Be Shot For Six Pence (24 page)

I had cut my slender margin of safety in half.

Stop for a minute, and think it out.

This was the moment at which, in any normal climb, I should have turned back. But I could not turn back. I could only go on. I must accept a non-existent margin of safety because I had no choice. But there was another reason too. A purely psychological one. I could now see my goal. My progress had brought me far enough round the curve of the turret to see the point at which I was aiming.

Above my head, and about five foot to my right was the point where the main guttering touched the circumference of the turret. And, to make the sight even more tempting, there was a down drainage pipe in the angle of the wall (If I had been thinking properly I should have deduced that there must be).

If only I could now have gone
downwards
and sideways all would have been well. For I could have descended, crab-wise, into an area of softer mortar until I reached the drain pipe, and then climbed up it onto the roof. But by no power on earth could I descend. By no contortion could I drive in a piton at lower than knee level.

It was maddening to realise how near I had come to success. My calculations seemed crazy yet in the event they had proved absolutely correct. But for the successive hardening of the mortar, I should only have had to make two more, comparatively easy, steps and I should have been safe on that roof.

Fear is a bad counsellor to a climber; but anger may be worse.

I gave each of those shaky pegs a final tap for luck, gripped the top one and stepped onto the lower.

Almost at once the lower peg started to bend under my weight.

I increased the grip of my hand. Previously I had been using the upper peg lightly, to maintain balance. Now I was actually suspended from it.

Which introduced a final, limiting, factor. The length of time I could support myself by the strength of one hand, for my foothold was sloped out to such a degree that it was almost useless.

With a cold feeling of desperation, I pulled out the free hand peg, moved it across and up as far as I dare, and drove it in. By the mercy of God, I had struck a moderate patch and it went in a certain way.

The lifting and driving of the bottom peg was the hardest work I have ever tried in my life. My left foot had now almost no grip at all and my left wrist was weakening dangerously. Again I struck a fair patch, and it was this alone that saved me. Six blows brought the peg home.

I pulled on my left wrist, got my toe onto the right peg, lifted, got my new hand hold, and, in that instant, lost my left peg.

How it happened I have no clear idea. I had been almost hanging on it and I can only think that the sudden removal of my weight jerked it. It slipped from my fingers, and seconds later, I heard the pretty tinkle as it landed on the courtyard.

(I fell with the peg; turning over and over in the air. All my calculations had been false. I had thought I was far enough over to avoid the spikes. I must have been wrong, for one of the spikes went right through me. It was curious that I felt no pain.)

At what interval of time after this I do not know, but a matter of seconds only, I guess, my head cleared, and I found that I was staring stupidly at my left hand.

I was still standing, with my right foot firmly on its peg and my right hand holding fast. But there was something wrong with left wrist. The cord had gone. In grabbing at the hand peg, the loop over my wrist must have slipped.

Quite slowly I looked down. The foot peg was still in the wall. The cord was trailing from it. And it was as effectively out of my reach as the hand peg which had just fallen eighty foot into the courtyard.

I was stranded, balanced on one shaky spike, holding on to another, and three foot from my goal.

How long it took me to work out the last step I have no idea. Time had ceased to have much meaning.

Then I saw the solution.

The first thing was to change hands and feet. The hand was easy enough. The foot was another matter; but I did it with a sort of awkward shuffle. I was beyond caring for finesse.

Then, taking as firm a grip as I could with my left hand, I threw myself across to the right, hand and right foot together.

My fingers scrabbled for a moment, then found the top of the pipe.

Seconds later I was on the roof. I threw myself forward, flat, my right cheek against the dew-wet slates, and lay for five minutes without stirring, savouring what it was like to be alive again.

It was the sound of a car that stirred me. It was coming along the main road at the foot of the wooded knoll on which my prison house stood. I could see the head lights, but they were dimmed by the light of morning, which was coming up with strides.

In ten minutes the sun would be up.

