He seldom used the ground for cover. His technique was to jump from tree to tree. As soon as I had appreciated that, I shepherded him towards the edge of the copse, which was at its narrowest behind the barn, hoping to force him out into the open, greyer than the wood though no longer moonlit.
But now, I think, he did take to the ground; and I could not turn his flank and keep him on the run without venturing into the open myself. That may have been just what he wanted me to do.
I had threatened him twice already with a noiseless approach over favourable ground; so, when silence had gone on long enough to alarm him, he retreated along the limit of the windbreak parallel to the barn. Still not a shot was fired. It was a savage hunting, all the more vile because of discipline. Neither would lose contact, but neither had any intention of being left with an empty gun. Two shots were not enough. It was so obvious that if one fired the other would reply at the flash, and then all must be staked on the last cartridge immediately. He must have longed, as I did, for both magazines to be exhausted and the way open for hands and the butt.
This was the only moment of the night which had any resemblance to a true duel. When there was movement it was quick and intense as lunge, parry, and ripost. Then came another interval while I tried to work round his flank.
Always I was the attacker, infiltrating behind him while he believed I was in front, and always he fell back from tree to tree to avoid the threat. Once either of us could have been killed. I had noiseless grass under my knees and I crept very close to a shadow which I had recognized as him. But where grass can grow there is some light from above. I remembered that just in time. When the shadow moved I was already poised to roll sideways into greater darkness. Even so no shot was fired. That was typical of the sudden engagements.
The pace was getting faster now. After all these weeks he was the hunted, and he knew it. He was driven back on the western side of the barn where the trees thinned out and the windbreak stood well back from the wall. I circled round outside him, trying to force him into the open or into a hopeless frontal attack. At last I pinned him on the edge of the open space, and little chance he had of moving to any other cover without offering a target. But the cover which he did have gave him a formidable position. He was cradled in the roots of a big beech. I doubted if I was looking at him. In any case there was no possibility of distinguishing the roundness of a body from the roundness of roots.
Conditions underfoot were satisfactory. The prevailing westerly winds sweeping round the corner of the barn had cleared away all leaves and debris. I cautiously disengaged and crawled back through the darkness of the copse parallel to the northern wall. When I was out of all possible sight I crossed the open strip to the wall itself, and began to work my way back along it towards the corner. There I was behind his position. It would be a longish shot – for that light – across the bare ground, but I reckoned I should have time to aim carefully.
Hugging the wall I peered round the northwest corner of the barn. I could not see him. I came to the conclusion that he must be standing up against the trunk of the tree.
He fired. The shot struck me full in the forehead. I was sure of that, yet the body refused to believe that it was dead. It scuttled away like a rat, back along the wall, and staggered into the safety of the trees. I think it even turned and twisted among them to throw off pursuit. It dropped behind some low, black thing, while the person carried in this automaton of terrified muscles put his hand to his forehead and collapsed.
I have the impression that my unconsciousness was not total; if it was, then there is some primitive saviour in the damaged animal watching on its behalf until the higher nervous centres regain control. Something must have been listening, for I knew that Saint Sabas had not followed me. That something, when I was capable of checking intuition, was right. There was no sound at all of riding boots shuffling lightly over leaves.
I raised my face just off the ground and took my hand away from my forehead. Immediately blood poured over my eyelids. Very delicately and still wondering, I dabbled in the mess. There was no hole in the skull.
Then what had happened? It seemed likely that I had forgotten dawn and misjudged the light. Saint Sabas, taking an occasional look behind him, had seen my head peering round the corner of the barn with insolent over-confidence against the streak of eastern sky. He had missed – but either the bullet ricocheting off the wall or a chunk of stone dislodged by it had ploughed across my forehead. I tried to get the flap of scalp back into position and bandage it with a handkerchief. I could not lift my hands behind my head to tie a knot. Again I fainted.
When I drifted back to consciousness the light was growing grey – still a dark grey, but where there were trees one behind another I could distinguish them all as separate. I was lying behind a fallen branch and easily to be seen if Saint Sabas looked for me. I could not understand why he was not on me already. He need not even use his last shot. A boot would do.
It was an effort to remember that he was human, that he had no power to follow scent or see in the dark. Of course his right game was to wait another ten minutes for a little more light and crouch over the blood trail which would lead him to me.
I remembered beasts from my shooting days before the war which I never found. Did they die or did they recover? They had a better chance of escaping than I. Often the loose skin, stretched by running, no longer corresponded with the hole in the flesh, and the blood trail petered out. Then the brown eyes, dull with pain and fear, must often have watched me pass the cover – likely as not another fallen branch – and go ignorantly away.
The light grew. Saint Sabas could see the blood now whenever he chose to look. There must be little pools of it, not just traces on grass and leaf. A scalp wound, when fresh, is the messiest of all.
At last I heard him. He was still opposite the western side of the barn and trying to choke down a fit of coughing – which, earlier, would have killed him. The effort he made reminded me that in his eyes I was still dangerous.
