An Awkward Lie

by Michael Innes

  13

  They were before the Great Smithy – facing the giant caterpillar head-on through a scattering of beeches. And the moon had suddenly appeared high above them, seemingly unchallenged in the heavens. Almost as if at the flick of a switch, it had reduced to nonsense the notion of a stealthy nocturnal approach. There was one further clump of trees to which a dash for concealment could be made. But after that they would be confronting a sinister no man’s land of bare turf. If caught there by an enemy securely under cover, their position would be as ugly as could be.

  ‘They’ve made rather a suburban job of it.’ Bobby whispered. He was moved not by any particular wish to be disrespectful to the Ministry of Works or to the learned persons known as the Curators of Ancient Monuments, but rather by an obscure feeling that flippant words steady the nerves. And the trim little brick path did seem out of context. It led straight from a neat gate in a perimeter fence to the Smithy’s entrance. The entrance was a narrow slit, and impenetrably dark. It was like a gash in the conscious mind through which one gazed into the recesses of the anarchic id. On either side of it – casually present, it seemed, rather than set there for any ritual purpose – were two of the great sarsen stones which lay about the surface of the down like the abandoned tennis-balls of departed gods.

  It might be quicker to get through the gate than over the fence. The gate – Bobby saw – had one of those notices expensively manufactured in cast-iron which the Ancient Monuments people seemed to be particularly fond of. It no doubt told you that you were liable to prosecution if you started bashing the Smithy around, or succumbed to the temptation to scratch your name on it. Bobby had a sudden odd fantasy which came and went in an instant of time: he was crouching by the gate, and a bearded character took a pot-shot at him from that sinister orifice ahead, and the bullet slammed into the notice and thereby saved his life.

  This at least made him wonder whether he should draw his own revolver. He also wondered whether he ought to hand it to Susan. Perhaps he had exaggerated his familiarity with this form of small-arm. Probably people in Susan’s peculiar line of business, whether male or female, were required to put in an hour’s practice with such things once a week. And he and Susan weren’t at the moment in a position in which merely conventional notions of what is proper to one sex or the other ought to be too rigidly applied. Bobby wanted to hold on to the thing himself, nevertheless.

  ‘Keep that gun ready,’ Susan said. ‘And listen.’

  For a full minute they stood immobile, straining their ears. There wasn’t a sound. Or certainly there wasn’t a sound from the Smithy – any more than there was the faintest gleam of light from it. But Bobby realized how easy it was, in a situation like this, to start imagining things. He could have sworn that – as with the poet Wordsworth upon an occasion of similar alarm – there were low breathings coming after him.

  ‘Sounds,’ he whispered, ‘of undistinguishable motion.’

  ‘Steps almost as silent as the turf they trod.’ For an instant Susan’s hand took his; she had accepted this too as an aid to keeping one’s nerve. ‘And low breathings coming after us. But I expect it’s sheep. Bobby, we’ll go through the gate. And then each make for one of those two trees on the left. You take the one nearest the path.’

  They broke cover and ran. The gate opened with a loud creak. Bobby told himself that one would keep it that way if one had set up house in the recesses of the Great Smithy and wanted due notice of inconvenient intrusion. But at least nothing happened, and they gained their trees. But now they were separated by some yards, and a whisper would have to be something of a stage-whisper if it were to carry between them. And again Bobby seemed to hear stealthy movement. He looked all round, and in particular back among the beeches for the forms of straying animals – sheep or even cattle – which ought to be clearly enough visible in this light. He could see nothing that suggested the faintest movement. And now his fancy took another undisciplined bound – so that what his eye sought was human forms, prone and creeping: here the sheen of a naked torso and there the glint of the tip of a spear. Such carryings-on had been all the go up here through millennia which showed the armies of Hadrian and Alfred, of Harold and William, as but of yesterday. Perhaps some ghostly re-enactment of ancient battle, foray, surprise, regularly accompanied the full of Solo’s moon.

