Mr. Standfast
the lake below. Set a certain spring at work and you may find yourself
shot down into the water far below the ice, where your body will rot
till the spring.... That, of course, is an alternative open to you, if
you do not care to wait for my return.”
He lit a fresh cigar, waved his hand, and vanished through the doorway.
As it shut behind him, the sound of his footsteps instantly died away.
The walls must have been as thick as a prison’s.
I suppose I was what people in books call “stunned”. The illumination
during the past few minutes had been so dazzling that my brain could
not master it. I remember very clearly that I did not think about the
ghastly failure of our scheme, or the German plans which had been
insolently unfolded to me as to one dead to the world. I saw a single
picture—an inn in a snowy valley (I saw it as a small place like
Peter’s cottage), a solitary girl, that smiling devil who had left me,
and then the unknown terror of the Underground Railway. I think my
courage went for a bit, and I cried with feebleness and rage. The
hammer in my forehead had stopped for it only beat when I was angry in
action. Now that I lay trapped, the manhood had slipped out of my
joints, and if Ivery had still been in the doorway, I think I would
have whined for mercy. I would have offered him all the knowledge I had
in the world if he had promised to leave Mary alone.
Happily he wasn’t there, and there was no witness of my cowardice.
Happily, too, it is just as difficult to be a coward for long as to be
a hero. It was Blenkiron’s phrase about Mary that pulled me
together—“She can’t scare and she can’t soil”. No, by heavens, she
couldn’t. I could trust my lady far better than I could trust myself. I
was still sick with anxiety, but I was getting a pull on myself. I was
done in, but Ivery would get no triumph out of me. Either I would go
under the ice, or I would find a chance of putting a bullet through my
head before I crossed the frontier. If I could do nothing else I could
perish decently.... And then I laughed, and I knew I was past the
worst. What made me laugh was the thought of Peter. I had been pitying
him an hour ago for having only one leg, but now he was abroad in the
living, breathing world with years before him, and I lay in the depths,
limbless and lifeless, with my number up.
I began to muse on the cold water under the ice where I could go if I
wanted. I did not think that I would take that road, for a man’s
chances are not gone till he is stone dead, but I was glad the way
existed.... And then I looked at the wall in front of me, and, very far
up, I saw a small square window.
The stars had been clouded when I entered that accursed house, but the
mist must have cleared. I saw my old friend Orion, the hunter’s star,
looking through the bars. And that suddenly made me think.
Peter and I had watched them by night, and I knew the place of all the
chief constellations in relation to the St Anton valley. I believed
that I was in a room on the lake side of the Pink Chalet: I must be, if
Ivery had spoken the truth. But if so, I could not conceivably see
Orion from its window.... There was no other possible conclusion, I
must be in a room on the east side of the house, and Ivery had been
lying. He had already lied in his boasting of how he had outwitted me
in England and at the Front. He might be lying about Mary.... No, I
dismissed that hope. Those words of his had rung true enough.
I thought for a minute and concluded that he had lied to terrorise me
and keep me quiet; therefore this infernal contraption had probably its
weak point. I reflected, too, that I was pretty strong, far stronger
probably than Ivery imagined, for he had never seen me stripped. Since
the place was pitch dark I could not guess how the thing worked, but I
could feel the cross-bars rigid on my chest and legs and the side-bars
which pinned my arms to my sides.... I drew a long breath and tried to
force my elbows apart. Nothing moved, nor could I raise the bars on my
legs the smallest fraction.
Again I tried, and again. The side-bar on my right seemed to be less
rigid than the others. I managed to get my right hand raised above the
level of my thigh, and then with a struggle I got a grip with it on the
cross-bar, which gave me a small leverage. With a mighty effort I drove
my right elbow and shoulder against the side-bar. It seemed to give
slightly.... I summoned all my strength and tried again. There was a
crack and then a splintering, the massive bar shuffled limply back, and
my right arm was free to move laterally, though the cross-bar prevented
me from raising it.
With some difficulty I got at my coat pocket where reposed my electric
torch and my pistol. With immense labour and no little pain I pulled
the former out and switched it on by drawing the catch against the
cross-bar. Then I saw my prison house.
It was a little square chamber, very high, with on my left the massive
door by which Ivery had departed. The dark baulks of my rack were
plain, and I could roughly make out how the thing had been managed.
Some spring had tilted up the flooring, and dropped the framework from
its place in the right-hand wall. It was clamped, I observed, by an
arrangement in the floor just in front of the door. If I could get rid
of that catch it would be easy to free myself, for to a man of my
strength the weight would not be impossibly heavy.
My fortitude had come back to me, and I was living only in the moment,
choking down any hope of escape. My first job was to destroy the catch
that clamped down the rack, and for that my only weapon was my pistol.
I managed to get the little electric torch jammed in the corner of the
cross-bar, where it lit up the floor towards the door. Then it was
hell’s own business extricating the pistol from my pocket. Wrist and
fingers were always cramping, and I was in terror that I might drop it
where I could not retrieve it.
