Black August (17 page)

The big man was grinning but he shook his head. ‘We can't
keep it up, and they'll be through below-stairs in a moment; barricade's half-down already.'

Kenyon groaned as he wiped his grimy, bloodstained face. ‘Where has that fellow with the gun got to? Can't he pick off the agitator and the other ring-leaders?'

‘He's run out of shot, but don't you worry. I'll bring the boys up here. The crowd will never be able to pass us on those stairs in a month of Sundays.' With his leg-of-mutton hands thrust deep into his breeches pockets the Greyshirt officer strolled out of the room.

The battering ram found its mark again with a terrific thud, the whole barricade was shifting, chairs and tables tumbling to the floor. With a howl of triumph the mob surged forward, thrusting the remaining obstacles inward through the shattered shop-front, and clambering wildly over the top. The Greyshirts retreated to the rooms above and hurriedly erected a new rampart on the landing with beds and bedding; the fight at the windows was renewed with increased vigour.

Suddenly there was a lull. A motor horn was hooting insistently further along the street, and the crowd, scenting fresh and easier prey, began to stream in that direction.

The hooting grew louder, and there were angry cries as a big closed car zigzagged down the street. The people drew hastily back on to the pavement, but one small urchin ran out and threw a broken teacup at the chauffeur. Next second the mudguard caught him, and he fell under the near front wheel. There was a howl of execration, and a dozen men flung themselves in front of the long bonnet. Two, three, four were sent spinning, and then the car pulled up.

‘How about trying to break out now?' Kenyon suggested.

Silas Gonderport Harker shook his cherubic head. ‘Not a hope; we'd never get a hundred yards.'

Over the heads of the crowd they watched the occupant of the car, a tall, lean, elderly man with a lined aesthetic face. He showed no trace of fear or excitement but produced an automatic and with the utmost calmness fired three times, once to the front over his chauffeur's shoulder, then swiftly once through each side window of the car. The bullets drilled neat round holes through the glass, and each one killed a man. The mob snarled with rage but gave back instantly, cowering with fear one against the other. With a sudden jerk the car
bumped over two of the bodies and sped on.

Almost before it was out of sight another car came in view, and the crowd greeted it with a roar of savage hate; the driver, a young man in a soft hat, hesitated and slowed down. A woman stooped and picking up a small bronze ornament from the gutter, hurled it at him. It struck the young man full in the face; his head lolled stupidly for a second and then the car swerved violently, ran on to the pavement, and crashed through the window of a shop. A man was pinned between the bonnet and the framework, his head gushing blood from the cuts of the splintered glass; his screams, and those of the other people who had been run down could have been heard half a mile away, yet no one paid any attention to them; they were dragging the occupants from the back of the car; an old man, a fat woman, and a girl.

‘Oh, can't we help them?' Ann clutched at Kenyon's arm, but almost before she had finished speaking the girl had disappeared, thrown down and trampled upon by a hundred feet. The old man went next, struck on the back of the head by a bottle. His eyes goggled stupidly, staring out of a fleshy white face for a second, then he sank from view; but the fat woman survived for three or four minutes. She swung a weighty bag, driving her aggressors from her by striking them with it in the face, but hands clawed at her from all sides and her clothes were ripped to ribbons; a malicious urchin kneeling behind her lugged at her skirt, the fastenings broke and it descended to her ankles revealing a bright blue petticoat. He seized that too and wrenched it to the ground.

Suddenly she kicked herself free of the clothes around her feet and leaving a large portion of her pink silk blouse in the hands of a vicious shrew, broke away from her tormentors. With amazing swiftness for her bulk she pelted down the street, naked to the waist, her legs encased in a pair of frilly calico drawers; she presented a ludicrous, but pathetic and terrifying sight. Rivulets of blood coursed down her shoulders and tears gushed from her eyes; before she had gone twenty yards she was tripped and fell. The mob closed in on her and kicked the great unwieldy body into shuddering immobility.

‘Hunted like hares!' whispered Kenyon.

‘What say?' asked the American.

‘Nothing.' Kenyon was thinking of his father's prediction and
wondering where he was now; safe at Windsor, or already fallen a prey to the blind resentment of the people against the ruling caste which had allowed things to drift into this terrible pass.

