" 'Of course I did,' I answered. 'And a very useful bit of hypnotism, I thought. When we're rested up, we can get her to put him to sleep again, take his gun and do a bunk in one of the local boats. Now Connie, do get hold of yourself, old chap. What we both need is some rest, that's all.'
" 'Some rest?' he almost wailed. 'Donald, you cretin, we have to get out of here at once. At once, do you hear me! The German is nothing compared to what lives here!'
"A voice from behind me stopped whatever I was going to say. I turned and saw the girl, standing smiling at the entrance to the room.
" 'Have you talked with Euryale?' she repeated, when she saw I hadn't heard her. 'Let us go then and see the other man, the impatient one.'
"Connie pushed past me, rather rudely as a matter of fact, before I could answer and faced the girl from a very short distance. He spoke in the old language.
" 'So you are Keto, eh, young lady? And the ... the one whom we talked with was Euryale, then?' His voice was very gentle and low, as if he were anxious not to excite or annoy the girl.
" 'Then,' he continued still facing her, 'where is Stheno? Surely she dwells also in the House of the Eye, does she not?'
"Now I can, as I said earlier, understand slow-spoken Classic Greek, but what this rigmarole meant escaped me completely. However the girl answered quite calmly as if it all made perfect sense to her.
" 'Of course,' she said, looking mildly at us, 'And they have always needed one daughter. Euryale comes up seldom and Stheno never, so I must see the House is kept strong and safe and tell the folk in the village what to do and how to get food for us and themselves.'
" 'I wish,' she added slowly, 'that I had a sister, for it is often lonely. But that is for the Two to decide.'
"Connie backed up until he was close to me, as if he wanted to lean on me, as perhaps he did. I was feeling pretty chipper again, but he was a bit older and a rather thin chap. His reserves of energy were about gone.
" 'Come,' said Keto again, more abruptly, 'we will go out and find a place where you can rest. You seem tired and not strong. We do not like people who are not strong. It will be better for you if you are strong. You are not old or weakened by sickness which is something we do not like either.'
"She turned on her heel, assuming we would follow and we did, in silence, back through that maze and jumble of dark rooms until we left the portico and were once more standing outside in the garden with the sun on our heads and a soft breeze ruffling our hair. It now seemed very hot, but it was the effect of that dank and frigid pile of stone on our systems for it was really a lovely day.
"Around a corner of the building, pacing fast, gun in hand, came the SS man, von dem Bruch-Wiletzki. He broke into a trot when he saw us, charged up and thrust that Browning practically up my left nostril. He was furious and his mean, narrow face was also frightened. There was no more 'cultivated-among-equals-of-good-birth-together' manner about him now, just suspicion and nastiness. He yelled in English, 'Where did she take you, Captain Ffellowes? Don't try to lie to me! I had an attack of dizziness and when I came out from it, you and that Greek were gone! I demand to know what you have been doing! Remember, I am in charge here and you two are nothing but my prisoners whom I can, and will, shoot out of hand if it should be necessary. Well?'
"I tried at least to appear calm. These Teuton hysterics are usually impressed by what they consider British phlegm, whether they admit it or not.
" 'Now see here,' I said, 'put that pistol away and please do try to be reasonable. We left you in the garden (I made no mention of how we had left him; if he was prepared to assume he had had a dizzy spell, that was his lookout) and were taken down to be interviewed by what must be one of the more unpleasant old ladies on record. She said a few words of dubious import from behind a dirty curtain and told us, in effect, to go away. That is absolutely and completely all, and now let's sit down and talk sensibly for a change.'
"His pistol drooped and he re-holstered it grudgingly and then actually did sit down, on a bench where we joined him. Keto sat on the grass nearby looking happily at us, apparently not bothered by our use of another language, simply content to gaze on her new toys, or possibly playmates.
" 'Himmelherrgottkreuzer!" suddenly burst out the German, 'This damned place is becoming intolerable. Every time I issue an order to this stupid girl I find myself an hour later sitting staring at the ground. The only thing that she has done which I wished was to tell those two undermensch to row out and pick you up. I can't even find out what the name of this place is!' His voice had steadily risen until at the end it was almost a wail.
"I looked over at Connie in a questioning way, but he was staring at the German. He asked him a question and got a prompt answer.
" 'Yes, I talked with some old woman, some hag-like creature down in the dark,' he admitted. 'I could scarcely understand her and when I shined my belt lamp,' he indicated a small torch clipped to his cross buckle, 'she had fled, vanished and there was nothing behind the curtain but a hideous statue.'
" 'A statue?' breathed Connie, his face taut, 'a statue of what?'
" 'How do I know?' yelled the Nazi, springing to his feet. 'Who cares anyway? A huge octopus with an awful sleeping face or something. I can't catalog these barbaric atrocities. It made me sick to look at it, with its shuttered eyes, so I called for the girl, this moron Keto, and demanded to be taken away.'
"He looked down at us angrily and then, apparently realizing that he needed us, tried to relax. He sat down again and almost visibly got a grip on himself.
