With yells of fright the officer and his men came bounding out of the door and it was a good five minutes before they mustered the pluck to go in again. Angela signalled. Freddie pulled another wire. There was another crash; and out came the frightened men again as though an enraged lion were after them. This time they made no further attempt to enter the house but, getting a long pole, proceeded to fish the officer’s belongings out of the room, through the open doorway, without crossing the accursed threshold.
When they had rescued the things from the poltergeist’s lair the officer gave a shout and his half-frozen men came straggling towards him through the snow. He addressed them for a few moments then, apparently inspired by some new impetus, they scattered and quickly began to load up their six lorries.
Angela’s stratagem had succeeded and her victory was complete. Three-quarters of an hour later, except for a little scattered rubbish, there was not a trace of the Russians in the clearing. Bag and baggage they had moved on further north to form a new camp in a more congenial atmosphere; and it was a safe bet that they would not select a place within several miles of that devil-ridden spot.
Freddie brought the horses and sleigh back and after clearing up the smashed crockery they were able to settle down in their refuge as though they had never been driven out of it. Nevertheless, after their midday meal Freddie and Gregory went out and felled two tall trees on either side of the track so that they fell across it. Then they cut the lower branches from many others and fixed these firmly among the boughs of the fallen trees; thereby forming a screen which would prevent any other troops that passed along the road seeing the house from it even in daylight.
That night they were able to get the news over the wireless again and from an English commentary on the past week’s events—by a neutral—learned of the terrible earthquake in Turkey which was said to have killed 20,000 people and to have wrecked a score of towns and hundreds of villages, many of which were still in flames; while their unfortunate inhabitants who had survived the quake were suffering acutely from having to camp out in the Anatolian snows. Two German cruisers had been sunk by British submarines right in the mouth of the Elbe—another splendid feat of naval daring—and the first Canadian troops had arrived in England without a single casualty.
Nearer home the Soviet Generals had been hurling division after division of their troops against the Mannerheim Line in a new offensive. It was reported that the Russians were ill-equipped, ill-led, and abysmally ignorant creatures who had not the least idea what the war they were waging was about. Many hundreds of them among the thousands of prisoners taken said that they had never even heard of Finland, that they fought only because they were ordered to, and that Communist Party members drove them on to the Finnish lines by keeping machine-guns trained upon their backs. Yet that did not affect the fact of their overwhelming superiority in numbers in spite of which the Finns had broken every attack, and the great offensive was said to be weakening.
No trace of Bimbo and his wives, Mutt and Jeff, had been seen since they had taken refuge in the forest with the rest of the party on the arrival of the Russians. They had stood near that evening watching the preparations for the first ghost attack; but it had been impossible to explain to them what was being planned. They evidently had not associated the making of the catapults and the cutting of the devil masks with the dancing lights and horrid screaming later in the evening; and so had been just as terrified as the Soldiers. In any case, they had disappeared into the great forest as unexpectedly as they had come out of it and the party at the trapper’s house never saw them again.
Yet their fortnight’s stay had proved an invaluable blessing for, during it, they had taught their hosts their method of fishing and how to recognise the spoor of certain animals—bear, reindeer, wolf, lynx, hare and fox, several of which were fit for human consumption. After the Lapps’ departure Freddie and Gregory used to go out most days on their own and often brought back some animal or fresh fish, the supply of which from the frozen lake appeared quite inexhaustible.
Among the trapper’s stores there were few luxuries but such as there were had been set aside for special occasions; so on Christmas Day they were able to have a gala dinner although not a single course of it was in any way similar to the fare they would have had at home. They felt confident that the King would be making a personal broadcast, as usual; so, remembering that such broadcasts took place at about three o’clock, Greenwich “mean time”, and knowing their own longtitude to be roughly 30° West, Freddie began to tune in at a few minutes before four. With bent heads they sat round the radio, listening intently. After a little while they heard a faint, indistinct mutter, not a word of which could they catch, but it went on for about ten minutes and they felt certain that it had been the King of England speaking to the people of his Empire and all those of British race and sympathies who were scattered over the five continents and the seven seas, which filled the English members of the party with a strange satisfaction.
For the rest of the evening they got dance-music from nearer stations and amused themselves with a Christmas-tree which Erika had dressed with some of the store of candles, cut into small pieces, and hung with presents. Their gifts to one another were little things that they had made in secret during the past week and brought all the more joy to their recipients in that they were the product of time and thought instead of easily made purchases.
By December the 30th, when Finland had been at war for a month, not only was the Mannerheim Line still intact, as Loumkoski had said it would be, but a Finnish Suicide Squad of two hundred and fifty ace skiers had penetrated into Russia and cut the Leningrad-Murmansk Railway; which magnificent achievement was immediately followed by a smashing Finnish victory on the Suomussalmi front where two more divisions of Soviet troops had been surrounded and cut to pieces.
