The Time Trap. John Russell Fearn

to the other.”

      “But surely,” Lucy Brand asked, “we can find our way back if we follow this road as far as it will go?”

      Dawlish shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Just as one can never be sure that the waves on a shore will strike the same spot twice, so we cannot be sure of finding the way out. If we get out at all it will be by the merest chance; just as the merest chance brought us here.”

      There was dead silence—until Nick exploded.

      “Dammit, man, do you realize what you’re telling us? You are as good as saying we’ve got to stop here for the rest of our lives!”

      “Yes, sir. I base my opinion on the fact that those who came here before us never returned to the everyday world.”

      Harley raised his head and looked blank. “Who the blazes ever came here before us?”

      “Quite a few, sir. The records of missing people show that many thousands of people vanish every year without trace. Take two examples—Henry Potter of Maida Vale, who on the nineteenth of January, 1916, stepped back into his home to pick up an umbrella he’d forgotten, and was never seen again! Or the case of Dorothy Arnold of New York, who vanished from a busy shopping center in the middle of a summer afternoon. As for ships, they have dis­appeared in endless numbers and nobody has ever solved how, or why.”

      Harley straightened up. “So our names can now be added to the world’s record of missing people? How very nice! However, we are pretty healthy at the moment, but what happens when the picnic stuff gives out? I’ve seen neither food nor water in this confounded place.”

      “Water there must be or grass would not grow,” Dawlish answered. “We’d find water if we dug down.”

      “I’m doing no digging!” Bernice declared impatiently.

      “Before long, Miss Forbes, you may have to do many things in order to survive. As for food, I think we have an ocean in the distance there, and it may contain fish. I think we ought to remove everything we need from the car and then bead towards that ocean—on foot, of course.”

      The women looked in dismay at their light evening shoes and costly dresses, the latter showing under the opened coats.

      “Back to the primitive in one easy lesson!” Betty Danvers said finally. “Well, I’m game. Let’s go, girls!”

      But for her there would probably have been trouble with the grumbling Bernice and Lucy Brand, but against the younger woman’s example they could not stand out, so they descended stiffly to the dusty ground and stretched aching limbs.

      Nick clambered out too and joined Dawlish. Harley came wandering round the rear of the car and stood on the outside of the group, hands in the pockets of his evening trousers. He was unshaven and completely despondent.

      “Rugs, picnic equipment, and stove,” Dawlish said, hand­ing out the various articles to one or other. “This is all we need. I am sorry to abandon the car, sir.”

      “Thirty thousand pounds down the drain,” Nick sighed. “Ah well, we’re still alive.”

      He began walking, dust stirring round his shoes, and as he went he slipped his arm through Bernice’s so that she had to keep pace with him. She gave an angry glance.

      “Things are bad enough without you looking so disgust­ingly cheerful!” she exclaimed.

      “No use being miserable, Berny. If we’re to die let us do it with a smile on our lips.”

      “The rugged individualist,” Betty commented dryly. “Just the same, there’s a lot in what you say, Nick. I know be­cause I’ve tried it.”

      Nick frowned as the party struggled onwards. “Tried what, Betty? What are you talking about?”

      “Myself, as usual.” Betty gave a laugh. “This experience we have stumbled into is more amusing for me than anybody because, even in the normal world, I wouldn’t have lasted above six months.”

      The party halted, startled by the revelation. Betty had a defiant look on her pert face.

      “I know all of you have got me down as a girl whose main abject in life has been to get rid of father’s money,” she continued. “But you’ve had the wrong angle. Since it does­n’t matter much what we confess to each other I may as well tell you I’ve been having a last fling. Who wouldn’t, with only six months to go?”

      “You mean,” Bernice asked in horror, “that you have only six months to live?”

      “That’s it.” Betty shrugged and continued walking, her high heels catching in the rutted, dusty ground. “Something wrong with my heart. I heard about it six weeks ago, so I resolved to have the time of my life—and now look what’s happened! I’m not the only one who’s been given a death sentence! All of you have! Can you wonder I want to laugh?”

      “But you won’t, Miss Danvers,” Dawlish murmured, com­ing up beside her with the picnic case in his hand and a rug over his shoulder.

      She glanced at him quickly. She was noticing that he was far younger than she’d thought. No more than thirty-five.

      “Why won’t I?” she demanded.

      “Because I think you are too generous-minded to laugh at people in the same boat as yourself.”

      Betty raised a critical eyebrow and said no more.

      “After this,” Bernice wailed suddenly, “I’ll never feel clean again in all my life!”

      “If that’s an ocean ahead you can take a swim,” Nick said.

      “Can I? In what?”

      Nick hesitated, and then Harley Brand broke in: “I’m wondering how Consolidateds have broken this morning—”

      “Dearest, it doesn’t matter,” Lucy told him patiently.

      “What doesn’t? Consolidateds matter a great deal—”

      “You and Consolidateds may never meet again,” Lucy went on. “Do try and get things in focus, Harley. We may finish up dying as savages, with no food, no clothes, and no hope. Your checkbook in your wallet will be so much waste paper.”

      “Rubbish! We’ll return. Dammit, we’ve got to!”

      “Which means we must have organization,” Dawlish said. “Not so much for getting ourselves home, but for survival here. And organization demands a leader. I suggest—myself.”

      “Good enough,” Nick said, before anybody could object. “You seem to know more about this mess than anybody, so it’s only right. Okay, everybody?”

      There were slow nods, nothing more.