Nine Coaches Waiting

"It's a friend's privilege to be used," said William. He loosed my hands. There was a pause. He said: "If you are going to stay with Philippe, I might see you now and again, mightn't I?"

"I don't suppose I'll be staying."

"No?"

"No."

"I see." He got to his feet and smiled down at me. "Shall I run you down to the Villa Mireille now in the jeep?"

"No, thanks, William. I-think I'll wait."

"Okay. I'll say goodnight, then. You'll look me up before you leave, won't you?"

"Of course. Goodnight. And-thanks a lot, William. Thank you for everything."

I forgot him almost as soon as the front door shut behind him. Someone had come out of the library. I could hear Hippolyte's voice, and Raoul's, talking quietly. They were coming along the corridor together.

My heart was hurting me. I got up quickly and moved towards the door. Hippolyte was talking, saying something about Héloïse. I shrank against the wall to the side of the door so that they wouldn't see me as they passed.

“… A nursing-home," said Hippolyte. "I left her with Doctor Fauré. He'll look after her." There was something more-something about an allowance, a pension, and "somewhere away from Valmy, Paris or Ca

They had reached the hall. Hippolyte was saying goodnight. I went softly out into the corridor and hesitated there, waiting for Hippolyte to leave him. I was shaking with panic. Léon and Héloïse might have faded already into the past, poor ghosts with no more power to terrify, but I had a ghost of my own to lay.

Raoul's voice, now, asking a question. Seddon's answer, almost indistinguishable. It sounded like "Gone." A sharp query from Raoul, and, clearly, from Seddon: "Yes, sir. A few minutes ago."

I heard Raoul say, grimly: "I see. Thank you. Goodnight, Seddon."

Then I realised what he had been asking. I forgot Hippolyte's presence, and Seddon's. I began to run down the corridor. I called: "Raoul!"

My voice was drowned in the slam of the front door. I had reached the hall when I heard the engine start. Seddon's voice said, surprised: "Why, Miss Martin, I thought you'd gone with Mr. Blake!" I didn't answer. I flew across the hall, tore open the great door, and ran out into the darkness.

The Cadillac was already moving. As I reached the bottom of the steps she was wheeling away from the house. I called again, but he didn't hear-or at least the car moved, gathering speed. Futilely, I began to run.

I was still twenty yards behind it when it slid gently into the first curve of the zigzag, and out of sight.

If I had stopped to think I should never have done what I did. But I was past thinking. I only knew that I had something to say that must be said if I was ever to sleep again. And I wasn't the only one that had to be healed. I turned without hesitation and plunged into the path that short-circuited the zigzag.

This was a foot-way, no more, that dived steeply down the hillside towards the Valmy bridge. I had taken it with Philippe many a time. It was well-kept, and the steps, where they occurred, were wide and safe, but it could be slippery, and in the dark it could probably be suicide.

I didn't care. Some kind freak of chance had made me keep Philippe's torch in my pocket, and now by its half-hearted light I went down that dizzy little track as if all my ghosts hunted me at heel.

Off to the left the Cadillac's lights still bore away from me on the first long arm of the zigzag. He was driving slowly. The engine made very little sound. I hurtled, careless of sprains and bruises, down through the wood.

It couldn't be done, of course. He was still below me when he took the first bend and the headlights bore back to the north, making the shadows of the trees where I ran reel and flicker so that they seemed to catch at my feet like a net.

The path twisted down like a snake. The whole wood marched and shifted in his lights like trees in a nightmare. Just before he wheeled away again I saw the next segment of my path doubling back ten feet below me. I didn't wait to negotiate the corner with its steps and its handrail. I slithered over, half on my back, to the lower level, and gained seven precious seconds before the dark pounced again in the wake of the retreating car.

The third arm of the zigzag was the longest. It took him away smoothly to the left without much of a drop… I would do it. At the next northern bend I could be in the road before he got there.

I flung myself down a steep smooth drop, caught at a handrail to steady myself, and then went three at a time down a straight flight of steps. The rail had driven a splinter into my hand, but I hardly felt it. A twig whipped my face, half-blinding me, but I just blinked and ran on. Down the steps, round, along over a little gorge bridged with a flagstone… and the great headlights had swung north again and the shadows were once more madly wheeling back and away from me. But I was below him now. I could do it. Only fifty yards away the track ran right to the bend of the road, where a high bank held the cambered corner.

The shadows blurred and wavered, caught at me like the ropes of a great web. My breath was sobbing; my heart-beats hammered above the sound of the oncoming car.

Here was the bank, head-high. Beyond it the road lay like a cha

But even as I put my hands on the bank-top to pull myself over into the road, I heard the engine's note change. He was gathering speed. Some devil of impatience had jabbed at him and he let the Cadillac go for just those few seconds-just those few seconds.

She went by below me with a sigh and a swirl of dust and I fell back into the darkness of the wood.

If reason had spoken to me then I would have stayed where I was. But reason could not be heard for the storm of my heartbeats and the silly little prayer on my lips. "Please, please, please," it was, and it spun in my brain like a prayer-wheel to the exclusion of any kind of sense or thought.

I didn't stop. Two more sweeps of the zigzag, and the Valmy bridge and-he was away. I left the path and simply went down the shortest way between my bank and the next northerly hairpin. That it was a reasonably smooth slope carpeted with nothing worse than dog's-mercury and last year's beech leaves was my luck-and better than I deserved. I fetched up against the trunk of a beech near the banked-up road while the car was still only half-way down to it, but I made no attempt this time to climb the bank into the road.

My beech-tree was at the edge of a rocky little drop, and below me lay the bridge itself. The white mist that marked the river swirled up into silver as the Cadillac took the bend beside me and bore away again for the last steep bend to the Valmy bridge.

I went over the drop. The stone glowed queerly in the light that came off the mist. The rock was rough and steeply-piled, but it was solid enough, and easy to scramble on. I suppose I got scratches and knocks, I don't know. I do know that I slipped once and gripped at a holly-bush to save myself and even as I bit off the cry I heard the shriek of the Cadillac's brakes.

I found out later that something had run across the road. I like to think it was the same anonymous little creature that had been there the first time Raoul kissed me. At any rate it stopped the car for those few precious seconds…They were enough.

I dropped into the road just as his lights swept round the last curve. '

I ran onto the bridge. The mist swirled up waist-high. It was grey, it was white, it was blinding gold as the glare took it.

I shut my eyes and put both hands out and stayed exactly where I was.