CHAPTER X
Few in the history of human warfare have been so difficult to convince that they had been taken prisoner by an enemy as was Dr. Kokintz, when captured by Tully Bascomb in the name of Grand Fenwick. He had, it is true, good reason for his disbelief. For one thing, he had been expecting sandwiches, and he had got, instead, broadswords. For another, he had anticipated that a twentieth-century air-raid warden would be up to see him with coffee and comfort. Instead he was confronted by two fourteenth-century men-at-arms, clad in chain-mail, and covered from shoulders to calves with surcoats on which were emblazed a double-headed eagle, rampant. Finally, in common with the whole United States, he had no idea that the nation had been invaded, and invaded by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
Even for a man who kept in touch with current events, the situation would have been astonishing. For Dr. Kokintz, who as a scientist was more familiar with the future and the past than the present, it was beyond immediate comprehension.
“No sandwiches,” he said, for the third time, blinking at Tully as if he had risen through the floor boards and was likely to disappear by the same route at any minute. Tully told him for the third time, with creditable patience, that there were no sandwiches, and that he was a prisoner of war.
“I do not understand it,” the doctor said, shaking his head from side to side, quite slowly. “I do not understand it. I believe I must have been working too hard and am suffering from hallucinations. You two”—pointing to them—“are a hallucination. You are the result of my working too hard. The mind, when over-pressed with realities, takes refuge in fantasy at times, and that is undoubtedly what has happened to me. You may also be the result of vitamin shortage. That sometimes has a good deal to do with it. However, if I close my eyes and breathe deeply, you will undoubtedly disappear.”
He closed his eyes, took two or three deep breaths and opened them again furtively. But the two men-at-arms were still there, still clad in surcoats and mail, and still staring at him out of hostile blue eyes.
“So,” said Dr. Kokintz. “It is not a hallucination and I am a prisoner of war. But perhaps the matter will resolve itself if subjected to reason. Please tell me: who is the United States at war with?”
“The Duchy of Grand Fenwick,” replied Tully.
“The Duchy of Grand Fenwick,” repeated the doctor. He said the words quite slowly as if weighing them, to see whether they had any substance. “Certainly, this is a hallucination,” he concluded. “I was born in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. How can I be a prisoner of war of the place where I was born?”
“Look,” said Tully grimly, conscious of the passing of the minutes. “This is not a hallucination. This is deadly earnest. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick declared war on the United States over two months ago. We have invaded New York. You are our prisoner, and we are going to take you back to Grand Fenwick with us.”
“But why did the Duchy of Grand Fenwick declare war on the United States?” Dr. Kokintz asked.
“Over wine,” replied Will. “You Americans are imitating our wine, putting out some kind of a rot-gut brew and calling it Pinot Grand Fenwick. That’s why.”
“Over wine,” said Kokintz. “For what other reason would one expect a nation to go to war with the United States?” He shrugged his shoulders as if the matter was now entirely clear.
“Enough of this,” rapped Tully. “You’re coming with us as a prisoner of war. You and that bomb you made. Where is the bomb?”
“Bomb?” said the doctor, the word pulling him sharply to his senses, out of the dream into which he felt he had slipped. “Bomb? What bomb are you talking about? I don’t know of any bomb.”
“This bomb here,” said Tully, thrusting the copy of the New York Times in front of him. “The one that will blow up everything if it is exploded.”
The physicist glanced for one second from them to the lead box on the bench. Suddenly he made a grab at it, but Tully was there before him and snatched the oblong container up in his big hand.
“Is this it?” he asked, triumphantly. He thrust it out at arm’s length, and the weight was such that he nearly dropped it. Indeed, it was slipping from his hand when he caught it with the other, letting his sword clatter to the floor to do so. Dr. Kokintz rose to his toes like a ballet dancer, and then subsided, his eyes closed tight behind his thick glasses.
“Please,” he said, wiping a hand across his forehead. “Please be very careful. That box you have in your hand is dangerous.”
