Damsel in Distress Read online

  “It’s mighty kind of you to offer, young fella, but I guess it’s not something that can be fixed on the spot. Me, I’m the financial wizard, don’t pretend to understand the mechanical stuff, but Crawford, my technical man, was driving us. Say, you’ve met him.”

  “Yes, you introduced us.” He hadn’t pursued the acquaintance, not having taken to the American engineer, despite his enviably extensive knowledge of motor-cars’ design and manufacture.

  “Crawford knows autos if anyone does. He went off with some broken part or other to hike to the nearest garage.”

  “I might as well have a dekko.” Phillip already had his aged tweed jacket off. He tossed it into the Studebaker and rolled up his sleeves. He wasn’t about to pass up a good excuse to examine an unfamiliar engine.

  Gloria came and stood beside him. “Mr. Crawford said something about the radiator,” she said uncertainly. “Didn’t he, Poppa?”

  “Beats me, honey.”

  “That’s it.” Phillip pointed. “Look, the hose is gone. It must have split. I think I have a spare in my tool-box which just might fit. Let’s give it a try.”

  “Atta-boy!” said Mr. Arbuckle with a nod of approval. “That’s what I like to hear. Be Prepared. It’s a wunnerful motto, yes sirree, and not just for Boy Scouts.”

  “Yes, sir.” Phillip grinned at him. He was growing quite fond of the old bird.

  He fetched a couple of lengths of different-sized hose, a knife, spanner, and screwdriver from the tool-kit attached to the Swift’s running board. As he bent over the Studebaker, a brown Ford motor-van with FARRIS, BUTCHERS painted on the side panel came along the lane and stopped.

  A burly man, shabbily dressed, stepped down. Touching his cap to Arbuckle and Gloria, he addressed Phillip, “Wotcher, cock. Need an ’and?”

  “No, thanks. It’s just a matter of getting a new radiator hose clamped in.”

  The man leaned with meaty hands on the Studebaker’s nose. “Yer’ll need water to fill ‘er up, gov’nor,” he pointed out.

  “True,” Phillip agreed. “I’ll buzz over to the nearest farm in my bus.” Gesturing with the screwdriver towards the Swift, he turned his head slightly. From the corner of his eye he caught a sudden motion.

  Arbuckle cried out. Phillip swung round. Heavy boots thudded on the dry, packed earth of the lane as four men masked with handkerchiefs rushed around the front of the van.

  Two dived over the side of the Studebaker, reaching for Arbuckle. One grabbed Gloria. The fourth swung a crowbar at Phillip.

  He ducked the blow.

  “Gloria!” he shouted, and went for her attacker with the screwdriver.

  The van’s driver caught him from behind and wrenched the screwdriver from his grasp. A second swing of the crowbar caught him on the side of the head.

  Exploding stars blinded him. His ears rang. Distantly aware of a heavy, sweetish odour, he sank into darkness.

  2

  Chloroform! The word came to Phillip in the instant of rousing. Then the explosive roar of the big guns inside his head claimed all his attention.

  After a while, he grew almost used to the internal shelling. He was lying curled up on his side, he realized. His wrists were tied behind his back and his shoulders ached dully. The dark red inside his eyelids suggested a dim light. Cautiously he opened his eyes.

  A narrow sunbeam streaked, flickering, across dusty, uneven floorboards, then zigzagged upwards, climbing, gleaming on beige silk stockings … Gloria! Ye gods, how could he have forgotten? The devils had bagged her too!

  “Miss Arbuckle?” he whispered. “Gloria?”

  She did not move. Praying her stillness was just the effect of the chloroform he had smelled, that they hadn’t hurt her, Phillip raised his head. The pain sent him spiralling back down into the dark.

  He roused again—five minutes, half an hour, half a day later, he had no way of knowing—to feel a drop land on his cheek. The detonations inside his skull had diminished to mere hammer-strokes. Some seemed to come from a distance, tock-tock-tock, like a woodpecker. And that angry chattering scold sounded like a squirrel. Was he in a wood?

  The air he breathed had a damp feel, a woodsy, mildewy smell, but the surface he lay on was too hard for leaf-mould and there was a faint odour of paraffin. He remembered floorboards, warped and split, with cracks between. And Gloria!

