Otto looked at the chair and the cord which lay by its feet. He lowered the gun, and a gleam came into the bright, dark eyes which were watching him. He tossed the gun away from him—and even before it landed clattering upon the table and slid with a heavy clanging to the floor, Altinger leapt forward. His left fist swung, and then his right foot.
He moved with astonishing speed for a man of his bulk—and though Otto blocked the fist with ease, the man’s heavy shoe caught him squarely upon a shin bone and a flame of agony licked a jagged path up through the leg to his body.
His arms closed around Altinger, outside Altinger’s arms. And his left hand closed about Altinger’s right wrist and dragged it upwards.
Against his chest and his arms he could feel great muscles swelling hugely, but he was steel. He began to move forward, slowly—and Altinger, his face distorted by tremendous, useless effort, moved with him.
The edge of the heavy table caught Altinger’s back, just above the waist. Otto’s free right hand came from behind Altinger’s back and thrust itself beneath Altinger’s chin.
Sounds came from Altinger’s grimacing lips, but if they were words Otto did not hear them.
Very slowly, inch by inch, Altinger’s body was forced back . . . and back . . . and back. . . . At last his shoulders met the wood of the table-top: he lay, across the corner of the table, with the captive, tortured arm pulled up to his shoulder blades and his head unsupported; his head which dangled, in spite of all effort, over the table-edge.
The hand beneath his chin was inexorable. It no longer thrust upward, but outward and downward: it was being forced back, toward his immovable body. . . .
He did not hear the sound which meant that his execution was over; the sound like a lath being snapped beneath layers of wool. . . .
Otto picked up the Lüger. He did not look at Altinger’s sprawling body. He ran down the passageway, pulling aside as he did so the chair in front of the cellar door. He shouted:
“Clare! Come to the side door!” and, with barely a check, ran to this door and through it.
He was only just in time—and he had not struck too hard. The man Flecker was on his hands and knees, trying to struggle to his feet. He was shaking his head from side to side.
Otto thrust him down again, on his back, and knelt beside him and kept him to earth with a heavy hand.
There was a sound behind him, and he turned his head and saw Clare standing in the doorway. He said:
“Go on!” and pointed ahead. “Go near to the road and wait—near their car.”
She seemed to hesitate—and he said sharply:
“Do as I say! Go on! This man is going to tell me what we have to know. . . .”
In the small hangar, the roaring engine of the Lockheed made a bedlam.
But neither Kurt Kummer nor his mechanic was distressed by the din. They were used to it—and when it was smooth and right-sounding like this, it was even music to their hardened ears.
Kummer glanced for the fifteenth time at the watch upon his wrist—and then glanced at the mechanic and saw that the man was looking out across the level field to the winding roadway which led to the hangar from this particular entrance to the Bjornstrom estate.
Familiar headlights were speeding towards them—and the mechanic went quickly out of the hangar as Kummer turned back to the plane and climbed into the cabin and made quick check of the things which should be there.
He climbed out again and went to the open doorway. The car was not in sight now: it must have pulled up in the usual place behind the hangar—and in a moment the mechanic would come running back, over-officious, leading the way for Rudolph Altinger.
But the mechanic did not come. A frown pulled Kummer’s thick black brows together, and he walked out of the hangar and looked across the moonlit grass.
The car was where it should be—but he did not know the two figures which were approaching him. He thrust a hand inside his leather coat and pulled out a stubby automatic and raised it. . . .
He did not fire. He saw a flash from the gun in the tall figure’s hand—and a great numbing blow took him in the shoulder and he spun around and fell. . . .
Consciousness came back to him—and then memory. He could not rise, but managed to prop himself up on an elbow. His gun was gone. He could not move: he could only watch.
He saw the shining silver plane, gleaming in the silver moonlight, move out of the hangar. . . .
He could not do anything: he could only watch. He saw the tail-lights gather speed and the silver tail itself flashing as the machine rushed away from him, bouncing jerkily over the shorn grass. . . .
And then, when the tail-lights were specks; when there came hope that the unknown pilot, not reckoning the weight of the extra petrol tanks, would not be able to clear the serried ranks of the pines which reared, suddenly, nine hundred yards away, like a monstrous barrier black against the moon-washed grass, he struggled somehow to his knees.