The Tiger in the Well, Page 36

  "We promised the man," said Con. "We have to make the telephone call."

  "As soon as we find her," said Tony. "She'll be safe, and we'll find her soon enough. I'm going to have forty winks."

  "Hey - they've been here! Look! The fire's still--"

  A dog growled below them. They looked at each other.

  "There's some of 'em still there!" said a man's voice.

  "All right, come on down," said another voice, an official voice, a police voice. "Else I'll come up and get yer, and yer won't like that. I'm not having baby-stealing on my beat. You're nabbed, that's what you are. I've gotcher."

  For days now, Sarah-Jane Russell had stood outside Orchard House. That odious man Parrish had paid her off, her and Ellie and Mrs Perkins, and told her to be about her business, find another job, the position of nurse was filled.

  And no one knew where Miss Lockhart was; no one knew whether Harriet was safe; no one could help at all. Sarah-Jane didn't know what to do. Ellie was staying in the town, and Mrs Perkins had gone to stay with her cousin in Reading. Sarah-Jane was staying with her married sister, but there wasn't really room. . .

  There was no law against her standing outside the gate, though. Watching them cart away all the family's possessions. Watching them bring in vanloads of property from somewhere else. Watching new servants appear, take down curtains, change locks, repaint the woodwork a vile shade of red. Sarah-Jane stood there for days, watching, noting, weeping.

  Parrish saw her eventually, and sent for a policeman to tell her to move away. She knew the policeman: he was Ellie's sister-in-law's cousin. They were both embarrassed. She went away then, but came back later, and kept out of sight in the bushes.

  She didn't know what she was going to do. But someone had to stay there. Someone had to keep watch. She had vague thoughts of waiting till they brought Harriet there (she had no doubt that they would, in the end; they seemed to be able to do everything they wanted) and kidnapping her, snatching her away, running off somewhere. But she knew she probably wouldn't. She wasn't brave enough, not on her own. That sort of thing only happened in Jim's stories. Oh, if only they'd never gone away. . .

  She arrived outside the house that morning to find that something had changed. There was smoke coming out of the chimney, and a carriage in the drive. Servants were moving about in the dining-room.

  As she crouched down in the bushes outside the gate and peered through, the front door opened and Parrish came out.

  He stood in the doorway, stretching, yawning, scratching himself. He looked as if he owned the place, and he didn't care who knew it. She longed to throw something at him. She longed to run out there and shout at him, attack him, beat him down. She even felt for a stone; but then a woman came out, in an apron like that of a nurse, and said something to him. He nodded and went back inside, closing the door.

  Did that mean Harriet was there? Had they got her after all?

  Sarah-Jane felt tears come to her eyes. That something like this could happen in England - that the law actually helped it on its way. . . She gulped and swallowed hard. Her head sank down into her hands. It was too much.

  "Sarah-Jane?"

  Her heart thumped against her throat, and she spun round. Then her mouth fell open, she felt suddenly dizzy, and she put a hand on the wall to steady herself.

  For standing in the road, a knapsack over his shoulder and a straw hat on his head, was a slim young man with bleached hair and a sun-darkened face and clear green eyes.

  "What the bloody hell's going on?" he said.

  "Jim! Oh Jim -"

  And she flung herself at him and clung, trembling and sobbing and laughing. He'd never been so surprised in his life.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  INDIAN INK

  It was almost a minute before she could speak. She kept laughing, crying, clinging to him - and glancing back at the house, so that he knew without asking that something was wrong in there. He pulled her out of sight, back into the bushes, and made her let go of him and sit on a stone.

  "We got back to Southampton last night," he said. "Mr Webster's still there supervising the luggage; I came back early with Charlie Bertram. I was going to give you all a surprise. But didn't you get our letters? What's going on?"

  "We haven't seen any letters for weeks - they must have thrown them away - Jim, they've taken everything--"

  "Calm down. Stop gabbling. You're not making any sense at all. Tell me the whole thing, and start at the beginning."

  She took a deep breath.

  "Yes. Sorry. Of course. Oh, Lord, I don't know where she is even--"

  "Get on with it," he snarled.

