‘Yes, it is – and we must search the whole bloody dump. Let’s begin–’ Tim broke off. ‘But listen!’
From somewhere above their heads there had come a faint call – and it was repeated now. Although faint, it was also angry.
‘Tim! Tim you silly sod –up here at the top!’
Tim gave a shout of triumph and bounded up the remainder of the staircase. Without pausing to call out again, he disappeared up a further flight. His uncle followed with what speed he could. When he reached the attic storey it was to find his nephew halted before a stout wooden door at the end of a corridor.
‘Dave,’ he was calling, ‘are you in there?’
‘Yes, I damn-well am!’ It was plain that Dave was wholesomely enraged. ‘And I don’t think there’s a lock. Simply a couple of hefty bolts.’
‘That’s it – just an improvised clink for an all-time idiot.’ Tim shouted this in a most unamiable manner. It was not the least strange fact about this extraordinary situation – Averell reflected – that the two young men were affecting to be cross with one another. ‘You oughtn’t to be allowed out by yourself,’ Tim shouted for good measure. ‘Lucky that nannie had an eye on you.’ He drew back the bolts and flung open the door. ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ he said.
It was a small room lit by an inaccessible skylight, and it contained very little except Dave himself. Dave wasn’t in bonds; he had simply been securely incarcerated. Across the dusty floor his footprints could be distinguished as he had prowled to and fro – like a mangy circus tiger (Tim was to say) in a cage as small as the cruelty to animals people would allow. The furniture consisted of a rickety cane chair and an incongruously massive kitchen table. On the table was a mug, an empty beer can, and the remains of a cold chicken.
‘Well, I’m damned,’ Tim said. ‘Guzzling too.’ His conduct as he spoke was at variance with these words, since he had grabbed his friend, hugged him, and was waltzing him round the table. ‘No complaints, I suppose? Treated very well? Don’t forget you have to say that to the reporters. It’s the regular thing.’
‘Bugger the reporters – and let’s get out. Where are all those chaps?’
‘Busy extinguishing a fire started by a careless tramp.’
‘I don’t know that they are,’ Averell said. ‘Just listen to that.’
This was an unnecessary injunction, since a great banging had suddenly made itself inescapably audible below.
‘It’s the back door,’ Tim said calmly. ‘They can’t open it, and it puzzles them. Let them puzzle away while we do a quick think. On just how to fight our way out.’
‘There are about a dozen of them,’ Dave said with a drop into sobriety. ‘I don’t want to be discouraging, but it’s a ratio of four to one. Mr Averell, did you do unarmed combat back in that Hitler’s time?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Then we’d better arm ourselves. Tim, what do you think about that table? Could we get the legs off it? They’d make very handy clubs, and the joints feel a bit wonky.’
The young men at once applied themselves to this project with vigour, upending the table and wrenching at the legs with a will. They came away quite easily.
‘Bags I this one,’ Tim said childishly. ‘It has a couple of usefully nasty nails left in it.’ He brandished it in air. ‘And now we’d better nip downstairs and see if we can simply make a run for it. That would be simplest, of course, in the circumstances. But I rather reckon that battle it will have to be.’
‘I wonder about simply sticking to the defensive?’ Averell asked. ‘I can’t believe that a fire like that is going to be ignored. Quite soon the police are bound to turn up, and these crooks know it. I doubt whether, as things are, they’d see much point in making an assault on us. Their booty has gone for good, and their captive is out of their grasp. What they must be thinking of at this moment is calling it a day and making themselves scarce.’
These were highly rational thoughts, which were respectfully listened to. But their basis was now promptly falsified in a dramatic manner. The hammering at the back door had ceased, but only to be replaced by fresh mainfestations of violence. Through the house reverberated a crash of breaking glass – oddly accompanied by the roar, abruptly silenced, of some powerful engine.
