第 10 页

devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I

thought he probably had some kind of graft with the constabulary.

Most likely he had letters from Cabinet Ministers saying he was to

be given every facility for plotting against Britain. That's the sort

of owlish way we run our politics in the Old Country.

The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn't more than a

couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting on destruction, for I

could see no way out of this mess. I wished that I had Scudder's

courage, for I am free to confess I didn't feel any great fortitude.

The only thing that kept me going was that I was pretty furious. It

made me boil with rage to think of those three spies getting the

pull on me like this. I hoped that at any rate I might be able to

twist one of their necks before they downed me.

The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up

and move about the room. I tried the shutters, but they were the

kind that lock with a key, and I couldn't move them. From the

outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I

groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter, and

the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelt of

cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in

the wall which seemed worth investigating.

It was the door of a wall cupboard - what they call a 'press' in

Scotland - and it was locked. I shook it, and it seemed rather

flimsy. For want of something better to do I put out my strength

on that door, getting some purchase on the handle by looping my

braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I

thought would bring in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit,

and then started to explore the cupboard shelves.

There was a multitude of queer things there. I found an odd

vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a light. It was out in

a second, but it showed me one thing. There was a little stock of

electric torches on one shelf. I picked up one, and found it was in

working order.

With the torch to help me I investigated further. There were

bottles and cases of queer-smelling stuffs, chemicals no doubt for

experiments, and there were coils of fine copper wire and yanks and

yanks of thin oiled silk. There was a box of detonators, and a lot of

cord for fuses. Then away at the back of the shelf I found a stout

brown cardboard box, and inside it a wooden case. I managed to

wrench it open, and within lay half a dozen little grey bricks, each a

couple of inches square.

I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my hand. Then I

smelt it and put my tongue to it. After that I sat down to think. I hadn't

been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.

With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens.

I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew its power. But the

trouble was that my knowledge wasn't exact. I had forgotten the

proper charge and the right way of preparing it, and I wasn't sure

about the timing. I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power,

for though I had used it I had not handled it with my own fingers.

But it was a chance, the only possible chance. It was a mighty

risk, but against it was an absolute black certainty. If I used it the

odds were, as I reckoned, about five to one in favour of my

blowing myself into the tree-tops; but if I didn't I should very

likely be occupying a six-foot hole in the garden by the evening.

That was the way I had to look at it. The prospect was pretty dark

either way, but anyhow there was a chance, both for myself and for

my country.

The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was about the

beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no good at these cold-blooded

resolutions. Still I managed to rake up the pluck to set my teeth

and choke back the horrid doubts that flooded in on me. I simply

shut off my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as

simple as Guy Fawkes fireworks.

I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I

took a quarter of a lentonite brick, and buried it near the door

below one of the sacks in a crack of the floor, fixing the detonator

in it. For all I knew half those boxes might be dynamite. If the

cupboard held such deadly explosives, why not the boxes? In that

case there would be a glorious skyward journey for me and the

German servants and about an acre of surrounding country. There

was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks

in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew about

lentonite. But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities.

The odds were horrible, but I had to take them.

I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window, and lit the

fuse. Then I waited for a moment or two. There was dead silence -

only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage, and the peaceful cluck

of hens from the warm out-of-doors. I commended my soul to my

Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds ...

A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor,

and hang for a blistering instant in the air. Then the wall opposite

me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending

thunder that hammered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped

on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.

And then I think I became unconscious.

My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few seconds. I felt

myself being choked by thick yellow fumes, and struggled out of

the debris to my feet. Somewhere behind me I felt fresh air. The

jambs of the window had fallen, and through the ragged rent the

smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped over the

broken lintel, and found myself standing in a yard in a dense and

acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill, but I could move my limbs, and I

staggered blindly forward away from the house.

A small mill-lade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the other side of

the yard, and into this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had

just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade

among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel. Then I

wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to

a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a

wisp of heather-mixture behind me.

The mill had been long out of use. The ladders were rotten with

age, and in the loft the rats had gnawed great holes in the floor.

Nausea shook me, and a wheel in my head kept turning, while my

left shoulder and arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy. I looked

out of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the house and

smoke escaping from an upper window. Please God I had set the

place on fire, for I could hear confused cries coming from the

other side.

But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad

hiding-place. Anyone looking for me would naturally follow the

lade, and I made certain the search would begin as soon as they

found that my body was not in the storeroom. From another

window I saw that on the far side of the mill stood an old stone

dovecot. If I could get there without leaving tracks I might find a

hiding-place, for I argued that my enemies, if they thought I could

move, would conclude I had made for open country, and would go

seeking me on the moor.

