The Dark Frontier (25 page)

“I warned you, Professor. I warned you, Mr. Casey. You chose to disregard my instructions and you will have to take the consequences.”

She was trembling with rage. In that moment I saw that she was probably not quite sane. She controlled herself with a tremendous effort and turned to Kassen.

“Was there anything missing?”

He seemed cowed. “No, dear lady,” he muttered, “nothing but some records which they burnt.”

“Then get on with your execution.”

She turned again to go. Kassen went to the switchboard. Marassin was drawing himself up and was saluting stiffly, either in honour of her going or in deference to our prospective decease, when the outer door of the laboratory on our right flew open and a volley of shots rang out. I saw Kassen and three of the other men, among them the pink-eyed officer, fall.

Thrusting the Countess through the door behind him, Marassin retreated, returning the fire from the outer door as he went. Another volley followed and the remaining two men, who had been firing wildly at their invisible target, pitched forward. Marassin was unhit, however, and disappeared. Then Beker rushed in at the head of five scrawny and wild-looking peasants holding rifles. Three of them dashed after Marassin and the Countess. The other two took up a defensive position by the door.

Beker cut us free. I think I must have been a little lightheaded for I remember becoming hysterical about the oil that was oozing over the floor from a bullet-hole in one of the High-Tension condensers. Neither of them took any notice of me. Carruthers was bending over Kassen. He was apparently quite dead, as was the man in the chair who had been hit in the head by a ricochet.

Beker’s three henchmen returned crestfallen and reported
that Marassin and the Countess had got away by car. They commenced to loot the bodies.

Carruthers turned to Beker.

“Have you a match?” he said.

Beker produced a box.

“Light one, Beker.”

Beker did so and held it out.

Solemnly Carruthers drew a sheaf of papers from his pocket and put them to the match. The flames licked round them. He held the papers by the corners until they were burnt, then he ground them underfoot.

“There remains now your work,” he said to Beker.

The other nodded.

A few moments later, Carruthers and I were walking down the hill towards Groom’s disabled car. The man we had bound had evidently been freed by Groom, for he was nowhere to be seen. Carruthers replaced the distributor arm and the car started easily. We climbed in.

“We’ll wait a minute,” said Carruthers.

We waited in silence.

The rain had stopped and the sky was clear. The air smelt fresh and good. I felt drowsy and there was only the pain throbbing in my wrist to remind me that I had not just woken from a dream. Mechanically I noted the time by the luminous dial of Carruthers’ watch. It was a quarter to one. In fifteen minutes the Ixanian revolution would begin. It seemed a very remote affair under the calm derision of the stars.

Suddenly there was a quick rumble and the roar of a big explosion shook the car. In the direction of the laboratory there was a glare in the sky.

Carruthers put the car in gear, backed it into the quarry and then shot forward down to the valley road.

“Kassen, his laboratory and one copy of his secret,” he murmured. “Now for the second copy.”

O
n the outskirts of Zovgorod we received the first intimation that a revolution was in progress.

A barrier had been erected across the road. It was manned by a dozen or more armed peasants, grim, grizzly men, two of whom jumped on the running-board as we approached. Carruthers produced from his pocket a small card and displayed it. The sight of it was hailed with excited shouts and
Bravos
. A way was promptly cleared for us and we drove on.

In the city itself, all was silent, but as we approached the centre of it I began to notice groups of men standing at street corners in the shadows. Behind one such group I saw the shadow of a machine-gun.

“The outpost pickets,” Carruthers explained. “They’re there to deal with the police if they get troublesome.”

We avoided the Kudbek and drove through back streets in the direction of the Countess’s house. About half a kilometre from the square in which it was situated we were stopped by
one of the pickets. The leader of the group came to the window of the car and saluted.

“The Countess Schverzinski has gone to her home?” Carruthers asked in French.

“Half an hour ago, Monsieur,” was the reply.

“The servants and guards have been dealt with?”

“Two hours since, Monsieur.”

