Terry said, “What are you going to do with me?”
He put his hands on the table and leaned across it.
“Terry—don’t look like that.”
Her eyes dwelt on him. They were burning bright.
“What are they going to do with me? What is that woman going to do? You won’t tell me, but I know. They’re going to kill me—you know that. She’s given you your orders, hasn’t she?”
“Terry!”
Her look changed to a puzzled one.
“Why are you doing it? Is it for money?”
“No, it isn’t for money.”
She leaned on the table.
“Then why? You don’t hate me, do you? I haven’t done anything to make you hate me. You’re not like Jake. You don’t want to hurt me, do you? I can’t see why you should.”
“Don’t, my dear! Terry, please don’t!” He took her hands across the table and held them. They were very cold indeed. “Terry—don’t! I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll get you away.”
Her hands stirred in his.
“Get me away?”
“If you’ll do exactly what I tell you. She’s gone upstairs. Listen—she’s calling to Jake.”
They stood there hand in hand, and heard Jake come along the passage and go clattering up the stairs a couple of steps at a time. Terry said in a whisper,
“He’s gone upstairs.”
They waited. Her hands clung to Peter’s. Warmth was coming into them.
“Yes, he’s gone upstairs,” said Peter. “They’ve both gone up. And Bert went out—he’s the driver—so that means there’s no one on guard. Wait a minute till I go and see if there’s anyone at the door.”
He went to the area door and opened it. A cold, heavy air flowed sluggishly into the house. There was no fog but a pitch-dark night heavily clouded and without star or moon. He went half-way up the area steps, and saw the car, and the driver leaning against it.
Bert came over and whispered, “Are you ready?” And when Peter nodded he began at once to whistle stridently and rather out of tune:
“Tea for two, and two for tea,
Me for you, and you for me—”
He walked away. The sound of his feet on the pavement and the sound of the whistling receded.
Peter went back into the kitchen. He said quickly,
“Get your coat. The car’s there. We’ve got a chance of getting away with it.”
He saw her face change. Colour came into it. She went past him quick and light—so light that he could hear no sound of her feet as she ran down the passage. Then she was back, the coat flying loose and a hand on his arm. But at the area door she checked. There was a whisper close at his ear.
“Why it is open? Why have they left it open?”
He whispered back, “I’m supposed to be on guard. It’s all right.”
And then up the steps and across the pavement to the car.
He had a moment’s indecision as they emerged from the area. Suppose they linked arms and ran for it to the corner. Suppose they were to ring the next-door bell. He took a quick look up and down. The road fairly bristled with “To let” boards. They stretched misshapen hands in the dim light of a street-lamp which seemed a long way off. A deserted road, a dead road, a road of derelict houses leading to a dark square. He could just distinguish a blur of trees.
No, better take the car, steer for some frequented road, and stop the first policeman.
The whole thing passed like a flash. Then they were in the car. The first tremor of movement, the gathering speed, the wheel between his hands, gave him an intoxicating sense of power, so easily, so lightly, so quickly they were away.
Terry’s shoulder was tense against his. As they turned the corner and began to skirt the square, he said, “We’re off!” and felt her relax. He could have shouted.
And then from behind him came the voice of Maud Millicent Simpson.
“Very neatly done, Spike. I’ll give you a bonus for that.”
Peter held the wheel steady. He felt as he had felt when a brickbat had dropped on his head when he was ten years old and he had gone in too close to watch the fascinating business of demolishing a rickety old house. There was the same horrid shock, the same angry surprise. But, whereas the brickbat had plunged him into unconsciousness, this shock intensified consciousness to an almost unbearable degree. With every sense heightened, he realized how cleverly, how fatally he had been tricked. What a fool he had been to dream that they would let him get away with Terry and a car. Before she had finished promising him a bonus it was all there in his mind—the complete picture of the dupe he had been and the danger they were in. The bonus he was likely to get was death, and he knew it. He spoke without undue delay in a rather grumbling voice,
“What’s all this? I thought you were following us.”
