At first Georgia had thought he was bluffing; then that he was off his head with megalomania. As he talked, however, revealing Plan B and the depth of his own infamy, she realised he was neither a bluffer nor a lunatic. She perceived, too, the real secret of the clock-golf course. It was a symbol not so much of the E.B. organisation as of his own intention to betray it. He had not anticipated that any one would read the secret of that green turf, yet it was a revelation—an unconscious one, perhaps—of his double treachery.
For Plan B, as he had said, was simple enough. Chilton intended the rising to take place in the way mapped out by Plan A. Arms would have been distributed from the secret dumps to the revolutionaries a week or two beforehand, while his agents were creating a panic on the Stock Exchange and disseminating rumours that the new Popular Government was on the point of involving us in a war with the Axis Powers, taking away the small man’s savings, socialising industry. Then, when the country had been keyed up to the right pitch of bewilderment, indecision, hysteria, the rising would break out. Leading Cabinet Ministers would be kidnapped or assassinated, Broadcasting House and the B.B.C. stations in the provinces would be occupied, the Civil Service thrown into confusion, the daily papers compelled to close down or print under E.B. orders; and finally, when the nerve centres of government were paralysed, an ultimatum would be delivered to parliament backed up by flights of bombers over Westminster. Parliament must hand over to the E.B. council, or they would be destroyed.
“At this point,” said Chilton, with that infectious smile which Georgia now loathed like the plague, “at this point, when the E.B. await the setting-up of their dictator, I shall intervene. I shall call a conference of the E.B. leaders, put it to them that they must not be led by their initial successes into thinking that the whole country is theirs, and suggest a compromise. My key men on the E.B. Inner Council ate, of course, aware of this manœuvre and have a majority vote. They will vote me into the position of Guardian of Public Safety. A good idea, ‘First Guardian,’ don’t you think? The English like the idea of being looked after, without having to admit any filial piety. You see the point of all this? I shall be announced to Britain, first as a mediator, then as First Guardian of the Committee of Public Safety. The politicians have utterly failed to control the situation; the country is in a state of anarchy; the public confusion and my own personal popularity will do the rest. The man in the street will have no idea, certainly no proof, that I was behind the original rising. The E.B. rank-and-file may think what they like—they’ll have no proof either—that’s why I have been so careful not to let the identity of their leader be revealed to them. Most of them will accept me, either as their real leader or as the best compromise. A few may kick; they’ll be dealt with. I should add that my partners—my future partners in the Axis—are awaiting events with great interest. Should we have more difficulty than I expect in overcoming opposition at the outset, they have promised to lend me a hand.”
“I see,” said Georgia disgustedly. “All you and your precious E.B. amount to is a sort of Fifth Column, first to give your jack-booted friends an opportunity for attacking England, and then to stab us in the back while we’re being attacked. You’re even more contemptible than I imagined.”
Chilton Canteloe rose to his feet, the silk dressing-gown rustling, the revolver steady in his hand. He went on as if she had not spoken.
“Another advantage of my position will be that I can get rid in a perfectly legal manner of any of my associates whom I distrust. Our countrymen dislike purges; but, in a state of emergency, they’re willing to bury their heads in the sand and let someone else do the dirty work for them—provided it’s done with all the legal paraphernalia, a chaplain in attendance, and officials to sign the document in triplicate. Yes, if any one cuts up rough, I can dispose of him in the most correct manner. Far more correctly, I’m afraid, than I shall dispose of you, Georgia.” Chilton had quite recovered his good humour. “Oh dear, what a pity I have to kill you. I feel you would have inspired me to even greater heights.”
“When you’ve finished talking, you might get on with it. Or haven’t you the nerve? I suppose even your dirty work must be done by proxy.”
“What a heroine! Game to the last! You ought to be in a book. I’ve not had time to arrange the details of your demise. And I’m sure you want to read Plan A. We’ll say half an hour, shall we? It’ll give me time to consult Hargreaves Steele. Lucky he stayed over to-night. I don’t know whether he’s got any of his maggots with him. If not, I’m sure a fertile brain like his will be able to think up something. In the meanwhile——”
He motioned with his revolver. Georgia was almost tempted to fling herself at him. A bullet would be better than Professor Steele’s iniquities. But she restrained herself. She had half an hour, and she knew Chilton’s secret now—knew him for a double traitor, a traitor both to his country and to the E.B. movement itself. She must give her knowledge a last chance of survival. She picked up her bag and the papers, and walked in front of him out of the room.
