Operation Pax (35 page)

‘I think not.’

‘Then, just for a time, you’d better stop. We’ve started a distraction at the front of the house that must be keeping the bulk of these people busy. With luck Miss Appleby and I can break in to this place on the island and take whoever is on guard there by surprise.’

‘You are brave people. Have you arms?… Yes? Then go. I will wait, since you ask me. But there is one other thing of which I was to speak. It is the second reason why they will press on with what they have wished to do, even if they feel that soon they must abandon this place. It is the active evil spirit… I do not know the words for it.’

‘I think I see.’

‘Since yesterday I believe it has become a madness, a fury. Such a plan as theirs aims at wealth and power. But it springs simply from an illness of the mind, a compulsion to destroy. And if things go badly, and their ambitions are checked, then they will destroy blindly, rather than not destroy at all. So they are very dangerous.’

Remnant nodded. ‘In fact there’s a strong case for getting in on a little destruction first. That’s just my notion.’ He put his hands up to the shattered skylight and heaved himself to the roof. ‘We’ll be back in no time.’

Anna Tatistchev nodded. ‘
Gott gebe!
’ She sat down quietly on the side of the bed.

Jane Appleby was already at the extreme edge of the long roof. Remnant hurried after her. Fortune, he thought, had thrown him up against two very good sort of women for an affair of the sort on hand.

Jane was staring at the temple. It had a sufficiently forbidding look. ‘Ought she not to have come with us? She’s the child’s mother, after all.’

Remnant shook his head. ‘For the moment, only business considerations count. We’ve got two guns – the one from Cline’s drawer, and one I took from the chap I slugged… Got a pocket?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ever fired a revolver?’

‘Quite often. But only at targets, I’m afraid.’

Remnant grinned. He seemed to have leisure to regard this as a capital joke. ‘Good enough. Here you are.’ He handed Jane Cline’s weapon. ‘Right shoulder if you want to be humane. Tummy if you’re feeling nasty.’

‘I see.’ Jane shivered slightly. ‘I can imagine circumstances in which I shall feel very nasty indeed.’

‘They won’t happen. We’re a step ahead of all that. Things are going along quite nicely. It’s a matter of impetus, you know. First thing they teach you about assault.’

‘And I can imagine other circumstances in which I should find you insufferable, Mr Remnant… How do we go?’

‘Straight across the bridge, Miss Appleby. Take your shoes off.’

Jane obeyed without asking questions.

‘Good woman. We go across the lid, so to speak. And it’s tin. Don’t want to make a row. Twenty fires in that highly respectable drunks’ home wouldn’t draw the whole high command away from this affair in front of us. So follow me, and don’t speak until you’re spoken to.’

Jane compressed her lips. There were moments when she found Roger Remnant very hard to take. His own shoes were off and strung round his neck. From the roof on which they stood to the upper surface of the tunnel-like bridge was an easy drop, and he made it in absolute silence. Jane dropped down beside him. They went forward on tiptoe. The surface was of corrugated iron. Walking delicately, it was not easy to keep a sure balance. But in less than a minute they had reached the other end.

Remnant came to a halt and stood quite still, frowning. Jane saw that the next problem was a hard one. On either side of them the sheer wall of the temple went off in a blank, smooth curve, and below them it dropped clear into the water. Remnant’s voice came softly in Jane’s ear. ‘No good taking a swim. Bad splash. Bad for the guns. We don’t know what’s on the other side. This is perhaps the only entrance – and it may be sheer like this all the way round.’ He paused, rapidly appraising again the whole situation. ‘Have to go up.’

Jane looked up. The proposal seemed blankly impossible. What confronted them was a steeply pitched pediment – presumably an ornamental feature crowning the doorway now concealed by the bridge – which rose until it almost touched the curved cornice of the building. Remnant put out his hand to it. ‘That or nothing,’ he murmured. ‘We can just get on the outer face of the pediment; it’s not too steep to crawl up – at least I don’t think so. How to get off it and on top of the cornice is the headache. But there isn’t sudden death below; only a filthy ducking. I think I can take you. Follow me.’ He edged himself on to the pediment, belly downwards, and crawled up its smooth incline. ‘Not bad’, he whispered back. ‘Pediment projects beyond the cornice a good six inches. And there’s a lightning conductor to help. We can do it. Come on.’

