Black August

by Dennis Wheatley

‘The waves are a natural orchestra, aren’t they? We might be listening to the overture of the “Flying Dutchman”.’

  ‘Yes, or Beethoven. It must have been like this when he wrote the “Moonlight”.’ He nodded at the bright August moon riding high in the heavens, and added slowly: ‘It seems natural somehow to transmute these long dark shadows and the shimmering of the waters into sound.’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘You’re musical then; I don’t know why, but somehow now I feel I might have guessed.’

  ‘Yes, it’s half my life—by far the better half—and I knew we had that in common from the way you watched that fellow singing in the boat.’

  ‘Did you? But tell me about the other half. What do you do in normal times. Mr. Harker?’

  ‘I?—oh, I’m in Steel,’ he replied laconically.

  ‘Were you over here travelling for your firm when the trouble started?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly, the firm’s got a London office on this side.’

  ‘Oh, you were here permanently then?’

  ‘No, just looking round, but maybe you wouldn’t have heard the name of Harker in connection with Steel before.’

  ‘What!’ Veronica exclaimed, ‘are you the Harker?’

  ‘Surely. If you have ever heard of anyone named Harker in Steel, I think it would be me.’

  ‘Of course; how stupid of us not to realise that before.’

  ‘Well, now, why would you?’ he protested with a little laugh. ‘I’d hate to go around with “Millionaire” placarded on my back.’

  ‘Yes, but your other name, Gonderport, ought to have given us the clue, if we hadn’t been so busy wondering how long we were going to remain alive; and you must admit it’s surprising to find a Captain of Industry who rows boats and digs trenches as cheerfully as if he had been used to it all his life.’

  ‘Believe me, Lady Veronica, this is the first decent holiday I’ve had in years.’

  ‘Holiday!’

  ‘Yes, it’s as good as breaking prison to get away from the sort of life I lead. Stenographers, balance sheets, and big business folk chasing me all the time, and every ten minutes: “This’ll be your call, Mr. Harker. Mr. Harker, I’ve got your office on the wire. Mr. Harker, you’re wanted on the Transatlantic line.” The same thing goes on even if I’m at Deauville or at my favourite home in Atlanta, for what the folk on the news sheets call vacation. For once in my life, too, I was dead certain that no one was after me for my money, and you’ve no idea what a joy it is to be taken at my face value by people like your brother and the General, without having to wonder just what they want to sting me for.’

  Veronica nodded. ‘Looked at that way a millionaire’s life must be pretty grim, but how in the world did you metamorphose yourself into an officer of Greyshirts?’

  ‘Easy,’ he chuckled. ‘I tumbled to it pretty early in the game that there was real trouble coming and I figured that every live man would have to take a hand some way in the cause of law and order, so I had a talk with an old friend of mine that I met way back in the War. He just insisted that I must be an officer and fixed it for me; so when the crash came all I had to do was to walk right out of Claridges and get into this suit of dungarees.’

  ‘And you honestly mean to tell me that you are enjoying this incredible party?’

  ‘I do; but you’re not really unhappy, are you?’

  ‘Not really. In fact I might be quite enjoying it too, if only I could see my hairdresser and buy a few things for my miserable face.’

  ‘Now isn’t that strange—’ she could see his cherubic smile in the bright moonlight—‘ten days ago I could have gone right off and bought you a whole beauty parlour if you’d felt that way, now I can’t even buy a ten cent cigar for anyone; but why worry, you don’t need those things, you’re just lovely as you are.’

  ‘Mr. Harker!’ Veronica’s voice was not a protest, but a faint, delicious mockery.

  ‘Have a heart now,’ he protested quickly. ‘I may have lost my fortune but I’ve still got my first name; it’s Silas.’

  ‘Well, Silas, do you know what I think about you?’

  ‘No; but I’d give a heap to learn.’

  ‘You haven’t got it dearie; but I’ll tell you all the same. You’re some fast worker.’

  ‘An’ you’re sure the Katz pyjamas,’ he laughed, copying her idea of Bowery American idiom.

