Operation Pax Read online

  Beneath the unfamiliar Routh a Routh all too fully known stirred uneasily. He knew that one falter meant that he was done for. Conversely, however wild his story, unflawed assurance might yet carry him triumphantly through. ‘You just can’t afford it,’ he said. ‘If our lot simply let the truth about you seep out, where would you be? The moment we simply knew, don’t you see, we had you where we wanted you.’

  There was a brief silence. Squire and his companion were once more exchanging what was a purely disconcerted glance.

  ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us what you do know? Particularly if I admit frankly that there is a good deal of force in your proposition?’ Egg-Head spoke with a new mildness.

  ‘Know? Why, that you have the means of making gold, of course.’

  ‘Thank you.’ For the first time Egg-Head looked really nonplussed. He was staring at Routh as if considering whether here was something really very deep indeed. ‘And Squire here is a sort of mad Midas? In imagining that he was luring you here it was his intention to transmute you into a full-size statue – the Golden Dustman, perhaps – and exhibit you at the Royal Academy?’

  ‘I don’t know what Squire was fool enough to think.’ Routh spoke almost at random. Had he made some wrong move? Perhaps the concern of these people was not with gold at all. Gold, after all, had been no more than a clever guess. Quickly he endeavoured to retrieve himself. ‘We’ll call it gold,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we don’t know for certain – and then again perhaps we do. But it’s certainly something you can’t afford to have talked about. And – mind you – I’m no more than a messenger.’ Routh paused, displeased at thus having demoted himself. ‘Or say an envoy – that’s about it. And what I require now is simply this: a substantial sum on leaving as an earnest of good faith–’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Of what?’ Egg-Head had returned to his desk and sat down again.

  ‘There’s no need to be funny.’ Routh’s voice rose to a pitch. He realized that he was near the end of his tether, and that he must bring the thing off within the next few minutes if he was to bring it off at all. ‘I’m to have a reasonable sum down. And after that my crowd will communicate with you by means that you will be told about later.’

  ‘I see. Well, I think we can settle this matter almost at once. Only we shall first have to consult higher authority.’ Egg-Head had a new note in his voice; it was almost a note of humour, and Routh was unable to find it reassuring. ‘As you very acutely suspected, I am not the Director. Squire, will you slip across and explain matters? No, my dear fellow, you need not be apprehensive. I can keep a very sufficient eye on our friend. And although I dislike firearms…’ Egg-Head’s right hand vanished into a drawer of his desk, to reappear again holding an automatic pistol. ‘Explain to the Director that we shall not occupy his time for more than five minutes.’

  Squire’s departure was by the green baize door that Routh had first become aware of when peering through the keyhole. There could be no doubt that the Director lived, or at least worked, on the island at the farther end of the enclosed wooden bridge. Supposing that there was no delay, Squire would presumably be back with him within five minutes. Meanwhile Egg-Head continued to sit at his desk, his back to the baize door, the revolver ready in his hand, and his eye never straying from Routh for an instant. A minute went by in silence, and Routh became aware that the clock behind him was beginning to misbehave. Looking at those two bleak eyes and the muzzle of the pistol, he found it, in fact difficult to remain convinced that he commanded the situation. And no sooner was doubt admitted than it grew. Routh realized that he had shot his bolt. When a fresh mind was brought in – and moreover a powerful mind such as the Director presumably possessed – it would be all up with him.

  Egg-Head broke the silence. ‘Do you know, I think you have put up rather a good show? I no longer have the slightest inclination to believe your story, but as an improvisation it is thoroughly creditable to you. You are presumably just what poor Squire took you for: a mere vagabond that nobody is going to worry about, and regularly in some petty way on the wrong side of the law. That’s it, is it not?’

  Routh made no answer. He was chiefly aware that his stomach felt bad, just as it had in the bank.

