The Secret Journey (74 page)

He stood up without a sound. Then slowly he began to turn the handle. The door moved, creaked. The blood ran to his head, he clasped his hands about his mouth. He was trembling like a leaf. The woman had turned round and looked towards the door. Peter put his eye to the keyhole. As he looked at the woman's face he realized suddenly that she had heard the creaking sound. She was no longer reading, but with downcast eyes watching the door. Peter went suddenly cold, and though his whole body remained rigid, his right hand, as though endowed with some individual life of its own, began to turn the handle again. Was she
really
looking at the door, or was she reading still? Perhaps she was falling asleep. This time he pushed the door with a firmer hand. The woman moved. He could see her face in profile now. Then he pushed wide the door and slipped into the room. He closed it, ran across the room and stood in front of her. ‘Oh!—You——' she exclaimed, but he heard no word. He was only mindful of the hideousness of her features in that sudden moment of confrontation. He whipped the knife from his pocket and drove it deep into her neck. She gave a low scream and fell back in the chair. A fountain of bright blood spurted forth upon him—his hands were covered, his coat splashed, but he saw nothing beyond that upturned face. With a sudden frenzy, as though born of the immobility of Anna Ragner, he pressed in the knife, the blood curdled about the hilt. Her half-open mouth seemed to make her more hideous. The expression upon her face seemed one of contempt, of mockery. He lifted the ringed fingers of her right hand, bunched them together and forced them brutally into the dead woman's mouth. The features seemed to distend, the mouth beneath the glaring eyes seemed to be devouring the jewelled hand.

It was at this moment that Mr. Corkran burst into the room. He had heard the low scream. ‘Bloody Christ!' he shouted, and rushed towards Peter. Peter Fury dodged him and dashed out of the room. As he rushed down the hall he seemed to feel the presence of that silent-footed man who had so often walked it, and he only remembered one thing. He had a vivid impression of the dead woman with her hand in her mouth. The door banged. He heard a shout—there was a scuffling of feet. He ran down the drive. The gate was stuck. He leaped over it and made off in the darkness.

Daniel Corkran was already running down the drive. He stood for a moment bewildered, his body shaking, his hands to his head. He shouted, ‘Stop that man! Stop him!' Then he ran back, shut the door, and went out through the gate.

Peter Fury was still running, but Corkran, fleet of foot, was on his heels again. Darkness walled them in. There was nothing to be seen on that long black road but their flying figures. Suddenly Peter Fury stopped, but only for the flash of a second, as though measuring his pursuer's distance, then he dashed into a side-street. He wanted to stop again, if only for a moment. He felt his heart would burst. But he dare not. Daniel Corkran continued to shout. He stood a moment at the corner of the street. A cul-de-sac. He had him. Doors were flung open—people seemed to pour into the dark street as Corkran still shouted, but Peter had gone. He had climbed a wall, and even as the excitement grew he was already slithering down an embankment. There was the line. If he followed the line he was safe. ‘Oh, Jesus!' he exclaimed. ‘It's done! It's done!' His forehead was thick with sweat. The house had vanished, the knife had disappeared—vision was clouded only by that hideous mouth that seemed to be in the act of devouring its own hand.