  "Yes. I will. It began. . . Oh, it was the man with the divorce papers. He came one morning. . ."

  As she told it all, stumbling and forgetting and going back to fill in details but trying to get it clear and tell it plainly, he found himself at first incredulous, then outraged, then chilled - and finally murderous.

  "You mean that bastard's in there now?"

  "Yes. He must have come last night. There's a whole lot of them in there; he's got new servants - all our furniture's gone, every stick of it - it's all his stuff--"

  "Has he got Harriet?"

  "I don't know. There's a woman there like a nurse, so perhaps he has. What are you going to do?"

  "Throw him out."

  He took a clasp-knife from his knapsack and hacked a stout stick from the nearest tree.

  "But Jim, there are lots of them in there - he's got a gang--"

  "Just watch," he said.

  He swung the knapsack over his shoulder and stepped out into the road. She'd never seen him like this: every atom in him seemed to be crackling and blazing with fury. It frightened her. She stumbled after him - and then stopped suddenly.

  A man stood in the road in front of them. Not Parrish; a man she'd never seen before, elegant, dark and somehow dangerous-looking. He was looking at Jim with a speculative expression, but he didn't move out of the way.

  "Who the hell are you?" said Jim.

  "My name's Mendel. Jonathan Mendel."

  Sarah-Jane saw Jim's head lift as if he recognized the name. He was still electric with anger, but he was puzzled now too.

  "Kid Mendel?" he said. "From Soho?"

  The man nodded.

  "Are you mixed up with this?"

  "Yes. Wait a minute," he said, coldly and firmly, as Jim took a step towards him. "I don't know who you are, but you look as if you're about to go and do some damage to that man Parrish. I had the same idea. But I'd remind you that we're both in sight of the house, and till we understand each other's position, I suggest we move aside."

  Jim took a breath, and nodded. Mendel lifted his hat to Sarah-Jane. He looked like a scholar of some kind, with his balding head, his intelligent eyes; but a tough, worldly one. She couldn't place him at all. They moved out of sight of the house, behind the wall again.

  "Well?" said Jim.

  "If you give me a couple of minutes, I'll tell you everything I know about this business," said Mendel. "Then you can tell me who you are, or not, as you please. And you can decide whether or not you'd like some help. I've got half a dozen men around this house, and if you know who I am, you'll know what sort of men they are."

  Jim whistled quietly. "All right," he said. "Let's hear it."

  Sarah-Jane was completely nonplussed. Despite the man's suave expression, the elegant overcoat, the beautiful hat, there was something definitely frightening about him.

  He began to speak. It took nearly five minutes. He explained about Goldberg, about the Tzaddik, about what he'd heard that Sally was doing, about Harriet, about Rebecca and the Katz family, about Parrish's stealing Harriet. Sarah-Jane gasped then, and caught Jim's hand.

  "Miss Russell here's the child's nurse," said Jim. "Carry on."

  "We were waiting here, watching, as Mr Goldberg instructed. We saw Parrish arrive - but we didn't see the child. It might have been that it was too dark, or it might hav
e been that they've left her somewhere else. That's why I haven't given the order to go in yet; we just don't know. As soon as it's possible, I'll send a man to telephone and see if there's any news from the other parties."

  "I see. Who's this Goldberg?"

  "Many things. A refugee. A journalist, a politician. Even a kind of bandit. I respect him greatly."

  Jim digested this. Then he put out his hand.

  "Jim Taylor," he said. "Where I come in is this. I live here, I'm Miss Lockhart's oldest pal, I'm the child's godfather. I've been away in South America and I've just got back, and this is what I find. Yes - you're right - I was going to do some damage. Was that an offer of help?"

  "It certainly was."

  "Then I'm greatly obliged. How many blokes have you got?"

  "Six."

  "Then what we'll do is this. There's going to be no question of breaking and entering. I don't believe in going outside the law, do you?"

  "No, no," said Mendel. There was some complicated kind of understanding between them that Sarah-Jane couldn't fathom, but they both seemed to be smiling somewhere, even though it didn't show.

