Bunty thought hopefully, the police coming back. And as though she had spoken aloud, he said in a whisper: “No!” And after a moment of listening with held breath: “Not the same car.”
He drew her out into the hall, and loosed her hand gently, and she heard him climbing the stairs in long, ranging, silent steps, three at a time. She groped her way after him, and found him in the large front bedroom, crouched at the window. Her eyes were already adjusting to the half-light, she could see clearly.
She saw the car creep very gently round the curve of the drive, shy in the shelter of the trees. She saw it halt to breathe, to observe the house in darkness, and then to accelerate and slide onward, reassured, into the gateway. Reassured? Or galvanised into more open action by fear that the place was indeed empty, that the birds were flown? It came on without concealment now, but quietly, hissed on to the edge of the gravel, rolled round before the door.
The doors of the car opened before it was still. Silently and purposefully two men slid out of it, one on either side, and then the motor cut out as suavely as a held sigh, and the driver slithered just as noiselessly from behind the wheel. Three figures, mute, shapeless and anonymous, deployed across the width of the gravel court, and looked up contemplatively under shading hat-brims at the blind frontage of the house. And two of the figures, quite suddenly and smoothly and naturally, as though these were the inevitable fruit you would expect to see ripening there, had guns in their hands.
Luke drew back from the window, caught Bunty in his arm, and swept her away through the doorway to the landing, closing the door of the bedroom silently behind them. Silence was everything now. Neither of them risked a word, even in a whisper. Thank God they’d switched off all lights before the car came within sight of the house. But they were both remembering what the police sergeant had said in the morning. He and his companion had seen a light in one of the windows here “from up the coast road a piece.” So might these men have seen one, a quarter of an hour ago. Bunty and Luke hadn’t thought to be cautious about showing lights. Mrs. Chartley had reported her presence to the police, so why disguise it? And now it was too late to worry. Simply get out of here by the only remaining way, and pray that the searchers were merely following up one possibility, and would come to the conclusion that the house was empty, and go away to hunt somewhere else.
But the guns, flowering miraculously in hands that had seemed to conjure them out of empty air, hadn’t looked at all tentative, or in the very slightest doubt of their premises.
Neither of them stumbled on the stairs, even in that quietly frantic rush they made; neither of them fouled any of the gay, impermanent fixings of the hall. They could hear the faint, deliberate crunch of gravel under cautious feet as the invaders cased the windows; but the darkness inside was sufficient to swallow all movement, and the glass in the panel of the front door was pebbled and opaque without light to bring it to life. Luke felt his way through the living-room door, and closed it gingerly after them just as a hand eased up the latch of the front door, with the faintest of metallic sounds, and tested it and found it locked. After that they had more freedom to move, more insulation between themselves and their enemies, and they could concentrate on saving time, which was the most vital factor of all. They had to be well down the slate staircase to the inlet before the hunters found their way round the corner of the house to the rear terrace and the faint, lambent plane of the seascape beyond.
The boat was the only card they had left. Why, oh, why had she listened to her tidy, housekeeper’s mind, and sent him to lock it away in the boat-house again? If it had still been riding at the jetty it would have saved them minutes now.
Out through the kitchen, out past the store, and Luke spared a moment to turn the key of the back door behind them. It slowed their retreat, but it completed the picture of an empty cottage, if only they could be far enough down the path to be out of earshot. There was no moon yet, but a faint starlight that brushed the flags of the tiny terrace, and gleamed on the level places in the pathway down the cliff. Thank God for the twists and turns in that erratic descent, that would take them out of sight within seconds. Sound would be a more dangerous betrayer.
Luke plunged to the edge of the terrace and led the way down in the dusk. He was on a path he knew, and could make good speed on the descent, but out of that complex of rocks the smallest rattle of a stone displaced would start a volley of rising echoes; and those characters out on the gravel weren’t going to waste much time getting into the house. A shot will open a lock, if there’s no other means at hand.
Luke put all thoughts out of his head for the moment, and concentrated on keeping his footing at a crazy speed, and bracing his left arm steadily to give Bunty a safety barrier from falling as she leaped and slid and bounded after him, and a grab handle whenever her foot stepped askew on the slates. The way was narrow as well as steep, his body would prevent her from crashing down towards the sea, even if she lost her footing. Whenever they reached one of the more level stretches he took her hand, but on the patches of broken shingle, laid with loose slate slabs for steps, she pressed close at his back and held by his shoulder. And at every step he quivered to the touch of her fingers with delight and agony, and wished her away, miles away in safety out of this mess in which he had involved her. But even then wishing her away was almost more than he could manage.
They were half-way down when he heard the back door of the cottage crash open above them, and at the same time the sound of running feet on the paved path that led round the house to the seaward side. One man had come round; two, probably, had gone through. Round the other end of the house it was impossible to go, it was built out to the edge of the drop. You could climb below safely enough if you had a fairish head for it, but not in the dark. Luke gripped the key of the boat-house in his pocket, his knuckles pressed for comfort against the gun. A finger of light from a torch fumbled down into the crevices of the rocks. They were sheltered from it by the tortuous turns, and close to the jetty now, but the pursuers could not fail to see the path, and the roof of the boat-house a sheen of grey in the sudden beam. With a light they could cover that descent only too quickly.
He was so intent on the movements of the men above that the movement below took him by surprise, bringing him up shocked and short like a blow to the heart.
A fourth man rose out of the shadows and bulked in their path darkly, blocking the way. The large, square-shouldered shape, neckless and muscular, closed the passage between the rocks solidly. A flat grey voice like the flat grey slates said: “Hold it right there, mate! Stay put, and get your hands up!”
Luke, arrested in mid-flight on steps steeper than average, pulled up with a suddenness that jarred him from heels to head, and cost Bunty her balance. Her foot slipped on a shifting stone, an unstable slate tilted forward as she stepped on it, and she was down on hands and knees, clinging to the rock, the displaced slab hard and heavy against her side. Some of the stones that supported its forward edge had rolled out of position and made it treacherous. She shoved her shoulder under it and heaved it back to its proper level to free herself of its weight, and the moment of confusion and alarm dissolved in understanding at that instant, and she knew they were not going to get away. They’d underestimated their opponents. The lay-out had been surveyed from the seaward side before ever the car drove up to the house. And this way, too, was closed to them.