  Instinctively he had crouched down, and he wondered whether it would be any use actually to get on his belly and crawl. He didn’t think so. On the contrary, indeed, it was now his business to stand up and be counted. For if his guess was right, if the bearded men with their prisoner were really somewhere concealed within the Smithy, then the only way to cope – short of waiting passively for help – was to take the place by storm. Of course they ought to wait for help – help which might now be arriving in less than half an hour. No other behaviour could honestly be called rational. But if the bearded men had taken the risk and trouble of bringing Hartsilver up here, it certainly wasn’t for any purpose that could be called a pretty one. They had only to know, or even to fancy they knew, that the old man had the solution of that idiotic code virtually at his command, and they might treat him in a fashion too barbarous for decent contemplation. In short, the only choice was to rush the beggars.

  Bobby’s right hand already grasped the revolver. He put his left hand in his pocket and brought out the torch. It would be needed the instant he was beyond that dark portal. He looked down at his shoes, and toed off each in turn. He could run quite silently on the brick path that way. He glanced at Susan behind her tree, and saw that she was kicking off her shoes too. Which meant he hadn’t an instant to spare. This Hartsilver business had hit her hard. She was quite capable of taking the lead, and of dashing into the Smithy unarmed. Or she might take it into her head to shout and to run nowhere in particular – this by way of drawing the enemy’s fire.

  Bobby was running now – running as he had never run down a touch-line in his young athletic life. But even as he ran he noticed something at his feet. The moon, still doing its stuff, had cast there the shadow of a dancing human head. Susan was very close behind him indeed.

  Nothing. Silence. Darkness. Darkness cut only by the beam of his own torch. Chill. And a smell that wasn’t quite of earth – but rather of unbelievable antiquity. If unbelievable antiquity can smell.

  Swiftly he cast the beam into the first chamber. It lay on his left hand. Nothing was revealed, and he hurried on. It was a surprisingly long way to a second aperture, and when he reached it and raked it there was only a small empty space. He went further, and stopped dead. He had to do this. He was confronting a door. A door is not a common appurtenance of a megalithic chambered tomb.

  It was a stout wooden door – with a couple of bolts of the kind that can be secured with a padlock. But the door was slightly ajar. And it moved as they looked at it. But only through the smallest angle. Perhaps a faint draught – a sighing to and fro of faint currents of air – was at play in this gloomy place.

  There was nothing out of the way about it. This came to Bobby almost at once. It hadn’t been imported by wandering Slavonic personages with beards. The Ministry of Works – which one thought of as simply a bowler-hatted gentleman carrying an umbrella – had caused it to be installed out of a provident care for the safety of those members of the archaeologically-minded public who might penetrate as far as this into the arcanum of the Great Smithy. Beyond this point the going was still hazardous. Only, the bowler-hatted gentleman had forgotten his padlock. Or perhaps it was still upon requisition from another Government Department.

  ‘It looks like a mare’s nest, wouldn’t you say?’ For the first time for what seemed an aeon, Susan spoke confidently and aloud. ‘No go, in fact. We must start again.’

  ‘No doubt.’ Bobby’s eye was on the faintly swaying door. It had explained itself to him in a flash, but he didn’t like it, all the same. He told himself that it was simply a final
test of nerve. He could creep towards it. Or he could do as he had been doing, and make a dash at it. He made a dash. This time, Susan was only inches behind him.

  A small chamber, very void indeed. And a cul-de-sac. So that was the end of this wild-goose chase. As Susan said, they must start again.

  The chill air with its queer smell – its neolithic smell – stirred behind Bobby and Susan. The Ministry’s useful door had closed behind them. They heard a bolt going home.

  ‘The first chamber must have another off it,’ Bobby said quietly. ‘They were lurking there. Plus Hartsilver, poor bastard.’ He hesitated. ‘Susan, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Shut up – Bobby, my own darling.’ Susan had meant Shut up. She was listening intently. ‘They’re very professional,’ she said, approvingly and coldly. ‘They don’t even bother to gloat.’

  The silence continued for a long time – or what seemed a long time. And then they heard an evil sound. It was a very evil sound indeed – a long, low moan of agony.

