And then the flame dwindled, guttered, and died out.
Desperately, April pumped and pumped; furiously she clicked at the mechanism — but there was no response. The little tank was exhausted.
The girl was almost crying with exasperation. So very near, and yet...She set her teeth and waited for the hot metal to cool. Once it was brittle again, there was a faint chance that she could utilise the gap she had made to force the link apart. Planting her shackled foot at the full stretch of the chain away from the wall, she placed the other at the height of the ring, flexed her knee and began to push.
There was a tiny metallic chink! and she was suddenly pitching over backwards, to land with a jar against the opposite wall. But she was free!
Panting, she leaned against the cold granite and listened. No sound interrupted the laboured breathing exuding from her own lungs. Picking up her handbag, she dropped the lighter inside, twisted the opened padlock out of her wrist iron, and walked across to the window. There was a light metallic tapping from the two links of chain still attached to her anklet, but it was not too bad.
The window opened on an ordinary latch. She swung it outwards, hauled herself up, and climbed into a narrow area.
It was quite dark now, and the wind was moaning softly among the tops of the tall trees which sheltered the house. In the flagged yard above the area, now that she could see all of it, a Humber shooting brake stood outside the barn whose roof she had been looking at from inside her cell. Beyond, light streamed from an open doorway leading into an immense garage, winking from the sophisticated curves delineating the body of a D.S.21 Citroen. The main part of the house bulked against the sky behind her — and she imagined from the suffused radiance outlining the roof that the lighted windows were all on the far side.
For a moment, she toyed with the idea of trying to steal one of the cars — then prudence overrode imagination: Wright had spoken of special devices to stop people trying to escape, and they would be on to her as soon as she pressed the starter. No, the stealthy exit to the cliffs, followed by a run down to Porthallow and a return in force with Mark — that was what was needed now.
In the instant that the thought was formed — and before she had had time to look around and take notice of the lay of the land — a man in chauffeur's uniform walked out of the garage and saw her. His exclamation of surprise was echoed by an angry shout of alarm from the cellar from which she had just escaped.
In a flash, April turned and ran, away from the light, away from the cellar, away from the chauffeur who was tugging a gun from his waistband. Before she had gone three steps, light shafted into the darkness from the cell window, where Wright was climbing out with a torch in his hand.
A shot crashed out behind her and something whizzed into the dark above her head. Water, she thought frantically, I must have water... There was something dripping near the cellar, she remembered: it must have been a tap or a water butt. She clattered to a halt and looked around — yes, there it was! Just behind her. A main risertap with a bucket hooked over it by the handle, against the wall of the house.
"Don't shoot!" she cried. "I give up; I'm coming…"
Slowly, she walked back towards Wright. Beyond him, the chauffeur stood with his pistol cocked, full of suspicion.
"Put up your hands," Wright called. "Walk slowly towards the barn."
In her right hand, April was prising what looked like a life saver from the roll of mints which had been in her bag... but it was a disc that would have frightened the life out of anyone who tried to eat it! As she lifted her arms, she flipped the pellet neatly into the bucket of water and hurled herself to the ground.
The instant that the life-saver touched the surface, a vast outpouring of dense smoke surged from the bucket, rolled across the yard and blotted Wright, the chauffeur, the cars and the garage from sight.
Shots from two different guns thundered as the girl scrambled to her feet and began wildly running away from the life-saving screen. Wright was bawling something in the dark, a bell had begun ringing, ringing, and in the distance she could hear a woman's voice calling. She hurled herself through an arched doorway in a wall, ran along a brick path and blundered into a shrubbery. She knew she only had a moment before they rounded the house the other way to cut her off.
On the far side of the bushes, she found herself on a lawn. The front of the house, mullioned windows ablaze with light, was off to her right. And away beyond, the night sky was speckled with a rash of red lights warning low-flying aircraft away from the masts of Trewinnock Tor.
She realized she was running in the wrong direction, away from the town.
On an impulse, she dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling back the way she had come, behind a line of standard roses.
A moment later three figures ran round the corner of the house and fanned out across the lawn. "Gerry," a woman called, "I should go towards the South Gate if I were you: she may have a car in the lane."
"Good idea!" Wright's mannered voice replied. "I'll go that way. Mason — you head for the boathouse and cut her off if she goes that way."
"Very good, sir," the man in chauffeur's uniform called back.
Grinning, April rose to her feet at the end of the row and walked softly back through the archway into the yard. Most of the smoke screen had blown away, but there were still layers of it wreathing in the light from the garage.
She tiptoed across the swathe of brilliance and glanced into the building. The place was deserted. As she began hurrying back down the path she had taken with Wright earlier that afternoon, she could hear the voices of the pursuit growing fainter and fainter in the distance behind her. So far, so good, she thought... But the lord of the manor had said that there were two servants besides himself and his wife on the premises. There was still one unaccounted for. And there was still the possibility of trip wires, electric fences and other forms of man-trap before she was off the property... She would have to go carefully, especially as she was now out of range of the diffuse illumination from the house and it really was very dark. Later, there would be a moon, but just now it was positively Stygian!
The mystery of the second servant did not remain long unsolved. As she rounded a spinney at the entrance to a field she saw below her the stile over which she had entered silhouetted against the pale fury of the sea, giant hands plucked her from the ground as though she had been a baby.
"Ah, now! What have we 'ere?" a deep voice exclaimed. "You'm beant running away without sayin' thank'ee, be en?... Maister'd never hold with that. I think you'd better come over by the house along of me, my pretty one!"
Twisting in the remorseless grip, April saw that the man was gigantic. He must have been fully seven feet high, and he was muscularly built to match. She chopped a karate blow at his neck, twisted again and seized his wrist in a judo grip— but the giant just laughed, hefted her over his shoulder like a roll of bedding, and began striding up the hill towards the house.
All right, the girl thought, if that's the way you want it... Maybe it's better like this!
Her handbag was looped over one wrist by the handles. Under cover of a girlish thrashing about with hands and feet, she manoeuvred yet another article out of it: a small gold lipstick case.
The hypodermic needle shot out at the touch of a catch, and the point was plunged into the vast wrist holding her on the man's shoulder before he had gone another three paces. The barrel was filled with chloral hydrate, and however tough the man was, this particular Mickey Finn would bring him down long before they reached the house.