The Sound of His Horn (11 page)

It amazed me that the Count's establishment should lavish such extremely good material on a criminal--as I must assume myself to be reckoned. It did not seem at all the Nazi way: they did not waste good clothes on human rubbish they intended to liquidate. But then I thought of the richness and elaborateness of the game-girls' costumes. Though I could not believe the little French writer's fears of violent death were justified, I had no doubt that he and I were destined for a part in some fantastic game of the Count's.

A little way off I could hear the faint murmur of running water. I pushed through the bushes and descended a wooded bank towards the sound. In a shady tract of beech wood, with little undergrowth, a small, clear stream came splashing over some rocks into an inviting basin of sand and pebbles. But before I could reach it, a savage burst of barking made me skip up the slope again and, peering from the bushes, I saw that there were two or three keepers with a couple of boar-hounds doing something at a rough rustic table a little way downstream from the pool. One of them was looking in my direction, and without any warning, he suddenly lifted his gun and fired. I ducked instinctively the instant I saw the motion, and I heard the small shot go cutting through the twigs above my head. I ran crouching back towards the hut again, and did not venture down until I heard the snarling hounds being dragged off into the further woods. Then I went with great caution, warily listening and looking before I left the cover of the bushes.

I found that they had left on the rough table a good quantity of food--bread, cheese, potatoes, raw vegetables and apples. I was hungry, and was on the point of snatching up a loaf, when a sudden suspicion ran like a thrill of cold water over my body, and I darted back into cover again: it had come to me that I was being lured out to give the keepers a better target.

Nearly an hour, I suppose, I lurked in the bushes, famished, but afraid to venture near the table. They had succeeded by a mere threat in turning me into a wild creature. No, I would not confess that I was afraid either of their shot or their dogs, but the necessity to risk no injury that would wreck my chance of escape was overriding. The effect was the same; call it cowardice or caution, I lay with the patience of an animal, waiting until I was absolutely sure that the coast was clear. Then I ran down, drank hurriedly, and snatched up an armful of the provisions and retreated. I did not go back into the hut, but found an open, grassy space where I could look well about me while I ate.

That was the bitterness of my 'freedom'--knowing that I was turned loose for some cruel amusement of the Count's, but not knowing what form it would take, what sort of malice or trick to guard against. The forest was fairer than heaven in my eyes, but I had no delight in it; all my senses were stretched all the time for signs of the danger that might be stalking me.

Nevertheless, I had a purpose. I flattered myself that I was made of different stuff from that broken-nerved French writing-fellow. I don't claim to enjoy being shot at, but I have been in a few actions and had bigger stuff than buck-shot whistling past my ears. So, feeling a good deal better for the food, I set off on my first reconnaissance.

I found the forest not at all as wild and tangled as I had expected. There were plenty of signs that it was well tended; except for thickets here and there the undergrowth was cleared away, fallen trees were sawn up and stacked beside the rides, and the grass of the rides themselves was kept mown short. Apart from its seemingly great extent, Hackelnberg forest was just such a piece of woodland as you would expect to find on a country estate in England. It had that air of privacy, and exclusion, too.

During the whole morning I did not see a living thing except a few small birds and a squirrel or two. That, too, astonished me, until I reflected on the manner of shooting practised there. What von Hackelnberg's guests wanted was game without effort, not the uncertainties of driving or hunting wild deer. But I had heard the Count himself riding abroad at night and winding his horn in the forest. What game did he pursue there, under the moon? I knew the answer to that question now, I thought, and I measured with my eye the hours the sun had yet to travel down the sky.

It must have been about the middle of the afternoon when I came to the fence. I had skirted a broad, gently undulating heath fringed with pines, and I had been keeping in the cover of the trees, making towards a tract of woods that lay beyond the heath. I came to the tip of my belt of pines and found between me and the other trees a very broad zone of short grass, bending round in a long, gradual curve as far as I could see to right and left. There were at least two hundred yards with no cover that would hide anything bigger than a fox, but more important, and immediately attracting my attention, was a kind of high wooden sentry perch in the middle of the open zone some four or five hundred yards from me. The top of the tower was enclosed and I could not see whether it was occupied or not, but I was morally certain that binoculars and rifle-sights were covering that open ground.