The revolver close behind her, she was forced to walk into the east wing of Chilton Ashwell. The wing was temporarily closed; she knew that if she called for help it would not be heard. They reached the top floor, and he pushed her into a small bedroom.
“The light’s in working order, I see. You’ll be able to read,” he said. “I’m afraid there are no sheets on the bed; but perhaps that’s just as well—a dangerous girl like you might tear them up for a rope and let herself out of the window like heroines do in books when there’s a fire. Well, so long. You’ve had your adventure, haven’t you? Oh, but one minute, though.”
With a sense of revulsion that stiffened her body to stone, she felt his hand ruffling through her hair. He gave it a little tweak, just enough to hurt her.
“No, I thought you didn’t use hairpins. But I had to make sure. You’re such a resourceful girl, aren’t you? And they say locks can be opened with hairpins. Now just let me look at that bag of yours.”
Not taking his eyes off hers or deflecting the muzzle of the revolver, he ran his hand through her bag, laid out its contents on the mantelpiece. Then he glanced at them.
“No skeleton keys. No tablet of cyanide,” he said, crowing over her a little. He was not a graceful winner. “No, Georgia, you disappoint me. You’re not such an efficient spy as I should have thought. In half an hour’s time, then.”
CHAPTER XV
THE EPISODE OF THE FOGGY MORNING
LOCKED IN THE stuffy little bedroom, Georgia’s first instinct was to get some air. Opening the window, she looked out. It was a dark, foggy night. The wall went sheer down; there was no parapet, no drainpipe or moulding to offer a slight hope of escape that way. She bit her lip thoughtfully. If the worst came to the worst, she could throw herself out of the window; better this than being left to Hargreaves Steele’s devices. Perhaps that was what Chilton wanted her to do. She imagined him waiting for the fall, taking off her clothes, dressing her body in her nightgown. He could say she had been sleep-walking, it would save him a lot of trouble.
With an effort she wrenched her mind away from these useless speculations. She looked at her wrist-watch. It was nearly quarter to three. How time flies. At ten past three. . . . Forget it, you still have time. She examined the lock of the door. It was a stout, old-fashioned one. Chilton Ashwell was built to last. And there was nothing in the room with which the lock could be forced. There was nothing in the room but an empty wash-stand, a small arm-chair, a cupboard, and the bed with a pile of blankets on one end.
The foggy night-air blowing in made her shiver. She did not like to shut the window; with it open, she felt not quite so hopelessly a prisoner. She lay down on the bed and pulled the blankets over her. She tried to think of Nigel, the Devonshire cottage, the lovely landscape now drawn out in the clean lines of winter. But Chilton Canteloe’s smiling, merciless face came between her and the comforting vision. His words wove backwards and forwards in her head, like an ar
gument one has thought of too late. “A heroine,” he had called her mockingly. “You’ve had your adventure.” “Like heroines do in books when there’s a fire.”
A fire! Georgia’s heart leapt up. He had all unwittingly offered her a hope of release. By heaven, he should have his blasted fire! She couldn’t force the lock, but she might burn down the whole door. Her hand went to her mouth, swollen where Chilton had hit her. Fire was the one thing she had always, from a child, been terrified of. Well, there was always the open window if she failed.
But how could she start a fire? You can’t just set a match to a door. On the mantelpiece were laid out the contents of her bag, amongst them a nail-file and a petrol-lighter. Thank goodness she had filled it this morning. She stabbed the file into the mattress on which she had been lying, ripped it along, pulled out the flock in handfuls and piled it against the door. She opened the cupboard doors. The shelves were lined with paper. She crumpled paper under the flock, unscrewed her lighter and poured the petrol over the heap. Then she put a match to it.
