The Red Ribbon by H. B. Lyle

Author:H. B. Lyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC006000 Fiction / Thrillers / Espionage
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

Wiggins rested one hand on Cumming’s bath chair and breathed in the last of the slivovitz vapor. The old man had settled down into a deep, shivering sleep, and judging from the look Kell gave them when he came back, there was nothing to be done for Brandon.

Around them, the high spirits of departure had dampened down. A gaggle of young men still boozed at the rail, although their conversation had become quieter, more intense. Some passengers dozed. One of the students played a pennywhistle, piercing over the whirr of the steam engines. A faint ditty, it reminded Wiggins of the folk songs some of the Irish used to play in the Strand Union; a bone-shop jig, they’d called it, though none of the grown-ups had the energy to dance. He closed his eyes. That was the joke—a bone-shop jig was played last thing at night, to send you off to the Old Man in the sky. Most of them hoped they’d wake up in the morning. Some of them didn’t.

A tap on his shoulder. “Hans,” Kell said loudly, and pointed. “Emden.”

Wiggins shook his head awake. Passengers congregated at the rail to look on as the port terminal came into view, startlingly bright with a string of electric lights running along the quay. Cumming stirred too. Wiggins glanced back at Kell, then leaned forward and whispered into Cumming’s ear, “Stay asleep. Or I’ll kill you.”

Constance and Kell got up and went to the rail themselves, and Wiggins risked joining them. Not only was the port lit up, but by the terminal point stood a phalanx of police, with two police cars at the waterside.

“For Brandon?” Kell whispered.

“Or for us?” Constance asked.

“Or ’im?” Wiggins nodded his head back to the bath chair.

The ferry juddered into position by the two cars. Wiggins glanced along the rail. “Yous take ’im,” he hissed. “I’ll run a dodge. We’ll meet at the motor garage we saw on the way in, down the side road.”

“Why there?”

“We will steal a motorcar.” Constance said this under her breath, but Wiggins couldn’t miss the glee.

He ran back to the bath chair and scrabbled underneath. As he did so, Cumming whispered, “Leave me. Save yourselves.”

“I ain’t a gentleman, but I ain’t scum neither.”

He pulled Cumming’s stick from the chair and hurried along the seaward side of the boat. He scooted around the back and came up to the land side of the ferry just as the gangplank swung down to the quay. There was chatter and excitement as Brandon and his police escort appeared at the top of the plank, the inspector making a great show of going first.

Wiggins crouched under the lifeboat. In its shade, shielded from both the seamen and the passengers, he took the sword from the swordstick’s sheath. Twenty feet long by five, the lifeboat hung off the side of the ferry rather than needing to be lowered. And it was held in place by rope, not cable.

Working as fast as he could, he sawed through two of the guy ropes, leaving a small twine intact at each end.

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