Authors: KJ Charles
The operator attempted a protest, but he had been taken by surprise, and there was, of course, nothing he could do unless he was to refuse a lady to her face. She hustled him out, and Curtis said into the receiver, to the questioning voice, “I must speak to Sir Maurice Vaizey. A matter of extreme urgency and national security. Get him now. A man’s life is at stake.”
Curtis came out of the hut a few moments later, and joined Fen and the operator in marvelling at the operation of the generator and the wonders of technological progress.
The operator looked awkward as they took their leave. “By rights, sir, miss, I oughtn’t have left the equipment alone even for a minute.”
“We’ve done no harm to it, I’m sure,” Fen assured him.
“No, miss, but it’s more than my job’s worth.”
“I dare say Sir Hubert would understand your courtesy,” Curtis put in. “But if you’d prefer we didn’t mention it to him…?”
“I’d be grateful, sir.”
“Then at least, may I…” Curtis tipped him generously and took Fen’s arm, and they strolled back to the house together in a mood of justified self-satisfaction.
Pat returned to the house not long before the dinner bell, in a flurry of cold air and red cheeks. Curtis had no opportunity to speak to her before she went up to change. It was unavoidable that they both had to be present at dinner. He only hoped that Daniel was in a state to watch over himself for a few hours, and was relieved to see James Armstrong at the dinner table too. He resolved to keep an eye on that young man throughout the evening.
“Where’s Mr. Holt?” commented Pat, in a pause of the conversation. “Has he left us as well?”
“We’re not quite sure,” said Lady Armstrong. “He went out this morning for a bicycle ride, I understand, and he hasn’t come back.”
“Perhaps he got a puncture. The roads are awfully stony. I say, I wonder if it was him I saw.”
“You saw him?” James’s voice was sharp.
“I don’t know if I saw him,” Pat said patiently. “I saw a fellow who might have been him, on a bicycle, at about lunchtime, I suppose. I was having a bite to eat up that stony outcrop perhaps seven miles northeast of here.”
“Oh, Pat, you are exhausting.” Fen gave her an affectionate look. “So desperately healthy.”
“But could it have been Holt?” James demanded.
“Miss Merton said, she doesn’t know.” Lady Armstrong’s tone held a hint of command. “We’ve men out on the roads. There’s nothing more to be done for now.”
“It’s almost certainly a puncture.” Pat spoke with conviction. “I shouldn’t bicycle here, I must say, one would be forever changing tires.”
“Oh, you’re a lady cyclist?” Mrs. Lambdon asked with some disapproval, and the conversation turned, to Curtis’s relief, away from the man he had killed.
He managed a word with Pat before bed when the two women engineered the evening card tables so that the three of them were engaged in a game of Reunion. By this point Curtis had developed a respect for their organisational powers that verged on awe.
“He’s not ill,” Pat murmured. “He’s got my revolver, and the door’s locked. Bring water.”
“Is he all right?” Curtis asked, as quietly as he could.
Pat gave him a look that struck him as a little too sympathetic. “Highly strung. He’ll do.”
Fen took a trick with great glee at that point, and Curtis returned his attention to the game as best he could, which was to say that he was thoroughly trounced.
He waited with almost unbearable impatience for the party to break up that night. It was taking on a nightmarish aspect now he knew the masks these people wore. Sir Hubert’s jovial manner seemed a parody of itself. James Armstrong and Lambdon struck him as not bluff but brutish, and Lady Armstrong’s fluttering, affectionate ways were repulsive in their glaring falseness. He made himself smile and chat and play, and went to his room with fervent gratitude at the earliest opportunity.
Chapter Twelve
He waited till past midnight before slipping from the house, armed with a flask of water, a hip flask of whisky, a cold chicken pie pilfered from the kitchen, and a revolver. He took even more care than before, treading as lightly as he could to get over the gravel around the house, and keeping to the shadows of the trees, away from the drifts of autumn leaves, rain-sodden though they were. He was aware that the Armstrongs’ men might still be out looking for Holt, and wished he had Daniel’s stealth, but he encountered nobody on his cautious way up to the folly.
