The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [87]
There was about six feet left to go when he raised his hand. “Stop. Hold still.”
I was so relieved that I didn’t notice the pain in my arm from the tightened loop; I just closed my eyes and kept my head down.
There were slight movements on the rope, and, after a moment or two, faint clicking sounds as he went to work on the metal shutters. Minutes went by. My left arm began to go numb. Then, there was another sound from below, a sort of hollow tapping. It only lasted a moment, before Fischer hissed at me. I opened my eyes again.
“Lower a little, very slowly.”
As I obeyed I felt the tension in the rope suddenly slacken. Miller was inside.
“Rest.”
I loosened the rope on my arm and massaged it until the pins and needles began. I didn’t try to massage them away. They kept my mind on my arm and away from other things, such as the day the games master had made me dive. When you got into the cadet corps you had to be able to swim, and, once a week, all the boys in each squad who couldn’t do so were marched to the Lewisham Public Baths to take lessons. When you had learned to swim you had to dive. I didn’t mind the swimming part, but when my head went under water I was always afraid of drowning. For a time I didn’t have to, because I kept telling the games master that I had bad ears; but then he said that I would have to get a doctor’s certificate. I tried to write one myself, but I didn’t know the proper words to use and he caught me out. I expected him to send me with a note to The Bristle, but instead he made me dive. I say “dive.” What he did was pick me up by one arm and a leg and throw me in the deep end; and he kept on doing it. Every time I managed to get out, even while I was still choking up water, he would throw me in again. One of the attendants at the Baths had to stop him in the end. He was married, so I wrote a letter to his wife telling her how he messed about with certain boys in the changing cubicles and pestered them to feel him. I was careless though, because I used the same handwriting as I had used on the certificate, and he knew for certain it was me. He couldn’t prove it, of course, because he had torn up the certificate. He took me into a lobby and accused me and called me an “unspeakable little cad”; but that was all he did. He was really shaken. When I realized it, I could have kicked myself. If I had known that he actually had been messing about with boys in the cubicles, I could have put the police onto him. As it was, I had simply warned him to be more careful. He had thin, curly brown hair with an officer’s mustache, and walked as if he had springs on the soles of his feet. The term after that he left and went to another school.
Fischer hissed at me and I opened my eyes.
“Take the strain.”
I wrapped the rope round my waist this time so that I could use my weight to push away from the edge if necessary.
“Ready?”
I nodded and held on tight. There was a jerk as Miller got his weight into the sling again. Then Fischer nodded.
“Up.”
I started to pull. The friction of the rope against the coat on the edge of the roof made it terribly hard. The sweat ran into my eyes. Twice I had to stop and knot the rope round my waist so that I could wipe my hands and ease the cramp in my fingers; but the coil got larger again and then Fischer began to use his good hand on one of the ropes in the tackle.
“Slow … slower … stop.”
Suddenly the tackle ran free and Miller, grinning, was crawling across the roof towards me. He patted my leg.
“Merci, mon cher collègue,” he said.
I shut my eyes and nodded. Through the singing in my ears I could hear him reporting to Fischer as he gathered in the tackle.
“All those we counted on and a few more to garnish the dish. I even fastened the shutters again.”
I felt him untying the rope from my chest. When I opened my eyes he was clipping the