The Fingerprint

Chapter XLII

WHEN SHE HAD RUN from Sid Turner she was in no case to think or plan. A blind panic drove her. The track led straight to the gravel pit and she followed it. It was only when her foot went over the edge and she lost her balance that she knew anything at all. What came to her then was thought in its simplest, most elementary form-“I’m falling.” And with that she fell, out of thought and out of consciousness.

The first thing she knew after that was something pricking her. She didn’t come to all at once. She had been very badly shocked and frightened, and she had had quite a fall. The pricking became more insistent. Her face and hands were scratched, her shoulder hurt. She heard Sid calling her, softly, cautiously. She lay as still as a rabbit and saw a small round disc of light go dancing by. Sid had a torch and he was looking for her. The thing that was pricking her was gorse. She had rolled, and slipped, and slithered down the side of the pit, and she was lying between two gorse bushes. They covered her against the dancing light, and it passed over her and was gone. The fear that had been holding her rigid relaxed and let her go. She lay in a soft trembling heap and prayed that the light would not return. If she was very good always, if she never told another lie in all her life, if she always remembered to say her prayers, perhaps God wouldn’t let Sid find her.

She drew herself up very, very carefully. She was stiff and sore, but there wasn’t anything broken. When she peered from between the bushes she could see the light going away to the left, sliding to and fro over the gorse, and the blackberry trails, and the yellow side of the pit. Sid was walking away from the place where she had fallen. As he went he shone the light over the edge and looked down and called her name.

“Mirrie, you little fool, where are you? I was only joking, you know. You wouldn’t be afraid of me-not of Sid. Just call back, and I’ll get you up. You don’t want to make me angry, do you? Mirrie!”

She began to crawl out from between the bushes. If he went on round the pit-if she could get out whilst he was on the other side-if she could get back on to the road… She hadn’t fallen very far, but if he heard her he would come back and kill her with the knife. She knew what his hand had gone into his pocket for-it was to get the knife. It opened with a spring. She had seen him open it before, the time he had set the point against her throat. If he caught her now he wouldn’t stop at frightening her, he would kill her dead.

She couldn’t climb in her coat. She slipped it off and let it go. The slope where she had fallen was not a steep one. She crawled on it an inch or two at a time, sometimes a little to the left, sometimes a little to the right, according to the lie of the ground. And then just as she got to the top the flickering light and Sid’s voice calling her. They turned and began to come back again. She got her knee over the edge, her other knee, her foot. If she stood up he would see her. If she didn’t stand up she couldn’t run away. The dancing light would pick her up-Sid would catch her and she would feel the knife.

She stumbled to her feet and ran screaming down the track. It was rough and rutted under foot. She didn’t think, “I mustn’t fall,” she knew it with a kind of shuddering intensity. If she tripped, if she slipped, if she fell, the knife would be in her back. She kept her hands stretched out before her as if they could save her from falling. They did just save her from running into the back of the car. She called out as it brought her up with a jerk, her hands sliding on the paint-work, but she didn’t fall, and through the sound of her own choked breathing she could hear the running steps behind her. She made her last, most desperate effort, pushed back from the car, and stumbled round it, feeling her way, banging into a mudguard, getting clear, and staggering on again towards the road.

She ran right into Johnny Fabian’s arms. He said,

“Mirrie! Oh, Mirrie!” and she said his name over and over again as if she couldn’t stop saying it, as if it was something that would keep her safe as long as she held on to it and didn’t let go. They stood on the edge of the track and held each other.

Miss Silver, coming up at a more sober pace, was aware of them. She had put on her electric torch, but she turned the beam away. And then quite suddenly it was cutting the dark again and she was calling out,

“Mr. Fabian-the car-it’s moving! Take care!”

There was the roar of the engine behind her words. It startled him to action. He jumped Mirrie off the track among the heather roots and saw the black shape of the car lurch past them and out on to the road. With the lights coming on and a dangerous reeling swerve to avoid Johnny’s car Sid Turner was out on the tarmac and away.

Miss Silver, who had also stepped into the heather, now emerged from it. She addressed Mirrie Field.

“My dear child! You are not hurt? It was indeed providential that Mr. Fabian should have been led to come this way. You are quite safe now, and you must try to compose yourself. There must be no delay in getting in touch with the police.” She directed herself to Johnny. “I endeavoured to take the number of the car as it passed me, but the plate had been, no doubt designedly, obscured by what looked like splashes of mud.”

Johnny shrugged.

“He’ll get rid of the car as soon as he can. He’ll have pinched it, so the number wouldn’t have been much help in tracing him. And he’d have had the legs of us even if we could have got off in time to follow him. He’d pick a fast one while he was about it.”

They got into Johnny’s old car and ran back to Field End. Just about the time that the lobby door swung to behind them and they came into the lighted hall Sid Turner went blinding round the corner of Jessop’s Lane into the main road and crashed into the Hexton bus. It was fortunately not very full. The driver had a miraculous escape, and of the few passengers no one was seriously injured, though old Mrs. Bazeley lost her front teeth and could never be persuaded that her son-in-law had not trodden on them on purpose. But the stolen car was what the conductor described as a mess, and Sid Turner was dead.