The Judas Pair l-1 Page 19

  I forced myself to think as the blaze above my head reached a crescendo. What could make air move? Propellers, windmills, waterwheels? A fan. A jet engine. A ship's screw. A paddle device. What had they used in prisoner-of-war camps when digging those tunnels? Bellows, conveyors of buckets, paddle engines? Bellows.

  Below me, on the shelf near my precious bottle of water, was the air gun. I had a pump for it, but at what rate did it actually pump air? It usually needed about four minutes to fill the gun's copper globe going full pelt, and that was tiring enough. I took the implement and gave a couple of trial puffs. The force was considerable, as it indeed would need to be, seeing that the eventual ball pressure was enough to propel a fourteen-bore lead sphere some thousand yards or so. I clasped it to me and put the screw nozzle against the open gun breech projecting from the vent. With some difficulty I began pumping. Almost immediately I felt a marvelous gentle breeze against my back from the opposite vent, but there came an unpleasant inrush of smoke with it. I would need to blow air out in the opposite direction. There might be less smoke that side.

  The barrels were easy to swap over as the vents were of a height. I simply slotted them in, having to mend the junction on the way across. That way around it was easier to use the pump, because I found I could use the wall as a support and one of the shelves as a fulcrum for my elbow. This time I was rewarded by the cool air on my shoulders without very much smoke. I guessed that a faint breeze must be blowing the fire and smoke in the direction I was facing.

  There was a certain amount of squeaking from the air pump, and its leather bellows flapped noisily, but in the cacophony from the fire above nothing I was doing could possibly be distinguished from the other noise. My only worry was if he saw a steady current of air somehow piercing the slanting smoke from somewhere in the grass. The shifting firelight would help.

  As minutes went by I improved on the system. Once it became obvious the system was working, I started settling down to a less frantic rate. I might, I reasoned, have to do this forever. You see fires still burning days after they've started, don't you? I counted my rate at about twenty pumps a minute. By stuffing my shirt into the vent around the jezail barrel I improved the motion still further by preventing any back draft. All incoming air was from the opposite side. Occasional gusts of smoke frightened me now and again, but they weren't too bad.

  I tried pausing for two consecutive beats to listen. Was there shouting from above? I dreamed—Was it a dream?—I heard a big vehicle revving, followed crazily by a sound of splashing of water. But the bastard might be trying to pretend the firemen had arrived. Twice I was near screaming for help. Drenched and demented, I resisted and pumped on, haunted by the memory of the stables which had burned down behind the old rectory. Submerged by the low evening mist, horses and stables were found as just ashes a full day later. And worse still I had no way out whether it was friends or foe on the other side, except through the flames.

  For some daft reason it seemed vital to suppress hopes of people like Margaret and Tinker Dill, those smug bastards in comfort somewhere who were believing I wasn't dying. The smarmy pigs, all of them. I sobbed and sobbed, pumping crazily on amid the lunatic noise.

  One really monumental crash interrupted me about an hour or two after my life-supporting system had been started. That would be the central longitudinal beam, I thought. The whole cottage was down now, with the exception of maybe part of a wall here and there.

  After that, nothing but the faint shushing roar, the ponderous crumblings and tremors all about me, and the steady slap-click-pat-hiss of the ancient bellows pump wafting beautiful cool air over my shoulders and out through the old barrels.

  Nothing but my arms moving, the pump handle slippery from sweat and spurts of blood as a cut reopened briefly. Nothing but leaning one way for a hundred pumps and another way for another hundred to ease my tiredness, nothing but the hiss of outgoing and the gentle coolness of incoming air. The question of survival receded. I became an automaton.

  There was nothing in my mind, no thought, no reasoning, no plans, virtually no consciousness, nothing but to continue pumping forever and ever and ever and ever.

  Chapter 16

  It must have rained about ten o'clock that Sunday morning as far as I was able to tell. All that did was make the wretched ashes cool a little faster than they'd otherwise have done.

