An Awkward Lie (22 page)

‘Shut up – Bobby, my own darling.’ Susan had
meant
Shut up. She was listening intently. ‘They’re very professional,’ she said, approvingly and coldly. ‘They don’t even bother to gloat.’

The silence continued for a long time – or what seemed a long time. And then they heard an evil sound. It was a very evil sound indeed – a long, low moan of agony.

‘That’s it,’ Bobby said. ‘Off that first chamber there’s quite a big second one. They’re operating there.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve still got this bloody gun. But it’s not much use through stone three-feet thick. It may be useful, I suppose, if we’re left here to die of thirst.’

‘Don’t be silly, Bobby. In twenty minutes they’ll be here. By the helicopter. And dozens of them by car an hour later.’

‘Bad half-hour for Hartsilver.’

‘He has to take his chance. Just keep that gun ready, Bobby. They may try some funny stuff.’

Bobby kept the gun ready. Through the red rage raised in him by the muted sound of another groan, he told himself – obstinately and as a kind of point of sanity – that Susan Danbury was his girl. That – if they both died like rats thirty seconds from now.

‘008.’

Bobby stiffened. His ears weren’t deceiving him.

‘Sir. 008. Is that a torch? Put it out.’

Bobby flicked off the torch. There was only absolute darkness.

‘Can you see, 008 or sir?’ The voice was unmistakably Beadon’s. ‘There
are
all those chinks, you know. The Smithy’s tumbling to bits, really. All those enormous stones. But a good heave would shift them.’

‘I don’t think so, Beadon. Not quite.’ Bobby spoke very softly. ‘But you’re right about the chinks. I’m beginning to see them.’

‘What shall we do, sir – 008, I mean?’

‘Who’s we? You and Walcot?’

‘No, sir. The whole school. We thought that might be the best thing. When you told us about meeting those men near the Smithy.’

‘You were quite right. But I hope Dr Gulliver will agree.’

‘We left him a note, as a matter of fact. It seemed the decent thing – poor agitated old soul.’

‘No wonder Susan and I heard sounds of undistinguishable motion. They’ve bolted us in.’

‘In the place beyond that door? We know it. We come exploring here. Just the bolts, do you think?’

‘That’s my impression, Beadon.’

‘Then Weedy can do it.’

‘Weedy?’

‘Weedy Green, sir. He can snake anywhere. Would those men be in the big room – the one off the first one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then there’s a kind of threshold. Did you see it, sir? Raised more than a foot. Weedy can snake past it, and get at that bolt. May we send him in, 008?’

‘No!’ Susan said.

‘Yes, Beadon.’ Weedy Green, Bobby told himself, was very small. But he was an English gentleman (and all that) in the making. Hartsilver being the stake, Weedy had better have a go. ‘Weedy’s to creep in, draw the bolt, and skip in here as fast as he can. Then you’ll hear a shot. Got that? A single shot. Is Walcot there?’

‘Sir!’ This was Walcot’s voice.

‘Confirm, Walcot.’

‘A single shot, sir. 008, that is.’

‘Right. The moment you hear that shot, all hell is to break loose. Understand? The whole school.’

‘OK.’ Walcot’s voice was low but triumphant. ‘Leave it to Beadon and me. We’ll promise to leather the bottom off any man who doesn’t yell like mad.’

‘Carry on, Beadon and Walcot.’

For a long half-minute Bobby listened. There wasn’t a sound.

‘Susan,’ he whispered, ‘of course this kid Green is first priority. The moment the door opens – if it does – I go through and cover the entrance of the chamber where these bastards have got Hartsilver. You take Green’s hand and follow. And you don’t stop till you’re in the open air. Then I’ll evacuate the place at gun-point. Right?’

‘Right.’

They stood immobile – side by side and in utter darkness. The chinks through which some faint glint of moonlight came didn’t amount to letting one see a thing. But Bobby’s hand was on the door. And after an age it quivered, faintly creaked, moved on its hinges. Bobby stepped aside, put out a hand to the invisible boy, and gently guided him into Susan’s arms.