“Good. From now on no one is to enter or leave the area without a pass.”

“
Bien, Monsieur
.”

We drove on.

“Good staff work,” I commented.

“I’ve been at it for a week,” he answered, “preparing for just such an emergency as this. I’m taking no chances, Casey,” he went on in the ringing tones he invariably reserved for the utterance of his more banal pronouncements. “There’s too much at stake.”

He stopped the car at the end of the square and we walked the rest of the way. The house was dark except for a single lighted room on the second floor.

“Are we going in the same way as before?” I said as we approached.

“With the guards and servants removed we can afford to be a little less informal,” he answered.

“How did you know that you’d want them removed?”

“Put yourself in the Countess’s place. If you were taken unawares by a revolution, what would you do? Take your most valuable possessions and fly the country, I should think.”

I was unconvinced by this specious explanation but let it go. Carruthers, I had noticed, always liked to regard his incredible guesswork as masterly foresight. Guesswork or no, however, his arrangements had been made well, for careful reconnoitring showed that the house was unguarded.

We advanced up the front drive. A large Mercedes limousine
with the radiator still hot was standing in front of the portico. We continued round to the side of the house. Then I remembered that, with my right arm partially out of action, I could not climb up over as I had done before. I told Carruthers.

“You needn’t worry,” was his reply, “we’re not doing any climbing tonight.”

He led the way to the servants’ entrance and tried the door. It was open. We walked in and found ourselves in the kitchen. Carruthers struck a match.

On all sides there was evidence of the hasty departure of the servants. A dishcloth and an apron were lying on the floor. On the table was a half-finished meal set for four persons. We passed through the kitchen along a narrow passage with doors leading off it until we came to a stairway leading upwards. Here we stopped and listened. I thought I heard faint movements above.

“They’re getting ready to go,” whispered Carruthers.

I said nothing. The house was getting on my nerves. I once travelled on a giant liner on her way to the breaker’s yard because someone had had the notion that there was a sob story in the trip. There was, but it was never printed. There was a pitiful loneliness about the deserted rooms and corridors that exercised a profoundly depressing effect on even the seamen. The stuff I turned out as a result might have been the outcome of a collaboration between Edgar Allan Poe and George Eliot. For me there is a curious air of tragedy in inanimate objects divorced from the warm proximity of the humanity for whose use they were designed. I have sensed it in an empty theatre and as I stood with Carruthers in the darkness of that old house I sensed it again. I pictured the scene that had been enacted there that night; the men on guard surprised at their posts by the sudden pressure of gun-barrels and whispered threats; the owner of the apron flinging it aside as he hastened to obey the curt commands to leave the goulash now glutinous on four
cold plates; the rapidly methodical search of the house and then the sharp order to abandon. As I discarded these fancies impatiently, a question arose in my mind.

“Where’s Prince Ladislaus?” I whispered.

“Left for Belgrade six hours ago. Very wise of him.”

That surprised me. The Prince had not impressed me as a man with an ear to the ground. I said so.

Carruthers laughed softly.

“He was warned. We couldn’t risk having him in the country. As leader of the aristocratic party he would have had to have been shot. That would have embarrassed the new Government. He has powerful relatives abroad.”

“He might have told the Countess.”

“He wasn’t given time.”

He pressed my arm enjoining silence and started up the stairs. I could see nothing ahead and counted nine steps before we came to a door set at a curious angle in the wall. Carruthers took my left hand and raised it above my head. My fingers encountered wood. I felt a wedge shape and moved my hand backwards and forwards. Then I understood. We were beneath the main staircase leading from the hall to the floors above, and behind the door used by the servants. Carruthers leaned forward and I saw the shape of it as it opened slightly.

We waited there for about five minutes. The darkest hours had passed and through the opening in the door objects had begun to take shape. I felt cold, my wrist ached and I was hungry. I longed, above all, for a drink.

