Nine Coaches Waiting

He set off sturdily, ahead of me this time, for the hut. I followed him thankfully. We were here, safe, at our star. It was Valmy now whose alien glimmer showed a crow's mile away. I spared a last quick glance for that cold point of light. Already it seemed remote, distance-drowned. I would never go there again.

I found my eyes were full of tears. Not one, but a swarm of stars swam in the liquid distance. Angrily, I put up a hand to brush the tears away, and looked again.

Not one, but a swarm of stars.

Three lights now glared from the white bulk that was Valmy. And even as I stared, with the quick hot thrill twisting belly-deep inside me, another window sprang to life, and another. My bedroom, my sitting-room, the schoolroom… and then I saw two tiny lights break from the shadows below and slide away as a car came out of the courtyard. The alarm had been given. Dear God, the alarm had been given. He hadn't waited till morning. He'd checked on us again, and now Valmy was up. I could almost hear the quick footsteps, the whispering, the whine of the wheel-chair, the humming telephone-wires. The bright windows stared with their five eyes across the valley. Then, even as I wondered through my sick panic why he should have roused the place, the lights went out quickly, one by one, and Valmy sank back into quiet. Only the single point of brilliance still showed, and below, the car's lamps dropped down two quick flickering curves of the zigzag and then vanished as they were switched off.

I'd been wrong. There had been no alarm. He'd found us gone, made sure, and then gone back to wait by his telephone. He had the rest of the night, and his hound was out after us. Bernard, drastically sobered? Raoul?

I turned and ran in under the darkness of the pines, as Philippe's soft rapping sounded on the door of the hut.

Half a minute went by; three-quarters. I stood beside Philippe, trying to still that little twist of terror deep inside me. In a moment now it would be over; the Englishman's feet would tread comfortably towards the door; the hinges would creak open; the firelit warmth would push a wedge into the cool night across the verandah floor.

The forest was still. The air breathed cold at my back. A minute; a minute and a half. No sound. He would be still asleep.

"Shall I knock again?”

"Yes, Philippe. Harder."

My nerves jumped and angled to the sharp rap of knuckles on wood. The sound went through the stillness like the bang of a drum. It seemed to me that it must startle the whole forest awake.

In the backwash of the silence that followed I heard, away below us on the road, the snarl of a car going fast.

There was no sound from the hut.

"There's no one in." The quiver in the child's voice-he must be very tired after all-made me pull myself together.

"He's sound asleep," I said calmly. "Let's see if we can get in. He won't mind if we wake him."

Philippe lifted the latch and pushed. A little to my surprise the door opened immediately. He took a step forward, hesitating, but I propelled him gently in front of me straight into the room. The sound of that engine reiterated from the valley was making my skin crawl.

"Mr. Blake!" I called softly as I shut the door. "Mr. Blake! Are you there?"

Silence met us, the unmistakably hollow silence of an empty house.

I knew from what William had told me that the hut only had one room, with a pent-house scullery at the back. The door which presumably led to this was shut. The room in which we now stood was the living, eating, and sleeping-room of the place.

He could not have been gone long. It didn't need the memory of the lighted window to prove that he had been there and until quite late. The wood-stove still glowed faintly, and the smell of food hung in the air. He must have been working up here, made himself a meal, and then decided, late as it was, to go down to the Coq Hardi. The blankets on the bed in the corner were neatly folded in a pile.

It was a bare little room, its walls, floor and ceiling all of pine, still, in the heat from the stove, smelling faintly of the forest. There were a sturdy, hand-made table, a couple of wooden chairs, and a hard-looking bed with a box underneath. A small cupboard hung in one corner, and a shelf over the bed held a few books. On pegs near the stove was a miscellany of things-ropes, a rucksack, an old khaki coat. Some spare tools lay beneath on a pile of clean sacking. In the far corner an upright ladder led to a small square trap-door.

"Can't we stay here?" There was the faintest suspicion of a whine in Philippe's voice; he must be very nearly exhausted, and indeed, the thought of going further appalled me. And where could we go? This must be what the mired fox felt like when it found its way to earth with the last calculated ounce of strength. I glanced at the shut door, at the glowing stove, at Philippe.

"Yes, of course." The car would be raking the road to the Villa Mireille. They would never look for us here. I said: "D'you think you could climb that ladder?"

"That? Yes. What's up there? Why do we have to go up there?"

"Well," I said, "there's only one bed down here, and that's Mr. Blake's. He may come back and need it. Besides, we'd be better hidden away up there, don't you think? Can you keep as still as a mouse if anybody comes in?"

He looked up at me, big eyes in a pinched little face. He was biting his lip. He nodded. I think if Léon de Valmy had come in at that moment I could have killed him with my bare hands. As it was I said briskly: "Well, we mustn't leave any sign we've been here, just in case somebody else comes looking for us before Mr. Blake gets home. Are your shoes wet? Ah, yes, they are a bit, aren't they? So are mine. We'll take them off-no, stay on the mat, petit- that's fine. Now, you carry them and perch here by the stove while I reco

Luckily the trap-door was light, and, it seemed, in frequent use. At any rate it opened easily and quietly, and, standing on the ladder with my head and shoulders through the opening, I raked the loft with the beam of Philippe's torch. I had been praying fervently as I climbed that the place would be not too bad. Now I gave a sigh of relief. The loft was almost as clean as the living-room, and quite dry. It was used as a store-room, and I could see some boxes and canisters, some more rope, a drum of wire, and-what was more to the purpose-a pile of tarpaulins and sacking on the chimney side of the steep-roofed little chamber.

I went quickly down again and reported this to Philippe. "It's beautifully warm," I said cheerfully, "right over the stove. Can you shove your shoes in your pockets and swarm away up while I collect some blankets? I'll pass them up to you. I can't spare the torch for a moment, so don't explore too far."

As I had hoped, there were extra blankets in the box under the bed. I dragged these out with wary flashes of the torch, and with some little trouble got them one by one up the ladder and into Philippe's waiting grasp. At last I pulled myself up beside him, and sent a final beam raking the little room… Nothing betrayed us; the floor was dry, the bed undisturbed, the door shut but not locked…

We shut the trap-door quietly and crawled-only in the centre of the loft could one stand-to make our bed. The warmth from the chimney was pleasant, the blankets thick and comforting; the little dark loft with its steep-pitched roof gave an illusion of safety.

So presently, having shared a stick of chocolate and said our prayers, from both of which exercises we derived immense comfort, we settled down for what remained of the night.

Philippe went to sleep almost immediately, curled in his usual small huddle up against me. I tucked the blankets thankfully round him, and then lay listening to his light breathing, and to the million tiny noises of the large silence that wrapped us in.