Dictator's Way (24 page)

“They'll try, I suppose,” Olive said, “to get more evidence I mean?”

“They will,” said Bobby grimly. “And remember, the police have nothing to do with motives, nothing to do with punishments. Our job is keeping order – to see that the simple people are kept in their right as the Psalm says.”

“Macklin had nothing to do with simple people, he was a spy,” Olive said.

“That's not for the police to judge,” Bobby answered gravely. “All we have to do with is the truth of what happened. There's nothing more important than the truth. If we only all stuck to the truth, we should jolly soon all be back in the Garden of Eden again. Look here. What's going to happen next? You don't know what an awful fuss there'll be when I don't report.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed. “Peter was saying that. I'll tell him to talk to you. We're out in the North Sea now. We have to make for a certain spot there. It's about his wireless – directional short waves. He sends out news – everything the Etrurian papers aren't allowed to publish, all about what the Etrurian People's Party is doing.”

“Oh, I say,” exclaimed Bobby interested. “I've heard about that. The Etrurian Government's rather worried – they were bothering our Foreign Office, said it was being sent from British territory and would we stop it, and we said, certainly, if it was, but it wasn't.”

“It isn't,” Olive said. “Peter sends it from out at sea – different every time. Sometimes from the Atlantic coast of Ireland, sometimes far out, sometimes from the Channel, to-night from the North Sea.”

Peter Albert came to the door of the cabin.

“Talking about Macklin?” he asked, “who killed him? does that matter?” He turned to Olive: “That motor yacht is closing us,” he said. “She's twice our size – more. She's just astern now. I don't like it. Looks to me as though she were waiting – waiting till it's dark.”

Quietly as this was said, the words seemed to convey a sense of closely threatening danger, of some obscure yet imminent threat. Olive could hardly have become more pale, but her gaze wandered again out through the open porthole as though she sought a refuge far away, since near at hand she knew that there was none. Peter Albert was silent, too. Difficult to say what there was about him conveyed the impression, but none the less he gave Bobby the idea of a man who knew the end had come but who none the less would throw into the conflict every ounce of energy and power he possessed. He looked like a man with his back to the wall and it may be that never than then do those of British stock fight better – as Haig well knew in the dark days of 1918. Peter said to Olive:

“You might go and have a squint – see if you think it's her again.”

Olive got to her feet and left the cabin without a word. Bobby said:

“Well, I'll dress.” He got up and began to put on his clothes which had been lying on a chair near, neatly folded. After a pause he said: “What's it all about?” When there was no answer to this, he said: “I'm still wondering why you brought me on board.”

“Eh?” said Peter, as if wakening from his own thoughts. “Oh, that? Oh, that was Olive. She said she wouldn't budge unless we fetched you along.” He scowled. “You might as well talk to a lamp-post as that girl,” he complained, “once she gets any fat-headed idea in her head. Said it would be murder – leaving you.”

“Murder?” repeated Bobby, and to him the word had a heavy sound in that small confined space, a sound he did not like to hear, for it reminded him of many things.

But Peter did not seem to notice.

“Lonely sort of spot,” he admitted. “Not much chance of help. Raining, too – regular downpour, thunder and lightning and all. Of course, we didn't know how bad you were. One of our chaps knocked you out. Lost his head a bit – I copped one of his, too.” He pointed to his coat where a stain of ink showed. “Luckily all the damage it did was to crack my fountain pen and make it leak. I'll have to get a new one.”

Bobby was dressed now. He looked at himself doubtfully in a small mirror hanging on the cabin wall.

“I'd like a wash and a shave,” he said.

Olive came back to the door of the cabin.

“I'm sure it's the same boat,” she said and went away.

Peter said:

“There's a razor in that drawer. I'll tell Olive to keep out of the way till you've finished. May as well drown clean as dirty, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” said Bobby, getting out the razor. “Are we going to drown? What's it all about? There's a boat following you? Is it the same lot who were in that car that followed us last night?”

“Not actually the same people – pals of theirs on the same lay, though.”

“Etrurian politics?” Bobby asked, diligently soaping his face.

Peter nodded and there came a light into his eyes.

“We want to give our country back her freedom,” he said.

“But you're a Britisher,” Bobby said. “You told me you opted for British nationality.”

