The Cockatrice Boys (9 page)

“Yes, indeed they are. The Mirkindole, you may know, a member of the Basilisk family, has a tiger's body and the face of an elderly dyspeptic gentleman with long curling horns. It is particularly deadly, since the eyes have hypnotic power. But the Gridelin hounds, I have heard, are champions at running them down. What a superlatively lucky circumstance that we are to be equipped with some of these excellent and faithful canine quadrupeds. I believe I have heard that they are bred in Hanover. From where, I wonder, and from whom have they been sent?”

“No idea at present,” said the colonel. “The message didn't state. Now here's a knotty question, and I'd like your views on it, gentlemen.”

The two officers looked at him attentively.

“The message, which the child Sauna passed to me, was dated New Year's Day, two days ahead of where we are now. Ought I to act upon it immediately? Set out directly? Or—or not?”

As the colonel put this question an extremely loud crash was heard overhead, and a few pieces of broken metal and glass were seen to fall past the windows on to the station platform. (Fortunately it happened to be the period of the crew's mid-morning snack-break, and all the men, as well as Sauna and Dakin, were aboard the train, partaking of watery cocoa and turnip crackers.)

“Bellswinger!” barked the colonel on the intercom. “What was that?”

“It was a dive-bomb attack by half a dozen Snarks, sir,” came Bellswinger's reply. “On the station roof at ground level. But they done themselves in, not one of 'em survived. We got all the bodies, and I've a party of men up there already, sir, repairing the hole with brown paper and filler-tape.”

“Tape! That won't hold them off for long, man.”

“I know, sir, but it's all we got left. Stores are running low.”

“Humph! Very well, Thanks, Sergeant.”

The colonel replaced the receiver of his house-phone. “I think that settles it, gentlemen. We can't afford to remain here any longer. To keep on the move is our only hope of survival. And we can pick up some more stores at Lincoln.”

“But can you get a message through to Leicester Square command post?” asked the major doubtfully. “To tell them your plans?”

“That is what we now have to discover. Upfold, pray fill the kettle and switch it on.”

The kettle, though convenient, was a chancy and unreliable instrument for transmitting and receiving messages. Sometimes, when boiling briskly, it would render loud and clear conversations between people or stations who were many thousands of miles apart.

“South Pole, South Pole to Command Station Tasmania: we are running out of herrings. Over.”

“Easter Island here, South Pole. I think we have a crossed line. No herrings in this area. Only heads. Over…”

“Capricorn-Cancer Area Control speaking. We have no herrings. Could let you have a few goats or crabs…”

“Perhaps the kettle might perform better if the child Sauna were present in the room?” diffidently suggested Lieutenant Upfold. “As a small radio, you know, often works better if somebody is holding it?”

“Possibly so, possibly,” snapped the colonel, vexed that he had not thought of this himself. “Bellswinger!” he ordered on the intercom. “Let the child Sauna be sent here at once. On the double.”

Sauna arrived on the double, out of breath, and with smudges of black on her face and the pillow-ticking apron she wore over her army issue dungarees. (During her sojourn on the
Cockatrice Belle,
brief as it had been, she had already grown out of the tattered clothes which had been big enough while she was surviving on a siege diet.)

“Sir!” she panted, saluting smartly as Bellswinger had taught her.

“Why is your face black, child?”

“Polishing buttons, sir.”

“Oh, very well. Never mind it. Pray lay your hand over the handle of that kettle.”

“Yessir…”

*   *   *

At the end of two hours all the persons in the colonel's cabin were red-faced, wild-haired, and damp with perspiration. The room was full of steam. But a tolerably workable method had been evolved, by means of which, with Upfold using the colonel's dress sabre as an aerial, holding its tip against the spout of the kettle and pointing the hilt in variations of three hundred and sixty degrees, contact with the Leicester Square headquarters was at last established.

Not before some very odd conjunctions, however.

A stream of spiky language issuing from the spout of the kettle threw Major Scanty into transports of excitement, and was identified by him as Hungarian. It seemed he had once spent time in that country and had friends there. Indeed he would have liked to prolong the conversation.

“They tell me, colonel, that there are no monsters at all in their country; indeed the continent of Europe is at present free from such a plague as has infested this kingdom. Is not that very singular, sir?”

“It would be if it were so, but I don't for a moment believe it,” grunted the colonel, who wanted his lunch. “Why should this island be singled out for special misusage? A most improbable notion! Pray, Upfold, shift the blade and try to find us the correct station.”

Upfold, frowning with the concentration required to shift the sword blade the infinitesimal fraction of a centimetre that would pick up a different wavelength, obeyed and a pale-blue flame ran, for a second, along the sabre to the kettle.

A tiny, distant, but crystal-clear voice commanded: “
Unloose the tempest.
”

“
Master. It shall be done.
”

“
Find the loose connection. Destroy it.
”

“
To hear is to obey.
”

Lieutenant Upfold's concentration slipped momentarily and a new voice took over.

“Saturn, Saturn,” it was saying impatiently. “Ring five hundred and two. Five hundred and two. Please adjust your circumference. Adjust your circumference. We have crackle from cosmic dust.”

Pressing his lips together, knuckles white with strain, Upfold at last found the correct point in the invisible dome of air above the kettle, and stood like a statue while Colonel Clipspeak enjoyed a brisk, businesslike conversation with General Grugg-Pennington, who happened at that very time to be holding a conference with Lord Ealing in Leicester Square tube station.

“Sir, is it true that you are arranging for despatch of Gridelin hounds to Willoughby-on-the-Wolds?”

