CHAPTER XII.
BARRAGE
1
At times when I recall that insane reconnaissance in the woods of Felsenweir, I know we were mad to have undertaken it. But this is because I fail to reconquer the spirit which drove us: desperation.
We had all in our different ways made light of the last warning and had concealed the real dread which it had inspired. Speaking for myself, I know now that I was behaving as a man behaves who has only one hour to live.
I was out to die fighting.
A shallow ditch bordered the woods and on the bank above it was a high hedge reinforced by barbed wire. Felsenweir was well protected. That point of access which Lonergan had discovered palpably was one in general use; in fact, a cleverly camouflaged gate, the hedge at this point being synthetic. Barbed wire terminated to right and left of the opening. A bolt was concealed amid this unnatural shrubbery. How any man could have discovered such a device was a problem which defeated me until:
“I saw a guy go in,” Lonergan explained.
He fumbled for and found the bolt. Presently he swung back what appeared to be a section of hedge. I wondered again as I had wondered before what could be the connecting link reconciling clever human agency and the seemingly supernatural.
Somewhere beyond that patch of moonlight in the shadows which hid the car, Gaston Max was watching us. But I could not see him.
I followed Lonergan and he partly closed but did not shut the masked gate.
“From here,” said he, “is a path right up through the trees. But we’re lucky if we find it.”
There was a queer blue half-light among the pines reflected from the sky. Max had lent me his electric torch and as we passed beyond the hedge I drew it from my pocket; but:
“Don’t flash a torch,” said Lonergan. “Stand still for a minute with your eyes closed. Stay that way until I give the word. You’ll find you can see like a cat.”
I accepted his guidance unchallenged. It was elementary woodcraft. Darkness so great as that which we produce when we close our eyes is rare. By contrast, half-light becomes full visibility.
“Open ’em,” said Lonergan.
I opened my eyes. What had appeared as impenetrable shadow was impenetrable no longer. For ten or fifteen paces ahead I could trace the path.
“All I know of this old trail,” Lonergan went on, “is what you can see. I got it from the highroad. I was covering the kite who went in. Where it leads, and if it’s beset with ‘pitfall and with gin,’ I can’t say.”
His quotation from Omar was illuminating. John Lonergan was truly a remarkable man.
We stood awhile, getting our bearings. The silence was intense—almost unnatural. Normally, nature is never still, day or night. I listened in vain for those furtive sounds which tell of wild life disturbed.
“I’ve studied around here in the daytime.” Lonergan spoke in a hushed voice. “Never a thing moves in these woods: not a bird—not a squirrel—not a rabbit.” …
My feeling of spiritual oppression grew deeper. Amid a hush in which our movements seemed to create a tremendous disturbance, we moved forward cautiously.…
“Did you ever see a plan of the castle?”
“No.”
We were talking in that hushed undertone one employs when visiting a cathedral.
“I did. It took me long enough to find one; but I found it at last. From the main gate below there’s a military road winding all around the hill at a fair gradient. There used to be other defences at intervals, but they’re defunct, I gather. Then there’s a deep dry ditch, a drawbridge commanded by two towers, and a twenty-yard path leading up to the old guard room.”
“Then I think we should turn left and get on to the road.”
“Do you? Think again.”
The ill-humoured growl, coming from one who in appearance was not only a mild-faced clergyman but also a perfect stranger, sounded indescribably strange.
“We keep off that road like a pussyfoot keeps off whisky. Get it out of your bean that we’re exploring a deserted ruin. If there are men in armour on the walls, why not on the road?”
Men in armour! I think, up to this point, indeed from the moment of meeting Lonergan, disguised, at the Regal, I had moved through subsequent nightmares in a sort of mental stupor. Certainly, the actual facts of our situation now came to me with all the shock of novelty.…
We had until midnight! Pitted against veritable powers of darkness—a bodiless Voice, those flying things—we were advancing upon a castle guarded by giant men in armour!
2
“Stop!”
Lonergan grasped my arm.
We had been following a faintly defined path sloping steeply upward. I thought we must soon come upon one of the windings of the road. Now, a sort of clearing showed ahead. Moonlight burst through, creating a very eerie impression, and reminding me of a setting of Gordon Craig’s for Macbeth.
