“It’s a straightforward enough plan,” he said. “I’m briefing you separately as you’ll be playing the part of Officer in Command. But don’t run away with the idea that you’re in command of the mission,” he added. “Because I’ll be there myself, right beside you. As your Corporal.”
“That’s nice and trusting of you,” said the Saint.
Rockham turned those pale eyes on him.
“A good mercenary commander never separates himself for long from his troops,” he replied. “Now — Braizedown Hall is under constant guard. A platoon of men, day and night. We could always try storming the place with superior numbers, but there’s a neater way. We take the place of the guard.”
Simon raised an eyebrow.
“How?”
“The Paras are due to hand over tomorrow to another regiment. The Lowland Light Infantry. And we’ve enough of their uniforms to make up a plausible- looking platoon. Lembick has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Scots regiments. I’ve put him in charge of the drill.”
The Saint thought about it. It was a bold and yet simple idea, the sort he would have expected from Rockham. He looked appraisingly at this man with the big square head, the determined jaw, the powerful hands; and he wondered what sort of conventional military strategist he would have made, if he had not chosen the path of lawless violence.
“What about the real platoon?” he asked.
“We divert them — send them on a circular tour around the country,” said Rockham, smiling. “And then we roll up in their place. And within twenty minutes after that, we roll out again — with the valuable Mr Instrood.”
All that day, the selected group of twenty-five men were drilled by Lembick in their tartan trews and battle-blouses. Tam o’shanters, those peculiarly Scottish woollen berets worn aslant, completed the uniform of that unique regiment — a regiment so elite and exclusive that even a person knowledgeable in military affairs of the time might be forgiven for never having heard of the Lowland Light Infantry.
Simon himself received special detailed briefing from Lembick on his role as Captain — and more than once he drew thankfully on his hasty studies to supply the general knowledge that was assumed of him.
When he woke himself that night for his rendezvous with Ruth Barnaby, it was with a simultaneous reprise of the cautionary thought with which he had fallen asleep after his last sortie. He made his way to the toilet as usual, but before switching on the light took a long look out of the window. And in the darkness below, he detected at one point the intermittent red glow of a cigarette, like an over- stimulated glowworm.
Therefore, after making normal use of the plumbing, instead of returning to his room or using the drainpipe exit route that he had established, he went boldly down the stairs and ambled out of the bedroom block.
He stood briefly outside the door, breathing in the cool night air and now and again gazing up at the few faint stars that were visible. When his eyes had adjusted fully to the dark, he began a leisurely stroll around. As soon as he moved off he saw out of the corner of his eye the black shadow that detached itself from a wall of the next block; and throughout the unhurried circuit he made of the main buildings he knew that the shadow was following at a discreet distance behind him.
The Saint smiled indulgently and allowed the pantomime to continue until he chose the moment to make an abrupt about-turn and say: “Why not join me, chum, instead of trailing along like a lost beagle?”
It was Lembick who loomed recognisably out of the dark. And said: “Where d’ye think you’re going?”
“For a walk,” said the Saint imperturbably. “I got the fidgets — tossing and turning, couldn’t sleep.”
“Nerves, maybe?” Lembick sneered. “About the job tomorrow?”
“No nerves,” rasped the Saint, in the abrasive tones of Gascott. “It’s a sort of muscle restlessness. Stops you settling down to sleep. The only cure is to move around and work it off.”
“You must need more exercise,” Lemback said. “That can be arranged.”
The Saint stood and faced him.
“Lembick,” he said, with a kind of military authority that he knew would have effect, “let’s stop this nonsense. We’re in this together now. We’ve got to work together. Let’s call it quits and get on with it.” He stuck out his hand disarmingly. “OK?”
After a long pause, Lembick accepted the hand.
“OK,” he growled. “For now.”
“Then I’ll go jog off my fidgets,” Simon said amicably.
“OK,” Lembick said. “Just don’t get mixed up with the patrol.”
“And you stay out of my room,” Simon responded genially. “In case you get any ideas, I’ll warn you: the feelthy pictures in my bag are booby-trapped.”
He strolled away on his supposed therapeutic walk through the grounds with the intuitive certainty that his bull-by-the-horns ploy had neutralised Lembick for that night at least. But he was under no illusion that he could count on it to work indefinitely.
That was a problem which would have to be dealt with in what cliché-mongers conveniently dispose of as ‘due course’. Until then, there was no worthwhile guarantee whatever of what form that nebulous futurity would actually take.
12
Ruth Barnaby was waiting for him outside the wall as arranged, and he told her about the briefing and drills.
“So it’s on,” he concluded. “Pelton’s hypothesis was right. Target — Instrood. At Worplesford Cross, all being well, the genuine platoon go off on a wild goose chase, and we roll up at Braizedown in their place. The guard change is scheduled for five o’clock, and we’ll be at Worplesford before four thirty.”
“I’ll tell Pelton,” she said.
“Will the Lowlanders be put in the picture?”
“I don’t know. That’ll be Pelton’s decision. I’d guess not. It just might get back to Rockham.”
The Saint sighed as he uncoiled himself from the car seat beside her.
“Ruth — I’m sure you’re right. That’s probably exactly what your boss will say.” Simon had got out of the car, and now he paused on his way, leaning in through the open door. “But if Pelton won’t confide in the Lowlanders, I hope he’ll damn-well confide in somebody. Because otherwise,” he said with heavy emphasis, “who the hell’s going to form that powerful reception party he promised?”
And she was still pondering the implications of those words for some time after she watched him ease his long figure back up to the rope ladder and over the wall.
So the curtain was about to go up, he mused, on what looked like being the final act in one of the strangest dramas he had ever been mixed up in. But while he slept that night, another scene of the penultimate act was being played out in another rural setting, not twenty miles away.
From an upstairs window of Braizedown Hall, Ruth Barnaby and Albert Nobbins watched as three vehicles came to a halt in the crunching gravel outside the front door.
First a jeep, decorated with the blue-on-maroon winged horse of the Parachute Regiment: in the driving-seat a Corporal of the Regiment and beside him a Captain. Then the big dark-green official car normally used by Pelton. Then a three-ton army lorry bearing the same insignia as the jeep.
“You think you can break him?” Ruth Barnaby asked.
Nobbins shrugged. He had changed his usual spectacles for a pair with round steel-rimmed lenses that made him look harder, less sympathetic.
“He’s a trained agent,” he said. “And tougher than most, so they say. But we’re calling the tune. And I’ve got him for a week. All to myself.”
Nobbins’s mouth came down in a firm little line and his manner held tense purposefulness that she had never seen in him before.