‘They’ve got out a tractor or something,’ Tim said, ‘and smashed their way in. Just the idea I had with that potty little motor-mower. Too late to nip quietly out, chums. It’s the siege, all right. They know we’re in the house – or that somebody’s in the house, because otherwise that back door couldn’t have been bolted against them. So they’ll start hunting round at once.’
‘No bloody bolts up here,’ Dave said. ‘Or not on the inside of this door. Could we get on the roof? If we could, and if there aren’t too many trapdoors and fire-escapes to it, we could hold out for quite a time. Like those chaps who start rioting in gaols.’
‘Let’s get into the corridor and see.’ Tim had moved rapidly to the door. ‘I could reach an affair of that sort by standing on your hulking great shoulders. And we could haul up Uncle Gilbert by his braces.’ Tim flung the door open, and then as abruptly banged it shut again. ‘No go,’ he said. ‘They’re on the floor beneath us, and will be up here in a jiffy. Listen to them! It’s like a whole blasted battalion. Prepare to sell your lives dearly. But perhaps they’ll only beat us up in a savage and vengeful manner before making tracks from the place.’
Averell found this hopeful thought not particularly comforting. There was now a great deal of noise immediately below, compounded by angry shouting, slamming doors, and the pounding of heavy feet.
‘No good trying to barricade this door,’ Dave said. ‘There’s nothing but the remains of that rotten table.’
‘Not the drill, anyway,’ Tim said. ‘Much too passive. You and I just stand on either side of it, and swat them in turn as they come in. Think of them as cockroaches or something. Uncle Gilbert will simply stand by and give an additional bash to any of them that looks like requiring it. Here they come! Stand by.’
Composedly the two young men took up this suggested station on either side of the door. They might have been tennis players positioning themselves at the start of a game. Then each poised his table leg in air – with Tim being careful to orient his two nasty nails to the most potentially lacerating effect. It was a grotesque spectacle – like a farcical episode in some brutal knock-about film in a past age.
And now there were running footsteps, a sharp command, heavy breathing, immediately outside. The door flew open. The young men tautened their arms.
‘Stop!’ Averell shouted.
He was just in time. It was policemen who were tumbling into the attic room.
21
It was the police helicopter that had shattered the windows. You can land a helicopter on a handkerchief, but it is usual not to come too near expanses of glass. As the forces of the law, however, had been equipped to storm the house through its first-floor windows, the havoc wrought by this particular machine had come in quite handy as speeding up the operation, which in fact was all over in under fifteen minutes. The police, indeed, had been a little disconcerted at finding no criminals inside the house, and had achieved much hurried ferreting about and vain rummaging. But eventually the whole lot had been rounded up in the outbuildings and the yard, and were now being ushered into several capacious black vehicles. Most of them being covered in soot and ashes from their vain fire-fighting, they presented a somewhat woebegone spectacle. Their demeanour, however, was in the main philosophic. Police brutality (for which Tim was keeping an eye wide open) could not honestly be said to be occurring.
Police curiosity was another matter. The Inspector in charge of the operation was under the irritating persuasion that it was his business to ask questions rather than answer them. Tim in the future was always to refer to this final half-hour of the a
dventure as ‘our interrogation’ or ‘when we were bloody-helping the fuzz with their inquiries’. For a time, indeed, Averell was afraid that the two young men were going to prove positively truculent; that they were about to express themselves as disgusted that a private-enterprise Operation had been crassly blundered in upon just when all was going swimmingly. But this fear proved baseless, since it failed to take account of that sense of fair play which has been whacked into all nicely brought up English boys. Tim and Dave (not to speak of Uncle Gilbert) had been rescued, and they knew it. Tim even managed to utter some embarrassed words to this effect. These were well received.
Dave gave an account of himself. Dozing down the street, he’d actually given that lot a casual hand at loading up the stuff they’d then smuggled into the house in Uffington Street as band paraphernalia. When he’d got the implications of this clear in his head he’d gone to do a look-see, and had later decided to confer with Tim. But then the bastards had jumped out of nowhere and clobbered him.