  ‘That’s it,’ Bobby said. ‘Off that first chamber there’s quite a big second one. They’re operating there.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve still got this bloody gun. But it’s not much use through stone three-feet thick. It may be useful, I suppose, if we’re left here to die of thirst.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bobby. In twenty minutes they’ll be here. By the helicopter. And dozens of them by car an hour later.’

  ‘Bad half-hour for Hartsilver.’

  ‘He has to take his chance. Just keep that gun ready, Bobby. They may try some funny stuff.’

  Bobby kept the gun ready. Through the red rage raised in him by the muted sound of another groan, he told himself – obstinately and as a kind of point of sanity – that Susan Danbury was his girl. That – if they both died like rats thirty seconds from now.

  ‘008.’

  Bobby stiffened. His ears weren’t deceiving him.

  ‘Sir. 008. Is that a torch? Put it out.’

  Bobby flicked off the torch. There was only absolute darkness.

  ‘Can you see, 008 or sir?’ The voice was unmistakably Beadon’s. ‘There are all those chinks, you know. The Smithy’s tumbling to bits, really. All those enormous stones. But a good heave would shift them.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Beadon. Not quite.’ Bobby spoke very softly. ‘But you’re right about the chinks. I’m beginning to see them.’

  ‘What shall we do, sir – 008, I mean?’

  ‘Who’s we? You and Walcot?’

  ‘No, sir. The whole school. We thought that might be the best thing. When you told us about meeting those men near the Smithy.’

  ‘You were quite right. But I hope Dr Gulliver will agree.’

  ‘We left him a note, as a matter of fact. It seemed the decent thing – poor agitated old soul.’

  ‘No wonder Susan and I heard sounds of undistinguishable motion. They’ve bolted us in.’

  ‘In the place beyond that door? We know it. We come exploring here. Just the bolts, do you think?’

  ‘That’s my impression, Beadon.’

  ‘Then Weedy can do it.’

  ‘Weedy?’

  ‘Weedy Green, sir. He can snake anywhere. Would those men be in the big room – the one off the first one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then there’s a kind of threshold. Did you see it, sir? Raised more than a foot. Weedy can snake past it, and get at that bolt. May we send him in, 008?’

  ‘No!’ Susan said.

  ‘Yes, Beadon.’ Weedy Green, Bobby told himself, was very small. But he was an English gentleman (and all that) in the making. Hartsilver being the stake, Weedy had better have a go. ‘Weedy’s to creep in, draw the bolt, and skip in here as fast as he can. Then you’ll hear a shot. Got that? A single shot. Is Walcot there?’

  ‘Sir!’ This was Walcot’s voice.

  ‘Confirm, Walcot.’

  ‘A single shot, sir. 008, that is.’

  ‘Right. The moment you hear that shot, all hell is to break loose. Understand? The whole school.’

  ‘OK.’ Walcot’s voice was low but triumphant. ‘Leave it to Beadon and me. We’ll promise to leather the bottom off any man who doesn’t yell like mad.’

  ‘Carry on, Beadon and Walcot.’

  For a long half-minute Bobby listened. There wasn’t a sound.

  ‘Susan,’ he whispered, ‘of course this kid Green is first priority. The moment the door opens – if it does – I go through and cover the entrance of the chamber where these bastards have got Hartsilver. You take Green’s hand and follow. And you don’t stop till you’re in the open air. Then I’ll evacuate the place at gun-point. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  They stood immobile – side by side and in utter darkness. The chinks through which some faint glint of moonlight came didn’t amount to letting one see a thing. But Bobby’s hand was on the door. And after an age it quivered, faintly creaked, moved on its hinges. Bobby stepped aside, put out a hand to the invisible boy, and gently guided him into Susan’s arms.

  ‘I’m going,’ he breathed, and glided through the doorway. The revolver was in his right hand. So it was with his left hand – which also held the torch – that he had to feel along the cold stone close by his right shoulder. When it met vacancy, that would be the small, empty chamber. When it felt vacancy again, that would be the antechamber (as it must have been) which he had failed to realize had some further chamber beyond it. Here he would pause. And Susan and the boy called Weedy Green would slip past him.

