Strong Man

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Yes, here,’ he called.

  But there was no satisfaction in his voice this time, and I knew why. I could almost hear the trampling feet of Colonel Aleyn’s loyal farmworkers pounding towards the house.

  The room Donald had found was more an office than a study, a small place with a roll-top desk in one corner, a tall wooden filing cabinet next to the narrow fireplace and a leather-covered writing table under the window with two piles of dusty-looking papers on it under squat brass paperweights.

  ‘Take the desk,’ Keig said to Donald.

  He turned to me.

  ‘You can take the table.’

  He himself advanced on the filing cabinet and jerked its top drawer full out. I ran across to the table which had two big drawers in front of it with little dangling handles. I dumped the guns I was carrying down with a crash—noise did not matter now—and pulled open the left-hand drawer.

  An incredible jumble of miscellaneous objects greeted me. Certainly no boxes of cartridges. I tried the other drawer. It contained nothing but papers, mostly small sheets with stamps on, receipts.

  Behind me I could hear the drawers of the tall filing cabinet crashing one by one on the floor as Keig inspected them and discarded them. I glanced over at Donald. He was deep in the desk, but apparently without result. I wondered if there might be at least a few cartridges loose in the first drawer I had opened. They would be better than nothing. I went back to it.

  In my excitement I could hardly distinguish one object from another in all the clutter, ink-bottles, india rubbers, paper-clips, a clothes brush, an electric torch without a top, drawing-pins by the dozen—I pricked my fingertips dabbling among them—a couple of battered-looking cigarettes, three or four old tobacco tins. And at last, right at the back, one cartridge, its brass end dulled, its brownish-red paper shabby. I grabbed for it.

  And at once I knew it was empty. I threw it to the floor in disgust.

  Then from the stairs outside there came a most terrible clatter. I seized one of the guns on the table and levelled it at the door, convinced that the other servants in the house had banded together and were making a rush at us.

  Keig went across and jerked back the door.

  ‘Quick,’ I heard a voice say, ‘there’s a whole lot of ’em coming down the drive.’

  It was one of our roof guards. I turned back to the table and grabbed up the other guns, too flurried to reason out whether it was better to take the useless objects or abandon them. Donald followed my example with the guns he had put on the floor beside the desk.

  ‘Did you finish looking?’ Keig asked him.

  ‘No, not the two bottom drawers this side.’

  ‘Get out, the rest of you, through the kitchens,’ Keig said.

  He turned to the desk and jerked open the first of the unsearched drawers. I ran out behind Donald, across to the baize door and through it, leaving it wildly swinging, and down a short passage to the big kitchen of the house.

  I have only the vaguest memory of a dresser and a table, half-seen in the gloom, and of my boots clacking out sharply on a tiled floor as I followed Donald across to an outer door and out into the night once more. He at once began to run hard as we left the house and I followed wondering where we were going.

  But I was right to trust his judgment. Evidently he had got the layout of the house and the gardens well fixed in his sailor’s mind because in less than a couple of minutes I realized we were at the place in the surrounding wall where we had originally come in. We scrambled over and a low voice called ‘It’s them.’ The rest of the party were waiting for us, jittery but keeping together.

  I wondered what we should do. But Donald was prey to no such indecision. He took over as second-in-command without a thought. Again I envied him.

  ‘We’ll hang on for Keig at least another five minutes,’ he said. ‘You lot with nothing to carry, fan out a bit and keep your eyes skinned. If anybody comes our way, shout first and run after.’

  Obediently four or five of the others set off into the night. But they had hardly left when I saw a familiar bullet-head crowned by its woollen cap appear at the top of the wall.

  ‘It’s Keig,’ I said, the relief almost making me shout aloud.

  But in fact there was not a great deal to be relieved about. Keig’s last desperate minutes of searching had been completely unsuccessful. And so, having tackled the one place within striking range where we had thought we might get hold of some weapons, here we were with nothing more than one dozen of those most ironical of objects, empty guns.