  Opening his eyes as another drop plopped onto his cheek, he turned his head and looked up into Gloria’s face. There was just enough light left to see her heavenly blue eyes red and swollen with tears.

  “Don’t cry, Glow-worm. We’ll get out of this somehow.”

  “Oh, Ph-Phillip, I was afraid you were d-dead,” she sobbed, positively raining on him.

  “Well, I’m not. So be a good girl and dry your eyes and blow your nose and let’s put our heads together.”

  “I c-can’t reach my handkerchief. I couldn’t even wipe the blood off your poor head.”

  Her hands were tied in front of her. Phillip seethed at the sight of the cord cutting into her slender wrists. He gritted his teeth—an outburst would help neither of them.

  “Perhaps you can reach mine,” he said calmly, “if you think you can use it when you’ve got it. In my shirt pocket.” His jacket, he supposed, must still be in the Studebaker where he had dropped it … how long ago?

  While Gloria, kneeling beside him, fumbled for his handkerchief, Phillip studied what he could see of their surroundings. The low ceiling, sloping downward on two sides, was rough, discoloured plaster, speckled with mildew, between ancient, sagging beams. In one corner, a dark brown stain looked like the result of a leak in the roof above.

  The stain ran down the wall. On the floor at the bottom lay a few chunks and a small heap of crumbled plaster.

  A hole? Phillip silently cursed the confounded bonds about his wrists. Not that a way into the attic seemed frightfully useful, always supposing he could have reached it, but it irked him that he couldn’t even investigate properly.

  “I have it!” With two fingers Gloria triumphantly fished the handkerchief out and shook it open.

  “Well done.”

  She promptly dropped it on the floor. “Darn. Now it’s too dirty to use to clean your head.” Groping, she picked it up between finger and thumb. This time when she shook it, a cloud of dust flew.

  Phillip held his breath till the dust settled. The way he felt, a sneeze might take off the top of his head. “You’d have had to use spit, anyway, Glow-worm. I expect I look a frightful mess, but on the whole I’d rather you didn’t touch it.”

  “Poor honey, it must be real sore. Does your head ache badly?”

  In spite of their situation, Phillip revelled in her solicitude. “Not as bad as it was,” he assured her, awkwardly rolling over and sitting up. The bursting shells promptly returned full force and his sight blurred. For a ghastly moment he thought he was going to be sick. Then the pain diminished again to a dull throb. “But it does still ache rather, and I don’t want to find out how tender it is where I got whacked. How do you feel?”

  “I was sure woozy when I woke up, but I’m okay now. Do you know what it was they used?”

  “Chloroform, by the smell. I was put out with it once when I broke my arm and had to have it set. I wish they’d used that on me instead of a crowbar!”

  “Oh, Phillip, why did they hit you and drug me and bring us here? What are they going to do with us? What do they want?” She bit her lip, but a sob escaped. “What have they done with Poppa?”

  She sat beside him, nestled against his side. Had Phillip possessed a fortune, he would have given every penny to be able to put his arms around her now. But Arbuckle was the one with the fortune.

  “Ransom!” he said. “They won’t hurt your father because he’ll have to be free to cough up the dollars.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I bet that’s what it’s all about. They’re always doing it in America, aren’t they? Speakeasies and gangsters and kidnappings, you re
ad about them all the time.”

  “You make it sound terrible, and it’s not. Most places aren’t like that at all. Ordinary people don’t have a thing to do with gangsters.”

  “But you’re not ordinary, Glow-worm,” Phillip pointed out gently. “Apart from being the sweetest, prettiest … Yes, well, I won’t go into all that now. But apart from that, it’s no secret your poppa’s simply rolling in the stuff. He’s practically a walking target for hoodlums.”

  “But we aren’t in the States. And the guy who drove the butcher’s van sure sounded English to me. He was one of them, wasn’t he? I figure the rest were hiding in the back of the van.”

  “Probably. Yes, he was definitely English, a Cockney actually, though the number plate was local. They must have stolen it, or the van.”

  “Cockneys are from London? You all sound just plain British to me.”

  “And all Americans sound American to me. I didn’t hear the other men speak, did you? They could have been Yanks.”

