William considered this, frowning thoughtfully.
“I bet this cousin of your mother’s pullin’ your leg,” he said at last. “I bet he’s not captured him really.”
“Oh yes, he has,” said Hubert confidently.
“Well, you’ve not got any proof,” persisted William. “He only says he’s captured him. I bet he’s pullin’ your leg.”
Hubert was silent for a few moments, savouring his triumph before he said, still with admirably acted carelessness: “Oh yes. I’ve got proof all right. He’s bringin’ him here to-day.”
“What?” squawked William. Then: “He can’t be—I said he was pullin’ your leg.”
“Yes, he is,” said Hubert. “The gov’nment are lettin’ him keep him for a bit ’cause they want it kept secret that he’s been captured. They don’t want the Germans to know what’s happened to him an’ if they took him prisoner themselves they’d have to put it in the papers. So they’re lettin’ this cousin of mine keep him for a bit for his own prisoner. He’s not dressed like he used to be,” he added hastily. “He’s disguised. He has to be, so’s people won’t recognise him.”
“Has he got a false beard?” said William, to whom the story was beginning to seem as credible as Robert’s exploits, recounted by himself.
“Oh no, he’s not got a false beard,” said Hubert. “That wouldn’t be any good. They come off too easy, false beards. No, he’s disguised as a British officer same as Robert or this cousin of mine. People’d never think it was Hitler, seein’ him in an officer’s uniform. An’ he’s gotter pretend he is a British officer, too, an’ he’s jolly glad to do it ’stead of bein’ put in prison. This cousin of mine’s taught him English, an’ he talks it as well as you or me by now.”
“Gosh!” said William. He took his seat on the top of a stile that led from the lane into a field. “Come on. Tell us all about it.”
Hubert perched beside him and began the story that he had so carefully prepared on the way.
“Well, it was like this,” he said. “This cousin of mine was walkin’ out in the country one day an’ he looked up an’ saw a parachute comin’ sailin’ down from the sky. He ran up to where it landed an’ saw it was ole Hitler, an’ Hitler said he’d come over same as Hess ’cause ole Goering was after him, so this cousin of mine took him along an’ rang up Churchill an’ Churchill said: ‘Well, let’s have ’em on toast for a bit wonderin’ what’s happened to him. Tell you what—s’pose you keep him yourself ’cause if we take him we’ll have to put it in the papers. You’d better disguise him as an officer an’ teach him English an’ take him about with you so’s he can’t escape.’ So this cousin of mine did an’ when my mother wrote to ask him to spend his leave with us he wrote back to say, yes, he’d like to if he could bring ole Hitler along with him.”
Hubert paused, breathless and exhausted. It was the greatest effort of imagination he had ever made in his life. William sat, elbows on knees, chin on hands, gazing into space, considering the story.
“Bet this cousin of yours is pullin’ your leg. Bet he’ll come alone an’ have a good laugh at you for believin’ him.”
“All right,” said Hubert. “He’s cornin’ at six tonight. You come along after that and have a look.”
“Yes, I jolly well will,” said William.
Hubert walked home happily. He had enjoyed the afternoon more than he had enjoyed any afternoon since the war began. It had been a refreshing change to hold forth to William instead of being held forth to by William. It had been a triumph to have concentrated the limelight upon himself instead of watching William enjoy it. It should be quite easy to sustain the Hitler fiction for the few days of his cousin’s visit. Fortunately his mother cherished a deep dislike of William as a “nasty rough boy” and had long ago forbidden him the house.
The excitement with which William had first heard the news decreased slightly as he walked homeward. The cousin had been pulling ole Hubert’s leg, of course. Anyone could pull ole Hubert’s leg. He’d done it himself dozens of times. He would go round there after tea and he’d bet anyone anything he’d just find old Hubert’s cousin having a good laugh at him.
He waited impatiently till six o’clock, then set off towards the Lanes’ house. Not wishing to risk an encounter with Mrs. Lane, he concealed himself behind the hedge in a position that gave him a good view of the garden. The garden was empty. No one could be seen at any of the windows of the house.
