Then there was silence again. And another groan.
She drew back from the door. She could not understand it. She thought it was a trap. She trusted nothing and nobody. Someone walked with a slow, painful step across the floor beyond the door. Angelina moved toward the panel again.
"Hello?"
She was startled by the sound of her own voice.
"Hello?" she called' again.
The footsteps halted. There was quiet; the birds sang; the water ran over the rocks outside. Then there came a slow fumbling as someone slid a bolt aside on the door of her room. She shrank back again.
"No, don't..."
* * *
A man stood there, looking at her. She hadn't seen this one before. He looked ill, a man with white hair and deep lines of suffering in his handsome face. He wore pajamas, but Angelina did not think this was particularly singular. His feet were bare and bloody, there were livid bruises on his face, and he held one arm as if it had been broken. He breathed queerly, as if every breath hurt him and he wished he could stop breathing, but he couldn't.
"My God, what have they done to you?" the man whispered.
"Who are you?"
"Amberley. Carl Amberley. They kidnapped me early this morning. What did they do to you?'
"I don't know. I don't want to think about it."
"How long have you been here?"
"I don't know."
"Well, don't you want to get away?"
She looked blank. She had buried the thought and hope of escape so deep in her mind that it was difficult to bring it back to the surface and look at it again.
"Are you all right?" the man asked gently.
"Yes. No. I don't know. They did things… Why aren't they here?"
"They've all gone, and were locked in." His voice was bitter, defeated. "They made me tell. I was weak. I have a very bad heart, young lady, and I thought they were going to kill me. I suppose the more intimate one becomes with death, the greater the cowardice for some of us. I thought they were going to kill me, and when that man with the knife…"
"Don't," she said quickly. She shuddered. "Don't mention him."
"But they got the information from me..."
"You couldn't help it. Please, sit down. You can't help me, either. You don't look well at all."
"They're all gone, and I've got to get out of here. But I don't seem to have the strength I need."
She looked at him and suddenly realized that for the last moment or two she had forgotten to think about herself. "Sit down," she said. "I'll look around. Don't you have any shoes?"
"They took me out of my bed."
"Maybe I can find you some."
"What about you?" You're barefooted, too. And in these mountains..."
"Do you know where we are?" she asked.
"Of course. Don't you?"
They took me from New York. Never mind; just sit down." Her voice had tightened. She saw he was having trouble breathing. "Please, sit down. I'll be right back. She even managed to smile. "And thanks for letting me out of my cage."
He started to ask her why she was a prisoner, too, but she didn't wait around to reply. The room she was in served as a living room, typically rustic for a mountain lodge, with wide-pegged floors, a fieldstone fireplace with a mounted deer's head over it, and pegs in the wall alongside where rifles had been kept. Somebody had thoughtfully removed the weapons. She wondered if they had been simply put out of sight, but she gave up hope for that sort of luck. There were two windows, both barred and shuttered from the outside. She tried the heavy plank door. It was also barred from the outside. Turning, she moved into a hallway that opened into a kitchen, with two bedrooms on either hand. None of the beds had been slept in. There was a back door opening onto a porch, but this was locked and the key was not in sight, and the glass panes were too small to break and crawl through. Still, she was not discouraged. She did not allow herself to think more than a step or two ahead. She was simply grateful for the moment that the Corbins and Slago and Fleming were not around.
There was a pot of coffee on the kerosene stove and she found wooden matches in the cupboard and lit the burner under the pot and returned to the living room. Amberley was sitting in a maple rocker, bent forward a little. His arm that looked broken was held at an awkward angle. She thought there were tears on his face, but she looked away from them.
"Are you all right?"
"I don't think... not really, no," Amberley whispered.
"I'll see if I can find some shoes."
"Can we get out of here?"
"I think so."
"The sooner the better, Miss..."
"Greene. Angelina Greene."
"What did they do to you?"
"Enough," she said.
She found a pair of leather moccasins in a suitcase in one of the bedrooms, and she found slippers for herself in Jessie Corbin's. The slippers were tight, but they were better than nothing. She went back to the living room again. Amberley had not moved. She knelt before him and helped him on with the moccasins.
"Do they fit all right?" she asked him.
"Yes. Fine."
"Let's see if we can get out, then."
"Do you know where to go?" he asked. "Do you have any friends around here?"
"No, but don't worry about me. You have to get to the police. You know more about all this than I do. I stumbled into it without knowing what it all meant You're the one to tell it to the police. But first you need some coffee."
* * *
She went back to the kitchen. She was worried about the gray look on Amberley's face, and the way he walked, with pain and hesitation. He could not go far, she knew. But every step away from this place would be a help. She couldn't think beyond that.
She gave him a cup of coffee, and while he sipped it, she broke one of the panes of glass in the kitchen door with the heel of her borrowed slipper and reached out and felt in the lock outside to see if the key had been left there. Her groping fingers found nothing. She stood back, frustrated. Through the broken glass, she could see the woods, the side of the silent mountain, the blue of the free sky.
