Dishonour Among Thieves Read online

  Behind the dank confining walls of Dartmoor Prison young Rory Macshane collected the strange items—sugar, needle and thread, bits of leather—that would aid him in his cleverly contrived break. Then on a foggy winter morning a fight in the work area distracted the guards, and Rory slipped into the chill mist that hung over the moors and disappeared.

  Two months later the residents of the serene fell country to the north—where Superintendent MacDonald, C.I.D., had retired—were alarmed by scattered evidence of an unknown visitor, recalling a terrifying, long-forgotten past. It was a past from which there could be no escape—not for the retired MacDonald, not even for the elusive Rory Macshane.

  DISHONOUR

  AMONG THIEVES

  by

  E.C.R. LORAC

  Copyright © 1959 by E.C.R. Lorac

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  WHEN RORY MACSHANE saw the raincoat, something inside him said, “This is it.”

  It was a good, heavy man’s raincoat and it had been dropped in the toolshed by a thoughtless mechanic who was repairing the electric pump. In a flash, the raincoat was hidden and Rory walked back to rejoin his gang, carrying the angle irons the boss had sent him to fetch.

  Rory had learnt, by a year’s imprisonment on the Moor, that it isn’t difficult to escape from a prison working party on Dartmoor. Several prisoners had bolted from their gangs in that period, bolted into the mist and simply disappeared: but all of them (with one notable exception) had been brought back within a few days: two had given themselves up, defeated by hunger and cold and rain: drenched, starved, shivering, they could not face another night of aching misery in the clinging mist and penetrating chill of the cruel Moor. A man needed more than the courage to make an initial dash if he were going to get away and keep away: he needed to use his wits to plan, to prepare over a period of months, to be quite clear as to what he was going to do and where he was going to do it. And he needed clothing, to conceal his prison uniform and to protect him from the cold; Rory favoured the winter months for escape: he believed in moving by night and lying up during the day, and the longer hours of darkness outweighed the cold to Rory’s mind.

  Never was there a convict better equipped to weigh the chances of escape than was Rory Macshane. Fourteen years ago, in the winter of 1944, when he was only twenty-one, he had escaped from a P.O.W. camp in Lower Silesia and reached Switzerland two months later. During his year in the P.O.W. camp, Rory had learnt a great deal: it was there that he had first learnt to steal—from his captors, the hated “goons”; to steal swiftly, silently, cunningly. To steal was a comparatively easy technique to acquire: to hide the proceeds of theft was much more difficult. You could hide anything if you were skilful enough, and skill meant practice and preparation. Thousands of prisoners of war learnt how to hide things from their captors: the most improbable things: civilian clothes, faked Wehrmacht uniforms and spoof weapons: tools, documents, food, containers in thousands: and these had been hidden in huts liable to sudden searches. The Germans searched conscientiously and assiduously, but the P.O.W.S beat them again and again.

  Rory Macshane remembered all his old skills when he was imprisoned on Dartmoor. It was much more difficult to hide things in an English prison than it had been in the huts of Stalag X, but it could be done if you were patient and observant enough. The warders were there to watch the prisoners, but some of the prisoners watched the warders even more closely.

  2

  Rory had given a lot of thought to his escape equipment. He had been a prisoner on Dartmoor for over a year, sentenced to a ten-year spell for robbery with violence. At first, he had been bemused, depressed, and sick at heart: robbery he had planned, collaborating with others whom he knew to be criminals. Violence had had no part in his plan, it had just happened when things went wrong. He had never talked about it, neither to the counsel who defended him in court, nor to the prison chaplain, nor his prison visitor. He remained obstinately silent and never told them how he was haunted by the memory of the old watchman who was lying, bloodstained, at his feet when he was arrested. He could have said, “I didn’t mean to hurt him”—but what was the good? He took what was coming to him in silence, including the biting words of the judge who had sentenced him.

