‘Nice welcome for a rescuing knight.’
‘What Hilda means,’ said Dawson, ‘is that there’s a motor scooter in their garage. But it only takes two. One pillion.’
‘You’ve got it all fixed?’ I really was surprised.
‘Hilda,’ said Dawson, ‘has been wonderful.’
‘She always is.’ I turned to her and, believe me, I really was anxious to get back into her favour. ‘Your beer-bottle message worked. But they got wise to it.’
‘And naturally,’ said Wilkins stiffly, ‘you didn’t go straight to a set of responsible people—but you had to come here on your own.’
‘There were complications.’
‘There always are with you.’
‘You want to hear the form or just go on grumbling?’
‘The form is all fixed,’ said Dawson. ‘By the way, what happened to old Freeman? They really killed him, did they? Such a nice chap.’ I said, ‘Don’t let’s bother about Freeman. We have to think about us.’
‘He was my friend,’ said Dawson. ‘We had some good times together.’
I made no comment.
Wilkins said, ‘Where’s Olaf?’
‘At the airport. You’re on Ibiza.’
‘Does he know you’re out here? I mean, does he know about this place?’
‘By now, yes.’
She sighed. ‘That means he’ll come charging out and upset things more. You shouldn’t have let him know. He might get hurt.’
I said, ‘For two people in deep trouble, you’re not exactly wild about being rescued, it seems.’
‘We’ve got it all arranged,’ said Dawson. ‘We could have managed nicely on our own.’
‘You’ve only got until six tomorrow morning—and then you’ll be lifted out of here by helicopter. You will. Wilkins and I will stay.’ I gave her a straight look. She sniffed. But she knew what I meant. She was too intelligent not to be way ahead of me all the time.
Dawson, taking a deep draw at his first British cigarette for days, said, ‘We can get out of here the moment they go to bed.’
‘They won’t go to bed tonight. They’re not sure whether they’re going to have a police visit. They’ll be on guard all night.’
‘You see,’ said Wilkins, ‘how you’ve messed things up. We were going tonight.’
I sat down on a chair by the boarded window. I don’t often feel chastened but I was now. A man works his fingers to the bone trying to set something up and when he’s finished, or failed, he gets no thanks or sympathy.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you would tell me how you propose to get out? I know I’ve got no standing, of course, but it would be nice to know that you might let me follow you and run along behind this motor scooter.’
‘Just try and take this seriously,’ said Wilkins primly.
‘A wonderful girl,’ said Dawson. ‘She’s been a tower of strength. This I say sincerely.’
‘Reminds me of your old dad,’ I said. ‘But let’s have the facts.’
‘How is my father?’ asked Dawson. ‘How’s he taking all this?’
A little exasperated now because there seemed no way of pinning these two down to a straight line of talk, I said, ‘He’s reacted as any father would, and also with true British phlegm. For your safe return, he’s agreed—no publicity, mind you—to a highly one-sided exchange of political prisoners between London and Moscow.’
His eyes popped. ‘You mean we’re being held by the Russians? I thought it was just for money. Didn’t you, Hilda?’
She shifted uncomfortably. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t see that there was any point in bothering you with my conclusions. You’ve had a bad enough time.’
Firmly, I said, ‘Just tell me, for God’s sake, how you propose to get out of here?’
‘There is,’ said Wilkins, ‘no need to blaspheme.’
‘It was Hilda’s idea,’ said Dawson. ‘You see, when we first came here, they used to take us separately for exercise in the courtyard. Hilda saw this motor scooter in the garage, and she saw one of them use it once. The cars were no good because we guessed that they’d never leave the ignition keys in at night. So, one morning, Hilda hit the big French chap with a stone and ran.’
‘It wasn’t a very big stone,’ said Wilkins.
‘They chased after her,’ said Dawson, ‘but she got into the garage and shut herself in. It took them a little while to break down the door and get her out. That was clever of her, wasn’t it? You see, they smashed up the bolts so that the door can’t now be shut up at night. That means we can always get at the scooter.’
‘Clever,’ I said. And it was. I should have taken over the secretarial work long ago and let Wilkins do my job. ‘But what good is access to the scooter out there if you can’t get out of here?’
‘Two birds with one stone,’ said Dawson, beaming at Wilkins. ‘You tell him, Hilda.’
‘While I was in the garage,’ said Wilkins, ‘I took a pair of pliers from the work bench and hid them on me. They didn’t search me when they brought me back here.’
I didn’t ask her where she had hidden them on her because I didn’t want more trouble from her. Instead, I said, ‘He’s right. You are wonderful. But don’t forget I’ve been saying it for years.’ Dawson stood up, and pulled back one of the floor rugs. ‘These boards, you see, are in short lengths and they’re nailed to the rafter of the ceiling below. We’ve been working with the pliers for three days taking out the nails. All we have to do now is to lift out three boards and we can drop through into the room below.’ He beamed at Wilkins and then at me. ‘She thought of it all,’ he said, replacing the rug.
At that moment the door opened and Paulet, gun in hand, came into the room, standing aside to let a woman with a tray pass him. I didn’t have to be told that it was Thérèse. She was a neat, trim, dark-haired number of about