“Is this the bomb?” Tully repeated, shaking it a little in emphasis.
“Please,” pleaded Kokintz. “Careful. Handle it as if it were a baby mouse. Yes. That is the bomb. If you shake it like that, or rattle it, or drop it, or jar it, or disturb it in any way, it is likely to explode. And if it explodes it will blow up all of New York and Philadelphia and Boston. It will kill every living soul for several hundred miles around. And over and above that, it will release a dreadful gas which will keep on killing everything it comes in touch with for years and years to come. So I beg of you, put it down gently and spare the lives of millions of innocent people.”
Will had been watching the scene with growing suspicion. He did not know what all this talk of a bomb was about. But if Tully said there was a bomb, then there must be a bomb. On the other hand it was hard to believe that the box his leader held in his hand could wipe out the whole of Grand Fenwick and more, which was what this Dr. Kokintz was trying to say.
He raised his sword now and reached for the bomb. “Give it to me,” he said, “and I’ll cut it open and see what’s inside. I think this man is lying, and that thing, which, even if it was filled with gunpowder, wouldn’t wreck much more than in this room, has got nothing in it but earth or sand.”
“No! No!” screamed Dr. Kokintz. “No. Please. I beg of you. Don’t hit it.” He flung himself on Will and seized his sword arm in both hands.
“I don’t think he is lying,” said Tully, quietly. “I think this is it. We ought to be going, but there’s just one thing I want to ask. Why did you make this?” And he held the box contemptuously out towards the scientist.
“It is a peace weapon of the United States of America,” Dr. Kokintz replied. “The only peace weapon of its kind; far more effective than the atom bomb or any other peace weapons devised so far.”
“A peace weapon?” said Tully, in some surprise, turning the box over in his hand. He looked over at Will, who was leaning on his broadsword. “Well,” he continued, “the sword Will there is leaning on is a peace weapon, only, of course, it’s not as good as this one, because you can’t kill so many people with it. You know, we in Grand Fenwick, being a small country, need a really good peace weapon, which is another reason for taking this contraption along with us. So let’s go. Down the stairs. March.”
Dr. Kokintz shrugged and walked to the door. But when he got there he turned around.
“What about my canary?” he said. “There will be no one to look after it.”
“There won’t be much need for anyone to look after it,” replied Tully. “This city is going to be atom-bombed pretty soon. Someone else using a peace weapon, and the sooner we get out of here, the better.”
“Atom-bombed!” exclaimed Will and Kokintz together.
“That’s right. Read this.” Tully showed them the New York Times again, pointing out the sentence on the front page which stated that the alert of the whole east coast of the United States, in preparation for atomic attack, was likely to be held in the next twenty-four hours. “The alert’s on,” he said, “so the attack should take place any minute.”
“But this is only a practice alert,” expostulated Kokintz. “The air-raid warden told me so. There is not going to be any real attack.”
Tully looked at him hard for a second and then read the story again. It didn’t say definitely that there was going to be a real atomic attack. In fact, the deeper he read into it, the more evident it became that the alert was for practice only.
“Maybe yo
u’re right,” he agreed at length, “and if so I’m much relieved about it. But while this practice alert is on, we have still to get down to the Endeavour and get you out of here with this bomb. So, march.”
“But my canary,” said the doctor.
“Take your canary with you. But hurry,” Tully ordered. Kokintz snatched up the cage and walked swiftly out of the room. At the head of the stairs, he turned to Tully. “Do not stumble and fall,” he said. “Otherwise, all New York will fall with you.”
CHAPTER XI
There was only one conflict worthy of note in the victorious war of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick against the United States of America. And that was so small, both in point of view of the numbers engaged and the area fought over, that it is difficult to find a word to describe it which would satisfy the military student or inform the layman. “Battle” certainly would not do. “Engagement” is too vague. “Affray at arms” has too large a ring to it. “Sortie,” perhaps, would best serve, for it was undoubtedly a sortie, a breaking out of one force to thrust through another and win its way to freedom.