I must move. And I must face the next decision, which was likely to be a difficult one.

The house was built in a hollow square round a central courtyard, with a turret at each corner joined by a long stretch of shallow pitched, slated, roof. Moving along the roof presented no difficulty. Feeling myself a little conspicuous on the outer perimeter, I clambered, flat-footed, up the ridge of the two roofs behind my turret and slid down the gully on the inner side. All my movements were slow and heavy. I was suffering from the most desperate reaction and was, besides, physically finished.

On the inner lip of the roof, overlooking the courtyard, I found a lead-lined cat-walk which served as a gutter or as a footway, I supposed, for workmen on the roof. I saw that by keeping to it I could make a complete detour of the building. It was broken by the dormers of half a dozen windows in each side of the square but these were shallow affairs, which I could scramble over as I came to them.

I was now out of sight of anyone on the ground, and I sat down to try and think.

As I sat, the sun came over the horizon in the pink glory which means wet weather, and sounds of returning life came clearly to my ears, funnelled up to me from the inner court below. A door slammed. A tin pail was clanked down on a hard floor. And a man began to whistle, sadly out of tune.

The moment for decision had come.

There was no doubt in my own mind that I could break in through one of the dormer windows. My faithful cord was still round my right wrist, and from it dangled my last remaining piton. With it I could quickly force the window latch and get back into the building. Supposing the door to be open I could then make my way to the ground and try to get out. That was where my imagination stopped working. I was certain to run into trouble. Trouble which I was too weary either to avoid or to fight. And if, by a miracle, I did get clear of the house without being seen, what then? I should be in the grounds, presumably guarded, of a Police Headquarters in full daylight.

I knew what the alternative was, but the truth of the matter is that I was afraid of it. Having got so far, I wanted to get further still. I wanted to get clear of that hellish building and out into the kindly countryside.

It was the same instinct that has made many an escaping prisoner of war rush the frontier at the end of a night’s march when his legs were too weak even to carry him over it. I had just enough sense to resist it.

I broke open the nearest window. No finesse was required here. I used the heel of my shoe to break the glass and thrust my hand through and slipped the catch. I was in an empty attic. The door opened on to a corridor.

I left that door open.

Then I went back to the window and climbed out on to the leadwork again.

From this point I took care to leave no trace of my progress. I moved carefully and slowly, avoiding the occasional puddle and drift of sodden leaves, until I had made my way round two complete sides of the square. I was now diametrically opposite the point at which I had made my ascent.

Starting from here. I peered into each dormer window in turn. I wanted to find a room with stuff stored in it. Since, if there was stuff in the room, it was likely to have a locked door.

The first two rooms were empty. The third, which seemed to be some sort of store room, was more hopeful. I slipped the end of my faithful piton under the catch and eased it open; stepped in, and closed and latched the window behind me.

The jumble of stuff almost filled the room. There were dusty hangings, roughly folded and piled together. Some of the largest fire-irons I have ever seen, thick with rust. Two or three tea chests, which were locked. A dozen or more chairs of the comfortless concert-room variety; a canvas back-drop on struts of a “castle battlement with one practical entrance up-prompt”; some religious bannerets, and an enormous, pâpier maché frog’s head. I burrowed carefully in behind a pile of hangings. My bed was dusty and cramped, but I could have slept on spikes in Little Ease.

When I came round again I had a throat like a kiln and a nagging headache; and my arms and legs felt as if they had been on the rack. Also, in spite of the warmth of my dusty coffin, I was shivering. I extricated myself and moved cautiously over to the window.

It was nearly eight o’clock. I had been out of the world for thirteen hours, and the sun had swung in its orbit from East to west, and the world had moved one day nearer the moment of its final dissolution, whereafter it would circle for ever, a desolate cinder in a forgotten planetary system.

And how had they all passed the day? Lady and the General. Gheorge, Lisa and Triie. And how was Colonel Dru feeling?