  ‘Sez you?’

  ‘Sez me—an’ how.’

  ‘Is that a fac’, big boy?’

  ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘Tra-la-la, well, some dew and some don’t—so let’s get back to the ballroom.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, just a very antiquated joke, my dear; but seriously, I think you’re a grand guy and I like you lots.’

  ‘That’s good to hear—er—Veronica!’ He casually drew her arm through his and they began to stroll back up the beach.

  ‘You may think so,’ she said after a moment, ‘but I’ll tell you something, Silas. I’m a cad from cadville, so be sensible, laddie, and don’t waste your time on me.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning, but I’m not just out of the egg myself.’

  ‘Why? Are you heavily married or something?’

  ‘I have been—and divorced, but that was when I was a kid pilot in the War days. We were all mad then and it didn’t last a year.’

  ‘But that’s æons ago; surely you haven’t been lying fallow ever since?’

  ‘Not exactly, but I’ve been mighty cautious these last three years. I near as damnit got hooked by a girl in Boston; she had all the virtues and was daughter to a rich man who ran his local church, but I caught her selling my market tips and got out in time; since then I’ve been extra careful.’

  ‘My poor friend, how easily you brainy men get stung.’

  ‘Yes; I might have known she looked too good to be true.’

  ‘Like me?’ Veronica paused on the doorstep of the inn.

  ‘No.’ His slow smile came again. ‘You’re not good; but I’ll bet you’re true.’

  Her ripple of laughter echoed up the stairway as she softly closed the door of the Anchor.

  On the following day the exploring parties set off before Veronica was up so, after attending to the wounded who were progressing favourably under her somewhat spasmodic care, she spent the morning attacking a huge heap of mending which she loathed, but which Gregory had insisted on her undertaking as payment for her keep. After lunch she deliberately played truant and wheedled an old salt into taking her out for a few hours in his boat. By the time she got back Kenyon and Silas had returned, and both had a tale of woe to tell.

  They spoke of deserted farms and frightened people who had fled at their approach. Kenyon had seen one poor woman and three children obviously murdered, a gruesome heap lying where they had been flung in a manure pit. A few of the farm houses were already looted and their contents left scattered about the rooms in wild confusion, while on the moors inland, the startled hares had given place to frightened humans, crouching in ditches here and there, scared and suspicious of each other. The few that they had caught and questioned could tell them little, except that nothing would induce them to return to the terror of the towns.

  Only one piece of possible good news came out of these expeditions, and that was Silas’s discovery of the Hollesley Labour Colony, which lay some two miles to the north-west of Shingle Street. It comprised a considerable settlement of town dwellers who had been transferred in previous years to the land, where they occupied small but pleasant houses and were peacefully engaged in fruit and dairy farming. Their principal official had failed to return from a visit to London early in the crisis, but under the leadership of an elderly colonist, whom Silas reported to be full of ability and sense, they had organised themselves to preserve order in their own district and resist encroachment.

  Gregory felt that such neighbours might prove a blessing if they could be induced to trade the fruit and eggs which they had in
abundance for Shingle Street’s surplus supply of fish, and made up his mind to visit their leader as soon as more urgent matters had been attended to; but the general report of the state of the countryside made him more determined than ever to secure all the provender he could without further delay.

  In consequence Kenyon was dispatched early next morning with a party of six soldiers and six villagers, to collect all that he could of the remaining stock from farms which he and Silas had marked down the day before.

  It was a heartrending experience and one that set a severe strain upon his loyalty. As a boy, like others of his class, he had snared many a plump pheasant on the neighbouring lands that marched by Banners out of sheer devilment, but to rob old women of their chickens in broad daylight is apt to turn the stomach of any decent man. Yet he knew that if they did not hang together and obey Gregory’s orders, given in the interest of them all, they would surely die.

  With a heavy heart he watched his men harness the scraggy horses into commandeered wagons at the nearest farms, and by ten o’clock a procession of five vehicles were winding their way behind him through the peaceful lanes.