“Bet the whole thing’s a leg-pull,” muttered William. “Bet he hasn’t even got a cousin comin’ to stay at all.”
Then the side door opened, and out came Hubert, Mrs. Lane and a tall fair man in uniform.
“Hasn’t brought a friend at all,” said William. “Pullin’ ole Hubert’s leg. I said he was all the time. It’s a jolly good joke. I’ll have a jolly good laugh at him to-morrow. I’ll have a jolly good . . .” His mouth dropped open. His eyes goggled. For at the side door appeared a figure long familiar to him from photographs and caricatures. It was bareheaded. The short moustache, the dark lank forelock, the pallid morose face.
“Gosh!” gasped William, going suddenly weak at the knees. “Gosh! It’s him!”
And, without stopping to consider anything further, he turned to flee as if the whole of the Gestapo were at his heels.
“What on earth’s the matter, William?” said his mother as he flung himself, panting and dishevelled, into the house a few minutes later, turning to bolt and bar the front door. “What are you doing that for?”
William gazed at her, still panting. He longed to tell her the whole story, but he had never yet broken a “cross my throat” promise and he wasn’t going to start now. Besides, on thinking the matter over, he decided that there wasn’t really anything to be afraid of. The prisoner was safely in his captor’s hands. Hubert’s cousin was presumably armed and would not allow him to escape.
“Nothin’,” he said. “Well, nothin’ you need worry about. He wouldn’t dare start any of his tricks over here.”
“What are you talking about, William?”
“Nothin’,” said William, drawing back the bolt. “I bet we’ll be all right. I’ve got my bow an’ arrows, anyway, if he does start any tricks.”
* * *
He shadowed the illustrious captive from a respectful distance all the next day. The illustrious captive went for a walk with Hubert’s cousin in the morning and stayed in the garden in the afternoon. William overheard him commenting on the countryside in excellent English. Certainly Hubert’s cousin had done that part of the job successfully. As Hubert had said, he spoke English as well as—or indeed better than—Hubert and William themselves.
The next day the two of them went up to London, and William spent the day in Hubert’s company listening to repeated accounts of the capture. Hubert was not gifted with any great imaginative powers and, having with an almost superhuman effort invented the story of the capture, he saw no reason to alter or add to it. William did not exactly become bored—one could hardly be bored by such a story—but he wanted a few more details.
“Well, what’s he goin’ to do with him next?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s just gotter wait till Mr. Churchill tells him what to do.”
“Hasn’t ole Hitler ever tried to get away?”
“No, he knows he couldn’t get away,” said Hubert. “This cousin of mine’d shoot him soon as look at him if he tried gettin’ away.”
“Does he lock him in his room at night or sleep chained to him or what?”
“No,” said Hubert, “he knows he won’t try to get away.”
Despite the undeniable excitement of the situation, there seemed something too static about it for William’s taste. It was so fraught with drama that drama should, as it were, spring from it continually.
“Wish he’d try to escape,” he said. “I bet I’d catch him if he did. He’d be my prisoner then, wouldn’t he?”
“Dunno,” said Hubert vaguely, “but anyway, he won’t try. He
knows he couldn’t get back to Germany an’ he quite likes my cousin. He says he reminds him of Gobbles.”
“He’s not a bit like Gobbles,” objected William.
“Well, it may be one of the others,” said Hubert, who was finding the whole thing, though enjoyable, something of a tax on his intellect. “It may be Himmler or Mussolini or someone. Anyway, he says he reminds him of someone. P’raps it was his father. I say, you’ve not told anyone, have you? My cousin’d get in an awful row with Mr. Churchill if you’ve told anyone.”
“’Course I haven’t,” said William indignantly. “I said ‘cross my throat’, di’n’t I?”
But the keeping of the secret was not proving easy. It hovered on the tip of William’s tongue a hundred times a day, though he always managed to choke it back. He decided at last that it could do no harm to hint at the possession of a piece of extraordinary knowledge . . .
