Текст книги "Watcher in the Shadows "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Household

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

I dropped to the ground, streaming sweat. Mrs. Melton’s odd words came back to me: that the same fate was on the horse and the goat in the same place. I was near to tears with the poignancy of it. I wanted to live, as Nur Jehan would, to enjoy that fate.

“A fine foal, von Dennim, I should think. Ah well, in the midst of death we are in life.”

The panting, but still ironical voice came from the far end of the barn on the other side of the door. Under cover of the excitement he had slipped out of my half. The speed of my two shots must have shaken his confidence. It was comforting to know that he hated the threat of such incalculable close quarters as much as I did.

I was sure that this conversational opening meant that he wanted to know whether he had hit or not. It was a good moment to choose. One leaps at a human word when recovering from near hysteria. But I did not reply.

“They’ll be very pleased at Chipping Marton, the vicar and all!” he went on. “What a charmingly passionate child! Even a Gestapo officer will do at her age … Missed again, von Dennim!”

The whine of a ricochet contemptuously emphasized it. I had been fool enough to fire two more shots at a voice certain to be under cover. Four in the Mauser now against three in the Colt.

A needed lesson. I reminded myself how I had made rings round this famous Savarin in the fields of Hernsholt. I must not be bluffed. I must never fire unless sure to hit. I must escape to the trees, and I must use my brains to get there. It was not going to be easy.

His night sight was as good as my own. If either of us attempted to crawl through the area of dark gray on the threshold of the door, he was dead. Within the recesses of the barn no night sight mattered at all. Our world was black.

His preference for the barn suggested that it was not the first time he had fought for his life in darkness. But in the battles of his guerrilla warfare he was festooned with full magazines for whatever weapon he used to spray his enemies. He could not use that technique. Past experience would not help to solve his ammunition problem. So we were equal. A sound had to be very promising indeed before either of us was likely to fire at it.

There were plenty of little sounds if one listened carefully – some made by rats, some by the settling of rotten wood and mortar after the plunging of the horses, some by St. Sabas. It was difficult for either of us to move quietly. He was wearing riding boots; I, ordinary boots and leather gaiters. Three or four steps might be completely muffled by patches of chaff or dung dried to powder, but the next crackled on noisier debris.

I was sure that St. Sabas had moved away from the far corner of the back wall where he had crouched to speak to me. He had crossed the barn to the front wall. An absolute silence from that direction —no rats, no movement – suggested that he was lying down in the angle of wall and floor close to the entrance, waiting for me to try to get out.

I decided on a booby trap to distract his attention. Close to my hand were the remains of a stable door, hanging from one hinge and swaying and creaking in the slightest breath of wind. I lifted a truss of hay and balanced it on the door. On the truss I laid my torch and covered it with more hay. I switched it on. No trace of light showed.

Then I moved on hands and knees to the angle of wall and floor on my side of the doorway. The wind or even a heavy footstep ought to bring the whole teetering pile down and give me a moment to leap out of the barn while St. Sabas charged the light or shot at it.

There we lay, separated from each other by fifteen feet of lighter space into which neither dared venture. He was there, all right. I once heard him draw a deep breath. I was very tempted to risk a shot parallel to the wall and six inches above the floor. But if I missed or only wounded, exactly the same shot in reverse would get me.

I waited a quarter of an hour for my delicately balanced bundle to collapse. It did not. No obliging rat. No puff of wind. Too damned ingenious. So I thought I might employ my time to better advantage. It would cost me a shot, but the shot might very well hit.

With infinite precautions I discarded my gaiters, took off my boots and stuffed them inside the top of my pullover with laces knotted behind my neck; I have never moved so slowly in my life. Then I started to circle the barn keeping close to the far wall so that I knew where I was. My plan was to crawl up behind St. Sabas and shoot whether I could see him or not. He would assume that he was faintly visible, and his only possible move was to hurl himself away from the wall into deeper darkness. That gave me a split second to get through the door before he recovered from the shock.

