“Very funny,” Mallory growled. “Very funny indeed.” He looked curiously at Miller. The American had removed his oilskin cape–the rain had ceased as abruptly as it had come–to reveal a jacket and braided waistcoat even more sodden and saturated than his trousers. It didn’t make sense. But there was no time for questions.
“Did you hear the phone ringing just now?” he asked.
“Was that what it was? Yeah, I heard it.
“The sentry’s phone. His hourly report, or whatever it was, must have been overdue. We didn’t answer it. They’ll be hot-footing along any minute now, suspicious as hell and looking for trouble. Maybe your side, maybe Brown’s. Can’t approach any other way unless they break their necks climbing over these boulders.” Mallory gestured at the shapeless jumble of rocks behind them. “So keep your eyes skinned.”
“I’ll do that, boss. No shootin’, huh?”
“No shooting. Just get back as quickly and quietly as you can and let us know. Come back in five minutes anyway.”
Mallory hurried away, retracing., his steps. Andrea was stretched full length on the cliff-top, peering over the edge. He twisted his head round as Mallory approached.
“I can hear him. He’s just at the overhang.”
“Good.” Mallory moved on without breaking step. “Tell him to hurry, please.”
Ten yards farther on Mallory checked, peered into the gloom ahead. Somebody was coming along the clifftop at a dead run, stumbling and slipping on the loose gravelly soil.
“Brown?” Mallory called softly.
“Yes, sir. It’s me.” Brown was up to him now, breathing heavily, pointing back in the direction he had just come. “Somebody’s coming, and coming fast! Torches waving and jumping all over the place–must be running.”
“How many?” Mallory asked quickly.
“Four or five at least.” Brown was still gasping for breath. “Maybe more–four or five torches, anyway. You can see them for yourself.” Again he pointed backwards, then blinked in puzzlement. “That’s bloody funny! They’re all gone.” He turned back swiftly to Mallory. “But I can swear–”
“Don’t worry,” Mallory said grimly. “You saw them all right. rye been expecting visitors. They’re getting close now and taking no chances. . . . How far away?”
“Hundred yards–not more than a hundred and fifty.”
“Go and get Miller. Tell him to get back here fast.”
Mallory ran back along the cliff edge and knelt beside the huge length of Andrea.
“They’re coming, Andrea,” he said quickly. “From the left. At least five, probably more. Two minutes at the most. Where’s Stevens? Can you see him?”
“I can see him.” Andrea was magnificently unperturbed. “He is just past the overhang . . .” The rest of his words were lost, drowned in a sudden, violent thunderclap, but there was no need for more. Mallory could see Stevens now, climbing up the rope, strangely old and enfeebled in action, hand over hand in paralysing slowness, half-way now between the overhang and the foot of the chimney.
“Good God!” Mallory swore. “What’s the matter with him? He’s going to take all day . . .” He checked himself, cupped his hands to his mouth. “Stevens! Stevens!” But there was no sign that Stevens had heard. He still kept climbing with the same unnatural over-deliberation, a robot in slow motion.
“He is very near the end,” Andrea said quietly. “You see he does not even lift his head. When a climber does not lift his head, he is finished.” He stirred. “I will go down for him.”
“No.” Mallory’s hand was on his shoulder. “Stay here. I can’t risk you both. . . . Yes, what is it.” He was aware that Brown was back, bending over him, his breath coming in great heaving gasps.
“Hurry, sir; hurry, for God’s sake!” A few brief words but he had to suck in two huge gulps of air to get them out. “They’re on top of us!”
“Get back to the rocks with Miller,” Mallory said urgently. “Cover us. . . . Stevens! Stevens!” But again the wind swept up the face of the cliff, carried his words away.
“Stevens! For God’s sake, man! Stevens!” His voice was low-pitched, desperate, but this time some quality in it must have reached through Stevens’ fog of exhaustion and touched his consciousness, for he stopped climbing and lifted his head, hand cupped to his ear.
“Some Germans coming!” Mallory called through funnelled hands, as loudly as he dared. “Get to the foot of the chimney and stay there. Don’t make a sound. Understand?”
