Read Online A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Geoffrey Household
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I could find again even in the dark. Relieved of that, he ran like a man with a guilty conscience.
We swerved back, following the contour line below the copse where my innocent statistician had sat and counted traffic, and began to pound up the slope at an angle. This was stumbling, not running; and our pursuers drew up into close touch. They couldn’t see us–or only as occasional bulks against the sky–but they couldn’t fail to hear us.
They had had time to think and began to call:
“Lex! Lex!”
“That vos the voice of Peenk,” said the passenger in a firm Central European accent, and half stopping.
I shoved him on.
“Run, Lex! Pink’s the police informer. I’m getting you to Heyne-Hassingham.”
Thank the Lord he was high up in the party! That name seemed to be immediate proof of my bona fides. He crashed along the side of that hill like a startled heifer, through bush and over rabbit hole. We increased our lead a bit, and I took a chance on being where I thought I was. I pulled them round behind a thorn brake, through a gap in the furze and down onto the ground. As we dropped flat on the turf, Lex gave a muffled cry of pain.
“Damn these thorns!” hissed Sandorski.
He dug me in the ribs and held out, behind our friend’s back, a little syringe with which he had just jabbed him in the thigh.
The hunt passed us, then checked and turned back. They knew, as soon as they stopped to listen, that we must have gone to ground on the hillside. In the stillness of the night you could hear a man charging across country half a mile away. If only we could have reached the springy turf of the green track above us, we could have run–or jumped or danced, for that matter–without a sound.
They closed in, and flashed torches quickly on and off. They were wise not to spoil their night sight, and it may be, too, that they feared we were armed and desperate. All they could see was a formless black mass of thorn and furze, forbidding search. The twisting track into the heart of it, worn down by the persistent feet of little animals and an occasional sheep, was clear enough from where we lay, but indistinguishable from outside. Two of them were above us and two below us. They made a halfhearted attempt to beat the patch, but the furze was stiff and centuries old; we might have been surrounded by a lion-proof thorn fence.
It was as well that Sandorski’s syringe had done its work, for they started to ask Lex what the devil he thought he was doing. They couldn’t say very much, for they didn’t know who was with him or why the plane had come down in the wrong place or why it had immediately and frantically taken off again. Indeed they couldn’t be certain that Lex had ever got out of the plane at all-–and from their point of view we might be three unknown enemies, or Lex and two. Sandorski’s cavalry tactics had landed us in the most God-awful defenseless position, but at least they had bewitched the opposing force into a nightmare world where nothing made sense.
Hiart’s querulous voice, above us, said:
“For heaven’s sake, don’t go throwing names about!”
Pink, from below us and in a furious temper, told him to beggar off home to his bleeding nanny.
All the same, it wasn’t funny. True, they couldn’t see us till they stepped on us, but they had only to wait till daylight or till we grew impatient.
We heard somebody moving round our patch of cover and giving orders in whispers. I think it was Hiart, for their next move showed a certain subtlety. They shifted noisily about until we hadn’t the faintest notion where any single one of them was, and then preserved the most absolute, disciplined silence.
We were out of the wind on that slope, and there wasn’t a sound. A rare car rushed along the road in the valley beneath. A sheep coughed on the lower ground by the stream. This went on for half an hour. At least I found it to be only half an hour when I looked at my watch. I thought it must be
We swerved back, following the contour line below the copse where my innocent statistician had sat and counted traffic, and began to pound up the slope at an angle. This was stumbling, not running; and our pursuers drew up into close touch. They couldn’t see us–or only as occasional bulks against the sky–but they couldn’t fail to hear us.
They had had time to think and began to call:
“Lex! Lex!”
“That vos the voice of Peenk,” said the passenger in a firm Central European accent, and half stopping.
I shoved him on.
“Run, Lex! Pink’s the police informer. I’m getting you to Heyne-Hassingham.”
Thank the Lord he was high up in the party! That name seemed to be immediate proof of my bona fides. He crashed along the side of that hill like a startled heifer, through bush and over rabbit hole. We increased our lead a bit, and I took a chance on being where I thought I was. I pulled them round behind a thorn brake, through a gap in the furze and down onto the ground. As we dropped flat on the turf, Lex gave a muffled cry of pain.
“Damn these thorns!” hissed Sandorski.
He dug me in the ribs and held out, behind our friend’s back, a little syringe with which he had just jabbed him in the thigh.
The hunt passed us, then checked and turned back. They knew, as soon as they stopped to listen, that we must have gone to ground on the hillside. In the stillness of the night you could hear a man charging across country half a mile away. If only we could have reached the springy turf of the green track above us, we could have run–or jumped or danced, for that matter–without a sound.
They closed in, and flashed torches quickly on and off. They were wise not to spoil their night sight, and it may be, too, that they feared we were armed and desperate. All they could see was a formless black mass of thorn and furze, forbidding search. The twisting track into the heart of it, worn down by the persistent feet of little animals and an occasional sheep, was clear enough from where we lay, but indistinguishable from outside. Two of them were above us and two below us. They made a halfhearted attempt to beat the patch, but the furze was stiff and centuries old; we might have been surrounded by a lion-proof thorn fence.
It was as well that Sandorski’s syringe had done its work, for they started to ask Lex what the devil he thought he was doing. They couldn’t say very much, for they didn’t know who was with him or why the plane had come down in the wrong place or why it had immediately and frantically taken off again. Indeed they couldn’t be certain that Lex had ever got out of the plane at all-–and from their point of view we might be three unknown enemies, or Lex and two. Sandorski’s cavalry tactics had landed us in the most God-awful defenseless position, but at least they had bewitched the opposing force into a nightmare world where nothing made sense.
Hiart’s querulous voice, above us, said:
“For heaven’s sake, don’t go throwing names about!”
Pink, from below us and in a furious temper, told him to beggar off home to his bleeding nanny.
All the same, it wasn’t funny. True, they couldn’t see us till they stepped on us, but they had only to wait till daylight or till we grew impatient.
We heard somebody moving round our patch of cover and giving orders in whispers. I think it was Hiart, for their next move showed a certain subtlety. They shifted noisily about until we hadn’t the faintest notion where any single one of them was, and then preserved the most absolute, disciplined silence.
We were out of the wind on that slope, and there wasn’t a sound. A rare car rushed along the road in the valley beneath. A sheep coughed on the lower ground by the stream. This went on for half an hour. At least I found it to be only half an hour when I looked at my watch. I thought it must be
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