The circling of the barn tried patience hard; but my long practice in moving imperceptibly counted. There were numerous small scraps of barbed wire and old iron about. Each foot had to go down slowly feeling for the floor. At last I struck the front wall, followed it towards the door and stopped a couple of yards short of the point where I believed St. Sabas to be. I did not want to touch him. There was no telling what his exact position was. He might have heard me. Even if he hadn’t, the instinct of the hunted could be strong enough to make him turn round to face the imagined danger.

Bent low and with my left hand on the ground I fired into the darkness ahead. St. Sabas cursed and seemed to charge the spot where I had been but was not. I tiptoed in two strides round the doorpost and into the open.

So easy. So unhurried. And it was successful just because I had used my superiority in stalking, though not under the conditions I expected. I sat down and put on my boots. It was nearly as dark outside as in the barn. The wind had dropped. A soft, straight drizzle was falling. Low down on the horizon was the faint streak of the false dawn.

I lay down on the left of the door between the pile of rubble and the dung heap. He could never see me there until he stepped on me. If he tried to break out it was the end of him.

It was now my turn to wear down his nerves. He did not know whether I was inside or outside the barn; and he had to know, for time was against him. On the top of that, loss of blood from my first shot might be telling. All I had seen when he tried to ride me down was the edge of a stained cravat and his coat collar pinned up over it. The last shot, too, could have scored. His exclamation seemed to carry more than surprise, but whether pain or just anger I was not able to tell.

I intended him to waste himself by useless cunning and empty attacks until he lost patience. Meanwhile I waited, covering the door. Several times I heard him. Once he made a rush, but there was no shot. After that was silence. He was listening for me.

It was essential that he should go on thinking I was inside, so I cautiously heaved a clod of earth obliquely through the door. When it fell, it sounded exactly as if I had tripped over something soft. The result was a rustle of movement and an audible stumble. I could feel that his nerves were at last giving way. By this time there was a curious occult sympathy between us; I imagine it was the effect of intense concentration upon the other’s mind. In another minute he would have charged out of the door, regardless of the consequence.

And then that blasted bundle of hay collapsed when it was no use to me. The torch rolled tinkling across the floor. It was still lit, of course. There was no immediate reaction from St. Sabas. He was holding his breath and living only in his ears.

I never knew such a tiger of a man for swift decision. The lighted torch, falling without any sound or action to back it up, convinced him that I was not in the barn at all. If I was not, then it did not matter whether his figure was outlined for a second in the window. I might be watching it from the outside, but it was a hundred to one that I was watching the doorway. Perhaps that clod of earth clinched it. Whatever the object was, it had been thrown in through the door.

I heard him run across the barn and drop down to the ground through the window without any precautions at all. I ran on a parallel course along the outside wall, but arrived at the corner of the barn just too late. All I saw was a movement into the copse without any clear outline. I fired at it and he replied from the trees as I hurled myself into cover a few yards away from him.

This at last was the game as I wanted it to be played. I knew on which black square he was and the particular complex of shadows which held him. But the beech leaves underfoot were not packed and there were too many dead and crackling stems of some kind of umbellifera. To stalk him was not easy. It was impossible to move quietly – or quietly enough for ears trained by those hours of terror in the barn.

In a sense we were nearly always in sight of each other. But which shapeless specter was a man and which a bush or a tuft of coarse grass was hard to tell – unless, that is, it deliberately moved to draw a shot. Each knew that the other knew exactly what he had left in the magazine, and neither could be tempted by anything less than a certainty. Myself, I would have considered a certainty any solid which still looked like part of a man at a range of a dozen feet.

He seldom used the ground for cover. His technique was to jump from tree to tree. As soon as I had appreciated that, I shepherded him towards the edge of the copse, which was at its narrowest behind the barn, hoping to force him out into the open —grayer than the wood though no longer moonlit.

But now, I think, he did take to the ground; and I could not turn his flank and keep him on the run without venturing into the open myself. That may have been just what he wanted me to do.