  3

  We did at least get back to our well-hidden glen without encountering anybody at all, and I was as glad to slip down its steep sides as ever I had been to drop into bed after some utterly hectic day in Fleet Street or abroad. It was full daylight when we arrived, because of the more circuitous route we had taken on the way back. And we slumped down beside the stream and ate most of the loaves which Fred Quiddie had found in the kitchens of the big house. But even food did not dissipate the depression I felt when I thought of our situation now. I guessed that most of the others—sitting either in silence or exchanging only muttered words—were as downcast as I was. Even Fred Quiddie had not had the heart, once we were safe in the solitude of the mountains, to start up one of his ribald songs, as he had done when we set out.

  It was hard to tell whether Keig shared the general feeling of depression. He crouched beside the little deep-sunk stream when we had finished eating and began to shave at the thick black stubble on his cheeks with the little safety-razor he had pinched from Colonel Aleyn’s bathroom. His expression was as impassive as ever. I wondered whether I ought to ask to borrow the razor myself or whether I would let my beard grow.

  I had just come to the conclusion that I would do nothing about deciding at this moment—the painful process of shaving in icy water and with no sort of soap was more than my frayed nerves would stand after a sleepless and alarm-filled night—when there was a concerted movement from among some of the others. I sat up abruptly. Something out of key about their action disturbed me, though I could not quite say why.

  The men who had got to their feet—there were five of them headed by Jack Ascough—moved over towards Keig.

  ‘Mr Keig,’ Ascough said, ‘we would like a word, if we may.’

  I frowned. The fellow seemed to have a positive knack for doing things just wrong.

  Keig felt at his cheeks, decided they were not yet smooth enough, and reached forward and dipped the razor down into the stream again.

  ‘Yes?’

  Ascough said nothing. He stood looking down at Keig’s broad humped-over back as he held the razor in the icy water of the stream. Evidently he did not feel happy at saying whatever it was he wanted to unless Keig was formally facing him. But, when Keig brought up the dripping razor, straightened his back and attacked the stubble round his chin without paying him any further attention, he made the best of a bad job and began putting his complaint in a strained nasal voice, eyes on some distant horizon.

  ‘Mr Keig, we are not properly satisfied with the arrangements made as per the present time.’

  ‘What arrangements?’ Keig said, through his stretched mouth.

  ‘The arrangements with reference to the chain of command,’ Ascough declaimed in the same nasal tone.

  Keig took the razor briefly away from his chin.

  ‘There isn’t any chain of command,’ he said. ‘There’s only fifteen of us, man.’

  ‘It isn’t so much that, then,’ Ascough replied, driven to a more natural mode of speech through sheer exasperation. ‘It’s you.’

  Now Keig swung round, though he remained in a crouching position at Ascough’s feet, an attitude which he did not appear to find in the least humiliating.

  ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Just what is it you’re saying?’

  ‘We no longer consider it right for you to remain O-i-c.’

  Ascough glanced round behind him at the others standing there. Now that
he had brought it out he plainly felt the need to make sure of his support. The four men standing a yard or two to his rear all looked studiously at the side of the glen beyond them. But they were nevertheless standing their ground. By now everybody, with the exception of the two sentries posted at the head of the glen, was aware of what was happening. I glanced quickly round to assess the general attitude. Fred Quiddie and tubby little Francis Crowe, the barber, were obviously indignant at any sign of distrust towards Keig. But the rest seemed either still puzzled or pointedly neutral, I could not decide which.

  If it comes to a fight, I thought, Keig isn’t in the best of positions, squatting down there like that and with the stream at his back.

  I had seen the quick frown momentarily wrinkle his broad forehead at Jack Ascough’s words. But he stayed crouching where he was, balanced on his haunches, the little safety razor in his right hand.

  ‘O-i-c?’ he repeated questioningly.

  And it was quite clear to me that he was in fact totally puzzled by these initials.

