In the last split second the question posed by the closed door seemed an enormity, so fateful that Andrew was afraid to grasp the handle, yet there could be no hesitation. He gripped and turned and pushed, and the door would not budge. He thrust with a shoulder, and it yielded, swinging in on creaking hinges.
The relief was almost painful. He pushed Ruth through the opening, followed her, and closed the door slowly and quietly. His need now was for something with which to barricade the door, but, in the first moments, the darkness inside the mill seemed impenetrable. They waited, straining to accustom their eyes to the gloom. They were afraid to move because of possible obstructions and hazards of collapsed flooring or open traps. After a while they saw that there was a little light. Slats had rotted and broken away from the boarded windows, and the day seeped in through the gaps.
They moved in from the doorway, testing the floor and finding it sound. Great rectangular shapes loomed in the heavy dusk, barring the way, and there were voices uttering inarticulate sounds of warning. Inside this place the grinding metallic noise caused by the shifting sail-frames was magnified enormously, and a hundred creaking and screeching overtones came down from the cap on the top of the structure to join in an eerie concert. The wind that blew gently from the sea was an orchestra in this sounding-tower, running a dynamic scale from a whisper of flutes to a gusty percussion, and sometimes there was a sound almost like a human cry for help.
Andrew felt the girl’s hand on his arm. He pressed it with a reassurance he did not feel, then got his lighter out. The warmth of his body might have evaporated enough fuel for a momentary flame. The flame lasted three seconds, but in that time the rectangular shapes took a third dimension and became great wooden bins. A small square of dim light showed in the low ceiling and Andrew saw steps ascending. He began to drag one of the heavy bins towards the door, but a new sound, distinctive, standing out against the background concert, made him wheel. The hinges creaked. He drew Ruth closer towards him, and they both saw the door open; saw the figure of a man in the slot of light; saw the door close again.
“The steps!” Andrew whispered. “We must climb to the next floor.”
They moved silently. Then the beam of a torch cut across the darkness and travelled round the chamber. The two dropped down behind one of the bins. The beam travelled past them and was switched off. They waited. They heard no sound from the man, but they knew he was there with his automatic pistol held in front of him, guarding the door. A pause, and he came towards them. He bumped against one of the bins, but did not use his torch again.
Andrew looked up at the square of dim light in the ceiling. The steps were there, only a few feet from them. The noises of the place would cover any sound they made. He touched Ruth’s hand, and she followed him, keeping close as he slowly proceeded, feeling his way cautiously, wary of obstacles. There was another long bin to conceal them, but when they reached the steps they were without any cover. He explored them quickly with his hand.
“There’s no rail,” he whispered. “Be careful, and go quickly.”
He was suspicious, fearing that the torch might spear through the darkness and pin them on that fixed ladder, but it did not happen. They reached the floor above without mishap, and, in a few seconds, had lowered a trap door into position and silently moved a heavy bin on top of it.
There was more light on this floor, more gaps in the boarding of the windows, and they could see where they were. The bins were smaller than those below, and on one side was a small milling machine that had been worked by a driving belt from the next floor. A series of chutes also came down from the next floor, but Andrew was interested only in the tactical possibilities. They might ascend to the main grinding floors, and go higher still, past the great stones that had once pulverised the grain, till they reached the cap with its shafts and cranks and cogwheels.
They peered up into the tower through the open trap above and heard the noises of the mill in louder concert. They were nearer the source of the creaking and groaning, and also it seemed that the wind from the sea was getting up a bit. The mill was more restive, straining as if it wanted to set its sails going again and its great stones turning.
Ruth said: “If we have to go up there, I’m going to surrender.”
“We’ll stay here,” Andrew promised her. There had been no movement of the bin, no attempt to lift the barrier, but this fact was not reassuring to Ruth.
“We’re bottled up,” she said. “If they don’t make that engine work, we may be here all night.”
“What about Charley Botten?” he said.
“What, indeed?” she answered grimly. “That’s his friend downstairs, isn’t it?”
Andrew was silent. He looked through a chink in one of the windows, but all he could see was the empty stretch of Groper’s Wade. The afternoon was dying gloomily. It would soon be time for the yawl to push off if Kretchmann was to fulfil his plan.
He crossed to the opposite window and from there he could see the craft. Kretchmann and Haller were still working on the engine. They had been doing something to the magneto and were now replacing it. Haller was reaching down, working with a screw wrench. Kretchmann was fitting a lead from the distributor, to a sparking plug. When they had everything ready, Haller swung the starting handle, but the only improvement was that the engine gave an extra cough before it spluttered into silence. Haller swung the handle again and again, but it was hopeless, and by now they both knew it.
They talked in German. Andrew strained to hear, but failed to catch a word. Kretchmann gestured widely, pointing to the sky, then waving towards the cottage. Haller nodded, but seemed reluctant about something. The tide was running out now, and Kretchmann had to step up onto the landing stage. He walked up the knoll and disappeared, and a moment later the sound of an engine revving came from the yard. Ruth, sitting on one of the bins in deep dejection, raised her head.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That’s our car,” he answered. “It was Kretchmann who had the key. I think the yawl has beaten them. They’re going to run away.”
The diagnosis was reasonably correct, but Kretchmann had not yet finished with the yawl. When Andrew looked again through his spy hole, the German was backing the car slowly down the knoll to bring it to the edge of the landing stage.
What happened next made Andrew rub his eyes. He took another look, then beckoned to Ruth.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I’d like to know,” he answered. “Either they’re mad or I am. They’re taking the ballast out of the yawl and loading it into the back of the car. Pig iron.”
She stood beside him, peering through the gap in the boards. She saw the two men straining as they lifted the heavy bars of metal onto the landing stage and then into the car. Another, and another, and another… smeared with some black substance, filthy with oil and grease. They were careless of dirt; they were eager, concentrating on the job, heedless of everything but that grim-looking cargo.
“Pig iron,” Ruth said. “Pig iron!”
Then down the knoll walked Jolly-Face, still following the pointing muzzle of his automatic. When he was three yards from the car he called out something that the wind blew away from Andrew, but Kretchmann and Haller heard it, and Kretchmann turned as if he had been hit by a bolt of lightning. Jolly-Face raised his pistol and aimed it at Kretchmann’s head and Kretchmann and Haller lifted their hands up and reached high.
Jolly-Face motioned sharply with his gun and shouted something. Andrew caught enough of the German to make out the whole of it. Kretchmann and Haller were to keep their hands high and get back in the boat.