I had threatened him twice already with a noiseless approach over favorable ground; so, when silence had gone on long enough to alarm him, he retreated along the limit of the windbreak parallel to the barn. Still not a shot was fired. It was a savage hunting, all the more vile because of its discipline. Neither would lose contact, but neither had any intention of being left with an empty gun. Two shots were not enough. It was so obvious that if one fired the other would reply at the flash, and then all must be staked on the last cartridge immediately. He must have longed, as I did, for both magazines to be exhausted and the way open for hands and the butt.

This was the only moment of the night which had any resemblance to a true duel. When there was movement it was quick and intense as lunge, parry and ripost. Then came another interval while I tried to work round his flank.

Always I was the attacker, infiltrating behind him while he believed I was in front, and always he fell back from tree to tree to avoid the threat. Once either of us could have been killed. I had noiseless grass under my knees and I crept very close to a shadow which I had recognized as him. But where grass can grow there is some light from above. I remembered that just in time. When the shadow moved I was already poised to roll sideways into greater darkness. Even so no shot was fired. That was typical of the sudden disengagements.

The pace was getting faster now. After all these weeks he was the hunted, and he knew it. He was driven back on the western side of the barn where the trees thinned out and the windbreak stood well back from the wall. I circled round outside him, trying to force him into the open or into a hopeless frontal attack. At last I pinned him on the edge of the open space, and little chance he had of moving to any other cover without offering a target. But the cover which he did have gave him a formidable position. He was cradled in the roots of a big beech. I doubted if I was looking at him. In any case there was no possibility of distinguishing the roundness of a body from the roundness of roots.

Conditions underfoot were satisfactory. The prevailing westerly winds sweeping round the corner of the barn had cleared away all leaves and debris. I cautiously disengaged and crawled back through the darkness of the copse parallel to the northern wall. When I was out of all possible sight I crossed the open strip to the wall itself, and began to work my way back along it towards the corner. There I was behind his position. It would be a longish shot – for that light – across the bare ground, but I reckoned I should have time to aim carefully.

Hugging the wall, I peered round the northwest corner of the barn. I could not see him. I came to the conclusion that he must be standing up against the trunk of the tree.

He fired. The shot struck me full in the forehead. I was sure of that, yet the body refused to believe that it was dead. It scuttled away like a rat, back along the wall, and staggered into the safety of the trees. I think it even turned and twisted among them to throw off pursuit. It dropped behind some low, black thing, while the person carried in this automaton of terrified muscles put his hand to his forehead and collapsed.

I have the impression that my unconsciousness was not total; if it was, then there is some primitive savior in the damaged animal watching on its behalf until the higher nervous centers regain control. Something must have been listening, for I knew that St. Sabas had not followed me. That something, when I was capable of checking intuition, was right. There was no sound at all of riding boots shuffling lightly over leaves.

I raised my face just off the ground and took my hand away from my forehead. Immediately blood poured over my eyelids. Very delicately and still wondering, I dabbled in the mess. There was no hole in the skull.

Then what had happened? It seemed likely that I had forgotten dawn and misjudged the light. St. Sabas, taking an occasional look behind him, had seen my head peering round the corner of the barn with insolent over-confidence against the streak of eastern sky. He had missed —but either the bullet ricocheting off the wall or a chunk of stone dislodged by it had plowed across my forehead. I tried to get the flap of scalp back into position and bandage it with a handkerchief. I could not lift my hands behind my head to tie a knot. Again I fainted.

When I drifted back to consciousness the light was growing gray – still a dark gray, but where there were trees one behind another I could distinguish them all as separate. I was lying behind a fallen branch and easily to be seen if St. Sabas looked for me. I could not understand why he was not on me already. He need not even use his last shot. A boot would do.

It was an effort to remember that he was human, that he had no power to follow scent or see in the dark. Of course his right game was to wait another ten minutes for a little more light and crouch over the blood trail which would lead him to me.

I remembered beasts from my shooting days before the war which I never found. Did they die or did they recover? They had a better chance of escaping than I. Often the loose skin, stretched by running, no longer corresponded with the hole in the flesh, and the blood trail petered out. Then the brown eyes, dull with pain and fear, must often have watched me pass the cover – likely as not another fallen branch – and go ignorantly away.

