Going It Alone (19 page)

‘Holmes?’ It seemed that Tim’s recent chatter had gone out of his head.

‘That the creatures’ silence – or near silence – is significant. They’re meant to kick up a hullabaloo if strangers come around the place. But that, just at present, wouldn’t suit somebody’s book. With dirty work going on, the gang is being careful not to alarm or alert the neighbourhood.’

‘Uncle Gilbert, didn’t I tell you that you have a genius for this sort of thing?
Nil
desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro
. Did I ever confess that I know you paid for my classical education? Thank you very much. And I hail you as Teucer now.’

‘Teucer was an uncommonly good archer, and an enemy fell dead at every twang of his bow. So that cap doesn’t fit. And it isn’t recorded that he had to listen to a great deal of nonsense.’

‘Then listen, Uncle Gilbert, and I’ll say something reasonably sensible. There’s a flaw in your theory about those somnolent dogs. They’d be unlikely to alarm the neighbourhood, because there simply isn’t one. That was quite clear in the final stages of our getting here. As gents’ residences in these parts go, this is a remarkably isolated one. That was no doubt part of its attraction for our friends.’

‘True enough, Tim. Still, if those dogs have really been doped, it must have been to prevent their attacking or alarming
somebody
.’

‘Not attacking. They were securely behind bars already – unless they were first drugged and then dragged and dumped here. But alarming, yes. It’s a puzzle.’

‘Perhaps it’s possible –’ Averell paused, since the idea in his head was so elusive that he had to grope for it. ‘We keep on talking about the gang. Is it conceivable that there are two gangs?’

‘I think I’d call one enough.’

‘Yes – but one does read of such things. Gang warfare. One gang preying on another. There may be a rival gang, which has got wind of all that bank loot. It’s preparing to take this place by assault now, and it has begun by silencing those dogs.’

‘I think that’s a bit far-fetched, Uncle Gilbert.’ Tim said this with some severity, as if all extravagance of fancy was uncongenial to him. Then he frowned, and looked at Averell doubtfully for a moment. ‘But do you know? It would fit in with rather a queer feeling I’ve been having from time to time since we arrived here. It’s as if I had some sixth sense telling me we are under observation – and not from inside but from outside, so to speak. And I don’t usually go in for rum feelings.’

‘I’d suppose not.’ Averell was in fact considerably startled by the suggestion of some dubious paranormal faculty lurking in his nephew.

‘But of course there are perfectly adequate scientific explanations of such seemingly untoward phenomena.’ Tim seemed to detect his uncle’s discomposure, and to feel that it might be assuaged by a short expository lecture. ‘What is in question is no more than a hyperacuity of one or another of the ordinary senses, the report of which presents itself only obscurely and at some rather elusive level of the mind.’

‘I see. But now –’

‘Quite often, though, the faculty operates at a fully conscious level. Shelley could distinguish the individual leaves of a tree at a range of a couple of hundred yards – and he thought nothing of it.’

‘Tim, if we’re being spied on, we’d better do something about it.’

‘Well, at least do something about something.’ Tim’s untimely sense of mischief was in full play. ‘In fact, just carry on. We’re going to case that barn. Their strong room or treasury, one may call it. But the whole building can’t be occupied that way. I’ve an idea that, here at the back, it may run to motor-sheds and store-rooms and so on with independent entrances. I know it doesn’t sound interesting. But you never know what you may find. It mayn’t be quite deserted, even. There may be a stray gangster around whom we can surprise and overpower and fiendishly torture until he renders up all the secrets of the conspirators. Are you a sadist, Uncle Gilbert? Did you enjoy tormenting the younger kids at that Belsen of a nineteenth-century public school?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Tim! It wasn’t a Belsen, and it wasn’t in the nineteenth century either.’

‘That’s no answer. I’ve often thought I’m probably a sadist. Now we’ll see. Come on.’

Mercifully, no potential victim of these flesh-creeping fantasies was found. The barn itself was a brick and timber affair, and much too stoutly built to be broken into in a hurry. But at ground level several small chambers had been scooped out of it, and enlarged by wooden structures forming miniature wings. These were all unsecured. Two of them sheltered powerful cars, but the cars themselves were locked up. A third was a kind of store and small workshop, piled with the miscellaneous litter that accumulates in such a region of a big country house. Tim poked around it appreciatively.

