Dictator's Way (23 page)

“They'll kill me?” he suggested. “Their responsibility,” he said more lightly than he felt, for he guessed his were words that ran too near the truth. “Suppose it's the other lot?”

“Then most likely they'll kill us both,” she answered promptly.

“Jolly,” he remarked, “and if it's both lots, perhaps they'll start killing each other. On the whole,” he added thoughtfully, “I hope it is both lots.”

“You had better go,” she whispered. “It's so dark, no one could find you, if you were quick.”

“And you?” he asked. “It might be the second lot, you know – those who followed us. Come along.”

“No, we mustn't stay together,” she told him. “I don't know what'll happen now. If I had shot you it would be a lot easier. I'm glad I didn't. I wish it had been me – shot, I mean. I'm so cowardly, a coward, afraid. It's no good. Peter said so once. I wish I never had – begun, I mean. Oh, it's awful, such a muddle.”

All this had come out in a rush, an incoherent rush as of her deepest feelings breaking loose beyond any clearness of expression into a deep cry of bewilderment and fear. Then she was gone on swift, light feet, slipping away into the dark that opened to receive her and at once closed behind her, as it were, an impenetrable door.

He started to follow, running. His foot caught in something and he tripped and fell. As though the sound of his fall had been a signal long awaited, there burst out at once a clamour of shouting, of running steps, of blows given and returned.

In the darkness dim forms blundered to and fro. A sudden unexpected flash of lightning from the clouds that, unknown to them all, had been gathering overhead, lit up the scene for a moment, the sea, the shore, the figures of men frozen, as it were, into immobility by that momentary blinding light, a daunting light as though an unknown power above were not willing that what was being done should be hidden by the darkness. It vanished and all again was hidden in the black night. Someone screamed:

“Look out! Look out!”

Someone else cried:

“There he is.”

There were other cries, confused, bewildering, contradictory, and at a distance someone called in agony on the name of the Mother of God.

Bobby stood still bewildered, uncertain what to do, what to make of this sudden rush of conflict. Big, heavy drops of rain began to fall, and out at sea the thunder roared. The storm was about to break. Bobby had no idea what to do, but he supposed he must do something. He wondered what had happened to Olive. He would have called her name, but he felt it would be useless to do so. Amidst the hurrying, rushing steps around he tried to distinguish one, light and quick, that might be hers, but he could not. He shouted:

“Police. I am police. Police are here. What –”

But he got no further. Someone hit him from behind and he collapsed forward on his face, unconscious, just as the rain began to fall like a sheet of water suddenly let down.

When Bobby recovered consciousness, he lay for a long time watching a swaying, swinging ceiling just above him, wondering vaguely why it seemed to be so continually shifting its position, conscious of a very bad headache, occasionally asking himself where he could be and what had happened, but far too languid to worry overmuch about such questions.

Then gradually memory returned as the picture of last night's events began to form itself in his mind, the madness of that nightmare race through the darkness, the silence and the stillness of the long wait by the sea, the voice of Olive Farrar by his side, fierce, threatening, and bewildered.

He found himself smiling a little. Something deep and fundamental in himself, something he had hardly known was there, something primeval, reckless, individual, though sublimated by discipline and the tradition of civilized life into a strong sense of duty, seemed as it were to laugh an answer to his memory of Olive and that menacing pistol she had held.

“She would have done it all right,” he told himself. “She's got guts.”

“A man's mate,” he thought again.

He wondered what had happened after he had lost consciousness, knocked out, he supposed, from the testimony of that aching head of his, and why he had been brought here. On board ship apparently – Peter Albert's yacht at a guess. A nice fuss there would be when his motor-bicycle was discovered by the shore and no trace of himself. Scotland Yard would be very annoyed. Scotland Yard did not expect its officers to vanish mysteriously. When he got back, if he ever did, he would be at once instructed to submit a written report, justifying his disappearance. It seemed very clear to Bobby that he wasn't going to come out of this affair with much official credit. He frowned uneasily at the thought and then his frown changed to a smile as he thought again of Olive and that pistol of hers which might so easily have gone off. Still smiling at the memory he dropped off into a deep and refreshing sleep.

The sound of voices woke him. A man was standing in the doorway of the tiny cabin. Bobby recognized him as Peter Albert. Peter was speaking to someone standing behind him. He said:

“They're still there, close on our starboard beam.” Then he said: “Chap looks all right to me – pleasant dreams from the grin he's got. I say, Olive, isn't it about time you got a sleep yourself?”

“I'm all right,” answered a voice Bobby knew was Olive's.