“I bet I know somethin’ that’d give you a shock if you knew about it. Mother,” he said portentously as he entered the morning-room.
But Mrs. Brown had an exciting piece of information of her own to impart.
“I’ve had a wire to-day, William,” she said. “Robert’s coming home on leave.”
And that, for the moment, drove the thought of the secret right out of William’s head. Robert, the hero, who had conquered Africa, sunk the Bismarck and crushed Raschid Ali’s revolt . . . William’s soul thrilled at the thought of meeting him again.
When Robert actually arrived, however, William found it a little difficult to sustain this attitude. Robert in uniform was so devastatingly like Robert out of uniform—an irascible unreasonable elder brother, passionately interested in such trivial affairs as football results, the fit of his tunic, and the girl friend of the moment. It became more and more difficult to reconcile him with the hero of the sagas that William had so assiduously woven around him. It wasn’t easy even to imagine his capturing Hess. But William, born hero-worshipper, was determined to see Robert as he wished to see him. He meant Robert to be a hero, therefore Robert must be a hero. It would have been easier to reconcile oneself to the old unheroic Robert had it not been for Hubert’s cousin with his glorious prize just across the way. The more William thought of this, the more intolerable seemed the state of affairs. He would not submit to it. Robert was a hero. Robert should be a hero.
Robert must be a hero . . . And yet the situation didn’t seem to be one that admitted of heroism. There were not likely to be any more Nazi leaders drifting in parachutes from the skies. It was a pity, thought William regretfully, that Robert had not been there instead of Hubert’s cousin when Hitler came down. And then—quite suddenly—William had his idea. It was a stupendous idea. Robert had not captured Hitler, but he could still capture him. There was Hitler under his very nose only about a quarter of a mile away. He could capture him from Hubert’s cousin and then he would be his—Robert’s—captive, until such time as the government saw fit to claim him as their own. William, of course, still considered himself bound by his promise.
He could not tell Robert in so many words that the Fuhrer was a prisoner at the Lanes’ house and ripe for recapture, but he could surely induce the captive to attempt escape and then put Robert on his track. That, though sailing a bit near the wind, wouldn’t, he considered, be actually breaking his promise. The scheme called for careful planning. His first thing to do was to get Hitler by himself, and that wouldn’t be easy because naturally he spent most of his time in company with his captor.
It was only after a whole day’s continuous stalking that William managed to secure his prey. He came upon Lieutenant Orford walking back alone from the village. Rather apprehensively—for, after all, this was the man who murdered friends and enemies alike by thousands in cold blood, and it was a lonely stretch of road—William sidled up to him.
“I say,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “why don’t you run away?”
Lieutenant Orford stared at him in surprise.
“What on earth are you talking about?” he said.
“There’s no one about,” said William. “I bet you could run away all right.”
Lieutenant Orford waved him impatiently aside and strode on down the road without answering.
William gazed after him regretfully. That hadn’t been any good. Evidently he didn’t want to run away. Scared of being shot, probably. He must try to think of some more cunning plan . . . Suddenly he thought of one. He ran to catch up the swiftly moving figure.
“I say!” he panted. “Hubert’s cousin sent a message for you.”
The swiftly striding figure stopped. “Why on earth couldn’t you have said that before?” he snapped.
“Were you expecting a message?” said William cunningly.
“’Course I was,” snapped Lieutenant Orford. “He said that if he’d started before I got back he’d leave a message where he’d gone to.”
“Oh,” said William. “Well, he’s started. He’s gone to”—he summoned all his inventive powers—“he’s gone to Poppleham. D’you know where that is?”
“Never heard of it,” said Lieutenant Orford.
“Well, he told me to take you to it if you didn’t know it,” said William. “I don’t s’pose you know England very well, do you?”
Lieutenant Orford ignored this remark and they walked on in silence for some moments. Then William said casually: “I expect you liked it in Germany, di’n’t you?”
“Liked what?” said Lieutenant Orford shortly.