Although the affair was minute, measured both in terms of the forces engaged on both sides, and the casualties sustained, yet it must rank in importance among the major engagements of the world. For in the course of this action, the lives of many millions of Americans were saved—and saved, as the result of a peculiar irony, by the invading side. And at the same time, the affair provided the invaders with the means of retreating brilliantly from the field to return to their own country, their objective achieved and their enemy defeated, though the fact of their defeat was not appreciated by the Americans for some time.
At the corner of One Hundred and Tenth Street and Broadway, on their march downtown to return to the brig Endeavour, having with them Dr. Kokintz and the quadium bomb, the forces of Grand Fenwick, under Tully, were met by the forces of the United States, led by General Snippett, Commander of Civil Defense for the New York area. General Snippett had under his command his chauffeur, two sound trucks with armed police seated beside the drivers, and a mobile canteen with a staff of four, which had been reinforced by the addition of two more armed policemen. His total force then was twelve, but it was mechanized, being contained in four automobiles.
The two armies, if the word is permissible, sighted each other from a distance, the streets being clear of all traffic, and at a range of five hundred yards, commenced to dispose themselves for battle. The Fenwickians, following the style of defense developed towards the end of the fourteenth century, spread themselves across the avenue in a harrow formation. The gaps in the front line of bowmen were filled by a second line of men standing two paces behind them. Behind these, and covering the gaps in the second fine, was a third line of warriors. On each side of this harrow formation the men-at-arms placed themselves to deal, with their broadswords and maces, with any attempt at a flanking movement. A flanking movement was not likely to develop, for the buildings on either side of the street would have proved too great an obstacle.
What General Snippett might have done was to go down a side street and, by executing three right-angle turns, taken the Fenwick force in the rear. He did not realize this, however, until the assault was already well launched.
Seeing the invaders prepared for battle, General Snippett gallantly signalled his whole force to come to a standstill, took one armed policeman aboard his car, and advanced for a parley without further escort.
His chauffeur drove the car slowly to within a few hundred yards of the invaders and stopped. The car was a convertible with the top down, and when it had stopped, General Snippett rose in the front seat, and hailing the Fenwickians, called out, “What the hell is all this about? Why aren’t you down in the shelters?”
To this Tully replied courteously that he was the commander of the Grand Fenwick expeditionary force, which was at war with the United States, and offered General Snippett the opportunity of withdrawing honourably from the field, since he was outnumbered. If, however, he refused to withdraw, Tully pointed out, there would be no alternative but to join battle, though every effort would be made to spare as many lives as possible.
General Snippett’s reply to this was profane and very little to the point. He concluded by shouting out that if what he termed “that gang of idiots” wasn’t on its way to an air-raid shelter in one minute, he would order his men to fire upon them.
Tully assumed that this being an ultimatum, the parley had concluded, and he gave the order for his bowmen to prepare to loose a volley, the target being the three other automobiles which had remained in the American lines five hundred yards away. When he saw the arrows flash in the sunlight, as they were pulled from their quivers, watched them being fitted to the bowstrings, saw the bows raised slowly, and then bent as each bowman leaned his left arm into the bow so as to bring his arm straight with his shoulder—when he saw all this, General Snippett appears to have lost his head.
He was heard to shout to the policeman with him, “Knock over that tall guy in the fancy-dress costume for me.”
The policeman, who had a carbine with him, got out of the car for better aim and Tully called to Will, “Take off the fellow’s hat. He lacks respect.”
There was hardly a noticeable movement, hardly as much as the taking of aim, before the arrow sped from Will’s bow like an angry bee. The policeman had only just raised his carbine when the yard-long shaft lanced through his hat, whipped it off his head and carried it a further hundred feet down the street, before plunging into the asphalt. The shaft remained there, standing at an angle, the policeman’s hat dangling from it, as the first trophy of war for Grand Fenwick.