“You've been sitting up all night though there's nothing really to worry about – a crack on the head isn't all that serious. He'll be all right when he wakes most likely. You'll be breaking down yourself if you don't look out. No good playing the fool the way you are.”

There was no answer to this. Peter Albert went on irritably:

“You're only making an ass of yourself.”

“I'm going to stay till he wakes,” Olive answered.

Bobby was careful to keep his eyes closed and to assume as regular and deep a breathing as he could.

“You always were as pig-headed as they make 'em,” grumbled Peter Albert.

Bobby found himself torn between the necessity of continuing to be asleep in case Olive went when she knew he was awake, and his desire to resent with instant physical violence these blasphemies that Peter Albert was permitting himself to utter.

The dilemma was resolved by Peter Albert's departure, still muttering to himself rude and inconceivable things anent Olive's general intelligence and extreme fondness for having her own way. Bobby heard Olive, who had apparently been standing behind Peter, come into the little cabin. She stood by the bunk where he was lying and he thought that she was bending over him. He continued to keep his eyes carefully closed, to breathe slowly and regularly. He would have liked to risk just one peep, to see what her expression was as she watched him, but he knew well that that expression, whatever it might be, would change the very instant she knew he was awake.

He heard her move away. Presently he ventured a peep. She was sitting at the open porthole, looking out over the sea of which now and again Bobby got a glimpse as the yacht heeled over. They were travelling, he thought, at a fair rate of speed, and one that was increasing, for the throb of the engines was growing much more perceptible. A motor yacht, he supposed, the one Peter Albert had spoken of at the Twin Wolves Bobby fancied, too, that the wind was freshening, that they were running into rough weather. It seemed pleasant to him to lie there idly, without thought of either past or future, and watch Olive sitting so close by his side. Without turning her head she said:

“Have you been awake long?”

“Oh, well,” said Bobby, slightly disconcerted.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

Bobby considered.

“A bit empty,” he decided, naming what had now become his most prominent symptom.

His head had ceased aching, his mind had cleared, only a certain lassitude remained, a feeling that it was more agreeable to lie still than to move. Olive said:

“I'll get you something to eat, but let me look at your head first.”

As she spoke, she undid bandages that had been placed round it and felt with care an exceedingly large lump.

“Does it hurt much?” she asked.

“Well, it does rather awfully,” Bobby answered in a deliberate bid for sympathy and was well rewarded by the grave expression her countenance now assumed.

“The skin doesn't seem broken. I'll put some more boric ointment on,” she said.

She became busy and very soon had the bandage in position. Bobby said:

“This is Mr. Albert's yacht, I suppose. What happened?”

“We had to bring you on board, we couldn't leave you there,” she explained. “You had had a blow on the head, you might have been killed.”

“Take more than that to kill me,” Bobby boasted, and she gave him a look he did not for the moment understand.

“You mean if I had fired off that pistol,” she muttered.

“I didn't,” he protested eagerly, for indeed he had only wished to show off a bit and to pretend that he thought nothing of being knocked unconscious. “I say, Miss Farrar.”

He paused and they remained for a moment or two looking at each other. She had always been pale, but now Bobby thought that her pallor was- ghastly. There were dark lines under her eyes, she gave an impression of being at the very end of her endurance and yet, contradictorily, of having still reserves to draw on – perhaps it was that her bodily powers were exhausted but that a spiritual energy still remained. She said abruptly:

“I'll get you something to eat – I expect it's food you want.”

She went away, leaving him with his mind full of many thoughts. Before long she was back with some hot chicken broth. She gave it him and found a dressing-gown for him to put on when he sat up. She said:

“Peter says I'm to tell you he's sorry about having had to bring you on board. It was raining in torrents and we didn't know how bad you were. It seemed the only thing to do, it's lonely there, miles from any house.”

Bobby was too busy with the chicken broth to have any time to answer this. She took away the empty bowl and came back presently with an omelette.

“Did you make it?” Bobby asked after a time, surprised to discover that it contained ham, still more surprised to find how different it tasted from all the other omelettes he had ever known.

She nodded abstractedly, and then with a faint smile she said:

“Peter only cooks with a tin opener.”

Bobby continued to devote himself to the omelette. Astonishing how hungry a clip on the head could make a chap. He said presently:

“What happened after I was knocked out? Who were those other chaps? Was it they knocked me out?”

“I'm afraid it was one of the men on board,” she answered. “It was dark, he didn't know, he thought you were one of – of the others.”

“Who were they? What became of them?”