  ‘What I like is the way you really have tried to exploit the situation rather than simply wriggle out of it. I wish we could take you on, my man. You’d at least, one day, be more use than Squire. Unfortunately it’s dead against the rules. So you see where you stand.’

  Routh heard his own faint voice, speaking as if in the air above him. ‘You can’t do that! You can’t do that to me!’

  ‘Be very sure that we can. And look here – there’s no need to drag it out. Take a rush at me, man. I can promise you that your death will be instantaneous.’

  The room had begun to sway before Routh. Egg-Head’s words had been altogether impassively spoken. It was impossible to tell whether compassion, or mockery, or the depraved wish for a moment’s mortal excitement had prompted them. It was only clear that the game was indeed wholly up. He was to be murdered.

  ‘You poor devil.’ This time the accent came through. It really was compassion – compassion tinged with embarrassment at the mere sight of anything so miserable and so shabby and so helpless as Routh. And in Routh it lit a last desperate flare of rage. He felt, without any volition of his own, his whole body tauten to spring. If even with a burst of bullets in him he could get his dying fingers round that throat…

  The baize door opened. A split second longer and he would have sprung. As it was he stared over Egg-Head’s shoulder, fascinated. For the door had opened only a little, and what had entered the room was a cat. It leapt noiselessly to the back of a chair close to the man’s back. He was totally unaware of it. If only… And then the thing happened. The cat took a further leap to Egg-Head’s shoulder. It was evidently a familiar domestic trick – but for the moment it caught the man unaware and helpless. Routh sprang. The two men went down together with a crash, struggling for the weapon. Routh had it – and in the same instant became aware of Egg-Head’s mouth before him, wide open and screaming. Routh thrust the muzzle in it and pulled the trigger. And the great domed head exploded under his eyes like a bomb.

  Routh tried to rise. One of his knees, slipping from the body, grated painfully on a hard object on the floor. It was a bunch of keys, similar to that which Squire had used in coming through the park and gardens. Routh grabbed it and hauled himself to his feet. He must get out. The man who was to have killed him instantaneously he had himself instantaneously killed. The automatic as it emptied itself into the grey pulp of Egg-Head’s brain must have alarmed the whole place. Within seconds not only Squire and the Director but everybody in the building – even the people whom he had watched playing croquet – would be about his ears. He had seconds to get out of this house; minutes to escape from this whole infernal region and reach the salvation of the hidden Douglas.

  Routh turned to the door by which he had entered. As he did so he saw the cat once more. It was crouched on the dead man’s desk with humped back and waving tail. He thought it was going to spring at him. But the cat remained immobile – a great honey-coloured creature with long curling white whiskers. Its two forepaws lay on a folded sheet of quarto paper.

  As if from very far back in time, the memory of what he had learnt about Formula Ten swam in Routh’s mind. What lay there on the desk was something that Egg-Head ought not to have had access to except amid the most elaborate precautions for its security, something worth millions. Realization of his opportunity came to Routh like a great flood of white light. To snatch this paper from out of the paws of the cat might be to wrest unspeakable triumph from what had seconds before appeared defeat and death.

  He took a step towards the desk. The cat hissed at him and bared its claws. Beside himself, Routh turned, caught a poker from the fireplace, and hit wildly at the brute, as if intent to mingle its bespattered brains with its master’s. But the cat sprang aside and the poke
r crashed down on the desk. Routh grabbed the paper and ran from the room.

  Part 2

  Routh in Flight

  Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell,

  Though thither doom’d?

  – PARADISE LOST

  1

  The corridor was deserted, and Routh ran for the door that gave on the open air. But even as he did so there was a shout from the room behind him. At the far end of the corridor first one door was flung open and then another; there was a chatter of excited voices; and several white-coated figures appeared simultaneously. Routh bolted through the nearest door on his right. He was back in number eight.

