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was a ghost town

    littered with the corpses of unburied dogs while the roads into Piemburg were jammed with

    cars whose drivers were exhibiting all the symptoms of mass hysteria. It was clear that

    the aim that Kommandant van Heerden had hoped to achieve by the detour was not being

    realized.
     The same thing could hardly be said of Konstabel Els. His aim, always accurate,

    had by this time become positively unerring. The casualties among the plain-clothes men

    were mounting so rapidly that they fell back from their more advanced positions and

    huddled in the hedgerow trying to think of some way of circumventing the deadly privet

    bush which was obstructing them so successfully in the course of their duty. Finally

    while some of them crept into the thick bushes that covered the hillside directly facing

    the gateway and far enough away to ensure the deadly revolver couldn’t reach them, others

    decided to try to outflank the murderous bush.
    To Konstabel Els it was beginning to become fairly clear that this was no ordinary

    gun-battle, but something quite new in his experience as an upholder of law and order.

    He listened with quiet confidence to the hail of bullets that flattened themselves

    against the walls of the blockhouse. Every now and again he peered out of the gun port that

    overlooked the Park to make sure that no one had worked his way round behind him, but the

    Park was clear. He need not have worried. Sir Theophilus had prepared for such an

    eventuality by constructing an extremely deep ditch which ran between the blockhouses

    that fringed the Park. As with so many of the Governor’s devices this defensive haha was

    unexpectedly treacherous and so well camouflaged that anyone approaching it from the

    road was quite unaware of its existence until he was already impaled on the terrible

    iron spikes that lined its concrete bottom. The plain-clothes men lost two of their number

    in the haha before they gave up the attempt to outflank the concealed blockhouse.
    The screams that followed this attempt heartened Konstabel Els who imagined that he

    had scored two new hits in what he had no doubt were extremely painful portions of the

    human anatomy. He was a little surprised at his success as he had not fired for several

    minutes and certainly not in the direction from which the screams came. He decided to

    check his rear again, and peering out of the gun port that overlooked the Park was just in

    time to see Kommandant van Heerden leave his hollow and scuttle towards the house with an

    astonishing turn of speed for a man of his age and sedentary habits. Kommandant van

    Heerden had also heard the screams that came from the haha and had reached the frantic

    conclusion that the time had come to leave the security of his hollow at no matter what

    cost to life and limb and return to Jacaranda House to try to find out what had happened to

    the cretinous Luitenant Verkramp.
    Whatever the Kommandant’s reasons, and they were unknown to Konstabel Els, the sight

    of his only possible ally scuttling away and leaving him in the lurch convinced the

    desperate Els that the time had come to use the elephant gun if he were not to die alone and

    deserted at the hands of the desperados down the road. He could see movement in the

    bushes on the hillside opposite him and he decided to try a volley there. He mounted

    the great multi-barrelled rifle in the gun port, aimed at the bushes concealing the

    plain-clothes men and gently pulled the trigger.
    The detonation that followed was of an intensity and had about it a seismic quality

    which came, when he could pick himself off the floor of tie blockhouse where the recoil had

    thrown him, as a complete surprise to Konstabel Els. Not that he hadn’t heard it before,

    but on that occasion he had been slightly distracted by the attentions of the

    Dobermann. This time he could appreciate the true qualities of the weapon.
    With a white face and with his