Over Christmas they had used the wireless extravagantly and by New Year’s Eve they found to their distress that it was growing fainter. Even the nearest stations became difficult to pick up, so they decided to conserve it as much as possible by only listening to the news twice a week. Yet by January the 6th it had faded out entirely. The batteries were dead and although they had searched through all the stores they had failed to find any replacements.
For the last week snow had been falling in greater quantities every day. The barricade of felled trees and branches across the track now appeared as a solid barrier of snow, twenty feet in height, shutting them completely away from the road. Fresh falls of snow had long since obliterated the rubbish left by the Russians and the Satanic snow-god which Erika had fashioned was now a cone-shaped pillar; the only landmark which broke the smooth, crystal-white carpet of the clearing. On cloudless days when the sun shone for an hour or two low over the tree-tops there was a temporary thaw. The monotonous patter of drips would start about one o’clock, only to cease again shortly after two as the melted snow froze into icicles which got longer and longer as the days passed, until by early January the trapper’s domain was like a fairy scene in a pantomime portraying the Ice King’s realm. The cold was so intense that they never went out except on the necessary business of visiting the stores in the block or tending the horses, and occasionally on longer expeditions to secure fresh food.
The icy air seemed to have driven even the Arctic animals into some secret shelter of their own. Only the wolves still evinced their presence by their dismal howling at night; and even Freddie, who was the hardiest of the party, found that he could not remain out long enough to follow the occasional spoor they saw for a sufficient distance to get a shot at a bear or reindeer; so they had to content themselves with fish.
But each expedition to the lake became more hazardous as although they knew the way there well now there was always the danger of being caught in a heavy snow-storm. When returning from the lake on January the 18th Freddie and Gregory were surprised by a blizzard in which they lost themselves for an hour while they could not see more than two yards ahead. They only
found the house again by sheer good luck, and decided that to make further fishing expeditions would be courting death.
Their inability to hunt or fish any longer explained why the Finnish trapper had laid in such a large stock of dried meat and tinned stores; for without these things any family in that region would have starved to death long before the thaw set in.
By the end of January they were completely snow-bound and the radio which had kept them in touch with the outer world had been silent for three weeks. In all that utter stillness no sound had reached them except the occasional howl of a wolf or the dripping of the trees, and that of their own voices and movements in the one big room where they lived and slept.
They knew that they had at least three months to go before the thaw would start in that high latitude. In the meantime two wars were raging; one, with bitter intensity, only a few hundred miles away; the other a strange, unusual sort of war which had so far consisted of ceaseless naval vigilance and tip-and-run aircraft raids, but a war upon which hung the fate of their countries and the future of all civilisation. Yet they could learn nothing of them since they were cut off from the world just as surely as though they had been dead.
But the Timeless Ones who fashion for all mankind their trials and opportunities decreed that they should leave their refuge long before the thaw set in.
Chapter XXIV
Buried Alive
In the long dark days, when the grey light filtered through the remaining panes of window for such a little time that it seemed as though they were living in perpetual night, their only occupation was telling stories and seeking to improve Gregory’s memory, as there were no books in any language that they could read, no games to play or radio to listen to.
By the end of January he had reacquired quite a considerable stock of miscellaneous knowledge but countless facts and many episodes in his own life about which the others could not inform him still remained a closed book. For instance, although he had eight scars from old wounds on his body he did not know how he had acquired any of them, except the cut on the back of his head which had caused him to lose his memory and the wound on his shoulder which he had received on the night of November the 8th during the Army Putsch in Berlin. He talked intelligently again about the subjects he had mastered, but rather in the manner of a bright schoolboy than in that of an extraordinarily well-informed man and, while he entered cheerfully into any pastime or job that was suggested, he seemed entirely to have lost his initiative and to be incapable of producing any new ideas as to how they might wile away the endless hours.
For going out in the snow he used a pair of the trapper’s snow-boots but he still retained most of his money in the false soles of his shoes, which he used in the house, and one of the soles had worn a little thin, so Erika suggested that he should turn cobbler and resole it with a piece of untanned leather cut from the thickest pelt they could find in the almost empty fur-store, nailing the piece of tough, dry skin on with some brads, of which there were plenty in the trapper’s tool-chest.
Before he started on the job he removed the false sole inside the shoe and took out the wad of high denomination German bank-notes. With them were a few folded sheets of thin paper, almost filled with close typescript, which he glanced at casually and threw aside.
“What’s this?” Erika asked, picking them up and smoothing them out.
“Something out of my dead past, I expect,” he laughed. “Anyhow, I have no secrets from you, my sweet, so read it and see.”
“It’s in German,” she said, “and obviously typed by an amateur.”
He smiled. “I’m afraid that means nothing to me. What’s it say?”
She read for a few moments in silence, then replied: “Heaven knows; it seems to be somebody’s plans to hold a Familie Tag.”
“What’s that?” asked Freddie.