  The room was empty. He realized that many of the adjoining rooms were now tenanted, and that his only exit was back through a corridor into which these people were peering or tumbling. But if his plight was desperate his mind was working clearly and swiftly. There was a white coat hanging behind the door; he snatched it from the peg and scrambled into it. From a corner of the bench he snatched a pair of horn-rimmed glasses – these he had noticed during his brief imprisonment – thrust them on his nose, and ran from the room.

  The corridor held at least half a dozen white-coated figures, shouting and gesturing. Routh shouted and gestured too. At the same time he pushed his way towards the door he wanted. Squire had secured it behind them on their entry, but there was a chance that it was kept unlocked during the hours that all these people were at work. In a matter of seconds he had reached it and found that his calculation was justified. He flung himself through and banged it to behind him.

  He knew that the respite thus gained could only be momentary. Fortunately the row of windows down the long corridor held nothing but frosted glass, and he could not be observed simply by a glance through them. In front of him was the high beech hedge that ran the full length of the long building, and Routh saw instantly that a gap to scramble through would not easily be found. His eye turned apprehensively to the door. It must surely be flung open now at any moment. Suddenly he saw that some half-hearted attempt had been made to embellish the bleakly utilitarian structure with climbing plants, and that up the wall on one side of the door ran a scrap of denuded wooden trellis. Routh grabbed at it and climbed. Within five seconds he was lying prone on the flat roof.

  The surface was warm in the afternoon sunshine. Long and narrow, with its row of skylights down the centre, the roof was curiously like the deck of a liner. He was exhausted – so exhausted that he was suddenly afraid that he might go to sleep. But through the roof he could hear a mutter of voices, and presently the door by which he had bolted was flung open from within. He heard louder voices and his body tautened in acute anxiety. It sounded as if two of the searchers were running down the path in opposite directions. Would another of them think of the roof, or spot the fragment of trellis?

  The door was shut again, and in the immediate vicinity he could hear no sound. But now in more than one direction dogs were barking, and somewhere on the other side of the house a stable bell was being rung with a will. He knew intuitively that the strange establishment upon which he had stumbled had a well-drilled response to such a crisis as had come upon it. In other words, against him, Routh, a whole powerful machine was being brought smoothly to bear. The two-stroke and freedom could not be more than two miles away. But he would have to fight his way out to them through the invisibly turning mesh of this formidable mechanism.

  He raised himself cautiously. The first essential was to discover the extent to which his position was overlooked. Ahead of him lay the covered bridge and the island. These were alike invisible, and he was presumably immune from observation in that direction. On either hand was a scattering of treetops which represented very substantial protection; here and there were gaps through which, even when he was flat on the roof, he might possibly be spotted from the middle distance; nevertheless the hazard seemed small compared with some through which he had recently passed. He looked behind him – and found a very different state of affairs. As he ought to have remembered, this whole structure projected directly from a wing of the main building. And from the main building it was commanded by more than a dozen windows.

  He saw that he must get off the roof at once and run for it. But he was reluctant to descend as he had come, and he therefore decided to crawl cautiously to the other side. In doing this he had to face the risk of making some sound that might communicate itself to people still in the laboratories below. On the other hand he had a strong impression that the farther side consisted of a single blank wall without means of egress from the building. And this seemed to represent one threat the less.

  The bell had ceased ringing and the dogs had fallen silent. He guessed obscurely at forces now strategically posted and waiting; at the beginning of some systematic combing of the whole property that would be quietly efficient and final… Then he came to the edge, peered, listened, lowered himself over and dropped.

  He landed among grass and pine needles, and picked himself up unhurt. It was as he had thought. The building was nothing but a blank concrete surface running off in either direction. In front of him was an indefinite extent of young fir trees. Among these he made his way at once, for they gave at least the sensation of shelter. In a moment he came diagonally upon a faint path. He wished desperately that he was armed. He wished that he had better understood the operation of the automatic. One bullet would have been enough for Egg-Head, and would have made a mess less likely to remain sickeningly on the memory. With the ability to kill and kill again he might be able to fight his way out. As it was, as soon as he was spotted he was helpless. He stopped, recalling that he still wore the white coat. He got rid of it, but without managing to feel any the more secure. The little plantation of pines was thinning out and merging with a ragged shrubbery. He left the path and ran crouching forward from bush to bush.