The defence itself seemed ridiculously inadequate: a single row of slender steel pickets supporting three strands of thin wire which shone bright in the sunlight. I wormed my way on my belly as near as I dared, taking advantage of the heath that grew a little beyond the pines. It did not look like barbed-wire, even, and in the daylight I could see none of that strange radiance which I had seen, or thought I had seen, in the moonlight the night I came to Hackelnberg.

I crawled a few inches nearer, and at my movement a brace of black-game rose with a whirr from the heath a couple of yards in front of me. I watched them sail away, making for that other woodland beyond the fence. The cock flew high, but the hen, a little behind, was much lower; I could see that if she did not rise she would barely clear the top strand of wire, about ten feet from the ground. But she did rise a little: I saw she had seen the wire and was going clean over. Then suddenly she dropped, killed as cleanly as if she had been knocked down by a good shot with twelvebore. I heard the "plump!" of her body hitting the hard, bare ground at the foot of the fence. And yet I will swear she had never touched the wire; I am certain that she was two feet in front of it when she dropped; and then, if she had touched it--a big bird going at a fair rate--I should have seen it vibrate, for it was bright stuff, quite visible. I glanced quickly at the sentry-perch to see if there was any sign of the bird's having been observed there, but nothing stirred.

I moved off, exploring, to my left, keeping within the bushy fringe of the woods. I found some places where I could approach much nearer to the fence under cover, and from there I could see that for a distance of about two feet on each side of the bottom strand of wire the earth was completely bare for the whole length of the fence; here and there on this hard-baked, naked strip I noticed little bunches of fur and feathers: the remains of other birds and small animals that had tried to cross the fence.

A half-mile or so farther on I sighted another tall wooden sentry perch; it was a good enough guess that they would be situated at intervals all round the perimeter so that the whole line of the fence would be under observation. Had it not been so, I reasoned, I should clearly not have been alive to lie here and observe them this day from
inside
the fence. I lay there some time in concealment, reasoning on my observations and making my deductions about that fence. I thought I had evidence now of the effective range of the Bohlen Rays, which, I supposed, were carried and discharged by the strands of wire. If the effective radius of activity of each wire were two feet, then, obviously, the whole fence constituted a lethal obstacle four feet wide and twelve feet high. A tunnel was clearly the answer. That the rays were not conducted any appreciable distance by the earth itself seemed to me to be proved by the fact that the grass grew thick and healthy just outside the two-foot zone. But the nearest I had been to the fence so far was about forty yards. Should I have time to dig, by myself, and with such implements as I could fashion, a tunnel at least fifty yards long?

I began to work my way back towards the hut quite early. I had kept fair track of my direction, marking trees and scoring patches of bare earth with a stone as I came, and so, in spite of some blunders, I reached my clearing again before dark. I had been debating in my mind the possibilities of evading whatever unpleasantness the Count planned for me, and had considered acting on the hint the Frenchman had dropped--that is, changing my sleeping place. But then, some instinct--call it obstinacy or pride--revolted against being driven like an animal, running like a cat before a dog and providing them with the very sport they wanted. If they were coming to torment me, better to be found in my lair and fight it out there. I wanted my freedom desperately, but I think I was genuinely more afraid of becoming such a timid, crazy wreck as that Frenchman than I was of an unequal fight.

So I returned, went boldly down to the table, seeing and hearing no one, and ate heartily of the provisions there and carried the remainder back to the hut. Then I collected a number of long straight sticks and contrived to fix them in the form of a rough lattice to block the door, so that, though they would not stand assault, I should at least be woken up by their cracking if someone tried to get in. Finally, I laid the stoutest stick I could find and a good heavy flint beside my bed and lay down.