  He had got there, and still there wasn’t a sound – so that he wondered whether the enemy, having somehow silenced Hartsilver, were alerted and waiting. Only, there was a light: the faintest filter of light, such as might seep round more than one sharp turn in a constricted space. He felt a breath behind him, waited for some further seconds, and glanced to his left. The other dim light, that from the entrance of the Smithy, was obscured for a moment and then cleared again. Susan and Green were gone. He snapped on the torch, and stepped forward. In the same instant, he fired a single shot behind him. It made a most tremendous row.

  He rounded a jutting stone baffle and was in a middle-sized chamber, lit by a low light from a hurricane-lamp. There was a table in the middle, and from either side of this two bearded men had just sprung to their feet. They might have been interrupted in a quiet little committee-meeting. There were writing-materials on the table, and a couple of glasses, and what appeared to be several bottles of soft drink: one of these was like an old-fashioned ginger-beer bottle – a heavy stoneware thing. Bobby held the men covered, and they were very startled indeed. They well might be. It wasn’t merely that this intrusive young man had turned up again within ten minutes of having been safely locked up. It was also that outside the Great Smithy there was a sudden pandemonium of sound which might have betokened the tumultuous release of all the devils in hell. Overcombe was doing well.

  But there was no Hartsilver.

  ‘Hartsilver!’ Bobby called out – and nothing happened. Bobby felt his finger tremble on the trigger. ‘Hartsilver!’ he cried out again. And then Hartsilver was before him – risen up from somewhere behind the table: from the floor, perhaps, or a bench or a bed. He didn’t look too good, but he might have been looking very much worse. ‘Stay still, and listen,’ Bobby said. ‘You mustn’t get between me and either of these men. Skirt the wall of this damned place, and go outside. There’s help there.’

  And Hartsilver went out. The boys were still yelling like mad. But their moment of immobilizing dismay had been achieved, and they could now merely be thought of as enjoying themselves. Left alone with the bearded men – neither of whom had ventured on a menacing movement – Bobby wasn’t quite sure of the technique next to be followed. But he remembered that they ought to be told to put their hands up. So he gave this order s
harply. It was obeyed at once. There still seemed a bit of an impasse, however. It was almost certain that they both had weapons concealed about their persons, and they would continue a menace until they were expertly disarmed. Bobby was in no doubt of the expertness required. There were two of them, and they were a wily couple. Against them was one man with one gun. It wasn’t an occasion for any overconfident movement. The problem was to hold them until armed help arrived.

  ‘I’m going to shove you,’ Bobby said, ‘where you shoved me – and bolt you in there until you’re taken care of. I shall back out, and you will follow at your present distance. Once in the passage, you will back into the far chamber in your turn. If either of you drops an arm, I’ll kill him. It will be the only way to deal quickly enough with the other one. Do you understand?’

  Both men nodded. The sight of them wagging their beards like that was almost unnervingly grotesque. But Bobby had no inclination not to save up his amusement for a later occasion.

  ‘Listen again,’ he said, ‘I’m going to count as I back out. You will both take one step, and one step only, to each number. One…two…three–’

  ‘Please!’ For the first time, one of the men spoke – and it was very hoarsely. As he did so, he nodded towards the table. ‘We may take a drink?’

  ‘You – not the other one – may pick up one bottle as you pass. But keep your hand well away from your body. Four…five–’

  The man who had spoken lowered an outstretched arm very gingerly towards the stoneware bottle. In the same instant, Bobby’s body did an extraordinary thing. Bobby’s body picked up Bobby and dropped him neatly behind that baffle – it was like a great stone buttress – which he had skirted on entering. Or his eye, it might be said, had been in a queer way ahead of his mind. It had been aware that the bottle was not to be picked up, but hurtled towards him.

  And then Bobby’s ear came into play. It registered a shattering roar. And all his senses signed off at once.