  As his natural resilience returned, Rory’s mind turned to escape: he knew he could get away. In the P.O.W. camp, neither searchlights nor wire nor machine guns nor guards had been able to stop men from escaping: the real problem came later; having achieved a temporary and precarious freedom, how to convert it into real freedom? To get out was one thing, to keep out was another.

  Remembering back to his long trek from the Polish frontier to Switzerland, Rory listed his needs as “Kit. Food. Cover.” Kit included adequate clothing to protect a man from the cold and wet which might reduce his will: kit, also, which would not brand him as a fugitive at first glance, if anybody set eyes upon him. Food was also an essential: food to keep him fit for the first crucial period before he had developed his ability to “live off the country.”

  “Cover” included enough knowledge of the immediate surroundings of the prison to convert the first dash into temporary security, whether by digging a burrow or crawling into thick undergrowth. Both these expedients were possible to a skilled fugitive; Rory knew. He had developed them to an art, the art of taking cover.

  Food was a problem which exercised his ingenious mind over a period of months: some foods would keep, if you could find a container and a hiding place. Sugar was one of them: sugar helps to maintain body temperature and energy and a cold hungry man yearns for it. Fats of some sort kept wholesome over a long period in the right conditions: lard and dripping were both edible weeks after you had “salted them down” if you had a cool hole to hide them in. Bread and suchlike would have to be secreted shortly before you made your break. Rory had a store of matches and he collected some wood chips and kept them dry. An escaper could not make a fire by day, the smoke would betray him, but Rory and his fellow P.O.W.s had developed a technique for kindling a fire at night in a hole in the ground: the first revealing flicker of kindling had to be concealed by crouching over the hole: then grass and leaves and damp twigs were added with infinite care until a hot nucleus of ash developed which showed no flame or sparkle; just a smouldering mass of peat-like embers, hot enough to raise the temperature of a can of water and provide the sweetened drink which put fresh life into a chilled body, and from which warmth still seeped out to comfort half-frozen fingers. Rory Macshane was an adept at making a fire which showed no telltale flame at night: smoke didn’t matter, provided you chose a place where no one was within range to smell it.

  3

  Thoughts of the skills he had once developed as an escaper kept Rory’s mind from the dreary present and kept alive the zest in life without which no escaper can succeed. Despair is a deadening quality: stifling to the will and lowering to a man’s vitality. All through those months when he made his plans, when he hid the oddest and seemingly most useless little bits of gear, Rory Macshane behaved as a very reasonable prisoner; neither too humble and co-operative nor yet too self-willed and truculent. There were occasions when he gave a hand to a warder in difficulties, but not often enough to brand him as a blackleg among his fellow convicts. He helped the latter, too: helped them with his fund of escaper’s experience.

  Eventually Rory got the reputation of “a good prisoner,” a man who gave no trouble and was a good worker, given a chance to work. He worked cheerfully: any workshop, from sewing mailbags to repairing clothes and boots, offered materials which were treasure trove to an escaper: needle and thread, bit
s of fabric or leather, nails and suchlike. The thing to do was to have patience, never to take anything but the smallest and least traceable items, and not to take even these too often.

  Eventually Rory was rewarded for his patience and good behaviour: he was drafted into one of the field gangs who worked in the open under the eyes of armed warders.

  The chaplain was one of the first who said to the Prison Governor: “Macshane has some quality in him which I like: I wish I could get him to talk, I think there’s something worth while in him if one could only get at it.”

  The governor replied: “He’s tough. He’s got a bad record of thieving and he was sentenced to this stretch for a very brutal crime.”

  The prison visitor who came to talk to Rory said: “I like the chap. He’s a countryman: he’s worked on the land and he’s got a natural feeling for beasts and birds. I know that from the way he listens and the very occasional comment he makes when I talk about my own farm. I wish I could get him to open up: there’s some good in him if one only gets on to terms with him.” And the warder to whom the prison visitor spoke replied:

  “He’s tough. He’s behaving well because it suits him, he likes working outside and he’s a good worker. But if ever we get another bout of real trouble here, Macshane’s one of the men I shall watch. There’s nothing reformed about him: he behaves while he finds it convenient to behave.”

