Night Over Water - Ken Follett [180]
He had to hurry.
He crawled over the piled luggage and grabbed his own suitcase. Working feverishly, he opened it and stuffed Lady Oxenford’s coats and dresses into it. He had to sit on the lid to close it again.
Now he could get into the trunk. He found he could close it from the inside easily enough. Would he be able to breathe when it was shut? He would not be inside for long: it might get stuffy but he would live.
Would the cops notice if the clasps were undone? They might. Could he close them from inside? That looked difficult. He studied the problem for a long moment. If he made holes in the trunk near the clasps, he might be able to poke his knife through and manipulate the clasps through the holes. The same holes would bring him air, too.
He took out his penknife. The trunk was made of wood covered with leather. The dark green-brown leather was imprinted with a pattern of gold-colored flowers. Like all penknives, his had a pointed implement for getting stones out of horses’ hooves. He set the point in the middle of one of the flowers and pushed it in. It penetrated the leather easily enough, but the wood was harder. He worked it in and out. The wood was about a quarter of an inch thick, he guessed. It took a minute or two but eventually he got through.
He pulled the point out. Because of the pattern, the hole could hardly be seen.
He got inside the trunk. With relief he found that he could close and open the clasp from inside.
There were two clasps on top and three down the side. He went to work on the top ones first, as they were most visible. He had just finished when he heard footsteps again.
He got inside the trunk and closed it.
Somehow it was not so easy to close the clasps this time. Standing with his legs bent he found it difficult to maneuver. But he managed it at last.
His position was painfully uncomfortable after a couple of minutes. He twisted and turned but got no relief. He would just have to suffer.
His breathing sounded very loud. Noises from outside were muffled. However, he could hear footsteps outside the hold, probably because there was no carpet there and vibrations were transmitted through the deck. There were now at least three people out there, he guessed. He could not hear doors opening and closing, but he felt a much nearer step and knew someone had come into the hold.
A voice came suddenly from right next to him. “I don’t see how the bastard got away from us.”
Don’t look at the side clasps, please, Harry thought fearfully.
There was a knock on the top of the trunk. Harry stopped breathing. Maybe the guy just leaned his elbow on it, he thought.
Someone else spoke from a distance.
“No, he ain’t on this plane,” the man replied. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
The other party spoke again. Harry’s knees hurt. For God’s sake, he thought, go and chat somewhere else!
“Oh, we’ll catch him all right. He ain’t gonna walk a hundred and fifty miles to the border without somebody sees him.”
A hundred and fifty miles! It would take him a week to walk that far. He might hitch a ride, but in this wilderness he would surely be remembered.
There was no speech for a few seconds. At last he heard receding footsteps.
He waited awhile, hearing nothing.
He took out his knife and poked it through one of the holes to undo the clasp.
This time it was harder still. His knees hurt so much that he could hardly stand, and would have fallen if there had been room. He became impatient, and poked the blade through the hole again and again. A panicky claustrophobia seized him and he thought I’m going to suffocate in here! He tried to be calm. After a moment he was able to blank out the pain while he carefully worked the blade through the hole so that it engaged the catch. He pushed the blade. It lifted the brass loop, then slipped. He gritted his teeth and tried again.
This time the catch came undone.
Slowly and painfully he repeated the process with the other catch.
At last he was able to push the two halves