  For once Gloria didn’t tick him off for his use of the slang term for her countrymen and threaten playfully to call him a Limey. As an effort to distract her, the scheme was a dismal failure.

  “I hope they’re not,” she said with a shiver. “Some of those gangsters don’t think twice about spraying bullets around.”

  “They won’t do that. Your father will want proof of your safety before he’ll hand over a farthing. A dime.”

  “Oh Phillip, I’m glad you’re here. I’m scared, but I’d be even more scared without you.”

  She needed him, not like Daisy, who tended to regard his efforts to protect her as an irritating intrusion. But what was a fellow to do, when all he wanted was to shield his sweetheart against the world and he couldn’t even hold her little hand to comfort her?

  He bent his head and kissed her forehead. It wasn’t quite the circumstances he had imagined for their first kiss.

  It didn’t help morale that the light was fading fast. The small, square window, in the centre of one wall of the small, square room, was barricaded with heavy boards, nailed in place. The streak of sunshine which had earlier squeezed between the planks was long gone. Outside, the long summer evening might linger. Inside, it would very soon be dark.

  Time was a-wasting. He didn’t think more than a few minutes had passed since he came to, but what an absolute ass he was, sitting here chatting!

  “Glow-worm, you’ve tried the door?”

  “Yes. There’s no keyhole but it won’t budge. I guess it’s barred on the other side.”

  “Oh well, not much chance they’d forget it. Before the light goes you’d better see if you can untie my hands.”

  “I tried before, when you were unconscious. The knots are too tight. But I guess I could try to cut the rope with a bit of broken glass. There’s some over there under the window.” She struggled to her feet, crossed to the window, and crouched down. “I didn’t dare try as long as you might wake up and move any moment. I was afraid of cutting a vein and killing you.”

  Phillip joined her. Among the scraps and splinters of the broken window-panes were three or four largish shards. “Can you pick up a piece without cutting yourself?”

  “Yes, but I can’t get a real good grip on it. I won’t be able to see too well, either. Gee, I wish I really was a glow-worm.”

  “I’ll turn around, so you have all the light there is. Hack away, and don’t mind my groans when you stab me.”

  Stab him she did, and nick him, and slice him. After an “Oh, Phillip, I’m sorry,” at the first sign of blood, she sawed away in silence and he managed neither to groan nor to twitch. It might have been worse if his hands had not been pretty well numbed by cut-off circulation.

  In the quiet, Phillip heard voices. They seemed to come from below, through gaps between the shrunken floorboards.

  “Hear that?” Phillip whispered. “Hold on a jiffy, I want to see if I can hear what they’re saying.” He lay down and pressed his ear to one of the wider cracks. The smell of paraffin grew stronger.

  ‘ … still out?” someone asked.

  “Out to the wide, last time we ’ad a butcher’s.” Butcher’s hook—look; it was Cockney rhyming slang. Not a Yankee, nor a local man, but another Londoner. “That chloroform’s powerful stuff.”

  “You sure you didn’t clobber the bloke too ’ard, Jimmy?” The third voice, also Cockney, held the anxious note of an oftrepeated query.

  “Not bloody likely. D‘ya fink I wants to dangle? Pity I didn’t ’ave me sandbag ‘andy but we wasn’t supposed to need anyfing else, just the chloro. Anyways, I got it down to a fine art, ’asn’t I, so not to worry, cock.”

  “Better start worryin’.” That was the first voice again, the van driver’s, Phillip was almost sure. “The Yank’s mad as fire ’bout you bringing the young cove along too.”

  “Us! ‘Oo was it said ’e talked like a nob, and ‘oo found ’is card-case in the two-seater? ‘E’s a Hon, you says, and what that means is, ’is pa’s a lord.”

  “Did I tell ya to grab ’im for ransom along wiv the girl?” the driver demanded aggrievedly. “Did I? Like bloody ‘ell, I did! The Yank’s right, most nobs’s dough’s tied up in land and big ’ouses and art and such. They ain’t got the ready, not quick, any‘ow, not like Mr. Moneybags. Yer want ter ’ang around a few weeks while ’is bloody lordship sells a few of ’is fancy pitchers?”

  “Weeks? Gorblimey, no.”

  “Right, then.”

