"Gaston! Put that thing down—at once!"
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Roche turned into the twin mouths of a shotgun, with his own pistol hanging uselessly at his side. The old man was breathing heavily—and, for God's sake, the old woman had something in her hand too, just behind him! Madame Peyrony stood up. "Angélique: you will telephone the Police and tell them that Algerian terrorists are attacking the Englishman's Tower—they must come this instant. Then, you will telephone M'sieur Galles with the same message. At once!"
"Oui, Madame." The old woman didn't turn a hair either—
she might just as well have received orders for supper. She simply vanished from the doorway.
In her place, with a scampering slither, a small boy appeared behind Gaston, wide-eyed and tousle-haired.
Roche drew in his breath. It was there, just as he had known it would be—the last treachery of all, deep inside him, where he had always known it would be, waiting for him.
He looked at Madame Peyrony. Nobody could do more, or more efficiently, than she was doing. And no one could blame him for waiting here with her for the distant sound of the police klaxon—he was only one man, and too far away from the Tower to get back there in time. Whatever happened now, there was nothing more that he could do.
"Yes, Captain?"
He could feel her read his mind, through every twist of his fears, right down to the bedrock of cowardice.
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"I must go back to the Tower—to . . . divert them," he said thickly. "I promised."
"Of course." She inclined her head graciously. "How many of them are there ... to be diverted?"
"I don't know." His mouth seemed full of pebbles. "But I must go now—at once."
"But of course." She nodded again. "So you must take the car
—that will divert them."
"The car?"
"Petit Gaston—" she threw the command past him "—you will start the car for M'sieur le Capitaine. At once—and then attend your grandfather!" She came back to Roche. "It is complicated to start, so I am informed, but the child will do that for you."
Roche was momentarily diverted by the scampering sound behind him, and then by the look on her face.
"You have a weapon." She nodded down at his hand. "So you must do your best—as you promised."
He looked at her speechlessly.
"Off you go then!" Her voice became an order. "And, for your information, Captain ... I have disliked that car for over twenty years—you understand?"
Roche went—it was as though he was moving in a dream—
down the staircase, across the hall—into a darkening world dummy5
eerily lit by light streaming out of the courtyard on the left of the door, which drew him towards it.
This wasn't how it was meant to be—
The Delaroche Royale was already alive and waiting for him, with huge headlights blazing, but only the faintest thrumming of the engine buried deep inside it.
The child swung out of the driver's seat, making way for him.
"How do I make it go?" He looked despairingly at the bank of instruments. "Where's the gear-lever?"
The child came up at his shoulder, standing on the running-board. "There is a switch— there—" he pointed "—and then m'sieur presses upon the accelerator pedal—down there—
and then the brake is off, and she goes—"
Roche snapped the switch and felt for the brake—the monster was already moving—there was no gear lever—
Christ!
The child dropped away. " Turn quickly, m'sieur!" he shrieked at Roche.
The wall on the other side of the courtyard was looming in the blazing light—Roche twisted the wheel in panic—his foot had hardly touched the accelerator pedal—the gateway of the courtyard came to meet him— but too fast, and it was far too narrow—
Something crashed ahead of him—scraped hideously alongside him— and then was lost behind. A whole wood of trees, sharply picked out in ranks by the searchlights, sprang dummy5
into view on either side of the car: it was a steep drive, by the angle of the car—but not by the way the monster breasted it, without effort.
Turn left, along the ridge—he had done something wrong, so that the engine was roaring at him now, angry at his stupidity
—
And he was going too fast, even though he didn't know why—
the slightest touch on the accelerator made the monster go mad—and he had to turn off, down the Tower drive, the moment the trees thinned—and they were thinning already—
Christ!
And— Christ!—there were figures dancing in the road—
scattering left and right—
The last temptation was the worst of all, because it was the least expected: he could put his foot down and drive for ever, and nothing this side of Hell could catch him!
But he swung the wheel to the left with all his might instinctively, and jammed his foot down on the brake without consciously weighing up the temptation— apt to make rash decisions underpressure would have to do as an epitaph.
The monster tried to turn in a civilised fashion, but its weight and the laws of motion were against it: it slithered, and the wheels locked, and it lost control of itself, as Roche himself had already done. Trees—a tree—and bushes, and black space
—and finally the Tower itself whirled in front of him, like a dummy5
newsreel. Then it crashed sideways into something solid, half throwing him out of the soft body-fitting seat.
The engine stalled, but the lights still searched out every detail of the Tower—every small unevenness and shadow, everything pale bright yellow or black—and the cottage way past it, trailing creeper and blank windows, and a man throwing himself down out of the door—
He rolled down sideways as the window starred and cracked and burst in on him, even as the noise of the automatic weapon caught up with the sound of the shattering windscreen.
Everything went dark around him—inky black, pitch dark, after the brightness. He fumbled for the pistol, which he remembered out of the past—he had put it on the seat, ready to hand, as he had entered the car. It wasn't there—he felt around for it—it wasn't there— it wasn't anywhere, and it was too late to go on searching for it.
The door on the driver's side had already burst open with the impact, so that his legs were sticking out of it; he pushed himself in the same direction, holding on to the wheel to enable him still to keep his balance as his feet felt the ground.
But then standing upright no longer seemed sensible: hit the ground was what the Staff Sergeant always shouted—
He dropped flat, willing the earth to open up. But it was hard as rock under him.
Silence.
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He lifted his head cautiously. It wasn't really night, he realised—not now that the bright light had been extinguished: it was almost night—there was a thick quilt of cloud high above him, illuminated by the moon far above the quilt... but he could still see too much, and could be seen too easily if he moved away from the shadow of the car.
The sudden sound of breaking glass broke the stillness. Then a sharper crack—the crack of a pistol—fixed the sound ahead and above: Audley had fired out of the high arrow-slit in the Tower, smashing the window first like the cowboys in the films.
Silence settled down again.
"You bastards down there!" An American voice rang thin but clear from above. "You just keep your goddamn heads down—
okay?"
Bradford was buying time—and he was buying it in the belief that the crash or the burst of fire which had blacked out the lights had finished off Roche's rescue attempt, and Roche himself with it.