The light grew. St. Sabas could see the blood now whenever he chose to look. There must be little pools of it, not just traces on grass and leaf. A scalp wound, when fresh, is the messiest of all.

At last I heard him. He was still opposite the western side of the barn and trying to choke down a fit of coughing – which, earlier, would have killed him. The effort he made reminded me that in his eyes I was still dangerous.

I had forgotten that he too was wounded, once if not twice. That was the likeliest reason why he had not charged out after me when I was hit; he was thankful for a rest. Whether dying or not, at any rate I was out of action. He could be sure that this time I was not bluffing. With a bit of luck I might be blind. But meanwhile I still had two rounds in the magazine.

He was right. I was not harmless at all, and if I could lie up safely a little longer I might still have a last spring in me. Through all these minutes of half-conscious self-pity I had been identifying myself with some harmless creature dying defenseless in the forest. But it was I who was the wounded tiger, not he. I raised my head for the first time and looked round. My fallen branch gave no cover for even half-light, and the patches of blood must point straight at it.

Was it possible to change position? If I were going to try, I must begin at once. I could not. The thought of any physical action was so repugnant that I welcomed excuses. I should faint in the open. I should leave such a trail that it was futile to hide myself. In imagination I could see him bobbing intently from tree to tree until he reached … but until he reached whatever I wanted him to reach, of course!

It was a grim and cruel thought from which to recover morale. Yet that was its effect. If I could find the strength to lay a blood trail which led past the barrel of the Mauser, I and my future were safe.

I looked round for some shelter, not too far away, into which I could reasonably have stumbled at the end of my first blind rush. There were two possibles. One was a bit of broken wall near the edge of the windbreak; the other, a little hollow which might once have taken the overflow of the spring. Neither was any use for defense, but both had to be approached closely before St. Sabas could see whether my body was lying on the ground.

To one or the other I had to make a followable trail. When he came across the matted blood and leaves behind the branch where I had collapsed, it must be clear to him in what direction I had crawled on. Whether I chose wall or hollow, he would not walk straight up to it, but would try to work his way round and take a look from any convenient cover.

I could not distinguish clearly all the details of gray mass. I was looking, however, into a part of the copse to the right of the central clearing which I had reconnoitered carefully on my first arrival at the barn in some previous existence and into which I had dodged when escaping from St. Sabas’s mounted attack. So the blurred picture, though without detail, made sense.

The hollow was very simple to outflank, and if he were reasonably careful while engaged in stalking it I had no chance of ambushing him. The wall was more promising. There were two low bramble bushes on the edge of the windbreak which commanded it. The way to put a last shot into an old goat lying helpless behind the wall was to pass round the outside of the copse, re-enter it and look down on him between or over the brambles.

That was all right so far as it went. Yet the plan was no more than a sick man’s dream unless I could find the strength to carry it out. I raised myself to hands and knees. They did not belong to me, but they worked.

I had to cover thirty flat and simple yards over a sparse carpet of last year’s fallen leaves. I assured myself that it was easy, provided I took it slowly and remembered to collapse quietly. The handkerchief had adhered to my forehead. To pull it off was the hardest task. I was absurdly terrified of the result, and my hand twice refused to do it.

The final jerk overdid the job. When I started to crawl the blood trail was spectacular. I forced myself to remember that it was only a surface cut, that one could lose pints of blood and that all I had lost probably didn’t add up to one. I tried to convince myself that this fast dripping had nothing to do with my weakness and that I was just suffering from concussion. That —a purely mental thing – ought to be under the control of the will, and it had to be if I wanted to live.

Halfway to my destination I think I began to laugh a little, for I recall being shocked at such levity. What had amused me was the thought that all this was in vain. Savarin was a fighter, not a tracker. Would he ever notice blood on red-brown beech leaves? I swore at him and dripped on to a flat white stone. Then I found another and dripped on that.

I reached the tumbledown wall and dropped behind it. I had been right; the damp patch of shadow between the mossed stones and the bramble bushes was just the sort of refuge which a wounded animal would choose. Binding the flap of scalp back into position, I rested. My hands could now tie a knot of sorts, which gave me confidence. I suppose the effort had done me good – had held off the effect of shock perhaps. Shock seems to be a killer of birds and the smallest mammals and man, not of a large and angry beast.

