“I’ll remember,” said Tring. “I should like to get him, especially if he was concerned in that Raine’s Wharf business. We got Macshane, you’ve found Millstone. If Borwick was the third—well, I want him quite a lot.”
“You’ve a feeling that Borwick and Millstone left Macshane to be sentenced for a job they did themselves.”
“Aye,” agreed Tring. “Then there’s this to it: the other two must have been certain in their own minds that Macshane wouldn’t give them away, or they’d never have left him alive. One of them had a heavy cosh—and it wasn’t Rory. We never found the cosh. In fact, as you might point out, if you weren’t such a mannerly bloke, there was the hell of a lot we never found out about that job—and Rory didn’t help us any.”
“Rory interests me quite a lot,” said Macdonald. “If he’d turned Queen’s Evidence as you suggested, he might have got a lighter sentence, also the jury would have taken into consideration the fact that with three men on the job, the chance of Rory’s having coshed the night watchman was only one chance in three, though there’s another way of looking at it. Sam Borwick may have spread himself on his own prospects; the land he was going to inherit from his father, and the hard cash that was hidden in the farmhouse.”
“In other words, Sam Borwick was a chap it was worth while keeping in with,” said Tring, and Macdonald went on:
“That’s one way of looking at it. I’m trying to get inside Rory Macshane’s mind. He may well have said to himself, ‘If I get caught and “put inside” for a long stretch, I can get away. I’m sure I can get away—from any prison in England. I’ve learnt the “know how” and learnt it the hard way.’ So Macshane thought it worth while to come in on that wild scheme of looting the furs in Raine’s Wharf, saying, ‘If it comes off, we shall be in clover. If I’m copped, I can get away.’
“That’s all right, so far,” continued Macdonald. “He got away, but the tug-of-war comes later. He’d have had no money and he wouldn’t have dared to try to get a job. Once an escaped convict’s been described and his photograph issued, one of his mates is likely to recognise him and give him away.”
“He’d have needed money,” said Tring thoughtfully. “He had to have food and there were only two ways of getting it, paying for it or stealing it, and there weren’t any reports of thefts after Macshane escaped from the moor.”
“I expect he’s too smart to fall into that temptation,” said Macdonald; “but I have an idea that Rory Macshane, with all his P.O.W. experience, would have found it child’s play to filch food from some small village store, where the tins are piled up higgledy-piggledy in the customary manner, and the shopkeeper would never notice that one had disappeared. But when I spoke of him needing money, I was thinking of a longer term. A fugitive’s life is all right at first; there’s the exhilaration of having got away. But as month succeeds month, a man needs an aim, some hope of better things than a life like a hunted animal, always hungry, always at a stretch. I think that after a while Macshane’s thoughts would have turned to comfort and security, and the chance of talking to his fellow men. That’s when I think he may have thought of Borwick and the farmhouse he talked about. I said I thought Borwick was in Lunesdale, and I think Macshane won’t be far away. So it’s up to me to get back there, too, and see if I can put my theories into practice.”
2
When the fugitive had got his lorry started up in the open space by the pipe-line encampment, his heart rejoiced and he felt that his problems were over. It was some while before his confidence was shattered. For Tom Martin (as he was known to his mates) had his own plans and these were not limited to catching the man who got away with the lorry and handing him over to the authorities. Martin had a much more elaborate plan. During the first few moments, he made no move, he crouched against the back of the driver’s cab, until the lorry had turned off the concrete, crossed the road, and was lurching over the fell side, parallel with the pipeline trench. Then, when he judged it too risky to wait any longer, he got one leg over the edge of the lorry’s box body, got his coiled rope ready in his right hand, and switched on the torch he held in his left hand. A second later, with perfect accuracy, he got a loop of rope over the driver’s head and around his neck and drew the rope tight—as tight as he deemed necessary. He heard the spat-out profanity, and the heavy vehicle lurched madly. “Better step on the brake and pull up, Sam. It’s your one chance. You’ve got me to deal with, and you know who I am. Pull up, blast you, stop! You’re finished. Stop, I say!”
As the unhappy driver, half-throttled by the rope around his neck, put a hand to try to free his throat, another coil of rope was dropped cunningly in place, this time lashing one arm to his body. The rope jerked again, and Tom Martin realised his captive was too far gone to be capable of stopping the vehicle and it bucketed down the rough slope. Tom leaned over the driver’s shoulder and got a grip on the steering wheel. He gave it a furious tug and the vehicle slewed to the left and hit a hillock whose solidity brought