For a time we heard no further movements from upstairs; then a door slammed suddenly and we heard footsteps over our heads as someone began to descend the stairs. The footsteps reached the hall and clicked across the parquet. A door opened and there was silence. Then I saw the door in front of us opening slowly and Carruthers’ figure filling the gap.

We stepped out into the hall. From a room at the end of
the hall, a shaft of light came through a half-opened door. Carruthers led the way slowly towards it. Outside the door we paused. There was a faint rustling of papers from within. Then I saw Carruthers raise his gun, lean forward and gently push the door open.

The room was the Countess’s study and the occupant of it was the lady herself. She stood by the safe still in her fur travelling-coat. In her hand was a bundle of documents. A pile of charred and burning papers in the hearth explained what she was doing. As she came into view another bunch of torn scraps fluttered from her hand into the bonfire. She did not turn her head.

“Come in,” she said abstractedly.

We went in, Carruthers with his gun levelled.

“I was expecting you, Professor,” she remarked, as she dropped the remainder of the papers into the hearth.

I started, but Carruthers was unmoved.

“Madame’s perspicacity does her credit,” he said cordially. “I trust,” he added quietly, “that you understand what I am here for.”

She turned to face us with a smile. She might have been according an audience to the ambassador of a friendly power.

“I do, Professor, I do indeed,” she answered. “I very much regret, however, that we cannot accede to your request.”

Carruthers raised his eyebrows. “We?”

“Colonel Marassin is just behind you,” she observed.

I experienced a bitter thrill of fear. We had walked straight into a trap. We were to be defeated at the last by one man and one woman in a house surrounded by allies. We had been fools to suppose that we were a match for these people.

“If you will lower your pistol and step forward one pace very slowly, Colonel Marassin may defer his intention to kill you for a moment or two,” said the Countess in French.

Carruthers’ arm dropped to his side and the gun was
snatched from his hand. Marassin advanced into the room until he was beside the Countess.

“My brother,” she went on smoothly, “left a message for me before his enforced departure. The city, I believe, is in the hands of a rebel force.”

“Someone must have been careless,” murmured Carruthers, “but your information is correct, Madame.”

She sighed. “Small things sometimes decide the fates of nations,” she said. “If I had not been called to the laboratory, I should have received the message in time to recall troops from Grad and Kutsk to deal with the situation. It is, I presume, impossible now?”

“Zovgorod was isolated from the outside world an hour ago, Madame.”

She accepted the statement without question.

“I thought as much. I have one great consolation. The peasant Government seems to have better brains to lead it than the foolish democrats who overthrew the monarchy. The Grad and Kutsk affairs were good ideas.”

Carruthers bowed. “Madame is too kind.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“So?” She looked at him keenly. “I should not have thought it. You have qualities unusual in a professor. I can see that we underrated you. I thought so once before, but Colonel Marassin assured me that you were as foolish as you looked. I will confess, however, that I still feel a trifle mystified. Armament manufacturers do not usually gain their ends by supporting radical movements. They encourage the more aggressive forms of dictatorship.”

“That I can well believe,” answered he. “I am afraid, Madame, that I am a very misunderstood man. Mr. Groom, too, had the misfortune to assume that I was the man I seemed.”

“For whom do you work then, Professor?”

I saw a blank look come into Carruthers’ face. He seemed
to have lost his self-possession. The Countess waited in vain for his answer. She shrugged at last.

“It does not matter,” she said. “Tell me, however, where is this man Groom at the moment?”

Carruthers recovered some of his assurance. “Mr. Groom,” he said, “is at this moment wandering in the darkness towards Zovgorod. Mr. Casey and I are using his automobile.”

“Then,” she said thoughtfully, “you have taken nothing from the laboratory?”

“Nothing, Madame. The laboratory is, however, no longer standing. A few hot-heads were anxious to retaliate for Colonel Marassin’s disgusting action in murdering Andrassin so foully, by blowing up the electricity dam. A more responsible section of the Young Peasants’ party was able fortunately to divert their enterprise into more harmless channels. The laboratory is now a hole in the ground.”