He heard Jake laugh. So the two of them were there in the back of the car. He hadn’t thought to look, and there hadn’t been time. They must have come out of the front door as soon as she had called Jake up to her and just got in there at the back and ducked down. It was the simplest, the easiest trick in the world.
Maud Millicent said in her hard, sweet voice, “I thought we’d give you a surprise. No use taking out two cars when one will do, and you might have had trouble with her—later on in the lighted streets. She might have wanted to stop a policeman and have one. I thought we’d really do better all together.”
“It looks to me as if you didn’t trust me,” said Peter, still in that grumbling voice.
He mustn’t take it too smoothly. If they had a chance at all, it lay in letting them think that he had no real suspicions. A man who thinks he’s going to be murdered doesn’t grumble.
Maud Millicent laughed quite musically.
“What a thing to say—and when I’ve just promised you a bonus! Don’t be foolish, Spike—you’ve done very well. Here she is without a mark on her, and if anyone saw her get into the car, they would swear she came of her own free will, which is just what you were told to contrive. I’m sure she believed every word you said about getting her away. Almost any girl will fall for a repentant crook. It’s so flattering to feel you’ve converted someone—isn’t it, Miss Terry Clive? Quick, Jake!”
Terry had snatched at the handle, throwing her weight against the door, but even as she did it, Peter’s hand left the wheel and caught her arm. There was a moment of horror, a moment of breaking strain, and then Jake had her wrists, pulling her back. She had no chance. He held her, not tightly, but in a clasp she could not shift. Peter’s hand went back to the wheel.
Maud Millicent said, “Turn her!” and Terry was pushed into the corner of the seat against the door she had tried to open. She saw the outline of a hand. The light of a street-lamp passed across the hand. She saw that it held a pistol.
What sort of nightmare was this? She looked at the pistol with wide, straining eyes. Why hadn’t she been quicker? If she had got the door open—She hadn’t got it open. He had stopped her. He had tricked her, lied to her, betrayed her. It was not fear that drained the blood from her lips and the courage from her heart, but the agonizing pain of betrayal. It hurt so much that she had not cared what would happen to her after her desperate thrust at the door. It was not a bid for freedom, it was the blind panic instinct of escape from a proximity which had become unendurable. To sit beside him with her shoulder touching his, to hear him speak—it was more than she could bear. She thrust wildly at the door, and his hand came out and stayed her.
Now she stared at the pistol, and wondered whether they were going to shoot her, and whether it would hurt very much. She wasn’t afraid. She leaned back against the side of the car where Jake had pushed her, and heard Maud Millicent say with an edge on the sweetness of her voice,
“You really are a fool, Terry Clive. We’ve got a fairly long drive before us, and you wouldn’t enjoy it much with a broken arm or a broken leg. Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s dangerous to jump out of a moving car? We were do
ing about twenty-five, I should think. You wouldn’t have been killed, you know—no such luck. But you might have broken most of your bones, or you might have been dragged and got your face messed up, and that really would have been a pity—wouldn’t it, Spike?”
Peter hunched his shoulders and put a growl into his voice.
“Oh, come off it! What’s the good of this sort of thing? How do you expect me to drive in traffic with a girl trying to throw herself out of the car? Why couldn’t you leave her to me like you said you were going to? She was as pleased as Punch until you butted in. First you say how well I’ve done, and then you go and spoil it. Why can’t you leave the girl alone?”
Maud Millicent laughed a little.
“Very cock-a-hoop all of a sudden, aren’t you, Spike? Now, Terry Clive, will you listen to me. We’re taking you down into the country. If you do what you’re told you’ll be all right. If you give any trouble you won’t. And if you try to call out or put your hand on that handle again, I shall shoot you. Don’t buoy yourself up by thinking that this is a bit of bluff—it isn’t. Or that I wouldn’t dare, because I would. I could have shot you a dozen times in the last five minutes, and no one would have turned his head. Everyone’s taken up with the noise they’re making themselves. Now—are you going to be sensible?”
