Operation Pax (33 page)

‘But – but it would be murder.’

‘Just stand back a bit, will you?’

Jane’s head was decidedly swimming again. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing! You can’t murder–’

‘Much worse than murder going on here, if you ask me. Whole place overdue for the everlasting bonfire. I say, what an anticlimax, my dear woman, if I haven’t got a match.’

‘I devoutly hope you haven’t.’

‘Here we are – box of Vestas. I think you should have the fun of starting it off. Your show, after all.’

‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. I think you must be–’

‘Just one lighted match, please. Into the waste-paper basket. And then we go out by the French window.’

Jane glanced unbelievingly at Remnant. He was looking her straight in the eyes. He might he crazy, but he was certainly not mad. She took the box, got out a match, and struck it. It was like being a hangman and giving a tap or a pull to whatever worked the drop. She threw it into the waste-paper basket and there was a great leap of flame. Remnant grabbed her and they bolted through the window.

Remnant chuckled. ‘I never had a girl commit murder for me before. You mayn’t believe it – but it’s the honest truth.’

Jane’s head was still misbehaving, and she felt that at any moment her knees might misbehave too. ‘Look here’, she said, ‘couldn’t we just – just get him out of that cupboard and drop him into a flower bed?’

‘How pity runs amok in gentle heart.’ Remnant was looking rapidly about him. ‘Or have I got that one wrong?’ Abruptly his manner changed. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. As a matter of fact the whole place isn’t going to burn down – worse luck. A fire started in the night like that might get sufficient grip to do it. But not now. Your match hasn’t started much more than a pretty good diversion. And that’s what we want.’

Jane gave a long gasp. ‘Then let’s make the best of our chance.’

‘Capital. Excellent girl. You know, until we winkle out this young man of yours, and until I get back to my wife and twelve kids, you and I make not a bad team.’

Jane became aware that they were hurrying with considerable purposefulness along the terrace. ‘Where are we going now?’

‘It’s like this. I reckon that in the excitement of our little fire, you and I will be forgotten for a bit back there. And that gives us our chance of finding the other side of the place.’

‘The research side?’

‘Exactly. The real devilry is there. What we want is the boys in the back room. I expect there will be quite a number of them. And – for that matter – I expect they’re really at the back. Did you notice the structure of the place as we drove up? There seems to be a lot of new building – much less dressy than all this – stretching out behind… Round this way.’

They turned a corner of the main façade of the house, and as they did so heard shouts behind them. Jane quickened her pace yet further. ‘Are they after us?’

‘Not a bit of it. They’re after the fire. No doubt in a remote place like this, with a big staff, everybody has a job when it comes to fighting a blaze. That means that we turn their own efficiency against them.’

‘I see. And I’m not really surprised you didn’t care for those lectures. You must have found the don’s wits a bit on the slow side.’

‘Steady on. There’s a chap coming.’ Remnant laid a hand on her arm and brought her to a leisured walk. ‘New patients – understand?’

Jane nodded. The man approaching them was clearly some sort of servant or attendant about the place. He had almost the look, indeed, of what might be called a guard, for he had the measured pace of somebody on a regular beat. Remnant raised a hand and beckoned him forward. ‘The sort of patients we are,’ he murmured, ‘don’t mind mentioning a disastrous fire in passing. But they preserve a lofty demeanour, all the same.’

The man had quickened his pace and was eyeing them suspiciously. ‘One moment,’ he said; ‘are you residents in the Clinic?’

Remnant frowned. It was evident that he was one very little disposed to be questioned in this way. ‘Certainly, my man. But I signed to tell you that you are needed at the front of the house. There appears to be a fire.’

Audible corroboration of the truth of this was now available. Somewhere on the other side of the building a shrill bell was sounding; there was shouting and a calling of sharp words of command; it was even possible to hear an ominous crackle of flames. The man hesitated, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, made as if to turn round, and then hesitated again. ‘Not through the red door, please,’ he said sharply. ‘Some of the Director’s animals are out, and they’re not to be disturbed.’ Again he looked them over in quick scrutiny. Unlike the servants they had so far met, he had only the most perfunctory semblance of a respectable bearing. The shouting increased, and this appeared to convince him where his most urgent business lay. He went off at a run.