" 'Listen, gentlemen,' he said, his voice trembling. 'This is a very remote island, wherever it is. Germany will absorb it in due course but there may be a longish time before that happens. I admit it, we may be here quite a while. I find this situation intolerable, personally. I have things to do, important things, and I do not doubt that you have also.
" 'Therefore,' he went on, trying to be as persuasive as he could, 'I propose a temporary armistice. I could make you help me, but I will not. Two more Allied officers freed will not stop the Third Reich to any serious degree. Aid me in escaping and I swear to let you go, even to assist you to rejoin your forces, on the honor of a German officer. What do you say? Tell me you agree and we can develop a plan.'
"I looked at Connie and he looked at me and we read each other's minds. We could trust this bastard exactly the distance of a mosquito's antenna, but we had better play along and see what developed.
" 'Captain Murusi and I are agreeable, Major,' I said blandly (be damned if I'd use his idiotic SS title). 'We don't much care for this place either. Your offer sounds reasonable enough. What had you planned to do?'
"Well, while Keto smiled and gazed at us, like an ornithologist with three totally new species, all discovered together, we worked out a simple escape plan. It seemed that the German had been given a small ground floor room on the far wing of the great sprawling house. He felt sure we would be given similar rooms near or next to his. Although there were only very small windows, too small for a man, the rooms had no doors and were really only cells or cubicles made of stone. There was an exit to the outside at the end of a short corridor and at midnight (we all still had watches) we would rendezvous there and go down and simply steal a row boat. There were several at the base of the path to the house and no one seemed to guard them.
"To me it sounded rather too easy. I frankly had not cared a bit for our encounter with the old person inside and I knew Connie was very upset indeed about the whole layout, although for some esoteric reason I couldn't fathom. The Nazi had the wind up worse than either of us, although he was trying to pretend otherwise in the best herrenvolk manner. I also felt sure that a German bullet in the back would be our destined reward as soon as he considered himself quite safe, and I knew Connie felt exactly the same.
"Nevertheless, we had little choice except to agree. The man was on the edge of a complete crackup, and might shoot us on the spot. Even the likelihood of Miss Keto's swift—a
nd paralyzing—retribution afterwards would hardly have been of much concern to us.
"Connie turned to the young lady and asked very politely if we could be shown to our rooms. It was indeed by now late afternoon, and the sky was darkening rapidly, which made our request all the more credible.
" 'Do you wish food brought to you,' she said a bit dubiously, 'for I wished you to eat in my company?'
"Connie was superb. I knew him enough so that I could tell it gave him the absolute chills to even talk to her, but he concealed it awfully well. He told her that we wanted to rest and be in our top-hole best form to enjoy her ravishing company and a lot of bumph like that.
"Her reaction was curious, I thought—not that of a flattered woman at all, but more like that of a child, who knows it's being put off but anticipates a treat in the near future anyway. Also as the light faded, her strange round eyes grew less attractive and rather, well, spectral.
"Von dem Bruch-Wiletzki was quite right. She showed us to rooms, or cubicles, next to his and drifted reluctantly and slowly away.
"A short time later one of the island men, older than the two we'd seen, but the same dull, vacant-eyed article, appeared with food. There was coarse bread and meat, some grapes and a jug of the sweet, heavy wine. Connie wouldn't touch the meat, seemingly some sort of local and very stringy goat. It wasn't bad, so I ate his. He wouldn't say why at the time, only asked me not to eat it either, but I was hungry. I expect he was wrong anyway.
"There was no fish, which was odd for an island, but one can't worry about everything.
"The Nazi ate with us, but he actually didn't tuck much away. Mostly he fidgeted and looked at his watch and muttered to himself. Once he shot a question at Connie, something about the statue he'd seen, I believe, and Connie said 'I knew the eyes were closed or you couldn't describe them,' whatever that meant.
"It was not exactly a cheery meal, but I felt better when I'd finished. Always grab a bite in a tight place, because you never know where the next nibble is.
"We decided to set, since it was now six-thirty, three rough sentry go's until midnight. I had the first and the other two went to their respective cubicles and tried to sleep on the pallets provided for them.
"I lay down on mine and tried to plan ahead a bit on how to deal with our German 'comrade.' I had not, you may have noticed, given my word to any agreement, and he was so obviously meditating treachery, he hadn't even asked for it, which was a trifle silly of him if he expected to be believed.
"I hadn't much luck in thinking up any schemes, beyond grabbing a rock and blipping von Bruch from behind. The atmosphere of the gloomy place, the House of the Eye, was not conducive to ordered thought. A soft wind moaned through the little narrow windows and strange groaning and creaking noises echoed through the cold, dank air.
"I think the whole place must have been built over vast limestone caverns in the island's rock, caverns which allowed the sea to enter. Every so often a great muffled noise, something like a softened howl, would come vibrating through the floor, almost shaking it with its sheer intensity. I am considered to be anything but oversensitive, and yet at times one was almost persuaded that one was hearing some monstrous and awful beast, whose feeding hour is overdue and whose bellow signals the rise of a titanic and raging hunger. All this from the sea simply banging away at the ceiling of an underground and underwater cave far below my feet. Shows you how wrought up I was, eh?