  As time went on the noises above lessened somewhat, though the intolerable heat reached a peak some hours after the sounds of the fire had faded. The first improvement I noticed was that smoke wasn't coming in anything like as frequently as it had. My breathing was difficult from the heat, though, and once I cried out in pain when, shifting my cramped position on the steps, I inadvertently touched the flagstone above my head. It burned my arm, and stinging blisters rose swiftly on my skin. As I resumed my pumping they burst and serum washed warm patches down my arm and onto my knee. I'd been going some eight hours at a guess when I finally decided to chance a minute's rest.

  Numbly, I forced myself to work out the time by counting. The vent was showing that daylight glow. I could actually hear the cracklings of the settling ash mixed incongruously with faint twitters of the birds. No sound of revving engines now, no faint shouts either real or imaginary. If the firemen had come at all, they were gone now. And a wise murderer returns to see his job's properly done. Maybe he was already sifting through the embers for the turnkey. I know I would have done just that. God knows, I thought wearily, what the robin thinks of all this. I drank about a third of my water and endured the discomfort as the heat rose while I sat down. The ache was almost pleasurable. Sitting and eating dry bread and cheese seemed almost bliss after the horrible efforts I'd expended at the old bellows. Within two or three minutes, however, the heat rose again and I had to resume my action with the air pump to cool the cell down and allow me to breathe properly.

  Throughout the morning I drove myself into forming a scheme. I would pump for about five minutes, then rest for as long as I could tolerate the heat, upon which I'd resume pumping. Limping along in this fashion for a while, I soon realized I'd overestimated the rate at which the incoming air cooled my prison. I reluctantly had to increase pumping time to about half an hour or so, which gave me sufficient coolth for about five minutes. There was an additional danger here, in that I was tempted to fall asleep while resting. I had to prevent this by standing up.

  With time to think I became bitter. Where the hell were the fire people? And the police? And my lazy, swarmy, self-satisfied bloody friends? Why weren't they calling frantically for me, digging through the ash with their bare hands? I would. For them. But Lovejoy's nearest and dearest let him have a private bloody holocaust. The swine had all assumed I was shacked up elsewhere with some crummy bird. Could life be so outrageous that I'd been trapped by an armed maniac and so-say roasted alive by him in my own bloody home, and the entire country was just not caring enough? I wept from frustrated anger at the insult. All life in that moment seemed utterly mad. No wonder people just set out determined to simply get what they could. Who could blame them? The proof was here, in ashes above me. And I, honest, God-fearing Lovejoy, finished up buried underneath the smoking ruins of my own bloody house, cut, filthy, bleeding, weary, and as naked as the day I was born.

  My elbows were like balloons full of fluid, swollen and soggy. My wrists were more painful still but not so swollen. Despite them and the blisters I had to resume at the bellows.

  As time wore wearily on I became aware of lessening temperature. In rest periods I could hear rain on grass and a faint drumming. Could it be rain on the old Armstrong? My rest periods were becoming longer and safer and the need of cool air was not so absolute. I was able to risk sitting down and having a rough meal.

  Eventually there came a time when I felt it would not be risking total extinction to fall asleep. I lodged myself upright on the steps and was into oblivion within seconds.

  You'd never seen such a sight. The cottage was a pile of smoking
cinders and ash. In the dusk the garden seemed so small without the cottage to make the plot seem a little more imposing. The whole scene was pathetic. Where the kitchen alcove had been the ash was knee deep, perhaps the result of my water trap. Water was seeping from below, there, probably from a damaged rising main.

  The rain had ceased. Smoke still rose from the debris in places. You can't help wondering at the curious consequences of physical events, almost as much as at biological goings-on. Why, I wondered, had that particular crossbeam, lying half charred among the ruins, not burned all the way through as the rest appeared to have done? And why was part of the wattle-and-daub wall still standing to a height of about three feet close to where the front door stood, with the rest in ashes?

  It had taken me a full hour to extricate myself from the hole. The weight of smoldering debris had made the slab difficult to lift. Still, I thought grimly, the murderer can't push even his phenomenal luck too far. Quick-to-burn stuff makes light ash.

