After dinner I slipped quietly away in the car. It was a clear evening but very cold, with the wind settled in the north-east, and I still had an hour of daylight before me. First I went round the park for the preliminary survey. Some of it was walled, with bushes and creepers growing over the bricks, and some of it had tall hedges, in which were plenty of oaks. In the wall, about three hundred yards from the house, was a door. I got out of the car and tried it and found it locked. But it was evidently used by somebody, for there were fresh marks where the key had turned, and there were faint indications on the wide grass verge that someone had been walking that way. Then my eye caught the still fainter marks of tyres. Someone had been drawing up a car on the verge and then using that door. If for purposes of secrecy, the spot was perfect, for the door was well overhung by the low branches of a huge oak, and since there was a sharp curve in the road, a car coming by would be past before the hidden car could be seen.
I was looking at things from the point of view of some attack on the house, and at once I saw the unimportance of it all. Any active person could get into the park, not only over the wall, but through weak spots in the hedge. What was important for defence was the inner perimeter, as it were—the patrols that were maintained closely round the house itself by night. All the same, what I had seen was interesting. If nobody inside the Hall had been using that door, then someone outside had been using it to get into the grounds by night and make a furtive survey. Who that someone was I had no idea. I knew it would hardly be Cross, but I did think it might be a Negger.
That inquisitiveness of mine had wasted too much of my daylight, so off I went at once to main gate guard, and in case the reason for my visit should be suspected, I asked no questions, but drove straight through. When the inner sentry halted me, I left my car just short of him and went towards the house on foot. There was no reason why I should let the Hall know what was in the air that night, though it did occur to me that if I saw anyone connected with the house, I might give him a private tip in case there should be unusual noises.
Well, I had a good scout round and I got my bearings. I flattered myself that everywhere, including the kitchen garden, was clear in my mind, and then I came back by the rear of the house. Dusk was heavy in the sky, with dark clouds towards the west, and if it hadn’t been so late in the year I’d have said we were due for snow. Then I saw the stone summer-house against the sky and beyond it could just make out the line of boundary wall and the door, though they were three hundred yards away.
I took off my glasses to polish them, for the light was suddenly none too good, and as I did so I was thinking that if I hurried back to Camp there would be no need to use lights. Just then I saw something move by the summer-house, and I hooked my glasses on again In what I can only call a fraction of a second, I saw a man standing by the summer-house, and I was dead sure it was Colonel Brende.
Now I did not remember till afterwards that according to Penelope Craye, the Colonel was away and would most likely not be back till the morning. What I did think was that I’d just give him the private tip that we and the Home Guard had a stunt that night, so I made my way across the lawn. It was about a hundred yards, and the light was getting no better, but I didn’t worry when the Colonel was not in sight for there was nowhere he could go, and I guessed he’d be sitting on one of the teak seats on the flagged surround. But when I got to the summer-house there was no sign of him.
I thought that was extraordinarily odd, so I took a look round. Behind the summer-house was nothing but the flagged surround, and though there was a door at both back and front, each was locked. The flagged surround was a good twelve foot wide behind, then came a wide bed of wallflowers, and then a clipped yew hedge. The soil of the bed was undisturbed, and the hedge had no gap. Where Colonel Brende had gone—if it had been Colonel Brende—was a mystery.
I stood for a minute or two in the deepening dusk, and more than once my fingers went to my glasses. Then I had to admit that I had been mistaken. When I had hooked my glasses on after cleaning them, my eyes had had no time—particularly in that treacherous light—to get back to anything like focus. Of one thing only was I sure. It had not been Colonel Brende I had seen, but I must most certainly have seen a moving object resembling a man, and what that object was I couldn’t for the life of me imagine.
CHAPTER VI
Saturday Night
THE fun was not likely to start before the night was good and dark, which would be between nine and ten, or, to speak the lingo, twenty-one and twenty-two hours. I walked from the Camp and reached main gate well before that latter hour, and I gave the sergeant no hint of why I had come. The men on duty till midnight had already been posted, and so he could scarcely pass round the news that the Commandant had made an unexpected appearance and they’d better keep their eyes skinned.
The inner patrols moved on the gravel and lawns and the flagged walks round the main building, and through opened doors into the walled enclosure behind which are what are usually called the servants’ quarters. Four men moved and four were standing. When a patrol reached a standing man, that man moved on. That kept them awake and keen, and it kept them reasonably warm on a bitter night. And since the movements were not strictly regular, it had seemed to Harrison and myself that anyone from outside had a mighty poor chance of slipping through.
I moved about well outside the patrols, and bitter cold I found it, though I had on gloves and an additional sweater, and the British warm well round my ears. Soon I was trying to get the lie of the land relative to both shelter and visibility, and all at once I had an idea. There were plenty of seats by the summer-house and the hedge behind it would make shelter. The floor level there was a good ten feet above the tennis-courts, and I ought to be well placed for hearing.