‘There’s a jolly nice motor-mower,’ he said when he emerged. ‘The sort you sit on and whizz around like mad. But nobody seems to bother to use it, do they? Plenty of ammo, too.’ He paused on this obscure remark. ‘I wonder about that back door of the house itself. Could one use the mower as a battering-ram and bash it down? Then one could go roaring through the place, knocking the brutes down like nine-pins. It’s an enticing thought.’

‘It’s very great rubbish, Tim.’

‘So it is. I think the front door will be better. We’ll go back there. Come on.’

Averell had by now been enjoined quite frequently to come on. And as on this occasion Tim didn’t pause for compliance there was nothing for it but to follow him. To leave him unsupported was inconceivable, and it wasn’t practicable to knock him down and tie him up until the orthodox forces of the law could be summoned at last. The real moment of crisis had come.

This time they rounded the house almost at the double, so that it seemed only moments before the front door faced them. It lay within an incongruous little classical portico, which was gained by a short flight of steps. Tim bounded up them, and his uncle followed. Here they were at least sheltered from any casual view.

‘We ring the bell,’ Tim said. ‘We do exactly as I said we’d do at the butcher’s shop.’

Tanto in discrimine
, Averell told himself, as if succumbing to his nephew’s recent penchant for Latinity. Here was the crunch. He nerved himself.

‘No, Tim. We do nothing of the kind.’

‘It will be perfectly all right. They’ll be scared stiff, and simply cave in. We’ll be negotiating on our own terms.’ Tim put his hand out to the bell.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Quite definitely not. We’d simply be handing them three hostages instead of one. I veto it.’

‘Teucer speaking?’

‘Teucer.’

‘Then back to headquarters. Napoleonic change of plan.’

With these absurd words Tim turned and walked down the steps. This time at a dignified pace they both traversed the full length of the house and retraced their steps to the back. All those dozens of windows looked down on the conclusion of this amazing episode. It seemed incredible that they were not observed and pursued. Had they run as fast as they could on this abrupt retreat from Moscow the chances of detection would scarcely have been appreciably minimized. And it wouldn’t, of course, have been good for morale.

The yard was as deserted as before. The truck still stood innocently in front of the barn. They took their former route to the back – Averell at least every moment expecting uproar and enraged pursuit behind them. But there wasn’t a sound – or none except the heavy respirations of the stupefied dogs. Tim sat down on a bench, as if at the end of an afternoon’s stroll through scenes of rural calm. He produced a packet of cigarettes.

‘Have one of these?’ he asked. ‘Or what about the pipe?’ Averell made no reply, but sat down too. He had obviated, he felt sure, immediate disaster. But he had no idea of where they went next. Tim took a cigarette from the packet, tapped it in an old-fashioned way on a thumbnail, and struck the match. The match promptly went out.

‘Have to dodge inside,’ he said. ‘Back in a minute.’

His uncle watched him disappear into the store-room. He must have been continuing to have difficulty in lighting up, because nearly a couple of minutes went by. Averell became conscious of a faint smell. It wasn’t a doggy smell, nor was it the piggy smell from his own soiled garments. It was, in fact, the smell of petrol vapour. Then Tim appeared again. And suddenly behind him there was a back-cloth of leaping, of roaring flame.

‘Better move away a little,’ Tim said calmly. ‘I’m afraid I was a little careless with that match.’ He grinned happily as he glimpsed the appalled expression on his uncle’s face. ‘Ammo doing us proud,’ he said. ‘If we just had that double-bass we could play Nero to it, couldn’t we? But of course we have other work on hand this afternoon.’ He flung away his cigarette with the air of a conjuror dispensing with his wand. ‘Action stations, Uncle Gilbert! The last battle begins.’