  At each house they visited he witnessed the same heart-breaking procedure, women in tears and sullen, cursing men. Whenever he could, he dealt mercifully with them, taking in quantity only from those who had comparative abundance, and consoled a little by the knowledge that, had he refused to undertake this foray, another might have been sent who would perhaps have dealt far more harshly with the unfortunate country people.

  As the day wore on their loads increased. One wagon contained chickens under a net, another pigs, a third a fine stock of flour from a mill, a fourth ducks and geese, the fifth all sorts of miscellaneous provender; but the farther they advanced inland the more frequently they came upon batches of stragglers and the bolder these became. At first the little parties of twos and threes only pleaded with him to give them food and followed for a short distance before despairing of succour from his convoy but, later, larger parties advanced threateningly from scattered coppices by the wayside and only the sight of the soldiers’ rifles kept them from attacking.

  When he arrived at Shottisham he encountered real trouble. A farmer had followed them two miles on foot, shaking his fist and shouting curses at them for the seizure of two of his pigs. To Kenyon’s annoyance the man raised the village against him and the locals, hurriedly concluding a brawl in which they were engaged with some town roughs, joined forces with their late enemies and set on his convoy. The farm carts could not be galloped so he halted them as close together as possible in the wider portion of the village street, and then stood up in an endeavour to pacify the crowd, but a shower of stones soon put an end to his peroration.

  Obviously there was only one thing for it; but he warned his men to fire high, and a volley shattered the silence of the sleepy street. For a moment turmoil reigned and the eighty or more people who composed the crowd fled in all directions, but with the sudden realisation that no one had been hurt they regained their courage, and under the leadership of the angry farmer made another rush.

  Kenyon knew that his dozen men would be overwhelmed in two minutes if he hesitated any longer and that, hate it as he might, the outcome depended upon himself, so he drew his pistol and shot the farmer neatly in the thigh.

  With a yelp of pain the man rolled over in the gutter, while the crowd stopped dead, overawed by this sudden display of determination. Swiftly Kenyon seized upon the ensuing silence.

  ‘Take warning!’ he shouted, ‘or my men will put a volley in the middle of you. Up against that wall, quick now!’

  In a rapid shuffle they obeyed, pressing near each other for shelter as they huddled against the barn he indicated.

  He ordered down his troops and lined them up with rifles at the ready: ‘If any of you move a step, you’re for it,’ he announced tersely to the cowering crowd, then, determined to punish the villagers for their attack rather than loot any more of the miserable scattered farm dwellings, he sent his half-dozen Shingle Street handy-men into every house in the place to commandeer all that they could lay their hands on.

  Two more carts had to be requisitioned for the extra load, which consisted of a fine miscellaneous haul including the entire supply of drinks from the village pub, which were discovered to have been hidden in a hen house, and a most welcome find of some three thousand cigarettes.

  With a parting threat, that if any of the wretched inhabitants moved a foot before his last wagon was out of sight they would still get a volley, Kenyon turned his convoy about and headed once more for Shingle Street.

  Silas was sent out on a similar errand the following day, but Gregory, suspicious that his Lieutenants were too soft-hearted for the business, set out himself on Saturday with a squad of twenty men.

  Just before midday Silas abandoned his herculean labours on the Redoubt and went in search of Veronica. He found her, dressed in a suit of borrowed overalls, busy painting three enormous notice boards in the garden behind the inn. They bore the legend, WAR DEPARTMENT—ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN, and were being made at Gregory’s orders for erection, one about a mile inland on the road up into the hills and the others on the foreshore half a mile or so to the north and south of the village. In his view, the English being such a law-abiding people, the sight of them with a sentry pacing up and down nearby would be quite sufficient to prevent isolated tramps, or even small parties of fugitives, from advancing nearer to Shingle Street.

  ‘Would you do me the honour to have a little lunch with me today?’ Silas inquired blandly.

  ‘My good man,’ Veronica jammed her paint brush back into the pot, ‘don’t we always feed together in this infernal pub, and it looks as though we shall until I’m grey.’

  ‘No, this is a little private party I’m throwing at the Ritz-Carlton, Shingle Street; do come.’