It was time for the second move – the move which left no trail at all. The full twilight of dawn had come, but most of the barn was now between me and my enemy – if, that is, he were still behind it or on the western side of it. And if he wasn’t, it was all up anyway.

I rose to my feet and staggered from tree to tree until I was out of that hated, loathsome windbreak and could drop onto the thyme-scented hill turf. The fold of ground along which I had attacked after leaving Nur Jehan was close and would do for my purpose. I squirmed into it, facing the bramble bushes so that I would not have to move again to fire. The grass hid me well enough so long as St. Sabas did not look for me. Light suddenly grew very much better. I think I must have had a short period of unconsciousness.

The windbreak appeared surprisingly small It seemed incredible that there had been room in it for so much juggling with the art of murder. But its darkness was understandable. That canopy of dripping leaves, now nearly green, was solid enough for some lush, wooded valley.

The dawn chorus of birds was of splendid volume and variety. I could hear nothing else. All depended on sight, yet I dared not raise my head for a level look at the copse. I had to content myself with a swift glance every few seconds, for it gave me an intolerable headache to keep my eyes strained upwards. Even so nothing was clear. I did not know that I had seen St. Sabas until I noticed that what I had taken to be a tree trunk glimpsed between branches was no longer there.

My plan then was working. If he had come from the fallen branch to the edge of the windbreak it could only mean that the blood trail was dictating his movements. I lay very still, for it was certain that he would take no risks.

He quietly emerged from the trees at the far corner and began to work his way towards me. He was very tired and a little unsteady on his feet. His left arm was tucked into his coat; the sleeve was darker than the rest of the cloth. That was my shot when escaping from the barn, and that was why he had preferred to fight on his feet rather than his stomach. I like to think – but it may be hypocrisy – that I felt a stirring of pity for him, which fear all night had prevented.

It was very quickly extinguished. He began the stalk of the bramble bushes. His body, slanting forward, followed the black Colt in his right hand. He was intent as any beast of prey nosing inch by inch into the wind. Once he stopped and looked straight over me across the colorless turf. It was a possible chance, but I was in no state for snapshooting. He would have seen me as I raised head and shoulders to fire, and jumped into the trees. I needed a lot of time to aim; even an unhurried shot when he reached the bushes might be beyond me. The range was all of thirty-five yards.

He arrived at his objective and crouched behind the brambles. Evidently he did not like the prospect of putting his head over the top to see what was between them and the wall. He tried to find a gap, but there wasn’t one and the undergrowth crackled as he pressed against it. I heard him over the singing of the birds. He realized that he was going about it the wrong way and that it was much safer to stand up and look quickly into the recess.

It was now or never. I rested my elbows squarely, holding the wrist of my right hand with my left. The barrel of the Mauser was reasonably steady, but blood dripped over my eyes at the critical moment. I forced myself not to hurry the shot, to take all the time in the world, to remember that it did not matter if he looked round and saw me.

He discovered that there was nothing behind the wall, no man dying or still dangerous. He stood up to his full height with a movement of impatience, turned and caught sight of that deadly little triangle on the ground formed by my head and forearms.

With the speed which was characteristic of him he took his only chance and fired. I paid no attention. I knew that only an aimed shot could hit at that range – or perhaps I was concentrating so desperately that I could not be distracted. I squeezed the trigger.

It was low for the heart, but it would do. St. Sabas spun with the shot, holding his side. I never expected him to move any more after such a raking internal wound. It was not enough to stop a beast, but a man, yes. Men knew what had happened to them.

But he came on. Staggering on feet which would hardly carry him he came on, with nothing but bare hands. It was automatic, a last flare of his insanity of revenge. I was at the end of my resistance. Whenever I covered him the barrel of the Mauser sagged. He must have traveled five hideous, agonizing paces before I got him in the sights, more by accident than anything else, and this time heard the bullet strike. I had hit him high up on the thigh and smashed the bone. Poor devil. Magnificent fighter. He lay down, rather than dropped, and put his head in his hands.