"It's a simple lock," Amberley said. "Let me try."
The hot coffee had helped him. He found a nut pick in the kitchen drawers and he thrust it into the lock and tinkered with it. Angelina stood by and felt despair return like a fog rolling over her mind. Why was she running away? There was no place to go. No place she could hide from herself. She touched the rough bandages on her wounds. It was as if Slago's knife had cut something out of her that couldn't be replaced.
"Here we are," Amberley said, at last.
The door swung open. He breathed heavily again. The air beyond the open door felt crisp and cool. They walked out together.
The lawn around the house was rough and shaggy. Amberley walked uncertainly. A dim trail led off into the pines in front of the house, and without a word, they started down the long slope, moving slowly because of the man's weakness. They did not look back.
The trail led down to a small bridge that spanned a rocky, tumbling stream. The water looked cold and inviting. Angelina longed to bathe; she felt dirty; she felt as if all the water in the world couldn't wash away the filth that grimed her. But she knew she couldn't stop. This man with her suffered every step of the way, but he was going on, and the least she could do was to go on with him.
They were on the bridge when they heard the car approaching. A trick of the terrain had kept them from hearing the motor before. Angelina saw the car almost simultaneously with the sound as it came grinding around a curve in the trail and turned to the bridge. It was the green Buick station wagon, and Slago was driving.
She reacted without thinking or weighing the cost. Escape had been a dream, anyway, a prayer and a curse. Turning, she shoved Amberley off the bridge and down the little slope into the thick brush along the banks of the stream. Almost in the same moment, she ran headlong along the trail, toward the car.
Slago saw her; he sto
pped before he struck her, and got out, grinning. Angelina turned, pretending to be confused, and began to run in the opposite direction. He ran after her and she looked back, as if in terror. Amberley was climbing up out of the stream, staggering into the brush. Slago had not seen him. She stumbled and fell. She heard Slago crash after her like some animal hunting her down. She tried to get up, but her dress had snagged on the brush, and it held her helplessly to the soft earth until Slago caught up with her. She turned and looked up into his pale, cruel eyes. He was laughing.
I've been waiting to get us alone again for a long time, sweetheart," he said.
Chapter Eighteen
Durell followed the realty agent's directions and turned off the main highway to follow a dirt road that twisted up the side of Kittitimi Mountain. It was almost ten o'clock now. He had called Washington, and Wittington had ordered him to stand by at the motel until he could get some men up there to help. Durell couldn't just sit and wait. He kept thinking of Angelina and Amberley. He told Wittington that any men he sent could follow him, and then he had taken the road to the mountain.
The sun was now well over the thrusting shoulder of the pine-clad range ahead. Far below he could see the line of the abandoned colliery rails, curving up through the silently singing valleys. He knew where he was going now. He could even guess what Corbin's objective was, although Wittington had refused to tell him.
He kept watching for the little bridge that George Johnston had told him was only a quarter of a mile from Corbin's lodge. There were no other summer cottages on this road. Now and then he glimpsed rusted wire fencing through the woods and an occasional No Trespassing sign. He had looked curiously that way, but there seemed to be only a wilderness on that part of the mountain.
He found Amberley just a short distance from the bridge, and he quickly stopped the car. He did not get out immediately, but put his gun in his lap and waited and listened. Amberley lay face down, sprawled on the trail where he had fallen. In his pajamas, the man was unmistakable. Durell got out and walked slowly toward him.
The man was still alive. Durell felt his pulse, saw the blue tinge of the man's cyanotic lips, the broken arm. Durell s face was blank as he looked sharply toward the wooden bridge beyond. He couldn't see the Corbin cabin, but he knew it was there. And because of the silence, he knew no one was in it now. He was still too late, just a step behind them.
"Amberley, can you hear me?" he said gently. "It's all right now. I want to help you." He paused, and then asked: "Where is the girl? Angelina Greene. Wasn't she in there with you? Wasn't she a prisoner, too?"
"Prisoner, yes..." Amberley whispered. He opened his eyes and looked at Durell's lean, hard face. "Who are you?"
"A friend," Durell said. "You can believe that."
"Got to... stop them..."
"Where did they go?"
"I told them — told them where to go. Couldn't help it There's so much pain... Can you get me to a doctor?"
"The best thing is to lie still. Where are they?"
"The girl — let them catch her again — to give me a chance to get away. But I... I couldn't t make it."
Durell had nothing to ease the man's pain. He felt impatient to go on, but Amberley had something to tell him, and he had to learn what it was. "How long have you been out here?"
"Don't know... blacked out when' he came back."
"Who?"
"The ugly one. The girl let him grab her to give me a chance..."
"Half an hour ago?"
"Maybe."
"Longer?"
"I don't know "
"What did they get out of you? You can tell me. I'm going after them."
"Follow trail... past lodge. Old coal mine... Blue Spot shack entrance... Look at the rails..."
Amberley lowered his head. His breathing was quick and shallow. Durell felt for his pulse again. He said: "There will be some men along, right behind me, I hope. They'll take care of you."