The policeman himself fired at the moment that the arrow struck, but his aim was entirely spoiled and his round flung upwards at least twenty yards over Tully’s head. Tully, in the meantime, took a bow from the man nearest him, and with the same casual unconcern displayed by Will, looking almost away from his target, whipped off General Snippett’s hat with an arrow. This shaft also continued down the street to drop within a few feet of that fired by Will.
It was this last arrow, fired by Tully, which was unwittingly the cause of placing the lives of some millions of people, unconscious all of them of the battle, in jeopardy. For in order to take the bow, Tully had passed the quadium bomb to the bowman to hold, and the latter, unconscious of its true nature, paid it scant attention. In the minutes that followed, Tully himself forgot about the bomb. He knew, with an instinct for military tactics, bred in him through the generations, that this was exactly the right moment to strike a vital blow at the enemy.
“One flight,” he cried, “fifty feet this side of their lines. And then charge with sword and buckler.”
The volley sped like a shower of hail down the street—a small compact bundle of arching arrows which threw a leaping shadow along the buildings, reached their zenith and then slipped down to the earth to thud into the road surface a few feet from the cars drawn up behind General Snippett. The arrows had hardly left the bowstrings before the men of Grand Fenwick had drawn their swords and, with bucklers thrust before them, hurled down upon General Snippett’s car and the others to the rear. The General’s automobile was quickly captured by Will, who jerked the chauffeur out of the seat and snatched the carbine away from the policeman and flung it through the window of a nearby building. He then fetched the General himself a cuff which, gallant man though he was, put him out of action for the remainder of the encounter.
The three cars composing the main American lines, however, were not so readily dealt with. The occupants of one, the canteen car, seeing a howling mob of men descending upon them, swords wheeling in bright circles in the sunlight, fled. The two policemen, however, stood their ground, though uncertain for a second what to do. One raised his carbine and fired a shot which struck one of the Fenwick bowmen in the chest. The bowman fell, got up, and fell again, to remain quiet and still upon the street. He was a small farmer named Tom Cobley, a man of forty-five years of age, a
nd that day he achieved more honour than had come to any of his countrymen in five centuries. For Tom Cobley was the first to die for Grand Fenwick in over five hundred years. His body, pickled in a barrel of brine, was later taken to his homeland and buried in a crypt next to that of Sir Roger Fenwick, in the heart of Fenwick Castle.
The stout defense of the American policeman was sufficient to give heart to the remainder of his comrades, who commenced to fire into the approaching horde. But there was no time for the Americans to aim, and the bowmen were upon them before they could loose more than two or three ineffective rounds. In the short melee that followed, the Fenwickian soldier who had been given the quadium bomb to carry, being, because of his burden, deprived of the use of any other weapon, decided to hurl it at one of his opponents. His arm was jostled as he threw, so the bomb flipped up in the air for about twenty feet. Tully caught a glimpse of it as it sped upward. He was standing on the hood of one of the automobiles, perhaps ten feet from where it would fall and, in falling, destroy most of the major cities on the east coast of America.
He flung himself forward towards it, grasped it in his two hands as it came down, and rolled to the ground, the bomb held firmly to his chest. When he got up, New York and all its inhabitants had been saved, the forces of Grand Fenwick had won a decisive victory over their enemies and were in possession of their four automobiles; and Dr. Kokintz, who had been entrusted to the care of two men, had fainted. It was some minutes before he could be revived, and when his consciousness was restored, he took one look at the quadium bomb, which Tully held reassuringly before him, and fainted again.
The battle had lasted no more than five minutes from the initial parley with General Snippett to the capture of all the American equipment plus the General himself, his chauffeur, and four policemen. The remainder of the American force had fled the field, and Tully ordered his men to get into the American cars, and follow him down to the Cunard dock where the brig Endeavour awaited them. Since Tully was the only man in Grand Fenwick who knew how to handle an automobile, the other cars were driven by the captured Americans, swords pressed to their sides to ensure that they attempted no escape.
The Mouse That Roared: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 1) Page 9