In the draught from the window a flame blazed up. Carefully she nursed its precarious life, adding paper, then a drawer from the wash-stand, then, as the fire began to draw more steadily, piling the rest of the mattress on it. Would Chilton and Steele hear the crackling, wherever they were? Skirmishing flames began to venture farther afield, licking along the wooden panelling on either side of the door. Fog and smoke stung Georgia’s eyes, rasped her throat. The crescent of fire was advancing towards her in stealthy little rushes. It was coming too fast. No, it was dawdling, Chilton would be back before . . .
Hurriedly Georgia stuffed the papers inside her dress, stowed in her pocket the money that lay on the mantelpiece; she could not be encumbered with a bag now. The door was a sheet of flame now, and in a few minutes the whole room would be a furnace. It was either the door or the window for her. She wrapped the blankets close about her head and body, and threw herself against the blazing door. The panels gave, but the lock still held firm. Sobbing with the agony of flame and smoke, Georgia recoiled, reeled back to the window, gulped the harsh, foggy air. Then she picked up the arm-chair and ran at the door again, ramming it with the chair. This time, in a shower of sparks and a great swirl of smoke, the door fell outwards.
Georgia flung down the blankets and sped along the landing, down the narrow stairs. At the bottom was a green baize-covered door which shut off this part of the house. Georgia felt for the handle, turned it. Chilton had locked the door from the outside. She was still in the trap and soon all the landing overhead would be ablaze. She turned against the wall, all the fight knocked out of her, and buried her head in her hands. Her hands, stretched up against the wall, encountered a metal frame, felt upwards. It was a fire-extinguisher. It would be as much use against that inferno as a glass of water. Perhaps she could smash open this door with it, though. She took it down from its stand, but at that moment she heard footsteps on the far side of the door, and then the key turned.
“Can’t you smell smoke?” said the voice of Hargreaves Steele.
“Don’t tell me that little bitch has——”
It all happened in a moment. Georgia had been crouching against the corner of the wall, hoping they would pass her in the dark. But, as Chilton came through the door behind Professor Steele, he switched on the light. In that instant Georgia banged the knob of the extinguisher hard against the wall. Startled, the two men wheeled round on her, and she directed the stream of liquid full into Chilton Canteloe’s eyes, then, as he fell back moaning, clawing at his face, she let Professor Steele have it.
She slipped between their stumbling bodies, locked the door on them, and ran lightly towards the main staircase, switching off lights as she passed. First to her bedroom, where she hurried on her fur coat. No time to pack a bag. David Renton slept on the floor above, the servants high up in another part of the house. As for Chilton and Steele—let them burn, she thought coldly. But the rest ought to be warned. A plan formed itself in her head, its salient points miraculously emerging like a bold landscape out of mist.
Letting herself out of the front door, Georgia ran round the west wing of the house and down the gravelled drive to the garages. She pulled the chain of the great iron bell. Presently the head of Chilton Canteloe’s chauffeur appeared at a window above.
“What the hell? Oh, beg pardon, Mrs. Strangeways.”
“Quick! The house is on fire! The east wing. We can’t get through to the fire brigade. Something’s gone wrong with the telephone. Get a car out.”
The man came clattering down the stairs. Georgia heard the scrape of the garage door being slid open.
“Shall I drive you, m’m? Best run into Ashwell and call up the brigades from there.”
“No, I’ll manage alone. Now wake up every one else who sleeps here. Jump to it, man. One of you run over to the house, and make sure they’re all roused up there. Tell the rest to make a relay of buckets.”
“We’ve got an auxiliary fire-engine here, m’m.”
“Good. Just start up the car for me first.”
The self-starter whirred. Georgia leapt into the driver’s seat of the big Rolls. Above the sound of the engine she could hear the chauffeur’s shouts and the clanging of the alarm bell. All that din would drown for a while, at any rate, whatever noise Chilton and Steele might be making. Whether the fire or the rescuers reached them first was not of vital importance to her at the moment. She had had to allow them this chance of being rescued, in order to get hold of a car. It would give her a good start at least.