He didn't think Amberley could hear him any more.
* * *
He spent only a few minutes in the lodge. No one was there. He went through it quickly, gun in hand, finding only silence and emptiness. There was no hint as to what had happened here.
He could take the car no farther. The road ended at the cabin, and beyond there was only a hiking trail that twisted away into the woods, climbing toward the silent green shoulder of Kittitimi Mountain. Durell wasted no more time. He started walking.
The sun was hot now. Flies buzzed persistently in the dank, green underbrush, but he paid no attention. Now and then he caught a glimpse of quiet, sunlit valleys below, with the colliery rail line lifting gradually to meet him. He wondered what Amberley had meant by telling him to look at the rails. He saw that the trail would intersect the single track, abandoned line presently, and he walked faster. When he came to the wire barrier across the trail, he did not hesitate. It was new, like the metal warning sign against trespassers that hung from it. Somebody had cut through the wires recently and gone on. A few steps beyond he found the wire clippers in the grass. They were slightly rusted, as if they had been out in the dew all night.
In twenty minutes he came to the railroad line. The trail crossed it in a narrow, wooded gorge and then swung along beside it to follow the right-of-way. The tracks had been laid recently, but not too much traffic had gone over them. The gorge opened at the northern end onto a wide slope of the mountains face. Durell was sweating from the long, straight upward climb, and now he paused and studied the open terrain with care.
He was almost at the abandoned mine workings. A mile away he could see the cluster of gray, weathered buildings of the colliery, a faded sign hanging from one of the sway-backed roofs. The rail line ahead divided at several switch points, became a double track and then doubled again. Sunlight glinted on the ribbons of steel, and all at once he saw what Amberley wanted him to see. If the colliery had been abandoned as long ago as the public was meant to believe, those rails would have long been rusted and overgrown with weeds. But they looked new.
He studied the slope for another long minute, looking for a sign of life and movement. There was nothing to see. The face of the mountain looked jagged, with great outcroppings of granite overhanging the wooden structures below. The wind made a steady, singing pressure in his ears. He wondered if he ought to wait here for the men Wittington was sending to help, but somewhere ahead in those deserted-looking buildings was the end of the trail he had followed — a trail marked with death and the blood of innocent men. He went on.
When he had covered half a mile diagonally across the face of the slope, he saw the green station wagon. He almost missed it because it was partly hidden behind a small shack that stood higher on the mountainside than the rest of the mine structures. And Amberley apparently had not known about the road by which the Buick had been brought all the way up through this wilderness. Either that, or Amberley had supposed that the footpath would bring him here faster and more surely. It was plain that Slago, after recapturing Angelina, had discovered Amberley's escape and driven here to find the others.
He came to another high wire fence, and this one was not cut, and he lost several precious minutes seeking a way to climb over it. A long tongue of pine woods intervened at this point between the fence and the shack, and he lost sight of the Buick for a time while he moved on and finally he came out on a crag of rock overlooking the fence and the workings below. By climbing a few feet into one of the pines, he was able to drop over the barrier. Now he saw that some kind of steady activity had been going on at the site of the mine — an activity that the public had been encouraged to forget or ignore in this remote place.
The rails had been used. And there was a flat clearing to the west of the leaning colliery towers that might have been designed as a landing area for helicopters, with yellow circles painted on the asphalt apron. One of the long open sheds nearby could have been used to shelter the machines. And Durell also saw that several of the gray mine buildings were not
in as rickety shape as they had appeared.
Somebody was stationed and quartered here. There was a jeep, just visible in the shadows of a small hill of waste on the lower slope. There was even a faint plume of smoke from the chimney of one of the buildings. But no one was in sight.
If any troops were quartered here, they were deep underground, and so were the Corbins and Slago and Fleming by now.
Durell moved on down toward the station wagon.
Now he became aware of a restlessness in the atmosphere, a steady pulsing and a hum of hidden machinery and he paused in the brush above the shack to study the place in detail. The station wagon looked empty. The door to the ramshackle place was open, but he couldn't see inside.
He had the feeling of being an intruder in a place far from all the everyday realities of life. The silent, subtly shifting pressures of the mountain made his nerves tense. The humming and pulsing was louder now. He moved toward the station wagon first. It was parked in tall weeds behind the shack, but a well-trodden path led to the door of the building. When he paused by the car, he saw what looked like a shapeless gray bundle of old clothes or blankets huddled on the floor of the car. Then he saw her feet and his heart lurched suddenly.
"Angelina?" he whispered.
There was no movement and no reply. He drew a deep breath. A crow screamed loudly in the pines nearby. The air of the coal mine seemed deeper and darker.
"Angelina?"
There was a faint, tentative stirring. "Sam?"
"Come out of there," he whispered.
"You're too late."
"I need help."
"I can't help you."
He reached in and touched her gray dress and she reacted violently, covering her wounded body, shrinking from his touch. Her eyes looked at him as if he were a stranger, staring in terror and shame.
"What did they do to you?" he whispered.
Assignment — Angelina Page 15