  I placed the time at about nine o'clock Sunday night. The grass was wet from the rain. I had the sense to kick ashes back onto the paving over the priest hole to obscure signs of my escape, and I skipped swiftly onto the damp grass because my trousers were smoldering. With the same facility of the previous night I knew he'd gone. I had the Nock with me and slipped it to half-cock for safety.

  The car was a wreck, the tires shreds of charred rubber, the paint gone, the metal twisted, and the trimmings burned to blazes. I hadn't a bean. Except for the few items down in the priest hole I was bust. Dizziness forced me to rest a few minutes. I sat in the darkness beneath the hedge to recover and bathed my face with wet grass. There was nothing for it but to ask for help, but from whom?

  My neighbors didn't get back until Monday as a rule, so they weren't about yet, assuming I'd guessed right about it being Sunday evening. Other people up the lane couldn't be approached. I knew hardly any of them, and anyway I would send them into screaming fits by heaving out of the darkness like a charred scarecrow. I would have to phone somebody. Muriel? Margaret? Jane? Tinker? Dick or Brad? Who was safe?

  There were signs people had come. Great marks were gouged in the gravel path. Several bushes were crushed. A fire engine, probably. Foot hollows in the grass were filled with rainwater already. A small crowd of well-wishers, half disappointed at not seeing Lovejoy crisped, the rest busy speculating which bird it was that had luckily seduced me away from the danger. Friendship's a great restorative.

  The idea of a telephone seemed bizarre. You just pick up the receiver, dial, and have a perfectly normal conversation with whoever's at the other end. After a night such as I'd spent? I'd heard somewhere that people rescued from bizarre episodes full of danger—like sailors on a raft for days—weren't allowed back to normal life immediately but were put into solitude until the idea of rescue became a tangible reality. Maybe human brains can't accept too much relief all at one go. Not knowing if I was doing right or not, I compelled myself to sit there beneath the darkening hedge watching the ruins smolder, trying to keep my relief from dominating my thoughts.

  The proper thing to do would be to walk through the gathering dusk to the policeman's house. It was only about a half-mile. Nobody would see what a state I was in. He might lend me some clothes. I was wearing socks, shoes, trousers, and a shirt, all filthy and torn. Caked as I was with grime, ashes, and dried blood, I couldn't be a pretty sight, cut and blistered. Or perhaps the telephone booth? Our one public phone was always lit and stood by the village pond in front of the Queen's Head. We have no street lamps, but the place was too prominent.

  After some two hours or so tasting fresh damp air, I rose creakily, holding on to the hedge to keep myself upright. It proved difficult even to walk, to my surprise. I kept to the verge of the gravel path so as to make no noise and examined the lane before limping quickly across, carrying the two-barreled pistol now at full cock should my premonitions let me down.

  My neighbor has two cottages knocked into one and extended to the rear. Like me he has a curving gravel path up to the front. I ignored this and crept slowly through his garden to the rear of the house. To help in harvesting his apple trees, he has two extending ladders in an open shed there. I laboriously carried one to the house and climbed to an upstairs window. Anybody can get in modern catch windows. Within minutes I was blundering about downstairs in the darkness and on the phone.

  I dialed Margaret. Mercifully she was in.

  "Thank God!"

  "What's He done to earn gratitude?" I snapped. "Look. Have you your car?"

  "Yes. Did you know—?" she began.

  "I know. I'm still in it."

  "What?"

  "Come and get me, please." I rang off.

  I'd cleared away any trace of my trespass in the house as best I could and was back in the shelter of my own hedge by the time her Morris approached. Funny how bright the headlights seemed.

  "Lovejoy?" Her voice was almost a scream as she slithered to a halt on the gravel. The cottage really did look like something from a nightmare.

  "Here."

  I stepped from the hedge and she really did scream before I could calm her.

  "It's only me, Margaret."

  "My God! Are you—?"

  "Sorry about the fancy dress," I said wearily. "Calm down."

