[The Girl From UNCLE 04] - The Cornish Pixie Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 35

"Is there a way that would bring us out inside Wright's grounds from here, though? That's the point now."

"Sure there is. Don't you want to try and get Mr. Slate out first?"

April sighed. "The assignment comes first," she said miserably. "We have to stop THRUSH, and that means nailing people like Wright. If we go for Mr. Slate first, we may be too late: the Wrights are being taken off in a submarine."

"But it may take time to get them. We might not make it. We may be too late for Mr. Slate..."

"Just show me the way, Ernie," the girl said harshly, "and leave the decisions to me."

Twenty minutes later, the boy was heaving at a square stone set in the ceiling of the passageway. They had zigzagged endlessly from tunnel to tunnel, with frequent references to Ernie's rough map, and at last they had hit a wider gallery in the rock which he recognised. In the fading light from the torch, he hurried to the end of a short cul-de-sac and began to search the rough-hewn ceiling for the trapdoor.

"Here we are then," he exclaimed triumphantly, "it's still here okay! Comes out in the middle of a ruined chapel, so we needn't worry about noise. When this place was the manor house..." He began to push at the stone slab.

The passageway was just short of six feet high, so that he had plenty of leverage. When April joined him, there was a shower of dust from the crevice all around the stone and it moved slightly. A moment later, the trapdoor lifted at one end...and then it was up and over with a crash that seemed to split the night and they were hauling themselves painfully up into the open air.

Through a wood and across a small field was the house. They could see through the lighted French windows the burnished hair of the woman who was crouched in front of the huge Devon grate tending a fire of papers, which she fed from time to time with documents from a suitcase open on the floor beside her. Wright himself, his silver hair as immaculate as ever, came in through the doorway, beyond which they could see stairs curving up in a gracious sweep. He was carrying two lightweight valises.

April sank down behind an ornamental shrub on the lawn, motioning the boy to keep out of sight behind her. Cautiously, she parted the spiky branches and peered through.

Instantly a bell started ringing wildly and the lawn was flooded with the livid glare of a dozen spotlights. For one frozen moment, she saw the THRUSH man arrested in mid-step, his mouth open in surprise, and then he had dropped the valises and leapt for the doorway to plunge the room into darkness. Obviously she had unwittingly touched off one of the alarms with which the place was ringed.

Footsteps clattered round the corner of the house from the stable yard. Mason appeared with a shotgun in his hands and stood at the edge of the lawn, squinting suspiciously out into the floodlit area. A shout from behind a hedge on the far side of the facade testified that Jacko, too, was out in defence of his master's domain... and then the voice of Wright himself was calling (April thought from an unlit upper window): "Out there, you fools! On the lawn, behind that bush at the side of the lily pond... There's just the girl and a man, as far as I can see. Get in there and get them!"

The girl had been unwrapping another of the smoke- producing pastilles from the packet in her bag. Now, before Mason or Jacko could start shooting, she lobbed it into the lily pond. As soon as the smoke boiled up, she screamed, "Run, Ernie! Run!" as loud as she could — and held Bosustow's arm in steely fingers to make sure that he stayed exactly where he was. A fusillade of shots rang out as the impenetrable screen mushroomed up and then streamed across the lawn before the wind. Wright, firing now from upstairs, and Jacko, using some heavy calibre revolver, were raking the blanked off area in the belief that they were stealing across the lawn behind the cover of the smoke. Mason was advancing cautiously towards it across the stretch of grass that was still visible, his more cumbersome weapon held in reserve.

April waited until he was some way past them, facing the billowing black cloud. Then, motioning the boy to stay where he was, she stole out from behind the bush on tiptoe and silently approached behind the chauffeur. When she was immediately behind him, she called clearly, "No! Back this way, Ernie," and threw herself to the grass.

In the instant that Mason swung the shotgun round towards her, there was a blast of fire from the far side of the smoke screen — four shots in quick succession from Jacko's revolver and two coughing reports from the direction of the house that sounded ominously like an express rifle.

Had she in fact been where she had led them to believe, April would have stood little chance of escape. The chauffeur was hurled a yard backwards by the impact of several bullets, dropped the shotgun, spun round with upraised arms and then crashed to the ground. He twitched once and then lay still.

"One," whispered April as she wormed her way back be hind the bush to the boy. "Grab that 12-bore and follow me..."

They circled the illuminated lawn, crunching their way through an herbaceous border loud with dead leaves. There had been no sound from beyond the screen since the shots... And then suddenly the woman's voice: "You imbeciles! You've been tricked into shooting Mason... and now they have his gun.

"Good!" the girl breathed. "That means she's out in the garden too. Now, we're going to go indoors and see what surprises we can work there!"

She flattened herself against a wall laced with peach trees as the huge bulk of Jacko pounded across the gap at the far end of a short avenue of yew bushes. From the far side of the terrace, high heels tapped in the other direction.

April and the boy stole down the avenue, skirted a summer house, and found themselves outside the French windows. The house was in complete darkness. In the blaze of light which centred on the lily pond, the last vestiges of smoke wreathed about the inert figure of the dead chauffeur. Jacko and the woman were somewhere near the garage: they could hear their voices over the roof.

With infinite care, the girl pressed the latch on the nearest door. It sank down silently and the French window swung open. Inside, there was warm air and a hint of tobacco smoke, the lingering fragrance of a cigar — a domestic scent distorted by the harsh tang of charred papers in the grate. Through the drawing room, wide doors gave on to a darkened hallway. a chequerboard of moonlight was admitted through a leaded window near the front door, and against the subdued luminance of stained glass they could make out the silhouette of banisters slanting up towards the first floor. Somewhere a clock ticked slowly.

Catching the boy by the hand, April edged towards the stairs. Abruptly the hall was blazed with light and, from behind and above them, Wright's supercilious voice drawled:

"Stay exactly where you are. This is a Mannlicher — I don't need to remind you of its muzzle velocity. It reloads very fast: I could drill the two of you before you'd moved two steps. Jacko! Come here... indoors... I've got a job for you

There was an answering cry from the terrace. There followed the thunder of heavy feet in the drawing room — and suddenly the whole place, it seemed to April, was full of people. Dark figures materialised from the foyer, the kitchen quarters, the cloakroom, even the upstairs passages, and in an instant the house resounded to the noise of hand to hand combat!

The intruders, she saw with stupefaction, were all policemen, led by the redoubtable Superintendent Curnow.