig in the ribs. Throwing himself forward he flung his left arm round the Major's neck and jerked his head violently backwards. At the same moment his right hand descended on the pistol holster at the officer's side, wrenched it open and grasped the weapon.

  Within seconds of Gregory's first move, entirely unaware of what he was about to do, the pilot cried, `We'll be landing in a few minutes. Fasten your safety belts.'

  At the unexpected sound of threshing limbs beside him, he turned. By then Gregory had pulled the pistol from the holster, struck the Major a sharp blow on the side of the head with the butt and had the weapon pointing at the pilot.

  `Up!' he snapped. `Up, or I'll put a bullet through your head! We are not landing, and if you won't fly this plane I will.'

  The aircraft was down to a thousand feet. The pilot, his eyes staring, did as he was bade and pulled back his joystick, but at so sharp an angle that the aircraft shot up as though about to loop the loop. The manoeuvre came near to giving back the mastery of the situation to Ribaud's men. Gregory and James, who had half risen, were flung violently back into their seats, and the gun was jerked from Gregory's hand. But, as he had already knocked the Major unconscious, the odds remained two to one against the pilot.

  Grimly endeavouring the carry out his mission, the pilot brought the aircraft down again in a steep dive.

  `Half choke him!' Gregory cried urgently, and as he stooped to grope about the floor for the pistol, James's great hands closed round the pilot's neck from behind. As the pressure increased, he let go of the controls and began to claw frantically at James's fingers. Still the aircraft descended.

  At that angle Gregory could see ahead out of the forward window. The plane was plunging straight to earth. The flares on the runway seemed to be leaping up to meet them. Forcing his head and shoulders between the unconscious Major and the pilot, he grabbed the joystick and pulled it back. The aircraft shot up again at such a steep angle that he feared it must stall. But it was now flying at an altitude of no more than five hundred feet. Then, to his horror, he saw that it was hurtling direct at a rocky peak that rose up from the centre of the island.

  By then the pilot, half strangled, had had enough. His eyes starting from his head, he stopped clawing ineffectually at

  James' hands and let his own fall,, then rammed down his left foot on the rudder bar. The plane banked steeply.

  At that moment the stunned Major came round. Unaware of the acute danger, he gave a groan, turned sideways in his seat and grabbed Gregory by the shoulders, wrenching him away from the controls. James let go of the pilot's neck to come to Gregory's assistance. The back of his fist smashed into the side of the Major's face. With another groan, he fell back in his seat. The pilot gasped in breath, then, panting wildly, seized the joystick. The plane zoomed up. It was touch and go. They missed the side of the rocky peak by no more than twenty feet.

  Seeing that for the moment disaster had been averted and that the pilot had come to heel, Gregory again groped on the floor until his hand closed on the pistol. Picking it up, he jabbed the barrel into the pilot's ribs and snarled, `Now, damn you! Do as I tell you or I'll put a bullet through your guts. Take her up to two thousand and head due east.'

  The man had no more fight left in him. Rapidly the aircraft gained height, banked again and came round on the given course. A few minutes later the island of Yuloga was fading away into the night behind them.

  Blood was trickling from the side of the Major's mouth where James had struck him. His kepi had fallen off and he was sitting hunched up with his head lolling forward, but his eyes were open, showing that he was still conscious. To make certain that he would give no further trouble, Gregory handed the pistol to James, then, with his left hand, grabbed the man by the hair, pulling his head back, and with his right undid his tie. Thrusting him forward again he pulled
his arms behind his back and used the tie to secure his wrists firmly together. '

  Turning to the pilot, Gregory said, `You will now fly us to Tujoa.'

  `Fly her yourself,' the man replied truculently. `I'm not going to risk facing a court martial for having helped two dangerous criminals to escape from justice.'

  Gregory had many times parachuted from an aircraft and knew a considerable amount about them, but; in spite of what he had implied when first threatening the pilot, he was not a trained airman; so he snapped back, `I could fly her, but I'd probably crash her on landing. Like it or not, unless you want to risk being burned to a cinder, you'll do the job for us. You've got your orders and you'll bring us down at Tujoa.'

  The pilot gave a harsh laugh. `Like hell I will! I haven't enough petrol to get her half that distance.'

  `You're lying. Tujoa is quite a bit closer to Yuloga than Yuloga is to Noumea, and you would have had to make the return hop.'

  `That's so, but I would have taken on fuel at Yuloga.'

  Gregory swore under his breath. The petrol gauge told him nothing, because he did not know if the pilot was already using the reserve tank or if it was still full. He might be bluffing. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth this was a really nasty one.

  After a moment's thought Gregory said, `The Ocean in these parts is peppered with small islands. You are to keep going for Tujoa as long as you can. If you do find the petrol getting low you are to bring us down on the nearest island. But I'd like you to be clear about one thing. Should you do that and when we have landed I find that there is more than one gallon of petrol in the tank I'll blow your brains out.'

  `If you'd ever tried to land an aircraft on a coral atoll you'd not be such a fool as to ask me to,' the pilot replied in a surly voice. `She'd rip her bottom to pieces and we'd end up like strawberry jam.'