  ‘Officer-in-charge,’ Ascough said stiffly. ‘Force commander, if you like.’

  ‘And what you’re telling me is that I should hand over to someone else? Or do you want us all to go and give ourselves up to the Keepers?’

  Ascough gave that glance behind him once again.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve only got to look at the mess we’re in. I mean, you haven’t been all that successful to date, have you? It was your idea to try landing at this time of year, and the boat sank with everything in it, radio equipment, everything. And then you decided on trying to obtain an arms issue from that house, and look what happened there. If you’d ordered a proper recce, you’d have found out there was no ammo available, wouldn’t you? I mean, someone with proper experience would think of things like that. And—and we consider Commander Fayrhare should take over.’

  It was all out now.

  Keig, still without moving, looked over to where Donald was standing.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ he asked him.

  ‘Not a thing,’ Donald said clearly and loudly. And I believed him utterly.

  ‘And if I had just stepped out of it?’ Keig asked. ‘You’d have taken over?’

  ‘I don’t think the question arises,’ Donald replied perfectly steadily.

  ‘Yes,’ Keig said, ‘you’re right. It doesn’t arise.’

  He swung round in that extraordinary crouching position still, and looked up at Ascough standing straight in front of him.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you’d better get up to the top and take over from the look-outs.’

  He glanced at the group standing squarely behind Ascough.

  ‘And you, Cannell,’ he said. ‘You go with him.’

  It was an astute choice. Young Cannell, impetuous and variable, would have been easily enough won over to Jack Ascough’s mutiny. But equally he was young, and he was no match for Keig’s direct strength.

  He looked sullen for only a moment, and then swung off and headed for the place where it was easiest to climb up to the glen top. Ascough looked as if he would dearly like to call him back. But instead he stared down at Keig again.

  That’s all very well,’ he said. ‘But there’s a whole lot of us who just aren’t satisfied.’

  ‘You lot?’ Keig asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ascough replied, getting his courage back. ‘Five of us, all told. A third of the group.’

  Keig carefully felt all over the skin of his face with outspread fingertips.

  ‘Five with Cannell?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. And you can take it for granted—’

  ‘Then you’re four now,’ Keig interrupted brutally, and he glanced over to where young Cannell was scrambling along up the side of the glen.

  Then he finished his fingertip exploration of cheeks and chin. Evidently he had now succeeded in getting his whole face smooth enough to satisfy him because he began shaking the water from the little razor with short swift jerks of his right hand.

  When he had finished he lumbered to his feet and stood, legs apart, looking at the group in front of him.

  ‘Now listen to me,’ he said. ‘When we went to Colonel Aleyn’s house we went to the only place we were likely to get hold of weapons. It was our bad luck there was nothing to put in them. But we got guns, and when you point a gun at somebody they’re not to know it’s empty. So we’re about ready to take on the Keepers’ watch-point on Trigorrey. And you, all of you, will do as you’re told while we do.’

  His dark eyes fixed on Ascough.

  ‘Now, get away to the look-out place,’ he said.

  And Ascough, pale under his sandy complexion, simply went.

  How much of this plan to get guns from the Keepers themselves Keig had formulated before Jack Ascough’s quickly fizzling-out challenge was made I never knew. It was not the sort of thing he spoke about. I doubt if he had it arranged in his mind in every Particular then because the whole enterprise required very detailed working out. But all the same he must have fixed on the main lines while the rest of us were hurrying despondently back from the almost fruitless raid on Colonel Aleyn’s house.

  This was, in fact, very typical of his way of doing things. A problem would come up; he would think about it for a little and decide what it meant had to be done; then he would do it or get others to; and as soon as it was done he would begin thinking about the new situation.

  And he would go on planning away until he had dealt with every detail, as his method of tackling the Trigorrey watch-point showed. Operating from the glen, a base that seemed secure from discovery, and with a supply of food now to last with care for several days, he at once started finding out all he could about both the watch-point itself and the surrounding country and its scattered inhabitants.