  Rory Macshane certainly liked working outside: he had been brought up on a farm in Northern Ireland and as a lad he had worked as a hired man on a farm in Westmorland. He was a skilled hedger and ditcher and he repaired stone walls and fences as though his heart were in the job. His heart was in the job of getting fit: hardening his muscles, gone soft in imprisonment, hardening his feet in preparation for a long walk (but not so long as the walk he once took to the Swiss border). Working outside gave him much more scope for hiding things: he had collected some empty tins and some sacks: sacks which had been made for potatoes, for calf food, for fertiliser. Sacks were very useful to an escaper on Dartmoor, and no one had ever suspected him of “lifting things.” He was always working with a will, a model prisoner, and he knew very well that a warder can’t keep his eyes on one man for too long when he is jointly responsible for a number of men. Rory had got some of his gear beyond the enclosures and he could pick up his cache in a matter of seconds when he was ready for it.

  From the recaptured escapers, the men who had given themselves up, news seeped through about the lie of the land immediately beyond the purlieus of the prison. Rory Macshane was interested in running water. The warders had police dogs to track fugitives and Rory had good reason to believe that a man who takes to the bed of a stream leaves no scent which dogs can follow. Under the very eyes and ears of the warders, Rory Macshane memorised the mumbled details of the terrain outside from men who’d made a bid for it and been defeated. They had no heart to try again, but Rory was determined not to be defeated: he’d pulled it off once, in an enemy country where a mistake meant a bullet; he’d won through, not only by virtue of wits and patience and guts. His countryman’s sense had helped him. Keep to the open country was his motto: avoid villages; and prospect carefully before approaching any habitation.

  4

  It was at the end of January that Rory made his getaway. The day had dawned clear, but the temperature dropped steadily and by mid-afternoon the mist came down quite suddenly, just as Rory had hoped when he felt the windless chill of the air. The head warder blew his whistle to order the gang to fall in to return to cells: with the uncanny awareness of prisoners, the gangers sensed rather than saw Rory’s plunge into the mist through a gap in the wire which he himself had made. Yards away from him a fight developed among the gangers and the warders were fully occupied for a few moments in restoring order, and every minute the mist thickened. Rory heard the shouts and yells, the whistles and orders as he plunged on, bent double, towards a dip in the ground where the mist was densest: he knew it would take the warders a little time to form the gang into ranks and longer to realise that their files were a man short. Rory straightened up and ran, plunging over the rough ground in the direction where he hoped for his stream: he carried the bundle whose twine lashings he had grabbed as he got beyond the wire. Before the “man escaped” siren howled from the prison walls he had found his stream, and the mist closed down on him in dense whiteness, cold and clammy, the sort of mist he had longed for.

  5

  When he found the stream, Rory sat down and took his boots off: sodden boots are no good to a man who faces weeks of walking. From his bundle he produced the oddest footgear, resembling moccasins, which he had made from bits and pieces of canvas and leather and sacking, sewn together with stolen needle and thread. They would save his feet from getting cut on the stones and rocks in the bed of the stream: and save his feet they did, to a considerable extent. By the time he reached a tributary streamlet and turned uphill in its ice-cold water, he knew his moccasins had served their purpose: bruised his feet might be, but they were not cut.

  When he reached the head waters of the streamlet, he sat down and rubbed his feet dry and then put on the socks and boots which he had hung around his neck by the tied laces. They were good boots—one of the advantages of working in an out-of-doors gang: men can’t do field work without decent boots. Then he untied the twine which had bound his raincoat into the smallest possible bundle and he shook the coat out and put it on. He was left with two sacks: one contained his meagre store of hoarded food packed in two tins: the other sack he put around his shoulders. The bundle of sacks and coat and the tins had been hidden in a crevice in the ground beyond the wire days ago. Somehow Rory had contrived to hide that bundle, unseen by the warders, when he was shifting working gear. It seemed an improbable feat to accomplish, but he had succeeded in more improbable jobs when he had been behind barbed wire. And here he was, free: having accomplished the most hazardous jobs of all, he had no fear at all. He had made it.