  "What's happened to you? The police phoned me. I came around. We've looked everywhere. The fire brigade was here. It was terrible. Somebody said you'd gone off with—"

  "Turn the headlights off, there's a good girl."

  With her help I got in and leaned back feeling almost safe. She slid behind the wheel. I could see her white face in the dashboard's glow.

  "Shouldn't I phone Geoffrey, or—"

  "Disturb him at this hour?" She didn't miss the bitterness.

  "I'll take you around to the doctor's."

  "No," I snapped. "Are you on your own at home?" She nodded. "Then can I come there, to clean up?"

  "Yes." She started the engine and backed us down to the lane. "Did you manage to save anything?"

  "One thing." I said, lying back, eyes closed. "Me."

  Bathed and in some clothes Margaret happened to have handy—perhaps from the estranged husband—I examined myself in the bathroom mirror. I'd have been wiser to stay filthy. My face was cut in a dozen places. An enormous bruise protruded from my temple. My left eye was black, a beautiful shiner. I'd lost a tooth. My hands were blistered balloons.

  She gave me a razor to shave with, a messy job with more blood than whiskers.

  "Your husband's?" I asked.

  "Mind your own business," she said.

  She made a light meal and I went to sleep on her couch with the television on. I couldn't get enough of normality. She sat in an armchair close by to watch the play.

  "Let me take that."

  I hugged the Nock close and refused to give it to her. "I'm, trying to make the pair," I said, a standard antique dealer's joke.

  She didn't smile.

  Chapter 17

  The day dawned bright and brittle. For an hour I could hardly move a joint and tottered about Margaret's house like a kitten. A bath loosened me up. I felt relatively fresh after that. Just as well, I thought, as it was going to be a hard week.

  The telephone rang about eleven, Tinker Dill asking if I'd been located. I told Margaret to say I'd gone to London for a couple of days with a friend. She didn't like this but went along with it. The story was that the post girl had seen the cottage afire. She'd called the police, the fire brigade, and an ambulance —a thorough girl. I made Margaret ring Dandy Jack to say she wouldn't be in to the arcade for a few days and to let prospective customers know she'd be back soon.

  I also got her to ring Muriel and say there'd been an accident of some description. She told her about the cottage and what she'd heard over the phone. Muriel seemed dismayed, Margaret reported to me. Real tears, as far as one could judge.

  "Well, some people love me anyway," I cracked, leering with my gappy grin.r />
  "God knows why," she said.

  They gave me a column and a picture—of the burned cottage, not me—in the local paper on Tuesday evening. Police, it said, were making inquiries. Arson could not be ruled out. My own whereabouts were not known, but speculation was that, in the throes of a depressive illness, I had accidentally started a fire and died, or else I was staying with friends. It was made to sound fifty-fifty, and who cared anyway. Too bloody casual by far. The ruins were being searched for clues. It was widely known that I was mentally disturbed after the unfortunate accidental death of a close friend. By Thursday I was written off from public awareness, which suited me. The local paper went back to the more important foot-and-mouth disease. On Friday I asked Margaret to take me for an evening drive.

  I felt absolutely calm. The Nock just fitted the glove compartment, wrapped in a dry duster to prevent scratches. All anxieties and fears vanished in the calm that certainty brings.

  Margaret had been marvelous during the week. We'd chatted about antiques and I'd been pleasantly surprised at how stable my thoughts were, and how I enjoyed her company. She'd taken the full account of my escapades at the cottage quite well. The only point where I differed from the truth was the invention of a hidden tunnel beneath the sink out to the back of the copse. After all, the honor among dealers is bendable, and my remaining stuff was still down there. I'd partly paid my keep by authenticating some musical seals of about 1790 for her, lovely they were too.

  "You're not going to do anything silly, Lovejoy?" she asked as she drove.

  "People keep asking me that."

  "And what do you answer?"

  "Women do keep on, don't they?" I grumbled.

  "I'm waiting, Lovejoy."

  "Of course I won't do anything silly."

  "Then why the gun?"