An appalling stench of rottenness came to my nostrils.
“With that moonlight in front it doesn’t matter,” Lonergan muttered. “Shoot your torch down on the ground—right here, at my feet.”
I did as he directed.
Not a yard ahead amongst the tangled undergrowth lay a dead fox.…
But the result of my action had far stranger consequences. The carcase was a mass of moving colour!
A sort of dermestes beetle was busy. Their wing cases shone like metal in the ray. But, beautiful yet horrible, a cloud of brightly coloured moths of the death’s head or hawk moth family rose as unexpected light touched that filthy banquet.
“Suffering Moses! Light out!”
I switched off the ray of the torch. Some of the beetles had taken flight as well. These beautiful nocturnal things disturbed at their feast flew out into the moonlight toward the clearing. In a new, breathless silence, faint humming of the hawk moths’ wings was clearly audible.
Then—just as those brilliant insects became visible in the moonlight—one by one, in quick succession, moths and beetles fell! As though the radiance of the moon had meant instant death, they were stricken!
Lonergan grasped my arm.
“Watch! … watch those things falling!”
I pressed the button of the torch again, flashing a ray to right and left. The cause of the stench became evident. The fox was not the only victim.
Hares there were and birds—most of them plucked clean as though long dead; but some, the hosts of beetles and other carrion guests which rose as my ray disturbed them… only to drop in the light of the moon!
“Woodville!” Lonergan’s voice was hoarse, low pitched. “Woodville! We’re on the edge of a death zone! Nothing can live in that clearing!”
I was clammy, icily cold.
“Back! Back!” I whispered. “There’s an invisible barrage!”
3
Stumbling and slipping, we headed back down the slope. Through the trees in ghostly ranks below us I could see a patch of highroad touched by the moon. Somewhere right of it Gaston Max waited.
Only by a monstrous effort of will did I restrain myself from leaping blindly through the darkness like a wild thing fleeing the hunter.
Up there on the hillside silent Death had awaited us. Was the murder zone fixed mechanically? Was it mobile… sentient… controlled by some evil spider whose eyes, even now, were watching our futile struggles?
One gleam of hope there was in the black horror of my panic. That carrion stretched in the undergrowth suggested that the invisible barrage had been put down at this exact point before. Where they lay, their death leaps had carried them.
“Left!” came Lonergan’s husky voice. “Bear more left. The gate’s five yards this side the light patch.”
Fifteen, twenty staggering paces we made, and nearly reached the hedge—freedom… when:
“Who’s there?”
Lonergan pulled up, grasping my arm.
“Lonergan!”
“Max!”
A ray of light shone out from Lonergan’s torch. We stood so far above the hedge that the ray shot over it and directly upon the pale face of Gaston Max looking upward at us.
In which very moment, and whilst we stood rooted to the spot, came a queer piping cry from high above our heads. A heavy body fell from some lofty, outstretching branch and crashed into the ditch beyond the hedge.…
I saw Max stoop, peer down—move forward.
“Stand still!” I cried. “Stand still, Max! Don’t stir, for your life!”
My voice was totally unfamiliar to me.
The light of Lonergan’s torch became extinguished. I heard him groan.
“Max was wrong! We’ve been covered right along! There’s a second barrage! It’s just been laid down. That’s why the owl fell. We’re trapped between the two! …”
4
Amid many dreadful memories of those days and nights I find that this moment holds a unique place. There stood our ally. There lay the open road: escape, freedom. An invisible wall separated us!
Death lay in wait upon the slopes above, behind us… perhaps, even now, was creeping down stealthily. Death was before us, unseen, uncanny.…
As once before, since I had found myself in the Black Forest, I fought with a ghastly desire to scream—or to laugh. A mad pageant of my life passed feverishly across my brain. Alone, a solitary, appealing figure, at the end of it—Marusa… and I clenched my teeth.
Max was speaking. I retain no recollection of his words. I think he was suggesting plans. None of them, I fear, would have saved us. But Fate had designed a better plan than any of the three could have conceived.
“Stop!” Lonergan’s harsh voice definitely brought me to my senses. “I want to listen.”
