From London Far by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

exhaustion, the girl was displaying a remarkable turn of speed. But then she looked a long way under thirty, and Meredith was forty-nine. Too old to take steep stone stairs three at a time – which was nevertheless what the present exigency required.
    For now there were shouts not far behind them, and seconds after they had reached what must be the first floor of this mysterious building the zip of a bullet past their ears suggested that momentarily at least they had been within sight of their pursuers. They raced down yet another whitewashed corridor, swung round a corner, and found themselves in a dimly lit chamber of cathedral-like vastness, wholly void. The thud and echo of their footsteps as they crossed this was like the rout of an army through the colonnades of a deserted city.
    Again there were shouts not far behind – and this time, it seemed to Meredith, less by way of mere hubbub and more by way of well-directed hue and cry. Moreover, there were answering calls from somewhere in front of them, a fact the sinister import of which even an amateur could appreciate at once.
    But now they were once more in a whitewashed corridor – a short one, this time, and from which they emerged upon a further low-lit chamber of an amplitude answering to the first. But whereas the first had been empty this was everywhere filled with uncertainly discerned rectangular masses, in some places scattered singly upon the floor and in others piled in towers and pyramids disappearing into a dimness of rafters or girders overhead. It was like tumbling into a giants’ nursery at night and scurrying forward through a prodigal disorder of building bricks abandoned at the end of a day’s tremendous play. Meredith and the girl plunged into the recesses of this fantastic repository. But voices, purposeful and assured, were all around them. They were trapped. The girl, as if realizing that nothing remained but to fight it out, stopped short, gave a quick glance to see that Meredith still had Bubear’s gun, and drew him swiftly into the complete shadow of two impending cliffs of the giants’ play blocks. Actually, they were packing-cases, Meredith could now see. Was it possible – fantastic thought! – that they were all filled with masterpieces of the world’s art? He was about to whisper an urgent inquiry on this when a quick pressure of the girl’s hand restrained him. Somebody had run straight past their hiding-place, shouting an order as he went.
    The girl was leaning forward, straining every sense. Meredith, acutely aware that his own respiratory and pulmonary systems were shockingly noisy contrivances, crouched motionless beside her. Fortunately, there was a great deal of noise round about. Meredith listened – and presently with something of an analytical ear. His conclusion was a curious one. He and the girl were doubtless the occasion of all this noise. But they were the object of only part of it. A hunt for them, that was to say, was going forward. But so was much else as well.
    Hoists and derricks were in operation. Motor-trolleys of the kind which, in recent years, have come to add to the discomforts of a railway platform were clattering over the floor, some with trains of satellite trolleys behind them. Twice beneath their feet there was the roar and throb of a powerful petrol engine, and this was followed by the grinding of gears hastily thrown in and a rapidly diminishing rumble and rubbery shudder through the building. Heavy lorries, in fact, were pulling out into the safety of London. Meredith had a sudden intuition in the darkness of a multifarious and ordered activity all about him. A whole community had sprung to the performance of some complex evolution at a word. Action stations – but that was not quite it. Abandon ship – he had got it, now. Mr Bubear’s little branch of the mysterious Properjohn’s organization had concluded that it was indeed the police and was hastily closing down. But meantime a sizeable