Another twenty yards and she caught sight of Freddie. He was plunging along with Gregory’s limp body slung over his back and Angela beside him. Putting on a spurt Erika came level with them. In spite of the icy cold, rivulets of sweat were running down Freddie’s face. His breath was coming in awful sobbing gasps and each gulp of the freezing air that he drew into his aching lungs hissed out again like a cloud of steam. He had made a supreme effort and covered the first hundred yards in remarkable time considering that he was carrying the dead weight of a fully-grown man; but he could not possibly keep up such a pace. Now, he was stumbling as he ran and his heart was hammering against his ribs as though it would burst with the strain. He knew that he must soon set his burden down or his legs would give way under him.
The firing had ceased but a fresh chorus of drunken shouts told them that the troops had not given up the chase; they were coming down the street after them. As they ran both the girls kept glancing over their shoulders. The dancing snowflakes still hid them from the pursuing soldiers but now that Freddie’s pace was flagging they knew that they must be losing their lead and they expected to see the troops emerge through the curtain of whiteness at any moment.
Erika was at her wits’ end. She still had two or three bullets left in the magazine of her pistol. But even if she could again manage to pick off their foremost pursuers she knew that she would never be able to hold the others up long enough to give Freddie a new lead that would be of any use now. He was almost done and from his reeling gait she could see that he was due to collapse within another thirty paces.
The collosal physical effort that Freddie was making took every ounce of his energy so that he could not use his brain at all but only stagger blindly on to the limit of his endurance. Every second the weight of Gregory’s body seemed to grow heavier and now he felt as though he were crushed under the bodies of five men instead of one. This time it was Angela who once more temporarily saved the situation.
They had passed the limits of the air-port and were no longer running along beside the fence but had entered a street with small houses on either side. Between two of them Angela spotted a narrow alleyway. Seizing Freddie by the arm she pulled him with all her force so that he swung round into it. Losing his balance he fell with Gregory just inside its entrance. Erika came sprawling on top of them but in an instant she was up and helping Angela to drag Gregory’s body from on top of Freddie and further into the ally. By the time they had pulled the body four or five yards Freddie lurched to his feet and came lumbering after them, only to collapse again just as he caught them up.
While he sprawled there panting as though his lungs would burst, Gregory lay inert and silent. Erika had to know if he was alive or dead. Wrenching off her right glove she fumbled franticaly at the furs about his neck and thrust her hand down under his clothing. He was alive. His heart was still beating. Her unspoken relief lasted only for a second. The blank walls of the houses rose steeply on either side of the alley and it was pitch-dark in there except for a faint, greyish oblong which showed where it entered the street. It was impossible for her to ascertain where, or how badly, he was wounded. Perhaps he was dying. Her brain reeled under a fresh spate of agony as she realised that he might be bleeding to death, yet she was powerless to stop it.
Crouching beside their men the girls peered with wide, anxious eyes towards the faintly light patch as they strove to get back their breath and still the beating of their hearts. Erika had dropped her gun when she tripped over Freddie but, although she was less than twenty feet from the place where she had fallen, she dared not go back to look for it. The snow had deadened the sound of their footsteps but it also deadened the sound of their pursuers. The Russians might reach the entrance of the alleyway before she could get her gun and slip back into the darkness. Everything depended now upon the soldiers’ not noticing the entrance and believing that their quarry was still ahead of them, further down the gloomy, snow-swept street.
She had been crouching beside Gregory for barely forty seconds when the sound of muffled footfalls and heavy breathing reached her. Angela laid a quick hand on Freddie’s shoulder to try and quiet him in case his awful gasping should be heard and he made an agonising effort to control the hoarse gulps that came spasmodically from his tortured lungs.
Another ten seconds and the troops had passed, ploughing heavily on down the road; but there was not an instant to be lost. When the Russians failed to sight the fugitives they would turn back and might notice the tracks in the freshly-fallen snow that led into the entrance of the alley. Erika had Gregory’s head pillowed on her lap. Half-crazed by fear that he was dying she stroked his face and in soft whispers implored him to speak to her; but he remained absolutely limp. She could feel that his mouth was hanging open but he did not utter even a moan or sigh. Angela was the first on her feet and she shook Freddie by the shoulder. “Come on, darling! Come on!” she whispered. “They may be back here in a moment.”
Still panting, Freddie struggled to his knees. The two girls hauled Gregory across his back and assisted him to rise; with a lurch he began to plod heavily along, deeper into the darkness of the alley. Erika was already following when she suddenly remembered her pistol and turned back to look for it. She knew within a few feet where she must have dropped it but the uncertain light made it impossible to see the pistol at a glance so she had to grope about on her hands and knees in the snow for a good minute before she found the deadly little weapon. Its safety-catch was still off and only the soft snow had prevented its exploding after it had fallen from her hand. Quickly pushing the safety-catch down she rammed the gun into her pocket and ran after the others.