The car had been pillaged before the fat woman fell, and now the sullen, angry faces in the street were turned up to the windows again. Like a savage inhuman herd they stampeded across the road and into the shop below. Fighting began on the stairway while Kenyon and Bob tore down the overmantel and curtain rods to hurl from the windows.

‘Burn them!' yelled a shrill-voiced woman suddenly. ‘Why don't yer burn 'em.' The cry was taken up; the street seemed to rock under the reiterated howling of the mass. ‘Burn 'em—burn 'em! The blasted Greyshirt swine!'

Kenyon caught a glimpse of Ann's face, drawn and haggard with unnaturally bright eyes. He fumbled for her hand and pressed it. ‘I'm sorry, Ann, terribly sorry that I brought you into this.'

She smiled, frightened, but trying to remain courageous. ‘It wasn't your fault. I'm quite all right.'

Veronica joined them. She held an unlighted cigarette between her fingers. ‘Kenyon,' her voice was quite even, ‘got a match?'

He produced a lighter. ‘How long,' she asked, ‘do you think we've got?'

‘Not long,' he confessed. ‘If they do set fire to the place we'll have to try and fight our way out, but—Anyhow, I wish to God I'd taken you out of London last night.' The moment he had spoken he regretted his words, for the delay of course was due to Ann, but she still held his hand and now she pressed it.

‘I'm sorry, Veronica; I've been an awful fool,' she said.

‘Darling, I could not have borne it without another woman!' Veronica announced, puffing at her cigarette; which was a lie anyhow, since she hated the presence of other women if there were men about.

Silas Harker hurried in from the landing. For the first time his placid cheerful face showed real anxiety. ‘We're sunk!' he exclaimed to Kenyon, ‘they've just set the staircase on fire!'

‘Turn on the tap in the bathroom and flood the house,' suggested Veronica.

‘There is no bathroom in a place like this,' the American answered tersely, ‘and we're for the golden shore unless we
can think of something quick!' Without waiting for a reply he left them again and as he opened the door a cloud of smoke billowed into the room.

The acrid fumes caught Veronica in the throat; she coughed and spluttered. ‘What shall we do, Kenyon? For God's sake say something; we can't stay here to be burnt alive!'

Wreaths of smoke were creeping under the floor, filtering into the room so quickly that it was already difficult for them to see out of their smarting eyes. It could only be a matter of minutes before they would be driven into jumping from the windows to be seized upon and kicked to death by the frantic crowd below.

At his wit's end Kenyon moved back to the windows; as he leant out a lump of coal sailed past his head. It was not more than a twelve-foot drop to the ground, but the mob stayed there—angry, expectant.

‘Listen!' he exclaimed, drawing in his head. As they listened a faint rat-tat-tat came to their ears. ‘Machine-guns!' he added suddenly.

‘Soldiers!' supplemented Bob. ‘If only they're coming this way.'

A low sullen roar like an angry sea came to them from the distance; then the staccato rattle of a machine-gun again, clearer now; a sudden hush had fallen on the crowd outside.

The machine-guns barked again, the sound coming sharp on the night air. Harker came running in. ‘The Tommies!' he cried, ‘d'you hear them?—and they're coming down the street.

Then Kenyon, craning out of the window, saw the first lorry. It was packed with khaki figures, their bayonets glimmering in the uncertain light as they stabbed at the boldest of the rioters who were trying to cling to the sides and back of the van. It rumbled below the window. Ann, Veronica, and Kenyon leaned out and shouted. ‘Help! Hi! Help!'

One soldier looked up and grinned, but they did not stop. At a steady pace the big grey wagon thrust its nose into the crowd and pressed on. A second appeared, apparently loaded with supplies; half a dozen Tommies sat on the top and back systematically prodding with their rifles at any member of the crowd who tried to gain a foothold.

Next to the driver sat an officer, and Kenyon saw at once that he was no ordinary A.S.C. lieutenant, but a member of the
General Staff; the peak of his cap bedecked with golden oak leaves and the red tabs on his tunic proclaimed it from the house-tops. He lolled back puffing at a cigarette, but a riding crop lay across his knee, and he used it without hesitation on the faces of anyone bold enough to climb on to the step.