“Now, how in the world did you know that?” said the general, utterly astonished. “Why, yes—I have the intention of doing so, but how you can have received news of the plan I can't imagine, for the beasts have not yet embarked. They come from Hanover and are to be sent by submarine from Amsterdam and by canal boat from Harwich to Willoughby. The journey should take two days. But the risks are severe, and the chances of their safe arrival are not encouraging. I do not like this
at all,
Clipspeak. By what means did you get wind of our intentions? Can there be a leak in our security?”

“Pray don't be concerned, General. There is no leak, I believe I can assure you. It is just that by remarkable good fortune we rescued from Manchester a young person who has unusual telepathic and precognitive dexterity. Indeed, it is only because of this that I am able to talk to you know.”

“Oh, very well. If you say so. But now, listen, Clipspeak, in case we have more trouble making contact. I want you to take the
Belle
on to Scotland. It appears that this whole evil invasion of our island is being directed from somewhere in that locality. The rest of Europe is clear, so far.”

“Oh, indeed, sir, how singular. That is in fact what Scanty—but I—”

“Don't interrupt, Clipspeak. It is being directed from a command post in Scotland. We have been given two possible names: Crook of Devon and Rumbling Bridge. Your mission is to discover this post and destroy it. So after Willoughby and the acquisition of the hounds, proceed northwards.”

“Who is—?”

“Who? We don't know. Nor why. But our intelligence is positive that orders are being issued from somewhere in the triangle between Crook of Devon, Rumbling Bridge, and the town of Dollar.”

“Is there a railway station at one of those places?” Colonel Clipspeak asked doubtfully.

“That is for you to ascertain! Possibly the nearest rail point may be Gleneagles—”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do not fail us, Clipspeak! The safety of the kingdom may rest with you. Indeed, that of all Europe! The plague may spread. You must set out at once. Do not forget to pick up the Archbishop, who will be expecting you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Clipspeak faintly.

“Over and out.”

Colonel Clipspeak mopped his brow with his stiff white pipe-clayed gloves. Sauna quietly prised the lid off and peered inside the kettle.

“Could you switch off?” she whispered to the lieutenant. “It's just a-going to boil dry.”

Thankfully laying down the heavy sabre, Upfold switched off the kettle at the wall plug.

Major Scanty was trembling with excitement.

“Then what those chaps in Hungary told us is true!” he exclaimed. “The main part of Europe has not been troubled by this plague of monsters. It is only our own kingdom which has been so afflicted. Now why, I ask myself, should that be?”

“I can think of plenty of likely reasons why,” muttered the lieutenant. But Colonel Clipspeak had bent on Sauna his piercing dark eyes, all the more brilliant for being set deep under bristly thickets of white eyebrow.

“Now then, miss! It's high time we knew more about
you.
All we know is that Dakin the drummer rescued you from this siege city. And that you are his cousin.”

“Yessir, my mam and his mam were sisters. But my mam and dad died, you see, and I've been looked arter by my Auntie Floss.”

“How did your parents die, child?”

“In a plane crash, sir. We was all going together for a holiday in Marbella, when the plane engine conked out.”

“And your parents were killed?”

“Yessir,” faltered Sauna, wiping away a couple of tears with a corner of her apron.

“And you? How was it that you did not die also?”

“I'd put on my life jacket, sir, like they told us, and the strap caught in a fig tree as I fell. And, by and by, some Spanish chaps lifted me down. And the next thing I knew, my Auntie Floss Monsoon had come to Spain to fetch me home. A'cos Mam and Dad were dead.”

“Their names were?”

“Ted and Emily Blow, sir. Dad used to be a chimney sweep in Newcastle, sir. That was where we lived.”

“So then you went to live in Manchester with your aunt. Had you known her before?”

“No, sir, never. Mam nor Dad never spoke of her, but she told me she was a cousin of my da.”

“Was she kind to you?”

“She was strict,” said Sauna, after some thought. “It was having my hands tied all the blessed time that was the worst.”

“And this gift of yours—being able to see and hear events and information before they have come to pass—have you had that always?”

“Oh no, sir,” said Sauna simply. “Only since the plane crashed, and Mam and Dad died, and I hung for six hours in that-there fig tree.”

“And did your aunt know of your gift?”

“Yes, sir. She didn't like it.”

“I see. Thank you child. Ahem. You may return to your duties.”

“It is the most remarkable piece of luck that we should have happened to take her on board,” said Colonel Clipspeak, when Sauna had slipped thankfully away to her button polishing.

“I wonder, though, was it pure luck?” mused Major Scanty. “Or was it preordained?”

“What can you mean?” demanded the colonel.

“Did you hear, sir, that singular little passage before Upfold here found the correct frequency for command headquarters?”

“All that idiocy about crabs and goats and herrings? Sounded like balderdash to me.”

“No, just the two brief exchanges about the tempest. And a loose connection.”

“Can't say I paid it any heed,” said the colonel.

“It make me think,” said Major Scanty. He stopped and rubbed his chin, looking thoughtfully at the colonel, who was beginning to fill in a large form, muttering to himself, “If we are to take on board the Archbishop of Lincoln, we shall need to make certain that
all
the formalities are most duly and carefully observed.”

But Lieutenant Upfold threw a keen glance at the major.

“You mean, sir, when that voice said ‘Unloose the tempest!' And a blue flame ran down the sword blade? I must confess it sent a cold shiver down
my
spine.”

“Oh, fiddle-de-dee!” snapped the colonel, hunting among all his pens for one that would write. “Why, if that was anything at all to the purpose, it was just some meteorological station giving a forecast. Probably in Japan. Much good that will do us.”