I had forgotten that he too was wounded, once if not twice. That was the likeliest reason why he had not charged out after me when I was hit; he was thankful for a rest. Whether dying or not, at any rate I was out of action. He could be sure that this time I was not bluffing. With a bit of luck I might be blind. But meanwhile I still had two rounds in the magazine.
He was right. I was not harmless at all, and if I could lie up safely a little longer I might still have a last spring in me. Through all these minutes of half conscious self-pity I had been identifying myself with some harmless creature dying defenceless in the forest. But it was I who was the wounded tiger, not he. I raised my head for the first time and looked round. My fallen branch gave no cover for even half light, and patches of blood must point straight at it.
Was it possible to change position? If I were going to try, I must begin at once. I could not. The thought of any physical action was so repugnant that I welcomed excuses. I should faint in the open. I should leave such a trail that it was futile to hide myself. In imagination I could see him bobbing intently from tree to tree until he reached … but until he reached whatever I wanted him to reach, of course!
It was a grim and cruel thought from which to recover morale. Yet that was its effect. If I could find the strength to lay a blood trail which led past the barrel of the Mauser, I and my future were safe.
I looked round for some shelter, not too far away, into which I could reasonably have stumbled at the end of my first blind rush. There were two possibilities. One was a bit of broken wall near the edge of the windbreak; the other, a little hollow which might once have taken the overflow of the spring. Neither was any use for defence, but both had to be approached closely before St Sabas could see whether my body was lying on the ground.
To one or the other I had to make a followable trail. When he came across the matted blood and leaves behind the branch where I had collapsed, it m
ust be clear to him in what direction I had crawled on. Whether I chose wall or hollow, he would not walk straight up to it, but would try to work his way round and take a look from any convenient cover.
I could not distinguish clearly all the details of grey mass. I was looking, however, into a part of the copse to the right of the central clearing which I had reconnoitred carefully on my first arrival at the barn in some previous existence and into which I had dodged when escaping from Saint Sabas’s mounted attack. So the blurred picture, though without detail, made sense.
The hollow was very simple to outflank, and if he were reasonably careful while engaged in stalking it I had no chance of ambushing him. The wall was more promising. There were two low bramble bushes on the edge of the windbreak which commanded it. The way to put a last shot into an old goat lying helpless behind the wall was to pass round the outside of the copse, re-enter it and look down on him between or over the brambles.
That was all right so far as it went. Yet the plan was no more than a sick man’s dream unless I could find the strength to carry it out. I raised myself to hands and knees. They did not belong to me, but they worked.
I had to cover thirty flat and simple yards over a sparse carpet of last year’s fallen leaves. I assured myself that it was easy, provided I took it slowly and remembered to collapse quietly. The handkerchief had adhered to my forehead. To pull it off was the hardest task. I was absurdly terrified of the result, and my hand twice refused to do it.
The final jerk overdid the job. When I started to crawl the blood trail was spectacular. I forced myself to remember that it was only a surface cut, that one could lose pints of blood and that all I had lost probably didn’t add up to one. I tried to convince myself that this fast dripping had nothing to do with my weakness and that I was just suffering from concussion. That – a purely mental thing – ought to be under the control of the will, and it had to be if I wanted to live.
Half way to my destination I think I began to laugh a little, for I recall being shocked at such levity. What had amused me was the thought that all this was in vain. Savarin was a fighter, not a tracker. Would he ever notice blood on red-brown beech leaves? I swore at him and dripped on to a flat white stone. Then I found another and dripped on that.
I reached the tumbledown wall and dropped behind it. I had been right; the damp patch of shadow between the mossed stones and the bramble bushes was just the sort of refuge which a wounded animal would choose. Binding the flap of scalp back into position, I rested. My hands could now tie a knot of sorts, which gave me confidence. I suppose the effort had done me good – had held off the effect of shock perhaps. Shock seems to be a killer of birds and the smallest mammals and man, not of a large and angry beast.
It was time for the second move – the move which left no trail at all. The full twilight of dawn had come, but most of the barn was now between me and my enemy – if, that is, he were still behind it or on the western side of it. And if he wasn’t, it was all up anyway.
I rose to my feet and staggered from tree to tree until I was out of that hated, loathsome windbreak and could drop on to the thyme-scented hill turf. The fold of ground along which I had attacked after leaving Nur Jehan was close and would do for my purpose. I squirmed into it, facing the bramble bushes so that I would not have to move again to fire. The grass hid me well enough so long as Saint Sabas did not look for me. Light suddenly grew very much better. I think I must have had a short period of unconsciousness.
The windbreak appeared surprisingly small. It seemed incredible that there had been room in it for so much juggling with the art of murder. But its darkness was understandable. That canopy of dripping leaves, now nearly green, was solid enough for some lush, wooded valley.
