“There were four of them. Frenchies. Two are dead in the barn. Innkeeper’s wife is taking the others to the hospital,” Warry O’Deming replied, his normal lilt muted to a throaty growl. “One of the bastards might live. Other’s a goner for sure. Walt here took a knife to the belly.”
“It’s nothing,” the German émigré said. “I’ve cut myself worse shaving.”
“Charlie?”
Brewster answered, “We laid him out on the sofa in the front room.”
Bell nodded. “Get the motorbike out of the truck and leave it here. I’ll be right back.”
He entered the inn. It had been an inviting space just hours earlier. Now it was shadowed with the gloom of a funeral parlor. The innkeeper was tied to a chair next to Charlie Widney’s body. Brewster must have figured the proprietor had ratted them out, even if he didn’t know how, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The man had been gagged. The man’s wife would have been too concerned with saving the Frenchmen to involve the police until after she’d reached the hospital. By then, Bell and the others would be miles away.
Bell took two twenty-pound notes from his wallet and tossed them into the terrified man’s lap.
“His name was Charles Widney.” He spoke deliberately, ensuring the innkeeper understood every word. “He was a good man who deserves a Christian burial. The men who killed him are French mercenaries who we’d escaped from. Your call put them back on our trail and cost Charlie his life. I will be back someday to make sure he’s been buried properly. If he hasn’t been, I will find you and I will beat you to within an inch of your life and then I will beat you two inches more. Are we clear?”
The man could only sob in fear.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Bell turned and left the building. Moments later, the trucks pulled out and vanished down the road.
37
Burdened by even more death, the men continued south, compelled to finish their quest and as unable to deviate from their course as migrating birds from theirs. Bell sold the other two gold coins he kept sewn into his travel bag for contingencies. He used some of the money to buy paint to disguise the trucks. They covered over the red bodywork and smart gold lettering with a shade of dreary green. They also worked out routes that maintained some miles between the two vehicles so that they no longer were traveling as a convoy.
Bell drove the lead truck, and every fifteen miles he would wait at a discreet spot by the side of the road for Warry O’Deming to appear in the second Leyland. O’Deming would pause, servicing his lorry, while he waited for Bell to pull ahead once again.
They averaged just twenty miles per hour.
Walt Schmidt sat in the cab with Bell while Brewster remained in the bed of the second truck with Vern Hall.
As the day wore on, Walt spoke less and less, and whenever Bell looked over at him, his face was drawn and ashen. He was in pain, and the jostling he was taking along the rutted roads was making it worse. Bell decided that they would stop in Stafford, a large town north of the massive sprawl of Birmingham. They were far enough removed from the train theft that there was no danger of leaving Walt and Vern behind. He would make Brewster see the necessity of it.
When the sun sank over the distant Irish Sea and darkness filled in the spaces between shadows, the trucks’ headlamps did little to cut the gloom. Still, Bell could see a faint flow in the night sky ahead that foretold their destination.
“How are you doing over there, Walt? I think tonight we’ll find you and Vernon some warm hospital beds with a couple of rosy-cheeked English nurses to look after you. How does that sound?” Schmidt said nothing. He just looked ahead, his body bouncing and swaying with every movement of the truck.
Bell knew, but still he called Walt’s name a little louder. “Walter? Are you with me, buddy?”
He reached over to touch Walt’s shoulder and the slight pressure upset an equilibrium that had been in play for some time. Walter Schmidt’s lifeless body tipped sideways and would have fallen from the truck had Bell not clutched onto him tight and brought the vehicle to a stop. They were in the middle of the road. There was no traffic, and the only sound was of the breeze rattling leafless branches.
“Typical German,” Bell said with affection. “Stoic ’til the end.”
Fifteen minutes later, Warry arrived in the second truck. He parked and approached on foot. When he saw something was amiss, he ran the last few steps. There was enough moonlight to see his friend slumped in his seat in an unnatural pose.
“You damned kraut,” O’Deming cried, letting his grief express itself as anger. “Why wouldn’t you even let us look at the wound? We might ’ave saved ya. Twenty years I knew him, Mr. Bell. Twenty years, and he never complained once. About anything.”
He stepped back so he could direct his next comment at Brewster, sitting dejected in the rear of the truck with Vern Hall’s head cradled on his lap. “See that, Brewster? Walt’s dead. And Alvin and Johnny. And Jake and Charlie and Tom. And Vern might as well be. And for what? Eh? Why are they all dead?”
“Easy, Warner,” Brewster said softly. He was affected by this latest death but appeared coherent. “You know why. This is more important than us. Walt could have asked us to stop at any time and we would have. But he knew we needed to keep going. There’s no stopping until we get the byzanium home. This ore represents an opportunity we can’t even comprehend because science hasn’t caught up to its potential. We all agreed to that back in Central City. And it still holds true right now.”
This seemed to calm O’Deming. “You’re right. It’s just . . .”
“I know,” Brewster agreed, not needing to articulate anything further.
They moved Walter’s body to the rear of the truck and drove onto a crossroad that led into utter darkness. It was still close enough to dusk that people might be around, especially as the Leyland drew closer to bigger towns, so they waited in a meadow until midnight. It was cold, and they huddled the best they could around the small fire Bell had built in the lee of his lorry. There was nothing to be done about hunger or thirst.
At the head of a grassy square in a village a few miles from where they’d stopped sat an old stone church with a bell tower on its side and a heavy slate roof. It was so ancient, it made Bell think it had been sculpted by Nature rather than fashioned by the hands of man. He used his picks on the door’s simple lock, and he and Brewster and Warry O’Deming carried Walt Schmidt’s body inside. The nave was pitch-black, but they made their way down the aisle and laid him carefully on the steps leading up to the altar. As with the others, Bell left a note on the man’s jacket with his name and a request that he be buried with a proper marker, as well as some money to cover the costs.
Warry crossed himself as he turned away and wiped at an eye when they made for the exit.