“Let’s go higher,” said Jonathan. “They’ll get excited again if we open these doors, but they mayn’t notice if we go right to the top.”
Each floor had the same layout, with the double doors at the end and the railway down the middle between the stacked goods. Different kinds of goods had been stored at different levels; on the second floor the trolley that ran on the rails had been left half unloaded, with two crates of tinned pineapples still on it and a ledger loose on the floor. The very top floor was used for the most miscellaneous items — there was even a bronze soldier in one corner, swathed in the ropes that had been used to handle the crates on the hoist; beside him lay several lorry axles. The roof had gone in a couple of places and patches of snow lay on the floor, but this meant it was much lighter; and when Jonathan pulled the double doors open it felt like sunrise. The girder arm of the hoist stuck out rigid above them, the big hook dangling halfway along. It was a gulping drop to the quay below. Out on the ice the dog pack were sniffing round Heartsease in an absentminded but menacing way. Jonathan leaned against his side of the doorway, quite unaffected by the chilling drop, and teased the back of his skull.
“We need a bomb,” he said.
“Oh, surely they wouldn’t store them here,” said Margaret. “The Army would have . . .”
He grinned across at her and she stopped talking.
“What’s on that trolley?” he asked.
This one hadn’t been unloaded at all. It was covered with small wooden boxes, no larger than shoeboxes, whose labels, still faintly legible, were addressed to the Gloucester Echo.
Margaret tried to pick one up but found she couldn’t move it.
“Printing metal,” said Jonathan. “Must be almost as heavy as lead. The boxes are small, so that a man can lift them. Now that’s what I call a real bit of luck! Let’s see if we can push it. Come on, harder! One, two, three, heave! Fine. Leave it there and we’ll try the hoist. It’ll be electric, but there might be a hand control to run the hook out. Tell me if anything moves.”
He tugged levers without result, then began to turn a large wheel.
“That’s it,” said Margaret excitedly, but still without any idea of what he was up to.
“Good. Now those bits of iron at the end of the rails must be to stop the trolley flying out over that quay if there’s an accident, but there might be a way of moving them.”
“Mine’s got a sort of hook this side.”
“So’s mine, hang on, it’s stuck. Can you see anything to bang it with? Yes, that’ll do. Ouch! Don’t worry, I only grazed my knuckles. Done yours? Fine. Now, just let me work this out.”
“But, Jo, even if you get them right under here, on the quay, you’ll only hit one or two, and . . .”
Jonathan stopped sucking his ravaged knuckle to grin at her.
“I’ve got a better idea. If it works,” he said.
He looked outside, up at the hoist, back at the trolley, down at the drop. Then he wound the hook in, so that he could reach it. Then he made Margaret help him shove the trolley right to the giddy verge. Then he fetched the ropes which festooned the bronze soldier and spent several minutes contriving a lopsided sling from the hook to the trolley. Last of all he wound the hook out almost to the end of the girder and readjusted the ropes. Margaret suddenly saw what would happen if the trolley were pushed the last few inches over the edge—pushed with a rush: it would swing down and out, in a wide curve, trolley and boxes all moving together; but because the far end of the trolley was on longer ropes than the near end, the boxes would start to slide out forwards, and when the swing of the ropes had reached its limit the boxes would all shoot on and be scattered right out across the ice, almost as far as Heartsease; and if the dogs could be lured on to the ice at the right moment . . . she knew what his next words were going to be before he said them.
“You’ll have to be bait, I’m afraid.”
“Bait?”
“Yes, as soon as I’ve found a lever. I want them on the ice halfway between here and Heartsease — it’s the big ones that are the killers. Go down to the bottom, edge one door open, make quite sure you know how to shut it, slip through and shout. Look, they’re bored with the tug and they’re going back to where they were before, so you’ll know just how long it will take them to get across. Stick it out as long as you can, Marge, but get back inside when the first dog is halfway between the boat and the quay — I don’t want to drop a ton of lead on you. If I shout, you’ll know it’s not safe to open the door. All right?”
“All right,” whispered Margaret, sick with terror. The stairs seemed longer going down, the rooms darker, the rustling of rats more obvious — perhaps they’d been scared into brief silence by the clamor of the dogs. Scrub and Caesar were restive: most ponies hate rats. She patted and talked to them both, until she realized she was only doing so to put off opening the door. She walked down between the rails and studied the bolt and the hook — the hook would be quite enough by itself. She was lifting it when she suddenly wondered whether she could hear him down all those stairs, supposing he was shouting to warn her of prowling hounds . . . come on, girl, of course you would — Jonathan wouldn’t have suggested it if it wasn’t going to work. She opened the door eight inches and slipped through the gap into the bitter daylight.
The dogs were over by a warehouse on the far side of the ice, squabbling over something edible. She could hear distant snarlings.
“Ahoy!” she called. Her voice was weak and thin.
“Ahoy!” came Jonathan’s cheerful yell far above her head.
She saw two or three dogs raise their muzzles and look across the ice. She pranced about on the quay, waving both arms to make sure she was seen, because most dogs have poor vision and the wind was blowing from them to her, so that no scent would reach them.
At once it all became like the nightmares you have again and again: the same baying rose; the same swirl of color spilled down on the ice; the same dogs leaped yelping in front, their heads held the same way; the same panic lurched up inside her. She was yards from the door, after her prancing, and rushed madly for it, but when she reached it she saw that the dogs had barely come as far as the tug, so she still had to stand in the open, visible, edible, luring them on. Bait.
But it was only seconds before the first dog reached the rumple in the ice she’d chosen as a mark, and she could slip back in and hook the door shut. As she closed out the last of sky she thought she glimpsed black blobs hurling down.
Then there came a thud, a long, tearing crack, a lot of smaller bangings; the yelping changed its note, faltered and vanished; then there were only a few whimpers, mixed with a sucking and splashing. She unhooked the door, edged it open and poked her head out.
The whole surface of the ice had changed — it had been nothing like as thick as she’d thought and was really only snow frozen together, without the bonding strength of ice. Now the under water had flooded out across a great stretch of it and the part between her and Heartsease was smashed into separate floes, overlapping in places and leaving a long passage of open water. The smaller dogs had not come far enough to be caught and vvere rushing away to the far quay, but most of the larger ones were struggling in the deadly water. As she watched, one which had been marooned on a floating island of ice shifted its position; the ice tilted and slid it sideways into the water; it tried to scrabble back but could find no hold; then it swam across to the fixed ice and tried there, but still there was nothing on the slippery surface for its front legs to grip while it hauled its sodden hindquarters out; it tried and tried. Margaret looked away, and saw several others making the same hopeless effort round the edges of the open water. In the middle two still shapes floated — dogs which had actually been hit by the falling boxes. She shut the door and went trembling up the stairs.