It was an uneasy night. It spite of my long walk I could not sleep. All the fears that my occupation during the day had helped me to subdue raced freely now, and the unceasing whispering, sighing, rustling and pattering of the forest were a fine field for them. My imagination interpreted even identifiable sounds, like the screeches of owls, as the voices of those abominable creatures from von Hackelnberg's kennels; I heard some small animal pattering among the dry leaves in the grove and fancied the baboon-boys circling round my hut.

Still, it was no fancy that brought me bolt upright just before daylight, staring at the grey square of my door and straining my ears to hear the sound repeated. I had caught the unmistakable note of the Count's horn, very far away, drawing out on just such a long note of finality as a huntsman would blow to call off his hounds at the end of the day. It had been a cloudless night; the moon was in its second quarter; the rides of the forest would have been light enough. The air of dawn crept chilly through my trellised walls and I shivered.

As soon as the sun was up I did my best to throw off that feeling of numb helplessness. My plans were scarcely formed as yet; I had only some general ideas which I dared not test against the facts as I so far knew them, for fear of total discouragement. I set myself, therefore, the limited task of procuring some sort of implement or weapon, and the best scheme I could devise for this was to see if I could not beg or steal one from the Doctor's household. I could not believe that the nurses who had tended me so well would be devoid of pity or so mechanically subservient and priggish as the Doctor boasted.

I waited in the cover of the bushes until the keepers had been with a fresh supply of food to the table; then, taking a small loaf and some apples and stuffing them inside my jersey as rations for the day, I set off to find my way to the hospital. It was a long and tiring business, and it had its alarms. For though I avoided every ride and path which might have led me direct to the Schloss, I several times heard parties moving near me: heard voices of keepers and tramp of horses, and once I had to lie still as a stone in the long grass at the top of a bank while a band passed slowly up a stream-bed below me--two bloodhounds held in leash, four of the baboon-boys with their nets scrambling along in front of their keepers, and a couple more foresters bringing up the rear, carrying those filament-throwing guns and looking sharply about them.

I caught a glimpse of some of the buildings of the Schloss through the trees some time after noon, and, guessing at my direction, worked slowly round through the woods. It was only by luck that I found the place, I suppose, but quite suddenly, when the afternoon light was mellow among the leaves I found myself looking down a little tunnel of a path at the white walls of the hospital and the narrow strip of turf and moss where I used to walk with the nurses.

Again, I had no cut-and-dried plan. I knew where the kitchen was; my idea was to scout it from the trees and seize any chance that offered to slip in and make off with a chopper, a shovel, a big knife--or any handy-looking bit of hardware. If the slaves gave me no opportunity to slip in unobserved in the daylight, I intended to lurk under the trees until they had gone to bed and then try to break in.

As I crept round through the trees and peeped out on the side of the building where the nurses' dormitory was, I saw my Day Nurse sitting by herself on a wooden bench by the wall, reading a picture-paper. On the impulse of the moment, I stepped boldly out and said, "Hello, Day Nurse!"

She jumped up with a shuddering little scream and stopped her mouth with the back of her hand when she recognised me. She stared at me in horror, with eyes so shockingly full of mortal fear that had I appeared to her by moonlight draped in the earthy cerements of the grave I do not think I could have affected her more. She returned not a word--did not even hear what I was saying, I suspect, but just stood there, frozen with terror, the backs of her fingers pressed to her lips. I don't know whether I should have convinced her that I was alive, or that I meant her no harm: I had no chance. A step behind me made me wheel just in time to see one of the other nurses turn and flee round the corner of the building with a loud shriek. Foolishly I ran after her, thinking to catch her and stop her raising the alarm; but she had already raised it: three stout slaves came running down the verandah steps with brooms in their hands and began to swipe at me, gurgling rough snarls in their throats. I fought back, but several more slaves joined them, better armed with cudgels, and I suffered some severe blows on my head and arms and shoulders. Then a window was flung open and I saw out of the corner of my eye the Doctor himself, with a pallid face, look out and scream encouragement to the slaves. I shouted to him in English, but he only screamed back at me with a kind of panic violence. I fled then, shielding my head from the blows and dashing for the cover of the woods.