  The shrubbery ended abruptly. It was bounded by a path which he had approached at right angles, and along the farther side of the path ran a six-foot wooden fence. He paused, hesitating whether to try scaling this, or to make what speed he could along the path in one direction or the other. And at this moment he heard voices behind him. He broke cover, ran to the fence, searched it for some foothold. There was none. He turned to his left and bolted along the path.

  His heart was pounding yet more heavily. He realized that this was partly because he was running uphill. If he had turned right he would have been making in the general direction of the little lake, and presumably of a stretch of park beyond it. As it was, he must be moving back towards the house. But to turn and retrace his steps required an effort of will that was now beyond him. He pounded on.

  Somewhere beyond the fence on his right a whistle was blown. His fancy depicted a long line of men rising at its summons and moving forward, as if on a field day. All sense of proportion and likelihood had deserted him; he thought of his pursuers in terms of platoons and companies; had a bomb exploded before him or a shell whistled overhead he would have felt no surprise, nor any appreciable increase of terror.

  There was another shout on his left. He glanced in its direction as he ran and saw several figures break from the trees simultaneously. Then, as if he had been a train entering a tunnel, they vanished. A fence like the one on his right had abruptly risen up on his left. He was labouring along what was in effect a long corridor. If they caught him here he hadn’t a chance. Not a bloody chance. If only he hadn’t emptied that gun. If only…

  The power of thought was leaving him, as if driven out of his body by the fierce pain of his breathing. If he could remember why all this was happening, it would be all right. If he knew where he was, or why he ran, so vast an accession of knowledge must infallibly save him.

  Routh pulled up. There was some crisis and his brain had cleared to meet it. He was at a crossroads – that was it. In front of him the fenced path ran straight on towards a huddle of buildings. To his left a transverse path led directly to the main bulk of the house. And to the right this
same path, unfenced and bordered only by low box hedges, ran through an indeterminate stretch of garden to the park. That was the way he must go. He turned to run. As he did so a man with a gun appeared as if from nowhere some twenty yards ahead, leapt the hedge without looking towards Routh, and then moved slowly down the path and away from him, scanning the gardens on either side.

  At any moment this new enemy might turn. There was nothing to do but go straight on, and make what he could of the shelter of the buildings before him. They were, he guessed, stables and places of that sort. The distance was scarcely greater than the length of a cricket pitch. Routh covered it without glancing behind him and found himself in a courtyard that was almost entirely enclosed. To his left was a wing of the house itself– the servants’ wing, probably, and distinguished by a multiplicity of small, sparely draped windows. To face them was like a nightmare – the familiar nightmare of being on the stage of a crowded theatre, with no idea of a part and no means of getting off. On its three other sides the yard was a jumble of coachhouses, storerooms, lofts and the like. The only entrance to it, apart from the narrow one by which he had come, was through a broad archway straight in front. Through this one would come, no doubt, to the main façade of the house. Should he dash straight through, and so make for that part of the park which was vaguely familiar to him? This question was answered even as Routh, with the slender mental concentration he had summoned back, addressed himself to it. Suddenly from beyond the archway came a sound that thickened and slowed his racing blood. He remembered Deilos and for a moment supposed that leopards or hyenas were at large in the gardens. Then he realized that he was listening to bloodhounds; that this appalling sound was the deep bell-note of which he had read in fiction. No living creature holds a more alarming place in the popular mind than does the bloodhound; and Routh was now reduced to sobbing with fear. At the same moment he heard voices and steps behind him. There was no more than the angle of a building between some group of his enemies and himself. He was within seconds of being captured.