No Entry

by Manning Coles

  Micklejohn did what he was told and asked in a meek voice if there was anything else.

  “If you know any nice strong prayers you might say them.”

  Branderode came into sight, a very small place with a few houses along either side of the road. There was, however, more than one lane turning off to the right and Hambledon slowed down.

  “A right fork just past the church—not that. Nor that. Where’s the church, for—there it is. Right fork. Good.”

  They turned off and left the place behind.

  “Did you notice the Vopo office? No light on anywhere and no smoke coming out of the chimney.”

  “Nobody awake yet,” ventured Micklejohn.

  “No. And the Vopo patrols who’ve been on duty all night on the frontier will be tired and hungry and chilly and a bit dopey, I hope. There. Look ahead, across two fields, do you see a road? That’s in the Western—dear me, how excessively fatiguing. Look to the left a little; two Vopos leaning on a gate. See them? The last time I was here there were two Vopos leaning over that gate. Oh, so that’s the roaring noise. I thought it was the blood rushing to my head. Now for a little innocent camouflage.”

  Hambledon leaned forward and pulled out the choke on the dashboard to its fullest extent.

  The roaring noise to which he referred was being made by a farm tractor in some kind of trouble. It had just been started up in the road ahead of them, which had suddenly deteriorated to a mere cart track and came to an end in a field. The tractor was roaring on full throttle and the driver was clambering about on it with a spanner, no doubt trying to calm it but without much success.

  Hambledon’s car by this time was responding to the full choke by running unevenly and pouring from the exhaust a cloud of black smoke which drifted across the landscape and poisoned the pleasant morning air. He came up close behind the tractor, stopped, leaving the engine running, and got out.

  The tractor driver could not have heard him but, in stepping down from his machine he bumped into Hambledon, who seized him by the arm and yelled in his ear.

  “Do you know anything about cars?”

  The man looked round and said he did, a bit, why?

  “Mine’s gone wrong. Come and do something!”

  The man walked towards the car and then noticed the green pennon and the windscreen stickers.

  “Agricultural Control,” he said, and shied away. “I hates agricultural controls. We’d all get on a lot better if you was all stuck in ditches. I’ve got my own troubles. Governor’s stuck and my tractor roaring her head off——”

  “Come on,” said Hambledon persuasively, and showed a roll of notes.

  “Oh, well. Your mixture’s too rich for one thing.”

  “The engine’s missing,” said Hambledon, and got the invariable reaction which always follows this remark. The man walked up to the car and cocked his head to listen.

  Hambledon hit him hard under the jaw and caught him as he fell. Micklejohn jumped out of the car and Hambledon said: “Lay him down under the hedge there. Now hop on the tractor. On the side seat, there, I’m driving. I don’t know much about tractors but they have gears like cars—hang on.”

  Hambledon swung the tractor round and out into the field ahead, there was a loud clatter behind, and Micklejohn reported in a horrified voice that they were trailing a cultivator but it was in the up position.

  “I am more interested in the Vopos; are they in the up position too? Across this field and the next and we’re free. They don’t seem particularly interested at the moment, do they? They probably think we’re in training for tractor races or merely—what the hell have you done?”

  Micklejohn, scarlet with effort and embarrassment, was heaving with all his strength against a long lever. The tractor had slowed abruptly to about half speed because the cultivator had been dropped into service and the six long curved tines were tearing up the ground.

  “ ‘Cast four anchors out of the stern'?” asked Hambledon lightly. “We are now entering upon a field of beans, the farmer will be pleased, won’t he?”

  “I thought this lever would let the trailer drop off,” wailed Micklejohn, “and now it won’t even come up again——”

  “There’s probably a catch on it somewhere,” shouted Hambledon above the uproar. “Like what you have on a hand brake.”

  They were cutting a beautiful swathe through the beans and the accumulated harvest was packing more and more tightly under the hooked tines. Micklejohn found a small lever and pressed it, the big lever came back suddenly, the tractor leapt forward, and Micklejohn fell off. Hambledon, who was not normally given to swearing, produced an expression which startled himself, the tines fell down again, and Micklejohn ran alongside and jumped on once more. The two Vopos, now only some fifty yards away, doubled up with laughter and clung to each other, pointing.

  At this point the farmer who owned the beanfield came running to cut them off from the gap for which they were making. He yelled, waving his arms and gesticulating, and signalled to the Vopos, who left off laughing and unslung their rifles. Another thirty yards to the road.

  “Could you repeat that trick?” shouted Hambledon. “You can leave out the comic turn at the end.”

  Micklejohn hauled the long lever forward again and held it this time. Another fifteen yards—ten——

  Something smacked into the tractor framing just in front of Hambledon and sang off, leaving a bright streak on the metal. He glanced over his shoulder. The Vopos were both firing though they did not look particularly steady. One of them threw himself down to take aim.

  Hambledon drove across the ploughed strip, across the road beyond, through a hedge and straight into another field of beans on the further side.

  “We’re safe,” shouted Micklejohn, releasing the lever in his excitement, “you can stop now, we’re safe.”

  A bullet passed through the sleeve of his coat and smashed the oil-pressure-gauge glass just in front of him.

  “Are we?” said Hambledon grimly. “Lever again, please,” and he drove on.

  Some men working in the field came running, white in the face and very angry.

  “Who are you—this is not allowed—who will pay for the damage—look at my beans—at my hedge——”

  Hambledon looked back at the road. Two motorcycles roared up to the corner, each with two men on it in the smart black uniforms of the Mobile Police. They pulled up, Hambledon sighed with relief, stopped the tractor, and cut the engine. The sudden silence was like a blessing.

  “The police shall arrest you and shall throw you back,” raved the Western Zone farmer. “Who shall pay me for all this damage?”

  Hambledon got down from the machine, staggered momentarily, and leaned against it.

  “Here is one perfectly good Russian-made tractor,” he said, patting it affectionately. “It is yours, it will more than pay for the damage.”

  “No. We shall have to give that back. We cannot keep it.”

  By this time there were a score or so of people round Hambledon and Micklejohn; men who had been working in the fields, women from a little cluster of cottages near by, round-eyed scared-looking children. They all stared at him and their eyes were not friendly.

  Three out of the four Mobile Police came through the gap in the hedge which had been made by the tractor and walked towards them; instantly the people milled round them instead, all talking at once. This trouble was not their fault, it was these two who had come across from the other side, they should be thrown back at once——

  The police put them aside and the sergeant in charge came up to Hambledon and asked him who he was.

  “You have heard of the young Englishman who went missing? That is he; his name is George Micklejohn. I am Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon, also an Englishman. The Chief of Police in Goslar knows me.”

  The sergeant made notes and spoke in a slightly more friendly voice.

  “I have had instructions about gentlemen bearing those names but, the Herren will understa
nd, their identities must be proved. It is my duty to conduct the Herren to Goslar.”

  Hambledon looked round at the ring of frightened hostile faces and beyond them to the ploughed strip, the Zonengrenze. Beyond this again there were the bent, sullen figures of the fieldworkers in the Soviet Zone all looking the other way; the square brown figure of the farmer shaking his fists over the long swathe cut in his beanfield; the Vopos—six of them now—standing about with their guns ready in their hands.

  “To Goslar,” repeated the sergeant.

  “Certainly, Sergeant. I cannot think of anything which would delight me more and the sooner the better.”

  “In Walkenried,” said the sergeant, “I will call up a police car. This way; it is not far.”

  They turned and walked away together.

  THE END