The dawn chorus of birds was of splendid volume and variety. I could hear nothing else. All depended on sight, yet I dared not raise my head for a level look at the copse. I had to content myself with a swift glance every few seconds, for it gave me an intolerable headache to keep my eyes strained upwards. Even so nothing was clear. I did not know that I had seen Saint Sabas until I noticed what I had taken to be a tree trunk glimpsed between branches was no longer there.
My plan then was working. If he had come from the fallen branch to the edge of the windbreak it could only mean that the blood trail was dictating his movements. I lay very still, for it was certain that he would take no risks.
He quietly emerged from the trees at the far corner and began to work his way towards me. He was very tired and a little unsteady on his feet. His left arm was tucked into his coat; the sleeve was darker than the rest of the cloth. That was my shot when escaping from the barn, and that was why he had preferred to fight on his feet rather than his stomach. I like to think – but it may be hypocrisy – that I felt a stirring of pity for him, which fear all night had prevented.
It was very quickly extinguished. He began the stalk of the bramble bushes. His body, slanting forward, followed the black Colt in his right hand. He was intent as any beast of prey nosing inch by inch into the wind. Once he stopped and looked straight over me across the colourless turf. It was a possible chance, but I was in no state for snapshooting. He would have seen me as I raised head and shoulders to fire, and jumped into the trees. I needed a lot of time to aim; even an unhurried shot when he reached the bushes might be beyond me. The range was all of thirty-five yards.
He arrived at his objective and crouched behind the brambles. Evidently he did not like the prospect of putting his head over the top to see what was between them and the wall. He tried to find a gap, but there wasn’t one and the undergrowth crackled as he pressed against it. I heard him over the singing of the birds. He realized that he was going about it the wrong way and that it was much safer to stand up and look quickly into the recess.
It was now or never. I rested my elbows squarely, holding the wrist of my right hand with my left. The barrel of the Mauser was reasonably steady, but blood dripped over my eyes at the critical moment. I forced myself not to hurry the shot, to take all the time in the world, to remember that it did not matter if he looked round and saw me.
He discovered that there was nothing behind the wall, no man dying or still dangerous. He stood up to his full height with a movement of impatience, turned and caught sight of that deadly little triangle on the ground formed by my head and forearms.
With the speed which was characteristic of him he took his only chance and fired. I paid no attention. I knew that only an aimed shot could hit at that range – or perhaps I was concentrating so desperately that I could not be distracted. I squeezed the trigger.
It was low for the heart, but it would do. Saint Sabas spun with the shot, holding his side. I never expected him to move any more after such a raking internal wound. It was not enough to stop a beast, but a man, yes. Men knew what had happened to them.
But he came on. Staggering on feet which would hardly carry him he came on, with nothing but bare hands. It was automatic, a last flare of his insanity of revenge. I was at the end of my resistance. Whenever I covered him the barrel of the Mauser sagged. He must have travelled five hideous, agonizing paces before I got him in the sights, more by accident than anything else, and this time heard the bullet strike. I had hit him high up on the thigh and smashed the bone. Poor devil. Magnificent fighter. He lay down rather than dropped, and put his head in his hands.
For me the night returned. I was hunting through dark woods, trying to find Benita or sometimes hunting Benita herself with an appalling sense of guilt which I tried to persuade myself I had no need to feel. There were policemen in Gestapo uniforms though I knew they were British, and the forest extended over the whole sphere of the world so that there was never any way out of it and never any more light to be. It was wrong and worrying when at last there was a great deal of sunlit grass beyond my toes. I opened my eyes still further. I was lying on my back, and there was a blue-peaked cap bending over me and
taking up too much of the glorious relieving sky. I twitched my hand to push it away.
‘Feeling better, Mr Dennim?’
This time I really lifted a hand. My head was beautifully bandaged. I was covered with a blanket. The policeman supported my shoulders and offered me hot, sweet tea. It worked like alcohol.
‘A flesh wound only, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Well, yes – if that’s what you call “only”.’
‘He is dead?’
‘He’s in a bad way. We’re waiting for the ambulance. Meanwhile would you care to tell us what happened?’
An inspector appeared from behind me, cleared his throat and slightly shook his head. He looked sympathetic, but extremely neutral. I vaguely remembered that there was some rule about not questioning persons to be charged with a crime until they were in a fit state to be cautioned.
‘What brought you here?’ I asked.
‘That stallion of yours rampaging down the Tewkesbury road. Traffic police picked him up together with a mare. Both of them were saddled so it looked as if there had been an accident. They got one of the hunt whips out of bed to catch the horses, and he did some telephoning and found out who they belonged to. An aunt of yours said there was a Miss Gillon staying at Stow-on-the-Wold who would probably know where you were, and she did.’
‘What did you tell Miss Gillon?’
‘We couldn’t tell her anything except that you might have had a fall. Your aunt was very insistent that Miss Gillon should stay where she was instead of getting lost herself, so that she could guide an admiral somebody up to the barn. A lot of sense the lady has, though I wouldn’t say her telephone manner was what I’d call good.’
Watcher in the Shadows Page 18