“It’s a type of reunion, very popular in Germany. The head of a family selects a certain day in the year—generally in the summer—and he issues invitations to every member of the family wherever they may be, with their wives and husbands if they have them, and even to their relatives by marriage. The whole lot gather together—sometimes as many as two or three hundred people if the head of the family is a rich man; even his relatives abroad attend if they can. Although they call it a Family-day it’s generally an affair lasting a whole week, and during it they have picnics and dances and dinners with speeches and lots to drink.”
“I see,” said Angela; “the idea is to keep the members of the family in touch with one another, I suppose?”
“That’s it,” Erika nodded; “and at the same time profitable business often results. It gives the men an opportunity to discuss their affairs and if they have similar types of undertakings in different cities they’re able to get in quite a lot of good work at the same time as they are having a week’s holiday with their relatives and friends.”
“Yes, I remember the custom,” said Gregory, “but I can’t think where I could have got hold of such a thing. If it gives the names of any of the people, read them out; that might give me a clue.”
“Great-Aunt Wilhelmina, Cousin Julia, Jacob Bauer—(he’s a Jew and doesn’t seem to be at all popular with the rest of the crowd)—the Engels branch of the family, Ernst, Mr. Saxe, Mrs. Klein—aslo referred to as Aunt Marta—Uncle Rudolf, Uncle Ulrich, Cousin Vicki, the Müllers, Mitzi, Gerta, Paula, August, little Paul …” Erika suddenly broke off. “There are dozens of them mentioned here.”
Gregory shook his head. “No, none of those names mean anything special to me.”
“Read it to us,” Angela suggested, and Erika began, translating slowly into English as she read:
“‘ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE NEXT FAMILY-DAY
“‘Our last Family Reunion was not the success it should have been, owing to lack of forethought and careful preparation. As a result of over-eagerness Great-Aunt Wilhelmina arrived before we were ready, so we lost the telling effect of the old lady’s entrance. Mother let us down very badly at the last moment by refusing to come at all; and, through neglect, other important members of the family did not receive their invitations or, having done so, did not accept because insufficient fuss was made about the importance of their presence in our midst. Our main mistake, however, was to quarrel openly with Cousin Julia, since this resulted in throwing her into the arms of that unspeakable Jew, Jacob Bauer, who immediately became engaged to her and who, through the power of his money and his hatred for us, has always striven to keep the family apart for his own benefit.
“‘As you will remember, they threw a rival party to our own to which many outsiders, as well as certain members of the family, went instead of to ours. Even Mother was induced to desert us because she was very hard-up at the time and, as usual, Jacob used his money-bags, advancing her a big loan on condition that she put in a belated appearance at his party.
“‘The failure of our last Family Reunion was all the more disastrous in that we had already decided that the time had come when the family must co-operate and amalgamate their various business interests if our central firm was to increase and prosper in the way that a flourishing business should; but the attendance at the Reunion was so poor that it proved impracticable to put such a suggestion forward. The death of Great-Aunt Wilhelmina, which followed, was a sad blow to us as it meant the splitting-up of the Engels branch of the family; and an even more serious setback was the publication of Grandmother’s Will which so wickedly deprived us of many assets.
“‘So serious were our firm’s losses as a result of these unfortunate events that many people thought we should be compelled to go out of business altogether; but since the appointment of Ernst as managing director of our firm the business has regained much lost ground and under his able guidance has become solvent again. It is, however, still under-capitalised and owing to the restriction of markets finds difficulty in competing with its two principal rivals, the Jew, Jacob Bauer, whose bitter enmity, hypocrisy and cunning are used without respite
in an attempt to strangle every enterprise which we start, and the firm of Saxe & Co., whose products compete with ours in many markets but whose major interests lie outside our sphere.
“‘Competition has recently become so intense that it is more necessary than ever that members of the family should be induced to pool their resources instead of struggling on independently; otherwise each member will tend to become poorer and poorer until they fall entirely into the octopus-like tentacles of Jacob, who will mercilessly exploit them as he has exploited the members of so many other families.’”
“Whoever meant to throw this party is evidently a big business man,” Freddie interrupted.
“Yes. He seems much more concerned with the possibilities of amalgamating all the family interests than with the social side of the gathering,” Erika agreed; and read on:
“‘The time has come, therefore, when it is imperative to hold another Family Reunion and use every means in our power to induce all members to accept the propositions which we shall place before them. It is suggested that the arangements should be made by gradual stages, with careful preparation between each, so as not to alarm Cousin Julia and her Jew fiancé and cause them to work against us before we come out into the open and actualy isssue the invitations to our Reunion.
“‘Jacob knew quite well what our intentions were if we had been sucessful with our last Reunion, and as these constitute a grave threat to the prosperity of his own business he will naturally do everything in his power to prevent our holding another. But he is by no means so virile as he was, and if we go to work skilfully we might even succeed in persuading Julia to break off her engagement to him. She is, after all, a member of the family, and apart from her predilection for this blackguardly Jew we have no differences of opinion with her which cannot be surmounted. It would, therefore, be a great triumph for us if we could bring her back into the family fold; and nothing should be neglected which might lead towards this end.’”
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