For me the night returned. I was hunting through dark woods, trying to find Benita or sometimes hunting Benita herself with an appalling sense of guilt which I tried to persuade myself I had no need to feel. There were policemen in Gestapo uniforms, though I knew they were British, and the forest extended over the whole sphere of the world so that there was never any way out of it and never any more fight to be. It was wrong and worrying when at last there was a great deal of sunlit grass beyond my toes. I opened my eyes still further. I was lying on my back, and there was a blue-peaked cap bending over me and taking up too much of the glorious, relieving sky. I twitched my hand to push it away.

“Feeling better, Mr. Dennim?”

This time I really lifted a hand. My head was beautifully bandaged. I was covered with a blanket. The policeman supported my shoulders and offered me hot, sweet tea. It worked like alcohol.

“A flesh wound only, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Well, yes – if that’s what you call ‘only.’”

“He is dead?”

“He’s in a bad way. We’re waiting for the ambulance. Meanwhile would you care to tell us what happened?”

An inspector appeared from behind me, cleared his throat and slightly shook his head. He looked sympathetic, but extremely neutral. I vaguely remembered that there was some rule about not questioning persons to be charged with a crime until they were in a fit state to be cautioned.

“What brought you here?” I asked.

“That stallion of yours rampaging down the Tewkesbury road. Traffic police picked him up together with a mare. Both of them were saddled so it looked as if there had been an accident. They got one of the hunt whips out of bed to catch the horses, and he did some telephoning and found out who they belonged to. An aunt of yours said there was a Miss Gillon staying at Stow-on-the-Wold who would probably know where you were, and she did.”

“What did you tell Miss Gillon?”

“We couldn’t tell her anything except that you might have had a fall. Your aunt was very insistent that Miss Gillon should stay where she was instead of getting lost herself, so that she could guide an admiral somebody up to the barn. A lot of sense the lady has, though I wouldn’t say her telephone manner was what I’d call good.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About half an hour. It all took time.”

I longed for the admiral and Georgina, but the car which came slowly bumping over the turf was not his. The hill gave an impression of early morning before a race meeting. There were little groups of people drifting up from the villages and looking for places with a good view from which they would not be ordered back by the police.

The car was allowed to drive right up to us. Out of it jumped Sir Thomas Pamellor, more shrimplike than ever —for he was unbrushed, unshaven and bristling with anxiety and importance. He didn’t recognize me, didn’t even look. I was just a vulgar and unpleasant casualty.

“I say, Callender, what’s all this?” he asked.

“We are a little doubtful, Sir Thomas,” the inspector answered. “On the face of it, there seems to have been a quarrel.”

“What? Teddy boys at it again? But what’s it got to do with my guest never coming home? He said he might be late, so I wasn’t bothering till I heard the mare had been picked up on the Tewkesbury road. I hope they haven’t molested him in any way. Such a shocking example for a distinguished Frenchman!”

“What is his name, sir?”

“The Vicomte de Saint Sabas. And very pro-British, Callender! His mother’s family … God bless my soul, what was their name? Two little ‘f’s.’ Not fforde, not ffolliot, not ffoulkes. Anyway his grandfather owned a lot of land in Northamptonshire. Oh, a very useful friend to this country! At heart he is just as English as I am French. Now, if only there were a few more people like us …”

“Would that be him, sir?”

I felt able to sit up and look round. A little way out from the edge of the copse, where he had fallen, two constables and a doctor were bending over him. Sir Thomas bustled across and cried out:

“St. Sabas! Good God!”

The man was unkillable. He appeared to murmur something, for I could see Sir Thomas listening. He came bounding back.

“Look here, Inspector, what has been going on? I am a magistrate and I have a right to be told.”

“We don’t know, sir. A neighbor of yours, Admiral Cunobel, called up headquarters as soon as he heard about the Arab horse and told them that Mr. Dennim was in danger of his life. But the vee … the, er … your friend cannot explain yet.”