“I don't know,” she answered, though whether this applied to the first question, or the second, or to both, did not seem clear. She went on: “It was so dark, no one could see anything. Peter had his boat and we got in and rowed away and that was all. Of course, we knew you weren't one of them, and we knew if they found you they would most likely just leave you there.”

“All the same,” he said presently, “I wonder why you didn't – I mean, just leave me there?”

“You might have died, there wasn't any chance of any help coming,” she answered moodily. “I know what you are thinking. It seemed the only way, the pistol. I thought everything would be ruined unless you promised not to tell anyone.”

“Oh, well,” said Bobby, a little regretful that an omelette was so small, so transitory a thing.

“I think I was I can't explain,” she continued. “I think it was partly driving so fast – the speed.”

“Like being a bit drunk,” observed Bobby sympathetically. “I know – you don't care about anything, just speeding is all that counts, goes to the head all right.”

“I think I was like someone else,” she said.

“Like Joan of Arc or Joan of the Hatchet?” Bobby asked.

At that her pale face went crimson.

“You're laughing at me,” she said, and then with a little gulp: “I suppose you're right.”

“I'm not laughing at you a bit,” Bobby protested. “I know just how you felt. You believed you had told us things we didn't know. You thought you had betrayed things, that you were a traitor and you must do something to put it right, anything. You felt you must get me to promise to hold my tongue and you didn't know how else to try. Well, of course that was all wrong. You hadn't said a thing we didn't know all about long before.”

“You said –”

“Oh, yes, what you told me made me sure we were on the right track. But then we knew that, and even if we hadn't we should have followed it up all the same. We always do. That's our strong point, I suppose. Once we start we never let up. Can't. No way of stopping the machine once it gets going. You see, it was plain enough. I got told off when I said to our Super. – Ulyett his name is, the big man who turned up at your cottage – when I told him there was one thing quite plain. He said any fool could see that.”

“What –?” she asked.

“That it's all an Etrurian show. Everyone knows a good many Etrurians don't like either the Redeemer of their country or the way he redeemed it, just as a good many Italians don't like their Duce and a good many Germans don't like their Hitler. Well, everyone concerned in Macklin's death had something to do with Etruria. Mr. Albert's half Etrurian by birth, even if he did opt for British nationality, and I rather wonder why. Judson does a big trade with the Etrurian Government and they owe him a lot of money. That means he has to do what they tell him or he won't get a penny. Wonderful the hold a debtor has on his creditor. That's why the City backs up all the dictators, Hitler and Mussolini and the rest. They owe the City pots of money so they put the screw on and say if you don't do as you're told, if you don't switch us all the trade you can, if you don't, for instance, give us your shipbuilding orders instead of letting the Tyne have them or the Clyde or Belfast, we'll see you don't get paid a penny of what you're owed. Well, of course, that jolly soon brings the City to heel. Money has no smell and money knows no loyalty either. Then again the ‘Twin Wolves' is an Etrurian restaurant and restaurants are very handy for secret service purposes. Our Special Branch at the Yard knows all the dictators keep a secret service in England. It's jolly difficult to deal with, too. They don't do much over here, all this business – Macklin getting done in I mean – is exceptional and the Dictators don't like it any more than we do at the Yard. Upsets them as much as it does us. Their idea is to get to know what's going on among their nationals, and if any of their nationals don't behave, then to make their relatives at home suffer for it. There's a meeting of the Etrurian or the German or the Italian colony. We can't object. The Americans in London meet to celebrate the Fourth of July, for example. Why not? Quite right and natural. The difference is that if an American stops away – well, he misses meeting other Americans in a pleasant social afternoon. If one of the dictator country nationals stops away from their meetings, he's soon asked why. If he can't explain – well, his sister or his cousin or his aunt at home hears about it. Another point about the Macklin affair is that papers had been burnt outside the house – very carefully burnt. Attempts, too, had been made to hire a man called Clarence to do some dirty work. Easy enough to put all that together and see Etrurian politics were behind it all, and that Macklin was pretty certainly one of the Etrurian Government's agents – one of the Redeemer's destroying angels as they call his secret service people. But there wasn't much to give us any reason for suspecting one person more than another till we found Mr. Albert had a flat in the same block as Macklin. I don't know whether that will be considered strong enough evidence to act on, or if there's anything more, and my opinion won't be asked. There it is, you see, everything's known on both sides – Mr. Albert must have known his haying that flat under an assumed name would make our people want to ask him a few questions. I'm jolly sure if Mr. Albert were an Etrurian subject he would be asked to leave the country. As he is a Britisher, I don't see what they can do – unless they've more evidence than I know of. An alien can be expelled on suspicion. For a Britisher there has to be proof to satisfy a jury.”