Neville the Less
Page 62
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“Thank God that awful dog has quieted,” the Duchess was saying. “I dread to think what it’s done to my lovely doona! Or what it's doing in the rest of the house!”
“Sloppy work,” the Duke grumbled in reply. “Letting it wake up like that! Take it out of the vet's fee, we will; see if we don’t! See anything?”
The Duchess was aloft on a stool, squinting through the tiny bathroom window. The video surveillance network was no longer frozen but until he could get more than the grainy, impossible to decipher image it was delivering, she was his eyes on the neighbourhood.
“Not really. Too dark out there. Too much light in here.”
And at that moment, as though the observation were a command, the pool of spilled coffee funnelled over the edge of the desk, ran down the computer’s power cable, filled the multi-adaptor and fiz-zapped the Duchy's power supply, leaving them in sudden blackness, with an invisible column of stinking smoke wisping up the wall.
“Ah yes,” sighed the Duchess. “That’s better.”
The dumbfounded Duke begged to demur.
“Blasted bloody nitfits!” he swore, pounding the air above the desk and kicking blindly at the cables. “Bloomin’ damn cock-up Made-in-China rubbish!”
He’d devoted years of loving attention to this system, knowing all along it was the enemy’s technology; never thinking they’d be cunning enough to design strategic failure into it. Just when the video set-up was coming good! Just when the backyard camera had begun to show movement! Someone? Something? The glimpse had been too quick to tell.
Still, if a man wasn’t up to dealing with the odd snafu, then he wasn’t up to much at all! “Look to the back, Enid!” he ordered as he fumbled for and found his special ‘Made in Japan’ head lamp. He couldn’t remember if the ruined Procedure Schedule contained an alert code higher than Wolf but if it did, he’d be declaring it now.
“What’s there? What can you see?”
“Um! Oh that’s awkward. Let me . . . get my head . . . ! Oh I can’t see much at all! My eyes are still adjusting I think!”
“Okay, okay! That’s alright! Just keep watching the back. If anything moves, you shout, okay? I’m going to . . .!” Going to what? Get the power back, of course! “I have to get to the circuit board, Enid! Throw some switches. At the back door! That dog . . . I don’ know where it is now, so I'm gonna take the gun. But I’ll close the door behind, okay? You’ll be okay?”
“Yes yes. Should you switch off the appliances before you turn the power back on, dear? I think you should.”
“No, no time for that! Remember, sing out if you see anything, Enid! Okay? Loud and clear! Anything at all!”
He might, in the event, have saved his breath. Because in the process of putting on his helmet lamp, instructing the Duchess and reaching for his ancient ‘Made in India’ four-ten shotgun, he accidentally and very nearly lethally misjudged its location, nudging the cocked and loaded weapon into free fall.
Before the Shot
The sound of Ava’s barking was still being amplified when Neville and ‘Soon dropped into the Duchy’s backyard. But in a strangely diminished way which had become fragmented by intermittent thuds and crashes. They’d heard the Duke call for the wolf and, in their private imaginings, each felt certain that the Terrier-of-Death’s greatest test might well be at hand. In each also, though - as resolutely in one as in the other - a determination was growing that this battle would not be one of tooth and fang alone.
How and where to begin were the only questions, answers to which were not provided by the dim lights that glowed from heavily curtained upper storey windows. There wasn’t even enough light to illuminate the perilous path that lay between them and the building. Even so, ‘Soon’s instinct was to run straight ahead; Neville’s was to exercise caution.
“If we go too fast,” he warned, “we might step in a trap! We can’t help if we’re stuck in a trap!”
He’d never, from his mango tree perch, seen evidence of the Mongolovian wolf-hunter’s handiwork though he’d carefully studied the spaces between the spike-edged giant bromeliads, the needle sharp robelinas and the saw-toothed wild sisal that dotted the yard. And there was the wolf to think of too! Which, if it wasn’t actually fighting for its life with Ava (as seemed probable from the amplified confusion of barks, yelps and thuds) quite probably had been released into the yard.
Stepping protectively to the fore, Neville challenged the darkness with the magic cyclone bolt and peered, wide-eyed, into its depths. It was at that point that, with a hugely audible click, Ava’s voice and all sounds of the chaos within the Duchy were cut off.
“What happened?” ‘Soon whispered.
“I don’t know! Maybe . . . maybe something broke!”
They waited. Very shortly and ominously the dim upper story lights also blinked out.
“Uh oh!” whispered Neville.
In the new silence, smaller sounds, scratchings and snufflings in the undergrowth, began to surround them. Edging closer. Neville crouched lower, pushed the bar out farther. Maybe toads. Maybe lizards or bandicoots.
“Maybe the demon Al!” ‘Soon whispered, pressing up close to Neville.
“Or the wolf!” he whispered back.
She took, for comfort, a fistful of his shirt and, one behind the other, both trembling behind the outstretched magic iron bar, they waited. Until the explosion from the shotgun made a fist of their fear and punched them back against the fence.