"It really was a most weird place with the utterly dumb and peculiar servants or serfs or whatever and the two women, old and young, running everything and lurking in this vast mausoleum. I almost got up and woke Connie, because he at least seemed to have some idea of who these very odd people were, but decided to let him alone. He had the last watch, just before we left and I thought he looked really done up.
"Eventually the German appeared from his cell and announced he would take his turn. But he told me in a nasty voice that he would take it in my company. I could sleep and he would wait for Murusi. 'I don't trust you two overmuch, Captain,' he said and tapped his pistol. 'We will wait together until midnight.'
"I was annoyed, but too tired to argue and fell asleep on my pallet almost at once. I needed rest and the Nazi problem could wait.
"I woke up suddenly to a crash and a thud. The SS man had been sitting on a low wooden stool, the room's sole furniture, and must have nodded off. At any rate, as I blinked and stretched, I saw a grinning Connie tucking that very large pistol in his belt. He had waited, come around the door fast, and dotted the German over the head with the stool from his cell. The Nazi lay on the floor, quite visible in that strange light, looking as if he were asleep. Well, let him answer the questions about where we had gone.
"There was no need for speech. My shoes were already on and we had never removed our clothes at all. We stole down the corridor, Connie in front with the gun, me carrying one of the stools. We could see moonlight coming in a door at the far end, and there was no sign of life or movement elsewhere, unless one counted the sub-aqueous and subterranean roarings, which were both louder and more frequent. I thought to myself there must be quite a sea running.
"When we actually got out, we could see a strong wind had come up and the sea was indeed rising. We were at an exit leading directly into the garden, and after a quick look around, we dashed off for the head of the path down to the beach. The shrubs and low trees were bending in the wind and the moon gave strong but fitfull illumination through a wrack of racing cloud.
"We had just reached the Hoplite statue I mentioned earlier, and it looked very effective and alive in the moonlight, when the last sound I expected to hear broke on my ears. It was the snap of several bullets passing by! An accompanying burst of fire came from behind us.
"I threw myself flat instinctively and saw Connie dive under a bush to the right. We wriggled around and got a look back at the building and saw we had made two cardinal errors.
"One was assuming that the Nazi had only one weapon. He was staggering after us firing a Schmeisser machine pistol in short bursts and screaming something in German, probably curses. The second error was not bashing his conk a bit harder, or at least tying him up.
"Connie sighted the Browning carefully and fired twice. One bullet must have been a near miss, and that was excellent shooting with a pistol, by the way, especially at night. Usually, a large rock is a far more reliable weapon. At any rate, von dem Bruch-Wiletzki also fell flat and got behind that base of a statue about a hundred feet off. He stopped firing and a momentary quiet, broken only by the wind and the sound of waves far below, lay about us.
"But now the House of the Eye was roused. No light appeared, but suddenly Keto in her white robe, her heavy blond locks flying, appeared in a clear space not far from the German and a little behind him. She called out something, but he had either had enough or was rattled, and whipping around, shot her dead in her tracks, using at least six bullets. I was appalled, because strange though the girl may have been, she was unarmed and had done nothing to justify her cold-blooded murder, at least that I could see. Connie, I may add, disagreed, but that is another matter.
"The German seemed a bit stunned by his own action and remained staring at the body, his back to us and resting on one knee. Connie motioned to me and we both got up and ran for the path like deer. We were running on turf and made no sound at all. I think we could have just gone racing on down, but at the head of the path something, some premonition or other, made us turn back and this is what we saw:
"Where the Nazi had been standing, something had interposed between us and him. The moon was partly veiled and sight was difficult, but some great, dark bulk, whose upper parts seemed to writhe and be full of restless movement, had blocked off the light so that the German was momentarily hidden. Whatever it was suddenly withdrew, lurching off to one side and at that precise moment the moon came from behind the clouds.
"What we both saw made us tear down that path like Olympic sprinters. In seconds it seemed, we were in
one of the little boats, each at an oar and pulling like hell for the harbor entrance. The waves were rising but we fought our way out of the narrow entrance and pulled for the open sea like good ones.
"Despite the rest and grub, we'd been through a lot you know, and as we passed the two little headlands which guarded the harbor I began to slack off a bit on the oars. But Connie noticed at once and, thank goodness, was having none of it.
" 'Goddammit, Donald, keep pulling!' he screamed over the rising wind. 'We aren't near being safe yet! Pull, for the love of your mother, pull!'
"Something about his manner, d'you know, made me tug a bit harder and my idea that we could rest vanished.
"The wind was strong, but not near gale force and the air was warm. The little boat was well-shaped for riding the seas and we took in hardly any water, but we were getting quite wet from the spray. Overhead the sky had grown darker and black clouds seemed to be increasing ahead of us, to what I assumed was north. Behind us not a light shown and only an occasional gap in the clouds revealed the mass of the island. Now, in the clouds ahead, I could see lightning begin to play as I looked over my shoulder. The thought crossed my mind that we had come to the island in storm and in storm we were going forth.
The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 12