Shouts above his head. An avalanche of black figures piling over the wall. He ran on. Something in his blood, some wild delirium answered to this oncoming pack. A goods' train roared in from the tunnel. Its long black shape was silhouetted against the skyline. ‘I've murdered her. God! I've done it. Oh, Christ! That knife! That knife! Each time I lost it and I got it back. Oh, God!' He fell, gasping, incoherent sentences falling from his lips. He got up, wiped his face and ran on. There was a crash and clatter. They were gaining on him. A man-hole! A man-hole. Where was there a man-hole? A whistle blew. ‘Police,' flashed through his brain. ‘Police! Jesus!' Suddenly he flashed across the points behind the signal box, ran up the bank, caught the boarding and leaped up. A face met his own. They were trying to pen him in. They had surrounded him: a face that seemed only teeth. Teeth. Voices in his ears. He fell flat; rolled down the bank again. Quickly he undid his boots, flung them into a hole, and gathering himself as though for some supreme effort, ran on. He kept to the four-foot, facing the oncoming traffic. Each stride landed him on the sleepers. He seemed to fly, to be drawn farther and farther behind the wall of the protecting darkness. Which way out? Suppose he was confronted suddenly? He began to limp. His foot had at last plunged on to the ballast of small stones. Ahead darkness. Saving darkness. Again he fell, seemed to catapult over a hidden pile of fish-plates, and was on again. ‘A light,' he cried. ‘There's a light.' There was no light. Nothing but the impenetrable blackness that held his secret. He stopped, fell flat on his face. He could see nothing. He listened. Yes, people were behind. He could hear them now. And as he rose he flashed his eyes towards the direction of the sound. The air seemed to hum; teeth, rows of teeth, seemed to flash by. Then he was on again. A hole! A hole! If he could find a hole. The voices were drawing nearer, they swelled into shouts. Terror seized him. He stood shaking, eyes to the ground—listening. Yes, they were almost on top of him. He turned, leaped across the rails, and scrambled up the opposite banking. Twice he slipped, and climbed again. Fortified by sheer desperation, by the very sounds in his ears, he made a supreme effort and reached the top of the wall. He dropped twelve feet into an entry, and lay there gasping, covered with filth, bloody, petrified. He rolled over into the filth, he plunged his hands into it, to rub off the blood. He pressed his face against the cold stones and wept.

He was caught. He was hemmed in. It was dark no longer. The blackness vanished. Some monstrous sun had appeared and bathed the street into which he now ran in a blinding white light. Bodies moved forward, backward, faces rushed towards him, vanished, flashed towards him again. He was trapped. He was alone in the middle of the street. And all around, people! He screamed, ‘Go away! Go away!' and tried to run. But his feet were leaden. He put his hand to his nose, began spitting; he shouted, ‘Leave me alone!'

‘God! I was dreaming or something,' he said, and pulled himself up from the filth in which he had lain. Had he been asleep? How long had he lain there? Sounds became thunderous in his ears and he heard a voice shout, ‘He cleared this wall. I saw him!' He ran down the entry. Darkness again, darkness that seemed to throb to the movements of figures. He glanced round. A great crowd were behind him. They were running. He could feel their breath upon him—the air was choked with their breathings. Instone Road. If he could reach the bottom he might elude them. He might make the railway again and so along to the Loco Shed.

Suddenly the air was alive with cries. ‘There he is! Catch him! Stop that man! He's murdered a woman.' The crowd came on. Peter vanished again into a side-street. ‘Oh, God!' he said. ‘Oh, God! Oh, Mother! Anthony!' He could see them. They were standing at the door in Hatfields. Their arms were held out to him. Their arms seemed to stretch far out—to touch him. Yes, he could actually feel them. A man barred his path. He knocked him down and ran on. Then he rushed through an open doorway. A family were sitting at supper. They saw a flying form and then it seemed to melt into the very air. He had gone right through the house. Another wall. He began climbing again. ‘Mother!' he shouted. ‘Mother!' He dropped down on to soil. He was on a canal bank. Lights loomed up. He flung himself down, his breast seemed on the point of bursting. ‘Oh, Christ! Christ!' and he hammered the earth with his fist. There was a roar behind him. People were jumping over the walls. He dived into the water, swam under the surface. He reached the opposite bank, climbed another wall and found himself in a long dark street. He ran on. Nothing save those outstretching arms. They drew him on.