Jane came on. Her head was clear, but her recollections immediately afterwards confused. Somehow they had done it. They were lying in a sort of broad lead gutter behind the cornice. Beyond this again the curve of the dome.

‘We’re perfectly hidden here. Lie still. I’m going right round.’ Remnant breathed the words in Jane’s ear and set off at a crawl. He had become, she realized, suddenly very cautious. He disappeared round the curve of the dome, keeping wholly prone in the gutter. His progress in this fashion could not be rapid; to Jane it appeared an age before his head and shoulders emerged from behind the answering curve of the dome on her other hand. She thought inconsequently of Sir Francis Drake, home after circumnavigating the world.

‘The temple doesn’t cover the whole thing. There’s quite a bit of ground on the other side, and the island runs out in a little tongue, with a much smaller temple at the end of it. That means there’s probably another entrance to this big one, facing that way. But, ten to one, it’s pretty massively locked up. I’m going up again. Better do it from the other side, where there’s less chance of being seen.’

This time they both crawled half round the dome. Peering over the cornice, Jane presently saw the vacant stretch of island that Remnant had described. The second temple was very much smaller: an oblong affair, again with Doric columns. Jane, a severely educated child, at once saw that it was a miniature version of the Theseion at Athens. But Remnant was paying more attention to what was above him. ‘Only a step up to the drum’, he said. ‘But the first part of the dome’s more difficult. However, it’s ribbed. I’ll go up and have a look.’ He rose, spread-eagled himself between two of the ribs to which he had pointed, and worked himself upward. As the ribs converged and the pitch lessened the going got easier. Presently he set himself astride a single rib and kneed himself to the top. Within a minute he was sliding down a rib and had come to rest beside her again. It was an expert roof-climber’s job, and Jane guessed that if he was unfamiliar with the lecture rooms of the colleges of Oxford he was tolerably familiar with their towers and pinnacles. ‘Any good?’ she whispered.

‘What have you got on under that skirt and jersey?’

By this time Jane was schooled into finding nothing that Roger Remnant said at all odd. ‘Nylon.’

‘A lot of it?’

‘Well quite a lot.’ Jane was apologetic. ‘It’s getting on in October.’

‘Stockings?’

‘Nylon too.’ This time Jane was yet more apologetic. ‘Economical, really.’

‘I want the whole lot.’

‘The whole lot?’

‘Listen – it’s as I thought. The lantern up there screens a circular opening at the top of the dome.’

‘An eye.’

‘Very well – an eye. And it looks straight down on a sort of small circular hall–’

‘A cortile.’

‘–with rooms opening off all round. I think we can make something that will take me down.’

‘If you mean out of my nylon, then I’m going down too.’

‘We’ll see about that. Look – I’ll nip round here a bit and see what I can contribute.’ Remnant grinned. ‘Not that I can really compete. But a pair of braces will give us a final useful three or four feet.’

He was gone. It was not a commodious spot in which to undress, but Jane made no bones about it. The garments when lying in a heap at her feet seemed absurdly tenuous. She picked them up and crawled with them farther round the drum. The sensation of a skirt and woollen jersey next to her skin was mildly disconcerting. Remnant was waiting for her. He took the things one by one. ‘Absolutely splendid. Marvellous stuff. Take an elephant. Unfortunately it needs a bit of time. You can fill it in by finding your way about that gun.’

Jane obediently found her way about the gun. Remnant worked with concentration and extraordinary care. Every drop of impetuosity seemed to have evaporated from his personality. She suddenly knew that her confidence in him was complete.

He had finished. ‘You saw how I went up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then up you go first. If you slip, go slack and spread eagle. You won’t come really fast, except right at the end here. And – listen – when you do get up and peer over, the floor will seem the hell of a long way down. But it isn’t as far as it looks.’

‘I understand that.’

‘Then off you go.’

The woollen jersey tickled horribly as she sprawled and kneed her way upwards, and the scratching of the tweed skirt was worse. But the climb itself was a good deal easier than she had expected, once the first thrust of the dome was conquered. In a few minutes she was under the lantern with which this freakish building was surmounted: and a moment later Remnant was beside her.