Stevens lifted his hand, gestured in tired acknowledgment, lowered his head, started to climb up again. He was going even more slowly now, his movements fumbling and clumsy.
“Do you think he understands?” Andrea was troubled.
“I think so. I don’t know.” Mallory stiffened and caught Andrea’s arm. It was beginning to rain again, not heavily yet, and through the drizzle he’d caught sight of a hooded torch beam probing among the rocks thirty yards away to his left. “Over the edge with the rope,” he whispered. “The spike at the bottom of the chimney will hold it. Come on–let’s get out of here!”
Gradually, meticulous in their care not to dislodge the smallest pebble, Mallory and Andrea inched back from the edge, squirmed round and headed back for the rocks, pulling themselves along on their elbows and knees. The few yards were interminable and without even a gun in his hand Mallory felt defenceless, completely exposed. An illogical feeling, he knew, for the first beam of light to fall on them meant the end not for them but for the man who held the torch. Mallory had complete faith in Brown and Miller. . . . That wasn’t important. What mattered was the complete escape from detection. Twice during the last endless few feet a wandering beam reached out towards them, the second a bare arm’s length away: both times they pressed their faces into the sodden earth, lest the pale blur of their faces betray them, and lay very still. And then, all at once it seemed, they were among the rocks and safe.
In a moment Miller was beside them, a half-seen shadow against the darker dusk of the rocks around them.
“Plenty of time, plenty of time,” he whispered sarcastically. “Why didn’t you wait another half-hour?” He gestured to the left, where the ifickering of torches, the now clearly audible murmur of guttural voices, were scarcely twenty yards away. “We’d better move farther back. They’re looking for him among the rocks.”
“For him or for his telephone,” Mallory murmured in agreement. “You’re right, anyway. Watch your guns on these rocks. Take the gear with you… . And if they look over and find Stevens we’ll have to take the lot. No time for fancy work and to hell with the noise. Use the automatic carbines.”
Andy Stevens had heard, but he had not understood. It was not that he panicked, was too terrified to understand, for he was no longer afraid. Fear is of the mind, but his mind had ceased to function, drugged by the last stages of exhaustion, crushed by the utter, damnable tiredness that held his limbs, his whole body, in leaden thrall. He did not know it, but fifty feet below he had struck his head against a spur of rock, a shaip, wicked projection that had torn his gaping temple wound open to the bone. His strength drained out with the pulsing blood.
He had heard Mallory, had heard something about the chimney he had now reached, but his mind had failed to register the meaning of the words. All that Stevens knew was that he was climbing, and that one always kept on climbing until one reached the top. That was what his father had always impressed upon him, his brothers too. You must reach the top.
He was half-way up the chimney now, resting on the spike that Mallory had driven into the fissure. He hooked his fingers in the crack, bent back his head and stared up towards the mouth of the chimney. Ten feet away, no more. He was conscious of neither surprise nor elation. It was just there: he had to reach it. He could hear voices, carrying clearly from the top. He was vaguely surprised that his friends were making no attempt to help him, that they bad thrown away the rope that would have made those last few feet so easy, but he felt no bitterness, no emotion at all: perhaps they were trying to test him. What did it matter anyway–he had to reach the top.
He reached the top. Carefully, as Mallory had done before him, he pushed aside the earth and tiny pebbles, hooked his fingers over the edge, found the same toehold as Mallory had and levered himself upwards. He saw the flickering torches, heard the excited voices, and then for an instant the curtain of fog in his mind lifted and a last tidal wave of fear washed over him and he knew that the voices were the voices of the enemy and that they had destroyed his friends. He knew now that he was alone, that be had failed, that this was the end, one way or another, and that it had all been for nothing. And then the fog closed over him again, and there was nothing but the emptiness of it all, the emptiness and the futility, the overwhelming lassitude and despair and his body slowly sinking down the face of the cliff. And then the hooked fingers–they, too, were slipping away, opening gradually, reluctantly as the fingers of a drowning man releasing their final hold on a spar of wood. There was no fear now, only a vast and heedless indifference as his hands slipped away and he fell like a stone, twenty vertical feet into the cradling bottleneck at the foot of the chimney.