“Please, Tom,” he heard her say. “Let me speak for you. I can tell your story to the police. Perhaps I can convince them as you convinced me.”
Something from Sayers then, that Sebastian could not hear.
“But I see the truth of it now,” she said. “James Caspar is to blame and has bound our employer to him in some secret pact. I can explain all this. Will you not let me be your advocate?”
“How can I do that?” Sayers said. “Knowing the danger I’d be placing you in? No, Louise. I’d rather see you safe.”
“But now you’ve warned me of the danger,” she said, “I’ll know exactly how to protect myself.”
At that moment, there came a sound from down the line. It was a train whistle. The locomotive’s approach was further signaled by a moving tower of white smoke against the blue of the sky. Almost immediately after, the engine came into view.
They would later learn that the apprentice signalman had taken his master at his word that they were to “hold the train until the police arrived” looking out of the signal-box window and seeing men in uniform gathering at the gateway on the north side of the station, he’d taken that as his cue to raise the signal and let the train through.
For Sebastian, it was an unwelcome complication but not necessarily a disastrous one. They all but had Sayers now. Even if he succeeded in boarding the train, they could close in and take him from it. But Sebastian had no intention of allowing him to board.
Sayers had his back to him. He was watching the engine as it came into the station. Sebastian grew bold, and started to emerge from his hiding place.
If he could get up behind Sayers without being seen, he might be able to pinion his arms. The officer and the others could rush forward then, and all would quickly be over. It could be carried off without violence or bloodshed.
“Please, Tom,” the woman said. Sayers looked at her.
“You truly believe I am sincere?” he said.
“Tom,” she said. “I know of no more sincere man in this world.”
Sayers seemed to realize that he had been gripping her arm hard enough to cause her pain. Sebastian was out in the open now, but Sayers had not yet seen him.
“Forgive me,” Sayers said to Louise, and released his grip on her.
Whereupon, without any warning, she shoved him hard. He stumbled back. He was close to the edge, and missed his step.
Her action sent him tumbling from the platform, right in front of the moving train.
NINETEEN
It seemed to Sayers that he fell with grace, but landed with none. The track bed was around five feet below platform level, a darkened pit of oil and stones and spilled coal. Only the rails were clean, their surface ground to the bare metal by constant use. He hit the sleepers with his face only inches from the ties; he had about a second to roll into the space between rails before all was plunged into darkness and flooded with steam, accompanied by the deafening racket of steel on steel as the engine passed right over him.
Inevitably, he’d landed on his bad arm. He might have cried out. No one could have heard it if he had. He tried to make himself as small as he could without risk of touching the wheels; they were enormous, and would easily take off any body part that got in their way.
The axles and the undercarriage passed above him, spitting grease and steam as the engine slowed to a final halt. First the engine, then the coal tender behind it, and finally a little more headroom as the first of the passenger coaches came to a stop overhead.
Steam continued to billow all around, pressure driving it along the track and out through the understructures of the carriage. He was unharmed beneath the train, but no skill had saved him from decapitation or a maiming; it was sheer luck, and nothing more.
He could hear voices, shouting, an urgent commotion. And in his mind’s eye he saw the expression on Louise’s face, captured in his memory as if in a photographer’s flash.
It had all been an act. This past twelve hours, she’d been performing to save her life; or so, at least, she must have believed. She’d deceived him into thinking he’d convinced her. He’d thought that he was winning her over when, all along, she’d been playing on his trust and looking for her opportunity.
He scrambled out from under the passenger wagon, emerging into the middle of the open trackbed. Now the train stood between him and the platform. For the moment, he couldn’t get back. From down here, the carriage looked enormous, an unscalable wall.
They were calling his name. Who knew his name? And were those police whistles that he could hear?
Sayers turned and crossed the empty track to the opposite platform. A jump and a scramble got him up onto it, with his good arm doing most of the work. As he was getting to his feet, he heard answering cries from the woodland close by.
They were here, and he was surrounded. Almost. He glanced back, and saw curious faces looking at him from the windows of the train. Those on the platform were probably assuming that he was underneath it, mangled or dying. But any moment now they’d learn the truth, and would need only to run to the bridge or fling open both sets of carriage doors to get through to him.
There was no time to waste. Louise was lost to him. There was nothing for it, but to run.
So he ran to the end of the platform and hurdled a picket fence, landing in brushwood on the other side before descending an embankment to an open field.
He had to forget her. He had to forget that look. He had to think only of himself now. Otherwise, they would have him.
He took a moment to check out the landscape. Behind him were the station and the woodland. Ahead of him lay open fields. Across the nearest of the fields ran a cart track that met the railway embankment farther down. The track passed under the embankment by means of a brick tunnel.
Sayers made for the tunnel, valuing speed over concealment. The track was churned and muddy. The tunnel was taller than a house but barely more than one cart’s width. For the few seconds that it took him to run through it, he could hear his own ragged sobbing echoing all the way up to the vaulted roof.
Sobbing? He was astonished.
Back in the open air, he stopped and fought for control. This would not do. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and then walked forward slowly until his breathing steadied. He was on a fenced lane now, and ahead of him was a crossroads. He broke into a cautious trot. He had no idea how close his pursuers might be.
When he reached the crossroads, he chose the way to his right. After a while this lane began to climb, and when he saw that it would end in a farmyard, he left the road and struck out across moorland. On high ground, he stopped and looked back into the valley that he’d left. He expected to see it swarming with men, all spread out in a long line and sweeping their way up the slopes toward him. But there were none.
He couldn’t make out the railway station for the tree cover, but he could see the track and the fields that he’d crossed. Way down there moved the merest handful of men, a dozen of them or less, tiny figures making slow progress in entirely the wrong place.
At that his spirits lifted, just a little, and he turned and walked on.
After two hours or more, he was growing breathless and light-headed. He drank from a peaty stream, which left him hungry. He’d eaten nothing in more than a day, apart from a pie that he’d bought with pennies that he’d found in his stolen coat’s pocket.
As the day wore on the skies darkened again, and some time later it started to rain. When he came upon an abandoned cottage, he sheltered and waited for the clouds to pass over. The doors and windows of the old house had gone, as had part of the roof. But the beams were intact, as was most of the upstairs floor, so there was enough to keep him dry. No one had lived here in years, and only sheep seemed to use it now. Some farmer had dumped a sackful of cut turnips as winter feed in the place that had once been the sitting room.
Most of the turnips had now rotted away. Sayers found one that hadn’t and tried to bite into it, but spat it out. Perhaps boiling for an hour or two might have made it edible. But he had nothing to hold water to boil it in, and no way of making fire even if he did.
