The Great Train Robbery - Crichton Michael (книги без регистрации .TXT) 📗

____________________

The wind struck him like an enormous fist, screaming about his ears, stinging his eyes, filling his mouth and tugging at his cheeks, burning his skin. He had not removed his long frock coat, and the garment now flapped about him, whipping his legs "so fiercely that it was painful."

For a few moments, he was totally disoriented by the unexpected fury of the shrieking air that passed him; he crouched, clutching the wooden surface of the coach, and paused to get his bearings. He found he could hardly look forward at all, because of the streaking particles of soot blown back from the engine. Indeed, he was rapidly covered with fine black film on his hands and face and clothing. Beneath him, the coach rocked and jolted in an alarming and unpredictable fashion.

He very nearly abandoned his intent in those first moments, but after the initial shock had passed he determined to go forward with his plan. Crawling on his hands and knees, he moved backward to the end of the coach, and paused at the space over the coupling that separated his carriage from the next. This was a gap of some five feet. Some moments passed before he gathered the nerve to jump to the next car, but he did so successfully.

From there he crawled painfully down the length of the car. His frock coat was blown forward, covering his face and shoulders and flapping around his eyes. After some moments of struggle with the garment, he shucked it off and saw it sail away, spun twisting in the air, and eventually fall by the roadside. The whirling coat looked enough like a human form to give him pause; it seemed a kind of warning of the fate that awaited him if he made the slightest error.

Freed of the coat, he was able to make more rapid progress down the second-class coaches; he jumped from one to the next with increasing assurance, and eventually reached the luggage van after a period of time he could not estimate. It seemed an eternity, but he later concluded it had not required more than five or ten minutes.

Once atop the van, he gripped an open slapper, and uncoiled his length of hemp. One end was dropped down the slapper, and after a moment he felt a tug as Agar, inside the van, picked it up.

Pierce turned and moved to the second slapper. He waited there, his body curled tight against the constant, unyielding blast of the wind, and then a ghastly green hand-- Agar's-- reached out, holding the end of the rope. Pierce took it; Agar's hand disappeared from view.

Pierce now had his rope slung from one slapper to the next. He tied the loose ends about his belt, and then, hanging on the ropes, eased himself over the side of the van until he was level with the padlock.

In that manner he hung suspended for several minutes while he twirled the padlock with a ring of picks, trying one betty after another and operating, as he later testified with considerable understatement, "with that degree of delicacy which circumstances permitted." Altogether, he tried more than a dozen keys, and he was beginning to despair that any would turn the trick when he heard the scream of the whistle.

Looking forward, he saw the Cuckseys tunnel, and an instant later he was plunged into blackness and churning sound. The tunnel was half a mile long; there was nothing to do but wait. When the train burst into sunlight again, he continued working with the keys, and was gratified when almost immediately one of the picks clicked smoothly in the mechanism. The padlock snapped open.

Now it was a simple matter to remove the lock, swing the crossbar free, and kick the door with his feet until Burgess slid it open. The morning train passed the sleepy town of Godstone, but no one noticed the man dangling on the rope, who now eased down into the interior of the luggage van and collapsed on the floor in absolute exhaustion.

Agar testified that in the first moment that Pierce landed inside the luggage van, neither he nor Burgess recognized him: "I cool him first, and I swear I granny he's some muck Indian or nigger, so black he is, and his dunnage torn all about, like he'd gone a proper dewskitch"-- as if he'd had a thorough thrashing. "His min's a rag of tatters, and black as all the rest of him, and I says, the cracksman's hired a new bloke to do the lay. And then I see it's him himself, right enough."

Surely the three men must have presented a bizarre picture: Burgess, the guard, neat and tidy in his blue railway uniform; Agar, dressed splendidly in a formal suit, his face and hands a cadaverous bloated green; and Pierce, sagged to his hands and knees, his clothing shredded and sooty black from head to foot.

But they all recovered quickly, and worked with swift efficiency. Agar had completed the switch; the safes were locked up again, with their new treasure of lead shot; the five leather satchels stood by the van door in a neat row, each laden with gold bullion.

Pierce got to his feet and took his watch from his waistcoat, an incongruously clean gold object at the end of a soot black chain. He snapped it open: it was 8:37.

"Five minutes," he said.

Agar nodded. In five minutes, they would pass the most deserted stretch of track, where Pierce had arranged for Barlow to wait and pick up the flung satchels. Pierce sat down and stared through the open van door at the countryside rushing past.