“Well, you know, liked it,” said William vaguely, and added after a short pause: “What d’you think of Hess?”
“I don’t think about him at all,” said Lieutenant Orford.
Again conversation flagged. William led his companion over a stile and across a field, breaking the silence finally with: “I expect they’re wonderin’ what’s happened to you over there.”
“Who?” snapped Lieutenant Orford, “and over where?”
William sighed. The illustrious captive was evidently determined not to give himself away. Probably he’d made a “cross my throat” promise not to.
“Oh well,” he said, “I suppose you don’t want people to know about it.”
“Where is this Poppleham place?” said Lieutenant Orford irritably. He was tired of trailing over the countryside with a half-witted child.
“We’re nearly there,” said William.
They had reached the old barn now and the next thing was to lure his captive into it.
“I say!” he said, pausing at the open door and peering into the dark comer. “There’s somethin’ funny in that corner, isn’t there?”
Lieutenant Orford was not devoid of curiosity. He stepped into the barn. William pushed the door to and shot home the bolt.
Robert, seated comfortably in a deck-chair in the garden, looked up at William with a mixture of helplessness and elder-brother severity.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said shortly.
“Well, I keep tellin’ you,” persisted William. “This man came down in a parachute an’ he was dressed like a British officer an’ he asked me in German where Rudolph Hess was an’—”
“You don’t know any German,” objected Robert. “No, but he translated it into broken English for me an’ I got him to the ole barn an’ locked him in. He looked to me sort of as if he might be Hitler, an’ I thought it’d be nice for you to take him prisoner.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Robert. “He couldn’t possibly be Hitler.”
“All right,” shrugged William, “but he’d got a face like Hitler’s an’ he came down by a parachute in a British uniform an’ started talkin’ German.”
“Was it a khaki uniform?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the parachute?”
“Dunno. Think he must have hid it.”
“It’s a ridiculous story,” said Robert again, pretending to return to his book.
It sounded ridiculous, of course, but Rob
ert wasn’t quite happy about it. Ridiculous things of that sort had happened all over Europe and might happen in England any day, impossible as it still seemed. Suppose there were something in the kid’s tale, after all. It wouldn’t do any harm to verify it. He stood up and closed his book.
“I happen to be going in that direction,” he said loftily. “You can come along if you like.”
* * *
Lieutenant Orford had spent a very uncomfortable quarter of an hour trying to escape from the old barn. It had no windows and, though the door was old, it held firmly. He had kicked and shouted, but no one had heard him. His anger against the half-witted child who had locked him in had risen to boiling point when suddenly the door opened, revealing the half-witted child in company with a young man. Without stopping to consider. Lieutenant Orford leapt forward to execute vengeance. Robert, for his part, had taken for granted that the whole story was one of William’s fantastic inventions. When therefore a figure in khaki, with what in the semi-darkness looked like the face of the German Fuhrer in one of his brain-storms, hurled itself upon them, he lost no time in closing with it. They fought fiercely and silently. Though they were fairly well matched, Robert seemed to be getting the best of it.
“Hold on, Robert!” shouted William. “I’ll go and get a rope.”
It had occurred to him suddenly that it would be a fine score over Hubert if Robert could lead his prisoner past the Lanes’ house at the end of a rope.
* * *
William sat in the wheelbarrow, munching an apple and gazing morosely at the next-door cat, who sat on the fence that divided the gardens, gazing morosely back at William. The adventure had ignominiously petered out to nothing. To worse than nothing . . . for Robert, from being super-hero, had become again the old Robert, unheroic but with a swift sure hand for the avenging insults and injuries, and he had considered that the events of the afternoon constituted both.
It had taken William some time to secure a rope and when he returned to the old barn he had found it empty. He had scoured the countryside for traces of either Robert or his captive, and had then returned home to find the two of them in amicable converse in the morning-room. The visitor had a black eye and Robert a swollen nose. Robert fell upon William without ceremony and it was the visitor who finally rescued him.
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