The Opening Score
TWICE the butler raised the angle of his flashlight, revealing to Bony that they were crossing a wide gravelled area hemmed by the house, the observatory, the outbuildings, and the stacks of fodder. It was obvious that the two girls had taken this little journey before, because, without direction from their escort, they walked straight to one of the outbuildings.
Before the door of this building they stopped and the man passed them, to throw his light upon the lock, which he proceeded to free. The door was pushed inward. The girls entered, an interior light was switched on, and the butler then relocked the door. When he stalked back to the house, Bony was lying full length at the base of the observatory.
The man having entered the house, Bony crossed to the outbuildings. It was constructed of stone blocks, and it needed no light to inform him that the door was heavy and solid and that it was secured by a bolt kept in place by a padlock of the Yale type.
He could hear the murmuring voices of the inmates, and without making his presence known to them, he circled the building, and so arrived below a small window set high in the wall. The window was open, and the light within revealed thick iron bars bisecting it. Here the voices were louder but the words indistinguishable.
Bony waited until the light went out, and then, reaching up, he began to tap a tattoo upon the window-sill. When nothing happened he so employed his wire sword as the drumstick, and then above the soft tapping came a voice asking who it was.
“A friend,” he called softly. “Don’t put on the light.”
He jumped and caught hold of the lowest bar, pulling himself upward so that his face was above the sill. He could feel the warmth of the room. A vague shape moved just beyond the bars and the sound of quick breathing played upon his ears.
“Are you Mavis Sanky and Beryl Carson?” he whispered.
An exclamation, and then steadily:
“Yes. Who are you? What do you want?”
“Well, for one thing, I want to get you out. I presume you would like to be free. As I told you, I’m a friend-and a policeman. I want you to answer my questions as shortly as possible because time is vital.”
“All right.”
“Tell me how many hands are employed here?”
“Seven.”
“Whereabouts are they quartered, do you know?”
“Two, no, three buildings from here. On my right. But they’ll be over at the house with the Bensons and their visitors.”
“The hands were not at table with the company this evening?” Bony queried.
“Oh yes, they were. All of them excepting the two who are away. They’re not real stockmen.”
“I didn’t think so. When are the absent two expected back, d’you know?”
“Tonight,” replied a different voice. “I heard Heinrich ask Mr. Benson, and he said they should have been back from Dunkeld before it was dark. They’re not stockmen, as Mavis said. They’re all foreigners, excepting the Bensons and that man from the hotel.”
“And you were abducted, were you not?”
“Yes,” indignantly. “They were waiting for us on the road-after we left the hotel. They forced us into a car and we fought them, so they chloroformed us or something. The last thing I remember was seeing that old yardman at the hotel looking out from behind some bushes. We were brought here and compelled to work for Miss Benson.”
“We refused, of course,” said the other girl, and when Bony asked what then happened, her voice was vibrant with anger. “They whipped us. They tied our hands together round a post. She was there and counted the strokes. Heinrich did it with a whip with lots of thongs on it. Ten strokes that woman counted for each of us. We went on strike again a few weeks after that and got fifteen strokes that time. We daren’t refuse to work after that, scrubbing and washing and waiting at table for the beasts.”
“Oh, please get us out of here. Smash the door down or something.”
“No, Beryl, not that. They would hear. Mister-out there-you might get the key of the door bolt. It’s hanging on a nail just inside the side door.”
“The door by which you left the house?” Bony asked.
“Yes, that’s the door. Will you try to get it?”
“I won’ttry to get it,” Bony said. “I’ll just get it. Now you dress and wait for me. I may not return for an hour, but be patient. Now tell me. What’s going on here?”
“We don’t know. It’s something inside the observatory. They hold a kind of service over there, generally at night. They’re going to have a service tonight. Yes, there’s the organ.”
“Who attends the service?”
“Everyone who’s here.”
“What about this Heinrich man?”
“Oh, he goes too. Serves them with drinks and refreshments.”
“How long does the service continue?” Bony pressed.
“Two hours at least. Sometimes much longer.”
“You don’t know what kind of service?”
“Can’t even guess. That hotel man plays the organ, and sometimes someone or other sings. It’s all foreign to us.”
“All right,” Bony whispered. “Now I’ll be going. Dress in the dark and be ready. Have you your walking-shoes?”
“No. They took our shoes from us the day after they brought us here. Shoes! It’ll be weeks before we can wear shoes again after having had to wear slippers for months.”
Hands reached forward and became clasped over Bony’s hands gripping the bars.
“You’ll take care, won’t you?”