I forced myself to think out calmly the question of the clamp, for a
pistol bullet is a small thing, and I could not afford to miss. I
reasoned it out from my knowledge of mechanics, and came to the
conclusion that the centre of gravity was a certain bright spot of
metal which I could just see under the cross-bars. It was bright and so
must have been recently repaired, and that was another reason for
thinking it important. The question was how to hit it, for I could not
get the pistol in line with my eye. Let anyone try that kind of
shooting, with a bent arm over a bar, when you are lying flat and
looking at the mark from under the bar, and he will understand its
difficulties. I had six shots in my revolver, and I must fire two or
three ranging shots in any case. I must not exhaust all my cartridges,
for I must have a bullet left for any servant who came to pry, and I
wanted one in reserve for myself. But I did not think shots would be
heard outside the room; the walls were too thick.
I held my wrist rigid above the cross-bar and fired. The bullet was an
inch to the right of the piece of bright steel. Moving a fraction I
fired again. I had grazed it on the left. With aching eyes glued on the
mark, I tried a third time. I saw something leap apart, and suddenly
the whole framework under which I lay fell loose and mobile.... I was
very cool and restored the pistol to my pocket and took the torch in my
hand before I moved.... Fortune had been kind, for I was free. I turned
on my face, humped my back, and without much trouble crawled out from
under the contraption.
I did not allow myself to think of ultimate escape, for that would only
flurry me, and one step at a time was enough. I remember that I dusted
my clothes, and found that the cut in the back of my head had stopped
bleeding. I retrieved my hat, which had rolled into a corner when I
fell.... Then I turned my attention to the next step.
The tunnel was impossible, and the only way was the door. If I had
stopped to think I would have known that the chances against getting
out of such a house were a thousand to one. The pistol shots had been
muffled by the cavernous walls, but the place, as I knew, was full of
servants and, even if I passed the immediate door, I would be collared
in some passage. But I had myself so well in hand that I tackled the
door as if I had been prospecting to sink a new shaft in Rhodesia.
It had no handle nor, so far as I could see, a keyhole.... But I
noticed, as I turned my torch on the ground, that from the clamp which
I had shattered a brass rod sunk in the floor led to one of the
door-posts. Obviously the thing worked by a spring and was connected
with the mechanism of the rack.
A wild thought entered my mind and brought me to my feet. I pushed the
door and it swung slowly open. The bullet which freed me had released
the spring which controlled it.
Then for the first time, against all my maxims of discretion, I began
to hope. I took off my hat and felt my forehead burning, so that I
rested it for a moment on the cool wall.... Perhaps my luck still held.
With a rush came thoughts of Mary and Blenkiron and Peter and
everything we had laboured for, and I was mad to win.
I had no notion of the interior of the house or where lay the main door
to the outer world. My torch showed me a long passage with something
like a door at the far end, but I clicked it off, for I did not dare to
use it now. The place was deadly quiet. As I listened I seemed to hear
a door open far away, and then silence fell again.
I groped my way down the passage till I had my hands on the far door. I
hoped it might open on the hall, where I could escape by a window or a
balcony, for I judged the outer door would be locked. I listened, and
there came no sound from within. It was no use lingering, so very
stealthily I turned the handle and opened it a crack.
It creaked and I waited with beating heart on discovery, for inside I
saw the glow of light. But there was no movement, so it must be empty.
I poked my head in and then followed with my body.
It was a large room, with logs burning in a stove, and the floor thick
with rugs. It was lined with books, and on a table in the centre a
reading-lamp was burning. Several dispatch-boxes stood on the table,
and there was a little pile of papers. A man had been here a minute
before, for a half-smoked cigar was burning on the edge of the
inkstand.
At that moment I recovered complete use of my wits and all my
self-possession. More, there returned to me some of the old
devil-may-careness which before had served me well. Ivery had gone, but
this was his sanctum. Just as on the roofs of Erzerum I had burned to
get at Stumm’s papers, so now it was borne in on me that at all costs I
must look at that pile.
I advanced to the table and picked up the topmost paper. It was a
little typewritten blue slip with the lettering in italics, and in a
corner a curious, involved stamp in red ink. On it I read:
“_Die Wildvögel müssen heimkehren._”
At the same moment I heard steps and the door opened on the far side, I
stepped back towards the stove, and fingered the pistol in my pocket.
A man entered, a man with a scholar’s stoop, an unkempt beard, and
large sleepy dark eyes. At the sight of me he pulled up and his whole
body grew taut. It was the Portuguese Jew, whose back I had last seen
at the smithy door in Skye, and who by the mercy of God had never seen
my face.
I stopped fingering my pistol, for I had an inspiration. Before he
could utter a word I got in first.
“_Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde,_” I said.
His face broke into a pleasant smile, and he replied:
“_Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch._”
“Ach,” he said in German, holding out his hand, “you have come this
way, when we thought you would go by Modane. I welcome you, for I know