‘A bit conspicuous up here, so we don’t want to waste time. And there won’t be much of this admirable rope to spare, so we mustn’t waste that either… But here’s the lightning conductor again. Saves us a couple of feet. There – it’s fixed. You can go up and down ropes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you may follow as soon as I’ve touched down. If it bears me it will bear you.’

‘In that case wouldn’t it be better–’

‘Be quiet. The stuff’s all right. It’s the knots. But I’ve worked each one just all I know how. Well, this is the dangerous bit – see? Every way the dangerous bit. After this the clean-up will follow.’

‘I believe you. Go ahead.’

Remnant swung himself over the eye. ‘As it happens, I go down a bit fancy. But you come plain – feet, knees, both hands. No bright girl of the gym – understand?’

‘Agreed.’

Remnant drew the revolver from his pocket. He still had his appearance of extraordinary concentration. And then he was gone – so quickly that whatever was fancy in his method quite eluded Jane’s analysis. Whatever it was, it took him down the improvised rope like an express elevator, and with the revolver poised ready in a free hand. He was safely on the floor – a marble floor, Jane suddenly saw – and standing quite still. He did not look up. That, she realized, would have made this yawning and suddenly horrible chasm seem somehow much deeper. He would betray no anxiety about her. His attention was absorbed in studying the circle of closed doors surrounding him. A gentle draught of air came up. It was a very chill air, and it stirred the crazy dangling thread that, minutes before, had been no more than a thin and diaphanous sheath round her own body. It looked now as if it would scarcely bear the weight of a small plummet at the end of it. But it had borne Remnant. She realized that it was now or never – both for this, and for ever looking herself in the face again. She went over and down – hand over hand, carefully, as she had been told.

She had done it, and the marble floor was very cold on her bare feet. Remnant’s hand came out and touched hers. It was a gesture commanding absolute silence. The little cortile, with its cupola and lantern above, could be a dire acoustic trap. A mere whisper, incautiously pitched, would echo and re-echo round it, until the reiterated and amplified sound was like surf breaking on a beach. Jane strained her ears. She could hear only a low, intermittent sighing, now rising towards a whistle and now sinking to a moan. It was the wind, she thought, playing through the lantern and washing round the chill concavity of the dome.

Remnant moved his other hand slightly. It was the one holding the revolver. She understood, and drew out the weapon in her own pocket. She gripped it firmly, imagining the clatter it would make if it fell. She looked downwards. The marble was white and faintly veined, like her own feet that rested on it. She looked around. There were five closed doors. Two of them were symmetrically placed on either side of a vaulted passage leading, she guessed, to the main doorway and the bridge, and the fifth was directly opposite this.

She heard her own heart. Remnant’s left hand let go of hers and described a small circle in air. She understood him instantly. It was like having a twin brother with whom no speech was necessary. He disliked the way the closed doors surrounded them. Let the wrong one open, and for a fatal second they could not help being taken unawares. His finger moved, and she knew that they were to stand back to back. With infinite caution he took a step sideways. She did the same. It was like ceasing to be man and woman, and becoming a monstrous crab. They moved towards the vaulted passage, holding the doors covered on either hand. She still heard faintly the sob and wail as of invisible wind. They had traversed the breadth of the marble floor. It was patterned in concentric circles, and their slow progress had been like that of a pawn on an unfamiliar board. The open archway was now above their heads. The length of the corridor on which it opened must correspond to that of the surrounding rooms.

She was touched lightly on the shoulder. It was her job to stand guard alone. Remnant had gone. A moment later she heard the first sound that either of them had occasioned. It might have been the scrape of iron on stone. Remnant was back and standing beside her, his revolver in front of him and his glance circling warily from door to door. His left thumb went over his shoulder. She was to make the same inspection that he had just carried out. The passage proved to be no more than eight paces long. At the far end were massive double doors, sheathed in bronze, and with their handles gripped in the jaws of bronze lions. A key stood turned in a powerful lock. And a stout steel bar, pivoting at the centre, had been swung round and engaged in niches in the surrounding stone. It had been the sound of this forced home that she had heard a moment before. Remnant had made very sure that they would not be surprised from the direction of the bridge.