Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  “Strange sort of affair,” said Luke. He was looking at the squat, one-storey annexe sticking out at the back. It was clearly of recent construction. The more they looked at it, the odder it seemed. It was a small, square, battlemented addition, totally out of keeping with the rest of the building.

  “What it might be,” said Joe, “Diddun Mrs. Stokes tell us the admiral had been an astro—something?”

  “An astronomer.”

  “Just the word I was thinking of. He liked looking at the stars and the moon. So he builds that new bit, takes his telescope up onto the roof, and does a bit of astronomising.”

  “Could be,” said Luke. It seemed an expensive way of building a mounting for his telescope, but the old boy had money and could indulge his hobby. He said, “It’d be a useless little room, wouldn’t it? There’s just the one small window on this side – heavily shuttered. Could be one on the other side, but nothing at all on the end overlooking the cliff.”

  Joe, who had better eyes than Luke, said, “It may be short of windows, but there’s a big overhead light in the roof. You can just see it, between the battlements.”

  Now that Joe pointed it out he could see it, and it did offer a possible explanation of the whole setup. The admiral could have his telescope mounted inside the room and do his viewing through the overhead light, which would be openable.

  “I think that’s right,” he said. “No doubt it suited the major, too. Up there on the roof, with his own telescope, he’d have a grand view of the harbour. So here’s where we split our forces. You stay put and keep your eyes open. If the major comes up onto the roof, you’ll be able to see him. I’m going to have a look around the garden.”

  “What’ll you be looking for?” asked Joe gloomily. He didn’t like being reminded of the old days when he had been the more active of the two. Give him back his leg and he’d have been over that fence in no time.

  “What we really need,” said Luke, “is a spot that will give us a view of the front of the house, so that we can see what visitors the major has. Preferably high enough for us to be able to look down into the house. And a bit on one side, so that we could keep the roof of this annexe under observation.”

  “Easy. All we’ve got to do is anchor a balloon about forty feet above the bottom left-hand corner of the garden.”

  “An invisible balloon, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Joe. He seemed to have recovered his spirits.

  “I’ll be having a quick look at the garden. I don’t imagine I shall find anything, but you never know.”

  “Bear in mind that if that bosun comes rushing out at you, you won’t be able to get back over that fence in a hurry, without me to give you a leg up.”

  Luke had this thought very much in his mind as he scrambled awkwardly over the wire fence and dropped down on the other side. He remained on hands and knees for a bit, to see what lay ahead. He was in the northeast corner of the garden, which was laid out in flower beds, weed-free and neatly edged. Either the bosun had been busy with hoe and spade or, more likely, the original gardener had been retained.

  Picking his way among the beds, he came out onto the front drive and went forward cautiously. The left-hand side of the drive was one continuous bed, containing thorny-looking shrubs. The other side was a strip of turf. Clearly anyone approaching the house and not wanting to make a noise crunching up the drive would step off onto the turf and advance along it. That was quite clear.

  The caution that had been bred into Luke when he acted as assistant to his gamekeeper father alerted him to the possibilities of the situation. About fifty yards from the house, he found the trip wire he had expected. It was cunningly set, six inches from the ground, between forked sticks.

  Luke looked at it with distaste. He wondered what other traps there were. He was beginning to dislike and distrust the garden. Neatly shaved and cultivated, it offered no sort of cover, no possible lying-up place.

  “Get out of it,” he told himself, “before you do anything stupid.”

  Five minutes later, he was back on the safe side of the fence. Joe was where he had left him, perched on the knoll, clasping his knees.

  “You look happy,” said Luke. He said it resentfully. The futility of their excursion was weighing on him.

  “I am happy.”

  “I’m glad someone is.”

  “And why am I happy? Because I’ve found my balloon.”

  “You’ve done what?”

  “I’ve been thinking. About what you said. How unfortunate it was this golf course had appeared. All the disadvantages of it. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “Right. Now try thinking about the advantages. What we’ve got to do is start thinking”—Joe brought out the next word with justifiable pride—“constructively.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Take a look at the southwest side of the garden. And what do you see? You see a line of well-matured beech trees, just outside the fence. Planted, I’d guess, to give the house some protection from the land breeze that blows most evenings. Look at the one at the right-hand end of the row. The tallest, as it happens. If we were roosting on top of that, we’d be in our balloon, wooden we?”

  “Yes,” said Luke. “We would. But how do we get there?”

  “If we come tomorrow night with a few nails and pegs we can make a way up that tree that even I could manage. And that’s the advantage of it being on a golf course. If you treated a tree like that anywhere in open country, you’d soon have a pack of nosy kids climbing the tree. Not here. The only boys who come here are caddies, carrying golf clubs. And the golfers are keeping their eye on the ball. Not looking for nests in the trees. Right?”

  “Joe,” said Luke, “you’re wonderful.”