They had passed out of the black gulf made by the two houses but wooden fences hedged them in on either side for some distance and the only light was the greyish, snow-filled murk above. At last they reached the further entrance to the alley and Freddie set Gregory down again while they held a quick consultation as to which way to go. Their only knowledge of the geography of Petsamo came from their brief flight in the semi-darkness above it but they felt that the town lay towards their left and that it would be best to make in that direction; so Freddie hoisted Gregory on to his shoulders again and they set off along a dreary-looking road.
It seemed that they had managed to evade the soldiers but the thought that the Russians had taken Petsamo filled them all with the gravest forebodings. From the little they could make out, encompassed as they were by darkness and snow, they were passing down a street which consisted of back gardens interspersed with empty lots and they felt that since none of them could speak Finnish it would be a risky business to knock up a house, even when they found one. As the Russians had fought their way into Petsamo that day everything would be in confusion; they might easily walk into a trap, as they had done at the air-port, and find that the building they knocked up had been taken over as a billet for Russian soldiers; or, if it still held Finns the Finns might take them for Russians—as they could not speak Finnish—and set about them. Even the fact of heading for the town seemed a policy of dubious wisdom. The main body of Soviet troops would certainly be quartered there and the sort of fate that might overtake them as prisoners of the Russians was too grim to contemplate; yet they could not stay out all night with the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero.
They had covered about a quarter of a mile at a slow, plodding pace when the bulk of a house loomed up through the snow; before it stood a huge sleigh to which were harnessed three horses. Erika halted the party with a swift whisper. “Wait! If we can get hold of that troika we could get away.”
“Where to?” Freddie muttered anxiously.
“God knows. But away from the Russians, anyhow.”
“Yes,” Angela added quickly. “Erika’s right. Anything would be better than falling into the hands of those soldiers.”
“Right,” said Freddie. “Let’s take it, then. It’s no time to bother ourselves about private ownership.”
As they stepped forw
ard a man emerged from the shadows on the far side of the horses. They had no idea if he was a Russian or a Finn but Erika felt now that their very lives depended upon getting possession of the sleigh. Drawing her pistol she advanced on the man, crying sharply in German: “Put your hands up!”
The man stood there, evidently not understanding. In the uncertain light she could not see the expression on his face but she stepped forward another couple of paces and thrust out her automatic so that he could see it. Apparently taken completely by surprise he jumped back a pace and pulling his hands from his pockets lifted them quickly above his head.
Freddie ran to the near side of the sleigh and lowered Gregory into it. Angela scrambled up on to the box and grabbed the reins. The sleigh-bells on the harness jingled and the three small wiry horses began to paw the ground impatiently. Erika waved her pistol, motioning the owner of the sleigh to retreat. He began to curse in some unknown language but gave back a few paces. Then, suddenly regaining his courage, he made a rush at her.
Her pistol flashed as she sent a shot over his shoulder. It brought him up short and she lowered her gun with a determined gesture which showed him that she meant to put her next shot into his body; he hesitated, then still cursing, he began to back away again.
“All aboard!” called Angela, passing the reins to Freddie. With a swift turn Erika grabbed the off side of the sleigh and jumped. Freddie cracked the whip and as Erika half-fell into the body of the troika the horses plunged their way into the snow-flaked darkness leaving their unfortunate owner shouting and cursing in the middle of the road.
The three horses were as much as Freddie could handle but he soon had them under control. Although they were still rugged up against the piercing cold they cantered down the street at a fine pace and he let them have their heads for the first mile, until they were clear of the town and somewhere out behind the air-port on a road that had only a line of trees at one side to mark it. Pulling up, he un-rugged the horses and with the reins still over the crook of his arm came round to the side of the sleigh to find out how badly Gregory was wounded.
Erika and Angela had both lost their dressing-cases but they had found a torch in one of Gregory’s pockets and were examining him by it. He was still unconscious but the light showed that the fur collar of his coat was glistening with wet blood and on removing his fur cap they found that he had been wounded in the back of the head. At first they feared that a bullet had smashed his skull and was lodged in the bone there, but as Angela held the light and Erika probed the wound gently with her fingers they discovered that it was only a deep cut through his hair and the back of his scalp; upon which Freddie declared that the wound must have been made by a spent bullet which had ricocheted off the brickwork of the air-port building.
As Erika probed the deep cut Gregory began to moan and soon afterwards came round but he was unable to talk coherently. The girls bandaged the wound as well as they could by making a wad of their handkerchiefs and keeping it in place by pulling his fur papenka over it; then they made him as comfortable as possible between them in the back of the sleigh and drew the rugs, with which it was well provided, over them.
If the man from whom they had stolen the sleigh had roused his neighbours there was still danger of pursuit so, jumping on to the box, Freddie drove on again. There would have been considerable risk of his driving off the road had it not been that the way was now dead straight and lay between two solid blocks of forest which they had entered within a few hundred yards of their first halt, and even through the gently-falling snow he could see the black blur of the massed tree-trunks on either side.
After they had been going for nearly an hour he pulled up and turned towards the others to ask a little doubtfully: “D’you think we ought to go on? I haven’t the faintest idea where this road leads to.”
“Never mind,” said Angela decisively. “Give the horses another breather, then drive on again. We must get as far as we possibly can from Petsamo now it’s been captured by the Russians.”
