"BEYOND DOVER"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1939, Page 12

"BEYOND DOVER"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GIELGUD.

(Author of “Death at Broadcasting House," etc.)

CHAPTER XXIV. To Hugo Brandon, faced with the prospect of covering several -miles of very sketchily known country in the darkness and the solution of an ininsoluble problem at the end of the journey, that night seemed the briefest of episodes between dusk and sunrise. To Sally and Nigel, who believed it to be the last they would experience on earth, it seemed interminable. They had been-locked into a small room on the upper floor of the Palace; a small room with two beds in it, having all the appearance of a servant's bedroom. The walls were washed with some kind of bluish grey distemper to within a couple of feet of the ceiling. Above was a black edged dado composed of a fantastic flower pattern in dingy pink. They were given hot water, quite an eatable tea, and half a dozen candles, and left to their own devices. “Just in case you are meditating escape,” said the corporal in charge of the guard, who seemed a pleasant well-educated young man, “I should point out that there is a sheer drop of some fifteen feet to a stone terrace. As a sentry will be posted there all night, it would hardly be worth your while to try. If there is nothing else I can get you, I will wish you goodnight.” He looked hard at Sally, as though he wanted to say more. Then he went away. “Well, Sally?” “Well, Nigel?” “Can you believe that it’s really going to happen —to us? I can’t, Sally. I keep on thinking of Grant, my boss, and of Clapham and Dwyer, and Camden Town Tube Station. They’re still there, Sally—going on just as usual. They will be tomorrow. I can’t make myself believe that —we shan’t!" “Does it matter?"

“I suppose not —what are we going . to do? I suppose we’ve got the best part of eight or nine hours.” “You know,” said Sally, “I feel absurdly as if I was waiting for a train —say at Rugby at about three in the morning, with a long wait to make the connection, and nothing to read, Nigel, It sounds a futile silly thing to say, but I think I want to go to sleep again.” “I wish I thought I could sleep, Sally.” “Of course it does seem a ghastly .vaste —I did want to see the sunrise I’m sure these windows look east.” “Lie down,” said Nigel. “I’ll tuck you up, and wake you up in time for the sunrise. “I shouldn’t sleep anyway—l don’t even feel tired. Besides I’ve some thinking to do.” And, rather to his surprise, Sally took him at his word, let him wrap her up in the coverlet, turned her face to the wall, and very soon, the regularity of her breathing, told him that she was asleep. Nigel, his hands clenched on his knees, sat watching her with a singular feeling of mingled pity disappointment and frustration. The candle on the table behind him, burning low, began to flicker wildly, sending his shadow leaping up and down the wall as if in some fantastic dance. Automatically he took out his cigarette case and opened it. Basil Lutyens’ green wafer caught his eye, and he had to bite his lip to prevent himself laughing aloud. “I suppose I ask the firing party for permission to smoke a last cigarette, whip this out, and find they’re all carrying similar bits of green paper on the magazines of their rifles —then wel all shake hands and go home to tea!” he thought angrily and childishly. He realised suddenly that he was bitterly loath to die. It was not that as yet he was particularly afraid. That would come later. It was not on Sally’s account. That she should die in such a horrible way stood up in his mind as such a monstrous crime against God and man that he had still a vague and ultimate belief that something must materialise to prevent its happening. This feeling was all for himself. He looked at his hands; pressed his fingers hard against his face. He suddenly was violently aware of a multitude of absurd things: drinking beer, feeling a fur rug under bare feet; diving; the sudden sight of the sea through trees; coffee and marmalade; the smell of a flowershop near his lodging in London. His whole being revolted elementally at being deprived irrationally of all these things, i The candle flame leaped suddenly! and expired. Nigel did not bother to I light a fresh one. Already through b the window he could see the mass of'. trees looming black against the prom-;’ ise of dawn in the eastward sky. He I, felt that, if only life could be granted' j to him, he would be happy just to sit I like that indefinitely, looking at treesj[ against a brightening sunrise, demanding nothing more. If only something would happen to prevent his being shovelled away into a nameless grave ' his body broken and'twisted, his lungs choked with blood and dust

He got up and began to walk up and down the little room. Slowly at first, then gradually faster and faster, moving his head a little, as if.breathing hurt him, swinging on the turns like a leopard in a cage. Then Sally turned over, stretched herself, yawned, and rubbed her eyes, just like a child waking. And Nigel, stopped abruptly in his prowl, knew in that minute the ultimate torments of hell

By contrast, Hugo Brandon had had, in his own opinion, far 100 little time to think. He left the inn of the Three Twisted Trees with his landlady's blessing and with a freshly-shaven upper lip, which made him feel queerly naked all over. He was still wearing his subaltern’s tunic when he reached the outskirts of Bratza. and was within an ace of getting himself shot by some of von Auffenburg’s dismounted horsemen as they made their final assault up the hill against what remained of Dragutin’s garrison in the citadel. It. was rather a thrilling experience—the roar and scream of the horse-artillery batteries as they fired a final rafale the flaring to heaven of burning houses, the crescendo of cheering as the attack broke cover and charged up the street, waving their weapons in the exultant fury of a successful storm.