“Yes, but only so I couldn't be chucked out,” Peter explained calmly. “I'm Etrurian – half English perhaps, but wholly Etrurian all the same. I like and admire England and the English. I think the whole future of civilization depends on the backing you in England give the small free countries – not that there's been much backing lately. But I would sink England, the English, your colonies and dominions, America, too, the whole Anglo- Saxon tradition for ever, if I had the power and if I thought it would help my country one jot, one tittle.”

As he spoke there came upon him an ecstasy, as it were, a glow, a fire, a leaping flame of purpose that seemed somehow to lift him high above the level of ordinary life. For the moment it was as though he soared, posed in the heights, transformed from man into a force of nature against which nothing could prevail – not even the finality of death, for there is that which death ends not but makes the stronger. Then as Bobby watched him, wondering a little, he changed and laughed gently and said:

“No need to bore you with Etrurian politics. And luckily I couldn't destroy the Anglo-Saxon tradition if I wanted to and I don't, because that same Anglo-Saxon tradition is our help and our example in Etruria. Since the English are free, why should we remain slaves? I mean of course us of the Etrurian People's Party – not the Redeemer of Etruria and his destroying angels. What I mean is I only opted for British nationality so as to be safe from your Special Branch – they have a nasty trick of cancelling your permit to stop in the country. You aren't Special Branch, are you?”

“No,” answered Bobby, “just ordinary crime investigation. Murder, for instance. When there's a murder, I may be put on the job.”

“I thought so,” Peter agreed. “Murder? That's your word, I suppose. Natural enough. I mean from your point of view. Well, when the house burns you can't be too particular what you do.”

“I think perhaps you have not been,” Bobby said.

“Blade all right?” Peter asked. “I might have given you a new one – there are some about somewhere, I think. I daresay you can't see it but I've got one aim – the freedom of Etruria, to make it again a country where men can speak their thoughts, where justice is once again justice and not merely the will of the man they call the Redeemer. Nothing else counts. I had an elder brother once. Perhaps you've heard of him. I don't expect you remember. It was in the papers at the time. Seven years ago. Two years before I opted. He was an airman. He flew across Etruria, town and country, dropping leaflets, telling the people the truth, telling them what we were doing, telling them all the things the Etrurian papers aren't allowed to publish, urging them to join us- – the People's Party. For fifteen hours, from dawn till nearly night, he flew the length and breadth of the country, dropping leaflets. Twice he came down at prepared spots for fresh supplies of leaflets and of petrol. He could easily have flown away across the frontier when he had done enough. But he went on. It was towards evening when they got him. Of course, they were bound to in the end. He had nothing to defend himself with even if he had wanted to. The whole air force of Etruria was after him. He knew they would be. Before he went up he said: ‘They've got five hundred 'planes and all of them will be sent up to get me.' It was nearly sunset when they did. He crashed in flames. Well, they got him. I go on. They'll get me. But there are others who will still go on.”

“Olive – Miss Farrar?” Bobby asked. He was dressed now, he was being very careful to get his tie right. He said: “She is in it, too?”

“Oh, yes, rather,” Peter agreed. He added carelessly: “That's why we are going to get spliced.”

“You are engaged?” Bobby muttered, undoing his tie and fastening it again. “I thought so,” he said.

“Her idea,” observed Peter.

“What?” said Bobby.

“If you ask me,” declared Peter, “I don't think it's any job for a woman – not getting married, I don't mean, I mean the sort of thing we're trying to pull off. When she asked me about marrying I was a bit bowled over at first – unexpected. I said I must think it over and I had to agree the idea had its points. I made her swear though that when I'm wiped out and she's a widow she'll chuck it. Made her swear on the Bible and kiss the Book as well – she's Protestant, you know. Most of our people aren't, of course.”

“There's no question of – of love between you, then?” Bobby asked hesitatingly.

“No, what for? why should there be?” Peter asked in a surprised voice. “Hang it all, she's a jolly sight too fond of her own way for me. I daren't so much as drink a cocktail if she's in sight – if I do I get a lecture a mile long about keeping in form and do I think chaps going to row in the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race drink cocktails? Blowed if I know, and I don't suppose she does either, but that doesn't stop her jawing. You ought to have heard her letting loose when we wanted to leave you on shore last night. We might have been a gang of murderers from the way she talked and a lot of school-children from the way she bossed us around. Of course, she was a bit above herself last night. She had been wanting to do you in, hadn't she?”