“Yes. I’m with you there,” he agreed; “but the devil of it is that we don’t know where we’re going.”
“We can’t help that,” said Erika; “anything is better than falling into the hands of the soldiers. One look at their faces as they were in that mess-room drinking like hogs was quite enough to show what brutes they are.”
After resting the horses they continued their journey into the unknown at an easier pace, halting once more after another half-hour had passed. The snow was still falling so they could not see the stars and Freddie was uneasy about their direction; but the girls continued to insist that they must get as far as they could from Petsamo by morning and Angela volunteered to drive the next stage.
When they went on she found the three horses a heavy strain upon her arms but the vigour she had to exert to control them kept her warm; and it was a pleasant change from sitting inactive in the back of the sleigh where the cold was bitter even under the pile of fur rugs.
Freddie took over again after the next halt and they went on and on down the long, straight road which they had had no difficulty at all in following as it was still bordered in either side by grim, silent forests.
When they halted for the fifth time they estimated that they must be well over twenty miles from Petsamo; yet they had not seen a single traveller on the road or passed through any village. As they drove on again the snow began to lighten. After a little it ceased altogether and they were able to see the moon, which was only four days past full, and the stars gleaming overhead in a pale, frosty sky. Freddie halted the sleigh once more and remained peering up at them for a moment; then he said in an uneasy voice:
“That’s the North Star up there on our left. We’ve been driving into Russia.”
“Petsamo is only about fifteen miles from the Russian frontier,” said Erika, “so we must have crossed it by now.”
“I don’t know,” Freddie replied. “This road doesn’t run due east but about south-east by south, so we may still be somewhere on the Finnish side of the frontier.”
“Oh, hell!” exclaimed Angela. “What are we going to do? I haven’t noticed a single turning for the last ten miles or more and the last thing we want to do is to drive on into enemy territory; yet we can’t go back.”
Gregory had fallen into a troubled sleep so they could not consult him. Freddie glanced at the dial of his luminous watch. It was not yet midnight and so still November the 30th, the first day of the Russo-Finnish War. It seemed incredible that so much should have happened to them in so short a space of time, yet they had woken that morning in the comfortable room at the Helsinki police headquarters with Finland still at peace; reasonably confident that they would soon be free again and, having completed their mission successfully, be on their way to England. Since then, they had been charged with murder, had passed through three devastating air-raids, had flown seven hundred miles, had made a most dangerous night-landing in a snow-storm, had narrowly escaped being killed or captured by drunken Russian soldiers and had driven twenty-five miles in a stolen troika to find themselves lost and stranded in the desolate Arctic.
The seemingly endless forests on either side of them were utterly still with a terrifying silence that could almost be felt. For many miles they had seen no sign of life; they were foodless and shelterless and from the agonising cold they knew that the thermometer must stand at many degrees below zero.
The two men were wanted for murder in Finland; all four of them would be arrested and shot for firing on the soldiers if they fell into the hands of the Russians, and if they did not return to Petsamo they must drive on into Russia, for if they remained where they were they would freeze to death before morning. As all of them silently considered this desperate situation they felt that they were faced with an insoluble problem.
Chapter XXI
The Man Without a Memory
“Well, we can’t stay here,” said Freddie, flapping his arms across his chest, “otherwise we’ll get frost-b
ite. This cold is absolutely shattering and the only antidote to it is to keep moving.”
“But where to?” said Angela desperately. “If we go on until we reach a village we’ll probably find ourselves in Russia.”
“For all practical purposes we’re in Russia already,” Erika remarked slowly; “as the Russians took Petsamo some time today they must have driven in the Finnish frontier guards round here; so we’re behind the Russian lines now in any case.”
“That’s true,” Freddie agreed, and Erika went on:
“We’ll be no worse off if we go forward than if we go back—in fact, we’ll almost certainly receive better treatment if we strike a new lot of Russians further along the road than we should if we returned to Petsamo and fell into the hands of the crowd we fired on. They’d never believe we only did it in self-defence.”
Angela made an effort to stop her teeth chattering and added: “Ye-ye-es. They’d sh-shoot us if they caught us, so we must go on. I’m going to drive again.”
Right oh!” Freddie handed her the reins. “There must be a village somewhere along this road and maybe the peasants will give us shelter whether they’re Finns or Russians.
They drove on for what seemed an interminable time through the dark, menacing forest, which now looked even more sinister in the bright moonlight, halting occasionally to rest the horses and change the drivers. Erika remained with Gregory’s head pillowed on her shoulder although she was cramped and terribly cold. Angela tried to persuade her to change places and take a turn with the reins but she refused for, brave as she was in other ways, she was frightened of anything to do with horses.
Freddie could not understand how any main road, such as this obviously was, could continue for so many miles without a single village upon it, until Erika said: “I don’t think people like ourselves who live in the more highly-populated parts of Europe ever quite realise how sparsely countries bordering on the Arctic are peopled. Sometimes, I believe, there’s as much as a hundred miles between settlements, and then they are inhabited only by miners or trappers.”
Faked Passports Page 29