The door was locked. He knocked, softly, and then stood back, feeling very exposed, so that he was visible from the window. He hoped Daniel wasn’t asleep.
There was the scrape of a heavy wooden bar, and the door opened.
Daniel stood in the doorway, rumpled, unshaven and disreputable in the baggy stolen garments, and Curtis’s heart twisted at the sight. He hurried into the folly. Daniel barred the door behind him and turned.
Curtis had meant to ask at once whether Daniel had seen anything to suggest he’d been found, but the words had vanished from his mind. He was paralysed with the desire to take the man in his arms again, just to hold him close and feel his warmth.
“Curtis.”
“Christ, I’m glad to see you,” Curtis said with unthinking honesty.
“I’m glad to see you too. Not as glad as I was last time we met. But then, I never want to be quite so pathetically grateful to see anyone again.” Daniel’s voice sounded strong enough, but there was a twist of something nastily mocking in there.
Curtis tried to read his face in the darkness. “Are you all right?”
“Thanks to you. And the remarkable Miss Merton, of course. If James Armstrong had come along, I’m positive she’d have shot him on sight.”
“I’m glad she didn’t,” Curtis said, matching Daniel’s dry tone, because there was nothing of his own need in the other man’s voice.
Control yourself, you damned fool.
“I’ve rather promised myself that I’ll break his neck.”
Daniel tilted his head, assessing. He was two feet away, and Curtis was vividly, physically aware of him, so close, not moving closer. “Have you? Yes, I believe you have. It would be better if you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“We need to know what they’ve sold and to whom. Sir Hubert and Lady Armstrong are bright, Holt’s dead. The egregious James is by far the most likely to talk, once in custody. You’ll notice I’m assuming that you’ve managed to summon help.”
“I spoke to Sir Maurice this afternoon. He’s sending men up, to be here by the morning. We’ve just to wait it out now. For which purpose, I’ve a revolver, food and drink.”
“Water, or actual drink?”
“Both.”
“I do like you.”
The tone was light enough, but the words hung in the air just a little too long. Curtis stared at the dark shape, wishing he could see better.
“Come up here, it’s less uncomfortable.” Daniel led the way up the winding stair to the mezzanine, where the mullioned windows let in what moonlight there was. “What’s happened about Holt?”
“He’s been missed, of course. James is suspicious of something, though Pat made a good effort to throw him off the track. I don’t think they’re panicking yet.”
“And with luck, our relief will have arrived before they start tomorrow.” The picnic blankets were piled on the wooden floor. Daniel waved a hand in the manner of a gracious host, and they seated themselves, side by side, backs against the stone wall. It was cold, but not unbearably so. Curtis passed over food and water.
“Thanks.” Daniel took a bite of pie. “Tell me. How did you know I was there, in the cave?”
“Well, I couldn’t see how you’d have upped sticks with all your things. The Armstrongs claimed you’d been asked to leave for cheating at cards with Holt and Armstrong—”
“If I had cheated that pair at cards, you would know about it because they’d both be wandering around in their drawers, having lost the shirts off their backs.”
“I
thought
you’d be able to fuzz cards.” Curtis felt obscurely proud of his colleague’s accomplishments.
“I can; I didn’t. Go on.”
Curtis explained about Armstrong’s remark and the inference he’d drawn. Daniel turned and stared at him. He shifted uncomfortably. “What?”
“You walked two miles to explore a cave in the middle of the night, based on a chance remark of that insupportable cretin Armstrong?”
“It was the only idea I had. I couldn’t think what else to do.”
“I’m not arguing, I’m marvelling at my own good fortune. Listen, Curtis, I can’t tell you how grateful I am—”
“Don’t. No, really, you thanked me quite enough last night.” That wasn’t true, as such, but he had no need for gratitude, and he couldn’t bear that tremor of anger and shame in Daniel’s voice. “It was no more than any decent man would have done under the circumstances, and you’d have done the same for me.”