  “So whatta we do?” asked the anxious voice. “We can’t just let ‘im go. ’E’ll ’op it to the rozzers straight orf.”

  “We’ll ’ave to keep ’im till the ransom’s paid and we let the girl go.”

  “’E’s no use,” the driver said carelessly. “Just get in the way. The Yank says, you’re ter get rid of ’im—for keeps. Rub ’im out, pronto.”

  A long silence followed this announcement.

  Phillip shuddered. Nothing in four years of appalling trench warfare had affected him quite like that apparently casual order to murder him in cold blood. Shells and shrapnel, poison gas, machine-gun bullets, even a sniper’s fire, were impersonal. One didn’t know the name of the man one bayonetted face to face, and anyway it was a case of kill or be killed. But Phillip was no threat to these men, no mortal threat at least, though he’d gladly see them rot in gaol for the rest of their lives for what they were doing to Gloria.

  “I dunno … ,” said one, hesitantly.

  “Not me,” the crowbar-wielder affirmed. “I don’t swing for nobody.”

  “Yer’ll all be assessories anyways,” the driver advised them. “’E don’t care who does it, but summun’s gonna ’ave ter or the deal’s orf. ‘E reckons no one won’t miss ’im for a while, the way ‘e’s always ’opping about, ‘ere today and gone termorra. If ya wants yer share o’ the goods, don’t cross the Yank. Ya’d better pick cards or summat.”

  “Us? What abaht you?”

  “Me, I’m orf back to the Smoke. The old man saw my face, it ain’t safe for me round these parts. Done my bit, I ’ave, all I were brung in for, and bin paid my bit f’rit. Them as wants ter scoop the pool ’as to work ’arder. Enjoy yerselves among the clod‘oppers, mates. Bright lights, ’ere I come!”

  His blithe voice grew fainter as he spoke, and a moment later, Phillip heard a door slam shut. He sat up.

  “Have they gone?” Gloria asked softly. “What did they say?”

  He thanked heaven she had not listened. “One of them has left. The rest are still here, or only stepped out for a moment. They’re after ransom, as we guessed. They were talking about letting you go when it’s paid.”

  “Poppa will pay, just soon as ever he can.”

  “Of course.” Not soon enough for Phillip, however. He wasn’t going to go without a fight, though. “Gloria, are you almost through the rope?” he asked urgently.

  “It’s awful slow work, honey,” she apologized. “There’s one strand about ready to part, but I can’t see properly
any longer and … and it’s hard to hold the glass steady now it’s slippery.”

  “Slippery? Have I bled all over it? Try another piece.”

  “I … It won’t help for more than a minute. I … I’m bleeding, too.” She held out her hands. The last light was just enough to show the blood welling in slow drops from her fingertips.

  “Oh, Glow-worm!”

  She came to him, looping her bound wrists over his head and pressing herself to him as her soft lips brushed his.

  “I’m okay as long as you’re with me. Oh, here they come.” At the sound of boots clomping upstairs, she removed her arms from around his neck, but she stayed close. “We’ll ask them to untie us. Why shouldn’t they? We can’t get out of here.”

  “You might as well ask.” Phillip was desperately trying to formulate a plan.

  There were four men, he thought, if they all came, but the doorway was too narrow for more than one to enter at a time. Still, it was the only way out, and if he got past the first, the rest would be waiting.

  It looked hopeless, yet he could not just let them lead him away like a lamb to the slaughter, or, worse, do away with him right there in front of Gloria. Now was the time to discover whether tennis and squash had kept him as fit as he hoped, not the moment to remember that a gentleman does not brawl in the presence of a lady.

  Even without the use of his hands, surely he might at least give them something to remember him by.

  With a creak and a thud, the bar was withdrawn. The door swung open. On the threshold stood a brawny figure silhouetted against the flickering light of a paraffin lamp.

  Phillip’s head took the brute in the stomach. He went over backwards, cannoning into the man behind. Together they tumbled down the stairs.

  Struggling to regain his balance, Phillip caught just a glimpse of shadowy shapes closing in on either side of him on the tiny landing. He kicked out desperately as they grabbed his arms, as the sweet, sickly smell of chloroform wafted to his nostrils.

  A damp pad clamped across his face. He couldn’t breathe. His head hurt like hell. He didn’t care.