‘Not,’ Dave said magnanimously, ‘that they weren’t quite decent once they got me out of the bloody crate. Fed me, and even treated me to some tinned stuff passing as beer.’
‘It’s not precisely a major point in their favour,’ the Inspector said dryly. ‘Did they say anything about holding you to ransom?’
‘No, they did not. They weren’t exactly chatty, you know.’
‘Did you yourself reflect that something of the sort might have become their main interest in you?’
‘It did cross my mind.’
‘Would you describe yourself as rather a notable prize for people thinking of that line of business?’
‘I don’t know at all. I suppose my people are fairly well off. As people go, that is.’
‘Thank you very much.’ The Inspector spoke rather as if dropping this reasonably comprehensible young man into a pigeon-hole from which he could be retrieved at need. ‘I don’t think I have anything more to ask you at present.’
‘But I’ve something to ask you,’ Dave said – now a shade belligerently. ‘Would you mind telling me how your people got on to the thing?’
‘Oh, not in the least.’ The Inspector appeared delighted. ‘We have been acting on information received.’
‘Who from?’
‘Ah, that’s another matter.’
‘Damn it all –’
‘My dear young man, the reply I have given you would satisfy any judge in the High Court, and it will have to satisfy you.’ The Inspector smiled at Dave in the friendliest way, much as if he had taken a liking to him in a totally non-fuzzlike manner. ‘And now I have one or two questions to put to Mr Barcroft.’
‘Fire ahead,’ Tim said grimly. ‘But I don’t undertake to answer them, and am not obliged to do so.’
‘Of course not. But what I have in mind is merely something that needn’t embarrass you in the slightest degree. I’m just curious about the origin of that fire.’
‘Oh,’ Tim said – and for a moment seemed to have been put decidedly at a stand. Then he took a deep breath. ‘There was this tramp, you see. Your men must have spotted him.’
‘I’m not aware that my men spotted any tramp, Mr Barcroft.’
‘Good lord! For how long have you had this place under observation, Inspector?’
‘Since noon.’
‘Under close observation?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Everything tied up, and even the guard dogs taken care of it’
‘All appropriate measures were put into operation.’
‘Then it’s very odd you don’t know about the tramp.’
‘It is – decidedly.’
‘A bloody careless tramp. He went into the shed to light a fag. And he must–’
‘No doubt he must.’ The Inspector was staring hard at Tim. ‘Would you be able to identify him?’
‘I’m sure I could identify him. And my uncle could probably identify him too. Isn’t that right, Uncle–’ Tim paused fractionally. ‘Isn’t that right, Uncle Georges?’
Averell was momentarily confounded by this, which he took to be one of his nephew’s most atrocious pieces of mischief, and decidedly untimely at that. But the Inspector was looking at him expectantly.
‘Well,’ Averell said, ‘he seemed to me a fairly ordinary tramp, although no doubt careless beyond the average. But – do you know? – I rather thought he had a cast in one eye.’
‘That’s it!’ Tim said – and immediately touched sublimity. ‘Or was it a limp, mon oncle? I can’t really remember.’
The Inspector breathed a shade heavily, and for a moment affected to consult an unused notebook in front of him.
‘You know,’ he asked Tim, ‘just what that barn contained?’
‘Rubbish out of the bank, I suppose. I don’t much mind what it contained myself. No doubt the bank people won’t be too pleased.’
‘But you are pleased, Mr Barcroft, that you got into this house in the endeavour to rescue your friend?’
‘I bloody well am.’
‘Then I think that is all.’ The Inspector closed his notebook in what might have been termed a symbolic fashion. ‘And it is not my impression that we shall get far in the hunt for that tramp. He will prove, I imagine, rather carelessly, to have lost himself.’ The Inspector looked straight at Tim. ‘But you needn’t let that disturb you.’
Tim was silent for a moment, and then spoke four memorable words.
‘Thank you very much.’
On the sweep outside the Black Marias of the law were preparing to depart. So was the helicopter. The show was over. But suddenly the Inspector appeared to bethink himself.