“Well, not exactly,” Bobby protested. “I don't suppose she meant it.”

“She jolly well did,” retorted Peter. “She generally does and so she did last night all right. I daresay she was all worked up, though. Driving the way she had been and being followed, and the darkness, and she had got it into her head she had given the whole show away and that if our plans failed and a few hundred people got shot and bombed and so on – then that was her fault, her responsibility and she mustn't let it happen even if she had to put in a spot of shooting on her own. You see all of us, we have the lives of a good many people in our hands – a slip of the tongue and they, not we, face the firing squad; they, or, what's worse, their uncles, brothers, sisters, wives, children, go to the concentration camps. It gets so you feel it going round in your head till you're hardly sane any longer. I've known a man blow his brains out himself rather than stand the strain any longer of knowing what one careless word might mean to others. Olive was a bit like that last night – all wrong, of course. What she told you wasn't any more than your people knew before. But she didn't realize that. You have to know the feeling before you know what it can work you up to. Now she's a bit deflated, poor kid – feels she was rather a fool. I expect I rubbed it in a bit too much, telling her what an ass she had made of herself. I enjoyed it, though. Generally it's the other way, her telling me what an idiot I've made of myself.”

Bobby looked at Peter with some disfavour. He disapproved strongly of the general tone of Peter's remarks and yet he did not quite know how to express that disapproval.

“Bossy, that's Olive,” said Peter suddenly.

But Olive herself had returned to the cabin door in time to hear this last remark.

“I'm not,” she said indignantly, “it's you.” She added: “They want to know if they hadn't better change course and increase speed?”

“What's the good?” Peter answered. “They would only do the same. Our chance will be when it's dark – theirs too. I expect they'll have a searchlight. That'll do us if they have.”

Olive nodded and went away and Peter explained:

“When it's dark I expect they'll try to ram us – sunk without trace. They may have a gun, but they won't want to use it. Too much noise. Perhaps they haven't one, though. Customs might ask questions. I hope they aren't in touch with one of their submarines. Not likely, though, they wouldn't risk using a submarine so far from their base – sure to be spotted. Their game will be to ram and sink. Quiet. Nothing to attract attention. If there are any questions – unfortunate accident.”

“You mean there's a boat following us that means to ram and sink us?” Bobby asked, a touch of incredulity in his voice.

“Got it in one,” Peter answered. “She's two or three times our size and much faster, probably. Smash her bow into our side and perhaps a bomb or two to help the good work on.”

“Well, I don't want to interfere,” observed Bobby, “but why not make for port or get in touch with passing shipping? They would hardly dare do anything openly, would they?”

“Might,” said Peter. “They might try the regrettable accident stunt. No one could say anything. Our dear little Redeemer expects results and if he doesn't get them he's apt to turn nasty. He thinks failure is a kind of treachery, and all our dictators do hate treachery so. If we tried to make for port – we couldn't before dark. As for other shipping – well, this is a lonely part of the North Sea. That's why we're here.”

“How's that?”

“Wireless. We've got a pretty powerful transmitting set. Propaganda for Etruria, you would call it – information about all the things the Etrurian Government wants kept quiet. There's been talk about it in the British papers. We've four sending stations in all. Two land – Land North and Land South. Two sea – Sea North and Sea South. We are Sea North. To-night it's specially important to get the stuff through. There's one division of the Army ready to move and nearly half the Navy should come over once the Army moves. If that does happen, then the people will rise in mass. There'll be a chance then. They won't merely be machine-gunned and air bombed into surrender. A mob hasn't much chance nowadays against machine- guns and bombs and poison-gas, perhaps. A whiff of grape-shot, Napoleon said, didn't he? The modern dictator can go one better than that. But once any portion of the Army moves, we've a chance. That's why it's so important to get off the messages we have to send to-night. Half an hour should be enough and with any sort of luck we ought to be able to get that in before they can sink us. I say, you know, I'm awfully sorry you've got let in for all this. Much better have left you on shore, only Olive kicked up such a beastly fuss – wrong headed sort of girl, if you ask me.”