He would have to wait, he knew, until all those lights in the huts were put out, until total darkness indicated that everybody was asleep. There were no guards posted down there and he knew it. He thought of his route, not the main track, the concreted road which had been laid so that supply vans and the engineers’ cars could reach the camp from Oakham in the valley far below. It would be a mug’s game to take that road, he could be pursued by any fast-moving vehicle, pursued and caught. He meant to take the rougher track which followed the pipe line itself; it would take him three miles. If he managed to get “one o’ them bleeding lorries” started up, he could follow the track, even bump over the fell, until such time as he judged it wiser to jump and let the lorry wreck itself on the incline, so that it looked as though the driver—who had disappeared—must have been killed. They could waste time looking for his body and he would be hurrying across towards the railway line which would take him to the anonymity of industrial cities. No one had seen him, he argued to himself, only that old “b——” who came hurrying away from High Garth, and he wasn’t going to do any talking yet a while.
Stretching out on the ground again, the fugitive watched the lighted encampment and noticed that some of the lights were no longer shining. It was after ten now, and the men were generally early to bed, dog tired after their heavy working day.
2
In the big hut, the men had ceased talking; several of them were half-asleep already, lulled by the croon of the radio. They had been talking, inevitably, about the news from High Garth and about the police officer who had come up to the camp with old Mr. Staple.
“We was in luck, if you think it out,” said Barney White to Tom Martin. “ ’Tisn’t many afternoons the gang bosses can swear there wasn’t a chap missing from the job, and that Lawley, he’s a truthful cove, he’d never swear to what he wasn’t sure of, not even to help a pal out of a difficulty.”
“True enough,” agreed Martin. “The cops can’t pin this job on any of us.” He sat in silence after that, thinking hard. He was thinking of the man who had attacked the farmer on the fell side, and got clear away, seemingly.
“I wonder which way he went,” pondered Tom Martin. “He’d never have gone down to the valley. There’s always chaps working on the land, and they’re quick to spot a stranger if so be he was a stranger, and if he wasn’t he’d have been careful no one set eyes on him: and that road down there in the valley, ’tis a busy road, cars passing all the time and mostly local folks in the cars. Reckon he didn’t go down to the valley. If he wanted to beat it, safer to come up the fell, this way. Once the whistle’s gone and work’s finished, there’s no one around here and after dark he could walk miles, knowing no one could see him.”
“Walk miles,” he echoed to himself; “it’s miles right enough.” Then he remembered the lorries, parked on the clearing beyond the huts. “If he’s smart with engines, one o’ those lorries would just suit him,” thought Martin. “It’d be worth watching out in case he tries to be clever. You never know, this may be journey’s end and quite time, too,” he added to himself.
3
The fugitive waited until nearly midnight before he closed in to the encampment; every light was off now, the place in total darkness. The sky was clear and a moon was shining from the south, so that he had no difficulty in making his way round die angle of the big hut and on to the concrete where the lorries were parked. He went down on his hands and knees here and kept in the shadow of the lorries, because he realised that when he was upright the moon threw his own shadow, surprisingly black, on the white concrete. Not that he thought that anybody would be looking out from one of those black window spaces—“too tired, poor beggars,” he meditated. He crept up behind each lorry in turn and examined its registration number in the faint light reflected up from the surprisingly light concrete. He knew exactly which lorry he wanted. Months ago he had driven one of those lorries and he had pocketed the ignition key before he left, one of those pieces of forethought of which he was capable. He had been completely silent in his movements up to now, and there was silence all around him, not a soul stirred. He crouched down by the bonnet of the lorry for a few moments and felt it with his hands. It was warm, his luck was in. The engine would start at a touch and then he would let in the gear and plunge off, over the concrete, across the road which led direct to the valley, to that other track he knew about, and then—pound over the fell for a bit before he abandoned the old vehicle in the quarry pit over yonder.
With thumping heart, he raised himself and got into the driver’s cab. He had no idea that someone had crept up behind the lorry, someone who moved as silently as he did himself. The other man stood there, quite still, with one hand on the edge of the lorry’s body, one foot pressed against the backboard, poised, ready. He never stirred until the driver was in the cab and had pulled the self-starter. The noise was surprising in