"Are you well, then?" Agar asked.

"Well enough," Pierce said. "But I don't cherish going back."

"Aye, it's frazzled you proper," Agar said. "You're a sight and no mistake. Will you change when you're snug in the compartment again?"

Pierce, breathing heavily, was slow to comprehend the meaning of the words. "Change?"

"Aye, your dunnage." Agar grinned. "You step off at Folkestone as you stand now and you'll cause no end of stir."

Pierce watched the green, rolling hills flash past, and listened to the rumble of the carriage on the roadbed. Here was a problem he had never considered and had made no plans for. But Agar was right: he couldn't step out at Folkestone looking like a ragged chimney sweep, especially as Fowler was almost certain to seek him out to say goodbye. "I have no change," he said softly.

"What say?" Agar said, for the noise of the wind through the open van door was loud.

"I have no change of clothing," Pierce said. "I never expected…" His voice trailed off; he frowned. "I brought no other clothing."

Agar laughed heartily. "Then you'll play the proper ragamuffin, as you've made me play the stiff." Agar slapped his knee. "There's a daffy of justice, I say."

"It's nothing funny," Pierce snapped. "I have acquaintances on the train who will surely see me and mark the change."

Agar's merriment was quashed instantly. He scratched his head with a green hand. "And these same of your acquaintances, they'll miss you if you're not there at the station?"

Pierce nodded.

"It's the devil's own trap, then," Agar said. He looked around the van, at the various trunks and pieces of luggage. "Give me your ring of tickles, and I'll break a pit or two, and we'll find some square-rigged duns to fit you."

He held out his hand to Pierce for the ring of picklocks, but Pierce was looking at his watch. It was now two minutes to the drop-off point. Thirteen minutes after that, the train would stop in Ashford, and by then Pierce had to be out of the luggage van and back in his own compartment. "There's no time," he said.

"It's the only chance-- " Agar began, but broke off. Pierce was looking him up and down in a thoughtful way. "No," Agar said. "Damn you, no!"

"We're about the same size," Pierce said. "Now be quick."

He turned away and the screwsman undressed, muttering oaths of all sorts. Pierce watched the countryside. They were close now: he bent to position the satchels at the lip of the open van door.

Now he saw a tree by the roadside, one of the landmarks he'd long since set for himself. Soon there would be the stone fence… There it was… and then the old abandoned rusty cart. He saw the cart.

A moment later, he saw the crest of a hill and Barlow in profile beside the coach.

"Now!" he said and, with a grunt, flung one satchel after another out of the moving train. He watched them bounce on the ground, one by one. He saw Barlow hastening down the hill toward them. Then the train went around a curve.

He looked back at Agar, who had stripped to his underclothes, and held his fine duds out for Pierce. "Here you are, and damn your eyes."

Pierce took the clothes, rolled them into as tight a ball as he could manage, wrapped the parcel with Agar's belt, and, without another word, swung out the open door and into the wind. Burgess closed the van door, and a few moments later the guard and Agar heard a clink as the bolt was thrown, and another clink as the padlock was locked once more. They heard the scratching of Pierces feet as he scrambled up to the roof; and then they saw the rope, which had been taut across the roof from slapper to slapper, suddenly go slack. The rope was pulled out. They heard Pierces footsteps on the roof a moment longer, and then nothing.

"Damn me, I'm cold," Agar said. "You'd best lock me back up," and he crawled into his coffin.

____________________

Pierce had not progressed far on his return journey before he realized he had made still another error in his planning: he had assumed it would take the same amount of time to go from the van to his compartment as it took to go from his compartment to the van. But almost immediately he recognized his mistake.

The return trip, against the blast of the wind, was much slower. And he was further burdened by the parcel of Agar's clothing, which he clutched to his chest, leaving only one hand free to grip the roofing as he crawled forward along the length of the train. His progress was agonizingly slow. Within minutes he realized that he was going to miss his intended schedule, and badly. He would still be crawling along the rooftops when the train reached Ashford Station; and then he would be spotted, and the jig would be up.

Pierce had a moment of profound rage that this final step in the plan should be, in the end, the only thing to go irretrievably wrong. The fact that the error was entirely his own doing merely increased his fury. He gripped the pitching, swaying carnage roof and swore into the wind, but the blast of air was so loud he did not hear his own voice.