Well, I made my way slowly towards it, and as I did so I heard the challenge of a sentry far away to my right. Cross’s men were abroad then, I thought, but though I strained my ears to listen, I could hear no more. That bitter north-east wind was now blowing, as I judged, at about thirty miles an hour, and the boughs of the trees soughed and creaked. I found my seat, which was one of a pair placed either side of the summer-house front door, and very soon I began to get used to the light. Considering I had had no vitamin diet, as I amusedly told myself, it was astonishing how much I could see. But it was only that the clouds had lifted somewhat, for above me I caught the twinkling of quite a number of stars. Where I sat was sheltered and comparatively warm, and I had a shrewd idea that one of Cross’s men, if he were at all familiar with the Hall gardens, would try to use the summer-house as a kicking-off place for an attempt to get through the cordon.
But nothing happened. The luminous dial of my watch showed the time to be twenty-three hours. Things, I told myself, ought to be happening by now, and things, in fact, did begin to happen. But if you are expecting an Othello narration of moving accidents by flood and field or hairbreadth escapes in the imminent deadly breach, you are in for the anti-climax of your life. What happened first was this. I had a tickling in my throat so I coughed very, very quietly into my handkerchief, and it was then that I heard a noise.
I couldn’t describe what the noise was like, but something told me that someone was close, and had moved. I held my breath, and at the same moment I heard the distant drone of a plane. Then that damnable tickling started in my throat again. Slowly I got out my handkerchief, and as I bent my head forward for the cough, things really happened. What they were I didn’t know, for the simple reason that I knew nothing at all. It was like that evening in the trenches when I was talking to my sergeant and we were laughing at some joke. In the middle of that joke, or so it seemed, I looked round, and there I was in a hospital bed at Êtaples.
When I opened my eyes that night, quite a lot of things were happening, and I can’t tell you the sequence in which I became aware of them, but at the same moment as I felt the pain in my head, I heard a tremendous crash, and a bomb fell some few hundred yards away. I didn’t know
where I was, but I remember saying to myself in my rude soldier’s speech, “To hell with this. This is no place for me.” Then I knew I was lying on the flagstones. My fingers went to my glasses, but by the mercy of Providence they were unbroken. Then I felt the pain in my head again, and on the top of my skull was a lump. Next I knew I was going to be violently sick—and I promptly was. After that I felt a little better.
Then I began to damn and blast Cross and his men, and tell myself that if I found the misbegotten son of Belial who’d knocked me out, I’d knock several kinds of hell out of him. Then I heard two more tremendous crumps, though farther away, and I was aware of excited voices from the men at the house.
“There he is!” a voice said excitedly. “Look. Over them trees. There’s the parachute!”
Distant searchlights were weaving in the sky, and I rolled over on my back and stared at them. Then I hoisted myself up on my elbows. There was the drone of receding planes, a more distant thud, and then nothing but the same old sough of the night wind. I was suddenly icily cold, and I got somehow to my feet and to the seat. In a minute or two I could feel like walking, and I had a shot at it. A sudden wonder made me look at my watch. The time was just on one hour, and I had therefore been lying on those flag-stones, well and truly sandbagged, for best part of an hour and a half.
I had a few halts before I reached the guard hut at the main entrance, and though I was still feeling groggy on my pins, I flattered myself that the sergeant noticed nothing unusual about me. I saw he was both pleased and excited, but I couldn’t very well ask him what had been happening since he knew that I’d been on the spot. What I did ask him to do was to give me his version of the night’s doings.
No wonder he was pleased. The Home Guard had tried to get through and three of them had been collared, including Cross himself. But for the raid happening and, as he said, spoiling things, they’d probably have collared more.
“Where are the Home Guard now?” I said.
He grinned. “Two men are here, sir. Captain Cross just went off to find the others, then we’re making them a spot of hot tea.”
“I think I’ll have a cup too,” I said.
I had come through the black-out screen to the light of his room, and he had a good sight of me.
“Excuse me, sir, but are you all right?”
“Not too bad now,” I said. “The fact is I had a nasty fall.”
“Sit down there, sir, and I’ll get a cup of tea.”
Off he went. Cross’s two men were in the room, which was a kind of clink.
“You fellows had bad luck then,” I said.
One of them shook his head and gave a wry grin.
“Your men were a bit too thick for us, sir. We thought we were all right when we got by a patrol, and then we ran clean into a standing sentry. You feeling any better, sir?”
I believe my face was rather green, and I still had the very devil of a pain in the head, but I was twice as good a man as had tried to get up from the flag-stones at the summer-house.
“Here is Captain Cross,” one of the men said, and I heard him speaking to the sergeant outside. Then he came in, and five men with him, and he was taking the defeat of his attempt in an extraordinarily good spirit. His men said they had enjoyed nothing so much for a long time, and it would buck up the whole Platoon if every man could take his turn at such night operations.
“You’re knocking off pretty early, aren’t you?” I said.
“I ought to be getting back,” he said, “and seeing what’s being done about those German airmen. I hope they’ve been rounded up.”
The sergeant had brought in tea and had gone out again. I thought the opportunity a good one.