They resumed their brisk pace. ‘You see?’ Remnant said. ‘They always hand you your next move on a plate. We find a red door and go straight through. It looks as if he’s meant to keep it locked, but thought he was hardly going to move out of sight of it… How peaceful all this is.’

Jane was not very confident that she agreed. But she had come to recognize that with Remnant one had an exhilarating sense of going just where one wanted to go. There was now nobody near them. Only on somewhat higher ground on their left, and beyond the formal gardens, a scattering of people – patients presumably – were strolling and pausing before what appeared to be a series of enclosures cut into the slope of the hill. Jane glanced at these as she hurried forward. ‘It’s very odd,’ she panted, ‘but it looks rather like a zoo – a private zoo.’

‘Nothing more likely. All guinea pigs needn’t have only two feet. And that fellow said something about animals through the red door… How this place goes on and on.’

They were still skirting the main building on their right. But it had now changed its character, and presented a long line of mullioned windows separated by heavy buttresses which had nothing much to support. There was something decidedly uncomfortable upon passing each of these in turn, for they seemed almost constructed for the sake of affording lurking places.

‘But here we are.’ The mullioned windows had given place, for a score of paces, to blank walls. And now, between two of the buttresses, they came upon a wide archway, so high that one could have driven a double-decker bus beneath it, and closed by vermilion painted double doors. Inset in one of these was a wicket. Remnant gave this a thrust and it opened; they went forward as if through a short tunnel, and presently emerged in a broad courtyard. On their right was some sideways aspect of the main building. The three other sides of the court were formed by a miscellaneous but continuous jumble of stables and offices.

‘Quick!’ Remnant took Jane’s arm and drew her like a flash behind the shelter of half a dozen piled bales of hay close by where they had emerged. There were three or four men on the farther side of the courtyard, hard at work trundling a small fire-fighting wagon from a shed. They brought it across the yard at the double; the doors beneath the archway were flung open; they disappeared towards the front of the house.

‘Another riddance of bad rubbish.’ Remnant drew Jane from their hiding place and glanced around. ‘Nobody else in sight – and no animals. We’ll go through there.’ He pointed to a narrower passage-way that seemed to afford an egress from the courtyard immediately opposite where they stood. ‘And I think we’ll go at the double too.’

They dashed across the yard and up the passageway. When they emerged it was to run full tilt into a man standing stationary in the open air at the farther end. He stepped back, at the same time whipping something from his pocket. It was a revolver. This time, there could be no doubt whatever about what they were in contact with.

‘Come on, then!’ Remnant had shouted over the man’s shoulder – and with so convincing an urgency that the elementary trick worked. The man spun round apprehensively and Remnant sprang at him. In a second he had gone down with the same sort of thud as had the Medical Superintendent. Remnant knelt beside him, and then glanced up at Jane. ‘Go on,’ he said sharply. It was a tone of command more absolute than any he had used before.

She walked on. She felt a sudden fierce excitement – and at the same time wondered how much more of this she could stand. He was with her again within seconds. She saw that, once more, he was very pale. It was a moment to hold her tongue, but she was physically unable to do so. ‘What did you do to him?’ she asked.

‘Nothing pretty. He’ll be the worse of it for weeks. But it gives us the time we need. He’s behind a bush… And there are the animals.’

They had continued at a run along a narrow lane between high wooden fences. On their left this fence continued to shut out any view but on their right it now turned off at a right angle, and their path was bounded instead by a plantation of fir trees. Among these a number of small pig-like creatures were routing. Jane recalled her queer thoughts at Milton Porcorum. They seemed, somehow, less queer in this setting. It was possible to believe that these snuffling and grunting little creatures had lately been small boys and girls – and that they were themselves approaching the very hall of Circe… She brought her mind back to what Remnant had been saying – ‘What time
do
we need?’ she asked.

‘Not much. If we manage anything at all, it must be soon. Within an hour or so the whole place will be packing up.’

She looked at him incredulously. ‘Packing up?’