‘Help!' they yelled again. ‘Help!' But although the officer must have heard them he took not the slightest notice. Then the driver looked up casually at the window, his face changed suddenly, he spoke to the officer and brought the lorry to a halt. The latter glanced up and muttered a quick order, the lorry reversed and bumping its rear wheels on the kerb, pulled up with a jerk on the pavement beneath them.

The crowd welled up against the now stationary vehicle, and brickbats began to fly again, but a third lorry had come into view carrying another load of troops; and a machine-gun was mounted on the driver's seat.

The officer stood up and waved his crop. There was a sudden spurt of flame, and a horrible clatter echoed through the narrow street. For a second the crowd hesitated, but even as they did so the watchers at the window saw the front ranks drop, mown down by the blast of flying lead into a horrible shambles. The gun rattled and coughed, spluttering forth its message of death; the third lorry had drawn up beside the second now, and Kenyon could see the face of the man crouched behind the gun; it was a mask of malicious glee; he was shooting to kill and glorying in the fun, as mad with blood-lust as any of the crowd he was executing.

The street cleared with extraordinary rapidity, but in every direction bodies lay huddled in grotesque attitudes, or wounded strove frantically to drag themselves clear of this hellish tornado.

‘Come on,' cried one of the Tommies. ‘What are yer waitin' fer—Christmas Day 'an a well-filled stockin'? Jump, an' we'll catch you.'

Bob led the way, landed on his feet but tripped on the uneven surface of the load under the tarpaulin. The soldiers pulled him to his feet. Then Ann and Veronica were lowered by willing hands until their ankles were on a level with the heads of the troops below.

The officer had climbed down and stood on the pavement superintending the evacuation. The Greyshirts followed one another out of the window; then Kenyon, his eyes smarting abominably
from the smoke, looked at the American. Only the two of them remained.

‘Go to it!' called Harker, flinging a leg over the window-sill. ‘I felt certain we'd get out of that jam some way!' then he let himself drop.

Kenyon was perched on the ledge of the other window, below him on the pavement stood the officer. ‘Coming,' he shouted, and jumped. He landed with a thud, the officer caught him with a quick grip of the arm, and as he pitched forward, his nose came in sharp contact with the crossed sword and baton on his rescuer's shoulder.

‘Brigadier-General in full war paint,' flashed into his mind, then he heard a quiet voice say: ‘I hope you've brought the promised magnum of champagne,' and looking up, found himself staring into the amused face of Gregory Sallust.

‘Keep your mouth shut,' snapped Gregory with a sudden change of face, ‘and thank your stars that Rudd spotted Ann at the window; up you go.'

As Kenyon was hauled up he recognised Rudd, under the thin disguise of a khaki uniform, grinning at him from the driver's seat, and suddenly realised that the loaded lorry was the same that he had seen in Gloucester Road that afternoon. Silas Harker was perched on one side of him and Ann on the other.

‘Did you see,' she gasped. ‘Gregory! What
can
it mean?'

‘God knows!' Her shook his head. ‘But better say nothing.'

‘Wasn't that just marvellous luck?' The American slapped his enormous thigh and then waved cheerfully to some of his men who were climbing into the rear lorry. The leading vehicle had halted a hundred yards further along the street and its complement of troops were out in the road dragging the wounded and killed on to the pavement so that the convoy could proceed.

Except for a few of the mob who had crowded back into the scant protection of the doorways, Jamaica Road was almost deserted now. Gregory jumped up into his place, waved his crop and the three lorries got under way again.

A woman on the opposite side of the street hurled a chamber pot from a second floor window. It crashed harmlessly to pieces in the road but without waiting for any order a soldier raised his rifle. There was a loud report, a scream, and the woman disappeared. One of the men laughed.

‘That was pretty brutal—and unnecessary,' said Kenyon angrily to the sergeant who was sitting back to back with him.

‘Can't blame them, sir,' the man replied. ‘If you'd been standing by for days on end, while the blighters chucked things at you and not allowed to raise a finger, I reckon you'd do
likewise. It's made a power of difference to the boys, having an officer who believes in tit for tat. They'd follow the General anywhere—already.'