  "Out of the question," Jim went on. "So I invite you and your associates to join me for a spot of breakfast, since it's such a miserable bloody morning, and since I can ask who I like into my own home. Only we're feeling like a bit of a lark, so we don't go in the front door, we go over the back wall and up the side and in through a first-floor window. Then, my goodness, we find some strange furniture on the premises. How shocking. We better sling it out the window. Then we find some bloody stranger galloping up the stairs to see what's going on. If he has the nerve to offer us violence, provoking most justly our wrath and indignation against him, he can have a bucketful."

  While Mendel called up his men, Jim trimmed his stick and swung it once or twice, testing the balance.

  "I usually carry a knuckleduster in a fight," he told the gangster. "But they're no use against thirty-foot snakes or poison frogs, so I left it behind. This'll do."

  Sarah-Jane looked around the little group of Soho criminals. Hardened, scarred, they looked as if they'd been pickled in sin for years; and Jim, with his suntanned skin and the wicked glitter in his eyes, looked like a pirate captain.

  "Right, gentlemen," he said. "It gives me great pleasure to invite you to breakfast. Sarah-Jane, as soon as we get in, you go and look for Harriet. You never know. If she's there, stay with her till it's safe to come out."

  Her heart was thumping; she didn't know whether it was fear, or excitement, or both. She walked with Jim, Mr Mendel and the others alongside the wall, down the brick-walled lane, and through the wicket gate into the thick shrubbery at the bottom of the garden.

  Jim pointed to the glass-and-iron structure by the garden wall to their right.

  "If we get on top of that wall, it's no more than a stroll along to the bathroom window up there - see it? By the ivy? Course, if he's in the bath, we'll have to close our eyes when we climb in. All right, Sarah-Jane?"

  She nodded. She wasn't sure about heights, but it wasn't very high after all: ten feet or so. And it was out of sight of the kitchen and the dining-room, which was where they all seemed to be.

  Jim found the old wooden ladder in the grass and propped it up.

  "Here we go then," he said.

  Sally's head struck a lump of masonry and then she was underwater and the nightdress was clinging round her and she couldn't get free, struggling, struggling - then her face broke surface and somewhere there was solid ground underfoot.

  She flung her arm up and grabbed for whatever was there - nothing - then there was: something hard - she got her fingers on it and clung, in the roaring crashing swirl of water.

  Something to stand on - something to cling to.

  "I'm not going to die!" she shouted. "I'm not going to! I bloody won't!"

  Then because the foothold was slipping and because she found a better place for her hand a few inches along, she kicked off and tried to haul herself up.

  If only she could see; for all she knew there was safety a foot away on one side and certain death just as close on the other. If you thought like that, though, you'd be paralysed. So she clung to her handhold (an iron bar, wedged in somewhere among the rubble) and little by little, gritting her teeth, ignoring the shaking in her muscles, she pulled herself up and half out of the water.

  She felt about in front of her, and found space. Behind the iron bar was a mass of bricks, mortar, rubble, plaster, but there was room above it.

  One more effort and she was clear, bruised and grazed and numb with cold; she lay panting on the gritty rocky surface and regained her breath.

  She rolled over on to her back. Stones, the sharp ends of bricks, pressed into her ribs - but there was light above her.

  Real, too.

  It didn't go away when she opened her eyes: a little grey patch of daylight far above. . .

  She sat up, craning to see, and cracked her head on something, starting off a fall of stones. She cried out with the pain and swayed, nearly losing her balance and falling back into the water.

  She put her hands up, sheltering her head, and looked again. No doubt about it: this was the lift shaft, and up there was the sky.

  "Help!" she shouted, and again, "Help! Help!"

  Though if the whole house had collapsed, there might be no one there to answer.

  "All right," she said aloud. "I'll get out. You're not killing me down here like a rat."

  Her voice sounded muffled and enclosed, and drowned in any case by the water, but it felt good to speak.

  "Stand up," she told herself. "Go on. If you can see a light, you can climb up there. Move, you lazy baggage. If you're too fat to get through, hang there and yell. Now go."

  Feeling her way, trying not to bang her head, she carefully stood upright on the crumbling, precarious rubble and looked up. She could smell fresh air; it was wonderful. She began to climb.

