The rum worked.
“I have militär training,” he said proudly.We couldn’t let him make an enthusiastic job of it then and there, because we did not know what was going on beneath us. The platform might be empty, or there might be a whole group of railwaymen discussing the next day’s football. I leaned over the edge of the concrete while Sandorski sat on my legs. With the top half of my body upside down, I surveyed the station. On our own platform no one was in sight; on the far platform there was some activity around the baggage office–not very strenuous, but sufficient to keep eyes from straying where they had no business.
“All clear for you, General,” I reported, wriggling back to the horizontal.
He dropped onto the roof of the car, and was off it again with first bounce. He could now keep watch on the platforms for us, and signal to me from the narrow space between the back of the car and the buffers at the end of the bay.
When he beckoned, I too dropped and told Lex to follow. Strength or nerve failed him at the last moment, and he stuck with his chest on the edge of the concrete and his legs kicking wildly in air–just where I couldn’t grab them without risk of falling off the top of the car myself. At that moment a porter chose to walk, whistling, round the corner of the station buildings. I caught Lex’s legs as they lashed back, and prayed that he wouldn’t let go his hold on the roof and that the porter wouldn’t look up. For long seconds we formed a leaning, living bridge between restaurant-car and roof until it was safe for me to whisper to him what to do and where to put his feet.
We dived under the van with, at last, no interested public but the station cat. She seemed to think that she could learn a thing or two from our movements, or perhaps considered us as promising kittens and was showing us how an experienced adult would have done the job. At any rate, she put up such a dance of misplaced enthusiasm between station roof and car and buffers that the porter at the far end of the platform was interested and came back and started to call for puss. Thank God cats don’t bark!
We didn’t have a long wait. The second train in was for London–one of those slow and weightily important trains, usually empty, which stop everywhere to pick up the mails. I poked up a very cautious head. The platform was sparsely populated by porters and post-office employees, and there was no convenient crowd of passengers alighting or boarding the train; it couldn’t have been worse. And then a light engine came along, banged into the restaurant-car, was coupled on, and prepared to draw our cover from over our heads.
It was a moment of hopeless, helpless disappointment. We stood up in my lookout post–between the back of the van and the buffers–and waited to be revealed in all our guilty nakedness to the shunter and assistant stationmaster as soon as the dining car drew out. I don’t know who first saw the way of escape. Even Lex didn’t miss it, for he was trying to scramble up before I shoved him from behind. On the far side of the bay was a ledge, hardly wide enough to be called a platform. We had only to walk along that as the car pulled out, and nobody–provided neither driver nor fireman looked to their right–could see us.
It worked. We trotted along by the flank of that friendly restaurant car, and when we were clear of the bay we saw salvation. There was a goods train standing on the far side of the London train, which we couldn’t get a glimpse of from where we had been. We had only to walk up the permanent way between the two trains and get in from the wrong side.
The doors were already shut, and the night mail might start at any moment. We were weary of precautions. We crossed the rails in a bunch. I don’t know if anyone saw us. If he did, he must have been too tired to bother with trespassing passengers. Once between the two trains, the rest was simple. We settled Lex in a steaming hot empty compartment, put his overcoat under his head, and went into another ourselves to breathe freely. Two minutes later the train left.
“Now,” said Sandorski, “where’s that needle and thread?”
Lex by this time had complete trust in us, and was convinced that the life we had led him for the last twenty-four hours was all for his own good. Every one of our actions was consistent with a desperate attempt to pass him through a cordon of police and private enemies, and deliver him to Heyne-Hassingham. Of course–for that was just what we were trying to do. He no longer worried about his briefcase; in any event he could be sure it hadn’t been tampered with, since it had not gone up in a burst of flame.
Sandorski undid our precious brown paper parcel. The bottom of the briefcase, relieved of string, gaped. The stuffing of paper fell out.
“Can you ever make a job of it?” I asked.
“Must,” he answered. “And I made my own shoes in prison camp. How long have I got?”
“Well, expresses take an hour and a half. We can safely add another hour for this train.”
I think I never admired him so much as during that journey. I had no idea that he could be so meticulous. Every stitch that I had cut was lifted out, and with infinite care he drove his needle through the same holes. First he sewed the cardboard roll back to the inner side of the bag, leaving slack the wire between the latch and the incendiary, so that even when the device was set it wouldn’t go off. Then he put back the loose paper and stitched up the seam. The only thing he could not restore exactly as we found it was the sealed tape that ran the length of the roll and round the two ends. We stuck the cut edges of the tape to the cardboard, and hoped that Heyne-Hassingham, in his general state of agitation, wouldn’t notice. The trigger wire of the incendiary still ran through the tape, so it was pretty certain he would cut, withdraw his documents and never look at roll or tape again.
Lex had not seen his briefcase at all since he packed. He had only seen the parcel, which was beginning to look disreputable. We brushed the drying mud from our clothes, remixed it and smeared it artistically here and there over the case to hide the newness of the thread. Then we wrapped up the parcel again, and soaked the lower end in mud and water. When Lex handled it, the paper would certainly disintegrate and the dirt of the case would need no explanation.
While Sandorski was working on his long task I stood in the corridor, in case Lex should take it into his head to get up and disturb us. He didn’t. He was only too thankful to be able to lie down in peace. I visited him occasionally. At Winchester he stared into the night, and burbled something about King Alfred and Law. He was a well-read blighter.
After Basingstoke, where the line from Salisbury joined that from Southampton, we were–potentially, at any rate –in danger again. I felt it was slight. To the police, after checking the likely trains, it must appear that we were still in or around Salisbury. It was certain, however, that there would be a routine control at Waterloo. I wanted to leave the train at one of the suburban stations, but Sandorski wouldn’t have it; he feared that, as the only passengers getting out, we should attract attention.
Three quarters of our job, he said, was now done. Lex had his briefcase and papers seemingly intact, and so long as he kept away from us there was nothing to prevent him from leaving the terminus and taking a taxi to 26 Fulham Park Avenue. The police had no description of him. What happened to us didn’t matter much, but it would be more comfortable and discreet to be arrested in Fulham Park Avenue than elsewhere.
We woke up Lex, who was feeling brighter, and Sandorski gave him instructions in rapid German, which he translated to me afterwards. Early in the morning Lex was to telephone Heyne-Hassingham and tell him that he had escaped during some trouble or other at the landing of the plane, which looked like an attempt to kidnap him. He had got clear, had spent the day in a village, lying low and finding out where he was, and had then taken a late train to London. He was to obey his instructions to hand over his briefcase to Heyne-Hassingham in person, and he was to ask Heyne-Hassingham to come to London to receive it. He was not to talk of his adventures or to mention his address on the telephone, but simply to say he was where he had been told to go in any emergency.