Max ceased speaking. The American agent, whose hearing was more acute than that of any man I had ever known, touched my shoulder sharply.
“There’s somebody coming along the road,” he declared. “Do you hear him, Max?”
“I hear nothing,” the Frenchman replied.
“All the same there’s somebody coming—and it’s a hundred to one he’s coming here! If he opens the gate, it’s safe for us to open it. There’s maybe a neutral path through the zones. It’s up to you, Max! We’ll beat back some way and take cover.”
“Rely upon me, my friends.”
We heard light movements, and Gaston Max was gone.
“Back, Woodville! We’re all exposed here. No noise.”
I stumbled back up the slope and lay at full length beside Lonergan in clammy, choking undergrowth, waiting and listening.
At last I heard the footsteps! … Nearer they drew, and nearer—a sound of possible salvation!—until, although I could not see the road, I realized that whoever approached must be near to the camouflaged gate.
Came a sharp scuffle, an angry cry… silence… a sort of muttered conversation… silence again.
“There’s the gate!” Lonergan whispered. “Somebody coming in! Your gun handy?”
“Yes.”
I rose stealthily to my knees, prepared I thought for any human emergency. But as I did so…
Coming up the slope, a vague, gigantic outline against the dim moonlight on the roadway beyond, was a huge figure, apparently some seven feet high!
A sharp inhalation from my companion told me that he too had seen the apparition.
“It’s one of the Things in armour! Poor Max has gone! Don’t shoot till I give the word.” …
Closer, and closer yet, came the Thing—always with moonlight behind it. My trigger finger grew tense; when:
“Don’t shoot, Lonergan!” came the voice of Gaston Max. “I can see you, although you cannot see me. I have my back to the light.”
At a bound I came to my feet. Lonergan sprang upright beside me. I saw a tall fellow of the peasant class (more I could not determine in that light) upon whose broad shoulders, like the fabled Old Man of the Sea, Gaston Max was mounted, his pistol thrust against the head of his unwilling carrier!
“Suffering Moses!”
“Quick! Follow! I thought the danger might be electrical and that this one wore insulated boots—hence, my friends, the apparent clowning! He tells me it is not so. He would not lie! Follow, quickly!” …
I found myself stumbling down the slope again behind captive and captor. The gate was open and we came out upon the road.
“Cover this fellow,” said Max.
Lonergan’s pistol was rammed into the man’s ribs as Gaston Max sprang lightly from his strange perch.
“Now,” said Lonergan, “beat it to the car. It’s still touch and go!”
We ran along the lighted patch already growing narrower; and:
“For God’s sake,” groaned the prisoner, who seemed to me to be a decent type of labourer, “don’t take me with you! Don’t take me with you!”
“Keep right on!” Lonergan pushed the man before him. “You can tell us a whole lot about Felsenweir! Show a light, Woodville.”
Max sprang to the wheel. Lonergan and I with our prisoner bundled into the back of the car.
“I can tell you nothing,” the man groaned. “I can tell you nothing! It just means my death—if I speak—if I go with you! It means my death!”
Max got the engine started.
“Don’t turn her!” Lonergan shouted. “Go right ahead like blazes!”
“I go!” Max cried back.
Off we went headlong, and for three miles we raced blindly through the night. We were silent and the prisoner was strangely still.
When at last those lights marking the outskirts of the town came into view, I uttered a sigh of relief.
It was as I did so that the Voice spoke! …
“Gaston Max!”
Max pulled up the Hispano-Suiza in two lengths.
“John Lonergan!”
Dimly, over the oddly relaxed figure between us, I saw Lonergan sit rigidly upright.
“Brian Woodville!”
Max turned. I could see his eyes glaring in his pale face. Somewhere a clock began to chime the hour…
Midnight!
“Gaston Max—you shall survive for a thousand years, that future ages may look upon a clever man.… John Lonergan—you almost succeeded in deceiving me. Your reward shall be oblivion.… Brian Woodville—upon you the decision shall rest…”
Silence!
The man seated between Lonergan and myself slipped limply to the floor of the car.
“Merciful God!” Lonergan groaned.
Our prisoner’s former stillness was explained. He was dead!