There was a postscript. Leaning heavily on the bannisters, Quilley came stumbling and groaning after, down the stairs and through the hall.
“Boss, wait for me… don’t go without me…!”
She heard the moaning complaint ebb along the wall, and reach the front door. And then the two of them were alone. Stiffly she got up from the floor, laying Luke gently down out of her arms, and went out into the porch.
The sound of all those running feet on the gravel had roused the whole garden. It was like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane. Pencils of light sprang up from three points, two among the trees on one side of the gate, one from the rough grass on the other, and converged upon the racing figures; and suddenly the copse began to spawn men, they came swarming out on the run, and streamed from all directions towards the Jaguar. They were already between the fugitives and the Riley. A little spurt of flame stabbed the darkness, a shot fired at the tyres, not at the men. Fleet didn’t retaliate, didn’t swerve or halt or hesitate, he charged straight for the grey car, darted round in its shelter to the driving seat, and in a moment the engine soared into life, and the car began to move, gathering speed like a greyhound out of a trap. With three of its four doors wide open and vibrating like wings, it surged across the gravel towards the open gate, while the rest of the crew scrambled and clawed their way aboard. He kept it idling for them a matter of seconds only. The nearest policeman was not ten yards away.
Quilley, last of the queue, came hobbling agonisingly after, appealing aloud in a high wail of outrage :
“Boss, wait for me… wait for me… you can’t…”
He was hopping frantically alongside as they gathered speed; he got a grip on the front passenger door and clung in desperation.
“Give me a hand… Con, give me a hand…”
But it was Fleet who gave him a hand. They were four aboard, and wanted all the speed they could make, and no overloading. Fleet leaned across Con to the open door, spread his large palm against Quilley’s chest and shoved him off, neatly catching the door as it swung loosely back, and slamming it shut. The car leaped clear of the pursuers by a matter of feet, and Quilley, hurled from his hold, fell sprawling under it.
The rear wheel heaved and lurched over his foot, the Jaguar slewed round insecurely for an instant, and then shot away through the gate and roared round the curve of the drive. Quilley’s scream and the exultant tiger-purr of the acceleration died away together, diminuendo along the calm air of the night. A cluster of dark figures surrounded the rumpled heap on the ground. The light-grey Jaguar was gone along the sunken lane, hell-bent for the main road.
Suddenly it waa abnormally quiet, and everything was over.
CHAPTER XIII
« ^ »
Luke came round with a skull full of hammers and a mouth full of old cobwebs, springing into instant, jangling awareness of Bunty’s arm under his head and Bunty’s palm cupping his cheek, and a bolt of hurtful light probing over them both out of the darkness. The edge of the falling beam showed him the end of a man’s dark sleeve, and a hand holding a gun.
There was no end to it, and no escape. He set a palm to the floor in frantic haste and levered himself up groggily to his knees, leaning between Bunty and the threat, trying to put her behind him, though the sudden movement set his head ringing like a cracked bell, and the torch burned a hole through his eyes and into his brain. And Bunty drew him back gently into her arms and held him there, her cheek pressed against his forehead.
“It’s all right, my dear, it’s all right! The police are here… It’s all over, we’re safe…”
“Safe…?” he repeated dazedly. He lifted a shaky hand and touched her cheek. “They didn’t hurt you…? Where are they?”
“They got away in the Jaguar… all but the lame one…”
“They’ll no’ get far.” The darkness spoke in the voice of the sergeant with the pepper-and-salt hair, in tones of ripe satisfaction. The gun vanished into a jacket pocket. The torch settled briefly upon Bunty’s pale, soiled face, and considerately turned its beam aside. “We’ve got a road-block up in the cutting. They’ll no’ get through that. You’re all right, ma’am?”
She nodded: now that the tension was broken she was almost too tired to speak.
“And your right name, now,” he asked cautiously. “It wouldn’t be Felse, would it?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m Bunty Felse.”
“Thank God for that!” said the sergeant with profound satisfaction, and in all innocence kicked away the newly-recovered world from under Luke’s feet. “Your husband’s been going daft, worrying about you.”
How strange, how very strange, that it had never even occurred to him to think that she might belong to someone else! As if such a woman as she was could ever have come so far through life without being recognised, desired, loved. She had seemed to belong so surely to him, to be a miracle created specially for his salvation, without any existence previous to their meeting. But of course she was flesh and blood, like ordinary women. For him she had no age, no class, no kin, there had been nothing before he found her. But of course she had known all those years of her life without him, before ever he existed for her. She had known a marriage, and a husband who was going daft, worrying about her.
Luke lay very still, overwhelmed with the magnitude of his desolation and loss. And what confounded him most was the paradox of being in her arms, linked with her in an alliance such as surely she had never in her life experienced with any man before, or ever would with any man after. He both possessed and had lost her.
Three men came in from the seaward side, and one more from the landward, and this last was an inspector, no less. They found candles in one of the kitchen cupboards, and the young constable of the morning, taciturn as ever, rummaged among Reggie Alport’s electrical spares and did some minor miracles with fuse-wire. Soon he had the current working in the kitchen, at least, so that they could do a little preliminary first-aid on Quilley before the ambulance came. The door stood open between the kitchen and the living-room, to share the benefit of the light.
“No,” admitted the inspector ruefully, “I’m afraid we didn’t check up on your fictional Mrs. Chartley at first. I only wish we had, we should have been here earlier. But you seemed all above-board to McCabe, and we had no reason then to be looking out for a woman. No, what put us on to you was further information from your home county. You can thank your son for it, indirectly. It seems he came home without notice late on Saturday evening, and found nobody there to welcome him. When nobody came back by eleven he called your husband’s chief, and