Bony chuckled encouragingly, and he said with a confidence he dared not mistrust:
“Don’t you worry. I’ll be all right. Anyway, there’s a friend of mine not very far away. I wonder if you know him. Which of you is Mavis Sanky?”
The hands upon his own pressed hard, and their owner gave the affirmative reply.
“His name is Glen Shannon.”
“Glen!” almost shouted the girl, and her friend hushed her and cried: “You always said your American would come looking for you, didn’t you?”
“Well, he has been looking for you, and you will see him soon. So both be good girls and obey orders, and don’t switch on your light or make any noise. I’ll get that key, but it may take time. Aurevoir!”
Relaxing his grip, he dropped to the ground, picked up the wire, and passed round to the front of the building.
Opposite was the observatory, two wide windows set very wide apart appearing as the eyes of a pagan idol emitting music instead of fire. To the left, the house, with its main entrance illumined by a porch light. The side door was open and he could see a small hall beyond.
Once again the shapeless shape danced through the corridors of the night. Bony located the hands’ quarters, a spacious building and empty of light. His nose located the paint and oil stores, and fire was the natural idea-association with oil. The door being unlocked, he entered, and with his fingers found a tapped drum of kerosene and an empty bucket which he filled from the drum. Diversionary tactics are easily executed, and with greater celerity, by the application of kerosene and a lighted match to a fodder stack.
One of the stacks was of oats, and it had been broken open. Loose straw was there, which he piled against the open cut and saturated with the kerosene. The ignited match could be applied if and when events decided the moment.
Everything he saw, even in the darkness, bespoke the wealth and the prosperity of the owner of Baden Park. There was no litter. Somewhere in the distance, removed that its noise would not disturb, hummed a powerful generating plant. The garage building contained seven stalls, each having an automatic door, whilst under one great iron roof was enough machinery to work a dozen ordinary farms.
Satisfied that he was now familiar with the scene of the probable battle to come, Bony drifted back to the observatory and discovered several points of interest. The building was square in shape, its thirty-feet high walls of granite blocks supporting the cupola, and its only doorway facing towards the house. The door was ajar. It was almost four inches thick and was fitted with heavy iron hinges reaching almost across its width, like the door of an old church. There was no keyhole and no fastening bolt. Near the left-hand corner a series of iron rungs gave access to the cupola, Bony assuming that when the telescope was installed certain mechanism required periodic attention.
As though to a time-table, people appeared in the main doorway of the house, and Bony skipped to the far side of the observatory and peered round the wall angle to watch the house party arrive. They walked slowly and solemnly, as people walk to church. The butler pushed open the door, stood aside, then went in last. The door was partly closed, leaving a five-inch ribbon of light to fall upon the ground.
The music faded into silence, and the enthralled Bony could hear the subdued voices within. They went on for perhaps a minute, when the organist began again to play and Heinrich emerged and went back to the house, where he switched off the exterior light over the main door, closed that door, and passed to the secondary or side door. Bony could see him cross what appeared to be a small hall and disappear beyond.
The organ produced sound like the wind in faraway trees, rising and falling, and gradually gaining in strength until it became the rolling drums of a funeral march.
He was tempted to steal to the door and peer within. What he might see was tearing his patience to shreds, but he could not risk discovery until he had removed the imprisoned girls to safety. He recognised the influence of the music, the stirring of his pulses, the arousing of emotion at the cost of caution. Himself no musician, he had to offer silent tribute to the organist, for the music was claiming him, touching him with its magic fingers, removing control of imagination.
The influence of the music was such that he did not see Heinrich until the butler had left the house, leaving the side door open, and was half-way to the observatory door. And then, instead of waiting, immediately the man had entered the observatory, Bony ran to the side door, turned to see if he had been observed, and went in through the doorway back first, snatching the key hanging from the nail.
Movement in the small hall spun him round to face a man who had entered from the passage beyond and now stood with astonishment in his steel-blue eyes at sight of the tattered and bootless Bonaparte. A yard only separated them.
Bony’s reactions came in sequence. First a feeling of annoyance with himself at not counting the men who had entered the observatory, for this man must have been one of the round dozen he had seen at table. Then followed the feeling of frustration, for, although he had the key, there was still the prison door to be opened without being observed, and other matters to attend to without his presence being noted. Nothing could be permitted to thwart the success of his plans.
The man regarding Bony was distinctly hostile. He took one pace nearer to him, and his right hand flashed upward into the left-hand side of his evening jacket. Voluntary action with him then ceased. The wire sword hissed and fell across his exposed wrist. He staggered back, raised his head to shout, and so exposed his throat to the bite of the wire.
There was no scream. Bony had him in his arms before he could collapse to the floor.