“What do you call sensible?”
“You’ll go quietly and not give us any trouble.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“That is our affair. You do what you’re told and I’ll tell Jake to let go of you.”
“Tell him to let go,” said Terry.
“Do you hear, Jake? She doesn’t really care about having you so close. Not very flattering, but one just has to take the rough with the smooth. I expect she’d be kinder to Spike. What a pity we didn’t think of it before. I could have driven the car, and we could have let Spike sit behind with her. She wouldn’t have minded his arm round her.”
Terry was quite rigid with anger. She didn’t feel hurt and vulnerable any more. She felt hard enough to break anyone who touched her. She could have smashed that door open now, she could have jumped out of the car without hurting herself. She said in a small, clear voice,
“Tell him to take his hands away.”
“Well, Jake, there you are. Go on—take them away. Now, Terry Clive, let’s see how nicely you can behave. You lift a hand or open your mouth, and it’s the last thing you’ll ever do in this world. Jake’s going to change places with me, and I’m going to keep this pistol resting on the seat where you’ll feel it against the back of your neck. You needn’t work up a faint or anything like that. It won’t go off so long as you behave yourself.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to drive with all this sort of thing going on,” said Peter gloomily. “What happens if we have a smash?” He was wondering if it wouldn’t be a good thing to stage one. A nice mild smash—nothing like it for collecting a crowd and a policeman. “Ten to one I’ll run into something, with all this going on and a car I’ve never driven before. What happens then?”
Maud Millicent addressed him with sweetness.
“A bullet for you, and another for her. So you’d better give your mind to your driving,” she said.
CHAPTER XXXIV
They had been driving for the best part of an hour. Peter had become to all appearance an automaton. When Maud Millicent said “Faster,” he accelerated. When she said “Slow down here,” he slowed down. When she said “Next turning to the left”—or right, as the case might be—he took it. They had cleared London long ago. He was no longer quite sure where they were, but presently they came out upon what he thought was the Guildford by-pass. Then the directions began again.
She had a map spread out upon her knees. He could hear it crackle, and he caught the flicker of a torch as she moved it to and fro. No, perhaps not she. Perhaps it was Jake who held the torch, because whether they were in traffic or in dark lanes, whether they dropped to twenty or raced along the straight at fifty-five, Maud Millicent’s hand with the pistol in it stayed just there at Terry’s ear. She was thorough, she was careful, and she was utterly ruthless. She would shoot Terry Clive with as little compunction as she had shot Louisa Spedding. She had explained that in her most mellifluous voice—any trouble of any sort, and she would shoot them both. The car would be found stranded by the side of the road. One of those murder-suicide cases so dear to the sensational press—SOCIETY GIRL AND GANGSTER—FATAL ROMANCE. It sounded horribly plausible. If she didn’t choose this way out, it was because she had some better plan up her sleeve. Peter kept wondering what it was, and whether it would offer him a chance of getting away with his life and Terry’s. Because he was under no illusion. They were in one danger, he and Terry Clive. They had seen too much, they knew too much, they were inconvenient. And they were about to be eliminated.
Peter had no intention of being eliminated if he could help it. Maud Millicent had said something about Sussex, and Sussex suggested the sea. A good way of eliminating them would be to have the car driven over a cliff. He had certainly gathered that an accident was to be staged. Well, if there was to be an accident, Jake and Maud Millicent must avoid the actual crash. They would find some excuse to leave the car, some means to ensure that he remained in it. He wondered how they were going to manage that. Spike Reilly, even if not a highly intelligent person, might be supposed to possess the elementary instincts of self-preservation. How did Maud Millicent expect or hope to induce him to drive himself and Terry Clive over a cliff? No, it would have to be something not quite so crude as that. He would very much have liked to know what. One thing was certain, if Jake and Maud Millicent left the car, his number and Terry’s were up. And yet it was only there that he could see the faintest chance of escape. As long as that pistol was trained on Terry the slightest move on his part would touch it off. But if he could lull their suspicions, play the stupid grumbling dupe, and blunt even in a small degree the keen razor edge of Maud Millicent’s watchfulness, there might be a moment, just one, in which he could make a desperate bid for safety.