  Soon we were able to build up in fair detail a picture of life inside the eight-foot granite wall that made up the mountain stronghold. Six people lived there we found, four Keepers, their Overseer and the Overseer’s young wife. There was a single-storey barracks for the men, a two-roomed cottage for the Overseer and his wife and another small square windowless building which we soon discovered to be the armoury.

  Shortly after we learnt this we put into operation the first stage of the plan. In what turned out to be a wildly exhilarating night we threw stone after stone from carefully collected heaps high over the granite wall and into the watch-point. And the moment the Keepers sallied forth at dawn to avenge this insult we contrived to vanish into thin air along various well-reconnoitred routes. Our pursuers never got within two hundred yards of us, and next day spirits were extraordinarily high all round.

  They rose yet higher when with dusk that day our sentry on the cold hill above the watch-point reported that all four of the Keepers had later been out scouring the countryside in pairs on their motor-cycles right up until the light began to fail. I think I was the only one for whom even a trace of doubt existed.

  When no one was near I put my hesitations to Keig.

  ‘What if they’ve been visiting some other shepherds like they visited our friend?’ I asked.

  Keig’s impassive face remained as expressionless as ever.

  ‘If they’ve made trouble,’ he said, ‘It’ll keep people on our side—so long as they know they’ll be revenged before long.’

  I had nothing to say in answer. But the image of the ruin that had been made of the snugly square house where we had eaten our first island meal was sharp in my mind.

  Next day came our bid for the heavy shotguns in that square granite-built armoury inside the watch-point.

  Operations began an hour before dawn with a repetition of our stone-throwing jamboree. When it began to get light it became possible to make out individual buildings inside the fort and, though I have never been much of a thrower, I suddenly began to take pleasure in selecting Particularly well-trimmed pieces of rock and hurling them with all the accuracy I could muster at the Overseer’s cottage.

  And at last I br
oke a window. I felt a flush of real triumph.

  It was a pretty unthinking sort of triumph, I must admit. As the tinkle of the breaking glass came clearly to me through the thin mountain air I thought only of the Overseer. He was a big raucous bully of a fellow with a quiff of stiff black hair like a boar and a swaggering belly, and I pictured him leaping from his bed in a fury at the sound of breaking glass. I did not at all picture my other victim, his wife, although I felt from my hours of observation that I knew her as well as I knew him. She was a mere girl, hardly twenty I would have thought, and her husband was already leading her a miserable sort of a life, venting his bullying instincts at home whenever he was not lording it over the surrounding countryside. More than once I saw the girl—she was flaxen-haired and prettyish, but tending to be fat and already a little blowsy—scuttle out of the cottage away from him, and even from a distance you could tell she never looked at him but out of the corner of her eyes.

  So what she must have felt when there came this new attack of ours on her already precarious security I do not know. But I was right about her husband and his fury.

  A minute or so after the window had crashed in he came storming out of the cottage and went over to the barracks at a run. And ten minutes after this all five men from the post went trotting over to the big double gates, shotguns at the ready, bandoliers of cartridges round their chests, green hats with those arrogant cockades jammed firmly on their heads.

  They heaved open one side of the heavy wooden gates, came out, heaved back the gate, locked it solemnly and turned to look for the enemy. They saw us, too. We had taken care they should. And in a few minutes they were out of sight of the gate, running down the mountainside pursuing half-a-dozen teasing, constantly disappearing figures.

  As soon as they had gone Keig, myself and Francis Crowe ran out of hiding and attacked the gates. A few minutes work with Keig’s axe sufficed. And holding our empty useless guns as menacingly as we could, we advanced into the watch-point. Ahead there was the squat windowless armoury, to our left was the cottage, to our right the barracks. And in the cottage was the Overseer’s young wife and she, if our plan was going to work out, must know where the key to the metal door of the armoury was.