“I’d like to ask you people a direct question, and it’s a highly confidential one. I must ask you to give me your word that you’ll not mention the matter to a soul.”
Cross said he could answer for himself and his men, so I asked which of them had given me that crack on the skull. Cross was horrified, and his men were absolutely at a loss. Not one of them had been near the summer-house. If they had been near it, one said, they’d have seen me on the ground and would have gone for help. When Cross began introducing the men and telling me who they were in the town as proof that that kind of thing wouldn’t be done, I told him their word was good enough for me, and I now had my own ideas on who had been responsible for the attack.
“One of the Neggers, I shouldn’t be surprised,” said young Holby, who was the son of a local solicitor and waiting to be called up for the R.A.F. I didn’t tell him that as far as I was concerned he had hit the nail on the head, but I began asking about the raid.
“Just when I came to,” I said, “I heard the very dickens of a bang—or I think I did.”
“That wasn’t a bomb,” Cross told me. “That was one of their planes brought down by one of our night fighters. At least we think so. We distinctly heard cannon shots.”
“The crew baled out?”
“We saw a couple baling out,” he said. “Holby says he saw a parachute coming down at about half-past eleven, but I tell him he must have been wrong. We only heard one plane then, and I’m sure that was ours. It was another hour before the raid got going.”
“Heavens! that reminds me,” I said. “I ought to have been back in Camp if there was a raid. Harrison will be wondering what on earth’s happened to me.”
The tea had been drunk and Cross said he’d take me back in his car at once. Two of the men were going with him, and the rest had their own transport. I was glad to accept the offer. His car was along the road with two others, under the care of another of his men. Young Holby came with us, and he and I had the back seat. He told me he was very keen on night work and had been trying out a special vitamin course. In his view it had made a difference, and he could literally see like a cat in the dark. His voice lowered when he told me about that first parachutist he had seen. About two miles, so he judged, over to the south-east, was where he had caught sight of the something white in the sky, against the clear and the stars.
I felt rather uneasy about that. Part of our job was to be at the disposal of the Police and the Home Guard for the rounding up of any baling-out airmen, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had been letting Harrison down, so when the car stopped at our main gate, I asked Cross if he would be having any information within, say, the next hour. If he had, I’d arrange for the telephone orderly to bring it to my bedroom.
The telephone orderly said Captain Harrison had gone to bed about half an hour before. I asked what the raid had been like from his point of view, and he was rather contemptuous. Nothing had fallen near the Camp, and he reckoned there had been no more than twenty bombs in all, most of which, if not the whole issue, had fallen in open country.
I thought it might be a good idea to ring the local police and hear what they knew. The Superintendent was still out, the station sergeant told me. There had been no local damage, as far as could be at present ascertained.
“Rounded up any Huns?” I asked.
“We got the three that baled out,” he said. “The pilot was dead in the plane.”
“Heard any news about any others baling out, more to the south-east?”
“You’ve heard it then, sir, have you?” he said. “No, we haven’t any more news about them. They’re out of our district. They come under the Buxton rural area. What we have been asked is to keep a look-out. That’s really what the Super’s after now.”
Young Holby had been right, then.
“Why did they come down?” I asked.
“Ask me another, sir,” he said. “What we think is that the machine developed mechanical trouble and they got the wind up. After they jumped, the plane might crash fifty miles or more away. All I do know is that there weren’t any of our night fighters in the sky till half an hour later.”
“Well, let us knew if you want any assistance,” I told him and rang off.
Somehow I didn’t feel like bed. There were some biscui
ts and chocolate in my drawer, so I munched some and then stoked my pipe. After that I felt much better, and my brain began to function more clearly. I told myself that I’d make a full report to Command of the night’s activities, and get Cross to make one too, to form an appendix. In the Service, as in a few other thing in life, it’s always as well to get your blow in first. Let Command get the idea that we were fine, enthusiastic young fellows, and then, if the time ever came, they’d find it hard to eat their own commendatory words. We might even be spared one or two brass-hat inspections.
The phone went. Cross was ringing, and he gave me much the same news as had come through the police. I ought to have known from the way he rattled it off that he was anxious to get something else off his chest. What he had to say was startling.
It appeared that one of the men who had been in the car with us lived on the south-east edge of the City, and he hadn’t told me so at the time in case I should insist on taking that man home first before coming to the Camp. After he left me therefore, he turned back to the City. Not four hundred yards from the park, at the strategic angle of the side road and the main highway, he had come across a strong piquet of men sitting in the lee of the hedge.
The light was pretty bad, of course, and he had thought at first that they might be some of his men whom his second-in-command—an elderly but bellicose retired colonel—had sent out scouting for Hun airmen. So he got out of the car and then found that they were a party of a dozen or so Neggers, all armed with stout sticks. They were a mixed lot, and the man in charge —a little fat futurist artist of a chap, about fifty—said blandly that they were picnicking by way of experiment, and certainly they all seemed to have haversacks with food and thermos flasks.
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 8