‘Certainty. Keep a clear head. Didn’t I say that one had only to put a fist through an affair like this and it crumples? No matter how cleverly the sinister side of the place had been insulated and hidden away, it is almost absurdly vulnerable. Whatever it is, it’s a thoroughly top-heavy piece of villainy, and the chaps who run it must be prepared to fade out at very short notice indeed. And the moment they discover I slugged that fellow behind us, or that I punched poor old Cline on the jaw, they’ll know their hours are numbered. You see, they won’t dare to reckon we broke into their filthy hideout without leaving a word or two behind us. Presently they’ll be on the run. We want to trip them up in the first hundred yards… There seems to be a building through the trees. We’ll make for it.’

They plunged into the little wood. The small pig-like creatures scurried out of their way. Jane thought of the forbidding outer wall, the high wire fence, the men who seemed to prowl the place with guns, the sinister suggestion of inner recesses of the building given over to the perpetration of unspeakable things. She remembered the terror of the little man in the upper reading-room… But Remnant treated the whole impressive structure as so much papier mâché. She hoped he was right. The plantation was no more than a narrow screen of trees, and they now found themselves before a long, low, blank building that ran off indefinitely on either hand. Remnant glanced to his right. ‘Seems to run out from the back of the house. Lit by skylights let into the flat roof. All the windows and doors – and perhaps a corridor – on the other side. Much what we’re looking for, if you ask me. Let’s see if we can get round it on the left.’ They turned and hurried along the blank surface of the building, It would not be a pleasant spot to be brought to bay against. ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ Remnant had come to a halt. Before them was a sheet of water, and into this the end of the building dropped sheer. ‘Take a look at that.’

Jane looked. Before them was a small lake, its banks thickly wooded. Near the centre was an island, almost entirely occupied by a large circular temple of somewhat bleak design. The walls of this were entirely blank, and recessed behind Doric pillars supporting the curved architrave; above this was a somewhat inelegant and incongruous dome. But the odd feature of this not very successful ornamental venture was its being joined to the building they had been skirting – and joined by a drab and utilitarian enclosed wooden bridge. It was like a Bridge of Sighs run up in a drearily functional age.

‘Quite a strong point, in a quiet way.’ Remnant was looking at the temple with a sort of reluctant admiration. ‘Ten to one, it’s the nerve-centre of the whole bit of voodoo we’re inquiring into.’ He glanced at Jane, and she saw that his face was set in new and grim lines. ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’

She felt herself turn pale. ‘You think it looks horrible?’

‘Well – my guess is that it would do with a little airing. And now we go up this apple tree.’

Jane stared. Here at the edge of the little lake there was the ghost of an orchard, and one gnarled and sloping old tree grew close to, and overhung, the building beside them. ‘You mean we get on the roof?’

‘Just that. Then we can either drop down on the other side, where there may be doors and windows, or take a bird’s eye view of things through the skylights. I’d like to know just how the ground lies in this long building before we tackle the island and that temple. We’ll do our final clean-up there, I don’t doubt; but we’ll just have a look at this first.’ Remnant was already on the flat roof, and in a moment he had hauled Jane up beside him. ‘It’s rather raked by the windows of the house. But that can’t be helped.’ He walked to the nearest skylight, knelt down, shaded his eyes and peered in. ‘I can’t see the whole room. But it looks like a small bedroom – and not exactly luxurious. We’ll move on to the next.’

They were unpleasantly exposed, Jane thought, to anybody who was prepared to take an interest in them. But excitement sustained her; she felt a mounting certainty that they were really coming nearer to Geoffrey; and if he, and others, could be rescued at all, Roger Remnant seemed very much the man to do it. He had dropped down beside another skylight. ‘Different cup of tea’, he said. ‘Rather like Cline’s study over again. Leather chairs, handsome books, bathing belles, by some lascivious old Italian over the mantelpiece. What about its belonging to Cline’s opposite number on the research side?… Move on to the next… Looks like a lab. It
is
a lab… And so is this one. As far as I can see all these rooms inter communicate – and they open on a passage on the far side as well. The set-up is pretty clear, wouldn’t you say?’