All the chances were against a chance for him and Terry. He was already distrusted, already condemned. He couldn’t speak to her or warn her. The critical moment might find her drowsy, dulled with misery, half fainting—and he needed to have her every sense alert, responsive.
Why should she respond? She had despised him, liked him in spite of herself, trusted him greatly, and dropped from that to a shattering sense of betrayal. Would she trust him again in some perilous instant of which she knew nothing, and could know nothing until it broke upon them both? How could she? How could he have the faintest hope of it? She sat there, drawn away from him, pressed against the side of the car, quite silent, quite motionless. He had not looked at her once, and he was sure that she had not looked at him. Yet he knew just how she sat, just how she held her head, just how her hands gripped one another. He knew that she was wounded past belief. He did not think she was afraid. He felt as if he had stabbed her and was leaving her to bleed to death. He felt the conflict of her thoughts, the conflict of his own.
Silence—a dark car—dark by-ways—a dark windy night.… His thoughts were strange to him. He contemplated them with surprise, with quickening interest, with excitement. Terry and himself. He had the feeling that they were isolated from everyone else in the world, two creatures alone in a creation so new that it had all to be discovered. The first man and the first woman—Adam and Eve—Peter Talbot and Terry Clive.… He thrust with a savage jab of humour amongst these thoughts. What a garden of Eden! At any rate the serpent was not far to seek.
The jab fell harmless. He couldn’t speak to Terry, but he was aware of her as he had never been aware of anyone before. It was just as if he could think her thoughts as well as his own. They filled him with compunction and with tenderness—a flood of pity and of love. All at once he was exalted, confident, secure. He felt invulnerable. It was his hour. And when a man comes to his hour he comes to mastery. Apprehe
nsion, doubt, uncertainty dropped away. He had no idea how he was going to save Terry, but he was quite sure he would save her. He continued to drive with the mechanical precision of a robot.
Terry sat quite still in her corner. At first the stillness was rigidity, paralysis. There had been shock, pain, anger, very sharp anger, and then—nothing at all. No thought, no feeling, no fear. Her eyes were open. They saw a continuous line of hedgerows slipping past. Sometimes there was a tree, sometimes there was a break where a side road came in. Sometimes, but not very often, another car went by, coming towards them with headlights dipped, or coming up from behind them in a glare of light. The trees and the tops of the hedgerows were blowing in a very high wind. When they slowed down she could hear the sound of it, blowing high up in the empty arch of the sky, tearing across the open fields, battering against the roof of the car. She did not think about the wind. She heard it, and she saw the trees bend. It blew across the surface of her mind. She did not think about anything.
Time passed, but she did not know how much. She began to feel again. First physical things. Her shoulder was stiff. Her left arm hurt where it was pressed against the side of the car. She moved it, shifting on the seat, and at once felt something else—the muzzle of the pistol against the back of her neck, and a wild, sudden stab of fear. She said in a small, piteous voice like a child’s,
“Please, may I move? I’m so stiff.”
Maud Millicent said, “Anything in reason,” and Terry straightened herself so that she could lean into the back of the seat.
Now she could look straight down the road they were travelling on. It was a great relief. That sliding hedgerow had begun to make her feel giddy. The rigidity passed from her body. She relaxed. She began to think again. All her thoughts were slow and weak. Something had hurt her very much, and she didn’t want to be hurt again.
She began to think about Peter. She didn’t call him Peter of course, because she only knew him as Spike Reilly, but she didn’t call him Spike. She had never called him Spike. She had no name for him. He had called her Terry, but she had no name for him. She thought about him. The thoughts got stronger. They didn’t hurt any more.
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