‘I’m going,’ he breathed, and glided through the doorway. The revolver was in his right hand. So it was with his left hand – which also held the torch – that he had to feel along the cold stone close by his right shoulder. When it met vacancy, that would be the small, empty chamber. When it felt vacancy again, that would be the antechamber (as it must have been) which he had failed to realize had some further chamber beyond it. Here he would pause. And Susan and the boy called Weedy Green would slip past him.

He had got there, and still there wasn’t a sound – so that he wondered whether the enemy, having somehow silenced Hartsilver, were alerted and waiting. Only, there was a light: the faintest filter of light, such as might seep round more than one sharp turn in a constricted space. He felt a breath behind him, waited for some further seconds, and glanced to his left. The other dim light, that from the entrance of the Smithy, was obscured for a moment and then cleared again. Susan and Green were gone. He snapped on the torch, and stepped forward. In the same instant, he fired a single shot behind him. It made a most tremendous row.

He rounded a jutting stone baffle and was in a middle-sized chamber, lit by a low light from a hurricane-lamp. There was a table in the middle, and from either side of this two bearded men had just sprung to their feet. They might have been interrupted in a quiet little committee-meeting. There were writing-materials on the table, and a couple of glasses, and what appeared to be several bottles of soft drink: one of these was like an old-fashioned ginger-beer bottle – a heavy stoneware thing. Bobby held the men covered, and they were very startled indeed. They well might be. It wasn’t merely that this intrusive young man had turned up again within ten minutes of having been safely locked up. It was also that outside the Great Smithy there was a sudden pandemonium of sound which might have betokened the tumultuous release of all the devils in hell. Overcombe was doing well.

But there was no Hartsilver.

‘Hartsilver!’ Bobby called out – and nothing happened. Bobby felt his finger tremble on the trigger. ‘Hartsilver!’ he cried out again. And then Hartsilver was before him – risen up from somewhere behind the table: from the floor, perhaps, or a bench or a bed. He didn’t look too good, but he might have been looking very much worse. ‘Stay still, and listen,’ Bobby said. ‘You mustn’t get between me and either of these men. Skirt the wall of this damned place, and go outside. There’s help there.’

And Hartsilver went out. The boys were still yelling like mad. But their moment of immobilizing dismay had been achieved, and they could now merely be thought of as enjoying themselves. Left alone with the bearded men – neither of whom had ventured on a menacing movement – Bobby wasn’t quite sure of the technique next to be followed. But he remembered that they ought to be told to put their hands up. So he gave this order sharply. It was obeyed at once. There still seemed a bit of an impasse, however. It was almost certain that they both had weapons concealed about their persons, and they would continue a menace until they were expertly disarmed. Bobby was in no doubt of the expertness required. There were two of them, and they were a wily couple. Against them was one man with one gun. It wasn’t an occasion for any overconfident movement. The problem was to hold them until armed help arrived.

‘I’m going to shove you,’ Bobby said, ‘where you shoved me – and bolt you in there until you’re taken care of. I shall back out, and you will follow at your present distance. Once in the passage, you will back into the far chamber in your turn. If either of you drops an arm, I’ll kill him. It will be the only way to deal quickly enough with the other one. Do you understand?’

Both men nodded. The sight of them wagging their beards like that was almost unnervingly grotesque. But Bobby had no inclination not to save up his amusement for a later occasion.

‘Listen again,’ he said, ‘I’m going to count as I back out. You will both take one step, and one step only, to each number.
One…two…three
–’

‘Please!’ For the first time, one of the men spoke – and it was very hoarsely. As he did so, he nodded towards the table. ‘We may take a drink?’

‘You – not the other one – may pick up one bottle as you pass. But keep your hand well away from your body.
Four…five–’

The man who had spoken lowered an outstretched arm very gingerly towards the stoneware bottle. In the same instant, Bobby’s body did an extraordinary thing. Bobby’s body picked up Bobby and dropped him neatly behind that baffle – it was like a great stone buttress – which he had skirted on entering. Or his eye, it might be said, had been in a queer way ahead of his mind. It had been aware that the bottle was not to be picked up, but hurtled towards him.

And then Bobby’s ear came into play. It registered a shattering roar. And all his senses signed off at once.