Had Timothy Barcroft begun at this point to execute a wild dance before the large-scale arson he had so effortlessly achieved his uncle would scarcely have felt surprised. But this would have been unjust to his nephew, who was no more a potential fire-bug than he was a thwarted sadist. Not that he wasn’t taking satisfaction in the rapid progress of the conflagration he had occasioned. But this arose primarily (as was soon clear) from his conviction that he had achieved a tactical master-stroke, and perhaps in some subsidiary degree on the score of what might be called socio-economic theory: the persuasion, to wit, that what was presently to be consumed to ashes in the barn was a mass of worthless paper purporting to be wealth in an acquisitive society. Robbers had been robbed in Uffington Street, and now the Uffington Street robbers were being robbed in their turn in a splendidly ironic manner. There was a kind of quiet bonus, as it were, of high-minded satisfaction in the contemplation of this fiery spectacle.

‘Softly, softly!’ Tim was murmuring – apparently to the flames. ‘Just go easy there. We don’t want our friends to have a lost cause on their hands too soon. And here they come, I think. Stir your stumps, Lord Emsworth. Back to the ghostly Empress.’ Having thus signalled that he
did
know his P G Wodehouse, Tim took his uncle by the arm and conducted him at the double to the abandoned sty. It provided a flanking view of the ensuing proceedings.

The fire was already making a surprising amount of noise, and it was this that first alerted the unknown number of the enemy within the house. The back door had been flung open amid much shouting, and half a dozen men poured out into the yard. For a moment they stood halted in a bemused clump, as if immobilized by the magnitude of the disaster confronting them. They then dashed across the yard and disappeared behind the barn, from the main structure of which smoke was already billowing. Inside the house itself a bell began shrilling in further alarm, and a second group of men emerged and followed the first. There was no indication of anybody in command. It was plain that a most satisfactory disorganization – indeed panic – obtained.

‘There’s quite a spot of fire-fighting equipment in the furthest shed,’ Tim said. ‘Quite enough to keep them busy for a time in a more or less rational way. But will they have left a guard behind them? That’s the umpteen-dollar question, Uncle Gilbert. A matter of nice psychological calculation, in fact. But we take our chance, don’t we? Into the Valley of Death, Colonel Averell.
Come on!
’

For the moment the yard was deserted, the entire force of the enemy being occupied at the back of the barn, where contradictory orders were now being shouted amid what it was to be hoped was still entire confusion. Tongues of flame were beginning to lick through the shingled roof of the building, and at one corner there was a cascade of sparks and the crash of falling timber.

‘Too hot, too hot,’ Tim yelled wildly, ‘I have
tremor cordis
on me!’ With his uncle abreast of him, he dashed across the yard to the back door. They bundled themselves through it, and Tim banged it to. ‘Bolts,’ he shouted, ‘splendid bolts!’ He rammed them home. ‘Just do the same by the front door and any others, and the bloody castle’s ours. Wait a minute, though.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘Police!’ he bellowed surprisingly. ‘Come out, you bastards, in the name of the law!’

There was silence. Tim’s voice had echoed as a voice echoes only in an almost void and empty house.

‘It may be a castle,’ Averell said soberly. ‘But it looks as if it’s going to be a castle under siege.’

‘Too true, Uncle Gilbert. But sufficient unto the day. Stay here. I’ll make the next recce.’ And – much as he had done at Boxes when under threat from what had proved to be the harmless if vexatious Gustave Flaubert – Tim went off to make a round of the ground floor of the house. Averell moved to a window of the back lobby in which he stood, and found himself looking across at the barn through heavy bars. There were now men in front of the building, directing upon it the jet from a fire-hose that seemed far from adequate to the task in hand. It couldn’t be long before they had to give up their endeavours as a bad job. But there was now another factor in the situation. Over the burning building there hung a great plume of smoke which must be visible for miles around. He remembered that a mere disaster to a haystack produced just that effect. What happened in such a case? Did anybody alert the nearest fire-brigade if the owners of the rick failed to do so? It occurred to him that somewhere in this house there must be a telephone, and that he ought to locate it, dial 999, and contact the police. They were more urgently required, it seemed to him, than any number of fire engines. But now Tim had returned, and this possibility was ruled out by the first words he spoke.

‘Telephone disconnected,’ Tim said. ‘These chaps seem to be here in a pretty temporary way. Nothing but camp beds and kitchen furniture. Security so-so. All the lower windows barred or with lattices rigged up on them. But they’ve only to find a few ladders, and come at us simultaneously through several first-storey windows, and we’re sunk all right. So there’s no time to waste. Come into the hall.’