  ‘O.K.,’ she said a little mystified. ‘Lead me to it,’ and pulling off her overalls which concealed her long slim legs in a pair of borrowed shorts, she strolled along beside him to the Redoubt.

  Rudd greeted them in the big dug-out which Silas had constructed for himself; it seemed that he had been borrowed for the occasion, and he was busy arranging a mass of cottage-garden flowers on a carefully-laid table.

  Veronica sniffed an appetising smell. ‘Don’t that make yer hungry, miss?’ grinned Rudd.

  ‘It certainly does! Produce the ortolans, friend.’

  Silas settled her comfortably in a chair and the meal began. Fresh lobster, roast duckling and green peas, followed by a dish of nectarines and washed down with a bottle of Moselle.

  ‘How did you do it?’ she laughed as Rudd served the coffee and Silas produced fresh boxes of cigars and cigarettes. ‘That’s the best lunch I’ve had in the hell of a time.’

  His round face broke into a puckish smile. ‘There are plenty of lobsters on the coast and if you treat the fishermen right they’re first-class boys. As for the rest, didn’t Gregory send me out raiding yesterday? This party occurred to me when I struck a good-sized private house.’

  ‘Well, I give you full marks, Silas.’ She stretched out a hand across the narrow table, and he laid his own great paw gently on it.

  ‘It’s comforting, somehow, to eat a Christian meal again, but what wouldn’t I do with you if I had you in New York.’

  ‘You never know,’ mused Veronica.

  ‘No, I guess you never know,’ he repeated and they smiled quickly at each other.

  Silas went out to set his men to work after their midday spell and then returned to keep Veronica company, declaring that in the last six days he’d done enough work for a dozen men, which justified him in taking a holiday.

  They laughed a lot, finding immense amusement in their different lives and the strange fate that had brought them together on this undreamed-of-shore.

  The afternoon sped by all too quickly, and they were still together when Gregory returned from his foray. His men were grim and silent, evidently hating the work whi
ch he had imposed upon them, but his haul was far larger than that made on either of the two previous days and told the tale of many a ravished farmstead.

  Not yet content he sallied forth again on the Sunday, this time with a different squad of men, and returned once more in the evening, tired, morose, and poker-faced, but with a long line of loaded wagons. Between them in the four days the countryside for miles around had been swept bare of every living thing except the starving humans whom he now reported to be living on their cats and dogs; but Shingle Street was provisioned against an indefinite siege. With fish, meat and poultry in plenty the inhabitants could survive the most rigorous winter almost in luxury.

  All he required now was fruit and fresh vegetables, so on Monday, having carried out a rapid inspection of the fortifications which were growing apace on the lines he had laid down, he set out as his own ambassador to Hollesley.

  Mr. Merrilees, the elected representative at the Labour Colony, received him a little suspiciously at first, but soon became friendly. He was a small, nervous, bearded man, and his somewhat bigoted enthusiasms provided much material for Gregory’s cynical sense of humour, yet Gregory took care to conceal his amusement with that urbane manner of which he was such a master.

  The labour movement, the Wesleyan Church, and the British Empire were the trinity of gods which governed Mr. Merrilees’s existence, but he was not above killing a chicken and cooking it for a Brigadier-General.

  ‘Not that I approve of the Military,’ he hastened to say. ‘I’m a pacifist myself, for the burden of war ever falls heaviest on the working man, but all soldiers are the servants of the Government and represent the King, who is a fine man if ever there was one—long may he be spared to us!’

  ‘Amen,’ said Gregory, marvelling at the quaint philosophy by which his host had arrived at this loyal wish. Then after the fashion of all potentates, whatever the manner of their arising, they fed first and got down to business afterwards.

  In Merrilees, when he had explained his project, Gregory found a willing trader, but one who knew how to drive a hard bargain. An agreement for the exchange of commodities proved a simple matter, but with all the tenacity with which he had fought against wage cuts in the past, Merrilees now demanded shelter for his people within the Shingle Street fortifications in the event of a concerted attack by the starving workers from the towns.