For a moment Hugo thought that after all he would take Lutyens advice; borrow some picked men from the General and make a rescue from the Summer Palace in form. But just as he was making up his mind, Karl von Auffenburg came riding up the street within ten yards of where Hugo stood in the shadow of a battered wall. Ou the other side of the street a house

had just burst into flames, and Hugo had an excellent view of the General as he passed. He was leaning forward, beating his sweating charger savagely with a crop, and jabbing at its heaving flanks with his spurs. His lined old face was contorted with a mixture of fury and blood lust. Three of his staff and a handful of lancers rode at his heels, and as he passed by Hugo heard him yell over his shoulder: “Remember my orders! No looting and no prisoners! Come up, curse you!” Hugo backed further into the shadow. There was no help there. If he revealed who he was there would only be more excuse for smashing and burning and murder. The old platitudes had a most tedious way of proving right. Two blacks did not make a white, and never would. He must find another way. And keeping to back streets and in the shadows, Hugo made his way through burning Bratza, round the ruins of the citadel, where von Auffenburg was now celebrating his triumph, and made his way into the woods on the slopes noi'th of the town. Once there, he dismounted, patted his horse’s neck, released it from saddle and bridle, and finally sent it on its way back to Bratza with a smack on its rump. It clattered down to a bend in the stony path, and stood for a moment looking back, ears cocked. Then it disappeared in to the darkness. Hugo looked at his watch. It was a little after ten. He took off his officer’s tunic, rolled it into a ball, and slung it into the undergrowth. He thoroughly dirtied his shirt, ripping open one sleeve. He bit his finger nails till they were uneven and rubbed them into the gravelly earth till grime-rimmed. He rubbed the palms of his hands against the trunk of a tree, and then all over his face, paying special attention to his upper lip, which was suspiciously free from sunburn.

He destroyed the parting in his hair, put his wrist watch into the pocket of his breeches together with ■ his father’s signet ring, re-read a letter from his mother and carefully tore it up and ground the fragments into the earth with his heel lighted his last cigarette, threw away the case, put on the private tunic he had borrowed ■ from the inn, and went forward. - He thought he was travelling by the r glimpses he could get of the stars through the trees. Actually his subconscious mind was remembering the : comprehensive knowledge of the • woods between the Summer Palace and Bratza that had been the prop- ; erty of a small boy in spectacles some seventeen years before. > In one of the smaller rooms of the i Summer Palace, whose windows ; looked nearly due south, Mirko Dragutin and Radko Tankosic were sitting . over a bottle of wine. It was typical ; of the pair that, while Tankosic spraw- : led, with his feet on the seat of a second brocaded chair, and his belt and pistols on the painter French table with its ridiculous spindly legs, Dragutin should look as trim, as precise, as self-contained at three o’clock in the morning as'he had at the court-mar-tial. Through the windows, over the tree tops, rose and fell the glare from the burning of Bratza. The room was full of smoke from cardboard tipped cigarettes. The candles were burning low. “You've given Yanko and,the rest of them a fine funeral!” said Tankosic suddenly, pointing through the win- ' I dow. “Damn von Auffenburg!” rapped out Dragutin. “I never dreamed he’d have the sense to revise his plan like that. Not that it makes any odds in the long run. We’ve got those Whites thrashed, Radko, thrashed and smashed to hell!” “Then why not go to bed?” yawned Tankosic. “I’ve still to make up my mind about these English,” said Dragutin. “Make up your mind!” Tankosic’s eyes glinted evilly. “Are you proposing that I should not shoot them after all? They’re lucky, Mirko. In the old days I’d have grilled the man over a slow fire and then had the ,flesh off his bones! And the girl would have spent a pleasant night with my komitadjis. Clean bullets are too good and too quick for a couple of spies!” “There are times, Radko, when I find you disgusting!” said Dragutin. “And others when you find me pretty useful, ch?” retorted the Albanian, ' reached out his hand for the bottle. “Empty! Damn!” And he flung it to ’ smash in the empty grate. "Be quiet,” said Dragutin. He spoke quite, softly, but there was a look in his eyes which made the other stiffen in his chair like a wild beast when the trainer enters the cage carrying the whip. “Well?” he growled. "What is it now?”

“The question,” said Dragutin, “is simply one of comparative expediency. On the one hand what do we gain by carrying out the sentence. On the other, what do we lose?” Tankosic said nothing. "I 'think,” continued Dragutin, “that we gain a good deal in personal satisfaction. These- English deserve a lesson. They think they can go anywhere, poking their long noses into other countries’ affairs, with nothing but their passports, a knowledge of their own language, and an intelligence too limited to enable them to realise that they are taking risks.” "What is there for us to lose, Mirko?”

"The English Government will make a fuss, you know. Our blessed Republic, whose bacon we have just saved, won't want to lose the sympathy of the great British Democracy."

"Mirko, you're talking like a child! How do we know these two are English? Just two people arrested in Bratza by our irregulars in suspicious circumstances, the man carrying arms. They are shot trying to escape—Gods knows the formula has been used often enough.” ‘‘Personally,” said Dragutin coldly, "I feel it’s been used too often to carry any particular conviction any longer. Besides, there’s another thing” “What?” “Do you think it possible, Radko, that this girl was in such intimate relations with Ottokar Maximilian in London and Paris, might know of his present whereabouts?" There was a pause and Tankosic smashed his fist down on the table, j (To be Continued.)