‘What do you make of that… would he have gone off on a recce?’
‘I don’t know. But I warned him to keep clear of trouble…’
It was at that instant that they heard the sound of a shot, coming distant but distinct from behind the southerly slope. A second later it was repeated by a second and a third, each producing a ringing echo from the stony little hollow.
‘Brother… let’s go!’ Hansom jerked in the clutch. The Wolseley went bumbling forward over the outrageous concrete track. Foot down, Hansom lashed the tortured vehicle into the fifties, making it bound and bucket like a goaded stallion. The track bore to the left through an area of scrubby bushes, but some distance beyond the pill boxes it apparently vanished into the naked heath. Swearing viciously, Hansom blazed on along the line it had been taking, the sheer power of his anger seeming to keep the car going.
‘Over there — keep left!’
The track was coming to light again. Making a sudden turn to the left, it dived into an unexpected grove of firs. A pearl-grey Jaguar leapt into sight and Hansom dragged on the wheel like a madman; the Wolseley twisted from stem to stern, wiped past a tree, then straightened again. And then they were out on the southern side of the ridge, with the abandoned airfield stretching ahead of them: and there, developing at a speed which defied interference, was the drama which Stephens’s silence had portended.
Johnson’s Proctor had commenced its take-off from the adjacent end of a runway — a runway which, one could see, was badly damaged by cracks and sinkings. Its tail was already rising, its engine rolling at full throttle, it had the bit between its teeth and it was irresistibly tearing forwards. Irresistibly — except for one thing. The other Wolseley was racing towards it. Stephens must have driven down the runway ahead of it, and now, circling round, was dead in its path.
Something caught in Gently’s throat as he took in the spectacle, for what must happen was well-nigh inevitable. It was impossible to apply the brakes to the Proctor, and the Wolseley showed no intention of budging.
‘The prop — the engine — they’ll sheer him in halves-!’ He watched it in the grip of a ghastly compulsion; the searing experience of those few seconds seemed to suspend and to expand into several hours. But at the moment of impact, the unforeseen happened. The Proctor flew up like a great catherine wheel. Digging its nose into the ground, it spun crashingly over and over, hurling fragments in all directions across the heath-covered soil. And Stephens, he rumbled on up the runway unharmed, his tyres a-shriek as he stamped on his brakes. He brought the Wolseley X-7 to a jerking halt: he didn’t seem even to have scratched her paintwork.
Seeing that Stephens was unharmed, Hansom drove on towards the aircraft, which had finally come to rest lying flat on its belly. One wing was wrenched off and the other was badly damaged, while the propeller had been twisted into savage, unnatural shapes. The undercarriage, sheered away, had flown to various parts of the compass, and the port side of the tail assembly hung in raw-looking ribbons. Of the occupants, Miss Butters was lying slumped against the control panel, while Johnson was feebly trying to force back the perspex hood.
In emergencies of this kind, Hansom was a good man to have around. He wasted no time in words or panicky actions. He was out of the Wolseley almost before it had stopped, and leaping up on the wing root, had begun to work on the jammed hood.
‘Get us out of this, cocker… we’re swimming in petrol…!’
It was true, the stuff was pouring from a fractured pipe in the wing root. In addition the engine was simmering, sounding like a sinister boiler, giving every now and then little popping and cracking noises.
‘This bastard thing’s twisted… to hell, it’s twisted!’
‘Is there an axe in the car?’
‘Yeah — get it, for Christ’s sake!’
Gently dropped down from the wing and ran to the boot of the Wolseley. He found a fireman’s axe and a jemmy in the tool kit it contained.
Stephens, meanwhile, came bumping up in the second Wolseley, and trembling and pale added his efforts to theirs.
‘He… he did that deliberately…’
‘Turned off, you mean?’
‘Yes… oh God… we’ve got to get them out of there!’
‘What about those shots?’
‘He was shooting at my tyres… let me have something… let me!.. we’ve got to get them out!’
He seized the jemmy from Gently’s hand and began furiously levering with it, Hansom at the same time delivering crashing blows with the axe. Johnson had sunk down into his seat and appeared to have lost consciousness. Anne Butters didn’t stir from her prone position.
At last the hood was freed and by brute force torn off, and the admission of fresh air seemed to revive Johnson a little.
‘Jesus… take it easy! My leg’s buggered up…’ Trying to move, he went suddenly white, then his head dropped forward again.
Gently and Stephens got him out — it was not an easy business then; his fractured leg, sticky with blood, had become entangled with the controls. He was fortunate perhaps to remain unconscious during the process, and he continued in that state while they carried him behind the cars. Hansom took care of Anne Butters on his own. Apart from being out, she showed no sign of any injury. For fear of internal injury he was nevertheless cautious, and handled her with a gentleness that one would not have suspected of him.
‘I’ll strap up the boyo’s leg… I’m a first-aid wizard.’
‘First we must get them away from here — and likewise the cars.’
‘We didn’t ought to shift them…’
‘Suppose that wreck goes up!’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean… right. We’ll use that chunk of wing for a stretcher.’
At a safer distance of seventy yards they parked the two Wolseleys to make a screen, and behind it, assisted by a drooping Stephens, Hansom strapped and bandaged Johnson ’s leg. Before commencing he gave the estate agent a jab from a morphia ampoule, taking care to find the label and to tie it to his patient. It was really a revelation to watch the Chief Inspector at work — he was displaying a side of his surly nature which had rarely come uppermost.
‘That’ll fix you, sonny, till we can get you to a hospital.’
Johnson managed to grin at him from under his immense moustache.
‘But Anne… what about…?’ His eyes flickered glazedly to the limp figure.
‘Don’t worry about her. She was only knocked out cold.’
Just then, when they had given up expecting it to happen; a sudden woof of flame sprang up from the wreckage; in moments it had turned into a roaring, wolfish pillar, and a great jet of black smoke puffed into the sky above it. There was nothing they could do — their car extinguishers were futile. One might as well have tackled it with a glass of water. Stephens, back in his car, was trying to raise Fosterham, their own control being now out of range.
Miss Butters stirred and her eyes fell open, vacantly; then, at the snarling sound of the flames, they jumped wide in fear. Johnson’s lids were closed and he was murmuring thickly to himself:
‘… Christ… Christ… I wasn’t meant to die that way…’
Stephens eventually contacted the control at Lynton, but they phoned through to Fosterham as being the nearest to Rawton Aerodrome. Some half an hour later quite a cavalcade appeared, its component vehicles rocking and pitching as they negotiated the frightful surface. First came two mounted police, who had been acting as pathfinders, and now fanned out impatiently as they came to the scene of the crash. They were followed by a police car and a bobbing white ambulance, and finally by an RAF fire tender, hastily summoned from the nearest camp.
The latter drove across to the wreck and began to engulf it in white foam, though there was little now left of it except the engine and bearers. From the ambulance jumped down a pair of overalled attendants. They carried a rolled-up stretcher which they silently unbuckled.