Solo Hoobin’s moon looked down on Bobby Appleby. Bobby Appleby looked up at Solo Hoobin’s moon. He did so without cricking his neck. This was because he was lying flat on his back – quite comfortably, on downland turf.

But, although comfortable, he was obscurely outraged. He endeavoured to struggle into a sitting position – although not, at first, with much success. In fact he sank back again – and so was able to observe a further phenomenon in the heavens. It was a little cluster of coloured lights, and he rather thought that two were steady and one was winking. They were more or less floating down towards him. Bobby supposed that here must be what the newspapers call a UFO – an Unidentified Flying Object. Then the phenomenon began to make quite a familiar noise, and he realized that it was a helicopter. He lost interest in the helicopter, and recalled another noise instead. As he did so, his sense of outrage returned with redoubled force, and under the influence of this the power of speech returned to him. His actual words, had he been particularly conscious of them, might have surprised him, since for a robust young man he was very little addicted to coarse language.

‘What the bloody hell was that?’ Bobby demanded.

‘It’s called a concussion grenade.’ Susan’s voice spoke calmly from somewhere above him – perhaps from heaven. ‘It hasn’t done you much harm.’

‘How’s Hartsilver?’ Bobby’s head was clearing rapidly.

‘Not much harm either. Of course, suddenly being tortured does rather startle an elderly gentleman. But we were more or less in at the start.’

‘Had he solved that idiotic cipher-thing?’

‘Absolutely not. It leaves him standing. It was Nauze or nothing, if you ask me.’

‘You don’t think there’s life-or-death in that anti-ballistic stuff, do you?’

‘Not if you say not, Bobby. Perhaps you should rest now.’ This brought Bobby scrambling to his feet. Under the serene moon the boys of Overcombe School were sitting around in small groups. Satisfaction was apparent upon the faces of all. Perhaps this was because they had providentially brought provisions with them on their expedition, and they were now in the enjoyment of a midnight collation. Bobby inconsequently wondered whether the bowler-hatted gentleman would send in a force of menial persons to clear up the orange-peel, the lemonade-bottles, and the gaudy wrappings of favoured chocolate confections. And suddenly Bobby became aware of Onslow. Onslow was carrying a squash-racket. He must have snatched it up from his extensive armoury of bats and balls and whatever as being a likely weapon with which to meet this obscure emergency.

‘A most deplorable thing. A great loss to English archaeology.’

Bobby turned round. The voice was the voice of Dr Gulliver. He was wearing his academic gown, which gleamed greener than ever in the moonlight.

‘And without doubt the most important of all the antiquities within reach of the school.’ Dr Gulliver looked with the greatest severity at Bobby. Indeed, Bobby, who was still not quite himself, rather expected to be told that – displeasing as such a duty was – Dr Gulliver was obliged to correct him to the extent of two strokes with the cane. Fortunately, Dr Gulliver – with an agitated stride – simply moved away.

‘Susan, what was the old ass talking about?’

‘The Great Smithy. It was Smithy they managed to concuss, and not the unconcussable Bobby Appleby. It was unsuspectedly unstable – as Beadon seemed to know. We found you’ – Susan’s voice suddenly trembled – ‘under the only chunk that still had a roof over it.’

‘And those bearded chaps?’

‘Buried. I suppose in what was the royal tomb. Ironic, in a way. Emissaries of a People’s Republic, and so forth.’

‘Yes.’ Bobby looked, for the first time since getting to his feet, at the immediate scene of his recent romantic adventure. The giant caterpillar had crumpled up.

‘Susan, people will be tumbling out of that helicopter?’

‘At any moment.’

‘And more arriving in cars? And there will have to be a fuss?’

‘I suppose so. No Intelligence Service on earth could keep mum about an affair like this.’

‘It’s a marvellous moon. Look at the trunks of the beeches.’

‘Fab.’

‘Before all the chit-chat, we’ve time for a stroll to that nearest clump, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sure we have.’

And the great trees were around them when Solo’s moon put on the last of its turns that night. As if snared in a bag, it vanished behind a stealthy and unsuspected cloud. Considering that it was in darkness that he had to do the job, Bobby took Susan very accurately in his arms.

‘So there,’ Bobby said. ‘No more awkward lies.’

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President's Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at 'St Anthony's College', Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.