St. Sebastian Place. The chapel. Price Street. Hatfields. Doors opened, the streets became flooded with light. Life poured out into them, fragments became massed. The mass moved on, a living flood. It shouted, laughed, cursed. The cries of children merged in this solid phalanx. Hat-fields seemed to tremble before the oncoming waves of people. The arms beckoned, ‘Come! Come!' The bricks became great mirrors through which he could glimpse the sea of faces, thrust forward, upturned, meshed together as one face—a hideous face with a bejewelled hand in its mouth. He began to laugh. Hands reached out, he eluded them and dived into the entry. The pallid light from a lamp fastened to the wall shone down on him. Again that deluge of movements behind him, a forest of hands, faces—teeth. There was the door. ‘Jesus!' he shouted. Somebody pulled at his coat. He gripped the top of the wall. Then he fell into the yard. The light from the kitchen flooded it. The back door was safe. He reached the kitchen door. ‘Open it! Open it!' He kicked, pummelled with his fist. People were piling into the yard. ‘Open it for Christ's sake!' he shouted. Suddenly it opened and he fell in. The door closed. The bolt shot back. ‘God!' he said. ‘God!'

He stood in the kitchen. There was Anthony sitting by the window, and there his mother. She was bent over the fire stirring something in the pan. She swung round and looked at him. ‘What is this?' she said quietly, as though this dramatic entrance was the most natural thing in the world. The yard was black with people. The house seemed to shake under their cries, their loud, insistent hammerings upon the door.

Peter caught his mother by her arms—he began to laugh—his eyes seemed to dance in his head. Suddenly he began shaking her. ‘Mother! Mother! Don't you understand, Mother?' Then she saw his bloody hands, his blood-bespattered coat, his face splashed, yeasty with sweat.

He shouted as his shaking of her became more wild. As though seized by some desperate energy, he began pushing her back towards the sofa. ‘Don't you understand? Mother! We're free.' He loosed his hold upon her, then suddenly grabbed her shoulders and shook her, madly, as though this desperate energy had spilled over, had covered her, covered him, flooded the kitchen, poured over the house. ‘You're free! I tell you!' He stamped his foot. ‘We're free! Free! FREE!'

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CHAPTER I

I

The crowds that surged round the doors of the Round House were good humoured, and full of spirit, and the bitingly cold wind of the November evening did not deter them. They pushed and swayed about the doors. They had been increasing in size for the past hour. As the first of the cars rolled up to the doors the crowd was forced back by the police, firmly, but not too firmly, as was usual when crowds gathered in such places. But this was no ordinary occasion and they could afford to be indulgent. At the sporadic outbursts of feeling, patriotic and otherwise, as well as the sometimes too manifest horseplay, they winked eyes. So long as good humour continued to permeate through the crowd they would remain indulgent. To them its only significance lay in sheer physical weight. But the Gelton Force had so often asserted itself against them, and in no unmistakable manner and authority, that they
could
this evening show a little indulgence. Society, at least that section of Gelton society that mattered, seemed quite safe.

To-night was a special occasion, and if Bumbledom trembled with pride, Geltonian crowds trembled too, upon the precipice of many anticipations. Here, then, was the first car. The crowd started to sway and push, hats were knocked off and feet trodden on, whilst somewhere in its midst a child's wail rent the air. The police did their duty and in due course the first car door opened. There was a momentary silence. A low murmuring sound began, and then an excited member of the audience cried out:

‘Ooh! Why—it's Sir Digby Dick!'

And it was Sir Digby Dick, a man of means, of large affairs, whose big red face had the bovine look of some of his own prize cattle. The crowd stood on its toes, leaned forward. Slowly, the gentleman moved towards the doors of the Hall. He smiled twice, hearing his name bandied about by the excited crowd.

The car rolled away and another took its place. A long black car, bearing the city's crest on its windows and bonnet. The Lord Mayor. There were a few cheers then, and the Mayor passed inside. The excitement had now reached fever pitch, for the cars were rolling up in a steady stream. One dignitary after another got out and went into the Round House.

‘Plenty of money knocking about to-night.'

‘Think this idea's a good one?'

‘Ah, a lot you'll get out of the bloody war.'

‘Ooh! Just look at'er! Just look at her dress!'

‘There's a smasher of a car for you. Know whose that is?'