No doubt my defection had been reported to him.

An arc light came on in the courtyard and I shrank back from the window. But it was not aimed at me. It was directed downwards. Something was happening in the courtyard, and since anything that went on in that building could be my concern, I craned to look.

Four men had marched out. They were in the uniform of the Jagd-Polizei the Hunting Police; and they carried rifles.

Then two more men appeared. They had someone by the arms. Someone in shirt sleeves and open neck. Someone I thought I recognised.

A chair was fetched, and the shirt-sleeved man slumped in it. As he was being tied to it, I recognised him. It was my sentry of the night before.

Four rifles sounded together. The man in the chair jumped as if hot needles had been stuck into him; strained for a minute and then sagged into a parody of sleep. He had been a great sleeper. Reveille would trouble him no longer.

The men filed off. The lights went out. That scene was over.

Before it got too dark to see I tackled the door of the room. I wasn’t worried about it, because I knew that, at a pinch, I could always get out of my window and move along until I found a room with an open door. But this one gave me no trouble. It was designed to keep people from outside getting in. In the end I loosened one of the screws which held the keeper of the lock, and twisted the whole keeper back until it was clear of the tongue.

Then I waited. If anyone came in at the door I would put on the pâpier maché head and recite the Frogs’ Chorus from Aristophanes. That should give them something to think about.

I must then have gone to sleep again, sitting, for the next thing I remember is looking at my watch and seeing that the time was eleven o’clock.

Almost exactly forty-eight hours ago I had said to Trüe: “What do I do now?” and the little witch had said to me: “Just walk out of the exit and take a look at the booths.”

Oh, the sweet child.

I creaked to my feet, an old, old man, and walked across to the door and opened it. Everything was quiet up on the top storey, but there was plenty of life below.

I turned up the collar of my coat and buttoned it across to hide my shirt. And I wound the cord round one end of faithful old peg to form a grip. Piton, jemmy, and now life-preserver. A versatile piece of iron.

On the third floor I found a bathroom with the door open, and went in and drank a gallon of water and felt a bit better.

Then I ventured down another storey.

Clearly it would be a lot safer not to use the ground floor at all. There was certain to be some sort of night staff in charge.

Better to try one of the rooms on the first storey. Best of all, if I could get into the one next to the turret where there should be a downpipe corresponding to the one I had reached the roof by. Anyway, I ought to be able to drop from a first storey window.

Unless they had spikes all round the house.

The first storey passage was carpeted. I located the bathroom, but the window was too small, and opened only at the top. Next door should be a bedroom. I opened the door and looked in. Someone gave a strangled grunt and said: “Who the Hell’s that?” I shut the door, and retreated round the angle of the stairs.

I heard the bedroom door open and someone breathing heavily. Then the door shut. That’s all right, old chap. Just the fairies paying you a visit.

I went on up to the floor above and eased open the door of the room above the one I had just visited. This one was empty and looked unused. I opened the window. And there was the hoped-for downpipe. It looked stout, and had thoughtfully been set away from the wall so that I could get my fingers round it. Just what the burglar ordered. I took off my shoes and dropped them down the front of my shirt, swung out, and started slowly down the pipe.

The window under me was tightly shut. Evidently the grunter had heard about the dangerous properties of fresh air. I felt an urge to rap on his window, but refrained. A minute later I was sitting on the ground putting my shoes on.

The south was the deserted side of the building. Ahead of me was a slope, thickly covered with trees and bushes, a line of lights, and freedom.

I scuttled across the path and got under cover. The going was not too bad. It was a formal garden which had been deliberately allowed to run riot. The rambler roses were the main difficulty, although there was a sort of giant yucca which had to be treated with respect.

There was plenty of time, and I moved forward with great caution. One thing I had in mind was the possibility of trip-wires; but if any were there, luck took me past them. Ten minutes brought me to the lights. They were a line of overhead electric lights, on standards, of the sort used in prison camps.