I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering chaff behind me to

cover my footsteps. I did the same on the mill floor, and on the

threshold where the door hung on broken hinges. Peeping out, I

saw that between me and the dovecot was a piece of bare cobbled

ground, where no footmarks would show. Also it was mercifully

hid by the mill buildings from any view from the house. I slipped

across the space, got to the back of the dovecot and prospected a

way of ascent.

That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on. My shoulder

and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and giddy that I was

always on the verge of falling. But I managed it somehow. By the

use of out-jutting stones and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy

root I got to the top in the end. There was a little parapet behind

which I found space to lie down. Then I proceeded to go off into

an old-fashioned swoon.

I woke with a burning head and the sun glaring in my face. For a

long time I lay motionless, for those horrible fumes seemed to have

loosened my joints and dulled my brain. Sounds came to me from

the house - men speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary

car. There was a little gap in the parapet to which I wriggled, and

from which I had some sort of prospect of the yard. I saw figures

come out - a servant with his head bound up, and then a younger

man in knickerbockers. They were looking for something, and

moved towards the mill. Then one of them caught sight of the wisp

of cloth on the nail, and cried out to the other. They both went

back to the house, and brought two more to look at it. I saw the

rotund figure of my late captor, and I thought I made out the man

with the lisp. I noticed that all had pistols.

For half an hour they ransacked the mill. I could hear them

kicking over the barrels and pulling up the rotten planking. Then

they came outside, and stood just below the dovecot arguing

fiercely. The servant with the bandage was being soundly rated. I

heard them fiddling with the door of the dovecote and for one

horrid moment I fancied they were coming up. Then they thought

better of it, and went back to the house.

All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the rooftop.

Thirst was my chief torment. My tongue was like a stick, and to

make it worse I could hear the cool drip of water from the mill-

lade. I watched the course of the little stream as it came in from the

moor, and my fancy followed it to the top of the glen, where it

must issue from an icy fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses.

I would have given a thousand pounds to plunge my face into that.

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the

car speed away with two occupants, and a man on a hill pony

riding east. I judged they were looking for me, and I wished them

joy of their quest.

But I saw something else more interesting. The house stood

almost on the summit of a swell of moorland which crowned a sort

of plateau, and there was no higher point nearer than the big hills

six miles off. The actual summit, as I have mentioned, was a

biggish clump of trees - firs mostly, with a few ashes and beeches.

On the dovecot I was almost on a level with the tree-tops, and

could see what lay beyond. The wood was not solid, but only a

ring, and inside was an oval of green turf, for all the world like a

big cricket-field.

I didn't take long to guess what it was. It was an aerodrome, and

a secret one. The place had been most cunningly chosen. For

suppose anyone were watching an aeroplane descending here, he

would think it had gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the place

was on the top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre, any

observer from any direction would conclude it had passed out of

view behind the hill. Only a man very close at hand would realize

that the aeroplane had not gone over but had descended in the

midst of the wood. An observer with a telescope on one of the

higher hills might have discovered the truth, but only herds went

there, and herds do not carry spy-glasses. When I looked from the

dovecot I could see far away a blue line which I knew was the sea,

and I grew furious to think that our enemies had this secret

conning-tower to rake our waterways.

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the chances

were ten to one that I would be discovered. So through the afternoon

I lay and prayed for the coming of darkness, and glad I was

when the sun went down over the big western hills and the twilight

haze crept over the moor. The aeroplane was late. The gloaming

was far advanced when I heard the beat of wings and saw it volplaning

downward to its home in the wood. Lights twinkled for a

bit and there was much coming and going from the house. Then

the dark fell, and silence.

Thank God it was a black night. The moon was well on its last

quarter and would not rise till late. My thirst was too great to allow

me to tarry, so about nine o'clock, so far as I could judge, I started

to descend. It wasn't easy, and half-way down I heard the back door

of the house open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill

wall. For some agonizing minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed

that whoever it was would not come round by the dovecot. Then

the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I could on to the

hard soil of the yard.

I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I reached the

fringe of trees which surrounded the house. If I had known how to

do it I would have tried to put that aeroplane out of action, but I

realized that any attempt would probably be futile. I was pretty

certain that there would be some kind of defence round the house,

so I went through the wood on hands and knees, feeling carefully

every inch before me. It was as well, for presently I came on a wire

about two feet from the ground. If I had tripped over that, it

would doubtless have rung some bell in the house and I would

have been captured.

A hundred yards farther on I found another wire cunningly

placed on the edge of a small stream. Beyond that lay the moor, and

in five minutes I was deep in bracken and heather. Soon I was

round the shoulder of the rise, in the little glen from which the

mill-lade flowed. Ten minutes later my face was in the spring, and I

was soaking down pints of the blessed water.

But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles between me

and that accursed dwelling.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Dry-Fly Fisherman

I sat down on a hill-top and took stock of my position. I wasn't

feeling very happy, for my natural thankfulness at my escape was