  After some deliberation they abandoned the idea of nails as being too noisy to fix, and prepared a number of wooden pegs, sharpened and painted black. They also bought a brace and bit. They found that the pegs, judiciously placed, provided an easy way up the tree. From the top of it, they had a bird’s-eye view down into Fairford Manor. The tree being offset to one side, they could keep the roof and skylight of what they had begun to call the Telescope Room under observation. For the rest, they were able to watch the inhabitants of Fairford Manor going to bed.

  It was an orderly progress.

  First, the female contingent, a middle-aged housekeeper and her daughter, went up to their bedrooms on the top story and drew the curtains, thus sparing the observers the embarrassment of watching them undress.

  A full hour later, they saw the major get up from the table in the ground-floor room that was evidently his study and ring the bell. This produced the bosun. The two men stood for a few minutes, talking. Then the bosun disappeared and they heard the sound of the top and bottom bolts in the front door being shot. The lights in the study and the front hall went out, and in the silence that followed they heard footsteps going upstairs.

  “One of them or both?” said Luke.

  “Difficult to tell,” said Joe.

  “The major may be going to bed, or he may be going up onto the roof of the Telescope Room for a look at the boats in the harbour.”

  “So how does he get there?”

  “Either there’s a ladder on the far side that we can’t see, or maybe there’s a way out from one of the rooms at the back.”

  They had borrowed a pair of night glasses from their landlord and took it in turns to keep them focused on the roof of the annexe. They kept this up for more than an hour, but no one appeared. The only sound to break the deep silence was the humming of the generator that supplied the house with electricity.

  “All gone to bed,” said Joe. “What say we do, too?”

  “Motion carried,” said Luke. He added, “From now on we’ll take it in turns. I’ll do tomorrow night.”

  “Then bring a bit of plank with you. Fix it between these two boughs. Give you something to sit on. Squatting here has given me a numb bum.”

&n
bsp; This seemed to Luke to be sensible. He was beginning to feel the onset of cramps himself. He wondered how Joe, with his peg leg, had put up with it.

  They were back in bed by two o’clock and rose late on the following morning. Luke decided to stay indoors and write the long report he was preparing for Hubert, to be handed on, if he saw fit, to Vernon Kell. He was careful not to be too optimistic about possible results of their efforts. Joe had disappeared on some mysterious business of his own and had not reappeared when Luke set out. It was a much colder night, and he was glad to put on an overcoat, which helped to conceal the two-foot length of board he was carrying.

  By ten o’clock, he was comfortably established on his treetop seat. He noted that the study was in darkness, but the hall light was on and the front door had been left ajar. When the bosun appeared, smoking a cigar and strolling a few paces up and down the drive, Luke deduced that the major was out and that his factotum was waiting up for him.

  The bosun went indoors again. One hour had crept past and the better part of a second one when Luke heard the sound of wheels on the approach road and saw the lights of a car. The gate must have been left open, since the car drove straight through and stopped in front of the hall door. The bosun appeared and switched on the porch light.

  It was an impressive car, one of the latest Lanchester tourers, painted battleship grey. The uniformed chauffeur jumped out and held the car door open while the occupants sat for a few minutes, finishing their conversation.

  Then the major emerged and as the other man leaned out to say something, Luke had no difficulty recognising him. It was Sir John Smedley, chairman of the Portsmouth Bench, whom he had last seen at the party given to the American visitors.

  As the conversation continued, Luke was now able to pick up snatches of it. There was a reference to “Friday” and to “the Guildhall.” This was followed by something deprecating that John had to say about rumourmongers.

  Rumours of what? Luke wondered. The coming of war?

  The car drove off, leaving the question unanswered. The major went in, the front door was shut, and the porch light and hall light were turned off. No light in the study, no movement on the roof of the Telescope Room. Presumably, the major had gone straight up to bed. Since no light appeared at any of the windows on his side, Luke deduced that the major’s bedroom must be in the far side of the house. This was a logical supposition, since it meant that it would overlook the harbour.

  After waiting for a further hour, Luke climbed down. He skirted the clubhouse, where a noisy Saturday night party was going on, crossed by the ferry, and made his way home to bed.

  The next morning, at breakfast, Luke could see that Joe was pleased with himself. He knew that he liked to hunt his own line and produce the results when he was ready. So all he said was, “I hope you had a good day.”

  “Smashing,” said Joe. “By my calculation me and Mr. Hobhouse between us we put away ten pints of wallop and near half a bottle of Scotch. What about you?”

  Luke knew that Mr. Hobhouse would be explained in due course, so he contented himself with recording what he had heard and said, “Can we find out what’s happening at the Guildhall on Friday?”

  “Our host will know,” said Joe, and departed to consult Mr. Stokes, who had returned, empty-handed and resentful, from London.

  When he came back he said, “Seems it’s a Masonry party. All the nobs around here are Freemasons.”

  Luke digested this information in silence. If it was true, he could see rocks ahead.

  Joe was on watch that night; Luke on Monday; Joe again on Tuesday. The results were uniformly disappointing.

  They became acquainted with every move of every member of the household, and none of them gave any grounds for suspicion. Neither the major nor the bosun had been sighted on the roof of the Telescope Room. The major, like his watchers, seemed to find time hanging heavily on his hands and had taken to playing patience. Joe, who had an excellent view of the cards, maintained that, more than once, he had caught him cheating.