“I hate to disabuse you, my dear fellow, but I wouldn’t do it for my own mother. I’m an utter coward about being underground. And have learned a valuable lesson about keeping that fact to myself.”
“I knew a fellow with a dreadful fear of spiders,” Curtis offered. “In the army. Big chap, near my size, tough as old boots, and terrified of a little spider, poor chap.”
“And doubtless you all ridiculed him for it without mercy. I’m well aware it’s irrational, and cowardly, and whatever you like. I just—feel the earth above me, that’s all. I can feel the entire weight of it, millions of tons, millions of years, pressing down on my head—”
Curtis put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “Do you know what a sergeant told me before I went into battle for the first time?”
“No?”
“He said his best advice was to get to the latrines in good time, because a good few of us were going to soil ourselves in terror.” Daniel twisted round to look at him, and Curtis grinned at his expression. “What I mean is, one can’t help one’s fears. The question isn’t if you’re a fellow who cries in the night before a big engagement—and I knew a damned brave man who did exactly that, regularly. It’s whether you pick yourself up the next day.”
“What was your rank?” Daniel asked.
“Captain.”
“Really. I’m astonished you weren’t a general.”
That was waspish, but more the Daniel he knew. After a second, Daniel leaned against him, and Curtis shifted his arm around his neck, just to make them both more comfortable.
“Were you afraid?” Daniel asked abruptly. “In battle?”
“Not much. I’ve very little imagination. It’s the imaginative chaps who suffer.”
“‘The coward dies a thousand deaths’?”
Curtis shook his head. “These chaps put themselves at risk for their country. Cowards don’t do that.”
Daniel was silent for a few moments, but Curtis was sure his body had lost some of its tension. He watched the back of his dark head, the nape of his neck. He wanted, so much, to lean forward, to touch that skin with his lips, the lightest brush.
He asked, “What happened, anyway? How did they catch you?”
“Oh, rotten luck. I let myself into the service corridor while everyone was downstairs—I thought it was most likely to be unoccupied then. Unfortunately, that brute March came along with a couple of his pals, and he summoned Holt. I had no chance of talking my way out of it to that pair, and from inside the corridor, it’s impossible not to see what they’re up to, with the cameras and mirrors.” Daniel shifted his weight closer against Curtis. “And of course Holt doesn’t like me, what with my irritating habit of Judaism, and that stupid showy performance at billiards, from which I really could have refrained.” He sighed. “I have
not
covered myself in glory on this mission.”
Curtis tightened his arm. “So what happened then?”
“Well, Holt wanted to know how I got in there. Whether you knew what I was doing. I went all whiny East End in an effort to persuade him I was just an opportunistic thief, but he chose not to believe me. Which was when he came up with the bright idea of the cave.” Curtis felt his convulsive swallow. “The idea being, you see, that after a day underground I should be ready to tell them whatever they wanted, which was of course quite correct, except that it didn’t take anything like a day, not with that bloody water dripping down like stones falling and the c-cold—” He stopped short, then took a deep breath, exhaled hard, and went on with just the barest tremor in his voice. “Holt was too clever for his own good. I don’t honestly think he believed I was more than a thief. I think he wanted to find a reason to torture me. Or even, to torture
somebody
, and I happened to be in a vulnerable position.”
“I’m damned sorry I gave him the idea with that blasted story.”
“I’m not. For one thing, I shouldn’t have preferred it if he’d used knives or needles. For another, it’s thanks to his desire to see me go mad underground that you were able to reach me, for which—”
“Sssh.” Curtis pulled him closer and felt Daniel twist to slip his arms round his chest.
They held each other in silence, in the chilly dark, with the faint light of the moon through the mullioned window casting everything grey. Curtis found, to his own slight surprise, that he was stroking Daniel’s hair. Daniel wasn’t objecting.