She spun the car out of the yard into the main drive. Fog steamed and streamed in front of her, blunting the beams of the headlights, but Georgia’s eye for country, that printed its vivid maps on her memory, enabled her to swing along the curving drive at nearly forty miles an hour. Nearing the park gates, she was seized with apprehension lest Chilton should have already escaped from the burning wing and telephoned the lodge-keeper to stop her.
Yes, the massive iron gates were locked. Well, of course, they always were at night. She kept her finger pressed on the bell till the lodge-keeper emerged.
“Quick! Where’s the key? The house is on fire. I’m off to ring up the brigade. All our telephones are out of order.”
The old man, stupid with sleep, peered at her fire-blackened face, scratched his head.
“What’s to do, m’m?” he said.
“Chilton Ashwell is on fire,” she yelled at him. “You’re to go up to the house at once. His lordship’s orders. Now fetch the key, for heaven’s sake.”
He fetched it. Georgia sighed with relief. It had not occurred to the old man that they might try ringing up the fire stations from the lodge telephone. She heard his feet clattering away into the fog. Opening the gates, she drove the car through. She locked them behind her and threw the key away into the bracken. There were two other exits from the park, but her pursuers would naturally come first to this one which opened on to the main road.
Pushing the car to the very limit of safety along the Nottingham road, with the windscreen open so that she could see better through the fog, Georgia decided on her next move. On a clear morning, she might have risked driving straight to London. But this fog would slow her down too much. If Chilton was rescued, he would have the E.B. out after her in a twinkling, would probably inform the police too that his car had been stolen, and the car was so easily recognisable. Her first job must be to get rid of it, then.
She stopped at the public call-box in Ashwell to ring up the fire-brigades. They would at least add to the confusion, and possibly hamper Chilton a bit. Then she sped on towards Nottingham. She drove the car into the yard of the L.N.E.R. station. Luggage. She would be dreadfully conspicuous without any luggage at this time of the morning. Conspicuous! And her grimy face, too. For all she knew her eyebrows and half her hair might have been burnt off. Switching on the inside light a moment she found a mirror. Dear me, I look like the morning after a Witches’ Sabbath. What a hag! She b
egan to rub her face with a handkerchief. Before she was half clean, however, another idea struck her.
A hatless, rather grimy woman arriving at a station at about four o’clock in the morning is bound to be pretty conspicuous anyway. Well, I must trade on that. If the eyes of the railway officials are going to come out on stalks, let them. I daren’t bank on Chilton having been destroyed in the fire. Suppose he’s survived it. He’ll certainly expect me to make for London: he’s thorough, so he’ll have the trains watched as well as the roads. Therefore I dare not take a London train, unless there’s a fast one leaving here very shortly. On the other hand, it’d be no harm for me to give the impression that I’m going to London.
Georgia got out of the car, opened the boot, and extracted from it one of the suitcases with which it was fitted. At the booking office she inquired about the next train to London. It did not run for nearly an hour. She bought a third-class ticket, and walked down towards the platform. The ticket-collector stared curiously at her face, as she complained how bad was the service to London: her car had broken down, and it was most urgent she should get up there quickly. Her dirty face and her lady-like voice made a contrast which impressed itself upon the ticket-collector. His private opinion was that she’d taken a drop too much and smashed her car up. Georgia was, indeed, reeling a little from fatigue as she descended the steps, though her brain was still too keyed-up to feel it.
The long platform was deserted, its lights dismally marooned in the fog. Georgia cleaned herself up in the ladies’ room, then strolled towards the far end of the platform. A fog-signal smacked dully from somewhere out in the gloom, and there was the distant clatter of a train. Glancing about her, Georgia hurried down the ramp, slipped like a wraith across the metals to an up platform. The train rumbled in and came to a halt, standing there with that derelict and lifeless look of trains in the small hours of the morning. It was a slow to Manchester, a yawning porter told her. As well Manchester as anywhere else: she could lose herself in a city that size, get a breathing-space, put through a call to Sir John; and the E.B. would not be looking for her yet in that direction. Wearily she got into the train. Sitting there, clanking slowly through the fog, she began to feel the smart of the burns on her forearms. It reminded her that to-night had been real, not the phantasmagoria of fear and violence it seemed. She was out in the open now against her enemies, England’s enemies.