Cry of the Hunter - Jack Higgins [70]
Fallon suddenly felt an insane desire to laugh rise up inside him. He was losing his grip. He should have thought of this. It was so obviously the clever thing to do. Even as he watched, the three policemen and the guard boarded the train and the platform started slipping away.
He moved quickly out of the compartment and along the corridor to the nearest door. As he put his hand out to open it the platform disappeared and the train moved out into the country again, gathering speed. For a moment he considered his position. He didn’t have very long. There weren’t many people on board and it would only take the three policemen ten or fifteen minutes to work their way through the train. He leaned out of the window and glanced along the track. There was a goods train standing on a side line a few hundred yards away. His mind worked rapidly assessing the risk, and then he smiled and opened the carriage door. There really was no risk in anything now. There was only what he had to do.
He grasped the hand rail firmly and closed the door behind him. The train was doing about twenty miles an hour and yet the stationary goods train seemed to rush towards him. He waited until it was twenty or thirty yards away and jumped.
In the split second before he landed he knew he had miscalculated the speed. His feet hit the gravel and he desperately tucked in his head as he somersaulted and crashed heavily to the ground.
For several moments he lay sprawled half-across the track upon which the goods train stood and his senses reeled. A small, insistent voice forced him to his feet and sent him lurching towards the goods train. His whole body was on fire with pain and his mind tried to take refuge from the shock of it. He reached the end waggon and reached up and pulled on the sliding door. The effort sent fresh waves of agony rippling through him. He gritted his teeth and heaved on the door and it opened. For a moment he rested there and then he pulled himself up into the waggon.
It was full of packing cases and there was little room between them. He leaned on the door with all his remaining strength and closed it. He turned and moved forward until he was standing in a small space between some packing cases and the side of the waggon. His head was swimming and the pain was a living thing that would not leave him alone.
There was something warm and sticky trickling down inside his shirt. Almost casually he reached a hand inside his coat and took it out again. It was covered with blood. His wound had broken open. For a moment he regarded it in horror and then, as the pain rose inside him, he half-stifled a scream and crumpled to the floor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE emerged from a deep well of agony and huddled on the floor in the narrow space between the packing cases and the side of the waggon, gasping for breath as the pain ebbed and flowed in his helpless body.
It was like that for a long time - a very long time. Gradually he forced the pain away from him, down to another place, below the level of his consciousness. It was there and yet it was not there. He giggled furiously and opened his eyes and found himself in darkness.
A slight feeling of panic moved inside him and he reached out through the dark and touched the side of the waggon as if to reassure himself that it was still there. The train was moving very slowly along the track and nearby he could hear the sound of other trains.
He felt light-headed and he searched his pockets until he found a packet of cigarettes. He pushed one into his mouth and his fingers fumbled for a match. It flared in his cupped hands and he leaned forward to light