  By day, Joe continued to cultivate Mr. Hobhouse, while Luke concentrated on his study of the German language. It was when he was getting ready to set out on Wednesday night that Joe said, “Do you think it’s possible that we’re chasing a red herring?”

  “It’s possible,” said Luke, “but don’t forget what the great Fred Wensley taught us when we were recruits: ‘in all watching, the secret of success is persistence.’”

  Joe said, “Might suit some people. I prefer action. And action’s what I’ve been taking.”

  “With Mr. Hobhouse.”

  “Right. So let me tell you something about him. He’s a great drinker. What you might call an alcoholic champion.”

  “And what does he do when he isn’t drinking?”

  “He takes photographs. Sometimes on the beach or the pier. Sometimes on High Street. Snapping people he thinks are promising subjects.”

  “Meaning people who will pay him for the photographs?”

  “Right. Tourists mostly. They pay him the money and give him the name of the hotel or boarding-house they’re staying at, so he can let them have the photograph when it’s developed.”

  “Seems to involve a good deal of trust.”

  “You mean he might walk off with the money and not produce the photograph? He couldn’t do it. He’s licensed by the Council. Any complaints and he’d lose his licence. No, he plays fair. Very well thought of is Mr. Hobhouse. That’s why he took a lot of persuading before he’d do what I wanted.”

  “Which was …?”

  “To hang about outside the Royal Duke. It’s still the major’s regular watering place. And get a full-face snap of him as he came out.”

  “Did you explain why you wanted it?”

  “Sure. I told him I was a private detective, looking for evidence in a divorce case. He didn’t like it. I offered him a fiver for the photo. He said it might cost him his license. I went up to ten pounds. He weakened. Then to fifteen. He fell.”

  Luke drew a deep breath and said, “Where are we going to find fifteen pounds?”

  “Telephone the boss. He’ll authorise the payment. When you explain what you want the photograph for.”

  “If you’d explain it to me,” said Luke patiently, “then perhaps I could explain it to him.”

  “To send it out to America, of course. If Judge Rosenberg recognises it we might be getting something on the major. Which we won’t do by sitting watching him play cards.”

  “Yes,” said Luke. “I suppose we might.” He didn’t say it with any confidence.

  The afternoon mail brought a letter from Hubert Daines. He said that inquiries at the War Office had produced a negative result. They had accounted for all the Major Richards on their books, and it was clear that none of them could be the man at Portsmouth. However, as they pointed out, this was not conclusive. He might have been on some other force – in America, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. They promised to extend their inquiries but warned that it was going to take time.

  And time, thought Luke, was a precious commodity. The Continental news had been so muted lately that anyone who could read between the lines could see that trouble was coming – was indeed very close. Week by week the days were running off the reel.

  Wednesday was a windless, moonlit night, with a ground mist that had come up at dusk. As Luke climbed into his observation spot, he was thinking that they had reached a low point in their inquiries.

  Could Joe be right? Were they barking up the wrong tree? Had all their thinking been muddled nonsense? This gave rise to another and even more disturbing speculation. They had assumed, when they first saw it, that the annexe at the back of the house had been built by the old admiral as a place from which to pursue his astronomical studies. Very possibly it had been. The large skylight in the roof certainly supported the idea. He could have had his telescope mounted inside the room and by opening one or another of the shutters in the skylight, he could have kept any requir
ed portion of the heavens under review. That was all totally feasible.

  But – and as the fallacy which had followed from this line of reasoning struck him – Luke felt inclined to kick himself.

  Even if all that was true, why should Major Richards wish to go onto the roof of the annexe with his own telescope?

  What he was thought to be doing was spying on the ships in the harbour. No doubt, this was correct. But why should he make his observations from the roof of the annexe? He had the whole house at his disposal. Why not take his observations, far more easily and far more safely, from one of the bedroom or attic windows at the back of the house?

  It was at this moment of extreme doubt and gloom that he saw them, dimly visible in the moonlight.

  Two Zeppelins, coming directly toward him.

  Chapter Five

  It was difficult to judge distances at night, but he thought that the Zeppelins were about half a mile away when he first saw them. They had covered most of that distance when the light appeared.

  It was a thin thread of illumination, shining upwards from the skylight of the annexe. And he could now see that it was not appearing steadily, but in groups of longs and shorts. Clearly a message. Equally clearly, a message intended for the Zeppelins, as no one else could see it unless they were, like him, more or less directly above the skylight.

  —/UUU/UUU/UU/UU/UU/UU/U/U/U/U/U/U/U/U

  He fumbled for his notebook, managed to find the pencil in the one pocket he had not put it in, and scribbled desperately. He was conscious of a feeling of triumph. Their suspicions of the major were justified. He was a German spy. All that they had been wrong about was his method of working.

  He had no need to go onto the roof of that convenient annexe. All he had to do was to sit inside it and turn the light on and off.