  Having got the raincoat buttoned and one sack draped over his head and shoulders, he moved up the rough hillside through the dense mist: the higher he climbed, the thicker the mist, and he rejoiced in it: the mist meant security. He knew, too, in which direction he was moving, up to the heights of Sheeps Tor: he had often seen its rocky eminence and he knew that no other ground rose as steeply as this from the prison. He was going on, up to the top to the rocky outcrop. Once there, he would hunt for a place where he could burrow a bit with his broken trowel blade, some place under a rocky overhang where he could rest a little, eat the hunk of cheese he had in his pocket, even grub a hole and light a fire: the matches and chips were safe under his shirt.

  He stopped to get some water in one of his tins, transferring the tin’s contents to his pockets. As he climbed, with his free hand he grabbed occasional twigs and heather fronds: the mist was so thick he could risk a small fire as darkness fell. He was very cold, but the climb was getting the circulation going in his feet again, and he was warm with satisfaction. He had done what he had planned to do.

  When Rory Macshane at last got himself wedged into his burrow under a rocky overhang, with heather branches helping to conceal him yet further, it was doubtful if anybody would have spotted him in full clear daylight. He had stepped into the larger sack and pulled it up to his armpits, shoving the raincoat down around his legs: his odd bits and pieces of gear went into the large pockets of his raincoat: the other sack he pulled over his head and shoulders, a cut piece giving his eyes fair play. The sacks helped to keep him warm and dry, and would be useful cover sometime when cover was needed: a sack is good camouflage in country districts. He did not go to sleep, but he rested and chewed his cheese and crust and he listened with an ear to the ground for any telltale sounds of pursuit. He was thinking of all the things he had planned to do.

  Rory was going to travel north: he meant to travel on his feet, unless he was lucky enough to spot a wagon on a goods train later: he knew all about jumping trains; but he was quite prepared to walk all t
he way. What was two or three hundred miles odd to him? As he lay under the projecting rock in the mist on Dartmoor, he remembered some of the countryman’s tricks which had saved him from starving in Germany. He was good with beasts: accustomed to cows since he was a small child, he could creep up to any cow in the dark without alarming it, murmuring the “cush, cush, cusha,” which cows understand: he could get his fingers round the warm teats and direct a stream of milk into his can; no milking cow resents skilled, accustomed fingers on its udder. He could stalk farmyard fowls, and wring a bird’s neck before it had had time to let out a warning squawk: he could steal eggs from under a sitting bird. He had learnt all these things when he was a ragged barefoot urchin in Northern Ireland and the knowledge and practice of them had saved him from starving and would save him again. As he lay there, snug in his sacks, a powerful healthy man, unafraid of weather or pursuit, he laughed softly to himself: he had done it before and he could do it again and at the end of the long trail north there was a reckoning to complete.

  Even while Rory Macshane laughed under his breath, warders and searchers cursed him as they groped their way in the blinding mist: roads were patrolled, cars searched, railwaymen alerted, bus drivers warned. (As though Rory would have been fool enough to risk travelling on a road.)

  The prison chaplain said: “I’m sorry. I hope he doesn’t get himself into more trouble. I feel I failed with him: there’s something good in the chap somewhere.”

  “So you say, Padre: I say we shall be lucky if there isn’t a murder before we catch him. He’s tough, a real criminal type.”

  Neither chaplain nor warder thought of the escaped convict as a man who could creep up to a cow in the dark or get on terms with a nanny goat. Escaped convicts always took to the roads eventually, stole from cottagers or village shops: they had to have food and shelter. That’s why they were nearly always caught. Prison warders and officers get to learn a lot about convicts who try to escape: most of them are townsmen, some are skilled mechanics and housebreakers. Their minds turn to roads and transport, the chance of stealing food from houses or shops, stealing a car from a garage, stealing a ride on a passenger train. Very few of them are countrymen and fewer still face a walk of over two hundred miles cross-country, living “off the land.”