‘There are just one or two formalities,’ he said. ‘Of identification chiefly.’ He turned to Gilbert Averell. ‘Would you, sir, happen to have any present means of identifying yourself?’
It was the moment of truth. There was nothing to do but to rise to it. Averell produced from an inner pocket the passport of the Prince de Silistrie and handed it to the inquisitor in front of him. The Inspector opened it, studied it for a moment only, and then handed it back.
‘Thank you, Prince,’ he said politely. It was as if he regarded it as the most natural thing in the world that a well-bred youth such as Mr Barcroft should run to a French uncle of exalted rank. ‘May I ask if you intend to stay long in England?’
‘Only over the next two or three days,’ Averell said firmly. And he added, ‘Might I be required to return for the purpose of giving evidence against those criminals?’
‘Possibly. Yes, possibly.’
‘I could be required to do so?’
‘Dear me, no – and indeed there may be no necessity for your presence. And no English court could require the attendance, simply for the purpose of giving testimony, of any foreign national.’ The Inspector glanced at Averell whimsically. ‘We could hardly start extradition proceedings, could we?’
‘Merci, Monsieur l’Inspecteur,’ Gilbert Averell said. And he managed a dignified Gallic bow.
They drove back to London in Dave’s car, and had reached the motorway before Tim spoke.
‘Quite a decent chap,’ Tim said, and paused. ‘But a bit thick, as they all are,’ he added complacently. ‘Couldn’t spot the fact, Uncle Gilbert, that you’re no more a Frog prince than I am.’
‘What you are,’ Dave said cheerfully to his friend, ‘is an all-time silly sod. I say! Where shall we go for dinner?’
EPILOGUE
IN FRANCE
‘My dear friend,’ the Prince de Silistrie said, ‘I hope you had an enjoyable vacation?’
‘Yes, indeed. Decidedly.’
‘And I too. I visited the tombs of the Etruscans. Gilbert Averell visited the tombs of the Etruscans, ought I not to say? Melancholy, those mellone – but by fortune les
s extensive than the later catacombs of our own most holy religion.’ The Prince de Silistrie, who was a very devout man, paused becomingly on this. ‘Yet how joyous a people, Gilbert! The little statues – figurines, as you also say – dancing, diving, running, and sometimes so shamelessly Priapic, in such readiness, as they pursue, it must be, the nymphs! Your great writer David H Lawrence celebrates this.’
‘I suppose he does,’ Averell said, and glanced a shade uneasily at his friend. The two men were lunching at Poissy, and the Seine sparkled in May sunshine round the little island on which their restaurant lay. Many gentlemen were already in straw hats. It was all very Monet, very Renoir – or Lambinet, Averell thought, recalling his favourite novel by Henry James. They were both silent for a moment: two brothers quietly enjoying one another’s company, as they must appear to any casual regard. ‘And you had no difficulty with the passport?’ Averell asked cautiously.
‘None whatever. And how I acted one of your admired compatriots! At Volterra, in the Porcellino – so charming a name for a little hostelry – I breakfast on the bacon and eggs. Think of that, my friend!’
‘And l’estomac stood up to it well? Always in France one considers l’estomac.’
‘Indeed, yes.’ Georges signalled no disapproval of this pleasantry. ‘Only when I returned to Paris there was an incident. C’est le curieux de l’affaire. I received a photograph. “Snapshot” is perhaps the proper term.’
‘A snapshot of just what?’ Averell asked – although he knew perfectly well.
‘Of myself – or such was the suggestion – ravishing an English rose. In a grotto, or some such secluded place. It is a fresh light upon your character, my dear Gilbert. I hope the little rencontre went well. English roses are said to be so chilly, are they not? It is as if the dew were upon them always.’
‘That is complete nonsense.’
‘They are, in fact, ardent? It is a calumny?’
‘I’m not talking about that. I mean about what was taking place. I was comforting an innocent girl, little more than a child, who happened to be very much upset.’
Going It Alone Page 16