  Parrish wasn't in the bath. There wasn't anyone upstairs at all, as Jim found out within a minute, while the others were climbing in. They were good, he thought: quiet, practised. . . Well, they're professionals, they should be.

  "There isn't even a nursery prepared," he told them in a whisper. "Her bed's gone, her toys aren't here. . . I don't think he's going to bring her here at all. Sarah-Jane, stay upstairs anyway. Look after me knapsack, will you? Don't drop it - there's a shrunken head in there for Ellie."

  She took it doubtfully while he conferred with Mendel. Sarah-Jane had been right about the furniture: all the stuff here was new, he said. So they'd throw it out. They'd start with a great heavy ugly wardrobe in the main bedroom. It should land on the drive outside the dining room.

  "I'd love to see 'em jump," Jim said longingly. "I'd pay a quid to see that. . . Come on. We'll start with the wardrobe and carry on from there."

  They tiptoed along the landing and into the room. Sarah-Jane watched from the landing. She had a good view of the hall, and of the front garden, too, through the landing window. She could hear laughter from the dining-room, and the smell of frying bacon came up from the kitchen as a maidservant carried a tray along the hall. She felt alight with excitement.

  There was the creak of floorboards; would they hear it? Then a scraping sound. . .

  And then a mighty crash from outside.

  And a ringing silence all through the house; and after a second or two, a shout of surprise from the dining room. And then more objects began to fall from the windows, and as Sarah-Jane looked out, it seemed to be raining furniture: a bed, two chairs, a dressing-table, half a dozen drawers one after the other and then the chest they came from, with their contents - ties, shirts, underwear - fluttering down over the lawn like dead birds.

  And more furniture flew out: a bedside table, a bureau, another bed, a linen-press, another chest of drawers, a bamboo chair, and then the dining-room door flew open.

  "What the hell's going on?" shouted Parrish, and stopped as he saw Sarah-Jane at the to
p of the stairs.

  Three or four men rushing out behind him bumped him forward a step or two, and then stopped themselves. He had a napkin in his hand. Without taking his eyes off Sarah-Jane, he wiped his mouth carefully.

  "Right," he said.

  The glare in his eyes - greed and triumph and anger - frightened her, and she looked back along the landing. Then there was a huge crash as something heavy struck the drive outside, and all the men jumped.

  "There's someone else up there," said one of them.

  Parrish flung his napkin down and leapt for the stairs. Sarah-Jane stepped back nervously, and found Jim beside her.

  "Who's this, Sarah-Jane?" he said.

  Parrish stopped, halfway up the stairs, and looked up.

  "It's Mr Parrish," Sarah-Jane said. Her voice was hardly audible. She stood back out of the way as Mr Mendel and the others came to the top of the stairs. She'd never seen men fighting before, but she knew she was going to now.

  Jim set off down. Sarah-Jane realized why he'd made them come in through the window: it gave him the position of the rightful occupant and made Parrish look like the intruder; it showed the truth of things. He stopped a couple of steps above Parrish.

  "Who are you?" said Parrish.

  "You don't come into someone's house and then demand to know who they are," said Jim. "I live here. You don't. I'll give you five minutes to get all your men and all your staff off the premises. Then we throw you out. That's a handsome clock you've got standing down there. Five minutes, by that. Move."

  A maidservant came out of the kitchen, apprehensive, and stopped with her hand to her mouth. Sarah-Jane saw her from above, saw her glance back, saw a man's head appear there in the shadow behind her, look past her, and then retreat silently.

  She wondered if she should tell Jim. Parrish was going downstairs now, slowly, backwards. When he reached the hall floor, he went to join his men at the door of the dining room, and all of them watched as Jim and Mendel and the others came down after them.

  She saw Jim standing easily at the foot of the stairs, holding his stick, waiting; she saw Mendel standing next to him, arms folded, with the air of a gentleman inspecting a painting at the Royal Academy; she saw his men ranged behind him, brutal and frightening and intense; she saw someone behind Parrish slip an object into his hand. . .

  And then he was holding a pistol. In a moment, all the power had swung the other way.